Alex "Shaya" Lichtenstein, the man at the center of a wide-ranging NYPD bribery scandal involving the sale of gun permits to civilians, was sentenced to 32 months in jail yesterday, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Lichtenstein, who had previous pled guilty for his role in the bribery scheme, had his sentence handed down in federal court yesterday. He previously admitted that while he was a member of the Borough Park neighborhood watch group the Shomrim, he paid up to $1,000, as well as gifts like limo rides, to NYPD officers in the police department's Licensing Division in exchange for gun licenses for his clients. Under the cover of acting as an expediter for gun licenses, Lichtenstein would take payments from $10,000 to $16,000 from his clients and give part of the money to the police officers he worked with. In at least one instance, Lichteinstein helped a man with four domestic violence complaints on his record get a gun permit.

"By engaging in an egregious scheme to trade cash for gun licenses, Alex Lichtenstein and his co-defendants in the New York City Police Department corrupted the sensitive process of evaluating gun license applications in New York City," acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Joon H. Kim said following the sentencing.

The case that has unfolded since Lichtenstein was busted for bribing NYPD officers for gun permits has seen three NYPD officers demoted for their roles in helping Lichtenstein with his scheme. Even with this sentencing, the case may not be over. According to the Times, federal prosecutors announced that they had found evidence of other bribes paid to "high ranking" NYPD officers, based on records that Lichtenstein kept. Earlier this year, prosecutors told the court that they had recordings of 70,000 conversations that Lichtenstein had made, including some with NYPD officers about his gun licensing bribes.
Cambodias opposition party will stop using a slogan the ruling party has characterized as incitement if the countrys courts rule against it, a lawmaker pledged Friday, as the country gears up for local commune elections in June.



Speaking to reporters during a visit to Prey Sar Prison, where several opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) activists and lawmakers are jailed, CNRP lawmaker Son Chhay said his party would honor any court decision on the slogan, which he noted had become popular with the public.



If the courts or competent authorities find the slogan to be problematic, the CNRP will follow such a decision, he said.



We are not obstinate. The message in the slogan has already made its way to people of all walks of life. There is no way we can retract it. Nonetheless, the CNRP will not include the slogan in its five-point political platform for the upcoming election [if ordered by the court].



In a statement last week, the ruling Cambodia Peoples Party (CPP) accused the CNRP of sowing incitement and troublemaking with its campaign slogan, adopted during an extraordinary congress session at the end of February.



The ruling party had said it would file a lawsuit against the CNRP if it does not modify the slogan, which reads, Replace the commune chiefs who serve the party with commune chiefs who serve the people.



Some 300 CPP commune chiefs across Cambodia have signed letters accusing the opposition of using the campaign slogan to fan disunitylanguage similar to that used in a recently approved legislation which could see whole parties dissolved for such behavior.



CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said Friday he was skeptical of Son Chhays pledge and did not expect the opposition to stop using the slogan entirely.



We welcome such a move, but we are wary that it might be temporary only, he said.



When the opportunity avails itself, I believe, he will use the slogan again. To prove it to us, he has to make sure the slogan is removed from the CNRPs five-point political platform. Unless the CNRP moves to a four-point political platform, we will remain unconvinced.



Last week, Wan-Hea Lee, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) representative in Cambodia, told RFAs Khmer Service she saw no problem with the CNRPs use of the slogan and was unaware of any legal basis the CPP might have for threatening the opposition with a lawsuit.



Political observers say the reason the CPP has threatened to file a lawsuit against the CNRP is because the ruling party is afraid the slogan will convince the public to vote for the opposition, despite CPP claims that the slogan is offensive to its commune councilors.



Local elections are slated for June 4 and will see candidates vie for 1,646 commune councilor seats across Cambodia. Twelve political partiesincluding the CPP and CNRPare authorized by the National Election Committee (NEC), the countrys top electoral body, to compete in the polls.



CNRP legitimacy



CNRP officials have warned that the CPP seeks to prevent the opposition from standing in the elections through a variety of different measures, including the passage of the political party law approved by the National Assembly on Feb. 20, despite an opposition boycott of parliament in protest.



The new law bars anyone convicted of a crime from holding the top offices in a political party and forced former CNRP president Sam Rainsyin exile since late 2015 after his conviction on defamation charges supporters say were politically motivatedto resign last month to preserve the party.



The CNRP held its extraordinary congress session in part to amend its statute and appoint Kem Sokha president of the party in Sam Rainsys place, in response to a clause in the political party law that would have required them to replace their leadership within 90 days or risk being dissolved.



Earlier this week, Cambodias Minister of the Interior Sar Kheng said Kem Sokhas promotion may violate CNRP bylaws requiring a grace period on appointing a new president of 18 months and could threaten the partys legitimacypreventing its candidates from running in the June commune elections.



On Friday, Son Chhay dismissed those claims, saying Kem Sokhas appointment did not violate the partys bylaws and adheres to requirements under the new political party law.



The CNRPs statute does not prohibit the party from electing a new president, he said.



The new law on political parties also requires parties to elect new presidents within 90 days of the former presidents absence. Our newly elected party president is recognized by Prime Minister Hun Sen, so I dont see anything wrong with our party legitimacy.



Reported by Moniroth Morm and Vuthy Tha for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
A court in Hong Kong on Friday handed down three-year jail terms to three street food vendors for throwing things at police officers during the "fishball revolution" clashes of February 2016 in the city's Mong Kok district.



Students Hui Ka-ki, 23, and Mak Tsz-hei, 20, and chef Sit Tat-wing were jailed by the city's District Court after being found guilty of throwing items like glass bottles and bamboo poles at police officers.



Judge Sham Siu-man rejected a plea for leniency from the defense, saying that the court needed to deter others from acting similarly.



"Anyone participating in such riots needs to understand there is a cost," Sham told the court on Friday. "Violence is violence."



He said only some of the police heading for the scene of the unrest on the night of Feb. 9, 2016, were equipped with riot gear like helmets and perspex shields, and were hit by a rain of missiles from all quarters, thrown by an enraged crowd.



"There is no doubt that their lives were potentially in danger, and it is lucky that nobody was seriously injured," Sham said.



Chief Inspector Chan Shun-ching of the city police department's Organized Crime and Triad Bureau welcomed the sentences in a brief statement.



"Police welcome the court's judgement, which reflects the gravity of the case," Chan said, adding that 103 police officers had sought medical treatment on the night of the clashes.



"The court also clearly sent a message to the public that no violence will be tolerated under the laws of Hong Kong," he said.



Fishball revolution



Scores of people were arrested in the Feb. 9 Mong Kok riots, dubbed the "fishball revolution" on social media, which started after a dispute between police and unlicensed food vendors in the gritty working class districtalso the scene of clashes during the 2014 Occupy Central pro-democracy movement.



Police arrested 86 people in connection with the clashes, but cases against many of them have been dropped owing to lack of evidence.



Cases are proceeding against 33 suspects, including Edward Leung and Ray Wong of the localist group Hong Kong Indigenous, all of whom have been released on bail.



Wong told reporters on Friday that the government is moving to stifle dissent in bringing rioting charges against protesters.



"We should be thinking about these young people who were prepared to pay such a high price ... in today's environment, in coming out onto the streets."



"Rioting cases are still ongoing against protest movements by young people."



Pan-democratic lawmaker Claudio Mo said the sentences were too harsh.



"They were really much harsher than I had imagined they would get," Mo told reporters. "I thought they'd get a few months, but how wrong I was."



"Now, they have enshrined the notion of rioting into Hong Kong law, which has the subtext of being a warning to others," she said.



Video footage of the riots showed a large crowd throwing bricks and other objects at riot police, who fought back with pepper spray and batons, injuring an unknown number of people, including journalists.



Others set fire to debris in the street, while business owners reported damage to property.



Different views



Chinese and Hong Kong officials have described the "fishball revolution" as the work of "radical separatists."



But sociologists have cited growing reports of police brutality and a sense of disillusionment after the Occupy Central movement failed to bring about fully democratic elections in Hong Kong.



Other commentators have blamed the administration of chief executive Leung Chun-ying for heavy-handedness when dealing with dissent, rather than working to gain public trust and recognition for government policies through consensus-building.



Reported by Wong Lok-to for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Ding Wenqi for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
China's leaders on Friday turned out in force to pay their last respects to Li Zhao, wife of late ousted premier Hu Yaobang, who died at the weekend at the age of 96.



But liberal academics who wanted to attend her funeral at Beijing's Babaoshan crematorium said they were denied entry permits to the funeral.



Li's son Hu Dehua told RFA shortly after his mother's death was announced that she had passed away peacefully at the family home in Beijing on March 12.



Her funeral, which took place amid tight security and a police cordon, was attended by President Xi Jinping and all members of China's all-powerful Politburo standing committee.



Admission was by permit only, 1,500 of which were issued, according to an academic who was issued a permit but unable to attend due to illness.



Even permit-holders lined up for hours for a chance to pay their respects after Li's remains were installed in a hall reserved for revolutionary figures.



Hu Dehua told RFA that the family had been hoping that Li's remains could be laid to rest alongside those of her husband.



"It would be better that way," he said in a brief interview on March 13. "But we'll have to wait for the funeral committee to look into it, and hear their opinion."



Managed event



Among those who attended were constitutional scholar Zhang Lifan, rights lawyer Shang Baojun, and former members of the editorial staff of the now-shuttered liberal political magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu.



Footage of the scene provided by an eyewitness showed a photo of Li presiding over the hall, as black-clad bearers carried in a coffin draped in the flag of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.



One tribute read: "Deep feeling, far-sighted, always in our hearts."



Near the entrance of the hall, which was packed with funeral wreaths, another tribute read: "In deep, painful mourning for Comrade Li Zhao."



The invitation-only event was in sharp contrast to the spontaneous outpouring of public mourning on Tiananmen Square following Hu's April 22 state funeral.



Popular among ordinary Chinese for rehabilitating millions purged during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement and for righting some of the wrongs of the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Hu was mourned by thousands on Tiananmen Square in May 1989.



The demonstration of public grief and outrage sparked the student-led pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square, which ended with hundreds and perhaps thousands of deaths in early June that year. It also triggered the fall of Hu Yaobang's successor, Zhao Ziyang.



Simple, straightforward



But Li held the status of a revolutionary hero in her own right, shaving her head to pass as a man, and showing up in the Communist Party's stronghold of Yan'an in the 1930s to join the revolution.



After she married Hu in 1941, she continued with her own career at the head of China's state-owned textile industry, giving birth to four children, Hu Deping, Liu Hu, Hu Dehua, and Li Heng.



During her husband's tenure as premier, she was rarely seen with him on official engagements, but remained a respected figure among Beijing's leaders in spite of her husband's ouster.



She is also remembered for her role during the 1980s in overturning thousands of political verdicts and miscarriages of justice that flooded the government after the death of late supreme leader Mao Zedong and the beginning of the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping.



Her office in the capital was dubbed "The No. 2 complaints department," and Li enjoyed a reputation for simplicity and straightforwardness.



Lawyer Shang Baojun told Hong Kong media that much of the outpouring of grief was also an expression of popular feeling about Hu, who he said is unlikely to be rehabilitated by the current leadership.



Beijing-based democracy activist Zha Jianguo said he would like to have gone to the funeral, but was unable to get a permit.



"It proved too difficult to find someone who would obtain one for me," said Zha, whose activism would make it unlikely that he would be allowed in under his own name.



"There is so much weight of symbolic meaning packed into this event, for the people of China, and her intellectuals," he said.



"By mourning Li Zhao, they are [also] mourning Hu Yaobang."



'Hidden meaning'



Zha said China's leadership was making an unprecedented change in ruling Chinese Communist Party protocols by attending the funeral of Li, who was only a bureau-level cadre in the official hierarchy.



"This is another angle on [the official attitude to] Hu Yaobang," Zha said, adding that the honor of Hu's wife is in stark contrast to the official treatment of Hu's successor Zhao Ziyang, who was ousted for taking too liberal a line during the 1989 student movement.



An academic who declined to be named agreed that the funeral was exceptional.



"There is a lot of hidden meaning here, which I don't dare over-interpret," the academic said. "It has to do with elevating Hu and obliterating Zhao, and the last traces of [public grief for] the Tiananmen Square massacre. That's why Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang are treated differently."



"Think about it: all seven members of the Politburo standing committee, with wreaths from [former presidents] Jiang [Zemin] and Hu [Jintao]."



"[Former premier] Zhao Ziyang has been dead 11 years, and his family hasn't even been allowed to lay his ashes to rest, while here they are giving the wife of a former premier such a grand send-off," he said.



"That tells you everything about the intention of the leadership."



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Calls in North Korea for wartime mobilization in response to U.S.-South Korean military exercises now under way are being greeted by the countrys citizens as business as usual, with few showing signs of actual alarm, sources in the nuclear-armed state say.



The first order by the North Korean armys Supreme Command went out on March 1, a source in Yanggang province told RFAs Korean Service.



Since then, emergency orders for Worker-Peasant Red Guards have been made three times, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But this has only increased the number of complaints about the mobilizations instead of heightening an atmosphere of real crisis.



North Korea's Worker-Peasant Red Guards, formed in 1959 and equipped mainly with small arms with some heavier weapons, are the country's largest civil defense force.



Preparations for mobilization include orders for active duty and reserve troops to stand ready for combat, with training in black-out and evacuation procedures made mandatory for both soldiers and civilians, the source said.



Evacuation drills for the reserve forces have not yet gone ahead, the source said.



But the emergency mobilization of paramilitary forces, reserve training units, and the Worker-Peasant Red Guards have been put into effect. These calls can be made at any time, so everyone is under pressure all the time now.



The sources spoke to RFA before a visit to Seoul this week by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who signaled a tougher policy toward North Korea, including the possibility of pre-emptive military action.



"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson told reporters after he visited the heavily militarized border that separates the two Koreas.



"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, and economic measures. All options are on the table," he said.



Daily movements restricted



In a departure from earlier North Korean training, this years calls to mobilize began at 4:00 a.m. and lasted until 6:00 a.m., the source said.



This was one hour ahead of the previously established schedule so that the movements could escape surveillance by U.S. reconnaissance satellites, he said.



Emergency mobilization orders now restrict business trips and other daily movements by soldiers and civilian officials, a source in North Hamgyong province said, also speaking to RFA.



But apart from the inconvenience of the blackout training and other emergency drills, no one seems alarmed anywhere. The atmosphere is the same as always, he said.



Central government authorities say that the situation is more serious this year than in previous years, but they say this every year, he said, adding that some are calling the present state of emergency a conspiracy aimed at winning public support following the purge earlier this year of North Korean state security chief Kim Won Hong.



In gatherings of trusted friends, people are saying Only the high-ranking officials who are high and mighty are really frightened of war, while the poor people with nothing to lose are saying it would be better for war to come.



Reported by Sunghui Moon for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Soo Min Jo. Written in English by Richard Finney.




UPDATED at 01:30 p.m. EST on 03/20/2017

Chinese authorities have reduced the number of monastic dwellings at Sichuans Larung Gar Buddhist Academy targeted for destruction to 3,225, in response to appeals by the management committee of the complex, one of Larung Gars abbots says.



The decision, announced on March 12, reverses a projected total of 4,320 demolitions announced earlier on Jan. 13, according to a public address given by the abbot on March 16.



The destruction of these houses will be completed by April 30 without excuse, according to the talk, a recording of which was obtained by RFAs Tibetan Service.



Last year, a total of 1,500 homes was demolished at Larung Gar, the abbot said, leaving unclear whether the total of 3,225 now announced for destruction includes that figure or is a number to be destroyed in addition to those already torn down.



Meanwhile, a total of 259 monks and nuns who had come to Larung Gar from neighboring Qinghai province are still present at the institute but will soon be forced to return to their home towns, the abbot said.



Initially, the authorities had prepared a list of 500 monks and nuns from Qinghai, but many who were included in that list had previously passed away or had already left, so now there are 259 who will have to leave, he said.



A total of 3,729 monks and nuns were forced to leave Larung Gar last year, with another 1,600 removed from the institute in 2015 and 600 forced out in 2014, the abbot said.



All of the issues causing pain and hardship to this institution are being discussed in a democratic fashion by [Larung Gars] management committee, and we ask all of the members of this institute to exercise patience and tolerance, taking lessons from the teachings of the Buddha and our beloved teacher, the abbot said.



Political reeducation



Many thousands of Tibetans and Han Chinese once studied at Serthar (in Chinese, Seda) countys sprawling Larung Gar complex, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the worlds largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.



The number of students now left at Larung Gar is still unclear, though many coming originally from the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and western Chinas Qinghai and Gansu provinces have already been removed and sent back to their native regions, sources said in earlier reports.



Those sent back to the TAR have been subjected to month-long courses of political reeducation before being allowed to return to their family homes.



Hundreds of nuns from Tibetan-populated counties of Sichuan have meanwhile been housed in temporary camps of two-storey buildings set up in desolate areas of the province until more permanent accommodations can be found.



Tourist destinations



As the work of destruction proceeds at Larung Gar, construction of a nearby tourist village has meanwhile begun as part of a plan by authorities to confront trends of Tibetan religious and cultural expression and contain monastic growth, according to a report released in March by the Washington, D.C.-based International Campaign for Tibet.



Tibet is being turned into a huge tourist destination, says one Tibetan resident of Serthar quoted in the report, titled Shadow of Dust Across the Sun.



Guesthouses and fancy hotels inside and immediately outside monastic environments will grow to host more and more Chinese tourists, with the purpose of improving the local economy and at the same time detracting time from monastics education and activities, the man said.



This is the main objective of the Chinese government with regards to Buddhism, and we Tibetans have no power to influence any of these plans.



Reported by RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.



UPDATE: This update provides information on the total numbers of Larung Gar monks and nuns expelled in 2016, 2015, and 2014.








Authorities in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region are offering hefty sums of cash to would-be tipsters on terrorist activities, according to an official announcement issued in the aftermath of a deadly attack carried out by a group of Muslim ethnic Uyghurs last month.



In a Feb. 23 statement recently obtained by RFAs Uyghur Service, the Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture government said 100 million yuan (U.S. $14.5 million) had been set aside to reward residents reporting suspicious acts following the knife attack a week earlier in Guma (Pishan) county.



Our region will create an anti-terror defense front composing every ten families as a unit, and an anti-terror reward fund in order to encourage the masses to actively provide tips related to terrorism, the announcement reads.



Tip providers will receive anywhere from 150 yuan (U.S. $22) to 500,000 yuan (U.S. $72,426), depending upon the importance and usefulness of the tip on suspicious terrorist activity or suspicious individuals.



The announcement said authorities would guarantee the anonymity of informants and secretly transfer funds to their bank accounts, if requested.



Anyone exposing high-ranking members of the community involved in suspicious activity will be handsomely rewarded for their information.



Tip providers who report on double-faced cadres, party members or double-faced religious clergy will receive 200,000-500,000 yuan (U.S. $28,970-72,426), the announcement said.



The focus on rooting out top-level terrorists echoed points in a speech on maintaining stability by Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo earlier this year, calling for the severe punishment of double-faced cadres and religious clergy in the region.



A second announcement, issued Feb. 28 by the Chira (Cele) county government, offered similar rewards to local residents for reporting on their neighbors.



Tip providers who report on the suspicious activities of individuals returning from overseas travel will receive 10,000 yuan (U.S. $1,449), the Chira announcement said.



Tip providers who report on individuals who refuse to greet, shake hands, socialize, let their children marry the children of, or attend the funerals of government cadres and patriotic religious clergy will receive 3,000 yuan (U.S. $435).



Those who report individuals for having stitched the star and crescent moon insignia on their clothing or personal items or the words East Turkestanreferring to the name of a short-lived Uyghur republicon their mobile phone case, purse or other jewelry, are also eligible to receive 3,000 yuan.



Offering rewards to informants is the latest move in a bid by authorities to increase security in Hotan, where a Feb. 15 attack by three Uyghurs in a residential area of Guma county left five passersby dead and another five injured, with the attackers themselves shot dead by police, according to state media.



The attack appears to have been motivated by anger at threats by local officials to punish the attackers for praying with their family, an activity outlawed by authorities in an effort to restrict Muslim religious practice in Xinjiang, sources told RFA.



On Feb. 16, authorities in nearby Keriye (Yutian) county announced a move to add 254 additional auxiliary members to its police force, with 204 jobs reserved for ethnic Uyghurs and 50 spaces held for Han Chinese, local media reports said last week.



Prefecture-wide policy



RFA was able to confirm that rewards were being offered to informants in at least two other counties in HotanKeriye and Lop (Luopu) countiesafter speaking with police officers in local townships.



A police officer who answered the phone in Lop countys Sampula township told RFA that phone calls from tip providers go straight to our chiefs, but said that as part of the stations auxiliary patrol, I dont have specific information about this issue.



An officer in Keriya countys Qarqiy township said he was unable to provide details about rewards to informants without the permission of his chief and the local political commissioner because the information was confidential.



But officers from two other townships in KeriyaSiyek and Kokyar townshipsconfirmed that several tipsters had made contact with local authorities in the weeks since the Hotan government issued its announcement.



Tip providers or situation reporters directly meet with township party secretary or township security personnel, said an officer from the Siyek station.



I am usually on a 48-hour watch duty at the police tower. Almost nobody comes to provide tips or report things thereat least, I havent seen anyone doing it.



A police officer in Kokyar township told RFA that tip providers from the township and villages [are] coming in to report suspicious things or individuals, adding that some had called the police station directly.



There were tip providers from the Hotan region who received a monetary reward, said the officer, who did not provide his name.



In our area, the situation is quite normal because we adopted tough measures earlier and cracked down hard on suspicious individuals or activities. We do get some tips from time to time but really not on a large scale.



The officer said that it was normal for neighbors to spy on one another and watch one anothers activities in the township and area villages.



Every ten families are organized as a group to watch one another, he said.



Suspicious things are usually reported to the township cadres, but not many people come to our police tower to provide tips.



Suspicion and fear



Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, president of the Uyghur American Association (UAA) exile group, compared Hotans reward system to tactics used in Nazi Germany, under Stalin in the Soviet Union and in Mao Zedongs China during the Cultural Revolution, and said it was likely to backfire in Xinjiang.



For the Chinese governmentespecially in the Hotan regionto throw some crumbs to the Uyghur people and encourage them to spy on their own is nothing short of pushing those living under its authoritarian rule into a moral crisis that will result in tragedies of conscience, Kokbore said.



While such heavy-handed Chinese policy may produce some limited results, it will sow deep suspicion among the people. It is clearsuch a society without trust, and living under suspicion and fear, will eventually shake the foundations of Chinas communist rule.



China has vowed to crack down on what it calls religious extremism in Xinjiang, and regularly conducts strike hard campaigns including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.



While China blames Uyghur extremists for terrorist attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
An outspoken rights activist from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong is under house arrest enforced by round-the-clock shifts by state security police, who are preventing her from leaving her home to visit a doctor.



"There are 10 of them working each shift right now, with three or four unlicensed vehicles and two regular cars," Li Biyun said from her home in Guangzhou's Shunde district on .



"The annual parliament is over, but they are still preventing me from going out," she said. "I'm allowed out in my neighborhood, but I'm not allowed to go anywhere else."



Li said the authorities have confiscated her ID card, making it hard for her to carry out simple tasks like buying a train or plane ticket, or accessing public services such as healthcare.



"My health has been poor with old injuries that haven't healed properly" Li said. "It's not the sort of medical problem that can be fixed just like that."



"My relatives want to take me to see a doctor, but I can't go to register at the hospital because they still have my ID card, and they won't give it back to me," she said.



Li suffered serious injuries after being thrown by police from a moving car following her release from a detention center, where she was held for "breaking election rules" for seven months before being released following her trial.



She has also reported multiple injuries from torture in detention last year. After her release, police put pressure on the hospital treating her to discharge her before she had fully healed, Li told RFA.



After the incident, Li took temporary refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Aug. 31 to evade police who were tailing her.



Li told RFA in an interview on International Women's Day that women are particularly vulnerable in 's China.



"The Chinese government says that men and women are equal, but in reality, we women don't have any rights at all," she said. "For example, the rules say that men in rural areas get access to their share of land at the age of 18, while women can only get hold of land by going through the back door."



"As a woman, I wanted to stand up and become a district People's Congress delegate, but the authorities accused me of disrupting the elections," she said. "I have been in jail, I have had threats against my person, and my ID card has been taken and not returned to me."



"So, no, as a woman, I don't feel equal."



Meanwhile, Li Biyun's sister Li Caiyun said she has also been placed under police surveillance, upsetting her family life.



"There are people following me every day, two of them," Li Caiyun said. "They won't let me get in a car or on a bus, or any form of transport."



"There are police officers but also hired thugs from criminal gangs," she said. "This is affecting my kid, who doesn't like seeing them."



"My kid asked me : why can't you sue them, Mommy?"



In , Li, 48, was dumped at high speed by the side of the road after being jailed on public order charges during which she alleged torture at the hands of police.



A court in Guangdong's Shunde city found Li guilty of "obstructing civic duties" after she tried to stand as an independent candidate in elections to her district People's Congress.



Since her detention, she has been coughing up blood, and has had difficulty walking due to leg injuries sustained during her "release" from detention.



In 2011, Li joined dozens of political activists across China in a campaign to file applications to stand for election to district-level National People's Congress (NPC) bodies, in spite of official warnings that there is "no such thing" as an independent candidate.



Li's candidacy enjoyed widespread popular support after her earlier advocacy work on behalf of local residents whose farmland had been sold off by local government for development.



Apart from a token group of cosmetic "democratic parties" that never oppose or criticize the ruling party, opposition political parties are banned in China, and those who set them up are frequently handed lengthy jail terms.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Lok-to for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
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Iranian authorities handed over 200 Afghan prisoners at the main border crossing in Islam Qala in western Afghanistan. Afghan authorities said those transferred on March 15 had been sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment for their involvement in drug smuggling in Iran. (RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan).
The European Union says Belarus must immediately release protesters detained in a series of recent demonstrations against a tax on the unemployed.

The EU said on March 17 that the arrests of demonstrators protesting the levy, which President Alyaksandr Lukashenka calls a tax on "social parasites," highlights "a clear need for a broader democratization process in the country."

"Freedom of association and of assembly needs to be ensured," a spokesperson for the EUs foreign affairs office said in a statement. "Recently detained peaceful protesters, including journalists covering the events, must be immediately released."

Authorities have detained more than 150 people across Belarus since March 1, dozens of whom have been handed jail sentences of up to 15 days.

Among those detained was RFE/RL's Belarus Service correspondent Halina Abakunchyk who was kept in police detention overnight after being arrested while live-streaming the protest in the city of Vorsha, northeast of the capital, Minsk.

A local court found her guilty of taking part in an unsanctioned rally, and released her on March 13 with the equivalent of a $300 fine.

Protests in the capital, Minsk, and other Belarusian cities continued despite Lukashenka's March 9 announcement that collection of the tax would be suspended until 2018.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Belarus Service
A man born in Saudi Arabia has been convicted in a U.S. federal court on charges he participated in a 2003 attack in Afghanistan that killed two U.S. servicemen.

A jury in Brooklyn, New York, deliberated for just two hours on March 16 before reaching the guilty verdict against admitted Al-Qaeda fighter Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun.

Harun, who was not in court and watched the trial from his jail cell, was extradited from Italy in October 2012.

He has insisted he is a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than a criminal court.

Harun, who holds Niger citizenship, traveled to Afghanistan to join Al-Qaeda weeks before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, prosecutors said.

They said he took part in an assault on U.S. troops in 2003 that killed Army Private 1st Class Jerod Dennis, 19, and Air Force Airman 1st Class Raymond Losano, 24.

A Koran recovered at the site had Harun's fingerprints, prosecutors said.

He also was convicted of later plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
A Brooklyn man convicted in the vicious 2013 gang assault that left the victim blind in one eye could spend four years behind bars. 24-year-old Mayer Herskovic was sentenced in Brooklyn State Supreme Court on Thursday; his fate now rests on the outcome of an appeal.

Herskovic had faced up to 15 years in prison after DNA evidence linked him to a mob of men who chased and then beat Taj Patterson on Flushing Avenue in South Williamsburg. Patterson was 22 at the time, had been studying fashion marketing, and walking from a birthday party to his home in Fort Greene when he was attacked in South Williamsburg on December 1st, 2013. The assailants approached him from behind, knocked him down, and kicked him repeatedly while yelling "Stay down, faggot!"

During Herskovic's trial, Patterson testified that some of the men that attacked him had worn logos of the Shomrim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood patrol force that has been the target of both praise and scrutiny. According to the Times, the Shomrim members accused Patterson of vandalizing cars in the area during their attack, but a police investigation later debunked those claims.

Patterson suffered a broken eye socket, and, despite multiple surgeries, doctors say he will never regain sight in his right eye.



Two Shomrim members recently admitted to being involved in an attack on Taj Patterson, whose mother had to take his story to the media before the NYPD would fully investigate.

"Im walking down some block by myself and then the next thing I know, Im surrounded by a group of Hasidic Jewish men and theyre attacking me, Patterson told the Daily News shortly after the attack. I was alone. I was an easy target. Im black. Im gay, a whole slew of reasons."

The NYPD's initial investigation into the attack on Patterson was closed in a single day, with no arrests made. According to the Daily News, the initial police report only referred to one attacker and appeared to partially blame Patterson for his own attack, calling him "highly intoxicated, uncooperative and incoherent." The case was only reopened after Patterson's mother spoke out in numerous interviews with local media. The second investigation resulted in five arrests; charges against two men were dropped, while two others, Pinchas Braver and Abraham Winkler, took plea deals. Herskovic remains the only suspect facing jail time.

During Herskovic's trial last year, Hate Crimes Unit Detective Eric Sanchez testified that when investigators tried to retrieve surveillance footage of the assault, "We discovered that many of the residents in the area were being uncooperative." Sanchez said that when asked for footage, people in the predominantly Hasidic Jewish area claimed their cameras were broken or weren't set to record at the time.

In his sentencing yesterday, judge Danny Chun acknowledged that Herskovic was "not the most culpable" for Patterson's injuries. Still, evidence appeared to directly link him to the beating. Prosecutors argued that lab tests found Herskovic's DNA on one of Patterson's sneakers that had been tossed onto a nearby roof during the assault. However, Stuart Slotnick, Herskovic's attorney, refuted the veracity of the tests.

"We think the DNA evidence was completely and totally flawed," Slotnick said in court Thursday, according to DNAinfo. "He's innocent."

Before his sentencingand the immediate move to appealHerskovic said, "I wish that I could take back what happened to Mr. Patterson...I pray that Mr. Patterson finds peace for what he has suffered and endured."

"I'm 24, my life is about family, helping people," he continued, according to the News. "I work as a construction worker. I work with all kinds of people, black, white, Hispanic, gay and not gay." An appellate judge issued a 120 day stay of Herskovic's sentencing while his attorneys prepare his appeal.

While Herskovic praised his own good character and his legal team continued to refute evidence, prosecutor Timothy Gough stressed that Patterson was the clear victim and had suffered permanent physical and psychological pain. Gough told the Times Patterson has lost his outgoing nature and now questions his belief in a higher power.

"He was a young black male in a predominantly Orthodox neighborhood," he told the paper. "This defendant, that group, that community could not see him as an individual."
An Afghan official says a suicide car bombing near an army base in eastern Afghanistan has killed one soldier and wounded several others.

Akbar Zadran, a district chief in the eastern province of Khost, said that the Taliban detonated an explosives-laden vehicle in front of the military base in Sabari district on March 17.

Zadran said the blast triggered an hourlong gunbattle with four Taliban fighters, who were all killed.

He said the blast was so powerful that it damaged nearby houses and a school.

In a statement, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Last week, Taliban fighters attacked an air base in Khost, located along the volatile border with Pakistan. All three militants were killed in a shootout with security forces.

The March 17 attack comes a week ahead of the launch of the Taliban's annual spring offensive.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
There's a specter haunting Belarus -- the specter of Ukraine.

And there's another specter haunting Belarus -- the specter of Russia.

As Belarus witnesses its largest antigovernment protests in years and as President Alyaksandr Lukashenka tries to weather the worst political crisis of his 23-year rule, nightmare visions of revolution, coups, annexations, and Kremlin-sponsored hybrid war are increasingly being invoked.

Fears of a Minsk Maidan. Fears that Lukashenka will use lethal force on demonstrators. Fears that Lukashenka will be forced from power like former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Fears that Russia will use the chaos to seize Belarus.

In the minds of many, Belarus's 2017 can easily become Ukraine's 2014.

And what one specifically fears about that speaks volumes about where one stands.

And which fears one is trying to stoke about "the Ukraine scenario" also offers a rare glimpse into apparent palace intrigue in Lukashenka's famously opaque regime.

According to one narrative making the rounds, Lukashenka is being manipulated by a cabal of security service officials who are trying to frighten him into a harsh crackdown on the protesters.

The faction, led by Interior Minister Ihar Shunevich, is reportedly telling Lukashenka that the protests are being orchestrated by revolutionary elements from Ukraine who seek to export the Maidan to Belarus.

A report released this week by the Minsk Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Research called the effort "complete disinformation" designed to push Lukashenka to "commit more gross political mistakes."

The authors of the report, Arseny Sivitsky and Yury Tsaryk, write that if Lukashenka does crack down forcefully, "it would lead to a full-scale domestic conflict in the country."

And that would open the door to Russian intervention.

"We may be on the verge of an attempt to implement a hybrid aggression against our country," journalist Dzmitry Halko writes on the website Belaruski Partizan.

"The Donbas scenario," Halko adds, "is being prepared. Don't be naive."

Shunevich, of course, is an easy bogeyman for those fearing a crackdown and Russian intervention. He famously showed up at a Victory Day parade back in 2015 in a vintage NKVD uniform.



But if Shunevich is the favorite scarecrow of Belarusians fearing a crackdown and a Moscow-backed hybrid war, those afraid of a Minsk Maidan and a pro-Western turn have unmasked their own villain: Foreign Minister Uladzmir Makei.

Just days after the Minsk Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Research report and Halko's article in Belaruski Partyzan were published, Yury Baranchyk, a Belarusian journalist residing in Moscow, weighed in with a piece on the Russian nationalist website Regnum.ru that turned this narrative on its head.

Baranchyk claims that a faction led by Makei is trying to persuade Lukashenka to negotiate with the protesters and cozy up to the West.

The reason, Baranchyk argues, is that Makei is scheming to be Lukashenka's successor and is attempting to undermine the Belarusian strongman's grip on power.

"Makei's propagandists are pushing Lukashenka down Yanukovych's path," he writes.

It is hard to judge -- let alone confirm -- any of this.

But adding to the air of intrigue, the day after Baranchyk's article was published, police in Moscow detained him at the request of the authorities in Minsk, who requested his extradition. But a Moscow court later ordered that he be released.

Regnum had long been publishing articles accusing Lukashenka of betraying Belarus's traditional ally Russia by seeking better relations with the West.

In December, police in Belarus detained three journalists -- Siarhej Shyptenka, Yury Paulavets, and Dzmitry Alimkin -- for inciting ethnic hatred in the articles, one of which referred to Belarus as a "mad pseudo-state."

What this little information war appears to point to is an online effort to influence how Lukashenka handles the current crisis.

It also points to something we have rarely seen in Belarus: clan warfare and palace intrigue in Lukashenka's court.

And it is indicative of the tough spot Lukashenka now finds himself in.

"Lukashenkas advisers are also whispering in his ear about the dangers of a 'Ukrainian scenario,' meaning a real popular uprising. But a crackdown on mass protest would also play into Russias hands -- and perhaps give it the excuse it needs to intervene," Andrew Wilson, author of the book Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship, writes in Politico.

"If the Belarus president is to survive, he will have to walk a narrow path, with his citizens pushing him from below and the Kremlin watching for its opportunity from outside."

(A big thanks to my colleague Alyaksey Znatkevich of RFE/RL's Belarus Service for his helpful comments and advice for this post.)

NOTE TO READERS: Be sure to tune in to The Power Vertical Podcast on March 17, where I will discuss the issues raised in this post with Alyaksey Znatkevich of RFE/RL's Belarus Service and Maryna Rakhlei of the Fund for Belarus Democracy at the German Marshal Fund.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.
Belarusian Prosecutor-General Alyaksandr Kanyuk says Minsk is ready to provide Russia with all the materials needed for the extradition of a senior editor of the Russian news agency Regnum.

Kanyuk told reporters in Minsk on March 17 that Yuriy Baranchyk, a Belarusian citizen, is wanted in Belarus on suspicion of "inciting racial, ethnic, religious, or other social hatred or discord."

He dismissed reports that Baranchyk is seeking political asylum in Russia as a "public relations" campaign.

Regnum is a nongovernmental online news service that covers events in Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Baranchyk was detained in Moscow on March 14 at Minsk's request.

Regnum's editor in chief, Modest Kolerov, said that a Moscow court declined to order Baranchyk held in custody on March 16 and that he was likely to be released on March 17.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
A court in Belarus has handed down the death penalty to a 32-year-old man, the first case this year.

Volha Barsukova, spokeswoman for the Homel Regional Court in eastern Belarus, said the man was sentenced to death on March 17 after he was found guilty of killing two retired people in the town of Naroulya in March 2016.

The mans named was not revealed.

Belarus remains the only country in Europe to hand out capital punishment.

The last death sentence was handed down in December 2016 to a man who was found guilty of murdering his two daughters.

The European Union and rights groups have urged Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty for years.

According to rights organizations, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in the ex-Soviet republic since the early 1990s.

Based on reporting by belnovosti.by and Belapan
Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he is in constant contact with international security authorities to ensure stability in Kosovo as more ethnic Serb police officers in the north of country resigned.



Kurti said on November 6 after a rally by ethnic Serbs in the streets of North Mitrovica that the security situation in Kosovo was threatened by various criminalized individuals and groups, but said that during his time in office, we have made great progress in the fight against crime and corruption."



He added that the rule of law goes hand in hand with peace and security and cannot be threatened, adding that authorities do not distinguish criminals on the basis of ethnicity, but only on the basis of their criminal acts."



When asked about the decision on November 5 by the Serbian List party to leave Kosovo's institutions, Kurti repeated his call that Kosovo Serbs refrain from doing so.



"I once again I invite all Serb citizens of our country to not abandon institutions, not to resign, not to leave their jobs, because there would be less service for the people," he said.



Kurti has blamed Belgrade for seeking to destabilize Kosovo by supporting the ethnic Serbs in their boycott of state institutions.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on November 5 that the withdrawal of Kosovo Serbs from the country's institutions "is not a solution to the current disputes" and it has the potential to further escalate tensions.



A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Kosovo released to RFE/RL's Balkan Service late on November 6 said the United States agreed with the European Union that the recent developments around relations between Kosovo and Serbia "are of great concern and put important progress achieved in the EU-facilitated Dialogue at risk."



"The Kosovan Serbs' withdrawal from Kosovan institutions is not a solution to the current disputes and has the potential to further escalate the tensions on the ground," the statement added. "All involved must take steps to reduce tensions and ensure peace and stability on the ground."



The Serb officers who resigned on November 6 submitted written resignations to the police station in North Mitrovica. One of the policemen told RFE/RL that the officers only submitted their resignations in writing but had not yet turned in their uniforms and weapons. However, he said this will follow in the coming days.



Numerous media outlets reported that the police officers took off their uniforms as part of the wider Serb movement to withdraw from institutions in Kosovo touched off by a move to implement a mandate on the conversion of vehicle license plates.



A statement from the Kosovar police force said it was aware that Serb police officers had abandoned their posts and that some have handed over police equipment.



The rally by ethnic Serbs in North Mitrovica on November 6 came a day after Serbs there said they would quit their posts in state institutions to protest against the use of license plates issued by Pristina.

Following a meeting of Serb political representatives in the north of Kosovo on November 5, the minister of communities and returns, Goran Rakic, said he was resigning from his post in the Pristina government.



He told reporters that fellow representatives of the Serb minority in the north had also quit their jobs in municipal administrations, the courts, police, and the parliament and government in Pristina.



Rakic said they would not consider returning unless Pristina abolishes the order for them to switch their old car license plates, which date to the 1990s when Kosovo was a part of Serbia, to Kosovo state plates.



Addressing the rally on November 6, Rakic accused Kosovo government authorities of not respecting international law and agreements negotiated in Brussels.



Rakic has called on the protesters "not to fall for provocations and to continue the fight with peaceful and democratic means."



The license-plate measure took effect on November 1, and Kosovo authorities said enforcement would be gradual.

The U.S. Embassy statement reiterated Washington's position that the Kosovar authorities should extend the process of converting vehicle license plates and suspend any punitive actions until the license plates issue can be resolved through dialogue.

Many ethnic Serbs in Kosovo refuse to recognize the countrys independence from Serbia, which it declared in 2008.



The European Union has told Kosovo and Serbia that they must normalize ties if they want to advance toward membership in the 27-nation bloc.

With reporting by dpa, AP, and AFP
China and Russia have blocked a UN Security Council statement expressing concern over the situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state, where Rohingya Muslims have reportedly been subject to attacks, diplomats say.

"We did put forward...some proposed press elements, but there was not consensus in the room," Matthew Rycroft, the British UN ambassador and president of the council for March, said on March 17.

A short statement would have "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and would have stressed the importance of humanitarian access, according to Reuters, which said it had seen a copy of the draft.

Diplomats said Myanmar neighbor China, with Russia's support, blocked the statement from being issued. China and Russia both have veto power in the council.

Diplomats said both countries raised objections, but their UN missions did not reply to requests for comment.

The UN human rights office last month accused the Myanmar military of mass killings and rapes of Rohingya Muslims and the burning of villages.

It said its actions "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity.

About 1.1 million Rohingya live among the countrys Buddhist majority.

Many among the Buddhist population claim the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many have lived in the country for decades.

The government of former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized by international partners for not doing enough to help the Rohingya.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) says it is ready to resume lending in Uzbekistan after a decade-long pause.

EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti on March 17 said after a visit to the former Soviet republic that the lender has signed an agreement with the government to explore ways of increasing its investment activity.

I am delighted that the EBRD is reengaging with Uzbekistan. These discussions have been highly fruitful and there is great interest on both sides in reinvigorating the relationship between the Bank and Uzbekistan, the EBRD chief said.

No financial figures or potential projects were specified.

The bank's ties with Uzbekistan soured over human rights concerns and a lack of political and economic reforms during late President Islam Karimov's tenure.

The EBRD limited lending in Uzbekistan in 2004 and stopped operations there by 2007.

Chakrabarti, however, told AFP news agency during his visit that "I think there is a very strong commitment [to economic reform] from the top down."

"The president [Shavkat Mirziyaev] has made that clear with the new development strategy, which is about the state doing a lot less and the private sector doing a lot more," he said.

"We know everything is not perfect there, but I think it is important to note that there is a certain movement in the right direction, and encourage that movement," he added.

Mirziyaev, who came to power after Karimov's death was announced in September, is being closely watched for signs of an effort to decrease the country's isolation.

The EBRD was created to assist in rebuilding Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War and has since expanded its business to Central Asia and other areas. Its shareholders are 65 individual countries, the European Union, and the European Investment Bank.

It is Central Asias largest institutional investor with about 11.6 billion euros ($12.5 billion) committed to regional projects.

Since 1991, the EBRD has invested 894 million euros in Uzbekistan and has a remaining current portfolio of about 8 million euros.

Uzbekistan has Central Asia's second-largest economy after oil-rich Kazakhstan, but its economy is burdened by heavy regulations and corruption.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, AFP, and The Astana Times
The European Commission has agreed to send Ukraine 600 million euros to shore up its deteriorating economy, ending months of delays over conditions linked to the loan.

With Ukraine in a third year of war, the European Union softened demands that Kyiv first lift a ban on Ukrainian wood exports, saying the money could now be sent because the government had submitted a bill to change that policy.

"Ukraine has done a remarkable job of stabilizing and reforming its economy, despite the armed conflict unfolding on its soil," Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said on March 16.

The conditions the EU has attached to the aid are aimed at modernizing the economy and ridding Kyiv of entrenched corruption.

The aid payment takes the total of EU loans to Ukraine to 2.8 billion euros since 2014. Kyiv badly needs the money. It estimates that a blockade of trade with eastern areas held by Russia-backed separatists that was announced this week would cause the economy to shrink by 2 percent.

In February, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker promised to release the aide to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman. A final 600 million euro disbursement is still available under an aid package that expires next January.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters


The European Union on March 17 condemned Russias seizure of Ukraines Crimea territory, calling Moscows annexation of the Black Sea peninsula a direct challenge to international security.

The statement by EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini came one day ahead of the third anniversary of Russias formal incorporation of Crimea that was dismissed as illegitimate by Ukraine, the United States, and more than 100 countries in the United Nations General Assembly.

Three years on from the illegal annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by the Russian Federation, the European Union remains firmly committed to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Mogherini said.

Both the EU and the United States hit Russia with several rounds of sanctions in response to the land grab and Moscows backing of separatists whose war against government forces has killed at least 9,940 people in eastern Ukraine.

That conflict continues to grind on despite a 2015 peace deal reached in Minsk, Belarus. The Ukrainian military said on March 17 that two of its soldiers were killed and eight others wounded a day earlier in attacks by the separatists in the swathe of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas.

Separatist leader Igor Plotnitsky vowed on March 17 that a referendum would be staged on the incorporation of separatist-controlled areas into Russia.

Prior to annexing Crimea, Russia staged a referendum on the peninsula following the seizing of key government buildings there by unmarked Russian special forces after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia amid mass street protests across the country.

Moscow used the poll, rejected by Kyiv and the West as illegal, as justification for taking control of Crimea, claiming it represented the will of the people there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's drew international condemnation last month by signing a decree ordering Russian authorities to recognize identity documents issued by the separatists who hold parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Kremlin however, is not considering integrating the separatist-controlled areas into Russia, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 17.

"We do not see any eventual deliberations as possible in this context," he said.

He accused Ukraine of "deliberately rejecting" the region, criticism that came days after Ukrainian authorities announced the suspension of all cargo traffic with areas held by the separatists.

Addressing the anniversary of the Crimea annexation, Peskov told reporters that Russia hopes that "sooner or later Kyiv will start to treat the will expressed by the several million Crimean residents with respect and will accept the results" of the 2014 referendum staged by Moscow there.

Russia has portrayed its military operation in Crimea following Yanukovychs ouster as necessary to protect ethnic Russians and other residents of the peninsula from oppression by pro-Western officials that eventually took power in Kyiv.

That narrative is rejected by Ukraine and Western governments, which accuse Russian-backed authorities in Crimea of rights abuses against Crimean Tatars and others opposed to Moscows rule there.

Referring to the annexation, Mogherini said in her March 17 statement that the EU reiterates that it does not recognize and continues to condemn this violation of international law.

It remains a direct challenge to international security, with grave implications for the international legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states, she said.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to improve ties with Russia and previously indicated he could consider lifting sanctions against Moscow related to Crimea, his young administration has repeatedly denounced Russias takeover of the peninsula.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a March 16 statement that Washington again condemns the Russian occupation of Crimea and calls for its immediate end.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Brussels correspondent Rikard Jozwiak, RIA-Novosti, TASS, Interfax, and Reuters
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Preliminary hearings in Kazakhstan's case against fugitive tycoon and opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov have begun.

Three co-defendants in the case, who were present in the courtroom in Almaty on March 17, agreed that the hearing and the trial will be conducted in the absence of Ablyazov, who fled abroad in 2009.

The judge said that a trial date will be announced on March 18.

Investigators say Ablyazov and his subordinates embezzled some $5 billion while running BTA Bank in Kazakhstan. Ablyazov denies it, saying the case against him is politically motivated.

Ablyazov, who is also wanted in Russia, was arrested in France in 2013 after months on the run.

He was released from jail on December 9 after France's highest administrative court cancelled an order for his extradition to Russia, saying the request had been made for political reasons.
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Several hundred people gathered for the second day in Armenia's capital, Yerevan, to protest the death of an activist who passed away just days after being released from prison following a 25-day hunger strike.

Artur Sarkisian, 49, died of heart failure on March 16 after being moved to a hospital for emergency surgery, one of the doctors who treated him said.

The protesters demanded a full investigation into the death of Sarkisian, who was in prison on charges of aiding opposition gunmen last summer.

They marched through downtown Yerevan on March 17 but were stopped by police from reaching the Justice Ministry.

Some shouted slogans accusing Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian (no relation) of being responsible for Sarkisian's death, while others called for the resignation of the justice and health ministers.

The protests come ahead of parliamentary elections on April 2.



Investigators said they have opened a criminal case into his death, while Prime Minister Karen Karapetian said on March 17 he was experiencing "deep pain" about what happened.

Sarkisian had been accused of delivering food to armed members of a radical opposition group during their two-week standoff with security forces.

During the two-week standoff last July, two police officers were killed and several were injured, after about 30 armed members of the Founding Parliament radical opposition group took hostages and barricaded themselves inside a police station.

They were demanding the release from prison of their leader and the resignation of the Armenian government.

Sarkisian surrendered on July 31 along with the remaining gunmen holed up in the compound.

He was released in December on health grounds, but was rearrested on February 9 and began a hunger strike. He was released on March 6 only after six opposition lawmakers posted bail for him.

Based on reporting by AP and RFE/RLs Armenian Service
U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to slash funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid by about one-third has sparked criticism and concern at home and abroad on March 16.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against "abrupt funding cuts" that could "undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts" at the world governing institution, where Trump proposed to reduce the U.S. share of funding for peacekeeping operations to 25 percent from 28 percent -- or $7.9 billion -- today.

France's ambassador to the United Nations, Francois Delattre, said that the world more than ever needs "a strong UN and an America that stays committed to world affairs."

"America's retreat and unilateralization or even the perception of it" creates risks and could lead to greater global "instability," he said.

But the U.S. envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said "the UN spends more money than it should, and in many ways it places a much larger financial burden on the United States than on other countries."

Besides footing the lion's share of peacekeeping costs, the United States also funds nearly one-quarter of the overall UN budget and UN agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

China and Japan make the next largest contributions to peacekeeping, at 10 percent each, followed by Germany and France at 6 percent each.

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal said the proposed $10.9 billion cut in funding for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- about 28 percent -- would be "destabilizing and irresponsible."

"Impact would be enormous across domestic and international programs," she wrote on Twitter. "The hardest hit would be the poor in the U.S. and abroad." She added that Congress should "just start from scratch" in writing the foreign aid budget.

The deep foreign and domestic cuts in the president's $3.8 trillion budget plan, which were intended to offset a 10 percent or $54 billion increase in military spending, drew near unanimous opposition from Democrats in Congress -- and opposition from several prominent Republicans.

Two U.S. senators who vied with Trump last year for the Republican presidential nomination came out strongly against the massive shift of funds from diplomacy to defense.

"Foreign aid is not charity," said Senator Marco Rubio, while Senator Lindsey Graham said that "these increases in defense come at the expense of national security."

Protecting national interests requires a comprehensive approach, "including not just military engagement but also the full and responsible use of all diplomatic tools at our disposal," said Republican Representative Hal Rogers, who chairs a a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees State Department and foreign aid spending.

The Democratic members on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan to express their concern, saying it's short-sighted to cut diplomacy while beefing up defense.

"Our diplomats settle disputes so that they do not have to be settled with bombs and bullets," they wrote.

"If we slash our investment in diplomacy and development, we are telling our service members -- and the American people -- that we will take our chances down the road, even if that comes at a much higher cost in blood and treasure."

Even some high-ranking former defense officials expressed reservations.

"We learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan that our military needs an effective civilian partner if victories on the battlefields are going to be converted into a sustainable peace," Stephen Hadley, national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, told The New York Times.

"And only a sustainable peace ensures that postconflict states do not return again to becoming safe havens for terrorists."

But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson defended the downsizing of diplomacy, which he would oversee if Congress were to accept all the cuts.

"We are going to construct a way forward that allows us to be much more effective, much more efficient, and be able to do a lot with fewer dollars," he said.

Tillerson criticized his predecessor, John Kerry, for spending too much, "in part driven by the level of conflicts that the U.S. has been engaged in around the world, as well as disaster assistance that's been needed."

"Clearly, the level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking in the past -- and particularly in this past year -- is simply not sustainable," he said.

With reporting by AFP, dpa, and Reuters


Lithuanias president says NATO should move its command centers closer to the alliances eastern borders to deter the "growing threat from Russia."

President Dalia Grybauskaite on March 16 said NATOs current location in Western Europe is a relic of the Cold War and that more forces should be redeployed.

"The current NATO command structures and military forces were positioned according to the Cold War logic -- in Europe's west and south," Grybauskaite said after talks with U.S. General Curtis Scaparrotti, NATO's supreme allied commander.

With the "growing threat from Russia, it is necessary to redeploy allied forces to the eastern flank," she said.

She said NATO has been "too slow" to redeploy its command structure from Western Europe.

Scaparrotti told reporters that advanced technologies enable the Western military alliance "to command and control from different locations."

Since World War II, U.S. and NATO forces have been stationed in Western Europe, mainly in Germany, Britain, and Italy.

But NATO is beefing up its presence in Eastern Europe, deploying four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis in an effort to reassure Eastern members in the face of Russia's military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and its illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Hundreds of NATO troops and heavy equipment have been moved to Lithuania as part of that process.

Based on reporting by AFP and dpa
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on March 16 prolonged its monitoring mission in Ukraine by one year -- until March 2018.

Three years after Moscow illegally annexed the Crimean region, tensions between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists are still high and a 2015 cease-fire agreement is violated regularly.

Fighting has claimed the lives of at least 20 civilians since the start of the year and wounded almost 100 more, according to the United Nations. In recent weeks, the observers have reported a deteriorating security situation in eastern Ukraine and an increase in the number of cease-fire violations.

The unarmed, civilian OSCE mission, with more than 700 international observers, seeks to reduce tensions and report on the situation on the ground. The 57 member states of the OSCE, which include Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, decided by consensus to extend the mandate of the mission until March 31, 2018, the OSCE said.

The mission was first deployed in 2014 and this was its third extension. It will have a budget of 105.5 million euros for the year, enabling the staff to upgrade monitoring equipment.

Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS


It's no secret that social media reposts can land you in hot water in Russia, where numerous people have been fined or imprisoned in recent years for sharing content deemed "extremist" by authorities. But what if you repost news about your punishment for reposting banned content?

As opposition activist and politician Dmitry Semyonov found out this week, that's not always safe either.

A court in the central Russian city of Cheboksary on March 16 found Semyonov, 27, guilty of "mass distribution of extremist materials" for reposting a news item about his earlier conviction for reposting "extremist" content.

Both this week's decision, a copy of which was obtained by RFE/RL, and the earlier one concerned misdemeanor charges and resulted in fines for Semyonov, a political activist with former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's nongovernmental organization Open Russia.

But his convictions come amid what rights watchdogs call a broader crackdown on online speech by Russian authorities over the past several years, one that targets not only racist and xenophobic content but also political and religious speech that free expression advocates say should be protected.

At the center of Semyonov's most recent clash with authorities is a photograph of Russian federal lawmaker Vitaly Milonov, a conservative firebrand most widely known for his high-profile crusades against LGBT rights.

In November, Semyonov was charged and convicted of misdemeanor distribution of extremist material for a 2014 repost that featured a photograph of Milonov wearing a T-shirt that read: "Orthodoxy Or Death."

Milonov has repeatedly been photographed wearing shirts bearing that phrase. But based on a 2010 ruling by a Moscow court, the phrase was included in the Justice Ministry's official list of banned extremist materials because it was deemed to stoke religious hatred.

Semyonov was fined 3,000 rubles ($50) after being found guilty, a decision criticized by the respected Moscow-based Sova Center, which tracks the use and abuse of antiextremism legislation in Russia.

And then things took a turn for what Semyonov calls "the absurd." In late December, the activist took to his account on Vkontakte -- the popular Russian analogue of Facebook -- and reposted an item about his case that was originally posted by Open Russia. The description in the original post contained the phrase "Orthodoxy Or Death."

Two weeks later, an officer with the regional branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) -- Russia's main security agency and the main successor to the Soviet KGB -- noticed the post while conducting an "investigative operation" monitoring "regional Internet resources," according to court documents.

"At least now we know what the working day of an FSB officer is like," Semyonov quipped on Facebook last month after being called in for a meeting with police. "They study my Vkontakte page in close detail every day."

Semyonov's lawyer, Aleksei Glukhov, said on Facebook that they would appeal the March 16 conviction.

His two misdemeanor convictions followed his 2015 conviction on a criminal charge for reposting an article by a prominent liberal political commentator Matvei Ganapolsky that included an image featuring Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that the court deemed extremist.

Semyonov was convicted and fined 150,000 rubles ($250) for the May 2014 repost, though the court immediately amnestied him, thus clearing the conviction from his record.

Semyonov ran as a liberal candidate in last year's federal parliamentary elections and had planned to run in local elections in Cheboksary this year.

In an interview with RFE/RL following his March 16 guilty verdict, Semyonov said that he believes the reposting cases are aimed at interfering with his political work.

"If it had just been one time, it could have just been written off as a coincidence," he said.

He noted that journalists reporting on the Milonov picture have not been charged with disseminating extremist material.

"It turns out that that all journalists are allowed to quote that phrase, but I'm not allowed to," Semyonov said by telephone.
Russian media reports say a journalist who has criticized the government has died in unexplained circumstances in the Siberian region of Buryatia.

Thirty-five-year-old Yevgeny Khamaganov died in a hospital emergency room in Buryatia's capital, Ulan-Ude, on March 16, according to local media reports.

The cause of death was unclear and there has been no official statement.

Some reports cited friends as saying Khamaganov was hospitalized on March 10 after he was severely beaten by unknown assailants. Other reports say he was rushed to the hospital due to complications from diabetes.

Khamaganov was known for articles criticizing policies of Russias federal government.

Khamaganov, an ethnic Buryat, left Ulan-Ude for his native village in 2015, after he was severely beaten by attackers who broke his neck. But he moved back to Ulan-Ude on February 27.

Mongol-speaking Buryats make up less than a half of Buryatias population of some 1 million people.

With reporting by babr.ru, vt-inform.ru, and arigus.tv
Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn was paid more than $67,000 by Russian companies before the U.S. presidential election, according to documents released on March 16 by a Democratic congressman.

U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland asked President Donald Trump's administration to provide a comprehensive record of Flynn's contacts with foreign governments and interests.

The documents show that Flynn accepted $33,750 from Russian state-backed television channel RT for appearing at a Moscow event in December 2015, a few months before he began formally advising Trump's campaign.

Flynn's financial relationship with RT may violate a constitutional provision against gifts from foreign governments, Cummings said.

He released documents obtained during an inquiry conducted by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives into Flynn's activities before Trump appointed him to become national security adviser.

Trump forced Flynn out as national security adviser last month, after it was revealed that the former Army lieutenant general misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations in December with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Flynn's ties to Russia have been scrutinized by the FBI and are part of House and Senate committee investigations into contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians.

The newly released files show that RT -- designated by the U.S. intelligence community as a propaganda arm for Russia's government -- also paid for luxury hotel stays and other expenses incurred by Flynn and his adult son, Michael Flynn Jr., during the Moscow trip.

Flynn sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the climax of the televised RT gala.

Cummings said Flynn's acceptance of payments from RT violated the emoluments provision of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits retired military officers from accepting gifts from foreign powers.

RT identifies itself as an independent news network, but a report by U.S. intelligence agencies made public in January said RT has long been considered by the U.S. government to be a Russian propaganda arm.

In an addition to the RT payments, Flynn was also paid $11,250 for two speeches in Washington -- one in August for Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian charter cargo airline, and a second in September for Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab, a Russia-based cybersecurity firm.

With reporting by AP and AFP


The lower house of the Russian parliament has ordered a probe into whether RFE/RLs Russian Service, Voice of America, and CNN are in compliance with Russian laws.

The move by the State Duma on March 17 comes just days after U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat-New Hampshire) introduced a bill that would empower the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by RT, the state-backed Russian TV channel.

The Russian initiative was introduced by Konstantin Zatulin, a member of President Vladimir Putins United Russia party, which holds an overwhelming majority in the Duma -- Russia's lower chamber of parliament.

Approved by lawmakers on March 17, the move instructs the Dumas committee on information policy to probe compliance with Russian laws by VOA, CNN, and RFE/RLs Russian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda.

Zatulin specifically linked the probe to Shaheens bill, which cited an assessment by U.S. intelligence that RT was used as part of a Kremlin-directed hacking and public-influence campaign aimed at helping President Donald Trump defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in last years presidential election.

RT and the Kremlin reject the accusation. RT is funded by the Russian government, but argues it is editorially independent from the Kremlin.

Both RFE/RL and VOA are overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. agency that supervises civilian government broadcasting and media operations.

VOA is a federal entity, while RFE/RL is a private, nonprofit organization funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress.

CNN has also come under fire from Moscow over its coverage of alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election and purported ties between associates of Trump and Russian officials.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier this month accused the Atlanta-based international news network, which Trump has repeatedly criticized as well, of spreading false news.

Shaheen told RFE/RL that it appeared her legislation had struck a nerve with the Kremlin and some Duma members.

My bill is straightforward: RT News has made public statements boasting that it can dodge our laws with shell corporations, and this legislation gives the Department of Justice the authority it needs to fully investigate, Shaheen said in a statement.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act is a decades-old law that requires anyone working in the United States on behalf of a foreign government, in a political or quasi-political capacity," to register with the Justice Department.

With reporting by RFE/RLs Russian Service, rbc.ru, RIA Novosti, and Interfax
The fight for truth, justice and a country that doesn't ban people based on their religion is perhaps a never-ending one. Oh well! The fight which never ends continues this weekend, with opportunities for you to learn, look smart, laugh and dance against the president's agenda.

Protect Trans Rights

Beyond just the issue of what bathroom trans people are legally allowed to use, there's a whole host of struggles to win trans people basic rights and respect from the government. Come out and show your support for your trans comrades by participating in "a big group hug" in Washington Square Park and let them know they're not alone.

FREE, Friday, March 17, noon, Washington Square Park

No Ban Human Banner Action

The second Muslim ban may have already been struck down in one court, but this is hardly the end of the fight, especially with Donald Trump giving speeches about how he'd rather just have the version of the ban without exceptions for green card holders. If you want to take a stand against this ban, in a very literal sense, you can join this effort to make what organizers are calling "a human banner" that spells out "#NOBAN."

FREE, Friday, March 17, 5 p.m., Pavilion at Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, Battery Park

Cybersecurity 101

How can you stay cybersecure in this dystopia where your own computer's front-facing camera is constantly spying on you? I don't have the faintest clue, but the Hunter Artist Action Group can tell you, or at least they've booked some people who can explain everything you need to know about Signal, PGP, Tor, password managers and more. Seems like some useful knowledge to have, even if we all know that no matter how secure we are, one day the machines will rise up and destroy us.

FREE, Friday, March 17, 7 p.m., Hunter College, 205 Hudson Street, 2nd Floor

Irish Stand - NYC rally for justice & equality

Despite the fact that bloated shambling corpse Steve Bannon is helping the Trump administration attempt to build an exclusionary state only welcoming to white people, it's worth remembering that America didn't always think of the Irish as "white." So the day after the Irish prime minister meets Donald Trump and gives him a bowl of shamrocks, speakers like Colum McCann, Maeve Higgins, Shaun King and Richard Schiff will be on hand at a concert to benefit the ACLU, taking place at the same church where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela have given addresses.

$15, Friday, March 17, 7:30 p.m., The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive

Bronx pro-choice Counterprotest

Anti-abortion protesters are going to be showing up at abortion clinics for their "40 Days of Life" rallies this weekend, so a committed group of activists are going to be at one local abortion provider to show these people the Bronx. The only thing better than a good protest is a good counter-protest, so here's your chance to show up and "mobilize a visible, vocal, and unapologetic pro-choice response wherever and whenever reproductive rights are under attack."

FREE, Saturday, March 18, 9 a.m., Bronx Abortion, 2070 Eastchester Road

Divestment Day

Something like the Dakota Access Pipeline doesn't just happen out of thin air, you need money to be able to build it (bet you didn't know that). Turns out that financial giants like Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank, TD and other invest in projects like this and other efforts that will just keep propagating fossil fuel's stranglehold on the world. So to put pressure on these finance giants, activists are inviting people to rally in Union Square and then go to their banks and close their accounts, so that you can put your money in more Earth-friendly institutions.

FREE, Saturday, March 18, 10 a.m., Union Square

Workshop: So You Wanna Get Involved But Don't Know How

School is bad, I get it. Activism school on the other hand, will continue to be useful for you, unlike physics or basic math. This workshop will give you a basic overview of the local political and activist landscape, show you the best ways to get involved in the fight for justice and also teach you how to not work yourself to death so you don't burn out (a very important aspect of activism!). Plus, your admission fee goes to Planned Parenthood, so this is like a two-for-one deal.

$15, Saturday, March 18, 3 p.m., The Alchemical Studios, 104 West 14th Street

First Comes Love

Whom amongst us does not love a good pornography? Well actually probably a few of you. But if you enjoy or see the humor in porn, get down to tonight's event in which comedians like Jean Grae and comedy country duo the Reformed Whores help perform scenes sent to host Kyle Ayers following his Craigslist solicitation for porn scripts one drunken evening. And beyond being the kind of filthy evening that would be sure to give Jeff Sessions the vapors, the proceeds of tonight's show will go towards the National Network of Abortion Funds.

$8, Saturday, March 18, 7:30 p.m., Union Hall, 702 Union Street

Rally to Resist Voter Suppression

Voter suppression is a big problem nationwide, and while New Yorkers walk around thinking we're the most progressive state in the land, don't forget that our state doesn't have early voting and automatic registration. Both of those ideas, which could help increase turnout in state elections, are on the table in this year's state budget, and a number of groups are rallying this weekend to remind the Governor, Assemblymembers and state Senators that they want them enacted. Do you think this too? Get to Battery Park then, ya goof.

FREE, Sunday, March 19, noon, Battery Park



When your new skinny budget jeans make your ass look so grabbable. (Getty)

Clinton Hill Postcard Writing Party and Pow Wow!

Members of Congress still need to be bothered and reminded that they should do their job of not letting America turn into a polluted authoritarian hellscape. You could call them and tell them that, but you could also join up with some fellow rabble writers and help BURY THEM IN AN AVALANCHE OF STERNLY-WORDED POSTCARDS. Okay so there probably won't be an avalanche, but it's still good to get together with people and work for good. Plus, this is in a bar which means you can drink while you're doing this.

FREE, Sunday, March 19, 2 p.m., DSK Brooklyn, 710 Fulton Street

Community Immigration Forum

Please forgive the cliche, but New York is a city of immigrants. This means that even if you're not an immigrant yourself, you probably know someone who's going to be impacted by the new anti-immigrant fervor sweeping the nation. What can you do to help? What laws are coming down the pipeline? These questions and more will be answered by "lawyers and experts on immigration."

FREE, Sunday, March 19, 3 p.m., P.S. 132 Juan Pablo Duarte, 185 Wadsworth Avenue

Trivia For A Cause With Trivia NYC

"Hey Dave," you're asking me, "what if I want to show off how smart I am but also do good in the world?" Well I appreciate the question and fortunately for you I have an answer. You go to Trivia for a Cause, which will take your money and give it to Planned Parenthood. Every cent you spend tonight will go to the group, and beyond shelling out for Blue Point beer specials, you can spend your scratch on raffle tickets to win things like Astoria Bookshop gift certificates, movie tickets, Blue Point swag and more. Just don't come crying to me if someone beats you at trivia, maybe you're not as smart as you think you are, you know?

FREE, Sunday, March 19, 7 p.m., Q.E.D., 27-16 23rd Avenue

Queer Soup Night

You know what's a real important thing for you to do if you want to keep on living? Eating. Food! You can't live without it. Soup is a food, and it's an especially good food for our suddenly resurgent winter weather. So head on down to Pels Pies and eat soup (comes with cornbread or challah) courtesy of the Gefilteria's Liz Alpern, because whatever money you donate for the soup will go towards the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project and the TransWomen of Color Collective.

$10 suggested donation, Sunday, March 19, 6:30 p.m., Pels Pies, 446 Rogers Avenue

WAFT Presents The Crystal Ball

Witches are having a moment, with considerable media attention coming their way for their anti-Trump activism. Continuing their election season spiritual assaults on the president, Sunday's gathering at the House of Yes will use the power of positivity and dance to raise some money for Population Action International, "who provide reproductive health services around the planet and are directly affected by the expansion of Trumps global gag rule." Wear your witchiest outfit and dance the night away to goth, industrial, disco and pop, get your future told to you at a tarot card reading, enjoy a witch-themed cabaret. Go nuts, just don't get yourself turned into a toad.

$10, Sunday, March 19, 10 p.m., House of Yes, 2 Wyckoff Avenue


At 10 a.m. on February 17, Russian draftee Arkady B. jumped out of a third-story window of his barracks outside Moscow. Doctors say it was a miracle that he survived, with multiple compression fractures, a concussion, and other injuries. They are optimistic that Arkady, who asked not to be identified for this article, will walk again after a few months of rehabilitation.



"They were squeezing money out of me," Arkady told RFE/RL. "They wanted 110,000 rubles ($1,860). Supposedly some things went missing -- a tent, some shoes, some sort of spare parts. They found a naive idiot and pressured me hard."



Arkady's mother, Natasha, told RFE/RL that he had repeatedly reported widespread extortion in his unit to his division psychologist, but no action was taken.



"He called home several times and complained about the extortion," Natasha said. "He called on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of February, saying that if he didn't come up with 110,000 rubles, they would either put him in prison or force him to sign up for a stint as a volunteer soldier. He couldn't take the pressure, so he jumped out a window."



Arkady's story is hardly unique. Although the Russian government does not release statistics on crime in the military, reports of suicides and suspicious deaths in the armed forces are depressingly common. According to government figures, cases of extortion overall more than doubled between 2015 and 2016, and rights activists say cases inside the military are also on the rise.



"Violence and extortion haven't gone anywhere in the military," Sergei Krivenko, head of the Citizen And The Army NGO and a member of Russia's Human Rights Council, said. "But the form of these things has changed. Hazing as a day-to-day form of control by senior soldiers over recruits has been superseded by a system where violence is determined on ethnic grounds or by region of origin. The point of the violence now is not maintaining some sort of discipline but the extraction of money."

Though the Russian Defense Ministry remains silent on such incidents, Citizen And The Army's most recent semiannual report, covering the second half of 2016, provides glimpses into the closed world of the Russian military.

-- On July 28, a soldier died when he fell from a barracks window in the Kaliningrad region. The incident is under investigation.



-- On the night of August 4-5, a soldier in the Novosibirsk region was found dead from hanging, a suspected suicide.



-- On August 8, the body of an 18-year-old soldier was found in a St. Petersburg cemetery about 10 kilometers away from his unit. The case is under investigation.



-- On September 26, a soldier was found hanged near Bryansk. His mother reportedly received an SMS from him four days earlier asking for money. His body was reportedly bruised, with two broken ribs.



-- On October 17, the body of a soldier was discovered in Amur Oblast. He had been shot dead and, officially, the incident was ruled a suicide.



-- On November 19, a 26-year-old lieutenant was stabbed to death in Volgograd by a soldier over a "conflict about money."



-- On December 27, an 18-year-old soldier was found hanged in a shower near Dzherzhinsk. The incident was ruled a suicide, although the body was scratched and bruised.

Activists estimate there are 200 to 300 such suspicious incidents in the Russian military each year.



Many of these cases are connected with extortion, Krivenko said.



"Extortion within military units has been on the rise in recent times," he said. "Many connections between soldiers have literally turned into money relationships: 'If you don't want a particular duty, pay. If you want to make a phone call home, pay.' And it must be understood that these crimes are, as a rule, unreported. Many soldiers are afraid to complain, thinking it will only make things worse. Very often, information about extortion only comes out during the investigation of other crimes."



After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military fell on hard times, with massive reductions and spending cuts, as well as a sharp loss of social prestige. Hazing, or dedovshchina, was rampant, often with fatal results. Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, the military's budget has been sharply increased. The state has prioritized upgrading the military's equipment and the creation of volunteer, contract-based units.

The soldiers are afraid to complain, preferring just to pay in the hope that they will then be left to serve out their term in peace. But then their parents get their sons back in a zinc coffin."

Hazing, in its pure form, has been on the decline, but extortion has become "the norm" in the military, says Veronika Marchenko, an activist with the NGO Mother's Rights.



"The vast majority of these crimes go unreported and taking a case to court is extremely hard," Marchenko said. "The soldiers are afraid to complain, preferring just to pay in the hope that they will then be left to serve out their term in peace. But then their parents get their sons back in a zinc coffin. And when we investigate these cases, either we learn that either the soldier was driven to take his own life or it was a murder that was covered up to look like a suicide. Very often, the root of these tragedies is extortion as draftees are squeezed for money."



In many cases, the ultimate culprits are officers, extorting money from soldiers either for their own benefit or to purchase things for their unit. Aleksandr Gorbachyov, a lawyer with the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers in St. Petersburg, told RFE/RL that officers often use collective discipline among soldiers to pressure recalcitrant recruits.



"The soldiers, as a rule, pay, of course," Gorbachyov said. "There are those who don't pay, but they have problems with their units because resistance is collectively punished -- for instance, by denial of permission to call home or by depriving them of sleep."



On February 6, 19-year-old Ilya Gorbunov died at his military unit outside of Moscow after just three months of service. According to military officials, Gorbunov died from injuries suffered when a tank he was driving rolled off a bridge. The incident aroused suspicion because no other soldiers were reported injured, although the T-80 tank should have a crew of three. In addition, Gorbunov's sister said her brother had no driving license or experience.

Maria Gorbunova told RFE/RL that her brother had contacted her repeatedly in the days before his death asking for money.



"First, he called and asked if we could quickly sell his share in our apartment," she said. "An officer supposedly lost 58,000 rubles and, Ilya said, they were making the four soldierswho were on duty at the time pay the money back. He said he had to give his portion immediately."



Gorbunova said Ilya told her that he was beaten regularly along with another soldier who reportedly suffocated to death in a storage closet in January.



"Another SMS from Ilya was asking for money that he needed to pay for a notebook computer that disappeared from his unit," Gorbunova said. "We immediately sent him 18,500 rubles. But that money didn't save him in the end."



She says a soldier from her brother's unit told her Ilya had been severely beaten by three other soldiers and locked in a tank. When they went to let him out three hours later, he was dead.



"Ilya is the third soldier to die in that unit since the beginning of the year," Gorbunova said.



On March 7, 19-year-old Denis Khamidullin died at his military unit outside Yekaterinburg with only two months left to serve. Officially, his death was ruled a suicide, although the military provided no details.



His family says he regularly asked for money. In November, he sought 5,000 rubles and in February, 2,000 rubles more.



"He spoke to his sister several times in January and February," Khamidullin's mother, Dina Khamidullina told RFE/RL."'I have such problems, if you only knew,' he told her. But she hid that from me."



"We spoke to him for the last time on March 7," she said. "We were cut off, but I didn't bother calling back. I figured I'd talk to him again. But there was no 'again.'"

RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson and RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service contributed to this report
The Standard & Poors (S&P) agency has raised its outlook on Russian credit to positive from stable, saying it sees the country returning to economic growth after two years of recession.

S&P on March 17 cited improving growth prospects and a lower risk of large capital outflows in lifting its outlook, but it kept the actual long-term credit rating at Triple-B-minus, which is one notch above a junk rating.

S&P said continued international sanctions will keep a lid on growth, limiting the increase in gross domestic product (GDP) to 1.5 percent in 2017.

Still, that is an improvement from the 0.2 percent contraction in 2016.

The sanctions have been imposed by Western nations for Russias illegal annexation of Ukraines Crimea region and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

For the period 2017-20, it said it sees an average GDP gain of 1.7 percent.

Over the medium term, we expect that the economic recovery will be driven by the expected modest rise in oil prices, continued expansion of the oil and, particularly, gas sector in volume terms, as well as an uptick in household consumption, it said.

But it said in the short term, the economy will remain constrained by international sanctions and structural impediments -- such as the states pervasive role in the economy -- and that the challenging business and investment climate will continue to limit Russias ability to diversify away from commodities.

Based on reporting by AFP and The Financial Times
Over the past five years, Iranian officials and state media have touted the "indigenous" ingenuity in the Islamic republic's mass-produced Mohajer-6 combat drone, which Russia has deployed in its war against Ukraine.

But a new investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, has found that electronic components underpinning Tehran's production of the Mohajer-6 are far from homegrown.



The Mohajer-6 drones contain components produced by companies from the United States and the European Union, both of which have sanctions restricting the export to Iran of such technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes  dual-use technology.

The presence of these components in the Mohajer-6 does not mean their producers are in violation of U.S. or EU sanctions, and RFE/RL does not have evidence that this is the case.

The investigation also found Mohajer-6 components produced in China, including a real-time mini-camera made by a Hong Kong firm that said it was "very sorry" that its products were being used in war.

At least one major foreign-produced component of the Mohajer-6 has previously been identified by reporters in a Mohajer-6 recovered from the battlefield by the Ukrainian military: an engine made by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Bombardier Recreational Products.

But Ukrainian intelligence assesses that the Iranian combat drone contains components from nearly three dozen different technology companies based in North America, the EU, Japan, and Taiwan, the Schemes investigation has found. A majority of these companies are based in the United States.



A Schemes reporter who personally inspected the foreign-made drone parts identified components produced by at least 15 of these manufacturers.

These include parts made by the U.S. technology firm Texas Instruments, which said in a statement that it does not sell into Russia or Iran and complies with applicable laws and regulations.

To identify these components, Schemes reporters examined parts of the Mohajer-6 drone that the Ukrainian military shot down over the Black Sea near the Mykolayiv region coastal town of Ochakiv. They also reviewed Ukrainian intelligence records on the sources of these components.

The drone also contains a microchip bearing the logo of a California technology company and a thermal-imaging camera that Ukrainian intelligence says may have been produced by a firm based in Oregon or China.

Both Western officials and experts on illicit technology transfers say Iran has built a broad, global procurement network using front companies and other proxies in third countries to obtain dual-use technology from the United States and the EU.

"Exporters will look at the request coming from the [United Arab Emirates] or another third country, and they'll think that they're selling to an end user based there, when really the end user is in Iran," Daniel Salisbury, a senior research fellow with the Department of War Studies at King's College London, told RFE/RL.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions specifically targeting Iranian companies that Washington links to the production and transfer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia for deployment in its war on Ukraine. Fighting rages with no sign of an end more than eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion on February 24.

"Non-Iranian, non-Russian entities should also exercise great caution to avoid supporting either the development of Iranian UAVs or their transfer, or sale of any military equipment to Russia for use against Ukraine," U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement announcing the sanctions.

Chinese Cameras, California Chips

Development of the Mohajer-6, the latest model in a series of drones Tehran has used since the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, began in 2017, while mass production began the following year. During a ceremony commemorating the Islamic Revolution, then-Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said that the new tactical drone could perform surveillance, reconnaissance, as well as help destroy targets.

Hatami extolled what he described as the drones domestic design, a portrayal echoed in later reports by Iranian media.

"The homegrown drone was made through cooperation among the army, Defense Ministry, and Quds Aviation Industries," the English-language Tehran Times quoted an Iranian military official as saying in July 2019.

The dismantling of the Mohajer-6 drone recovered by the Ukrainian military shows that the UAV is packed with foreign components.

One of these parts is a bright-orange real-time mini-camera produced by the Hong Kong-based company RunCam Technology. Documents seen by Schemes show that Ukrainian intelligence has also identified RunCam as the producer of the camera, which likely assists in remote guidance of the drone.

Founded in 2013, RunCam is involved in the development and production of so-called "first-person-view" real-time cameras. "Our users are our friends," the company's website states. The site says that RunCam has two authorized Iranian dealers.

Reached by Schemes for comment about the use of its camera in the Iranian drone deployed by Russia in its war on Ukraine, RunCam said in an e-mailed response: "We are very sorry to know that RunCam's products were used in warfare. RunCam is specialized in producing products for model aircraft hobby. We never contact any customer related to military."

The provenance of the Mohajer-6 drone-s thermal-imaging camera is more difficult to determine. A Ukrainian intelligence assessment reviewed by Schemes indicates it could be the Ventus Hot model produced by Sierra-Olympic Technologies, based in the U.S. state of Oregon, but that it also resembles a cheaper analog available for sale by the Chinese company Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology.

Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology said in an e-mailed statement that the company did not "have any business with Iran," because "it will affect our business." The company said it specializes in marine services and is not involved in manufacturing. It also said that it did not have a single successful order for its online advertisement of the thermal-imaging camera resembling the one recovered from the Iranian drone.

Sierra-Olympic Technologies did not respond to a request for comment on the possible use of its thermal-imaging cameras in Iranian combat drones in time for publication.

Microchips recovered from the drone also featured the logos of the California-based company Linear Technology Corporation and its parent company, the Massachusetts-based semiconductor company Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI). ADI did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the possible use of its technology in the Iranian combat drone.

Schemes reporters also observed among the components of the Iranian drone a voltage step-down converter produced by Texas Instruments. The company said in an e-mailed statement that it "does not sell into Russia, Belarus, or Iran."

"TI complies with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, and does not support or condone the use of our products in applications they weren't designed for," Texas Instruments said.

Schemes reporters also saw several components produced by the California-based technology manufacturer Xilinx, whose parent company is the multinational semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), also based in California.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, one of these Xilinx components was integrated into a video data-link module located in the wing of the Mohajer-6 that helped carry out attack missions.

"This module transmits information from the board to the missile head. That is, guidance for the missile. With the help of this module, it was possible to guide the missile to the target," a Ukrainian military intelligence representative told Schemes.

AMD did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

'No Authorization'

Previous media reports about the components of the Mohajer-6 drone, including by CNN, have shown evidence that its engine was produced by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, whose parent company is the Quebec-based Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP).

The Canadian company responded to the reports on October 21, saying in a statement that it "has not authorized and has not given any authorization to its distributors to supply military UAV manufacturers in Iran or Russia."

"As soon as we were made aware of this situation, we started an investigation to determine the source of the engines," BRP said. .

But Schemes reporters found that the authorized Rotax distributor listed on the Austrian manufacturer's website advertised itself as a Rotax aircraft engines distributor for Iran as recently as December 2020.

The distributor, the Italian company Luciano Sorlini S.p.a., has posted multiple magazine advertisements on its websites in which it describes itself as a Rotax distributor for numerous countries. Prior to January 2021, Iran was listed among these countries.

The Rotax website also lists a Tehran-based company -- MahtaWing -- as an official service center for its engines. The company, known in Persian as Mahtabal, conducts repairs of Rotax engines, including the Rotax 912 iS, the engine that was found in the Mohajer-6 combat drone recovered in Ukraine.

BRP said in an e-mailed statement on November 4 that while Luciano Sorlini S.p.a. is the appointed distributor of Rotax aircraft engines in Iran, "since 2019, no Rotax engines have been sold in Iran, and we will not sell any engines to Iran moving forward."

The Canadian company said it had "internal controls" that "significantly" restrict the sale of its products for military purposes.

"For example, the sale of any BRP product to operators with any military activity in Iran, Turkey, and Russia is strictly prohibited," BRP said. "We conduct our business in compliance with all EU, Canadian, and U.S. applicable regulations."

BRP described the Iranian company MahtaWing as a "local service center" that "offers maintenance services for previously sold aircraft engines."

Shahriar Siami of RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report.
A 26-year-old Serb who worshipped superheroes and whose father was once the head of Serbia's antiterrorist service has been arrested after allegedly trying to blackmail Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox through a local distributor by threatening to release a copy of The Boss Baby, the latest animated film from Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studios, before its world premiere.

Momcilo Dinovic reportedly obtained a copy of the movie and demanded more than $25,000 worth of bitcoin, the electronic currency, or he would post the film online before its official release on March 31, RFE/RL's Balkan Service reports.

According to the Serbian Interior Ministry, Dinovic received the equivalent of about $11,000 in bitcoin from the companies and was waiting for more when he was detained by police in Belgrade on March 14.



Police have not said how Dinovic, an IT expert, came to possess the film, a star-studded computer animation featuring Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, and Jimmy Kimmel.

But screenwriter and film critic Aleksandar Radivojevic noted that "at a time when everything is done over the Internet, things like this can easily leak out or can be hacked."

If found guilty of extortion, Dinovic faces a prison sentence of between three and 12 years.
ON MY MIND

First Alyaksandr Lukashenka tried the carrot and then he tried the stick. But neither seem to be working.

Faced with massive protests against an unpopular tax on the unemployed, the Belarusian strongman suspended the tax.

And when the protests persisted, Lukashenka turned to his old tried-and-true methods: arrests and intimidation.

But the unfolding crisis in Belarus, driven by economic hardship and declining living standards, is showing no signs of abating.

And as the drama unfolds, the Kremlin -- ever wary of losing another client -- is watching attentively.

So what happens next?

On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we'll take a close look at the Belarusian Spring, the reaction from the regime and Moscow, and where it all may lead.

Joining me will be Alyaksey Znatkevich of RFE/RL's Belarus Service and Maryna Rakhlei of the Fund for Belarus Democracy at the German Marshal Fund.

So be sure to tune in later today!

IN THE NEWS

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite says NATO should move its command centers closer to the alliances eastern borders to deter the "growing threat from Russia."

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says Washington should "never trust Russia," the latest in a series of hawkish statements that have made her a leading Russia critic in President Donald Trump's administration.

The United States on March 16 issued a sharp condemnation of Russias seizure of Crimea on the third anniversary of a referendum Moscow staged there and later held up as justification for its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.

The European Parliament is calling on Moscow to free more than 30 Ukrainian citizens who are in prison or other conditions of restricted freedom in Russia, Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to visit Russia on May 2.

Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn was paid more than $67,000 by Russian companies before the U.S. presidential election, according to documents released on March 16 by a Democratic congressman.

A day after U.S. authorities indicted two Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers over a massive hack targeting Yahoo, the Kremlin reiterated its claim that the Russian state has never been involved in any cyberattacks.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has prolonged its monitoring mission in Ukraine by one year -- until March 2018.

Russian authorities have moved to shut down the work of Jehovahs Witnesses in Russia, asking the countrys Supreme Court to declare the denomination an extremist organization.

Ukraine's suspended tax and customs service chief, Roman Nasirov, has been released on bail from his two-month pretrial detention on embezzlement charges.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has imposed sanctions on five banks with Russian capital functioning in Ukraine.

A Belarusian court has ordered Associated Press reporter Yuras Karmanau to disavow a report he wrote showing high levels of radioactivity in milk produced near the Belarusian territory irradiated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Dozens of activists were fined or sent to jail for up to 15 days in Belarus on March 16, following protests in three cities the previous day.

WHAT I'M READING

The Gerasimov Doctrine 2.0

Russian Armed Forces General Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov has published a new article in Voenno-Promyshlennii Kuryer, The World On The Brink Of War. The piece, based on an address Gerasimov gave at the Academy of Military Sciences, expands on his argument that the West is waging a hybrid war on Russia.

The Russian Defense Budget

Writing on his blog, Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague takes a close look at the Russian defense budget

A New Kind Of Alliance

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves writes in Defense One that "a new kind of war demands new defensive alliances." Ilves argues for a new collective security organization based on democratic principles rather than geography.

Kadyrov's Spetsnaz

In Republic.ru, Anastasia Yakovleva takes a look at a new training center for special forces that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has set up near Gudermes.

The Kremlin's Western Friends

Aleksandr Morozov has a piece in OpenDemocracy on the state of Russia's influence networks in the West.

About That 'Yanukovych Letter'

Halya Coynash writes about how Russia has changed its story about the letter from ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych that was used to justify Moscow's armed intervention in Ukraine.

Remember Crimea?

Ridvan Bari Urcosta of the Institute of International Relations at Warsaw University has a piece on the European Council on Foreign Relations website on how to put Crimea back on the international agenda.

Why Belarus Matters

Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations and a professor at University College London, has a piece in Politico on why the West should keep an eye on Belarus.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump gave NATO another strong endorsement but told visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Germany and other allies must do more to contribute to the alliances collective defense.

Trump made the comments during a joint March 17 news conference after holding his first meetings with the German leader since he took office in January.

During last years election campaign, Trump repeatedly criticized NATO allies for not spending enough on their militaries, under their obligations to the alliance. He also cast doubt on whether the United States remained committed to the alliances central provision -- that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all.



Those comments rattled U.S. allies, particularly those in Eastern Europe, where the Soviet Union dominated throughout the Cold War.



Since his inauguration, however, Trump has publicly stressed the U.S. commitment to the alliance, while also demanding that members "pay their fair share."



"Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States," Trump said. "These nations must pay what they owe."

Ukraine Crisis

Merkel said that for Germany, NATO is of prime importance to us. She also raised the issue of Russia, which has stoked anxiety in Europe with its 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine.



Together with French President Francois Hollande, Merkel brokered the peace agreement known as the Minsk accords, aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Standing alongside Trump, she said relations with Russia need to be improved but not before the Ukraine crisis is resolved.



"There has to be a safe and secure solution" to the Ukraine conflict, she said.

Trump said a peaceful solution is needed to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.

He thanked Merkel and Hollande for their work in brokering the 2015 peace deal, though violence between the two sides continues to grind on.

"We ideally seek a peaceful solution" in Ukraine, Trump said.

Trumps policies on immigration and refugees have also worried Germany and other European allies. In an unusual rebuke from a foreign ally, Merkel in January publicly criticized a White House order that restricted immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.



The order was later blocked by U.S. courts, and the White House has since modified the directive, though that has also been suspended by two federal judges.



Merkel, who is seeking another term as chancellor in a September national election, has faced enormous pressure in Germany for her relatively open policies on immigration.



Germany, like many European countries, has seen a massive influx of migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa, and a growing number of right-wing and xenophobic political parties across the continent have sought to tap into fears over terrorism and crime.



During the news conference, Trump was also asked about his claims that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had ordered wiretaps of Trumps New York offices during the election campaign.



Trump made the claims on Twitter earlier this month, prompting a denial from Obamas spokesman and public refutations by top Republicans and Democrats in Congress.



Asked by a German reporter about the wiretapping claims, Trump stood by his claim, and responded with a joke referencing reports in 2013 that the United States listened in on Merkel's phone calls.



"At least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump said, glancing at Merkel.
Ukrainian lawmakers have approved a bill that requires national television and radio stations to have at least 75 percent of their programming in the Ukrainian language.

The issue is controversial among Ukraines Russian-speaking population, and pro-Russia separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine claim Kyiv is deliberately reducing the use of the Russian language. Kyiv denies the allegation.

The legislation is still going through parliament and requires presidential approval. The first reading of the bill was approved on March 16.

The bill also requires local TV and radio stations to have 50 percent of their content in Ukrainian.

The language quotas would be in place between 0700 and 2200.

The bill also requires that foreign films aired on Ukrainian television channels, including Russian movies, must carry Ukrainian subtitles.

Viktoria Syumar, chairwoman of the parliamentary committee for freedom of speech and information policies, told a session that some Ukrainian broadcasters have up to 90 percent of their programming in Russian.

She added that the Crimean Tatar language was included in the Ukrainian language quota.

Based on reporting by Interfax and UNIAN
KYIV -- Ukraine's suspended tax and customs service chief, Roman Nasirov, was summoned to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) for questioning on March 17.

In a rare attempt to prosecute a high-level official in Ukraine over alleged corruption, Nasirov is being investigated on suspicion of defrauding the state of 2 billion hryvnyas ($74 million).

The summons came a day after he was released from pretrial detention when his family paid his 100-million-hryvnya ($3.7 million) bail -- a record high in Ukraine.

NABU said on March 17 that it has lodged an official request with the State Service for Fiscal Monitoring to find out where his relatives came up with the money.

Upon his release on March 16, Nasirov told journalists that the case against him is "politically motivated" and said he would fight to prove his innocence.

"I am thankful to my family that they somehow managed to find this crazy amount of money," he said. "Now I have a better opportunity to quickly and fully prove my absolute innocence and the absolute groundlessness of the allegations."

Nasirov was suspended from his post on March 3, and a district court in Kyiv on March 7 ordered him placed in pretrial detention for two months.

NABU says that Nasirov signed off on grace periods for a number of taxpayers, including companies linked to a former lawmaker who fled the country in 2016 while facing a corruption investigation.

During earlier court hearings related to Nasirov's pretrial arrest, dozens of activists rallied in Kyiv to ensure Nasirov does not escape trial. That was not the case when Nasirov's was released long after dark on March 16.

Officials had said that Nasirov would be placed under house arrest if he made bail, but the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's office (SAP) said on March 16 that he would not be confined to his home.

It said that he had been fitted with an electronic monitoring device.and he will be allowed to move around the city of his residence -- Kyiv.

He is barred from leaving the city without investigators' permission, hand in travel documents so that he cannot leave Ukraine, and contact or communication with people involved in the probe.

President Petro Poroshenkos government is under pressure from Ukrainians, Western governments, and groups such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight corruption.

Observers say corruption harms the economy and hurts Ukraine's chances of throwing off the influence of Russia, which seized Crimea in 2014 and backs separatists whose war against government forces has killed more than 9,900 people in eastern Ukraine.

With reporting by UNIAN and Interfax
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A historic U-shaped, two-story brick building on the edge of the Carytown neighborhood in Richmond will be converted into 32 apartments.

Crescent Preservation & Development and Oxford Group LLC, two Richmond real estate investment firms, closed on the $1.69 million purchase Wednesday. Renovations are expected to start immediately.

We plan to have it open by this time next year or a little sooner, said Carthan Currin, a principal with Oxford.

The apartments will be 600 square feet for one-bedroom units and 800 square feet for two-bedroom units. Rents will range from $900 to $1,600 a month.

For Carytown, this project represents a significant economic boost to the neighborhood, Currin said.

The 16,288-square-foot building at 3003 Parkwood Ave. was built in 1941 for the Virginia Commission for the Blind and served as the executive offices of the commission until 1980.

Most recently, it was a retirement home known as Parkwood Manor.

Operations at the facility started to wind down when the property was first marketed for sale in May 2015, said Chris Jenkins, a sales and leasing associate with Commonwealth Commercial Partners, a commercial real estate firm in Henrico County that represented the seller  Ampak Properties LLC in Richmond.

Residents were relocated to other assisted living facilities, Jenkins said.

The property is in a fabulous location offering future residents easy access to all of the amenities in Carytown, said Sam Worley, a senior vice president at Commonwealth Commercial.

Built during the Colonial Revival-style era, the building sits on 0.68 acres at the corner of Parkwood Avenue and South Sheppard Street. It features Flemish-bond brick exterior walls, a brick belt course and corner quoins or masonry blocks.

The property is assessed by the city for $1.28 million.
The last 35 years have brought a lot of changes for Virginias largest farm advocacy organization, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation.

Now, the organization has completed a book that chronicles its history since 1982.

From The Ground Up: Growth of a Modern Farm Bureau, is the first book written by Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Vice President of Communications Greg Hicks, who put in three years of work on the side, mostly on weekends, to research and write it.

It was published by Dementi Milestone Publishing, which focuses on books about the people and places of the Richmond area.

A previous official history of the Farm Bureau, The Virginia Farm Bureau Story: Growth of a Grassroots Organization was written by J. Hiram Zigler and followed the organizations development from its origins in 1926 to 1982. T

he new 168-page hardback book picks up where the previous one ended.

With numerous photos from the organizations last 35 years, the book includes chapters on the five Virginia Farm Bureau presidents since 1982.

It covers the organizations involvement in legislative issues such as establishing a secretary of agriculture and forestry as a cabinet-level position in Virginia, and how the organization dealt with changes to agriculture in the state  such as the end of the tobacco and peanut quota systems.

It also covers how the bureau has grown through acquisitions such as the State Fair of Virginia and Meadow Event Park, birthplace of legendary racehorse Secretariat, as well as the growth of the Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co.

Having been here for so many years myself, I lived through a lot of what we covered, said Hicks, a Virginia Farm Bureau employee since 1987.

He pored over years of documents and interviewed retirees who held lengthy tenures there.

Three employees worked closely with him on the project: Farm Bureau graphic design supervisor Maria LaLima, communications assistant editor and staff writer Kathy Dixon, and Leeanne Ladin, The Meadow Event Parks Secretariat tourism manager.

The $30 book can be purchased through dementimile stonepublishing.com and at amazon.com.

Signed copies can be bought from Hicks at ghick@vafb.com.
CEOs of small and midsize businesses in the Charlottesville area soon will have a new network to meet and learn from other such leaders.

The Virginia Council of CEOs, an organization of small and midsize company leaders, is expanding from its home base in Richmond to Charlottesville.

Im excited that were expanding beyond Richmond because were sort of living into our name, Virginia Council of CEOs, finally, said Executive Director Scot McRoberts.

One of the things that propelled the expansion, McRoberts said, was a new partnership with the Virginia Chamber of Commerce that will give active members of the council dual membership in the chamber and allow the two organizations to work closely together on future events and initiatives.

The partnership was the result of a meeting between McRoberts and Virginia Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Barry DuVal.

The council started in 2000 in Richmond with three roundtables of about 10 CEOs and has grown to about 200 members, mainly from the Richmond area.

Our mission is to connect CEOs for learning and growth, and the peer group, the roundtable, is the primary way we do that, McRoberts said.

The roundtable groups meet once a month, with elements of the meetings timed so that no one member can dominate the discussion. Members share challenges and experiences to learn from each other, but they do not give direct advice about what someone should do with their company.

When somebody shares the story of their experience, its absolutely true, he said. Its available, but theres no obligation to do anything with it; its a learning opportunity for everybody around the table.

Council member Arlene Lee, president of R.E. Lee Cos. in Albemarle County, said she was looking for professional development and a way to network with other business leaders when she signed up a year ago.

As a CEO, the decisions we make affect a lot of people, not just our own employees, but they affect other companies we work with and vendors we work with, she said.

One of the reasons that the roundtables and the forums are so valuable is that its peer-to-peer support and learning, and the feedback that we get from other CEOs with similar situations is really valuable.

Lee said she hopes the council in Charlottesville will grow to the level already enjoyed by the Richmond group, but she hasnt decided if she will join a roundtable there or stay in her current group.

I see the benefit to the CEOs that are in Richmond, the benefit that they have with networking with each other, Lee said. I would love to have that in Charlottesville.

In addition to the roundtables, the council also hosts quarterly meetings, an annual retreat, and other meetings and social events.

Membership on the council is for individuals who are functionally, if not by title, the CEO. Their company has to have $1 million or more in annual revenue and at least five full-time-equivalent employees.
Richmond City Council members expressed disappointment Thursday that city finance officials are declining to cooperate with City Auditor Umesh Dalal in a review of the citys tax-collection efforts.

The comments surrounded a budget hearing that included a review of Dalals budget needs for the coming year.

If were not going to allow our city auditor to do the job, then lets just save the money, Councilman Michael Jones said.

I was embarrassed to see someone from the administration say theyre not willing to give information to our auditor. Whether its state law or not, we all talk about transparency. Transparency cant be selectively entered into and out of.

Jones comments prompted Councilwoman Reva Trammell to reveal that she plans to introduce a resolution at the councils next formal meeting expressing the bodys support for the audit of the citys revenues administration division.

She said she had already spoken to her colleagues about the measure and a majority had said they would support it. Indeed, of nine council members, six interviewed Thursday agreed they would support Trammells resolution.

The issue stems from a dispute between the auditors office and city finance officials that dates back to former Mayor Dwight C. Jones administration.

Dalal said he was asked by a previous deputy chief administrative officer for finance to audit the citys processes for assessing and collecting business taxes, meals taxes, personal property taxes and real estate taxes.

At last report, the city is owed $52.8 million in delinquent taxes.

Dalal conducted a similar audit in 2012, which he said revealed that a substantial amount of revenue was not being collected.

But over the summer, Dalal said finance officials decided they would no longer cooperate with the audit.

While Dalals office has broad investigative authority within the city, under state code he can only access identifying tax records for review if it is specifically requested by a localitys finance director.

The citys finance director, John Wack, who has been on the job since July, and his superiors said theyre not interested in such a review.

At an audit committee meeting this week where the issue was discussed, they did not provide an explanation for their position other than to say we dont see any need.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney is backing the finance officials decision not to participate.

"The mayor has heard the people of the city loud and clear. They want a city hall that's transparent and accountable," Stoney's press secretary, Jim Nolan said in a statement.

"That's why he brought in VCU's Performance Management Group to conduct a performance review of every department in city hall, the results of which will be made public. If after the conclusion of our performance review the mayor is not satisfied with its findings or deems it insufficient to assess the performance of the department, we will welcome the input of the city auditor."

Nolan said Stoney and the auditor are scheduled to meet Monday.

Stoneys citywide review, which he promised on the campaign trail, and Dalals proposed audit are vastly different in scope: Stoneys review consists of a survey of city employees, a review of past audits conducted by Dalals office, and interviews with high-level employees selected by Stoneys administration, according to the citys contract with VCU.

Meanwhile, Dalal is proposing a technical review of administrative processes, tax data and collection effort.

Council members said they believe both are important. In addition to Jones and Trammell, council members Andreas Addison, Parker Agelasto, Kim Gray and Kristen Larson said they support the auditors push for review. The remaining council members were not immediately available for comment and have not yet taken a stance.

We need to use all available resources to make our city government as efficient and effective as possible, Larson said.

Councilwoman Kim Gray expressed surprise Stoneys administration would shy away from the review at a time when theyre proposing a slate of fee increases in the coming years budget.

This is an administration that proposed a budget asking our citizens to pay more in utilities and fees to be able to achieve basic city services, Gray said. So how can we in good faith ask for more from our citizens and not be willing to allow our revenue department to be audited.

Addison said he appreciated that audits can be a lot of work and understood why the administration might have reservations. But he said he agreed that the citys tax collection processes  particularly real estate taxes  need to be reviewed.

Its $50 million owed to us and were making tough decisions between funding schools, fully staffing our police department, our fire departments, he said.

Trammell expressed disbelief that Stoney wouldnt push his administration to cooperate with Dalal.
An insurance agent who stole $1.9 million from nine clients  in some cases the life savings of retirees  while acting as a financial adviser was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in prison.

Larry J. Horsey, 41, of Chesterfield County, who used the victims money for vacations in Florida and Hawaii and other personal expenses, pleaded guilty in December to mail fraud and a related charge. One woman lost $700,000; a retired engineer, $458,000; and a disabled victim, almost $44,000.

This may be the worst breach of trust I have seen, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson told Horsey. In other cases, Hudson said, investment advisers stole money in small amounts here and there from clients.

You never had any intention whatsoever to invest a dime ... you have caused tremendous damage, Hudson said.

Earlier in the hearing, Hudson told Horseys lawyer, John W. Luxton, that he disagreed with his favorable characterization of his client.

This is a fellow who looked someone in the eye, a fellow human being, and stole their life savings, said the judge.

Shortly before the sentence was imposed, Horsey apologized. Turning to look toward victims and their families sitting behind him in the courtroom, he said, I am sorry ... I stole your money. I stole your trust. I stole your security. I understand I stole all of that from you.

At one point, Hudson interrupted him, asking, Can you explain to me how youre going to pay back $1.9 million?

Horsey said he believed he could obtain a good job once released from prison.

In pleading guilty last year, Horsey, a married father of one child, admitted conducting the scheme from 2012 until last June, using his business, the Heroes Academy, on Buford Road.

According to authorities, Horsey realized in October 2012 that his business, described as a nonprofit financial educational school, was in trouble and that he could not afford to meet his payroll and lease for his suite of offices. The business also offered financial planning services.

He admitted approaching clients he met at one of his financial seminars, or who were referred by others, and proposed that they transfer funds into annuities, IRAs or other long-term investments that he would manage for them.

Horsey deposited their checks into his businesss bank account. But instead of using the money for investments, he spent it on personal and business expenses.

Luxton told Hudson on Friday that the fraud began soon after the academy opened. He said Horsey initially considered his taking of a clients money as a short-term loan that he would quickly repay after his business was on solid financial footing.

It was a snowball and it just never ended, Luxton said.

Luxton and Thomas A. Garnett, an assistant U.S. attorney, agreed that Horsey cooperated with authorities. But Hudson asked, once Horsey was aware of the investigation, What else is he going to do, Mr. Luxton?

Sentencing guidelines called for a term of seven years to more than eight years. Garnett asked for seven years, at the low end, citing Horseys cooperation and the hope that the sooner he was released, the sooner he could start trying to repay the stolen money.

But, Garnett said, prison time was warranted.

In a sentencing memorandum, Garnett wrote last week that Horsey was the kind of financial adviser that his victims truly believed they could trust. After meeting (him), and listening to his financial pitches, they pulled their savings out of the safest places imaginable  their banks, or annuities with respected and established national firms  and handed those savings to Larry Horsey.

They did so because the defendants fraud scheme was intensely personal. He got to know them and spent time with them one-on-one. When he offered to review their finances, he did so free of charge  a personal kindness, Garnett wrote.

Garnett complained that Horsey sat across (the victims) kitchen tables and in their churches, and promised that he knew what he was doing when they handed him their checks. He knew at this point how each victim had built his or her savings and what their plans were for those savings  then he took those checks, and spent his victims money on himself.

On Friday, Garnett told Hudson that by and large these were not wealthy people. ... They just wanted someone to take their nest egg, to grow it carefully and safely. Instead, said the prosecutor, he spent that money on himself.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Luxton asked Hudson to allow Horsey to self-surrender to begin serving his prison term at a later date. Hudson refused. I dont trust his word, sir, Hudson told Luxton.

I hope you have learned a good lesson, Hudson told Horsey shortly before he left the courtroom and Horsey was placed in handcuffs.
UPDATE: Abby Catherine Gallini was located safe this morning and has been reunited with her family, Hanover County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.

___

The Hanover County Sheriffs Office is seeking the publics help in finding a missing 15-year-old girl.

Abby Catherine Gallini was last seen at her home in Mechanicsville on Wednesday evening. She was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and black leggings.

Police described Gallini as a white female with brown hair and blue eyes who is approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighs about 130 pounds. She is known to frequent King William County.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Gallini is asked to contact the Hanover County Sheriffs Office at (804) 365-6140 or the Metro Richmond Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000.
Eric Holder, who served as U.S. attorney general under President Barack Obama and who is taking a lead role in a national Democratic redistricting effort, will headline the state Democratic partys Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in June.

Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, will keynote the event on June 17 at the Richmond Marriott, days after Democrats and Republicans pick their candidates for statewide office in a June 13 primary.

Holder has called the Virginia governors race an important early focus for the group. The governor who is elected in November will preside as state lawmakers redraw legislative and congressional boundaries after the 2020 census.

This Novembers elections in Virginia are a top priority for Democrats and give us the opportunity to undo Republican gerrymandering and have a legislature and Congress that truly represent the views of the people, Holder said in a statement provided by the Democratic Party of Virginia.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe is helping to spearhead fundraising for the Democrats national effort to make gains through redrawn boundaries after the census.

David DOnofrio, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Virginia, said in a statement: Democrats are simply trying to accomplish in courts what they cant do at the ballot box.

They simply cant fathom why they cant win legislative elections in Virginia. It cant be voters rejecting their far-left policies, so they have to find another excuse. We hope someone will tell former Attorney General Holder that Democrats drew their own lines in the Virginia Senate, then-Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on the lines, as did Rep. Robert C. Bobby Scott, D-3rd and the Legislative Black Caucus, and they still wound up out of power.

Virginias congressional and legislative boundaries have been the subject of court action in recent months.

Democrats picked up a congressional seat in the 4th District after a three-judge panel redrew the states U.S. House boundaries after finding that legislators packed too many African-Americans into Scotts 3rd District.

In a second federal case over Virginia redistricting, the U.S. Supreme Court has instructed a lower court to re-examine whether the Virginia General Assembly unconstitutionally stuffed African-American voters into certain House of Delegates districts, opening the door to a new political map.

In a third case, a Richmond Circuit Court judge will soon rule in a challenge to 11 Virginia legislative districts. The redistricting group OneVirginia2021 charges that those districts violate requirements in the Virginia Constitution that districts be compact.
A neighbor called 911 at about 1:15 p.m. to report the house fire at 3911 Blake Drive, but by the time fire crews arrived on the scene half of the house was in flames, Joseph Sposa, deputy chief of operations with the Spotsylvania County Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Management, said in a press release.
The wave of anti-Semitism that has swept the nation would be disturbing enough if it were an isolated affair, but it isnt. Muslims have come under attack as well.

Across the country mosques have been torched, shot at, targeted with bomb threats, subject to hate mail, taunted with a severed pigs head, and sent letters threatening Muslims with genocide. Hate-crime statistics show a sharp uptick in such incidents over the past couple of years.

And those are just the unofficial acts. During the presidential campaign Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslim entry to the U.S., and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz suggested that the police needed to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.

Some might be tempted to distinguish this hateful barrage from the hateful barrage directed at Jews, on the grounds that Muslims have carried out several terrorist attacks in the U.S. That would be a mistake for two reasons.

First, the number of Muslims involved in such attacks is minuscule, while the number of Muslims in the U.S. exceeds 3 million. Holding all Muslims responsible for the actions of a tiny fraction of them is a collectivist fallacy of the worst sort.

Second, trying to draw up a taxonomy of bigotry does little but divide its targets into competing camps, when they and everyone else should be joining forces to oppose acts of hatred against any faith. That is why it is disappointing to see the Trump administration, which was slow to condemn anti-Semitism, decline to condemn Islamophobia.
In what should be a wake-up call, members of an alleged Richmond gun trafficking ring last week brought new attention to how easy their crime is to commit.

The audio is chilling. Everyone should give it a listen. While the authorities listen in on wiretaps, traffickers explain how they operate in the illegal gun market. And what, to hear them tell it, is the key to the whole enterprise?

These gun runners, just down the road from National Rifle Association headquarters, mock and boast about Virginias weak gun laws.

Connecting those Virginia traffickers to their criminal customers is Interstate 95, or what cops and prosecutors call the Iron Pipeline. A stream of illegal guns flows north, starting in the states south of the Mason-Dixon line with lax gun laws.

Traffickers such as the 24-member Richmond ring get guns from licensed dealers, using so-called straw purchasers who can actually pass a gun-sale background check. They also buy guns directly from unlicensed sellers, no background check required. (Indeed, two of the Richmond buyers were felons and would have failed a background check.) Then, they hop in a car or board a bus to resell guns at a profit  up the interstate and hundreds of miles from where they or their suppliers first bought them.

Those Richmond traffickers are not alone, either. The scope of the problem? Every year, one in three crime guns that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives traces comes to investigators outside the state where it was originally purchased. So, no matter how strong a citys or a states own gun laws, those out-of-state crime guns continue to bedevil cities especially. In New York City, 90 percent of crime guns come from beyond state lines. In the Midwest, Chicago finds itself on an island, surrounded by states with laws (most notably Indiana and Mississippi) that attract, rather than repel, gun traffickers.

Virginias own weak gun laws do not make it a good neighbor. Guns sold here are recovered in out-of-state crimes at more than twice the national average rate  making Virginia one of the top crime gun exporters. Virginians suffer for having weak gun laws, too. During a recent five-year period, the rate of Virginia women fatally shot by intimate partners was 32 percent higher than the national average.

By comparison, states with strong gun laws more effectively prevent gun crime and save lives. States that go beyond federal law and require criminal background checks on all handgun sales, for instance, see 48 percent less gun trafficking in their cities. They also see 47 percent fewer women shot to death by intimate partners, as well as 53 percent fewer law enforcement officers fatally shot in the line of duty.

States can adopt their own strong measures  but those along the Iron Pipeline will only stay as safe as the state with the weakest laws allows. Without congressional intervention, gun trafficking will persist as an interstate problem in need of a national solution.

Thankfully, a bipartisan group in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed such a solution last week. The Gun Trafficking Prevention Act of 2017, first and foremost, would provide a clear and effective statute making trafficking a crime  effectively replacing vague laws that ATF has called needlessly complex.

The new law would contain some teeth, too. It would provide prison sentences of up to 20 years. Such penalties would apply not only to people who buy a gun intending to transfer it to someone prohibited from possessing one, but also to the straw purchasers who intentionally provide false information when buying guns. These sentences would represent a new tool for prosecutors since todays penalties are so weak. If you have any question as to the NRAs clout, the sentence for trafficking guns right now is the same as that for trafficking chickens or livestock.

Strong gun laws and enforcement work. They can deter trafficking, dry up a revenue source for criminal gangs, and keep guns out of the hands of people barred from having them.

Congress should do its part  and give law enforcement the tools they need to stop gun traffickers from wreaking havoc, both here in the commonwealth and beyond.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
STUARTS DRAFT  The announcement this week that the Hershey Chocolate Company plant in Stuarts Draft will add 69 new jobs and spend millions on new equipment bodes well for the future of the plant, officials say.

It also comes at a particularly good time for Augusta County. Less than two weeks ago, Wilson Trucking in Fishersville announced that its nearly 100 local employees would lose their jobs later this year. The company is being sold to a Texas-based trucking company, Central Freight Lines.

As part of the Hersheys expansion, the Virginia Jobs Investment Program will provide funding and services to help recruit and train new employees to the Stuarts Draft plant, Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a release. The VJIP funding will also support the retraining of 140 existing employees on the new equipment.

Denise Ward, a Hershey spokeswoman in Pennsylvania, said the expansion is being made because of Hersheys Cookie Layer Crunch product. She said the product was launched in Stuarts Draft, but said it is going national. Ward described the treat as a mixture of milk chocolate and cookie layers.

The announcement marked the eighth expansion for Hershey in Stuarts Draft since the plant was established in 1980. The most recent expansion occurred just last summer, when a new product line came to the Stuarts Draft plant.

McAuliffe said the expansion is a tremendous testament to the commonwealths competitive business climate.

The Stuarts Draft plant is Hersheys second largest U.S. plant, with an employee base of more than 900.

We are honored that Hershey continues to invest and expand in the commonwealth and look forward to future growth in the years to come, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Todd Haymore said.

Haymore said the Hershey expansion is indicative of the kind of economic expansion Virginia needs right now. He said it is vital for new jobs to be created from existing Virginia industries, adding that about two-thirds of the new jobs in the commonwealth are the result of expanding existing companies.

Augusta County Board of Supervisors Chairman Tracy Pyles said the fact that Hershey keeps expanding in Stuarts Draft shows how good our people are and that they do a good job.

Pyles said Augusta County has other advantages, including a low tax rate, key transportation corridors and access to large markets, and the availability of smart people at our universities.

South River District Supervisor Carolyn Bragg represents the Stuarts Draft area.

The Stuarts Draft community and Augusta County are appreciative of our partnership with Hershey Chocolate of Virginia, and we will work to support the companys efforts to expand and thrive in this area, Bragg said.

Dennis Winnett, the plant manager in Stuarts Draft, suggested that the plant has a bright future.

As Hersheys sales continue to grow and we bring more innovative products to market, Stuarts Draft will play an important role in our ability to make these popular Hershey products for consumers all across the country, Winnett said.

Hershey is headquartered in Pennsylvania and manufactures chocolates, sweets, mints and other snacks for delivery across the world. The company has 18,000 employees worldwide and has more than 80 brands.

Haymore said Virginia needs to continue to promote private-sector jobs. While he said the commonwealth values the federal government sector, which provides thousands of jobs to the state, mostly in northern and eastern Virginia, Haymore made clear that its important for the commonwealth to continue to be less reliant on the federal dollars.
Roanokes new business accelerator was unveiled on Thursday, as the public was invited to tour a facility that local leaders hope will soon house some of the most promising regional startups .

For now, the Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program  which goes by the acronym RAMP  looks like an average office space on the third floor of the old Gill Memorial Hospital Building in downtown Roanoke, complete with separate rooms for five companies, shared meeting areas and a kitchen.

The idea, Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council (RBTC) board member Sam English explained, is to pull the regions entrepreneurs into RAMP and give them everything they need to take their businesses to the next level.

English said the region has existing resources for new companies, such as a plethora of co-working spaces. But it doesnt have enough to push those startups toward market success and profitability.

So this is really for companies that want to accelerate their growth, English said. They probably have a product of some sort. Maybe they have revenue, maybe not.

The program is a joint venture between the city of Roanoke, which owns the building at 709 South Jefferson St., the RBTC and Virginia Western Community College.

Through RAMP, startups will have access to formal business training from Virginia Western, mentorships through the RBTC and swanky office space from the city.

English said among valuable aspects of the program for burgeoning entrepreneurs will be connections to heavy-hitters from the Roanoke and New River valleys.

He added that mentors volunteering with the program have all started, run and sold companies worth millions of dollars.

Russ Ellis, a vice president at Interactive Achievement before it was acquired by PowerSchool last year, said there was nothing like RAMP when he was first learning the basics of entrepreneurship. But after more than 25 years in the tech industry, he has some things to pass on to the next generation.

You have to make sure theyre organized properly, they have the right people in the right seats, theyre thinking strategically, they have well-developed plans, Ellis said.

The six-month program will be free for the startups, but only five will be accepted into the first cohort. RAMP will continue accepting applications from interested entrepreneurs through March 31 and hopes to have its first group moved in this summer.

Robert McAden, recently named CEO of the RBTC, said only a handful have applied so far, but RAMP is talking to about 25 potential applicants.

The program is open to all types of businesses, but McAden said most will probably come from the technology or life sciences industries.

While RAMP will continue to occupy the third floor of the building, the program will largely be funded by leasing out the rest of the space.

The property is owned by the city of Roanoke, which used a $600,000 state grant to renovate the facility after it sat vacant for about seven years.

The second floor below RAMP houses a Virginia Western Community College classroom and new offices for the RBTC, investing firm Common Wealth Growth Group and the new VTC Innovation Fund, a $15 million venture capital group recently established by Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic.

The first floor, meanwhile, is still empty. RAMP organizers say they hope to find a tenant to rent that office space sometime soon.

We are clear that this is an economic development thing, this is a community thing, English said. We want to help businesses here to be able to grow and be successful  here.
At the Roanoke Valley Governors School for Science and Technology, students are charged each year with carrying out a science fair project. This year, RVGS/Salem High School senior Alex Anama elected to work in the Biomedical and Behavior Sciences field on a project titled, The Effect of Vitamin D Milk as a Natural Mouth Rinse on S. epidermidis.

As part of the Governors Schools Mentorship elective, Alex spent time this summer at Anama Family Dentistry shadowing his dad, Dr. Steven N. Anama. It was there that Alex noticed a correlation between patients with poor gum health and their lack of regularly using an over-the-counter mouth rinse. According to the ADA, therapeutic mouthwashes can help prevent or reduce gingivitis, plaque, tooth decay, cavities and bad breath, and Alex was surprised that more patients werent using them. He decided to find out why, and their responses surprised him even more.

As I listened to my dad talking with his patients, said Alex, I heard some of them say they were concerned about the high alcohol content in mouth rinses. I developed a simple research survey that addressed the alcohol issue, and I started using it with my dads patients. I then decided to include friends, neighbors and others in the community to poll the broadest group that I could, and of the 75 people who completed the survey, 14.8% of them were concerned about the alcohol content of commercial mouth rinses.

I wondered if whole milk, which contains both vitamin D and calcium, could work as a natural alternative to Listerine, and I hypothesized that it would present at least some, and maybe even an equivalent amount, of Listerines antibacterial properties.

To test his hypothesis, Alex soaked blank discs in distilled water (the control group), original Listerine, which has an alcohol content of 26.9%, and vitamin D milk, which has an alcohol content of 0%. He then applied the discs to lawns of Staphylococcus epidermidis, a bacteria known to cause periodontal disease that he had left growing on nutrient agar plates. He incubated the plates for 24 hours at 98.6 degrees (normal oral temperature), and then took pictures of each plate and uploaded their yielded zones of inhibition to the computer program ImageJ for analysis.

I found that in the control group, bacteria grew over the plates. In the milk group, bacterial growth was inhibited, but the Listerine group showed significantly more inhibition. Vitamin D milk cant match Listerine as an effective antibacterial mouth rinse, but for people concerned about alcohol increasing their risk for oral cancer, its better than nothing!

Since Alexs results supported his hypothesis, better than nothing also means success.

Alex Anama is just one of the 264 gifted and talented young scientists who attend Roanoke Valley Governors School for Science and Technology. To learn more about the Governors School, a half-day regional public STEM school for motivated students in grades nine through twelve, please visit the schools website at www.rvgs.k12.va.us or contact the schools director, Mark Levy, or the schools guidance counselor, Kathy Sebolt, at 540.853.2116.

Submitted by Regina Carson
Arts organizations across Virginia will see funds for day-to-day operations shrink if Congress backs President Trumps plan to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.

The presidents federal budget proposal, unveiled Thursday, also defunds the National Endowment for Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, potentially affecting a number of regional institutions such as Jefferson Center, the Taubman Museum of Art and Blue Ridge PBS.

Several arts leaders in the Roanoke and New River valleys expressed disappointment and dismay at the prospect of ending the NEA and NEH. This would be a tremendous hardship on the regions arts organizations, wrote Susan Jennings, Roanokes arts and culture coordinator.

Elimination of the NEA would have a ripple effect across the arts landscape, which ultimately would impact all of us, wrote Ruth Waalkes, executive director of the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech.

Needless to say, we are hoping this will not become a reality, wrote Pat Wilhelms, artistic director of Roanoke Childrens Theatre.

Federal financial support of the arts and humanities has long been a contentious issue, though Trump is the first U.S. president to suggest terminating the NEA and NEH. Both agencies have annual budgets of about $148 million, a tiny fraction of the $3.9 trillion federal budget.

We have had this looming over the arts institutions for many, many years, said David Crane, executive director of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. The big story is how does it affect all of us and what does it mean for our part of the state.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, cautioned that the Presidents budget is simply a proposal and not the law, but did not make any promise that hed work to protect those agencies. With nearly $20 trillion in national debt, I strongly believe that the federal government needs to take a close look at every federal program and determine where and how the budget can be cut.

Its difficult to measure the exact effect the loss of NEA money would have, because Virginia arts organizations receive most of their NEA funding through grants administered by the Virginia Commission for Arts. Those grants contain a mix of federal and state funds.

The VCA receives about $708,000 a year from the NEA, which accounts for about 16 percent of the VCAs $4.5 million operating budget. Commission executive director Margaret Vanderhye estimated that the NEA also gives a total of more than $1.1 million in direct grants to individual arts organizations in Virginia each year.

Statewide, the VCA has given an average total of $3.5 million in grants to arts organizations over the past four fiscal years. The grants often help out with the expenses of daily operations. That is the hardest to replace, wrote Jefferson Center Executive Director Cyrus Pace.

In Roanoke, Salem, and Botetourt and Roanoke counties, nine nonprofits receive annual VCA grants that help with operating funds: Attic Productions, Jefferson Center, Mill Mountain Theatre, Opera Roanoke, Roanoke Ballet Theatre, Roanoke Childrens Theatre, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, Southwest Virginia Ballet and the Taubman Museum of Art.

Of those nine, the Taubman has received the most money over the past four years, most recently a $62,150 grant for 2016-17.

The VCA also has given annual $5,000 matching fund grants to those localities. The Roanoke Arts Commission uses the citys allotment to offer micro grants to art organizations.

Over the past four fiscal years, the VCA grant total given to those four communities has averaged almost $240,000 annually.

Nonprofits and local governments can also apply directly for NEA and NEH grants. An NEA grant funded Roanokes Parks and Arts program, which brings performances and visual art activities to neighborhood parks.

Roanoke Superintendent Rita Bishop said the school district is concerned that cuts to regional arts organizations could trickle down to Roanoke schools.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Trumps budget would eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would mean less money for Roanokes public radio and television stations.

Blue Ridge PBS (WBRA-TV, Channel 15) would lose $871,000, nearly one-third of its total operating budget of $2.7 million, general manager James Baum said. The station sends its federal grant back to PBS in the form of payment for programming, so the reduction would hurt the national network, although local viewers would see an impact, Baum said.

It would devastate PBS, Baum said. When this [funding] goes, our viewers are going to really see it. The effect on national programming and on the shows people love and enjoy will be devastating.

Roanoke-based public radio station WVTF-FM (89.1) would see less of a cut  about $230,000 per year, which is 7 percent of the stations annual operating budget of $3.45 million. Still, that figure is a substantial amount of funds, said station manager Glenn Gleixner.

A cut or elimination will affect our local productions, said Gleixner, who said affected programs would include, news reporting across the commonwealth, public affairs programming, our Radio Reading Service and the possibility of ending service in smaller rural areas.

Virginias public broadcasters have been forced to rely on less taxpayer dollars in recent years. The General Assembly under former Gov. Bob McDonnell eliminated all state funding for public broadcasters in 2012. Those cuts forced Blue Ridge PBS to eliminate its education department and fire seven employees.

Gleixner and Baum hope that Trumps public broadcasting cuts will be restored by Congress. Gleixner pointed out that the CPBs appropriation of $445 million amounts to one-hundredth of one percent of the current $4 trillion [federal] budget.

Staff writer Sara Gregory contributed to this report.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  When he was a student at the University of Virginias School of Law, Edwin Fountain said he rarely gave any thought to the odd statue between Clemons and Alderman libraries.

The Aviator depicts an Icarus-like figure with feathered wings and arms outstretched toward the sky. Its a tribute to James McConnell, the former student who volunteered as a fighter pilot for the French Air Service during World War I.

For Fountain  now the vice president of the national World War I Centennial Commission  the statue has more significance than ever.

Many World War I memorials are hidden in plain sight.  The Aviator is one of those memorials, Fountain said Thursday morning at a memorial ceremony for McConnell at UVa.

 Hidden in plain sight can apply to the many ways World War I affects us, he said.

Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of McConnells death  his plane was shot down during a confrontation with two German pilots on March 19, 1917.

McConnell, who entered the war with the ambulance service in 1915, died less than a month before the U.S. became a belligerent in the War to End All Wars.

Fountain said he realized the need for the university to honor him during a trip to McConnells grave in Paris, as the anniversary of his death approached.

Its right the university honor its son because James McConnell embodied  in the most sublime way possible  the will to service that is the best the university teaches us, he said.

McConnell studied at UVa from 1908 to 1910 before withdrawing at his fathers request to help with his business.

After a stint with the American Ambulance Corps, he joined the Lafayette Escadrille, a group of volunteer American fighter pilots in the French Air Service. McConnell wrote an account of his exploits, titled Flying for France, while recovering from a back injury he suffered on duty.

He still was feeling the effects of the injury when he was killed, Fountain said.

After his death, UVa commissioned Gutzon Borglum  the sculptor who went on to design Mount Rushmore  to design a memorial. The Aviator was dedicated in 1919.

McConnell was driven by both principles and a desire for glory, Fountain said.

He was an adventure-seeking knight of the air who served France to repay the debt owed to France for its contribution to the Revolutionary War, he said.

McConnell left a strong impression on his classmates at UVa as a leader and a doer  he was, among other things, co-founder of an aviation club, active in the Hot Feet Society (precursor to the modern IMP Society) and editor-in-chief of the yearbook, Corks and Curls.

Not everyone recognizes the man behind the statue, but hes had a lasting impact on at least two student organizations on Grounds.

Thursdays event began with a ceremony by the drill team of the universitys Air Force ROTC detachment, which has been renamed the McConnell Escadrille in honor of the fallen World War I airman.

That used to be the formal name for the team, said Col. Patrick Donley, commander of the 890th Cadet Wing at UVa, but it had fallen out of use since the 1960s.

Donley said he wants to reconnect cadets at UVa with an important part of their history and offer them a role model.

This was prior to the draft or any kind of expectation of American service in the war, Donley said. He went out of his way to serve for a cause that he believed in.

Members of Beta Theta Pi, McConnells old sorority, were also on hand to talk about the lasting impression hes left on their organization.

Chase Ciotti, the chapter president at UVa, said new members have to learn about McConnells story. Aspiring Beta Theta Pi members look to him as an example, Ciotti said.

At the end of the day, his values were clear, Ciotti said. He always put others before himself.

McConnells letters and artifacts from his life  including a part of the fuselage from his biplane  are on display in an exhibition at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library through mid-May.
Mar 17, 2017 12:00 AM

Author: Zach Robinson

St. Patricks Day is no time for celebration for those of us who work in the trauma unit. Each year we end up treating far too many people who decided to drink and drive. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were 10,265 road deaths caused by alcohol impairment across the country between February 2015 and February 2017. More than 100 of those occurred in along the Wasatch Front.

Due to the prevalence of alcohol involved motor vehicle crashes our colleagues from the social work department complete an alcohol assessment on trauma patients. Screening for alcohol or substance abuse in trauma patients and connecting those that meet a particular set of criteria has been an effective way for our trauma center to reduce injury in our community. Alcohol is such a significant contributing factor to traumatic injury, identifying problem drinkers and guiding them to resources to help them, is a vital part of our community focused injury prevention efforts.

NHTSA offered a few tips to stay safe and to prevent drunk driving. Those tips include:

If you will be drinking, plan on not driving. Plan your safe ride home before you start the party. Designate a sober driver ahead of time.

If you become intoxicated, do not drive for any reason. Call a taxi, phone a sober friend or family member, use public transportation, etc. Also, try NHTSAs SaferRide mobile app, which allows users to call a taxi or friend and identify their location so they can be picked up.

If someone you know has been drinking, do not let that person get behind the wheel. Take their keys, take them home, or help them arrange a sober ride.

If you see an impaired driver on the road, contact your local law enforcement. Your actions could help save someones life.

While you are out celebrating this St. Patricks Day please dont get behind the wheel of your vehicle. Driving after a night of partying is deadly. Law enforcement officers all across Utah and the region are doing what they can to prevent any injury or death caused by those that attempt to drive after drinking.

At University of Utah Health, specifically within the trauma service, we want you to be safe while celebrating this St. Patricks Day holiday. Keep the roads safe this holiday, and please dont drink and drive.
Junior road safety officers at Laughton Junior and Infant School, Sophie Bell and Cairo Hopewell along with learning mentor, Anne-Marie Brammer, who are heading a campaign to try and get sponsorship to fund a new crossing patrol at the school after theirs was removed due to council cuts. 170379-4

SAFETY-CONSCIOUS pupils have launched their own appeal for sponsorship to help pay for a lollipop lady outside their school as they fear someone could get killed.

In a heartfelt letter sent to businesses, junior road safety officers at Laughton Junior and Infant School pleaded for money to help raise the 3,000 needed to fund a crossing patrol.

The appeal comes after Rotherham Borough Council said School Road outside the school in Laughton-en-le-Morthen was selected as one of seven lollipop points to lose its funding from the end of this month as it did not meet the criteria required for a patrol to be necessary.

Road safety officers Cairo Hopewell and Sophie Bell said in the letter that the school was on a really busy road that people usually speed on and that they were worried about someone getting injured or even killed.

Head teacher Emma Gill said: The difficulty is I dont want to cut it and the governors dont want to cut it - its the most difficult decision the governors have ever had to make but we definitely cant afford to do it, it would mean cutting staff in school.

So we asked the council to give us an accurate figure and they said it would be around 3,000 for the year, which doesnt seem like anything but we just cant fund it.

Mrs Gill said School Road was the main route in and out of Laughton and parents had raised safety concerns about the crossing patrol being cut.

The issue is that as you approach the village its national speed limit and the first thing you come to when you come into the village is the school, Mrs Gill said.

It goes from 60mph to 30mph and theres no way you can drop to 30mph without slamming the brakes on.

The school crossing patrol is only about 20 to 30 metres from the national speed limit sign.

Cairo and Sophie have sent out letters to businesses in and around Laughton and parents have also been asked to help.

Mrs Gill said: We have contacted a few businesses who have said theyll see what they can do to help.

But the funding runs out on March 31 so its very much needed now. Anything and everything people can do to help is appreciated.

Matt Turner, whose two children Lilly (8) and Harvey (5) are both pupils at the school, said it would be positive for businesses to step in.

He added: I started at Laughton Junior and Infant School myself in 1984 and there has always been a crossing patrol.

There was nowhere near the volume of traffic back then.

The traffic has increased but they have cut the crossing patrol which is a worry for me with two children there.

A Rotherham Borough Council spokeswoman said: Following last years budget cuts, an independent survey of 74 council-funded patrol points across the borough was carried out and identified 21 sites that did not meet the national criteria a school crossing patrol (Road Safety GB criteria) \_ Laughton was one of these schools.

Following the outcome of the survey, an extended period of consultation was undertaken with all the schools identified.

Each school, including Laughton, was offered the opportunity to fund the service, working with the council.

We understand Laughton School is currently seeking sponsorship for its school crossing patrol and the council would be happy to review the situation if the school was able to progress with this.
A high-powered Russian delegation led by Yuri Trutnev, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and Presidential Envoy to the Russian Far East discussed closer collaboration between the gem and jewellery industries of the two countries with representatives of the GJEPC and BDB during a visit to the Bharat Diamond Bourse in Mumbai, says a report on gjepc.org.The delegation comprised a number of senior officials including governors and ministers from various parts of the Far Eastern region of Russia.GJEPC Chair Praveenshankar Pandya and BDB President Anoop Mehta put forward some concrete proposals to the Dy PM and other leaders regarding possible areas of cooperation. They suggested that the removal of high import duty on cut and polished diamonds entering Russia would help the growth of the jewellery manufacturing export industry there.Pandya pointed out that Russian jewellery had a superior finish compared to many other European nations, but lagged behind the others because of the cost factor on account of the import duties on diamonds, which are a key raw material. He even suggested that the two countries could look at an arrangement under which diamonds mined in Russia, and then cut and polished in India could then be re-exported to Russia to feed the jewellery manufacturing industry there.The second proposal was related to the setting up of a 50:50 joint venture between Russian miner ALROSA and the Indian industry to carry out diamond exploration and mining in India. Mehta pointed out that a JV could immediately consider reviving the Bunder project in MP, which is known to have proven diamond reserves of over 30 mn carats, given Russias expertise and experience in diamond mining.On his part, Yuri Trutnev suggested that the Indian industry could look at setting up some cutting and polishing units in the Far East and train Russian workers in the art of cutting and polishing. The delegation responded favourably to the proposals and Trutnev has invited an Indian delegation to visit Russia next month for further discussions.
Alrosa sold two batches of diamonds from its Angola-based processing facility of Catoca since the beginning of this year, according to a news report.

Alrosa controls a 32.8 percent stake in Catoca, so was Endiama, an Angolan state-owned diamond company.

LL International Holding B.V. which is owned by China-Sonagol controlled an 18.0 percent stake, while Brazils Odebrecht Mining Services owns 16.4 percent of the company.

"Since February 2017 our Angolan partners have allowed us to participate in sales. We have already sold two pilot batches of diamonds from the Catoca deposit," Russian news agency TASS quoted Alrosa vice president Rinat Gizatulin as saying, adding the deal was worth between $10 million and $15 million.

Catoca conducts diamond mining operations in the Lunda Sul Province.

It produces and sells around 6.8 million carats each year.

Meanwhile, Gizatulin said Alrosa was also planning to sell 35 percent of diamonds from Catoca and about 50 percent from the Luaxe deposit, also in Angola.

Luaxe was still under development with production expected to commence early next year with an annual output of about 10 million carats.

"According to our geologists, this is a very promising huge deposit with at least 400 million carats of diamonds," said Gizatulin.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Petra Diamonds said it is conservatively guiding for flat diamond pricing for its fiscal year 2017, but improved product mix is expected for Finsch, Cullinan and Koffiefontein mines in South Africa.

The group said in a presentation at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Sun City Conference that it was expecting Finsch to record an average price of $100-105 per carat during the fiscal year 2017, while Cullinan was expected to register $105-115 per carat and Koffiefontein $520-550 per carat.

This projection, however, excluded stones above $5 million in value.

Finsch recorded an average price of $98 per carat during the first half of its fiscal year 2017, while Cullinan registered $127 per carat and Koffiefontein $495 per carat.

The first half of H1 FY 2017 saw steady market conditions, with pricing on a like for like basis generally on par with H2 FY 2016, said Petra.

Finsch registered an average price of $89 per carat during the fiscal year 2016, Cullinan posted $126 per carat while Koffiefontein recorded $462 per carat.

Meanwhile, Petra said there are signs of stabilisation in rough diamond market evident with steady demand across majority of size ranges, except in the smaller, lower value categories which experienced some pressure in December 2016 tender due to the Indian governments demonetisation policy.

Petra Diamonds first half revenue for the fiscal year 2017 leaped 48 percent to $228.5 million compared with $154.0 million, a year earlier.

The increase in revenue helped its half earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rise to $87.1 million from $48.5 million.

Its adjusted net profit after tax was also up 348 percent to $28.2 million from $6.3 million during the same period last year.

The groups production jumped 24 percent to 2,02 million carats during the period under review compared with 1,62 million carats, a year earlier.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Chow Tai Fook will open its first ever branded store in Japan at one of the tax-free stores operated by Laox. The new store is part of an agreement for partnership signed by the two companues on March 13.

The new store will span approximately 820 square feet at Laox WATCH., one of Japans major wristwatch specialty stores, in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It will offer a wide range of jewellery products including gem-set jewellery, gold products and platinum & karat gold jewellery. It is located within a 2-minute walk from Shinjuku Station East Exit, in one of Tokyos most vibrant commercial centres.

Chow Tai Fook Managing Director, Kent Wong, remarked, We are thrilled to partner with Laox to provide our customers in Japan. With opportunities arising from 2020 Tokyo Olympics, we see great business potentials in the Japanese market.

Laoxs President and Representative Director, Luo Yiwen, said, In collaboration with Chow Tai Fook, we hope to actively promote its high-quality and fashionable products

While Chow Tai Fook has more than 2,300 POS worldwide, Laox is a renowned Japanese tax-free store operator, at Tokyo. The company has a heritage of over 80 years and operates 40 general tax-free stores around Japan.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




Thumbs down

A report released last week demonstrates some of the potential human costs of widespread delays at medical facilities run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

An inspection requested by Montanas U.S. senators found that four of the states military veterans may have been harmed by long wait times in getting appointments or receiving medical services in 2015, according to an Associated Press report.

One of them was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts while awaiting an appointment with a psychiatrist, one was not able to have surgery on a suspicious lesion before it was too late, one may have missed out on certain cancer treatment options because of the delays, and one survived a heart attack while waiting to have a medical procedure done on his heart.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said VA Secretary David Shulkin assured him that addressing the issues in the report will be a priority.

We certainly hope hes right, because our veterans may not be able to wait much longer.

***

Thumbs up

Behind every great student is a great teacher. And we were pleased to see many of those great students and teachers from the Helena area recognized this week.

Each year, the Helena Education Foundation names 50 graduating seniors as distinguished students for their academic achievements, leadership or triumph over adversity. Those students then select the public school teachers who did the most to make that happen.

We published the names of all 100 distinguished students and educators this week, and they will all be honored during the HEF Celebration of Excellence on May 8.

We want to take this opportunity to congratulate the honorees for this great honor. We are proud to call them our friends and neighbors.
New president of ALROSA will leave the company's development strategy unchanged

17 march 2017 News

(rns.online) - The new president of ALROSA, Sergey Ivanov said that he would be committed to the development strategy of the company, which is focused on mining minerals, selling non-core assets and increasing production.

"I would like to assure you that I am committed to this strategy and intend to make every effort to deliver it," Ivanov said during a conference call with analysts organized to discuss the company's annual results. His statement was cited by Reuters.

Sergey Ivanov was elected as president of ALROSA, the world's largest producer of rough diamonds, on March 13. This prompted some analysts to ask whether he would start diversifying into diamond polishing or other commodities, the agency said.

Sergei Ivanov previously worked as a senior vice-president of Sberbank and headed the board of directors of insurance company Sogaz.




HNTB Corporation has promoted Rob Troup to transit and rail market sector leader for the Northeast Division. The company has also added Mark Niles as senior project manager and associate vice president, based in Washington, D.C.

As an HNTB vice president, Troup is based in the Philadelphia office; he joined the firm in 2016. In his new role, Troups focus is client development, as well as the management of engineering and design for rail and transit projects in the northeast region.

Troup has more than 35 years of public transportation experience with a focus on developing comprehensive engineering and operational solutions to improve multimodal transit infrastructure and services. He has significant experience managing high-density transit design, operations, maintenance and construction in heavily urbanized environments such as the Northeast corridor and the New York metropolitan region.

Prior to joining HNTB, Troup was the deputy general manager of operations for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA) where he was responsible for all aspects of engineering, maintenance and operations for Metro Rail and accessibility transit services. He also worked with Amtrak, New Yorks Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New Jersey Transit and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

His responsibilities include program management, business development, technical quality oversight and project delivery.

Niles has 30 years of transit-planning experience and an extensive background in the mid-Atlantic. His experience includes projects and programs for the WMATA, DC Streetcar and many other transit and rail, bus and paratransit planning projects across the United States.

Prior to joining HNTB, Niles served as associate vice president for another consulting firm. In this role, he served numerous regional projects, including as program manager for the WMATA on-call planning contract, project manager for the Federal Transit Administration New Starts/Small Starts land use reviews and Metrobus market and effectiveness studies.
Airbus Group said the French authorities, the Parquet National Financier, has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption in the civil aviation of Airbus Group relating to irregularities concerning third party consultants.

The company announced on 7 August 2016 that the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had opened an investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption in the civil aviation business of Airbus Group relating to irregularities concerning third party consultants.

Today, the company noted that the two authorities will act in coordination going forward.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Caterpillar Inc. has hired former U.S. Attorney General William Barr to help the company in ongoing government investigation.

In a statement, the heavy-machinery maker said it has retained Barr as outside counsel to assess and help address the investigation. The federal probe is going on into tax issues surrounding its Swiss subsidiary Caterpillar SARL.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Umpleby, who took the office on January 1, has tasked Barr with reviewing matters relating to the search warrants executed at Caterpillar facilities on March 2, and assisting the company in appropriately addressing those matters.

Earlier this month, federal agents searched three Caterpillar offices in Illinois, including the company's headquarters in Peoria. The search was part of an Internal Revenue Service investigation related to profits earned by Caterpillar SARL. The IRS reportedly has demand the company to pay $2 billion in taxes and penalties for profits assigned to the Swiss unit.

According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois, agents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the U.S. Department of Commerce also participated in the searches.

Barr served as the 77th Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush, and before that as Deputy Attorney General and as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice.

He is currently of counsel to the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. After his public service, Barr served for over 14 years with Verizon Communications, Inc. and its predecessor company, GTE Corp.

Umpleby said, "Bill Barr is one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, with an impeccable track record, well known for his integrity and direct, honest advice. I have asked Bill  who has no prior connection with Caterpillar  to draw on his experience and that of his colleagues at Kirkland & Ellis and other advisers, to take a fresh look at Caterpillar's disputes with the government, get all the facts, and then help us bring these matters to proper resolution based on the merits."

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Enel (ENLAY.PK,EN) reported net income from continuing operations of 3.79 billion euros for fiscal 2016 compared to 3.37 billion euros, prior year. Earnings per share from continuing operations to ordinary shareholders of the Parent Company was 0.26 euros compared to 0.23 euros, last year. EBITDA was 15.28 billion euros, down 0.1% from previous year. Ordinary EBITDA was 15.17 billion euros, an increase of 0.9%.

Fiscal 2016 revenues totaled 70.59 billion euros compared to 75.66 billion euros, last year. The Group said its revenues were down 6.7% due to negative exchange rate developments, a decline in electricity trading, the deconsolidation of Slovenske elektrarne, a reduction in electricity sale prices in mature and lower electricity production.

The Group's proposed dividend for 2016 was 0.18 euros per share, of which 0.09 euros per share paid as interim dividend in January 2017.

Francesco Starace, Enel CEO and General Manager, said: "The Group's excellent performance in the implementation of our strategy enabled us to achieve better than expected results in 2016 and to post growth in EBITDA for the first time since 2013. The results achieved in 2016 have enabled us to increase net income by 17% over the corresponding figure for 2015 and increase the dividend pay-out to 57%."

In 2017 Enel plans to continue industrial growth, focused on networks and renewables, with a growth EBITDA target of 1.4 billion euros.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
The European Commission said Friday that, following discussions with Facebook Inc. (FB), Google and Twitter Inc. (TWTR), it has given them one month to come up with detailed plans on how they would comply with EU regulations. If final proposals are not satisfactory, consumer authorities could ultimately resort to enforcement action.

The European union consumer authorities and organisations have received a growing number of complaints from consumers, who have been targeted by fraud or scams when using social media websites, as well as having been subject to certain terms of services that do not respect EU consumer law, the EU said.

On this basis, EU consumer authorities, under the leadership of the French consumer authority and with the support of the European Commission, sent a letter to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ last November asking them to address two areas of concern.

On 16 March 2017, EU consumer authorities and the European Commission met with these companies to hear and discuss their proposed solutions. The companies in question will finalise detailed measures on how to comply with the EU regulatory framework within one month. The Commission and the consumer authorities will review the final proposals. If they are not satisfactory, consumer authorities could ultimately resort to enforcement action, European union said.

Commissioner Jourova said,".... Social media companies also need to take more responsibility in addressing scams and fraud happening on their platforms. I want to thank the EU consumer authorities who have worked tirelessly with the Commission on this important issue over the past months. From today, social media companies have one month to come up with solutions to comply with EU rules."

The companies have agreed to propose changes on two areas: Unfair terms and conditions; addressing fraud and scams that mislead consumers when using the social networks.

The EU noted that the Social media companies must remove any fraud and scams appearing on their websites that could mislead consumers, once they become aware of such practices. In this connection, national consumer protection authorities should have a direct and standardised communication channel to signal such wrongdoings to social media operators and obtain take down of content, as well as information concerning the traders responsible for the infringements. This is in line with EU consumer legislation and the E-Commerce Directive, which gives the possibility to Member States to establish procedures governing the removal or disabling of access to illegal information.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
President Donald Trump sidestepped a question about allegations a British intelligence agency helped former President Barack Obama wiretap Trump Tower on Friday and suggested reporters speak to Fox News about the claim.

During a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump noted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was referencing a claim made by Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano.

Trump described Napolitano as a "very talented legal mind" and argued questions about the allegations should be directed to the former judge.

The comments from Trump come even though Spicer and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have reportedly apologized to the British government for mentioning the claim.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May previously said the White House had offered assurances the allegations would not be repeated.

When asked about the allegations of wiretapping, Trump suggested he had something in common Merkel, whose cell phone was allegedly tapped by Obama.

Trump also discussed several other issues during the press conference, reiterating his support for NATO but once again calling on members to pay their fair share.

The president also denied that he is an isolationist and stressed that he is in favor of a trade policy that is both free and fair.

Asked about the House Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump once again expressed confidence that the bill will pass "pretty quickly."

Trump pointed to an earlier meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee during which several lawmakers were convinced to support the legislation.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
The regulatory framework that helps shape the look of Helenas downtown could change.

The city of Helena has hired consultants with Orion Planning + Design, which is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado but has an office in Helena.

The state Department of Commerce Community Development Block Grant Program is providing $25,000 of the contracts $35,000 cost, said Sharon Haugen, the citys community development director.

In addition to recommended changes to downtown zoning -- perhaps creating a set of regulations exclusively for the downtown -- the consultants may also suggest other, slight modifications to zoning districts, Haugen said.

These modifications would benefit the downtown or other areas of the city that share the same zoning, she explained.

Haugen said shes hopeful that a regulatory revision for the downtown will promote development in that area of the city and aid in the implementation of the downtown master plan that was created in 2016.

Changes to downtown zoning were also proposed by the master plan that was created through a joint effort by the Helena Business Improvement District, which focuses exclusively on the downtown, and the city.

The city commission has taken an interest in the master plan and receives updates on its implementation.

The draft timetable for the zoning revision calls for several periods for public comment before completion of the project in December.
Roundup: Saudi kills 30 in 235 airstrikes on Yemen in 6 days

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By Baseema al-Absi



SANA'A, March 15 (Saba)  At least thirty civilians were killed, Including a woman and two children, and 15 others wounded in 235 airstrikes launched by US-backed Saudi aggression warplanes on several Yemeni provinces over the past six days, officials and residents told Saba.



In Sana'a, the aggression warplanes launched 48 air strikes on Nehm and Arhb districts, Dam Alakran , Manaha area, Guards School and Al-Athrat valley.



The aggression dropped cluster bombs during airstrike on Sanaa.



Four citizens, including a woman, killed in one of the raid on a car in the Nehm district.



Also in Sana'a, the aggression planes hit the entrance of a popular market in Alehima Al-Kharigyya directorate and a regular road linking the capital Sana'a with Hodeida, cutting off the road.



In Sa'ada, the aggression launched 47 airstrikes on several districts, including Dhahir and Ketaf, Bakim, Razih, Al-Saefe Camp, as well as other different areas of Monabbih district.



In Jawf, the aggression warplanes launched five raids on Al-Mton directorate and al-Maslob district.



In Taiz, the aggression fighter jets waged 43 air raids in Mokha city, Mawza distric, kaleed camp, Howzan Mount, Taiz Airport and ALamry area.



In Mareb province, the aggression warplanes carried out 16 raids on several civilian regions, including Serwah, Hareeb, ALKramesh and Heelan Mount.



In Hodeida port city, the aggression launched 32 air strikes on areas, Al-Khokha area and Kamaran Island.

Also in Hodeida, 22 citizens were killed and ten others wounded in a raid from the aggression planes that targeted Al-Khokha market.



In Hajja, the aggression warplanes launched 27 airstrikes, targeting Medi port city and Haradh border crossing.



Also in Hajja, a woman and two children were Killed and another child was wounded in an air raid targeted the home of a citizen in Almzraq area of Harad district.



In Dhamar governorate, the aggression fighter jets launched two air strikes on Otoma district.



In Amran province, the aggression warplanes carried out two raids on Al-Mrha Mountain.



In Mahaweet, the aggression fighter jets waged two raids targeting a bridge in Bani Saad area that killed one citizen.





BS/ZAK



Saba

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[15/March/2017]
HAMILTON  Thursday was the deadline for county commissions across the state to decide if they would support a mail ballot for the upcoming special election to select Montanas sole congressman.

By late afternoon, Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg, president of the Montana Association of Clerk and Recorders, had learned that 54 of the states 56 counties had passed a resolution to support a mail ballot.

Only two  Richland and Bighorn  opted to hold that election at the poll.

The resolution was required under a bill working its way through the Legislature that would allow for a mail ballot for the May 25th election that will decide who will be the states new congressman.

The seat opened after Ryan Zinke was named Secretary of the Interior.

Since SB 305 has not yet passed the House, the decision to adopt a resolution was a proactive measure, Plettenberg said. The proposed legislation required that county commissioners pass the resolution allowing for the mail ballot 70 days before the election.

All of that could become moot March 23 when the House Judiciary Committee holds its hearing on SB 305, the legislation that would allow counties to use a mail ballot for the special election.

That hearing could be our last hurrah, said Plettenberg. We will really know then where we stand. If it comes out of the committee meeting, well have a good shot at it.

That association and numerous county commissions have joined to ask the Legislature to allow counties the option of holding this one special election by mail ballot in order to save cost and confusion.

But that might be difficult in a Legislature controlled by Republicans. State GOP Chairman Jeff Essmann, who represents Billings in the Montana House, has pushed hard against a mail ballot, arguing that it would help the Democratic candidate.

Following Zinkes confirmation, Gov. Steve Bullock selected Thursday, May 25 for the special election.

That day comes just before Memorial Day weekend. Election officials worry about finding enough election workers to man the polls and, in some cases, places to house the polling places since many school buildings are reserved for graduation ceremonies.

But some legislators  including, according to Plettenberg, the entire House delegation from Ravalli County  remain opposed to SB 305.

Im very disheartened by that, Plettenberg said. They are not listening to their commissioners and clerks.

House Majority Leader Ron Ehli of Hamilton said he is hearing from people on both the sides of the issue, including Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, who is opposed to the mail ballot.

We are getting a lot of heat from people in opposition of the date for the election, Ehli said. People want to know why the election is being held on Thursday, May 25, instead of a Tuesday in June.

Ehli said it makes no sense to us whatsoever that the governor picked that date.

The legislator said hes also hearing from people who question the integrity of an all-mail ballot.

In my mind, theres no question at all in our clerk and recorders, he said. I have total confidence in them.

But, Ehli said, there have been too many cases of all-mail ballots where the process has been abused over time. Ehli said some of his constituents have brought those concerns forward.

Currently, Ehli said voter confidence in the election process in Montana is rated very high.

With the good work of our clerk and recorders, voters in this state have different options, he said. Its one of the reasons why Montanas elections rank so high. People get to vote the way they want. Thats key to me.

While the money issue is important, Ehli said, it cant be the only issue in the discussion.

Rep. Nancy Ballance of Hamilton said she's heard concern about legal issues surrounding a mail ballot, including how same-day voter registration would occur.

"What I see is these legal issues keep popping up," Ballance said. "There are deadlines that have to be met. Everyone thinks it's a good idea because it will save some money...Everyone is running toward this as a way to save some money, but I think it could end up in a mess. There is more to it than meets the eye."

The Ravalli County Commission voted unanimously recently to approve a resolution to allow for a mail ballot in the special election.

Commissioner Jeff Burrows said the commissions decision was based both on the fact they knew their election office would struggle to find polling places and poll workers, as well as the financial hit the county would take by holding a poll election.

A poll vote will cost the county $65,000 versus a mail ballot cost of about $50,000.

That is a significant cost savings for us, Burrows said. All the costs for this special election have been shifted on to the counties. We will have to pay for those costs out of our operating reserves.

The unexpected election hasnt been the only unanticipated cost that Ravalli County has been forced to dig deep into its pocketbook to pay for this year.

Weve just come through a really heavy year for snowplowing, Burrows said. We were over budget in Decemberwe based those costs on historical averages and weve had such mild winters for the last few years.

This year, our budget just got drilled, he said. And now were going to have to take another significant hit doing this special election.

Burrows said the commission is reaching out to its state legislators in hopes of encouraging them to support the mail ballot option.

Plettenberg said its important for people to remember the proposed legislation is entirely focused on this one special election.

We had unanimous support for the resolution from our commission, she said. They are all Republicans. By the way, I am one, too.

Plettenberg said shes heard from a lot of average voters too.

Mostly they stop by the front counter or see me in the grocery store, she said. They tell me they dont understand why the Legislature is opposed to this and ask if they can do anything to help.
MISSOULA -- President Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget sends some troubling messages to both rural American and the wider world, according to Montanas former senator and U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus.

Its very sad to see a budget proposal like this, Baucus said. Its red meat on a surface level to Trumps supporters, but it will hurt rural America.

The 62-page budget released on Thursday calls for a 21 percent cut to the Department of Agriculture and a 12 percent reduction at the Department of Interior, which together manage Montanas national forests, parks and public lands. Baucus called it a disturbing indication of Trumps instinct to fight with people rather than work with them.

It comes down to a realization I had in Congress 34 years ago, Baucus said in a telephone interview from his home in Bozeman. We in rural states have to fight hard or were going to be taken advantage of when Washington starts doling out dollars. I dont want to take advantage of other parts of the country, but I dont want them to take advantage of us.

"I see this budget especially giving a big boost to defense states -- mainly southern and coastal states. We have all this federal land. Eastern and coastal states dont have as much federal land, so they have a tax base that supports higher standards of living and greater commerce. We need programs like PILT and SRS to balance things out.

Trumps budget proposes unspecified cuts to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program Baucus helped create to support communities dominated by federal land management. The related Secure Rural Schools (SRS) forms a major part of many county budgets and recently expired.

On Thursday, Congress heard testimony about how Beaverhead County recently lost $330,000 in SRS funds needed to match almost $2.4 million for a 17-mile county road infrastructure project. The county commissioners had to nearly zero out its budget reserves to sustain the project.

Baucus spent the past three years as President Barack Obamas ambassador to China after serving six terms in the Senate and two in the House. Trump has not named a new ambassador.

Thats kind of pertinent, with Secretary (of State Rex) Tillerson visiting as we speak, Baucus said. Theres a big power vacuum in in the State Department. The Chinese will notice. We still dont have a full American ambassador to China, and we dont have one in Japan, either. I noticed he (Tillerson) didnt stop at the American embassy in Japan when he was there. Thats a big morale-booster when the secretary stops by. Instead, theyre looking at a 30 percent cut in the Department of State budget.

Baucus pointed to the recent example of North Koreas belligerent missile launches and nuclear testing. On Friday, Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" And Tillerson told South Korean officials that Obamas policy of strategic patience with North Korea could be replaced by a more military approach.

Kim Jong Un is giving us fits, and it's getting existential, Baucus said. Thats something where only the United States can lead. South Korea cant solve the Kim Jong Un problem. China doesnt want to. Its up to us.

On the other hand, Baucus said Trumps rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement would hurt American business opportunities.

If we send signals that were maybe not as engaged, we lose influence, Baucus said. Countries around the world want America to lead. We are the economic powerhouse -- the country of free enterprise and rule of law and independent judiciary. Theyre saying, 'Please, please stay involved. We get a lot of pressure from the Chinese, and we need the United States to be here as a counter-balance.' With the U.S. leaving, that gives the Chinese a lot more influence. It leaves a big void.

However, the Chinese and American citizens probably will see very different spending proposals as Congress puts its priorities on the budget process, Baucus said.

I think (Democratic Sen.) Jon Tester is doing a great job, and (Republican Sen.) Steve Daines is doing a great job, Baucus said of Montanas current congressional delegation. Theyve been around. Well just have to fight. I think Jon and Steve will be fierce in their opposition.
Still Standing: Four the Moments legacy honoured at Nova Scotia Music Week

When a quartet of Halifax women began singing together a cappella in the name of social justice in 1982, there was little in the way of a music industry at play in Atlantic Canada. And even if there had been, its likely that Four the Moment would ...
FRENCHTOWN  A Frenchtown High student has been granted an order of protection against a music teacher who is the subject of a criminal investigation.

Troy Bashor, who teaches music to grades 5-12 in Frenchtown, was served the final order of protection, which cites sexual assault as its basis, on Tuesday. It is effective through June 30, 2018.

According to the Frenchtown School District website, Bashor teaches several classes, including choir, percussion, theater and more. He also leads extracurriculars in music and theater.

Missoula Justice of the Peace Landee Holloway granted a temporary order of protection Feb. 24, based on the student's petition. The student has not been identified as she is a minor.

Bashor was served with a temporary order Feb. 27 that forbade him from entering the school. The final order issued Tuesday allows him to be in the building, but he must maintain a 15-foot distance from the student.

Frenchtown Superintendent Randy Cline said in an email that the district was notified of the allegations and investigated them.

"The District did not substantiate the allegations of inappropriate conduct but did address boundary issues with the staff member," Cline said. "The staff member is back at work and the District is aware of the contact restrictions in the order that was issued by the Justice of the Peace."

On Friday, Missoula County Sheriff's spokeswoman Brenda Bassett confirmed that an active criminal investigation is focused on Bashor.

Bashors attorney Peter Lacny declined to comment about the criminal investigation on Friday, and said he and his client have not made a decision about whether to appeal the order of protection.

Holloway requested all text messages between Bashor and the student from Sept. 1 through March 6. At a hearing March 13, Holloway granted the order of protection, finding that the student "is in danger of harm and that good cause exists" for the order.

The student alleged that the most recent incident occurred Dec. 20 in Frenchtown High's auditorium. She reports that law enforcement was notified.

In describing that incident, the student said Bashor made comments about her underwear and touched her inappropriately.

She said she fled when another student walked in.

In her request for the order of protection, the student described multiple incidents in which Bashor allegedly touched her in ways that made her so uncomfortable that she pulled away from him, including sliding his hands under her shirt and into her pants.

The student said she wants to be in school but feels "unsafe." She describes feeling anxious and nauseous when she sees him.

Bashor started in Frenchtown in 2002 as a part-time music teacher, according to the district website. He offers private percussion lessons, and has helped Missoula Children's Theatre with music and percussion.

Bashor's friends started a GoFundMe page last week that had raised more than $8,300 as of Friday afternoon, with more than 100 messages of support for Bashor accompanying donations.

In early 2016 another Frenchtown teacher, Michael Botsford, was charged with endangering the welfare of children, a misdemeanor, for exchanging thousands of text messages -- including ones that were sexual -- with a student. Botsford resigned from the school after being put on leave in April 2015, around the same time that a criminal investigation into his conduct began. He eventually pleaded guilty and received a six-month suspended sentence.
By SA Commercial Prop News

Commercial Real Estate Markets Begin Long, Slow Recovery



With a strong pipeline of deals, transaction volumes of global investment in 2012 are expected to match 2011 levels, says Jones Lang LaSalle report

The world's major commercial real estate markets have been in recovery mode since the crisis of 2008/2009, with 2011 having shown the strongest evidence of an upswing so far. As we move through 2012 nonetheless, first quarter market data suggests a slowing in forward momentum, with investment and leasing volumes down by about one- fifth compared to a year ago, according to Jones Lang LaSalle report on Second Quarter 2012 Global Market Perspective.

"We believe this is a lagged market response to the escalation of the euro crisis during the second half of 2011 and, as such, it is likely to be a temporary slowdown. Given the more positive outlook for the global economy, the significant weight of capital targeting commercial real estate and the strong pipeline of deals, we fully expect the global real estate markets to resume their steady, measured recovery during the remainder of 2012," the report said.

This is despite the global investment volumes down 21 per cent yearon- year, owing to a lack of product in core markets and constraints on debt finance. But with a strong pipeline of deals, transaction volumes for full-year 2012 are expected to match 2011 levels, the Jones Lang LaSalle report revealed.

On the other hand, overall leasing activity has slowed, a delayed response to corporate occupier caution. Q1 2012 volumes are down 15- 25 per cent year-on-year. Gross leasing volumes are expected to be slightly lower in 2012 compared to 2011.

Sectors that continue to grow are technology, energy and commodityrich markets that are registering robust corporate occupier demand. Domestic corporations and outsourcing (BPO) are driving demand in many emerging markets. The financial sector remains subdued however.

The Americas region still offers the greatest potential to outperform in 2012. In the US, the most sought-after property is the rental apartment market which remains strong. New York is the second top city for real estate capital by Tokyo.

In terms of the retail market, international retailers are targeting emerging markets, with a strong focus on Greater China with retailers moving deep into China's secondary and tertiary cities. In Europe, the retailers are no less sanguine with rents in prime retail markets rising at their fastest rate in over a year.

Meanwhile, in the hospitality industry, hotel operators are stepping up acquisitions in Q1 2012.
By SA Commercial Prop News

European Investment Bank backs South African affordable and social housing by providinga further R2 billion (EUR 150 million) for investment in affordable and social housing in South Africa.



The European Investment Bank (EIB), Europes long-term lending institution, has agreed to provide a further R2 billion (EUR 150 million) for investment in affordable and social housing in South Africa.

The new programme will be managed in South Africa by four local partners  two public development finance institutions and two commercial banks - who have already identified a pipeline of development projects that would deliver approximately 23,800 new housing units.

The first of the four loan agreements were signed in Johannesburg this week by Pim van Ballekom, European Investment Bank Vice President responsible for sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, and representatives of Nedbank. Funding provided by the EIB to the four South African institutions will enable public and private developers to increase engagement in the affordable and social housing sector.



Support for increased provision of affordable and social housing is essential for further economic and social integration in South Africa. The European Investment Bank's second programme reflects the goals of the countrys National Development Plan 2030. Building on the success of the previous engagement; it uses the same model of fruitful cooperation with local public and commercial banks to help stimulate financing for building new homes and upgrading existing ones across the country. We recognise the special importance of improving housing for low-income South Africans as crucial to helping South Africa achieve economic and social integration and development objectives. said Pim van Ballekom, European Investment Bank Vice President.



The European Investment Banks engagement reflects the 2012 Financial Sector Code committing South African banks to promote a transformed, vibrant and globally competitive financial sector that reflects the demographics of South Africa and to direct investment into targeted sectors of the economy such as social and affordable housing.



The criteria for EIBs funding include a tangible demonstration by the bank of its active participation in the provision of housing in SA. In keeping with its ranking of the JSEs most empowered company under the dti Codes, Nedbank has also demonstrated its commitment to transformation by its Affordable Housing Development unit in Nedbank Corporate, ensuring the development of new homes for people in the Financial Sector Code income sector, which aims to eradicate housing backlogs for the lower income groups, says Manie Annandale Head: Affordable Housing Development Finance. In addition, the Affordable Housing Development Finance unit in 2013 developed a Social Housing development funding product for SHRA (South African Social Housing Regulatory Authority) accredited Social Housing Institutions to accelerate much needed Social Housing delivery for the income groups between R1500 and R7500pm. This funding initiative is the first of its kind among the top four Commercial Banks in SA.



The EIBs new initiative follows a successful similar programme launched in 2008 that has supported the delivery of some 42,000 affordable and social housing units in both, inner city neighbourhoods and on Greenfield sites. Individual housing schemes funded under the initiative will be implemented across the country by developers and housing providers.



Under the initiative the European Investment Bank will contribute up to half of a housing schemes cost. Selected housing schemes are expected to be implemented by 2016 with around 6,500 construction jobs created during construction. The funding will also support renewable energy components such as solar geysers which will be part of new constructions.



The new Affordable and Social Housing Initiative remains the European Investment Bank's most substantial financial support for low income housing outside Europe, reflecting the importance of decent housing conditions for further economic and social development in South Africa.



In 2012 the European Investment Bank provided nearly EUR 2.2 billion for projects in a range of sectors across Africa.
Actress Kareena Kapoor Khan took her three-month-old baby Taimur Ali Khan out on a drive last evening. Bebo took break from her work commitments to spend time with her little munchkin and the two went out in a drive on Thursday night. Where baby Taimur is spotted sitting in her nanny's arms, Kareena was sitting right next to them in the car. This is Taimur's first outing on the streets of Mumbai with her mommy dearest. It was a great opportunity for the paparazzi and they went click click seeing the two. Minutes after the pictures of Kareena and Taimur went viral on the social media.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday said that she has spoken to the Pakistani authorities about the two Indian Sufi clerics who went missing in the country.

"Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted.



"We have taken up this matter with the government of Pakistan and requested them for an update."



The two clerics visited Lahore on March 13 to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine.



On March 14, they offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine also in Lahore.





The next day when they reached the airport to take a return flight for Karachi, Nazim Ali Nizami was stopped to clear some documentation and Syed Asif Ali Nizami was asked to board the flight.



He reached Karachi airport and asked his relatives to pick him up but he did not come out.



Since then, their mobile phones have been switched off and their family in India has not been able to get in touch with them.
The Rajya Sabha was on Friday disrupted by Congress members during Zero Hour over the role of Goa Governor Mridula Sinha in the formation of the new BJP government in the state.

The Chair briefly adjourned the House after Congress members trooped near the Chairman's podium and started shouting slogans.



Soon after the House met, Congress member Digvijay Singh demanded a discussion on the Governor's role under Rule 267, which entails suspending the listed business of the day and starting a discussion.



But Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien turned down the notice saying the role of the Governor can be discussed only under a Substantive motion.



Digvijay Singh referred to to an interview given to Mumabi Mirror by the Governor where she said that she reached the decision to invite Manohar Parrikar to form the government after consulting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.





Singh quoted Sinha's words: "I didn't speak with the Centre, no one approached me, no one called me. Then Parrikar informed me around 6.30 p.m. on Sundaya. I felt I should speak with Arun Jaitley, and I called him around 9.30 in the evening, discussing the situation. So that settled it."



Despite the Congress being the single largest party in Goa, the Governor invited the Bharatiya Janata Party led by former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to form the government.



Parrikar on Thursday won the trust vote in the Goa assembly.



The Congress members objected to Sinha consulting a Union Minister before making a decision.



Deputy Leader of Opposition Anand Sharma said that it was violation of Article 164 (1) of the Constitution.



However, Kurien said that he could not allow a discussion on the matter merely going by newspaper reports.



Soon after, the Congress members trooped near the Chairman's podium and shouted slogans "Loktantra ki hatya band karo" (Stop murdering democracy) and "Narendra Modi teri tanashahi, nahi chalegi (Narendra Modi, autocracy won't be tolerated)



As the din continued, Kurien adjourned the house till 12 noon.


The Pakistan Foreign Office ' title=' Pakistan Foreign Office '>Pakistan Foreign Office on Friday confirmed that a request had been received from India seeking assistance in tracing two clerics who went missing after visiting Lahore's Data Darbar.

Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said the request had been received and forwarded to the Interior Ministry, who are pursuing the matter.



Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that she has spoken to the Pakistani authorities about the two clerics.



"Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted.



"We have taken up this matter with the government of Pakistan and requested them for an update."





Head cleric Asif Nizami and Nazim Nizami went missing in Pakistan, during their visit to Lahore's Data Darbar. The clerics have been missing since Wednesday.



According to the family of the clerics, the duo was set to fly to Karachi on Wednesday, and while Asif was allowed to board, Nazim was stopped at Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete documents.



Exchanges between clerics of Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, and the Data Darbar are part of a regular tradition.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday suggested the "possibility" of EVM tampering and urged the Election Commission to call an all-party meeting to discuss the issue.

"I have seen the Election Commission's version that says nothing (no instances of tampering with the EVMs) is there. But I have also seen a version of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy where he said EVMs can be tampered (with)," Banerjee said.



"Whether they accept it or not is up to them. But I think the Election Commission may call an all-party meeting. Let this be discussed," she said.



Earlier, Bahujan Samajwadi Party chief Mayawati alleged the EVMs were "managed" in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections to ensure a BJP win.





Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal too said EVMs were tampered with in Punjab, with 20-25 per cent of AAP votes getting transferred to the Akali Dal-BJP alliance to prop up the Congress.



Playing Swamy's video clip wherein the BJP Rajya Sabha MP talked of the possibility of EVMs tampering, the West Bengal Chief Minister said she herself was not implying anything but only quoting a "member of the BJP" on the issue.



"He said Japan is making a software for EVMs but they don't use it. Even America does not use it. Germany has stopped using it after a recent court order," she said.
Accusing the BJP government in Haryana of hatching a "conspiracy" to weaken their agitation, the Jat community on Friday said they will continue with their protests across the state and will also lay siege to the national capital on March 20.

Talks between top Jat leaders and Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, which were scheduled to be held in New Delhi on Friday, could not be held.

Jat leaders accused Khattar and his government of going back on assurances made to the Jat community on Thursday and earlier.

However, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar told media in Chandigarh said that the Jat leaders had backed out of talks which were to be held on Friday.

"It has come to my notice that they want to hold a joint press conference along with me. I have not received any information from the committee of ministers that I had to address such a press conference in Delhi," Khattar claimed, adding that he left for Chandigarh due to prior engagements.

"I am always prepared if the Jat leaders want to have a dialogue with me. Although my schedule for tomorrow is already fixed, but I will be available for meeting with Yashpal Mailk and other Jat leaders on Saturday in Chandigarh or Sonipat or Delhi. My sole purpose is to restore and maintain peaceful atmosphere in the state. The government is keen to move forward with all sections of the society," Khattar maintained.

Jat leader Yashpal Malik told the media in Rohtak town, 70 km from Delhi, that the BJP government had hatched a conspiracy to weaken the Jat agitation by misleading the Jats.

He said Khattar left Delhi on Friday for Chandigarh without meeting the Jat leaders.

The meeting had been announced by the seniormost minister in the Haryana government, Ram Bilas Sharma, in Panipat on Thursday.

"The state government hatched a conspiracy against us and misled the people in order to weaken the agitation. The cancellation of the meeting with the Chief Minister has left us with no alternative but to continue the agitation," Malik said.

The Jat agitation, which began on January 29, completed 48 days on Friday.

The Haryana government on Thursday held talks with Jat leaders in Panipat and claimed that the discussions were "positive".

Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, who led the Haryana government panel in the talks, said a final breakthrough was likely to be achieved by Friday.

The Jat leaders were earlier in talks with a five-member panel of senior government officers but the talks had remained inconclusive.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) had earlier announced that the community would intensify its agitation by taking their protest to Delhi on March 20.

The Jat leaders said that they would gherao entry points of Delhi from seven sides and protest at the Parliament complex.

The AIJASS, led by Jat leader Yashpal Malik, has been agitating to press for its demands in Haryana since January 29.

Talks between the state government and the Jat leaders hit a roadblock last month as the Haryana government made it clear that it has no jurisdiction to withdraw cases being investigated by the CBI against some Jat leaders over violence during the agitation last year.

Khattar accused the Jat leaders of changing goalposts.

Their demands include reservation for Jats, jobs to the next of kin of those killed in violence in the Jat agitation last year, compensation to those injured, withdrawal of cases against them and action against the officers, who ordered action against the Jats, among others.

Violence during the agitation last year had left 30 people dead and over 200 injured. Government and private property worth hundreds of crores of rupees was damaged during the violence in February 2016.

Khattar said in Chandigarh that the Jat leaders had backed out of the Friday talks.

"I am always prepared if the Jat leaders want to have a dialogue with me. Although my schedule for tomorrow is already fixed, I will be available for meeting Yashpal Mailk and other Jat leaders tomorrow in Chandigarh or Sonipat or Delhi.

"My sole purpose is to restore and maintain peaceful atmosphere in the state. The government is keen to move forward with all sections of the society," Khattar said.
BJP President Amit Shah on Friday said a massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh and Uttrakhand for the party is a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies and his popularity among the masses.

Participating in 'India Today Conclave 2017' here through video-conferencing, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said elections could not be won due to one or two reasons and multiple reasons helped the party win.

"For us, Modi-ji and his policies made it possible to win assembly elections with such a huge mandate," Shah said.

"There was a wave in BJP's favour in Uttar Pradesh and results proved that caste-based and dynastic politics has no place in India.

"The BJP's motto is inclusive growth of the country without any appeasement policy."

As for the BJP forming governments in Goa and Manipur despite not having the mandate, Shah said: "There were hung assemblies in the two states. Any party with majority can form a government in cases like these."

Commenting on Modi government's demonetisation, the BJP President said it was a "multi-dimensional step" and was not aimed at polls.

"It was just one step in a massive effort to curb black money and corruption," he added.

He said: "Reform is a small word; "it aims at transformation."

"We took some hard steps with regard to funding for political parties. Change will come gradually; we have started the process," Shah said.

Asked about BJP's alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Shah said: "Our alliance with the Shiv Sena is intact and will remain so."

"There's no issue with the Shiv Sena; there was a friendly match in Maharashtra civic polls with the Shiv Sena," he said.

He ridiculed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati for their charge that electronic voting machines were tampered with in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

"They should know the EVMs can't be tampered with. No one listens to Kejriwal in the country," he said.

Shah said he hoped the BJP will again form the government at the Centre in 2019, saying that every election is important for the BJP.
The Congress on Friday said Goa Governor Mridula Sinha has "admitted" that she consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during government formation in the state and demanded her dismissal by President Pranab Mukherjee.

In a statement here, senior Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa alleged that the Governor's actions were politically motivated and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had "manufactured its majority" in the coastal state.

"In an audacious revelation, the Governor has shockingly accepted that she consulted Union Minister Arun Jaitley to invite the BJP for government formation. This proves that the BJP manufactured the Goa majority while the Governor acted in cahoots with the central leadership in Delhi," he said.

Bajwa said the Supreme Court had time and again reiterated that it was the Governor's duty to "act judiciously" while exercising their power at the time of appointing the Chief Minister.

The Congress leader said that in her interviews, Sinha had said she "heard they (Congress) could not elect their legislature party leader, nor get enough support".

"We want to ask the Governor, where did she hear it from? Did she hear it from anybody in the Congress? How can she take such a decision without consulting the President of India?" he said.

He alleged that the Governor indulged in "massive constitutional impropriety" and "unpardonable dereliction of duty" by speaking to Jaitley.

Bajwa also demanded Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi take action against Jaitley.

"We urge the President of India to exercise his powers and immediately dismiss the Governor of Goa for abdicating her constitutional responsibilities and oath of secrecy," he said.
Police on Friday patrolled the Yamuna river bank here and mounted extra vigil after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love.

An official said the information was passed on to the police and the intelligence agencies on Thursday after which several teams combed the area and stepped up vigil.



Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials, however, tried to play down the threat, saying the security arrangements were routine.



Local newspapers have published a photo from the website showing a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon.



The world heritage monument is visited by over six million tourists annually.



Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh said police teams were on alert and a close watch was being kept on crowds.





The internal security in the Taj Mahal is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force. The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts.



SWOT commandos have been put in charge at vantage points. Mock drills are being conducted every few hours to test the state of preparedness.



Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams are keeping a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking towards the eastern gate, the sources said.



Superintendent of Police Sushil Dhule and a team of the bomb disposal and dog squads on Thursday evening visited the entire area around the Taj Mahal.



The number of visitors to the Taj Mahal is on the rise. The annual Taj Mahotsava is set to begin on Saturday.
The swearing in of a new BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will most likely take place on Sunday, party sources said on Friday.

The oath taking ceremony of the new Chief Minister and the cabinet was likely to be a grand affair with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah ' title=' BJP President Amit Shah '>BJP President Amit Shah attending the event.



An estimated one lakh people are also expected to attend the ceremony at the Kashiram Smriti Upvan in the evening.



Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states are also likely to attend.



While no official announcement has been made so far about the next Chief Minister, the sources say the name of union minister Manoj Sinha has "more or less been finalized" by Amit Shah.





A formal announcement will be made on Saturday.



Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar and Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad presided over a high-level meeting on Friday to take stock of the preparedness for the mega event.



The Bharatiya Janata Party is returning to power in the country's most populous state after a gap of almost 15 years. It won 325 seats along with its allies in the 403-member House.
Japan successfully launched a satellite on Friday, to track land and maritime movements in North Korea and conduct surveys on the weapons program of the rogue state,media report said.

The H-2A rocket was launched at 10.20 a.m. local time from the Tanegashima base in the southeast of Japan, media reported.



The mission is a cooperation between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and aerospace manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which has been involved in the field since it was privatised in 2007.



The launch, initially scheduled for March 15, was delayed due to poor weather conditions at the base.



These types of satellites are designed to capture images from several hundred kilometres above the earth and are used to monitor the areas where North Korea conducts its ballistic missile tests.

The North Korean regime led by Kim Jong-un carried out a series of missile tests and two nuclear explosions in 2016.



The hermit-state leader also tested four more ballistic missiles, one of which fell only 200 km off the Japanese coast, earlier in March.



Japan currently has six satellites in orbit which take pictures during the day, while its radars are responsible for surveillance at night or for observing in bad weather conditions.



The US intelligence and the Defence Department anticipates that North Korea may soon undertake a new round of testing of its missile and nuclear program, media reported.
At least 10 persons, including tourists and members of a BBC film crew, were injured in a "huge" explosion at erupting volcano Mount Etna in the Italian island of Sicily.

"Lava flow mixed with steam -- caused huge explosion -- group pelted with boiling rocks and steam," tweeted BBC science reporter Rachel Morelle on Thursday.

"Many injured -- some head injuries, burns, cuts and bruises. Volcanologist said most dangerous incident experience in his 30 year career," read another tweet from Morelle.

Morelle said all those involved in the eruption were "okay" and had been brought of the mountain safely by an "excellent rescue team".

She said a guide had suffered a dislocated shoulder, while a 78-year-old woman had been very close to the blast, but managed to get away safely. Six people were taken to hospital in Catania and Acireale but doctors said their condition was not serious.

Morelle said a big ash cloud was visible above Etna and the plume from the explosion was visible a long way off. Bright orange lava from the volcano could reportedly be seen in the city of Catania and the resort town of Taormina.

The lava had mixed with some snow, causing a small explosion and then a larger one. Members of the group ran down the mountain, trying to reach the safety of a snow mobile, Morelle tweeted.

The Catania operation centre of Italy's volcanology institute confirmed that three of its experts had been on Mount Etna and some had suffered injuries in the explosion.

One of the world's most active volcanoes, Mount Etna spewed lava up into the sky in the early hours of Thursday for the third time this year after it began erupting in late February.

At 3,330 metres, it is the highest volcano in Europe.
Two police personnal and six suspected militants from across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were killed after an assault on a checkpost in Khyber Agency on Friday.

Pakistani troops "effectively responded", resulting in the death of the militants, media quoted the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) as saying.



Earlier this month, five Pakistan Army personnel were killed also in a cross-border "terrorist attack" on three border posts along the Afghanistan border area.


Pakistan has accused India of imperilling South Asias peace and security and urged New Delhi to recognise the importance of bilateral dialogue between the two countries, media reported on Friday.

"Pakistan has shown a number of gestures which were not reciprocated by India. We hope that India will soon realise that dialogue is a key to peace and stability in the region, as well as peace between our two countries," Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria said to media on Thursday.



He was responding to a question about the prospects of resumption of bilateral dialogue after ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) latest electoral victories, media reported.



It was earlier speculated by Pakistani officials that New Delhi, after the latest round of state elections, might move to lessen tensions with Islamabad and resume dialogue.



Zakaria hit out at the BJP government for using the "Pakistan card" in their domestic politics, saying it was "unfortunate and regrettable".

The spokesman said Pakistan wanted resolution of all outstanding issues with India, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute through a "sustainable and result-oriented dialogue" which does not "disrupt or breakdown on flimsy grounds".



"India has to learn to live in peace with all its neighbours, including Pakistan. It is only through peace and dialogue," he added.



In reply to a question about Indian tests of extended range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, he said it underscored the importance of a bilateral engagement for introducing more confidence-building measure, avoidance of arms race and promotion of strategic stability in the region, media added.
Britain's intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has denied the White House claims that it helped former President Barack Obama "wiretap" Donald Trump ' title=' Donald Trump '>Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

GCHQ said in a statement that the claims repeated by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday were "utterly ridiculous" and ought to be ignored.

The claims of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former US judge Andrew Napolitano earlier this week and were later repeated by Spicer at a press briefing on Thursday, reported the Guardian on Friday.



"Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer had said.





A GCHQ spokesperson said: "Recent allegations about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then President-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."



The denial came as the Senate Intelligence Committee announced it had found no evidence that Trump Tower had been under surveillance in 2016, contrary to Trump's previous claims that his predecessor Barack Obama had ordered wiretapping, reported BBC.



"Based on the information available to use, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," committee chair Richard Burr said in a statement on Thursday.



Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats Party, said Trump was "compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment".
More than 30 terrorists and nine security personnel have been killed in Pakistan since the army launched a major operation last month, the military said on Friday.

The military announced on February 22 the start of the countrywide operation codenamed "Radd-ul-Fasaad", ("Reject Discord"), after a series of terrorist attacks that killed over 100 people in the country.

According to the army's Inter-Service Public Relations, the security forces also foiled a number of terror attacks during the operation, which still continues across the country.

Nine security personnel have lost their lives in the operation.

In one of the major raids, five terrorist were killed on March 7 when they were planning to attack a judicial complex in Swabi, a district in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The intelligence-based operation targeted sleeping cells of the militants who were using their hideouts to facilitate the bombers for terror attacks.

Army spokesman Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor said in a statement earlier that the operation was aimed at "indiscriminately eliminating residual and latent threat of terrorism, consolidating gains of operations made thus far and further ensuring security of the borders."
DECATUR  Jose Luis Aboytes, a former pastor of a church on the city's east side, was charged Thursday in Macon County Circuit Court with seven felony counts for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting and abusing a girl younger than 13 during a period of seven months.

Aboytes, 58, who is being held in the Macon County Jail on $250,000 bond, is facing one count of predatory criminal sexual assault, punishable by six to 60 years in prison, two counts of criminal sexual assault and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

The victim told police she attended the Palabra Miel Hispanic Church, 3434 E. Wabash Ave., where Aboytes began to sexually abuse her in an office in the church about Sept. 16, 2015, said a request for an arrest warrant by Decatur Police detective Erik Ethell.

Aboytes was listed as a pastor/elder of the church in the court document.

The victim said the abuse began with Jose touching her leg and progressed to sexual intercourse, said the court document. The victim said that during choir practice Jose would call her into his office, where he would fondle and abuse her. She reported that the abusive conduct occurred during a period of several months.

The adolescent girl told police she took numerous cellphone photographs of her naked body and sent them to Jose's phone.

Detectives received more than 10 letters from the girl, in which Aboytes expressed his love for the victim, in addition to knowing her age, Ethell wrote in the court document. Aboytes frequently asked (the victim) to destroy the letters after reading them.

An intellectually disabled teen girl also reported to police that she had been abused by Aboytes, said the warrant request. She said that Aboytes would call her into his office, hug her and fondle her on top of her clothes. She told detectives that Jose told her not to tell her parents about the conduct.

In a July 2010 story in the Decatur Herald & Review, it was reported that Aboytes, who was originally from Mexico, was then serving as the assistant to the church's founder, the Rev. Alberto Diaz. The article reported that Aboytes was leading the congregation in song during a worship service.

A family that was cleaning the one-story church building Thursday afternoon confirmed that Aboytes was an assistant pastor at the church but is no longer on the church's staff. When Diaz was contacted by phone, he said he did not want to discuss Aboytes with the Herald & Review.

Aboytes is due in court March 24 for his arraignment and to present his attorney.
Addressing national opioid crisis is happening in Salina

Salina organizations are joining the effort to fight and educate people on the crisis that nation is facing with opioid addiction.
DECATUR  Meridian High School has a brand-new building and began the school year with a budget in the black.

Yet three-quarters of the way into the school year, the district has yet to receive a transportation payment from the state of Illinois, and that has put its budget $300,000 in the red.

How do you compensate for $300,000 you thought was going to be in the budget that isn't there? said Eric Hurelbrink, principal of Meridian. As father to two children in the district, he said, he has to consider that the decisions he makes affect not only his own kids, but all the other students as well.

At a town hall meeting at Stephen Decatur Middle School on Thursday, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, talked about the inequities in school funding in Illinois, and how the situation is getting worse.

Over the past five fiscal years, we have increased spending on K-12 grants by $1.3 billion, and every year the metric of inequity has gotten worse, he said.

State Rep. Sue Scherer, a retired teacher who has worked closely with Manar on school funding reform measures, said that a wealthy district north of Interstate 80 is considering adding lanes to the school swimming pool while a downstate school in a poor district hasn't had new textbooks for 15 years.

We've been fighting about this since 1978, when I started teaching, Scherer said.

Manar said school funding inequity is built into the law, and the only solution is to dispense with the use of property taxes. The same law has been in use since 1997, he added, and times have changed significantly since then.

A bill is pending in the the legislature that isn't the radical bill he and Scherer had proposed in the past, but a compromise that will eventually fix the problem.

Raphaella Prange, who works at Millikin University, said she attended the town hall meeting because she sees the effects of inequitable funding on college students. The ones who have come from wealthy districts have a distinct advantage over the ones who don't.

I've been watching Andy fight this for years, said Fred Spannaus, a Decatur school board member. There's no more important fight than school funding.

Teacher Hannah Lyberger, mathematics department chair at Eisenhower High School, said that as a teacher, she's surrogate mom to 160 students as well as being a mom to her own kids, and she sees the difficulty of working with limited resources every day.

I'm the one who has to look into your child's face and say 'no,' she said. I get as creative as I can, but sometimes, it's not enough.

City Councilman Patrick McDaniel said that one problem with bringing change was evident at the meeting, which was attended by about 30 people. Where are the parents? he said. He had hoped for a larger turnout.

Prange said a group is working together to fix that problem by training parents in civics and engagement with government bodies. An organizational meeting is planned for 6 p.m. Sunday, April 2 at the Decatur Area Arts Council. The hope is that with training, parents will become more willing to be involved and let their voices be heard, she said.
The Trump administrations skinny budget found some money for nuclear waste.

And that may reflect a sense of momentum on Capitol Hill to find some sort of way to deal with the massive amounts of nuclear waste at plants such as the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), even though moving the spent fuel would take years.

The new administration unveiled its first budget blueprint on Thursday and proposed spending $120 million for starters to initiate a robust interim storage program while also looking at reviving the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

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These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the federal governments obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security and reduce future taxpayer burden, a note said in the section reserved for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The White Houses 53-page plan called for boosts in defense spending but cuts in domestic programs and federal agencies. Even DOEs budget came in for a 5.6 percent reduction.

Like every other economic plan put forth by any presidential administration, the Trump administrations proposals are just that  proposals that are ultimately subordinate to what Congress hammers out on the budgetary front.

But David Victor, the chairman of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel, said the appropriation for nuclear waste may be one of the only topics in the current political environment that can generate support from members of both parties.

There are 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste sitting along the coastline at SONGS and 76,000 metric tons of spent fuel at sites across the country.

Theres a lot of Trumps proposed budget that horrifies me, in particular around cutting funding for science and energy, but (long-term nuclear storage) is an area where I think the nation is now starting to make some progress, Victor said.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who has introduced a bill called the Interim Consolidated Storage Act, said he thinks the chances for funding the White House nuclear waste proposal are extremely good.

You have an active group of members, some of whom are Democratic members, who have a vested interest in moving legislation forward, Issa said. And the idea that it would be forced out, the fingerprints of whoever wanted to force it out would show all over.

A $120 million appropriation is a tiny amount of money in relation to the federal budget, but supporters of consolidated interim storage said it would represent a show of resolve on the part of the federal government.

As a budget line item its not a bad number at all, Issa said in a telephone interview from Washington D.C. Its sufficient to do the feasibility of these sites.

Consolidated interim storage sites are designed to be built in isolated locations where multiple nuclear facilities could deposit their waste.

Two potential interim storage locations have been discussed  one in West Texas and another in eastern New Mexico.

A company in Andrews, Texas has filed an application to accept 5,000 metric tons of nuclear material and is represented by Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, who has co-sponsored Issas bill.

Getting the massive nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles from Las Vegas, back on track will assuredly lead to a battle on Capitol Hill.

Both Democrats and Republicans from Nevada blasted the Trump proposal within moments of its release.

Washington needs to understand what Nevada has been saying for years: We will not be the nations nuclear waste dump, said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev.

The federal government spent about $15 billion to build the facility at Yucca to house nuclear waste from sites across the country but then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., led the fight to shut the repository down and in 2010 Barack Obama suspended licensing for the site.

Yucca Mountain was scheduled to open in 2017.

While taking a tour of SONGS last month with Issa, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., and chairman of the House subcommittee that reviews nuclear sites, was asked if Yucca Mountain was coming back onto the bargaining table.

Its never been off the table, Shimkus said.

Issas bill would be paid for by using part of the federal governments Nuclear Waste Fund, which is worth upward of $40 billion and was funded by ratepayers in areas powered by nuclear plants.

A 2014 court order stopped the feds from taking fees from electricity customers because, with Yucca Mountain sidelined, the government had no place to send nuclear waste.

Were paying a lot of money for the privilege of not having a solution that we were obligated to have, Issa said. Its not free. Its going to cost every taxpayer money until theres a working solution.

But even if Congress adopts a plan roughly similar to the White House proposal, there are a series of practical and regulatory hurdles to clear.

For example, sites like SONGS still need to place some of their spent fuel into canisters. Then federal law needs to be changed to install a reliable funding mechanism for interim sites and a strategy needs to be adopted in order to move the waste from one place to another.

There is still a long way to go, Victor said. We could have troubles on any of those fronts, but I think whats encouraging is that on every single one of those fronts, were starting to see progress.

More than 8 million people live within a 50-mile area of SONGS, which has not produced electricity since January 2012, after a steam generator leaked a small amount of radiation.

Southern California Edison (SCE) is the majority owner of the plant, which is in the process of being decommissioned. San Diego Gas & Electric owns 20 percent.

Edison officials said they were heartened by the news of $120 million proposal.

We are pleased to see funding proposed to restart the Yucca licensing process, and continue to also support interim storage proposals that would enable SCE to move San Onofres used fuel to an off-site location, said spokesperson Maureen Brown.

This story was updated to include a comment from Southern California Edison.

Business

rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski

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Attention college graduates: The easiest places to get a professional job and save money are Phoenix, Seattle and Charlotte.

The determination was part of a joint study from housing website Zillow and professional networking website LinkedIn that looked at employment data, salaries and other factors from 2016 to see where job candidates have the best chance of pocketing cash at the end of the month and getting hired in three major categories.

So, how did San Diego do?

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Americas Finest City ranked near the bottom in two categories and almost the middle in one. It could be worse  Los Angeles was dead last in all categories.

Heres how San Diego measures up by job category:

Finance (22 out of 30 cities): San Diegans in this profession had $2,810 in disposable income a month after paying rent in 2016. In the first place spot, Charlotte, workers pocketed $3,685 a month. There were also more jobs available in the North Carolina city, about .45 for every 1,000 people. It was .39 in San Diego. The worst region was Los Angeles, where workers saved the least of any city studied  $2,292 a month  and had about .23 job openings per 1,000.

Health care (27 out of 30 cities): San Diego scored worst in this category because workers only kept 34.5 percent of their earnings after paying taxes and rent, about $2,735 a month. The best place was Phoenix, where workers kept $3,793 a month and there were 2.9 job openings per 1,000 adults. The worst was Los Angeles where workers keep $2,962 a month, which was more than San Diego but had less job movement.

Technology (17 out of 30 cities): San Diego did the best in this category, but only because of hiring. Workers can expect to retain $2,772 (second-lowest of all cities) a month. In Seattle, which also has high home prices, workers hold on to $5,493 a month. San Diego had 1.5 job openings per 1,000 adults, higher than more than half of the cities studied.

Aaron Terrazas, senior economist at Zillow, said the organizations decided to look at the data to give job seekers a leg up on their decision to move.

We had in our mind someone working in one of these industries and deciding between a bunch of different places, he said. Probably someone that is highly mobile and just starting out.

Terrazas said a job seeker considering San Diego may have a tough decision to make.

The reality is the cost of living, for housing and taxes, certainly weighs on the take-home pay youre going to have, he said. A lot of people want to live in San Diego and its a beautiful place. But, it is expensive.

The overall subjective beauty of a location did not always correlate in the study. For instance, technology workers in Miami got to keep 46.9 percent of their monthly income after rent and taxes compared to 34.6 percent in San Diego.

Just looking at take home pay, San Diego ranked the second-worst in technology out of the 30 cities, and fourth-worst in finance and health care.

However, job openings are the citys saving grace. San Diego had the eighth-most job openings in technology per 1,000 adults and ninth-most in finance (tied with Phoenix and Dallas). Health care was near the bottom, with only Cleveland and New York City having less per capita job openings.

The study also looked at share of workers that changed their jobs in 2016. The theory is job changes show how strong an industry is and how confident workers are staying in the area.

By that metric, San Diego did pretty well. About 7 percent of health care workers in San Diego changed jobs in 2016 (seventh-highest out of the 30 cities), along with 11.3 percent of technology workers (tied for ninth place) and 9.8 percent of finance workers (tied for 14th place).

Housing costs are typically the reason why most studies of San Diego give the city poor marks. A larger report last year from Bankrate of 21 cities found San Diego was the seventh-worst place for growing wealth. Although the city ranked high on access to education and workers that have access to a retirement plan, it fell behind other cities because of a lack of savable income as a result of home prices.

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phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar

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At American Lithium Energys Carlsbad headquarters, President and co-founder Jiang Fan opens a padlocked door to the companys battery testing chamber.

Here, squat machines puncture batteries with nails, crush them with a weight and pump so much voltage into them during recharging that they swell like miniature balloons.

This abuse could spark explosions or fires in typical lithium-ion batteries. Yet American Lithiums cells dont blow up or ignite. Theyre misshapen but harmless.

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The small company, which mostly supplies batteries to the U.S. military, believes it has come up with technology to improve safety in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries  the power source for a growing number of electronic gadgets ranging from cellphones to laptops to electric cars to home energy storage..

The technology, branded Safe Core, is complicated, and Fan isnt revealing many details. But Safe Core stems from a U.S. Department of Energy project to deliver high-energy electric vehicle batteries that wont catch fire in a crash, and it has been applied to wearable bullet safe batteries for soldiers.

What we did was put a fuse inside the cell, so when something is wrong inside, our fuse will kick in and break the current and then the battery will be safe, said Fan, who has doctorate in solid state chemistry from Arizona State University.

Though rare, reports of lithium-ion batteries bursting into flames have made headlines over the years  most recently with Samsungs Galaxy Note 7. The South Korean electronics giant spent $5.3 billion recalling the flagship smartphone, which became infamous at airports as passengers heard announcements for months that the Note 7 wouldnt be allowed on-board.

American Lithium, which has delivered more than 20,000 batteries to Department of Defense customers since 2011, recently spun out a new company called Amionx to commercialize Safe Core technology. It has two patents issued and four pending. It hopes to license the technology for use in lithium-ion batteries globally.

The company isnt alone in trying to make lithium-ion batteries safer. Several start-ups and research labs are working on new techniques  including using solid materials that are less volatile than those used in todays lithium-ion batteries.

But that transition to next-generation batteries likely is still likely several years away. American Lithium contends its technology can be rolled out in existing battery production lines in as little as six months without a significant increase in capital equipment costs or bill of materials expense..

Fan said the company has included the technology in its own battery manufacturing operation for its military customers.

People who dont know about this, at first they will probably be skeptical, said Fan But when they look at our facility, we have the same facility they have. It is not a lab project. It is at real scale, and it has been validated by the U.S. military.

American Lithium may be onto something, said Brian Morin, president of Dreamweaver International, a provider of advanced technology for batteries.

Not having dug into their technology but having read the patent, the concept works, said Morin, a board member of the National Alliance for Advanced Technology Batteries, a trade group focused on electro-chemical energy storage technology. Whether the implementation works or not I dont know. But the concept works.

Morin added that American Lithium is taking a novel path toward improving battery safety. There are not 10 other guys trying to do the same thing, he said. So if they have made it work, they have something that is a unique approach.

First brought to market by Sony in 1991, lithium- ion batteries have significant advantages over nickel cadmium in terms of energy density, rapid recharging and cost, according to Tirias Research.

Their chemistry and cell structure, however, present a potential risk of fire, estimated at anywhere from one in a million to one in 50 million.

To mitigate the risk, sophisticated battery management software is used to prevent overcharging and detect problems. Fire retardant chemicals and hardened shells are sometimes included with battery packs to boost safety  though they can hurt performance.

These steps havent always worked. In 2013, Boeing was forced to ground all 787 Dreamliners for a few months following a battery fire. In 2006, millions of notebook PCs with Sony lithium-ion batteries were recalled after reported fires.

More recently, a recharging hoverboard has been linked to a house fire in Pennsylvania that killed a 3-year-old girl. A passenger on a flight from Beijing to Australia reported her headphones suddenly began sparking flames before being extinguished by the flight crew.

Many of these failures have been blamed on manufacturing defects.

The higher quality cells are always better, said James Kaschmitter, a co-founder PolyStor and now head of research firm SpectraPower. The reason vape cigarettes and hoverboards go off is they are cheaply made cells.

The market is growing, driven in part by electric vehicles and the surge in number of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Allied Market Research forecasts that the lithium-ion battery market will grow from $30 billion in 2015 to more than $77 billion by 2024. Telsa is currently building a battery factory, called the Gigafactory, in Nevada that it estimates will eventually produce enough batteries to power 500,000 Tesla cars.

There also is increasing pressure to get more power out of batteries for mobile video and other energy-hungry applications.

As people try to put more energy into the cell, they end up making compromises, said Morin. Each one is just a little compromise in terms of safety, but it makes the whole system less robust. So the level of manufacturing defects (the battery) can withstand is lower.

You can write it off to manufacturing defects and try to avoid them, but what a lot of people are trying to do is build a more robust system that wont be as sensitive to manufacturing defects.

Techniques to boost safety include external cooling shields and other safety systems deployed outside the battery itself. They can confine a failing cell and prevent extreme heat from spreading to other cells in a battery pack.

Start-up KULR Technologies has worked with NASA to develop a lightweight, carbon fiber-based heat sink for battery packs. The company has a research and manufacturing center in San Diego. Its technology could be used in electric vehicles, aircraft and industrial energy storage, according to Michael Mo, KULRs chief executive.

NASA has been our primary development partner, said Mo. They have very strict space constraints and weight constraints. That is the market we are initially targeting, where customers really value weight and space.

American Lithiums technology works inside the battery cell itself, killing it when temperature, voltage or current thresholds are exceeded.

We are trying to make the battery safer from the inside rather than relying on all the outer mechanisms, said Jenna King, chief executive of Amionx.

Founded in 2006 by Fan and Robert Spotnitz, American Lithium worked on a project to develop a thin, wearable bullet-safe battery that slips into a soldierss vest to power communications gear.

In a video from a military test lab, American Lithiums wearable battery is shot three times with a high powered military rifle. It doesnt explode or heat up beyond the militarys design threshold.

The company, which has less than 50 workers, believes Safe Core potentially can boost the shelf life of batteries by limiting corrosion. It works not only with lithium ion but other battery chemistries, including emerging solid state configurations.

Retired Qualcomm President Steve Altman, who helped create the mobile giants technology licensing arm, is an investor and Chairman of Amionxs board of directors. The company declined to say how much it has raised to spin out Amionx.

While fire and explosions caused by lithium-ion batteries are relatively infrequent, the damage when they do occur can be costly and devastating, Altman said, including major recalls, damage to brand reputation, personal injuries and even fatalities. The market for Safe Core includes every product application that uses lithium-ion batteries.

Business

mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973
Researchers this week issued a sort of almanac of the ocean off Southern California in wide-ranging report on the the regions marine protected areas established in 2012.

San Diegos coast includes 11 of those marine protected areas, from Batiquitos Lagoon in North County to the Tijuana River Mouth.

The report  State of the Southern California South Coast  cataloged the species found in habitats from sandy beaches and intertidal zones to deep water canyon, tallying both the diversity of marine creatures and their abundance.

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Among the findings: sea stars may be slowly bouncing back from a catastrophic die-off several years ago, and marine life appears to be increasing in older protected areas around the Channel Islands.

Its really giving a deeper understanding of this wonderful asset that we all identify with as Californians, which is our ocean, said Tom Maloney, executive director of the California Ocean Science Trust. MPAs and monitoring of MPAs represent a globally important commitment to our ocean.

The report examined ocean areas in and around marine protected areas, and measured baseline levels for the types and numbers of sea creatures in those waters. Theyll check those in future years to see if the new protections are working to boost populations of fish and other species.

Researchers used various methods ranging from tagging and recapturing lobsters, to aerial surveys and scuba dives, to observe and count species.

In La Jolla Canyon, researchers conducted special elevator transects straight up the canyon walls, where they identified 37 fish species including 15 rockfish species. The more rugged the canyon walls, the more life there was. But the deepest portions of the canyon, below 650 feet, had the most diverse species.

Its too early to know how well the protected areas are working, but figures from the Channel Islands showed that older MPAs had increased density and biomass  the total mass of living organisms  compared to surrounding areas. In those areas, most of which were established in 2003, the biomass of targeted species increased by more than twice the rate that it did outside the MPA boundaries.

In another hopeful sign the report noted that sea stars, which perished from a wasting syndrome across the West Coast in 2013 and 2014, may be starting to recover. Scientists identified a virus as the likely culprit in the sea star die-off, but believe that exceptionally warm water that persisted until last year may have also contributed to the deaths.

Since then, researchers have found an abundance of baby sea stars in the waters where the species collapsed, said Pete Raimondi, a marine ecologist from UC Santa Cruz. Researchers will follow whether those juvenile sea stars make it to maturity, or succumb to the same disease that wiped out the previous generation.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
The town of Borrego Springs had known for weeks that a spectacular superbloom of wildflowers was ready to spread across the desert floor  yet when Flowergeddon hit in full glory about a week ago, nobody was fully prepared for the tidal wave of visitors that would follow.

Restaurants ran out of food. People relieved themselves in the desert because there werent enough bathrooms. Store employees quit on the spot, fed up with angry customers whose patience had been exhausted by gridlocked traffic and service delays.

Sheriffs Deputy Billy Painter, who has been based in Borrego Springs for 15 years, said hes never seen anything like it in the region. Not even close, he said.

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Now, with another record-setting weekend approaching, authorities and merchants are scrambling to accommodate the crowds. More sheriffs deputies and California Highway Patrol officers will be on hand, 40 portable toilets are being brought in and distributed around town, and restaurants are stocking their freezers with extra food.

Kathy Dice, the superintendent of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, estimated that roughly 20,000 people are descending on the area on Saturdays and Sundays and maybe half that on weekdays. She said attendance records are being set daily.

1 / 12 Flowers in bloom next to the Welcome to Borrego Springs sign at the west end of town along Palm Canyon Drive on Wednesday. Large crowds are expected this year for the super bloom. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 12 With a line out the door, Chris Rogowski, a director of interpretive sales for Anza Borrego Foundation, helps customers seeking flower information. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 12 A crowd lines up at the State Park Store to get flower information and maps. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 12 State Park peace officer Carina Hammang directs traffic at the corner of Hoberg Road and Palm Canyon Drive. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 12 Crowds looking for blooming flowers along Palm Canyon Drive near the visitor center. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 12 Parking along Hoberg Road at Palm Canyon Drive near the visitor center. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 12 Crowds at the corner of Hoberg Road and Palm Canyon Drive near the visitor center. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 12 A group of people enjoy a large bloom of flowers along Di Giorgio Road. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 12 Groups of people enjoy large blooms of flowers along Henderson Canyon Road. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 12 Cars and people along Henderson Canyon Road. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 12 Groups of people head to the fields along Henderson Canyon Road. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 12 An unusually large number of cars drive along Palm Canyon Drive. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Jeanne Fredericks , owner of Fredericks Ethnic and Ancient Arts in Borrego Springs, said the crowds have been great for business, but agreed that many stores and eateries have struggled to keep up.

Its sad because were running out of food and people are not that patient, she said. They dont realize were little. Theyre coming into town and wondering what kind of town runs out of food? Our restrooms are bombarded.

One look around the landscape and its easy to see why. Flowers are in full bloom all over the desert park and are easy to find.

Just driving into Borrego Springs down Montezuma Valley Road, brilliant colors can be seen around every bend. There are places in the northern part of town where vast fields of flowers are blooming  and where cars filled with tourists are lining the sides of usually desolate roads.

I grew up in San Diego, but this is my first time here, Linda Anderson of La Mesa said Wednesday as she stood in a huge flower field north of Henderson Canyon Road. I could not have imagined it. The desert is generally rugged and raw and rough, but this is so delicate and gentle. The contrast is just spectacular.

Anderson was among many who made the mid-week trip, hoping to avoid the worst of the traffic.

Roughly 15 miles to the west and up the hill from the valley floor in Ranchita, 32 cars passed the lone general store there between 8:16 and 8:21 a.m. Wednesday heading toward Borrego Springs along County Road S-22. Every car had at least two people inside and most had three or four. Most of the people were older, and all looked to be dressed for a day of flower hunting.

And they were running late.

An hour earlier, the large parking lot at the state parks visitor center had already filled and rangers had closed the road leading there.

And in front of the Anza-Borrego Foundations state park store, a crowd of 50 waited for the doors to open at 9 a.m. so they could get maps and directions. The crowds kept pouring in all morning

Weve never been here before, what should we do? asked Tracy Trousat of Hemet, a question repeated all day hundred of times to the overworked staff.

Still, that was nothing compared to last weekend.

Sheriffs Sgt. Brian Jenkins said traffic was backed up 20 miles getting into Borrego Springs on Saturday morning. Some said it took four hours to drive the 25 miles from downtown Borrego to Route 79 near Lake Henshaw Sunday afternoon.

The influx has been tough on the tiny town of Borrego Springs, which is home to only about 1,500 year-round residents. During the winter  when snowbirds arrive  the population can swell to 10,000 or more.

Painter, the sheriffs deputy, said property owners have complained about visitors dumping trash in their yards. Fruit has been stolen from citrus ranches and some people have used the groves to go to the bathroom.

The Sheriffs Department has budgeted for two more deputies and a sergeant to be in town for the next two weekends and the CHP has said it will send two additional units for badly needed traffic control.

The roads out here are not designed for this, Painter said.

Meanwhile, most Borrego business owners are feeling a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion.

Its been great for sales, said Ben Nourse, co-owner of Borrego Outfitters in The Mall. This has been unprecedented.

We would like to have the town show itself in the best light and, perhaps with this many folks, its a bit challenging for us to do that, he added. On the other hand, my basic feeling is you make hay when the sun shines. Were grateful to have a lot folks here.

The park, businesses, the Rotary Club and the chamber have gotten together and paid for 40 portable toilets to be brought in. They were to arrive by Friday. Many will be placed in downtown Borrego Springs, others will be placed at the parks visitor center and up on Henderson Canyon Road, one of the most popular viewing areas.

Most experts think the height of the bloom is right now  by the end of the month brown could largely return to the desert floor.

Visitors are being advised to come early and on a weekday, wear closed-toe shoes (cacti and snake), and to bring lots of water and a snack.

Linda Haddock, the executive director of the Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce, said the superbloom shouldnt be missed.

 This is something that hasnt occurred since the 1990s, she said.

How big a deal is it? Haddock met two groups of tourist earlier this week: one was from Hong Kong, the other from Japan.

They came to the United States to see the wildflowers, Haddock said.

jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones
Its a coincidence that the San Diego Womens Week conference arrives just two months after the nationwide Womens March, which became the largest public protest in American history. But for two of the events keynote speakers, these unexpectedly large public gatherings of women could become a positive force of change in a politically divided time.

Speakers Marlee Matlin, a 30-year activist for the deaf and hard of hearing, and Shiza Shahid, co-founder of The Malala Fund for womens education, say that 2017 could become a pivotal year for womens activism. Theyre both speaking at the Inspiration Conference on March 24, the finale of San Diego Womens Week events, which run March 20-24 at four North County locations. The event is organized by the North San Diego Business Chamber.

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Matlin, 51, lost her hearing as a toddler and won an Oscar in 1988 playing a young deaf woman in Children of a Lesser God. Ever since, shes actively campaigned for equality for the deaf and hard of hearing, including closed captioning for films and TV, more roles for deaf and disabled actors and accessible technology for all.

She was reluctantly pulled into last years presidential campaign when allegations surfaced that then-host Donald Trump had called her retarded during filming of the 2011 season of Celebrity Apprentice. She made it a teaching moment.

I wanted to use the opportunity to state publicly that there are 35 to 45 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and using that word is not only wrong but abhorrent. I went further to say that as an American, I have a voice and my voice is my vote, said Matlin, who was interviewed by phone with the help of her ASL interpreter Jack Jason.

Matlin, a mother of four who lives in L.A. with her police officer husband, said Trumps misogynist comments and behavior have galvanized American women in a way that hasnt been seen since the 1970s. The recent protest marches arent just a reaction to Trump but to the idea that womens rights  as well as those of minorities, immigrants and the LGBTQ community  could soon be rolled back.

If somehow we seem to be going back in time, that theres an appearance that rights are being reduced, then we as people who live in a democracy have a right to speak up, Matlin said. Im familiar with barriers, I grew up with them  Its time for us to speak up. We did it in the 60s and 70s and were quiet for 20 or so years and now its a cyclical time for us to speak up again.

Shahid, 27, left her job in 2014 to co-found The Malala Fund with Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize-winning Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban on her way to school. The international fund advocates for womens empowerment through education. Shahid recently left the Malala Fund to start her own company, Now Ventures, which will raise money for positive social and environmental startups.

She said women have more power than they realize to influence positive change, whether its through education, work, politics or protest.

More and more as demographics are shifting and diverse individuals and women are coming to the forefront, they are influencing outcomes in politics, business, investing and entrepreneurship, said Shahid, who splits her time between her office in San Francisco and the home she shares in L.A. with her new husband.

Theres a divide among women today but thats narrowing and bridging. More than ever, women are supporting one another and standing up for one another, Shahid said. This is a unique moment in time and theres a lot of work to be done to get the progress we wish to see.

San Diego Womens Week was founded in 2010 by Debra Rosen, president and CEO of the North San Diego Business Chamber. At the time, Rosen said there was some resistance to a womens-only conference, but as the events profile and popularity has risen, so has the growth of womens and diversity leadership groups at companies all over San Diego County.

More than 1,000 women are expected at Mondays free opening day program at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. From 300 to 400 women are registered for networking and health-themed events in Rancho Bernardo on March 22 and 23. And the daylong Inspiration Conference will draw 500 to the Harrahs Southern California resort in Valley Center.

This years Womens Week has a tolerance, diversity and inclusion theme. Rosen is a strong advocate of equal rights for women, but she said that the empowering message of the 2017 Womens March on Jan. 21 could have had a greater impact if the message was delivered with more focus and less anger.

Women want to be seen differently, Rosen said. You want to be a leader, but you can do it in a manner that youre respected. Theres a way to present who you are, what you want and and what you can offer in a less angry way and I think people will hear you.

It comes down to how you present yourself and your advocacy, she said. They can be passionate and polished at the same time.

SAN DIEGO WOMENS WEEK

Four days of events at four locations in North County. Organized by the North San Diego Business Chamber.

Monday, March 20: Opening Day

Features: Breakout sessions, makeovers, headshots, vendor village, resume reviews. Noon to 7 p.m. Wyland Center, Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. Free admission.

Wednesday, March 22: Dare to Dream

Features: Inspirational speakers, networking, wine, beer and food tastings. 5:30-8:30 p.m. Sony Electronics, 16535 Via Esprillo, Rancho Bernardo. $69 (ages 21 and up only).

Thursday, March 23: Finding Your Life Balance

Features: Health and fitness speakers, stress reduction and meditation sessions, health screenings. 6-8 p.m. Sharp Rees-Stealy Rancho Bernardo, 16899 W. Bernardo Road, Rancho Bernardo. $35.

Friday, March 24: Inspiration Conference

Features: Full day of lectures and panel discussions. 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Harrahs Southern California Resort, 777 Harrahs Rincon Way, Valley Center. $179

Registration and details: sdwomensweek.com

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
The Marine Corps investigation of cyber bullying by a Facebook forum of veterans and active-duty troops has widened into a probe that now involves cooperation from all military branches, FBI agents and state prosecutors, officials said Friday.

Headquartered in Quantico, Virginia, the Military Criminal Organization Task Force includes detectives from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Theyre looking into allegations that current and former members of the armed forces swapped risque images of women and denigrated those victims using sexually violent language on multiple websites that continue to proliferate, Naval Criminal Investigative Services Supervisory Agent Curtis Evans said during a Pentagon news conference Friday afternoon.

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This is the No. 1 priority for our agency right now, he said. So were throwing every resource we have at it. As soon as an allegation comes in, were aggressively attacking it. Were collecting evidence as fast as we can. As you can imagine, in cyberspace the evidence is there one minute and then its gone. Its a 24/7 thing for us.

Investigators have served subpoenas on Facebook, Google and internet service providers. Until those electronic records arrive, they are combing through screen shots preserved by tipsters before Facebook shuttered the Marines United page, a private group that at its peak boasted 30,000 members.

Theyve identified more than 1,200 screen names on the Marines United site. Sifting through them, they believe that about 725 of them belong to active-duty Marines, 150 to Marines reservists, 15 to active-duty sailors and 310 to members who are now civilians.

That does not mean that all these individuals are involved in criminal activity, Evans said.

Although Navy and Marine officials who briefed Congress this week suggested that about 500 active-duty and prior service members might have shared the targeted photos  triggering probes concerning a wide range of federal and state laws barring hacking, revenge porn and other felonies  Evans said his team was working a far smaller number of active cases based on hundreds of tips.

The team has located about 20 female victims of the photo sharing, but Evans told The San Diego Union-Tribune that investigators cant always identify the people in every image. He urged anyone with information about the the sharing of salacious pictures on these online forums to contact the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at www.ncis.navy.mil. Tipsters can give their names or remain anonymous.

Were taking the proper investigative steps to collect the evidence we need to pursue a criminal charge, Evans said. We use our cyber tools.

Evans pointed to the role played by the NCIS Cyber Department, which is able to get a lot of information for us to be able to prove where the photos originated from and proactively, potentially find victims from other sites.

The task force is sharing evidence that falls short of the threshold for criminal charges under military law to commanders so they can treat boorish behavior by active-duty and reserve troops with administrative measures, which could range from formal reprimand letters to a reduction in rank.

When suspects cant be charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice because theyre civilians, the investigative team hands off the evidence to non-military law-enforcement agencies, plus state and federal prosecutors.

There are approximately 32 states weve seen so far that have laws on the books that address  revenge porn and other types of stuff, Evans said.

Flanking Evans at the news conference was Brig. Gen. James Glynn, director of the Office of Marine Corps Communications. He leads a Current Operations Cell thats designed to immediately combat online misconduct and get help for potential victims by leapfrogging the traditional bureaucratic red tape that snarls the military services.

It currently has 30 members and is adding more staff, Glynn said. He pledged that the expanded Current Operations Cell would reflect the diversity of the Marine Corps itself, with about 40 percent of the group already comprised of women ranked from sergeant to lieutenant colonel.

Another group  the Future Operations Cell  is studying the cultural underpinnings that led to the cyber bullying on Marines United and other websites, with the goal of proposing reforms.

Were planning focus groups in the not too distant future across the force to better understand the root of the issue, Glynn said. How do folks out there that arent here in the national capital region understand and appreciate this issue, how does it affect them directly  both the behavior and the resources available to address it.

During a Senate hearing earlier this week, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers criticized the Marine commandant and other military leaders for what was seen as a years-long failure to take seriously sexual harassment, gender discrimination, cyber bullying and other misconduct in the services.

The military brass urged victims of Marines United and similar web forums to have trust in the current investigation and related attempts to root out these types of misbehavior.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
Ten minutes before Cathy Kennedy was killed by stray gang gunfire, Escondido Councilwoman Olga Diaz drove the same busy route on her way to pick up her daughter from dance class.

Fate granted safe passage to Diaz on East Grand Avenue, but a few minutes later it placed Kennedy in the path of a stray bullet.

The vigil held Tuesday night wrung the emotion from this tragic misalignment of the stars. Funeral services Friday will do the same.

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Nothing left to say about how sad it is. A great pity, a lastima.

There are, however, things that should not have been thought or said as the police closed in on the suspects believed to be responsible for Kennedys death.

Heres one livid example of how not to think or speak when gang violence breaks out.

This is what President Trump is trying to kick out of our country, a reader wrote recently to Union-Tribune reporters.

I dont understand why anyone would object to deporting thugs like this. Wise up, California!

Theres a major thing wrong with this outburst.

The automatic assumption that a Latino gang member must, almost by definition, be illegal.

Wrong.

In poor communities of a wide range of ethnicities, gangs have been a way of life for, well, ever.

As Escondido police Chief Craig Carter affirmed Thursday afternoon, the two murder suspects under arrest are legal residents.

Take that whipping boy off the table. No Trump tweets in store.

Its no mystery why four council members, the city manager, and the head of the Chamber of Commerce showed up to the news conference announcing arrests of the alleged shooter and a juvenile accomplice. Collectively, they must have felt that their city dodged a hail of bullets.

Escondido, arguably more than any of the regions 18 cities or the unincorporated areas, has been the most plagued with ethnic tension.

Back in 2006-07, youll recall, Escondido was a poster city.

Diaz, the first Latina to win a council seat in the citys history, entered politics to push back against policies widely viewed as hostile to Latino residents.

Since then, Escondido has taken steps forward and back, blowing warm and cold, reaching out with open arms while forming an unusually close relationship with ICE as a law-enforcement partner to weed out undocumented criminals.

Its a human tightrope that can seem unsteady.

Fortunately for the Hidden Valley, this genre of tragedy is American-made as so most are.

In 2009, LaKiesha Mason was celebrating her 21st birthday in the Gaslamp Quarter when a fight broke out between rival gangs. Shots rang out and a bullet hit Mason in the head, killing her.

Eyewitnesses helped convict the killers on murder charges. Their race or ethnicity wasnt the point. Justice was. The killers were All-American thugs who, out of stupid pride, as a judge said, shot at rivals with spray cans and snuffed out an innocent life and lost their freedom for the rest of their lives.

To those (and you know who you are) who wanted to turn Kennedys death into a symbol supporting draconian deportation, the status of the shooter(s) mattered profoundly.

Sorry, youre going to have wait for your next next outlier, your next cause celebre.

On the probability scale, it was always most likely that the killer(s) was a repeat American offender who moved in and out of the justice system and was out on probation, a ticking time bomb fused in prison. When more information is released about the suspects, well find out if that familiar broken record is true this time.

In Whittier, for example, police officials are blaming Assembly Bill 109 and Proposition 47, reform measures allowing early release from prison, for the deaths of one officer and the wounding of another at the hand of a violent ex-con.

The union representing LA police officers wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra that the murder is the latest tragic example of a convicted felon who recycled multiple times through our criminal justice system and, when not incarcerated, wreaks havoc on society.

There is, however, another angle, a heroic one, that should be acknowledged.

A colleague who lives in Escondido, and knew Kennedy as his dental hygienist for 20 years, mournfully wondered before the arrests if the shooting might be a good example of the new atmosphere Trumps anti-immigrant policies have created. We had a photo of the Escondido police going door to door, asking for witnesses and information.

Thats good police work, youd think, unless you put yourself, as my friend does, in the position of apprehensive people behind the doors.

Its potentially a moral dilemma for people there. It could come down to helping catch a killer or avoiding getting yourself deported. Or that could be how people perceive it now, even if thats not the case. Are the cops getting cooperation? Are things different now?

Chief Carter put that apprehension forcefully to rest Thursday. The Latino neighborhood where the shooting took place stepped up and helped police track down suspects. The desire for justice trumped fear of deportation for themselves or others close to them.

Though Carter freely acknowledges the harsh baggage his department lugs around, hes knocking himself out, he says, to communicate to Latino residents that the police, as opposed to ICE, are not in the business of deporting good people.

As I said, Escondido walks a human tightrope that, following a terrible twist of fate, held steady as steel.

The city that has been framed as lacking pity has, it seems to me, found its beating heart.

logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com
Even though the topic can be controversial, some doctors plan to start talking with their patients and communities about climate change.

A coalition of mainstream medical associations that together represent more than half of all American physicians announced this week that it will urge white-coat professionals to link health problems such as asthma, allergies and the spread of certain diseases with environmental shifts that most scientists believe are caused by global warming.

The American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology are among those that have joined the new Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health. In its first public remarks Wednesday, the group cited the northward expansion of tropical infections like Zika and warming temperatures causing heat-related illnesses as examples of climate changes impacts on health.

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The consortiums stance runs counter to the opinions of some critics who said todays science has not reached the level of precision and sophistication necessary to make such direct connections between climate change and health effects. Some also wonder whether discussing sensitive political issues with patients could erode trust between doctor and patient.

The consortium is asking physicians to volunteer to become champions in their communities by speaking out to their own patients and to local policymakers. Its website  medsocietiesforclimatehealth.org  includes handouts that assert how climate change affects asthma, allergies and heat-related medical problems.

We believe the risk is there and its growing. We really need to speak out, said Dr. Mona Sarfaty, the consortiums leader and director of the Program for Climate and Health at George Mason University in Virginia.

Dr. Jennifer Marks, who teaches medical students how to communicate with patients in her role as a professor with the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said the rule is generally to avoid controversial topics.

We see patients with all kinds of beliefs about many things that we may not necessarily share, but that should not alter how we take care of their health, Marks said. I want them to share whatevers on their mind and feel that they will not be judged.

On the other hand, she added, doctors are obligated to keep up with the latest research in their fields. They do need to understand what is driving patients symptoms so they can treat them effectively.

Asked whether she would mention climate change when advising a pregnant woman about how she could avoid mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus, Marks said that element would not necessarily top her list. Explaining to patients that many scientists link climate change to the expansion of mosquito territory seems a little far afield from providing specific medical advice, she said.

I think the conversation I would have with the patient would be focused on their individual needs and maybe not so much on the origins of the virus, unless they expressed an interest in that information, Marks said.

Some physicians are pushing for that broader discussion.

Dr. Bruce Bekkar of San Diego recently left a 24-year career as an obstetrician and gynecologist with Kaiser Permanente to advocate full time on climate change and health issues.

Given the same Zika virus scenario, he said he would be comfortable mentioning climate change in explaining to a pregnant patient why she needs to be more careful about mosquitoes today versus a few years ago.

I wouldnt go on and on about it and let it dominate the visit. But I think I would say something like, Science tells us unequivocally this is a new risk to you due to climate change, Bekkar said.

He also said as long as communication about climate change is backed up with valid research, hes comfortable with a little discomfort among his patients. Ive always felt that my job is not necessarily to protect their ego but to give them necessary information that could change their lives. That may mean that I piss them off or ruffle their feathers a little bit, and so be it, he said.

Its difficult to project just how much impact the new consortium will make. While total membership of the participating medical organizations exceeds 400,000 physicians, it is unknown how many doctors will actually participate in the climate-change campaign.

For years, the World Health Organization has described global warming as a significant threat to human health.

More recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled a Climate and Health Summit without explanation. Some observers have viewed that action as a sign that the new presidential administration in Washington, D.C., will take a different position on government participation in programs that try to address climate change. President Donald Trump and his assistants have not spoken publicly on this topic.

On Wednesday, the consortium said it intends to send the Trump administration a copy of its report on climate change and health. But it steered clear of taking a political stand.

We are a health group, not a political group, Sarfaty said.

The consortiums other members include the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, Immunology; American Academy of Pediatrics; American College of Preventive Medicine; American Geriatrics Society; American Podiatric Medical Association; Infectious Diseases Society of America; National Medical Association; and the Society of General Internal Medicine.

The American Medical Association, the nations largest society for doctors, is not part of the consortium. It did not respond to a request for comment.

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paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson
Mayor Kevin Faulconer says that San Diego will not participate in a federal program where local police perform the duties of immigration officers.

In a March 15 memo to the City Council, Faulconer reaffirmed the citys police department will not take part in a provision of the Immigration and National Security Act that allows the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law.

Such an agreement would essentially task local law enforcement officers with doing the job of the federal government and places an unfair financial burden on local taxpayers, Faulconers memo says.

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The mayor says city police officers do not stop people exclusively to determine their immigration status, and they do not ask the immigration status of people who are victims or witnesses of crimes. If a person is suspected of committing a crime, however, San Diegos police officers work with regional, state and federal authorities to hold them accountable regardless of their immigration status.

Our police department is committed to protecting everyone in our community and bringing criminals to justice, he said in the memo. The stronger the partnerships are between law enforcement and residents, the more successful we will be at keeping our neighborhoods safe.

Some local law enforcement officials in San Diego and elsewhere have expressed concern that if their officers become involved in front-line immigration enforcement it would detract from crime-fighting efforts because witnesses would be reluctant to come forward.

The memo reinforces the mayors continued non-endorsement of the new administrations immigration policies. His recent comments in reaction to tougher policies from President Donald Trump have reiterated the benefits of legal immigration and the importance of the cross-border relationship between San Diego and Tijuana to the regions economy, culture and social fabric.

The mayors office issued the memo in response to a request from City Councilmembers David Alvarez, Georgette Gomez and Chris Ward.

In releasing the memo on Twitter earlier this week, Alvarez said the three had asked the mayor/SDPD to not participate in ... Trumps deportation force.

Alvarez said the police departments current policy improves public safety by making people feel comfortable reporting a crime whether or not they are in the country legally.

Thats what we wanted and ensured, he said. We want people in San Diego to be confident that their police department responds to their needs and that they are safe.

San Diego has never declared itself a sanctuary city and Faulconer has flatly rejected the notion that it is one, even though it is on lists of such municipalities compiled by some conservative groups.

Sanctuary cities are loosely described as those that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration work. But the lack of a consistent definition has caused uncertainty. This was underscored in early February when Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly visited San Diegos border region. During a meeting with local officials, San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman asked him for a definition and Kelly responded, I have no clue.

Alvarez said that he believes there would take legal action if its decision to not be a part of the National Security Act program causes the Trump administration to classify San Diego as a sanctuary city.

If it attempts to do that we have the right as a city to be able to defend ourselves against what I would consider unconstitutional actions from the federal government. I think there would be a very strong case to be made, Alvarez said.

In a January 25 executive order, Trump said the Department of Homeland Security, the federal organization that primarily enforces immigration laws, will meet with state and local governments to make agreements to perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens in the United States under the direction and the supervision of the Secretary

The program requires local police officers to be U.S. citizens, complete a background check, have a year of experience in their current position, and have no pending disciplinary actions to participate. They must also complete an initial four-week training program and a refresher course every other year.

According to ICE, 37 law enforcement agencies participate, but only one, the Orange County Sheriffs Department, is from California. One large metropolitan police department, Las Vegas, is part of the program.

Under the agreement with Orange County, the sheriffs department will detain immigrants at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after completing a jail sentence, and transport them to a location of ICEs choosing.

In his memo, Faulconer said San Diego law enforcement cooperates with immigration authorities.

County jail officials notify ICE liaisons of the immigration status of individuals upon booking, he said.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841
San Diego police are searching for a suspect who slashed a man on the ear and finger during an argument near Balboa Park Thursday evening.

The 42-year-old victim told police the attack happened under the El Prado bridge near Balboa Drive about 6:45 p.m., San Diego police Officer Robery Heims said.

The man was taken to a hospital for his injuries.

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He described the suspect as a Latino woman about 5 feet 5 inches tall with black hair. She was wearing an orange T-shirt under a yellow T-shirt and green pants.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
SPRINGFIELD (AP)  Gov. Bruce Rauner has taken his confrontation with the state's largest public-employee union to the Supreme Court.

The Republican announced Friday that his office has asked the high court to uphold a labor board ruling in his favor. That ruling last fall allowed Rauner to impose his preferred contract conditions on 38,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.

But an appellate court put the brakes on Rauner two weeks ago. It prohibited Rauner's action until it could determine whether the labor board ruling is appropriate.

AFSCME has been without a contract since June 2015. Negotiations dating to early 2015 have been unsuccessful and Rauner's team quit negotiating a year ago.

Rauner says he's made "commonsense" offers. AFSCME disagrees and wants to keep bargaining.
A homeless man tried to lure a 11-year-old girl from an Encinitas preschool Friday morning and was soon arrested, a sheriffs official said.

The 34-year-old man had been in town only about three days, after arriving in San Diego by train from Milwaukee, sheriffs Sgt. Scott Bligh.

The girl was in the fenced front yard of Oasis Community School on La Mesa Avenue when a man tried to persuade her to come out of the gate, Bligh said.

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She became scared and ran back toward the building, Bligh said. He said older children participate in special programs at the school on Fridays.

A woman at the preschool saw the man walking away and the Sheriffs Department was notified about 10:40 a.m.

Bligh said the woman rode in a patrol car with a deputy who, with other deputies, spread out to look for the man. She spotted him at the light Beach volleyball courts not far from the preschool.

The man, who deputies identified as Nemo Piano Bailey, was arrested on suspicion of annoying a child. Bligh said he didnt think they had sufficient evidence to book him on attempted kidnapping.
An attempt to smuggle four Chinese nationals into the U.S. illegally was foiled on Tuesday when a roving drug dog alerted Customs and Border Protection to a suspicious car.

The car was attempting to cross into the country at the San Ysidro Port of Entry when the dog caught a scent from the 2014 Chrysler 200 about 5:45 p.m., a federal official said.

Officers examined the trunk and found the three males and one female crammed inside. They were later placed on an immigration hold, and are expected to be removed from the country.

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The driver, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, is expected to face federal charges in connection with the incident. His vehicle was seized.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
As many as 16 thieves smashed their way into Neiman Marcus department store in Fashion Valley before dawn Friday and stole designer purses.

They used five different vehicles with paper plates for getaway cars.

My best guess is, they knew exactly what they wanted and where they were, said police Capt. Paul Connelly.

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He said the city hasnt seen a department store burglary like this in a long time.

Nothing this brazen, with so many suspects.

One of the burglars smashed a glass door and the pack of thieves ran inside, grabbed the handbags, then filed back out through the door.

The break-in occurred about 3:20 a.m. at the high-end retailer in Fashion Valley mall on Friars Road.

It triggered an alarm, and mall security arrived before police officers, but still not in time to see any of the burglars or their cars, Connelly said. The vehicles were parked on the north side of the mall, off Friars Road.

Connelly said the purses retailed for $100,000 to $150,000. Some brands, like Chanel and Gucci, sell for $2,000 apiece.

He said some of the merchandise might turn up online.

Security video caught the heist, but none of the the burglars could be identified. They all wore hooded sweatshirts and had their faces covered.

After snatching up the handbags, they piled into a white SUV, possibly a Chevrolet Tahoe with tinted windows and black rims, and four sedans. One was a late-model, silver Ford Taurus. Two other cars were red four-doors and one was gray, police said.

Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for anyone with information that leads to arrest in the case. Tips can be called in to detectives at (619) 692-4800 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. Anonymous email and text messages can be sent via www.sdcrimestoppers.org.
An teen was shot twice Thursday night when he got into an altercation on his way to a house party in Pacific Beach, police said.

Officers found the 18-year-old victim on Riviera Drive near Edgecliff Drive about 10:30 p.m.

He told officers he was on his way to a house where about 20 people were partying when he got into an altercation with a group of males. One man fired at the teen, who was struck in the arm and the lower back.

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He was taken to a hospital with injuries that werent life-threatening.

Police didnt say where specifically the shooting took place. Two vehicles on nearby La Cima Drive were hit by bullets

The victim described the shooter as a black man with short dreadlocks and a medium build. He may have driven off in a vehicle, but the victim couldnt describe it.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
San Diego police have a new way to confirm the presence of marijuana and other drugs in impaired drivers  a mouth-swab device that is already being used by police departments in more than a dozen states and is expected to become more popular with the legalization of marijuana.

It is the first technology of its kind to be used in San Diego County. The two Drager DrugTest 5000 machines, which cost about $6,000 each, were donated by the San Diego Police Foundation last week.

They are expected to debut Friday night at the St. Patricks Day DUI checkpoint downtown.

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The machine, about the size of a mini bookshelf stereo system, tests for the presence of seven drugs  marijuana, cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, amphetamine, methadone and benzodiazepines. The device does not read the level of intoxication; drivers would have to take a blood test for that information.

Its a huge concern of ours with the legalization of marijuana that were going to see an increase in impaired drugged driving, Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said at a news conference Thursday near the Ingraham Street bridge in Mission Bay, a common DUI checkpoint spot.

California voters approved the use and cultivation of recreational marijuana by passing Proposition 64 in November.

To prepare for the effects of the law, a team of San Diego narcotics officers went to Denver to learn how Colorado has fared since recreational marijuana was legalized there and found that the region has seen an uptick in drugged driving, Zimmerman said. The numbers have been growing in California as well.

In 2014, 38 percent of drivers who were killed in motor vehicle crashes in California tested positive for drugs, whether legal or illegal, according to the state Office of Highway Safety. Thats up from 32 percent the year before.

We want to get these impaired drivers off the streets, the chief said.

The Drager 5000 premiered in the U.S. in 2009 and is now used by police in places such as Los Angeles, New York, Arizona and Nevada, as well as in other countries such as Australia, Belgium and Germany.

In San Diego, the machines will be used primarily at DUI checkpoints for now.

Like the handheld preliminary alcohol screening devices frequently used in the field to test for booze, drivers cannot be forced to submit to a Drager 5000 test.

Officers trained to recognize the symptoms of drug impairment will first look for various indicators that a driver is high, from an unsafe driving maneuver to bloodshot eyes to the odor of marijuana to blank stares, San Diego police Officer Emilio Ramirez said. Once there is ample suspicion of drug use, the officer can then request to perform field sobriety tests or for a driver to take the Drager 5000 test.

If the driver refuses at that point, the officer can force the person to submit to a blood test.

To use the machine, the driver is handed a mouth swab and instructed to run it around the inside of the mouth for up to four minutes. The swab is then placed into the machine, along with a vial of testing solution, and the machine does its work. It takes about six to eight minutes for results to print out on a receipt.

A positive result will likely send the driver to a police phlebotomist for a blood test to determine precise drug levels.

If the mouth swab test is negative but the officer still has a suspicion of impairment, then a blood draw might still be mandated, because the Drager 5000 only measures for seven kinds of narcotics, Ramirez said.

When it comes to detecting marijuana, the machine only looks for the active THC compound that is responsible for the high. That component, delta-9 THC, can stay in a persons system for a few hours or longer, depending on how the cannabis was ingested and how the persons body processes the drug. The machine does not look for the inactive THC compounds, which can stay in a persons system for weeks, police said.

In other words, if someone legally smoked marijuana two days ago, there would be nothing to worry about if tested on the machine.

Evidence from the Drager 5000 will be admissible in court, although the machine is not expected to have a notable effect on how drugged driving cases are prosecuted, attorneys said.

Under California law, there is no legal threshold for the amount of drugs in a persons system when it comes to driving. Alcohol cases are more black and white  a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level or higher is illegal.

Officers and prosecutors have instead had to rely on subjective measures and observations to build a case of drug impairment, which can be different from person to person.

Impairment is impairment, said Deputy City Attorney Taylor Garrot, one of two people who works solely on drugged driving cases as part of a state grant program. If your system cant handle that level, then you shouldnt be driving.

The unit prosecuted 282 drugged driving cases last year, up from 150 the previous year, authorities said.

San Diego attorney Paul Neuharth, who defends DUI cases, agreed that the preliminary drug test wont have much impact in the courtroom. He said that any positive tests will be backed up by blood tests.

He said while the Drager 5000 does not detect levels of intoxication, he expects to see that ability in the near future.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
A documented Escondido gang member accused of murder could face the death penalty in the fatal shooting of a woman who was headed home from church when she was struck by bullets that police say were intended for a rival gang member.

Dionicio Crespin Torrez Jr., 24, pleaded not guilty in a Vista courtroom Friday in the murder of Cathy Kennedy, 55, who was shot as she drove eastbound on East Grand Avenue about 9 p.m. March 7, not long after leaving a weekly bible study at the Church of St. Timothy. Kennedy died at a hospital a short time later.

After Torrezs brief arraignment, the prosecutor called the case heartbreaking and tragic, and a wake-up call for the community.

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Escondido has seen a rise in gang violence despite efforts by the Escondido Police Department, and it has culminated in the killing of an innocent person, simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Deputy District Attorney Laurie Hauf said.

In addition to murder, the District Attorneys office is alleging that the shooting was done to advance gang interests  a special circumstance that makes Torrezs potential punishment either life in prison without parole or death. The decision whether to pursue the death penalty will be made at a later time.

Torrez also faces other charges, including two counts of attempted murder for shooting at the two rival gang members, a shooting police said was done in retaliation for gang-related tagging at the Pepperwood Meadows apartment complex, along East Grand Avenue between Rose Street and Midway Drive.

No new details of the case were provided in open court. After a sidebar meeting with attorneys, Superior Court Judge Cynthia Freeland cited the allegations and my concern for public safety in her decision to deny bail for Torrez.

Hauf said the on-the-record sidebar  out of earshot of the media and the courtroom audience  was done for the purposes of maintaining the defendants rights, constitutional rights.

Torrez was arrested Wednesday, along with a 16-year-old juvenile, also said to be a gang member. The teen will be arraigned in Juvenile Court on Monday morning. Whether the teen will be tried as an adult will be up to a Juvenile Court judge.

In announcing the arrests on Thursday, Escondido Police Chief Craig Carter said both Torrez and the teen are Escondido residents and U.S. citizens. He also said more arrests would follow.

As of Friday afternoon, Hauf said, only the Torrez and the 16-year-old have been arrested.

The only other criminal case on file for Torrez was a 2011 misdemeanor vandalism case. He pleaded guilty but court records indicate he failed to pay all his fines on time, and also repeatedly failed to sign up for court-ordered anger management classes.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com
When San Diego County supervisors voted early this year to increase their own salary by more than $19,000  as angry taxpayers yelled shame on you from the packed chamber  newly seated Supervisor Kristin Gaspar cast the lone vote in opposition.

The former Encinitas mayor told the room that she could not support the 12.5 percent pay hike because she was not sure she deserved the money.

One of the first questions I always ask myself is, Is the compensation appropriate for the work performed? she said before casting her no vote. Awkwardly, I sit here, having been sworn in just 24 hours ago, and I can be the first to admit that I dont know how to get past that first fundamental question.

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Kristin Gaspar, center, on Jan. 9  the day she voted against a pay raise for county supervisors, (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Two months later, it turns out, the newest member of the Board of Supervisors will accept the raise, which goes into effect today, pushing her annual $153,289 paycheck up by almost $10,000 for now with an additional boost coming in December.

Gaspar issued a statement explaining her thinking, in response to a question from U-T Watchdog.

While I did not vote for the proposal, this is now the official compensation for supervisors, the statement said. Not accepting it would create a disparity among supervisors who all perform the same job serving the public.

That position was criticized by good-government activists.

When she voted no she took a moral stand; obviously that moral stand didnt mean much, said John Van Doorn, an electrical engineer from Fallbrook who protested the pay raises before they were approved in January.

Now she has what she needs to say when she runs for re-election  that she voted against the raises, Van Doorn said. But in taking the money, its kind of an empty claim.

The higher salaries for members of the Board of Supervisors kick in as the county faces a deficit of at least $100 million from its $5.4 billion budget. Last month, board Chairwoman Dianne Jacob warned that looming changes in federal spending under the Trump administration could double or even triple that gap.

For decades, the salary paid to county supervisors was set at 80 percent of the compensation paid to Superior Court judges, allowing the elected officials to get periodic pay increases without the spectacle of a public vote on a touchy subject.

The action that Gaspar opposed in January adjusted the pay scale to 85 percent, effective March 17. The compensation rate will climb to 90 percent of a judges salary on Dec. 7, driving supervisors annual pay to $172,450 (or more if judges get a raise in the meantime).

The increased salary also will boost the elected officials county pensions, lifetime benefits that are calculated by the amount of annual earnings.

Simon Mayeski, a San Diego small business owner and longtime volunteer with California Common Cause, said if Gaspar was truly opposed to the pay hike, she would have lobbied her board colleagues against taking the money.

They were getting raises already that were more or less in line with other employees lately, less than 1 percent, Mayeski said. Not good enough for them, they voted to increase the percentage. Thats the story.

In supporting the proposed raises, supervisors noted that the salary formula had not been amended in almost 20 years.

San Diego County has the second largest population in the state and in terms of square miles is one of the nations largest counties, larger in size than two states, Supervisor Ron Roberts said at the time. I am very comfortable this adjustment is fair and justified.

Pay hikes for elected officials are often controversial. One such dustup is playing out in Boston this month over GOP lawmakers who voted against pay increases for lawmakers, then accepted the money. They are being ridiculed as the vote no, take the dough caucus.

Some California lawmakers have declined to accept pay raises in a show of fiscal discipline.

In 2013, after an independent panel approved pay hikes for state legislators, Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, and Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside, declined the boost for themselves.

Last time I checked the state still has a structural deficit which we have not addressed as a Legislature, Chavez said at the time.

Chavez said on Friday that he subsequently accepted the salary increase because voters were aware of the compensation package when they re-elected him.

I go back to the theory that as long as people know what they are paying me for the job Im doing, I will take the money, he said.

Gaspar, a Republican, ran as a fiscal conservative, an approach she also took on the Encinitas City Council. After she was elected supervisor, the Encinitas council in January voted itself a 45 percent raise on a 3-1 vote. Gaspars conservative ally, Mark Muir, voted against the increase.

Muir did not immediately responded to an inquiry about whether he plans to accept the raise when it takes effect in late 2018.

Staff writer Ricky Young contributed to this report.

Make your voice heard

What do you think of the supervisor accepting the raise? Use this link to send an email to Gaspar, and copy U-T Watchdog.

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jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald
Today our nation appears politically divided as never before. Republicans and Democrats are bitterly opposed on numerous issues. Many believe this division means there is no chance of reaching consensus on the risks of climate change, much less on what to do about it. But there is reason for hope.

Related: Our warming world is in need of fixes

The city of San Diego is one exception to this bleak picture. Its ambitious Climate Action Plan was unanimously passed by a bipartisan City Council with the added support of Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

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Unfortunately, local action alone will not solve our climate challenge. Congress needs to act to create a strong and enduring national climate policy. Recent developments in Washington, D.C., are now providing new hope this will occur.

In the last session of Congress, Republicans introduced House Resolution 424, recognizing the threat of climate change and calling for federal action. By the close of the 114th Congress, it had 16 Republican co-sponsors, including two members of the Tea Party-related Freedom Caucus.

Democrats joined with Republicans last year to found the Climate Solutions Caucus. Its goal is to bring the two parties together to evaluate the challenges climate change pose to our country and to develop policy responses. Today the caucus numbers 26 members, 13 from each party (including Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, and new members Darrell Issa, R-Vista, and Juan Vargas, D-San Diego). Eleven representatives have joined the caucus since the election.

In February, the Republican Climate Leadership Council was unveiled. Its founding members include George Shultz and James Baker (the only persons to have served as both secretary of state and treasury secretary) and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Members of the council have already met with White House aides.

The Climate Leadership Council calls for a gradually rising, revenue neutral tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels. It includes border adjustments to guarantee an even playing field for international trade. Most importantly, the proceeds would be returned to American households as a dividend to compensate for the expected rise in the cost of living and to help keep the economy growing.

Although not perfect, this is beginning of a policy that Americans on all parts of the political spectrum could support  fair to people, fair to business and powered by market forces.

A similar proposal by Citizens Climate Lobby, a nationwide bipartisan group of over 50,000 volunteers, starts the carbon fee lower but increases it more rapidly. Its plan does not include the elimination of EPA authority over carbon dioxide, nor does it provide tort immunity for emitters, as called for by the Climate Leadership Council.

It is heartening to see that Republicans and Democrats are beginning to talk about solutions to our climate crisis. They are recognizing the need to protect American families from the impacts of climate change: hotter temperatures, rising sea level (its no coincidence that the Climate Solutions Caucus started in Florida), and longer and more severe droughts here in the Southwest.

Military experts also agree that climate change is a security threat: damage to coastal military facilities, increased refugee flows and Russian designs on an ice-free Arctic Ocean are just a few examples. Additionally there are grave and worsening health threats posed by climate change: among them are increased heat waves, water contamination and the spread of disease vectors, like West Nile virus.

The overwhelming consensus of climate scientists is that the world must reduce, and within 50 years eliminate, the use of outdated fossil fuels if the damage to our health, our economy, and our national security are to be held to a level that we can successfully cope with.

Technological advances may allow use of some fossil fuels in the future, but even if that occurs, rapid reduction in carbon emissions must begin now.

Its time to get to work on a fair, efficient and effective national climate policy. America can come together to find bipartisan solutions to the climate challenge. A revenue neutral carbon tax is the first step.

United, America can take its rightful place as the indispensable leader of the global fight against climate change. We can protect our children and grandchildren. The political conversation has begun, without rancor and with mutual respect. Lets make sure it continues.

Bockmon, a volunteer with Citizens Climate Lobby for seven years, has a Ph.D. in chemical oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Yaeckel, a chapter leader for Citizens Climate Lobby in San Diego, has a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
The city of San Diego is facing a new challenge from the skies  what to do about drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the small, aerial devices that weigh less than 55 pounds and typically fly below 400 feet. Reportedly more than 1 million drones are now being marketed nationwide, for commercial users and hobbyists, either online or at your local big box retail outlet.

Thats a million robo-copters  soon to be buzzing over local schools, parks, pedestrian streets and communities across the U.S. The question is: How should this new wave of mini-aviators be regulated, and by whom? In the next few weeks, the San Diego City Council will vote on whether to approve a proposed drone ordinance that has already been endorsed by its public safety committee.

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Critical issues are at stake. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) law says drones cant fly within five miles of airports, yet there has been an alarming uptick in the number of pilot-reported drone sightings at airports across the United States  for example, nearly three times as many in 2015 (more than 600) as in 2014.

Southern California is one of the nations hot spots for airport drone sightings, not surprising, given our climate, stunning scenery and busy aviation corridors.

When a drone is directly sucked into a large jets engine or hits a wing, it will almost always take down the plane, end of story. But according to experts, even if they dont smash into the wing or engine, drones can seriously endanger flights by jostling external sensors, penetrating the cockpit or simply distracting pilots.

We stand at the precipice of a brave new world of unmanned aerial vehicles. How will large cities like San Diego cope with 50-pound drones flying over streets, canyons, beaches, private patios or backyards? What protections does a mom tending to young children at a neighborhood park have when a drone hovers menacingly, scaring the little ones?

Consider just a few recent anecdotes. During a wildfire disaster in San Bernardino County in 2015, drones flying near the disaster zone caused officials to shut down aerial firefighters (helicopters and planes that drop water or flame retardant), significantly delaying, for precious minutes, their role in suppressing the wildfire. Lives could have been lost.

Closer to home, a 2015 summer beach party in Encinitas was disturbed by a drone that buzzed directly overhead. When it failed to leave, a father tossed his shirt over it, bringing it to the ground. Police arrested him for alleged felony vandalism. Charges were later dropped, but he spent eight hours in jail.

To be fair, UAVs can be valuable to society  they may help rescue people lost in the wilderness, survey crime scenes, monitor forests or check pipelines and other infrastructure.

But these uses for the most part take place in less-populated areas and are controlled by trained officials who understand public safety protocol.

The challenge faced by the FAA and mega-urban regions like San Diego is how to manage perhaps a million future users, including hobbyists with little experience, who will be operating in a high-density metropolis.

The FAA published the first drone regulations in 2015; unfortunately, they leave many unanswered questions. For example, while commercial UAV users must have a remote piloting license, thus far, hobbyists arent being as closely monitored.

Another critical issue: The FAA states that drone operators must maintain a visual line of sight over the UAV at all times. How can this be enforced in a region like San Diego, with its many canyons, valleys and mountains, where, most amateur pilots are sure to lose sight of their drones?

The proposed city of San Diego drone ordinance states that the authority to punish reckless UAV use will lie in the hands of the citys Police Department. But it fails to specify how reckless use will be determined, falling back on the FAAs regulations, which, as mentioned, are vague.

The proposed city drone ordinance simply doesnt go far enough. The devil lies in the details. What are the penalties to hobbyists if they invade the sanctity of schools or public parks, including beaches? Should the city of San Diego create no drone zones? Where?

Elected officials shouldnt merely defer to the FAA on the drone issue; they need to step up to the plate and clarify how public safety for San Diegos residential communities will be protected as this new wave of technology unfolds before us.

Herzog has taught city planning in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University for more than 25 years. He is the author/editor of 10 books on cities and urban design. His son, Adin Herzog, is a licensed pilot and certified drone operator.

Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 66F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
President Donald Trumps skepticism about climate change was made plain this week with his decision to block rules promulgated late in the Obama administration to force automakers to increase their average miles per gallon for cars and small trucks to 54.5 mpg by 2025, up sharply from the present 36 mpg. This decision was almost certainly sealed during Trumps first week in office, when he was told by Ford CEO Mark Fields that the rules would cost 1 million jobs because they would force U.S. companies to build vehicles that customers dont want.

Much of the response to the presidents dramatic action focused on what it might mean for California, which is specifically allowed to have tougher rules on vehicle emissions by the 1970 federal Clean Air Act and whose rules are also used by 13 other states. Yes, of course, California should fight to maintain its exemption. Yes, of course, local and state governments should continue their efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions when they can.

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But the Trump decision needs to be viewed in a larger context and deserves a more dramatic response. That context? The leader of the worlds most powerful nation and largest economy rejects what scientists describe as an existential threat to the human race. If the president doesnt believe this threat exists, enactment of a carbon tax  considered the most efficient way to scale down greenhouse-gas emissions  seems a long shot. An op-ed written for The San Diego Union-Tribune by local scientist Emily Bockmon and local activist Carl Yaeckel makes a strong case for such a tax and notes growing bipartisan support in Congress. But a Trump veto of a carbon tax would likely be impossible to overcome.

Another Union-Tribune op-ed by Jane C.S. Long  until recently the associate director for energy and environment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory  outlines a plausible approach to taking on global warming that doesnt require Trumps approval. Long strongly supports conventional attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. But she notes that even if all emissions stopped immediately, mankind has already bought a thousand years of climate change. Long says this means attempts to geoengineer the problem may be necessary, either by finding ways to capture carbon in the atmosphere or by using known methods to reflect incoming solar radiation. The first approach appears safe but is very difficult. The second approach is much less difficult but far more fraught with risks.

While geoengineering may seem futuristic, it is nothing new. In 2015, the National Academy of Sciences recommended research into the field as a hedge against catastrophe should emission reductions not do enough to slow global warming. Its time to heed these scholars. The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board cant be alone in thinking a hedge against catastrophe makes common sense.

We call on one or more of the nations benevolent billionaires to consider privately funding a massive endeavor on the scale of the Manhattan Project to try to geoengineer such a hedge. People buy life insurance every day. Earth needs life insurance, too  especially when the most powerful man on it is indifferent to an existential threat to humanity.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliotts declaration that under city zoning rules, short-term vacation rentals are not allowed in residential or commercial areas is welcome in its decisiveness. Her view is no surprise. Its what she told The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board last fall in an interview during her successful bid to replace her boss, termed-out Jan Goldsmith, as city attorney. Goldsmith had previously told the City Council it needed to resolve unanswered questions about San Diegos broad, vague and unenforceable rules on what was allowed with the 6,000 short-term rentals available online, mostly through Airbnb. Elliott went further, concluding that unless short-term rentals are specifically allowed in the municipal code in residential or commercial areas, theyre not OK.

Elliott has been careful to say this is her view of zoning language, not a stand for or against vacation rentals. But because it reinforces critics of the citys current free-for-all vacation-rentals approach  and could be used in court in lawsuits against the city over such rentals  Elliotts pronouncement could have the positive effect of forcing Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the City Council to finally hammer out a clear policy on these rentals.

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The emotions raised by this issue were on full display in late October, when hundreds of supporters and opponents of short-term vacation rentals attended a City Council meeting at which a proposal to ban them in most of San Diegos single-family-home neighborhoods failed on a 7-2 vote. After the vote, the council instructed city officials to develop thorough regulations for short-term rentals.

Next Friday, the councils Smart Growth and Land Use Committee will hold a hearing on these rules. According to committee Chairman Scott Shermans staff, three options will be presented. The first will follow along the lines of what Councilman Chris Cate has proposed: an ordinance that would allow short-term rentals with permits that pay transient-occupancy taxes throughout the city, but with increased enforcement of penalties against properties with infractions. The second will follow the much more restrictive approach sought by Councilwoman Lorie Zapf, which would allow some rentals but also impose broad limits. The third will offer a middle ground between the first and second options.

Unfortunately, after watching two years of dithering on the subject by the mayor and City Council, theres little to suggest that any of the three options will actually be adopted. After all this time, deep divisions still remain at City Hall over what to do.

This editorial board will wait to see specific details of the options before taking a firm position. But the citys first priority should be ending the disruptions endured by many residents where short-term rentals are used as raucous party houses by loud people with no respect for the neighborhood. The second priority of any vacation-rentals ordinance should be to allow San Diego property owners who play by the rules to profit from renting their homes and condos. They have rights, too.

So long as there is strict, consistent enforcement of penalties against nuisance properties  enforcement that doesnt just levy fines but bans further rentals if property owners dont take their responsibilities seriously  regulations similar to what Cate has proposed appear to address these two priorities in a reasonable way.

The issues are obvious. The debate has been long and thorough. Now its time for it to end.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
When The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board endorsed Proposition 64, the November ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana use for people over 21, our view was that marijuana use was already widespread throughout California because of a lax medical marijuana law that could be gamed by recreational users  and that it made sense to regulate and tax pot rather than continue with a laissez-faire status quo. But we worried about the lack of a well-regarded driver impairment field test for THC, marijuanas primary active ingredient.

Now the San Diego Police Department is using a testing method to establish possible drug intoxication that has gotten mixed marks elsewhere. The departments two Drager DrugTest 5000 machines test oral mouth swipes for the presence of marijuana, cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, amphetamine, methadone and benzodiazepines. Drager says its machines only test for the presence of the active THC compound that creates the high, not residual THC. San Diego police say if a test shows the compound, drivers will be taken in for blood testing to establish their level of impairment.

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But while this testing method is being used by more and more law enforcement authorities, it has its skeptics. Last year, Susan Price, the Orange County district attorneys assistant head of courts, told the Orange County Register that in her agencys experience, the test was more effective in detecting amphetamines and cocaine than marijuana and prescription drugs, citing several false positive and negative results. And the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported last year that its research found that the claim that blood tests could show THC impairment cannot be scientifically supported. Defense attorneys are going to have potent tools to push back at marijuana DUI charges.

Thankfully, Proposition 64 provides funding for attempts to devise more reliable law enforcement tools. The UC San Diego Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research sees promise in field tests that measure reaction time, attention, coordination and perception instead of THC. For now, though, accurately testing drivers for marijuana impairment remains problematic  and legal headaches await authorities who insist otherwise.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
A California Supreme Court judge has asked the lead federal immigration agency to stop stalking courthouses to make arrests of unauthorized immigrants because of concern that doing so would undermine the judiciarys ability to provide equal access to justice.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye outlined those concerns in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in light of recent reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests inside courthouses.

Our courthouses serve as a vital forum for ensuring access to justice and protecting public safety, Cantil-Sakauye wrote. Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our countrys immigration laws.

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What may have prompted the judge to issue the letter was the arrest last month of an unauthorized immigrant at a courthouse in Pasadena. Other areas of the country have seen similar arrests since President Donald Trump signed an executive order to deport unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.

The arrest of an unauthorized immigrant who was in an El Paso, Texas, court to be granted a protective order against a domestic abuser sparked outrage and prompted Multnomah County to ask the public to report ICE raids at courthouses.

El Paso County prosecutor says after ICE detained a woman in a courthouse, crime victims contacted them saying they weren't coming to court pic.twitter.com/ERX0I6e8FW  Ashley Goudeau (@AshleyG_KVUE) March 15, 2017

The tactics by ICE agents worry immigration advocates and law-enforcement officials because it might discourage residents from testifying in court or cooperating with police. But the tough approach has also been applaued by Trump supporters who want the federal government to step up immigration enforcement.

ICE's presence at #Denver courthouse interferes with local law enforcement's ability to prosecute violent crimes https://t.co/NNZAHFLDwH  National Immigration Forum (@NatImmForum) March 6, 2017

They are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS and they're being arrested by law enforcement officers doing their sworn duty to protect & serve!!  Jim Phillippi (@CallingAstro424) March 16, 2017

The executive order Trump signed in late January significantly expanded the scope of immigration arrests to include unauthorized immigrants with a criminal background, from violent felonies to lesser offenses.

In responding to requests for comment on Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauyes letter, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice defended the agencys practice of arresting unauthorized immigrants at courthouses.

While ICE does arrest targets at courthouses, generally its only after investigating officers have exhausted other options, Kice said.

The immigration debate wont end any time soon. Americans are still divided over ICE and how to enforce immigration laws, as is evident in many reactions shared online.

they are illegal, they are criminals you are trying to stop CA from following the law we will turn them in I will turn them in https://t.co/xIDFXNs3d7  Jensen (@jensen4law) March 17, 2017

 ICE needs to steer clear of courthouses! Read @JennieACLU's statement commending #CAChiefJustice leadership: https://t.co/uU5QhW5Reg  ACLU of Northern CA (@ACLU_NorCal) March 16, 2017

it is terrifying and i now ask my clients in family court matters if they are citizens because of the arrests in court horrible https://t.co/tAQCrBAkd5  Philomena Barboza (@AttorneyBarboza) March 16, 2017

Will other states follow suit with Californias request? Share your thoughts with me.

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez
President Donald Trump s administration has released a budget blueprint to make America great again, leaving some people praising him and others wondering whats so great about eliminating funding for something so many of them grew up with  the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

A note from the president on the document released by the White House this week said his plans for federal spending prioritize the safety and security of the American people.

To keep Americans safe, we have made tough choices that have been put off for too long, Trump wrote. But we have also made necessary investments that are long overdue.

Trumps document says the president is committed to making sure that taxpayer dollars are expended for the highest return projects and that all levels of government maximize leverage to get the best deals and exercise vigorous oversight.

Should that apply to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National Public Radio (NPR) and more?

Corporation for Public Broadcasting CEO Patricia Harrison said if Congress supports Trumps guidance on the budget, it would mean the collapse of the public media system itself and the end of this essential national service. The CPB receives about $455 million year year, according to the L.A. Times.

Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvany said the cuts are completely defensible.

Sesame Street is now run by HBO, but many who grew up watching Big Bird and the gang on PBS took the suggestion to cut funding personally. Others agree with the president, particularly when it comes to funding for NPR.

Both sides of the issue invoked Big Bird, naturally. And memes.

What do you think? Should federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting stay or go?

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
What would happen to Meals on Wheels, a program that provides food for some 2.4 million low-income American seniors, if its entire federal funding were eliminated as proposed in President Donald Trumps budget blueprint?

Youll get a mouthful, depending on who you ask.

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Trumps spending plan, which boosts defense spending and eliminates a number of federal programs, including grants for Meals on Wheels under the Department of Housing and Urban Development, became the subject of conversation at the White House on Thursday after the cuts were revealed late Wednesday.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said some of the programs under HUD are not showing any results.

Mulvaney just said Meals on Wheels "sounds great" but it's one of those programs "not showing any results" via @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/KYHAnFdcUd  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 16, 2017

The budget, referred to as a skinny budget for its lack of major detail, proposes to cut $6.2 billion from HUD, $3 billion of which currently funds the Community Development Block Grant programs, a portion of which goes to Meal on Wheels.

Government funding for Meals on Wheels, a Virginia-based nonprofit with a regional branch in San Diego County, accounted for 3 percent of its $7.5 million in 2015, according to its most recently available financial report. Its San Diego County branch got 1.5 percent of its $4.4 million budget in 2016 from government grants.

More than two-thirds of the national programs 2015 budget  68 percent  came from corporate and foundation grants, according to its report.

Several people pointed this out on social media as many others criticized the budget cut as harmful to senior citizens.

Majority of funding for Meals on Wheels is NOT government pic.twitter.com/6L9mEDqJKw  Elaine NoWallFundingNoDeal (@jet_thomson) March 17, 2017

Its unclear how much of those government grants actually come from the CDBG program, and the organization made that point in a statement Thursday while adding that such cuts could severely impact its mission.

The problem with a skinny budget is it is lean on details, said Ellie Hollander, President and CEO Meals on Wheels America. So, while we dont know the exact impact yet, cuts of any kind to these highly successful and leveraged programs would be a devastating blow to our ability to provide much-needed care for millions of vulnerable seniors in America, which in turn saves billions of dollars in reduced healthcare expenses.

Update: Meals on Wheels vice president of communications Jenny Bertolette told the Washington Post that most of the funding for the program comes from the Department Health and Human Services, which also faces cuts. However, Bertolette indicated that due to the lack of details in the budget proposal, it remained unclear how cuts would impact the nutrition programs for American seniors.

But the threat of cutting funding to programs that help the most vulnerable Americans prompted a one-sided outpouring of criticism on social media.

Meals on Wheels feeds 500,000 veterans every year.



Where does taking food from hungry veterans fit into the "America First" doctrine?  Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) March 16, 2017

How can Republicans say they are the Christian party when they literally take food from the poor? #RepublicanHypocrisy https://t.co/t81pKEoX5p  Rob Klint   (@1RobKlint) March 16, 2017

Talk about a death panel. https://t.co/fZufwSPcqG  Emily Schwarzkopf (@eschwarzkopf) March 16, 2017

At first I thought it was a gaffe, but nope they just straight up don't believe in keeping elderly folks from starving https://t.co/DJztW0fCaa  Dad (@fivefifths) March 16, 2017

Having delivered 4 Meals on Wheels I'm livid. SO many depend on food AND the human contact. People would cry they were so happy to see you.  Neko Case (@NekoCase) March 16, 2017

The conversation also broadened beyond criticism.

Imagine how many #MealsOnWheels could have been bought with the $1,200,000,000.00 Democrats spent on Hillary's failed campaign.



\_()_/  Vigilant Veteran (@VigilantVeteran) March 17, 2017

Do you think the federal funding will disappear or will Congress continue to pay for the program? And do you think Trumps budget will inspire more people to donate to the nonprofits cause?

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

UPDATES:

8:55 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details from Wheels on Meals vice president of communication Jenny Bertolette.

This article was originally published at 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, 2017.
You may not have unwrapped a robot on Christmas, but your new year will be filled with artificial intelligence.

The digital gift comes courtesy of Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies, large and small, that are making rapid advancements with virtual personal assistants that can solve problems and even complete tasks.

Were going to start to see more personal assistants (in the new year), and the ones that are already online will get more useful, said Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner.

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The assistants, sometimes referred to as chatbots, represent noteworthy advancements to computer programs that simulate conversations. Chatbots are not new  perhaps youve already conversed with the voice-based variety, say Apples Siri or Microsofts Cortana. Pseudo-chatbots are already commonplace, such as an automated message from Amazon that a package was delivered or a text message that confirms a reservation.

But in 2016, youll encounter different, smarter varieties of chatbots, some of them appearing in your favorite social media applications.

Chatbots are designed to answer questions, to perform searches, to interact with you in a very simple form, such as jokes or weather, said Brian Solis, principal analyst with Altimeter Group. Ultimately, they should be able to anticipate your needs and help you shop.

These robot helpers are also expected to assume more human-like qualities in 2016, exchanging messages in a conversational style that more closely resembles a friends way of speaking than a computers mechanical responses.

The human side of chatbots will be most apparent in mobile messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger, where the social network has already begun perfecting its own virtual assistant called M. M, first released to a small number of Messenger users in August, is just like any of your other Facebook friends, except that, in addition to striking up a conversation or cracking a joke, the assistant can book travel, make purchases or wait on hold with the cable company when youre not in the mood.

Powered by both artificial intelligence and actual humans (who help train the digital robots), M blends the mixed identities into a dynamic being thats just waiting to be called upon in Facebook Messenger whenever the mood strikes. The persona, originally codenamed Moneypenny after the fictional character in James Bond films, is the digital equivalent of a secretary or hotel concierge.

M will have friends, or foes, in Googles forthcoming chatbots, as the search giant is also working to add question-and-answer computer programs inside a messaging app, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. Google is likely motivated by a desire to gain ground in the mobile messaging realm, where rivals such as Facebook are far more dominant. The company also has a financial interest to remain at the forefront of Internet search, a behavior that, on smartphones, has migrated away from the traditional search engine.

Mobile messaging apps, meanwhile, are on the fast-track to a billion users, growing so fast that theyre overshadowing social networking as a favorite smartphone activity with youngsters.

If you look at what the youngest tech generation is doing ... its more about Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger than it is with pure-play social networking, said Blau. That is where the future is. Its not that social networking will go away, its that messaging will become more important.

Fully 49 percent of smartphone owners ages 18 to 29 use messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Kik or iMessage, according to a Pew Research Report published in August. The activity appeals to older generations as well. Some 37 percent of smartphone owners age 30 to 49, and 24 percent of those ages 50 and older use mobile messaging apps, Pew found.

Facebook Messenger is now used by more than 700 million people each month. WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, has more than 900 million monthly users.

As audiences grow, American companies are taking inspiration from hit Asian messaging services, where human-like chatbots such as Microsofts Xiaoice (meaning little Bing) have already proved popular. The American variety of artificial intelligence and automated assistance currently centers around shopping  for good reason. Thats where the money is.

Take the iPhone apps Mona and Mezi, for instance, which are both marketed as personal shopping assistants, and are all about helping you buy more, faster.

Powered entirely by artificial intelligence and built by former Amazon employees, Mona is meant to provide a concierge-like experience for consumers looking for top-notch recommendations on what to buy. She  the 1-year-old startup has a female persona  is programmed to appeal to 18-to-35-year-old women who like to shop online, enjoy finding discounts on high-end fashion and appreciate getting feedback from friends. She sifts through your email receipts and interactions with the app to make educated bets, based on probability equations, on what you want to purchase.

Mona is currently more computer algorithm than chatty Cathy, but her creators will make her more conversational in 2016.

Mona will show you five items, and you will be able to say, Mona, I like the first one but can you show me that in a different color?, said Orkun Atik, co-founder and CEO of the Seattle-based startup. And we want to give her a personality because we believe that we can advance her to a level where youre talking to a person.

Mona may sound like a niche app with limited appeal, but a robot that scours the web to help you find, and buy, exactly what you want could serve as a replacement for Google. Atik is convinced of this. He believes in five years people will interact with smart, artificial-intelligence-based personal assistants in lieu of search engines.

The recently launched app Mezi is also a type of search-engine replacement. The app acts as an electronic travel agent and product expert, responding to natural language requests in a friendly fashion. Like Facebook, Mezi relies, in part, on humans to converse with shoppers. The company employs people it considers subject-matter experts so customers get the best recommendations possible. Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, is used behind the scenes to route conversations, identify message intent and assist the assistants.

Currently, 25 percent of Mezis messages are machine-made, CEO Swapnil Shinde said, but the San Francisco startup believes it can perfect the system to handle 80 percent of messages with chatbots. Its a necessary progression as machine labor is far more economical than the human equivalent.

The reason why chat is becoming a very good Petri dish for (chatbot) experimentation is because it is such a simple window, Altimeters Solis said.

That is, the constraints of messaging apps make them ideal breeding grounds for bots still in their intellectual infancy. Plus, the medium is suited for concierge-like treatment, which more of us, particularly younger folks, are beginning to expect from our apps.

Philosophically, it is how we, as consumers, have been conditioned, Solis said. You want great service. You crave great experiences  and you feel like youre entitled to them, regardless of your status.

So if you expect the world to revolve around you, chatbots could be your new best friend.
The death of Artur Sargsyan yesterday in a Yerevan hospital should serve as a wake-up call to voters in Armenia on the eve of the April 2 parliamentary election.

Heres a young man, a veteran of the Artsakh War, whose only crime was to bring food to members of the Sasna Dzrer group who seized and held a Yerevan police station for two weeks last July.

Nicknamed the bringer of bread, Sargsyan was subsequently arrested and released, and then arrested in February of this year, allegedly for not showing up to a court hearing.

He was held in pre-trial detention and later went on hunger strike for three weeks.

Sargsyan, seen by many as a symbol of resistance to the ruling regimes heavy-handed response to popular protests last summer, took direct action according to a set of deeply held personal principles.

Surely, Sargsyan realized that by crossing the police cordon his life would no longer be the same. His was a conscious response to developments unfolding around him.

The regime toyed with his life, bouncing him around the legal system like a ball. The police hounded him and his family members. They wouldnt make life easy for this lone rebel.

Everyone in Armenia knows the courts, the judges and the prosecutors office are mere enforcement levers of the current regime. They performed their roles to a tee.

One evening, as I strolled through Yerevans Liberty Square, I saw thirty or so young people camped outside. They were staging a sit-down strike demanding the release of Sargsyan from pre-trial detention. Sargsyan was into his second week on hunger strike.

That seemed to be the extent of public solidarity with the bringer of bread.

Now, after his death, many have expressed their condolences and regrets for not mobilizing while Sargsyan was alive. Its a broken record of missed opportunities and a shortage of human compassion.

Last night, several hundred citizens took to the streets, expressing their anger at the tragic turn of events. They called Artur a victim of the regime and demanded accountability.

A colleague at Hetq rightly pointed out that in Armenian culture bread symbolizes life, sustenance, and hospitality towards strangers. My friend says that Artur was devoured by the regime; the meat-eaters ().

As to how Sargsyans victimization will affect voters on April 2 is anybodys guess. Will voters realize that they are victims as well; daily being victimized by an illegitimate government that gives a rats ass for their welfare?

And what are the alternatives for voters who realize their plight and the dead-end politics of the past decade? The pickings are slim indeed. Sycophants, stooges, starry-eyed nationalists, tainted politicians, regime collaboratorstake your pick.

Yes, go cast your ballot according to your conscience in the belief that you are making a difference. Defend your vote. But, please, dont stop there. Dont fool yourself into thinking youve done your civic duty.

Turn your crocodile tears and handwringing into something much more empowering!

Follow Arturs example, and express your humanity, your indignation, in ways so striking and unique that others will take notice in turn.

Its a game of personal courage and conviction.
Armenias Investigative Committee (IC) has launched a criminal investigation of possible medical malpractice into the March 16 death of Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread, this according to a Facebook post by Sona Trouzyan, an adviser to the president of the IC.

Sargsyan died yesterday at Yerevans Armenia Medical Center after being diagnosed with an abdominal hernia. He died a few hours after being operated on.

Artur Sargsyan, who was arrested and later released for bringing food to members of the armed Sasna Dzrer group who seized a Yerevan police building last July, staged a three week hunger strike after being detained in February of this year, allegedly for not appearing for a court date regarding his case.

Sargsyans death certificate specifies cardio-vascular failure and multiple organ failure as the cause of death.

Trouzyan writes that a forensic examination will be performed to clarify the circumstances of Sargsyans death, and that, at the request of his family, qualified third-party experts will be allowed to participate.
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Bless our families and our children,

and choose from our homes those who you desire for this holy work.

Heavenly Father,your divine Son taught usto pray to the Lord of the harvestto send laborers into His vineyard.We earnestly beg youto bless our Diocese and our worldwith many priests and religiouswho will love you fervently and gladlyand courageously spend their livesin service to your Son's Church,especially the poor and the needy.Teach them to respond generouslyand keep them ever faithfulin following your Son Jesus Christ,that under the guidance of the HolySpiritand with the inspiration ofSaint Damien and Blessed Mariannethe Good News of redemptionmay be brought to all.We ask this through Christ our Lord.
49 Million People Across 46 Countries Are at Risk of Famine

A global food crisis brought on by the conflict in Ukraine brings new threats to children.

Skyrocketing wheat prices could put millions of children in the world's most fragile contexts, such as Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, at risk of illness or even death due to hunger. In places like South Sudan and the Sahel, the ongoing conflict has hindered access to food for years. In Kenya, 3.5 million people are suffering extreme hunger. In Somalia, up to 1.5 million children could be facing severe acute malnutrition by October.

COVID-19 is adding to the impacts of conflict and climate change to push millions of children across the world to the verge of starvation. Theres no vaccine for hunger, but there is a solution if we act now.
Doha, Qatar -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2017 -- The American School of Doha (ASD) has completed an ambitious School Improvement Project that was started in 2013. Recently the school celebrated the grand opening of their brand new facilities and cemented its reputation as one of the best International school in Qatar. The occasion, which was headlined by the U.S ambassador to Qatar, Her Excellency Dana Shell Smith was honoured by the attendance of distinguished guests who included the Chairman, Board of ASD Trustees, Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al -Thani, Member of the Board of Trustees, Tom McHale, Head of ASD Board of Directors, Alistair Routledge; Basem Qablawi, ExxonMobil; Mitchell Eichelberger; Ricardo Costa Almeida, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, Qatar, and Yousuf Buhindi, Occidental Petroleum Corporation.The architects of the Campus Improvement Project, CIP, had three goals in mind:



- To boost enrollment of grades 4 to 12 with an additional 198 students to enable more and more young people in Doha acquire opportunities made possible by an ASD education.



- Tackle the challenges of the existing curriculum that include delivery of multiple options for high school level science classes, allocate more space for sporting activity, solve problems related to physical education and create more room at the existing elementary library.



- Improve the security and fire safety across the entire campus.



The objectives of the Campus Improvement Project have largely been achieved with the massive construction program that saw the erection of eight classrooms in the middle and high schools, allowing expansion from seven to eight sections in both divisions. New shared facilities, and new safety enhancements in the entire school.



In an ambitious attempt to support extensive AP and IB program, that offers and serves a growing student body, three science labs and a greenhouse were also constructed in the middle and high schools. Another landmark development was the construction of two gyms, one in elementary and another in middle/high school. This endeavor will go a long way to support an increased student population from Grades 4 through 12 and also allow for improved performance of sporting activity at all levels, especially bodybuilding, strength, and conditioning, etc.



A covered outdoor play area, a learner's pool, and a new enclosed, air-conditioned indoor courtyard are improvements designed to target the particular development of the youngest students at ASD.



Of particular concern was the perpetual overcrowding in the prior elementary library. But with the CIP initiative, this has now been addressed and the flexibility to grow student attendance in Grade 4 and five will now be realized.



An extra five learning support rooms provide much-needed space for ASD's expanded student services programmes; and the additional installation of sprinklers in the middle and high school classrooms, the primary and the addition of hydrants, new CCTV cameras, three new sentry houses and the newly added computerised panel to monitor the whole campus all work in tandem to make ASD the best International school in Doha.



The American School in Doha extends sincere gratitude to the following corporations for their support in cementing American School of Doha as one of the top schools in Doha: Occidental Petroleum Corporation; Chevron Phillips Chemical Company Qatar; ExxonMobil Qatar; and Jassim and Hamad bin Jassim Charitable Foundation.



About American School of Doha

The American School of Doha is an independent, U.S. accredited, college preparatory school, committed to providing educational excellence, through a standards based, internationally enriched American curriculum, serving a multicultural student body.



Website: http://www.asd.edu.qa

Email:info@asd.edu.qa

Tel:+974 4459-1501

Address: American School of Doha - Qatar Al -Soudan PO Box 22090
Ah, that new car feel . . . Its different, better, and exciting . . . all at the same time.

As I watched our March webinar, Making use of all that parlor data, I instantly made the connection to driving a more modern vehicle. It has all sorts of bells and whistles, automated features, and the promise of greater safety and efficiency.

Long gone are the days of having only monthly milk testing to determine how your cows are milking. Technology now tells you so much more. If you think the cow alone determines how much she puts in the tank, this webinar will open your eyes.

A dairys production depends on the cow, the employees, and the equipment. When parlor data is generated on each and every cow, for each milking, and for each stall, it is easy to pinpoint places to improve and where to recognize good work.

Dr. David Reid, a veterinarian, reviewed several parlor reports he analyzes for clients dairies. Dairy Comp305s outputs are extensive, but being able to understand them makes it possible to improve parlor efficiency, as well as milk production and udder health.

Most new cars are loaded with technology that display all kinds of information. You might say, Thats cool, but what do I really need to know. Similarly, while watching the webinar, I wondered how many people are fully aware of all the information todays parlors provide and how to sort through it to determine whats important.

Look at milk weights per cow per side of a herringbone or parallel for each turn. Sometimes you will see 0 pounds for each cow on that side. That usually means that a side of cows entered, yet were released (in error) before the machines were attached.

Are there cows in the wrong milking string? Dairy Comp305 color-codes pens so when a cow is in the wrong group, its obvious she is out of place.

Look at individual stall data to see if one unit has consistently poor performance. That will alert you that the equipment at that stall should be checked for wear and functionality.

After reviewing the various reports, its usually easy to spot issues. That gives you tools to use when you talk to the milking team to see how and why the problem occurred, and how it can be addressed.

The reports also help monitor rotary parlors. If there is a high percentage of manual machine removals (didnt detach automatically), that could indicate poor udder stimulation, delayed machine attachment, or the floor deck is set to run too fast.

Other trends can be analyzed, too. Milk flow data can be an indication of how the cows are brought to the parlor. Is the cow pusher calm? Are the cows comfortable or agitated as they enter the parlor?

Dr. Reid recommends posting each days reports for the milking team to view. Over time, the team is aware of the expectations, in a documented format. He also suggests weekly meetings to review the reports with the milking crew. They can be brief. Ten minutes is all you need, he shared.

There were more examples he shared. Learn about them in the archived presentation.

Join us next month

Join us for the webinar A breath of fresh air  ventilating barns on Monday, April 10, at noon (Central time).

Nigel Cook, D.V.M., University of Wisconsin-Madison, will cover basic design concepts required for effective natural ventilation and examine the reasons producers struggle to keep cows cool in summer. He will discuss ventilation systems in seven different U.S. regions. Register here.

Patti Hurtgen





The author is the online media manager and is responsible for the website, webinars, and social media. A graduate of Modesto Junior College and Fresno State, she was raised on a California dairy and frequently blogs on youth programs and consumer issues.
Phoenix, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2017 -- Bona Fide Foods public relations director, Maria Molina, announced that the company has officially launched with a selection of authentic Spanish paprika and extra virgin olive oil from Spain.



"Our philosophy is to supply the finest quality ingredients and unique products," said Molina.



Bona Fide Foods is committed to providing premium culinary ingredients from the Mediterranean that offer exceptional taste. The company provides retail shopping opportunities for the home cook, as well as wholesale options for a comprehensive array of professional establishments ranging from restauranteurs and catering companies to chefs and healthcare food services.



Bona Fide Foods utilizes a unique selection process for its olive oils that involves the quality of the olive trees from which the fruit is collected. More than 260 olive varieties are grown in Spain, providing Bona Fide Foods will a wealth of opportunities when selecting its unique blends with the best healthy properties.



The company offers monovarietal olive oils that are derived from specific types of olives. Its coupage olive oils are those that are created from a unique blend of varieties by artisans skilled in the craft to produce specific flavors.



Known as the liquid gold of the Mediterranean, olive oil contains different flavors and underlying notes just as fine wines exhibit. The oils offered by Bona Fide Foods represent the creme de le creme of olive oils. Graded on its unique qualities of aroma, fragrance, freshness, sweetness and taste, only the oil that demonstrates the highest marks in all five categories earn the designation of extra virgin olive oil.



Bona Fide Foods also offers smoked paprika in sweet, bittersweet and hot varieties. More than just a colorful spice, the peppers from which the company's Spanish paprika is derived are subjected to a traditional selection and drying process that's different than those in other pepper producing regions. Just as the wooden casks used in vintage wines influence the taste, so it is with the company's smoked paprika to achieve its aroma, color, and flavor.



The launch of Bona Fide Foods provides home cooks and professional chefs with extra virgin olive oil and Spanish paprika that are flavorful, healthy, and contain high levels of antioxidants. Also, products that have earned the Protected Designation of Origin accreditation label guarantee the highly differentiated quality due to their origin, standards of manufacturing, and distinction as ingredients for haute cuisine.



About Bona Fide Foods

Bona Fide Foods is the provider of premium quality extra virgin olive oils and smoked Spanish paprika of distinction crafted with traditional methods. The company serves the needs of customers ranging from home chefs to professional culinary establishments and healthcare food services.



Media Contact:

Maria Molina, Public Relations

Bona Fide Foods

Phone: 602-483-6912

Email: info@bonafidefoods.com

Website: www.bonafidefoods.com
Clinton, UT -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2017 -- 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



Contact Adam Green!

c: 801-809-7766

e: g3president@comcast.net



Clinton, UTAH General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Introduces New Geneology Support Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.news.adampaulgreen.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



The Mayflower was hired in London, and sailed from London to Southampton in July 1620 to begin loading food and supplies for the voyage--much of which was purchased at Southampton. The Pilgrims were mostly still living in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands. They hired a ship called the Speedwell to take them from Delfshaven, the Netherlands, to Southampton, England, to meet up with the Mayflower. The two ships planned to sail together to Northern Virginia. The Speedwell departed Delfthaven on July 22, and arrived at Southampton, where they found the Mayflower waiting for them. The Speedwell had been leaking on her voyage from the Netherlands to England, though, so they spent the next week patching her up.



On August 5, the two ships finally set sail for America. But the Speedwell began leaking again, so they pulled into the town of Dartmouth for repairs, arriving there about August 12. The Speedwell was patched up again, and the two ships again set sail for America about August 21. After the two ships had sailed about 300 miles out to sea, the Speedwell again began to leak. Frustrated with the enormous amount of time lost, and their inability to fix the Speedwell so that it could be sea-worthy, they returned to Plymouth, England, and made the decision to leave the Speedwell behind. The Mayflower would go to America alone. The cargo on the Speedwell was transferred over to the Mayflower; some of the passengers were so tired and disappointed with all the problems that they quit and went home. Others crammed themselves onto the already very crowded Mayflower.



Finally, on September 6, the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America. By the time the Pilgrims had left England, they had already been living onboard the ships for nearly a month and a half. The voyage itself across the Atlantic Ocean took 66 days, from their departure on September 6, until Cape Cod was sighted on 9 November 1620. The first half of the voyage went fairly smoothly, the only major problem was sea-sickness. But by October, they began encountering a number of Atlantic storms that made the voyage treacherous. Several times, the wind was so strong they had to just drift where the weather took them; it was not safe to use the ship's sails. The Pilgrims intended to land in Northern Virginia, which at the time included the region as far north as the Hudson River in the modern State of New York. The Hudson River, in fact, was their originally intended destination. They had received good reports on this region while in the Netherlands. All things considered, the Mayflower was almost right on target, missing the Hudson River by just a few degrees.



As the Mayflower approached land, the crew spotted Cape Cod just as the sun rose on November 9. The Pilgrims decided to head south, to the mouth of the Hudson River in New York, where they intended to make their plantation. However, as the Mayflower headed south, it encountered some very rough seas, and nearly shipwrecked. The Pilgrims then decided, rather than risk another attempt to go south they would just stay and explore Cape Cod. They turned back north, rounded the tip, and anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor. The Pilgrims would spend the next month and a half exploring Cape Cod, trying to decide where they would build their plantation. On December 25, 1620, they had finally decided upon Plymouth, and began construction of their first buildings.



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.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.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. http://www.MyChocolatePod.com, http://www.Facebook.com/AdamPaulGreen



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.



http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



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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
Pune, Mahrashtra -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/17/2017 -- The report entitled Global PTFE Micro Powder Market 2017 presents key insights into the global PTFE Micro Powder market along with the latest up-to-date industry details and forthcoming PTFE Micro Powder industry trends, which will assist the readers to focus on product specification and end users driving the overall market revenue and profitability.



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2 Solvay

3 Shenyang Tianyuxiang Micro Powder Material

4 Shanghai 3F New Material Company

5 Shamrock Technologies

6 Reprolon Texas

7 Micro Powder (MPI)

8 Gujarat Fluorochemicals

9 Daikin

10 Chenguang Research Institute of Chemical Industry

11 Chemours(DuPont)

12 Asahi Glass

13 3M



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1 China

2 Europe

3 India

4 Japan

5 South East Asia

6 USA



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1 Coatings

2 Elastomers

3 Inks

4 Lubricants & Grease

5 Thermoplastics

6 Others



Finally, the research study provides a comprehensive view of the global PTFE Micro Powder market, offering market size and estimates for the period from 2016 to 2021, keeping in mind the above mentioned factors.
An analysis of rock samples collected from the Superior Province, the region in Canada just north of the Great Lakes, suggests the samples contain components of ancient basaltic crust that existed more than 4.2 billion year ago (Hadean eon).

Recreating the nature of Earths first crust is difficult because geologic activity has created turnover that drove most of it back into Earths interior.

While some slivers of 4-billion-year-old crust remain in the rock record, only isolated zircon mineral grains are dated to be older.

Finding remnants of early Earths crust has proven difficult, but a new approach offers the ability to detect the presence of truly ancient crust that has been reworked into merely really old rocks, said study co-author Dr. Richard W. Carlson, Director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The novel approach examines variations in the abundance of an isotope of the element neodymium, which is created by the radioactive decay of a different element, samarium.

The isotope of samarium with a mass of 146 (samarium-146) has a half-life of only 103 million years. It decays to the isotope of neodymium with a mass of mass 142.

While samarium-146 was present when Earth formed, it became extinct very early in Earths history.

Researchers know of its existence from the study of very ancient rocks, especially meteorites and samples from Mars and the Moon.

Variations in the relative abundance of neodymium-142 compared to other isotopes of neodymium that didnt originate from decaying samarium reflect chemical processes that changed the ratio of samarium to neodymium in the rock while samarium-146 was still presentbasically before about 4 billion years ago.

Dr. Carlson and his colleague, University of Ottawa researcher Dr. Jonathan ONeil, studied 2.7 billion-year-old granitic rocks that make up a portion of the eastern shore of Hudson Bay.

The abundances of neodymium-142 in these granites indicates that they were derived from the re-melting of much older rocks  rocks that were more than 4.2 billion years old  and that these ancient rocks were compositionally similar to the abundant magnesium-rich rock type known as basalt, which makes up all of the present day oceanic crust.

In more-recent times in Earths history, basaltic oceanic crust survives at Earths surface for less than 200 million years before it sinks back into Earths interior due to the action of plate tectonics.

The teams findings, however, suggest that basaltic crust, which may have formed not long after Earths formation, survived at Earths surface for at least 1.5 billion years before later being re-melted into rocks that form a portion of the northernmost Superior craton, a geological formation that extends roughly from the Hudson Bay in Quebec to Lake Huron in Ontario.

Whether this result implies that plate tectonics was not at work during the earliest part of Earth history can now be investigated using our tool of studying neodymium-142 variation to track the role of truly ancient crust in building up younger, but still old, sections of Earths continental crust, Dr. Carlson said.

Details of the research were recently published in the journal Science.

_____

Jonathan ONeil & Richard W. Carlson. 2017. Building Archean cratons from Hadean mafic crust. Science 355 (6330): 1199-1202; doi: 10.1126/science.aah3823
[MANILA] Mandatorily labelling genetically modified (GM) food products gives them a negative image and also raises costs for consumers.



Mandatory labelling will be viewed by consumers as a warning, argues Milton Stokes, director of Monsantos Global Health and Nutrition Outreach programme at a press briefing in Manila on 7 March. Decades of studies have shown no ill effects or safety issues with GM foods and there are also no differences between GM and non-GM food, Stokes said.



Citing a Cornell University study, Stokes said that labelling could increase food costs by US$ 500 a year per family in the US.



Organic and voluntary labelling provides options for those wishing to avoid GM products. Milton Stokes, Monsantos Global Health and Nutrition Outreach programme



Monsanto, Stokes says, supports voluntary labelling by producers. But, if producers dont see the need for GM labelling its their discretion. For our part, Monsanto supports food labelling only if there is a scientific, health or safety reason.



Besides, organic and voluntary labelling provides options for those wishing to avoid GM products.



Labelling for GM is not mandatory in the Philippines, Southeast Asias largest grower of Bt corn. The crop contains genes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil bacterium that protects crops against insects  in this case the corn borer insect.



For the Philippine-based Limketkai Manufacturing Corporation (LMC), voluntary labelling makes good business sense. Nikka Roldan, research and development assistant at LMC, one of the countrys largest distributor of cooking oil, says GM has become an issue thanks to increasing public awareness of health and wellness.



We want people to know that our canola is not GM, Roldan says. As far as we know, we are the first to use the non-GM label (locally), she adds.



Eufemio Rasco Jr., author of The Unfolding Gene Revolution and former head of the Philippine Rice Research Institute, says he is dismayed by negative perception of GM foods. Labelling food as GM is like putting a skull-and-crossbones on products which are subjected to safety assurance protocols that are more rigorous than those for common food products, he says.

Stokes says a bigger concern should be food handling and storage which often cause mass poisoning incidents mostly due to spoilage and insanitary conditions during processing. He believes that GM got a bad name after the media wrongly associated it with the 1990s mad cow disease outbreak in Europe. GM technology , Stokes says, was created to help farmers deal with weed and pest problems, so firms like Monsanto only talked to farmers. This resulted in misinformation that was fast-tracked with the boom in Internet and social media, he says.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Asia & Pacific desk.

This article was made possible with support from Monsanto.
The Whanganui River in New Zealand has become the first river in the world to be given the same legal rights that are enjoyed by a human. The river is long held in great respect by the native Maori people, who have been fighting for this right to given to the river for more than a century.

According to BBC, the Maori have been fighting for the river's recognition for over a period of 160 years. The Whanganui River in North Island has been given the right by the New Zealand Parliament as they passed a bill recognizing it as a human on Wednesday. Now the river will be represented by two people in future court proceedings, one from the Maori tribe and another from the native Crown tribe.

The Whanganui is the third longest river in New Zealand and is revered by the native tribal people. Emotions flew free among the Maori members of the New Zealand Parliament as they welcomed the news with tears and music. The New Zealand Parliament also said that the well-being of the river is their responsibility, as it is linked to the well-being of the tribal people directly.

According to The Guardian, this new status of the Whanganui River imposes the law that any kind of harm done to the river will be regarded as an attempt to harm the members of the tribe, as they are now one and the same. This also bears a message to be given to the world that human beings are not the masters of the universe; rather they are just a part of it, as much as the rivers and mountains are.

The new law also honors the point of view of the tribal people of New Zealand who regard the Whanganui River as a part of their community. The New Zealand Parliament passes it with a view to the development of the river and the restriction of any kind of anti-economic usage of the river in the future.

The new amendment includes a budget of $80 million for the financial redress of the Whanganui River. An additional amount of $30 million will be used to improve the river's health.
The Great Barrier Reef, home of many coral reefs, is now 50 percent dead, scientists stated. The global warming has affected the waters in the ocean and has warmed it up to the point that coral reefs cannot adopt.

Most parts of The Great Barrier Reef are examined, unlike in the first report. A large part of the Great Barrier Reef, mostly the northern part, has been dead, according to the scientists who researched and checked on it. They have been killed because of the overheated seawater. The southern part, which survived last year's mass bleaching, is now being affected by the overheating of the seawater. This occurrence is hinting that the Great Barrier Reef might be in more danger than last year, reported The New York Times.

"We didn't expect to see this level of destruction to The Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years," said Terry P. Hughes, director of a government-funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published Thursday as the cover article of the journal Nature. He added that two-thirds of the coral reefs in the north, which he saw dying, are completely dead now.

This event is definitely because of climate change, scientists stated. It is also not just Australia's problem because it is happening in every seas and ocean of the world. "This one won't be as bad as 2016, but it could be more comparable to 1998 or 2002," said Terry Hughes, the lead author of the new study and director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. It is likely to be the third or second most severe mass bleaching that happened, said National Post.

Bleaching of corals like in The Great Barrier Reef in Australia happens when the corals change their colors. It is likely being pushed by the water temperature. The colors of the corals are very important to them because that is where they get their life and energy from. Once it's gone, so is the coral's life.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted an ocean just a few miles beneath the icy shell of Saturn's moon Enceladus. This indicates that it may potentially host an alien life just like Jupiter's moon Europa that also has an ocean under its surface, according to astrobiologists.

Nicolas Altobelli, who was not involved in the study and the European Space Agency's (ESA) project scientist for the Cassini-Huygens Mission, stated that with this find, it opens to new perspectives to examine the rise of habitable conditions on the icy moons of the gas giant planets. He further said that if Enceladus underground ocean is near to the surface as the study suggests, then a future mission to this moon with an ice-penetrating radar sounding instrument could identify it.

In the study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on March 13, 2017, the team examined the observations made by Cassini during its flyby in 2011 using a radar instrument. The data indicate that the temperatures just a few meters below the surface are between minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit and minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit, which are extremely cold. The researchers said that this thermal irregularity indicates that the ice shell of Enceladus is quite thin and around the south pole, probably about 4.2 miles thick in places, according to Scientific American.

This new study confirmed with the previous 2016 study indicating the average depth for the ice shell of 11 to 14 miles and a thickness of fewer than 3 miles at the south pole. Linda Spilker, a Cassini Project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said these findings of temperatures close to three sedentary higher than those outside them could contribute to the interest of Enceladus. She further said that what its underground sea really like and if life might evolve there, these remain to be resolved by the coming missions, as noted by Science Daily.
President Donald Trump is making good on his promise to shift NASA's focus from earth sciences and education (including climate change) to space. With this, he puts NASA's budget to focus specifically on the Moon or on Mars.

According to The Washington Post, Trump is cutting back NASA funding slightly -- from $19.3 billion to $19.1 billion. The largest portion of the funds will go to human exploration division, setting aside $3.7 billion for the Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System (SLS) jumbo rocket. This is the very same spacecraft that the agency said will get humans to Mars. In the budget outline, NASA is instructed to "investigate approaches" that could help reduce the costs of the exploration missions, in order for the agency to have a more expansive exporation program.

The budget cut for NASA is not that bad, considering that other non-defense programs were propsed to have larger cuts. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency would have a 31 percent reduction in its budget.

Naples News mentioned that the president's vision for the space agency calls for some dramatic shifts, showing the massive difference in priorities from the previous administration. However, it seems that the Trump budget will not pay for the continuation of the development of the Asteroid Redirect Mission that NASA had been pitching as a low-cost stepping stone for Mars explorations.

In the two-page outline released by the administration on Thursday, it appears that the budget is limited to the following: human exploration ($3.7 billion), commercial activities, planetary science ($1.9 billion), earth science ($1.8 billion) with a cut of nearly $100 million and aeronautics ($624 million for research and development) of faster, safer supersonic flights). The entire education budget, which used to be around $115 million, was scrapped entirely as it is "performing functions that are duplicative of other parts of the budget."
DARLINGTON, S.C.  For the first time, alumni of the Darlington County School District can request their high school transcripts online, considerably shortening the time usually required to receive an official copy.

The school districts Human Resources Department recently brought the service online, and Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jane Hursey, director of the department, said the district is thrilled.

We are excited to be able to offer our former students a more convenient and expedient access to their transcripts, she said. We believe this service will be particularly beneficial to those graduates who now live out of state.

Transcripts available online include those from at least three school years prior, currently 2013 or before. Student records are maintained at the school level for three years following graduation. After the third year, records are archived at the district.

Former students who wish to submit written requests to the district office may, of course, continue to do so.

To submit a transcript request online, former students can visit the districts website at www.darlington.k12.sc.us. Under the Quick Links selection on the home page, choose Alumni Transcript Request. Students will then be directed to a new website, Need My Transcript, to begin the request. Third-party companies requesting transcripts on behalf of former students, or a student who prefers, may visit the website directly at www.needmytranscript.com.

The website will require that a photo of a drivers license or state identification card be uploaded in order to verify identity. The cost is $7 for former students and $15 for third parties.

The district will receive the request immediately and asks for 7-10 days to retrieve and deliver the transcript, though it typically will not take that long.

We are required by law to archive 75 years of student records, Hursey said. It is a tremendous responsibility, but it is also a privilege to serve our students.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Carolinas Hospital System honored 38 of its nurses during a Certified Nurses Day celebration on Thursday at the Floyd Conference Center.

Certified Nurses Day is recognized across the nation to honor nurses who have achieved and maintained their national certification.

Chief nursing officer Costa Cockfield emceed the celebration at the Floyd Conference Center on the campus of Carolinas Hospital. Cockfield acknowledged that becoming a certified nurse is no easy task and showed her appreciation to the 38 nurses in attendance for their unrelenting professionalism, leadership and compassion.

Fewer than 20 percent of American nurses are board certified, Cockfield said. You have reached a milestone of personal excellence along your professional journey. Your dedication to quality patient care is appreciated.

Certified Nurses Day is truly celebrated on March 19 but because that is a Sunday this year, Carolinas Hospital chose to celebrate on Thursday so more nurses could attend. March 19 is the birthday of Margretta Madden Styles, a scholar who was a pioneer of nurse credentialing.

Michelle Isgett, a labor and delivery nurse at Carolinas, said becoming board certified benefits not only the nurses, but the patients they care for as well.

It helps us to be better advocates for our patients, Isgett said. Any time you have the opportunity to get more education to make you better at what you do, thats always a good thing.

Cherrie Simon has worked as an intensive care nurse for 30 years but didnt choose to get her certification until just four years ago. Now, Simon said. she and her fellow certified nurses are able to use their knowledge to better care for each patient at Carolinas Hospital.

It took me a while to decide that I wanted to try to pass he certification test because its really intense, Simon said. It gives me a lot of pride to know  I was able to pass that test and use that knowledge every day to take care of the patients.
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Florence Knights of Columbus recently awarded $18,000 raised in the fall 2016 Columbus Hope Foundation Campaign to several Pee Dee area agencies.

"The funds collected end up at local organizations that serve the mentally and physically handicapped. The Pee Dee Center on National Cemetery Road has received the greatest amount of money each year due to their desperate need," said Joe Balotti with the K of C. The Center this year received $12,000 from the organization.

"As the campaign has grown over the years, we have added the other organizations that serve the handicapped as we are financially able," Balotti said

Other groups that received donations included Florence County Foundation for Special Needs, $3,000; the local Special Olympics organization, $1,000; Florence District 3 Exceptional Children, $1,000; and St. Anthony's School, $1,000.

"The Columbus Hope Program for the South Carolina Knights of Columbus Councils has been in place for over 20 years. The program is designed to give away specially wrapped tootsie rolls to anyone that would like one and then hope for a donation," Balotti said.

"Local businesses have graciously allowed Knights of Columbus to 'stand out' at the entrances of the businesses giving away tootsie rolls and hoping for a donation. We also have several businesses that graciously include us in their annual giving programs," Balotti said.
FLORENCE, S.C.  The floodwaters of 2015 have long ago receded but the health impact of those record-setting floods lingers.

Through a grant from the American Red Cross, HopeHealth will partner with that agency to assess the effects of the 2015 floods on the health of Williamsburg County residents.

HopeHealth will ask residents of Williamsburg County to complete a brief survey on environmental factors that may be adversely affecting the overall health of the community.

The surveys will be kept confidential and results will be used to provide guidance and medical treatment where needed.

Residents will be able to complete the surveys both in-person at local events as well as by phone at 1-800-273-5997, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Details regarding the upcoming events will be released in coming weeks.

HopeHealth is one of 21 nonprofit, federally qualified health centers in South Carolina and provides quality and affordable health care services to individuals in Florence, Clarendon, and Williamsburg Counties.
The 60/40 joint venture will be managed by both parties, with the majority stake held by Penang Port.

Plans include extending the berth to 688 meters from its current length of 400 meters. This will enable the simultaneously docking of two mega-ships carrying more than 4,900 passengers each.

In addition, the redevelopment will include spaces for tour buses to ease the flow of traffic in the areas around the cruise terminal. Other aspects will improve accessibility for physically challenged passengers throughout the terminal from ship to shore.

This development is supported by Malaysia's state and federal governments and associated agencies including tourism bodies, and will be a focal part of Malaysian Tourism EPP6 plan to create a 'Straits and Borneo Cruise Riviera.'

Further, the joint venture will showcase Georgetown, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to the fast-growing cruise market.

The ability to handle more and larger ships at Swettenham Pier is expected to position Penang as a major cruise destination in the region.

RCL is scheduled to make 38 calls in 2017.
From January to February 2017, Chinas shipbuilders booked 2.21m dwt of new vessel tonnage, a surge of 133% compared to the same period of 2016, according to data from China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry (Cansi).

The shipbuilders order backlog as at end-February 2017 stood at 92.07m dwt, shrinking by 22.6% on a year-on-year comparison and down 7.6% from end-2016, Cansi figures showed.

In completed tonnage, Chinese yards built a total of 9.36m dwt of vessel capacity during the two-month period, representing a spike of 123% year-on-year.

Cansi figures further showed that the countrys 53 leading shipyards controlled more than 90% of the shipbuilding market share with their newbuilding orders amounting to 1.97m dwt, orderbook on hand of 88.74m dwt and completed tonnage at 9.12m dwt over the first two months.

The shipbuilding association also monitors 80 main yards which registered a combined completed newbuild value of RMB49.05bn ($7.1m), a decrease of 11.2% from the year-ago period.

Of the total value, shipbuilding accounted for RMB22.5bn, equipment amounted to RMB3.04bn and repairs took up RMB1.79bn.

The 80 main yards generated a combined revenue of RMB30.07bn from January to February 2017, a decline of 21.2% year-on-year, and a profit of RMB120m, down 30%.

Cansi has adjusted down the number of main yards that it monitors to 80 since the start of this year from 94 in 2016. In the past few years, the Chinese market has witnessed a consolidation of yards under state-owned enterprises and the downfall of several privately-owned shipyards, including those that were once highly successful such as Rongsheng Heavy Industries, Sinopacific Shipbuilding and Mingde Heavy Industry.
There were no orders for floating production units in Q4 2015 or Q1 2016 with orders starting to return in the shape speculative FSRU orders in Q2 2016. For the past two years more LNG related units than FPSOs, David Boggs, managing director Energy Maritime Associates told Marine Moneys Singapore Offshore Finance Forum.

Looking at the market as a whole Boggs said: This year the floating production industry has turned the corner, still not back to the levels of 2014, but people are more optimistic going forward.

Last quarter of 2016 saw seven floating production unit awards comprising three FPSOs, three FSRUs and one production semi for Mad Dog 2. The FPSO awards included the Liza from ExxonMobil to SBM Offshore which is yet receive the final investment decision and a move by BW Offshore to acquire a stake in the Dussafu production sharing contract in Gabon, which Boggs said was to secure employment for an existing FPSO unit.

Commenting on the BW move into field assets he said: Well see if other contractors want to makes similar move.

While the market it is recovering this is in part due to very low rates it very attractive for oil companies to sanction projects.

The rates these days  people are working for less than costs, its unbelievable time and when is that going to happen again when you can get someone to work for less than it costs to operate the actual unit as an alternative is stacking which is actually going to cost them money, Boggs said.

So we actually think its great opportunity time for oil companies to sanction these projects for the next one- two years.

There are some 51 idle production units at the moment most of which came off contract although a small number are speculative newbuilds that have never been employed.

Energy Maritime Associates believes half the idle units will eventually be scrapped with those built to higher specifications, and therefore more flexible in terms of deployment, most likely to find new contracts.

Want to know more about opportunities in the offshore marine sector in 2017:

Download the White Paper: The State of the Offshore and Workboat Industry 2017
Despite the on-going tax issues and the countrys economic woes the growth of the Greek-controlled armada continues at a pace and at the beginning of March stood at record levels.

The fleet of ships over 1,000 gt 1 March comprised 4,084 ships of 329m dwt and 192.4m gt, just seven vessels more than a year ago, but some 8.16m dwt and 3.52m gt more.

The figures include 196 vessels of 20.6m dwt and 12.34m gt, on order from shipyards around the globe according to data compiled for the 30th consecutive year by the London-based Greek Shipping Cooperation Committee (GSCC).

However, the home flag fleet has decreased in all categories and according to data provide to the GSCC shipowners body by IHS Markit, the Greek flag flies over 747 ships, of 75.21m dwt and 43.71m gt, a significant loss of 62 ships, 3.74m dwt and 2.34m gt over the 12 months.

In fact, the Greek flag is the third choice of home owners with the fleet registered under some 41 flags all told, led by the Marshall Islands which gained 74 ships in the 12 months to March, ahead of Liberia which gained 31 ships. Cyprus gained 13 ships, and Malta four overall with, like the Greek, a decrease for all other flags.

Notably, Greek parent companies represent 25.2% of the world tanker fleet and 16.2% of the ore and bulk fleet. Overall, the Greek owned fleet comprises 7.6% of the worlds ships, 13.7% of gt and 16.2% of dwt.

Average age of the Greek-controlled fleet in ship terms increased slightly but, nevertheless, continues to be 2.9 years below the world average age standing at 10.3 years. It is 8.7 years in terms of gt and 8.6 years in dwt terms.

When it comes to classification, LR's Greek fleet comprises 834 ships (856 ships in 2016); ABS: 768 ships (779 in 2016); ClassNK: 744 ships (732 in 2016); BV: 688 ships (681 in 2016); DNV GL: 668 ships, down from 702 ships in 2016 and RINA 191 ships, a gain over the year of 26 ships. When it comes to the Greek flag fleet, LR has 223 ships (261 in 2016); ABS 207 ships (211 in 2016); DNV GL 117 ships (130 in 2016); RINA 80 ships (78 in 2016); BV 66 ships, (77 in 2016) and ClassNK 20 ships, down five from a year ago.
An ambitious plan to pull Berkeleys burgeoning homeless population off the streets, first into sheltering mini-villages and then into permanent housing, got a big rollout by the citys mayor Thursday  but one big question loomed.

How will the city pay for it, especially when President Trump and the Republican Congress are trying to cut funding to social welfare ventures all over the country?

Were going to look at everything we can, from foundations, private donations and nonprofits to ballot-box funding, Mayor Jesse Arreguin said at a press briefing on the Pathways Project, which he crafted with City Councilwoman Sophie Hahn. This is a growing humanitarian crisis, and I think the people want their government to take strong action.

For now, the costs are penciled in only as significant, and what Arreguin and Hahn have in mind before the plan goes to the City Council on April 4 is a lot of community discussion  and fishing around for buy-in from potential funders. The money required would probably crest into the millions, considering one element of it alone, a Navigation Center-style shelter, cost San Francisco $2 million to start up in 2015.

This is a unique time in the crisis to capture the goodwill of the people, Hahn said. Were a small town with a big voice and a big heart, and we cant live with the status quo. Its not acceptable for anyone. Its time to act.

With tent cities sprouting in Berkeleys empty lots and freeway exchanges in the same alarming, high-profile way they have in Oakland and San Francisco, homelessness is being called Berkeleys number one problem by the mayor and other leaders.

The last published street count in Berkeley, conducted in 2015, tallied 834 homeless people, up 23 percent over the previous count taken in 2009. Numbers from a January count are expected this summer  but regardless of that tally, which most expect to be higher than 2015s, most city officials estimate there are as many as 1,200 people living outside now. The city has 135 shelter beds.

Key elements of the Pathways Project are drawn from widely praised techniques conceived in San Francisco.

The first of those is the creation of a navigation center, which Arreguin and Hahn are calling a STAIR Center. Its basically a homeless shelter, but with services aimed at quickly housing people or reuniting them with family, and with so few restrictions that campers can bring in pets, partners and all their belongings. Also on site would be meals, counseling, storage, security, bathrooms and more  everything needed to help people stay stable for a couple of months while they are routed into a better situation.

Encouragingly for Berkeley, the $2 million startup funds for San Franciscos version were donated, and Berkeleys probably would be cheaper because it is conceived with the idea of using sturdy tents instead of all hard-walled structures, as in San Francisco. Arreguin said he would like the center up and running within six months, though he said the timeline for the entire project will have to be fleshed out by city planners.

The other technique lifted from San Francisco would be an outreach team to relocate tent campers into housing or shelter, taking several weeks with each camp. Like San Franciscos Encampment Resolution Team, Berkeleys crew would bring in portable toilets, trash cans and offers of everything from drug rehabilitation to bus rides home as they clear out each colony. They would then work with police and city officials to make sure another camp doesnt regenerate in the same spot.

One of the most innovative elements of the plan is the intention to create a mini-village called a Bridge Living Community, based on tiny home models being pioneered in a few cities around the country  including Santa Rosa. It would consist of sturdy tents grouped together, with counselors on site, to function as transitional homes while people take as many as four months to settle into more permanent solutions. No other Bay Area community has tried using tents in this fashion, or used so many tiny home structures.

The last elements of the Pathways Project are The 1,000 Person Plan, aimed at preventing people from becoming homeless and creating or identifying permanent housing, and a Community Engagement program to enlist the public to volunteer labor, material and funds.

Under the current president and national administration, it is unlikely that the needs of the homeless will be meaningfully addressed, Arreguin and Hahn wrote in their plan. We further acknowledge that even with Berkeleys best efforts, through adoption and implementation of The Pathways Project, we are unlikely to fully resolve homelessness in our community.

Despite these challenges, we believe it is a moral imperative for our community to do everything in our power to work towards resolving this crisis.

Said Hahn on Thursday: We have to be realistic. This is a very big undertaking for a city this size. Berkeleys population is 117,000.

Sally Hindman, a longtime homeless advocate who runs Youth Spirit Artworks for disadvantaged kids, said the plan holds a lot of promise. She and other advocates were consulted in its creation, and while she finds the souped-up shelter and tiny-home plans encouraging, she said she remains wary of the projects intention to enforce anti-camping laws once a tent city has been cleared.

We dont want more anti-homeless laws being passed here, because its clear that just sweeping the camps and putting up fencing not only doesnt work, its stupid, said Hindman, who also helps oversee the Street Spirit homelessness newspaper. But that having been said, there need to be multiple approaches to these problems on our streets, and Jesses team is starting to get at that.

Theyre not there yet, but theres been a focused approach to creating this plan that involves a lot of listening, and that is very good.

Many homeless campers said they also liked some elements of the project. But cynicism ran thick, born of being chased nearly weekly from one camp site to another by street cleaners and police.

If they get a good site for this village theyre talking about and let us proceed in a rational manner, it could be fine, said Brett Schnaper, 55, who sleeps in Berkeleys biggest tent city, 35 people who call their Adeline Street camp the Snubbed by the Hub Poor Peoples Tour. The Hub is the citys referral system for homeless services.

The problem is if they want to do something heavy-handed, Im not interested, he said. And Im afraid thats what it will be. Schnaper said his camp has had to move 17 times since September.

At the western foot of University Avenue, Seabreeze food stand cashier Maly Choeun said she was eager for any plan that could end the procession of tent cities that have popped up across the street for years. The current encampment is a dirt-lot bike-repair operation.

There is always a camp over there, always, and sometimes theyre good, sometimes theyre not, she said. Theres no trouble so far with this current group, but sometimes the people camping there have stolen food. I feel sorry for them, but I dont need the trouble.

I dont know what the solution is. I just know somebody has to find one.

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @KevinChron
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Inside Stanfords virtual reality lab, Juan Parra of San Francisco suddenly found himself transformed into a African American woman engaged a racially motivated confrontation with a taller, agitated white man.

Parra felt instant empathy for his virtual character, even though he knew she wasnt real.

I felt that I needed to react, he said. I cant say it was anger, but I couldnt just stand still.

Parra was one of a dozen online Stanford Graduate School of Business students who, on Thursday, visited the universitys Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which since 2003 has conducted academic research on the psychological and behavioral effects of virtual reality.

Tobin Asher, the Stanford labs manager, said the interdisciplinary research includes many departments, such as medicine and education, and focuses on how people react while in a virtual reality experience and whether they carry that experience with them once they return to reality.

Stanfords lab started more than a decade before the current wave of VR headsets and software brought the technology into the average consumers home for the first time.

This week, UC Berkeley received a large corporate donation that will allow the university to build its first VR research lab and classroom by this fall to help inspire students to join the ranks of the nascent VR industry.

Whenever you have an emerging market, one of the bottlenecks is the (available) workforce, said Allen Yang, executive director of UC Berkeleys Center for Augmented Cognition. You need to have a new generation that can master the new technologies. Its not enough to have genius co-founders or generous VCs. What we want to bring is more people into this market.

There are numerous academic institutions around the world studying virtual and augmented reality. For example, Columbias Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab is known for designing techniques to improve tasks such as surgery, maintenance, assembly and indoor and outdoor navigation, said lab director Steven Feiner, the labs director.

But Stanford's lab has done some of the most important work on understanding how people conceive of themselves and others when inhabiting a virtual environment, Feiner said in an email. This is fascinating work.

In addition to racial discrimination, the lab can also simulate age discrimination and is experimenting with adding a sense of smell to the virtual experience.

Weve made people color blind in VR, weve turned people into cows in VR, Asher said. We can do a lot of different things, and this is all about gaining a new perspective.

For example, in one demonstration, the participant cuts down trees with a chain saw and clear-cuts a forest. Researchers found that about 20 percent of people who did the deforestation exercise went on to reduce their use of paper in real life, Asher said.

We can see how powerful having an actual experience can be, versus just them watching something passively or reading about it, he told the business students.

In a program showing the effects of climate change, Khash Kiani picked up and cataloged sea snails on a healthy underwater reef, then moved to another section devastated by ocean acidification and found the sea snails were badly corroded and their population almost gone.

It was a very effective way of making people feel the impact, Kiani said.

The labs main room has a system of low-frequency speakers below a floor of airplane-grade steel that can replicate the feel of rumbling motion beneath a subjects feet. However, some of the original motion tracking and headset equipment that cost $140,000 is now replaced by an $800 HTC Vive headset and handheld tracking and haptic-feedback controllers.

The university has released the ocean experience to the public for free. Were not in this as a money-making thing, Asher said. What this is really about is learning about things.

The UC Berkeley Immerex Virtual Realty Lab, to be housed in the College of Engineering, will have a similar philosophy.

Funded by an undisclosed amount of money donated by Santa Clara virtual reality startup Immerex, the lab will build on work started by a student-run VR club and will tie into the universitys Center for Augmented Cognition, which opened last year to support research by faculty and graduate students.

Yang, a founding faculty adviser for the club, the cognition centers executive director and a part-time chief scientist for Immerex, said the reality labs higher goal is to prepare todays students for future careers in the virtual and augmented reality industries.

That includes a curriculum that will involve students and faculty from the departments of engineering, architecture, journalism, psychology and performing arts.

If we want to make Berkeley the center of innovation in the AR and VR space, we really have to foster a community rather do it project by project, he said.

Yang said the Berkeley VR lab isnt an attempt compete with Stanford the way the two university battle in sports.

That would be trivializing the tremendous challenges that we are facing, he said. I see a much larger opportunity for collaboration, not just between the universities, but between the universities and the industry.

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny
As the UC regents unanimously approved Carol Christ on Thursday as the first female chancellor in UC Berkeleys 149-year history, they didnt merely applaud the 72-year-old scholar.

They gave her a standing ovation.

We are very lucky, Chairwoman Monica Lozano said, turning to face Christ after the regents voted in San Francisco. We are absolutely certain that you are the right leader for UC Berkeley at a time like this.

Christ will take the helm of the renowned public university on July 1.

For UC Berkeley, its been a time of deep financial problems overshadowed, at times, by public criticism for its apparent tolerance of sexual harassment by high-profile administrators and professors. Morale problems have accompanied the difficulties.

Berkeley is a troubled campus in terms of people learning to get along with each other, Regent Dick Blum told his colleagues before the vote. We needed someone from inside the place to lead it.

Christs understanding of UC Berkeleys culture, her experience as a tireless champion of gender equality and diversity and her habit of making things better all were considerations for UC President Janet Napolitano, who chose Christ from five nominees culled from 500. She builds strong relationships, and trust, with diverse groups and diverse individuals, and then forms consensus and finds solutions, Napolitano told the regents.

Even faculty who freely criticize campus administrators expressed approval. News of Christs appointment prompted a flurry of emails among professors that included love poems and verses from Handel.

Students also applauded her accessibility.

A scholar of Victorian literature, Christ joined UC Berkeley in 1970 as an assistant professor. She has served as chair of the English department, dean of humanities, provost, dean of letters and science, and in 1994, as executive vice chancellor before returning to teaching in 2000. She left the campus in 2002 to become president of the private Smith College in Massachusetts, and returned in 2015 to head the Center for Studies in Higher Education.

Meanwhile, UC Berkeleys Chancellor Nicholas Dirks revealed in February 2016 that the campus faced a $150 million deficit. He said departments should make cuts, and that he would eliminate 500 staff jobs over two years. In May, he asked Christ to return to her jobs as provost and executive vice chancellor  second-in-command to the chancellor  in charge of campus finances.

Asked Wednesday about the difference between running a private college and a large public university, Christ cited a key difference in fiscal oversight: At Smith, attentive trustees require the campus president to update them on finances four times a year; UC campuses have no such individualized structure. She said that a previous chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, proposed such a structure, but it went nowhere.

To address the budget crisis, We must reimagine our financial model, Christ told the regents, adding: This is a difficult historical moment for our campus  one more difficult, I believe, than any since the 1960s.

She said she intends to diversify the revenue stream at UC Berkeley with more fundraising. And instead of focusing almost entirely on elevating the campus profile, as some of her predecessors have done, Christ said she believes Berkeley is as much about the community-college transfer student from Modesto or Fremont ... as it is about its Nobel Prize winners.

A top priority will be addressing the campus critical shortage of student housing, she said.

Christ will earn the same $531,939 base salary that Dirks received and will live in a university-owned house.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
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A 46-year-old man was arrested Friday after making a false bomb threat at Civic Center BART that stopped trains and caused major delays across the transit system, officials said.

Don John Stevens was arrested on suspicion of making a false bomb threat and interfering with railroad operations, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman.

A witness told a BART station agent that a man later identified as Stevens entered the station with an object and said he had planted two bombs inside the station, officials said. He reportedly told the witness everybody should get out, then quickly walked away.

Civic Center station shut down around 9:30 a.m. for about an hour because of the report, causing delays in both directions across the BART system as trains were unable to run through the station, officials said. The investigation also shut down Muni light rail service at Civic Center.

BART police officers had cleared the area on Market Street between Seventh and Eighth streets of pedestrians with assistance from San Francisco Police Department, and swept the station with explosive detection police dogs.

Service was restored at 10:26 a.m. after police combed the station and did not find any suspicious devices, said BART Lt. Randy Gregson.

San Francisco police officers later detained a suspect near the station who matched the witnesses descriptions. The initial witness and another person at the station both positively identified Stevens as the suspect, officials said.

On behalf of our riders and everyone at BART, wed like to thank the witness who showed the initiative to report this, BART spokesman Jim Allison said in a statement. BART has detailed safety and security information on its website that may assist potential witnesses.

Stevens was booked into San Francisco County jail shortly after noon, where he was being held on $10,000 bail.

Sarah Ravani and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ SarRavani, @JennaJourno
Theres something funky about how the Oakland City Council  and Councilwoman Desley Brooks, in particular  has handled the citys pot-business permit system.

It doesnt smell right.

There has been delay after delay after delay in the establishment of a solid permitting system that will allow more than 100 marijuana businesses in Oakland to emerge from the shadows, go legit and pay taxes to the city.

Each and every time, its been Brooks who has derailed the process.

Why?

Whats her motive?

She insists its about equity, reparations for people of color disproportionately affected by marijuana arrests and convictions.

I agree something needs to be done so black and brown people arent excluded from the multibillion-dollar industry. And you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Oakland who would argue that this isnt a noble and worthy cause.

But Brooks hasnt explained how black and brown people will actually benefit, long term, from her plan. (Id like to ask her many questions, but she doesnt return my calls.)

Instead, she has managed to toss up roadblocks to the citys permitting system  and her colleagues on the council have allowed her to do it.

Why isnt anybody willing to stand up to Brooks?

In May, the council unanimously supported Brooks plan to set aside half the citys pot permits for people who were either jailed on marijuana convictions in Oakland within the past 10 years or who had lived for at least two years in a designated East Oakland neighborhood with high marijuana arrests in 2013.

Because a general pot permit could be issued only for every equity permit, a lot of nonequity businesses would be stuck waiting in line.

Only after the council approved the plan did some members begin having second thoughts.

In September, Brooks, along with council members Reid and Noel Gallo, proposed an amendment that required every cannabis business to fork over 25 percent of its profits and at least one seat on its board of directors to the city. In return for a permit, the city would set aside a third of the revenue it collected to three community job-training programs.

In late October, Brooks requested that the citys Department of Race and Equity conduct a thorough analysis of the laws the council passed in May, a report she knew could take months to prepare. It was released in March.

In November, a plan that would force large-scale businesses to pay back taxes, plus interest, and $10,000-a-day fines for every day they have operated was actually floated.

The latest roadblock is a residency requirement. This one  slipped in at the last minute  was approved unanimously by the council last week, along with other changes to the pot-permit ordinance. It means applicants for either an equity or general permit will have to prove they live in Oakland  and have lived in the city for the past three years.

That puts businesses like Dark Heart Nursery, which produces premium clones, in a pinch. Dark Heart, which is run out of an East Oakland warehouse by a San Leandro resident, has been operating for more than a decade. It has 60 employees and has paid millions in taxes to the city, but now Dark Heart might have to move.

Oakland is considered a cultural hub for cannabis because of the work put in by businesses like Dark Heart  businesses that, as of now, arent ensured a permit. And that stinks.

The 1-to-1 ratio will end once an equity-assistance program, funded by cannabis tax revenue, reaches $3.4 million. And though the qualifying equity neighborhoods have been expanded, applicants are now required to have lived in one of the neighborhoods for 10 of the past 20 years. Also: The applicants current income must be below 80 percent of the citys average median income, another wrinkle to an already obscure profile.

Im having trouble buying that Brooks is doing all of this for selfless reasons.

Because right now, it seems that the only thing she has accomplished is to stall the permitting process and discourage existing businesses from staying in Oakland.

And why would she want to do that?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr
Geert Wilders may sound like the name that theyd give to a villain in a science fiction movie, but he is also probably the most important international political figure that you never heard of until last week.

Wilders, the leader of an anti-Muslim political party in the Netherlands, finished a distant second in Wednesdays Dutch national elections, but not before dragging the campaign dialogue in that historically liberal country into the realm of cultural intolerance, religious prejudice and xenophobia.

Wilders defeat caused a collective exhale among political establishment types from Amsterdam to Washington, who had feared that the Brexit vote in Great Britain and Donald Trumps election here in the U.S. would trigger far-right victories throughout Europe this year. Upcoming elections in France, Germany, and possibly Italy, present similarly fervent populist and nationalist challenges to the political mainstream in those countries. A victory for an ultra-conservative candidate in the Netherlands could have provided tremendous momentum for like-minded hopefuls across the continent.

All of which should serve as a reminder to those of us on this side of the Atlantic that our escalating debate over the Trump administrations approach to immigration and border policy is far from a uniquely American phenomenon.

Throughout the West, questions of national and cultural identity, tolerance and diversity are being raised by working-class voters who believe that newcomers to their communities are forcing a shrinking economic pie to be divided into smaller and smaller portions. For several decades, political traditionalists like myself have promoted globalism as an economic and cultural cure-all for societys challenges. More recently, weve learned that not everyone is as sophisticated  or as well insulated  as we are.

On the same day that Dutch voters were casting their ballots, this same fight was being waged on multiple fronts in this country as well. Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked Trumps revised travel ban on refugees from parts of the Muslim world. In Sacramento, the state Legislature continued to wrestle with a so-called sanctuary state proposal, which would prohibit local law enforcement agencies from using their resources to enforce federal immigration law. And in Los Angeles San Fernando Valley, a man whose fiancee was killed by an undocumented immigrant in an automobile accident told a national television audience about a condolence call that he had received from President Trump.

I have written previously about the economic, political and moral need for immigration reform. But the increasingly heated debate on this topic has made it clear that reform opponents are unlikely to be persuaded by a strategy that relies on sermonizing, insults and condescension. Theres no question that some of those who support crackdowns on undocumented immigration are motivated not by economic concerns but by sheer bigotry. (Special thanks to Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, for his ongoing cooperation in proving this point.) But the vast majority of those who oppose immigration reform  and expanded free trade, for that matter  are not hateful or angry. They are frightened.

For those Americans who fear globalization, the most convenient scapegoats to blame for their economic anxieties are those who come here from other countries seeking better lives for themselves and their families. There is ample evidence that the overall economic benefits of immigration and trade far outweigh the downside, but thats not an easy message to sell to a laid-off factory worker who is feeling the full brunt of those disadvantages. The broader economic growth statistics and rising stock market will be of small consolation to him as he tries to figure out where a high school education will take him in a post-industrial economy.

The challenge of explaining to the economically dispossessed that the threat to their jobs comes not from immigration and trade but from advances in technology is a considerable one, made even more difficult by the likelihood that the necessary audience is more likely than not to own a smartphone that provides a steady stream of contradictory information. But it has to be done. Otherwise, the most unacceptable explanations become the most widely accepted ones.

If the voters who support Trumps immigration crackdown are simply castigated for their intolerance, they will have little reason to reconsider their thinking. The much more difficult and time-consuming alternative, helping them understand that there are better ways to provide for their own economic futures than denying opportunities to others, will also be a more productive one.

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.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

A budget, according to political axiom, is a statement of values, and President Trumps first spending plan is more of a statement than most. Bearing the blustery title America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, its even lighter on fiscal detail, heavier on political rhetoric and freer of practical aspiration than its forebears. But it states its values clearly: war over diplomacy, border fortification over virtually everything else and paranoid style over substance.

As with Trump himself, what the budget doesnt value makes for a far longer list than what it does. The State Department and Environmental Protection Agency would both lose more than a quarter of their budgets. The departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, the Interior, Transportation, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce would all sustain cuts ranging from 12 to 21 percent.
President Trumps effort to impose travel restrictions on six Muslim-majority nations has bumped up against devastating evidence about his ultimate intentions. The star witness: Trump himself.

Indeed, two federal judges who ordered a halt to his latest proposed travel ban this week each cited Trumps campaign rhetoric to surmise that the motivation may be to target people on the basis of their religious faith. In December 2015, just after the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Trump had called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S. until our countrys representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
Somewhere along the line it became fashionable to say that San Franciscos nightlife is dead.

Media outlets worldwide ran think pieces about our famously rebellious city becoming the height of uncool because of the tech invasion. It became popular to talk about San Francisco with a you missed it schadenfreude, the way hipsters talk about bands that have sold out.

Frankly, thats all nonsense.

While the displacement crisis is real and urgent, and should be at the center of our efforts to preserve San Franciscos nightlife  cynicism is boring and declaring an entire city over is lazy.

We are a city that an earthquake literally burned to the ground and eight years later hosted a Worlds Fair just to show off our rebuild. Our 170-year-old brand of irreverent, multicultural and political art is not so easily killed  and let me assure you San Francisco nightlife is putting up a fight. New efforts like the Legacy Business Registry, the Comptons Transgender Cultural District and The Stud becoming the countrys first co-op nightclub are examples of our grit and innovation.

But the effort that could revive our embattled arts and music scene overnight, and even trigger a nightlife renaissance, is the LOCAL Act, endorsed by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. Starting where former state senator, Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, left off, Wieners Senate Bill 384 will allow California cities the option to extend last call to 4 a.m. California is a huge state  bigger than many European countries  with the sixth-largest economy in the world. A blanket law that forces San Francisco County to have the same liquor laws as Yolo County is just bad government.

It should be a no-brainer for San Francisco to allow carefully chosen neighborhoods and bars to remain open past 2 a.m. Many venues make almost 85 percent of their revenue between 11:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. Extending last call by just two hours could almost double the gross income of these venues, allowing them to shoulder the citys higher rents.

Struggling venues would find themselves in the black again  suddenly able to hire more bartenders, DJs, musicians, drag queens, performers and the support staff who rely on them. And legacy venues such as the Stud and Oasis, which act as stewards of San Francisco culture, would be secured for generations to come.

And its not just the direct employees of bars and venues who are impacted. The nightlife and tourism economy includes the taxi drivers, the restaurant employees, the workers at hotels, boutiques and convention centers, all of whom are hurt by a nighttime economy that shuts down hours before the big-city norm.

Of Americas world-class cities like New York, Chicago, Miami and New Orleans, only San Francisco and Los Angeles close their bars by 2 a.m. Californias outdated, Prohibition-era-based liquor laws are costing San Franciscos tourism-based economy hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

If were going to keep our status as a city built on rock n roll, then were going to have to respond to this crisis by thinking big. If you support music, culture and nightlife, then you should support Wieners LOCAL Act.

Nate Allbee created and ran the campaign for the Legacy Business Registry and is a founding member of the Stud Collective and the Comptons District Coalition. Heklina is an internationally recognized drag performer, nightlife promoter and LGBT activist, and is a founding owner of SoMa performance venue Oasis.
Theres a little part of Yolo County thats home to one of Californias most overlooked wine regions.

Established as an American Viticultural Area in 1985, Clarksburg is marked by its location along the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which pulls in ocean breezes and creates a cool maritime climate. Fertile, low-draining soils allow the little wine region to produce 45,000 tons of grapes each year. Here the heritage grapes are the crisp Chenin Blanc and the bold, chewy Petite Sirah  varieties that produce excellent stand-alone wines, but also excel as blending varietals.

In fact, 90 percent of the grapes grown in Clarksburg are sold outside the county, predominantly to neighboring Napa Valley. But youd never know it. A little bit of fresh, acidic Clarksburg Chenin or brawny Petite Sirah can round out a Napa Valley blend  and as long as Clarksburg fruit makes up less than 25 percent of the final wine, the winery can still put Napa Valley on the label.

Despite that 90 percent figure, there has been a recent increase in the number of vintners who want to keep more Clarksburg fruit in Clarksburg. Rather than exporting their high-quality wine grapes, theyre taking ownership of the full product, from grape to glass.

The Old Sugar Mill, a 1930s beet processing facility, helped Clarksburg gain steam when it opened in 2005 as a multivendor tasting room and custom-crush site. Today, it houses 14 individual wineries. Visitors can easily spend a whole day winery hopping without ever leaving the building.

But venture outside the Mill, and youre guaranteed to find a few of Yolos treasures.

Theres a sense of solitude along the craggy farm roads lined with vines, altogether more rustic than what youd find in Napa or Sonoma. There are very few buildings, just a light smattering of modest homes and barns. One starts to wonder, where are all the wineries?

To find them, I took to the single-lane back roads that follow the Sacramento River to discover what Clarksburgs winemakers are creating with their heritage grapes.

Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle

Youre almost there! reads Julie Russells sandwich board signs, sporting an attachment of Mylar balloons. She staggers them along South River Road  the main road that leads tourists in and out of Clarksburg  urging drivers to make the detour to her Julietta Winery.

Julie and her husband, Craig, are among the newest kids on the Clarksburg block, having officially opened their winery 2 years ago. Craig, a Napa County native, grew up in a family of vintners, but followed a different career path, establishing his own general contracting business. It was Craigs mother, Beverly, who encouraged the couple to transform the familys Clarksburg property  an unplanted 12-acre lot with an old barn used for storage  into a winery. To hear the couple tell the story, this was more than a gentle suggestion:  She was always saying, You have to get into grapes, you have to get into grapes, says Julie.

Using Craigs connections in Napa, the Russells started buying fruit from a few trusted grape growers and experimented with a winemaking side business. We figured it was something we could pursue after we retire, says Julie.

But the couples side business blossomed, so they transformed the barn into a tasting room and built a winery next door.

Julie, with her personal preference for Napa Cabernets and cool-climate Syrahs, will continue to source grapes from various California regions, in Clarksburg and beyond. However, her first estate vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon, from the modest vines circling the parking lot, is now aging in barrels. Shes looking forward to planting more varieties  including Zinfandel, Tannat, Cabernet Franc and Tempranillo  on the property this year, in hopes of producing more estate wines.

Clarksburgs small-town quaintness extends to the Julietta tasting room, where the walls are decorated with works by local artists. Lounge chairs and sofas invite lingering. Outside, visitors can enjoy the bocce ball court, putting green and picnic area  and, of course, the bucolic serenity of the Clarksburg countryside. The Russells are often behind the bar, greeting regulars by name and welcoming those just passing through as if they, too, are part of the Clarksburg community.

During my visit, Julie poured a full lineup of her current releases, which range from the crisp Clarksburg Chenin Blanc to the hearty Napa Cabs. However, she seemed to take personal pride in the 2013 Beverlys Legacy, a melting-pot blend of Zinfandel, Syrah, Tempranillo, Grenache, Mouvedre and Petite Sirah named in honor of the woman who got the Russells into grapes.

Loyal Miner is another Clarksburg vintner with winemaking in his blood. His great-grandfather, Loyal Aubrey Miner, was a bootleg winemaker in the 1920s. While majoring in history at UC Davis, known for its viticulture and enology program, he took a wine appreciation class. I remember thinking I really like this. Ever since then, Ive wanted to make wine. Now a successful partner in his own law firm, he finally made his dream a reality when he opened Miners Leap in 2013.

This is truly a boutique operation. Miner makes more than 13 single-varietal wines along with several blends in lots that never exceed 100 cases. Limited production allows him to experiment with grapes from other wine regions more frequently. This means a taste of Miners Leap will be different on each visit.

The outdoor tasting room was a bit chilly for Miner and me during my windy winter visit. Luckily, he stocks a box with wool blankets for just such an occasion. Though the red wines also seemed to be affected by the cold atmosphere (the Zinfandel and Petit Verdot refused to open up), his Lodi Albarino was perfectly enjoyable  the proper balance of crisp acidity, a creamy mouthfeel and beautiful floral aromatics.

Miner loves to call in and entertain the crowd. The century-old barn that sits on the property now houses the indoor-outdoor tasting room. Its eclectically decorated with art from Cabo San Lucas (Miners home away from home) and Hotel California memorabilia (Obviously, I like the Eagles, he says). The tasting room patio overlooks an outdoor area that calls to mind a beach resort, complete with palm trees, lounge chairs, and a small stage for local bands, wedding ceremonies and, once a month, church services.

The newest addition is an even larger event space just a few yards from the tasting room, able to accommodate up to 500 guests  perfect for the summer concert series Miner has in the works. This summer, Miners Leap will also plant its first estate vineyard plantings, which will include Chenin Blanc and Petite Sirah.

The Bogle family  the major winemaker in town  has been farming this slice of Yolo County since the mid-1800s, primarily as a seed-corn grower. It wasnt until the 1960s that Warren Bogle, looking for a crop he wouldnt need to sow each year, planted his initial 20 acres of vines  10 acres of Chenin Blanc and 10 acres of Petite Sirah.

He was the first to plant (grapes) in Clarksburg, says granddaughter Jody Bogle, director of public relations for Bogle Vineyards.

Today, Bogle Vineyards farms more than 1,600 acres of grapes with estate-owned vineyards throughout California. Although this is by no means a small operation, its a family business through and through. Grandchildren Ryan, Jody and Warren Bogle have their hands in all aspects of the business, from tasting room hospitality to vineyard management.

We are farmers at heart, says Bogle. We feel very blessed to get to do what we love every day.

That sense of family extends to the visitors experience. While I tasted a few current releases and futures (the estate was having a barrel-sampling event that day), my host, CC, toured me through the quaint tasting room. He pointed out photos of the Bogles dating back to those pre-grape-farming days and a topographic map illustrating the Clarksburg terroir.

The Bogle pioneering spirit seems to endure to this day with the few family-run wineries recently planting their roots in Clarksburg soil. Though small and virtually unrecognized by the dominant wine regions, Clarksburgs vintners see the potential of their surroundings. Their hard work in the vineyards and hospitality in the tasting room truly make Clarksburg a worthwhile wine-tasting travel destination.

Stacy Briscoe is editor and producer of The San Francisco Chronicles forthcoming wine web site, The Press. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com

A taste of Clarksburg

The Clarksburg AVA touches Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties . Yolo Clarksburg is home to just a handful of stand-alone wineries, in addition to the Old Sugar Mill. While each celebrates this little piece of California terroir, these are a few of my favorites . Bonus point  no reservations required.

Julietta Winery

Wine to try: 2015 Chenin Blanc ($24). Visiting Clarksburg means visiting one of the few California regions where Chenin Blanc still thrives. Julietta Winerys interpretation is a perfect balance of crisp acidity, subtle fruit aromas of apples and pears, and an almost creamy mouthfeel that gives the wine an enjoyable weight and body.

51221 Clarksburg Road, Clarksburg; (916) 744-9090. www.juliettawinery.com. Tasting room hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Fee: $5.

Miners Leap

Wine to try: 2014 Pinot Noir ($26). Miner will be proud to tell you that Clarksburg is a successful producer of Pinot Noir. The constant delta breeze keeps these thin-skinned grapes cool even in the summer sun. Those most familiar with Napa and Sonomas take on the varietal shouldnt miss out on Clarksburgs expression.

5420 South River Road, Clarksburg;(916) 882-1000. www.minersleap.com. Tasting room hours: Noon-6 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Fee: $5.

Bogle Winery

Wine to try: 2014 Reserve Petite Sirah ($24). Being one of the first grapes planted by the Bogles, Petite Sirah is considered Clarksburgs heritage grape. The 2014 vintage, sourced from the Bogles Sutter Ranch, is one that will take your palate on a journey, first bursting with jammy dark fruits, then toward a savory herbaceous mid-palate, finishing with plush tannins and lingering hints of cacao.

37783 County Road 144, Clarksburg; (916) 744-1092. www.boglewinery.com. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Free.

Old Sugar Mill

Wines to try: Fourteen wineries have tasting rooms in the 1935 beet processing facility.

35265 Willow Ave., Clarksburg, (916) 744-1615, www.oldsugarmill.com . Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily (tasting room hours vary).

Travel tip

There arent a lot of restaurants in this part of Yolo County, so be sure to pack a picnic and enjoy the beautiful setting in any one of these wineries. If youre in the mood for some local flavor, Shortys La Amistad Cafe, on the corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Clarksburg Road, is a long-standing community favorite for Mexican food.

36046 Jefferson Blvd., Clarksburg; (916) 744-1346. Open 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. daily.
Water began gushing down the mangled spillway at Oroville Dam on Friday in what state officials said was the start of a weeklong test to see if the sheared-off chute and the carved-out hillside around it could sustain even more pummeling as flows into Lake Oroville increase during the spring snowmelt.

The floodgates opened at 11 a.m., after the spillway was dry for nearly three weeks, and within an hour the flow had reached a brisk 50,000 cubic feet per second. By the early afternoon, a cascade was flying off the busted concrete spillway, racing through a yawning crater dug out of the earth last month, and joining the Feather River below.

Bill Croyle, acting director of the California Department of Water Resources, which runs the dam, said water will continue to spill for five or six days. The move was necessary, he said, because the elevation of Lake Oroville  the states second biggest reservoir  had risen about a foot in the previous 24 hours, to 864 feet above sea level.

State officials are trying to get the level to 835 to 838 feet above sea level and to keep the lake well below 901 feet  the point at which water would begin pouring over the dams emergency spillway, which is also compromised.

About 16,000 cubic feet per second was flowing into the lake Friday from the surrounding mountains, which are piled high with snow after a series of winter blizzards. Reservoir levels are expected to rise more next week as another storm rolls through.

At the moment, I need to get some water out of this reservoir, so as long as we dont see catastrophic loss of a lot of concrete then were going to need to roll through this, Croyle said. If we need to deploy another corrective measure we can do it.

A gaping hole was first detected Feb. 7 on the main spillway of the nations tallest dam, forcing operators to reduce the flow, which at the time was moving at the same rate  about 3.2 million pounds of water a second  as managers ramped it up to on Friday.

Within days of the initial spillway failure, the lake water rose and began pouring over an emergency spillway that had never been used and onto a bare hillside below. The hill eroded quickly, causing the state to warn of a catastrophic collapse and temporarily evacuate nearly 200,000 people downstream.

At that point, dam managers were forced to continue using the main spillway, worsening the damage. The panorama of destruction revealed when the floodgates were finally closed on Feb. 27 was shocking.

Croyle said the current weeklong spill will be the first of up to three lengthy releases before June 1, as snow melts in the mountains and flows into Lake Oroville. The sooner the state can stop using the spillway, the sooner it can start fixing it.

If we have a mild, cool spring and early summer then maybe we can get away with two spills, including the spill today, Croyle said.

The reservoirs Hyatt Power Plant, which had been pumping 12,900 cubic feet per second of water out of the reservoir, was shut off during Fridays procedure. Managers need to make sure the hydroelectric plant will work simultaneously with the spillway.

The releases mean the Feather River below will rise between 10 and 15 feet, officials said, a concern for downstream farmers who saw banks along the river collapse the last time the spillway flows swelled and then subsided.

Croyle said managers will monitor the effect the water has on the damaged hillside near the main spillway, as well as the debris flow into the river and the downstream erosion. He urged anglers, boaters and people who live by the river to be aware that the river will become deeper and swifter.

Meanwhile, engineers and geologists are scrambling to figure out how the crippled chute can possibly be fixed by the end of the year, in time for the next rainy season. Croyle said a team of engineers, geologists and others are working up various potential schemes, even as 170 state employees and 500 contractors work 24 hours a day to strengthen what remains.

Crews have reinforced the main spillway with concrete and bolted it to the ground, and every crack on the chute has been sealed, Croyle said. Meanwhile, tons of concrete and boulders are shoring up the hillside below the emergency spillway, though the state hopes not to use it again.

Through February, the work has cost the state $100 million, or about $4.7 million a day. Although Croyle said the state has mitigated the major concerns, the state will probably have to spend at least twice as much in the coming months.

Drill rigs, concrete mixers and a rock-crushing plant are being mobilized in a staging area at the site, while haul roads are being shored up in preparation for the work ahead, which is expected to begin after repair plans are finalized within the next two weeks, Croyle said.

There are a whole bunch of different options to repair or replace the main spillway, he said. Some of them are really interesting.

Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, said the key over the next three months is for the state to use the spillway as little as possible, with just enough releases to handle the melting snowpack.

The biggest risk to me could be that the operation of the gated spillway would cause continued erosion of rock into the river that would block the hydropower outlets, forcing the power plant to remain shut down and unable to release water, said Lund.

He said officials will have to decide whether to rebuild, modify or shore up the existing spillway  or build a new one parallel to the old one.

If you have eroded everything that can be eroded, then maybe thats your new spillway, he said.
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Big changes are coming to the Ruby Skye nightclub in San Franciscos Union Square, and one of them involves bowling balls.

The spot at 420 Mason St. is scheduled to close within two months and be remodeled into a music hall, restaurant, bar and bowling alley.

I like bowling, explained Nate Valentine, the restaurateur and developer who is taking over the spot.

Ruby Skye, an ornate hall often jammed with hundreds of sweaty young dancers bouncing around to DJ music, and its downstairs neighbor Slide Lounge will be combined into one large venue, expected to open late this year, Valentine said. The new name is expected to be August Hall.

The structure that houses Ruby Skye, called the Native Sons of the Golden West building, is an eight-story, granite-and-brick-faced edifice originally built in the 1890s with Art Nouveau trappings, and was home to the old Stage Door theater.

Valentine said he intends to maintain the buildings heritage while upgrading its facilities and fixtures.

I love this city, and I love this building, he said. We want to preserve its history and bring it into the next phase of its life. Its an iconic venue, and I want that to continue.

At present, the hall is used mostly for electronic dance shows with DJs, with most tickets selling for $10 to $25. The new venue will feature live bands as well, along with occasional comedy shows. Admission prices have not been set.

The new downstairs restaurant will feature upscale dishes like avocado-and-sardine toast for dancers and bowlers to fuel up on, along with spareribs, Bolognese dishes and french fries.

Valentine, who developed the Harper and Rye bar and the Tipsy Pig restaurant in San Francisco, said he became excited when he heard rumblings that Ruby Skye was soon to become available. A spokeswoman for Ruby Skye said the current owner of the site was ready to make a change.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle

staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
San Franciscos top legal officials joined the chief justice of the California Supreme Court in calling for federal immigration agents to refrain from stalking courthouses and arresting people who are in the country illegally.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, District Attorney George Gascon and Public Defender Jeff Adachi released a statement Friday saying such arrests could jeopardize public safety. They were responding to reports of arrests at courthouses in Southern California, Oregon, Arizona and Texas, among other places.

The work of our courts is critical to ensuring public safety and the efficient administration of justice, the statement said. Enforcement policies that drive victims away from the courthouses  whether they be victims of crime or unfair labor practices  undermine the administration of justice.

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement defended the arrests, saying they are undertaken only after investigating officers have exhausted other options.

The agency noted that many people apprehended at courthouses have criminal records and are increasingly not being turned over for deportation by local authorities. In San Francisco, sanctuary city laws prevent such cooperation.

On Thursday, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and said that she was concerned about reports from the states trial courts that federal agents appeared to be stalking unauthorized immigrants to make arrests.

Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our countrys immigration laws, Cantil-Sakauye wrote. I respectfully request that you refrain from this sort of enforcement in California's courthouses.

The pointed statements come as President Trump has called for more extensive immigration enforcement  and as nearly everyone who is undocumented has become a priority for deportation under new policies.

James Schwab, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, noted that it was safer for agents to make arrests inside courthouses because visitors are searched for weapons when they enter. He said decisions on arrests are made on a case-by-case basis, with agents taking into account factors that include a targets criminal history and whether agents have solid leads on the persons whereabouts.

Now that many law enforcement agencies no longer honor (immigration) detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat, he said.

In the Bay Area, officials at the Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, San Francisco and Alameda County superior courts said they were unaware of any such arrests being made recently in their courthouses.

Court officials were supportive of Cantil-Sakauyes letter.

The court shares the chief justices concerns and commend her for taking a strong stand on behalf of all Californians who rely on access to justice in our state courthouses, said Ann Donlan, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Superior Court. The S.F. bench will discuss potential (immigration) enforcement in San Francisco courthouses to determine what policy, if any, to adopt in response to the issue.

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz
Mark Lane and Harlan Place, two bustling, adjacent little alleyways in the heart of downtown San Francisco, will light up Friday, March 17, for an evening of revelry at the St. Patricks Day Block Party, hosted by local pub and restaurant the Irish Bank.

The party, planned for the holiday, will be the pubs encore celebration after similar festivities during the citys St. Patricks Day Parade on Saturday, March 11. But you wont want to miss out on this one  from 2 p.m. through midnight, the Irish Bank promises plenty of grub, booze, live music and a balloon drop. In honor of Irelands patron saint, grab a pint and dance the night away to sets by local acts the Watch and DJ Marc Van Brabant.
It felt like I spent as much time in the car as I did at the table this week.

It took three hours to get to the Restaurant at Meadowood on Tuesday. I also went to Single Thread in Healdsburg, but it wasn't nearly as difficult to get there on the weekend, although that hasn't always been the case.
ORLANDO  Floridas governor has rebuked Orlandos top prosecutor and transferred from her authority a case involving the slaying of a police officer after she announced her opposition to the death penalty.

Signaling he wants the killing of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton to be prosecuted as a capital case, Republican Gov. Rick Scott transferred the first-degree murder case of suspect Markeith Loyd out of the office of State Attorney Aramis Ayala. The case was reassigned to another prosecutor in a nearby district.

Ayalas . But the prosecutor stood firm, saying she concluded after a review that theres no evidence that executing criminals improves public safety.

I have given this issue extensive, painstaking thought and consideration, Ayala said a news conference Thursday. What has become abundantly clear through this process is that while I do have discretion to pursue death sentences, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interests of this community or in the best interests of justice.

Scott immediately asked the prosecutor to recuse herself from the case, but she refused.

Under Florida law, a governor can only suspend an elected official for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, habitual drunkenness, incompetence, or permanent inability to perform official duties. But the law does allow a governor to reassign a particular case for good and sufficient reasons.

Scott issued a statement that Ayala has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case.

Ayala said she would abide by the governors order.

Ayala was elected last fall in a judicial district that has shifted from moderately conservative to liberal over two decades.

No other Florida prosecutor in recent memory has opted out of seeking the death penalty, said Buddy Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association for more than four decades.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said he was extremely upset. He said Loyd should face the death penalty if convicted of killing Clayton and his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon.

Loyd faces two first-degree murder counts and other charges in the deaths of Sade and Clayton.

Mike Schneider is an Associated Press writer.
1 Pipeline challenges: A judge has combined lawsuits filed by four Sioux tribes over the Dakota Access pipeline, streamlining the drawn-out legal battle over the $3.8 billion project to move North Dakota oil to a distribution point in Illinois. The neighboring Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribes teamed up last summer in the main lawsuit against Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that granted pipeline permits at more than 200 water crossings, including the Missouri River. The Yankton Sioux also sued last summer, and the Oglala Sioux filed its own lawsuit last month.

2 Power struggle: North Carolina judges issued partial victories Friday to both Republican legislators and new Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over laws designed to undercut his powers. The judicial panel threw out laws approved two weeks before Cooper took office that limit his authority in carrying out elections and that give civil service job protections to hundreds of former Republican Gov. Pat McCrorys political appointees. But a majority of the three judges also upheld the new law subjecting Coopers Cabinet secretaries to formal confirmation by a majority of the state Senate.
WASHINGTON  President Trump refused to back down Friday after his White House aired an unverified claim that Britains spy agency secretly monitored him during last years campaign at the behest of former President Barack Obama.

Although his aides in private conversations since Thursday night had tried to calm British officials who were livid over the claim, Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.
Former San Francisco immigration attorney Matthew Muller will spend 40 years behind bars for a shocking Vallejo kidnapping that grabbed wide attention but was initially dismissed as a hoax by police.

Sacramento federal Judge Troy Nunley handed down the sentence, which included five years probation, during an emotional hearing Thursday afternoon, in which the victims spoke publicly for the first time since the horrific ordeal began in March 2015.

Mullers two victims in the case, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, each addressed their abductor, speaking with measured words but ultimately breaking into tears as they detailed their ordeal.

I knew this was probably it for me. My life was coming to an end and I made peace with that, Huskins, 31, said of being kidnapped and raped twice by Muller, a Harvard Law School graduate.

Once released, I couldnt fathom the pain that was to come, she added. I felt like a little girl, scared, wanting to hear the voices of my parents saying, Its OK.

Huskins and Quinn, 31, said the trauma they endured was compounded by the suspicions of Vallejo police, who initially did not believe them.

Within an hour of being released, I was a suspect accused of making this up, Huskins said. I lost my job and my health insurance at a time when I most needed care.

Quinn said the pain inflicted on him and Huskins endures, even in their sleep.

How many times do I have to wake up Denise from a nightmare, and how many times does she have to do this to me? he said, reading from a written statement.

At times, he addressed Muller directly.

You strategically destroyed our lives, Quinn said. I cannot and will not ever be the same. My family will not ever be the same.

After the couple spoke, Muller, 39, addressed the court.

Theres nothing I can say, he said from his seat, wearing his orange, Sacramento County jail clothes. Im sick with shame that my actions have brought such devastation. I hope my imprisonment can bring closure to Aaron and Denise and Im prepared for any sentence the court imposes.

Those were the only words he spoke except for briefly answering the judge twice, saying he understood court procedures. He sat upright the entire hearing, blinking rapidly at times with a wide stare, listening intently to every word uttered in court

Muller, who acted as head of Harvard Law Schools Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program in 2008 after spending four years in the Marine Corps, pleaded guilty to the crime last year.

He agreed to cop to the charges in exchange for prosecutors not asking for more than a 40-year sentence.

The courts probation department, though, recommended Muller get life in prison in its presentencing report.

Mullers attack on the Vallejo couple came without warning, although he had apparently been planning the attack for months and had sneaked into Quinns Mare Island home before, authorities said.

Shortly before 2 a.m. on March, 23, 2015, the well-built prowler dressed in all black, slipped into the house where he found the couple asleep in bed.

He bound his victims before playing detailed instructions on a recorded message, all the while taking precautions such as checking their blood pressures and heart rates.

With a cocktail of NyQuil and Valium, Muller drugged Quinn and took off with Huskins, switching cars en route to his hideout that authorities believe was his parents South Lake Tahoe vacation home.

Huskins on Thursday recalled being bound on the floor that day, listening as Muller scrubbed the bathroom floor and bathtub. In her mind, she said she imagined he was cleaning up the remains of other victims.

She was determined to not let her abductor have the satisfaction of seeing her in pain.

If this were my last moment, I would not go out screaming in terror, she said.

Over the next two days, Muller forced his hostage to have sex with him, telling her he was part of an organized group of criminals, while appearing to show compassion for her situation.

In order to survive, Huskins went along with the charade as Muller forced her to kiss him and pretend they were a couple while he raped her.

That will haunt me for the rest of my life, she said to Muller. I know you did that on purpose to leave your mark on the most intimate parts of my life.

As she underwent the horror, police in Vallejo cornered Quinn in an interrogation room at police headquarters, subjecting him to hours of intense questioning, apparently unconvinced by his story.

The next day, The Chronicle received a proof of life statement from Huskins kidnapper.

As teams of searchers  some with cadaver dogs  fanned out around Mare Island looking for Huskins, the woman remarkably turned up safe at her fathers home in Huntington Beach (Orange County), where her kidnapper drove her.

It blew my mind how arrogant he was - how sure he was he wouldnt get caught, Huskins said. Before releasing me, he had the nerve to say he wished we met under different circumstances.

But even as she recuperated in Huntington Beach, police in Vallejo and agents from the FBIs Fairfield branch dismissed the ordeal as bogus. Vallejo police Lt. Kenny Park got up before national television cameras and called the incident an orchestrated event and demanded the couple apologize for what he labeled a hoax.

For several days after, The Chronicle received bizarre and raving letters from Huskins apparent kidnapper, providing details of the crime, while purporting to be part of a band of Oceans Eleven, gentlemen criminals.

Things might have ended there, but less than three months later, on June 5, 2015, Muller broke into a Dublin familys home  a crime that was remarkably similar to the Vallejo home invasion.

But when the husband fought back, Muller ran away, leaving his cell phone behind. Authorities tracked the phone and Muller to the South Lake Tahoe home, where they found evidence linked to the Vallejo kidnapping.

Thursdays sentencing, though, likely isnt the end to the strange saga. Muller could face local charges for crimes against Quinn. Muller is also a suspect in at least three similar attacks in Mountain View and Palo Alto.

The Solano County District Attorneys Office told Quinns attorneys in June that prosecutors would not file any criminal charges in the case until the federal matter was resolved.

Huskins and Quinn, meanwhile, have filed a lawsuit against the city of Vallejo and its police department for defamation of character and constitutional-rights violations.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
Ali Muldrow, candidate for Seat 6 on the Madison School Board, said at a Thursday night forum sponsored by the Cap Times that as a woman of color, she wants to represent those looking for a seat at the table. ... Creating inclusive programming is something I've spent my entire adult life doing.
'Late Night' host Seth Meyers delivered President Donald Trump a healthy plate of criticism Thursday night for presenting a budget plan that would cut funds for Meals on Wheels.

"How dead inside do you have to be to not want old people to get food?" Meyers asked during a one of his "Closer Look" segments that provides an entertaining take on the day's headlines.

"Your heart is so small it makes your tiny hands look like catcher mitts," he added.

Meyers talks about Meals on Wheels near the end of the segment in the video below.

Meals on Wheels consists of 5,000 local nonprofits that organize volunteers to deliver meals to millions of seniors across the country. Many states help fund these programs with money from Community Development Block Grants that the budget blueprint calls to eliminate.

What's more, the network of programs receives about 35 percent of its funding from the federal government through the Older Americans Act, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The budget blue print includes a 17.9 percent cut to the HHS, says Jenny Bertolette, a spokesperson for Meals on Wheels America, a national association supporting the programs across the country with education, training and advocacy.

Meyers went on to point out that Trump was cutting funds to a program his voters rely on.

"Old people voted for you," he said. "Your key demographics were old people and older people. They believed you when you said you care about them. There's nothing more low-life than lying to the elderly."

And then as a photo of First Lady Melania Trump appears overhead, he says, "You should know that. You're 70. Don't you hate it when people lie to you and say things like 'I'll try to make it down next week, it's just that I'm on Kayak and there are no flights.'"
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A doctor feeds a malnourished child at a feeding center run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria, in August 2016.
Lee Nelson, left, and Henry Simon met for the first time 48 years after Simon, a captain, sent Nelson a commendation for the great job he did as a finance clerk.
Wisconsins 45-year-old humanities council could vanish and programs designed to foster creative thinking in schoolchildren could be on the line if President Donald Trumps proposal to eliminate federal funding for the arts and humanities comes to fruition, local officials said Thursday.

Trumps proposed budget, released early Thursday, zeroes out funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a source of funding for Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio, would also be done away with under the Trump plan.

Money from the NEA and NEH finds its way to Wisconsin to help fuel the states arts scene and enrich its cultural life.

Trump is the first president since the endowments were created in 1965 to call for their elimination, noted Dena Wortzel, executive director for the Wisconsin Humanities Council.

Ninety percent of our funding comes from the NEH. If the NEH is eliminated, the Wisconsin Humanities Council will cease to exist, she said.

The Wisconsin Humanities Council received $750,000 from the NEH this year. Much of those funds go toward seed funds for projects across the state, and can leverage often more than three times that amount in local funding, but really provide crucial support to get local projects off the ground, Wortzel said.

Recent programs have ranged from the Wisconsin Veterans Museums Talking Spirits program, where schoolchildren learn about Civil War history with the help of live costumed actors, to a recent collaboration with the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters to showcase a revival of Wisconsin Oneida beadwork.

George Tzougros, executive director of the Wisconsin Arts Board, noted Trumps budget is only the beginning of the process.

Tzougros said to preserve federal arts funding, advocates must remind policymakers that elitism in the arts is a myth, and government funding actually makes the arts more accessible to all.

Were in the creative economy as we speak, he said. So, trying to remain the innovative leader of the world is going to be difficult when you take and really harm arts education, which is one of the places creativity exists.

The Wisconsin Arts Board received $817,600 from the NEA this year, a figure that is matched by the state. About $33,000 of that, or $66,000 with state dollars, goes out to schools, Tzougros said. But even more arts education comes from local arts groups  which are funded in part by the state arts board  and whose outreach efforts can help communities where school arts programs have been cut.

Like Wortzel, Tzougros noted federal grants can serve as a stamp of approval to draw more dollars. Money from the arts board will never be the major portion of anybodys budget, he said. But, as a symbol of having gone through a rigorous selection process, private dollars do flow.

Madison Opera general director Kathryn Smith said in a statement that the NEA support is very important to us, and the agencys block grant to the state helps fund programs such as the companys free Opera in the Park event, which draws some 16,000 people each summer.

Madison Opera also has received $72,500 from the NEA since 2013 to support specific productions. In that same period, Madison Symphony Orchestras Heartstrings program, which takes classical music to communities of people with special needs, has won $70,000 in NEA grants.

Opera for the Young, a program that goes into Madison-area schools, has received $77,000 directly from the NEA since 2013. Reedsburg-based Wormfarm, which created Sauk Countys annual Farm/Art D Tour and Fermentation Fest, has received $210,000 from the NEA since 2013 to launch and maintain its multiday celebration of rural culture.

Malcolm Brett, director of broadcasting and media innovations at UW-Extension, said he is concerned about the proposed elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but is optimistic that constituents will speak up to maintain funding.

UW-Extension and the Educational Communications Board both oversee Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Federal funding amounts to roughly 11 percent of the annual budget for WPR and WPT, which is significant, but there is a great deal of support from within the state for the organizations, according to Brett.

We have supporters across the state, he said. We have very good support from our donor base, we do a lot of local programming and our audiences respond to that. We are also fortunate to have state and university funding and good support from the corporate community.

Other stations across the country would be facing 20, 25 or even 40 percent budgetary losses if the federal funding was removed, Brett said.

In the past, when state budget cuts affected WPT and WPR, additional donations came in to keep the stations running  but only temporarily, he said.

Typically if we get a state budget cut there is an immediate, but temporary, uptick in giving, Brett said. People respond to the clear need, but its not a replacement.

He cited a recent survey done by PBS which concluded that 72 percent (of voters) feel that public television is excellent value for federal funding.

There was no survey cited in support of public radio, but Brett added that listeners are passionate. They listen many, many hours a week. Across Wisconsin almost half a million people listen to WPR a week.

If the budget elimination were to pass, Brett said he believes many stations nationwide would close up shop. But Wisconsins public radio and television operations would not.
Before there was The Book of Mormon or South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone produced Cannibal! The Musical, a 1993 movie that has become a cult classic.

The Overture Center is nearly sold out for its eight May performances of "The Book of Mormon" in Overture Hall, but there are still plenty of tickets left for "Cannibal! The Musical," a musical theater version of the film, playing until Sunday at Overture's smaller Capitol Theater.

And it's the U.S. premiere for "Cannibal!," which in its limited run is doing eight performances in Madison, with five left. After Madison, it goes to Nashville for three shows.

"It was Trey Parker's first film that he created and it's very B-movie style," said Michelle Nash, who plays the lead female role. "The blood and the gore is very amped up and it's campy and funny."

The musical tells the mostly-true story of miner and guide Alferd Packer, who in 1874 set out to prospect for gold in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. It was alleged, but never proven, that Packer killed and ate five of his companions after the group got lost in the wild.

"It's the story of six friends heading up to the mountains. Things kind of go sideways, but above all else, it's a comedy with a hilarious outcome and buckets of laughs," said the musical's director Christopher Bond, who added six songs to the musical that weren't in the film.

The film is one of Trey Parker's early works, from when he was fresh out of college, Bond said.

After Parker became well-known, different theater groups began asking for the rights to adapt the film into a musical, mostly at universities, he said. "And the people who owned the rights would say, 'Yeah, here's the movie script, good luck.' "

But there was never any professional adaptation because it didn't have as many songs as a full feature would need, so, in 2009, Bond started writing more.

At the time, he was directing "Evil Dead The Musical," a Canadian rock show based on the classic horror film series. In that musical, five college students go to an abandoned cabin in the woods where they turn into demons.

In 2014, "Evil Dead" got a good reception in Madison and it made Bond want to come back.

"Evil Dead" had a splatter zone, where in the first five or so rows at the Capitol Theater, audience members got covered in fake blood.

While there's blood in "Cannibal! The Musical," audiences will be safe, Bond and Nash say.

"We try not to dump a bucket of blood on people, but definitely promise laughs and amusing music and an irreverent night of theater," Bond said.

He said the show has a little bit of everything: Singing, dancing, puppets, fights, and special effects. "I think the big thing is that it is not scary. Even though it's called 'Cannibal! The Musical.' It's far from it."

Nash, 26, who plays the reporter determined to tell the story of the cannibal, at the same time trying hard not to fall in love with him, said the musical, like Parker's more famous works, is not afraid to go to the most extreme places imaginable to find humor.

"It can be very crude. It just pushes that envelope," she said. "And certain songs have that pace that 'Book of Mormon' does."

While parts of "Cannibal!" are shocking, with people getting ripped apart, it's done in a B movie-style way, "so you're never actually frightened," she said.

"It's the perfect combination of a funny classic musical theater show with the added element of the blood and the gore," Nash said. "If you're a fan of anything of Trey Parker's, then you will definitely enjoy the production."

In 2015, a version on "Cannibal!" made its debut in Toronto, where a review in the Globe and Mail was less than kind. Headlined, "A not-so-sophisticated barrel of laughs," the article starts out, "Make no bones about it: Cannibal! The Musical is no The Book of Mormon."

It goes on to say that Trey Parker fans who enjoy the more sophomoric side of the oeuvre of Parker and Stone (Parker's South Park co-creator), won't be disappointed by gross-out gags about eating a dead man's buttocks.

Meanwhile, Bond promises that the musical Madison will see is new. He and his collaborators have made changes and have rebuilt the show, he said. And they plan to add cities beyond Madison and Nashville, depending on the audience response.

"Above all else, it's just a funny, hilarious night out," Bond said, "having a great time, and laughing your face off."
Sorry, poor people of America. Republicans are quietly sealing all the exits on the poverty trap.

Its a four-part process, in which officials at all levels of government are taking part:

First, reduce poor womens access to the reproductive services they need to prevent unintended pregnancies, so they have less control over when, and with whom, they have children.

Second, make it harder for any unexpectedly expecting women to have abortions.

Third, make the adoption process more expensive, reducing incentives for other families to adopt the babies resulting from these unplanned pregnancies. (Yes, amazingly, Republicans plan to do this.)

Finally, cut the services these involuntarily growing low-income families rely on to help support and care for their children, and to move up in the world.

Lets take a walk through the policies that constitute this poverty-prolonging policy four-step, shall we?

It begins with House Republicans American Health Care Act, which would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Federal dollars are already barred from being used for abortions; the AHCA would prevent federal funds from being used for any other Planned Parenthood service, too. This is unfortunate, given that Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of contraceptive care for poor women in the country. Some of its patients would be able to find other providers of reliable, effective contraception, but many wouldnt. In more than 100 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only clinic providing publicly supported contraceptive services to poor women, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In its analysis of the health care bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 15 percent of people who live in areas without other clinics or medical practitioners serving low-income populations would lose access to care  leading to more unintended pregnancies.

Now consider that at the state level, Republican officials have been aggressively curbing access to abortion by banning the procedure after 20 weeks, imposing impossible-to-meet regulatory and licensing requirements on providers, and implementing waiting periods. As a result, the women who do get pregnant without planning to will be less likely to terminate their pregnancies, even if they are not interested in having a baby. (Incidentally, Medicaid would pay for many of these births; the CBOs Trumpcare analysis estimated that eliminating Planned Parenthood funding for just a year would leave Medicaid on the hook for several thousand additional births.)

What options do these women have, then?

Pro-life conservatives often urge women seeking abortions to consider adoption instead. But under the House Republicans tax plan, adoptions would get more expensive.

You read that right.

The House leaderships A Better Way blueprint calls for dramatically cutting tax rates, especially for the rich. It partly pays for these cuts by eliminating some credits and deductions. Among those set to go? The adoption tax credit.

Adopting a child can be enormously expensive, running into tens of thousands of dollars. This tax credit was designed to offset some of those costs, up to $13,460 per child, though the credit phases out for higher earners. In 2014, about 74,000 families claimed the credit, costing the government about $355 million, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

For context, the mortgage-interest deduction, which the Republican tax-reform plan would preserve, will cost the federal government about $69 billion this year  about 200 times as much.

I doubt Republicans have anything against adoptive parents; in fact, one of the architects of the House tax plan, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, is himself an adoptive parent (though at a recent speech, he noted that he did not qualify for the adoption tax credit because his family was in the wrong tax bracket). Promoting adoption is just not their priority, pro-life rhetoric to the contrary.

In any case, whatever Republicans intentions, the elimination of this tax credit would mean that at least on the margin, women who became pregnant accidentally would have fewer options.

Which leads us, finally, to President Trumps newly released budget.

Trumps budget would dramatically slash the social safety net, especially services for poor families. It would cut housing and energy subsidies for low-income households, as well as after-school, before-school and summer programs that millions of parents depend on. Moreover, it would decimate many of the programs that low-income parents and children rely on to climb out of poverty, including job training, college assistance and community banking.

Thus the cumulative effect of Republicans family policies: force poor people to have more children than they want or believe they can afford, then tell them and their children that theyre on their own.

So much for family values.

 2017, Washington Post Writers Group

Email: crampell@washpost.com. Twitter: @crampell.
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San Francisco real estate executive and arts patron Charlot Malin died Monday after a sudden illness. She was 48.

Mrs. Malin, who cut a fashionable figure on gala nights, was no mere society swan. She was chief operating officer and director of design for Troon Pacific Inc., an international development company that she ran with her husband, Gregory Malin, the chief executive officer. The firm focused on sustainable design in residential and commercial properties, master-planned communities, tech campuses and historic preservation.

Mrs. Malin, an interior designer, was Troons director of design. Her projects included homes and wineries in Napa and Sonoma, George Lucas Skywalker Ranch Sound Studios, and Robert Redfords Sundance Resort in Utah, among others.

She was also a supporter of the arts. Since 1994, she was active with the San Francisco Opera and held leadership positions at the organization including Opera Ball co-chair and Opera Guild president from 2014 to 2016. According to the San Francisco Operas website, Mrs. Malin attended her first opera in Oslo at age 7, where her fathers aunt and cousin sang in Aida.

She was an incredible champion of our Guild Education programs, striving to bring opera to the youth of today  which is, of course, the future for tomorrow, Jane Mudge, current Guild chairwoman, said in a statement.

Mrs. Malin was also active at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art  as chairwoman of the Curators Circle, as an ex-officio trustee from 2012 to 2015, and in tapping her European connections to assist in a show of works by famed Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. The show, a collaboration between SFMOMA, the Munch Museum in Oslo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is scheduled to open in June.

Her dedication to SFMOMA was passionate and impactful, Neal Benezra, director of SFMOMA, said in a statement. In addition to sharing her expertise and leadership, her relationships with cultural organizations in her homeland of Norway helped to support our upcoming exhibition on Edvard Munch.

Mrs. Malin studied interior architecture in Arizona, France and San Francisco, where she met her future husband in 1992, but kept ties to her native country by holding board positions on the Norwegian-American Cultural Foundation and the Norway House Foundation. She also promoted the work of one of her favorite Norwegian fashion designers, Keyna Aranguren, by wearing her gowns to black-tie events.

In addition to architecture and the arts, she was active in womens causes and led the West Coast effort of the Voss Foundation, which works to provide freshwater and sanitation across sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Malin is survived by her twin sons, Benjamin and Sebastian; parents, Turid and Tore Diskerud of Arizona; and brother, Paal Diskerud of Norway.

A private memorial service is pending. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Charlot D. Malin San Francisco Opera Guild Education Fund, 301 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102, or at www.sfopera.com/charlotmalinfund, or the Charlot D. Malin Commemorative Fund at www.vossfoundation.org/charlot-d-malin-commemorative-fund .

Carolyne Zinko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: czinko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @CarolyneZinko
CASTRIES, St. Lucia  Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Mr. Walcotts death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early Friday by his son, Peter.

Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia, read a family statement released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honor for many years. In selecting Mr. Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity of his writings including the 1990 Omeros, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as majestic.

In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet, said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Mr. Walcott.

St. Lucia Prime Minister Allen Chastanet said flags throughout the island would be lowered to half-staff to honor Mr. Walcott, one of the most renowned figures to emerge from the small country.

It is a great loss to Saint Lucia, he said. It is a great loss to the world.

Mr. Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the very rich and complicated experience of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theater, Mr. Walcott work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Mr. Walcott to regional status because of an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man.

Mr. Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer, he once said during a 1985 interview published in the Paris Review. The English language is nobodys special property.

Mr. Walcott was born in St. Lucias capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Mr. Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics.

Guy Ellis and David McFadden are Associated Press writers.
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HODEIDA, Yemen  A military vessel and a helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen overnight Friday, killing at least 42 people, according to a U.N. agency, Yemeni officials and a survivor who witnessed the attack.

Yemens Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni city of Hodeida, and it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons into the port in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from war-torn Yemen.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed said the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemens Hodeida province, and was 30 miles off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel and then the helicopter gunship opened fire.

He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up flashlights, apparently to show that they were poor refugees. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

A top official with the U.N.s migration agency said 42 bodies have been recovered from the attack. Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, said the attack at around 3 a.m. on Friday was totally unacceptable and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat before firing on it.

Laurent De Boeck, the head of the IOMs Yemeni office, said the U.N. agency believes all those on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.

The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognized government. The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

Abdel-Karim al-Ayyashi and Jamey Keaten
1 Royal assent: A bill authorizing Britain to start its exit from the European Union received royal assent and became law Thursday, empowering Prime Minister Theresa May to begin divorce proceedings from the bloc. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act has received the assent of Queen Elizabeth II. May is now free to invoke Article 50 of the EUs key treaty, triggering two years of exit negotiations.

2 Pirates release tanker: Somali pirates who seized a Comoros-flagged oil tanker earlier this week after five years without a major hijacking in the region have released the ship and its crew without conditions, officials said late Thursday. Security official Ahmed Mohamed said the pirates disembarked the ship, which was heading to Bossaso port, northeast Somalias commercial hub, with its eight Sri Lankan crew members aboard. Mohamed said the release occurred after negotiations by local elders and officials with the pirates, who seized the tanker on Monday. The pirates were given passage to leave once they disembarked, he said.
What do you want to see (and do) in a Dane County Park?

Residents will get their chance to tell county officials what they would like the county parks, trails and recreation areas to be for the next five years, at two public information meetings scheduled on March 30 and April 5.

The meetings will take input to update the Dane County Parks and Open Space Plan, which has to be updated every five years to be able to get state stewardship grant funds.

The March 30 meeting will be at the Cross Plains town hall, 3734 Highway P in Cross Plains, and the April 5 meeting will be at the Cottage Grove village hall, 221 E. Cottage Grove Road in Cottage Grove. Both begin at 7 p.m.

The plan is the blueprint the county uses to make changes to the recreational opportunities in the county's lands, as well as to identify what areas should be protected from any development.

"We are excited to hear the thoughts and ideas from residents about what they value most about our park system," said Dane County Executive Joe Parisi in a news release on Friday.

The County Parks Department is also using a survey to help determine the path of the plan. The survey can be found online at http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07edx78f4aj02u6mqc/a0111j0e40ntt/greeting
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BERLIN  Refugee deaths rose sharply last year, particularly in the Mediterranean, as smugglers made ever-riskier attempts to ferry asylum-seekers on increasingly unseaworthy vessels, according to United Nations statistics released Friday.

The International Organization for Migration documented 7,763 deaths in 2016 worldwide, 27 percent more than the 6,107 recorded in 2015.

Two-thirds of the deaths took place in the Mediterranean Sea, where 5,098 people lost their lives trying to make the trip from North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East to Europe, according to information collected by the groups Data Analysis Center in Berlin.

The number of Mediterranean casualties last year was 35 percent higher than in 2015, despite more organized rescue efforts and fewer people trying to make the perilous journey. Most of the 2016 deaths were in the Central Mediterranean, where 4,581 refugees died attempting the longer trip from North Africa to Italy.

The migration organization cautioned that better monitoring and reporting might account for part of the increase in deaths in the Mediterranean. The area has become a greater focus as more asylum seekers streamed into Europe in recent years.

But evidence shows that along with several large shipwrecks, there also were more small fatal incidents as smugglers pursued strategies such as launching multiple boats simultaneously  making rescue operations more difficult  and taking to rough seas during the winter, the organization said.

There are huge sums of money to be made for each of those boats that cross the Mediterranean, so the more people you can cram into a boat, the more money you make, said Frank Laczko, director of the International Organization for Migrations analysis center.

David Rising is an Associated Press writer.
JERUSALEM  Syria fired missiles at Israeli warplanes early Friday after a series of Israeli air strikes inside Syria  a rare military exchange between the two hostile neighbors that was confirmed by both sides.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several antiaircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.
TOKYO  The Trump administration gave its clearest signal yet that it would consider taking military action against North Korea, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that all options are on the table to deter the threat from Pyongyang.

Tensions are running high in Northeast Asia, with North Korea making observable progress toward its goal of building a missile that could reach the U.S. mainland and China incensed over South Koreas decision to deploy an American antimissile battery.
Things Get Ugly at the Roundhouse

Tuesday's cascade of unexplained vetoes by the governor may be unconstitutional. Santa Fe senator and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth raised the issue last night and pointed to a section of New Mexico's Constitution that requires not just a veto but an explanation within three days while the Legislature is in session. Martinez did send explanations yesterday, but they may be too late. Meanwhile, Martinez is sparring with Republican Senator Sander Rue over his bill that requires an accounting of her $80,000 contingency fund. After a nasty tweet about Rue from a Martinez political committee, the senator brought up that unspeakable night in December 2015the pizza party.

Whither Goest Thou, House, With Thy Shiny Veto?

After the Senate voted to override the governor's veto, sparking a storm of bill rejections from the chastened governor, House Republicans

. The bill, which would let teachers use more than three sick days a year without penalty, passed the chamber with overwhelming Republican support. Democrats could bring up the override, of course, but with just a six vote advantage in the House, they'd either need to find a bunch of Republicans to join them or find a time when a bunch of Republicans aren't on the floor to vote against an override.

The Half-Day of Action

SFR estimates the crowd at the Roundhouse topped 1,000 students, parents, teachers and education supporters as Santa Fe Public Schools let students out early yesterday to protest against budget cuts that could cost the district programs, school days or teachers. Check out the recap and the livestream (which is, of course, not actually a livestream at this point).



I'm Free (You're Not)

The executive director of the state Parole Board has resigned to take another state job. SFR recently highlighted the rarity of parole for New Mexico's most serious offenders after they have served their sentences, as well as the role the board's chairwoman played in ensuring they stay behind bars.

Da Doo Ron Run

Santa Fe City Councilor Ron Trujillo is running for mayor. The hard-fishin', Javier-opposin', real Santa Fe-representin' councilman sat down with SFR's Steven Hsieh to talk soda tax and political campaign.



A Closer Look

The Council on American-Islamic Relations wants a closer look at the desecration of two copies of the Quran at a Santa Fe library. The holy texts were apparently urinated on by a Wyoming couple that also placed copies of the Bible around the library and some Ann Coulter books, "for all to see."



A Black Hole From Which No Information Escapes

It's not the kind of award any public agency or official ever wants to win, but New Mexico's Interstate Stream Commission took top honors as the worst public agency in the country for the free flow of information that belongs to the public. The Society of Professional Journalists hands out the Black Hole Award annually. In addition to the winner, New Mexico also had a finalistthe mayor of Hobbs.



Did I Unplug the Coffee Pot?

Faced with the promise of a lot less money following the legislative session, Rio Rancho's school district has asked teachers to ditch small appliances like coffee pots or microwaves in classrooms. That didn't go so well. After the district threatened to confiscate the electricity-sucking demons if they weren't gone by the end of the week, teachers revolted. The district is now asking for more conscientious use.



Thanks for reading! The Word fears that the mere suggestion of "Da Doo Ron Ron" by the Crystals will cause it to be in your head all ... day ... long. At least, we hope it's the Crystals, because your other option is Shaun Cassidy's version.



Subscribe to the Morning Word at sfreporter.com/signup.

Santa Fe Reporter
New Zealand shares rose, with Fletcher Building in a trading halt ahead of an announcement Monday, while New Zealand Refining dropped after BP New Zealand Holdings sold down its stake.

The S&P/NZX50 Index gained 6.16 points, or 0.09 percent, to 7,158.15. Within the index, 31 stocks rose, 14 fell and three were unchanged. Turnover was $381.2 million, with trading boosted by NZ Refining, Sky Network Television and Spark New Zealand.

Fletcher Building gained 1 percent to $9.22 before being placed in a trading halt minutes after the market opened for what it said was a review of the financial performance of its construction division and the impact on earnings guidance previously provided to the market.

"We'll find out on Monday what that means, but it doesn't sound good," said Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners. "It's a little bit unusual to go into a trading halt just because you're putting out an update. I'm not sure why they've been forced into that for a whole day just to provide an update, but my read would be we'll see a downgrade to their earnings forecast for the full year."

"It's a bit of an enigma to be honest - you've had this wonderful construction backdrop for the last few years and you'd think companies like Fletcher are going great guns, whether it's from the Christchurch rebuild or the housing market, but for whatever reason they don't seem to be able to capture and benefit from that," Lister said. "I think it'll be quite a frustrating one for people if they come out with softer full-year guidance, the last result was a bit so-so and the share price performed pretty badly in the wake of that, so it looks like it might be another bit of bad news. If you're a building company and you can't make money when things are as they are, you're probably never going to make money."

Goodman Property Trust led the index higher, gaining 1.7 percent to $1.19, while Kathmandu Holdings gained 1.6 percent to $1.97 and A2 Milk Co rose 1.5 percent to $2.68. Spark fell 2.3 percent to $3.44.

NZ Refining was the worst performer, down 4 percent to $2.39. BP New Zealand Holdings has sold down more than half its holding in the nation's only oil refinery operator, reducing its stake to 10.09 percent. It intended to sell 34.7 million shares, or 11.1 percent of the company, for at least $2.30 per share, and sold at $2.32 per share, valuing the transaction at $80.5 million. That price was a 6.9 percent discount the yesterday's closing price of $2.49.

"The stock's performing reasonably well, it's holding up solidly above the price that placement was done at so that tells you investors are reasonably comfortable with that story," Lister said.

Sky TV fell 2.8 percent to $3.49, while Warehouse Group lost 2.6 percent to $2.29 on its last day on the benchmark index.

"Warehouse hasn't had a great week, it's off a good 5 or 6 percent this week and coming out of the 50 will probably keep it under a bit of pressure because it won't be on the radar for as many investors," Lister said.

Units in the Fonterra Shareholders' Fund gained 0.5 percent to $6.35. Fonterra Cooperative Group will get to choose whether to accept supply from new dairy conversions from the 2018/19 season under changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill, tabled in Parliament late yesterday.

Outside the benchmark index, AFT Pharmaceuticals gained 3.7 percent to $2.80. The pharmaceuticals company raised new funds through a redeemable share issue to fuel international growth and announced plans to raise more capital in a share purchase plan.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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A Madison woman who crashed into a parked car early Friday morning was ticketed when she tried to flee the scene by jumping into an off-duty police officer's car, the officer having stopped to render aid.

The officer prevented Tiffany Driver, 30, from driving away when he reached into his car and took the keys, Madison police said.

The incident happened at about 4 a.m. in the 6200 block of Raymond Road on the city's Southwest Side.

The Madison officer was going home from work when he saw the crash scene and stopped to help.

"The driver (Driver) was not seriously injured," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "When she heard sirens, she decided to get into the off-duty officer's personal car."

Before putting the car in gear, the officer took the keys.

Driver was cited for various violations, including her third alleged drunken driving offense.
A Dane County Jail inmate who went absent without leave on Wednesday was taken into custody Friday on Madison's East Side.

Allan Brown, 46, was located by Sheriff's Office detectives and arrested at about 9:30 a.m. and returned to jail.

Brown was declared AWOL when he didn't come back to jail Wednesday night after being gone all day to his job.

He is serving a probation sentence for false imprisonment.

Under terms of his Huber Law sentence, he can leave jail for work.
A computer repair scam is making its way around Janesville, with police warning residents not to fall for the phone call.

The intended victims are being called by the scammer, who tells the called people their computers are having problems and they need to send money to get the problems taken care of.

"Someone calling you has no access to your computer, and would not know if it is not running optimally," Janesville police said on Friday.

"Furthermore, a reputable computer repair business would not contact you by phone to solicit your business."

The police department advises anyone getting such phone calls to check with the Better Business Bureau, http://www.bbb.org/wisconsin, to see if the business calling you is legitimate.
NEW DELHI: The UK-based Bullitt Group, license holder for Land Rover, JCB and Kodak brands for phones and audio products, has launched a new smartphone in India for 64,999, aimed at tapping into the premium 'rugged' segment.



The Cat S60 -- which is the world's first smartphone with an integrated thermal camera -- will be available from tomorrow across high end multi-brand outlets and Amazon India.

"We see an immense opportunity for our devices in the rugged smartphone category in India. While, we estimate the annual demand to be about a million units, this is a premium segment and we see a lot of potential in it," Bullitt Group Chief Marketing Officer Linda Summers told PTI.



She added that the company would look at tapping into both consumers and B2B segments for the product.



Globally, Bullitt has sold over one million units of Cat phones. The phones will be distributed in India by Brandeyes.



Powered by Android Marshmallow operating system, the Caterpillar-branded phone features a 4.7-inch multi-touch display with auto wet finger and glove support, 3,800 mAh battery, underwater 13MP main camera with dual flash and 5MP front facing camera.



The dual SIM 4G phone has a Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM and 32GB memory. The US-based Caterpillar is a global leader in the construction and mining equipment space.



Last year, Bullitt had partnered Tata Motors-owned automotive brand Jaguar Land Rover to launch smartphones and accessories.



While, Summers did not comment about the expected launch dates of the Land Rover-branded smartphone, she said the company would look at bringing a Kodak-branded smartphone to India soon.



"We do not compete in the mass products market. Our products are designed to meet unmet or underserved needs of specific consumer segments," she said.

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NEW DELHI: India has the potential to rank higher in areas like disease prevention and medical device manufacturing if barriers in research and innovation are removed, an official of a US-India business body has said.



"India has proven to be a leader in global life sciences space," president of US-India Business Council (USIBC), Mukesh Aghi, said.



"If the barriers to research and development and innovation are removed, India has the potential to rank even higher in areas of IPR, disease prevention, and drug and medical device manufacturing," he said.



In partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs and Invest India, USIBC brought together policymakers, global experts, industry leaders among others during the second annual conference on 'Innovation Driven Expansion of Healthcare Access in India' held recently.



It was aimed at providing a substantive framework for a candid and constructive interaction between policymakers, global experts and industry leaders.



Experts, including Frank Lichtenberg from Columbia University and Ramanan Laxminarayan from Princeton University, presented their findings at the conference.



"Access begins with the awareness of need, ability to obtain medical advice, a prescription and finally medicines required for treatment.



"Therefore, innovation to enhance access is not just about innovative products or pricing but also innovative ways to strengthen each step of this access chain," S Sridhar, Country Manager of Pfizer India, said.



Other participants, including Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog and Union health secretary C K Mishra, spoke about the importance of India's potential and status as a major healthcare power, a statement by USIBC said.



The conference examined various facets of India's healthcare system including areas ranging from intellectual property to using public-private partnership to reduce cost and expand access, challenges with immunisation and promoting innovation in healthcare.

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After an initial sample showed nearly 1 in 10 drinking fountains in Madison schools had lead levels higher than the national standard, the Madison School District this week expanded testing to all district buildings and started sampling water from more than just drinking fountains.

Facilities manager Chad Wiese said the original plan was to use district staff to sample just public drinking fountains  those in common areas  in all 50 schools, with results analyzed by the State Laboratory of Hygiene.

But after results from a first round of testing by district staff in late February showed six of the 19 tested schools with at least one public fountain with elevated lead levels  specifically, 14 of 157 fountains in the East High School attendance area  district officials decided to hire an outside testing company to expand and finish the job.

The lead is believed to be coming not from pipes used to carry water inside or outside the schools, Wiese said, but from inside the water fixtures themselves, especially the schools older, porcelain-style fountains. The Madison Water Utility tests city water for contaminants, and lead lines to carry water were removed from 2001 to 2007.

This testing (by the school district) is voluntary and proactive, Wiese said. We feel very fortunate in Madison to have the good water supply we do heading into our schools.

Where were getting some of the elevated results is where you may have lead soldering or brass containing a high amount of lead in the actual fixture itself, he added.

Excessive lead from water, paint or soil is a serious health concern, especially for children, and the problem has received increasing attention in recent years, prompted in part by high-profile cases of lead-contaminated water in places such as Flint, Michigan.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no safe blood lead level for children, as even small amounts absorbed into the bloodstream can cause brain damage and slowed growth.

For water from municipal systems, the Environmental Protection Agency has set a limit of 15 parts per billion for lead. However, people dont absorb lead from water into their bloodstream on a 1-to-1 basis.

The presence of lead in a small sample or in a few sips of water isnt going to raise your blood level, said Dr. Elizabeth Neary, a Madison pediatrician. We dont absorb lead at a rate of 100 percent.

The Madison School District began looking into the problem after getting questions about lead from parents and others in January. The head of the Madison Water Utility Board, Madeline Gotkowitz, at a School Board meeting urged the district to do some testing of its own, Wiese said.

But after the initial round, environmental testing firm TRC of Madison was hired to test not just fountains in common areas but also fountains in classrooms, kitchen sinks, sinks in staff lounges and ice makers, for a total of about 1,350 fixtures, Wiese said.

And in addition to schools, TRC will test fixtures in the district administrative building on Dayton Street and in the facilities office on Pflaum Road, under the expanded plan.

The highest test result seen in a Madison school so far is 68 parts per billion, Wiese confirmed. By comparison, in Flint, test results from different areas ranged from 27 ppb to 13,000 ppb. The EPA considers water to be toxic at 5,000 ppb.

TRC began work on the expanded testing program this week, with schools tested including Hamilton Middle School, Marquette Elementary and OKeefe Middle School.

TRC staffers are bundling the water samples they collect into batches before sending them out to an outside analysis firm, Wiese said. All results are expected to be back to schools in the first week of April.

That initial round of testing was made up of 17 schools in the East High attendance area, plus Schenk Elementary and Whitehorse Middle School in the La Follette High School attendance area. The elevated results in 14 fountains were at East High School, Blackhawk and Sherman Middle Schools, and Gompers, Lapham and Lowell Elementary Schools.

Wiese noted the results were far from uniform. Some aging fixtures, for example, tested fine.

We tested 39 drinking fountains at East (High School) and 38 out of 39 came back below limits, and thats one of our oldest buildings, Wiese said. But well work our way through the entire district and take them one at a time.

The district for years has been replacing porcelain fountains as they fail or in newer construction with modern fountains containing little or no lead, including some with electric coolers and bottle-filling stations that have their own filtration systems built in, he said.

Some of our newer schools wont have the old porcelain-style fountains at all, he said. But our average building is over 50 years old, so a lot could still have them.

Any drinking fountain found to have elevated levels of lead is shut down, and wont be available for use again until it is repaired or replaced and then tested again, Wiese noted.

I think the school district is being proactive, said Neary, who is a member of the Council on Environmental Health of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We dont want our kids to be exposed and we just want to get those old porcelain water fountains out of there.

District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said the cost for testing districtwide is expected to be about $150,000, although that figure could vary depending on how much retesting is required. The money will come from a building services department maintenance budget that includes funding for projects that come up throughout the year.

The cost to repair or replace fountains and other fixtures is currently unknown, pending completion of all the tests. The money for that expense also will come from the maintenance budget, Strauch-Nelson said.

For more information, Wiese directed people to a district website  https://buildings.madison.k12.wi.us/voluntary-water-testing  that was created to explain the lead-testing issue and provide updates on the project work.
WASHINGTON: The Indo-U.S. ties are one of the most important in the world and essential to maintain stability in South Asia, a Republican Senator has said while stressing that India's neighbour makes things challenging.



Senator Richard Burr, who has first-hand access to the information on terrorism in the region and Pakistan's tacit support to such groups, made the remarks while speaking at a round table organised by the US India Friendship Council and the US India Business Council at the Capitol Visitor Center.



"The United States-India relationship is one of the most important in the world. Its absolutely essential to stability in that region. And how do I say this in a diplomatic way. (India's) Neighbourhood is not one of the best in the world," Burr, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said yesterday.



"Neighbourhood makes things very challenging," he said without naming Pakistan.



"So to have stable governments that look towards prosperity for its people and looks towards the United States for relationships that are long lasting and trustworthy, we could not have a better partner than we do in India," he added.



The North Carolina senator said when America is prosperous, the rest of the world is prosperous as well and when it does not have a right architecture for everybody who wants to succeed here, it dampens the opportunities elsewhere around the world," he said.



The 90-minute panel discussion was also attended by several other US lawmakers including Senators Thom Tilles and Joe Donnelly.



Congressman George Holding and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the two Co-Chairs of the Congressional India Caucus, along with Indian-American lawmakers Ami Bera and Ro Khanna and Congressman Ted Yoho attended the event during which they reiterated their commitment to India US relationship.



"In Washington, one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats alike agree on is strengthening the Indo-US partnership. The need now is for a positive and concrete agenda in the 115th Congress and with the Trump Administration to take advantage of this historic opportunity," Indian-American entrepreneur Swadesh Chatterjee said in his address.



He said if India and the US cannot cooperate as the closest of friends, addressing mutual interests will be severely harmed.



"These interests range from the fight against terrorism to the prevention of a hegemony in Asia and to economic development," he said.

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NEWDELHI: Honda Cars India today launched its compact crossover model WR-V in the country priced between 7.75 lakh and 9.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

Based on the Jazz platform, the WR-V comes with both petrol and diesel powertrains.

The two petrol variants are priced at 7.75 lakh and 8.99 lakh while the diesel trims are tagged at 8.79 lakh and 9.99 lakh (all prices ex-showroom Delhi).

The petrol variants are powered by 1.2 litre engine while the diesel versions come with 1.5 litre powertrains. The company, however, stayed away from introducing an automatic variant of the model.

"The fast evolving Indian market has shown strong demand for compact vehicles that are stylish, comfortable and have premium features," Honda Cars India President and CEO Yoichiro Ueno told reporters here.

With the launch of the Honda WR-V, the company is offering a vehicle for recreational usage as well as comfortable driving for daily use in the city, he added.

"We are confident that WR-V will help us to fortify our premium image in all segments," Ueno said.

The model comes with various features like satellite linked navigation, smartphone connectivity, dual airbags, anti lock braking system, among others.

India is the first country to manufacture and launch the Honda WR-V in the world. It is the first model developed by Honda R&D India in association with Honda R&D Co Ltd, Japan.

Ueno said that with the launch of new City sedan last month and WR-V now, the company is poised for a consistent growth in the coming months.

"We have started the year on a positive note. The new City has received an overwhelming response with over 14,000 bookings till date. Around 40 pct of the total bookings have been made for the top-end variant of the model," Ueno said.

He added that the company is also studying to bring some premium models into the country.

Speaking at the launch, Honda Motor Company's Chief Operating Officer, Regional Operations (Asia & Oceania), Noriake Abe said India is the first country to manufacture and launch the Honda WR-V in the world which is testimony to the Japanese company's commitment to the Indian market.

Giving an account of Asia Oceania region, he said that countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam posted robust growth while in India, the company faced "tough business environment".

"Demonetisation led to cash crunch and severely impacted consumer sentiments and our business. From February, the sentiment has improved and so is the business," he said.

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President Donald Trump has more than 42 million followers on his two Twitter accounts, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. (Associated Press)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If you haven't been following President Donald Trump on his two Twitter accounts (@realDonaldTrump and @POTUS) this week, here's what you might have missed.

The president's most popular tweet this week had to do with the leak of his 2005 tax returns to media.

"Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns?

FAKE NEWS!" @realDonaldTrump tweeted at 6:55 a.m. on March 15.

That tweet garnered nearly 99,000 "likes" and was retweeted more than 25,000 times.

Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

Trump's second most popular tweet this week was a tally of new jobs created.

"JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!" he shouted, in a tweet posted on @realDonaldTrump at 11 a.m. March 14. That post garnered nearly 97,000 "likes" and was retweeted more than 24,000 times.

The same tweet got another 31,000 "likes" on his @POTUS account.

Four tweets on March 15 were posted after stops to greet supporters in Detroit and Tennessee.

"Will be going to Detroit, Michigan (love), today for a big meeting on bringing back car production to State & U.S. Already happening!" he posted on @realDonaldTrump at 7:13 a.m. on March 15. That post garnered more than 87,000 "likes" and more than 14,000 retweets.

Will be going to Detroit, Michigan (love), today for a big meeting on bringing back car production to State & U.S. Already happening!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

"Looking forward to a big rally in Nashville, Tennessee, tonight. Big crowd of great people expected. Will be fun!" President Trump posted on @realDonaldTrump at 7:30 a.m. March 15. That post garnered more than 82,000 "likes" and was retweeted more than 14,000 times.

Looking forward to a big rally in Nashville, Tennessee, tonight. Big crowd of great people expected. Will be fun!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2017

He followed up with two tweets embedding videos of his Tennessee rally.

"In Nashville, Tennessee! Lets MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" he tweeted on @realDonaldTrump at 8 p.m., March 15, with a video of supporters waiting to greet him as he arrived by motorcade. The tweet got 79,000 "likes" and was retweeted more than 15,000 times.

In Nashville, Tennessee! Lets MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/m5UR4vv6UH  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2017

"Thank you Nashville, Tennessee!" he tweeted shortly after midnight March 16, at the conclusion of his rally, posting with a video of his remarks. That one got 72,000 "likes" and 14,000 retweets.

Trump's @POTUS account has 16 million followers and his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, has 26.3 million followers, a number that's steadily grown since he was elected president. That makes him one of the most followed people on the social media service, according to Twitter.
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

WASHINGTON - Some of President Donald Trump's best friends in Congress sharply criticized his first budget Thursday, with defense hawks saying the proposed hike in Pentagon spending wasn't big enough, while rural conservatives and others attacked plans to cut a wide range of federal agencies and programs.

The bad mood among Republican critics was tempered by a consensus that the president's budget wasn't going very far on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers reminded everybody that they ultimately control the nation's purse strings.

"While we have a responsibility to reduce our federal deficit, I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the president's skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive," Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. "We will certainly review this budget proposal, but Congress ultimately has the power of the purse."

"We've not had our chance yet," he added in an interview.

Rogers was one of several GOP lawmakers to dismiss Trump's budget as a pie-in-the sky wishlist with little hope of surviving negotiations in Congress. Most Republicans gave passing support to Trump's general goal of increasing defense spending while reducing costs elsewhere in the budget. But none would embrace the specific White House blueprint.

"I've never seen a president's budget proposal not revised substantially," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "As a member of the Budget Committee, I'll carefully scrutinize and assess priorities as the president has with his proposal."

The upcoming budget clash between Congress and the president has emerged as another obstacle in Trump's young presidency. Just this week, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a sweeping freeze of Trump's latest travel order.

The House GOP plan to revise the Affordable Care Act is embattled, as is Trump's push to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. His tax reform and infrastructure plans have yet to get off the ground.

As he passes the halfway mark of his first 100 days, Trump is under increasing pressure to show that he can make good on his ambitious promises.

Some of Trump's closest allies said his budget has virtually no chance in Congress, pointing to what they expect to be vociferous opposition from Democrats.

"The left is not going to let him decrease nondefense discretionary to the extent that he wants to," Rep. Raul R. Labrador, R-Idaho, told reporters on Thursday. "We're going to have to find a different way to balance the budget."

It is not uncommon for Congress to disagree with some priorities in a White House budget. But the blueprint risks putting GOP lawmakers on a collision course with Trump over demands for spending cuts they cannot deliver. Even those fiscal conservatives who do want to cut spending don't necessarily think slashing major domestic programs is the answer.

In the past, the White House has worked directly with congressional leaders to agree on an overall spending number for the whole government, which is then passed to Appropriations Committee members to divvy up among different departments and agencies.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney defended the president's proposal on Thursday, acknowledging that the next challenge will be to sell it to lawmakers.

"The message we're sending to the Hill is, we want more money for the things the president talked about, defense being the top one, national security," he said. "And we don't want to add to the budget deficit. If Congress has another way to do that, we're happy to talk to them about it."

One reason for the tepid response on the Hill is lawmakers are mired in high-level negotiations to craft an interim budget before the current one expires on April 28. Talks so far have centered on sticking to the two-year bipartisan spending agreement with an overall spending level of $1.07 trillion for 2017.

Republicans expect the spending targets for 2018 to stay about the same, according to several aides familiar with the negotiations.

Trump has proposed spending more next year - upward of $1.15 trillion - by tapping into a separate war fund account as well as other funds.

Many lawmakers also want to increase spending, but doing so would require a bipartisan agreement. Republicans have a slim 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, and any spending deal will require support from Democrats who will not back increased defense spending without corresponding hikes in domestic spending.

Democrats and some Republicans are worried that the $54 billion hike in defense spending will make a powerful dent in the budget of 18 other federal agencies - most prominently the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department.

Several Republicans expressed concern that Trump's budget slashes foreign aid by an especially large number.

"As General [Jim] Mattis said prophetically, slashing the diplomatic efforts will cause them to have to buy more ammunition," Rogers said, referring to the defense secretary. "There is two sides to fighting the problem that we're in: There is military and then there's diplomatic. And we can't afford to dismantle the diplomatic half of that equation."

Rogers predicted the foreign aid cuts "will not stand, adding: "This too shall pass."

Conservatives are also skeptical that Trump's budget will significantly reduce the deficit. The only way to accomplish that, they argue, is to overhaul entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.Those programs, along with other mandatory spending, help make up nearly two-thirds of all federal spending while Trump's proposal only targets a third of it.

But Trump promised during the campaign that those programs, including Medicaid, would not be touched.

"I can tell you that I brought up entitlement reform [with Trump] a week or so ago, [and] the pushback was a little stronger than I expected," said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. "It's going to take a lot more encouragement in terms of actually tackling entitlement reform."

Republicans also worried that some of Trump's cuts would undermine critical environmental programs in their states. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said he plans to oppose major cuts to the $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

"I'm committed to continuing to do everything I can to protect and preserve Lake Erie, including preserving this critical program and its funding," Portman said in a statement.

The same could be said for Republicans from rural and agriculture-heavy states that stand to lose big under Trump's proposed cuts. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, raised concerns that farmers could be hit hard at a time when farm income is already down 50 percent compared with four years ago.

Agriculture cuts are a particularly sensitive issue because periodically lawmakers spend months, if not years, hammering out the details of a comprehensive farm bill.

"Agriculture has done more than its fair share," Conaway said in a statement. "The bottom line is this is the start of a longer, larger process. It is a proposal, not THE budget."

One of the greatest pockets of opposition to the Trump blueprint can be found among defense hawks. Defense and national security programs would see the biggest boost in funding under the president's budget.

But these military-minded members are not satisfied, accusing the president of everything from accounting gimmicks to playing fast and loose with the lives of soldiers in war zones to follow through on his campaign promises.

Republicans have long contended that defense cuts introduced during the last administration damaged the military and hampered its war readiness. Many supported Trump's call for a dramatic increase in military investment - but they don't believe this goes far enough.

"The Administration's budget request is not enough to repair that damage and to rebuild the military as the president has discussed," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in a statement, noting "serious shortcomings" that "will worsen without immediate action."

"It is morally wrong to task someone with a mission for which they are not fully prepared and fully supported with the best weapons and equipment this nation can provide," he added.

Trump's budget puts $603 billion toward defense - but Thornberry and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., are both asking for $640 billion.

They also stress that the $54 billion proposed by Trump is misleading because it is only $19 billion more than what the country spent on defense last year - a rise of just 3 percent.
CITY HALL -- Less bang for big bucks?

The city spent $2,778 for every deer vasectomy performed during the first year of the management program, according to Parks Department numbers.

Agency contractor White Buffalo Inc. was paid $2 million this fiscal year to carry out the city's plan to cut down Staten Island's white-tailed herd.

Seventy-eight male fawns and 642 adult bucks were given vasectomies through Monday, the last day of the effort this fiscal year, according to the Parks Department.

At 720 deer for $2 million, each surgery cost $2,777.78 this fiscal year.

"The budget for White Buffalo's work is not exclusive to the surgical procedure but rather also includes capturing and tagging, monitoring, mapping, and other services related to the deer management study," parks spokesman Sam Biederman said.

White Buffalo will continue performing vasectomies in August, two months into the city's next fiscal year.

The city's contract with White Buffalo is for up to $3.3 million over a three-year research study.

Anthony DeNicola and his team at the wildlife conservation nonprofit are also tracking deer with ear tags, radio collars and trail cameras. Forty bucks and 45 doe had radio collars as of Wednesday.

White Buffalo is expected to estimate Staten Island's deer population soon.

Only 527 deer were found on Staten Island during the city's latest aerial survey of the herd -- 236 less than a count three years ago and well below what the city expected.

There are likely well over 1,800 deer living in the borough now -- more than three times the city's last count and a 7,400 percent increase since 2008.

Wildlife biologists believe bucks make up about 40 percent of suburban deer herds that aren't hunted. Based on the number of vasectomies performed, the herd likely has a minimum of 1,800 deer.

The total size is probably larger than that, as fawns haven't been the city's focus for the vasectomy effort this season.

A state Department of Environmental Conservation study from 2008 estimated there were roughly 24 deer on Staten Island. Wildlife experts speculated that the herd grew when deer swam from New Jersey because of dwindling food sources and habitat loss.

An unrestrained and expanding deer herd on Staten Island can harm parks and private property, spread tick-borne illness and wander into roads more often, increasing the risk for deadly vehicle collisions.

The three-year vasectomy effort is expected to eventually reduce the herd 10 to 30 percent annually.

Still, some wildlife experts thought the plan won't work because the city is ignoring basic deer biology and conventional herd management practices.

The Parks Department believes the herd is now growing mostly through reproduction, not migration, and sterilizing males instead of females is meant to be faster, cheaper and more humane.

Five deer were euthanized by the city as of Monday after getting injured during capture attempts. This is required under the city's state permit for the vasectomy program.

This article was corrected to clarify that the vasectomy effort is expected to eventually reduce Staten Island's deer herd 10 to 30 percent annually, not 10 to 30 percent overall.
Verrazano.jpg

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge one-way toll has been in place since 1986. (Advance file photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Show me the numbers, says Rep. Daniel Donovan.

Asked by colleague Rep. Jerrold Nadler to support a return to two-way tolling on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Republican Donovan is lukewarm on the idea until he sees proof that it won't hurt his Staten Island/South Brooklyn district.

Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes portions of Manhattan and Brooklyn, has long tied traffic woes in his district to vehicles, mostly trucks, coming through Staten Island because they can avoid the toll. They travel from New Jersey to Staten Island and into Brooklyn or Manhattan, toll-free on the Verrazano and East River crossings, and then take the New Jersey-bound tunnel toll-free back.

But they do pay a toll on the Staten Island-bound bridges from New Jersey.

Nadler argues having a one-way toll creates an incentive for drivers to change their route and go through neighborhoods they would otherwise avoid.

Until 1986, drivers had been splitting the bridge toll both ways. But then-Congressman Guy Molinari wrote an amendment to a federal transportation bill to end two-way tolling, as cars waiting to pay the Brooklyn-bound toll caused backups on Staten Island.

Nadler and other groups and individuals calling for the two-way tolling to make a comeback argue since E-ZPass is used, and cashless tolling is being rolled out this year, there have been fewer cars stopping to pay the cash toll and that number will only continue to decrease.

The traffic jams of 1986 won't be seen again, they argue.

But Donovan wants to see that in writing before he supports the idea.

"Changing a system that's been in place for 30 years can't happen on a whim or be based on unsubstantiated theories," Donovan said recently. "Proponents of a two-way toll have said it would decrease traffic. If that's the case, then a conversation should certainly be had. But until I see that data, I'm not going to support any change to the status quo."

That's why he has asked the MTA to study the revenue and traffic impacts of returning to a two-way toll.

The congressman penned a letter on Friday, asking the agency to answer a few questions after studying the proposal.

Will a two-way toll discourage drivers in New Jersey from entering New York City through Staten Island?

Will a two-way toll encourage Long Island and Brooklyn drivers to travel to New Jersey through Staten Island instead of through the Manhattan tunnels?

What net traffic impact would a two-way toll have on Staten Island and South Brooklyn?

Would a two-way tolling structure impact MTA revenue?

"I am hesitant to support the two-way tolling proposal without clear data detailing the traffic and revenue impacts the scheme might have compared to the status quo," Donovan wrote.

The MTA would not comment for this story other than to say it would evaluate Donovan's request and respond directly to him.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In response to recent bomb threats, the Jewish Community Center in Sea View will host a hate crime forum on Monday.

The forum, which will be at the Joan and Alan Bernikow Jewish Community Center located at 1466 Manor Road, was conceived in collaboration with District Attorney Michael E. McMahon, the NYPD Patrol Borough Staten Island, and the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and it will open to the public.

The forum will be held between 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and officials will explain how law enforcement is responding to the recent threats to JCCs and will equip attendees with the tools to appropriately identify and report an incident should they witness or be the victim of a bias-based attack.

Last month, three JCCs on Staten Island were the subject of a bomb threat.

The threat was considered to be made against all three Island locations, including those in Sea View, Arden Heights and Tompkinsville, said Ruth Lasser, a spokeswoman for the JCC.

No bombs were found during sweeps by police, Lasser said.

A woman employee at the Joan and Alan Bernikow JCC received a call, Lasser said.

The call was short and there was a reference made to a bomb going off in two hours. The bomb threat was not specific to the Bernikow center, so police were called to all three locations, she said.

Shortly after the threats were reported, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered an investigation into a wave of bomb threats against JCCs in New York State.

The same day of the threats, David Sorkin, Staten Island JCC executive director wrote in a letter to members that they were "closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as the Secure Community Network (SCN)."

In January, police investigated after an anti-Semitic sticker was found at the Sea View JCC.

Since the incidents were reported, police have been monitoring the JCCs in Sea View.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police have released additional video in the ongoing investigation of an attempted arson against an NYPD vehicle in New Brighton.

The video shows a light-colored Nissan Quest, which, police say, was driven by the man sought for questioning in connection to the anti-cop arson.

An unidentified individual approached an unoccupied NYPD command post vehicle at the intersection of Jersey Street and Benzinger Avenue Wednesday at approximately 2:50 a.m., police say.

Officers in a marked patrol car that was passing by saw a black man who was wearing dark clothing throw a lit device in the direction of that command vehicle at about 2:50 a.m. on Wednesday, police said.

The device missed its intended target and landed on the ground. An officer stepped out of the patrol car and stomped out the flames. Police chased the suspect on foot, but he escaped.

Police identified the device as a Molotov cocktail -- a bottle with fuel inside. It was recovered intact. Both the bottle and a glove found nearby smelled of gasoline.

Police released an initial video of the man sought for questioning. The NYPD has asked for the public's help to identify the man seen in the video.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-577-TIPS (8477) or 888-57-PISTA (74782) for Spanish; visit nypdcrimestoppers.com or send text tips to CRIMES (274637), then enter TIP577.
President Donald Trump and his close Republican ally Gov. Scott Walker disagree over Trumps budget proposal to eliminate federal funding to help preserve the Great Lakes.

Walker joined with other Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats on Thursday in opposing Trumps call for eliminating federal funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program that addresses the lakes most pressing environmental threats.

Walker said he would work with House and Senate leaders and talk with the Trump administration about restoring the funding. A bipartisan group of 47 members of Congress, including everyone from the Wisconsin delegation except House Speaker Paul Ryan, sent Trump a letter last month urging him to protect the $300 million-a-year program.

It makes sense for us to continue to make prudent investments in protecting and improving the Great Lakes, Walker said in an interview. Its one of those where its a combination of quality of life, certainly in terms of access to the greatest fresh water supply in the world but also its an economic impact. Commercial fishing, tourism, so many of those things tie in to a healthy and vibrant Great Lakes system.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose northeastern Wisconsin district borders Lake Michigan, called Trumps budget proposal ill-advised and said there is a moral obligation to pass on clean water to future generations.

The program Trump wants to kill has put more than $2.2 billion into the eight-state region for projects that have removed toxic waste from industrial harbors, fought invasive species such as Asian carp, and supported efforts to prevent harmful algal blooms.
The way of the empty hands The Simi Valley Shotokan Karate Dojo recently hosted a two-day seminar at Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District headquarters featuring a trio of karate experts. The Oct. 22 seminar was...

Slide into winter fun at SnowFest The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District is bringing snow to Simi Valley. SnowFest will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sun., Nov. 6 at Rancho Madera Community...
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The Electoral Council would like to remind all 13 registered political parties that the annual report for 2016 should be submitted to the Electoral Council before April 1st, 2017, as stipulated in article 27 of the National Ordinance on Registration and Finances of Political Parties. This means that the final day to submit the annual reports of the political parties is Friday March 31st, 2017. The annual report should include:





a. The composition of the board during 2016.

b. The amount of contributing members at the beginning and at the end of 2016.

c. The amount of contribution received from members during 2016.

d. An overview of activities carried out in 2016.





The 2016 annual report should be accompanied by a financial report as laid down in article 28 of the aforementioned National Ordinance which states that the financial report should at least include:





a. The financial position at the start and end of 2016.

b. A specified statement of income and expenditure, as well as an auditors report by a certified accountant (Dutch: registeraccountant/RA) regarding the accuracy of the financial report.

c. Donations of ANG 5,000 or more from a source other than a natural person.

d. The total amount of donations, other than contributions from party members.





The Electoral Council would like to remind all parties concerned that failure to comply with the National Ordinance on Registration and Finances of Political Parties may result in a penalty being imposed.




Page Content





Some topics addressed during this meeting were: the management of the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten (CBCS), the de-risking trends within our financial institutions, the division of assets of the former Netherlands Antilles, Sint Maarten and Curacaos possible participation with the pilot project organized by the United States and the upcoming IMF Meeting in Washington, to take place in April of this year. The meeting further centered around the plan of approach to finalize and address other pending financial matters and to ascertain a continued working relationship between both Governments.





Photo caption  Minister of Finance Richard Gibson Sr. & Minister of Finance Curacao Kenneth Gijsbertha





On Monday 13th March, 2017 the Minister of Finance from Sint Maarten, the Honorable Richard Gibson Sr. met with the Minister of Finance from Curacao, the Honorable Kenneth Gijsbertha to discuss vital financial matters that affect both Sint Maarten and Curacao.
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin has joined two dozen other mayors around America against President Trump's second try at restricting travel into the U.S. by people from six Muslim-majority nations.

The mayors joined in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in federal court in Seattle, showing support from their respective cities in support of six states against the travel ban.

"The city of Madison has spoken out," Soglin said in a news release on Thursday. "Our community is one in which people of all faiths, races and gender feel safe and welcome."

Mayors of the country's largest cities added their names to the list, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Other big cities against the travel ban include Boston, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

"The revised travel ban is an affront to American values, weakens our national security and is unconstitutional," Emanuel said.

The second version of the travel ban was to have taken effect on Wednesday, but the ban was blocked by two federal court judges.
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

Donald Trumps Tax Returns: Voting 223-183, the House on Wednesday blocked a Democratic attempt to force consideration of a resolution directing the Ways and Means Committee to use its authority under law to obtain from the Treasury copies of President Donald Trumps 2006-2015 tax returns, review the documents in a closed session and then report the information therein to the full House. A yes vote was in opposition to the Democrats bid for disclosure of the presidents tax returns.

Voting yes: James Sensenbrenner, R-5, Glenn Grothman, R-6, Sean Duffy, R-7, Mike Gallagher, R-8

Voting no: Mark Pocan, D-2, Ron Kind, D-3, Gwen Moore, D-4

Staff Dismissals at Veterans Department: Voting 237-178, the House on Thursday passed a bill reducing civil service job protections and weakening collective bargaining rights at the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to make it easier to fire or discipline poorly performing employees in the 350,000-person workforce. A yes vote was to send HR 1259 to the Senate over arguments it disregards workers due-process rights.

Voting yes: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

Voting no: Pocan, Kind, Moore

Gun Purchases and Veterans Mental Health: The House on Thursday voted, 240-175, to require patient-by-patient judicial review before the Department of Veterans Affairs can submit the names of veterans with serious mental issues to the FBIs system of background checks on gun purchasers. Such referrals now occur without judicial oversight. A yes vote was to send HR 1181 to the Senate.

Voting yes: Kind, Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher

Voting no: Pocan, Moore

SENATE

Jobless Benefits, Drug Tests: Voting 51-48, the Senate on Tuesday nullified as too soft an Obama administration rule under which states can subject applicants for unemployment compensation to drug testing. The Department of Labor rule limits scrutiny to occupations where testing already occurs such as aviation and railroading. Republican advocates of a replacement rule support drug checks on a broader array of occupations or even blanket testing. A yes vote was to send HJ Res 42 to Trump.

Voting yes: Ron Johnson, R

Voting no: Tammy Baldwin, D

Seema Verma, Medicare Administrator: The Senate on Monday confirmed, 55-43, Seema Verma, a private health care consultant, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. A yes vote backed Verma as leader of an agency that helps administer health care coverage to more than 100 million Americans through Medicare, Medicaid, the Childrens Health Insurance Program and Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

Voting yes: Johnson

Voting no: Baldwin

Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence: The Senate on Wednesday voted, 85-12, to confirm Dan Coats, a former GOP senator from Indiana, as director of national intelligence. A yes vote was to put Coats, 73, in charge of a directorate that oversees and meshes the work of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Voting yes: Johnson

Voting no: Baldwin

H.R. McMaster, National Security Adviser: Voting 86-10, the Senate on Wednesday reconfirmed Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as a three-star general, enabling him to stay on active duty while serving as national security adviser to Trump. A yes vote was to qualify McMaster to hold both posts while still in uniform.

Voting yes: Baldwin, Johnson

KEY VOTES AHEAD

In the week of March 20, the House will take up the GOPs American Health Care Act, along with bills to repeal the anti-trust exemption for health insurers and promote association health plans for small businesses. The Senate will vote on the nomination of David M. Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

 Thomas Voting Reports
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A federal judge should reject a challenge to President Donald Trumps travel ban by a Syrian family trying to relocate to Wisconsin, U.S. Justice Department attorneys argue in a new court filing.

The case revolves around a Syrian Muslim who fled the war-torn country in 2014 and settled in Dane County. Hes been working since last year to win asylum for his wife and 3-year-old daughter, who remain in Aleppo. They were trying to obtain visas when Trump issued his first travel ban in January.

The administration isnt seeking to block the mans family from coming but argues the lawsuit is moot since the travel ban has been blocked by two federal judges and the order already includes waivers for family members of refugees.

The man filed a federal lawsuit in Madison asking a judge to block the ban from applying to his family so they could continue the visa process. U.S. District Judge William Conley declared that request moot last month after a federal judge in Washington blocked the ban. The family is now slated to travel to the U.S. embassy in Jordan next month for visa interviews.

Trump has since issued another ban, however, temporarily prohibiting travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria, from entering the United States. The new order prompted the man to renew his request last week.

He argued the new ban is anti-Muslim and violates his rights to freedom of religion and due process. Conley issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting immigration officials from enforcing the ban against the mans wife and daughter, saying theyre in danger daily. Now the man wants Conley to issue an injunction, which would further cement the courts protection.

Conley has set a hearing on the injunction request for Tuesday. The Justice Department filed a brief late Thursday night arguing against an injunction.

Agency attorneys wrote the mans request is unnecessary since federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland completely blocked the ban this week. The order also includes waiver provisions for people who seek to reside with a family member admitted to the United States legally and the man cant show hes been harmed, they wrote.

The attorneys went on to say the ban is a valid exercise of the presidents authority to temporarily suspend certain classes of aliens from entering the country and the ban draws distinctions based on the risk of terrorism, not religion.

More fundamentally, Plaintiff misses the point: the Orders objective is to prevent future terrorist attacks before they occur, the governments brief said.

According to the Syrian mans lawsuit, he fled his country to avoid near-certain death at the hands of two military factions, one fighting against President Bashar al-Assads regime and another that supports it. Both sides thought he was working for the other; each faction tortured him and threatened to kill him. He didnt identify himself in the lawsuit to protect his family.
If you like Cold War-style thrillers and dont mind getting the bejeebers scared out of you, we recommend an article by arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis titled North Korea is Practicing for Nuclear War. On the edge of your seat already, right?

North Korea is Americas strangest adversary: isolated, paranoid, belligerent and  heres the worst part  armed to the teeth. Earlier this month the regime of Kim Jong Un simultaneously test-fired four missiles in the direction of Japan on an arc leading directly toward the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan. Removing any doubt, North Korea announced that it was testing its capacity to strike the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan.

Lewis said that calling this provocation a missile test underplays the threat. North Korea has a proven ability to fire missiles that could reach Japan and South Korea. It also has nuclear weapons and is developing the ability to put them on warheads. These arent missile tests, they are military exercises, Lewis wrote in Foreign Policy. North Korea knows the missiles work. What the military units are doing now is practicing  practicing for a nuclear war.

His thesis is that North Korea, the U.S. and its South Korean ally are embarked on a dangerous course of gaming out first-strike capacities. Currently the U.S. and South Korea are conducting annual joint military exercises that appear to be dress rehearsals for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, which would come in response to a threat. The practice efforts include taking out Kim and assaulting his nuclear and missile facilities, according to Lewis.

North Korea hates these exercises and responded with its multiple-missile test. The significance of firing four rockets is that firing a quartet would increase the chances of eluding a sophisticated U.S. anti-missile defense system known as THAAD. This system, Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, can shoot down an incoming short- or medium-range missile while its still high in the atmosphere. With Kim acting tough, the U.S. Army says its moving as quickly as possible to deploy THAAD in South Korea.

What disturbs Lewis is the idea that in the event of a crisis, Kim might decide to use his nukes before the U.S. and South Korea can find and destroy his missile units. He has to go first, if he is to go at all, Lewis wrote. Gulp.

His point is that too much attention is paid to North Koreas obsession with developing ICBMs capable of striking the United States. That threat is likely years away, but the North soon may be able to launch a nuclear attack on U.S. installations in Japan or South Korea that gets past THAAD before President Donald Trump has time to tweet about it.

Instead of counting on THAAD (or Trumps tweets) to save humanity, we have another idea for the president: Game out scenarios in which the U.S, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia acknowledge the North Korean threat and cooperate to exert pressure on Kim to come to the table to discuss security guarantees in exchange for economic benefits. This group of countries has worked together previously to negotiate with North Korea, so there is precedent.The obvious counterargument is that previous talks have produced no resolution. But this time the stakes are higher as Kims weapons programs move forward. Everyone at the table would be more nervous than ever. ... Consider the Chinese position: They fear THAAD because the systems powerful radar can peer beyond North Korea into China, theoretically identifying Chinese missiles and scoping out troop movements. Thus it could upset the balance of power with the U.S., setting off an increased arms race. So the Chinese would enter talks knowing that if they dont want THAAD in the neighborhood, they have to help restrain North Korea.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Beijing, ahead of an expected meeting in the U.S. next month between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. North Korea certainly will be on the agenda, but dont expect immediate breakthroughs: China is North Koreas only powerful friend and has interests other than shooing away THAAD. For one, China doesnt root for a North Korean collapse because it would send millions of refugees over the border into China. For another, there is Chinas audacious moves to control the South China Sea.

But China mistrusts Kim. Remember last months strange assassination of Kims half-brother in Malaysia? He had been living under Chinese protection in Macau. In apparent reaction, the Chinese made a show of shutting down coal deliveries from North Korea.

Heres whats also true:

China has no more interest than anyone else in waiting for North Korea to set off World War III in Asia. So amid the scary stories of North Korean brinkmanship, there is an opportunity for the Trump administration to work with whoever is willing to find a better ending to this chilling prospect.
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Investigations are under way into the cause of a house fire at Ngunnawal in Canberra's north on Friday afternoon.

The blaze took hold of a three bedroom in Minnta Place, Ngunnawal, just off Karragang Circuit.

ACT Emergency Services Agency sent three fire trucks, a hazmat team, a commander and a breathing apparatus to the scene.

No one was home at the time of the fire and no injuries were reported, an ESA spokesperson said.
An employee of Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council died on the job on Friday morning.

A spokesman for the council has declined to identify the individual, or provide details including age or gender.

An employee of Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council died on the job on Friday morning.

A statement about the death was sent to media advising that the worker died while "undertaking normal duties" and the death was believed to be due to natural causes.

But the spokesman said the death was referred to the New South Wales Coroner for investigation, and all council staff were being offered support.
Canberra's night of lights has arrived and the man behind the fireworks has promised a spectacle.

Skyfire 2017 will feature 20 minutes of fireworks from 8.30pm involving almost four tonnes of explosives synchronised with music from HIT104.7.

Pyrotechnic Fortunato Foti, of Foti International Fireworks, setting up fireworks for this year's Skyfire. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Foti International Fireworks creative director Fortunato Foti advised people to position themselves anywhere along Lake Burley Griffin for a world-class view.

"We've got 11 platforms that spread over 500 metres, so we've got a 500 metre front of fireworks so to speak," he said.
Women who need a breast reconstruction after cancer are being asked to consider being referred to the plastic surgery department at the Canberra Hospital where they can have the procedure done for free rather than going through the private system and paying $20,000 or more.

Canberra plastic surgeon Ross Farhadieh, who also works in the public system, said he and his team were doing two to three publicly-funded breast reconstructions a month at the Canberra Hospital.

Breast cancer survivor Tanya Gendle of Gungahlin had her breasts removed and reconstructed by plastic surgeons at the Canberra Hospital at no cost, and loves the results. Credit:Karleen Minney

But with the right resources and funding, they could do two to three a week, such was the potential demand from women who could be using the public health system.

Mr Farhadieh said some women were paying as much as $20,000 to private plastic surgeons when there was no need.
NAB gave disgraced planner Graeme Cowper a reference when he left the bank under a cloud. Credit:Nick Moir Bigger scandal This is scandalous enough, but an even bigger scandal is that despite all the bad publicity and the blowtorch that has been aimed at the industry in the past few years, the big four and AMP are still not doing enough to notify ASIC of any wrongdoing by their staff. Nearly half of the advisers were not notified to ASIC until the licensees identified and reported their advisers to us in response to ASIC's direction. Why not? According to ASIC, "all of the institutions publicly state that their core values include being customer focused, 'doing what is right' for customers, and acting with integrity". This clearly isn't a few bad apples but an orchard.

But when it comes to the crunch, those statements are largely just words. For example, when advice licensees became aware of serious misconduct, the report confirms they often fail to protect future customers by adequately notifying ASIC or the recruiting licensee, in other words, they brushed it under the carpet. There were inadequate background and reference-checking processes and inadequate audit processes. It's more than a few bad apples, it's the whole orchard of dodgy advice. "When customers had potentially received non-compliant advice, the audit process failed to properly assess whether the adviser had demonstrated compliance with the best interests duty and other related obligations, so that affected customers were not always identified or properly remediated, where necessary, and advisers providing non-compliant advice remained undetected," it says. Given this, it is a wonder ASIC still came up with 185 potentially dodgy planners.

Apples aplenty It makes a mockery of the constant reference by bank chiefs that the dodgy goings on in the financial planning industry is the work of a "few bad apples", a term used to describe rogue financial advisers. This clearly isn't a few bad apples but an orchard. The report says an estimated $30 million has been paid to 1347 customers following inappropriate advice during the period of this review. But this doesn't include the various compensation schemes run by CBA, including the original scheme that paid out $52 million, or the more recent open advice review program, which, at August 31 had offered almost $10 million in compensation. Nor does it include the rampant misconduct at Macquarie. Macquarie entered an enforceable undertaking in January last year, more than two years after ASIC first became aware of the extent of misconduct in Macquarie Private Wealth. That included the misclassification of many clients as sophisticated investors, poor record-keeping and some advisers cheating on exams using the famously circulated "Penske file" stuffed full of answers.

Nor does it include the $178 million these institutions charged almost 200,000 customers for financial advice services they never got. In that case, customers were literally paying their hard-earned money for nothing, while the big four banks and AMP raked in the fees. Time for accountability Heads surely need to roll and it shouldn't just be the financial advisers but the executives who set the tone and have continued to turn a blind eye. The report is informative and paints a picture of an industry that needs a lot more work. But it would have been a lot more powerful if the regulator took the next step and put names to the institutions. That way we would know which ones were doing better than others in terms of breaching dodgy advisers. We would also know which ones continue to turn a blind eye. ASIC deputy chairman Peter Kell says the industry "isn't there yet". He is right. Kell wants law reform, including higher penalties, beefed-up powers and strengthening breach reporting requirements.

This is part of the solution but the time has come to name and shame institutions. There is too much at risk: people's life savings. But the industry will push back. The government will need to stand strong if it genuinely wants to repair trust among customers and will get its opportunity in the shape of the review into ASIC's powers. Industry response ASIC is hopeful that the Australian Bankers' Association's recently announced Reference Checking and Information Sharing Protocol for financial planners will be a panacea. The problem with this is licensees don't have an appetite to do reference checking. They peddle the excuse of privacy invasions and potential defamation suits if they say too much about a financial adviser.
National Australia Bank, the country's fourth-largest lender by market value, said on Friday it sold $500 million of "gender equality" social bonds, amid burgeoning demand for ethical investments.

Ethical investing in Australia has doubled to $51.5 billion in the past two years, according to the Responsible Investment Association Australasia.

Proceeds of the NAB issue will refinance loans made to a portfolio of businesses, including law firms and property companies, that have a gender equality citation from Australian government body Workplace Gender Equality Agency. Credit:Nicholas Walker

AMP Capital said on Thursday it would sell $570 million worth of tobacco and weapon manufacturing-related stock and bond holdings under its revised Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) program and Responsible Investment Philosophy.

Australia is lagging many of its peers when it comes to responsible bond issuance. There has been a meagre $3.5 billion worth of debt, nearly all green bonds, sold so far in the country.
Bernard's Magic Shop has performed its most astonishing act  disappearing, on its 80th year anniversary.

The iconic retailer this week assigned the West Melbourne lease it committed to in 2015 to another tenant and, when The Age visited on Wednesday, was moving out.

Kristina at Bernard's Magic Shop in West Melbourne, where she moved after rents were raised 70 per cent at the Elizabeth Street store. Credit:Simon Schluter

The lease transfer comes six months after the shop's caretaker for the past 25 years, a magician only ever reported as Kristina, flagged the business' future was as an e-commerce offering. Its bricks and mortar store was negatively affected over the years, Kristina said, by a combination of dwindling patronage, high rents and inconvenient customer parking.

Bernard's opened in 1937 at 211 Elizabeth Street  an address synonymous with the magic retailer until the building sold to investors two years ago for $7 million. When the new owners subsequently sought to increase the rent by about 70 per cent to the market rate, Bernard's relocated to 355 Victoria Street.
Even the Christmas jumpers have a 30-year guarantee, which could encourage decades of twee festive photos.

It comes down to an old-fashioned promise: If the clothes fall apart in 30 years, Tom Cridland will replace them free of charge - assuming the customer still wants to wear the sweatshirt, T-shirt or jacket 30 years later, and can still fit into it.

Twenty-six-year-old Tom Cridland has gained an outsized profile for his eponymous men's fashion label thanks to actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Craig, and savvy self-promotion.

Tom Cridland, of UK men's clothing range Tom Cridland.

While Australians have fallen for fast-fashion - spending more than $600 million at budget chains Uniqlo, Zara and H&M a year - Cridland said the country was one of his boutique brand's top markets, behind its native UK and the US.

"We're planning to come for the first time [to Australia] and promote sustainable fashion towards the end of 2017," he said. There are also plans to launch women's clothes this year.

The Tom Cridland brand - which is owned by Cridland and partner Deb Marx - was born three years ago, thanks to a 6,000 loan. Along the way, it has opened and shut a shop in London, raised tens of thousands of pounds from crowd-funding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and set up a public relations arm which has about 20 clients.

Cridland said the business was generating about 1 million ($1.6 million) in online sales. It does not sell to retailers such as department stores. Its textile workers, such as clothes makers in Portugal, are contractors.
For all the news medias rightful focus on the kleptocracy, lying, manipulation and malpractice that undergird the presidency of Donald J. Trump, something is even more troubling about this administration: its supporters. No matter what outrageous falsehood he tweets, no matter what ethical standard he eviscerates, no matter what democratic principle he violates, Trumps supporters stand by loyally.

They dismiss the evidence presented by experts from right and left. They accept this hours lie, which contradicts the lie of the hour before. They even deny their own values to cling to Trumps heresies.

The presidents latest big lie is the claim President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower to spy on his campaign. Trump and his surrogates have repeated various versions of that dangerous falsehood for several days now, with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. But according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports, Republican voters tend to believe Trump.

Historians tell us that this is the way that dictatorships begin. A totalitarian makes war on truth, perverts the assumptions that underlie critical thinking and masters the dark art of propaganda. Of course, he (or she) must have a willing audience, a substantial following that wants to believe.

And Trump does. A mid-February Gallup poll found that 81 percent of Republicans believe the president to be honest and trustworthy. By then, Trump had already repeated  several times  an easily refuted contention that his inauguration crowds were the biggest in American history. All youd have to do is look at the photos posted by several news organizations, which placed pictures from the National Mall during President Barack Obamas inaugural festivities side by side with Trumps.

By the time of the poll, the president had also repeated  several times  the outrageous claim that Hillary Clintons popular-vote victory was the result of massive voter fraud, an outbreak of illegal balloting that involved as many as 5 million people. Many of his surrogates have repeated that monstrous fabrication. Where is the major investigative commission that press secretary Sean Spicer said would be led by Vice President Mike Pence? It has not materialized, and that doesnt seem to matter.

Talk about defining deviancy down. Trump has already violated many of the norms of the American presidency and challenged democratic values. For example, he denounces judges, who represent an equal branch of government. Where are all the tea-partiers who claim to revere the U.S. Constitution? Why are they still staunchly supporting Trump?

Then theres the matter of the presidents deeply troubling relationship with Vladimir Putin, the autocratic leader of Russia, one of this nations most troublesome rivals. Its clear that Russia intervened in the presidential election, likely the worst scandal in the history of U.S. politics.

And evidence continues to mount that Trump has a murky and mysterious web of connections to Russians in Putins circle. Back during the summer, Trump reportedly instructed his surrogates to remove language from the Republican Party platform that supported Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists. Backing Russia as it tries to take over Ukraine contradicts years of U.S. foreign policy dictates from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Not that Trump voters care. For all the handwringing over the economic fears of working-class white voters, their populism has a deep undercurrent of white Christian nationalism.

They are not terribly interested in the tenets of a pluralistic democracy or in a broad economic justice. Rather, they are swayed by the clarion call of a man who has promised to restore white Christian America to dominance. Their ambivalence to the U.S. Constitution  its separation of powers, its protection of religious minorities, its support for dissent  poses the greatest threat to the republic since the Civil War.

After days of reticence, Republican leaders finally found the guts to refute Trumps lie about wiretaps. But they may lose that newfound courage if their constituents continue to back Trump.

Its no wonder that George Orwells 1984, the chilling vision of a dystopian, totalitarian future where inconvenient facts are simply deleted and rewritten, is suddenly popular again, rocketing to the top of best-seller lists. Its uncomfortably familiar.
If David Herman needs a reminder of the importance of his role as the chief executive of Melbourne's 81-year-old Lort Smith Animal Hospital, he can find two by casting an eye around his office.

The first is his dog, Pearl, whom Herman adopted from Lort Smith almost nine years ago. "I had no idea then I would end up chief executive of Lort Smith, and be bringing Pearl back here almost every day," Herman says.

Lort Smith Animal Hospital chief executive David Herman. Credit:Wayne Taylor

The second is an antique desk in the corner of Herman's office. It belongs to Louisa Lort Smith, the founder of the charity. "It's a reminder of the history of this place, and the remarkable woman who founded it," Herman says. "Eighty years later, the principles and beliefs of Louisa Lort Smith still underpin the strategy work I am doing right now."

Herman took a long and diverse career journey before becoming the chief executive of Lort Smith.
Other poor defence decisions of Howard's were the construction of the Defence Headquarters Joint Operations Command in a paddock in the marginal electorate of Eden-Monaro, and joining the troubled United States-led F-35 joint strike fighter program at vast unnecessary cost. Let's go wider afield. On housing affordability, Howard introduced the capital-gains-tax concession; bolstered the first-home buyers' grant; and boosted immigration  all putting pressure on housing demand. Investor entry into the housing market took off from the moment the capital-gains-tax concession began. We wallow helplessly in the backwash of these idiotic decisions. Speaking of tax, Howard introduced the over-60 superannuation tax holiday, other super concessions, family payments to middle-income households, age-based tax concessions, and lots of income-tax breaks for middle to higher-income households. These have been difficult if not impossible to wind back and have increased inequality in Australia. In short, Howard squandered the mining boom on buying votes and allowing miners to be lightly taxed. A do-nothing ditherer like Turnbull or McMahon is better than someone who made Australia poorer and less equitable.

In education, he dramatically increased federal funding to private schools ,which they largely spent on non-educational luxuries. He starved public schools. The result is the worsening scores Australia gets on national and international testing. Again, it has been difficult to unwind because of the demand that "no school should be worse off", which Julia Gillard was forced to accede to. In health, Howard's government corroded Medicare by misdirecting money into tax deductions for inefficient private health insurance. Again, they are hard to unwind. Howard set the stage for the present return to the 1960s in the health system  one in which many people cannot afford to pay for healthcare. We now bemoan the casualisation of the workforce, underemployment and low wages growth. A lot of that is down to Howard's industrial-relations policies, culminating in WorkChoices. With infrastructure, Howard was a master of the pork barrel. The regional partnership program was biased towards Coalition and marginal seats. We have mentioned the Defence joint HQ. The priority given to the Alice-to-Darwin railway was another big spend in a marginal seat, instead of being part of the orderly construction of a national rail network in which the Melbourne-Brisbane link was the obvious priority. The misspend is still sounding in infrastructure deficits today. It took Labor to set up Infrastructure Australia to expose the pork barrels and put a bit of economic rationality into the system.

Howard politicised the public service when he sacked six department heads upon coming into power. Abbott followed suit, It was followed by Abbott when he sacking three when he came into office. Again, a bad Howard precedent becoming the new norm. In Indigenous affairs, Howard's legacy was the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission; the intervention; the failure to say sorry to the stolen generation; and the mishandling of constitutional recognition. On other iconic questions, he created historic mischief. He divided and ruled on the 1999 republic referendum instead of being a national leader. He demanded his party members vote for an antiquated definition of marriage; we still have division in our society when our English-speaking and European friends and allies have all grown up. He joined a liberal party when it was what he called a "broad church", then, in power, he systematically removed everything left of the nave and made it the conservative party in which Malcolm Turnbull is having difficulty finding a pew. Yes, he implemented gun control, but that was fairly easy in a nation just shocked by the largest mass gun murder in history to that date.

Yes, Australia broke records for continuous economic growth, but, again, this was fairly easy after the Hawke-Keating reforms and a mining boom. Yes, Howard implemented the GST, but it was only half the job that New Zealand did because of the Senate. But Howard did not revisit the tax later when he had a Senate majority. Returning to energy, Howard followed the US out of the Kyoto agreement. He reluctantly agreed that a carbon tax would be worthwhile but did nothing about it. He encouraged the states to privatise electricity and, in 1998, set up the national electricity market based on market principles  meaning electricity network owners, suppliers and retailers could screw consumers and small business. In all, a do-nothing ditherer like Turnbull or McMahon is a better proposition than someone who put in train changes which have made Australia a poorer, less equitable place and which have been very difficult to undo. Loading
You might want to look away. I'm about to open the kimono and urge you to reach for some low-hanging fruit. This journey we will embark upon won't be pretty. Going forward, we will need to ladder up, reach out and then take a deep dive.

Still with me? You've spent far too much time trapped in meetings, haven't you, eyeballs glazing, brain melting, trying to keep up as some twat prances about at the front of the room slowly hypnotising you with his grasp of gobbledegook. Or, as it's more formally known, corporatese  the fastest-growing language on the planet, the lingua franca of the insecure and the badge of honour worn on the lapel of those expensive suits preferred by the modern bullshit artist.

Meetings don't have to be like this.

So let's bite the bullet, put our ducks in a row and get the ball rolling by hitting the ground running and seeing if we can change the goalposts. You know. Let's start.

Corporatese has emerged as a melanoma on the body of the English language, greedily digging its way beneath the surface and eating away at the fabric of meaning. Politicians, naturally, revel in it. Consultants encourage its growth. And the rest of us have been sitting back and allowing it to flourish. Much the same way they did in the 1950s when a British psychologist, Raymond Cattell, took the word "synergy"  originally used by Protestants to describe how divine grace worked alongside human will  and inflicted it on the wider world.
Professor Robert Kelly, a dad and expert on Korea, showed us this week how flexible work arrangements, for him working from home, can suit some families.

The video of him doing a live BBC interview and being interrupted by his two young children has gone viral.

The funny video has not been immune to social media commentary, and some of that discussion has been around the role of men and women in child rearing, as well as flexible work.

What are your rights in Australia to request flexible work arrangements and can your employer refuse?
Illustration: John Shakespeare Then South Australia's Premier Jay Weatherill announced his own plan for his state's electricity. The national market, he said, was "broken". His $550 million plan is to build a new gas-fired power plant and battery storage to provide reliability. Turnbull's Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg denounced him for "going it alone". Turnbull needed another idea, and he needed it fast. So on Wednesday his press office gave an advance briefing to the newspapers, and on Thursday Turnbull announced his new idea. Celia Pacquola with Luke McGregor and Rob Sitch in Utopia. It was nation-building. It was the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme 2.0. It was "an electricity game-changer", he said. It would cost about $2 billion and take about four years. It was a 30-year vision put together in less than three weeks.

Feasibility studies? the last sentence in Turnbull's announcement said: "A feasibility study is expected to be completed before the end of the year, and construction can commence soon after." So he already knows the result of the feasibility study? Of course not. In fact, it was plain from the chief executive of the Snowy Hydro scheme, Paul Broad, that this is not a plan so much as a concept. Broad said in a Sky News interview on Thursday night that studies were needed on the geological feasibility, the technological feasibility and the financial feasibility. A former adviser to Turnbull on electricity, Danny Price of Frontier Economics, said Turnbull's announcement was a "thought bubble", that "all we've got is full-on politics". Said Price: "We have an emergency that needs to be managed now, not with thought bubbles." So Turnbull has taken the advice of the prime ministerial press secretary from Utopia. He's committed his government to the project before knowing whether it's feasible. Or not.

In fact, deliberations on this project were so sketchy that Turnbull hadn't even consulted its majority shareholders. The Commonwealth owns only 13 per cent of the Snowy Hydro corporation. The majority shareholder is the state of NSW with 58 per cent and Victoria with the remaining 29. What if the majority owners didn't want to pay their share of the estimated $2 billion, reporters asked? Turnbull said the federal government would be "happy" to pay the lot. That was a tough negotiation. It's enough to make you wonder. Was Utopia political satire, or political instruction manual? Weatherill said the plan was "an insult" to South Australia. The head of one of Australia's biggest power companies, Jon Stretch of ERM Power, said that if "this stupid anxiety between the states and the feds doesn't stop, we are in deep trouble". He said that "if we cannot get an environment where people are going to invest, nothing will happen". As for last month's brilliant plan for a new coal-fired electricity plant, well, that was very last month: "Turnbull drives stake through heart of fossil fuel industry," was the headline on the RenewEconomy website announcing Turnbull's Snowy proposal.

The site's editor, Giles Parkinson, wrote: "By promoting pumped hydro, Turnbull is effectively signing the death knell for any new coal or gas fired generation built by the private sector, and is paving the way for a 100 per cent renewable energy grid, driven mostly by wind and solar." "By adding pumped hydro, and distributed battery storage" in homes, and buildings, "Australia can reach a 100 per cent renewable energy target, possibly within a few decades." He cited an ANU expert, Andrew Blakers, in support: "It's game over for gas, it's game over for nuclear. Solar PV and wind have won the race." And guess what? All this, and the Turnbull government hasn't yet produced its electricity policy. It's still waiting for the official review it commissioned from Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. The Finkel report is supposed to form the basis of the government's policy. So Turnbull is not only crashing ahead regardless of feasibility, he's charging forth in the absence of an overall policy. Apart from the sheer incoherence of all this political freneticism, consider the larger implications. This is a Liberal Prime Minister announcing a federal government intervention to build a new electricity storage and generation project.

"This is a dramatic change, a massive government intervention, in an area that has always been a state responsibility, electricity" says a senior Liberal. "The Liberal party is now a party of state intervention." What would Malcolm Turnbull have said of this in the days when he was a pro-market man, sceptical of government intervention in the economy? We know what he'd have said, because this is what he said of Kevin Rudd's National Broadband Network. When Rudd's initial plan for the NBN failed because of a lack of suitable private bids to build it, Turnbull, then the opposition leader, wrote: "In order to distract attention from the total failure of his broadband policy, Rudd made an even grander promise" of a bigger scheme paid for entirely by the federal government. If you insert the words "coal-fired electricity policy" instead of broadband, you can see what Turnbull would have made of his own Snowy announcement.

The Malcolm of 2009 continued in a piece in The Australian newspaper that the prime minister's plans "are not supported by a business plan, a financial study, advice from Infrastructure Australia or, so far as we know, anything other than his desire to get a big headline (it worked)." He concluded with this demand of Rudd: "Prime Minister, show us the numbers before you spend the money." One Liberal wag this week said that Turnbull's Snowy plan was even more dubious than Rudd's NBN: "The NBN had more detail  at least it was worked out on the back of an envelope." The era of the market is dead, it seems, and nation-building is back, at any cost. Today, Turnbull leads a government building the NBN and now committed to a Snowy scheme of unknown feasibility. Oddly enough, the political class is assuming this power to step into the market at will at the very time that public confidence in government is at a record low.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has started dismantling Australia's sweeping ban on coal seam gas drilling, arguing a new scheme to divert a share of government royalties to farmers will overcome furious opposition in the bush.

Mr Joyce on Friday embraced a South Australian government plan to pay farmers 10 per cent of royalties in exchange for allowing gas wells on their land, saying the scheme should be rolled out nationally, with an exclusion of prime agricultural land.

The Agriculture Minister said lifting moratoriums and giving landholders a fair price in exchange for access would equate to "a substantial turnaround in attitude and that is a very good outcome".

"I can't see people who start making hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars a year having a backlash," Mr Joyce told Fairfax Media.
The "end is very near" for the Islamic State terror group in its Iraqi heartland of Mosul, according to Brigadier Hugh McAslan, the second-in-command of coalition land forces in the country.

There were plenty of doubters about the Obama-era strategy of training the Iraqi forces, advising them through the battles while supporting them from the air.

But when Mosul finally falls, as Brigadier McAslan of the New Zealand Army says it will "very soon", the slowly but patiently-executed plan, which avoided putting foreign combat troops on the ground  save for some secretive special operations soldiers  will be vindicated.

Brigadier McAslan explains how they've done it in Mosul. It starts with gathering intelligence on the whereabouts of Islamic State commanders and then killing them in precision strikes, mostly from the air.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he doubts the government can work effectively with new ACTU boss Sally McManus after her comments that union members should break "unjust laws".

The Coalition launched into its second day of attacks on ACTU leader Sally McManus, led by Mr Turnbull and echoed by Peter Dutton, who labelled Ms McManus a "lunatic".

Ms McManus created a firestorm on her second day on the job, when she told ABC's 7.30 on Wednesday that she believed in the rule of law "where the law's fair, where the law's right, but when it's unjust, I don't think there's a problem with breaking it".

The comment sparked an immediate response from the Coalition, which seized on it as evidence for the necessity of its controversial ABCC laws, the stalling of which in the last parliament acted as the trigger for Mr Turnbull to call a double dissolution election.
Outgoing ABC chairman Jim Spigelman says the broadcaster needs to "treat its audience as citizens, not consumers". Credit:Steven Siewert "But the 'if it bleeds it leads' tradition in journalism is very strong." Spigelman's five-year term has been a dramatic period: $250 million in budget cuts, the axing of the ABC's international broadcasting service, Tony Abbott's Q&A boycott and the arrival of Guthrie. Now it's over. His office is full of packed-up cardboard boxes; his artworks have been pulled off the walls. It's not his choice to go, and he's honest about it.

"If I had been offered a second term I would have accepted," says the former NSW chief justice and principal private secretary to Gough Whitlam. "My predecessor wasn't given a second term and wanted it; I haven't been given a second term." Few prime ministers give up the chance to select their own ABC chair and Malcolm Turnbull is no different  even though he and Spigelman have been close friends for decades. In between energy policy announcements in Canberra and the Snowy Mountains, Turnbull travelled to Sydney on Wednesday to attend Spigelman's farewell. In his speech, Spigelman revealed a secret plot hatched in the final year of the Whitlam government to buy The Australian newspaper.

Spigelman, then head of the Department of Media, was dispatched to meet Rupert Murdoch to ask whether he would sell the broadsheet to the ABC. Only a handful of people knew of the plan. It would have been an explosive move  The Australian was campaigning ferociously against Whitlam and the ABC has no charter responsibilities for print media. Spigelman remembers the idea was driven by a desire to reduce the concentration of newspaper ownership not to stifle criticism of the government. Although the paper was bleeding money, Murdoch said no. In 2013 Spigelman announced a series of external audits to assess the ABC coverage's for bias. In his speech he said he was concerned ABC journalists  like those elsewhere  were more interested in same-sex marriage than electricity prices.

"I don't think it's changed much," Spigelman says. "There isn't as much attention on the issues of the 'Howard battlers', working families, people in the suburbs. "We should be connecting with all segments of the Australian population." On accusations of political bias, he says: "It's probably true there are a greater number of Labor voters among our journalists than conservative voters. I wouldn't have thought that's unrepresentative of journalism across the board." He adds: "To say there's a single perspective on life at the ABC is wrong.

"If you go outside Sydney and Melbourne you find a more conservative approach. Most people criticising the ABC know nothing about the breakfast program, say, in Perth or Adelaide or Brisbane." Spigelman says many staff found the audits  which involve paying outsiders to critique the ABC  "ridiculous" but believes they have been useful. A review of budget coverage prompted the ABC to focus more on policy than politics; the broadcaster's editorial guidelines were changed after an audit into asylum seeker coverage. Last September, Employment Minister Michaelia Cash wrote to the ABC saying it was "required to comply" with the government's workplace bargaining policy, prompting Spigelman to accuse the government of a "fundamental challenge to the independence of the ABC". "That was the only occasion in my five years I thought the independence of the ABC was being threatened.

"I said: 'You can't give us a direction on what to do'. "That was the end of the story." He's also critical of the government for its tardiness in appointing board members. The terms of Fiona Stanley and Jane Bennett expired last June but they have only just been replaced.



"We have made major decisions during that period and it would have been better to have a full complement of directors.



"It's not as if these things can't be organised in advance - they just don't get the attention they deserve until the last moment." Spigelman's biggest legacy will be the appointment of Guthrie, who last week announced a restructure that will see 200 employees leave the ABC.

While conceding Guthrie's arrival has unsettled some staff, he praises the former News Corp and Google executive as "very dynamic, very focused". "Mark Scott had nothing like her range of experience when he came to the job. "He hadn't run anything of this scale." Spigelman backs Guthrie's push for more on-screen diversity and to reach out to younger audiences. "The biggest challenge facing the ABC is how to maintain an older audience used to appointment television and another generation that doesn't operate in anything like that manner."

Bidding farewell this week, Spigelman asked staff to remain true to his guiding philosophy for public broadcasting: "The ABC has to treat its audience as citizens, not consumers. As people with rights and duties, not just wants and needs." Outgoing ABC Chair James Spigelman on: A potential ABC/SBS merger: "I've never, ever pushed a merger. Others here have. The ABC is big enough. There's no case for merging SBS radio with the ABC. It performs its particular responsibilities very well. "I'm not sure what SBS TV is really for any more; it's not really an ethnic broadcaster, it doesn't feel like a public broadcaster. That doesn't mean it doesn't have good programming, it does [but] there are real questions about SBS television that need to be addressed." Managing Director Michelle Guthrie: "Not many people know that when Michelle ran Star TV in India she used to be woken up regularly by Sonia Gandhi or Prime Minister Singh complaining [about coverage]. She'll have no problem dealing with Canberra."
Australia's business leaders and biggest corporations are being bullied by activist groups into supporting same-sex marriage laws, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Friday.

Days after brewing company Coopers moved to head off a boycott of its products after Liberal MPs Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie appeared in a video debating same-sex marriage reforms, Mr Dutton told Sydney radio host Ray Hadley that big corporations including Qantas were afraid of being targeted online by activist groups.

"We need to have the ability for both sides to be heard and we're in a politically correct age it seems, which I can't tolerate, and I think a lot of Australians are of the same view," he said.

Mr Dutton said he wanted a respectful debate on marriage equality, but added that publicly listed companies shouldn't take political stances and business leaders should not prioritise debating moral issues over running their companies.
As Winston Churchill warned, if we ramp up the arms race, well just make the rubble bounce.

The stakes are even higher today because so many countries have nuclear weapons  and they could set the world on fire. This moment calls for a strong, but nuanced and strategic policy, not incendiary bluster. (Attention, you-know-who).

In Europe, theres increased talk of a European Union nuclear weapons program that would refocus Frances arsenal to protect the rest of Europe and operate under a common European command. Supposedly this plan would be enacted only if the continent could no longer count on American protection.

Therein lies the problem. The world is rapidly moving away from reducing nukes toward adding nukes, an escalation in Europes military power and a break with American leadership. This is one of the consequences of Europes insecurity about the White Houses relationship with Russia and Russias more aggressive policies.

Similar angst is being stirred in Asia, where Kim Jong-un has forced the proliferation issue like a teenager playing chicken by firing four ballistic missiles toward Japan. To counter his continuing recklessness, the U.S. is in the process of sharing its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense  known as THAAD  with South Korea, which is most immediately at risk.

Both China and Russia have yelped loudly in protest  they complain the THAAD radar might allow us to peep into their military activity. But the U.S. already has that capability in other radar systems and has every right to defend itself.

At the same time, Russia has escalated stakes in the region by launching a cruise missile in violation of the 1987 INF treaty.

The U.S. is being tested on multiple fronts. President Trumps statements have been divergent: He is on record saying, Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. He also talked of reaching a new arms agreement with Moscow that would reduce arms very substantially.

A show of strength is warranted, but its good to keep in mind the American arsenal is as much about reassuring allies as deterring enemies. Reassurance is about credible commitments backstopped by steady leadership. Both are now in question.

Projecting an image of sobriety and resolve must be at the core of our statecraft. We might not convince Russia and China of our best intentions, but we do have allies who want to be reassured.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a start toward that goal on his Asia tour. When President Trump meets with President Xi Jinping in April, he should emphasize the THAAD system wouldnt be necessary if China leaned harder on Kim Jong-un to stop provocative missile launches. And he should let his friends in Russia know  preferably by high-level talks rather than tweets  that we will make sure NATOs deterrence forces are well-prepared with the latest technology to counter a first-strike from Russia.

An arms race is hard to stop, but U.S. policy shouldnt speed it up.
Barry Humphries wore purple trousers to Bill Leak's memorial, held on Friday afternoon at the Sydney Town Hall, and attended by prime ministers present and past, editors, television personalities, and several hundred well-wishers who stood waiting in the rear of Druitt Street in the rain, just so they could say goodbye.

Purple trousers seemed right for the life of Leak, a brilliant cartoonist, a bohemian turned anti-PC wildman, a doting father, a painter, a muffin enthusiast and a "shit-stirrer". They sounded a note of anarchic elegance that seemed to fit.

PM Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy Turnbull arrive at the Memorial Service for Bill Leak at Sydney Town Hall. Credit:Brook Mitchell

Once indoors, Humphries took off his trilby hat, out of respect. Not that Leak cared much for respect - at least not in his work, which was brilliant but controversial, and recently earned him the ire of Islamic extremists and left-wing "do-gooders", as detailed by several of the eulogists.

Guests included former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, ministers Peter Dutton and Mitch Fifield, crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen, senators Derryn Hinch and Malcolm Roberts, and media identities Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, Mark Latham and Ross Cameron. A personal message from Rupert Murdoch was read by The Australian's editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker.
When Malcolm Turnbull assumed the mantle of a nation-building prime minister this week, evoking the vision and courage of those who delivered Australia's biggest engineering project, he could have offered a silent prayer to his Liberal predecessors.

Had they succumbed to the temptation and privatised one of the nation's most prized public assets, Turnbull would not have been able to turn to the Snowy Hydro Scheme to help solve the country's energy crisis and boost his diminishing standing among voters.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

Of course, flogging off a national icon would have been a tall order, not least because the ownership is shared with the New South Wales and Victorian governments. But that has not stopped the idea being pushed regularly, and hard, over the years.

Even last year, there was talk that Snowy Hydro was being primed for sale, with speculation focusing on how the opposition from the National Party could be tempered by keeping the water side of the business in public hands.
Sometimes a hero comes along when you least expect it to brighten your life and widen your horizons. Please enter, with tremendous swagger, Marion. Otherwise known as the adorable 4-year-old who barged into her dad's very important interview on the BBC and made her entire family famous.

To recap, Professor Robert Kelly, an expert on East Asian relations was speaking about the impeachment of South Korea's president when Marion triumphantly barged into his spare room/office, followed by her baby brother in his walker and then her heroic mum who slid into the room to yank the children away from the screen. It was very, very funny.

After the video went insanely viral the, frankly, adorable, family gave a few interviews to the press including one where Prof. Kelly described Marion being in a "hippity-hoppity mood' when she made her small-screen debut as she'd just celebrated her birthday.

To which all women then prayed that we too could have the confidence of a hippity-hoppity four-year-old, and also that she never loses her supreme cool.
Canada. It's smaller than you think.

Matthew Perry has revealed his younger self had a playground scrap with none other than Canadian Prime Minister, and bastion of the meme-loving left, Justin Trudeau.

The Friends actor, who was raised in Canada, spoke about the incident in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday night.

"I have a story about [Trudeau] that I'm not proud of," Perry said, saying an old friend had recently reminded him of the altercation.
I believe as photographers out there covering news we have a huge responsibility in capturing the truth. That means to photograph what is happening no matter how confronting it might be. In the case of my show, I want people to not look away from the images I am showing them, no matter how disturbing and confronting they might be. By not looking away you're honouring the dead and the living, a kind of memory to the suffering of others. You can say, I'm not really there with youbut I am. I want people to feel my photographs; if they don't feel them then I have failed as a photographer.

Stephen, please tell us about Don't Look Away  what does that title mean?

Stephen Dupont has spent more than two decades covering war, social conflict and natural disasters. This image shows the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban City, the Philippines, in 2013. Credit:Stephen Dupont

Photojournalist Stephen Dupont wants you to be confronted by his images. The Australian, who has spent years documenting nations riven by conflict, describes himself as an anti-war photographer.

James Nachtwey speaks about photojournalists as being a "witness" to history, is that sort of what you are tapping into here?

His words speak loud and clear, yes we are witnesses to history and to memory. My show takes the audience on not just a journey into my life as a photographer but one through history itself. I reveal in a very personal way my own experiences while covering some of the world's biggest and forgotten stories over the past two decades. Through my stories and pictures I say, look at this, don't you remember? Or, look at this, can you believe this? I jolt people's senses and their memories so these tragic events are not forgotten.

This is a performance that is a mix of your work, and also you ad-libbing and speaking with moving and still images. What's it like to present your work in this way?

I've spent years doing talks and lectures, keynotes. I needed another kind of approach to my work, one that uses photographs, sound scapes, music and videos, but most importantly one that allows me the presence on stage to deliver really personal and revealing stories. This performance is from the heart and one that allows me to engage the audience in a most powerful way. This theatrical approach lets the audience really engage in my world, my photography.

What do you want participants of your show to take away from it? Do you have a message or theme that you want to get across?
Those people closest to an Adelaide man who was fatally poisoned in 2015, including his then partner, are the focus of an investigation into his murder.

Police now believe 63-year-old David Lawrence, who died in his Morphett Vale home in December 2015, was deliberately poisoned through lethal doses of prescription medications added to his food and drinks.

David Lawrence, 63, was found dead in his home in December 2015. Credit:SA Police

Initially, police did not believe there was anything suspicious about Mr Lawrence's death. Toxicology results later revealed he had died from lethal levels of prescription opiates and other medication which he had never been prescribed.

Mr Lawrence had lived with his partner for about 18 months before his death. She has since moved to Dapto, near Wollongong in NSW.
Sensitive employment data on another 53,000 federal public servants may have been supplied to a private firm conducting workplace ballots without the knowledge or consent of the workers.

Both the giant Department of Defence and the behemoth Department of Human Services have refused to detail the extent of the employee data they supplied to private polling outfit ORIMA in the wake of revelations of the hand-over of extensive information by the Tax Office.

Pluto is not a dog, says Department of Human Services spokesman Hank Jongen.

Unions are urging one of the departments to use the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct its workplace ballot so the department's public servants can be assured their employment details, home and private email addresses, are in safe hands.

Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan insists his agency was on solid legal ground when it covertly supplied its contractor with the names, email addresses, locations of work and pay grades of each of its 19000 employees without their knowledge or consent.
Developers building in inner Sydney suburbs such as Potts Point, Darlinghurst and Erskineville will be forced to contribute to building affordable housing across the city, under a new proposal by the City of Sydney to tackle the lack of homes for low-income workers.

The proposal recommends expanding the council's current affordable housing policy, which operates only in pockets of the city, across the whole council area  a move which would boost the number of low-income homes by 40 per cent, but likely anger developers.

Under the policy, developers would be required to make a contribution  either a monetary payment to a community housing provider or an in-kind contribution of finished homes in their development for affordable homes  on new building projects across the city.

The levy would be phased in over four years and would create 600 affordable homes to be rented at below-market rates to low-income workers, according to the council's projections.
Kemel Barakat's coffin is carried out of the Alawi Youth Movement Centre. Credit:Nick Moir "Now these blokes and their families have to be bunkered down and living in hotel rooms for fear someone is going to pop them," one source said. "They are scared," a police officer put it simply. Ahmad "Rock" Ahmad of the notorious Ahmad crime family. Credit:Nick Moir Some of the figures now constantly looking over their shoulders braved the potential threats to attend Barakat's rain-drenched funeral in Marrickville on Thursday. Others skipped it, acknowledging tensions were high.

As is the case after any gangland murder, police are wary of imminent and violent retaliation. They are also concerned that the brutality of Barakat's death is a sign of worse things to come. The scene of the shooting in Mortlake. Credit:Brook Mitchell Barakat, also known as "Blackie", was murdered in his Mortlake apartment after he emerged as a suspect in the shooting of crime figure Hamad Assaad. Like Barakat, Assaad was a suspect in the shooting of notorious standover man Walid "Wally" Ahmad last April. The recent tit-for-tat shootings appear to have roots in a fierce battle between some of the south-west's most feared families and their associates. Kemel Barakat was arrested during a bikie crackdown in 2013. Credit:NSW Police

Barakat, a 29-year-old with a family base in Marrickville, found himself intertwined with the Ahmad network only in the past couple of years. He had a long affiliation with the Hells Angels, as his tattoos showed, but his loyalty to his mate Rock, more than a decade his senior, became of particular interest to police. Their partnership came at a time when the Ahmad family had been dealt a succession of heavy blows and the pressure to save face was on. The funeral of Wally Ahmad at Lakemba Mosque. Credit:Edwina Pickles It was April 2016 and Rock's brother Wally, a charismatic, larger-than-life figure and established career criminal, had just been killed. The 40-year-old was sitting at Havana Cafe in Bankstown Central after a gym session when a man ran towards the heavy set figure and fired multiple rounds. Wally bled out on the tiles of the cafe as his brothers turned up demanding to see their dying sibling. It was a significant blow to the criminal network. Wally was a widely recognised figure in the area. He demanded rent from dealers plying the Bankstown/Punchbowl drug trade, mediated everything from conflicts over drug rip-offs to business disputes, and stood over honest business people for his own benefit.

Kemel "Blackie" Barakat. Credit:Instagram After completing a six-year jail term for shooting Mayez Danny at Greenacre in 2002, sources say Wally was trying to re-establish himself in the south-west criminal world. While Wally was predominantly the face of the Ahmad family, Rock was the less exposed yet equally influential sibling in the background. A few weeks before Wally was killed, his younger and more volatile brother Mahmoud "Brownie" Ahmad travelled to Lebanon. His journey out of the country came after he was allegedly involved in a deadly gunfight between the Ahmad and Elmir families outside Wally's smash repairs shop in Condell Park. Wally Ahmad was shot dead at Bankstown Central shopping centre in April, 2016. Credit:Facebook Over the course of the lengthy confrontation, which spilled out onto Ilma Street, a gun was pulled and 32-year-old Safwan Charbaji  related to the Elmir family by marriage  was shot dead.

A few days later, Brownie left. He was effectively helpless as, from Lebanon, he watched his brother Wally's murder unfold. Police speculate that the absence of two brothers and the dwindling strength of the family may have led the Ahmads to soften their historical disdain for outlaw motorcycle clubs. "After the Wally stuff they started to become quite vulnerable as they are not used to being on that side of the gun," one source said. The Hells Angels wanted to set up a chapter in the Punchbowl area but they needed permission to do it. Providing the green light for the Hells Angels in Punchbowl could have given the club access to a drug run and potentially bolstered the strength and support base of the Ahmads and associates. According to the club's website, it set up the chapter in 2016. However, police say there has been recent tension and confusion over whether the Ahmads ever gave their permission for the Hells Angels to gain a foothold on their turf or if that agreement folded.

It is an example of how loyalties, governed by family or ethnic lines, chop and change, particularly in the Middle Eastern organised crime sphere. Former police assistant commissioner Ken McKay, who helped establish the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad, said allegiances changed depending on where a personal benefit could be found. "And some of the people that were on the right yesterday are now on the left," he said. There was no doubt the absence of some brothers would impact the Ahmad family, McKay said, but they could draw strength from elsewhere. Parallels have been drawn between the current conflict and the violent feuding between the Lebanese Darwiche and Razzak families in the early 2000s.

Asked what it took to end tit-for-tat shootings such as these, McKay said: "It comes to a stop when they all get locked up or they are all dead. "It doesn't end pleasantly." After Wally's death last April, police were braced for what seemed to be inevitable retribution. But none came. While the list of people who wanted Wally out of their lives was long, there were no solid suspects. It was at this point that crime figure Hamad Assaad got cocky. He had kept quiet about Wally's death but, comfortable with the belief police had nothing, he started talking. Underworld sources say the 29-year-old, investigated for shootings, drug rips and extortions, began mouthing off about how he killed the notorious crime figure.

He was socialising with Hells Angels bikies at the time, including rumoured national president Dallas Fitzgerald. He had fallen out with mafia figure Pasquale Barbaro, who was shot dead a few weeks later. In October 2016, as he prepared to take a relative to school, Assaad was shot dead in a well-planned assassination involving four people. His execution was captured on his own CCTV system. It wasn't long before Barakat emerged on the radar as a suspect in the shooting. While a friend close to his family conceded he was in the frame, they say if anything, it was more likely he was a driver in one of the getaway cars. Investigators say Blackie wasn't known for putting on a show but from that point he was thrust into the police spotlight. The Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad used powers associated with firearm prohibition orders to search his house regularly and unapologetically without a warrant. He had been in his Mortlake unit for about a month when he was killed but had already started making plans to move.
Almost 1100 people alleged they were sexually abused as children in Anglican church institutions, according to new data made public by a royal commission.

The figures show for the first time the extent of alleged child sex crimes within Anglican institutions and have been described by church leaders as shocking and shameful.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse analysed complaints received by Anglican authorities between 1980 and 2015.

Counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC told the first day of the hearing into Anglican institutions that the figures are "likely to under-report the incidence of child sexual abuse".
WASHINGTON  From Ronald Reagans welfare queen to Donald Trumps Detroit single mom, the unmarried mother remains a constant fascination to Republicans wielding budget-cutting scalpels.

Whereas Reagan was propagating a stereotype of the fraudulent abuser of public largesse when he popularized the term in 1976, framing welfare policy thereafter, Trumps budget blueprint purportedly is aimed at helping single mothers (in Detroit, for some reason) by building a better military.

If youre having trouble connecting the dots, welcome to the fracas.

The budget, which includes massive cuts to spending in the arts, sciences (including medical research) and diplomacy  mostly in the interest of increasing military spending by $54 billion and subsidizing that blasted wall  was designed by asking: Can we ask the single mother in Detroit to pay for this?

This is how White House budget director Mick Mulvaney explained the administrations calculations on MSNBCs Morning Joe. Apparently cognizant of diversitys fealty to both sexes (not to be confused with genders), Mulvaney also mentioned coal miners (with apologies to Barbara Burns, noted groundbreaking female miner).

One of the questions we asked was, can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? Mulvaney queried. The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we cant ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Are there really no single mothers in Detroit listening to NPRs Fresh Air? Or, whose kids watch Sesame Street? Though the CPB gets $450 million annually in federal funds, much of that money is distributed to local television and radio stations and producers. NPR, long an object of GOP contempt, probably will be fine thanks to donor support, but not so the local shows, which often are educational and/or public safety-oriented.

The end objective, Mulvaney said, is to keep Trumps campaign promises while not increasing the budget deficit. Among those promises: Build the wall (delete: I will make Mexico pay for that wall); and beef up national security.

And, of course, the ultimate goal in whittling away programs that serve the poor or protect the environment is to Make America Great Again. As Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Before we parse the meaning of the word great, a few facts: The proposed budget, which is really just a collection of bad ideas or suggestions, doesnt stand a chance of congressional approval as is. To pass the Senate, over which Republicans hold a relatively slim majority (52-48), it would require Democratic support. The blueprints strong emphasis on defense and security, notwithstanding cuts in airport policing, at the expense of domestic programs is a no-go.

Though many Republicans also oppose some of the more draconian cuts, others want yet more defense spending. Both Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and John McCain, R-Arizona, chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, respectively, want $640 billion rather than the measly $603 billion proposed.

Given Trumps commitment to a military buildup  and the formerly silent Secretary of State Rex Tillersons recent remarks that military action may be necessary to end North Koreas nuclear games  investing in defense might not be a bad gamble.

But hope for a cancer cure might be. The National Institutes of Health  the nations premier research institution  is threatened with losing about 20 percent of its budget. And bets on climate-related concerns would be long shots. Among many related cuts, the budget would eliminate four NASA missions, including the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which monitors climate change from its position a million miles from Earth. Collect information that might suggest the need for environmental regulations? LOL.

By tragic coincidence, we learned the day before Trumps budget was released that vast portions of Australias iconic Great Barrier Reef, one of Earths largest organisms, are dead from overheated seawater caused by greenhouse gases emitted via the burning of fossil fuels.

But never mind. Greatness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder  and Trumps idea of both tends toward reactionary excessiveness unburdened by historys future judgment. Besides, what do NASA missions have to do with coal miners or single moms?

Not one thing, other than a future for all those fatherless children in Detroit  and the coal miners daughter, who probably needs essential social services more than she does that blasted wall.
A Coogee local has drowned while swimming at the eastern suburbs beach in rough weather on Friday evening.

The 77-year-old man headed to the beach with his sister at about 7pm.

Paramedics treat a man in a helicopter at Coogee Beach. Credit:Stephen Godfrey

She went for a walk along the beach while her brother had a swim, a NSW Police spokeswoman said.

When she returned from her walk at about 7.45pm and couldn't see her brother, she became worried and waved down a surf lifesaver who called emergency services.
New laws to force domestic-violence accused to wear GPS trackers and reverse the presumption of bail could be in jeopardy, with a parliamentary committee unable to agree to recommend whether they be passed.

The LNP introduced a private member's bill to reverse the presumption of bail for an alleged offender charged with domestic violence-related offences, such as strangulation, assault and kidnapping.

A parliamentary committee was unable to agree to recommend the LNP's domestic violence bill be passed. Credit:iStock

It would mean people charged with a domestic violence-related offence would need to show why they should be released on bail, rather than prosecutors arguing why they should remain behind bars until sentenced or found not guilty.

The bill would allow offenders to be ordered to wear GPS trackers if granted bail and ensure victims were alerted when the defendant applied for bail or received parole.
Two parents accused of murdering their toddler have been forced to face a courtroom 10 years after their boy was last seen.

Dina Colleen Bond and Shane Arthur Simpson, 43 and 49, asked not to appear in person for the hearing but were overuled by the magistrate.

They were arrested on Thursday evening and charged with murder in the early hours of Friday morning.

Baden Bond was last seen 10 years ago, in March 2007, at his family home in the Logan suburb of Woodridge.
Paul Zerafa had been growing his dreadlocks for 12 years, but it only took minutes for them to be removed.

The haematology scientist at the Princess Alexandra Hospital shaved off his knee-length dreads on Friday after raising about $9000 in less than a month for the Leukaemia Foundation's World's Greatest Shave.

Haematology scientist Paul Zerafa shaved his knee-length dreads on Friday, after raising money for the Leukaemia Foundation. Credit:Robert Shakespeare

Mr Zerafa shaved at the hospital, where he has worked for 10 years, and said he was blown away by the support of colleagues and friends who donated to the cause.

"Everyone's been so supportive, all my colleagues, my friends, just people in the street," he said.
Jim Coghlan, the policeman best known for catching Tony Mokbel. Credit:Simon Schluter In 1987, he bought a Boronia pizza parlour, the first of more than 20 apparently legitimate businesses he used to wash drug money. He was able to grow at the time because police dismissed him as a lightweight, even writing in his criminal file that he "lacked financial acumen". Yet his wealth quickly exploded. In 1995 he had known assets of $128,000  six years later he was worth $15 million. Tony Mokbel arrives at the Melbourne Supreme Court for sentencing in July 2012. Credit:Jason South A later psychological report found he was "semi-literate with a very limited degree of formal education". The truth is he was ambitious, imaginative, a quick learner and amoral. For him, it was just about supply and demand and he saw the demand for drugs was massive.

In 1997, a Mokbel drug lab worth a then record $78 million exploded in a Brunswick house. It was only a minor setback and within three years he had learnt to spread the risk. The Edwena was used in the escape of Tony Mokbel from Australia to Greece in November 2006. Credit:Victoria Police He had cocaine arriving in Australia on November 10, 2000, a shipment of chemist-grade ephedrine from Serbia landing days later, as well as 350,000 ecstasy tablets coming in the following month. The figures are staggering: the Serbian container of 550 kilograms of ephedrine had a wholesale value of $20 million and could be used to produce 40 million pills with a street value of $2 billion. Jim Coghlan reflects on a job well done. Credit:Simon Schluter

Although he was charged over the Serbian job, he finally jumped bail in 2006 during his trial on an unrelated cocaine importation. The reason? He had been leaked statements that implicated him in two underworld murders. And while he was prepared to do a few years over the cocaine charges, he wasn't prepared to risk a life sentence for murder. Wigged out: John Silvester assumes Tony Mokebl's disguise. Credit:Fairfax Designers His subsequent movements have been well recorded. For nearly a year, he hid at a mate's place at Bonnie Doon before buying the 17.4-metre yacht Edwena, importing a Greek sailing crew, and relocating to Athens where he continued to run his Australian drug syndicate. In the beginning, Purana didn't even bother to look for Mokbel, for the investigators had a more ambitious plan than just to drag Tony back to face existing charges.

Edwena, used by Tony Mokbel to escape to Greece in November 2006. Credit:Victoria Police Media They wanted to destroy his empire piece by piece using the mantra "Investigate, Identify and Dismantle". It was only in April 2007 that Purana began to seriously look for Mokbel in an operation code-named Magnum. The taskforce's breakthrough came when they persuaded a trusted insider to turn. The informer, officially known as 3030, came to Purana through a curious route. He was a professional musician who once played in a band with a serving policeman. He reached out to the cop  who brought him in. Mokbel's clean phone was identified and tapped, along with those of his deputies. One of their drug cooks was persuaded to work for Purana, allowing detectives to set up a perfect sting operation.

Eventually, Tony was tracked to the Athens suburb of Glyfada and arrested at the Delfinia Cafe on June 5 wearing a bad wig and a carrying a doctored Australian passport in the name Stephen Papas. Nine years ago today (March 18), following an 11-month extradition battle, the Greek Supreme Court ordered his return to Australia. Captured Victorian fugitive Tony Mokbel in his wig. Photo: AAP Credit:AAP Image/Simon Mossman He was acquitted of one murder charge and the second was withdrawn but, due to the overwhelming evidence gathered by Purana's Magnum, he was forced to plead guilty to multiple drug charges and in 2012 was sentenced to 30 years with a minimum of 22. Purana investigator Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan seems to have spent half a career investigating Mokbel and he was there when his man was arrested in Greece. Coghlan wanted more than just getting the pinch and, along with other experts, spent years finding $54 million of The Company's hidden assets.

As a result, authorities seized 54 residential properties, two farms, 30 cars, Edwena the yacht, a Caulfield horse stable, country hotel, Brunswick market, Sydney Road car park, Boronia pizza parlour, four jet skis, 75 per cent of the racehorse Pillar of Hercules, cash, jewellery and three million Linc Energy shares, which the crooks bought at 20 cents and the government sold at $2. Purana destroyed a massive drug syndicate and provided a template on modern investigation, which relies on a multi-agency co-operation, turning insiders and identifying tainted assets. The arrest and conviction of Mokbel's team proves good policing works. It also proves that as far dealing with our drug issue, it is the equivalent of trying to bring down a charging bull elephant with a pea shooter. Since Mokbel was jailed, the flow of drugs has only grown. He brought them in by containers; now syndicates have their own ships. He was a smart local entrepeneur; now Australia is targeted by international cartels, well aware we pay the highest prices in the world. The truth is we are worse off now than when Mokbel was grabbed 10 years ago. And yet we continue to provide police with extra resources to slow supply while doing little to deal with demand. For every extra dollar we spend on drug law enforcement, we should spend the same on rehabilitation and education. The fact we don't have an effective anti-drug advertising campaign is a disgrace.

Mokbel's arrest ended Victoria's eight-year Underbelly War but the void was immediately filled by the next generation. Only the names change. Naked City's Wickedpedia: Where are the main Underbelly players now? Edwena: The 17.4-metre ketch Mokbel bought for $323,000 to sail from Fremantle to Greece. Renamed St George, it was finally sold for around $30,000. Carl Williams: An unemployed supermarket shelf-stacker who was making $100,000 a month manufacturing drugs until he went to war with the Moran clan. Ten years ago last month, he was sentenced to a minimum of 35 years for three murders. Eventually agreed to become a prosecution witness hoping to make a deal. Bashed to death in prison in 2010 almost certainly on the orders of his former pal Rocco Arico.
A truck driver is in hospital under police guard after a fatal crash on the Calder Freeway on Friday morning.

A man from Romsey, north of Melbourne, was killed on the freeway when a truck ran over the top of his ute about 6.30am.

The man was a father of six and on his way to work when his car was crushed by the truck, Channel Seven reported.

Police are reportedly investigating whether the truck driver may have been under the influence of drugs at the time of the fatal crash.
Every week, dozens of families move to Cranbourne, unpacking boxes in their new houses, and further bloating the suburb, one of the fastest growing in Australia.

And, every week, hoods invade at least two houses in Cranbourne while the residents are inside.

Frank Sottile, owner of Prowatch Security, says people are 'afraid to be in their own home'. Credit:Jesse Marlow

It's not just the population thats ballooning in Melbourne's south-east. So are the number of home invasions, or aggravated burglaries.

According to crime data for 2016, released on Thursday, the 3977 postcode, which includes Cranbourne, Skye and Devon Meadows, had the most home invasions in Melbourne, and was one of only three postcodes in the state to record more than 100 aggravated burglary offences.
A man accused of torturing his neighbour and burning her alive does not want to face a murder trial in the country Victorian town where they lived.

Michael Cardamone, 49, has pleaded not guilty to the January 2016 murder of Whorouly mother Karen Chetcuti Verbunt, and will face trial from July 31 this year.

Michael Cardamone is taken into Wangaratta Court before a hearing last year. Credit:Mark Jesser

But at a Supreme Court directions hearing in Melbourne on Friday, his barrister Patrick Tehan QC signalled an application to move the trial from Wangaratta to Melbourne.

Mr Tehran told Justice Lex Lasry that Ms Chetcuti Verbunt was a well-known citizen of their community and worked for the local council.
Almost half of the apartment owners in one of Melbourne's most beloved heritage hotels say the property has been allowed to deteriorate by a body corporate functioning as a "personal fiefdom" serving the building's wealthier tenants, nightclubs and bars.

Poor security and easy access by outsiders to apartments at St Kilda's The George Hotel have led to regular problems for residents. These include drunk patrons from bars downstairs roaming the corridors, sex worker servicing clients on stairwells and drug users injecting on fire escapes. In one notable incident last July a naked intruder walked the corridors knocking on doors and masturbating.

Residents of apartments at The George, Fifi Carbines, Antoinette Starkiewicz, Colin Dowzer, and Jonana Kowenzowski, are among those concerned about problems at the building. Credit:Justin McManus

Of the building's 70-odd owners, 33 say the landmark building  which was turned into apartments two decades ago  has been badly mismanaged and is deteriorating as a result.

They says this has been done to the benefit of "a cabal" of richer owners and bar operators, while the company employed to run the owners corporation has done nothing.
Premier Daniel Andrews will take the "unprecedented" and "unconventional" step of spending up to $50 million to buy a beleaguered timber mill in Heyfield in a bid to save jobs in Gippsland.

Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, which processes timber from the plant, has rejected supply offers from the state-owned VicForests because they were deemed too low and would force the mill that employs 250 people to close.

The timber mill at Heyfield. Credit:Mal Fairclough

The supply offer of 80,000 cubic metres for the next financial year, and 60,000 more per annum for the following two years, was made because VicForests said there was dwindling supply in the state's forests.

ASH wanted nearly double the offer that was on the table.
During Cold War debates about the merits of capitalism and communism, Americans offered a simple gauge: the movement of people.

You have the Berlin Wall, the argument went. We have the Statue of Liberty. If communism is a blessing, why do people flee Cuba for America, not the other way around?

Ronald Reagan, the hero of modern Republicans, knew that immigrants were not a threat to our way of life but a reinforcement of it. He welcomed them as allies, self-selected for their attraction to democratic ideals. They came here not because they wanted to change America but because they admired it as it was.

I have always believed there was some divine providence that placed this great land here between the two great oceans, he said in 1986, to be found by a special kind of people from every corner of the world who had a special love for freedom and a special courage that enabled them to leave their own land, leave their friends and their countrymen, and come to this new and strange land to build a new world of peace and freedom and hope.

Imagine what Reagan would think of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who abhors foreigners like a deadly virus. On Monday, King tweeted, We cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies. Last year, he said, Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end. This week, King insisted immigrants are importing a different culture, a different civilization, and that culture and civilization, the imported one, rejects the hosts culture.

King was talking about Middle Easterners, but his suspicions extend to undocumented immigrants, most of whom come from Latin America. He claims they are refusing to assimilate into the American culture and civilization.

Among the alleged sins of Latino immigrants are that they drag down wages and give birth at public expense. But if theres anything worse than poor foreigners, its rich ones. Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps chief White House strategist, has complained (inaccurately) that two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia.

He sees their numbers as trouble because, he says, a country is more than an economy. (Its) a civic society.

Yes, it is. And Silicon Valley is a proud product of ours, showcasing the wonders that intellectual and economic freedom can create. Its absurd to think immigration undermines our civic life. Immigration has always been inseparable from our civic life. What is it about high-achieving Asian-Americans that Bannon finds threatening to our way of life  aside, that is, from their race?

From the start, immigrants have elicited groundless panic. Bannon, a Catholic, forgets that Catholic immigrants were once seen as fundamentally hostile to democratic principles. The eminent 19th-century Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher warned that the subjects of the pope would subvert our free institutions. Beecher would be surprised that subjects of the pope now dominate that free institution called the Supreme Court.

The court also has three Jewish justices, which would offend supporters of the Immigration Act of 1924. It was designed to keep out Jews, among others, who were seen as genetically inferior and politically radical. But Jews confounded anti-Semites by succeeding and integrating into American society just as every previous immigrant group had.

There is no reason to think newcomers from Latin America or the Middle East will be any different. King and others believe Islam is irredeemably violent and hostile to freedom and democracy  hence his opinion that admitting Muslim refugees amounts to cultural suicide.

But he underestimates the power of American culture. A 2011 Gallup poll found that 89 percent of American Muslims say there is never a justification for an individual or group to target and kill civilians  compared with only 71 percent of Protestants and Catholics. American Muslims are also more favorable to same-sex marriage than evangelical Christians are.

The fear that foreigners will poison our culture or destroy our government has no basis in experience. Basic indicators of assimilation, from naturalization to English ability, are if anything stronger now than they were a century ago, University of Washington scholar Jacob Vigdor has written about Hispanics. Muslim immigrants in the U.S. are highly assimilated, presenting a strong contrast with Muslims in most European countries, he told me.

The vast majority of todays immigrants, its clear, can be expected to uphold our best political ideals and cultural traditions. King and Bannon? Not so much.
The sister of Perth barrister Lloyd Rayney says the family name has been "irreparably tainted" since he was named the only suspect in his estranged wife's murder.

Mr Rayney's sister Raelene Johnston, who is a former prosecutor, told his multimillion-dollar defamation trial against the state that some of their friends no longer saw him and never asked her how he was.

Mr Rayney is suing the West Australian government for being named as the prime and only suspect in the murder of his wife Corryn. Credit:AAP

Ms Johnston said in her statement tendered to the WA Supreme Court on Friday that she had heard people say words to the effect of "You are the lawyer who killed your wife" and "Hey Lloyd, how did you do it?"

Ms Johnston said she did not like to talk about high school, her family or her parents' professions for fear someone would ask about them and their surname.
Bali: Australian Sara Connor could face more years behind bars over the death of a Bali police officer after prosecutors announced they would appeal her four year jail sentence.

Prosecutor Agung Jayalantara told Fairfax Media the appeal to the High Court was because prosecutors had requested both Connor and her British DJ boyfriend David Taylor face the same sentence over the killing of Wayan Sudarsa, a father of two and member of the Bali police force for 35 years.

"This afternoon prosecutor Oka filed the notification to appeal to Denpasar District Court," he said.

However Mr Agung said prosecutors were unlikely to appeal Taylor's six year sentence.
The Narva River divides Estonia and Russia. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk By this stage I suspect he's pulling my leg. No, he's serious. But he's no warmonger. "My relatives and friends are sure that Russia and Estonia should be friends," he says. "If one neighbour is taking the knife, the other takes the axe. No. We should not escalate. And not provoke." Estonian border guard senior specialist Kalmer Janno. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk A woman in a white coat, with striking red dyed hair, comes through next. She is is a proud, patriotic Estonian, she says.

"If NATO or Trump decided to fall back it would be very bad," she says. "The Russian population here is affected by the Russian media, they are watching Russian TV channels. That's why this subject is very big around here." Estonian Stanislav Pupkevich looks over the river towards Russia. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk If you want to annoy a Narvan you need just three words: "Is Narva next?" Next as in: Crimea, eastern Ukraine, Narva. They're sick of it. They're sick of the sanctions hurting local businesses (Narva is much closer to St Petersburg than Estonia's capital Tallinn, so the town depended heavily on trade across the border). They're sick of being side-eyed after crossing the river to visit a family grave or a sightseeing trip to Nevsky Prospekt. Narva was rebuilt by the Soviets after it was flattened in 1944. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk

They're sick of journalists making them the new Cold War flashpoint. But since at least Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, military strategists can think of no place more likely to catch an acquisitive Kremlin's eye. Vladimir Cherdakov runs a club in the suburban fringes of Narva. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk And with US President Donald Trump sending mixed messages about his commitment to NATO, and his defence secretary speaking pointedly in Brussels about "moderating" military support for Europe should countries not contribute more to the alliance, the prospect of Russian tanks rumbling across the bridge is not unimaginable. General Sir Richard Barrons paints a picture of a dysfunctional NATO caught strategically on the hop.

Narva's officials are full of praise for their city. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk Sir Richard served in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq during his 36 years in the British army, finishing his career as commander of Joint Forces from 2013 to 2016. He picks Narva as an example of where things could go wrong ("most wars start for bad reasons," he says). The border control between Estonia and Russia. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk "Russia feels seriously aggrieved with the way it's been treated since the end of the Cold War, genuinely sees the enlargement of NATO as a threat  genuinely believes people like me would like to stimulate a colour revolution in Moscow," he says.

He points to the array of precision conventional ballistic missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, which mean Russia "dominates the air space over the Baltics". The view from Narva Castle in Estonia. Credit:Ivo Panasyuk "There are very sophisticated Russian armed forces within easy reach of Narva. Imagine a moment where we're falling out with Russia, it might be over Syria or Ukraine or Crimea. Well, it's very easy just to send ground forces into Narva and you know  You've locked down the airspace. You've basically broken Article 5 [the NATO defence pact] and say 'come on if you're hard enough'. "At which point the NATO alliance, which have no plan for this and have no resources ready to deal with it would have to mobilise at leisure and fight their way back into the Baltic sphere." On Putin's resolve, he quotes Richard Nixon's autobiography: "Communist leaders believe in Lenin's precept: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw."

He also paints another scenario  more likely and more insidious. Russians are the "market leaders" in hybrid warfare, he says, combining social media, cyber attacks, propaganda and bought influence to weaken their opponents. "All Russian needs to do [in the Baltics] is promote weakness and instability. Hybrid warfare is very good at weakening alliances, weakening national capacity. And you also know that you could do very small things to breach article 5 and you would bluff the alliance." Since 2014, NATO has been refocusing on its weakness in eastern Europe, after a generation in which it retooled to fight in the deserts of the Middle East. There are regular NATO exercises in the Baltics. Just earlier this year, UK armed forces took part in celebrations for Estonia's Independence Day, ahead of a deployment of 800 troops.

In early March, on a trip to Finland, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid insisted that NATO was not preparing for war. "In recent months, many people have got the impression that there is something out of the ordinary going on in the Baltic area," she said. "[NATO] is creating the deterrent that it believes is necessary in the current situation. "For some reason, the notion has spread worldwide that now we may be preparing for something darker. This is absolutely not the case." Many Narvans were not impressed at all by the military display by the British. They wonder, why would you want to provoke the Russians? Why not just be friends? I meet the mayor of Narva, Tarmo Tammiste, in his office  he's a lovely man, generous, welcoming, and proud of his city despite its problems.

Narva, once a beautiful baroque city, was bombed flat in 1944. Under the Soviets it was rebuilt by labourers from across the USSR: Ukrainians, White Russians. Now 97 per cent of the population speak mostly Russian and most of the schools teach a large portion of classes in Russian. From the outside, it would seem they are the perfect population for hybrid warfare of the same model used in Crimea or the Donbas in Ukraine. But though they call themselves Russians, that doesn't mean they want to be Russian citizens, says Tammiste. Quite the opposite, in fact. "They are not Russian Russians, they are Russians in Estonia," he says. "They are proud that they are living here in Estonia."

On cross-border trips, Narvans see first-hand how they're doing much better than their neighbours. The European Union has poured millions into their town, funding a huge refit of the water and sewage systems, building riverside paths and schools. "I have relatives back in Russia and there's a clear difference you see when you go there," says vice-mayor Vyacheslav Konovalov. "Living in Estonia alongside Estonians, you tend to absorb all the good things about life here. Not throwing trash as you go. Tidying up. Which is still a problem back there." Pensioners get more pension in Estonia, he says. Some even save money to send to families across the border. To Narva, Ivangorod is their neighbour, not their enemy. There is a Christmas tradition where the Russian and Estonian versions of Santa Claus meet in the middle of the bridge, then swap cities and distribute lollies to dancing children. Every year the mayor of each town gives a box full of presents to the first child born in the other town.

The main challenge for Narva is not geopolitical, Tammiste says. It's economic. The population is shrinking and when tensions grew between Russia and Estonia it hurt business. The tourism industry was cut by almost half. Most business investment had come from across the border, and this was slashed by sanctions, mistrust and the plummeting rouble. "Some [Russian] companies were even ordered to stop developing businesses," says Konovalov. "All those good things we marketed and put as our selling points, they were all evaporated because of the geopolitical stance. You wouldn't risk your money putting businesses here at this time when everybody talks about 'is Narva next, when is the day?' "We saw the Russians taking the risks and investing money into the region and creating jobs and creating opportunities for young people to stay. So of course we are losing because of these tensions." In the suburban fringes of Narva, club owner Vladimir Cherdakov sits proudly in his dining room and offers me a pancake. The place is not exactly jumping during the lunch hour  I see a bare handful of customers. Born in Narva, Cherdakov is what you'd definitely call a local character. An amateur musician (he presses a copy of his latest CD into my hands), he runs a bunch of businesses around town.

He deplores the effect that sanctions against Russia have had on his town and his business. "Two years ago I opened this place as a restaurant, but I had to turn it around as a nightclub and a general club to hang out, because people in this town don't any more have enough money to buy in big parties or buy good food from the restaurants," he says through an interpreter. "They stay home and they make their own food. So the economic level in the city just dropped in two years. "Every time I see on TV the government decided to cut social benefit, or close a kindergarten or school to cut the budget for some social institution, I see that and I think 'this is happening because of the tensions, because of the sanctions'." He scoffs at the idea of a military threat from Russia. "I don't believe Putin would attack Estonia, never. That's impossible."

And as for hybrid warfare  he says that if, like in Ukraine, nationalists started oppressing Russian-speaking people, insisting they stopped speaking Russian or attacked them, then "something would go really wrong". "But unless something like that happens, no, local people would never go fight the government or NATO forces, never." That said, he has no time for NATO. "Historically, Narva was always a reason for war. A war zone. I don't think it's good for one side to bring in troops and build military bases and bring guns, because the other side will do the same and I don't want to be in the middle of it. There might be a chance that someone will make a bang and it will unleash the hell." On my last morning in Narva, I'm taken for a hazardous walk along the border itself, on the river bank.

For me, my biggest concern is staying upright on the ice. For Estonian border guard senior specialist Kalmer Janno, his main concern seems to be to convey how unconcerned he is by the fact that he's patrolling the frontline against a supposed enemy. "We don't talk about politics. We are professional border guards, we do professional tasks, and both sides understand we have to co-operate," he says, prosaically. His and his Russian counterpart's biggest concern is the river itself. There's good fishing in there. But the water is fast and cold, and every fishing boat must have a licence and keep in contact with the local border station. Their other main concern is endlessly creative smugglers. Once they found a clandestine pipeline running along the bottom of the river, piping cheap vodka from Russia into the EU. He talks to me happily, and a little boringly, about an initiative for cross-departmental co-operation, so police, the border guards, customs and the river rescue squads are all linked together.
The hands are made for cutting. Donald Trump rests his hands on notes during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Credit:Bloomberg Trump's vision, while campaigning, was of a nation getting back to basics, about reining-in profligate capital city bureaucrats who recklessly threw around taxpayer funds, at home and abroad, in the midst of what he called "American carnage." Trump's budget shifts tens of billions of dollars to defence and homeland security, by cutting a swathe through dozens of other agencies  many of which have enjoyed bipartisan support and some of which are geared to the needs of typical Trump voters. The mind behind Trump's grand plans. Credit:Bloomberg In fact, the budget is the third time in a matter of weeks that Trump has screwed his voters  first on protection for their retirement planning, then in his makeover of Obamacare, and now wanting to slash programs by which they get affordable housing, banking, weatherizing homes, job training, paying home heating oil bills, and legal advise in civil matters.

But defence get an extra $US54 billion, while as many as 20 other agencies would feel the knife  with cuts of more than 20 per cent for Agriculture, Labour and the State Department; and a crippling 30-plus per cent for the Environmental Protection Agency  which would lose 50 programs and 3200 jobs. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, right, accompanied by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, discuss planned changes to healthcare. Credit:AP Contributions to the United Nations would be cut and Washington would pay no more that 25 per cent of the cost of international peacekeeping ventures. It's funding for development banks like the World Bank would be pared by $US650 million. The National Endowment for the Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the Chemical Safety Board, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and a $US430 million training program for nurses and other health professionals would be eliminated. Work on climate change and medical research would shrink dramatically. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney making a point. Credit:AP

As Trump's budget fattened the national security apparatus, rural communities would no longer get grants and loans for water facilities and local airports. After-school and summer programs would go unfunded; and home energy aid, job training programs and legal services would get the chop. But the Mexican border wall, which Trump insisted Mexico would pay for? That's in there - $US1.7 billion in new funding this year and another $US2.6 billion next year. Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, was a controversial appointment to the NSC. Credit:AP "There's a lot of programs that simply cannot justify their existence, and that's where we zeroed in," Mulvaney said, making explicit mention of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where the $US3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds anti-poverty efforts, including the iconic Meals-on-Wheels programs, would be eliminated. "There's no question this is a hard-power budget," said Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. "It is not a soft-power budget. It represents a president who is beholden to nobody but the voters  he's following through on his promises. We did not consult with special interests; we did not consult with lobbyists."

This is a good point at which to make clear that a presidential budget is more a signal of White Houses priorities, than it is a decree. It is Congress that writes budgets and few observers expect to see the Trump wish list formalised as the budget. Others have arrived in Washington with the same intention to slash and burn. In his first year, President Ronald Reagan cut taxes dramatically and cut projected government spending by five percent. But as he left office eight years later, most of the programs he had had trimmed were bigger than when he had arrived, and those that he wanted to shutter were still in existence. The problem is that Republicans in Congress, as much as Democrats, are quick to sign on for the broad, philosophical notion of cuts, but much less so for axing any program that has support among their own constituents or which bring money or jobs to their state or district. Hence Bannon's prediction, in a speech in Washington last month, of an ideological "fight every day." Anticipating never-ending conflict as Trump fought for the rights of his "forgotten people" over those of coastal elites and international institutions, he warned: "If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken."

That's the context in which Justin Bogie, a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged Trump on - "I think for President Trump, it is important for him to get these ideas out there and show 'I am still committed to these things.'" But Congress is jacking up already, with Senator Marco Rubio, who lost to Trump in the battle for the GOP nomination, reminding the White House: "the administration's budget isn't going to be the budget, we do the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets." Another of Trump's primaries challengers, Senator Lindsey Graham is of like mind, declaring of the Trump budget: "dead on arrival." And in a withering statement, former House Appropriations Committee chairman and Republican Hal Rogers said: "I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the president's skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive. We will certainly review this budget proposal, but Congress ultimately has the power of the purse."

The same uncertainty clouds hopes for Trump's bid to reorganise the federal bureaucracy  again, it's a system that in its national guise is seen as sprawling and unwieldy, but at a local level it delivers money and jobs which are the bacon that senators and house members like to claim they have bought home for their communities. "Every president since Roosevelt  every one, every single one  has done a study of how to fix government," Paul Light, a New York University professor and author of A Government Ill Executed, told USA Today. " Presidents can dream the big dream. They can have studies. President Trump won't be the first to have one, and he wouldn't be the first to be disappointed in it." Trump has already imposed a federal hiring freeze and his brief to Mulvaney on remaking the bureaucracy is expansive  come back within a year with proposals for the president and Congress to "eliminate unnecessary agencies." Ah, yes. Congress gets in on this act too. To date, Mulvaney is talking the talk, but Elaine Kamarck is one who tried to walk the walk. Now at the Brookings Institution, she managed the Clinton administration's bid to reinvent government  her memories are not exactly happy.

"You have to tell big pieces of the government to stop doing stuff, and the only way to do that is to overturn statutes," she told The Washington Post. "That's why almost every effort has come far, far short. Despite many Republican administrations and Republican Congresses, the government is bigger than it ever was." President Obama had a crack at it too, with Congress passing a law in 2010, by which agencies were required to account annually on wasteful spending. And in its first five years it saved $US56 billion  mere petty cash in a budget worth more than $US3.5 trillion a year. With all that in mind, Trump needs to contemplate his relationship with Congress, and in that he might conclude that it would have been more sensible, politically, to have rolled out something like his proposed $US1 trillion infrastructure scheme before tangling with repealing and replacing Obamacare. On infrastructure, once the local spending had been factored in, Trump would have won sufficient backing from Republicans and Democrats. But few if any Democrats will back the carpet-bombing of Obamacare  and Trump is even having difficulty rounding up the necessary number of Republicans. And with his GOP critics split, because the health insurance makeover is either too little or too much, it becomes difficult for Trump to appease them all. The risk is a protracted brawl that could permanently poison the president's relationship with Congress.

State governors are leery too, because a big part of the Trump governance equation is to shift responsibilities and costs from Washington back to the states. "It's very much a zero-sum game at the state level," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Governors Association. "It's not like there are pots of money sitting around that can move in. If grants are cut to state and local governments, something has to give." Ed Rogers has been around the block a few times, as a GOP political consultant and as a senior staffer in the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. Thinking aloud in an op-ed in The Washington Post he was hopeful, but uncertain on Trump's chances of crashing through. Loading "We just can't afford to keep spending at the rate that we are, not when each taxpayer is now responsible for $US166,000 of the nation's $US19 trillion debt. I'm sure the spending is doing some marginal good, but is it worth borrowing money from the Chinese to keep supporting our debt?
Beijing: Every year China's most powerful leaders were drawn to the family home of a diminutive grandmother.

On the news of this 95-year-old's death last Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping's mother was the first to send flowers.

Hu Yaobang, left, and Li Zhao married in 1941. Credit:Peoples Government of Hunan Province

Li Zhao is best known in China as the wife of the 1980s liberal reformer Hu Yaobang, who held the country's highest office as general secretary of the Communist Party - until being forced out. It was his death in 1989 that famously sparked the Tiananmen Square student protests.

The annual pilgrimages in more recent times of former Chinese leaders Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and before his elevation to the top job, Xi, to her door, were read like tea leaves as a barometer of Hu's legacy of liberal ideas. They also spoke of personal loyalty.
Washington: The Pentagon denied on Friday that it had targeted a mosque in the Western Syrian province of Aleppo, saying that it had carried out a strike against an al Qaeda meeting place and believed that it had killed dozens of militants.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis, showing an image of the site of the attack, told reporters that manned and unmanned US aircraft had targeted and struck an al Qaeda meeting place on Thursday in the village of al-Jina.

Davis said the US military currently does not assess any civilian casualties.

Reuters
Flanked by a thousand-person entourage, Saudi Arabian King Salman travelled to China on Thursday to deepen economic ties between the world's biggest oil exporter and the world's second-largest oil consumer. It's a key stop in the king's six-week trip to Asia that comes as Riyadh struggles with a slumping oil market and a desperate need to diversify its economy.

During his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, King Salman oversaw the signing of up to $US65 billion ($85 billion) worth of economic and trade deals, spanning sectors from energy to space, though the Chinese government disclosed few specifics. Saudi Arabia and China also deepened their energy relationship with more than 20 agreements on oil investments and in renewable energy. China even discussed taking a stake in Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil firm, which is preparing for a public listing, Bloomberg reported.

Saudi Arabia limped into 2017 facing grim economic forecasts fuelled by a global oil glut. In January, the IMF revised downward its projection for Saudi economic growth from 2 per cent to 0.4 per cent this year. King Salman, and especially crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, have launched an ambitious campaign to shock the country out of oil-dependency and diversify the economy under the auspices of its Saudi Vision 2030 plan. It's culminated in the unusual six-week trip to Asia that includes stops in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Maldives as Salman courts foreign investors.

The two leaders also dropped hints that China could boost its diplomatic footprint in the Middle East. "Saudi Arabia is willing to work hard with China to promote global and regional peace, security and prosperity," Salman said. He added he hoped China would increase its role in Middle East affairs.
Washington: The Trump administration filed court papers on Friday, US time, hoping to salvage its second version of a travel ban, after two judges in separate cases this week found it likely violated the Constitution.

The Justice Department filed legal papers in federal court in Maryland, setting up a new appeals court showdown in Richmond, Virginia.

Earlier this week, federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued orders against the travel ban, finding it violated the First Amendment by disfavouring a particular religion. If the Justice Department had appealed the Hawaii order, the case would have gone to the same San Francisco-based appeals court that rejected an earlier version of the travel ban.

The First Amendment prohibits any "law respecting an establishment of religion,'' meaning the government must remain neutral between religions - or between religions and non-religion - and not favour or disfavour a particular faith.
Seoul, South Korea: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ruled out on Friday opening any negotiation with North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and said for the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action "if they elevate the threat of their weapons program" to an unacceptable level.

Tillerson's comments in Seoul, a day before he travels to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, explicitly rejected any return to the bargaining table in an effort to buy time by halting North Korea's accelerating testing program. The country's leader, Kim Jong-un, said on New Year's Day that North Korea was in the "final stage" of preparation for the first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States.

The secretary of state's comments were the Trump administration's first public hint at the options being considered, and they made clear that none involved a negotiated settlement or waiting for the North Korean government to collapse.

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson said, a reference to the term used by the Obama administration to describe a policy of waiting out the North Koreans, while gradually ratcheting up sanctions and covert action.
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):---- Ministry of Public Housing, Environment, Spatial Development and Infrastructure (Ministry VROMI), announces that there will be a partial road closure at the intersection Soualiga boulevard/Arch Road on Friday, March 17.

The partial closure will take place from 9.00am to 12.00pm. The project entails finalizing the road crossing on Soualiga Boulevard.

Motorists are advised to pay keen attention to road crews who will be directing the traffic flow. The work will be carried out by Washington Construction.

Road works will be carried out on Friday on Bush Road by Windward Roads from 8.00am to 4.00pm. These works will be carried out alongside Kentucky Fried Chicken up to the area of the Gasoline Station on the right side of the road.

The works entails trenching and the laying of a new water line for NV GEBE. Motorists are advised to pay attention to workmen in the area.

Ministry VROMI apologizes for any inconveniences this may cause.
A state senator Tuesday touted his bill giving school and municipal officials more say over where and how they notify citizens about their decisions.

Local control is a buzzword we hear in Madison, Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, told the Senate Committee on Local Government at the state Capitol. This is what this bill is about: local control.

And thats just the problem. As Gregg Walker, publisher of the Lakeland Times in Minocqua, testified at the same hearing: Local control over government transparency, in my opinion, is a horrible concept.

Hes right.

While most public officials are honest people trying to improve their communities, they nonetheless have a powerful interest in not publicizing potentially unpopular or costly decisions. After all, doing so could lead to public outcry, slowing or stopping their plans and costing them votes in the next election.

But thats how democracy is supposed to work  with vigorous public involvement and debate. And to stay well informed, the public needs easy access to government information and decisions.

So for decades, Wisconsin has required public schools, counties, cities, villages and technical colleges to publish meeting minutes in local newspapers (at a deeply discounted rate set by the Department of Administration). Wisconsin newspapers also publish and archive the information  for free  on a searchable and secure website.

The reason these statutes exist and why local governments have to follow them is because it helps keep corruption out, Gregg Walker explained. Can you imagine if government had no obligation to post notices and minutes in a place easily and readily accessible to the public?

Senate Bill 42 and Assembly Bill 70 would scrap requirements that local governments publish their meeting minutes in local newspapers. Instead, schools and municipalities could bury this information on government websites.

Stroebel and others, including Reps. Ed Brooks, R-Reedsburg, Keith Ripp, R-Lodi, and Dave Considine, D-Baraboo, are behind this misguided proposal.

Other lawmakers from both parties are wisely speaking out against it, including Reps. Todd Novak, R-Dodgeville, and Terese Berceau, D-Madison. Good for them.

Gov. Scott Walker wants to go even further than Stroebels bill. Language in the Republican governors budget would let state and local agencies remove public notices from newspapers related to spending and ordinances.

The Legislature should reject both of these proposals. A Legislative Council study committee looked at the need for public notices in print and online last year and recommended keeping current requirements.

Much of rural Wisconsin lacks reliable internet. And even those citizens with access to government websites often have a hard time finding what they want to see.

They are known as digital ghost towns, Gregg Walker said of government sites. And whether they are up-to-date is another big question. Citizens in northern Wisconsin rely instead on local newspapers to keep them informed.

Newspapers guarantee the ultimate local control  the ability of the people to hold their government accountable, he said. Without that information, they cannot do so.
Pond Island:---St. Maarten Carnival Main Sponsor, TelCell, has once again put to poster the faces of persons who play a big part in the islands premier cultural event.

These faces will be gracing TelCells colorful I Am Carnival posters throughout the Carnival season, appearing on lampposts, vehicles, in the festival village, and throughout the Philipsburg area.

The I Am Carnival posters first made their appearance during carnival and proved to be very successful as a way of spotlighting individuals in the community who make special contributions to the annual carnival event.

In January this year, we set out to get some new faces by launching a Who is Carnival Facebook campaign giving everyone a chance to nominate their own important persons who they would like to see on our posters, said TelEm Group Manager, Marketing & Sales Grisha Marten.

She said the Facebook response was huge and it took three members of the Carnival Development Foundation along with eight members of TelCells Carnival Core team to sift through the many suggestions to come up with this years list of faces. They are:

Rumari Rogers  2 x Reigning Monarch

King Vers - Soca Rumble Power King 2016

Lil Sunshine  Junior Calypso Queen 2016

Shakeya Charles Arrindell  First female calypso monarch winner 2016

Pauline Gumbs  Well known Carnival reveler

Bobo  Legend: multiple King of Road March and Calypso

Congratulations to these wonderful advocates of our Carnival event. Its a pleasure to let everyone know who they are by having them featured on our posters, said Grisha, who also thanked TelCell customers and members of the public for making suggestions and coming up with some wonderful reasons why they were making their particular choice of faces for the TelCell I Am Carnival posters.
Broadband Forum launches new Council for NG-PON2

Fremont, California, 16 March 2017. The Broadband Forum today welcomes NG-PON2 Forum members, integrating the NG-PON2 Forum to create the new NG-PON2 Council, which will aim to accelerate the development of NG-PON2 technology as it continues to gain momentum.

Over the last 12 months, the Broadband Forum has been increasingly focused on NG-PON2 through its Fiber Access Networks Working Group. That work is a solid basis to take NG-PON2 to the next level with the founding of the NG-PON2 Council. The Broadband Forum believes, in addition to work on management and testing standards, industry stakeholders need to understand the capabilities of the technology and how it could help support ultrafast broadband roll-out.

Having fostered the NG-PON2 Forum from its infancy to its leadership position today, as a premier assembly of vendors and service providers looking to widen the scope and broaden the market of NG-PON2 technology, I am thrilled to see the NG-PON2 Forum moving to the next level by becoming part of the Broadband Forum, said Bernd Hesse, NG-PON2 Forum Founder and President, newly appointed Chair of the NG-PON2 Council, and Senior Director of Technology Development at Calix.

The focus of the NG-PON2 Forum was always to accelerate the adoption of the technology, a mission that can only be helped by the Broadband Forums breadth of membership and stellar reputation in the industry. As the NG-PON2 Forum now becomes the NG-PON2 Council under the Broadband Forum umbrella, Im proud to still be leading this Council and look forward to informing the world of the boundless possibilities of this exciting technology.

This integration comes at the same time as operators begin to show increasing interest in the technology. At the recent FTTH Council Conference 2017, it was noted that several operators are conducting lab or field trials, aiming for deployments in the near future. Northpower Fibre announced that it held the worlds first NG-PON2 demonstration in a live network, delivering 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) speeds over multiple wavelengths to hubs located in a business premises and residential home in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Dr. Vincent OByrne, Director of Technology at Verizon and NG-PON2 Forum board member, said: I see the move of the NG-PON2 Forum into the Broadband Forum as recognition that not only is NG-PON2 technology a maturing technology, but of the industrys interest in seeing NG-PON2 succeed. Establishing the NG-PON2 Council is an important milestone and a meaningful step for NG-PON2 and the industry.

The NG-PON2 Council will work under the banner of the Broadband Forum, providing greater access to the Broadband Forums wide range of member operators and vendors. The integration will be finalized after the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) in Los Angeles, where the NG-PON2 Forum will hold a workshop session.

Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said: NG-PON2 is at a crucial stage with significant moves beginning to be made by operators in terms of deployments. Ultrafast access is a key component in the future of broadband and NG-PON2 has a role to play in delivering it. The Broadband Forum sees education and positioning for the technology as a key step in its evolution.

A video interview with Bernd Hesse and Robin Mersh about the partnership can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj5t2mDaIb0&feature=youtu.be.

The NG-PON2 Council will be holding a workshop (organized earlier under the NG-PON2 Forum name) at OFC in Los Angeles on Thursday March 23rd, 2017 8:30AM-2:30PM PST.

http://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/exhibit-hall/show-floor-programming/2nd-ng-pon2-forum-workshop-the-momentum-of-ngpo/

For more information on the Broadband Forums work, visit: www.broadband-forum.org.
Askida a Finalist for the 2017 Mercuriades Awards

MONTREAL, QUEBEC  (Marketwired)  03/16/17  Askida, a leader in custom software development and software quality assurance, is proud to announce that it has been selected as a finalist in the category Development  Web or Mobile Technology for the 37th edition of the prestigious Mercuriades awards. The company was nominated for its innovative Askida solution, which orchestrates automated tests and makes it easier to analyse the results throughout the lifecycle of an application.

Created in 1981 by the FCCQ (Federation des Chambres de Commerce du Quebec), the Mercuriades have become some of the most prestigious awards for the Quebec business community. Every year, the Mercuriades celebrate the innovation, ambition, entrepreneurship and performance of companies created in Quebec. Presented by TELUS, the category Development  Web or Mobile Technology showcases a new technology whose creativity, interactivity and/or adaptive design allowed it to reinvent and improve a business process, service or product.

Were incredibly honoured to be finalists for this years Mercuriades awards, says Steeve Duchesne, Askidas CEO and cofounder. Obviously, Id like to congratulate the entire Askida family. Its because of their efforts that our company has been able to experience so much growth and success in the past year. Our Askida solution, developed entirely in-house, is unique on the market and at the center of our practice of quality assurance. It allows us to regularly surpass our industry highest quality standards.

The gala for this years Mercuriades awards will be held on Monday, April 24th 2017 at the Palais des Congres in Montreal. The finalists for this years awards were selected by an independent jury composed of industry specialists, FCCQ members and evaluators from the firm BDO.

About Askida

Askida is a company specialized in software development and quality assurance whose aim is to enhance the competitive advantages of its clients while also reducing costs and risks. The company develops high-quality custom software solutions and guarantees the quality of existing software through its own ASKIDA solution. Located throughout Quebec and North America, its clients consist of innovative organizations that require top-of-the-line solutions that cater to their unique business processes and high standards of software quality.

Contacts:

Askida

Guillaume Morissette

Communications officer

Office: 514 286-9366 #256
Shaw Communications Second Quarter 2017 Conference Call

CALGARY, ALBERTA  (Marketwired)  03/16/17  Shaw Communications Inc. (TSX: SJR.B)(TSX: SJR.PR.A)(TSX: SJR.PR.B)(NYSE: SJR)(TSX VENTURE: SJR.A) will be releasing its consolidated results for the Second Quarter (ending February 28, 2017) the morning of Wednesday, April 12, 2017.

A conference call with Shaw Senior Management and the financial community is scheduled as follows. Press/media and the public will be able to participate in listen-only mode.

Conference Call Details:

Webcast:

You can listen to the live or recorded broadcast at: .

The webcast is available until midnight Eastern Time, Friday, May 12, 2017.

Note:

If you wish to be added to our distribution list for conference call notices/press releases, please send your request to .

About Shaw

Shaw is an enhanced connectivity provider. Our Consumer division serves consumers with broadband Internet, Shaw Go WiFi, video and digital phone. Our Wireless division provides wireless voice and data services through an expanding and improving mobile wireless network infrastructure. The Business Network Services division provides business customers with Internet, data, WiFi, telephony, video and fleet tracking services. The Business Infrastructure Services division, through ViaWest, provides hybrid IT solutions including colocation, cloud computing and security and compliance for North American enterprises.

Shaw is traded on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges and is included in the S&P/TSX 60 Index (Symbol: TSX  SJR.B, SJR.PR.A, SJR.PR.B, NYSE  SJR, and TSXV  SJR.A). For more information, please visit .

Contacts:

Shaw Communications Inc.

Investor Relations
2016 Results: ALTANA Achieves Sales Increase and Leap in Earnings

Posted by Publisher Internet

 Sales amount to ?2,075 million

 EBITDA reaches ?453 million

 Outlook for 2017: Further profitable growth

The specialty chemicals Group ALTANA concluded the 2016 fiscal year with an increase in sales and a leap in earnings. Sales rose by 1 percent to ?2,075 million. Adjusted for acquisition and exchange rate effects, sales grew by 2 percent compared to the previous year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose by 16 percent to ?453 million, thus significantly surpassing the previous year?s result (?391 million). At 21.8 percent, the EBITDA margin was also higher than the previous year?s figure (19.0 percent).

2016 was a very good year for ALTANA. In a challenging market environment, we were able to increase our sales and earnings, said Martin Babilas, CEO of ALTANA AG. We are well on track for further profitable growth.

BYK and ECKART as growth drivers

In 2016, the BYK Additives & Instruments and ECKART Effect Pigments divisions were the drivers of sales growth in the ALTANA Group. BYK boosted sales by 4 percent to ?909 million. The rise in sales due to the acquisition of Addcomp Holland B. V. in mid-2016 compensated for minor negative exchange rate effects. Adjusted for these effects, the division?s operating sales growth was also 4 percent.

Sales in the ECKART division amounted to ?62 million, with both nominal sales and sales adjusted for minor exchange rate effects up by 3 percent.

At ?52 million, sales in the ELANTAS Electrical Insulation division were 2 percent lower than in the previous year. Adjusted for exchange rate effects, sales were on a par with the previous year?s level.

Sales in the ACTEGA Coatings & Sealants division decreased by 6 percent to ?52 million on account of the sale of the ACTEGA Colorchemie group in the spring of 2016. Adjusted for this acquisition and minor currency effects, sales reached the previous year?s level.

Balanced regional sales distribution

With Europe accounting for 39 percent of total sales, Asia for 31 percent, and the Americas for 28 percent, the ALTANA Group?s sales distribution according to regions continues to be balanced. With nominal sales growth of 5 percent in 2016, ALTANA achieved the highest growth rate in Asia. Operating sales in this region rose by as much as 8 percent. In China, the region?s largest single market, nominal sales growth was 6 percent; operating sales were up by 11 percent. In the Americas, sales decreased, mainly due to weak demand from the oil and gas industry. Nominal and operating sales were down on the figures for the previous year by 3 and 4 percent, respectively. The U.S. posted sales decreases of 4 and 5 percent, respectively. However, the region remains the ALTANA Group?s largest single market. Nominal sales in Europe remained at the previous year?s level; operating sales increased by 2 percentage points.

Expansion of research and development activities

In the 2016 fiscal year, ALTANA continued to invest heavily in innovation. Research and development expenses amounted to ?129 million, corresponding to 6 percent of sales ? as in the previous years, a high share compared to the industry average. Examples of the targeted expansion of the company?s research and development activities are the doubling of laboratory capacities of ACTEGA Rhenania in Grevenbroich and the opening of ELANTAS? cross-divisional Printed Electronics center in Hamburg. ALTANA?s investments in property, plant and equipment and intangible assets totaled ?122 million (previous year: ?86 million).

Outlook: Further profitable growth

For the 2017 fiscal year, ALTANA expects the global economy to exhibit slightly stronger growth than in the previous year and overall increasing sales volumes. In this environment, ALTANA anticipates to achieve operating sales growth of 2 to 5 percent with slightly lower earnings profitability. While acquisitions are expected to contribute to sales, the company?s nominal sales growth may be influenced by exchange rate changes that are difficult to predict.

ALTANA is a global leader in true specialty chemicals. The Group offers innovative, environmentally compatible solutions for coating manufacturers, paint and plastics processors, the printing and packaging industries, the cosmetics sector and the electrical and electronics industry. The product range includes additives, special coatings and adhesives, effect pigments, sealants and compounds, impregnating resins and varnishes, and testing and measuring instruments. ALTANAs four divisions, BYK Additives & Instruments, ECKART Effect Pigments, ELANTAS Electrical Insulation, and ACTEGA Coatings & Sealants, all occupy a leading position in their target markets with respect to quality, product solution expertise, innovation and service.

Headquartered in Wesel, Germany, the ALTANA Group has 48 production facilities and more than 50 service and research laboratories worldwide. Throughout the Group about 6,000 people work to ensure the worldwide success of ALTANA. In 2016, ALTANA achieved sales of more than 2 billion euros. About 6 percent of sales are invested in research and development every year. Its high earning power and high growth rate make ALTANA one of the most innovative, fastest growing, and profitable chemical companies in the world.

www.altana.com
Programming note: On Friday morning, I will be in a trial court in connection with a case I am working on thats at the post-trial motion stage. As a result, additional posts will appear here on Friday afternoon. As always while I am away from the office, additional appellate-related retweets may appear on this blogs Twitter feed.







Lawmakers warn judges ruling on travel bans against exceeding power; Rulings seen as political: Andrea Noble and Stephen Dinan of The Washington Times have this report.







House, Senate Approve Justice Palmer For Another Term On Supreme Court Bench: Christopher Keating of The Hartford Courant had this article last week.







The Revolt of the Judges: What Happens When the Judiciary Doesnt Trust the Presidents Oath. Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic have this post at Lawfare.







Campaign Pledges Haunt Trump in Court: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report.







Judge Gorsuchs Writings Signal He Would Be A Conservative On Social Issues: Nina Totenberg had this audio segment on this evenings broadcast of NPRs All Things Considered.







Alito: USs dedication to religious liberty being tested. David Porter of The Associated Press has this report.







Chief Justice Roberts Considers the Case of Tom Sawyer: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report.







SCOTUSDaily interviews Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal: You can read the interview at this link.







AP Explains: The doctrine sure to emerge in Gorsuch hearings. Mark Sherman of The Associated Press has an article that begins, When Democrats question Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch at his Senate confirmation hearing next week, theyll probably ask a lot about something called Chevron deference.'







9th Circuit judges to Congress: Leave us alone. Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press has this report.







Why Courts Shouldnt Try to Read Trumps Mind: The judiciary should not abandon its traditional role simply because the president has abandoned his. Law professor Josh Blackman has this essay online today at Politico Magazine.







Why Trumps Revised Travel Ban Could Still Succeed: Despite judicial setbacks, federal law leaves open the possibility that the presidents new executive order might prevail  if he can keep quiet. Law professor Garrett Epps has this essay online today at The Atlantic. And online at Bloomberg View, law professor Noah Feldman has an essay titled Real Drama for Travel Ban Will Be at Appeals Court.







Senate Democrats focus on Gorsuchs defense of Bush-era terrorism policies: Robert Barnes and Ed OKeefe of The Washington Post have this report. And in todays edition of The New York Times, Charlie Savage has an article headlined Neil Gorsuch Helped Defend Disputed Bush-Era Terror Policies.







Four Confirmation Fights That Shaped the Supreme Court: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report.







Appeals court judges rebuke Trump for personal attacks on judiciary, intimidation': Fred Barbash of The Washington Post has this report.







A Time to Choose for the Supreme Court: Linda Greenhouse has this essay online today at The New York Times.







Faith in the Ninth Circuit: Daniel Hemel has this post today at the new Take Care blog.







Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Restructuring: Three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals testified at a hearing on proposals to split the court, which is the largest of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals. C-SPAN is broadcasting live at this link this mornings hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.







Gorsuch Has Strong Tie to Proponent of Morality-Based Natural Law; Among Supreme Court nominees mentors is revered law professor whose conservative views on social issues have ignited controversy: Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal has this report.







New blog alert: A blog titled Take Care: Ensuring the President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed has made its debut today, featuring a stellar list of contributors.







A Matter of Life: The death penalty as a conservative conundrum. Mary Cuddehe has this article in the March 2017 issue of Harpers Magazine.







The Sage of Yale Law: Anthony Kronman was a university dean. Now hes a born-again pagan who thinks he might have discovered the meaning of life. Joshua Rothman has this post online today at The New Yorker.







The Supreme Court Confronts Racism in the Jury Room: Is racism in deliberations any less toxic than racism in open court? Law professor Garrett Epps has this essay online today at The Atlantic.






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Our View: Your vote, whatever it is, is a vote for democracy
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Plentiful sunshine. Near record high temperatures. High 79F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Slight chance of a shower throughout the evening. Low near 60F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Abundant sunshine. Near record high temperatures. High 79F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Slight chance of a shower throughout the evening. Low 59F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph.
To help prepare the public for the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is awarding minigrants to fund outreach activities focused on engaging groups of people who are underrepresented in the science community, such as women, minorities and people with disabilities.

On Thursday (March 16), the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force announced 31 winners of the minigrants program. Libraries, schools, museums, Boys & Girls Clubs and even a Girl Scout troop are among the recipients. Each project will receive up to $5,000 to spend on eclipse-related activities ranging from classes and workshops to festivals and parties.

This eclipse has been called the Great American Solar Eclipse because the path of totality  where the moon will completely block the sun  crosses the entire contiguous U.S., from Oregon to South Carolina. Viewers who aren't along the path of totality can at least witness a partial solar eclipse. (Either way, you'll need protective eyewear to safely observe the sun.)

"There is clearly a lot of interest in this summer's solar eclipse," Angela Speck, co-chair of the AAS task force and director of astronomy at the University of Missouri, Columbia, said in a statement. "We received 153 mini-grant proposals representing a remarkable amount of creativity and enthusiasm. I wish we could have funded more of them, but the 31 projects we did fund will help spread 'eclipse fever' around the country and will undoubtedly motivate significant numbers of underserved youth to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math." [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: Path, Viewing Maps and Photo Guide]

One group, at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, will use its grant to fund a four-day-long solar eclipse science camp for 25 high school students from underserved communities in the area. On the day of the eclipse, the park will host a viewing event for the public during which those students will serve as guides and educators. In New Orleans, a company called F&L Organizational Support Services will run a 10-day-long camp called "EclipseFEST 2017" to get the local youth excited about the eclipse.

Another project, at the University of Missouri, plans to teach hundreds of fifth-grade students how to use sound to study bee behavior during the total solar eclipse. Students at Heyward Gibbes Middle School in Columbia, South Carolina, will take their eclipse activities to a local retirement home, where they will educate the elderly about eclipses, hand out eclipse glasses and watch the solar eclipse.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) awarded minigrants to 31 outreach projects across the U.S. to help prepare the public for the total solar eclipse that will occur on Aug. 21, 2017. (Image credit: 2017 Google/INEGI via AAS)

Another project, on the San Juan Islands in Washington, the Indigenous Education Institute will host events that focus on Native American communities along the path of totality and their cultural history as it pertains to eclipses. The group plans to produce a video "based on native perspectives, cultural knowledge and stories of the sun," according to the project description.

The minigrants program was named after the late Julena Steinheider Duncombe, an astronomer from Nebraska who published eclipse predictions and maps for the U.S. Naval Observatory in the 1960s and '70s. Duncombe started the first school-lunch program by preparing meals for students who couldn't afford them.

Funding for the Julena Steinheider Duncombe grants came from the National Science Foundation and are administered by the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force. You can find a complete list of the grant awardees here.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The gas giant planet KELT-16b orbits incredibly close to its star, completing a full orbit in less than a day. In this artist's impression, a Jupiter-size planet passes in front of its star.

A giant planet that is scorchingly close to its star may not survive for long, a new study finds. The planet started a death spiral more than 2 billion years ago, and may have just a few hundred thousand years of life left before it gets torn apart.

The blazingly hot skies of this doomed world could shed light on how the atmospheres of alien planets work, the study's researchers said. This research could one day help astronomers detect signs of life on distant worlds, the scientists said.

In the past 25 years, astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 3,450 worlds outside the solar system. These discoveries have revealed that some of these exoplanets are very different from Earth and its sibling planets, with the finds including "hot Jupiters," gas giants that orbit their stars closer than Mercury does the sun. [7 Ways to Detect Alien Planets]

Astronomers have developed some clever methods of detecting tiny planets orbiting distant stars. See how scientists find alien planets in our full infographic here (Image credit: By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

The latest frontier in exoplanet science involves analyzing the atmospheres of these distant worlds to learn more about their weather and composition."The ultimate goal of such exoatmospheric studies would be to measure the presence of a biomarker molecule," study lead author Thomas Oberst, an astrophysicist at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, told Space.com. Biomarkers can serve as evidence of biological activity such as photosynthesis, he explained.

Although the technology to detect biomarkers in the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets is likely still several decades away, "we can study the atmospheres of hot Jupiters right now using current technology and telescopes," Oberst said. "As such, hot Jupiters are currently the most valuable 'laboratories' for building and refining our understanding of and techniques for observing exoplanetary atmospheres."

The scientists investigated a hot Jupiter named KELT-16b using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT), which consists of a telescope in Arizona and another telescope in South Africa. The researchers found that the giant planet has about 2.75 times Jupiter's mass and is 1.4 times as wide as Jupiter.

KELT-16b orbits the star KELT-16, which is about 1.2 times the mass of the sun and located about 1,300 light-years from Earth. Observations of KELT-16 suggest that, in addition to its planet, the star also possesses a companion red dwarf star, which orbits at least 286 astronomical units from KELT-16. An astronomical unit (AU) is the average distance between the sun and Earth, about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

KELT-16b its star at about 0.02 AU, which is about 1/20 the distance between Mercury and the sun,. The planet can reach searing temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius).

Based on current models of giant planet formation, the researchers said they suspect KELT-16b might once have orbited much further from its star than it does now, perhaps more than 5 AU. Gravitational tugs from the companion star might have disrupted the planet's orbit, sending it closer to its host star.

The fact that KELT-16b orbits so closely to its star means the planet experiences extreme heat and powerful tides. The researchers estimated that the planet likely began a runaway spiral to its doom about 2.1 billion years ago, and that tidal forces may shred the world apart in as little as another 550,000 years.

"Most if not all hot Jupiters are likely to end up being tidally disrupted," said Keivan Stassun, study co-author and a researcher at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. For KELT-16b in particular, the researchers have precise details on the age of the system and the way in which it evolved, so they can pinpoint the likely timing of the planet's death  "and it is imminent," Stassun told Space.com.

KELT-16b is the sixth planet discovered so far whose year (the amount of time it takes the planet to complete an orbit around its star) is less than a day long, Oberst said. The regularity with which KELT-16b passes in front of its star will make it easier for astronomers to examine starlight passing through the planet's atmosphere; this information can yield clues about the atmosphere's composition and activity, the researchers said.The planet's large size and the amount of light it gets from its star will also make gleaning atmospheric details about KELT-16b easier "than [with] most other hot Jupiters," Oberst said.

The researchers said they hope this giant planet will help answer questions such as what happens at the boundary line between night and daylight, called the terminator, on such a highly irradiated world. "If its temperature cools enough in going from the dayside to the nightside, KELT-16b may have rain showers of titanium oxide and vanadium oxide at sunset," Oberst said.

Further analysis of KELT-16b's doomed orbit can shed light on how exoplanets evolve over time. "Although we now have many examples of what solar systems can look like, a complete picture requires understanding how often planets don't survive," Stassun said. "In other words, we need information about 'planet mortality' in order to make complete sense of the planet census."

The scientists detailed their findings online Feb. 7 in The Astronomical Journal.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The Wideband Global SATCOM 9 communications satellite for the U.S. military is encapsulated in the payload fairing of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket ahead of planned March 18, 2017 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket is poised to lift off this Saturday (March 18) to deliver a multipurpose communications satellite into orbit for the U.S. military.

Blastoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is scheduled for 7:44 p.m. EDT (2344 GMT), and will be the second launch this week from the Eastern Range. The launch window closes at 8:59 p.m. EDT (0059 GMT on March 19).

Perched atop the rocket is the ninth member of the $442 million Boeing-built Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) network, which collects and routes real-time data through thousands of terminals worldwide and supports the military's Global Broadcast Service.

"It's essentially like having DishTV for us," Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, commander of the 45th Space Wing, based at Patrick Air Force Base, said in an interview.

The WGS network is used to relay television broadcasts, video conferences, images and other high-bandwidth data to and from ships, aircraft, ground forces, operations centers, the U.S. Department of State, the White House and select partners worldwide. The network also provides services to U.S. allies, five of which paid for the cost to manufacture the spacecraft.

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket is poised to lift off Saturday (March 18) carrying a Boeing-built Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) network satellite. (Image credit: ULA)

A single WGS satellite has more capability than its entire legacy network, called the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS), a constellation of 14 satellites launched between 1982 and 2003. Four DSCS satellites remain in operation today.

The WGS spacecraft support both X-band and Ka-band communications, which are parts of the electromagnetic spectrum used for data transmission. The satellites can seamlessly cross the bands to accommodate voice, data, video and other types of communications over a broad range of ground-based and mobile terminals.

"WGS provides anytime, anywhere communications for soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and international partnership through broadcast, multicast and point-to-point connections," said Robert Tarleton, director of the Military Satellite Communications Systems Directorate at Air Force Space Command in Los Angeles.

WGS is the highest-capacity military communications system in the U.S. Department of Defense arsenal, Tarleton told reporters during a prelaunch conference call.

In exchange for part-time use of the WGS network, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and New Zealand picked up the $442 million bill to manufacture the satellite.

"It's a win-win," Monteith said. "We get another satellite, and they get access to the entire constellation."

The United States has a similar partnership with Australia, which paid for the WGS 6 spacecraft that was launched in 2013.

The 10th and final member of the WGS constellation is targeted for launch in late 2018.

Follow Irene Klotz on Twitter @Free_Space. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
WASHINGTON  Vice President Mike Pence didn't offer any hints about what the Trump administration might do in space when he met with Buzz Aldrin last week, the former astronaut said March 14.

A March 10 tweet from the official account of the vice president featured a picture of Pence meeting with Aldrin at the White House. "Fun to host a true American explorer, Buzz Aldrin, at the @WhiteHouse as we work to shape the space policy of our administration," the tweet stated. The White House didn't provide additional details about the meeting, and Aldrin did not respond to an email asking about the meeting.

Aldrin, in Austin, Texas, to participate in the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival March 14, was asked about his meeting with Pence in a Facebook Live interview organized by SXSW after his speaking appearance, which had an emphasis on human Mars exploration. "What did he say? Did he say he was going to work on it?" interviewer Shira Lazar asked Aldrin of his discussion with Pence.

"No, he's not in a position to be able to do that. He has a number of things that he's doing," Aldrin responded. "But he took note some suggestions and some offers of assistance. It was very friendly, very satisfying. I felt very good at the end of the meeting, and I hope he did too."

Pence is widely expected in the space community to take a leading role in the development of the Trump administration's space policy. Statements of the Trump campaign's proposed policy made prior to the November election said that the administration would reestablish the National Space Council, which last operated when George H.W. Bush was president. At that time, and in earlier administrations, the council was led by the vice president.

"He is excited about doing the space council," Robert Walker, the former chairman of the House Science Committee who crafted that campaign position, said of Pence in a December interview. "He has expressed absolute excitement about that particular role. I think that will be a place where he will find time for it."

The administration, though, has yet to announce the creation of the space council, despite rumors it would be established shortly after President Trump took office Jan. 20. It has also, to date, not provided details about prospective changes to national space policy.

Aldrin used his appearance at SXSW to talk about his vision for human exploration of Mars. That included detailed discussions about his concept for Mars "cycler" spacecraft that would transit between the Earth and Mars, providing regular transportation to support the creation of a permanent base there.

But as the new administration reportedly shows greater interest in sending humans to the moon, Aldrin said lunar missions could play a role in Mars settlement by testing systems intended for use on Mars. "The moon enables us to go to Mars," he said. "It's almost mandatory, in my way of thinking, because the base that we want on Mars we will design and place it on the moon."

That could be done with international partners, Aldrin said, tying into interest by other nations in lunar exploration. "At the moment we're seeing a renewed interest in the moon," said Time magazine editor at large Jeffrey Kluger, who appeared on stage with Aldrin and in the later Facebook Live interview. "The moon has suddenly become the 'it' world as it was in the 1960s."

Aldrin also acknowledged the "bodacious" plans for Mars missions announced by SpaceX founder Elon Musk in a September presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico. However, Aldrin said that Musk hadn't yet demonstrated the same attention to detail about what's needed for humans to live once they arrive on Mars.

"He's a transportation person. He knows rockets," Aldrin said of Musk. He recalled a meeting a few years ago where Musk outlined plans for sending people to Mars, but had fewer details about how those people would live and work there. "It seems as though maybe he hasn't given that a lot of thought."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is known for being home to several astronomical observatories. The region's high altitude and scarce rainfall provides crystal-clear skies for impeccable observing conditions.

But this high desert also offers an unparalleled approximation of the conditions on Mars. With its harsh, dry environment and intense ultraviolet radiation, most life in this extreme desert exists as microbial colonies underground or inside rocks.

That makes the Atacama Desert a good place to practice looking for life on Mars.

NASA's Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS) team just concluded their second season in Chile, testing out their KREX-2 rover. Thirty-five researchers, scientists, engineers, and support staff spent a month testing out this prototype rover, sending it on various mission to use its drill and life-detection instruments. Using the unforgiving landscape, they were able to demonstrate the technical feasibility and scientific value of a mission that searches for evidence of life on Mars.

"Putting life-detection instruments in a difficult, Mars-analog environment will help us figure out the best ways of looking for past or current life on Mars, if it existed," said Dr. Brian Glass, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center and the principal investigator of ARADS. He also led the first expedition in 2016. "Having both subsurface reach and surface mobility should greatly increase the number of biomarker and life-target sites we can sample in the Atacama."

The rover in its mobile configuration with drill raised and visible at the front, arm stowed, and instruments closed. (Image credit: V. Robles/NASA/CampoAlto)

Glass said the team tested out KREX-2's drill and robotic arm, as well test as assessing the driving capabilities of the rover.

"It behaved beautifully in the field," he said. "It was a steady platform that enabled us to [drill] deeper than we expected."

RELATED: Mars 2020 Could Return to Where NASA's Spirit Rover Roamed

The KREX-2 rover carries a lightweight, low-power, two-meter drill, along with a robotic sample transfer arm. This year, the team tested out three life-detection instruments, positioned nearby, which were fed samples acquired by the rover's drill.

The instruments included the Wet Chemistry Laboratory, an instrument developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that flew on the 2007 Phoenix mission to Mars, and the Signs of Life Detector, from Spain's Center for Astrobiology. This instrument uses biochemical tests to search for 512 different biological compounds.

Members of the ARADS team  NASA's Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies project  start the day setting up the rover for test runs in Chile's Atacama Desert. (Image credit: V. Robles/NASA/CampoAlto)

Another instrument making its first trial run is the Microfluidic Life Analyzer from JPL, which processes extremely small samples of any water found under or inside of rocks. It can isolate amino acids, a building block of life.

Together, the three ARADS instruments searched for signs of current or past life. The scientific data collected provides insights on how life exists in the high desert today and how it first developed in this environment. Their geological and soil mineral tests also showed that extremely dry conditions have persisted in the Atacama Desert for at least 10 to 15 million years, and possibly far longer.

RELATED: Sending Mars Rovers on a 'Walkabout' Could Boost Their Science Output

The ARADS team's stated goal is to pave the way for future Mars rovers that can help answer some of humanity's fundamental questions about life beyond Earth, such as whether Mars was home to microbial life in the past, and if it still is today. These tests are helping plan for the instruments on NASA's Mars 2020 rover, which  among other experiments -- will search directly for the signatures of life, past or present, on Mars.

This year's ARADS expedition was the second of four annual tests planned through early 2019. Next year, the team hopes to have the rover carry out and operate the life-detection instruments itself, along with the drill that was tested this year.

WATCH: How Far Do Mars Rovers Travel Before They Die?

Originally published on Seeker.
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Macron: There's much to criticize, that's true. Our political system encourages that. We don't have proportional representation. There's little renewal in our political class and it's always the same faces. There's also a lack of morals -- it's one affair after the other. A system like that cannot be successful.

SPIEGEL: Why should we believe that you will be any different? You were also economics minister under Francois Hollande and you attended an elite school.

Macron: Still, I'm not a classical politician -- I don't command the usual established rhetoric of daily politics. I am committed to taking a different approach to things. I want voters to be able to trust the people they have voted for again. That's why we want term limits. No more conflicts of interest! The incomes of elected officials must be transparent.

SPIEGEL: You've been traveling across the country for weeks now. What kind of France are you experiencing?

Macron: I am constantly encountering an immense energy. Even though people often assume the opposite, the French want to build something up, to create something. You can feel a vitality that apparently goes unrecognized all too often. You just don't see it in the French media. But, of course, there is also a lot of uncertainty, anxiety about the future and sometimes a longing for a past that may not even have existed. And there is often a feeling of being left behind.

SPIEGEL: Who feels like they are being left behind?

Macron: The big cities are the winners in France. They have no problems. Go to Lyon, Marseille or Bordeaux -- that's where the successful people are. People there know how to deal with globalization. But there is also the France at the periphery, a rural France plagued with doubts. We need to bring these two parts back together. Key to this is our middle class -- they form the base of our democracy. We cannot lose them -- we must support them.

SPIEGEL: It's in this skeptical France that Marine Le Pen and her Front National are particularly successful. How do you intend to gain ground there?

Macron: I am trying to spread optimism and represent an opposing view from all those who want us to isolate ourselves. During my election appearances, I don't always just talk about the reforms our country needs to undertake and how that will be painful. That's been the talk for the last 30 years. I don't believe that France is capable of reform -- at least not in normal times. Fortunately, we are experiencing exceptional circumstances at the moment. It is a moment in which everything is possible.

SPIEGEL: And you believe your window of opportunity has arrived?

Macron: Exactly. I believe we find ourselves in a period of radical transformation. Regardless of whether it is digitalization, the environment or terrorism. We can be successful in this new world. We have the necessary willingness. The French are inventive and innovative. But we need to finally pick ourselves up.

SPIEGEL: What would your first official act be as president?

Macron: Three major reforms: The labor market must be opened, we need improved vocational training programs and the school system needs to support equal opportunity again.

SPIEGEL: More concretely: How would your style of governing differ from that of your predecessors?

Macron: Both Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande more or less suffocated their cabinets. I would handle it differently. A president should not govern. He should transcend partisan lines, delegate to those responsible and appoint the right people. Nor should he act as though he were responsible for everything or as if he could handle it all on his own. Above all, a president is a guarantor of the institutions. He sets the overall direction.

SPIEGEL: You are campaigning as an avid pro-European. Isn't that risky? Marine Le Pen is very successful with her attacks on Europe.

Macron: I am defending Europe, but I am not naive when it comes to its mistakes. There is also a Europe that isn't working. But you cannot cede that criticism to the anti-Europeans. For 10 years now, we've been providing them with more and more room. It's always the same discussion: first Grexit, then Brexit. We simply look on as Hungary and Poland ride roughshod over European values and we do nothing about it. The mutual inability to propose something ambitious for Europe to our citizens is exhausting the European dream. There have always been several countries, an avant-garde, who want to proceed. That prompted, at the initiative of Germany and France in 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community, the basis for European unity.

SPIEGEL: You would advocate for a core Europe with a tighter degree of union?

Macron: We need much deeper integration within the eurozone. A multispeed Europe has long been a reality and we shouldn't even attempt to push all countries to move forward in unison. That was a major mistake of the past years. We haven't further developed the eurozone because we feared scaring the British and the Poles. And what did that lead to? Britain voted to leave anyway and Poland is now telling us that Europe is a horrible thing. We have lost a lot of time.

SPIEGEL: What's the solution?

Macron: We need a joint finance minister and a permanent head of the Euro Group. We also need to take a close look at European institutions, make adjustments to them and also make them viable for the future. The principle has to be that no member state should be excluded from the outset, but also that no member state can prevent others from proceeding. And the impetus for this needs to come from France and Germany.

SPIEGEL: In recent years, the balance within the EU has been shifting more and more. Germany has become more important and France less so.

Macron: We will not whip Europe back into shape if France doesn't do its job. It's now our duty to finally follow through with reforms. France must restore its credibility by reforming the labor market and getting serious about its budget. At the same time, we, together with Germany, must stimulate growth again. I believe that the next five years will be decisive for our future, perhaps only the next three. Now, in 2017, we have an election year -- in France and in Germany. After that there are three years without elections in which we need to shape Europe.

SPIEGEL: Who would you prefer to work with -- Angela Merkel or Martin Schulz?

Macron: It's my motto not to interfere with others. Conducting politics in my own country is sufficient for me.

SPIEGEL: How would you judge Francois Hollande, the most unpopular president in modern French history?

Macron: I want to win the election in order to get the country in shape for the future. I'm not available at the moment for assessing the past.

SPIEGEL: What would happen if you were to lose the election and Marine Le Pen instead became president?

Macron: Our country would become impoverished. If France left the EU, both our competitiveness and our purchasing power would be reduced. It would likely lead to riots across the country. Le Pen would demolish Europe and the eurozone. I take her and her policy platforms very seriously. I fight against them every day because I believe they are wrong for our country. They would cause damage to both our fellow citizens and our businesses. An election victory for Marine Le Pen would have serious repercussions for France.

SPIEGEL: And how do you think the populists should be dealt with?

Macron: Whatever happens, we can't cede them the battlefield! Look at what is happening to us here. The conservatives are copying Front National. They are forgetting their principles. They are trying in this way to win the election at any price. Nicolas Sarkozy already tried to do that in 2012 and it failed back then as well. They take people for idiots -- it's really dramatic.

SPIEGEL: Speaking of the conservatives. In Germany a person who is the subject of criminal proceedings like Francois Fillon would hardly be able to continue his campaign. Why are things different in France?

Macron: I think it is the product of the difference between Protestant and Catholic culture. Among us Catholics, a person commits a sin and then confesses -- and all is forgotten again because the person apologized.

SPIEGEL: Will the French forgive Fillon?

Macron: I'm not someone who holds a neutral view on this. But I do believe that many of my compatriots are disturbed by Fillon's behavior. He believes that the rules that apply to others do not apply to him. It is precisely this type of politician that the French are sick of.

Brigitte Macron, the candidate's 63-year-old wife, enters the train compartment and sits down silently, wearing jeans, a light blue cashmere sweater and a blond pageboy haircut. She accompanies Macron to almost all of his campaign events and is the "anchor in his life," as a new book about the pair's relationship describes it. Brigitte Macron was a teacher at Macron's high school in Amiens and she was married with three children. She left her husband to live with Macron. The couple married in 2007.

SPIEGEL: In recent weeks, there have been targeted attacks on your private life. The claim was made that you are gay and that you lead a double life. You confronted these allegations directly at a campaign event.

Macron: I had wanted to address these rumors for a long time. It is always better to call things by their name so that you eliminate any room for stories like that. I approached the whole thing with a bit of irony and that also put an end to it.

SPIEGEL: Did you agree on that strategy with your wife?

Macron: Did we talk about it Brigitte? No, I don't think so.

Brigitte Macron: No, I didn't know he was going to do that. You know, he thinks entirely independently at this point.

SPIEGEL: The fact that a younger man is married to a woman who is a few years older is ...

Brigitte Macron: Thank you for this formulation, it's very nice of you -- a few years ...

SPIEGEL: ... who is precisely 24 years older, still appears to shock a lot of people, even in 2017. Have you gotten used to this or does it hurt your feelings anew each time you encounter it?

Macron: You know, if I were together with a woman who was 20 years younger than me, then no one would consider it strange in any way. The opposite is true -- they would all think it was great. But I have never lived my life based on what other people might think about it.

SPIEGEL: So, you are able to just distance yourself from all the malice and rumors?

Macron: Of course, there are hurtful moments -- the worst are not the ones that affect you, but ones that affect other family members. But you have to distance yourself from it, otherwise you would be unhappy. At some point we decided not to let the ignorance of others get to us.

SPIEGEL: And does it work?

Macron: Yes. Brigitte and I are immunized from this kind of maliciousness.

SPIEGEL: How would you describe yourself five weeks before the first round of voting? More euphoric or more nervous?

Macron: How did a famous French rugby trainer once put it? I'm calm, I'm at peace with myself and I am very determined. But a lot could of course happen -- there are many risks.

SPIEGEL: Which?

Macron: Doubts that could suddenly overcome the French people.

SPIEGEL: That you're too young for the office, for example?

Macron: Not only that. We could also make mistakes. The next month will be decisive.

SPIEGEL: In contrast to your competitors, you do not have a solid group of core voters that has consolidated over years to back you.

Macron: I don't lose any sleep over that. All the better. It means that I have to convince French voters with content and ideas. Left and right? These ideas originated in yesterday's world.

SPIEGEL: Your comments that the French colonial era was a crime against humanity sparked a lot of anger. Have you since become more cautious about what you say and how you say it?

Macron: I like to say things the way they are. I thought very precisely about my words about Algeria.

SPIEGEL: Yeah? But you also delivered extensive explanations afterward.

Macron: I thought it was necessary because I hadn't counted on such reactions. I didn't know that this issue still remains so painful for the French. I neither will nor want to resort to empty phrases -- that's a disease among politicians.

SPIEGEL: Do you already know where you will be on May 7, the day of the run-off vote?

Brigitte Macron: Emmanuel and I will vote in Le Touquet. The mayor there is already nervous about all the security precautions. After all, it's just a small seaside resort on the northern French coast.

Macron: That evening we will be in Paris at the headquarters of En Marche! With all my staff.

SPIEGEL: And the next time we meet will be in Elysee Palace?

He doesn't answer. He takes a quick look around and then pats his hand on his own forehead.

SPIEGEL: What are you doing?

Macron: If you can't knock on wood

SPIEGEL: Mr. Macron, Mrs. Macron, we thank you for this interview.
When Macron appeared in a hall in Toulon the next day, many seats were empty. "I'm sorry if I offended anyone with my remark," he said. Still, he added, France must also confront the unpleasant sides of its history. His approval numbers sank even further.

The next day, he stood in front of his desk in Paris and explained into a camera what exactly he had meant with his remark. He said that he had not intended to insult anyone, but added that people should be allowed to speak openly. His appeal sounded like an entreaty.

He is struggling with himself as he tries to convert his direct approach into something positive. Sometimes he succeeds. During a visit to one of the French suburbs known as banlieus on Tuesday, a younger business owner asked Macron what promises he had for residents of the suburbs.

"I won't promise you anything," Macron replied, looking the man directly in the eyes. "We have already promised far too much for the banlieue, and then failed to keep our promises."

On the next day, International Women's Day, as he was standing on the stage of a small theater in Paris, a woman in the audience took the microphone and asked: "Monsieur Macron, with you as president, will we finally have a female prime minister again?

"I would like to see that happen," Macron replied, raising his voice. Nevertheless, he added, he would not select someone to head his government according to gender, but solely on the basis of competency.

He has managed to do what no one before him has achieved. This is the first time since the establishment of France's Fifth Republic in 1958, that an independent candidate has stood such a strong chance of becoming president. And perhaps the signs for a candidate like him have never been this auspicious, either. Some 89 percent of the French believe that their country is moving in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, Macron's success cannot be reduced to the weakness of his opponents.

A New Way of Doing Politics?

In April 2016, Macron founded his movement, En Marche!, in Amiens, the northern French city where he was born. Today, less than a year later, it already counts more than 200,000 members, a number that is growing by the day. "I don't know how this experiment will end," he said at the time in the exhibition hall in Amiens. But he wanted to try.

He was disappointed by his stint as a cabinet minister. It involved too much weighing of pros and cons, too many cumbersome procedures, too many compromises. At the end of the process, he said in an interview shortly before submitting his letter of resignation to President Hollande, the results no longer reflect one's own contribution. At the time, in May 2016, protests against the labor market law he had been instrumental in creating were reaching their climax, and mass strikes were crippling public life. Sitting in a high-speed train to Brussels, tying his tie and speaking incessantly, he said it was time to rethink the way political decisions are made, noting that they no longer corresponded to what people expected from those in power.

"Even if you want to pass a law in an expedited procedure, it takes six or seven months. That is very, very slow," he said. His resignation was the logical consequence of these words.

As a politician, you also have to be an educator, Macron said in the interview. You have to explain to people what you plan to do. It was a blatant dig at the governing style of his president. This is another reason he says his movement -- he never calls it a party -- is different. There are flat hierarchies, and anyone who is interested in a "transparent debate" can participate, Macron explained.

Shortly after it was founded, 25,000 Frenchmen had already registered on the En Marche! website. Local groups were formed throughout the country, and their members went from door to door with a questionnaire:

"What do you not like about France?"

"What do you dislike about the political system?"

"What is your greatest hope?"

To be able to bring about change, you have to listen first, says Macron. He used the answers to these questions to develop the platform for his presidency, which he calls "My Contract with the Nation."

It took him almost three hours to present his platform in a speech in Paris. He wants to rebuild the French social insurance system, reducing the differences between privileged public servants and people working in the private sector. Some 120,000 jobs are to be cut in the public sector, an unheard-of plan for a former cabinet minister in a Socialist government. He wants to strengthen equal opportunity by breaking up ghettoization, especially in cities. As part of this plan, companies will not have to pay social insurance contributions for career starters from the suburbs for three years in order to make people from those areas more attractive hires.

Suddenly the energy was back again, says Axelle Tessandier, 35. The fit entrepreneur, with dark, curly hair, is sitting on a table at the headquarters of En Marche! Macron has rented three floors in an ugly office building in the 15th arrondissement, with a lot of open space and a few bunk beds for those occasional late-night work sessions. A hundred volunteers help answer emails and phone calls, and there are about 50 paid employees. The movement relies solely on donations for its funding.

A Breath of Fresh Air into French Politics

Tessandier lived in the United States for a while before returning to France in late 2015. She says she could no longer look on from afar as France, her country, was going to the dogs. There had been two serious terror attacks and the Front National was gaining strength. The mood was dismal.

"I arrived in Paris and didn't know what to do," she says. She didn't want to work for the Socialists and she didn't agree with what the middle-class right represented. And suddenly there was Emmanuel Macron: Neither left nor right, just forward. Macron calls it "progressisme," and Tessandier liked it.

Imagine someone suddenly waking up after sleeping for 50 years, she says. This person would have trouble coping in a world where so much has changed -- unless, she says, this person is placed in the National Assembly. "He would feel comfortable there, because that's where nothing has changed." It's an effective way of describing how urgently change is needed in French politics.

Macron is the only candidate not trying to score points by fomenting fear. He wants to create hope and spread optimism, two things that have gone missing in France in recent years. Macron says he believes in "benevolence, even in politics."

He refuses to tolerate whistles and catcalls during his appearances, even if they are aimed at his rivals. This has incensed essayist Pascal Bruckner, who writes that benevolence is out of place in politics and is something for the clergy instead. Bruckner finds it intolerable that Macron sees himself as something of a savior.

Macron's campaign events, as it turns out, resemble so-called happenings, in which the elaborate sound and lighting systems place Macron sqarely in the focus. When he stands and spreads his arms, it feels like he is blessing his audience: a slim, almost slight man with blue eyes and well-proportioned facial features.

"Je vous aime farouchement," he calls out to his audience in Lyon. "I love you boundlessly." Together, he promises, raising his voice, "we will lead hope to triumph!"

These bombastic sentences sound odd -- they're not words he would use in a conversation. Macron is a disarming person, friendly and attentive. He knows how to listen. After a meeting with him, one always wonders how he manages to be so likeable, and how he is able to keep his self-confidence from tilting into arrogance.

This would make sense, given his background. As much as he may be fighting for renewal, he is a product of the classic French system of elite education. He attended the best schools in the country and before becoming President Hollande's adviser at the Elysee Palace, he made a lot of money as a banker at Rothschild.

An Unexplainable Career

In his political-biographical manifesto, "Revolution," published to coincide with the beginning of the campaign, he does his best not to seem like a boy wonder who succeeds at everything he tries. He repeatedly mentions his marriage to a woman 24 years his senior as proof that he is not interested in conventions, and that he actually tends to defy them -- against all resistance.

"I know the feeling of being viewed as odd, because you live your life in a way that does not correspond to the norm," he said in a recent TV interview. "This isn't just theoretical for me. I've experienced it." And in early February in Paris, he couldn't have responded more elegantly to a longstanding rumor that he is gay: with irony.

"Should you have heard that I am leading a double life, then this is my hologram, which has slipped away from me. This cannot possibly be me." The rumors are particularly difficult for his wife Brigitte, he said, who wonders how he could even manage this feat physically. "After all, we are always together, day and night," said Macron, before adding, in a dig at Fillon, that he doesn't even have to pay her.

It was an extremely upfront, unusually clear reaction to attempts to discredit him through his personal life. He even named the name of his supposed lover. It seems likely that the interview brought him even more new supporters.

He can't even explain his own career himself, he writes in his book "Revolution." And he is still amazed by his success.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, March 17, 2017 (SPS) - The Canarian Association of Solidarity with the Saharawi People organizes today a series of activities to protest against the Canarian companies that continue to participate in the looting of Saharawi natural resources since the beginning of the Moroccan occupation.

According to the association, all these activities, following the European Court of Justice ruling in December 2016, are criminal and immoral and "Morocco cannot continue to export Saharawi products as its own".

The protest is directed against such criminal activities and the complicity of the authorities which protect them, when they do not promote it.

The association organizes a press conference and a human chain in front of Granintra company based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. SPS

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The honour was bestowed by the Council for the Awards of the Royal Agricultural Societies (CARAS), acting on behalf of the UKs four national royal agricultural societies (the Royal Agricultural Society of England; the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland; the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society and the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society). It recognises the outstanding contribution by an individual to the understanding, efficiency and well-being of agriculture and is given to invited individuals who demonstrate the required high level of achievement.

Phil Stocker was recognised for his work with NSA to communicate key topics to sheep farmers and raise the profile of the sector outside of agriculture. He joins some 1,200 individuals recognised by CARAS, made up of more than 350 Associates and 800 Fellows.

Phil says:

I really do feel honoured to have been put forward for this prestigious award and to have come through the process as an Associate Member of such an important and influential society. The awards hold real standing and bring you within the company of so many creative, successful and forward-thinking people.
Astronomers have found seven new earth-size planets orbiting a star called Trapppist-1, and think some of them might be inhabitable and/or even harbor life.

While I always tend to get excited about such discoveries, I am especially so this time because you cant have too many exit strategies when you are an enemy of the people. At this point my travel plans are in wait-and-see mode, although I do have a bag packed in case the Trumpster totally loses the plot.

The most talked about Plan B is Canada, where a lot of Trumpster-fearing Americans are threatening to move in the event 2017 turns into 1984. A secondary possibility is Mexico. Im not crazy about either choice.

I mean Canada is a great country, close to the United States culturally, and home to friendly people. The problem is the weather. When you think worst place to spend winter in the United States, places like North Dakota, upper Michigan, Maine come to mind. Canada is north of all these places. Enough said?

Mexico presents the opposite problem. With climate change looming, Mexico could become a destination to which it is too hot to trot. The other obvious problem with relocating to Mexico is if diplomatic relationships sour, you could find yourself rounded up and deported back to the United States. I mean, talk about awkward.

If the situation were to present itself, moving to a new planet would be ideal if the logistics could be worked out. First off, there is the matter of getting there. The Trappist planets are 40 light years away, which seems a lot closer than it really is. Given that one light year equals 5.88 trillion miles, and the fastest space craft NASA has ever launched travels at about 36,000 mph, it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 780,000 years to get there. That noted, there are Uber drivers who do warp speed.

Another obstacle would involve accommodations. Where would you live: apartment, condo, pod, double-wide, RV. How about if you wanted to build. Would lots be available? What are the zoning laws like? Mortgage rates?

Then there is the matter of immigration. How would they feel about taking us in, particularly if they have been watching us? Musing on the practice of owners following their dogs around and retrieving their poop, Jerry Seinfeld once wondered if space aliens observing us might get the wrong impression as to who was in charge.

There are other things inquiring aliens might wonder about.

The Academy Awards: Come on, they couldnt get the Best Picture envelope right?

March Madness: Once a year tall men in shorts chase a brown ball around, which results in mass hysteria among the population. Is this a mating rite?

Driving: Do they steer their cars by waving middle fingers at each other?

Anyway.

Now that the new Trappist planets have been located, astronomers might want to call in some marketing people.

As it stands right now, the seven new planets are named Trappist-1b, Trappist-1c, Trappist-1d and so on through Trappist-1h. Beyond boring.

Imagine if the star gazers had been in charge of naming the sun, where would we be:

Literature: The Trappist Also Rises.

Music: Here Comes the Trappist.

Advertising: Fun in the Trappist.

Im thinking, why not humanize the new planets by naming them after, say, characters from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Tell me planets named Mary, Lou, Ted, Murray, Sue Ann, Rhoda and Chuckles wouldnt resonate.

Seriously, wouldnt you feel more connected to a planet named Chuckles than Trappist-1h?

Ground control to Major Tom.

Jim Shea is a lifelong Connecticut resident and journalist who believes the keys to life include the avoidance of physical labor and I-95. He can be reached at jimboshea@gmail.com and on Twitter @jimboshea.
Wilfredo Gutierrez, also known as Bean and Big Pun, is to spend his next 15 birthdays behind bars.

Once hes released and completes five years of probation, Big Pun will be 60 years old.

On Thursday, Gutierrez learned his fate when he was sentenced in Bridgeport by U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden to 180 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release, for trafficking heroin.

According to court documents, between September 2015 and May 2016, Gutierrez and others, including his brother Bobby B.O. Gutierrez, conspired to distribute at least 10 kilograms of heroin in Fairfield County.

This case stems from a probe involving the Drug Enforcement Administrations Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, Stamford Police Department, Norwalk Police Department and State Police. The investigation included court-authorized wiretaps, controlled purchases of narcotics and physical surveillance.

The 40-year-old Gutierrez already knows what to expect behind bars.

His criminal history dates to 1994 and includes multiple state drug convictions for which he has served more than 16 years in prison.

In July 2011, Gutierrez was sentenced to nine years in prison and 11 years of special parole for violating Connecticuts Corrupt Organizations and Racketeering Activity Act and sale of a controlled substance.

He was released to a halfway house on Aug. 27, 2015. While in the halfway house, Gutierrez continued to coordinate the acquisition of heroin from individuals in the Bronx, (N.Y.,) and the distribution of the drug in Fairfield County. On Dec. 21, 2015, he was returned to custody for a technical violation of his parole, and he continued his involvement in the acquisition and sale of heroin, the U.S. Attorneys office in Connecticut said in a release.

On May 26, 2016, a search of B&B Deli in Bridgeport, which was owned by the Gutierrez family and served as a hub for their drug dealing, revealed two digital scales, two large plastic bags containing what appeared to be cutting agents, and five cellular telephones.

Gutierrez, his brother Bobby, and seven others were charged as a result of the investigation. All pleaded guilty. Bobby Gutierrez is in custody while awaiting sentencing.

On Nov. 22, 2016, Wilfredo Gutierrez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin.

Bolden ordered Gutierrezs federal sentence to run concurrently with his state sentence.

The DEAs Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force includes members from the Bridgeport, Stamford, Stratford, Norwalk, Milford and Trumbull police departments, and the State Police.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anthony Kaplan and Heather Cherry.
BRIDGEPORT  Police are investigating the shooting of a 20-year-old man who was hit by multiple gunshots early Friday morning.

Bridgeport Police Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said the victim, who police did not identify, was wounded at about 3 a.m. near Denver Avenue and Denver Court on the citys West Side.
T ake a trip to the UKs pizza nerve centre in Milton Keynes, Dominos Pizzas headquarters, and the first thing you notice is how few people seem to be about. The car park is full, but where is everybody? Apart from the loading bays, its strangely quiet.

Apparently 550 people work here but on the main factory floor, there are just half a dozen people tending to the vast machinery. The kit produces 350,000 dough balls a day, plopping them on plastic trays, and then zipping them about on conveyor belts resembling some souped-up airport security scanner. After that theyre shipped around the country to hundreds of outlets.

Its not quite the man and a dog theory of manufacturing, the fabled future factory which employs a man to feed the dog, and a dog to bite him if he fiddles with the machines, but its getting there. The process is so clinical that Im not even allowed to take my own biro onto the factory floor, lest a rogue pen lid ends up in a nearby Hawaiian. Valentines Day may be their busiest day of the year (men of Britain, we can do better than that surely?) but there isnt a great deal of romance in the process.

Nonetheless, theres big bucks. Dominos Pizza arrived over here from the US in 1985 and the UK incarnation alone is worth 1.9 billion. It shifts 130 million pizzas a year through more than 900 UK franchises. Then theres Ireland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg and a stake in the German market.

The pizza king overseeing this operation is 62-year-old chief executive David Wild, a grey-haired veteran of more than 40 years with some of the biggest names in the corporate world.

Wild, a Mancunian grammar school lad, enjoyed messing around with chemicals in his youth when he wasnt watching Manchester Uniteds great 1968 team. That took him all the way to read chemistry at Oxford, where he ate his first pizza in the early Seventies. But there he fell out of love with the increasingly theoretical turn of the subject, and decided to get into marketing and brands instead, kicking off a career that took him to giants including Tesco and Walmart. He worked at Tesco, setting up its eastern European business when the firm was in its juggernaut growth spurt under Sir Terry Leahy.

Before Dominos, he ran bikes chain Halfords, which ended badly for him in 2012 after a string of profit warnings. Dominos originally tapped him up in November 2013 as a non-executive director because of his experience in Germany, where the company was struggling. And when boss Lance Batchelor departed for Saga in early 2014, Wild seized his chance, stepped in and by April, he had the job full time.

Dominos really took off over here around the turn of the century with its sponsorship of The Simpsons, massively raising the profile of the company in one of the most successful tie-ups in TV history. Those teenagers of the late Nineties are still with them today, chomping away with kids of their own. We call them the family feasters, he says.

Wild has to eat his fair share of the stuff in his job, but there isnt too much evidence of that on his waistline so far. The week before I meet him hes eaten a Dominos in Sheffield, Wimbledon and Geneva. I dont even attempt to eat the whole pizza. His favourite (and the nations) is the Pepperoni Passion.

As for his favourite takeaways, he sticks to the party line and says cautiously that we have Indian and we would have pizza, although pizza at home sounds like a busmans holiday.

Company watchers say he has a bit of a hard man reputation, of being difficult to work for and running his team ragged, although sitting across the boardroom table in his open-necked striped shirt, hes avuncular charm personified. I would say Im a pussycat, he laughs.

Nonetheless, while hes been in charge, hes had three finance directors. The first, Sean Wilkins, appointed by Batchelor, quit after a year  it was a big step up for him. His own hire from moneysupermarket.com, Paul Doughty, quit after five months, which was a cultural thing, he didnt enjoy the business. The third, Rachel Osborne, is still there. He does admit: I am demanding. But I hope Im supportive in achieving those demands.

Another early item in Wilds in-tray was sorting out the German mess. Dominos misjudged the market badly, making the classic mistake of worrying about scale rather than quality.

He did a deal in 2015 that effectively surrendered control of the German master franchise to the Australian version of Dominos, in a joint venture which bought the Joeys delivery chain. His pragmatic view is that its better have a third of 200 stores that are making a profit than 100% of 25 stores that are losing a fortune. Over here, Wild has ambitions for 1600 UK stores, splitting its territories so franchisees can deliver more pizzas in the golden mile around outlets. With smaller territories, the goods get delivered faster, they taste better and the marketing costs come down.

That said, Cenkos analyst Andrew Saunders is a sceptic with a Sell rating on the shares, even though his kids love the pizza, worrying about cannibalised sales. Were also worried about the encroachment of competitors, like Just Eat doing a tie up with Pizza Express, he adds.

"There is a little bit of consumer nervousness out there, there is no question of that."

Dominos did worry that the online takeaways site would produce a revival in independent pizzerias. But the firm raised their game online: Whats happened is that Just Eat have grown the market and weve grown with it. Weve not seen the material renaissance in the independent sector that we feared. Most of their ads are about Indian and Chinese [takeaways].

But when Dominos is opening 80 stores a year, when do we hit peak pizza? Intellectually there has to come a point. Where that is, I dont know. If we ate as much pizza as the Icelandics do, it would be three or four thousand.

Recent results suggest Dominos, after years of double-digit growth, could be in for a much tougher time in 2017. UK sales growth slowed sharply in the first two months of the year, sending the shares into a freefall.

Wild says: There is a little bit of consumer nervousness out there, there is no question of that. Were planning to be more aggressive in the market later in the year. Expect a blizzard of promotions and money-off deals to keep the nation chomping.

Outside Dominos, the boss, who has four children, lives in David Cameron country near Chipping Norton with his wife, although his United season ticket takes him back up north regularly. He may be in his sixties, but he has no plans for a quieter life and says he wont be handing over to the heir apparent, chief operating officer Simon Wallis, any time soon. What else to say about him? Hes a fan of University Challenge, although when I put him on the spot with a few starters for 10 he flunks tricky questions on genetics and the race which sacked Rome.

Heres one he does get right: identifying Italian dictator Mussolini as the originator of the myth that trains always ran on time under the Fascists. Wilds not quite a dictator, but looking around his slick operation, Il Duce might well have approved. Will he have the right answers to avoid the squeeze on pizza-lovers wallets this year?
I t was always going to take something dramatic for Circassia Pharmaceuticals to claw its way back after last years cat allergy drug trial flop.

But Steve Harris, the biotech firms chief executive, appears to have pulled a rabbit out of the hat after unveiling a deal with AstraZeneca.

Circassia has secured the commercial rights to sell two of the pharma giants respiratory drugs in the US  Tudorza and Duaklir  which treat patients suffering from emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Circassia will pay Astra up to $230 million (185 million) for the rights, including $50 million in its own shares, giving Astra a 14.3% shareholding, just behind Neil Woodford and Invesco on the register.

Harris said: Its a unique transaction weve done here. I cant recall any quite like this before.

He added that the deal would give the company more emphasis on later-stage products.

That will be a relief to shareholders who watched on as Circassia lost two-thirds of its value in one day when it stopped trials for an experimental cat allergy drug. The allergic symptoms of patients were the same as those who took the placebo.

The shares started the long road to recovery today, surging 21.75p, or 25%, to 109p, but are still some way off the 260p levels of 12 months ago.

On the wider market, there was little to move the blue-chips as the FTSE 100 edged 2.99 points lower to 7412.96 after hitting new highs yesterday.

Prudential was up 25.37p to 1778.87 as analysts hailed its annual results. Canaccord said they were strong across the board and lifted its target price to 1900p and JPMorgan Cazenove turned less bearish as it upgraded from Underweight to Neutral.

Troubled smartphone parts maker Laird dived 26.44p, or 15%, to 149.56p as its rights issue kicked in.

Shares in Gym Group were flagging after Phoenix Equity Partners, its former owner, sold its remaining stake in the business for 68.5 million. The sale by the private equity firm, which also owns upmarket fashion brand LK Bennett, caused the budget gyms operators shares to fall 11.57p, or 6.3%, to 173.43p.

At the smaller end of the spectrum, Australian businessman Murray dAlmeida stepped down as chairman of Management Resource Solutions, an AIM-listed support services firm to miners and oilers Down Under.

It follows a lengthy battle with former chief executive Paul Morffew, who was ousted last year, just before the company said it had uncovered issues in its consulting business, which has since been shut down.

Morffew, still the largest shareholder, has spent months trying to eject dAlmeida, who is behind the Donut King franchise in Australia. Management Resource Solutions shares remain suspended at 15p.

Finally, specialist lender Private & Commercial Finance, off 0.12p at 26.38p, unveiled a 10 million share placing, which comes a few months after it was awarded a banking licence.
P anmure Gordon chief executive Patric Johnson said a 15 million-plus takeover by Bob Diamonds Atlas Merchant will restore the 140-year-old stockbroker to its former glories, as he insisted he wanted to stay at the firm.

Panmure on Friday accepted an all-cash offer of 100p per share from the former Barclays chiefs private-equity house and 43% shareholder QInvest, a Qatari investment bank, to take the company private.

The shares rocketed by 69.75% to 101p. The offer is a 68.1% premium to last nights closing price of 59.5p, valuing Panmure at 15.5 million.

Top shareholders, including Church House Investments and EFS Hermes, have backed the offer, which can also be taken up in new Panmure shares.

Johnson, who was named chief executive last February and has been helping negotiate the deal for a couple of months, said he would like to stay on if the deal goes through. I didnt do this to get myself fired, he said.

Our Qatari shareholders helped put me in this role and have supported me in returning to profitability. Now the time is right to take the business private.

Panmure has strong ties to former Prime Minister David Camerons family, having employed three generations.

It floated on the junior stock market 12 years ago after being sold by Lazard but Johnson said it was important to take the firm back to a partnership model.

Although Diamond co-founded Atlas Merchant, the Panmure deal has been led by his man in London, Matt Hansen, a former partner at vulture fund Cerberus.

This is not about the return of Bob Diamond, its about a well-respected team of people at Atlas and QInvest investing in a brand with a huge amount of potential, Johnson added.

Mid-market stockbrokers have been under pressure due to shrinking trading volumes and increased regulatory burdens.

Panmure swung to a 16.7 million statutory loss in 2015 although it expects to make a small profit this year thanks to a busier period for M&A and stock-market listings.

Atlas Merchant owns three other financial services companies: Greek specialist bank Credicom, Bermudian reinsurer Somerset Insurance and US broker-dealer South Street Securities.
T his papers poll suggesting that more than half the country does not think Theresa May will get a good Brexit deal does not make welcome reading for the PM before her speech to the Tories spring conference. There she talks about Brexit as a glorious opportunity for a fairer Britain; the poll suggests a bleaker view.

This may reflect a bad week for the Prime Minister. Following the Chancellors humiliating about-turn on National Insurance, there was the revelation of electoral malpractice by the Tories in the general election and Nicola Sturgeons destabilising bid for another Scottish independence referendum. Mrs May has held her ground on the referendum, though it would have been better done first in the Commons, but the only comfort for her has been Labours poor performance.

Yet the poll may be unduly bleak about Brexit. In an Institute for Government meeting yesterday, Jeremy Browne, the City envoy to the EU, suggested that Brexit could bring job losses to the City of five to seven per cent. But he was also emphatic that the City was primarily a global entity, hosted by Britain, which the EU should see as a European resource. Pascal Lamy, the former director- general of the World Trade Organisation, admitted that striking a deal could take five years or more, but also dismissed the suggestion that the EU was out to punish Britain. The talks, he said, would be complex but any cost to Britain would entail a cost for the EU. The Brexit negotiations are going to be difficult but we must approach them on the basis that a good deal for Britain is also a good deal for the EU. Free trade is in all our interests: the EUs and ours.

Hands off school funds

The Government is also under pressure over its plans to rebalance education funding across the country. London schools are among the biggest losers. The consequences will be drastic: many schools will lose staff or drop less popular subjects or extra-curricular activities. That means the quality and breadth of pupils education will be diminished and so will social mobility.

Schools in the capital have made huge improvements in recent years and this progress will be set back by sudden cuts on this drastic scale. The Governments bid to reduce funding inequality in schools is understandable but the pace and scale of the rebalancing must be reconsidered. Schools are now mobilising parents to protest against the cuts, and in London they will be vociferous. Tory MPs, who now constitute the real opposition, must make clear the cuts are politically unacceptable. Any bill enshrining these changes can and should be voted down.
T homasina Miers may not be hands on in the kitchen as much as she was, but with more than 20 branches of Wahaca across the UK, plus numerous other projects on the go, she still spends a lot of her time in restaurants.

When shes not in one of her own sites, she enjoys hoppers, whisky sours and thin crust pizzas. Plus a bit of Mexican.

Where do you like to grab a quick bite?

I spend my time dashing around between my restaurants so when not eating there I usually pick up something from a street food stand I happen to be passing, or I am rather partial to a sausage roll from Ginger Pig.

And which would be your ultimate London restaurant for a special occasion?

At the moment (it does change) I am nuts about Spring and the Portland  both serving very beautiful looking, seasonal, spoiling food using wonderful ingredients. Pidgin is also a fantastic, crazily creative and wonderful little spot in Hackney. And always The Clove Club too.

Top pick: The Clove Club

You often get out of work late. Where do you head to eat and drink?

It will usually be Quo Vadis, Barrafina, Hoppers or Hix bar.

Read all the latest restaurant news and reviews

Whats your favourite local gem?

I really love Hereford Road and Dock Kitchen, both close to me and the pizzas at The Oak on Westbourne Grove are delicious with a very thin crust and great toppings.

Where do you go to cure a persistent hangover?

Anywhere Mexican  tacos are the cure for all hangovers

Late spot: Barrafina

Whats your favourite cocktail, and where do you drink it?

A whisky sour, at either Quo Vadis, The Groucho Club or Hix.

Where do you rate for food shopping?

My local market in Queens Park is brilliant. La Fromagerie and Neals Yard for cheese. Fortnums, Amathus and Salusbury Wine Store for liquor.

Your favourite pub?

Having just had my third child it is scary to admit how long it has been since I was in an old-fashioned boozer  I do love my ales, so much more delicious than so many micro-brewed bottled beers that are being made.

Whats the most indulgent experience you have ever had in London?

Tom Bartlett, a genius architect and great friend, hired The Clove Club to come and cook a private dinner in one of his new projects  it was the most delectable experience ever.

Imagine you had a surprise day off tomorrow. You cant leave London. What would you do?

Aaagh, the pleasure! The luxury! The joy! I would visit as many galleries as I could in a day eating my way around London as I went London really is the greatest city on earth.
H elen Dunmore is unwell. Earlier this month the 64-year-old novelist referenced Philip Larkins Aubade and the dread of death in a newspaper article in which she made clear: There is no vagueness about my mortality.

In the afterword of Birdcage Walk, her 15th novel, Dunmore further reveals that she was unaware of having cancer while writing a book that focuses on the legacy of life. A novel written under such a growing shadow cannot help being full of a sharper light, she wrote.

The story opens in 1792 in Bristol  where Dunmore now lives  as the French Revolution is raging across the Channel. It was inspired by the authors knowledge of a real Birdcage Walk, which cuts through a disused local graveyard where so many stories have long dissolved into the earth.

The lead character, Lizzie Fawkes, is the daughter of a libertarian mother who dares to pen her thoughts on hereditary privilege as her revolutionary circle await news from their Girondist friends in Paris.

Lizzie rebels by marrying the sexually beguiling Diner, a property developer not favoured by the anti-capitalists. He also happens to be a control freak and murderer, who in the opening chapter buries his first wife Lucie and becomes embroiled in a Georgian version of Grand Designs gone wrong while building a terrace in Clifton.

Mostly he stalks the novel like a cross between Emily Brontes Heathcliff and wife abuser Rob Titchener from The Archers, often leaving Lizzie scurrying back to her Mammie and eventually into the arms of a wanted liberal poet called Will Forrest. Thats when shes not in bed with her dominating husband, where she spends an inordinate amount of time, resulting in sex scenes that read: The room is cold but we burn. Or: We fold into each other. Dunmore is nothing if not a champion of the bald seven-word sentence.

Although best known for her 2001 novel The Siege, about the siege of Leningrad, and a canon of other historical novels, Id never read Dunmore until now. This surprised my sister, who has been a huge fan for years, although even she got stuck on page 40 of this new book. It is not without interest but it neither made me cry nor laugh, nor race to the final chapter.

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Dunmores real gift is to shine a light on unsung historical stories  from D H Lawrences expulsion from Cornwall in her first 1993 novel, Zennor in Darkness, to the real-life 18th-century Bristol property crash and pamphleteers of political change in Birdcage Walk.

Yet what prevailed most was the lingering question: what is left behind after death? The sharper light in this novel reminds us that we all have something to pass down to the next generation. The extraordinary love of a mother for her daughter. The idiosyncratic arch of an eyebrow. An unlearned, natural talent.

As Dunmore herself recently wrote: We die, but do not quite die out.
O ver time, even facts we consider steadfast truths can change. People used to think doctors could forgo washing their hands before surgery. Knowledge is ever-evolving.

The seven ideas below probably changed since your school days. Re-educate yourself.

THEN: Pluto is a planet

NOW: Pluto isn't a planet

Downgraded: The dwarf planet Pluto, captured by the New Horizons probe in 2015 / BEST QUALITY CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Handout photo issued NASA of , the dwarf planet Pluto, captured from New Horizons at about 4 pm EDT on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach, as the craft is set to get a close up look at the last t

We've known since the late 1800s that a ninth planet, after Uranus, potentially existed. In 1906, Percival Lowell, the founder of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, even began a research project intended to locate the mysterious "Planet X."

Then in 1930, a 23-year-old newbie at the facility found it. The discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, had been tasked with systematically comparing photographs of the sky taken weeks apart to search for any moving objects. He eventually saw one and submitted his finding to the Harvard College Observatory. After an 11-year-old English girl named the new planet (for the Roman god of the underworld), we started including Pluto as a planet in our solar system.

But in 2003, an astronomer found a larger object beyond Pluto  which he named Eris, according to NASA. The new information caused a bunch of other astronomers to question what really makes a planet a planet, and they decided, based on size and location, that Pluto just didn't make the cut. Neither did Eris, actually. Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet.

Needless to say, primary school kids were pretty disappointed.

But there may be hope. Researchers have recently been debating whether to make Pluto a planet again.

THEN: Diamond is the hardest substance

NOW: Ultrahard nanotwinned cubic boron nitride is the hardest substance

Hard luck: an uncut diamond / REUTERS

We've known about two substances harder than a diamond since 2009: wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite, according to Scientific American. The first resists indentation with 18% more fortitude than a diamond, and the second  a whopping 58%.

Unfortunately, both substances are rather unusual and unstable in nature. In fact, the study's authors, published in the journal "Physical Review Letters," only calculated the new substances' hardness, instead of actually testing it using a tangible specimen. That makes the discovery a bit theoretical.

But another contender was published in the January 2013 issue of the journal Nature. In the simplest terms, researchers compressed boron nitride particles to form "ultrahard nanotwinned cubic boron nitride." They simply re-organised the particles like an onion, or a flaky rose, or those little Russian dolls that fit inside one another, as the team explained to Wired.

As a result, expect women everywhere to start asking for ultrahard nanotwinned cubic boron nitride engagement rings. Because those really are forever.

THEN: Witches in Salem were burned at the stake

NOW: They were actually hanged

Even if you didn't read Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" in high school, you probably learned somewhere that the townspeople of Salem burned witches at the stake.

But that never happened, according to Richard Trask, a town archivist for Danvers (formerly known as Salem Village.) He also chaired the Salem Village Witchcraft Tercentennial Committee from 1990 to 1992 and wrote a book detailing the time period called "Salem Village Witch Hysteria."

At the time of the trials, New England still followed English law, which listed witchcraft as a crime punishable by hanging  not burning at the stake, Trask said. In Europe, however, the church labelled witchcraft heresy and did tie up suspected practitioners and light them on fire. You can see where the confusion started.

THEN: Israelite slaves built the pyramids

NOW: Egyptians workers built the pyramids themselves

Even movies like "The Prince Of Egypt" perpetuate the idea that slaves built the pyramids. Although many think the Bible tells us they did, the book doesn't mention the story specifically.

This popular myth reportedly stems from comments made by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin when visiting Egypt in 1977, according to Amihai Mazar, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"No Jews built the pyramids because Jews didn't exist at the period when the pyramids were built," Mazar told the AP.

Recent archaeological finds actually show that Egyptians built the pyramids themselves. Workers were recruited from poor families in the north and south but were highly respected, earning crypts near the pyramids and even proper preparation for burial.

Slaves wouldn't have been treated so honorably.

THEN: Folding a piece of paper more than seven times is mathematically impossible.

NOW: The record stands at 13.

Whether in art class or science, this rumour definitely spread among the masses. But Britney Gallivan, a California high school student, didn't bite.

She, with some volunteers, bought a giant, $85 roll of toilet paper and proceeded to blow everyone's mind by folding it a surprising 11 times. She realised everyone else who tried had been alternating folding directions, and even developed an equation, based on the thickness and width of the specific paper, explaining why you shouldn't.

Gallivan was a keynote speaker at the 2006 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics convention. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Environmental Science in 2007. And since then, she's appeared on MythBusters.

In 2012, students at St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, broke Gallivan's record, folding paper 13 times.

THEN: The Great Wall Of China is the only man-made structure visible from space

NOW: Many man-made places are visible from space.

Great, but not that great: the famous wall cannot be seen from space / REUTERS

Technically, this wasn't ever a solid "truth"  just a "fact" schoolchildren ubiquitously included in their class projects. In fact, rumours that you can see the landmark, not only from a spaceship, but all the way from the moon, date back as far as 1938.

In 2003 though, the first Chinese astronaut finally shattered the myth.

The party responsible, a man named Yang Liwei, admitted he couldn't see the Great Wall from space, according to NASA.

Other photos surfaced here and there. The consensus became that you can, indeed, catch glimpses of the Wall but only under the right conditions (snow on the structure) or with a zoom-capable camera. You can also see the lights of large cities  and major roadways and bridges and airports and dams and reservoirs.

The moon factoid, however, is totally wrong.

"The only thing you can see from the Moon is a beautiful sphere, mostly white, some blue and patches of yellow, and every once in a while some green vegetation," Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean told NASA. "No man-made object is visible at this scale."

To further clarify, people probably mean these structures are visible from satellites orbiting Earth  but that's not actual space.

THEN: Five (or three) kingdoms of classification exist.

NOW: There might be as many as eight kingdoms.

Depending when you grew up, your school science teacher probably described three main kingdoms of life  animals, plants, and bacteria (monera)  or five, including fungi and protists, too.

Either way, we've expanded our classification of life since then.

The more species we find and analyse, the more complex labeling life becomes. In addition to the five kingdoms above, we now know of archaea, previously thrown under monera. Archaea superficially look like other one-celled organisms called eubacteria, but they're completely different.

Even larger systems exist which further divide eubacteria into two more kingdoms or separate chromista from all the other protists.

In the United States, however, they stick with six: plants, animals, protists, fungi, archaebacteria, and eubacteria.
O ne of the joys of living in a global city is you can have the world literally on your plate. If you're one of those Londoners always on the hunt for new flavours, here are six cuisines currently taking the city by storm.

Comptoir Libanais

Eastern Mediterranean

Call it Lebanese, Levantine, Berber, Israeli, or Palestinian, what Yotam Ottolenghi started, others are now running with, showing off the variety of the eastern Med. Whether it's Berber-style Octopus Mashawsha at The Barbary, tagines and Manaesh at Comptoir Libanais, or Crispy, Sticky, Crunchy chicken at Bala Baya, a take on Tel Avivian street food, there's more to it than hummus and dips.

Dishoom

New Indian

We've known for a while that chicken tikka masala is more British than anything else. Which is why a whole swathe of new restaurants are showing off the full gamut of flavours from India, as you'd get them in India. From Mumbai-inspired Kichri at Kricket to Dishoom's Irani cafe-style black daal via a host of different naans at the LaLit, not to mention GunPowder, Tandoor Chop House, and Talli Joes, they all show theres yet more to explore.

House of Seitan

Dirty vegan

It might sound like a contradiction in terms but the city is waking up to the idea that choosing not to eat animal products doesn't automatically make you a clean-eating saint. Vegan food isn't all chickpeas and chia as House of Seitan's vegan fried chicken and the Club Mexicana's baja to-fish taco and jackfruit tinga masa pancake demonstrate.

Breddos Tacos

Mexican

There's been something of a taco takeover this year. Corazon and Breddos both specialise in the Mexican street food, and restaurants like Temper and Pachamama have added their take on the taco to their menus in response to our insatiable appetite. Wahaca serves three million tacos a year and is celebrating a decade so use their Taco Tuesday excuse to fill up on Pork Pibil.

Eat Poke

Poke

Rainbow-coloured Hawaiian-style fish salad was the Instagram darling last year, and our appetite for this bright bowl food hasn't abated. Track down Eat Pokes street food stand at Kerb, or call in at Honi Poke or Ahi Poke. For something higher end, try Black Roe, where chef Jordan Sclare fuses poke with Asian flavours in dishes like Black Roe Ahi and Yellowtail Poke, for a Pacific Rim twist.

Nape

New British

For all that's exotic to be had from abroad, there's plenty that's good close to home. Anglo and Perilla take a thoughtful approach to modern British cuisine, Plot in Tooting Broadway Market makes use of the best of British produce in its season, and Nape in Camberwell curates and celebrates the best of British charcuterie, showing that sometimes some of the best flavours are homegrown.

From one-off eateries to your favourite chain restaurans, Westfield has something for even the most discerning of diners. Visit uk.westfield.com for a full list of food and drink establishments
T he magic and grandeur that comes with the upcoming release of Disneys newest live-action movie, Beauty and the Beast, may have you longing for a taste of fairy tale France.

Belles town and the Beasts castle are fictional, but we've found the next best thing: the most picturesque places in France that will make you feel as if you are walking into a Disney film.

From the divine Dordogne to the luscious Loire Valley, here are six Beauty and the Beast-inspired travel destinations for your summer hitlist.

1. Beynac-et-Cazenac, Dordogne

Dordognes quaint charm and cobbled streets may as well be Belles fictional hometown. Wander the streets, browse the local shops and even peep inside the chateau that sits atop the village like a true Disney princess would.

2. Mont St Michel, Normandy

Although this structure looks like a castle rising from the sea, Mont St Michel is actually not a castle at all, but a medieval abbey. Although one might image the Beast dwelling in the tower, many say this landmark actually inspired the castle in Disneys Tangled.

3. Colmar, Alsace

This protected town near the German border is so well-preserved, it looks just like the pages of a storybook. Be sure not to miss the Schwendi Fountain, which looks just like the fountain where Belle reads to sheep!

4. Chateau de Chenonceau, Loire Valley

Built over the river Cher like a true Disney-esque castle, this chateau is one of the most photographed spots in Loire Valley.

5. La Cure, Beaujolais

CV Villas

This towering, stone structure overlooks the French countryside, putting guests into a 13th century fairy tale - exposed stone walls and all.

6. Le Chateau Aubens, Focalquier, Provence

CV Villas

The grand entrance and impressive interiors are fit for a queen. It's not surprising then that this villa was once a retreat for French royalty. The regal charm lives on through the open fires, olive grove and even a private chef.

Beauty And The Beast Clip - Belle

Read our review of Beauty and the Beast here.
A collector raided protected sites for the UKs rarest butterfly before killing the specimens and keeping them at his home, a court heard.

Phillip Cullen, 57, is accused of six offences relating to Large Blue (Maculinea arion) butterflies, which are endangered globally.

Bristol Magistrates Court heard he was seen climbing over a locked gate with a net at Collard Hill, near Street, Somerset, on June 18 2015.

Conservation volunteers watched Cullen chasing and swiping at a Large Blue butterfly with the net before leaving the site with white plastic bags hours later.

Cullen also allegedly clambered over a gate into Daneway Banks near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, on the same day.

The collector went to protected sites to capture specimens of the Large Blue butterfly / PA

He was approached by a volunteer after being seen with a net and claimed he was interested in parasitic wasps.

The court heard Large Blue butterflies were found at Cullen's home in Cadbury Heath, Bristol, on February 12 last year.

Prosecutor Kevin Withey told the court: "It is an offence to capture, kill or possess that butterfly because it is a protected species in the UK.

"The Large Blue became extinct in around 1979 and was reintroduced in the 1980s.

"It was reintroduced to two areas locally, the Collard Hill nature reserve and another location near Cirencester."

Mr Withey said witnesses saw Cullen with a small net and a video camera at both sites on June 18.

A warrant was executed at Cullen's home months later and officers found a large number of butterflies, including Large Blues, it is alleged.

"It is critical to the case that some of those butterflies were labelled by the defendant," Mr Withey said.

"One is labelled CH18 and one is labelled DB18."

Mr Withey said these referred to Collard Hill and Daneway Banks and the date the butterflies were captured, June 18.

In interviews, Cullen claimed the labels were in relation to the colours of the butterflies - cobalt hue and dark blue.

The court heard butterflies are never labelled in this manner.

Neil Hulme, of the Butterfly Conservation charity, was at Collard Hill on June 18 and saw Cullen and another man arrive at 1am.

He told the court he watched the two men climb over a locked gate with plastic bags appearing to contain glass jars and a net.

"I knew that to be carrying a net or to be catching anything would require a permit," Mr Hulme said.

"I saw him [Cullen] clearly chasing for a distance of 15 to 20 metres what I knew to be a Large Blue.

"I saw him take two swipes at it but I don't think they were successful."

Mr Hulme took photographs of the man and later reported his behaviour to superiors at Butterfly Conservation.

Phillip Cullen allegedly killed the butterflies and then kept at his home / PA

When asked about people who collect Large Blue butterflies, he replied: "It is probably really a small hardcore of people.

"It is not something which is widespread but people involved are usually quite determined in their efforts."

The court heard the net Cullen was holding was smaller than a typical butterfly net.

"It would be very easy to catch a Large Blue in a net like that without any damage," Mr Hulme said.

Mark Greaves, a volunteer for Butterfly Conservation, saw Cullen and another man at Daneway Banks on June 18.

He told the court the Large Blue is a native British butterfly of which numbers began to decline from the 1800s.

However, a reintroduction plan was started after the butterfly became extinct in the UK, using stock from Sweden.

Mr Greaves said there is a secondary market for Large Blue butterflies mocked up to look like "old Victorian species". These can fetch between 200 and 300 each.

The enthusiast approached Mr Cullen after spotting him with a net on the site.

"He said he was interested in parasitic wasps but he hadn't seen one," he said. "There are very few people who are interested in parasitic wasps."

After leaving the site, Mr Greaves saw Cullen and the other man in a nearby lay by, looking in their white plastic bags.

Cullen denies six charges, relating to two Large Blue butterflies.

Geoffrey Martin, of the Natural History Museum, said there were up to 30 trays of butterflies at Cullen's home.

The court heard that Cullen was linked to an eBay account with the username biker205.

In interview, Cullen admitted selling butterflies at auction, including those from Britain.

He said he bought butterflies from farms in Europe, set and pinned them in cases and then sold them at auction.

The Large Blue is the largest and rarest of blue butterflies and has a row of black spots on its upper forewing.

It spends most of the year within the nests of red ants, where the larvae feed on ant grubs.

The globally-endangered species has always been rare in Britain but became extinct in 1979.

In 2004, it occurred on nine sites in the country, following a major conservation programme.

Cullen told the court he had not caught or killed any Large Blue butterflies on June 18 but had done so "decades" earlier.

"I went out to catch butterflies and I am not sure when and where and that's the truth," he said.

He insisted he went to Collard Hill to film the Large Blue and to collect parasitic wasps, which he had been interested in for about four years.

Cullen said he and his friend, Andrew Carter, climbed into the site as it was the quickest way in.

He admitted taking a small net but said this was only on a "scrubby field" and not the main parts of the site.

When asked if he had used it to catch Large Blue butterflies, he replied: "Absolutely not".

Cullen told the court he had purchased the Large Blue butterflies found at his home from abroad.

"The majority came from France, they were bought," he said. "I bought them in a big case of butterflies."

He confirmed that CH referred to 'cobalt hue' and DB to 'dark blue', adding that 18 referred to the size of a butterfly's wingspan as it lands.

Additional reporting by the Press Association
A man who attacked a police officer and stole his car in east London has been jailed.

Tony Turner, 36, was approached by the officer after he was spotted near the scene of a BMW which had crashed into a hedge in Chigwell.

But after undergoing a breathalyser test he lashed out, headbutting the officer and punching him in the head several times.

Turner then jumped into his car, which had a police dog inside, and drove off.

Essex Police said the car was later found in Frinton Road, Romford, with the police dog inside unharmed.

The officer suffered minor injuries in the attack in October 2015 and received hospital treatment before being discharged.

Turner, who had no driving licence or insurance, was arrested three months later after trying to board a train to France.

He was jailed for two-and-a-half years and banned from driving for eight-and-a-half years at Chelmsford Crown Court on Friday.

T/Chief Superintendent Trevor Roe said: "Turner carried out a violent assault, head-butting a police officer who was carrying out his duties to keep the people of Essex safe.

"He got behind the wheel of a car without insurance or a licence and escaped by attacking a police officer and fleeing in his police car before attempting to leave the country and evade justice.

"We will not tolerate violence being used against our officers and Im sure people across the county are as pleased as I am that Turner has been handed a substantial prison sentence and a driving ban that stretches close to a decade.

Turner, from Dagenham, was given 18 months for assault and a 15 month sentence, to run concurrently, for aggravated vehicle taking. He was also sentenced to 12 months for furnishing false information to police to run consecutively.
T wo more people have been arrested following the murder of father-of-two Jonathan McPhillips in north London.

Mr McPhillips was seriously stabbed and collapsed outside cocktail bar Be At One on Islingtons Upper Street in the early hours of Saturday, February 25.

The 28-year-old was rushed to a hospital in east London but died three days later surrounded by his family.

He was described by his close friend as one of the most honest and genuine people you will ever meet.

Forensics: the scene in Upper Street

A 24-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of his murder on 4 March, but police today revealed two further people have been arrested in connection with the crime.

A 19-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder and a 45-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender. Both were being kept in custody.

Detectives are continuing to investigate the murder, as well as another stabbing which also happened on Upper Street on the same night.

After police were called at 12.40am to the attack on Mr McPhillips, officers discovered a 17-year-old boy had also been knifed.

He was taken to an east London hospital and has since been discharged.

Anyone who witnessed the incident or anyone who has any information is asked to call the incident room on 020 8345 3775, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
F our teenagers accused of planning to travel to Syria to join Islamic State will face trial in the summer.

Ahmedeltigani Alsyed, 19, along with two boys aged 17, and a 16-year-old, all from London, appeared before Mr Justice Holroyde at the Old Bailey.

The youths were charged last month with preparation of terrorist acts as they were allegedly poised to travel to Syria.

Alsyed, from Hounslow, and one of the 17-year-olds are also charged with collecting information contrary to section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 while the other 17-year-old is accused of dissemination of a terrorist publication.

According to the charge details, two of the youths went to the gym and paintballing as training for their plans while the other two allegedly bought flights and visas to Turkey and survival equipment.

They are all also accused of having extremist material and swapping messages online discussing how to get out to the war-torn country.

One of them allegedly had a video on his phone of battles, crusades and prisoners of Islamic State being executed.

Another is charged with having details about how to build a pressure cooker bomb.

Mr Justice Holroyde ordered the trial to be heard at Woolwich Crown Court from July 3 before Judge Christopher Kinch QC with a plea hearing on a date to be fixed in June.

He denied bail to Alsyed, who appeared before court by video link from prison.

However, the two 17-year-olds, of Middlesex and Merton, were granted bail with strict conditions, including not to use mobile phones or social media.

No application for bail was made on behalf of the 16-year-old defendant, of south west London, who was remanded in custody.

Additional reporting by the Press Association
A man who sexually assaulted paramedics while being taken to hospital has avoided jailed.

Richard Pascal, 53, repeatedly touched a female paramedic on the bottom while in an ambulance after being found too drunk to stand in Hackney.

London Ambulance Service was called to Tesco in Morning Lane to reports of man collapsed outside the store on Sunday, January 22.

Medics propped up Pascal, of Shaw Crescent, Lime House, before placing him in the back of an ambulance for further treatment at 6.10pm.

While lying on a stretcher he began tapping one of the paramedics, a 32-year-old woman, on the thigh.

He then moved his hand and touched her colleague, a 53-year-old woman, several times on the bottom, a court heard.

The paramedic staggered backwards and told him that his behaviour was inappropriate.

Following this, the two paramedics began driving Pascal to Homerton Hospital as he needed further treatment for an injury caused by a fall.

He then started using sexually explicit and threatening language towards both women, police say.

The paramedic sitting in the rear of the ambulance with the patient was so afraid that she moved into the front with her colleague.

Pascal then unfastened the restrains on the stretcher and confronted on of the woman, grabbing her wrists.

The LAS control was alerted as the paramedics feared for their safety.

They pulled over and police arrived. Officers escorted the ambulance to hospital.

Pascal was sentenced to a six week prison sentence suspended for 12 months at Thames Magistrates Court on March 9.

He was also given an alcohol abstinence requirement for two counts of sexual assault and using threatening and abusive words.

He also had to pay a total of 350 costs.

Detective Inspector Paul Ridley from Hackney CID said: The behaviour of Pascal was unforgivable and the language he used was abhorrent.

The fact that the paramedics continued to assist the male despite his repeated threats epitomises their dedication, professionalism and compassion.

Although Pascal claims he was drunk, that was no excuse. He will now be subject to seven years of sex offender notification requirements. Robust action will always be taken in cases of this nature.
A model and her mother have been jailed after the mother assumed the identity of a dead Kensington landlady to make more than 1 million in a property fraud.

Laylah Scarlett De Cruz, 31, who lives in Dubai, and Dianne Jean Moorcroft, 62, of Warley Road, Blackpool, were both found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy to commit fraud.

On Friday, De Cruz was jailed for five years and Moorcroft sentenced to three years in prison.

In 2014, the duo conspired with others to rent a four-bed property in Eagle Place, Kensington, using fake documents.

Fraud: The model in her police mugshot / Met Police

When the tenancy of the property had been secured, Moorcroft changed her name by deed poll to that of the genuine owner of the property, who was deceased.

She then travelled to Dubai where she opened bank accounts - using a new UK passport - in the dead woman's name, Scotland Yard said.

After that she made her way back to London where she successfully applied for a 1.2 million loan against the property.

Laylah De Cruz: The model has been jailed

The loan was approved in October 2014 and the funds transferred to Moorcroft's Dubai bank accounts, from where they were later withdrawn in cash.

Detectives launched an investigation later that month after the Land Registry reported suspicious activity around the Kensington property.

Prosecutor Teresa Hay said during the trial: The fraud was as simple as it was audacious. Dianne Moorcroft changed her name by deed poll in summer 2014 solely for the purpose of participating in this fraud.

She was encouraged and supported in the endeavour by her daughter Laylah De Cruz.

Moorcroft was arrested in February 2015 at her home and De Cruz was arrested as she entered the UK from Dubai in May last year.

The proceeds of the fraud have never been recovered.

The road in Kensington where the home is located / Nigel Howard

Detective Constable Richard Kirk, of the Met, said: "As these women conducted this devious fraud, it is clear that it didn't occur to them that official agencies would be able to see through their scheme and this was their undoing.

"Although the wider investigation to trace additional members of the network is ongoing, it is clear that De Cruz and Moorcroft played key roles in the execution of this crime.

"It is my hope that their incarceration today has seriously disrupted the activities of any additional members of the group."

De Cruz and Moorcroft both denied conspiracy to commit fraud.

However the jury at Southwark Crown Court convicted the model and her mother by a majority of 10-2 after a ten-day trial.

Alasdair Lewis, Director of Legal Services at HM Land Registry, said: "Property fraud causes a huge amount of distress to its victims and today's custodial sentences properly reflects the serious nature of the crimes.

"This case highlights the importance of taking steps to protect your property from fraud, particularly if it is tenanted or left empty."
A man has been charged in relation to a prison escape from Pentonville jail.

Scott O'Reilly, 48, of Shepherd's Lane, east London, has been charged with assisting an offender, the Metropolitan Police said.

He has been bailed to attend Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court on April 13.

Police launched a manhunt after Matthew Baker and James Whitlock escaped from HMP Pentonville on November 7 2016.

Three other people were arrested for assisting an offender and bailed.

They are a 33-year-old man who has been re-bailed to a date to be confirmed, a 24-year-old woman who is bailed to a date in mid-April, and a 19-year-old man who has been released from his bail and will face no further action.

According to reports, the escaped cellmates' beds had been stuffed with pillows to make them look as though they were sleeping.

The pair are said to have used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to cut through bars before scaling a perimeter wall to freedom.
T wo moped thieves snatched 18 mobile phones from pedestrians in one afternoon in London before leading police on a 90 mph chase which ended after officers closed the M11 motorway.

Zuriel Hutson, 21, and Sharuk Sheraji, 22, carried out a string of thefts using a high powered stolen moped on a Saturday in June last year.

In just a few hours they snatched 10 phones in Westminster, three in Camden, two in Islington, two in Hackney and one in Tower Hamlets.

The pair were caught after officers from the Met and City Polices Operation Attrition team, which targets moped snatches, raced to intercept them in unmarked cars with back up from a police helicopter.

Police chase: A moped is seen being driven the wrong way down a dual carriageway

The offenders were spotted due to their visibly dangerous riding through the streets. They stopped in Whitehall Street, Haringey.

Sheraji jumped off the moped and attempted to flee on foot, but was caught by the officers. He was found in possession of the 18 stolen phones and was arrested for attempted robbery.

Hutson evaded officers and drove off on the moped, fleeing north onto the North Circular and then onto the M11 where, reaching speeds of 90 mph, he wove in and out of traffic often on the wrong side of the carriageway.

Dodging traffic: aerial footage of the chase

Still pursued by the police helicopter his driving caused motorists to swerve out of his path, though several were involved in minor collisions.

Police were forced to close part of the motorway to prevent further danger to motorists but as Hutson approached the blockade he collided with two cars as he tried to squeeze between a gap in lanes.

The impact forced him to crash, knocking his shoes off his feet as he skidded and rolled along the motorway. He also narrowly avoided being struck by the car behind.

Danger: one of the riders crosses lanes on the M11

However, Hutson got back up, restarted his moped and continued along the hard shoulder, again against oncoming traffic.

Then police deployed a stinger tyre deflation device ahead of the moped which finally slowed him down and eventually forced him to stop on the slip road of the M11 to the M25.

He then attempted to flee on foot, but police soon caught up with him.

Crash: One of the riders was left sprawled on the motorway

The pair, both from Islington, are facing jail today after pleading guilty to various offences at Wood Green Crown Court at an earlier hearing.

Hutson admitted conspiracy to steal, dangerous driving and breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order. Sheraji pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order.

Facing jail: Zuriel Hutson, left, and Sharuk Sheraji

Detectives have identified 17 of the 18 owners of the stolen mobile phones so far, who have provided statements and had their phones returned to them.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Heatley said: The convictions should send out a strong message that such incidents will be dealt with robustly by the Met police and the courts.

Both defendants, Hutson in particular, could have caused serious injury to the victims, the public, other motorists, even themselves, in their callous execution of their crimes and attempts to evade justice. They had no regard for anyone but themselves.

These offenders rely on the unwariness of the public to snatch their phones whilst they make calls. People hold their private and personal information on their phones. So I urge everyone: Dont make it easy for them. Be aware of your surroundings and keep your phones secure at all times.
S ocial media companies are failing to contact police to report blatant offences of online child grooming, a senior Scotland Yard detective claimed today.

He said officers had encountered numerous cases where offenders and victims made little or no effort to disguise their ages.

In some cases girls as young as 10 were being targeted in an effort to get them to commit indecent acts online.

Detective Superintendent John Macdonald, of the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command, said police often saw chats between offenders and victims after seizing computers during investigations.

It is very clear from much of the chat that the offender is talking to a child, he added. The children dont always hide the fact they are young, they are often open about it, girls will say they are 14 or 15.

Conversely the offenders dont always hide the fact they are an adult. I would have thought it must be fairly easy for the social media companies to take more proactive measures to identify this and inform the police.

We need more assistance from social media companies because the victims rarely come forward. But we are not getting a great deal back from them.

He said it should be possible for companies to monitor conversations and put alert systems in place: I can see blatant examples of online grooming but I do not see any reporting of it coming through to me. The volume of these offences is of such a size we would be hoping social media companies would be contacting us more than they are.

Unfortunately the fact that most are based abroad doesnt help us and they clearly wish to protect the privacy of their own users as well. All the major online social media firms are thought to be involved, including WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook.

Mr Macdonald spoke out as the Met held a major conference in London to discuss how best to support victims of child sexual exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice.

New statistics show the number of crimes involving child sexual exploitation in the capital has jumped by almost 50 per cent in two years. Offences increased from 618 in 2014 to 922 last year, while the number of children believed to be at risk of sexual exploitation rose from 1,116 to 1,582.

Police believe more incidents are being reported and more offences are taking place. We know these figures are a drop in the ocean because it is so under-reported, Mr Macdonald said.

Some victims see the offender as their boyfriend and dont want to get them into trouble. Some are scared to report for fear of retribution, or cant face the thought of talking about it to anyone, or dont trust the police.

This week Taheeb Udusole, 27, was jailed for seven years for sexual activity with two girls, aged 14 and 15, who he met on social media.

The Nigerian, of no fixed address, claimed to be the wealthy 17-year-old son of an African king. Snaresbrook crown court heard he offered gifts and cash to his victims then sent taxis to collect them.

Mr Macdonald said some men were targeting multiple girls, complimenting them, asking for indecent images, then trying to persuade them to meet for sex. Most cases involved 14 or 15-year-olds but there were also attempts to get children as young as 10 to do indecent acts or supply indecent photos online, he added.
M ore than 1,000 patients, doctors and campaigners will tomorrow call on NHS chiefs to scrap plans to axe congenital heart surgery at the Royal Brompton Hospital.

A protest march down Kings Road in Chelsea will be waved off by former Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd, who is a heart patient at the Brompton.

It comes amid growing controversy at the proposals, which would affect an estimated 14,000 child and adult patients at the UKs biggest specialist heart and lung hospital.

NHS England bosses have admitted there is no robust clinical evidence for a key reason behind the reconfiguration  and they have no idea what will happen to patients with cystic fibrosis and severe asthma if the Bromptons paediatric respiratory services also have to close.

Baroness Boothroyd, 87, said: I have been a patient at Royal Brompton for many years and have had the most superb care and treatment.

Congenital heart surgery at the Royal Brompton Hospital (pictured in file photo) could be scrapped

She added: Why is so much money and energy being spent on a proposal to close the largest and best-resourced congenital heart disease team in the country? This reckless idea must be stopped.

The Brompton is among several hospitals under threat as NHS England seeks to implement new national standards, including the requirement for other paediatric services to be co-located. The Brompton relies on medics from the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to arrive within 30 minutes.

There is concern that linked services at the Brompton, such as its paediatric intensive care unit and world-leading research, would also be destroyed.

A cross-party group of 20 MPs this week called on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to halt the plans. The case for change  which is out to consultation until June 5  began to unravel when NHS England chiefs faced questions at public meetings this month.

Professor Huon Gray, national clinical director for heart disease, admitted there was no evidence that co-locating paediatric services would lead to better outcomes for patients.

His colleague Will Huxter, regional director of specialised commissioning, was asked what would happen to the UKs largest paediatric respiratory clinic. He said: We cannot at this stage say what the plan would be around re-provision, because that is not a piece of work we have done in detail.

NHS England declined to comment on the protest or the case for change but said it hoped people would continue to make their views known during the consultation.
T wo brothers have been criticised by a judge after blowing their entire inheritance on a hopeless bid to stop their stepmother getting an extra 25,000 from their fathers will.

Richard and Jonathan Powell had claimed their disabled father, David, did not understand what he was doing when he made his final will, granting his second wife 125,000.

They said an earlier document, from which stepmother Ailsa Williamson Powell would get 100,000, was his last true will, and forced the pensioner to go to court over it.

But after ruling in her favour, Judge Marc Dight has now said the brothers were unreasonable not to accept that their father and stepmother were a devoted couple.

Inheritance blow: Jonathan Powell / Paul Keogh

Ruling they should pick up the entire estimated 200,000 legal bill for the case  thereby wiping out their own inheritance  the judge blasted the sons for forcing her to go to court.

She should not have been put to the trouble and expense of proving this claim on the tenuous basis of challenge advanced by Richard and Jonathan Powell, he said. My conclusion is that their position has not been reasonable at any point in this litigation.

Second wife: Ailsa Williamson Powell had tried to settle out of court / Paul Keogh

Their stance has, it is apparent to me, been driven by personal issues and not by a reasonable inquiry into their fathers state of mind.

Central London County Court earlier heard that retired Kent farm manager Mr Powell died aged 84 in 2012 after a 20-year battle with Parkinsons disease. His death set his second wife of nine years and his sons from his first marriage  Wandsworth financial advisor Richard, 54, and US-based Jonathan, 55, against each other in court.

Mrs Williamson Powell, of Littlebourne, Kent, said a will made in 2009 in which she was left 125,000  equal to half of the remaining estate after gifts to others  was her husbands last true will. The brothers were bequeathed 62,500 each.

However, they claimed a will made 18 months earlier, in which she and they split the estate three ways, was the last valid one. The widows barrister, Mark Dencer, said the case had only come about because the avaricious brothers did not like her and hoped she would lack the stomach or means to fight. Having lost the case, the brothers argued that the costs should be paid out of their fathers estate. The court heard Mrs Williamson Powell had tried to settle outside court and found it inexplicable that it had actually gone to trial.
T he Government is to return powers to Tower Hamlets Council - two years after the removal of disgraced former mayor Lutfur Rahman.

Since Mr Rahman was removed from office in 2015, the council has been run by Government-appointed commissioners.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid announced he is "minded" to restore full powers to the authority, with commissioners leaving at the end of March.

Announcing the decision, Mr Javid said: "Two years ago, Tower Hamlets Council had completely lost the trust of its residents.

"It was mired in corruption and financial mismanagement that only direct intervention could resolve."

Mr Javid said he would "keep a close eye" on the borough, with elected mayor John Biggs reporting directly to him on progress every three months for the next year and a half.

The commissioners were appointed at the end of 2014 following a critical independent report into the council's award of grants and sale of properties under former mayor Lutfur Rahman

Mr Rahman was removed from office in April 2015 after being found guilty of electoral fraud after an Election Court trial.

The news also comes after independent councillor Shahed Ali was jailed for five months and disqualified from office in October due to housing fraud.

He was a close ally of Mr Rahman, having served in his Cabinet before the former Mayor was kicked out of office.

Mr Javid added: "Thanks to Sir Ken Knight and his team of commissioners working closely with the new Mayor, I am confident that Tower Hamlets Council is on the right track to provide the services their residents deserve and rightly expect."

Mr Biggs said: "Over the past 21 months the council has undergone a complete transformation. Under the previous mayor this was a council drowning in crisis, corruption and controversy.

"Since then we have brought in new leadership, opened up the decision-making process and challenged historic wrongdoing and bad practice.

"Tower Hamlets is an amazing place to live, our residents deserve a top performing council and services to match - that is my ambition.

"There are still massive challenges from the past we are working to repair."
T his was the dramatic scene after a car ploughed into a pole and flipped onto its roof in east London.

Four people inside the vehicle were injured after the car overturned and crashed into a roadside pole in Hackney on Thursday night.

Police and paramedics raced to the scene of the crash in Holmleigh Road, Stamford Hill.

Emergency services were called to the collision at about 11.52pm.

The Hatzola ambulance service treated four passengers at the scene.

Two of them were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

A Met Police spokesman told the Standard on Friday morning the car was recovered and the road cleared.
A woman in her 80s is fighting for a life after a double-decker bus and car crashed near a busy junction in north-west London.

Emergency services sped to the scene of the crash in Parson Street, Hendon, shortly after 4pm on Friday.

Firefighters rescued the woman and a man, also in his 80s, from the car before the woman was rushed to a central London hospital.

Dramatic images posted on social media show the rescue being carried out, with the silver car surrounded by firefighters as members of the public look on.

The woman sustained injuries that are thought to life threatening, while the man was unharmed, a police spokesman said.

A spokesman for the London Fire Brigade added: "We were called at 4.06pm to a car in collision with a double-decker bus.

"Two people were trapped in the car and had to be released by firefighters.

"They were take to hospial by the London Ambulance Service."

Road closures were put in place while an investigation was carried out and motorists warned to avoid the area.
H ome in less than fashionable suburbs of outer London have become the fastest-selling in the capital, research shows today.

Although areas that have seen rapid gentrification in the east of the capital were previously the hot locations, it is now the turn of boroughs such as Sutton and Havering.

An analysis by property website Zoopla shows that properties in Sutton are the quickest to go under offer after they are put on the market.

Experts said the study is further evidence of the strength of outer Londons property market in comparison to the prime central London market, which has stalled in recent years.

More people are now willing to move to previously unpopular areas because of their affordability and improving transport links, they added.

Sutton properties take an average of 28 days after being listed for sale to get an offer, the research suggests. Havering and Bexley were next at 29 days.

They are among the fastest places to sell property in Britain, with Northampton (27 days) top of the list.

All the prime inner London areas take longer than the national average of 47 days.

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Properties in the most expensive boroughs, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster, are slowest to go under offer in the capital, at 83 and 70 days respectively.

Wandsworth (56 days), Camden (58 days) and Hammersmith and Fulham (62 days) make up the bottom five.

Haringey, 10th on the list of fastest-selling boroughs, is the highest-placed in inner London.

The analysis was based on a sample of for-sale listings, published on Zoopla on or after January 1 last year, and how long it took for their status to change to under offer. Separate research has shown property prices in outer London rising by up to 20 per cent a year.

In central London, stamp duty rises and the vote to leave the EU are blamed for a freeze in the past two years. However, there are recent signs of recovery, with foreign investors taking advantage of the fall in the value of the pound.

Jonathan Hopper, managing director of the buying agents Garrington Property Finders, said: The past year has seen a real shift in momentum from central London to the suburbs.

Boroughs like Havering are enjoying a surge in interest. Regeneration and the prospect of better transport connections mean that areas like this can offer both good value and the potential for strong growth.

A spokesman for Zoopla said: We are seeing outer London continuing to grow and central London stalling.
T o the Roundhouse in Camden last night for its 10th anniversary charity gala. All eyes were on one man: Jeremy Clarkson. The petrolhead was stepping out for the first time in public with his new girlfriend Lisa Hogan. He was also returning to the stage where he ended his BBC career in 2015. What would he say tonight?

Clarkson has been seen with Hogan over the past few months  the pair visited Barbados  but this was their first public outing. A one-time researcher for John Cleese, she is the ex-wife of Baron Bonkers, Steven Bentinck. Her beau Jeremy divorced his wife Frances in 2015.

Clarkson got up on stage to auction off a lap of the racetrack on his show The Grand Tour, and recalled a meltdown at the gala two years before. In the media storm following his allegedly punching producer Oisin Tymon in the face, Clarkson called BBC management f***ing bastards at the Roundhouse.

I may have said some choice words about some of the BBC management and I was sacked, he said, but as a result of that Ive done really very well for myself. BBC director-general Tony Hall was in the audience, and Clarkson addressed him. I know the director- general is sitting over there shitting himself but dont worry, Tony, this is fine, he said, before pointing towards Halls table. You lose, he said, in Trumpian style.

The invective did not stop there. At Top Gear Clarkson had clashed with the Beebs then director of television Danny Cohen. At Amazon he is free of management, he said. I can provide the track, he boasted. You dont have to get any permission from Danny Cohen or anybody like that.

One hopes Lisa was impressed.

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AFP/Getty Images

Hats off to Labour MP Luciana Berger, who has had a baby. Last night Berger tweeted a picture of the newborn, a little girl, saying she was born on Monday and is called Amelie Moselle. Alistair & I are over the moon, she added, receiving kind words from well-wisher Hilary Benn, himself the son of a politician, the late Tony Benn. We look forward to seeing Amelie in the division lobby in due course, he tweeted.

French Macron has lamour for London

Photothek via Getty Images

Emmanuel Macron, the favourite to be French President, is known for his love of London, where he raised campaign finance before holding a rally in Westminster.

As one pundit cracked: He loves London so much, he wants to take it home  a knowing nod to Macrons desire to repatriate Londons Frenchies, and import as many City jobs as possible post-Brexit.

A TV profile last night also saw the social liberal candidate revealing two other loves: Harold Pinter (his favourite foreign playwright) and a uniquely British sweet, several of which he popped into his mouth during the filming. Yes, Macron really does enjoy a Fishermans Friend. At least thats one UK company that can likely look forward to a 0 per cent export tariff.

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Quote of the day: The first time I met him I felt like I had met a rather wayward cousin

Sandi Toksvig is excited to work with outlandish comedian Noel Fielding, her new co-host on Channel 4s Great British Bake Off

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A letter to the London Review of Books from Sarah Walker of Norwich notes some curious stats. In the five [recent LRB] issues, men have made up 78 per cent of the reviewers and used 83 per cent of the total word count dedicated to reviews; 78 per cent of the authors reviewed have been male, she writes. Maybe its simply the case that women are just that much less interesting.

When Professor Sarah Churchwell highlighted the letter on Twitter, books blogger John Self replied: London Review of Blokes.

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Warsi to storm Twitter

Getty Images

Sayeeda Warsi was known as the first female Muslim Cabinet minister. Then she was known as the minister who resigned on Twitter, over the Governments apathy over Gaza. Now Twitter is set for another surprise.

Warsi, now a Baroness, has a new book out at the end of March, The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain. But despite approaches made by newspapers to serialise the book, she has decided to release it herself on Twitter. She will send it out in chunks online, from this coming Monday.

Never the wallflower, Warsi, 45, will be talking about the reality of our Muslim communities and the British obsession with jihadism within. Expect the account from the Dewsbury-born Baroness to be punchy.

Despite the kind offer of serialisation I have chosen Twitter to introduce my story in my way, available to all, free of charge, anywhere in the world, Warsi tells us. Serialising this way will engage a more diverse audience and promote debate online as well as constructive conversations offline.

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(ullsteinbild via Getty Images) / ullstein bild via Getty Images

The Economist mag is famous for brainboxes but a cock-up this week listed editor Zanny Minton Beddoes on the Orwell Prize for Journalism longlist instead of journalist Edward Carr. Submitting for the prize, Carr filled in a form the wrong way, listing Zanny in the author box and himself merely a contact. As Economist articles are anonymous, the judges gave ZMB the credit and longlisted her. The Economists slogan praises intelligence, which presses forward. With minds like these...

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Tweet of the day: I wish my route to work and Michael Goves jogging route were not the same. Todays look: fluorescent green microshorts.

Tweeter @divaeharris explains the hazards of living near the fitness fanatic MP.

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Tatts what friends are for

Want some sauce with those wings? Chef Gizzi Erskine put her tattoo in the frame yesterday, posting an image of herself in a slinky gown from chic label Celine. When you go to your mates house to help her pack and end up trying on all her clothes and being very unhelpful, she wrote. What an angel.

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Kane hosts a Beauty and a Beast

Be. Our. Guest.

To Mount Street last night, where Christopher Kane welcomed guests including Laura Carmichael and Dan Stevens to his Mayfair store. Kane has designed an impressive collection of Beauty and the Beast-themed pieces, perfectly timed with the release of the new film.

Stevens plays Beast in the film and Carmichael, who appeared in Dowton Abbey with Stevens, showed her support at the bash.

Omen of the day: yesterday the Government launched planforbritain. gov.uk. Visitors were met with an error message. The Plan for Britain is broken, tweeted Sky News Mollie Goodfellow. Bodes well.

Follow The Londoner on Twitter and Facebook here.
S ayeeda Warsi was known as the first female Muslim Cabinet minister. Then she was known as the minister who resigned on Twitter, over the Governments apathy over Gaza. Now Twitter is set for another surprise.

Warsi, now a Baroness, has a new book out at the end of March, The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain. But despite approaches made by newspapers to serialise the book, she has decided to release it herself on Twitter. She will send it out in chunks online, from this coming Monday.

Never the wallflower, Warsi, 45, will be talking about the reality of our Muslim communities and the British obsession with jihadism within. Expect the account from the Dewsbury-born Baroness to be punchy.

Despite the kind offer of serialisation I have chosen Twitter to introduce my story in my way, available to all, free of charge, anywhere in the world, Warsi tells us. Serialising this way will engage a more diverse audience and promote debate online as well as constructive conversations offline.

For all of today's Diary click here.

Follow The Londoner on Twitter and Facebook here.
J eremy Corbyn was plunged into a fresh royal row today after failing to vote for a 369 million renovation of Buckingham Palace.

The Labour leader came under attack after most of his shadow cabinet and about 150 of his MPs backed a change to the Sovereign Grant Act 2011 to pay for the repairs to protect the Palace from fire or flood  but he did not.

Backbench MPs, who stressed they were instructed by the whips to vote for the extra funding, were stunned to discover that Mr Corbyn, and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, did not take part in the vote after Prime Ministers Question Time on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Labour leader said: He had other commitments.

However, Prime Minister Theresa May, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, Chancellor Philip Hammond and his Labour counterpart John McDonnell supported the legal change.

SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson led his party in voting against the expenditure, together with Labour MPs Dennis Skinner and Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Refurbishment vote: Buckingham Palace / @NPASLondon

Labour MP John Mann said he and other MPs got repeated text messages reminding us to vote after PMQs. Another Labour MP said: Its somewhat galling to see another vote  where we are whipped to vote in a certain direction  is not being followed by the leader of our party.

Another senior backbencher added: It seems Jeremy just cant shake off the habit of not following the whip.

James Cleverly, Tory MP for Braintree, claimed: This shows Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour cronies have no respect for British values.

Republican Mr Corbyn sparked controversy in 2015 for not singing the national anthem during a Battle of Britain service.

And Ms Abbott faced criticism from Labour MPs last month after missing a vote on triggering Brexit. Friends said she had developed a bad migraine.

The change to the Sovereign Grant Act 2011 was passed by 464 votes to 56 and means the Royal Household can receive 25 per cent of Crown Estate profits  up from 15 per cent.

The extra income, which could total 30 million annually, will fund a ten-year programme of Palace repairs.

Before the vote, a spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: Of course we arent in favour of letting historic buildings fall into rack and ruin, but there has to be something wrong with our priorities when the elderly are left without the support they need while 70 billion of tax cuts for the wealthy and big business are no trouble at all.
S enior Tory MPs in London today warned Education Secretary Justine Greening against a fresh raid on school budgets in the capital to appease a revolt by colleagues in the shires.

They spoke out after Conservatives representing rural Britain stepped up demands for proposed reforms to the funding formula to be changed to channel more cash into their schools  even though London is set to be hardest hit by the shake-up.

Mark Field, Tory MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, said: If the Government were to entirely reopen this without injecting more money then the risk is London would be the big loser.

Wimbledon MP Stephen Hammond added: London schools are already hurting. We will be fighting to ensure that the formula is fair to London as well as everywhere else.

The London Assemblys education panel also warned against returning to the dark days when the capitals schools were the worst performing in the country.

Many London schools receive more funding than those in other parts of the country due to deprivation levels.

But the panel pointed out that more than 70 per cent of London schools will lose money under the proposed National Funding Formula, which is out for consultation.

Education panel chair Jennette Arnold said: In 2006, London was the worst performing region at both secondary and primary level. Now, students in the capital are achieving the best GCSE results in the country.

Umbrella group London Councils says that the new National Funding Formula will cut 19 million from school budgets in the capital, and that together with rising costs identified by the National Audit Office, they will have to make savings of 360 million in its first year, 2018/19.

Ms Greening, the MP for Putney who went to a comprehensive in Rotherham, was warned by veteran Tory Geoffrey Clifton-Brown that she will struggle to get the reforms through Parliament unless more funds are diverted to shire schools.

A spokesman for Ms Greening said: Its a genuine consultation and that is why Justine extended it so everybodys views could be heard.
B rexit will do "terrible damage" to the UK's universities, Sir Vince Cable has warned.

The former business secretary told students at Glasgow University that their generation would be "blighted by the consequences of Brexit" which would put funding and schemes such as Erasmus at risk.

He was speaking at hustings for the post of rector of the university on Thursday evening.

He is among 10 nominees who include human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar and two controversial figures - right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulos and Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson, neither of whom attended.

Whoever is chosen as rector will take over from US whistleblower Edward Snowden who is coming to the end of his three-year tenure.

Sir Vince, an alumnus of the university, said that he would be a strong voice for students amidst the uncertainty of Brexit.

He said: "Brexit, if it happens, will do terrible damage to universities.

"Your generation are effectively going to be blighted by the consequences of Brexit. Universities are going to be damaged seriously by Brexit.

"In Scotland 15-20% of staff are from the EU and there are a substantial number of EU students. Now their future is uncertain."

He added: "I think the biggest challenge you will face is that the era of university expansion may be coming to an end. The Brexit phenomenon may send universities into a downward spiral.

"There will potentially be enormous financial pressure here. The role of the rector is that when the battle of resources comes, the interests of the students are at the fore.

"I see my job as standing up for the students in what will be a difficult environment for universities."

He also pledged that as rector he would address issues such as student mental health, gender equality and student space.

The election will be conducted electronically under the single transferable vote system on March 20 and 21.

The next rector will be announced on March 31 and the installation ceremony will take place at a later date..
B ritish spy agency GCHQ has hit back at claims it tapped Donald Trump's phones during the US presidential campaign.

In an unusual move for the organisation, which usually keeps silent on matters of intelligence, a GCHQ spokesman branded the allegations of wiretapping nonsense.

Mr Trump claimed his home in New York, Trump Tower, had been spied on with wire taps planted on behalf of former president Barack Obama in the run-up to the election.

Spokesman Mr Spicer pointed to comments made on Fox News by former judge Andrew Napolitano that former US leader Mr Obama used GCHQ to install the hacking technology.

But in a rare statement, a spokesman for the British agency said: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president elect are nonsense.

Donald Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer / REUTERS

He added: They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Mr Spicer quoted Mr Napolitano, who initially made the GCHQ allegations, saying: Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.

"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer lies to the media during press conference

GCHQ - the Government Communications Headquarters - works alongside MI5 and MI6 and focuses on defending the country against cyber threats. It usually refuses to respond on intelligence matters.

When US whistleblower Edward Snowden - a former NSA analyst - claimed the agency had the power to turn people's mobile phones off and on and switch on the handset microphone to listen to what is happening around them, GCHQ kept quiet.

In BBC Panorama interview two years ago, Snowden said that GCHQ allows agents to track a subject's movements with greater than usual accuracy.

A spokeswoman said at the time: "It is long-standing policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters."

GCHQ has become less secretive in recent years with recruitment adverts on pavements and the publication of a puzzle book.
B aggage handlers are being investigated after two were caught on camera carelessly throwing luggage as they unloaded a plane.

EasyJet passengers suitcases were tossed onto a truck with two crashing onto the concourse at London Luton Airport after the arrival of a flight from Copenhagen on Monday.

The firm which handles baggage for easyJet at Luton, Menzies Aviation, called it unacceptable and said an investigation was under way.

The incident was recorded on a phone by tattoo artist Jonas Ozolins, 30, from Sweden, who said the lack of respect for peoples possessions was terrible.

Careless: Suitcases were tossed onto the runway at Luton

Mr Ozolins told the Standard: Me and my brother were watching the plane parking next to the gate and the staff started to unload.

The two gents parked with the luggage vehicle and started unloading. The first bag was thrown at the back of the truck. My first thought was that he misjudged the throw and that it was an accident. Then the other bags kept flying. I got my phone and started recording to help the owners of the bags if something valuable got broken.

Throw: A suitcase is hurled onto a truck at Luton

He added: I travel a lot in my work, with expensive equipment that provides my living and I saw myself in the owners position. I got really upset by the unprofessional behaviour.

A spokesman for the company said: Menzies Aviation considers the safe conveyance of passengers luggage to be a matter of the highest importance. The behaviour displayed in this video is unacceptable.

Probe: the footage was filmed at London Luton Airport

We will take whatever action is necessary to ensure that such behaviour is stopped, and our professional standards are upheld properly in future.

London Luton Airport and easyJet said they were working with the handling company.

EasyJet added: We work closely with all of our airport partners to ensure our passengers bags are handled securely.
D onald Trump appeared to refuse to shake German Chancellor Angela Merkels hand during an awkward joint appearance at the White House.

During a photo call on Friday, photographers asked the two world leaders to shake hands, but the President appeared to ignore both their and Ms Merkel's requests.

Ms Merkel can be heard saying: "Do you want to have a handshake?"

President Trump either does not hear the request or ignores it, continuing to sit angled away from her, hunched forward with his legs apart and hands together.

Ms Merkel can be seen with a bemused expression on her face, clearly assuming she has been ignored.

President Trump previously slammed Merkel's immigration policies as well as criticising NATO and Germanys position within the EU.

Angela Merkel appeared unimpressed after the apparent snub / AP

Ms Merkel, meanwhile, has led criticism of the President's travel bans.

President Trump and the German Chancellor did shake hands as she arrived at the White House earlier in the day.

They met in the Oval Office where they were expected to talk about strengthening Nato, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraines conflict.
A former Power Rangers star has pleaded guilty to killing his roommate with a sword.

Ricardo Medina, 38, played the Red Wild Force Power Ranger in 2002 and starred in Power Rangers Samurai in 2011.

The Californian-born actor pleaded guilty on Thursday to stabbing his roommate to death, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced.

Medina, from Los Angeles, entered the plea to one felony count of voluntary manslaughter and admitted an allegation of using a sword in the killing.

The crime took place on January 31, 2015 when the defendant and victim Josh Sutter, 36, who lived together, got into an argument over Medina's girlfriend.

Ricardo Medina pleaded guilty to killing his flatmate / Getty Images

The argument turned physical and Medina fatally stabbed Sutter multiple times with a sword.

Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef with the Major Crimes Division said sentencing is scheduled for March 30 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court and Medina faces six years in state prison.

Power Rangers Samurai, which was on screens from 2011 to 2012, was his last listed acting job.

He has also appeared in an episode of ER and one of CSI: Miami.
A security sniffer dog which grounded flights at a major airport after escaping from its leash has been shot dead by police sparking outrage in New Zealand.

The 10-month old dog, called Grizz, could not be captured after it broke free and ran amok on the airfield causing hours of delays and 16 cancelled flights at Auckland airport.

Airport officials said the decision to shoot the dog on Friday was a last resort.

But the killing was met with outrage from animal lovers who asked why the trainee sniffer dog could not have been tranquilised instead.

Mike Richards, a spokesman for the New Zealand governments Aviation Security Service (Avsec) which was responsible for the animal, said Grizz was getting into a wagon in the airports public landside area when the dog decided to make its escape.

A gate connected to an airside security area had been opened to let a truck through and the dog decided to make its escape and run onto the airfield at about 4am.

A plane takes off from the runway at Auckland Airport in New Zealand / Getty Images

Mr Richards said a huge search was launched in pitch black conditions but when Grizz was finally found he would not let anyone near him and kept sprinting across the runway.

He said: We tried everything: food, toys, other dogs, but nothing would work.

Airport officials finally ordered police to shoot Grizz.

New Zealand animal rights organisation Safe told the New Zealand Herald that he was appalled by the dogs needless death.

A spokesman said: A tranquilliser gun should have been used after efforts to catch the dog failed. If such a gun was not available - which it should - then they could have borrowed one from Auckland Zoo or elsewhere.

The airports Facebook page was inundated with a deluge of comments from people angry at the decision to shoot the dog.

Tracy Edgar wrote: Seriously, Auckland Airport - you tried for 3 hours to detain the dog and couldn't, so you felt your ONLY option was to shoot and kill him? Really? Why the hell couldn't you have called in Auckland Zoo or a vet, and had them use a tranquilliser gun instead? Would it have really been that difficult? As an animal lover, I find your decision appalling.

Adam Morris, a passenger on one of the delayed flights, posted on twitter that he had been told the dog was still at large when his plane took off from Tauranga but that airport staff still hoped to catch it.

He later tweeted that the dogs death was terribly sad.

Grizz's fate also upset Hilary Barry, the hose of New Zealand's prime morning show, Breakfast.

She told viewers: "Do they not have a tranquiliser gun?

"I've just been on their website too looking at these gorgeous dogs."

Saying Grizz had just gone a bit "cray cray", she added: "So, it's only Auckland airport. Sixteen flights were delayed, so? So they shot it. They shot it dead.

"I don't care if your plane is delayed, they don't need to shoot the dog."

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A spokesman for the airport said: "We exhausted every option and could not catch it."

He added that there were no traquiliser guns at the airport and that the police did not have them either.
T wo people have been killed in the second deadly avalanche to hit a region of the Austrian alps in just days.

The avalanche hit in the countrys western region of Tyrol on Friday, police said.

Officers said five people had been in the off-piste area near St Anton when the avalanche struck.

Two people have been found dead but their gender and nationalities were not yet known, according to police.

It comes two days after four Swiss mountain climbers were swept away by an avalanche in the same province on Wednesday.

The avalanche engulfed a group of eight foreign tourists but four people managed to free themselves and seek help.

Three of the bodies were discovered quickly but rescuers searched for hours to find the fourth victim who was buried deep in the snow.

This page is being updated.
A woman who was drugged along with her boyfriend and then dragged from their California home has described the hell that we have survived as their attacker was jailed for 40 years.

Denise Huskins spoke out before her abductor was sentenced yesterday for a crime so elaborate and bizarre that police initially dismissed it as a hoax.

You treated me like an object, a toy, an animal, Ms Huskins told her kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard-trained lawyer who pleaded guilty in September.

She described the two days of physical and psychological torture she endured after Muller snatched her from her and her boyfriends San Francisco Bay Area home two years ago.

I still have nightmares every night, she said, fighting back tears. Sleep is not rest for me. It is a trigger.

Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who was bound and drugged during the kidnapping, said he cannot and will not ever be the same.

Huntington Beach police Crime Scene Investigator vehicle is seen at the family home of Denise Huskins. / REUTERS

US District Judge Troy Nunley in Sacramento called the abduction a heinous, atrocious, horrible crime as he sentenced Muller, 39.

He had faced up to life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

In court, Muller said he was sick with shame for the pain and horror he caused.

Matthew Muller, 39, who kidnapped Denise Huskins. / AP

Shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, he looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced.

Mr Quinns mother Marianne said a life sentence would have been better because they never would have to worry about him ever again, but again, hes going to be in jail for a long, long, long time.

Defence lawyer Thomas Johnson argued for a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment.

They want him to be a monster to get to 40 years. Fine. Marginalise mental illness, he told the judge.

Muller used a remote-controlled drone to spy on Ms Huskins and Mr Quinn before he broke into their Vallejo home, tied up the couple and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said.

They were blindfolded while Muller played a pre-recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.

He put Ms Huskins in the boot of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days before eventually releasing her in her home town of Huntington Beach.

He claimed in emails to a San Francisco reporter that Ms Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals who were practising their kidnapping tactics.

After her release, Vallejo police called the kidnapping a hoax and erroneously likened it to the book and film Gone Girl, in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested in an attempted robbery at another Bay Area home.

They found a mobile phone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Mr Quinn, linking the disgraced lawyer to the abductin.

Vallejo police have since apologised. Ms Huskins is suing the city and two police officers, accusing them of defamation and inflicting emotional distress.

Muller, a former Marine, lost his law licence in 2015 in an unrelated incident.


A clothing shop owned by Kim Kardashian and her sisters Khloe and Kourtney was vandalised in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The outside of West Hollywood boutique, DASH, was covered in red spray paint by vandals, TMZ reported.

Pictures obtained by the US gossip site show cleaners scrubbing off the graffiti shortly after it was discovered.

It is not the first time the shop has been targeted.

In June last year, a man threw a dumbbell and a lit piece of rag through the window after closing. Several f the family's other shops have also had windows smashed.

Kim Kardashian - In pictures 1 /96 Kim Kardashian - In pictures AFP via Getty Images Just married Kim Kardashian and Kanye West 'Just Married' wedding image in 2014 E! Going for gold Kim Kardashian Ultra Beam 2017 Shoot Kim Kardashian Family Robert Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Khloe Kardashian arrive at the KIIS-FM's 2008 Wango Tango concert held at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on 10 May 2008 in Irvine, California Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Emotional on E! Kim Kardashian cries on E! in 2012 asking herself if she should end her marriage with Kris Humphries E! Bikini selfie Kim Kardashian posts a picture of her posing in a selfie wearing a white bikini in 2013 Kim Kardashian Breaking the Internet Kim Kardashian breaks the Internet with the front cover of Paper Magazine in 2014 Paper Magazine 2006 Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian arrive at the International Launch of Dom Perignon Rose Vintage 1996 Champagne by Karl Lagerfeld on 2 June 2006 in Beverly Hills, California Getty Images 2007 Kim Kardashian blows out her birthday cake candles at her birthday party at Les Deux on 21 October 2007 in Los Angeles, California Noel Vasquez/Getty Images 2007 Kim Kardashian walks the runway at the Christian Audigier Fall 2007 fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week held at Smashbox Studios on 21 March 2007 in Culver City, California Mark Mainz/Getty Images 2008 Television personalities Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, and Kris Jenner attend the season two launch of 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' at Les Deux on 19 March 2008 in Hollywood, California Charley Gallay/Getty Images 2008 elevision personality Kim Kardashian arrives at the 7th Annual "Los Premios MTV Latin America 2008" Awards held at the Auditorio Telmex on 16 October 2008 in Guadalajara, Mexico Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images 2009 TV personality Kim Kardashian arrives at the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Nokia Theatre on 20 September 2009 in Los Angeles Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images 2009 Kim Kardashian arrives at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards held at the Staples Center on 8 February 2009 in Los Angeles, California Frazer Harrison/Getty Image 2010 TV Personalities Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian and Kim Kardashian make an appearance at Borders Century City to sign copes of their book "Kardashian Konfidential" on 2 December 2010 in Los Angeles Frazer Harrison/Getty Images 2010 Kim Kardashian attends Heidi Klum's 2010 Halloween Party at Lavo on 31 October 2010 in New York Getty Images 2010 Gabrielle Union, Kim Kardashian, Ciara and Kelly Rowland attend Tracy Reese Spring 2010 fashion show at the Salon at Bryant Park on 14 September 2009 in New York Bryan Bedder/Getty Images 2010 Kim Kardashian visits the Oktoberfest on 22 September 2010 in Munich, Germany. Florian Seefried/Getty Images 2010 Kim Kardashian on a visit to London on 12 September 2010 Chris Jackson/Getty Images 2010 Kim Kardashian arrives at the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on 29 August 2010 Frazer Harrison/Getty Images 2010 Reality television star Kim Kardashian poses next to her wax figure on 1 July 2010 at Madame Tussauds, New York Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images 2010 Kardashian and Justin Bieber attend the TIME/CNN/People/Fortune 2010 White House Correspondents' dinner pre-party at Hilton Washington Hotel on 1 May 2010 Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2010 Kim Kardashian walks the runway at the Heart Truth Fall 2010 Fashion Show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at The Tent at Bryant Park on 11 February 2010 in New York Jemal Countess/Getty Images 2011 Kim Kardashian arrives at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE on 28 August 2011 in Los Angeles, California Jason Merritt/Getty Images 2011 Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian attend the Kardashian Kollection Launch Party at The Colony on 17 August 2011 in Hollywood, California Jason Merritt/Getty Images 2011 Kourtney Kardashian (3rd from L), Khloe Kardashian and Kim Kardashian pose with models backstage at the Beach Bunny Swimwear 2011 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim at the Raleigh on 16 July 2010 in Miami Beach, Florida Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images 2011 Kim Kardashian poses during her fragrance launch at Debenhams, London on 8 June 2011 Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images 2011 Musician Elton John and TV Personality Kim Kardashian attend the 19th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party at the Pacific Design Center on 27 February 2011 in West Hollywood, California Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2011 Producer Sean 'Diddy' Combs and TV personality Kim Kardashian arrive at The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on 13 February 2011 Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2011 TV personality Kim Kardashian arrives at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at The Shrine Auditorium on 30 January 2011 in Los Angeles Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images 2011 TV personality Kim Kardashian arrives at the 16th annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards at the Hollywood Palladium on 14 January 2011 in Los Angeles Christopher Polk/Getty Images 2012 Kim Kardashian attends 2nd Annual Midori Green Halloween Party at Avenue on 27 October 2012 in New York Getty Images 2012 Kim Kardashian and Kanye West leave the Valentino Haute-Couture Show as part of Paris Fashion Week Fall / Winter 2012/2013 at Hotel Salomon de Rothschild on 4 July 2012 in Paris, France Julien M. Hekimian/Getty Images Kanye West and Kim Kardashian arrive for the screening of "Cruel Summer" at the 65th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France on 23 May 2012 Francois Mori/AP 2013 Kim Kardashian arrives at The Hollywood Reporter's 22nd Annual Women In Entertainment Breakfast at Beverly Hills Hotel on 11 December 2013 in California Jason Merritt/Getty Images 2013 Kim Kardashian and Kanye West attend the Costume Institute Benefit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on 6 May 2013, celebrating the opening of Punk: Chaos to Couture Timothy A.Clary/AFP/Getty Images 2013 im Kardashian surrounded by Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputies leaves the Stanley Mosk Courthouse after attending her divorce hearing from Kris Humphries on 12 April 2013 Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images 2013 Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian attend the 21st Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party at West Hollywood Park on 24 February 2013 Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images 2013 Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian and Kelly Osbourne and actress/singer Miley Cyrus attend the 21st Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party at West Hollywood Park on 24 February 2013 in California Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images 2014 Rihanna and Kim Kardashian attend The Inaugural Diamond Ball presented by Rihanna and The Clara Lionel Foundation at The Vineyard in Beverly Hills, California on 11 December 2014 Getty Images 2014 Kim Kardashian arrives to promote her new fragrance "Fleur Fatale" at a Spice Market event on 18 November 2014 in Melbourne, Australia Scott Barbour/Getty Images 2014 Kim Karadashian set pulses racing with her cover for British GQ Magazine GQ Magazine 2014 Lewis Hamilton, Nicole Scherzinger, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West attend the GQ Men Of The Year awards at The Royal Opera House on 2 September 2014 2014 Kim Kardashian and Kanye West kissing at their wedding in Florence, Italy E! News 2014 Kanye West and Kim Kardashian attend attend the "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5 May 2014 in New York Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images 2015 TV personality Kim Kardashian arrives at the LACMA Art + Film Gala in Los Angeles, California, on 7 November 2015. Reuters 2015 Kanye West (L) and Kim Kardashian attend the 'China: Through The Looking Glass' Costume Institute Benefit Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 4 May 2015 in New York Mike Coppola/Getty 2015 Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Kris Jenner attend the Balmain show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2015/2016 on 5 March 2015 in Paris, France Getty Images 2015 Alia Wang, Aimie Wang, Kim Kardashian, North West, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj attend the Alexander Wang Fashion Show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2015 at Pier 94 on 14 February 2015 in New York Craig Barritt/Getty Images 2015 Kim Kardashian, North West and Kanye West attend the Alexander Wang Fashion Show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2015 at Pier 94 on 14 February 2015 in New York Craig Barritt/Getty Images 2015 Kim Kardashian attends The 57th Annual GRAMMY Awards at the Staples Center on 8 February 2015 in Los Angeles Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2016 Kim Kardashian attends the Givenchy show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Spring/Summer 2017 on 2 October 2016 in Paris Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images 2016 Fashion model Kim Kardashian West is seen on day five Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2017 on 1 October 2016 in Paris, France Rex Features 2016 Kim Kardashian attends the Balmain show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Spring/Summer 2017 on 29 September 2016 in Paris, France Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images 2016 Kim Kardashian at the Balmain show after party during Paris Fashion Week on 28 September 2016 Rex 2016 Kim Kardashian West attends the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden on 28 August 2016 in New York Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images 2016 Television personality Kim Kardashian attends "Famous by Kanye West", a private exhibition event at Blum & Poe art gallery in Los Angeles, California on 26 August 2016. Rachel Murray/Getty Images 2016 Madame Tussauds staged a waxworks party in honour of the Queens 90th birthday attended by stars chosen by the public, with a selfie-taking Kim Kardashian, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adele, Barack Obama and David Beckham among the guests in attendance. Alex Lentati 2016 Kim Kardashian West arrives for the Gala to celebrate the Vogue 100 Festival at Kensington Gardens on 23 May 2016 Jeff Spicer/Getty Images 2016 Kim Kardashian West attends the "Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology" Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on 2 May 2016 in New York Larry Busacca/Getty Images 2016 Kim Kardashian posted a topless selfie with Emily Ratajkowski weeks after her nude selfie Kim Kardashian 2016 Kim Kardashian attempts to break the Internet again posting a naked selfie on 07 March 2016 Kim Kardashian 2017 Kim Kardashian attends Harper's BAZAAR Celebration of "ICONS By Carine Roitfeld" at The Plaza Hotel Getty Images 2017 Kim Kardashian is seen at 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' in Los Angeles, California Splash News 2017 Kim Kardashian Ultra Beam 2017 Shoot Kim Kardashian 2018 Calvin Klein campaign led by Kim Kardashian West, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner Calvin Klein 2018 Kim Kardashian posing topless on her social media channel Kim Kardashian 2018 Kim Kardashian with pink hair in Tokyo Rex Features 2020 Kim Kardashian's 40th Birthday Kim Kardashian Kim Kardashian's 40th Birthday Kim Kardashian Kim Kardashian's 40th Birthday Kim Kardashian 2020 Kim Kardashian announced her family's iconic reality show is over after 14 years on air E!

The latest attack came a day after Kardashians half-sister Kendall Jenner reportedly had jewellery stolen from her home.

The model and reality TV star held a party with friends at her Hollywood on Wednesday night, and discovered items were missing from her jewellery box just after 1am, TMZ reported.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told the Press Association that a call was placed at 1.15am from a house in Marmont Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, the exclusive road on which Jenner reportedly lives.

They said police officers responded to a call, although they could not confirm if it was placed by the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, or if it came from her house.

Officers were unable to locate a suspect, and no description for a suspect was given.

The incident comes months after Kardashian was bound, gagged and robbed of a reported 8 million worth of jewellery by a group of men in October last year.
U S model Kendall Jenner contacted the police after jewellery was stolen from her home, according to reports.

TMZ reported that the incident happened in the early hours of Thursday morning after the 21-year-old allegedly discovered items had gone missing.

Jenner reportedly held a party with friends at her Hollywood on Wednesday night, and it was only just after 1am that she is said to have discovered the items were missing from her jewellery box.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told the Press Association that a call was placed at 1.15am from a house in Marmont Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, the exclusive road on which Jenner reportedly lives.

Target: Kendall Jenner on the catwalk in New York / Neilson Barnard/Getty

They said police officers responded to a call, although they could not confirm if it was placed by the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, or if it came from her house.

Officers were unable to locate a suspect, and no description for a suspect was given.

Versace AW17 at Milan Fashion Week 1 /36 Versace AW17 at Milan Fashion Week Versace at MFW Gigi hadid walks the AW17 finale AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Gigi Hadid walks the AW17 runway Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway Getty Images Versace at MFW Bella Hadid backstage Getty Images Versace at MFW Kendall Jenner backstage Getty Images Versace at MFW Gigi hadid backstage Getty Images Versace at MFW Bella Hadid walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Kendall Jenner walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Catherine McNeil walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Lineisy Montero walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway Getty Images Versace at MFW Models walk the AW17 runway Getty Images Versace at MFW Gigi Hadid walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Natasha Poly walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Binx Walton walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway Getty Images Versace at MFW Bella Hadid walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Kendall Jenner walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW A model walks the AW17 runway AFP/Getty Images Versace at MFW Donatella Versace greets her runway audience AFP/Getty Images

A spokesperson for the LAPD said the value of the belongings alleged to have gone missing could not be verified.

Jenner has not given a statement, and she has not posted on social media since the reported theft took place.

The incident comes months after Jenners half-sister Kim Kardashian was bound, gagged and robbed of a reported 8 million worth of jewellery by a group of men in October last year.

The mother-of-two spoke about the terrifying ordeal on the new season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in which she said she feared for her life.

Standard Online has contacted a representative for Jenner.

KUWTK - season 13 - trailer

Additional reporting by PA.
A search at the Kimball High School on Wednesday located some quantities of drugs and weapons.

Kimball Police Chief Andrew Bremer did not provide information about specific quantities of drugs or weapons located, but did say that officers with the department and the Nebraska State Patrol did conduct a search of vehicles and some lockers at the school Wednesday. Some citations were issued to students, though he declined to release details about the number of students cited.

Bremer said that the search was a routine search done at the high school.

We are just trying to keep the schools safe, he said. Trying to keep drugs and weapons out of the schools.

Prior to the search, Bremer said that officers conducted a drug interdiction class with teachers, providing them with information about how to spot possible drug use and other offenses.

Most people are supportive of the routine searches, he said, and its part of an effort to be visible at the school, including routine visits for lunch and other activities.
Omaha is the starting point for a rolling childrens museum that will truck back and forth across Nebraska this year in celebration of the states 150th anniversary of statehood.

The 26-week, 42-community tour of the Truckin Through Nebraska museum begins April 7-9 at the Omaha Childrens Museum.

Nebraska first lady Susanne Shore said its appropriate that the tour begin in Omaha.

We could not have accomplished this enormous undertaking without the support and guidance of the Omaha Childrens Museum, she said. We are incredibly grateful for their partnership and the expertise they brought to the project.

The Mobile Childrens Museum is Nebraska 150 Celebrations largest project.

The museum is contained in a 53-foot, state-of-the-art, custom air-ride, double-expandable trailer that is specially designed and outfitted for traveling exhibits. The unit is climate-controlled; has GPS tracking, Wi-Fi and its own generator; and is fully accessible to people with disabilities.

Interior exhibits will include areas where kids will build shelters and test them in a wind chamber or earthquake simulator, design their own 10-acre homestead, test their knowledge of Nebraska, create a movie, explore toys from the past and craft their own postcards.

Exhibits will also surround the exterior of the trailer, allowing for optimal play and learning space, organizers said. These exhibits will include a timed chore challenge obstacle course, foam block invention area and toy creation station.

Shore said sesquicentennial celebration planners created the mobile museum to provide a fun, hands-on learning experience for children who may not normally be able to easily access a childrens museum. Children will explore their heritage and envision their futures through play, interactivity and the latest technology, she said.

We hope the experience will help power the imagination and create an excitement about learning, Shore said.

The mobile museum will officially launch at 5 p.m., April 7 at the Omaha Childrens Museum.

Regan Anson, executive director of Nebraska 150 Celebration, thanked all of the communities for hosting the museum.

A project of this magnitude requires a huge commitment on the part of the communities we will visit, including extensive volunteer support, she said.

The mobile museum is sponsored in part by Childrens Hospital, First National Bank, Peter Kiewit Foundation, BNSF, Associated General Contractors of America  Nebraska Chapter, AGC Nebraska Building Chapter, TransCanada and Nebraska Educational Savings Trust.

Exhibits in the museum are intended for children ages 5-12, but audiences of all ages are welcome. Admittance is free and open to the public.

TOUR

SCHEDULE

BY TOWN

Here is an alphabetical list of Panhandle tour stops by the Mobile Childrens Museum. Hours of operation will vary by location. Visit www.ne150.org/museum/ for additional details prior to the museums visit to each community or contact the local chamber of commerce.

Alliance

May 23-24

Chadron

May 19-20

Chappell

June 4-5

Gordon

May 14-15

Kimball

June 1-2

Scottsbluff

May 26-28
The West Nebraska Family Research and History Center has rescheduled the Brian Croft, Professor of History and English, WNCC forum on 150th birthday of Nebraska, on March 18. It will be now held on March 25 at 1:30 p.m., at the West Nebraska Family Research and History Center, 1602 Ave. A.

Croft will present a program on the background of Nebraskas statehood, from its territorial controversies and in-house politics to the Federal demand for a revision of its proposed state Constitution. There will also be a number of 1867-era maps and pieces of ephemera on display for study and discussion.

For more information contact the center at 308-635-2400.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., will hold a town hall Friday morning from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. at Elkhorn South High School.

Lawmakers across the country, particularly Republicans, have been facing intense crowds at their town halls as President Donald Trump begins implementing his agenda.

Constituents with questions on everything from health care to Trumps ties to Russia have been packing auditoriums to share a piece of their mind.

Sasses choice of timing quickly drew criticism on social media, with questions about hosting a town hall so early on a weekday  and with less than 24 hours' public notice.

Sasse spokesman James Wegmann noted that the senator has a full schedule Friday that also includes visiting students at Waverly High School, a talk with the Lincoln South Rotary Club and another town hall in Aurora at 3 p.m.

He plans to end the day with a fish fry in Grand Island and the St. Patricks Day festival in ONeill.
Aneta Thompson, 94, of Faulkton and formerly of Gering, NE, passed away Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at the Faulkton Area Medical Center.

Funeral service will be 1:00 p.m., Monday, March 20, 2017 at the United Church of Faulkton. Visitation will begin one hour prior to the service at the church. Burial will be 1:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at Westlawn Cemetery in Gering, Nebraska.

She was born to Clair and Hazel (Farrell) Shafer on March 20, 1922 in Wallace, Nebraska. After graduating from high school in Elsie, Nebraska, Aneta attended nursing school in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and Denver, Colorado. After graduating from nursing training, she met and married O. Wayne Thompson on Oct. 30, 1943. They lived and worked in Gering for 55 years before moving to Faulkton.

Throughout her life, Aneta worked as a private practice nurse for Dr. Harvey in Gering, NE. She also was a school nurse, a private care nurse, and a church camp nurse.

Aneta was very active in her church in many capacities. She was a wonderful cook and always shared her baked goods with church friends and amongst her many other friends and family.

She is survived by a son, Tim (Carol) Thompson of Ft. Collins, CO; a daughter, Susan (Ron) Bowar of Faulkton, SD; and grandchildren, Wendy Thompson, Adam (Jennifer) Thompson, Erin Bowar, Shannon (Brandon) Schuler, and Breann Bowar.

She was preceded in death by her husband, O. Wayne Thompson.

Luce Funeral Home of Faulkton has been entrusted with Anetas arrangements. Visit www.familyfuneralhome.net.
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 17 March 2017

Discontinuation of education decreased

In all, 5.1 per cent of students attending education leading to a qualification or degree discontinued their studies and did not resume them in any education leading to a qualification or degree during the 2014/2015 academic year. Compared to the year before, discontinuation decreased in upper secondary general, university of applied sciences and university education and remained unchanged in vocational education. These data derive from Statistics Finlands Education Statistics.

Discontinuation of education in upper secondary general, vocational, university of applied sciences and university education in academic years from 2005/2006 to 2014/2015, %

The percentages of discontinuation were 3.1 per cent in upper secondary general education aimed at young people, 7.6 per cent in vocational education aimed at young people, 7.6 per cent in university of applied sciences education (university of applied sciences degrees), and 6.2 per cent in university education (lower and higher university degrees) in the academic year 2014/2015.

Men discontinued their university of applied sciences education most commonly and women their vocational education

If students who have changed their sectors of education, e.g. students who have switched from upper secondary general school to vocational education, are not calculated as discontinued students, the percentages of discontinuation are lower. Students in upper secondary general education and in university of applied sciences education changed their sector of education most frequently. Women changed their sector of education slightly more often than men.

Men discontinued completely their education leading to a qualification or degree in the academic year 2014/2015 more often than women in all sectors of education. Men discontinued their university of applied sciences education most commonly and women their vocational education. Women discontinued their studies in their own sectors of education more often than men only in vocational education.

Discontinuation of education leading to a qualification or degree by sex and sector of education in academic year 2014/2015 1)

Sex / sector of education Number of students used in the statistics on discontinuation of education

20 Sept. 2014 Discontinued in own sector of education Changed sector of education Discontinued completely education leading to a qualification or degree % % % Total 476 465 6,3 1,2 5,1 Men and women Upper secondary general education (aimed at young people) 95 322 3,1 1,7 1,4 Vocational education (aimed at young people) 123 590 7,6 0,8 6,8 University of applied sciences education (university of applied sciences degrees) 127 736 7,6 1,7 6,0 University education (Bachelors and Masters degrees) 129 817 6,2 0,8 5,3 Men Total 225 702 7,1 1,1 6,0 Upper secondary general education (aimed at young people) 40 775 3,3 1,7 1,7 Vocational education (aimed at young people) 67 079 7,6 0,6 7,0 University of applied sciences education (university of applied sciences degrees) 59 994 9,3 1,8 7,5 University education (Bachelors and Masters degrees) 57 854 7,0 0,8 6,1 Women Total 250 763 5,6 1,3 4,3 Upper secondary general education (aimed at young people) 54 547 2,9 1,6 1,3 Vocational education (aimed at young people) 56 511 7,7 1,1 6,5 University of applied sciences education (university of applied sciences degrees) 67 742 6,2 1,6 4,6 University education (Bachelors and Masters degrees) 71 963 5,5 0,9 4,7

1) Numbers of students used in calculating discontinuation differ from total numbers of students, because part of students had to be removed from the data. The data do not include the Rovala Institute, the Pohjois-Savo Institute, the Lybecker Institute, the Police University College, the National Defence University or the Tampere University of Technology, because discontinuation of studies could not be calculated due to insufficient monitoring data.

Education was discontinued most often in the fields of natural sciences, tourism, catering and domestic services, and natural resources and the environment. There were least discontinuations in general comprehensive education or upper secondary general education and in the field of health, welfare and sports.

Of students aged 18 or over who discontinued upper secondary general school education, 43 per cent continued studies leading to a qualification or degree in some other sector of education, and 15 per cent started working. The corresponding figures were 10 and 24 per cent in vocational education, 22 and 51 per cent in university of applied sciences education, and 14 and 56 per cent in university education. The employment data are based on Statistics Finland's employment statistics.

The database tables of these statistics contain information on discontinuation of studies by sector of education in different fields and levels of education, and regions.

Other statistics also indicate that studying was more interesting than before. Degrees were completed faster in 2015 and the employment of students decreased (Progress of studies and Employment of students).

In 2015, in all 686 students discontinued apprenticeship training during the four-month probationary period, which is 1.4 per cent of all students in apprenticeship training. In all, 3,314 students discontinued apprenticeship training after the probationary period, which is 6.7 per cent of all students in apprenticeship training. The total number of students in apprenticeship training was 49,102 in 2015.

A total of 409 students had discontinued studies in one way or another in comprehensive school during the 2015/2016 academic year. The number of those who had completely dropped out from compulsory education in the spring term was 94 and those over the age of compulsory education having left school without a leaving certificate from comprehensive school was 315. More than one-half of school drop-outs were boys. The number of boys among those who had completely dropped out from compulsory education was 53, and 185 among those having left comprehensive school without a leaving certificate.

The statistics describe the discontinuation of post-comprehensive school education leading to a qualification. Data concerning discontinuation in the academic year 2014/2015 have been obtained by examining the situation of students in September 2015 having attended education in September 2014. If a person has not continued education or obtained a qualification during this period, he/she is counted as having discontinued education. In order to calculate the discontinuation, students have been followed in a certain logical order where completion of a qualification is always prioritised above studying. The calculation of discontinuation is described in more detail in the quality description (only in Finnish).

Source: Education. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Heli Hiltunen 029 551 3314, koulutustilastot@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

Publication in pdf-format (230.3 kB)

Updated 17.3.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Discontinuation of education [e-publication].

ISSN=1798-9302. 2015. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 7.11.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/kkesk/2015/kkesk_2015_2017-03-17_tie_001_en.html
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 17 March 2017

Qualifications were completed faster

According to Statistics Finlands education statistics, completion of university education accelerated. In all, 56 per cent of the students having started university education completed their studies in five-and-a-half years, 33 per cent completed lower university level degrees and 23 per cent higher university degrees. The pass rates of university of applied sciences and upper secondary vocational education also improved in 2015.

Pass rates by sector of education in 2015 and 2014 1)

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 Upper secondary general education

aimed at young people 3,5 80,5 80,6 -0,1 Vocational education aimed

at young people 3,5 67,7 66,3 1,4 University of applied sciences education (youth education) 4,5 47,3 44,5 2,8 University education (lower and higher university degrees) 5,5 56,0 52,5 3,5

1) The pass rate tells how many per cent of those that started the education have completed the qualification within the examined study time.

Pass rates for university education in different reference periods by the end of 2015 (lower and higher university degrees)

The pass rate of education grows, the longer time has passed from the start of education. The older the cohort of new students is examined, the higher the pass rate became. Seventy per cent of students completed a higher or lower university degree in seven-and-a-half years and, as many as 78 per cent of those having studied for 12.5 years have passed a university degree.

Pass rates of lower university degrees for young people in 2015 and 2014 by sex for those having studied for 3.5 to 4.5 years

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Gender Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 University education (lower university degrees) 3,5 Men 10,9 9,6 1,3 Women 21,9 20,5 1,4 4,5 Men 25,7 18,2 7,5 Women 40,4 32,3 8,1

Only 17 per cent of those who had started studying for a lower university degree completed the lower university degree in the target time of three-and-a-half years. Female students completed a university degree in that time more often than men. Twenty-two per cent of women and 11 per cent of men completed a lower university degree. The difference in the pass rate was 11 percentage points. The pass rate at four-and-a-half years had improved by eight percentage points for both women and men in 2015 compared to the previous year.

Pass rates of higher university degrees for young people in 2015 and 2014 by sex for those having studied for 5.5 to 6.5 years

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Gender Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 University education (higher university degrees) 5,5 Men 18,4 18,0 0,4 Women 27,3 28,0 -0,7 6,5 Men 28,6 28,0 0,6 Women 42,7 40,6 2,1

Nearly one in four completed a higher university degree in the target time of five-and-a-half years. Female students completed a higher university degree in that time more often than men. Twenty-seven per cent of women and 18 per cent of men completed a higher university degree. The difference in the pass rate was nine percentage points. Among women that started studying for a university degree, 43 per cent completed the degree in six-and-a-half years and 29 per cent of men. The difference in the pass rate was 14 percentage points.

Over 60 per cent of women and close on one-third of men complete university of applied sciences degrees in the target time

Pass rates for university of applied sciences education in different reference periods by the end of 2015

Forty-seven per cent of those who started studying for a university of applied sciences degree completed their studies in four-and-a-half years. Education was completed in at most seven-and-a-half years by 69 per cent and in twelve-and-a-half years by nearly 70 per cent of those studying for a university of applied sciences degree. At its highest, the pass rate for university of applied sciences degrees was 74 per cent for those who started studying more than 13 years earlier.

Pass rates of university of applied sciences education for young people in 2015 and 2014 by sex for those having studied for 4.5 to 5.5 years

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Gender Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 University of applied sciences education (youth education) 4,5 Men 32,6 29,5 3,1 Women 60,3 57,7 2,6 5,5 Men 46,7 46,5 0,2 Women 69,1 68,5 0,6

The difference between genders is even larger in the completion time of university of applied sciences education than in university education. Over 60 per cent of women completed their studies in four-and-a-half years, while close on one-third of men managed the same. The difference in the pass rate was 28 percentage points. Men close the gap a bit when five-and-a-half years of studies have passed. Sixty-nine per cent of women and 47 per cent of men had completed their studies in that time. The difference in the pass rate was 22 percentage points.

Completion of upper secondary general school in four years has increased slightly

Pass rates for upper secondary general education aimed at young people in different reference periods by the end of 2015

According to the data for 2015, upper secondary general education was completed typically in 3.5 to 4.5 years: Eighty-one per cent of new students in upper secondary general schools completed the upper secondary general school syllabus in at most three-and-a-half years and 89 per cent in at most four-and-a-half years. When the duration of studies was more than four-and-a-half years, the number of completers of upper secondary general education in relation to the number of those starting education settled between 89 and 90 per cent.

Pass rates of upper secondary general education aimed at young people in 2015 and 2014 by gender for those having studied for 3.5 to 4.5 years

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Gender Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 Upper secondary general education aimed at young

people 3,5 Men 80,1 79,9 0,2 Women 80,9 81,1 -0,2 4,5 Men 88,0 87,5 0,5 Women 90,2 89,6 0,6

Men studying in upper secondary general school passed their qualifications slightly slower than women studying there did. Eighty per cent of men completed their upper secondary general school qualification in three-and-a-half years, while for women, the corresponding figure was 81 per cent. Changes in the pass rate of upper secondary general education were small in 2015 compared to the previous year. The pass percentages of those who completed their education in four-and-a-half years grew by 0.5 percentage points for both men and women.

The pass rate of vocational education improved by 1.4 percentage points

Pass rates for vocational education aimed at young people in different reference periods by the end of 2015

The duration of qualifications completed in vocational education for young people varies more than that of upper secondary general qualifications. Sixty-eight per cent of vocational education students passed their vocational qualifications in three-and-a-half years or faster. Seventy-four per cent of students completed their education in at most four-and-a-half years.

The pass rate for vocational education grew yearly slightly also for those having studied longer: 76 per cent of those having started studies five-and-a-half years earlier and 80 per cent of those having started nine-and-a-half years earlier had completed their qualifications by the end of 2015.

Pass rates of vocational education aimed at young people in 2015 and 2014 by sex for those having studied for 3.5 to 4.5 years

Sector of education Duration of studies (years) Gender Pass rate 2015 (%) Pass rate 2014 (%) Difference between pass rates in 20152014 Vocational education aimed

at young people 3,5 Men 67,4 66,7 0,7 Women 68,0 66,0 2,0 4,5 Men 73,9 73,1 0,8 Women 74,1 73,0 1,1

Men and women completed their vocational education within the target time almost as often. Of women, 68 per cent completed their studies in three-and-a-half years and of men slightly more than 67 per cent. In four-and-a-half years, 74 per cent of both women and men had completed their studies.

When the duration of studies was over five-and-a-half years, women completed the qualifications they had started more often than men did. For women having started studies eight-and-a-half years ago, 81 per cent completed the vocational education by the end of 2015, while the respective figure for men was 79 per cent.

The database tables of these statistics contain information on the differences between the pass rates for different fields of sectors of education (see database tables). The database tables also include information on those students who did not attain their qualification in the target time.

In these statistics, the number of completers of education relative to starters of education has increased particularly for tertiary level education. Other statistics also indicate that studying was more interesting than in the year before, as both discontinuation of education and employment of students decreased (Discontinuation of education, Employment of students).

Source: Education Statistics, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Anna Loukkola 029 551 3678, koulutustilastot@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

Publication in pdf-format (286.8 kB)

Updated 17.3.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Progress of studies [e-publication].

ISSN=1799-1021. 2015. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 7.11.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/opku/2015/opku_2015_2017-03-17_tie_001_en.html
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 17 March 2017

Every other student was working while studying

According to Statistics Finland's Education Statistics, employment among students decreased by close on one percentage in 2015 from the previous year. Slightly less than one-half of students were employed during their studies. Since 2004, the share has been highest in 2008 when nearly six out of ten students were employed during their studies.

Shares of employed students aged at least 18 of all students in 20082015

Working was most common in connection with university and university of applied sciences studies. Fifty-five per cent of university students and 54 per cent of university of applied sciences students had an employment contract while studying. Close on one-half of students attending upper secondary vocational education were employed during their studies. In 2015, the share of employed students in university education decreased most, by around one percentage point from the year before.

Women worked while studying more frequently than men: 53 per cent of women and 46 per cent of men had an employment contract while studying. The proportion of employed women in upper secondary general education and in university of applied sciences education was ten percentage points higher than that of men. Thirty per cent of women in upper secondary general education were working alongside studies and 56 per cent of women in university of applied sciences education. Fifty-one per cent of women in upper secondary vocational education worked, which was seven percentage points more than for men.

Employment during studies grew clearly the older the students were. While 22 per cent of students aged 18 were working, the share of employed students aged at least 25 was nearly triple. Of 21-year-old students, 39 per cent and of 24-year-old students, 49 per cent had an employment contract. Among students aged 25 or over, 61 per cent were employed during their studies.

Employment of students during studies varied by field of education. Sixty-one per cent of students in the fields of social sciences, and business and administration, 56 per cent of students in the fields of health, welfare and sports, and 53 per cent of students in the fields of humanities and education had a valid employment contract at the end of 2015.

Employment during studies was more common than the average for the whole country in the regions of Uusimaa, Ostrobothnia and Varsinais-Suomi, and in Aland.

More information on the employment of students can be found from the Tables in databases. More information related to the progress of studies is available from statistics describing Progress of studies and Discontinuation of education .

Source: Education. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Vesa Hamalainen 029 551 2594, koulutustilastot@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

Publication in pdf-format (221.2 kB)

Updated 17.3.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Employment of students [e-publication].

ISSN=1799-0017. 2015. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 7.11.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/opty/2015/opty_2015_2017-03-17_tie_001_en.html
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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Bucharest Court can start the trial of the case concerning the Romanian Post impairment by businessman Nelu Iordache and former manager of Blue Air company, Gheorghe Racaru, the Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday.

The decision was made after the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) contested the Bucharest Courthouse's decision to withdraw some phone tapping from the case. The Court of Appeal granted the prosecutors' appeal and disposed the maintenance of all evidence to the file.

Cristian Mihai Buciu, former director of the Operational Direction within the Romanian Post National Company, businessman Nelu Iordache and former Blue Air manager, Gheorghe Racaru were indicted by DNA prosecutors in November 2016, the two being charged with the offense of improper participation in abuse of office, if the civil servant has obtained for himself or for a third party undue benefits.

According to a DNA press release sent on Tuesday to agerpres, the three defendants' actions prejudiced the Romanian Post National Company (Posta Romana, CNPR) with over 3.3 million euro.

"On September 8, 2008, the defendant Cristian Mihai Baciu, (...) with the other two defendants' support, manipulated the Romanian Post representatives into signing, in bona fide, a contract with disadvantageous conditions, prejudicial to the national company that was thus bereft of 3,395,286 euro. As a matter of fact, ANRC (subsequently ANCOM, the Romanian regulator in communication) imposed on the Romanian Post National Company internal standards as to the distribution of priority postal items, determined by European regulations. The only solution identified by the Romanian Post for compliance with the maximum distribution intervals was to set up an air platform dedicated to the correspondence transport," reads the press release.

According to the same sources, the Board of Directors of CNPR approved the business plan on setting up the air platform, although they did not calculate the income and expense the project entailed, and Cristian Mihai Buciu was appointed to deal with taking the necessary steps for the project's implementation.

Prosecutors argue that for purchasing an air service, a public acquisition procedure was launched, the contract value being estimated at 45 million euro, in relation to a number of flight hours and the cost they incurred.

"Imposing certain flight routes, unjustified transport capabilities of aircraft, a maximum collateral value for participation in the tender and a high threshold value for the turnover have restricted access to the public acquisition procedure, given that no air operator (on a market already small) did not have its own sufficient aircraft. Consequently, the only company who could formulate an offer was the airline managed by George Racaru and Nelu Iordache, the latter being a close friend of Cristian Mihai Buciu. In order to meet the qualifying conditions, the airline representatives submitted a fake bank guarantee letter," the release mentions.

According to the prosecutors, although the financial bid of the transport airline managed by George Racaru and Nelu Iordache, designated the winning one, included six direct flights with six aircraft, the contract established that for the same money only four flights with four airplanes will be carried out.

The investigation revealed that the contract containing other flights than those in the financial bid accepted in the public acquisition procedure and at inflated prices brought a prejudice to the Romanian Post worth 3,395,286 euros.

Romanian Post was a civil party with the sum of 6,926,713 euro, in the case being ordered the insuring measure to seize the movable and immovable property that belongs to the defendants.

The case was sent for trial to the Bucharest Court, with the proposal to maintain the ordered precautionary measures.
Minister of National Defence Gabriel Les assured, during talks with president of the National War Veterans Association, retired General Marin Dragnea, that the management of the Ministry of National Defence is constantly concerned with addressing the issues faced by veterans and war widows.

"Minister of National Defence Gabriel Les had this week a series of meetings with representatives of the National War Veterans Association (ANVR), the 'Alexandru Ioan Cuza' National Association of Reserve and Retired Military Personnel (ANCMRR) and of the 'Regina Maria' Heroes Cult National Association," the Ministry announced in a release.

During the talks, the first since Les took office as Minister of Defence, the sides reviewed subjects of common interest and discussed the Ministry's projects and priorities regarding the rise of the living standards of the Army's military and civilian personnel, with reference to both active staff and reserve and retired military personnel.

"Talks with ANCMRR representatives focused on the various issues of reserve military personnel, as association president, retired Gen. Mihai Iliescu, voiced appreciation for the permanent openness to dialogue of the Ministry's leading staff," the release said.

The "Regina Maria" Heroes Cult National Association headed by retired Maj. General Visarion Neagoe presented the Defence Minister a report on organization's efforts via the central office and the county subsidiaries to preserve and capitalise on the cultural heritage devoted to the memory of the heroes and to the future projects that will be implemented through cooperation with the competent structures of the Defence Ministry.

"DefMin Gabriel Les termed the meetings with association representatives extremely useful and suggested that they be held on a regular basis," the release said.

agerpres.
President Klaus Iohannis on Friday said that talks with a visiting delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were somber in tone, adding that the IMF officials shared with him some well justified concerns. "I recognise that talks were somber in tone and the IMF delegation shared with me some well justified concerns. They are at the end of the evaluation mission and told me that they told the same things to the prime minister and the finance minister. I very much hope these matters will be taken into account," Iohannis said at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

Romania's President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday welcomed at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace a delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) led by head of the IMF mission for Romania Reza Baqir. The Presidential Administration reports in a press statement that the meeting was designed to unveil the main conclusion of the periodic evaluation missions by virtue of Romania being a member state of the International Monetary Fund.

Agerpres
President Klaus Iohannis on Friday said that the Supreme Council for National Defence (CSAT) will discuss the controversial purchase of corvettes at its meeting on Tuesday. "I do not think there are problems, but certainly that will be a matter to be discussed by CSAT," Iohannis said at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

A CSAT meeting chaired by Iohannis is scheduled for Tuesday at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace. The Government on Thursday repealed the controversial decision passed by the previous Ciolos Executive for the purchase of four corvettes. Defence Minister Gabriel Les said the Government will continue the corvette project and try to keep its conduct in Romania.

Agerpres
NEW YORK  Sean Hannity says he "never pointed" a gun at Fox News colleague Juan Williams, despite a CNN report to the contrary.

CNN reported Thursday that Hannity pointed a gun directly at Williams and turned on the laser sight off-air following a heated segment last year.

But Hannity told the New York Daily News that he had been discussing guns and "showed my good friend Juan Williams my unloaded firearm in a professional and safe manner for educational purposes only."

Williams said on Twitter that he and Hannity are "great friends" and the "incident is being sensationalized." He says "everything was under total control throughout and I never felt like I was put in harm's way."

Fox News tells the Daily News "no one was put in any danger."
FERGUSON  The Canfield Green apartments and the straight stretch of West Florissant seem serene on a mid-morning drive.

A man pushes a stroller, American flags whip outside a tax office in a strip mall and windows have replaced plywood that had replaced windows.

The city has hired an African-American police chief, a brotherhood center is being built and Ronald Robinson takes his daily walk.

Things are getting a little better here, Robinson said, with inflection on little.

But no, he said, its not forgotten.

If other evidence is needed to underscore the fact that since August 2014  when Michael Brown was fatally shot by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson during an altercation on Canfield Drive  residents still struggle with the shooting and protests that drew worldwide attention, consider this:

All it took for the towns tenuous tranquility to be jarred was a low-budget documentary from a fledgling filmmaker and proud college dropout, shown for the first time last weekend at a film festival more than 700 miles away.

Pollock claims footage he uncovered from the Ferguson Markets security tapes of Brown in the store hours before the alleged robbery shows that Brown was not a strong-arm robber but simply a party to a marijuana-for-merchandise deal. Pollock insists authorities concocted the robbery scenario to justify Wilsons shooting of the unarmed Brown.

Those same authorities counter that it is Pollocks footage that has been altered. The unedited footage shows store clerks refusing Browns bartering attempt, they say.

St. Louis County Prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch called Pollocks work a pathetic attempt at a video production.

Well, I think hes pathetic, Pollock said in response to McCullochs charge. He then tied the prosecutor to the old white-boys network and the institutional racism in St. Louis.

Documenting parents perspective

Pollocks film is listed with a 1:35 running time. The cast includes Browns parents, Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden, who attended the Austin festival. They have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson, Wilson and former Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson.

The title of the film is a play on the 1937 song Strange Fruit, made famous by Billie Holiday, that tells of racism and lynchings of blacks in the American South.

Pollock said the film, which was not made available to the Post-Dispatch for viewing, was told from the Brown familys point of view.

Most definitely, we wanted to tell the story from their eyes, to do the definitive piece from the familys eyes, with real evidence, Pollock said.

While eager to discuss his film, Pollock was far more reluctant to discuss specifics of his time here  other than to say it started in late 2014, after a grand jury ruled that Wilson acted within the law and should not be indicted in Browns death.

We worked undercover, we were undercover, Pollock said.

He refused even to say what general geographic area he and crew members stayed in at night and added that the entire crew agreed to the silence.

Pollock, 35, is a Connecticut native who said he dropped out of the University of Wisconsin when he was 19 and moved to New York and worked as a production assistant for various productions. His break came in 2003, when a producer he had worked for told him Michael Moore was looking to hire a new assistant.

Pollock said Moore hired him over several other candidates who had graduated from prestigious schools.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Pollock worked as Moores assistant during the making in 2004 of Fahrenheit 9/11, and as a second-unit director in 2005 on Slacker Uprising. In 2005, he was one of the five founders of Michael Moores Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan.

Like his mentor Moore, whom Pollock still considers a best bud, Pollock is not afraid to step on the rhetorical pedal when promoting his films.

The truth is the truth is the truth, he said. And the truth hurts.

Moore took to Twitter on Sunday to praise his former assistants work, what Moore called a powerful 5-star review of my colleague Jason Pollocks Ferguson film ...

Pollock released his first feature documentary, The Youngest Candidate, in 2008. It follows four teens running for public office in America. Stranger Fruit is his second feature documentary.

Pollock said he personally raised the money to make the film.

Ive had hundreds of requests from film festivals, internationally even. Were hoping for a healthy world tour, and were shopping it to distributors, Pollock said.

Power of documentaries

Cliff Froehlich, executive director of Cinema St. Louis, said he exchanged emails with Pollock in late January.

Froehlich said he was interested in including the documentary in the roster of films for the 2017 St. Louis International Film Festival, set for Nov. 2-12. He said Pollock replied with a general interest.

Froehlich said nothing certain could be said at this point, especially since the film and Pollock have generated publicity.

Should the film get a distributor, it could be released so wide by the time of the festival that it would not be included here, Froehlich said.

But we still have an interest in any movie, controversial or not, that is about St. Louis, Froehlich said.

As to the nature of documentaries, Froehlich said film-goers should be aware that documentaries often have clear points of views and opinions.

There are some that are factual, or at least purport to be. But most are clearly trying to persuade the audience, he said.

David Wilson, co-founder and a director of the documentary-only True/False Film Fest at the University of Missouri-Columbia, agreed that viewers should know that documentarians readily adopt points of views.

Wilson said one could argue that viewers get more honest reporting when the subjectivity is worn on their sleeve. We know where the author is coming from.

He also said a director who clearly embraces one side of a story can get closer to certain people and bring us a much deeper understanding of an issue.

Subjective or reckless?

Jay Kanzler, attorney for the market and a documentary maker in his own right, bristles at the notion that Pollocks film would provide a deeper understanding.

In fact it is all a lie, Kanzler said of Pollocks clips, which he, too, says have been altered. And when you watch the unedited version, you see that.

This isnt about having a different point of view. His documentary is reckless and puts peoples lives at risk, Kanzler said.

Last Sunday, when news reports aired about the films debut, about 100 people gathered to protest outside the market. Several gunshots were fired nearby, a man was charged with trying to light a police car on fire and a woman was charged with punching a Ferguson police officer.

So, no deeper understanding?

We dont get closer to the truth by using untruths, Kanzler said.

True or untrue, Ferguson resident Robinson, who said he saw a clip of Pollocks footage on local news reports, carries with him his own understanding as he walks Canfield Drive.

Robinson believes authorities, got away with it in the death of Brown.

He didnt steal anything.
A family tragedy unfolded Thursday in a series of dramas in Glen Carbon and Highland: a deadly house fire, an infant saved from a sinking SUV, a body recovered in a lake.

A woman's body was pulled from the lake. The body was later identified as Cristy L. Campbell, 32, of Dogwood Lane in Glen Carbon. She was the mother of the infant.

A body found in the Glen Carbon house was a man, a source said.

The baby boy was taken to a St. Louis hospital for treatment after being pulled from the SUV in Silver Lake around 6 a.m. He was expected to make a full recovery and to be released Friday, Madison County Sheriff John Lakin said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

"Fortunately there is something good that can come of this," Lakin said of the child's survival.

Authorities were notified about 5:15 a.m. that a house on Dogwood Lane in Glen Carbon was burning. Six children who were in the house when the fire began escaped. Some of those children ran to a nearby Wal-Mart to call 911, said Glen Carbon Police Lt. Wayne White.

The caller said there was a possible victim inside, White said, but the house was fully involved and firefighters could not safely enter until they had put the fire out. The body was removed midafternoon Thursday. An autopsy will be done.

A surveillance video obtained from a neighbor shows an SUV's headlights switching on in the driveway of the house about 4:50 a.m. Several minutes later, the SUV backs out of the driveway. About 3 minutes later, a reflection from the flames of the burning house can be seen on the side of a nearby house. Four children run across the street, heading in the direction of Wal-Mart. The smallest child is carrying a blanket.

Around 5:30 a.m. about 16 miles east of the Glen Carbon house, a 911 caller notified the Madison County Sheriff's Office that a vehicle had driven into Silver Lake, off Route 143. Highland EMS made it to the lake first and paramedic Todd Zobrist rushed into the cold water and searched the vehicle.

Lakin lauded Zobrist as a "hero," saying he swam out 50 to 75 feet into the lake, did a sweep of the car and found the three-month-old baby floating inside the vehicle with about six or eight inches of air space.

The baby was lifeless when Zobrist pulled him from the SUV and Zobrist began CPR on the roof of the vehicle, which was partly submerged, Lakin said. The infant was rushed to a St. Louis hospital.

At the same time, authorities launched a boat to search for the driver. They issued a plea for the public's help in finding Cristy Lynn Campbell, a "person of interest."

Cristy Campbell's body was found around 11:15 a.m. about 400 feet from where the vehicle went into the water, Lakin said. It was pulled from the lake around 1:15 p.m.

A gun was found inside the SUV, a source said.

Cristy Campbell was divorced in Madison County in 2012 from Justin Campbell, according to court records. She identifies Justin Campbell on Facebook as being the father of her children. The divorce was granted by default when he failed to appear in court. Cristy Campbell was awarded custody of the children.

Cristy Campbell has published photos of herself with seven children, including a baby boy, Julian, born in December. The four boys and two girls range in age from 4 to 14.

A neighbor, Sherry Ricker, said she believed that Justin Campbell was living at the house, a split level on a street of well kept ranch and two-story houses. She said the family was always busy because the kids were involved in a variety of activities, and that the house was filled with trophies.

She said she saw Cristy Campbell and held the baby three days ago. "She was happier than I had seen her in a long time," Ricker said.

All seven children, "to include the infant child rescued from the submerged vehicle," are accounted for and safe, the Madison County Sheriff's Office said in a press release. They are with family members, Lakin said.

Court records point to a tumultuous relationship between Cristy and Justin Campbell.

In 2005, Justin Campbell was charged with domestic abuse. Prosecutors said he caused bodily harm to Cristy Campbell, then known as Cristy L. Brueggemann, by slapping her in the head when she was 16 weeks pregnant. He was sentenced in March 2006 to a year of probation and fined $500.

The couple, who by this time had three children, was married on Nov. 3, 2006, at the Madison County Court House.

Justin Campbell's probation was revoked when he failed to pay on time and appear in court, and he was arrested in October 2007. The case was closed again in December 2007.

In 2010, Cristy Campbell sued her husband for divorce, but withdrew the suit.

On April 24, 2012, she alleged abuse again.

"He has choked me, he has pushed me several times, he has slapped me in my head, he has pushed me into bricks, she wrote.

A judge granted an emergency order of protection on April 25, 2012, and Cristy Campbell sued again for divorce.

On May 10, 2012, the couple appeared in court together and Cristy Campbell asked for the protection order to be dismissed; it was.

The divorce was finalized on July 27, 2012. She was awarded custody, he was granted visitation rights.

In February 2014, Cristy Campbell requested supervised visitation, alleging that one of the children told her his father had pinched and punched him, and another child said he had been choked. The court ordered that Justin Campbells visitation take place at a court-approved neutral location.

In May 2014, Glen Carbon Police cited Cristy Campbell after she allegedly allowed a 5-year-old child to leave their home on Dogwood Lane and wander around the streets of Glen Carbon unattended. She attended parenting classes in exchange for prosecutors dropping the charge.

Authorities said at the news conference that they had answered about 50 calls at the house since 2010, including hangup 911 calls, barking dog calls and some domestic calls.

The house stood Thursday with melted siding and a charred roof line. A Spiderman bicycle was propped against a wall, near an angel statue.

A manager at Bob Evans restaurant in Collinsville, where Justin Campbell was employed and worked on Wednesday, said the staff is distraught. Campbell was "an outstanding guy," he said, who "loved his kids."

Silver Lake is about 16 miles east of the Glen Carbon home that burned.

Jeremy Kohler, Ashley Jost and Robert Cohen of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this article.

Here's our earlier coverage:

A deadly house fire early Thursday in Glen Carbon and an SUV carrying only an infant rolling into a lake in Highland are connected, authorities said.

The body of a man was found in the Glen Carbon house, and a woman's body was pulled from the lake, a source said Thursday afternoon. The woman was identified as Cristy L. Campbell, 32, of Glen Carbon, according to the Madison County Sheriff's Office.

The baby was taken to a St. Louis hospital for treatment after being pulled from the SUV in Silver Lake around 6 a.m. The baby was expected to make a full recovery and to be released Friday, Madison County Sheriff John Lakin said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

The body was pulled from the lake around 1:15 p.m. It was found in a brushy area near the edge of the lake.

A gun was found inside the SUV, a source said. An ID found inside a purse in the SUV belonged to a female who lived at the address where the fire occurred in Glen Carbon, the press release said.

The man's body found at the house has not yet been identified.

Law officers had launched a boat to search the lake and the coroner was called shortly after 11 a.m.

Police in Glen Carbon, where one person died in the house fire early Thursday, had asked for help in finding the owner of the home. Cristy Campbell was a "person of interest," police said. By the time of the press conference Thursday afternoon, authorities said they were no longer looking for Cristy Campbell.

Six children who were in the home when the fire began all escaped, authorities said.

Cristy Campbell has published photos of herself with seven children, including a baby boy, Julian, born in December. The four boys and two girls range in age from 4 to 14.

"We believe the infant in the lake at Highland could be the seventh in the family," said Glen Carbon Fire Chief Ralph Well.

A paramedic went into the water to search the vehicle and found a baby floating in water with about 6-8 inches of air space inside the SUV. The baby was unresponsive when the paramedic pulled him out and the paramedic began CPR on the hood of the SUV, Lakin said. The baby was taken to a St. Louis hospital, said Fire Department Capt. Brad Menz.

Menz said the SUV appeared to have rolled down a hillside into the lake around 6 a.m. near Illinois Route 143. No one else was in the vehicle, and it was not immediately clear how the car wound up in the water.

At least 20 police officers were seen at the house next to where the car went into the lake. It was unclear if there was a connection between the home and the SUV. Detectives at the scene did not answer questions.

Campbell was divorced in Madison County in 2012 from Justin Campbell, whom she identifies on Facebook as being the father of her children, according to court records. The divorce was granted by default when Justin Campbell failed to appear in court. Cristy Campbell was awarded custody of the children.

Months prior to the divorce, Cristy Campbell sought and obtained an order of protection from the father, alleging abuse. The order was dismissed about two weeks later at the request of Cristy Campbell.

In a news conference earlier Thursday, Glen Carbon Police Lt. Wayne White said two of the children ran to a nearby Wal-Mart and called 911 after the fire broke out about 5:15 a.m.

The caller said there was a possible victim inside, Well said, but the house was fully involved and firefighters could not safely enter it until they had put the fire out.

Police informed firefighters that it was a crime scene and possibly related to the Highland incident, Well said.

The body inside the house was removed about 3:40 p.m.

A surveillance video obtained from a neighbor shows the headlights turning on in an SUV parked in Campbell's driveway about 4:50 a.m. Thursday. Several minutes later, the SUV backs out of the driveway and two small children can be seen in the headlights. About 3 minutes later, a reflection from the flames of the burning house can be seen on the side of a nearby house. Four children run across the street, heading in the direction of Wal-Mart. The smallest child is carrying a blanket.

About 5:01 a.m., a black sedan pulls into the frame and parks across the street from the house. Two men walk in the direction of the Wal-Mart. A few minutes later, the men return to the car, turn around in the cul de sac and sit there as a fire truck comes down the street. The car leaves when the fire truck passes it.

Sherry Ricker lives across the street from the Campbell residence. She said the family was always busy because the kids were involved in a variety of activities, and that the house was filled with trophies.

She said she saw Cristy Campbell and held the baby three days ago. "She was happier than I had seen her in a long time," Ricker said.

Court records point to a tumultuous relationship between Cristy and Justin Campbell.

In 2005, Justin Campbell was charged with domestic abuse. Prosecutors said he caused bodily harm to Cristy Campbell, then known as Cristy L. Brueggemann, by slapping her in the head when she was 16 weeks pregnant. He was sentenced in March 2006 to a year of probation and fined $500.

The couple, who by this time had three children, was married on Nov. 3, 2006, at the Madison County Court House.

Justin Campbell's probation was revoked when he failed to pay on time and appear in court, and he was arrested in October 2007. The case was closed again in December 2007.

In 2010, Cristy Campbell sued her husband for divorce, but withdrew the suit.

On April 24, 2012, she alleged abuse again.

"He has choked me, he has pushed me several times, he has slapped me in my head, he has pushed me into bricks, she wrote.

A judge granted an emergency order of protection on April 25, 2012, and Cristy Campbell sued again for divorce.

On May 10, 2012, the couple appeared in court together and Cristy Campbell asked for the protection order to be dismissed; it was.

The divorce was finalized on July 27, 2012. She was awarded custody, he was granted visitation rights.

In February 2014, Cristy Campbell requested supervised visitation, alleging that one of the children told her his father had pinched and punched him, and another child said he had been choked. The court ordered that Justin Campbells visitation take place at a court-approved neutral location.

In May 2014, Glen Carbon Police cited Cristy Campbell after she allegedly allowed a 5-year-old child to leave their home on Dogwood Lane and wander around the streets of Glen Carbon unattended. She attended parenting classes in exchange for prosecutors dropping the charge.

Ricker said she believed that Justin Campbell was living at the house on Dogwood.

A manager at Bob Evans restaurant in Collinsville, where Justin Campbell was employed and worked on Wednesday, said Campbell was "an outstanding guy" who "loved his kids."

"Everyone is waiting for confirmation it was him."
A mental health patient killed himself Thursday at a controversial state facility for sexually violent predators.

William G. Bradford, 46, hanged himself at the Department of Mental Healths Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services, or SORTS, facility in Farmington.

St. Francois County Coroner James Coplin said emergency dispatchers contacted his office at 6:23 a.m. He said Bradford was pronounced dead at the scene.

He went into a closet and hung himself, Coplin said.

The Department of Mental Health said the case is under review.

SORTS is a secure mental health facility situated next to a prison. Its reserved for some of Missouris most troubled residents. They are held in SORTS indefinitely as patients, out of fear of what they might do and for treatment.

According to a news report, Bradford pleaded guilty to three counts of forcible sodomy involving a 3-year-old girl in 1995. At the end of his prison term, he was flagged as a possible predator.

At his civil commitment trial in 2008 in Boone County, Ted Bruce, of the state attorney generals office, said the goal of Missouris sexually violent predator law was to keep sex crimes from happening again, not to punish patients.

This is a chance to break the cycle, Bruce said then, according to the Columbia Missourian. He needs treatment.

SORTS, which also has a facility in Fulton, came under fire in recent years because nobody was being released. After a six-year legal fight spurred by SORTS patients, St. Louis-based U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Fleissig ruled in 2015 that Missouris application of treatment of civilly committed sexually violent predators was not constitutional.

The state, plaintiffs and attorneys have since been trying to come up with reasonable solutions to improve SORTS treatment. But that has been delayed by disagreements. A trial on how to best move forward is scheduled to begin June 12.

Bradford had also been frustrated by the delay. In a 10-page letter to Fleissig in September, he wrote about many objections and concerns regarding the lingering court case, including the status of several SORTS patients who are in the final stages of their lives.

Any settlement agreement that does not address these most vulnerable members of the SORTS community is inadequate, Bradford wrote, according to court records. How many more people need to die here?

Bradford told the judge that he was blessed to be nearing the end of my confinement. He said hed completed core therapy goals and was working on goals to integrate into the community. He said an annual review of his case found that he was no longer more likely than not to re-offend if released from SORTS. Bradford said court approval of his conditional release was pending.

Apparently, the hearing wasnt held.

In July, SORTS patient Timothy S. Donaldson, 52, hanged himself at Fulton State Hospital. Hed been one of the first SORTS patients to be conditionally released back into the community. But he was accused of violating the terms of his release agreement in St. Charles and was being returned to indefinite treatment.
FERGUSON  Jeffrey Williams, found guilty in December of shooting and wounding two police officers at a 2015 Ferguson protest, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison.

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Gloria Reno handed down the sentence. The state had sought at least 30 years for Williams. His lawyer, Jerryl Christmas, asked for 15 years.

A jury found Williams guilty of two counts of first-degree assault, three counts of armed criminal action and one count of unlawful use of a weapon, for shooting from a vehicle and striking the officers on March 12, 2015.

St. Louis County Officer Scott Brown, then 41, was hit in the shoulder, and Webster Groves Officer Cameron McKay, then 32, was hit in the cheek on a security line outside the Ferguson police station on South Florissant Road.

Brown has returned to duty and is a member of the tactical team. McKay has not returned to duty. Neither officer attended Fridays hearing. Williams made no statement in court.

Williams lived in the 10700 block of Hallwood Drive in an unincorporated area of north St. Louis County.

Protesters had gathered upon the announcement that police Chief Thomas Jackson, who was in charge of the department at the time of the Michael Brown shooting, was resigning. The crowd was starting to break up when shots rang out.

Three shots were believed to have been fired from about 125 yards away, on Tiffin Avenue.

Police said that Williams, 22, admitted firing the shots and that a .40-caliber pistol recovered from his home was matched to shell casings at the scene.

In a recording of jail phone calls obtained by the Associated Press, Williams is heard telling someone that he fired at people with whom he was having trouble  not the officers.

Nobody aiming at no police, he says, I ran up the hill and he (an unidentified person) shot at the car.  I shot back.

Christmas said at the hearing that Williams insists he was not the one shooting from the car but that two others in the car told police he was the one who opened fire. He said, It was really just a fluke that these officers were shot.

Its just unfortunate all the way around, Christmas said after the verdict. The gunfire, he said, was totally unrelated to the protest going on.

At the time the two officers were shot, Williams was on probation for a 2013 crime of receiving stolen property.
JEFFERSON CITY  Gov. Eric Greitens administration is taking a page from his counterparts in Illinois when it comes to the states fleet of aircraft.

Just as former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, and current Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, moved to jettison state-owned airplanes in the Land of Lincoln, Greitens is planning on selling one of the states two passenger planes used by his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

Word of the grounding and potential sale of the states 1999 Beechcraft King Air C90 is contained in the latest budget proposal being mulled in the Missouri House of Representatives.

In the Department of Public Safety spending proposal, it calls for a $37,000 reduction in aircraft maintenance costs due to the sale of the twin-engine, six-passenger plane.

Rep. Kathie Conway, R-St. Charles, said the agencys new director, Col. Sandy Karsten, gave the green light for the budget maneuver soon after she was sworn in this month.

She said we really did not have the need for the plane, Conway told the Post-Dispatch on Friday.

The decision comes after Greitens, a Republican who took office on Jan. 9, has said he is not planning to use the state plane.

That practice is a switch from the Nixon era, when the chief executive was routinely rapped by Republican lawmakers for his regular use of a taxpayer-funded state airplane to traverse the state.

However, now Democrats are complaining about Greitens use of private airplanes because the governor is not disclosing who is financing his flights.

In early March, the Post-Dispatch reported that the private plane that ferried Greitens from Jefferson City to Springfield to Las Vegas and to Washington was owned by a company that operates newspapers and television stations from Missouri to California.

The governors office and top officials with the St. Joseph-based News-Press & Gazette Co. said the plane was leased by a third party because the company was not using it at the time.

Although taxpayers are not being billed for Greitens air travel, aides have not disclosed who is paying for the trips.

In Illinois, Quinn first announced the sale of nine of the states airplanes in 2014. Rauner inherited four unsold planes and one helicopter when he took over in 2015.

In the end, Illinois received $2.5 million for the aircraft and the reduction of an estimated $1 million in inspections and maintenance costs.

It was unclear Friday how Missouri might go about selling the airplane and how much it might bring into state coffers. When Illinois sold its 2000 King Air in 2015, the selling price was $1.7 million.

Conway said the remaining planes in Missouris fleet are not being eyed for grounding. The Department of Public Safety aircraft fleet consists of four helicopters, eight single-engine Cessnas and the King Airs.
As we have since July 2006, each Friday well post our sampling of cigar news and other items of interest from the week. Below is our latest, which is the 522nd in the series.

1) Tomas Regalado (pictured above), mayor of Miami, this week sent a letter to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, imploring the agency to reconsider FDA regulation of cigars in light of the new administration and its own regulatory review and reconsideration process. An email alert from Cigar Rights of America applauds Mayor Regalado for the letter, which calls for a comprehensive economic impact analysis, as well as a reexamination of option two, which would exempt premium cigars from the regulation. The letter can be read in its entirety here. Some interesting statistics found in the letter include the following: Florida is headquarters of over 40 corporations in the premium cigar industry; Florida is home to at least 232 small businesses reliant upon the premium cigar industry; and Miami considers itself the base of operations for the industry, with services ranging from shipping, trucking, bonded storage, etc.

2) The Washington Post asks: What does the future hold for historic Ybor Citys cigar culture? Yet even with all cigar connoisseurship happening up and down Seventh Avenue, it was hard to ignore that Ybor Citya National Historic Landmark Districthad seen better days. In the early 20th century, Tampa had been the undisputed cigar capital of the world, outproducing even Havana. In its heyday, the city had more than 150 factories, employing about 10,000 workers, and rolling more than 500 million cigars each year. Now, beyond the small storefront producers still rolling premium handmade cigars, only one large cigar factory remains.

3) In last months Question of the Month (which admittedly ran significantly longer than a month), we asked readers to select the answer that best describes their position on the U.S. embargo of Cuba. The embargo was right when it was enacted, but now is the time to end it was the top answer with 36% of the vote. It was followed by the embargo should be phased out, but only if Cuba meets tangible benchmarks towards freedom and democracy (30%); the embargo never should have been enacted (19%); and the embargo should be kept in place until Cuba adopts full freedom and democracy (15%). Be sure to weigh in on this months question by voting in the sidebar to the right. And feel free to contact us if youve got a good suggestion for a future StogieGuys.com reader poll.

4) Inside the Industry: Steve Saka reported on Facebook on Tuesday that he received the first shipment of Umbagog, a paper-bundled cigar with a Broadleaf wrapper deemed too ugly to be used for his more premium Mi Querida line. The sizes being shipped are Corona Gorda (6 x 48, $6.45), Robusto Plus (5 x 52, $6.45), Toro Toro (6 x 52, $6.95), and Gordo Gordo (6 x 56, $7.45). For us, [Umbagog is] not a profit center, but a cash recovery product to make efficient use of the Broadleaf, wrote Saka. In my perfect world, all of the wrapper coming out of my pilons would be perfect and none of these would exist. Umbagog will be appearing at about 35 retailers nationwide; a preliminary list of retailers can be found here.

5) From the Archives: This was our most-read article last year: our groundbreaking piece about how the FDA misleads the public it is supposed to serve, especially when it comes to handmade cigars and youth smoking.

6) Deal of the Week: The cigars are a mystery, but you do get a lot of them. Theyre all name brands, not house brands or no-name bundles, and they come for less than $3 per cigar. These Grab Bags tend to sell out fast, so if you need to fill up your humidor on the cheap, act quickly.

The Stogie Guys

photo credit: Miami Herald
The World Bank has "approved a package of measures worth $450 million to help the poorest and most vulnerable people in Pakistan", a press release issued by the organisation said on Wednesday.

The National Social Protection Program for Results, which is worth $100mn, will assist the federal government to strengthen national social safety net initiatives  such as the Benazir Income Support Programme  to improve 'beneficiary families' access to complementary social and productive services", the statement added.

"Pakistan has made significant progress in the implementation of economic reforms," said Illango Patchamuthu, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan.

"However, despite the substantial progress in the initial reform programmes and recent developments in the financial sector, there remains an important unfinished reforms agenda, such as financial access and inclusion remain particularly low," Patchamuthu added.

"About 100 million adults in Pakistan don't have access to formal and regulated financial services. This number represents about 5 per cent of the world's unbanked population," the organisation's Pakistan director said.

"This needs to change for Pakistani women and men to realise their aspirations."

One of the initiatives is Finance for Growth Development Policy (FGDP), which is a policy credit of $300mn to support efforts of the Pakistani government in promoting a more inclusive and transparent financial sector, the statement added.

The programme aims to raise financial access throughout Pakistan to 50pc of adults, including 25pc women by 2020.

Similarly, in the next three years, it aims to boost private sector credit access to small and medium enterprises to 15pc from 7pc in 2015.

Additionally, the organisation will help to strengthen the tourism industry in Punjab via its $50mn Punjab Tourism for Growth Project by building public-private sector partnership and allowing the provincial government to "foster stronger governance as well as give residents a more prominent say in local development plans".

The credit is financed from the International Development Association, the World Bank Group's grant and low-interest arm.

"Pakistan is among the 25 countries the World Bank Group and partners are prioritising as part of the efforts to reach Universal Financial Access by 2020.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Tel Aviv regime poses "the biggest nuclear threat" to the Middle East region and the entire world.

Speaking in an interview with Lebanon-based and Arabic-language al-Mayadeen news network on Thursday evening, Zarif described Israels policies towards regional nations as vicious, stressing that Israeli authorities seek to conceal truth and advance their aggressive plots through the language of threats.

We have never expected Israel to adopt a peaceful and non-violent approach. We have got used to Israels policies over the past years, he commented.

The top Iranian diplomat also reiterated Tehrans preparedness to offer support and assistance to bring about national unity among Palestinians, terming the issue as an urgent "priority" for the Islamic Republic.

Zarif then pointed to the resistance against the Israeli regimes aggressive acts, saying Tel Avivs aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip and Lebanon taught the regime that Palestinian and Lebanese nations are not soft targets.

'Iran ready to cooperate with Saudi Arabia on regional issues'

Elsewhere in his remarks, Zarif pointed to Saudi Arabia and Israels concurrent attempts to heap pressure on Iran, saying the Riyadh and Tel Aviv regimes joined efforts since the beginning of nuclear talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China  plus Germany to sabotage the negotiations.

They explored all available avenues and exerted excessive pressure. We predict that they are still pushing ahead with such efforts, he said.

I advise Saudi Arabia to cooperate with us instead of collaborating with others in a bid to harm Iran. Countries that commit erroneous acts must offer apologies to Iran. This is not our mistake that some countries have decided to invade Yemen for no clear reason, and support Daesh and Nusra Front militant groups in Syria and Iraq, Zarif stated.

He said Tehran and Riyadh could have good relations.

Iran is prepared to cooperate with all Muslim states within the framework of non-inference in the domestic affairs of each other. Cooperation with neighboring countries, including Saudi Arabia, must be aimed at the establishment of peace in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria," the Iranian foreign minister stated.

Zarif also expressed regret over division among Muslim countries.

'Trump policies a gift to extremists'

Zarif also dismissed US authorities rhetoric against Iran as ineffective, saying the administration of former US President Barack Obama imposed numerous economic sanctions against Iran, which produced adverse political outcomes and left them with no option but to sit at the negotiating table with Iran.

He stated that Iran has devised a vast array of scenarios concerning its nuclear agreement with the worlds major powers, but the best option is that Americans stand committed to the accord.

The US administration knows that sanctions against Iran are not helpful, and implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is the best possible option, Zarif pointed out.

The Iranian foreign minister also denounced US President Donald Trump's new travel ban on citizens of the six Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, saying the restriction is a "gift" to extremists.
More than 40 Syrian civilians have lost their lives when US warplanes bombed a mosque full of worshipers overnight in a village west of Aleppo.

More than 100 people were also wounded in the air raid on the village of al-Jineh, just over 30 km west of Aleppo, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

The head of the London-based observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said the raids targeted the mosque during evening prayers.

The US military confirmed that it had carried out a deadly airstrike in northern Syria and would investigate reports that civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in the raid.

The observatory said many people were still trapped under the collapsed mosque as rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for.

Jineh is in the western Aleppo countryside, which along with Idlib is home to hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by fighting in other areas.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time where there are usually religious lessons for men in it.

I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldnt even recognize some of the bodies, he added.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. It has alo been involved in a similar campaign in neighboring Iraq.

The alliance has on many occasions attacked Syrian civilians, military and infrastructure under the guise of fighting the terror group.

There are also reports that the US-led attacks have on numerous occasions hampered counter terrorism operations by Syrian armed forces.

The latest US air raid came just after Syria contacted the United Nations to warn against an imminent disaster in the wake of air raids by the US-led military coalition close to the Euphrates and Tishrin dams.

Damascus urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to help stop the attacks, The total destruction of these dams that are being targeted by the airstrikes will wash away and flood cities, towns and villages, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living in those areas.

Washington has currently between 800 and 900 Special Operations troops in Syria. A Pentagon official told AFP on Wednesday that the United States is set to deploy about 1,000 additional troops to the northern parts of the country.

In an interview with Chinese TV station Phoenix, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the US troops in Syria invaders because under international law foreign governments cannot deploy troops to sovereign countries.

Any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation... are invaders, said the Syrian leader.

The bloody US attack comes amid a countrywide ceasefire in Syria in parallel with a diplomatic process aimed at ending the crisis in the Arab state.
China and Saudi Arabia signed agreements potentially worth tens of billions of dollars on Thursday, Beijing said, as President Xi Jinping welcomed Saudi King Salman on a state visit.

The visit by the 81-year-old king comes as China pursues a charm offensive towards the Middle East, where it has previously kept a low profile. The trip returns the favour after Xi visited the kingdom last year as part of the first state visit to the Middle East by a Chinese leader in seven years.

No specifics were given about the 14 memoranda of understanding that were signed at Beijings Great Hall of the People, which included agreements in energy, and a range of other spheres. But Chinas Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming told reporters various projects could be worth up to $65bn.

King Salman arrived on Wednesday with a reportedly massive entourage of around 1,000 people following stops in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia as part of a month-long Asia tour.

China is pivoting towards the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia is strengthening its alliances in east Asia, as the United States global diplomatic stance under President Donald Trump remains unclear. China depends on the volatile Middle East for oil supplies but has long taken a back seat in its disputes.

But over the past year Xi has taken a new approach, with steps that include offering to host talks between the opposing parties in the Syrian conflict.

Zhang said both the Syrian and Yemen wars were discussed on Thursday, with the two parties agreeing that the crises should be resolved through political discussions.

China is also pushing Xis signature One Belt, One Road policy, a strategy to increase trade links and market connectivity between China, Europe and regions in between, based loosely on the ancient Silk Road trading route.

This visit will push forward and continue to improve the quality of our relations and bear new fruit, Xi told the king.

China has been Saudi Arabias largest trading partner since 2015 and the kingdom was for years the biggest source of crude oil for the fuel-hungry Chinese economy.

Russia last year supplanted the Saudis as Chinas top oil source, according to official Chinese statistics.

The visit is the monarchs first to China since taking the throne in 2015.

Past [China-Saudi] ties were good, but at least from a Saudi perspective, can use a significant boost, said Joseph Kechichian, a senior fellow at Riyadhs King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

In an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Saudi ambassador Turki Bin Mohamed Al-Mady emphasised his countrys potential role in the One Belt, One Road initiative.

In terms of strategic location, Saudi Arabia serves as the central hub connecting three continents  Asia, Africa and Europe  and has been an important part of the initiative, Al-Mady said.
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Jackson followed the presidency of John Quincy Adams as the seventh President of the United States. He further founded the Democratic Party, serving from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson served in Congress and gained fame as a general in the United States Army. As president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the "common man" against what he saw as a "corrupt aristocracy" and to preserve the Union.

Trump was the first sitting president to visit since Ronald Reagan. Trump toured Jackson's mansion, walked to his tomb saluting and laid a wreath as taps played in the background  all marking the 250th anniversary on Wednesday of Jackson's birth. Jackson's populist politics have resonated with Trump. Upon moving into the White House last month, the new president hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.

Trump gave a 10-minute speech to as many as 400 people from the steps of the mansion, saying he was a "big fan" of Jackson. Among those attending were nearly 100 Tennessee lawmakers. Trump noted the portrait in the Oval Office and the magnolia tree outside the White House that came from Tennessee.

"Andrew Jackson was the people's president and his election came at a time when the vote was finally being extended to those who did not own property," Trump said.

"Jackson didn't want government corruption. He expanded benefits for veterans and battled financial powers that bought influence at the expense of citizens," Trump said. "And the current president," said Jackson "imposed tariffs on foreign countries to protect American workers."

There is good reason why Democrats looked upon Trump's visit to Heritage in such hatred.

Jacksons career was marked by many interesting" incidents. He fought a duel with a man who insulted his wife. He was spared because his thin frame was concealed in a heavy coat. The bullet passed through the coat but missed him. His adversary, Charles Dickinson, was not so fortunate.

Jackson was viciously attacked during his campaign, impugning his character and that of his wife, Rachel. Political slander is nothing new, and was particularly rampant during the early 1800s. The press was continually dogging Jackson during his tenure as President. On leaving office, he bought his own newspaper in order to bring his case to the public. Called a jackass by his opponents, the animal became the symbol of Jacksons party - the Democrats.- late in the 19th century.

At the request of his predecessor, President James Monroe, Jackson invaded Spanish held Florida to suppress Cree and Seminole tribes who were raiding the U.S. He negotiated with the Spanish, at bayonet point, to cede Florida to the U.S.

When gold was discovered in Georgia, settlers rushed to claim their share of the riches, overrunning land held by the Cherokee Indians. The Cherokee, highly Westernized, sued Georgia, and eventually won their case in the Supreme Court. Jackson disagreed, and famously said, John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. The Cherokee were forcibly removed from their land, and marched to Oklahoma, an event known as The Trail of Tears.

This was not his only confrontation with the judicial system. After defeating the British in New Orleans in 1814, Jackson kept the militia in his service and established martial law in Louisiana. Among his solders was a judge named Dominic Hall. Another state judge, Joshua Lewis, ordered Halls release from service with a writ of habeas corpus. Jackson had Lewis arrested. Before the affair was settled, Jackson also arrested a state legislator, a Federal judge and a lawyer.

In the election of 1829, no candidate received a majority of the Electoral vote. Subsequently Jackson was elected President by the House and the Senate elected John C. Calhoun, as Vice president. A political enemy, Calhoun worked tirelessly against Jackson and his appointees.

Instead of political operatives, Jackson chose a cabinet composed of businessmen. Most of his other appointments followed the same line, establishing Jackson as a man of the people. Infighting and gossip led Jackson to fire his entire Cabinet. As Vice President and President of the Senate, Calhoun was able to block their replacements. Jackson gathered associates he trusted, forming a defacto government, known as the Kitchen Cabinet. On reelection, Jackson chose Martin van Buren as his running mate. Van Buren proved to be an interesting if not particularly effective successor. Thats another story.

Trump stood at Jackson and Rachels tomb at The Hermitage, and saluted, as shown in a widely distributed photograph.

Any thoughts why?
Todd Talks

By Todd Muller

As many of you will have seen, on March 8 we celebrated International Womens Day. While this is a great opportunity for our community not only to celebrate our wives, mothers and sisters, and to discuss the issues facing women in our society, we need to be mindful these issues should not only be front of mind one day a year  but every day.



The two biggest issues for women I feel we have a responsibility to eradicate are domestic violence and our gender pay gap. New Zealands gender pay gap is 12 per cent. Yes, we are consistently ranked as having one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. No, this isnt good enough. There is no justification in 2017 for paying women anything less than the value of the job.

Ive had the privilege to work at both Zespri and Fonterra in senior levels in my career and looking back I probably fell into the trap of paying what the market suggested and didnt forcefully test that the proposed remuneration was genuinely fair and blind to gender. Its important we front the bias that exists so clearly across many of our employers. Granted the bias might be subconscious, but every woman should be paid what the role is worth  not what we think the woman might accept in salary negotiation.

There is a lot of debate on feminism and its role in todays age, but for me its simple. Until I can look my daughters in the eye and assure them they will be free from violence in their homes and paid fairly in line with their male counterparts I will continue to be a determined feminist on these issues.
Clayton Mitchell

New Zealand First MP

New Zealanders respect a brave politician, whos willing to make a tough  or even unpopular  call for the greater good. What Kiwis think of someone who is trying to pretend to do so, remains to be seen.

The current Prime Minister is standing on the post-baby boomers, born after 30 June 1972, who have worked hard and paid their taxes, and contributed to Kiwisaver, and are now being told, work longer, because theres not enough in the pot for you. In the last eight plus years this blue government has not contributed a single shiny penny to the NZ Super Fund. This is lunacy.

The NZ Super Fund currently stands at $30 billion. Had this blue government been contributing like they were supposed to, there would be over $50 billion in there today. The issue now, is not whether we can afford Superannuation in the future, but its whether this blue government is prepared to behave in a financially responsible manner and ensure that this money will be invested in the Super Fund, to guarantee that Super will be there for Kiwis when they retire.

If the government wants a solution to this problem, they should look at New Zealand Firsts policy, and stop the nonsense of allowing recently arrived immigrants, who have contributed absolutely nothing in taxes and Kiwisaver, but are entitled to a full pension after only ten years here. This is costing us billions of dollars, and forcing hard-working New Zealanders to foot the bill by working longer to receive less.

The current Prime Minister is trying to talk tough while crystal ball-gazing twenty years into the future, why not unveil a policy on flying cars and underwater cities while hes at it?

New Zealand First policy is: that 65 should remain the age of eligibility for Superannuation; the NZ Super Fund is capable of covering the costs of future retirees as long as the government keeps investing in it; and that 25 years contributing to New Zealand, is required before a pension.

Simple, straightforward and sustainable now, and in twenty years time.
UPDATED 11.03AM: A woman and an infant have been confirmed as the two people killed in a house fire in Taupo this morning.

Detective Senior Sergeant Matt Cranshaw says a scene examination is underway at the scene of the fatal fire.

Emergency services were called to the fire at a property on State Highway 5 in Rangitaiki, at 2.49am.

"Police can confirm that a woman and an infant are deceased. A further three people are being treated in hospital.

"A scene examination is being conducted by Police, Fire and ESR scientists," says Matt.

"Victim Support and Police are supporting the relatives of those involved during this time."

Police will not speculate on the cause of the fire until the investigation is concluded.

EARLIER:

Two people are dead and three others injured following a house fire in Taupo.

Emergency services were called to the fire at a property on State Highway 5 in Rangitaiki, at 2.49am.

Police say the three patients were airlifted to Waikato Hospital.

Their conditions are believed to be serious.

The cause of the fire is unknown and police, along with a fire safety officer, will return to the scene this morning to conduct a scene examination.

People with information about the fire are asked to contact their nearest police station.

Alternatively, information can be left anonymously via the Crimestoppers 0800 555 111 line.
While Katikati residents will be dancing in the street upon hearing the New Zealand Transport Agency is adding a bypass for the town to its State Highway 2 Waihi to Tauranga programme, two long-time supporters want the project to start swiftly.

The NZTA says since the $520 million Waihi to Tauranga programme was announced by Transport Minister Simon Bridges last April, further investigations to develop detailed solutions along the corridor has concluded a bypass is needed for Katikati.

NZTAs Central North Island regional relationships director Parekawhia McLean says while further work is required to determine the best route for a bypass and timing for design and construction its clear that removing the state highway from the town centre will keep people safe, continue to improve reliability for locals and tourists and improve access to Katikati.

But long-time bypass supporter and Katikati resident of 45 years, Don Wallis, thinks while political pressure and 2017 being an election year is going to get it much sooner construction should happen without further investigation.

Don says when the bypass was on the agenda last time, but shelved by the transport agency of the day due to two local businessmen objecting the plan, the community was told it was ready to go.

The route has already been set, the money has been paid [for the land], the engineering has been done to the cost of the ratepayers, says Don, who founded the Squeaky Wheel Action Group that protested for a bypass back then by repeatedly using the Main St pedestrian crossing  now controlled by a traffic light  to halt traffic they wanted out of town.

So that [further work required to determine the best route] is absolute rubbish  its stalling on paper.

Don says many in the community would feel that now NZTA has said the bypass is back on the programme, they should just get on with the job. Thats exactly what should happen.

Its nothing to do with bypassing Auckland traffic or anything, which is a fallacy. Its all to do with population growth. We [Katikati] have become an extension of Tauranga, were a suburb.

Fellow Katikati resident and long-time bypass campaigner John Logan asks: They didnt say at what timeframe it will begin or anything? as he hears of the news.

The bypass has been on the agenda before and been dropped off.

John says last time the bypass was halted there was a real fear among some  mainly the local business community  that Katikati would become a ghost town. They were saying: Whos going to come into Katikati to eat or shop when Tauranga is only half an hour away?.

Katikati is set to get a bypass  but the question is when?

But he feels the town is better placed now to grow and evolve after a bypass is built.

That why all of these groups, like the mural group, were set up  to create attractions in the town. And the population has grown enormously since then.

I think now  even with a bypass  Katikati is strong enough and big enough to stand on its own.

Parekawhiasays the NZTA expects to provide the community with more information on the timing, possible form and indicative cost of the bypass later this year.

Theres still a lot of work to be done and well keep the community fully informed as we progress.

Public open days on the SH2 Waihi to Tauranga programme will be held later this month.
A Tauranga to Auckland flight was among 16 domestic and international flights delayed when an aviation security dog escaped is handler at 4am and ran off onto the airfield.

The dog was shot dead at daylight after airport staff spent more than three hours trying to catch the dog.

Tauranga resident Adam Morris, a passenger on the 6am Tauranga-Auckland flight, tweeted about the plane being delayed by the dog being on the runway.

It is so awful to hear that the dog at Auckland Airport had to be put down. What an incredibly sad outcome.  Adam Morris (@bigmarnmorris) March 16, 2017

The Tauranga flight took off about 6.30am.

Counties Manakau Inspector Tracy Phillips confirmed that Auckland Airport staff directed police to shoot the AVSEC dog, which was loose at the airport this morning.

This followed considerable efforts over several hours by AVSEC and airport staff to contain the dog after it was first reported to be loose at 4am.

Police based at the airport provide a range of support, and were in a supporting role for this incident which was led by airport staff and AVSEC, says Tracy.

Our thoughts are with the AVSEC dog handler involved. This is not an outcome which anyone wanted, and police were only asked to be involved as a last resort.
Omokoroa Community Skate Group is going head-to-head against the countrys best and brightest voluntary groups and organisations at the Trustpower National Community Awards.

The supreme winners of the Trustpower Western Bay of Plenty District Community Awards held last year, will represent the area at the national awards which will be held in Rotorua on March 24-26.

Joining Omokoroa Community Skate Group at the awards will be representatives from 24 other voluntary groups or organisations from around New Zealand who were also named supreme winners at their regional Trustpower Community Awards.

Trustpower community relations representative Teresa Partridge says Omokoroa Community Skate Group have put together a wonderful eight minute presentation on what they have has achieved and why they deserve the title of Trustpower National Community Award Supreme Winner.

They will be judged on their presentation, along with a 1000 word summary of the organisation.

This band of volunteers worked so hard to make their skate park dream a reality, getting very creative with fundraising. The resulting skate park facility is for the community and offers a challenging, yet modest neighbourhood skate facility that can be enjoyed by all ages.

We cant wait for them to share their story on the national stage.

Heading along to the awards from the skate group will be Erin and Sam Cartwright, along with Western Bay of Plenty District Mayor Garry Webber and his wife Carole.

Should they be named the national supreme winner, the Omokoroa Skate Group will walk away with a custom-made trophy, $4000 in prize money, a framed certificate, plus a $1000 consultancy voucher from one of New Zealands leading training providers for the community sector, Exult.

The runner up will receive $2500 in prize money, a $500 Exult voucher and a framed certificate, while the Whetu Mataiata Award recipient receives a framed certificate and a consultancy service package from the award sponsor Exult.

The presentations take place on Saturday, March 25, in the BayTrust Forum at Rotorua Energy Events Centre, with the supreme winner, runner-up and Whetu Mataiata Award winner to be announced at an awards dinner that evening at Blue Baths.
A sea challenge will take place at the annual Northern Area Sea Cadets regatta being held at Sulphur Point, Tauranga, this weekend.

Teams from Hamilton, Auckland and Whangarei will compete with the local unit, the TS Chatham Sea Cadets.

Our Northern area skills regatta will have over 80 participants in seven units, says Lieutenant Commander Sandra Berry.

One from Tauranga, one from Hamilton, four from Auckland, and one from Whangarei.

They compete with nine cadets and one officer in each team, so thats 70 people plus staff that help run the various skills stands, whether it be mast building, using mast equipment to make a flag pole, putting the mast up, sailing, rope work, and marching.

The Cadet Forces in New Zealand is made up of three branches or corps. These are the Air training Corps, the New Zealand Cadet Corps and the Sea Cadets.

Each corps is modelled on a corresponding branch of the New Zealand Defence Force  the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF), the New Zealand Army and the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN).

The Sea Cadet Corps is the smallest of the three branches and has 16 units across New Zealand.

Each area of the Sea Cadets (Southern, Central and Northern) holds an annual regatta, and the Northern area regatta, based at Sulphur Point, will operate from the TS Chathams headquarters at the Tauranga Yacht Club.

The downstairs facilities house a kitchen, classroom, storage and hall where the cadets parade and do their drills. Usually they camp there during the regattas, sleeping on pads on the concrete floor.

During February, a practice weekend was held at Sulphur Point with the TS Achilles, TS Gambia and TS Bellona units invited from Auckland. Each of the Auckland units brought a Feva yacht, a Crown yacht, and a power boat. The Crowns are over 30 years old.

Amanda Ward, one of the parents was on staff helping with food preparation and support for the training weekend.

The TS Chatham Crowns are called Mutley and The Don, says Amanda.

The cadets restored the boats themselves under the guidance of Hutcheson Boat Builders over two winters. One of the project managers supervised the cadets through stripping back the boats. They take so much pride in those boats now.

Each of the crowns has a cadet on board who has passed the coxswains course where they are qualified in boat handling, including capsizing and man overboard. The February weekend conditions made it ideal for practising the more complicated manoeuvres like gibing, putting up a spinnaker and practising capsizing.

Cadets originated from a time of need, says Sandra, to train young people who were 16 and 17 years old so when they turned 18 they could join the military properly to be trained to go to war and meet the need.

TS Chatham Sea Cadet headquarters at Sulphur Point.

Sailing, shooting, rowing, ropes, kayaks, camps and sea challenges are all part of normal life for 18-year-old Sea Cadet warrant officers Tayla Wong-Lithgow and Sophyia Hilario who took part in the practice weekend.

I was looking for an extra-curricular activity to do, says Tayla, who got involved six years ago. Sea cadets sounded really cool. Theres heaps of activities and you get to meet lots of people. That really appealed to me.

We do a coxswain course, which teaches cadets how to sail, says Sophyia, who entered sea cadets five years ago and has a father serving in the New Zealand Defence Force. We assess them on their skills, which can be transferred into NCEA credits.

Youth can join sea cadets from age 13, usually staying on until age 19, when they choose to continue, join the forces, or leave, often for university.

Im planning on carrying on as an under officer, says Tayla, and after that I can commission as an officer.

Sophyia has a few months left to decide about her future.

Im trying to balance cadets, student life and work, says Sophyia, but cadets is so worth it.

They both enjoy sailing and making new friends.

Fundraising and looking for sponsors is a constant exercise, in order to replace essential equipment and maintain their corps. The cadets need 30-60 new Personal Flotation Devices. These retail at $100 each, or a total of $3000- $6000. They also fundraise to cover their operating costs of rent, photocopier servicing, insurance for the boats, RTs, life jackets, and other equipment.

In Term 2 and 3, the sea cadets go shooting at the Te Puke Range every Friday night. Over the summer their time is spent sailing, and weekends are for fundraising, parades and commemorations, such as Anzac Day.

New members can join from age 13, and meet at the TS Chatham Sea Cadet headquarters at Sulphur Point on Wednesday nights at 6.30pm.

The public is welcome to come watch the regatta over the weekend.

Tyler Fasching and Chris Simmons on the support boat.
Thousands of Kiwis are out and about celebrating St Patricks Day today - an Irish holiday remembering the patron saint who ministered Christianity in Ireland during the fifth century.

More than half a million Kiwis have Irish ancestry and the last Census revealed about 14,000 people identify as being Irish-born.

There are also a dozen Irish Societies dotted throughout New Zealand that celebrate the love of everything Irish.

A number of structures throughout the country will be lit up in green tonight to mark the occasion, includng the Sky Tower in Auckland, the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, and the New Brighton Pier in Christchurch.

Who is celebrating St Paddys Day in Tauranga?
Yes, we need to keep it under control

No, we need to learn to live with it
The Eurafrica Trail, the first mountain race in the world to be held in two continents and three countries, will be starting from Gibraltar for the first time this year. It is due to take place over five days from Wednesday 11 October, finishing on Sunday 15 in the Moroccan town of Chefchaouen.

This year will see the third edition of the popular race, which in the past has included 1,000 competitors from nine different countries and has needed 200 volunteers. However, this year's event will be more difficult than ever because, in addition to the 25 or 50 kilometre leg in the Alcornocales Natural Park in Andalucia and the final 40 kilometre leg in Chefchaouen, participants will have to do a four kilometre vertical climb from Europa Point in Gibraltar to O'Hara's Battery via the Mediterranean Steps.

The event has grown exponentially and has now established relationships with mainstream and specialized media partners around the world. Eurafrica Trail also has over 10,000 subscribers and its website statistics depict over 1.5 million online hits.

In addition to the competitive side of the event the Eurafrica Trail organisers are very conscious of the need to protect the natural environment within which the race is held and the communities that it involves. With this in mind, they have organised activities such as the planting of the Eurafrica Forest to reverse the carbon footprint of the race last year, and the cleaning of river channels in the Alcornocales Natural Park, which also took place in 2016.

Gibraltar's Ministry for the Environment is now exploring avenues of mutual interest so that suitable projects can be planned in the very near future.

Registration for the Eurafrica Trail opens on 30 March and can be accessed via the website www.eurafricatrail.com.
The roots that link Malaga with Ireland are more ingrained than many people might think.

Among the Irishmen who found a prominent place in the history of the city was a leather tanner named Thomas Livermore Page.

His name is etched into Malaga's history because two of his daughters married personalities of great importance in the development and future of the city.

George Campbell was a renowned Irish painter who had a 25-year love affair with Malaga. Campbell became acquainted with numerous Spaniards who had settled in Dublin during the 1940s, and he often painted visiting Spanish dancers in their traditional costume

Walter Starkie, the Irish scholar, Hispanist, author, musician and founder and first director of the British Institute in Madrid, was seduced by Spain.

One of his most famous works, Spanish Raggle-Taggle, is based on his travels through Spain during the 1930s.

Robert Boyd is probably one of the most popular Irish heroes connected with Spain. Boyd was one of the leaders of an ill-fated liberal uprising against Ferdinand VII that was captured and executed in 1831.
The province of Malaga lost its round number - exactly 100 - of municipalities on 17 March 2009. After years of campaigning, the small town of Villanueva de la Concepcion finally gained its independence from Antequera, becoming municipality number 101.

The segregation was approved that morning at the Junta de Andalucia's cabinet meeting and the locals immediately took to the streets, hooting their horns and letting off fireworks.

The people of Villanueva de la Concepcion, located at the foot of the famous El Torcal nature reserve, had begun their campaign for independence nearly 20 years previously, in 1980.

The next step came in 1992 when Villanueva earned itself the complicated title of Entidad de Ambito Territorial Inferior al Municipio (EATIM) which basically recognised its status as an administrative unit, but still governed by Antequera. Under this category, it had its own district mayor, 'alcalde pedaneo', and a residents council which could make decisions in areas such as construction and maintenance of country roads and fountains, among others.

In 2001 Villanueva de la Concepcion was promoted to the title of Entidad Local Autonoma (ELA) which earned it a higher level of self-government.

Finally, in 2007, the segregation papers went to Malaga for approval and then on to Seville, where the final agreement was signed.

The small town fulfilled all the requirements to apply to become independent, according to Andalusian law, in terms of population, size, financial sufficiency, identity and distance from the 'mother' town centre.

Villanueva de la Concepcion had a population of 3,417 at the time of its independence (3,304 in 2016). At 5.98 kilometres from Antequera, it covers 63.2 square kilometres, and, as well as Antequera, it borders with Almogia and Casabermeja to the south.

Often referred to as the 'pueblecillo' by the people of Antequera, the Villanovenses (as the locals are known) considered Antequera as a brother municipality of which they did not feel a part.

The earliest traces of human presence in the area date back to the Middle Palaeolithic period, and Neolithic stone tools have been found. The Iberians founded the first town, Osqva, which was later referred to by Roman historians Tito Livio and Plinio. The Roman town would have had temples and a theatre, according to historians. It is thought that the town was abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire.

In the Nasrid period the area was defended by a belt of five castles, of which one, Xebar, was in what is now the municipality of Villanueva, helping to safeguard the routes down to the coast.

Villanueva de la Concepcion gained importance again in the second half of the 18th century with the construction of the Camino Real to link Malaga and Madrid.

From then on the village gradually grew up again and was named a 'poblacion rural' in 1880.

Since 2009 two more villages have gained independence in the province, Montecorto and Serrato, both previously attached to Ronda, taking the total up to 103.
Thousands of Irish nationals, and those who assume the identity for the day, are gearing up for the biggest party of the year.

St Patrick's Day celebrations will be taking place all along the Costa del Sol today, and gallons of Guinness will be consumed by green-clad revelers whose only aim is to party.

Few of the partygoers spare much thought for the coordinators of these massive all-day events and the people behind the scenes rarely receive much recognition for their efforts.

The popular celebration held in Benalmadena every year is organised by the Irish Association of Spain. Founded by Tony Bell in 1997, the association facilitates social contact between the Irish people living in Spain, and their St Patrick's Day party is one of the most attended in the area.

However, the Irish association does much more than arrange the annual shindig in memory of the Apostle of Ireland. Terry McKinley, president of the association, explained that the objective of the platform is to assist and inform Irish nationals who have chosen Spain as their adopted home. They also offer their services to the thousands of Irish tourists who visit the Costa del Sol each year.

"We are not a club or welfare; there is no membership or fee, we simply provide an informative service to the Irish community who live or visit the Costa del Sol," the president told SUR in English.

There is an estimated 4,000 Irish nationals living in the province of Malaga and the association soon became their leading social and informative platform.

The service is not only available to the Irish community; it also offers help and information to people with a general interest in Irish history, culture and traditions.

The association has a list of teachers on their books, and so traditional Irish folk dancing lessons can be arranged for those who want to learn the Slip Jig, or other old style step dances.

Working closely with many of the town halls along the coast, the Irish Association publish details of upcoming events, clubs and classes that may be of interest to the Irish community.

Their website lists preferred service providers and their products are monitored to ensure the highest quality service. Another of their priorities is to promote and encourage the use of the many Irish-owned businesses in Spain.

The association also gives assistance to Spanish nationals wishing to travel to, or live in, Ireland. They offer help with problems tourists might encounter, like lost or stolen passports.

Their committee members can liaise with the consulate and the police, and assist with complicated paperwork like insurance claims and theft reports. They recently helped with the funeral arrangements of an Irish national who had died in Torremolinos.

"We are here for the benefit of all expatriates on the coast and even though we focus on the Irish community, our services are here for whoever may need them," Terry explained.

The Irish Association of Spain has been assisting Irish residents and tourists for twenty years. They are renowned for their ongoing service and long-standing traditional St Patrick's Day celebrations, and this year they have added another party to their agenda.

The first of this year's two celebrations begins at 12pm today. Mass will be held in the Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepcion in Arroyo de la Miel, followed by the traditional parade from the church to La Paloma Park.

The second party will be held on Saturday 18 March, in the Plaza La Nogalera in Torremolinos from 12pm until 6pm.
A Partido Popular councillor in Mijas, Santiago Martin, resigned on Thursday after SUR revealed the content of conversations in which a Podemos councillor, Francisco Martinez Avila, was offered a job in exchange for supporting a vote of no confidence in the current mayor of Mijas.

At a meeting on Tuesday, with Martin and the local PP president and former mayor Angel Nozal, it was also suggested that Martinez Avila, known as Curro, would not be reported for an alleged illegality in his salary paid by the town hall if he signed a motion that would put Nozal back in the mayors office.

The municipality is currently ruled by the centre-right Ciudadanos (Cs) party led locally by mayor Juan Carlos Maldonado. After Angel Nozal, who was mayor between 2011 and 2015, failed to repeat his overall majority in the last elections, the PP joined forces with Ciudadanos and Maldonado became mayor.

Disagreements, however, then led to a break in the two-party pact and Ciudadanos instead went into coalition with the socialist PSOE group. They have the support of Martinez Avila, the only CSSP (Podemos-supported) councillor, on key issues.

Car journey

Tuesdays meeting, which Martinez maintains was not the first time he has received offers from the PP, began when Santiago Martin picked up Martinez Avila in the car park of the Parque Acuatico. The first part of the taped conservation took place between the two councillors on their way to the appointment with Nozal at the headquarters of the Mancomunidad of the Western Costa del Sol, of which the former PP mayor is vice-president.

The CSSP representative expressed his concern about a court sentence that Angel Nozal allegedly planned to use to report Maldonado for irregularities. The sentence, according to Martin handed down by the supreme court, apparently argues that a councillor who does not belong to the local government team should not be paid a salary for working full time for the town hall, unless this is approved at the first council meeting of a term of office.

Using this sentence as a precedent, the PP believes that a lawsuit could bring serious legal consequences for Maldonado, as well as for Martinez, who would, according to the PP, have to pay back around 20,000 euros to the town hall.

In exchange for signing the no-confidence vote, which would make Nozal mayor, the PP, according to Tuesdays conversations, would keep the alleged sentence to themselves.

Im telling you that if Maldonado falls, this wont come up again, said Martin.

The subject of the vote of no confidence was discussed later during the meeting with Nozal.

To turn the tables at the town hall, we need a motion [of no confidence], said the former mayor.

This hypothetical no confidence vote would have taken place during the coming weeks, once the support of Martinez had been established as well as that of another councillor, Elena Abda, who is not affiliated to any party.

Job offer

Santiago Martin referred to the prospect of a job before the pair parted company again in the car park.

Dont let me down, Curro, said the PP councillor who stood down on Thursday. I can guarantee you the next four years at Club La Costa, I can get it out of Angel because he told me a year ago. Martin added that he could expect a salary of up to 1,500 euros and implied that it was an opportunity he couldnt afford to let pass by, as you speak English, youre an educated person, you want to study and go abroad, you want to do things.

On Thursday the public prosecution department decided to open its own investigation into the Caso Mijas to establish whether the events constitute a criminal offence.

Martinez Avila had previously stated that he would report the PP representatives for threats, coercion and influence peddling.

According to the Podemos councillor, this was not the first time that he had been pressured in this way. This was the last straw, he said referring to when Santiago Martin first mentioned the possible legal case regarding his salary. Theyve tried to offer me things before and this time I had to catch them out, he added. I felt blackmailed and I couldnt let that happen.
After several years of searching, Age Concern Fuengirola and Mijas is delighted to announce the opening of its first charity shop in the heart of Los Boliches. The shop is located at 56 Calle Francisco, just a two-minute walk from the church.

Age Concern Fuengirola and Mijas was formed in February 2014 and has already set up three drop-in centres and a welfare outreach programme.

The new shop, which will open its doors on Monday 20 March, is light and airy with plenty of room to walk around and browse. There is easy access for wheelchair users and the attentive, volunteer-staff will always be on hand to help.

Steve Marshall, secretary of Age Concern Fuengirola and Mijas, said, "It has taken a two year search before we settled on the right premises, although at the moment it's organised chaos, but we'll be alright on the day."

All items for sale are selected for their quality and the money generated from the shop will help to fund their charity and social work in the local community.

The shop will sell new and secondhand goods, including clothes, jewellery, fashion accessories, household items, tools, DVDs and books.

With additional stock arriving daily, there will be something for everyone and the organisers promise to keep their prices low.

The shop will be open from 10am until 2pm Monday to Friday, and they will also open from 5pm until 7pm on a Wednesday.

Age Concern Fuengirola and Mijas was started by a small group of volunteers who recognised the need to provide services and support for older people living in Spain.

The charity provides advice, help and friendship to the over 50s English-speaking expat community within the area around Fuengirola and Mijas.
The police investigation was labelled 'operacion Erario'(operation treasury). A Malaga business woman had complained to police last year that a tax official was allegedly asking for money to give advice on how to avoid or evade tax.

On Wednesday this week, the undercover police operation reached its climax when plainclothes officers and the investigating judge discreetly entered Malaga's main Hacienda office, on Avenida Andalucia next to El Corte Ingles, to arrest the employee.

Seven raids were carried out in total and six people were held in total, including at least two lawyers who belong to a 'gestoria' tax advisory that was working with the Hacienda official.
The Knit and Natter group has made another generous donation to the neonatal department of the Malaga maternity hospital.

More than 700 handmade baby garments were handed over to hospital staff during a presentation that was held in the Gelato & Mare ice cream parlour in Los Boliches last Thursday.

A selection of handmade blankets and covers, bonnets, boots and jumpers had been knitted and crocheted by the Los Boliches based group; many of whom were also present at the hand over.

Since forming in 2009, the Knit and Natter group has donated thousands of handmade garments to the maternity hospital. The clothes are used for the newborn babies of underprivileged families, especially those born prematurely.

A representative from the hospital said, "We are very grateful to the knitters for their generous donation. These garments will help families in difficult situations."

Helen Ulfseth, the group's spokesperson, thanked all the knitters for their tireless commitment.
Mayor of Marbella, Jose Bernal, led a town-council delegation to Moscow for the MITT tourism fair in the Russian capital this week. It aimed to consolidate the municipality's position as a popular tourist destination in that country.

The Russian market is an interesting proposition for Marbella, who want to encourage people not just to visit the town but also to make it their second home, due to Russia's strong economy and purchasing power.

Visitors with the supplement. / SUR

As an extra initiative at the show, SUR showed once again its commitment to the tourism sector with a special 24-page supplement in Russian which recommended the Costa del Sol as a destination and with a dedicated section on Marbella also included.

This supported the council's other aim which was to highlight the quality and excellence of the surrounding area, considering many visitors already know a lot about Marbella town itself.

The town had its own stand for the first time at the fair, held between Tuesday and Thursday, as part of a strategy to catch up with Catalonia, which is still the preferred destination in Spain for Russians.
British travel giant Thomas Cook discussed its business strategies for summer tourist destinations at its 'Destination Management Conference' at the Palacio de Congresos conference centre in Torremolinos this week.

In a boost for the Costa del Sol's image, Torremolinos was chosen to host the annual event which was attended by more than 250 executives from 50 countries. Peter Frankhauser, company chief executive, led the two-day meeting and set out to brief staff on current social and political factors affecting the tourism market and to anticipate operational issues that may occur from now until the end of the summer.

Spain is Thomas Cook's most popular destination, with the company expecting to look after a similar number this summer to the 4.5 million tourists who travelled to the country last year on its packages.

Support from the mayor

The conference was opened by the mayor of Torremolinos, Jose Ortiz, who was keen to highlight the strong historical links that the company, as "pioneer of tourism", has with the Costa town.

Ortiz also emphasised the importance of public and private partnerships and a strong relationship between all travel agents as key to seeing Torremolinos become "a leading tourism product".

The mayor also reminded those present of the 100 million euros invested by the local hotel industry in the last two years in the town, which has been "one of the biggest renovation and modernisation programmes seen on the Costa del Sol in decades". Some 20 per cent of the 21,000 rooms in the municipality are expected to have been modernised.

Thomas Cook plans to increase flights to the Spanish mainland this summer, in addition to its increased programme to the islands. Extra flights have been scheduled to Malaga and Almeria airports among others.

The mayor took advantage of the occasion to invite the directors, managers and executives of the company to discover for themselves the many attractions that are on offer in Torremolinos, which is aiming beyond the traditional image of sun and beaches in order to turn itself into a new global, multi-experience destination.
The Basque terrorist group ETA has said that it will conclude its total disarmament by 8 April. One of the five people arrested last year in the south of France, Jean-Noel Etcheverry, made the announcement through a column in the French newspaper Le Monde.

He was among those arrested in December when they were trying to dispose of weapons used by the terrorist group.

According to sources, "civil intermediaries", acting in the name of ETA, will inform the French judicial authorities of the location of the last remaining weapons caches over the next few days. These will then be dismantled under the supervision of the International Verification Commission. The disarmament, said the sources, will be unilateral and unconditional.

"Caution"

Spanish government spokesperson, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said on Friday that the announcement was being treated with "caution" and that the government's position had not changed since 2011.

"ETA has to do two things," he said, "Disarm and disband."

"Credible"

The spokesperson for the Basque independence party EH Bildu, Arnaldo Ortegi, described the announcement of the total disarmament as "good news" and said it was "totally credible".
The former president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, has been banned from public office for two years by a Barcelona court for his part in the organisation of an independence referendum held in November 2014. Two other former regional ministers were also banned from office.

The court found that the regional government, headed by Mas at the time, had provided logistical support for the vote, despite the Constitutional Court ruling the vote illegal. Mas had claimed that the vote wasn't a referendum but a "voluntary political process". A decision is still awaited from the Supreme Court on Francesc Homs, ex-cabinet minister, on the same charge.

'Spain is a funfair democracy'

Mas hit out at the decision, saying that Spain was a "funfair democracy" and that the law wasn't the same for everyone. Mas also faces extra pressure on his political career as his name has been linked to the 'Palau' corruption case, when commission was allegedly paid to local politicians for awarding public contracts.

Another banned referendum is controversially planned for September this year by regional politicians.
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Spanish retail giant, Inditex, carried on its upward march in 2016 and continued to beat its own sales records. The Galicia-based company, which owns brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear and Stradivarius, saw sales of 23.31 billion euros worldwide in the twelve months ending 31 January, an increase of 12 per cent. Over 15 billion of these sales came from the Zara brand.

Group sales grew in each of the 93 countries where it operates. There were 279 net store openings last year and it now has 7,292 shops around the world.

Inditex profits increased ten percent to 3.1 billion euros, helping it keep its market leadership and beating nearest rival H&M.

Reporting the annual results this week, Pablo Isla, company chairman and CEO, thanked the group's 160,000 employees globally. Staff levels increased by 9,596 on 2015.

It was also announced that Amancio Ortega, Inditex founder and one of the world's richest men, was lucky enough to walk away with a 1.3-billion-euro dividend.

In Madrid, Zara is getting ready to open its biggest store in the world on 7 April, with 6,000 square metres of retail space.
Work on Phase I of the Rocky Gap Greenway Project, 2,500 feet of sidewalk that stretches along U.S. 52 from Bland County High School to Woodys, is nearing completion. The concrete sidewalk has been laid, and 16 street lights designed like Victorian-era lamp posts are being installed. Asphalt work should be finished when the weather warms up later this month, said Bland County Administrator Eric Workman.

The community-driven greenway project is an off-shoot of the local Ruritan Clubs beautification program. The greenway will link Rocky gaps Old Phoenix Bridge, The Veterans Memorial and other sites near Wolf Creek and Laurel Creek

The project started thanks to seed money from the Wythe-Bland Foundation and, eventually, the county received grants to pay for the project. In all, more than one million dollars has been raised in grant funding.

County officials believe the greenway will benefit the areas health and economy, as more visitors and cyclists enjoy it.

Phase I of the greenway project was funded by grants from the Virginia Department of Transportation Safe Routes to Schools program and from the Wythe-Bland Foundation.

Next up is Phase II, the refurbishing of the Phoenix Bridge and the creation of a 10-foot-wide walking/biking trail from Eagles Road along old Route 61 to the Veterans Memorial. Plans also call for a parking lot near the memorial.

County leaders hope work on Phase II will begin this summer.

So far, the county has secured $600,000 from the Virginia Department of Transportation for the project. The money is earmarked for rehabilitation of the bridge, trail construction, and parking at the Veterans Memorial. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has provided for an engineering study of the bridge and the evaluation of any environmental or structural repairs that are needed.

To reach Millie Rothrock, call 228-6611, ext. 35, or email
Rural Retreat native Doris Crouse-Mays has been named as one of eight 2017 Virginia Women in History honorees.

The Library of Virginia program recognizes the achievements of women, past and present, who have contributed to the states history.

In addition to a ceremony at the Library of Virginia in Richmond later this month, Crouse-Mays will be honored in Rural Retreat on Friday, March 24, at 7 p.m. at the Grace Lutheran Church. Admission is free.

In 2006, Crouse-Mays became the first woman to hold executive office in the Virginia AFL-CIO (American Federal of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) when she was elected to a four-year term as its secretary-treasurer. Four years later, she was the first woman elected president of the organization; she was re-elected to another four-year term in 2014. In her role, Crouse-Mays has emphasized the importance of labor unions working with businesses to achieve fair wages, health care, job safety, and retirement security for Virginias workforce.

The AFL-CIO is umbrella federation for U.S. unions, with 55 unions representing 12.5 workers.

Just a little ole country girl from Wythe County, Rural Retreat  pretty amazing, Crouse-Mays said. I found out several months ago. I had to read the (notification) letter three times to see if I was reading it correct. I am very thrilled.

Another reason Im thrilled is the fact that coming from a rural part of this state and growing up there and going to school and college, graduating from WCC  all through this process - I never had in my mind I would make history in anything; I just tried to do well in everything I did, she said. The values that come from smaller towns, with the education, smaller classrooms, more individual attention to help you grow educationally and just working through life. You get all of those values, and Ive maintained those values no matter where I was and where I went.

Born in Rural Retreat, Crouse-Mays is the daughter of Fred and Gladys Brewster Crouse. A 1977 graduate of Rural Retreat High School, she started her career as a telephone operator and quickly became involved in the labor movement as a shop steward. She joined the Communications Workers of America and later worked as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (later UNITE/HERE). Winning accolades for increasing union membership, Crouse-Mays became the Virginia state field director for the national American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1997. She attracted new members and expanded the organizations political influence. In 2001, she served as the statewide coordinator for the AFL-CIOs political program, and two years later was named political director of the Virginia AFL-CIO. A member of the Virginia Democratic Party Steering and Central Committee, she was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 2008 and was named to the transition committee for governor-elect Terry McAuliffe in 2013. She serves on the board of Emerge Virginia, which seeks to identify, encourage, and train women to run for political office.

Crouse-Mays said she enjoys improving the working life for men and women. Issues her organization is working on include raising the minimum wage, increasing pay for teachers and ensuring workplace safety.

I enjoy what I do because when I see the ability to change workers lives and empower them, there is no greater satisfaction then that, Crouse-Mays said. I know there are those that may not look favorably on unions, but we are the ones that brought about labor standards, 40-hour work weeks, the weekends, even holidays and many more benefits. Workers having unions gives them a venue to fight for dignity, respect, earn a fair wage and retire with security.

Crouse-Mays sense of fairness stretches back to her high schools days, she said.

Going back to my earlier (even high school days) I have always been about fairness and treating people with respect, she said. One of my signatures in my yearbook was that I should be a lawyer because I would argue with a fence post. Well I am not a lawyer, but I will argue if I think and feel workers are being mistreated. So being drawn to the labor movement and working with unions is a natural fit for me.

The one thing that workers want the most is to be treated fairly, she added. It amazes me that the one thing workers want the most does not cost anything. It costs nothing to treat workers fairly.

The Library of Virginia is honoring Crouse-Mays along with seven other women. The other honorees are Louise Harrison McCraw (1893-1975), a cofounder of a circulating library for the blind; Undine Anna Smith Moore (1904-1989, an internationally recognized composer; Mary Virginia Jones (b. 1940), one of the first women to graduate from Virginia Tech with a degree in mechanical engineering; Nora Houston (1883-1942), an artist who worked for woman suffrage; Martha Dillard Franck Rollins (b. 1943) and Corazon Sandoval Foley (b. 1950, two women who advocate for minority communities; and Cynthia Eppes Hudson (b. 1959), the chief deputy attorney general for the commonwealth of Virginia.

The eight honorees are featured in the 2017 Virginia Women in History exhibition on display on the second floor of the Library of Virginia in Richmond during the month of March, Womens History Month. The exhibition will then travel to libraries, schools, and cultural institutions across the state. Copies of a poster featuring the women and learning activities tied to the Virginia Standards of Learning have been distributed to public and private schools and cultural institutions across Virginia.

The 2017 Virginia Women in History program culminates on March 30 with a program recognizing the honorees.

For more information, visit the librarys website at www.lva.virginia.gov or call 804-692-3999.

To reach Millie Rothrock, call 228-6611, ext. 35, or email mrothrock@wythenews.com.
Fire.JPG

An early morning fire damaged a home at 212 Lakeview Avenue in Syracuse on Friday, March 17, 2017.

(Samantha Mendoza | syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - An early morning fire Friday on Syracuse's West Side forced eight people from their home.

The fire at 212 Lakeview Ave was reported at 3:36 a.m., according to the Onondaga County 911 center. Witnesses said the fire department put the fire out in a matter of minutes.

A woman could be heard screaming after the fire broke out, neighbors said. Thick smoke could be seen coming from second-floor windows, they said.

Today, a second-floor window was partially boarded up and some burned debris could be seen on a first-floor porch roof.

The American Red Cross provided assistance to five adults and three children displaced by the fire, the group said in a news release.
Don Cazentre

Ranking America's biggest breweries

The United States is now home to more than 4,000 breweries, from giant international conglomerates to tiny neighborhood nanobreweries and brewpubs. The Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association, a trade group representing independent craft brewers, this week released its annual lists of the top 50 breweries in the country, ranked by sales volume. There are two lists -- one is the top 50 breweries overall, and the other is the top 50 craft breweries. Note: The 2017 list is based on 2016 sales figures.

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DimaSobko

A brewer vs. a 'craft' brewer

What's a craft brewer? This has always been a difficult question to answer, and has only gotten harder as the industry has grown. The Brewers Association defines a craft brewer as small, independent and traditional. The difference between craft and non-craft was always based partly on size, and the current BA definition is that a craft brewery makes less than 6 million barrels a year (a barrel is 31 gallons). The BA also contends that a craft brewer is one that is less-than-25-percent owned or controlled by a non-craft brewer. The final piece of the definition is most important: It says that a majority of the production for a craft brewer is beer whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation. That essentially rules out beers like Bud, Miller and Coors which use non-traditional adjunct grains to lighten the flavor and body of the beer.

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Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships etc.

Ranking the top brewers has also been complicated in recent years by a series of acquisitions, mergers and takeovers. That has affected the standing of many of the Upstate New York breweries on the list. Click through the remaining slides to see which Upstate breweries cracked the Top 50 overall and Top 50 craft breweries.

Photo: Southern Tier Brewing Co. in Lakewood, near Jamestown, formed a partnership last year with Victory Brewing Co. in Pennsylvania. See where the new partnership ranks below.

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Kirsty Wigglesworth

Anheuser-Busch Inbev

New York state location:

Baldwinsville

Overall rank:

No.1. (No. 1 in 2016)

Craft brewer rank: N/A

The worlds largest brewer makes our Upstate list because one of its 12 U.S. breweries is in the Radisson Business Park just outside of Baldwinsville. That plant opened in 1976 as a Schlitz brewery, then was taken over by A-B. In addition to Budweiser and Bud Light it makes an assortment of flavored malt beverages, plus hard ciders and some craft beers the company has acquired, like Goose Island and Blue Point. The Baldwinsville plant, with four 1,000-barrel brew kettles, is by far the largest brewery in New York state.

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SCOTT SCHILD

North American Breweries (Genesee)

New York state location:

Rochester

Overall rank: No. 5 (No. 6 in 2016)

Craft brewer rank: N/A

North American Breweries is the name of the company that operates Genesee Brewing Co., Dundee Ales & Lagers and other American beer brands like Magic Hat and Pyramid. It is not considered a craft brewer, though the small Genesee Brew House adjacent to the big Genesee brewery might qualify as craft if it was independently owned. North American Breweries is owned by the Florida Ice & Farm Co. of Costa Rica, makers of Imperial beer. It jumped up one spot in the 2017 ranking, passing Boston Beer Co. (Sam Adams) to move into 5th place overall.

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Duvel Moortgat (Brewery Ommegang)

New York State location: Cooperstown

Overall rank: No. 12 (No. 22 in 2016)

Craft brewer rank: No. 6 (No. 15 in 2016)

This is the U.S. subsidiary of the Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat. Duvel was a founding partner in Cooperstowns Brewery Ommegang in 1997 and bought the Belgian-style beer maker outright in 2005. In 2013, it acquired the much larger Boulevard Brewing Co. of Kansas City (and has since joined with Californias Firestone Walker), causing it to jump high up the annual lists of largest American brewers. It moved up a whopping 10 spots in the overall list from 2016 to 2017, and 9 spots in the craft beer list.

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David Lassman

Artisanal Brewing Ventures (Southern Tier)

New York state location: Lakewood (near Jamestown)

Overall rank: No. 22 (No. 40 in 2016)

Craft brewer rank: No. 13 (No. 33 in 2016)

No New York brewery had a bigger year-to-year jump in the rankings than Southern Tier Brewing Co., now part of Artisanal Brewing Ventures. Southern Tier was founded in the far southwest corner of New York in 2003, and quickly earned a reputation as one of the best beer-makers in the country. It also expanded quickly. It's big jump in this year's rankings came after its 2016 partnership with the larger Victory Brewing Co. of Pennsylvania.

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Submitted photo

Matt Brewing Co. (Saranac)

New York state location: Utica

Overall rank: No. 26 (No. 24 in 2016)

Craft brewer rank: No. 17 (No change from 2016)

The largest family-owned brewery in New York state, now more than 125 years old, was a non-craft brewer for a century, with beers like Utica Club and Matts Premium. It turned to craft brewing with the introduction of the Saranac line in the late 1980s, and now that is by far its biggest product. It also owns Flying Bison Brewing of Buffalo and makes beer for other craft brewers under contract. It is the only Upstate brewery in the Top 50 to fall in the list since last year, but just by two spots, from 24 to 26 in the overall rankings.

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Michelle Gabel

Other Upstate NY connections

Gordon Biersch, a national brewpub chain based in California, has two locations in Upstate New York -- Buffalo and Syracuse. It ranked No. 43 overall and No. 34 among craft brewers. Brooklyn Brewery (No. 20 overall and No. 11 in craft) is headquartered in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, but has most of its beer produced under contract Matt Brewing in Utica. Ballast Point Brewing of San Diego (No. 17 overall and 11 in craft for 2015) was purchased in 2015 by Constellation Brands, a giant beverage company based outside of Rochester. Also: One other New York state brewery made the Brewers Association Top 50. Sixpoint Brewing, of Red Hook, Brooklyn, ranked No. 43 on the craft brewery list (but didn't make the overall list). Photo: Pouring beer at the Gordon Biersch at Destiny USA in Syracuse

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Don Cazentre | dcazentre@syracuse.com

More on America's biggest breweries

Check out the national Brewers Association for the Top 50 lists and other brewery information and statistics.

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- For the next two weekends, maple producers across New York will open their doors for tours, demonstrations and samples as part of New York State Maple Weekend.

Maple Weekend, now in its 22nd year, will be held March 18, 19, 25 and 26 at 168 sugar shacks, museums and other locations across the state. Most locations will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on those days.

Some producers will also be hosting all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts featuring their homemade syrup.

Smartphone users can also download the NYS Maple Weekend app, which provides a searchable database of participating locations and pancake breakfasts, as well as turn-by-turn directions. It is available on iTunes or Google Play.

Below is a guide to the producers hosting Maple Weekend events in Central New York this year. For the full list of locations in New York State, visit nysmaple.com.

Cayuga County

214 Chipmans Corners Road

Locke, N.Y., 13092

(607) 423-2775

In their words: 10,000 plus taps flow right into sugarhouse on modern tubing systems. Boiling syrup, free samples, product demonstrations. New reverse osmosis machine.

Cortland County

1335 West Valley Road

Preble, N.Y., 13141

(315) 636-8569

In their words: Daily demonstrations of evaporator, reverse osmosis, and vacuum system. Storytime, samples and cooking demos. Maple coffee and scones with maple cream available for $3.

291 Cooper Hill

Marathon, N.Y., 13803

(607) 849-7865

In their words: We will have tapping demos, free samples and tours of our sugar house.

Madison County

3232 Rippleton Road (Rt 13 south)

Cazenovia, NY 13035

(315) 662-3355

Pancake breakfast dates: March 18, 19, 25 and 26, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Pancake breakfast menu: Pancakes with fresh Critz Farms maple syrup, French toast, scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, maple-cooked ham, juice, coffee, tea and hot cocoa.

Pancake breakfast prices: Adults: $8.50; ages 8 to 12: $6.50; ages 3 to 7: $3.50.

In their words:

We will be boiling sap on a wood-fired evaporator. Sugar house tours & wagon rides into the sugarbush will be offered from 9-3. We will be serving an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet from 9-1. Maple popcorn & other specialty items for sale. Free Samples! Farm Brewery & Winery tasting room open featuring hand crafted hard ciders and beers sweetened with pure maple syrup.

697 State Route 26

Georgetown, N.Y., 13072

(315) 837-4480

Pancake breakfast dates: March 25 and 26 at the Georgetown Fire Department, 954 State Route 26.

Pancake Breakfast Menu: Pancakes, sausage gravy, hash browns, scrambled eggs, coffee, juice and Many Maples pure maple syrup.

Pancake Breakfast Prices: Adults $8; children ages 5 to 12:$5; children under 5 are free.



In their words: Maple tours, from tap to table. Free samples of products. Recipes and advice on cooking with maple. Tours of our new sugarhouse. Pancake breakfast at the Georgetown Fire Department from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, March 25 and 8 a.m. to 12 noon Sunday March 26th. Pancakes, sausage gravy, hash browns, scrambled eggs, coffee, juice and Many Maples pure maple syrup!

Oneida County

5275 State Route 31

Verona, N.Y., 12478

(315) 335-0887

Pancake breakfast dates: March 18, 19, 25, and 26, from 7:30 a.m. to noon.

Pancake breakfast menu: pancakes, eggs, toast, sausage and syrup.

Pancake Breakfast Prices: Adults: $8.00; senior citizens and children under 12: $6.00.



In their words: Maple sap house tours, open house, Maple Queen and Princess presentations cooking with maple, sale of maple syrup and maple products. Sunday, March 26th - 2017 tree tapping ceremony, maple coloring contest winners.

7945 Maxwell Road,

Clinton, N.Y., 13323

(315) 725-0547

In their words: Tours of the sugar house as we are boiling the sap on our wood-fired evaporator. Watch our process and see us making fresh maple cotton candy to sample. We will also have other maple products along with our maple syrup available to sample or purchase.Recipes to share and kids or parents can stir their own maple cream to eat.

8874 Tibbitts Road

New Hartford, N.Y., 13413

(315) 793-3114

In their words: Educational tours will be given.

Onondaga County

3769 Pleasant Valley Road

Syracuse, N.Y. 13215

(315) 469-6422

In their words: Come taste the first harvest of the year. Take a free tour and try some free samples. We will be operating our new evaporator, making maple cotton candy and other maple recipes. Come see our expanded sugar house. Take a spring walk in our sugar bush!

For sale: Cedarvale Maple Syrup, with 265 acres and thousands of maple, Christmas trees

1420 Dutch Hill Road

Tully, N.Y., 13159

(315) 696-6109

In their words: Come see how the Dutch Hill Maple family has been producing syrup for almost 50 years in the beautiful hills of Tully, N.Y., where sweetness is in our roots. You'll learn just how pure maple syrup is made and you'll be able to sample all of your maple favorites. We look forward to welcoming you into our sugar house and sharing our love of all things maple with you!

8597 Pierce Road

Jordan, N.Y., 13080

(315) 689-9833

Pancake breakfast dates: March 18, 19, 25 and 26, from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

Pancake breakfast menu: Coffee, orange juice, pancakes, home fries, sausage, real maple syrup, and eggs.

Pancake breakfast prices: $6 per person. Children under 5 are free.



In their words: Making maple syrup - maybe wax on snow, maple granulated sugar, maple cream, other maple products. All new this year: demonstrations will show sap gathering the old way with buckets to the more modern tubing and vacuum system. We also have an evaporator with energy efficient steam system, and have installed a reverse osmosis system. We have maple popcorn, maple soft ice cream, maple cotton candy, & molded maple sugar.

Oswego County

86 Guernsey Road

Hannibal, N.Y., 13074

(315) 593-2329

In their words: It is that time of year when the air around the sugar bush is filled with the sweet smell of Pure Maple Syrup. Maple Hill Farm has been in operation since 2001. Come walk the sugar bush woods and watch the syrup making and bottling process in the sugar house. The sugar house features a Leader oil-fired arch along with a Leader Steamaway. Dress for the weather and bring your mud boots!

2437 County Route 4

Fulton, N.Y., 13069

(315) 243-1024

Pancake breakfast dates: March 18, 19, 25 and 26, from 8 a.m. to noon.

Pancake breakfast menu: Pancakes topped with 100 percent pure maple syrup, locally-produced sausage, maple coffee, tea, juice and milk.

Pancake breakfast prices: Adults: $6.50; children: $4.

In their words: Come gather with family and friends for an authentic maple experience where new technology meets family tradition. Smell the sweet aroma of pure maple syrup while you tour the Enders Family "sugar house" and sample our maple confections. We feature family-friendly activities including movies of the sugar making process, tapping demonstrations, coloring contests and more!

524 County Route 64

Mexico, N.Y., 13114

(315) 380-1416

In their words: Come tour our sugar house and see the whole process of sap being turned into pure maple syrup. We have miles of pipeline that collects sap from roughly 2000 maple trees and brings it right inside our sugar house where you can watch it fill our holding tanks. From there it goes through filters and a reverse osmosis machine that removes large amounts of water from the sap before it heads off to the evaporator to be boiled into pure NYS maple syrup. There are always plenty of free samples as well as a tapping demonstration inside the sugar house where you can practice tapping your own maple tree.

1309 County Route 85

Hannibal, N.Y., 13074

(315) 564-7133

In their words: Events include: free maple basket raffle each weekend, self-guided tour through the sugarbush, learn how to identify a hard maple tree, which ones are suitable to tap, how to tap and more. In and around the barn you can feed, pet, milk, learn about and love our farm animals. Come meet and enjoy Emma the big Brown Swiss cow (Supreme Champion Oswego County Fair), her newest baby Emma Lou and several other new farm babies. Enjoy collecting eggs from the hen house and several other activities. Come enjoy the day at Maple Hollow Farm where everyone leaves a little sweeter!

Seneca County

1451 County House Road

Waterloo, N.Y., 13165

(315) 539-0445

In their words: Wood Fired Evaporator will be boiling if weather permits. Come taste our free samples!

Tompkins County

1420 Taughannock Blvd.

Ithaca, N.Y., 14850

(607) 273-6260

Pancake breakfast dates: March 18 and 19.

Pancake breakfast menu: Pancakes, maple syrup, sausage links, apple crisp, coffee and orange juice.

Pancake breakfast prices:

Non-members: Adults: $12; seniors and children: $7; children age 3 and under: Free. Family (up to five): $35.

Members: Adults: $10; seniors and children: $5; children age 3 and under: Free. Family (up to five): $25. Free for Young Naturalist Access Program members.

In their words: Join the Cayuga Nature Center for our annual celebration of all things maple at Maple Fest 2017, March 18 & 19. This year's Maple Fest will feature live music (10am to 2pm), a delicious pancake breakfast (9am to 2pm), live animal presentations (programs begin at 11 am and 1pm) and fun, education activities, crafts, vendors, and maple-tapping demonstrations throughout the day. Come discover the science behind one of upstate New York's most valuable forest products!
ROME, NY - The owner and operator of an auto sales business in Oneida County has been sentenced for failing to turn in sales taxes he collected over a five year period, according to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

Ricky J. Hoke, 61, of 4817 Humaston Road, pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal tax fraud, a felony. As part of his sentence in Oneida County court, he must pay back the $70,732 he collected in sales tax but didn't remit to the state, the department said.

Hoke was charged with underreporting sales taxes he collected from customers from 2010 to 2015, the department said. He also was sentenced to five years probation.

"When merchants collect tax on automobile sales from customers and fail to remit the tax, they're stealing from the state and the local communities who depend on the sales tax revenue to fund critical public programs and services," said Nonie Manion, acting tax commissioner.

New Yorkers aware of sales tax evasion or fraud can anonymously report it online or by calling 518-457-0578.
2014-07-21-mg-colella4.JPG

Syracuse Parks and Recreation's The Stan Colella All-Star Band performs in Clinton Square in 2014. The event was a part of the ArtsWeek in Downtown Syracuse's Jazz Up Your Lunch Series.

(Michelle Gabel | mgabel@syracuse.com)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Local arts and education groups would lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars if President Donald Trump's budget passes Congress.

Trump's proposed budget would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Company for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Together, those four agencies account for $1.02 billion in the federal budget, less than one percent of the total budget. Each channels money into Central New York's non-for-profit cultural and educational organizations.

In Syracuse, cutting the NEA would have the most visible impact.

CNY Jazz Central Executive Director Larry Luttinger said eliminating the NEA would create an "existential crisis" for local arts organizations like his.

"The overall domino effect from this action would be devastating," he said. "It's challenging enough running an arts organization in Central New York. We don't need a tsunami."

Over the last 10 years, the NEA has awarded more than $1 million to local organizations, including CNY Jazz, CNY Arts, the Erie Canal Museum, Light Work, the Everson Museum, Syracuse Stage, the Redhouse and Syracuse Opera, among others.

Additionally, about 40 percent of the NEA's funding is given to the states to dole out. The New York State Council on the Arts, which distributes money to local arts groups, received $751,675 last year. The Council supports things like the Everson Museum, the Onondaga Historical Association and the YMCA.

Light Work, a non-for-profit group that supports photographers, has been receiving NEA grants since the 1970s. They received $40,000 this year to support an artist-in-residency program.

Executive Director Jeffrey Hoone said the money is a small part of the organization's budget, but the grant is used to leverage other investment.

"Grants are done through peer review -- you're in competition across the country," he said. "When you get a grant, it means you've met certain standard of excellence. That's important in getting other funders to give money."

Hoone added that the money also demonstrates support of the arts, which "make life worth living."

Natalie Stetson is executive director of the Erie Canal Museum, which this year received a $60,000 NEA grant to present an Erie Canal documentary in cities along the canal, including a showing in Baldwinsville.

She said the money isn't part of the annual budget, but is used for special projects like the film -- things a small museum like hers could never afford otherwise.

Arts and culture program, she said, are always on the chopping block. Trump's recent proposal feels a little scarier, though.

"We're always asking not to cut our funding, probably since the NEA was founded," she said. "There was always a good deal of hope that representatives would listen to us. There's something in the air now that feels a little more real and a little more solid."

In all, Trump's budget would totally eliminate 19 agencies, including the NEA.

Some are well known, like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for television and radio networks, like Central New York's WRVO.

Others are less familiar, like the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

In addition to supporting museums like the Erie Canal Museum, the IMLS has given millions of dollars to Syracuse University's School of Information Studies to support research and education programs for students.

Dr. Ruth Small is Meredith Professor of Information Studies at the iSchool. She said she has received more than a dozen grants from IMLS since 2003. Those grants allow her to fund research projects with a national scope.

One such project created a database of thousands of lesson plans for teaching media literacy -- how to evaluate the authenticity of information, i.e. "fake news." Those plans are available to schools across the country for free. The iSchool maintains the database.

Small said the grants have partially or fully funded tuition and work for more than 100 students.

SU also receives less frequent grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Last year, the NEH awarded $50,400 to a Syracuse University professor to study the cultural impact of tea. Another group of professors is using a two-and-a-half-year, $29,879 grant from the NEH to create a digital cultural map of Onondaga Lake.
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump exits the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 3, 2017.

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

It's time for President Donald Trump to put up or shut up. Either supply evidence that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign, or retract the claim and move on. The longer this farce drags out, the more Trump damages his credibility and demeans the office of President of the United States.

Long before he was elected, Trump had a casual relationship with facts and a reluctance to admit error. (Exhibit A: the demonstrably false claim that Obama was not born in the United States. It took five years for Trump to retract it.) Winning the White House didn't change him. On Day Two of his presidency, Trump fumed about photos comparing the crowds at his inauguration to Obama's - even though everyone could discern reality with their own eyes.

That was only the first inkling of the cloud of "alternative facts" emanating from the Trump White House, on matters great (i.e., the wiretapping business) and small (i.e., who actually wrote Trump's inaugural speech). A White House statement made in all seriousness one day is written off as a joke the next. Laugh all you want about Kellyanne Conway's spying microwave; what the administration's shape-shifting rhetoric is doing to political discourse, and confidence in the executive office, is desperately unfunny.

It is not possible to have a rational debate about the policies being implemented by the new administration when you can't trust half of what it says. It is not possible for our allies and adversaries to conduct diplomacy when the words coming out of the administration change meaning from one day to the next.

Most worrisome is what might happen in a real crisis - a terrorist incident, say, or a North Korean missile strike. Would the public believe the president? Would the world?

Trump and his staff are standing by the wiretapping claims, in the face of denials by Obama, members of the intelligence community and strong skepticism from both parties in Congress. FBI Director James Comey is scheduled to testify Monday in a public session of the House Intelligence Committee. He will be forced to address Trump's claim directly. That should put an end to all this tail-chasing.

The stated purpose of Comey's appearance is to discuss the FBI's investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election. It might be worse for Trump if it turns out the wiretaps of which he speaks were listening in on foreign actors talking to the Trump campaign. After all, it was routine surveillance of Russia's ambassador to the United States that led to the firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for prematurely discussing sanctions.

If the president is proved right, we'll admit our error. If he's proved wrong, will he?
Congressman John Katko meets with demonstrators

U.S. Rep. John Katko, R-Camillus, says he will oppose the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare because it's not good for New York. Demonstrators confronted Katko about the health care bill and other issues outside of the Blarney Stone in Syracuse on March 6, 2017. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. John Katko on Friday became the second GOP House member from Central New York to say he can't support a Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Katko, R-Camillus, who had voiced previous concerns with the replacement bill, said House Republicans still have not done enough to address his concerns that the measure is bad for New Yorkers.

"Fundamentally, I don't believe this proposal provides an adequate market-based option for insurance access, nor does it address out-of-control costs," Katko said in a statement. "Further, I am confident the proposal would harm hospitals across my district. Hurting New York state, to benefit other regions, does not sit well with me."

Claudia Tenney, R-New Hartford, of the neighboring 22nd Congressional District, told Syracuse.com on Wednesday that she is leaning toward voting against the GOP bill because some of its changes are bad for New Yorkers.

Tenney said she was disappointed that an analysis of the GOP plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded older people will pay substantially more for their health insurance than younger Americans.

Like Katko, Tenney said she also had concerns about the impact of Medicaid cuts on Upstate New York hospitals.

New York officials say the Republican plan will leave 1 million state residents without health insurance and transfer $4.5 billion in costs from the federal government to state taxpayers.

Katko's decision on Friday coincided with an agreement between the White House and conservative Republican Study Committee to change the GOP replacement bill.

The revised bill gives states the option to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and pays states block grants for Medicaid, rather than using a cap system that would be more favorable to New York.

Katko was not available for an interview Friday to elaborate on his concerns. In his statement, Katko said he still opposes Obama's Affordable Care Act and believes it failed to keep its promises. But he said substantial changes are needed before he can support the program's repeal.

"The administration and leaders in Congress deserve credit for starting this process," Katko said. "But we should take the time to ensure a viable market-based alternative to Obamacare is ready simultaneous with the repeal. I believe we can get there."

Katko had promised since his first campaign for the 24th Congressional District seat in 2014 that he would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act only when Republicans offer a viable replacement plan.

Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
GEDDES, N.Y. - Meatball Madness organizers estimate they've served at least 50,000 meatballs during the past 13 years.

So what's another 5,500?

That's how many - so far - are expected to be served on March 26 at the annual Meatball Madness fundraiser for Elmcrest Children's Center.

A dozen restaurants have signed up to each make 400 meatballs, according to the event's spokeswoman, Mary Anne Winfield. Advance tickets are available at Top's Friendly Markets.

The event raises about $25,000 to $30,000 each year, Winfield says. The money goes toward educational and employability programs at Elmcrest.

In addition to the meatball samples, attendees enjoy a buffet from Dominick's Restaurant, as well as wine tastings. Judges will determine the "Best Meatballs in Town" award. Chef Paul Valenti, from the Palace Theater, won last year.

Here's what you need to know:

Date: noon to 3 p.m. March 26

Place: International Pavilion, New York State Fairgrounds

Cost: $13 advance or $15 at the door for adults; $8 advance or $10 at the door for children 6 to 12; children under 6 free. Family passes (two adults, two children) are $40 advance, $50 at the door.

Participating restaurants

Avicolli's

Attilio's

The Basil Leaf

Limp Lizard

Luigi's of Syracuse

The Market Diner

Nick & Angelo's

The Palace Theater

Santangelo's

Strada Mia

Twin Trees Too!

Vince's Gourmet Imports

Meatball judges

"Just Joe" Altier

Jeff DeFrancisco

Honorable Michelle Pirro Bailey

Honorable James Cecile

Dr. Armand Cincotta

Sheriff Gene Conway

Ted Long

John Oliver

Honorable Anthony Paris

Ray Rinaldi

Amy Robbins

Arlene Stewart

Niko Tamurian

Jim Teske

Donations for a silent auction are still welcome. Gift cards, gift baskets, and items from local retail establishments are popular.

For more information, contact Janene Bartell at 315-446-6250 ext. 334 or at jbartell@elmcrest.org.
Andrew Cuomo

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo takes reporters' questions after announcing the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's far west side, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, in New York.

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trashing Donald Trump's proposed budget, calling the Republican president's spending plan "dangerous, reckless and contemptuous of American values."

The Democratic governor on Thursday called on Congress to reject the Trump budget "out of hand."

He says the budget would cut funding for key transportation projects such as the long-sought rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey and undermine affordable housing, health care research and environmental protection.

Cuomo says that when combined with proposed tax cuts for the rich, the budget is a repudiation of every day New Yorkers.

Noting the budget's call to increase military spending, Cuomo, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender, said America has always offered more to the world than military might.
New York -- An EMT in the Bronx was run over and dragged to death by her own ambulance after it was stolen by a man who had been riding on the back.

Yadira Arroyo, 44, was a mother of five and had been with the New York City Fire Department for 14 years, according to CBS New York. Arroyo died Thursday night.

#FDNY mourns the loss of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo, Station 26, who was killed in the line of duty tonight while serving our city. pic.twitter.com/b3KrzGabYE  FDNY (@FDNY) March 17, 2017

Arroyo and her partner were in the Soundview section of the Bronx responding to a call when they realized a man was riding on the back bumper of their ambulance, according to the New York Daily News. The man, 25-year-old Jose Gonzalez, eventually jumped off and tried to steal a backpack from a bystander.

The medics pulled over and tried to help. Gonzalez started to walk away, but then turned back, went around Arroyo and got into the driver's seat of the ambulance.

Arroyo had left the door open when she got out of the vehicle, according to the News.

Emergency medical workers struggled with Gonzalez and he sped backward, the News said. Arroyo was hit, knocked down and went under the wheels.

The ambulance then moved forward. Arroyo was dragged underneath for at least 15 feet, according to the News.

Gonzalez, who has a lengthy criminal record, was tacked by a passing MTA officer and a group of bystanders and taken into custody, the News said. A source told the paper he was incoherent and talking to himself.

Arroyo's partner, EMT Monique Williams was treated for minor injuries. Arroyo died at Jacobi Medical Center.

"She started her day, her shift today like every other day and then a senseless act of violence takes her life," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, according to CBS. "It's a tough moment for all, but it's a moment where we honor those who serve us and protect us."

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Google + | 315-454-2112
Two Aframaxes to be fitted with Evoqua BWMS

Evoqua Water Technologies has won an order from a South Korean shipyard to supply and install its patented SeaCURE ballast water management systems (BWMS).

The BWMS will be fitted on board two Aframaxes under construction for a Singapore-based shipowner, believed connected to Tanker Pacific. Each vessel will feature a 3,000 cu m per hour capacity SeaCURE BWMS, which Evoqua will deliver for installation this summer during the vessels early construction phase. The vessels are scheduled for delivery in 2018. Matt Granitto, Evoquas business manager, ballast water treatment, said: We are delighted to have been awarded this contract. The order is indicative of the confidence the tanker segment has in our SeaCURE system as a ballast water management solution that does exactly what it has been designed to do. We now have tanker references on newbuilds and existing tonnage. With so many different ballast water treatment technologies and systems available, shipowners do need to be confident that the system selected is not only compliant, but capable of meeting ship-specific operational and budgetary requirements. The electrochlorination process at the heart of Evoquas SeaCURE system is proven technology, capable of handling the high flow rates and variable water quality we encounter during operations, he said. JaeWook Bae, team manager of BWMS business at Krosys, Evoquas South Korean-based partner that secured the order, added: The driver for awarding Evoqua the project was the side-stream technology inherent to the SeaCURE system. The side stream which will feed the system will be from the sea chest in the engine room when the ship is in marine water, and from the aft peak tank when in brackish or fresh water. This process perfectly fits the operational profile of this ship type, while offering shipbuilders a compliant solution that is more cost-effective and easier to install than comparable systems. According to Lars Nupnau, Evoquas global business development director, ballast water, an influencing factor was the SeaCURE systems ability to treat the vessels aft peak tank without the need for an additional electrochlorination unit. Rather than taking a full flow or in-line approach to ballast water treatment, the small-feed stream process is particularly advantageous to the tanker segment as just one system can treat all ballast water tanks, Nupnau explained. Typically, a full flow or in-line system would require a second, separate ballast water treatment to manage the aft peak tank, but because the electrochlorination part of our system is installed in the engine room  a designated safe area  we can use the same electrochlorination unit. For the shipowner, this means lower capital expenditure and a less complex, time-consuming installation, he said. SeaCURE BWMS uses a patented process that injects biocide into ballast seawater before it reaches the large surface filter intakes to reduce the growth marine organisms that become harmful to filters. Available as a compact skid or as modular components, the system is suitable as a newbuild or retrofit installation, since biocide generation takes place in small side streams from the main ballast water thus reducing system footprint and optimizing available space. The Evoqua SeaCURE system can also be configured to provide marine growth protection for critical on board seawater cooling systems.




The Dubs amendment was passed in May 2016 to grant safe passage to unaccompanied refugee minors into the UK. As of February 2017, it has been restricted from the original ballpark figure of 3000 children to a mere 350. Local councils in the UK show that they are able to cater for the full 3000, but the Government has voted against taking others from councils able to accept more minors.

The so-called refugee crisis is one of mass migration from conflict zones, oppressive regimes, and violent states around the world. I have long been sceptical of NGO and humanitarian work for its often-colonial undertones and its lack of understanding of cultural specificities. Im also not sure how responsibility is allocated in a situation like this, or where narratives of belonging come in. These ideas are too complex for this short article  I cannot tell you about the politics but I can tell you about the personal, human dimension.

I worked at the Childrens Centre in the camp in Dunkirk over Christmas. The camp there is organised, compared to how makeshift the camp in Calais was. There are huts for most people, three meals a day, toilets, supply containers, a womens centre, a childrens centre, a learning centre, and a tea tent. This is unusual in itself; across the rest of Europe many refugees are sleeping rough in cold and dangerous conditions.

Some of the kids I was working with had parents that were dead, in prison, or were human traffickers. These kids, in a flash of unfortunate circumstances, could be left alone, leaving them vulnerable to trafficking, physical abuse, and emotional trauma. We must look out for them. When we neglect to provide for minors, we essentially give up hope for the future. The camp is a strange combination of optimism and despair  someone once said to me that its like watching flowers grow out of manure and I think thats true. The residents there dont believe that Europe will not provide for them  the UK is a shining beacon of hope. Everyone wants to get here. I met someone there who was younger than me and had spent every night for two months trying to get into the back of a lorry to make safe passage to this country. Before he was in France, he had been in Finland. He had fled Iraq aged 15.

Importantly, its also not just the youngest ones we need to be concerned for; most of the unaccompanied minors at the Dunkirk camp are boys in their late teens. They look like men because they have been through a lot. We often neglect to recognise their childhood, and we expect that because they have already lived the lives of men well beyond their years, they can and should be able to continue as such.

The camp is unsafe. The living conditions are cold, cramped, and there is an abundance of dangerous black mould. The camp is mostly male and so women are especially unsafe; human faeces was scattered around the edges of the camp because the women were too afraid to use the toilet facilities after dark for fear of being attacked. There is a large Kurdish majority in the camp, and this often means those that are of another ethnic group, such as Afghan, or Persian, can be made to feel less than welcome. This is harrowing for all residents, but for those who are just children, it is heartbreaking. Nobody leaves their life behind for fun. These people have uprooted their homes, their families, and their existences for whatever hope that is driving them.

We have laws and policies enshrined to protect our minors, and yet we are letting painful neglect occur just across the Channel. The moment that will always stick out for me was when I was walking through the camp and passed a girl who hadnt been at the Centre that morning. I asked where were you? and she gave me the worlds cheekiest grin: I was in a lorry last night and I only woke up now. Everybody is sick  my mommy is sick, my daddy is sick, and my sister is sick, but Im not sick because I had two blankets! She stuck her tongue out and galloped away. The joy in her voice over having two blankets, contrasted with the desolation of the scene, breaks my heart. It makes me bitter, and sad, and angry. Take action: these are kids whose lives hang in the balance.
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Gmail users in recent months have been targeted by a sophisticated series of phishing attacks that use emails from a known contact whose account has been compromised. The emails contain an image of an attachment that appears to be legitimate, according to Wordfence.

The sophisticated attack displays accounts.gmail.com in the browsers location bar and leads users to what appears to be a legitimate Google sign-in page where they are prompted to supply their credentials, which then become compromised.

The technique works so well that many experienced technical users have fallen prey to the scam, noted Mark Maunder, CEO of Wordfence. Many have shared warnings on Facebook to alert family and friends, given that the technique has exploited otherwise trusted contacts so successfully.

Googles Reply

Google has been aware of the issue at least since mid-January, based on comments from Google Communications Aaron Stein, which WordPress characterized as an official statement from the company.

Google was continuing to strengthen its defenses, Stein said, adding that it was using machine learning-based detection of phishing messages, safe browsing warnings of dangerous links in emails, and taking steps to prevent suspicious sign-ins.

Users could take advantage of two-factor authentication to further protect their accounts, he suggested.

Wordfence last month noted that Google Chrome released 56.0.2924, which changes the behavior of the browsers location bar. The change results in the display of not secure messages when users see a data URL.

Google last month announced additional steps to protect G Suite customers against phishing, using Security Key enforcement. The technique helps administrators protect their employees using only security keys as the second factor.

Bluetooth low energy Security Key support, which works on Android and iOS mobile devices, is another user option.

Realistic View

Recent changes in Chrome and Firefox browsers have mitigated some of these types of attacks, observed Patrick Wheeler, director of threat intelligence at Proofpoint.

However, a variety of techniques are used to target users, he pointed out.

Attackers create extremely realistic landing pages, use Javascript to obfuscate and encrypt pages and contents, and host documents directly on Google drive, he told TechNewsWorld.

They recently have used PDFs to make it appear that users already are logged onto Google Docs  then users are prompted for a login when they move the mouse over the PDF.

Attacks such as these are a type of cat-and-mouse game in the sense that attackers will find more sophisticated entry points as cyberdefense methods improve, noted Javvad Malik, security associate at AlienVault.

This shows the increasing maturity of cybercriminals, he told TechNewsWorld. As they become more organized and better funded, mainly through the proceeds of crime, they can invest time and resources into tweaking attack methods to become more effective.

Difficult Defense

Attacks like phishing and social engineering are among the most common methods of entry, according to Sam Elliott, director of security product management at Bomgar.

Attacks like these often target privileged users with access to sensitive data, he said.

While companies are aware of this, providing security around these types of users without limiting their ability to do their jobs effectively is difficult, Elliott told TechNewsWorld.

Defining privileged user poses additional challenges for companies, even those with sophisticated security protocols, he added.

Despite the challenges it poses, like any phishing scam, this one has a limited lifespan, observed Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president for cloud research at Trend Micro.

Because it impacts a very specific audience, theres also a central point to prevent this scam, he told TechNewsWorld.

Google likely will deploy image recognition and URL filtering to prevent this campaign from continuing, Nunnikhoven said.

Google did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
One of the biggest disappointments at this years Mobile World Congress, which opened Monday, is that the Samsung Galaxy 8 phone wont make it. The phones official launch is scheduled for March 29.

The Galaxy line has been the ultimate iPhone fighter. Rumors around the anniversary edition of the iPhone suggest that it will do amazing, magical things, like 3D selfies. (OK, Im really missing Steve Jobs at the moment  who the hell wants 3D selfies?!?)

Missing the biggest historical alternative is keeping a lot of us home this week. Still LG, Motorola, Lenovo and Qualcomm are expected to make huge announcements that could result in the iPhone 8 looking a tad out of date when it finally launches later in the year.

Ill share some observations on what they have in store and close with my product of the week: a new PC camera from Logitech that enables Microsoft Hello on laptops and desktop PCs that otherwise wouldnt support it. (When it works, Microsoft Hello is actually pretty cool.)

Gigabit Wireless

Some of this stuff we can anticipate just from Qualcomm launches. Perhaps the biggest of late is the Qualcomm X20 Modem. This part is likely to dominate the high-end phones announced at MWC and for good reason. It isnt that it provides a maximum throughput of 1.2 gigabits  while impressive, that would just blow out our data plans  but that it uses carrier aggregation that increases overall data speeds by 2x or better.

This means youll have a far better chance of syncing your mail or downloading a book, movie or big file during the last minutes before the flight attendant forces you to put hour phone in airplane mode. It also means that cloud-based services likely will work much better on your phones, which will open up the door for things like

Cloud-Based Artificial Intelligence

Lets not kid ourselves  services like Siri suck. Weve been waiting for some time for Apples partnership with IBM to result in a far better, Watson-like personal assistant. However, the richer the service, the less likelihood it can run on the phone, and the more it needs significant battery life.

If you really want a powerful artificial intelligence experience on the phone, you need both a powerful cloud-based AI and enough bandwidth to make the thing work, so expect some interesting, and far more powerful, cloud-based services announced this week.

Watson may be a stretch  though I doubt it  but the vastly improved Google Assistant is expected to be displayed on a far wider number of phones this year. So, one way or another, the new smartphones are likely to become a ton smarter.

LG Steps Into Samsungs Space

With the Galaxy 8 delayed, LG is expected to step into Samsungs space with a stunning new phone that is mostly hardened glass. I expect Corning, which makes Gorilla Glass, will be especially pleased.

This phone is expected to have mostly screen (tiny metal borders), the most advanced camera system to date, and a ton of performance-based features, and it could well be the phone to lust after. Leaked images suggest it may be one of the most beautiful phones ever created. Apple will not be pleased.

BlackBerrys Move

BlackBerry is expected to showcase its Project Mercury at the show (the company teased it at CES this year). Its the last BlackBerry-designed phone, and the company is going out with a bang.

Ive seen pictures of it floated on the Web, and it appears to be the best blend of a keyboard and screen phone yet. As BlackBerry phones have been for some time, it is Android-based, but its hardened and surprisingly pretty.

This is likely the phone that President Trump should carry, as he has been getting chastised for his apparent use of his non-secure aging Android phone. With Mercury, he could power-tweet far better than on any screen-only phone. Hmm, come to think of it, maybe we should keep him away from keyboard phones

This phone is supposed to have a lot of the same technology as the Google Pixel, but with a keyboard and security. Its on my own personal lust list.

Huawei Pixel

Rumor is that Huawei will be building the next Google Pixel phone. These phones tend to be technology showcases for Android, and Huawei has been doing surprisingly well in this space of late, though mostly in Asia.

All we seem to know is that it will sport some interesting new metallic colors, and it will showcase what you can do with Android if you pull out all the stops. Improvements in camera, features, battery life and charging, as well as a stronger connection to Googles cloud services, all should be anticipated.

Samsung Tablet

While the new Galaxy 8 is expected to miss the show, Samsungs new Galaxy Tab 3 is expected to make it. This should be the most feature-rich tablet in the market when it launches (although Lenovo may give it a run for its money).

Samsung is rumored to have cornered the market in Qualcomms most advanced Snapdragon solution. If it finds its way into this tablet, it would make it the most powerful and best-connected yet. Take that, iPad!

Nokia Is Baaaack

Most of what is expected from Nokia is low-end stuff, but the fact that it is back in the phone business shouldnt be lost, as it once dominated cellphones. Nokia also is expected to have a high-performance tablet.

When Microsoft was serious about competing with the iPhone, Nokia had the best true alternative to the iPad, suggesting that its new Android-based tablet could be worth a look. On spec, it is rumored to be very similar to the Samsung offering but likely better looking.

Lenovos Plans

Lenovo is teasing that it plans to do something really big at Mobile World Congress this year, but virtually nothing was known about what that might be when I was writing this.

Its Motorola division has been releasing some very interesting modular products over the last year, and it has been very aggressive with unique tablet designs. Watch it for one or two big surprises this week.

Wrapping Up

It looks as though everyone and their brother are stepping up to make Mobile World Congress pretty amazing this year, but I expect that well still be waiting to see if the next versions of the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy will be even better.

Most of this stuff likely will be available for purchase in the April time frame. That gives you a few weeks to save your nickels, so that if you fall in love with something you actually can afford to buy it.

The rumor that the next iPhone will cost more than US$1,000 may have a lot of folks looking far more favorably at a better, more affordable alternative. Well see  but I may have to hide my credit cards for a bit.

I was excited when Microsoft launched its Hello log-in technology with Windows 10, until I realized that it required a special camera to work and virtually no PCs were shipping with one at the time. Eventually I got the latest Surface Book, and it works like a champ. You basically just open the cover and it sees you and reliably logs you in. No pin or password.

I mostly work on a desktop system, though, and until now, there hasnt been a camera solution that would get Microsoft Hello to work on a desktop. You see, for Hello to work properly, you need an infrared component that virtually no cameras had when Hello launched.

Well that just changed with the Logitech Brio Camera. At $199, it is an impressive piece of kit, with full autofocus, 4K HDR, and great low light performance.

Logitech 4K Pro Webcam

It rivals my 4K semi-pro Sony video camera for image quality and exceeds it with HDR. It even has a 5x digital zoom that works surprisingly well, given that most streaming services support HD but not 4K (so you dont see the resolution you lose by zooming). Of course, it has the infrared component Hello needs.

On the desktop, I now just have to wake up the system, give it a couple seconds to see me, and then Im in. The quality for any video call I do is just night-and-day better, which is as much about the low light capability of this camera as anything else.

Given how little investment there has been in desktop cameras over the last decade, Id never have figured anyone would bring out something this good. Since the Logitech Brio fixes my Windows Hello problem  Ive already ordered a second one for my wife  it is my product of the week.
Qualcomm has proclaimed that the term "processor" is no longer an adequate description of its Snapdragon SoC. Rather, the mobile chipmaker wants us to refer to it as a "platform."

In announcing the terminology update, Qualcomm said Snapdragon is more than just a single component, a piece of silicon or what many interpret as the CPU. The chipmaker instead sees it as an "anthology of technology" comprised of hardware, software and services - a CPU, a GPU, an integrated modem, a DAC and fingerprint technology, for example - that simply can't be expressed in a world like "processor."

It'll now be called the Qualcomm Snapdragon Mobile Platform.

Qualcomm also said that moving forward, only premium mobile platforms will retain the Snapdragon brand. Low- and mid-range 200 series chips, meanwhile, will fall under the new Qualcomm Mobile name without the Snapdragon distinction.

The company said it hopes the change will help differentiate entry-level and high-volume solutions from their flagship and high-end platforms, thus providing better clarity and expectations for customers.

The San Diego-based chipmaker is the first to admit that the change isn't seismic.

It's perfectly reasonable for Qualcomm to want its high-end components to stand out from budget-minded offerings although I can't help but wonder if they could have come up with something better than the overused "platform" buzzword.

Qualcomm's next flagship release, the Snapdragon 835, is expected to show up in Samsung's Galaxy S8 in the coming weeks.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, SpaceX successfully launched a communications satellite for EchoStar. The original launch was scheduled for Tuesday but was scrubbed due to high winds. While SpaceX is known for innovation in the field of aerospace with countless launches and subsequent recoveries of their rockets, today's event was just a standard launch. The EchoStar XXIII satellite was successfully deployed to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit and will now provide broadcast services to Brazil.

GTO is considered "far" for rocket launches since it is about 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface. The satellite was also on the heavier side compared to most launches SpaceX has done. Because of the distance and weight, the rocket needed to carry extra fuel which did not leave room for landing equipment. The Falcon 9 rocket that was used is also nearing its end of life.

Successful deployment of @EchoStar XXIII to a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit confirmed. pic.twitter.com/LpPWLo8YMN --- SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 16, 2017

SpaceX will be transitioning to the Falcon Heavy rocket soon as the Falcon 9 is nearing its final upgrade version. Elon Musk first unveiled the Falcon Heavy back in 2005 where it was described as 3 Falcon 9's joined together. With 27 engines, the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket ever besides the Saturn V.

The Heavy is scheduled to begin flying in the summer of 2017.

The launch took place at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Launch Complex 39A, the same pad that launched people to the moon on Apollo 11. Back in 2014 SpaceX signed a 20 year lease with NASA to use this launchpad.
There has been plenty of talk about new and amazing battery technologies that will allow our smartphones to run for up to a week without needing a charge, but it could still be many years before they make their way into consumer products. Based on a recently published patent, Sony thinks a better solution would be for users to share power wirelessly from nearby devices.

A filing made by the Japanese company last year suggests that rather than relying on more efficient batteries or power packs, your future emergency power needs could be solved by generous friends. Building on wireless charging concepts like Qi, the documents describe being able to transfer power between devices using an antenna-based system.

Most of the patent focuses on how the system could seek out near compatible devices, much like scanning for a nearby Wi-Fi spot, and start transferring energy to or from them. The idea being that you can scan and find a friend's phone, link with it, then start mooching their power (or sending some to them). It could also be used to draw power from wireless charging base stations.

Sony wants the system to be used in a number of battery-powered devices, not just smartphones. Think laptops, smartwatches, and wearables.

The precise technical details of how the system would work aren't included in the patent. As noted by The Guardian, converting power into radio waves and back again is an extremely lossy process however it happens.

Like all patents, Sony's system may never make into the real world. But being able to draw power from a multitude of different devices does sound kind of cool.
A rare and surprising encounter with humpback whales delighted marine biologists, who were puzzled to spot them in a gathering of impressive size.

Research cruises in the southwestern region of South Africa stumbled across these magnificent creatures huddling in large groups of up to 200 to hunt and feed together.

The sightings occurred in the Benguela Upwelling System, a stream of oceanic currents that flow from St. Helena Bay all the way to Cape Point.

Equally remarkable was discovering their presence in these waters off-season. Several study expeditions reported chance meetings with humpback whales in October and November, when the creatures should have already started their migration to colder regions.

This time of the year typically finds the whales embarked on a journey to Antarctica, where they go to find food and spend the summer after giving birth and nursing their calves in warmer tropical waters.

The unusual behavior prompted an ample research into the feeding habits of humpback whales, which revealed a few unexpected facts about their nature and way of life. The findings were published in the journal PLOS One.

Surprisingly Sociable

Humpback whales have been consistently described as solitary animals, which enjoy spending most of their days alone and seldom seek the company of others. Scientific literature reports rare exceptions of the animals gathering in arctic waters to feed in groups but of significantly smaller sizes.

In the past, researchers marveled at seeing the whales come together in congregations of no more than 15. Now, they are utterly bewildered to find them rounding up in "supergroups" of 20 to 200 animals.

According to study author Ken Findlay, from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa, this type of whale social conduct is fairly unprecedented.

"No such dense feeding aggregations have been reported elsewhere in low or mid latitudes during Southern Hemisphere humpback whale migrations," Findlay explains.

Researchers have had the opportunity to observe this recent peculiar behavior on three separate occasions, during study trips along the Benguela Upwelling System in 2011, 2014, and 2015.

These sightings contradict what was previously known of these majestic creatures, suggesting they have a more gregarious nature than originally thought.

What Makes The Humpback Whales Assemble Here In Such Large Groups?

One theory is the abundance of prey makes the Benguela System particularly appealing. The study indicates a high prevalence of mantis shrimp in the area, which humpback whales have been found to favor.

Another possible cause for the whales amassing is the recent spike in their numbers, which could lead them to explore unfamiliar hunting territories to avoid exhausting their usual food supplies.

A third explanation could be the animals, whose populations have replenished over the past 20 years, are now reverting to an older hunting strategy. After a century of absence, the whales could be returning to their former feeding grounds due to the recent massive increase in their numbers.

"For the last few decades, suddenly they seem to have overcome some threshold and have begun to increase very fast," said Gisli Vikingsson, from the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute in Iceland.

Researchers are also considering the possibility that humpback whales have been habitually spending their summer in Benguela unbeknown to us. Findlay suggests this could have been happening all along in less frequented areas, where it would be difficult to observe.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A simple trip to the dentist caused the death of an autistic 4-year-old boy from Vancouver. The child never woke up after being anesthetized as part of a routine procedure at Must Love Kids Pediatric Dentistry.

The patient, Mykel Peterson, had problems keeping his mouth open. The dental center gave him a common anesthesia, called Ketamine, in order to sedate him while the dentist checked whether his teeth needed a filling or a crown.

The kid's mother, Thmeka Curry, said that the dentist had checked her son's teeth. After the procedure, the dentist wanted to see whether the kid was awake.

4-Year-Old Boy Dies At The Dentist

The child was given a shot instead of the usual gas, to be put to sleep while the dentist examined him. Before the child's examination, his mother carried him in the room where he was put to bed. Immediately after that, the woman was asked to wait in the lobby while the dentist carried out the procedure.

After the examination, Mykel was carried to the recovery room, waiting for the drug to wear off. After a while, a nurse noticed that the kid hadn't been breathing, and his mom was, once again, asked to leave the room. The medical team started doing compressions, and then the kid was rushed to a nearby hospital.

"The anesthesiologist started to check his pulse and was shaking him and at this point I am still not aware anything happened to my son," she said.

The child was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead. A medical examiner is still working to determine the exact cause of death, and the child's family will only have the results of the toxicology report after eight weeks.

Must Love Kids Pediatric Dentistry said that the institution only works with highly qualified anesthesiologists, who have already performed more than 1,900 procedures in the last three years and a half.

"We contract with an independent, highly qualified and experienced board-certified anesthesiologist for anesthesia services who follow strict protocols, including a pre-operative checkup and clearance by the child's primary physician prior to the procedure," noted the statement.

Health Department Deciding Whether To Investigate The Case

The state is deciding whether or not to investigate this case.

"We received information, notification of this event through what we call a serious reportable event," declared David Johnson, spokesman for the Washington State Department of Health.

The team at the ministry is investigating the report, and it will then decide the following course of action. Additionally, an investigation may take place. However, according to Johnson, the decision-making process could take some time, varying from days to weeks.

Before a decision is made, the ministry will not reveal the name of the medical staff who was involved in this situation. Should an investigation actually take place, the names will only be made public after a complaint or investigation is filled in.

Following this unfortunate incident, Curry said that the news has not struck her yet, saying she is numb rather than anything else. The woman is waiting for the toxicology report, which is the only document that could explain what happened to her son.

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Samsung is about to launch the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ on March 29 at an event in London and New York at the same time.

The company has confirmed to the South Korean media that it will begin taking preorders for both these devices from April 7. As anticipated, customers in South Korea will be the first ones to get their hands on the brand-new flagships.

However, the company has not revealed a date for the global rollout of the flagship devices.

The Pre-Sale

The April 7 preorder date information comes courtesy of ET News, which cites company executives, and reveals that the duration of the pre-sale will be from April 7 to April 17. Eventually, the Galaxy S8 and its sibling, the Galaxy S8+, will hit the shelves in South Korea on April 21.

The reports also state that from April 18, Samsung may be holding pre-launch proceedings exclusively in South Korea.

Three key carriers in the country may organize the pre-launch event in their premises for subscribers. Consumers may also get the opportunity to participate in the event and earn some rewards.

These events will be held from April 18 to April 20. During these events, the maximum prize a participant may win is around $2,650. The other prizes may include Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8+ phones or the Samsung Gear S3.

Generally it is unusual for carriers and Samsung to arrange pre-sales events just a few days before the sale. Carriers usually hold events on the day when the sale starts.

A Samsung official has said that these pre-launch events for Samsung Galaxy S8 were planned suddenly, and it is believed that these may be held in a bid to increase the number of subscribers for the carriers.

Galaxy S8+ U.S. Release

Previous reports have indicated that the release date of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ may be postponed due to the company's intense testing process. This is to prevent another fiasco similar to the one following the Galaxy Note 7 release.

Samsung may release the latest flagships in the United States on April 28, not April 21, according to tipster Evan Blass. Even though this report does not go on to state when the company would roll out the flagships globally, it does give an inkling that it may be sooner rather than later.

The April 21 release for the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ in its home country suggests that the smartphones could arrive in the United States soon after.

For now, it seems that the release date of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ in global markets is still April 28, unless the company decides to surprise fans and roll them out on April 21 itself.

Photo: Maurizio Pesce | Flickr

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Ibuprofen, one of the commonly used medicines to cure headaches or backaches, holds the chance to increase the threat of cardiac arrest.

Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen are among the most frequently used painkillers worldwide and are available in pharmacies without any prescription.

The use of NSAIDs can cause platelet aggregation that leads to blood clots, arteries to contract, increased fluid retention and increased blood pressure.

According to a new study, NSAIDs hold the highest chances of causing heart ailments, stroke, heart failure, as well as high blood pressure.

"Allowing these drugs to be purchased without a prescription, and without any advice or restrictions, sends a message to the public that they must be safe," said Gunnar H.Gislason, professor at Copenhagen University Hospital Center and also the author of the study.

The Study

In order to get an in-depth knowledge about the possible risks that can take place when using NSAIDs, a study was conducted to find out the relationship between the use of these drugs and cardiac arrest.

For the purpose of the study, details of patients who suffered a heart attack outside the hospital between 2000 and 2010 in Denmark were collected from the Danish Cardiac Arrest Registry.

Data were also collected on all NSAID prescriptions from Danish pharmacies starting 1995. The prescriptions included both non-selective NSAIDs such as diclofenac, ibuprofen, and some COZ 2 selective inhibitors such as celecoxib and rofecoxib.

How Was The Study Conducted?

In order to establish the link between the use of NSAID and heart ailments, a case-time control design was used in the study. Each of the participants was used both as the case and also the control for two different time periods, which lead to the elimination of the confusion due to chronic comorbidities.

Patients who took the NSAID 30 days before the heart attack (case period) was compared with the patients who took the NSAID drugs preceding the 30 days without any heart cardiac arrest (control period).

Result Of The Study

Out of the 28,947 patients diagnosed with an out-of-hospital heart attack in Denmark, 3,376 were treated with NSAID at least 30 days prior to the attack. Diclofenac and Ibuprofen were found to be the commonly used NSAIDs in the attack cases, with the former counting up to 51 percent and the latter covering 22 percent of NSAID usage.

Consumption of any kind of NSAID was found to have increased risk of heart attack by 31 percent, where diclofenac and ibuprofen contributed up to 50 percent and 31 percent of increased risk of cardiac arrest respectively.

According to Professor Gislason, selling of these drugs in places such as supermarket and petrol stations should be strictly banned and should be only made available in the medicine shops in low doses.

The research has been published in the European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.

Photo: Tim Sackton | Flickr

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Android 7.0 Nougat was launched in August of last year, with the latest major version of Google's mobile operating system brought first into Nexus devices.

Several months later, Google is now reportedly preparing the launch of Android 7.1.2 Nougat, which would be the latest update to the operating system.

Android 7.1.2 Nougat Release Date

A recent report revealed that Google will be pushing out Android 7.1.2 Nougat to the public very soon, especially as the beta version of the operating system update was released six weeks ago. The rumored release date of Android 7.1.2 Nougat is said to be at the end of March or by early April.

The rumors on the Android 7.1.2 Nougat release date started due to an update that was revealed by Rogers, a carrier in Canada, for Google's Pixel devices. Rogers claims that the update, which will launch on April 3, will add VoLTE support and include the March security patch of Google. Rogers has been testing VoLTE for Pixel smartphones for a few months alongside Android 7.1.2 Nougat, and the speculation is that the operating system update will be pushed out at the same time as when Google starts releasing OTA and factory images alongside security updates.

When Will Your Smartphone Receive Android 7.1.2 Nougat?

First and foremost, it should be noted that not all Nexus devices will be receiving the Android 7.1.2 Nougat update, with Google confirming that the Motorola-made Nexus 6 and the HTC-made Nexus 9 tablet will not be upgraded.

As such, it is expected that Android 7.1.2 Nougat will first arrive to owners of the Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, and Pixel C. Google's Pixel and Nexus devices are always the first smartphones and tablets to receive Android version updates, and it is expected that the trend will continue for Android 7.1.2 Nougat.

For owners of other Android-powered smartphones, you might want to temper your expectations. While there is the possibility that Android 7.1.2 Nougat will be released by Google by the end of March or early April, it will take some time before the update reaches non-Google smartphones and tablets.

The delay in the arrival of Android upgrades to other devices is due to the fact that the individual carriers providing connectivity to smartphones and tablets, as well as the manufacturers of these devices, need to sign off before an Android operating system update is received by users.

The bad news is, sometimes, the delay can be very long. For example, owners of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge in Canada will only be able to receive the Android 7.0 Nougat update on March 20 through a Rogers rollout, seven months after the original release of the operating system. In the United States, the unlocked version of the Moto Z Play only started receiving the Android 7.0 Nougat update last week.

This is no indication that owners of Android Nougat-compatible owners will have to wait that long before Android 7.1.2 Nougat arrives on their devices. However, with no specific release date yet, users of non-Pixel and non-Nexus devices will have to add on at least a couple of months more to the launch date of the Android 7.1.2 Nougat once it is known to have an idea of when they will receive the update.

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The iconic life-sized statue of the Gundam RX-78-2, from the classic Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, was created back in 2009 as a temporary exhibit. However, due to its popularity not just in Japan but also all over the world, it was later given a permanent spot in Shizuoka before being moved to Odaiba near Diver City.

After five years of protecting Tokyo and drawing tourists, Gundam RX-78-2 has now been dismantled, but not without a proper send-off that is linked to the anime series.

Gundam RX-78-2 Statue Fires Last Shot

After its last show on March 5, the Gundam RX-78-2 statue was officially dismantled by contractors on March 14. The contractors started off by removing the robot's head and left arm.

While this might not mean much for most people, removing the head and the left arm of the Gundam RX-78-2 actually carries extreme significance. With a missing head and left arm, the statue paid homage to what is known as the Last Shooting pose made by a heavily damaged Gundam RX-78-2 when it fired its beam cannon into the air before it was destroyed.

The Gundam RX-78-2 suffered the damage in battle against the Zeong, an unfinished Zeon prototype piloted by Char Aznable, within the Zeon stronghold. The robot's pilot, Amuro Ray, later returned to the remains of the Gundam RX-78-2 to escape.

Of course, the statue was not holding a weapon and did not raise its arm to directly replicate the Last Shooting pose, but for fans of Mobile Suit Gundam, the removal of the head and left arm of the statue was enough to send the message. The move was seen as a fitting send-off for the popular attraction.

Gundam RX-78-2 Statue To Be Replaced

The 18-meter Gundam RX-78-2 has been retired for good, but in addition to plans to create a Gundam robot that is capable of moving by 2019, there will be a replacement statue in the form of the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam.

The Unicorn Gundam statue will be even taller than that of the Gundam RX-78-2, as it will stand 24 meters tall. A promotional image released for the statue, which will be installed this year, showed that the robot will be in Destroy Mode, with the internal psycho-frame parts to be colored pink similar to the start of its series. There is still the possibility that the color of the parts will be changed to green, though, similar to the last episodes.

The choice to go with the Unicorn Gundam to replace the Gundam RX-78-2 is interesting as well. The Gundam RX-78-2, the original Gundam, is a classic and very popular, but the Unicorn Gundam is more recognized internationally.

While fans will be looking forward to the arrival of the Unicorn Gundam statue, the walking Gundam by 2019 could be more important. Its release in 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Gundam series and is also the year before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, which should lead to even more tourists finding their way to Japan in the near future.

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The next-generation Microsoft Surface Book 5 could hit the scene this spring and it could pack the latest AMD Ryzen, based on the latest hints.

Some were expecting the Surface Pro 5 to debut at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 but since it was a no-show, rumors are now betting on a spring release.

As anticipation is gradually building up, a slew of rumors and reports tried to paint a picture of what to expect and the latest ones hint at an interesting twist. No official confirmation is available for now so it's all just speculation at this point, but here are the latest Surface Pro 5 rumors and expectations.

Microsoft Surface Pro 5 With AMD Ryzen On Board

While earlier rumors indicated that the Surface Pro 5 would ship with Intel Kaby Lake under the hood, it now seems that the device might pack an AMD chip instead.

This presumption stems from a recent trailer for Alien: Covenant that seemingly shows a new Microsoft Surface device. AMD is sponsoring that movie and the trailer's description touts "Intelligence powered by AMD, Ryzen and Radeon."

Consequently, speculation is rife that the trailer is teasing the upcoming Surface Pro 5 with AMD Ryzen under the hood.

Surface Pro 5 Rumored Specs And Release Date

The previous Microsoft Surface Pro 4 hit the scene back in October 2015, leading some to expect the Surface Pro 5 in October 2016. Microsoft limited its October 2016 event to the Surface Studio and the Surface Book i7, however, with no mention of the Surface Pro 5, so a 2017 unveiling seemed more likely.

When the Surface Pro 5 was a no-show at the MWC, speculation indicated that it skipped the show to wait for the next major Windows 10 update. Microsoft will unleash the Windows 10 Creators Update this spring, which makes it highly likely that the Surface Pro 5 will debut soon with the latest software on board.

The upcoming Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is further expected to boast a 4K display, a magnetic stylus with wireless charging, and USB Type-C. Rumors also hinted at a Q1 release, which means that the Surface Pro 5 could make its debut as soon as this month.

The Surface Pro line is designed to pack desktop-grade power in a portable device and each iteration has been better than the previous one. That said, the Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is expected to be an impressive powerhouse all around and if it does indeed launch with AMD Ryzen under the hood, it could pack a mean punch. On the other hand, Intel's Kaby Lake is still a possibility and would also deliver plenty of oomph for a high-end Surface Pro 5.

With nothing official so far, we only have tidbits of information to get a glimpse of what could be in the cards, but it's tough to tell anything for sure. As always in such cases, take all leaks, rumors, and reports with a grain of salt until the formal unveiling. If Microsoft is gunning for a spring release for the Surface Pro 5, we'll know more soon enough.

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A phishing scam has apparently been plaguing Gmail users, potentially stealing their Google credentials by fooling them to open an email attachment.

Phishing scams are among the worst things on the internet and while generally they're fairly easy to spot for more tech-savvy users, some of them are more cleverly designed and manage to trick more people.

This is the case with the latest Gmail phishing scam, which at first glance looks pretty convincing and could fool plenty of unsuspecting users. As in all cases, however, phishing scams are not impossible to spot and avoid so here's what you need to know about this threat.

Gmail Phishing Scam: How It Works

This phishing scam has apparently been going on for quite some time, as Wordfence first warned about it back in January. Google has since taken steps to address it and in late February it made some tweaks to the Chrome browser to warn users in case they faced this phishing attempt.

As with many other scams like this, this Gmail phishing scam involves an attacker with an email address designed to appear as someone known to the user. They send an email with a seemingly innocent attachment such as a Word document or a PDF, but it's all a scam. Upon clicking the attachment to preview it, Gmail users are redirected to a Google sign-in page prompting them to enter their credentials.

How To Detect This Gmail Phishing Scam

As Lifehacker points out, those seemingly legitimate attachments are in fact embedded images crafted to pose as attachments that send users to a fake Google sign-in page to steal their Google credentials.

Although that sign-in page is fake, everything appears to look normal, complete with the Google logo text boxes and everything the legitimate Google sign-in page displays.

However, the address bar gives it away. Instead of a standard URL like "https://" the page actually masks a data URI that starts with "data:text/htyml." Consequently, to avoid falling victim to this phishing scam, take a good look at the address bar and check whether it looks like a legitimate URL or a data URI. If it's the latter, do not enter your Google credentials - just leave.

Google has updated its Chrome browser to warn against fake sign-in forms such as this one, but it doesn't stop the phishing scam altogether. It just shows a "Not Secure" message in the address bar of the page, and some users might not even spot it. At the same time, many users rely on other browsers that don't offer such warnings so the safest way is to just check the URL.

If you're using Google Chrome and you spot the "Not Secure" warning in the address bar, close the tab immediately. If you're using another browser and you spot the "data:text/htyml" giveaway for the URI, close the tab immediately.

For more information on how such scams work, as well as how to avoid and report phishing emails, head over to Google's dedicated support page.

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After this cutting-edge fertility treatment received official approval in Ukraine, it's now the United Kingdom's turn to witness the birth of "three-parent babies" in the near future.

Newcastle University has been granted permission by UK regulators to perform this type of in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure, which uses DNA from three different people and is designed to help women with mitochondrial disease conceive healthy babies.

First 3-Parent Babies In The UK

The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority publicly announced the decision on March 16, licensing the university to implement mitochondrial donation IVF techniques.

The first "miracle babies" conceived via this controversial method could be born by the end of the year or at the beginning of 2018.

The British Parliament legalized this procedure in 2015 and the HFEA approved its use in licensed cases a year later. Newcastle University is the first clinic to be granted a license for artificial fertilization through mitochondrial donation.

"Patients will now be able to apply individually to the HFEA to undergo mitochondrial donation treatment at Newcastle, which will be life-changing for them, as they seek to avoid passing on serious genetic diseases to future generations," said HFEA Chair Sally Cheshire.

The Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation supporting scientific and medical achievements, has long advocated for the approval of this technique. Foundation director Jeremy Farrar described HFEA's announcement as "a landmark day for people living with mitochondrial disease."

How The Technique Works

Mitochondrial disease is caused by defective mitochondria, microscopic structures that convert food into energy at a cellular level. This condition is comparably rare and affects 3,500 women in Britain at the most. The faulty mitochondria are genetically transmitted, making it impossible for women who have the disease to give birth to healthy babies.

In infants, the condition is often fatal. Some families have lost multiple children to this disease, which drains the body of the energy it requires to sustain the cardiac system. One in 4,300 children is born with severe symptoms, which lead to muscle weakness, blindness, deafness, seizures, learning disabilities, diabetes, and heart and liver failure.

Since only the mother can pass down mitochondrial disease, healthy mitochondria are provided via a donor egg. During this procedure, scientists harvest the nucleus and DNA from the mother's egg and implant it in the donor egg, which is then fertilized and implanted through IVF.

Because mitochondria have their own DNA, the resulting embryo has DNA from three people, but only the biological parents' genes can influence the baby's physical appearance and personality.

Professor Doug Turnbull, head of Newcastle's Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research, anticipates the university's clinic could help 25 couples every year.

"This will allow women with mitochondria DNA mutations the opportunity for more reproductive choice," he told BBC.

In the United States, this experimental technique was been successfully used more than 15 years ago. Tech Times reported last year the 17 children born as a result of mitochondrial donation are healthy and doing well.

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Samsung Galaxy S8 leaks and rumors are piling up and newly surfaced images show a sleek Jet Black color option that might look very familiar to iPhone fans.

Apple stirred great hype with its Jet Black iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus back in September, and the color option quickly proved to be in great demand. If in the past Apple would spice things up in terms of design by introducing a new look with each iPhone iteration, in recent years it settled for the same overall design and pulled other tricks to keep things interesting.

With the iPhone 7 series, for instance, Apple increased the amount of internal storage, packed a dual rear camera setup onto the larger model, and introduced new color options. The Jet Black avatar was the most popular, sporting a mirror-like glossy finish that added a more elegant touch.

Glossy Black Samsung Galaxy

Samsung didn't take long to go down the same path and in December 2016, it introduced the Galaxy S7 edge in a glossy black avatar called Black Pearl.

While Samsung previously released a slew of black phones, it never offered a glossy black option until after Apple introduced its Jet Black iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Jet Black Leaks

It now seems like the glossy black Galaxy S7 edge was successful enough to warrant a new iteration and Samsung is apparently ready to add the same glossy avatar to the upcoming Galaxy S8 series.

The highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus will finally debut later this month and newly leaked images now show a sleek Jet Black (or Black Pearl) color option.

The images surfaced on Weibo (via SlashLeaks) and allegedly show a Galaxy S8 mockup in the stylish glossy black avatar. Third parties often use leaked schematics to come up with to-scale dummy units (mockups) of upcoming Samsung and Apple smartphones. Such units are made using real materials and although they're not the real product, they're often quite close to the real deal.

If this proves to be true in this case, the upcoming glossy black Samsung Galaxy S8 will look pretty stunning, albeit it will also be a fingerprint magnet because of the mirror-like finish.

Nevertheless, the color option could be another selling point for the Galaxy S8 flagship and further heat up the already fierce competition between Samsung and Apple.

Other Samsung Galaxy S8 Color Options

Other rumors Samsung Galaxy S8 color options include White, Gold, Black, Orchid Gray and Violet, with availability potentially varying by market.

With an official unveiling set for later this month on March 29, the new Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus are expected to go on sale sometime in April. It remains to be seen which of the rumored color options will actually be in the mix, but the leaks are painting an exciting picture.

As always with leaks and rumors, however, it's best to take everything with a grain of salt until the formal unveiling.

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Tardigrades, perhaps more commonly known as water bears, are tiny creatures that maintain such strange characteristics. These Muppet-like creatures are able to survive extreme conditions, including staggering amounts of radiation, temperatures 302 degrees Fahrenheit to almost absolute zero, and pressures that would beat those in the deepest ocean trenches.

Water bears can also endure being dried up for up to a decade or even longer. In a new study, researchers found that they have special genes encoding for disordered proteins to help water bears survive near 100 percent water loss.

Extreme Desiccation: How Do They It?

Scientists previously assumed that this survival ability is due to a sugar called trehalose, which is what sea monkeys or brine shrimps use for preserving cells during desiccation. Trehalose levels, however, appeared much lower in water bears, so it couldnt possibly be the key.

The team of Thomas Boothby at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discovered clues in the water bears genes.

"The big takeaway from our study is that tardigrades have evolved unique genes that allow them to survive drying out. In addition, the proteins that these genes encode can be used to protect other biological material  like bacteria, yeast, and certain enzymes  from desiccation, explained Boothby, a postdoc fellow and the study first author, in a statement.

The team discovered that water bears produce a special kind of glassy substance holding their essential proteins and molecules in a suspended state until their bodies are rehydrated.

The glass practically traps desiccation-sensitive molecules in a form of matrix and hinder them from breaking like they usually would without the glassy protection, Boothby told Christian Science Monitor.

Proteins known as tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs) are responsible for producing this bioglass, where the shapeless yet highly flexible rearrange into solid bioglass once extreme drying takes place.

Once the water bears are exposed to water again, the bioglass melts, and the unique proteins return to their old random state.

Engineering The Same Unique Proteins In Other Animals

The researchers figured out that they could also maneuver other creatures to carry the same proteins and survive extreme desiccation.

When they inserted the genes into living bacteria and yeast, they discovered that the proteins equipped them against extreme desiccation just like they did with water bears. TDPs in a test tube are deemed adequately protective of desiccation-sensitive molecules, physically barring their breakage or folding.

These results offer the exciting possibility that TDPs could also work the same wonders on larger and more complex animals.

Cellular biologist John Crowe told the Monitor that its a convincing piece of research, but he is hardly convinced that the disordered proteins are tardigrade-specific as suggested. The proteins may also turn up in other desiccation-tolerant organisms, he said.

Potential real-world uses and applications of TDPs include protecting crops from drought as well as allowing medications to be stored at room temperature instead of constantly chilled conditions. The latter could be a good development for supplying important drugs in remote communities or those that lack refrigeration.

In light of rising global temperatures and greater spread of disease, results like this may also spell greater chances of survival for a number of life forms.

The findings were discussed in the journal Molecular Cell.

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A Walmart Stores supplier has issued recall of frozen pizzas sold in 11 U.S. states over fears of possible listeria contamination. About 6,700 pizzas sold under Walmart's Marketside brand were included in the recall.

Pizzas Recalled For Potential Contamination

RBR Meat Company recalled about 21,220 pounds of Marketside Extra Large Supreme Pizza that have been supplied to retail distribution centers located in Nevada, California, Washington, and Utah.

Walmart said that the pizzas were available in Washington state, Montana, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, and Hawaii.

The affected products were produced on Feb. 23. They carry the lot code 20547 and establishment number "EST. 1821," which can be found inside the USDA mark of inspection.

"The following product is subject to recall: 50.6-oz. corrugated box containing 1 shrink wrapped 16" pizza labeled as 'Marketside Extra Large Supreme Pizza,' with lot code 20547," the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said in a statement released on March 15.

The FSIS said that some products may be frozen and may still be in consumers' freezers. It urged those who purchased the products to not consume them. Products subjected for recall should be returned to where they were purchased or thrown away.

No confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of the affected products have been reported, but the problem was detected during routine sampling.

Listeriosis

Listeria is a food borne illness caused by Listeria monocytogenes. Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that about 1,600 people get listeriosis per year. About 260 of these cases are fatal.

CDC estimates that Listeria is the third leading cause of death from food poisoning in the United States. Earlier this month, six people from different states were brought to hospitals because of listeria infection. Vermont and Connecticut saw two fatalities linked to this food-borne outbreak.

Listeria infection tends to be more serious when it affects people with weak immune system, older adults, and pregnant women. Pregnant women and their newborns are at higher risk of getting a Listeria infection and the effect can be serious.

In a study published in February this year, researchers from Madison School of Veterinary Medicine found that Listeria pathogens can have adverse effect on the fetus during pregnancy. Infection may even cause miscarriage when this occurs in the early stages of pregnancy. Researchers urge pregnant women to avoid several food that may increase their risk for Listeriosis such as unpasteurized milk, raw sprouts, soft cheese, melon, and deli meats that were not carefully handled.

"Listeria is a harmful germ that can hide in many foods. Outbreaks of Listeria infections in the 1990s were primarily linked to deli meats and hot dogs. Now, Listeria outbreaks are often linked to dairy products and produce. Investigators have traced recent outbreaks to soft cheeses, celery, sprouts, cantaloupe, and ice cream," CDC said.

Pregnant women may experience fever and other flu-like symptoms due to infection. For those who are not pregnant, symptoms may include stiff neck, headache, confusion, loss of balance, fever, muscle aches, and convulsion.

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Beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon, Enceladus, lies an active aquatic world. Back in 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft had captured for the first time water jets, which were gushing out of the icy surface of the satellite, located near the south of Enceladus.

Based on this observation, scientists had concluded that a global ocean is surely buried beneath the icy crust of Enceladus. However, a new study states that the ocean may not be buried very deep from the surface, and is now close enough to be spotted by a radar.

Enceladus And Its Tiger Stripes

The new study, based on microwave interpretations of the region, shows that Saturn's moon is a lot warmer than expected, and the ocean may now lie only a few miles away from its icy surface. In 2005, the plumes of water that gushed out into space from the South Pole of Enceladus originated from four warm fractures on the surface of Saturn's moon, commonly known as "Tiger Stripes".

Since then, many flybys have been conducted in an attempt to understand the subsurface composition of Enceladus' ocean. The scientists suggest that it is similar to the subsurface ocean present on Europa, which is Jupiter's moon.

However, data gathered during a 2011 flyby showed that Enceladus' subsurface ocean may be much nearer to the surface than was previously estimated.

"During this flyby, we obtained the first and, unfortunately, only high-resolution observations of Enceladus' South Pole at microwave wavelengths," said Alice Le Gall, the lead scientist of the study

Gall further added that the observations made during the 2011 flyby, have given researchers and scientists a unique insight into the activities that are taking place beneath the icy surface of Enceladus. She said that the images captured during the flyby reveal that the first few meters of the surface area, that was under investigation, is much warmer than it was earlier deduced. Some places were 20 K warmer than the others.

Galls says that the warming may be caused due to sun's illumination to some extent. Moreover, the additional warming may be due to heat being emanated from Saturn.

Possibility Of Alien Life?

Enceladus is now being considered as a front runner for hosting alien life in its subsurface oceans, given that some areas of the moon are much warmer than the others.

The study conducted by Dr. Gall and her collaborators covered a narrow arc shaped area at the South Pole of the region. The observed swathe is about 311 miles long, almost 16 miles wide and is located just 19 to 31 miles north of the tiger-striped fractures.

The study has been published in journal Nature Astronomy.

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America is set to witness a celestial treat as a full solar eclipse is set to occur on Aug. 21 this year. The range of the eclipse will stretch from Oregon to South Carolina.

Other U.S. states will witness a partial eclipse. On the day, the aforementioned regions will feel as if all the lights have been blotted out, as the sun will completely disappear in the middle of the day.

What Is A Solar Eclipse?

A solar eclipse is a phenomenon where the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and blocks the latter's view from the planet. Due to this, the sun's disc is completely covered by the moon.

This in itself is not a very rare phenomenon, but the full eclipse is only within a 60- to 100-mile radius. As the Earth is mainly covered by oceans, the eclipse almost always occurs over the same.

What Is This Eclipse's Significance?

As reported by The Washington Post, the eclipse has been given the moniker "Great American Eclipse" and rightly so. The last total solar eclipse was witnessed in the United States way back in 1918. Americans will mark this date because of its significance.

The sun will be blocked for approximately an hour and a half by the moon. People are already beginning a countdown to the eclipse and have reserved hotel rooms in line with the event.

A prime spot to view the eclipse will be Carbondale, in Illinois. It is a five-hour drive from Chicago, and the Southern Illinois University is gearing up for a huge eclipse weekend. It is expecting a multi-thousand gathering.

How Is America Greeting This Phenomenon?

The Adler Planetarium has come up with an exhibit called "Chasing Eclipses." This exhibit will be open for the public sometime next week and delves into the history of solar eclipses, as well as upcoming celestial events. Visitors can stand in the shadow of the moon, study artifacts used by scientists of yore and build tools for viewing eclipses themselves.

NASA will be live-broadcasting the event, and researchers speculate that this may be the most celebrated eclipse ever, garnering the highest number of views.

The next solar eclipse is set to occur in 2024, but Chicago will again witness an eclipse in such close proximity in 2099.

Precautions To Be Taken

The total eclipse will be seen from Glendo, Wyoming, at 11:45 a.m. MT and the totality ends after just 2 minutes and 28 seconds.

One should keep in mind never to look at the eclipse directly. Always use eye protection as the ultraviolet radiation from the sun can cause permanent optical damage and blindness. Remember to wear eclipse glasses or use a pinhole projector to view the eclipse.

Photo: Takeshi Kubok | Flickr

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A new study has revealed that more than 50 million years ago, some animals shrank in size in response to a series of extreme global warming events.

Effect Of Climate Change On The Early Horse Species Arenahippus

Researchers of the study, which was published in Science Advances, found that some ancient animals which include the dog-sized Arenahippus, an early horse, became smaller as levels of carbon dioxide and temperatures rose as part of natural global warming.

By analyzing fossil teeth, researchers found that the ancient compact horse became 14 percent smaller going from 17 pounds to 14. 6 pounds.

"These guys were probably about the size of maybe a dog, then they dwarfed," said study researcher Abigail D'Ambrosia, from University of New Hampshire. "They may have gone down to the size of a cat."

An Evolutionary Response

Researchers said that changes in the body could be an evolutionary response that can help animals to efficiently reduce body heat as a smaller body size would allow them to cool down faster. The availability of nutrients and quality of food may also have a role.

The impact of climate change on animals, and even plants today, has also been documented by several studies. Researchers were able to conduct observations that suggest modern-day creatures also go through evolutionary processes to adapt to a warming world popularly blamed on carbon emissions.

Effects On Animals

Just like the Arenahippus that evolved to adapt to a warmer planet, many animals that exist today became smaller in response to climate change. A 2014 study found that wild salamanders have been shrinking since 1957. Researchers think that the Appalachian salamanders get smaller in size due to drier and warmer conditions created by global warming.

The migratory bird red knot has also experienced dramatic shrinking since 1985. Since the Arctic has been warming up earlier as a result of climate change, the snow melts two weeks earlier than decades ago. The insects in the Arctic respond to this shift by hatching earlier.

When red knot chicks hatch though, the insects are already past their peak so food source becomes scarcer. As a result, the shorebirds develop smaller bodies and shorter bills. Being smaller, however, threatens the population of the birds, which could even possibly lead to their extinction.

"Shorter-billed birds were forced to live on seagrass, which is a poor food source for these birds. The poor survival of shrunken first-year birds clearly contributes to the current population decline seen in red knots nowadays," explained Jan van Gils, from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

Effects On Agricultural And Wild Plants

Plants are affected as well. In a 2016 study, researchers found that extreme heat waves and droughts have led to a reduction in global cereal harvests such as wheat, rice and maize within a period of 50 years, essentially affecting agriculture and food production.

In another study, researchers who looked at the DNA markers in plants found that exposure to climate change conditions led to altered genetic composition of wild plants.

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U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless has officially started taking preorders for the sleek new LG G6 flagship and three special offers aim to make the smartphone powerhouse even more attractive.

The highly anticipated LG G6 made its debut at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 boasting impressive specs and features all around, ready to compete at the top end of the smartphone market.

The timing might be perfect for the LG G6, as it's arriving plenty of months after 2016 flagships hit the scene, but before 2017 powerhouses such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the iPhone 8 make their debut.

In other words, the LG G6 has a good window to shine as the first exciting flagship smartphone of 2017 and it's ready to start shipping soon to prospective buyers in the United States.

Verizon LG G6 Price And Options

Verizon Wireless is now taking preorders for the 32 GB LG G6 in either black or gray color options. The smartphone starts at $0 down (for eligible customers), followed by 24 monthly installments of $28 per month. Those who prefer to purchase the handset outright, meanwhile, will have to shell out $672 for the LG G6.

That's a decent price considering that the LG G6 comes with powerful specifications and flagship-worthy features, as high-end smartphones don't come cheap.

Verizon LG G6 Special Offers: Free Smart TV, Google Home, And More

Verizon has three special offers available with the LG G6 - trade-in credit, a free Google Home smart speaker, or a free LG Smart TV.

The first one entails a trade-in credit, with Big Red offering $200 back to customers who trade in an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or iPhone SE, a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Moto Z, Moto Z Force, Moto Z Play, HTC 10, LG G4, LG G5, LG V10, or LG V20.

To take advantage of the trade-in credit, customers have to buy the LG G6 with monthly payments and trade-in one of the above-mentioned eligible devices either during the checkout or once they submit the order. Verizon will offer the $200 as bill credits over the following two years.

The second promotional offer bundles a free Google Home with the purchase of the LG G6. To take advantage of this promo, buy the LG G6 from Verizon and after checkout, head over to LG's website to fill out the form for the promotion. Both the first and second special offer require purchasing the LG G6 by April 30, 2017.

The third special offer for the Verizon LG G6 bundles a free 43-inch LG Smart TV. To take advantage of this promo, customers have to either switch to Verizon's network or add a line with the LG G6 on monthly installments, and use the Verizon unlimited plan. Next up, customers need to access the dedicated page for this promotion and use the code FREELGTV. The fine print notes that the TV will ship within eight to 10 weeks after receipt of claim, and the offer is valid only while supplies last.

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The reported move of Mayo Clinic to stamp its preference on patients with commercial insurance has triggered a strong reaction from senior health officials who dubbed the action as disconcerting.

Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper said her department is very concerned about the Mayo CEO's order and is looking how that will be put into action.

The official said it is looking into the matter to know whether it is tinkering with any of the existing laws on human rights.

Leaked Video Transcript

A leaked video transcript of Mayo CEO Dr. John Noseworthy's counsel to the employees on the new policy was obtained by the media and triggered a storm in the healthcare circles.

The authenticity of the video has been confirmed by Mayo.

"I was really surprised," Piper said while adding that the DHS still expects the Mayo Clinic to honor its commitments to enrollees in public programs.

She said the Mayo CEO has been sent some communications for which response is awaited.

Piper said it is unusual on the part of a hospital boss to openly promote the cause of privately insured patients at the expense of government funded patients.

Piper hinted that DHS will also relook at its existing contracts with Mayo and also probe the complaints lodged by Medicaid patients about "dissatisfactory service at the Mayo."

Meanwhile, the Mayo staffers invited the commissioner for a discussion. Though Mayo's action will not affect a large number of patients, the selective strategy might be reflecting the financial pressures faced by Mayo due to federal health reforms.

In the video, the CEO says the clinic will take patients irrespective of payer source. However, Noseworthy wanted the employees to apply discretion when two patients are referred with similar conditions. Then the "priority should be accorded to those with private insurance."

"We're asking ... if the patient has commercial insurance, or they're Medicaid or Medicare patients and they're equal, that we prioritize the commercial insured patients enough so ... we can be financially strong at the end of the year to continue to advance our mission," the CEO said in the video recorded late last year.

Mayo Defends Action

Mayo said the preference for commercial insurance is a way to bolster patient numbers and a means to subsidize patients whose insurance is inadequate to cover the cost of their care.

A statement by Mayo said medical need will be the first priority in the matter of scheduling patients. The clinic's statement claimed that Medicare and Medicaid still constituted 50 percent of the total services.

In 2016, Mayo provided more than $600 million in care to patients, in which $500 million is in unreimbursed care for Medicaid patients and charity.

Medicare patients had their services billed up to $1.8 billion which was still not reimbursed.

Serious Violation Of Law

Discrimination of public program patients through denial or delay of care at the emergency room is a serious offense, according to Tom Barker, a lawyer at Foley Hoag.

However, the right of a hospital to order its elective patients on the basis of payer source is a gray area, he added.

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Paytm Bill Payments Service Is Now Available In Canada | TechTree.com

Indian mobile payments and commerce company Paytm has announced that it has finally entered Canada, and the Paytm Canada app is now available for download on both Android and iOS platforms.

According to a recent official blog post, Paytm has mentioned that its Canada journey started back in 2014 as a two-member operation in Toronto, working out of local libraries. The post mentions that, today, Canadians can pay their cell phone, cable, internet, electricity and water bills using the new Paytm Canada app. It is also said that they can use it to pay insurance and property taxes.

[Screenshots via Gadgets360]

Apparently, if you look at the apps screenshots, you can clearly see two segments - Pay Canadian Bills and Pay Indian Bills. Also, the company boasts of allowing to pay Indian mobile bills using Canadian credit cards.

[Image via Paytm Blog]

Commenting on the launch, Harinder Takhar, CEO  Paytm Labs said, "We are excited to announce that starting today, consumers in Canada will be able to access the seamless Paytm experience that is already well-known in India for its convenience. We are confident that Canada will be a very successful market for us".

Speaking at the launch, Toronto Mayor John Tory said, "It's been a great experience to be home to the Paytm Labs team in Toronto since 2014. Toronto is the city for a company looking to locate in North America with our multisector strength and our exceptional diverse talent pool. With the Canadian app launch, we look forward to Paytm's success and being an integral part to its growth story globally".

TAGS: Paytm
Since 2009, developed countries have failed to meet their commitment to finance US$100 billion to help poor countries mitigate climate-related problems. | Read More
Leap onto land saves fish from being eaten







Sydney, Australia (SPX) Mar 15, 2017





Fish on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga have evolved the ability to survive out of water and leap about on the rocky shoreline because this helps them escape predators in the ocean, a ground-breaking new study shows. "Avoiding predators might be an explanation of why some animals move from their ancestral homes into starkly different environments, but evidence for this is rare because it is difficult to collect," says study first author Dr Terry Ord of UNSW Sydney. "Our study of blenni ... read more
Update: LSU Police has made an arrest in the case.

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LSU police officers on Friday identified a "person of interest," as well as a vehicle allegedly linked to the reported abduction Wednesday night of an LSU student from sorority row on the university's campus.

A university spokesman said that the investigation into the incident  which was first reported to Baton Rouge city police around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday  remains ongoing but they hope for a resolution soon.

The person of interest was being questioned by LSU police Friday afternoon, said Ernie Ballard, the spokesman.

East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputies assisted campus police in detaining someone in connection with the incident in the Gardere area.

WBRZ-TV reported that two men were detained at a home on General Adams Avenue around noon, and a WBRZ reporter noted a vehicle parked at the home matched the description of a car LSU police said was connected to the case.

Campus police distributed a flyer with photos of a dark-colored car connected to the alleged abduction to area law enforcement agencies. The flyer, which was not released to the media, said a man driving the car parked it on campus before abducting a student and forcing her into her own vehicle.

On Wednesday night, around 11:58 p.m., LSU sent out an emergency text message to students that described the perpetrator of the reported abduction as an armed man with dreadlocks wearing a black shirt and pants. It indicated the victim was safe.

Baton Rouge police officers were dispatched to the 1700 block of Government Street around 9:30 p.m. that night "relative to a stolen vehicle and possible rape," a BRPD police spokesman told The Advocate on Thursday. The case was quickly turned over to LSU police after officers determined the crime happened on campus.

A clerk at the One Stop convenience store at 1701 Government said that a visibly upset woman entered the store around 9 p.m. Wednesday. Alhassan Murgen, 19, said when the woman walked in, almost everyone immediately realized she was scared, shaking from fear.

The security footage from the store shows a customer, who had been waiting by the entrance, ushering the woman away from the door, further back into the store.

Murgen said he brought the woman back behind the plexi-glass wall where a door can be shut to separate the employees from customers. Murgen said she used his phone to call 911 and call her mother.

"We gotta help her," Murgen said. "She was scared That's what we're supposed to do."

The woman said a man had dropped her off there, but that he soon drove off, Murgen said. The woman said that man had put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her, Murgen said.

The woman's mother showed up before police officers arrived, who came about 25 minutes from when they first called, Murgen said.
The "budget blueprint" that President Donald Trump's administration unveiled on Thursday could have a far-reaching impact on Louisiana, and the state's leaders say they are now looking for more details about the president's spending proposal.

Trump's budget plan, which was outlined in a 53-page summary document, calls for deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and other federal agencies, while ramping up spending on Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

It also calls for the outright elimination of funding for dozens of smaller agencies and programs.

The Delta Regional Authority, which recently has been aiding with the town of St. Josephs lead-contaminated water response, would get no federal funding, likely shuttering its efforts.

The Trump administration's recommendation also eliminates funding for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant program that has been repeatedly used as a vehicle for providing disaster recovery assistance to Louisiana, including $1.6 billion for victims of last year's catastrophic floods.

Additionally, it makes several suggestions of shifting more responsibility of funding some services to states, as Louisiana faces its an estimated $500 million deficit in the budget that begins July 1.

Gov. John Bel Edwards' spokesman Richard Carbo said the governors' biggest concern is the CDBG cut. He said it doesn't necessarily signal doom for the state as it seeks an additional $2 billion in flood recovery assistance, but it should be addressed.

"We just don't know what the cut to the funding will mean to the administering of resources," he said.

Aside from the disaster aid, towns and parishes across the state last year received more than $13 million in community development block grant funding that allowed those communities to repair sewer and waterlines. Additional funding came to cities and parishes for community-based programs.

During a press briefing Thursday, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said that the administration questions how effective the CDBG money has been.

"To take the federal money and give it to the states and say, look, we want to give you money for programs that don't work -- I can't defend that anymore," he said. "We cannot defend that anymore. We're $20 trillion in debt."

He didn't directly address the disaster assistance component of the program. Officials have long relied on the block grants to aid rebuilding because of the program's flexibility.

The budget blueprint suggests states and cities to take on the CDBG responsibility without federal funding. It also doesn't directly address the disaster recovery component.

The blueprint also would cut spending on the National Flood Insurance Program's Flood Hazard Mapping, which ultimately affects insurance rates.

Carbo said proposed cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers could also impact Louisiana priorities, including the long-awaited Comite River diversion project.

He added that the governor's office has been in communication with the White House and is still seeking additional information.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the third-ranking member in the Chamber, said he will be thoroughly reviewing Trump's request.

"His emphasis on fiscal responsibility is a welcome change after eight years of President Obamas big-spending, government-knows-best ways," Scalise said in a statement. "Of course, spending is ultimately decided by Congress through the legislative process, and as we begin these discussions with the administration I will be looking closely at how this proposal could impact southeast Louisiana, including key priorities like the National Flood Insurance Program, storm protection and coastal restoration projects."

Scalise, R-Jefferson, has emerged as a key ally of the president among House leadership.

"Already, my Republican colleagues and I have begun working with the president to cut the size and cost of government, grow our economy, create jobs, and keep Americans safe by securing our border and properly funding our troopsand the Presidents budget request today represents an important step in that process," he said.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, said that he views Trump's proposal as an early starting point that will be vetted.

"Clearly, we've got to manage our debt and deficit -- we can't waste money," he said. "This is a blueprint, not a budget. It's not been passed."

Cassidy said a program that is justified isn't necessarily in danger.

"It just has to prove its merits," he said.

Cassidy said that immediate red flags for him were cuts the U.S. Coast Guard that Louisiana relies on, particularly in times of hurricanes, and medical research. A doctor, Cassidy said that the nation has to be committed to research that will come up with cures Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer and other diseases.

He said he also thinks it's unclear what the proposed CDBG cut would mean for federal disaster assistance for Louisiana.

"That will be one of the questions," he said.

U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, whose North Louisiana district has received several economic development boosts from the Delta Regional Authority, said he sees positives and negatives in the White House outline. Abraham, an Alto Republican who is a veteran and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has been a vocal advocate for defense spending and services for veterans.

President Trumps budget blueprint paves the way for truly slashing the size of the bloated federal government and finally invests in our military and veterans," he said. "Well need to negotiate on some areas that are important to economic development in Louisiana, but I believe the proposal is a good first step in what will be a developing negotiation process.

U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, the lone Democrat among the state's congressional delegation and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was less optimistic about the proposal.

He said Trump's plan would "put the future of Louisiana in jeopardy" and called it "an insult to our state."

A budget is much more than numbers on a page, it is a moral document that reveals your priorities," he said. "With this budget, the president has made it clear that our states well-being is not high on his list."

Richmond also said that, despite Trump's statements that he wants to help lift the black community, the budget outline cuts needed services.

"This budget proposal is not a new deal for African Americans," Richmond said. "Its a raw deal that robs the poor and the middle-class to pay the richest of the rich."

The Congressional Black Caucus is scheduled to meet with Trump on Wednesday, according to the White House.
Advocate staff photo by BRIANNA PACIORKA -- Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards will ask the Legislature to change the state's system of collecting business taxes, replacing a tax on corporate income with a tax on corporate sales, according to administration officials. He also wants to begin charging sales tax to a number of services and items that currently aren't taxed.
When news came out that former U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany has signed on with a Washington lobbying firm, my first thought was that it would really be news if he hadn't.

In going to work for Capitol Counsel, Boustany, who left Congress earlier this year after falling short in his bid for U.S. Senate, is following a lucrative path forged by former senators Mary Landrieu, John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston, former U.S. Reps. Bob Livingston, Billy Tauzin, Richard Baker and more  and most recently traveled by David Vitter, who didn't run for reelection last year and who had already announced he'd join the lobbying ranks.

In fact, Boustany's new job will have the Lafayette Republican working alongside another onetime Louisiana Congressman, Jim McCrery, one of the firm's partners. Both are tax code specialists who rose through the ranks on the House Ways and Means Committee, so they should pack quite a one-two punch.

Boustany's announcement also puts to rest the possibility that he might join the Trump administration, at least in the near term.

Some Louisiana officials, led by U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, had tried to push him for the job as U.S. Trade Representative. Boustany's generally a free trader, so appointing him would have openly conflicted with President Donald Trump's anti-trade campaign rhetoric (not that that sort of thing is a deal killer these days, given how many Goldman Sachs veterans have landed in Trump's inner circle since he excoriated Hillary Clinton for her amply-compensated closed-door speeches for the financial firm). But it would have been good for trade-dependent Louisiana.

Familiar name in Louisiana being pushed hard to head FEMA Paul Rainwater, who played a key role in helping Louisiana recover from hurricanes under bot

With both Vitter and Boustany spoken for, the only question is whether the third member to leave the state's delegation this year will join them. John Fleming, a Republican from Minden who also ran for Vitter's seat, has yet to announce his future plans. This could mean that he still hopes to join the new administration, perhaps as head of FEMA  although some powerful state officials are pushing Trump to appoint another Louisianan, former Louisiana Recovery Authority and Jindal administration official Paul Rainwater, instead.

Fleming has met with the Trump team but has not provided more details. If he eventually comes out with an announcement like Boustany's, we'll know how that all worked out.
Married at First Sight's Anthony Manton will be calling the races at Thoroughbred Park's charity race day on Saturday.

Anthony is one of a group of singles who agreed to "marry" - ie participate in a legally non-binding ceremony - on air to a complete stranger, in his case air hostess Nadia Stamp.

Anthony from Married at First Sight is coming to Canberra.

He has been cast as the villain and it's yet to be seen if the "marriage" survives.

In the meantime, Anthony, who works for TAB Corp, will be doing what he knows best and calling the races at the Canberra Racing Club's "A Good Day Out" race day on Saturday. He's also worked in Malaysia and Singapore.
In a perfect example of good timing, the National Museum of Australia will on Sunday present a plaque to the town of Cooma recognising the start of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme as one of Australia's "defining moments".

The Defining Moments in Australian History project was initiated by the National Museum of Australia to stimulate a public discussion about the events that have been "of profound significance to the Australian people".

National Museum of Australia curator, Jonathan Lineen, who curated the "Defining Moments'' history project, with the plaque that will be presented to the town of Cooma on Sunday.

The initial list of 100 defining moments was compiled by museum staff, in consultation with an advisory panel of leading historians. Since the project began, suggestions for additional defining moments have been added from the public, bringing the list to more than 250.

On the list is the Chifley government beginning the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme in 1949.
Two of Canberra's most enterprising women have, with a great deal of heartache, announced they will not proceed with their planned new food and wine venture, The Local Larder, at the Canberra Centre due to " irreconcilable differences" with the centre's owner.

Julie Nichols and Rachel Evagelou, the women behind the hugely successful Handmade Market and Shop Handmade store, say they gave their all to make The Local Larder work at the Canberra Centre but liaising with the centre owner, Queensland Investment Corporation, had got them nowhere.

Handmade Canberra creative directors Julie Nichols and Rachel Evagelou have had to walk away from their dream of opening The Local Larder at the Canberra Centre. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

The Local Larder was due to open in August last year as a local food, wine and tourism hub opposite Glebe Park, injecting life into the otherwise moribund eastern end of the Canberra Centre but delays caused by issues "beyond their control" meant that date came and went, forcing them to miss the critical Christmas trading period.

All that remained - and all that still remains today - was their proposed new home in the old Rivers Store boarded up, with its facade ripped down for renovation but no sign of any action on the site.
It costs about $120,000 per year to care for just one prisoner inside Canberra's Alexander Maconochie Centre.

But what if you could help keep ex-inmates from returning to jail for a fraction of that cost?

A pilot program has provided support to inmates released from the Alexander Maconochie Centre for 12 months after they get out the past three years. Credit:Rohan Thomson

A pilot program which helps people in the ACT readjust into the community for a year after they are freed from prison is showing promising results.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales say the ACT's Throughcare program has helped to curb recidivism by 23 per cent.
One of the cornerstones of civilisation is the rule of law. There is overwhelming support for that notion; most people are keen to obey democratically created laws that do not transgress morality and common sense. Without laws, there would be anarchy and rampant injustice. Most people, too, would argue, as does The Age, the best way to change a law is through democratic and parliamentary processes. It is also true that history is replete with examples of good coming from unjust laws being broken, and of evil coming from unjust laws being observed. Some of the most revered figures  including Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King jnr  are those who have stood up to bad laws. Protest is central to democracy. Credit:Louie Dovis While in prison in 1963 for resisting a law preventing him from protesting against the appalling treatment of African Americans, Dr King  who was awarded the Nobel peace prize after leading huge peaceful protests against racial injustice  said: "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." He also said: "An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

These are seminal ideas, and they need to be debated in good faith, particularly by lawmakers and others involved in public policy debate and formulation. It reflects poorly, then, on those who have reacted in a shrill and wilfully unsophisticated way to a comment by the incoming head of the union movement that if laws are not fair, they can be resisted. In a TV interview, ACTU secretary Sally McManus said she believes in the rule of law, but that when the law is unjust, it should be broken. That is an unremarkable position. But The Age believes Ms McManus should be quick to condemn any thuggery, fraud and other egregious unlawfulness by her members. We do not want here to analyse the merits of any particular law. We do want to set out the principle that in some circumstances civil disobedience is not only justified, but compelled. Whistleblowing is another example. Progress comes from civil disobedience. There is a profound difference between breaking a law out of greed or the desire to harm someone, and resisting a law that is demonstrably unfair. Ms McManus has been disingenuously misrepresented as considering herself above the law by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and many of his team, as well as Labor politicians, including Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, a former union leader who called for an amnesty on those who had supplied medical marijuana. All the populist posturing this week does not augur well for the return of Parliament in coming days. These issues transcend petty party politics, yet we are likely to witness an abusive slanging match in the forum where enlightened laws are supposed to be created.
Auckland Airport officials say they had no option but to ask police to fatally shoot a dog on Friday morning after he ran from his handler and on to the tarmac.

The runaway airport service dog, called Grizz, was shot dead after he delayed more than a dozen flights.

Grizz the dog was shot dead at Auckland Airport. Credit:Facebook/Avsec

The airport earlier said the dog had been caught but later confirmed he had been fatally shot.

Airport spokeswoman Lisa Mulitalo said Grizz was only killed as a last resort.
Nationals senator John "Wacka" Williams has revealed he has Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition that has begun to affect his mobility.

Describing the illness as "something I thought I'd never, ever get", Senator Williams confirmed he was diagnosed 12 months ago after experiencing difficulty with his left leg.

Universally known as "Wacka", a childhood nickname, the outspoken New South Welshman encouraged other men to see their doctor if they encountered health problems.

"Too many men, when they have a problem, bottle it up," he said on Sky News on Friday. "It builds up inside [and] serious things happen. You've got to get it off your chest, speak to people."
Tiarnie Coupland was just 13 when she first experienced the sharp pain of rejection that is an aspiring actor's lot. She got to the final stages of casting for the role of Isabelle in the 2011 Martin Scorsese blockbuster Hugo, up against rising American star Chloe Grace Moretz.

Coupland missed out  and the movie went on to be nominated for 11 Academy Awards.

"I'm living out my rebellious side on set." Credit:Marissa Alden

"I was very sad," she remembers of the sliding-doors moment in her career, six years ago. "But I learnt to grow a thick skin. You have to move up and move onwards with roles."

Testament to her lack of bitterness about the Hugo disappointment, Coupland, now 19, cites Moretz as one of her screen idols (the other is Anne Hathaway).
Another overseas leader, another awkward handshake moment at the White House.

This time, it was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met with US President Donald Trump on Friday.

Things seemed to be going well when Trump greeted the long-time German leader with a handshake as she arrived at the White House.

But, it was when the pair sat down in front of the press, after a private discussion covering America's NATO involvement as well as the situations in Ukraine and Afghanistan, that things went awry.
When Banok Rind was in year 10, her teacher didn't think she'd amount to anything. She would grow up to be an unemployed drunk, she was told. That's what Aboriginal people were.

"That's what she told me  so I didn't think I'd make it to year 11 or year 12, let alone uni," Ms Rind said.

The hurtful comments and daily acts of racism added up over the years. They weighed on her, compounding the transgenerational discrimination her people endured, Ms Rind said.

But she was determined. She did make it to university, enrolled in nursing and moved east.
Passengers and crew on a Regional Express aircraft flying from Albury in NSW have made a lucky escape after one of its propellers sheared off in mid-flight, narrowly avoiding hitting the wing and tail and forcing its pilots to make an emergency landing at Sydney Airport.

The Saab 340, carrying 16 passengers and three crew, was about 10 nautical miles from Sydney Airport when its right-hand propeller flew off, leading the two pilots to declare a PAN, which is one step down from a full-scale Mayday.

The pilots are understood to have felt a vibration and were about to shut down the right-hand engine when they looked out the cockpit window to see the propeller  rotating at thousands of revolutions per minute  disappear over the plane's wing.

Following the PAN call to air-traffic control, emergency services readied for the 34-seat plane's arrival at the airport, but it landed safely shortly after midday on Friday.
Three people have been charged after a man was tied up, beaten with a spanner and had glue rubbed on his eyes during a vicious home invasion.

The robbery happened at Kallangur, north of Brisbane, on Wednesday and detectives were continuing to search for a second woman involved in the attack.

Investigations were continuing into a Kallangur home invasion, as detectives continued to search for another woman believed to have been involved.

It will be alleged a 64-year-old man answered the door of his Duffield Road home about 10.20am to two women.

Police said while the victim was chatting to the women, two men broke in through the rear of the house, before taping the man to a chair and rubbing glue in his eyes.
The woman accused of masquerading as a doctor at a Melbourne cosmetic surgery clinic was employed by a bankrupt former doctor who had been banned from examining female patients' genitals without a chaperone.

Roger Bernard was last year forbidden from performing intimate examinations or skin checks on female patients  particularly inspections of "the perineum, breasts and buttocks"  without another person there, Fairfax Media can reveal.

Mr Bernard managed the Werribee Cosmetic Clinic, where he employed Phoebe Pacheco, an overseas trained doctor this week accused of treating at least 145 patients despite being unregistered in Australia.

The clinic is owned by a 24-year-old woman who shares Mr Bernard's surname.
A Victorian drug-addicted mother who killed another mother-of-three in a fight over $50 has been sentenced to at least 16 years in prison.

Alicia Schiller, 27, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of fatally stabbing ice-dealer Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert in a drug-fuelled rage in the home they shared in the Geelong suburb of Norlane in 2014.

Alicia Schiller.

Justice Elizabeth Jane Hollingworth handed down a 20-year sentence with a 16-year minimum on Friday and said Schiller still hadn't accepted that she'd killed someone.

Ms Evertsen-Motsert, 32, was stabbed several times in her Norlane home on the night of November 9, 2014. She died from a stab wound to the chest.
Freetown: A Christian pastor has found one of the world's largest uncut diamonds  weighing 706 carats  in Sierra Leone's eastern Kono region.

The stone, a photograph of which was posted on the president's official website, is being stored in the country's central bank, government sources said.

A local chief from Kono handed the stone to President Ernest Bai Koroma on behalf of Emmanuel Momoh who made the discovery. The government plans to auction it.

The presidency said in a statement on Thursday that Koroma thanked the chief who acted as an intermediary for not smuggling it out of the country.
LEARN MORE Become a Schmarter Car Buyer!

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 16, 2017 -- CarGurus, a leading car research and shopping site, today released a survey uncovering Canadian car shoppers' habits and preferences. The survey's findings showed that different types of car shoppers are willing to travel varying distances for a car, heavy online researchers have a more extensive car-buying process than non-internet users, and men and women have different priorities on what's most important when buying a car.

Key survey findings include:

Near, Far, Wherever You Are

The survey found that while most Canadians are not interested in a road trip to get their car, those that devote more time to car shopping research are more willing to travel great distances for their desired vehicle. In addition, those that conduct extensive online research are more likely to travel for a car as opposed to other expensive items.

70 per cent would not travel more than 100km to buy a car.

30 per cent of shoppers that spend more than 10 hours doing online research are willing to travel more the 200km to buy a car.

70 per cent of respondents that use four or more websites for car research said they would travel the furthest to purchase a car over other big ticket items like electronics, home appliances and furniture.

"Dedicating research time and using online resources can take the guess-work out car shopping and position a shopper to find their perfect deal, even if it means travelling further to get it," said Sarah Welch, Senior Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CarGurus. "It's interesting yet unsurprising that shoppers that invest significant time in research are also willing to travel further to get the car they want."

Hitting the Books:

Shoppers dedicating many hours to online research and visiting multiple websites for research are on a serious hunt for the perfect car. The smaller subset of shoppers not using the internet as a research tool tend not to be as extensive in their shopping process as heavy internet users.

57 per cent of shoppers that spend more than 10 hours doing online research visit four or more dealerships.

54 per cent of Canadians who visit more than four websites for car research visit four or more dealerships.

44 per cent of Canadians who don't use the Internet for car research are much more likely to visit only one dealership.

Time is from Mars, Gas is from Venus:

The survey found that men and women have different ideas about what's most important to consider when buying a car.

Women are more likely to say gas prices are most important to consider when buying a car (42 per cent vs 33 per cent men).

Men feel the time of year is most important to consider when buying a car (46 per cent vs 38 per cent women).

Methodology

These observations are based on an online survey of 1,000 randomly selected Canadians, 18 years of age or older. The survey was carried out by Google Surveys and issued in February 2017.
News from Mercedes-Benz Trucks - Mercedes-Benz Unimogs conquer ice and fire in Cumbria

Cumbria County Council 16 March 2017; Cumbria can justly claim to have the highest, most challenging terrain and the worst winter weather conditions of all England's counties - when the going gets tough, the crews responsible for keeping the hill roads open know they can depend on their trusty Mercedes-Benz Unimogs.

With a territory that takes in the rugged fells of the Lake District and a chunk of the wild and remote north Pennines, Cumbria County Council needs the toughest, most capable vehicles to clear snow and ice for motorists.

Faced with a job of this magnitude, it should be no surprise that highways chiefs rely on a pair of 4x4 Unimogs to spearhead their campaign to keep the county moving.

Spring brings no respite for the versatile off-road trucks - rather than parking them up and waiting for the temperatures to plummet again, the Council removes their gritting and snow-clearing equipment and replaces it with demountable water tanks, pumps and hoses. The trucks are then ready to tackle moorland and forest fires in the most hard-to-reach locations.

Cumbria's Unimog U500s are currently fitted with 5m3 Econ grit hoppers and spreaders. Up front, depending on the conditions to be tackled, each can be armed with cutting and blowing equipment by Kahlbacher, of Kitzbuhel, Austria - where they know a thing or two about snow - or Cuthbertson plough blades.

In April these will be replaced by 4,000 litre water tanks and high-pressure Angloco spraying pumps, along with racking to carry fire-fighting tools such as axes and beaters. From this point, until they change roles again at the onset of the next winter, they will be crewed by fire-fighters from the Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service.

The County Council's Transport Services Senior Manager David Jenkinson says: "The Unimogs are superbly capable and are really the only viable option for the type of terrain we have to deal with. Throughout winter they are right at home on Cumbria's high fell routes, whatever the weather, and in summer they are able to access fires which could be miles from the nearest road."

The Unimog's relatively compact footprint is also a useful attribute when working on the narrowest county roads, many of which have high banks or stone walls at either side.

"We've operated Unimogs before so our drivers are familiar with them," continued Mr Jenkinson. "The U500s are the best we've seen though. The cabs are extremely well designed and user-friendly, with superb all-round visibility, and they're supremely competent whatever the conditions. Even when faced with deep snow drifts, steep muddy slopes or the most rutted tracks, there's just no holding them back."

The off-road heritage of the iconic Unimog stretches back more than 70 years. Since the first model was launched in 1946, constant development by Mercedes-Benz engineers has kept it at the forefront of the off-road pack and today it is widely acknowledged as the world's leading all-terrain vehicle, with a reputation forged in the harshest operating conditions.

There are two core variants: an implement carrier with front, side and rear attachment points, and a base truck for a range of other bodies. All Unimogs have 4x4 chassis with single rear wheels, which follow the track created by the front wheels.

Gross weights vary from 7.5 to 16 tonnes and engines from 156 hp to 300 hp - these drive through electro-pneumatic gearboxes with up to eight forward and eight reverse ratios, or automatic transmissions.

Bernhard Dolinek, the manufacturer's Head of Special Trucks, Unimog, said: "Cumbria Council's vehicles perfectly illustrate the cost-effective adaptability of the Unimog - these U500s are able to tackle diverse roles with equal aplomb, which is far more efficient than using different chassis for each purpose."


PHILADELPHIA, March 16, 2017 -- The Safe Autonomous Vehicles (SAVe) Campaign today announced that out of more than a dozen automakers it challenged to take responsibility for failures in their autonomous vehicle technology, only Volvo has publicly agreed to accept responsibility for their robot cars at some levels of automation.

Meanwhile, the campaign noted that VW, just days after pleading guilty to a massive effort to deceive customers, responded to the challenge by pledging that its "long track record . . . stand on its own merits."

The VW response to the SAVe Campaign challenge read, in part:

"It is in fact because of our experienced approach over many years that we have encouraged other players in this field to follow a transparent step-by-step introduction of this transformative technology so that consumers above all find comfort in the long-term societal benefits AVs offer for safety, reduced emissions, improved quality of life in congested areas and greater mobility for the disabled and elderly among us. We will let our long track record and continued pursuit of this philosophy stand on its own merits."

SAVe challenged executives from Audi, BMW, Daimler, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Land Rover, Lyft, Nissan, Porsche, Tesla, Toyota, Uber, and VW to pledge to take responsibility for accidents caused by technology failure in ALL autonomous (robot) vehicles. The campaign set a deadline of March 15 for the companies' responses. Only VW/Audi and Porsche responded. None of the companies agreed to be accountable for failures in their technology.

"To be clear: Our campaign supports the development of autonomous vehicle technology," said national SAVe Campaign spokespersonand motor vehicle accident victims' advocateJeremy Warriner. "We believe self-driving cars may be one of the most significant technological developments of our lifetime. They promise enormous benefit for consumers, IF manufacturers establish concrete transparency and accountability standards."

Warriner, a survivor of a near-fatal car accident that required the amputation of both legs above the knee, praised Volvo for its industry-leading promise of accountability for SAE Level 4 and 5 vehicles, while pushing automakers to go even further. "The companies we've challenged pride themselves on safety and reliability. No manufacturer will want to be known as the risky choice in self-driving carsor as the company who won't stand behind its product."

The SAVe Campaign (SAVe) is a national project to educate the general public, opinion-leaders, and policymakers about the importance of ensuring that automakers take responsibility for their autonomous technology. SAE International's levels 2-5 range from partial to full automation. SAVe will be working with its partners to share the following chart of the auto company responses to date. For research on self-driving vehicles and a list of coalition partners, visit www.savecampaign.org.

Contact: Jeremy Warriner

jeremy@savecampaign.org

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/auto-manufacturers-refuse-to-take-responsibility-for-their-robot-car-failures-300425002.html

SOURCE SAVe Campaign

RELATED LINKShttp://www.savecampaign.org
Honoring the helpers Awards recognize those who support autism community

Thirteen community members and providers were recognized for their resilience, passion and heart at the 2022 Awesome in Autism Awards ceremony. The 14th annual event, hosted by Autism Society Ventura County, was held Oct. 20 at Wood Ranch Golf Club...

Go purple to support those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer November is the busiest month of the year for cancer awareness campaigns. Im going to focus on one of thempancreatic cancer because its a type weve seen a noticeable rise in over the last few years. And because it remains...

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...
Donald Trump is hardly the first Republican president to propose defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcastingthe tax-supported entity that underwrites PBS and NPRbut he could be the first to actually get it done.

Although the $445 million budget item that Trump wishes to zero out is a mere speck of dust in the $4.6 trillion scheme of thingsa line item that represents $1.35 out of each citizens pocketthe cut would likely bring about the dismantling of radio and television networks that have survived for five decades through periodic belt-tightening and political intimidation.

Thus, in the budget plans released Thursday, Trump and his minions are flipping the Big Bird at a popular American institution.

Today has been very disappointing, PBS President Paula Kerger told The Daily Beast, noting that an individuals annual outlay for public broadcasting is barely enough for a cup of coffee.

I think we are always concerned whenever were in a circumstance like that, where a budget has a zero next to our name. In this case, were taking nothing for granted. These are different and complicated days.

PBS icon Bill Moyers warned: This is the first time theyve tried it when theyve had one-party rule in Washington, and this time they have what it takes to succeed, which is a ruthless president who doesnt want any medium that competes with the alternate facts that theyre putting out.

As a top aide to President Lyndon Johnson 50 years ago, Moyers contributed to the formulation of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that launched citizen-backed television and radio in the United States. I was present at the creation, he told The Daily Beastbut if things go Trumps way, Moyers might also be present at the destruction.

I think their real target is NPR, which is a national broadcast news network with enough gumption to be a threat to the alt-right media, Breitbart and those people, said the 82-year-old Moyers, who these days is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which dispenses around $3 million a year to support independent journalism and documentaries, as well as making documentaries himself and running his own eponymous online news outlet, Moyers & Company.

Washington-headquartered NPR, which reaches 37.5 million listeners a week on 264 member stations plus hundreds more licensee-stations with news programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, depends on taxpayers for around 10 percent of the NPR systems billion-dollar budget. NPR has so far not commented on Trumps proposal.

But CPB President Patricia Harrison blasted the budget plan in a statement: There is no viable substitute for federal funding that ensures Americans have universal access to public medias educational and informational programming and services. The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public medias role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions--for Americans in both rural and urban communities.

Neal Shapiro, president of New Yorks WNETone of the three major PBS production centers (Boston and Washington are the other two)said that if Trumps budget cut is enacted, it will literally destroy public television.

It is really catastrophic because the whole system depends on a relatively small investment by the federal government$1.35 per taxpayer, Shapiro told The Daily Beast. I think most taxpayers wouldnt notice it one way or the other if it went away. But I think they would notice if PBS went away.

Shapiro, who estimated that taxpayers fund 15 percent of WNETs $150 million budgetwith the rest supplied by viewers, donors, foundations and individual station licensing fees for WNET productions such as Great Performances and Naturethe federal investment is really the flywheel that keeps this whole system goingWe raise five or six times more money than the federal dollars, but the federal dollars are often the first in, and often the ones that can pay for some of the operating expenses because those are often the hardest thing to raise money for. To pull the plug on that would be to destroy the lynchpin of the whole system.

In the worst-case scenario, rural and small-town PBS stationsmany of which depend on the feds for half or more of their annual budgets because they cant draw on the financial resources of a big city like New Yorkwould be forced off the air.

The interdependent network of 350 member stations nationwide would inevitably start to collapse, fees to the production centers would decline, and eventually creative producers would look elsewhere for a truly national audience, which in turn would prompt a death spiral of decimation.

I think the rural districts and smaller towns will be the first places that are hardest hit, Shapiro said, noting that many of those stations are located in red states that helped Trump win the presidency. The big stations will be able to survive in the short term, he added, but as the system crumbles, well all get washed away.

The CPB has long been a target of conservative culture warriors such as former Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan aide Patrick Buchanan, who placed it prominently on his personal hit list.

But Trumps freshly minted budget director, former South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney, is framing the proposed cut as an act of fiscal responsibility.

"Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?" he asked Thursday during an appearance on MSNBCs Morning Joe. "The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense and we will, but we can't ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

Mulvaneys argument was undermined not only by the miniscule expense to coal miners and single moms, but also by a public opinion survey commissioned by PBS in January, clearly in anticipation of Trumps budget ploy.

The telephone survey of 1,001 registered voters, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic polling firms and released Thursday as Trumps budget landed, showed 73 percent opposing federal cuts for public television; meanwhile, 83 percent, including 70 percent of those who voted for Trump, wanted Congress to find budget savings elsewhere.

NPR, meanwhile, has also found a powerful Republican ally in Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that grants federal funding for the CPB.

In a recent interview with media site Current, Cole admitted to enjoying Morning Edition, calling it informative and fair and said NPR and PBS both perform a valuable service. I support them both.

With public radio I can wake up without someone shouting at me, he said. I know some people disagree but if theyd listen to the content theyd likely come to another opinion.
In 1999, during an interview at the 92nd Street Y (then YMHA) later published in the Paris Review, the playwright Arthur Miller told an interviewer he had run into Mel Brooks while on vacation in the Caribbean in 1968, just before the premiere performance of The Price.

Id never known him before, recalled Miller. He said, Well, what are you doing now? I said, Well, I just wrote this play that were about to put on. Its called The Price. He said, Whats it about? I said, Well, there are these two brothers... He said, Stop, Im crying!

You can see why there might be tears watching it: a lesser-known play in the Miller canon, it focuses, like Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, on the emotional knots of fathers and sons, and a lot of very vexed ghosts of the past, and money and its own complicated and perverting force within families. This, as many know only too well, only becomes evident after the death of a parent, and the divisions of the spoils begins.

As Miller once told Humanities magazine, The two greatest plays ever written were Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, and they're both about father-son relationships, you know. So this goes back. He and his own father Miller once likened to two search lights on different islands.

Living through the Depression, Miller said in the same interview, had left him with the feeling that the economic system is subject to instant collapse at any particular momentI still think soand that security is an illusion which some people are fortunate enough not to outlive.

In the new Broadway production of The Price, Mark Ruffalo plays the central character, Victor Franz, a stolid New York cop who has come to his parents townhouse in his navy blue uniform to host an antique dealer, Gregory Solomon (Danny DeVito, making his Broadway debut). Solomon has come to appraise the value of the residences furniture, held in the attic where the action takes place, with a view to buying it all before the property is demolished. And so the negotiations, suspicion and bluster begin. No theatrical pun intended, but DeVito steals the show.

What looks like a simple furniture transaction turns out to be anything but. For one, there is Esther (Jessica Hecht), Victors wife, who loves himindeed their quiet mutuality, even while acknowledging the differences between them, is one of Millers most charming, recurring theme in the play.

But Esthers dissatisfaction, her desire for money and a materially more upscale life is the niggling thorn between them, and probably wouldnt be quite so hurtful if it didnt find an embodiment at the end of act one with the appearance of Walter (Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame), Victors charismatic, well-dressed and considerably ritzier brother. Just as in other Miller plays, the unseen characters, here the boys father, remains a fulcrum of the play.

The Pricethis Roundabout Theatre production is directed by Terry Kinneyis not a fast play. Nor are its stakes as abyss-facing as Miller at his most unsparing. All these characters will carry on at the end.

But it is, at moments, a piercing study on familial devotion, betrayal, and disillusion. The appraisal being conducted is not just the cost of furniture, but the cost of relationships; how much we invest in them compared to how much we get out of them, financially and emotionally.

With the end of their fathers life, what are Victor and Walter left with? The recriminations of the past, now filtered through the exacerbating stress of present-day money, and reuniting not for a birthday or a happy occasion but to sell possessions and objects off. Financial transactions, it emerges, have been the familys inner currency for yearsdisastrously.

Derek McLanes crowded set design is significant: There are so many objects on stage that present a suitably claustrophobic saleroom-cum-obstacle course for all the actors. This apartment is crowded with furniture: choc-full of sofas, a giant harp, bureaus, wardrobes, dressers, tables; to convey the crowdedness all the objects hang from the ceiling as well as standing on the floor. Outside are a background set of shadowy water-towers, those lyrical custodians of the New York skyline.

Victor may be the central character in The Price, but hes also the most flagging (and sometimes its just impossible to hear Ruffalo through his macho New York-accented braying): maybe its his plodding determination to play at life with as straight a bat as possible. He is 50 and feeling it. Solomon may be much older, but he is a ball of energy. Victors determination to keep the transaction brief, and on his terms, is torpedoed immediately. Thank goodness: his dourness would be too heavy an anchor, even if it's true to the character Miller intended.

DeVito, playing the kind of irreverent, hilarious, irritation-generating dynamo that he also does so brilliantly on filmsteals the audiences attention, especially when it comes to consuming an egg, the shell of which he cracks with his cane. He then eats it with the gusto that Cookie Monster attacks his cookies. His character is 89, and in a long, colorful life has been three times married and somehow acquired a discharge from the British Navy. But he, too, is hiding a family tragedy, and DeVitos emotional register shifts perfectly at the moment of its revelation.

Hecht skillfully does as much as she can do with very little, Millers vision of her seems beached between acquisitive shrew and frustrated peacemaker, with little shading in betweenit is Hechts subtle coquettishness that adds an edge to her interactions with Walter. Shalhoub is also unexpected: he looks as smooth as any stage villain should yet his desire for money isnt simple greed, and he doesnt patronize his brother, despite having materially achieved so much more. He puts the price of his beautiful coat at two gallstonesoperated on a big textile guy who keeps sending him things.

Money is the constant rub. Their resentment is rooted in Walter giving just $5 a month to the running of the household when Victor had moved in with their father to take care of him. And now Victor is willing to sell off the furniture for $1100 to Solomon. Well, not if the more eyes-on-the-prize twinning of Walter and Esther have anything to do with it.

But the family mystery and betrayal runs much deeper; the two brothers have, Victor most appallingly, been gulled by their father, and from that has flowed all these years of resentment. Why, Victor wants to know, didnt Walter help fund his way through college? Was their father really so poor? Why, Esther, wants to know, when harsh truths are revealed, have she and Victor lived so poorly? Solomons transactional offer turns out to be the most honestly proffered of the evening. Money has been Victors jailer; Esther sees it as a probably elusive key to a happier life for them all.

The tragedy seems in a lower-key than the most dramatic Miller we see on Broadway. The play has a scratchy melancholy to it, rather than a cataclysmic finalitywith the characters rooted in the airless apartment, and not really capable of going anywhere. The play comes to feel a little stilted, its action as arrested as the characters emotions.

The price of family devotion and betrayal, Miller implies, is one that can taint emotions and bank accounts for years. As Miller told the Paris Review, he wrote the play to show that the past counted, that they (Victor and Walter) were creatures of the past just as we all were. They had affected to negate the past, cut themselves off from it, and throw it in a wastebasket. As it turned out, they were as much affected by their fathers and grandfathers. There was no way to escape it, any more than you could escape the beat of your own heart.

The Price is at the American Airlines Theatre, 227West 42nd Street, New York City. Book tickets here.
Up a flight of stone steps in an anonymous building, way on the western edges of New Yorks Hells Kitchen, there is a dark jewel of the spring theatre season. Please do all that you can to see it.

That Spill, written and directed by Leigh Fondakowski and produced by Ensemble Studio Theatre, is such an accomplished theatrical distillation of scrupulously researched oral history shouldnt be a surprise. Fondakowski was also the head writer of Moises Kaufmans The Laramie Project, which cast a similar all-encompassing narrative beam over the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepard.

In Spill, Fondakowski oversaw the conducting of more than 200 hours of interviews, combed through documents and researched everything about the Deepwater Horizon oil platform collapse of April 2010, which killed 11 people and injured 17.

One-hundred and thirty million gallons of oil were discharged into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, bringing environmental catastrophe to Louisiana, with traces of the slick making their way to the Florida Panhandle. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in history.

The ensemble enacting these events in multiple roles are all equally excellent: Michael Cullen, Vince Gatton, Alex Grubbs, Ronald Alexander Peet, Molly McAdoo, Maurice McRae, Kelli Simpkins, and Greg Steinbruner.

The play is bounded by encounters between the wife of one of the deceased talking to (presumably) Fondakowski. She recalls her husband, and their love and commitment to one another, but utterly unsappily. She still remembers the night, when convinced he was going to propose, she ate and drank extremely gingerly, not wanting to accidentally eat her engagement ring.

But the proposal, and even their first kiss, doesn't come with a playwrights romantic rosy adornment, but both captured in moments of real life; their last kissat the airport waving him off to Deepwater Horizon (owned by Transocean and chartered by BP), where she just knew he shouldnt be flying to, and she couldnt explain whyis especially jolting. (The play notes that the Macondo prospect, the site of the drilling, was also the name of the ill-fated town in Gabriel Garcia Marquezs magical realist novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.)

One actor plays both Tony Hayward, former chief executive of BP as he gives evidence (and all credit to the company for not making him into a boo-hiss villain) and a father whose son died in the disaster. The son who died wasnt a lawyer like he was, this father notes, adding angrily that he fully intends to use all his legal nous to make BP pay.

Fondakowskis script is a wealth of detail and technical knowledge, clearly conveyed to a neophyte audience. It does not ring with righteous indignation: the detail of the incident, as calmly conveyed as it is here, is enough to stir that in the audience without any overt pushing.

Sarah Lamberts ingenious scenic design makes the most of a bare and sparsely furnished stage area: the action is centered around a blue rectangle (symbolizing mostly water perhaps?), on the borders of which are raised platforms to evoke Deepwater Horizon itself, and around which are benches, used in courtroom and domestic scenes. The actors put on jackets and remove shirts and jackets to segue between charactersoccasionally holding electrical lanterns aloftwith Lee Kinneys sound design using simple, dirge-like beats and deeper, more menacing tones when disaster strikes.

Nick Francones lighting is simple and vivid, especially again at the moment of disaster; and the production also makes effective use of four video screens designed by David Bengali. Through those are variously telegraphed the secret feed BP initially kept to itself of oil belching out into the ocean floor, the oranges of fire burning on water, and the deceptively peaceful vistas of scarred waterlands.

The moment of disaster is viscerally, yet simply conveyed, with mesh paneling, clanging chains, and the sheer panic of the actors, all playing those caught up in the disaster.

First, there are the BP executives playing video games, unknowing that disaster is about to strike. Then there is the realization that something terrible is happening, and we watch the husband of the wife we have met already helplessly trying to marshal some kind of order. And then all very literal hell breaks loose, with mud, like black rain, showering down, and then explosions and fire and the terrifying lurching of the platform.

One survivor, by then in a rescue raft, recalls watching a figure running across the deck and still running over the edge as hellish fire consumed it. Another character recalls leaping from the deck, and hitting the water, and swimming in fire and oil until a passing ship proved his salvation. We learn the water was calm that day; if there had been five or even ten foot waves the death toll would have been much higher.

The tangle of wires that had been part of the platform become, hauntingly brushed against the floor by the company (hauntingly sounding like the ebb and flow of waves), a symbol of encroaching pollution in act two.

The wife of part one recalls her 5-year-old daughter claiming to have been visited by the ghost of her father telling her he is not coming back. The dead bodies are not recovered, but this mans wife doesnt share her mother-in-laws hope her beloved husband will walk through the door. She knows he wont.

Another man wants to make a quick buck out of joining the clean-up operation, but he ends up imperiling his own health. He says he only has himself to blame: greed got him there.

Greed, of course, is the heart of the catastrophe at the heart of the catastrophe. Primarily it is corporate greed, and what may really remain with you is the scale of BPs apparent craven heartlessness not just afterwards, but even in the moments of the tragedy unfolding. Spill also suggests that heartlessness was compounded by their technical ineptitude in being unable for months to put a stop to the oil belching into the ocean itself.

Sure, one relation says: it was nice to go to the White House, and President Obama was solicitous. But Nancy Pelosi, unpublicized, was the one who really spoke to the victims families in depth. And Obamas moratorium on drilling in the area came to an end just months later. BP itself resumed drilling there 15 months later.

The real tragedy, one wizened oil industry employee says at the end, is our addiction to, and dependency on, fossil fuels. It was the foundation of this disaster, the foundation of the victims deaths and injuries, the foundation of BPs rushed, botched response to it, and the foundation of the much bigger environmental catastrophe the world is still careering towards.

Spill is an urgent, accomplished piece of theatre. It is not a call to action or cri de coeur. It is much calmer and narratively stealthier than that. But if you leave feeling both desperately sad and outraged, then it has done its bleak, brilliant job.

Spill runs until April 2nd at Ensemble Studio Theatre, 545 West 52nd Street, New York City. Book tickets here.
When he strides up Fifth Avenue with the Saint Patricks Day Parade, NYPD Lt. Brian Vaughan of the Counterterrorism Division will not be marching with his comrades, but with a visiting contingent of the Irish national police, An Garda Siochana.

And he will have switched the nameplate on his dress blue uniform with one bearing the name a newly discovered cousin who was serving with the Gardai when he died in a bombing nearly a half-century ago.

Inspector Samuel Donegan was a 60-year-old father of six who had never ventured from the shores of his native land when he was killed by a booby-trapped tea crate in 1972. Vaughan was just a year old at the time. He will now be carrying Donegans picture into Saint Patricks Cathedral for the pre-parade Mass and then in the annual procession up Manhattans grandest avenue.

This guy is a cop, Im a cop, Vaughan recalls telling himself after the discovery of the familial connection, just last month. And with the approach of Saint Patricks Day, Let me march in his honor.

Vaughan announced via an email to the slain cousins son, John Donegan, that his fathers memory would be represented at this years parade. The son replied from County Kildare where he lives in retirement after a career as a schoolteacher.

He never left Ireland during his lifetime, even for a holiday, so it's hard to imagine how he would have felt if someone told him that his name and picture would one day feature in the New York St. Patrick's Day parade, the son wrote of his father. We'll be looking out for you when we watch the TV coverage here and thinking fond thoughts for you and your family.

The son was mindful of the dangers police officers in particular continue to face everywhere when he added, Enjoy the parade. These are uncertain times for everyone, particularly for policemen, and there are so many occasions of tragedy and sadness, you've got to make the most of the joyful ones.

Wise words for all of us on all days.

The discovery of the connection between Vaughan and the Donegans is a tale worthy of a modern day seanchai, or storyteller. The tale begins in 2015, when curiosity about his genealogy prompted Vaughan to sign up with Ancestry.com in search of branches of the family tree that were not known to him. He received no replies.

After two months, I was like, This is very frustrating, he would later tell The Daily Beast.

He let this membership lapse and forgot all about it until last month, when curiosity stirred again. He had no expectations when he checked Ancestry.com for the first time is two years.

I said, What the hell he would remember.

He was surprised to see that he had received a reply shortly after he had last looked. He went ahead and renewed his membership and saw a message that had been sitting in the inbox since 2015 from a John Kelly in Ireland.

Vaughan emailed Kelly and they exchanged what they knew about their respective lineages and determined they were cousins. Vaughan told his newfound relative that he was a lieutenant with the NYPDs Counterterrorism Division and sent him several uniform patches.

Kelly informed Vaughan that there was another cousin, Inspector Samuel Donegan, who had been a cop in Ireland when he was killed. Kelly also told Vaughan that their murdered cousin had a son, John Donegan. Vaughan exchanged emails with the son and asked for his address, so he could send him some NYPD patches.

I do that for all my cousins, Vaughan wrote.

Vaughan did not fail to see significance in the interlocking connections that only began with a common bloodline. Vaughans duties as a counterterrorism lieutenant in New York include bomb blast threat assessment and he now turned out to have a cousin in Ireland who held the equivalent rank and was killed by a bomb.

Vaughan wanted to learn all he could about this relative with whom he had a double trans-Atlantic bond of family and vocation.

As detailed in press accounts and recorded in Garda archives, Inspector Samuel Donegan was two years from retirement on June 8, 1972, when he participated in a joint police and Irish army patrol along the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They came upon a tea crate that had been set in the middle of a country lane and was painted with the word BOMB in what were later described as almost comically large letters. A string was attached to it as if to facilitate pulling it aside.

The BOMB proved to be a hoax and they resumed the patrol. Donegan and a 21-year-old Irish Army Lieutenant named John Gallagher were chatting as they walked along the Legakelly Road outside Cavan, when they came upon a second tea crate bearing the word BOMB an hour later.

Donegan and Gallagher had every reason to figure this was also a hoax, but the second tea crate proved to contain gelignite. Gallagher was seriously injured, but survived. Donegan died after being rushed to a hospital.

The Bishop of Kilmore officiated at Donegans funeral. The procession included nine chief superintendents, 53 superintendents, and 120 other Gardai. Six sergeants served as pallbearers. Six fellow inspectors walked alongside the hearse on the three miles to the cemetery. The coffin was of course covered with the Irish Tricolor.

Donegan was the 394th person killed in what were called The Troubles, the first member of the Irish security forces killed by an explosive device.

That same day, a 395th person died, this a 19 year-old Catholic construction worker named Norman Campbell, who was shot to death while working on the upper floors of a building going up in the Shankill Road area, which protestant paramilitaries had long claimed as their turf. He had been shot at on the job twice before and the previous week had pulled a fellow worker to safety when gunfire erupted. He was scheduled to marry a protestant girl in five weeks.

She was his life and they were devoted to each other, his mother, Sarah Campbell was later quoted saying. He wanted to keep working there because he said he needs money for the wedding. He told me, Mammy, some day Im going to die on this job. And I pleaded with him to get a job somewhere else. 

The killings in divided Ireland went on and on until the Good Friday agreement in 1998, when The Troubles officially ceased. Vaughan had joined the NYPD four years before and saw another kind of war strike New York three years later, on 9/11. He spent two weeks of 16-hour days in the recovery effort at the smoldering pile that had been the World Trade Center. He now spends each working day helping to keep the city prepared for a threat that continues after than 15 years.

In quiet moments between that duty and helping his wife raise three kids, Vaughan has been in touch with An Garda Siochana in Dublin, including with the sergeant in charge of the Garda Museum and a second sergeant who will be in the contingent coming over for the Saint Patricks Day Parade. Vaughan made plans to march with them.

As the big day neared, Vaughan got a notice from the post office that a package had arrived for him from Ireland. It had been sent by the Garda Museum and he opened it to find a blue lanyard such as his cousin would have worn with his uniform had he ever been able to venture from Irelands shores to the happy procession in New York. There was also a Garda tie clip and a brass whistle such as Irish cops of earlier times used to signal each other each and to sound alarms. There was also an official bio of Donegan, along with a black and white photo of him in uniform. Vaughan had the picture enlarged into an eight-by-eleven.

When the parade starts up on Friday, the lone figure in an NYPD dress uniform among the representatives of An Garda Siochana will be carrying a black-and-white photo of an Irish inspector. Those who look closely at the New York cop will notice an Irish Inspectors blue lanyard along with his NYPD lieutenant's gold bars. Those who look closer still will see that the nameplate VAUGHAN has been replaced with one he had made.

S. DONEGAN, it reads.

In the coming months, An Garda Siochana will be holding a memorial for fallen comrades and marking the 45th anniversary of Donegans death. Vaughans dream is to be there in full dress uniform.

And lay a wreath, he says.
The White Rose of jihad was a no-show for his last day of trial.

In fact, Ibrahim Adnan Harun Hausa hadnt been there a single day of the nearly two weeks the government presented its case to the jury. Prosecutors said Hausabetter known as Spin Ghul, or White Rose in Pashtois an avowed al Qaeda member involved in a 2003 attack that killed two American servicemembers in Afghanistan, and that he plotted to blow up the American embassy in Nigeria.

A nearly five-year ordeal in American courts had not turned the Saudi-born Spin Ghul into a believer in civilian justice. He hadnt been to court, physically, in nearly a year, and stopped cooperating with his defense case long ago.

The jury was told to disregard Spin Ghuls absence, though it served as a stark reminder of his earlier demands of Brooklyn judges: Send me to Guantanamo.

Spin Ghul was arrested in Italy in 2011 and extradited to the U.S. the next year. Prosecutors alleged that he joined al Qaeda in Afghanistan shortly before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In Afghanistan, they said, Spin Ghul was involved in attacks against U.S. troops that killed Airman 1st Class Raymond Losano and Private Jerod R. Dennis. They said he then went to Pakistan for training before going to Nigeria, where he planned an attack on the U.S. embassy in the style of the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Prosecutors said he confessed while in American custody in Italy.

And throughout, Spin Ghul told the court that he saw himself as an anti-American warrior.

At an early hearing, he demanded to be tried at a military courtjust like the individuals being held in Guantanamo Bay, according to court transcripts. In all the cases of individuals who are found fighting, they were beingtheyre being handled by military courts and that military courts, even the individuals who are in Guantanamo are beingwere found and are being held there, he said. Its possible that youre forgetting something. I am a warrior and the war is not over.

Magistrate Judge Edward Korman tried in vain to explain the concept of an independent judiciary.

The truth, yes, I was brought to America, Spin Ghul responded. Our terrorism is not over.

Yet even at that meeting, despite cautions from Korman to consult with his appointed attorneys before speaking, Spin Ghul referred to the location where I fought with the Americans, and made other seeming admissions of guilt. He was infuriated that he had still not had a Quran returned to him, and he found the replacements available at the Metropolitan Correctional Center unsatisfactory.

Thats why I want to remind you that I am still in battle. The way in which I am being judged I have not completely accepted yet, Spin Ghul said, according to court transcripts. I dont understand everything thats happening completely and youre a judge, but even though youre a judge, the country is at war with us. That is a fact. Dont forget that.

Judges and his attorneys continued efforts to placate Spin Ghul. But over and over again, he demanded international courts and military tribunals.

I dont mind if I am killed. I prefer that, he said.

Well, just like I dont have any power to send you to a military court, I have no power to grant your wish to die, Korman told him in a May 2013 hearing.

At one point, Spin Ghul demanded to be his own counsel, in the face of a life sentence. [Y]oull probably wind up in somein Colorado where they keep the most dangerous criminals inside a mountain and [they] never see anyone, Korman said. So in a sense, its like deciding to go through major surgery in which you could lose your life and you decide to be your own surgeon. Now that doesnt make sense.

The case was later transferred to Judge Brian Cogan for trial. Eventually, purportedly unhappy with continuing questions over his mental health and competency to stand trial, the location of the court, and the lack of international tribunal, Spin Ghul began refusing to attend hearings. When he did show up, hed hum loudly or talk over the judge and lawyers until he was transferred into a side room, according to court documents.

Things hit a new low when Cogan ordered marshals to use force to bring Spin Ghul to court in May 2016. Despite hand and leg restraints, he managed to shred his clothing on the way to the courthouse.

He arrived in court wearing nothing but underwear, the judge said, according to court transcripts.

I talked to the marshals about whether it would be possible to dress him. The marshals said they could get a shirt on him and have him sit in his underwear, Cogan said. I said thats not acceptable.

That didnt satisfy Spin Ghul. According to the court record, he screamed incoherently from his holding cell while the status conference went on. I dont know if the lawyers can hear it as well as I can, Im sure the defense lawyers can, but its quite loud, Cogan remarked.

The judge eventually decided that Spin Ghul was signifying a total lack of desire to participate in the proceedings and stopped attempting to summon him to court. But his court-appointed attorneys, who were tasked with mounting a defense without their clients participation or cooperation, asked the government to provide them with prisoners who were held with him in Libya or Italypeople who might be able to shed light on torture or other trauma Spin Ghul may have undergone.

We have a client who had been cooperative with us and who seems to have just fallen off the rails, Susan G. Kellman argued before Cogan in November 2016. So one can say that [Spin Ghuls actions are] deliberate, which is what the government has said, or one can say that it may be a function of the treatment that he received when he was in Libya, and there are people who were there in jail with him who might be able to say this is the way we saw him be treated.

The judge denied her request. The trial continued without Spin Ghul.

In closing statements Thursday, prosecutors recounted to jurors in detail the attack that killed Losano and Dennis while a photograph of Osama bin Laden looked over the jury box from a white board. Two interpreters took turns translating in a low hum for Spin Ghul into a microphone to accompany a video feed piped into his cell, though theres no evidence he was watching.

Defense attorneys had no summation to presenta revelation that exasperated Assistant U.S. Attorney Shreve Ariail. But Cogan, the judge, said he had no problem with the defenses strategy, adding that he had not heard what a factual defense may be for Spin Ghul.

If they were to stand up now and say, The government has the burden [...] that would just give the government another opportunity to stand up and say, you didnt hear a single word showing the defendant is innocent, did you? he said.

Cogan saw no need to give them that advantage, though Ariail instead asked the judge and defense lawyers to inform Spin Ghul of their decision.

You could at least do that for me, cant you? Ariaili asked David Stern, one of the attorneys.

Not that it made a difference. The jury was sent out after lunch, and returned a verdict two hours later.

Spin Ghul was found guilty on all counts. He faces life in prison.
I went to college in Dublin for a semester in the early nineties. Basically, all I knew about the country was the music of The Pogues and the joys of Guinness Beer, both of which were hugely important to me at the time. Students have studied abroad for worse reasons. But my simplistic notions of Irish culture led to countless awkward exchanges. When I mentioned something about corned beef and cabbage to my two new Irish flatmates, one of them pounced. Thats American shite, he said. No one eats that. I liked the other flatmate better.

In America, corned beef and cabbage now exist alongside green beer and leprechauns in our holy trinity of St. Patricks Day excess. So how did the dish come to be forever associated with the homeland of my sneering flatmate if no one there eats it?

In 97 Orchard Street, a book that traces the culinary traditions of five immigrant families growing up in a tenement on Manhattans Lower East Side in the 19th and 20th centuries, food historian Jane Ziegelman suggests that corned beef and cabbage came to be associated with the Emerald Isle through two sources. However, neither of those sources happened to be located on the Emerald Isle.

For centuries, the dish held no symbolic position in the food chain and wasnt connected to a specific country. It was simply a hearty and economical meal that sustained the countrys new wave of immigrants from across Europe. Among those immigrants were the Irish, millions of which had scattered across the United States following the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s. Many had most likely never tasted corned beef until they reached America. Through a gradual, haphazard process, second- and third-generation immigrants reclaimed corned beef and cabbage as a quintessentially Irish food, writes Ziegelman.

England first used the term corned beef in the 17th century as a nod to the giant, corn kernel-sized salt crystals used to cure meat. Over the next century, much of the worlds corned beef was actually produced in Ireland. Cork, specifically. But the Irish exported it to other European countries, and across the Atlantic, since at the time, the average Irish farmer couldnt afford to eat it.

Per Ziegelman, Dutch settlers brought corned beef and cabbage to the United States in the early 17th century, and later waves of immigrants arrived with what she calls their own corned beef traditions. The Germans sliced it thin and put it on black bread. The Scots simmered theirs with vegetables and added oatmeal to thicken the stock. Wherever corned beef was eaten, Ziegelman writes, cooks developed ways of preparing it that harmonized with local food traditions.

Like all immigrants, newly assimilating Irish-Americans were caught between the push of their new homeland and pull of the old country. In their new urban enclaves, few could find, or afford, the back bacon they had grown up on. But European Jews had settled in many of the same areas as the Irish, which meant that many of New Yorks Irish got their meat through kosher butchers. That meat, ironically, was corned beef, which Jews made from brisket, a tougher cut from the front of the cow. It tasted similar to the Irishs beloved salted pork. So why cabbage? Again, it was the most accessible and affordable vegetable at the time.

When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, with the country teetering on the edge of war, his luncheon included mock turtle soup, corned beef and cabbage, parsley potatoes, blackberry pie, and coffee. The comfort food lineup may have been more appropriate for a post-church lunch at grandmas, but its safe to say Lincolns populist gesture went over better than his second inauguration in 1865, when drunken midnight revelers, shell-shocked by four years of civil war, demolished a lavish buffet of foie gras, oysters, and bombe a la vanilla.

By the late 19th century, corned beef and cabbage had spread across New York. The unforgettable flavor combinationsalty and sweetseemed to embody the typical Irish disposition. (To say nothing of the tender, forgiving texture.) The dish became a staple of Manhattan restaurants, from modest lunchrooms that ladled massive portions into tin buckets for 15 cents to swank hotel dining rooms like the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where corned beef and cabbage shared the table with pate de foie gras and beef tournedos with bearnaise. It popped up in hospitals, orphanages, and even prisons. Ireland essentially stopped exporting corned beef because other countries began producing so much of it.

But according to Ziegelman, thats when corned beef and cabbage went mainstream, thanks to an unlikely source: a comic strip. Bringing Up Father, George McManuss popular American comic that launched in 1913, chronicled the exploits of Jiggs, a newly rich Irish-American who wanted nothing more than to sneak out on his nagging, social-climbing wife, Maggie, to drink and play pinochle with his lower-class buddies at a tavern called Dinty Moores. The carousers typical meal therecorned beef and cabbagebecame a running joke.

The influence of Bringing Up Father was enormous. Maggie and Jiggss high jinks inadvertently launched a chain of gastronomic events that transformed both the perception and reality of Irish-American food ways, writes Ziegelman.

In 1914, a Manhattan saloonkeeper named James Moore, who claimed to be McManuss inspiration for the comics tavern owner, Dinty Moore, opened an Irish steak house and pub in New Yorks Midtown theater district. Capitalizing on the comic strips popularity, Dinty Mooresall stately mirrors and polished brassdrew a distinguished crowd of celebs, athletes, publishers, and politicians. Dinty Moores thumbed its nose at the authorities during Prohibition and became a mainstay of Broadway for decades. By the time it closed in the 1970s, the establishment was practically a national monument. Its signature dish led the opportunistic Moore to forever refer to himself as the Corned Beef and Cabbage King. (Dinty Moore beef stew, made by the Minnesota-based canned meat retailer Hormel, also cashed in on the establishments fame, ultimately enjoying lesser glory but more name recognition.)

By the 1940s, corned beef and cabbage was synonymous with Irish American, and had become the mandatory St. Patricks Day meal. Simultaneously, it had solidified itself as a lowbrow meal for the working class, a fact that some embraced and others resisted. Slurring insinuations long have been cast in the direction of corned beef and cabbage, Mary Meade groused in a 1938 article in the Chicago Tribune. An unjust whispering campaign has given it the reputation of being a dish too proletarian for the well bred dinner table. Meades defensive prose that follows does little more than solidify its blue-collar position once and for all.

So today, I will, of course, be enjoying plates of corned beef and cabbage. Every bite will perpetuate a misguided tradition with a complicated transatlantic story arc. But, what I wish I had said to my flatmate: Sometimes, almost by accident, history is a winding road that leads back home.
The unceremonious firing of Preet Bharara last weekalong with 45 other U.S. attorneysgenerated significant consternation among Democrats about the way the forced resignations were handled.

But the firings likely led to celebration in Istanbul. Thats because as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Bharara oversaw the arrest and prosecution of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish national who allegedly helped run a scheme that funneled billions of dollars worth of gold into Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The alleged crime, dubbed the Gas for Gold scandal, may be among the largest money-laundering schemes in world history. From 2012 to 2013 alone, according to the Jerusalem Post, the Turkish government paid Iran $20 billion worth of gold for oil and natural gas. Zarrabs trial is scheduled to begin on Aug. 21 of this year, according to court documents. And some expect he may testify that Turkish leadersincluding close allies of President Recep Tayipp Erdoganwere involved in the scheme.

Bhararas willingness bring charges against Zarrab made him a social media celebrity in Turkey. Shortly after Zarrabs indictment was unsealed, The New York Times reported that Bhararas Twitter following ballooned from just a few thousand people to more than 245,000. Many Turks saw him as willing to pick up where their judicial system failed, writing poetry about him and offering him gifts.

The prosecution had the potential to be geopolitically explosive. The indictment, which was unsealed on March 21, 2016, laid out an elaborate scheme by which Zarrab and two others worked with the Iranian government to pay the country in gold for gas that it produced, illegally infusing capital into its economy and blunting the impact of U.S. sanctions. Zarrabs trial could put extraordinary scrutiny on Erdogan and his associates, depending on how the trial plays out.

So experts say Erdogan and his allies are deeply concerned about Zarrabs coming court date.

I think the Turks are very frightened by the prosecution, and given how dogged Preet Bharara is known as, they worry that a lot of stuff would be coming out, said Henri Barkey, a former State Department official who worked on intelligence issues and the Middle East.

Clearly, I think the Turks are now hoping that whomever becomes the new U.S. Attorney for the Southern District will not pursue this case as vigorously as Bharara was, added Barkey, who now heads the Middle East program at the Wilson Center. That remains to be seen.

Barkey said the Turks will suspect that Bhararas ouster means Zarrab would be more likely to get some sort of plea deal.

With Preet, there was no chance, he said. But the moment you kick him out of the equationif it was at zero percent chance, maybe its a 20 percent chance or 30 percent chance. There is a greater chance under somebody else.

The Turkish embassy did not provide comment for this story.

Steven Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bhararas firing would have delighted Erdogan.

When I heard Bharara was fired, I thought, oh my god, Turkish government officials must be dancing in the street, because Zarrab potentially can spill the beans on everything, he said.

President Erdogan and his people kind of fear this would become of those things that would be devastating to their political prospects in Turkey, he said of the indictment. This whole Reza Zarrab thing has really freaked them out.

Erdogan isnt the only world leader with a connection to Zarrab. President Donald Trump drew criticism on the campaign trail when news broke that Zarrabs holding company, Royal A.S., was run out of Trump Tower in Istanbul.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, said Bhararas ouster wont impact the prosecution. Benjamin Brafman, the lead defense attorney for Zarrab, declined to comment.

At the least, whoever Trump nominates to take Bhararas place will take responsibility for a prosecution that is politically electricand has the potential to win him or her fans in surprising places.
When President Donald J. Trump tweeted a photo of himself solemnly saluting Andrew Jackson at the deceased presidents Nashville tomb, it was all part of Stephen K. Bannons populist plan.

On Wednesday, Trump honored the birthday of Jackson, the seventh American president and founder of the Democratic Party, in his remarks outside the Hermitage, Jacksons former estate in Nashville, Tennessee. Trump, a Republican, self-promoted himself as the modern-day heir to Jacksons legacy.

It was during the revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite. Does that sound familiar? Trump said ahead of a rally in Nashville on Wednesday. The president, who noted that his visit to the Hermitage was inspirational and that he is big Jackson fan, also sang Jacksons praises earlier that day during an unrelated speech in Detroit, Michigan.

But President Trumps love affair with the ghost of Andrew Jackson is a relatively newfound one. His only other tweet about Jackson came in July 2013, when he wrote: Interestingthe last time a Democrat succeeded a two-term Democratic pres. was in 1836 when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson. (Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would have succeeded two-term president Barack Obama but was of course defeated by Trump in the 2016 election.)

Trump discussed Jackson briefly last April when he was asked during the primary to weigh in on the issue of deposing Jackson from the front of the $20 bill. Trump, then the GOP frontrunner in the primary, blamed the move on pure political correctness.

But the reason Jackson has taken on such a physical and rhetorical presence in the Trump White House is, in fact, primarily because of Bannon, Trumps chief strategist and the former head of Breitbart. According to officials in the Trump campaign, presidential transition, and administration speaking to The Daily Beast, Bannon would often discuss Jacksons historical legacy and image with Trump on and after the campaign trail, and how the two political figures were a lot alike.

[During the race], Trump would say he had heard this pundit or this person making the comparison, and [Steve] would encourage him and tell him how it was true, a Trump campaign adviser who requested anonymity to speak freely told The Daily Beast. It was a way to flatter [Trump], too. Bannon and Trump talked about a lot, but this was the president they had casual [conversations] about the most."

Another senior Team Trump official said that as the transition was underway, he would encourage [Trump] to play up the comparison, and that Trumps campaign and message was a clear descendant of Jacksonian populism and anti-political elitism.

"[Bannon] is why Trump keeps equating himself with Andrew Jackson. That is the reason why," the aide added.

According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, Bannon had suggested and had given Trump a reading list of articles and biographies on Jackson, and reading material on Jacksonian democracy and populism. Stephen Miller, another top Trump adviser, also recommended and offered related reading material to Trump, a senior Trump administration official said.

Miller and Bannon did not respond to emails seeking comment.

[Trump] has read other biographies and articles [on Jackson] and has taken a strong interest, the official said. He was deeply moved by his visit to the Hermitage.

The president placed one of these biographies on his desk in the White House, a book that Trump once ostentatiously showed visiting journalists, The Washington Post reported, while noting that it was less clear whether he had read it.

Bannons push has clearly paid off, even affecting the decor of the White House. Along with Trumps public statements and tributes, the president hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office shortly after entering office in late January. Bannon, a longtime history nerd, has aggressively peddled the Jackson-Trump narrative in interviews over the past few months.

On the day Trump was inaugurated in Washington, D.C., Bannon told The Washington Posts Robert Costa that Trumps inaugural speech was ripped from the Jackson playbook.

It was an unvarnished declaration of the basic principles of his populist and kind of nationalist movement, Bannon said in January. It was given, I think, in a very powerful way. I dont think weve had a speech like that since Andrew Jackson came to the White House. But you could see it was very Jacksonian.

Bannon ought to know: He and Miller reportedly wrote most of the speech and drew inspiration from Jackson.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that ran shortly after Trumps upset victory in November, Bannon had once again name-checked the president nicknamed Old Hickory.

Like [Andrew] Jacksons populism, were going to build an entirely new political movement, he said. Its everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolutionconservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.

Its also worth noting that, as The Daily Beast reported this week, in college Bannon and his friends would jokingly refer to his regular apartment meetings with other student leaders and activists as The Kitchen Cabinet. In the early 19th century, The Kitchen Cabinet was a term coined by Jacksons political enemies to describe his group of unofficial advisers.

The parallels between Trump and Jackson are, in many ways, deeply flawed. Jackson brawled with the established elite of the era, whereas Trump has, despite his rhetoric, emboldened them. Jackson came from poverty and was known as a war hero, while Trump was born into wealth and dodged the draft. Trump is a deeply divisive and outwardly bigoted figure; Jackson, however, committed mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

But Bannon doesnt shy away from invoking controversial or despicable role models. In the same Hollywood Reporter interview in which Bannon discussed Jackson and Trumps populism, the White House chief strategist favorably invoked, among others, the devil.

Darkness is good, Bannon said. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. Thats power.
Donald Trumps chaotic first few months in office have sent a clear signal to the rest of the world: Dont make the same mistake we did.

This week, far-right candidate Geert Wilders, a populist candidate whos been labeled the Dutch Trump due to his ferocious Islamophobiaincluding a desire to ban the Quran, close all mosques, institute a Muslim immigration ban, and generally combat the Islamization of Europesuffered a crippling defeat to the more liberal Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Some believed Wilders would defeat Rutte and thus become the opening salvo in a nationalist movement across Europe. But it was not to be.

On Thursday night, The Daily Shows Trevor Noah weighed in Wilders defeat, which his opponent called a feast for democracy.

As hateful as Wilders message clearly is, there are many Dutch people that find it appealing because they say A) Muslims are stealing their jobs, and B) Muslims are trying to Muslimify the Netherlands. Thats a real word, said Noah. Thats why they put their trust in a guy who looks like Christopher Walken when he was a Batman villain.

Noah then speculated that there is something fishy about these right-wing populists bizarre blond coifsfrom Wilders to the U.K.s Boris Johnson to Americas Donald Trump.And by the way, can I ask a question real quick? What is it with these villains and their hair? They all have the same-looking hair! In Holland its Geert, in the U.K. its Boris, in the U.S. its Trump, joked Noah. People, I dont know if Im the only one who sees this, but its obvious whats going on here: Weve been invaded by mind-controlling aliens who look like bad hair.

There seems to be, Noah argued, a negative Trump effect: that countries around the world are observing the rocky Trump administration and opting for stability over a violent shakeup.

Anything is more stable than Donald Trump, offered Noah. A toddler in high heels is more stable than Donald Trump. An IKEA chair on a high-wire over Niagra Falls is more stable than Donald Trump. A bowl of pudding using a vibrator is more stable than Donald Trump.
On Friday morning conservative mirror-yeller Tomi Lahren made an appearance on The View, a show that is still on. At the end of her appearance, she and the gals spent several seconds discussing why she is pro-choice.

Yes, conservatisms next rising star, enemy of man-hating feminists everywhere, believes that women should have access to legal abortion.

The hosts mostly handled Lahren with kid gloves, allowing her to monologue in her trademark style without really calling her out on why shes a fountain of logical fallacies. Donald Trump lies, said one panelist; so did Obama! said Lahren. Russia ties should be investigated, said one panelist; so do wiretapping claims! said Lahren. But they were, said one panelist; I just want an investigation! said Tomi.

Lahren could be replaced in any debate with a pull-string doll that says So Did Obama! and be almost as effective as the real thing. Of course, her sparring partners politician of choice doing a bad thing doesnt make Trump also doing that bad thing less bad, but distraction and false equivalency have always been Lahrens (very effective) argumentative tacks.

Toward the end of the segment, Lahren told the panel that she believed Hillary Clinton would have been worse for women than Trump. When pressed for her reasoning, she cited the fact that Hillary stayed married to Bill Clinton after he cheated on her. Donald Trump is a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has endorsed cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, an organization that helps millions of low-income women access health care. Following this line of reasoning, forgiving one man for cheating is worse than endangering the health of millions of women.

Joy Behar was unconvinced.

If hes so anti-woman, Lahren shot back, why did he select a female to run his campaign? If Kellyanne Conway had been a Democrat, you all at this table would be applauding her, singing her praises.

The audience applauded.

Thats like saying some of my best friends are Jewish, and being an anti-Semite. It has nothing to do with each other, said Behar.

I trust women! Lahren exclaimed.

The audience applauded.

Following that exchange, host Sonny Hostin needled Lahren on abortion, noting that 68% of conservatives consider themselves anti-abortion, and yet, Lahren says shes pro-choice.

Im pro choice, and heres why, Lahren said. I am a constitutional, yknow, someone that loves the Constitution. Im someone thats for limited government. So I cant sit here and be a hypocrite and say Im for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies. I can sit here and say that, as a Republican and I can say, you know what, Im for limited government, so stay out of my guns, and you can stay out of my body as well

The audience applauded.

See? I told you we wouldnt bite! said View host Sara Haines as she and Paula Faris grasped for Lahrens wrists.

The audience applauded.

Lahren has never hidden her pro-choice stance, but her sudden appeal to it is odd given her frequent and fervent attacks on women who identify as feminists, or women who fight for abortion rights. Her stance moves from odd to downright incoherent when taken in context with attacks she made on the womens march back in January. In one of her trademark rants, she sputtered against the march for being exclusive.

Its not just the marchersits the feminist movement and, really, the collective left who preach tolerance and understanding, but only for those people and issues they believe in, said Lahren. Meanwhile, they point fingers at Trump or Trump supporters and label us all bigots with their cardboard signs and their hashtags and their exclusive moral high ground were just not good enough to stand on. Well, bull.

Lahren appears to be alluding to the exclusion of pro-life groups from the list of sponsors of the march, of which she considers herself part of the we until shes trying to curry favor in front of a hostile audience.

Girl power.
The meeting in the east room of the White House was billed as a chance to reset the relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but her first face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump was an exercise in chilly correctness.

Trump didnt give any ground on his hardline stance on trade or refugees, and Merkel politely stood her ground, saying in her opening statement only that she appreciated the Presidents hospitality, Its better to talk to one another than about one another, and that the time spent together before greeting the media was a very good first exchange of views.

Trump appeared impatient and restless as he stood at the podium, and took offense at the questions posed by German reporters. The first, initially directed at Merkel, was about her reaction to Trumps dangerous isolationist policies. Then the reporter turned to Trump to ask, Why are you scared of diversity in the media that you talk about fake news?

Nice friendly reporter, Trump quipped to laughter from the friend and family section to his left, where Vice President Pence sat with Reince Priebus sat with Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Im not an isolationist, Donald Trump continued, Im a free trader, but I am also a fair trader. For good measure, he added: I dont know what newspaper youre reading, but it would be another example of fake news. More appreciative laughter from the cheering section.

Trump would later say, in response to a question from a U.S. reporter, that, negotiators for Germany have done a far better job than negotiators for the United States. Were going to even it out. We dont want victory; we want fairness. He referred to horrible NAFTA, and said the fact that workers were screwed, thats probably the reason Im here when you talk about trade.

The second question allotted to the German media was directed at Trump, and the various debunked claims that he and his administration had made about alleged wiretapping of his campaign by the Obama White House: After these clear rejections, are their other suspects?  And are there tweets you regret?

Very seldom, Trump shot back, adding he wouldnt be here if it werent for his tweets. I can get around the media when the media doesnt tell the truth, and I like that.

Pressed on the origin of his claims, Trump directed the reporter to a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, referring to former judge and current Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitanos claim today that President Obama went outside the chain of command" and had British intelligence monitor and track Trump. You shouldnt be talking to me, you should be talking to him.

Trump couldnt resist another gratuitous shot at Obama, saying to the German reporter that when it comes to the subject of wiretapping, Perhaps we have something in common, a reference to the Edward Snowden-leaked revelation that during the Obama administration American security agencies listened in to Merkels cell phone. That drew laughter from the German press.

During his campaign, Trump called Merkels open-door policy for refugees catastrophic, and predicted the German people would overthrow her. She faces the voters in September, and after the Netherlands populist politician, Geert Wilders, failed to oust the center-right prime minister, Merkel said it was a signal that right-wing populism was losing momentum.

At the press conference with Trump, she defended her policies on integrating refugees, saying migration, immigration, integration has to be worked onThis is where we have an exchange of views.

Trump said he strongly supports NATO, but that the allies have to pay up, that they owe vast sums of money These nations must pay their fair share.

Merkel said her government pledges to pay 2 percent through 2024, and that military spending rose 8 percent last year, in keeping with Trumps demand that the allies do more to insure their own security.

The two questions allotted to U.S. Americans focused on domestic issues, with Mark Halperin of Bloomberg asking Trump what in the health care plan before Congress is non-negotiable.

The President launched into his sales pitch for the plan, citing a meeting that morning at the White House with 12 Republican lawmakers who, he said, came in as nos and left as yeses. Its coming together beautifully, he said.

He emphasized that Obamacare is failing, and that he could wait one year and even the Democrats would be willing to work with him.

Whats non-negotiable? Halperin pressed. Ill tell you after were finished, Trump said in one of the lighter moments in an otherwise coldly correct encounter with one of Americas staunchest allies.
The congressional staffers thought they were going to see a whiz-bang encrypted communications technology when they traveled to Old Town, Alexandria, for a presentation by the now-shuttered Flynn Intel Group.

Its what came after that gave them pause: a half-baked, conspiracy theory-laden briefing alleging that Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen is leading an Islamic extremist cultural invasion of the United States.

Hes a threat to us, and to our good friend and ally Turkey, Flynn representative Bijan Kian told the House Homeland Security Committee staffers, according to a congressional staffer familiar with the matter.

Kian asked the staffers to back the Turkish governments demand to extradite Gulen, apparently not realizing their committee didnt have jurisdiction over the matter, the staffer said.

It was a sloppy, uncompelling presentation that smacked of lobbying on Turkeys behalf, according to a congressional staffer, sharing details not previously reported about the October meeting.

That view was only strengthened when retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn published an op-ed arguing for Gulens extradition, describing him as a shady Islamic mullah residing in Pennsylvania whom former President Clinton once called his friend.

Yet Flynn Intel Group only registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent last weekacknowledging that his firms work may have benefited Turkey. The public disclosure came after hed served the shortest term as national security adviser in U.S. history, stepping down after misrepresenting his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Vice President Mike Pence.

And now House Democrats on Thursday released documents detailing that Flynn was paid more than $56,000 in 2015 by three Russian firms with alleged Kremlin ties, including Russian President Vladimir Putins media mouthpiece RT and Kaspersky Labs.

That disclosure raises the specter that Flynn violated the U.S. Constitutions Emoluments Clause, which bans retired general officers from accepting payments from foreign governments, according to House Oversight Committee Ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), in a letter to the White House, Pentagon, and FBI.

Flynn spokesman Price Floyd said the retired general had informed the Defense Intelligence Agency of the paid speaking engagement for RT. General Flynn informed and briefed the DIA before his trip to Russia and again upon his return, Floyd told The Daily Beast on Thursday.

Flynn properly reported his overseas travel for the December 2015 trip, in accordance with the regulations for people holding security clearances, said DIA spokesman Jim Kudla on Thursday.

He reportedly did not file paperwork to report the payments to the U.S. Army, however. Army spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Flynns multiple links to foreign concerns raise questions about how carefully the Trump administration vetted its senior staffers, as well as Flynns own instinct for what may be legal but not quite appropriate behavior for a retired flag officer.

They also highlight loopholes in Justice Department measures meant to require lobbyists to disclose their work on behalf of foreign governments. Proponents of reforms to those laws say Flynn followed the letter, if not the spirit, of existing rules on foreign governing lobbying, though Flynns spokesperson denied that that was the case.

But discrepancies in the firms various lobbying filings point to exactly the kind of gray area the Justice Department warned about in a report last fall. Justice officials tasked with enforcing the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) told the departments inspector general that foreign governments might be exploiting loopholes in U.S. lobbying disclosure laws to exert influence surreptitiously on American public policy.

We are hoping that with this whole controversy surrounding Flynn, there will be a renewed interest in closing these loopholes, said Lydia Dennett, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight. The Flynn situation is the perfect example of how things can fall through the cracks.

***

Last fall, Flynn disclosed to the Justice Department that he was lobbying for the Dutch company Inovo BV. Flynns initial lobbyist registration form last year said the Flynn Intel Group would advise [Inovo] on U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

He registered through a domestic disclosure process that requires far less information to be made public than when one registers as a foreign agent. And in the months that followed, as Flynns registration as a foreign agent essentially acknowledges, its push for Gulens extradition crossed the line from purely commercial work to lobbying for a major foreign-policy objective of the Turkish government.

His initial lobbying registration was a tacit claim that Inovo was independent of the Turkish government. But Inovos owner, Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, chairs a Turkish trade promotion group organized under the auspices of the countrys Foreign Economic Relations Board, whose members are government-appointed. And Alptekin told Turkish media that he had helped arrange a visit to the United States by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year.

Kians congressional presentation on the threat posed by Gulen and his American followers, and Flynns subsequent column, dovetailed with the interests of the Turkish government, which has blamed a failed July coup attempt on cleric Gulen and demanded his extradition.

Thats why Flynns lawyers decided to retroactively register him as a foreign agent out of an abundance of caution, a person close to Flynn told The Daily Beast, speaking anonymously as a condition of describing Flynns legal strategy.

His Inovo work, Flynn acknowledged in the filing, could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the White House had been unaware Flynn was about to make a FARA filing, but the person close to Flynn said his lawyers had notified the White House counsels office before and after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Kian did not respond to emails or telephoned requests for comment, nor did Flynns law firm, Covington & Burling.

***

Yet for all that smoke, legal experts say Flynn was complying with the law as currently writtenor enforced.

Disclosure requirements turn on the question of who benefits. Lobbyists whose work principally benefits a foreign government or political party must notify the Justice Department and register as a foreign agent.

But lobbyists for foreign companies and organizations, even state-owned ones, that are not controlled or directed by a foreign government can simply report their work as if they were working for a U.S. company.

Thats why Justice officials have warned that foreign state actors might seek to evade the heightened scrutiny of registering as a foreign agent by routing U.S. advocacy through ostensibly independent commercial entities.

Officials at the Justice Department's National Security Division (NSD), which administers and enforces foreign agent laws, warned the inspector general in a report last September that foreign governments might try to influence U.S. policy through private companies whose lobbyists manage to evade FARAs heightened disclosure requirements. The inspector general agreed, and the Justice Department has since recommended that Congress close the loophole through legislation.

The Trump White House has accentuated shortcomings in lobbyist reporting laws, Dennett says, by narrowly tailoring ethics requirements surrounding foreign lobbyists to cover only those who register as foreign agents.

Trump administration appointees are required to pledge that they will never, after their time in the administration, engage in lobbying activity that would require me to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Dennett says that pledge leaves open the possibility of work on behalf of non-U.S. companies, some of which might have closer ties to foreign governments than they let on.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with the group Public Citizen, considers the Trump administration to be a case study in the need for more stringent disclosure.

The Trump administration is stepping into the White House with more foreign investments and conflicts of interest with foreign countries than weve ever seen before. So this is something that can become a very, very critical issue in the next four years, he said in a January interview.

There is one upside to the potential controversy. All our lobby disclosure improvements, and even the lobby disclosure acts themselves, have come in the wake of scandal, Holman said.

Im fully expecting the new Trump administration to be one of the most scandal-ridden administrations in recent history, he said, and upon that scandal, we may be able to promote some sort of vast improvements in foreign lobbyist disclosure laws.
Does it matter if the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is on the congressional cutting block even though it is a small agency costing on a per capita annual basis less than a postage stamp?

There is an American political consensus that the federal government has a responsible role to play in scientific research. A deep understanding exists that scientific inquiry has led to technological and health care advances that have lengthened and improved life. However, science has a flip side. At the same time that the life span of man has been increased, the vulnerability of mankind has grown. As Einstein so profoundly noted, splitting the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking.

On the assumption that it is easier for scientists to understand dark matter than for public officials to comprehend the dark motives that haunt potential adversaries and may even lurk within, it is an insufficient national security policy to depend on research in laboratories alone. The research that stems from libraries and other repositories of the wisdom of the ages must not be abandoned.

Half a century ago the National Endowment for the Humanities was established on the assumption that world leadership could not solely be based on superior power, wealth, and technology, but must also be premised upon worldwide respect for our countrys qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.

Like its scientific counterparts (the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health), the NEH was established as a depoliticized research institution. Decisions on research grants were designed to be made by bringing together academic experts in various disciplines to peer review applications for federal research assistance in fields ranging from history, literature, and philosophy to related disciplines like comparative religion and foreign languages.

The result has been the facilitation of over 7,500 books, dozens of which have been awarded Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes. Likewise, the agency has supported the digitization of the papers of figures from George Washington to Albert Einstein. It has helped fund hundreds of documentaries like Ken Burnss series on the Civil War. In addition, the 56 NEH-affiliated state and territorial humanities councils annually put on more than 50,000 educational programs, all selected by individuals in decentralized jurisdictions to respond to local interests. Through book, film, and programmatic outreach, millions of citizens on a yearly basis have been uplifted by the work of this unique government agency.

Wherever we may be as individuals trying to make sense of our own odysseys through life, we are affected by global events and what has become a global hiring hall. An increasing number of things are beyond our control. Care, however, must be taken to recognize that one of the myths of our times is that the humanities are impractical, unrelated to jobs and a work environment. Actually, they are not only practical but central to long-term American competitiveness.

To understand and compete in a world economy we need relevant knowledge of peoples near and far and the imaginative capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of others.

Change and its acceleration characterize the times. With each passing year, jobs evolve. Training for one skill set may be of little assistance for another. On the other hand, studies that stimulate the imagination and nourish capacities to analyze and think outside the box suit well the challenges that change brings us. They make coping with the unprecedented a manageable endeavor.

What better way is there to apply perspective to our times than to study history of prior times? What better way is there to learn to write well than to read great literature? What better way is there to think critically and understand American traditions than to ponder Locke and Montesquieu and the influence of the European Enlightenment on our constitutional processes? The insights provided by humanities disciplines and the judgmental capacity to analyze, correlate, and express our thoughts developed in humanities studies are not dismissible options for society. They are essential to revitalizing the American productive engine.

Even more significant than issues of commerce are the challenges of citizenship and public leadership when for the first time in history weapons of mass destruction have been proliferated and terrorism has been globalized. The health of nations is directly related to the depth of knowledge applied to public decision-making. Thinking from the gut is costly.

For instance, despite having gone to war in the Persian Gulf a decade earlier, Congress and executive branch policy-makers understood little of the Sunni/Shia divide when 9/11 hit. Similarly, despite the French experience in Algeria and the British and Russian in Afghanistan, we had little comprehension of the depth of Islamic antipathy to foreign intervention. Nor, despite the tactics of a Daniel Boone-style patriot named Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, who attacked British garrisons at night during the Revolutionary War and then vanished in South Carolina swamps during the day, we had little comprehension of the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare.

Every American senses that something is askew in our political system. Our judgment is under attack from traditional allies as well as international rivals. Instead of standing forthrightly up for old-fashioned American valuesa Lockean respect for individual rights and a Burkean reverence for established social structureswe seem to be lashing out, accentuating domestic ruptures and escalating rather than alleviating international tensions. As a result an increasing number of people on the planet seem to think that America has lost its historical grip. We seem not only to be unschooled in foreign cultures but prone to misunderstand our own heritage.

The conclusion is self-evident. Just as we need to rebuild an infrastructure of roads and bridges, we need to strengthen our infrastructure of ideas.

Tyrants have good reason to fear the humanities. We do not. The humanities are Americas stock and trade. They are a national asset that we shortchange at our peril.

A former congressman and chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Jim Leach is a visiting professor of law at the University of Iowa.
Michael Jamieson celebrated in new Glenturret

Glenturret Distillery has released a 29 year old single cask malt, dedicated to long-time cooper, Michael Jamieson, who has worked in the industry for 44 years.

The Glenturret Jamieson's Jigger Edition is a cask strength single malt whisky, priced from 295-395, with only 170 bottles of available.

Dedicated to Jamieson, whose whisky career as a cooper has spanned over four decades, the 29-year-old whisky was filled on 20th November 1987 in a repaired cask that would have once passed through the Clyde Cooperage in Addiewell, when Jamieson was at the height of his career.

Jamieson began his career at Clyde Cooperage aged 15 in 1971, following in the footsteps of his father who was also a cooper. Jamieson says: "Coopers are a rough and tough bunch."

Jamieson was also responsible for hand-crafting the washbacks at distilleries across Scotland, including the douglas fir washbacks at Glenturret Distillery, made completely by hand with no glue, nails or screws.

Now retired and living in Speyside, Michael has hung up his tools after 44 years in the Scotch whisky industry. He spent the last seven years of his career as a foreman cooper, responsible for the movement of 40,000 sherry casks from Spain and 90,000 refill casks.

Glenturret Distillery, which claims to be Scotland's only remaining hand crafted malt whisky made in the traditional way, wanted to honour Michael's commitment to the industry with a retirement gift as a tribute to all his work.

Speaking of the dedication, Jamieson comments: "I'm absolutely delighted and honoured to have been given this special dedication from Glenturret Distillery. I have fond memories of visiting Glenturret throughout my career and I have no doubt that the cask that this special whisky matured in would have once passed through the cooperage all those years ago. It's a great industry to work in and I'll definitely miss the banter but I'm looking forward to enjoying my retirement up in Speyside with a wee dram or two."

Michael Jamieson's dedication is the latest in a series of limited-edition releases from the distillery, all of which pay homage to the craftsmen who have formed the whisky industry over the years. Others who have been given a whisky dedication include James Fairlie, the man who re-established Glenturret Distillery in the 1950s and two stillmen, Chic Brock and Hugh Malloy, who both worked at the distillery in the 1980s, both of which are now sold out. The most recent dedication, Cameron's Cut, went to current distillery manager Neil Cameron, who celebrated 20 years at the Crieff-based distillery last year.

Stuart Cassells, general manager at The Famous Grouse Experience based at Glenturret Distillery comments: "The Glenturret Jamieson's Jigger Edition is another very special, limited edition single cask of the very finest Glenturret malt. We're delighted to dedicate it to a man who spent his working career maintaining the casks and hand-crafting our very special wooden washbacks which give our whisky its unique flavour. With 44-years in the whisky industry as a cooper and foreman, we were delighted to present Michael with bottle number 002 of this delicious 29-year old whisky and we wish him a most enjoyable retirement."

17 March 2017 - Sam Coyne The Drinks Report, news editor
London's East End might not be the first place you would think of to connect with nature. However, once past Mile End's bus depot and beyond the diesel-belching Texaco garage and its chewing gum-pocked pavements, you will be pulled up short by an unexpected vision: its grass-roofed Art Pavilion.

This cocooning gallery hunkers into the ground and, inside, curves cosily behind and above you drawing your gaze, not only to the mirror-calm water reflecting light through the glass wall, but also to its excellent new exhibition, Force of Nature. It showcases the work of 28 established and emerging international contemporary artists and has been curated by James Putnam, founder and former curator of the British Museum's contemporary arts and cultures' programme.

Putnam explains "From the beginning of human history, and in every culture, nature has played a vital role in creative expression." He should know, he was also a curator of the BM's Egyptian galleries where nature is so evident in many ancient artworks.

This new exhibition, which runs until April 9th, aims to counter the depressing assertion that nature is an autonomous entity existing independently from the human race. It argues that the planet's people are very much a product of their environment. "Contemporary artists have been inspired not only by nature but also its processes - evolution, birth, growth, ageing, decay, change." Putnam continues: "The artists are taking inspiration from nature's inherent forces, their acute observations and individual approaches result in works that are monumental and ephemeral."

David Nash's extraordinary Cyprus tree sculpture Rough Sphere hits you with its solidity and the overwhelming urge to touch it to experience its texture and feel the warmth that seems to exude from it. Its organic quality magnified by its position between the steel columns of the white gallery space.

Other exhibitors blurring the perceived lines between humanity and nature are artists such as Koen Vanmechelen, the Belgium trans-disciplinary regular of the Venice Biennale. Vanmechelen's piece is part of his ongoing intriguingly-titled Cosmopolitan Chicken Project. This art practice involves interbreeding national chicken species and results in installations such as Coming World: delicate transparent glass eggs nestled in a giant wooden nest structure that float on the Art Pavilion's lake, scrambling our notions of the natural world.

Birdlife also features in the work of Kate McGwire, whose ties to nature and fascination with ornithology was instilled from an early age growing up in the Norfolk Broads. Her sculpture Scuffle re-frames the exquisite beauty of plumage onto writhing coils. The conflict of the attraction to the feathers and uncertainty of the alien shapes makes a compelling statement. Putnam says, "Although it may seem that we're growing ever distant from nature, we instinctively retain a penchant for its forms and materials that are destined to co-exist with humanity."
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS): Have you ever wondered how the concept of food or the staples change from one region to another? Then go for the Great Harvest Festival being hosted by the Kolkata-based GT Route from Mar 18-Apr 2, 2017.

A multi cuisine restaurant at Jameson Inn Shirraz, GT Route, which highlights the culinary delights from Kabul to Kolkata, will showcase an array of rice-based preparation during its food festival.

A harvest festival is a popular festival for any agrarian community. Taking a leaf out that harvest festival, GT Route has decided to hold its Great Harvest Festival.

Rupam Banik,Executive chef, Jameson Inn Shiraz said, Last year, the Great Harvest Festival had received a very encouraging response and the city's discerning food lovers appreciated the exotic rice preparations.Therefore we decided to go for it again.

This year too we have tried to keep the food as innovative as possible so that food lovers get a chance to enjoy some little-known delicacies, said chef Banik.

There will be 11 special rice items included in this festival -- four vegetarian preparations, 6 non-vegetarian preparations and 1 dessert.

Vegetation preparations such as Kara Chawal Kabab (shallow fried rice cake served with tamarind sauce), Masaledar Kathal Pulao (jack fruit and rice cooked with traditional Awadhi herb and spice served with fresh coriander and dry chilli kadhi), Bag-E- Bahar Khichdi (rice lentil and vegetable cooked together and served with pickle, julienne crispy fried potato and papad), Shahi Soya Biryani (saffron scented soya nugget biryani served with yogurt)

Non-vegetarian preparations include Prawn Wild Rice Conjee ( wild rice and prawn thick soup served with pickled veg), Gosht Ki Tehari (Rampur style spiced mutton pulao), Nargishi Kofta Biryani (mutton mince wrapped egg biryani served with Burani Ghol), Lalbagh Murgh Biryani (Murshidabad style chicken pressure biryani served with fritter chilly and sesame peanut yogurt gravy), Macher Bhapa Pulao (boneless fish chunk and rice cooked together with lemon and mustard scent serves with mustard raita), Muri Ghonto (fish head and Gobindo Bhog rice cooked together with traditional Bengali herb and spices).

Dessert is Zarda Pulao (traditional mixed dry fruits and sweet pulao).

A meal for two at the festival will cost approximately Rs. 700 plus taxes and will available between 12 pm -4 pm for lunch and 7 pm -11 pm for the dinner at GT Route.

(Reporting by Camellia Chatterjee)
Prof. Hughes and his team also found that despite politicians throwing money at water quality improvement measures, poor water quality isn't the major cause of bleaching.

"It's clear that water quality nearest to the land is muddier than the middle and outer Reefs with their pristine waters a familiar sight in glossy tourism magazines, but building resistance or improving water quality won't alter the bleaching".

What's needed to improve the Barrier Reef is a global intervention. At a local level "it's not possible to build local resistant to climate change through local management. That's not to say managing water and fishing is not a good idea as it does affect the reef's capacity to bounce back" says Hughes.

Who are the Reefers' behind the headlines?

Marine scientists are affectional known as reefers', and one of the biggest fish in the field is distinguished Professor, Terry Hughes FAA.

The most cited individual coral reef scientist in the world, he started working on Caribbean coral reefs in the 1970s. Since gaining his PhD from John Hopkins University, his work continues to reward him with an abundance of accolades. He's been praised as everything from a "reef sentinel", to the seminal researcher in the field of coral reef ecology. Growing up in Ireland, Terry studied at Trinity College Dublin, gained his PhD in the USA, and took a postgraduate job at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before moving to Townsville, in northern Australia during the late 1980s.

Hughes is supported by a team of marine scientists who are all based at the Centre for Excellence, including Senior Research Fellow, Dr Andrew Hoey.

Hoey has worked with coral reefs since moving from Sydney to Townsville in 1995. An economics graduate who never worked a day in the field, like every other Australian Andrew has a passion for the outdoors, and moved north to study corals for three years at James Cook University in 1995.

Andrew is also the President of the Australian Coral Reef Society - the oldest organisation in the world concerned with the study and protection of coral reef.

As a Senior Research Fellow at ARCCOE, Andrew's role in last year's project was to carry out underwater surveys of bleaching reefs at Lizard Island in the catastrophically damaged northern zone.

Aerial surveys of the bleaching tell the scientists where the bleaching is occurring but he says to understand the scale, "you really need to get into the water, if you want to document the mortality."

Hughes and Hoey agree global warming and changes in climate temperatures are responsible for the bleaching. Calling on more to be done by UNESCO and a speeding up of the 2050 Reef Plan will help make the most of the narrow window they have identified to halt the destruction.

Always take the weather with you

Whilst scientists are convinced that climate change is responsible for the bleaching, climate sceptics think bleaching outbreaks are more likely a combination of natural weather patterns and increased global temperatures. The El Nino, La Nina and ENSO weather patterns circumnavigating the planet that bring warmer weather (El Nino), cooler weather (La Nina) and neutral weather (ENSO).

Prof. Hughes disagrees: "It's a myth that El Nino contributes to bleaching. In 1998 one of them contributed to a bleaching event on the Barrier Reef. In 2002 the second bleaching event was not an El Nino year; five years later, (2017) we are seeing bleaching and again, it is not an El Nino year".

Whilst, El Nino gives a slight spike of heat, "the reality is that La Nina years today are now warmer than El Nino years were 20 years, because of global warming" adds Prof. Hughes

Sceptics can no longer say that bleaching isn't caused by global warming, "It's us - it's not El Nino. Blaming the weather is an excuse to say it's not just us, it's nature too but in truth it's anthropogenic global warming".

Last year was Australia's fourth recorded hottest year with national temperatures reaching 0.87 C above average. Ocean temperatures also rose to 0.77C above average. Sea temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef spiked between February and April the time of corals bleaching.

International pressure could save the Great Barrier Reef.

After almost 40 years working with coral reefs, Prof. Hughes wants UNESCO do more.

UNESCO has until now, held back from listing the Reef as in danger' because the area has remained relatively pristine.

UNESCO is concerned about whether the attribute of the world heritage area that led to its inscription in 1981 is being maintained. The Outstanding Universal Values - OUV - relate to the northern part of the Barrier Reef, the area that is the most damaged.

Prof. Hughes explains that before last year bleaching "Australia has argued that the OUV of the world heritage area is still intact, because the northern third is still pristine. That's where the dugongs (manatee), turtles and corals, were. But, between February and October last year, two thirds of the corals in the northern Great Barrier Reef died. That is a catastrophic loss".

Without the corals there is no ecosystem, biodiversity or habitat for turtles and dugongs (seacows). Corals are an integral part of the OUV. Without corals there's no geological structures, no biodiversity, and no aesthetic value - all of which are OUV elements.

Mixed Messages over mines

Convincing UNESCO that mines and coastal development can co-exist with the future security of the Reef is a big task. But, politicians and UNESCO need to be brave enough to face up to the real causes of climate change.

The Barrier Reef is in Australian waters, and it falls to Federal Minister for the Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg, to convince UNESCO the Reef is surviving.

Stewardship of the Barrier Reef is spilt in favour of the Federal Government, with the Queensland Government responsible for a very narrow strip along the coastal edge - including fisheries, ports and dredging, coastal development and coal mining.

Although much of the responsibility for the Reef's future survival depends on decisions made over 1,000 miles away in the capital Canberra, both Federal and State governments are united in support for a new Adani mega coal mine to bring economic growth to the area.

The Professor is forthright in his views on coal, recently Tweeting to Queensland opposition leaders wanting to build a new coal fired power station in north Queensland, "I'm off tomorrow to measure back-to-back bleaching on #GreatBarrierReef. Leave the bloody coal in the ground!"

"Both governments are singing from the same hymn sheets' when it comes to developing the Adani coal mines, which is a terrible policy failure for the GBR. If the Adani Carmichael mine goes ahead it would make it impossible for Australia to meet its responsibility for the COP21 treaty" warns Prof. Hughes.

"Australia at least has signed up for the 1.5 degrees centigrade target, which we are currently on a trajectory to miss. Remember these three bleaching events have happened with less than one degree of global average warming. Two degrees will not be comfortable place for corals" he says.

This policy disconnect between Australia's love of fossil fuels, clean coal, fracking etc.; Queensland's pledge to have 50% renewable energy, and Australia's responsibility for stewardship of the world heritage area means advocates need to look in and outside of Australia for support.

Dr Hoey says, "We need to look for a global solution and Australia should be leading the way in discussions of clean coal. Don't try and badge coal as a clean energy - it's not a clean energy".

UNESCO and Australian Government need closer ties.

UNESCO World Heritage Community will meet for its 41st session in Krakow in July, and the annual meeting could provide the narrow window of opportunity needed to save the Reef. But Prof. Hughes is adamant that his role in the future of the Barrier Reef is as a scientist and not a spokesperson or media personality.

"My niche role as a scientist is not to lead the charge on anti-coal or pro-renewable energy or even saving the reef - my role is to get the data and show what is actually happening to the GBR".

But both Hughes and his colleague Hoey understand that media interviews and publishing papers play a critical role in educating people about the deteriorating health of the Barrier Reef.

Some of the coverage from last year's bleaching had a tendency to be negative - like a requiem for the Reef. The message that's getting out via the media is the Barrier Reef is dead and that's not helpful adds Dr Andrew Hoey.

Terry gets that media reports with negative reporting, disaster discourses or blaming natural weather cycles "are not helpful, [and] the last thing we want to do is write off the Barrier Reef - these bleaching events are incredibly serious". Instead as Director of the Coral Reef for Excellence, Professor Hughes would like to see more pressure from UNESCO and a fast tracking of the 2050 Reef plan.

More info here:

Integrated Coral Reef Studies,

UNESCO World Heritage Committee will next meet July between 2nd and 12th.

Prof. Terry Hughes paper Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals, by 46 co-authors, appears in the journal Nature. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21707

This Author

Dr. Maxine Newlands is a lecturer in Political Science at James Cook University, and was not paid by the centre for this interview.


Rideshare service, Lyft, Inc., allegedly violated Philadelphias Fair Criminal Records Screening Standards Ordinance, also known as Ban the Box, according to this press release from the law firm Outten & Golden LLP.

Heres a snippet from the press release:

What is Ban the Box?

Philadelphias Ban the Box rule, about which Ive blogged before here, limits when private employers can ask about an applicants criminal history. It also hamstrings private employers from overreaching and denying employment to folks with really old criminal convictions that have nothing to do with the job opening.

Is Lyft a private employer?

Wait a darn minute! I thought Lyft drivers werent employees, but independent contractors. Thats what Lyft says. Therefore, could Lyft be considered an private employer that offers employment under the Ban the Box rule?

Heres what Ban the Box says:

Employment means any occupation, vocation, job, work for pay or employment, including temporary or seasonal work, contracted work, contingent work and work through the services of a temporary or other employment agency; or any form of vocational or educational training with or without pay. Employment shall not, for the purposes of this Chapter, include membership in any law enforcement agency, or domestic services in or about the private home in which the employer resides, as defined in the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, 43 P.S.  333.101, and its regulations at 34 Pa. Code  231.1 (b).

Employment shall not, for the purposes of this Chapter, include membership in any law enforcement agency, or domestic services in or about the private home in which the employer resides, as defined in the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, 43 P.S.  333.101, and its regulations at 34 Pa. Code  231.1 (b). Private employer means any person, company, corporation, labor organization or association which employs [ten or more] any persons within the City of Philadelphia. It includes job placement and referral agencies and other employment agencies.

Well, if Lyft drivers arent employees, and Lyft doesnt have 10 or more folks whom it otherwise does employ within the City, then Lyft is not a private employer. Thus, Mr. White would be out of luck here.

But, wait! Is there more?

What if Lyft is wrong? Could this be a test case to see if a Philadelphia court  theres no diversity jurisdiction or federal question to remove to federal court  eventually concludes that Lyft employs its drivers. Then, a separate class action may not be far behind. Maybe even a separate class claim under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act?

Unless drivers sign arbitration agreements with class-action waivers, which happens to be an issue that the Supreme Court will entertain soon.

This is beginning to sound more like chess than checkers
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 ...
Srinagar, Mar 17 (IBNS): Militants managed to escape after having a brief gunfight with security forces in Batnoor area of Pulwama district in South Kashmir, police said on Friday.

Police sources said that after receiving inputs about presence of some militants hiding in the area, Rashtriya Rifles in coordination with

Special Operation Group of Jammu Kashmir Police laid seize around the suspected house, ensuing a fierce gunfight.

After having a gunfight on Friday morning, militants managed to escape from the house, senior police officer told India Blooms News Service.

Earlier this week, three militants and a six-year-old girl were killed in encounter that took place in Kalaroos area of Kupwara in North Kashmir.



(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS): Slamming the role of West Bengal police department, the Calcutta High Court on Friday handed over Narada sting operation probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

A division bench, consisting of Calcutta High Court's acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice Tapobrata Chakraborty, directed the Central probe agency to take over the investigation in the next 24 hours and submit the preliminary inquiry report by 72 hours.

The court also said that CBI would lodge FIR against those, who were seen in the sting tapes, if the agency found them guilty.

Meanwhile, observing the case as a cognizable offence and harmful incident for the society, acting CJ Nishita Mhatre condemned of the roles of state government and its police force in the matter.

The court has also ordered the state administration to suspend senior IPS officer S.M.H. Mirza, who was seen taking bribe in the sting footage.

Since Mar 14, news portal- Narada News- released several sting operation footage, where TMC's leaders, ministers, MPs and MLAs were recorded, allegedly taking bribes.

Ever since the video footage came to light, TMC leaderships have been claiming that the sting footage is doctored and a conspiracy of opposition parties.

Following West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's direction, Kolkata Police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) had started an investigation into the matter.

Demanding CBI or ED probe into the Narada case, at least three Public Interest Litigations (PIL) were filed before the High Court.

After authenticity of the Narada sting tapes were confirmed by two Central forensic laboratories (CFCL) in Hyderabad and Chandigarh, hearing in the case completed months ago and the order was reserved by the division bench.

Meanwhile, counsels of the accused said that they are moving to the Supreme Court on Saturday against the verdict.

A CBI source told IBNS that a special team of the Central investigation agency's anti corruption unit in Delhi will take the charge of Narada probe soon and the CBI will take raw sting footage and other evidences from the court's custody by next 24 hours.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)

Image: Wikimedia Commons
How a $1.1M grant could help put Burlington on the conservation map

Here's a look at the $3.1 million plan to showcase the sites and experiences that gave rise to the founding father of conservation.
New Delhi, Mar 17 (IBNS) : Put on the dock for the party's undoing in mustering support for formation of Government in Goa, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh on Friday alleged that there was a "sabotage by party leaders" which frustrated his alliance proposal with Goa Forward Party.

"As a strategy I had proposed a secular alliance with regional party headed by Babush Monserratte and Goa Forward headed by Vijai Sardesai," Singh said in a series of tweets.

"Our alliance with Babush went through and we won 3 out of 5 but our alliance with Goa Forward was sabotaged by our own leaders. Sad!" he wrote.

The Congress had supported Atanasio (Babush) Monserratte's United Goan party in Panaji constituency and given tickets to four of his supporters.

"Goa Forward won 3 out of 4 (seats) they contested. Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22," he said .

"Still Digvijaya guilty? I leave it to you to judge," he tweeted.

Within the party, Digvijay Singh was widely criticised for being not "quick enough" to garner the support of regional parties to form a Government, even though the party was much ahead of the BJP having bagged 17 seats and needed the support of only four legislators to grab power.

The BJP, which claimed only 13 seats, had the last laugh as it secured the right number by successfully wooing the regional parties.

Singh said while the Congress is being blamed for deciding late on its legislative party leader in Goa, the BJP is yet to decide its leader in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

"Congress was blamed for being late in deciding its Leader. BJP yet to decide leader in UP and Uttarakhand. Results came on 11th evening."

He said the Congress Legislative Party leader for Punjab was decided on March 13 and for Manipur and Goa on March 12.

"Letter to Governor goes after the leader is chosen, which we did but the Governor took the decision before that," he said.

Image: digvijaya singh twitter account @digvijaya_28
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NORWALK  The first five years after opening a new business are notoriously difficult, particularly in the restaurant industry.

But the owners of The Spread on North Main Street in South Norwalk have made it look easy. Theyre approaching the five-year mark with two restaurants under their belt, a third in the works and a laundry list of philanthropy efforts many new business owners would have put off for a later date.

Everyone has shown us a tremendous amount of love and support, said owner Shawn Longyear. They support us and we support them. If it wasnt for the customers and the community we wouldnt be here.

Longyear owns the restaurant with Andrey Cortes, Chris Hickey and Chris Rasile. The four have a combined 80 years of experience in restaurants, much of of it spent bartending, but The Spread is their first venture into restaurant ownership.

While four owners means four decision makers, four people with varying ideas and increased chance for conflict, the teams approach has been based on keeping an open mind and approaching problems democratically. Executive chef Carlos Baez is also a part owner in the business and oversees the kitchens at The Spread and El Segundo, but is not involved in front-of-house decisions.

We were friends for 20 years and people said opening a restaurant together, we would want to kill each other, Hickey said. But its been almost six years since we started the whole process and we still enjoy each others company. We keep each other in check and we act as our own set of checks and balances. Its been great to work with your friends every day.

The one issue that never required a debate was the decision to be actively involved in the community as often as possible. While Hickey is the only one originally from Norwalk, all five owners have a soft spot for the city.

They actively support and participate in fundraisers for Paws for a Cause, Reggies Pet Project, Husky House and Green for Kids.

Were all huge dog and animal lovers, Hickey said. Chris (Rasile) has fostered 43 dogs and were all dog owners.

The team has also been involved with the Sheffield Island Education program, and has participated in fundraisers for Clasp Homes, a Westport-based nonprofit that provides services for people with autism and intellectual disabilities. They also volunteer with Wakeman Town Farm, Community Plates and the annual SoNo Stroll, hosted by the Human Services Council.

While they never actively set out to participate in philanthropy work, Cortes said it was only natural to get involved.

We figured stuff would come up and we always talk about the things were doing, but there was never any argument about whether or not we should do this, Cortes said. We would love to help everyone if we could.

The Spread opened almost five years ago, and the team opened a sister restaurant, El Segundo, in August 2016. Both restaurants feature rotating menus of international cuisine, Baez speciality. There are plans in the works to expand outside of Norwalk, though nothing is set in stone yet.

Baez was born and raised in Mexico City, and helped his father in the the familys three taquerias. He later worked for a Japanese restaurant, and in 2000 moved to the U.S. where he worked as a sushi chef before transitioning to a French restaurant, which solidified his love for the variety of international food. Prior to joining The Spread, he learned the farm-to-table approach as the Chef de Cuisine at Napa & Co. in Stamford.

Baez has earned a number of accolades for his cooking, and competed in the Food Network show, Beat Bobby Flay.

I love it here, Baez said of The Spread. I love that I can take off and put on the plate anything I want.

kkrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
Patna, Mar 17 (IBNS): Buddhist spiritual leader Dalai Lama inaugurated the three-day International Buddhist Conclave at Rajgir International Convention Centre Nalanda (RICC Nalanda), in Bihar, on Friday, according to media reports.

President of India Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to attend the closing ceremony on Sunday.

Nearly 1000 representatives from 35 countries around the globe are attending the Conclave.

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and other dignitaries released a Pali Tripitaka book at the inaugural session of the Conclave.

Union Minister of State for Culture & Tourism (Independent Charge) Dr Mahesh Sharma was also present at the inauguration.



Images: Ministry of Culture
WILTON  One afternoon in June, Officer William Barrett was at Three Brothers Diner in Danbury with his friend Kevin Woulfe, when he noticed Woulfe was turning blue and was not responding to the waitress at the counter.

At first, Barrett thought Woulfe was choking, so he began to perform the Heimlich maneuver. But he soon realized that Woulfe had no pulse and was not breathing, and thats when he began chest compressions.

Woulfe regained a pulse soon after and was transported to Danbury Hospital, undergoing a cardiac stent placement for an obstructed coronary artery.

He survived the event and firmly believes he wouldnt have without Barretts quick actions.

Hes my friend and he saved my life, Woulfe said. If we didnt get a bite to eat, I probably would have died in my apartment.

Barrett and other police members were honored for their hard work and heroic efforts Monday night, at the departments annual awards ceremony.

Barrett received the Life Saving Award, and Woulfe was there to hand it to him.

We do save many lives, Chief Robert Crosby said. And this is the first time where we have the person whose life was saved here with us today.

The ceremony was filled with other notable firsts.

The esteemed Medal of Honor was not awarded to one individual but a group of six police sergeants and officers who helped rescue a driver trapped inside a burning vehicle on the eve of Thanksgiving.

The medal recipients were sergeants Gregg Phillipson, David Hartman and Arnault Baker and officers Mark Canepari, Brandon Harris and Malcolm Hayes.

These officers were not thinking of their safety but the safety of that operator. And because of them, that operator got to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner, Crosby said. Weve only given out one other Medal of Honor before and that was to Sergeant (Thomas TJ) Tunney who had the same type of event and went into a burning car to rescue somebody several years ago. Well, all these officers are receiving the Medal of Honor for what they did to save that gentlemans life,

The Community Police Officer of the Year Award, which was created in the memory of Tunney, was also awarded to more than one officer.

Both Lt. Rob Cipolla and Officer Shawn Frendt received the award for their demonstration of outstanding service to the community, with particular emphasis on the departments values of integrity, respect, professionalism and community support.

Cipolla was recognized for his leadership in several community policing initiatives, such as Coffee with a Cop, Stroll with Patrol, and A Ride to End Domestic Violence; Frendt was recognized for his involvement in nearly every community policing event and for organizing a day where he and some members of the Wilton Fire Department visited the Syrian refugee family placed in Wilton.

This is all and above what they do each day, when they put on their uniform and go to work and patrol, Crosby said. So gentlemen, thank you very much.

Cipolla, who was asked to give a few remarks, said he was humbled to receive the award in honor of their friend and former colleague Tunney, who served on Wiltons force for 31 years and received an outpouring of support from the community when he was battling cancer about a year ago.

He really didnt realize how much an impact he had on the community of Wilton and the people he interacted with, and it really made me think about what it is that defines a good police officer. So often we think about, you know, a good arrest or a good case solved or how many cars we stopped. And those things are all really important to keep our community safe, to keep our roads safe. But they all have distinct beginnings and ends, Cipolla said.

But what doesnt have an end is the impressions we make with those we interact with in the community. And for all of us here today that knew TJ either personally or professionally, we can all speak to the blessing it was to have him in our life and the impression he left on all of us.

Cipolla then asked every member of the police department at the ceremony to join him on stage.

As the chief said, community policing is a goal that we have here in the Wilton Police Department. We want to engage with the community, Cipolla said. But at the end of the day  whatever ideas we come up with, whatever manner we decide to community police  its merely just an idea if we dont have the people standing up on stage here to implement it and put it into action.

Thank you for what you do every day. You guys make community policing real here in Wilton for us, and TJ would be proud of all of us.

The Officer of the Year Award, which was created in 2003 after the untimely death of Officer Jack VanDeusen, was awarded to Officer Eric Patenaude.

Patenaude was recognized for his dedication to the K-9 program, top department ranking in motor vehicle stops and drug arrests, and overall demonstration of the highest standards of the police profession since joining in June 2014.

Although Officer Patenaude is a fairly new officer, he has demonstrated the ability for thorough investigations, reporting work, proactive police work and his outgoing personality to be worthy of the Police Officer of the Year Award, Crosby said. He has a go-getter mentality and has served the community of Wilton very well. Officer Patenaudes work ethic and dedication to the profession should be recognized and as a model to all officers.

The ceremony also included the first time the department awarded service pins to officers for every five years of service.

First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice and Wilton Police Commission Chairman Donald Sauvigne thanked Crosby for his 32 years of service with the department and gave him their best wishes for his near retirement and move to Virginia. They also expressed their excitement about working with Capt. John Lynch in his new role as the chief of police starting in April.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim
FRESNO, Calif. (AP)  A judge has ruled that California can require Monsanto to label its popular weed-killer Roundup as a possible cancer threat despite insistence from the agrochemical company that it poses no risk to people.

Superior Court Judge Kristi Culver Kapetan in January tentatively dismissed a challenge by Monsanto and a citrus growers group. In her final ruling last week, the judge said that none of Monsantos objections were viable.

The company had sued the nations leading agricultural producing state, saying California officials illegally used recommendations from an international health organization to make its decision to require the warning labels.

Monsantos attorney, Trenton Norris, told the judge that the warnings will drive some customers away, hurting the company.

California regulators have said they relied on a finding by the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, considered a gold standard for cancer research.

Critics take issue with Roundups main ingredient, glyphosate, which has no color or smell. Monsanto introduced it in 1974 as an effective way of killing weeds while leaving crops and plants intact.

The chemical is not restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which says it has low toxicity and recommends people avoid entering a field for 12 hours after it has been applied.
KEARNEY  Would you pay more for a steak if you knew it came from Nebraska?

State ag officials believe consumers will, potentially boosting the value of cattle for ranchers and feedlots here.

Theyre close to launching a marketing program that will promote certified beef from Nebraska  meat from cattle born and raised in the state.

A new logo with that slogan could appear on beef packages at supermarkets as well as on restaurant menus in the U.S. and overseas.

Nebraska Department of Agriculture Director Greg Ibach told an audience last Wednesday at the annual Governors Ag Conference that the new marketing effort comes under a U.S. Department of Agriculture program.

The Process Verified Program allows producers to show consumers that their product meets certain claims, whether its cage-free eggs, or meat thats traceable to certain farms or that has never been treated with antibiotics.

Ibachs office is opening conversations with meatpacking plants in Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado that process Nebraska beef about using the label. The first customers they would try to sell on the program would be companies that import and distribute Nebraska beef overseas, he said.

Marketing efforts in the last decade have increased Nebraskas share of U.S. beef exports.
ALDA  Nebraska Game and Parks Commissioners met at the Crane Trusts Wild Rose Ranch on Thursday afternoon.

As part of their meeting, Crane Trust employees and Game and Parks employees gave updates on their research.

Chuck Cooper, President and CEO of the Crane Trust, told commissioners the back story of the trust and how its being opened more to the public.

Within about the past five years, the Trust has put up a few cabins available for rent. Excursions, such as crane safaris and fat bike rides, are also available. Cooper said the Trust gives people a variety of options that they can see and touch.

What this is, in a way, is an adult education program, Cooper said. The best time to teach somebody something is when they dont know theyre learning anything.

The price to stay in a cabin is high, but that also helps attract people who really care and are willing to give to the Trust. Cooper mentioned that the Trust has gotten many donations from people who were already paying to stay at the Trust. Cooper said having the Trust more accessible to the public is important, because it needs people to care about the habitat, the cranes and the research being done.

If the public doesnt think this is important, itll go away, Cooper said.

Its a jewel, Commissioner Dick Bell said about the Trust.

Andrew Caven, lead biologist at the Trust, said many opportunities are available to cooperate with Game and Parks on protocols. Cooper and Caven expressed willingness to work with the Nebraska Game and Parks.

Alicia Hardin, wildlife division administrator at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, gave an update on the research of upland game shooting hours. Surveys were taken of changing pheasant hunting hours and how that would affect hunters and businesses in certain communities. The findings were that businesses and hunters tended to like the shooting hours to stay the same, which is a half-hour before sunrise, or to start at sunrise. Hardin showed that hunters preferred an earlier start time rather than a later one. She said businesses liked earlier times so people would come to town for a longer period of time, such as staying in a hotel overnight.

Lastly, Kristal Stoner, wildlife diversity program manager at the Commission, gave a monarch butterfly update. The cornbelt is a hotspot for monarchs, she said. However, monarchs are on the decline. She said as part of a multi-state goal, eastern Nebraska hopes to add 100 million milkweed stems to bring back the butterflies. Total, the goal is to have 1.6 billion milkweed stems throughout Nebraska and other surrounding states within the next few years. She said to bring back the monarch, it wont take just a few people growing milkweeds in certain areas, but that it the little pieces that we can get anywhere and everywhere are what were going to need to bring the monarch back.
The JCPenney stores in North Platte, McCook, and Fremont are among 138 stores that will be closing according to the list of closures that J.C. Penney Company, Inc. released on Friday morning.

According to the statement, the closings are "part of a continuing effort to advance sustainable growth and long-term profitability."

Approximately 5,000 employees will be impacted by the closure. The company said they are in the process of identifying relocation opportunities and will provide outplacement services for eligible employees who are leaving the company.

Most affected store will begin the liquidation process on April 17, according to the statement and most of the closures will occur in June.
New Delhi, Mar 17 (IBNS): President of India Pranab Mukherjee will visit Sonipat, Haryana on Saturday to inaugurate an international conference on the theme of 'Universities of the Future: Knowledge, Innovation and Responsibility'.

The three-day conference will be held at the O. P. Jindal Global University (JGU).

The Conference seeks to examine the future of the Indian universities in the 21st century and will have thirteen thematic panels.

Thematic sessions will focus on research, knowledge creation and publications, innovation, regulation, policy making, financing of universities and internationalisation of higher education.

Image: JGU Twitter
Election Day 2022: The stakes are high with all eyes on Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania voters on Election Day will make decisions that could reshape the future of both the commonwealth and nation.
Dahod, Gujarat, Mar 17 (IBNS) : Two sisters in their early teens, were allegedly gang-raped in a moving car by six men in front of their father in Gujarat's Dahod, about 200 km from capital Ahmedabad on Wednesday, NDTV reported.

Five of the six attackers have been arrested.

Police said the men , wanted to punish the family after the girls' brother accused one of them of bootlegging in the dry state.

Police are also on the look out for seven more people, allegedly involved in the conspiracy to kidnap the girls.

NDTV quoted police as saying that Kumat Baria, one of the arrested, had been named in a police complaint by the brother of the girls for selling liquor to him. .

On Wednesday morning, Baria and 13 other men drove up on motorcycles and an SUV at the village shop of the girls' father and allegedly dragged them and the father into the SUV.

As the vehicle was in motion, six men allegedly took turns to rape the girls, before pushing them and the father out of the car about 25 km away from their shop..
Influencing community bonds through education, near-peer mentoring and opening students eyes through Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles new black studies program are all topics on this weeks episode of Segue, SIUEs premier radio show spotlighting the ideas and issues of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) on WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound.

In this weeks episode, Greg Budzban, PhD, CAS dean, sits down with Jessica Harris, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Historical Studies and the incoming director of the black studies program. They talk about her research, her vision for the new program, as well as educating the next generation of students through community growth.

Before arriving at SIUE in 2011, Harris earned a bachelors from Dillard University in New Orleans. She was awarded a PhD from Cornell University and wrote her dissertation on the activism of black women in Oakland, Calif. before World War II.

During her freshman year at Dillard, Harris turned in a paper on the Black Panther Party. Her professor thought so highly of her work that they submitted it to a contest. The essay was subsequently chosen for presentation. During her sophomore year, she presented the paper to a conference filled with renowned civil rights activists and researchers.

Still quite interested in the Black Panthers, she arrived in 2006 in Oakland and the University of California at Berkley, and got quite curious about the African American community in Oakland before the 1970s.

The further back I went, I started to come across all these remarkable and outstanding women whose names I had never heard of, but who were highly visible in terms of the narrative of Oaklands African American history, she says. I thought I should focus on these women, and find a way to bridge their contributions and their history to the activism that we saw in the city in the 1960s.

Its interesting to think back to my journey of making these women visible in the historical narrative long before I reached graduate school, she says.

In her dissertation, Harris highlights the work of Delilah Beasley and Frances R. Albrier, two incredibly impactful women who made lasting impacts on the Oakland community leading to the flourishing civil rights movement of the 1960s. Beasley served as the first African American woman to write regularly for a mainstream metropolitan newspaper.

Most of Beasleys work focused primarily on a section titled Activities Among Negros, which allowed her to expose Oaklands residents, who were generally white, to the lived experiences of African Americans. Albrier became a pivotal part of the labor movement and was a prominent member in the Oakland community.

These women, individually or collectively, made lasting impacts on the community in terms of networks of activism, and putting issues of concern around labor, class and race on the table that younger generations of activists were able to pick up on, Harris says.

As SIUE works to build its curriculum for the new black studies program, community engagement activities and activism is going to be at the forefront for students.

Black studies as a discipline started with the activism of young people, including students on college campuses, she says. Students demanded to see themselves as part of the curriculum, and see faculty like them hired to teach.

One of the goals within the program will be to create a pipeline of sorts between college students and high school students in the East St. Louis community. By facilitating positive relationships, the older students can explain the benefits and experiences from college to influence the next generation.

Finding a way to do that in the classroom, but actually find co-curricular activities to engage the community, will be critical, Budzban replies. The college experience is not something that is visible to these high school students. This way, they will have people they are in contact with that can give them a realistic perspective of what such an experience can be.

Mentoring is something that is underestimated in terms of how much transformative power it can have in a community, Harris proclaims. I find that when I engage with students in certain spaces, Im not just Dr. Harris. Im Jessica. It creates a different context of how we communicate.

To be effective educators, it is important to identify students as human beings who have individual problems outside of the classroom. Creating a student-centered classroom is what American educator and civil rights activist Bob Moses considers the pedagogy of the future.

In a recent conference I attended, I was able to speak with Bob about his methods and with students who spoke about presenting math that is aligned with the language they use in situations that they see every day, she says. Students demanding these ideas can have implications not just for the field of mathematics, but for how we deliver content for other areas.

Through creating a network around the student, this openness influences strong, grassroots movements and activism within communities.

The one thing that is constantly stable and perseveres the best in times of struggle is the community, she says. The only way to advocate for the type of transformation were wishing to accomplish is to have the community as a significant partner along the way.

Catch the entire conversation at 9 a.m. this Sunday by tuning in to WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound.

SIUE Marketing & Communications
Name: Mary Beth Williams

Office sought: Glen Carbon Village Trustee

Offices held now or previously: Glen Carbon Village Trustee, 2013 to present

City of residence: Glen Carbon

Education:

 Bachelor of Arts, St. Marys College, Notre Dame, Indiana

 Juris Doctorate, SIU School of Law, Carbondale, Illinois

Occupation: Attorney

Why are you seeking office? I am seeking office because I want to continue to serve my community and as Glen Carbon continues to grow, I want to ensure that the growth occurs in a smart, responsible manner so that Glen Carbon continues to prosper and be a great place to live.

What qualifies you for the office? I have been a Glen Carbon Village Trustee since 2013.

What are your plans if elected to that office? 1) To ensure that development and economic growth are controlled in a reasonable way in order to preserve the character of the Village, including requiring developments to provide substantial green space. 2) To continue infrastructure improvements while maintaining preventative maintenance projects. 3) To keep costs under control.

Why should voters cast a ballot in your favor? Voters should vote for me because I will represent their best interests and I am experienced in making tough decisions.

Describe your leadership experience:

 Chairwoman, Building and Development

 Committee, Village of Glen Carbon Board
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS) : Kolkata High Court judge CS Karnan on Friday refused to accept a a bailable warrant by the Supreme Court after police arrived his residence to execute the apex court order, reports said.

In an unprecedented event, Chief Justice of India JS Khehar and six more judges had summoned Justice Karnan in connection with a contempt case in February after he accused several members of the judiciary of being corrupt.

The top court issued the bailable warrant directing him to appear before it on March 31.

The top court's order followed another unprecedented event as Justice Karnan called a "court" on the lawns of his home and ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the seven Supreme Court judges who had issued a contempt notice against him.

Bengal director general of police Surajit Kar Purakayastha, Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar and another senior IPS officer went to the New Town residence of justice Karnan to serve the warrant.

I rejected the same after assigning valid reasons. This kind of demeaning acts from your lordships and further perpetrating the Atrocities Act is absolutely out of law to the utter embarrassment of a Dalit judge, justice Karan wrote in his response to the seven-member Supreme Court bench.

While talking to the media at his residence on Friday, Karnan said: By ordering this bailable warrant against me the Supreme Court has made itself a laughing stock before the whole world.

These seven judges dont know law. The Supreme Court did not apply mind. Thats why public confidence is decreasing day by day, he said.

When asked what he would do in the event of the Supreme Court taking stronger action, he said,I am seeking legal opinion.
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Linkedin A. Ibrahim Almuttaqi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017

In recent days there has been a reemergence of the discourse regarding the direction of Indonesias foreign policy, following Jakartas enthusiastic chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).

That enthusiasm could be seen in Indonesias hosting of the inaugural IORA Leaders Summit as well as producing the IORA Concord. Indeed, Indonesias efforts to push the 21-nation-strong regional organization toward greater regionalism were applauded by many, not least by South Africas President Jacob Zuma and Australias Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, respectively the upcoming and previous chairs of IORA.

Yet Indonesias efforts have also raised questions as to whether the country is turning its back on ASEAN and if it is, what the reasons for such a move might be. Writing in The Diplomat, Dedi Dinarto argued that Jakarta sees a new opportunity in the Indian Ocean, an opportunity that a divided ASEAN can no longer present.

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Linkedin M. Taufiqurrahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017

It is the biggest corruption case the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has ever handled and the first hearing of the e-ID card graft case has revealed the true scale of rapaciousness with which politicians stole money from state coffers to enrich themselves.

In collusion with officials from the Home Ministry and private businessmen, the lawmakers cooked up a scheme to swindle Rp 2.5 trillion (US$440 million), KPK investigators have claimed. One politician named in the indictment allegedly accepted $5.5 million, while a former minister was alleged to get $4.5 million.

The most outrageous thing about the revelation is that there has been no outrage as compared with, for example, a governor who is accused of insulting Islam. Beyond the newspaper headlines and short-lived condemnation on social media, there has been no indication that the public is taking the mega corruption case seriously. In a country where millions of people earn less than $1 a day and where the four richest men are worth as much as the poorest 100 million, news of well-heeled politicians robbing billions from the state budget has barely struck a chord.
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Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017

Finally President Joko Jokowi Widodo has taken the right step by rejecting a proposal from lawmakers on the tobacco bill, after he was convinced that it would contravene laws, including the Health Law. The bill aims to protect the domestic industry and farmers, which tobacco control advocates say would be at the expense of public health. Last month opponents of the bill included children  statistics from 2013 showed three out of 10 youngsters lit up before they were 19.

Lawmakers have insisted on continuing the bills deliberation without the government and have threatened to block any bill sponsored by the government. Therefore, the Presidents rejection of the bill is not enough. With a boost in public support for his decision, Jokowis government should issue a new roadmap to phase out tobacco production by shifting the dependency of farmers and cigarette factory workers to income sources other than tobacco.

It will not be easy, but the blueprint would be a concrete sign of government support for citizens wellbeing, following last years Supreme Court ruling that annulled a 2015 roadmap for the tobacco industry. The roadmap had targeted almost 525 billion cigarettes by 2020, triple the current production rate, while Indonesians are already among the globes top smokers  including a number of infants.
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Linkedin Lailatul Fitriyah (The Jakarta Post) Indiana  Fri, March 17, 2017

Despite their many differences, Islamic and Christian feminist theologies are both natural consequences of the diverse experiences of women around the world.

They converge in the crucial awareness of the dominant depiction of God in male imagery that has been the source of divine legitimacy for the oppression of women.

Since then, it has become a model of other violent structures, in which a group of humans is divinely elevated against other groups based on their sex, gender, skin color and sexual orientation.

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Linkedin Thomas Adamson (Associated Press) Paris  Fri, March 17, 2017 11:37 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52aa70 2 Lifestyle Givenchy,fashion,fashion-designers,#fashion,Clare-Waight-Keller,Fashiondesigner Free

Givenchy has announced the appointment of Clare Waight Keller as its new designer  signaling a surprise change in artistic direction for the Paris fashion house.

British-born Keller showcased her last collection for Chloe at this month's Paris Fashion Week. She is known for her saleable hippy-chic, '70s aesthetic.

Read also: Louis Vuitton, Hublot favorite luxury brands for Indonesians

In a statement Thursday, she said house founder "Hubert de Givenchy's confident style has always been an inspiration" and that she was grateful to write "a new chapter in this beautiful story."

Keller replaces Italian designer Riccardo Tisci who won plaudits during his 12-years at the LVMH-owned house for styles that mixed gothic and street culture.

They attracted a whole new generation of fans to the brand, including Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who were regulars at the catwalk shows.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 11:26 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde529013 4 People viral,#viral,bbc,live-interview,Robert-Kelly,South-Korea,Professor Free

After a video featuring his two children crashing his interview with BBC went viral, Professor Robert Kelly and his wife, Jung-a Kim, have finally broken their silence.

Kim told James Menendez, the man who conducted the original interview, that the experience had been a little bit stressful, but that [they] are trying to handle it and that the family laughed a lot, but still were worried a little bit more.

We were worried actually that the BBC would never call us again. That was our first response  mortification that we had completely blown our relationship with you, Kelly added, though he admitted that he and his wife understand why people find it enjoyable... Its funny.

Read also: Jackie Chans stunt team pays tribute to him in viral video

Kelly told the Wall Street Journal the reason that their 4-year-old, Marion, was so excitable and confident was because earlier that day she celebrated her birthday at kindergarten. She was in a hippity-hoppity mood that day because of the school party.

In response to some peoples outcry about him trying to push Marion away during the interview, Kelly explained that there were toys behind him, and he was hoping that she would notice them instead.

Other peoples reactions also made Kelly pretty uncomfortable, when they assumed that Kim was the nanny instead of the mother of the children.

Kim had a more relaxed attitude about the assumptions. I hope people just enjoy it and dont argue over this thing, she said. Im not the nanny  thats the truth  so I hope they stop arguing.

Kelly also blames himself for the intrusion of the two kids, as he forgot to lock the door. (sul/kes)
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Linkedin Barbara Ortutay (Associated Press) New York, United States  Fri, March 17, 2017

Google is trying to improve the quality of its search results by directing review teams to flag content that might come across as upsetting or offensive.

With the change, content with racial slurs could now get flagged under a new category called "upsetting-offensive." So could content that promotes hate or violence against a specific group of people based on gender, race or other criteria.

While flagging something doesn't directly affect the search results themselves, it's used to tweak the company's software so that better content ranks higher. This approach might, for instance, push down content that is inaccurate or has other questionable attributes, thereby giving prominence to trustworthy sources.

Read also: Google finally bids farewell to manual captchas

The review teams  comprised of contractors known as "quality raters"  already comb through websites and other content to flag questionable items such as pornography. Google added "upsetting-offensive" in its latest guidelines for quality raters. Google declined to comment on the changes, which were reported in the blog Search Engine Land and elsewhere.

The guidelines, which run 160 pages, are an interesting look into how Google ranks the quality of its search results. For instance, it gives examples of "high-quality" pages, such as the home page of a newspaper that has "won seven Pulitzer Prize awards," and "low-quality" pages, such as an article that includes "many grammar and punctuation errors."

The guidelines cite an example of "Holocaust history" as a search query. A resulting website listing "Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen" would get flagged.

The new "upsetting-offensive" flag instructs quality raters to "flag to all web results that contain upsetting or offensive content from the perspective of users in your locale, even if the result satisfies the user intent." So even if the results are what the person searched for, such as white supremacist websites, they could still get flagged. But it doesn't mean the results won't show up at all when someone searches for them.
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Linkedin Hillel Italie (Associated Press) New York, United States  Fri, March 17, 2017

Ivana Trump, the first wife of President Donald Trump, is writing a memoir that will focus on the couple's three children.

"Raising Trump" will be published Sept. 12, Gallery Books told The Associated Press on Wednesday. According to Gallery, Ivana Trump is writing a story of "motherhood, strength and resilience" and also will reflect on her "childhood in communist Czechoslovakia, her escape from the regime and relocation to New York, her whirlwind romance, and her great success as a businesswoman."

Read also: Trump calls for privatizing air traffic control operations

"As her former husband takes his place as the 45th president of the United States, his children have also been thrust into the media spotlight  but it is Ivana who raised them and proudly instilled in them what she believes to be the most important life lessons: loyalty, honesty, integrity and drive," the statement reads.

Donald and Ivana Trump divorced in 1992 amid revelations that Donald Trump had been having an affair with Marla Maples, who became his second wife. (They divorced in 1999 and six years later Donald Trump married Melania Knauss.) Gallery is calling the book "non-political," and it's also unlikely to be critical of the president, whose candidacy Ivana Trump supported. Her divorce from him included a nondisclosure agreement, and her children with him  Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric  are close to their father and are contributing memories to the book.

Read also: Reducing the Trump effect

The three younger Trumps said in a statement that they were "excited" about "Raising Trump" and called Ivana an "amazing mom, teacher and inspiration to all of us." Ivana Trump said in a statement that "Raising Trump" was in part a response to compliments she receives about her children.

"I was a tough and loving mother who taught them the value of a dollar, not to lie, cheat or steal, respect for others, and other life lessons that I'll share now in 'Raising Trump,' along with unfiltered personal stories about Don, Eric, and Ivanka from their early childhood to becoming the 'first sons and daughter,'" she said.

Ivana Trump has written books before, including "The Best Is Yet to Come: Coping with Divorce and Enjoying Life Again" and the novel "For Love Alone," which led to a legal battle with her ex-husband. In 1992, Donald Trump sued Ivana for $25 million, claiming the novel was based on their marriage and violated the nondisclosure portion of the divorce decree. Ivana Trump countersued over other parts of the divorce agreement and, in 1993, the two settled their differences.

Gallery is part of Simon & Schuster, which under its Threshold Editions imprint published Donald Trump's campaign book "Crippled America," released in paperback as "Great Again."
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Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Sydney, Australia  Fri, March 17, 2017

An Australian woman suffered burns to her face after her battery-operated headphones exploded during a flight from Beijing to Melbourne, Australian air safety investigators said Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not released, fell asleep on the plane while wearing the headphones and awoke to a loud explosion about two hours into the flight, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement about the Feb. 19 incident. The woman said she then felt a burning sensation on her face.

"I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck," the woman was quoted as saying in the statement. "I continued to feel burning so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. They were sparking and had small amounts of fire."

The woman, whose name was not released, fell asleep on the plane while wearing the headphones and awoke to a loud explosion about two hours into the flight, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement about the Feb. 19 incident.(Australian Transport Safety Bureau /File)

Read also: Samsung launches QLED TVs, 'The Frame'

Flight attendants poured a bucket of water on the headphones. The battery and cover were melted and stuck to the floor of the plane.

Passengers were "coughing and choking" for the rest of the flight, the woman said.

The transport safety agency said it believes the batteries in the headphones likely caught on fire. A spokesman said the agency has decided not to say what brand of headphones was involved, because officials believe the problem was with the batteries.
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Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan, North Sumatra  Fri, March 17, 2017 22:53 2060 a291276806121264c0bd211cde5435ba 1 National Jokowi,jokowidodo,AMAN,customary-forest,indigenous-people,indigenous-people-rights,#forest Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo has confirmed support for indigenous people in Indonesia following the acknowledgment of customary forests in several areas across the archipelago, a minister has said.

The President is consistent in promoting and protecting the rights of indigenous people in the archipelago, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said in a speech during the opening ceremony of the fifth congress of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) in Tanjung Gusta, Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, on Friday.

As many as 2,304 indigenous community members are attending the congress.

Among customary forests acknowledged by the government are Kulawi in Sigi regency, Southeast Sulawesi, and Tapang Semadak in Sekadau regency, West Kalimantan.

(Read also: Carnival of culture opens indigenous people's congress in North Sumatra)

The government officially acknowledged customary forests in December 2016. In the first stage of the process, President Jokowi issued government decrees that acknowledged the customary forests of nine indigenous communities. He handed over certificates for the forests, which cover 13,122.3 hectares, to customary leaders in a ceremony.

Siti said the government was striving to complete its plan to reclaim another 7,000 ha of customary forests from pulp and paper company PT Toba Pulp Lestaris concession areas, after it managed to take 5,100 ha in December.

Apart from acknowledging customary forests, Siti said the government would also support indigenous people in marketing products created from customary forests.

It would be difficult for indigenous people to optimally benefit from customary forests if they did not have adequate market access, she added. (ebf)
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS): Saying the Calcutta High Court's judgement in Narada sting case very unfortunate, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday announced that her government and Trinamool Congress (TMC) party will appeal to the Supreme Court against the verdict.

During an 'administrative' press conference at the state secretariat at Nabanna, Mamata Banerjee said, "The sting operation was carried out before 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the footage was published just before Bengal assembly polls in 2016 from BJP state headquarter in Kolkata, which clearly indicate that this sting operation was a conspiracy and political vendetta against our party."

"This verdict is really unfortunate and disappointing and my party and government are moving the Supreme Court to get justice," Banerjee said.

Earlier on Friday, calling the Narada case a cognizable offence and harmful for the society, a division bench, consisting of Calcutta HC's acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take charge of Narada probe in the next 24 hours and to submit a preliminary inquiry report by 72 hours.

Criticising the judgement, Mamata Banerjee said, "I'm surprised how could BJP state president Dilip Ghosh say that High Court would hand over Narada probe to CBI and he made the statement 20-25 days prior to the verdict was announced."

On Feb 17, BJP's state president Dilip Ghosh had told the media that like Saradha, Narada probe might be handed over to CBI.

Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee again claimed that her party leaders, who were seen in Narada tapes, took 1-2 lakh rupees as donations before Lok Sabha polls and the process was certified by the Election Commission of India.

"A huge amount of money was donated during the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. Then why not a probe is announced there!" Banerjee said.

"After the footage was published, I formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter. But putting a stay order, Calcutta High Court had stopped our investigation process, which was very unfortunate," she alleged.

Welcoming the verdict, state general secretary of CPI-M, Surya Kanta Mishra, said, "Since the beginning, we are demanding for CBI probe into Narada case under direct monitoring of the court as state government is using its machinery to hide the truth and save accused TMC leaders."

"We will hold rallies across the state and centrally in Kolkata on Friday and Saturday, respectively, to protest against the scam," Mishra added.

Since Mar 14, news portal- Narada News- released several sting operation footage, where TMC's leaders, ministers, MPs and MLAs were shown allegedly taking bribes.

From the beginning, TMC leadership has claimed that the sting footage was doctored and a conspiracy of oppositions.

Following West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's direction, Kolkata Police's Special Investigation Team (SIT) had started an investigation into the matter.

Demanding CBI or ED probe into Narada case, at least three Public Interest Litigations (PIL) were filed before the High Court.

After authenticity of the Narada sting tapes were confirmed by two Central forensic laboratories (CFCL) in Hyderabad and Chandigarh, hearing in the case completed months ago and the order was reserved by the division bench.

Meanwhile, counsels of the accused said that they are moving to the Supreme Court on Saturday against the verdict.

A CBI source told IBNS that a special team of the Central investigation agency's anti corruption unit in Delhi will take the charge of Narada probe soon and the CBI will take raw footage of the sting and other evidences from the court's custody in the next 24 hours.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 11:45 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52b926 1 City Bantar-Gebang,waste-to-energy Free

Bantar Gebang landfill will become a center for waste residue processing after Jakarta operates an intermediate treatment facility (ITF) for garbage this year.

Jakarta Environment and Sanitation Agency deputy head Ali Maulana said Jakarta would still need the Bantar Gebang landfill in Bekasi, West Java, to accommodate residue from processed garbage after the development of the waste-to-energy facility.

Jakarta produces 7,000 square meters of garbage per day. Even if all the waste is processed at ITFs, there will be around 10 percent residue that can be dumped at Bantar Gebang, Ali said as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com on Thursday.

The city plans to establish five ITFs near industrial estates in East and North Jakarta, Ali said.

The groundbreaking of the ITF in Sunter, North Jakarta, is scheduled for later this year with an estimated budget of Rp 3 trillion (US$224.9 million). It will be developed in cooperation with a Finnish company. (wnd)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 13:57 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde536ce9 1 National Luhut-Binsar-Pandjaitan,Caledonian-Sky,raja-ampat,coral-reefs,West-Papua Free

Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan has said the captain of UK cruise vessel MV Caledonian Sky, which recently ran aground in Raja Ampat, West Papua, had previously made a similar mistake, in which his vessel entered shallow waters in Medan, North Sumatra, destroying sea biota in the area.

We have data on the ship captains mistake in Medan, said Luhut on Thursday. Therefore, the minister said, he very much regretted the decision of local authorities to release and let the Caledonian Sky vessels captain to leave Raja Ampat waters after it damaged coral reefs in the area.

Luhut said his ministry would investigate the parties that had permitted MV Caledonian Sky to continue its travel after the incident. The vessel should have not been permitted to leave the area.

We will look into it first. There might have been improper procedures [applied by our authorities]," he said as quoted by kompas.com in Jakarta on Thursday.

(Read also: Ministry to check damage to Raja Ampat coral reefs)

The government has dispatched an integrated team, which involves the Environment and Forestry Ministry, the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister and the Transportation Ministry.

Luhut said the government would also take legal action over the incident. Within the next two or three days, an official statement from the government will be released."

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said MV Caledonian Skys captain and owner could face both criminal and civil lawsuits. In terms of criminal prosecution, the vessels captain could be charged with violating Law No.32/2009 on environmental protection and management.

The cruise ship ran aground in shallow waters in Raja Ampat and destroyed coral reefs in the area on March 4 when it carried 102 tourists who wanted to enjoy bird-watching in Waigeo. (hol/ebf)
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Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan, North Sumatra  Fri, March 17, 2017 17:26 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde53ceaa 1 National AMAN,indigenous-people,indigenous-people-rights,North-Sumatra Free

Hundreds of people in traditional attire from ethnic groups nationwide made for a vibrant opening ceremony at the fifth congress of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) in Tanjung Gusta, Deli Serdang regency, North Sumatra, on Friday.

The customary groups from across the archipelago marched around 4 kilometers from Customs House to Jl. Klambir V before returning to the location where the opening ceremony of the congress took place.

AMAN Congress organizing committee head Arifin Monang Saleh said Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, Presidential Office chief of staff Teten Masduki, National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Sandra Moniaga and North Sumatra Governor T. Erry Nuradi attended the event.

National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) and other Indonesian civil society groups were also present, he added.

Arifin said a carnival of local cultures was chosen as the theme for the opening of the congress to showcase Indonesias diversity. Through this carnival, we hope the diversity in Indonesia can be acted on wisely to maintain unity in the country, Arifin told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the ceremony.

He said the AMAN Congress began two days earlier, presenting various discussions. The results of the discussions will be formulated by all congress participants, before they reach decisions on particular matters.

Many issues related to the sustainability of the lives of indigenous people in this country will be discussed at the congress, said Arifin, adding that the event would end on Sunday. (ebf)
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 11:01 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde528932 1 Business financial-services,cyber-attacks,prevention Free

The United States-based network security company Fortinet has stated that Indonesias financial services industry is vulnerable to cyber-attacks due to its obsolete security methods in facing the ever-growing number of highly-skilled cyber criminals.

The financial services industry is still the main target [for cyber criminals] considering the sensitivity of its data, which is considered very valuable on the online black market, Fortinet regional director for Indonesia Edwin Lim said in a statement on Wednesday.

As the quantity and complexity of cyber-attacks have been increasing, the financial services industry should prepare itself to be better in detecting and decreasing such threats.

(Read also: Police playing tough in combating cybercrimes in Indonesia)

The company said many players in the industry had yet to secure their valuable data through cloud computing, which is the process of storing and accessing data over the internet with a shared connection between computers and other devices on demand.

Therefore, Fortinet calls on each institution to provide two-factor authentication (2FA) in securing its data. Using a 2FA system, data is protected with the combination of a password and another authentication mechanism that is connected to a personal gadget, such as a smartphone.

The company also suggests that all industry players secure their data by investing more in internet of things (IoT) infrastructure.

IoT basically allows every physical object to be interconnected with one another. Every digital process will generate big data or extremely large data sets that can be analyzed to reveal patterns and trends to increase productivity and efficiency in everyday life, including in public safety. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 16:54 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde53b9e9 1 Business tax,idle-land,DarminNasution,sofyan-djalil,comments Free

Economic Coordinating Minister Darmin Nasution has said that the governments plan to impose progressive taxes for idle land will not be implemented in the near future as relevant officials are still studying the matter.

[Imposing progressive taxes for idle land] is not our priority. We are still studying it, said Darmin as reported by kompas.com on Friday, but he denied that the government had totally canceled the plan.

Darmin said the government preferred to focus on agrarian reform, land for agriculture and plantations, housing for poor people in urban areas and reorganizing retail businesses.

Early in February, Agrarian and Spatial Minister Sofyan Djalil said the government would soon impose the progressive taxes for idle land as part of the governments effort to optimize the function of land for people's prosperity.

(Read also: Sofyan Djalil, Sri Mulyani to discuss taxes for idle land)

The policy was to respond to criticism that the majority of the land in the country was controlled by a limited number of rich people, while the majority of farmers only have limited access to agricultural land, forcing most of them into poverty.

Sofyan then said many people bought land for speculative purposes, sparking an increase of land prices and making it too expensive for others.

Darmin said on Friday that the government preferred to prioritize policies that could immediately reduce economic disparity. (bbn)
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 11:26 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde529688 1 Business recalcitrant-miners,PNBP,NGO,comments Free

An advocacy NGO has called on the government to take firm action against mineral and coal miners that owe royalties and exploration fees.

As of February, government non-tax revenue (PNBP), including from unpaid royalties and exploration fees amounted to Rp 5.07 trillion (US$381.2 million), according to the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys Directorate General for Minerals and Coal.

Of the total figure, Rp 3.95 trillion is owed by mining license (IUP) holders, Rp 1.1 trillion by coal mining business permits (PKP2B) holders and Rp 20.6 billion by contract of work holders.

Without any firm action by the government, such a problem will occur again and again, while regional administrations, as the benefit recipients, will keep being disadvantaged, Agung Budiono, researcher with Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The government has set a March 31 deadline for miners to settle their arrears. Failure to meet the deadline will result in the Directorate General for Minerals and Coal not processing any of their clean and clear (CnC) status, registered exporter (ET) licenses, export permits (SPE) and sailing permits.

If they failed to meet the deadline, Agung said the government should also prosecute them in accordance with the 1997 PNBP Law, which stipulates that evaders can be sentenced to a maximum of one year in jail or be fined up to twice as much as the arrears. (bbn)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) has announced that only one more official candidate debate will be held ahead of the runoff in the capitals gubernatorial election. That debate is scheduled for April 12.

Just like the debates ahead of the first round in the election, the upcoming one would start at 7.30 p.m., KPU Jakarta head Sumarno said on Thursday, adding that the commission had not yet decided on the venue, the moderator or the topics to be debated.

We will determine the debate format this week by inviting representatives of the campaign teams for a discussion, he said at his office in Salemba, Central Jakarta.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) head Sumarno has denied accusations he violated the election organizers code of conduct, as alleged by the volunteers of incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, who reported him to the Election Organization Ethics Council (DKPP) on Thursday.

Sumarno, for instance, is said to have failed to remain neutral by using a photo of the 212 protest, a large protest demanding the prosecution of Ahok on Dec. 2, 2016, as his Whatsapp profile picture.

Sumarno said he uploaded the photo a long time ago.

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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 12:45 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52fdb8 1 Business ceramics,Indonesia,target,production,Airlangga-Hartarto,comments Free

The government aims to fully utilize the national production capacity of ceramics to make Indonesia the fourth-largest ceramics producer worldwide.

Last year, Indonesias ceramics production reached 350 million square meters, or only 60.3 percent of its estimated total capacity of 580 million square meters a year.

Hence, we should increase it further. If we can reach 100 percent production capacity, we will be the worlds fourth-largest ceramics producer, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto said on Thursday in a statement.

(Read also: Ceramic industry group to hold ceramic exhibition to woo global players)

Of the total production figure in 2016, about 87 percent were allocated to the domestic market, while the rest was exported to various countries in Asia, Europe and America.

At that time, Indonesia produced 290 million tableware items, 120 million roof tiles and 5.4 million sanitary wares.

Airlangga said the country had competitive advantages in the ceramics industry, especially considering its abundant natural resources that could be used for raw materials of ceramics. Moreover, Indonesias ceramics consumption is still relatively low compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors.

Now, we have to take strategic steps [to boost the ceramics industry], by strengthening the industrys structure, improving the quality of human resources, bringing technological innovations through research and development and developing the infrastructure, Airlangga went on.

Hence, the Industry Ministry has proposed to make the ceramics industry one of priorities to get a lower industrial gas price, as it needs a long-term supply of gas so that it can see a production boost in the long run. (bbn)
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Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

Celebrating its fifth anniversary in the Indonesian market, the local unit of Singapore-based online marketplace Lazada hopes to move forward with more emphasis on bringing the countrys small and medium businesses (SMEs) to the online fore and improving digital interaction between consumers and vendors.

Despite its convincing achievements over the past five years, the platform feels that more can be done to help Indonesias SMEs familiarize themselves with the digital platform. Many of the concerns, say the company, still revolve around the perceivably outdated idea that it is expensive for businesses to go digital.

Lazada Indonesias co-CEO Florian Holm, however, said there were actually no barriers preventing SMEs from going online with their businesses. What slows down the transformation is lack of awareness on how to make use of any available technology for their advantage.

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Guwahati, Mar 17 (IBNS): The Assam government has decided to release first six months arrears of revision pay scale recommended by the 7th Assam Pay & Productivity Pay Commission to the state employees before the Rongali Bihu.

The state government cabinet on Friday approved to release the first six months arrears of revision pay scale to the state government employees before April 14 next.



Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the recommendations of 7th Assam Pay & Productivity Pay Commission will be implemented from April 1, 2016 and the state cabinet had approved it.



The Assam minister said that, the state government will have to bear additional burden of Rs 1600 crore to implement the new pay commission.



For this around 5 lakh state government employees will be benefited, Sarma said.



Earlier, the state finance minister had declared about implementation of new pay scale from April 1, 2016 in his budget speech for the financial year 2017-18.



On the other hand, the state government cabinet also approved to establish a separate directorate of Science and Technology.



(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
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Linkedin Angela Charlton and Nicholas Paphitis (Associated Press) Paris  Fri, March 17, 2017

French prosecutors are investigating a possible Greek link after a letter exploded Thursday at the Paris' office of the International Monetary Fund, lightly injuring one person.

The IMF incident came as a Greek anarchist group claimed responsibility for a letter bomb sent to the German Finance Ministry the day before.

The Paris prosecutor's office said Thursday night investigators found "residues of Greek stamps" on the letter bomb at the IMF's office in the French capital.

French President Francois Hollande called Thursday's explosion in Paris "an attack" and noted "a similarity with another event of the same nature in Berlin. ... We are trying to establish the causes of what happened as part of an international investigation."

Authorities in Athens confirmed the Greek lead in the investigation.

"We've just been informed by the French authorities that (the parcel) was posted from Greece," Greece's deputy minister for public order Nikos Toskas told Antenna TV.

Toskas added that whoever sent the Paris' letter bomb used the name of a senior Greek conservative opposition lawmaker, Vassilis Kikilias, and "the address of an office that is no longer in use."

The failed letter bomb sent Wednesday to the German Finance Ministry also had the name of a false sender, that of another senior lawmaker from the same party, Adonis Georgiadis.

France remains on edge and under a state of emergency from Islamic extremist attacks that killed 235 people over the past two years.

After the late morning explosion in Paris, employees of the IMF office in a chic district of western Paris were evacuated while armed military officers and police guarded the area.

It was unclear who sent the homemade explosive, which was like a "big firecracker" and sent by regular mail, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said. He said the IMF office had received threatening phone calls in recent days but they were not necessarily linked to Thursday's incident.

IMF director Christine Lagarde, who is French, said she was told about the explosion while on a trip to Germany.

"I condemn this cowardly act of violence and reaffirm the IMF's resolve to continue our work in line with our mandate," she said in a statement.

The secretary who opened the letter was injured by shrapnel in the face and hurt in the eardrum because of a "rather violent noise," the police chief said.

Police searched all four floors of the building, which also houses the World Bank office in France, Cadot said. No one else was injured and only light damages were incurred.

A Greek public order ministry official said French authorities sent Greek police photographs of the blast site, which were being examined by Greece's anti-terrorism squad.

Greek authorities were awaiting information on potential evidence from the injured secretary in the hope she might remember details about the sender's address, the ministry official said.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters on the record.

The official later said it looks as if both parcel bombs were the work of the same group.

"It is very likely that they were sent by the same organization, although we can't be quite sure yet," he told the AP.

He said, "It looks as if it could be a repeat of 2010," when Conspiracy Cells of Fire sent a series of explosive parcels to the offices of European politicians  including German Chancellor Angela Merkel  and foreign embassies in Athens.

The official said Greek authorities are concerned that the group may have sent more parcels that have not yet been detected.

The Greek group that claimed responsibility for the German bombing, Conspiracy Cells of Fire, claimed in an online posting Thursday on a Greek left-wing website that the attack was part of a concerted campaign by international anarchist groups.

Many Greeks resent the austerity measures imposed by the IMF and the European Union in order for their financially strapped country to get international bailouts. While France has been an ally to Greece's government in negotiations over the bailout, far-left and anarchist groups oppose the whole international financial system.

The bomb sent to Germany, containing low-grade explosives like the ones used in fire crackers, was destroyed Wednesday before it could explode.

___

Paphitis reported from Athens, Jeffrey Schaeffer, Elaine Ganley, Sylvie Corbet and Philippe Sotto in Paris contributed to this report. (**)
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Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Fort Lauderdale, Fla  Fri, March 17, 2017

A 39-year-old baby sitter who recorded himself abusing a toddler will spend 60 years in prison.

A South Florida judge sentenced Jason Barber on Thursday. Barber previously pleaded guilty to charges including producing and distributing child pornography.

In a news release, prosecutors said co-defendant Benedict Shaw asked Barber, who lived in Las Vegas and was the boyfriend of the child's mother, to record himself sexually abusing the child. He sent Barber a package containing diapers, a cellphone and other items to record the abuse. Shaw was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2014.

Prosecutors say tips to a task force led them to Shaw in South Florida. Barber was arrested in Las Vegas. Authorities say a man who bought a cellphone from Barber found child porn images and contacted police.
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

Restructuring specialist Elia Massa Manik, 52, faces the biggest challenge of his career as he takes the helm of state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina, which has frequently fallen victim to political intervention and rent-seeking practices by those close to power.

Probably due to his lack of faith in the companys internal executives, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has appointed relative outsider Elia to lead Pertamina after infighting forced the ouster of the companys president director, Dwi Soetjipto, in February.

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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 12:49 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52fe8f 1 Business Elia-Massa-Manik,pertamina,energy,holding-company Free

The newly appointed president director of state-owned energy firm Pertamina, Elia Massa Manik, has stated that the company can operate far more efficiently if the government realizes its holding company plan.

The government plans to form holding companies for various sectors, including energy, financial services and construction, with the aim of boosting the value and efficiency of all state-owned enterprises.

In my professional view, indeed, energy management has to be integrated. That way, each company [under the holding] can sharpen its focus in running its business, Elia said in Jakarta on Thursday.

Moreover, we can be far more efficient in our investment as there will be coordination between companies with the same nature.

(Read also: Elia Massa Manik appointed Pertamina chief)

On Feb. 13, Gus Irawan Pasaribu, the chairman of House of Representatives Commission VII overseeing energy and mineral resources, confirmed that the commission was drafting a bill that would serve as the legal basis for a special energy holding company for state-owned enterprises.

Gus said the holding company would coordinate at least four state-owned enterprises in the energy sector. First, a company that deals with the upstream oil and gas businesses; second, a company that will manage the affairs presently being handled by the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas); third, a company for the downstream oil industry; and fourth, a company for the downstream gas industry.

As a national oil company, Pertamina would have full authority in managing explorations in the upstream industry, Gus said. (bbn)
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Linkedin Mriganka Jaipuriyar (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Fri, March 17 2017

The dramatic discipline shown by Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers in adhering to the landmark production cut deal reached late last year has no doubt taken the world oil market by surprise, but it has done little to make a dent on overflowing barrels, prompting prices to hover in a tight range of US$50-$55/barrel.

And with the refinery maintenance season looming, it is unlikely that international oil prices will break above $55/barrel in the near term.

According to a survey by S&P Global Platts, out of a total refining capacity of around 32 million b/d in the Asia-Pacific region, approximately 2.9 million b/d is expected to be shut over March to June, reducing demand for crude oil.

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Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan  Fri, March 17, 2017 07:04 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde519335 1 National peatland,peatland-restoration,palm-oil,#Peatland Free

Academics from several universities across Indonesia have recommended the government revise Government Regulation (PP) No. 57/ 2016 on Peat Ecosystem Protection and Management Regulation, saying that the regulation is not pro-people and its implementation could damage plantation activities in Indonesia.

Indonesia Land Science Association (HITI) chairman Budi Mulianto said the recommendation would be immediately conveyed to the government to show their concerns over the fate of farmers and plantation companies, which might face economic impacts from the implementation of the PP.

(Read also: Conversion of peatland concessions into conservation areas commences)

Budi, who is also a land expert from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said many farmers and plantation companies cultivated oil palms on peatlands. He said he was worried that if PP 57 was not revised, farmers and plantation companies operating on peatlands would have to stop their plantation activities

To anticipate the matter, we will recommend the government revise PP 57. Within the next two weeks at the latest, the recommendation will have been sent to the government, Budi told The Jakarta Post after a seminar at the North Sumatra University in Medan on Thursday. (ebf)
The Jakarta Police have uncovered a closed Facebook group of some 7,000 members alleged to have shared child pornography since last year.

The group, called Official Candys Group, was open to members only and required those who wanted to join to upload links to videos of child pornography.

Once they had joined, members were required to regularly upload links to child pornography with different victims, thus increasing the number of abused children. Some of the videos were made by members themselves.

People who uploaded material would have Rp 15,000 (US$1.12) transferred to their PayPal accounts for each click on their video links. The page, which has now been blocked by Facebook, had approximately 500 videos and 100 pictures containing child pornography.

Police have arrested four administrators of the Facebook page.

Two of the suspects, men aged 25 and 17, have also been accused of abusing eight children, including a 3-year-old.

In light of the incident, the Womens Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry has called on parents to educate their children about sexuality in order to prevent them from being manipulated and becoming victims of crime.

Let the children learn about their own bodies. They must know that they have private parts that no one else can see or touch, the ministrys deputy for child protection, Pribudiarta Nur Sitepu, said during a press conference.

Abuse of and sexual aggression against minors are rampant in Indonesia, a country that still pays low attention to child protection.

In Jakarta alone, more than 2,000 cases occur every year, most of which are classified as sexual abuse.

Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) head Arist Merdeka Sirait on Wednesday called the incident a wake-up call for the country.

People must see that repressive measures alone will never be adequate in tackling sexual abuse of children. The government must address the problem from its roots, he said, citing a similar case in August 2016, when police arrested a 41-year-old man in East Jakarta for pimping children.

The commission has initiated a national movement against child prostitution. So far, the group has held counseling sessions for students in several cities in North Sumatra, giving them basic knowledge about their sexuality. We are hoping to organize more sessions across the country, he said.

The commission, along with the polices cyber crime division, has also mapped several locations of alleged child prostitution syndicates across the country to find out possible connections between them. But I cannot disclose the locations, because the investigation is still ongoing, he said.

Indonesia, he explained, had the unfortunate potential to become a new haven for child prostitution.

We have found footage of child pornography scattered around in the most surprising locations, such as remote villages. The ease of access for pedophiles to channel their fetish through the internet is the reason, he said.

Separately, Jakarta Police cybercrime head Roberto Pasaribu said on Wednesday that his division was still looking into the identities of the groups members.

We are cooperating with authorities from other countries, including the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], to unravel the identities of the members, because, based on our investigation, one of the administrators has access to foreign pedophile communities, he said. (dea)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 20:44 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde541bf1 1 National Jokowi,jokowidodo,West-Kalimantan,#WestKalimantan,cross-borders,Aruk-cross-border-post Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo has expressed his hope that a renovated border post in Sambas regency, West Kalimantan, will benefit residents by improving the local economy.

The President said he believed the Aruk integrated cross-border post (PLBN) could spur growth in the surrounding area.

I just wish for people to make optimal use of the border post in Aruk as a new economic growth center. This should not be used only as an immigration, quarantine and customs and excise office. People should benefit from the PLBN through a growing economy in Sambas, said Jokowi after inaugurating the post on Friday.

(Read also: Jokowi inaugurates border post in West Kalimantan)

The PLBN Aruk is the third border post inaugurated by Jokowi in West Kalimantan. The President inaugurated the PLBN Nanga Badau in Kapuas Hulu on Thursday, while the first such post was inaugurated in Entikong last December.

We have built three PLBNs with a sophisticated design, which are all located in West Kalimantan, he said.

The President also expressed his gratitude for hearing that West Kalimantans economy had grown at a rate of 5.22 percent last year, outpacing national average growth of 5.02 percent.

President Jokowi has vowed to improve border posts given their importance for economic development in areas far away from Indonesias urban centers.

In 2016, he instructed relevant authorities to accelerate the development of seven border areas: three regencies of West Kalimantan, namely Sambas, Sanggau and Kapuas Hulu; three regencies of East Nusa Tenggara, namely Belu, Malaka and North Timur Tengah; and Jayapura in Papua. (hol/ebf)
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 12:02 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52c881 1 Business electricity-projects-worth-Rp21t,PLN,35000-MW-program Free

State-owned electricity firm PLN signed on Friday agreements for 16 projects under the 35,000-megawatt electricity program worth a total investment of Rp 21.1 trillion (US$1.58 billion).

Of the total investment, Rp 13 trillion will be used on the development of various power plants across the country, while Rp 6 trillion is the cost of a five-year service agreement and Rp 2.1 trillion will be used to develop transmission circuits.

Of the projects, PLN signed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for four power plants with a total capacity of 927.5 MW, including the Muara Tawar combined-cycle power plant (PLTGU) in Bekasi, West Java, with a capacity of 650 MW.

The company also signed letters of intent (LoI) for six power plants with a total capacity of 898 MW, including ones in Papua.

Moreover, PLN signed procurement contracts for the development of 928 kilometers of transmission circuits with a capacity of 500 kilovolts along Javas northern coast.

Many of these projects are located in the countrys eastern part. We want to ensure development in that region as electricity there will have a positive impact on the people, PLN president director Sofyan Basir said on Friday at his office in Jakarta.

The government plans to procure 35,000 MW of electricity by the end of President Joko Jokowi Widodos term in 2019, aiming to gradually increase the national electrification ratio to 97 percent from the 91.16 percent last year. (bbn)
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she would be a participant if there is a combined opposition in future, hinting at a grand alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre on Friday.

While answering a reporter in a press conference, Mamata said: "If there is a formal proposal, I am there."

The Trinamool Congress supremo earlier in the post-demonetisation phase urged all regional, secular and non BJP parties to unite and she herself toured Lucknow and Delhi protesting against the Central government.

After the miserable results of Congress in UP poll, one senior Congress leader in an interview also hinted at the formation of such unified opposition, "if needed".

Highlighting the importance of opposition in a democracy, the WB CM said: "In democracy there is a government and an opposition. For betterment of the country, the party running the government should do good work and the opposition party should also be strong."

The TMC chief attacked BJP for political vendetta after Calcutta High Court transferred the case of Narada sting operation to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

TMC in response moved to Supreme Court challenging High Court's order.

Mamata claimed that earlier BJP raised the issue of Narada sting operation purposefully just before the West Bengal assembly election in 2016 for political benefits.

In a sting operation by Narada News which was released in early 2016, various political leaders were seen to accept money which included Firhad Hakim, Shovan Chatterjee and Subrata Mukherjee, many of them hold important portfolios in current state government.

However, Mamata said that people rejected such allegations against TMC party members because many of them were re-elected in 2016 election.

Rejecting all the possibilities that BJP could take on her party, she said that it is impossible for BJP to escalate in the state politics because they are number three or four party currently in Bengal.

After the thumping majority in Uttar Pradesh assembly election, BJP state President Dilip Ghosh rumoured that the saffron party would come to power very soon in Bengal.

Speaking about the politics of divide, Mamata said that she trusts people of this state who would not accept such divisions.

"I have full trust in Bengal. Bengal is not the place where you will divide and say anything and people will start accepting that," she said in this context.

Image: Facebook
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Linkedin Ivany Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

The Jakarta administrations order to take down provocative, election-related banners erected at several mosques and other public places across the city appeared to have been ignored in at least one location on Thursday.

Four such banners were seen at Al-Jihad Mosque in Karet, Setiabudi, South Jakarta. Two banners read This mosque does not perform funeral prayers for those supporting and defending blasphemers, while another banner read Quran blasphemers are the destroyers of national unity.

Reports about Al-Jihad Mosque and its provocative banners caused outrage last week after a family claimed that the mosque authorities had denied their request to hold prayers for their deceased mother, Hindun, 78, because she had voted for incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama in last months first-round Jakarta gubernatorial election. Ahok is currently on trial for blasphemy.

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Linkedin A. Kurniawan Ulung (The Jakarta Post) North Toraja, South Sulawesi  Fri, March 17 2017

Goodbye seems to be the hardest word for Torajan people to say, but they know how to deal with broken hearts when loved ones pass away.

Yohanes Salempang was devastated when his father, 67-year-old Lukas Lili, died after falling from a palm tree in July 2016. The latter was in a plantation, picking palm fruits that would be processed into palm wine. He died on the way to the hospital.

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 16:01 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde53a9de 1 City reclamation,revitalization Free

Following a court decision to revoke the reclamation permits for Islet F, I, K on Thursday, the campaign team of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama said Friday that the reclamation should be continued to revitalize the Jakarta Bay area.

Emmy Hafild, the teams spokeswoman, said that the reclamation would save bay residents from three major disasters which might hit the city in the future: tidal flooding, locally known as rob, floods and sea pollution.

"Reclamation is part of the plan to make a new residential where the residents [living in the bay area] can avoid the three disasters," she said during a press conference at Ahok's campaign post on Jl. Cemara, Menteng, Central Jakarta.

(Read also: Jakarta clears hurdle in reclamation project)

She said that if the reclamation continued, the fishermen who lived around the bay would be relocated to a low-cost apartment complex specifically designed for them in Muara Angke, North Jakarta.

Some parts of the islets would also be set aside to accommodate the fishermen, she said.

Therefore, the Jakarta Bay area, which would be free of any residential areas, could be revitalized as it would be planted by mangrove.

That mangrove would filter the pollution from the Jakarta Bay land, Emmy said.

On Thursday, the Jakarta Administrative Court considered that permits issued for construction of islets F, I and K had violated several regulations and damaged the environment.

Topics : reclamation revitalization
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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Semarang, Central Java  Fri, March 17, 2017 22:55 2060 a291276806121264c0bd211cde544562 1 National semen-indonesia,Semen-Rembang,cement,cement-factory,Rini-Soemarno,#SemenIndonesia Free

State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini M.Soemarno said a cement factory built by state cement maker PT Semen Indonesia in Rembang, Central Java, would begin operations in April.

During her visit on Friday, the minister said it was hoped that President Joko Jokowi Widodo could inaugurate the factory, which drew a total investment of Rp 4.9 trillion (US$367.50 million), in April. The construction of the factory, which had a production capacity of three million tons of cement per year, had been 99.16 percent completed, she added.

Formally, the factory has been completed and can fully operate. I will report this visit to Pak Jokowi. Insya Allah [God willing], he will inaugurate it in April, said Rini.

Semen Indonesia president director Rizkan Chandra, Bank Mandiri president director Kartika Wirjoatmodjo and BNI president director Achmad Baiquni accompanied the minister on the visit.

Rini said all permits needed for the construction of the cement factory were almost complete. For the factorys inauguration, the government was still waiting for the result of the Strategic Environment Assessment (KLHS), which would be announced directly by President Jokowi.

We hope the KLHS will be complete in April, she said.

During the visit, Rini spoke with villagers living in areas near the factory who support its construction. They are from Kajar, Kadiwono, Pasucen, Tegaldowo and Timbrangan villages.

She claimed the majority of local residents living near the factory supported the presence of Semen Indonesias cement plant.

Rini admitted five percent of local residents continued to reject the construction of the factory. We will seek solutions for that, she said. (ebf)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

Private carrier Sriwijaya Air Group has forged a cooperation with the Salim group, one of the countrys biggest conglomerates, to further develop Bintan Resorts in Riau Islands, eyeing 25 percent of the foreign tourists targeted by the government in 2019.

Sriwijaya Air commercial director Toto Nursatyo said the company had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PT Bintan Resorts Cakrawala, a subsidiary of Gallant Venture Group  controlled by the Salim group.

The main objective is to make it a main destination, not just a side destination. The [under construction] airport can make the destination more interesting and become an international gateway for foreign tourists, he said recently.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17 2017

Despite being located in a high-rise apartment block, there were no signs of any fire-safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers, fire alarms or sprinkler systems, in the cafeteria of the Robinson low-cost apartment complex in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, recently on Monday.

Martin, a 60-year-old food seller at the cafeteria, said he was not worried about the danger of fire, as he had not experienced any fire incidents in the apartments since he opened his stall around six months ago. For me, it has been so safe and secure here. I am not worried at all about safety, Martin said, adding that he cooked food using gas-burning stoves at his stall.

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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie and Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 10:48 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde52884f 1 National Komnas,Komnas-HAM,religious-freedom,#KomnasHAM,ridwan-kamil Free

The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has presented Regional Government with Achievement in Religious and Faith Freedom Protection Awards to three mayors for their inspiring work in upholding the rights of religious minority groups in their cities.

Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil, Bekasi Mayor Rahmat Effendi and Manado Mayor Vicky Lumentut were awarded for their achievements on Thursday during the 2017 National Congress on Religious and Faith Freedom held in Jakarta.

Jayadi Damanik, the coordinator of the faith and religious freedom desk at Komnas HAM, who announced the winners, said the awards were given to the mayors because they had the courage to persistently stand up for minorities against intolerant groups.

"The mayors have pushed their subordinates to respect and protect the rights of their citizens to freedom of religion and faith. They promote tolerant and non-discriminatory policies that are in line with human rights principles," Jayadi said on Thursday.

This year's recipients were selected by the faith and religious freedom desk at Komnas HAM following a year of monitoring and analysis.

Rahmat was awarded for his courage to stand up to intolerant Muslim groups who repeatedly staged rallies and urged him to revoke the building permit (IMB) of St. Clara church, which was to be the first Catholic church in North Bekasi. He has been named a patron of religious tolerance alongside Bekasi Deputy Mayor Ahmad Syaikhu by four church organizations in Bekasi for their commitment and consistency in campaigning for pluralism and peace in the city.

Ridwan, meanwhile, earned praise from the rights commission for his commitment to making the West Java capital a rights-friendly city. (ebf)
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Linkedin Bagus Saragih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 18:34 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde53e490 1 National Kostrad,India,joint-exercise,Penerbad,Kopassus,TNI-AD,military,TNI Free

As many as 45 Indonesian Army personnel are set to participate in a joint military exercise with the Indian Army in Nhan Camp, India, from March 20 to April 2.

The Indonesian delegation will consist of 29 personnel from the Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), 13 from the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) and three from the Armys Aviation Center (Penerbad).

Kostrad's Para Raider 501 Infantry Battalion personnel lie on the ground during a field training in Cilodong, West Java, on Friday.(Courtesy of Kostrad/File)

The joint exercise is part of the good bilateral relations between Indonesia and India in the military sector. We also aim to improve cooperation between the Indonesian Army and the Indian Army, Kostrad spokesman Lt. Col. Agus Bhakti said on Friday, as quoted in a statement.

(Read also: Indonesia to host trilateral military exercise in Kalimantan)

Personnel from Kostrads Para Raider 501 Infantry Battalion, who will represent the force, had been intensifying training in Cilodong, West Java, ahead of their departure to India, he added.

The training comprised exercises like short-range battle, demolition, shooting, survival as well as fast roping and rappelling.

The so-called Garuda-Shakti exercise is held annually. Last year, it was conducted in Magelang, Central Java.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 07:24 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde519c91 1 National Darfur,Sudan,peace-mission,#Darfur,peacekeepers Free

After a year serving as peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan, and an additional two months being held over weapons smuggling accusations, a 138-strong peacekeeping team has arrived back in Indonesia.

All members of the Indonesian Formed Police Unit (FPU) VIII arrived at Halim Perdanakusuma airport, Jakarta, on March 5 in good shape, except for one casualty  Brig. Sumda lost a finger in an accident when fixing a car in Darfur.

Upon their arrival, they were taken to a police training center in Bogor, West Java, for general health checkups  a standard procedure that personnel must undergo before resuming their regular duties.

On Thursday they received medals of honor from the United Nations for the best performance among 13 countries participating in the African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur. The officers also received Bakti Buana medals from the Indonesian government.

The Indonesian Police always dispatch their best officers for every UN mission, said the National Polices International Relations Division head, Insp. Gen Saiful Maltha.

Regarding the arms smuggling accusations, Saiful said the case was over, with El-Fasher Airport authorities in Darfur asserting that better procedures were needed to prevent similar incidents from happening again in the future.

The Indonesian team denied the smuggling accusations, saying that firearms found among the luggage of its returning personnel belonged to another group, as the result of baggage mishandling.

Meanwhile, Indonesia has dispatched a fresh peacekeeping team, called FPU IX, to Darfur for a year of service. (hol)
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Linkedin Joan Lowy (Associated Press) Washington  Fri, March 17, 2017

President Donald Trump is calling for privatizing the nation's air traffic control operations in his budget proposal, a top priority of the airline industry.

The proposal says spinning off air traffic operations from the Federal Aviation Administration and placing them under an "independent, non-governmental organization" would make the system "more efficient and innovative while maintaining safety."

There are about 50,000 airline and other aircraft flights a day in the United States. Both sides of the privatization debate say the system is one of the most complex and safest in the world. The FAA would continue to provide safety oversight of the system under a congressional privatization plan.

Airlines have been lobbying vigorously for the change, saying the FAA's NextGen program to modernize the air traffic system is taking too long and has produced too few benefits. Industry officials say that privatization would remove air traffic operations from the uncertainties of the annual congressional budget process, which have hindered the FAA's ability to make long-term procurement commitments.

"Our system is safe, but it is outdated and not as efficient as it should or could be," said Nick Calio, president of Airlines for America.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents the FAA's 14,000 controllers, backed an unsuccessful congressional attempt at privatization last year. The union said it will evaluate Trump's plan. Union officials have complained that the FAA has been unable to resolve chronic controller understaffing at some of the nation's busiest facilities, and they say they've become discouraged by the modernization effort's slow progress.

But FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told an aviation industry conference earlier this month that the agency has made "tremendous progress" over the past decade in updating its computers and other equipment in order to move from a radar-based to a satellite-based control system. The modernization program has already delivered $2.7 billion in benefits to airlines and other users of the system, and the FAA expects to produce another $13 billion in benefits by 2020, he said.

Opponents say the process of transferring air traffic control operations from the FAA to a corporation could take years and be disruptive.

"Air traffic control privatization will not benefit the flying public and it definitely will not benefit taxpayers who will be on the hook for bailing out the private ATC corporation if it fails," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.

Airlines have an important ally in Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., the House transportation committee chairman. The committee approved an aviation bill sponsored by Shuster last year that would have removed air traffic operations from the FAA and placed them under the control of a private, nonprofit corporation. The bill would also have protected the controllers' wages and benefits and continued their union representation.

Opposition to the bill from other powerful House committee chairmen who oppose ceding Congress' oversight of the air traffic system to a private entity prevented Shuster from bringing the bill before the entire House for a vote. Lobbying groups representing business aircraft operators, private pilots and small and medium-sized airports also oppose privatization. They say they fear airlines will dominate the corporation's board and that they'll be asked to pay more to support the system while facing reduced services.

Shuster received $148,499 in airline industry campaign contributions in the 2016 election, making him the industry's top recipient in the House, according to the political money tracking site Opensecrets.org. Shuster was also an early House backer of Trump's presidential campaign, and campaigned with him in Pennsylvania three times. Since the election, he has pressed Trump and White House officials to back privatization.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired the nation's air traffic controllers after they went on strike. The current privatization debate is unrelated to that labor dispute.

___

Follow Joan Lowy at http://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joan-lowy (**)
Guwahati, Mar 17 (IBNS): Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit made a request to British Deputy High Commissioner, Kolkata, Bruce Bucknell to do the needful for returning the Vrindavani Vastra, the 16th century treasure of the State to Assam.

The British envoy who is on a tour to Assam, on Friday morning called on the Governor at Raj Bhavan in Guwahati as the duo spoke on a wide spectrum of issues of mutual interests.

Purohit drew the attention of Bucknell that once Assams treasure Vrindavani Vastra, a drape woven by Assamese weavers during the 16th century under the guidance of the Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankardev are with the possession of Victoria and Albert Museum London, and he sought his help in the getting the drape back to Assam.

Drawing the attention of the Britsh envoy, Purohit said that the State is rich in Eri and Muga silk, handloom and bamboo craft among others as he said that both Assam and Britain can work on these sectors for their further promotion so that both the geographical entities can reap rich dividends from these sectors.

Purohit also said that Assam is rich in bamboo and cane craft as he requested Britains help to organize an exhibition of Assams handicrafts in Britain for the mutual benefit of both Assam and Britain.

The British Deputy High Commissioner also hailed Assams prolific and pristine tourism and said that the States tourism can be extensively used to facilitate people to people contact between India and Britain.

Purohit also acknowledged the British envoys gesture of visiting Assam as he said that both the geographical entities will keep working to strengthen bilateral relations.



(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 13:15 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde531be3 1 City pedophile,networks Free

The police have finished investigating two of four suspects of a recently dismantled child pornography network.

Jakarta Police special crimes unit deputy chief Comr. Akhmad Yusep said the files on suspects, identified only as DF, 17, and SHDW, 16, had been handed over to the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office.

DF and SHDW were two of four administrators of a closed Facebook group named Official Candy Group that had a network of more than 7,000 people. The group was blocked following the discovery of footage of child pornography.

"The investigations into DF and SHDW were faster than for the other two because according to regulations, the police are only allowed to spend 15 days investigating underage suspects," Akhmad said as quoted by tempo.co on Thursday.

DF has also been accused of sexually abusing six children, two of them his nieces.

SHDW, a teenage girl, was recruited by the Facebook account creator to help manage the group.

"For the time being, we are keeping the underage suspects in special confinement and given them psychological tests," Akhmad said.

The other two suspects, Wawan, 25, and Dede Sobur, 27, are still undergoing investigation.

The suspects have been charged under the 2008 Electronic Information and Transaction Law and the 2008 Pornography Law. (dea)

Topics : pedophile networks
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

The Jakarta Police have arrested another suspect, identified only as AAJ, in Bekasi, West Java, in its ongoing investigation into an internet child pornography ring.

The suspect, a 24-year-old employee of a private company, was allegedly one of the members of a closed Facebook group of some 7,000 members reported to have been sharing child pornography since last year.

He was one of the more frequent uploaders to the group, called the Official Candys Group, said Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono. Based on our investigation, AAJ uploaded about 1,000 items as a member of the group. He joined the group shortly after it was established, Argo said on Friday, adding that the group was established in September 2014.

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Linkedin Winda A. Charmila (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

Despite a series of sectarian attacks, incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama managed to make it to the second round of the gubernatorial election.

Recent surveys conducted after the first round show that the Christian and ethnic Chinese governor may have a chance to win the runoff election given that a significant number of Muslim voters are still willing to vote for him, despite rising sentiment against him following allegations that he insulted the Quran.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

As many as 45 Indonesian Army personnel are set to participate in the Exercise Garuda Shakti-V/2017, a joint exercise with the Indian Army, slated for March 20 to April 2 in Nhan Camp, India.

The Indonesian delegation will consist of 29 personnel from the Armys Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), 13 from the Armys Special Forces (Kopassus) and three from the Armys Aviation Center (Penerbad).

The joint exercise is part of the bilateral relation between Indonesia and India in the military sector. We aim to improve cooperation between the Indonesian Army and the Indian Army, Kostrad spokesman Lt. Col. Agus Bhakti said on Friday.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

The National Police have been coordinating with Interpol to verify rumors that Bahrumsyah, an Islamic State (IS) group fighter from Indonesia, was killed in Syria.

National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Martinus Sitompul said that, as of Friday, the police were still unable to confirm the death.

We have also yet to receive reports from [Bahrumsyahs] family, he said.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

Indonesia summoned the United Kingdoms envoy on Friday after a cruise ship run by a London-based company rammed into coral reefs in a protected marine area in West Papua, causing irreparable damage.

Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan summoned British Ambassador to Indonesia Moazzam Malik to his Jakarta office on Friday. After the meeting, Ambassador Malik told reporters he had a very good discussion with the senior minister.

Im disappointed to learn about the damage to this coral reef in West Papua, as we are with any environmental incident that occurs in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world, he said.

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Linkedin Hans David Tampubolon (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 18 2017

A young woman traveling the world should be an inspiring story.

Advertisements in the form of product placement and brand sighting are common in major movies. These short bursts of sightings provide sponsorship to produce movies and can be acceptable as long as they are not distracting from the story.

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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 17, 2017 06:35 2061 a291276806121264c0bd211cde518f41 1 SE Asia Singapore,#singapore,maritime-border,#maritime Free

Indonesia has called on all parties to respect existing laws with regard to the ongoing legal case related to Singaporean vessel the Seven Sea Conqueress at the Tanjung Pinang District Court in Batam.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir said on Thursday that the Seven Sea Conqueress was allegedly involved in illegal conduct in Indonesian waters, adding that the detention of the captain and crew was carried out in Indonesia's territorial waters.

"The case has entered the legal process and it is hoped that all parties will respect the applicable laws in Indonesia and observe the development of the legal process in question," Arrmanatha told The Jakarta Post.

The spokesperson was speaking in response to a protest by the Singaporean Foreign Ministry released on Wednesday, which called for the immediate release of Captain Ricky Tan and the vessel, as well as the termination of any purported investigation against him.

Nine Singaporean passengers were detained on Aug. 20 but were released about two weeks later. However, Tan and the vessel remain in Indonesian custody, according to Singapore's statement.

(Read also: Singapore protests Indonesias move to detain its vessel, passengers)

The vessel allegedly did not have valid documents and permits, Arrmanatha said, adding that consular access had been granted since the beginning of the investigation. The suspect's lawyer had met several times at the naval base where Tan and the vessel are being held, he added. (ipa)
Editor note: In honor of St. Patricks Day on Sunday, TLD columnist Eric Ferrara of the LES History Project takes a look back at the origins of one of New Yorks most famous parades:

St. Patrick holds a special place in the hearts of many New Yorkers. Not only is he the primary patron saint of Ireland, he is also the adopted patron saint of the Archdiocese of New York, so it is no surprise that tens of thousands of people show up every year just to participate in the St. Patricks Day Paradewhile spectators run into the millions.

Though very little documentation exists about the life of St. Patrick, the narrative which has become universally accepted is that the former slave rose to great prominence in the 5th century, bringing Christianity to Ireland. One famous legend states that St. Patrick taught the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) utilizing the symbol of the three-leaf shamrock.

By the 10th century, a Roman Catholic holiday in honor of St. Patrick was celebrated in Ireland annually on what is considered to be the anniversary of his death, March 17. It wasnt until the 18th century that an official parade was organized in St. Patricks honor and that took place over 3,000 miles from his homeland, here in Lower Manhattan.

Though it is thought of as the oldest and largest non-military parade in the nation, details about when New York Citys St. Patricks Day parade started are just as fluid as the legend of St. Patrick itself.

Some books and archived newspaper articles cite March 17, 1763 as the first St. Patricks Day celebrationclaiming it was held not as a parade, but as a breakfast meeting at the Crown and Thistle Inn on Whitehall Street. Then in 1779, the annual breakfast turned into a staged parade where 400 Irish volunteers marched behind a British band from Lower Broadway to a tavern on the Bowery.[1]

However, according to other sources like the History Channel, the St. Patricks Day parade started on March 17, 1762, as Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City.[2] (Presumably under the auspices of ghost Nazis from outer space.) And a 1917 New York Times article claimed that it was the 150th anniversary of the parade that year, dating its origins to 1767.

According to the New York State Ancient Order of Hibernians, the association which has organized the event since the early 19th century, the parade will mark its 252nd anniversary this Sunday. You can do the math.

Regardless of the parades exact date of origin, its route was contained to Lower Manhattan for over a century. And as the citys Irish population grew in the 1840s and 50s, the annual festivities expanded greatly and took on a whole new meaning.

Most Irish living in the city before the Great Potato Famine were of Protestant faith, which complemented the majority religious practice of the population at the time. However Irish immigrants arriving in the mid-nineteenth century were predominantly Catholic, resentful of the English powers which caused such hardships in their homeland.

Settling into a city where English Protestantism still held sway was complicated to say the least; a subject explored over and over in numerous books and movies like Martin Scorseses fictional Gangs of New York.

However one thing the Irish did have going for them was their numbers. They were too large a voting block to dismiss altogether, so the St. Patricks Day Parade evolved into a political grandstanding opportunity with eventual full support from the city.

By the 1860s, tens of thousands of Irish citizens participated in the yearly event, sprinkled with ambitious politicos who became Irish for the day. Marchers organized early in the morning at City Hall Parkwith ranks spilling over the Bowery and all the way up East Broadway to Grand Street. After the firing of a cannon at 12 noon, the procession folded together at Chatham Square and advanced up the Bowery to the original St. Patricks Cathedral on Prince Street.

By 1870 the parade expanded, with the participants lining up around 2nd Avenue and East 10th Street before following an unusual route: south along 2nd Avenue, west on 2nd Street, south along the Bowery, through Chatham Square to City Hall, north along Broadway to Union Square, across 14th Street to 9th Avenue, north to 23rd Street, and east to 1st Avenue before heading back south to Cooper Union at East 8 Street and 3rd Avenue where the parade ended. Did you get all that? Now try to follow it after three or four Jamesons.

Soon after a new St. Patricks Cathedral was erected at 5th Avenue and 50th Street in 1879, the parade route was moved further uptown to 5th Avenue where it takes place to this day.

In 1888, the New York City Board of Alderman introduced a resolution to fly an Irish flag at City Hall every March 17th. With 27% of the board, 28% of the police department and 16% of the citys population by that time of Irish decent, the proposal had wide support from many civic and fraternal organizations. However, anti-Tammany Mayor Abram Hewitt shot the plan down, stating, I am in favor of raising the American flag on the City Hall under any pretext, but foreign flags under no pretext.[3]

By this time, the St. Patricks Day Parade was not without its share of controversy. Some Irish-nationalists complained of the parades political hijacking and boycotted the event, while some non-Irish citizens felt it was, well, too Irish:

It has been celebrated rather in a spirit of hatred and revenge toward England than in spirit merely of attachment to Ireland, one Opt-Ed author wrote in 1887, calling the procession aggressive and defiant in character.[4]

By the 1960s, the St. Patricks Day Parade evolved into treasured event in New York City, attracting spectators from across the globe (along with their spending dollars). Perhaps its success made the city go a bit parade-crazy, because it issued 552 parade permits in 1966 alone. There was a strong push by merchants at the time to remove the growing number of parades from 5th Avenue to Central Park but the plan was determined by the City to be unfeasible.

Judge James J. Comerford, who also happened to be chairman of the St. Patricks Day parade committee, said that merchants have no real reason for complaints since the parade was on Fifth Avenue before they were.[5]\

Eric Ferrara is founder and director of the non-profit Lower East Side History Project, and author of several New York City history books including two new titles, Lower East Side: Then & Now & Lower East Side: Oral Histories. Ferrara has consulted numerous movie and television projects for HBO, Warner Brothers, National Geographic, History Chanel and many more.

A personal note from Eric: Please join me this St. Patricks Day, Sunday March 17, 2 p.m. at the Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue & Museum, 280 Broome Street, for a presentation of my new book, Lower East Side Oral Histories and on Wednesday March 20th for a very important Bowery preservation fundraiser at the Bowery Hotel. See http://leshp.org for more information.]
Kolkata, Mar 17 (IBNS): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the formation of Health Regulatory Commission to keep a check on the billings and activities of private hospitals and nursing homes.

The Commission consisting of eleven members with sitting judge of Calcutta High Court, Ashim Kumar Roy would look into the complaints regarding medical negligence under the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Act (Registration, Regulation and Transparency).

The new law brought forward by the state government was passed at Vidhan Sabha on March 3 and received the consent of Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi on Thursday.

One of the provisions of the law is to impose penalty on private hospitals and nursing homes, in case of violation.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee while announcing the formation of the Commission at Nabanna (state headquarter), said: "This Commission is for those who are misusing healthcare. The government has a social responsibility. People must have a recourse to justice."

However, she said that all heath establishments are not bad.

Image: Facebook


There was a filing deadline this week for candidates participating in this years city elections, which means we have a few more clues about the shape of the upcoming City Council race in District 1.

City Council member Margaret Chin is going for a third term, representing the Lower East Side, Chinatown and the rest of Lower Manhattan. She has two challengers, Christopher Marte and Aaron Foldenauer.

According to the latest report, Chin has raised $52,376 and has a campaign balance of about $35,000.

Marte collected $50,489 and now has $46,000 in his account.

Foldenauer has raised $18,083 and has around $10,000 on hand.

The spending cap for City Council campaigns is $182,000. The city offers a six-to-one match for the first $175 in donations from local residents. The system is meant to encourage small donations. Marte is a community activist who grew up in the area around Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Foldenauer is an attorney. The Democratic Primary takes place in September.

Martes supporters say theyre impressed by his ability to raise a significant amount of money to take on a sitting Council member. At it stands today, hes got more in the bank. On the other hand, Chin has huge built-in advantages as an incumbent. Past opponents have raised a lot of money and still failed to unseat her.

See below for the top 10 contributions to each campaign. Well have a story about the District 2 Council race next week.

Margaret Chin

Rosie Mendez (District 2 Council member) $2000 Chen Lieh Tang (Hwa Yuan Restaurant) $2000 Kin Yip-Yu (Kinyu Realty) $1000 Leter Z. Li (PL Electrical Corp.) $1000 Yan Na Luo (Chase Global Realty) $1000 David Louie (Insurance agent) $1000 Mark Levine 2017 (District 7 Council member) $1000 Jason Chen (Self-employed/construction) $1000 Margaret Chin $500 Alan Tung (candidates husband) $500

Christopher Marte

Kate Gallo (Self-employed/Seattle) $2750 Pradeep Baliga (Jane Street Group Finance) $2750

Dodge Landesman (Unemployed/local political activist) $2000 Margaret Lee (Gallery owner) $1000 Adam Woodward (Photo researcher/Bowery preservationist) $1000 Coss Marte (Conbody/candidates brother) $1000 Jeannine Kiely (Community Board 2 member) $1000

Joseph Reiver (Educational Light teacher) $1000 Carolina Marte (BAML Banker/London) $1000 Coss Marte (Conbody/candidates brother) $700

Aaron Foldenauer
Mumbai, Mar 17 (IBNS): The shoot of Golmaal Again has begun in full swing and joining this laugh riot is actress Parineeti Chopra.

Speaking on the same, director Rohit Shetty said to a leading daily, She plays a girl of today  wholesome and earthy. You will never see the characters in my films in Armani suits or any designer outfits; Parineeti is no exception!

He further added, After working with her for the last four days, I can say that she looks like shes always been part of the gang as she blends in beautifully.

Parineeti on her reason for choosing the film said, It really came to me at the perfect time. I was looking to do a big, fun, comedy film and Golmaal Again was the perfect combination of all these three things. The biggest deciding factor was obviously Rohit Shetty. He is someone Ive always wanted to work with. I love all his films, and the kind of reach he has. Working in such an environment is also educating me on who our audience really is, what kind of films they like watching. I am honoured and excited to be a part of it. I love working with the team. They are a mad, fun loving bunch always playing pranks and making fun of the crew but theres so much of love and friendship between them. Its such a fun set to be a part of and theres never any stress!

My character is as fun, crazy and cool as these boys are, so I was very excited when this role was offered to me, she added

Golmaal Again is directed by Rohit Shetty and stars Ajay Devgn, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor, Kunal Khemu, Shreyas Talpade, Prakash Raj, Sanjay Mishra, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Parineeti Chopra and Tabu.
Actress Mischa Barton has described her horrific ordeal as she fights against the public release of a sex tape filmed by a former partner secretly and without her consent.

The star, best known for starring in teen drama series The OC, appeared at a press conference alongside her lawyer to reveal she is taking legal action against footage and images being sold and published on adult websites.

Mischa, 31, said she is speaking out about her experience in order to protect other women from the pain and humiliation of similar situations.

Mischa Barton (Tony Di Maio/PA)

She said: I just want to say that I have been put through an incredibly hard and trying time. This is a painful situation and my absolute worst fear was realised when I learned that someone I thought I loved and trusted was filming my most intimate and private moments, without my consent, with hidden cameras.

And then I learned something even worse  that someone is trying to sell these videos and make them public.

I came forward to fight this, not only for myself but for all the women out there.

I want to protect them from the pain and humiliation that I have had to go through. No woman should have to go through this.

Mischa Barton (Stephanie Sian Smith/Heineken/PA)

Mischa thanked her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, and her friends for helping her throughout this horrific experience, described as revenge porn.

It is a very hard thing to do, but I am glad that I am finally standing up for myself, she added.

The identity of Mischas ex-partner is not being revealed, although Lisa confirmed the video was filmed over the past 12 months.

Lisa said that because Barton had dated the man who filmed the video, his actions are considered a form of domestic abuse according to Californian law.

In a written statement, she said the court agreed and gave us everything we asked for, including orders to stay away from Ms Barton and not contact her.

We got court orders issued; filed police report; sent cease and desist letters. My statement in Mischa Barton case. https://t.co/BzGis6oj9m  Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) March 15, 2017

She added: Most importantly, the court ordered that this individual and his agents may not sell, distribute, give away or show any naked pictures or videos of any type of Mischa Barton.

Lisa said she called the press conference to raise awareness of the images and video and to stop their sale and publication to all interested parties.

She said that those who violate the courts order could face imprisonment.

At the press conference, she said: Revenge porn is a very common crime  its scary, even for a celebrity, to stand up like this, but its important for girls and women to stand up for our rights.
Peter Hopkins, Newcastle University and Robin Finlay, Newcastle University

Muslim youths tend to be portrayed as politically disengaged or potentially extremist. Debates about the war on terror, and US president Donald Trumps immigration plans are damaging how the world sees young Muslims today.

But the way that Muslim youth are being talked about in the media is only part of the story. That is why we spoke to 35 young Scottish Muslims about how they engage with political debates and stand up for their rights in a positive way. The majority of Muslim youths aged 15 to 27 who took part in our research participate in public and political life. These young people are challenging the idea that they are a threat, or not interested. Instead, they are eager to engage.

However, while there were numerous passionate responses from our study participants, we also found that some young Muslims encounter specific challenges that have the potential to put them off politics.

Everyday experiences of Islamophobia and racism make public and political participation especially challenging. For some young Muslims, there is a fear that it could leave them open to racist hostility. Moreover, Islamophobia makes some anxious about appearing overly politicised.

Some young Muslim women in our study felt that they had to deal with multiple prejudices, too, based not only on their religion but also their gender . Gender norms within communities and stereotypes of Muslim women  such as those associated with the hijab  were emphasised as potential barriers.

But despite this, we have found that young Muslims in Scotland, like many worldwide, are overwhelmingly keen to get involved in both local and global politics. Being interested in politics is not just about voting, or having an opinion. Though we did find that young Muslims participate in conventional electoral politics, many are also involved with social activism, volunteering and charity work.

Scottish politics

For the young Muslims we spoke to, Scottish electoral politics was seen as a key form of political participation. Despite the stereotype of Muslims not wanting to be part of British life , the politics of Scotland are of particular interest to many of the young Muslims living in the country.

John Gomez/Shutterstock

Interestingly, the 2014 independence referendum, Scottish nationalism and the Scottish National Party have all captured the attention of many young Muslims. A Pakistani Muslim man from Glasgow told us that he thought the referendum did wonders in Scotland, because, like many young people both Muslim and non-Muslim he wasnt interested in politics before it happened.

Some young Muslims we spoke to believe that the referendum has helped define what it is to be Scottish in a new multicultural society. Many interpreted Scottish nationalism and the possibility of Scottish independence quite differently to the recent comments made by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan

He warned that Scottish nationalism could be as divisive as racism and religious intolerance. But young Muslims consider Scottish independence as a progressive idea. One Muslim woman from Edinburgh told us:

I find it has been really inclusive. Its not about the colour of your skin, and its not about where you come from, its about what you want for Scotland.

Framing Scottish nationalism in this way was an important factor in motivating young Muslims to engage in electoral politics. It was a political movement many felt they could support and be involved in. Whether they were for or against, everyone could voice their opinion on the independence referendum, regardless of race or religion.

Activism, charity and volunteering

Politics for these Muslims goes beyond the mainstream big issues, and indeed beyond conventional politics. From the 35 we spoke to, we found that the most frequently engaged with forms of activism included protest marching, awareness-raising events and internet activism. Like many young people of all backgrounds, their political concerns were wide-reaching.

Global issues  such as the refugee crisis, concerns about human rights and anti-war activism  came up in discussion. At the same time, more local matters such as concerns about poverty in Scotland, food banks and the Trident nuclear deterrent were on the minds of the study participants, too.

For these young Muslims, engaging with public life went further, into charity, community and volunteering work . The majority of participants volunteered or did some form of charitable work. The activities were varied, ranging from fund-raising for international causes to local community work such as street cleaning.

For some, political participation is a way to respond and challenge difficult prejudices. Understandably, though, prejudices make others cautious about pursuing an interest in politics. Despite our positive findings, young Muslims are willing to play a much bigger role in public and political life in Scotland. But for that to happen, society needs to overcome Islamophobia, racism and other stereotypes about Muslim young people.
Police have launched a hunt for four men they wish to speak to in regards to a sexual assault that took place at a university halls in Preston.

University of Central Lancashire buildings in Preston

The 19-year-old victim had gone to visit a friend at Sanctuary Students in Moor Lane, Preston, at around 10.15pm on Thursday March 2nd. But once there, he was attacked by four men. He attempted to escape and was dragged back inside.

Two more men arrived and the victim was punched, forced to strip and assaulted.

The gang threatened the victim and demanded cash from him before leaving the flat.

When he managed to escape, having suffered injuries to his face and nose, he called the police.

Sanctuary Students is a University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) residence hall.

This was a sickening and abhorrent attack, said Det Con Richard Clancy, from Preston CID, where the victim was lured to an address in Preston before being assaulted and threatened. The incident has left the 19-year-old very shaken, and its crucial we find those responsible.

Following CCTV enquiries, we want to speak to these four men in connection with the offences. Intelligence suggests that the men might be from the Greater Manchester area, possibly Rochdale.

They are advising that, should anyone recognise these men, they get in contact immediately.

Anyone with information is being urged to call police on 101, quoting crime reference SA1703005 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.
Students are continuing to visit Trump-led America despite the Presidents controversial travel ban.

According to youth travel site StudentUniverse, youth travel to the US has not been as negatively affected as initially feared.

One week into his presidency, President Trump signed an executive order, which banned refugees entering America for at least 120 days and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen) for at least 90 days.

This controversial order caused an instant knock to youth interest in travel to the States: StudentUniverse saw a 19% drop in bookings during the week after the ban, and a poll of the companys customers showed UK students were 82% less interested in visiting or studying in the US following Trumps inauguration.

However one month on from Trumps initial travel ban, and after various restrictions have been put in place, bookings to the US are only down 6%.

Dan Baker, Head of Marketing at StudentUniverse, said: For many people, the travel ban imposed by President Trump has caused anxiety and concerns about upcoming student travel plans, but we are pleased to see it hasnt dented students desires to travel. America is a fascinating and fun destination so its great to see young people are still enticed by all it has to offer.

Elsewhere, other destinations are seeing a huge increase in popularity as adventurous students opt to travel further afield.

StudentUniverse have seen spikes in bookings to Thailand (380%) and Australia (280%), as well as India (225%), New Zealand (200%) and Bangladesh (200%).
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Mumbai, Mar 17 (IBNS): Actor Arjun Kapoor has just signed up with a new brand and it's his cousin Rhea Kapoor's boyfriend with director Karan Boolani at the helm.

Its an ad for a shoe brand that Arjun shot for, before leaving for his Mubarakan schedule in London.

Photographer Rohan Shreshtha has shot the pictures. The boys shot the ad in a warehouse in Andheri as they wanted a rustic, macho earthy feel for the ad.

A source charts the ads progress, They all had fun shooting together. Arjun is very fond of Karan and the two have often partied together. This is not the first time Karan has done an ad. He has done loads of them. Also, he had to be very clear about what he wanted from the actor, as the latter was short on time. Currently, the ad is being edited.

He has assisted on Rheas movie Aisha and Karan Johars film Wake Up Sid.

He directed a short film The Audition, apart from a number of ads.

Karan is also said to be making his feature directorial debut with Anil and Rheas home production, a teen comedy about urban youth who meet as strangers during their freshman year at an American university, but leave as friends for life.
New York, Mar 17 (Just Earth News): The United Nations and its humanitarian partners in Iraq are scrambling to get emergency sites ready amidst a mass exodus from West Mosul, with nearly 700,000 civilians still living in the city where Iraqi forces are fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daaesh), according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country.

The number of people is higher than expected, Lise Grande told journalist in New York via videoconference from Iraq. If the pace accelerates further, its going to stretch us to the breaking point.

She added that if 50,000 civilians flee in a single day, the current system would not work properly. The UN and its partners have already started to set up large warehouse size structures which will house the families as they await the dignified support they deserve, said Grande.

According to the latest figures she disclosed, there are still an estimated 650,000 to 680,000 civilians in Mosuls Old City.

We fear the civilians there might be trapped in an extremely difficult situation. Families that chose to stay are at risk, families that leave are also at risk, said Grande, noting that ISIL is targeting people who try to flee what is expected to be a prolonged siege.

Meanwhile, people who stay are without food and water. No steady supplies have been able to reach the city since mid-November, Grande said.

Families with resources are trying to trade what they can to eat even one meal a day, according to stories from people who were able to flee, while some people go for days without meals.

Whether you stay or whether you go there are significant risks to the civilians, Grande noted. The greatest problem is water.

When the military operation to oust terrorists from the area began on 17 October 2016, some 1.5 million civilians were living in Mosul. In the eastern part of the city, some 345,000 were displaced  of whom about 70,000 returned home because conditions are ready and safe to do so, journalists were told on Thursday.

The western part of Mosul is more densely populated, however. There is hope that civilian casualties will be limited because the Iraqi forces adopted a so-called humanitarian concept of operations which prohibits artillery strikes, requires civilians to remain in their homes, and provides humanitarian exit corridors wherever necessary.

Those who do flee are screened at the Hammam al Alil site, with the men separated from the women and children. Once interrogated and cleared, the families are reunited.

The senior UN official said the Organization and its humanitarian partners are working around the clock in support of the Iraqi Government to quickly get sites ready for the displaced civilians. Aid workers receive the site, set up tents and mattresses, clear and construct sanitation areas, and then transfer the areas to Iraqi military, who move in civilians on civilian buses.

Grande said that there are concerns about water and sanitation at the screening sites, and that the Government has asked for additional support to help it correct those conditions.

The UN and its partners are supplying food, water and other services to the sites, with more than 1.4 million people reached.

Coordination between the UN, its partners and the Government is good, but complicated, Grande acknowledged, noting that the UN is part of 19 daily coordination forums, which include a range from local to national officials.

Photo: UNHCR/Saif Al-Tatooz

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Mar 17 (Just Earth News): Secretary-General AntAnio Guterres is committed to reforming the United Nations and stands ready to discuss with the United States and any other Member State how best to create a more cost-effective Organization that can tackle the enormous challenges facing the international community, his spokesman said on Thursday.

A statement from Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN has seen the blueprint of the 2018 budget released by the White House and notes that the budgetary process in the US is complex and lengthy and it needs to be completed.

Media reports suggest that the proposed budget would seek major cuts in US diplomacy and foreign aid, among other areas.

The Secretary-General is grateful for the support the United States has given to the United Nations over the years as the Organizations largest financial contributor, said that statement.

The statement goes on to say that the Guterres is totally committed to reforming the United Nations and ensuring that it is fit for purpose and delivers results in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

However, abrupt funding cuts can force the adoption of ad hoc measures that will undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts, it adds.

The Secretary-General stands ready to discuss with the United States and any other Member State how best we can create a more cost-effective Organization to pursue our shared goals and values, underscored the statement.

It goes on to note that the UN chief fully subscribes to the necessity to effectively combat terrorism, but believes that it requires more than military spending.

There is also a need to address the underlying drivers of terrorism through continuing investments in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, countering violent extremism, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, sustainable and inclusive development, the enhancement and respect of human rights, and timely responses to humanitarian crises, it states.

The international community is facing enormous global challenges that can only be addressed by a strong and effective multilateral system, of which the United Nations remains the fundamental pillar, the statement concludes.

UN Photo/John Isaac

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Mar 18 (Just Earth News): New public-private partnerships are essential if broadband is to reach everyone and help accelerate the achievement of global sustainable development goals, members of the United Nations broadband commission said on Friday.

ICT [information and communications technology] and broadband are linking everyone and everything for the betterment of economies and societies, said Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Co-Chair of the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, during its spring meeting in Hong Kong.

We are motivated by wanting to have the global community connected, especially the billions of unconnected. We will succeed when we work together: government, industry and civil society leaders, he added.

The Broadband Commission was established by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in May 2010 with the aim of boosting the importance of broadband on the international policy agenda, and expanding broadband access in every country as key to accelerating progress towards national and international development targets.

Following adoption of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015, the Commission was re-launched as the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development to showcase and document the power of ICT and broadband-based technologies for sustainable development.

According to a press release on the meeting, some 5 billion people are currently without mobile broadband access, meaning that the paths to access digital services and applications are blocked for much of the world's population - holding back progress on sustainable development.

The release also said that at the spring meeting, the need for a new deal between all players was roundly debated, with renewed commitment to work towards concrete actions that will effectively connect the unconnected with broadband - especially to support least developed countries.

In particular, emphasis was placed on remote and rural areas which represent the biggest challenge and where barriers to access need to be also viewed through the prism of affordability and content, notably local and multi-lingual content.

Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General and Commission Co-Vice Chair, stated, ICTs underpin vital achievements and modern services in many sectors, and governments and industry must increasingly work together to create the conditions so badly needed to facilitate the growth of broadband for sustainable development, he stressed.

Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director-General and Commission Co-Vice Chair, noted, We must ensure the digital revolution is a revolution for human rights, in order to promote technological breakthroughs as development breakthroughs.

Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez Photo: ITU/M.Jacobson-Gonzalez

Source: www.justearthnews.com
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New York, Mar 18 (Just Earth News): The number of South Sudanese fleeing their homes is aalarming,a the United Nations refugee agency on Friday said, announcing that 1.6 million people have either been displaced or fled to neighbouring countries in the past eight months ago.

A famine produced by the vicious combination of fighting and drought is now driving the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, the spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Babar Baloch, told journalists at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

He added that the rate of new displacement is alarming, representing an impossible burden on a region that is significantly poorer and which is fast running short of resources to cope.

Refugees from South Sudan are crossing the borders to the neighbouring countries. The majority of them go to Uganda where new arrivals spiked from 2,000 per day to 6,000 per day in February, and currently average more than 2,800 people per day.

The situation is now critical, said Baloch, warning that recent rains are making the humanitarian situation more difficult.

The UN agency is reiterating its calls for financial support. Aid for South Sudanese refugees is only eight per cent funded at $781.8 million, and UNHCR's funding appeal for Uganda urgently needs $267 million.

The situation in Uganda is a first and major test of the commitments made at the Summit for Refugees and Migrants last September, the spokesperson said.

One of the main achievements of the Summit was to create a refugee response framework that integrates humanitarian and development efforts. This translates into giving refugees land and allowing them to access job markets, for example.

The situation of refugees in Uganda could impact how the UN and humanitarian partners are working to support national authorities in the other neighbouring countries  the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan.

No neighbouring country is immune, said Baloch.

'Security situation continues to deteriorate'

Also on Friday, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (UNMISS), David Shearer, warned that the security situation in the country is worsening, and national authorities are not taking action.

The situation in South Sudan continues to deteriorate and generate profound human suffering for the population of that country  suffering in which local and ethnic divisions have been exploited for political ends, David Shearer told a meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council on South Sudan.

He added that the recent escalation of fighting in Equatoria considered the food basket of South Sudan  has led to a significant displacement of civilians and disrupted food production for the country.

Intense fighting is also reported in the Upper Nile. Satellite imagery shows much of one town, Wau Shilluk, destroyed and deserted.

The senior UN official reiterated concerns about the humanitarian situation in the country, calling the ongoing crisis entirely man-made. An estimated 100,000 people are facing starvation and an additional one million are classified as being on the brink of famine.

Shearer, who is also the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the country, urged access for humanitarian organisations and the UN mission.

Photo: UNHCR/Will Swanson

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Image: twitter.com/POTUS

Washington, Mar 17 (IBNS): Updating people on his government's healthcare plan, US President Donald Trump said that they are making 'great progress'.

"Great progress on healthcare. Improvements being made - Republicans coming together!" his tweet read.

Trump's team also had a meeting with members of Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and said that he's hopeful of growth in the future.

"My representatives had a great meeting w/ the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce at the WH today. Look forward to tremendous growth & future mtgs!" the tweet read.
Why this microscopic mussel poses a problem to South Dakota

Some say the issue could be chalked up to boaters following regulations, but the issue is more complex than that.
Toronto, Mar 17 (IBNS): Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been compelled by NDP's democratic reform critic to put more pressure on the Senate to strengthen its disciplinary actions in the Senator Don Meredithas case of sexual relationship with a teenager, media reports said.

Bad behaviour is inherent in a place where there is no accountability Nathan Cullen, NDP MP was quoted by CBCNews.

'It's time the Senate implement new rules for the removal of senators who have violated ethical standards, he said.

Meanwhile, without waiting for Trudeau to intervene, Red Chamber got ready the relevant documents to take legal actions and if necessary to expel Meredith.

Meredith had admitted to Ottawa police during investigation that he had sexual intercourse with a teenager once and Ottawa police had dropped the case without laying any criminal charges on Meredith.

Meredith was then referred to the Senate's ethics officer, Lyse Ricard who claimed Meredith had intercourse three times, including once when the woman was 17 years old.

When asked to comment about the ethics report, Trudeau kept the necessary distance and said and instead established an independent advisory board to make necessary recommendations on senatorial appointments.

Although Cullen objected to his response and said, "He's still the prime ministerbecause as long as he keeps appointing peopleHe must lift a finger to make it more accountable and respectful," CBCNews reports said.

Peter Harder, Trudeau's representative in the Senate, had publicly called on Meredith to resign, with the possibility of his expulsion.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)

Image of Justin Trudeau: Wikipedia


Wikimedia Commons

Toronto, Mar 17 (IBNS): The Toronto-based company Canada Goose, popular for its winter jackets and for its $900 parkas with fur-lined hoods, has gone public in stock markets in Toronto and New York under the symbol aGOOS,a media reports said.

Canada Goose presented with an initial public offering of 20 million shares priced at $17 per share under the symbol GOOS, Canadian Press News reports said.

Shortly after markets opened, Canada Goose shares opened at $23.86 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, later sliding to $22.19 as of Mar 16, 11 a.m. ET.

In New York, shares opened at US$18 about 90 minutes after the opening bell and were trading at US$16.75

The outerwear manufacturer said that 12.85 million shares out of the 20 million subordinate voting shares offered, will come from existing shareholders.

The existing shareholders will hold 79 to 81 percent of the company after the sale, depending on if an over-allotment privilege is used by underwriters.

Canada Gooses warm coats had been popular in Antarctica and fashion industry by trekkers and Its parkas, which retail for up to $1,500, had been worn by celebrities

According to securities filings, the company said, it had a revenue of $290.8 million and net income of $26.5 million in fiscal 2016

The company operated two retail stores in Toronto and New York and its products can be found in 36 countries worldwide. 70 percent of Canada Goose is owned by Investment firm Bain Capital, which it acquired in December 2013.

Canada Goose had faced controversy with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for its use of coyote fur in its jackets.

PETA bought $4,000 worth of Canada Goose shares -- minimum amount required to contribute to shareholders meetings -- PETA spokesperson Ben Williamson told Global News today.

This would allow PETA to go to Canada Goose's annual meetings to submit shareholder resolutions compelling Canada Goose to stop sourcing animal products.

PETA said that it will keep companys shares until it had seen that enough progress had been made, said Williamson.

When asked, what PETA planned to do with this investment, it said that all the proceeds from the profit would be used for PETAs non-profit endeavours.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
The national capital has been struggling to meet its power demand even as it has been witnessing power struggle between the governments  the Centre and the Delhi government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. While the endless conflict in the corridors of powers may hinder many real issues, there could be a ray of hope for the citizens troubled by power outage.

The Delhi government solar power policy targets 2,000 MW solar power generation by 2022, and it would meet eight per cent requirement in the capital, according to the government.

Delhi solar policy targets will provide around 2,000 MW Solar power by 2022. Overall, it will meet about eight per cent energy requirement in the capital, Minister Satyendar Kumar Jain told thestatesman.com in an exclusive interview.

According to the government's statistics, power demand peaks at 11 am and 3 pm. In view of it, the Delhi Government is working to meet up to 500 MW of those peaking power demand.

Consumer-end-solar-power will also help in mitigating problem of overloading of distribution network and may reduce lower tension (LT) level breakdowns, the health minister, who is also minister, Power, PWD Industries, Transport & Urban Development, said.

When asked about the new announcement in the renewable energy sector for the capital, the minister replied, We have made provision of Rs.20 crore for 2017-18 towards generation-based Incentive".

"As per the current market trend, solar installations cost between Rs.55,000-Rs.60,000 per KW without subsidy. We are hopeful in getting better response, Jain added.

Kejriwal had on June 6, 2016 announced the Delhi government's ambitious policy to make the capital a solar city, as a part of its clean energy movement. Now, the policy is scheduled to roll out in April.

The Delhi government is already on toes to make the city a solar one. For instance, the Delhi Secretariat is first of its kind in India to run on renewable energy, i.e solar power. This initiative by the Delhi government has made them save over Rs 1 crore in the last one year.
India and Russia are setting up a $1 billion fund to promote mutual investments in infrastructure and technology projects, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

Both the countries would contribute $500 million to the fund, Sitharaman said while addressing India-Russia Business Forum at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) here on Thursday.

While the Russian funds would be channeled through Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Indian contribution will be accrued from National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.

Sitharaman elaborated upon other measures being taken by Russia and India to scale up their economic engagement and to boost bilateral trade and investment.

As part of these initiatives, the India Russia CEO Forum will hold its meeting this year at a mutually convenient date.

The forum was constituted in St Petersburg in June 2016.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Russia is estimated at $1.2 billion till date while Indian investment in Russia is around USD 4.9 billion.

"There is tremendous potential for enhancing such investments," the minister said, adding that initiatives like Make-in-India would catalyse Russian investment in several Indian sectors including Defence production.

"The Make-in-India initiative was launched by the government in order to encourage businesses to manufacture products in the country, creating additional jobs for local population. This is a major drive to foster innovation, enhance skill development, protect intellectual property and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure," she said.

India and Russia are engaged in robust cooperation in the energy sector, including collaborations in civil nuclear energy, hydrocarbons and renewable energy.
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) surged by 7 per cent in the first half of trade Friday after a parliamentary panel suggested MTNLs merger with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).

The panel tabled a report in Lok Sabha on Thursday which says the merger would give MTNL and BSNL a chance to compete against other telecom players.

At 1.40 pm, MTNL was trading 3.7 per cent higher at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and 3.5 per cent up at the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

MTNL in February had reported standalone net loss at Rs.819.96 crore during the three-month period ended December 31.

The company had reported a net loss of Rs.671.59 crore in the same period of 2015.
Nifty50 closed at an all-time high for second-straight day amid positive Asian and European markets and supportive domestic cues.

The Sensex at the BSE closed 63 points up at 29,649 and the Nifty at the NSE ended six points higher at 9,160. On Thursday also the Nifty had closed at an all-time high amid positive global equity markets.

In the broader markets, BSE Midcap index slipped 0.2 per cent but Smallcap index rose 0.1 per cent.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, FMCG index registered the biggest gain with a jump of 2.4 per cent while Telecom index became the top loser with a dip of 2.7 per cent.

On Thursday, the Sensex had closed 69 points higher at 29,586 and the Nifty had closed 69 points lower at 9,122.

Top gainers in the Sensex-30 pack: ITC (up 4.9 per cent), Infosys (up 1.1 per cent), Wipro (up 0.9 per cent), Maruti Suzuki (up 0.7 per cent) and Axis Bank (up 0.7 per cent).

Top losers in the Sensex-30 pack: Bharti Airtel (down 3.7 per cent), SBI (down 1.7 per cent), M&M (down 1.4 per cent), ICICI Bank (down 1.3 per cent) and L&T (down 1.1 per cent).

In the world markets, most Asian markets registered gains. Singapores Straits Times Index rose 0.2 per cent, Hong Kongs Hang Seng index inched up 0.1 per cent, Koreas KOSPI index gained 0.7 per cent, Chinas Shanghai Composite Index declined 1 per cent and Japans Nikkei 225 Index lost by 0.4 per cent.

European markets opened in the green zone, FTSE 100, CAC 40 and DAX indices were trading higher between 0.1-0.4 per cent.

Back home, the Rupee closed four paise down at 65.56 against the US Dollar.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on Friday blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reducing revenue deficit grant, seeking to compensate for the "losses incurred by the state".

The increase in debt during the recent years was mainly because of the sharp reduction in revenue deficit grant during 2013-14 and 2014-15 coupled with the increased salary burden due to pay scale revision, the Chief Minister informed the assembly.

He said the revenue deficit grant, which was Rs 2,232 crore for the first year (2010-11) of the award period was reduced sharply to Rs 406 crore for the last year (2014-15) of the 13th Finance Commission's award period.

Replying to the budget discussion, the Chief Minister said there was overestimation in the recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission on account of the share in central taxes for the year 2013-14 and 2014-15.

"Actual receipt during these two years remained Rs 528 crore less as compared to the amount estimated by the 13th Finance Commission. Thus in 2013-14 and 2014-15 the state had to borrow more than three per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), to keep the pace of development in the state," he said.

He said the 14th Finance Commission had also overestimated the tax devolution for 2015-16 and 2016-17. During 2015-16, the state received Rs 3,611 crore as against the estimation of Rs 4,441 crore.

"The tax devolution will be Rs 4,343 crore during the current year 2016-17 as against Rs 4,778 crore estimated by 14th Finance Commission in its recommendations. As such we have received Rs 966 crore less during first two years of the 14th Finance Commission award period."
The Himachal Pradesh Revenue minister, Kaul Singh Thakur on Friday said that the state government is concerned over the inter-state boundary dispute between Himachal and Jammu and Kashmir.

We will see to it the HPs territory is not encroached by the other state near Sarchu ahead of Lahaul Spiti, the minister said in reply to a question by Lahaul Spiti MLA, Ravi Thakur (Congress) in the state assembly

Kaul Singh informed the house about the round of meetings of the Lahaul Spiti officials with those in Ladakh in 2014 over the boundary dispute and said it was decided that both the sides would exchange the revenue records and maintain the status quo.

He said in 2015, the Leh Police set up a chowki at Sarchu in Lahaul Spiti where the Forest department grants permission for camping sites.

The minister said the Surveyor General of India team has visited Sarchu and Shinkula Border of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir in Leh-Ladakh Areas.

So far, no request has been received by the received by the state government for deposit of any amount for demarcation by the state government.

The Lahaul Spiti MLA expressed concern that no steps had been taken to resolve the sensitive issue over last three years.

In reply to another question by Kuldeep Kumar (Congress MLA from Chintpurni) Kishori Lal (Congress MLA from Baijnath) and Maheshwar Singh (BJP MLA from Kullu) Revenue minister, Kaul Singh Thakur informed the house that the state government had allotted land to 191 landless persons across the state in past four years.

He said 4000 applications were so far pending, which the government will decide in next six months.

Intervening in the reply, Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh said the state government will try to scrutinise pending applications in next three months. It will be a difficult task but we will try to do it and extend the benefit to the eligible landless persons, he said.
With the Jat agitators announcing to continue their march in Delhi on coming March 20 despite reaching an agreement

with government at Panipat on Thursday, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Friday said that no dialogue can reach an agreement until the protesters stop changing their stand.

Addressing a Press conference, Khattar said, "Yesterday, a meeting took place between the Jat leaders and the state government committed headed by education minister Ram Bilas Sharma in Panipat where the protesters has assured to end the agitation.

Their leaders, however, again changed their statement today and announced to continue to block Delhi borders. It would be difficult to reach agreement if the agitators continue to change their goal posts after every meeting."

The CM further added that he is ready to meet representatives of the agitating Jat community if they wish to resolve the issue without adding fresh impractical demands. "Talks cannot be taken further with the protesters changing their stand each time. Moreover, Law and Order would be maintained at any cost," he added.

He also stated that protesters changing their statement even after reaching an agreement with the government shows that there could be some political vested interest the fresh occurrence.After a meeting with Jat leaders on Thursday, Ram Bilas Sharma said that the state government had accepted seven major demands made by agitators and the

protest would end soon.

Khattar informed that the agitators were assured that a meeting of them with a Union minister to start process for other backward class status for the community would be fixed before March 20, demands regarding granting compensation and giving government jobs to the dependents of deceased and injured during the previous agitation,

would be fulfilled in a time framed manner.

Further the government has reportedly assured to examine the withdrawal of cases except the cases pending with the courts and registered with the Central Bureau of Investigation.

However, Akhil Bharatiya Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti national president Yashpal Malik refused to reach an agreement with the government saying that any decision was to be taken after meeting with the CM.

"No such accord took place in the meeting. Government is befooling people. We stand by our decision of blocking Delhi borders," Malik added.

The Jat agitators have threatened to block the national Capital on March 20, announcing that the community members from the adjoining states would throng Delhi. With an aim to avoid any untoward incident amid Jat stir, a total of 101 companies have been deputed in the state.
Senior BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat will become the ninth Chief Minister of Uttarakhand. Fifty-six year old Trivendra was elected as the legislative party leader of the BJP in a meeting held in Dehradun on Friday. The stage is now clear for the CM to take oath, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah in the state capital on Saturday.

Initially over half a dozen names were in the race for the top post. But, the final race got reduced to Trivendra, Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant. It is said that veteran BJP leader and Nainital Member of Parliament Bhagat Singh Koshyari backed Rawat. In popularly BJP used terminology Trivendra received double engine support- one from Koshyari and other from party chief Amit Shah. Rawat is considered close to Shah.

A former Sangh Parchark, Trivendra is post graduate from HNB Garhwal University. Rawat has also done a diploma in journalism. He won the 2002 and 2007 assembly polls from Doiwala assembly seat. In 2012, Trivendra shifted to Raipur assembly seat and suffered defeat against Umesh Sharma of Congress. It was followed by his loss in 2014 Doiwala assembly by-election against Heera Singh Bisht of Congress.

Two consecutive defeats, badly shattered the confidence of Rawat. Six months before the start of the 2017 Uttarakhand assembly polls, Trivendra Singh Rawat was unsure of the seat to contest from. He was in a dilemma between Doiwala and Raipur seats. Finally he decided to fight from his old seat Doiwala and scored a thumping win against Heera Singh Bisht of Congress by a margin of over 24,000 votes.

Trivendra served as the state agriculture minister in Khanduri government in 2007. Rawat hogged limelight at that time by launching the cow urine project. Though many made fun of the agriculture minister at that time, but now distilled cow urine is now in popular demand and its market is growing with each passing year.

After elected the leader of the BJP legislative party, Trivendra Singh Rawat met Uttarakhand Governor KK Paul to present his claim of forming the government in the hill state. Trivendra Rawat will be dwelling in the official Chief Minister residence- which Harish Rawat did not used considering it inauspicious.
Reacting to the Calcutta High Court order to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the Narada sting footage case, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that her government will challenge the order in the Supreme Court.

"Will challenge before the Supreme Court against Calcutta HC order directing preliminary inquiry by the CBI on Narada sting operation," the chief minister said.

Mamata defended her ministers and said that the BJP is behind the sting operation.

"Everyone knows this that the sting was published from the BJP office," she said.

"I will not comment on this. We'll approach higher judiciary," she added.

The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the CBI to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the Narada sting footage case, in which prominent TMC leaders were involved.
Ricardo Medina, who starred in the "Power Rangers" TV series, has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for stabbing his roommate to death with a sword.

Prosecutors said Medina stabbed his roommate to death with a sword during an argument.

The 38-year-old entered the plea during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. He faces up to six years in state prison when he is sentenced on March 30, reports mirror.co.uk.

Prosecutors said Medina stabbed Josh Sutter with a sword multiple times on January 31, 2015 as the two men argued about the actor's girlfriend at their apartment in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles.

Following the fatal confrontation, Medina called the 911 emergency number and remained at the scene until the sheriff's deputies arrived. Sutter died of the injuries.

Medina was arrested at the time of Sutter's death but was released within days after prosecutors asked for further investigation into the high-profile case.

Medina played the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger on the popular "Power Rangers Wild Force". He also voiced the character of Deker on a later series, "Power Rangers Samurai". He has also appeared on prime time shows like "CSI: Miami" and "ER".
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday inaugurated a three-day international Buddhist conference in Bihar's Nalanda district.

The Dalai Lama lit a traditional lamp to mark the start of the meeting at Rajgir, a Tourism Department official said.

Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma was present at the event.

President Pranab Mukherjee will attend the concluding ceremony.

According to officials, some 1,000 delegates from 35 countries are attending the conference.
In a surprising development in the ongoing race for UP CM's post, one of the leading contenders Manoj Sinha on Friday denied reports of his name figuring for the coveted post. Sinha said that he has no idea of who else are in the race.

"Neither I am in the race for UP CM nor do I know of any such race," Manoj Sinha was quoted as saying by a news portal.

With UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya's name being ruled out of the race on health grounds, reports suggested that Sinha is most likely to become the next CM of the most populous states. Interestingly, Manoj Sinha is believed to be the common choice of both PM Narendra Modi's and BJP president Amit Shah.

Hailing from eastern Uttar Pradesh, Manoj Sinha is known for his clean image. The 57-year-old BJP leader of the Bhumihar caste has served as a Lok Sabha member from Ghazipur three times.

At present, Sinha is the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Communications and Minister of State for Railways.

While sources in the party are confident that Sinhas name will be announced after the meeting of the newly elected party MLAs on Saturday, the party leadership, however, has not announced anything as yet on the matter.

Many other names are doing the rounds for the CM candidature for UP as well. Apart from Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Manoj Sinha, others in the fray are Shrikanth Sharma and Yogi Adityanath for the coveted post.

The BJP claimed a resounding triumph in Uttar Pradesh in the recently held assembly elections and won 325 seats out of 403 with its allies.

The oath ceremony for the newly appointed chief minister of UP will be held on March 19 at Smriti Upwan, Lucknow.
The Centre has been taking a series of steps to improve law and order situation in Kashmir, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha today. Replying to a debate on the demands for grants of the Home Ministry, Mr Singh said the Centre has adopted a humanitarian approach to the problem of Jammu and Kashmir and taken a series of measures to improve the situation in view of the recent unrest in the state.

On the Pathankot terror attack, he said investigation in the case was at an advanced stage and the Centre is committed to punish its perpetrators. Referring to terror incidents in the country, he said killing of militants has increased in the recent past in the valley. While 99 terrorists had been killed in 2011, the number rose to 222 in 2016, and nearly 1442 terrorists have surrendered this year as against 394 in 2011, the minister informed the Lok Sabha.

Elaborating on the situation of areas affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE), Mr Singh said the number of districts affected by naxalism has reduced from 106 to 68, with 35 being the most affected, across seven states including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Maharashtra.

On the role of women in internal security, the Home Minister said the Centre has instructed states to reserve 33 per cent of posts in police forces for women. "I have written to chief ministers of all the states with regard to 33 per cent reservation in women and police. State governments have taken cognizance of it and are working in that direction," Mr Singh said.

For giving protection to women, the Home Minister said under the Nirbhaya Fund created after the gruesome Delhi gangrape of 2011, nearly 40,500 police personnel are being trained especially for protection of women and cyber security.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev on Friday discussed a wide range of issues pertaining to bilateral economic relations, official sources here said.

Trutnev, accompanied by leaders from Russia's far east and a business delegation, is on a visit to India from March 15-18.

The two leaders "agreed that the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia, based on longstanding and time-tested ties, is very deep and extends to all spheres of mutual interest".

"Sushma Swaraj specifically stressed the growing mutual beneficial ties between India and Russia in energy sector, particularly in the Russian far east," said an official statement.

"The minister emphasised on cooperation in maritime and agricultural sector, and on institutional linkages between the countries in these areas," it added.

Sushma Swaraj also thanked Trutnev for inviting the Indian participation in the Third Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September.

The two leaders agreed that interaction between various ministries of India and Russia will further boost economic cooperation.

Russia is India's foremost defence and strategic partner and largest exporter of defence equipment and nuclear technology.

Recently, Russian oil major Rosneft agreed to invest $10.9 billion in Indian hydrocarbon sector and Indian oil companies like Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India and Oil and Natural Gas Commission had acquired stakes in Russian Vankor and Tass-Yuryakh oil fields.
Taking forward the struggle against linking Aadhaar card with midday meals in government schools, National Federation of Indian Women and Right to Food campaign along with MPs from different political parties held a protest outside the Ministry of Human Resource Development here today.

The protest meeting was attended by hundreds of people from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odhisa, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkand and Bihar. Activists said they oppose any move by the Central government to make Aadhaar compulsory for children under the midday meal scheme in government schools.

Speaking at the meeting, Kavita Srivastava of Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) said, This government should not have any misconception that their electoral victories will dilute our struggle, we will continue to fight for the rights and legal entitlements of the most oppressed and backward communities. The rule for biometrics does not allow children under five years to have any biometric identification. "

Emphasising on government's willingness to get everyone enrolled under Aadhaar, she added, Mr Modi as part of his Digital India project wants to see India as the largest digital empire in the world and that at the cost of sacrificing the entitlements of crores and crores of women , children and old people in this country. Its also an indication that now we are moving towards surveillance states whereby a government wants to closely monitor the activities of every individual.

Annie Raja of the National Federation of Indian Women insisted the government is moving towards complete privatisation by attacking these social welfare schemes.

It is natural that when Aadhaar card is made mandatory for children to have their entitlements such as midday meal, a large chunk of them will remain excluded from getting these benefits, this will cut the expenditure of the government and in turn cause decrease of footfall in different schools," she said. Is this the way Prime Minister wants to build a new India, with illiterate youths? she asked.

In a series of orders, the Supreme Court has made it clear that Aadhaar cannot be made compulsory for people's entitlements. However, in the last few years, Aadhaar has been made compulsory for a growing list of welfare schemes.

The protest meeting was later joined by Rajya Sabha MPs Oscar Fernandes of Congress and D Raja of the CPI. Addressing the gathering, Fernandes said linking Aadhaar card with midday meal is absolutely ridiculous. "Children from our own country are studying in these schools, the government is trying to withdraw the social welfare schemes initiated by the UPA government. We gave children food and pen in schools, the government is snatching it away from them," he said.

D Raja of the CPI said his party will continue to fight over this issue both outside and inside Parliament. We raised this issue in Parliament yesterday, it is important for the government to understand that having Aadhaar is voluntary and not mandatory. I understand the concern of people since I myself went to a school where midday meal was served to us."

The government in its last notification had mentioned that schoolchildren will continue to avail the facility of midday meal by using other identities but eventually they will have to get an Aadhaar card.
Kashmir separatist leaders Syed Alishah Geelani, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik on Friday warned Pakistan not to annex Gilgit-Baltistan by declaring it as the fifth province of Pakistan and said the move was unacceptable.

In a joint statement these separatists pointed out that Kashmir, Ladakh, Jammu, POK and Giglit Baltistan is a single entity and political destiny about Jammu Kashmir is yet to be decided.

Declaring Pakistan as a prime party to Kashmir issue, the separatists said that people in Jammu and Kashmir have always regarded and accepted the role of Pakistan as a party to the issue. However, any step which may hamper the disputed status of Kashmir is unacceptable.

We hail the role of Pakistan regarding the issue in international flora, however any deviation in its stance about Kashmir and its geographical entity is improper & will prove detrimental for Kashmir cause, they said.

They expressed serious concern about proposal of declaring Giglit Baltistan as fifth province of Pakistan and said that it will have damaging impact over the disputed status of the state.

They said that Jammu Kashmir is long standing issue in international forums and world community has agreed to decide its political destiny through resolutions acknowledged by UNO.

They further said that unless and until the people of the state are provided an opportunity to decide the future course of state through referendum, no division, alteration and changes are acceptable. Rejecting any idea of merging of its part or division of state, the leaders said that both India and Pakistan have no authority or right to alter the geographical status of J&K.

The separatists asked Pakistan to show wisdom and desist from such steps which may hamper the political and geographical position of Jammu and Kashmir.

Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik expressed hope that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will fulfill their commitment regarding the geographical entity of Jammu and Kashmir and will desist from this adventure of annexing Giglit-Baltistan as the fifth province of Pakistan.
Finally, after nearly 37 years of sustained effort the BJP has been able to install its government in Manipur. The political house that Congress chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh built over 15 years of his uninterrupted rule has finally crumbled. And this despite his party securing 28 seats in the 60-member House ~ three short of the magic figure to form a government. This should be seen as reassuring evidence of the voters faith in Ibobis government. After failing to muster the required strength, Ibobi stepped down gracefully, in keeping with democratic traditions.

The BJPs performance ~ 21 seats ~ was impressive, given the fact that in its previous essays it had drawn a blank. As a matter of fact, even before the election it became clear that smaller groups like the National Peoples Party (it won four seats), Naga Peoples Front (four), Lok Janshakti (one) and All India Trinamul Congress and Independent (one each), would be the king-makers. Barring the last two, others are either NDA members or supporters.

Politicians in Manipur have the incredible ability to switch allegiance or offer themselves to the highest bidder. They also have the weakness to be sucked by centripetal forces. Little wonder, the BJPs first chief minister, N Biren Singh, was, until three months ago, a disgruntled Congress minister. Such turncoats were largely responsible for political instability in the past. That Manipur saw the funerals of as many as 18 ministries between 1972 and 1998, carries its own tale. The BJP ministrys stability will depend on how dexterously it distributes largesse. Every MLA wants a ministerial post and a plum portfolio. The party has to redeem several electoral promises such as fast and steady development, lifting the nearly five-month-old economic blockade and banning frequent imposition of bandhs and strikes and, most importantly, its assurance to the Meiteis in the 3 August 2015 framework Naga peace accord that the Centre signed with the NSCN (IM) leadership, where there is no mention of Manipur, implying no dismemberment of the states territory to satisfy the Nagas. Last but not the least, will the BJP be able to lift the ban imposed by a top Meitei militant group in July 2000 on screening of Hindi films, playing of Hindi music and display of sign boards in Hindi? And how long will it keep silent on the Manipuris most-hated Armed Forces (Special powers) Act, in force since the end of 1979?
Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, has been sent back to Goa in the partys interest to take over as the chief Minister once again. His departure has created a void at a critical time when the state of defence preparedness and slow pace of military modernisation need the governments urgent attention. Major operational voids in the war establishment of the three Services need to be made up early in order to enhance combat readiness.

It is only in the last six months that Parrikar had launched a concerted drive to make up the existing deficiencies by invoking emergency financial powers of the government. The government had at long last begun to address the critical hollowness plaguing defence preparedness ~ a term used by General VK Singh. He had also initiated reforms in the procedures for the acquisition and indigenous manufacture of weapons and equipment. A new minister will take time to settle down and learn the ropes of defence procurement. Large-scale deficiencies in ammunition and important items of equipment continue to adversely affect Indias readiness for war and the ability to sustain military operations over 20 to 30 days. According to a CAG report, the army is reported to have some varieties of ammunition for barely ten days of conflict and it will cost over Rs 20,000 crore to replenish stocks. It will be recalled that during the Kargil conflict in 1999, about 50,000 rounds of artillery ammunition had to be imported from South Africa. The occurrence of such a situation during a time of crisis must be avoided through a prudent replenishment and stocking policy.

The government has signed contracts with Russian manufacturers to procure ammunition and spares worth Rs 5,800 crore for the army and Rs 9,200 crore for the air force. Similar deals are being negotiated with French and Israeli companies. However, it has been reported that the traditional norms of stocking ammunition at intense rates for 30 days of fighting and normal rates for 30 days are being watered down. If this is true, it would be a retrograde step.

Modernisation of the armed forces has been proceeding at a slow pace due to the inadequacy of funds, rigid procurement procedures, frequent changes in the qualitative requirements, the black-listing of several defence manufacturers and bureaucratic red tape. Parrikar had appointed a committee led by Dhirendra Singh, former Home Secretary, to review the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP). Several pragmatic amendments were approved by the Defence minister and DPP 2016 was issued in early-April 2016.

Weapons and equipment purchase projects worth over Rs 1,50,000 crore have been accorded acceptance of necessity (AON) by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) chaired by the Defence Minister since he took charge in late 2014. Contracts have been signed for acquisitions worth approximately Rs 90,000 crore. However, it will take three to five years before deliveries begin. In the army, artillery modernisation is yet to begin. There is an urgent need to acquire approximately 3,000 pieces of 155 mm/ 52-calibre guns to replace obsolescent guns and howitzers. So far a contract has been signed only for 145 pieces of M777 155 mm/45-calibre howitzers from the US. Air defence and army aviation units are also equipped with obsolete equipment that has degraded their readiness for combat and created vulnerabilities.

Modern wars are fought mostly during the hours of darkness, but most of the armoured fighting vehicles ~ tanks and infantry combat vehicles ~ are still night blind. Only about 650 T-90S tanks of Russian origin have genuine night-fighting capability. The infantry battalions need over 30,000 third generation night vision devices. Other requirements for infantry battalions include 66,000 assault rifles ~ a soldiers basic weapon, carbines for close quarter battle, general purpose machine guns, light-weight anti-materiel rifles, mine protected vehicles, 390,000 ballistic helmets, and 180,000 lightweight bullet proof jackets. Action to acquire these items has been initiated and needs to be constantly monitored by the minister himself.

The Navy is in the process of building an air defence ship at Kochi to replace the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, six Scorpene submarines at Mazagon Docks and 22 destroyers, frigates, corvettes and other ships such as fast attack craft, landing ships and support ships. However, Indias maritime security challenges are growing and the Navy not only needs to modernise but also expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific region.

Modernisation plans of the air force are proceeding ahead, but at a snails pace. The MMRCA project to acquire 126 fighter aircraft to replace obsolete MiG-21s appears to have been shelved, except for the governments plans to purchase 36 Rafale fighters from France for which a contract has been signed. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin (F-16) and Boeing (F-18), both of the US, and Grippen of Sweden are reported to have jumped into the fray again with offers to produce their aircraft locally with transfer of technology (ToT). The IAF also requires two AWACS early warning aircraft, six mid-air refueller tankers, 56 transporter planes, 20 advance jet trainers, 38 basic trainers, 48 medium-lift helicopters, reconnaissance and surveillance helicopters, surface-to-air missile systems and electronic warfare suites. All three Services need to upgrade their C4I2SR capabilities to prepare for effects-based operations in a network-centric environment and to match ever increasing Chinese capabilities.

The serviceability state of warfighting equipment needs substantial improvement. Many frontline equipment are out of action for want of spares. It is suspected that the delay in changing the old batteries of INS Sindhuratna could have been the cause of the accident that resulted in the death of two officers, injuries to seven sailors and irreparable damage to the submarine. The serviceability state of the SU-30MKI fighter-bomber fleet is reported to be just about 50 per cent. Numerous vehicles in the army are off road for want of tyres, tubes, batteries and items likes spark plugs.

Financial management too needs a major overhaul. All of the required acquisitions are capital intensive and the present defence budget cannot support many of them. The defence budget for FY 2017-18 has dipped to 1.62 per cent of the countrys GDP ~ the lowest level since the disastrous 1962 War with China. Parliaments Standing Committee on Defence and the armed forces have repeatedly recommended that it should be raised progressively to 3.0 per cent of the GDP if India is to build the defence capabilities that it needs to meet future threats and challenges and discharge its growing responsibilities as a regional power in Southern Asia. The budgetary allocations earmarked on the capital account for the modernisation of the armed forces will continue to be surrendered unless the government sets up a rolling, non-lapsable defence modernisation fund of approximately Rs 50,000 crore under the Consolidated Fund of India. Cutting down on wasteful subsidies from which the people do not really benefit in a meaningful manner would be one way to spare more funds for national security.

The armed forces are now in the fifth and final year ~ indeed the final month ~ of the 12th Defence Plan (2012-17). It was never formally approved with full financial backing by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). The government also has not formally approved the long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP 2007-22) formulated by HQ Integrated Defence Staff.

Without these essential approvals, defence procurement is being undertaken through ad hoc annual procurement plans, rather than being based on duly prioritised long-term plans that are designed to systematically enhance Indias combat potential. These are serious lacunae as effective defence planning cannot be undertaken in a policy void. The government must commit itself to supporting long-term defence plans. Structural reforms need to be implemented in an early time-frame to improve national security decision-making and synergise defence planning. The most important issue that has been pending for long is the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). This was first recommended by the Arun Singh Committee on Defence Expenditure in the early 1990s and then by a Group of Ministers led by Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. Though the CCS had approved the appointment of CDS, no one has been appointed as yet. It is time for the Modi-led NDA-2 government to implement the decision of the Vajpayee-led NDA-1. The new minister will have a lot on his plate and will need to put in many months of hard labour to come to grips with the complexities of defence preparedness and military modernisation in the prevailing regional environment.

The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies,
Nepal has been roiled by political instability since the devastating earthquake two years ago. The political temblors have reinforced the destabilisation caused by the natural. Indeed, the Himalayan country has known two Prime Ministers since 2015. Wednesdays withdrawal of Madhesi support, specifically of the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM), may not affect the Prachanda government as it has 320 members in the 601-member Constituent Assembly. The government led by the CPN-Maoist Centre is backed by the Nepali Congress, Rashtriya Prajatantra Party, and certain fringe entities. This can scarcely inspire confidence in Kathmandu, however. The degree of forward movement consequent upon last years decision of the Madhesis to join the Prachanda coalition has been dissipated in a little over six months. As a restive ethnic group on the border with India, the Madhesis have conveyed a robust message ~ the incumbent dispensation, much like the previous Oli government, has failed to meet the ultimatum to fulfill their festering demands, chiefly a reorganisation of the provinces and a liberal citizenship policy. The latest ultimatum expired on Tuesday, and the coalition has ceased to be a cohesive entity with the withdrawal of support. The Morcha has severed its seven-month-old ties, implicitly accusing the government of backtracking on assurances, indeed to take care of ethnic sensitivities. It bears recall that the constituents of the Madhesi-led Morcha had voted for Prachanda in the prime ministerial election on August 3 last year on the basis of the pledge that the government would concede their demand for an amendment to the Constitution. The Madhesi decision to withdraw support to the government came hours after Prachanda made a desperate last-ditch attempt to convince them to participate in the impending local polls. Once again he has promised to amend the Constitution but without addressing the core issue ~ reorganisation of the provincial boundaries. It was, therefore, unrealistic to expect the eleventh-hour feelers to mollify the ethnics. The other concerns that the Madhesis have raised are that the government had infringed upon the jurisdiction of provincial governments, which are yet to be formed, by declaring local-level elections. The governments indifference runs counter to the terms of the three-point agreement reached last August, notably the pledge that the Prachanda government would amend the Constitution.

Regretfully, successive governments in Kathmandu have been impervious to the festering demands, resulting in a six-month economic blockade last year of the India-Nepal border by the Madhesis. With fuel and medicine supplies having been disrupted, India has unwittingly been drawn into the vortex of the dispute. Politically, Nepal may not be in crisis quite yet; but Prachanda will hopefully take a call on the contentious issues that are no less important than the local elections ~ apparently the Prime Ministers immediate obsession. The credibility of the government is at stake.
Serves North Korea right. Its Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un wanted his half-brother dead and his lackeys decided to do the dastardly deed in Malaysia.

Analysts have surmised Malaysia was chosen over Macau and Singapore  places Kim Jong-nam was also known to frequent  because it posed the least political and economic risk to North Korea.

Pyongyang must have also taken into consideration the relaxed and friendly ties between the two countries where its citizens could go in and out without visas and scrutiny.

So when Jong-nam was poisoned at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 on Feb 13, Pyongyang most likely expected unsuspecting Malaysia to believe a man named Kim Chol died of a heart attack and, since he had a diplomatic passport, dutifully release the body to the North Korean Embassy. End of story.

As it turned out, even the most well-laid plans can go awry and they certainly did for the North Koreans.

A day later, a Reuters report, quoting US and South Korean government sources, announced to the world Jong-nams strange, sudden death and the whole thing unravelled.

After that, Malaysian authorities couldnt just let it go. By miscalculating badly, Jong-un brought massive world attention on himself and his insanely run nation.

Jong-nams assassination by a swipe of nerve poison is so surreal that it is the stuff of Hollywood movies. And it actually is.

In the 2014 comedy, The Interview, two American TV talkshow hosts, played by Seth Rogan and James Franco, get an exclusive invitation to interview Jong-un. The CIA gets wind of it and enlists the two to assassinate him with a fast-acting poison on a medical plaster to be administered by a handshake!

Pyongyang found the movie so offensive, it threatened merciless retaliation against the US. But maybe it also found inspiration in the modus operandi.

Even before Jong-nams sensational murder, there was little good news about North Korea.

It has long made a mockery of its official name as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. This is a totalitarian hermit kingdom ruled by three generations of a dynastic family that has gotten more brutal and psychotic with each successor to the throne.

The Kims have been obsessed with building military might over feeding their brainwashed subjects. As a result, famine and starvation has been a recurring feature. In the 1980s, The Star newspaper started a North Korean Famine Fund that raised a few million ringgit from sympathetic Malaysians.

Another devastating famine struck from 1993 to 1999 which the United Nations says killed an estimated two million people.

The World Food Programme (WFP) was allowed entry in 1995 and never left. Two of the 11 Malaysians who managed to return from North Korea after Pyongyangs decision to bar Malaysians from leaving the country, were working for WFP.

Then there was the horrifying news of how Jong-un executed his uncle by marriage, Jang Song-thaek and his entire family, including his son Yong-chol who was recalled as the ambassador to Malaysia, in December 2013.

Shocking as it was, since those killings involved North Korean citizens and took place on home ground, the rest of the world shrugged off the whole unsavoury episode and did nothing.

But North Korea has spilled blood outside its borders. Pyongyang was held responsible for the attempted assassination of South Korean president Chun doo-hwan during his official visit to Yangon, Myanmar, in October 1983 which killed 21 people, including four of his Cabinet ministers, and wounded 46 others. In November 1987, Pyongyang ordered the bombing of Korea Airlines Flight 858 which was flying from Baghdad to Seoul in an attempt to destabilise South Korea and disrupt the 1988 Olympic Games.

After each deadly episode, there was fury and condemnation. Yangon suspended diplomatic ties for a while but these were resumed to the extent Myanmar and North Korea were considered secret allies by the United States.

Malaysia-North Korea relations may have soured considerably but in all likelihood, bilateral ties would normalise after some time; already media interest in Jong-nams murder is winding down. His body will have to be eventually returned to North Korea and Malaysians stuck in Pyongyang will be allowed to leave.

But should we be so forgiving even though there were no Malaysian casualties in this incident?

The assassination should be viewed in relation to whats currently happening on the Korean Peninsula. For almost two decades since 1999, no diplomacy and international sanctions have been able to derail North Koreas pursuit of its nuclear weapons programme.

When Jong-un took over in 2011, he made no bones that his first, second and third priorities were to strengthen his military. By 2016, he was able to test-fire dozens of missiles with possible nuclear warhead capability from mobile launches and submarines.

The latest test on March 6 with four long-range missiles fired into the sea, just 300km off the Japans northwest coast, has spooked Tokyo, angered Seoul and even rattled Beijing.

The situation is further complicated by Seoul hurriedly agreeing to the US installing its Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea. That has not gone down well with Beijing and Moscow.

As tensions escalate, putting North Korea and the US and its allies on a collision path, what should Malaysia and the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations do?

All 10 members of Asean have long had formal diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, some more friendly than others, and the region ranks behind only China in economic importance for North Korea, according to the South China Morning Post which describes the number of North Korean diplomats in the region as inordinate.

Jong-nams murder has exposed how Pyongyang had exploited Aseans relaxed diplomatic policy to conduct clandestine activities in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, says SCMP.

This included North Korean intelligence agents using a front company, Glocom, with its office in the heart of Kuala Lumpur to sell battlefield radio equipment, in violation of UN sanctions.

The world waits to see how pugnacious President Donald Trump will handle North Korea. But Malaysia and the rest of Asean must also act and not go back to status quo because North Korea is not an east Asian problem for only the US, China, South Korea and Japan to tackle. As Albert Einstein warned, The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.

So Asean should stop being so nice and start dismantling Pyongyangs spy nests in their midst. No amount of economic benefits can justify a bilateral relationship with a paranoid nation led by a murderous megalomaniac.

The writer is the former group chief editor of The Star Media Group, Malaysia. This is a series of columns on global affairs written by top editors and columnists from members of the Asia News Network and published in newspapers and websites across the region.
What started as a food distribution programme is today a major international humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term international development projects. Founded in 1945, CARE International (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) has a presence in 80 countries. Four years ago, it made the transition to an India entity, CARE India. The India board operates under the global CARE federation.

Speaking about the organisations work, CARE Indias Managing Director and CEO, Rajan Bahadur, elaborated upon the challenges faced in the various sectors, or verticals to ASHA RAMACHANDRAN. Excerpts:



Q: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressing on the need to educate the girl child, how is CARE India gearing up?

A: CARE India works under four verticals: health, education, livelihood and disaster preparedness and thereby disaster management. Within this, our focus is on women and the girl child. We are more focused on marginalised communities. We work across 14 states currently and we have a large operation of close to 40 projects. We have changed with the times. What was once for food distribution is a very different organisation now. As I mentioned, our focus is on women and the girl child.

Last year (FY 2015-16), CARE India directly reached out to 1.36 lakh children (52 per cent girls from the most marginalised communities). We also do a lot for education, including the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBV). We are not just impacting girl child but also training teachers. Most of these are residential programmes.

Udan, a recent programme in Mewat, Haryana, is basically for girls who are school drop-outs and girls who have never been to schools. Its a 11-month residential programme, where they work and learn with a peer group. So, the girls not just study but also (learn) community living and then we put them into the mainstream.

India is a huge country and there is so much differentiation between girls and boys. The basic DNA of CARE India is to make sure that we work at school level and also make a difference to the community. We build capability and capacity to bring that change.



Q: Despite several policy measures, the plight of women and their safety appears to have improved little. Your comments.

A: Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act, 2005, is important. But we as an organisation would work on a platform which is more at ground level. So we would work with girls ad women to bring in that social change and a cultural change.

There is a difference between equality and equity. Say, in a family, food is never equally distributed. Normally it happens that the housewife gets the least. And when she is expecting, instead of getting more than her due, she continues to get less. Yet she is doing the maximum amount of work. So, I think a lot needs to be done in terms of how women and their roles are accepted in society.

CARE India works a lot with creating self-help groups (SHGs). Today there are people who have not stepped out of their houses and are running small businesses. These women are negotiating with banks.

We work with men as well and its worked wonderfully. So, men are also sensitised. But the basic thing is you can protect women against violence. Unless the men are sensitised, unless the household is sensitised too  there has to be a consensual (move).

The other thing is, when women become earning members, their respect within their families goes up ~ their acceptance, their dependence, all of that changes. The husband and the in-laws are supportive. They know theres money coming in and because of money there is hygiene and better nutrition. We strongly believe that if a woman is empowered and has got the capacity, she makes a far greater difference for theres a ripple effect around her. We work a lot with boys and men as well. Unless we arrest the underlying cause of the problem ~ some of these are unequal power relations ~ we will never be able to create a level playing field.



Q: Women are also getting skills in negotiating and marketing, which were traditionally held by men?

A: Of course. We have various projects on skill building. Then there are related cycles of confidence levels. When the women are empowered, they make sure that what they couldnt get, like education, their children will get them.



Q: Are there any changes needed in government policy and the law to meet needs of women?

A: Government is doing a lot. But the nature of the business is so large that a lot more needs to be done. They seem to be moving in the right direction. But it will take time. You can keep on criticising the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programmes. But they need time to gather momentum. Yes, more can be done. We (CARE India) are playing a far greater role. Government itself is very serious about this, which is a good thing.



Q: Can you throw some light on CARE's new models of public-private partnership and livelihood in the rural area?

A: Whether its land rights or agri-farming, we will work on that. These are important to us because these are marginalised tribal communities. And again, while our focus is women and girl child, its not like we dont work with men. In fact, at the grassroots level, there has to be connectivity. You cant be segregating one from the other. It actually works well when they have each others support.



Q: What are your views on PPP?

A: There are different ways of looking at it. CARE India works with the Centre, the state governments, with corporates, public sector companies and other NGOs. We help build the capacities of smaller NGOs. There may be areas during disasters where we are not present. We would then reach out to those with whom we already have an MoU, so that we can step in at any point of time and start working.



Q:. Turning to another major area of CARE India's work, disaster management, given India's strides in this sector, do you think the country is geared up to meet any eventuality?

A: About 10-15 years ago, we could almost predict that say in UP during monsoons, certain areas would get flooded. Today, you cant predict. Whether you attribute it to climate change, population expansion, or whatever, every month there is some disaster. Who could imagine Hyderabad or Chennai getting flooded? And flood means not just rainwater but crazy floods. So, I think things are changing.

When theres a disaster, government agencies are sometimes dependent on organisations like us. What really counts is the human element. Everything else is secondary and everybody is on a level playing field.

After the tsunami and the Mumbai terrorist attack, there was a lot of learning. It was not that people did not know it earlier but nobody realised the magnitude. Im sure that as an organisation, as an economy and as a government, we are far better prepared today.



Q: What is CARE India's role in disaster management and mitigation?

A: We work at two levels: disaster relief and, before that, with communities for disaster preparedness, how to anticipate and how to build more resilient homes and so on. Its like a fire drill ~ prepare people how to go about it.

The writer is the Managing Director and CEO of CARE, India.
A slew of railway officers will be sent to Japan and China for getting specialised training on high speed rail technology. Thirty eight officers of various services of Indian Railways have been identified for getting the training in Japan. This will be the second batch of railway officers going to Japan for such training.

Political clearance is being obtained from the Ministry of External Affairs for sending another lot of railway officers to China. The first batch will comprise 40 railway officers. They will go to South West Jiaotong University for a training course in civil engineering. An academic services agreement was signed with Jiaotong University.

A high-speed train corridor with 15 stations is being proposed between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been conducting feasibility studies for setting up of high speed railway corridor.

It is also learnt that Railway officers will be getting training in the IITs and IIMs, Indias premier engineering and management institutes. The Indian Railways will be sending 20 officers from various services to IITs and IIMs for rail-related research and advanced studies.

The focus will be on upgrading the tracks, signalling and electrification system on the railway tracks so as to improve punctuality and speed of trains. This assumes greater significance in the wake of the railways introducing high-speed rail network in the country.
A railway research centre in Australia has entered into an agreement with the Indian Railways to support future research and technology development related to critical infrastructure in India.

Representatives from Monash University Institute of Railway Technology (IRT) and Indian Ministry of Railways corporation DFCCIL (Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited) signed an agreement on Thursday in New Delhi.

IRT with partners  Balaji Railroad Systems Ltd (BARSYL), leading railway consultants in India, PwC, and Indian Institute of Bombay (IITB) were selected as the preferred supplier from a competitive global selection process.

They will provide guidance on the establishment of a new applied research and development institute in India known as SRESTHA (Special Railway Establishment for Strategic Technology & Holistic Advancement).

SRESTHA will be locally engaged, but have a global reach with the aim to become a world leader in the advancement of rail.

Significantly, the project will provide guidance to the Indian Railways on international models that will be adapted to the Indian railway environment.

IRT Director Ravi Ravitharan said the partnership will help advance railway technology both in India and around the world.

"I am extremely pleased to be invited with our partners to assist with this significant project, which will support future research and technology development related to critical infrastructure for India. Indian Railways is one of the largest employers in the world and this is a very important project not only for IRT but also for Victoria and Australia," Ravitharan said.

IRT is the premier track and vehicle railway research centre in Australia.
Japan launched a new spy satellite on Friday, the country's space agency said, as the region grows increasingly uneasy over North Korea's quickening missile programme.

The Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan's mainstay H-2A rocket from a launch site in the country's southwest.

It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is coming to the end of its mission.

Japan started putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003 after North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile over the Japanese mainland and into the western Pacific in 1998.

The threat has steadily accelerated and just last week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with three landing provocatively close to Japan.

Tokyo currently maintains three optical satellites for daytime surveillance and three radar satellites for nighttime monitoring. Two of those are backups.

The new satellite will succeed one of the three radar satellites that was launched in 2011.

The satellites are officially for "information-gathering"  a euphemism for spying  but are also used to monitor damage in the wake of natural disasters.
The Punjab provincial government was placed in an awkward position on Friday as the authorities wrongly put up banners carrying pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin while welcoming the President of Tatarstan who was to visit Pakistan.

The banners carried pictures of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif along with Russian President Putin instead of President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov who began his three-day visit to Pakistan on Friday, Geo News reported.

The pictures of the Russian strongman were removed after the local administration was mocked by social media users.
The Tibetan Parliament in exile called for the need to boost the liaison initiatives and official reach, particularly through Chinese language in order to reach out and cater to the Chinese public through avenues, including digital and online platforms.

The parliamentarians also questioned the exile governments Department of Information and International Relations on the front and called for bolstered inventiveness on the issue in the future.

The Tibetan legislators urged the administration to review and strengthen liaison initiatives as well as improving human resources, particularly Chinese liaison officers with regards to improving links with the Chinese intellectuals and masses.

Tibetan Prime Minister, Lobsang Sangay, who also holds Information and International Relations portfolio, said the administration would be hosting a meeting followed by workshop for Tibetans with Chinese language proficiency from North America, Europe and India in the coming months.
US President Donald Trump's administration will appeal rulings by two federal judges who blocked his second attempt to institute a travel ban, media reports said.

"We intend to appeal the flawed rulings," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in his daily press briefing on Thursday, referring to temporary stays issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Spicer said Trump had the authority to impose a 90-day ban on the issuance of visas to people from six Muslim-majority countriesand halt the US refugee program for 120 days, Efe news reported.

"The danger (of terrorists entering the US) is real. And the law is clear," said the White House spokesman.

He added that the Trump administration was exploring all available options to vigorously defend the revised executive order.

Trump's original travel ban suspended US entry for all refugees as well as travellers from a group of Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Imposed on January 27, the travel ban also was blocked by a federal judge.

Among the alterations made in the revised order were the removal of Iraq from the list of targeted nations and an exemption for lawful permanent residents and travellers who obtained US visas ahead of the January 27 announcement.

The revised order also does not indefinitely bar Syrian refugees from entering the US.

The federal judges who issued the latest stays found that Trump's order did not offer solid evidence of a terrorist threat and was unconstitutional because it discriminated against people on the basis of their religion.
Two suspected Pakistani smugglers were on Friday arrested in the northwest Italian port city of Genoa, according to police

The two Pakistani men were driving two cars with 13 migrants hidden inside, reports stated.

When asked, the migrants told police they were heading for northern Europe. They arrived in Sicily two weeks ago aboard a boat from Libya, they said, according to the police..

The two Pakistanis now face charges of abetting illegal immigration.

(With inputs from agencies)
Emma Watson stars as Belle and Dan Stevens as the Beast in Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, a live-action adaptation of the studio's animated classic directed by Bill Condon.


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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right, stands with South Korean Deputy Commander of the Combined Force Command Gen. Leem Ho-young, second right, as two North Korean soldiers, top left and top center, look at the south side at the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, South Korea, Friday, March 17, 2017. Others are: Command Sgt. Maj. Steven L. Payton, left, of the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea and U.S. Secretary of State's Chief of Staff Margaret Peterlin, second left. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool)
Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
India and Russia are setting up a $1-billion fund to promote mutual investments in infrastructure and technology projects, said Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Both the countries would contribute $500 million to the fund, Sitharaman said while addressing India-Russia Business Forum at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS).

While the Russian funds would be channeled through Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Indian contribution will be accrued from National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.

Sitharaman elaborated upon other measures being taken by Russia and India to scale up their economic engagement and to boost bilateral trade and investment.

As part of these initiatives, the India Russia CEO Forum will hold its meeting this year at a mutually convenient date. The forum was constituted in St Petersburg in June 2016.

Foreign Direct Investment from Russia is estimated at $1.2 billion till date while Indian investment in Russia is around $4.9 billion.

"There is tremendous potential for enhancing such investments," the minister said, adding that initiatives like Make-in-India would catalyse Russian investment in several Indian sectors including defence production.

"The Make-in-India initiative was launched by the government in order to encourage businesses to manufacture products in the country, creating additional jobs for local population. This is a major drive to foster innovation, enhance skill development, protect intellectual property and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure," she said.

India and Russia are engaged in robust cooperation in the energy sector, including collaborations in civil nuclear energy, hydrocarbons and renewable energy.
Anyone who consumes short format content was in awe of the The Viral Fever. The success of 'Pitchers and Permanent Roommates', a hugely popular web series, took it a notch higher.

However, the success story took a different path early this week. The content creation group went through a huge setback when an anonymous blogger on blogging site medium.com allegedly accused the TVF founder and CEO Arunabh Kumar of molestation. Soon, many more women, some with their identities revealed and some anonymous, joined in to make the charge stronger.

The TVF team mostly maintained silence throughout, except for an instant social media response that has been widely criticised and an interview in a Mumbai tabloid where Kumar "unconditionally and unequivocally" denied all the allegations. "Social media has already declared me an offender, but I am ready to address all the allegations against me. I am open to receiving a police complaint so that I can respond legally as well. TVF is bigger than me and if there is a remote chance that I have done any wrong, let me be persecuted," he had said.

On Thursday, activist-lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui filed a third-party complaint against Kumar. "I have filed a complaint. The complaint would translate into FIR hopefully by tomorrow (Friday). I have filed the complaint with the women's commission as well," Siddiqui told news agency, IANS.

However, on Friday morning, the TVF team came out with a media statement stating that they are looking into each of the sexual harassment cases against Kumar. "Even as we were dealing with the first episode, several other allegations surfaced soon thereafter. Please know that we are sincerely looking into each one of them. We are committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations. Many of you have asked so we would like to confirm that yes, we have an ICC (internal complaints committee) set up in each location," the company said. "Its been a tough couple of days for us at TVF, as you would know. We needed to first and foremost take care of our internal team that has been most impacted by the recent events."

In another statement, the also team announced that their next show 'Bisht, Please!', scheduled to stream from next week has been postponed. "The excitement remains the same, but we are rescheduling the release," said the message as it continued, "We also want to apologize, therefore, about cancelling our on-ground event on Saturday."

The on-ground event was the screening of the first three episodes of the series. Ironically, in conversation with THE WEEK last week (before the entire controversy erupted), Nidhi Bisht, the co-writer and lead protagonist in Bisht, Please!, explained how the entire team was happy to do its first woman-centric show. "We want to bring out the problems a woman faces in day-to-day life," she had said. It was after this that the TVF controversy shook the social media.

Acknowledging the string of events, it said, "Yes, there have been allegations of misbehavior against our founder, from several women. When the first blog appeared on March 12th, it shocked all of us, including our extended set of associates."

The severity of the allegations confused" the associates.

Since the blog alleged that he/she was an employee with the organisation and even indicated specific content production they were a part of, the team immediately began checking the facts internally. "We did send out an instant response, which may have been a bit too quick and emotional. We recognise that we should have handled that response better. However, it is a fact that we have found no records of any such person on our pay roll, in that given time-period, as described in the blog," the company stated.

TVF reiterated that as a team of 240 strong professionals, the team is determined to work hard in winning the love back. "We will do everything in our capacity to learn and get better, get bigger. Give us that chance," it concluded with a plea.

With so many women having allegedly accused the TVF founder of molestation, it only seems right to look into the matter as it deals with a lot of serious issues, including workplace harassment and safety of women.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, on Friday, defended her leaders and ministers implicated in the Narada sting case.

A Calcutta High Court division bench had dubbed West Bengal police a 'puppet' while handing over investigation to the CBI.

She called the HC order unfortunate and vowed to move the Supreme Court against the order.

"We will move apex court against the order. It was a big conspiracy to tarnish our image," Mamata said.

She said that the entire footage of Narada video was broadcast in the BJP office before the assembly election in April last year.

"How should BJP know that CBI inquiry would be ordered? This is a big conspiracy going on against us," she said.

Mamata said the allegation was levelled against her party before election and TMC won the election even after that.

"So we won in the people's court," she said.
Vehicles like tractors and trollies can only be allowed to carry goods and not people. Any violation of it can attract penal provisions under the Motor Vehicles Act, said Union home ministry in an advisory to the states. In states like Haryana and agricultural belts of Uttar Pradesh, tractors and trollies are the usual modes of transport, particularly amongst the Jat community.

The MHA advisory to the states comes at a time when Jat agitators are ready to storm the Parliament with 25-30 lakh protestors, ready to march to the capital on March 20.

The MHA has shot off a five-point advisory cautioning the states to take all possible steps to ensure there is no open sale of petrol or diesel in these states. At the same time, it has said vehicles like tractors and trollies which carry goods should not be used to ferry people across state borders.

The ministry is all set to clamp down on agitators as it has asked states to not allow congregations and impose Section 144.

The Centre has also advised states to ensure that law and order is maintained and protestors are detained much before they enter the capital and carry out their march to the Parliament.

The Delhi police will have a tough task at hand, given that class 12 students have exams and would be travelling to exam centres across state borders of UP and Haryana. The UPSC will also conduc its examination around the same time.

The MHA has also asked states to filter traffic movements and plying of buses in a way that normal traffic flow is not affected. At the same time, the protest should not be allowed to spill onto the streets.

However, the All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti is unrelenting and has decided to boycott any call for talks by the Haryana government.

"We will only talk to the Central government when we reach the capital," says Yashpal Malik, president of the Samiti spearheading the agitation.

Speaking to THE WEEK, Malik said that they waited for the Haryana chief minister to speak with them on Thursday, but he did not come for any meeting.

"It was only later that he expressed his willingness to meet us, but then we decided to boycott the meeting. We will only talk to the Central government," he said.

Malik said that it was up to the government to impose section 144 , but they will not buckle down and are ready to face arrest.
The separatists in Kashmir have cautioned Pakistan not to merge Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) as its fifth province since it will harm the Kashmir cause.

The Pakistan government is mulling merging Gilgit-Baltistan with Pakistan to legitimise the 52 billion dollar investment by China on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that passes through the area.

India has opposed the use of Gilgit-Baltistan territory for CPEC on the grounds that the territory belongs to India and is under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

But China has pressed Pakistan to legitimise its control on Gilgit-Baltistan by merging it with Pakistan or changing the constitutional status of the area to justify its inclusion in the much-hyped CPEC.

The affairs of Gilgit-Baltistan, also called northern areas by Pakistan, are largely managed by the federal government of Pakistan. However, it elects a legislative assembly.

The area was made a separate administrative entity by Pakistan in 1970.

In 2009, the area was made self-governing territory of Pakistan with separate legislative assembly and chief minister.

The Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) leaders are also opposed to the idea of granting Gilgit-Baltistan the status of the fifth province for fear that it would render the demand for plebiscite or referendum in entire Jammu and Kashmir as null and void.

The PoK leaders and separatists fear that if Pakistan merges the area, it would legitimise India's control on a portion of territory belonging to Jammu and Kashmir.

Kashmir, Ladakh, Jammu, Azad Kashmir (PoK) and Gilgit-Baltistan are a single entity. The political destiny of Jammu and Kashmir is yet to be decided," a spokesman of JRL said. "Proposal to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as the fifth province of Pakistan will have a damaging impact on the status of the state, said a spokesman of JRL. Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) is a collective comprising Hurriyat Conference (G) led by Syed Ali Geelani, Hurriyat Conference led (M) led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik.

The spokesman said Jammu and Kashmir is a long-standing issue in international forums and the global community has agreed to decide its political destiny through resolutions acknowledged by UN.

"Unless and until the people of the state are provided an opportunity to decide the future through a referendum, no division, alteration or changes are acceptable. Both India and Pakistan have no authority or right to alter the geographical status of the state,'' the spokesman said.

Declaring Pakistan as the prime party to Kashmir issue, the JRL said people in Jammu and Kashmir have always regarded and accepted the role of Pakistan in this dispute. However, any step which may hamper the disputed status of Kashmir is unacceptable, the spokesman said.
In light of Home Minister Rajnath Singh's refusal to come to Uttar Pradesh, Union Minister Manoj Sinha is considered the front runner for the post of chief minister. Sinha, who hails from an upper caste background, has been in the good books of Prime Minister Narendra Modiduring a visit to Varanasi, the latter praised Sinha for his commitment and work ethic.

What puts Sinha ahead of other contenders is his hard working nature, clean image and long experience in politics. Sinha, who studied in BHU (Banaras Hindu University), was quite active in student politics, heading the union.

He was born on July 1 1959 in the eastern UP district of Gazipur and did masters in civil engineering from BHU before joining politics.

Sinha had all the markings of a brilliant politician since the beginninghe had become the president of the BHU students' union in 1982. He made his debut in the Lok Sabha from Gazipur in 1996. He won the parliamentary elections again in 1999. This is his third tenure as MP.

For seven years, from 1989 to 1996, Sinha remained in the BJPs national council. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while appointing his first cabinet in 2014, made Sinha the railway minister. In the second expansion, he was appointed the minister of communication (independent charge).

A hard worker who maintained a low profile, Sinha is regarded as one of the best performing MPs in the house. He has been hailed for his active participation in the proceedings of the house and asking relevant questions of public interest. He has been adjudged as one of the seven most honest MPs in the country.

He has been a member of the general council and school of planning from 1999-2000. He has also been a member of committees on energy and government assurances.

Sinha represents Lok Sabha constituency of Gazipur and is equally popular with Hindu and Muslim voters there.

Apart from politics, agriculture and travelling are his two passions, which he pursues in leisure hours. He married Neelam Sinha in 1977. He has a son and a daughter.

Sinhas work as railway minister was hailed from several quartershe stood for improving facilities of railways and worked for the expansion of Cantonment station in Varanasi for which he announced a package of Rs 250 crore.

Though has ruled out his name in the race, what makes him a strong contender for the post is his good relationship with BJPs top brass like Amit Shah, Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh and others. He also enjoys a good rapport with the RSS.
A teenager opened fire at his high school in southeastern France on Thursday, wounding up to four people, in an attack apparently inspired by videos of US mass shootings such as Columbine, officials said.

The incident in Grasse, which does not appear to be linked to militancy, comes with France on high alert after more than 230 people were killed in the past two years by attackers allied to Islamic State.

"It was total panic," Achraf, a student in the school, said on BFM TV. "The gunshots were at 4 to 5 meters from where we were. We thought the gunman was coming toward us. We heard him shouting."

France's Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem visited the scene in Grasse, a town known for its perfume industry, and said the attack appeared to be "a crazy act by a fragile young man fascinated by firearms".

"His motivations seem to be linked to bad relations he had with other students in school," Grasse prosecutor Fabienne Atzori told reporters.

With a presidential election less than six weeks away, the attack by a 16-year-old armed with a shotgun loaded with lead pellets looked likely to further stoke France's debate on security.

Separately in Paris, an employee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was injured in the face and arms when a letter bomb posted to the world lender's local office blew up as she opened it, police said.

Atzori said 10 people had been hurt in the school attack, either physically or emotionally. One person was shot in the stomach and the headmaster was injured in the shoulder after trying to stop the gunman.

The youth, who was also carrying munitions, handguns, a grenade and what seemed to be a homemade explosive device, put up no resistance when he was arrested at the school, she said.

The youth was not known to police and checks were being made to establish whether there were any accomplices and how he had acquired his weapons.

"The first investigations suggest he had consulted videos of mass killings in America," an interior ministry spokesman said.

Gun laws

France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. French citizens are banned from owning automatic weapons, while many other guns require government authorisation and a medical exam, along with a permit from a hunting or sport shooting federation.

"This is reminiscent of the Columbine tragedy in the US," Socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon told reporters, referring to the 1999 incident in which two students fatally shot a teacher and 12 classmates before killing themselves.

Images of what appeared to be the Grasse attacker's Facebook and YouTube pages showed a fascination with Columbine and violent images, as well as with instructions for homemade weapons.

Local emergency services used Twitter to advise residents of the town of about 50,000 inhabitants to stay at home after the shooting began around 1 pm.

Witnesses interviewed by local television described a scene of panic as the gunman entered the canteen, with students rushing to hide under tables or sprinting for the exit.

"I just know the gunman by sight. He was gentle and low-key key, not a nasty guy," student Achraf added. BFM TV did not give his family name.

Atzori said the teenager, who fired two or three times, had initially entered a classroom looking for someone in particular.

After he had left, pupils alerted the headmaster to his presence. The headmaster, who did not appear to be the target, was shot trying to calm the assailant down.

"He's a normal boy. There were no signs. He is a bit reserved and doesn't make waves," Jean-Rene Laget, a local resident who knows the student's father, told Reuters. "His father never said he had problems with him."
Poet Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, died at his home in St. Lucia on Friday aged 87, a spokesman for his publisher said.

Jeff Seroy, a spokesman for publisher Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, said St. Lucia-born Walcott died shortly after 5 am on Friday. The cause of death was not immediately known, but Seroy said Walcott had been ill for some time and had recently returned home from a hospital stay.

His longtime companion, Sigrid Nama, was with him at the time of his death, Seroy said.

Walcott, who was born on the volcanic island in 1930, came to the attention of the public in 1962 with a collection of poems called, "In a Green Night," which celebrated the Caribbean.

In 'Omeros' (1990), an epic poem considered his most ambitious and accomplished work, he invoked Caribbean voices through Greek myth, drawing on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and in its citation, the Swedish Academy said: "He has both African and European blood in his veins. In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet."

Britain's former poet laureate Andrew Motion described Walcott as a member of the great Nobel-winning poetic generation."He did as much or more than anyone to win the global respect for Caribbean writing that it deserves and now enjoys," Motion said in an emailed statement. Walcott's children, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw and Anna Walcott-Hardy, said his funeral would be held on the island.
Airbus will be setting up a greenfield training facility in Aerocity. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2018.

By Arindam De: Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Friday performed the ground-breaking ceremony for the first ever Airbus India Training Centre in Asia.

Airbus will be setting up a greenfield training facility in Aerocity, close to Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. This training facility is being set up to cater to the growing demand of skilled people in the domestic aviation space.

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It is expected to be operational by the end of 2018.

MoS Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha and CEO of Airbus Tom Enders were also present on the occasion.

WHAT THE FACILITY WILL HAVE

The centre would be constructed over an area of around 7,000 square metres. Once complete, the facility will have two A320 full flight simulators, which could be increased to six, as and when the need arises. Initially, the centre was expected to train 800 pilots and 200 service and maintenance engineers. At present, Airbus has more than 250 aircraft in service in India and state carrier Indian Airlines has placed order for 550 more aircraft.

Speaking on the occasion, Gajapathi Raju said that the countrys rapidly growing fleet of passenger aircraft must be matched by a supply chain ensuring availability of skilled pilots and maintenance engineers. The minister also urged Airbus to consider setting up a Maintenance and Overhaul facility (MRO) in India, in tune with the Make in India policy of the government to generate further employment opportunities.

INDIA'S CIVIL AVIATION SECTOR TO GROW BIG: AIRBUS

Airbus CEO Tom Enders said that India was poised for tremendous growth in the civil aviation sector. He further said that this training centre would be the first fully-owned facility of Airbus in Asia, which was an example of Airbus' enduring partnership with India.

India is one of the fastest growing domestic aviation markets in the world. The market is expected to grow at over 9 per cent, year-on-year for the next two decades. This growth rate would be far greater than the world average of 4.6 per cent.

The number of per capita trips is expected to grow four-fold in the next 20 years, boosted by improving economic and demographic factors. By these estimates, Airbus sees a demand for more than 1,500 new aircraft and the accompanying need for close to 25,000 new pilots and maintenance engineers in the next 20 years.

Also read | Mallya case: Deposit Rs 192.51 crore within 8 weeks, DRT asks Airbus

--- ENDS ---
Jason Greenblatt, the Shomer Shabbos New York real estate lawyer appointed by President Trump as his special representative for international negotiations, was in Israel this week.

Greenblatt met Tuesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, following a five-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday night.

Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt tweeted that the two had discussed settlements, the regional situation and how progress toward peace with Palestinians can be made.

But the Tweet he sent today many YWN readers would find interesting:

Thank u @israeliPM office for mincha minyan & @netanyahu for davening with me so that I could say Kaddish for my mother @jdgreenblatt45

Thank u @israeliPM office for mincha minyan & @netanyahu for davening with me so that I could say Kaddish for my mother @jdgreenblatt45  Jason D. Greenblatt (@JasonDovEsq) March 16, 2017

(Charles Gross  YWN)
Syria fired missiles at Israeli warplanes early Friday after a series of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria  a rare military exchange between the two hostile neighbors that was confirmed by both sides.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said, without elaborating. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but said the safety of Israeli civilians and Israeli aircraft was not compromised.

The army said the incident set off sirens in Jewish settlement communities in the Jordan Valley.

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is extremely rare, though Israeli military officials reported a shoulder-fired missile a few months ago.

A Syrian military statement said four Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace  flying into Syria through Lebanese territory  and targeted a military position in central Syria.

Damascus said Syrian anti-aircraft systems confronted the planes and claimed one of the jets was shot down in Israeli- controlled territory and that another was hit. The Israeli military denied the allegation and there was no sign that any of the jets had been hit or downed.

The Syrian statement, in line with typical anti-Western rhetoric from Damascus, said the blatant aggression was an attempt by Israel to support terrorist gangs of the Islamic State group inside Syria and deflect from the victories of the Syrian army in the countrys civil war, which this week entered its seventh year.

Israeli Channel 10 TV reported that Israel deployed its Arrow defense system for the first time against a real threat and hit an incoming missile, intercepting it before it exploded in Israel.

The station said the Israeli military had been on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which is backed by Iran and fights alongside Syrian government forces.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

Jordan, which borders both Israel and Syria, said parts of the missiles fell in its rural northern areas, including the Irbid district. The military said the debris was the result of the Israeli interception of missiles fired from Syria toward Israeli positions and bases.

Radwan Otoum, the Irbid governor, told the state news agency Petra that the missile parts caused only minor damage.

A chunk of missile crashed into the courtyard of a home in the community of Inbeh in northern Jordan, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

Umm Bilal al-Khatib, a local resident, said she heard an explosion and initially thought a gas cylinder had exploded. When she went outside she found a small crater and a 3-meter-long (10-foot) cylinder. She said her husband contacted Jordanian authorities, who removed the debris.

The Haaretz daily said the interception took place north of Jerusalem. However, the Arrow is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles high in the stratosphere, so it remained unclear why the system would have been used in this particular incident.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the reports.

The Arrow is part of what Israel calls its multilayer missile defense comprised of different systems meant to protect against short and long range threats, including the thousands of missiles possessed by Hezbollah in Lebanon and rockets used by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering mostly sporadic incidents of spillover fire that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors by Syrian President Bashar Assads forces. Israel has responded with limited reprisals on Syrian positions in response to the errant fire.

The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011 as a popular uprising against Assad, eventually descended into a full-blown civil war with Syrian government forces fighting an array of rebel groups. The chaos has allowed al-Qaidas affiliate in Syria and the Islamic State group to expand their reach.

The skies over Syria are now crowded, with Russian and Syrian aircraft backing Assads forces and a U.S.-led coalition striking Islamic State and al-Qaida targets.

Israel is widely believed to have carried out airstrikes on advanced weapons systems in Syria  including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles  as well as Hezbollah positions, but it rarely confirms such operations.

(AP)
Following publication of the proposed state budget for the next fiscal year, Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, criticized Gov. Chris Christie for deleting $9 million in support for non-public schools, much of that earmarked for security funding.

Christies proposed Fiscal Year 2018 budget eliminates funding for the Secure Schools for All Children Act, which he signed into law in September. In decrying the governors proposal, Schaer cited the numerous recent threats to Jewish institutions in New Jersey and nationwide.

It is disconcerting that the governor ostensibly supported providing funding to secure non-public schools just months ago, but now, in the midst of repeated threats to New Jerseys Jewish institutions, he eliminates it, said Schaer (D-Bergen/Passaic). Any parent who ever has had to drop a child off at school in the morning knows how important it is to be able to rest assured that the school is safe.

The Secure Schools for All Children Act established a state aid program to provide security services, equipment or technology to help ensure a safe and secure school environment for students attending non-public schools.

The state appropriated $7.5 million in funding for the program in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget. The Democratic budget originally included an allocation of $75 per student to each school district in the state for non-public school security, but Christie reduced the amount to $50 per student. In contrast, the per-pupil allocation of security funding for children at New Jerseys public schools is $144, Schaer noted.

Every child  regardless of the school he or she attends  has the right to a safe learning environment, said Schaer. Its bad enough that non-public schools receive less funding to ensure their students safety as it is. The notion of eliminating that funding altogether simply is unacceptable.

(YWN Desk  NYC)
The following is via TLS:

The Jackson Township approved the ban on dormitories throughout the Township on Thursday evening.

Last month, the Township pulled the proposal from the agenda when a large crowd showed up to oppose the ordinance.

The meeting this evening also attracted a large crowd.

The unanimous approval of the ordinance comes despite the fact that many saw this as a direct target of Orthodox Jews moving into the town, and an effort to further deter the growth of Jewish residents within the township. The town of Jackson borders with Lakewood, and hundreds of families have already moved into the neighboring tows of Jackson and Toms RIver.

The ordinance bans dormitories anywhere in the Township  including residential, commercial and industrial zones.

Agudath Israel of Americas New Jersey Director Rabbi Avi Schnall was extremely unhappy about the vote.

Tonights vote was a severe setback in the relationship between a growing portion of Jackson residents and the town Council, Rabbi Schnall told TLS. Over the past few weeks, hundreds of emails were sent to the council members asking to have a conversation, all these requests were ignored. Its a very sad day for Jackson and for religious liberties.

(Source: TLS)
While chareidi Jerusalem councilmen applaud the fact that Mayor Nir Barkat has spoken out and given assurances that the Shabbos status quo would be honored and fears of growing chilul Shabbos are unfounded. This cleared the way for the chareidi councilmen to support the city budget as well as save face, telling constituents that their threat not to support the budget compelled the mayor to respond as he did.

Others explain the mayors words were nothing more than lip service and the chareidi representatives sold out.

After months of going head-to-head with the mayor over Kedushas Shabbos in Yerushalayim with the mayor, the chareidim made due with the mayor addressing them, assuring them Kedushas Shabbos would not be trampled in the capital. In essence, this is the same promise made by the mayor when he drew up coalition agreements with the various parties.

Deputy Mayor Yossi Deutsch praised Barkat, emphasizing the importance of keeping Shabbos in the city.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Yesh Atid party head MK Yair Lapid spoke out strongly Wednesday against the United Nations, which in its latest report accused Israel of Apartheid policies against PA (Palestinian Authority) residents throughout Yehuda and Shomron. Lapid explained the report is full of Hate and anti-Semitism.

Lapid didnt mince words, citing the UN has become a collaborator with terrorism rather than fulfilling its mandate of defending democracy and freedom. He questioned just how nations including Syria and Sudan dare to teach morality to the State of Israel.

Lapid calls on the United States and the European Union nations to make it clear, to send a message to the UN that if its current anti-Israel policies are not halted, they will cease supporting the organization.

He added that he was working in Washington this week to persuade decision makers to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council and halt funding for the UN.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Speaking at the India Today Conclave, BJP President Amit Shah that two major parties joined hands in Uttar Pradesh but it did not work.

By India Today Web Desk: Fresh from the success in Uttar Pradesh, BJP President Amit Shah said Narendra Modi's popularity and the effective implementation of pro-poor schemes led the BJP to a landslide win in the Hindi heartland.

In his first public address after the BJP's spectacular show in the recently concluded Assembly elections, BJP President Amit Shah said that he was confident that the BJP would get two-third majority in Uttar Pradesh.

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"There is no way one can calculate a wave but we were sure that if we cross 240, then the final tally could settle at any number," Amit Shah said at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai.

The BJP president did not consider a Bihar-like grand alliance for the 2019 election a worthy challenger to the Narendra Modi government. He said two major parties had joined hands in Uttar Pradesh but it did not yield desired results.

HERE IS WHAT AMIT SHAH SAID AT INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE:

Amit Shah said the huge mandate in the BJP's favour in the Assembly elections has forced the political discourse to change in the country. "The results have shown that caste politics, dynasty politics and appeasement politics will not work and only politics of performance can win the voter," Amit Shah said, who is now being hailed as the Chanakya of Indian politics. Replying to Asaduddin Owaisi's statement at the Conclave that the verdict in Uttar Pradesh was exclusive and not inclusive, Amit Shah said the BJP never said that it did not want Muslim votes. "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas is not about giving tickets but ensuring development reaches all, including minorities," the BJP president said. Accused by the Opposition of stealing the mandate in Goa and Manipur where BJP did not get the maximum seats, Amit Shah said his party had more vote share than the Congress in both the states. "In hung assembly, whichever party can prove its majority forms the government," Amit Shah said. The BJP president said the victory in Manipur shows that the BJP has now reached almost every corner of the country. Promising a pro-development government in Uttar Pradesh, Amit Shah said the BJP government would not indulge in politics of discrimination and fast-track growth to dust off the 'BIMARU' tag from the state. The BJP president did not consider a Bihar-like grand alliance for the 2019 election a worthy challenger to the Narendra Modi government. He said two major parties had joined hands in Uttar Pradesh but it did not yield desired results. On asked if demonetisation worked to the BJP's advantage in the Assembly elections, Amit Shah said the decision was not taken for electoral gains. However, he was quick to add that the mandate shows that people supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision. The BJP president while ducking the million-dollar question on who will be the next Uttar Pradesh chief minister, said the party is now focusing on the upcoming elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. Amit Shah said the BJP's definition of a Congress-mukt India is an India free of corruption and dynasty politics.

WATCH VIDEO | India Today Conclave 2017: Full video of BJP President Amit Shah's keynote address

--- ENDS ---
Despite an American extradition request, Jordan is unwilling to hand over Hamas female terrorist Ahlam al-Tamimi who drove a vehicle to transport the Sbarro suicide bomber in 2001.

The heinous terrorist was sentenced to 16 life sentences, one for each person murdered in the attack, however, like over 1,000 other terrorists, she was released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal.

Leading to the request was the FBI decision to place al-Tamimi on the most wanted list as among the dead were American citizens.

According to the Israel Radio report, Hamas is defending her, calling on Jordan not to honor the extradition based on its interpretation of the extradition, that the Americans have no right to extradite her.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri is angry with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu because he was not invited to China despite the fact his ministry is supposed to sign a cooperation agreement with China.

According to the Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) report, Deri was surprised to learn other cabinet ministers were invited to join, including Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, Environmental Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin and Health Minister Yaakov Litzman.

Deri was already sending messages to party colleagues just how to retaliate when the cabinet secretary became aware of what was taken place, sending Deri and invitation to join the delegation. Deri declined.

Galei Tzahal quoted a Shas source saying It is unacceptable that Netanyahu shows no loyalty to those most loyal to him in the coalition. It is the prime ministers tendency to crush those closest to him and Shas is not be willing to absorb this disregard.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A defendants murder conviction in a retrial over the disappearance and death of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 should be thrown out because the new jury knew members of the first jury were sitting in court with the victims family, his attorneys said Wednesday.

Alice Fontier said in court papers that her client Pedro Hernandez could not have gotten a fair trial because the jury was unfairly influenced by how close former jurors were to the Patz family. Members of the first jury who voted to convict Hernandez in 2015, a case that ended in a mistrial on an 11-1 vote, attended the second trial and often sat with Stan Patz in court. They were sitting with the family when the verdict was read Feb. 14.

In this highly emotional case, the presence of the prior jurors and their close and obvious relationship with the Patz family conveyed the message that they believed in Mr. Hernandezs guilt, Fontier wrote. This information deprived Mr. Hernandez of a fair trial.

Hernandez confessed several years ago to choking Etan, but his lawyers had said that admission was the false imagining of a troubled man whose mind blurred the boundary between reality and illusion.

The Manhattan district attorneys office response is due March 22, and prosecutors said they had no comment until then.

Fontier said the defense team uncovered the information after news reports that a juror in the second trial, Michael Castellon, said he had been told by court officers that the first jury was sitting with the family. Castellon didnt immediately respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.

A defense investigator, Joe OBrien, reached an alternate who said he knew about the first jury well before deliberations but wasnt told by court officers.

He could not recall if it was a general announcement to the jury or if it was just a comment passed between the two of them, but he assured me that other jurors knew this as well, according to OBriens affidavit filed with the motion. The investigator didnt reach anyone who deliberated in the case.

The second jury deliberated over nine days before finding Hernandez, 56, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, guilty of murder and kidnapping. The first jury deliberated for 18 days before deadlocking after a single juror wouldnt convict. The sentencing has been postponed.

Etans disappearance captivated the nation. He was one of the first children to be pictured on milk cartons after he vanished May 25, 1979, on his way to school. His case shaped both parenting and law enforcement in the United States.

(AP)
A bill authorizing Britain to start its exit from the European Union received royal assent and became law Thursday, empowering Prime Minister Theresa May to begin divorce proceedings from the bloc.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act has received the assent of Queen Elizabeth II.

The bill was passed by Parliament on Monday but needed royal assent to become a law. Such assent is a formality  no monarch has refused to sign a bill for more than 300 years.

May is now free to invoke Article 50 of the EUs key treaty, triggering two years of exit negotiations.

She says she will do that by March 31, calling it a decisive moment for Britain. The prime ministers office has indicated notification will come in the last week of the month.

Under the terms of the EU treaty, Britain will no longer be a member of the bloc two years after May issues the notification. The British government hopes to seal a new free-trade deal between the U.K. and the bloc in that time.

But EU negotiators warn it could take two years just to settle the divorce terms; agreeing on a new relationship for the U.K. and the EU could take years longer.

(AP)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will depart for China on Sunday, 21 Adar, on an official state visit.

The visit follows an invitation by Chinese President Xi Jinping and will mark 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Chinese President will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and host him for an official dinner. The Prime Minister will also meet with his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang.

Government officials explain that the visit will stress the continued strengthening of economic cooperation with the Chinese government: Increased Israeli exports to China, attracting Chinese investments in Israel, and increased industrial and research cooperation between Chinese and Israeli companies.

A series of economic agreements that will assist Israeli industry by continuing to increase the number of countries active in, and exporting to, China will be signed during the visit.

PM Netanyahu will meet with the leaders of Chinas largest corporations, each one with turnovers of tens of billions of dollars. The prime minister will be accompanied by a senior business delegation of dozens of Israeli businesspeople from the various industries and companies active in China, as well as from companies interested in penetrating the Chinese market. Delegation members will attend a business forum with over 500 invited guests, to be chaired by the Prime Minister.

Mr. Netanyahu will also attend the third joint Israel-China innovation conference. The first such conference was held in China in 2015; the second was held last year in Israel with the attendance of a Chinese Deputy Prime Minister.

Israel and China will sign cooperation agreements in aviation, education, bringing Chinese construction workers to Israel, science, health, environmental protection and a multi-year plan for a task force on strengthening bilateral economic ties.

Prime Minister Netanyahu will be accompanied by Environmental Minister Zeev Elkin, Economy & Industry Minister Eli Cohen, Science Minister Ofir Akunis, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman and Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu commented, We will continue the talks on establishing a free trade agreement between China and Israel and we will hold the third joint Israel-China innovation conference. Of course, we are continuing to develop new markets and to open new markets for the Israeli economy. I expect all ministers to cooperate on this, and they are doing so.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The House Budget Committee voted narrowly Thursday to advance the troubled Republican health care bill, with defections by three GOP conservatives underscoring the obstacles party leaders face in maneuvering to avoid a stinging setback to their showpiece legislation.

The vote was 19-17, with Democrats unanimously voting no. Had one more Republican joined them, the measure would have failed in what would have been a damaging, embarrassing  but not fatal  blow to the measure. The legislation has the backing of President Donald Trump, who one lawmaker said called Republicans on the panel to press them to push the bill forward.

The committee was debating a slew of non-binding proposals suggesting changes in the measure, with some expected from Republicans. Those may provide clues about the types of changes GOP leaders believe the legislation will need for it to win House approval, which top Republicans hope will occur next week.

The White House and Republican leaders are already talking to rank-and-file Republicans about revising the bill to nail down support.

Before the vote, panel Chairwoman Diane Black, R-Tenn., appealed to fellow Republicans to back the legislation, calling it the conservative health care vision weve been talking about for years. The measure would strike down much of former President Barack Obamas 2010 overhaul and reduce the federal role, including financing, for health care consumers.

Dont cut off discussion. Stay with this effort, she said, calling the measure a good first step.

Three members of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus  Reps. Dave Brat of Virginia, Gary Palmer of Alabama and Mark Sanford of South Carolina  opposed the measure.

Democrats said the legislation would strip coverage from millions who gained it under Obamas 2010 overhaul and bestow a massive gift on the wealthy by repealing many of that laws tax increases.

This is Robin Hood in reverse, but far worse, said the panels top Democrat, Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky. Citing lawmakers town hall meetings that have been jammed with activists opposing the GOP bill, he said, This bill is not what the American people want.

Republicans easily swatted down Democratic proposals to allow amendments in the full House that they hoped would embarrass Republicans, such as deleting provisions that would reduce coverage or cut Medicaid.

The committee vote came four days after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected the legislation would boot 24 million people from health coverage. That includes 14 million whod lost it next year  a scary scenario for lawmakers facing re-election next year, and overt GOP opposition has grown since that report was released.

The bill would eliminate the tax penalty that pressures people to buy coverage and the federal subsidies that let millions afford it, replacing them with tax credits that are bigger for older people. It would cut Medicaid, repeal the laws tax increases on higher earning Americans and require 30 percent higher premiums for consumers who let coverage lapse.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reiterated Thursday that negotiations are ongoing to produce a bill that can actually pass the House. He insisted that Trump was closely involved in that process, disputing reports of palace intrigue or any schism between himself and the president.

I am excited about the fact that we have a president who likes closing deals, Ryan said.

At a late rally in Nashville Wednesday, Trump said: Were going to arbitrate, were all going to get together, were going to get something done.

But insurgents still abound.

Conservatives want to end Obamas expansion of Medicaid to 11 million additional low-income people next year, not 2020 as the bill proposes. They say a GOP proposed tax credit to help people pay medical costs is too generous, and they want to terminate all of Obamas insurance requirements, including mandatory coverage of specified services like drug counseling.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., head of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, continued pushing for changes. He claimed at least 21 members of his group would oppose the measure as written; the bill would fail if 22 Republicans join all Democrats in opposing it.

But underscoring the push-pull problem GOP leaders face in winning votes, moderates feel the tax credits are too stingy, especially for low earners and older people. They oppose accelerating the phase-out of the Medicaid expansion and are unhappy with long-term cuts the measure would inflict on the entire program.

(AP)
The following is via Breaking911.com:

A suspect is in custody after an explosive device was found in a suitcase at the Port Authority Bus Terminal Wednesday evening.

Port Authority Police were alerted to the unattended suitcase in the lobby of the deli around 5 p.m. local time. A bomb sniffing dog was brought in and police eventually opened the bag, discovering a knife, bolt cutters, screw drivers and an improvised explosive device, WNBC reported.

After reviewing surveillance video, officers tracked down 38-year-old Arsenio Mason, who told police he was looking for the suitcase.

Mason reportedly said he was headed to Seattle. Police did not say why the suspect was carrying the materials.

He was subsequently booked on charges of criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, possession of burglary tools and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

(Source: Breaking911.com)
[PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

Councilman David G. Greenfield got a first-hand look at the new OHEL headuarters on Avenue M in Midwood. Greenfield has secured over $4 million in funding over the last few years for this important project. OHEL CEO David Mandel led him on a tour of the construction site that will house all of Ohels services in one location to be names the Ohel Jaffa Family Campus.

OHEL is the premier social service organization in our community and is recognized for its expertise throughout New York, Greenfield said. I am proud to have funded such a significant portion of Ohels brand new campus so that Ohel can serve an even greater number of people with even more services.

OHEL has been serving Brooklyns communities with individual and family support since 1969. Specific services OHEL offers include preventive care, foster care, adolescent residential programs, domestic violence counseling, substance abuse and addiction programs, sexual abuse programs, school-based mental health services, a Helpline, and numerous other programs to support communities that are too often neglected.

Thanks in part to the funding Councilman Greenfield has secured together with the NYC Council, OHEL is building a brand-new facility in Flatbush that will expand its ability to support New Yorks most vulnerable communities. The new Jaffa Family Campus features improved floor plans that are maximized for efficiency and privacy, features Greenfield was able to personally inspect while touring the site.

Greenfield has worked closely with OHEL and Community Board 14 to ensure that construction of the site proceeds on schedule so that the organization can bring its outstanding services to Flatbush and the surrounding area. He was joined on the tour by Community Board 14 member Kalman Yeger who has been assisting Greenfield through his work on the local Community Board.

I will always fight for outstanding community organizations like OHEL, Greenfield said. The work they do to support so many in our community deserves all the support we can give.

The facility is expected to be complete by the end of this summer.





(YWN Headquarters  NYC)


The top two senators on the intelligence committee say they have seen no indication that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by the U.S. government before or after the 2016 election.

President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping him and asked congressional committees investigating Russias interference in the election to pursue that as well.

Republican Sen. Richard Burr and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner issued a joint one-sentence statement and did not elaborate. The two senators are leading one of three congressional investigations into Russia and the presidential election. The probes include looking into Trump associates contacts with the Kremlin.

In response to Trumps claims, the Justice Department is doing its own review of whether Trump or any of his associates were the subject of surveillance.

(AP)
The White House announced nominees for six senior Pentagon jobs on Thursday, including a longtime Boeing Co. executive for deputy secretary of defense, in its most significant step toward surrounding Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with Trump administration picks.

President Donald Trump has struggled to fill top Defense Department positions. Mattis is the only administration nominee to be confirmed at the Pentagon. Until Thursday, the administration had only announced four other nominees; two of those later withdrew. Trumps pick for deputy secretary is Patrick M. Shanahan.

The latest manifestation of Mattis struggle came earlier this week when he abandoned an effort to get White House approval for his choice of policy chief, Anne W. Patterson, a career diplomat who was opposed by some Senate Republicans. The White Houses nominees list Thursday didnt include a new policy chief, but it did name a deputy policy chief.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said Mattis recommended all six of the nominees to the White House. Each requires Senate confirmation.

As deputy secretary of defense, Shanahan would succeed Robert Work, a former Marine and Obama administration holdover. Work is the only senior Pentagon official from the prior administration still in place, although others have been performing the duties of senior officials in the absence of Trump nominees.

Shanahan moved up through the management ranks at Boeing over a career that began in 1986. The Puget Sound Business Journal called him a Boeing fix-it man in a March 2016 report on Shanahans promotion to his current position. He oversees the companys global supply chain strategies and use of advanced manufacturing technologies. Shanahan was a central to getting the 787 Dreamliner on track after production problems in the programs early years, the report said.

Boeings website says Shanahan is a member of the companys executive council, reporting directly to the chairman and president, Dennis Mullenburg. Shanahan previously was senior vice president of airplane programs from 2008 to 2016 and vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. A Washington state native, Shanahan is currently chairman of the University of Washingtons Board of Regents. He holds a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington and two advanced degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

David Joel Trachtenberg, nominated for the No. 2 policy job, is president of Shortwave Consulting, a national security consulting firm. He has held several Pentagon positions, including principal deputy assistant secretary for international security policy responsible for NATO, Europe, Russia and Eurasia issues. He penned a December 2015 commentary saying the Obama administration failed to adapt to a changing reality with Russia following its annexation of Crimea, incursions into eastern Ukraine, and more aggressive military exercises.

Despite Moscows clear shift toward a more threatening nuclear posture, U.S. policy remains stuck in the mud of unrealistic and outdated assumptions, Trachtenberg wrote.

Elissa Slotkin, who was acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs for the final two years of the Obama administration, said Trachtenberg was a member of Trumps Pentagon transition team and was viewed as holding mainstream Republic views on national security issues.

We were happy to have him on the transition team because he reflected an experienced foreign policy perspective, in contrast to President Trump, she said in a telephone interview.

The White House said it also intends to nominate:

David L. Norquist, a partner with accounting firm Kearney and Co., as budget chief.

Elaine McCusker, currently director of resources and analysis at U.S. Central Command headquarters at McDill Air Force Base in Florida, as deputy budget chief. Mattis knows her from his years as commander of Central Command.

Robert Daigle as director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, which provides the secretary of defense with independent analysis of major acquisition programs. He served in that office during President George W. Bushs administration.

Kenneth P. Rapuano as assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense. He is senior vice president at ANSER Corp., which describes itself as a not-for-profit research institute with emphasis on national security and homeland defense.

(AP)
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Mar 17 (PTI) There were 15 terror attacks on the army last year as the force lost 68 soldiers, the Lok Sabha was today informed.

2016 also recorded 449 instances of ceasefire violation by Pakistan along the Jammu and Kashmir border.

In a written response to a question in Lok Sabha, Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State for Defence, said 10 cases of terror attacks were recorded in 2014, followed by 11 in 2015, 15 in 2016 and three until March 15 this year.

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2015 and 2016 also saw a spike in the number of deaths of army personnel, recording 67 and 68 casualties respectively in terror attacks and along the border. In 2014, 38 army personnel died in terror acts while 13 have lost their lives this year.

Bhamre said, in 2016 the area along the Line of Control, which is under operational control of the army, saw 228 instances of ceasefire violations while the area along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, under the control of the Border Security Force (BSF), recorded 221 instances of ceasefire violations.

This accounts for more than one instance of ceasefire violation everyday.

In 2017, 30 instances of ceasefire violations were recorded along the LoC while six such instances along the international border were recorded until February 6 by the BSF. PTI PR KUN

--- ENDS ---
Three federal judges on Thursday asked Congress not to break up the vast, San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a longtime target of Republicans and a recent foil to President Donald Trump.

The 9th Circuit in February refused to immediately reinstate Trumps ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, prompting the administration to release a new, narrower ban. On Wednesday, Trump renewed his criticism of the court, saying at a Nashville, Tennessee, event that people are screaming to break up the 9th, which encompasses nine Western states.

Take a look at how many times they have been overturned with their terrible decisions, Trump said. Take a look. And this is what we have to live with.

Republicans have floated efforts to split the circuit for decades, arguing that the court has a liberal slant, a high caseload and distances that are too far for judges to travel. The circuit is the largest of the federal appellate courts, representing 20 percent of the U.S. population. It includes California, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

All of the proposals to split it, including the last in 2005, have failed in Congress. Those battles have often pitted lawmakers from California against members of the smaller, more conservative states.

Circuit division would have a devastating effect on the administration of justice in the western United States, said Sidney Thomas, the chief circuit judge for the court. A circuit split would increase delay, reduce access to justice, and waste taxpayer dollars.

Thomas, who is based in Billings, Montana, was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. The other two judges who testified against the split were Pasadena, California-based Judge Alex Kozinski, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, and San Francisco-based Judge Carlos Bea, appointed by former President George W. Bush. None were involved in the hearing on Trumps travel ban.

I think you should take into consideration the views of people on the ground  the litigants, practitioners and judges in the circuit, Bea said. The overwhelming majority of the people directly involved is against a split of the Circuit.

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Californian and a conservative, led the Judiciary subcommittee hearing to examine ideas for restructuring the court.

We are all trying to figure out whether to split the court for reasons that should not be ideological, he said.

But some of his Republican colleagues were more partisan, confronting the judges about their courts decision on Trumps ban and other immigration decisions.

There are a lot of us who are outraged, said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

The circuit has 29 judges, many more than the 5th, which is the next largest circuit with 17 judges. It was created in 1891 when the American West was much less populated.

The hearing did not focus on specific bill, but there are at least four bills that would create a split. Lawmakers have been hoping for some momentum since the courts high-profile decision on Trumps ban.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, has introduced one of the bills. His would carve out Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and Montana and create a new so-called mountain circuit.

I have no doubt that the 9th Circuit works well for its judges, Flake said in a statement submitted for the hearing. My concern is whether or not it works well for the people of Arizona. It does not.

Democrats have opposed the split. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was a leading opponent in the 2005 push, which she said was politically motivated. She has suggested adding judges to the court instead.

At the hearing, New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler said he believes Republican attempts to break up the circuit are dangerous.

Like clockwork, we see proposals to split up the 9th Circuit whenever it delivers a controversial decision with which conservatives disagree, the Democrat said.

(AP)
The IDF is becoming an increasingly difficult place for religious soldiers as there is a growing effort to have women serve in all units, including combat units RL. This new reality makes it significantly more difficult for shomer Shabbos soldiers are women in a combat setting poses an entirely set of halachic problems.

According to a post on the Facebook page of the Chotem organization, addressing mixed gender units serving in the Bardlas Base, there is a disgusting norm that has evolved. According to some of the female soldiers, there is not even the most minimum measure taken to protect their modesty.

It is pointed out the base is simply not prepared to take in so many females, and this results in sharing bathrooms, with Chotem confirming testimony from male soldiers, who have seen women entering their bathroom on numerous occasions.

The Facebook post adds the commanders always come while the females are dressing. It is pointed out this appears to be intentional as it occurs frequently. The posts speaks of other events not suited for printing, but RL the situation on the mixed base is what one would expect in modern society.

Chotem laments this is exactly what it warned would occur and how the IDF is becoming unsuited for religious soldiers as a result of the mixed units.

In a directly-related matter, Rosh Yeshivat Beit El Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed Shlita has sent a letter to MKs citing the problems and the fact that mixed gender units will only serve to weaken the IDF rather than strengthen it. The rav questions Who gave the IDF chief the authority to tamper with the basic values of most of the soldiers, who are religious?

Rav Melamed adds under the banner of equality, the IDF Chief is leading a process that is contrary to Torat HaTzava (IDF)  forcing a process that is unwanted by most soldiers.

Rabbi Melamed calls on MKs to work with religious MKs towards eliminating the new mixed gender policies and to permit each and every soldier to live according to his hashkafa.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday night the eve of 16 Adar met in Jerusalem for over five hours with Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trumps Special Representative for International Negotiations.

They reaffirmed the joint commitment of both Israel and the United States to advance a genuine and lasting peace between Israel and the PA (Palestinian Authority) that strengthens the security of Israel and enhances stability in the region.

The Prime Minister told Mr. Greenblatt that he believes that under President Trumps leadership, it is possible to advance peace between Israel and all its neighbors, including the Palestinians, and he looks forward to working closely with President Trump to achieve that goal.

Mr. Greenblatt reaffirmed President Trumps commitment to Israels security and to the effort to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace through direct negotiations.

The Prime Minister and Mr. Greenblatt continued discussions relating to settlement construction in the hope of working out an approach that is consistent with the goal of advancing peace and security.

Mr. Greenblatt stressed how important enabling the growth of the Palestinian economy and improving the quality of life for Palestinians are to President Trump.

The Prime Minister assured Mr. Greenblatt that he was fully committed to broadening prosperity for Palestinians and sees it as a means of bolstering the prospects for peace.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Kobi Gideon, GPO)
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday, 8 Adar, demanded the resignation of Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who together with Rabbi Eli Sadan heads the Bnei David IDF prepatory yeshiva.

Levinstein spoke out against todays IDF policy, the placement of women in combat units. The rabbi spoke out harshly, stating women belong in Sheirut Leumi and not the military.

Lieberman begins his letter, As one who has great respect and admiration for rabbonim, I was very disappointed with the blunt and dismissive style of one viewed as a respected rabbiin my humble opinion, this testifies on the one hand to the desire to provoke and agitate and on the other, the loss of discretion  I do not know which is the worse of the two.

He then speaks of those women who serve and those who sacrificed their lives. Lieberman acknowledges the contribution made to the IDF by Bnei David, but feels your values cannot serve as the basis for educating the yeshivas talmidim.

Lieberman explains Since this is a recurring pattern, it is clear you stand behind these statements, referring to last summer when Rabbi Levinstein spoke out against the IDF and the toeiva community.

Lieberman calls on Rabbi Levinstein to resign his post, one he has held together with Rabbi Sadan for close to 30 years, since its establishment. The senior minister explains that failure to do so would result in him using his authority to halt Defense Ministry recognition of Bnei David as a prepatory yeshiva.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
With Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman demanding Rabbi Yigal Levinstein step down from his co-leadership of Yeshivat Bnei David, the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Eli Sadan speaks out, stating he will not cooperate with a dictatorship.

Rav Sadan founded the yeshiva located in Yishuv Eli with Rabbi Levinstein almost three decades ago. Together, they have molded many of the IDF finest officers, infusing a spirit of patriotism and that serving in the IDF is an unparalleled mitzvah.

Sadan, an Israel Prize recipient, does not appear overly concerned following Liebermans threat. He already told Defense Ministry representatives contrary to Liebermans demands, Rav Levinstein will remain in the yeshiva at his side.

Walla News quotes portions of the dialogue that took place during that meeting. Rav Sadan is quoted clarifying, that he has absolutely no intention of carrying out the terms of the Defense Ministers ultimatum, stating I will not cooperate with a dictatorship.

The meeting was called in order to permit the Defense Ministry officials understand the yeshiva and determine if Rabbi Levinstein plans to comply with the ultimatum, which Rav Sadan rejected outright. Walla adds that This is a spin, explaining the Defense Ministrys ability to economically harm the yeshiva is minimal at best.

In addition, Rav Sadan is among liberal dati leumi rabbonim who signed a declaration opposing religious soldiers serving in mixed unit. Also signed to that proclamation if the head of Rabbanei Tzohar, Rabbi David Stav.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Mar 17 (PTI) Around Rs one crore in demonetised currencies were seized from a finance companys office in suburban Mulund, the police said today.

Five persons, including two employees of the financial company, were arrested in this regard, a senior officer said.

The incident came close on the heels of the seizure of Rs 2 crore in the scrapped notes from a car in suburban Bandra on Wednesday.

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"The banned notes were kept at the companys office located at Parmeshwari Plaza in Mulund, for exchanging them with new currencies last night," the DCP (Zone VII), Sachin Patil told reporters at a press conference.

He said the seized banknotes comprised 9964 pieces in denomination of Rs 500 and 4998 pieces in denomination of Rs 1000.

The officer said two of the five accused are employees of the financial company.

All the five accused were present in the office when the police seized the banknotes.

"None of them could explain about the possession of the bank notes and could provide details, following which they were arrested," Patil said.

They are identified as Haresh Desh Mehre, Vipul Jain, Malai Doshi, Kung Patel and Krishna Nadar.

Another senior official said it seems the accused were at the office for some kind of business dealing.

"The exact nature of their involvement is being probed. The source of money and their intended destination is also being investigated," he said.

On Wednesday night, police had seized Rs 2 crore in the scrapped notes from a car in suburban Bandra and arrested four persons, who turned out to be the employees of a financial company in suburban Andheri. PTI AVI NSK RYS

--- ENDS ---
No thanks: Marmite maker Unilever rejected Kraft's 115bn bid

American investors were less than impressed with the ruthless speed that Paul Polman and Unilever dispatched Kraft Heinz when they came a-calling with a 115billion bid last month.

A survey by research house Bernstein reported by the FT found that some 53 per cent of shareholders felt it was all a matter of money, and had the premium offered by Kraft Heinz been 40 per cent above Unilever's share price, instead of a mere 19 per cent, it should have been all systems go.

Fortunately, 60 per cent of British investors felt differently.

The truth is that too many fund managers are obsessed with short-term performance  for reasons of remuneration and survival  and find it harder to focus on the longer-term or the broader economic and public interest.

As a guest at a Jupiter investment evening earlier this week, I was struck by the mocking tone of a fund management guru when he referred to the profits and sales forecasts made by AstraZeneca at the time of Pfizer's bid as 'being in la-la land'.

Sure, they may have been a shade upbeat, but that is not surprising. We have great companies such as Rolls-Royce which deliver four or five profit warnings in short order.

Predictions of a post-referendum disaster, like so many forecasts, proved wrong.

What is more important about AstraZeneca is the concentration of research and development in Cambridge, advances it is making in immunology treatments for cancer (potential blockbusters) and the enormous strides it is making in emerging markets such as China where it is number two in pharmaceuticals.

All of which is more valuable than an earnings sugar-rush.

Which brings us to Unilever, a company with heritage in the UK and a research, development and testing budget of 250millions a year.

This would have never survived an onslaught by Brazilian cost-cutting billionaires. Similarly, Unilever's art deco headquarters in Blackfriars, and all the vital business services provided to it, would have been endangered, and 88,000 UK pensioners placed at risk.

Polman, rightly, is promising investors a quickie business review. But he is ready to resist short-term demands to do the splits and sell great brands such as Marmite.

Instead, the goal is to speed up the modernisation programme Connected 4 Growth launched last year, bringing forward projected savings of 1billion (860billion).

Big mergers and takeovers are off the agenda, but high margin, innovative bolt-on deals such as razor-blade firm Dollar Shave Club are part of the plan.

The idea is to use branding skills and e-commerce to roll out products to new audiences, particularly in emerging markets such as India where Unilever is well established. Investors, no doubt, will complain that this is not enough.

The group will almost certainly seek to recycle some free cash flows to shareholders in the shape of buybacks and/or special dividends.

Rightly it is standing firm for Britain and refuses to forget its roots. Hopefully, the get-rich-quick brigade will be repulsed.

Double bubble

Quite a day for comebacks. 'Safari' Bob Diamond is back in the beating heart of the City with his bid for that fading but venerated old-line stockbroker, Panmure Gordon, home to David Cameron's forebears.

When Diamond first arrived at BZW it too was a diminished Square Mile brand beaten into submission by the arrival of the US investment banks Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs et al.

Within a few short years, Barclays Capital rose from the embers to become the only UK-owned investment bank of note.

Bob's closeness to Qatar, his partners in the Panmure Gordon venture, was revealed in 2008 when he reeled in the Gulf state for a rescue fundraising which kept HM Treasury at bay.

As for the other returnee, it is former chancellor George Osborne masquerading as a newspaper editor. Wonder what compliance mavens at BlackRock think of that?

Greek gods

Great opportunity for wannabe policymakers seeking trips to some of the most beautiful islands in the world, healthy Mediterranean food and drinkable wine.

The Council of Economic Advisers in Greece seeks five economists with postgraduate qualifications to restore an economy that has shed 45 per cent of its GDP and represent the country at the IMF and the eurozone.

My application is already in the post.
Safe bet? Seeing Machines makes technology that detects when drivers are tired

WHO IS IT?

Seeing Machines makes technology that detects when drivers are tired or distracted. Its technology is used in lorry fleets as well as the aviation, rail and mining industries. It's about improving safety as apparently one in six fatal crashes involves a drowsy driver.

WHAT'S THE LATEST?

Seeing Machines technology uses camera-based systems which use algorithms to detect the symptoms of fatigue and alert the driver.

It tracks head and face movements to measure how often drivers are blinking and where they are looking.

The firm is now trying to move from generating income from one-off hardware sales to a more reliable subscription-based revenue stream.

WHO BACKS IT?

Major investors include big-fund management firms Fidelity, which has a 3.2 per cent stake, and Miton Asset Management, which holds 3.75 per cent.

The largest shareholder is Hunter Hall Investment Management, an Australian ethical investment firm, which has a 17.5 per cent stake in the business.

WHY YOU SHOULD INVEST

It has secured a follow-on order from a major US car maker which will see its monitoring system used in a semi-autonomous vehicle later this year.

Other recent milestones include a royalty arrangement with US equipment maker Caterpillar and a deal with US fresh goods distributors Shamrock Foods to fit 750 heavy goods vehicles with its systems.

AND WHY YOU SHOULDN'T

Shares plunged this week as the firm reported a loss of 8.8million in the six months to December 31, down from a profit of 7million the year before.

Seeing Machines said the figures reflected investment in its technology and a one-off licence fee with Caterpillar.

It has also reduced full-year revenue expectations in its fleet business and said there had been slower than anticipated growth from Caterpillar.

Price: 3.5p
'We have come a long way from the beginning of our movement six years ago,' Arvind Kejriwal told party workers in a letter written in the wake up the party's poor showing in the Punjab and Goa Assembly polls.

By Pankaj Jain: Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal has written a letter to party workers, demoralised after the AAP's recent loses in Punjab and Goa Assembly elections. The party was especially betting big on Punjab, which sent four AAP leaders to the Lok Sabha in the 2014 general election.

The party won 20 constituencies in Punjab, narrowly beating the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bhartiya Janata Party combine's 18 seats to emerge as the principal opposition in the state. In Goa, on the other hand, AAP failed to open its tally, losing in all the constituencies the party contested in.

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Delhi chief minister Kejriwal's morale-boosting letter, sent to all APP volunteers, comes just ahead of Delhi municipal polls, scheduled for April 22.

TEN BIG TAKEAWAYS FROM THE LETTER "Ever since Punjab and Goa results were announced, supporters have been calling to ask what next for us and the party. To understand what next, we need to recall where we started and where we have reached today." "We have come a long way from the beginning of our movement six years ago. Millions of you took to the street in protest (against corruption)." "All we wanted was a corruption-free India and (a) strong anti-corruption law. They (political parties) mocked us and said fight and win the election to pass a Janlokpal bill." "Thousand of you gave your tann, mann and dhann (heart and soul) that carried us through (the) rocky ride from the 28/70 (seats) in 2013 (Delhi polls) to 67/70 (seats) in 2015 Delhi election." "Although we didn't get the expected results in Punjab, we are now the principal opposition party. Also having got 6 per cent vote share in Goa, we (are) just 1 state away from becoming a national party." "We will need to take time and fully understand the why and how of these results. Before thinking about what next, we need to understand that winning and losing will be part of our political adventure." "The 65-year-old BJP has only 18 per cent seats and ~20 per cent vote share in Karnataka. The 130-year-old Congress has 15 per cent seats and 18 per cent vote share in Maharashtra. They haven't given up and there is no reason for us to give up." "The question we should ask ourselves is whether the current political system is fine? Have rampant corruption and crony capitalism disappeared?" "Is there justice for all? Are common people getting what they deserve? If the answer is 'No' we have to continue and strengthen our political resolution." "You believed in us when we took our first baby step, had no experience in contesting election, and didn't know whether we could win even a single seat. Keep the faith, keep up the fight, Hum Honge Kaamyaab!"

Arvind Kejriwal wrote to AAP workers following the party's losses in Goa and Punjab

ALSO READ | Congress to use Punjab Assembly elections results against AAP in MCD poll campaigns

ALSO READ | Assembly Election Results 2017: What lies next for Kerjiwal after AAP falls short of expectations

ALSO WATCH | Video of AAP leaders celebrating Punjab victory even before results are announced, goes viral

--- ENDS ---
Oil stocks took a knock this week as the price of the black stuff slipped to its lowest level since November.

Despite an agreement to cut production by 1.2m barrels a day by the oil cartel Opec being widely adhered to, supply is still outpacing demand.

Now some experts are concerned the deal could be derailed by a surge in the US, where a 55 per cent year-on-year jump in active rigs has driven production levels to record highs.

And as US production increases and Opec's falls, the cartel is losing market share.

Glut: A pumpjack sits on the outskirts of Midland, Texas. In the US, a 55% year-on-year jump in active rigs has driven production levels to record highs

Some are fearful this does not provide much incentive for the group  made up of major oil-producing nations  to maintain a production cut.

And if Opec abandons the strategy, the glut of oil on the market could see the price  currently about $50 a barrel  plunge once more.

Since 2008 it fell from $147 a barrel to $26 last year as Opec flooded the market to stave off competition from the shale industry.

But the move hammered profits, and in November the cartel agreed to cut production in a bid to shore up the price. But its efforts may be for nothing.

Richard Hulf, manager of the Artemis Global Energy fund, says: 'What we are seeing at the moment is volatility because there is more supply than people expected. But I think that will soon start to ease off.'

Matthew Jennings, investment director of the Fidelity Specialist Situations fund, believes that despite the recent price falls, oil could reach $65 a barrel in the coming months.

This is because it is in Opec's best interest to push oil prices higher. Saudi Arabia, for example, needs $75 a barrel to maintain profitability.

Any price rises are good news for the FTSE giants. It means the dividends of BP and Shell, for example, will look more secure.

Currently the pair yield 6.8 per cent and 7.1 per cent respectively, but there are worries that these payouts could be cut if the oil price plummets.

Some 6.7 per cent of Jennings's 3billion fund is invested in Shell.

He says: 'Shell is integrating assets it has acquired at the moment, which means it doesn't have to spend money investing in new exploration to grow.'

But Hulf is still cautious. He is focusing on firms that aren't solely reliant on oil. He says: 'Oil will be important until about 2030, but we will start to see gas replacing it as a major fuel.

'We like companies that have both oil and gas fields and can grow at a low cost.'

But even those firms which have a broader range of assets can be hit by a change in investor sentiment.

If fears mount that the oil price could revert then share prices can fall hard. This makes picking individual stocks to invest in very risky.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, says: 'A large proportion of the FTSE 100 is made up of oil and gas firms, so a relatively low-risk way to get exposure to the sector is simply to buy a tracker fund instead.'

The BlackRock UK 100 Equity Tracker has around 11.7 per cent of its portfolio in the energy sector and charges just 0.06 per cent a year.

Another option for investors is an equity income fund. These invest in blue-chip companies that pay a decent dividend, which means many hold oil giants.

The Schroder UK Alpha Income Fund has 11 per cent of its cash in BP and Shell, which has returned 14.7 per cent over the past year.

The two feature in the top holdings of the Royal London UK Equity Income Fund too. It has returned 19.9 per cent over the past year.
Swoop: Ex Barclays boss Bob Diamond has struck a deal to buy Panmure Gordon

Shares in Panmure Gordon jumped more than 80 per cent after former Barclays boss Bob Diamond struck a deal to buy the historic City stockbroker.

The AIM-listed firm, which dates back to 1876 and has close links to David Cameron's family, is being snapped up by Diamond's investment vehicle Atlas Merchant Capital and the Qatari royal family.

Diamond and his Qatari partners QInvest, which already own 43 per cent of Panmure, have agreed to pay 100p a share for the rest of the business  valuing the company at 15.5million.

The deal has been driven by Matt Hansen, Diamond's top executive in London and a former executive at vulture fund Cerberus.

Panmure shares hit a high of over 108p after the bid was announced before closing up 64 per cent, or 38.5p, at 98p.

The deal casts doubt over the future of the 98 staff at its headquarters in London although sources said the plan was to invest and expand the business.

Panmure chief executive Patric Johnson said it was the 'right time' to take the company private.
Computer software company Cerillion climbed as it announced a contract win.

One year on from its stock market debut, shares have nearly doubled from their placing price of 76p.

The firm, which provides software to telecoms companies, won a tender with a European operator, initially worth 2.1million.

Cerillion will supply customer relationship management and billing software and provide an ongoing managed service to operate it. Shares gained 1.7 per cent, or 2.5p, to 147p.

Chip shape: One year on from its stock market debut, shares in computer software company Cerillion have nearly doubled from their placing price of 76p

Tullow Oil tumbled after it revealed plans for a rights issue in a bid to reduce its debt.

A rights issue is when existing shareholders in a firm are offered the chance to buy additional shares at a discounted rate.

The oil and gas group has proposed a 25-for-49 share deal. The issue price of 130p is a discount of more than 45 per cent to where shares closed on Thursday. The company is looking to raise 607million.

Chief executive Aidan Heavey said: 'Tullow and its staff have worked exceptionally hard over the past three years to re-set the business in the face of the toughest conditions I have ever known in the oil sector.'

Since 2014 the firm has reduced staff levels by around 44 per cent. It is targeting savings of 485million by mid-2018. Now it wants to start the process of reducing its debt.

STOCK WATCH - ADGORITHMS Adgorithms is a software firm which uses artificial intelligence-based algorithms to help online advertisers to engage customers. Shares in the business, founded in 2010, soared as it announced it had won a 12-month rolling contract with one of the world's largest nutrition, health and wellness companies. Adgorithms' technology  named Albert  will be used in online ad campaigns across South America. Shares soared 27.2 per cent, or 4.5p, to 21p.

Tullow reported net debt of 3.9billion at the end of 2016. The firm said it would also use the proceeds to invest in drilling opportunities and exploration.

It added that many of its own directors intended to participate in the rights issue. However, shares plummeted 14.8 per cent, or 35p, to 202.3p.

The FTSE 100 set yet another record closing high. The blue-chip index finished up 0.12 per cent, or 9.01 points, at 7424.96.

The highest riser of the day was insurance group Admiral Group after a positive broker rating. Shares leapt 1.9 per cent, or 37p, to 1945p.

Recruitment firm SThree slipped as UK hiring slowed. The business said gross profit in the three months to February 28 had been flat as uncertainty about Brexit continued and conditions remained tough in the banking and finance sectors.

Permanent staff placements fell 14 per cent in the quarter, while contract positions were up 7pc.

SThree said trading in Europe and the US helped performance  around 80 per cent of profit comes from outside the UK.

The group said that with ongoing political and economic uncertainty, it was managing the business prudently, investing in its best-performing teams and keeping a firm control on costs.

Shares dropped 2.7 per cent, or 8.5p, to 307p.

A share placing sent Gym Group spiralling down. Some of the low-cost gym company's largest investors are to cut their stake in a placing of 39.1m shares  some 30.5 per cent of the total issued.

Phoenix Equity Partners and Bridges Ventures, the two largest shareholders in the firm with a 20.4 per cent and 10.1 per cent stake respectively, will have no holding left after the placing which is set to settle on March 22.

Shares were placed to institutional investors at 175p each, raising a total of 68.5million. The pair have been reducing their holding in Gym Group for some time now.

Bridges cut its stake from 13.9 per cent to 10.1 per cent in September. Shares tumbled 7 per cent, or 13p, to 172p.

Stellar Diamonds advanced as it was reported the 13th largest diamond ever found had been discovered in Sierra Leone, where it operates.

The 709-carat sparkler was discovered by a pastor. Shares climbed 2.4 per cent, or 0.12p, to 5.25p.
The question on many Britons' lips is: when will Bank of Dave start opening branches?

A few years have passed since Burnley's most famous television star and entrepreneur Dave Fishwick hit our screens with Bank of Dave.

Since then, even more high street bank branches have closed, savings rates crumbled and small business loans difficult to obtain.

This Sunday, the popular businessman and Bafta winner has his first weekend primetime slot in his new show 'Dave's Guide to Spending Money', which airs at 6pm on Channel Four.

Water baron: Dave can't believe the price people pay for bottled water - so starts his own brand from a tap, Water of the North

He told This is Money: 'We are very excited about getting a weekend prime time slot up against the television giants.' He also reveals below just how close he is to obtaining a full banking licence.

In his new show, a one-off with more coming in the future, he investigates the rising cost of energy bills and questions why people buy expensive bottled water.

In true Dave entrepreneurial spirit, he starts bottling tap water after trying some which costs up to 50 a bottle, shown to him by a 'water sommelier'.

Interestingly, he reveals you can find out what is in your tap water - which he labels 'Council Pop' - as water suppliers legally have to. Simply visit the website of your water supplier and tap in your postcode.

The water that he bottles in the show comes from the tap at his minibus business.

He gets advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi to help with branding  and inspired by near-by beauty spot Pendle Hill, is given the name 'Water of the North'.

Dave shows that a litre of tap water costs around 0.2p  whereas bottled water is nearly 70p a litre on average.

He takes his product around to local upmarket restaurants, and all of them agree that they'd stock the product, before Dave reveals that it is simply tap water, reminiscent of Del Boy with his Peckham Springs in Only Fools and Horses.

Power station: Dave visits Samso, an island in Denmark which is energy self-sufficient and is inspired to start his own mini version

To prove his point about surging energy prices, with most of the Big Six firms hiking prices imminently, Dave sets up a mini power station in a shed after an inspiring visit to Samso, an island in Denmark which is energy self-sufficient.

Poll Would you bank with Dave? Yes No Would you bank with Dave? Yes 1016 votes

No 133 votes Now share your opinion





Although the set up costs are huge, Dave sticks up solar panels, a small wind turbine and an anaerobic digester to then put electricity into the grid, in order to power the Burnley Christmas Light switch on.

He accepts that most people would not be able to start a mini power station, but he points out that if communities get together, it could be a worthwhile exercise.

Furthermore, he discovers that collective switching could be the way forward for those who are struggling with energy bills.

He meets a group of pensioners in Sedgefield, Durham, who have flipped the energy model around and get firms to bid for their business. Some residents are saving nearly 400 a year.

Collectively, the move has saved residents 113,000 a year  and Dave believes that if more communities go arm-in-arm, they could save a packet on energy.
Isa rates are creeping up slowly, but rates are still disappointingly low, so it's important to do your homework to find a top-paying account.

The 5 April is fast approaching and with Isas, it's a case of use it or lose it, so if you haven't made the most of your tax-free allowance yet, you need to act fast.

It's also wise to use this as a prompt to make sure that your existing Isas are on the best possible rate, especially as sneaky banks and building societies let some legacy deals drift down to as low as 0.01 per cent interest.

To help you minimise time spent trawling through savings tables, the team at This is Money has picked our five top fixed rate Isa deals across a range of fixed rate terms.

Savers can currently get between 1.5 and 2.25 per cent for locking their cash away

Rates have improved over the past year, with the leading one-year deal paying 1.5 per cent now, compared to 1.2 per cent this time last year.

Everyone over the age of 18 in the UK is entitled to put away up to 20,000 before the end of the 2017/18 tax year in April and earn interest tax-free.

This doesn't have to be new savings: you can also transfer existing Isa savings into a new account if the provider allows it.

Read more about transferring your Isa balance here.

Is it worth fixing if the base rate could rise soon?

Fixed-rate accounts currently offer higher rates than easy access Isas because they require you to leave your money untouched for the full term of the product.

Make sure you don't need access to the money. If you need income from it you can interest paid to another account in many cases, if not you can roll it up within many fixed rate deals.

Anna Bowes, director of independent savings advice site Savings Champion, says: 'With the possibility of at least one Bank of England base rate rise on the horizon, many savers may question the sense in opening a fixed rate Isa  when they could expect the rate on their variable rate Isa to increase shortly.

But it could make sense to put some of your savings into a fixed rate bond or Isa  perhaps just not all of it. While you wait for your variable rate account to increase, you are missing out on better interest immediately and there is no guarantee or schedule for the base rate to rise. It may happen in the short term, but equally, it may be delayed. Plus there is no guarantee that your variable rate Isa will increase in line with the base rate.'

Here are our top five fixed rate accounts on offer at the moment. You can check our independent savings tables yourself here.

Al Rayan Bank 12 Month Fixed Term Deposit Cash Isa [Full details]

Al Rayan Bank currently offers the best one-year fix at 1.5 per cent. The account is Sharia Compliant, which means it operates under Islamic finance principles offering an expected profit rate instead of guaranteed interest.

The bank monitors the target profit on a daily basis to ensure it is achievable.

It allows transfers in and can be opened online with an initial minimum deposit of just 1,000.

At the end of the term the 1.5 per cent rate would earn you a total 300 in interest on your full Isa limit of 20,000.

Paragon Fixed Rate Cash Isa, 1.45%[Full details]

Paragon has a one-year fix paying slightly less than the best buy at 1.45 per cent, but it offers the option of a both annual and monthly income from your savings.

You must apply online with a minimum balance of just 500 (up to 100,000). The account allows transfers in from an existing Isa.

After a year, 20,000 in the account would earn 291.94 in interest.

Paragon's 2 Year Fixed Rate Cash ISA, 1.67%[Full details]

Challenger, Paragon, currently offers the highest rate at 1.67 per cent over a two-year term.

You can open the account online, with a minimum of 500 and the account allows balances up to a maximum of 100,000 excluding interest.

At the end of the two year period, maxing out this years full Isa limit of 20,000 would earn you a total 678.80 in interest.

Virgin Money 3 Year Fixed Rate cash Isa, 1.85% [Full details]

Virgin Money again takes the top spot when it comes to three-year fixed rate Isas at 2 per cent.

If you want interest paid monthly you earn 1.98 per cent.

The account allows transfers in. It can be opened online with a minimum deposit of 1, again up to 2 million.

Locking away this years full Isa allowance of 20,000 would earn you a total 1,235.67 over three years.

Charter Savings Bank 5 Year Fixed Rate cash Isa, 2.25% [Full details]

Charter Savings Bank also beats the rest of the market when it comes to fixing for five years.

It pays 2.25 per cent - or 2.23 per cent if you opt for monthly interest.

You can transfer in from an existing Isa account. It requires an opening balance of 1,000 and allows a balance of up to 1.5 million.

After five years, a 20,000 balance would earn 2,379.09 interest.
Mufti Mahmud Khan, Director of RAB legal and media wing confirmed that the attack was targetted at the police camp.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: A suicide bomber blew himself up near a temporary camp of police's elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Ashkona Haj camp area of Dhaka on Friday afternoon.

Mufti Mahmud Khan, Director of RAB legal and media wing confirmed that the attack was targetted at the police camp.

"Two of our officials have been injured," he added. However, he did not give details of the incident.

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The attack comes two days after the Islamic State called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh and a day after police's Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagong's Sitakunda where two militants of new JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest.

Earlier, a female member of the same group, affiliated with the IS, blew herself up during a raid in Ashkona on December 24, while another man committed suicide by slitting his throat during a raid at an Azimpur den on September 10.

Also read:

Suicide bombing in Pakistan: Two killed, around 18 injured at Peshawar

Pakistan: Suicide blast rocks Lahore's Mall Road, 16 including 2 senior cops killed

Iraq: At least 40 killed in Damascus bombing targeting Shi'ites

--- ENDS ---
MBABANE  The Law Society of Swaziland has condemned Members of Parliament (mps) for accusing lawyers of charging exorbitant fees.



This follows a submission which the legislators made to the effect that the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs should speed up the process of enacting a law that will regulate lawyers. The submission was raised during the House of Assembly portfolio committee debate of the ministry on Monday.

According to the MPs, lawyers were guilty of charging citizens exorbitant fees whenever they opened cases with them.

The MPs said they were concerned that there were many Swazis who had lost a lot of money after opening cases.

Responding to the accusations, Secretary of the Law Society of Swaziland Bhanyaza Mdluli said it was not fair for MPs to accuse them of charging high fees as they were guided by rules and regulations. He mentioned that there was a Legal Practitioners Act and By-Laws of the Law Society, which provided guidelines on the operations of lawyers including the fees that they were supposed to charge clients.



It is totally wrong to say that lawyers charge high fees because the cases are determined by their seriousness and importance. There is also the experience of that particular lawyer, which is also considered. The accusation makes us wonder if the MPs are just trying to be relevant since elections are drawing closer, said Mdluli.



He made reference to the by-laws, which stipulate considerations for charging fees according to the importance of the matter, quality of work done, experience and seniority of the lawyer.

The legal document further highlights that in order to afford the lawyer reasonable and adequate remuneration for the services rendered, it shall take cognisance of the amount of work done, complexity of the matter or the difficulty of questions raised, skill and labour involved plus the place where the circumstances in which the services were rendered.



Mdluli acknowledged that there had been cases of lawyers who treated their clients unfairly but said it was not fair to then generalise and judge all of them.

Just like there are MPs who commit crimes, there are lawyers who engage in malpractice but you cannot then generalise and make such blatant accusations, so I do not think the MPs know what they are talking about, Mdluli said.

He emphasised that the legal documents that guided lawyers were in Parliament and said MPs were supposed to know them better and further emphasised that there was a fees committee, which dealt with matters where clients could lodge complaints whenever they felt that they were overcharged.
MBABANE - A man is opposing divorce from his wife, claiming that they both cheated and were now at par.



Thembinkosi Nsibande, who is being divorced by Nondumiso Nsibande, informed the court that all he wanted was to reconcile with his wife since he was prepared to learn from the mistakes they both did in their marriage.

After confessing before Magistrate Sifiso Vilakati that he once gave his wife a headache by cheating on her, Thembinkosi said he was praying that he reconciles with his wife, who had allegedly given up on him pending the outcome of the divorce.



He alleged in court that his wife even went to the extent of having a child outside their marriage as well.

Nondumiso had initiated the divorce proceedings against her husband.

The couple had been in and out of court trying to resolve their personal issues before the divorce papers were filed.



I still love my wife despite the fact that she has a child outside marriage. She forgave me after I cheated on her and so I forgive her for cheating on me too. I think she decided to file for divorce because she thinks she cannot reverse the disgrace she was in. Any person is bound to be tempted, he said when asked if he still believed he could be with his wife.

Ushayele mine tinyoni ngako ke ngimtsandza nemaphutsa akhe.



These are allegations that Thembinkosi made in court and they are yet to be verified.

Narrating how he allegedly discovered his wifes new relation with a church member who was close to him, Thembinkosi alleged that this happened after reading his wifes emails.

He alleged that his wife was requesting his love rival to read the messages.



In her emphasis, my wife said to the man please do my love. Those days she no longer had time for me, he alleged.

One day, he alleged that his wife asked him to pick the children up from school as she was rushing to Siphofaneni. He said he picked the children up and returned to his homestead at Hilltop.




Alleged Elangeni serial killer and rapist Vusi Phineas Dlamini. (Pics: File)

MBABANE - Their sin was telling him that they knew him after he had robbed and raped them.



This is the story of the women who were raped and some subsequently killed by alleged Elangeni serial killer Vusi Phineas Dlamini.

In his confession, Dlamini mentioned that he killed most of the women because he feared that they would identify him after he had raped and robbed them.

He further disclosed he would kill the women by throttling and drowning some of them to make sure they were dead.



The accused is facing eight charges of murder and six of rape.

He is alleged to have committed the offences in Ezulwini around 2008 and 2009, when women went missing from their places of residence, only to be discovered dead and sexually abused.

In his confession, which he now claims he recorded under duress, the accused narrated an incident where he cut the hand of one of the women and put it in his bag.



One day I boarded a mini-bus to Mvutshini and when I alighted, I came across a young woman next to Somnjalose High School and I accosted her. I scared her with a bush knife I was carrying, grabbed her and went to the forest and when we were next to a river I throttled her until she died, reads part of Dlaminis confession.

He said he then took out the bush knife and cut her hand off, which he put in his bag.



According to Dlamini, he remained in the forest until it was dark and at about 6pm, he then walked out of the forest to board a mini-bus to Lobamba.The accused said when he reached Lobamba, he boarded a kombi to Manzini where he called the police on their emergency number 999 and asked to be connected to the Lobamba police.

I alighted at Nkhokhokhweni station and I went to a certain homestead, which had been built on a piece of land that was allocated to me. I sat next to the homestead until it was completely dark, narrated the alleged serial killer.

Dlamini disclosed that in the middle of the night, he then made a way through a fence to the homestead.



I went to the toilet, placed the hand on the toilet roof and went out to close the fence I had damaged to gain entry. I then went home and burnt the bag which contained the hand, claimed the accused.




LOBAMBA  Another day another blunder by the Ministry of Education and Training.



The latest one is that the ministry, through the Teaching Service Commission (TSC), has been accused of authorising the posting of unqualified teachers who are referred to as Emabutfo in rural schools.

It is alleged that most of the implicated candidates did not perform well in Form V as they did not obtain the number of credits required for one to even teach at a primary school. The issue was raised by Deputy Speaker Esther Dlamini in the House of Assembly during the portfolio committee debate of the ministry, which took place on Wednesday.



When making her submission, Dlamini said she had been sent by concerned teachers to request the minister, Phineas Magagula, to conduct an investigation after it was discovered that there were more candidates who were undeservedly joining the profession under the tag of Emabutfo. The information I have received is that the teachers are posted to the rural areas where no one can question if they are eligible and that the office of the TSC knows about the issue, Dlamini said in Parliament.



She went on and submitted that the candidates were said to have been seconded at an office in Nkhanini, which she said she did not know about. This needs to be investigated because these people are teaching our children wrong information, she said.

Even before she could finish her submission, some MPs were already standing up one by one to request that she elaborates on what she was taking about. With most of them looking shocked, they asked her to explain what she meant by referring to the unqualified teachers as Emabutfo, so that even the minister would understand and respond to the allegations.



She mentioned that they were referred to as Emabutfo and emphasised that they did not have the qualifications to teach but all were said to have received the letters from Nkhanini to get posting letters from the TSC office.

After her explanation, the MPs demanded an answer from the minister, if he knew anything about the issue. However, since it was not yet the official time for him to respond, he stood up and told MPs that he had many serious issues on his plate and that he was not going to stand up to respond to just one. After all submissions had been made and it was the official time for him to respond, the minister requested the MPs to allow him to go and consult on the allegations.

This newspaper reliably gathered that the issue was raised during a meeting for head teachers and deputies that took place at Sydney Williams Primary in Manzini last week Thursday, where it was said that rural schools were slowly becoming a dumping site.
By India Today Web Desk: Emma Watson and Dan Stevens's much-anticipated film Beauty and the Beast is finally here. The film, which is a live-action remake of Disney's 1991 animated film of the same name, has wowed critics across the globe. Beauty and the Beast revolves around Belle, who is abducted by a fearsome Beast, and her journey from loathing him to falling in love.

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Here's what the reviews say:

Variety: Going into "Beauty and the Beast," the sheer curiosity factor exerts a uniquely intense lure. Is the movie as transporting and witty a romantic fantasy as the animated original? Does it fall crucially short? Or is it in some ways better? The answer, at different points in the film, is yes to all three, but the bottom line is this: The new "Beauty and the Beast" is a touching, eminently watchable, at times slightly awkward experience that justifies its existence yet never totally convinces you it's a movie the world was waiting for.

The New York Times: To quote a lyric from one of the songs in "Beauty and the Beast," "there may be something there that wasn't there before." The familiar elements are all in place, of course. It's "Beauty and the Beast," for goodness' sake: a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme and all that. And there are inspired flights of nostalgia as well, visual evocations of the predigital glory of Busby Berkeley, Ray Harryhausen and other masters of fantastical craft.

But this live-action/digital hybrid, directed by Bill Condon and starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens in the title roles, is more than a flesh-and-blood (and prosthetic fur-and-horns) revival of the 26-year-old cartoon, and more than a dutiful trip back to the pop-culture fairy-tale well. Its classicism feels unforced and fresh. Its romance neither winks nor panders. It looks good, moves gracefully and leaves a clean and invigorating aftertaste. I almost didn't recognize the flavor: I think the name for it is joy.

The Washington Post: This "Beauty and the Beast" isn't predicated on starry-eyed romance or animal attraction, but the solace of mutual loss and understanding, which makes it all the sweeter... Emma Watson delivers an alert, solemn turn as Belle, the French country girl with a penchant for reading and inventing. Although Dan Stevens - best known for his recurring role on "Downton Abbey" - is heard more than seen, he lends the Beast the right ratio of soul to raffish misanthropy.

The Guardian: The whole movie is lit in that fascinatingly artificial honeyglow light, and it runs smoothly on rails - the kind of rails that bring in and out the stage sets for the lucrative Broadway touring version... Emma Watson is a demure, doll-like Belle, almost a figure who has stepped off the top of a music box; she never gives in to extravagant emotion, or retreats into depression, but maintains a kind of even-tempered dignified romantic solitude. She doesn't set the screen ablaze, but that isn't quite the point: she is well cast and it is a good performance from her.

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Empire: Under the stewardship of Bill Condon, a director well-used to intense fans after his experiences making two Twilight films, the team behind this mega-money extravaganza rarely put a foot wrong. Following the blueprint laid out for it by its predecessor faithfully but not slavishly, it hits all the big notes, while adding a few new melodies of its own. There are a few minor fumbles, but you're likely to walk away with a lightened step, a broad smile and at least one song-worm in your ear.

ALSO READ: Emma Watson opens up on her 'topless' photo and its 'feminist' backlash

ALSO READ: American theatre won't screen Beauty and the Beast because it has a gay character

ALSO WATCH: Emma Watson's teen rebel avatar

--- ENDS ---
The BJP legislators, headed by Rawat, would meet Governor Krishan Kant Paul and stake claim to form the new government in the state.

By India Today Web Desk: Trivendra Singh Rawat, who was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party in Uttarakhand on Friday, will take oath as chief minister today.

"Trivendra Singh Rawat was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party. His name was proposed by Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant. The proposal was accepted unanimously", Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters in Dehradun.

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Tomar said that the BJP legislators, headed by Rawat, would meet Governor Krishan Kant Paul and stake claim to form the new government in the state.

RAWAT AN OLD RSS MAN

Rawat, a former state BJP chief, won his traditional Doiwala seat by defeating the Congress's Hira Singh Bisht by over 24,000 votes.

A former pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), Rawat is also considered close to BJP president Amit Shah.

He was in close touch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the latter was a General Secretary of the BJP and in-charge of Uttarakhand.

During the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Rawat was attached with Amit Shah in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP swept all but seven seats. He is also credited with the BJP's win in Jharkhand.

SWEARING-IN AT 3 PM

Uttarakhand BJP chief Ajay Bhatt has said the oath taking event has been fixed for 3 pm on Saturday. All the 57 newly elected legislators of the BJP have been asked to come to the state capital.

The BJP has swept back to power in the hill state after five years, that too with a landslide majority.

Modi and Amit Shah along with select central ministers and senior BJP leaders are likely to be present at the oath taking ceremony.

Security arrangements are being made at the Parade Grounds, keeping in mind the VVIPs who will attend. Besides Rawat, Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant were in the race for the Chief Minister's post.

WATCH VIDEO

--- ENDS ---
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The abrupt firing of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bahara sent a shudder through Queens, where his prosecutions of corrupt politicians seems to have halted the long parade of lawmakers found guilty of illegal dealings.

Bahara, who spent eight years as the head of the most powerful prosecutors office in the country, earned his stripes for rooting out corruption in politics, white collar crime on Wall Street, terrorism and big bank fraud.

Appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 and asked by then President-elect Donald Trump to stay on, Bahara was fired last week after he refused to resign as part of a mass housing cleaning of 45 attorney generals across the country. It was ordered by the Justice Department, which under earlier administrations had followed the same practice.

But Baharas ouster raised disturbing questions since Trump Towers in Manhattan is in his offices jurisdiction, the venue for possible investigations into the president.

Three days before his firing Bahara, known for his independence and bipartisan prosecution of lawmakers, was asked by watchdog groups to investigate foreign money flowing into Trumps companies. Sources say the FBI has been looking into whether Trump entities have received funds or payments from Russia, which is suspected of trying to influence the U.S. presidential election.

Bahara, who has assiduously avoided politics, also may have had a number on his back as the former chief counsel for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, now the Democratic minority leader, who has tangled with Trump on his agenda.

But closer to home in Queens, Bahara left his mark on three high-profile cases that sent state Sen. Hiram Monserrate to jail in 2010 for using nonprofit funds to pay staffers for his failed Senate run. In 2013 he indicted state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Jamaica) and City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Bayside) in a corruption case in which Smith tried to bribe his way onto the GOP line in the race for mayor. Both men are still serving long sentences.

His reach shook the halls in Albany last year, when Bahara won corruption convictions of Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Brooklyn), and Republican Senate majority leader Dean Skelos. Both men have appealed.

Baharas unexpected departure leaves his yearlong investigation into Mayor Bill de Blasios political fund-raising hanging in the balance.

But in this borough his legacy is quite clear: No elected official has faced federal corruption charges since the crusading prosecutor brought down Smith and Halloran back in 2013.
More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the city\s port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city\s prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," he said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen\s Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

The attack drew condemnation from UN agencies and the International Committee for the Red Cross, with the ICRC also demanding an immediate investigation.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

The UNHCR says that Yemen is hosting more than 255,000 Somali refugees.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

It called on all sides in Yemen\s war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

The ICRC\s Eric Christopher Wyss, quoting survivors at the scene, said many people on the boat "were refugees from Somalia or Yemen, fleeing the conflict".

"It was a gruesome and heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded," he said.

The IOM said it believed the boat had been headed for Sudan.

"We strongly condemn this attack and deplore such a tragic loss of life," the ICRC\s director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

"These people were themselves fleeing conflict, in search of safety and a better life. We call on the warring parties to conduct an immediate investigation into what happened."

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting the UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen\s western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN\s humanitarian chief Stephen O\Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

On Friday, a rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of the pro-government forces in a camp east of the capital Sanaa, officials at a hospital in Marib town said.

SOURCE: AFP
According to sources in the police, mobile record of Parmeshwar Ram disclosed that Alok Mehta, cooperative minister and Krishna Nandan Verma, law minister made recommendation calls to him.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: The Special Investigation Team probe into the multi-crore Bihar job scam has confirmed the involvement of two top state ministers, a former RJD MP and two legislators, one each from JD-U and BJP who made calls and sent mobile messages to Parmeshwar Ram, secretary of Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), recommending their candidates for govt jobs.

Parmeshwar Ram has already been arrested.

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According to sources in the police, mobile record of Parmeshwar Ram disclosed that Alok Mehta, cooperative minister and Krishna Nandan Verma, law minister made recommendation calls to him. Apart from the two ministers, former RJD MP Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, BJP MLA from Muzaffarpur, Suresh Sharma and Ram Balak, JD-U MLA from Bibhutipur also called the officials of BSSC for their candidates.

" Why is there so much of fuss over the issue. We make recommendation calls to officials. People come to us with request and we make calls. I am ready for any kind of probe in the matter," said Alok Mehta, cooperative minister.

Soon, after Parmeshwar Ram was arrested, his mobile was seized and sent for forensic examination. The details extracted from the mobile disclosed how ministers, former MP and legislators messaged the names of candidates and their roll numbers to the secretary of BSSC.

Patna SSP, Manu Maharaj, who is also heading the Special Investigation Team, however, claimed that names and mobile numbers of persons who made recommendation calls to officials at BSSC are being verified.

Also read:

BSSC chairman Sudhir Kumar arrested in connection with multi-crore job scam

Bihar employment scam: Politicians' role under scanner as pictures of former CM with BSSC accused appear on social media

--- ENDS ---
The Israeli military said it shot down one of numerous anti-aircraft missiles launched on Friday at its air force which was operating in Syria, in a rare such incident that spilled over into neighboring countries.

The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli jet during the operation. Israel denied this, saying that all its aircraft had returned unscathed.

"At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft compromised," an Israeli military spokesman said.

Rocket sirens had sounded in the early morning in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and two Reuters witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later.

The military said in its statement that one of the anti-aircraft missiles had been intercepted. The blast was heard as far away as Jerusalem, dozens of miles away. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

A Jordanian civil defense source said a projectile had landed in a village on the outskirts of the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Syrian and Israeli borders, causing light damage.

The source said army engineers were examining the object, believed to be fired from Syrian territory in the direction of Israel. Video posted on social media purported to show remnants of a rocket, possibly parts of the intercepting missile, though Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage.

"Overnight IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defense Force) Aerial Defense Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the Israeli military said in its statement.

Israel has carried out dozens of strikes to prevent weapons smuggling to the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting rebels alongside the Syrian army. However, the interception of a missile making its way over the Syrian border was an uncommon incident.

Syria\s army high command said in a statement on Friday that Israeli jets had breached Syrian air space early in the morning and attacked a military target near Palmyra, in what it described as an act of aggression that aided Islamic State.

It said its air defenses shot down one of the Israeli jets over what it called "occupied ground" and damaged another. Israel denies this.

Israeli media said the Syrian army had fired surface-to-air missiles at the Israeli aircraft. The military would not provide further details on the targets it struck, nor on the amount or type of projectiles launched at its forces.

An Israeli military source said Israel\s Arrow ballistic missile shield had identified an "incoming threat" and shot down one of the projectiles.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss what he charged were Iran\s attempts to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria.

Iran, Israel\s arch-enemy, has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad\s staunchest backer and has provided militia fighters to help him. Israel is concerned Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006, is trying to obtain sophisticated weapons it could use against Israel.

SOURCE: REUTERS
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.
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Citizens Bank said Friday it had resolved an issue with direct deposit paychecks being posted to customer accounts.

Customers woke up Friday unable to access their accounts or see that their paychecks had been posted. The Providence, R.I. bank initially blamed the problem in a "vendor processing issue," although the issue was not explained in detail.
The government, in the crack down mode, has sought an explanation from the district magistrates who permitted the officers to leave the district headquarters and gather at Raj Bhawan for the protest.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: The Nitish Kumar government has served show cause notice to two dozen IAS officers who had assembled at the Raj Bhawan on February 26 to protest the arrest of senior IAS officer and chairman of Bihar Staff Selection Commission, Sudhir Kumar in the multi-crore job scam.

Of the two dozen IAS officers, 18 are district magistrates who supported Sudhir Kumar demanding his release. The government, in the crack down mode, has sought an explanation from the district magistrates who permitted the officers to leave the district headquarters and gather at Raj Bhawan for the protest.

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It may be noted that soon after Sudhir Kumar was arrested on February 24 and sent to jail in the job scam, the IAS association had launched a massive protest. The association first met chief minister Nitish Kumar and later Governor Ram Nath Kobind and submitted a memorandum on the issue alleging that the senior IAS officer was being wrongly framed in the scam.

IAS ASSOCIATION FORMED HUMAN CHAIN AS MARK OF PROTEST

After meeting the governor, the association members demanded that the case should be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for a fair probe as they did not trust the Special Investigation Team's (SIT) probe which was set up by the chief minister. Members of the IAS association also formed a human chain in support of Sudhir Kumar much to the anger of the state government.

The association upped the ante on Nitish Kumar and passed a resolution not to take any verbal orders from him and wear black bands to work as a mark of protest.

Interestingly, the notice was served to the IAS officers after Nitish Kumar announced on the floor of the House on February 28 that he will take exemplary action against the protestors.

ALSO READ | BSSC chairman Sudhir Kumar arrested in connection with multi-crore job scam

Bihar attempts world record as Nitish leads longest human chain in support of prohibition

Bihar bureaucrats protest against BSSC chairman's arrest, say won't take verbal orders from CM

--- ENDS ---
Trump supporters made #BoycottHawaii trend on Twitter after a federal judge in the Aloha State halted President Donald Trump's new entry ban. The hashtag quickly took on a life of its own as those opposed to the ban co-opted #BoycottHawaii to mock conservatives.

"Please, all Trump supporters, #BoycottHawaii. It's literally the only way Hawaii gets more beautiful," wrote Ed Galvin, a producer for "The Ellen Degeneres Show."
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Albany

If you want details on, say, plans for a gas line proposed to run through your neighborhood, you might ask for correspondence between the gas company and the Department of Environmental Conservation or the Public Service Department.

You could request those documents under the state's Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL.

But if you want to see correspondence between the same gas company and your local Assembly member or senator, you may or may not get it, depending largely on the whim of the lawmaker in question.

That's because much of the state Legislature's correspondence and other records are exempt from disclosure under FOIL.

"They exempted themselves,'' said Susan Lerner, executive director of the good government group Common Cause NY, referring to passage of the state's first FOIL law four decades ago.

"It's certainly a double standard, at the very least," added Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think-tank.

The discussion comes as both the Democrat-led Assembly and Republican-controlled Senate have over the past few years been rocked by corruption cases that have led to leadership changes in both chambers and created a surfeit of headlines about criminal behavior and cover-ups.

While former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate leader Dean Skelos were convicted in federal corruption cases, any correspondence they may have had with those seeking official favors in exchange for gifts and payments weren't obtainable by the press or average citizens under current FOIL rules.

Other legislative documents that can be blocked from release include analyses of proposed bills that could provide indications of how much a given measure might cost, or how effective a new law would be.

"The public never gets to see it," said Lerner.

Spokespersons for both legislative leaders, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, did not respond to requests for comment.

But their legislative responses lay out some of their thinking regarding the applicability of FOIL.

The Senate, for instance, in its resolution regarding the version of the proposed 2017-18 state budget, they say the "Senate denies the Executive proposal to subject the legislature and the legislative ethics commission to the same freedom of information law provisions to which executive agencies are subject. The legislative process is inherently open to the public for input, scrutiny and review. In contrast, the public is made aware of many Executive agency activities only after they occur.''

Several FOIL experts agreed to some extent, saying there was a difference between the executive and legislative branches.

For one thing, the executive branch, which oversees state agencies, is where the rubber ultimately hits the road regarding government policy, so there's more interest in what the governor and his commissioners are doing.

While the New York Public Interest Research Group would like the Legislature to be more subject to FOIL, its legislative director Blair Horner said "most FOIL requests are on the executive side."

"The executive branch is 24/7," he said, "and it's not as open as the Legislature, which votes in public."

A portion of legislative correspondence can be obtainable by FOIL requests to any state agency that is communicating with a given lawmaker, said Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government.

"It would be fine" to make the Legislature subject to FOIL requests for emails and other records, said John Kaehny, executive director of the reform group Reinvent Albany.

But he and members of other good government groups are putting a priority on strengthening FOIL in other ways, including passing a law that would mandate the payment of attorneys' fees to a plaintiff when a court finds that an agency had no "reasonable basis" to deny access to a public record.

Lawyers' fees can under current law be awarded in such cases. But judges have discretion on that front.

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Under the most recent proposal, such payments would be mandatory.

The idea is that a state agency would think twice before blocking a FOIL request if there was a good chance they would be taken to court and be forced pay legal fees on a regular basis.

Currently, agency officials can delay and stonewall FOIL requests, since they know that relatively few plaintiffs will spend the considerable amount of money needed to fight them in court.

The measure has been sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Amy Paulin and Republican Sen. Pat Gallivan.

There are other wrinkles that could emerge if lawmakers were more subject to FOIL.

Due to fears of federal prosecutors  who can subpoena such correspondence  legislators have are already become more hesitant to commit their thoughts to paper.

Making legislative emails subject to FOIL could simply prompt lawmakers to curtail or stop their use of that form of communication.

And the idea of opening up legislative emails hasn't been at the top of the agenda for lawmakers, even those such as Gallivan who have pushed for stronger FOIL enforcement.

"I don't have strong feelings one way or the other,'' he said when asked about the idea of making lawmaker emails FOILable.

rkarlin@timesunion.com  518-454-5758  @RickKarlinTU
Tipperary Rose Fiona O'Sullivan has officially launched the search to find this years Premier Countys representative for the Rose of Tralee International Festival in August this year.

The Irish TV presenter remembers fondly the last year as the reigning Tipperary Rose, especially the little nudge of encouragement she was given which resulted in one of the best years of her life.

From Lourdes to Tralee to New York, being the Tipperary Rose has given me so many opportunities. It has strengthened my pride in Tipperary and I have discovered all of the good that is being done at a local level. When I became the Tipperary Rose last April, I discovered what it feels like to represent where you come from  a true honour, said Fiona.

Meanwhile coordinator of the Tipperary Rose of Tralee events, Ciaran O'Connell said: Fiona has been one of the busiest Tipperary roses in as many years, partaking in over seventy events across the county and country, and putting Tipperary on the map not only in the Dome last August but also at the many local, national, international events she has attended as a proud Tipperary Rose. We are reaching out to all the Clubs and Parishes of the county; North, South, Mid, East and West to ask you to nominate or suggest a local lady to come forward and take the first step of this once in a lifetime experience while representing your local area, town, village or business.

In the 2017 Rose selections, whoever is picked as the Tipperary Rose in April will travel via the Rose tour to the international festival in Tralee in August and will take part in all the parades, Rose Ball, public engagements and a private qualifying event at the festival, from which 32 Roses will be chosen to appear in the live selection broadcasts.

The selection is open to females between 18 and 27, who are of Irish ancestry or citizenship, be unmarried or never been married and who would like to represent County Tipperary.

For more info visit www.roseoftralee.ie/apply or find the tipperary.rosecentre on all social media. Closing date for entries is the 8th of April. The selection day is Friday 28th of April at the Anner Hotel, Thurles. A Rose Information evening will take place on Sunday the 26th of March 5 -7pm at The Anner Hotel, Thurles.
Nenagh paid a moving tribute to those lost in the Irish Coastguard tragedy off the County Mayo coast in the early hours of last Tuesday morning.

At the start of the town's St Patrick's Day parade, one minute's silence was observed for the crew of Rescue 116, Capt Dara Fitzpatrick, co-pilot Capt Mark Duff, winch operator Paul Ormsby and winchman Ciaran Smith.

The annual parade traditionally starts with Tipperary Fire Service moving through the streets with its sirens blaring. However, for the first time ever the sirens fell silent as the fire tenders led the parade before going back on active duty.

And the thousands of spectators bowed their heads in the incessant rain and blustery wind as they remembered Capt Fitzpatrick and the missing crew members.

Also paying tribute were members of Lough Derg Sub-aqua Club and Search and Rescue Service, who paused briefly before the reviewing stand.

Meanwhile, in a week when the town was rocked by the news of the phased loss of 210 jobs at its Coty cosmetics plant, Nenagh put on a brave face and showed its resilience by refusing to let the bad weather rain on its parade. Some 41 local voluntary organisations, sporting clubs and businesses took part in the parade, including hundreds of children from the town's Irish dance schools and academies and Girls' Convent School Marching Band and majorettes.
Congress, despite facing one of its worst defeat in Uttar Pradesh, remained firm on its vice-president Rahul Gandhi to take on the Modi wave in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Even before an idea of forging a grand alliance to take Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019 took wings, differences have cropped up over the leader of such an alliance. After the BJP registered a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh elections, there has been a growing clamor amongst the political parties to come together on a common platform ahead of 2019. The victorious Bihar model of grand alliance on Thursday took the initiative urging for the formation of such an alliance on the national forum, but differences have erupted over the face of the alliance.

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Congress, despite facing one of its worst defeat in Uttar Pradesh, remained firm on its vice-president Rahul Gandhi to take on the Modi wave in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"It's Rahul Gandhi for us to take on Narendra Modi. However, every party has its own Prime Ministerial candidate and when time comes, we will reach a consensus," said Ashok Chowdhary, Congress state president and education minister.

JD-U, on the other hand believes that it was the grand alliance under the leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar which stalled the victory march of BJP in state elections. Party spokesperson Sanjay Singh warned unless all parties unite under Nitish Kumar, defeating BJP in 2019 remained a distant dream.

"Uttar Pradesh results are very unfortunate and if a Bihar like alliance would have been forged, things would have been different in UP. If all political parties do not unite, there will be a big loss for all. One person who can challenge PM Modi is only Nitish Kumar," said Sanjay Singh, JD-U spokesperson.

BJP, however, believes that the concept of a broader alliance like Bihar on the national platform was not feasible keeping in mind several PM candidates of every regional party.

"Top most leader of every regional parties is a Prime Ministerial candidate for that party. What better can it be for the BJP if leaders like Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad, Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam Singh, Mamta Bannerjee and Naveen Patnaik become PM candidates of their parties," commented Sushil Modi, senior BJP leader.

Though, the saffron party opines that a person can become PM only whose party has at least 200 MPs of their own. Since, Congress was the largest political party besides BJP, there was hardly any chance of Congress backing anyone else, but Rahul Gandhi.

Also read:

Modi vs Nitish in 2019? Bihar's Grand Alliance wants to go national now

Uttar Pradesh Election Result 2017: How SP, BSP, Congress missed chance to do a Bihar

What results of 2017 Assembly polls say about future of electoral politics

WATCH THE VIDEO:

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Those who frequent Diamond Street or Central Avenue may have noticed some new signage outside some of the local bars, and they arent alcohol 
Tanner Harmon, 6, of Titusville, peruses over a few books that have caught his eye during Pleasantville Elementary Schools Scholastic Book Fair.
[March 17, 2017] Concordia Launches New Teacher Education Curriculum

Concordia University Portland, which prepares more teachers than any other university in Oregon, launches a new undergraduate teacher preparation curriculum in fall 2017, unanimously approved by the Oregon's Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC). This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005502/en/ New teacher preparation curriculum rolls out in fall 2017 for Concordia University Portland undergraduate students. (Photo: Business Wire) The new teacher preparation curriculum allows future teachers to be immersed from "day one" into school environments, instead of waiting several terms before beginning student teaching experiences. The emphasis on clinical field experiences - early and often - helps drive classroom discussions, theory and coursework, as part of a new national education model called 3 to PhD. The new curriculum impacts Concordia's College of Education bachelor's degrees, including Elementary Education and Secondary Education, and is in line with Concordia's mission to prepare leaders for the transformation of society.



The curriculum compliments 3 to PhD (@3toPhDpdx) and the fall 2017 opening of Concordia's new College of Education, co-located with Faubion School adjacent to Concordia's NE Portland campus. The immersive experience allows daily collaboration between Concordia and Faubion students, faculty and staff. The redesigned curriculum includes field experiences over all four years of the undergraduate program, closely aligned with current and relevant coursework. It features:

Candidate choice of STEAM or Community-Based Education focus

A strong emphasis on relationships between candidates, students, mentor teachers, university faculty, district, and community

A mentoring pipeline for clinical experiences, early career teaching support, and leadership in our programs Each year, Concordia places more than 300 educators earning bachelors and masters degrees with clinical experiences in school districts in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Annually, Concordia University education graduates teach and inspire more than 16,000 elementary, middle and high school students. "The collaboration with Portland Public School's Faubion School and our College of Education have inspired how we prepare teachers for the 21st Century," said Concordia University's College of Education Dean Sheryl Reinisch. "Our faculty has a wealth of classroom teaching experience and places strong value on 'learning by doing'." Concordia University professors shared key elements of the new model at upcoming statewide and national conferences, at the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) in Tampa, Florida, on March 2, and Oregon Association of Teacher Educators (ORATE) at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, on March 17. Presenters included: College of Education Dean Dr. Sheryl Reinisch, Associate Director of M.Ed. Programs Dr. Alisa Bates, Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Professor of Education Shawn Daley, Director of Undergraduate Studies Angela Vossenkuhl, Director of MAT Programs Stephanie Murphy, Associate Professor of Education Dr. Julie Owens, and Program Evaluation Chair & Associate Professor of Education Dr. Mark Robertson. Follow 3 to PhD on Twitter and Instagram @3toPhDpdx. ABOUT CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY Concordia University is a private, Lutheran, liberal arts university located in northeast Portland, Ore. with a mission of preparing leaders for the transformation of society. Founded in 1905, Concordia University is Oregon's fastest growing university, now serving more than 5,000 students on its campuses and online, through its College of Education, College of Health & Human Services, College of Arts & Sciences, School of Management, and Concordia University School of Law in Boise, Idaho. For more information visit www.cu-portland.edu and www.concordialaw.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005502/en/

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[March 17, 2017] Dairy Queen Celebrates First Day of Spring With Free Cone Day on March 20

B-roll VO: Drones have delivered products and pizzas. Now drones are delivering cones - for a good cause. To kick off Free Cone Day on March 20th, which is also the first day of Spring, DQ enlisted the help of a drone to deliver cones to a few lucky fans http://bit.ly/dqfcd. It was the first time the Berkshire Hathaway company has delivered cones by drone. For the rest of us, we can get our free cone at DQ all day on Monday, March 20th. Participating locations also will be collecting donations for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, which raises funds to help save and improve the lives of kids treated at 170 children's hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005402/en/ Dairy Queen vanilla soft-serve cone with the signature curl on top. (Photo: Business Wire) Live Remote, V/O and Photo Opportunity for MONDAY, MARCH 20 Drone Delivery B-roll: http://bit.ly/dqfcd







WHO: Participating non-mall Dairy Queen and DQ Grill & Chill locations throughout the United States WHAT: Will celebrate Free Cone Day on the first day of Spring. Fans will receive a FREE small vanilla soft-serve cone with the signature curl on top (limit one per customer while supplies last). At participating locations, donations will be collected for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, which raises funds to help save and improve the lives of kids treated at 170 children's hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. Last year, more than $200,000 was raised during Free Cone Day. WHEN: All day on Monday, March 20 WHERE: To find a participating location, contact information for Dairy Queen locations can be found at www.DairyQueen.com/locator.

MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES: Local participating Dairy Queen locations invite media in on Free Cone Day to learn how to make the cone with the curl on top. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: For more information about the Dairy Queen system, visit DairyQueen.com. Connect with the DQ system on Twitter (News - Alert) using #LOVEmyDQ and at twitter.com/dairyqueen. Visit the DQ Facebook (News - Alert) fan page, which has more than 10.8 million friends and become a friend at facebook.com/dairyqueen. About IDQ: International Dairy Queen Inc., (IDQ), based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the parent company of American Dairy Queen Corporation. Through its subsidiaries, IDQ develops, licenses and services a system of more than 6,700 locations in the United States, Canada and more than 25 other countries. IDQ is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Berkshire) which is led by Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and CEO of Berkshire. For more information visit DairyQueen.com. About Children's Miracle Network Hospitals: Children's Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds and awareness for 170 member hospitals that provide 32 million treatments each year to kids across the U.S. and Canada. Donations stay local to fund critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable care. Since 1983, Children's Miracle Network Hospitals has raised more than $5 billion, most of it $1 at a time through the charity's Miracle Balloon icon. Its various fundraising partners and programs support the nonprofit's mission to save and improve the lives of as many children as possible. Find out why children's hospitals need community support, identify your member hospital and learn how you can Put Your Money Where the Miracles Are, at CMNHospitals.org and facebook.com/CMNHospitals. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005402/en/

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[March 16, 2017] EQUITY ALERT: Rosen Law Firm Files Securities Class Action Lawsuit Against Citizens, Inc. - CIA

Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces that it has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of Citizens, Inc. securities (NYSE:CIA) from March 11, 2015 through March 8, 2017, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). The lawsuit seeks to recover damages for Citizens investors under the federal securities laws. To join the Citizens class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-1077.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. or Kevin Chan, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. NO CLASS HAS YET BEEN CERTIFIED IN THE ABOVE ACTION. UNTIL A CLASS IS CERTIFIED, YOU ARE NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL UNLESS YOU RETAIN ONE. YOU MAY ALSO REMAIN AN ABSENT CLASS MEMBER AND DO NOTHING AT THIS POINT. YOU MAY RETAIN COUNSEL OF YOUR CHOICE. According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Citizens' brokers and pitchbooks falsely claimed that most of the funds from its insurance policies were directly inested in U.S. Treasury Bond; (2) funds from Citizens' insurance policies were funneled into continuous open market purchases that inflated Citizens' stock price; and (3) as a result, defendants' statements about Citizens' business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.



On March 8, 2017, Seeking Alpha published an article asserting that Citizens sells insurance policies to foreign retail investors and retirees with promises that they are backed by U.S. Treasury bonds even though such policies actually funnel millions of dollars into open market purchases of Citizens' shares and inflate the value of such shares. On this news shares of Citizens fell $0.45 per share or over 5% over the next two trading days to close at $8.00 per share on March 9, 2017, damaging investors. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than May 15, 2017. If you wish to join the litigation, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-1077.html or to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact Phillip Kim or Kevin Chan of Rosen Law Firm toll free at 866-767-3653 or via email at [email protected] or [email protected].

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn (News - Alert): https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm or on Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/rosen_firm. Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170316006407/en/

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[March 16, 2017] Robbins Arroyo LLP: Patriot National, Inc. (PN) Misled Shareholders According to a Recently Filed Class Action

Shareholder rights law firm Robbins Arroyo LLP announces that a class action complaint was filed against Patriot (News - Alert) National, Inc. (NYSE: PN) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint is brought on behalf of all purchasers of Patriot National securities between August 15, 2016 and March 3, 2017, for alleged violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by Patriot National's officers and directors. Patriot National, together with its subsidiaries, provides technology-enabled outsourcing solutions within the workers compensation marketplace for insurance carriers, local governments, reinsurance captives, and other employers in the United States. View this information on the law firm's Shareholder Rights Blog:

www.robbinsarroyo.com/shareholders-rights-blog/patriot-national-inc/ Patriot National Accused of Enabling Biased Special Committee According to the complaint, on Augus 15, 2016, Patriot National confirmed that the special committee of its board of directors was working with Ebix (News - Alert), Inc. to possibly combine the two businesses. Then, on November 8, 2016, Patriot National announced that it was rejecting a $475 million proposal from Ebix. In a subsequent conference call with analysts, Steven M. Mariano, Chief Executive Officer of Patriot National, stated that the Ebix transaction was rejected because the company had a better offer from someone else. However, the complaint alleges that Patriot National officials failed to disclose that the special committee was beholden to Mariano, was operating for the benefit of Mariano, did not independently assess the merits of the Ebix transaction, and was not exploring strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.



On March 3, 2017, Patriot National disclosed that it entered into an agreement with Guarantee Insurance Group ("GIG") and Mariano, majority owner of both Patriot National and GIG, regarding the service agreements between the company and GIG's wholly-owned subsidiary Guarantee Insurance Company. Under the agreement, the company paid GIG $30 million. The company further disclosed that "[a]s further material inducements for the company's payment," GIG and Mariano agreed to a series of corporate and financial covenants, including that the company would not enter into any transaction with an affiliate of Mariano without the prior approval of a majority of independent directors. On this news, Patriot National's stock fell $0.72 per share, or 16.4%, to close at $3.67 per share on March 6, 2017, and continued to decline in the following days, closing at $3.01 per share on March 8, 2017. Patriot National Shareholders Have Legal Options

Concerned shareholders who would like more information about their rights and potential remedies can contact attorney Darnell R. Donahue at (800) 350-6003, [email protected], or via the shareholder information form on the firm's website. Robbins Arroyo LLP is a nationally recognized leader in shareholder rights law. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits, and has helped its clients realize more than $1 billion of value for themselves and the companies in which they have invested. Attorney Advertising. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170316006409/en/

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[March 16, 2017]

EnterpriseDB Postgres Engineers to Present at pgDay Asia 2017

BEDFORD, Massachusetts, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- EnterpriseDB (EDB), the database platform company for digital business, today announced that two of its engineers are among the presenters scheduled to speak during pgDay Asia 2017, held March 17 at the TKP Conference Center in Singapore and March 18 in conjunction with FOSSASIA 2017 at the Singapore Science Center.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/319928/enterprisedb_corporation_logo.jpg

The EnterpriseDB engineers will speak on Friday, March 17. Dilip Kumar, a Principal Engineer at EnterpriseDB, will deliver his presentation, What's Coming Next in Parallel Query, at 11 am. PostgreSQL 9.6 added parallel processing capacity, and a series of patches for additional parallel processing featues have been proposed for PostgreSQL 10. Kumar will provide an overview of new features and examine a performance analysis.







Devrim Gunduz, Principal Systems Engineer, will deliver his presentation, PostgreSQL: WAL for DBAs, at 1:00 pm. Write-ahead Logs (WALs) in PostgreSQL are used in multiple operations, including replication and backups. Gunduz will address what they are and help database administrators understand how to apply them across a series of scenarios.

To learn more about Postgres, attend Postgres Vision, June 26-28, 2017 at the Royal Sonesta Boston. Find details at www.PostgresVision.com.

About EnterpriseDB (EDB) Corporation

EnterpriseDB (EDB), the database platform company for digital business, delivers the premier open source-based data platform for new applications, cloud re-platforming, application modernization, and legacy migration. EnterpriseDB integrates with enterprise technologies and infrastructures for hybrid cloud management, data integration, and data warehousing. Our customers benefit from the most reliable, high-performing, flexible, open, and cost-effective data management platform available. EnterpriseDB is based in Bedford, Massachusetts with 16 offices around the globe. For more information, visit www.EDBPostgres.com.

EnterpriseDB is a registered trademark of EnterpriseDB Corporation. EDB and EDB Postgres are trademarks of EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Nancy Scott

EnterpriseDB

+1 781.357.3090

[email protected]

Cairbre Sugrue

Sugrue Communications

+44 (0)1932 429 779

[email protected]
[March 16, 2017] AHF Commends President Trump for Maintaining Critical Funding for AIDS Fight in Budget Blueprint

In response to the release of President Donald J. Trump's budget earlier this week by the White House, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, released the following statement: "AIDS Healthcare Foundation welcomes the news today that the Trump Administration's budget 'blueprint' for fiscal year 2018 maintains critical funding for the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the US government's contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund). While the budget still needs approval from the U.S. Congress, today's announcement that the President supports continued funding for PEPFAR and the Global Fund means millions of lives will be saved around the world. With approval from the US Congress, established under President George W. Bush, continued under President Barack Obama-and now with the support of President Donald Trump-these programs are a model of bipartisan unity in the fight against three deadly infectious diseases. In 2015, the US provided over 66 percent of total funding by donor governments for the HIV response in developing countries according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.



AHF also welcomes language in the President's budget announcement that calls funding for Ryan White AIDS providers as one of its highest priorities. In addition, the budget includes $500 million for the US domestic response to the opioid epidemic for prevention and treatment and a new federal emergency response fund to deal with situations such as the Zika virus outbreak. However, AHF has ongoing concerns with proposals to convert Medicaid to block grants to the states and changes to the Affordable Care Act that will leave people living with HIV without health insurance." AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest provider of HIV services in the world with over 700,000 patients in its care, receives very little direct funding from PEPFAR and the Global Fund. However, its patients receive lifesaving medicines acquired through these two international public health institutions.

"AHF looks forward to working with the Trump Administration and the U.S. Congress in making sure these budget commitments become law," added Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. About AIDS Healthcare Foundation AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 702,000 individuals in 38 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook (News - Alert): www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert): @aidshealthcare. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170316006435/en/

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Accusing BJP of 'stealing' people's mandate in Goa, Digvijaya Singh asked for a detailed discussion on the matter in the Upper House of Parliament.

He added that the principal opposition party will take this matter to the President of India.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh spearheaded the attack against BJP led NDA government in Rajya Sabha today on the formation of government in Goa.

Talking to India Today, Congress Rajya Sabha MP said, "Rahul Gandhi was right when he said that they have stolen ( mandate) like a thief.. They have committed dacoity. Theft and dacoity is always committed at night... They have committed dacoity and BJP will have to pay for it."

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Accusing BJP of 'stealing' people's mandate in Goa, Digvijaya Singh asked for a detailed discussion on the matter in the Upper House of Parliament.

Here's what is happening: To this, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi replied that they are ready for a dialogue. However, as per rules of Rajya Sabha, Congress was asked to submit a substantive motion against the Governor of Goa. "We are submitting a substantive motion against the Governor of Goa and Finance Minister Arun Jaitely and have requested the chair to accept it," said Digvijaya Singh. He added that the principal opposition party will take this matter to the President of India. "We are drafting a memorandum and would take this matter up with the President of India. We will ask him to dismiss Goa governor on grounds of misconduct." Congress senior leader directed his ire towards Union minister Nitin Gadkari as well. "Nitin Gadkari in an interview said that he got instructions and he picked up his bag and moved to Goa. Now Gadkari should tell us what all came out of the bag and what was distributed."

Also read: Goa: From being the single-largest party to sitting in Opposition, how Congress lost the plot

Also read: Outfoxed in Goa by BJP's Manohar Parrikar, Congress creates ruckus on Rajya Sabha floor

Also read: Goa: Congress heading towards a split, says Vishwajeet Rane

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[March 16, 2017] U.S. Security Associates Named Authorized Guard Services Reseller of the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV

MONTVALE, N.J., March 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sharp Robotics Business Development (SRBD), a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation (SEC), announced the appointment of U.S. Security Associates (USA) as an authorized guard services reseller of the Sharp INTELLOS Automated Unmanned Ground Vehicle (A-UGV). Introduced to consumers of security technologies and human guard services by Sharp at the ASIS International September 2016 security exhibition in Orlando, Florida, the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV is a cost-effective, multi-terrain, mobile sensor platform that can capture video, audio and environmental data, while providing a visible deterrent. The data collected by the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV can enhance outdoor surveillance, security, safety and maintenance inspections, helping organizations meet the challenges of an ever-changing security landscape by augmenting a skilled guard force. Cliff Quiroga, Vice President of SRBD, lauded the relationship with USA. "Robots in security will help protect people, infrastructure and assets. To Sharp, protecting people means caring first for those who cre for the rest of us - our frontline security officers. The human workforce can be availed of tedious, repetitive and often dangerous tasks. Instead, their attention can be focused on more intelligent-based work."



Richard L. Wyckoff, President and CEO of U.S. Security Associates, stated, "Our agreement with Sharp ensures USA's clients will continue to have the most innovative capabilities and additional layers of protection to enhance daily security measures. Importantly, the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV can also provide a first response protection capacity in an emergency or crisis situation." "As part of our industry exclusive P3SM Technology Platform, we now offer the market leading capabilities to mitigate risk, eliminate incidents and create the best outcomes for our clients," stated Wyckoff.

About U.S. Security Associates

U.S. Security Associates (USA) is North America's security solutions leader, with locally-responsive offices providing premier national security services and global consulting and investigations. The company provides career paths for over 50,000 security professionals serving several thousand clients and a range of industries. Innovative applications of leading-edge, proprietary technology enable USA to rank annually among the world's best training companies, sustain the highest standards of quality, and underscore world-class customer service with unparalleled accountability. USA's rise as one of today's largest security companies is a natural byproduct of these differentiators together with a commitment to investing in employee reward and development, giving back to local communities, and relentlessly striving to be the best: Safe. Secure. Friendly.. For more information, visit www.ussecurityassociates.com. About Sharp Electronics Corporation

Sharp Electronics Corporation is the U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Sharp Corporation. Sharp is a worldwide developer of one-of-a-kind home appliances, networked multifunctional office solutions, professional displays, robotics and energy systems. For more information, visit SharpUSA.com. Contact: Alice DiSanto, SRBD Director of Marketing

Telephone: 914-582-8464

Email: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-security-associates-named-authorized-guard-services-reseller-of-the-sharp-intellos-a-ugv-300425310.html SOURCE Sharp Robotics

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[March 16, 2017] NanoSensors, Inc. Announces Stockholder Update (OTC Pink: NNSR)

NanoSensors, Inc. announced today that it has reinstated its corporate charter with the State of Nevada. The Company, currently subject to a court-appointed custodianship, also named Terrance Flowers as its Interim Chief Executive Officer and Director. In accordance with the Nevada Corporations Code, NanoSensors will seek to call a Special Meeting of Stockholders within sixty (60) days. Mr. Flowers stated, "I am hopeful that the stockholders of the Company will view the reinstated charter as an important first step for NanoSensors to again become a viable public issue." He continued, "while the court-appointed custodian completes its obligation to the Courts, I will be evaluating potential business models for the Company going forward." As of the date of this release, management has not entered into any materil negotiations with respect to a prospective business combination.



As part of the ongoing restructuring of the Company, management will seek to begin publishing "current public information" with OTC Markets in order to move to the "Pink Current Information" tier. "Our objective is to not only create value for our stockholders, but to be transparent in the process of doing so," Mr. Flowers added. NanoSensors will seek to consummate any prospective business combination transaction and to begin publishing information with OTC Markets as soon as practicable. Statements in this press release that are not historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Although NanoSensors, Inc. believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, NanoSensors, Inc is unable to give any assurance that its expectations will be attained. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include the company's ability identify a suitable business model for the corporation.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170316006448/en/

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[March 17, 2017] Toshiba Medical's Model-Based Iterative CT Reconstruction Helps Improve Cardiac Imaging

Taking model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) beyond the research setting, Toshiba Medical will demonstrate its Forward projected model-based Iterative Reconstruction SoluTion (FIRST) for cardiac exams at this year's American College of Cardiology (ACC) 2017 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., March 17-19, 2017 (Booth #1625). Available on its most advanced CT systems, the AquilionTM ONE / GENESIS Edition and the Aquilion ONE ViSION Edition, FIRST (MBIR) helps make CT exams safer, reduces noise and offers clinicians high-resolution images to make confident cardiac diagnoses. The FIRST technology helps improve high-contrast spatial resolution while rducing radiation dose up to 85.3 percent as compared to filtered back projection* and drastically cuts the time needed for model-based CT image reconstruction. FIRST can improve high-contrast spatial resolution by up to 69 percent (1.69 times) as compared to filtered back projection* for cardiac imaging while reducing radiation dose. Utilizing the Aquilion ONE / GENESIS Edition CT system clinicians can offer fast chest pain triage by combining one-beat low-dose high-resolution cardiac CTA with FIRST MBIR.



"We designed FIRST to help providers benefit patients with advanced technology used in research and bring it to a routine clinical setting, including cardiac," said Dominic Smith, senior director, CT, PET/CT, and MR Business Units, Toshiba (News - Alert) America Medical Systems, Inc. "FIRST is an integrated, fast and easy-to-use technology that transforms the path to diagnosis." About Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc.

Toshiba America Medical Systems, a Canon (News - Alert) Group company headquartered in Tustin, Calif., markets, sells, distributes and services radiology and cardiovascular systems, including CT, MR, ultrasound, X-ray and interventional X-ray equipment. For more information, visit Toshiba Medical's website at www.medical.toshiba.com. About Toshiba Medical Toshiba Medical offers a full range of diagnostic medical imaging solutions including Ultrasound, CT, X-Ray and MR, across the globe. As of December 2016, Toshiba Medical became a member of the Canon Group. In line with our continued Made for Life philosophy, patients are at the heart of everything we do. Our mission is to provide medical professionals with solutions that support their efforts in contributing to the health and wellbeing of patients worldwide so that together our industry-leading solutions deliver an enriched quality of life. * On the Aquilion ONE ViSION (TSX-301C) View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005131/en/

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[March 17, 2017] BCE completes acquisition of Manitoba Telecom Services: Bell MTS launches in Manitoba today, activates province-wide investment and innovation plan

$1 billion program to deliver advanced broadband networks and services throughout Manitoba

program to deliver advanced broadband networks and services throughout Fibe TV, CraveTV, Gigabit Internet and Canada's fastest-ranked wireless network for communities large and small; 4G LTE wireless turns on in Churchill today

today Dan McKeen leads the Bell MTS team from Winnipeg as Vice Chair, Bell MTS & Western Canada

leads the Bell MTS team from as Vice Chair, & Investment in the community includes a new Bell Let's Talk project led by Clara Hughes MONTREAL and WINNIPEG, March 17, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - BCE Inc. (Bell) (TSX: BCE) (NYSE: BCE) today announced the launch of Bell MTS following the completion of its acquisition of Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS). Uniting the local and national strengths of MTS and Bell Canada, the new Bell MTS will bring unprecedented investment and innovation in broadband communications to Manitoba, including the rollout of next-generation Fibe services and Canada's fastest-ranked wireless network. "On behalf of everyone on the Bell team, I extend a warm welcome to our new Bell MTS colleagues. We look forward to working with you to deliver the leading broadband wireless, Internet, TV and media services throughout Manitoba," said George Cope, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada. "Bell is proud to be a major investor in Manitoba's future, enabling economic development with the most advanced network infrastructure and service innovations for consumers and business customers. With the talent and experience of the MTS team backed by Bell's scale and proven broadband strategy, Bell MTS will lead the way in Manitoba's competitive communications industry." "I would like to thank departing MTS CEO Jay Forbes for his exceptional leadership of MTS and his support in completing the $3.9 billion Bell MTS transaction, enabling a new era of communications investment and growth in Manitoba while creating tremendous value for customers, shareholders and team members," said Mr. Cope. Bell MTS will roll out a 5-year, $1 billion broadband network expansion plan for Manitoba's cities, traffic corridors, rural locations and remote communities. Winnipeg will also serve as Bell's headquarters in Western Canada. Dan McKeen appointed Vice Chair, Bell MTS & Western Canada

Bell MTS will be led by Dan McKeen, Vice Chair, Bell MTS & Western Canada, who will also continue to serve in a national role as Senior VP, Small Business. A Bell executive experienced in operational integration and the efficient delivery of broadband services to urban, rural and remote communities alike, Mr. McKeen was most recently Bell's Vice Chair, Bell Aliant. He was appointed in 2014 to lead the successful integration of Bell Aliant, the #1 communications services provider in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, into Bell's national operations. "I'm proud to lead Bell MTS as we begin our plan to take broadband communications to the next level in Manitoba. I know firsthand the benefit of Bell's scale and expertise in building the high-performance networks that consumers and businesses need in today's economy. With a strong team in place, Bell MTS is very well positioned to compete in the marketplace with the advanced communications services that will foster economic growth across Manitoba," said Mr. McKeen. Glen LeBlanc, Bell's Chief Financial Officer, will assume the role of Vice Chair, Bell Aliant in addition to his CFO responsibilities, working from Bell's Montreal national headquarters and Bell Aliant's offices in Halifax. Martine Turcotte continues in her role as Vice Chair, Quebec, also based in Montreal. 4G LTE is on in Churchill

"I'm excited to announce that we've successfully delivered our first Bell MTS infrastructure project today: New 4G LTE wireless service for the town of Churchill," said Mr. McKeen. "A growing ecotourism and research centre, the Polar Bear Capital of the World is now served by the mobile network ranked faster than any in Canada and the United States, and will soon be connected with new broadband fibre connections. It's a great example of the Bell MTS plan to efficiently deliver the outstanding TV, Internet, mobile and business services to Manitobans." Building on the proud MTS legacy of service and deep knowledge of the Manitoba marketplace with significant capital investment, Bell MTS will introduce the superior Fibe TV experience, the fastest Internet with Gigabit Fibe, the fastest-ranked 4G LTE wireless available, Bell Media's popular CraveTV, and the most extensive national data hosting, connectivity and cloud services for government and business customers. As part of its launch plan, Bell MTS will maintain current MTS wireless price plans for at least 12 months from today. Integrating operations at a total of 69 Bell and MTS retail stores across the province, Bell MTS will offer the full range of MTS and Bell wireless, TV, Internet and home phone services. That includes MTS Ultimate TV and Bell Satellite TV, as well as enhanced services like Fibe TV and Fibe Internet, and exclusive products like the Wireless 4K PVR and the HomeHub 3000 residential gateway as they become available. Bell MTS wireless services will also become available at The Source, Tbooth wireless and WirelessWave locations throughout Manitoba. Starting today, CraveTV is available to MTS Ultimate TV subscribers who can sign up for Canada's fast-growing video streaming service and get the first 30 days free. Launched in 2014, CraveTV has gained more than a million subscribers to its top television programming from major studios like HBO and SHOWTIME and original all-Canadian content like the hit comedy LETTERKENNY  which premieres the special episode "St. Perfect's Day" today. In addition to Churchill, which will also be connected with Gigabit Fibe Internet and Fibe TV services, Bell MTS has announced these initial projects in its Manitoba capital investment program: Sponsorship of Winnipeg's downtown Innovation Alley hub for students, creators and entrepreneurs including superfast LTE-Advanced mobile and Gigabit Fibe Internet services.

downtown Innovation Alley hub for students, creators and entrepreneurs including superfast LTE-Advanced mobile and Gigabit Fibe Internet services. Continuous broadband wireless coverage along Manitoba's critical north-south transportation corridor, Highways 6 and 75 from Manitoba's "Hub of the North" Thompson to the US border at Emerson .

critical north-south transportation corridor, Highways 6 and 75 from "Hub of the North" Thompson to the US border at . Expansion of mobile and wireline broadband networks in the mining centre of Flin Flon on the Saskatchewan border.

on the border. New wireless services for smaller towns and remote locations, including 5 underserved Indigenous communities: Easterville , Gods Lake Narrows , Gods River , Grand Rapids and Red Sucker Lake . Bell Let's Talk in Manitoba

The Bell Let's Talk initiative is expanding in Manitoba with a new dedicated fund for Indigenous mental health chaired by Winnipeg's own Clara Hughes, legendary Canadian Olympian and national spokesperson for Bell Let's Talk. The Bell Let's Talk team is consulting with leaders from Manitoba Indigenous communities on plans for program funding announcements. "Local engagement and insight have been key to Bell Let's Talk from the start so we are pleased to be learning from community leaders how we can best support the mental health and wellness of Manitoba's Indigenous peoples," said Ms. Hughes. "Bell Let's Talk can make a real difference in opening new avenues of community support across Manitoba and I'm very excited to help make that happen." Already active in Manitoba, Bell Let's Talk announced 2016 Community Fund grants for 7 Manitoba organizations delivering mental health support programs in their communities. Grant applications are being accepted until March 31 for the annual $1-million Bell Let's Talk Community Fund, which funds grassroots mental health initiatives in every region of Canada. Acquisition of MTS completed

Bell has completed its acquisition of all 74,398,389 common shares of MTS, being all of its issued and outstanding common shares. A detailed description of the Plan of Arrangement (the Arrangement) is provided in the MTS management information circular dated May 26, 2016. MTS common shares are expected to be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) effective on March 20, 2017. With the completion of the transaction, Bell gains approximately 710,000 wireless, Internet and IPTV customers in Manitoba, a 5% increase in its total broadband service subscribers, and becomes the #1 mobile provider in Manitoba with more than 470,000 total Bell and MTS wireless subscribers. Bell will update its 2017 financial guidance targets to reflect the MTS acquisition when it reports Q1 2017 operating and financial results on April 26. Information for MTS security holders

As specified under the Arrangement, MTS shareholders were entitled to elect and receive, for each common share held, either: $40.00 per MTS common share in cash, subject to pro-ration (cash consideration); or 0.6756 of a BCE common share per MTS common share, subject to pro-ration (share consideration). The share consideration was based on BCE's 20-day volume weighted average price of $59.21 on April 29, 2016 (the business day before the announcement of the transaction). Shareholders could only elect to receive cash consideration or share consideration for all their shares; shareholders could not elect to receive a combination of cash and shares. Any MTS shareholder who did not properly make an election by 5 p.m. eastern time on March 14, 2017 was deemed to have elected to receive, for each MTS common share, the cash consideration, subject to proration and rounding. The aggregate consideration of approximately $2.9 billion being paid to MTS shareholders will be 45% in cash and 55% in BCE common shares. BCE funded the approximate $1.34 billion cash component through debt financing and issued 27,642,714 BCE common shares to fund the equity component. The table below indicates the entitlement to be received by MTS shareholders for each MTS common share. The pro-ration was only applied to the cash consideration option.







Election Entitlement to be received Cash consideration $20.3977 in cash and 0.3311 of a BCE common share Share consideration 0.6756 of a BCE common share No valid election $20.3977 in cash and 0.3311 of a BCE common share

No fractional shares will be issued and BCE will pay out fractional shares in cash. An MTS shareholder who has elected to receive share consideration or cash consideration but, because of proration, receives a combination of BCE common shares and cash, will be required to make a joint election to obtain a full or partial tax deferral. A tax instruction letter providing certain instructions on how to complete the tax election may be obtained at BCE's website at bce.ca/investors/shareholder-info/mts-acquisition . MTS has applied to cease to be a reporting issuer under applicable Canadian securities laws. Bell Canada intends to assume all of the obligations of MTS under its outstanding medium-term notes as part of an internal corporate reorganization of MTS, and BCE intends to guarantee these obligations. Caution concerning forward-looking statements

Certain statements made in this news release are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements relating to benefits expected to result from the acquisition of MTS by Bell, including our network deployment and capital investment plans in Manitoba, our business outlook, objectives, plans and strategic priorities, and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by the words assumption, goal, guidance, objective, outlook, project, strategy, target and other similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as aim, anticipate, believe, could, expect, intend, may, plan, seek, should, strive and will. All such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbour" provisions of applicable Canadian securities laws and of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties and are based on several assumptions, both general and specific, which give rise to the possibility that actual results or events could differ materially from our expectations expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. As a result, we cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize and we caution you against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release describe our expectations at the date of this news release and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, we do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this news release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are provided herein for the purpose of giving information about benefits expected to result from the acquisition of MTS by Bell, including our network deployment and capital investment plans in Manitoba. Readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes.

There can be no assurance that the benefits expected to result from the acquisition of MTS, including our network deployment and capital investment plans in Manitoba, will be realized. The nature and value of capital investments planned to be made in Manitoba over 5 years assume our ability to access or generate the necessary sources of capital. However, there can be no assurance that the required sources of capital will be available with the result that the actual capital investments made by us in Manitoba during such period could materially differ from current expectations. About Bell

Canada's largest communications company, Bell provides consumer, business and government customers with a comprehensive and innovative suite of broadband wireless, TV, Internet and business communication services from Bell Canada, Bell Aliant and, starting today, Bell MTS. Bell Media is Canada's premier multimedia company with leading assets in television, radio, out of home and digital media. Founded in Montreal in 1880, Bell is wholly owned by BCE Inc. (TSX, NYSE: BCE). To learn more, please visit BCE.ca or Bell.ca . The Bell Let's Talk initiative promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day, a national day of conversation about mental health, and significant Bell funding of community care and access, research and workplace initiatives. Bell Let's Talk Day 2017 set new records with 131,705,010 total messages of support driving $6,585,250.50 more in Bell funding for Canadian mental health at no extra cost to participants. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk . Media inquiries:

Marc Choma

613-785-0622

[email protected] Investor inquiries:

Thane Fotopoulos

514-870-4619

[email protected] SOURCE Bell Canada

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[March 17, 2017] Concentrix Wins Grand Stevie And More At 2017 Stevie Awards

FREMONT, Calif., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Concentrix won Stevie Awards in several categories at the eleventh annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service Gala held in Las Vegas on February 24, 2017. From individual customer service awards to team and executive level categories, Concentrix staff were honored with 14 awards, including the most distinguished Grand Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service. This prestigious award honors the top 10 organizations overall in the competition. Two Concentrix Senior Executives received top honors: a Silver award for Senior Sales Executive of the Year and a Bronze award for Contact Center Leader of the Year. Additionally, Concentrix won Gold for Young Customer Service Professional of the Year. Concentrix also received multiple Bronze and Silver Awards for recognition of staff leadership and contribution in Australia and New Zealand. In the New Product and Service category, Concentrix won Bronze awards for both Contact Center Solution and Business Intelligence Solution. In the Customer Service and Contact Center Team categories, Concentrix won Silver Awards for Innovation in Customer Service and for Front-line Customer Service Team of the Year. Concentrix also received Bronze Awards for: Customer Service Team of the Year, Recovery Situation; Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year, Solutions Team; and Customer Service Training Team of the Year. "We truly believe in the power of innovation and applaud our staff for thinking differently. Our team courageously acts on bold, thoughtful new ideas which helps our clients to be disruptive and differentiated in their marketplace," said Chris Caldwell, President of Concentrix. "On behalf of everyone here at Concentrix, I congratulate our Stevie Award winnrs."



"We've received more nominations in the 2017 Stevie Award for Sales and Customer Service than ever before. By popular demand, the awards categories were expanded and competition was fierce among finalists," said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards. "Business development, customer service and sales professionals have crucial roles in business success, and the Stevie Award winners this year should be proud of their distinction and innovation among everyone in these fields." About Concentrix

Concentrix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), is a leading business services company. We focus on customer engagement and improving business outcomes for over 450 global clients across six continents. Our 100,000+ staff deliver technology-infused, omni-channel customer experience management, marketing optimization, digital, consulting, analytics and back office solutions in 40+ languages from 125+ delivery centers. We serve automotive; banking and financial services; insurance; healthcare; technology; consumer electronics; media and communications; retail and e-commerce; travel and transportation; and energy and public sector clients. Visit www.concentrix.com to learn more.

About The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are the world's top sales awards, business development awards, contact center awards and customer service awards. The Stevie Awards organizes several of the world's leading business awards shows including the prestigious American Business AwardsSM and International Business AwardsSM. More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were preliminarily judged by 77 professionals worldwide before moving into final judging on 114 sales and service categories. Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service are available at www.StevieAwards.com/sales. About SYNNEX

SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a Fortune 500 corporation and a leading business process services company, provides a comprehensive range of distribution, logistics and integration services for the technology industry, as well as outsourced services focused on customer engagement strategy to a broad range of enterprises. SYNNEX distributes a broad range of information technology systems and products, and also provides systems design and integration solutions. Founded in 1980, SYNNEX Corporation operates in numerous countries throughout North and South America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Additional information about SYNNEX may be found online at www.synnex.com. Statements in this release that are forward-looking involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual results in future periods to be materially different from any future performance that may be suggested in this release. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release.  2017 Concentrix Corporation. All Rights Reserved. SYNNEX and CONCENTRIX are registered trademarks of SYNNEX Corporation, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off., used under permission. All other names and marks are the property of their respective holders. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/concentrix-wins-grand-stevie-and-more-at-2017-stevie-awards-300425284.html SOURCE Concentrix

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[March 17, 2017] Labbrand Research Finds 85.6% of Chinese Millennials Use Mobile Payment for Offline Purchases, Almost Double Their U.S. Counterparts

NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Labbrand, a leading global brand consultancy, previewed its findings on U.S. and Chinese millennials' digital drivers. The findings, based on an extensive online survey with young adults aged 20 to 35 years of age in both countries, showed that Chinese millennials use digital tools to satisfy functional and emotional needs  food, expenditure, socializing  more prevalently than their U.S. counterparts. Among the key indicators, 85.6% of Chinese millennials use mobile payment in physical shops at least once a week, as opposed to 44.7% of U.S. millennials. Such findings can be leveraged by global brands crafting their digital strategies for these and other international markets. Other noteworthy initial findings of the survey were also revealed. In terms of socializing, for example, Chinese millennials are highly expressive online  71.4% post answers to questions on Q&A sites or forums at least once a week, while 77.6% post reviews on movies, restaurants, travels or other activities at least once a week. U.S. millennials fell short of reaching 50% (41.8% on posting answers and 44.8% on posting reviews) on both questions. Overall, the majority of Chinese millennials agree that they tend to share everything they do online (55.3%), whereas only 28.3% of American millennials felt the same way. Labbrand released the initial findings of the survey at the Millennial 20/20 summit in New York. At the event, Denis Sabet, Labbrand's Managing Director of North America, presented on "The Digital World of Chinese Millennials", while also highlighting takeaways for brand marketers in the U.S. "The term millennial has been overused, and the definition has become too broad," said Sabet, "Brands need to uncover deeper and more specific insights on millennial consumers, and to tailor their brand actions to the characteristics of more targeted segments."



Based on the Digital Drivers model developed by Labbrand, the survey results also indicated that U.S. millennials are driven to digital platforms mainly by the need to seek pleasure, while Chinese millennials tend to be simultaneously driven by the needs of connection, discovery, actualization as well as pleasure. The Digital Drivers model helps brands to look beyond generic data to gain deeper insights into the drivers behind digital behaviors. A more in-depth analysis of Labbrand's latest survey on U.S. and Chinese millennials' will be released in the coming LABReport on March 31.

About Labbrand Labbrand is the leading China-originated global brand consultancy with a rapidly expanding global footprint that includes regional operations in APAC (Shanghai, Singapore), Europe (Paris), and North America (New York). Through brand innovations, we create, grow, and disrupt to be strong and resilient in dynamic markets. We are multi-cultural in approach and cross-disciplinary in research, strategy, naming, design, and digital. Together this gives us the foresight and ability to build brand equity. labbrand.com About Millennial 20/20 Millennial 20/20 Summits are the grand gathering of brands, retailers, corporates, service providers, investors and start-ups to celebrate the modern age of commerce and business powered by the millennials and future consumer generations. The summits focus on the impact of technology, digital and the rise of the internet of beings which is drastically changing how, where and when we consume and interact with brands, retailers and start-ups in the following industry sectors: Fashion & Beauty, Food & Beverage, Travel & Hospitality and Fitness & Health and in the key pillars of retail, marketing, mobile, payments, video, data, social, e-commerce and CRM. Millennial 20/20 has been created with the belief that business events need to advance with the times and deliver a curatorial, experiential and personalized experience for attendees. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/labbrand-research-finds-856-of-chinese-millennials-use-mobile-payment-for-offline-purchases-almost-double-their-us-counterparts-300425394.html SOURCE Labbrand

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[March 17, 2017] Absolute Dental Opens Southern Nevada's First "Green" Dental Facility

LAS VEGAS, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Absolute Dental, one of Nevada's largest and most well-established dental care providers, is announcing the grand opening of Southern Nevada's first "green" dental facility. The state of the art facility will allow patients and doctors to view x-rays and other information on television screens in the privacy of individual rooms. This new "green" standard will significantly eliminate waste from traditional x-ray films used by other providers. This new, state of the art dental office will be located at 1860 Charleston Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89104 and will take the place of Absolute Dental's existing office located at 556 N Eastern Ave Las Vegas, NV 89101. Patients can expect the same great care they've come to expect from Absolute Dental, with services including general dentistry, pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, endodontics, and oral surgery. This new office features nine private rooms (including two "quiet" oral surgery rooms offering sleep dentistry,) and a four-chair open orthodontic bay. It will serve patients Monday through Friday from 9am to 6pm.



An all-day grand opening event is planned for this Saturday, March 18 from 1pm to 4pm at the new location, and will be open to the public. Press and media members are also welcome to attend. The practice will be officially open for business on Monday, March 20.

About Absolute Dental Absolute Dental started in the Las Vegas valley over 14 years ago with a single office, and has been providing industry-leading dental care to our communities ever since. Now with more than 25 offices and growing, we remain committed to offering quality affordable dental care and comfortable experience for your entire family, from the young to the young at heart. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/absolute-dental-opens-southern-nevadas-first-green-dental-facility-300425307.html SOURCE Absolute Dental

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[March 17, 2017] Decisions by the Annual General Meeting of Solteq Plc

HELSINKI, Finland, Mar 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Solteq Plc Stock Exchange Bulletin 17.3.2017 at 3.15 pm The Annual General Meeting of Solteq Plc was held in Vantaa today. The Annual General Meeting and the Board meeting, held after the Annual General Meeting made the following decisions: DECISIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION Solteq's Annual General Meeting approved the financial statement for period 1.1.-31.12.2016 and discharged the CEO and the Board of Directors from liability. The Board of Directors' proposal of to the General Meeting that a dividend of EUR 0.05 per share be paid from the financial year ended on 31.12.2016 was accepted. The dividend will be paid to shareholders who on the record date of 21.3.2017 are registered as shareholders in the Company's shareholders' register held by Euroclear Finland Oy. The dividend is paid on 28.3.2017. The Annual General Meeting decided that The Board of Directors includes five (5) members. A monthly remuneration of 3.000 euros to the Chairman of the Board and 1.500 euros to the Board members and remuneration of 500 euros per meeting will be paid to the Chairman of the Board and to each Board Member. Aarne Aktan, Eeva Grannenfelt, Kirsi Harra-Vauhkonen, Markku Pietila and Mika Uotila were re-elected as Board members. Authorised public accountants KPMG Oy Ab was re-elected as auditor of the company. DECISIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPOSALS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS The Annual General Meeting authorized the Board of Directors to decide on share issue, carried out with or without payment and on issuing share options, and other special rights referred to in Chapter 10, Section1 of the Finnish Companies Act as follows: The maximum total amount of shares or other rights is 5.000.000. The authorization includes the right to give new shares or convey company's own shares. The authorization includes a right to deviate from the shareholders' pre-emptive right of subscription if there is a significant reason in company's opinion, e.g. to improve the capital structure, to finance and execute business acquisitions and other business improvement arrangements or to be used as a part of remuneration of personnel. The authorization includes that the board of directors may decide the terms and other matters concerning the share issue. The authorization is effective until the next Annual General Meeting, however, no longer than until April 30, 2018. DECISIONS OF THE BOARD MEETING HELD AFTER THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING In the Board meeting, held after the Annual General Meeting, Markku Pietila was elected as the Chairman of the Board. In addition the Board of Directors decided to appoint the Audit Committee. The members of the Audit Committee are Aarne Aktan, Markku Pietila and Mika Uotila. Mika Uotila acts as the Chairman of the Audit Committee. SOLTEQ PLC CONTACT: For further information please contact: Markku Pietila, Chairman of the Board of Directors Tel +358 500 4551 56 E-mail: [email protected] Antti Karkkainen, CFO Tel +358 40 8444 393 e-mail: [email protected] Distribution: NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Key media www.solteq.com This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com The following files are available for download:







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[March 17, 2017] Publix and BayCare Health System Announce Exclusive Four - County Collaboration

Publix Pharmacy and BayCare Health System are pleased to announce an exclusive collaboration to improve the delivery of health care to the residents of Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Polk counties in Florida. The collaboration initially includes BayCare branded telehealth sites in various Publix locations, BayCare screening stations in all Publix locations and Publix Pharmacies on-site at five BayCare hospital locations. "This is a very exciting collaboration for both Publix and BayCare," said Publix Vice President of Pharmacy Operations Fred Ottolino. "Through this agreement, we will not only be able to provide BayCare medical expertise to Publix customers seeking non-urgent medical care, but we will also be able to bring Publix's premier service to BayCare's patients." "BayCare is extremely pleased to enter into this agreement with Publix because we share the core value of excellence," said Glenn Waters, Executive Vice President/COO, BayCare Health System. "This collaboration between medical care and pharmacy also furthers the long-time BayCare commitment to connect the many different aspects of health care in an efficient manner that improves both patient health and the care experience. We are very focused on helping individuals access the right level of care in the right place and this collaboration does just that." The agreement makes BayCare Publix's exclusive health care and telehealth collaborator within the four-county geographic region. The telehealth sites will have a private room with teleconferencing and medical diagnostic equipment, including stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, high-definition cameras and other tools necessary for common diagnoses. The telehealth sites allow patients to speak directly via video conferencing technology with a board-cetified physician through BayCare's physician network. The physician can direct the patient to use the available diagnostic tools in order to make a diagnosis and write any necessary prescriptions. Publix Pharmacy support staff will be available to assist patients, if needed. Fees to use the telehealth site are expected to be competitive with a normal doctor's office copay, and appointments will not be needed. The locations and opening dates of the telehealth sites are to be determined.



Another component of the collaboration will enable BayCare patients to test their blood pressure and perform other screenings on the in-store health and wellness kiosks - known as higi stations - and send their screening results directly to their BayCare physician at no extra fee. In addition to these new services within its stores, Publix will purchase, renovate and operate four existing on-site BayCare hospital retail pharmacies at St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa; Mease Countryside Hospital, Safety Harbor; Morton Plant Hospital, Clearwater; and St. Anthony's Hospital, St. Petersburg. A fifth Publix Pharmacy will be built in Winter Haven Hospital. Publix also will provide free, bedside prescription delivery services to patients at all BayCare hospital locations.

Publix and BayCare have committed to finalize the details of the collaboration by the end of the year but anticipate that all of the components could be completed within the next four months. About BayCare Health System BayCare is a leading not-for-profit health care system that connects individuals and families to a wide range of services at 14 hospitals and hundreds of other convenient locations throughout the Tampa Bay and central Florida regions. Inpatient and outpatient services include acute care, primary care, imaging, laboratory, behavioral health, home care and wellness. Our mission is to improve the health of all we serve through community-owned, health care services that set the standard for high-quality, compassionate care. For more information, visit www.baycare.org. About Publix Publix is privately owned and operated by its 200,000 employees, with 2016 sales of $34 billion. Currently Publix has 1,144 stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. The company has been named one of Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" for 20 consecutive years. In addition, Publix's dedication to superior quality and customer service is recognized among the top in the grocery business. For more information, visit the company's website, corporate.publix.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005409/en/

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[March 17, 2017] ICAT Syndicate 4242 Places its First Catastrophe Bond, Buffalo Re Ltd.

ICAT Syndicate 4242 of Lloyd's of London has successfully sponsored its first catastrophe bond, Buffalo Re Ltd Series 2017-1. The cat bond placement supports indemnity reinsurance coverage from Buffalo Re Ltd. for named storms and earthquakes occurring in the U.S. The coverage is a part of Syndicate 4242's overall cat reinsurance program that renews on April 1. With this cat bond issue, ICAT Syndicate 4242 is the first Lloyd's syndicate since 2002 to act as sole sponsor for a cat bond. ICAT Syndicate 4242 buys a robust reinsurance program of $745 million excess of $40 million per occurrence, with the cat bond supporting $164.5 million of that coverage over a three-year risk period. The bonds were issued in two tranches, with the coverage from the first tranche inuring to the second tranche to provide cascading coverage for multiple events. Final pricing came in at and below the initial launch range, respectively for the Class A and Class B Notes even as the transaction was upsized from the initial $125 million. Willis Capital Markets & Advisory ("WCMA") served as the sole structuring agent and bookrunner for the bonds. Megan McConnell, Active Underwriter for ICAT Syndicate 4242 commented: "We are incredibly excited to have completed our first cat bond and to have received such a warm reception from the capital markets. Notwithstanding our already extensive relationships with capital providers, this transaction offers the syndicate additional sources of capacity and fits seamlessly within our overall reinsurance strategy. We are proud to have partnered with Willis Capital Markets & Advisory and their high level of expertise and professionalism has been vital to the successful execution of the transacion."



Brad Livingston, Vice President of ILS for WCMA commented: "WCMA is proud to have supported ICAT Syndicate 4242 in its inaugural catastrophe bond transaction. Syndicate 4242 has been one of the best performing syndicates over the past ten years and ICAT has a reputation for best in class catastrophe underwriting in the SME market segment. Investors were eager to support the business through Buffalo Re. Buffalo Re provides the syndicate fully collateralized capacity at attractive, stable pricing. We are pleased with the efficiency of the process, not only in minimizing transaction expenses but also in compressing the execution timeline to close in advance of the syndicate's core reinsurance renewal process. Buffalo Re highlights the benefits and continued ease of execution of fully distributed 144A transactions." About ICAT Syndicate 4242

ICAT Syndicate 4242 began underwriting in 2007 with the goal of helping homeowners and business owners in hurricane- and earthquake-prone regions of the United States recover from natural disasters. Business is produced in partnership with select retail agents, wholesale brokers and capital partners. ICAT Syndicate 4242 is managed by Asta Managing Agency and rated "A" (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company and "A+" (Strong) by Standard & Poor's. The Syndicate has been a top performer in the Lloyd's market over its ten years of underwriting at Lloyd's. Boulder Claims, a subsidiary of ICAT, has successfully managed more than 23,000 claims since its founding in 2005, including those from Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Katrina, Dolly, Ike, Isaac, Sandy and Matthew. For more information, visit www.icat.com. About Willis Capital Markets & Advisory Willis Capital Markets & Advisory, with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and Sydney, provides advice to companies involved in the insurance and reinsurance industry on a broad array of mergers and acquisition transactions as well as capital markets products, including acting as underwriter or agent for primary issuances, operating a secondary insurance-linked securities trading desk and engaging in general capital markets and strategic advisory work. Willis Capital Markets & Advisory ("WCMA") is a trade name used by Willis Securities, Inc., a licensed broker dealer authorized and regulated by FINRA and a member of SIPC ("WSI (News - Alert)"), Willis Capital Markets & Advisory Limited (Registered number 2908053 and ARBN number 604 264 Page 2 of 2 Press Release 557), an investment business authorized and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority ("WCMAL") and Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (Hong Kong) Limited, a corporation licensed and regulated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission ("WCMAL (HK)"). View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005413/en/

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Induction of Navjot Singh Sidhu as Cabinet Minister has proved as bursting the bubble of his supporters who were hoping for his appointment as deputy chief minister.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The swearing-in of Captain Amrinder Singh's cabinet while at one hand has left his camp overjoyed, it appeared as a bittersweet for Navjot Singh Sidhu supporters who were hoping that he will become teh Captain's deputy.

Induction of Navjot Singh Sidhu as Cabinet Minister has proved as bursting the bubble of his supporters who were hoping for his appointment as deputy chief minister. Sources close to the party said a faction led by former Punjab Congress chief Pratap Singh Bajwa was in favour of a number two position for Sidhu but the demand automatically got rejected as more senior Congress legislatures secured a victory.

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A three-time parliamentarian, Sidhu will be having a third number in the government and has been allotted departments which were being considered insignificant by the opposition and people from his own camp in comparison to others including the ministers of state. While the Minister of State Razia Sultana got the Public Works Department besides Social Security and Women Development ,

Other MoS Aruna Chaudhary has been given independent charge of Education department including Higher Education. Sidhu was neither considered suitable for the Health Department (his wife was Chief Parliamentary Secretary Health) nor for the Rural Development. He has been made a Tourism, Culture and Local Bodies minister.

CLEVER MANIPULATIONS

"Captain has cleverly manipulated the things so that Navjot Singh Sidhu is deprived of the number two position. His wings have been clipped so that his image does not overshadow him or any of his cronies," Chief of Whip, AAP Sukhpal Singh Khaira said.

Sources privy to the information say, senior Congress legislatures were against giving a Deputy Chief Minister's post to Sidhu as he had joined Congress a few days before the elections. They had also expressed their reservations about Sidhu and had conveyed the same to the Captain. Captain in turn had told the party high command that he can accommodate Sidhu by giving him a third position but not as his deputy.

"I have won six assembly elections . It was my right to be at number two," says Brahm Mohindra who will be having a number two position in the government and was once in anti-Captain camp.

Sidhu was not available for a comment but one of his trusted aides Daman Deep Singh told India Today that Sidhu had personally not demanded any post for self but his supporters were hoping that he will be number two in the cabinet.

DEPARTMENTS GIVEN AS PER CHOICE

"No no ...it is wrong .Sidhu had never asked for any position. He was consulted by Captain Amrinder Singh before allotting the portfolio. All the departments given to him are as per his choice. However, it is true that his supporters wanted him to be a Deputy Chief Minister," Daman Deep Singh said.

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Insiders say a Punjab Congress faction wanted to project Sidhu as Captain's rival before he contested election but it did not work. Seeking help from Captain's rivals to meet Rahul Gandhi had not gone down well with Captain who played safe during the elections. He proved his mettle by winning 77 seats and then called the shots by sending the demand to create a deputy CM's post to seed.

Also read:

Navjot Singh Sidhu inducted as Cabinet minister in new Congress government in Punjab

Amarinder to take oath as Punjab CM today; Navjot Sidhu, Manpreet Badal likely to get Cabinet ranks

--- ENDS ---
[March 17, 2017] Scala to Display Digital Experience Creation Tools at Adobe and Shoptalk Events

MALVERN, Pa., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Scala, Inc., will be first-time exhibitors at two tradeshows in Las Vegas next week, Shoptalk "next gen commerce event" and Adobe Summit Digital Marketing Conference, in booths #1522 and #148 respectively. Scala, a member of the STRATACACHE family of complementary digital solutions companies, will debut a new platform, EXP, at Adobe Summit, being held March 21-23. EXP is a web standards-focused platform with built-in tools and infrastructure for developing high-impact digital experiences, leveraging existing assets, workflows and skill sets of the experience designers. Further, EXP's flexible content creation uses modern web technologies, allowing for seamless integration with existing apps and systems as well as popular social, technical and retail cloud services. "We built this new platform with developers and designers in mind," said Joe Sullivan, Scala COO. "EXP allows them to remain focused on solving the creative aspects of executing the experience or vision by eliminating many devops-related tasks. Debuting it at an event like the Adobe Summit, lets us reach technical creative minds who may be looking to push the boundaries of traditional digital signage. We can show them what's possible and that we have the tools to bring it to life." Sullivan wil be on hand at Adobe Summit for in-depth discussions of EXP along with members of the Scala professional services and EXP development teams.



The Scala booth at Shoptalk, which is being held March 19-21, will display solutions that inspire retail innovators and marketers to use digital to impact and impress shoppers, leaving them with a lasting impression of the brand. The solutions focus on interactivity, drawing shoppers into a high-touch, in-store experience and leveraging technology seamlessly behind the scenes. Interactive Fitting Room  RFID tags on product price tags can detect when an item of apparel enters, moves or leaves an area of the store. When guests enter the fitting room, a touchscreen is triggered to display item details and compelling images. Shoppers can use the fitting room touchscreen to learn more about the brand and apparel, request assistance or even "click and ship" their purchase.

 RFID tags on product price tags can detect when an item of apparel enters, moves or leaves an area of the store. When guests enter the fitting room, a touchscreen is triggered to display item details and compelling images. Shoppers can use the fitting room touchscreen to learn more about the brand and apparel, request assistance or even "click and ship" their purchase. Smart Mannequin  Customers are treated to the high-touch experience that draws them into brick-and-mortar stores with the Smart Mannequin. By touching sensor-embedded 2XU high-performance athletic apparel, a nearby touchscreen is triggered to display detailed product information, allowing the shopper to browse and learn more on their own.

 Customers are treated to the high-touch experience that draws them into brick-and-mortar stores with the Smart Mannequin. By touching sensor-embedded 2XU high-performance athletic apparel, a nearby touchscreen is triggered to display detailed product information, allowing the shopper to browse and learn more on their own. Instore Re-Targeter  Using beacon technology and connecting to a retailer's app, it's possible to detect and act on fact-based consumer profiles and purchase history for in-store customers. Sales associates with live data dashboards can adjust screen content to be as relevant as possible to one specific customer in the store to highlight recently viewed items, suggest complementary purchases and offer tailored promotions. About Scala, Inc.

Scala solutions deliver engaging retail experiences by connecting networks of digital signs, kiosks, mobile devices, websites and Internet-connected devices. Scala, a STRATACACHE company, provides the platform for marketers, retailers and innovators to easily create and centrally manage deployment of shopping experiences while retaining the flexibility to rapidly adapt to local business conditions and preferences of customers in the store. With 30 years of experience entertaining, informing and educating audiences, Scala is well-known for its innovation and leveraging best-of-breed technologies, such as mobile and predictive analytics, to create award-winning solutions that are easy-to-use, yet infinitely customizable. Headquartered near Philadelphia, PA, Scala's network of partners and developers located in more than 90 countries drives more than 500,000 screens worldwide.

Media Contact:

Kim Karelis

LEWIS

Phone: 781-761-4500 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scala-to-display-digital-experience-creation-tools-at-adobe-and-shoptalk-events-300425464.html SOURCE Scala, Inc.

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[March 17, 2017] NCSBN Responds to White House FY2018 Budget Outline

CHICAGO, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yesterday, the White House released their FY 2018 Budget outline, America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, which proposes cutting $403 million from federal health professional and nursing workforce programs and $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR).

In response, National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) CEO David Benton, RGN, PhD, FFNF, FRCN, FAAN, made the following statement: NCSBN opposes the cuts to nursing workforce programs as proposed in the White Houses budget blueprint. The way that health care is delivered is rapidly changing and we must strive to understand what impact that has on the nursing workforce and the competencies nurses require. We must provide education to the professionals that deliver care in this ever evolving environment. By not funding the tools that help us compehend how health care is changing, we will be unable to equip nurses with the necessary skills to care for patients, effectively putting those patients unnecessarily at risk."



He continued: "Through its own research and the research of NIH and NINR, NCSBN seeks to promote evidence-based regulatory excellence for patient safety and public protection. Cutting funding for health research at the NIH and NINR is not only counter to NCSBNs mission, it is also antithetical to the very premise of providing evidence of efficacy that the White House is seeking to deliver through their budget blueprint. In this financially challenged environment, ensuring that nursing research supports these efforts is critically important to improving safety for patients, facilitating access and achieving optimal efficiency and effectiveness. Founded March 15, 1978, as an independent not-for-profit organization, NCSBN was created to lessen the burdens of state governments and bring together boards of nursing (BONs) to act and counsel together on matters of common interest. NCSBNs membership is comprised of the BONs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories  American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands. There are also 27 associate members that are either nursing regulatory bodies or empowered regulatory authorities from other countries or territories.

NCSBN Member Boards protect the public by ensuring that safe and competent nursing care is provided by licensed nurses. These BONs regulate more than 4.5 million licensed nurses. Mission: NCSBN provides education, service and research through collaborative leadership to promote evidence-based regulatory excellence for patient safety and public protection. The statements and opinions expressed are those of NCSBN and not the individual member state or territorial boards of nursing. Contact: Dawn M. Kappel Director, Marketing and Communications 312.525.3667 direct 312.279.1034 fax [email protected]

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[March 17, 2017]

Los Angeles Business Journal Selects Dave Watts of NetFusion As A Top CIO Finalist

LOS ANGELES, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dave Watts, President of NetFusion, an outsourced I.T. provider for professional services firms, has been nominated for five consecutive years as the Los Angeles Business Journal's Chief Information Officer of the Year.

The 2017 Chief Technology Awards, which will be held on Wednesday, March 22nd at the Casa del Mar in Los Angeles, recognize top information technology experts supporting Los Angeles businesses, institutions and nonprofit groups.

Watts, who has run NetFusion for 22 years, attributes his repeat recognition as a finalist to his reputation for providing consistent, reliable results to the CPA, business management ad legal professions and to reliably protecting his clients from security breaches.







"We are experts in those verticals," Watts says. "We know their line of business applications better than anybody else."

Watts says more and more businesses have become aware of his reputation and understand that "a significant security breach can put a company out of business by creating so much damage that you won't get a second chance."

With each project, Watts first clarifies and articulates his client's business objectives. Then he lays out for his clients how technology can best accomplish those objectives, along with the pros and cons of each choice  all within the context of the client's specific objectives, infrastructure, budget, and compliance requirements.

Current on his knowledge, skills and of the products being offered by many vendors, Watts searches out the best products and services or "ingredients" and brings them together, adding best practices, strategy, and experience to create outstanding service.

Professional services firms and small-to-medium sized businesses throughout California turn to NetFusion to design, implement and manage stable, scalable and secure I.T. networks. For more information, visit NetFusion.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/los-angeles-business-journal-selects-dave-watts-of-netfusion-as-a-top-cio-finalist-300425281.html

SOURCE NetFusion
[March 17, 2017] Dolan Law Firm Announces Recipient Of Its Inaugural Justice Empowerment Scholarship

Christopher Dolan, founder and lead trial counsel at the Dolan Law Firm, announced today that Fatima Casas, an undergraduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, has been selected as the winner of the inaugural Dolan Law Firm Justice Empowerment Scholarship. The law firm awarded Casas a $2,500 scholarship. The Justice Empowerment Scholarship encourages young persons to advance the cause of social justice. Scholarship applicants were required to produce and post on YouTube (News - Alert) a short video on the topic of justice. Twenty-four students from across the nations submitted videos. Casas' video and those of other applicants can be seen at https://dolanlawfirm.com/about-us/scholarship/ A first year student at UC Berkeley, Casas is studying politcal theory and ethnic studies in pursuit of a future career in the law. In her powerful video, Casas returns to her hometown of San Bernardino, California, to discuss issues of terrorism and gun violence, police brutality, lack of educational opportunity, full equality for the LGBT community, and the refugee and immigration crisis. "Justice is shining a light on the dark forces of oppression and fighting cultural stereotypes and prejudice that bring us down," Casas stated. "The social justice warrior in me aspires to have the courage to change the institutions of power that dehumanize and exploit us."



"Fairness and justice are what motivates the attorneys at the Dolan Law Firm. We see in Fatima Casas a similar passion for fairness and justice and are pleased to award her the Justice Empowerment Scholarship to advance her studies," stated Dolan. "I thank all the students that produced videos and applied for the scholarship. You are at the forefront of the fight for social justice in America. Your videos will inspire other young persons nationwide to strive for social justice in their communities." About the Dolan Law Firm

With offices in San Francisco, Oakland and Marin, the Dolan Law Firm represents clients in personal injury; car, Uber, motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents; elder abuse and neglect; employee rights and wrongful termination; whistleblower; and civil and LGBT rights cases. Learn more at https://dolanlawfirm.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005126/en/

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[March 17, 2017] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP Commences Investigation on Behalf of BRF S.A. Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM") is investigating potential claims on behalf of investors of BRF S.A. ("BRF" or the "Company") (NYSE: BRFS) concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws. On March 17, 2017, news sources reported that Brazilian federal police raided BRF offices and other meatpackers after a two-year investigation of alleged bribery regarding the inspections of their facilities. The investigation, known as "Operation Weak Flesh," xposed roughly 40 cases of meatpackers who bribed inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary procedures such as processing rotten meat and running plants with traces of salmonella. Brazilian police arrested three BRF employees, and 20 public officials. On this news, BRF stock has fallen as much as 8% during intraday trading on March 17, 2017.



If you purchased BRF securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Lesley Portnoy, Esquire, of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles, California 90067 at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, by email to [email protected], or visit our website at http://www.glancylaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number and number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005587/en/

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[March 17, 2017]

Navaera Sciences Announces Contract with Access Credit Union Limited (Access Credit Union)

NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /CNW/ -- Navaera, the leading provider of next-generation knowledge management technology, announced today that it has been awarded a contract with Access Credit Union, a leading financial institution in Manitoba. As part of the agreement, Navaera will provide Access Credit Union with Navaera On-Demand Risk, a unified risk management solution that includes anti-money laundering (AML) compliance functionality together with a range of automated risk management features that enable financial institutions to detect and prevent various types of fraud, misconduct non-compliance, waste and abuse.







ABOUT NAVAERA SCIENCES

Navaera Sciences provides industry leading products for business operations, regulatory compliance, corporate responsibility and employee collaboration that enable clients to create and sustain competitive advantage by leveraging data to build and enhance organizational knowledge. Navaera Sciences offers a suite of advanced products that enable clients to develop and implement smart business planning strategies, improve operations and achieve ROI in the face of evolving global dynamics.

Navaera Sciences is a privately held company headquartered in New York, NY. For more information on Navaera, please visit us on the web at navaera.com.

CONTACTS

Cesar Sanchez

Phone: (866) 326-7601 x5015

E-Mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Navaera Sciences
[March 17, 2017] Physicians Realty Trust Declares Quarterly Cash Dividend and Announces Date for First Quarter 2017 Earnings Release and Conference Call

Physicians Realty Trust (NYSE:DOC) (the "Company") announced today that the Company's Board of Trustees has authorized and the Company has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.225 per common share and unit for the quarter ending March 31, 2017. "Today we announce the 15th consecutive quarterly dividend to be paid by Physicians Realty Trust. We have begun 2017 like we finished last year, with strong growth and investment, in some of the best medical office facilities we have purchased. Moreover, during this quarter we had an exceptional response from investors in our debut $400 million investment grade public bonds as well as our more than $300 million equity raise. We are now positioned with our pipeline for another strong year of growth, with a strong balance sheet, low debt, and tremendous liquidity. Our proprietary approach to working directly with existing clients and new healthcare systems and physicians, positions us well to be the medical office facility platform and owner of choice, allowing us to continue to enhance the long term quality and stability of our portfolio. In these times of changing healthcare policy and capital markets volatility, we believe medical office buildings remain the most stable, most desirable health care real estate for long term investment and cash flow, and we continue to have great success thanks to our clients, partners, and investors. We look forward to discussing our first quarter 2017 results in May," said John T. Thomas, President and Chief Executive Officer. The dividend will be payable on April 18, 2017, to common shareholders and unit holders of record on April 5, 2017. Earnings Release and Conference Call Information The Company announced it will release its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2017, before the market opens on May 3, 2017, and will hold a conference call on this day at 2:00 p.m. ET to discuss the financial results and provide a company update. The conference call will be hosted by President and Chief Executive Officer John Thomas, Chief Investment Officer Deeni Taylor, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Theiler, and Chief Accounting and Administrative Officer John Lucey. The conference call can be accessed by dialing (877) 407-0784 from within the U.S. or (201) 689-8560 for international callers. Participants can reference the Physicians Realty Trust First Quarter Earnings Call or passcode 13657810. The conference call also will be available via a livelisten-only webcast and can be accessed through the Investor Relations section of the Company's website, www.docreit.com. A replay of the conference call will be available beginning May 3, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. ET until May 24, 2017 at 11:59 p.m. ET, by dialing (844) 512-2921 (U.S.) or (412) 317-6671 (International); passcode: 13657810. A replay of the webcast also will be accessible on the Investor Relations website for one year following the event. Beginning May 3, 2017, the Company's supplemental information package for the first quarter 2017 also will be accessible through the Investor Relations section of the Company's website under the "Supplemental Information" tab.



About Physicians Realty Trust Physicians Realty Trust is a self-managed healthcare real estate company organized to acquire, selectively develop, own and manage healthcare properties that are leased to physicians, hospitals and healthcare delivery systems. The Company invests in real estate that is integral to providing high quality healthcare. The Company is a Maryland real estate investment trust and has elected to be taxed as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes. The Company conducts its business through an UPREIT structure in which its properties are owned by the Operating Partnership, directly or through limited partnerships, limited liability companies or other subsidiaries.

Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains statements that are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "plan", "outlook", and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward looking statements include any statements regarding the Company's strategic and operational plans. Forward looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which such performance or results will be achieved. Forward looking statements are based on information available at the time those statements are made and/or management's good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward looking statements. These forward looking statements include any statements regarding the Company's strategic and operational plans. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, not all of which are known to the Company and many of which are beyond the Company's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in greater detail in the Company's filings with the Commission, including, without limitation, the Company's annual and periodic reports and other documents filed with the Commission. Unless legally required, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Completion of the offering on the terms described, and the application of net proceeds, are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, without limitation, general economic conditions, market conditions and other factors, including those factors discussed in the preliminary prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus and in the Company's annual and periodic reports and other documents filed with the Commission, copies of which are available on the Commission's website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements after the date of this release. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005624/en/

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[March 17, 2017] Marcus Hiles - Promotes Educational Rights and Opportunities for the Local K-12 Students

Long-time supporter of youth and children's development, the prominent investor and philanthropist Marcus Hiles continuously advocates for improving life chances for every member of the local communities. In line with his altruistic vision, Hiles has launched annual grants programs for local K-12 schools to help fund technology, after school initiatives, extra-curricular activities, and professional development training for teachers. Hiles' aim is to ensure all students graduate from high school with the skills necessary to succeed academically in college, which is a launch pad to economic prosperity in America. Marcus understands administrators are forced to cut these types of additional opportunities due to tight budgets and limited funding, and hopes his financial support will enable many of these critical programs to continue and strengthen the connection between community, student, and teacher. Marcus Hiles' keen understanding of the challenges youngpeople face in an urban environment rise from his humble upbringing as the son of a minister in the inner city. Hiles experienced the value of giving firsthand and knows the powerful impact a strong community and good education can have. Marcus Hiles has volunteered countless hours, purchased technology and software upgrades for several schools across Texas, and funded many public and private K-12 and college education grants, which help kids reach their potential. He has also been involved with career and job placement services for youths and university students.



Marcus Hiles, Dallas real estate entrepreneur and visionary developer, is Founder and CEO of Texas-based Western Rim Property Services who has spent more than three decades creating properties that embody his idea of affordable luxury living. His companies manage and own more than 15,000 high-end properties with affordable world-class amenities focused on promoting a healthy lifestyle. About Western Rim Property Services:

Western Rim Property Services, Inc. develops, owns, and manages apartment homes in Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, New Braunfels, San Antonio, and Houston, Texas. Known to offer a contemporary, high quality and luxurious lifestyle to its residents, the firm's mission is simple: build the highest quality homes in the very best locations, maximizing views with signature amenities, in superior school districts. This assures a rapid lease-up and excellent customer acceptance. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005705/en/

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[March 17, 2017] SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Goldberg Law PC Announces an Investigation of JBS S.A. and Advises Investors with Losses to Contact the Firm

Goldberg Law PC announces that it is investigating JBS S.A. ("JBS" or the "Company") (OTCMKTS: JBSAY) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws. If you purchased or otherwise acquired JBS shares and would like more information regarding the investigation, we encourage you to click here, or contact Michael Goldberg or Brian Schall, of Goldberg Law PC, 1999 Avenue of the Stars Suite 1100, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067, at 800-977-7401, to discuss your rights without cost to you. You can alsoreach us through the firm's website at http://www.Goldberglawpc.com, or by email at [email protected].



Brazilian federal police raided the offices of JBS after a two-year investigation into alleged bribery of regulators to subvert inspections of their plants. The investigation, known as "Operation Weak Flesh," had unearthed about 40 cases of meatpackers who had bribed inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary practices such as processing rotten meat and operating plants with traces of salmonella. Police apprehended two JBS employees, as well as 20 public officials. JBS offered in a securities filing that three of its plants and one of its employees were targeted in the probe. When this information was announced to shareholders, the value of JBS stock dropped, causing harm to investors.

If you have any questions concerning your legal rights, please immediately contact Goldberg Law PC at 800-977-7401, or visit our website at http://www.Goldberglawpc.com, or email us at [email protected]. Goldberg Law PC represents shareholders around the world and specializes in securities class actions and shareholder rights litigation. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005708/en/

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Election day information: voting times, polling centers and races

Residents will have their final chance to cast votes in local races on Nov. 8, including seats on both the NLCS and MCS boards and Sheriff.
By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Mar 17 (PTI) The Madras High Court was today informed that city police commissioner S George will appear before it on March 22 in connection with a contempt petition.

An undertaking to this effect was given before Justice N Kirubakaran by Additional Advocate General Venkatramani.

Recording the undertaking, the Judge posted the matter for March 22.

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The judge had ordered the presence of the commissioner on a petition by Pon Thangavel for allegedly not complying with the courts earlier directive to provide him protection.

The court had ordered protection to Thangavel after he had filed a petition seeking action against city corporation councillor V Annamalai for declaring in his electoral affidavit that he does not have any property though he and his family allegedly owned 12 immovable assets.

The Income Tax department, which was ordered to hold an inquiry into assets owned by Annamalai, recently submitted a report stating that the councillor and his family owned properties worth Rs four crore.

When the matter came up yesterday, the judge had flayed the attitude of officers in not complying with the judicial orders and summoned S George to appear before it in a contempt petition. PTI CORR ROH RT MVV

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Council approves rules to limit self-storage growth Future self-storage facilities in the city of Thousand Oaks will be excluded from prime commercial areas, according to a new ordinance adopted by the City Council this month. In a...

Dealership does Distinguished thing SPECIAL TRIPChildren from Boys & Girls clubs in Camarillo, Simi Valley and Moorpark, and Oxnard and Port Hueneme attended Misty Copelands Oct. 18 appearance in the Distinguished Speaker Series at...

Stagecoach Inn honors veterans The Stagecoach Inn Museum is honoring those who served with a Veterans Day exhibit featuring museum volunteers who have served in the military as well as family members who have...
India has strongly objected to Pakistan's reported plans, stating that the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir, including Gilgit Baltistan, is a part of Indian territory.

By Ananth Krishnan: China on Friday said its economic corridor to Pakistan wouldn't affect its stand on the Kashmir issue, as it parried suggestions that it had a role in Pakistan's recent move to turn the disputed Gilgit Baltistan region into a province.

India has strongly objected to Pakistan's reported plans, stating that the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir, including Gilgit Baltistan, is a part of Indian territory.

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The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which connects China's western Xinjiang province with Pakistan, passes through Gilgit Baltistan. There had earlier been reports in Pakistan that China had expressed concerns on the region's "unsettled" status.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday, however, said that CPEC had nothing to do with its stand on Kashmir.

Asked about Pakistan's reported plans to turn Gilgit Baltistan into a province, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular briefing, "The essence of your question is about the Kashmir issue. China's position is consistent and clear cut. We believe it is an issue left over from history and should be resolved between the two sides in dialogue and consultation in a proper manner. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor won't affect China's position on the relevant issue."

Reports from Pakistan had said plans were underway to change the administrative status of Gilgit to tighten Pakistan's grip, and that a committee had suggested to integrate the region into Pakistan's federal structure.

India's Ministry of External Affairs said on Pakistan's reported plan that "any unilateral step by Pakistan to alter the status of that part will have no basis in law and will be completely unacceptable."

The region has recently taken on added significance with the deepening China Pakistan relationship. China and Pakistan do not share a border. China's frontier Xinjiang region borders Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). China's connectivity projects hence depend on carrying out massive infrastructure works in Gilgit Baltistan, which India has raised objections to.

China, however, is going forward with $51 billion worth of projects as part of CPEC, comprising energy projects and infrastructure works in the economic corridor that will link Xinjiang, through PoK, to the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea. China has told India that the projects were "without prejudice" to the region's disputed status and that the projects were purely commercial in nature.

Also Read

China to co-produce ballistic missiles, aircraft with Pakistan after slamming India's weapons programme

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China defends Pak corridor after Modi criticism of projects

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Students at MIT Pune have developed a robot named Chintu whose aim is to help the elderly.

By Vishakha Saxena: Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune, in collaboration with IBM, on Thursday introduced Chintu -- a robot designed to assist senior citizens in conducting everyday tasks.

Chintu, who was unveiled during the ongoing MIT Tech Fest 'Texephyr', can do everything from setting reminders to dancing to Gangnam Style.

"The robot has opened up a new and exciting research avenue for our students. Robotics, machine learning and cognitive computing are interesting and exploring fields of research today and our students are getting first hand experience of working in these fields," MIT Pune's Head of Computer Engineering Department Vrushali Kulkarni told IANS.

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"What I like most about Watson is that it can solve real world problems. These services can be used as and when required, and are always accessible," said MIT Pune student Krishnamohan Manmohan.

Here's everything you might want to know about Chintu:

#1 Chintu is two-foot tall and weighs around 5 kgs. It has a microphone, multiple cameras, multiple on-board sensors and an internal memory of 8GB. The MIT team is working on not only enhancing existing features, but adding new ones too.

#2 Chintu gets its intelligence from IBM Watson -- a cognitive technology that can think like a human -- and the IBM Bluemix Cloud platform. Watson APIs powered by IBM Bluemix guide the robot through solving day to day problems, the American technology giant said in a statement.

"This is a great example of co-creation. You put great technology in the hands of bright and enthusiastic students, you give them freedom and a fun element and India's next generation of engineers start to do magical things. This is the way in which innovation will happen in the future," said Mezjan Dallas, University Relations Leader at IBM India.

#3 With support from Watson, Chintu is perfectly capable of reading text and can thus help the elderly in reading newspapers, books.

The cognitive assistant has the capability to perform a lot of other simple tasks, like reading, recalling capitals of different countries and telling you the time in the other countries.

#4 Chintu can set reminders as instructed by its owner - it just needs to be given a time, date and purpose for the reminder.

#5 Chintu is a bit of an entertainer too, with its capability to sing, dance and even emulate Shah Rukh Khan.

In its introductory video, MIT Pune students showed Watson dancing to the 2012-hit Gangnam Style on cue.

#6 Chintu has the capability to detect emotions from the change in tone and respond accordingly. It uses the Tone Analyser API to effectively detect emotions.

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#7 It takes an individual between two and three days to get used to Chintu. Its programming can also be customised to suit the needs of the person.

#8 Chintu is being developed by four final-year students at MIT Pune - Krishnamohan Manmohan, Rishab Dasgupta, Astitva Shah and Sanketh Gupta - with blessings from IBM, which provided a Rs 10 lakh grant under its Global Shared University Research grant programme.

The robot came from French firm SoftBank Robotics, while the students devised the software that allowed it to interact with people real time. They began working on Chintu in January just this year.

"The future of innovation will be co-creation and that is what this is. This is deep research in the hands of the students who learnt quickly and put this together in just eight weeks," Dallas told Economic Times.

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By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Mar 17 (PTI) A 140-member squad of paramilitary CISF was today flagged off for rendering United Nations (UN) mandated security duties in the Caribbean island of Haiti.

The contingent will render civil police duties and assist local police under the umbrella of the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

The squad has undergone training in weapon handling, crowd control and tackling of hostage situation among other security tasks.

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The team was given a ceremonial send-off after inspection by CISF Director General O P Singh from the forces camp here.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) is deputed on this UN mission since 2008 and this will be the ninth contingent of the force to that country.

"The major responsibilities of this contingent will be protection of civilians under imminent threat of physical violence and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipments," CISF spokesperson Deputy Commandant Manjit Singh said.

The CISF is tasked to secure 59 civil airports and other critical infrastructure in the aerospace and nuclear domain of the country. PTI NES ANB

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Though the best Android phones come with plenty of storage these days, space is usually scarce on older devices and cheap phones, with a large part of the phone's storage taken up by the operating system and preloaded apps.

Fortunately, a number of Android devices sport microSD card slots that allow you to expand your storage capacity by inserting a memory card. Using a memory card in your phone will not only allow you to store your photos and videos to it, but may also let you move some of your apps across. Not all Android phones support this. But for those that do, here's our guide on how to move Android apps to an SD Card

What to know about adding storage

First, not all Android devices allow you to install portions of an installed app to the microSD card, but for those that do, its just a quick trip to the application manager and a button press away. Most flagship phones have moved away from support for this feature; it is more commonly found in midrange to low-end hardware, but these are often devices that could use the extra storage.

Unfortunately, even if your smartphone supports the feature, not all apps do. Large apps such as games leave most of their data on the internal storage. For example, Asphalt 8 puts just 64MB of data on the microSD card while leaving the remaining 1.4GB to fill up your phone or tablet. That said, you can save some space this way, particularly if you have a lot of apps installed and move as many as possible to a microSD card.

Move apps to SD card using application manager

1. Navigate to Settings on your phone. You can find the settings menu in the app drawer.

2. Tap Apps.

3. Select an app you want to move to the microSD card.

4. Tap Storage.

5. Tap Change if its there.

If you dont see the Change option, the app cannot be moved. If you are unable to find any apps with this option, it is likely that your device does not support the feature.

6. Tap Move.

If you wish to move an app back to the internal memory, hit the Change button again and select Internal Storage.

Use SD card as internal storage

If your device does not support moving apps to a microSD card theres another option, first introduced in Android Marshmallow, that may be the answer for you. This feature is called Adoptable or Flex Storage, and it allows you to format a microSD card to act like added internal storage. Again, not all devices with a microSD slot will support this feature: Motorola, Huawei and Nvidia have all chosen to enable Flex Storage, while Samsung and LG have removed it.

There are a few factors to consider before enabling this feature. You will want the fastest microSD card that you can find to ensure smooth performance, at least Class 10 or UHS-I and preferably UHS-3. Any data present on the microSD card will be erased when you format it as internal storage, and from that point, it will be unusable in other devices (unless you reformat it again). Finally, remember that if you remove this microSD card from your phone, you will break functionality to any apps or content youve moved to it.

1. Navigate to settings on your phone. You can find the settings menu in the app drawer.

2. Tap Storage.

3. Select your SD card.

4. Tap the overflow menu button in the upper-right corner.

5. Select Storage Settings.

6. Tap Format as Internal.

7. Tap Erase & Format. If the system determines that your microSD card is too slow it will prompt you with a warning here that it will degrade performance.

8. Tap Move now. After making the selection you will tap next and initiate the transfer to your microSD card. The system will indicate roughly how long the transfer will take and how much data will be moved to your SD card.

9. Tap Done.

Your SD card will now be listed immediately below the internal shared storage and the system will use it as additional internal storage in the future.

Now you know how to move Android apps to an SD Card, take a look at how to speed up your Android phone or tablet in this quick and easy guide. For something more advanced, check out how to connect USB storage devices to your Android phone or how to print from an Android phone or tablet.
Our friends over at Gizmodo today posted a story entitled, "You Don't Really Need an Anti-Virus App Anymore."

Sorry, but that headline is just dumb. If you're running Windows, macOS/OS X or Android, you absolutely do need the best antivirus software.

The Gizmodo piece (which is a bit more nuanced than its headline) correctly says that keeping your system and internet-facing software updated, following best security practices and using common sense will go a long way to protect you. But none of that will save your butt when a brand-new piece of malware comes along and blows right past your system's built-in defenses.

Good antivirus software will at least give you another chance to stop those new threats. There's no good reason not to have it: Many AV programs have little system-performance impact, and many good ones are free.

Windows 10 may be the most secure operating system I've ever used, and Microsoft Edge the most secure browser, but researchers and online criminals keep finding new ways to attack them.

The Gizmodo writer is right when he says that compared to a decade ago, "Windows has much more robust security options built in, browsers are smarter, and, hopefully, so are the users."

Windows 10 may be the most secure operating system I've ever used, and Microsoft Edge the most secure browser, but researchers and online criminals alike keep finding new ways to attack them.

But you know who else is smarter? People who look for security flaws. Windows 10 may be the most secure operating system I've ever used, and Microsoft Edge the most secure browser, but researchers and online criminals alike keep finding new ways to attack them.

Those vulnerabilities aren't always fixed right away, either. Google found a bad one last November, made it public three months later (after Microsoft hadn't patched it), and the problem wasn't resolved until this week.

If you haven't installed the latest Patch Tuesday updates, you're still at risk from that flaw, even with Windows 10 and Edge. If you have installed the patch, there will be another dangerous flaw disclosed soon enough.

Beefing up the browsers

It's also true that web browsers are a lot safer than they once were. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome both automatically update themselves on desktop operating systems, and both they and Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will automatically update Adobe Flash Player.

(If your browser still automatically plays Flash videos and ads, that's a big security risk. Here's how to make sure they'll run only upon your approval.)

But so much bad stuff still gets through browsers, especially via exploit kits that bombard browsers with one attack after another, or through malicious banner ads that secretly drop malware into your computer. Antivirus software does a good job at stopping such stuff.

Gizmodo implies that Windows Defender, which comes built into Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, may be the only antivirus solution you need on a PC. That's not true, at least not yet. Defender is slowly getting better, but it still lets much more malware get past it than do most third-party antivirus products, paid or free.

This bring us to another Gizmodo point of argument: AV software is a waste of money. The truth is that you can get perfectly good AV software, such as that made by Avast, Avira, Bitdefender or Sophos, absolutely free. It may not have all the bells and whistles of paid antivirus software, but it's just as good at protecting your PC, and miles better than Windows Defender.

Gizmodo is ignoring the elephant in the room -- the fact that most Android users either can't keep their phones up to date, can't install apps only from the official Google Play store, or both.

Those other operating systems

What about Macs and Android devices? Those present very different cases. Macs rarely get attacked, but that's because few people try to attack it. Macs live in a nice neighborhood while Windows machines live in a war zone.

Still, half a dozen new examples of Mac malware were found last year, and experts expect that number to grow in 2017. (We've seen four new ones already this year.) That's why we review the best Mac antivirus software.

As for Android security, Gizmodo dodges the question by stating that, "Smartphones are locked down much more tightly than your laptops and desktops, and if youre keeping your Apple or Google OS up to date, and only installing apps through the official app stores, then youre most likely going to be fine."

This is totally disingenuous, and is really only true for Apple devices and the few phones that Google itself sells and provisions. Gizmodo is ignoring the elephant in the room -- the fact that most Android users either can't keep their phones up to date, can't install apps only from the official Google Play store, or both.

That's because smartphone makers and wireless carriers have to dissect and approve every new Android update before they push it out to their customers, and because those same entities often stop updating a phone when it's as young as 18 months old. Even fully supported phones may wait months for a new security update from Google.

MORE: Why Apple iPhones Don't Need Antivirus Software

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Android users in China can't buy apps through Google Play, due to the Chinese government and Google butting heads. Tens of millions of Android phones in other countries don't use Google Play at all.

Here's a page showing the current distribution of Android versions among devices visiting the Google Play store. (This excludes those Chinese phones and many others around the world.) As of this writing, two-thirds of phones with Google Play installed are running Android 5.1 Lollipop or earlier, which are no longer officially supported by Google.

Phones running Lollipop or Android 4.4 KitKat can still get some security updates, if their makers or carriers let them. Phones running Android 4.3 Ice Cream Sandwich will get none at all. All those phones are ripe for attack in ways that fully patched Android phones aren't, which is why we also keep tabs on the best Android antivirus apps.

It's as if two-thirds of Windows users were running Windows Vista (partly supported) or Windows XP (not supported at all), and then wise guys like Gizmodo argued that those PCs didn't really need antivirus software.

You know who does dumb things with their computers or smartphones? Everyone.

We are all morons

Finally, one last point. The Gizmodo argument is that smart people won't get infected.

You know who does dumb things with their computers or smartphones? Everyone. We all click on shortened links in Twitter or Facebook, even when we don't know where those links go. We all install free software we find online, even when we know that's risky. We all open email attachments from the boss, or from people who say we owe them money (or vice versa).

Put it this way: Have you ever been fooled by someone or something online? Have you ever been rickrolled? Then you need antivirus software.

Antivirus software will not solve all your security problems. It's not a silver bullet. Something bad may still get through. But your chances of that bad thing making it to the heart of your computer or smartphone are greatly reduced if you add antivirus software to your rings of defenses.
Residents question Google Fiber's future in Kansas City area after installations canceled KANSAS CITY, Mo. - When Larry Meurer first learned Google Fiber might be coming to his Olathe neighborhood, he was one of the first neighbors to sign up for the high-speed service. A former IT specialist, everything about Google Fiber appealed to him.

Out in the stix, they're stuck with Comcast or Spectrum . . . Now, given a recent pullback . . . It seems that the outer reaches of the Golden Ghetto could have to wait quite awhile forInternets service that dominates Kansas City Proper. Take a peek:
- This "exclusive" news is over a measly 500 bucks.





- The dispute involves Christmas gift card purchases and whether or not they were approved . . . SCINTILLATING!!!





- The story notes that Bryan Dial, Jr. and "Mothers In Charge" Founder Rosilyn Temple were formerly friends and Mr. Dial was part of an employment dispute with the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime - The organization that launch "Mothers In Charge" . . .

"The local politics that have been played with me are disgusting... I don't know that I've ever experienced such betrayal"

For the record, Mr. Dial has stepped away from the Ad Hoc crowd, seen the light and redirected his efforts toward his church and more education-based community mentoring. The guy has spent countless hours helping children, volunteering and working within his community. Bryan Dial, Jr. is one of the good guys and this hit piece hatched by the Mothers in Charge gang speaks to their level of duplicity when confronting controversy. Remember that Rosilyn Temple has been one of the loudest anti-gun advocates in the urban core and helped put push the 2nd Amendment crackdowns championed by Mayor Sly James.

MOTHERS IN CHARGE IS ABOUT POLITICS NOT CRIME-PREVENTION!!! ANY HELP THEY MIGHT PROVIDE VICTIMS OF CRIME IS QUICKLY CASHED IN FOR POLITICAL CAPITAL!!! THIS LATEST HIT PIECE DEMONSTRATES THEY ARE MORE THAN WILLING TO ATTACK ANYONE WHO BREAKS FROM THEIR RANKS!!!

"The Kansas City chapter received generous funding from the Kansas City Missouri Police Department to move into its own office space and expand the scope of its programs and services. In November 2014, "KC Mothers In Charge" (KC MIC) appointed its inaugural Board of Directors and incorporated itself as nonprofit corporation in the State of Missouri. In May 2015, KC MIC received 501(c)(3) federal tax-exemption status."

Participants in a politically active local anti-crime group are going after a former volunteer and the latest controversy once again signals the start of the silly election season in Kansas City.Here's the headline . . .Read the whole thing but here are the highlights . . .Remember that Mr. Dial was formerly a City Council candidate who did pretty well in his first try at office and could be planning another run . . . Via Facebook, Mr. Dial references political backstabbing at the root of this story. The comment he publicly shared with friends, of which TKC is one, a few hours before this latest story went live . . .We encouraged him to stand up to the petty allegations . . . Reality: Mr. Dial made the wrong move by not talking to the Fox4 reporter and he should have requested a sit-down interview. He's kind of a soft spoken guy and, fact is, nobody likes getting ambushed by a camera crew.To be fair, I don't know and don't care about Christmas gift-card controversy.Here's what's easy to understand . . .Worst of all . . . According to their web page they are funded by police i.e. taxpayers. So local residents are stuck paying for all of this political theater.And so, while Kansas City enduresrecord breaking homicide uptick, it's important to note that this taxpayer funded group seems more concerned about gift cards and thwarting any perceived election time threat.Developing . . .
More Kansas City Trump Fighting

Kansas Honor After Alleged Hate Crime

Brownback, lawmakers honor victims of Olathe bar shooting Kansas lawmakers used resolutions to honor the victims of an Olathe bar shooting being investigated as a hate crime, and Gov. Sam Brownback's proclaimed Thursday as Indian American Appreciation Day in Kansas. Brownback recognized the two survivors, Alok Madasani and Ian Grillot, and commemorated Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who died in the Feb.

Golden Ghetto Bad Gas Tonight

Crews work to plug gas leak in Overland Park Crews worked Thursday night to plug a gas leak near 119th and Riley in Overland Park. The Overland Park Fire Department said a crew working in a trench in front of QuikTrip in that area likely struck a 4 inch gas line that started to leak.

South Kansas City Renaissance???

Blight study approved to launch potential East Bannister Area Plan in south Kansas City The Planned Industrial Expansion Authority on Thursday approved financing for a blight study in three specific areas near the Cerner Innovations office campus in south Kansas City. The blight analysis, estimated to cost $16,000 to $20,000, would help pave the way for an East Bannister Area Plan, designed to encourage commercial and residential redevelopment.

Local High Art And Politics

Eclipsed, at the Unicorn: women at war, looking for peace Trigger warning: everything. Eclipsed, now playing at the Unicorn Theatre, covers a series of tragic particulars in its focus on 2003 Liberia: rape, hunger, abuse, abandonment. But the script isn't steeped in pity or cliches about noble suffering. In fact, it's partly a comedy - and that's key to its success.

Kick-Ass Kansas City Collabo

Tech N9ne and Krizz Kaliko Are Not With the 'Drama' on New Song - XXL Tech N9ne and Krizz Kaliko link up for "Drama," the latest collaboration off of Dominion, the Strange Music collabos album that's dropping on April 7. Tech handles the verses while Krizz comes in for the melodies.

remains one of theand her body of work inspires a quick peek at this collection of news links closer to home. Take a look:And this is thefor right now . . .
KANSAS CITY ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS SEND EXCLUSIVE WORD TO TKC READERS CHALLENGING CRITICS OF QUESTION #3 AND THE NEW ANIMAL SHELTER UP FOR A VOTE IN THE APRIL 4TH ELECTION!!!

Teresa Johnson is executive director of The KC Pet Project and she shares these comments and a bit of data in support of Question . . .

"It was brought to my attention that some inaccurate information about animal sheltering has been distributed by Dan Coffey at Citizens for Responsible Government. Inaccurate statements by Mr. Coffey are not new, as he regularly releases misinformation in an effort to attack virtually all measures related to improving Kansas City. While Mr Coffey may be earnest in his opposition to the bond plan to build a new shelter, he has spoken out of his wheel house when it comes to the state of animal sheltering in our Metro . . .





"It's completely unrealistic that any of them could provide free services to the city -- and even more unrealistic that any of them would be in a position to handle more than 10,000 animals per year for the city of Kansas City without significant financing by the city . . .





"Kansas City is a leader in the metropolitan area. KC Pet Project is a shining example of a positive public/private partnership in animal welfare. And animal health services are an economic engine for this city.The city's residents should expect Kansas City to be able to provide an adequate, modern facility for the care of the city's homeless pets. Voting YES on Question 3 will make that happen."

Teresa Johnson Of The KC Pet Project

This morning we report both sides of an issue worthand countless cute pet lives . . .To wit . . .Background . . .Remember that tax fighter and maybe one of the only guys in Kansas City looking to save you money, Dan Coffey recently asked:Here is the retort . . .Read her comments in full after the jump . . . And you decide the fate of cute doggies on Kansas City streets in the upcoming April 4th Question #3 vote. Developing . . .It was brought to my attention that some inaccurate information about animal sheltering has been distributed by Dan Coffey at Citizens for Responsible Government. Inaccurate statements by Mr. Coffey are not new, as he regularly releases misinformation in an effort to attack virtually all measures related to improving Kansas City. While Mr Coffey may be earnest in his opposition to the bond plan to build a new shelter, he has spoken out of his wheel house when it comes to the state of animal sheltering in our Metro.KC Pet Project is nationally recognized as a the THIRD largest,No Kill Shelter in the country - meaning no pet from Kansas City, MO is turned away. "No Kill" is often used for limited admission shelters that close admission when they are full, but commit to providing the animals in their care a live outcome. Also, the 4400 Raytown Rd is the only facility that accepts stray, lost or abused animals from Kansas City. And while other organizations could in theory accept owner relinquishments from KCMO residents, they are under no obligation to do so. KC Pet Projects other locations and staffing are paid for by donor dollars and cannot accept animal control intake or owner relinquishments.In addition to his misunderstanding of the differences between open-admission and limited admissions shelters Mr Coffey inaccurately notes that the other shelters in the area "Get No Federal, State or City Funds." However, he is wrong in his claims as all of them receive some level of city or county funding.The Animal Rescue League of Iowa, in Des Moines, receives more than $700,000 per year from the City of Des Moines for their contracted services for Animal Control Field Services and to operate their animal shelter.Wayside Waifs has agreements with the cities of Riverside, Grandview and Belton for the animal sheltering services and receives payment from all three for the services they provide to those communities.The Humane Society of Greater Kansas City has a contractual agreement with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County for veterinary care for the shelter animals in that community.And the Great Plains SPCA also receives annual funding from the city of Independence and from Jackson County taxpayers.Actually, Great Plains SPCA shelter in Independence is a great comparison as the services they provide the city of Independence most directly mirror the relationship KC Pet Project has with Kansas City. The animal shelter in Independence was built entirely with taxpayer dollars from Jackson County, and each year, the Great Plains SPCA receives $435,000 from the city of Independence and Jackson County contributes $130,000 to the cost of operation. http://fox4kc.com/2013/02/12/new-jackson-county-animal-shelter-to-open-in-april/Question 3 on the April ballot would provide the same for Kansas City residents as it would provide a new facility for KCMO to replace aging, dilapidated building and then continue to contract the sheltering services to KC Pet Project.I also want to clarify the reported numbers of pets "handled" in Mr. Coffey's note. Animal welfare organizations fill a variety of purposes, including intaking animals from the public and animal control, providing low cost veterinary services, or providing basic vaccinations and city licenses. While all are important functions, the cost difference between providing a round of vaccinations (which takes 15 minutes) is different that providing for the cost and care of rehoming an animal which may take weeks or even months. So several of the organizations have very large animals "Handled" numbers due to public veterinary services provided -- which KC Pet Project does not do in large part due to the inadequacies of the shelter facility in which they are currently using a double-wide trailer as a veterinary clinic.Pointing out these contracts and differences isn't meant to to disparage any of these organizations who all do fine work in the capacities they serve.It is, however, unrealistic to believe that any not-for-profit group would be able to provide an important government service such as animal care and sheltering services without government spending for these services with the cost based on the size and scope of the relationship.Working with not-for-profits is beneficial for cities, as in each of these cases, the not-for-profits are providing services far beyond the value of their respective contracts. However, it's completely unrealistic that any of them could provide free services to the city -- and even more unrealistic that any of them would be in a position to handle more than 10,000 animals per year for the city of Kansas City without significant financing by the city.Even if it were possible, it wouldn't negate the fact that all of these facilities are quite a distance from the majority of Kansas Citians. This long distance would drive up costs and inefficiencies for the animal control officers who bring in the majority of animals to the shelter and also be a disservice to KCMO residents who might need to visit the shelter looking for a lost pet. Many residents already struggle with this due to lack of transportation options to the current shelter, but putting the shelter in another city would make this incrementally challenging for the city's residents.Kansas City is a leader in the metropolitan area. KC Pet Project is a shining example of a positive public/private partnership in animal welfare. And animal health services are an economic engine for this city.The city's residents should expect Kansas City to be able to provide an adequate, modern facility for the care of the city's homeless pets. Voting YES on Question 3 will make that happen.##################
Delhi currently has no comprehensive programme for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of drug addict children in the city.

By Priyanka Sharma: With thousands of street children becoming victims of drug abuse in the Capital, Delhi government is now planning to start dedicated juvenile drug de-addiction centres in six major Delhi hospitals.

According to a government official, 30 beds have been earmarked in PT Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, GB pant hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Ambedkar Hospital, Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital and Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS) each for juvenile drug addicts. The official further informed that attendants will be provided for each child.

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As such there is no comprehensive programme launched by the government for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of drug addict children in Delhi. "An intersectoral co-ordination committee for comprehensive response for drug abuse prevention and de-addiction services in Delhi has been formed to look after the program for juvenile drug abuse."

ANOTHER CENTRE PLANNED IN TILAK VIHAR

Government has also planned to commission 30-bedded deaddiction centre at the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) building in Tilak Vihar. At present, there are three government hospitals such as RML, AIIMS and IHBAS with OPD for de-addiction clinics for juveniles including one polyclinic at Tilak Vihar. There are about seven government opioid substitution treatment centres (OST) in the Capital.

Officials also pointed out the scarcity of psychiatrists and lack of trained clinical psychologist in the government hospitals. The move comes after Mail Today reported the government survey on 70,000 street children being a victim of drug abuse.

The survey reported that out of 70,000 children, about 20,000 children consume tobacco, 9,450 children are addicted to alcohol, 7,910 use inhalants while cannabis are used by 5,600 children. Consumption of heroin was reported to be consumed by 840 and pharmaceutical opioids and sedatives consumed by 210 children each.

The government has made provisions for basic amenities for street children and safer environment for prevention of substance abuse with interventions to focus on enhanced contact with friends and safety networks, an official said. Besides that, Delhi government has also recommended mohalla clinics to be set up in schools.

ALSO READ | 70,000 children habituated to drugs, reveals 1st major government survey on Delhi's street kids

ALSO READ | Candy drug makes a comeback in Delhi; children in peril, parents warned

--- ENDS ---
The Greek Ministry of Culture announced that the location where the Greek naval forces had gathered before the historic sea battle of Salamis against Persians in 480 BC has been discovered

The Greek Ministry of Culture announced that the location where the Greek naval forces had gathered before the historic sea battle of Salamis against Persians in 480 BC has been discovered.

The battle of Salamis is one of the most important battles in the history of Ancient Greece. It was a naval battle fought between an alliance of Greek city-states under Themistocles and the Persian Empire under King Xerxes in 480 BC which resulted in a decisive victory for the outnumbered Greeks. The battle was fought in the straits between the Attica mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens, and is deemed as the climax of the second Persian invasion of Greece.

The announcement clarified that the location was most likely the commercial as well as the navy port of the island of Salamis in the classical ancient Greek era, the largest and closest of the Athenian state, after the three ports of Piraeus Kantharos, Zea and Munichia.

The discovery came to light after ongoing archaeological search that started in November-December 2016 by team of 20 experts and scientists from several Greek universities and archaeological bodies and was funded by the British Horon Frost Foundation that supports Maritime Archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

It is the commercial and probably war port of the classical and Hellenistic period of the city-state of Salamis, the Ministry and added: It is also the region where a portion of the united Greek navy had gathered on the eve of sea battle in 480 BC It is the pool part of the united Greek fleet on the eve of the great battle of 480 BC, which is adjacent to the most important monuments of the Victory: the Polyandreion (tomb) of Salamis fighter and the Trophy on Kynosoura, the statement says adding that references to the ancient port of Salamis has been found in the works of geographers Skylakos (4th BC) and Stravon (1st BC-1st AD) as well as of traveler and geographer Pausanias (2nd AD)

The search also verified the existence of ancient artifacts submerged on the three sides (north, west and south) of the bay of Ambelakia.

Some of the findings that came to light included port structures, fortifications and various other buildings.

Following aerial photography, photogrammentric processing, topographical and architectural documentation, the first visible map of the region came to surface, the Minister underlined and also revealed that the investigation confirmed that the three sides of Ambelakia Bay (north, west and south) kept submerged antiquities, which gradually sink and emerge due to changes of the sea level, which, especially in February, reach half a meter.

The findings include harbor structures, fortifications and various premises and are considered of major historical significance for archaeologists and fans of Ancient Greece.

Ancient Greek historian Herodotus recorded that there were 378 triremes in the Allied fleet. The Persian fleet initially numbered 1,207 triremes. However, by his reckoning they lost approximately a third of these ships in a storm off the coast of Magnesia, 200 more in a storm off the coast of Euboea, and at least 50 ships to Allied action at the Battle of Artemisium.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: The Department of History, United States Military Academy License: CC-BY-SA

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The package with explosives sent to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Wednesday was sent from the region of Attica and cited as its sender New Democracy Vice-President Adonis Georgiadis

The package with explosives sent to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Wednesday was sent from the region of Attica and cited as its sender New Democracy Vice-President Adonis Georgiadis, the Citizens Protection Ministry confirmed.

The package arrived at the ministry mailroom and was found to contain explosive material. It was neutralized by German police.

After the news, Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas asked Germanys police contact in Athens for information on the parcel. It was established that the package was mailed from a yet unknown ELTA post office in Athens and bore Greek stamps and seals.

A photo of the package sent by German authorities cited Georgiadis name and office address:

Spyridon - Adonis Georgiadis, New Democracy, Akadimias 84 -10678, Athens Attica, Greece.

Toskas notified the ND lawmaker who confirmed the address, after which police and anti-terror police asked their German counterparts for more details on the explosive mechanism and other information which will shed light on the real sender. Authorities are also trying to establish from which post office the parcel was sent and how it got past security at the airport.

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
Greece is fulfilling its debt towards refugees despite the economic crisis, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said

Greece is fulfilling its debt towards refugees despite the economic crisis, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said on Thursday, during a meeting in Athens with the Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Ambassador Laura Thompson.

Pavlopoulos asked for IOM and UNHCRs support in supporting the refugees currently living in Greece.

"We asked for the support" which is anyway due " from some of our partners in the European Union who have not understood that they are Europeans. And being European is a great honour; but it also but entails significant obligations. And one of these is solidarity in these large humanitarian issues," the President said.

On her side, Thompson said Greece has made a lot of progress on all issues and conditions are better, which will allow the country to manage the issues and the refugee population which is living here.

"We are making a great effort in the European Union, not just with the EU authorities, but also with member-states, to recognize this effort and gain everyones support," she said, adding that she will discuss with Greek ministers how the situation has developed, what progress is being made and how IOM can help further.

"Its a great honour and you can certainly count on our support in the coming years," Thompson said.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Two suicide bombings hit the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday, killing dozens as the countrys war entered its seventh year

Two suicide bombings hit the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday, killing dozens as the countrys war entered its seventh year.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the capitals main judicial building early in the afternoon, killing at least 30 people and wounding dozens of others, Syrias state news agency SANA reported.

A second attacker detonated himself at a restaurant in the Rabweh area of Damascus, according to SANA, killing and wounding an unidentified number of others. There was no immediate claim for the bombing, which came as the countrys civil war entered its seventh year.

The attack on capitals Palace of Justice, located near the famous and crowded Hamidiyeh market in Damascus, was the latest in a spate of explosions and suicide attacks targeting government-controlled areas in Syria and its capital.

According to Damascus police chief Mohammad Kheir Ismail, the attacker struck in the early afternoon  at 1:20pm (local time). A man wearing a military uniform and carrying a shotgun and grenades arrived at the entrance to the palace, the police chief told state TV.

Source: al jazeera

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
Both leaders said they would allow rallies on their soil

The leaders of Germany and France decided to allow rallies of Turkish politicians in their countries on the Turkish referendum provided the domestic laws were respected. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande released a joint statement condemning the term nazi used by Turkey to criticise Germany and other EU countries that had decided to ban Turkish politicians from holding rallies in their countries.

The statement read that France had expressed its solidarity to the countries that had come under attack by Turkey. Turkish citizens will go to the ballots in mid April to decide on whether to expand executive powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia will sign nine agreements on funding projects worth SR2 billion ($533 million) in the housing, roads, water, electricity and other infrastructure sectors in Bahrain, a report said.



The projects implemented by the Saudi Fund for Development, Saudi ambassador to Bahrain Dr Abdullah bin Abdulmalik Al Shaikh noted in an interview with Bahrain News Agency (BNA).



He added that a delegation, led by the funds deputy president Yusef bin Ibrahim Al Bassem, will visit Bahrain on March 18 to attend the signing of the agreements.



He also underlined the role of the Gulf Development Fund in embodying cohesion between the GCC member states and joint economic cooperation.



In June 2015, Saudi Arabia allocated funding worth $670 million to pay for housing, road, power and water projects in Bahrain. It was the second instalment of a $2.5-billion grant from Saudi Arabia, which was pledged as part of the $10-billion Gulf Development Fund.
French police arrested a 16-year-old student who opened fire at a high school in the town of Grasse on Thursday, wounding three other students and the principal who tried to intervene, a report said.



The suspect, identified by the Interior Ministry spokesman as Killian Barbey, opened fire at Alexis de Tocqueville high school at about 12:40 local time (11:40 GMT), the ABC News report added.



The government minister for victims' affairs, Juliette Meadel, told BFM television there four people, including three students and the high school principal, were shot.



The Grasse prosecutor said some of the victims were suffering from "emotional shock." None of the injuries was considered life threatening.



Prosecutor Fabienne Atzori said the young man  armed with a rifle, several pistols and a small grenade  entered a classroom then left, "not finding the person or people he was searching for."



"The motivation of the student appears linked to bad relations with other students in this high school in which it appears he had some difficulty integrating," Atzori said.



She said there was no reason to suspect the shootings were terrorism-related, "whatever the origin of the terrorist enterprise."
Opec secretary general Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo will attend the Opec-Russia energy dialogue, expected to be held in June, the organization said in a statement.



Barkindo has invited Dr Sun Xiansheng, secretary general of the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum (IEF) to attend the Opec-China energy dialogue, to be held in China in April, and the Opec-Russia energy dialogue as a guest of honour.



It would be important that the IEF participate, Barkindo said. It is the essence of [the] IEF to bring all parties, producers and consumers, together  in the interest of sustainable stability in the oil industry and the global economy.



You have an important role to play, he said. It would be good if our joint cooperative efforts can [be made] manifest here.  TradeArabia News Service
Flynas, a leading low-cost carrier in Saudi Arabia, has extended its partnership with Booking.com, a global leader in booking hotel and other accommodations online, to allow its loyalty programme "nasmiles" members to earn Smile Points when booking accommodation via a co-branded website.



A common challenge when booking accommodation through third-party online marketplaces is the inability to earn airline loyalty reward points. Members of "nasmiles" now have the option to book their hotel stays and continue to earn Smile Points, the airline loyalty programme's currency.



"We are excited to bring this partnership to our members. Booking.com is a global brand and well recognised in the market for their offering. With this partnership our members can continue to actively engage with the programme even after they've completed their flight, and accumulate points faster so that they can redeem it on flynas products and services" said Paul Byrne - flynas CEO.



"Our plan is to continue partnering up with great brands like Booking.com to allow our members to continue earning Smile Points across every aspect of their travel" said Paul Byrne - flynas CEO.

To earn Smile Points, nasmiles members will be required to book their hotel stays through a co-branded platform managed by Booking.com. Before completing the booking process, nasmiles members will be prompted to enter their membership ID in order to earn Smile Points.

Smile Points earned can be redeemed for flights and other services, such as cabin upgrades, meals, preferred seat selection and much more.



With this new agreement, flynas is able to extend the benefits of its nasmiles loyalty programme to not just to their existing members, but to new travellers choosing the low-cost carrier. - TradeArabia News Service
Walcott received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992. The 64-chapter Caribbean epic "Omeros" in 1990, plays such as "Dream on Monkey Mountain" and "The Last Carnival" were some of his memorable works.

By AP: Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott's death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early on Friday by his son Peter.

"Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia," read a family statement. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

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The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity" of his writings including the 1990 "Omeros," a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as "majestic".

"In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet", said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

WALCOTT WAS OF AFRICAN-DUTCH-ENGLISH ORIGIN

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the "very rich and complicated experience" of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him the reputation of being one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including "Dream on Monkey Mountain" and "The Last Carnival," and founding theaters such as the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled "English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most - if not any - of his English-born contemporaries."

A COMPOSITION THAT FLOPPED

Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write "The Capeman" story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics.

Walcott's treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, "The Star-Apple Kingdom," he wrote of the "groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream."

His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent most of his time in St. Lucia.

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Kaiten dining or conveyor belt sushi dining is a staple in Japan. Indeed, the feeling of seeing delectable Sushi passing through the conveyor belt -- and the waiting and eventual tasting of the food -- is unique and delightful. New York's Manhattan could now enjoy the same experience as Britain-based Japanese street food and sushi chain Yo! Sushi has opened its first 44-seat Kaiten dining experience serving only the best and freshest sushi, tempura, salads and sashimi.

According to New York Daily, the Yo! Sushi Manhattan branch has a hundred-foot conveyor belt running across the dining room. Seats are placed strategically to make the conveyor belt parading the freshly made Japanese dishes accessible to everyone. Each bowl has a protective cover, a sticker that indicates the time it was made and color-coded bowls that indicate their price value estimates, which another sticker specifies for diners.

Dishes in the restaurant include a for-sharing Aburi Sharing Platter and for ordering special dishes including the rice and panko fried chicken sandwich Katsu Sando and cocktails including a Margarita, Yo!'s craft beer, sake. For those who would pass on inebriation, there's tea.

According to Food & Wine, desserts are also available including shave ice and an ice-cream packed deep-fried bao resting in miso caramel, pistachio and soybean powder named the Hirata Donut. Photos from the lifestyle website show the appealing look of the latter dessert.

Chef Mike Lewis of the Yo! Sushi chain said the most difficult part of managing a Kaiten restaurant is having proper timing. He said they are tasked to "gauge what customers are eating" and the food still in the middle of the line and which time would they leave the line. Variety is the most important thing for him. The time stamps on food allow guests to ensure the dishes they pick out have not gone over an hour -- raw dishes could only last one hour after creation.

Yo! Sushi has over 70 restaurants in the United Kingdom. Lewis said its American branches -- only about seven to date in Florida, New Jersey, Boston and others -- adapt its menus slightly to localize its menus. Lewis said guests could rest assured that Yo! Sushi's menu strives to "make it more special for each location."

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Hungary is another one of Europe's most treasured destinations. Its capital, Budapest, is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the country itself is never short on amazing escapades and memorable travel adventures.

But Hungary is so much more than what meets the eye. Care to know more? Here are some facts about the place that will probably surprise you:

Naming a child is a serious matter. If you're a Hungarian parent, naming your child must always be on the pre-approved list of names in the country. You cannot just name your child whatever you want. If you ever want a unique name, you have to make an appeal first and pass an application to the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

They have a magic potion. This magic potion takes form in a fruit brandy named Palinka, and if you're ever in the country, you must be smart enough to not refuse a shot when offered by the locals. Hungarians revere this drink because they think it cures almost all ailments. They have a local saying that goes: "Palinka in small amounts is a medicine, in large amounts a remedy".

Hungary has its own breed of pigs. Called Mangalitsa Pigs, it's a result of a 19th-century Austro-Hungarian experiment in which they inter-bred a wild boar with a pig bred especially for lard. Now, the mangalitsa pigs are coveted around the world because of its excellent quality of meat. Only 60,000 Mangalitsa pigs can be found in the whole world, and 75% of its population is in Hungary.

Clinking beer glasses is rude. Do not make the mistake of clinking your beer glasses in Hungary-it is considered a social faux pas. This is because of a legend way back in the 1848 Hungarian revolution, in which 13 Hungarian generals were executed by the Austrians, and with every death, Austrians clunk their beer glasses. To show respect to the generals, Hungarians vowed to never clink their glasses when drinking ever again.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
"Shokugeki No Soma" chapter 207 is finally here, and it finally shows the beginning of the ultimate battle for the control of Totsuki Academy. Many fans of the manga may be thinking that the match between the rebels and the Elite are not fair, considering that there are eight in the side of the academy and only four for Soma's side.

But in the latest chapter at Mangatown, readers found out that they will be helped by really talented students, namely former elite members Satoshi Isshiki, Terunori Kuga, Tosuke Megishima and Subaru Mimasaka. In the first three on three battle, Soma is joined by Isshiki and Megishima against sixth seat Kinokuni Nene and two more.

The rebels are clearly the underdogs in the battle, with the emcee even asking the expelled students to watch the food war inside what looks like a prison cell. Soma's foe, Kinokuni, is considered an expert in cooking soba noodle. She was raised in a traditional restaurant and everyone claims no one in the academy is more superior over her when it comes to cooking the noodles.

Just his luck, Soma draws soba as the theme of the battle. Everyone is amazed at Nene's skills in making soba the traditional way, and most are convinced that there is no way Soma could beat her. Especially when Soma announced that he would be making instant yakisoba. "Shokugeki No Soma" chapter 207 ends with Kinokuni noticing that Isshiki is smirking and looking confident despite the odds being in her favor. There is also the appearance of some new characters that will surely bring more drama to the regiment de cuisine.

Meanwhile, Anime News Network reports that a new anime DVD for "Food Wars! Shokugeki No Soma" will be released, this time with a new cast. It will be released on July 4 and will be included in the 25th manga volume.

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Iceland is famous for its glaciers, volcanoes, geysers, and lava fields, but beyond its tourist sites, the country might be the cure for Alzheimer's disease. Scientists flocked to the ice country to study human genetic variability and how it can give information on diseases and how to cure it.

Researchers believed that the key to understanding illnesses lies on the Icelander's DNA. They've found that genetic abnormalities contribute to ailments like Alzheimer's disease and liver disease.

Geneticist Kari Stefansson told CNN News, "We discovered a variant a few years back, maybe three or four years back, that confers protection against Alzheimer's disease. It's a rare (gene) variance found in about 1% of the Icelandic population, and if you carry that variant, you are almost completely protected against Alzheimer's disease."

Residents in Iceland have 90 percent pure, hereditary genes that can be traced to one Viking ancestor. Since they are more isolated than the rest of the world, their unique gene pool can easily be traced off in their family tree to know where the genetic abnormality started.

The variants found in some the residents have influenced the creation of proteins that make or break brain development. Stefansson's founded company deCODE and its parent organization, AMGEN, would like to reproduce that genetic variant found in Iceland and turn it into a medicine to cure various diseases.

Stefansson added that the country is making a notable mark in the field of medicine after he studied the genetic pool of the country for 20 years. However, many are also criticizing deCode's work about privacy as the group has access to the people's medical records.

Scientists told the public that the data they have are secured and encrypted. Most of the world's genes were harder to discover as it makes up to millions of genetic contributions found all over the world.

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Indian Idol Junior runner-up Nahid Afrin has been making news after a so-called fatwa was issued against her by a group of Muslim

By India Today Web Desk: Indian Idol Junior runner-up Nahid Afrin has been making news after a so-called fatwa was issued against her by a group of Muslim

16-year-old Nahid Afrin, the finalist of Indian Idol Junior, was asked to stop singing by a group of Muslim clerics. However, thanks to the support of Assam government and industry colleagues, the little one is now unperturbed. "I will continue to sing till I die," she said.

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Saath Nibhaana Saathiya actress Devoleena Bhattacharjee, who also hails from Assam, has come out in support of the Assam teenager.

Also read: From Little Champs North East to Indian Idol Junior, Nahid Afrin's musical journey has been fascinating

"Being an actress, I understand my love towards my acting and performance. No one can stop me to act or put any restrictions in following my passion. Similarly, No one can ask Nahid or anyone else to give up their talent. It (fatwa) is unacceptable and is tantamount to infringement of one's freedom. Such a move shouldn't be tolerated. I am happy that Assam government is supporting Nahid and helping her to go with her passion and talent," she said in a statement.

Nahid has been doing quite well for herself after becoming the runner-up in Indian Idol Junior. She has also made her Bollywood singing debut with Sonakshi Sinha's Akira.

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Transportation Research Board > Blurbs > Seismic Retrofit of Spliced Sleeve Connections for Precast Bridge Piers





Seismic Retrofit of Spliced Sleeve Connections for Precast Bridge Piers





E-Newsletter Type: E-Newsletter Type: University Research News



This Summary Last Modified On: 3/17/2017 The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University has released a report that examines a repair technique for precast reinforced concrete bridge column-to-footing and column-to-pier cap joints. The repair utilizes prefabricated carbon fiber-reinforced polymer shells, epoxy anchored headed mild steel rebar, and non-shrink concrete to relocate the column plastic hinge. Text Size:
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Clue: It has to do with another food group.

Once in a while I encounter some cooking advice that makes a light bulb go off in my head. In this case, it was a headline on Mark Bittmans cooking blog: Treat Your Veggies Like Meat. Writer Emily Stephenson describes dining at a friends house, eating deliciously crispy roasted vegetables. When she asks her friend how its done, the friend replies: Ive never understood why people dont treat vegetables like meat.

Its a brilliant revelation. Why dont we? Meat eaters, for example, would never put a steak in a lukewarm pan or in a steam basket over a pot of simmering water. Theres a reason why cooks take time to brown stewing beef meticulously before braising. Doing this creates a glorious brown crust and an explosion of flavor.

A nice, browned, crisp sear is one of the best parts of eating meat, vegetables, bread, and pretty much anything else. This browning is known as the Maillard reaction that happens between amino acids and sugar as they are heated... The important thing to know is that browning and caramelizationthe process that forms a crustis what makes cooked food taste great.

Vegetables are no different. They respond wonderfully to heat. They can develop charred edges, caramelized sides, mouthwatering sweetness, and a perfect softly crunchy texture. And yet, many home cooks either ignore this knowledge or are unaware of it.

Theres almost no limit to what can be roasted at high heat and transformed into a sublime version of its everyday self. Take cabbage, for example. When I get a big head from my CSA share, it takes weeks to get through if I make coleslaw. But if I chop it into chunks, toss with oil and salt, and roast at 450 F, it turns into a golden, sweet treat that I cant stop snacking on. (It also shrinks down considerably, which helps me get through it faster.)

Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, green beans, tomatoes, rapini, scallions, bok choy, zucchini  these arent the usual veggies that come to mind when you think of roasting, but theyre all excellent in roasted form. Take Stephensons advice and preheat your pans in the oven while prepping the vegetables. You should hear a sizzle when you toss them in, coated in oil and seasonings. Thats a good sign. Thats where the magic happens.
By Press Trust of India: Airbus CEO

New Delhi, Mar 17 (PTI) The delivery schedule of Airbus A320neo planes will not be affected in the long run due to the Pratt & Whitney engine issues, faced by IndiGo and GoAir, the aircraft manufacturer said today.

"The engine issues are unfortunate. It is obvious that the engine you are talking about has had some teething problems. I do not see that overtime this will largely impact our deliveries," CEO Airbus Tom Enders said.

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The government is conducting a review of the snags faced by Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines of Airbus 320neo (new engine option) planes, operated by IndiGo and GoAir in India.

Civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked the US engine maker to address the issues within a "specified time".

"This is something we are working on with the airline customers, the engine makers and the Indian authorities," he said.

At present, there are 21 A320neo planes of IndiGo and GoAir that are powered by P&W engines that have been frequently facing technical snags.

Airbus also said that it was confident that the demand for its planes will grow in the near future.

"We are, so far, focused on single-aisle aircraft but I am absolutely sure that over time there will also be a shift to the entire product range including our new and efficient long-range planes," the Airbus CEO said.

"The year-on-year growth rate of 10 per cent in the Indian aviation sector is amazing and we are predicting that this growth rate will continue for the next two decades. This means a need for many more aircraft--single aisle--but increasingly long-range aircraft as well," said Enders.

Last month, two A320neo planes of budget carrier GoAir made emergency landings due to the engine issues.

In January, an IndiGo plane had to abort take-off at the last minute at Mumbai airport after one of its engines developed snag during taxiing.

Following these incidents, the DGCA had directed IndiGo and GoAir to carry out inspections of the engines once they complete 1,000 hours of flying, instead of 1,500 hours as recommended by P&W.

The civil aviation watchdog has also called for repeat inspections every 500 hours thereafter. PTI JC IAS SMJ

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"Whether one would accept or not is absolutely their choice. But the Election Commission may call an all-party meeting. Let the issue of rigging of voting machines be discussed", Mamata said.

By India Today Web Desk: In the wake of allegations of rigging of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly election, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said that the Election Commission should convene an all-party meeting to discuss the matter.

"Whether one would accept or not is absolutely their choice. But the Election Commission may call an all-party meeting. Let the issue be discussed", Mamata said.

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When asked whether she was in favour of an investigation into the charges of tampering of EVMs, she said, "I have seen the Election Commissioner's version that there is nothing. But I have also gone through a video tape of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in which he says these EVMs can be tampered with."

Banerjee showed journalists footages of Swamy's video in which he talked about the possibility of voting machines being manipulated.

SWAMY'S VIEW BASIS FOR MAMATA's DEMAND FOR PROBE

In the video clips, Swamy is seen saying that the EVMs were made in Japan, but ballot papers were used even there during elections because the machines could be rigged to favour a certain outcome.

Even countries like the United States and Germany are using ballot papers instead of EVMs, the BJP leader was heard saying in the footage.

Describing Swamy as "very strong legally", the Trinamool Congress supremo said, "What he (Swamy) has said is not wrong. He has not said anything bad. I have not said anything, but I think there can be an investigation into this issue."

Incidentally, Mayawati had accused the BJP of murdering democracy following her party's drubbing in the Uttar Pradesh election, saying that the EVMs were tampered in such a way that only votes cast for the BJP were accepted. The Bahujan Samaj Party chief had even alleged that had it not been for the rigging of voting machines, BJP wouldn't have won from Muslim bastions in the state.

Even Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has raised concerns of tampering of EVMs. Stating that the poll outcome in Punjab was completely unexpected for the Aam Aadmi Party, Kejriwal has also asked the poll panel to probe the possibility of EVMs being rigged.

Also read | EVMs cannot be tampered with, integrity of electoral process intact: Election Commission

Also read | AAP was sweeping Punjab, even BJP's Advani doubted EVMs: Kejriwal asks EC to probe alleged tampering

Also read | UP election results: BJP rigged EVMs, couldn't have won otherwise in Muslim bastions, says Mayawati

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WATCH VIDEO

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By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Mar 16 (PTI) A festival showcasing Indias diverse culture began this month in Ukraine.

The festival, which started this month, will culminate in October, Ministry of Culture said in a release.

It will showcase diverse Indian culture, including classical and folk dance, music, film festivals and seminars on yoga in different cities of Ukraine, namely, Kyiv, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Lviv, Ivano Frankivsk, Poltava and Ternopil. PTI MP IKA

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 17

French aircraft manufacturer Airbus today began work on its first fully-owned training centre in Asia, with the ground-breaking ceremony at Aerocity, near Indira Gandhi International Airport here. Vistara, the joint-venture airline of Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, became the first airline to sign an agreement with Airbus to train its pilots at the centre.

Vistara said it had signed a five-year agreement with Airbus Group India Pvt Ltd to provide training to its pilots for the A320 aircraft.

Airbus India Training Centre (AITC) brings state-of-the-art technology to India for the training of flight crew. It is equipped with latest software that accurately simulates the aircraft-handling characteristics and system responses.

The ground-breaking ceremony was performed by Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Tom Enders, CEO, Airbus. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was also present.

Airbus said it has no plans to set up a final assembly line for large commercial aircraft in India in the immediate future. However, Airbus could have an assembly line for helicopters and military aircraft, going forward, CEO Tom Enders said. We have no plans to put a final assembly line of large commercial aircraft into each and every market. But on the other hand, I would acknowledge too that in future, there could be final assembly line for large aircraft, Enders said.

India is the fastest growing domestic aviation market in the world and is expected to continue growing at an annual rate of 9.3% over the next 20 years, outpacing the world average of 4.6%. The number of trips per capita in India is expected to quadruple by 2035 due to a combination of economic and demographic factors.

To cater to this huge demand, Airbus forecasts a requirement for at least 1,600 new passenger and freighter aircraft by 2035. The consequent increase in Indian in-service aircraft fleet will lead to an accompanying need for over 24,000 new pilots and maintenance engineers.

Indias rapidly growing passenger aircraft fleet must be matched by adequate availability of skilled pilots and maintenance engineers. Airbus pilot and maintenance engineering training centre is the type of facility which will help augment the talent pool of such personnel and thus be a force multiplier for the Indian aviation sector, said Raju.

We have only scratched the surface when it comes to the growth of civil aviation in India. This training centre will be the first such facility fully owned by us in Asia. It is a symbol of our enduring partnership with this country, said Enders. The AITC will become operational by end-2018 with two A320 full-flight simulators, increasing to four and potentially to six simulators in due course. It will start with an initial capacity to train over 800 pilots and 200 maintenance engineers annually. The centre will cater primarily to Airbus operators in India and the region.

(with PTI inputs)
New Delhi, March 17

A total of 29 lakh debit cards were subjected to malware attack last year through ATMs that were connected with the switch of Hitachi, the government said today.

As reported by commercial banks, 2.9 million cards were used at ATMs that were connected to switch of Hitachi, which was subjected to malware attack, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

However, he said, the successful attempts of misuse of compromised cards as reported to the RBI by banks was only 3,291.

"RBI has informed that Hitachi Payment Services (HPS) appointed SISA Infosec for PCI forensic investigation. The final report suggested that the ATM infrastructure of HPS was breached and the data between May 21 and July 11, 2016 were compromised, but not the POS (point of sale) infrastructure," he said.

According to the minister, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has said no independent investigation was carried out by it.

He further said the RBI advised banks to improve and maintain customer awareness and education with regard to cyber security risks.

"Banks were also asked to educate the customers on the downside risk of sharing their login credentials or passwords etc to any third-party vendor and the consequences thereof," he added. PTI
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 17

The crime branch of the UT police today brought Chattar Singh, a member of the Bawariya gang, on production warrant from Ambala jail and took him to Uttar Pradesh to make recoveries in a case. The accused used to purchase stolen gold chains from snatchers and sell them off to jewellers in UP.

The crime branch had recently arrested three members of the gang, identified as Ashok Kumar (32), Rajesh Kumar (23) and Dev Kohli, alias Honey (25), who were involved in around 40 cases of snatching in the city. The police had also recovered 21 gold chains from them.

Police officials said the snatchers used to sell off the snatched chains to Chattar Singh who further sold them to jewellers in Shamli district of UP.

A team of the crime branch went to UP along with the accused to recover the stolen chains. The jewellers, who bought the snatched chains, will also be questioned and the chains recovered from them, said a police official.

The police sources said Chattar had confessed to buying a large number of gold chains from the accused.

The police from neighbouring states, including Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan, also contacted the UT police with regard to the arrest of the snatchers. The Rajasthan police suspect that the accused were involved in various crimes in their state as well. They have CCTV footage showing the accused, the police sources added.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 17

Dr Jagat Ram, Professor and Head of Ophthalmology Department, PGI, took over as new director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) here this evening. Earlier in the day, the Centre ordered his appointment on the coveted post, which was vacated by Dr Yogesh Chawla in October last.

Talking to Chandigarh Tribune after assuming charge, Dr Jagat Ram said speedy completion of major projects, including that of 250-bedded hospital, will be his priority. He said he would also review all pending projects of the institute and make sure they were completed soon.

Our OPDs and Emergency are under tremendous pressure due to heavy patient footfall. Finding a resolution to that is crucial and of utmost importance. It is certainly on my priority list, he said.

Sharing his vision, the new PGI Director said taking along employees of all cadres as a team and working for the development and betterment of the institute was his primary aim.

He said the implementation of Digital India initiative in the PGI would also be his focus. Digitisation of all operations in the institute and promotion of research activities and medical education are other core areas I would work towards achieving, he said.

Prof Jagat Ram conceded that the biggest challenge would be to complete all projects that have been pending for years and making sure that all employees work together as a team. There will be harmony and teamwork in the PGI, he assured.

Notably, it was on October 6, 2016, that former PGI director, Dr Yogesh Chawla, completed his tenure. Since then, the Dean, Dr Subhash Verma, had been officiating as director.

Dr Jagat Ram, an internationally acclaimed eye expert

Dr Jagat Ram, who is 61 years old, is at present working as Professor in the department of ophthalmology, PGI, Chandigarh. He introduced phacoemulsification surgery for the first time at the PGI (1994) and Republic of Seychelles (2004). His work on Posterior capsule opacification after cataract surgery and in-the-bag fixation of intraocular lenses received the WHO award for best research work. He has published a unique textbook on Pediatric Cataract Surgery in 2007.

He received his medical degree (MBBS) from Medical College Shimla (HP) in 1978, followed by residency in ophthalmology (MS) at the PGI, Chandigarh, which he completed in June 1982.

Administratively, he headed the ophthalmology unit for 26 years, has been a member of the selection committee of the PGI for ad hoc faculty and other group for 15 years, Chairman of the Institute Compassionate Appointment Committee for eight years, has worked for the Eye Bank Society of India for 24 years (as member, secretary and now vice-president). He is at present Chief Coordinator of the International Council of Ophthalmology (London) from India and Chairman of the Core Technical Committee (CTC-A), PGI.

He is recognised internationally for his outstanding contributions to the field of cataract and refractive surgery. He is recipient of the most prestigious award, Best of the Best Winner, for a new surgical technique, Management of Double Crystalline Lens, at American Society Cataract and Refractive Society (ASCRS) held at San Francisco, US, 2013. On May 9, 2016, he received the Best of the Best Award again at New Orleans, US, at the ASCRS which is a unique international honour. He received Oscar of Paediatric Ophthalmology at World Congress of Paediatric Ophthalmology in Barcelona in 2015.

Dr Jagat Ram is truly an inspiration and best known for his untiring devotion to both, patient care and teaching.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Mar 17 (PTI) With some parties questioning the reliability of EVMs, former Election Commission chiefs have asserted that the machines are tamper-proof.

Stressing that EVMs have proved their worth for the last 19 years, they urged the losing parties not to pass their "unhappiness of the loss" on to the machines.

Former Chief Election Commissioners M S Gill, V S Sampath and H S Brahma told PTI that the machines are "reliable and tamper-proof" and political parties should not question their reliability if they lose elections.

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The Election Commission had yesterday, in a strongly worded statement, rejected as "baseless and wild" the charge the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with.

Gill, who had pushed for the use of electronic voting machines in November, 1998, said, "People have faith in EVMs. Unfortunately, some political parties are destroying this faith... losing parties should not pass the unhappiness of the loss on to the EVMs."

He said these machines have lived up to the expectations of the countrys democratic system for the last 19 years.

"These machines have given India a peaceful democratic system. Remember the ballot paper days and the allegations that were levelled?" he said.

In 2004, the machines were used in all the constituencies in the Lok Sabha polls. "13 lakh machines and 75 crore voters, but no flaws," he recalled.

He said the use of EVMs was challenged by J Jayalalithaa in the Madras High Court and later Punjab Chief Minister Amrinder Singh became a party to it. "This case and several other cases against the use of EVMs have been rejected by courts," he said.

Another former CEC V S Sampath said reservations about the reliability of EVMs are not new. "In the heart of hearts they (politicians) know, EVMs cannot be tampered with," he said.

"Losing parties raise these issues...till the time the custodial security of the machine is with EC, it cannot be tampered with...before polls, candidates or their agents check it.

"After polls, they can affix their own seal on the EVM (container). Then it is stored in a strong room with armed guard. You cant do anything with it, till it is in custody," he said.

H S Brahma, who succeeded Sampath at Nirvachan Sadan, said the EVMs are "guaranteed 100 per cent reliable".

"They have proved their worth and utility. You cannot question its reliability," he said.

BSP chief Mayawati and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have demanded reverting to the old paper ballots after their electoral losses in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively. Mayawati has even said she would move the court for an order to this effect. PTI NAB RT

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Murli Manohar Joshi

The word yoga first occurred in the Rig Veda. That it was being practised in India since the very dawn of civilisation is clear from the excavation of Indus Valley sites. Figurines in various yoga postures have been found in these excavations. It was Patanjali (500 BC) who first provided the philosophy, the science and the grammar of this wonderful subject through the famous text Patanjali Yoga-Sutra.

In modern times though there have been several interpretations of this dictionary of yoga, to my mind the best is the treatise written by Yogacharya BKS Iyengar. After his personal experience of the system, Iyengar also devised a unique method of providing variations suitable for those who were unable to go through the rigours of the postures prescribed for a normal healthy person. His entire approach to yoga was to make the postures readily accessible even to the differently abled. His system is known world wide as Iyengar Yoga.

Yoga was taken to the west by several Indian gurus. Several centres were started where people practised and realised the beneficial effects of yoga, mostly as a readily accessible health regime leading to physical fitness.

More than physical health

Yoga not only improves physical fitness but is something much more, it is beyond physical health. The human persona is not only a body but is also a mind, an intellect and a soul. Yoga attempts to harmonise all of them. As a result, one possesses a healthy body, a sharp intellect and an unflickering or focused mind which is capable of realising the unity between i, generally known as personal consciousness, and I, the universal consciousness. In fact, yoga means to join and its ultimate goal is to experience the unity of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness and then to realise that both are not different. In this sense, yoga essentially teaches us to recognise the fundamental unity between human being and the humankind and also between us and the environment and ultimately to recognise a total interconnectedness of every thing with everything. The essence of this realisation is to experience that "All is one".

The Western rational mind was not ready to accept that such a relationship can be an objective, verifiable experience within the framework of mechanistic world-view. The experiences of eastern yogis were thought as mystic bordering on some sort of hallucinations. Till the middle of the 20th century, yoga in the West was only a physical health regime.

Several scientists in the West became interested in investigating the relationship between religious experiences and brain function. They designed highly sophisticated experiments to monitor the brain activity of a yoga practitioner at the most intense and mystical moments of his experience to shed some light on the mysterious connection between human consciousness and the persistent and peculiar human urge to connect with something larger than ourselves.

Neurologists Andrew Newberg and Eugene D 'Acquili, offer an explanation that is at once profound and simple and scientifically precise: The religious (spiritual) impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain. This revolutionary conclusion was arrived at by Newberg and Eugene after a long-term investigation of brain function and behaviour and serious studies of meditating Eastern meditators and Franciscan nuns at prayer. What they discovered was that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads us to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid and tangibly real. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call "oneness with the Universe, and the Franciscans attribute to the palpable presence of God is not a delusion or a manifestation of wishful thinking but rather a chain of neurological events that can be objectively observed, recorded and actually photographed.

Newberg and Eugene say that "the unescapable conclusion is that God is hardwired into the human brain". Besides scientific readings, they also looked for descriptions of the mystical components of the world religions and mythologies. They also looked for a relationship between the emergence of ritual behaviour and the evolution of human brain science. They found that the results indicated the emergence of a meaningful pattern that suggested "that spiritual experience at its very root is intimately connected with human biology. That biology in some way compels the spiritual urge".

Some of the western authors like Evelyn Underhill have stated that mysticism or yogic experience in its pure form is the science of ultimate, the science of union with Absolute and nothing else. This state of union is described as attainment of a "unitary state". Also, the true nature of reality can only be experienced through a direct yogic (mystical) encounter or through the experience of reaching a unitary state or unitary continuum.

It is indeed interesting to note that many western authors are now saying, "Each great religion has a similar origin where the spiritual awakening of its founders to God, the divine, the absolute, the spirit, Tao, the boundless awareness. The same is found in the experience of the rishis in India (samadhi); the Buddha in his experience of Enlightenment, in Moses the patriarchs, and prophets of the Biblical tradition in the inner realisation by Jesus of the relationship with his father, in Prophet Mohammed's revelation regarding the experience of Allah and the declaration of the Vedantic rishi that Sarvamidam Khalu Brahmam, or All is One.

Science, as is popularly known, is based on a foundational assumption that "all that is real can be verified by scientific measurements, therefore, what cannot be verified by science is not really real". But Einstein as far back as 1938 had stated that scientific interpretations of the physical world may not be as reliable as rational materialists would like to believe.

Participatory universe

The question became very important when scientists wanted to experiment with the measurements of fundamental particles. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg finally showed through his epoch-making discovery that not only the electron picture is a blurred one but also the electron itself is not knowable or accurately measurable through any possible scientific experiments. It leads ultimately to the concept of a Participatory Universe, where observer and observed become one.

Perhaps the most remarkable intellectual achievement of the 20th century was quantum theory, which is at the basis of our understanding of chemistry, biology, and physics and, consequently, it is at the basis of the century's astonishing technological advances. One of the two creators of this theory was Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961). In an autobiographical essay, he explains that his discovery of quantum mechanics was an attempt to give form to central ideas of Vedanta which, in this indirect sense, has played a role in the birth of the subject. In 1925, before his revolutionary theory was complete, Erwin Schrodinger wrote:

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the East and the West, I am above and below, I am this entire world."

Schrodinger's book, What is Life? (1944), also used Vedic ideas. The book became instantly famous although it was criticised by some for its emphasis on Indian ideas. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the DNA code, credited this book for key insights that led him to this revolutionary discovery.

According to his biographer Walter Moore, there is a clear continuity between Schrodinger's understanding of Vedanta and his research:

The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All is One.

In a famous essay on determinism and free will, Schrodinger expressed very clearly the sense that consciousness is a unity, arguing that this Insight is not new From the early great Upanishads the recognition Atman=Brahman (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.

Quantum basis of consciousness

In recent years, it has been suggested that the secrets of consciousness have a quantum basis. When physicists tried to understand the sub-atomic world, serious problems confronted them. Classical mechanics failed to explain the motion of sub-atomic articles and experiments in the domain of the particles resulted in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, according to which "efforts to discover ultimate reality through experiments were meaningless, and also that the common division of the world in to subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul was no longer adequate." As a consequence, in sub-atomic world, the observer becomes a "participator". This leads to the notion of a participatory universe quite close to the yogic view.

In the later half of the 20th century, J.S. Bell, a leading physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research while explaining the paradoxical results of a famous thought experiment, had proposed what is known as Bell's theorem: "At a deep and fundamental level the separate parts of the Universe are connected in an intimate and immediate way." Thus reiterating the yogic concept of a holistic Universe, where science and spirituality appear to be converging. This convergence can lead to a better understanding of human relationships. A synthesis of science and spirituality will create to a peaceful, egalitarian inclusive, nonviolent and progressive world. Certainly our planet will become a better place to live.

The writer is a former Union Minister and Professor of Physics
The Narendra Modi government has unveiled a new health policy (NHP) that is different from the old avatar in its shift away from the sick care approach to preventive health. This is laudable and in keeping with the worldwide trends where the debate has shifted from providing good treatment to patients to ensuring people do not fall ill prematurely. While NHP 17 spares the citizens from a health cess, there are question marks on the government's two key policy tenets  increasing health spending to 2.5 per cent of the GDP and the goals to reduce infant mortality and eliminating leprosy, kala azar, TB and filarisis. Was the government playing to the galleries when it copy-pasted these disease elimination targets mentioned in this years Union Budget?

As for funding, India is at the bottom of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in public funding on health. It is unclear from where Union Health Minister JP Nadda will find the money to meet these targets. Take the plan to set up screening centres for hypertension, diabetes and oral, breast and cervical cancers in 1.5 lakh primary health centres that will henceforth be called by the catchier name of wellness centres. Given the existing pitiable state of the public health delivery system, the government may have turned a blind eye to the cultural, technological and economic obstacles that will hobble this aim.

However, NHP 17 needs to be commended for recommending a watchdog system to prevent insensitivity to and fleecing of patients. A tribunal to adjudicate peoples complaints and a healthcare standards organisation should provide solace to patients done in by a greedy fraternity. On the whole, the health policy is strong on intentions but falls short on embracing the tough options that accompany a shift from acute care to preventive health. These include changes in medical education curricula and research and intensive training in the science and practice of cost-effective health promotion. Without an appropriate ecosystem, NHP 17 may fall short of the citizens expectations of an affordable, responsive and proactive healthcare system.
Prime Minister Modis poll campaign announcement that the Centre would bear the cost of the farm loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh, which would be among the immediate decisions the new BJP government would take, resonated in Parliament on Thursday as opposition MPs demanded a similar lifeline for farmers across the country. Responding to the discussion in the Lok Sabha, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh only reiterated what Modi had said and the BJPs UP manifesto had promised. The Finance Ministry, the RBI and banks are opposed to such concessions which, as the SBI chief has put it, tend to disrupt credit discipline among borrowers.

The government stand in Parliament has dimmed chances of a nationwide loan write-off. The Centres partisan action of rewarding UP farmers for electing a BJP government is bound to invite a backlash and lead to heart-burns in left-out states, particularly Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab, where agrarian distress has driven a significant number of farmers to suicide. This may create problems for Capt Amarinder Singh in Punjab as he too had made a similar promise. Under the Karza-kurki khatam, fasal di poori rakam campaign the Congress had roped in some 32 lakh farmers and made them fill forms for obtaining debt relief. The Captain went beyond loans taken from banks and cooperative societies to cover those owed to arhtiyas. Patronised by both the Congress and the Akali Dal-BJP combine, the arhtiyas grip on power structure has stalled Central reforms meant to eliminate middlemen from the procurement process. Last year, Tamil Nadu waived Rs 124.45 crore of farmer loans. Given Punjabs stressed finances, the Captain will have a difficult time in keeping his promise.

If sectoral slowdown or sickness can be a ground for writing off large industrial loans, the persisting crisis in agriculture cannot be overlooked. A handful of big borrowers have created a mountain of bad loans for banks, while many farmers kill themselves over ridiculously small amounts. Loan waivers, however, cannot match, or replace, efforts for sustainable growth, which requires higher agricultural spending and productivity. The road map, including MSPs, has to be on the lines suggested by the Swaminathan Commission.
Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 17

The scheduled joint declaration of an agreement between the government and All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) did not take place today as Jat body president Yashpal Malik gave it a miss.

Malik was scheduled to address a press conference at Haryana Bhavan along with Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, heading the high-powered committee to resolve issues raised by Jats.

After waiting for more than an hour, Sharma announced that as per the agreement between the AIJASS and government last evening, dharnas would be called off at all but 10 places from tomorrow.

The government has agreed on all seven demands, he said. The demands included review of criminal cases and jobs for dependants of deceased and rendered physically impaired during last years agitation.

He showed an agreement document bearing signatures of the government and AIJASS. Asked about Maliks absence, he attributed it to a technical reason.

Earlier, Malik faced hostility from members of the community during a meeting of the core committee at Jat dharamshala, about 20 km from Haryana Bhavan.

They laid a condition that leaders must talk to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar before the event. Sharma said there was no condition of Malik meeting Khattar, who left for Haryana in the morning.

Khattar had approved the agreement last night and Malik was kept in the loop, Sharma said. He added that the time and venue were fixed with Maliks concurrence.

Minister Krishan Kumar Bedi and Chief Parliament Secretary Kamal Gupta, members of the committee, and Chief Secretary DS Dhesi arrived on time.

Dhesi stated that Malik was on his way. The joint declaration was postponed by more than an hour. Sources said back-room talks continued with the AIJASS in the interregnum.

With Malik playing hard to get, the Chief Minister was contacted in Haryana, following which he stated that he was open to meet Jat leaders. This had no effect on Malik, who left for Rohtak.

Raj Kumar Saini, BJP MP from Kurukshetra, said the government had been showing weakness by holding talks with Jats.
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, March 17

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) has accused the Haryana Government of conspiring against them and misleading the people in an attempt to weaken their agitation.

Addressing a press conference today, Jat samiti leader Yashpal Malik said dharnas across the state would continue and they would go ahead with their plan to gherao Parliament House in New Delhi on March 20.

Malik said they were hopeful of reaching an amicable settlement after yesterdays meeting with Cabinet minister Ram Bilas Sharma.

He pinned hopes on a meeting with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, slated to be held at Haryana Bhavan in New Delhi this afternoon, but Khattar left for Chandigarh without meeting them.

This indicates that the state government hatched a conspiracy against us and misled the people in order to weaken the agitation. The cancellation of the meeting with the Chief Minister has left us with no alternative but to continue the agitation, he maintained.

Asked whether they were agreeable to further talks with the government, the samiti leader stated that talks could be held with the core committees approved, but only with competent authorities, including empowered functionaries of the Union and state governments.

In response to a query, Malik maintained that the points discussed with Sharma in Panipat yesterday were supposed to be finalised during their meeting with the Chief Minister, slated to be held at Haryana Bhavan in New Delhi today.

They came to know through the media this morning that the Chief Minister had left for Chandigarh and hence, no meeting would be possible, he said.

Following this, we held a meeting and decided to continue the agitation, he asserted. He refused to divulge details of their discussions with government functionaries during the meeting in Panipat.

Govt, Malik playing fixed match: Yadav

Rewari: Capt Ajay Yadav, a former minister and senior Congress leader, has accused the BJP government and AIJASS chief Yashpal Malik of playing a fixed match in the name of Jat reservation stir to serve their political interests. He held Malik responsible for the death of 31 persons in violence and arson during the Jat stir in February last year. "If it is not a fixed match between the BJP government and Malik, why did the government keep mum over the issue till the declaration of the UP Assembly poll results. The panel of ministers could have been formed earlier also if the government really wanted to hold parleys with Jat protesters," said Yadav while talking to mediapersons here on Friday. Targeting Malik, Yadav said the Jat leader had come to Haryana from UP just for political gains because he had been rejected by people of his home state. Since the matter of reservation was sub judice, it could not be given in the prevailing situation, he added. TNS
Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 17

A high-powered committee on the smart city mission, chaired by Chief Secretary VC Pharka and a special House of the Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC), will take a final call on the draft proposal for the smart city mission tomorrow.

Mayor Sanjay Chauhan, while commenting on the draft proposal, said The residents participated in the whole exercise on a massive scale. They want a smart city that is livable, clean and green, provides 24x7 quality water supply, has ducts to bury the overhead electric cables and water pipelines and provides a time-bound hassle-free transport. They want a city that is safe for women and children and pedestrians.

The smart city project proposes to redevelop the shanty of Krishna Nagar and the ramshackle Lower Bazaar and Ganj areas into new smart localities in a phase-wise plan.

The residents want to bury overhead transmission lines and cables and the water pipelines and retrofit the aged and defunct infrastructure to give the city a smart look, Chauhan stated.

They want smart transport system, pedestrian paths, escalators to speed up mobility in the city. We have convened a special House session tomorrow to pass the draft proposal, he added.

The SMC had engaged over 80,000 residents, various NGOs, public representatives and residents welfare associations to prepare the draft proposal under the supervision of Mayor Sanjay Chauhan, Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar, mission in charge Prashant Sirkeck and SMC consultant.

Sirkeck said after the Municipal House passes the draft proposal, a high-powered committee would take the final call on it. We will submit it to the Ministry for stage-II competition, he added.

He said they had inducted a wide spectrum of suggestions from all stakeholders in the city with direct engagement with them.

The smart city mission invited residents through social media, including Youtube, Facebook and Mygov.in web portal showcasing citizens engagement. It also launched an interactive website (missionsmartshimla.com, shimlamc.org), Facebook account/page (Smart city Shimla), twitter account (@smartshimla), emails (missionsmartshimla@gmail.com) and MyGov.in web portal.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 17

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said there is no question of undermining the importance of a historical city like Shimla and neither the secretariat nor any other office will be shifted from here to Dharamsala, where only new offices will be opened in the future.

Shimla is a city with great history and it is and will remain our capital. Having an administrative set up at Dharamsala to facilitate the people of Kangra and the adjoining areas will not lower the dignity of Shimla in any way, he remarked while replying to the debate on the budget proposals for 2017-18 in the Vidhan Sabha today in which 39 MLAs participated.

He said the Opposition should not instigate and mislead the public as the second capital has been declared for the integrity and unity of the state. He said the decision had been taken solely to benefit people of lower areas and not for political benefit. He said a grant of Rs 3,000 crore per annum, which Himachal used to get from Planning Commission, has been discontinued after the formation of the Niti Ayog. He said the increase in debt was mainly due to sharp reduction in Revenue Deficit Grant during the years 2013-15 coupled with the increased salary burden due to pay scale revision by the Punjab Government followed by Himachal in 2012. The Revenue Deficit Grant which was Rs 2,232 crore in 2010-11 of the award period reduced sharply to Rs 406 crore for 2014-15 of the 13th Finance Commission award period.

Virbhadra said due to overestimation in the recommendations of 13th Finance Commission, the actual receipts in 2013-14 remained Rs 528 crore less as compared to the amount estimated by 13th Finance Commission. It is because of this that in 2013-15, we had to borrow more than three per cent of the GSDP to maintain the pace development works, he justified.

The tax devolution will be Rs 4,343 crore during 2016-17 as against Rs 4,778 crore, resulting in Rs 966 less receipt in these two years, he explained. The apprehensions being expressed by Opposition are unfounded and based on conjecture and wishful thinking, as what I have said is authentic and based on Central and state records, he remarked.

Commenting on the walkout by the BJP, he said he already knew that they would stage a walk out as part of their pre-planned strategy. They only know how to criticise as they suffer from a dictatorial mentality, he said. The budget was passed by the house in the absence of BJP MLAs.

Earlier participating in the debate Sanjay Ratan said the BJP legislators were showing a lot of concern for the financial health of the state but when it comes to enhancing their own salaries and emoluments, they are more than happy. The Chief Minister has never discriminated with any part of the state and institutions have been opened even in your segments. If you have the guts go and say in front of your electorate that you dont want them rather than criticizing in the house, he challenged the BJP MLAs.

Chief Parliamentary Secretary Jagjivan Pal defended the move to make Dharamsala second capital. I am shocked at the BJP mentality as party members are more appreciative of the British time and not what Virbhadra has done for the state, he said evoking strong protest from the opposition benches.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 17

Apart from announcing arrears worth Rs 19.26 crore to HRTC pensioners for two months, state Transport Minister GS Bali said the state would register only those vehicles which comply with Bharat Stage-IV emission norms from April 1 onwards.

Mass Emission Standard for Bharat Stage-IV had been made mandatory and shall come into force with effect from April 1 in the state, Bali stated here today, adding that only BS-IV vehicles will be registered henseforth to cut down emission in the state. BS- IV fuel releases less pollution than the BS-III fuel.

As a now, sufficient stock of BS-IV compliant petroleum fuel was available in the state, he said.

He further said that after the amendment of Rule 115 of the Centre Motor Vehicle Rules 1989, Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had issued notification on August 19, 2015, making Mass Emission Standard Bharat Stage IV as mandatory in most of the states, including Himachal Pradesh.

The minister said as per this notification, the four- wheeled vehicles manufactured on or after October, 1 2015 should comply with BS- IV emission norms but this should not be applicable to four-wheeled transport vehicles plying on the inter- state permit or national permit or all -India tourist permit.

Besides, Bali said the HRTC would release pension worth Rs 19.26 crore for December, 2016 and January this year at the earliest. About 4,922 pensioners will benefit from the decision.
Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 17

Kanya Maha Vidyalaya (KMV), Jalandhar, organised a two-day international conference on Skill Development in Education under the aegis of the DDU, Kaushal Kendra, awarded by the MHRD, GoI.

Keynote speaker Dr Paul Wilson, general manager, TAFE, Queensland East Coast, Australia; chief guest Prof Chirstopher Musick, associate vice-president of International Affairs, Chatham University, USA; Guests of Honour Dr Marta Fulop, head, department of social and cultural psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary; and Dr RK Mahajan, Dean, College Development Council, GNDU, Amritsar; were accorded floral felicitations by president, college managing committee, Chander Mohan; general secretary, KMV managing committee, Alok Sondhi, and college principal prof Atima Sharma Dwivedi.

In his introductory address, Chander Mohan, president, Arya Shiksha Mandal, said in the present scenario of excessive automation, the institution of higher education needs to promote and encourage native skills of the country also by integrating them in the education system.

He lauded the pivotal role played by Kanya Maha Vidyalaya in building Skill India through its various study centres and programmes on the campus.

The college principal said the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes it imperative and pertinent for higher education to evolve a sustainable model of education in the country and make it skill capital of world.

In his address, Dr Paul Wilson delved upon the significant role of organisational cultural leadership in skill development in education. Despite so much of globalised world, organisational cultural leadership was a skill still confronted with challenging issues like bureaucracy, communication, cultural values, indulgences and restraints within a culture. Christopher Musick while sharing his experiences opined that exploring the world characterised by variety and diversity, while transcending the barriers of cultures, societies and professional worlds was also a skill. This assimilated experience acquired skillfully, coupled with passion for ones professional could contribute at the individual level for sustainable development of any country.

Dr Marta Fulop deliberated upon the need of creating opportunities for teaming millions to enable them learn even within their limited environment. Motivation and individual enterprise singularly or as a dialogic interaction between individuals and organisations could help learners to have goal-oriented education.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 17

The sanitation situation is getting worse in the city with the protest of the safai karamcharis entering its third day here today.

The Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) has failed to reach a compromise with the protesters.

Sanitation workers are seeking better wages and regular jobs in the corporation.

Nearly 2,000 sanitation workers have been suffering for the past 15 years as their salaries have not been enhanced and they continue to work as daily wagers. Though people are facing problems, senior officials of the Municipal Corporation have not taken any step to address the issue or make an alternative arrangement to lift the garbage from the city.

The state government has been pushing the people to make Jammu a smart city but on the contrary, it cannot even handle the cleanliness in the city. The government should sort out the issue of sanitation workers at the earliest, said Sushil Sharma, a local resident.

The major demands of sanitation workers include reorganisation of the JMC, scrapping the contracts to NGOs, deployment of municipal employees in wards instead of parking lots and regularisation of contractual drivers.

As the government is totally apathetic towards our issue, we will continue the strike. This time, we want the government to meet our demands. There wont be any compromise, said Rinku Gill, president, Civil Safai Karamchari Union.

Sanitation workers are on an indefinite strike due to which heaps of garbage can be seen across the city, which is posing serious health risks.
By Press Trust of India: Washington, Mar 17 (PTI) Even brief global warming events - known as hyperthermals - can cause mammals to shrinking in size, according to a new study that unveils the underlying effects of current human-caused climate change.

More than 50 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a series of extreme global warming events, early mammals responded by shrinking in size, researchers said.

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"We know that during the largest of these hyperthermals, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) temperatures rose and some mammals shrank by 30 per cent over time, so we wanted to see if this pattern repeated during other warming events," said Abigail DAmbrosia, a doctoral student at University of New Hampshire in the US.

"The hope is that it would help us learn more about the possible effects of todays global warming," said DAmbrosia.

Researchers collected teeth and jaw fragments in the fossil-rich Bighorn Basin region of Wyoming.

Their focus was on several early mammals including Arenahippus, an early horse the size of a small dog, and Diacodexis, a rabbit-sized predecessor to hoofed mammals.

Using the size of the molar teeth as a proxy for body size, the researchers found a statistically significant decrease in the body size of these mammals during a second, smaller, hyperthermal, called the ETM2.

Arenahippus decreased by about 14 per cent in size, and the Diacodexis by about 15 per cent.

"We found evidence of mammalian dwarfism during this second hyperthermal, however it was less extreme than during the PETM," said DAmbrosia.

"During ETM2 temperatures only rose an estimated five degrees and it was shorter only lasting 80,000 to 100,000 years, about half as long as the larger PETM," she said.

"Since the temperature change was smaller, this suggests there may be a relationship between the magnitude of a global warming event and the degree of associated mammal dwarfism," she added.

Researchers propose that the body change could have been an evolutionary response to create a more efficient way to reduce body heat.

A smaller body size would allow the animals to cool down faster. Nutrient availability and quality in plants may have also played a role.

Previous research shows that both the PETM and the ETM2 hyperthermals coincided with increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that could have limited nutrient quality in plants, which may have contributed to the smaller mammal body size.

Hydrological records during the PETM also suggest less precipitation and drought which could have led to drier soils and even fire which may have affected vegetation growth and eventually possibly offspring size. After both hyperthermal events, body sizes on all mammals rebounded.

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The study was published in the journal Science Advances. PTI MHN SAR MHN

--- ENDS ---
Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 17

Notwithstanding statements of senior party leaders to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha byelections on its own, the BJP leadership has decided to support its coalition partner People Democratic Party in the bypolls. An official announcement in this regard is likely to be made after a meeting of the state election committee tomorrow.

Highly placed sources said the party leadership had made it clear to the state unit that contesting the byelections separately despite being in the coalition would send out a wrong message, which would help the Opposition. The party high command has already asked the state unit to support the PDP on both seats for which the byelections are going to be held, a source said, adding that due to demand of a group within the party for contesting the elections separately, the BJP state unit had put the onus on the party high command to take the final call in the matter.

Instead of discussing the Lok Sabha byelections, the state election committee of the BJP in its meeting on Saturday would shortlist candidates for the forthcoming elections to the Legislative Council, a source said.

While March 21 is the last date for filing nominations for the Srinagar parliamentary constituency, March 24 is the deadline for the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat.

The PDP has nominated Mufti Tassaduq Hussain, brother of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, as the party candidate for the Anantnag constituency and Nazir Ahmad Khan for the Srinagar seat.

On Tuesday, BJP state general secretary (organisation) Ashok Kaul had stated that it would contest the byelections, ruling out any alliance with the PDP.

The Anantnag parliamentary constituency had fallen vacant in June 2016 after Mehbooba Mufti had resigned from the Lok Sabha following her election to the Legislative Assembly from the Anantnag segment.

The Srinagar Lok Sabha seat fell vacant after former PDP leader Tariq Hamid Karra had resigned from the PDP as well as the Lok Sabha in protest against brutalities on Kashmir protesters during the unrest last year.

Tassaduq to file nomination on March 20

Srinagar: Chief Minister Mehbooba Muftis brother Tassaduq Mufti, who is going to contest from the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat, is likely to file his nomination papers on March 20. Tassaduq  a cinematographer-turned-politician  is the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate from Anantnag and will contest against Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir. The PDP has already begun its campaign in the high-profile Anantnag constituency by holding a workers meeting. The campaign is likely to pick up pace once Tassaduq files his nomination. Mehbooba may address party workers the day Tassaduq files his nomination. The partys Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency candidate Nazir Khan will also file his nomination the same day. Ministers Abdul Rehman Veeri and Haseeb Drabu will be in charge of the poll campaign in Anantnag and Altaf Bukhari and Naeem Akhter will be in charge of the campaign in Srinagar, a party leader said.  TNS
Jasmine Singh

A love triangle with a message flashing in the backdrop (especially for the Doaba of Punjab), this is how wed see director Navaniat Singhs Jindua. The film starring Jimmy Shergill, Neeru Bajwa, Sargun Mehta and Rajiv Thakur is a typical Navaniat Singh film, which means it has oodles of mush, beautiful actresses, breathtaking locales but an extremely predictable storyline.

The screenplay of Jindua is written by Dheeraj Rattan. Dheeraj hasnt brought in any new kind of mush to the love triangle except for the fact that he has put in a subtle message for all youngsters who dream of getting a citizenship in Canada. And the director has executed this angle well. In fact, this is one element of the film which many Punjabis and Punjabi NRIs would relate to. The story is pretty racy with no time wasted in useless details! Forget about the story as by now we know how mushy Punjabi cinema can get! Despite a predictable graph of the plot, Navaniat has nicely brought out the emotional quotient of the actors. Since you know what to expect ahead, you might find it slightly stretched in parts. The film gets a point for its raciness but loses one for its predictable plot!

The film scores another point for its actors who have done justice to the story and to the characters. Neeru Bajwa and Sargun Mehta deserve a special mention for having done a great job. Neeru gets under the skin of her character, and so does Sargun, who scores a 100 in dialogue delivery. As for the main hero of the film, Jimmy Shergill, the actor is definitely looking good, has acted great, but his outfits, the Sunday longer than Monday look doesnt strike a gong! Jimmy is an actor who knows how not to go overboard in the emotional scenes, thus allowing those scenes to flow smoothly. Then, of course, there is another actor who deserves a mention, stand-up comedian Rajiv Thakur. The artiste imparts a nice and controlled humour to the film. And how could we not mention the adorable canine, Duffy? Looking at the posters one would have thought the dog was placed there for a purpose or maybe he was to add zing to the climax. But well, sorry Duffy, you just look adorable, and thats it!

The title track of the film, Jindua, sung by Ranjit Bawa and Jasmine Sandlas is foot- tapping kind, and so is Dholna sung by Prabh Gill.

Jindua is undoubtedly a love triangle that will follow the path you think it will. If only we remove the predictability of the film, it will be a perfect mush story, but then isnt love predictable? What do you say!
Johnson Thomas

Variations on the beauty-beast theme are dime-a-dozen. Even director Bill Condons last two Twilight installments were similar in theme. Disneys latest re-jig of the eternal childrens fantasy fairytale Beauty and the Beast is more than just another variation of the same old theme though.

The heroine, Belle (Emma Watson), may not be as beautiful as her name suggests but she is different from the norm. She is a bookish, bright and an ingenious young woman who lives with her father (Kevin Kline) in a picture-book French village. A sorceress intervention renders her widowed father, Maurice, a prisoner of a disgruntled, hirsute grotesque ram-like beast, who once was a Prince (Dan Stevens); presently cursed for his arrogance and disrespect. The devoted daughter tricks her father into leaving her behind in exchange for his freedom and finds herself the object of Cupids arrows trying to undo an age-old curse, which has relegated the Princes staff to being household objects of desire.

The ancient fairytale has, of course, been tweaked and quite fashionably too. Condons version is presented as a live action musical with plenty of magical elements. While the songs are melodious, the background score is exuberantly orchestrated. Gaston (Luke Evans), a narcissistic cabbage-stomping former soldier, and his adoring pal LeFou (Josh Gad), lend levity to the engagement. The action though is a little less compelling than expected. The choreography and songs are enchanting. The modern nips and tucks are sure to endear it to contemporary audiences. Scriptwriters Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos hint at a psychosexual subtext that is elementally human, but the overall cast of the story is about goodness and spunk, where a woman defies tradition to embrace something beyond her own bucolic upbringing.
Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 17

A day after a Haryana ministerial panel reportedly reached an agreement with the Jat community, the pro-quota leadership today said their march to New Delhi and gherao of Parliament on March 20 was very much on.

All-India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti chief Yashpal Malik charged the Manohar Lal Khattar government with misleading the people and announced their plan to gherao Parliament remained unchanged.

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Hitting back at Malik, Chief Minister Khattar said some of the protesters did not like peace and they appeared to be either politically motivated or had vested interests.

I am always prepared to negotiate with an open mind to resolve the issue. The Jat leaders can hold talks with me wherever they desire, said Khattar.

The ministerial committee, headed by Ram Bilas Sharma and Krishan Bedi and Kamal Gupta (Chief Parliamentary Secretary) among its members, held talks with the Malik faction yesterday and had reportedly decided to announce the end of the impasse today.

The Chief Minister said the protesters had decided to call off their stir after the agreement with the panel. One of the agreement points was that once the Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict on reservation was out, a provision for quota would be included in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution. The government was also to reinvestigate various Jat stir-related cases. The next of kin of those killed during the protests last year or those who sustained permanent disability (or their next of kin) were to be given regular government jobs within 60 days.

The samitis seven-point agenda was discussed in detail with Malik and other members. Almost everything has been decided, Ram Bilas had claimed yesterday.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 15

India and Russia on Friday signed key agreements for long-term maintenance support for Sukhoi-30MKI fleet of fighter jets of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

IAF has some 230 of the Sukhoi-30 jets of Russian origin. Mid-air engine failure of the Sukhoi-30 had India worried in the year 2014 that led to modification in the engine following Russian intervention.

The agreement was signed in presence of Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and Russian Industries minister Denis Manturov at a first-of-its-kind Indo-Russian meet in New Delhi.

The Sukhoi is serviced and maintained by public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). As per the agreement the Russian companies United Aircraft Corporation and the United Engine Corporation will provide long term supply of spares and technical assistance for five years.

The Sukhoi-30 engine needs to be overhauled after a fixed number of hours  about 800-900 hours of flying. All military equipment by the very nature of it needs consumable parts that have run-life and need to be changed or overhauled after its specified life. .

The Sukhoi has an availability rate of 65 per cent because of delay in spares. The agreement aims to quickly supply the parts.

The two-day meeting is aimed at improving the maintenance issues on fighter jets Sukhoi-30MKI, Mi-17 helicopters, T-90 tanks and the MiG 29K naval fighters.

About 70 per cent of military equipment with the Indian armed forces  the Army, Indian Air Force (IAF) and Navy  is of Russian origin. With Moscow continuing to be the largest supplier of military hardware, this scenario will not change for the next three decades.

Repairs and servicing of key equipment are hampered by lack of ready availability of spares. A rather circuitous route through a single agency in Moscow makes it lengthier.

The matter had been discussed during the summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin at Goa in October.

Russian manufacturers of military equipment source key parts such as engines, avionics and weaponry from producers within Russia, sometimes even Ukraine, to integrate them on planes or warships or tanks.
Lucknow/New Delhi, March 17

Suspense remained on BJP's chief ministerial pick in Uttar Pradesh as newly-elected MLAs were all set to meet here on Sunday to elect the leader, with Union Minister Manoj Sinha among the frontrunners.

"The new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh along with his Cabinet colleagues would take oath on March 19 at 5.00 PM at Kanshiram Smriti Upvan," Governor Ram Naik said in a statement in Lucknow.

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State BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said that the legislature party meeting would be held tomorrow at Lok Bhawan  the newly constructed Chief Minster's office located adjacent to the UP BJP office.

Central observers  Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav  will remain present at the meeting to elect the chief minister.

Besides Sinha, Home Minister and former state chief minister Rajnath Singh and state party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya are being projected as strong nominees for the post by their partymen.

All these leaders in their interactions with the media have played down their chances with Sinha turning poetic today, citing a verse which translates as 'desires are treacherous, and change once fulfilled'.

"Naa mujhe kisi race kaa pata hai, naa main kisi race main hun (neither do I know about any race, nor am I in any race)," Sinha told reporters outside Parliament when asked if he was in the race to become the chief minister of the country's politically most important state.

Maurya, who was on Thursday discharge from a hospital, where he was admitted after he complained of feeling queasy, is seen as a favourite if the party opts for an OBC face.

He parried questions and said the state legislature party will decide on the chief minister tomorrow.

"Legislature party will decide who will be the chief minister. The oath taking ceremony will be on March 19 and all national leaders of the party will attend the ceremony," he told reporters.

"If the name of the new Chief Minister is revealed before the meeting of the newly-elected MLAs, then the relevance and sanctity of the meeting would be lost," he said The Home Minister, several leaders said, is a natural contender due to his profile and vast administrative experience.

With the BJP leadership often springing a surprise with its choice of state leaders like Manohar Lal Khattar and Vijay Rupani, both of whom were not among the favourites to lead governments in Haryana and Gujarat, sources said a relatively lesser known leader cannot be ruled out.

The central observers will most likely inform the MLAs about the BJP top brass' choice which will be subsequently endorsed at Saturdays meeting. PTI
Mumbai, March 17

President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday stressed on the need to guard against majoritarianism, saying those in power must take the entire nation along at all times.

Consultation and consensus is the best and often the only way forward, he said while lauding the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after BJP scored landslide victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

In a Parliamentary democracy, we must always guard against majoritarianism. Those in power must involve and take the entire nation along with them at all times, Mukherjee said in his speech at a conclave organised by India Today here.

Appreciating Modis felicitation speech following the resounding win, he said, I was extremely happy to hear Prime Minister Modi speak about the need for humility in the aftermath of his partys victory in recent elections to Uttar Pradesh and other state Assemblies.

He asserted that while electoral verdicts are determined on the basis of bahumat (majority), the states will be governed on the principle of sarvamat (consensus). This is indeed Indias tradition and what the large majority of our people desire to see in action.

In the speech circulated at the function, the President also chose to flag the issue of frequent disruption of Parliament, saying I speak with some anguish because my entire public life has been defined by my role in Parliament. It is, therefore, difficult for me to stand and watch this fundamental pillar of Indian democracy being rendered ineffective.

In my view, there is absolutely no justification for constant disruption of proceedings, low level of attendance, shrinking in number of days that the Parliament and state legislatures meet as well as the irresponsible manner in which important legislation, including theBbudget and financial proposals, get passed with hardly any discussion, he said.

Mukherjee said it was of benefit to both the ruling party and the Opposition to break this vicious cycle of disruptions and disorderly behaviour and also made an appeal to political leadership across the spectrum to arrive at an agreement that all protests and airing of grievances will be undertaken in a manner that the functioning of Parliament and legislatures are not disrupted.

In the wake of debates on social media about targeting individuals for having a different opinion, the President said Free speech and expression is not only guaranteed by our Constitution but has been an important characteristic of our civilisation and tradition.

Indians, he noted, are known to be argumentative, but never intolerant. In fact, a conclave such as this is one of the best examples of the free debate and discussion that should take place in our society, he said.

Mukherjee, whose five-year term comes to an end in July this year, spoke about the two Prime MinistersManmohan Singh and Narendra Modiwith whom he had worked as the first citizen of the country.

I have learnt a lot from the calm wisdom and great scholarship in the field of economics of Dr. Manmohan Singh, who has been a colleague and friend of long years. I have also been deeply impressed by the focused approach, energy and capacity for hard work of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.  PTI
New Delhi, March 17

Opposition Congress on Friday forced an adjournment of Rajya Sabha proceedings over the conduct of the Goa Governor in inviting the BJP to form the government in the state after she reportedly consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Congress members alleged breach of propriety and constitutional norms in the consultations Goa Governor Mridula Sinha held with Jaitley. They stormed into the Well of the House raising slogans against murder of democracy, forcing Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien to adjourn the House till noon.

Earlier, when the House met for the day, Digvijaya Singh (Congress) said he had given a notice under Rule 267 seeking setting aside of the business of the day to take up gross constitutional impropriety committed by the Governor of Goa.

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Singh read out from an interview Sinha gave to a newspaper in which she reportedly said she did not expect the BJP to form the government but spoke to Jaitley before arriving at the decision to call the party to form the government ahead of the Congress, which had emerged as the single largest party in elections.

Kurien said the conduct of a Governor could be discussed only on the basis of a substantive motion and he had disallowed Singhs notice.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the conduct of the Governor was discussed when the Arunachal Pradesh issue was debated in the House.

Why don't you move a substantive motion, Kurien asked.

No. I have to go by rules. You can bring substantive motion, Chairman will consider it.

Azad said his party colleague Singh had not raised any issue with the conduct of the Governor but merely stated what she had said in an interview.

In the interview, he said, the Governor said she did not expect the BJP to form the government and she had called Jaitley at 2130 hours on Sunday before inviting the BJP to form the government.

How can the Governor seek permission of a Cabinet minister to form a government? Azad asked as Kurien insisted on a substantive motion for any discussion.

Singh said the House was supreme and a sense of members present could be taken and his notice under Rule 267 converted into a substantive motion.

Anand Sharma (Congress) said the Constitution clearly defined the duties and powers of Governor in appointing chief minister and it did not anywhere state that the Governor is supposed to consult a serving cabinet minister.

The Constitution does not allow a Governor to consult a cabinet minister for government formation, he said. PTI
Lahore/New Delhi, March 17

Pakistan on Friday conveyed to India that it was seriously pursuing with its law enforcement agencies the case of two missing Indian clerics, an issue External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said has been taken up with the Pakistani government.

Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI in Islamabad that, no clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far but Pakistan was pro-actively pursuing the case.

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In a series of tweets, Swaraj said both Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at the Karachi airport and Pakistan government has been requested for an update on both the Indian nationals.

We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport, tweeted Swaraj.

The 80-year-old, Syed Asif Nizami, is the head priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah.

Official sources in New Delhi said Pakistan has conveyed that it was seriously pursuing the case with its law enforcement agencies.

Indian nationals Syed Asif Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on March 8, 2017, Swaraj said.

Zakaria also said, We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter, noting that the Foreign Office had received the request of the Indian government to trace the two clerics.

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.  PTI
"People mistake it for the politics; it is actually the air pollution and the weather that affected my health," says Parrikar.

By Rohini Swamy: Goa Chief minister Manohar Parrikar speaks exclusively to India Today in Goa. He speaks about his transition as defence minister of the country to the chief minister of the state that he has his roots. During the interaction he lets us into a bit of his personal life and coping with his high stress portfolios.

Q: You have assumed the office of the Chief Minister again. From one hot seat to another, was the transition comfortable?

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A: When you are not attached to the seat, the seat becomes quite comfortable.

Q: A lot of voices echoed asking you to return as Chief Minister, and only then they will they align with the BJP in Goa. Is that what brought you there?

A: First of all it is a compliment that the MLAs wanted me to come back. I feel quite pleased with it. It was a necessity of the state that I return, though it was not an easy decision. For me moving from a national scenario back to a small state is very limiting. I started getting strong signals that they wanted me here and looking at my personal comforts as the weather conditions in Delhi was affecting my health I returned. The central leadership also thought it would be a good challenge for me to handle the state again.

Q: How did you manage to convince the PM Mr Modi?

A: The PM is very sensitive to Goa mainly because all good things happened to him when he was in Goa. He always gives Goa extra attention. He was quite keen that Goa should not go in the wrong hands and that is why the party may have decided that without taking any risk or manipulation we should take the opportunity to take its governance.

Q: What do you do to de-stress? You have been the Chief Minister, Defence Minister which are highly stressful jobs. How do you manage?

A: First of all I do normal exercises which I stopped when I went to Delhi. Now that I am back I have started again. I have started my morning exercises. One thing I must tell you, I believe in 'karmanye vaadhikaarasthe...'.

And I think mentally I have reached a stage where neither the material pleasure nor the seat of power has any satisfaction to me. In very few occasions I got stressed. Even when I was in the Defence Ministry particularly when the two surgical strikes took place, that was definitely time I was stressed for 10-12 hours.

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Q: How did you manage during the surgical strikes?

A: You distract yourself by reading and one strong point I have developed from a very early age is that I can compartmentalise my thoughts. So if I can't do anything beyond what I have done, the moment I do what I am supposed to do I de-compartmentalise myself.

Tomorrow suppose I go to my factory my entire focus during that time will be attending to work there and at that time I do not have any tension of the world. This is a unique ability I have developed and very few people have this. I call this compartmentalisation. This has helped me so that the stress does not spill over from one compartment to another.

Q: Do you think Digvijaya Singh should be pulled up?

A: That is for the Congress to decide. Hypocrisy is the reason behind the decline of the Congress in Goa. And it is the love for the family rule that brought them down. What they require is a charismatic and a visionary as a leader. Prime Minister Modi is like that.

I am not a person who keeps praising and am not in the habit of talking praises of any one, but in my political life of 25 years, though I knew PM Modi when he was CM of Gujarat he has always been a visionary and of great dynamism. Visionary like him is beyond anybody's imagination. I am not comparing him with anybody particularly but after Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and probably Vajpayee he is a visionary I have seen. Modi has the charisma to fight it through.

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Single-mindedness and charisma you have to see it to believe it. I have seen his determination and that is the same quality I have. I had many qualities similar to him. He may have reached a level where he is becoming truly a world leader; mine may be at a slightly lower level of proficiency. But we are similar. I believe he has a fantastic vision and the vision perspective is so clear for him was seen when he was being attacked after demonetisation; he believed in it and stood his ground. Finally he succeeded.

Q: You also as a Defence Minister found yourself in hot water during the surgical strikes. How did you cope up with it?

A: For the surgical strike, we have to give credit to the Army. There is no doubt about it. When people were trying to debate the issue, they did not realise that if there was a failure, would they have passed on the failure to the Army? They would have actually blamed me for that.

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So if I am to be blamed for their mistake, then I should also be given some credit for the political decision with the clearance of the Prime Minister and monitoring it with me. I think it was a great decision. This could have happened only because the morale of the army has been boosted in the last two and a half years. That is my single contribution. The Army is more prepared to ensure that we succeed.

Q: After your tenure as a Defence Minister how ready are we to combat our enemy?

A: We have to ultimately check up our readiness with our adversaries. With one we have improved our position in the recent years. And the other adversary needs to be. All this preparedness is for contingencies. So we have improved we have better connectivity and better equipment. I am satisfied with my achievement as Defence Minister.

Q: How did your family react to your coming back to Goa?

A: Normally my family does not get involved in politics. They were happy; they knew that it was not the politics but the psychologically getting used to the city Delhi that had begun impacting me. People mistake it for the politics; it is actually the air pollution and the weather that affected my health.

My family does not attach themselves to politics. It doesn't matter to them if I am chief minister or defence minister. They have travelled all over the country and the world without people knowing that they are my family or related to me. They don't travel around as if it is a star on their shoulder. They look at it as my individual contribution and support me wherever needed. For example, when I am running around I may forget my medicine but my son will remind me at 8 o'clock everyday that I have to take my medicine.

Q: What is your mantra to be a good chief minister?

A: To become a successful politician while you require all the intelligence capabilities, administerial experience, in between all that you have to try to become a good human being. Compassion is something that you should have as chief minister. As Defence Minister, veterans can vouch for me that I used to read all their emails. And respond despite getting 300 mails per day. Many of the veterans got their pension dues pending for 20-30 years in lakhs of rupees.

I remember one case. One lady who was the wife of a martyr during the 1971 war, she received arrears of 36 lakhs as bank was sitting on it. The last and most important point you are not the owner of this chair. The people have trusted you and that is why I said this seat is not hot for me. This seat belongs to the people of this state, I shall try and deliver. These principles I have always followed. The day I can't I will drop all and go home.

Also watch:

Was sure about the floor test result: Manohar Parrikar

Also read:

Goa's BJP-led government wins trust vote by 22-16 in 40-member Assembly

Vishwajit Rane, Congress MLA who skipped Goa trust vote, quits party

--- ENDS ---
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 17

Trivendra Singh Rawat was today unanimously elected BJP Legislature Party leader after which he met the Governor to stake claim to form the next government in Uttarakhand. He will be sworn-in as Chief Minister along with seven ministers tomorrow. The ceremony will be attended by PM Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, said sources.

A former RSS pracharak, Trivendra has been a minister in the BJP-led government in 2007 - 2012. He is known for his administrative and organisational skills.

Earlier, the BJP MLAs met at a hotel in the presence of two observers Union Minister Narender Tomar and general secretary Saroj Pandey. Trivendra's name as the Legislature Party leader was proposed by BJP leaders Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant. Both are believed to have been contenders for the post.

The proposal was seconded by senior leaders Madan Kaushik, Ritu Khanduri, Yashpal Arya and Dr Prem Singh Rana. All this while, Trivendra's supporters, who had gathered outside the hotel in large numbers, kept chanting his name.

The meeting ended peacefully unlike in 2007 when unhappy party workers backing BC Koshiyari had run amok after BC Khanduri was announced the CM-designate.

Speaking to mediapersons later in the evening, Trivendra said his top priority would be a corruption-free Uttarakhand and transparent governance. We have to meet the expectations of the people. I will ensure that my government is transparent and honest," he said.
Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 16

Capt Amarinder Singh took oath as Punjabs 26th Chief Minister at a simple ceremony at the Raj Bhawan here today. Seven MLAs were sworn in as Cabinet Ministers and two as Ministers of State with Independent charge.

It will be Capt Amarinders second stint as CM, having headed a Congress government in 2002-07. The first Cabinet meeting is scheduled for March 18. The CM assured to set up a Special Task Force to eliminate drugs as one of the first steps to be taken.

Edit: Capt has team in place

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh were among those who attended the ceremony. Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh, Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Sachin Pilot, Rajiv Shukla and Raj Babbar too were present. Security personnel had a tough time tackling a stream of Congress leaders trying to get through the security cordon.

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With five-time MLA Brahm Mohindra placed at number two and Navjot Singh Sidhu at number three in the ministry, ahead of Manpreet Singh Badal, all speculation on Sidhu being given the post of Deputy CM has been put to rest, at least for the time being.

Patiala seems to have got a lions share with the CM and three of his ministers Mohindra, Sidhu and Sadhu Singh Dharamsot (Nabha)  hailing from the district.

Sources said Capt Amarinder had a word with Rahul on portfolios. Sidhu was reportedly keen on getting Excise and Taxation, but the CM chose to keep the portfolio with himself.

The CM, accompanied by ministers, later took charge at the Secretariat amid a multi-faith prayer ceremony.
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 17

The Punjab and Harayana High Court stayed the reversion of the lecturers working in Punjab Education Department on Friday to master cadre post. Justice Jaishree Thakur of the high court also issued notice to Punjab for May 22.

The order came on a petition filed by Shruti Gupta and some other lecturers of Gurdaspur district who had challenged an order passed the director public instruction on March 10. The order meant that after more than nine months of their promotion from the post of science mistress to the post of lecturer chemistry, they were reverted on the ground of revision in seniority list.

It was contended by counsel for the petitioners Kapil Kakkar and Hema Kakkar that in July 2016, the petitioners who were working as science mistresses on the basis of their seniority were promoted to the post of lecturer in chemistry. But due to the order, their promotions stood cancelled without a notice or a hearing on the ground that the seniority of the masters/mistresses in the Punjab Education Department is to be revised.

It was submitted by the counsel that unless such an exercise is done and the whole seniority list was recast, the petitioners could not be demoted to the old post on the ground that they were junior employees and the action was illegal, taken without application of mind.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 17

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today offered to cooperate with the Amarinder-led state government for a drug-free Punjab.

Leader of Opposition HS Phoolka met the Chief Minister today and offered cooperation on the governments war against drugs. In a statement, he said everybody in Punjab knew who were behind the drug supply racket and the CM should act against those elements.

A day after confrontation with the Congress on the alleged ill-treatment of AAP MLAs during the oath-taking ceremony, Phoolka had a cordial meeting with the CM today. Reminding Amarinder about his oath he took in Bathinda to rid the state of drugs in four weeks after coming to power, Phoolka said the countdown for the task had started.

I am sure that Amarinder will fulfill his promise and curb the drug trade by April 16 (30 days) and send all drug peddlers in Punjab to jail, he said.

The leader, meanwhile, said all party MLAs and leaders would shun the VIP culture and wont use red beacon on their vehicles. He said the AAP MLAs would claim only necessary perks, which would be needed to perform their duties towards the people.

Ex-DGP ready to chip in

Amritsar: Former DGP (Prisons) Shashi Kant has offered assistance to the CM for tackling the drug menace. He stated that his department had submitted a list with the state government in 2007, mentioning the names of top politicians and officers who were linked to the drug trade. I urge Capt Amarinder to trace the list, he said, stressing the need to set up an anti-narcotics commission. TNS
Real Estate Industry body, NAREDCO has urged the Haryana Government to speed up work for completion of the much awaited Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway (KMP). The work on the proposed expressway was supposed to get completed by March 31, this year. The date has now been postponed to mid of June 2017.

According to officials of the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd. (HSIIDC), about 70 per cent of the civil work on the 83-km stretch between Manesar and Kundli has been completed and the remaining construction is expected to be done by mid of June. KMP, which is also called the Western Peripheral Expressway, is around 136 km long expressway and connects Kundli in Sonepat district, Manesar in Gurugram District with Palwal District. The entire construction has been delayed by over seven years for several reasons, including operational inefficiencies, controversies around land acquisition and various other litigations. After much delay, on April 5, 2016 the 53-km stretch between Manesar and Palwal was opened for public use.

When completed, the Expressway will vertically connect Gurugram to Sonepat and Kundli which are the emerging as residential hubs on NH1. Commenting on the advantages of the completion of the mega project, Parveen Jain President NAREDCO said, The opening up of the Expressway will provide a plethora of socio-economic development opportunities to the entire region. The completion of the remaining stretch is the key to unlocking the growth potential in the region. A number of housing, commercial and infrastructure projects have been planned along the route. Completion of the entire project within the stipulated time frame will help the region to prosper. NAREDCO plans to submit its request to the Haryana Government. Very soon we will be sending our submission to the state government. Hopefully, government will look into our long-pending demand. The completion will positively impact the development of Sonepat-Gurugram, stretch, which is now becoming a prime real estate destination in the region, added Jain.

Sonepat, a satellite city of Delhi and located 20 km from North of Delhi, is already witnessing large-scale developments in all sectors  residential, commercial and retail. It has been marked as one of the prominent industrial zones of Haryana. With sky-rocketing property rates of Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida, real estate in Sonepat offers good options to all sections of buyers.

With the completion of KMP, the city is set to become another real estate hub like Gurugram and Noida said Vijay Arora, Vice President, Jindal Reality Pvt. Ltd.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 17

Foolproof security measures have been made for the oath-taking ceremony of the next government at the Parade Ground here tomorrow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP national president Amit Shah, Union ministers and VVIPs are expected to attend the ceremony.

The police conducted a rehearsal and security personnel deployed on VVIP duty were briefed about the programme at the police lines. Identity cards were issued to policemen to be deployed at the Parade Ground and in adjoining areas.

The district police heads of Dehradun, and neighbouring districts have been told to remain vigilant to avoid any untoward incident during the movement of VVIPs. Local intelligence units are keeping an eye on suspected individuals.

The Uttarakhand Police will deploy 20 SPs, 16 ASPs, 22 Inspectors, 7 Station House Officerss, 149 Sub-Inspectors, 50 head constables, 663 constables, 15 women Sub-Inspectors, 74 women constables, two traffic inspectors, 11 traffic Sub-Inspectors, 18 traffic head constables, 38 head constables, three party teargas, two sections of the Provincial Armed Constabulary and three units of fire engine for security. An elaborate traffic diversion plan will be implemented around the Parade Ground and adjoining areas to avoid jams during the ceremony. Strict adherence to the traffic plan would be ensured to avoid rush, congestion and confusion.

ADGP (Law and Order) Ram Singh Meena said the policemen deployed for VVIP security had been instructed not to use cellphones while on duty. The police personnel deployed at the Parade Ground had been directed to report for duty three hours before the function begins. Strict disciplinary action would be taken against those found guilty of lethargy in performance in duty.
DUBAI, March 17

Twenty-two people were killed in an attack on a mosque during Friday prayers inside a military base in Yemen's Marib province, local officials said.

Two missiles were fired at the mosque located inside the military camp of Kofal in the west of Marib after a rocket was fired, the officials said.

Most of Marib is under the control of forces loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi. Iran-allied Houthis are battling his internationally recognised government.  Reuters
By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Mar 16 (PTI) Madras High Court has refused to stay three regulations of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) pertaining to access charges levied by owners of cable landing stations, where submarine cables providing international connectivity terminate.

A bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G Ramesh and Justice RMT Teeka Raman declined to pass the interim order on appeals by Tata Telecommunications Ltd and Bharti Airtel against a single Judges order dismissing their challenge to TRAI regulations of 2007, October 2012 and December 2012.

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The matter has got wider ramifications on the perspective of the consumers and on the financial aspect and therefore it would be wholly unsafe to pass any interim orders at this point of time, the bench held yesterday.

The court posted the appeal to April 17 for hearing.

The matter relates to charges levied by Cable Landing Stations (CLS) through which submarine cables which provide vital international communication between countries across the world terminate in India on the seashore.

Of the 16 CLS in the country, eight are owned by Tata Telecommunication, four by Bharti Airtel and the rest byTCL, Reliance and BSNL.

TRAI by the three regulations had reduced the access facilitation charges levied by the CLS owners to 1/10th of the existing rates following complaints that the charges by the petitioner firms were excessive.

The regulator had said the rate cut would ultimately benefit the internet users.

This was challenged by both the TATA Telecommunications and Bharathi Airtel on the ground that the TRAI had no power to fix or amend the charges and they were not service providers.

A Single Judge had dismissed their petitions. Hence the present appeals were filed.

When the appeals came up for hearing, counsel P Chidambaram representing Tata Telecommunication Ltd argued that CLS was an infrastructure and that his client was not a service provider. Therefore, TRAI had no power to regulate them.

He also contended that the company had established the CLS at huge cost and therefore, had absolute right to fix access charges.

P Wilson appearing for TRAI submitted that the three regulations were in the nature of subordinate legislations and hence the Constitutional presumption of validity was in their favour.

He submitted that the legislative will should not normally be put under suspension pending court consideration.

He said the petitioners were refusing to comply with the December 2012 regulations and duopolising the whole market making difficult of broadband penetration in the country.

He submitted that when public interest was involved, the commercial interest of these two operators has to take a back seat and prayed that the regulations should not be stayed. PTI CORR VS IKA MAV

--- ENDS ---

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Aden, March 17

More than 42 persons, including women and children, have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said today. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the citys port, an official said. The International Organisation for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the citys prison. More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air, but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and said that force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida. There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone, the spokesman said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces. It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was headed for Sudan.  AFP
Beirut/United Nations, March 17

The head of the United Nations West Asia commission resigned on Friday, after what she described as pressure from the Secretary-General to withdraw a report accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians.

The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a UN body had clearly made the charge.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had asked the commission to remove the report from its website, a UN official said earlier.

Guterres insisted on the withdrawal of the report, UN Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf said.

Based on that, I submitted to him my resignation from the United Nations, Khalaf told a news conference in Beirut on Friday.

The report concluded Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. The accusation - often directed at Israel by its critics - is fiercely rejected by Israel.

Israels Foreign Ministry spokesman likened the report to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. The United States, Israels main ally, said it was outraged by the report.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York the report had been published without consultation with the UN secretariat.

It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary general to renounce the report, Khalaf said.

Khalaf stood by the report, calling it the first of its kind from a UN agency that sheds light on the crimes that Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity.

The report, which Khalaf had said had been prepared at the request of ESCWA member states, was no longer visible on the commissions website on Friday.

UN chief accepts resignation

The UN chief Antonio Guterres has accepted the resignation of Khalaf, a UN spokesman said.

This is not about content, this is about process, said Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The Secretary-General cannot accept that an Under-Secretary-General or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorise the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself, he told reporters.  Reuters
London, March 17

The White House has apologised to the British government after claiming that a British intelligence agency spied on US President Donald Trump at the behest of his predecessor Barack Obama.

US National Security Adviser HR McMaster spoke to his British counterpart on Thursday about Press Secretary Sean Spicers claims that British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a White House official said on Friday.

The official described the conversation as cordial where McMaster described Spicers comment as unintentional. McMaster also told his counterpart that their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House. The official said there was at least two calls from British officials on Thursday and that the British ambassador to the US called Spicer to discuss the comment. Sean was pointing to the breadth of reporting, not endorsing any specific story, the official said.

A senior administration official said Spicer and McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government.

Earlier, a spokesman for British PM Theresa May said UK officials had protested to the Trump administration after the claims were repeated by Spicer on Thursday. The claims of GCHQ spy agency involvement were initially made by former US judge Andrew Napolitano earlier this week. Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ, Spicer had said.

Mays spokesman said it had been made clear to the US that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated.  IANS

Guterres warns against US funding cuts to UN

United Nations: Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday warned against an abrupt cut in US funding to the UN, saying the reduction by the biggest contributor will affect the UNs reform efforts. Guterres comments came after Trump proposed a budget cut for diplomacy and foreign aid. His spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief stands ready to discuss with the US and any other member state how best to create a more cost-effective organisation.

Artists slam proposed reduction in art budget

Los Angeles: The artistic community has denounced Trumps plan to eliminate funding to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment of the Arts. Trump has reportedly proposed the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the body, nor its subsidiaries National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service plan to take this lying down.
Dhaka, March 17

An Islamist suicide bomber on Friday blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladeshs elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) here, injuring two security personnel, a day after five militants were killed in police raids.

It was an incident of suicide bombing. The suicide attacker targeted our camp, RAB spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said.

The area where the incident took place was earmarked for constructing the headquarters of the force.

The blast wounded two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka Cantonment.

The officer said the attack appeared to be an act of any militant outfit, but it was not clear immediately which of the Islamist outfits staged it.

Right now we are concentrating our attention to ascertain if the complex and the neighbourhood are secured, Mahmud said as polices counter-terrorism unit with bomb disposal team reached the scene while thoroughfares around the complex were blocked for vehicular movements.

Witnesses said the youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp, killing himself instantly and seriously wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber, aged around 25 years, apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall.

The attack comes a day after polices Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagongs Sitakunda where two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest. Two days ago, the ISIS terror group had called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has witnessed a nationwide anti-Islamist crackdown since last week while police said they arrested over 80 militants.  PTI
Dhaka, March 17

An Islamist suicide bomber today blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladesh's elite security forces near the Dhaka international airport, injuring two security personnel, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.

It was an incident of suicide bombing. The suicide attacker targeted our camp, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said.

Authorities have issued an alert for all international and domestic airports and prisons in the country and ordered to step up security.

It is not a red alert, but we have received orders for more vigilance. We are always alert. We have been told to intensify our security because of that incident, said Superintendent Jahangir Kabir of Dhaka Central Jail.

The IS, within hours, claimed the attack on its Arabic Amaq news agency, saying one of its supporters carried out the suicide bomb attack on an RAB barrack, Dhaka Tribune reported.

It is the first attack the IS has claimed in Bangladesh this year and 27th since September 2015.

Over 70,000 inmates are lodged at 68 jails in the country. The area where the incident took place was earmarked for constructing the headquarters of the force. The blast wounded two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka Cantonment.

Witnesses said the youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp, killing himself instantly and wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber, aged around 25 years, apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall.  PTI
Beurut, March 17

The head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said a US-backed assault to drive Islamic State from its de-facto capital Raqqa would begin at the start of April and the YPG would be taking part, despite fierce opposition from neighbouring Turkey.

A spokesman for the US Pentagon, Navy Captain Jeff Davis, said no decision had been made yet on the Raqqa offensive, which is part of a two-pronged attempt to dismantle the caliphate declared by Islamic State in parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

US-backed forces, including the YPG, are closing in on the city and President Donald Trump has said he wants to accelerate efforts to crush the hardline militants, who are under siege by US-backed Iraqi forces in the much larger city of Mosul.

The comments by YPG commander Sipan Hemo to Reuters were the first indication of a date of an attack.

In a written reply to questions, Hemo, who rarely if ever appears in the media, said: "Regarding the decision to liberate Raqqa and storm it, the matter is decided and at the start of the month of April the military operation will begin." He added: "We believe that liberating Raqqa will not take more than a number weeks". His comments were relayed via a YPG spokesman.

Ankara has been pressing the United States to drop its military alliance with the Syrian Kurdish group, which it views as part of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has been fighting an insurgency for three decades in Turkey.

The role of the YPG is a major point of contention between the United States and its NATO ally Turkey, which wants Washington to draw instead on Syrian Arab rebel groups backed by Ankara for the final assault on Raqqa, a predominantly Arab city.

Hemo said YPG militia would storm Raqqa alongside Arab fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). "Of the total force for storming Raqqa, 25 per cent are YPG, who are set apart in their combat experience and high-level command skills directing battles in cities," he said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told broadcaster Haberturk in an interview late on Thursday that parts of the US military favoured incorporating the YPG into the assault force because of its earlier successes on the ground.

"But we also see that there are different stances within the US administration. Right now, they do not have a clear stance on this. They are going through a transition period," he said, adding: "The talks are ongoing".

The Pentagon has said that Arab fighters account for about 75 per cent of the alliance of militias fighting to isolate Raqqa.

Closing in

Backed by US air strikes and special forces, the SDF cut the last main road out of the city earlier this month.

The only way out of Raqqa now is over the Euphrates River that borders the city to the south, all bridges across which have been destroyed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, has said. The Observatory estimates the city's population at 200,000 and believes many of the Islamic State leaders are still there.

Hemo said preparations for the attack were advanced: "The combat readiness is adequate with regards to weapons, equipment and the number of fighters, particularly after the encirclement of the city and its isolation from three sides  the west, the north and the east".

The US-led coalition last week announced that a Marines artillery unit had been deployed to Syria to help accelerate the campaign to defeat Islamic State at Raqqa, adding to some 500 US forces already in Syria.

A second Kurdish military source said: "It is clear that American forces are increasing in numbers and equipment in northern Syria with the aim of creating a strategic balance and giving more momentum to the Raqqa battle and what comes after it. This momentum is subject to increase as the actual date for the battle of Raqqa draws near at the start of April."

Seeking Kurdish rights

The YPG forms the military backbone of autonomous enclaves carved out by Kurdish groups in northern Syria since the start of the conflict in 2011. Its deepening influence has prompted Turkey to intervene in Syria to prevent further Kurdish gains.

The Kurds, systematically persecuted for years by the Syrian state, say their aim is not independence, but regional autonomy in a negotiated settlement to the war.

Hemo said the YPG's political goal was "guaranteeing the rights of the Kurdish people in Syria legally, constitutionally".

He added: "Then there will be no problem with the regime, despite the military confrontations that happened before". Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has previously opposed the idea of federalism says the state will reclaim all of Syria.

In recent weeks the Russian-backed Syrian army staged a lightning advance through IS-held areas to reach the frontier with areas held by a YPG-allied militia, the Manbij Military Council, suggesting at least a tacit understanding.

The YPG still controls districts of Aleppo city, which is otherwise in government hands, while the government operates an airport in the city of Qamishli, which is in YPG hands.

Hemo said he had a long history of struggling for Kurdish rights in Syria and had "helped" Kurds in other parts of Kurdistan  an area spread between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

The YPG's priority, he said, was to "fight terrorism" everywhere in Syria, "given that we are part of Syria".  Reuters
Washington, March 17

US President Donald Trump's administration will appeal rulings by two federal judges who blocked his second attempt to institute a travel ban, media reports said.

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"We intend to appeal the flawed rulings," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in his daily press briefing on Thursday, referring to temporary stays issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Spicer said Trump had the authority to impose a 90-day ban on the issuance of visas to people from six Muslim-majority countries...and halt the US refugee program for 120 days, Efe news reported.

"The danger (of terrorists entering the US) is real. And the law is clear," said the White House spokesman.

He added that the Trump administration was exploring all available options to vigorously defend the revised executive order.

Trump's original travel ban suspended US entry for all refugees as well as travellers from a group of Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Imposed on January 27, the travel ban also was blocked by a federal judge.

Among the alterations made in the revised order were the removal of Iraq from the list of targeted nations and an exemption for lawful permanent residents and travellers who obtained US visas ahead of the January 27 announcement.

The revised order also does not indefinitely bar Syrian refugees from entering the US.

The federal judges who issued the latest stays found that Trump's order did not offer solid evidence of a terrorist threat and was unconstitutional because it discriminated against people on the basis of their religion.

IANS
New York, March 17

A traveller has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled threatening slurs and even kicked a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the at John F Kennedy Airport.

Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison.

Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, Are you [expletive deleted] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing? said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employees chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, You did nothing but I am going to kick your [expletive deleted] a**, the complaint said.

Rhodes then kicked the employee in the leg, after which she tried to get away, but Rhodes persisted, kicking the door and stepping into her office and blocking her from escaping.

Another person, also not identified, tried to calm Rhodes and moved him away from the door, while the employee ran out of the office to the lounges front desk.

Rhodes allegedly followed the employee, at one point getting down on his knees, bowing down in imitation of a Muslim praying.

He shouted, [Expletive] ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kinds of people. You will see what happens.

According to the charges, the victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg and was placed in fear of physical injury, annoyance and alarm.

In the wake of the attack, New York Gov Andrew Cuomo proposed the Transportation Worker Protection Act, which would make any assault against an airport worker a felony, punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison. ANI
Seoul, March 17

Military action by the US against nuclear-armed North Korea is an option on the table if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washingtons top diplomat Rex Tillerson said today.

The strong comments from the Secretary of State, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.

Tillersons tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan. The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyangs artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.

Even so, Tillerson said the US strategic patience had ended  the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under that policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table, Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se. Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict, he said. If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that options on the table.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition. Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year. Tillersons remarks came a day after he said 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had failed and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

On Saturday, Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more. I dont believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UNSC resolution with full participation of all countries, he said.  AFP
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Mar 16 (PTI) The Bombay High Court has rapped the Maharashtra police over its dubious conduct in an alleged rape and human trafficking case in which the policemen named as perpetrators by the two victims were assigned the probe.

A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Revati Mohite Dere yesterday directed the police to trace the two victims, including a minor girl, who are missing since April last year.

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The bench was hearing a petition filed by an Delhi-based advocate seeking a CBI probe in the case.

As per the plea, the two victims, one of whom is a 15-year-old girl from Nepal and the other an aspiring model from Delhi, had been lured by a Pune resident on the promise of a job.

They were later allegedly forced into prostitution, raped multiple times, and brutally assaulted, burnt with cigars and cigarettes and beaten up with belts by the clients as well as the traffickers, the petition said.

They managed to escape from Pune to Delhi where they met the petitioner who helped them approach the Delhi police.

A zero FIR was filed in Delhi and another FIR was filed in Pune. The victims also named two officials of the Pune police as their clients, the petition said.

The bench directed that the state Advocate General, the Pune Police Commissioner or another senior official from Pune police remain present on the next date of hearing.

The high court is expected to take up the matter for hearing on March 31.

The court also directed the Pune Police Commissioner to appoint a senior officer above the rank of Deputy Commissioner to supervise the further probe into the case.

The HC asked the state government to clarify how were the accused police officials allowed to carry out the investigations in the case.

"Once they have been named by the victim, they have no business to continue being associated with the case in any manner," the bench said.

"The allegations are of very serious nature. In one case the supplementary statement makes serious allegations against the very police officers who are carrying out investigations. The more serious aspect of the matter is that the whereabouts of the girls are no longer known," the judges observed.

"Take sincere and immediate steps to trace the victims," they said. PTI SP GK RT

--- ENDS ---
One ELD provider, Eroad, is using a third-party verification program to help give customers peace of mind. Photo: Eroad

If you see an announcement that an electronic logging device has been FMCSA certified to meet the new mandatory ELD regulations that go into effect Dec. 17, you might assume that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has performed some sort of testing to verify that that the ELD does in fact comply with those regulations.

That assumption would be wrong.

Earlier this year, FMCSA posted a notice on its Facebook page that some ELD manufacturers are improperly marketing their devices as FMCSA-certified. This is incorrect. FMCSA maintains an online registry of devices vendor-certified by the manufacturer.

In guidance last September, FMCSA advised, Prior to purchasing an ELD, carriers and drivers should confirm that the device is certified and registered with FMCSA and listed at this website: https://3pdp.fmcsa.dot.gov/ELD/ELDList.aspx. Devices not vendor-certified by manufacturers and registered with FMCSA may not be compliant with the FMCSRs.

But in reality, theres no guarantee that the ones on the list are actually compliant, either.

Registration, not verification

In order to certify their product, ELD manufacturers simply conduct their own tests, explains Alexis Cappelle, ELD program manager for Continental Corp. However, the tests may or may not follow FMCSA's test specifications. As a result, fleets may not know if an ELD registered on FMCSA's website is actually compliant. A system registered today may be found non-compliant tomorrow and removed from the list.

John Seidl, a longtime commercial enforcement officer whos now a transportation consultant with Integrated Risk Solutions, puts it a bit more bluntly: To get on the list, In laymans terms, you just say, Im an ELD.

To get on the list, In laymans terms, you just say, Im an ELD.

Tom Cuthbertson, vice president of regulatory affairs with Omnitracs, explains that its a registration process; its not a certification process. At this point FMCSA, theyre not vetting documentation.

Joel Beal, general manager of Loadtrek, has been in the electronic logs business since 1998. Unscrupulous ELD providers, he says, could throw together some Word docs and check a few things off and [say] Voila, Im certified.

Gorilla Safety, however, says the self-certification process is not as easy as one might think. The FMCSA doesnt just trust that you are compliant. Instead, they ask for additional details of your product, documentation and other items important in the process.

Cuthbertson explains that there is a list of documents ELD suppliers must upload to the website to register, such as a driver user card, instructions on transfer of data to law enforcement, malfunction and diagnostics, photos, and serial numbers of the products.

Nevertheless, Gorilla Safety admits, With that said, there is much room for ambiguity.

The assumption is compliance, says David Heller, vice president of government affairs for the Truckload Carriers Association. Like any rule  when they issue the hours of service rule, they expect drivers to comply. Theyre not going to be out there looking at these carriers its up to the provider to develop the device to the specs provided by FMCSA.

Avery Vise with TransComply, a compliance support firm for smaller carriers, says in developing this self-certification process, the agency has not really fully taken into account the upside of being able to entice people to buy your product because youre registered is great enough that some of these vendors may well self-certify even if theyre not remotely compliant. Some of them have been on the list from within a few weeks of the list being available, and it seems unlikely they went through a very rigorous process.

Independent verification

This is why PIT Group, a Canada-based testing group better known for its fuel efficiency testing, last year announced that it would offer independent testing and verification of ELDs.

In advance of the ELD mandate in the U.S., a growing number of suppliers are self-certifying ELDs, said Yves Provencher, director of the PIT Group. But suppliers that come to us for ELD verification will differentiate themselves in the market because our testing is thorough and unbiased, and it will cover the most up-to-date requirements in the ELD rule.

One ELD provider that has teamed up with PIT for independent verification is ERoad, which expects to be on the FMCSA ELD provider list very soon. The New Zealand-based telematics provider is relatively new to the North American market but has been in business since 2000.

Gorilla Safety is another company that has turned to outside help. It is using KPMG, one of the "big four" auditing firms, to review testing procedures, results, security governance and more.

The company explains that in self-certifying, ELD providers can use the ruling itself or the testing manual. However, We have found many discrepancies between the ruling and the published testing manual, causing Gorilla Safety to err on the side of safety and use the ruling itself in these cases. Due to this ambiguity, it was important to Gorilla Safety to enlist the help of a well-recognized third-party for our testing procedures, test result review and final assessment.

Gorilla says there are still challenges to using a third-party certification. The third party provider could be engaged to test one version of the software. In this case, how do they assure ongoing versions of the software remain compliant? Secondly, how can the client be sure the testing company takes the most conservative approach, assuring compliance? Third, what is the reputation of the third-party testing firm? Is this a company you have heard of before and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt is above board? Will you stake your company on it? These are all important questions.

What happens if its not compliant after all?

Paper logs need to be kept in the cab in case the ELD stops working -- but can only be used for eight days. If your device is found to be non-compliant, that's not a lot of time for a fix or replacement. Photo: Jim Park.

If for some reason the device is discovered down the road to not be compliant, the carrier is in a tight situation. While the driver can use paper logs temporarily, the FMCSA says motor carriers will have eight days from notification to replace a noncompliant device with a compliant one.

This is the same time allowed to take action on ELDs that need to be repaired, replaced, or serviced, says Duane DeBrunie, FMCSA spokesman. In the event of a widespread issue, FMCSA will work with affected motor carriers to establish a reasonable timeframe for replacing non-compliant devices with ELDs that meet the requirements.

Vise says this provides little comfort to carriers. It sounds as if FMCSA only plans to be flexible if there is a widespread issue. That is of little consolation to a carrier that relied on ELD registration in its decision to purchase a system.

A system thats non compliant should be one of the most concerning things for people."

Eric Witty, vice president of product at PeopleNet, says a system thats noncompliant should be one of the most concerning things for people. If they buy a system that claims to be compliant and FMCSA says, We dont think this is compliant and you need to get it corrected, youd better make sure whoever youre doing business with has the ability to react. Otherwise you could get into a rip-and-replace situation where you have to replace it with a new one.

Why dont I recognize most of these names?

As of this writing, there are just under three dozen ELDs on the list. But if youre looking for longtime electronic log and in-cab computing companies such as Omnitracs or PeopleNet, you may be puzzled to find they arent there. Some providers say they wont feel comfortable self-certifying their e-log systems as an FMCSA-compliant ELD until theyve completed more testing.

Pete Allen, executive VP of sales for MiX Telematics, notes that the ELD certification guidelines are a 500-plus-page document with a lot of technical details. As an ELD provider, he says, you want to make sure youve got it right before you [self-certify]. We are planning to do it well before the deadline. Our platform were putting out in the field today is ELD ready, it just needs a software update.

At Omnitracs, Cuthbertson explains, theres a lot of testing to go through before they will feel comfortable registering as self-certified. We support quite a number of HOS rulesets you have to go through. We want to make sure if our customers are using California ag rules or Texas oil field rules, all this stuff has to be tested together.

However, ERoad says the ELD rule does not require those HOS rule sets to be built in. There are no technical specifications that require all the standard and specialized HOS rule sets to be provided on the ELD, says Gail Levario, vice president of strategy and market development. It is an optional value-added feature for an ELD to have the built-in HOS functionality. ERoad is one ELD provider that says it will soon be on the self-certified registration list, with the help of a third-party verification service from PIT Group.

Fleets currently using e-logs meeting AOBRD requirements can keep using those devices for another two years. Some providers say they will be able to upgrade them to ELD-compliant devices through a software update. Photo: Deborah Lockridge

The ERODS file

One of the key sticking points cited by some ELD providers is related to how enforcement officials will check driver logs. Many officers will be using a software called ERODS (short for Electronic Record of Duty Status) to translate data from a file transferred from the ELD into a consistent format that will automatically do the math.

To get that file to the officer, it can be done via telematics (uploaded via web services or sent in an attachment to an email), or peer to peer (a short-distance transfer protocol such as Bluetooth or a USB file transfer.)

This USB file transfer is not your $15, 6-GB thumb drive, says Cuthbertson. This is an approximately $100 malware-protected thumb drive that enforcement would own, not the carrier or the driver.

Seidl says not all states will do the file transfer to ERODS. In that case, there are two options:

 The driver can print a copy of the log to give to the enforcement officer. Very few systems will have this capability.

 If the ELD is set up to allow it, the driver can hand the actual device to the enforcement officer to look at a display that mimics the traditional paper log grid. Cuthbertson notes that the display under ELD rules must have additional fields displayed for the officer, such as the odometer reading.

However, apparently the ERODS software is not yet ready, and FMCSA has not given ELD providers a way to test the actual files to make sure they will transfer properly. FMCSA has been clear that this is not a requirement to self-certify, but some ELD providers would feel better about putting themselves on that list if they were able to test this file.

Duane DeBrunie, FMCSA spokesman, says the requirements for the output file are outlined in the technical specifications. The manufacturers responsibility is to ensure the output file meets that requirement. If it does, the manufacturer can self-certify. FMCSA is in the process of testing its ability to receive and process the output file, but that will not be part of the certification process.

PeopleNets Witty explains, Its not that we dont want to be [on the list] and that customers dont constantly ask why were not, but even though its self-certification, there is a testing process. and one of those things is being able to create and exchange a file with the FMCSA, and the FMCSA is not even done creating the web services that allow you to exchange the file. So until then, you cant really verify it.

We could in spirit say weve done all the other testing, weve created a file and reviewed it and believe it meets the criteria without actually exchanging it with FMSA and could be on that list today, but weve chosen not to because we believe until you can actually do the testing and be sure it works," Witty says.

Beal says the fact that there is no way to really test the file makes many ELD providers nervous.

As most developers and engineers will tell you, building a file to spec doesnt always mean its going to work," Beal explains. "There are some very smart people who question the structure of the file. We would never release a product that isnt tested because you just never know. So were hoping in the next month or two we get access to some sort of testing environment.

One solution to the question of the transfer of data to enforcement officials? Print the logs, as Continental's VDO Road Log does. Photo: Continental

One company thats not particularly concerned about it is ERoad, which was expected to be added to the FMCSA self-certified list in March.

Were still waiting for FMCSA to finalize the file transfer, [but] we have no doubt that after what weve done with the 600-page document and how well weve translated that into a very workable product that we'll be able to do the same with the file transfer, says ERoad President Norm Ellis. Thats not an area were particularly concerned about and well be ready to comply as soon as its shared with us.

And in fact, says ERoads Levario, The way that the ELD mandate has been written, the ELDs can be implemented without ERODS, because roadside inspectors will fall back to the display requirement of the ELD to be able to conduct their inspection.

Or, they can fall back on an ELD which can print the logs, which is what Continentals VDO Road Log ELD does. Capelle says standards for roadside log data transfers are not yet in place, and may not be in place for years to come. As enforcement starts truly checking the logs from ELDs, scrolling through electronic displays and smartphones will be very difficult and time-consuming. Many drivers will want to look for a system that doesn't require them to hand over their smartphone or tablet to enforcement  An ELD that can print out an instant log answers the need for fast inspections and maintaining privacy.

Teletrac Navman is addressing the problem by guaranteeing updates to its customers as needed for compliance. Certain aspects of technical specifications that ELD devices will be required to comply with have yet to be published, it noted in an announcement. As a result, Teletrac Navman will continue to upgrade existing Director HOS customers with the relevant compliance specifications when and as they become defined; ensuring customers' Director investments remain protected after the December 18, 2017, and December 16, 2019, compliance deadlines.

What can you do?

Dont just say, They're on the list, thats a good product. Its buyer beware.

Cuthbertson was on the MCSAC subcommittee that wrote some of the technical specs. I know what the detail is, and its pretty significant. Im not going to disparage anybody; Im just saying people should look at the products, understand the regulation, and go through the checklist to make sure all those items are there. Dont just say, They're on the list, thats a good product. Its buyer beware.

There is a checklist that ELD providers are supposed to go through in order to self-certify. For instance, Beal says, the system is supposed to allow you to do a diagnostic health check to make sure the system is running.

A lot of systems have been known to go down for hours at a time and record nothing, Beal says. There are provisions to make sure the system is tied into the trucks electronic control module and read specific information from it, such as speed and distance. There are certain ways the information has to be displayed in the cab of the truck.

If youre reasonably honest and competent, you can do your own homework and figure out if [an ELD] meets [the standards] or not, Beal says.

MiX Telematics' Allen recommends fleets work to understand the technical requirements and make sure whoever they pick meets the requirements. Its a self-certification process, and just because a company fills out the form that says they do, doesnt mean they do. He recommends fleets consider creating test scenarios to help evaluate possible ELD vendors. For instance, how are the new editing requirements handled?

They must have a log in for the driver; they must prompt for any unassigned mileage to find out if should go against that driver. They also need to validate any edited logs. All edits are put in the drivers hands, but if a manager does an edit, it must be prompted to the driver to accept or reject.

Another scenario, Allen says, is if you have certain specific hours of service challenges such as oil field rules. Ive been doing this 25 years and Ive seen companies that dont interpret the hours correctly, so the system doesnt work for certain scenarios.

Fleets, he says, could create a couple of such scenarios for a potential vendor and ask them to demonstrate how their system handles them, or request that a couple of units be installed and run a live test for a week or so alongside the paper logs.

Vise suggests that at the very least, the simple thing to do is to ask the manufacturer what they have done with the product to differ from an AOBRD [the regulatory standard in effect for e-logs currently in use]. Dont say, Do you do this or that; just say, What have you done. See if they can explain it, see if they understand the difference. Any credible supplier should know.

The other thing they should do is they really should insist on or try to insist on a provision in their supply agreement that calls for damages in the event theres a delisting, in the event FMCSA ultimately determines that an ELD is not compliant and says essentially that well buy back the devices and compensate for any lost time because a driver or truck had to be grounded. The upshot is really that a disreputable provider is not going to agree to that. If theyre not going to stand by their product, then I would recommend moving on to someone else.
The clock is ticking. Come Dec. 17, the paper logbooks that truck drivers have been required to use to track their hours of work and rest since the 1930s will be history for interstate trucking operations, used only for emergency backup in case of a malfunction of new, mandatory electronic logging devices.

The ELD mandate was ranked the number-one issue facing the industry in the American Transportation Research Institutes Annual Survey for 2016, a jump of five places from 2015.

Uncertainty and apprehension surrounding implementation of the ELD mandate is shaping up to cause a bumpy rollout, says Marc C. Tucker with transportation law firm Smith Moore Leatherwood. Come December, he says, scenes of holiday shoppers braving long lines at the local mall in order to buy the latest and greatest holiday gift may be supplanted by carriers rushing at the last minute to locate a certified ELD.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced the final ELD rule in December 2015. It requires electronic logging devices for all trucks model-year 2000 or newer engaged in interstate commerce. Suppliers of ELDs must conform to technical specifications, certify their ELDs, and register them with FMCSA.

You can definitely see the wave of ELD adoption moving forward, says David Heller, vice president of government affairs at the Truckload Carriers Association.

However, the most common mistake fleets make when adopting ELDs is trying to do it too quickly, says Tom Bray, senior editor with safety and compliance product/service provider J.J. Keller. It takes time to select a good system that is a match for your fleet, develop the compliance culture necessary to operate in the electronic logging universe, train everyone in how to use the system, and roll it out in an orderly fashion, says Bray.

Thats why he and others are urging fleets who have not already started the process of adopting ELDs to get moving.

The first step fleets need to take to be ready for ELD compliance? Accept that change is good and that keeping paper logs has become unmanageable, inaccurate and inefficient, says Tom Kwan, spokesman for ELD provider FleetComplete.

With that in mind, weve talked to compliance experts, fleets, ELD providers and others to bring you these 13 things you should be aware of as you prepare for the December ELD deadline.

1. It is highly unlikely that the rule will be set aside or postponed anymore.

The rule has already survived a number of legal challenges, and its unlikely the latest legal challenge to the rule brought by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association will succeed. In October, a three-judge panel ruled against OOIDA in its lawsuit against FMCSA, which claimed the rule violated truck drivers Fourth Amendment rights of privacy. OOIDAs latest petition calls for a full court to hear the case.

Avery Vise with TransComply, a compliance support firm for smaller fleets, says he believes there is little chance for OOIDA to prevail. And although ELD opponents are trying to get Congress and a new more regulatory-averse administration on their side, Vise notes that Congress itself mandated ELDs in a Republican Congress. I dont see them overturning a safety regulation they put in place.

2. The grandfather provision may not be as much of a reprieve as you think.

The regulatory standard for the optional electronic logs currently in use is for automatic on-board recording devices (AOBRDs). If you are using these, you can continue to use them for two years after the deadline.

What happens if you buy a new truck after the December deadline? If you are replacing a truck with an AOBRD, you can install that existing AOBRD in the new truck, says FMCSA spokesman Duane DeBruyne. However, you may not purchase and install a new AOBRD in a vehicle after Dec. 18, 2017.

So if youre currently running e-logs meeting AOBRD standards, you do have some breathing room, but only until you expand your fleet. If youre going to ride both sides of the fence of AOBRD and ELD, depending on how the vendor implements the solution, it will be challenging, on the back end and for the driver, says Eric Witty, vice president of product for PeopleNet. Not only are some of the rules for ELDs slightly different, but the mandate also creates different workflows involving editing (see below).

Fleets currently on AOBRDs, Witty says, may want to do a terminal-by-terminal or site-by-site ELD adoption once they reach a certain number of trucks with ELDs. The good news is that for many modern AOBRD devices, switching them to ELDs will simply require a software upgrade. In many cases that wont even be an extra charge.

3. Drivers will have more control over editing.

One big change in the ELD rules is that in order to address concerns and legal challenges about electronic logs being used to harass drivers, drivers have more control and responsibility over edits.

The driver can edit the logs now by regulation, and if the back office sends an edit, he can accept or reject it, explains Tom Cuthbertson, vice president of regulatory compliance for Omnitracs. If admin creates an edit for that drivers log, they have to understand its in a pending state until the driver does an action on it. And if he rejects it, there could be a reconciliation process that has to take place operationally.

Its a critical change that many fleets may not be aware of, says Pete Allen, executive vice president of sales for MiX Telematics.

At the end of the day the driver is responsible for hours of service, he says. The system maintains it, but they are ultimately responsible for their logs being right.

A specific technical requirement in the ELD rule requires that the device prompt the driver when he logs in to the system to indicate whether or not he is responsible for unassigned mileage in the system, as well as accepting or rejecting any edits made by the home office.

At regional intermodal carrier BarOle Trucking, a bring-your-own-device ELD system backed by a longtime industry brand made sense for its fleet of 74 trucks.

4. Unassigned vehicle moves need to be accounted for.

Unassigned mileage or unassigned vehicle moves is another key difference in ELDs. If a technician needs to take the truck out for a road test or someone needs to move the truck around the yard, say to take it to the fuel dock, that driving time will be recorded in the ELD and needs to be assigned to a driver. If it isnt, the next time a regular driver logs in to the ELD, he or she will be asked if those are his or her hours. If those hours are rejected, the carrier has to reconcile them.

Cuthbertson says carriers can define categories of exempt drivers, which allows those technicians or other people moving the truck around the yard to log in as an exempt driver, and that way the driver and the back office wont be burdened with reconciling those hours. And make sure youre reviewing and reconciling those, he says; otherwise it could show up in a DOT audit.

Examine your operation and see where youre moving vehicles now, and make two, three or four exempt categories, he recommends.

5. The transition will probably take longer than you think.

It usually takes longer to transition fleets to electronic logs than you would anticipate, says John Diez, president of dedicated transportation solutions at Ryder System.

Its going to take some time to research and choose a provider. Then it may take several weeks to actually get the equipment in hand, and more time to install and configure it on all your trucks. And dont forget about training drivers, dispatchers and back office staff.

If I was a moderate sized fleet I would want to have my plan in place and rolling by June, says Joel Beal, general manager of ELD provider Loadtrek. You can easily spend up to four months just picking a system and rolling it out. [Then] youve got a bit of a learning curve; theres no way itll take less than a month to get everyone on board and probably two months.

It takes a lot longer to implement than you think its going to, especially the driver training, says Karol Smith, director of safety and compliance at BarOle Trucking, a regional intermodal hauler with 74 trucks operating in six states and based in St. Paul, Minnesota, which implemented ELDs late last year.

If you envision a very smooth transition, think again, she advises. Whatever system you choose, make sure you understand it fully before you roll it out. Its worth paying for the training. Make sure you have enough trained personnel to handle driver questions and problems. My first few weeks, I was taking calls at home. Be prepared for things to happen, because the bottom line is, they will.

At US1 Logistics, a 600-plus-truck agent-based intermodal fleet that is about halfway through its implementation of PeopleNet e-logs, Safety Manager Dan Patterson says if there was one thing he would go back and do differently, it would be to have started a little sooner. It took time to get the buy-in from some of the companys agents and drivers, he notes.

In addition, before you even begin making the transition, its a good idea to first get everyone, both drivers and supervisors, operating as close to 100% legal as possible on paper logs, recommends Kellers Bray. This will prepare the drivers for the level of compliance that the systems bring, as well as provide a period for operational adjustments. The more fleets and drivers fudge on paper logs, the harder it will be to adopt to electronic ones.

6. The FMCSA does not verify ELD compliance or performance.

One of the most important things to keep in mind as you choose an ELD provider and system is that the agency does not verify that the devices are compliant.

Last September, FMCSA issued an important note saying that prior to purchasing an ELD, carriers and drivers should confirm that the device is certified and registered with FMCSA and listed at this website: https://3pdp.fmcsa.dot.gov/ELD/ELDList.aspx.

Devices not vendor-certified by manufacturers and registered with FMCSA may not be compliant with the FMCSRs.

But in reality, theres no guarantee that the ones on the list are actually compliant.

In order to certify their product, ELD manufacturers simply conduct their own tests, explains Alexis Cappelle, ELD program manager for Continental Corp. However, the tests may or may not follow FMCSAs test specifications. As a result, fleets may not know if an ELD registered on FMCSAs website is actually compliant. A system registered today may be found non-compliant tomorrow and removed from the list.

As Omnitracs Cuthbertson puts it, Its a registration process; its not a certification process. At this point FMCSA, theyre not vetting documentation.

There is a predefined list of documents ELD providers must submit to register, such as a users manual, an image of the product, a driver user card, instructions on transfer to law enforcement, malfunction and diagnostics, serial numbers, etc.

John Seidl, a longtime commercial enforcement officer whos now a transportation consultant with Integrated Risk Solutions, puts it more bluntly: To get on the list, In laymans terms, you just say, Im an ELD.

Many of the major providers of current electronic logs are not yet on the list. Most tell us they are still testing in order to feel fully confident in their ELD products before registering. Some providers are turning to independent third-party companies that are performing the verification tests, such as PIT Group and TransSafe Consulting.

In short, do your homework; dont just pick a device off the FMCSAs list.

7. Choosing the right provider is key.

With the FMCSA taking a buyer beware approach to the self-certification of ELD compliance, making sure you have a compliant device is one of many reasons to choose your ELD provider carefully.

Norm Ellis, president of ELD provider ERoad, says with so many new companies coming into the market, fleets need to make sure their vendor is stable and has the financial wherewithal to be their provider for several years in the future. Someone that has two people in a garage with a cell phone app, are they really going to be here to support me a week, a month, a year later?

Its extremely important to ask questions about the ELD manufacturer, says Continentals Cappelle. How long has the company been in business? How long has it been making electronic logs? How many devices from the manufacturer are in use?

Fleets should not only make sure that the products are currently compliant, but that vendors have the ability to stay informed and update their devices in the event of regulatory changes, says Ravi Kodavarti, director of product management for Rand McNally.

If your fleet runs on hours regulations outside the typical over-the-road scenario, such as oil field operations or with a split sleeper berth exemption, you need to make sure the provider you choose understands those operations.

And BarOles Smith recommends paying attention to the customer service levels of the providers youre considering, especially being able to get in touch with someone in an urgent situation. I dont want to get a voice message system and I dont want a 24-hour delay in responses, she says.

8. Some systems offer much more than electronic logs.

If all you want is a device to comply with the ELD regulation, there are low-cost devices available that will do just that, and nothing else. But many systems offer other benefits for your fleet.

At BarOle Trucking, Smith says, being able to import all the data for IFTA fuel reporting is huge for us. That alone I cant tell you how much time its saving in the back office.

IFTA reporting and electronic driver vehicle inspection reports are two of the most oft-cited additional features that go hand in hand with e-logs. E-DVIRs give you a validation against your logs that youre actually doing your inspections, says PeopleNets Witty.

From there, you can move into dispatching, messaging, workflow applications and more. In fact, the variety of additional functions available can be overwhelming.

If a fleet does not come into the shopping process with a clear vision of what is needed and what are expendable wants, it is way too easy to over or under buy, says Kellers Bray. A good idea here is to allow drivers and supervisors to be involved in the needs and wants discussions, as well as provide input when it comes time for system selection. Avoid putting neat bells and whistles onto the list just because one vendor has them.

Beal says while features that do things like reduce idling, improve route planning, improve mpg and reduce accidents can offer a huge financial payback, at the same time, if youre a smaller fleet or in an operating environment thats not very complex, maybe a more basic ELD really is what you need.

If youre interested in some of these features but feel like it might be a bit overwhelming to deal with those and ELD implementation at the same time, talk to potential providers about how easy it is to start off with a more basic system and add modules later.

9. You need to choose the device thats right for your fleet.

Beyond making sure its compliant, is from a provider you trust, and deciding what features you want beyond electronic logs, there are other questions to consider when choosing the device to use.

It comes down to different factors that are relevant to a particular fleet, says Magellan GPS. For example, other industries they work within, their specific operating thresholds such as temperature, vibration, shock, water, and so forth. Does the fleet require a particular operating system, whether Android, iOS, or Microsoft? Does the business require other essential software components that need to reside on the ELD, in addition to telematics?

How the ELD integrates with your back office systems is just as important as, if not more important than, what the driver uses in the cab.

Dont focus on the hardware in the truck to make a decision, Seidl says. Focus on how youre going to interact with the device and how its going to bring value to your organization. If youre a big company and need cameras and lane deviation and safety technology, research the interface and make sure its supporting what you need. If you only have eight trucks and need bare-bones compliance, youre maybe a guy who dispatches over the phone and barely have a smartphone, then you want that interface to be simple to use.

Roehl Transport has been 100% on electronic logs since 2012 and in 2015 completed a fleet-wide upgrade to the DriverTech DT4000 for its 1,900 tractors. John Paape, vice president of information technology, recommends you have a clear understanding of what your solution goals are today and what you feel they may in the future. Some of the things he recommends considering are pros and cons of device mobility; the ability to support third-party applications such as navigation and safety; ensuring the device has the ability to support your integration needs (such as a camera system); and understanding the data cost model as you expand your use of the device.

10. Phone/tablet based systems offer pros and cons.

Many ELD providers offer lower-cost systems that work via a BYOD, or bring your own device, smartphone or tablet provided by the user. The mobile device shares information wirelessly with a separate black box device that gets information directly from the engines electronic control module.

At BarOle Trucking, a system that could work on the same devices it uses for other mobile apps made the most sense, explains Smith. We use mobile apps and state-of-the art dispatching. Customers are getting real-time updates. We use signature capture when receiving loads, an email and picture goes back to the consignee immediately. The company also uses Drivewyze scale bypass on its devices. So the XRS platform from Omnitracs made sense for them.

US1 Logistics initially started with Rand McNally hardwired TND 760 devices, but has moved to the HD 100. Its tablet-based, so we can put some apps on there that will help our drivers take pictures of bills of lading and shoot them in a PDF right to our agents, Patterson explains.

However, Integrated Risk Solutions Seidl cautions that there are some things to keep in mind before deciding on such a system. Cell phones and consumer-grade tablets, he says, are not as durable as most purpose-built ELD or in-cab computer systems. Some systems require a subscription to the ELD service on top of your regular data plan for the device. How often will you have to buy new batteries and chargers? What happens to your ELD compliance if the batterys dead, or the driver leaves it on the table at a truckstop? Do you have measures in place to prevent the use of that device while the truck is moving?

What happens in a dead spot? asks Mark Haslam, CEO and founder of DriverTech. If youre using a portable device that can move with the driver outside the cab, you do have a much higher risk if you lose the device or drop the device and damage it or if your battery goes dead  at that point you might not be compliant.

11. Fleets should develop policies and procedures.

Before you actually put ELDs in the trucks, recommends Kellers Bray, take time to develop the companys policies related to electronic logs. What are you going to require of your drivers, based on the options available? How are you going to audit for false entries or missing information? Who is going to deal with unassigned driving time? Who is going to audit edits? What are you going to do with the first driver caught falsifying (either deliberately not logging in or making an edit that leads to a false record) or tampering (such as breaking a device or using someone elses log in)? Who is going to counsel, correct, and discipline the drivers if there are problems?

Haslam recommends designating a few people at your fleet who are going to be the lead on ELD implementation. You want to pick folks in the fleet that have longevity and are going to be there and have a great understanding of how the hours of service works, he says. You want to bring them up to speed on the ELD system [so they can train others in the company], but you also want to create a good feedback loop so drivers who are having issues know who to contact at the fleet  and that person at the fleet has a direct line to the ELD vendor.

12. Drivers may be both harder and easier than you think.

It takes time to train your drivers on ELDs, especially if theyve only used paper logbooks.

The first hurdle is driver buy in, Beal says. A lot of bigger fleets will tell you their drivers love it, and theyre not lying. It does take work out of the drivers hands thats not compensated. It also kind of gives the driver a bit of leverage when dealing with dispatch  you really cant force me to work 90 hours a week because its visible.

However, there is a learning curve before drivers get to that point.

The key is to train the drivers on the system as the system is coming on line so there is not a long lag time between the training and the driver actually starting to use it, recommends Kellers Bray. The training needs to include normal use, special use, requesting/making edits, common problems (and solutions), what to do if the device fails, and setting the device up for roadside inspection. The training should involve live training using an actual device.

Ohio-based auto hauler Moore Transport implemented electronic logs in the past two years using the Omnitracs 50 in-cab system. Treasure Phillippi, safety supervisor, put together step-by-step instructions on paper, some 30 pages worth with screen shots. After a week or two they dont have any problems.

Moore implemented the electronic logs with groups of 10 drivers at a time, running concurrent paper logs and e-logs during the transition period. Some dragged their feet but soon asked if they could quit running paper logs and move entirely to electronic.

While some fleets have had success with phasing in ELDs gradually, Gorilla Safety believes starting with too few drivers can be a mistake. Too often, we come across a fleet that wants to use ELDs on one or two trucks before they go all-in. To be successful in the integration of a system, the fleets must commit a full location or terminal to the process. This will allow users to learn from one another and build the internal processes necessary for success.

13. There will be some changes in roadside enforcement.

Is enforcement going to be ready for this? asks PeopleNets Witty. I think like every other rules change theres going to be a period of adjustment. I think theres going to a be a learning curve, technology challenges, when you go from four or 10 systems to 25 or whatever the numbers going to be with these vendors coming out of the woodwork.

ELDs must support one of two options for electronic data transfer of the hours of service information from the ELD to enforcement officials. The first option is a telematics transfer type ELD. At a minimum, it must electronically transfer data to an authorized safety official on demand via wireless Web services and email. The second option is a local transfer type ELD. At a minimum, it must electronically transfer data to an authorized safety official on demand via USB2.0 and Bluetooth. In addition, a driver must be able to give the officer either a printout of the logs, or be able to hand the officer the ELD display. However, its unknown when or how many enforcement officials will be using the electronic transfer functions, especially at first.

Seidl, the former enforcement officer, predicts that while enforcement officials are getting up to speed on ELDs, the biggest hours of service violation at roadside inspections will be failing to have a device instruction card and blank paper log books in the cab as required by the regulation. In addition, the new ELD rule, he says, requires additional information than what was required under the AOBRD rule. So if you have an old card, youre going to be in violation for using a card without all the information.

And what if the ELD quits working? Under the current optional AOBRD rules, a driver can go back to paper logs for as long as it takes to get it repaired or replaced. But if an ELD breaks, the driver has only eight days to repair or replace it.

They can keep paper logs for eight days, but thats the max, Cuthbertson says. I dont care if youre a two-truck fleet or a 1,000-truck fleet, you need a process to get those items repaired within eight days.

14. You may need to make adjustments to avoid a productivity hit.

I think the good providers, the ones that execute well, can expect 3% to 5% productivity loss, says Ryders Diez. Those are carriers that have good programs in place already. But if youre not prepared you could see in excess of that.

Carriers we spoke with, however, say once drivers get through the initial adjustment, they can actually become more productive on e-logs.

Even on paper logs you can still only work 14 hours a day, Phillippi says. I actually have drivers who are more productive with electronic logs. Before if they stopped to use the bathroom and it took 7 minutes, it showed 15. Now it only shows 7 minutes.

We have actually not seen our productivity drop off a bit, says US1 Logistics Patterson. It boils down to the operations side working with the driver, going into the portal and seeing when a driver started his day and try to manage his hours better.

One problem some fleets will have is shippers who are used to fleets fudging on logs and pushing drivers to exceed hours of service to meet customer demands.

Shippers are a bigger problems than drivers in my opinion, Beal says. Now at least the carriers got a little bit of backing from the federal government when they say they cant have this trailer in Little Rock by tomorrow morning.

TCAs Heller also believes the ELD mandate will help carriers in pushing customers to work with them on loading and unloading delays. Detention numbers cant be fudged anymore, he says. When a driver says hes waiting to get loaded, itll show down to the latitude and longitude and amount of time they were there. Obviously the hope is it improves dialogue between shipper and carrier to get drivers to do what they really need to do, and thats drive.

READ MORE Check out the latest news and product coverage on HDT through the new ELD Channel

CORRECTION: The original print version of this article incorrectly cited 13 points when there are actually 14.
Chip Overbey. Photo: Old Dominion Freight Line

Old Dominion Freight Line recently posted a short animated video highlighting the scope and scale of the less-than-truckload carrier. We spoke with Chip Overbey, senior vice president of strategic planning, to learn more about OD's impressive growth strategy. (The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

HDT: The freight climate was soft last year, yet you continued to invest in building, remodeling and expanding service centers. Why is that important?

Overbey: This is nothing new for us. We've been reinvesting in this company and this business for many, many years. Between 2006 and 2015 weve invested over $900 million in our service centers network. If you count equipment and technology, since 2012 weve invested a billion and a half or more. Even during the recession, we were investing in the business. We believe we have a premium service. Our value proposition is a high-quality service for a fair and equitable price. Even when economic conditions are somewhat off, in a just-in-time, online economy, if its not available to sell, there is no sale. So people need their goods, they need them on time, they need them in good condition, and the best way to do that is to have the capacity available to them when they need it.

If you look at [our] service center count from 2005 to the end of 2014 compared against other publicly traded LTLs, their terminal parity is down 27%; ours is up 42%. That means we've got the capacity to move [customers] goods though our network in a time-sensitive manner, over 99% on time, [with] around 0.3% claims ratio.

With tractors and trailers, against those same carriers, our tractor count is up 30% and trailers the same; the nearest competitor is about half that. At the end of the month or the quarter people looking for trailers and need high quality service, we've got it here. We don't say, We cant pick you up today.

Frankly, financially weve had the wherewithal to do it. I think our value proposition of high quality at a fair and reasonable price has allowed us to maintain a solid balance sheet. Customers have been very loyal to us, so we can make the reinvestment back into the business.

HDT: How much is driven by the need to adapt to consumer-driven e-commerce?

Overbey: I dont know that e-commerce itself drives it, other than if you think about the e-commerce model, the idea is to get as close to the consumer as you can. People want to order things and get it next day or the second day. We may not be delivering to that end consumer, but were having to help the fulfillment centers turn their inventory. In our world, over 87% move in three day or less and 68% second day or less.

Some of the service centers where we added capacity or spun off [another service center] in a market, like Atlanta where we used to have one and now have three plus one in Athens, gets us closer to those fulfillment centers to provide that quick turnaround. Our trailers are really a warehouse on wheels. Turning it quickly helps drive supply chain costs down and were very good at that. We can have conversations with shippers about how their supply chain works and we have a really flexible network that can help them with that.

We may add doors to an existing service center, or we may spin off and, say, instead of adding another 100 doors, maybe we need to put that 100 doors 50 miles up the road closer to that industrial park or that city. Weve been very successful with organically growing.

HDT: What benefits are there to service center remodels beyond adding doors?

Overbey: It may be a technological upgrade. Sometimes it's hard to put a hard dollar on this, but when employees are coming to a place thats clean and ergonomically friendly, it cant help but help your morale. Theyre proud of where they work and the tractors they drive in. Theyre proud to invite customers to facilities and show it off. And thats one of the things that separates us from the field. Sometimes when we can bring someone and show them our technology, our resources, and how they can make their businesses better, its good for us. You want your places to be warm and friendly and inviting; and your equipment can look that way too. State of the art equipment that is new and efficient and gets the best fuel mileage possible; all those things matter.

HDT: How does scope and scale benefit the company and what are the challenges of growth?

Overbey: One [challenge] is financially being stable enough to do that, and weve been blessed. Youve got to have the financial wherewithal to fund it. Obviously the macro economy hasn't helped.

And always things like finding the right people. We've been blessed to find good quality people in every market who understand our culture. The people drive it. Its cliched, I know, but they're the most important asset we've got. We don't have high turnover, so weve been very blessed with that and it helps overcome some of the economic challenges.

HDT: In an article in the Journal of Commerce recently, Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group, said, There is no certainty demand is going to increase. This is not the time to add capacity. He said if LTL carriers add too much capacity, pricing power could slip away. What do you think about that?

Overbey: There are really three different types of capacity. Theres network capacity, such as service centers, number of doors, and real estate; theres tractors and trailers, the equipment; and then theres people.

We try to add capacity where we think were going to grow. We have internal models and studies that show when a service center reaches a percentage of capacity, we know historically its time to start planning to do something. From a tractor and trailer account, it doesn't make sense to have equipment sitting, so you do have to be very disciplined in what youre doing.

HDT: Jindel also contended that LTL carriers should try to unlock unused capacity in existing terminals before adding doors or buildings, using technology to incur affinity in routing, cross dock operations, etc.

Overbey: That is something that we spend a lot of time [and money] on. In technology alone, since 2012, we spent right at $115 million on technology. How do we use our operational technology, how do we use our databases, how do we use information from customers, to help us plan better, be more effective. We're after the same things as a shipper may be  we want to make sure were as efficient and move that freight as quickly a possible with as few resources as possible. Thats what technology helps us do. It also allows you to give information to your customer to help them communicate with their customers.

HDT: Where do you see things heading in the future?

Overbey: The macro economy is always going to be a big part of transportation. Its going to be interesting to see how that unfolds over the next few quarters and years to come. After recessions, a lot of carriers don't have the ability to invest in equipment you've got to operate with a reasonable return to invest the money back into the business. Otherwise you end up robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We still only have 8.5 to 9% of the LTL share. depending on whose study. So for us, the downside is weve only got that much. The upside is, theres opportunity there theres a lot of growth opportunity. We have a great service that moves across North American borders. Its going to be interesting to see how the economy changes and what factors come into play in the coming months.
Intermodal is playing a larger role in changes in long-haul trucking. Ports on the East Coast, like the Port of Savannah, may see more traffic coming through the newly expanded Panama Canal, which could result in less freight being trucked across the country from West Coast ports. Photo: Port of Savannah

The truckload landscape is slowly but surely being reshaped by market forces that are redefining for many fleets what it means to be a long-haul carrier. While these changes may not be as rapid or disruptive as whats happening in the last-mile space, they are just as transformative for trucking in the 21st century.

The deregulation of trucking in the early 1980s threw open the door to truckload carriers, many of which launched with a single truck and grew into industry giants. Those operations have been synonymous with long-haul freight movement, as carriers in the less-than-truckload segment have primarily picked up and delivered freight with regional and shorter hauls, including local peddle routes.

To be sure, long-haul freight is not going away. But how it gets moved by truckload carriers is starting to evolve, driven by changes in customer and market demands as well as the impact of the continuing driver shortage.

Shippers are becoming more demanding of their carrier partners, which is remaking many familiar freight distribution patterns. Underlying changes in consumer habits have been driven by advances in what supply chains can do at dizzying speed to engage individual shoppers plinking out orders for socks or dog food or what-have-you on keyboards out there in Anywhere, U.S.A.

Because technology is changing how sellers of all things interact with both their business and consumer buyers, shippers are being compelled to redesign supply chains to ensure product gets to market faster and more intelligently than ever. They are doing what it takes to ensure that deliveries, whether to stores or front doors, are completed speedily and as hassle-free as possible. That means more complex supply chains sprouting more distribution points that truckload carriers must figure out how best to serve.

Consider that Walmarts unexpectedly high U.S. sales for the 2016 holiday season are being credited to a jump in online spending, according to global IT and business solutions provider Syntel. Retailers are accountable to customers, and their success is measured not just in terms of the quality of the products they offer, but also by the quality and consistency of the customer experience, says Syntel CEO Rakesh Khanna.

In line with that thinking, he contends that leveraging real-time data enables retailers to monitor customer shopping habits; track interest in individual products across in-store, online and mobile shopping channels; and achieve insights into stock levels and the supply chain to ensure that the right products are available for purchase.

And that means freight has to move from origin to distribution centers to stores and even to homes in much different patterns than it has for decades.

Intermodal

Technology is also advancing the role of intermodal movements in handling long-haul freight. The Internet of Things we hear so much about these days translates into visibility across the supply chain, from origination to last mile drayage, points out the Intermodal Association of North America. IANA sees an increasingly interconnected intermodal network and the rapid deployment of information-sharing solutions generating more revenue per mile, with shared benefits for importers, exporters and carriers.

Intermodal, of course, is but one solution for long-haul freight, and it has limited appeal. IANA says one of its key strengths is adding capacity through double-stacking containers on trains while maintaining a fuel efficiency advantage over trucks, making it the cost-effective transportation option particularly at distances of 500 miles or more.

But look to the sea, and another way that the global intermodal industry will directly affect U.S. trucking is becoming visible. Last June, the Panama Canal  that marvel of 20th-century engineering  completed an expansion of its locks. Some estimate this could shift up to 10% of the marine container traffic coming from East Asia away from West Coast ports to East Coast ports by 2020.

The enlarged canal and corresponding infrastructure changes made at East Coast ports will enable much larger container ships to directly serve the densely populated Atlantic seaboard, instead of docking at West Coast ports and then shipping goods eastward by rail or truck.

These larger ships can carry up to about 13,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, or TEUs, making for nearly three times the shipping container capacity of 4,500-to-5,000-TEUs of the Panamax-class vessels that previously were the largest to traverse the canal. Some analysts expect that, over time, this greater seaborne capacity will push growth of more regional trucking on both coasts by, in effect, equalizing the freight flows to each side of the continent.

Swift Transportation is diversifying its service offerings to appeal to both customers and drivers. For example, the carrier offers an expedited team service aimed at high-value loads that relies on more than 4,000 drivers, while its new Swift Express routing option allows drivers to transport loads within a close range of their homes. Photo: Evan Lockridge

More paths to regional and beyond

The upshot of all these logistics trends is that retailers and their suppliers are moving toward supply chains that are more regionalized, because they aim to be closer and more responsive to their customers in this digital age. That is whats shortening the truckload length of haul  or as some describe it, regionalizing freight.

Layer on top of that the endemic shortage and high churn rate of long-haul drivers and the drain on productivity created by stricter federal safety regulations, and the pain points carriers must alleviate extend beyond just keeping the customer satisfied.

The result of these influences is that some truckload carriers are now more engaged in shorter or regional hauls and are more likely to pursue freight via dedicated contracts and on the spot market, even to the point of setting up in-house freight brokerages.

Some truckload carriers view these changes as opportunities. Some are setting up hub-and-spoke operations in which the regionalized hub terminals put the trucks closer to the long-haul freight. Others are fielding more teams to handle expedited longer-haul freight; running Pony Express-type freight relays; or switching from assigning trucks to individual drivers to operating via slipseat.

Typically, larger carriers are shifting company-owned trucks to dedicated contract carriage and other regional freight routes. At the same time they are establishing their own brokerages so they can move the less profitable long-haul freight by brokering it to smaller carriers and owner-operators, primarily on the spot market.

Jonathan Starks, COO of freight transportation forecasting firm FTR, says many truckload fleets are running essentially a hybrid model. Dedicated carriage tends to be over shorter hauls, so then the carrier pushes linehaul moves onto the spot market or to brokers. The idea is if they can focus on dedicated routes and optimize their operation for that, they will get both higher productivity  asset utilization  and rates. He says this trend emerged in the early 2000s and continues to grow.

He is less enthused about some other truckload trends, such as expedited freight moved by teams and freight relays. Theres good growth out there for expedited freight, but there are limited applications for rapid delivery or replenishment [of goods]. And its not a major way to address driver turnover. As for relays, he says, the Pony Express lasted only until there was a better system in place. Relaying might work well with autonomous trucks, but otherwise it would have relatively limited applications.

On the other hand, Starks views hub-and-spoke distribution as a promising avenue. Hub-and-spoke setups work well with more localized warehousing to ensure omnichannel fulfillment in a narrow window of time. (Omnichannel is the trend toward a mix-and-match buying experience of online, brick-and-mortar, and hybrid options.)

Some larger carriers are shifting company-owned trucks to dedicated contract carriage and other regional freight routes. Photo: Drivewyze

Dealing with driver delays

No matter how exactly the freight gets moved, if you shout long haul, what echoes back is driver shortage. And by all indications, that script is not going to be rewritten much if at all, leastways until autonomous trucks become commonplace on the nations highways.

A driver shortage is hardly unique to the 21st century, but the most recent analysis of the situation released by the American Trucking Associations is grim. ATA estimates that if nothing changes in the trend line by 2024, the shortage could be as high as 174,500 drivers. And that figure does not take into account the impact of specific regulations, such as the electronic logging device mandate that kicks in this December. Rather, the estimate simply demonstrates the difference between the expected supply of drivers (using demographic and population data) and the demand for drivers (which accounts for industry growth and replacing aging drivers).

ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello, co-author of the analytical report, calls the driver shortage a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. He says a range of solutions is called for, including increasing driver pay and getting drivers more time at home, as well as improving the image of the driver and their treatment by all companies in the supply chain.

Keeping the driver from being held up, of course, is highly important to more than the driver, and may be a key difference in the 21st-century logistics environment. C.H. Robinson, a Fortune 500 global provider of freight transportation and 3PL services, states in a recent white paper that research shows that keeping the driver moving and generating income is more important to some carriers than keeping as a customer a shipper that delays them.

The authors point out that carriers cant generate revenue without reliable drivers, and todays driver shortage can lead to carriers favoring shippers that do more to make the driving job more attractive so the carrier can keep good drivers. All nine truckload carriers interviewed for the study affirmed that if all things were equal between two shippers, they would choose the one that keeps their drivers happy.

The paper suggests that a carrier might opt to more often reject loads offered by a shipper that consistently provides a bad experience for drivers, even if the fleets concern does not register right away in the rate. In other words, carriers have more immediate leverage to apply by simply rejecting loads.

Moving well beyond merely striving not to waste drivers time on duty, consultant Duff Swain, president of Trincon Group, contends the time is right for truckload carriers to slipseat their operations to maximize productivity on a very rational basis.

People dont get off a bus, train, plane or ship because the person operating the vehicle ran out of working hours, because the carrier slipseats the vehicle with another operator, says Swain. The only reason we dont slipseat trucks is that fleet owners are stuck in a past mindset.

He argues that because trucks can be depreciated over three years and typically now carry a warranty of 700,000 miles, they should be run for 700,000 miles in three years to maximize revenue and minimize expenses and to pay less tax on profits. But you cannot drive a truck 700,000 miles in three years with one driver, so you have to slipseat it.

Swain says slipseating of truckload shipments does exist  just look at how gasoline retailers are supplied. Large oil marketers, such as Exxon, cooperate with local mid-size carriers to pick up and deliver gasoline to gas stations on a 24/7 basis. If they do not operate 24/7, no one makes a profit.

However, Swain concedes that slipseating truckload freight does require operating in highly saturated lanes by employing drop-and-hook techniques and domiciling drivers and trucks differently.

Technology and its influence on human behaviors is not so much changing the long-haul landscape as shaping it into a far more fluid environment. And those carriers that can quickly adapt to this more flexible and variable marketplace will be the ones that keep on prospering in the 21st century.
By Press Trust of India: Agartala, Mar 17 (PTI) The Karnataka Anti-Terror Squad and Tripura Police today arrested a suspect in the 2005 terror attack at Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bengaluru from Jogendranagar area near here.

"Acting on a tip-off, Karnataka ATS and Tripura Police, in a joint operation, arrested Habib Mia (37) from Jogendranagar," Superintendent of Police Abhijit Saptarshi said.

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"Mia will be produced before a local court tomorrow to avail transit remand to take him to Karnataka," the officer said.

The institute was attacked on December 28, 2005. A retired mathematics professor was killed and four others were injured in the attack. PTI JOY AYP DIP

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At the India Today Conclave, two of the leading names in business and planning, Mahindra Group CMD Anand Mahindra and Niti Aayog chairman Amitabh Kant underscored the systemic changes that are taking place in India.

By India Today Web Desk: Just before lunch at the India Today Conclave session on Conversation: The New Fault Lines, Global Economy, Local Flux turned out to be a debate on future of India.

Two of the leading names in business and planning, Mahindra Group CMD Anand Mahindra and Niti Aayog chairman Amitabh Kant underscored the systemic changes that are taking place in India.

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Anand Mahindra said, "Make In India is a very nice idea. And, it is beginning to work."

However, Mahindra also said that if any businessman endorses Make In India, he is being considered as 'spineless'. "But there is nothing to be cynical about it," Mahindra added.

"The world is going to come to India because it is seeing political stability and viability in India. Ease of doing business has improved in India," Mahindra pointed out.

Sharing dais with Mahindra was Niti Aayog chairman, Amitabh Kant, who said, "India has improved its ranking in ease of doing business by 39 places in two years. No other country has improved its ranking so much."

When pointed out about the World Bank report of ease of doing business, where India is placed at 138th rank of 190 countries, Kant said, "The World Bank takes into account only Mumbai and Delhi. We have made improvements there also, which will be reflected on the ranking next year or so."

'NEED 12 CHAMPION STATES'

Highlighting the role of states in India's growth story, Amitabh Kant said, "Certain fundamental changes are taking place in India. There is huge focus on competitive federalism. It is not only limited to ease of doing business."

"There is competition about improving education, health and other sectors. Rankings are being done. Naming and shaming is taking place, which has changed the way states approached their business earlier," Kant said.

"You need to create 12 champion states for developed India. Niti Aayog is trying towards this end. Unless states like UP and Bihar drastically improve, it is difficult to see a developed India," Kant said.

READY TO INVEST IN BIHAR?

While Kant emphasised on faster growth in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Mahindra seemed reluctant about advising investors putting money on states like Bihar.

He said, "Investor looks for infrastructure, ease of doing business, skilled workers and most of committed leadership. This is why investors are going where they are going."

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"In case of Bihar, it is extremely attractive for investment as it is a huge market. It has huge population. The present leadership has quality," Mahindra said.

Kant identified labour reform as one area where Indian leadership should be focusing on. He said, "We have 58 million medium and small enterprises. Very few countries have that number. We need labour reforms urgently."

Mahindra cited the example of Gujarat in tackling the challenges of business and investment. He said, other states need to learn from the Gujarat example.

#Conclave17 Make in India initiative is laudable one. It has picked up pace now:@anandmahindra LIVE https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/4v9JM6BJEY&; India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

Kant pointed to freight corridor that is expected to be ready by 2018. "With dedicated freight corridor ready by 2018, the time consumption in transporting goods will reduce drastically. In some cases it will come down for 14 days to 14 hours, which will improve the business environment in the country."

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India Today Conclave 2017: Political authority doesn't make Modi authoritarian, says Mehbooba Mufti

WATCH VIDEO | Anand Mahindra at India Today Conclave 2017: Make In India beginning to work

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This Sunday on 60 Minutes, its two Stefanovics for the price of. two.

The episode features stories on radicalisation in the school grounds, marriage behind bars and the son of Australias first billionaire.

Curiously the description of Peter Stefanovics report takes a much different tone to one he posted on Instagram.

Lessons of Hate

In some schools it seems learning the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic, is no longer enough. There is now a fourth R: radicalisation. Education authorities are so worried about a rise in religious extremism among students that they have identified dozens of Australian schools as possible breeding grounds for junior jihadis. Equally worrying, earlier this month the principal and deputy of one high school in Sydneys south-west were stood down after refusing to implement a government de-radicalisation initiative. It was a program designed to counter anti-social and extremist behaviour. The replacement principal is now promising to teach students core Aussie values. But is that enough in the battle for our kids hearts and minds?

Reporter: Karl Stefanovic

Producers: Steve Jackson, Ali Smith

Life Sentence

Danielle Laskie is an intelligent and kind healthcare worker from Melbourne whos devoted to helping others. But is she too devoted? Maybe even a little bit naive? Two years ago she started exchanging letters with a murderer serving a 63-year stretch in a US prison. Almost immediately the pen-pals became partners, and then last year they literally married at first sight inside one of Americas toughest jails. Its probably not how most brides imagine their weddings will be, but Danielle is blissfully happy with her life sentence and shes now campaigning to prove her husbands innocence. Which begs the question: is the con conning his new bride?

Reporter: Peter Stefanovic

Producers: Grace Tobin, Sean Power

A Fortunate Life

Peter Holmes a Court knows he has had  and is still having  a very fortunate life. As the son of Australias first billionaire, corporate raider Robert Holmes a Court, Peter was always destined for a career in the business world. For a while he did just that. In 2006, he and actor Russell Crowe famously took over one of our most revered footy clubs, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. But less well known is the personal cost Holmes a Court paid for helping steer Souths back to greatness. His marriage failed, as did his business partnership with Crowe  bitterly. So, finding himself at a crossroads in his life, Peter Holmes a Court decided to go back to where his story began, back to the spectacular wilds of Africa.

Reporter: Liam Bartlett

Producer: Nick Greenaway

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.
Former Bachelor contestant, Georgia Tripos, who appeared in last years series alongside star Richie Strahan, has been arrested over an alleged drug syndicate with a friend.

Nine News reports she was charged with trafficking amphetamine and cocaine following an arrest on Wednesday.

Police allege the former contestant and her co-accused, Kristiana Karakostas, were running a syndicate, selling drugs online on Craigslist.

She was granted bail and is due to face court on July 7.

TEN declined to comment.
Ajax, Anderlecht, Besiktas, Celta, Genk, Lyon, Manchester United and Schalke made it through to the UEFA Europa League quarter-finals on Thursday night  check out how they did it and watch highlights of every game here.

Thursday's round of 16 second legs (click for individual match highlights)

Ajax 2-0 Kbenhavn (agg: 3-2)

Anderlecht 1-0 APOEL (agg: 2-0)

Besiktas 4-1 Olympiacos (agg: 5-2)

Genk 1-1 Gent (agg: 6-3)

Krasnodar 0-2 Celta (agg: 1-4)

Manchester United 1-0 Rostov (agg: 2-1)

Monchengladbach 2-2 Schalke (agg: 3-3, Schalke win on away goals)

Roma 2-1 Lyon (agg: 4-5)

There was drama aplenty in Istanbul, where Besiktas cruised past Olympiacos despite spending 51 minutes down to ten men. Vincent Aboubakar, who had put the hosts in front, was the man dismissed. Ryan Babel  without a goal in Europe since August 2010  struck twice, with Cenk Tosun also on the mark.

Schalke came from behind to eliminate Gladbach Getty Images

Schalke, meanwhile, came from 2-0 behind on the night  and 3-1 down on aggregate  to oust fellow Bundesliga side Monchengladbach. Genk finished the job against Gent in the round of 16's other one-nation tie despite 17-year-old substitute Louis Verstraete's effort for the visitors.

There was another notable strike in Amsterdam, Ajax's in-form forward Kasper Dolberg scoring the Eredivisie outfit's 600th goal in UEFA competition.

Elsewhere, Juan Mata cemented United's progress past Rostov, while Roma won on home soil but could not overturn their 4-2 first-leg deficit against Lyon. Anderlecht and Celta made relatively short work of APOEL and Krasnodar respectively.
| By Mary T. Phelan

University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay A. Perman, MD, along with University of Maryland School of Medicine (SOM) Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, and University of Maryland School of Nursing (SON) Dean Jane M. Kirschling, PhD, RN, FAAN, announced today that an alumni couple, Richard Sherman, MD, SOM '72, and Jane Sherman, PhD, SON '85, have made a $1.5 million gift to the University to establish a new health care innovation center to be located in the Health Sciences and Human Services Library.

The gift, which will create the new Richard and Jane Sherman Center for Health Care Innovation at the library, is dedicated to encouraging an environment where doctors, medical students, nurses, and other health care professionals can harness their intellects and probe their thinking beyond the box.

It will be a place in which motivated health care thinkers and doers, individuals and teams of learners and mentors with diverse capabilities will find sources of intellectual property information, as well as diverse tools useful in promoting innovation, said Richard Sherman, who retired from private practice in internal medicine and cardiology in 2015.

From left, University of Maryland School of Nursing Dean Jane M. Kirschling, Jane Sherman, Richard Sherman, and University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean E. Albert Reece.

He added the center will centralize software with sources of academic, corporate, and scientific material with potential to enable people to efficiently focus ideas toward the improvement of patient-physician focused health care.

The Shermans understand better than most how critically important it is that we nurture the relationship between provider and patient, that we enable their close communication and collaboration, so that everyone on the provider team understands the outcomes theyre striving for and how to best achieve them, Perman said. Im so grateful that the Shermans want to harness innovation as a way to strengthen this special relationship and have underwritten our efforts to do just that.

The remarkable and generous gift by Richard and Jane Sherman is a powerful gesture signaling both their compassion and their genuine commitment to stimulate innovative thinking here at UMB and well beyond, added Thomas J. Sullivan, CFRE, MS, vice president and chief philanthropy officer of UMBs Office of Philanthropy. Their extraordinary charitable investment will create a lasting impact that will alter the lives of countless patients in the years to come.

At the SOM, Richard Sherman was mentored by the esteemed Theodore Woodward, MD 38, then chair of the SOM Department of Medicine. In part, Richard Sherman said, it was the impact of mentors such as Woodward that inspired the creation of the center.

I was mentored by outstanding people at the medical school who taught me the real meaning of innovation, people who helped me to think differently and beyond the norm, Richard Sherman said. When you are trained properly in the beginning, it stays with you for life.

Reece, who is also the vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, said: This is a tremendous gift from Drs. Richard and Jane Sherman that strongly supports our goal to focus on innovations that enable current and future health care professionals to provide the highest level of quality in health care delivery. We are all proud to have an alumni couple like the Shermans who are so dedicated to our institution and to making an impact.

Jane Sherman, who practices holistic nursing, also referenced her SON education as playing a key role in supporting her strong convictions about the emphasis of providing nursing care that is both nursing research- and theory-based. She was one of four graduates in the first class of the schools PhD program.

Dr. Perman has been a strong advocate for interdisciplinary learning and service at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Jane Sherman said. In support of Dr. Permans vision, the center will unite UMBs professional schools and will be available to anyone on campus who wishes to take advantage of this outstanding resource.

We are excited about the enormous opportunities created by this generous gift from Drs. Richard and Jane Sherman, added Kirschling, University director of interprofessional education. Their gift will build upon the Universitys ongoing work in interdisciplinary and team-based health care delivery and research. It will provide significant new resources and tools to spur creative thinking and innovation. We are deeply grateful to the Shermans for their commitment to creating an environment where new ideas will thrive.

Together, the couple saw a need for changes in a health care system that has been cluttered by a check-the-box mentality that employs people who actually get between doctor and patient. Collaborative interaction and communication are lost, Richard Sherman said, by needless forms that often repeatedly ask the same questions of a patient. He had cancer as a 27-year-old intern and developed a perspective from both the doctor and the patient point of view.

Thinking beyond the norm inspired Richard Shermans involvement in the creation of ICU Medical Inc., a San Clemente, Calif., company that develops life-saving and life-enhancing medical devices. The companys founder, George Lopez, MD, invented its first product, the ClickLock, following the death of a patient whose IV accidentally disconnected. Richard Sherman remains a member of ICUs board of directors.

Overall, Richard Sherman believes that todays health care is burdened by non-professional policymakers driven by cash flow to support a massive bureaucracy. He adds that unnecessary programs need to be eliminated while others should be merged to promote economy and improved quality of care.

Both Richard and Jane Sherman point out the need for students to examine whether they really have the gut ethic it takes to distinguish the difference between individualized quality care and care that is just generic. It is Richard Shermans hope that the new center will support students who have creative ideas that need to be nurtured, so that these ideas are not lost.
Inaugurating India Today Conclave 2017, India Today Group Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie says, "It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 16th edition of the India Today Conclave. And the first in Mumbai."

By India Today Web Desk: India Today Group Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie delivers his inaugural address at the India Today Conclave 2017. Here is the full text:

Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 16th edition of the India Today Conclave. And the FIRST in Mumbai.

Although I've spent most of my life in Delhi, I have some connection with Mumbai.

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I grew up in Mumbai in the 1950s. It was Bombay then. There were no high rises, no traffic jams and certainly no pollution. It was a blissful childhood.

Thirty-eight years ago, we started a city magazine here called Bombay. Our first cover story was titled: "I'll be nuts to live here, but I'll be crazy to live anywhere else." I presume it's still the same. Mumbaikars take such pride in their city. And, probably the debate Delhi vs Mumbai still rages on and will never end.

Well, we are here to bridge the gap in some way.

As you can see, I have a deep affection and long association with the city.

And I am very happy to bring India Today Group's signature event to Mumbai.

Thank you all for being here.

Somehow the India Today Conclave has always had a date with history. The first Conclave was held four months after the most catastrophic event of recent times, the 9/11 attack in 2001.

And since then, for the last 15 years, we've had many of greats of the world who've made history at the Conclave - Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the Dalai Lama, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi, Dr.Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi, Dr Abdul Kamal, Queen Raina of Jordan, and Amal Clooney to name a few.

Mumbaikars, I hope you're impressed!

Today we hold the Conclave in the shadow of Brexit, the Trump victory, Demonetisation and the stunning results of the five state elections last week.

All momentous events.

As you can see, much has changed since our Conclave last year. In fact, the last year has been as traumatic as it was dramatic.

Nothing is, as it used to be.

It is no surprise that post-truth was the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year.

Suddenly everything that is a lie is the truth, and everything that is true is a lie.

The world is now being divided and defined differently.

Left or Right is no longer the only binary. The divides are wide and widening--Open societies vs Closed ones; Rich vs Poor; Elites vs Masses; Nationalism vs Anti-nationalism; Freedom vs Censorship, Free Trade vs Protectionism.

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Considering all that has happened in the past year, our theme for the Conclave--The Great Disruption--if may I say so, is right on the button.

What are these great disruptions which are transforming India and the world?

I believe fundamentally, there are five such forces at work. In many ways they are interconnected.

The first great disruption is the Backlash to Globalisation.

There is little doubt that globalisation has benefited the world economy and pulled millions out of poverty but one of its unintended consequences has been that it helped the elites more than the masses.

In the age of multilateral trade treaties, many Americans came to view free trade as a job killer and an impediment to wage growth-concerns that were, in fact, rooted in reality. In America, between 1999 and 2011, cheap Chinese imports eliminated about half a million U.S. manufacturing jobs, and perhaps as many as 2.2 million jobs in total.

No wonder Trump's call for America First has resonated so well in his country. The whole outsourcing model of shipping jobs abroad is under threat with serious consequences for our $150 billion software industry which employs 10 million people. This would also seriously impact our export thrust and 'Make in India' initiative.

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The architecture of global trade as it has existed for the past 70 years is being challenged. In a way, it all started in June last year with Brexit where the people of Britain decided to retreat into its shell.

We are privileged to have with us later tonight the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy who will share with us the impact of Brexit and the state of French politics, which is on the verge of a historic result that would have far reaching consequences for the world.

Even before that, there is talk that a global slump maybe on the horizon.

The second great disruption is Technology.

The pervasiveness of the Internet is transforming the way we eat, live, shop, travel and even the way we interact with each other. It has given rise to the sharing economy. This collaborative consumption, a hallmark of the millienials and we have plenty of them, has changed the way we exist.

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It makes us use our resources more efficiently but the result of all these changes is that it affects existing business models and most importantly JOBS. Add to this the increasing use of automation and the loss of jobs becomes the biggest disruptor in a nation's political economy.

I believe JOBS is the biggest issue we are faced with in India today. Every year 10 million youngsters become eligible for jobs, which are simply not there. The performance of this government so far is dismal on this front.

And we are sitting on a time bomb of anger and frustration. We have several experts, industrialists and policymakers in the next two days who will discuss this.

The third most important disruption has been the Information Explosion.

The smart phone means that everyone has the world in the palm of their hands. It is the great democratiser. Everyone has the same access to information. Also, it means that everyone now knows everything about everyone. Add to that social media and you have a force multiplier.

There are no more secrets anymore. It has meant that inequalities and inequities are now in the public domain. People in the villages now know how people live in the cities and what products are available and denied to them. This raises aspirations but also aggravates resentment.

I don't think we fully appreciate the effect this information explosion has on the minds of people who never had it before.

Remember all revolutions, first start in the mind.

On the flip side, there is greater transparency and accountability in public life. The slightest wrongdoing is pounced upon by social media and with over 600 news channels in India, there is nowhere for anyone to hide.

The fourth greatest disruption is the assertion of identities.

These could be regional, linguistic, sexual, communal and even casteist. We have seen this most acutely in India with the rise of caste quota agitations, the protests on campuses against assaults on freedoms, an increasingly polarised political discourse where even in Parliament disruptions happen with monotonous regularity.

Democracy is our most precious gift and our representatives should give it more respect.

The Fifth Great Disruption is the rise of Maximum Leaders.

Donald Trump as President has both houses of Congress on his side unlike President Barack Obama who was hamstrung for eight years.

Xi Jinping in China has emerged as the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping in a country that is now a certified superpower.

His neighbour, Vladimir Putin, has an iron grip on his country, and an imperialist vision for Russia that would rival that of the Tsars.

We, of course have our own Maximum Leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a man who through sheer hard work and force of will dominates Indian politics. He's bigger than his party. He towers over his ministerial colleagues and the opposition. He remains completely unchallenged.

He is, as we have found, The Disruptor-in-Chief. Since he's been in office from May 2014, he has been pushing change in every direction.

I look forward to hearing his address tomorrow evening.

All these maximum leaders of major countries of the world have the potential to cause serious disruption for better or worse within their own country and in the world order.

India is a complex country to govern, with all its intricacies, diversity and its noisy democracy. We have kind of done well but still have a long way to go.

India today is just about achieving 70 per cent literacy that China reached in the '80s, and our per capita income is what they had 15 years ago.

My personal belief is that biggest obstacle to India's growth is its slothful, unresponsive, wasteful bureaucracy. It is the delivering arm of any government. However great a government plans are and however noble its intention, it is likely to get lost or at best diluted in our bureaucratic maze. Unless the bureaucracy is streamlined, I believe, not much will change. Grand announcements will remain only just that. And we will merely trundle along.

We don't need to cut the red tape--we need to throw away the tape most of the time.

No political leader till date has had the courage to make a frontal attack on the bureaucracy. It is just too large. At best, they've done homeopathic treatment when surgery is required. We are a smart, creative, hardworking people.

The government just needs to provide an enabling environment and let us do the rest.

You will be hearing from many central ministers today about the specific details of their innovations in governance. Also, chief ministers of politically significant states will explain how they have put their interests on the national agenda.

We are also privileged to have President Pranab Mukherjee with us later today. He's a man whose sense of history and phenomenal memory are as well developed as his insight into politics. He's been a vocal President in a politically charged environment and has never shied away from speaking his mind, whether on dissent on campus or about maintaining parliamentary decorum.

Academics, business titans, sportstars, young inheritors, actors, college activists, lawyers, diplomats, you will hear from all of them over the next two days. They are all movers and shakers in their own fields.

You will watch premieres of short films especially made for us by top flight directors, performances conceived for us by actors at the top of their game, a demonstration of virtual art, and a conversation between two iconic actors, the ageless Amitabh Bachchan and irrepressible Shah Rukh Khan.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Conclave is a celebration of ideas and a moveable feast for your mind. Partake of it with joy.

We hope you enjoy the two days as much as we've enjoyed putting it all together for you.

Thank you and happy Conclave-ing.

ALSO WATCH

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Displaced Iraqi children bring relief items to their shelter in Hasansham (Iraq) in October 2016.  UNHCR/Ivor Prickett

HASANSHAM, Iraq  Slipping out of west Mosul under cover of darkness, Safa gashed her foot on a jagged metal spike placed at the roadside by extremists to puncture the tyres of vehicles trying to reach Iraqs embattled second city.

As we got near to what we thought was a safe area, we saw lights and heard voices calling us to come closer, saying that they were the army. They werent, they were the extremists pretending to be friendly, she recalled. They shot dead two children and a woman. Later, others in our group buried them where they fell.

She and her 35-year old taxi driver husband Alaa are among thousands of residents of the battered west of Mosul, dodging extremist bullets and booby traps as they flee the furious battle for Iraq's second city.

They shot dead two children and a woman. Later, others in our group buried them where they fell.

Together with Safa and their four children, Alaa reached the safety of the Hasansham camp complex last Tuesday.

Around 255,000 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since the operation began in October, with over 100,000 since the military campaign in western Mosul began on February 19. The last week has seen the highest level of displacement yet, with 32,000 displaced between March 12 and 15 alone.

As displacement from western Mosul continues unabated, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is opening two new camps and asking donors for additional funding to help protect and shelter those forced to flee. It is also asking donors for US$37 million in additional funding to support those forced to flee.

Seeking a safe space after fleeing Mosul fighting

UNHCRs new Hasansham U2 camp, east of Mosul, is ready to shelter 3,000 people in coming days, before expanding to 9,000, Meanwhile, Hammam al-Alil 2, 25 kilometres south of Mosul, will be ready to receive 6,600 people on Monday and will have capacity for 30,000 when complete, UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters at a news briefing in Geneva on Friday (March 17).

UNHCR continues to advocate with the Iraqi Security Forces and authorities for newly displaced people from western Mosul to be taken to camps east and north of the city where there is capacity, Baloch said. We anticipate that IDPs will begin to be transported to camps in the north this week.

Among those reaching Hasansham and safety in recent days was father-of-five Adil and his wife Hiyam, who fled their family home in the Hay Shuhada neighbourhood after it was taken over by extremists preparing to fight advancing government forces.

Weve no plans to go back right now, our home town may be liberated but it might not be safe yet."

We were told to leave our house. They wanted to use it for snipers on the roof, says Adil, 47, who first took his family to nearby Nablis, where they spend five days before making their escape at night to avoid extremists, finally reaching Hasansham.

We are so relieved to be in the camp, Hiyam says. Weve no plans to go back right now, our home town may be liberated but it might not be safe yet. My father and brother are still there so we want to go back. We spoke to them four days ago, we hope they are okay, she adds.

Meanwhile, Alaa, Safa and their two sons  who were dehydrated, vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea when they reached Hasansham  were simply glad to be safe.

We are happy to be here, he said. We have no idea if our house is still standing. We will wait to hear if and when it is safe to go back home.
A South Sudanese refugee looks out of a truck before being transported to the recently established Imvepi settlement, at the Imvepi Reception Centre, Arua District, Northern Region, Uganda.  UNHCR/David Azia

GENEVA  Driven by fresh fighting, horrendous acts of violence and facing drought and famine, thousands of people are fleeing South Sudan, making it the worlds fastest growing refugee crisis.

Total displacement from South Sudan into the surrounding region has now reached 1.6 million people, an astonishingly high percentage of the countrys former total population of some 11 million. The rate of new displacement is alarming, representing an impossible burden on a region that is economically challenged and fast running short of resources to cope.

No neighbouring country is immune. Refugees are fleeing into Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Central African Republic. Almost half have crossed into Uganda, where in the countrys north, the situation is now critical, UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told a press briefing in Geneva.

Uganda: South Sudanese seeking refuge "everywhere they can"

Until recently we were seeing new arrivals there at a rate of around 2,000 people daily. The influx peaked in February at more than 6,000 in a single day. In March, the peak in a single day has been more than 5,000 with the current daily average of over 2,800 arrivals, he added.

Transit facilities in northern Uganda set up to deal with the newly arriving refugees from South Sudan are stretched to breaking point. Recent rains in the area have not helped and have added to the misery.

South Sudanese refugees queue for food at a reception centre in Arua, in northern Uganda.  HCR/David Azia

Todays situation in Uganda is proving to be the first and major test of commitments made at last Septembers Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York, including a key commitment to apply a game-changing approach to refugee situations worldwide - known as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF).

Uganda is a frontline state for this new approach. Along with five other countries it has agreed to champion the CRRF by taking actions to integrate humanitarian efforts with developmental ones. These include providing land to refugees, including refugees in national development plans, and allowing them to access job markets.

These efforts are at grave risk of failing unless there is urgent and large-scale additional support. At present funding for South Sudanese refugees in the region is at just eight per cent out of the required US$781.8 million. UNHCRs own funding appeal for Uganda is short by more than a quarter of a billion dollars (US$267 million), Baloch concluded.

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Somali refugees look back anxiously as they prepare to board a smuggler's boat to cross to Yemen from Somalia, November 2007.  Alixandra Fazzina

UNHCR is appalled by the deaths of refugees after a boat carrying them across the Red Sea from Yemen to Sudan was reportedly attacked overnight on Thursday off the governorate of Al Hudaydah on Yemens west coast.

According to the latest information available, the vessel was carrying 140 passengers. So far, 32 individuals are reported dead and 30 injured. UNHCR is continuing to verify these details.

UNHCR teams on the ground are following up the situation of the survivors in order to provide them, and the families of those killed, with immediate support.

As conditions in Yemen deteriorate as a result of the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis, refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly fleeing onwards, following established migratory routes, including across the Red Sea to Sudan with the intention of heading onwards to Europe. This tragic incident is the latest in which innocent civilians, including Yemenis, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, continue to suffer and disproportionately bear the brunt of the conflict in Yemen.

UNHCR continues to urge all parties to the conflict in Yemen do their utmost to protect civilians.

Yemen is hosting over 255,000 Somali refugees. Last year, more than 117,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Yemen. In February, UNHCR launched a major campaign to spread awareness about the dangers of crossing the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea from Africa to war-stricken Yemen and highlighting the horrendous conditions and rising risks.
A South Sudanese refugee looks out of a truck before being transported to the recently established Imvepi settlement, at the Imvepi Reception Centre, Arua District, Northern Region, Uganda.  UNHCR/David Azia

Eight months after fresh violence erupted in South Sudan, a famine produced by the vicious combination of fighting and drought is now driving the worlds fastest growing refugee crisis.

Total displacement from South Sudan into the surrounding region is now 1.6 million people. The rate of new displacement is alarming, representing an impossible burden on a region that is significantly poorer and which is fast running short of resources to cope.

No neighbouring country is immune. Refugees are fleeing into Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Central African Republic. Almost half have crossed into Uganda, where in the countrys north, the situation is now critical. Until recently we were seeing new arrivals there at a rate of around 2,000 people daily. The influx peaked in February at more than 6,000 in a single day. In March, the peak in a single day has been more than 5,000 with the current daily average of over 2,800 arrivals.

A result of the rapid influx is that transit facilities in northern Uganda set up to deal with the newly arriving refugees from South Sudan are becoming overwhelmed. Recent rains in the area have not helped matters, and are adding to the misery.

Todays situation in Uganda is proving to be the first and major test of commitments made at last Septembers Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York, including a key commitment to apply a game-changing approach to refugee situations worldwide - known as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF).

Uganda is a frontline state for this new approach. Along with 5 other countries it has agreed to champion the CRRF by taking actions to integrate humanitarian efforts with developmental ones. These include providing land to refugees, including refugees in national development plans, and allowing them to access job markets.

These efforts are at grave risk of failing unless there is urgent and large-scale additional support. At present funding for South Sudanese refugees in the region is at just 8 per cent out of the required US$781.8 million. UNHCRs own funding appeal for Uganda is short by more than a quarter of a billion dollars (US$267 million).

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai, Owaisi today said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to polarise the election by referring to graveyard and cremation ground.

By India Today Web Desk: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has termed the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election results as "an exclusive verdict" saying that "in the battle of Kabristan and Shamshaan, Shamshaan won over Kabristan."

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai, Owaisi today said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to polarise the election by referring to graveyard and cremation ground.

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"The Uttar Pradesh Assembly election was an exclusive verdict. It was the verdict for development of some and not for inclusive development. In the battle of Kabristan and Shamshaan in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, Shamshaan won over Kabristan," Owaisi said.

Responding to Owaisi's charge, Jammu and Kashmir Social Welfare Minister Sajjad Lone said, "You can't question winning in a democracy. I don't agree that it was an exclusive election verdict in Uttar Pradesh."

If you accept democracy, you accept winning in election, you can't question that, Sajjad Lone said.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe countered Owaisi by claiming that large number of Muslims voted for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

We have had spiritual democracy. Imposing one ideology or thought is not possible in India. India is a vibrant democracy. Nobody can destroy that, Sahasrabudde said.

COUNTER-NARRATIVE TO CHECK BJP

During the India Today Conclave session on 'The Great Debate: A Million Mutinies, What makes an Indian?', some of the panelists underscored the need for the Opposition to have a counter-narrative to check the BJP.

Noted sociologist Dipankar Gupta said, "The Opposition needs to have an alternative discourse not an anti-BJP narrative to check the rise of the BJP. An alternative point of view is needed to counter the BJP," adding, "It could be Congress or without Congress."

'RAHUL NO COMPETITION TO MODI'

Gupta further said that as the principal Opposition party the Congress needs to reinvent itself.

Responding to a query about Rahul Gandhi, Gupta said, "Congress identified in Punjab with Amarinder Singh and it won the election. In Uttar Pradesh, Congress identified with Gandhi and it lost. In Gandhi background the Congress was soundly defeated while in Punjab they won. Rahul (Gandhi) is no competition to (Narendra) Modi in providing leadership."

Agreeing with Gupta, Owaisi said, "Days of dynastic politics are over. You will have to prove yourself that you work for people."

On the question of having an alternative narrative, Owaisi said, "If you want to defeat Modi, don't become junior Modi. Create an alternative viewpoint."

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Among the participants in the debate was noted musician TM Krishna, who had questioned Finance Minister Arun Jaitley when he criticised some protesters at JNU and Delhi by calling their agitation as 'alliance of subversion'.

ICSSR chairman Sukhadeo Thorat, who is former UGC chairman and professor emeritus JNU, said, "The idea of India is defined by constitution. It says that India is secular and socialist."

The governments supported by majority population or religious community are cause for worry in India, Thorat said.

ALSO READ | India Today Conclave 2017: HRD Ministry to table national education policy soon, says Prakash Javadekar

India Today Conclave 2017: HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh says GST can push up GDP by 150-200 bps

WATCH VIDEO | India Today Conclave 2017: Shamshaan over Kabristan in Uttar Pradesh, says Owaisi

--- ENDS ---
Hello and welcome to India Today Conclave 2017, the country's biggest platform where business leaders, politicians, thought leaders and icons from all fields of life will explore and exchange ideas. Among the speakers are Pranab Mukherjee, Narendra Modi, Nicolas Sarkozy,Amit Shah,Mukesh Ambani, Anand Mahindra, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Asaduddin Owaisi, Mehbooba Mufti, Devendra Fadnavis, Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Anushkha Sharma. Stay tuned for all the latest updates.

By India Today Web Desk: India Today Conclave LIVE Updates: Hello and welcome to India Today Conclave 2017, the country's biggest platform where business leaders, politicians, thought leaders and icons from all fields of life will explore and exchange ideas.

WATCH INDIA TODAY MUMBAI CONCLAVE LIVE HERE

9:26 pm: Everything I did, I did it with passion. I always gave 100 per cent. Even when I was a young boy in school I wanted to do 100 per cent, life is so short, everything will be finished soon, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

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9:25 pm: I loved working with Angela Merkel. I selected Carla rather than Angela. Angela Merkel is a strong woman. She is the lady who brought honour to Germany: Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:20 pm: The most unstable and cruel continent in the world is not Africa, it is the Europe. We assassinated 6 million people. I will never say that Brexit is good news: Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:17 pm: When I am India, I may not say namaste but I like your culture. If you invite me for dinner, perhaps I would say the food is good even if I don't like it. I will adapt to your hospitality. A person must respect the culture of the country he is in, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:16 pm: In France, we have a principle - secularity. We don't want children to be recognised by their religion. In public schools, children are recognised as children of France. There is no discrimination, there is no separate table for children of different religions: Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:15 pm: In France, men and women are treated equally. The body of a woman must be respected in its entirety: Nicolas Sarkozy

9:10 pm: From the bottom of my heart I believe in equality between a man and woman. Everyone should live their culture they want. Girls must select their husbands, dress the way they want to. I don't see the reason behind why a young woman be imprisoned in a burqa, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:05 pm: I believe in collaboration. I have always wanted strategic alliance between India and France. Between India and Pakistan, I have always said India will remain my preference, says Sarkozy.

9:01 pm: For me India is a democracy and as a democracy it must bring to justice those who were behind terror attacks on its soil. Pakistan has to do more: Nicolas Sarkozy.

9:00 pm: Is Pakistan doing enough on terror. No. I am not the only one to say or believe that. I would want India and Pakistan to have better relationship. In the end of the day we will win the war on terror when we are together, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

8:57 pm: Mumbai faced terrible terror attack. We have also experienced the horror of terror in Paris, Nice. Most of the attackers were French. This problem is blowing on our face. When it comes to terrorism it is them and us and we can not allow them to win: Sarkozy.

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8:52 pm: India can provide the world the idea of dialogue and respect for differences, says former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

8:50 pm: China must have a stand on terrorism but it has obligations too. The more India disagrees with China, the more both should talk, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

8:48 pm: The world is multipolar. It is an opportunity to rebalance power and opportunities, Sarkozy.

8:46 pm: I like America, irrespective of who is the President. Same is my love for India, says Nicolas Sarkozy.

8:45 pm: Trump is there. We can't deny it. We have to work with him and the United States

8:35 pm: Asia is the new axis of the world: Nicolas Sarkozy

8:33 pm: Elections are unpredictable. Everybody said Brexit would never happen. Everybody said Hillary Clinton would win US elections: Sarkozy

8:30 pm: I want to talk about India, world, the amazing opportunities that exist in the world. Will India take up the leadership that I would like to take up: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

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8:15 pm: Demonetisation was a multi-dimensional step. It was just one step in a massive effort to curb black money, corruption: Amit Shah.

8:10 pm: We are preparing for both Himachal, Gujarat elections and 2019 Lok Sabha election. Every election is important for us, says Amit Shah.

8:08 pm: Our alliance with Shiv Sena is intact and will remain so. There's no issue with Shiv Sena, there was a friendly match in Maharashtra civic polls with the Shiv Sena: Amit Shah.

8:05 pm: People like Mayawati and Arvind Kejriwal should know the EVMs can't be tampered with. No one listens to Kejriwal in the country, he is just frustrated: Amit Shah

8:01 pm: As far as 2019 is concerned, India will vote for the BJP and Narendra Modi will return as the prime minister, says BJP president Amit Shah.

7:57 pm: Reform is a small word, we aim at transformation. We took some hard steps with regard to funding for political parties. Change will come gradually, we have started the process, says Amit Shah.

7:55 pm: There has been not a single case of corruption reported against our government. Surgical strikes improved India's international image. Reforms for poor, farmers have been taken up on war scale. This government wants overall development be it in agriculture or infrastructure: Amit Shah.

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7:52 pm: We want electoral reforms. We want all elections panchayat, Assembly, Lok Sabha to be held on the same day to save people's money, says Amit Shah.

7:50 pm: We are now preparing for Himachal and Gujarat elections. By Congress-mukt Bharat we mean to free India from Congress's way of doing politics: Amit Shah.

7:47 pm: Demonetisation was not aimed at getting any political mileage. The mandate in five states proves that people of the country have approved of the PM Modi's decision: Amit Shah.

7:45 pm: Uttar Pradesh will soon be on the map of developed states of the country. We will wipe the BIMARU tag from the state: Amit Shah.

7:40 pm: We got more vote percentage in Goa and Manipur. There was nothing wrong in BJP garnering support of other parties to form the government in both states, says Amit Shah.

7:35 pm: There was a wave in favour of the BJP. The mandate in Uttar Pradesh will change the way political pundits think. The results have proved that caste-based politics has now no place in India. Our motto is inclusive growth: Amit Shah.

7:33 pm: We in politics work with a mission. We had faith the UP will give our party two-third majority. There are several reasons behind the stunning victory. The biggest of them is PM Modi's pro-poor policies says BJP president Amit Shah.

7:15 pm: Empowerment for me began at home. Charity begins at home, my dad said when I was 12. Now, I understand what he meant then: Anushka Sharma.

7:11 pm: India Today has given me an opportunity to introspect. Not settling for less is key to my career in the industry. I questioned the established norms. However, questioning the norms was not that easy in the industry, says Anushka Sharma.

7:06 pm: With age you will understand what your upbringing means to you, says actor Anushka Sharma.

6:55 pm: We need to go step-by-step to reach our ultimate objectives. Digital India is a great vision but it needs to be implemented carefully with proper planning, says Ananya Birla, Entrepreneur.

6:50 pm: World's population is ageing. Three quarter of world's population is unskilled. Government's Skill India initiative is a great step, says Shashwat Goenka, Sector Head, Spencer's Retail Ltd.

6:48 pm: Electric cars are a cool idea but I don't see them as being environment friendly. They emit more harmful gases, says Manasi Kirloskar, Executive Director, Kirloskar Systems.

6:40 pm: We should be realistic of what machines can and can't do, says Rohan Murty, Founder, Murty Classical Library of India.

6:30 pm: In all fairness we should forget about winning more medals in 2020 Olympics and start preparing for 2024 and 2028. We got do it. There's huge amount of talent of India but it has to be nurtured, says Abhinav Bindra.

6:26 pm: Everyone was predicted that Deepa will die in her room. This was not acceptable to me. It was more about creating a new identity for myself: Deepa Malik.

6:20: pm: I was getting Arjuna Award in 2012 but I missed Paralympics in the same year: Deepa Malik

6:15 pm: I came fourth in Rio because I was not good enough for third, says Abhinav Bindra.

5:35 pm: Am a part of the democracy. Will melt with the mass without leaving any legacy: President Pranab Mukherjee.

5:33 pm: It took me 20 years to shun smoking pipe. I started in 1973, left it in 1993: Pranab Mukherjee.

5:27 pm: I have been witnessing disruptions in Parliament. I would urge everyone to strive to get consensus on issues. Parliament is primary forum for debates. Vicious cycle of disruptions should end. I am disturbed by what has been happening in Parliament. Disruption is Parliament is totally unacceptable to me: President Pranab Mukherjee.

5:20 pm: Atal Bihari Vajpayee was one PM whose style of working was completely different, says President Pranab Mukherjee.

5:15 pm: I have worked with several PMs during my career. Have learnt many things from them. The present PM Narendra Modi has his own way of working. I must say he has picked up fast. I appreciate him for his hard work: President Pranab Mukherjee.

5:10 pm: The Prime Minister derives authority from people, question is how he/she uses that power: President Pranab Mukherjee.

5:05 pm: Indira Gandhi was a very strong leader. Her political highpoint was liberation of Bangladesh. She was one of the most influential PMs. She derived power from the people: Pranab Mukherjee.

5:00 pm: Today India is one of the largest producer of food grains. This has been possible because of the efforts of subsequent Prime Ministers: Pranab Mukherjee.

4:55 pm: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru made Parliament vibrant. He discouraged hero worship. I tried following his path, says President Pranab.

#Conclave17I am notoriously known to exceed time allotted to me: @RashtrapatiBhvnWatch LIVE at https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/z0lTJFMQwC- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

4:50 pm: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had biggest influence on my life, says President Pranab Mukherjee.

4:25 pm: The Bharatiya Janata Party is forcing us to fall in line, which is unacceptable, says AIMIM MP Owaisi.

4:20 pm: I will not say what you want me to say. The Constitution gives me the right to be different, says Owaisi.

4:13 pm: The need is to secularise our politics. The minority feels insecure because the majority tends to get a religious base. We are a working democracy. We can't deny the fact that state after state we have the government which has people from the majority caste: Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman,ICSSR.

4:08 pm: India is like a salad bowl.It is not a melting pot like the US. Why protests at Ramjas College wasn't allowed? Because the administration felt threatened: Owaisi.

4:06 pm: Political democracy is not the number game alone. Agree that voices of the marginalised sections are being suppressed: Sahasrabuddhe

4:04 pm: There's complete freedom of worshipping whichever god you like. Unless there is no difference of opinions there will be no democracy, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, BJP MP.

4:03 pm: We can't speak in black or white. We can't say whether to accept democracy or not, says Krishna.

3:59 pm: Jallikattu issue got mass support but it was a caste issue. It is a complex issue. Half of the people who gathered at Marina Beach in Chennai were not aware what Jallikattu was, says TM Krishna, musician.

3:58 pm: Look at the record of Congress on human rights. More hawkish than anybody else, but it is not being talked about: Lone.

3:53 pm: We are satisfied what NDA government at the Centre has been doing for our state, but there's always room for improvement. You have to understand we are dealing with a problem which has not developed in the last couple of years but has been there since years, says J&K Minister Sajjad Lone

3:49 pm: BJP talks of sabka saath, sabka vikas but their manifesto has no mention of Unani medicine. There's only Ayurveda: Owaisi

3:46 pm: If you have to defeat Modi, don't become a junior Modi, there has to be a difference. Convince the people, work hard, says Owaisi.

3:45 pm: Congress has to become a completely different party if it has to survive. Leadership quality is where Rahul Gandhi is lacking. Rahul is no competition to Modi: Deepankar Gupta.

3:40 pm: Minorities have to rejig themselves. The problem with the anti-BJP front is that they just want to defeat the BJP. There has to be an alternative framework, which is lacking at the moment, says sociologist Deepankar Gupta.

What BJP succeeded in doing is to get everybody but Muslims, non-yadavs & non-jatavs on its side: Dipankar Gupta, Sociologist #Conclave17 pic.twitter.com/buYJ4CrJlc- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

3:38 pm: UP election verdict is a verdict of exclusive development not inclusive development, says Owaisi.

3:34 pm: Unfortunately, what happened in Uttar Pradesh is shamshan won over qabrastan, says AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi.

3:27 pm: Pakistanis are as terrified from terrorism as anyone else in the world: Kalki Koechlin.

3:20 pm: Cricket is the real unifying factor in India and Pakistan. Bollywood is huge in Pakistan. Bollywood is not an NGO, you can't expect it to stand for political issues, says actor Kalki Koechlin.

#Conclave17 I only knew India & Pak through conflict, I wanted to see more human aspect:@kalkikanmani LIVE https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/QkwpOPPhRV- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

3:05 pm: Find your humanity, find your truth - is Ahluwalia's message to US President Donald Trump. We are not Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians we are human beings first: Waris Ahluwalia.

3:02 pm: New York is as safe as any other city. I have lived in that city since childhood. I was physically assaulted when I was a kid, but I still feel safe in the city, says Ahluwalia when asked whether he feels safe in New York.

#Conclave17 New York feels as safe as any other city in the world:@WarisAhluwalia LIVE https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/sTWI4KkExq- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

2:59 pm: Learning to step away from self interest is what that matters. Fear, hatred is not a new problem. Humanity has been facing it since ages: Waris Ahluwalia.

2:55 pm: Fear exists in all of us. It is all about the fear of the unknown. In the US, after the election, there were over 1000 bias related incidents, says Waris Ahluwalia, Designer and Actor.

1:55 pm: This is a government which is ready to take risks whether it is demonetisation, Skill India, Make in India or other projects: Anand Mahindra.

1:50 pm: It is very critical for journalists to move out to areas where growth is taking place: Amitabh Kant.

1:45 pm: At the end we want a leadership which delivers, then I am very comfortable in investing in a state like Bihar as well, says Anand Mahindra.

1:41 pm: My personal views is that you need to create 10-12 champion states in India. When states improve, India is bound to develop. Unless states like UP and Bihar drastically improve, it will be difficult to get demographic advantage, says Amitabh Kant.

1:38 pm: We had made India a very difficult place to do business. The legacy of 68 years can't be wiped in two years. For the first time, this government is talking about ease of doing business, says Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Ayog.

1:35 pm: Why would we not want Make In India. The objective is laudable.Is it working? Yes, it is beginning to work, says Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra Group.

#Conclave17 Make in India initiative is laudable one. It has picked up pace now:@anandmahindra LIVE https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/4v9JM6BJEY- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

1:25 pm: People in Opposition parties are not our enemies but rivals, says Venkaiah Naidu when asked who would he like to be friends with in the Congress.

1:20 pm: High fee means good education is a myth. Government schools have to improve their quality of education. Our aim is to reform government schools to such a level that parents will bring their children from private schools to government schools, says Javadekar.

1:15 pm: We will soon grant complete autonomy to IIMs and reforming UGC. We will be also redrafting the five pillars of education. Sabko siksha, achchi sikha is our motto, says Javadekar.

1:12 pm: What we require is to imbibe quality education in schools. In last two years, we've come out with learning benchmarks. We have defined what students are required to do, says Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.

1:09 pm: Indian digital economy to become 1 trillion economy in the coming years, says IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

1:05 pm: Indian IT initiative is an asset for America. I hope new US administration know or should know that Indian IT companies dont't steal jobs. They pay taxes: Ravi Shankar Prasad.

1:00 pm: Our vision is to make India a major hub for manufacturing hub. Digital India is designed to empower all Indians. Our government opened 270 million Jandhan accounts for poor and underprivileged, says Ravi Shankar Prasad.

12:56 pm: We have added mobiles in India equal to the population of France and Italy in the last 2.5 years, says Ravi Shankar Prasad.

12:54 pm: Digital India is more for the poor India and underprivileged, says Ravi Shankar Prasad.

#Conclave17 Our focus is to make India a country of good governance, faster delivery & good accountability:@rsprasad pic.twitter.com/SjQlc0MhF9- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

Smart cities will take time, can't happen overnight. Housing is the top most priority for this government: Naidu.

12:48 pm: SMART City mean liveable city. PM Modi told me cities should be picked through a competition based on various parameters. Only 100 such cities not enough, these 100 would act as inspiration for others: Venkaiah Naidu.

12:45 pm: CITY means Civic Infrastructure To You, which most the cities have been lacking. Our government's aim to revive that infrastructure: Naidu.

12:43 pm: In 1975, Indira Gandhi was kind enough to put all of us in jail. The good thing that happened that year was the birth of India Today magazine: Venkaiah Naidu.

# India now is a woken up India which celebrates start-ups. Local innovation is essential for world innovation: Vijay Sharma.

# We will be an asset manager, not current account manager like other banks, says Paytm founder Vijay Sharma.

# World is a broken place for people who are sincere. I want to change that. Poverty is an asset which people use sometimes: Vijay Sharma, Paytm founder.

India Today Conclave 2017: GST will check tax evasion, it's now pay taxes or get out, says Adi Godrej #Conclave17https://t.co/0Baccf7SaR pic.twitter.com/ZbBnc31SWY- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

# We will be a bank soon, if RBI graces us: Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# Business model is to make it cheap, make it work: Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# The only success of Paytm is that, it works whenever you want it to work, never ditches: Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# You can undermine a business but not technology, it is a tsunami: Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# I don't think I will be a seller anymore, it is time to write history book writer: Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# What happened in 2016 (demonetisation) was nothing less than revolution: Founder & CEO, Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

# Demonetisation is a big bang reform: Deepak Parekh

# GST will help counter flow of money. It'll have a major effect: Adi Godrej.

# Credit rates have come down because prices of raw materials have come down: Deepak Parekh.

# GST will quickly go into a smooth process and government will do all the required changes: Godrej.

GST will lead to maximum revenue generation and minimum invasion of tax. The system should be such that the need to do something incorrect should be discouraged, says Adi Godrej.

# If you are paying your taxes, why should you be worried. We hope that the states shape up and improve on ease of doing business, says Deepak Parekh.

# A lot needed to be done if we have to improve on ease of doing business. Govt has certainly taken some steps to improve ease of business, but we still have too may controls, says Adi Godrej.

# China factor is one of the factors why our private investment is slow Private investment is the problem area, but I expect it pick up. Domestic consumption is our strength, exports have been rising: Deepak Parekh.

# Would like to model 'Brand Maharashtra': Fadnavis.

# Pahalgam is my favourite tourist destination. Once a Kashmiri, always a Kashmiri: Mehbooba Mufti.

# Won't comment on a hypothetical question, Shivraj Singh Chouhan on what Central ministry he would opt for if PM Modi calls him to Delhi.

# It was Congress's immaturity to make demonetisation a poll issue and they paid for it: Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

# If Atalji could run the government with 22 regional parties, I can run my government with one ally. I will manage Shiv Sena, don't worry: Fadnavis.

# In a democracy, one party can not destroy its rival, it is the people who decided the future of a party: Fadnavis. People like Mayawati are gone but not out. Regional parties are going to stay, they can't be ignored. Political landscape is going to change, it wont be like this always: Mehbooba Mufti.

#There are various factors behind farmers committing suicide, but I agree more needed to be done for farmers. There is double digit growth in Madhya Pradesh since past many years. It is no longer a bimaru state: Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

# Every state will gain from GST: Devendra Fadnavis. We will gain something but at the same thing we will lose too. I am confident that GST will rollout by July: Devendra Fadnavis.

# Being a border state, we are being given a special treatment and what is wrong in that because we are the victims as well: Mehbooba Mufti.

# I would like to invite people to come and spend time with family, not just come and invest. Despite encounters, it is one of the safest states: Mehbooba Mufti.

# There is no partiality in the Niti Ayog: Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

# There is a healthy competition going on in the country: Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

# There is a lot of positivity in the bureaucracy right now: Devendra Fadnavis.

# Bureaucracy is a horse and we need to ride it: Devendra Fadnavis.

# PM Modi is trying to evolve the country as a true federal structure. PM Modi is open to ideas: Mehbooba Mufti.

# We need to reach out to the youth of the state: Mehbooba Mufti.

# Democracy is all about sharing and caring: Mehbooba Mufti, Chief Minister, Jammu & Kashmir

# We are focusing on our states, Centre has its own role in development: Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

# No one is going to Delhi, this is for sure: Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh.

# Our work is to reform, we should stick to that: Devendra Fadnavis.

# When India Today Conclave has shifted to Mumbai, why should I move to New Delhi: Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister, Maharashtra

# Conclave is a celebration of ideas, says Aroon Purie.

# Left or Right is no longer the only binary. The divides are wide and widening: Aroon Purie.

# India is a complex country to govern. We've done well but still a long way to go: Aroon Purie.

# Democracy is our most precious gift, says Aroon Purie.

#I don't think we fully appreciate this information revolution. The slightest wrongdoing is pounced upon by social media: Aroon Purie.

# Job creation is the biggest challenge we are facing in India today, the performance of this government is very dismal on this front: Aroon Purie.

#Architecture of global trade in being challenged, says Aroon Purie.

# Our theme this time - The Great Disruption - is right on the button: Aroon Purie.

# We are holding the Conclave in the shadow of demonetisation, Brexit and stunning results of elections in five states: Aroon Purie.

# It is a great pleasure to bring India Today Conclave to Mumbai: Arun Purie.

# 38 years ago, I started a city magazine in Mumbai: Aroon Purie.

# Great pleasure to welcome you all to India Today Conclave 2017, first in Mumbai: Aroon Purie.

#Aroon Purie, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, India Today Group, delivering welcome speech.#

#Looking forward to 'The Great Debate - Cooperate and Compete The New Federalism' at India Today Conclave 2017, tweets Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis.

#The conclave will also see Bollywood actors Kalki Koechlin and Anushka Sharma on the stage in two different sessions.

# India Today Conclave 2017 will bring two of the biggest stars that the Hindi film industry has ever produced - Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan - together in one session.

#Among the most awaited speakers who will hold centrestage today will be eminent personalities such as President Pranab Mukherjee, former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy and BJP chief Amit Shah.

# The 16th edition of India Today Conclave, being held over today and tomorrow at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai, has an eclectic line-up of celebrities from various walks of life.#

# Hello and welcome to India Today Conclave 2017, the country's biggest platform where business leaders, politicians, thought leaders and icons from all fields of life will explore and exchange ideas.

--- ENDS ---
Participating in a debate at India Today Conclave 2017, Mehbooba said, "I have met Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few times and I have found that he is open to ideas. He is not authoritative."

By India Today Web Desk: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has rebuffed the allegation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he is authoritarian in his approach.

Participating in a debate at India Today Conclave 2017, Mehbooba said, "I have met Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few times and I have found that he is open to ideas. He is not authoritative."

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"Contrary to perception and allegations by some PM Modi is not centralised. He wants to make it true federal system in the country. He has the moral authority to do it," Mehbooba said.

Mehbooba was in discussion with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Mehbooba also said that the Centre and the state government both need to think about phasing out AFSPA from the Kashmir Valley.

Inviting the businessmen and investors from Mumbai in Kashmir Valley, Mehbooba said, "Kashmir is the safest place for women even when encounters are taking place. Come not only to invest. Come to Kashmir with your families."

FADNAVIS AS DEFENCE MINISTER?

Taking part in the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai, Devendra Fadnavis kept everyone guessing about him being moving to Delhi as a Union Minister.

Responding to a query about the speculation that he could be the next Defence Minister, Fadnavis said, "India Today Conclave has shifted from New Delhi to Mumbai. Why do you want me to move from Mumbai to Delhi?"

But, Fadnavis immediately added, "I am a true soldier of party. Whatever our Prime Minister and party president tells me to do, I am ready to do."

"Right now I have a job on hand. I am a Chief Minister now. I have Maharashtra on my agenda."

'ONLY FARMERS DON'T COMMIT SUICIDE'

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asserted that his state no longer belonged to BIMARU state after registering double digit GDP growth rate in the last seven years.

Chouhan tried to play down the issue of farmers' suicide in Madhya Pradesh saying, "Only farmers are not committing suicide. Students and businessmen are also committing suicide."

"All suicides by the farmers are not due to loan or crop failure. There are other reasons also for farmers' suicide. We remain committed to ameliorate the living conditions of farmers," Chouhan said.

THE GST QUESTION

Responding to a query about will July 1 deadline for GST be met, Fadnavis said, "Yes, I am confident. The deadline will be met. GST council has approved it. If political disruption is the motive then I can't say anything."

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"GST will create a common market. When VAT was introduced, there were concerns and apprehensions were expressed. VAT was a barrier regime. Now we are shifting to non-barrier regime. Barriers were artificially created," Fadnavis said.

"We are manufacturing state. As a big manufacturing state, we will lose something. But, at the same time being a big state, we are a big consumer state and there we will gain something," said Fadnavis.

"If some states lose more, then we must think that we are one nation. If some backward state gains and some better doing states are losing out, they should be happy. The GST will bring level playing field for everyone. Every state will gain with GST," Fadnavis added.

APPRECIATE REGIONAL ASPIRATIONS

Jammu and Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti once again defended Article 370. She said every state has a unique situation. Maharashtra has Article 371 there, Jammu and Kashmir has Article 371, she said.

"You cannot do away with the regional aspirations. You have seen it after Mandal commission report. You have seen groups of Yadavs, rise of Mayawati and others," Mehbooba said.

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"For us in Kashmir, India is not a country. It is a universe for us. It is full of diversity, different aspirations and all co-exist. It is the beauty of India," Mehbooba added.

Mehbooba said that the Centre has been responsive about the needs of Jammu and Kashmir. "Whenever I have met Union Ministers, be it (Nitin) Gadkari or (Prakash) Javadekar, they have always listened to us and supported us. We have been given whatever we needed," Mehbooba said at India Today Conclave 2017.

However, she was quick to add that in cases of international treaties if the states are affected then need to be consulted.

DEMONETISATION FACTOR

Talking about public anguish over demonetisation, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that he did not see any.

Chouhan said, "I go out to people every day. I did not see anyone complaining about demonetisation. No one showed anger.

"People were happy with the decision made by PM Modi. They believed in his intention of flushing out black money," Chouhan said.

On a related query, Fadnavis said, "The subject matter concerning RBI rests with the Centre and states did not need to be consulted about."

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ALSO READ | Aroon Purie delivers inaugural address at India Today Conclave 2017: Full text

--- ENDS ---
Mexico has been one of the most popular destinations for those who are going on spring breaks but the US State Dept. has warned college students about spending their vacation in certain spots in Mexico. They said that rampant crimes in some areas can be dangerous for Americans.

Today, most students and faculty from across the country are already on break or about to be on break, but a travel warning has been released, according to CBS DFW. While the most famous destination is in Quintana Roo in Mexico, there is no advisory in effect in this location. However, spring breakers are advised to take caution when traveling to specific places like Felipe Carillo Puerto or east of Jose Maria Morelos because mobile and internet services are almost inaccessible.

The state department travel warning also reiterated that US citizens have been victims of a number of crimes including kidnapping, homicide, robbery, and carjacking in different states in Mexico, Fox News reported.

The travel warning specifically reminds spring break travelers of the dangers in a total of 14 Mexican Sttaes. The state of Guerero was specifically mentioned being the most violent state in Mexico for the third year in a row in 2015. Armed members of self defense groups who operate independently of the government are the ones who maintain the road blocks and are considered volatile and unpredictable.

Guerero is home to the popular Acapulco which has become one of the centers of Mexico's drug war. Back in 2009, the city is being visited by roughly 30,000 American spring breakers but the numbers have drastically dropped to 500 two years after.

However, despite these travel warnings, Mexico's tourism industry remains stable and unshakable especially in places like Acapulco and Cabo San Lucas.
It was seven years ago when Pierce Community College have made efforts in determining the reason behind low graduation rates after three years. They have joined a college-reform network called Achieving the Dream.

According to Diverse, Achieving the Dream is a national network of more than 200 community colleges who are committed to success reform. It aims to promote 7 principles that will help students succeed. Leaders from these schools gather to share best practices on how to help students from community college complete college and earn a degree.

At Pierce, the change had to happen because less than 19 percent of their students finish college after three years, according to Seattle Times The district's chancellor Michele Johnson decided to make change happen, and it finally did as the school became one of the winners in Achieving the Dream. Pierce's graduation rate is now at 31 percent. Around 64 percent of their college students are the first in their families to go to college.

Johnson was asked by Seattle Times' Education Lab to find out what the college gas been doing. She said that they have added research capacity and started breaking down data, and also a number of new different interventions.

Pierce also made new student orientation as a requirement and began their mandatory college-success courses. Johnson also said that they have increased, even doubled tutoring services and supplemental instruction and had more than 200 faculty members who have participated in reading apprenticeships. She said that this focus on their mission is what is going to help students to thrive and eventually become successful.

Pierce's winning in Achieving the Dream's Leah Meyer Austin Award was indeed a prize for the school's effort in making outstanding progress in changing the focus to student culture.
Motorola has reportedly suffered from identity crisis for so many years and the acquisition made by Lenovo is considered to be a great help in reviving the well-known brand. In relation to that, this year could mean something to the Lenovo-owned phone maker because the most anticipated Moto Z (2017) is likely to put an end to its crisis.

Moto Z (2017) Will Re-Introduce the Moto Mods

The giant tech firm Lenovo who acquired Motorola a year ago is looking forward to deliver more smartphones while tapping into Motorola's legacy as the world's first mobile maker. For this matter, Moto Z (2017) could be the smartphone that will re-introduce the wonders of Moto Mods while fully embracing the iconic "Motorola" brand.

It could be that Moto Z (2017) is the smartphone that will put relevance to Motorola phones. According to CNET, Lenovo is looking forward to provide more Moto Z from 2017 and beyond alongside new Moto Mods including a new power bank with an extended battery which adopts the wireless charging, gamepad for mobile gaming and voice-activated assistant Alexa of Amazon.

In the aspect of marketing the Motorola name, Lenovo has hired Jan Huckfeldt, a longtime Procter and Gamble executive as Chief Marketing Officer. In an interview, Huckfeldt confidently said that within 12 months Motorola will be known as a premium name in the US once again.

Moto Z (2017) Specs

Sprint and Motorola have recently sealed its partnership on Gigabit Class LTE service that was believed to be tested on Moto Z (2017). According to Phone Arena, the new device is reportedly powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC with an integrated Snapdragon X16 LTE modem inside that supports the Gigabit LTE technology.

Sprint and Motorola partnership could put Verizon out of the picture because according to Sprint CTO Dr. John Saw, only the company has the capacity to deliver enough licensed spectrum of 2.5GHz high-band TDD LTE. Moto Z (2017) is slated to hit the store shelves on June.
UC Regents voted unanimously on Thursday in San Francisco to approve Carol Christ as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. Christ was nominated by UC President Janet Napolitano earlier in the week.

The 72-year-old scholar was given a standing ovation for being the first female chancellor in UC Berkeley's 149-year history. She is set to officially take over as chancellor on July 1st.

Christ has worked for Berkeley for more than three decades from being a professor and chair of the English department to dean. She also served as Smith College's president from 2002 to 2013 before she returned to Berkeley as the provost and interim executive vice chancellor.

UC Regents voted unanimously on Thursday in San Francisco to approve Carol Christ as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. Christ was nominated by UC President Janet Napolitano earlier in the week.

The 72-year-old scholar was given a standing ovation for being the first female chancellor in UC Berkeley's 149-year history. She is set to officially take over as chancellor on July 1st.

Christ has worked for Berkeley for more than three decades from being a professor and chair of the English department to dean. She also served as Smith College's president from 2002 to 2013 before she returned to Berkeley as the provost and interim executive vice chancellor.

Among Christ's biggest challenges is to ensure that UC Berkeley maintains being the top public institution in the country while also dealing with a decline in funding from the state. She believes that it's time to re-imagine the school's financial model. The university relies on two block grants, tuition dollars and state funding.

The ABC 7 News reported, Christ said that they would certainly need to increase the importance of philanthropy revenue. Christ said the Regents are expected to approve a cap on the number of higher paying out-of-state students in order to allow more California students to enroll.

The cap would be 20 percent at most UC's, and 24 percent at Cal, UC San Diego and UCLA. The UC system will receive $18.5 million from the state in exchange. Cal will celebrating its 150th anniversary next year.

One of her top priorities would be to address the campus' critical shortage of student housing. Christ said that she intends to diversify the revenue stream at UC Berkeley through more fundraising.

Aside from of focusing on elevating the campus profile, Christ believes that Berkeley is as much about the community-college transfer student from Modesto and Fremont as it is about its Nobel Prize winners. Christ will earn the same $531,939 base salary that of the previous chancellor and will live in a university-owned house according to The SF Gate.
South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon, who is the former Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), has been hired by Harvard University. This came after he withdrew from Korea's presidential race, after former President Park Geun-hye was impeached due to her involvement in a corruption scandal.

The former Secretary General of UN will be heading to the United States on Mar. 24. Ban, 72, will not be teaching regularly in Harvard University but will be a visiting professor and will have occasional seminars, Yonhap News Agency reported.

This type of agreement is usually reserved for presidents or prime ministers. It has been given to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Finnish President Tarja Halonen.

Harvard University will be offering Ban Ki-moon a secretary and residence. He will be accompanied by his wife Yoo Soon-taek, according to Korea Times.

On Thursday, his aide said that he is expected to finish the job and return to South Korea in July. Before he will be leaving for the U.S. next week, he has been scheduled to attend several public events.

The events include a launching ceremony for his latest book, which is scheduled for Mar. 16. On Mar. 20, he will be attending a global peace forum hosted by supporters from Chungcheong Province.

Last month, Ban Ki-moon announced that he will not be a candidate for the presidential election. It has been confirmed that the election will be on May 9.

Several of his conservative supporters purportedly tried to persuade him to run for office but he refused. He has said that his public appearances did not imply that he wants to rejoin Korean politics.

Back in 2014, Harvard Foundation named Ban as Humanitarian of the Year. He has been described as a role model for the university's students as a symbol of humanitarianism. Grammy Award-winning Rihanna received the award this year for her philanthropic efforts.
Delivering the special address at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai, President Mukherjee said, "Four of the five years during the UPA-I the growth rate was more than 8 per cent. The base of Indian economy was so strong that it sustained 2008 global economic crisis."

By India Today Web Desk: President Pranab Mukherjee may have just served a reminder to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the economic growth rate. He also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being very observant.

Delivering the special address at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai, President Mukherjee said, "Four of the five years during the UPA-I the growth rate was more than 8 per cent. The base of Indian economy was so strong that it sustained 2008 global economic crisis."

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He said that rate of investment was about 38 per cent of the GDP with sound rate of savings.

Mukherjee emphasised that the various governments (led by Congress party) worked hard to streamline and strengthen the fundamentals of Indian economy.

'INDIA WAS ASSERTIVE EARLIER ALSO'

President Mukherjee seems to have served another reminder to PM Modi by referring to 'aggression' shown by Indira Gandhi during 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

"That was the highpoint of assertion and aggression. If that was not aggression, then what is aggression of Indian nation," Mukherjee asked.

Indira Gandhi expressed India's concerns through 1971 assertion, Mukherjee underscored, adding that it was India's strong response that Pakistan was forced to declare unilateral ceasefire.

PM Modi has been talking about surgical strike as the first real assertion by Indian state against the rogue behaviour of Pakistan.

President Mukherjee reminded the nation of the contributions of first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for laying the foundation of democracy in India.

MUKHERJEE PRAISED MODI

Showering lavish praise on Narendra Modi, Mukherjee said that he has acquired mastery over external affairs, foreign economy.

"He is observant. I appreciate when he said that you can win election by majority but to rule you need consensus," Mukherjee said about Modi.

He related a story about Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he requested Pranab Mukherjee not to be very harsh on the then George Fernandes, who was being attacked in Parliament over coffin scandal after Kargil war.

Mukherjee served under four Prime Ministers as ministers beginning with Indira Gandhi and followed by Rajiv Gandhi, Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh.

DISRUPTION IN PARLIAMENT

President Mukherjee expressed concerns over continued disruption in Parliament.

"Enormous power is vested in members elected to Parliament and Legislative Assemblies. Their primary job to make laws," Mukherjee said.

Talking about Anna Hazare's anti-graft movement, he said that agitation was a message that the Lok Sabha had failed in doing its primary duty of framing an anti-corruption law, a Lokpal law despite several committees recommending for it.

"In the first Lok Sabha during 1952-57, total 677 sittings of Parliament were held and 319 bills passed. But, in contrast the 15th Lok Sabha saw only 357 sittings and only 180 bills were passed because the disease of disruption has crept in," Mukherjee said.

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"Disruption in Parliament and law making is unacceptable to me," President asserted adding, "In 15th Lok Sabha, as much as 46.1 per cent of allotted time was lost to disruption."

A visibly upset President said Session after session lapsed without passing a law. Who will make law then, he asked. CAG report is presented to the Lok Sabha. Who will examine it, he wondered.

The first annual Budget of India was of Rs 397 crore only while the today India's Budget stands at Rs 17 lakh crore, Mukherjee said.

"But the time which was spent to discuss the Budget of Rs 397 crore then and now how much is spent for discussing Rs 17 lakh crore points to the basic deficiency in the way we are functioning in Parliament. Legislators must make law," Mukherjee said.

ALSO READ | Aroon Purie delivers inaugural address at India Today Conclave 2017: Full text

India Today Conclave 2017: Dissent okay, disintegration is not, says Venkaiah Naidu on free speech debate

--- ENDS ---

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Oct. 26, 2022

U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo.  Cadets got the unique experience of interacting with and learning from the 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 at the U.S. Air Force Academy Sept. 27-29. The National Character and Leadership Symposium sponsored the visit and three days of activities.The 12
Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017, Prakash Javedekar said his ministry is in the process of giving final shape to national education policy.

By India Today Web Desk: Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javedekar said the new national education policy is nearly ready and could be tabled before Parliament soon.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017, Prakash Javedekar said the government sought suggestions from all quarters for a year and a half, and is now in the process of giving a final shape to the policy.

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Javedekar also said that the HRD Ministry wants to retain the best minds in the country and therefore is incentivising research programmes and offering research scholars an opportunity to train with the best in the industry.

HERE IS WHAT PRAKASH JAVADEKAR SAID AT INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE:

We are all for autonomy for institutions. Under the IIM Bill, we have given full autonomy to the institutes. We believe education empowers and takes a country to the next level. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has recorded 98 per cent enrollment, but the focus is now on quality. Therefore, our aim is 'Sabko Shiksha, Acchi Shiksha'. Learning outcomes have been mentioned but not defined, therefore, we are trying to provide benchmarks on what a student's learning curve should be when she is 1st Standard or 3rd Standard. This will also help parents track their child's growth. We have introduced the option of detention at 5th Standard and 8th Standard because a massive dropout is seen when a child moves to 9th Standard. However, we have left it to the states to decide if they want to enforce this or not. The government is focusing on reforming teacher training programmes. We are tracking every institute; the good will survive while the rest will get eliminated. The government is encouraging incubation centres, inviting research proposals and incentivising research projects under IMPRINT (Impacting Research Innovation and Technology).

WATCH VIDEO | India Today Conclave 2017: 3 Ministers - Naidu, Prasad, Javadekar; 3 big ideas

--- ENDS ---
UW TV Program Examines Economy, Adventure

Randy Bruns, Cheyenne-Laramie County Corporation for Economic Development CEO, will discuss challenges to diversifying the states economy during the information program Wyoming Signatures Sunday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. on Wyoming Public Television.

Bruns says even though the city of Cheyenne has been successful in creating jobs, many who work in Laramie County are commuting from elsewhere.

In another segment, hard-core adventure writer Mark Jenkins, from Laramie, a University of Wyoming writer-in-residence, will be featured. Jenkins is known for climbing Mount Everest, his Hard Way columns in Outside Magazine and his books related to his worldwide adventures.

In the Wyoming Signatures interview, Jenkins, a National Geographic writer, will give a behind-the-scenes-look at footnoting, fact-checking and other aspects of his life as a journalist.

Also, Bryan Shader, who oversees UWs research computing efforts and is a liaison with the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne, will be interviewed by Rachel Wagner.

Shader, UWs special assistant to the vice president for research and economic development, and professor of mathematics, will discuss how the supercomputer helps researchers around the world, UW students and the states economy.

Wyoming Signatures is produced by UWTV of the UW Outreach School. Wyoming PBS can be seen over the air and via cable or satellite in communities throughout Wyoming. A complete list of channels may be found at www.wyomingpbs.org/coverage.php.
Wyoming Business Tips for March 26-April 1

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 Andrea Lewis, WSBDC Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) specialist

Im interested in marketing my services to the federal government. What agencies do the most business in Wyoming, and how should I pick which one to market to? Noel, Bar Nunn

Fourteen major federal departments or administrations spent more than $311 million in Wyoming in the 2016 fiscal year.

Those agencies bought everything from gill netting to electrical power, mules to equipment rental, fire incident support services to background investigation services. From Afton to Yoder, services and/or products were used in 86 towns or locations across the state.

Its important to note that the federal departments are made up of many agencies. The top 10 contracting agencies in fiscal year 2016 that did the greatest dollar value of business in Wyoming, listed from highest to lowest, were: the Federal Highway Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Park Service, Department of the Air Force, Department of the Army, Forest Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Defense Commissary Agency, Bureau of Land Management, and Employment and Training Administration.

However, for the purpose of targeted marketing, it is not always accurate enough to know which agency completed business. For instance, the Department of the Army is made up of many entities. Do you need to target the Army Corps of Engineers or the Wyoming Army National Guard? Should you focus on your local Forest Service office or a regional Forest Service acquisition center? Knowing which contracting office does the purchasing is important and will save you time and money.

Finding agencies involves several approaches. An efficient way to go about it is to do market research on government sales. Online public access databases are available, such as the Federal Procurement Data System (www.fpds.gov) or www.USAspending.gov. The Wyoming PTAC is more than happy to do research for you -- my contact information is below.

Once you have selected which agencies to target, develop relationships with them by reaching out through email, phone or at a matchmaking session at events where government contractors or departments exhibit. Set up meetings to talk about your capabilities and what you can offer them. Do not be all things to them -- put forward your most capable services or products, and work at developing trust. This will do much to lessen their notions of risk in doing business with you.

Before a company considers contracting with the government, an assessment of how ready the owner needs to be is needed. The government is risk averse -- normally officials do not want to take a chance on hiring a startup company to do work, preferring businesses that are doing well in the commercial market. Questions such as work capacity, financial soundness, and the ability to manage contract administration and accounting should be asked before a company enters the government marketplace.

The Wyoming SBDC Network PTAC offers assistance in finding the best marketing targets for Wyoming companies. For more information, call (307) 772-7372 or email Lewis at amlewis@uwyo.edu.

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.
"Consultation and consensus is the best and often the only way forward," he said while lauding PM Modi's speech after BJP's big wins in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

By India Today Web Desk: President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday stressed on the need to guard against "majoritarianism", saying those in power must take the entire nation along at all times.

"Consultation and consensus is the best and often the only way forward," he said while lauding the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after BJP scored landslide victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

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"In a Parliamentary democracy, we must always guard against majoritarianism. Those in power must involve and take the entire nation along with them at all times," Mukherjee said in his speech at a conclave organised by India Today in the western Maharashtra state.

Appreciating Modi's felicitation speech following the resounding win, he said, "I was extremely happy to hear Prime Minister Modi speak about the need for humility in the aftermath of his party's victory in recent elections to Uttar Pradesh and other state assemblies.

PRANAB HAILS PM's FELICITATION SPEECH

"He asserted that while electoral verdicts are determined on the basis of 'Bahumat' (majority), the states will be governed on the principle of 'Sarvamat' (consensus). This is indeed India's tradition and what the large majority of our people desire to see in action."

In the speech circulated at the function, the President also chose to flag the issue of frequent disruption of Parliament, saying "I speak with some anguish because my entire public life has been defined by my role in Parliament."

"It is, therefore, difficult for me to stand and watch this fundamental pillar of Indian democracy being rendered ineffective.

PARLIAMENTARY DISRUPTIONS UNJUSTIFIABLE

"In my view, there is absolutely no justification for constant disruption of proceedings, low level of attendance, shrinking in number of days that the Parliament and state legislatures meet as well as the irresponsible manner in which important legislation, including the budget and financial proposals, get passed with hardly any discussion," he said.

Mukherjee said it was of benefit to both the ruling party and the opposition "to break this vicious cycle" of disruptions and disorderly behaviour and also made an appeal to political leadership across the spectrum to arrive at an agreement that all protests and airing of grievances will be undertaken in a manner that the functioning of Parliament and legislatures are not disrupted.

Also read | India Today Conclave 2017: In praising Modi, President pushes a rider - Cong-led UPA made economy strong

ALSO READ | India Today Conclave 2017: Dissent okay, disintegration is not, says Venkaiah Naidu on free speech debate

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WATCH VIDEO

--- ENDS ---
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had profound influence over my generation. It is not that he did not make mistakes but the fact remains that he took tremendous risk of introducing parliamentary politics in a country that is so vast and diverse, had zero economic development and low literacy levels at that time. Nehru was the architect of parliamentary system of government.

During 1900-1949, India's GDP growth was 0-1 per cent. From taking aids from other countries, India is today one of the largest producers of food grains. This is possible because of the sustained efforts of subsequent prime ministers.

Indira Gandhi had a strong influence over me. The high point of her political career was her effective and almost decisive role in liberation of Bangladesh. She was an effective Prime Minister who could utilise her power to further the principles she believed in.

Politics is associated with power and power is associated with office. In India, power is concentrated in the Prime Minister. He is not only the first among equals, but he is a little more than that. The Prime Minister derives power from the authority (given to him) by people. The question is how to exercise that power.

I have learnt from every Prime Minister I have worked with. Manmohan Singh gave complete autonomy to his ministers. We should give credit to Narendra Modi for picking it up (the skills) quickly.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee's style was different. One day I found that the PM is coming to my seat before the session. I told him you should have sent for me. He said doesn't matter, we are friends. Don't be too harsh on George (Fernandes)... I told him I salute your concern for your friends.

"Raaj karne ke liye bahumat nahi, sarvmat chahiye" (To rule, you don't just need majority, you need consensus). This is the spirit of democracy.

I never thought that by holding office either my wisdom has increased or my importance has increased. Office is nothing but a service to people.

We should build a strong public opinion to prevent the disruptions of Parliament proceedings. Anna Hazare's agitation on Jan Lokpal shows the weakness of the system. From 1970 to recent times, we could not legislate on Lokpal.
Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the India Today Conclave stage that the government has conveyed concerns regarding H1B visas to US authorities.

By India Today Web Desk: Union Minister for Law and Justice & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the India Today Conclave on Friday that the government had conveyed its concerns regarding US President Donald Trump's decision to suspend expedited processing of H1B visas to US authorities.

"We have conveyed our concerns to US authorities at the highest level," said Prasad while speaking at the India Today Conclave stage. "Indian companies don't steal jobs, they create jobs for a better India, and also for a better USA," he said.

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Speaking during a session titled "The Governance Agenda: How to Make a More Powerful, Digital, Smarter India", Prasad said, "particularly for USA, Indian IT companies have given nearly $20 billion as tax in the last five years. They have given jobs to 4,00,000 people there; they have given value addition to nearly 75% of the fortune companies. The Indian IT initiative is an asset for America."

#Conclave17 We have conveyed our concerns to US authorities at the highest level :@rsprasad LIVE https://t.co/VHffbecDJh pic.twitter.com/FsDegNuY7x- India Today (@IndiaToday) March 17, 2017

PREMIUM PROCESSING

Each year, 85,000 H1B visas are made available, including 20,000 reserved for workers with advanced degrees. Last year, Indian workers accounted for 70 per cent of the 85,000 available H1B visas, with Indian firms receiving 17,000 visas, or 20 per cent of the total.

The typical duration for processing any H1B visa application can take anywhere from 2 to 6 months. On the other hand, a premium H1B visa process permits firms to pay a $1,225 (Rs 82,000) fee to expedite applications and get a decision in 15 days.

Early this month, however, the Trump administration -- under its "America First" motto -- suspended the premium processing of H1B visas for six months.

A 'REFORM' BILL

Another cause of concern is the H1-B visa reform bill that calls for doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000 from the current minimum wage of $60,000. The legislation would make it difficult for firms to use the programme to replace American employees with foreign workers, including from India, with lower wages.

The bill, which was tabled before the Congress at the fag end of January and is likely to be signed by President Trump soon, would also require employers in the US to first offer a vacant position to an equally or better qualified American worker before seeking an H-1B or L-1 visa holder.

CONCERNS IN THE AIR

These moves and President Trump's rhetoric since his election has left Indian firms jittery, particularly the $150 billion Indian information technology industry, which will likely be affected by the move.

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India's IT lobby, warned that the H1-B visa reform bill will not solve a US labour shortage in technology and engineering. It also said the bill unfairly targets some of its members.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indian-it-sector-h1-b-visa-bill-us-donald-trump-nasscom-tcs-infosys-wipro/1/871339.html

Earlier this week, former US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal also acknowledged that "the issue of H1B visas" could be a "source of tension" in Indo-US ties.

WATCH

Also read:

How Trump's new executive order on H1B visas will dent Indian IT sector

India articulating visa concerns vigorously with US: Nirmala Sitharaman

--- ENDS ---


On Wednesday, March 15, Las Vegas Hypnotist Anthony Cools visited Comedy Magician Mike Hammer at the Four Queens Hotel & Casino.

Mike said, Anthony is a great hypnotist so I was glad I didnt put him to sleep at my show.

Anthony Cools has the longest running hypnosis show in Las Vegas and can be seen at the Paris Hotel and Casino.

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Click Here Follow Anthony Cools at: https://twitter.com/@TheAnthonyCools

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Source: viettimes.vn

The Danang Department of Transportation made a statement on March 9.

In the meantime, the earlier order from the Traffic Safety Committee of Danang outlined in Document 57/CV-BATGT on preventing the operation of GrabCar and Uber in the city, is still valid. In the document, the committee asked that the City Department of Information and Communications order Internet and mobile service providers to prevent mobile phones from accessing the Grab and Uber apps, and that the city police and the City Department of Transport work together to find and punish people and organisations that are providing illegal services through these apps.

A long fight

The Danang Department of Transport issued Document No.9670/UBND-SGTVT on November 25, 2016 and Document No.1000/UBND-SGTVT on February 14, 2017 to request the Ministry of Transport to allow Danang not to deploy the pilot programme to apply technology in contracted passenger transport businesses like Grab and Uber.

According to deputy director Bui Thanh Thuan of the department, Danang is very supportive of enterprises business activities and always wants to create a friendly environment to welcome enterprises. However, reflecting on the results of the 9-month pilot plan in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, GrabTaxis activities in Danang are considered unsuitable.

Specifically, GrabTaxi, the functions of which are mostly similar to that of traditional taxis, would add to the traffic problems. Thuan stated that the number of new registered private vehicles has increased rapidly due to GrabTaxis activitites: more than 7000 cars in Hanoi and 20,000 in Ho Chi Minh City. There are also numerous vehicles from other provinces flowing to these two big cities to work as GrabTaxis. Thuan asserted that the traffic problems have taken a complicated turn since the introduction of the pilot plan in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Danang is a small city, said the deputy director, current forms of transportation can already meet the peoples needs.

Thuan also mentioned the governments incomplete management of GrabTaxi. For example, taxing policy for GrabTaxi is still unclear and cannot ensure fairness with other forms of transportation businesses.

Out of the five cities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, Khanh Hoa, Quang Ninh) chosen by the Ministry of Transport to pilot applying technology in the contracted passenger transport business, Danang is the only one that refused.

The other side of the coin

CEO Nguyen Tuan Anh of Grab Vietnam has expressed disagreement with Danangs decision. Traffic problems must be solved by planning, not by banning vehicles. Furthermore, Grab provides services that help share cars, which would lead to less traffic. This model has succeeded in many countries, like Singapore and the US, among others, said Tuan Anh.

In the meantime, Grab still continues to advertise and operate underground in the city.



A youtube user uploaded this video of him using Grab in Danang

President Lu Bang of Danang Consumer Protection Portal stated that banning GrabTaxis activities is inappropriate. In our developing community, people will benefit from several forms of transportation businesses. Banning and limiting these forms can cause difficulties and violate peoples rights, Bang said.

According to Bang, Danang should develop suitable policies to help these enterprises to compete healthily. The authorities jobs are to prevent enterprises from tax evasion and illegal activities, not to ban them. The people have the right to choose cheaper, safer, and better serviced vehicles, said Bang.

Lawyer Nguyen Trung Nam of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association commented on the case that banning a new enterprise from entering the market is a sign of business protectionism. This is disadvantageous to both consumers and existing enterprises, as protection trims enterprises motivation to develop, leading to stagnation.

Economic expert Nguyen Minh Phong also stated that closing the doors in front of Grab is a step backward for Danang. He pointed out that refusing a new modela new chance at cheaper transportationhas a negative impact on Danangs life quality.
The Vietnam government has promised the international community that it will respect, protect and promote the rights of youth through its voluntary commitment to uphold the rights set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, he told the audience.

This includes the obligation to take all legislative, administrative and other measures to protect and ensure the rights of children and to develop policies and act in their best interests.

He noted that for the past quarter of a century, the Vietnam government has diligently worked to take concrete actions and create a world in which every child has a healthy and safe childhood, the opportunity to learn and a voice to speak for themselves.

However, while much has been achieved in the protection and promotion of the rights of children since 1990, he said, there are still many in Vietnam who do not fully enjoy their human rights.

The fact remains that more need be done, he underscored, promising continued commitment on the part of the government in line with the UN Convention to ensure a fair chance for every Vietnamese child.

Former Minister Pham Thi Hai Chuyen of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in turn spoke about the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on February 20, 1990 by the government and highlighted legislative actions that have taken place since then.

Mrs Chuyen specifically noted the Law on Child Protection, Care and Education, approved by the National Assembly in 1991, which was subsequently amended in 2004 and 2015 and talked about how it is the cornerstone of the commitment by the government to the UN Convention.

During the past 25 years, much has been accomplished in advancing the rights of children in Vietnam, said Mrs Chuyen, and the government can be proud of all that it has achieved in many areas.

Most youth in Vietnam have what they need for healthy development, to thrive and to flourish. An estimated 90% of them now receive annual vaccinations to guard against the six most dangerous diseases in the country.

The under the age of five mortality and malnutrition rates have been drastically reduced, she continued, noting that most children of school age now have universal access to free primary and secondary education and regularly attend classes.

Not only are more young people every year now enjoying better health care, but they also are enjoying a higher standard of living as the economy of the country improves and its people move into the lower middle income ranks.

However, in some areas, the government still has a long way to go to adequately protect their fundamental rights, she added, saying some ethnic minority youth and those experiencing mental ill-health are still areas of concern.

The UNICEF Representative in Vietnam, Mr Youssouf Abdel-Jelil, applauded the commitment of the Vietnam government to the rights of children and its efforts to give effect to the UN Convention.

It is my fervent hope, said the UNICEF Representative, that the government continue to make concrete and practical advances to improving the quality of life and fulfil its fundamental obligation to Vietnamese children in the future.
People reacting to the incident, which the interior ministry said injured eight people in total. (Photo: AFP/Valery Hache)

The teen was carrying a rifle, two handguns and two grenades in the attack at the Alexis de Tocqueville high school in the sleepy hillside city of Grasse, police told AFP.

An interior ministry spokesman said eight people, including the principal, were injured. Some were hurt in a stampede triggered by the attack.

The suspect, who has not been named publicly, had shared pictures and videos on social media of infamous US school shootings, including the 1999 Columbine massacre.

The head of the regional government, Christian Estrosi, told AFP that the shooting was "not at all" being seen as a terror attack and that the shooter appeared to have "psychological problems".

The head teacher was admitted to the local hospital with gunshot wounds to the arm and three pupils were treated for buckshot injuries, the hospital's director Frederic Limouzy told AFP.

Investigators initially said they were looking for an accomplice but a police source later said the shooter, who was not previously known to the authorities, appeared to have acted alone.

Fifteen-year-old Mokhtaria told AFP she was having a cigarette in the school garage when she heard shots ring out. "We saw people coming down shouting: 'There's a nutter firing at people'. We ran for it," she said.

France is still in a state of emergency after a series of terror attacks including the November 2015 massacre in Paris and a truck attack in Nice, just 40 kilometres from Grasse, in July last year.

The shooting comes just over a month before the first round of France's two-stage presidential election, in which security is one of the main issues on voters' minds.

IMF LETTER BOMB

All schools in Grasse were locked down after the late-morning shooting, which sent panicked pupils scurrying for cover.

A police cordon was thrown up around the building in the town known as France's perfume capital due to several scent factories.

The French government had already bolstered security outside after following the series of militant attacks since January 2015 that have claimed hundreds of lives.

More than 3,000 reservists were called up to help keep watch outside the country's 64,000 primary and secondary schools for the opening of the school year in September.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cut short a trip to the northern Somme area because of the Grasse shooting, as well as a letter bomb blast at the offices of the International Monetary Fund in Paris on Thursday.

A secretary at the agency suffered burns to her hands and face after opening a parcel containing explosive material believed to be a firework.

Employees were evacuated from the building near the Arc de Triomphe monument in the heart of the capital "as a precaution", a police source said.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde condemned it as a "cowardly act of violence".

US-style school shootings are almost unheard-of in France, a country with low levels of gun violence.

The last major attack at a school was in 2012, when an Islamic extremist from Toulouse, Mohamed Merah, shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the city before being killed by police.

In March 1984, a 15-year-old student shot and killed a teacher in the southwestern town of Castres before turning the gun on himself.
The Honda Civic and Honda CR-V models were produced in Vietnam, while the Honda Accords were imported from Thailand. The recall applies to all units produced in 2012.

List of Honda cars recalled

The repair and replacement will be done for free. Customers can bring their cars to all Honda dealers in Vietnam.

The reason of the fault is that the propellant is in contact with temperature and humidity for a long time, which may result in too high pressure.

There have been no accidents involving these Honda cars in Vietnam. In January, Honda Motor Co. recalled 772,000 additional Honda and Acura vehicles in the US for a defective front passenger seat air bag.
The Buddhist festival, which fell on March 14-16 (on the 17th-19th day of second lunar month), honours Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, while praying for peace and prosperity for the country.

The festival includes incense-offering ceremony, traditional boat- racing, a praying ceremony, Buddhism indoctrination, and exhibitions of paintings, photos and calligraphy.

Listed among the countrys 15 biggest festivals since 2000, the festival has become a spiritual tourism product of Danang, welcoming Buddhist followers from across Vietnam.

It contributes to preserving the national cultural identities and promoting Danangs tourism to domestic and foreign visitors.

Quan The Am Pagoda, built in 1957, is located at the foot of the Kim Son (Metal Mountain) in the Ngu Hanh Son (Five Element Mountains), which boasts wonderful natural landscapes with several ancient pagodas, mysterious caves and picturesque scenery.
Inside Son Doong cave

The programme aims to lure domestic and foreign visitors to Quang Binh in order to develop its tourism into a spearhead economy, provide a platform for travel operators of Hanoi and Quang Binh to form networking and attract more Hanoi investment into Quang Binh tourism.

At the press conference, Vice Secretary of the provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Huu Hoai introduced the potential, strength and new products of Quang Binh tourism sector, investment attraction and tourism demand stimulation policies, and plans to open flight services connecting Quang Binh with Thailands city of Chiang Mai, and Dong Hoi city with Cat Bi in the northern port city of Hai Phong.

Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan asked the province to popularise its tradition, history, and culture, and sacred land with talented and heroic people while bringing more images of Quang Binh as well as Vietnam abroad.

A music show Quang Binh in songs will take place at the Hanoi Opera House from 8-10:30pm on March 26-27.

From March 25-27, a series of events are also planned, including a tourism promotion and connectivity seminar, a photo exhibition Quang Binh  most attractive destination in Asia, a cultural space of Le Thuy folk song heave-ho, a marketing programme Quang Binh  Kingdom of world caves combined with music activities, among others.

A highlight of the programme will be a space to attract visitors to Son Doong  the worlds largest cave, affording them a chance to experience Son Doong in the midst of Hanoi.

The central province of Quang Binh boasts the most special tourism resources in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, notably Phong Nha  Ke Bang National Park twice recognised by UNESCO as a World Natural Heritage thanks to its geological, geo-morphological, biodiversity and aesthetic values. It is also the first heritage in the region to meet three out of the four criteria for the status.

The locality is also endowed with the longest coastline with a number of pristine, crystal-clear and sandy beaches, and a variety of specialties.

As the native land of the late General Vo Nguyen Giap and labour heroine Mother Suot, Quang Binh also holds special tangible and intangible cultural heritages such as ceremonial songs and Le Thuy folk song heave-ho.
With Indians in America facing alleged racist attacks in the last one month, Ahluwalia said, "We have to realise that we are all the same and there is no other".

By India Today Web Desk: Waris Ahluwalia, who was not allowed to board an Aeromexico flight in February 2016 because he was wearing a turban, has an advice for US President Donald Trump.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017, designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia asked Donald Trump to "find your humanity and find your truth".

With Indians in America facing alleged racist attacks in the last one month, Ahluwalia said, "We have to realise that we are all the same and there is no other".

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HERE IS WHAT WARIS AHLUWALIA SAID AT THE INDIA TODAY CONCLAVE:

The man behind the House of Waris, designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia said fear is like a seed that is planted in our hearts and grows over a period of time, referring to the current climate of hate in a post-Trump United States. Talking about the incident in 2013 when a GAP ad featuring him was defaced with racist messages in US, Waris Ahluwalia said GAP responded within three hours and supported him. This, Ahluwalia said, earned the company many more fans and immense goodwill. In contrast, Aeromexico took two days to respond, Ahluwalia said. He was barred from boarding a flight to New York after he refused to remove his turban. The delay in response from Aeromexico hurt the goodwill of the company, said Waris Ahluwalia. Ahluwalia had posted a photograph of him with the boarding pass of Aeromexico on Instagram and soon the story went viral. Following the incident, Ahluwalia had demanded that the security staff be educated on cultural sensitivity. Ahluwalia said he sought more than just a simple apology because he did not want others to face a same situation. Asked about the weirdest thing he has been called, Waris Ahluwalia said that post 9/11 attack, he was assaulted and called Osama bin Laden. However, he said a resilience to fight off such attacks has made people like him continue to feel safe in New York.

ALSO READ | At India Today Conclave Mahindra says Make In India will work, Amitabh Kant looks for 12 champion states

India Today Conclave 2017: Indian IT firms assets for US, don't steal jobs, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

WATCH VIDEO | India Today Conclave 2017: 'Find your humanity, find your truth', Waris Ahluwalia tells Donald Trump

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Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung (right) receives Choi Jeongho, Vice Minister for Transport of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Korea in Hanoi on March 15.

The Government Office announced that Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung had met with Choi Jeongho, Vice Minister for Transport of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Korea on March 15.

Dung said at the meeting that the strategic partnership between Vietnam and South Korea is seeing positive development in various fields, especially in economics. Dung expressed gratitude to the South Korean government and related agencies that helped Vietnam develop public infrastructure.

According to the Ministry of Transport, South Korea is Vietnam's second largest investor in transport, behind Japan. Many projects done by South Korean investors have had positive effects.

Dung went on to say that in the coming time, Vietnam would have high demands for building and upgrading public infrastructure such as the North-South highway, seaports and airports. Dung suggested that the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport should encourage firms to research and invest in Vietnam.

Choi Jeongho agreed that infrastructure development had a lot of room for investment and for Vietnam and South Korea to deepen co-operation. Currently, South Korea is preparing to implement a financial aid package for several key fields in Vietnam including road transportation, urban and high-speed train and energy.

He confirmed that the Ministry for Transport of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport would encourage firms to go and find business opportunities in Vietnam. South Korea is also willing to share experience in attracting PPP investments for public infrastructure.

On the same day, Dung also met with Alfred J. DiMora, founder of Dimora Enterprises, LLC. Dung welcomed the fact that Dimora Enterprises, LLC is interested in car assembling and producing in Vietnam.

Dung said Vietnam's automobile industry had potential with high growth rate. He hoped investors would conduct market surveys before considering investment.
US President Donald Trump says the wiretapping allegations "really covers surveillance and many other things". (Photo: AFP/Nicholas Kamm)

"We don't have any evidence that that took place," Devin Nunes, the Republican head of the congressional committee looking into the allegation, said at a press conference Wednesday.

"I don't think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower," said Nunes, whose House Intelligence Committee is also investigating suspected Russian interference in last year's US presidential election.

Nunes's conclusion was echoed by the panel's top Democrat, Adam Schiff.

"To date I've seen no evidence that supports the claim that President Trump made that his predecessor had wiretapped he and his associates at Trump Tower," Schiff said at the press conference. "Thus far, we have seen no basis for that whatsoever."

On Mar 4, Trump sparked a furore when he wrote on his Twitter account that Obama had put a wiretap on communications at Trump Tower, the New York home of the president and first family, before the Nov 8 election.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

"Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" he wrote in a second tweet.

The tweets set off a fierce controversy, in part because it was unprecedented for a US president to accuse a predecessor of a felony crime.

The allegation was also remarkable because Trump - known for making bombastic and often unsubstantiated claims on Twitter - would have access to secret law enforcement and intelligence inquiries containing such information.

TRUMP: WORDS WERE 'IN QUOTES'

In an interview late Wednesday with Fox News, Trump was asked how he found out about the alleged wiretapping.

"I had been reading about things," he said, before making a reference to a New York Times article from Jan 20 and "other things" that he read where wiretapping was discussed.

Trump also mentioned by name a Fox News reporter who "the day previous" - presumably Mar 3 - "was talking about certain, very complex sets of things happening. And wiretapping. I said 'wait a minute, there's lot of wiretapping being talked about.' I'd been seeing a lot of things."

Trump told Fox "don't forget: when I say wiretap, those words were in quotes ... because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things."

He added, however, that "for the most part I'm not going to discuss it because... we will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasn't been submitted as of yet."

FBI CHIEF TO TESTIFY

During the press conference with Nunes and Schiff, they said they did not expect to hear evidence backing up Trump's claim when James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testifies to the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

But the two congressmen said they were hoping to make progress on the issues of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, including how many people linked to the Trump campaign might have been wiretapped in the course of that or other inquiries.

Also testifying Monday will be Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, the government's electronic spying body. Another intelligence hearing, with testimony from other witnesses, is scheduled for Mar 28.
A person hangs from a rope beneath a cable car booth after 60 tourists became trapped in the two booths that ascend the El Teide Volcano (3,718m ) in the El Teide National Park on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife on Mar 15, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Desiree Martin)

A total of 111 people, including eight children, were forced to stay at three shelters on Mount Teide, the highest mountain in Spain and a major tourist attraction, cable car company Teleferico del Teide said in a statement.

They included tourists who became trapped in two cable cars that stopped working mid-air on Wednesday roughly 60 metres (200 feet) from the ground, as well as visitors who were already at the top of the volcano and were waiting to get down.

Helicopters, firemen, and park rangers were called in to help with a pulley system to get about 70 tourists who were trapped in the cable cars back to the ground during a four-hour rescue operation. Each was placed in a harness and then lowered through a hatch of the cable car.

Many of the tourists who were plucked from the cable cars made it to the base station of the volcano at an altitude of 2,356 metres (7,700 feet) on foot despite the rocky terrain, but those with reduced mobility spent the night at the shelters.

Four helicopters evacuated the tourists, many wearing shorts and sandals, from the shelters on Thursday to the base station, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Rescuers also escorted tourists by foot to the base station, where medical staff and psychologists were waiting.

"There is no serious injury, some people were dizzy, had high blood pressure, some scrapes, light injuries," a local emergency services spokeswoman said.

The tourists who spent the night at the shelters had food and water and were accompanied by emergency services staff, he added.

The authorities did not provide details regarding the nationalities of the tourists who became trapped but the AFP photographer said the majority were foreigners, including Australian and British citizens.

The peak of Mount Teide, located in the heart of Tenerife in the archipelago of the Canary Islands, is over 3,700 metres high, offering spectacular views of the island and the stars.

The cable car takes visitors up almost to the summit, although the last stretch must be done on foot. It will remain closed until Saturday.
Mr Dimora is visiting Vietnam to prepare for the building of an electric car production and assembly factory in the country.

DiMora Motorcar, an affiliate of Dimora Enterprises, is known for the world's most luxurious and expensive car- the US$2 million Natalia SLS 2 sport luxury sedan.

Deputy Prime Minister Dung said the growing Vietnamese automobile market is quite lucrative for foreign investors. In the first phase, Dimora Enterprises will produce electric cabs for Mai Linh Group.
A prawn export processing line. Australias ban on Vietnamese prawn imports has seriously damaged the countrys aquaculture industry, which annually exports about US$55 million worth of uncooked prawns to Australia.-VNA/VNS Photo Manh Linh

A prawn export processing line. Australias ban on Vietnamese prawn imports has seriously damaged the countrys aquaculture industry, which annually exports about US$55 million worth of uncooked prawns to Australia.-VNA/VNS Photo Manh Linh

Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce announced a six-month suspension on the import of raw prawns in January, following an outbreak of white spot disease in Queensland.

Viet Nams deputy minister of Industry and Trade, Tran Quoc Khanh, said the ban had damaged his countrys aquaculture industry, which exports about US$55 million worth of uncooked prawns to Australia.

"In our view, [the ban] is not in line with common practices and the spirit of nurturing and enhancing the existing good trade relationship between Viet Nam and Australia," Khanh said.

"The temporary ban on uncooked prawns was issued by the Australian Government without giving sufficient time, by advance warning, for Vietnamese prawn exporters to take needed actions to avoid such large economic losses.

"The prawn import suspension imposed by the Australian Government has been causing serious damage to the prawn farmers and exporters in Viet Nam.

"A number of Vietnamese exporters specialising in the Australian market are facing the risk of going bankrupt due to the suspension."

Australian authorities are still investigating how white spot disease spread to Australia, while prawn farmers have blamed Asian imports.

Khanh said Viet Nam should be allowed to keep exporting raw prawns to Australia until there is proof that imported prawns were the source of the outbreak.

"If Australia continues to maintain the ban, Viet Nam requests that it provide adequate scientific evidence as soon as possible showing a causal relationship between prawn imports from Viet Nam and the outbreak of white spot disease in Australia," he added.

Viet Nams Government said the ban may be in breach of a World Trade Organisation agreement on how governments should apply food safety measures to traded products.

"Some Vietnamese businesses view the suspension as going beyond the necessary extent provided for in the WTO agreement, but we are still studying this point of view of Vietnamese companies," he said.

Biosecurity failures

The Seafood Importers Association of Australia has previously said the ban had damaged Australias international trade reputation, but the Department of Agriculture defended the move, saying it was necessary to protect the nations aquaculture industry.

The deputy minister said he respected Australias sovereignty and biosecurity decisions, but nonetheless asked the Federal Government to reconsider the need for a ban.

"We are supportive of the actions taken by the Australian Government in applying necessary measures to control the outbreak," he said.

"This does not imply that we push aside the safety of the Australian prawn farming industry.

"We call for the close cooperation by the two sides in taking alternative measures that have less negative impacts on our bilateral trade, while ensuring the safety of the Australian prawn farming industry and the environment in Australia."

He said Vietnamese uncooked prawn products had been exported to many countries around the world without facing any import suspension.

"We are willing to support the Australian Governments decision on prawn import suspension but only when other measures which have less negative impacts on trade have proved to be ineffective or useless," he said.

Viet Nam and Australia have disagreed over bilateral agricultural trade before.

In 2015, Viet Nam temporarily banned the importation of fruits from Australia following a disagreement over Mediterranean fruit fly.

Suspension decision not taken lightly

An increase in exotic pets and diseases has prompted Australian farmers and environmentalists to demand more focus on biosecurity.

An Australian Agriculture Department spokesperson said the government and the department had "the utmost respect for domestic farming industries in Viet Nam and across the globe".

"Our work to support technical market access in countries that Australia exports to, as well as those that we import from, is firmly based on the safety and biosecurity of local industries both in Australia and overseas, as well as the mutual economic benefits of trade," the spokesperson said.

"The department recognises that this suspension will have flow-on effects to Australian consumers and international exporters, including Viet Nam. The decision is not one that has been taken lightly."

The spokesperson said the suspension complied with the provisions of WTO agreements that allow a member to temporarily suspend imports in certain circumstances.

The decision to suspend prawn imports will not be in place longer than is necessary to ensure the protection of the domestic prawn industry, which remains the first priority, the spokesperson said.
By Press Trust of India: From Fakir Hassen

Johannesburg, Mar 17 (PTI) An Indian-origin woman author will represent South Africa in Fiji at an event to commemorate the centenary of the abolition of Indian indentureship.

Fourth-generation South African-Indian Elaine Pillay- Stevens said she was honoured to have been chosen to speak at the International Conference on the Indian Indentureship System in Lautoka, Fiji next week.

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Pillay-Stevens, an author of childrens book and former teacher, will carry a message of how descendants of Indian indentured labourers can become valuable citizens of their adopted lands during a conference designed to commemorate the centenary of the end of the indentured labour system.

The system saw more than a million Indians being taken to British colonial territories in Africa; the Indian Ocean and Caribbean islands; and South America, largely to work on sugarcane plantations.

"Besides speaking about the impact that the indenture system had on me personally, I will also explain how South African-Indians today are involved in the larger South African society at all levels," Pillay-Stevens said.

She said there was a shared history between South Africa and Fiji because of the indenture system that established a bond between Indian-origin citizens of both the countries.

Her paper will focus on how descendants of the indentured migrants can contribute to the social and economic development of the countries where they find themselves as citizens now.

Over two-thirds of South Africas Indian origin population of 1.4 million are descended from the thousands of indentured labourers who suffered huge hardships under the system created to source labour after slavery was abolished in 1833.

Lured by promises of a better life, the first migrants suffered exploitation at the hands of their British colonial masters, but persevered to establish schools, temples and mosques with their meagre earnings to the extent that there is a 100 per cent literacy level among the newest generation of South African-Indians.

"The system of indenture ended on March 12, 1917. The last indenture contract lapsed on January 1, 1920," the organisers of the conference said in its call for papers.

March 12, 2017 marks the centennial of the official abolition of Indian indentureship.

The primary objective of the conference is to facilitate discourse on all aspects related to the indenture system, also known more commonly as the Girmit system.

The Convention Organising Committee, chaired by Jagannath Sami of the Fiji Girmit Council, has the support of leading Indian-origin academics from universities in more than 10 countries including India. PTI FH CPS

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Tradition and Spirit Behind the Day of the Dead

Remembering the deceased has been at the core of many traditional rituals and celebrations. This especially rings true in Mexico, where family and friends gather annually to pray and tell anecdotes about the departed, build altars to encourage their souls to visit the human realm, and even dress up as
The death of Sok An, the former deputy prime minister who passed away in a Beijing hospital on Wednesday at the age of 66, was a huge loss for the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, officials say.

Its not a simple thing. Its a very huge loss for the Cambodian Peoples Party. He was a central figure that will be missed. We think about this a lot, but its the nature of humankind, said CPP spokesman Sok Eysan.

An was born on April 16, 1950, in Takeo provinces Kiri Vong district. He married Theng Ay Any, who gave birth to four sons and a daughter.

In 1981, he became secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and chief of the cabinet of Hun Sen, who was then foreign minister. In 1985 he was posted as ambassador to India, before returning to Cambodia and becoming deputy minister of foreign affairs in 1988.

After the UN-backed elections in 1993, An was given a senior position in the Council of Ministers, and since 2004 has been deputy prime minister and minister in charge of the Council of Ministers.

Phay Siphan, government spokesman, described An as a brilliant diplomat and a leading cultural preservationist.

He successfully put Preah Vihear temple in the list of World Heritage, although there were consequences, he said, referring to tensions with neighbor Thailand, which also claimed ownership of the temple area.

Ans son, Sok Puthyvuth, married into Hun Sens family, further cementing the relationship between the two CPP figureheads.

Meas Ny, a social researcher, said that while Ans family had benefited greatly from his relationship to Hun Sen, in terms of what he did for the nation, I find it hard to say because he had so many jobs. So we dont know what he has done actually.

Ans four sons are all involved in business or politics. Puthyvuth is head of the Soma Group and president of the Cambodia Rice Federation. Sok Soken was made an undersecretary of state at the foreign ministry, prompting allegations of nepotism. Sok Sangvar is deputy head of the Apsara Authority, the body that overseas the Angkor Archaeological Park, which An was also closely tied to. Another son, Sok Sokan, is a lawmaker for Takeo province.

Sok An majored in geography, sociology and history at a university and went on to complete a higher degree in pedagogy and later studied at the National Administration School.
On an afternoon in June last year while some 30 million British people went out to vote in a referendum to decide the United Kingdoms future within the European Union, George Edgar was busy at his office in Phnom Penh, watching the results come in.

The former British diplomat and current E.U. Ambassador to Cambodia was appointed six months before the Brexit referendum and is a staunch supporter.

Given the time here as a British citizen working for the E.U., it is no secret that I was on the side of the U.K. staying with the E.U., Edgar said in an exclusive interview with VOA Khmer early this week.

Indeed I made sure I voted in the referendum, so I was surprised and disappointed with the result, Edgar said.

Soon after the referendum, then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who campaigned for the Remain camp, stepped down, giving way to Theresa May who will oversee the Brexit process.

The May government brought the plan for royal assent this week, beginning the process of a British exit from the E.U.

Brexit is a sign of increasing nationalism and xenophobia, and its bad for the E.U. and bad for the Western world, said Sophal Ear, associate professor of world affairs at the Los Angeles-based Occidental College.

While many things have changed since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, the global role of the E.U. is not going to change any time soon, according to Ear, who authored the 2013 book Aid Dependence in Cambodia.

If you see whats happened with Trump and his actions being used to justify muzzling the media elsewhere or the cause of human rights, we could see the same thing with Europe if nationalist parties come to power, he said. But the US has one president. The EU is still a bunch of countries, so its actions will not become irrelevant (or used against it) overnight.

Though he said a hard Brexit would be regrettable, Edgar told VOA Khmer that he was hopeful that it could be encouraging to the remaining 28 state members to move the E.U. forward with renewed energy.

One of the reasons for me that attracted me to working with the E.U. in the first place is the fact that the E.U. as a whole can have a stature and influence on the global stage, which can be much greater than the influences of the member states taken individually, he said.

That would remain true even after the departure of the U.K., and it is something I believe very deeply, Edgar added.

Regardless of the upheavals in Europe, Edgar said he was focused on what the E.U. is doing here in Cambodia in support of the countrys democratization process  including technical support for the National Election Committee  education, fisheries, public finance management reforms, and decentralization.

Those aspects that I do, which are central to what we are doing here, are not affected by issues such as the decision of the British people that Britain would leave the E.U. and other things going on in Europe at the moment, he said.

Electoral Reforms

The E.U., alongside Japan, has been assisting electoral reforms executed by the N.E.C. in the first phase with a biometric voter registration system, recording some 7.8 million voters for ahead of the commune elections in early June this year.

The N.E.C., which was overhauled after the controversial 2013 election, is also tasked with organizing the next general election, in 2018.

But pre-election political tension appears to have been mounting. Nearly 30 opposition members, civil society workers and government critics have been jailed over the past two years in what Edgar descried as what looks like politically motivated judicial cases.

One of those jailed was N.E.C. deputy secretary general Ny Chakrya, well-known as a prominent human rights worker before he was appointed to the election body. Rong Chhun, a prominent opposition-appointee to the N.E.C.s nine-member leadership board, is also facing legal action.

Kem Ley, a well-known political commentator who was critical of the government - and, on occasion the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party - was shot dead in last July at a busy cafe in the capital.

Long-term opposition leader Sam Rainsy last month announced his resignation from the presidency of the CNRP following amendments to the law on political parties that could have seen the CNRP dissolved if he remained in the position.

Complicated Politics

There have been, over the past year, the significant tensions between the CPP and the CNRP, Edgar said, adding that the situation was concerning.

Asked if such a situation has doubt whether the elections can be free and fair, the E.U. Ambassador said it would be a mistake to predict the quality of an election in advance.

Trying to say now or trying to make the judgment now of the quality of the election that has not happened would be very wrong, he said.

We are very keen to see ... an environment that allows genuine electoral competition because it is an important aspect of multi-party democracy, which Cambodia set out in its constitution, he said.
The Cambodian government this week launched an investigation into the appointment of Kem Sokha as the new president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Sokha assumed the role at an extraordinary party conference earlier this month after its former leader, Sam Rainsy, stepped down amid legal pressure to resign.

Sar Kheng, interior minister, on Tuesday said the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party should not recognize the new CNRP leadership because it had violated its own internal rules by holding an early conference, saying the party should have waited 18 months before making the new appointments.

Khieu Sopheak, interior ministry spokesman, said it was also against the partys rules to hold a congress without the presence of the president.

Eng Chhay Eang, CNRP vice president, said the congress had been rushed because of recent amendments to the political parties law, which could have led to the dissolution of the CNRP if Rainsy had remained president.

He added that the party had complied with its internal rules.

Duong Sotheara, legal officer at election watchdog Comfrel, said as the partys internal rules were not legally binding, there was no reason for the opposition to be concerned.

When a party president passes away, it cannot keep the position vacant and needs to elect a new president, he said.

In February, changes to the Law on Political Parties meant that if Rainsy, who has a criminal conviction for defamation, had remained in his position, the Supreme Court could dissolve the party.
A federal immigration judge in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota has granted a rarely used waiver to a Cambodian who arrived legally in the United States as a child refugee and was detained for deportation as an ex-convict.

The judge based her decision on the extreme hardship his forced return to a homeland he hardly knows would cause the multi-generational family he supports, according to activists who attended the hearing.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained Ched Nin, 37, in August 2016. In 2010, he was sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted on charges that included second-degree assault, according to court records.

Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, his conviction meant he lost his legal permanent residency, or green card, and faced deportation, until Judge Susan Castro of the federal immigration court in Bloomington, Minnesota, granted what is known as a Section 212(h) waiver on February 24.

Ched was released immediately and said that while he was happy to be home, he was saddened that ICE was continuing to detain seven other Cambodian former convicts.

"I want to help keep families together," he said in his only public remarks.

No naturalization without pardon

With the waiver, he will regain full legal permanent resident status, "but unless he gets a governor's pardon, his crime bars him from naturalizing," said Katrina Dizon Mariategue, the immigration policy manager at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center in Washington.

Once an immigration judge grants such a waiver, "it is rare for the government to appeal," Jayesh Rathod, an immigration law professor at American University's Washington College of Law, told VOA.

An ICE spokesman said he could not comment on the decision because of privacy laws protecting U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

Reacting to the waiver, Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project, told VOA, "There are many people who deserve the waiver. I hope judges are able to maintain independence to judge each case on its own."

Section 212(h) waivers can be applied except in cases of "murder or criminal acts involving torture or an attempted or conspiracy to commit murder or criminal acts involving torture."

Linus Chan, a University of Minnesota Law School professor whose practice specializes in immigration detentions, led Ched's legal team. Its argument was based on the extreme hardship that deportation would cause his family because he is their sole support, said Dizon Mariategue. Key is the hardship that would be caused to an American citizen, Ched's wife, who brought the petition, and his children.

Although the extreme hardship "can be a high bar, it is not meant to be an impossible bar," said Chan.

Judges can weigh a variety of factors in making a decision, including the seriousness of the crime, the chance of reoffending, the person's length of time in the United States and previously granted permanent residency status.

According to Dizon Mariategue, the immigration judge found extreme hardship in Ched's case. One child with a rare heart condition who is not expected to live past age 25 would have lost health care and access to surgeries without his health insurance. Child Protective Services recommended that two of his children from a previous marriage be placed with him so that they could have a better home or risk being placed in foster care. He is the sole family member with strength to lift and care for his immobile, elderly father, a legal permanent U.S. resident. Without his income as a union carpenter, the family faced foreclosure on their home.

Strong evidence needed

"I think the hardest thing to prove in a 212(h) waiver is that extreme hardship," said Rathod. It requires strong evidence of "some kind of hardship to a qualified relative," which is almost impossible to prove without strong legal support, he added.

Given that the 1996 law makes it very difficult for individuals to have legal representation after they have been detained, "there is a problem," said Rathod.

"Really, this victory is a combination of not only the really good legal strategy, but a lot of the support from the community as well," said Dizon Mariategue.

Ched's wife, Jenny Srey, and other family members organized legal support from local and national organizations.

Danielle Robinson Briand, who represents two of the remaining seven Cambodian men detained by ICE, said the fight for their release would be more difficult under the administration of President Donald Trump. They were transferred from ICE detention in Minnesota to the Oakdale Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana, on Wednesday.

Socheata Pharseth, whose husband is now in Louisiana, said that while she was happy for Ched's family, "my husband started to lose hope and has given up. But I am not giving up. I continue to fight and hope that one day we can be reunited."
Security forces in Pakistan have arrested dozens of suspects, including Afghans as part of an ongoing nationwide crackdown against extremist groups. The raids came as fresh militant attacks killed three security personnel.

Hundreds of suspects have been detained in the military-led crackdown that started when a string of suicide bombings across Pakistan left nearly 130 people, mostly civilians, dead in February.

The outlawed Pakistani Taliban and local affiliates of Islamic State claimed responsibility for the violence.

A military statement Friday said joint search and intelligence-based operations in several cities, including the national capital of Islamabad, rounded up 46 suspects, including 11 Afghan nationals, and also seized weapons and ammunition. It did not give further details.

Pakistan still hosts an estimated three million registered and undocumented Afghan refugees.

The latest arrests came on a day when Taliban militants assaulted outposts in the northwestern Khyber tribal district on the Afghan border, killing two paramilitary troops.

The army said the pre-dawn terrorist raid was launched from across the Afghan territory and retaliatory fire killed at least six retreating assailants.

Separately, a pair of suicide bombers armed with automatic weapons attacked a training center for the Frontier Constabulary security force, killing an officer and wounding two others.

The commandant of the institution, Liaquat Ali Khan, told reporters the bombers tried to sneak into the facility, which housed more than 70 recruits at the time, to "cause maximum casualties, but the guards quickly responded and neutralized both the assailants. One of them was gunned down in the shootout. The other was killed when his suicide vest was hit and exploded during the gunfire, he added.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, took credit for both the attacks.

Pakistan insists the militant group operates out of Afghan border areas and has repeatedly called on Kabul to take action against it.

Islamabad unilaterally closed Afghan border crossings after last months attacks and authorities said the restriction remains in place, though authorities have hinted at lifting it soon.
Each year, the University of Southern California brings delegations from Africa to meet with business leaders, government officials and others in the U.S. But this year, the African summit has no Africans. All were denied visas.

Visa issues are not uncommon for people traveling from African nations. During her prior three summits, Mary Flowers saw a high percentage of her attendees at the African Global Economic and Development Summit, unable to attain visas.

"Usually we get 40 percent that get rejected but the others come," said Flowers, chair of the African Global Economic and Development Summit. "This year it was 100 percent. Every delegation. And it was sad to see, because these people were so disheartened."

Flowers estimated that she lost about 100 attendees, including speakers and government officials. The countries affected included Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa.

'A discrimination issue'

"I have to say that most of us feel it's a discrimination issue with the African nations," said Flowers. "We experience it over and over and over, and the people being rejected are legitimate business people with ties to the continent."

A request for comment from the State Department was not immediately returned.

Flowers said those who were denied visas were called for embassy interviews just days before they were supposed to travel, despite having applied weeks or even months ahead of time.

One of those denied a visa was Prince Kojo Hilton, a Ghanaian artist whose work includes special effects and graphic art. He paid his $500 fee to attend the event and was asked to lead a session on filmmaking. But he held off buying his plane ticket until his appointment at the embassy on March 13, four days before he was supposed to travel.

"I was really disappointed when I went to the embassy," Hilton said in an interview with VOA.

Travel ban

It remains unclear why all of the Africans heading to the event were denied visas this year.

Diane E. Watson, who formerly represented a Los Angeles-area district in Congress, said she had called the State Department to ask for information about the denial of visas for would-be delegates to the USC summit. But the State Department isn't allowed to discuss individual visa cases.

With the heightened attention on foreign nationals coming to the U.S., there have been stories of more visas being denied to people from countries other than those named in the Trump administration's executive orders. But visas are routinely denied by U.S. embassies without explanation.

If there has been an increase in the number of visas rejected under the new administration, it's hard to verify. The publicly available State Department data dates only to late 2016.
One of the enduring legacies of the Barack Obama presidency will be the relationship built between the United States and young Africans. As part of Obamas Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), each year 1,000 young people from sub-Saharan Africa travel to the United States to spend six weeks at a U.S. college or university. The program will continue this summer.

But building enduring relationships is a two-way street, and many in Africa want to see Americans coming to their continent as well. Thats what 26 Americans selected to participate in a Reciprocal Exchange program, a new component of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, are now planning to do.

The U.S. Department of State partnered with IREX, a nonprofit organization focusing on international education and research, to help continue collaboration between 27 Mandela Washington Fellows and 26 American professionals. The program will take the U.S. citizens to 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa during March.

Exchange program

Brian MacHarg is director of academic civic engagement at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, which hosted 25 young African leaders in 2016. Now, MacHarg has been invited by two of those young leaders to travel to Niger and Benin to conduct workshops.

We had spent six weeks talking about connection to the community, so this is an opportunity for those fellows to share with their communities what they learned during the institute and, me being there, I can help foster those conversations to take place, he said.

In northeast Benin, MacHarg will be joining Mandela Washington Fellow Abiona Jean Bamigbade, who is the founder of Education for Development, an organization that advocates for girls education.

MacHargs academic specialty is helping professors integrate experiential learning into their curriculum and getting them to build connections with the communities in which they teach.

My hope, in conjunction with the fellows who I know, is to facilitate some of the conversations in those communities and help NGO leaders and workers think a little bit about civic responsibilities and how can we foster that in our communities. How NGOs can partner with educational institutions for mutual benefit, he said.

Project in Ethiopia

Another participant in the program is Rudy Hightower, a retired U.S. Naval officer and Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University who is traveling to Ethiopia. There he will work with Dr. Enque Endeshaw, an Ethiopian psychiatrist who is looking at ways to improve delivery of mental health care and services for migrants and refugees.

The two will use nonlinear modeling software to do scenario planning that will help policymakers decide whether the country needs to do things such as increase training for psychiatrists or give nutritional supplements to refugee populations. The modeling will also look at things like high rates of post-traumatic stress and domestic violence in refugee populations. Ethiopia is home to an estimated 700,000 refugees, according to the United Nations.

Were going to try to build some models to kind of better explain whats going on so that policymakers can make better decisions on how to intervene and how to make things better, Hightower said.

But as important as the actual work will be, Hightower believes the people-to-people connections may be equally significant.

I would hope that Ethiopians and people around the world still know that America cares and Americans care no matter what you hear in the news, he said. I hope I bring something a little bit new in the way of research methods and decision-making tools, but more importantly Ill let them know that Americans havent changed. America has a lot of compassion and caring for countries throughout the world.
China will begin preparatory work this year for an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, an official said, as two U.S. senators introduced a bill to impose sanctions on its activities in the disputed waterway.

China seized the strategic shoal, which is also claimed by the Philippines, in 2012, and the United States has warned Beijing against carrying out the same land reclamation work there that it has done in other parts of the South China Sea.

This week, Xiao Jie, the mayor of what Beijing calls Sansha City, an administrative base for disputed South China Sea islands and reefs it controls, said China planned preparatory work this year to build environmental monitoring stations on a number of islands, including Scarborough Shoal.

Restoration, erosion prevention

The monitoring stations, along with docks and other infrastructure, form part of island restoration and erosion prevention efforts planned for 2017, Xiao told the official Hainan Daily.

The report came ahead of a visit to Beijing at the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, where he is expected to reiterate U.S. concern about Chinese island building.

Tillerson has called the activity "illegal." Last June, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned that any move by China to reclaim land at Scarborough Shoal would "result in actions being taken by the both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions, but isolating China."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Anna Richey-Allen, said it was aware of the Chinese report and reiterated a call on South China Sea claimants to avoid building on disputed features.

The Philippine Foreign Ministry declined to comment, saying it was trying to verify the reports.

Washington stresses the importance of free navigation in South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year. China claims nearly all of the sea, and Washington is concerned its island-building is aimed at denying access to the waters.

Senators' bill

This week, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, introduced the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, which would ban visas for Chinese people helping to build South China Sea and East China Sea projects.

It would also sanction foreign financial bodies that "knowingly conduct or facilitate a significant financial transaction for sanctioned individuals and entities" if China steps up activity at Scarborough Shoal, among other actions.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the bill "extremely grating" and said it showed the "arrogance and ignorance" of the senators.

Bonnie Glazer, an Asia expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said it was unclear whether China planned dredging work at Scarborough Shoal, something that could wreck efforts to agree on a code of conduct for the region that Beijing professes to support.

She noted that parties to a 2002 declaration of conduct had agreed to refrain from inhabiting uninhabited features.

During his January confirmation hearing, Tillerson said China should be denied access to islands it has built up in the South China Sea. He subsequently softened his language, saying that in the event of an unspecified "contingency," the United States and its allies "must be capable of limiting China's access to and use of" those islands to pose a threat.
According to sources, the railways will be spending nearly Rs 5 lakh for each of these officers during the two years they spend at these premier institutes.

By Mail Today Bureau: It's time for the railway babus to take lessons at countries premiere engineering and management institutes to enhance their skills.

The Indian Railways will be sending its 20 officers from various services to IITs and IIMs for rail-related research and advanced studies.

"Fellowship scheme for railway officers has been introduced at central and state universities and centres for excellence, like IITs, IIMs and IIS," said a senior railway board officer.

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He said a scheme for encouraging railway employees to acquire higher qualifications at Master's level in IITs, IIMs and institutes of repute will also be introduced.

The IR has issued a notice for admission for MTech programme for 20 railway officers from the disciplines of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.

An official said the training programme will also be opened for officers in railway PSUs, like IRCTC, IRCON and others.

Services of professional agencies would be used for evaluation of railway-training programmes. A policy has been framed in this regard, the official added.

According to sources, the railways will be spending nearly Rs 5 lakh for each of these officers during their two years of course.

AIMED AT UPDATING OFFICERS' SKILLS

"In keeping with the need to maintain pace with fast-changing transport environment and need for innovation and modernisation, the railway board has decided to update and upgrade the professional and technical knowledge and skills of the railway officers by enrolling them into academic programmes in premiere technical and management institutes in the country," said a communication from the railway ministry to all railway training institutes.

Sources said the Master's degree in Engineering will be helpful in improving the passenger safety standards in the railways as well as improving the overall train operations.

Focus will be on upgrading the tracks, signalling and electrification system on the railway tracks so as to improve punctuality and speed of the trains. This assumes greater significance in wake of the railways introducing high-speed rail network in the country.

The Indian Railways had signed an MoU with University of Mumbai in April last year for setting up a centre for railway research. A railway ministry official said an academic services agreement was signed with Beijing Jiaotong University, China, for training of 100 officers of various departments in heavy-haul technology.

ALSO READ | Indian Railways recruitment 2017: World's largest online examination to be conducted for 18000 vacancies

--- ENDS ---
China is slowly tightening its grip on self-ruled Taiwan to make it break a nearly year-old political deadlock, but its avoiding any tough measures that it cant reverse if relations improve, analysts say.

A Chinese official said at an annual parliament session in Beijing this month that the government will revise official language related to its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, which has been self-ruled for 70 years. Its not clear what statements the revisions would cover.

But experts in Taipei believe neither that change nor any other move is likely to rattle Taiwan before the Communist Partys year-end congress, which could decide changes in the senior Chinese leadership as well new mandates on relations with other governments.

Chance to break deadlock

(Chinese President) Xi Jinping himself or the party center does not want Taiwan to become a hot potato before the 19th partys congress, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. They would not do anything dramatic if there is no specific issue to be dealt with.

Taiwan has indicated it might make an overture to China within the year.

The second half of the year might be a good chance to break the deadlock in cross-Strait relations, Chiu Chui-cheng, deputy minister with Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council, said Thursday without elaborating.

The Council thinks that a lot of international and regional changes since the start of the year are affecting development of the cross-Strait situation, Chiu said. To handle international, regional, cross-Strait and domestic uncertainty, the government must stay calm, rational, and control risks and seize opportunities while cautiously promoting cross-Strait policies.

Economic, diplomatic pressure

In the meantime, China could use more economic and diplomatic pressure to push Taiwan toward a resumption of dialogue that stopped after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May. Tsais party includes advocates of Taiwans de jure independence from China to consecrate self-rule. Independence is a red line for Beijing, but surveys indicate most Taiwanese prefer autonomy.

That type of pressure will probably mean more cuts in Taiwan-bound group tourism, which fell 30 percent from May through December. China would also continue to bar Taiwan from United Nations events and from joining sub-agencies such as the International Civil Aviation Organization.

But it could also reverse any of those moves, said Huang Kwei-bo, associate diplomacy professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

To make Taiwan poor, thats one thing, and another is in international space to make it less convenient for Taiwan, he said. The result I think is that just Beijing wants to remind Taiwan people if cross-Strait relations are not good, this is what youre going to see. Basically whatever mainland China does, they will be able to reverse any of it.

Favors likely

Analysts in Taiwan also expect China will offer favors to Taiwanese investors who back Beijings views on relations. It will also push for more people-to-people exchanges, especially among youth, Huang Kwei-bo said.

According to convention, delegates at the year-end congress in Beijing would give Xi another five-year term as party chairman, auguring political stability for China as a whole and in turn for its relations with Taiwan.

As a rule, when authority in Beijing is strong and steady, Beijings measures toward Taiwan are more flexible, said Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor in Taiwan. Measures are harsh when authorities are being challenged, he said.

Tsais government and officials in Beijing have never talked because they cannot agree on how to regard each other  as two parts of China per Beijings view or against a backdrop that recognizes Taiwans self-rule. Chinese leaders talked regularly with the eight-year government of Tsais predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou. Mas government and China signed more than 20 deals that stimulated trade and investment between the two sides.

China and Taiwan have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalist lost to the Communists and re-based in Taipei.
The thorny issue of trade will be a key topic that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will discuss with Chinese leaders when he visits Beijing this Saturday and Sunday. Given President Donald Trumps blunt criticisms of Beijings trade practices and other policies, bridging the divide will not be easy.

Tillersons first official visit to Asia, capped off with a stop in Beijing, is seen as an important step in mapping out the road ahead for the worlds two biggest economies.



He will be talking with Chinese officials about how the two can chart a way forward on trade and other key issues.



"We want to be able to pursue a constructive discussion with China that enables us to get at sort of problem areas and make progress on issues," Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton told reporters.



WATCH: Bill Ide's video report

Tough trade talk

Trump complained frequently about Chinas trade practices on the campaign trail, threatening to impose tough import tariffs on Chinese goods and promising to label the country a currency manipulator.



None of that has happened yet and since Trump and Chinas Xi Jinping spoke last month on the phone, relations appear to be moving in a positive direction.



Despite what Chinese officials say is a sense of optimism about relations and renewed pledges for more open access for foreign companies here, concerns about a possible trade war and frictions persist in China.



"We do not want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said. " That would not make our trade fairer. Our hope on the Chinese side is that no matter what bumps this relationship hits, we hope it will continue to move forward in a positive direction.



Beijing residents realistic and optimistic



On the streets of Beijing, some expressed concerns about the trajectory of ties, but also faith that the two could find ways to manage frictions.



As long as both sides can find a peaceful way to address their interests, they should be able to move forward," one Beijing resident told VOA.



Each side has their own political agenda, despite what some may say in the U.S. There will be frictions, but I dont think a trade war is likely," opined another.



There of course will be frictions over their views on trade and finance, but thats normal," a third Beijing resident said.



It is normal given the size and huge interests of both economies, analysts say, but forwarding Trumps America first agenda while keeping relations with China on track brings new uncertainties as well.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, inaugurated a three-day international Buddhist conference Friday in Nalanda district in Bihar, India. The Indian government is sponsoring the conference, titled "The Relevance of Buddhism in the 21st Century."

In his opening address, the Dalai Lama told Buddhist delegates and experts from 35 countries that all religions share one principle  love and compassion  and that all must promote religious harmony in order to overcome both historical and current problems created in the name of religion.

"In this very moment while we are enjoying joyfulness and peace, in the same planet, same human beings are killed [under acts] including in the name of religion," said the Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile in India since 1959. "It is unthinkable! The every source of compassion and forgiveness becomes a source of violence! It is like turning medicine into poison."

One thousand delegates are attending the conference, according to the Indo-Asian News Service.

Previously, some international Buddhist conferences barred the Dalai Lama because of China's opposition. This time, China did not send delegates to the conference, presumably because of the Dalai Lama's presence.

A Chinese Buddhist professor working in Japan did attend the Friday meeting, according to Jangchup Choeden, the abbot of Gaden Shartse Monastery in India.

Speaking to VOA, Choeden said the Dalai Lama emphasized how a 21st-century Buddhist must be.

"He said the 21st-century Buddhists must use their intelligence and conduct analytical observation rather than blindly follow the faith," he said.

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee is reportedly going to attend on Sunday and address the conference. Mukherjee met with the Dalai Lama in December, causing China to say it was "strongly dissatisfied." This was the Dalai Lama's first meeting with an Indian head of state in 60 years.

China calls the Dalai Lama a "dangerous separatist." The Nobel Peace Prize laureate denies espousing violence and says he wants only genuine autonomy for Tibet.
The number of people killed in Peru following intense rains and mudslides wreaking havoc around the Andean nation climbed to 67 Friday, with thousands more displaced from destroyed homes and others waiting on rooftops for rescue.



Across the country overflowing rivers caused by El Nino rains damaged 115,000 homes, collapsed 117 bridges and paralyzed countless roadways.



"We are confronting a serious climatic problem,'' President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a statement broadcast live Friday afternoon. "There hasn't been an incident of this strength along the coast of Peru since 1998.''



The highly unusual rains follow a series of storms that have struck especially hard along Peru's northern coast, with voracious waters inundating hospitals and cemeteries, and leaving some small villages entirely isolated.

On Thursday, the National Police rescued eight people who had been trapped for three days in Cachipampa and removed the body of an 88-year-old man killed in the floods. In the highlands along the department of La Libertad, dramatic video showed crashing water inundating several buses and trucks, killing at least five people.

Rescuers were searching Friday for survivors.

Even Peru's capital city of Lima, where a desert climate seldom leads to rain, police had to help hundreds of residents in an outskirt neighborhood cross a flooded road by sending them one-by-one along a rope. The muddy water channeled down the street after a major river overflowed. Some residents left their homes with just a single plastic bag carrying their belongings.



In total, more than 65,000 people in nearby Huachipa were unable to either go to work or return to their properties.



"There's no way to cross,'' said Henry Obando, who was rescued after leaving the factory where he works and making his way toward a rooftop where officers created a zip-line to cross. "Many people are trying to get to their homes.''







The storms are being caused by a warms of the surface waters in the Pacific Ocean and are expected to continue for another two weeks. Kuczynski declared Peru's Central Highway in a state of emergency Friday and announced he would be boosting funds for reconstruction. He said he was optimistic the country was in a strong position to make a swift recovery but urged resident to use caution.



"This hasn't ended,'' he warned. "And it will continue for some time more.''



In 1998, another El Nino event brought heavy rainfall to the nation's coast, causing landslides, ripping apart homes and leaving hundreds dead.
Nael Zaino will do anything for his almost 2-year-old son, Aram, whom he has hardly had a chance to meet.

When I saw him first time, he was crying and the bad moment was when he refused to come to me. Maybe hes punishing me why I was absent all this period.

Working for an oil company in Iraq, Zaino was not absent by choice. He and his wife, Lin Arafat, are Ismaili minorities from Syria, and their home there is no longer safe from the Islamic State.

They are so close to my village also. We are expecting any moment they may be inside the village, Zaino said.

Asylum granted

While visiting her aunt in the U.S. in 2015, Arafat asked for asylum and received it. Zaino then applied for a U.S. visa as a family member. It was approved on the same day that Trump signed his first executive order, banning travelers from seven Muslim majority countries. As a result, Zainos first attempt to enter the U.S. failed.

Its very hard. I lost all my hope  because Im here all alone with the little boy. I need him [Zaino] to come to have some support, Arafat said.

If you ask about my feeling, I would say I was in a dark box, dark room, black everything around you is black, Zaino said.

This is America

After many days of phone calls that led to help from U.S. Senator Kamala Harris office, Zaino finally arrived at the airport in Boston, Massachusetts, which he compared to coming into the sun.

I start seeing a spot of life, he said.

To his surprise, he was not only admitted to the country, he was welcomed.

The officer gave me my passport with a stamp and he told me, Go and start your life and enjoy it with your son. It was unbelievable. He let me feel strong. He told me, This is America. This is American people. We are all behind you.

The greeting from the customs officer was at odds with what Zaino had seen on the news: The American government was taking a hard line with refugees and immigrants, particularly from Muslim-majority countries in an effort to safeguard U.S. citizens from terrorism. After the first travel order was stopped by the courts, a revised executive order issued March 6 again included Syria in a three-month ban on visa holders from six mostly Muslim countries. A court in Hawaii put a temporary hold on the second order Wednesday.

Getting to know his son

Zainos reception in the U.S., not only from the immigration officer but from other Americans he has met, has emboldened him.

If it (the revised executive order) harms us, there will be someone to stop it, and we will be a part of it, he said.

For now, Zaino is working on getting to know little Aram, as they take baby steps together.

I dont know what happened yesterday. He refused to let me do anything for him, but today, from the morning, he was smiling, and he let me kiss him, which is not possible yesterday.
Turkey's president continues to ratchet up tensions with the European Union, as he campaigns ahead of an April referendum to extend his presidential powers. The unprecedented rhetoric is raising concerns as to whether Turkish-EU relations can recover.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having already accused EU members Germany and the Netherlands of being fascists and Nazis, has extended his war of words to the entire bloc.

Erdogan accused EU countries of persecuting Muslims like Jews were during World War II, and said that the spirit of fascism was running wild on the streets of Europe. In the meantime, his foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that Europe will be the site of what he called holy wars that will ultimately destroy it.

The comments follow a European Court of Human Rights ruling that businesses could ban their employees from wearing religious symbols including Islamic headscarves in certain circumstances. Political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners says the attacks on Europe are an attempt by Erdogan to consolidate nationalist and religious voters ahead of next month's referendum.

Big test for EU-Turkey relations

Yesilada warns that with opinions polls indicating the referendum is too close to call, EU-Turkish relations are set to face their greatest test.

Its the most crucial vote in [Erdogans] political career; if the whole idea is to bolster the vote for the yes camp, they need to invent new tricks to keep this fight going with the EU until mid-April because otherwise it will fade off, these shocks fade off in a week at most. What they will invent to further annoy Europe [with] above and beyond outrageous insults, I really don't know, Yesilada said.



For now, Erdogan's attacks on Europe have only been confined to rhetoric. Despite repeated threats of sanctions against Germany and the Netherlands for banning Turkish ministers from speaking at rallies of ethnic Turks, until now there have only been few diplomatic measures.

Refugee deal at risk

Erdogan warned Thursday, however, that a key refugee deal with Europe could be at risk. Last years deal, which is marking its first anniversary, helped stem the mass influx of migrants into Europe.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 15,000 refugees a month should be sent to Europe as a shock therapy. Analysts suggest Ankara would be reluctant to end the refugee deal, it being key to maintaining relations with the EU, as well as an important leverage. Political columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website says the refugee deal will probably help prevent a severing of ties but warns relations may have been irreparably damaged.

Its going to take a lot of hard diplomacy to backtrack and to put things back on track; obviously for Europe, for its own interest, it will maintain things. But a wedge has been driven between the government in Turkey that represents Turkey at the moment and Europe, so its not going to be easy.



With the outcome of the referendum in the balance - and with it, some claim, even the future of the president himself - observers say Erdogan and his government remain focused just on winning the vote, whatever the cost, which could mean more trouble for Europe-Turkey relations.
As Russia becomes a hot-button issue in American politics, a former Pentagon official is urging the new Trump administration to pay more attention to the conflict in Ukraine.

Michael Carpenter, a senior Defense Department official under former President Barack Obama who dealt with Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs, described to VOA on Friday a six-point plan to support Kyiv in the face of separatist rebels backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Fundamentally, we think this supports our interest," Carpenter said of U.S. support for Ukraine. His plan was also laid out in an article in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

Carpenter proposes U.S. support, funding and training for the Ukrainian military, further U.S. involvement in diplomatic discussions with European nations, and tightened sanctions against Russia. In addition, he says the U.S. should seek hard deadlines for implementing a European plan of action in the region covered by the Minsk Protocol, a plan for settling the long-running dispute among Ukraine, Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The former deputy assistant secretary of defense also urged continued U.S. investment in Ukraine and encouragement for additional European support to develop democracy in Ukraine.

Call for military assistance to Kyiv

Carpenter focused on funding issues during his interview with VOA's Ukrainian service. He is a firm advocate of providing Ukraine with defensive weapons  a policy that has been sharply contested in U.S. political and military circles  not only for budgetary reasons, but also because of concerns that arming Ukraine would exacerbate problems between the Kremlin and Washington.

Military aid for Ukraine had been proposed in an early version of the Republican Party's platform  a summary of its principles and policies  at the national convention last year that formally selected Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee. However, the proposal about Ukraine was deleted shortly before the platform was finalized, and in recent weeks there have been reports linking that decision to talks on the sidelines of the convention between Trump campaign officials and Russian officials, including Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The administration has not publicized any clear plan of action in Ukraine since Trump's inauguration. During the U.S. political campaign, Trump told an interviewer that the people of Crimea  the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014  "would rather be with Russia." He also indicated that he would, if elected, "take a look at" formal recognition of Crimea as Russian territory.

The current National Defense Authorization proposal for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, allocates $150 million for aid to Ukraine, less than half of the $335 million budgeted during fiscal 2017. Carpenter said the reduced amount for 2018 is not final, but he also pointed out that "in this environment here in Washington," cutting spending has been a high priority.

"If, in fact, Congress decides to cut funding ... I think that's very disappointing. I hope it doesn't happen," Carpenter said, detailing how much the Ukrainian military has benefited from U.S. training.

U.S. training has helped Ukrainian troops

"It's difficult to overstate how under-resourced the Ukrainian military was when the conflict began, and how far they have come since then," the former Pentagon official said. The Ukrainian military's improved skills, he added, can be attributed in part to U.S. training programs.

About 10,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 have been wounded since the conflict in Ukraine began in 2014, according to United Nations estimates.

On the diplomatic side of Carpenter's plan, U.S. collaboration with Europe would be crucial, although hopes for such cooperation may be slimmer under Trump than they were with Obama, given the new president's ambivalence toward NATO. Even during the Obama administration, the U.S. was absent from the talks that led to the Minsk Protocol, which brought together France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia in a plan for a lasting cease-fire and more autonomy for rebel-held regions of eastern Ukraine.

"I'm no fan of the Minsk agreement. I think it was very poorly crafted," Carpenter said. "Nevertheless, it is currently the one diplomatic vehicle for resolving the conflict that all the parties are working from."

Now, however, he said it's "high time that we stepped back into it and simply told our French and German colleagues we are part of this process."

Tatiana Koprowicz of VOA's Ukrainian service contributed to this report.
Cameroon's economic capital is cracking down on gang violence that has changed the lives of residents in many of Douala's neighborhoods.

Forty-five-year-old Ndjasso Pierre, who lives in New Bell, a popular neighborhood in Douala, says armed gangs started regular attacks when one of their members was accused of harassing citizens and killed by a crowd.

He said the assailants, who were previously attacking in groups of seven and eight, are now coming in larger numbers and targeting people inside their homes. He said the groups are signaling that they will continue attacks.

Pierre said the assailants attack using fire and locally made guns, machetes and knives.

Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, governor of the Littoral region of Cameroon where Douala is located, said several people have died and hundreds wounded. He says hundreds have also been arrested by the military which was deployed to protect the population.

Diboua said New Bell and other affected Douala neighborhoods will no longer be at the mercy of armed groups. He said people who know the network of traffickers supplying drugs to the armed groups should inform them that the military will have no mercy when it starts organizing spontaneous raids.

Douala has a population of about 3 million, a majority of whom are unemployed youths. Insecurity has always been present in the city, with broad daylight assaults, but this is the first time armed gangs have been in running battles with the military.
Attacks on people with albinism are resurging in Malawi after a six-month lull last year, when the government and a local rights group campaigned to end the violence.

Albinos are targeted because of the false belief that their body parts have powers to increase wealth

Now an Albino welfare body is asking the government to institute a commission of inquiry to find where the body parts are sold.

Recent attacks

Malawians had a rude wakening in January when a 17-year-old albino boy was brutally killed in southern Malawi. The suspected attacker allegedly enticed the boy into his home with biscuits and juice.

Police have since arrested the suspect. But more attacks and attempted kidnappings have followed. In the most recent incident, police in the capital, Lilongwe, arrested one of two attackers who tried to force their way into the home of an albino rights activist last week.

The suspect is awaiting trial.

On Tuesday, police in the Mchinji district of central Malawi exhumed the bones of an albino person whose grave was vandalized. Two men were arrested last week after they were found selling some of the bones.

Market thriving

Overstone Kondowe is the president of the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi. He told VOA these incidents confirm the thriving market for albino body parts.

We are asking for a new approach to undo this business, Kondowe said. Thats why we would love as an association if we would have this commission instituted as urgently as possible in order to reverse the trend.

Police records show that 19 people with albinism have been killed since 2014, along with about 100 cases of abductions and attempted abductions.

The government previously put measures into effect to end the attacks, including imposing harsh penalties on those who seek to harm albinos. It also set up a task force to deal with crimes against albinos. Kondowe says the task force is not funded yet to carry out its duties.

We are proposing a commission of inquiry because we have seen how effective it is and how free people are to give information whenever they have been invited, which can lead to the arrest of the masterminders of this business, Kondowe said.

Working with Interpol

Nicolas Dausi is the government spokesperson. He told VOA that with or without the commission of inquiry, tracking down the masterminds of the albino attacks is not an easy task.

There is a problem because the people who are doing this they are the relatives, like an uncle; a father can sell his daughter or son with albinism, Dausi said.

However, he says the government is working with Interpol.

The police is liaising with counterparts in the SADC [Southern African Development Community] region through Interpol because it started, you remember, in Tanzania and then Mozambique, Dausi said. And through Interpol we are hope to get to the core to as where are the market.

Mia Seppo is the country representative of the United Nations Development Program in Malawi.

We are very concerned, Seppo said. And we are having discussions with partners on what to be done to ensure that its just a temporary situation.

Last year, a visiting U.N. representative said an estimated 10,000 albinos face death in Malawi if the government fails to end these attacks.
More than 30 people are reported dead after unknown assailants fired on a boat carrying migrants in the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen.

The boat, believed to be carrying Somali refugees, came under fire late Thursday night near the port of Hudaydah on Yemen's west coast, according to Mohamed Abshir Gedi, the deputy Somali community chairperson in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Gedi put the death toll at 32, with 27 wounded. The injured people included a 25-year-old woman who lost her leg, he told VOA's Somali service Friday.

It is not clear who opened fire on the boat. According to news agency reports, witnesses gave conflicting messages on whether the attack came from a helicopter or another vessel.

The Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Houthi forces in Yemen said it was not involved in any fighting Thursday in Hudaydah.

Gedi said the migrants were attempting to reach Sudan to escape the insecurity of war-torn Yemen. Yemen is home to a quarter-million Somali refugees who fled poverty and violence in their own country.

The United Nations refugee agency said it is appalled by the deaths and says it has teams on the ground in Yemen to help the survivors and the families of those killed.

This tragic incident is the latest in which innocent civilians, including Yemenis, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, continue to suffer and disproportionately bear the brunt of the conflict in Yemen, it said in a statement.
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Mar 16 (PTI) Indrani Mukerjea, accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, today told the special CBI court here that she would oppose her estranged son Mekhails claim on Sheenas share of ancestral property.

Mekhail Bora has moved the Guwahati district court, seeking probate (verification by court) of the will of his grandmother, Indrani told the court in Mumbai today.

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The Guwahati court directed that if Indrani, who is lodged in a prison here, had any objections she should submit them in person or through a lawyer.

Indrani, who was present before the special court here, told the judge that she planned to object to Mekhails claim on Sheenas share of grandmothers property.

Her (Indranis) mother had nowhere said that in the event of Sheenas death her share will go to Mekhail, Indrani said.

Indranis mother Durgaranee died in October 2015. In her will dated April 30, 2012, she had bequeathed a piece of land, a two-storied house and two other structures in Guwahati to Sheena and her brother Mekhail.

Mekhails application said the 2012 will revoked a will made in 2009, and gave a major chunk of assets to him.

Indrani and her former husband Sanjeev Khanna were arrested in 2015 for the murder of Sheena (24), her daughter from earlier relationship, in April 2012. Indranis husband and former media baron Peter Mukerjea was arrested later for being part of the conspiracy. PTI VI KRK IKA SRE

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Hillary Clinton's gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continues with a St. Patrick's Day speech in her late father's Pennsylvania hometown.



The former Democratic presidential candidate will be the keynote speaker Friday night at the Society of Irish Women's annual dinner in Scranton.



Clinton's father grew up in Scranton, and she spent summers at the family's cottage on nearby Lake Winola.



The speech is one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts.



The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to Republican Donald Trump.
Israel's military said it shot down one of several anti-aircraft missiles Friday as it carried out predawn airstrikes on Syria, in a rare military exchange between the neighboring countries.

Syria's army said it shot down one Israeli military jet and hit another during the operation. Israel said all of its aircraft returned home safely after attacking several targets in Syria.

Air raid sirens alerted residents in Israel's Jordan Valley to the aerial action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the airstrikes targeted weapons in Syria bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters, and he vowed Israel would continue to carry out such raids when necessary.

"When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah and we have intelligence and it is operationally feasible, we act to prevent it," Netanyahu said.

Aiding Assad

Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in that country's civil war. The Iran-backed group fought a monthlong war with the Jewish state in 2006.

Friday's incident was one of the most serious military exchanges between Israel and Syria since 2011, when the Syrian civil war began.

Syria said Israel attacked a military target near Palmyra, and it denounced the airstrike as an act of aggression that amounted to assistance for the Islamic State group.

Jordan, which borders both Israel and Syria, said part of the Syrian missile that Israel shot down fell in its rural northern areas.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) issued a rare statement acknowledging the operation: "Overnight, March 17, [Israeli Air Force] aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission, and IDF aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles. At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF aircraft compromised."
Thousands of HIV-negative Kenyans will for the first time be placed on daily antiretroviral medication, or ARVs, in a bid to avert new infections.

The new program seeks to lower the country's HIV transmission rate to individuals who face a substantial risk of contracting HIV, such as rape victims and HIV-negative drug users.

The head of the National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP), Martin Sirengo, said the measure will be rolled out in April and will involve the use of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP.

We are introducing PrEP to a selected population, not to everyone, and this selected population includes, for instance, HIV-negative partners in a discordant relationship, where the other partner is positive, Sirengo said. Anyone who comes and gives a history of repeated sexually transmitted infections, anyone who comes for repeated PrEP medication, that tells us they are at risk of getting HIV," will be eligible, he said. "We are also recommending PrEP to anyone who has multiple sexual partners.

Drugs are very effective

If taken daily, the drugs have a success rate of preventing HIV infection of more than 96 percent, according to pilot studies conducted in Kenya by NASCOP and the Partners Prevention Program between 2013 and 2016.

Only four out of the over 1,500 [tested] got infected [with] HIV, which means prep is highly effective to the tune of over 96 percent or more, Sirengo said. And, when we look at the four that got positive, we actually realized they were not adhering to the treatment.

Kenya becomes the second country in Africa, after South Africa, to roll out PrEP. However, it is widely used in developed countries.

Some aren't so sure

Some are still skeptical about the drug.

Esther Atieno is a commercial sex worker. She says she prefers to use alternative methods.

I don't think many people will use it, Atieno said. There is no one who likes to take medication every day. The condom is the best protective method because it is not something you use every day like the daily pill.

Drugs free in public facilities

Sirengo agrees that users should combine PrEP with other preventive interventions, like use of condoms and male circumcision to further reduce the risk of acquiring HIV.

The cost of the treatment is between $500 to $800 a person per year, but it is expected NGOs and other partners will subsidize the treatment.

The drugs will be free in all public facilities, but those who seek treatment in private health facilities will have to purchase the drugs for $60-$100 per annual treatment.

Sirengo says trained health workers will assess who qualifies for this treatment.

It is anticipated that the drug will avert many new infections in Kenya, reported to have the fourth-highest HIV infection in the world. An estimated 1.5 million Kenyans are said to be living with the virus.
The first 100 days of an American presidents first term in office traditionally are a time when the new administrations major policy proposals might encounter less partisanship from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and possibly even have a head start on being voted into law.

Thats particularly true when the presidents party controls both houses of Congress, as is currently the case. But at this point, about two months after the inauguration, things have not gone so easily for President Donald Trump.

From health care to the federal budget to immigration, Trumps biggest proposals have run into major obstacles in Congress and the courts. Its a trend that contradicts Trumps frequent assertion that he has achieved more in two months than any other president in American history.

Its not actually going particularly well, said Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. The president has not scored any easy victories on big things.

Travel ban

The latest roadblock came Wednesday, when a federal judge blocked Trumps new executive order to halt the U.S. refugee program temporarily and bar travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The restraining order was issued hours before Trumps new immigration rules were to take effect.

It was the second time that courts have thwarted Trumps attempts to implement immigration restrictions (an earlier, more sweeping travel ban was blocked by a different judge last month), and it set up a potentially lengthy legal battle in the months ahead.

Trump has vowed to fight hard to reinstate the ban, promising to take the case to the Supreme Court, if necessary. But its not likely a battle he wanted, especially when his team is struggling to make progress on so many other fronts.

Theyre going from fire to fire to fire. And a lot of these fires have been set by themselves, said Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist and political commentator. It doesnt seem like the White House even has a long-term strategy here.

Health care

Many lawmakers within Trumps own Republican Party dont support his biggest proposals, including his plan to repeal and replace former President Barack Obamas signature health care law.

Trump built his political campaign last year around a promise to undo Obamacare, as he prefers to call the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

However, the repeal-and-replace campaign by Trump and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill has so far failed to gain much traction. And they suffered a major blow this week when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trumps proposed replacement bill would result in 24 million Americans losing their medical insurance by 2026.

Watch: White House 2018 Budget Draws Mixed Reactions

Federal budget

Another major plank in Trumps campaign platform was a sharp cutback in government spending. A preliminary version of the presidents budget proposal was released Thursday, greeted by widespread criticism from members of both major political parties.

The Trump spending plan calls for one of the biggest increases in military spending ever, with most of those costs coming from a significant reshaping of the federal government  budget reductions so steep that many Cabinet departments would have to suspend or eliminate programs that provide assistance to Americans living near the poverty line.

The opening salvo in what looms as a budget war between Congress and the president also calls for the elimination of almost all U.S. foreign aid.

The budget must be approved by Congress, of course, and full details will only be released in the weeks to come. Key lawmakers, however, have let it be known that the plan as Trump presented it Thursday is essentially dead on arrival.

Trump has said his budget and his health care proposals are simply the first stage in negotiations, and that he expects back and forth between lawmakers before any agreement is reached. But the billionaire ex-businessman, who portrays himself as a master dealmaker, has failed to bridge many of the divides.

No 'Trump caucus'

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Trumps positions dont align perfectly with either party, leaving him few allies in Congress who support his entire agenda. Republican strategist Siegfried says: There is no Trump caucus. Nobodys running as a Trump Republican right now.

In addition, some potential Trump allies have been alienated by the presidents unorthodox communications style. That includes lawmakers from both parties, whom Trump regularly assails in his Twitter feed, and the news media, regularly denounced by the president as the enemy of the people.

Trump is pressing his agenda at a time when public opinion surveys give him unusually low favorability ratings. An average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics ((www.realclearpolitics.com )), a news group considered nonpartisan, shows 43 percent of Americans approve of Trumps job so far, a rating much lower than that of other presidents during their first months in office.

Watch: Two Months in, Major Parts of Trump's Agenda Stalled

Some successes

But its not all bleak for Trump, who remains hugely popular among Republican voters.

His pick of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court was widely praised by conservatives, as were his decisions to eliminate many government regulations and reauthorize construction of oil pipelines that had been hold because of environmental concerns.

At a campaign-style rally this week, Trump pointed to how the U.S. economy has continued to add jobs since he took over the White House. He also won cheers from supporters for pulling the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal, which he said would have hurt U.S. workers.

We have done far more, I think maybe more than anybodys done in this office in 50 days, that I could tell you, Trump told an enthusiastic crowd Wednesday evening in Nashville, Tennessee. And weve just gotten started.
Malawi has started registering new cases of cholera in areas bordering Mozambique, one week after the government in Malawi warned of a cholera outbreak in the neighboring country.

The disease  an acute diarrheal infection caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium  affects children and adults, and can kill within hours if left untreated.

Malawi last registered cholera cases in 2015, but now health authorities in Malawi say they have found new cases at a health center in Nsanje district bordering Mozambique.

"So far we have 11 suspected cases, all in Ndamera health center," said Alexander Juwa, the district health officer in Nsanje. "Here we did what we call a Rapid Diagnostic Testing, and it came out positive. We have set up a treatment unit there, and nobody has died."

Juwa said they haven't confirmed whether the outbreak is a spillover from Mozambique, because none of the cholera patients had contact with anyone from there.

"When we did a follow-up of the cases, it appears communities have clean water supplies," Juwa said, "but probably we are suspecting issues to do with food preparation and food handling that might have caused the problem."

Media reports in Mozambique say cholera has infected more than 1,200 people, killing two this month.

The outbreak is believed to have been triggered by Tropical Cyclone Dineo, which hit the country last month.

In Zimbabwe, the health ministry says it has detected three suspected cases of cholera in Chipinge district, which borders Mozambique.

"The area where the cases have been reported is adjacent to the border, where there is an influx of people coming from Mozambique," said Aldrin Musiiwa, the deputy minister of health. "There are cases of cholera which have been reported in the adjacent Manica province of Mozambique."

Meanwhile, the governments of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are urging people to practice safe hygiene to prevent further spread of the disease.
A Mexican army general said his forces are increasingly coming under fire from drug traffickers protecting opium poppy plantations in Oaxaca state, where opium growers are moving production to take advantage of mountainous terrain and impoverished villages.

Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mujica said Wednesday that army patrols were fired at twice this week as they tried to cut down poppy plantations in western Oaxaca.

On Monday, an army helicopter searching for poppy fields was hit by gunfire from the ground, damaging the fuel tank. The chopper landed safely.

He said a third army patrol was blocked from reaching about 30 poppy fields they could plainly see in the distance, by a demonstration of Indian residents, mostly women and children. Armed with only sticks and machetes, the Triquis stood in front of soldiers and refused to move.

Walking a thin line

Duarte Mujica said the farm communities were being recruited by the cartels and acknowledged the army is walking a thin line in Oaxaca, where Indian communities jealously guard their territories and their rights.

Any confrontation with Indians would be a public relations disaster.



The presence of the military in this and other areas of the state is because of the important presence of opium poppy and marijuana fields that the drug cartels have been planting in the mountains of Oaxaca,'' Duarte Mujica said. I want to repeat that the Defense Department and particularly the soldiers of the 8th Region are respectful and sympathize with the traditions and practices of each of the Indian groups in Oaxaca state.

Dangerous shift in Oaxaca

The shift to Oaxaca has officials worried. The state is better known for its colonial capital and beaches, but its large impoverished Indian population and mountainous terrain could make it ideal for growing opium.

The Mexican army faces a delicate task in moving into Oaxaca's notoriously conflictive Triqui Indian communities.

The region has seen three Triqui groups locked in a decades-long armed struggle that has led to dozens of killings.

Army told to leave the area

One of those groups, known as the Triqui Unification and Struggle Movement, demanded this week that the army be withdrawn completely from the area.

Now we have the Mexican army coming in by land under the pretext of searching for poppy plantations. They staged incursions all last week in our territory, and found only corn fields and more cornfields, the movement said in a statement. Get the army out of Triqui territory! No to the militarization of our country's indigenous lands!

The idea that authorities are finding only corn fields is questionable; in recent months, unusually large poppy fields have been found in Oaxaca, whereas opium production used to be centered in neighboring Guerrero state.

Increasing army raids in Guerrero  and the presence of a large number of violent small drug gangs who fight among themselves for the business of buying opium paste from farmers  have apparently made Oaxaca more attractive. And Oaxaca Indian groups like the Triquis have a long history of armed resistance. Dozens have been killed in the violence, including a Finnish rights observer.

Opium fields growing in size

One striking aspect is the size of the opium fields the army is finding in Oaxaca. In Guerrero, such plantations rarely measure more than an acre (half hectare).

But in February, federal police found a pair of poppy fields in another part of Oaxaca that measured almost 37 acres (15 hectares).

Altogether, in the last year, Duarte Mujica said troops had destroyed a total of 1,747 acres (707 hectares) of poppy and marijuana fields, most of them poppies.
A new rebel group in war-torn South Sudan has gained some high-level supporters, both within the country and the South Sudanese diaspora.

General Faiz Ismail Futur announced this week that he has resigned his post in the main rebel group, the SPLM-IO, to join the National Salvation Front.

Futur, who was the SPLM-IO's commander in the Wester Bahr al Ghazal area, told VOA's South Sudan in Focus program that the rebel soldiers under his command had been ignored by rebel chief Riek Machar since 2015.



"I am practical person; I need to work closely with my army in the front line as I did for the past years," the general said. " ... I am really sorry to find out that there is no institutional plan in IO.



Leadership crisis



Early last week, another official within Machars rebel group resigned. VOA obtained the resignation letter of former deputy spokesman Colonel Nyarji Jermlili Roman who worked briefly in Machars office after the SPLM-IO signed a peace deal with the government in August 2015.

Jermlili cited lack of accountability and tribalism as some of the institutional problems within the SPLM IO. He also accused Machar of failing to supply his forces in Equatoria with arms and necessary logistical support.

The SPLM-IO's director for public relations denied there is any leadership crisis among the rebels. Puok Both Bulang said General Futur was relieved of his duties last September "based on some administrative issues."

Meanwhile, senior members of the ruling Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the diaspora have defected to the National Salvation Front.

The former chairman of SPLM secretariat in the United States, Ladu Jada Gubek, told VOA in an interview Thursday that he and 10 other executive members of the secretariat have switched to the NSF.

He said he has lost confidence in the ability and the leadership of President Salva Kiir to end the violence in South Sudan.

The SPLM-led government under General Salva Kiir Mayardit has turned from democracy to dictatorship, from freedom to oppression, from equal treatment and participation to marginalization, from nationalism to tribalism and from peace to war, he said.

Jada said the government in Juba has endangered the union of South Sudanese by pitting tribes against each other.

He said the SPLM secretariat in the United States tried to reform the party, but faced resistance from what he called tribal supporters of the status quo.

"And therefore non-Dinka South Sudanese are often treated with second class status and viewed with suspicions and distrust, he said.

Jada, who hails from the Equatoria region of South Sudan, said his decision to join the National Salvation Front has no connection to the ethnicity of the NSF's leader, General Thomas Cirillo Swaka, who also hails from Equatoria.

Other reported defectors to the NSF include the army's former director of military justice Brigadier General Henry Oyay Nyago; army commander of logistics support General Kamilo Otwari Alerado Paul; politician Lado Jada Kwajok and six SPLM-IO shadow governors from the Equatoria region.



Mired in war



South Sudan has been mired in war since fighting between pro- and anti-Kiir factions broke out at the end of 2013. The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced more than two million people from their homes and triggered ongoing food shortages in many areas.

Opponents of Kiir accuse him of seizing power and property for his own Dinka tribe at the expense of the many other tribes that make up South Sudan, which became an independent country only six years ago.

Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar signed a peace deal in August 2015, but the agreement has made little progress since fighting in the capital, Juba, last July killed 300 people and forced Machar to flee the country.

The leader of the NSF, General Cirillo, has said Kiir is destroying the East African nation and must be overthrown.
A Tahitian official says Barack Obama has arrived in French Polynesia on a private trip.



A press office official in Tahiti who was not authorized to be named told The Associated Press on Friday that the former U.S. president landed Thursday in Tahiti then took a plane on to a private island.



His destination, she said, was "The Brando'' - a luxury resort popular with celebrities on Tetiaroa Island. It's named after the late Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, who bought the spot, the hotel website says, after becoming enchanted with its rare beauty during the filming of 1962's "Mutiny on the Bounty.''



The official did not elaborate further on the visit. French Polynesia is a French territory in the South Pacific.
Assal Ravandi knows service. First, as a soldier in the United States Army in Afghanistan. Now, as a soldier for soldiers at the organization she founded  Academy of United States Veterans.

But Ravandi insists that her service has not been selfless.

Serving has always made me feel good and therefore, I consider it to be a self-serving act in a way, while it's still helping others," she said. "So, service was something that I thought I would end up doing one way or another.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Ravandi came with her family to the United States at age 13. She thinks her decision, years later, to join the United States Army was partly inspired by the life she left.

I come from a place where people get killed, prosecuted, imprisoned for every ounce of freedom that they want in life," she said, "and at the end, when all the blood is shed, and all the people that are imprisoned  you still dont have it.

Toughing it out

Ravandi was 29 when she entered the military. Basic training is always difficult and Ravandi found it especially hard. She was surrounded by enlistees years younger than her, but says the experience taught her a lot, especially about herself.

The system was incredibly comprehensive and it taught me a lot physically, emotionally, mentally," she remembers. "My favorite part in the basic training experience that I had was marksmanship. I loved shooting my weapon, and I soon learned that I was physically more capable than I thought I was.

Powerful weapon

But marksmanship did not turn out to be Ravandis most important skill during her deployment in Afghanistan.

Her native language, Farsi, proved to be a more powerful weapon in the effort to serve and protect. Farsi is very similar to Dari, the most common language spoken in Afghanistan.

"The first thing that I would teach them, it was in Dari dialect, which is the primary language of Afghanistan, and I would say, after you meet someone tell them Beysar khosh shodam, which means 'It is nice to meet you,'" she said. "And I think that kindness and that notion, that gesture, can bring people together.

Ravandi was recognized for her work teaching Farsi to infantry soldiers. Her battalion commander presented her with a medal.

Civilian life

Ravandis duty in Afghanistan and the Army had a major impact on her. After she left military service, she found that nothing else measured up to the work she did as a soldier.

I felt so privileged, so honored to serve in the United States military," she told VOA. "I think, until I actually got there, I didnt know it was everything that I ever wanted and to be honest with you, I dont remember who I was before I was a soldier.

Returning to civilian life was not easy for Ravandi.

I kind of lost myself after my military service," she recalls. "I didnt know what I was going to do. I was just going through the motions, just going through life and I started to suffer from post-traumatic stress.

However, Ravandi did know what she wanted back from Army life.

The one thing that I missed the most, that could make me feel better was the community and comaradery in the United States military, she said.

So she recreated it outside of the military by founding the Academy of United States Veterans. The group provides public and media relations support to veteran service organizations, veterans programs and veteran-owned businesses.

Its motto? We serve those who serve those who served!

Only in America

Ravandi says she does not think her story would have been possible in any other country in the world.

She still expresses wonder that, in her words, freedom is something that is just given to you in the United States.

I take a lot of joy in this incredible life," she said. "This opportunity thats been given to me and to wake up every day and to know that I have put all the effort, all the thought, all the energy into something and in the end it was worthwhile.
An ad hoc arrangement that curtailed conflict in a northern Syrian flashpoint town could be a blueprint in other areas of Syria and Iraq for peace and stability once Islamic State fighters have been routed, military officials and analysts say.

The Syrian town of Manbij recently became a battle zone when Kurdish, Arab and Turkish forces came toe-to-toe, vying for territorial control in the area months after IS was removed with the support of the U.S.-led coalition.

But quiet diplomacy last week involving commanders from Turkey, the U.S. and Russia reportedly hammered out a loose deal restoring peace in Manbij and entrenching unallied international forces in buffer zones.

The agreement paved the way for leaving governance in Manbij to the local population, refocusing what had been feuding military units on the continuing war against IS elsewhere in Syria.

"International forces, especially the United States and Russia, played a very important role in reaching the agreement," said Nasir Hajj Mansur, a commander with the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). "The presence of foreign forces have been instrumental in keeping peace in Manbij."

'Diplomatic solution'

Turkey has objected to having Kurdish YPG, the main force within the SDF, in Manbij and has vowed to battle it in parts of northern Syria. But Turkish officials recently toned down their anti-Kurdish rhetoric in the region.

"Finding a diplomatic solution with the U.S. and Russia [for] Manbij has become a necessity," Turkish defense minister Fikri Isik said Thursday. "A military approach would only be considered if diplomacy failed."

And analysts believe that Ankara has realized a diplomatic approach at present is a more realistic way to sort out problems in northern Syria.

"I believe Turkey will continue to make its case behind the scenes quietly and diplomatically that YPG forces should leave Manbij," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "I do not think they will take military action."

For the time being, U.S. Army Rangers stand not far from Russian soldiers entrenched in Syrian government unions while local militias, Kurds and Turkish-backed forces keep to their areas. International forces fly flags to clearly delineate their identities and locations.

U.S. forces are flying the flag "to make sure that there is no mistake or miscalculation about who is there," U.S. Col. John Dorrian, the Baghdad-based spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters at the Pentagon.

"I would say that when our forces go into a city  and they're visible, that this has a reassuring effect on the people in the area," he said.

As the arrangement plays out, the U.S.-led coalition and its allies are hopeful similar deals could be made elsewhere in the region as forces continue to oust IS fighters from towns and cities. But U.S. officials say each case is unique.

"You can liberate a city, but unless you come in with leadership, local governance, and deal with some of the  real issues of reestablishing infrastructure, electricity, that kind of thing, basic services, but also dealing with some of the political tensions and dynamics and addressing them with reforms, I think  then you're not going to win the overall battle," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said this week.

"Part of what we need to do  is going to be how do we look at not just defeating IS on the battlefield, but making sure that they're eliminated from the social fabric, that they don't somehow, we don't simply defeat them tactically and not defeat them online, in other spaces, so that they can no longer recruit, there's no longer people who would be swayed by their cause," he said. "And part of that is going to be how do you enact the kind of political reform."

Looking to Raqqa

As the battle to recapture Raqqa  IS's de facto capital in Syria  is nearing, Kurdish officials hope an arrangement like the one in Manbij could be used in Raqqa.

"Any area in Syria that gets liberated from [IS] will be handed over to its people so they can run it by themselves, because a federal system is the best solution for Syria," Saleh Muslim, a high-ranking Kurdish official, told the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, adding that "what happened in Manbij could happen in Raqqa and elsewhere."

Kurdish officials also say this method allows local communities to take charge of their affairs, alleviating sectarian and ethnic tensions.

"As soon as our forces liberate Raqqa, a civilian council will take over to lead local affairs," SDF commander Mansur said.

And the U.S., too, has been helping to find individuals who can govern a post-IS Raqqa, local military officials said.

"In fact we, along with our American partners, have been consulting with local tribal leaders and other effective people from Raqqa for the next phase in the city," Mansur told VOA.
"I appeared to be in a state of shock. It was a compelling picture as it depicted everything - shock and trauma," Nidhi Chaphekar said.

Nidhi Chaphekar's photo went on to become a iconic representatio of the attacks (Reuters photo)

By AP: An Indian flight attendant who was injured in the Brussels airport blasts last year said Friday that she has recovered 70 percent fitness and would like to resume her passion, flying.

Nidhi Chaphekar suffered burns and fractured her foot in the explosions. She said was looking forward to visiting Brussels next week to take part in the first anniversary commemoration and meet the doctors and others who helped her.

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The March 22 bombing in the Brussels airport and subway killed 31 people and wounded 270.

A photograph of Chaphekar, a flight attendant with Jet Airways, taken after the airport blasts became an iconic image of the attacks. It showed the 40-year-old mother of two sitting dazed and bloodied, with her bright yellow uniform ripped.

In an interview in Mumbai on Friday, Chaphekar said the picture gave her family in India hope that she was alive.

"I appeared to be in a state of shock. It was a compelling picture as it depicted everything - shock and trauma," she said.

In the past year, Chaphekar's life has changed.

"From a very independent female, I became dependent on others as I recovered from injuries. I used to run a lot. I can't run now," she said.

"I am 70 percent fine now. A bone has to be put in my injured right foot. Physically, there are challenges," Chaphekar said.

"I have not yet started flying. My dream is to fly back," she said, adding that she would be flying to Brussels on Sunday for a 10-day visit.

Chaphekar said she is writing a book and has been asked to give motivational speeches. She wants to inspire people and tell them that everything is possible in life.

"I used to be a very difficult person, but the love and affection of people after the Brussels experience has changed me," she said.

ALSO READ | PM Modi pays tribute to Brussels attack victims, lays wreath at metro station

ALSO WATCH | Nidhi Chaphekar: A survivor's tale of Brussels terror attack

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The Pentagon said it carried out an airstrike against al-Qaida in Syria, but denied hitting a mosque where a human rights group said more than 40 people were killed.

Manned and unmanned aircraft targeted a building next to the mosque in the town of al-Jinah, near Aleppo, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters Friday. The spokesman, Navy Captain Jeff Davis, said the strike killed dozens of "core al-Qaida" senior members who were meeting inside the building Thursday.

The Pentagon released a photo of the strike's aftermath to support its claims. The photo showed what appears to be an intact, undamaged mosque next to a larger building that apparently suffered multiple weapons strikes. Debris was scattered on the street, but many cars parked between the mosque and the heavily damaged building were intact.

"The area was extensively surveilled prior to the strike in order to minimize civilian casualties," Davis said.

Air Force Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said the U.S. military would investigate "any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike."

"We take this very seriously," he added.

An earlier account from another Central Command official estimated the mosque was about 15 meters from the separate building that came under attack.

Earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 42 people were killed and dozens more wounded in an airstrike on the mosque in northern Syria. The group said it was unable to determine whose warplanes carried out the attack.

Syrian and Russian military aircraft are known to have been active in that area of northern Syria.

"More than 100 people were wounded," Syrian Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that many were still trapped under rubble. Rahman's group is based in Britain, and compiles its reports based on descriptions from sources on the ground in conflict areas.

The town of al-Jinah has been known to be under the control of Islamist groups, but the Syrian Observatory said no militant factions were present at the time of the airstrike.

Thursday's attack targeting senior al-Qaida members followed suicide attacks a day earlier in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that killed at least 30 people on the sixth anniversary of the start of the Syrian civil war.

Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has killed 400,000 people, wounded more than 1 million and displaced half the country's population.
Afghanistans national security adviser met Friday with senior officials in Russia to discuss counterterrorism cooperation and efforts to promote peace as Taliban insurgents staged fresh deadly attacks in Afghanistan.

The high-level talks came amid growing concerns over Russias contacts and alleged military assistance to the Taliban to enable the group to fight and contain Islamic State influence in Afghanistan. The two militant groups have regularly clashed in areas where Afghan forces have limited control.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, however, in talks with national security adviser Haneef Atmar, assured him that Moscow is working only to promote stability in Afghanistan.

Our recent contacts with the armed opposition [Taliban] are aimed only at encouraging the group to join the Afghan government-led peace process, Atmars spokesman, Tawab Ghorzang, quoted the Patrushev as telling the Afghan delegation in Friday's meeting.

Moscow as important political ally

Ghorzang said the Afghan government welcomed the Russian explanation and stance" and reiterated that Moscow is an important political ally of Kabul. He added the two sides also shared concerns stemming from a rise in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and agreed to boost cooperation to curb narcotics production and smuggling.

Russia believes IS militants are trying to establish a foothold in volatile Afghan regions bordering Central Asian states threatening Moscows national security interests.

But Afghan authorities say national security forces with air support from the United States have killed hundreds of IS operatives and significantly degraded the terrorist threat in the country.

New Taliban attacks

Fridays talks in Moscow came on a day when the Taliban staged fresh attacks in different parts of Afghanistan and security forces carried out new raids against IS militants.

Officials said that a suicide truck bomber attacked an Afghan military base in southeastern Khost province, killing at least one soldier and wounding 13 others. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the violence, giving a much higher death toll for Afghan forces.

The insurgents staged a similar attack in eastern Nangarhar province, killing one person and wounding several others.

The Taliban also ambushed a government convoy on a main highway linking the northern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan, and reportedly set fire to tankers transporting fuel for security forces. The attack blocked traffic, stranding scores of vehicles, Afghan authorities reported.

Separately, military authorities in eastern Nangarhar province said that security forces, with U.S. air support, killed at least 40 IS militants in overnight operations in Kot, one of several districts where the terrorist group has its bases.
Somali Islamists are letting civilians in drought-hit regions under their control move with relative freedom to find food, the group and a U.N. official said Thursday, but they are continuing to restrict the access of international aid groups.

Somalia, struggling to recover from more than 25 years of civil war and an ongoing battle between its U.N.-backed government and Islamist insurgents, could sink into famine if the April rains fail.

About quarter of a million people died during the last famine in 2011, when al-Shabab's restrictions on movement and its refusal to allow many aid groups access pushed up the death toll, aid groups say.

This time, the insurgents say people can move.

"We do not stop those who want to leave for other places, they are free," Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed, the chairman of al-Shabab's drought emergency committee, told Reuters.

Al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked Islamist group, has lost large swaths of territory in recent years to pro-government regional militias and African Union peacekeepers supporting the weak federal government.

Although it lost control of most major cities, it is still strong in parts of rural southern Somalia.

Justin Brady, the head of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said he had met several residents who recently left al-Shabab territory and were concerned they would be unable to return.

"If they return from areas of government control, they will be viewed with suspicion and subject to abuse," Brady said. "It will be unfortunate, if there are decent rains, that they cannot go back with tools and seeds."

Brady said al-Shabab still restricted aid workers' access.

Death rates related to cholera and diarrhea in al-Shabab-held areas were 4.5 times higher than in government-held areas, the United Nations says.

"We cannot reach people with the most basic interventions such as water purification tablets, soap, or jerry cans to improve their water," Brady said.

Cholera has broken out in 11 of 18 regions as wells dry up and families drink infected water.

Al-Shabab's Mohamed said that international aid agencies in Somalia were ineffective and al-Shabab provided its own aid.

"They just talk and dying people need action to save them," Mohamed said. "We have started giving food and water to the most drought-hit Somalis."

He said that the insurgents used 70 trucks to supply water and provided food rations to 400 families Thursday.

Residents, though, were skeptical the militants could do enough.

"Al-Shabab gave us water and food and we have seen them taking food and water to others in the area, but the needs of the entire people cannot be met," resident Abdullahi Mohamed said from Hindheer district in the central Galgadud region.

"Some people are in the jungle where there are no roads. Some are dying under trees," he said.

The U.N. said it fed 1.1 million Somalis last month and provided clean water to 570,000.
South Africa, long a haven for migrants from across Africa, is trying to update its immigration policy with a number of changes, which one official says aims to strike a balance between being welcoming of immigrants and keeping the nation safe.

Among the policy changes being considered: the creation of processing centers for asylum-seekers along South Africas border; the end of an automatic path from long-term residency to citizenship; the introduction of a points-based system intended to attract highly skilled immigrants and the elimination of some visa requirements for African citizens.

The proposed changes come amid tensions over xenophobic attacks on African immigrants, with the view that it is "neither desirable nor possible to stop international migration.

Delicate balance

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said the proposal, which will go before parliament next week, aims to strike a delicate balance between welcoming millions of migrants from African countries and keeping the nation safe.

The new policy comes amid a wave of violence in recent weeks against African immigrants, whom violent protesters accuse of taking jobs and scarce resources away from South Africans.

South Africa is committed to freeing movement in a managed way, Gigaba told journalists on the sidelines of a conference on international migration in Johannesburg. And we will be looking at what is happening in West Africa, to draw lessons from how West Africa is dealing with this process and, and to the extent possible, to begin implementing some of those measures.

"Because, most certainly, the South African international migration policy must be Afrocentric," he said.

Last year, the Department of Home Affairs said 16 million people arrived in South Africa. Most came from neighboring countries, such as Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and Botswana. The government also documented the arrival of more than 400,000 Americans and more than 560,000 British nationals.

That same year, immigration officials deported more than 23,000 people, most of them from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi.

Tony Elumelu, director of the Commission on Free Movement of Persons for the Economic Community of West African States, said South Africas proposed policy works well with the transitory nature of intra-African migration.

We are a highly mobile people, but we do not stay, Elumelu told VOA. So if we do not stay permanently, what you do is allow us to go and come back.

Critics of proposal

Human rights activists have expressed concern over the proposal.

Jacob van Garderen, national director of Lawyers for Human Rights, said the proposals on asylum-seekers are worrying.

We are concerned that some of the laudable mission statements in the white paper are not translated into reality through the sections that follow," van Garderen said. "We are very concerned about additional restrictions that are being introduced or proposed for asylum-seekers, the creation of additional detention centers in the various provinces, the removal of the right to work and study for asylum-seekers.

"There also seems to be a further push for the criminalization of immigration offenses, which is deeply unfortunate," he added.

Minister Gigaba will deliver the paper to South Africas Cabinet next week. He says hes optimistic that it will pass, and that the changes will take effect by 2018.
South Sudanese women in Uganda say they have found a way to support each other amid tough financial times.

The idea can be traced to the South Sudanese concept of sanduk, or box. It's an arrangement under which each member of a group of women contributes a small amount of money monthly, collected by the group's treasurer. All the cash is given to one member of the group each month. The same exercise is repeated the following month for a different group member. It continues until the last person is reached, and then it starts all over again.

The South Sudanese women living in Uganda have modified this merry-go-round way of helping each other by expanding it to household items like soap and sugar.

The women say the practice is making it possible for many with meager resources to buy household items they would have never been able to obtain otherwise.

Sanduk helps with hardships

Aneta Andrua is a founding member of one such group with about 20 members in Kampala. She said the Sanduk idea was adopted as a result of all the hardships South Sudanese women living there were facing.

When we came here, life was hard and this inspired us to come up with this initiative. We had no means of survival. We were suffering and struggling to survive, said Andrua.

Women in the group meet once a week, each time at the home of the beneficiary that keeps the collection of items.

Anet Asienjo, another member of Andrua's group, said they give each other all kinds of practical household items.

We came up with the suggestion of helping each other by collecting at least one bar [of soap], a kilo of sugar, omo [powdered soap], because you alone can't afford those things, Asienjo said.

Safety in numbers

Asienjo said individual women cannot afford to buy such items in bulk, but by pooling their resources, they can all afford basic necessities. Contributions have been particularly useful for mothers with children attending boarding schools.

When you see 10 bars of soap, 10 kilos of sugar and you have two kids in [boarding] school, at least each of the two will take two to school, and you remain with some to help you at home. By the time it is getting over, another round comes in, Asienjo said.

Joyce Keji, another member of the group, said each week, they also pool a small amount of money that the treasurer collects. Group members are allowed to borrow money from the pooled savings to help them out of difficult situations.

Like your friend also falls sick, sometimes the child is sick. ... You will call your friend because that money we are contributing, we are putting with one person [who] is keeping for us the money. And then we are giving for assistance also, Keji said.

Group brings women together

Group member Gale Khalifasaid she sees enormous advantages in the practice because most South Sudanese women here cannot rely on steady incomes.

Before this idea occurred to us, life was tough for all of us. We were unable to buy these items in large quantities. So when one of us came with this concept, we thought it was also a really good way of bringing women together, Khalifa said.

As the economic and financial crises continue in South Sudan, many people have slashed their remittances to family in Uganda.

Women often earn a modest profit from selling items like homemade bread and peanut butter, or by sewing clothes and bed sheets. With nothing to fall back on in case of an emergency, South Sudanese women see the Sanduk initiative as their only hope of surviving hard economic times in Uganda.
This week marked the sixth anniversary of the Syrian war - and it was an especially brutal seven days, with a mosque allegedly damaged by a U.S. airstrike, a twin suicide bombing in Damascus and claims of phosphorus-bomb attacks by Russian and Syrian warplanes.

The death toll in Thursdays U.S. airstrike on the village of al-Jinah, on the border of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, rose overnight to 46, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group.

The observatory, which uses a network of sources on the ground in Syria for its reporting, claims a majority of those killed were civilians.

U.S. defense officials say the mosque was not the target of the airstrike but that a meeting of al-Qaida militants nearby was. A number of extremists had been killed in the raid, they say. In a statement, the spokesman for the United States Central Command said the warplanes had hit a nearby building, but missed the mosque, which was full at the time for evening prayer.

U.S. forces conducted an airstrike on an al-Qaida in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria. We did not target any mosques, said Col. John Thomas. What we did target was destroyed. There is a mosque within 50 feet of that building that is still standing. He added that claims of civilian deaths would be investigated but that the Pentagon has aerial photography indicating the mosque was still standing.

Later Friday, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters that defense officials believe dozens of core al-Qaida leaders were killed in the U.S. strike.

Pentagon statement

Capt. Jeff Davis also said the mosque had not been targeted and he released a post-strike aerial photograph showing the mosque adjacent to a destroyed building."I wanted to draw your attention to it, because I think there are a lot of reports suggesting that we had targeted a mosque," he said. "We did not. Of course, you know we never would."

The strike he said had been conducted by manned and unmanned aircraft. "We struck a meeting of senior al-Qaida terrorists -- some of these were likely high-value individuals," Davis said.

"We're currently assessing that," adding that extensive surveillance took place before the strike.

"We do not currently assess there were any civilian casualties," he said.

The volunteer emergency medical service known as the White Helmets says it also documented the attack and that the mosque was hit. The group posted video showing the rescue operation with emergency workers digging people out from rubble. Activists also posted video that purportedly shows the northern part of the mosque damaged.

Idlib has been a significant safe haven for al-Qaida in recent years, said Thomas.

Local activists argue that the village of al-Jinah, southwest of Atareb in the western countryside of Aleppo, is not held by any al Qaida-linked groups.

Area known for jihadist activity

The area has been the scene of jihadist gatherings in the past. In November 2014, jihadist veterans known collectively as the Khorasan group tried to broker a merger between militant archrivals the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, the then-official Syrian branch of al-Qaida, and a meeting was held at a farmhouse in nearby Atareb.

And there has been other recent jihadist activity in the area. Last month, militants kidnapped a local mayor in Atareb, prompting street protests against jihadists a few days later by locals.

Even so, Thursdays airstrike has prompted denunciations from local activists, who argue there would be outrage in the U.S. if the airstrike that caused so many civilian deaths had been carried out by Russian warplanes.

The Syrian Observatory described the bombing as a massacre.

Analysts are critical of the airstrike. Whether there was a high value target in the area or not, targeting even part of a mosque during prayer time with multiple munitions is just shockingly short-sighted, argues Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute and author of the book The Syrian Jihad.

He added, Who in their right mind could have thought this was a risk worth taking? Opposition Syrians are seething this morning and at the click of a button, America has gone from being perceived as being cold-hearted about Syrian suffering to being no different to the Assad regime. This really is a deeply dangerous development and couldnt have come at a worse time. Acts like this do nothing more than to justify and empower extremist narratives, which bizarrely, are exactly what were meant to be combating.



Looser rules of engagement?

There are also concerns by rights groups that bombing so close to a mosque may indicate that the Pentagon has loosened the rules of engagement in Syria. That holds out the prospects of more civilians being killed in future U.S. airstrikes targeting al-Qaida-linked groups and the Islamic State terror group, they warn.

Earlier this week, there were U.S. media reports that the Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to give greater latitude to the military and CIA to target suspected terrorists in air and drone strikes, lowering the bar when it comes to the risks of civilian casualties. The possible change would include also giving the Pentagon and the CIA more autonomy in their targeting by allowing them to proceed without prior presidential authorization in Syria and other countries, according to U.S. officials.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to confirm earlier this week to VOA that a review is underway - or that there have been any changes made already. As a matter of standing policy, we don't discuss rules of engagement for security reasons, said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway. Likewise, we don't discuss plans under deliberation that have not been approved, he added.

The airstrike on al-Jinah came a day after more than two dozen people were killed in suicide bombings in the main judicial building and on a restaurant in Syria's capital, Damascus. The blasts follow another double suicide bombing in Damascus last weekend. Syrias state news agency SANA, reported there were also 102 injured in the courthouse attack and 28 wounded at the restaurant.

Al-Qaida's former affiliate, now known as Tahrir al-Sham. claimed responsibility for the attacks. Analysts have warned, though, that as al-Qaida and Islamic State are squeezed in Syria, they will respond with suicide attacks, much as IS has been doing in neighboring Iraq.

Call to speed up negotiations

In response to the Damascus bombings, the U.N.s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, urged all parties to speed up negotiations to end a war that has left an estimated half-a-million dead. There is no way that we should be accepting the fact that the sixth anniversary becomes the seventh, he said.

Its becoming one of the longest and most cruel wars of recent years, he added.

To round out the anniversary week, political activists opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused Russia of dropping white phosphorous or thermite-based munitions against the enemies of the Syrian government. They released video clips showing purportedly white smoke and fierce fires amid explosions in the village of Umm al-Karamil in the southern Aleppo countryside.

Still photographs supplied to Londons Independent newspaper appear to show the telltale white streaks of incendiary munitions in the air. Russian officials say Russian warplanes have never used weapons forbidden under international law. A United Nations protocol bans the use of air-dropped incendiary munitions in areas where civilians are known to be located.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has again emphasized the need for a new approach to deal with the growing North Korean nuclear threat that would include more aggressive actions than those taken under former President Barack Obamas Policy of Strategic Patience.

In South Korea Friday, he said, Let me be very clear the Policy of Strategic Patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.



In his first official trip to Asia this week, Tillerson - a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience - is visiting North Koreas key neighboring countries: Japan, South Korea and China.

President Donald Trumps newly appointed top diplomat flew into the U.S. Osan military airbase Friday morning where he met with the commanders of the U.S. Forces in Korea before visiting the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the inter-Korean border, established by an armistice agreement signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

After meeting with Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn and South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Yun Byung-se, Tillerson reiterated what he said in Tokyo Thursday; that diplomatic efforts of the past 20 years have failed, and that the $1.35 billion the U.S. provided North Korea in past assistance as encouragement did not work to persuade the leadership in Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.



Starting in the 1990s, the U.S. provided food aid and fuel oil shipments as part of a nuclear freeze deal that fell apart after it was learned Pyongyang was violating the agreement by secretly operating a uranium enrichment program.



THAAD divisions



South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se voiced strong support for Tillersons call for more effective measures to pressure the Kim Jong Un government to dismantle its nuclear program.

We will make North Korea feel the pain in its misguided administration, and change its calculation in the end, said Yun.

Both leaders also defended the need for increased defensive measures, including the controversial U.S. THAAD missile defense system being deployed in South Korea that can potentially intercept a nuclear-armed ballistic missile at a high altitude.

The current ruling conservative government in Seoul has downplayed Chinas strong opposition to THAAD as an unnecessary and provocative military escalation, and its concern that the systems powerful radar could be used to monitor others in the region. Beijing is reportedly retaliating by restricting the operations of some South Korean companies, and putting limits on some imports and tourists.



The U.S. secretary of state called on China to end the informal sanctions it has imposed on South Korea to protest the THAAD deployment.



We believe these actions are unnecessary and we believe theyre troubling. We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat to everyone, he said.

Presidential election



South Korea, however, is in the midst of dramatic political change following the impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye for her alleged involvement in an influence peddling scandal. A new presidential election has been scheduled for May 9 and the leading candidate is liberal Moon-Jae-in from the Democratic Party Of Korea. His party has been critical of THAAD, saying it is not worth the cost of alienating China.

In the National Assembly Friday, Woo Sang-ho - a Democratic Party leader - said, it is impossible to make North Korea give up its nuclear and missiles (programs) with just strengthening the arms race in Northeast Asia.

The South Korean liberal coalition, poised to take power in May, supports strong sanctions, but also believes real economic and diplomatic incentives are needed to peacefully resolve the North Korea nuclear situation.

Effective sanctions

Tillerson said he will discuss increasing the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea when he visits Beijing Saturday. The U.S., he said, will work to increase international participation in implementing the sanctions and pursue increased unilateral measures as well.

There are reports that Washington is considering increased financial penalties against Chinese companies and banks that do business with North Korea.

Beijings enforcement of sanctions is critical as it is North Koreas largest trading partner. China recently halted all coal imports for this year, but has also indicated it is reluctant to implement harsh measures that could trigger widespread instability and the collapse of the Kim government.



Military option

North Koreas accelerated efforts to develop the capability to strike the U.S. mainland with a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has added a new urgency in Washington to deal with this longstanding security threat

Tillerson said all options, even military options, are being considered to deal with the Norths advancing capabilities.

If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table, he said.

Many in South Korea and Japan argue that there are no viable military options. Possible airstrikes to take out North Korean nuclear and missile sites, critics say, would fail to end the nuclear threat, as many of the countrys nuclear and missile facilities are hidden in fortified underground bunkers. And worse, analysts say, a U.S. attack could draw China and the entire region into a full-scale nuclear war that would kill millions.

Military drills

South Korean and U.S. troops are currently involved in large-scale joint military exercises. About 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans are expected to participate in these drills, which have increased in scope and size in the last few years. Washington and Seoul say the exercises are defensive in nature, but North Korea has denounced them as rehearsals for invasion.

Pak Myong Ho, an official with the North Korean embassy in China, on Thursday denounced the joint military drills and said North Korea will continue with nuclear tests if the U.S. threat of force persists.

China recently proposed the U.S. halt joint exercises in return for North Koreas agreement to suspend further nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. But the U.S. secretary of state rejected that proposal, saying that a freeze at this time would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat, not just to the region, but to American forces as well.
In the latest outreach effort following a contentious campaign, top Trump administration officials - as well as first daughter Ivanka Trump - met Thursday with Hispanic business leaders.



Underscoring her unusual role working outside the administration, Ivanka Trump attended a round-table discussion Thursday morning with Hispanic women business owners in Washington.



Later, White House officials, including chief of staff Reince Priebus, held a meeting with other Hispanic business leaders, focused on jobs, the economy and access to capital.



The meetings were organized by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, whose president, Javier Palomarez, slammed Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, calling him a buffoon, among other slights. He has since joined the president's National Diversity Coalition and says he's open to working with the president on issues they agree on.



"The reality of it is,'' Palomarez said, "I'd much rather campaign from the inside than complain from the outside.''



Trump has been eyed warily by the Hispanic community since the beginning of his presidential campaign, when he claimed Mexico was sending its criminals over the border and railed against illegal immigration. Nonetheless, Trump won about 28 percent of the Latino vote - a similar share to Mitt Romney in 2012, according to exit polls.



"My representatives had a great meeting w/ the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce at the WH today,'' the president tweeted after the meetings."Look forward to tremendous growth & future mtgs!''



Palomarez said Ivanka Trump, who has no official role in the administration, spent an hour and a half with the women business owners, talking about issues such as entrepreneurship and science education.



"She made it clear that she has a passion around empowering women,'' Palomarez said in an interview between the two meetings, adding that the topics of Trump's proposed border wall and his crackdown on people living in the U.S. illegally had not been raised.



"There will be time and the circumstances to do that,'' said Palomarez, adding: "They're not done deals. The negotiation, the conversation continues.''



Trump said Thursday night at a rally in Nashville that his wall is "way ahead of schedule,'' and he has signed orders making it easier to deport people living in the U.S. illegally.
After a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. President Donald Trump said he supported NATO but renewed a call for member nations to increase their financial contributions to support the military alliance.

Trump expressed his "strong support for NATO" but called on fellow members who "owe vast sums money" to "pay their fair share."

WATCH: Trump: NATO Members 'Must Pay Fair Share'

His remarks came at a news conference after an Oval Office meeting with Merkel, a key ally he accused of "ruining" Germany by admitting thousands of Syrian refugees.

It was the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the Western world's most influential countries since Trump's election, and one that could help shape the future of the transatlantic alliance.

They were seemingly on a collision course since candidate Trump accused Merkel of "ruining" Germany and other European countries with liberal immigration policies, spoke ill of NATO and hinted at a trade war.

Merkel, for her part, scolded Trump for imposing a travel ban on immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, and she reminded him that any close U.S.-Germany cooperation must be based on "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."

Trump said the relationship between the U.S. and Germany was built on "shared values" and the alliance was a "symbol of strength" to the world.

In addition to NATO, several other contentious issues awaited the two leaders. Trump said he appreciated Germany's support in addressing the conflict in Ukraine, where "we seek a peaceful solution."

Trump said the two countries would continue the fight against "radical Islamic terrorism," saying "immigration security is national security."

The two leaders were to have a working lunch at the White House, where the president said "fair and reciprocal" trade policies would be discussed.

WATCH: Merkel: 'Hope We Can Resume' US-EU Trade Agreement Talks

As a candidate, Trump suggested he would renounce multilateral deals, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) with Europe, which had been championed by Merkel and former U.S. President Barack Obama.

In a hint at a possible compromise, a senior administration official told reporters last week that T-TIP could be considered a one-on-one trade deal, given how the EU structure interconnects European economies.

The leaders were also expected to discuss another controversial issue, Trump's proposed border tax, which is meant to encourage companies to make goods in the United States. Just hours before the Oval Office meeting, Germany's economy minister threatened to sue the U.S. at the World Trade Organization in an attempt to block the tax.

Trump sees the tax as boosting his job-creation agenda. Europeans see it as a challenge to the global trading system at a time when Trump's policies are pushing the United States toward protectionism.

Daniel Hamilton, director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, sees the White House meeting as a prelude to future negotiations.

Trump makes his first presidential visit to Europe in May to attend both a NATO summit in Brussels and a Group of Seven summit in Sicily. "That will be the next big step," Hamilton said.

Merkel and Trump were originally scheduled to meet earlier this week, but a snowstorm on the U.S. East Coast prompted the two world leaders to delay the session.
The U.N. children's fund finds thousands of refugee and migrant children are more vulnerable to deportation and exploitation today than when the European Union-Turkey agreement to stop mass migration flows from Turkey into Europe was enacted one year ago.

UNICEF acknowledges the EU-Turkey deal succeeded in significantly decreasing the number of refugee and migrant children on the move in Europe. However, it notes a disquieting increase in the threats and distress these children endure.

UNICEF says the underlying causes that prompted children and their families to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea one year ago remain, as millions of people are still affected by the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We observe a very concerning increase of the number of children kept under detention because of their migration status," said Lucio Melandri, UNICEF senior emergency manager. "So, we see in many countries a number of children that are simply detained for long periods and they are finally kept under what we define as unacceptable situations."

Melandri says children who are locked up in detention or stranded on an island for long periods of time suffer from psychological problems. Rather than remaining trapped in Greece or Italy, he says, many unaccompanied children take matters into their own hands to escape.

They will "try alone to contact criminal organizations, to try to cross borders in the night," Melandri said. "In many cases, these children who are moving alone are leading them to be eventually identified, put under detention. In many cases, we are observing with concern an increasing trend of migrants but, particularly, even children that are simply pushed back."

Under the EU-Turkey agreement, 120,000 refugees were supposed to have been relocated from Greece and Italy into other European Union member states. To date, UNICEF reports, just over 14,400 children and their families have found new homes, mainly in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Melandri says the EU should live up to its promises by protecting refugee and migrant children and not leaving them in substandard conditions and emotional distress.
Security forces came under fire when they entered a home in Pulwama's Batnoor Lassipora to nab a suspected stone pelter.

By India Today Web Desk: Anti-stone pelter operations in the Valley led to gunshots being fired in Pulwama's Batnoor Lassipora area Monday morning.

Personnel from the Jammu and Kashmir Police's Special Operations Group and the 182 and 183 Rashtriya Rifles reached the Batnur village to pick up a suspected stone pelter. The troops came under fire as they entered the multi-storied home at around 2.15 am Monday.

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The forces did not retaliate and the gunman is presumed to have escaped in the commotion that followed the initial fire. Forces have launched a manhunt to nab the suspect(s).

Earlier this month, two civilians were killed as a result of an encounter, in which in two Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were killed.

ALSO READ | J-K: 2 Lashkar terrorists, 2 civilians killed in Pulwama's Padgampora encounter

--- ENDS ---
President Donald Trumps budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters at the White House Thursday that the president is intentionally redefining U.S. foreign policy priorities, changing from a focus on soft power  diplomacy, participation in international institutions and cultural exchanges  to a laser focus on hard power with a big boost to military spending.

Asked about the impact of cuts to foreign aid to people suffering from famine and conflict around the world, Mulvaney said it should come as a surprise to no one that the president plans to spend more money at home and less money abroad, as he promised during the election campaign. But this fundamental shift in spending priorities has drawn swift criticism from a number of Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

Watch: White House Official: Trump Is Sending a Message With Budget

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Even the military doesnt think that would be a good idea. Of course, foreign aid is less than 1 percent of the budget anyway. But even the military will tell you that if we dont have a diplomatic outreach, whats going to happen  that [void] will be filled by the Russians and the Chinese, he told VOA.

Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee said his team remains in close contact with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss how he believes he can accomplish the State Departments work with this budget.

While the administration proposes a budget, ultimately it is the role of Congress to dispose it and fund government, Corker said. I believe we can strike an appropriate balance that recognizes the critical role of diplomacy in keeping our military out of harms way and appropriately advancing our nations interests while ensuring taxpayer dollars are used in the most efficient and effective manner.

Tillerson: Budget not sustainable

Tillerson was asked about the budget cuts at a news conference in Japan during his trip to Asia.

The level of spending that the State Department has been undertaking, particularly in the past year, is simply not sustainable, he said. The new secretary of state added that current spending reflects the level of conflicts that the U.S. has been engaged in around the world as well as disaster assistance. He said in the future, the U.S. will be engaging in fewer conflicts.

Asked about the percentage of cuts to the State Department and foreign aid, Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Thursday that overall cuts amount to 31 percent. Asked to explain Tillersons comments that the U.S. will save money by being in fewer wars, Toner said the U.S. has been at war for 16 years now, and that means a lot of secondary costs.

Long budget process

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reminded critics that when a president submits a budget, it is a blueprint, the beginning of a long process in which Congress has a critical role to play. Ryan praised Trump for aiming to reduce wasteful spending.

But even some conservative members of Congress who are known to be staunch advocates for cutting government spending rejected the idea of slashing foreign aid and U.S. diplomatic programs, including Republican Representative Ted Yoho of Florida.

At a time when American leadership is needed more than ever, we must continue to invest in the International Affairs Budget.  This will allow for necessary reforms in our international aid programs while not sacrificing our international security or economy for splashy headlines that say we are cutting American foreign aid, which will ultimately do nothing to address our current debt crisis, and creating yet another vacuum by the lack of American leadership which will be filled by most likely a foe to our country and our ideals.

Representative Elliot Engel of New York is the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Every normal program that were used to, that we took for granted, is in jeopardy  its like cutting the calf, cutting the bone, cutting the leg. Theres nothing there, and its just a real shame, he said.

One of the things President Trump said during the campaign was chiding President Obama he was weak and the United States was weak in international affairs  well how are we going to look now? How are we going to look now with a 30 percent or one-third cut so the United States cannot do the kinds of things it has been going to do, he added.

Democratic Representative Brad Sherman of California said the cuts would hurt some of the presidents own priorities, including his calls for extreme vetting of any foreigners who want to live in the United States.

Cuts would hurt Trump priorities

Were told by the president that hes going to have extreme vetting  trying to do extreme vetting with extremely little money is extremely stupid, Sherman said.

Engel added: The State Department issues over 10 million visitor visas every year. We need people coming here for business, for trade, for tourism, for investment, and they get well over 15 million applications  thats 15 million decisions. If you have one mistake, you could have a terrorist incident. Thats the importance we place on those officers that issue visas.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware added his voice to the criticism:

To dramatically increase spending on defense and to significantly cut spending on the diplomats and development professionals who often work hand in glove with our Defense Department in difficult and dangerous parts of the world like Iraq and Afghanistan is unwise, he said. I think it shows an over-reliance on the military and an under-appreciation of the power and the effectiveness of diplomacy.

Liz Schrayer is president and CEO of the U.S Global Leadership Coalition, a nonprofit group that promotes U.S. diplomacy. She said she was encouraged by the swift public outcry on Capitol Hill.

So were seeing a reaction at a bipartisan level from very conservative members of the Congress to very progressive members of Congress that are already reacting in just the few hours that this budget has been out by saying, No this is not where were heading and were not going to accept it.

The White House will provide more budget details in May. Current funding for the U.S. government expires April 28.

Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
The White House's 2018 budget plan for the U.S. Department of Energy includes $120 million for nuclear waste programs, including the restart of licensing for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a project stalled for years by lawsuits and local opposition.

The move signals that President Donald Trump may consider that nuclear waste solutions could extend the lives of existing U.S. nuclear power plants and speed up innovations in next-generation nuclear plants that backers say are safer than previous reactors.

Congress will debate the budget, and it is uncertain whether funds for waste will remain in the plan.

While Yucca Mountain would store waste on a practically permanent basis, the budget money would also support programs for storing waste at interim sites before Yucca opens.

"These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the federal government's obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security and reduce future taxpayer burden," according to a summary of the budget.

Billions spent

Yucca has been studied by the U.S. government since the 1970s as a potential repository for the nation's radioactive waste, and billions of dollars have been spent on it.

But Yucca has never opened because of legal challenges and widespread opposition from local politicians, environmentalists and Native American groups.

In 2010, then-President Barack Obama withdrew the license to store waste at Yucca amid opposition from then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat from Nevada.

Maria Korsnick, the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group, said the industry was encouraged by the plan for waste projects but that nuclear energy innovators were "nervous" about cuts to programs that have supported public-private partnerships to bring new nuclear technologies to market.

The budget eliminates funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and an innovative technology loan guarantee program that have been popular with both Democrats and many Republicans.

Trump's energy secretary, Rick Perry, told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing that restarting the Yucca Mountain project could not be ruled out, but that he would collaborate with states.

"I am very aware that this is an issue this country has been flummoxed by for 30 years. We have spent billions of dollars on this issue," Perry told the hearing in January. "I'll work closely with you and the members of this committee to find the answers to this issue."

The White House proposal for the Department of Energy budget calls for an overall cut of 5.6 percent.
The White House is continuing to stand by President Donald Trump's insistence that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower in New York, despite a complete lack of evidence.

Spokesman Sean Spicer faced off Thursday against a roomful of reporters who wanted to know why Trump keeps insisting it is true, even after top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees say it never happened.

Spicer accused the journalists of "mischaracterizing" what happened in the Senate committee.

WATCH: Spicer on wiretapping allegations

WATCH: Spicer, CNN reporter have terse exchange over wiretapping allegations

He also accused reporters of "cherry picking" what they choose to cover, and of ignoring House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, who said it was "very possible" there was surveillance of Trump.

But Nunes said he does not believe Trump's phones were tapped.

Spicer said Trump put the word "wiretap" in quotes in his original Twitter accusation. Spicer said that means there was widespread surveillance if not actual phone taps.

But the two top senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner, said Thursday: Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.

WATCH: Ryan says no evidence of wiretapping

Their statement followed one from House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who also dismissed the president's explosive claim March 4 that Obama ordered the eavesdropping. "We've cleared that up, that we see no evidence of that," Ryan said.

Trump, however, told Fox News late Wednesday that he "very soon" will produce evidence of Obama's actions.

Top leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that Trump's allegation is unfounded, but the president said his administration "will be submitting things" to the panel and that he perhaps will be speaking about his claim next week.

"You're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump said.

Numerous congressional leaders, both opposition Democrats and Republicans, have sharply rebuked Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, the skyscraper where the billionaire real estate mogul ran his campaign, and his home before winning the White House.

Trump made the wiretapping charge against his predecessor two Saturdays ago in a string of Twitter comments. One of them said: "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory."

Obama dismissed the allegation as "simply false," and Trump since then has not substantiated his claim. Until the Fox interview, Trump dodged reporters' questions about the allegation.

Trump told Fox his Twitter comment "really covers surveillance and many other things. Nobody ever talks about the fact that (the words 'wire tapped') was in quotes, but that's a very important thing."

WATCH: Nunes denies evidence of wiretapping

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Republican Devin Nunes, who has been supportive of Trump, held a news conference about Trump's wiretapping allegation.

"We don't have any evidence that took place," he said. "I don't think there was a tapping of Trump Tower."

The committee's top Democrat, Congressman Adam Schiff, agreed, saying: "To date, I see no evidence (of Obama ordered wiretapping), no basis for that whatsoever."

WATCH: Schiff says Trump's allegations 'irresponsible'

Nunes and Schiff said they are waiting for information from the Department of Justice by next Monday about whether the agency knows of any court ordered wiretaps of Trump, but said they have learned of no such bugging in their investigation.

The congressional probe was requested by the White House after Trump made his wiretapping allegation.

The House Intelligence Committee also is looking at links between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials during the billionaire real estate mogul's long run for the White House, and in the weeks after he won the election.

Nunes said James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country's top law enforcement agency, will testify next Monday before the Intelligence Committee about the wiretapping allegation and the agency's investigation of Russian meddling in the election aimed at helping Trump win.

One key U.S. senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Congress is going to flex its muscle."

He vowed, if need be, to subpoena the FBI to determine whether any U.S. judge issued a secret wiretapping edict that the FBI carried out.
Gibraltar Participates in Seatrade Cruise Global And Will Host The MedCruise General Assembly in Gibraltar 2017

Gibraltar once again participated at the Seatrade Cruise Global cruise and shipping convention held in Fort Lauderdale from 13th to 16th March.

Gibraltar is represented at the MedCruise stand by Nicky Guerrero, Chief Executive of the Gibraltar Tourist Board along with the Board's Senior Product Manager Suyenne Catania.

The event brings together representatives from all sectors of the cruise industry and is invaluable in facilitating one to one contact with cruise companies and the cruise press.

The Gibraltar Cruise Terminal experienced a record 2016, both for cruise calls and passengers. In total, 224 calls were made carrying a total of 425,845 passengers. This represented an increase of 9.8% in terms of calls, and 17.78% in terms of passengers compared to 2015.

2017 is expected to see another busy year as, to date, a total of 257 calls have been booked.

There are seven new inaugural cruise calls scheduled this year, including Norwegian Joy, Majestic Princess, Celebrity Reflection and Seabourn Encore. Of note this year is twenty calls by the Panorama II of Variety Cruises, which is making its inaugural call on 17 May. Further information on calls can be found in the cruise section of www.gibraltarport.com

This year Gibraltar will host the 50th MedCruise Annual General Assembly. Set up in June 1996, MedCruise is the Association of Mediterranean Cruise Ports. To be held between the 14 and 17 June, cruise line executives and MedCruise member ports will be in Gibraltar to discuss the latest developments of the Cruise Industry, the implications of cruising in the Med and its adjoining seas, plus the opportunity to discuss developments in the region. Also, business to business meetings and interactive workshops will be held between cruise line executives and MedCruise Ports.

The Hon Gilbert Licudi MP QC, Minister for Tourism and the Port commented "Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar continues to build on the success of the Rock's cruise industry. The teams at the Gibraltar Tourist Board and the Gibraltar Port Authority work together to maximise close ties with the cruise industry at events such as Seatrade Cruise Global and through our founding membership of MedCruise. Gibraltar continues to grow as a port of call destination in the Mediterranean, with 2017 expected to be another busy year. We continue to work with existing and potential new cruise lines to promote the product that Gibraltar has to offer. We also have the perfect opportunity to showcase Gibraltar during the MedCruise General Assembly to further establish new business in the cruise sector"
Drake. Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

We now know that a new Drake release (a playlist in this case), is imminent  two more sleeps, guys!  and when More Life does drop on March 18, you may not have to pony up any extra dough to hear it. Despite a long-standing, and seemingly fruitful, exclusive relationship between Drake and Apple Music, the record will not only be released via Apple/iTunes, but also on Spotify and Amazon simultaneously, according to Complex. This seems to fly in the face of previous Drake releases, which Apple sold exclusively, or at least first. This move might signal a turn away from that exclusivity on the 6 Gods part. Or, it might just be Drake being Drake  that is, being moved by Drakeish whimsy. Regardless, More Life is forthcoming, and it seems like there will be plenty of ways to hear it as soon as it arrives.
Greys Anatomy has guts. To focus an episode on a polarizing couple not once, but twice, is ballsy. There must be a whole slew of you who wanted to throw something at your television when you realized Who Is He (And What Is He to You)? was another all #Japril episode. I also know theres a bunch of you who squealed with glee at the news and cracked open a bottle of wine to celebrate. I know this because I am one of those people.

To be fair, this is more Jacksons week to shine than any kind of examination of his and Aprils relationship, unlike their last standalone episode. Regardless of how you feel about Jackson, or April, or Jackson and April together, you must admit that we all needed a little break from Grey Sloan Memorial. Everyone there has lost their mind. So much yelling!

Even if you are not a #Japril fan, there are things to appreciate about this episode, including  but not limited to  the fact that people were arguing for only 25 percent of the time, and that is a real win for us Greys fans. More than just an episode about two characters I care about, this is a good story about a son searching for his father, buoyed by great performances from Jesse Williams, Sarah Drew, and  drumroll please  ERIC ROBERTS. (Surprise! Eric Roberts plays the long-lost Robert Avery.)

Now, off to Montana in our private plane we go! Remember how agitated Jackson was before? A little mountain air is going to do him good. Jackson and April  who Catherine invited to take Merediths place when Zola conveniently had the flu  arrive at an Avery Medical Center in a cozy mountain town to perform a throat transplant. Caroline, the young girl getting the transplant, is too unstable to be moved, and it just so happens that there is a donor at the same hospital. This is the reasoning Jackson gives April when she presses him for answers as to why they would come all the way out here to perform this surgery. Obviously, there is more going on.

When they arrive, Jackson does some smooth talking with Carolines mothers, whom he reassures by saying charming things like, Im a father and I do not make promises I cant keep. It works, but April is turned off by the smarminess. Jackson tells her hes being honest and a good doctor, before he runs off to a local watering hole, the Jefferson Grill. There, he proceeds to creepily stare at the bartender and get very, very drunk.

Lest you think Jackson is drinking on the job, note that he only starts drinking after he gets a panicked text from April letting him know that the donor throat is no longer viable. Carolines moms are understandably freaking out; the only other option at the moment is a surgery that would leave her without vocal cords, and there is no way in hell thats happening. Unfortunately, April is left to do damage control alone  poorly.

She eventually finds drunk Jackson at the Jefferson Grill and tries to talk some sense into him. He wants none of it, makes a little scene, and leaves. April and the bartender are left to clean up after him. The bartender and April get to talking about surgery, and he introduces himself as Robert Avery. THATS RIGHT, YOU GUYS: Dr. Avery is right in front of us. Hes been somewhat of a mystery, rarely even mentioned since Jackson arrived in season six. Its about time we all got some answers regarding what this dude has been up to.

The next morning, Jackson is extra-surly and only wants to talk medicine. The doctors are called to the hospital and learn that Carolines moms are transferring her to a different hospital. Jackson warns them that it would be dangerous to move her, and anyway, he has an idea for how to save Caroline without permanently removing her vocal chords. The moms believe those baby blues and give him until 3 p.m. the next day.

Of course, once theyre out of the hospital, Jackson admits he is lying. He just needed to buy some time. Finally, April reveals she knows he came here to find his dad and that hes lying to everyone, including a dying girl. How dare you, handsome sir!

Later, Jackson lets his guard down. Hes hurt that his own father didnt even recognize him  that he looked right in Jacksons eyes and had no idea who he was. Old news, but Jesse Williams is wonderful in this scene. Make him know you, April tells him. And so they go back to the Jefferson Grill together.

Jackson eventually tells his father who he is  but the first interaction does not go as planned. Robert is very chatty and claims to be very happy. He couldnt take the pressures of being an Avery, so he left and found his real passion. Yes, his real passion is a dive bar in middle-of-nowhere Montana. Im not totally up to speed on the protocol when meeting the son you abandoned for the first time, but Im pretty sure telling him how fulfilled you are now and how your life before was trash is not part of it. CALL ME CRAZY.

Jackson barely speaks except to defend his mother, holds back tears (!!!), and then gets the hell out of there. The next morning, there is a very cute scene in which Jackson attempts to brainstorm about the case, but also, obviously, needs to talk about what happened with April. Eventually, Jackson has one of those patented Greys eureka moments, and thinks they can use Carolines own intestines to build her a valve for her throat. Its like this whole gut in your throat versus heart in your throat argument Jackson and April have. Theres no time to explain, we have a girls voice to save!

And save it, they do. Its very exciting and Im not ashamed to admit that I welled up watching Jackson and April be happy to work together. Oh, and also that a little girl is able to speak again. That too, I guess. But #Japril has been through so much, its a relief to see them enjoying each others company.

And you guys, they really enjoy it. Theyre wired after their big, life-changing surgery and Jackson cannot take his eyes off of April. Back at the hotel, he picks her up like he did all those years ago in that bathroom. REMEMBER THE BATHROOM? And they finally get down to business.

During their postcoital spooning session, Jackson realizes his mother sent April along because she knew hed need some support on this trip. Typical Catherine. April goes on to tell Jackson that hes a good father, that hes taken care of Harriet  and April, for that matter. No matter how hard it got, he never bailed. Robert couldnt do that. April reminds him that he came here to tell his father something, and Jackson owes it to himself to say it.

Back to the Jefferson Grill it is. This time, Jackson doesnt have a problem speaking. He tells Robert about Harriet. He tells him that having a kid is making a promise. Robert broke his promise, but Jackson would never, could never do that. Thats the difference between them. He doesnt think theyll be seeing each other again, which I get but also hope isnt true  if only to see Eric Roberts and Debbie Allen go toe-to-toe. One day, perhaps!

And with that, #Japril head back to Seattle. Aside from the long-awaited #Japril reunion (are they really back together or what, Greys?), the other big development is Jackson making amends with Catherine. He sees her on the tarmac and thanks her for, well, everything. He learned about his father, but he also learned about her. So, no more fighting  at least for a little bit, maybe?

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine

 Of course Catherines idea of grandmother-granddaughter bonding would involve reading medical journals. Poor Harriet!

 And OF COURSE Catherine has multiple berets for riding in her private car to her private jet. You can never have too many Lap of Luxury Head Accessories.

 Callback alert: April orders Chinese takeout for her and Jackson while they prep. Remember the last time they ordered Chinese takeout? Making out was involved.

 Jackson holding little Harriet before he left reminded me that we dont get nearly enough Jackson holding little Harriet. REMEDY THIS, SHOW.

Sob Scale: 5/10

We are only with the ex-donor dad for a moment, but that entire scene, including Jackson bringing up Samuel, is brutal. Also, it goes without saying, but any time Jesse Williams tears up, I tear up. I cant explain it, and I wont apologize for it.
Like most young actors co-starring in a major HBO drama opposite Oscar-nominated actresses, Iain Armitage got his start as a theater critic. Okay, so hes the only one in that category, but his online video reviews of Broadway and Off Broadway productions (yes, he was totally on top of the Hamilton phenomenon) led to him getting cast in Big Little Lies as Ziggy, the son of Shailene Woodleys Jane. It is his first major acting job, but it is surely not his last.

The 8-year-old son of Tony Awardnominated actor Euan Morton and theater producer Lee Armitage, Iain has starred in major projects since he shot the HBO drama last year, including the adaptation of The Glass Castle starring Brie Larson and Netflixs Our Souls at Night with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. (Both are due out later this year.) Earlier this week, CBS announced that he will also star in Young Sheldon, a Big Bang Theory spinoff that will focus on Sheldon Coopers wonder years.

Armitage recently spoke to Vulture about how he got into acting, what it was like to work on Big Little Lies, and his recently discovered love of David Bowie. Throughout the conversation, he was unfailingly polite  the word maam was used, at a conservative estimate, 35 times  and extremely exuberant. Its nice to meet you, Miss Jen! he said at the beginning of our conversation. So, yeah, the kids pretty irresistible.

You dad is an actor and your mom is a theater producer. Is that how you got interested in show business and theater reviews?

I started doing theater reviews because I got obsessed with theater at 3, after my first show, Hairspray. Then a couple agents saw my reviews and said, Oh, do you want to work with us? My mom didnt really want to, because some other kids in the movie business have gone a little crazy after and been a little selfish and not as, like, kind and respectful to others. So we didnt really want to, but then this one agent, Abrams Artists, they said, Could you just come and tell us why you dont want to? So we came in. They had great answers for everything, so then we signed up and I got my first show, Big Little Lies. In a way, it was like the theater did its magic.

You really love the theater, but you didnt necessarily think, Gosh, I want to be in a show.

Well, I wanted to be in a show. I thought it was really cool, but I didnt ever actually think it would happen. I was like, Yeah, theres no chance of that.

Tell me about getting cast as Ziggy. Did you have to do a bunch of auditions?

Okay, so, Abrams Artists are based in New York. We live in Virginia, and we go to New York a lot to see shows and to hang out with people there. But it would be kind of annoying if every time I got an audition, we had to drive into New York, or fly in, and then we had to do the audition. They really said, Hey, you know what you can do? You can do it on video and send it in. So first for Big Little Lies, we were out in L.A. for something, I cant remember quite what. But we did it, then we sent it in, and that was it.

A couple of weeks later we got a callback. By this time we had pretty much forgotten about it. [Pauses.] Actually, we hadnt forgot about it. We still liked it. So we went there and they said, You did a great job. And I said, Thank you. And then like a week after that, they said, You got the part for Big Little Lies. And me and my mom just shared this look of joy. It was like, Is this really happening? And I just loved doing it.

Youre working with some really big stars in this: Shailene Woodley and Reese Witherspoon.

Theyre very kind. Yes, maam. Very kind and very nice.

You work with Shailene Woodley a lot since she plays Ziggys mom. Do you remember first meeting her? How did you develop that mother-son relationship?

Yes. So what happened was, when we had heard we got the part we FaceTimed. So we FaceTimed her and we were just, you know, talking and I showed her some of my stuffed animals. I love stuffed animals. I have so many. Then we just kind of talked a little while on FaceTime.

Did you have a favorite day on set?

There were six principal kids on the show: me, Chloe [Coleman, who plays Skye], Ivy [George, who plays Amabella]. Darby [Camp, who plays Chloe], and Nicholas and Cameron [Crovetti, who play twins Josh and Max]. There was [a scene with Darby], we called it the backseat scene. Its the scene where theyre driving to school. One day Darby said, [singing], I want to do the backseat scene with Ia-in. Then wed go on to the song, so now the song sounds like, [sings], I want to do the back scene with Iain, and Chloe, and Ivy, and Darby, and Nicholas and Cameron who play twins. Now thats the whole thing. Thats our theme tune.

You had a scene in a recent episode where Ziggy has to draw a family tree and he gets really angry with Jane because she doesnt know his dads name. How was it to play such an emotional scene?

Me and my mom and my dad, we all get along very well. We all play with each other, we all hug. Were like a hugging, lovey, never fight family. Also, if we fight, it always ends in a hug and I love you.

It didnt really come naturally because Im not used to fighting with my parents. But it was kinda fun. Ive got to admit, one person said to me, Was it hard to throw down the chair? You must have felt so bad. I was like, No, I didnt. No, I didnt. I loved it. It was fun.

How many takes of that scene did you have to do?

We did like four takes and I was like, Can we do more? They were like, I think weve dented up the floor enough.

Music plays such a big part of this show. Darbys character, in particular, has always got her earbuds in. What kind of music do you like to listen to?

Well, I do a lot of show tunes because you know [starts singing again], Come on along and listen to, the lullabies of Broadway. Literally, thats what I do. I come along and listen to the lullabies of Broadway. And then this show got me into David Bowie and now I know virtually all of his songs. I can literally right now, on the spot, you can choose from 15 songs and I can sing any one. I love, love, love, love David Bowie. I have a record player and I have most of his records and I play them a lot.

What do you like about David Bowie?

In an interview, someone asked him whats his favorite thing to dress as? He had a lot of different costumes and cool stuff. He said  Im not quoting him, though  he said something like, well, I dont really know how Im going to dress next month. In a month, I may be dressing like an alien and the month after that, I may be dressing as Superman. He could be dressing as anyone and it would just depend on the day. He could dress as a variety street performer, he could be dressing as a king, he could be dressing as a knight, he could be dressing as an alien, he could be dressing as a monster. Just that change and that amazing voice of his. He just seemed magical.

He was. Its interesting: When I interviewed Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven on Stranger Things, she also said that has a record player. I thought that kids didnt listen to records anymore, but I guess you guys do.

We do, we do. About five out of every ten kids has a record player. A lot of children like to listen to music, yeah. You want to know something funny?

Yeah!

To go further into the root of David Bowie, me, and BLL, theres kind of a triangle there. Monsieur Jean-Marc [Valee], our director  our amazing, fantastical director  I have a fun fact about him. I had a birthday and I was in Montreal, where he lives, and so we said, Oh, do you want to come to my birthday party? Even though I was just planning, like, cake with my friends. He said, Oh, you know, it might be better if you come here. I would like to show you Fake Studios where I work. So we came there. Instead of seeing just a boring office, we saw this elaborate, beautiful place. Better yet, he had set up his own party for me. There was a beautiful cake. There were streamers. There was confetti. It was crazy amazing! He is the best. He gave me the record player along with a record of David Bowie. So he was really the one who got me into it.

He basically threw you a surprise party.

Yes, maam. I was obviously planning a little party. Like, I wasnt planning to have all my friends and everyone there. He was like, No, welcome to Fake Studios. Then he threw this amazing party and I was dumbfounded.

Youve got a lot of projects on your plate. You just signed up to play Sheldon in this Big Bang Theory spinoff. Thats exciting.

Yes, maam. Thank you.

Were you familiar with The Big Bang Theory? Had you watched that show before?

No, maam.

Can you tell me what that shows going to be like?

I havent really read the script. I read a teeny bit, so not really. I read the first two paragraphs.

Are you going to have to move to L.A. to do the show?

We dont think so. We dont really know. We just started, so were still figuring it out.

Do you eventually want to make acting your full-time job?

Well, maybe. Im sitting here in an apartment right now because were out in L.A. doing the Young Sheldon, Big Bang Theory thing. Literally, Im not kidding, I have a tablet filled with magic tricks, to the very brim. I love magic. I think I want to be a magician in Las Vegas when I grow up.

So I have seen all of Big Little Lies except for the last episode. I dont want to know what happens, but can you tell me something about the last episode? Will I be shocked by how it all turns out?

Yes, maam. Definitely, maam.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
All three who are the eighth, ninth and tenth accused surrendered following a directive from the Kerala High Court that rejected their bail plea.

By India Today Web Desk: Three co-accused - a priest and two nuns - surrendered before the Kerala police today in connection with the rape of a minor by a priest in Kottiyoor of Kerala's Kannur district.

Fr Joseph Therakam, who is the former Wayanad Child Welfare Commitee chairman, Sister Ophilia, superintendent of Holy Infant Mary Orphanage, and another Sister Betty surrendered before the circle inspector of Peravoor today.

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All three who are the eighth, ninth and tenth accused surrendered following a directive from the Kerala High Court that rejected their bail plea. The High Court had asked them to surrender before March 17.

ACCUSED PRIEST ARRESTED ON FEBRUARY 28

The 17-year-old survivor gave birth to a child after being raped by the priest. The accused priest, identified as Father Robin Vaddakumchiryil (48), was arrested on February 28.

The incident came to light after the police was informed by child-line activists following an anonymous complaint that a girl gave birth.

On enquiry, the teenager, who is in standard eleventh, stated that she was raped by the priest at a church.

Father Vaddakumchiryil (48), the bishop of St Sebastian church has confessed to the crime. He is the manager of the school where the girl studies.

The Father has been charged under stringent provisions of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Pocso) and IPC.

ALSO READ | 7 minor girls in Kerala orphanage raped for 2 months

28-year-old mother-of-two gangraped by 5, accused say they brought her home for paid sex

--- ENDS ---
Ms. Julie and her Greenies. Photo: Ali Goldstein/Netflix

Julie Andrews loves working with puppets. In the new Netflix series Julies Greenroom, the puppets in question come courtesy of the famous Jim Henson Company. Theyre a collection of children, known as Greenies, who are putting on a show in a small theater with the help of Ms. Julie (Andrews herself) and her assistant Gus (Giullian Yao Gioiello). The Greenies have a variety of different backgrounds and interests, including one puppet who operates a wheelchair  and because, according to Julie Andrews, every theater needs a duck, there is also a duck.

The experience of working with the Greenies is joyful, Andrews said in an interview with Vulture, the puppeteers operate them with joy. She and her daughter, the writer and arts advocate Emma Walton Hamilton, who co-created Julies Greenroom with Andrews and Judy Rothman Rofe, hope that joy rubs off on you  or more importantly, on your children. The series also includes guest cameos from the likes of Idina Menzel, Alec Baldwin, and Carol Burnett, offering both a kid-friendly tour of the performing arts and an argument about their importance. Ahead of the shows March 17 premiere, Andrews and Hamilton sat down to talk about defending the arts in the most subtle, but overt way, why its important to get kids into art while theyre young, and how they cast Ms. Julies assistant.

In this show, youre focusing so much on promoting arts education 

Julie Andrews: Trying to in the most subtle, but overt way. Hopefully without everybody knowing that were hammering them on the head with it.

Why do you think it is so important?

Emma Walton Hamilton: As an artist and arts advocate, we know firsthand all the statistics that you hear about. The arts are the most uniquely suited to provide young people with critical-thinking skills, problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, empathy and tolerance and compassion, looking at the other point of views.

JA: They are the safest bridge to other cultures and other worlds that you could possibly cross.

EWH: Theyre unifying or theyre not, depending on how subversive or how controversial they are. They level the playing field and they open your mind in a way that nothing else does. So, from our point of view, the earlier you start with that, the better. Because kids get comfortable with it or get exposed to it, get curious about it, or excited about it. If you wait until youre an adult to be exposed to the arts, it could seem elitist, it could seem out of reach, it could seem scary.

JA: The fact that so much funding is cut, it does give you pause. A lot of people think its frivolous, and it is not at all. Its essential.

EWH: Well, that is what they say, but I think what they really think is that its threatening. Its easy to say thats frivolous and meaningless, but underneath, its potentially threatening and so lets just put a lid on that.

The Trump administration is talking about cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

JA: Prime example of what were talking about. They just dont get it. Twas ever thus in England, too.

EWH: We hope by aiming our program at a young audience  although we really hope its a family experience  that we are nurturing and cultivating, not just the artists, but the arts appreciators and the audiences.

Its interesting how you include a character who is a donor to the theater, eventually revealed to be Carol Burnett, which emphasizes the financial realities of making art.

JA: Well, funnily enough, shes an important one. The arts need funding. Shes our benefactor, and she plays our wacky benefactor.

EWH: We chose to set the show in a small community-theater-type setting, in a regional, or rural, or suburban environment rather than a major cultural institution, because not everybody in the country can get to Broadway or can afford Broadway.

JA: They certainly cant these days.

EWH: But there are these small community theaters. There are these regional theaters, and cultural centers all over the country, all over the world. They do need to be supported by patrons. But they are accessible, or should be accessible. We want to make that case. Hopefully we get people curious about going out and exploring their local community center.

Lets talk about the puppets. Theyre so charming, and you got to work with the Jim Henson Company in making them.

JA: All of it has been an indulgence in the arts for us, hasnt it? Just joyful, watching the designers 

EWH: Learning about puppetry. The art of puppetry and what these puppeteers do.

JA: If we get a second season, which we hope we do 

EWH: Were going to devote a show to puppetry.

JA: Of all kinds! Marionettes 

EWH: These puppeteers, they are, first of all, they are athletes in a way. Because they are standing all day with their arms up in the air, watching a monitor. Reading their scripts, voicing the puppet, manipulating the puppet with facial expressions, with eyes opening or closing, hands moving, and nine times out of ten, sliding around on little wheelie-carts and navigating each other.

JA: The wheelchair one alone is manipulated by two people, and with joy. I mean, theyre unsung heroes. They really are.

The series moves through each step in the process of putting together a show, from casting onward. How did you decide what to focus on in each episode?

EWH: We had been asked by Netflix to serialize the episodes to tie them together. So when youre doing a show about the arts, the ending naturally cries out to be the show. Then, the arts that were focusing on should be the building blocks of putting on that show. We worked backwards. We knew that if the last episode is the show, then the second to last episode should probably be dress rehearsal, which would be the technical stuff backstage.

JA: And a disaster, because it always is.

You have an assistant on the show named Gus. What did you look for in casting him?

EWH: We were specifically looking for a few things. We were looking for youth.

JA: A young man, to identify with the kids, if I didnt.

EWH: And a different gender. So we were looking for young and male and hopefully, with a diverse cultural background.

JA: And talented.

EWH: Julian is half-Chinese, half-Italian. And he needed to be able to sing and dance.

He gets to sing, and sing with you.

EWH: This guy can sing, he can play guitar, he can juggle, he can beatbox. He just blew us away, and hes adorable.

JA: The kids are going to fall in love with him. Theyre going to fantasize and think hes so swell. He can do things that I cant. I can be a good mother and give the hugs and the TLC 

EWH: And somebody had to do the heavy lifting backstage. Ms. Julie cant. So hes really the stage manager.

JA: We compress enormously. It takes a lot more people than that [in a real production]. But this show is just fine.

When it comes to opening peoples minds to the arts, especially kids minds, what other shows or art forms do you think they should seek out?

EWH: Well, Hamilton. Thats first and foremost.

JA: Just anything. Im hoping that theyll find out, or a parent will find out, what turns their child on by watching this series. If the child said, I liked STOMP best and I liked the banging on the box and the drums and the this and the that, then you lead them in that direction. For me, it was everything from classical music to reading, and ballet was so essential. But it was hard because we couldnt beat people on the head with it. You couldve done a vast show. You couldve done an hour on the ballet. We only had so many minutes!

EWH: What we really would love the most, our absolute hope for this show, is that kids and families will watch the show together and that it will inspire curiosity in them to go out and investigate further whatever aspect of the arts turns them on. Maybe its experimenting with the arts themselves, or maybe its as an audience member. Or I dont know, become an arts writer. Theres something in it for everyone.
Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

Instead of giving Iron Fist the one-star rating it deserves, youll soon be able to give it a very satisfying thumbs down. Netflix has announced that the service is moving away from a five-star ratings system to a much more straightforward thumbs up/thumbs down choice. Five stars feels very yesterday now, Todd Yellin, Netflix president of product, told the Verge. Yellin said the thumbs system communicates personal taste better. Whats more powerful: you telling me you would give five stars to the documentary about unrest in the Ukraine; that youd give three stars to the latest Adam Sandler movie; or that youd watch the Adam Sandler movie ten times more frequently? Yellin said. (Not for nothing, but could we meet this huge Adam Sandler fan?)

Another Netflix update: It will start using algorithms not unlike dating sites to recommend movies based not just on related titles, but on how likely it is youll enjoy it based on your earlier activity and demonstrated interests. In addition to tracking and making titles available based on geographic location, the site will now track the success of titles across members with similar taste profiles. Were finding these clusters of people and then were figuring out who is like you, who enjoys these kinds of things, and then were mixing and matching those, Yellin said. Congratulations to everyone whos shown a propensity for foreign dramas featuring a strong female lead, but also enjoys Luke Cage and Gossip Girl  should our cluster start a newsletter?


Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Rachel Maddow may have had to endure some mocking from Twitter and Stephen Colbert, but her Tuesday Trump taxes exclusive delivered massive ratings for her already red-hot MSNBC show. Per just-released Nielsen data, Tuesdays The Rachel Maddow Show was seen by 4.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched show on cable for the night and beating first-run scripted programming on ABC and Fox during the 9 p.m. hour. Tune in for the Twitter-touted episode was more than 30 percent above Maddows already-inflated recent audience levels, and MSNBC confirmed it was the most-watched regularly scheduled episode of the show ever. Even more impressive: Maddow drew younger viewers to cable news. Tuesdays show notched a 1.0 rating among adults under 50, more than doubling her usual demographic skew and tripling the demo rating for usual cable news leader The OReilly Factor (0.32). Not immediately known: Whether Maddow lost many viewers in the second half of her hour-long show, once she revealed Trumps taxes. But even if the audience shrank, it remained substantial: The Last Word With Lawrence ODonnell, which airs right after Maddow, notched a much bigger than usual  2.7 million from 10 to 11 p.m.
Danny DeVito, Mark Ruffalo, and Tony Shalhoub in Arthur Millers The Price. Photo: Joan Marcus/2016 Joan Marcus

We are used to thinking of Arthur Miller as a restless moralist: an American superego salesman with a big territory to cover. But being a playwright, he is also, of course, a sensualist; his dialogue has great mouthfeel. The pleasure it gives is at its plainest and fullest in characters like Gregory Solomon, the 89-year-old Russian-Jewish furniture dealer played by Danny DeVito in the Roundabouts gripping if slightly muddy revival of Millers 1968 drama The Price. Arriving in the attic of a Manhattan brownstone to evaluate the thicket of breakfronts, chiffoniers, tables, chairs, carpets, and whatnots packing every inch of space, DeVito as Solomon delivers himself of such shtetl-cut judgments as, Anything Spanish-Jacobean, youll sell quicker a case of tuberculosis, and, If they would build old hotels, I could sell that, but they only build new hotels. As character writing, its dead-on; Miller knew the patois inside out. But DeVito also makes clear  between hailstorms of phlegm, in a crafty and totally delightful performance  that such lines are not merely for comic effect. Its really Millers struggle to squeeze philosophy out of the chaos of living that gives his dialogue, and thus his plays, their superb chewiness. And in The Price, that struggle is not just the method, but the story.

Its a story Miller knew too well. Like his own family, the Franzes in The Price were wealthy enough to employ a chauffeur (and collect nice furniture) before the Depression ruined them. The mother quickly died and the father, booted upstairs after losing the rest of the brownstone, went into a trance of miserly regret for the rest of his life. Their two college-age sons took radically different paths trying to get past the disaster. Victor, the younger, gave up his studies in order to provide for himself and his father, both of whom were reduced to eating the outer leaves of lettuce from the Greek restaurant on the corner. Eventually, with no funds to resume his training, he swallowed his dreams of becoming a scientist and took a job as a cop instead. Meanwhile, his older brother, Walter, looked after himself exclusively. He completed college and medical school, becoming a wealthy surgeon: an instrument, he says, that cuts money out of people. He sent his father only $5 a month; his struggling kid brother, nothing.

The play takes place half a lifetime later  today, Miller wrote, presumably meaning 1968. Victor (Mark Ruffalo) is now turning 50 and, with the brownstone about to be torn down, needs to sell the attics contents. He reaches out to Walter (Tony Shalhoub), with whom he has not spoken in 16 years, to see if he might like to keep anything for himself. But once the two of them reunite in that unhappy room, along with Victors frustrated wife, Esther (Jessica Hecht), the present collapses into the hole of the past. Who did what, and why, and what it meant are questions they evaluate as keenly as Solomon does their mothers cracked harp. For Victor the cop, the upshot, naturally, is guilt: How could his brother have left him to eat garbage? For Walter, denial is at the heart of the matter: Victor, he feels, threw away his life not because he had to, but because he refused to believe the painful truth about their family. (We invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know.) As for Esther, who thought she was marrying a like-minded nonconformist but ended up stuck in the rat race anyway, the issue is regret and the solution is money. She cant help admiring Walter, or at least his fine camel-hair coat, which, he says, cost two gallstones. For the pragmatic, which is to say the selfish man, everything is fungible, including family.

That the plays real action has all taken place long in the past is a dramatic sacrifice Miller was apparently willing to make, in order to force his characters to struggle with questions of interpretation. How do we shape our lives from what we believe? He keeps the plot twisting with ideas instead of events; The Price doesnt so much advance as it turns like a screw, deeper and deeper into the soft wood of memory. At some point in the second half  the play was originally done in one act, but Terry Kinney, the director of this revival, has divided it neatly in two  it becomes difficult to keep track of the box score of grievance, and you feel that Miller was not quite able, or willing, to clarify something that was naturally fuzzy. In any case, Kinneys production slightly compounds the problem by leaving too much of the argumentation unshaped; the actors, too  though already powerful and moving  sometimes look as if they need more time to figure out where they are. Of the three Franzes, Shalhoub as Walter is furthest along, but then Walter has the upper hand and the sharpest lines. Ruffalo, who is heartbreakingly sincere onstage, and Hecht, a live wire in a perfect pink-sherbet suit by Sarah J. Holden, still seem like they are working it out in real time, which is exciting, if occasionally baffling. Of course, DeVito, as the clown cleaning up after the elephants and their memories, walks off with the show.

That was generous of Miller, and maybe unavoidable. If you set out to write a philosophical mystery, its probably going to be mysterious. I like that unresolved quality in The Price  the way the puzzle pieces not only dont fit, but seem to be from different boxes. Perhaps the plays shifting sympathies, and its vigorous support for opposing points of view, arises from Millers autobiography: When the Depression exiled his family from Harlem to Gravesend, he sold bread to help the family make ends meet, but made sure he finished college. He was both Victor and Walter: disgusted by the fact that theres just no respect for anything but money in the world, and yet, by 1968, a man who had a lot of silk-stocking (or camel-hair) problems. No wonder, after the great plays about community that earned him those silk stockings, Miller turned in his 50s back to the family, leaving the world mostly out of the picture. (Derek McLanes marvelous set merely hints at it, with baleful clouds in the background.) The Price is almost abstract in its argumentation, as if in a Socratic treatise. Youd think that a play so wordy and rangy would be unwelcome in todays theatrical environment, which favors large, uncomplicated, single-minded action. But thats why its so needed. Its an old hotel, the kind they dont build anymore.

The Price is at the American Airlines Theatre through May 7.
Shes back and ready to smize. Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images

Tyra Banks heard the Americas Next Top Model fandom shout Who? when Rita Ora took over hosting duties for the resurrected modeling competition, and after a season spent on the sidelines, the inventor of such lexicon staples as the smize and the booty tooch is coming to reclaim her reality crown. Im overwhelmed and humbled by the intensity of the ANTM fan base whose deep affection for the show led me to have a change of heart. After giving it a lot of thought, I realized that remaining behind the camera wasnt enough because ANTM is woven into my DNA, Banks said in a statement released by VH1. In other words, Bankss DNA screamed Snatch it back! and so Tyra shall return.

Fellow producer Ken Mok is also enthusiastic about Ms. Tyras larger-than-life personality coming back to the show, saying, Tyra has always been the heart and soul of the franchise and her absence was deeply felt by our fiercely loyal fans who missed their Queen of the Smize. Wed like to thank Rita Ora for being a great partner and total pro. She infused this new iteration of ANTM with passion and creativity and we wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors. Professionalism aside, a Rita Oracle is no Tyra Mail.
The following movies are showing at first-run theaters Regal Jewel 16 (RJ16), Starplex Galaxy 16 (SG16) and the Waco Hippodrome (WH).

New in theaters

B BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Rich visuals and capable acting highlight an expanded, live-action version of the classic 1991 Disney animated feature. Rated PG. Frightening images, some action violence. 2 hours, 9 minutes. RJ16, SG16, WH.

C THE BELKO EXPERIMENT Violent, but limited horror film about occupants of a sealed Colombian office building forced into a deadly fight to survive. Rated R. Profanity and sexual references, some drug use, strong bloody violence. 1 hour, 28 minutes. SG16, RJ16.

Also showing

B BEFORE I FALL A popular teen learns about lasting values in reliving the final day of her life in a youth-targeted story that might make some parents squirm. Rated PG-13. Mature thematic content involving profanity, drinking, sexuality and bullying, all involving teens, and some violent images. 1 hour, 39 minutes. SG16, RJ16.

C A DOGS PURPOSE A slobbery, wet kiss for dog lovers, but a bit corny and sentimental story following a dogs spirit through five successive incarnations. Parents and dog owners should be advised that dogs die in the film. Rated PG. Thematic elements, some peril. 1 hour, 40 minutes. RJ16.

C+ FIFTY SHADES DARKER The sex-playing couple of Fifty Shades Of Gray, come back for more thats part steamy, part silly and not so much dark. Rated R. Profanity, strong erotic sexual content, some graphic nudity. 2 hours, 6 minutes. SG16.

C- FIST FIGHT Clunky, gag-driven comedy about two battling high school teachers (Ice Cube and Charlie Day) that lands few comic punches. Rated R. Frequent profanity, sexual content, nudity, drug material. 1 hour, 31 minutes. SG16.

B GET OUT Jordan Peele (Key and Peele) shifts from comedy to horror with telling effect with a young black man finding something sinister in a weekend visit to his white girlfriends family. Rated R. Profanity including sexual references, bloody images, violence. 1 hour, 43 minutes. RJ16, SG16.

C- THE GREAT WALL A multi-layered mess of a film has Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal as medieval mercenaries caught in a Chinese battle against hordes of wall-attacking monsters. Rated PG-13. Sequences of fantasy action violence. 1 hour, 43 minutes. RJ16.

B HIDDEN FIGURES Compelling story of three female African-American mathematicians who overcame others prejudice to play key roles in the manned space program. Rated PG. Brief profanity, thematic elements. 2 hours, 6 minutes. RJ16.

B JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 Relentless hitman John Wick (Keanu Reeves) returns in a deliriously action-packed film that spoofs B-movies while relishing in their excesses. Rated PG-13. Some profanity, brief nudity, strong violence. 2 hours, 2 minutes. SG16.

C+ KONG: SKULL ISLAND New King Kong installment moves action to 1973 with the Vietnam War as backdrop, but tone flips between serious and silly, with movies true purpose a fresh line of monster movies. Rated PG-13. Brief strong profanity, intense sequences of action violence. 1 hour, 58 minutes. SG16, RJ16.

A THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE Gleefully witty and delicious sequel to The Lego Movie that assembles considerable fun from superhero satire., action and affection for its characters  and audience. Rated PG. Rude humor, some action. 1 hour, 45 minutes. RJ16. SG16.

B LOGAN Violent, darker and complex chapter of the X-Man Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) saga has him protecting a child pursued for her special powers. Rated R. Frequent profanity, brief nudity, strong brutal violence. 2 hours, 21 minutes. RJ16, SG16.

C- THE SHACK Adaptation of William Paul Youngs best-selling novel about a grieving man healed through a metaphorical encounter with the Christian Trinity stumbles on a thin main character and glib answers to hard questions. Rated PG-13. Thematic material, some violence. 2 hours, 12 minutes. SG16, RJ16.

C SPLIT M. Night Shyamalans psychological thriller about a kidnapper with multiple personalities. Rated PG-13. Some profanity, disturbing thematic content and behavior, violence. 1 hour, 57 minutes. SG16.
Bipartisan committees of US lawmakers have rejected Donald Trump's claim that Barack Obama ordered a wire tap of his phones during the 2016 US presidential election.

By India Today Web Desk: A bipartisan intelligence committee of the United States Congress's upper house said it has found no evidence supporting Republican President Donald Trump's claim that his phones were tapped in 2016 on orders of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the US government either before or after Election Day 2016," the committee's chair Richard Burr and Democratic member Mark Warner of Virginia, said in a joint statement issued Thursday.

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The Senate Intelligence Committee's finding came a day after its counterpart in the House of Representatives came to the same conclusion. Both the committees are chaired by leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Commenting on the intelligence committees' findings House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said, "The point is, the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom...that no such wiretap existed."

His comments referred to US Congress's existing investigation into allegations Russia interfered in last year's US election process.

WHITE HOUSE: TRUMP STANDS BY CLAIMS

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, responding to a question on the committees' conclusions, said "[Trump] stands by it (the allegations),"

The allegations were first made by the US president on March 4, when he took to Twitter to say he had just learnt that Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump's phones in the run up to the US presidential election.

Trump, who offered no proof to substantiate his allegation, went on to tweet, "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad guy!"

Obama has expressly denied the charge and leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties have called on Trump to offer proof to support claims.

ALSO READ | White House asks Congress to probe Trump's accusation of Obama wiretap

ALSO WATCH | Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping him during election campaign

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By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Mar 17 (PTI) Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar today said the Opposition was not concerned about the plight of farmers and their demand for a loan waiver is a "political gimmick".

"Their demands are only political gimmicks. They are not at all concerned with sufferings of farmers. They think that by stalling the business of the legislature, people will forgive them for their 15 years of misrule," Mungantiwar told reporters here.

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The BJP leader said the Opposition had failed to do anything for farmers when they were in power at Centre and in Maharashtra.

"They (opposition Congress and NCP) are aware of their inaction when they were in power. In recent civic elections in some parts of the state they have lost miserably. Let the Congress do it (waive off loans) for farmers in Karnataka first," he said.

The minister said the state government was very much in favor of permanently waiving off the debt burden of farmers, but at the same time the government wants to ensure that farmers do not fall into a debt trap again.

He also dismissed the contention that state government can directly deposit farmers money in banks.

"Most of the district central cooperative banks and agricultural credit cooperatives are controlled by Congress and NCP. Their real motive behind the demand is these banks want their dues cleared," Mungantiwar said.

What is the guarantee that these banks will transfer the loan waiver funds to the farmers, he asked.

The government will need Rs 30,500 crore to waive off the debt of 31 lakh farmers in the state. There are about 1.36 crore farmers bank accounts in the state.

The proceedings of the Maharashtra legislature remain disrupted during the ongoing budget session on the loan waiver demand being raised aggressively by Congress and NCP.

Mungantiwar said the agricultural production, which has been in the negative for the last several years, has turned positive this year.

He said the government was studying options to reduce burden on agriculture by focusing on skill development and paying more attention on sectors that add value to the agri sector. PTI MM NSK

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By Press Trust of India: Washington, Mar 17 (PTI) The shape of our noses was formed by a long process of adaptation to our local climate, according to a new study published today.

Researchers found that wider noses are more common in warm-humid climates, while narrower noses are more common in cold-dry climates.

"We are interested in recent human evolution and what explains the evident variation in things like skin color, hair color and the face itself," said Mark D Shriver, professor at Pennsylvania State University in the US.

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"We focused on nose traits that differ across populations and looked at geographical variation with respect to temperature and humidity," said Shriver.

Researchers considered a variety of nose measurements, looking at the width of the nostrils, the distance between nostrils, the height of the nose, nose ridge length, nose protrusion, external area of the nose and the area of the nostrils. The measurements were made using 3D facial imaging.

Differences in the human nose may have accumulated among populations through time as a result of a random process called genetic drift.

However, divergent selection - variation in natural selection across populations - may also be the reason that different populations have differing noses. Teasing the two apart is difficult, especially in humans.

The researchers found that the width of the nostrils and the base of the nose measurements differed across populations more than could be accounted for by genetic drift, indicating a role for natural selection in the evolution of nose shape.

To show that local climate contributed to this difference, researchers looked at the spatial distribution of these traits and correlated them with local temperatures and humidity.

They showed that the width of the nostrils is strongly correlated with temperature and absolute humidity.

One purpose of the nose is to condition inhaled air so that it is warm and moist. The narrower nostrils seem to alter the airflow so that the mucous-covered inside of the nose can humidify and warm the air more efficiently.

It was probably more essential to have this trait in cold and dry climates, said Shriver. People with narrower nostrils probably fared better and had more offspring than people with wider nostrils, in colder climates.

This lead to a gradual decrease in nose width in populations living far away from the equator.

This is not the only explanation for nose-shape variation in humans. Researchers also found differences between men and women in nose features across the board.

Another way that the cross-population differences in nose size may occur is through sexual selection. People may choose mates simply because they find a smaller nose more attractive.

If an entire group thinks small is better, then those with large noses will have less success in reproducing.

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Over time, the nose size in the group will shrink relative to other groups. These notions of beauty may be linked to how well-adapted the nose is to the local climate.

The study was published in the journal PLOS Genetics. PTI MHN SAR MHN

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The Waco Downtown Farmers Market picked a big weekend to make its move from the riverfront to the McLennan County Courthouse parking lot.

The market will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at 510 Washington Ave., just four blocks from the Spring at the Silos festival which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

But farmers market officials say the more the merrier.

I think it will be a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase what the market has to offer to local customers as well as to out-of-town friends, market manager Kristi Pereira said.

The farmers market has typically drawn more than 2,000 people per Saturday to its old Webster Avenue location by the Brazos River, along with about 40 vendors. That site is now closing as the city starts a multimillion-dollar soil remediation project to prepare for a large riverfront development, but the farmers market is set to return to the area in 2019.

In the meantime, Pereira said she expects those vendors and fans to make the move to the temporary site, which will continue to offer a festival-like atmosphere with games, music and picnic tables.

The biggest challenge will be managing traffic and parking, she said. Pereira said theres plenty of free parking for the new market site with the Dr. Mae Jackson Development Center buildings parking garage on Fourth Street and the McLennan County Archives Building, 215 N. Fifth St. available. Downtown and farmers market volunteers will assist with signs and directing traffic.

Still, she said, I think it will be a little congested for the first couple of weekends.

It will take some practice, but that was the case at the old location, Pereira said. Eventually everyone will figure it out.

She said she is encouraging regulars through social media to cycle or walk to the market if possible. Another option is to take the new Silo District Trolley, which makes stops on Austin Avenue.

Megan Henderson, executive director of City Center Waco and a member of the farmers market board, emphasized that visitors should not park in private lots, such as those serving Cafe Cappuccino and the ALICO Building.

We want this to be a good experience not just for the vendors and customers but the part of downtown theyll be entering, Henderson said.

Meanwhile, the city has already started cleaning up the riverfront site where Catalyst Urban Development is set to begin a three-phase project late this year.

The city has pledged up to $8 million to clean old waste buried at the site, but City Manager Dale Fisseler said hes hopeful the cost will be much less. Fisseler said city officials plan to coordinate the cleanup so less work has to be done on the footprints of the new buildings.

We figure thats smarter than trying to give them a completely clean site, he said.

Fisseler said the first phase of the development, which includes restaurants, shops, interior streets, a parking garage, apartments and a renovated farmers market site, is due to be complete by late 2019.

Henderson and city officials said they expect to hold public meetings late this spring on the design of the new farmers market and other public spaces at the development, which is called Brazos Promenade.

Pereira, the market manager, said she hopes the public will continue to support the market in the meantime.

We will definitely miss our spot down by the river, she said. Theres no denying its one of the most beautiful markets in the state of Texas. But given the circumstances and the fact that we are supposed to return, the courthouse area is a wonderful relocation spot.
The government has invested more in infrastructure and transportation which has helped them to maintain the speed of growth rate steady.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: The Economic Survey of Maharashtra indicates that the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) is expected to grow at 9.4 per cent in 2016-17 as compared to 8.5 per cent of 2015-16. Also there is positive news for agriculture sector. Survey estimates agriculture and allied sector's growth will be 12.5 per cent from minus 4.6 per cent.

State's Economic Survey for 2016-17 was tabled by Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar who feels that Maharashtra is moving towards double digit growth in upcoming years. But state's public finance will be a big concern for the state government as its total debt is estimated to be Rs 3.56 lakh crore. As compared to Rs 3.2 lakh crore, interest payment is also set to increase from Rs 28220 crore to Rs 26217 crore.

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The government has invested more in infrastructure and transportation which has helped them to maintain the speed of growth rate steady. Maharashtra has also taken development work of 10 cities of states which got nominated for Smart City project. At the end of March 2016 the total road length maintained by PWD and ZP was about 3.01 lakh. About 99 per cent villages were connected by all-rounder roads or fair weather roads.

Importantly, the figure of land under irrigation was not mentioned. On being asked, the minister promised to read out the figures on Saturday.

Today when economic survey was getting tabled in Upper House Congress and NCP created uproar as Shiv Sena leader and state minister for Finance Deepak Kesarkar was tabling it. They opposed to Kesarkar saying Shiv Sena also wants loan waiver for farmers then how can Sena ministers table Economic Survey? But clarifying his stand while speaking to media Deepak Kesarkar told it's his duty to table this survey and present tomorrow's budget. He has got same instructions from party chief Uddhav Thackeray to continue his duty first.

According to the Economic Survey, total debt stock of Rs 3.56 lakh crore is 15.7 per cent of GSDP and is well within the limit of 22.1 per cent laid down by the 14th Finance Commission.

Also read:

India Today Conclave 2017: HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh says GST can push up GDP by 150-200 bps

Demonetisation effect to spill over to next quarter in some segments: Reserve Bank of India

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A McLennan County jury found that Jeffrey Place Rehabilitation Center officials were negligent in their care of a blind, diabetic Waco man and awarded the mans family $450,000 in damages Friday.

Jurors in Wacos 414th State District Court deliberated about 7 hours over two days before siding with Greg H. Byrd and his wife, Kim, in their wrongful death lawsuit against the Waco nursing center and its parent company, Senior Living Properties LLC.

Byrds father, Homer Byrd, a 79-year-old retired tractor mechanic, died in November 2015, a month after being admitted to Jeffrey Place, 820 Jeffrey St.

Testimony from the five-day trial showed that Byrd, a diabetic on dialysis, developed an infected big toe that turned gangrenous, which led to Byrds right leg being amputated just above his knee and, ultimately, to his death.

The plaintiffs expert witness, a geriatric specialist from California, testified that Jeffrey Place staff breached the ordinary standard of care by failing to promptly spot and treat the infected toe. Nurses testified they noticed the toe, but not until the wound had turned black, had a foul odor and was 4 centimeters by 5 centimeters.

He also said there was an inordinate delay in taking Byrd to the hospital.

A defense expert testified that Jeffrey Place personnel followed the directions of the centers medical director and did all they could for Byrd, who was seriously ill when he arrived at the center and was suffering from a variety of ailments, including heart problems and major vascular and circulatory problems.

Lee Cameron, a Dallas attorney who represented Jeffrey Place, and Heather Hicks, Jeffrey Place administrator, both declined comment after the trial.

Very thankful

I am very thankful to the jury, Greg Byrd said after the trial. They really paid attention and they stood up for my dad. I am very thankful to my attorneys, Jack Modesett and Vic Feazell, for taking on this case and taking it to the jury. They did such a great job.

The jury awarded the exact amounts Modesett requested during his final summations Thursday afternoon. The awards include $100,000 for pain and mental anguish suffered by Homer Byrd before his death, $75,000 for Greg Byrds loss of his fathers companionship and love and $75,000 for Greg Byrds mental anguish over his fathers death.

Modesett did not suggest a figure for exemplary or punitive damages, saying he was going to leave that figure to the jurys discretion. The jury awarded $200,000 in exemplary damages.

Shortly before the jury returned its verdict Friday afternoon, it inquired of Judge Vicki Menard about the net worth of Senior Living Properties LLC. Because there was no evidence of that at trial, the judge could not answer the question.

Juror Brandon Crocker said after the trial that he would have awarded more money to the Byrds in punitive damages if the decision had been solely his.

Due to the evidence we saw, it was just gross negligence, Crocker said. There was a lot more that could have been done for this man, and it was just absolute refusal to see a problem that is blatantly obvious.

Feazell and Modesett said they are pleased the jury provided some justice for the Byrds.

I think today was a victory for the people of Waco and elderly people everywhere, Modesett said. We had an amazing jury. They were very attentive and paid careful attention to the medical testimony. That is a testament to how fine the people were sitting on the jury.
Jurors recommended Thursday that a man convicted of sexually abusing a young family member for six years be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

A 54th State District Court jury convicted James Stanton Rudolph, 43, on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of indecency with a child by contact. The jury deliberated about 40 minutes Thursday before recommending that Judge Matt Johnson sentence Rudolph to 20 years in prison on one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child and 10 years in prison on one count of indecency with a child by contact.

Jurors recommended that Rudolph be placed on probation on all the other counts, despite pleas from prosecutors that Rudolph deserved a life prison term and that probation is not appropriate in his case.

Johnson did not sentence Rudolph, but ordered the probation department to conduct a presentence background investigation. The judge will sentence Rudolph in about six weeks.

Rudolph was not eligible for probation on the two counts for which the jury recommended prison time because a law change in 2007 removed probation as an option for those types of sex crimes.

Assistant District Attorney Gabrielle Massey, who prosecuted Rudolph with Ryan Bownds, told the judge the state would be asking him to order Rudolph to serve the pair of prison sentences consecutively.

The jurys verdict means Rudolph likely will be placed on probation after he completes his prison sentences.

Rudolph was convicted of sexually assaulting a young family member for six years, starting when she was 6 in 2002.

In punishment-phase testimony Thursday, the girls father told the jury that the abuse caused changes in his daughter that he couldnt explain at the time. He said she was depressed, had mood swings and was filled with anxiety.

The girl told the jury that, now that she is older, she has trouble dealing with her past in her own relationships with boyfriends.

I am always reminded of what happened to me, she said.

Two of Rudolphs former landlords who became his friends testified for the defense that Rudolph is always friendly, generous with his time and eager to help others.

One said Rudolph worked with him in a small-scale homeless mission in which they hired homeless men to work odd jobs and tried to help them turn their lives around.

He cares about people, Martin Wright said. Its hard to find somebody like him. He has a caring heart, a servants heart.

Does it show a servants heart to molest a child between the ages of 6 and 12? Massey asked Wright on cross-examination.

In summations, Massey told the jury that while they charged Rudolph with six felony counts, it could have been 100 counts over the six-year period.

She is strong now. But he ripped the innocence from that little girl. She is going to raise her kids knowing that people like Jimmy Rudolph exist, Massey said.

Defense attorney Steven Reed reminded jurors what witnesses said about Rudolphs good qualities and said he should not be sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Theres a chance that day in and day out he is going to be whipped every day in prison after they find out why he is there, Reed said. He could get raped every day. He is going to feel pain. Life in prison for a man who has actually done some good is just overboard.
A former juvenile detention officer who was set to stand trial Monday in the 2014 death of his infant son was sentenced to 48 years in prison Thursday in a plea bargain with prosecutors.

Judge Ralph Strother of Wacos 19th State District Court approved the plea agreement with Anton Juel Henry, who pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of murder and injury to a child in the death of his 2-month-old son and injuries to the boys twin sister.

Anton Henry had been charged with capital murder, but prosecutors were not going to seek the death penalty against him. Prosecutors also agreed to dismiss one count of injury to a child and reduced the other count from a first-degree felony to a state-jail felony. Strother sentenced Anton Henry to 24 months in prison on the injury to a child count and ordered the sentences to be served concurrently.

Anton Henry, 30, must serve at least 24 years before he can become eligible for parole. If he had been found guilty of capital murder, he would have been sentenced to an automatic life sentence with no hope for parole.

In a victim-impact statement after the sentencing, his former wife, Rhonda Henry, the mother of his two children, told Anton Henry that at least he still would have a chance at a life that her son, Jaden, does not have.

I cant describe how much pain I have been in for the past three years of my life, she said. I never thought our marriage would come to an end like it did. I wouldnt wish this on my worst enemy. The hardest thing of all was telling our daughter what happened to her brother and her father. Every day I look at her and see you.

Thumbing through a photo album for Anton Henry to see, Rhonda Henry said, our happier times, while showing photos of her pregnancy and the birth of their twin children. The last photo in the book was taken at Jadens funeral, she said.

At the end of the day, God has the final say-so, and you will have to answer to him, Rhonda Henry said.

Blunt-force injury

Anton Henry pleaded guilty to killing his baby in June 2014 by fracturing his skull and ribs. An autopsy showed the child died from blunt-force injury. While Anton Henry made incriminating statements to police, he never told them exactly how he caused the injuries to the child.

Anton Henry, who had worked at the Bill Logue Juvenile Justice Center as a detention officer since September 2013, told police he was frustrated and overwhelmed by Jadens constant crying and that he grabbed the baby by his torso, squeezing him really hard, according to court records.

He also pleaded guilty to injuring his daughter, Jaliyah, by striking or squeezing her torso with his hand or fist and injuring her left ankle.

I think it is sad for both Mr. Henry and for his wife because nobody won, said attorney Russ Hunt, who represented Anton Henry with attorney Michelle Tuegel. It was just a case where we wanted to get the matter resolved. There are no winners.
A water bomber that once carried Richard Dreyfuss through smoke-filled skies to fight forest fires in the 1989 film Always has landed in Central Texas, where Allen Maxwell said it will stay for good.

The Douglas TB-26C Invader aircraft has been at McGregor Executive Airport for a few weeks and will be one of the highlights at the Heart of Texas Air Show on Saturday and Sunday at Texas State Technical Colleges airport. Gates open at 9 a.m. both days.

Though the pilot and the 1944 World War II plane have never seen wartime combat, both have a long history of soaring above the clouds, Maxwell said. He co-owns the plane with another pilot.

Maxwell estimates there are 15 B-26 aircraft still flying around the nation. Others are displayed at museums or military bases, including four in the Dallas area, he said.

I love to fly, but I love to show what I have to other people, Maxwell said. Bringing it to the air show, everyone can see it and talk about it. And I know war is not really good, but kids like (learning about) war. It just shows some of our history. You know, its a WWII airplane, and people love the warbirds. Unfortunately, most of the WWII people have gone away.

Maxwell first heard about the B-26 bomber in 2012, when a man from Georgia who had bought the plane contacted him about flying it from Montana to Georgia. For about a year, he and the planes former owner went to Montana every weekend to get it in working order.

It had been an air tanker for a whole bunch of years, but it sat outside after they stopped using it as a tanker, Maxwell said. We had to get it going again and had to change the engine and everything. Then I had to ferry the airplane from Billings, Montana, where its home was, to Georgia.

He was training the owner to fly the plane, but the job ended up being too much for the owner to handle, he said.

Maxwell traded a Douglas DC-3 airliner and took the B-26C to the Vietnam War Flight Museum in Houston. He used the bomber to train at least 10 other pilots and showed in other air shows, he said. The plane is part of the Vietnam War Flight Museums collection but will remain in McGregor for anyone who wants to see it, Maxwell said.

At 78, Maxwell has been in aviation now for 62 years. He started training at age 15 in New Jersey and took his first solo flight at 16. He joined the U.S. Air Force as a mechanic after high school, served as an airline pilot in general aviation for a while and flew with the Commemorative Air Force nonprofit historical preservation group, he said.

Maxwell is one of only a few people in the nation who has earned both the Wright Brothers Master Pilot award for 50 years of dedicated service, technical expertise and outstanding contributions and the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award from the Federal Aviation Administration for his dedication to aviation safety.

What this means is back in 2006, I had been a pilot for 50 years without an accident or documented violation, Maxwell said. And (the other) is a mechanics award that shows the same credentials, that I have not been guilty of any kind of violations.

The Always plane was originally a single person Douglas A-26 bomber. Then the military converted it to the TB-26C, with a dual-pilot operation system to facilitate training, Maxwell said.

The military owned the aircraft until 1960, and hes working to find out where the plane operated and who used it during that time, he said.

People like a little more war history, but all this is was a trainer, he said. It trained all the pilots who flew the B-26 who went to war.

The bomber, known as the Fire Eaters in the movie and owned by Lynch Flying Service at the time, still carries its red and white firefighting colors on the wings, but Maxwell has added some blue to the tips of the wings to make it more patriotic, he said. Then, under the planes logo sits the films title with a small camera painted next to it.

If you look up its serial number and you look at the movie credits, youll see there were two B-26s in the movie: No. 57, which was an air tanker, and this is air tanker No. 59, Maxwell said.

The aircraft was the most frequently seen water bomber throughout the film, according to the Internet Movie Plane Database, a community-driven website, similar to the Internet Movie Database but with a focus on the history of aircraft used in movies.

My favorite part about flying the B-26 is its fast. Its really fast, Maxwell said. This airplane is redlined at over 400 knots, and will outrun the old P-51 Mustang. It wont outmaneuver it, but itll go right by it, its so fast. You can fly it in the air show and go 300 mph and its just like seeing an airliner go by.

Having this kind of history in his own backyard has been cool, said Tim Taylor, who has been helping Maxwell take care of the plane since it arrived.

Its nice to have something like this, because I like that you can educate other people about it, Taylor said. They come up and say, Thats cool. What is it? and you can tell them about it. It just shows how far weve come between what we have now and what we used to have.

Its cool to go online and look because theres lots of people who talk about this plane all the time, saying, Its here. No, its there. But every morning I come to work, its right outside my hangar.

Unfortunately, though, continual maintenance is needed, Maxwell said. The plane runs on money, and hes looking for sponsors willing to help take care of the unique bird, he said.

The bomber runs on 150 gallons of fuel an hour and uses oil like theres no tomorrow, and a single barrel of oil costs $1,000, he said. The plane is up to date on all its inspections but needs some cosmetic TLC to make it look sharp after sitting outside for a while, Maxwell said.

The plane is capable, but he wont be flying anyone in it anytime soon. Overall, it takes about $4,000 for an hourlong flight, he said.

Its just because of the type of engine. Its called a round engine, and because of the configuration, oil runs all down the bottom all the time and always leaks out, Maxwell said. People say its not leaking anymore, but that means its out of oil.

What he needs are more volunteers and donations. After the air show, the plane will remain in McGregor for paint and polish, he said. He also wants to put back the eight gun barrels originally on the plane to keep it as authentic as possible, he said. The ultimate goal is to have the aircraft serve as a mobile museum and to open it up to anyone wanting to learn about it, he said.

I never expected to be in a position of life where Im flying all these warbirds, Maxwell said. Its really an honor to be able to do this.
While Baylor University remains ensnared in controversy , its important to remind one and all that this distinctly Christian university also sends forth into the world much that is good. It benefits those who practice all faiths, embrace all ideologies.

Example? Over the winter break, I had the opportunity to read William Mitchells book, Baylor in Northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom: Journeys to Dohuk for Higher Education, Democracy and Voices for Survivors. It chronicles the efforts of Baylor faculty to bolster and right institutions of higher learning in war-torn Iraq, particularly for the good people of Iraqi Kurdistan.

I appreciate Mitchells approach in his book. For one thing, it meshes well with Baylors broader mission: to advocate not only academic excellence but also Christian values throughout the community, whether that community is a poor neighborhood in North Waco or a stretch of forgotten Northern Iraq.

Theres a sober quality to this book, one fortified not only by Mitchells unhurried, straightforward recollections but documents and even addresses involving Iraqi leadership. It gives an idea of the chaos on the ground: U.S. troops working to do good, even as their efforts are misunderstood back home, and how academic goals can get lost in the haze of wartime  everything from poisoned water holes to displaced residents to terrorism.

Mitchells book reflects on his leadership, academic background (20 years teaching at Baylor, including leading study-abroad programs in Turkey for 12 years) and professional experience (33 years of military service, including duty in Vietnam and the First Gulf War, the latter as American Air Base commander at Incirlik, Turkey).

The book demonstrates Baylors commitment, love thy neighbor. Its not just a slogan for the best of this university but a call to action. It highlights and exemplifies how Mitchell, now a professor emeritus of political science, stepped outside his comfort zone, took on security challenges and embarked on a mission to save and educate neighbors at Dohuk University during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As one who spent years traveling to Iraq in support of U.S. government missions, I can attest to the security challenges Iraq presented and continues to present. I can only imagine the challenges Dr. Mitchell and his team faced when it came to arranging meetings, making site visits and coordinating with both academia and governmental entities to ensure access and the success of his project.

The book is well-organized. Each chapter exhibits an assortment of great ideas, vision, relevance and justification for why this project was conceived in the first place. Dr. Mitchell said it best  new generations soon will be on our campus and they deserve to have an account of this unique Baylor story.

Mitchells recently published account highlights the efforts and collaboration of a team of scholars toiling for a common good: to provide help with higher-education teaching in a democratic society with the rules of law, and to capture oral histories of the resilience and courage of Iraqi Kurds. This book is a great read and I hope you have an opportunity to read it as well.

David Oualaalou is a global affairs analyst, author and professor of political science at Texas A&M University  Commerce. He is the author of More Than a Handshake: The Ambiguous Foreign Policy of the United States Toward the Muslim World.
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, hasnt given up on immigration reform. He was in the Senate to watch comprehensive bills he favored fall apart in 2006, 2007 and 2013. He was one of the presidential candidates whom Donald Trump beat for the Republican nomination in 2016. Trump won that contest after saying he would deport all illegal immigrants over a two-year period.

But Trump softened on the issue after winning the nomination and Graham now thinks he can work with him to achieve many of the aims of those earlier bills. He isnt trying to revive comprehensive legislation one more time, but he also rejects the idea of tackling issues a la carte. If Republicans try to enact legislation that only increases enforcement of the immigration laws, he believes Democrats will block it.

Instead, he tells me, he favors a series of discrete deals.

The first one would combine ramped-up enforcement, starting with the bad dudes, and legalization of illegal immigrants who came here as minors. Republicans are open to that legalization, he said, and it would be hard for Democrats to say no to securing the border and helping these 800,000 kids have a better life.

The second deal would legalize adult illegal immigrants working in agriculture and tourism  and at the same time require employers to use the e-verify program to make sure all new hires are legal.

Third, Graham would legalize those remaining illegal immigrants who passed a background check and paid a fine. In return he wants to shift legal immigration toward recruiting people with high skills rather than reuniting extended families. The immigration system of the future would be merit-based, he says.

I opposed the previous bills that Graham supported, and Im not completely sold on this plan. But it has enough attractive elements to make me think that those of us who are more hawkish than Graham on immigration should consider it.

The earlier bills would have substantially increased immigration, and low-skilled immigrants would have made up much of the increase. Most Americans dont want that, and the economic case for it is weak. His current idea would not raise immigration levels.

Under earlier versions of comprehensive reform, illegal immigrants might have gotten legal status before effective enforcement measures were in place  because, for example, those measures were tied up in court. In that case, legalization could have acted as a magnet for more illegal immigration and we would remain stuck in a cycle of illegal immigration and amnesty. This three-step sequence would reduce this risk, because Congress would enact most of the legalization after enforcement had been implemented.

One reason advocates for illegal immigrants have opposed enforcement-first bills is that they have feared that Republicans would never get around to addressing their concerns once they got those bills enacted. Because Grahams first step would include legalization of illegal immigrants who came here as minors, though, it might be taken as a sign of good faith.

As leery as congressmen are about trying to address immigration again, Graham believes expiration of President Obamas executive order granting quasi-legal status to illegal immigrants who came here as minors will be a tripwire forcing action. Republicans dont want Trump to renew their status  they said it was an abuse of power when Obama granted it  but fear the political consequences of exposing them to deportation again. So they have an incentive to pass legislation granting legal status but they will want to get something to make that legislation more congenial to conservatives.

The senator thinks he has one more thing going for him: the president. Heres the key: Trump can do something no other Republican can do on immigration, Graham said. What Trump can do is persuade the voters who are most concerned about illegal immigration that he is enforcing the law, and serious about making sure it is enforced in the future.

Grahams view: I believe the party will follow Trump if he leads.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a senior editor of National Review.
If Congress wants to lower the national temperature and quell the protests and bad feelings rapidly mounting across our land, they might consider listening more closely to Bill Flores when it comes to the combustible issue of immigration. The low-key Republican congressman from Central Texas offers a viable blueprint for immigration reform whose time, we believe, has come.

By getting to work on immigration reform  complete with realistic remedies involving not only border security but also the 11.5 million or so people in the United States illegally  Republicans can address an issue that drove President Trumps phenomenal 2016 campaign but in ways that are both humane and shrewdly pro-business.

Frankly, to let President Trump set the agenda with conflicting statements at rallies and in meetings is to allow Congress to abandon its Article I duties and responsibilities. And given that the Republican Congress has complained for several years about President Obamas federal overreach in this particular area, its high time for lawmakers to prove they offer more than campaign rhetoric.

Congressman Flores ideas, outlined in a Trib Q&A conducted by staff writers J.B. Smith and Phillip Ericksen, makes clear that a physical wall is not always practical considering the borderland terrain, yet border security is an absolute must. Expediting the processing of visas for certain trades is also a necessity, particularly for industries where workers are needed and Americans fail to fill the ranks.

Most controversially, Flores has for some time proposed a system of fines for those who came to this country illegally, even as he proposes ways to make them legal, given many of them are part of the foundation for construction, hospitality and agricultural endeavors in our state, including here in Central Texas.

And, yes, this includes a path to U.S. citizenship for the so-called Dreamers. As he told Ericksen and Smith: Look, if you take someone who was brought here when they were 2 years old and say, Now were going to ship you to Venezuela, theyd be lost. Theyre Americans. Weve educated them. Why not make Americans out of them? Legal Americans.

Some insist that Congressman Flores ideas amount to amnesty, but they need to consult a dictionary. Paying fines for long-ago offenses is not amnesty. And its important that local, state and federal governments know who these people are and ensure theyre paying taxes. And we hope this nation has not sunk to the level of imposing hardships on those who came here as innocent children.

To his credit, Flores ideas have been shaped and refined over the past few years by local folks, including business leaders as well as pastors. And when he invited comment from a mostly conservative crowd on his ideas at a town-hall meeting at Texas State Technical Colleges Waco campus last August, no one objected. Lets hope Flores can now employ his considerable influence in Washington  including that from his chairmanship of the solidly conservative Republican Study Committee last session  and help put this problem to rest before it rips this nation apart.
RINO bosses?

Spare us the acting-like-I-am-a-leader talking points, Rep. Bill Flores. Its obvious in your statements in the March 4 article, Flores engages with Waco area voters, that you are being sent out by your RINO bosses to soften your targets for an upcoming town-hall meeting. It appears your targets are Trump supporters who believe a border wall is vital to our security, Russian ties to Trump are fake news and social media is a critical part of the American peoples access to truth.

Texans used to be known for our good manners. How about making some kind, respectful and even supportive statements about President Trump  unless, of course, you arent allowed.

Marilyn Ammon,

Waco

* * *The March 10 letter by Peggy Hill of West concerning Congressman Bill Flores and his idea of amnesty for illegal immigrants was the best letter ever on a Trib opinion page. Her letter said more about what will help make America great again.This letter should have been printed on the front page of the Tribune-Herald. And President Trump should read it. Thanks, Ms. Hill!Lynette R. Shepperd,

McGregor

* * *I agree 100 percent with Peggy Hill of West in the Trib opinion section about defying Congressman Flores notion of amnesty for immigrants who are in our country illegally. Its always been that when foreigners wanted to settle in the United States, they had to go through legalization and abide by our rules and laws.Glady Schaeper,

Robinson

All Gods creatures

The pain and suffering intentionally inflicted upon rattlesnakes during roundups is indefensible. Rattlesnakes bite only to defend themselves and actively avoid contact with humans. These fascinating reptiles are a critical part of a healthy ecosystem.They may also have richer social lives than we ever imagined. Female snakes separated at birth can recognize relatives when they are reintroduced years later. One study found that female timber rattlesnakes, which often cluster together in groups of six or more in rookeries, prefer to associate with relatives rather than with strangers.During roundups, gasoline is pumped into dens and burrows and snakes are ripped from their hollows with hooks and tongs. The animals are jammed into sacks and garbage cans and left without food or water. Their heads are chopped off and their still-beating hearts are left in a bloody pile to be sold to China as aphrodisiacs. Children are encouraged to dip their hands into the pools of blood and leave gory handprints on the walls.

There have been reports that some snakes may have their mouths sewn shut so they can be manhandled by the public and used as photo props. These sick spectacles are nothing more than cash grabs. Rattlesnake roundups should be outlawed.

Jennifer OConnor,

PETA Foundation
By Press Trust of India: Colombo, Mar 17 (PTI) The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party today welcomed the postponement of the Saudi kings visit to the Maldives, saying there was a growing public outrage over President Abdulla Yameens attempts to sell an atoll to the royal family.

"With growing public outrage and strong opposition to President Yameens attempts to sell-off Faafu atoll to the Saudi Royal Family, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) feels that the time is not right for the royal visit," the party said in a statement released in Sri Lankan capital Colombo.

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An audio recording was leaked in which ruling party parliamentary group leader Ahmed Nihan was heard reportedly saying that President Yameens intention was to sell Faafu islands and lagoons to Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman who would own the islands in perpetuity.

Nilhan had claimed that Saudi Arabia was secretly behind President Yameens decision to change the Constitution in 2015 in order to allow foreigners to own land in the Maldives.

The MDP, which views the Faafu project as a fundamental threat to Maldivian sovereignty and independence, has urged Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family to completely pull out of the Faafu atoll project.

King Salman, who has already visited Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Japan during his ongoing Asia tour, was due to arrive in the Maldives tomorrow.

The Maldives government said the Saudi king cancelled the visit due to an outbreak of swine flu in Male. PTI CORR CPS AKJ CPS

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By Press Trust of India: Kolkata, Mar 17 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today told doctors of private hospitals not to panic because of the introduction of the Health Bill, which she said was aimed to bring transparency in the system.

"Some are trying to misguide the doctors. But I would like to assure them that there is nothing to worry about. If they are working fine then there is nothing to worry about," Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat.

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The Chief Minister, who also holds the Health portfolio, said the state medical council will be looking into cases of medical negligence, if any, on part of a doctor.

"There are only a few against whom there are complaints... those who give priority to business but there are only a few.

"Our fight is against the establishment... not all but a few who are misusing it and against whom we have got complaints," Banerjee stressed.

She hoped the West Bengal Clinical Establishments (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) Bill 2017 will show a new path for the entire nation and all states should take it up.

On private hospitals and nursing homes mulling options of closing down their business in the state after the new Bill was brought in by the government, Banerjee said, "There are complaints against only against seven or eight not all then why will they shut down business. They can rectify themselves. What will happen to the poor here."

She added that this kind of "blackmailing" will not be allowed in Bengal as she pointed out options of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

"It is not a place of blackmail. It is a place of good will and good governance," Banerjee stated.

On the Indian Medical Association (IMA) contemplating moving court against the Bill, she said, "It is their freedom of choice. Anybody can go to the court but do not you think that is for public cause."

"I do not know may be the IMA may belong to somebody... I will request them to listen to the commoners," she said, adding even doctors were supporting the Bill.

Banerjee announced that 11-member West Bengal Health Regulatory Commission will monitor billing and performance of private hospitals and nursing homes in the state and "the panel will start functioning immediately and their prime objective will be to maintain transparency".

Headed by Calcutta High Court judge Ashim Kumar Roy, who is scheduled to retire in likely another five months time, as the chairman of the panel, it will have consumer and self help department principal secretary Anil Verma as the vice chairman along with Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, Dr Gopal Krishna Dhali, Dr Makhonlal Saha besides, Additional DGP (law and law) Anuj Sharma and Kolkata Police DC South Praveen Tripathi on the panel. PTI SCH RG KIS

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Banks will be publicly named and shamed if they continue to fail to do basic background checks on their financial advisers.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on Friday released its review of how the country's largest financial advice firms have dealt with bad advisers and their customers.

It found they were still not doing enough to report misbehaviour by their advisers and make sure they were acting in their clients' interests.

During a press conference, deputy chairman Peter Kell lashed the banks over their failure to do basic reference checking when they employed financial advisers.
Turns out manufacturing is alive and well in Australia. Only these days we're manufacturing crises. This week's exhibit is from the gas industry, which having witnessed the energy market regulator's grave warnings that we'd all be having cold showers in the dark in a couple of years, found itself summoned to the Prime Minister's table.

"It is not acceptable for Australia  shortly to become the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas  to not have enough gas for its own families and its own businesses," boomed Malcolm Turnbull ahead of the meeting. And he was right. What was far less clear was why this arrangement had been so perfectly acceptable for so long.

Let's be clear: there is no gas shortage. Not in Australia, and not around the world. In fact, there's the opposite: a global glut of the stuff. BHP has already admitted there's enough gas in Bass Strait to supply the east coast "indefinitely". And globally, by the end of 2015 the gas industry was capable of producing about 25 per cent more liquefied gas than the world wanted to import.

By 2020, production capacity looks set to increase another 30 per cent. Even if demand is increasing  and that's not absolutely clear  it's not keeping pace with that. The world's biggest importer, Japan, has been reducing its demand for several years, and according to its own government, will be buying 30 per cent less gas by 2030 as it turns its focus to renewables.
There are calls for tighter restrictions on the sale of all over-the-counter painkillers in Australia after an international study found a significant link between ibuprofen use and cardiac arrest.

A 10-year Danish study of nearly 30,000 patients found the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including ibuprofen - commonly sold as Nurofen or Advil - was associated with a 31 per cent increased risk of a cardiac arrest.

Nurofen is the most common brand of ibuprofen, which has been linked to an increased risk of cardiac arrest. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

"Allowing these drugs to be purchased without a prescription, and without any advice or restrictions, sends a message to the public that they must be safe," said the study's author Gunnar Gislason, professor of cardiology at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte in Denmark.

Researchers examined all out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients in Denmark between 2001 and 2010 using the nationwide Danish Cardiac Arrest Registry.
Samsung's new Galaxy S8 will employ facial-recognition technology for mobile payments within months of release, adding cutting-edge security to help the marquee device stand out from rivals such as Apple's iPhone, people familiar with the matter said.

The Galaxy S8 to be unveiled later this month will blend fingerprint, iris and facial detection to verify users accessing mobile services including Samsung Pay, the people said. It's already working with banks to help them embrace facial recognition systems in coming months, they said, asking not to be identified talking about a private matter. Samsung declined to comment.

The S8 would be the first to use the technology to verify financial payment applications. Credit:Bloomberg

The Korean company needs to make a splash after killing off the fire-prone Note 7, which cost it more than US$6 billion and the global lead in smartphones. Success for the S8 will be crucial to salvaging Samsung's reputation, especially with de facto chief Jay Y. Lee detained in a corruption scandal that's already led to the ouster of the nation's president. And it'll be going up against the new iPhone due later in 2017  the 10th anniversary of the iconic device.

While previous Galaxy phones have allowed users to unlock their phones with facial recognition, the S8 would be the first to use the technology to verify financial payment applications.
Two motorists, identified as Nagashimha and Nishant, were driving without wearing helmets on the Mysuru-Bengaluru highway in Somanahalli village near Maddur town when they were stopped and manhandled by the woman SI.

By Nolan Pinto: That driving two-wheelers without wearing helmets must be made mandatory and violators penalised is strict action for everyone's safety that we all appreciate. But the manner in which a woman sub inspector in Karnataka's Mandya district slapped two youths for driving without headgear has left the entire district enraged.

On March 14, sub inspector Savi, along with other police personnel, was stopping motorists who were not wearing helmets and slapping fines. Two such people were happened to be residents of Hemmanahalli village of the district, identified as Nagashimha and Nishant.

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They were riding their bike on the busy Mysuru-Bengaluru highway in Somanahalli village near Maddur town.

SI ABUSED, MANHANDLED YOUTHS

But instead of imposing a fine on them and letting them go, the sub inspector allegedly abused them and they hurled cuss words back at her. SI Savi first grabbed them by their collar, slapped them and began pushing him towards the police jeep. The boys were then taken to a police station and booked for obstructing a police official from performing her duty.

This assault by the woman cop was captured on a mobile camera and uploaded on social media platforms. The video has gone viral by now. Residents are demanding that strict action be taken against the sub inspector for attacking these youths.

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A BBC reporter dodged "burning boulders and boiling steam" as she and a group of others fled a volcanic explosion in Italy that injured up to 10 people.

Mount Etna on the island of Sicily erupted on Thursday, causing magma to flow into snow that led to a violent explosion, which sent stones and rocks flying, emergency services said.

The explosion, which occurred near the summit of Etna, caught tourists, vulcanologists and members of a television crew filming for the BBC.

Dramatic footage shows the explosion of rocks raining down on the group as they sprint away from the blast.
Washington: President Donald Trump reiterated his strong support for NATO on Friday and pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet NATO's military spending target, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.

The meeting between the leader of Europe's largest economy and the US president was billed as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship.

"I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defence," Trump said at a joint news conference with Merkel.

Merkel said she told Trump Germany needs to meet NATO spending goals. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan.
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.
The security guards deployed at the entrance of AIIMS turned away patients from the emergency department, which treats around 2,000 patients daily.

By Press Trust of India: A mass casual leave by around 5,000 nurses at AIIMS today had a crippling effect on services offered to the patients as the emergency unit remained shut, while nearly 90 surgeries were postponed.

Several patients were forced to visit other hospitals in the wake of the strike nurses went on, even as the AIIMS authorities likened the protest to "blackmailing and arm-twisting" of administration at the cost of poor patients.

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The nurses union at the premier hospital have been demanding higher pay than that recommended by the 7th Central Pay Commission.

They have also threatened to go on an indefinite strike from March 27 if their demands for revision of pay scales and a hike in allowances are not met, even as AIIMS officials said they have forwarded their demands to the Health Ministry.

Majority of the patients approaching the AIIMS and trauma centre for emergency treatment today were forced to go to the nearby Safdarjung hospital and others hospitals.

The security guards deployed at the entrance of AIIMS turned away patients from the emergency department, which treats around 2,000 patients daily.

Also Read || 7th pay commission: Demanding better pay, 5,000 AIIMS nurses go on leave, emergency services shut down ||

Those patients and their kin who managed to get inside during the early hours of the day had to spend hours waiting for doctors to see them.

A 70-year-old Raani Bai, who suffers from kidney disease and had come all the way from Patna to be treated at AIIMS, said she had to wait for almost three hours before being forced to go to Safdarjung.

"We waited thinking the services would resume but then we were forced to go take our mother to Safdarjung as her condition was worsening," said Bais son.

Several other patients who came from across the country were at the receiving end as they were unaware of the strike call.

AIIMS administration said they have forwarded the demands of the nurses to the Health Ministry and requested it to convene a meeting with the Ministry of Finance to resolve the matter.

"The AIIMS administration has already revised the pay scales for all its employees including the nurses as per the recommendations of the 7th CPC.

"The administration has also agreed to the other demands of the Nurses Union including the change of nomenclature from staff nurse to nursing officer as well as their demands for study leave.

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"The demands for other allowances at the autonomous institutions like AIIMS is already under consideration of an empowered committee of the central government which is yet to give its recommendations," AIIMS acting Director Dr Balram Airan said.

Airan further said the current agitation by the nurses was completely "unjustified".

Also Watch || Air ambulance of Medanta hospital with 5 crew members crashlands near Bangkok ||

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A military court quashed an Army order of disciplinary action against a Major who had alleged that a Captain had sexually and emotionally exploited her with a false promise of marriage.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: A military court has pulled up the Army for taking action against a lady officer after she filed a complaint against a Captain for "sexually and emotionally" exploiting her with false promise of marriage.

The military court quashed the Army order of disciplinary action against the Major after a court of inquiry found her allegations against the Captain to be true.

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The failed love affair between the Major and Captain had started in 2011, when the two were posted at Bathinda, Punjab. The lady officer from the Corps of Signals was posted in a snooping unit in Bathinda when she came in touch with the Captain, who was a part of an artillery unit.

The Major claimed that as the intimacy between them grew, the two started living together and then got married in an Army temple there. However, she claimed that soon after, the Captain cheated on her and decided to marry another girl.

She then complained to the Commandant of her unit against the Captain. The lady officer also wrote letters to the Army top brass stating that she was cheated, sexually exploited and betrayed by the officer, following which a Court of Inquiry was launched by the force.

DISCIPLINARY ACTION FOR 'INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP'

However, while the Court of Inquiry was finalised, the complainant officer was also told she would have to face disciplinary action for "inappropriate relationship" with the Captain in violation of guidelines.

She approached the Armed Forces Tribunal against the Army decision to take action against her, and argued that the Army's decision was born out of "chauvinistic mindset," as it sought to shield the Captain and brand her as a partner in crime.

The military court in its order said the Army inquiry gave its opinion that the lady officer had been betrayed, cheated and sexually exploited by the Captain on false promises of marriage made by him.

However, later the Court of Inquiry was reassembled by the convening authority and it entered adverse findings against both the officers for having inappropriate relationship and recommended action against both of them, the military court said.

Finding fault with the Army's action, the military court stated that proceedings launched against her without giving her notice of her misconduct and seeking explanation is "patently erroneous and cannot be sustained".

"The court of inquiry was conducted on her complaints, proceedings for disciplinary action against her after collecting additional opinion from such court imputing that she maintained a relationship with another serving officer, that too without calling for an explanation from her, is improper," the court said.

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The court stated that Army law clearly states that in order to take action in such a case, the relationship between the officers must affect the good order of the Army and infringe adversely affect military discipline.

The court has, however, told the Army that if it wants to initiate action against the officer for inappropriate relationship, it can do so by seeking an explanation separately.

ALSO READ | Military court attempts to save Army Major's broken marriage

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This wasn't the first visit to Pakistan for either of the Delhi based Sufi clerics. While Asif Nizami was visiting Pakistan after 30 years, Nazim Nizami keeps going to Pakistan on various occasions and meetings as he is a prominent priest in the Muslim community.

By Shalini Lobo: Intelligence agencies suggest that both the Indian national Sufi clerics who went missing in Pakistan are in Karachi.

The two Sufi clerics who have been missing in Pakistan since March 16th may be in North Karachi suggest intelligence sources. Syed Asif Ali Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8th and were scheduled to return on March 20th but their phones are switched off and their whereabouts unknown.

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"My father's sister lives in Pakistan. The last we know about my father and cousin is that my cousin Nizam was asked to stay back in Lahore regarding some paperwork. My father was asked to proceed to Karachi. When he landed he contacted the person who was at the airport to receive him, but he never stepped out of the airport," said Syed Sajid Ali Nizami, missing cleric Asif Nizami's elder son.

The Nizami family met with officials of the Ministry of External Affairs and Home Ministry.

"Both Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh have taken cognisance of the issue and promised urgent action. They have assured us that my father and cousin will reach back soon," said Sajid Nizami.

This wasn't the first visit to Pakistan for either of the Delhi based Sufi clerics. While Asif Nizami was visiting Pakistan after 30 years, Nazim Nizami keeps going to Pakistan on various occasions and meetings as he is a prominent priest in the Muslim community.

"Both of them went to meet Asif's sister and to pay their respects at various shrines in Lahore. Asif Nizami is above 80 years of age and is a heart patient. I hope nothing happens to him and he returns home safe," said Shujauddin Nizami, one of the head priests at the Harzat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi.

Reports suggest that the clerics were possibly stopped by Pakistani authorities due to inadequate paperwork which posed as a hurdle to them travelling around Pakistan. "They had all their paperwork in place. If there was a problem then I think travelling from India to Pakistan in international flight would have had problems. I do not see how domestic flights should be a problem when it comes to their paperwork. I'm sure it wasn't just paperwork," said Sajid Nizami.

Both Asif Ali Nizami and Nazim Nizami were senior clerics at the Harzat Nizamuddin Dargah in the national capital.

Also read:

Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah's clerics go missing, Sushma Swaraj raises matter with Pakistan

2 Sufi priests from Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah missing in Pakistan; India takes up matter with Islamabad

Also watch:

Pakistan-based terror group responsible for Mumbai attacks, says former Pak NSA

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"Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted.

By India Today Web Desk: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today spoke to the Pakistani authorities about the two Indian Sufi clerics who went missing in the country on March 14.

"Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted.

"We have taken up this matter with the government of Pakistan and requested them for an update."

Indian nationals Syed Asif li Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on 8 March 2017. /1- Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Syed Asif Ali Nizami is Head Priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizammuddin Aulia dargah. /2- Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

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The two Sufi priests, including the head cleric of Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah went missing in Pakistan. They visited Lahore on March 13 to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine and offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine, the next day.

The next day when they reached the airport to take a return flight for Karachi, Nazim Ali Nizami was stopped to clear some documentation and Syed Asif Ali Nizami was asked to board the flight.

He reached Karachi airport and asked his relatives to pick him up but he did not come out.

Since then, their mobile phones have been switched off and their family in India has not been able to get in touch with them.

(With inputs from IANS)

Also Read

2 Sufi priests from Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah missing in Pakistan; India takes up matter with Islamabad

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They have been identified as Zhou Weiwu and Ms. Chen Yanyan.

By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: AIU officers arrested two Chinese national passengers who arrived from Hong Kong by Jet Airways flight and seized 1255 grams of crude gold chain with gold pendant depicting Lord Buddha and buckle made of gold from them valued at Rs 37,65,000.

They have been identified as Zhou Weiwu and Ms. Chen Yanyan. Both admitted in their statements recorded under Sec. 108 of the Customs Act, 1962 to have smuggled crude gold articles in India in order to earn profit from its sale.

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In a second case, personal search of one Nagpur-based couple Sanjay Motumal Kukreja and Savita Sanjay Kukreja resulted in the recovery of 585 grams of crude gold bangles and chain valued at Rs 17,55,000.

Also read:

Mumbai: Gold worth Rs 61 lakh seized at CSI Airport

Mumbai: Foreign currency and gold valued Rs 80 lakh seized at airport

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By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Mar 17 (PTI) Opposition members today created ruckus in the Maharashtra Legislative Council over Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis statements over the farm loan waiver issue.

Speaking in the Assembly yesterday Fadnavis had sought to know from the Opposition if it can guarantee that no farmer suicides will take place if a debt waiver is announced. He had also accused Opposition Congress-NCP of shedding "crocodile tears" over the plight of farmers.

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Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde said by not making a statement in the Council over the loan waiver issue, the Chief Minister had shown disrespect to the Upper House.

He demanded an apology from Leader of the House, Minister for Cooperation Chandrakant Patil, for the same.

Patil said amid din yesterday he tried to tell the House Fadnavis was about to come to the Council to make statement, but the Chair adjourned proceedings for the day.

The states annual Economic Survey report was tabled in the Council amid noisy scenes.

Sunil Tatkare (NCP), raising a point of order, argued Minister of State for Finance and Planning Deepak Kesarkar of Shiv Sena did not have the moral right to table the report as his party, too, was pushing for farm loan waiver.

The Leader of Opposition said Fadnavis has not set foot in the House ever since the budget session began nine days ago.

Munde countered the CMs query to the opposition on the loan waiver with his own set of questions. Munde sought to know whether the government would give 50 per cent extra assured support price and ensure 100 per cent procurement of all farm produce.

Munde wanted to know whether the government can assure there will be no drought in the state in future.

Referring to the recent hailstorms and unseasonal rains in Marathwada region, he wanted to know whether the government can stop these natural occurrences. (more) PTI MM RSY

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By The Associated Press Mar. 17, 2017 | 11:13 AM | PADUCAH, KY

A driver has pleaded not guilty in the death of a former McCracken County official who was hit while riding his bicycle last fall.

The Paducah Sun reports that 68-year-old Willie G. Holsapple appeared in court Thursday on multiple charges, including second-degree manslaughter, in former Judge-Executive Van Newberry's death.

Newberry was killed Oct. 13 when his bicycle was struck by a SUV driven by Holsapple. Holsapple told authorities he was passing Newberry when the bicycle veered in the path of his vehicle. Sheriff Jon Hayden says there was no evidence suggesting that happened.

Investigators say Holsapple had serious vision problems at the time and had ignored doctors' warnings that he should not drive.

Holsapple was indicted March 3. He's scheduled to appear in court June 8.

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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 16, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 16, 2017 | 11:21 AM | PADUCAH, KY

The young woman who stole merchandise from a midtown Paducah business is facing charges Friday.



21-year-old Cynthia L. McKibben, of Paducah, came to the police department Thursday afternoon, according to Paducah Police PIO Robin Newberry, after her employer showed her the photographs that were shared by local news media and on social media.



McKibben allegedly admitted taking the items Wednesday morning, according to police, from Uniform Headquarters along the 200 block of Lone Oak Road.



Officers obtained a summons Friday morning charging McKibben with theft by unlawful taking (less than $500).







Previous Story:





Police are asking for help identifying a suspect related to theft from a Paducah business.



According to the Paducah Police Department, the thefts were reported late Wednesday morning. The owner of Uniform Headquarters told police a woman came into the store and chose a bag from a sales display. The woman reportedly used it to conceal an undetermined number of scrub tops and pants, then walked out of the store and fled the scene with the merchandise.



A white woman with brown hair was captured on surveillance video wearing blue jeans, boots and a camouflage hoodie. Anyone who recognizes this woman or has information related to the reported crime should contact Paducah Police at 270-444-8550 or call CrimeStoppers at 270-443-TELL. Tipsters also may access the online tip form through the City of Paducah website 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 West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 17, 2017 | 06:30 AM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY

The Graves County Board of Education held its March business meeting Thursday evening where the board unanimously approved establishing a daycare program.

The Early Eagle Academy Child Care program will be available to families with children younger than school age on a tuition basis with plans to open for the 2017-18 school year in August. The project still is in its planning stages. The district is not taking applications at this time. However, administrators will announce application and other details as the program unfolds in coming weeks.

Superintendent Kim Dublin late Friday morning said, "What a tremendous response we already have gotten from people interested in our tuition-based child care at five of our schools, starting this fall! I know that our principals and many others in our district are getting questions about the Early Eagle Academy Child Care program. I know that, because I'm getting those questions, too!"

Dublin explained, "We were not in a position to plan logistics until the board approved the program. We're pleased that the 5-0 vote indicates the entire board's support! So, now we make concrete plans! Melissa Bazzell will lead the program. She has extensive education and experience in early childhood learning. She and I will meet next week to organize the process. We will do our best to address the major questions people have been asking last night and this morning."

The superintendent noted, "Primarily, people want to know about enrolling their children in day care and several adults are interested in employment. Our goal is to provide answers to those questions, establishing an application process for both. We expect to have answers by mid- to late April. Meanwhile, we are grateful for the overwhelming interest!"

Both the daily hours and number of days will be longer than the school day and school calendar That helps meet the needs of many working parents, according to Melissa Bazzell, the Graves County Schools early childhood learning specialist. The curriculum will help prepare children for school. The school district will adhere to licensing and regulation, as other child care programs do.

Bazzell told the board that among the 2,450 children aged birth to 5 years currently living in Graves County, established child care facilities only meet 23 percent of the need. She explained that funding changes have caused several facilities in Graves County to close in recent years, leaving a void.

The Early Eagle Academy Child Care program initially will serve between 120 and 150 children. It will occupy unused rooms at Fancy Farm, Farmington, Symsonia, and Wingo elementary schools as well as Graves County Middle School.
By Press Trust of India: From Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Mar 17 (PTI) Nepals main opposition leader KP Sharma Oli today warned Prime Minister Prachanda that the country will plunge into a serious crisis if local, provincial and federal parliamentary elections are not held by January next year.

Oli, chairman of Communist Party of Nepal-UML, cautioned the government not to be involved in any activities that would affect the May 14 local body elections. He also slammed the government for failing to do necessary preparatory works for the polls.

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Oli warned that Nepal will plunge into a serious crisis if local, provincial and federal parliamentary elections are not held by January 21, 2018 as mentioned in the constitution.

He further expressed his doubts that the Prime Minister himself is "conspiring" to foil the election or acting under the influence of others.

Oli was speaking after the conclusion of Nepal UMLs Mechi-Mahakali campaign from East to the West.

He said the party launched the campaign so as to provide impetus for holding all three elections within the stipulated deadline.

"The main objective of the campaign is to create public pressure for the implementation of the constitution and create a favourable environment for political stability by holding all three level elections," Oli said.

Meanwhile, Prachanda met Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav and assured him of providing all necessary support for holding the May 14 elections.

Earlier this week, The United Democratic Madhesi Front withdrew support to the government as it failed to address its concern within the seven-day ultimatum.

The Front on March 7 had issued the ultimatum to address their concerns that include re-demarcation of the provincial boundary and liberal citizenship policy among others.

The Front has been demanding governments endorsement for revised Constitution amendment bill and withdrawal of the decision to conduct local polls in May. PTI SBP UZM

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"One day all of it yours," says the matriarch in broken English to her grandson in Ryan Craig's new play. It sounds like a grand promise, but Yetta Solomon's rubber shop looms threateningly over her family, and in fact the stage in Edward Hall's production. It is a dark, dirty, dominating presence and in Ashley Martin-Davis's huge, oppressive designs there are layers, upon layers of rubber stuffed into shelves and dumped in corners. The shop she is so keen to keep in the family is excruciatingly overbearing, it forces the direction of this family's lives and crushes the characters' hopes.

This is the legacy of a woman who came to London on a boat with nothing; an immigrant who worked and worked on the markets with her husband before managing to buy her own place. Craig's play charts 20 years in Yetta Solomon's family  her husband dead, her sons running the business with eventual help from their own sons  from the early '60s to the early '80s. It is an epic narrative, echoing big classic American fighting family dramas.

Yetta is very much at the centre of Filthy Business. She is formidable, fazed by nothing, and has the right answer to everything. Manipulative and cunning, while being loving to those dearest to her, her raison d'etre is to ensure the shop and their livelihood will succeed at all costs. Even the cost of happiness.

Over the course of the play, pretty much everyone tries to escape Yetta's web but no-one manages to. Her son Leo, the brains behind the business, wants to set up on his own, but his plans are stamped on by his mother; Leo's son Mickey has revolutionary ideas for a business  he wants to tap into the soft furnishings markets  but she curtails that dream too. At the end of all their hopes is Yetta, both lifeline and grim reaper, because as she repeatedly stops the family from separating, the business, and their lives, slowly unravel.

Sara Kestelman, who almost stole the show on this same stage in IHo last year, plays Yetta and she is brilliant. Small in stature, but big in everything else, she is a ferocious force as she calls bullshit on everyone and everything. Kestelman brings heart and hate to the role, reflecting Yetta's simple essences: this woman sees the world through the prisms of loyalty and skill only. Even in her moments of great kindness, of which there are several, Kestelman makes sure Yetta is still seen as a pragmatist. The rest of the cast hold their own, but it's only really the enjoyable-to-watch Callum Woodhouse as grandson Mickey who manages to stand out alongside Kestelman. His journey is believable and well balanced.

Craig's narrative is very juicy, featuring twists, turns and shocks from beginning to end. But this is a big play, with a lot of characters, and where Yetta is fully fleshed, the rest are not as three dimensional. Though this doesn't spoil proceedings  there's a lot to hang on in this piece  it does mean that occasionally the focus becomes a little vague and a little crowded: the myriad themes of family, immigrant, motherhood, sacrifice, letting go of your kids and happiness are slightly too thinly drawn.

But it is Craig's evocation of an overbearing family figure, and the impact she has on the people around her, which rings most true. Yetta is so blinkered by her need to keep the family together and keep the shop open  "this is my country" - that she cannot see what and who she is destroying. It is riling, heartbreaking and often excruciating to watch.

Filthy Business runs at Hampstead Theatre until 22 April.
News channel CNN-News18 has reported, quoting top Pakistani government sources, that the Pakistani government has admitted to the detention of Syed Asif Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Nizami, by the intelligence agencies.

By India Today Web Desk: The two Sufi priests from New Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah, who went missing in Pakistan earlier this week, are reported to have been detained there following their allegedly suspicious movement in the country.

News channel CNN-News18 has reported, quoting top Pakistani government sources, that the Pakistani government has admitted to the detention of Syed Asif Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Nizami, by the intelligence agencies.

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The Pakistani sources said the charges against the Nizamis are serious and the intelligence officers are looking into their movement in two cities - Lahore and Karachi.

The two Sufi priests visited Lahore on March 13 to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine.

On March 14, they offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine also in Lahore.

The next day when they reached the airport to take a return flight for Karachi, Nazim Ali Nizami was stopped to clear some documentation and Syed Asif Ali Nizami was asked to board the flight.

Asif Ali Nizami reached Karachi airport and asked his relatives to pick him up, but he did not come out.

Since then, their mobile phones have been switched off and their family in India has not been able to get in touch with them.

SUSHMA ASKS PAKISTAN TO FIND NIZAMIS

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said she has spoken to the Pakistani authorities about the two Indian Sufi clerics who went missing in the country.

"Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted.

"We have taken up this matter with the government of Pakistan and requested them for an update."

The Pakistani Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria, meanwhile, has confirmed that an Indian request seeking assistance for the recovery of two clerics has been received by them.

The request has been forwarded to the Pakistani Interior Ministry, he said.

Also read | Missing clerics of Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah are in Karachi, says intelligence

WATCH VIDEO

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: From M Zulqernain

Lahore/New Delhi, Mar 17 (PTI) Pakistan today said it has no clue so far about the two Indian clerics, including the 80-year-old head priest of New Delhis Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, who went missing in the country.

"No clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far. However, we are pro-actively pursuing this case," Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI.

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"We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter," he said, adding the Foreign Office yesterday received the request of the Indian government to trace the two missing clerics.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said the Indian government has taken up the matter with Pakistan.

"We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," Swaraj tweeted.

Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at Karachi airport. Syed Asif Nizami is the head priest of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah.

The two had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight to Karachi on Wednesday.

The clerics had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

A Federal Investigation Agency official at the Lahore airport told PTI that they have no idea about the missing of the two clerics from the airport premises.

"It is not clear whether they have gone with someone on their own or there is some other matter," he said.

A senior Punjab police officer also expressed his departments ignorance about this matter saying: "Neither we have received any application about the missing Indian priests nor the federal government has asked us to look into this matter".

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition. PTI MZ UZM AKJ UZM

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama Padmavati has been under the scanner ever since the filmmaker began shooting for the film. After being thrashed in Jaipur by Karni Sena and the sets vandalised, Bhansali shifted base to Maharashtra in March. But to no avail. On Tuesday night (March 14), the set was attacked and set on fire by 45-50 unidentified men in Kolhapur.

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The men, armed with lathis and stones, stormed into the sets and started destroying the property. From costumes to animal feed, everything was set on fire.

It was only a few weeks ago that Bhansali decided to shift base to the Masai plateau, some 20km away from Kolhapur. Interestingly, the filmmaker beefed up the security after the Jaipur incident where he was manhandled by members of the Karni Sena and accused of distortion of history in Padmavati.

And now Shahid Kapoor, who plays Raja Rawal Ratan Singh - King of Chittor in Padmavati, has broken his silence on the incident.

In an interview to DNA, Shahid said, "I am aware that there has been some disruption that has happened. I am aware that a certain amount of costumes got burnt. I am aware everybody is safe and nobody got harmed. The shooting has wrapped up and the team is coming back."

He added, "What I am not aware of is who has done it. It is unfortunate that something like this has happened for the second time. As soon as there is some clarity, the production house will respond to it. No principal actors were there."

Shahid plays the husband of Padmavati in the period drama. It is for the first time that Shahid and Deepika will share screen space. The period drama, which is set to hit the screens by the end of 2017, also stars Ranveer Singh.

ALSO READ: Padmavati set burnt in Kolhapur, to get 24 hour security

ALSO READ: We are broken emotionally, say Padmavati designers on vandalism

ALSO WATCH: Padmavati set torched in Kolhapur

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jukebox musicals are like unfaithful husbands.

Theyre cheats.

Its best to get that opinion on the table when it comes to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Bittergirl: The Musical by Annabel Fitzsimmons, Alison Lawrence and Mary Francis Moore.

DYLAN HEWLETT PHOTO Three women bond over freshly failed relationships.

The core of the story is very specific, coming from the lives of the three Toronto playwrights who collaborated on the original non-musical play bittergirl as a creative coping mechanism after all three suffered relationship breakups back in 1999.

Their collective experience was woven into a play that invited audiences to have a few laughs of recognition, whether listening to the lame excuses of the dumper, or commiserating with the dubious survival strategies of the dumpee, which include calling in sick to work, exiling oneself to bed and obsessively driving by the exs home.

The original play incorporated girl-group music of the 1950s and 60s as a kind of dramatic punctuation. Bittergirl: The Musical weaves its songs directly into the mix, employing seasoned musical performers into the roles. Rebecca Auerbach is A, a 35-year-old anticipating a proposal when her boyfriend announces he is leaving. B (Sarite Harris) is a younger single, likewise romantically kneecapped when her boyfriend flies the coop. C (Alana Hibbert) is especially wounded because she has a child with her boyfriend, who abandons them both to realize a hitherto untold ambition to join the RCMP.

All three boyfriends are played by Michael Torontow, whose characters are alternately defined by cowardice, immaturity or delusion. (The fact that Torontow still manages to be somewhat likable is a singular achievement in itself.)

Throughout the 105-minute running time of the play (including an intermission), recognizable pop songs are employed as an emotional shorthand for the characters. The flush of true love is sung in an opening medley interpolating The Supremes I Hear a Symphony, and The Crystals double-shot And Then He Kissed Me and Hes a Rebel.

Subsequent heartbreak gets interpreted in songs such as Where Did Our Love Go?, Mama Said and Anyone Who Had a Heart. And so on.

Directed by Krista Jackson, its best enjoyed as a showcase for its performers. Auerbach, Harris and Hibbert are accomplished pop belters and each makes the most of her solos. For a fitness medley in which the three women employ a fitness regimen to get back on their feet, choreographer Kimberly Rampersad employs some intricately funny moves in an impressive display of graceful slapstick.

It all happens against a two-tiered, 60s pop-art-infused backdrop designed by Charlotte Dean, with music director Rachel Camerons all-female four-piece band providing live on-stage accompaniment on the upper tier. The set is as lovely to look at as the 60s and 70s music is lovely to hear, but both are temporally disconnected from a story that is struggling to be contemporary.

It amounts to a swell cabaret experience. But as a musical, again, it feels like a cheat.

In the best musicals, songs carry the plot forward. In a jukebox musical, the songs are there to be enjoyed in much the same way as one enjoys a Golden Oldies radio station, as a relaxing bask in the familiar. Here, the songs are shoehorned into the narrative, whether they fit (I Will Survive) or not (Hot Stuff).

One notable exception to this is a flat-out mockery of the Nazareth power ballad Love Hurts, which Torontow hilariously performs with the wind-machine-augmented bombast of Michael Bolton, cubed.

As a work of theatre, Bittergirl: The Musical is a fun diversion, if not an enduring work. To paraphrase the Canadian band Trooper: its here for a good time, not a long time.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three men were arrested minutes after a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the St. Johns High School parking lot Thursday afternoon.

Winnipeg police say the Grade 11 student at the North End school was confronted by the men about a previous matter at about 1:45 p.m. They were armed with a knife and a baton.

The teen tried to run but was knocked to the ground, beaten and stabbed in the upper body. The suspects fled on foot, police said Friday.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg Police at St. Johns High School Thursday afternoon.

The teen was rushed to hospital in critical condition. That condition was later upgraded to stable.

Police said the suspects were found hiding in a residence in the 300 block of College Avenue before 2 p.m.

A 21-year-old man was charged with uttering threats, causing death or bodily harm and possession of a weapon.

Two others, ages 18 and 22, were charged with aggravated assault.
The new teaser promises a fresh start for the characters. At least that is what it looks like.

By India Today Web Desk: American hit show Quantico, which follows Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra's character Alex Parrish's journey as an FBI officer as she fights crimes and saves the world from exploding, has received some great reviews. And one of the reasons behind the show's huge fan following across the globe is Alex's relationship and chemistry with Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin), another officer on the team.

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Priyanka recently shared an exclusive teaser from the show on her personal Instagram account.

In the said teaser, Ryan and Alex (Ralex, as they are called by fans), were seen sharing some intense moments together.

Check out the promo:

You dont have to wait until Monday to see the new episode of Quantico. I have an exclusive sneak peek! @abcquantico A post shared by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Mar 16, 2017 at 6:45am PDT

Throughout the show, the couple's relationship has seen a lot of ups and downs. Be it sharing steamy moments, to the break-up, and the engagement. And the distance again; it has been quite a ride for these two. But according to the latest promo, looks like things might get back on track for the lovebirds.

WATCH: The cast of Quantico is in love with their leading lady, Priyanka Chopra

Quantico will return to Star World on March 21.

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobas legacy telephone and telecommunications network is now back in the hands of the company that first owned it in the 1880s.

Friday was the first official day in the life of the new Bell division called Bell MTS.

Bells $3.9-billion acquisition of MTS officially closed at 12:01 Friday morning.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Bell has tapped Dan McKeen to take over the operation with the title vice-chair, Bell MTS and Western Canada.

As part of the deal, Bell has promised to embark on a $1-billion capital spend in Manitoba over the next five years and will roll out enhanced service offerings in the coming months, including what Bell boasts as Canadas fastest-ranked wireless network and Bells Fibe TV service, which presumably will replace MTS TV.

Bell MTSs Winnipeg offices will also, technically, become the headquarters for Bells Western Canadian operations.

Bell has tapped Dan McKeen to take over the operation with the title of vice-chairman, Bell MTS and Western Canada.

McKeens job up until Friday was running Bell Aliant out of Halifax, which hes done since Bell acquired Aliant in 2014.

Were excited about the opportunity here, McKeen, 55, said. It is quite similar to the process we went through with Bell Aliant.

There are some significant advantages in doing this  combining the scale of Bell with the local capabilities and local market knowledge and ability to execute in Atlantic Canada its very much what we are looking to replicate in Bell MTS.

McKeen, who will work out of Winnipeg from Monday to Friday and commute to his home in Halifax, said his first undertakings will be to get to know the people in the Manitoba capital, launch the Bell MTS brand and try to roll out consumer benefits.

The first indication of those consumer benefits might have been felt in Churchill, where an enhanced 4G LTE wireless service Bell MTS had previously announced went live Friday.

On Friday, Bell MTS also made its streaming television service, Crave TV, available to MTS Ultimate TV subscribers for $5.99 per month, a $2-per-month discount. (McKeen said it might take as long as a year to introduce Bells Fibe TV IPTV service to Manitoba consumers.)

Other than the departure of five senior managers from the executive suite, it was business as usual at the Main Street head office Friday.

Earlier this month, MTS CEO Jay Forbes publicly announced that he would be leaving the company.

Thursday was also the last day on the job for four others: Paul Beauregard, chief corporate and strategy officer and corporate secretary; Marvin Boakye, chief human resources officer; Paul Cadieux, chief financial officer; and Heather Tulk, chief customer officer.

McKeen could not say whether or not there will be any workforce reductions but he did say there will be changes.

Similar to what happened at Bell Aliant, when you bring two companies together there are some duplication of jobs, McKeen said. There will be some changes, but changes both at Bell and at Bell MTS.

Among other things, he said the process that took place in Halifax resulted in some former Aliant workers doing national Bell work out of the Halifax offices.

Bell MTS has a workforce totalling about 2,700 people.

Bob Linsdell, executive director of TEAM-IFPTE Local 161, the union that represents about 900 white-collar workers at MTS (which is down from 1,250 two years ago), said the stress level has been pretty high for the previous few months, but he remains optimistic.

The ball is in their court. They own the company, Linsdell said. We are really hopeful for Manitoba that everything will continue here in Manitoba and will build.

There are no directives or any obvious changes that are occurring immediately.

We bought this company to grow it and to win in the marketplace. We did not buy the company to shrink it, McKeen said.

Pricing concerns over Bells takeover of MTS had been a major issue among consumer advocacy groups.

The Competition Bureau made it clear consumers in regions that had four active competitors in the wireless market, as was the case in Manitoba before Bell acquisition of MTS, enjoyed the lowest rates. Bell has committed to maintain current MTS pricing for the next 12 months.

When Bell acquired Aliant there were four competitors in the marketplace. McKeen said the 12-month hold on prices was as long as the company felt comfortable with.

He said Bell has never billed itself as a low-cost provider.

We provide the fastest wireless network in North America, he said. We are a quality provider. We do not shy away from that. That means we need to get paid.

What that means when it comes to pricing in the future remains to be seen, but McKeen said ultimately the consumers will decide.

We do not have a crystal ball to know what the future brings, McKeen said.

In addition to changes in the corner office, to achieve regulatory approvals of the deal to acquire MTS, Bell had to agree to diminish its control of the market by way of selling about one-quarter of its wireless subscribers, about 120,000, as well as 13 MTS retail locations to Telus for $300 million.

It will also sell 24,700 wireless customers as well as wireless spectrum and six retail outlets to Xplornet.

The manner in which that process unfolds is still to be determined.

Xplornet will not take on the former MTS wireless subscribers until it builds its wireless network in Manitoba, which is expected to take at least six months.

McKeen said the Telus transaction will not take that long, but would not give any more indication as to how long it will be.

We are very committed to making that a good experience for the customers, McKeen said.

We are currently working with Telus on those plans.

Liz Sauve, a spokeswoman for Telus, said, We arent in a position to provider further detail until our deal closes with Bell, which is anticipated to happen in April.

Greg MacDonald, an equity analyst with Macquarie Securities, said the process is likely to include some sort of random split based on average revenue per user and churn characteristics.

With the completion of the transaction, Bell MTS will have about 470,000 wireless customers, making it clearly the largest player in the Manitoba market.

Once the rearrangement of the wireless accounts gets done, estimates are that Bell MTS will have about 44 per cent of Manitobas wireless market, Rogers will have about 36 per cent, Telus 18 per cent and Xplornet about two per cent.

In anticipation of the deal closing, Bell announced several capital projects over the past few months, including the enhanced wireless service in Churchill, faster broadband service to the downtown Innovation Alley, as well as continuous broadband wireless coverage along both Highway 75 to the U.S. border and Highway 6 to Thompson.

The company has also announced the expansion of mobile and wireline broadband networks in Flin Flon and new wireless services for several remote locations, including Easterville, Gods Lake Narrows, Gods River, Grand Rapids and Red Sucker Lake.

Bell has completed its acquisition of all 74,398,389 MTS shares and they will officially be de-listed from the TSX as of Monday.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 16/03/2017 (2062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The citys chief administrative officer has been accused of issuing a gag order on civic departments.

Coun. Shawn Dobson (St. Charles) said CAO Doug McNeil has instructed department heads not to talk to him about his initiative to promote civic departments best practices.

Dobson said he asked civic departments last month to send him examples of their top work so he could promote it to constituents.

Departments initially responded positively to his request, Dobson said, until McNeil ordered them to stop co-operating.

I got positive responses from all the departments initially, and then it went cold, Dobson said.

Thats because (McNeil) said something like that had to be run through his department. The department heads told me they were ordered not to talk to me.

Dobson vented his frustration with city halls exclusionary politics at council Decembers budget debate. Normally quiet, Dobson  a carpenter who accomplished the rare civic feat of defeating an incumbent in the 2014 election  blasted Bowman, his inner circle and the senior administration for refusing to share documents and information with all councillors.

This secrecy crap has got to stop, Dobson said at the Dec. 13 special council meeting. The reports the department wont let regular councillors see. EPC members wont share that information and a mayor that supports this Ive asked administration more than once if we could have information delivered to us in a timely manner, the response has always been we dont want this information leaked to the press. Now, thats trust for youI am more than just a little insulted. And Ive got news for you  I dont trust the administration. I dont trust EPC members. And I certainly dont trust the mayor. I dont trust you because of all the secrets and reports you hide from us regular councillors.

Dobson said councillors should be able to talk freely to any city employee on any subject, without interference from the CAO or any other official.

Ive talked to three department heads and they said because of an email (McNeil) sent them, they cant talk to me on that, Dobson said. Its a gag order. I feel its wrong.

Dobson said a lot of attention is focused on the citys faults but he found frustrating that no one at city hall is taking the lead to demonstrate the many good things done by civic departments. He cited as examples the break-away connections for traffic signals, which reduce the severity of injury in collisions, the successes of the Animal Services department, and the citys recently-opened high-tech transportation management centre.

Dobson said he is the council representative to the mayors age friendly and seniors advisory committee, where department representatives often attend meetings and talk about the good things being done by their staff.

I got tired of hearing this is one of Winnipegs best kept secrets and I wanted to share what was being told to the committee with the rest of the city, Dobson said.

Dobson notified McNeil of his plans on Feb. 23 and received a response the next day.

While I appreciate your intention to promote the City organization in a positive way, this type of initiative really needs to be approved and organized through my office as it impacts all departments in the public service, McNeil wrote in an email to Dobson. We want to make sure that the messages provided to the public are accurate and consistent.

McNeil went on to say to Dobson that he had been discussing the very same idea with his staff and they concluded the best means to promote the citys good works would be to include them in an annual report.

Dobson said he wasnt impressed.

No one reads annual reports. They get buried, lost.

A request by the Free Press for an interview with McNeil was rejected. David Driedger, the citys manager of corporate communications, said city staff are willing to work with councillors to promote projects only in their own wards, adding that staff are continuing to discuss the issue with Dobson.

That was news to Dobson, who said he reached out to McNeil twice since then, the last time a week ago, asking to meet with him and other councillors to discuss the initiative but he has not received a response.

Dobsons office said McNeil did send an email response Thursday afternoon  15 minutes before Driedger sent an email to the Free Press saying essentially the same thing.

I was planning to contact him (Friday) and ask if hed decided to stop talking to me, Dobson said.

Dobson said hes hoping going public will pressure McNeil into removing the gag order hes placed on the civic departments. If not, he said, he will proceed with the Promote Winnipeg initiative, as hes dubbed it on his own with information he picks up at meetings.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Harjit Sajjan, Canadas minister of national defence, is in Winnipeg today and will meet this afternoon with members of the Ukrainian community.

Sajjan will discuss Canadas support for Ukraine and its army at Holy Family Nursing Home (145 Aberdeen Ave.) beginning at 5:30. The event was organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress-Manitoba Provincial Council.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 16/03/2017 (2062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 33-year-old Winnipeg man has landed in prison after he led police on a high-speed chase with a stolen vehicle and rammed a tactical unit SUV.

Danny Morgado pleaded guilty and was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison for criminal offences including assault causing bodily harm, fleeing from police, resisting arrest and obstructing justice.

Winnipeg police were investigating Morgado in connection to a report that an 18-year-old woman had been assaulted in a local hotel room in the early hours of Sept. 16, 2016. When police arrived at the hotel in the 1700 block of Wellington Avenue, Morgado took off in a stolen vehicle that had different stolen licence plates attached. He sped away from officers, driving the wrong way down a one-way street and jumping a median before he rammed a police vehicle that was trying to box him in. The officers werent hurt.

Morgado then got out of the car and ran from police. He was eventually caught by the canine unit. He admitted to punching the young woman in the face and leaving her with a bloody nose after they got into an argument in the hotel room.

He also admitted to contacting the victim while he was in custody to try to get her to recant her allegations. Someone  its not clear who  used Morgados Facebook account on his behalf to message the woman prior to her meeting with a Crown attorney about the case in January.

I need you to say none of that stuff happened, the message said.

Court heard the victims foster parents read the message and Morgado was charged with obstruction of justice.

The father of two told provincial court Judge Brent Stewart Thursday that his actions were rooted in a meth addiction. Through his lawyer, he said the stolen vehicle he was driving during the police chase had been given to him by a friend and he didnt question how it was obtained.

He apologized to the victim and to his two young children. His defence lawyer, Crystal Antila, said Morgados children are a motivating force for him to enter treatment for drug addiction, which he told the judge he hopes to do in prison.

Ive had a tough life, you know, I cant really blame anybody for my actions, Morgado said as he appeared in court by video from Headingley Correctional Centre.

He was sentenced to 3.5 years for the charges related to the assault and police chase, as well as an additional two months for unrelated breaches of court conditions. He has less than three years left to serve behind bars.

A co-accused in the case, 29-year-old Tristan Provinciano, is set to appear in court on his charges next month.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
By Press Trust of India: Itanagar, Mar 17 (PTI) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu has written to his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah requesting his personal intervention in punishing the culprit who assaulted an Arunachalee student in Bengaluru recently.

Khandu in his letter written yesterday noted that though several charges were filed against the culprit ? one Hemanth Kumar, a lawyer by profession ? he managed to obtain anticipatory bail, an official communique said here today.

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The chief minister drew attention of Siddaramaiah towards the fact that every year, thousands of students from Arunachal Pradesh go to Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru for higher and technical education.

He said if the culprit responsible for assaulting Arunachalee student Higio Gungtey in Bengaluru is punished it would set an example to thwart similar incidents in the future.

The student from Arunachal Pradesh was allegedly beaten and forced to lick his house owners shoes for using excessive water.

While pointing that these students face racial discrimination in one or other form, he asserted that such discrimination ought to be negated in every possible way and dissuaded forth with.

He made it clear that culprits engaged in such kind of activities should be dealt with iron hands so that recurrence of such incidents are nipped in the bud and a sense of security is instilled amongst the student community pursuing studies in his state.

"I would therefore seek your personal intervention in the present case to ensure that the culprit is punished according to the law of the land and justice is delivered to the victim and his family members.

"I also would like to seek your kind assurance in ensuring safety and security of our students studying in various colleges and educational institutions in your state," he added in the letter to Siddaramaiah. PTI UPL RG

--- ENDS ---
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This article was published 16/03/2017 (2062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For 22 years, Nelson Tomalty thought there was something wrong with his monthly hydro bills.

He phoned Manitoba Hydro many times to complain, and the answer was always that he must be using a lot of electricity.

It wasnt unusual for Tomalty to get a monthly bill for more than $1,000 during the winter. The one time Manitoba Hydro sent out an inspector, he reported everything was tickety-boo.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Calculations detailing the difference in payments over one year. Nelson Tomalty claims Manitoba Hydro owes him more than $600,000 after a faulty meter appears to have been over billing him at his machine shop near Gimli, Thursday, March 16, 2017.

But when Tomalty got a new meter in late 2015, he noticed something miraculous. His monthly bill suddenly dropped by half, compared to the same months in previous years. The old meter was faulty, Tomalty said.

Calculating hydro bill overcharges over 22 years, plus interest, Tomalty estimates Manitoba Hydro owes him more than $600,000.

Im using their numbers. Im not making up numbers. These are numbers right off their meter, he said.

But if Tomalty thought Manitoba Hydro stonewalled him before, his attempt for redress has been like running into the proposed Trump wall.

They wont phone me back. They wont talk to me now, Tomalty says. The 81-year-old lives near Gimli.

They even blocked my number so I couldnt phone in for a while. Theyre the classic bully, as far as Im concerned.

Manitoba Hydro says it conducted a full review and denies the old meter malfunctioned.

Once removed, the old meter was sent to its meter shop for testing and passed with flying colours. It has since been put back into service at another location, spokesman Bruce Owen said in a statement.

This would indicate that the meter was operating normally and accurately recording (the) power drawn, Owen said.

Owen said home occupancy and frequency of use of major electrical devices are factors that could explain the difference in electricity consumption.

He added that Manitoba Hydro will perform on-site meter testing for customers. For a small fee, a customer also can have a meter tested by an independent Measurement Canada staff.

Tomalty said an inspector went to his home after he complained but never checked the meter. He only looked for leaks.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Nelson Tomalty claims Manitoba Hydro owes him more than $600,000 after a faulty meter appears to have been over billing him at his machine shop near Gimli, Thursday, March 16, 2017.

Tomalty has a big house at 2,700 square feet, with a lot of windows. So its conceivable he uses a lot of power. But in a month such as September, he would burn through $15 a day in electricity. Friends used to kid Tomalty about his high energy bills.

In the year before he got a new meter, his energy consumption was 63,000 kilowatt hours. It dropped to 33,000 kwh with the new meter.

Weather isnt an issue, either, as Tomalty doesnt use electric heat anymore.

Tomalty calculates he has been overcharged about $3,000 a year for 22 years, or $66,000. Then he adds interest  Manitoba Hydro interest. Thats what theyd do to me if I owed it to them, he said. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.

The public utility charges 1.25 per cent per month for late payments, or 16.08 per cent a year. With interest, Tomalty believes, hes owed more than $600,000.

Tomalty said he sent registered letters to Hydro with copies of all his statements to prove his case, but has not heard back.

This week, he sent a registered letter to Premier Brian Pallister, with similar documentation.

Im not giving up on this. I dont know if you have to shame them into this, or what, Tomalty said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 16/03/2017 (2062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are few basic social tenets on which nearly all people agree: murder is bad, literacy is good, that sort of thing.

Heres another one, though the strength of this conviction is, tragically, all too often honoured in the breach: impaired driving is a scourge, a clear public health danger and a selfish and violent act that kills or injuries too many Canadians.

But when we say impaired driving, whats the first thing that comes to mind? Booze, right? What about pot?

NEP2214008

At a minimum, most people can agree that its a terrible idea to drive while stoned out of ones gourd. Yet every day, a notable minority of Manitobans are doing it. Thats what MPI discovered in an anonymous roadside safety survey.

The numbers, reported in Thursdays Free Press, are striking. Of 1,203 drivers who agreed to give voluntary breath and saliva samples to MPI, about 10 per cent tested positive for drugs, including pot, cocaine and opioids.

Of those, marijuana was the most common. Fifty-three per cent of positive results included marijuana; cocaine was a distant second at 31 per cent, with opioids, benzodiazepines and amphetamines trailing along at lower rates.

It should be noted that not all of these positives suggested a level of impairment. Yet of those who did test positive for pot, 62 per cent had levels of THC in their system at least twice the legal limit in Colorado, where pot is legal.

Manitoba justice minister Heather Stefanson said she was troubled by the results; NDP justice critic Andrew Swan told the Free Press he was surprised that the rate was that high.

Frankly, he shouldnt be surprised; the numbers more or less line up with other data we have about pot usage in Canada. What those numbers tell us, consistently, is that Canadians are well-acquainted with marijuana.

By now, its clear that if the goal of prohibition is to crush usage of pot, then prohibition has failed. A 2012 study found that a little more than one in 10 Canadians used pot within the last year; that includes a full third of people aged 18 to 24.

Seniors are less likely to have ever used marijuana, but more than half of Canadians between 15 and 44 have tried it at least once; moreover, a full 3.2 per cent of Canadians over 15 smoke at least once a week.

Thats more of us than go to the movie theatre every week, just for a quick comparison.

So its clear marijuana laws havent made us strangers to pot. What prohibition does do is complicate how we discuss its safe use; if pot is illegal, then education campaigns are inevitably caught up in alarmism and baggage.

After all, how can we calmly educate youth on how to responsibly use a substance that, at this stage, is still illegal?

With the Liberals pledging to move forward on legalization  a move that advocates are anxiously awaiting, over a year since the federal election  we ought to seize this opportunity to open a sane conversation on safe use.

If and when we enact legalization, public education campaigns can focus on the facts. We can take a sober (so to speak) look at how marijuana use impacts driving and develop messaging strategies targeted to those effects.

For instance, a large 2015 study, which recruited occasional pot smokers and put them through a driving simulator, found that at high enough levels of THC, drivers showed similar levels of lane-weaving as with .08 blood alcohol.

What was more striking was how the two substances acted together: after using both alcohol and marijuana, test subjects showed significant lane-weaving, even when their levels of both substances stood below legal limits.

Clearly, theres still a lot of education that needs to happen around these effects. Anecdotally, many marijuana users Ive spoken to report feeling that pot use doesnt impact their driving; studies show otherwise, and that should be known.

That said, it will take more than that. Reducing impaired driving  regardless of substance  starts with education. But it also ties into other aspects of physical and social infrastructure, including cultural tolerance and transportation.

Japan, for instance, has a particularly exuberant drinking culture, but only 6.2 per cent of traffic fatalities there are linked to drunk driving  one of the lowest in the world by that measure. Canada, by contrast, clocks in the highest at 34 per cent.

Looking at those numbers, a good guess is that Japans superior public transit and pedestrian-friendly cities likely play a moderating role; in much of Japan, its very convenient to go out on the town and leave your car at home.

Yet so long as were talking about marijuana, the time for alarmism is over. We know its not as destructive as prohibition mantras held; it is not, as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently said, only slightly less awful than heroin.

With legalization hypothetically on the horizon, the time for public education is now. So lets see a federal bill on this issue, lets start discussing it frankly and factually  then lets get on with things, more informed and more safely.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have an ice Friday.

Freezing drizzle on Friday morning that will change to periods of snow is causing treacherous driving and walking conditions in Winnipeg and area as well as other areas of the province.

The Lord Selkirk School Division closed all of its schools Friday due to severe ice conditions on side roads. No buses were running and staff were not expected to report to their places of work.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Drivers faced wet and sloppy roads this morning on Bishop Grandin Boulevard near Shorehill Drive.

In the Prairie Rose School Division, St. Laurent School only has had its classes and buses cancelled for on Friday.

Highway 10 from Wasagaming to the north gates of Riding Mountain National Park were closed Friday morning due to poor winter driving conditions.

In Winnipeg, the freezing drizzle was expected to change to snow and blowing snow Friday afternoon. About two centimetres of snowfall was expected for the day with a northwest wind gusting from 50 km/h to 70 km/h. The temperature was expected fall to -5 C later Friday afternoon.

Overnight Friday and into Saturday, there will be blowing snow and more gusty winds from the northwest of 50 km/h gusting to 70 km/h. Winds will become light by morning. The low will be -15 C.

Saturday will be cloudy with a high of -1 C.

A low pressure system brought heavy snow to northern Manitoba overnight.

In Northeast Manitoba, Environment Canada issued snowfall warnings in the Oxford House, Gods Lake and Shamattawa.

A snowfall with total amounts of 10 cm to 15 cm is expected. Heavy snow will taper off later Friday as the system departs the province.

Travellers are cautioned that rapidly accumulating snow could make travel difficult over some locations. Visibility may be suddenly reduced at times in heavy snow.
Opinion

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This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At the Conservative Party leadership debate in Halifax in February, former business leader and reality-TV star Kevin OLeary made his debut into Canadian politics by taking his place among 13 other leadership hopefuls. Recent polls have the Dragons Den and Shark Tank personality leading the field and, even though it is still early, it appears he could be the frontrunner in the race to lead the party into the next election against Justin Trudeau.

OLeary is exploiting some of the messaging that helped carry Donald Trump to the presidency in the U.S. These high-profile business leaders have promised to use their business acumen to fix government and get results where career politicians and public servants have failed. Setting aside the question of how successful these two individuals have been in business, their jump to politics raises an age-old debate within the field of public management. Are the skills required to run a private company transferable to the public sector? Can government be run like a business?

These questions have been around since at least the 1980s, when government budgets ballooned and senior public bureaucrats were perceived to have too much power while being unresponsive to democratic control. Today, with trust in the efficiency and accountability of government at an all-time low, the private sector continues to provide fertile ground for those who seek new ways to implement the policies of elected governments and deliver pubic services.

ANDREW VAUGHAN / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Kevin O'Leary (left) with fellow Conservative party leadership candidates Kellie Leitch (centre) and Michael Chong at the debate in Halifax.

For example, in recent years the Saskatchewan government has attempted to implement a lean management philosophy, pioneered by Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota, to create savings in the provincial health-care system.

The most visible difference between running a private company and heading government is the goal that must be pursued. In the private sector, the goal is straightforward: maximize profit by increasing revenue and cutting costs. This is not to say the goal is easy  countless businesses fail every year  but the objective is singular, clear and relatively stable.

Some public-sector organizations will have objectives that are straightforward. Passport Canadas goal is to process applications and deliver documents in a timely and efficient matter. But government also has to address issues such as climate change, which involve balancing multiple, and sometimes even conflicting, objectives, such as economic growth, environmental protection and security. Therefore, while public-sector organizations may appear inefficient and irrational when compared to private-sector firms, this may be due to the nature of public governance as much as it is to mismanagement or incompetence.

Reports have already emerged that Trump is growing frustrated by his inability to push through his agenda for government. Because of the separation of powers in the U.S., the legislative and judicial branches of government have delayed or jeopardized many of the presidents cabinet selections and his executive orders on immigration.

The Canadian prime minister is not subject to the same checks and balances that exist in the American system. But OLeary may be headed for a similar fate if he were to lead the countrys next government. When responding to a question about improving health care at the Halifax debate, he suggested the best way to fix Canadas health-care system was to improve economic growth in the country. A link can be made between economic growth, government revenue and investments in health care. But governments have very little control over the economy and any leader who is going to tackle health care needs to offer more than a hope for increased revenue.

This is not to say private-sector practices can never be used to improve the operations of the public sector. Measuring performance on outcomes has become widespread practice among public organizations, even though it is often more difficult, after the idea was borrowed from the private sector. But knights-in-shining-business-armour are overpromising when they proclaim they will easily fix governments problems and quickly get results by bringing their private-sector prowess to the public sphere.

Brendan Boyd is a postdoctoral scholar at the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary.
Opinion

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This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The war on the public sector has long been a recurring theme. Countless governments at all levels have turned their attention to the budget lines for public servants as a way to rein in deficits.

Its a popular meme. Lazy, bloated, overpaid and over-pensioned bureaucrats  think Selma and Patty, Marges sisters from The Simpsons, the chain-smoking front-line workers at Springfields department of motor vehicles  with a self-important need to ensure the fine print is attended to rather than common sense.

Both the province and the City of Winnipeg are currently taking aim at public-sector wages. The city is involved in negotiations with about 80 per cent of its workers. The Manitoba government has talked openly about reopening contracts with its public-sector unions in order to slay the deficit.

ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

The city last week sent out a news release suggesting it was implementing a hiring and wage freeze to deal with a budget shortfall caused by an unexpected cost for snow removal. This week, the citys CAO, Doug MacNeil, clarified and said that the hiring freeze wont affect front-line services, but middle and upper management.

Premier Brian Pallister has made it clear front-line workers wont be affected by his budgetary cuts. As he has claimed, his mom and sister would be upset if he fired nurses or teachers.

Meanwhile, to the west, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says his government is looking at a provincial deficit of $1.2 billion and as a result his budget, to be tabled next week, has a 3.5 per cent cut in public sector wages built in. The Saskatchewan Government and General Employees Union has filed a challenge with the labour relations board, arguing the government has been acting in bad faith by proposing public-sector wage rollbacks.

In December, conservative think tank the Fraser Institute provided a report that suggested in 2015 public-sector employees made almost 11 per cent more than those working in similar occupations in the private sector. This type of data certainly helps build the case that the public sector is bloated and that they are the culprits for ballooning deficits.

However, when you peel back the numbers, the results are much more revealing.

For example, those who work in protective services make almost 40 per cent less than similar jobs in the public sector.

In other words, we pay our provincial correctional officers, security guards and police officers more than the folks who provide security in our local supermarket. Or teachers and professors make roughly 15 per cent more by comparison, but lets face it  there arent a lot of private-sector teachers or professors.

Heres where the meat is: the wages for those who are in senior management at the public sector, one of the areas governments are looking to cut? Well, according to the Fraser Institute, they make less than in the private sector. Not a lot, but less.

The point is that many public-sector jobs arent done by the private sector, but that doesnt stop government from making them great scapegoats.

There needs to be some discussion between the government and its unionized workers as deficits climb.

Overtime, benefits or the sheer number of bargaining units are potential areas to highlight. But stop using the public-sector workforce as a punchline for previous bad government decisions. Selma and Patty are fictional characters, after all, and their jobs got privatized a long time ago.
Opinion

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This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We met Ali on a comparatively balmy Monday morning. We were searching for three asylum-seekers who had crossed the border a few days before; he was scrubbing dishes in Salvation Armys second-floor open kitchen.

That morning, Ali and other asylum-seekers made breakfast together. He volunteered to wash up.

If people welcome us in Canada, then we have to clean the stuff they gave us, he said cheerfully. If you eat (from) a plate and you dont wash, then youre not kind. Keep them clean, put them back in a good place. Its a must.

Ali and his wife crossed into Canada last month. His fate is still left to the Immigration Refugee Board, but hes determined to be a successful Canadian. (Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press)

My colleague, photographer Phil Hossack, showed Ali a photo of the men we were hoping to find. Ali was apologetic; he hadnt seen them. But it was early, he pointed out helpfully: most asylum-seekers werent out and about just yet.

As luck would have it, we soon found all three men we were searching for. We also got to know Ali a little more.

My conversation with Ali never made it into last weekends 49.8 cover story. In that feature, myself, Hossack and journalist Randy Turner followed the other three asylum-seekers, starting from their first steps across the border.

Still, my thoughts keep slipping back to Ali, and the conversation we had on that morning. So Id like to take a minute and sketch his story  believing, in a way, that knowing its shape can help us understand how to move forward.

Its hard to describe Ali. He is 30 years old, but with an easy smile that makes him look a decade younger. He is soft-spoken and friendly, and likes to dress nicely; that day, he wore dark jeans and a preppy long-sleeved sweater.

Hed pulled together that outfit from the Salvation Armys supply of used clothing, he told me.

When Ali crossed the border late last month, he didnt come alone. His 37-year-old wife of three years was with him; she wound up staying on a womens floor of the Salvation Army. He showed me her photo with a newlyweds pride.

They fell in love thanks to an airport; he delivered cargo, she worked at a gift shop on the concourse. They started talking, and then exchanged numbers. You already know how the rest goes: love is the same all over the world.

When you get the number of a lady, the story goes from there, Ali said, with a shy smile.

Boundless optimism

Like some other asylum-seekers we spoke to, Ali was hesitant to discuss details of why he fled his home country of Djibouti. He was proud to say the country is friends with the United States, and that Djibouti is a peaceful place.

But it was family problems, he said; thats why they left. They werent safe there anymore, he said.

In that situation, them leaving makes sense. Djibouti is a tiny nation, about three-quarters the size of Vancouver Island; most of its 850,000 people live in a densely-packed capital thats a fraction of Winnipegs physical size.

So if ones life was threatened, it would be difficult to hide there. Especially if those threats came from family.

One could speculate what Alis family problems might be, but Im not in the business of guessing. At any rate, Canadas refugee board will hear the whole story; it will decide if Ali and his wife qualify for refugee status.

Besides, what fascinated me about Ali wasnt his background, but his brightness. Throughout our 30-minute conversation, Ali was boundlessly optimistic. Even in the fragile purgatory of his situation, his hope was undimmed.

He is determined to be successful; thats important to him. His dream is to get a job in Canada, save up and go to university to study business. One day, he mused, maybe he would open a supermarket or some kind of store.

It wasnt idle talk. On his phone, Ali keeps digital copies of self-help classics, such as the 1989 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He devoured that book during his quiet first week at the Salvation Army.

This gives you good ideas to develop yourself, he said. You have to read always. Otherwise you become illiterate.

He reads his books in English, rather than translations into French, which is one of Djiboutis two official languages. For Ali, that is a point of pride too: 10 years ago, he started teaching himself English by watching cable news.

When asked if Canada was appealing because French is an official language  he can conduct any government business en francais, if he wishes  Ali shook his head. He sees English as part of the puzzle of success.

English is an international language, he said, waving his hand for emphasis. Anywhere you go, they speak English. If you speak English, you understand everyone. I am happy to speak it everyday. I like always to speak English.

Our intention is to work

I think about Ali now, as the political storm over asylum-seekers continues to crackle. The issue will only get more complex and more difficult, as more people cross Canadas border. Already, temporary housing is growing scarce.

But this is not simply a political issue, or a matter of logistics. It is, at its heart, a story about people. It is a story about Ali and his wife; it is a story about Shahadat and Subir, who agreed to be featured in our cover story last week.

Every asylum-seeker brings their own story to Canada. We cannot tell all of them. Yet to divine the best path forward, we must understand something of the human lives hanging in the balance: who they are and why theyve taken this risk.

This will become more pressing, if the numbers grow. With that understanding, we can ensure a national response guided by the best of our instincts. Without it, we lack the information necessary to develop informed opinions.

For instance, when Provencher MP Ted Falk suggested asylum-seekers were taking advantage of Canadas generosity, that described none of the people I met. All were eager to contribute; none wanted to be burdens.

We dont want to take money from the government and sleep, thats not our intention, Ali told me, when I asked about his plans for the future. Our intention is to work for Canada, to work for the people.

We will push the country to the front, not the back, he added. I think countries like America were built by immigrants, because immigrants are very strong people.

I dont know if Ali and his wife will have their refugee claim approved. Until that decision their future is uncertain, their lives paused in time. So for now Ali will keep dreaming; he will keep washing dishes and studying self-help tomes.

Perhaps one day, those habits will make him a highly effective Canadian. The way he crossed the border may have been irregular; but there is nothing irregular about that pure, simple hope.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
By Press Trust of India: By Roopshree Nair Sharma

Chennai, Mar 17 (PTI) Russia is open to localising component production of its modern Sukhoi super jet even as it is talking to Mahindra and Mahindra for partnership for the MC 21 civil aviation aircraft, Russian Trade and Industry Minister Denis Manturov said here.

"We have a very good example of a modern aircraft, the Sukhoi super jet project. We are open to both exporting it to the Indian market as well as localising some of the components production. We are working on another civil aviation project, the MC 21 aircraft which is scheduled to have its first flight soon and we are having talks with Indian aerospace company Mahindra and Mahindra," Manturov said at the International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) organised by EEPC India here.

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He let out that a Mahindra subsidiary is manufacturing interiors for the Sukhoi super jet.

"I think they can also be a part of the MC 21 project, both for manufacturing some components and producing the interiors for the aircraft," the minister said.

Manturov, who held bilateral talks with Indias Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the sidelines of IESS, which opened yesterday, said having been associated with Indias defence sector, Russia is keen to get involved with the countrys civil aviation as well.

"We are currently having another project for 2114 (commercial) aircraft for regional airlines. We think that it is really compatible with the Indian market. It has a lot of demand for the Indian market and we are open to both Mahindra and Mahindra and other aerospace companies to manufacture components for this aircraft in India," he said.

As for Indias defence requirements, Russia will supply 60 multi-purpose Kazan helicopters in the first phase while joint facilities will be set up in India for the manufacturing of 140 helicopters. The agreement for the project will soon be finalised and announced, a Russian official said.

As a partner country, Russia has a predominant position at IESS, being organised by EEPC India with active support of the Commerce and Industry Ministry, besides the Department of Heavy Industry. Over 400 global companies are participating in the sixth edition of the event. PTI RSN ARD

--- ENDS ---
Saint Marys University of Minnesota finance and business intelligence and analytics double major student Peter Hegland, son of Jim and Tanja Hegland of Saint Charles, Minn., was named the universitys Outstanding Senior Male.

Hegland has demonstrated these qualities through his many involvements. Prior to graduating in December 2016, he was involved in entrepreneurship club, water polo club, Saint Peters leadership club and the Kabara Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. He was a resident assistant in Benilde Hall for two years, and he also founded a successful start-up business cleaning windows for residential properties in Rochester, Minn.

He was recognized as a Top 25 Student Entrepreneur in the U.S. and was invited to pitch his company at the national finals of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. Following graduation, Hegland began working as a merger and acquisitions associate with HelpSytems, a cybersecurity and IT technology company in Minneapolis.

The Outstanding Senior Male and Female Awards were presented during the universitys Founders Day March 14.
The Winona Catholic Worker will host a roundtable discussion with John Heid titled Walls: In our Lives and in the World" at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 23, at Bethany House, 832 W. Broadway.

Heid is a former Winona resident who has lived and worked on the U.S and Mexico border for years. He regularly offers direct aid to people crossing the border through the desert as well as hospitality to individuals and families at Casa Mariposa in Tucson, Ariz. Heid's discussion will draw on his personal experiences, accented by the current political climate.
Winona

Thursday

6:22 p.m.  Tony Ray Giest, 41, Winona was cited for running a red light after colliding with 44-year-old Fountain City womans car at the intersection of Fifth and Main streets.

8:29 p.m.  A man on Wincrest Drive reported his credit card number had been charged $150 at an Oklahoma Walmart, and a similar charge in Oklahoma was denied by his bank. He still had the card, so it was canceled.

Friday

3:02 a.m.  Charges of driving after revocation, fleeing an officer on foot, possession of a small amount of marijuana, and obstructing the legal process with force (gross misdemeanor) were referred against Melvin Earle Kimp, 26, Winona, after he fled the vehicle he had been driving after being pulled over for not using his headlights and driving erratically.

While Kimp was being chased, the passenger took the car  which was recovered near the Maplewood Townhomes. The passenger was not identified.
A pro-frac sand group made good on threat to bring legal action against Winona County over its frac sand ban Tuesday.

The suit, filed by Minneapolis-based law firm Larkin Hoffman, seeks to nullify the amendment to the countys zoning ordinance preventing the mining and processing of industrial silica sand  a classification which includes frac sand.

Prior to the meeting in November approving the ban on a 3-2 vote, Winona County commissioners received a letter from Larkin Hoffman threatening to sue the county on behalf of unnamed clients.

Those clients are still largely unnamed in the complaint.

Two parties are suing the county, a non-profit formed in January called Southeastern Minnesota Property Owners, and Roger Dablestein, a Saratoga County resident who owns property in Winona County.

The complaint alleges that Dablsteins Winona County land holds significant industrial silica deposits which are estimated to be in the range of 12 million tons located on approximately 38 acres.

The complaint said the ruling was unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious and violates the United States and Minnesota Constitutions, including, specifically, the equal protection, due process and takings clauses of these constitutions and the interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution.

The complaint seeks a ruling that agrees with that, as well as a prohibition on the enforcement of the ban on industrial sand mining.

The arguments reflect those offered in debates during the year-and-a-half leading up to the ban.

Those opposed to the ban, including representatives of the Minnesota Industrial Sand Council, argued that the restrictions constituted unconstitutional takings and unreasonably discriminated against a particular industry.

Winona County Administrator Ken Fritz said that while the county was aware of the potential for a lawsuit during the proceedings, the county didnt go about its business as if it was anticipating a suit.

They passed it, we implemented it, Fritz said. That was it.

Fritz couldnt comment about the specifics of the suit because it is ongoing.

County Attorney Karin Sonnemon had advised that the county had sound legal standing and that the ban did not create any constitutional or legal problems.

An amendment to the ban was drafted by Sonneman and drew from several examples, including Goodhue Countys Florence Township ban on silica sand mining for fracking and the Land Stewardship Projects proposed ban language.

The legal analysis made several additions to the initial language, including an argument for the amendment as it relates to the values in the countys comprehensive plan and the purpose of the countys zoning ordinance.

It also clarifies the distinctions among restrictions on different types of mineral excavation, extraction and land alteration by defining some uses as commercial minerals oa opposed to industrial minerals.

The county maintained that it would not affect the inter-county or interstate commerce of sand by truck, rail or barge, and would only apply to new mines.

No landowners have attempted to apply for a new mine since the ban was implemented.

The Land Stewardship Project has come out strongly against the lawsuit, saying that the decision had been supported by the majority of the countys residents.

Johanna Rupprecht, policy organizer for the Land Stewardship Project, said the county had done its due diligence and she thought it would hold up legally.

Were confident, Rupprecht said. And see this ultimately as the industry attacking our democratically made decision.
Nearly 40 percent of pre-K through high school students in Winona County say theyve had at least one adverse childhood experience  a potentially traumatic event that can lead to long-term mental health problems.

But in terms of student-to-support-staff ratio, Minnesota school districts have some of the weakest mental health programs in the country.

At the Winona Area Public Schools Boards regular meeting on Thursday, district staff and board members reviewed WAPS current mental health offerings and discussed how they might be improved.

Educators are used to working on the academics, said Margaret Schild, the districts director of community education. Thats your focus. It can be difficult if a student is struggling with outside issues that youre not aware of.

Last summer, the district joined a team of districts from across the country that work together to identify and fix shared weaknesses in their mental health programs.

Last fall, the district began to re-examine the roles and responsibilities of student support staff, making sure not to duplicate efforts.

And in January, the district hired a clinical social worker for Winona Middle School  someone qualified to diagnose and treat students in-house.

Our biggest problem is that shes in such high demand, said Amy Adams, the districts director of special education. Currently, the middle school has a waitlist of 13 students who need mental health assessments. Were trying to maximize the benefit of what we do have.

Schild said the Winona public school district has far fewer support employees than would be ideal. The district has:

One social worker for every 1,000 students.

One counselor for every 370 students.

One external, off-site therapist for every 275 students.

In lieu of the district hiring its way to better care, school staff say they want to fill gaps by improving their recognition of mental health conditions and their communication when handling such cases.

Staff also emphasized the districts need to strengthen partnerships with the community, like the one between WAPS and Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center.

And if results are positive at the middle school, staff say, their hope is to bring in-house assessment and treatment to other schools in the district.

Mental health is a serious problem across the United States, among both children and adults. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 20 percent of both groups are living with a mental health condition.

The institute reports that 50 percent of all mental health conditions begin by the age of 14, and that 75 percent begin by the age of 24.

Among students with mental health conditions, 70 percent do not receive care.

Educators are used to working on the academics. Thats your focus. It can be difficult if a student is struggling with outside issues that youre not aware of. Margaret Schild, WAPS director of community education.
Its that time of year again when we celebrate all things Irish but there is a lot more to Irish achievement than shamrocks, Guinness and Kiss me Im Irish hats. Ireland has been making a positive impact around the globe for centuries and what better time to celebrate some of those real Irish achievements.

The submarine

As unlikely as it may seem the modern submarine is indeed an Irish invention, developed by the talented John P. Holland from Liscannor in County Clare. The US Navy purchased Hollands design in 1900 where the USS Holland became the first commissioned submarine in history. Its success led to other navies also purchasing the designs including Japan and the United Kingdom where five Holland Class submarines were commissioned.

Los Angeles

Without the efforts of Irish engineer William Mulholland the city of Los Angeles could never have existed. Mulholland was the engineer responsible for successfully supplying the growing city with fresh water. He built one of the worlds biggest ever civil engineering projects to transport the water from hundreds of miles to the east to the city and the scheme still serves the needs of millions of people every day.

Potato chips

The idea for flavoured potato chips came from the aptly named Joe Spud Murphy, head of the fledgling Tayto crisp company who had developed a machine to add flavourings to the crisps as they were made. They first tried out onion, cheese & onion and cheese flavoured crisps and the cheese & onion version proved to be the publics favourite. Today flavoured crisps are the best selling snack food in most places around the world with an annual global market worth more than $16 billion!

The tattoo machine

The tattoo machine was invented by Samuel OReilly in New York, before OReillys invention tattooing was carried out via a crude set of needles usually fixed to a wooden grip used by the tattooist, the procedure was time consuming and extremely painful. Using a hollow, ink-filled needle his machine was far more precise and delicate that the manual techniques of the time and was also much faster. He patented his design in 1891 and it proved to be an immediate success.

The US Navy

John Barry from County Wexford was a successful officer in the new Continental Navy during the American Revolution. He is widely regarded as the the father of the American Navy and was the nations first commissioned naval officer.

Splitting the atom

The son of a Methodist minister born in Dungarvan, Ernest Walton was a research scholar at Cambridge where under the guidance of Sir Ernest Rutherford with John Cockcroft he successfully managed to split the nuclei of lithium atoms by bombarding them with a stream of protons. It was the first time an atom had been split and it was for this achievement that Walton and Cockcroft were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1951.

A cure for leprosy

Cork doctor Vincent Barry played a vital role in developing a cure for leprosy one of the most feared and misunderstood of diseases. He led a small team at Trinity College working on the related disease tuberculosis. In 1954 Barry was able to synthesize the compound Clofazimine which would become a crucial part of the multi-drug treatment now used for leprosy around the world.

The steam turbine

Developed by Charles Parsons, son of Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons of Parsonstown (now Birr, Co. Offaly) the steam turbine was a major advance in steam engine technology. It enabled the direct generation of electricity from steam power and was installed at power stations around the world as well as transforming marine propulsion.

Modern economics

Kerryman Richard Cantillon is often cited as one of the founders of modern economics. In 1730 Cantillon wrote the work that he is now remembered for, Essai Sur La Nature Du Commerce En General (Essay on the Nature of Trade in General) . In it Cantillon outlines a systematic modern economic theory covering a range of now core economic ideas. Cantillons Essai is now regarded as having huge significance in the development of modern economic theory and influenced many of those who followed including Adam Smith who cited it in his Wealth of Nations.

The White House

Among the worlds most recognizable buildings the White House in Washington DC was inspired by an Irish building and designed and built by an Irish architect. The official residence of US presidents for more than 200 years and home to the Presidents offices and staff its design was the brainchild of a farm boy from Kilkenny named James Hoban who based the design on Dublins Leinster House.

For more on the pluck of the Irish, read the new book What have the Irish ever done for us? by David Forsythe. On Facebook and @WHTIEDFU17 on Twitter for more information. To buy visit Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520699220.
Time to trade in those red #MAGA caps, Trumpkins. If you want your headgear to fit in with the latest White House fashions, invest in some tinfoil.

From top to bottom, this administration has been infested with conspiracy theorists. Most appear to be true believers. Take Stephen K. Bannon and his anxieties about the deep state, or the recently ousted Michael Flynn and his propagation of suggestions that Hillary Clinton was tied to a child sex ring run out of a D.C. pizza parlor.

Others, such as Kellyanne Conway, appear to just be paranoiacs for pay.

Conway seems convinced that the best way to stay in her bosss good graces is to spread parody-defying crackpot theories, or at least add a dash of color to President Trumps own crackpottery.

You may recall that Trump, with zero evidence, accused President Barack Obama of having the wires tapped at Trump Tower. Trump then called for a congressional witch hunt to find proof that the unfounded allegation is true. Over the weekend, Bergen Record columnist Mike Kelly asked Conway point blank, Do you know whether Trump Tower was wiretapped?

Conways response: What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other now, unfortunately.  There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, through their  certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways. And microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera.

Yup, Conway suggested that Team Trump may have been surveilled via microwaves and televisions. To be fair, though, if one were to spy on Trump, through the TV would be a good place to start.

In subsequent interviews, Conway acknowledged that she had no evidence for this claim and that she is not in the job of having evidence and is not Inspector Gadget.

Sadly, Conway is not the only White House official to spread conspiracy theories. Shes not even the only White House official to spread conspiracy theories this past weekend.

On Sunday, budget director Mick Mulvaney added his own screwball spin to the latest jobs report.

Weve thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers in terms of the number of people in the workforce to make the unemployment rate, that percentage rate, look smaller than it actually was, Mulvaney told CNNs Jake Tapper. Mulvaney declined to say exactly how the numbers were being manipulated, saying the explanation might bore people.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been calculating the unemployment rate the same way since 1940. But Mulvaney nevertheless supports the theories of his tinfoil-hat-wearing boss, who throughout the presidential campaign called the unemployment rate a hoax and totally fiction. Most recently Trump relayed through his press secretary that the jobs report may have been phony in the past, but its very real now.

As with Trump, Mulvaneys data trutherism goes back a ways. During the 2015 State of the Union address, for example, then-Rep. Mulvaney (R-S.C.) tweeted that Obamas math on the jobless rate doesnt add up.

Just a few days before Mulvaneys latest bout of irresponsible conspiracy theorizing, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt suggested that  despite the overwhelming scientific consensus  carbon dioxide may not be a primary contributor to climate change.

Its hardly just coincidence that the Trump executive branch is rife with beliefs that are wholly disconnected from reality. Such beliefs were a foundation of his campaign. Of course this would be the talent he attracts. Not scientists, experts or others who believe in weighing evidence, but people who heard Trumps many malicious lies and reckless insinuations  that vaccines cause autism, that Ted Cruzs dad was connected to the JFK assassination, that Mexicans are flooding over the border to rape and kill, that Antonin Scalia and Vince Foster may have been murdered, that 3 million people voted illegally, that our first black president was born in Kenya  and said: Sign me up!

That includes people such as Curtis Ellis, a Labor Department appointee who previously argued that Democrats were engaged in ethnic cleansing of working-class whites. Or Sid Bowdidge, the massage therapist who landed a job as a political appointee at the Energy Department, despite tweeting that Muslims ought to be exterminated.

As Conway has demonstrated, the darker and more sensational your conspiracy theories, the better. For this administration, only one political premise is beyond the pale: that the Russians maybe, just maybe, intervened in the 2016 election to help put Trump in the White House.

Whoa, lets not get carried away.
By Press Trust of India: Lucknow, Mar 17 (PTI) Security has been enhanced at the Taj Mahal in the wake of a media report of a threat to the 17th century monument from terror outfit ISIS.

"A link has been circulated in which it is claimed that Taj Mahal is on the target of ISIS. We are probing it. However, security has been enhanced in and around the monument," Additional Director General, Law and Order, Daljeet Singh Chowdhury told PTI here. The security was jacked up after a website showed graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looked like a weapon. According to reports, a pro-ISIS media group published a graphic depicting Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world, as a possible target of the terror outfit.

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The graphic was released almost a week after security agencies carried out combing operation in Uttar Pradesh in which one accused ? Saifullah ? was killed and six others were arrested.

It was reported that Saifullah was brainwashed by ISIS through the online medium and had carried out an attack on a train in Bhopal.

The graphic features an ISIS fighter wearing combat fatigues and black headgear armed with an assault rifle standing near the Taj Mahal.

It also features three inset pictures ? an image of Taj Mahal within crosshairs with the words "New Target" below it, a van with the Arabic text "Agra istishhadi" (Agra martyrdom-seeker) written in English, implying the threat of a suicide bombing, and an image of a "bomb".

The internal security of Taj Mahal, the biggest draw for foreign and domestic tourists, is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force, a central para-military force entrusted with the task of protecting industrial units, airports, metro rail and various other sensitive places.

The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) man the outer periphery.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams keep a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking slot towards the eastern gate.(MORE) PTI ABN SMI DV

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A 60-credit bachelors degree offered at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County has gained enough popularity that university leaders have added more career options for students to focus their studies.

Beginning in the fall semester, students enrolled in the universitys Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences program may choose to cater their studies towards an accredited degree in project management.

The brand new project management concentration is an opportunity for individuals to develop skills employers are looking for, said Joanna Muller, academic advisor to the program at UW-Baraboo and the University of Wisconsin-Richland. Local employers are telling me they want employees who can manage complex projects involving diverse teams.

Muller said project management is a growing job field  particularly in construction  and employers are in search of people who can balance costs, time, resources and other variables to complete building projects. Muller said skills taught through the program could help aging construction workers transition from hard, manual labor to management positions.

Other applicable job fields for the emphasis include healthcare, information technology and energy.

The Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences is a 60-credit degree thats offered at six UW Colleges, including UW-Baraboo. Students who have earned an associate degree from UW Colleges or a Wisconsin technical college can complete the degree in as few as two years.

The program features courses taught by professors from UW Colleges and several four-year universities. Classes can be taken on campus, online or through a combination of the two, and students may choose from five areas of academia to focus their studies, including business, communication, health and wellness, organizational leadership, project management and sustainability.

The program is designed to fit the schedules of both traditional students and busy adults who want to continue their education without breaking the bank. It also provides hands-on opportunities for students to apply their skills through internships, mentor programs and a final capstone project, which is required to graduate.

UW-Richland student Emily Zorea said the Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences degree gave her more time to plan her future than a traditional bachelors degree. As a newly engaged, nontraditional student with constantly changing obligations, Zorea said she wasnt set on a particular career field. After hearing about the flexible, 60-credit bachelors degree, she decided the program was right for her.

Pursing a degree in communications, Zorea earned an internship at WRCO radio station in Richland Center where she wrote, recorded and edited a series of news reports on the public library in town.

That was a really amazing opportunity, and because the degree works with so many local partners it was possible, she said.

The experience also allowed Zorea to land a job as the librarys youth services librarian, where shes completing her capstone project by facilitating a needs assessment survey with the goal of encouraging more Spanish-speaking families to use the librarys facilities.

Thats a real, hands-on, creative problem-solving project, she said. This degree really gives you the opportunity and flexibility to pursue things like that  to identify a problem and then find a strategy to fit that need and address that problem.

After earning her degree in May, Zorea will attend graduate school at UW-Milwaukee, pursing a masters degree in library sciences. Zorea said she believes the Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences degree provided her with more opportunities for hands-on experience than she would have received through a tradition four-year degree.

I received really excellent training all on my own time, and then was able to use that directly in my vocation, she said. If you are a highly motivated student, and you are here to learn, the degree is anything you want it to be.
Fourth and fifth graders at Necedah Elementary School told the story of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, in their musical Tall Tom Jefferson: A Patriotic Musical Journey.

The students told the story through song of Jeffersons (played by Kadin Schultz) life including some of the biggest achievements in his political career before getting elected president, such as writing the Declaration of Independence and becoming Secretary of State to George Washington. The students also told the story of how he lost the 1796 election to John Adams and tied opponent Aaron Burr in the 1800 election.

Alexander Hamilton (Angelina McNally) lobbied for Jefferson and the House of Representatives voted Jefferson as the third president of the United States. The students also told some of his biggest achievements in his political career such as the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as into his retirement years when he created the University of Virginia.

The musical was directed by Don and Cheryl Jackson. More photos from the musical will be posted online to the Juneau County Star-Times galleries.
Gov. Scott Walkers plan to switch to a self-insurance model for state workers medical care has little support in the state Legislature, top Republicans said Thursday.

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke said at a UW-Madison faculty forum that he hasnt found any lawmakers who are excited about the plan, The Associated Press reported.

The Joint Finance Committee, which must approve the proposal, likely will erase it from Walkers state budget, Steineke said.

Lawmakers are worried the plan wont generate $60 million in savings over the next two years, as Walker has promised, Steineke said.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos agreed there is skepticism regarding the projected savings and you would have trouble finding lawmakers who are excited about the proposal, his spokeswoman, Kit Beyer, told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Sen. Alberta Darling, co-chair of the budget committee, has some questions about the proposal, such as where the savings come from and how the proposal impacts both state employees and the private sector, her spokesman, Bob Delaporte, said.

Rep. John Nygren, the committees other co-chair, didnt respond to a request for comment. Nygren and Darling have previously expressed concerns about moving to self-insurance.

Despite the pushback from Walkers fellow Republicans who control the Legislature, the governor reiterated his support for self-insurance. Under the plan, the state would contract with six health insurance companies to pay medical claims for 250,000 workers and family members directly  and take on the financial risk for large claims  instead of paying premiums to 17 HMOs, which currently accept the risk.

The governor believes it would be unwise for the Legislature to throw away $60 million, Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said. We spent almost a year looking at this, and we think theres a convincing case to provide $60 million in savings that in turn, can be put into public education.

Consultants hired by the state have said the move could save $40 million a year or cost $100 million. The Group Insurance Board, which oversees the benefits, approved Walkers proposal last month, saying it would save at least $60 million over two years.

The state Department of Employee Trust Funds, which administers the benefits, continues to negotiate contracts with the health insurance companies and plans to submit contracts to the budget committee for approval, spokesman Mark Lamkins said. ETF staff have said they could make other changes, including using fewer health plans, if the committee doesnt approve self-insurance.

The proposal is expected to go before the budget committee later this month or next month.

Judith Burstyn, a UW-Madison chemistry professor and president of PROFS, which held the forum Thursday, had a mixed reaction to the idea that self-insurance might not be approved. Pay raises for university employees are tied to the $60 million in savings from self-insurance in Walkers budget, she said.

From the perspective of the health insurance part, Im somewhat relieved, Burstyn said. But it raises the question of whats going to happen to the pay plan if we dont go to self-insurance and we dont save that money?

State Journal reporter Matthew DeFour contributed to this report.
When we go to the grocery store, most of us buy our favorite brands, and we know theyre the brands we want by looking at the labels. We do this because were confident the contents of every can of Campbells Tomato Soup are the same and we wont find any differences between them.

We also tend to think that way when we hear the labels that people have been given: right-wing, liberal, socialist, Democrat, Republican, immigrant. Yet, within each group, there are many differences of opinions and goals.

That was obvious in the recent presidential campaign when long-time conservatives spoke out against Republican candidate Donald Trump and many who were traditionally liberal consistently attacked Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

I quickly learned my opinions differed from many of my most liberal friends. For instance, I believe in the death penalty when it can be proven without a doubt that someone tortured a child or any other human being. I questioned those who dont want gas and oil transported by pipelines, trucks or rail by asking them how they intended to drive anywhere without gasoline. When they replied that electric cars are the answer, I asked where the electricity was going to come from since theyre also against coal, gas and nuclear energy.

Since many also are against all mining, I asked what they thought solar panels and wind generators were made of if not precious metals, silicon and iron ore, all of which must be mined. Although we disagree on some things, I recognize theyre all good people who just want the best for the earth and its inhabitants.

And so do most on the Republican side. But many of their partys leaders, like the ones in power right now, want to eliminate regulations that protect those precious and necessary resources so they can appease their biggest donors. And yes, some Democratic lawmakers have put up weak resistance if their districts benefit from jobs that result in polluting those resources. The corrupt practice of pay-to-play isnt limited to one party.

As a moderate, I agree with the conservative views on fiscal responsibility. So do most liberals. I can honestly say that no liberals I know are for wasteful spending or unnecessary government programs. They pay taxes, too. Despite what some on the right side of politics claim, most liberals have jobs or are retired after working over 40 years. None of them defend people who cheat the welfare system. All Ive met support programs that train the unemployed and help them become independent.

Meanwhile, some on the left-side of the political spectrum claim Republican voters are racist, homophobic, sexist, lack compassion and much more. Yet many of my Republican friends are the opposite, giving their time and money to charitable causes, accepting of differences and believing in equal rights and a compassionate and reasonable immigration policy.

Studies show that most Americans are moderates, and theyre the truly forgotten ones. But theyre often given a limited choice of candidates who come from the most extreme edges or from the old establishment base, neither of which satisfies their expectations of an ethical, reasonable, intelligent candidate whos willing to listen to all sides before making an informed decision.

But theres hope. Some have taken action to unite moderates and others who are sick of the divisiveness. These people have formed groups to provide moderates a voice and choice in the political process.

One of those people is Wisconsins Mike McCabe, who created Blue Jean Nation, a group that welcomes anyone willing to work together to make government work better for all of us. Another group is Run for America, which is recruiting candidates who are more in line with the views of moderates. And then theres No Labels, a group thats the most active in Washington and is bringing lawmakers from both sides together.

The latter two groups are described in The Future of the American Center, a Nov. 29, 2016, article in the New York Times by conservative journalist David Brooks. He wrote, There is a raging need for a movement that embraces economic dynamism, global engagement and social support  that is part Milton Friedman on economic policy, Ronald Reagan on foreign policy and Franklin Roosevelt on welfare policy.

That may not be perfect, but its a beginning and a whole lot better than the destructive divisiveness thats blanketing our country today. Its time for all of us to remember, and fight for, our nation as described in the Pledge of Allegiance: indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
A man arrested on suspicion of selling what police say was thousands of dollars worth of heroin is being held in Columbia County Jail on $25,000 cash bond.

Joseph Thigpen, 40, of Madison, appeared in Columbia County Circuit Court on Thursday, facing charges of three counts of delivery of heroin and one count of possession with intent to deliver heroin.

Despite the (probation) holds, about which we have absolutely no control, said District Attorney Jane Kohlwey, I recommend a $20,000 cash bond.

If Thigpen is convicted on all counts, he could face up to 80 years in prison.

Taking into account prior convictions for possession with intent to deliver cocaine and third-degree sexual assault and that his official residence, according to court documents, is address unknown, Kohlwey said imposing a high cash bond on top of the holds by the Department of Corrections and federal authorities was reasonable.

He also told the undercover agent who was working this case, Kohlwey added, that he is, always doing business, and was able to get over 10 grams of heroin on short notice.

Thigpen was arrested following an investigation involving the Portage Police Department, the Columbia County Sheriffs Office and state Department of Justice Department of Criminal Investigation.

A series of arrests led investigators to Thigpen, who was introduced to an undercover DCI agent who then bought heroin from Gordon at the Petro Truck Stop in Caledonia. The agent bought $550 of heroin on Feb. 14, then $1,600 of heroin on Feb. 24, and the same again on March 8, at which point Thigpen was arrested. A bag of heroin found in his vehicle weighed over 19.5 grams.

The Jeep Cherokee that Thigpen arrived in was owned and driven by Nicholas Gordon, 23, of Madison, who was charged with delivery of heroin as party to a crime, possession of heroin with intent to deliver as party to a crime and carrying a concealed weapon.

Gordon reportedly told officers, who found a knife in his pocket, that he had given Thigpen a ride to meet a colleague and had seen heroin in the vehicle just before police told him not to move.

Defense attorney Amanda Riek told the court that she was not able to say why the only last known address was in Chicago, but that Thigpen has been living in Dane County for the past 20 years.

Given the history of the defendant and the charges pending and other things, the defendant is a risk to the public, said Judge Alan White, who ordered Thigpen to be held on $25,000 cash bond.

On Wednesday, Gordon was ordered held on a $500 cash bond. If convicted, Gordon faces a potential sentence of more than 40 years in prison.
Another important advocacy group supports putting body cameras on police officers who patrol Wisconsin communities.

End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, a coalition of 73 member organizations across the state, held focus groups from Milwaukee to Marinette to gauge the opinions of domestic abuse survivors and their advocates, associate director Tony Gibart told the State Journal editorial board.

In general, what they relayed to us was that they want privacy protections for themselves and for victims who might be (filmed by) body cameras, Gibart said. But they also supported use of body cameras as an accountability mechanism for law enforcement and as documentation of the abuse they were experiencing.

That makes sense, given the clear evidence video images can provide from crime scenes. It also adds another voice to the diverse chorus calling for wider use of cop cameras in local communities  including Madison, which has resisted this relatively simple technology.

Former Madison Police Chief Noble Wray calls body cameras on police officers a no-brainer because they help get at the truth of controversial encounters between police and the public. Wray worked for the Obama administration promoting modern law enforcement practices, including cameras on officers. A 12-month study found uniform cameras reduce complaints against officers as well as the use of force.

Madison is falling behind the rest of the country and opening itself up to legal liability by failing to even test these increasingly small and rugged cameras that can be mounted to police officers shirts, jackets, shoulders, hats and even glasses.

Wisconsins open records law allows for a balancing test between the publics right to see video evidence in prominent cases versus the privacy of individuals involved. The same balancing test has worked well and long applied to other police records on paper and audio recordings. In addition, the federal government encourages local police agencies to adopt clear rules on how and when to use their cameras.

Officers should be required to obtain consent prior to recording interviews with crime victims, the federal Community Oriented Policing Services office recommends on its website. This addresses the significant privacy concerns associated with videotaping crime victims.

Gibart said his statewide organization that advocates for domestic abuse victims hasnt endorsed specific criteria for how officers should use cameras. But many victims clearly see the value of having footage from the devices available to police and prosecutors, he added.

Wisconsins police union supports body cameras on patrol officers. Black Lives Matter activists want to make body and dashboard cameras mandatory. A St. Norbert College scientific poll of state residents found 82 percent of respondents favor cameras on cops.

Madison should embrace cameras, too, for the clarity they will bring to policing.
Salman Khan is reportedly going to shoot an action scene for Tiger Zinda Hai where the actor will be seen fighting a pack of wolves in Austria.

By India Today Web Desk: Director Ali Abbas Zafar is leaving no stone un-turned in the making of Tiger Zinda Hai. The film which is currently being shot in Austria has on board a full-fledged Hollywood stunt-and-action crew led by X-Men and The Dark Knight stunt director Tom Struthers.

According to recent reports, this coming week, Tiger Zinda Hai star Salman Khan will be shooting an action scene where he will have to fight off a pack of wolves.

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An insider close to the film's production told DNA, "It is producer Aditya Chopra's vision that the film matches with an international standards of action and the crew is going the extra mile to ensure that the spy drama Tiger Zinda Hai delivers on that vision. Salman will be seen fighting off a pack of wolves in a high-octane action scene in the snow laden forests of Austria."

Ali Abbas Zafar has earlier directed Salman Khan for the epic blockbuster Sultan for Yash Raj Films. Four years prior to Sultan, Salman starred in Kabir Khan's spy thriller Ek Tha Tiger, produced by Yash Raj Films. So, obviously, there are a lot of expectations from Ek Tha Tiger's sequel Tiger Zinda Hai, starring Salman Khan and helmed by the Sultan director Ali Abbas Zafar.

The source further added, "The international action crew is taking all cautionary measures to ensure the wolves are taken care of by their trainers, who have been working with the team for several days now, and the action sequence will follow all guidelines."

Tiger Zinda Hai will see Katrina Kaif reprising her role from Ek Tha Tiger. The film has a tentative release date of December 22 this year.

ALSO READ: The Dark Knight action director joins the Tiger Zinda Hai team

ALSO READ: Are Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif giving their relationship another chance?

ALSO SEE: 10 photos which show that Salman-Katrina should have never broken up

WATCH: A look at the controversial life of Salman Khan

--- ENDS ---
The following companies are subsidiares of TransDigm Group: 17111 Waterview Pkwy LLC, ARA Deutschland GmbH, ARA Holding GmbH, Acme Aerospace, Acme Aerospace Inc., Adams Rite Aerospace GmbH, Adams Rite Aerospace Inc., Advanced Inflatable Products Limited, Aero-Instruments, AeroControlex Group Inc., Aerosonic, Aerosonic LLC, Air-Sea Survival Equipment Trustee Limited, Airborne Acquisition Inc., Airborne Global Inc., Airborne Holdings Inc., Airborne Systems, Airborne Systems Canada Ltd., Airborne Systems Group Limited, Airborne Systems Holdings Limited, Airborne Systems Limited, Airborne Systems NA Inc., Airborne Systems North America Inc., Airborne Systems North America of CA Inc., Airborne Systems North America of NJ Inc., Airborne Systems Pension Trust Limited, Airborne UK Acquisition Limited, Airborne UK Parent Limited, Aircraft Materials Limited, AmSafe, AmSafe Aviation (Chongqing) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Private) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport Ltd., AmSafe Global Holdings Inc., AmSafe Global Services (Private) Limited, AmSafe Inc., Angus Electronics Co., Arkwin Industries, Arkwin Industries Inc., Armtec Countermeasures Co., Armtec Countermeasures TNO Co., Armtec Defense Products Co., Auxitrol SAS, Auxitrol Weston Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Auxitrol Weston Services China Ltd., Auxitrol Weston Singapore Pte. Ltd., Auxitrol Weston USA Inc., Aviation Technologies, Aviation Technologies Inc., Avionic Instruments LLC, Avionics Instruments, Avionics Specialties Inc., AvtechTyee Inc., Beta Transformer Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Beta Transformer Technology Corporation, Beta Transformer Technology LLC, Breeze-Eastern Corporation, Breeze-Eastern LLC, Bridport Erie Aviation Inc., Bridport Holdings Inc., Bridport Ltd., Bridport-Air Carrier Inc., Bruce Aerospace Inc., Bruce Industries, CDA InterCorp LLC, CEF Industries LLC, CMC Electronics Aurora LLC, CMC Electronics Inc., CMC Electronics ME Inc., Champion Aerospace LLC, Chelton Avionics Holdings Inc., Chelton Avionics Inc., Chelton Limited, Cobham Aero Connectivity, Cobham CTS Limited, Cobham Defence Communications Limited, Cobham Defense Products Inc., DART Aerospace, DDC Electronics K.K., DDC Electronics Ltd., DDC Electronics Private Limited, DDC Electronique S.A.R.L., DDC Elektronik GmbH, Darchem Engineering Limited, Darchem Holdings Limited, Data Device Corp., Data Device Corporation, Dukes Aerospace Inc., EST Defence Company UK Limited, Edlaw Limited, Electromech Technologies LLC, Elektro-Metall Export GmbH, Elektro-Metall Paks KFT, Esterline, Esterline Acquisition Ltd, Esterline Europe Company LLC, Esterline Foreign Sales Corporation, Esterline International Company, Esterline Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Esterline Technologies Corporation, Esterline Technologies Corporation, Esterline Technologies Europe Limited, Esterline Technologies France Holding SAS, Esterline Technologies French Acquisition Limited, Esterline Technologies Global Limited, Esterline Technologies Holdings Limited, Esterline Technologies SGIP LLC, Esterline Technologies Unlimited, Esterline do Brasil Assessoria e Intermediacao Ltda, European Antennas Limited, Extant Components Group Holdings Inc., Extant Components Group Intermediate Inc., GQ Parachutes Limited, Guizhou Leach-Tianyi Aviation Electrical Company Ltd, Harco, HarcoSemco LLC, Hartwell Corporation, Hytek Finishes Co., ILC Holdings Inc., IRVIN AEROSPACE LIMITED, IrvinGQ France SAS, IrvinGQ Limited, Janco Corporation, Johnson Liverpool LLC, Kirkhill Elastomers, Kirkhill Inc., Korry Electronics Co., Kunshan Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Leach Holding Corporation, Leach International Asia-Pacific Ltd, Leach International Corporation, Leach International Europe S.A.S., Leach International Germany GmbH, Leach International Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., Leach International UK Ltd, Leach Mexico Holding LLC, Leach Technology Group Inc., MarathonNorco Aerospace Inc., Mason Electric Co., Mastsystem Int'l Oy, McKechnie Aerospace, McKechnie Aerospace (Europe) Ltd., McKechnie Aerospace DE Inc., McKechnie Aerospace DE LP, McKechnie Aerospace Holdings Inc., McKechnie Aerospace US LLC, Mecanismos de Matamoros S. de R.L. de C.V., NAT Seattle Inc., NMC Group Inc., Norco, Nordisk Asia Pacific Limited, Nordisk Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Nordisk Aviation Products (Kunshan) Ltd., Nordisk Aviation Products AS, Nordisk Aviation Products LLC, North Hills Signal Processing Corp., North Hills Signal Processing Overseas LLC, Norwich Aero Products Inc., Palomar Products Inc., Pexco Aerospace, Pexco Aerospace Inc., PneuDraulics, PneuDraulics Inc., Pressure Systems International Ltd, Schneller, Schneller Asia Pte. Ltd., Schneller LLC, Schneller S.A.R.L., Schroth Safety Products, Semco Instruments, Semco Instruments Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Signal Processing Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Skandia, Skandia Inc., Skurka Aerospace, Skurka Aerospace Inc., Symetrics Industries, Symetrics Industries LLC, Symetrics Technology Group LLC, TA Aerospace Co., TA Mfg Limited, TDG Bavaria GmbH, TDG ESL Holdings Inc., TDG France Ultimate Parent SAS, TDG Germany GmbH, TEAC Aerospace Holdings Inc., TEAC Aerospace Technologies Inc., Tactair Fluid Controls Inc., Takata Protection Systems, Telair International, Telair International GmbH, Telair International Services PTE Ltd, Telair US LLC, TransDigm (Barbados) SRL, TransDigm Canada ULC, TransDigm European Holdings Limited, TransDigm Ireland Ltd., TransDigm Receivables LLC, TransDigm Technologies India Private Limited, TransDigm UK Holdings plc, Transicoil (Malaysia) Sendirian Berhad, Transicoil LLC, Wallop Defence UK Limited, Weston Aerospace Ltd, Whippany Actuation Systems, Whippany Actuation Systems LLC, XCEL Power Systems Ltd., Young & Franklin, Young & Franklin Inc., and exas Rotronics Inc..

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By Press Trust of India: Kolkata, Mar 17 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said the TMC and her government will challenge the Calcutta High Court order for a preliminary enquiry by the CBI into the Narada sting operation purportedly showing some party leaders accepting money.

"Of course our party and government will go to the Supreme Court for justice. If we think we have not got justice, we have the right to go to the higher court," Banerjee told reporters.

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She said her party would fight it both "politically and legally", terming the High Courts order to stop the Kolkata Police investigation in the matter as "unfortunate".

Banejee, who stood by her ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Firad Hakim, claimed the sting operation was staged and the video released at the BJP office.

Referring to a statement by state BJP president Dilip Ghosh that after the UP elections the CBI will start probe into the Narada tapes, Banerjee wondered how could he make such statement in advance.

"Before a judgment is given, how can BJP state president make a press announcement that after the UP elections the CBI will investigate the Narada tapes. Before a judgment is given a political party is giving all directions.. I am a lawyer and I am really shocked," she said.

Referring to the High Courts criticism of the state government, she said, "They (court) can criticise the role of a government but cannot say about an elected government that the people have lost faith in it.

"This was made an issue in the 2016 elections and all the three ministers shown in the Narada tapes had won the elections," she said.

"Rs one or two lakh is not a factor... the public wants to know how many crores of funds were spent in the UP elections?" Banerjee asked.

Maintaining that her party had obtained Income Tax clearance regarding all donations received by it, she said there should be an investigation against her if she had done anything wrong.

On the Calcutta High Court calling the state police a "puppet" of the state government, Banerjee said, "They cannot say this.. they are taking all security from police officials. They (police)are disciplined soldiers of the government. Kolkata Police force is the best in the world, I can assure you, and we know how they are working."

Earlier in the day, the court had ordered a preliminary enquiry into the sting, observing that the conduct of public figures must be beyond reproach.

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It said that given the persons against whom allegations have been made are ministers, MPs and other senior leaders from the state, it would be just to direct the CBI, and not a state agency, to conduct a preliminary enquiry.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborti directed the CBI to take possession of all material and devices related to the sting operation within 24 hours and conclude the enquiry within another 72 hours.

The court directed the CBI to register FIR, if required, after completion of the preliminary enquiry and initiate formal investigation thereafter.

The Narada sting tapes, which were released to different news organisations before the 2016 Assembly elections in West Bengal, showed some leaders allegedly taking money. PTI SCH SUN CR SK SK

--- ENDS ---
Aviva plc provides various insurance, retirement, investment, and savings products in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and internationally. The company offers life insurance, long-term health and accident insurance, savings, pension, and annuity products, as well as pension fund business and lifetime mortgage products. It also provides insurance cover to individuals, small and medium-sized businesses for risks associated with motor vehicles and medical expenses, as well as property and liability, such as employers' and professional indemnity liabilities. In addition, the company provides investment management services for institutional pension fund mandates; and manages various retail investment products, including investment funds, unit trusts, open-ended investment companies, and individual savings accounts for third-party financial institutions, pension funds, public sector organizations, investment professionals, and private investors. It markets its products through a network of insurance brokers, as well as MyAviva platform. The company was formerly known as CGNU plc and changed its name to Aviva plc in July 2002. Aviva plc was founded in 1696 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
By Press Trust of India: Melbourne, Mar 17 (PTI) New Zealand police today shot dead a trainee bomb detector puppy which escaped its leash and grounded flights at Auckland airport, drawing condemnation from animal rights activists.

Authorities said the 10-month-old bearded collie crossdog, called Grizz, could not be captured after it ran off.

The dog was training to be an Aviation Security explosion detector when he escaped handlers who spent hours trying to coax him away from the runway. Grizz was just six months from graduation.

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The incident grounded 16 flights and caused delays for several hours.

An airport official said the decision to shoot the dog, handled by the governments Aviation Security Service (Avsec), was a last resort.

"We tried everything, food, toys, other dogs, but nothing would work ... In these difficult circumstances the Airports Emergency Operations Center team decided to have the dog destroyed," Avsec spokesman Mike Richards said.

But it has been met with outrage, with many asking why the dog could not have been tranquilised instead.

SAFE for Animals Ambassador Hans Kriek condemned the killing, asking why the animal wasnt tranquilised, but the CAA spokesman said he "didnt believe" that had been an option.

Auckland Airport originally announced on their official Twitter they had captured the dog, before revealing an hour later that he had been killed. PTI AKJ AKJ

--- ENDS ---
Trapped, starring Rajkummar Rao and directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, is in theatres this week. Should you book your tickets for Trapped? Here is our Trapped movie review.

By Ananya Bhattacharya: Trapped, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and starring Rajkummar Rao in the lead role, is in theatres this week. How good or bad is Trapped? Here is our Trapped movie review.

Trapped Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa

Trapped Director: Vikramaditya Motwane

Trapped Rating: (3.5/5)

Trapped. The word is onomatopoeic. You know what it means. You know the feeling. You know the helplessness. So when a man is trapped in his own house, without food, water or electricity, how does he survive? Because survive he must. On the other side of this ordeal lies his version of the Promised Land. At least what he has promised to himself: Noorie and he will have many babies. While he is haunted by the pessimistic What ifs.

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Director Vikramaditya Motwane gives Bollywood a fantastic albeit loopholed survival thriller in Trapped. It feels a bit weird to realise that as a director, Motwane is just two-films old... even though both of them (Udaan and Lootera) were artistic marvels in themselves.

In Trapped, Motwane carries forward the legacy he seems to have inherited from the Anurag Kashyap school of filmmaking. The director's efforts shine through in every frame, in every sigh that his protagonist takes, in every moment that the viewer sits trapped inside the theatre with his/her gaze constantly travelling to the glowing EXIT sign. Trapped makes you feel trapped, but not in the way an MSG film would make you. You feel every bit helpless as Shaurya (Rajkummar Rao), who wakes up, takes his first step outside his new house, walks back in to get his mobile phone, and wham goes the door.

Trapped is the story of the much-in-love-with-his-colleague Shaurya, who tries all awkward proposal techniques till Noorie (Geetanjali Thapa) goes out on a date with him. She is to get married in two months. "Arranged marriage?" Shaurya asks. She nods. Two months pass by in the blink of an eye, and two days before Noorie is to take the train home to get married, Shaurya promises to move out of his flat that he shares with three other guys, to a new home. He'll arrange everything in a day, he tells her.

A shady broker catches Shaurya trying to cut a deal with other agents. He takes Shaurya to a high-rise which is yet to have residents move in. Some court-case jhamela, says the broker. All too relatable if you have had the (mis)fortune of hunting for a flat in a short period of time in a city like Mumbai or Delhi. Shaurya moves to this new flat, the door to which needs a bit of push from the outside if you want to get in. When he wakes up the next morning, there's no electricity, his phone's running out of battery, there's no water.

In Trapped, Motwane captures an entire panoply of emotions on Rao's face. Rao goes from irritation to anger to helplessness to fear, dangling between hope and despair, and clutching on to dear life. There are many close-ups of Rao's face, and he nails nearly all of them. Besides the mostly taut story, Trapped relies heavily on its lead actor. And Rao throws his lot with the film. He does a fabulous job as Shaurya, adding another feather to his already-decked cap.

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There's a rat, there are occasional visits from pigeons. Shot in a month and inside a flat in Mumbai, Trapped tells a tale of survival peppered with the occasional humour and a few heart-in-the-mouth scenes. Therefore when the film fails to address some basic questions, you feel let down. When Shaurya goes missing, for example, there doesn't seem to be a single family member or friend or colleague concerned about his whereabouts. It's almost as if the guy exists in vacuum. You hope for some sort of answer towards the end, but there's silence there too.

The runtime of the film works in its favour. In less than 2 hours, your patience levels are fine. The absence of songs makes sure the pace of Trapped is not hampered.

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Watch Trapped this week. Be thankful that you have the option of opening a door and getting out. And make sure you double-check the locks before that door shuts and you're, well, you know.

(The writer tweets as @ananya116.)

ALSO READ: Trapped director Vikramaditya Motwane asks why Dangal was seen by only 2 cr people out of 1.2 billion

ALSO READ: Trapped actor Rajkummar Rao opens up on why he went without food and water

ALSO WATCH: Team Shahid is back, Hansal Mehta directs Rajkummar Rao in Citylights

--- ENDS ---
Even as the BJP dissects whether it was able to win the Muslim vote in UP, an RSS-backed petition to end triple talaq has received signatures of over one million Muslims, mostly women.

By Siddhartha Rai: Even as the BJP and the Opposition are still calculating if there was a shift in Muslim votes towards the saffron party in UP that contributed to its landslide victory, over a million Muslims from across the country - mostly women - have already signed a petition moved by RSS-affiliated Muslim body Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) against the practice of triple talaq.

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The Muslim body - RSS pracharak Indresh Kumar is the liason from the Sangh's side who "guides" the MRM - has also called for a nationwide discussion on the issue that involves all the stakeholders.

"This is a problem of the community and the stakeholders within the community as well as the representatives from the state and the government must come and sit together to start a debate on this so that Muslim women can claim a human status," the organisation told Mail Today

BJP: TRIPLE TALAQ STAND HELPED PARTY IN UP

As the party itself puts it, one of the major contributing factors, as it claims, in its victory was a definite support from Muslim women who were moved by the party's stance on triple talaq as a repressive practice that needed to be done away with.

"Three factors, I suppose, defined our victory in the UP polls: first was Ujjwala scheme that provided LPG cylinders to poor women; second was construction of toilets under the Swachh Bharat programme, which also appealed to women; and last but not the least, our stand on triple talaq," said Sidharth Nath Singh, party secretary and newly elected MLA from Allahabad West.

While the signature campaign of MRM is still on, the outfit had warned the traditionally conservative clergy of the community to desist from making a religious issue out of a practice that was a social problem.

"The fact that the BJP was able to get Muslim votes in UP, the fact that they also won the Muslim-majority Deoband seat - that is long supposed to be the stronghold of orthodox Ulema - suggest that the party and the central government need to heed the voice of the Muslim women. Their support in polls is a tacit approval of the BJP's stand on the issue," said MRM national coordinator Mohammad Afzal.

"The fact that the BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate for the UP polls did not deter women of the community to at least in part vote for the party," claimed another functionary of the MRM on conditions of anonymity.

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Afzal also said the traditional clergy of the community needed to wake up. "The fact that a terrorist was killed and his father denounced him in the light of the latter's love for the nation and then a girl is issued a fatwa against for singing?all these things point to the changing scenario in India. They should wake up now and stop trying to convert the social evil of triple talaq from a social problem into a religious problem."

Even the great grandson of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a tall Muslim Congress leader of Indian history, extolled Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "positive attitude towards the Muslims". "The Ulemas are taking the Muslim community not in the medieval ages, but the dark ages and towards the stone age," said Firoze Ahmad Bakht.

ALSO READ | On triple talaq and in UP election, BJP hopes to get Muslim women's vote

ALSO READ | Woman fighting triple talaq: 'Muslim board member asked me to withdraw petition'

ALSO WATCH | Government will take steps to ban triple talaq post UP polls: Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

--- ENDS ---

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Feasibility study for Saudi Arabian HTGR project

17 March 2017

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China and Saudi Arabia have signed a cooperation agreement for a joint study on the feasibility of constructing high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) in the Middle Eastern country.

Gu and Yamani sign the HTGR agreement (Image: CNEC)

The agreement was signed yesterday in Beijing by China Nuclear Energy Engineering Group (CNEC) president Jun Gu and King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) president Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani. The signing was witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia's King Salman.

In a statement, CNEC said that under the agreement the two companies will consider the development of system solutions for the investment and construction of HTGRs. They will also examine cooperation in intellectual property and the development of a domestic industrial supply chain for HTGRs built in Saudi Arabia. The feasibility study, it said, will also support the Saudi government in its decisions related to an HTGR project.

The latest agreement follows the signing in January of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between China and Saudi Arabia on the construction of HTGRs.

CNEC said that since the signing of that MOU, the two countries have been looking at site selection for the project, building a regulatory system, training personnel and other aspects of the project.

Although Saudi Arabia's nuclear program is in its infancy, the Kingdom has plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years. A 2010 royal decree identified nuclear power as essential to help meet growing energy demand for both electricity generation and water desalination, while reducing reliance on depleting hydrocarbon resources.

In September 2015, contracts were signed between the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and KA-CARE to support their cooperation in developing KAERI's SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor). This is a 330 MWt (100 MWe) pressurised water reactor with integral steam generators and advanced safety features.

A demonstration HTR-PM unit under construction at Shidaowan near Weihai city in China's Shandong province. That plant will initially comprise twin HTR-PM reactor modules driving a single 210 MWe steam turbine. Construction started in late 2012 and it is scheduled to start commercial operation in late 2017.

A proposal to construct two 600 MWe HTRs at Ruijin city in China's Jiangxi province passed a preliminary feasibility review in early 2015. The design of the Ruijin HTRs is based on the smaller Shidaowan demonstration HTR-PM. Construction of the Ruijin reactors is expected to start next year, with grid connection in 2021.

CNEC has been actively promoting its HTR technology overseas and has already signed agreements with other countries - including the UAE and South Africa to consider the construction of HTGR plants. Last August, CNEC signed an agreement with Indonesia's National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) to jointly develop an HTGR in Indonesia.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Xe-100 HTGR moves to conceptual design

17 March 2017

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X-energy yesterday announced the start of work on the conceptual design of its Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed modular reactor, following a review of the company's readiness by an external panel of industry experts.

The first matrix-only "pebble" was produced by X-energy staff at ORNL in September 2016 (Image: X-energy)



Greenbelt, Maryland-based X-energy's readiness to proceed to concept design was evaluated by an external panel of industry experts from Southern Nuclear, Burns & McDonnell and Technology Insights. The conceptual design readiness review validated the baseline design parameters, preparatory documentation, analysis tools, scope of the proposed conceptual design phase (including all planned deliverables), management processes and overall team readiness to proceed to the next phase of reactor development.

X-energy plans to deploy the Xe-100 within 10 years, and CEO Kam Ghaffarian said moving the reactor into conceptual design put the company "well on the way" towards its goal. "A successful conceptual design phase requires thorough planning, a mature technical baseline, and a workforce committed to creating a safe, deployable design. I and our external review panel confirmed our readiness on March 8," he said.

US research into high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) began in the 1940s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and X-energy's reactor design builds on earlier Department of Energy (DOE) studies. Demonstration HTGR plants of various designs have operated in Germany, the UK and the USA, and two are currently operable - Japan's HTTR, and China's China's HTR-10.

The Xe-100 is a 200 MWt (75 MWe) reactor, which X-energy envisages being built as a standard "four-pack" plant generating about 300 MWe. The plant will use 'pebbles' of fuel containing Triso (tristructural-isotropic) fuel particles. Each Triso particle has a kernel of uranium oxycarbide (uranium dioxide) enriched to 15.5% uranium-235, encased in carbon and ceramic layers. About 25,000 Triso particles, each about 0.4 millimetres in diameter, are embedded in graphite to produce spherical fuel pebbles. About 17,000 pebbles will be used in each reactor. X-energy is working to master the pebble pressing process, a spokesperson told World Nuclear News.

Triso fuel's carbon and ceramic layers prevent the release of radioactivity, providing each particle with its own independent containment system, while the graphite surrounding the particles moderates the nuclear reaction. Such fuel cannot melt down and X-energy describes the reactor as "walk-away" safe in the event of a loss of coolant.

All of the plant's components will be road-transportable, streamlining construction by enabling the plant to be installed, rather than constructed, at the project site.

In January, X-energy was awarded cost-shared funding of $53 million over five years from the DOE to support the development of the Xe-100, working in partnership with BWX Technology, Oregon State University, Teledyne-Brown Engineering, SGL Group, Idaho National Laboratory and ORNL. At the same time, the DOE selected Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of Southern Company, to receive similar funding to develop its Molten Chloride Fast Reactor in partnership with TerraPower, Electric Power Research Institute, Vanderbilt University, and ORNL. In August last year, X-energy and Southern Nuclear Operating Company signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on development and commercialisation of their respective advanced reactor designs.

X-Energy also announced yesterday the appointment of Southern Nuclear employee Clint Medlock as program management consultant on the Xe-100 conceptual design, further reinforcing the relationship between the two companies.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
According to preliminary reports, BSF jawans of 31 Bn posted at Harbatali BOP had a heated debate with the villagers over a petty matter at 5.15 pm.

By Manogya Loiwal : Three villagers were allegedly shot dead by BSF personnel at Tripura's Harbatali, a border village of Sabroom subdivision in late evening.

The villagers were identified as Minkumar Tripura (35), Suralaxmi Tripura (36) and Parakumar Tripura (32) of Harbatali area.

After receiving the information of the incident, Inspector General (IG), Law and Order KV Srijesh, District Magistrate (DM), South CK Jamatia and the SP, South district rushed to the spot with reinforcements.

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According to preliminary reports, BSF jawans of 31 Bn posted at Harbatali BOP had a heated debate with the villagers over a petty matter at 5.15 pm.

"Suddenly, the jawans opened fire resulting in three villagers dying on the spot. Police have already rushed to the spot and sent the bodies to Sabroom hospital for post mortem," said a senior police officer.

Tension runs high at the village after death of three innocent villages without any provocation. "The DM along with the SP is camping at Harbatali to defuse the tension. The situation is under control," said the police officer.

(Inputs from Prabir Das in Agartala)Also read:

Tripura: BJP, TMC workers clash in Agartala, 3 injured

--- ENDS ---
The Democratic Republic of Somalia collapsed in 1991 after the civil war led to the disbandment of its navy. With its coastline unprotected, foreign fishing vessels reigned in Somalian waters and fished the oceans to capacity, leaving no fish leftover for the locals. As a result, many fishermen turned to piracy for a living. According to International Maritime Bureau (IBM), 2011 saw 142 pirate attacks around the world. 94 of these cases were off the coast of Somalia alone. It was estimated at the time that Somali piracy was costing other countries about $8.3 billion in 2010

Vigilante Turned Sea Gangs

Local fishermen, with the support of militia groups, took up arms to defend their source of livelihood. They attacked all vessels, including commercial ships, arms ships and oil tankers that passed through the Somali territory and beyond towards the Gulf of Aden, Maldives Islands and the Indian Ocean. What began as a defence against illegal sea activities became a lucrative business venture for pirates earning fortunes in return.

Methods Used By The Somali Pirates

Somali fishermen and civil war militiamen were the masterminds of the attacks. They were organized in different gangs, and their attacks involved fishing trawlers called skiffs that launched small attack speedboats to capture cargo. It also involved other commercial ships using rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They seized vessels, took hostages and demanded millions of dollars in ransom. When cornered by international naval forces, the pirates threw their weapons overboard to discard evidence making it difficult for them to be prosecuted in international courts. Most pirates, who were arrested and charged in Kenya, were acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. On April 18, 2009, Dutch marines freed two dozen Yemenis held hostage by Somali pirates. The pirates got away without consequence. In 2007, pirates killed a Chinese sailor when their ransom demands were not met. They are suspected to have killed four Americans in 2010, and have also been accused of torture and using hostages as a shield against naval defensive fire. Over the years, weekly pirate attacks reports skyrocketed, reaching a peak of 151 known attacks in 2011.

Support And Funding Of Pirate Activity

Somali pirates receive considerable support from the Somali population mainly because of the restored fish supply and the economic boost of ransom to local communities. With each successful operation, pirates got more funding from terrorist organizations in Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. These organizations include Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda and Wahhabi terror groups. Local investors also invested shares in different pirate gangs.

Impact Of Somali Piracy

The profits from pirate attacks rose from an estimated total of over $250 million USD, as of 2011, to an average of $9 billion USD annually. Profits from the infamously lucrative piracy trickled down to the pockets of local businessmen. Owners of pirate gangs became instant millionaires building luxury homes and driving flashy cars. Shipping companies spent a fortune by hiring armed guards and using longer shipping routes. Besides, pirate attacks succeeded in fending off illegal foreign fishing and improved fish harvest that was felt up to the Kenyan territory in the Indian Ocean.

Operation Open Shield And Other Interventions

International efforts led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), United States (US), European Union (EU), Russia, and India has made significant progress in suppressing piracy incidents. NATO launched Operation Open Shield to defend the international waters against Somali pirates while America became aggressively involved after the Hijack of a US vessel and capture of its Captain, Philips. They have fielded warships and naval forces to directly engage the pirates. Somalia government has also stepped up efforts by attacking pirate bases on land. Such measures led to the drop of pirate activities such that only one attack occurred in 2012 and none for the next five years. It is believed that most pirates are now involved in weapon smuggling and terror groups and their complete elimination largely depends on Somalia becoming politically stable.

Resurgence Of Pirate Activity

In October 2016, the UN noted that Somali pirates possess the intent and capability to resume attacks. Though the EU and the US still conduct their own operations in the area, NATOs withdrawal of its Operation Open Shield in December 2016 left a big gap that pirates may utilize. On the evening of March 13, 2017, the pirates broke their long absence from the vice and hijacked a Sri-Lankan oil tanker called Aries 13. The pirates are still in possession of the vessel and its crew.
Colonial Louisiana

In 1682, after two decades of exploring and expanding the North American interior, the French took control of French Louisiana (1682-1762) as part of their greater New World colony of New France (1534-1762). In 1718 the city of New Orleans was founded and four years later it became the capital of French Louisiana. French Louisiana soon became an important colony for France, and people from all over France's colonial empire began to flock to the region. New Orleans quickly grew to become the center of trade, commerce and the plantation economy. Because of France's ties to the Catholic Church, all of New France was under the authority of a single Catholic diocese based in Quebec. Even though Louisianans had less religious supervision than their French and Canadian counterparts, the Roman Catholic Church still played an important role in the exploration and development of the colony. Just before the end of the Seven Years' War (1754-63), France seceded most of French Louisiana to Spain, who was also heavily Roman Catholic. Spain controlled this territory until the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso was signed in 1800 between Spain and France, which gave Louisiana back to France.

The Louisiana Purchase

In 1803 Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) agreed to sell the territory of Louisiana to the United States for 15 million dollars. With the Organic Act of 1804, the U.S. divided their new land into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana. The Territory of Orleans was divided into 12 countries that used the same names and practically the same boundaries as the former colonial parishes. By 1807 the territorial legislature created 19 parishes without technically abolishing the counties. At the 1811 constitutional convention of the state, it was decided that Louisiana should be divided into seven judicial districts, each being made up of groups of parishes. In 1812 the Territory of Orleans had grown enough to achieve statehood, becoming the state of Louisiana. It was not until the 1845 Louisiana Constitution that the term parishes officially replaced counties as the official term for the state's major civil divisions.

Parishes

Louisiana is the only state in America whose political subdivisions are parishes and not counties. The state is divided into 64 parishes. Parishes are one of the several elements of the political and legal structure from that time that Louisiana has kept (the civil law legal system is another example). A parish is by definition a small administrative district typically having its own church and priest, which naturally grew out of Louisiana's heavily Roman Catholic influenced past. Of the 64 parishes in the state, 41 of them have an elected government that is called a Police Jury, which also goes back to colonial times. The Police Jury acts as the executive and legislative government of the parish and the Jurors are elected by voters, with a President that serves at the chairperson.
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According to a new report issued this week by Zillow and LinkedIn, there's a good reason thousands of technology workers are flocking to Seattle: the math works out.Tech workers who rent in Seattle can expect to have around $5,500 left over each month after covering taxes and rental housing costs. In San Francisco, they're left with about $4,000.Zillow and LinkedIn both combined U.S. housing and employment data to analyze a common set of priorities: an affordable rental home and a good job. The two companies used job listings data, salary data, and the percent of workers hired in the past year in three industries: health care, technology, and finance. By analyzing income tax rates and Zillow's median rent data, they were able to find housing markets across the country where those workers can pocket the largest share of their income after paying rent.For technology workers who rent, Seattle, Austin and Pittsburgh, Penn. came out on top among the housing markets analyzed, with the Bay Area at #4. Finance workers will find job and rental housing harmony most easily in Charlotte, NC, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Phoenix. Healthcare workers' best bets are Phoenix, Indianapolis, Ind., and Boston.Over the past decade, housing prices in coastal markets have shot up, in large part due to demand from workers following high-paying jobs. West Coast housing affordability is the worst in the nation; renters and home owners there often spend nearly half the median income to rent a typical home, while a rental in the middle of the country costs more like 25 percent of the median income.Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the findings is that tech workers do OK in the Bay Area, despite its notoriously high housing prices. The median home value in the San Francisco area is $789,300. Taking a tech job in the Denver area, where the median home value is $348,700, actually costs the average Denver tech worker about $140 a month, considering lower salaries there.Salaries for other industries don't hold up as well in the San Francisco area, though. Even highly-paid finance workers keep only about 32 percent of their incomes after paying for housing and taxes. In Charlotte or Chicago, they can pocket a median of 61 percent."High demand and inventory shortages have driven up housing prices in some markets so much that even if you land a great job, the salary might not cover living within commuting distance," said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell. "On the other hand, the nation's most affordable housing markets don't always offer plentiful employment opportunities. Housing is the biggest line item in most people's budgets, so we did the math for you and found 'sweet spots' -- places with great job markets and housing markets that will leave you with some cash at the end of the month.""As we've seen in LinkedIn's Workforce Reports, hiring has been strong in the U.S. We also know that having insight into where your earnings go further is important to job seekers," said Paul Ko, the head of analytics for LinkedIn's Economic Graph. "That's why these Sweet Spots are so attractive, as these cities are experiencing higher-than-average hiring rates, combined with good salaries and more disposable income."
By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Mar 17 (PTI) Trump administration through its proposed budget wants to send a message to allies like India that the country is changing its course from a soft power budget to a hard power budget, a senior White House official has said.

"Theres a very deliberate attempt here to send a message to our allies and our friends, such as India, and our adversaries, other countries, shall we say, which is that this is a hard-power budget; that this administration intends to change course from a soft power budget to a hard power budget," Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget told reporters at a White House news conference here.

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"Thats a message that our adversaries and our allies alike should take," the top White House official said as the Democratic lawmakers and foreign policy experts slammed the Trump administration for a drastic 28 per cent reduction in the foreign aid budget, which mostly is routed through the State Department.

Trump had proposed a USD 1.1 trillion budget yesterday, requesting a massive USD 54 billion increase in defence spending and a substantial cut in the State Department allocations particularly foreign aid.

The White House defended its decision to cut diplomacy funding.

"One of the reasons that youre seeing such a dramatic reduction in the State Department on a percentage basis is not that this president thinks that diplomacy is not important. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Weve already seen that Secretary Tillerson has had a tremendous diplomatic success already on the deal he cut with Iraq," Mulvaney said.

Trump, he said, believes in diplomacy.

"We believe that this budget protects that core function of the State Department. It just so happens that much of the foreign aid that the President talked about in the campaign, much of the money that goes to climate research, green energy, those types of things, theyre actually in the State Department budget," he noted.

Senator Marco Rubio of the Republican Party said he does not support the proposed 28 per cent cut to international affairs budget and diplomatic efforts led by the State Department.

"These programs are integral to our national security, and cuts at these levels undermine Americas ability to keep our citizens safe. In order to advance our national security interests, economic opportunity for our people and respect for human dignity everywhere, Americas leadership on the global stage is indispensable," Rubio said.

"I am deeply disappointed and dismayed to find out that despite the concerns raised by bipartisan Members of Congress and even by his own Secretary of State, President Donald Trump appears determined to cut US national security by slashing the State Department and USAID budgets by 36 per cent," said Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. PTI LKJ NSA

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By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Mar 17 (PTI) President Donald Trump today dismissed the notion that he was an "isolationist" in his policies, as he held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and asserted that Germany and the US must work together towards fair and reciprocal trade policies.

"My administration is in the process of rebuilding the American industrial base. A stronger America is in the interest, believe me, of the world as a whole," Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with the visiting German Chancellor Merkel.

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Germany and the United States, he said, must work together towards fair and reciprocal trade policies that benefit people of both the countries.

"Millions of hard-working US citizens have been left behind by international commerce, and together, we can shape a future where all of our citizens have a path to financial security. The United States will respect historic institutions and we will also recognise the right of free people to manage their own destiny," Trump said.

On immigration, another issue dividing Merkel and the new US president, Trump said immigration was a "privilege" and not a "right."

Responding to a question, Trump refuted the impression that he is an isolationist.

"I dont believe in an isolationist policy. But I also believe a policy of trade should be a fair policy. The United States has been treated very, very unfairly by many countries over the years. Thats going to stop. But Im not an isolationist," he said.

"Im a free trader, but Im also a fair trader. Our free trade has led to a lot of bad things happening. You look at the deficits that we have, and you look at all of the accumulation of debt. Were a very powerful country. Were a very strong country," said the US President.

The two leaders addressed a joint press conference after their meeting at the Oval Office -- the first between them.

Trump agreed to attend the G-20 Summit in Germany later this year, Merkel said. The two leaders were to discuss the economic issues over lunch after the briefing.

"Were going to talk at some length over lunch about the issues. We say trade has to be rendered fairer. There has to be a win-win situation. We can talk about the details of that," Merkel said.

"Weve already seen today when we had an exchange with our CEOs and also with our apprentices what sort of potential we can tap, what sort of potential our two economies have," Merkel said.

"Its very moving to see, particularly meeting with these young people, what sort of work towards the future is being done by our companies there," she said, adding that the two countries would continue their cooperation on a number of issues.

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Merkel said she had a very good first exchange of views with Trump and was looking forward to the talks over lunch. PTI LKJ ASK ASK

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It all began when the MP allegedly reposted a web article of a local Kannada TV channel on his Facebook page that focused on 4 IPS officers 'migrating' from the state as some were not given a post of their liking.

By Nolan Pinto: A Twitter war broke out between Mysuru-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha and Deputy Inspector General-Prisons D Roopa over the transfer of four senior IPS officers on central deputation.

It all began when the MP allegedly reposted a web article of a local Kannada TV channel on his Facebook page that focused on 4 IPS officers 'migrating' from the state as some were not given a post of their liking. The article claimed that IPS officer Madhukar Shetty had knocked on the Centre's door for not heeding his pleas in the state. Similarly, the article also cited examples of other IPS officers such as Sonia Narang, Labhu Ram and Kaushalendra Kumar.

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The IPS officer immediately hit out at the MP in her Facebook post asking him to 'let the bureaucracy be to itself free from political endorsements. Because politicization of bureaucracy does not help the system and society in the long run.'

On the issue of Madhukar Shetty, she says in her post, 'You have said that Mr Madhukar Shetty left the state because no good posting was given to him which seems to be just your imagination. The fact is that there is no post as good or bad in rules and legislations.'

Taking a dig at the previous government, she says, IPS officer Shetty was 'never posted in a good post (by your measure) even in the previous government. Mrs Sonia Narang was left with no option but to file the case because it came to light that some people were collecting bribes in Lokayukta in her name. We, bureaucrats, know how to battle it out.'

On the term 'migrating' of IPS officers allegedly used by the MP in the article posted on his Facebook page, she counters that saying, 'It is a necessity as well as a desire of every IAS and IPS officer to serve on central deputation for enrichment of job experience. It is basically this desire that pulls us to national capital and not any push factor as brought out in your writing.'

Focusing on the politicians-bureaucrats nexus as being hated by the public, she adds that, 'the view endorsed by as learned man as you occupying a high public office only adds to the problem and not solve it.'

She ends her post saying that the bureaucracy does not require politicians championing their cause for political gains adding, 'What we ask for is a free hand in our job and respect.'

The post put up by the IPS officer on Facebook was later taken down by the social media giant.

Also read:

IAS officer who praised Nehru in FB post transferred

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Between October 31 and November 2, the Socialist Equality Party (Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit, PSG), the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, held its regular party congress in Berlin. Six weeks before, a special congress of the PSG adopted a detailed resolution on The Return of German militarism and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party. The regular congress confirmed this resolution and an additional resolution, which we publish here, summarizing the conclusions from the developments that had taken place in the intervening weeks.

1. The German ruling elite is responding to the crisis of world capitalism and the impending failure of the European Union with a return to militarism. The Special Conference of the Socialist Equality Party on 13/14 September 2014 analyzed this development and resolved to place the fight against war at the heart of party work. History is returning with a vengeance, the resolution states. Almost 70 years after the crimes of the Nazis and its defeat in World War II, the German ruling class is once again adopting the imperialist great power politics of the Kaisers Empire and Hitler.

2. Since then, the militarization of Germany has not only continued but accelerated. The highest levels of government, all political partiesCDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Left Partythe media and leading academics are all involved. Not a day goes by without the media agitating against Russia, calling for a massive upgrade of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and demanding a major military intervention in the Middle East. Their campaign is aimed at intimidating the public and silencing all opposition to war.

3. For example, on October 27 in Spiegel Online, Klaus Segbers, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin, complained that Germany had so far responded to the annexation of Crimea by Russia mainly with speeches and with hesitant, late, half-hearted sanctions. Our mentality no longer contains the option of responding to a basic threatif necessary, with self-defending violence, he wrote, and called for the use of force where appropriate, against undemocratic disrupters of peacedecisively, without warning and permanently.

4. In his latest book, Will Europe fail?, former Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer advocates a sharper confrontation with Russia, which he accuses of seeking to expand into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. And the Europeans are at odds as always, militarily weak and disinterested, lulled to sleep over the years in their peaceful cloud cuckoo land with their homegrown illusions about the blessings of European-Russian cooperation, Russian money and business, Fischer writes.

5. A particularly pernicious role in this militaristic campaign is played by the Left Party and the pseudo-left groups within its ranks. They are doing everything to undermine the anti-militarist sentiments in wider layers of the population and mobilize support for the governments war policy. Fourteen leading party members of the Left Party responded to the renewed military offensive in Iraq and Syria by calling on the federal government to sponsor a resolution in the United Nations to legitimize imperialist military interventionwith German participation. The pseudo-lefts inside the Left Party reject the US bombing missions as ineffective and call instead for a proxy war on the groundby arming Kurdish militias and other ethnic minorities.

6. The PSG is literally the only political organization in Germany that opposes militarism. Immediately after the Special Congress in September, the PSG launched an offensive against militarism, holding a series of meetings, Why do the German elites once again want war? The most important meeting organized by the IYSSE was at Berlins Humboldt University, which has developed into a centre of ideological preparation for war.

7. The IYSSE successfully rebuffed efforts to censor the event politically by the university administration, which had sought to make provision of a room conditional to agreement that prior to, during and after the meeting, members of the University are not once again maligned, e.g. on leaflets, posters, the Internet, or otherwise reviled as militarists and warmongers. This was a reference to criticism of professors Jorg Baberowski and Herfried Munkler, who play a key role in the ideological offensive for militarism.

8. The IYSSE refused to accept this condition and published details of the attempted censorship, declaring, As a student group at the Humboldt University, we consider it not only our right but also our duty to oppose and condemn such views. This in no way stands in contradiction to the discussion of controversial issues on a purely scientific basis as stated in your letter. Rather, it forms its very essence. In the end, the university administration undertook a retreat.

9. The meeting was a great political success. Approximately 200 people, mostly students, took part and attentively followed the lecture. While most had no revolutionary understanding of the causes of war and militarism, the meeting revealed that widespread opposition to war exists among students and workers. The PSG campaign against militarism has brought this opposition to the surface and provided it with an orientation.

10. From the standpoint of the Marxist method and the tasks of the party, this is of great importance. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx stated, the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Therefore it does not grasp the significance of revolutionary, of practical-critical, activity. Marx concluded that The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

11. Determining objective reality is only possible in practice. From this it follows that the party must systematically expand and develop its political and theoretical work in the present period of economic crisis, social tensions and military conflicts.

12. At the centre of the struggle against war is the ongoing analysis and exposure of political developments through the WSWS, a systematic turn to the working class and student youth and a permanent political and theoretical delineation of the PSG from all pseudo-left tendencies. The influence of these bourgeois, pro-imperialist tendencies must be systematically undermined in the working class.

13. There can be no fight for socialism without a struggle against war and there can be no fight against war without a struggle for socialism, the International Committee of the Fourth International statement of 3 July 2014 reads. The struggle against war requires the unification of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program. The close collaboration with the other sections of the ICFI, especially in Europe, and the construction of new sections is a central component of the PSGs political offensive against war.
In a speech delivered Tuesday in Singapore, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appealed to the Trump administration to ensure that its America First economic agenda does not impact on its key allies and that longstanding strategic relationships in Asia remain in place. Labelling China as a mutual geo-political and geo-strategic competitor, Bishop said the United States must play an even greater role as the indispensable strategic power in the Indo-Pacific.

Bishop framed her appeal to Washington in the context of the inexorable tendencies, arising from the globalisation of production, that have plunged world capitalism into frenzied economic and military struggles between rival nation-states and the corporate elites that rule over them.

Bishop briefly reviewed the vast economic and social transformations over the past 40 years, as country after country in Asia developed along the export-orientated modela model based on the ruthless exploitation of the working class at far lower costs than in the advanced economies.

As an undesired consequence, Bishop declared, there are now too many countries and too many firms making too many products for too few consumers.

Bishop noted that despite purported over-production, there has been no slowdown in the deployment of new technology, such as robotics, automation and artificial intelligence, as corporations seek to gain advantage over their rivals. In short, she said, globalisation and technological advances will only intensify rather than alleviate regional and global competition between nations and firms.

Bishop excluded from her attempted analysis of the crisis of global capitalism that the cause of over-capacity is not lack of demand on the part of the worlds population for affordable goods and services. Rather, it is the intractable slump that followed the collapse in 20072008 of an entire edifice of parasitic financial speculation. More than eight years after the meltdown, there has been no return to pre-crisis economic growth. World trade is stagnant and even greater financial turbulence is looming as a result of the ongoing build-up of debt, especially in developing economies such as China.

While left unstated, Bishops remarks point to the fact that the only solution to the crisis under capitalism is that a large section of global finance and industry must be eliminated in order to guarantee profitability for the sections that survive.

Bishops speech gave voice to a major fear in the Australian political establishment: That the Trump administration is calling into question the entire framework of alliances through which Washington exercised global dominance following World War II.

The Australian ruling elite has been one of the main beneficiaries of US hegemony, or what commentators call the existing rules-based order. Financial and corporate relations between Australia and the US have vastly expanded over the past 40 years. In the last 15 years alone, Australia, based on its status as the 12th largest economy in the worlda status underpinned by massive US, European and Japanese investment in the countryhas secured free trade agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the US, Malaysia, Chile, Japan, South Korea and China. It is currently negotiating pacts with the European Union, Indonesia and India.

Confronted by mounting global competition, Australian capitalism placed particular hopes on the potential benefits it could derive from the US-dominated Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Initially including the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, and six other Asian and South American countries, the TPP would have delivered Australian-based investors and corporations even greater preferential access to the massive US and Japanese markets.

In the longer term, the exclusion of China, the worlds second largest economy, was explicitly aimed at pressuring the Chinese government to meet the terms of entry by deregulating its financial markets, lifting limits on foreign ownership, privatising state-owned assets and enforcing international intellectual property laws.

The expectation in Australia was that Hillary Clinton would win the US presidency and, in broad outline, continue the TPP and the economic agenda pursued by the Obama administration. The victory of Trump therefore came as a shock, followed by an even greater shock when he proceeded to repudiate the TPP in one of his first acts as president.

Trumps actions shattered expectations that the TPP would provide the basis for the Australian capitalist elite to weather, and even prosper in, ever more turbulent international economic conditions. Instead, the US now looms as the greatest potential risk to Australian trade interests and the so-called rules-based order. The Trump administrations demands that countries enter into bilateral trade agreements or face tariffs and other sanctions threaten to result in the loss of lucrative markets for Australian-based firms in Japan, China, South Korea and South East Asia and, above all, the US.

To the extent that there was any coherent strategy contained in Bishops speech it was that loyal American allies such as Australia and Singapore can somehow influence the Trump administration to take into account the interests of their ruling elites. The political system and values of the US corresponded with Australias, Bishop declared. Those of non-democracies, such as China, she asserted, did not.

In strategic circles, the perspective of gaining assurances from Washington that Australia will not be sidelined has been labelled doubling down on the US alliance. Its advocates expect it will require even greater Australian involvement in the aggressive US military build-up in Asia and provocations against China than took place under the Obama administrations pivot to Asia. If competition results in war between the US and China, Australia would be both a participant and a key base of operations for American forces.

Other options, however, are being canvassed.

In perhaps her most politically significant remark, Bishop stated: Many regional countries are in a strategic holding pattern, waiting to see whether the United States and its security allies and partners can continue to play the robust and constructive role that they have for many decades in preserving the peace.

Within its cautious "diplomatic speak," Bishops statement contains an implicit warning: If the US disregards the concerns of its allies in Asiaparticularly Australia and Japanit could rapidly lose their support.

Every action of the Trump administration is being assessed, and not only on the basis of its immediate consequences. With ever-mounting anxiety, the Australian ruling elite is weighing up whether Trumps policies will ultimately trigger a collapse of US influence in the region and call into question Australias ability to rely on the post-World War II US alliance to assert its economic and strategic interests.

Contrary to Bishops assertion that Australia and other states are in a holding pattern, her very presence in Singapore indicates diplomatic activity by Canberra to consolidate and strengthen relations, first and foremost with Japan and South East Asian countries. While there is no suggestion from the dominant sections of the Australian establishment of withdrawing from the US alliance, Australian imperialism is seeking to develop alternative counterweights to what it perceives as a strategic threat from China.
The budget outline issued by the Trump administration Thursday morning is a blueprint for social counterrevolution. It proposes a massive increase in spending on military operations and domestic repression, while slashing domestic social programs by as much as 30 percent and eliminating dozens of agencies and programs outright.

The document deals only with discretionary spending, funds that must be appropriated each year by Congress, accounting for about one-quarter of the $4 trillion that the US government will spend in the fiscal year that begins October 1.

The budget leaves open the fate of the remaining $3 trillion in federal spending, which includes payments under entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps, as well as other legally required payments, such as interest on the national debt.

The increase in military spending is far larger than that proposed in an initial White House statement last month, which showed the Pentagon budget rising to $603 billion in Fiscal Year 2018. After criticism by congressional hawks like Senator John McCain, and pushback from the military brass, the Pentagons budget will rise to $639 billion.

Instead of the 50-50 split between domestic and military spending in the discretionary portion of the budget, as prevailed under the Obama administration, the military share will rise to nearly two-thirds of the total, particularly if funding for the Veterans Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the nuclear weapons portion of the Department of Energy budget are included.

There is also a proposed $2.6 billion in funding for building a wall along the southwest US borderonly a fraction of the estimated $25 billion cost of this mad and inhuman project.

The Trump budget proposes the outright elimination of 19 government agencies, most of them long targeted for destruction by ultra-right ideologues and Christian fundamentalists. These include the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal services for the poor; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; AmeriCorps; and the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial disasters in chemical production and transport, including oil-well blowouts like the 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Destroying all these agencies saves only $3 billion, less than the cost of US military aid to Israel alone.

This is a budget that promotes death and destroys life. It pours billions into the Pentagon killing machine, at the cost of programs that provide food, shelter, heating, health care and other vital services for the population of the United States.

The biggest single cut is a $5.8 billion reduction in the budget for the National Institutes of Health, which funds a vast array of biomedical research by tens of thousands of health scientists. The biggest percentage cut, 31 percent, is in the Environmental Protection Agency, where 3,200 jobs and 50 programs would be eliminated, including all pollution cleanup operations in the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay. Half of the EPAs budget for research and development is eliminated.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney declared arrogantly, You cant drain the swamp and leave all the people in it. So, I guess the first place that comes to mind will be the Environmental Protection Agency. He continued, The president wants a smaller EPA. He thinks they overreach, and the budget reflects that.

The biggest impact of the budget cuts will be on the urban and rural poor. Trump proposes to abolish the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $3 billion a year to heat homes in the winter; the Community Development Block Grant program, which spends $3 billion on community development, affordable housing and aid to the homeless; the Appalachian Regional Commission, which promotes economic development and community infrastructure in that region; and the Delta Regional Authority, which does the same in the majority-black delta region of the state of Mississippi.

While Trump ran up huge margins in the popular vote in many impoverished rural counties, his budget wipes out much of the federal spending in those areas. He would eliminate long-distance Amtrak train service and the Essential Air Service, which subsidizes flights to small rural airports, and cut $500 million in Department of Agriculture funding for conservation, waste-disposal and water infrastructure in rural America.

Other significant cuts include $2.5 billion slashed from the Department of Labor for job training programs for seniors and disadvantaged youth, while funding would be increased for the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment program, which reviews state unemployment claims and verifies eligibility, harassing jobless workers and actually making a profit for the department.

Some $10.1 billion is cut from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, mainly by eliminating all spending on global climate change initiatives, sharply cutting back support for refugees and other foreign aid, and capping US contributions to the United Nations. The Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Account would be eliminated entirely.

The budget also proposes significant privatization, transferring the air traffic control function of the Federal Aviation Administration to an unspecified nongovernmental organization that would be effectively controlled by the airlines.

The Department of Education would suffer more than $9 billion in cuts, including cancellation of $3.9 billion in Pell Grant reserves, eliminating $2.4 billion in grants to states for teacher training and $1.2 billion for after-school programs. The Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant would be eliminated.

The department will get the only significant increase in social spending under the Trump budget, but this has an utterly reactionary purpose: $1.4 billion in new spending for charter schools, a private school choice program, and grants to school districts to promote the adoption of voucher programs which families could use to pay for education at private, religious, charter and even on-line schools.

One particularly noxious feature of the budget is its systematic assault on science, what the Washington Post called a seismic disruption in government-funded medical and scientific research. Besides the $6 billion cut from the NIH, the National Science Foundation is listed under other agencies which will have an across-the-board 9.8 percent cut. In agency after agency, funds for research are targeted for higher-percentage cuts, particularly if the research is linked in any way with environmental science or the study of climate change.

NASA has only one significant cut: the termination of several satellites to be placed in Earth orbit to study the planet we live on, because they might discover inconvenient facts about global warming and other climate changes. The budget document does not disguise the purpose of this shift, declaring that the administration wants the agency to focus on deep space exploration rather than Earth-centric research.

Both the discretionary budget unveiled yesterday and the overall budget including entitlements will not be enacted in the form proposed by the White House. This is an initial step in a sordid process of backroom dealing in which both congressional Republicans and Democrats will have their say, particularly in the Senate, where at least eight Democrats must vote with the Republicans to reach the 60 votes required for passage.

While Democratic Party reaction to most of the proposed cuts was hostile, this posturing, like the White House document, represents an opening bid. There is substantial Democratic support for many of the cuts proposed, particularly in environmental regulations, as well as for the promotion of charter and private schools.

More significantly, under Obama the Democrats offered to make significant cuts in Social Security through such measures as recalculating the cost-of-living provisions, and enacted major cuts in Medicare reimbursement through Obamacare. Such measures are sure to be raised when the budget talks turn to the entitlement programs.
A protest was held on March 11 in the city of Dunedin, in the south islands Otago region, against the impending factory closure by chocolate manufacturing giant, Cadbury. Today, however, after four weeks of backroom consultations with the E Tu union, the company confirmed the closure, which will destroy more than 350 jobs by 2018.

About 200 people attended the rally, which was organised by the union to try to divert workers anger into reactionary nationalist appeals to the multinational Mondelez, owner of Cadbury. Speakers included union officials, local Labour MP Clare Curran and Dunedin mayor Dave Cull.

Curran insisted there are Kiwi brands here that must not be taken offshore. Cull called on Mondelez to reconsider the citys invite to work together to find a solution by retaining part of the factory.

The Dunedin plant, originally opened in 1868 by biscuit maker R. Hudson & Co, was bought by Cadbury in 1930. It is the fourth largest employer in the city. Mondelez (formally Kraft Foods) bought Cadbury in 2010 for 11.5 billion. The companys 2016 international revenue was nearly $US26 billion, with profits totalling $10 billion.

Manufacturing is being moved to Australia, where two-thirds of the plants products are sold, as part of a global cost-cutting drive, begun in 2014 after shareholders expressed dissatisfaction over profit margins. In 2016, Mondelez reduced its international workforce from approximately 99,000 to 90,000. It has shut down factories in Philadelphia and Chicago in the US, Somerdale and Birmingham in the UK, Toronto and Montreal, Canada, and Mem Martins, Portugal. Production has been moved to cheap labour facilities in Mexico, China and India. Market approval for its plans has driven up the price of Mondelez shares from $US26 in 2013 to over $42.

In New Zealand, Cadburys revenue fell from $294.2 million to $283.4 million from 2007 to 2008. Its response was to close the Avondale factory in Auckland in 2009 and cut staff in Dunedin, totalling 268 layoffs.

The Service and Food Workers Union (now part of E Tu) did nothing to oppose the previous closure and sackings. E Tu, which fully accepts the companys determination to drive up profits, criticised the closure as a poor economic decision that would do huge harm to this brand.

No details have been released of E Tus negotiations with Cadbury management, but the union hinted it was offering concessions, such as job cuts, supposedly to make the factory more competitive. On March 10, E Tu official Chas Muir stated: What we are doing is fighting to keep the plant open. We  re fighting to keep every job possible  [emphasis added].

E Tu, the largest union in New Zealands private sector, was formed in 2015 when the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) and the SFWU merged, due to dwindling membership. The union has aided in laying off thousands of workers across the country, including at New Zealand Post, coal miner Solid Energy and New Zealand Steel.

The unions have systematically suppressed workers struggles. Industrial action plummeted from over 200 strikes in 1986 to an historic low of 13 in 2014. Union bureaucrats collaborate with businesses to ensure that factories shut down as smoothly as possible, with minimal disruption to the accumulation of profits.

Since the 200809 financial crisis, the Otago regions manufacturing industry has been gutted. Fisher & Paykels dishwasher plant closed in 2008 with 350 redundancies, with no opposition from the EPMU. In 2011, the construction of rail wagons by Hillside Engineering Workshop was outsourced to China, leading to 44 job losses, and the companys eventual sale in 2012 resulted in a further 90 job cuts.

The Japanese-owned Summit Wool Spinners Oamaru factory closed in 2013, resulting in 192 redundancies. The EPMU accepted the closure and said Summit had been a very good employer.

Various media figures called for a boycott of Cadbury products. Actor Sam Neill tweeted on February 22, urging New Zealanders and Australians to NEVER sell or buy anything Cadbury EVER again. Such a boycott would have a negligible impact on Mondelez and would do nothing to address the root cause of the redundancies: the drive for increased profit in a global capitalist market.

Opposed to any mobilisation of the working class to defend jobs, E Tu launched an online petition and appealed to the public to write to members of parliament. The petition expressed concern for the New Zealand economy.

The opposition Labour Party, whose leader Andrew Little previously led the EPMU, accepts the closure. Labours press statement suggested that civic leaders and the business itself works to ensure all of these workers have the training opportunities they need to find alternative employment.

Similarly, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei promised that if elected, the Greens would establish a Minister for Manufacturing in Cabinet, to better represent the interests of manufacturers and ensure they thrive.

The pseudo-left International Socialist Organisation promoted last Saturdays rally on its web site and sought to bolster illusions in E Tu. It suggested that industrial action by the union could force Mondelez to rethink, and to negotiate. Socialist Aotearoa demagogically called for the workers to occupy the plant and start up production themselves, supported by the wider union and social movement.

The pseudo-lefts aim to subordinate the Cadbury workers to E Tuthe very organisation that has collaborated with thousands of job cuts and will enforce the factory closure. Far from supporting the Cadbury workers, the union has joined the companys working group with employers to select an alternative manufacturer to make the companys local brands Pineapple Lumps, Jaffas, Chocolate Fish and Buzz Bar.

A real struggle to defend Cadbury jobs can be carried out by breaking from the pro-capitalist unions. Cadbury workers must co-ordinate with fellow workers in New Zealand and with Mondelez workers internationally, who are facing similar attacks. This means, above all, a rejection of all forms of nationalism used by corporations, governments and unions to demand ever greater sacrifices from workers for the sake of profit.

New organisations, independent of the unions and democratically controlled by rank-and-file workers, must be built to wage an industrial counter-offensive by the working class. These struggles must be guided by a new political strategy based on the fight for international socialism.

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[21 February 2017]
This article was published in the Russian-language New York newspaper Novy mir (New World) on March 17, 1917. It was published in Russian in Trotskys 1923 Voina i Revoliutsiia (War and Revolution), Vol 2, pp. 422-424. Below is an original translation. (Translator: Fred Williams; Copyright: WSWS).

War and revolution often follow one another in history.

In ordinary times, the working masses submissively engage in punishing drudgery from day to day, submitting to the mighty force of habit. Neither the foremen, nor the police, nor the jailers, nor the executioners would be able to keep the masses in subjection if not for this habitthe true servant of capital.

War, which tears the masses to pieces and slaughters them, is also dangerous for the rulersprecisely because, with one blow, it jolts the people from their customary state, awakens with its thunder the most backward and benighted elements, and forces them to look at themselves and those around them.

While thrusting millions of toilers into the fire, the rulers must put promises and lies in the place of habit. The bourgeoisie embellishes its war with all the traits that are dear to the magnanimous hearts of the popular masses: war for freedom, for justice, for a better life! Stirring the masses to their very depths, the war inevitably ends by deceiving them: it brings them nothing but new wounds and chains. For this reason, the tension of the deceived masses provoked by the war frequently leads to an explosion against the rulers; war gives birth to revolution.

Thats how it was twelve years ago, during the Russo-Japanese War: It immediately heightened the discontent of the people and led to the revolution of 1905.

Thats how it was in France 46 years ago: the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 led to the uprising of the workers and the establishment of the Paris Commune.

The workers of Paris were armed by the bourgeois government, in the form of the National Guard, for defense of the capital against German troops. But the French bourgeoisie were more afraid of their own proletarians than the troops of Hohenzollern. After Paris capitulated, the republican government tried to disarm the workers. But the war had already awakened in them a spirit of indignation. They didnt want to return to the factory bench as the same workers they had been before the war. The Paris proletarians refused to hand over their weapons. A clash occurred between the armed workers and the government regiments. This was on 18 March 1871. The workers emerged victorious, became the masters of Paris and on 28 Marchunder the name of the Communeestablished a workers government in the capital. The Commune did not last long. On 28 May, its last defenders fell after heroic resistance against the onslaught of the bourgeois hordes. Then began weeks and months of bloody reprisals against the participants of the proletarian revolution. However, despite its brief existence, the Commune has remained the greatest event in the history of proletarian struggle. Based on the experience of the Parisian workers, the world proletariat has seen for the first time what a proletarian revolution is, what are its goals and pathways.

The Commune began by confirming all foreigners elected to the workers government. It declared: The banner of the Commune is the banner of the World Republic.

It purged the state and schools of religion, abolished capital punishment, toppled the Vendome Columna monument to chauvinismand transferred all duties and posts to genuine servants of the people, setting their salary at no more than a workers wage.

It set out to make a census of factories and mills that had been closed by frightened capitalists in order to begin production there at public expense. This was the first step toward a socialist organization of the economy.

The Commune did not achieve all its plans: It was crushed. The French bourgeoisie, with the assistance of its national enemy, Bismarck, who had immediately become its class ally, drowned in blood the uprising of its true enemy, the working class. The plans and tasks of the Commune did not come to fruition. But they entered into the souls of the best sons of the proletariat in the entire world; they became the revolutionary legacy of our struggle.

And now, on 18 March 1917, the image of the Commune arises before us more clearly than ever before: for we, after a great interval of time, have once again entered into the epoch of great revolutionary battles.

The world war has torn tens of millions of toilers from their customary conditions of labor and vegetation. Until now, this has happened only in Europe; tomorrow it will happen in America as well. Never before have the working masses been given such promises; never before have they been drawn such radiant goals; never have they been so flattered as in this war. Never before have the propertied classes dared to demand so much blood from the peoplein the name of that lie that is called defense of the fatherland. And never before have the toilers been so deceived, betrayed and crucified as now.

In the trenches overflowing with blood and mud, in the starving cities and villages, millions of hearts are filled with indignation, despair and rage. And these feelings, when combined with socialist thought, are turning into revolutionary enthusiasm. Tomorrow its flame will burst to the surface in powerful uprisings of the working masses.

The proletariat of Russia has already emerged onto the great highway of revolution, and, under its offensive, the strongholds of the most shameful of despotisms are falling and crashing down. The revolution in Russia, however, is only the precursor of proletarian uprisings throughout Europe and the entire world.

Remember the Commune!we socialists will say to the insurgent working masses. The bourgeoisie has armed you against the foreign enemy? Refuse to return your arms to the bourgeoisie, just as the Parisian workers refused in 1871! Aim these weapons, as Karl Liebknecht has called for you to do, against your true enemy, against capitalism! Tear from its hands the state machine, transform it from a weapon of bourgeois violence into the apparatus of proletarian self-rule. You are now incomparably stronger than your predecessors were in the epoch of the Commune. Tumble all the parasites from their thrones. Take the land, the mines and factories and manage them yourselves. Fraternity in labor, equality in sharing the fruits of labor!

The banner of the Commune is the banner of the World Republic of Labor!

Novy mir, 17 March 1917.
A report by the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC) details the deadly effects of wholly repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) on workers and the poor in Pennsylvania.

Although Obamacare is a regressive law based on the capitalist marketwhose purpose has been to reduce costs for businesses, boost profits for the drug and insurance industries and ration health care for workersthe laws Medicaid expansion provided a portion of the population with access to health care.

In Pennsylvania, about 685,000 people received health care via the Medicaid expansion when Democratic Governor Tom Wolf took office. If repealed, 585,000 people would be booted off Medicaid and either forced to forgo insurance altogether or purchase insurance through an employer or the government-run marketplace, thus placing a financial burden on the person or persons. A small group would be insured though the General Assistance program, Medical Assistance for Workers with Disabilities program, and Medically Needy Only.

The second largest group of Pennsylvanians who acquired insurance were those who purchased health care on the government-run, for-profit marketplace. In the first three months of 2016, approximately 412,347 people bought overpriced private insurance in the marketplace, 321,345 of whom received a tax credit averaging $248 a month and/or cost-sharing reductions that capped out-of-pocket costs. Those who obtained tax credits would lose this benefit and perhaps their insurance. The 91,000 people who didnt qualify for the subsidy would still have a harder time gaining coverage.

All in all, the report predicts that more than 1.1 million people would lose health insurance and, consequently, 3,425 premature deaths would happen each year.

Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and author of the report, explained in a statement following the release of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring for the proposed House Republican replacement for the ACA, the American Health Care Act (AHCA):

The most disturbing information in the new report is the prediction that 24 million Americans will lose health insurance by 2026. That high number reinforces our tentative estimate that at least 1.1 million Pennsylvanians, and probably more, will lose health care coverage when the AHCA goes fully into effect. It also lends support to our view that 4,000 Pennsylvanians will die prematurely because a lack of insurance will make it impossible for them to get the health care they need.

Speaking with the World Socialist Web Site, Stier emphasized the impact that the new bill will have on health care. We are still doing work on the numbers, he said. Our first estimate is that at least 1 million people will lose health insurance within 10 years.

In effect Medicaid is being wiped out as an entitlement program. In the past, the federal government paid 50 percent of a states Medicaid costs. If there was a recession, and more people qualified for the program, the federal government would pick up half the cost.

Under the proposed rules, federal funding will be capped on a per-capita basis, based on 2016 costs, increased according to the Consumer Price Index of health care expenses. The problem with that, Stier said, is that costs for Medicaid increase a lot faster than the general costs of health care. Also, if there is a major outbreak of a new disease or a new procedure developed, those costs will not be reimbursed to the state.

We dont know how the state will respond, but this will be the loss of billions of dollars a year which will surely lead to people being cut off or denied services.

Workers who get benefits through their employer will also see their benefits cut, Stier said. Cuts to subsidies to employer-based health care will lead to the loss of insurance for another 250,000 to 300,000 people.

In a section titled How Many Will Die Prematurely? the PBPC report uses a study comparing mortality rates in states that expanded Medicaid and those that did not. That study found that states that did not expand Medicaid had a higher death rate by 19.6 for every 100,000 people. Applying those percentages to Pennsylvania would mean that roughly 3,525 people would die each year due to lack of insurance.

The PBPC report notes that this figure is likely low, as the study was for a single year and couldnt take into account the effect of not having health insurance over many years.

In addition to the loss of health care, a sizable portion of workers would be left without a job. It is estimated that 137,000 jobs would be eradicated from all parts of the economy, not just the health care sector, and 97 percent would be in the private sector.

Across the nation, the Milken Institute School of Public Health has reported that outright repeal of the ACA would reduce federal spending by $807 billion over a five-year period, 2019-2023. As a result, nationwide job losses in 2019 alone would be 2.6 million and gross state products could fall by $1.5 trillion over five years.

Pennsylvania children would adversely be affected. The axing of only the Medicaid expansion and subsidies would more than double the number of children uninsured, from 95,000 to 202,000, or from 3.4 percent to 7.2 percent. Total repeal would increase the number of uninsured children to 546,000, or 19.4 percent. The report notes that current research has demonstrated the positive benefits for children who are insured: better health, more success in school, and higher life-time earnings.

Moreover, the state government would experience severe financial problems. The gross state product would shrink by $76.5 billion and a corresponding tax reduction at the state and local level of $2.4 billion. The states general fund revenues would be reduced by $1.5 billion during a five-year period. Adding more to the financial burden is the fact that all of this pales in comparison to the additional expenditures that the state will be required to make if the ACA is repealed, estimated at $1.1 billion per year added to the states structural deficit.

The state government is currently encountering staggering levels of debt. Per a mid-fiscal year budget report, the 2016/17 budget had a $600 million gap, while the state has a structural deficit of $1.7 billion. The Independent Fiscal Office has stated that Pennsylvania will be afflicted with a $3 billion yearly budget deficit if it doesnt reduce or eliminate costs arising from pensions, human services and Medicaid expansion.

Democrat Governor Tom Wolf has disclosed his austerity budget proposal for the next fiscal year, which attacks state workers and teachers, education, and social programs. Former governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, made it more difficult for the poor to obtain health insurance; at one point 89,000 children had been purged from Medicaid, some with life-threatening illnesses.
The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph and Australian have stepped-up their anti-Muslim witch-hunt, with articles yesterday featuring hysterical allegations that primary school children as young as 10 years of age are showing signs of extreme radicalisation.

The entirely unsubstantiated claims were taken up by a number of other corporate media outlets. They were made in the context of an ongoing campaign against the principal and vice-principal of Punchbowl Boys High School in south-western Sydney, who were dismissed by the New South Wales (NSW) Education Department at the beginning of the month amid absurd reports that the school had become a hotbed of Islamic extremism.

As the WSWS has documented, the two were removed, with the support of the state and federal Liberal-National governments, because they had allegedly opposed the introduction of an anti-radicalisation program that compels teachers to inform on their students. Under the initiative, rolled-out by the state Liberal-National government last year, schools are required to report anti-social and extremist behaviour to the police, under a definition so vague as to include any political opinion, including anti-war views.

Yesterdays articles in the Murdoch press make clear that in addition to agitating for increased government and police surveillance of working-class schools, the media campaign has a broader political purpose. Under conditions of mounting social tensions and intense hostility to the entire political establishment, it is aimed at diverting anger into the reactionary channels of nationalism and xenophobia, with the most right-wing, backward and disoriented layers of the population being incited against Muslims.

The front page article in the Daily Telegraph was almost entirely based on the comments of Mrs A, an anonymous woman said to be a former teacher at Punchbowl Public School, along with brief excerpts that the Telegraph claims are from school incident reports and complaints from 2014. Many students at Punchbowl Public School, a primary school, go on to attend Punchbowl Boys High School.

While the front page headline in the print edition blared BEHEAD OF THE CLASS. Teachers document extreme alarm, the allegations contained beneath failed to deliver on its hype.

A complaint, for instance, stated that two young students had been repeatedly uncooperative and disruptive and began audibly chanting the Koran in Arabic when placed in time-out. In one incident, a group of children allegedly called one of their class mates names. In another case, boys were teasing each other about eating sausages and seafood because they were doing work related to food in the classroom.

The article, and other coverage, made much of death threats, and warnings of beheadings. All that was cited, however, was Mrs. As claims, unsupported by any evidence, to have received notes on her desk, which she asserted were from students, and to have seen children run their fingers across their necks.

The accompanying Daily Telegraph editorial stated that the primary school was plagued by an aggressively Islamic atmosphere and called for the education department to take action.

Other reports yesterday quickly called into question Mrs. As claims.

SBS news highlighted comments she made, which were not included in the online version of the Daily Telegraph, declaring that Australia was a Christian nation and denouncing the presence of Halal-certified food in schools. Far-right parties, which specialise in anti-Muslim xenophobia, have focused a number of campaigns on conspiracy theories that Halal certification funds terrorism, or is part of a plot to Islamise Australia. In addition, none of Mrs. As multiple complaints were upheld or acted upon by education authorities.

Undeterred, the Daily Telegraph followed up today with an article claiming to cite the comments of parents at the school alleging a culture of Muslim groupism. The article featured quotes, supposedly from anonymous non-Muslim parents at the school, declaring that Muslim parents reject the school rules around violence and will not make eye contact.

In publishing such comments, shot through with thinly-veiled racism, the unmistakable aim of the Murdoch media is to whip-up sectarian divisions in the working class, and encourage the development of fascistic and xenophobic movements. The Daily Telegraph article yesterday was immediately picked up by a number of Facebook pages associated with the extreme right, with venomous comments directed at the primary school children from Punchbowl.

The clearest indication that the filth pouring from the Daily Telegraph is part of a broader agenda was the response of the NSW Education Department. The departments head, Mark Scott, assured right-wing radio host Ray Hadley that, in response to Mrs. As allegations, there had been a meeting with senior police, and that police and education officials were holding talks at the primary school yesterday.

In other words, all that is required for the highest levels of the police and the Education Department to be brought down on a school, are highly dubious, anonymous, anti-Muslim allegations. Their response highlights the extent to which 15 years of the bogus war on terror have been used to eviscerate basic democratic rights, and boost police powers, including over schools.

At the same time, the response of both the media and the NSW Education Department is another indication of the normalisation of anti-Muslim witch-hunts in official political life. In 2005, less than four years after 9/11, senior Liberal-National and Labor politicians, acting in concert with radio shock-jocks, whipped-up a nationalist and chauvinist atmosphere over false claims of racially-motivated violence by Middle-Eastern men, leading to racist riots in Cronulla, in Sydneys south-east.

Since then, social distress and alienation from official politics has only grown, with one election after another, at both state and federal level, dominated by mass rejection of incumbents and a slump in support for official parties. Explicitly anti-Muslim forces, such as Pauline Hansons One Nation Party are being promoted precisely in order to channel the widespread disaffection with social inequality, job losses and the gutting of essential social services in a reactionary direction.

The witch-hunt underway at the two Punchbowl schools, and the absence of any opposition from the political and media establishment, including its left-liberal wing, must sound a serious warning to the working class. Under conditions of the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, sections of the Australian ruling elite are emulating their counterparts in Europe and the United States, promoting the same virulent anti-Muslim racism that is the stock in trade of fascistic and right-wing populist movements, and the harbinger of major attacks on the democratic rights of the entire working class.

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It is the fate of every truly significant social overturn, every great revolution, to be misunderstood, slandered, lied about and distorted. That is the specific and ignoble task of the intellectual defenders of the old order. Sometimes that process occurs in spectacular ways, sometimes in petty and paltry ones.

Margy Kinmonths documentary, Revolution: New Art for a New World, falls into the latter category. The director, more than anything else, is entirely out of her depth.

Inevitably, 2017 is witnessing the publication of various articles and books, the mounting of art exhibitions and the release of films devoted to the centenary of the October Revolution. Most are weak or worse, revealing the poor understanding of or intense hostility toward this titanic event among the so-called intellectualsand also taking advantage of the generally low level of popular historical knowledge.

The purported focus of Kinmonths film is the Russian and Soviet avant-garde artists, including Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Gustav Klutsis, Nikolai Suetin, Pavel Filonov, Marc Chagall, and Wassily Kandinsky. One of the documentarys few strengths is its interviews with descendants of a number of these artists. Some of those moments are fascinating.

Trying to describe the structure of Revolution: New Art for a New World is difficult, because the work lacks a coherent organization. It jumps from event to event, personality to personality, with almost no discernible logic.

In any case, the film opens with the International Womans Day protests of February (March) 1917, which sparked the movement that led to the overthrow of the tsar. Along with footage of the protests, the director has staged a re-enactment of women painting banners with revolutionary slogans. As narrator, she then provides a very potted and superficial history of Russian society up to 1917.

The film then briefly points to Viktor Bullas iconic photo of the July Days massacre, and Sergei Eisensteins October (1928), as a means of chronicling the revolutionary events. Kinmonth then goes on her meandering course.

The interviewees eventually include Suetins daughter Nina Suetin, Rodchenkos grandson Alexander Lavrentiev and Klutsiss granddaughter Maria Kulagina, along with filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky, the grandson of painter Pyotr Konchalovsky, and Zinaida Barzilovich, the granddaughter of painter Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. In general, the artists descendants expressed pride and sympathy for the work of their famous relatives, without saying much about the political and social history.

Kinmonth also speaks to various art experts, enlightening or otherwiseamong them, the academic and author of various books on the Russian avant garde, Christina Lodder; the director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova; head of Contemporary Art at the Hermitage, Dmitri Ozerkov; and Semyon Mikhailovsky, the Rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts.

However, other commentators have more of an obvious ideological ax to grind, including journalist and professional anti-communist Anne Applebaum and Natalia Murray, the co-curator of the Royal Academys current Revolution: Russian Art 19171932 exhibition. Konchalovsky, who went from working as Soviet director Andrei Tarkovskys collaborator to making a number of second-rate Hollywood films, also indicates his hostility to the October Revolution.

Kinmonth spends some time discussing Malevichs Black Square (1915) and his Suprematist movement, the trajectory of Chagall and Kandinsky, and pro-Bolshevik theater director Vsevolod Meyerholds Biomechanics (with actors demonstrating his techniques), to no particular effect. The film goes on to detail the Stalinist clampdown on the arts in the 1930s, suggesting, inevitably, that the dictatorial regime emerged organically from the 1917 revolution. Trotskys name comes up only once, in connection with his being edited out of Eisensteins October.

In regard to the latter film, it is impossible to ignore Kinmonths intellectual dishonesty or ignorance, or both. She asserts, in a directors statement, that her starting point for Revolution: New Art for a New World was October, a story which I discovered to be a lie and a propaganda exercise, which immortalised the political events through the lens of a great artist.

To substantiate her bald assertion that Eisensteins masterpiece is simply a lie, the narrator-director points to the fact that Octobers concluding section, depicting the storming of the Winter Palace, was an exaggeration, that there was no fierce fighting, or mass invasion of the palace as presented in the film and that the Provisional Government members were willing to surrender.  Compared to the intensity of the later battles of the civil war, this storming was unspectacular.

This is absurd. There is an element of artistic license in the scene, without question. As Trotsky notes in his History of the Russian Revolution: The final act of the revolution seems, after all this, too brief, too dry, too businesslikesomehow out of correspondence with the historic scope of the events.  Where is the insurrection? There is no picture of the insurrection. The events do not form themselves into a picture. Eisenstein tried to overcome that problem through heightening and concentrating the drama.

Were there other difficulties? Certainly. October was affected by the growth of Stalinism. We recently discussed the films difficult history.

As Kinmonth notes, Stalin intervened personally to insist on the removal of Trotsky from Eisensteins work. Moreover, there is an element of Lenin idolatry in October, which the Bolshevik leader would have found distasteful, and perhaps as well an early hint of Soviet patriotism or messianism.

Nonetheless, October provides a vivid and sweeping presentation, through the use of thousands of images, of the complex events of 1917. What Kinmonth and her ilk truly despise is the films indelible portrait of working class mass action, its exposure of the rottenness of the liberal bourgeoisie and its hangers-on and its treatment of the role of revolutionary leadership. Eisenstein cannot be forgiven for those elements.

But this is only one of the falsifications or distortions Kinmonths documentary offers. Another involves the attempt to make Lenin a crude advocate of art as a means of socialist propaganda. Kinmonth seems to be borrowing this idea from Natalia Murrays book, The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin. In that book, without citing a source, Murray claims that Lenin believed that monumental art provides the most powerful means of political propaganda.

Kinmonth and Murray are referring to the immediately post-revolutionary plans of the Bolsheviks to remove (and store) monuments erected in honor of the tsars and their minions (Lenin) that had no artistic or historic value. The Bolshevik leader proposed in April 1918 to replace such works with monuments to significant revolutionaries, artists, scientists and composers, including (wonderfully!) Gracchus, Brutus, Babeuf, of course Marx and Engels and other socialists, Marat, Robespierre, Bakunin, Plekhanov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Mendeleyev, Mussorgsky, Scriabin and Chopin.

The film claims that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were allocating funds to their monument project while millions were starving. This, of course, is another lie. The terrible famine took place in 1921-1922, as the result of vast imperialist intervention and White counter-revolution, long after Lenin made his proposal. If the Great Powers had accepted the existence of revolutionary Russia, there would have been no starvation!

Another indication of Kinmonths slovenliness is the narrations reference to an assassination attempt against Lenin in 1922. In fact, that event took place in August 1918, a mere four years earlier.

Lesser problems include paintings not identified, important dates not given, figures in the honor roll at the end of the film who have not been discussed, etc., etc. .

However, the great unresolved issue that hangs over the entire shoddy effort, and fatally damages it, is this:

On the one hand, the filmmaker and her experts cannot avoid describing the artwork inspired by the October Revolution as earth-shaking. Kinmonth herself argues that the tumultuous political period of the Russian Revolution produced some of the most inventive and brilliant works of art the world has ever known.

On the other, Revolution: New Art for a New World would have us believe that the Russian Revolution was a failure, a disaster, a meaningless blip or a historical detour. How is it possible that such a non-event or catastrophe should have generated brilliant and enduring artwork? Where is there a parallel in history? The various dictatorships and authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century have left nothing but ruins and human misery in their wake.

Virtually all of Kinmonths scholars and curators seem pleased that the tumultuousperiod is over and done with. Such wishful thinking has absolutely no impact on the historical process. Those who look at and take the Russian Revolutionary art seriously will not be stopped by the philistine commentators and prognosticators. They will inevitably be drawn to and inspired by the revolutionary events themselves.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made an appearance at a televised town hall event in Welch, West Virginia on March 12. The appearance, broadcast by MSNBC, was part of a national tour the former presidential candidate is carrying out on behalf of the Democratic Party.

Seeking to tap into popular anger over poverty, lack of jobs and attacks on health care and education, Sanders is attempting to convince disillusioned and disgusted voters that the Democrats can somehow be transformed into an instrument for progressive change. At the same time, he is promoting the trade unions, whose betrayals of miners struggles have left the former coalfields of West Virginia desolate and the miners and their families impoverished.

Sanders is peddling his book Our Revolution: A Future To Believe In, in which he argues for nationalist economic policies and presents the Democratic Party as an organization receptive to grassroots transformation.

While presenting himself as an independent and democratic socialist, Sanders has been elevated into the leadership of the Democratic Party precisely to contain the social opposition that gathered around his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. In a meeting with West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer in January, Sanders was told that his services were needed to make sure that public opposition to Donald Trump was directed in all the right proper channels, i.e., exclusively against the Republicans. Manchin, Schumer and Sanders have all offered to work with the Trump administration, glossing over the ultra-right-wing content of its policies. Manchin, a former governor of West Virginia, has gone out of his way to express admiration and support for Trump.

The West Virginia event, organized by Sanders office for the MSNBC program All In With Chris Hayes, was attended by a registration-only audience estimated at 250-350 people. The show was pre-recorded and edited by MSNBC for airing March 13. The taping was held at Mount View High School in Welch. No other media were permitted to record audio or video of the event.

Sanders, who ran in the Democratic primaries as a self-described socialist before backing Hillary Clinton, carried every county in West Virginia, some by considerable margins. Clinton, a longtime ally of Wall Street and the military/intelligence establishment and former secretary of state under Barack Obama, was seen as a personification of the corrupt status quo and widely hated in the state. In the general election, Republican Donald Trump received 74 percent of the vote on the basis of his pseudo-populist, anti-establishment demagogy.

Promoted as an unscripted, no-holds-barred conversation, the town hall was a carefully stage-managed affair, featuring Chris Hayes as moderator and several small panel sessions. West Virginia House of Delegates member Ed Evans, a Democrat, also participated on-stage.

The panelists included a selection of doctors, professionals, a coal miner and other residents of McDowell County and the surrounding area. Some of the participants, identified simply as local residents, were actually Democratic Party politicians, officials and activists. Sabrina Shrader, who spoke about deep poverty in Welch, was a 2016 Democratic Party candidate for House of Delegates in District 27 (Mercer and Raleigh Counties). Paula Swearengin, a single mom who was featured in a behind-the-scenes video on social media crying on Sanders shoulder, is an environmental activist with a history of lobbying on behalf of the Sierra Club.

Sanders remarks on the economy, infrastructure and health care deviated little from stump speeches he has given over the past year. He called for a $1 trillion infrastructure program to create jobs--an echo of President Trumps exaggerated campaign promises. Time and again, Sanders has gone out of his way to express support for Trumps America First economic policies, which have the backing of the unions. As he said after Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, If President Trump is serious about a new policy to help American workers, then I would be delighted to work with him.

In the town hall event, Sanders appealed to opposition to the Republican-controlled Congresss attack on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which would throw thousands of poor West Virginians off the Medicaid rolls, including retired coal miners and recovering opioid addicts. Dr. Lori Tucker, an obstetrician and gynecologist on the panel, explained that three-quarters of her patients depend on Medicaid.

Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, Sanders declared, I think we need to ask them to pay their fair share. To applause from the audience, he urged West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito to join Senator Manchin and oppose the proposed repeal.

The region has been crippled by a long-term decline in coal, with thousands of miners laid off and thousands more people forced to leave in search of work. McDowell County is among the worst-off counties in the country and is classified as being in economic depression. It has the lowest life expectancy for men in the US.

Much of the town hall event focused on the prospect of a revival in coal mining. President Trump, declaring he will Make coal great again, has attacked regulations on the industry. Democratic Governor Jim Justice has pursued similar policies at the state level, reversing environmental regulations and provisions for safety inspections. Because the Democratic Party has been identified with Environmental Protection Agency regulations that the right wing has blamed for the structural decline in the coal industry, called Obamas war on coal, Sanders took pains to proclaim coal miners heroes and thank them for their work.

The senator blamed Republicans for the crisis in the miners pension system, saying they were holding up legislation. At no point did Sanders mention the role of the United Mine Workers union in suppressing rank-and-file opposition to attacks on jobs, benefits and working conditions.

As one company after another took shelter in the bankruptcy courts and shed their pension obligations, the UMW and its Democratic Party allies stood by. In West Virginia, the coal industry has run roughshod over the population with the active collaboration of the Democrats, who controlled the state government for 80 years. A case in point is the Democrat Jim Justice, a billionaire coal executive who was heartily endorsed as one of the good coal operators by the UMW.

Sanders trod lightly on the question of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels, which the miner on the panel insisted were not connected. The choice is not protecting our planet and throwing these people out onto the street, the senator said. The choice is reinvesting in communities that have been devastated by changes in energy and giving people decent-paying jobs. Sanders made no proposals as to the decent-paying jobs that might replace the coal industry, but tourism and the promotion of small business benefiting a layer of the upper-middle class have long been pitched as an alternative by the social types present at the Welch event.

Although promoted as a microcosm of the problems gripping rural and small towns across the country, the Welch event was notably silent on many of the major issues of the day, including the vicious attacks on immigrants, widespread domestic spying and the danger of world war. This is because the Democratic Party has no real objection to these attacks, and Sanders himself has repeatedly called for nationalist trade barriers and a belligerent stance on Russia.

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The Pentagon is preparing to submit a request that would send 1,000 more US soldiers and Marines into Syria, doubling the number of ground troops now deployed in the war-torn country.

The proposed escalation, following close upon the sixth anniversary of the US-orchestrated war for regime change that has killed close to half a million Syrians and turned millions more into refugees, signals a turn toward a qualitative escalation of the US intervention in that country and in the broader Middle East.

The request for the troop buildup comes in the wake of the a report submitted by the Pentagon at the end of last month outlining proposals requested by the Trump administration for an escalation of the US intervention being waged in Iraq and Syria in the name of combating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US military operations in the region, is set to forward his recommendations to [Defense Secretary James] Mattis by the end of this month, and the Pentagon secretary is likely to sign off on them, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing an unnamed Department of Defense official.

The troops would likely come from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the US Armys 82nd Airborne Division. The Marines would be drawn from a force of 2,200 which is aboard ships now headed toward the Syrian coast, while the Army paratroopers would come from a force of some 1,000 troops that have been pre-positioned in Kuwait. The initial escalation of troop levels could be quickly increased further from these additional forces being deployed to the region.

Such an increase would formally abrogate caps imposed on US deployments in Iraq and Syria by the Obama administration, 5,000 in the first country and 500 in the second. These limits have already been breached with temporary deployments continuously rotating more US troops in and out of the region. Meanwhile, earlier this month the Pentagon dispatched 250 US Army Rangers and 200 Marines into Syria.

The proposed changes in US deployments would not only increase the number of troops on the ground, but also increase the potential for direct US combat involvement in a conflict that has been characterized by confusion and competing priorities among disparate forces, according to the Post.

This confusion and multi-sided character of the ongoing fighting in Syria is the direct product of Washingtons abortive attempt to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad through arming, funding and support for Islamist, Al Qaeda-linked militias in collaboration with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni gulf oil sheikdoms.

The further buildup of US forces, carried out against the opposition of the Syrian government and in violation of international law, is ostensibly aimed at combating ISIS, itself the product of the protracted US intervention in the region.

In combating ISIS, the US has relied on a militia force dominated by the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia. At the same time, Washingtons NATO ally in the region, Turkey, has intervened in Syria in the name of combating ISIS, but directing much of its military power at preventing the YPG from consolidating a Kurdish autonomous zone on Turkeys southern border.

The US Ranger unit, equipped with heavily armored Stryker combat vehicles, was deployed to the northern Syrian city of Manbij as part of what the Pentagon described as a reassurance and deterrence mission, i.e., an attempt to prevent Turkish and Kurdish forces from engaging in all out clashes.

Meanwhile, however, there is also the possibility of a far more dangerous military clash erupting in Syria between the US and Russia.

Russian forces, supporting the Assad government, are also operating inside Manbij. At a press briefing Wednesday, a spokesman for US operations in the region spoke from Baghdad to Pentagon reporters, acknowledging that US and Russian troops were close enough to observe each others movements.

They can see each other, said Col. John Dorrian. They are not talking to each other, and they are not hanging out together.

All of these disparate and mutually hostile forces are massing in the area for an attack on Raqqa, a city of 300,000 controlled by ISIS. The US is backing the Kurdish-dominated militia, which has said it will resist any Turkish role in retaking the city. Turkey, meanwhile, is supporting Turkish Islamist forces that are opposed both to the Kurds and to the Syrian government, whose own forces are moving against Raqqa with the backing of Russia.

As the Pentagon prepares its escalation in Syria, an influential Washington think tank has called for an even greater expansion of US operations aimed at furthering US strategic interests throughout the oil-rich region.

The Institute for the Study of War, which is funded by major military contractors, including Raytheon, GeneralDynamics and DynCorp, issued a report entitled Americas Way Ahead in Syria. Its principal authors are Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of neo-conservative advocates of global US military escalation who acted as advisors to US commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report criticizes the current plans for escalation as an attempt to supersize the Obama administrations strategy by lifting constraints on US forces and adding a few additional resources.

Instead, they advocate, President Trump and his team must change the strategy fundamentally. They should orient their new plan on American interests rather starting from what the US had been doing.

The strategy advocated by the Kagans points toward a US confrontation with both Iran and Russia for hegemony over the Middle East.

The Russo-Iranian military buildup and attempt to dominate the regional system and resources constrain and weaken the United States, the report states. Russia and Iran are building a regional order based on their shared near-term interests, which will not diverge any time soon. This developing system denies America the freedom to protect its own interests. The Russo-Iranian coalition will make it more difficult for the US to respond to terror threats against it, defend key allies such as Israel, and ensure unfettered access to trade routes the US economy depends on.

The report states that the US must maintain and likely increase its military presence in Iraq even after Mosuls recapture. It calls for the building up of forces in Iraq to confront and defeat Iranian influence.

We must show once again that we are wiling to fight and die with Sunni Arabs against their enemies and ours--Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Iran, it insists.

In Syria, the report adds, the US should seize and secure a base in southern Syria ... and create a de facto safe zone where US forces can recruit, train, equip, and partner with local Sunni militias.

It also states that Washington must prepare for direct military confrontation with Russia over control of Syria. The US must be prepared to conduct a full suppression of enemy air defense if necessary and to use alternative sources of leverage over Putin to deter him from attacking US forces. The US must position a joint package of strike and air defense assets in theater before beginning this course of action to strengthen this deterrence. The package must be obviously able to attain air supremacy throughout the theater and maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean if required.

Behind the initial plans for escalating US troop deployments in Iraq and Syria, what is being discussed in the White House, Pentagon and CIA, as well as the think tanks connected to the US military and intelligence apparatus, are proposals that pave the way to a third world war.
The talented actress recently revealed how she was rejected from several auditions because of her skin colour.

By India Today Web Desk: TV and film actress Ulka Gupta, who shot to fame with her show Jhansi ki Rani, recently revealed that she was rejected several times for certain roles because of the colour of her skin.

"I was very passionate about acting but surprisingly at a very young age, I came across the dark side of our industry. After wrapping up Resham Dankh, my father and I used to go for the auditions on a daily basis. And every time, I was disappointed to see that the producers were looking for a fair girl. According to them, fair girl represents an upmarket girl. I was rejected so many times just for the sake of my dark skin," the 19-year-old told Daily Bhaskar.

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The actress recently opened up on how she hit a low point in her life when she was repeatedly rejected in auditions.

Also read: Tannishtha Chatterjee walks out of Comedy Nights Bachao after getting roasted for her skin tone

"Due to my complexion, I got the role of Saloni's daughter in Saat Phere. Since that show focused on the girl's courage beyond her dark complexion; the casting directors finalised me. Otherwise, I was rejected most of the time. Surprisingly, even after so many years of experience, my casting agent still gets few requirements stating, 'need a fair complexion girl'. Honestly, I have stopped going for such auditions because I want my talent to speak for me and not the color of my skin," the actress added.

--- ENDS ---
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is using a three-country trip to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing this week to line up Americas current allies, Japan and South Korea, behind Washingtons preparations for an economic and potentially military confrontation against North Korea and also China.

Tillerson held talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida yesterday. Today, he lands in South Korea for discussions with Acting President Hwang Kyo Ahn. Tomorrow he will be in China for meetings with President Xi Jinping, State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

While Tillerson is couching his public comments in language about responding to North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests, the thrust of his tour is to escalate the US pressure on China over its alleged failure to do more to rein in North Korea.

According to US officials, Tillerson will threaten punishing sanctions against Chinese companies accused of trading with North Korea, and categorically reject Chinese calls not to proceed with stationing a US anti-missile system and attack drones in South Korea that could be used in any nuclear war with China.

Tillerson is the second member of Trumps cabinet to visit Japan. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis went last month, and Vice President Mike Pence is due in April, underscoring the administrations focus on using North Koreas missile and nuclear programs as a pretext for targeting China.

In Tokyo yesterday, Tillerson called for closer trilateral cooperation between Japan, South Korea and the US. It was important to maintain a strong alliance in which there is no space between us, he said.

Tillersons visit follows a Trump administration review of US strategy toward North Korea. According to media leaks, it was considering regime change and military attacks on the North. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that President Donald Trumps national security deputies had discussed both the possibility of pre-emptive US military strikes on North Korea and a reintroduction of nuclear weapons to the South.

Tillersons trip is being conducted against a backdrop of huge annual US-South Korean war games, based on offensive scenarios that include the rehearsal of decapitation raids by special forces units to assassinate the North Korean leadership. Intent on heightening tensions, the White House has rejected a proposal by China to halt the drills in return for North Korea suspending nuclear and missile activities.

In Tokyo yesterday, Tillerson said the ever-escalating threat from North Koreas nuclear program showed a clear need for a new approach, but did not say what the Trump administration planned. Speaking at a joint news conference after talks with Foreign Minister Kishida, he claimed there had been 20 years of failed approach, including attempts to assist and encourage North Korea to take a different pathway.

The Japan Times, citing an anonymous senior Japanese foreign ministry official, reported that Tillerson told Kishida that all options are on the table in dealing with North Koreas military threat. The official said Tillerson offered several ideas but denied that specific military options were discussed.

Before Tillersons departure from Washington, a Trump administration official underscored the White Houses rejection of Chinas objections to the deployment, currently underway, of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile battery in South Korea. THAAD is non-negotiable, the official told Reuters. This is one of those things where Beijing is just going to have to adapt to or live in a perpetual cycle of outrage.

In media briefings, senior US officials said Tillerson would also tell Beijing that the US was prepared to increase financial penalties against Chinese companies and banks that do business with North Korea.

Penalties have already begun, escalating an offensive that the Obama administration began last year. The Commerce Department last week announced that a Chinese tech firm, ZTE, would pay a $1.2 billion fine for violating sanctions by selling equipment to Iran and North Korea.

Although ZTE agreed to submit to the penalty, such large fines have the potential to damage Chinas economy. Last September, the Obama administration set a precedent by targeting a Chinese company, the Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Co. Ltd, accusing it of money laundering on behalf of Pyongyang.

Korea is only one potential flashpoint. During his congressional confirmation hearings in January, Tillerson set the stage for a possible clash with China, saying it should be barred from artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea.

Publicly, Tillersons trip was meant to reassure Japan and South Korea of Washingtons continued commitment to their defence. During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly threatened to pull out US forces unless Japan and South Korea paid more for hosting them.

In Tokyo, Tillerson emphasised the importance of the US-Japan alliance. Speaking before meeting Abe, Tillerson said it was the cornerstone for stability in Northeast Asia and the Asia Pacific and we look forward to strengthening that alliance further. Abe said Tillersons visit to Japan was timely, when tension was mounting in the region.

The Japanese government reportedly agreed to expedite scheduling of a Security Consultative Committeea meeting of the foreign and defense chiefs of both countriesto start considering concrete steps to enhance the alliance as soon as possible.

However, the visit also occurred in the context of steps by Abes government to rearm militarily in order to pursue its own imperialist ambitions, while still operating under the umbrella of its strategic alliance with the US. These moves include sending a Japanese guided-missile destroyer to participate in US-South Korean exercises near where four North Korean test missiles landed this month and dispatching a helicopter carrier for three months of operations in the South China Sea and across the Indo-Pacific region.

A hint of the tensions between the US and Japanese governments came in the Tillerson-Kishida press conference when Kishida said Japan will assume larger roles and responsibilities. A CBS News correspondent asked the Japanese foreign minister about reports that Abes government was considering acquiring its own THAAD system and a pre-emptive strike capacity against missile launches. Kishida said he did not understand the question and declined to allow the reporter to clarify.

On the economic front, the two sides evidently sought to patch up the rift caused by the Trump administrations withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which had promised greater access to each others markets as part of a wider push for a US-led Asia-Pacific economic bloc against China.

Officially, Tillerson and Kishida affirmed cooperation through a new bilateral economic dialogue, to be led by US Vice President Pence and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is also finance minister. In reality, the trade war warnings of punitive tariffs issued by the Trump administration, while initially directed against China and Mexico, also threaten major Japanese companies operating in these markets.
In rulings issued Wednesday night and Thursday morning, two federal district court judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked the implementation of Donald Trumps revised immigration executive order on the grounds that it likely violates the First Amendments prohibition of any law respecting an establishment of religion.

Both judges cited Trumps own bigoted campaign statements in their decisions as evidence that the executive orders were aimed at targeting Muslims. The orders marked the second time in two months that the courts have blocked Trumps executive orders limiting immigration.

The revised executive order, issued March 6, only slightly modifies the January 27 order that was struck down last month. It includes a 90-day ban on visa issuance to immigrants, students, and travelers from six of the seven predominantly Muslim countries included in the first ban, with the exception of Iraq. Refugee admission would be suspended for 120 days under the order. Unlike the January order, US legal permanent residents would be excluded from the travel ban.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled Thursday against reconsidering its February 9 decision blocking Trumps first executive order on immigration. Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, known for signing the Torture Memos as a Bush administration attorney, wrote a dissent signed by four other judges claiming the first executive order is legal for national security reasons.

Speaking in Nashville, Tennessee after the Hawaii federal judge issued the temporary restraining order, Trump said, the law and the Constitution give the president the power to suspend immigrationwhen he or she deems it to be in the national interests of our country.

Trump threatened to defy the courts: I think we ought to go back to the first version and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.

The possibility that Trump will disregard judicial decisions was underscored by his visit Wednesday to lay a wreath at the tomb of Andrew Jackson, the seventh US president and a demagogic representative of the southern slaveholding class. The timing of this visit on the day before the ban took effect was not accidental. Jackson famously rebuked the US Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Marshall, when the court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that the state of Georgia could not encroach on the territory of the Cherokee Native American tribe.

Plotting a genocidal campaign to remove the Native Americans and turn over their land to plantation owners, Jackson refused to enforce the decision, writing to Brigadier General John Coffee, The decision of the supreme court has felt still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate. (The apocryphal version quotes Jackson as saying, John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.)

Trump has tweeted similar sentiments, noting on February 4 after a district court struck down his first immigration order, The opinion of this so-called judgeis ridiculous and will be overturned, and What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban? In mid-2016, Trump said a federal judge was treating him unfairly in a lawsuit over fraud at Trump University because the judge was of Mexican heritage.

The rollout of the executive orders is part of a carefully choreographed and reactionary long-term political maneuver that bears the trademark of Steven Bannon, Trumps fascist chief strategist.

The two executive orders are initial attempts to test the boundaries of a judicial branch that has rubber-stamped almost all of the most antidemocratic measures carried out by the government under the auspices of the war on terror. At the same time, Trump is whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hysteria that he will then manipulate to launch even further assaults on basic democratic rights.

Prominent jurists have raised the possibility that the administration is counting on the courts to strike down the immigration orders in order to set the stage for the establishment of a state of emergency constitutional suspension.

Writing in the beltway insider blog Lawfare, Jane Chong noted in February, As I write these words, a record number of even-keeled folks are googling Reichstag fire and worrying out loud that the President of the United States is actively planning to exploit a future domestic terrorist attack to institute otherwise inconceivably bigoted, oppressive, and generally anti-democratic policies.

One such figure is former Bush administration attorney Jack Goldsmith, who wrote on Lawfare that the hasty rollout of the first executive order suggests that Trump is setting the scene to blame judges after an attack that has any conceivable connection to immigration. Goldsmith pointed out that after a bad terrorist attack, politicians are under intense pressure to loosen legal constraints, adding that courts feel these pressures, and those pressures will be significantly heightenedif courts are widely seen to be responsible for an actual terrorist attack.

Trump and his fascist advisors are already laying the basis for such moves. In a February 5 tweet, Trump denounced the judge who halted his first executive order: Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system.

The Democratic Party has laid the table for Trumps strategy. Over the course of the last 25 years, the Democrats have spearheaded or supported every antidemocratic attack carried out under the guise of the war on terror. With the help of the trade unions, they have encouraged Trumps economic nationalism and anti-immigrant hysteria. If Trump uses or fabricates a terrorist attack to abrogate further democratic rights in the name of national security, the Democratic Party will offer him their support.

For the time being, Trumps second executive order will remain blocked unless the government withdraws it or the rulings are overturned on appeal.
On Wednesday, the Verdi union stopped the strike by ground staff at the Tegel and Schonefeld airports in Berlin, despite the fact that the employer side refused to submit a new offer. On Tuesday afternoon the strike leadership announced to surprised workers at the Schonefeld airport that the strike was to be shut down until the weekend. Shortly before the union announcement, workers had participated in a demonstration through the airport.

As justification for shutting down the strike, Enrico Rumker, the strike leader at Schonefeld airport, stated that the union had been summoned to arbitration. In fact, no formal agreement has been struck on arbitration. Nevertheless, the union committee declared it wanted to consult from Wednesday on how to proceed.

Just days after starting their strike, ground services workers, who had begun their industrial action with great determination, have been confronted with a sabotage by their own trade union. At the beginning of March, workers voted for an indefinite strike by almost 99 percent to oppose the prevailing intolerable working conditions and low wages resulting from the privatization of airport ground services by the Social Democratic Party-Left Party Senate, led by former mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD).

Verdi was forced to organize a strike, but limited it to single days. A 24-hour strike last Friday was to be followed by a second 24-hour strike on Monday, which under pressure from the strikers was then extended for a further day.

At the same time, Verdi prevented a strike at Stuttgart Airport, thereby isolating the Berlin workers. The Verdi press release on Monday boasted that after the fifth round of negotiations, another strike had been averted at the last minute.

The workers in Stuttgart are to receive a 1 per hour wage increase, the same amount that workers are demanding in Berlin. The Stuttgart deal, however, is linked to a three-year contract. The agreement is aimed at awarding workers a paltry increase, which, at the same time, prevents them, according to German labour law, from taking any further industrial action for at least three years.

Verdi had already agreed a similar deal just days before in the cities of Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Cologne. These local contracts were also struck on the basis of a three-year running time. Verdi negotiator Enrico Rumker told the WSWS that with such good deals (!) one could not explain to anyone why there should be a strike

He failed to mention that the situation for airport workers in Hamburg is especially tense. Lufthansa Airlines announced this week that it plans to axe hundreds of jobs in the city at its subsidiary Lufthansa Technik, including compulsory redundancies for the first time. This one example shows that the same problems prevail for airport workers across Europein Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, London, Paris and other cities.

Negotiations between the union and employers began in Frankfurt am Main on March 15 and it is already clear that Verdi is determined to prevent a drawn-out strike by ground crew at all German airports.

The workers reacted very differently: They demonstrated their willingness to fight at the two Berlin airports for two days. The strike was supported by nearly 100 percent of ground crew and had an effect on schedules, with many flights cancelled.

The reason for their determination rests with the miserable working conditions that have worsened over the past 10 years. The private low-cost companies pay their ground crew workers between 9 and 11 per hour. Most employees receive short-term contracts, and many of the most difficult jobs involved in handling flights are carried out by temporary workers who often earn even less. At the same time, the workload of these workers has massively increased due to the extremely high passenger numbers in Berlin.

Nevertheless these companies have rejected the unions demand for a paltry 1 more per hour and instead offered a three-year contract with a pay increase of 8 percent, an annual hourly wage increase of just 27 cents, according to Verdi.

Twenty years ago airport ground services were owned by the state of Berlin and Lufthansa. After the SPD-Left Party Senate led by Wowereit and Gregor Gysi took power at the end of 2001, the decision was made to privatize airport services. The result is that there are now five companies that negotiate with Verdi on the employers side, which in turn represent 17 other private companies through subsidiaries and sub-subsidiaries.

The SPD-Left Party Senates initiative for Berlins airports was no coincidence. Already in 2002, the Senate withdrew from the municipal employers association in order to impose up to 12 percent pay cuts in the public sector. The Senate, especially the Left Party, worked closely with Verdi, which is mainly linked in Berlin with the SPD and Left Party. The massive cuts in the public service sector were sealed in a private walk in the woods between Verdi boss Frank Bsirske and the then Berlin economics senator, Harald Wolf (Left Party, then PDS).

On the decision to privatize ground services at the time, the Left Party wrote, dated April 11, 2008: This decision also came about with the votes of some of the employees representatives, who, in a very competitive field, saw future development possibilities in the event of a sale to an investor who would possibly respect tariffs.

The Left Party advocated the policy it maintains up to this day, in common with the declared policy of the Verdi leadership. Their joint response to the fierce airline competition in Europe is not the international solidarity of workers, but rather defence of individual workplaces at the cost of the entire workforce.

Airport workers face a serious challenge. As in countless other conflicts they must conduct a war on two fronts. They confront not only unscrupulous low-cost companies, but also trade unions like Verdi that have assumed control of the industrial dispute. Its functionaries sit on the company supervisory boards and are working to increase the competitiveness of the airports and their companies, i.e., to reduce costs by cutting jobs.
Europe

UK: Train drivers union attempts fresh sell-out in Southern Rail dispute

The ASLEF train drivers union is pushing a rotten sell-out of the struggle against Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains on the Southern Rail franchise. Wednesday saw ASLEF proclaim that it had secured a recommended deal with Southern Rails parent company, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), after constructive talks.

Train drivers are to be balloted on the proposed deal and the result declared by April 3.

ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan claimed that the deal offers solutions to our concerns, as well as restoring the confidence of all parties, and the travelling publicthe same claim made regarding an ASLEF recommended deal rejected by 55 percent of drivers in February!

Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union leader, Mick Cash, was scathing in his own estimation of the agreementdescribing the latest proposal as the old one in new envelope. Cash declared that the deal meant that drivers and passengers had lost the cast-iron guarantee they once had of a guard on the train, which means they will now be more exposed and left vulnerable when something goes wrong ... The fact is that GTR have deliberately done this deal behind the backs of guards and their union.

RMT members on Southern have taken 30 days of strike action over the dispute, which began last April and ASLEF has taken five.

The latest deal comes just two days after train conductors at Southern Rail, as well as Arriva Rail North and Merseyrail struck Monday to oppose the introduction of DOO services, during which, at Merseyrail, many ASLEF drivers refused to cross RMT picket lines.

UK: Underground rail staff vote to strike

Train drivers, members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) working the London Underground all night servicewhich operates Friday and Saturdayshave voted by a more than 90 percent majority to take strike action. The staff recruited to run the overnight service are employed on a part-time basis of 16 hours and are not allowed to apply for full-time positions for a period of six months. They are also demanding to be paid overtime rates; at present, because they are on the 16-hour contracts, any additional hours are just paid at normal rate.

Protest by UK auto workers over pensions

On Wednesday, staff working for BMW held protests outside the companys car plant at Cowley, near Oxford and Hams Hall in the West Midlands. The protests were over BMWs plans to get rid of final-salary pensions, replacing them with inferior ones, which will lead to pension losses in excess of 100,000.

Cinema staff in southern UK town set to strike

Staff at the Duke of York cinema in Brighton are due to strike tomorrow in pursuit of the living wage. They are members of the BECTU trade union and voted unanimously for the strike. Picturehouse owns a chain of 23 cinemas. In turn, Picturehouse is owned by Cineworld, the second-largest cinema business in Europe.

They will be joined by Picturehouse staff at Crouch End, Hackney and the Ritzy in Brixton, London who are striking over the same issue. The London staff have conducted a long-running dispute over the living wage issue.

UK nuclear fleet workers vote to strike

Staff at the Faslane and Coulport naval bases, members of the Unite union, have voted by more than 95 percent to strike. They service the UK nuclear submarine fleet. Unite accuses the Babock Marine company of victimising its members and refusing to negotiate with them. Other issues include the outsourcing of domestic servicing duties.

Strike by cleaners at prestigious London School of Economics

Around 250 cleaners at the London School of Economics (LSE) began a 48-hour strike on Wednesday. They work for Noonan Services Group and are represented by the United Voices of the World union (UVW). They are demanding pay and working conditions in line with workers directly employed by the LSE.

Belarus protest against tax on jobless

Several hundred protesters held a demonstration in the southwestern Belarus city of Pinsk on March 11 against a tax on workers who work less than six months in the year. Other rallies took place the next day in Babruysk, Vorsha, and Rahachou. A rally was also planned for the capital Minsk.

The tax would also apply to those who do not register with unemployment centres. The planned legislation authorizing the tax has been postponed for a year by the authoritarian Belarus president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, to allow for corrections to the legislation.

German airport ground staff walk out

Ground crew, members of the Verdi union, at the Tegel and Schonefeld airports in Berlin came out on strike Monday, returning to work on Wednesday. They are demanding a 1 an hour wage increase. Their strike led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights. They previously carried out two strikes in February over the same issue.

An offer from the employers of an 8 percent pay increase over three yearsa 0.27 rise an hourhas been rejected by the union. The employers body has called for mediation in the dispute.

Deal announced in German airline dispute

Lufthansa, the German airline, and the pilots union, Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), announced Wednesday that they had struck a deal to end a five-year dispute. The deal will cover pilots working for the Cargo wing, the budget operation Germanwings as well as the Lufthansa Airlines.

Under the new agreement, pilots will get a staggered pay rise of nearly 11.5 percent along with a one-off payment of nearly two months salary. It will cover the period from May 2012 to June 2022. The VC union carried out 14 separate actions during the course of the dispute.

Irish bus strike back on cards as talks fail

The Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) representing drivers and other staff working for the Irish bus company Bus Eireann, says a planned strike is likely to go ahead following the breakdown of talks between the union and the company. Negotiations, brokered by the mediation service, the Workplaces Relations Commission, broke down Monday. Members of the National Bus and Railworkers Union (NBRU) are also involved in the dispute.

Bus Eireann is running at a loss of nearly 10 million last year. The company put forward a survival plan to achieve 30 million in savings, 12 million coming from cuts in the payroll. In total, 55 measures have been announced, including closing some routes, reducing the number of drivers and bringing in productivity measures.

For their part, the unions are agreeable to tackling inefficiencies but at this stage are saying they will not accept cuts in pay and conditions.

Dublin college staff vote for industrial action

Non-academic staff at Dublins Trinity College, members of SIPTU and the Unite union, have voted by 90 percent majorities to take strike action. The main issue is over the increasing use of temporary contracts for new staff and the loss of permanent positions. The unions are due to meet with college management in an attempt to resolve the issue.

Maltese broadcasting staff protest bullying

Staff working for the Maltese Broadcasting Authority (BA), represented by the UHM union, held a one-hour strike on Tuesday, demanding the removal of the BA chairwoman, Tanya Borg Cardona, who was appointed just over a year ago. The BA staff accuse Cardona of imposing a regime of bullying and intimidation and called for her immediate resignation. The UHM said the strike was a last resort, as a petition sent to the Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, has had no response.

Spanish dock workers set to strike

Dock workers in Spain are due to hold a one-day strike today followed by further one-day strikes on March 20, 22 and 24. However, previously planned strikes had been cancelled.

The Sea Workers Union (CETM) called the strikes in response to a European Union ruling that the system requiring Spanish ports to give preference to dockworkers organised in stevedoring societies in each port, known as a Public Limited Company of Dockworkers Management (SAGEP), was a restraint on trade and must end. The SAGEPs recruit and train port workers before they are made available to employers.

Belgian truck manufacturer strike

Employees at the Volvo truck manufacturing site in the northwestern Belgian city of Ghent held a strike Tuesday. The plant produces 50,000 vehicles a year. One striker, who brought along a cow to the demonstration held outside the plant, told the media that the workforce were being milked dry by the company.

A spokesman for the strikers explained the company wanted to increase productivity 3 percent by increasing the already fast pace of the production line. He said older workers were already having problems trying to keep up with the pace of work. Last week, the company put forward a proposal which was rejected by over 80 percent of the workforce.

Talks between the unions and Volvo management over increased flexibility are continuing.

Firefighters demonstrate in Paris

Firefighters from across France held a demonstration in Paris Tuesday. They were protesting French government austerity measures, which has led to cutting the number of firefighters. They let off explosive flares as part of their demonstration to emphasise their opposition to the cuts.

Parisian rodent control staff strike

Staff responsible for catching rats in the city of Paris held a one-day strike on Tuesday. They are members of the CGT union. Around 50 of them, almost the whole of the workforce, held a demonstration outside the city hall. Among their demands are for more staff, they are not able to keep up with the demands for their services, and for the reinstatement of a 2,000 bonus they used to receive.

Portuguese nurses call strike

Portuguese nurses have called a strike to take place from 8 a.m. March 30 through midnight March 31, covering five shifts. Their demands include the return to a 35-hour week in line with other public service staff. Nurses union representatives are due to meet with the Portuguese health minister next week in an attempt to circumvent the strike.

Middle East

Protest by Iranian teachers

Hundreds of current and retired teachers held a rally outside the Iranian parliament on March 10, demanding teachers pay be increased in line with other government staff. They also protested legal action taken against activists.

Israeli health staff two-hour strike to highlight abuse

Israeli hospital and community clinic staff across the country were due to hold a two-hour strike Wednesday between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. local time. The stoppage was sanctioned by the Histadrut labour federation. It had been called to highlight verbal and physical abuse against health staff. According to the Health Ministry, there were 800 such attacks last year.

Africa

Kenyan doctors capitulate to Kenyattas demands

Kenyan doctors are reported to have returned to work on Monday, after signing an agreement. Direct negotiations with the unions and President Uhuru Kenyatta ended with the president declaring talks would not continue until the doctors returned to work.

Further reports suggest the Council of Governorsthe official negotiating bodyhave agreed to a submitted Return to Work Formula presented to the Court of Appeals by the doctors union.

The agreement is based on an allowance increase, with negotiations on the doctors central demand, the implementation of the 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), to continue after a return to work.

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union has conceded to a previously rejected pay offer and a promise of continued negotiations over the 2013 CBA that has since been put off.

Government officials are said to be monitoring the return to work of the 5,000 doctors. President Kenyatta has said that any doctor refusing to return to work would be sacked. Contrasting reports are emerging, suggesting streams of doctors returning to work, and others of virtually empty hospitals.

Kenyan university staff return on government reduced offer

On Monday, Kenyan lecturers agreed to return to work and were expected to be back in class on Tuesday. It represents a capitulation by their union, the University Academics Staffs Union (UASU), mirroring that of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union.

It was only last week that the union rejected an offer from their negotiating counterpart, the Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum, for an 18 percent pay increase pursuing a demand for 30 percent. It has now settled for a 17.5 percent pay rise

The union is celebrating the governments acceptance of the 2013-2017 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that is due to end in the summer. The UASU see this as a basis for a new CBA to be extended over a similar period. As part of the settlement, union members are expecting four years back pay based on the 2013-2017 agreed rate.

UASU vice chairman, Professor Muturi Mberia, thanked the government for signing the CBA and promised time lost during the course of the strike would be made up by his members.

Kenyan teachers threaten action

The Kenyan National Union of Teachers is threatening that it will strike in May. It is demanding the government increase its education budget to employ an additional 5,000 teachers.

Teachers are also demanding a timetable for the implementation of a collective bargaining agreement. Another continuing issue is the lack of parity of housing allowances.

Nigerian university staff walk out over unpaid wages and subscriptions

The members of three non-academic unions at the University of Ibadan went on strike Monday. They are protesting short payment of wages and interference with their pensions.

They rejected an appeal by the university vice chancellor to keep working after previous complaints by the unions were ignored. An earlier warning of an indefinite strike on March 8 was ignored by university management.

The unions involved are the National Association of Staff Unions (NASU), National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) and the Senior Staff Association Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and their complaints were expected to be addressed at a governing council meeting due to have taken place Wednesday.

Nigerian health workers to go on indefinite strike

A seven-day warning strike by Nigerian National Health Service workers at the National Orthopaedic hospital at Igbobi, Lagos, ended on Tuesday, paving the way for an indefinite strike.

Several unions under the Joint Action Committee (JAC) issued the strike warning over alleged corruption in the health service. The JAC claims wages have gone unpaid and funds paid through wage deductions had also gone unaccounted for. Payments for training and monies for promotion and call duty allowances could not be accounted for. The JAC claims numerous agreements with the Federal Health Minister and the hospital management to finance these increments have been made but not implemented.

South African bus workers given all clear for national walkout

Mediation in the South African bus workers dispute collapsed last week creating the possibility of a national strike. The bus workers union, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), received a certificate allowing them to strike. The union said it would now discuss with its members over the next month and plan a way forward.

South African social security workers protest working conditions

Some 6,000 Social Security Agency workers (SASSA) began a national strike Monday over working conditions. They are members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and are backed by the trade union federation COSATU.

Outstanding claims over their conditions remain unresolved going back to 2015 and negotiations had become deadlocked. Members working at state-owned SASSA have responsibility to administer social payments to 17 million South Africans. Distribution of welfare payments is also shared with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a private South African company, covering 9 million beneficiaries.

A constitutional conflict has come to a head over the continued involvement of CPS in administering the service. It was intended that its role would be relinquished in April 2017 following a previous agreement.

Concerns were raised earlier when the minister responsible for SASSA said it did not have the capacity to manage the service independently, but did not make that clear to the constitutional court.
By Press Trust of India: Hyderabad, Mar 17 (PTI) The state-run Gandhi Hospital authorities today constituted a committee to probe into the allegations that a patient was denied wheelchair for being unable to pay "bribes."

In absence of the wheelchair, the patient, with severe mobility problems, has been left moving around in the hospital for treatment, on a kids tricycle of his son, that his wife brings to the hospital while visiting it with him.

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S Raju in his 40s had been visiting the hospital for a follow-up treatment for the burn injuries that he had suffered due to electrical shock last August.

His wife Santoshi alleged as she did not have money to pay "tips" to the ward-boys, he was not being given wheelchairs and had to use a tricycle to move around in the hospital.

Santoshi said they had been coming to the hospital for the treatment and the doctors had told her that her husband, a painter, needs to undergo surgery. But the hospital authorities, she said, have been postponing it on various pretexts, including the paucity of beds.

She further said as ward-boys had been demanding Rs 100 to Rs 200 for providing wheelchair, she had been bringing their sons tricycle to the hospital during their visits.

"At least on five to six occasions I paid the amount. But, on Wednesday, I was not able to pay because I did not have the money. I brought this tricycle to the hospital and made my husband sit on it to move around in the hospital premises for treatment," said Santoshi, who stays in Begumpet area here.

She further alleged "they are creating problems... It is such a big government hospital.. they should help."

"Earlier my husband underwent treatment at the hospital for almost 100 days and I had to spend for getting injections and bed covers," said Santoshi.

Meanwhile, Gandhi Hospitals superintendent Dr Manjula told PTI "We have not got any written complaint from the attendants of the patient. However, on the basis of media reports, we have constituted an enquiry committee to look into the matter.

"A report is likely to be submitted within a day. Based on the report, the necessary action will be initiated against those responsible for the incident."

Dr Manjula said the patient, who had suffered electric burns, had undergone treatment at the hospital for over three months and he himself got discharged against the medical advise, though he had been visiting the hospital as outpatient.

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"Now he is on a follow up medication and next week he is again scheduled to come to the hospital," she said.

Responding to the incident, Telangana Minister K T Rama Rao said he spoke to the Superintendent of the Hospital to enquire about the incident.

"My office contacted the family and we will ensure they are helped," he tweeted. PTI VVK RS RMT RAX

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VALDOSTA, Ga. (WTXL) - A Valdosta dentist has been sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison for swindling nearly $800,000 from Medicaid patients he lied about extracting teeth from.

The U.S. Department of Justice said that Dr. Stanley B. Marable, 55, was sentenced to serve twenty-seven months in federal prison for healthcare fraud followed by two years of supervised release.

They said that he entered in a guilty plea on Oct. 13 of last year.

According to attorneys, Marable was a general practice dentist in Valdosta who was paid through Medicaid on more than 3,000 claims for the removal of teeth.

However, once they investigated these claims, they discovered that Marable had not removed teeth from many of the patients connected to the claims that had been submitted. Attorneys said several hadn't had any teeth removed at all, including one who didn't know Marable was a dentist.

The payments Marable received on these false claims totaled over $789,0000.

As part of his plea agreement, Dr. Marable agreed to pay a total of $789,841.00 in restitution to the Georgia Medicaid Program. The full amount of restitution was paid prior to sentencing.

In addition, Dr. Marable was ordered to pay a fine of $5,000.00 and a $100.00 mandatory assessment fee. The sentence was handed down by United States District Court Judge Hugh Lawson in Valdosta, Georgia.
Witnesses told police Burgess struck Mehta four or five times and called him a "(expletive) Muslim," according to the complaint.

By Press Trust of India: An American man has been charged with hate crime for assaulting an Indian-origin man and hurling racial slurs, mistaking him for a Muslim.

Jeffrey Allen Burgess, 54, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, has been accused of intentionally harming a man named Ankur Mehta on November 22 because of his "perceived race, colour and national origin".

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted Burgess of a hate crime charge in connection with the alleged assault at a Red Robin restaurant in South Hills Village, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

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Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division and acting US Attorney Soo C Song for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced the indictment.

At the time of the incident, police said, Burgess was sitting next to Mehta inside the Red Robin restaurant when he began insulting him and then repeatedly elbowed him in the head.

"I dont want you sitting next to me...you people," Burgess was quoted as saying by witnesses in addition to his anti-Muslim racial slurs, according to a criminal complaint filed by Bethel Park police.

Witnesses told police Burgess struck Mehta four or five times and called him a "(expletive) Muslim," according to the complaint.

Mehta was treated at St. Clair Hospital for a laceration to the upper lip and a loose tooth. Mehta is of Indian descent, police said.

In addition to the slurs, Burgess told Mehta "things are different now," police said, which authorities believe was a reference to the election of Donald Trump.

If convicted Burgess faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years of prison, a fine of USD 250,000 or both.

Burgess also faces state charges of ethnic intimidation, public drunkenness and simple assault stemming from the same incident.

The indictment of Burgess comes amid a series of suspected hate crime cases targeting Indian-Americans.

On February 22, Indian nationals Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani were shot at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, by a man shouting "get out of my country". Kuchibhotla, 32, later died at a hospital.

On March 3, a Sikh American was shot and injured in Kent, Washington, by a gunman who reportedly told him to "go back to your own country."

Also read:

Sushma Swaraj on US attacks on Indians: FBI probing hate crimes, India engaging with Trump regime

Florida man tries to set ablaze store owned by Indian-Americans

Also watch:

Indian government engaging with Trump administration on hate crimes in US: Sushma Swaraj

--- ENDS ---
The BJP has still not announced who is going to be the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. The newly-elected 312 BJP MLAs are expected to meet on Saturday and elect their legislature party leader.

By India Today Web Desk: The new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister will be sworn in at 5 pm on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will attend the oath ceremony to be held at Smriti Upwan in state capital Lucknow.

The BJP has still not announced who is going to be the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. The newly-elected 312 BJP MLAs are expected to meet on Saturday and elect their legislature party leader.

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The names of probables for the top post doing the rounds in political circles include Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Minister of State for Telecom Manoj Sinha, and state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Singh, a former UP chief minister, is probably the tallest BJP leader in the state, while Sinha, an upper caste Bhumihar, too has considerable administrative experience. However, their choice could antagonise lower caste voters.

Maurya, who had helped consolidate non-Yadav OBC votes in the party's favour, is said to be in the good books of BJP chief Amit Shah. Another probable is Union Minister Mahesh Sharma, who has strong links with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the BJP.

Manoj Sinha, insiders say, could be the final choice as he has a proven administrative record by serving in two union ministries, is a BHU passout, is amiable to workers and colleagues and comes from Ghazipur, Poorvanchal -- an important region for the BJP.

The BJP, which won three-fourths majority in the 403-member House, is returning to power after 14 years. It has 325 seats, including its allies, in the 17th Vidhan Sabha.

Also read:

What's stopping BJP from naming next Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister? Several reasons, say party insiders

Uttar Pradesh: As BJP prepares to announce CM candidate, MLAs scramble for Cabinet portfolios

Who will be the next Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister? Home Minister Rajnath Singh leads the race

--- ENDS ---
Nick Hogan has lost his job as a police officer in Tukwila, was terminated from another job as an officer in Snoqualmie, and, according to his lawyer, wont be able to work in law enforcement again. (Snoqualmie Police Department)
Dancing at An Evening at the Brooks Gala and Silent Auction. (Submitted photo)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented victory in the state in the 2017 Assembly election, with 312 of 403 seats, but with some of India's worst development indicators, there is much to do.

challenges before the new government in UP

By Indo-Asian News Service: With 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil, but with an economy the size of Qatar's - which has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnore - the new government of India's most-populous state Uttar Pradesh faces myriad problems.

The GDP of Uttar Pradesh is comparable to Kenya's, and its infant mortality rate rivals Mauritania, a poverty-ridden, west-African nation.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented victory in the state in the 2017 Assembly election, with 312 of 403 seats, but with some of India's worst development indicators, there is much to do.

We analysed six major challenges and the corresponding promises made by the BJP to fix them in its election manifesto, called the 'Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra-201'.

1. Second-highest maternal mortality, half the child population stunted

Despite having the largest population, Uttar Pradesh spends Rs 452 per capita on health, 70 per cent less than the average spending by states.

One in two children in the state is not fully immunised, and it has India's second-highest maternal mortality rate (258 deaths per 100,000 live births) and highest infant mortality rate (64 deaths per 1,000 live births), according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).

There are 84 per cent fewer specialists than needed, 50 per cent fewer nursing staff, and the lowest share of health workers (19.9 per cent) in India.

As many as 46.3 per cent of the state's children are stunted (low height-for-age), 17.9 per cent are wasted (low weight-for-height) and 39.5 per cent are underweight, according to NFHS-4.

What the manifesto said: The BJP has promised to have a primary sub centre in all villages with the latest equipment and technology. Further, it promised to set up 25 new medical colleges and specialty hospitals and one hospital at par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in every six blocks.

The BJP has promised a malnutrition-free state in five years.

2. Low learning levels, high absenteeism

Uttar Pradesh has achieved high enrolment of children in primary school, with 83.1 per cent of primary school-aged children enrolled in in 2015-16, according to the data from the government's Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE).

Major issues for the new government now include low learning outcomes, high absenteeism, and lower enrolment in grade VI and further - 60.5 per cent of upper-primary school-aged students enrolled in school in 2015.

In 2016, about half (49.7 per cent) of Grade I students surveyed in households could not read letters, while 44.3 per cent could not recognise numbers up to nine, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizen-led assessment of learning in rural India.

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The survey also found that a little over half of students (56 per cent) were present in primary school on the days of the survey.

What the manifesto said: It majorly concentrates on inputs - free education, books, uniforms, teacher-student and classroom-student ratios, along with laptops and free internet for college students, and a Rs 500 crore scholarship fund for poor students.

3. High youth unemployment, high migration for jobs

The low quality of education in the state (and dearth of jobs) is reflected in high unemployment. In 2015-16, more people per 1,000 were unemployed (58), compared to the Indian average (37). Youth unemployment was especially high, with 148 for every 1,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 years unemployed, compared to the Indian average of 102, according to 2015-16 Labour Ministry data.

Between 2001 and 2011, over 5.8 million people between the ages of 20 and 29 years migrated in search of jobs, but, for most of these migrants, low educational attainment likely resulted in low-paying jobs in the informal sector.

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Voters recognise the lack of jobs as a major issue in the state. As many as 20 per cent of voters surveyed said jobs were the most important issue this election year, according to a FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey.

What the manifesto said: The BJP government will create seven million jobs or opportunities for self-employment in the next five years, its manifesto said. As many as 90 per cent of all jobs in industries will be reserved for local youth. The manifesto also promises Rs 1,000 crore for a start-up venture capital fund, which will also create jobs for the youth.

4. Industrial growth one of slowest in country

Uttar Pradesh reported an annual industrial growth (2004-05 constant prices) of 1.95 per cent and 1.93 per cent in 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, according to the NITI Aayog -- among the bottom five in the country.

The state is struggling even in industries that have traditionally been strong. For instance, Kanpur's leather industry is in deep distress with 146 of its 400 leather tanning units shutting down in 10 years.

Uttar Pradesh ranked 20th out of 21 states on the 2016 State Investment Potential Index, a ranking of states on labour, infrastructure, economic climate, political stability, governance, and perceptions of a good business climate.

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The index, released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, identifies a shortage of electricity and vocationally-trained people as the main concern in the state.

What the manifesto said: It promises to triple current investment by the creation of an investment board. Further, it calls for a single-window clearance department, headed by the Chief Minister, for industries. The manifesto also promises to build six IT parks, a pharmaceutical park, and a dry port connected to a sea port to encourage exports

5. 20 per cent of India's agri households, but slow agri growth

By 2012-13, Uttar Pradesh, with an estimated 18.05 million agricultural households, made up 20 per cent of India's total agricultural households. Three out of four rural households depend on agriculture, making agricultural reforms a key agenda in one of India's most fertile belts.

For the nine years between 2004-05 and 2012-13, the agriculture and allied sector recorded the slowest compounded annual growth rate of 2.9 per cent, below the national growth rate of 3.7 per cent.

The state recorded a growth rate of 4.2 per cent in agriculture and allied activities (constant 2004-05 prices), slower than Uttarakhand, which recorded a growth rate of 5.12 per cent, and Madhya Pradesh, which grew at 18.85 per cent, in 2014-15.

Outstanding farmer loans stood at nearly Rs 75,000 crore as of two years ago. Of these, a little more than 10 per cent, or Rs 8,000 crore, was loaned through state cooperative banks or primary agricultural credit societies, which are the only loans that the newly formed government can choose to waive off -- the other loans are controlled by scheduled commercial banks. This amount includes loans to all farmers in the state, and not just small and marginal farmers.

What the manifesto said: It promises that all agricultural loans will be waived off for small and marginal farmers, while future loans will be provided interest-free. The new government will also create a roadmap to double agricultural income in the state by 2022.

Further, it promised to pay sugarcane farmers in the largest sugarcane-producing state within 14 days of sale, while also coordinating with mill owners and banks to repay previously-owed amounts to sugarcane growers within 120 days of forming the new government.

6. More than half the households un-electrified

In Uttar Pradesh, power cuts were the leading election issue for one-third of voters polled. It remains one of India's most poorly electrified states -- with 51.8 per cent of rural households unelectrified -- despite having the third-largest installed coal capacity in the country by end-January 2017.

Corruption and red tape within electricity distribution companies, which are responsible for the timely disbursal of funds for electrification projects, are a major factor in the lackadaisical progress of electrification across the state.

What the manifesto said: Every household in the state will be provided with 24-hour power supply, while poor households (below the official poverty line of Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas) will be given electricity connections free of cost. Poor households will also be provided the first 100 units of electricity at a discounted rate of Rs 3 per unit.

ALSO READ | Assembly election results a 'political earthquake', Congress 'rudderless', says Wall Street Journal

Uttar Pradesh: As BJP prepares to announce CM candidate, MLAs scramble for Cabinet portfolios

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Following a long negotiation between the State Prosecutor's office and the legal team of MK Basel Ghattas signed a plea agreement on Thursday evening, according to which the parliamentarian will serve two years in prison.

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Ghattas was filmed smuggling mobile phones and SIM cards to Palestinian security prisoners in an Israeli prison. He was indicted in January for smuggling documents and communication devices into a prison, using property for terrorist purposes, aggravated fraud and committing breach of trust by a public official.

MK Ghattas

Following the plea bargain, aggravated fraud will be removed from a revised indictment that will be filed at the beginning of next week. Afterwards, Ghattas is to resign from the Knesset with immediate effect.

The communications equipment Ghattas tried to smuggle into prison

Following his two years' imprisonment, Ghattas is to be put on probation for a period of time to be determined by the court. The prosecution will also apply for Ghattas to be fined an undetermined amount and will ask the court to attach a clause of moral turpitude to the conviction to reflect the seriousness of the crimes.

The Knesset's House Committee stripped Ghattas of his parliamentary immunity in December at the request of the attorney general.

(Translated and edited by J. S. Herzog)
IDF reported on Friday that it has shot down one of numerous anti-aircraft missiles launched Thursday night by Syria at Israeli F-15 fighter jets that had hit designated targets within Syria. Israeli Arrow anti-aircraft missiles were used to intercept a Syrian S-200 missile and protect its jets. Syria, in the meantime, described the Israeli strike in Syria as a "blatant Israeli act of aggression."

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The Israeli Military reported that its planes struck several targets in Syria, and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when the Syrian missiles were launched at its jets.

The unidentified object that fell in Jordan

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The IAF's F-15 fighter jets (Photo: EPA)

An S-200 anti-aircraft missile (Photo: AP)

An Arrow missile (Photo: Defense Department)

Missile sirens had sounded in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank at 02:43am, with two witnesses hearing an explosion a few minutes later. The IAF's interception of the Syrian anti-aircrafts missiles, in addition to the resulting sirens, prompted the IDF to issue a response acknowledging the its strikes in Syria. Normally, Israel does not divulge information about such operations. This is the forst time the IDF confirmed the operational use of its Arrow ground-to-air missiles.

The unidentified object that fell in Jordan

The Syrian Army responded to the strike by saying, This blatant Israeli act of aggression came as part of the Zionist enemys persistence with supporting ISIS terrorist gangs and in a desperate attempt to raise their deteriorating morale and divert attention away from the victories which Syrian Arab Army is making in the face of the terrorist organizations.

The Israeli Military said in its own statement that one of the anti-aircraft missiles launched against its planes had been intercepted, adding that all IDF jets had returned to Israel unharmed. The blast from the interception was heard as far away as Jerusalem, dozens of miles from the site. No casualties or damage were reported.

The Israeli Jordan Valley Security Headquarters

"Overnight IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defence Force) Aerial Defence Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the military said in its statement.

Arab media reported that Israel had targeted a delivery of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in its airstrike. Syria responded to the Israeli strikes with its its own missile attack, with the Syrian Army stating that it used S-200 anti-aircraft missiles against the Israeli jets.

Israel has carried out dozens of strikes to prevent weapons smuggling to the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting rebels alongside the Syrian army.

Prior to the release of the IDF's statement, sources in Jordan were reported that an S-200 anti-aircraft missile fell Thursday night in the northern area of Irbid, following which security forces surrounded the area of descent. It is still unclear whether the object was the remnants of the missile intercepted by Israel, part of the IAF missile, or another object.

Iran has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's staunchest backer and has provided militia fighters to help him. Israel is concerned Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006, is trying to obtain sophisticated weapons it could use against Israel.

Following the night's events, the air space above the Golan Heights was closed to flights.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss what he charged were Iran's attempts to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria.

Yoav Zitun, Roi Kais, Elisha Ben Kimon, Elior Levy & Roi Yanovsky contribued to this article.

(Translated and edited by Gahl Becker)
Due to the subsequent strikes of lawyers demanding a bench of Allahabad High Court for Western UP, charges have not been framed against the accused, even two years after the incident.

By Abhishek Anand: Hearing on framing of charges against 17 accused of Dadri lynching case has been deferred to April 26 due to strike of lawyers at the Surajpur court in Greater Noida on Friday.

On the night of September 28, 2015, a mob of locals attacked the house of Mohammad Ikhlaq, 55, a resident of Bisada village in Dadri area, some 40 kms from the national Capital, over allegations of slaughtering a cow and storing its meat for consumption.

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Ikhlaq was lynched while his younger son Danish survived with a fractured skull in the incident.

Eighteen youths, including three juveniles, were arrested on charges of murder and assault. One of the accused had died due to ailment under judicial custody while all three juveniles were released on bail in last one year. Fourteen accused are still lodged in the jail waiting for trial.

Due to the subsequent strikes of lawyers demanding a bench of Allahabad High Court for Western UP, charges have not been framed against the accused, even two years after the incident.

"Proceedings of the court couldn't begin as the lawyers abstained from work demanding a bench of Allahabad High Court in a Western UP. The next date of hearing is on April 26. Argument on framing of charges are now scheduled on the next date," said Ramsharan Nagar, counsel of the accused persons.

The incident had triggered a massive outrage over intolerance across the country with many prominent personalities returning their awards to the government as a token of protest. Also, BJP candidate from Dadri, Tejpal Nagar, who won with a margin of 80,000 votes, extended his support to the families of the accused claiming that some of them are 'innocent' and were falsely implicated.

ALSO READ | Dadri lynching accused dies in jail, villagers drape coffin in tricolour, refuse to cremate body

Dadri lynching: Ikhlaq's son fears beef order will be used in UP polls

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The Syrian Army issued a statement following Thursday night's air strike by IDF fighter jets, saying that four IDF jets struck at targets within Syria on Thursday night. The statement confirmed a previously released statement by the IDF, which stated that same.

However, the Syrian Army's statement also cliamed to have shot down one four IDF jets, while managing to hit a second jet. Israel has denied these claims.
The far-right Jewish organization Lehava, vehemently opposed to interethnic dating, has established two shelters for Jewish women who have had relationships with Arab men.

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Lehava defines itself as an organization to prevent assimilation, and it works to prevent contact between Jewish women and Arab men. Its two shelters are apartments: One is in the West Bank, and the other is in the center of the country. The purpose is not to provide a refuge for battered women, but rather acts as an attempt by the organization to assist Jewish women in ending romantic relationships with Arab men.

The Gopsteins

Anat Gopstein, the wife of Lehava Chairman Bentzi Gopstein, operates the West Bank apartment. She claimed, In the first days after a girl leaves an Arab man, shes extremely confused and might respond to (his) overtures and return to him. Were here so that won't happen.

Working alongside her is Coral Ben Shabbat, a young woman from Nahariya who said that she left an Arab boyfriend with Gopsteins help. My entire family fought me, Ben Shabbat recounted, but it was only thanks to Lehava that I left an Arab that I was in a relationship with.

Today I know how to talk to these young girls as equals because I was there, and I know where all the possible pitfalls lie. If there had been an apartment (when I was dating an Arab man) to flee to, I wouldnt have gone further downhill.

Bentzi commented on the apartments, The girls that come to the apartments stay there for as long as they need. Were here to protect them. Nobody can come here. We take care of everything, even educational institutions for women who come with children. The young women come here because the welfare authorities dont help them.

(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized on Friday for telling Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) "my Mizrahi gene got activated" during a dicussion they had over possibly postponing the launch of the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC).

Netanyahu has voiced his strong opposition to the IPBC, which is set to replace the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), over what he feels are the corporation's left-leaning inclinations. After Kahlon asked him on Thursday why he became is irate and demanded, then retracted a request to postpone its launch, Netanyahu replied that it was due to his "Mizrahi gene."

"I apologize for my comment from yesterday," tweeted Netnayahu on Friday. "I did not intend to hurt anyone. I am connected with every fiber of my being to all sector of Israel and cherish their substantial contribution to the legacy of our people and the building of our nation."
The IDFs Military Police have decided to open a criminal investigation into the Nahal soldiers who were filmed beating a handcuffed Palestinian in Hebron last October.

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The Military Polices decision was taken following media reports of the incident and widespread sharing of the footage. Military Judge Maj. Meir Vigiser has issued a gag order on the details of the investigation and the soldiers who have been arrested.

Footage of the beating

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The soldiers from the 50th Battalion were recorded beating the restrained Haisam Siaj, whom they had detained on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack.

Screenshot of the footage

The soldiers alleged that during his detention, Siaj attempted to escape, prompting the soldiers to forcefully prevent him from doing so. A violent fracas then ensued after the suspect allegedly attacked them and hit their commander in the face, giving him a black eye as the two wrestled on the ground.

Haisam Siaj

IDF officials responded to the footage, arguing that it had been tendentiously edited. The officials pointed out that, prior to the suspects transfer to the Shin Bet, he received medical treatment at a military camp in the area.

(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
The Philippines derided the European parliament on Friday for interfering in its affairs after it issued a resolution calling for the release of a top critic of the president's war on drugs, which it said should target narcotics networks instead of users.

EU lawmakers on Thursday adopted a resolution condemning the "many extrajudicial killings" taking place in the Philippines and showing concern for the safety of Senator Leila de Lima, a fierce critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, who is being held on charges of involvement in the drugs trade.

"They should mind their own business," said Salvador Panelo, chief presidential legal counsel. "They cannot dictate on the Philippine government on what to do with its constituent facing criminal charges," he said. "Nor can they can interfere with the judicial processes of our country."
SEOUL -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level "that we believe requires action."

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat after visiting the world's most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rivals Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about the possibility of using military force, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, "all of the options are on the table."
Rabbis in charge of the Bnei David pre-military yeshiva responded to Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's ultimatum , saying, "Out of our belief in our jobs as teachers and educators, we will not cooperate with any attempt to harm the freedom of expression and opinion of rabbis and Bnei David students and alumni."

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Rabbi Levinstein's colleague and former Israel Prize recipient, Rabbi Eli Sadan, has responded to the ultimatum, saying he will not dismiss Rabbi Levinstein or call on him to resign.

Rabbis Yigal Levinstein (L) and Eli Sadan (R)

"We will not allow politicians to ride on our backs," said Sadan. "Worse things have been said in Israel by all manner of officials, and in a democracy, the freedom of expression is one of the top values. The attempt to dismiss Yigal is only for political ends. We will not cooperate with a dictatorship."

Other prominent religious Zionist rabbis have joined the chorus against not only Levinstein's dismissal, but also criticism of his opinions regarding men and women in the IDF.

Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Director of Tzohar, Rabbi David Stav, said, "We are asking the IDF to allow every boy and girl to serve in a permissible unit according to Jewish law and not in places where serious Jewish legal questions arise, which can lead to a situation where something is forbidden by religious law. There are certain situations where physical proximity and intimacy occur and that is forbidden. The IDF needs to make every effort to allow boys and girls to serve according to Jewish law and religious belief."

However, despite all the support Levinstein is receiving, Lieberman has not budged on his ultimatum.

"As someone who knows the importance of military preparatory yeshivas, I have no doubt that they will continue to function and prepare the next generation of IDF warriors. The last thing I want is to harm that," said Lieberman. "Whoever really wants to continue the success and functioning of these yeshivas knows that it is incompatible with Rabbi Levinstein's continued service."

(Translated and edited by Fred Goldberg)
ANKARA -- Iran dismissed as "nonsense" comments made after U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that condemned Tehran's destabilising regional influence, state news agency IRNA reported on Friday.

Mattis and Prince Mohammed, who is the kingdom's defense minister, met on Thursday and discussed U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the fight against Islamic State. A statement issued by the Pentagon said they also discussed tackling "Iran's destabilizing regional activities."
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the UN regional commission that represents most Arab countries to remove a report from its website accusing Israel of practicing an "apartheid regime" against Palestinians, a UN official said on Friday.

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The report for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which comprises 18 Arab states, concluded that "Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole."

UN General Assembly (Photo: AFP)

The accusationoften directed against Israel by its criticshas never before been made by a United Nations body.

Rima Khalaf, UN Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary, resigned Friday, after what she described as pressure from the secretary general to withdraw the report. Khalaf announced her resignation at a news conference in Beirut.

In her remarks, Khalaf said, "It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary general to renounce the report."

Despite pressure, Khalaf stands by the report, calling it the "first of its kind" from a UN agency that sheds light on "the crimes that Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity."

Following the initial publication of the report, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, approached Guterres and US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, to see it shelved.

Rima Khalaf and former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Danon responded to Khalaf's resignation, saying, "The Secretary-General's decision is an important step in stopping the discrimination against Israel. The place for anti-Israel activists is outside the UN and it is time to put an end to this phenomenon of UN officials taking advantage of their positions for anti-Israel activities. For years Khalaf worked to harm the State of Israel, promote BDS regularly and should have left her job a long time ago."

Israel had been calling for Khalaf's resignation for years due to her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday the report was published without prior consultation with the UN secretariat.

Rima Khalaf (Photo: Reuters)

Israel's foreign ministry spokesman likened the report to a Nazi propaganda publication that was strongly anti-Semitic and described it as "despicable and a blatant lie."

The United States, Israel's main ally, said it was outraged by the report.

Nikki Haley issued a response to Khalaf's resignation, saying, "When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign. UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary General's decision to distance his good office from it."

Following news of Khalaf's resignationwhich was accepted by Guterresa UN spokesman clarified that "this is not about content, this is about process."
JOHANNESBURG -- Angola's parliament votes next week on a proposal to imprison for up to 10 years women who have abortions and people who perform them, angering the president's daughter and others in the former Portuguese colony.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are urging authorities to allow a protest Saturday in the capital, Luanda, calling on the country to decriminalize abortion, saying organizers have informed Gov. Higinio Carneiro but received no reply.

"We have often seen Angolan police use unnecessary and excessive force against peaceful demonstrators," said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International's regional director for Southern Africa.
While the name of the new Chief Minister and ministers is yet to be declared, state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Ajay Bhatt has informed that the oath taking for the new ministers has been fixed for 3 pm on March 18.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Hectic preparations are underway here for the swearing-in of the new government on Saturday, officials said.

While the name of the new Chief Minister and ministers is yet to be declared, state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Ajay Bhatt has informed that the oath taking for the new ministers has been fixed for 3 pm on March 18.

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All the 57 newly-elected legislators of the BJP have been asked to come to the state capital between Friday and Saturday to partake in the swearing-in which is likely to be a grand affair as the party has swept back to power after five years and that too with a landslide majority.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah along with select ministers from the Union government and central office bearers are likely to be present at the oath taking ceremony.

Security arrangements are being made at the Parade Grounds, keeping in mind the VVIPs who will attend the event, an official informed IANS. Senior police and district officials along with some BJP legislators have been visiting the venue to oversee arrangements for the Saturday event.

The newly elected lawmakers of the BJP are likely to meet later on Friday to elect their new leader who will also be the next Chief Minister of the state. BJP president Amit Shah has named two central observers - Saroj Pandey and Narendra Tomar, to oversee the election of the new legislature party leader.

BJP leaders Trivendra Singh Rawat and Prakash Pant are said to be front runners in the race to be the next Chief Minister of the state.

Also Read

What's stopping BJP from naming next Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister? Several reasons, say party insiders

--- ENDS ---
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted that he will have the last word when it comes to the struggle with the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) after a meeting with workers from the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA).

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In a Facebook post published Friday night, Netanyahu said he is ready to advance a plan in which portions of the IBA will be absorbed into the IPBC in order to avoid to the complete closure of the IBA and the dismissal of its employees.

IBA

"Today I met with employees from the IBA in a heartbreaking meeting. Dedicated and experienced people are being thrown into the street because of a wasteful and unregulated broadcasting corporation," wrote Netanyahu.

"IBA workers made me a proposal: Integrate parts of the IBA into the IPBC. This plan will prevent the dismissal of hundreds of employees."

Netanyahu also wrote that IBA employees are willing to continue to become more efficient, accepting wage reductions and early retirement. "I told them to present and organized plan and when I return from a state visit to China, we will make progress."

The IPBC, which is set to replace the IBA, is due to begin operations on April 30th.

Until recently however, Netanyahu has been working to prevent this and even asked Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon to postpone the decision by six months.

However, it has since been decided that the IPBC will begin operations as planned and a law centralizing control over corporation will be advanced.

(Translated and edited by Fred Goldberg)
UNITED NATIONS -- China, backed by Russia, blocked a short UN Security Council statement on Myanmar on Friday, diplomats said, after the 15-member body met to discuss the situation in Rakhine state, where the country's military is conducting a security operation.

The U.N. human rights office last month accused the military of mass killings and rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burning their villages since October in a campaign that "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman briefed the council behind closed doors. Britain requested the meeting.

"We did put forward ... some proposed press elements but there was not consensus in the room," British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, president of the council for March, told reporters after the briefing.
Embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad feels secure enough with his Russian backup, that he fired SA-5 missilesalso known as S-200 missilesat IAF fighter aircraft that attacked a strategic weapons target destined for Hezbollah.

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In northern Syria, there is a factory near the town of As-Safira, southeast of Aleppo, which produces the Scud-D missile, which has a range of 700km.

Remains of the S-200 missile in Jordan after it was intercepted by the Arrow

This is possibly the target IAF aircraft destroyed in their raid, which would harm Hezbollah's ability to acquire long-range missiles, whether they be Scuds or the Iranian-made Fateh-110.

The Syrian retaliatory missile launch occurred when IAF aircraft had already passed into Israeli airspace. Despite the Syrians possessing the most updated S-200 SAM system, which has the ability to intercept high-altitude targets, it is not the S-300 or the S-400.

S-200 missile (Photo: AP)

The system was developed in the 1960s by the Soviet Union and the missiles themselves are large enough that an Israeli Arrow anti-ballistic missile was launched to intercept it.

The firing of the SA-5 (S-200) is a change in policy of the Syrian regime. Bashar Assad feels confident with his Russian military backing, victory in Aleppo and the new strategic weapons he has received. His response is most likely also due to the fact that the property and materials are important to him.

IAF F-15 (Photo: EPA)

The launching of these missiles, especially when the jets were already far from Syria territory, is ominous and points to a rise in danger and tension. In fact, a launch of these missiles after an attack in Syrian territory can lead to a situation in which tension turns into war.

(Translated and edited by Fred Goldberg)
Israeli Ambassador to Russia, Gary Koren, was summoned Friday to a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov following an IAF airstrike in Syria last night

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In a recording released Friday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the airstrike, saying, "Our policy is very consistent. When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we have the intelligence and we have the operational abilitywe act to prevent it.

Remains of the S-200 missile shot down near Jordan

"This is what happened and this is what will continue to happen. I can talk about our determination, it is strong and the evidence for that is we are acting. Everyone needs to take this into consideration, everyone."

In an interview with Lebanese newspaper Elnashra, a Syrian official said that orders to fire on IAF aircraft were given some time ago, but that Israeli planes have recently carried out their attacks from Lebanese airspace.

According to the same official, "at 2:40, the aircraft penetrated Syrian airspace to conduct airstrikes on Syrian territory. The S-200 air defense system responded and fired at the planes as they attempted to return to Israeli airspace to get the protection of the new interceptor which fired several missiles."

Officials inspecting the S-200 remains

According to Western media outlets, IAF F-15s attacked a strategic weapons target destined for Hezbollah.

Upon their return to Israeli airspace, Syrian air defense systems fired several S-200 missiles at the aircraft. The IDF identified the incoming missiles, which would land in Israeli territory and for the first time, decided to fire the new Arrow anti-ballistic missile at the incoming Syrian projectiles.

The IDF said at no stage were the aircraft in danger and the distance between the missiles and the jets was too long.

(Translated and edited by Fred Goldberg)
Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon apparently wants state employees to do homework for people who want to demonize the refugees that church groups and other good-hearted Nebraskans are trying to help.

In the name of transparency, Brewer has introduced a bill that would require the state to collect information and compile it into a report.

But Brewer wants to collect only negative information  nothing positive about the contributions that refugees make to Nebraska, and nothing about the horrors they are fleeing. And he wants to make that cherry-picked negative information easily accessible on a state website.

If senators think that state resources ought to be used for that purpose, they ought to at least require the legislation to undergo major revision so that it presents information in an even-handed fashion.

Brewers bill (LB505) would require resettlement agencies to report the number, age, gender, family status and nation of origin for all refugees settled in Nebraska.

Apparently Brewer didnt do his own homework, because much of that information is already available.

Last year, for example, 1,782 refugees found a safe haven after fleeing bullets, bombs, torture, rape and, in many cases, the black-masked beheaders of the Islamic State. Lincoln welcomed 591 of those refugees. Of that total about 440 came from Iraq. Many of them are Yazidis who had been targeted for extermination by IS.

Brewer also wants the state to collect and report details on any state and federal benefits refugees receive.

If Brewer were really interested in transparency, he ought to also ask for information on how much in taxes refugees pay, and other positive contributions they make to Nebraska.

As written the bill goes out of its way to characterize refugees in a frightening way, with no positive references. Paragraph after paragraph of the bill uses language referring to purported infiltration of the refugee population to establish terror cells.

No mention is made of the months of extensive vetting that refugees must undergo before they are allowed to enter the United States.

Lincoln and other parts of Nebraska have been helping refugees for years, with Lutheran Family Services and Catholic Social Services playing a prominent role. Lincoln is home to second and third generations of Vietnamese who came here in the 1970s and 80s. In 2013 Lincoln was designated as one of the top 10 most welcoming cities in America by the nonprofit Welcoming America organization.

As written Brewers bill is a nasty piece of work that is an insult to the generosity and kindness shown to refugees by thousands of Nebraskans. The Legislature should either kill the bill or insist that it be thoroughly rewritten to present information on refugees to be collected and presented in a fair and accurate way.
If you havent filed your tax return yet, perhaps its because you know youll have to pay the IRS instead of collecting a refund.

While youre collecting forms and thinking about your financial situation, weve got one more chore you should add to your list.

Point your web browser to https://treasurer.nebraska.gov/up/ and enter your name. Perhaps youll have a pleasant surprise  the state is holding unclaimed property for you.

Entertainer Dick Cavett found that out during a visit to his home state last month when the Nebraska State Treasurers Office presented him a check for about $600 that belonged to his parents estate.

He is the son and stepson of Alva and Dorcas Cavett, well-known Nebraska educators honored by the name of Cavett Elementary School in Lincoln.

Cavett, a Gibbon native who grew up in Lincoln, was set to perform at the Lied Center in Lincoln, Wayne State College and in Hastings when the state took the opportunity to spotlight the $170 million in unclaimed property held by the state. Nebraska Treasurer Don Stenberg wants to return it to some 350,000 Nebraskans, former Nebraskans and heirs.

Its commonly uncashed paychecks, refunds, rental deposits, utility deposits, stocks, dividends, insurance payments, savings bonds, trusts, matured CDs and lost IRAs.

Nebraskans arent the only Americans who dont always keep track of funds they are due.

The IRS announced it is holding more than $1 billion in refunds for about a million taxpayers who didnt file a 2013 federal income tax return.

More precisely, the median expected refund would be about $763, and that doesnt include any unclaimed tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or education credits.

Altruistic taxpayers can sometimes be heard to exclaim that paying taxes is the price we pay to live in our free society.

That said, theres no reason not to accept funds or property to which we are rightly entitled.
Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said the government will not accept chants of 'Bastar maange Azaadi', 'Kashmir maange Azaadi' referring to the videos that show students allegedly raising anti-India slogans at Ramjas College.

By India Today Web Desk: Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said dissent is agreeable but disintegration is not agreeable while speaking about the raging debate on freedom of speech.

The union minister said the government will not accept chants of 'Bastar maange Azaadi', 'Kashmir maange Azaadi' referring to the videos that show students allegedly raising anti-India slogans at Ramjas College.

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While calling attempts to curb freedom of speech condemnable, Venkaiah Naidu said restraint must be exercised by everyone considering the sensitivities of different communities in India.

VENKAIAH NAIDU's LOVE FOR ACRONYMS

The Union Minister chose the India Today Conclave 2017 to coin acronyms, much like Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Talking about how to make cities smarter, the Union Minister for Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation said CITY means Civic Infrastructure To You.

Venkaiah Naidu said the government is providing the much-needed thrust to revive and strengthen urban governance. Naidu said 50 per cent of the central funds are now being transferred to states to help the latter push growth.

Positioning the current government as growth-oriented, Venkaiah Naidu said MODI stands for Making Of Developed India.

WATCH: 13 words from Venkaiah Naidu's diction that summed up his speech at India Today Conclave 2017

MAKING SMART CITIES

The Union Minister said a smart city is one which is smart in thinking, smart in vision and smart in execution, and is a liveable city.

He said 100 smart cities are not sufficient but they will act as light houses to inspire other cities to become smart.

Naidu said Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted initiatives and schemes to be public driven and involving greater public participation. He cited Swacch Bharat as a fine example of how a government drive has become a people's drive.

WATCH

--- ENDS ---
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

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This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

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As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
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40 miejsc parkingowych



Atut: Dodatkowe dochody z paczkomatow InPostu, a juz niedugo i z myjni samoobsugowej.



Tradycyjny zakup nieruchomosci, mozliwosc wykupienia uzytkowania wieczystego.
By Press Trust of India: rejects

Kolkata, Mar 17 (PTI) West Bengals top cop today delivered the bailable warrant issued by the Supreme Court to a sitting Calcutta High Court judge Justice C S Karnan in a contempt case to ensure his appearance before it on March 31. The warrant, which was served by Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purakayastha at the residence of Justice Karnan, was, however, "rejected" by the judge. The warrant was issued by the apex court on March 10 in in an order unprecedented in the annals of India?s judiciary,

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The DGP visited the residence of Justice Karnan in New Town area here along with Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar and DIG (CID) Rajesh Kumar and handed over the warrant to him.

"The DGP handed over the bailable warrant to Justice Karnan at his New Town residence this morning," a senior official of the state police force said.

A large police team was posted outside Karnans residence when the three senior police officials visited the place. In a letter to the seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar that initiated a suo motu contempt proceeding and issued a bailable warrant against him, Justice Karnan said he rejected the warrant.

"My Lords, your bailable Order dated March 10, 2017 in the suo motu contempt proceedings, today top police officers from the Calcutta High Court Circle came to my residence in order to execute the bailable warrant earmarked for 10.30 am on March 31, 2017".

"I rejected the same after assigning valid reasons," Justice Karnan said in the letter. Justice Karnan, meanwhile, sought a compensation of Rs 14 crore from the seven judges of Supreme Court for having stopped his judicial and administrative work.

In a letter addressed to the seven judges, who constitute the seven-judge Constitution bench that initiated the suo motu contempt proceedings against him, Justice Karnan requested them to cancel the bench, claiming that it was "unconstitutional".

"I request you to cancel the unconstitutional bench and restore my normal work," Justice Karnan wrote.

"The Honble seven Judges have prevented me in carrying out my judicial and administrative work from March 8, 2017 until now," Karnan said in yesterdays letter to the judges.

"Therefore I am calling up on all seven Judges to pay compensation, a sum of Rs 14 crores as compensation since you have disturbed my mind and my normal life, besides you have insulted me in the general public consisting of a population of 120 crores in India...," Justice Karnan said in the letter.

"Now all seven Judges shall pay a part of the compensation within a period of seven days from the date of receipt of this order," he said. On the day when the apex court issued the bailable warrant, Justice Karnan hit back, saying they have "no locus standi" to issue a bailable warrant against a sitting judge and alleged that he was being targeted for being a dalit.

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Justice Karnan also issued an order of registration of a case under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 against the judges constituting the seven-judge bench. PTI SCH AMR SUN RT GSN GSN

--- ENDS ---
By Press Trust of India: Nagpur, Mar 17 (PTI) After the Nagpur University postponed a seminar where the CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was to be the chief guest, the communist leader will now deliver a lecture at the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar College here tomorrow.

The Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University had on March 15 indefinitely postponed the seminar on `Erosion of Indian Democracy: Challenges and Solutions on March 18 and 19 that was organised by the Post-graduate Department of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Thought of the varsity.

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A delegation of social activists led by former Congress minister Nitin Raut had met with vice chancellor (VC) on this issue.

However, according to Raut, the VC refused permission to hold the programme on the scheduled date.

Meanwhile, today the department of Economics, Political Science and History ofDr Ambedkar College, Deekshabhoomi issued a release stating that Yechury will be delivering a lecture in their college on Saturday.

HoD of the Economics department Gautam Kamble told PTI "We have received consent of Sitaram Yechury for the programme. His lecture will contribute in enlightening the students of our department," Kamble said.

Raut said "After the refusal by the VC to hold the seminar at Department of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Thought, Nagpur University we were trying to somehow get his lecture conducted.

"Yechury is a very learned speaker. He is not an anti-national that his speech should be cancelled. There was no question of any protest from any right wing group or any other group."

The former minister said, "However, when our delegation met the VC yesterday, he seemed to be under immense pressure.

"It is not the culture of Nagpur tostop anyone and restrict anybodys freedom of speech." PTI CLS RMT BAS

--- ENDS ---
The last couple of weeks were the toughest of times for Indians. The terrorists, who wrought havoc in Mumbai, threatened to destroy the very idea of India. <br><br> The attack on Indias financial capital has really shaken the nation from its torpor. The incident has made common people take to the streets, cutting across lines of caste, creed, community and religion. <br><br> The consequence of the attacks has not even spared the sporting field. To be precise, it has turned India into a vulnerable cricketing hub where any foreign team will now give a second thought before planning a tour. <br><br> The terrorists launched their bloody battle in Mumbai when India had thrashed England five consecutive times in the seven-match ODI series, making a mockery of the English snobbery. Already shaken on the field, the Mumbai mayhem traumatized the British team and compelled them to leave the country midway through the series. <br><br> Some cricket pundits, administrators and former cricketers envious of Indias emergence as a new cricketing super power, started writing obituaries for India as a host nation for important cricketing events in the future. This sent shivers down the spines of cricket lovers and administrators in India. <br><br> Some feared that India is going the Pakistan way, which was robbed of several international cricket tournaments including the prestigious Champions Trophy in recent times due to security concerns. Nobody wants to be the guest of a person whose house is on fire. None should be blamed for being frightened. <br><br> But India is different in every aspect. The indomitable spirit of Indians is its greatest strength. In the past 60 years India has taken such beatings only to emerge as a much stronger nation. The largest democracy of the world may seem fragile on the face value, but has withstood several challenges in the past with resounding courage. <br><br> A nation, which braved four (1962, 1965, 1971 and Kargil) devastating wars, is on the threshold of becoming a super power. The nation is desperate to shed its third world tag. In every sector India as a nation has shown superb growth and improvement. <br><br> Its no difference in sports. Though in other sports India has only started doing well by securing its first individual gold in Beijing Olympics, cricket is the game the entire nation takes to with passion. Its all but natural that both as a cricket playing nation and international cricketing hub, India has emerged as a super power. <br><br> Our cricket team has emerged from a potential challenger, to becoming true champions by thrashing Australia 2-0 recently. Every cricket playing nation wants India to tour their country because it is the most followed team with plenty of charismatic players in its ranks. <br><br> Team India have the capacity to draw people out of their homes to the grounds. When India tour any country, people gather in huge numbers to catch a glimpse of the men in blue that ultimately proves to be a huge revenue generating factor for any country. So its all but natural that it will not be possible for any country to sever cricketing ties with India due to security reasons. <br><br> With a huge fan following and a powerful media, Indias emergence as the new cricketing hub cant be ignored. Its India which has heralded a new beginning in cricket by introducing Indian Premier League (IPL), a city-based rivalry everybody loves to take part in. <br><br> The snobbish England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) with ever-conservative MCC at its helm, seems to be losing its ground as more and more English players want to be part of this money making extravaganza in India. Some foreign players may not like this third world country, but they simply cant ignore the land which fattens their purses. So much so that the IPL and even Indian Cricket League (ICL) saw players including Adam Gilchrist, Stephen Fleming and Shaun Pollock taking early retirements to get a taste of this moolah. <br><br> Moreover, best of the players from England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa who generally get lukewarm response from their own people, get a sense of fulfilment when cheered by millions in India as they play for Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Superstars. Money cant buy adulation. <br><br> Indian people, despite having faced poverty, unemployment and terrorism, have always found solace in cricket in their hour of crisis. Even the greatest cynic of the game accepts its overwhelming influence on Indians. The game binds the whole nation on a common platform. It makes them forget their mundane sufferings. <br><br> A country in which cricket is considered as religion and its heroes as demigods, a handful of terrorists dont have the power to destroy the game or its spirit.
Chonmipem Horam `Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent`- Victor Hugo Can you imagine a life void of music? Absolutely NOT! Whether you admit it or not, music permeates our daily life, weaving its beauty and emotion through our thoughts, activities and memories. Music is harmony and music is beauty. Music has the quality of expressing the inexpressible. One cannot approach music with ones own peculiar likes, dislikes or tastes, which are all a part of ones own conditioning. Music is something both extraordinarily complex and incredibly simple at the same time.Roots of World Music day World Music Day also known as Fete de la Musique, was a music festival that began in France in 1982.The idea was conceived by French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang in 1981. Since then June 21st has been celebrated every year as World Music Day. Today, it has spread to Argentina, Australia, Britain, Luxemburg, Germany, Switzerland, Costa Rica, China, India, Lebanon, Pakistan and many other countries. On this day, the musicians perform for free in open areas. Free concerts are organized in parks, museums, train stations, castles etc. This is done to promote music, making all genres of music accessible to the public. It gives an opportunity to communicate and share special bond through music. The term World Music includes traditional as well as non-western music. It is folk music of any culture, created and played by indigenous people. It is a classical form of music accompanied by traditional ethnic instruments, some prominent forms are  Japanese Koto music, India raga music, Tibetan chants and South African `township music`. Genres India, being a land of unity in diversity with various cultures, traditions, art forms, every region has its own unique musical form. While there are various genres, Indian classical music has been divided into North Indian tradition known as Hindustani music and Carnatic music belonging to South India. But apart from these, there are varied forms such as  Bhangra, Bhajans or devotional, Ghazals and Qawwalis, Indi-pop, Folk, Tribal, Film songs, Remixes, Fusion. While, Bhangra is a dance oriented folk music, Bhavageete (literally `devotional song`) is a form of expressionist poetry and light music. Qawwali is a Sufi form of devotional music based on Hindustani classical. And in the West, we have Metal, Punk, Rock, Hip-Hop, Hard Rock, alternative, Experimental, Country, Disco, Funk, Classical, Progressive, Trance, Techno, Ska, Reggae music. Trance Music was developed in early quarters of 20th century and is generally played in club houses and dance floors. Indigenous Country Music born of the US is in form of folk, Celtic, church, gospels and tribal music, while, Pop Music is both classical and folk. Reggae is a music genre developed in late 1960`s. Its lyrics deal with faith, love, sexuality, relationships, injustice etc. Hip-hop is both a cultural movement and genre of music developed in New York City in 1970`s by African Americans and Latin Americans.The good, the bad and the ugly Music is an important form of communication. Its a reflection of society in a particular time and place. Music needs no boundaries, it bonds us irrespective of who we are, and where are we from. Not only its a source of entertainment but it also acts as a medium to convey messages, of how things are, and what lies ahead in the future. Michael Jackson`s song `Heal the world sounds beautiful as well as inspiring as it echoes noble thoughts. There`s A Place In Your Heart, And I Know That It Is Love, And This Place Could Be Much Brighter Than Tomorrow, And If You Really Try You`ll Find There`s No Need To Cry,In This Place You`ll Feel There`s No Hurt Or Sorrow There Are Ways To Get There If You Care Enough For The Living Make A Little Space, Make A Better Place... Heal The World, Make It A Better Place, For You And For Me And The Entire Human Race There Are People Dying, If You Care Enough For The Living, Make A Better Place For You And For Me If You Want To Know Why There`s A Love That Cannot Lie Love Is Strong, It Only Cares For Joyful Giving If We Try, We Shall See In This Bliss We Cannot Feel, Fear Or Dread We Stop Existing And Start Living Then It Feels That Always Love`s Enough For Us Growing So Make A Better World Make A Better World... And The Dream We Were Conceived In, Will Reveal A Joyful Face And The World We Once Believed In Will Shine Again In Grace Then Why Do We Keep Strangling Life Wound This Earth, Crucify Its Soul Though It`s Plain To See, This World Is Heavenly Be God`s Glow We Could Fly So High Let Our Spirits Never Die In My Heart, I Feel You Are All My Brothers Create A World With No Fear Together We`ll Cry Happy Tears See The Nations Turn their Swords Into Plowshares We Could Really Get There If You Cared Enough for The Living Make A Little Space, To Make A Better Place... You And For Me Music also grants us the freedom of expression. Like in late 1980`s and 90`s, young black Americans coming out of the Civil Rights Movement used this to show the limitation of the movement. It used Hip-hop to voice their issues. It lets them the world to be noticed. But inspite of all these social impacts, there have been negative aspects as well. Some of the most popular songs in Hip-hop genre have negatively influenced violence, drugs, alcohol, sex and disrespect for authorities, which is detrimental to the lives and education of the youngsters.Festivals There are many World Music festivals and jazz/folk/roots/new age crossover events. The Ariano Folkfestival is the biggest World Music festival in southern Italy, is held in mid August. The California World Music Festival is held each July at Nevada County Fairgrounds. The World Sacred Music Festival is held annually in Olympia, Washington State. FloydFest in Floyd, Virginia, USA. The Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg, New York, USA. Rainforest World Music Festival is another world music festival held in Malaysia. Stern Grove festival is a San Francisco celebration of musical and cultural diversity. The Starwood Festival in New York has been held in July every year since 1981.
New Delhi: Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Friday said that he has urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka Government to take strong action in Arunachal Pradesh student`s case where the lad from the north-eastern state was allegedly assaulted by his landlord and later forced to lick his shoes for using excessive water.

Rijiju told ANI that the Bengaluru Police is taking steps to reach out the people from north-east and added that the Home Ministry has been issuing advisories to the state governments for ensuring safety of the north-eastern people.

"Bengaluru Police is taking steps to reach out to North-East people. I`ve urged the Karnataka Government for strong action in Arunachal student`s case," said Rijiju.

"The Home Ministry has been issuing advisories to the state governments for safety and stringent actions if there`s any attack on North-East people," he added.

Higio Gungtey, 22, was allegedly assaulted by his landlord Hemanth Kumar on March 6 after an argument over the usage of water.According to reports, the other tenants in Kumar`s building complained of water shortage due to excessive use of water by the victim.

Reportedly, the owner was drunk when the incident occurred.
He was told that light eyes dont work, that he was too thin, that his voice wasnt good, that he has little confidence. But the unbeatable Hrithik Roshan shut those big mouths forever, triumphing over all that was being said. Other than the supposedly lucky extra thumb that he carries on his right hand, there are many more reasons that make the actor distinct from rest of the hunks of B-town. <br><br> We saw the star kid Hrithik really coming into his own, when he did those mighty leaps across the silver screen in Krrish, and when he got the youth swinging to his kick-ass dancing in Dhoom Machale, and when he distanced himself from the warring star studded blog bandwagon, and never shouted from the roof top to assure the positive reception of his macho abs. Perhaps, everything that he has done in the industry so far reflects his invincible spirit. <br><br><div id="related-box-j"><div class="more-news-bg-wht-j">Related Stories</div><div class="more-liner-bg-j"><a href="http://www.spicezee.com/articles/story20269.htm" target=_blank class="more-liner-link-j">Famous Quotes: Hrithik Roshan</a></div><div class="more-liner-bg-j"><a href="http://www.zeenews.com/imagegallery395.htm" target=_blank class="more-liner-link-j">Photo Gallery</a></div><div class="more-liner-bg-j"><a href="http://www.spicezee.com/celebrity/Hrithik_Roshan.htm" target=_blank class="more-liner-link-j">Profile</a></div></div> The awe-inspiring Hrithik, who turns 35 this January, has been a dutiful son, a loving husband, a responsible father, and without doubt, a zealous actor. He started his career as an assistant director to his father in the movies Khudgarz, KaranArjun and Koyla and today he stands as one of the best in Bollywood. Adored and loved like crazy by female fans, Hrithik has a big male fan following as well. <br><br> For the first time, when I saw him dance in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, I wondered, How could someone dance so effortlessly? His brilliant performance in Koi Mil Gaya made me think, How could someone act so real? And when I got to watch him in Jodhaa Akbar, and later in Dhoom 2, I was too love smitten by his looks to wonder! <br><br> Fine, he did not have to struggle like many to get that perfect launch pad, but if you come to think of it, theres one thing you would agree to - if it would not have been him in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, the not so exceptionally different film might have bombed at the Box Office. And had it not been for his exceptional act in Koi Mil Gaya or Krissh, or Dhoom 2 or Jodhaa Akbar the movies might not have done as great (if not have completely gone down the drain). <br><br> Not that Duggu hasnt been a part of some big time flops, but surprisingly theres something just so strikingly right about him that the audience chooses not to be critical about him. And nonetheless, his performance has always been appreciated by the not so well-taken film critics too. For almost each instance, be it in a film sequence or an ad commercial, Hrithik has been cherished for every on-screen glimpse. <br><br> Although by now, a handful must have begun to accuse me of over-justifying an obsession for the actor, but I cant do a thing to stop myself from mentioning that not anybody ever could have possibly come out as convincing in the role of a superhero as Hrithik did in daddy Rakesh Roshans special attempts. His proud father was so right when he once said, that if Hrithik would not have been there, he would not have ever thought of making films like Koi Mil Gaya or Krissh  films that were somewhat parallel to Hollywood cinema. <br><br> He has that star appeal, he has that talent, that style, that confidence, which is proving to be a kind of legitimate relativity that we could find with Hollywood. He truly is the Indian Superman! <br><br> Well, I havent really seen him boasting about his abs like others. And very honestly there, since his debut, I have never come across a single person who wants to keep away from Hrithiks fan list. <br><br> Although it won't be any difficult for me to go on showering such laudable adjectives on him, but for now would just put my admiration to rest, hoping that Hrithiks charm never ever fades away, and his magic keeps up with each year passing by. Heres wishing Bollywoods Mr Perfect a very happy birthday!
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. The United States urged Turkey to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, reports Armenpress.

During a daily press briefing at the State Department, the reporter said currently there are over 150 journalists in jail in Turkey, pressures are exerted on the opposition, and Turkey is going to a referendum under such circumstances. Asked how the US reacts on such human rights issues in Turkey, acting spokesperson Mark Toner said: We urge Turkey to respect and ensure freedom of expression, fair trial guarantees, judicial independence, and other essential freedoms.

As for the constitutional referendum, Mark Toner said it is a matter for the Turkish people to debate and decide.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on March 17 visited the National Academy of Sciences where the annual meeting summarizing the main results of Academys scientific and scientific-organizational activity for 2016 was held, press service of the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

President of the National Academy of Sciences, Academician Radik Martirosyan presented the most important scientific results and research developments of the Academys organizations, the works carried out towards international cooperation during the reporting year, the Academys activity on scientific personnel training and research intensification programs.

President Serzh Sargsyan said he will refrain to deliver a speech taking into account that currently an election campaign period is in the Republic, and expressed readiness to answer all questions of meeting participants, to listen their proposals.

Serzh Sargsyan also addressed a congratulatory message on the 95th birthday of a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Sergey Hambardzumyan, wished him health and strength to continue his national activity.




YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Scientific-research infrastructures require constant update and modernization of scientific equipment, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan said at the presentation of the annual report of the chairmanship of the National Academy of Sciences on March 17, reports Armenpress.

It is obvious that if there is no modern equipment, the scientific-research institution is just unable to carry out scientific activity. But as I know the finance that is provided also considers the necessity to acquire new equipment. If the talk is about providing additional funds, there must be a concrete program and the institution will receive additional funds to modernize its equipment. Overall we dont have so many opportunities to modernize all our scientific-research institutions, the President said.

Serzh Sargsyan said a program must be presented over the participation of a concrete scientific-research center, which the Government will consider and discuss with pleasure. It is just necessary to make a proposal and promise what result can be achieved in case of implementing the program, he said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov met with the students and professors of the American University of Armenia on March 17 who paid a study visit to the National Assembly. The meeting passed in Q&A format during which Sharmazanov answered numerous questions referring to both domestic and foreign policies of Armenia, as well as regional developments, Armenpress was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia.

The Vice President of the National Assembly commented on the remark on the international recognition of Artsakh. Our goal is to reach an international recognition of Artsakh. Artsakh can never be part of Azerbaijan. Artsakhs independence has no alternative and the Armenian authorities will spare no efforts to reach a solution of Artsakh issue meeting the interests of Armenians Sharmazanov said, adding that war is not a way to solve the issue and the NK conflict should be solved exclusively through peaceful means.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian gave a speech in New York during the event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Armenias membership to the UN. As Armenpress was informed from the pres service of MFA Armenia, Minister Nalbandian said,

Honorable Secretary General,

Your Eminences,

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,



It is a distinct pleasure to address you on the 25th anniversary of Armenias membership in the United Nations. I highly appreciate the presence of Secretary General here with us today. I also would like to thank all those who have contributed to the organization of this concert and all of you who join us for the celebration of this festive occasion.



Quarter of a century ago Armenia has been embraced by the community of sovereign states. It was the dream of many generations of Armenians scattered around the world that came to reality. I am glad to see here today many of those who stood by the newly emerging state and I would like to take this opportunity to once again acknowledge their indispensable contribution.



Needless to emphasize the whole significance of this day. It is not just the symbolism that matters. It is not about the status but the hope and vision for a peaceful and prosperous future, that rests in the foundations of the United Nations, that inspires to a common journey towards a better world free of wars, conflicts and dividing lines.



Armenia, as I believe numerous nations before us and many after, joined the United Nations with these aspirations and goals.



Armenia acceded to the family of nations during challenging times of its history but that has never diminished our resolve and commitment to the building of a society that fully adheres to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. We remain guided by the UN Charter that calls to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.



It is a solemn duty of all states, ascribed through their accession, to ensure the full and unhindered application of these commitments. Armenia strictly adheres to its obligations in this regard, including in its efforts to ensure an exclusively peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.



These commitments also form the central pillar of Armenias engagement within the UN framework. First and foremost it refers to our dedication to the UN prevention agenda.



As a nation who passed through the horrors of the genocide we feel a moral obligation but also an authority to speak out against recurrence of crimes against humanity.



Armenia also contributes to the world peace in a most direct way through participating in a number of peace operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mali.



We joined international concerted efforts aimed at countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism and addressing refugee crisis.



From Syria alone, about 22,000 refugees sought shelter in Armenia, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe.



Our country does its best to contribute to promotion of tolerance and intercultural, interfaith dialogue, combating racism, hate speech and xenophobia.



I would also like to emphasize that it is not just the list of endeavors but rather the hard work, dedicated efforts and unreserved commitment that define the full depth of multifaceted activities of Armenia within the UN framework during the past 25 years.



As we embark on the next chapter of our collective journey, I would like to reiterate Armenias unwavering support to the strong and effective global leadership of the United Nations that translates international obligations and commitments into tangible actions, builds bridges between peoples and eliminates dividing lines, promotes good neighborly relations, peace and prosperity worldwide.



Thank you.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Artsakh Bako Sahakyan convoked a working consultation on introducing a new energy-saving street lighting system in Stepanakert on March 17.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Office of the President of Artsakh, the Head of the State considered demanded the introduction of such a system, pointing to its significance from economic viewpoint.

The President gave concrete instructions to the heads of concerned structures towards proper solution of the discussed questions. Premier Arayik Haroutyunyan and other officials took part in the consultation.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. In the cultural house of Gegharkunik Provinces center Gavar city Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan talked about the development programs of the province in a meeting with citizens.

Out of the total 3.5 billion USD planned to be invested in Armenia 40 million USD investments will go to Gegharkunik Province by which 31 development investment projects are planned to be implemented. The economic development of Gegharkunik will progress in 4 directions  environmental protection, agriculture, development of alternative energy, development of infrastructures, The PM said, emphasizing that the focus of environmental protection will be the preservation of Lake Sevans ecosystem.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan awarded the winners of Luys Start Armenia Funds entrepreneurship grant.

Narek Aslikyan and Grigori Yenikolopov are the winners of this year. Narek Aslikyans project is about the creation of a practical training center for young IT specialists and programmers, while Grigori Yenikolopov together with other 4 colleagues plans to create a Museum of science in Lori which will foster the economic and touristic development of the province by creating new and innovative infrastructures.

Congratulating the winners, President Sargsyan expressed conviction that the jury was able to select the best ones. The best victory is the victory achieved by minimal losses, President Sargsyan said, adding that all the projects participating in the contest must serve the development of Armenia.

The Luys Start Armenia Fund is an entrepreneurship competition and the natural evolution of the Scholarship Program that brings home ingenuity and seeds entrepreneurship in the homeland.



Numerous Luys alumni have already founded successful Start-ups of their own, from boutique law firms to investment capital management services. At Luys, we are strong believers that a solid, viable network of start-up companies will perpetuate the long-term sustainability of the Armenian nation.
Volkswagen's powerful ex-chairman Ferdinand Piech, credited with its rise from the brink of bankruptcy to world leader status, is in talks to sell his stake in the group, its holding company said Friday.

The 79-year-old owns 14.7 percent in Porsche SE, which in turn controls the Volkswagen group with 52 percent of its voting rights.

The stake owned by the former 'Mr VW' is worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion), according to Spiegel Online, which first flagged the talks and said they followed differences with Porsche's founding families.

The negotiations cover the sale of "the major part" of Piech's Porsche SE holding to the Porsche and Piech families, which have first dibs on the purchase, Porsche SE said in a statement.

"At present, it is still unforeseeable whether the aforesaid changes in the shareholder structure of Porsche SE will in fact occur," the statement said.

Relations with the current management and the other co-owners of Volkswagen became strained after Piech claimed that company chiefs, including CEO Martin Winterkorn, knew about emissions cheating which led to the so-called 'dieselgate' scandal earlier than they admitted.

After fitting 11 million cars with devices allowing them to fool emission tests, Volkswagen in January agreed to plead guilty and pay $4.3 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle charges that it defrauded the United States and conspired to violate the Clean Air Act.

- Dieselgate got personal -

This added to the $17.5 billion that the company already agreed to pay in settlements with car owners and dealers for environmental cleanup.

Last month, the board members targeted in Piech's allegations rejected them as "false".

An internal investigation had examined Piech's claims last year and found no evidence, they said.

According to German tabloid Bild, Piech told prosecutors in the German city of Brunswick that he heard rumours about the emissions fraud in February 2015, while he was still chairman of the supervisory board.

Story continues

He reportedly put the allegations to then-chief executive Martin Winterkorn, who denied them, and to some members of the board.

The allegations have explosive potential as so far VW has always denied that senior management knew of the cheating before it became public knowledge in September 2015.

As the grandson of the inventor of the VW Beetle and a member of the Porsche-Piech clan that owns much of the group, Piech long ruled VW with an iron fist.

But a confrontation with Winterkorn, his former protege, cost him his place at the head of the supervisory board in April 2015.

Germany media have said that his last remaining post as a supervisory board member at Porsche SE itself is now also on the line.
LAS VEGASIt's been a long couple of weeks for Jonathan "War Machine" Koppenhaver, but likely no less long for his victims, former adult star Christy Mack and boyfriend Corey Thomas, but now it's almost over, with the final closing arguments having been completed shortly before 6 p.m. today.

According to the "blow-by-blow" tweeting of Fox5Vegas reporter Adam Herbets, Deputy Assistant District Attorney Rob Stephens delivered the argument for the prosecution, beginning shortly after District Judge Elissa Cadish finished charging the jury, reading each count of the indictment and explaining some of the terms used and reciting what the law requires to be proved before Koppenhaver could be found guilty of any particular one.

"'Now I have to kill you.' Those are the last words Christy Mack heard," Stephens began, according to Herbets. He followed that up by tying each count of the indictment to a specific incident. For example, Count 4, "Battery Constituting Domestic Violence  Strangulation," related to an incident where Mack failed to clean the water in their pet snake's cage well enough, so Koppenhaver made her drink it, after which he choked her, while Count 8, "Battery Resulting in Substantial Bodily Harm Constituting Domestic Violence," was based on an incident in a mall parking lot where Koppenhaver allegedly slammed Mack's face into the car dashboard after she tried to get out of the car while they were arguing.

One point that Stephens consistently hit on was the concept of consent: "Giving up is not consent," Stephens reportedly told the jury. "You're not required to scream to say 'No' if there's nobody around. 'No' should be enough; 'No, no, no,'" adding that the defendant was a "trained professional fighter. Christy Mack gave up. That is not consent."

Later, regarding the kidnapping charge, Stephens argued that the defendant was guilty of kidnapping "because he held Christy in that room for two hours. He had a knife and her cell phone."

Turning to Corey Thomas' injuries, Stephens explained, "Koppenhaver choked Corey Thomas three times. He doesn't have to lose consciousness. He doesn't have to see stars. It's a crime."

After Stephens' argument concluded, the court took a half-hour lunch break, and then Jay Liederman began his address to the jury with a surprise: "Are you ready for the spoiler alert? We are willing to concede on some counts. Feel free to check the 'guilty' box," adding that while Koppenhaver was willing to admit his guilt on some counts, "he didn't commit 34 felonies."

One of the major points Liederman attempted to make in his closing was that Mack's injuries were at least partly her own fault, since she had sent him at least one nude photo of herself on the night of the attack, and had reason to believe that Koppenhaver was coming over to her home, yet she remained there rather than leaving it to hide somewhere.

"This is a 'kitchen sink case,'" Herbets reported Liederman as saying. "They threw everything they could at my client. Some of the charges will stick." He also reminded the jury that the burden of proof remains with the prosecution, and claimed that they had not presented enough evidence to find Koppenhaver guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on the more serious charges, and that much of the evidence they did present was circumstantial: "He said, she said."

In sum, Liederman's argument ran the gamut from claiming that his client was so intoxicated that he didn't know what he was doing, to "logic" like, "If he wanted to kill Christy, why would he grab a knife? All he had to do was to keep hitting her." He also cast doubts on Mack's memories of the incident, even while admitting that he didn't believe she was lying in her testimony.

"I am not trying to justify the battery, but these other counts? There's no evidence that any of this stuff happened," Liederman claimed, adding later, "There's a difference between morality and criminality. Just because you're not a nice guy doesn't make you a criminal."

In the end, Liederman noted that Koppenhaver would plead guilty to Counts 16-23, all of which were either "Battery Resulting in Substantial Bodily Harm Constituting Domestic Violence" or "Battery With Use of a Deadly Weapon Constituting Domestic Violence."

After Liederman concluded, Deputy District Attorney Jacqueline Bluth addressed the jury in rebuttal.

"The defense wants you to think that this is the State of Nevada versus Christy Mack," she began. "It's not. This is [Jonathan Koppenhaver's] trial. ... His relationship with Christy Mack was textbook domestic violence. There were no secret meetings on ruining his life. ... You may not get this relationship. That's fine; I don't get it, but it is what it is.

"It's easy to say she should have left," Bluth continued, referring to the earlier defense claim, "but she was young and still somehow in love. She was in the thick of it. ... If Christy Mack was lying, why wouldn't she exaggerate? She could have lied and said that War Machine beat and raped her all the time.

"This isn't the Octagon," Bluth reminded the jury. "This isn't MMA fighting. There's no referee. There's no tapping out. This is domestic abuse."

Bluth also denied that Koppenhaver was suffering the effects of any drugs that witnesses said he had been taking, whether steroids, Adderal or Lexapro, during the attack, noting that the defendant himself had tweeted that he "had zero side effects and he was cured 99 percent."

"[Mr. Koppenhaver] came to so many forks in the road," she argued. "He could have stopped at any point along this road but he didn't, and now, this."

With closing arguments now complete, the jury will begin deliberations tomorrow morning on the remaining charges. Koppenhaver faces life in prison if found guilty on the more serious charges.
BARCELONA, SpainFor several years, manufacturers of love dolls have worked to make them look and feel as real as possible. Now engineer Sergi Santos has created one that responds as realistically as possible.

Santos creation, Samantha, looks much like any other high-end love doll, with the look and feel of real flesh and skin, and a posable skeleton. And not only can Samantha talk, but she also is programmed to respond to various types of touches, and even asks for more.

I love this, nice and gentle, she says. Now then, whats next?

Santos told news outlet Ruptly that Samantha is programed to behave much like a human partner, vocalizing her enjoyment of certain types of touch in certain areas, and behaving in a manner that grows from romantic to sexual.

Samantha is interactive, he said. Basically, she likes to be touched. She has different modes of interaction. She has romantic, she has family and she has also sexy modes.

Samantha reacts to touches and caresses on her hands, arms, hips and more, and sexually responds to stimulation of her G-spot, mouth and breasts.

The objective of sexual mode: get her to orgasm, Santos said.

See the entire interview at Ruptly.tv.
MONTREALGamma Films shingle PrettyDirty.com releases a new scene today that it says marks the beginning of a darker, edgier direction for the brand's trademark taboo relations-themed content.

Titled Indirect Relations, the scene was co-directed by Pretty Dirty founder Bree Mills and Craven Moorehead, and takes the typical "family role play" fantasy of most taboo fare a step further by centering on a father (Derrick Pierce) with actual sexual designs on his own daughter (Kristen Scott), which he sets out to realize the only legal way possiblevia a role play re-enactment using stand-ins Michael Vegas and Nina North.

"I like to think of my new direction as the Law & Order of porn," Mills explained. "We've taken an approach that fans will not associate with any other adult content they've seen."

Mills said the story of Indirect Relations was so hard-hitting, its cast had a hard time bringing the material to life.

Concurred Pierce, "I won't ever forget shooting this scene ... for better or worse! This scene will always be in my head. Bree's mind is so twisted that she even made me pause ... and I'm fucked up!"

"Indirect Relations is by far the edgiest scene I have done to date," Vegas added. "When Bree told me how far she was going to push this scene, I knew it would be something special." He went on to note that the scene was "so intense that the acting was minimal and the reacting was real."

"This scene is meant to be an example of the next chapter for us," Mills said, "reaching beyond the joke that many studios make of family role play porn, and feeding into the deep and obsessive taboo fantasies shared by serious fans of the genre. Pretty Dirty members should expect to see a lot of changes coming over the next few months, as we shift toward delivering on this new vision. I can't wait to see what buttons we can push!"

For her part, Scott affirmed, "This was the most twisted scene I've ever been a part of."

Indirect Relations is available now on PrettyDirty.com and will release shortly on other select VOD platforms.

For more information about PrettyDirty.com or other sites in the network, contact affiliate manager Derrick Gilbert at derric[email protected]. Follow Pretty Dirty on Twitter @PrettyDirtyCom.
LOS ANGELESSienna Sinclaire, self-proclaimed Naughty Lifestyle Expert and author of multi-award-winning travel guides, announces the release of her fourth sexy travel guide, Naughty Guide to San Diego.

Sinclaires earlier guides include Naughty Girls Guide to Los Angeles and Naughty Girls Guide to Las Vegas.

Naughty Guide to San Diego, available now as an e-book, features 164 beautifully photographed lavish pages of sexy and fun things to do in the port city; Everything from where to find the classiest strip clubs and escorts, Mistresses, dungeons, swinger clubs, naughty massages, sex toy stores, burlesque shows and sex classes; to the sexiest and swankiest restaurants, bars, hotels and more.

What sets this book apart from her other naughty travel guides, is that readers get a free walking tour of the Gaslamp District. This one hour walk has things the reader can enjoy on their own with interesting and naughty facts researched by Sienna herself. Old historical photos, old brothels to have dinner at, sexy hotels and more.

I decided to write this edition and include the walking tour as Ive taken many of my Meet Up groups on this specific tour and everyone always has a blast, says Sienna. So I wrote it for my readers to do on their own and have just as much fun!

Chapters in Naughty Guide to San Diego include History of San Diegos naughty side, Walking Tour of the Gaslamp, Nudist resorts, beaches, Sex toy stores, pole classes, burlesque classes, Fetish Clubs, Swingers Clubs, Dungeons, Mistresses and more.

Naughty Guide to San Diego, Naughty Guide to Vancouver, Naughty Girls Guide to Las Vegas and Naughty Girls Guide to Los Angeles are all available for purchase at TheNaughtyGirlsGuide.com.

For more information on Sienna Sinclaire and her Naughty Lifestyle Classes, visit NaughtyLifestyleExpert.com.
IT organizations, especially those running databases in the cloud, are hyper-focused on gaining access to fast storage with plenty of secure RAM. These solutions have to be available from anywhere, exactly when customers want them. They also must be economical, easy to work with, and scalable. No small order these days but with vSAN, partners can deliver on these customer needs, across organizations of all sizes.

At VMware PEX, we met up with partners who shared their success with vSAN to solve customer pains and how they are growing their business alongside VMware solutions.

Here are a few quick snippets from some of these vSAN partners:

SHI  Were not just selling infrastructure for the sake of infrastructure

20-year veterans in software and hardware procurement, deployment planning, configuration, data center optimization, IT asset management and cloud computing, SHI offers custom IT solutions for every aspect of a customers environment. They also deploy VMware solutions within their own environment. As Josh Dunsky, Director of Business Development explained, We evolved our solution areas primarily around users, security, and data center which maps to how VMware built their portfolio.

In addition, theyre a customer of VMware and use the solutions to support their internal infrastructure and employees. So, as they have sales conversations, its not just about the customers infrastructure its also about SHIs firsthand view of supporting a particular application or organization using vSAN within their own company.

Watch the SHI partner story.

Century Link  We provide flash storage at a reasonable cost

Century Link is a public cloud where customers typically run a lot of databases. The solutions they adopt have to provide all flash storage at a reasonable cost. Pete Peterson, Sr. Systems Administrator shared, with vSAN we can use accelerated caching devices, which makes a big difference over IP connectivity SAN solutions. Customers benefit through associated cost savings and Century Link keeps their SANs all flash which increases performance  constantly.

Watch the Century Link partner story.

Cloud Carib  We deploy cost effective solutions that scale

Founded in 2011, Cloud Carib is a Solution Provider located in Nassau, Bahamas that leverages VMware while focusing on government and financial services industries. Scott MacKenzie, Chief Commercial Officer shared their focus and specialization in deploying vSAN on the back-end for data services. Doing so, he said, enables us to provide massive amounts of IOPS to our clients in a secure format via our data center service offerings.

Watch the Cloud Carib partner story.

Dont miss the opportunity to learn more about vSAN this quarter. Check the vmLIVE schedule for you geography on Partner University and get registered today.

You can also submit your sown success story for a chance to be featured in an upcoming Power of Partnership blog or video. Remember, submitting a success story can:

Amplify your value proposition through VMW and external channels

Successfully market your organization

Demonstrate subject matter expertise on VMW solutions

So dont wait, submit your success story today.
grocery store

Earnings season is the most popular time for companies to raise their dividends, and this season has been another highly active time. In fact, two food companies just raised their dividends by 3-11%, so let?s take a quick look at each to determine if you should add one of them to your portfolio today.

North West Company Inc.

North West Company Inc. (TSX:NWC) is one of the leading retailers of food and everyday products and services to underserved rural communities and urban neighbourhood markets in northern Canada, western Canada, rural Alaska, the South Pacific Islands, and the Caribbean. It operates 230 stores under the trading names Northern, NorthMart, Giant Tiger, Alaska Commercial Company, and Cost-U-Less.

In its fourth-quarter earnings release on March 15, North West announced a 3.2% increase to its quarterly dividend to $0.32 per share, representing $1.28 per share on an annualized basis, and this brings its yield up to a juicy 4.2% today. The first payment at this increased rate will come on April 17 to shareholders of record on March 31.

Investors should also make the following two notes about North West?s dividend.

First, it has raised its annual dividend payment for five consecutive years, and the 3.2% hike it just announced has it positioned for 2017 to mark the sixth consecutive year with an increase.

Second, I think North West?s consistent financial growth, including its 10.1% year-over-year increase in earnings from operations to $118.1 million and its 9.8% year-over-year increase in diluted earnings per share to $1.57 in 2016, will allow its streak of annual dividend increases to continue through 2020 at the very least.

Premium Brands Holdings Corp.

Premium Brands Holdings Corp. (TSX:PBH) is one of North America?s leading producers, marketers, and distributors of branded specialty food products with operations in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Nevada, Ohio, Arizona, and Washington State. It serves a diverse customer base, and its brands include Grimm?s, Harvest, McSweeney?s, Hempler?s, OvenPride, Hygaard, Gourmet Chef, and Hub City Fisheries.

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In its fourth-quarter earnings release on March 16, Premium Brands announced a 10.5% increase to its quarterly dividend to $0.42 per share, representing $1.68 per share on an annualized basis, which brings its stock?s yield up to about 2.2% today. The first payment at this increased rate will come on April 17 to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 31.

It?s important for investors to make the following three notes about Premium Brand?s dividend.

First, it has raised its annual dividend payment for four consecutive years, and this hike has it on pace for 2017 to mark the fifth consecutive year with an increase.

Second, this is the third year in a row in which Premium Brands has raised its dividend by 10% or more.

Third, I think its incredibly strong financial performance, including its 49.8% year-over-year increase in free cash flow to $121.5 million and its 37% year-over-year increase in adjusted earnings per share to $2.48, will allow its streak of annual dividend increases to continue for another five years at least.

Which should you buy today?

I think North West and Premium Brands represent two of the best long-term investment options in the food industry, so take a closer look at each and strongly consider beginning to scale in to positions in one of them today.

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More reading

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The proven "return accelerator" for dividend stocks!

If you love dividend stocks or are in need of retirement income, we have a brand-new, exclusive report that's a must-read for any serious investor.

Written by celebrated Canadian journalist Jonathan Chevreau, this report outlines one of the 'wonders of the investment world' - how to use it, capitalize on it, and make money as best you can.

Click here now to claim your copy!

Fool contributor Joseph Solitro has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Some B.C. tech companies hope to take advantage of the cloud of fear over possible changes to U.S. visas for skilled foreign workers as they await Canada's new streamlined process for permits to come into effect.

The virtual world is bracing for a dose of cold reality as the U.S. moves to tighten policies for H1-B visas, which allow highly skilled workers to live and be employed in high tech hubs like California's Silicon Valley and Bellevue in Washington state.

Heads of some tech companies say the solution for people nervous about working for an American company lies in Vancouver.

"This uncertainty is really dialing down enthusiasm, especially for travel to the U.S. for long-term career moves. We're seeing that change slowly happen," said Igor Fatelski, CEO of Mobify, a tech company specializing in apps for retailers.

Worldwide interest

Highly specialized tech workers from outside the U.S. typically use H1-B visas to work for American companies.

But U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced the government plans to suspend expedited applications for those visas.

Fatelski said the change, along with uncertainty stemming from Trump's revised travel ban, is generating more interest in Canadian companies, including his.

"We're seeing more and more interest from around the world from potential employees that want to work in Canada because they're not certain what's going to happen in the U.S."

Fatelski immigrated to Canada from Russia when he was 15. Now, he employs more than 100 people  and says he will need more.

"There's a certain gap in talent and sometimes there's not enough engineers or executives to hire for all of the companies in town," he said.

Silicon Valley protest

Tensions are rising in the high-tech industry south of the border, where workers from other countries are facing obstacles.

Hundreds of protesters in Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, Calif., rallied on Tuesday against the U.S. government's looming policies like the visa application change.

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Some Canadian tech companies are spotting a chance to lure in-demand workers who feel uncomfortable about their future in the United States.

The Canadian government recognizes the same opportunity.

'Game changer'

At the B.C. tech summit, Navdeep Bains, Canada's minister of innovation, said the government will act quickly to fast track work permits to attract highly skilled talent from other countries.

"We're taking the processing time, which takes months, and reducing it to two weeks for immigration processing for individuals [who] need to come here to help companies grow and scale up," Bains said.

"So this is a big deal. It's a game changer."

That change will happen through the Global Talent Stream, a new program under the federal government's temporary foreign worker program. It's scheduled to begin on June 12, 2017.

U.S. companies are taking notice and a Canadian firm, True North, is offering to help them set up shop.

"What we suggest is that they think about moving their operations, or at least a chunk of their operations, to Vancouver, set up a Canadian subsidiary," said the company's founder, Michael Tippett.

"And that subsidiary would be able to house and accommodate those employees."

Industry experts says while the future is unclear for the tech sector in the U.S., it's clear high tech in B.C. is gearing up to take advantage.
Canada's International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne attends a meeting with members of the Canada-Mexico Chamber of Commerce in San Pedro Garza Garcia, on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico March 17, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - There is plenty of scope for Mexico and Canada to deepen supply chain integration, Canada's trade minister said on Friday, in the latest nod to boosting North American industry in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump's pledge to boost jobs.

"We have a good relationship, but I do believe when you look at the supply chain in North America, we can do so much more together," Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at an event in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

"We value our political and commercial relationship with Mexico and we will work closely with Mexico to build a more prosperous North America," he added.

Trump wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico and Canada, and has threatened to ditch it if he cannot get a better deal in his efforts to protect U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Mexican and U.S. officials have said changing the rules in NAFTA to increase the local content requirement for certain goods could form an important part of a renegotiated accord.

The U.S. president is preparing to submit his plan to renegotiate NAFTA to the U.S. Congress, and could call for bilateral talks that risk putting Mexico and Canada at a disadvantage.

Officials have said talks on reworking the pact could begin from the summer onwards. On Thursday, Champagne said that Canada is committed to keeping NAFTA a trilateral accord.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Sandra Maler)
From the multi-lingual robots that check you in, to the robotic arm that will store your luggage and the porter robots that will carry your bags to your room - the Henn na Hotel in Tokyo Bay has to be seen to be believed.

Bizarrely, the futuristic hotel features more than 140 'staff' robots and just seven human members of staff. There is even an aquarium complete with mini robotic fish.

Each of the 100 rooms has state-of-the-art facial recognition technology so guests don't need a room key and a small egg shaped robot is also inside every room ready to take commands from guests such as turning on the television.

(With inputs from AP)

Video Editor: Mohd Ibrahim
Confidence continues to rise among Americas consumers.

On Friday, the latest consumer sentiment numbers from the University of Michigan released Friday showed that in March confidence rose again, as the index of consumer sentiment rose to 97.6 from a final reading of 96.3 in February.

Though just below readings seen in January and February, Marchs preliminary reading indicates consumers havent been this consistently confident since early 2004.

The overall level of consumer sentiment remained quite favorable in early March due to renewed strength in current economic conditions as well as the extraordinary influence of partisanship on economic prospects, said Richard Curtin, chief economist for the survey.

The Current Economic Conditions component reached its highest level since 2000, largely due to improved personal finances.

Partisanship everywhere

Inside the UMich report, however, there still existed an incredible amount of partisanship among consumers.

Among Democrats, the Expectations Index at 55.3 signaled that a deep recession was imminent, Curtin said, while among Republicans the Index at 122.4 indicated a new era of robust economic growth was ahead.

Curtin added, Importantly, there was no moderation in these extreme views from last month, with the maintenance of the partisan divide fueled by selective attention to economic news, with Democrats more frequently reporting unfavorable developments and Republicans more frequently hearing of favorable changes.

Optimistic consumers, Curtin noted, are likely to increase their discretionary spending while those who are pessimistic will pare back.

This is likely to lead to uneven spending gains over time and across products.

Overall, the sentiment data has been characterized by rising optimism as well as by rising uncertainty due to the partisan divide, Curtin said.

Optimism everywhere

Fridays consumer sentiment report comes during a week in which measures of confidence from across the economic spectrum have pointed to American workers and business leaders remaining bullish on their prospects.

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On Thursday, we learned that in January, the number of Americans quitting their jobs rose to a seasonally-adjusted total of 3.22 million, the highest number since February 2001. The quits rate rose in January to 2.2%.

People quitting their jobs in droves is seen as a sign of confidence among workers, as folks are unlikely to quit a job unless they are confident they can get another one.

Earlier this week, both major U.S. CEOs and American small businesses indicated that confidence remains elevated.

On Tuesday, the Business Roundtables CEO Economic Outlook Index jumped 19.1 points to 93.3, the biggest jump since the end of 2009. This index measures expectations for sales, investment, and employment. Like many economic surveys, any reading over 50 indicates expected economic expansion.

JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, who is chairman of the Business Roundtable, said in that release, I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to enact a meaningful pro-growth agenda that will benefit all Americans. As these results confirm, business confidence and optimism have increased dramatically.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

The National Federation of Independent Business also released its February reading on small business optimism on Tuesday, which came in at 105.3, slightly down from Januarys 105.9, but still near its best levels in a decade. A major highlight in this report was a drop in the number of businesses citing government red tape as their biggest problem.

The NFIBs report did, however, caution that we havent seen a huge translation from this confidence into action. Optimism has not faded, but the enthusiasm has yet to be translated into an equally impressive increase in spending and hiring, the NFIB said in its report. This will require progress on the agenda that business owners voted for.



Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland

Read more from Myles here:
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau offers up a beer to a patron as he pours pints at a pub Friday, September 4, 2015, in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

Canadas love affair with beer is well chronicled. A 2016 report found that for more than half of Canadians, it is the alcoholic beverage of choice, while only 27 per cent and 22 per cent said they prefer spirits or wine respectively.

Canadians also drink on average 60.3 litres of beer per a capita a year.

But could the countys brewers take a hit after the federal government rolls out its legislation on legalized marijuana this summer?

Possibly, according to findings from south of the border.

A new study by the market research organization Cannabiz Consumer Group says that legal marijuana will swallow up 7.1 per cent of revenues from the U.S. beer industry.

Unfortunately, there is no doubt that leakage will occur, Rich Maturo, chief innovation officer at CCG, said in a press release.

Those companies that are gathering insights on cannabis and have the foresight to see it as presenting an opportunity in addition to a risk will fare much better than those who strictly take a defensive position.

The research, which polled more than 40,000 Americans last year, found that 27 per cent of beer drinkers have already substituted marijuana for beer, or would do so in the future if it was legal.

The recreational and medicinal use of the drug is allowed in eight states and there were 24.6 million legal consumers in 2016.

Meanwhile, the Canadian beer industry generated revenues of nearly $5 billion in 2012, and its sales totalled 2.3 billion litres the follow year, according to Statistics Canada.

But this number could be dwarfed by the recreational marijuana industry, which a 2016 report by Deloitte estimated could be worth as much as $22.6 billion.

And theres further evidence to back up the CCGs forecast. A report by investment research group Cowen and Company that came out last year linked marijuana consumption to a decline in beer sales in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, the latter of which two rolled out legalization in 2012 and the former followed suit in 2014.

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The research also indicated that higher-income consumers and men have been drinking less alcohol over the last five years, while their use of weed increased.

A 2016 study also found similar findings among youth.

According to the report by Project Know, a website dedicated to helping people with alcohol and drug addiction, high school age students in the U.S. were more likely to have used marijuana than participated in binge drinking in the past 30 days.
By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government plans to buy six Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT - News) C-130J military transport planes for around 900 million euros ($966 million) starting in 2019 under a joint operating agreement with France, German government documents show.

Germany and France first began working on the deal in October and announced broad outlines of their plans in February at a meeting of the NATO alliance, part of a broader push to increase European defense cooperation.

The German finance and defense ministries provided first concrete details about the cost of the aircraft -- and 110 million euros in additional costs for infrastructure and training simulators -- in documents sent to lawmakers, who must approve the funding for the planned German-French agreement.

The German finance ministry said Berlin would formally request procurement of the airplanes in 2019, according to the documents seen by Reuters.

France has already ordered four aircraft and plans to buy two more for the fleet, which is to be based in Evreux, France and operated jointly by both countries, the documents showed.

France would match Germany's spending of 110 million euros for infrastructure improvements at the air base and to buy simulators for joint training, they said.

The joint fleet is to be ready for use by 2021.

The German defense ministry told lawmakers that the simulators for the C-130J were built by Canadian firm CAE Inc (Toronto:CAE.TO - News), and official discussions with Canadian authorities about the procurement were planned in 2017.

The German air force had initially hoped to buy up to 12 C-130J military transports itself for the joint fleet so it could operate some in France, and set up a second base in Germany, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The defense ministry settled on buying six aircraft, citing financial constraints, but several sources said the issue could be revisited in coming years.

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"The need was identified and it hasn't changed," said one of the sources.

Germany says it need the C-130J transports to augment a planned fleet of 53 Airbus A400M transports and fill a capability gap that will come up starting in 2021 when Germany retires its fleet of smaller C-160 Transall transports, which can land at a broader array of airports and runways.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
By David Lawder and Leika Kihara

BADEN BADEN, Germany (Reuters) - The world's financial leaders will renounce competitive devaluations and warn against exchange rate volatility, a document showed on Friday, but are likely to struggle to find common ground on trade and financing against climate change.

The difficulty stems from a major shift in the views of the United States, where the new Trump administration is considering protectionist trade measures to curb imports and considers efforts to try to halt global warming a "waste of money".

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the world's top 20 economies are meeting in the spa town of Baden Baden in Germany to discuss world economic issues and will publish a joint communique on Saturday.

A draft of the statement showed that, for now, the issue of trade and protectionism is not mentioned at all. This breaks with a decade-old tradition of the G20 endorsing free trade and rejecting protectionism.

"It's about the right wording, it's about the openness of the world trade systems in the final communique," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said before talks began.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday in Berlin that the Trump administration had no desire to get into trade wars, but certain trade relationships need to be re-examined to make them fairer for U.S. workers.

G20 officials said the United States was ready to accept a phrase backing "free and fair" trade, given that the meaning of "fair" was open to interpretation. Europe was keen on adding that trade should be "rules-based", meaning subject to rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

European delegations have also explicitly rejected protectionism.

Facing a stand-off, Schaeuble, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year, has floated the idea that the issue of trade might be left out of the communique altogether to avoid a clash.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde seemed to back him when she said on Thursday, in an apparent reference to U.S. President Donald Trump, that new government leaders with a protectionist agenda needed time to get to know how international bodies work and better prepare their position.

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Some G20 officials had doubts if trade ought to take such a prominent spot in discussions of finance ministers and central bank governors and signaled there was no urgency to reaching a deal now, as it could be left to a leaders' summit in July.

But other G20 countries argue that goods trade makes up almost half of global GDP output and therefore is very much an issue for finance ministers trying to accelerate global growth. They argue a reference to trade in the statement is needed.

CLIMATE CHANGE FINANCING REMOVED

The G20 might also drop their explicit endorsement to finance the fight against global warming, the draft showed.

At their last meeting in July 2016 the G20 ministers said they encouraged all signatories of the Paris Agreement on climate change to bring the deal into force as soon as possible and honor their financial pledges it a timely way.

But U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office in November, has called global warming a "hoax" concocted by China to hurt U.S. industry and vowed to scrap the Paris climate accord aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump's administration on Thursday proposed a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programs and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality.

Asked about climate change funding, Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, said on Thursday, "We consider that to be a waste of money."

AGREEMENT ON FOREX

The G20 do agree, however, to show continuity in their foreign exchange policies.

The draft communique, which may still change and is to be published only on Saturday, reinstated the phrases used in past years in communiques on foreign exchange markets that were absent from the earliest version.

"We reiterate that excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability," the draft said.

"We will consult closely on exchange markets. We reaffirm our previous exchange rate commitments including that we will refrain from competitive devaluations and we will not target exchange rates for competitive purposes," it said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Japan of exploiting a weak yen to give exports an unfair trade advantage, leaving Japanese policy-makers worried that Washington may upend a G20 agreement that gives Tokyo room to intervene in the currency market to stem any unwelcome yen spike.

But Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said he agreed with his U.S. counterpart Steven Mnuchin on the need to abide by the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy, including a warning that excess currency volatility is undesirable.

"We agreed that it was important to maintain the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy," Aso told reporters after meeting with Mnuchin on Friday on the sidelines of a Group of 20 finance leaders' weekend gathering.

G20 officials also played down European concerns that the U.S. administration would roll back the tougher "Dodd-Frank" U.S. financial reforms enacted after the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

"This concern is not big," Schaeuble said.

(Additional reporting by Michael Nienaber, Joseph Nasr, and Yann Le Guernigou in Paris; writing by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Balazs Koranyi and Hugh Lawson)
A Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) sign is seen outside of a branch in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 26, 2016. (REUTERS/Chris Wattie)

Following a series of articles from CBC where employees of Canadas Big Five banks (Scotiabank, BMO, RBC, CIBC and TD) allege that they are forced to upsell, cheat and outright lie to customers so they can hit sales targets for fear of losing their jobs, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada [FCAC] announced an investigation into the business practices of the financially-regulated financial sector beginning in April 2017.

But until the results of the investigation are acted upon and the government puts a stop to them, how can customers of these banks anticipate or protect themselves from these alleged unethical and illegal sales tactics?

Jonathan Bishop, research analyst in parliamentary affairs at the Ottawa office of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre [PIAC] says just say no.

Just say, No!

It sounds simple but thats the simplest answer I can provide, he says. Say no, Im not interested or say, Do you have something in writing that I can take home and review? Say anything to walk away from that conversation or potential commitment if you have no interest in the product being sold.

Always check your statements and make sure credit or overdraft amounts have not mysteriously increased from month to month and there are no fees or charges you dont recognize. If there are these red flags, you may need to lodge a complaint against the bank.

Of course all five of these banks have a complaints process thats outlined on each of their websites. Beyond that, all banks have an Ombudsmans Office designed to address complaints and take them up the corporate ladder. Even beyond that however, theres another layer of service specifically designed to address complaints independent from a banks corporate governance.

Some banks use the Office of Banking Service and Investment [OBSI] or another independent arbitration service that would be listed on the banks website that can take your complaint as well even after youve dealt with your bank and youve simply had enough, says Bishop.

Story continues

If that still doesnt work, you can always bring your complaint directly to the FCAC. But, as many of the employees at the banks in question admitted, they had increased credit and overdraft limits without the client even knowing thats what was happening, just to make sales targets. What do you do when not only are you signed up for a product or service you didnt want, but youre also signed up for a product or service you didnt even know you had?

Consent is king

Unfortunately, when the consumer doesnt know the bank has signed them up for something they didnt want, theres pretty much nothing they can do. Theres no specific tells a teller may give away and no specific lines they may use.

In certain instances, consent may not be given and disclosure may not be had. In that case, its very difficult for the consumer to be proactive, if theyre unaware, says Bishop.

Such instances underscore a systemic problem highlighted in the FCACs investigation announcement.

The law requires that in order to provide customers with new and expanded products or raise their credit limits, the financial institution must obtain the customers prior consent and disclose key information about the costs and charges for the products they are purchasing, says FCAC Commissioner Lucie Tedesco in the statement.

Financial institutions compliance with these rules is non-discretionary and that message must be disseminated from the board of directors on down to the customer-facing staff, the statement continues.

The scope of the FCAC investigation includes an examination of all financial institutions business practices as they relate to consent and disclosure, including a noting of all factors that may cause the financial institutions to not comply. For its part, the Canadian Bankers Association [CBA]  a financial lobbying group representing 61 domestic, foreign and foreign bank subsidiaries in Canada  fully supports the upcoming investigation.

The CBA and its member banks look forward to cooperating with the FCAC in the review announced todayAs they have with all previous reviews, Canadian banks will cooperate fully and constructively with the regulatorIts important that this review be completed in a timely way. We are confident that the banks strong policies, procedures and controls are functioning well, read part of a statement from CBA president Terry Campbell.

A Financial Consumer Code

The PIAC would like to see the typical review process kicked up a notch with the introduction of a Financial Consumer Code, which they have advocated for over the last few years.

We think that kind of a code would provide clear rules of the road between banks and consumers. In addition to a code, a chance to address complaints when they feel their trust has been compromised by those institutions. Basically, a complaint resolution service, says Bishop.

Unlike the current complaint process managed internally by the banks, this would be an impartial complaint manager that everyone can go to, which would hopefully simplify the process of lodging complaints and eliminate bias.

Our thinking is if there was a single document everyone can look at with very clear rules, Banks must do X, banks must do Y and consumers see evidence that tells them, I dont think you did X there, thats concerning, they can have an impartial individual or service take a look at all the evidence and decide if there were potential violations, says Bishop.
Since New Zealands mid-1800s gold rush, the quaint neo-classical facade of Eichardts Private Hotel has been a fixture of Queentowns downtown waterfront. The white lodge stands out not for its sizethe main building holds just five of the hotels 10 total roomsbut for its historic architecture. Last October, however, the iconic property added an eye-catching new wing with its modern Eichardts Building, the crown jewel of which is the $10,000-per-night the Penthouse by Eichardts.

Bringing the high-end luxury of New Zealands famous superlodges to charming Queenstown, the 2,580-square-foot suite is no doubt the South Islands most upscale accommodation, featuring two bedrooms, a gourmet kitchen, an outdoor kitchen, and a marble bathroom with a sauna. Ready to fulfill your every demand is a dedicated team, including a butler, a chef, and a driver (whose Land Rover is at your disposal day and night). But the amenity that makes the Penthouse by Eichardts truly worth its five-figure nightly rate is its sprawling terracethe largest in Queenstownwith views that stretch across Lake Wakatipu all the way to the picturesque mountains of distant Fiordland National Park.

Should guests choose to leave their breathtaking panoramas, they can enjoy plenty of perks farther afield, including an after-hours shopping experience at the Louis Vuitton boutique located in the Eichardts Buildings ground floor. When they do return to their spectacular suite, theyll find a bubbling hot tub with a bit of bubbly on the sideall with views that seem to never end. (eichardts.com)

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By Sweta Singh and Matt Scuffham

(Reuters) - Private equity firm KKR & Co LP (NYSE:KKR - News) and Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec announced plans on Friday to buy USI Insurance Services from Onex Corp (:ONEX.TO) for $4.3 billion, including debt.

The deal is the latest in a string of mergers in the insurance market, which has not grown quickly enough to support smaller brokerages.

"It's a sector we like," Caisse Chief Investment Officer Roland Lescure said in an interview. "It's quite defensive, it has high cash-flow generation, and it's a growing sector where there is consolidation taking place."

The Caisse, Canada's second-largest public pension plan, is buying businesses to help it diversify from public equity and fixed income markets.

The pension fund, which has net assets of more than C$270 billion ($202 billion), wants to have 30 percent to 35 percent of its investments in areas such as private equity, infrastructure and real estate in the next four to five years, compared with 28 percent currently.

"At a time when there are lots of fears and questions on the potential protectionism and border adjustment tax," Lescure said, "being exposed to small and medium companies is a safer way of exposing yourself to the U.S. economy."

Valhalla, New York-based USI had net debt of about $1.82 billion as of Dec. 31 and generated 2016 earnings of $353 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

USI provides insurance and employee benefit-related products to smaller U.S. companies. Its staff of 4,400 operates from 140 offices throughout the United States.

Canadian private equity firm Onex bought USI in December 2012 for $2.3 billion from Goldman Sachs Group Inc's (NYSE:GS - News) private equity arm, funding $702 million of that through equity and borrowing the rest, with debt placed on the company.

The biggest deal in the insurance brokerage sector last year was the merger of Willis Group Holdings and Towers Watson. It created Willis Towers Watson Plc (NasdaqGS:WLTW - News), a company with a $17 billion market capitalization.

Story continues

USI has been active in buying small regional rivals. It has been trying to beef up USI One Advantage, an interactive platform that helps it share information with sales consultants sitting in offices around the United States.

KKR and the Caisse said they expected the deal to close by the end of the second quarter.

(Reporting by Sweta Singh in Bengaluru and Matt Scuffham in Toronto; Editing by and Lisa Von Ahn)
Its Saint Patricks Day, and the markets want to see as much green as possible, yet theyre relatively flat. Investors are keeping a close eye on progress from the G20 meeting in Berlin, as the US dollar will be one of the main topics of discussion.

Here are some of the other stories the Yahoo Finance team is covering for you today.

MEETING AT THE WHITE HOUSE

President Donald Trump is getting set to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Itll be the first time the two meet. Both sides pretty much disagree on everything, from NATO to immigration. While on the campaign trail, Trump called Merkels refugee policy insane. Can we expect a big confrontation between the two?

APPLE MAKES MORE MOVES

Apple (AAPL) is making more moves in China. The company will open two more research and development centers in the country. Four centers in total will open up later this year. Apple is investing over $500 million in research in China. What are some of Apples major goals by opening up these R&D centers?

SINGING A NEW TUNE

Spotify is closing in on potential licensing agreements with several major record labels, thats according to the Financial Times. This would help the company move closer toward an initial public offering. The deal would cut the royalty fees Spotify pays for playing songs. What does this potentially mean for people that use Spotify?
retail_shopping_carts-16-9

Canadian Tire Corporation Limited (TSX:CTC.A) stock is on a roll in 2017 and is up 10.7% year to date ? 863 basis points better than the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

Hasn?t anyone told Canadian Tire investors retail is in a funk?

Well, whoever you are, I?m sure you?re invested in Canada?s most iconic retailer for exactly that reason ? in times of difficulty, it pays to own quality. Canadian Tire is just that.

Recently, I read in a Canadian retail blog about value-priced retailer Old Navy and the fact it was expanding its store footprint in Canada. Currently operating 78 Old Navy stores here, it?s planning to open eight in 2017 and another 14, perhaps more, by 2020.

We?ve already seen the huge growth trajectory that Dollarama Inc. (TSX:DOL) has been on the past few years as retail has skewed high and low, while virtually eliminating the middle. TJX Companies Inc. (NYSE:TJX), a U.S. multi-brand off-price retailer operating Winners, Marshalls, and Home Sense in this country, is also doing brisk business, highlighting Canadian shoppers? desire for good value.

Old Navy clearly wants to take advantage of this trend; given it?s the best-performing brand for Gap Inc. (NYSE:GPS), Old Navy?s parent company, I wonder if the value-priced division?s enthusiasm is rubbing off on its two other brands.

Gap stock has had an incredibly rocky 12 months, twice blowing through $30 only to retrace its steps into the low $20s or high teens. Currently trading around $24, I believe this is the retail stock nobody?s talking about but should be; here?s why.

In February, Gap reported its strongest quarter in a long time, registering a 2% same-store-sales increase, the first since CEO Art Peck took over two years ago.

?We believe fundamentally, there is a significant market share opportunity [ahead of us]. To read the headlines today, you?ll see the words dead, dying, sick. We are none of those. We are healthy and strong and have a plan and clear direction,? Peck said during Gap?s Q4 2016 conference call. ?But we can all pick our favorite company that?s no longer in business and when the lights go off and the windows get boarded over, that is market share that is made available to the rest of the industry. She?s not stopping shopping. She?s shopping someplace else.?

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He?s so right.

I just wrote about the Hudson?s Bay Co. (TSX:HBC) M&A rumours, which seem to have it buying everything but the kitchen sink. Former Neiman Marcus executive Steven Dennis made a very interesting observation in Forbes magazine; specifically, while Neiman Marcus generates 31% of its revenue from e-commerce, it comes at the expense of its brick-and-mortar stores, what he terms ?channel shift.?

That?s exactly what Peck is talking about.

In the Gap conference call, Peck reminded those listening in that the apparel business is still growing between 2% and 5% annually and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

It?s one thing if the industry is contracting, but that?s just not the case. Gap intends to go after market share both by taking it from retailers who close their doors and creating it through better merchandising and reasonable prices.

That?s why Old Navy is expanding in Canada. There?s market share to be had.

Globally, Old Navy has close to $7 billion in annual revenue and has grown sales for five consecutive years. It finished fiscal 2016 with fourth-quarter and December same-store sales growth of 5% and 12%, respectively. The rest of its business, I?ll grant you, wasn?t nearly as robust, but overall its business is headed in the right direction.

Earnings might not look so hot right now and into the first half of 2017, but come the holidays, things should be doing just fine.

What I see is a business that generated $1.2 billion in free cash flow in 2016 ? 37.7% higher than a year earlier, despite a second consecutive year of declining revenue. Its free cash flow yield is a very attractive 12.5% ? four times higher than iconic Canadian Tire.

As Warren Buffett says, ?Price is what you pay; value is what you get.? Gap provides far more value than Canadian Tire does at current prices.

Six "pro" strategies for today's highly uncertain market

Motley Fool Canada's $250,000-real-money-portfolio service, Motley Fool Pro, is currently closed to new members. But lead advisor Jim Gilles is doing something special for investors who are worried about the market and where it will head in 2017.

He's revealing the six strategies he uses in Pro to help members guardrail their portfolios and make money in up, down, and sideways markets.

For a limited time you can download this "Pro 2017 Survival Guide" free of charge by simply clicking here.

More reading

Fool contributor Will Ashworth has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Six "pro" strategies for today's highly uncertain market

Motley Fool Canada's $250,000-real-money-portfolio service, Motley Fool Pro, is currently closed to new members. But lead advisor Jim Gilles is doing something special for investors who are worried about the market and where it will head in 2017.

He's revealing the six strategies he uses in Pro to help members guardrail their portfolios and make money in up, down, and sideways markets.

For a limited time you can download this "Pro 2017 Survival Guide" free of charge by simply clicking here.

Fool contributor Will Ashworth has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Showing interest in what youll be paid too early in a job application process shouldnt doom you, but it may not endear you to a potential employer. (Getty)

If I do end up filling this position, how much do you think Ill be getting paid an hour? Taylor Byrnes wrote to a rep at SkipTheDishes, a Canadian food-delivery company, ahead of her second interview.

Judging by her decision to share the emails on Twitter, the reply from Skip The Dishes was not what Byrnes expected: Your questions indicate that your priorities are not in sync with those of SkipTheDishes. At this time we will not be following through with our meeting this Thursday.

SkipTheDishes did reach out to Byrnes and re-make their offer of a second interview, co-founder Josh Simair said in a media statement.

The email sent to Taylor was wrong and does not represent our teams approach or values. We are very disappointed in how it was handled, Simair said. We are very committed to our community, employees and continuing to grow and create employment opportunities in the Prairies.

But Byrnes tweet, which was retweeted nearly 5,000 times, highlights how the expectations of a younger generation of job seekers can bump up against the norms that companies have followed for some time. But it also shows that younger job seekers can be bolder about going after what they want when looking for work, says career expert Sarah Vermunt.

As a generation, I find theyre certainly more wiling to go after what they want, Vermunt, author of the book Careergasm: Find Your Way To Feel-Good Work, tells Yahoo Canada Finance about the youngest cohort of job seekers. Salary and benefits can be an important part of that equation for many workers, she says.

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I think  people are getting sick of being expected to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop, Vermunt says. Millennials are pegged as an entitled generation but this has nothing to do with entitlement. People work to earn a living.

Its not just the attitudes and practices of younger job-seekers that have changed; the working world around them is also undergoing significant shifts. For decades, 52 to 58 per cent of jobs have been full time, according to StatsCan figures, but the number of young workers in full-time positions has been steadily declining.

More than 12 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 24 are unemployed and more than 25 per cent are underemployed. And people are increasingly likely to be working in jobs that are part-time, contract, freelance, or otherwise precarious, and to lack the protections of benefits or a union.

The rules for applying for freelance, contract, or part-time jobs may be outside the norms expected for full-time, salaried positions. For example, many freelance writing jobs list a per-article rate up front. And applicants may also find the process itself frustrating. A survey released by Monster Canada in May 2016 found that 72 per cent found application systems confusing, 75 per cent considering job descriptions to be too vague, and 67 per cent had trouble finding job postings that appealed to them.

There may be some growing pains in terms of how the hiring process is changing, Vermunt says. What Im noticing, with my clients at least, is that theyre more unwilling to settle for things that are unfair, and I think thats a wonderful thing actually.

In the incident with SkipTheDishes, Vermunt says she can understand the reasoning of both parties. Salary and benefits is not something thats typically talked about until after the interview process, when youre given a job offer, she says. When a job posting doesnt provide that information, theres an unspoken expectation that it will be brought up when an offer is made.

At the same time, based on her posted email Byrnes seemed to bring up her questions about compensation in a way that was respectful and enthusiastic, Vermunt says, even if it broke from some norms about job applications.

Reactions to Byrnes post on social media were split. Some criticized the companys response, even saying they would now boycott SkipTheDishes, while others said that it was too forward to ask about compensation before the second interview. (Byrnes did not respond to a request for an interview.)

@feministjourney Questions about compensation and benefits should be answered before people have to ask @SkipTheDishes.  Michael Oman-Reagan (@OmanReagan) March 13, 2017

Regardless of who was right or wrong, the interaction can tell both parties something important about whether or not they are a good fit for each other, Vermunt says. There are a lot of competent and responsible employees, and a lot of fair and interesting employers, who would not necessarily fit well together. Particularly in a competitive job-seeking climate, the process of looking for a job is not just about whether or not a company thinks youre right for them, she says.

An interview process is a two-way street, Vermunt says. Its a good opportunity for them to get information about you, and its a good opportunity for you to get information about them.
The March 2 debut on the New York Stock Exchange was picture perfect: Shares in Snap Inc., the maker of the popular photo-messaging app Snapchat, soared by 44 per cent.

But two weeks later, the stock has lost its post-IPO glow. Some Wall Street analysts are now wondering whether Snap has true staying power, or whether it will prove just as fleeting as the disappearing messages at the core of its app.

Shares in Snap were priced at $17 US before the IPO, but started trading at more than $24 once stock markets opened on March 2. At market close on Friday, Snap shares were worth $19.54.

Of 11 analysts who cover the stock, according to Bloomberg, six have negative ratings on Snap and the rest are neutral. Reports from those analysts show why they're so ambivalent about the stock.

What it will take to make Snap a winner

Snap stock is "like a lottery ticket," wrote Needham & Company analyst Laura Martin in her analysis. For that ticket to be a winner, Snap's advertising strategy will have to take off.

Snap's core user demographic, aged 13 to 34, is "an advertiser's dream," wrote Martin. Those young users are also highly engaged with the Snapchat app, partly due to the temporary nature of content shared by their friends.

Disappearing messages and stories create "a sense of urgency for users to check the app more often," noted a report from research firm Trefis. That means lots of advertising opportunities.

"The average Snapchat user opens the app eight times a day and spends as much as 25 minutes on the app," said the Trefis report. A survey of Snapchat users by Mizuho Securities found that 79 per cent of respondents used the app more than twice a day, and 21 per cent used it more than 15 times a day.

Advertisers are paying attention. According to research from Shebly Seyrafi with FBN Securities, advertisers "intend to dramatically increase their spend on Snap in the near future."

Story continues

The big risk to Snap's business model

Advertisers may be calling, but for now Snap still isn't turning a profit.

If the company wants to build advertising revenue, it has to prove that it can get more and more people using the Snapchat app. Those users also have to engage with in-app ads, which might not appeal to young users.

"Snap mainly targets large brand advertisers, and these ads and products may or may not necessarily resonate with users," wrote Neil Doshi of Mizuho Securities. "Furthermore, most agencies and advertisers we spoke with still consider Snapchat an 'experimental' buy, and not a core ad platform."

The growth in Snapchat's daily average users "is weak in most major developed countries" like Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Japan, wrote analyst Victor Anthony with Aegis Capital.

If Snap can't build a larger user base, wrote Anthony, "advertisers will likely seek out alternative platforms where growth remains robust, such as Instagram, which benefits from Facebook's targeting abilities."

Facebook-owned Instagram has chased after Snapchat's lead with a "stories" feature, allowing users to create short digital narratives and share them with friends.

Some analysts expect Snapchat's youthful product will have a tough time attracting an older crowd. In his report, Seyrafi doubts the extent to which older users "will embrace the whimsical (some would say silly) product offerings that Snap provides."

What if someone acquires Snap?

Investors in Snap stock could potentially enjoy a windfall if the company gets bought out, depending on the price of such an acquisition. Facebook tried to buy Snap in 2013, offering $3 billion  only to be spurned by Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.

"There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this," Spiegel told Forbes Magazine about his decision. "I think trading that for some short-term gain isn't very interesting."

Seyrafi thinks Facebook could try again, and offer more than $20 billion this time.

"Remember that FB paid $21.8B for WhatsApp, a company which, although it had more users than Snap, was not generating any real revenue," wrote Seyrafi.

But Spiegel and his chief technology officer, Robert Murphy, still control the vast majority of voting shares in Snap. The company's dual-class stock structure ensures they would have the final say in any sale.

Seyrafi noted another potential suitor for Snap: U.S. communications giant Comcast, whose NBCUniversal division struck its own deal with Snap to buy about 15 per cent of Snap shares for about $500 million US during the IPO.

In the meantime, Snap has to keep its mercurial young users coming back for more, and that's no easy task.

"Young users (Snap's core audience) are often fickle and faddish," wrote Laura Martin of Needham & Co. "If they desert Snap for a new app in three years, it is unclear what Snap will be worth."
Here are some of the stocks the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Tiffany (TIF) shares are shining bright like a diamond in early trading. The upscale jewelry retailer provided an upbeat outlook for the year after it delivered a beat on both its top and bottom lines for the holiday quarter. The results were driven by strong demand in Japan and China and as the company cut costs and raised prices. However, Tiffany continues to struggle to lift sales in the US.

Adobe Systems (ADBE) continues to impress investors. The stock looks set to open at a fresh 52-week high after the software maker behind Photoshop and Illustrator reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for last quarter. Revenue jumped nearly 22% as demand for its Creative Cloud package of software tools remained strong.

After a rocky week, Valeant (VRX) is feeling some love from investors. Shares were sharply higher in early trading. ValueAct Capital Management is now the companys second-largest shareholder. The activist investor increased its stake in the embattled biotech firm by more than 5% by buying three million shares, according to an SEC filing. This comes after Bill Ackmans Pershing Square Capital Management sold its 10% stake in the company amid big losses earlier this week.

Were also monitoring shares of Snap (SNAP). It seems the IPO honeymoon phase is over for the company. The stock is trading slightly lower in early trading. The stock fell below $20 a share for the first time Thursday after the company was hit with another sell rating. The parent company of Snapchat has been pulling back from a peak of more than $29 a share on concerns about the companys high valuation and lack of profitability.
Question 16-9

Canadian investors are searching for top stocks to add to their TFSA portfolios in an uncertain market.

Let?s take a look at TransCanada Corporation (TSX:TRP)(NYSE:TRP) and Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY)(NYSE:RY) to see if one is more attractive right now.

TransCanada

TransCanada had a good 2016, and the positive momentum looks like it should continue.

Why?

The company went on the acquisition trail last year, buying Columbia Pipeline Group for $13 billion. The deal added important strategic assets in the Marcellus and Utica shale play as well as key natural gas pipeline infrastructure running to the Gulf Coast.

In addition, TransCanada topped up its development portfolio, which includes near-term projects worth about $23 billion. As these assets are completed and go into service, TransCanada expects cash flow to increase enough to support annual dividend hikes of at least 8% through 2020.

TransCanada is also hoping to get its Keystone XL pipeline approved by the Trump Administration and is still working on the Energy East project, which would carry Alberta?s oil to the Canadian east coast.

TransCanada pays a quarterly dividend that yields 4.1%.

Royal Bank

Royal Bank earned more than $10 billion in profits in fiscal 2016 and is on track to deliver even stronger results this year.

The company?s success lies in its diversified revenue stream with strong contributions coming from personal and commercial banking, capital markets, wealth management, and insurance operations.

Royal Bank is also growing its presence in the U.S. through its 2015 purchase of a California-based private and commercial bank, City National, for US$5 billion. The acquisition is already contributing to the wealth management earnings stream and provides Royal Bank with a strong base to expand its presence in the U.S. market.

Royal Bank has a strong track record of dividend growth. The current quarterly dividend provides a yield of 3.6%.

Is one more attractive?

Both companies should be strong buy-and-hold picks for a TFSA portfolio.

Story continues

That said, Royal Bank has rallied significantly in recent months, and a pullback might be in the cards in the near term. The difficult publicity issues now facing the Canadian banks should also be considered.

TransCanada currently provides a higher yield and probably offers better dividend-growth prospects over the medium term. As such, I would go with the pipeline and power company as the first choice today.

Six "pro" strategies for today's highly uncertain market

Motley Fool Canada's $250,000-real-money-portfolio service, Motley Fool Pro, is currently closed to new members. But lead advisor Jim Gilles is doing something special for investors who are worried about the market and where it will head in 2017.

He's revealing the six strategies he uses in Pro to help members guardrail their portfolios and make money in up, down, and sideways markets.

For a limited time you can download this "Pro 2017 Survival Guide" free of charge by simply clicking here.

More reading

Fool contributor Andrew Walker has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Six "pro" strategies for today's highly uncertain market

Motley Fool Canada's $250,000-real-money-portfolio service, Motley Fool Pro, is currently closed to new members. But lead advisor Jim Gilles is doing something special for investors who are worried about the market and where it will head in 2017.

He's revealing the six strategies he uses in Pro to help members guardrail their portfolios and make money in up, down, and sideways markets.

For a limited time you can download this "Pro 2017 Survival Guide" free of charge by simply clicking here.

Fool contributor Andrew Walker has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Students from Nova Scotia and across Canada are being given an opportunity to work on an archeological dig at a massive 19th century coffee plantation in Cuba.

The Angerona Coffee Plantation, a national historic site in Havana province on the western side of the island, was established in 1813 by a German businessman named Cornelio Souchay.

At its peak, the plantation had hundreds of thousands of coffee bushes worked by 450 slaves.

"When you walk around the site, you really feel the history," Saint Mary's University professor Aaron Taylor told CBC's Information Morning on Friday.

"The plantation existed for 70 years. People were born there and died there."

Joint effort of Cubans and Nova Scotians

Taylor is heading the trip, which takes place June 3 to June 17. It is open to all Nova Scotia university students, not just those attending Saint Mary's University in Halifax, and will be a joint effort with Cuban students and archeologists.

Cuban people see the plantation ruins as an important place, "a sacred place," Taylor said.

One task will be to excavate the slave barracks.

"We want to get an idea of how people lived. If they lived in family units or were segregated according to gender. We hope to be able to answer those questions," Taylor said.

"They didn't have much. The things they had they created, they modified."

The plantation's main mansion ruins are still standing, as are its watch tower, overseer's cottage and aquaducts.

Telling the story of people who didn't have a voice

It is a place of beauty despite its dark past, Taylor said.

"We want to bring a human story to a very dehumanizing system. Slaves were treated like animals, treated as chattel, like cows and chickens. We can help tell the story of people marginalized, who didn't have a voice."

The trip will benefit students as it "is important for young people to immerse themselves in another culture," he said.

"Right now, the world is becoming a place of 'us' and 'them.' Becoming friends with people in other countries  they stop being 'them.'"

Students who hope to join the dig can contact Taylor at c.aarontaylor@gmail.com. The deadline is March 31.
A Corner Brook mother is pleading for the return of her 21-year-old daughter, who she says has left Newfoundland and Labrador for a "cult" in Costa Rica.

Kayla Jean Reid, who went missing in February, has been seen in that country in a video posted by Eligio Bishop, also known as Natureboy, according to her family.

Tammy Reid said she's worried for the safety of her daughter, and believes she is being "brainwashed" by the man  who, through Facebook and YouTube, preaches that the sun manifested itself on earth to create black women, tells his followers not to trust their senses, and suggests that all people share one consciousness and identity.

"I think he lured her to come down," Reid told CBC Radio's Corner Brook Morning Show on Friday. "I more or less think he has her brainwashed."

Tammy Reid said her daughter left her home for St. John's around Feb. 23 on the pretense of going to a church retreat. Reid said she was told by one of her daughter's friends that she actually left to go to the St. John's airport early on Feb. 26.

A few days later, Reid said she realized that Kayla Jean was not coming home and she contacted police.

"Kayla was talking before about going down to another country with a group," she said. "I tried to talk to her about it but she didn't want to hear it ... she had to be talking to this Natureboy."

'Sun Ray'

The family spotted Kayla Jean Reid in a video posted by Bishop/Natureboy and his followers on March 3, where he speaks directly about the girl who then called herself Sun Ray.

After talking about how the sun manifested itself into human form to create black women, which he called the "archetype," Bishop said others were made after people strayed from their original path.

He said Kayla Jean Reid is an example of someone who has a "mutation" in her "hardware."

"This hardware that you are now looking at, this hardware is a mutation hardware from the archetype," Bishop said. "Hardware that are lower self, with the consciousness, the software of the higher self."

Story continues

The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said on Thursday it has been in contact with Kayla Jean Reid, and it is "no longer investigating this missing persons file."

Strange conversations

According to the family, police contacted Bishop through email and had a phone conversation with Kayla Jean Reid.

Afterwards, Kayla Jean called both her mother and her aunt, Glenda Buckle. Both women say the conversations were far from normal.

"I was has happy to hear that she was OK," said Tammy Reid. "But in the background you could hear Natureboy more or less telling her what to say."

"The conversation was very disturbing, she said  he was saying that 'they were her family'  and it was a very disturbing conversation."

Tammy Reid said Kayla Jean told her she wasn't coming home.

'Brainwashed'

"Kayla is not thinking clearly right now, I think he has her brainwashed and she is more or less doing whatever he says to do," Tammy Reid said.

Buckle added that the conversation was "very rehearsed." She's concerned, because she said Kayla Jean has a history of mental illness which makes her vulnerable.

"She's been manipulated into leaving everything. She has no record of a return ticket back," said Buckle.

Now that Newfoundland police say their missing persons investigation is over, the family says it is considering filing an international missing persons report.

Tammy Reid said they are keeping track of the group through watching the Facebook and YouTube videos  calling what she sees "not normal"  and said Eligio Bishop has not answered her messages.

CBC News also tried to contact the man and one of his followers, and has not received a response.

"We would like to [have] Kayla brought home." said Reid. "[Whether] Natureboy is going to do that or we're going to go to Costa Rica and bring her back home  But Kayla will be brought home."

A cult?

In the same video where he speaks directly about Kayla Jean Reid, Bishop addresses accusations that he is a cult leader.

"I am the cult leader to them. To whoever watches that doesn't know who they are or what they are or what one is, for I am them," he said.

"They are not conscious. One is not conscious of the fact that I am them. So in their unconsciousness, they see Natureboy and separate me from them .... and this is how you know these are demons. Or one's lower self. Because I am the only thing in existence."

Bishop uses Kayla Jean Reid's presence to rebut the accusation he is racist or prejudiced.

"I know that Kayla's not thinking clearly," said Tammy Reid. "I think the longer she stays down there, the more brainwashed she will be. And the more corrupted she will be."
By Steve Scherer ROME (Reuters) - Italy will host a meeting between European and North African countries next week in a bid to strengthen support for an agreement it struck with Libya to fight people smuggling as migrant arrivals surge. The prime minister of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Fayez al-Seraj, will meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and interior ministers from eight European countries including Germany and France on Monday. Last month Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help Libya fight people smugglers, a deal that was endorsed by European Union member states. But Libya is still far from stable. Two governments are vying for power - in Tobruk to the east and Tripoli to the west - and the country remains mired in factional fighting and lawlessness. The authorities in eastern Libya have rejected the deal struck between Rome and Tripoli. "I'm not so naive as to not understand the situation there," Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters. "But we cannot remain immobile and wait for the country to stabilize." He said the Libya agreement and next week's meeting were not just "talk", but strategic steps toward managing mass migration to Europe. So far this year more than 16,000 migrants - a 36 percent increase on the same period last year - have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy after Libya-based people smugglers piled them onto flimsy boats. As part of the deal, Italy and the EU have promised to fund migrant camps on Libyan soil, but they need U.N. agencies to help manage them. Those same agencies have said Libya is not safe for migrants. "Migrants and refugees in detention (in Libya) are held outside any legal process and in conditions which are generally inhuman. They are exposed to malnutrition, extortion, torture, sexual violence and other abuses," four U.N. chiefs said in joint statement last month. On Friday, Italy's opposition 5-Star Movement also took issue with the Libya agreement, calling it "a sham". In a statement, 5-Star lawmakers said Libya was too dangerous for Italy's diplomats, urging the closure of the embassy in Tripoli. Last week Tripoli was gripped by heavy fighting as armed groups allied with Seraj took over a compound that had been occupied by a rival leader, while forces in Libya's Oil Crescent battled for control of two major oil ports. EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and interior ministers from Algeria and Tunisia will also attend the meeting. (Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Richard Lough)
By Tsvetelia Tsolova SOFIA (Reuters) - European Union sanctions on Russia are hurting Bulgaria, which should improve ties with Moscow and defend its interests within the 28-member bloc, the leader of the leftist Socialist party said ahead of a March 26 parliamentary election. Kornelia Ninova, 48, who took the reins of the former communist party last year, saw its support almost double to about 30 percent after Russia-friendly Rumen Radev, backed by her party, won the presidency in November. Her party is now a key contender in the parliamentary election, running neck and neck with the centre-right GERB party which has been less critical of the European Union's stance on Russia. Ninova's Socialists seek a bigger role for the state in the economy as well as closer ties with Moscow, in contrast to GERB's platform to deepen ties with Brussels and pursue pro-market policies. The close party standings in the polls mean the outcome of the race is unpredictable and Bulgaria will most likely have another fragile coalition government. "The Bulgarian Socialist Party is against the extension of the sanctions against Russia because they hurt the Bulgarian national interest - the Bulgarian economy, agriculture, tourism," Ninova told Reuters in an interview. "We lost from these sanctions." "DOUBLE STANDARDS" In her campaigning, she has explicitly promised to try to block the sanctions, imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, next time they are put to an EU vote. No EU country can veto the sanctions extension, which requires only a qualified majority, but Bulgaria holds the EU's rotating presidency in early 2018, giving a platform for its views. "We are firmly for the European membership and future of Bulgaria ... But we expect the same towards Bulgaria. We do not accept double standards, Europe on two speeds and different attitude," she said. The Kremlin's most loyal satellite in the Cold War era, the country of 7.2 million remains a popular holiday destination for Russians, many of whom have bought property there including on the Black Sea coast. It is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its energy supplies and many Bulgarians feel a strong cultural affinity for the country, with which they share the Cyrillic script and Orthodox Christianity. Centre-right GERB party agrees that the sanctions are harmful for Bulgaria, but says Sofia should show its solidarity with Europe. It links any lifting of the sanctions with the observance of the Minsk agreements. The Socialists also want to revive some Russian-led energy projects like the Belene nuclear power plant. Bulgaria pulled out of the 10 billion euros project in 2012 because of costs and concerns over increased energy dependence on Kremlin. The party plans to set up a 500 million levs ($274 million) state fund to boost industry and increase incomes in the EU's poorest member state. The party pledges to increase pensions by an average 20-30 percent. [L5N1FQ0KR] The plans will be funded by an accelerating economy as well as a "draconian" fight against what Ninova calls "a parallel state" that deprives taxpayers of about 10 billion levs a year. (Editing by Radu Marinas and Dominic Evans)
"No gifts, just donate your blood."

That's what a Vancouver woman told her friends and family ahead of her birthday for a second year in a row.

Anna Lin held a belated birthday party on Thursday at the Canadian Blood Services clinic on Oak Street.

Twenty-seven partygoers noshed on cupcakes, posed beside balloons and rolled up their sleeves to donate blood.

Ryan Matheson was among those there to say thank you and to encourage potential donors.

He lost his mother, Ginny, to leukemia in February.

In the last seven months of her life, she received over 100 units of blood.

"It's hard to have her gone but to be able to thank donors for giving us the extra time, it's special," he said.

'Just bring yourself and your blood'

Lin says the idea to hold a party came to her two years ago prior to another birthday when she was repeatedly asked what she wanted as a gift.

After some reflection, she said she realized she needed nothing but wanted to help others who could use a hand.

"There are people who don't even have the basics to survive, to live  like blood, for example."

At the time, she had never donated blood but implored her friends and family to join her, saying, "don't bring anything for me, just bring yourself and your blood and then we can donate together and give together."

"Because that's what I really want for my birthday."

Matheson says it's good intentions like Lin's that kept his mother alive long enough for some "bonus time" with the family.

The transfusions gave them another Christmas and for her to see several of her grandchildren turn another year older, including the youngest who is five.

"What it meant for us, is that he got an extra year," he said through tears. "He now remembers her for who she was."

Lin was moved after hearing Matheson's story.

"We never get to meet the people who receive the blood ... it definitely encourages me to give more," she said.

With files from Vivian Luk and David Horemans
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New York, March 17, 2017Armed men attacked the Tripoli office of the Libyan TV channel Al-Nabaa and set the building on fire, according to journalists for the station, news reports, and the Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy group. The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on authorities in Tripoli to investigate the assault, bring the perpetrators to justice, and to safeguard the stations employees.

The attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the office at around 1 a.m. on March 15, then stormed the building and set it on fire, Adnan Darwish, a journalist with the station, told CPJ. He said the attackers also stole administrative records pertaining to station employees.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, and the motives behind it were not clear. The station briefly went off air after the incident, according media reports and an emailed statement from Al-Nabaa, which said that no one was injured.

Libya is currently divided between two rival governments, one in the western city of Tripoli and one in the eastern city of Tobruk. Al-Nabaas coverage is generally sympathetic to the Tripoli faction.

Hours after the attack, the Libyan TV channel Al-Raseefa, which is generally sympathetic to the Tobruk faction, published on its Facebook page the names and salaries of Al-Nabaa employees, calling the station terrorist media. An Al-Nabaa journalist, who asked not to be identified for fear of his safety, said that the TV stations employees have been repeatedly threatened since the attack, and that some were not sleeping at home.

The assault on Libyas Al-Nabaa television channel was an assault on press freedom, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said. We call on authorities in Tripoli to bring those responsible to justice and to protect the stations employees from future violence. We further call on Libyan media to cease putting other journalists in danger by posting their personal information online.

On March 9 Al-Nabaa broadcast a leaked audio recording of a conversation between Mahmoud al-Misrati, the owner of the daily newspaper Libya al-Jadeeda, and an unidentified aide to Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar, the head of the armed forces government in Tobruk. In the recording, the two discuss a campaign to portray groups that recently seized control of eastern Libyan oil facilities as terrorists. In a call with an Al-Nabaa reporter also broadcast on March 9, Al-Misrati confirmed the authenticity of the audio recording and accused Al-Nabaa of being run by terrorists.

Armed groups attacked Al-Nabaa last year because of its support of the Tripoli-based government, CPJ reported at the time.

Last week, authorities in Tobruk shuttered a radio station there after the station aired critical coverage of the Tobruk government. At least 11 journalists have been killed in Libya since conflict erupted there in 2011.
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Journalists in Britain are becoming increasingly alarmed by the governments apparent determination to prevent them from fulfilling their mission to hold power to account. The latest manifestation of this assault on civil liberties is the so-called Espionage Act. If passed by parliament, it could lead to journalists who obtain leaked information, along with the whistle blowers who provide it to them, serving lengthy prison sentences.

In effect, it would equate journalists with spies, and its threat to press freedom could not be more stark. It would not so much chill investigative journalism as freeze it altogether.

The proposal is contained in a consultation paper, Protection of Official Data, which was drawn up by the Law Commission. Headed by a senior judge, the commission is ostensibly independent of government. Its function is to review laws and recommend reforms to ensure they are fairer and more modern.

But fairness is hardly evident in the proposed law. Its implications for the press were first highlighted in independent news website The Register by veteran journalist Duncan Campbell, who specializes in investigating the U.K. security services.

At face value, the Law Commissions intention was sensible enough. It seeks to update archaic secrets laws originally enacted to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of government information prior to World War I.

Many peacetime prosecutions under those acts have proved controversial, not least when levelled against Campbell himself. (He was one of three men convicted in the ABC trial in 1978 for either communicating or receiving so-called classified information). However, the commissions proposed reforms considerably strengthen restrictions on journalistic inquiry.

According to the paper, anyone who communicates information deemed to prejudice the United Kingdoms safety or interests, and anyone who obtains or gathers it, will be regarded as having committed an offence. Moreover, it says that there will be no restriction on who can commit the offence. It will apply to journalists and their sources: be they politicians, bureaucrats, or concerned members of the public who stumble across alleged secrets.

As Campbell pointed out in his Register article, if the Espionage Act existed in 2013, it would have criminalized former editor-in-chief of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger, and members of his staff, for handling copies of documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Rusbridger, who is now head of the University of Oxfords Lady Margaret Hall, has registered his alarm at the proposed law, telling The Register it has been drafted without any adequate consultation with free speech organizations. [EDITORS NOTE: Rusbridger is a member of CPJs board.]

The Guardians former investigations editor, David Leigh, also criticized the plan It would, he wrote to the Law Commission, have an indefensible chilling effect on free speech and it will open the way to the criminalization of bona fide journalists for allegedly spying'.

Their concerns heralded a chorus of criticism from human rights bodies, civil liberties groups, former whistle-blowers, and many lawmakers. One critic quoted by The Guardian referred to it as a law better suited to a banana-republic dictatorship and a sign of an increasingly unfree society.

In response, both Theresas Mays government and the Law Commission stressed that it was an early draft of the proposed law change. Then the commission followed up by extending the public consultation period by a further month, setting a deadline of May 3.

One of the commissioners, David Ormerod, a professor of criminal justice at University College London, argued that the proposals included greater safeguards for whistle-blowers, adding, No final recommendations have been made and we want as many people as possible to be able to have their say. An unnamed government source quoted by The Guardian said that the proposed prison terms had been taken out of context. But the context, and the political climate, point significantly toward the arguments of those of us who believe the threats to freedom of the press in Britain are very real.

Last year, parliament passed into law the Investigatory Powers Act, nicknamed the Snoopers Charter, with the specific aim of extending the potency of the intelligence services by allowing the interception of communications and communications data. Its critics described it as the most extreme surveillance law in UK history and The Independent said it placed Britain under some of the widest-ranging spying powers ever seen. The law emanated from the Home Office at a time when May was Home Secretary. Now prime minister, her government possesses the power to monitor, intercept and store communications data gleaned from tens of millions of citizens.

Journalists opposed the law on the grounds that it enables the security services and the police to discover the sources of their stories. News outlets have already reported several instances of authorities using the laws previous incarnation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, to hack into reporters cell phones to find out how they were obtaining stories. A Metropolitan Police report revealed the force obtained phone records from the political editor at The Sun; Kent county police obtained phone records for a Mail on Sunday journalist and his source in 2012, despite a judge ruling that the source could remain confidential; and Cleveland police were forced to apologize earlier this year after unlawfully accessing phone records of two Northern Echo reporters.

The debilitating effect of such intrusion is obvious: sources will be too scared to communicate with journalists if they cannot speak to them in confidence.

The Espionage Act would add to authorities increased surveillance powers. As The Times of London reported, among its proposed provisions is to criminalize the disclosure of information that might jeopardize the countrys economic well-being or damage international relations. In other words, it is not overly far-fetched to imagine that leaks about the U.K.s sensitive Brexit negotiations with the European Union could land both journalists and their sources in prison for undermining the nations economic well-being.

The government will, of course, emphasize that the main reason for introducing the law is to combat terrorism. No sensible journalist would wish to oppose measures designed to protect the public. However, the Espionage Act in its current form has too few checks and balances to protect journalists as they go about their essential work on behalf of the public. At risk are the hard-won rights that have long been the foundation of Britains democracy.

Comments on the public consultation document can be registered here.
dpa-AFX

Die Energiekrise wird sich in diesem Jahr fur viele Gaste auch beim weihnachtlichen Festessen im Restaurant bemerkbar machen. Wegen des Krieges in der Ukraine und der Vogelgrippe sind Weihnachtsganse knapp, ihre Preise zuletzt deutlich gestiegen. Mehr als drei Viertel der Gastronomen erganzen ihre Ganse-Menus nach einer Branchenumfrage des Hotel- und Gaststattenverbands Dehoga deshalb um gunstigere Alternativen: Wild, Ente oder Rind sind dabei die beliebteste Wahl, teilte der Verband am Montag m
Executions have been set for (top row, from left) Kenneth Williams,

Jack Jones Jr., Marcell Williams, Bruce Earl Ward, and (bottom row, from

left) Don Davis, Stacey Johnson, Jason McGehee and Ledelle Lee.





The seven-member panel, by a 4-3 vote, declined to take up the case of Jason McGehee, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 kidnapping and murder of a teenager. The court did not offer an explanation for its ruling.





Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of the conservative southern state, has sparked controversy by announcing that the state plans to execute McGehee and seven other death row inmates over a 10-day period in April.





The accelerated schedule comes amid a shortage of death penalty drugs across the United States, with Arkansas's stock of midazolam, a sedative used to anesthetize inmates, nearing its expiration date.





Arkansas has not executed any prisoners since 2005, and no state has carried out eight executions in 10 days since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.





The eight inmates have joined another death row prisoner in challenging state authorities' protocol for lethal injections.





There are concerns that midazolam does not bring about sufficient unconsciousness in detainees, who may in fact suffer severe pain while being executed.





Two of the prisoners are set to be executed on April 17, two on April 20, two on April 24 and two, including McGehee, on April 27.





The prisoners' joint lawyer John Williams on Thursday denounced the "dangerous" timetable for the executions, which increased the "risk of substantial harm already present" in the lethal injection protocol.





"The compressed execution schedule, asking an unpracticed staff to administer this protocol twice a day for four execution days in rapid succession, creates an extreme risk of harm and botched executions," Williams said.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: Agence France-Presse, March 16, 2017
Chief prosecutor Aramis D. Ayala

MIAMI  In a startling denunciation of capital punishment in a state with one of the nations largest death rows, the new chief prosecutor in Orlando, Fla., said Thursday that her office would no longer seek the death penalty.





The decision by the prosecutor  Aramis D. Ayala, the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit  could have widespread repercussions in Florida if other prosecutors follow suit. Nationwide, support for the death penalty has steadily declined, along with the number of executions, and in Florida, years of litigation and legislative maneuvering have left the capital punishment system in turmoil





Backlash from other law enforcement officials was swift. The state attorney general, Pam Bondi, called Ms. Ayalas decision a blatant neglect of duty.









Although the Florida authorities have not carried out any executions since January 2016, the state has 381 prisoners on death row. Twenty-two of them were convicted in Orange or Osceola Counties, the two counties within Ms. Ayalas territory.





Ms. Ayala said that the death penalty had failed as a deterrent and that it did nothing to protect law enforcement officers. She also cited the length of time between sentencing and execution, which often exceeds a decade, and the costs of capital cases. I am prohibited from making the severity of sentences the index of my effectiveness, she said on Thursday. Punishment is most effective when it happens consistently and swiftly. Neither describe the death penalty in this state.





Seeking life sentences, she said, would guarantee that violent offenders will never be released.





They will never continue to drain resources from this state with decades of appeals, and we can offer families of the victims more closure and more certainty, she added.





As recently as Tuesday, Ms. Ayalas spokeswoman told The Orlando Sentinel that the office was seeking death sentences in six cases. By late Thursday morning, the office had reversed its stand, throwing into question the potential punishment in a high-profile case against Markeith Loyd, who the police said killed his pregnant ex-girlfriend and then gunned down an officer, Lt. Debra Clayton, as she tried to apprehend him.





After Ms. Ayalas announcement, Mr. Scott called on her to recuse herself from the case, but she declined. He then removed her from it, saying in a statement that she had made it clear that she will not fight for justice.





Ms. Ayala, the first black elected prosecutor in Florida, suggested that she had not made the death penalty an issue in her campaign last year because there was a hold on executions at the time.





I do understand that this is a controversial issue, but what is not controversial is the evidence that led me to my decision, she said. If I require the attorneys in my office to manage cases  their individual cases  based upon evidence, I must follow the same evidence-based approach when I implement policies.





Later, she issued a statement saying that she had spoken to the governor, but that he had refused to hear her out. She added that she would comply with any lawful order he sent.





Ms. Ayalas new approach angered many people in local law enforcement, including some officials with whom she is expected to work closely. They said the case involving Mr. Loyd, who is representing himself and whose judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf, warranted a death sentence.





If there was ever a case for the death penalty, this fits, Chief John W. Mina of the Orlando police said in an interview, adding that he was commenting only on Mr. Loyds case. If there is a reason we have a death penalty in the state of Florida, its for the more serious, heinous crimes, which need to have serious consequences. Anything short is disproportionate.





Lieutenant Claytons family did not respond to a request for comment.





Death penalty critics welcomed Ms. Ayalas new policy for her circuit, which has a population of about 1.6 million people and draws millions of tourists each year.





A powerful symbol of racial injustice has now been discarded in Orange County, Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida conference of the N.A.A.C.P., said in a statement. Ending use of the death penalty in Orange County is a step toward restoring a measure of trust and integrity in our criminal justice system.





Mr. Scotts decision to remove Ms. Ayala also provoked strong reactions. My God, is this a dangerous precedent, said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. Whenever the governor doesnt like the exercise of prosecutorial decision by an elected prosecutor, hes going to step in and appoint somebody else?





Mr. Simon said the governor had engaged in a very shortsighted abuse of authority.





Good and sufficient reason would mean an ethical problem or conflict of interest, he said. This is not the case here. The only reason he is using to remove the prosecutor is that he disagrees with the prosecutors judgment.





Others worried about Ms. Ayalas imposing a sweeping standard on all potential capital cases.





You have some question whether or not the prosecutor is properly exercising prosecutorial discretion, said George R. Dekle Sr., a former prosecutor and former University of Florida law professor. I think any time anybody facing any kind of charging decision says never, then they are not thinking too clearly.





Ms. Ayalas shift in policy came days after Mr. Scott signed a law intended to resolve constitutional concerns about the states death penalty. The law, which requires juries to reach unanimous agreement before imposing a death sentence, was the second time in two years that Florida tried to address court rulings casting doubt on capital punishment in the state.

Death by Non-Unanimous Jury

Florida's death chamber

In Florida, nearly 300 people have been sent to death row despite dissenting votes. Its up to state prosecutors to right that wrong.

Thursday, the newly elected state attorney representing Floridas Orange and Osceola counties spoke out publicly against the death penalty, promising not to seek it in future cases. It was a momentous stance for a prosecutor to take in a state that has long been extremely aggressive in sentencing people to death.





While I have discretion to pursue the death penalty, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interest of the community or the best interest of justice, Aramis Ayala said in a press conference. Floridas death penalty has been the cause of considerable legal chaos, uncertainty, and turmoil.

Ayala, Floridas first black elected state attorney, presides over the judicial circuit that includes Orlando. She is thus far the only prosecutor in the state to categorically refuse to seek the death penalty. Yet her pronouncement isnt the only reason Floridas death penalty is in a state of uncertainty. Other prosecutors in the state are now facing a serious dilemma about how to deal with the roughly 285 people on death row whose death sentences are in limbo.

Consider the case of Emilia Carr. In 2011, by a vote of 75, a Florida jury sentenced Carr to death. She had been in a tumultuous on-and-off relationship with a man named Joshua Fulgham when Fulghams wife was murdered. Fulgham was notoriously abusivepolice had previously arrested him for assaulting his wife and threatening to kill herand evidence indicated that he hatched the plan. Still, the jury in his trial recommended a life sentence. A narrow majority of Carrs jurors, on the other hand, recommended execution, despite a total absence of forensic evidence linking her to the murder.

Carr had led a difficult life. She was sexually abused by her father, who went to prison for the abuse. Carrs father also pleaded guilty to solicitation to commit murder against Carr and two other women.

Carr married young and had childrenshe was eight months pregnant with her fourth when she was sentenced to deathand by all accounts, she was a devoted mother. But Fulgham was dominating and cruel, and Carrs past made her an easy target. The jury at her trial never got to hear much detail about the trauma she had endured throughout her life. Still, even without the full picture of abuse and trauma, five jurors did not believe she should be sentenced to death.

Today, the 32-year-old Carr is one of the youngest women in America on death row. She lives in a solitary cell, where she spends nearly 24 hours a day. She does not see her four children.

Until recently, Florida was one of the only states that allowed a non-unanimous jury to sentence someone to death. But last October, the Florida Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to sentence someone to death without unanimous jury support. This week, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill requiring jury unanimity in death row cases.

Unaddressed in the new legislation were inmates such as Carr, whose death row sentences were decided under the old law. Now, Floridas 20 elected prosecutors must decide what to do about the 75 percent of death row inmates who were sentenced by non-unanimous juries. Should they be resentenced to life without parole, or should the state spend time and money trying to get unanimous juries to sentence them to death?

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: The New York Times , Frances Robles, Alan Blinder from Atlanta, March 16, 2017Source: Slate, Larry Hannan, March 16, 2017
Back to the Middle Ages: Watching a public hanging in Iran Reformists in Iran are under pressure, detainees face torture and abuse, and people are being executed at an alarming rate, the Pakistani human rights lawyer and United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran Asma Jahangir Reformists in Iran are under pressure, detainees face torture and abuse, and people are being executed at an alarming rate, the Pakistani human rights lawyer and United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran Asma Jahangir told the UN Human Rights Council on March 13 in Geneva.





Earlier, on March 8, the non-governmental organization Iran Human Rights (IHR), published its annual report on the death penalty in Iran for 2016. According to the report, Iran still has one of the highest numbers of executions in the world despite the fact that the number of executions for that year  at least 530  was 45 percent lower than 2015.





We welcome any reduction in the use of the death penalty, said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director and spokesperson of IHR. But unfortunately there are no indications that the relative decrease in the number of the executions in 2016 was due to a change in the Islamic Republic of Irans policy. Our reports show that in just the first two months of 2017 Iranian authorities have executed at least 140 people.





No Notable Improvement





Asma Jahangir delivered her written report to the council on March 7. She said she regretted that her study did not reveal any notable improvement in the situation of human rights in the country. As expected, Tehran immediately condemned the report, labeling it unjust and politically-motivated, and arguing that it set out to portray a gloomy image of the Islamic Republic. As announced several times, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not acknowledge the report prepared by the special rapporteur who has been missioned based on a politically-tainted and selective resolution of certain countries," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said.





Of the 530 people executed in 2016, Islamic Republic officials have only announced 232, or 44 percent, of them. Two hundred and ninety-six people, or 56 percent, were executed for drug-related charges and 142 were executed for murder. At least five of the executed were under 18 and at least nine women were hanged. Thirty-three executions were conducted in public spaces.





The only encouraging finding, according to IHRs report, was that the families of the murder victims forgave 251 murder convicts, saving their lives  a higher number than in 2015.





It appears that, following on from the nuclear agreement, European countries in particular have failed to apply appropriate pressure on Iran in response to the executions. In 2016, Amiry-Moghaddam told IranWire, officials of European countries announced twice that they wanted a new round of talks with Iran over human rights and especially executions. But it seems that during the three and a half years of Hassan Rouhanis presidency not much attention has been paid to human rights and executions during negotiations.





In response to criticisms from international organizations over the high number of executions in Iran, Islamic Republic officials usually argue that more than 90 percent of executions are carried out as punishment for drug-related crimes. But according to the IHR report, 56 percent were executed for drug-related crimes, while in 2015, 66 percent of the executions were drug-related.





The Stalled Bill to Reduce Executions





In October 2016, close to 150 Iranian lawmakers signed a bill to significantly reduce the number of people executed on drug-trafficking charges. On November 23, 2016, parliament agreed to speed up deliberations regarding the bill. But it faced stiff opposition from a number of judiciary agencies. Since then, Irans Drug Control Headquarters has slowed down the process.





Revolutionary courts were responsible for issuing at least 64 percent of the death sentences in 2016. The courts were established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution  at the time they were set up as temporary courts designed to deal with the officials of the former regime. More than 37 years later, they continue to operate, says the IHR report. Today, revolutionary courts handle anything that relates to security issues, such as cases involving political and civil activists, and other cases dealing with alleged corruption or drug-related charges. These courts are responsible for the vast majority of the death sentences issued and carried out over the last 37 years in Iran, the report says. The revolutionary courts are less transparent than the public courts (both criminal and civil) and their judges are known for greater abuse of their legal powers than other judges.





According to the Iran Human Rights group, revolutionary judges often deny access to legal representation during the investigation phase and prevent lawyers from accessing client files on the basis of confidentiality. The report also says that judges often claim that lawyers have insufficient qualifications to review certain files.





Blatant Examples of Cruelty





The IHR report outlines some of the most egregious examples from 2016. They include:





- In August 2016, 25 Kurdish prisoners of Sunni faith were executed after being charged with cooperating with militant Sunni groups. The death sentences were issued after trials lasting less than 15 minutes and without any possibility of defense. IHR has credible information that many of these prisoners had been subjected to torture to extract forced confessions, the report says.





- In violation of its obligations under international treaties, the Islamic Republic executed at least five juveniles.





Iran: Executing teenagers - Iran also carried out public executions and other barbaric punishments such as amputations, and blinding of eyes. Thirty-four people were hanged in public spaces, in front of hundreds of citizens, including children. - Iran also carried out public executions and other barbaric punishments such as amputations, and blinding of eyes. Thirty-four people were hanged in public spaces, in front of hundreds of citizens, including children.





- The crackdown on campaigners opposed to the death penalty intensified and several activists were sentenced to long prison sentences. Human rights activist Narges Mohammadi was sentenced to 16 years in prison, including 10 years for founding the LEGAM (Step by step to abolish the death penalty) campaign. The persecution of campaigner Atena Daemi was another example of harsh treatment of activists.





In her report, Jahangir also noted that Iran has reportedly executed the highest number of juvenile offenders in the world over the last decade. She urged the Iranian establishment to immediately and unconditionally prohibit the sentencing of children to death and to engage in a comprehensive process of commutation of all death sentences handed down on persons currently on death row for crimes committed under the age of 18."





She also reiterated calls made by her predecessor Ahmed Shaheed to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.





Dissolve The Revolutionary Courts!





The IHR reports points to the revolutionary courts as being one of the main perpetrators of unjust and repressive judiciary practices in Iran. In their future talks with the Islamic Republic, says Amiry-Moghaddam, European countries must demand the dissolution of the revolutionary courts while pursuing the question of executions in Iran.





Back to the Middle Ages: Public flogging in Iran He also expressed hope that Iranian lawyers and jurists would take up the demand to dissolve the revolutionary courts. Thirty-seven years after the revolution, he says, the revolutionary courts continue the same practices. Besides the fact that the defendants in these courts are deprived of their most basic rights, the judges have powers beyond ordinary judges. He also expressed hope that Iranian lawyers and jurists would take up the demand to dissolve the revolutionary courts. Thirty-seven years after the revolution, he says, the revolutionary courts continue the same practices. Besides the fact that the defendants in these courts are deprived of their most basic rights, the judges have powers beyond ordinary judges.





In the conclusion of her report, Jahangir reaches the same conclusion: The Special Rapporteur observes that profound legal and structural changes are required for any significant improvement of the human rights situation to take place in the Islamic Republic of Iran [she] is concerned that the administration of justice is undermined by the proliferation of judicial decision making bodies. In this respect, she draws attention to the recommendations made by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention following the visit it undertook in the country to abolish revolutionary tribunals and religious courts. She is also concerned about the lack of independence of the judiciary.





In December 2016, President Rouhani unveiled and signed a Citizens Rights Charter , guaranteeing many progressive rights for Iranians. But the charter has failed to make any difference to how the Iranian regime and judiciary work. It is unlikely that latest report by the UN Special Rapporteur will change this either, especially since Irans most senior officials have already condemned it and labeled it politically-motivated.

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Source: Iran Wire , Aida Ghajar, March 14, 2017
Nollywood actors are having it really good with the harvest of political and ambassadorial appointments in 2017.

Helen Paul, Prof Danbatta and Ali Nuhu at the unveiling as the Face of the Telecom Consumer

Versatile female entertainer Helen Paul has been announced as the new Face of the Telecom Consumer by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Tatafo as she is fondly known signed the contract on Wednesday, March 15, at the commissions head office in Abuja.

Helen Paul and Prof Umar Garba Danbatta

READ ALSO: Mercy Johnson is the latest SSA in town

In a statement from the NCC reads: Helen Paul the renowned comedian and actress who also signed on alongside Ali Nuhu as the NCCs Face of the Telecom Consumer, visited the Commissions Head Office in Abuja today (Wednesday) where she met the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta and other members of the Management team.

By these engagements, both Ali and Helen will now feature in handbills, flyers, banners, posters, TV appearances, radio jingles, as well as on memorabilia and other iconography materials designed by the Commission for its series of activities scheduled to sensitize and celebrate the telecom consumers as the most central stakeholders of the telecommunications industry in Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Mercy Johnson finally speaks on her political appointment

Ali Nuhu gets NCC ambassadorial appointments

PAY ATTENTION! Never miss a single gist! Download Legit.ng news app for android

The non-exclusive contract flagged-off the Year of the Telecom Consumer campaign in Abuja, which coincided with the global celebration of World Consumer Rights Day.

Speaking on her appointment, Tatafo said: I feel so honoured. It is a trust reposed on me by the management of NCC, and I promise not to disappoint them. I give thanks to God and my fans for their unflinching support.

Helen Paul is a comedian known more as Tatafo for her child-like comedy. She is also an actress of repute. On his own part, Aliu Nuhu is one of the celebrated Kannywood actors who have been able to cross over to core Nollywood sector of Nigerian movie industry.

Meanwhile, actress Ego Boyo has been elected 60th president of International Women Society. She was inaugurated on Tuesday, March 14.

Source: Legit.ng
Sophia Antipolis, 15 March 2017: Painkillers considered harmless by the general public are associated with increased risk of cardiac arrest, according to research published today in the March issue of European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.1

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are among the most commonly used drugs worldwide and some, including ibuprofen, are available over the counter.

"Allowing these drugs to be purchased without a prescription, and without any advice or restrictions, sends a message to the public that they must be safe," said author Professor Gunnar H. Gislason, professor of cardiology at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Denmark. "Previous studies have shown that NSAIDs are related to increased cardiovascular risk which is a concern because they are widely used."

The current study investigated the link between NSAID use and cardiac arrest. All patients who had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Denmark between 2001 and 2010 were identified from the nationwide Danish Cardiac Arrest Registry. Data was collected on all redeemed prescriptions for NSAIDs from Danish pharmacies since 1995. These included the non-selective NSAIDs (diclofenac, naproxen, ibuprofen), and COX-2 selective inhibitors (rofecoxib, celecoxib).

A case-time-control design was used to examine the association between NSAID use and cardiac arrest. Each patient served as both case and control in two different time periods, eliminating the confounding effect of chronic comorbidities. Use of NSAIDs during the 30 days before cardiac arrest (case period) was compared to used of NSAIDs during a preceding 30 day period without cardiac arrest (control period).

Information was not obtained on over-the-counter drugs. Ibuprofen is the only over-the-counter NSAID in Denmark and is limited to small packages of 200 mg dosages. As patients were their own control, any underestimation of ibuprofen use should be equally distributed between the case and control periods.

A total of 28 947 patients had an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Denmark during the ten year period. Of these, 3 376 were treated with an NSAID up to 30 days before the event. Ibuprofen and diclofenac were the most commonly used NSAIDs, making up 51% and 22% of total NSAID use, respectively.

Use of any NSAID was associated with a 31% increased risk of cardiac arrest. Diclofenac and ibuprofen were associated with a 50% and 31% increased risk, respectively. Naproxen, celecoxib and rofecoxib were not associated with the occurrence of cardiac arrest, probably due to a low number of events.

"The findings are a stark reminder that NSAIDs are not harmless," said Professor Gislason. "Diclofenac and ibuprofen, both commonly used drugs, were associated with significantly increased risk of cardiac arrest. NSAIDs should be used with caution and for a valid indication. They should probably be avoided in patients with cardiovascular disease or many cardiovascular risk factors."

NSAIDs exert numerous effects on the cardiovascular system which could explain the link with cardiac arrest. These include influencing platelet aggregation and causing blood clots, causing the arteries to constrict, increasing fluid retention, and raising blood pressure.

Professor Gislason said: "I don't think these drugs should be sold in supermarkets or petrol stations where there is no professional advice on how to use them. Over-the-counter NSAIDs should only be available at pharmacies, in limited quantities, and in low doses."

"Do not take more than 1200 mg of ibuprofen per day," he continued. "Naproxen is probably the safest NSAID and we can take up to 500 mg a day. Diclofenac is the riskiest NSAID and should be avoided by patients with cardiovascular disease and the general population. Safer drugs are available that have similar painkilling effects so there is no reason to use diclofenac."

Professor Gislason concluded: "The current message being sent to the public about NSAIDs is wrong. If you can buy these drugs in a convenience store then you probably think 'they must be safe for me'. Our study adds to the evidence about the adverse cardiovascular effects of NSAIDs and confirms that they should be taken seriously, and used only after consulting a healthcare professional."

###
English Finnish

Nokia Corporation

Stock Exchange Release

March 17, 2017 at 8.30 EET (CET +1)

Nokia announces changes in its organization and Group Leadership Team to accelerate the execution of company strategy



Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced changes in its organizational structure and Group Leadership Team (GLT), effective from April 1, 2017.

"These changes are designed to accelerate the execution of our strategy," said Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri. "They will strengthen our ability to deliver strong financial performance, drive growth in services, meet changing customer demands in mobile networks, achieve our cost saving and ongoing transformation goals, and enable strategic innovation across our networks business."

The organizational changes announced today include the separation of Nokia's current Mobile Networks business group into two distinct, but closely linked, organizations: one focused on products and solutions, called Mobile Networks, and the other on services, called Global Services. In addition, the company's Chief Innovation and Operating Officer (CIOO) organization will be split, with its current operating activities moved to a newly-appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) organization, innovation activities to Nokia's Chief Technology Officer and incubation to Nokia's Chief Strategy Officer.

Leadership changes announced today include the following:

Marc Rouanne, currently Chief Innovation and Operating Officer, will become President of the Mobile Networks business group, responsible for mobile products and solutions, including 4G, 5G, cloud core, small cells and other advanced mobile solutions. Rouanne will remain on the GLT, reporting to Suri.

Igor Leprince, currently Executive Vice President of Global Services, will take the role of President of Global Services, a new business group comprised of the Services organization that currently resides within the existing Mobile Networks business group, including company-wide managed services. Leprince will join the GLT as a new member, reporting to Suri.

Monika Maurer, currently Chief Operating Officer of Fixed Networks, will assume the position of Group COO, responsible for Nokia's operating model, Global Operations (manufacturing and supply chain), procurement, implementation of cost saving and ongoing transformation activities, information technology, real estate, and quality. Maurer will join the GLT as a new member, reporting to Suri.

Marcus Weldon, currently President of Nokia Bell Labs and Chief Technology Officer, will retain those responsibilities and join the GLT as a new member, reporting to Suri.

Kathrin Buvac, Chief Strategy Officer, will assume additional responsibilities for incubation of select new business opportunities, and Barry French, Chief Marketing Officer, will assume additional responsibilities for Health, Safety, Security and Environment. They will both remain on the GLT, reporting to Suri.

With the integration of Alcatel-Lucent largely complete, Samih Elhage has decided to leave Nokia to pursue new opportunities. Elhage will continue in his current role and as a member of the GLT until April 1, 2017, and will remain as an advisor to the company through May 31, 2017.

"From helping lead the transformation at Nokia Siemens Networks and creating a disciplined operating model that remains a competitive advantage, to being one of the driving forces behind the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent and its fast and successful integration, Samih's contributions to Nokia have been remarkable," said Suri. "He has been a close friend and advisor through times both good and bad, and I fully support his desire for a change."

"I am proud of what I was able to accomplish during my time at Nokia and leave confident that the company is extremely well-positioned for the future," said Elhage.

As a result of these changes, all of which are effective from April 1, 2017, the Nokia GLT will consist of the following members: Rajeev Suri, Kristian Pullola, Monika Maurer, Basil Alwan, Bhaskar Gorti, Federico Guillen, Igor Leprince, Marc Rouanne, Ashish Chowdhary, Hans-Jurgen Bill, Kathrin Buvac, Barry French, Maria Varsellona and Marcus Weldon.

Additional background on the new members of the GLT can be found at www.nokia.com/en_int/investors/corporate-governance/group-leadership-team

The company will continue to report financial information for Ultra Broadband Networks, IP Networks and Applications and Nokia Technologies. Ultra Broadband Networks will be composed of the Mobile Networks, Global Services and Fixed Networks business groups. IP Networks and Applications will continue to be composed of the IP/Optical Networks and Applications & Analytics business groups.



About Nokia

Nokia is a global leader innovating the technologies at the heart of our connected world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry's most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing.





From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com

Media Enquiries:

Nokia

Communications

Tel. +358 (0) 10 448 4900

Email: press.services@nokia.com

Forward-Looking Statements

It should be noted that Nokia and its businesses are exposed to various risks and uncertainties and certain statements herein that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding: A) our ability to integrate Alcatel-Lucent into our operations and achieve the targeted business plans and benefits, including targeted synergies in relation to the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent; B) expectations, plans or benefits related to our strategies and growth management; C) expectations, plans or benefits related to future performance of our businesses; D) expectations, plans or benefits related to changes in organizational and operational structure as well as changes in our Group Leadership Team; E) expectations regarding market developments, general economic conditions and structural changes; F) expectations and targets regarding financial performance, results, operating expenses, taxes, currency exchange rates, hedging, reportable segments, cost savings and competitiveness, as well as results of operations including targeted synergies and those related to market share, prices, net sales, income and margins; and G) statements preceded by or including "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "foresee," "sees," "target," "estimate," "designed," "aim," "plans," "intends," "focus," "continue," "project," "should," "will" or similar expressions.

These statements are based on management's best assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it. Because they involve risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from the results that we currently expect. Factors, including risks and uncertainties that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to: 1) our ability to execute our strategy, sustain or improve the operational and financial performance of our business and correctly identify and successfully pursue business opportunities or growth; 2) our ability to achieve the anticipated benefits, synergies, cost savings and efficiencies of the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition, and our ability to implement our organizational and operational structure as well as changes in our Group Leadership Team efficiently; 3) general economic and market conditions and other developments in the economies where we operate; 4) our ability to manage and improve our financial and operating performance, cost savings, competitiveness and synergies after the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent; and 5) our ability to retain, motivate, develop and recruit appropriately skilled employees, as well as the risk factors specified on pages 69 to 87 of our annual report on Form 20-F filed on April 1, 2016 under "Operating and financial review and prospects-Risk factors", and in Nokia's other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Other unknown or unpredictable factors or underlying assumptions subsequently proven to be incorrect could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent legally required.
Sequa Petroleum N.V. (the "Company") today announces that consultation procedures with Tellus Petroleum AS ("Tellus") employee representatives have concluded and Tellus board and shareholder meetings have resolved to commence the Tellus liquidation process in accordance with the Norwegian Companies Act.

As stated in the Company's press release of 9 February 2017, the cessation of its business in Norway, now followed by the commencement of liquidation, constitutes under article 10 (g) of the Terms and Conditions of the Bonds a potential default of the Bonds.

The Company expects this potential default, together with the potential default related to the outstanding Q4 2016 Bond coupon as stated in the Company's press release of 14 November 2016, to be resolved with Sapinda's support as the Company understands that the required majority of the Bonds is held by Sapinda and affiliates.

While amounts received to date have not matched the timing or quantum requested, the Company currently expects to be able to draw sufficient funds from its convertible loan facilities with Sapinda Invest Sarl and Sapinda Asia Limited to enable it to continue to trade and complete the liquidation of Tellus.

The net funds expected from the repatriation of liquidated assets together with debt restructuring and possibly new equity and/or debt funds will enable the Company to progress selected high quality appropriately sized acquisition targets of production and development assets elsewhere that are value-accretive and provide cash flow.

Contacts:

Jacob Broekhuijsen, Chief Executive Officer

+44(0)203-728-4450 or info@sequa-petroleum.com
Amsterdam, 17 March 2017 (Regulated Information) --- The Supervisory Board of AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. ("AMG", EURONEXT AMSTERDAM: "AMG") resolved during its meeting on March 17, 2017 to make the following changes to its composition.

At the Annual Meeting on May 4, 2017 in Amsterdam, the Supervisory Board will nominate for appointment by the General Meeting of Shareholders, Mrs. Suzanne Rich Folsom and Mr. Willem van Hassel as new (independent) Supervisory Board members. Mrs. Folsom is a United States citizen and currently serves as the General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and SVP-Government Affairs, and is a member of the Executive Team, at the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. van Hassel is a Dutch citizen, senior lawyer and Dutch corporate governance expert. Full details of the Agenda of the Annual Meeting and the CV's of Mrs. Folsom and Mr. van Hassel can be found on AMG's website as of March 23, 2017, when AMG will publish the Agenda of its Annual Meeting to be held on May 4, 2017 in Amsterdam.

Mr. Martin Hoyos, who has been a Supervisory Board member since 2009, and chaired the Audit Committee since 2013, has requested to step down at the end of his term in May 2017 in view of other priorities and is not available for re-appointment. The Supervisory Board wishes to thank Mr. Hoyos for his dedication and services and his leadership of the Audit Committee during the past four years, and wishes him well in his future endeavors.

Furthermore, Mr. Petteri Soininen has requested to step down after having served on the Supervisory Board since 2015. Mr. Soininen joined the Supervisory Board in 2015 as non-independent nominee of AMG's largest shareholder, RWC European Focus Master Inc. (RWC), after RWC had entered into a Relationship Agreement with AMG. The Relationship Agreement comes to an end after the General Meeting of Shareholders on May 4, 2017 and Mr. Soininen wishes to retire as a member of the Supervisory Board on that date. The Supervisory Board wishes to thank Mr. Soininen for his dedication and services and wishes him well in his future endeavors.

During the period that Messrs. Hoyos and Soininen were members of the Supervisory Board, AMG has made important strategic decisions which have been positively reflected in AMG's share price. The Supervisory Board is grateful for the services of Messrs. Hoyos and Soininen as members of the Supervisory Board and wishes to thank them for their valuable insights and contributions.

This press release contains inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation.

This press release contains regulated information as defined in the Dutch Financial Markets Supervision Act (Wet op het financieel toezicht).

About AMG

AMG is a global critical materials company at the forefront of CO 2 reduction trends. AMG produces highly engineered specialty metals and mineral products and provides related vacuum furnace systems and services to the transportation, infrastructure, energy, and specialty metals & chemicals end markets.

AMG produces aluminum master alloys and powders, titanium alloys and coatings, ferrovanadium, natural graphite, chromium metal, antimony, tantalum, niobium and silicon metal. AMG Engineering designs and produces vacuum furnace equipment and systems used to produce and upgrade specialty metals and alloys for the transportation, automotive, infrastructure, and energy markets.

With approximately 3,000 employees, AMG operates globally with production facilities in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Czech Republic, United States, China, Mexico, Brazil and Sri Lanka, and has sales and customer service offices in Russia and Japan (www.amg-nv.com).

For further information, please contact:

AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. +1 610 293 5804

Steve Daniels

Senior Vice President

sdaniels@amg-nv.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
Panama Jack launches new collection with furniture supplier

United States

A U.S. casual home furnishings supplier has announced new licensing agreement with a leather upholstery specialist for the launch of new product lines under the Panama Jack brand.

Panama Jack, a U.S. based company that has built a powerful brand and loyal following with product offerings synonymous with a carefree beach lifestyle, has announced new licensing agreements with upholstery supplier, Leather Italia USA, to launch new product lines in April.

According to Kim Manna, CEO, Panama Jack, the company continues to expand in innovative, new directions that provide our customers with fun, new ways to experience our relaxed-lifestyle brand.

Theres a tremendous synergy between the Panama Jack and Leather Italia brands, said Mike Campbell, CEO and President, Leather Italia. Its relevant not only to the products launch, but also to the products development going into the future, he added.

Leather Italia USA has created a line of contemporary and traditional upholstered furniture for Panama Jack. The Georgetowne Collection features 20 styles of chairs and sofas. Founded by Campbell in 1997, Leather Italia USA aims to create and offer the best value for quality leather furniture.

Source: Home Accent Today
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 ...
If you haven't heard the news, I am leaving The Post to go to CNN!!!

I'll be doing a lot of the same stuff I do here there -- but just with more TV. And I am hoping to set up a chat there too -- so stay tuned and follow my Twitter feed for all the latest.

Anyway, it's been a massive pleasure to do these chats weekly-ish for the past 8 years or so. This will be the last one at The Post.

Let's do this!
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Americans have been saying more often: Honey, not tonight.

And that has been especially true for married couples and older adults, according to new study out of San Diego State University.

In the analysis by psychology professor Jean Twenge, people in the United States on average had sex about nine fewer times per year from 2010-14 than they did during the peak period of 1995-99, according to the nation's leading survey of Americans' behaviors and attitudes.

The survey reported that since 1999, there has been an accelerating decline in sexual activity that culminated with the largest drop between 2010 and 2014, the most recent period of data available.

Americans 50 to 59 showed the largest decrease in sex; the rate for that group fell by more than 10 instances of intercourse per year during the comparison time period.

Another demographic that had a notable drop: married couples. Their sexual activity decreased by 10.89 instances per year, compared with 6.6 for the never married.

In terms of education levels, Americans with a high school degree and their college-educated counterparts both experienced declines in sexual activity. But the college-educated category had a bigger drop: 14.9 fewer instances each year versus 6.8 for the other group.

And as for gender: The decline in sex was about evenly split among men and women.

The data was collected by the annual General Social Survey, a nationally representative poll of more than 26,000 Americans conducted since 1989. Among the questions asked every year is this one: "About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?"

While such a query might seem to make people a little uncomfortable, especially when asked over the phone by a stranger, the vast majority of respondents disclosed their level of sexual activity. On average, only 5.7 percent of respondents have refused to answer that question over the decades.

2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
New research suggests that an alternative to warfarin, when given at a low dose to dialysis patients, can be maintained in the blood at safe levels for potentially preventing strokes. The findings, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), indicate that additional research is warranted on the benefits of apixaban in patients with kidney failure.

Kidney failure patients on dialysis have a very high prevalence of atrial fibrillation, a common heart arrhythmia. As a result, they are at higher risk of stroke than the general population. The blood thinner warfarin prevents nearly two thirds of strokes in the general population of patients with atrial fibrillation, but because its effectiveness in dialysis patients is unclear, it is important to test alternative anticoagulants.

A team led by Thomas Mavrakanas, MD and Mark Lipman, MD (Jewish General Hospital at McGill University, in Canada) assessed the potential of apixaban, an oral drug that more directly inhibits coagulation than warfarin. For the study, 7 patients received a low dose of apixaban (2.5 mg) twice daily.

When the researchers collected blood samples, they found significant accumulation of the drug between day 1 and 8. When apixaban levels were monitored hourly during dialysis, only 4% of the drug was removed. After a 5-day washout period, 5 patients received the currently recommended dose of 5 mg of apixaban twice daily for 8 days. This led to dangerously high blood levels of the drug.

"This dosage should be avoided in patients on dialysis. On the contrary, drug exposure with the reduced dose of 2.5 mg twice daily may be considered in patients on dialysis with atrial fibrillation," said Dr. Mavrakanas, who is currently a research fellow at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. "No clinical data are yet available, however, and more evidence is necessary before recommending this drug at the 2.5 mg twice daily dose for stroke prevention in patients on dialysis with atrial fibrillation."

More information: "Apixaban pharmacokinetics at steady state in hemodialysis patients," "Apixaban pharmacokinetics at steady state in hemodialysis patients," DOI: 10.1681/ASN.2016090980
High grade dysplasia (carcinoma in situ) in the uterine cervix. The abnormal epithelium is extending into a mucus gland to the left of centre. This disease can progress to invasive cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) of the cervix. Credit: Haymanj/public domain

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) today issued a clinical practice guideline on human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for the prevention of cervical cancer. This is the first guideline on primary prevention of cervical cancer that is tailored to multiple regions of the world with different levels of socio-economic and structural resource settings, offering evidence-based guidance to health care providers worldwide.

The guideline includes specific recommendations according to four levels of resource settings: basic, limited, enhanced and maximal. The levels pertain to financial resources of a country or region, as well as the development of its health systemincluding personnel, infrastructure and access to services. The guideline complements ASCO's two other global, resource-stratified guidelines on cervical cancer, also stratified to these four levels of resources.1,2

Key guideline recommendations:

In all environments and independent of the resource settings, two doses of human papillomavirus vaccine are recommended for girls ages 9 to 14 years, with an interval of at least 6 months and up to 12 to 15 months between doses.

Girls who are HIV positive should receive three doses.

For maximal and enhanced resource settings:

If girls are 15 years or older and have received their first dose before age 15, they may complete the two-dose series;

If they have not received the first dose before age 15, they should receive three doses;

In both scenarios vaccination may be given through age 26 years.

For limited and basic resource settings: if sufficient resources remain after vaccinating girls 9 to 14 years, girls who received one dose may receive additional doses between ages 15 and 26 years.

Vaccination of boys: in all settings, boys may be vaccinated, if there is at least a 50% coverage in priority female target population, sufficient resources, and such vaccination is cost effective.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, with less developed regions suffering a disproportionate burden from the disease. In fact, 85% of cervical cancer diagnoses and 87% of cervical cancer deaths occur in less developed regions, including parts of Africa and Latin America.

"Because resource availability varies widely, both among and within countries, we need to adjust strategies to improve access to HPV vaccination everywhere," said Silvia de Sanjose, MD, PhD, co-chair of the Expert Panel that developed the guideline and head of the Cancer Epidemiology Research Program at Institut Catala d'Oncologia in Barcelona, Spain. "This guideline is unique in offering cervical cancer vaccination recommendations that can be adapted to different resource levels and we expect it to have a major impact on the global health community."

HPV infection causes virtually all cervical cancers in the world. Although it may also lead to genital warts and certain other cancers, cervical cancer is by far the most common severe condition related to HPV infection. Unlike other existing HPV vaccination guidelines, ASCO's guideline focuses on the use of HPV vaccination specifically for the prevention of cervical cancer.

"Although HPV vaccine has been around for more than a decade, the uptake of the vaccine has been less than ideal in many places, including in high-resource countries such as the United States," said Silvina Arrossi, PhD, co-chair of the Expert Panel that developed the guideline and an official and researcher at the Instituto Nacional del Cancer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "As an organization of cancer doctors, ASCO continues to endorse HPV vaccination programs and efforts to help spare more women around the world from this very difficult cancer."

Guideline Methodology

The guideline recommendations were developed by a multinational and multidisciplinary panel of oncology, obstetrics/gynecology, public health, cancer control, epidemiology/biostatistics, health economics, behavioral/implementation science, and patient advocacy experts, including some of the world's foremost research leaders on HPV and HPV vaccines.

The Expert Panel reviewed relevant literature published from 1966 to 2015, including systematic reviews, existing guidelines, and cost-effective analyses. This guideline reinforces selected recommendations offered in the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, National Advisory Committee on Immunization guideline (Canadian), German guidelines, and Immunise Australia guideline.

More information: The Primary Prevention of Cervical Cancer: American Society of Clinical Oncology Resource-Stratified Clinical Practice Guideline was published today in the Journal of Global Oncology, and is available at The Primary Prevention of Cervical Cancer: American Society of Clinical Oncology Resource-Stratified Clinical Practice Guideline was published today in the Journal of Global Oncology, and is available at www.asco.org/rs-cervical-cance  imary-prev-guideline along with supplementary materials. 1. Jeronimo J, et al. Secondary Prevention of Cervical Cancer: ASCO Resource-Stratified Clinical Practice Guideline. Journal of Global Oncology - published online before print October 28, 2016 2. Chuang LT, et al. Management and Care of Women With Invasive Cervical Cancer: American Society of Clinical Oncology Resource-Stratified Clinical Practice Guideline. Journal of Global Oncology 2, no. 5 (October 2016) 311-340.
Should a military doctor obey an order to not treat an enemy combatant? Or certify a sick soldier as fit to fight? Should a nurse take part in interrogations? Ride along on medical caravans to build trust with locals? Violate patient privacy for military ends? These and other questions are being studied by Canadian researchers with the Ethics in Military Medicine Research Group, led by University of Montreal bioethicist Bryn Williams-Jones with colleagues at McGill and McMaster universities.

Their latest paper, published in December in the winter issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, compares the ethics codes of the Canadian Medical Association and the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. At issue: the ongoing debate over the "dual loyalty" of military healthcare professionals' and whether the two codes - civilian and military - are "necessarily incompatible."

"To put it bluntly, how can the military profession, whose mission of defending state interests can involve the use of deadly force, be compatible with the medical profession whose primary mission is to heal and save lives?" asks lead author Christiane Rochon. Her conclusion, with co-author Williams-Jones, her PhD thesis supervisor: The two codes are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they support each other, with the military one turning out to be even more comprehensive than the medical profession's.

The researchers studied the issue for three years, interviewing over 50 Canadian military health professionals - physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, medical technicians, almost all of them high-ranking officers. "We wanted to understand the perspectives of health professionals working in a range of very challenging environments, from combat missions to humanitarian and peacekeeping missions," Williams-Jones told UdeM Nouvelles.

"They have a lot of tools to help them think through the ethical challenges they face, but those tools are not specifically adapted to their role as health professionals. As non-combatants they face different sorts of challenges." For instance, what is a military physician to do if asked by a commanding officer not to provide care to an enemy combatant? The easy answer: Obey medical ethics codes and international humanitarian law and treat the enemy; health care is a human right.

But some military medical personnel do feel they have a conflicting loyalty to their patient and their employer, and that feeling can be very complex, said Williams-Jones, director of the bioethics program at UdeM's School of Public Health. "It's not just whether they're healer or humanitarian or soldier; it's all of that mixed up."

In combat, a non-professional like a medic is first and foremost a soldier, someone who carries a weapon while dispensing care in the thick of the action. A physician typically operates further back: at a forward-operating base or the main base hospital. As such, the physician may be frustrated in not being able to provide the same level of care as he or she could back home, or by not being able to offer adequate follow-up, or by not being able to treat civilians," the study's authors found.

In combat zones like Afghanistan and Mali, on humanitarian missions in places like Haiti and the Philippines, and on peacekeeping missions in Rwanda or Kosovo, the challenges are accentuated with each new case, telescoped in a short period of time "This isn't M*A*S*H," said Williams-Jones. "Physicians and other personnel are not there for years at a time; they're going in for maybe six weeks or six months, into a very tense environment and making resource-allocation decisions, deciding who gets care and who doesn't: our soldiers versus friendly soldiers versus enemy combatants versus civilians, children. These are real tensions."

In the military, health professionals are much more aware of their social mission as purveyors of public health than they are normally as civilians treating individual patients, Williams-Jones added. "The physicians come from a very wealthy environment, most working in public hospitals as clinicians who are one-on-one with a patient. But in combat or on a humanitarian mission, they're much more in public-health mode."

The Canadian military has had an ethics code since 1997; it was last updated in 2013. The CMA's dates back much further, with major revisions after the Second World War and in the 1970s and '90s; the latest was in 2004. Unusually for a modern military, the Canadian Forces Code of Values and Ethics says it's more important to respect human dignity (the first principle of the code) than it is to follow orders (its third principle). The Canadian Medical Association Code of Ethics, by contrast, "is more duty-oriented," the study says. The CMA code "is more focused on the physician's relationship with the patient and the medical community, so it is in general more individualistic than the [Canadian military's], which recognizes from the start the social role of the military and its responsibility towards society," Rochon and Williams-Jones argue.

But isn't the military's principle of "legitimate use of force" incompatible with the physician's principle of "do no harm"? No, the authors say. "This is a false dichotomy that does not reflect the military and medical realities of today," they write. "The principle of 'do no harm' in medicine is increasingly recognized as being intimately related to other principles such as beneficence and autonomy (i.e., in debates about euthanasia and assisted suicide). "In the same way, the use of force (and so doing harm to others) by soldiers is heavily circumscribed and controlled by international laws [...] For example, recent international peacekeeping missions have been heavily criticized for not allowing soldiers to intervene when witnessing rape, murder, and even genocide (e.g., in Rwanda). "[...] These kinds of situation have shown that the appropriate use of force needs to be evaluated in relation to other principles (e.g., preventing harm to civilians, justice) and so is not by definition negative or wrong."

Those perceptions are also a generational thing. In their interviews with the researchers, younger health professionals most often didn't identify any significant ethical challenges they faced, whereas those with 15 or 20 years experience said they had many. One thing they did agree on: They need more "downtime" to discuss ethics as a team and hash out solutions. To that end, the researchers hope to get new funding to develop practical working tools - case studies, situation-specific and targeted ethics training, special versions of ethics guides annotated for military medical personnel, such as the one the British Medical Association published in 2012 called Ethical Decision-Making for Doctors in the Armed Forces.

The goal, concluded Williams-Jones, is simple: To make sure "that people have the ethics skills to handle situations on the ground. Ultimately, that's the most important thing."

More information: Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, DOI: 10.1177/1073110516684809
Visit here to apply for the summer school and for further information on how to apply for the research colloquium. Feel free to contact the organizer at internetlaw@unige.ch if you need any additional information regarding the above.

Additionally, the 2nd edition of the Geneva Internet L@w Research Colloquium which will take place on 23 June 2017. Please note that the deadline for applications is May 1st, 2017 for the summer school, and April 14, 2017 for the research colloquium.

Additionally, the 2nd edition of the Geneva Internet L@w Research Colloquium which will take place on 23 June 2017. Please note that the deadline for applications is May 1st, 2017 for the summer school, and April 14, 2017 for the research colloquium.

It offers a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the framework of an Internet law clinic and to discuss cutting edge Internet law and policy issues with academics (including researchers participating in the Geneva Internet L@w Research Colloquium, see below), practitioners, representatives of global policy makers, international organizations and leading institutions, including (for this year again) the Berkman Klein Center, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), WIPO, and the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), as well as from other prestigious academic or governmental institutions and global internet companies (Google and eBay).

It offers a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the framework of an Internet law clinic and to discuss cutting edge Internet law and policy issues with academics (including researchers participating in the Geneva Internet L@w Research Colloquium, see below), practitioners, representatives of global policy makers, international organizations and leading institutions, including (for this year again) the Berkman Klein Center, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), WIPO, and the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), as well as from other prestigious academic or governmental institutions and global internet companies (Google and eBay).

IP Inclusive -- a pan-professional diversity movement committed to helping make the IP professions more inclusive  was last night awarded the inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility Award at the prestigious Managing IP Awards.

The annual event, which took place at The Savoy in central London, saw over 250 IP professionals celebrate successes and achievements within the international IP world. Among the accolades this year was Managing IPs first ever Corporate Social Responsibility Award, presented to IP Inclusive for its work in uniting professionals throughout the IP world in the pursuit of greater diversity and inclusivity.





Andrea Brewster, Immediate Past President of The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and founder of the IP Inclusive movement, collected the award, commending Managing IP for making corporate social responsibility one of the benchmarks by which we can both measure and celebrate progress in the IP professions. Andrea commented: I am thrilled to accept this years award on behalf of everyone who has worked so hard to establish and grow the IP Inclusive community over the last couple of years. IP Inclusive has been a catalyst for change but we have also had incredible support from our founding organisations CIPA, CITMA, FICPI-UK, IP Federation and the UKIPO, and from a huge array of volunteers across the country. We are proud to have launched so many inclusivity initiatives, such as support and networking groups, events, learning resources, careers information and a community of signatories to our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Charter. My thanks to every single person who has chosen to become involved and thanks to Managing IP for recognising everyones efforts. I know that this award will spur us on to still greater things.





Lesley Evans, Chief Executive of European IP firm, Haseltine Lake and leader of the IP Inclusive Charter initiatives also spoke at the presentation, urging the audience of international IP practitioners to spread the word about IP Inclusive in their own jurisdictions. Lesley commented, This has been an extraordinary week for IP Inclusive. Not only have we celebrated our 100th signatory to our EDI Charter, but now we have received this amazing and unexpected award, which recognises the importance of increasing diversity across the IP professions. The IP professions are generally very open and welcoming, but they can be stronger and better still if they reach out and make themselves known to the widest possible workplace demographic. IP inclusive is giving us the tools and the impetus to do just that.




The number of measles cases in Italy has tripled this year, largely because parents are not getting children vaccinated due to spurious health scares, the health ministry said Friday.

More than 700 cases have been registered since the start of 2017compared with 220 in the same period last year and 844 for the whole of 2016.

Over half have been among 15-39 year-olds and the outbreak has been concentrated in some of the country's wealthiest urban centres: Rome, Turin, Milan and Florence.

The ministry said the surge showed a worrying number of younger Italians were not fully vaccinated against the disease.

"This is largely due to the growing number of parents who refuse vaccinations despite the established scientific evidence (of their effectiveness)," it said.

According to ministry data, only 85.3 percent of Italian two-year-olds had been vaccinated in 2015, well short of the 95 percent threshold recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to contain outbreaks.

"We need to rapidly boost the level of vaccination cover, which has fallen dangerously over recent years," said health minister Beatrice Lorenzin.

Although it usually only triggers relatively mild symptoms, measles can cause fatal complications. In Italy's last major epidemic there were 18,000 registered cases and 15 deaths.

Italy was one of the countries where discredited claims of a link between the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination and autism had a significant impact on public perceptions of the safety of the jab.

That was partly because a local court in Rimini awarded damages to the family of a young boy with autism in 2012 on the grounds that his condition had most likely been caused by the MMR vaccination. The ruling was overturned on appeal three years later.

The notion of an MMR-autism link was first suggested by a British researcher, Andrew Wakefield, in a 1998 paper for medical journal the Lancet that was subsequently found to have been falsified.

The paper was withdrawn in 2010 and Wakefield was barred from practising medicine. Numerous major studies since have found no evidence of a link.

 2017 AFP
Es It took thirteen days for Terri Schiavo to die after the doctors took out her feeding tube. For fifteen years, this 41-year-old woman from Florida had lain in a vegetative state after cardiac arrest and brain damage. Her death in late March 2005 was preceded by a bitter dispute. Her husband wanted to let her die, but her parents fought for her to be kept alive. Both sides claimed they were acting in her best interests. The Schiavo case went through the US courts, was debated by politicians, and attained considerable worldwide attention. It is regarded today as a tragic example of the complexity that such situations can take on  especially when the person actually affected cannot express an opinion.

However much we profit from the successes of modern medicine, many people refuse the option of being kept alive, because they don't want "to be hooked up to tubes or machines". No one can know in advance how it feels to be in a coma or to have dementia. But people wouldn't like to be kept alive at any price.

It is common in Switzerland for end-of-life medical decisions to be made that might possibly (or even probably) accelerate the inevitable. And such decisions are becoming increasingly common, as has been shown in a study conducted by the universities of Zurich and Geneva. In cases registered in German-speaking Switzerland in 2013 where death was not unexpected, 80 percent of the deceased had taken advance decisions about the end of their lives. In the great majority of cases, treatment was either discontinued, was not begun at all, or more drugs were administered to alleviate pain and other symptoms. In a small number of cases, the people concerned died by means of assisted suicide. This representative data comes from a survey of doctors.

Let's put an end to paternalism

But it's we ourselves who decide about the last things. Patient autonomy has become a core legal and medical/ethical principle in recent decades. It has equivalence with a doctor's duty of care. Our previously paternalistic relationship with medical professionals  along the lines of 'doctor knows best'  has purportedly given way to an interaction between equals. After the doctor has given his or her findings, the patient agrees to a particular treatment  or not. Informed consent is what the experts call it.

The Swiss Act on the Protection of Adults, which entered into force in 2013, strengthens the law on the right to self-determination. For the first-ever time, the patient decree, or 'living will', was established on a national basis. This allows a person to determine what medical measures they wish to accept or reject when they are no longer able to express themselves. It is binding for the doctor. Even if no such patient decree exists, the doctor may not simply take a decision on his own. He has to consult the next of kin too. But not even their views are binding  it's the presumed wishes of the patient that are paramount.

Studies carried out by the universities of Lucerne and Zurich show, however, that problems are now arising in daily healthcare practice. Regina Aebi-Muller, a professor of private and comparative law at the University of Lucerne, speaks plainly about this: "The patient decree, which attained legal certainty in the Act on the Protection of Adults, is practically useless in its present form". The researchers of Lucerne and Zurich carried out interviews with doctors and qualified nursing staff to ascertain how decisions about ceasing treatment or refusing it are actually made. It transpires that only a few people have made a patient decree. And when an acute situation actually arises, the decree is often neither available nor up to date. In such situations, it remains unclear whether the patient who is dying in an intensive care unit actually wants to be reanimated, or whether the nursing home resident suffering from advanced dementia should be transferred back to hospital and given antibiotics to treat pneumonia.

When you said 'no tubes' ...

Doctors are also confronted with patient decisions that are contradictory or impossible to respect. This does not surprise Aebi-Muller, who is studying the legal aspects of patient autonomy within the framework of National Research Programme 67 'End of life': "There are several templates for patient decrees. You can download them from the Internet, and tick the boxes in private". Patient decrees have to be interpreted, but lawyers are better equipped than medical experts to interpret texts. Aebi-Muller gives an example of where this can end up: a patient suffering from terminal cancer had decreed that she wanted 'no tubes'. The woman in question later lost consciousness, was unable to empty her bladder, and was visibly suffering. But the nursing supervisor refused to give her a catheter on account of her patient decree. The senior consultant, however, doubted whether the patient would have meant to include this kind of 'tube'. After the nursing staff's next change of shift, he inserted the catheter himself. The woman died peacefully that same night.

If the next of kin have to make such decisions, they are often overwhelmed, or unable to agree. They don't know the will of the patient because no one took the initiative to discuss it in the family. This can be a difficult burden for partners, daughters and sons. "One in three people is traumatised by having to make a proxy decision, and doesn't know if it was what their loved one would have wanted", says Tanja Krones, Head Physician of the Clinical Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of Zurich.

Absent agreements

Despite patient autonomy, doctors still have the power to make decisions. A trend has become discernible over the past ten years in which "patients tend to be drawn more into making decisions at the end of their lives", says Milo Puhan, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Zurich.

Few doctors act on their own without discussing anything with their patient and their next of kin, or without any recourse to an earlier expression of the patient's wishes. The study carried out in Zurich and Geneva showed that in just eight percent of cases where a patient was incapable of making a decision, their doctors took decisions for them. In a further twelve percent of cases, the doctor discussed the matter with professional colleagues or with nursing staff. In a further eight percent, the patients were actually able to make decisions themselves, but their doctors still failed to discuss end-of-life issues with them or their next of kin. Puhan sees one possible explanation in it being difficult to predict the course of a disease. "Diagnosing the phase of dying is medically challenging, and requires a lot of experience". An Australian study has shown that most conversations about medical decisions at the end of life only take place in the last three days before death. According to how a disease develops, the right moment can be missed altogether.

So, research is revealing possible areas of conflict. Aebi-Muller's conclusion is this: "Medical situations at the end of life cannot be regulated in the manner that the legislators imagine". She is convinced that any form of "absolute" patient autonomy will not function. More realistic, in her opinion, would be "relational" autonomy. At the end of our lives, when we are particularly vulnerable and suffering from pain, respiratory distress and fear, we are dependent on relationships. Aebi-Muller argues that medical staff should be given greater responsibility to make decisions, though without lapsing into old patterns of doctor-dominance. "There is no decision more personal than that relating to medical measures at the end of a life". A relationship between doctor and patient that is based on partnership, in which decisions are made together, can help support people in these situations.

Planning with counselling

The Zurich University Hospital is investigating how such support might be given. 'Advance care planning' is the name of the concept, meaning structured conversations with patients and their next of kin. Treatment teams trained in communication  doctors, nursing staff, pastoral care workers and social workers  find out in good time about a patient's wishes for treatment at the end of their life, and also about their personal views. If they become unable to make decisions themselves, what will actually be important to them? What are they afraid of? The Zurich University Hospital offers expert counselling, not just the patient decrees that can be downloaded from the Internet. "People are given evidence-based, decision-making aids", explains Krones. This means they know the concrete figures: out of 100 people who suffer cardiac arrest in hospital, even with immediate assistance, on average only 17 of them survive. And of these survivors, five to seven of them are later highly dependent on care.

Advance planning offers a better guarantee that a patient's wishes will be known and feasible, says Krones. This is also a relief to their next of kin. Such planning may also result in drawing up a patient decree, but it doesn't have to. Krones recommends a modular system that ranges from an emergency plan signed by the doctor to instructions for what to do in a case of a chronic incapacity to make decisions. The latter could come about because of dementia, or after a stroke. "What's important is to keep checking with the patient. Because people change". Perhaps someone has been diagnosed with dementia and wants to refuse life-extending measures as soon as she can no longer recognise her relatives. But what happens if her loved ones realise that this patient seems happy despite her limitations, laughing and taking pleasure in small things? "We have to address these questions", says Krones.

'Advance care planning' is not yet widespread in Switzerland. Krones's research confirms findings made abroad, namely that advance planning both helps to meet people's wishes better, and alleviates the trauma suffered by their next of kin. It also means that fewer people are taken to hospital or are subjected to invasive treatments such as operations. This concept does not aim to lower costs, but it appears to be a side-effect. All the same, the patients don't die any sooner.

This is how we are endeavouring to come to terms with death in a professional manner. Nevertheless, it will always remain something of a mystery. In the words of Ralf Jox, a palliative healthcare professional: "Advance care planning will change nothing about the fundamental insecurity that is characteristic of our existence". But it could help to increase trust.
(HealthDay)The time, money and pain spent on a facelift may be worth it, a small, new study suggests.

Hundreds of people who looked at photos of 13 women before and after "optimal" facelifts agreed that the women appeared younger, better-looking, healthier and more successful.

These weren't necessarily routine facelifts, since plastic surgeons deemed them to be samples of top-notch work, and their cost is unknown.

Still, "we showed for the first time that there is a measurable improvement in the appearance of patients undergoing facelift surgery as appreciated by the layperson," said study co-author Dr. Lisa Ishii. She is an associate professor and chief quality officer with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

The question her team posed was how effective are facelifts at making women look better when judged by the public at large?

To find the answer, the researchers asked five Baltimore-area facial plastic surgeons to provide "after" photos of 16 women who'd undergone facelifts with "optimal" results. The photos were taken at least six months after surgery.

A team then chose 13 of those women, with an average age of 58, to serve as subjects in the study; the races of the women weren't reported.

The researchers then showed "before" and "after" photos of the women to 483 online survey participants. Almost 80 percent of the survey participants were women, 75 percent were white, and the average age of the group was 29. It was a very highly educated group: About one-third had master's or doctoral degrees, while another 60 percent had four-year college degrees.

From "before" photos, the participants as a whole estimated the average age of the facelift patients as 60. After, that estimated age dropped to 56.

The participants also ranked the patients higher based on "after" photos on 1-100 scales of attractiveness, perceived success and perceived overall health. Between "before" and "after" photos, the average rating grew from 49 to 57 for attractiveness; 58 to 63 for perceived success; and 55 to 64 for perceived overall health.

The study didn't look at sex appeal.

"We were interested in measuring the parameters that patients express to us they would like to see improved. Patients do not typically say they want to look sexier after a facelift," Ishii explained. "They do say that they want to appear younger, more attractive and more successful."

Ishii noted that the researchers chose optimal facelifts instead of a more representative sample of randomly chosen facelift patients because it's common to use this kind of approach when experiments are performed for the first time.

Dr. David Castle is a professor of psychiatry at St. Vincent's Hospital and the University of Melbourne, in Australia, who has studied plastic surgery. He said the study has weaknesses.

The study focuses on optimal images, which "would arguably not generalize to the majority of people undergoing this procedure," he said. Also, the photos don't show "what we see when we look at someone" since they aren't moving images. "Finally," he noted, "the number of images is very small."

Castle added that the study doesn't measure whether facelift patients "feel happier, more confident and more fulfilled. They haven't captured this at all. It doesn't get to the core issuewhether people actually feel enduringly better about themselves."

But Dr. Samuel Lam, a facial plastic surgeon in Dallas, praised the study.

"Too often we have a negative bias about facelifts because we see over-skeletonized and over-pulled results that make individuals older, unnatural or both," Lam said. "However, good work that is natural and seamless is something that is worthy of study to show to the public the powerful positive value in this procedure when it is done well."

How can facelift patients choose the best plastic surgeon?

Dr. Michael Reilly, an associate professor of facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., recommends looking at qualifications (a surgeon should be board-certified in either general or facial plastic and reconstructive surgery); expertise (the surgeon should regularly perform the procedure and have pre- and post-op photos of previous patients with similar facial anatomy); and trustworthiness.

"Healing after facelift surgery can take time, and patients need to feel entirely confident that they will be taken care of during and after surgery," Reilly said.

The study was published online March 16 in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.

More information: Lisa Ishii, M.D., MHS, associate professor and chief quality officer, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore; Michael Reilly, M.D., associate professor, facial plastic & reconstructive surgery, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; Samuel Lam, M.D., FACS, facial plastic surgeon, Dallas; David Castle, MBChB, MSc, professor, psychiatry, St. Vincent's Hospital and University of Melbourne, Australia; March 16, 2017, JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, online Lisa Ishii, M.D., MHS, associate professor and chief quality officer, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore; Michael Reilly, M.D., associate professor, facial plastic & reconstructive surgery, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; Samuel Lam, M.D., FACS, facial plastic surgeon, Dallas; David Castle, MBChB, MSc, professor, psychiatry, St. Vincent's Hospital and University of Melbourne, Australia; March 16, 2017,, online

For more about facelifts, visit the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

When cancer cells divide they often make mistakes which can alter their DNA. While this can give cancer cells an upper hand, it can also be their downfall.

Some DNA mistakes change molecules inside the cells in such a way that they offer an advantage for the tumour cells over healthy cells, allowing them to grow uncontrollably. But other mistakes are just too damaging for the cells to handle, causing them to die.

It's like a set of scales that the cells must balance to keep growing.

To help them do this, cancer cells can also use DNA repair mechanisms to fix potentially fatal faults that develop over time.

But even though these DNA repair kits can keep the scales balanced, cancer cells are more reliant on these repair molecules to survive than healthy cells.

This makes certain cancer cells particularly vulnerable to drugs that switch off DNA repair molecules and which can upset the cancer cell's balance.

This strategy has recently seen several promising drugs, collectively called PARP inhibitors, now being used to treat some women with ovarian cancer.

But they don't work for everyone.

That's why Dr Donald Ogilvie, and his team based at Drug Discovery Unit, at Cancer Research UK's Manchester Institute, have turned their focus on a different molecule: PARG.

And their recent study, published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology, might lead to a new way to target how cancer cells repair DNA, and maybe do it better.

Sabotaging DNA repair

Dr Allan Jordan, Head of Chemistry in the Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Unit (CRUKMI DDU), devotes his time to studying potential new drugs. And he believes it's the close proximity between the institute's labs and the neighbouring Christie Hospital that helps speed up the process.

Experimental drugs, in preparation at the CRUK Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Unit . Credit: Ben McMahon

"Our team wants to translate the fantastic biology that goes on in the institute's labs into medicines for patients, like those at the hospital next door. We see 40,000 patients there a year, and only around half will beat their disease. Our job is to find something for the other half."

Their ambition was to target DNA repair molecules in a way that would help some of these patients, and the first step was to understand why PARP inhibitors don't work for everyone.

One reason for this is that there are 17 different members of the PARP family. And like most families, although they share similarities, each molecular sibling is slightly different from the other.

This gives the PARP family an advantage over the drugs that have been developed to switch them off. Drugs are designed very specifically according to the exact shape of the molecules they target. So most PARP drugs only switch off 2 or 3 members of the family.

This means that there's a chance that other family members will take their place and compensate for the loss, bypassing the drug's effects.

But PARP molecules are just one of many DNA repair tools that a cancer cell can deploy. So are there alternatives that could be targeted with new drugs?

This is where the DDU team turned its attention to PARP's molecular cousin, PARG.

A single target

PARG is also involved in repairing cells' DNA. But, unlike the sprawling PARP family, there's only one of this type of molecule.

And this, according to Jordan, makes it an excellent target for drugs.

"The advantage of going after PARG is that there is only one member of its family. So when you inhibit PARG, you may create a more effective roadblock in DNA repair," he explains.

PARG is part of the same DNA repair toolkit as PARP. As PARP repairs DNA, it constructs a molecular scaffolding frame which attracts other essential components of DNA repair.

Experimental drugs, in preparation at the CRUK Manchester Institute Drug Discovery Unit . Credit: Ben McMahon

But for the repair to take place, this scaffold needs to be carefully and methodically, disassembled. And this is where PARG comes in  disassembling that scaffolding, piece by piece in a safe, ordered manner.

So disabling PARG might tip the DNA damage scales towards being lethal for the cancer cells.

Tipping the scales

Discussing this idea with UK-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, researchers found the teams there had already started looking for experimental drugs to block PARG, among 1.4 million potential experimental drugs.

For Jordan, this meant the next steps weren't going to be easy.

"The number of molecules that AstraZeneca had already looked at told us we were facing quite a challenge. But it was a challenge we were willing to take on," he says.

Sifting through all the potential drugs AstraZeneca had tested, they found that one in particular was very good at stopping PARG from doing its job. In fact, the team's research has now found that one of its optimised PARG experimental drugs is even better at killing certain cancer cells growing in the lab than PARP inhibitors.

But while they have experimental drugs that look promising, there's still a way to go.

"This is not going to lead to a new treatment for patients overnight. First we need to understand the biology, how the experimental drug works and how to find which patients it works best for, before we can get it into clinical trials and patients," says Jordan.

"However, we believe this is a really exciting time for PARG."

"It's fantastic that Cancer Research UK is so involved in this work, just as it was for PARP inhibitors that are now approved medicines and benefiting patients. It could lead to the development of PARG inhibitors as a new type of treatment for cancer."

More information: Dominic I. James et al. First-in-Class Chemical Probes against Poly(ADP-ribose) Glycohydrolase (PARG) Inhibit DNA Repair with Differential Pharmacology to Olaparib, ACS Chemical Biology (2016). Journal information: ACS Chemical Biology Dominic I. James et al. First-in-Class Chemical Probes against Poly(ADP-ribose) Glycohydrolase (PARG) Inhibit DNA Repair with Differential Pharmacology to Olaparib,(2016). DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.6b00609
(HealthDay)Stem cells may offer new hope for patients with age-related macular degeneration, but that promise can come with some risks, according to research published in the March 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

One report details a legitimate effort to restore the sight of a 77-year-old Japanese woman with macular degeneration using stem cells. The team grafted a new sheet of retinal tissue derived from stem cells into the right eye of the female patient. One year after the operation, the patient's vision stabilized and her eye appears to have accepted the graft with no serious side effects, the authors reported.

A second article in the same journal issue reports on three older women who underwent unproven stem cell treatments on their eyes in 2015, senior author Jeffrey Goldberg, M.D., Ph.D., chair of ophthalmology for the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., told HealthDay. The women all thought the stem cell therapy was part of a clinical trial, but there's no evidence that a genuine clinical trial was taking place, Goldberg noted.

"The patients' severe visual loss after the injection was associated with ocular hypertension, hemorrhagic retinopathy, vitreous hemorrhage, combined traction and rhegmatogenous retinal detachment, or lens dislocation," write the authors of the second report. "After one year, the patients' visual acuity ranged from 20/200 to no light perception."

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Research Associate Xiuling Li (left) and Associate Professor Christoph Rader led the study on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute. (Photo by Junpeng Qi.) Credit: The Scripps Research Institute

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new drug delivery method that produces strong results in treating cancers in animal models, including some hard-to-treat solid and liquid tumors.

The study, led by TSRI Associate Professor Christoph Rader, was published March 16, 2017, online ahead of print in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.

The new method involves a class of pharmaceuticals known as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which include some of the most promising next-generation antibody therapeutics for cancer. ADCs can deliver a cytotoxic payload in a way that is remarkably tumor-selective. So far, three ADCs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but neither attaches the drug to a defined site on the antibody.

"We've been working on this technology for some time," Rader said. "It's based on the rarely used natural amino acid selenocysteine, which we insert into our antibodies. We refer to these engineered antibodies as selenomabs."

Antibodies are large immune system proteins that recognize unique molecular markers on tumor cells called antigens. On their own, Rader noted, antibodies are usually not potent enough to eradicate cancer. However, their high specificity for antigens makes them ideal vehicles for drug delivery straight to tumor cells.

"We now show for the first time that selenomab-drug conjugates, which are ADCs that utilize the unique reactivity of selenocysteine for drug attachment, are highly precise, stable and potent compositions and promise broad utility for cancer therapy."

Along with its potency, Rader noted, the ADC's stability is critical to its effectiveness. The researchers found that their new ADCs showed excellent stability in human blood in vitro and in circulating blood in animal models. Moreover, the new ADCs were highly effective against HER2 breast cancer, a particularly difficult cancer to treat, and against CD138 multiple myeloma. Importantly, the ADCs did not harm healthy cells and tissues.

"The selenomab-drug conjugate significantly inhibited the growth of an aggressive breast cancer," said TSRI Research Associate Xiuling Li, first author of the study. "Four of the five mice tested were tumor-free at the end of the experiment, a full six weeks after their last treatment."

The researchers plan to investigate similar ADCs going forward. Rader, along with TSRI Professor Ben Shen, was recently awarded $3.3 million from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health to test highly cytotoxic natural products discovered in the Shen lab using selenomabs as drug delivery vehicles.
Credit: University of Queensland

Scientists at The University of Queensland have taken a significant step forward in cardiac disease research by creating a functional 'beating' human heart muscle from stem cells.

Dr James Hudson and Dr Enzo Porrello from the UQ School of Biomedical Sciences collaborated with German researchers to create models of human heart tissue in the laboratory so they can study cardiac biology and diseases 'in a dish'.

"The patented technology enables us to now perform experiments on human heart tissue in the lab," Dr Hudson said.

"This provides scientists with viable, functioning human heart muscle to work on, to model disease, screen new drugs and investigate heart repair."

The UQ Cardiac Regeneration Laboratory co-leaders have also extended this research and shown that the immature tissues have the capacity to regenerate following injury.

"In the laboratory we used dry ice to kill part of the tissue while leaving the surrounding muscle healthy and viable," Dr Hudson said.

"We found those tissues fully recovered because they were immature and the cells could regenerate  in contrast to what happens normally in the adult heart where you get a 'dead' patch.

"Our goal is to use this model to potentially find new therapeutic targets to enhance or induce cardiac regeneration in people with heart failure.

"Studying regeneration of these damaged, immature cells will enable us to figure out the biochemical events behind this process.

"Hopefully we can determine how to replicate this process in adult hearts for cardiovascular patients."

Each year, about 54,000 Australians suffer a heart attack, with an average of about 23 deaths every day.

The UQ research has been supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the National Heart Foundation.

Heart Foundation Queensland CEO Stephen Vines said the charity was excited to fund such an important research project.

"Heart attack survivors who have had permanent damage to their heart tissue are essentially trying to live on half an engine," Mr Vines said.

"The research by Dr Hudson and Dr Porello will help unlock the key to regenerating damaged heart tissue, which will have a huge impact on the quality of life for heart attack survivors."

More information: Holly K. Voges et al. Development of a human cardiac organoid injury model reveals innate regenerative potential, Development (2017). Holly K. Voges et al. Development of a human cardiac organoid injury model reveals innate regenerative potential,(2017). DOI: 10.1242/dev.143966 Malte Tiburcy et al. Defined Engineered Human Myocardium with Advanced Maturation for Applications in Heart Failure Modelling and Repair, Circulation (2017). DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.116.024145 Journal information: Development , Circulation
Communications Minister Faith Muthambi has demanded an apology from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), accusing the university of violating her rights in the way it handled her application.

Muthambi applied to study an MTech in Journalism at TUT, but the university rejected her application due to a lack of experience and relevant qualifications.

Speaking to the Sunday World, TUT said the institution had considered and evaluated Muthambis application like any other prospective student.

The minister was denied entrance due to her lack of official qualification or formal training.

Muthambi has demanded an apology, asking TUT to correct the impression that she used her position to force her way into the university.

Muthambi cited her involvement with the media and journalists as motivation for her application.

Now read: Speaker tells Faith Muthambi he cannot overrule SABC report
Ster-Kinekor has responded to recent news of a security flaw in its old website, reinforcing that the security breach does not affect its new web platform.

Before Ster-Kinekor switched to its new Vista point-of-sale system, a large amount of data was at risk due to a security flaw in the website.

Ster-Kinekor said it was made aware the vulnerability in September 2016.

Ster-Kinekor also noted that it has not ever held the details of 7 million accounts, as has certain news reports have stated.

From 11 October 2016, Ster-Kinekor removed all customer information from the previous platform and ensured it was no longer vulnerable.

The company said all customer data is now fully secure following the migration to the Vista system.

Ster-Kinekor recommended that customers change their password regularly in order to ensure their safety online.
French Finance Minister calls on EU to oppose U.S.

Armenian President: Aliyev's statements about intentional destruction of mosques have nothing to do with reality

German MFA reports constructive talks in EU on new sanctions against Iran

Twitter postspones rollout of $8 subscription: Will blue verification checkmark be available after U.S. midterm elections?

Kazakhstani President Tokayev instructs to increase oil supplies bypassing Russia

President of Artsakh holds expanded working meeting

Armenian Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports to receive more than 250 billion drams in 2023

Borrell says EU is dependent on supplies from China

Armenia official: Peace treaty implies restoration of sovereign territory

Guterres thinks mankind is heading for climate hell

Why does IT sector in Armenia shift from attacking to defending and what can government's slowness lead to?

Dollar, euro gain value in Armenia

General: Iran riots were US plan to derail nuclear deal

Minister: 'Lydian Armenia' may start exploitation of gold mine on Mountain Amulsar

Armenia political scientist: Balance is formed in region thanks to Iran

Minister: 70 schools will be repaired or newly built in Armenia in 2023

UAE lifts most COVID-19 restrictions for tourists

Political scientist: There is no Armenian-American agenda

President of Finland says country has no plans to host nuclear weapons

Russian Ambassador to Armenia: We are not used to making PR and playing games

Flight restrictions extended to 11 airports in Russia

Kopirkin: Spiritual core will help Armenia, Russia overcome difficulties, challenges

Armenian specialists and University of Geneva develop multi-dimensional system for collecting satellite photos and information

Armenia ranks among top 5 CIS countries for winter tourism

Envoy: Russian president awarded Armenian philologist with medal

Iranian intelligence arrests 26 terrorists: an Azerbaijani citizen among them

Champions League: Pairs of 1/8 finals

Russian Defense Ministry confirms: Azerbaijan fired at Khramort village in Artsakh

Number of oil and gas drilling rigs is up in US

Economy minister: Azerbaijan aggression prevented increase of Armenia wheat sowing areas

Gegharkunik governor: There are observers who recorded that Azerbaijan carried out aggression against Armenia

Eight embryos extracted from abdomen of infant girl

ATP: 19-year-old Rune makes it into top 10 for first time

The National Interest: Iran turns attention to the Caucasus

Tokayev: Kazakhstan is ready to use other measures, besides diplomacy, for its defense

Another planet killer asteroid discovered: Can such asteroid go unnoticed, reach Earth?

World Cup 2022 Argentina's expanded national team announced

Economy minister: Primary agricultural products ensure 11%-13% of Armenia GDP

FAO: World grain prices rise in October

Kremlin urges Yerevan and Baku to refrain from destabilization

Four Armenian basketball teams to participate in European Championship

155 new cases of COVID-19 registered in Armenia from October 31 to November 6

Governor of Armenias Tavush on possible handover of enclaves to Azerbaijan: Not being discussed now

Governor of Armenias Vayots Dzor: We have pastures that are monitored by Azerbaijan

WSJ: Sullivan is in contact with Ushakov and Patrushev on Ukraine

Vayots Dzor governor: Azerbaijan military that infiltrated Armenia can be seen with naked eye from Jermuk city

Armenia President: Military clashes, hostilities have direct impact on soil, air pollution

IRGC seizes over 1,500 weapons in Iran riots

Minister: $879 million worth of agricultural products exported from Armenia

Benzema to miss next Real Madrid match

Andy Serkis praises The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

Japan to exterminate 150 thousand chickens because of bird flu outbreak

Armenia informational online platform for promoting highly qualified specialists engagement is launched

What is Elon Musk's mission for Twitter? Fake news removal and long tweets

South Korea's president apologizes for crush in downtown Seoul

Documento: Greek PM Mitsotakis used intelligence services to spy on dozens of people

Vinnie Jones, Giancarlo Esposito and Kaya Scodelario will play in Guy Ritchie's new series

Close to $98M to be allocated from Armenia state budget for agricultural projects in 2023

Man who set self on fire near Armenia government mansion is in severe condition

Anti-Iranian action to take place in Baku

UN promises to lift restrictions on Russian grain exports in near future

Fighter jet crashes in Saudi Arabia

Kim Kardashian faces consequences of Kanye West's anti-Semitic statements

About $770M to be assigned to Armenia territorial administration, infrastructure ministry next year

Armenia parliament vice-speaker: There is very important note in Sochi statement

Copper falls in price

New York bank robberies up 42% this year

Meta plans biggest layoffs in company's 18-year history: Why is Meta in trouble?

Armenia President to attend climate change convention in Egypt

Gold prices change slightly

World oil prices falling

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry want to keep their royal titles

Mirzoyan, Blinken, Bayramov to meet in Washington today

WTA Finals: World No. 1 Iga Swiatek suffers unexpected defeat

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Iranian Armenian MP: Iran-Armenia trade is expected to reach $1B

U.S. National Park Service urges against licking the Sonora desert toad

Mourinho: We did not deserve recent defeats suffered at hands of our immediate opponents

Azerbaijan army units open fire in direction of Armenia positions

Serie A: Inter, with Mkhitaryan, lose to Juve

Minister: Britain's government faces tough decisions

Pashinyan: Teachers in Armenia must get 800,000, 1,000,000 and 1,200,000 drams wages

Lazio beat Roma

Boris Johnson from fighting for Conservative Party leader over fears of losing income

Liverpool beat Tottenham thanks to Salah's double

Greece slams Turkish authorities' temporary ban on Greek official's entry

Scientifically proven: EU is inscrutable

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U.S. arms sales in Europe are soaring

Artur Davtyan's award ceremony (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Turkmenistan becomes regional energy center

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Artur Davtyan claims world champion title (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Blood Moon, total lunar eclipse, to take place on November 8: When, how to watch it?

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An event entitled "Stability and Security in the Caucasus: The Situation in Nagorno-Karabakh" took place upon the initiative of the Center for Mediterranean, Middle East and Islamic Studies of the University of Peloponnese, the ARF Armenian National Committee of Greece, and the Institute of International Relations of the Panteion University.

It was attended by Patriarchal Vicar Archbishop Komitas Ohanian, Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to Greece Fadei Charchoghlyan, independent member of the Greek Parliament Haris Theoharis, as well as the representatives of the Armenian community organizations, lecturers, students, and journalists.

The keynote speaker at the event was Foreign Minister of the Republic of Artsakh, Karen Mirzoyan, who briefed the participants on the processes taking place in Artsakh, the history of the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict, the current stage of its settlement process, as well as a range of issues related to regional security.

In his speech, the Foreign Minister stressed that the stance of the Azerbaijani authorities that has been based on the use of force and threat of force is the main reason for the retention of tension in the region, being one of the principle obstacles in the conflict settlement process. In this context, he noted that the actions of Azerbaijan aimed at the consistent escalation of the situationespecially in the recent periodand its complete reluctance to achieve a peaceful and lasting settlement of the conflict prove that Azerbaijan is ready to resort to extreme measures for advancing its political interests, right up to launching military operations, that being exactly the case in April 2016.

The Minister stressed that only thanks to the resolute actions of the Defense Army of Artsakh it was possible to prevent the further expansion of the military aggression and to force Azerbaijan to observe the ceasefire. This indicates the important role of the Republic of Artsakh as an integral part of the regional security system and a security provider.

Touching on the conflict settlement process, Karen Mirzoyan noted that the April aggression cast doubt on the prospects for the peaceful settlement. He also stressed that in this situation, the priority is to create conditions for the resumption of full-fledged negotiations, in particular, the full restoration of the ceasefire provided for by the 1994 and 1995 agreements, as well as the immediate implementation of the agreements reached in Vienna on May 16, 2016 and in St. Petersburg on June 20, 2016.

Speaking of the state-building processes in Artsakh, the Foreign Minister said, "The democratic development of the statehood of Artsakh is an irreversible process, a vivid evidence of which is the adoption of the new Constitution on February 20, 2017. Regardless of the challenges we face, the Republic of Artsakh will not deviate from its democratic path and will continue the struggle for the recognition of its self-determination by the international community".

At the end of the event, Karen Mirzoyan answered the numerous questions of the participants.

The working visit of the Foreign Minister of Artsakh to Greece has ended.
YEREVAN.  Food Provider Artur Sargsyan could have been released from prison sooner, said Armenian Revival Party (ARP) MP candidate Edgar Arakelyan, at a press conference on Friday.

Also, he extended his condolences to Sargsyans family and relatives.

And when asked whether the ARP will temporarily suspend its parliamentary election campaign due to the mourning events in connection with the Food Providers death, Arakelyan noted, in particular, as follows: We have not carried out events within the framework of the campaign, since yesterday. As for the assessments [regarding Sargsyans death], I believe everything is clear. He could have been released [from prison] sooner, and [they could have been] more attentive toward the matter of his treatment, especially when this was spoken about many times.

The parliamentary election in Armenia will be conducted on April 2.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police wall with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the members of this armed group.

Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
YEREVAN.  So that incidents such as what happened to the Food Provider no longer recur in Armenia, Yelk (Way Out) Bloc will continue is parliamentary election campaign, and defeat the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, the blocs MP candidate Gevorg Gorgisyan said at a press conference on Friday.

In his words, the Yelk representatives had fought to save the life of Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider.

We will not stop the election campaign even in the days of the mourning ceremonies, since we cant allow ourselves to wait even one day, stressed Gorgisyan. We need to work every day to deprive the Republican Party of Armenia of power.

The parliamentary election in Armenia will be conducted on April 2.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police wall with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the members of this armed group.

Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
YEREVAN.  The Communist Party of Armenia (CPA) condemns the treatment that was shown toward Food Provider Artur Sargsyan, CPA MP candidate Silva Adamyan said at a press conference on Friday.

A man, who just wanted to help another human being with [providing] ordinary food and water, received such treatment, noted Adamyan. We condemn this treatment, and condole with his friends, family members, and all those who heard about the courageous act by Artur Sargsyan.

Another communist party MP candidate, Naira Martirosyan, for her part, said: Artur Sargsyans health was not in a very good condition, but he had a great spirit. Had there been many such people in our society, everything would have been much better.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police wall with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the members of this armed group.

Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
YEREVAN.  Food Provider Artur Sargsyans brother, Arsen Sargsyan, has been recognized as the successor of the victim.

The Investigative Committee of Armenia opened a criminal case into Artur Sargsyans death in a medical center, the committee informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

In addition, a forensic post-mortem examination has been commissioned to find out the cause of his death. The victims successor and his representatives will have the opportunity to be present at this examination.

Furthermore, the victims successor and his representatives petitioned to the investigative body, with a request for including international experts in this examination. The petition was sanctioned, and this matter is currently being discussed.

The medical records on Sargsyans health condition have been taken possession of for this examination.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent emergency surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

The violent confrontation had lead to repeated clashes between protesters and police.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police cordon with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the Sasna Tsrer gunmen.

Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
When it comes to the SEO performance measure, a lot of factors are responsible. Right from developing and designing the responsive sites to optimizing the code structure and implementing the right set of keywords, followed by quality content distribution; everything is counted. However, one factor that gets overlooked at times is identifying the ways of leveraging the customer service practices that would create better and higher search engine rankings. Some of the top SEO agencies discuss the possible ways to improve SEO performance through suitable customer service.

Chatbots - Offering Live Support 24/7

It can be highly frustrating when the support response is poor while you face difficulty accessing a site or products and services. This is one of the major reasons for site abandonment. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to offer 24-hour customer care support. It helps in prompting better SEO results through increased traffic, higher user engagement, better site retention time and positive reviews, thus promising a high-quality customer experience. Such things are considered highly valuable for any search engine and helps in rewarding a site through a better ranking in the reputed search engine directories. In fact, with the inclusion of 24/7 live online support (chatbots), companies can enjoy benefits from humanized customer support systems without the need to employ 24-hour service representatives. The chatbots are similar to live support services because of their capability to interact with customers in a highly-humanized way.

Offering Useful Links through Bulk Mailing System

Any website can offer a better experience to the user if it features all the necessary information users are looking for. With the help of bulk mailer Mumbai, websites can expand their brand awareness by sending bulk mail to the registered visitors of the site. If there are links to certain important and relevant materials included that are related to the search content, the information will improve the users experience. Incorporating links is the perfect service tactic that helps in improving repeat business, conversion and user retention. In short, it results in a much-improved SEO scenario. The inclusion of quality links helps in boosting a sites perceived value among Web crawlers, which ultimately gives the site a higher search engine ranking. The value-added services also help in offering better user reviews that prompt better SEO.

Constant Reviewing and Feedback

If your site receives positive reviews and encourages feedback, it definitely helps in boosting SEO. Remember, traffic engagement has a certain impact on both Web crawlers and consumers perceptions, in regard to the valuation of a site. The inclusion of the positive reviews helps in supporting repeat traffic while prompting new traffic to visit the site. At the same time, feedback allows a business to modify the glitches and improve the user experience.

About the Author

Walter Moore is a digital marketing expert. He is also a regular columnist for gingerdomain.com. In this article, he discusses the potential benefits associated with online services to improve SEO performance for websites.

If youd like to learn more about chatbots, be sure to check out TMC (News - Alert) and Crossfire Medias newest conference and expo, Communications 20/20, happening July 18-20 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The event will focus on the next wave of technology and innovations that will transcend the importance of person to person contact, disrupting the future of the entire communications industry. Find out more HERE.
YEREVAN. -- From Syria alone, about 22,000 refugees sought shelter in Armenia, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said during the solemn event in New York dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Armenias membership to the United Nations.

The speech is as follows:

It is a distinct pleasure to address you on the 25th anniversary of Armenias membership in the United Nations. I highly appreciate the presence of Secretary General here with us today. I also would like to thank all those who have contributed to the organization of this concert and all of you who join us for the celebration of this festive occasion.



Quarter of a century ago Armenia has been embraced by the community of sovereign states. It was the dream of many generations of Armenians scattered around the world that came to reality. I am glad to see here today many of those who stood by the newly emerging state and I would like to take this opportunity to once again acknowledge their indispensable contribution.



Needless to emphasize the whole significance of this day. It is not just the symbolism that matters. It is not about the status but the hope and vision for a peaceful and prosperous future, that rests in the foundations of the United Nations, that inspires to a common journey towards a better world free of wars, conflicts and dividing lines.



Armenia, as I believe numerous nations before us and many after, joined the United Nations with these aspirations and goals.



Armenia acceded to the family of nations during challenging times of its history but that has never diminished our resolve and commitment to the building of a society that fully adheres to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. We remain guided by the UN Charter that calls to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.



It is a solemn duty of all states, ascribed through their accession, to ensure the full and unhindered application of these commitments. Armenia strictly adheres to its obligations in this regard, including in its efforts to ensure an exclusively peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.



These commitments also form the central pillar of Armenias engagement within the UN framework. First and foremost it refers to our dedication to the UN prevention agenda.



As a nation who passed through the horrors of the genocide we feel a moral obligation but also an authority to speak out against recurrence of crimes against humanity.



Armenia also contributes to the world peace in a most direct way through participating in a number of peace operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mali.



We joined international concerted efforts aimed at countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism and addressing refugee crisis.



From Syria alone, about 22,000 refugees sought shelter in Armenia, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe.



Our country does its best to contribute to promotion of tolerance and intercultural, interfaith dialogue, combating racism, hate speech and xenophobia.



I would also like to emphasize that it is not just the list of endeavors but rather the hard work, dedicated efforts and unreserved commitment that define the full depth of multifaceted activities of Armenia within the UN framework during the past 25 years.



As we embark on the next chapter of our collective journey, I would like to reiterate Armenias unwavering support to the strong and effective global leadership of the United Nations that translates international obligations and commitments into tangible actions, builds bridges between peoples and eliminates dividing lines, promotes good neighborly relations, peace and prosperity worldwide.
A protest in memory of Food ProviderArtur Sargsyan has kicked off from Yerevans Liberty Square. (PHOTOS)

As reported by Armenian News - NEWS.am correspondent, the march participants will head for the Government building, following which they will decide where to go.

The march is attended by actor Hrant Tokhatyan, as well as candidates of Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanian (ORO) alliance Vartan Oskanian and Armen Martirosyan.

We have come to stand by our people, and bow our heads to that man. There is such a symbolic thing in this man, the Food Provider. He will be remembered by the people that way. He did a very good job by bringing bread, but he was treated cruelly. We have always been by those [Sasna Tsrer] guys side, signing petitions and making statements, Oskanian told Armenian News  NEWS.am.

A criminal case has been launched Friday into the death of Food Provider Artur Sargsyan. The case is opened pursuant to the Criminal Code article on those providing medical assistance and services not fulfillingor improperly fulfillingtheir professional duties, and which has negligently caused the death of the patient being treated.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan.

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police wall with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the members of this armed group. Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
YEREVAN. - The participants of the march in memory Food ProviderArtur Sargsyan have staged a sit-in on Yerevans Mashtots Avenue, blocking the traffic. (PHOTOS)

At the moment, several dozens of participants have sat in the part of the street meant for driving, scanning Hero Artur, Armenian News - NEWS.am correspondent reports.

The police are trying to open the street through negotiations.

A criminal case has been launched Friday into the death of Food Provider Artur Sargsyan. The case is opened pursuant to the Criminal Code article on those providing medical assistance and services not fulfillingor improperly fulfillingtheir professional duties, and which has negligently caused the death of the patient being treated.

Artur Sargsyan, a.k.a. the Food Provider, died Thursday at Armenia Medical Center, in capital city of Yerevan

Sargsyan, who was charged with aiding the Sasna Tsrer armed group, was released from prison on December 31, 2016, since he had an illness that was incompatible with imprisonment.

On February 9, however, he was arrested yet again.

Subsequently, Sargsyan went on hunger strike, and demanded that his preventive measure of arrest be commuted.

A few days ago, and with a written guarantee by several dozen MPs, he was released from prison and immediately hospitalized.

Several days ago, however, he left the hospital on his own volition.

But his health grew worse on Wednesday evening, and he was rushed to Armenia Medical Center, where he underwent surgery; but he did not regain consciousness after this operation.

The Sasna Tsrer armed group had taken over a police patrol regiment building in Yerevan, taken hostages, but later surrendered, in July 2016.

On July 26, Artur Sargsyan had broken through a police wall with a vehicle loaded with food, and delivered food to the members of this armed group. Sargsyan, 48, was a sculptor and a wood engraver.
Today the UK will challenge executives from Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google regarding why advertisements marketing the government's services appeared alongside videos containing hate speech and extremist content on YouTube.

Google will be attending a meeting at the Cabinet Office following the Times newspaper reporting that public sector ads were appearing next to videos with homophobic and anti-Semitic messages, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said.

"We are waiting for reassurances that they have in place the technical expertise to stop our adverts appearing in the wrong places," he said.

(Alphabet is a core holding in Jim Cramer's charitable trust Action Alerts PLUS. See all of his holding with a free trial here.)
OSHA's 'Safe and Sound Campaign' Urges Employers to Keep Workplaces Safe

The campaign calls on employers to review their safety and health programs that protect workers.

OSHA announced it recently launched its "Safe and Sound Campaign," which calls on employers to review their safety and health programs that protect workers, as well as reduce workplace injuries and deaths.

"Workplace safety and health incidents hurt workers and their families, and they cost businesses' capital better invested in growing their business and creating jobs," said Kim Stille, OSHA's regional administrator in Kansas City. "By identifying and controlling job-related hazards that can lead to injuries and illnesses, businesses can improve their safety and health programs, save money and improve competitiveness."

Twelve fatality inspections have been initiated by OSHA in Kansas, Missourim and Nebraska since October 2016, and serve as the motivation for the new campaign. A significant increase in fatalities associated with confined space entry and trenching and excavating have also been discovered.

"With just a phone call, companies can contact OSHA for assitance in achieving safety compliance. Working together with businesses, unions, and employees, we can reduce these sobering statistics and implement and sustain workplace safety and health programs that can help employees avoid preventable injuries and deaths," Stille said.
"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee is brought to you by Miller Brewing Company, calling Milwaukee home since 1855. For the entire month of March, we're serving up fun articles on bars, clubs and beverages  including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars poll and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!

When it comes to finding a taste of Ireland and a tasty brew on St. Patrick's Day  or on any of the other 364 days of the year  OnMilwaukee readers have once again voted County Clare the best Irish pub in Milwaukee.

County Clare, 1234 N. Astor St., is a small inn that serves great authentic food, including Irish root soup, shepherd's pie, and corned beef and cabbage. With plenty of space to dine, drink or lounge by the fireplace, County Clare is always cozy yet rarely cramped.

After losing the silver medal for the first time to Mo's Irish Pub last year, Paddy's Pub reclaimed its runner-up title in 2017  and in case that wasn't enough, the East Side favorite also nabbed the OnMilwaukee editors' pick. Meanwhile, McBob's, O'Lydia's and Mo's Irish Pub filled out the rest of the highly contested top five.

OnMilwaukee editors' pick: Paddy's Pub

Runners up:

2. Paddy's Pub

3. McBob's

4. O'Lydia's

5. Mo's Irish Pub

This year we also asked a variety of prominent Milwaukeeans to weigh in on their pick for specific categories. For this category, we consulted Kristin Paltzer, PR manager for Celtic, Inc.

Paltzer's pick: County Clare

Milwaukee has a lot of great Irish bars and pubs, but if Im picking a favorite, I have to go with County Clare.

The food is excellent, and I love the genuine pub atmosphere. Its warm, welcoming and cozy  especially on winter days.

Its the perfect place to go read a great book or catch up with friends while sipping a glass of whiskey. I have two little kids, so life is pretty busy these days. But I feel like Im able to slow down and take a break from some of lifes craziness when Im there.
"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee is brought to you by Miller Brewing Company, calling Milwaukee home since 1855. For the entire month of March, we're serving up fun articles on bars, clubs and beverages  including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars poll and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!

Hoppy beer. Dark chocolate. Coffee.

A trend toward bitter flavors is sweeping U.S., and its playing out in the cocktail scene in some truly fascinating ways. But to truly understand whats happening behind bars across the country, it helps to have a bit of background about these intriguing and mysterious elixirs.

"My first introduction was probably a Jagermeister," says Guy Rehorst, founder of Great Lakes Distillery. "And it was probably at Mortons up in Cedarburg. Of course, I didnt like it at first. That level of bitterness is something of an acquired taste. You often dont love it right away. But when you try it a second and third time, you begin to see it in a different light. And I think thats true for a lot of the bitter liqueurs."

And Rehorst isnt alone. For many in America, the introduction to bitter liqueurs begins with a shot of Jagermeister, a German half-bitter which contains a complex roster of over 50 ingredients and an unmistakably strong flavor.

But the oft-misunderstood liqueur didnt begin as an ingredient meant for Jager-bombs. In fact, in Germany, Jagermeister has been enjoyed since its inception in the 1930s as an after-dinner drink meant to settle the stomach and aid in digestion.

"We all have an innate aversion to bitter tastes," writes author Jennifer McLagan in her book, "Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor," wherein she explains that the inclination to reject bitter substances is a biological safeguard against the ingestion of potentially poisonous substances.

But the bodys reaction to bitter also kicks the body into overdrive, activating enzymes, jump-starting digestion and stimulating the metabolism. Bitter substances also often contain sulfur-based compounds which are believed to support the natural detoxification pathways in the liver.

And thats part of what makes bitter spirits so intriguing.

From pharmacy to pleasure

Countries throughout the world have made unique contributions to the bitter, botanical liqueur landscape. And some recipes go back hundreds of years. Theres Becherovka in Russia, Suze in Switzerland, Salers in France, Amaro and Vermouth in Italy, and Unicum in Hungary.

But its only recently that producers in the States have hopped on board. The past few years have seen a mini-boom of American-made bitter liqueurs, including Leopold Bros. Aperitivo (Colorado), St. George Spirits Bruto Americano (California), Don Ciccio e Figli Cinque Aperitivo (Washington D.C.), St. Agrestis (New York) and Letherbee Fernet (Illinois).

And Milwaukee may soon make a contribution to the pot.

Rehorst, who recently invested in the technology that measures the quantity of alcohol in liqueurs (a necessity to meet requirements for labeling), says hes been toying with the idea of creating a bitter liqueur for a number of years.

"Were stepping into the realm of liqueurs with our recently released orange liqueur," he says. "I love Campari, and Id love to do a variation on it. And maybe something a bit more approachable for people who are put off by the bitterness."

Historically, most bitter, botanical liqueurs originated as medicine, which was created by herbalists, pharmacists and monks. Spirits, which were an excellent preservative, were used as a base for medicine as well as a disinfectant and solvent. Vermouth has been used for centuries to help cure stomach ailments, and before the time of Hippocrates, Greeks were mixing herbs with wine. In fact, liqueurs were state of the art in terms of curative medicine.

The recipes for these bitter elixirs (eventually called liqueurs) are traditionally closely guarded. Even today, the recipes behind many brands still remain secret, creating a shroud of mystery and cabal.

"Theres a major smokescreen surrounding each brand and the production of these products," notes Jordan Burich, the beverage mastermind behind Sprezzatura, the Italian pop-up concept which is just beginning to make a splash in Milwaukee. "And you really end up with all these myths about origin. Theres so much mystery surrounding various brands. And that mythology just contributes to the romanticism surrounding these liqueurs."

That abstruseness is likely part of the reason bitter libations are trending. But its also because a new generation of bartenders has taken an interest.

"I think its like everything," says Rehorst. "When it comes to spirits, the bartender sets the trend. With bitter, were still in the stage where bartenders are very much hand-selling it. With the exception of people drinking Campari  either as a spritzer or negroni  there arent a lot of people just spying a bottle of something and asking to try it. But, at places like Buckleys, The Palm Tavern and Goodkind, if you engage the bartender, you will inevitably end up trying something youve never had before."

Burich agrees.

"Theres a long history of people using bitter Italian spirits in cocktails and theres a connection between Italian spirits and American drinking that got lost a bit after Prohibition. I think were starting to see a renaissance in that area. And Milwaukee is moving in that direction. You can see it best inside the industry, where bottles of Amaro are moving in and out of bars in a way they havent in past years."

But will bitter drinks be the next big thing to hit Milwaukee? Maybe, maybe not.

"I think the consumer is just starting to gain an appreciation for it," Rehorst says. "And I think weve probably got a long way to go before its fully embraced. But there are a lot of great products out there, and some interesting new things coming out."

Stay tuned for more in this series on bitter libations  including installments on apertifs, digestifs and vermouth  throughout the remainder of bar month.
The image shows the measurement of the SZ effect in the galaxy cluster RX J1347.5-1145 taken with ALMA (blue). The background image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. A hole caused by the SZ effect is seen in the ALMA observations. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Kitayama et al., NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) successfully imaged a radio "hole" around a galaxy cluster 4.8 billion light-years away. This is the highest resolution image ever taken of such a hole caused by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZ effect). The image proves ALMA's high capability to investigate the distribution and temperature of gas around galaxy clusters through the SZ effect.

A research team led by Tetsu Kitayama, Toho University, Japan, and Eiichiro Komatsu, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany, used ALMA to investigate the hot gas in a galaxy cluster. The hot gas is a key component to understand the nature and evolution of galaxy clusters. Even though the hot gas does not emit radio waves itself, which would be detectable with ALMA, the gas scatters the radio waves of the Cosmic Microwave Background and makes a "hole" around the galaxy cluster. This is called the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (Note).

The team observed the galaxy cluster RX J1347.5-1145 located 4.8 billion light-years away. This galaxy cluster is well known among astronomers for its strong SZ effect and has been observed many times with radio telescopes. These observations revealed an uneven distribution of the hot gas in this galaxy cluster, which was not seen in X-ray observations. Astronomers therefore needed higher resolution observations; these however, were difficult to obtain with high-resolution radio interferometers as the hot gas in galaxy clusters is relatively smooth and widely-distributed.

ALMA utilized the Atacama Compact Array to overcome this difficulty, which provides a wider field of view with its smaller diameter antennas and the close-packed antenna configuration. By using the data from the Morita Array, astronomers can precisely measure the radio waves from objects extending over a large angle on the sky. With ALMA, the team thus obtained an SZ effect image of RX J1347.5-1145, with twice the resolution and ten times better sensitivity than previous observations. This is the first image of the SZ effect with ALMA.

"The new ALMA observation not only confirms the previous observations, but also provides an image with the highest resolution and highest sensitivity, which will open up a new era of SZ science," Eiichiro Komatsu points out. "The mismatch between radio and X-ray observations leads us to the conclusion that this cluster is undergoing a violent merger, and we think that there is a clump of gas which is incredibly hot."

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the remnant radiation from the Big Bang and its radio waves reach us from every direction. When CMB radio waves pass through the hot gas in a galaxy cluster, the radio waves interact with high-energy electrons in the hot gas and gain energy. As a result, the radiation is shifted from radio waves to higher energy. Observing from the Earth, the CMB in the original energy range has less intensity near the galaxy cluster. This is called the "Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect," first proposed by Rashid Sunyaev (currently director at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) and Yakov Zel'dovich in 1970.

More information: Tetsu Kitayama et al. The SunyaevZel'dovich effect at 5: RX J1347.51145 imaged by ALMA, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (2016). DOI: 10.1093/pasj/psw082 , arxiv.org/abs/1607.08833
Barn swallows on a wire. Credit: Matt Davis/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Most of our understanding about evolutionary changes and the formation of new animal species is based on the historical record. But a relatively new population of barn swallows in Argentina may help scientists see those changes firsthand.

The ubiquitous barn swallow, found on every continent except Antarctica, is a wondrous migrator. The barn swallows of North America journey over 12,000 miles in migrations as far south as Argentina and back every year. They breed in the north, then winter in the south, following a six-month cycle of movements dictated by the changing seasons.

David Winkler, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and his collaborators say a new population of barn swallows near Buenos Aires, established only about 30 years ago, has adapted both its migration cycle and its breeding cycle in a dramatically short time.

The birds in this population have shortened their migrations by more than a third, traveling only to the equator for winter, then back down to Argentina to breed. The birds were tracked using software developed at Cornell.

"This population of barn swallows has dramatically changed its annual migration and its annual cycle, both recently. It raises questions about what mechanisms are behind changes in these characteristics," Winkler said. "Most biologists are conditioned to think that changes this extreme must be a result of some drastic change that necessitates adaptation, via natural selection over many generations, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. And when a change like this occurs so rapidly, we have to ask, how much of this could be changed by individuals in a single lifetime?"

Winkler and his colleagues have found evidence that some northern-born swallows are still migrating south and joining the new population to breed in Argentina, rather than returning north.

"There are certainly ecological differences between the northern and Argentine breeding grounds, which could select for genetic differences in the birds," Winkler said. "But immigrants from North America likely continue to bring in northern genes, slowing any sort of genetic selection on the Argentine population."

Nevertheless, the researchers speculate that the Argentine population could be a step toward a new subspecies of barn swallow. The mechanisms that are driving these barn swallows' migration behaviors and life cycle timing may be similar to those that drove skuas and terns in the past: Both are seabirds with far-northern and far-southern sister-species pairs.

"Rather than interpret this new swallow population as a mere oddity, this colonization may be the initial phase of an evolutionary process," Winkler said.

Likely the biggest factor that's made Argentina more inviting for barn swallows is the expansion of human infrastructure over the past 50 years, he said. Barn swallows make their nests under bridges, building eaves and, yes, in barns.

"Barn swallows have adapted to people for many, many hundreds of years," Winkler said. "Well over 99 percent of the nests of barn swallows are in some kind of human-made structure."

Winkler and his colleagues studied the swallows' migration by capturing individual birds and outfitting them with solar-geolocation loggers. They looped flexible polymer string around each bird's legs and up around its back, where a knot fastened with a dab of superglue kept the trackers in place.

The findings were published March 16 in Current Biology. Co-authors include Cornell graduate student Marshall Iliff, and scientists in Argentina, Russia and Canada.

More information: David W. Winkler et al. Long-Distance Range Expansion and Rapid Adjustment of Migration in a Newly Established Population of Barn Swallows Breeding in Argentina, Current Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.03.006 Journal information: Current Biology
More than 600,000 times, researchers have cited Bio-Techne Corp. in academic papers as a manufacturer of tools that helped in their search for new tests and treatments.

The company, Minnesota's biggest biotech company, makes tiny bits of biology plus analytical machines and kits used in academic laboratories and pharmaceutical research and development labs worldwide. Its customers are trying to solve some of the most pressing questions in life sciences, from the vagaries of gene expression to drugs for cancer, autoimmune diseases and diabetes.

Now the dawn of the age of precision medicine therapies like cancer immunotherapy holds the potential for some of the company's most exciting and lucrative contributions to science.

Minneapolis-based Bio-Techne has gone on a bit of a tear in recent years, with revenue cresting at an all-time high of half a billion dollars last year and three analyst firms initiating coverage with optimistic outlooks since the start of 2017. An aggressive run of acquisitions and management changes since 2013 has come with new transparency and goal-setting, and analysts say the difference shows.

"We consider the company the top strategic asset in an increasingly target-poor life science tools industry," Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Dan Leonard wrote in January, placing a "buy" rating on Bio-Techne stock with a target price of $115 a share. The stock stood just under $107 as of market close Tuesday.

Bio-Techne has produced dependable wet-lab research tools for decades, which helps explain why so many University of Minnesota biology grads want to work there. Nearly a third of the company's workforce has a degree from the university.

Analysts like how Bio-Techne is growing, combining well-considered acquisition targets with the company's long-running reputation for producing top-quality raw proteins and antibodies for use in research.

In 2014, Bio-Techne paid $300 million to acquire a molecular diagnostics device company called ProteinSimple. That portfolio included a machine called Wes, which retails for about $60,000 and was the first device to automate the common - and commonly frustrating - research method called the Western Blot. The Wes requires higher-margin "consumable" Western Blot products, which are also sold by Bio-Techne.

"That's $60,000 in revenue, but after that, in order to operate the system (users) are going to need the cartridges," Leerink Partners analyst Puneet Souda said in an interview. "Once your installed base starts growing, that starts to drive your consumables. This is a very good consumables company, so we know they will execute well on that end. That's something I see as a major growth driver in the future."

Bio-Techne has set an ambitious goal of hitting $1 billion in annual revenue through a combination of internal innovation and well-curated acquisitions.

It recently launched its first entry in the veterinary products market: a test system for common pet parasites that contains the industry's only nontoxic biodegradable chemical preservative. The company has also made moves to expand its footprint in stem cell science, striking a new co-development and licensing agreement with a small biotech startup in Connecticut called MultiClonal Therapeutics.

Until a few years ago, the company was run by longtime CEO Thomas Oland, who smoked in the office, disdained travel budgets and refused to put a computer on his desk. Oland helped build a public company with a strong reputation for dependability and quality, but he never did a quarterly earnings call or a "roadshow" for investors.

Oland's conservative financial philosophy left the company with a full year and half worth of revenue sitting in the bank.

"You have to hand it to him - he had a huge hand in building this business. No question about that," said Struan Robertson, a vice president with the company. "But when you take a (CEO) in 2012 who doesn't have a computer on his desk because he doesn't really think you need them, and smokes in the building, you think, 'This is some old-school thinking.'"

A painful leadership succession was triggered in 2012, in which Oland resigned from the company earlier than expected, and his preferred internal candidate for CEO was bypassed in favor of former 3M executive Charles "Chuck" Kummeth, 56.

Oland, who has since passed away, warned shareholders in a public securities filing that turning to an outsider like Kummeth to become CEO would "put at risk all that we and our employees have built over the past 30 years."

The stock price has increased by 57 percent since Oland wrote those words in October 2012.

Since Kummeth became CEO in 2013, the company has brought in 12 new executives, completed acquisitions of nine companies, and grown annual revenue 60 percent, to $499 million in fiscal 2016. Adjusted profit grew 14 percent between 2013 and 2016, to $134 million.

Kummeth ran the company's first-ever quarterly earnings call, in 2013. In 2014, the company changed its brand name from Techne to Bio-Techne, reflecting its mission of serving the global biotech community. The name change was also needed because Kummeth discovered no one had ever registered the name "Techne" in the first place, he said.

"The funny thing about this company is, it's 40 years told, but the doors were locked to the public until I arrived," Kummeth said. "There was a lot of low-hanging fruit here to change to make some real quick impact. And the stock started moving pretty quickly."

That low-hanging fruit included getting everyone in the company a new computer and email address, and setting up a sophisticated public website to help academic researchers worldwide select among Bio-Techne's roughly 250,000 different products.

"In academia, there are 800,000-plus researchers in the world, and they all buy just a little bit every week. So you have to get to them via the web," Kummeth said.

He's being literal when he says a little bit. In some cases, products are sold in microgram quantities. "It's in a vial, and you can't even see the product. ... But it might cost $500. And it might run 20 experiments, worth millions of dollars. You don't know."

Sometimes researchers just need raw proteins or antibodies suspended in a vial that will trigger a reaction or transform in the presence of another molecule for their work. Other times, customers need an entire analysis kit that can glow in the presence of a specific protein.

Bio-Techne also makes "clinical control" products needed to calibrate hematology and blood-chemistry equipment in medical labs. And it sells instruments that analyze the purity and quantity of proteins and antibodies in a sample, which are required for makers of biologic drugs like vaccines and anti-inflammatory medications to meet strict regulatory controls.

In fiscal 2016 Bio-Techne introduced 1,600 new biotech products in the life sciences, most of which were used for research and therefore not required to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The company has spent 9 percent of its revenue on R & D for the past three years.

The result was 10 percent overall sales growth in 2016, and 6 percent organic growth in the fiscal year, which ended June 30.

"It is definitely a hard-to-scale business, which is why we are doing some of these acquisitions in instruments, to try to get some scale," Kummeth said. "You have to stay current, but you have you have to stay current at the level of thousands of products a year."

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Bio-Techne at a glance

Headquarters: Minneapolis

NASDAQ stock ticker: TECH

Employees: About 1,700

Offices globally: 24

2016 revenue: $499 million

Market capitalization: $4.03 billion

2017 Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
An Iowa State University agronomist has contributed to research identifying a corn gene that resists a virus that has caused substantial yield losses in most corn-cultivating countries.

Thomas Lubberstedt, a professor of agronomy, said the research will lead to crop varieties that can fight off sugarcane mosaic virus. The virus, in concert with maize chlorotic mottle virus, causes a condition known as maize lethal necrosis disease, which has led to total yield losses in East African fields. Maize lethal necrosis disease first appeared in Africa in 2011, most likely traveling from southeast Asia, and has become a major concern for African corn famers, Lubberstedt said.

"We hope our research can be used in countries where these viruses are present and contribute to getting these viruses under control," Lubberstedt said. "Ultimately, we want to help solve problems for farmers."

Sugarcane mosaic virus and closely related potyviruses threaten corn crops in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, though it hasn't been a major disease in the United States in recent years. The virus also infects sugarcane, sorghum and other crops.

Lubberstedt is a co-author of a study published this month in the peer-reviewed academic journal Molecular Plant detailing a possible genetic source of resistance to the virus. The study identifies a gene called Scmv1 that, when expressed at a high enough rate, helps corn plants fight off the virus.

The virus hijacks a protein in the plant related to photosynthesis that's critical for plant energy production and spreads from there, Lubberstedt said. Scmv1, the resistance gene, binds with the same photosynthesis protein and competes with the virus. If the gene is expressed at a high rate, it can stop the disease from spreading.

Lubberstedt has worked on corn trait mapping since the 1990s, but previous experiments managed to narrow down sugarcane mosaic virus resistance only to a cluster of genes. The new paper pinpoints the specific gene that governs resistance, which should make it possible to use transgenics and other methods to increase the expression of Scmv1 in plants.

More information: Qingqing Liu et al. An Atypical Thioredoxin Imparts Early Resistance toSugarcane Mosaic Virusin Maize, Molecular Plant (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.molp.2017.02.002 Journal information: Molecular Plant
Credit: Shutterstock

A Polish/Czech research team has demonstrated how even a seemingly ultrasecure form of money, designed using quantum mechanics can have a potentially important security loophole putting it at risk of forgery. But this highlights not the shortcomings of this exciting new technology, but rather its continuing potential to transform human society in the 21st century.

Quantum technologies are without a doubt currently in vogue in the scientific and technological communities. As the theory becomes reality, these exciting technologies promise to transform our societies over the coming decades.

The technology of tomorrow

As noted in this week's edition of The Economist: 'A bathing cap that can watch individual neurons, allowing others to monitor the wearer's mind. A sensor that can spot hidden nuclear submarines. A computer that can discover new drugs, revolutionise securities trading and design new materials. A global network of communication links whose security is underwritten by unbreakable physical laws. Such - and more - is the promise of quantum technology.'

The EU has also jumped on the quantum bandwagon, with funding of around EUR 550 million through Horizon 2020 to ensure that Europe maintains its role as one of the global powerhouses for quantum research (for more on the EU's efforts in this field, see the CORDIS Results Pack on quantum technologies.

Moreover, as with all developing technologies, scientists will not only have to push forward what works but also find solutions to existing weaknesses. A Polish and Czech team of scientists have done exactly this through developing what should be  in theory  ultrasecure 'quantum money' but then immediately found a serious flaw leaving it at risk of forgery. The research has been published in the journal 'npj Quantum Information'.

Forging the unforgeable

Under ideal conditions, quantum currency is impossible to counterfeit. But thanks to the messiness of reality, a forger with access to sophisticated equipment could skirt that quantum security if banks don't take appropriate precautions. The concept of quantum money has been around since the 1970s, first proposed by then-Columbia University grad student Stephen Wiesner, but this is the first time anyone has created and counterfeited quantum cash.

Instead of paper or plastic banknotes, the research team's quantum bills were minted in light. To transfer funds, a series of photons would be transmitted to a bank using the photons' polarisations, the orientation of their electromagnetic waves, to encode information.

To illustrate their technique in a fun way, the researchers transmitted a pixelated picture of a banknotean old pre-euro Austrian schilling bill  using photons' polarisations to stand for grayscale shades. In a real quantum money system, each bill would be different and the photon polarisations would be distributed randomly, rather than forming a picture. The polarisations would create a serial numberlike code the bank could check to verify that the funds are legitimate.

Crucially, a criminal intercepting the photons couldn't copy them accurately because quantum information can't be perfectly duplicated. 'This is actually the cornerstone of security of quantum money,' says Karel Lemr, study co-author from the Palacky University Olomouc in the Czech Republic.

However, the system would not be as secure as it first appears. Because single photons are easily lost or garbled during transmission, banks would have to accept partial quantum bills, analogous to a paper banknote with a corner torn off. This gives an opportunity for criminals to make forgeries that aren't perfect, but are arguably good enough to be verified by the bank.

Lemr and his colleagues used an optimal cloner, a device that comes as close as possible to copying quantum information (the technology to instigate a real money system based on quantum technologies does not physically exist yet), to attempt a forgery. The team showed that a bank would accept a forged bill if the standard for accuracy wasn't high enoughmore than about 84 % of the received photons' polarisations must match the original.

Previously, this vulnerability 'wasn't explicitly pointed out, but it's not surprising,' says theoretical computer scientist Thomas Vidick of Caltech, who was not involved in the research. The result, he says, indicates that banks must be stringent enough in their standards to prove the bills they receive are real.

So whilst this experiment highlights not only the great potential of quantum technologies, it also exposes significant security challenges that still need to be overcome. This isn't just confined to the concept of quantum money, but also many of the other revolutionary products the human harnessing of quantum mechanics promises.

However, as 'The Economist' summarises, the remaining challenges are mostly engineering ones, rather than scientific, and what is most exciting about quantum technology is its as yet untapped potential.

Provided by CORDIS
San Joaquin kit foxes face numerous threats, including habitat encroachment and sarcoptic mange. The highly contagious infection can lead to death. Credit: Rick Derevan

Endangered San Joaquin kit foxes face many threats to their survival, including loss of habitat and competition with non-native species such as the red fox. Now, scientists are rushing to save remaining fragile populations from a new danger - sarcoptic mange, a skin disease caused by mites.

A recent publication by Morris Animal Foundation-funded researchers sheds light on the dynamics of this highly contagious disease, and gives desperately needed information to those working to save the San Joaquin kit fox, a subspecies of the smallest canid in North America. The paper was published in the January 2017 Journal of Wildlife Diseases.

The San Joaquin kit fox (Vulpes macrotis mutica) is endemic to central California's San Joaquin Valley, but development of the area over the last century has led to a sharp decline in its population. Currently, there are fewer than 7,000 San Joaquin kit foxes, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. A critical population located in the city of Bakersfield is threatened by sarcoptic mange, first identified in spring of 2013.

Sarcoptic mange is a highly contagious, zoonotic disease caused by Sarcoptes scabiei, a mite that burrows into the skin. Hair loss and skin lesions, compounded by intense itching and self-trauma, can be fatal in severe cases. Urgent management strategies are needed to stop transmission of the disease to other members of this unique population, as well as to to other kit fox groups and other canids, both wild and domestic.

"The research results presented in this paper established a critical foundation for understanding the epidemiology of sarcoptic mange and its impacts on an extremely important population of endangered San Joaquin kit foxes," said Dr. Brian Cyphers, Associate Director and Research Ecologist of the Endangered Species Recovery Program at California State University, Stanislaus, and one of the paper's authors.

During the study, the research team confirmed the diagnosis of sarcoptic mange in 15 kit foxes either captured or found deceased. The team successfully treated three animals of nine found alive. They found no evidence that untreated kit foxes can recover from the infection, meaning prevention and treatment are critical to containing the spread of the disease.

"With this foundational study, we have been able to leverage additional funding to continue our research, including identifying potential strategies to eliminate the disease from portions of this kit fox population and possibly from the entire population," said Dr. Cyphers.

More information: Brian L. Cypher et al, SARCOPTIC MANGE IN ENDANGERED KIT FOXES (): CASE HISTORIES, DIAGNOSES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CONSERVATION, Journal of Wildlife Diseases (2017). DOI: 10.7589/2016-05-098 Journal information: Journal of Wildlife Diseases

Provided by Morris Animal Foundation
David Millican, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences in the College of Science, uses a peeper camera to determine what is living in the natural cavities he has located at his field site in Namibia. Credit: Jelena Djakovic

A Virginia Tech graduate student is living in one of the hottest and driest countries in the world this semester so that he can study how climate change, land management, and other human-caused phenomena impact a community of animals known as the cavity guild.

Composed of birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and invertebrates, the cavity guild, biologically speaking, is a group of animals that depend on holes and crevices in trees for their nesting sites.

However, Namibia receives only 2-24 inches of rainfall annually, leaving the landscape devoid of large trees. To exacerbate the problem, trees that are able to survive and grow in such a water-scarce environment are subject to removal for charcoal production, a common energy source in Namibia.

"Species in this community are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their habitat needs," said David Millican, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science. "Weather in Namibia is highly variable, with yearly droughts occurring in unpredictable intervals. This variation in weather may likewise cause extreme variations in community dynamics, with some species opting not to breed in years of extreme drought and others altering the timing of their breeding in response to the altered rain schedule."

Credit: Virginia Tech

The goal of Millican's research is to provide critical information on how the cavity guild community is structured.

Topics of interest include what tree species are most utilized by cavity nesters, the most important processes of cavity formation, and the intensities of the competitive interactions between species. Answers to these questions will help ensure the preservation of the community and its members.

While in Namibia, Millican partners with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international nonprofit organization based just outside of Otjiwarongo. As a visiting researcher there, he has access to research facilities and the center's farm properties for fieldwork. Currently, he is searching for and monitoring tree cavities in 20 sites, each approximately 40 acres in size.

"David's work continues our lab's tradition of conducting basic research with conservation applications and of studies of cavity guilds around the world," said Jeff Walters, the Harold Bailey Professor of Biological Sciences in the College of Science and co-director of the Interfaces of Global Change graduate program. "He is seeking to determine how connections between cavity resources and the species who use them, and interactions between those species, determine the abundance and diversity of cavity-dwellers. That knowledge can inform forest-management practices in order to integrate conservation with the needs of the people that depend on these habitats."

Credit: Virginia Tech

As an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow, Millican received a grant from Virginia Tech's Global Change Center to add a social science component to his fieldwork this semester. Each year, the center, which is housed in the Fralin Life Science Institute, accepts proposals from graduate students to support interdisciplinary research and research-related travel that address both basic and applied aspects of global change science.

"David's proposal stood out because he seeks to engage Namibian indigenous communities so that they can be part of the solution to this incredibly complex environmental problem. Most conservation issues require engagement of local stakeholders to be successful, and David is determined to make this a team effort," said Bill Hopkins, the center's director. "To this end, David has also surrounded himself with faculty expertise in ornithology, ecology, and social science, representing the type of interdisciplinary research that the center seeks to promote."

To best prepare himself for engagement with stakeholders, Millican teamed up with Ashley Dayer, an assistant professor of human dimensions in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. Dayer, a social scientist, teaches a graduate course called Human Dimensions of Fisheries and Wildlife that educates students about how current domestic and international issues can be addressed through an understanding of human thought and behavior.

"Dr. Dayer and I are keen to understand the wildlife perceptions of communities throughout Namibia, including private landowners and tribal communities," said Millican. "Namibia is a very diverse country, composed of communities with many different African tribal origins as well as European origins. To understand and incorporate the values of these unique communities into conservation outreach campaigns, we plan to hold focus group interviews with indigenous groups. Our goal is to understand how these different indigenous regions overlap and differ in their perceptions of wildlife to identify flagship species that could unite people in conservation action."

Credit: Virginia Tech

Flagship species, as students learn in Dayer's class, are an umbrella species for conservation of a habitat type or suite of species that are chosen for a conservation campaign based on their importance to people, rather than their ecological role. Flagship species are used to attract the attention of stakeholders to raise awareness and funds for conservation and to change people's behaviors to promote conservation.

"Working with Dave on this research project is just one of the rewards I've experienced as a faculty member affiliated with the Global Change Center," said Dayer. "He's one of several Interfaces of Global Change Fellows that I've had the opportunity to teach in my class. Their passion for integrating social and ecological science inspires me; I am sure that this generation of conservation scientists is going to make a real difference in this world."
Poultry litter being incorporated into the soil during disking, a process that turns the soil and pulverizes it so that the litter can be mixed into it. Click the image for more information about it. Credit: Agricultural Research Service

A Mississippi-based Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researcher has learned that using poultry litter as fertilizer can help cotton growers in the Southeast maximize profits.

Poultry litter (chicken manure, spilled feed, excess feathers, and other poultry-house materials) contains nitrogen and phosphorusboth important crop nutrients. Applying poultry litter to the soil also recycles some of the tons of litter generated annually by poultry operations throughout the United States, says Haile Tewolde, an ARS agronomist at Mississippi State.

While more farmers are using poultry litter as fertilizer these days, there is little information about the amounts cotton growers should use to maximize profits.

Tewolde and his colleagues applied poultry litter to cotton at seven different rates on two farms by scattering the litter with a commercial fertilizer spreader. They measured cotton lint yields for three years at one farm and five years at another. For comparison, they also measured yields where they applied standard rates of synthetic fertilizer. They factored in the costs for the litter and the market price of the cotton to determine optimal rates for earning a profit.

The researchers found that the most profitable rate is not the same as the rates that produced the highest yields because of cotton's current low cost. Maximum yields were achieved at 9,000 to 12,000 pounds of litter applied per acre. Yet, profits were highest at only 7,000 pounds applied per acre.

The results give growers specific recommendations to avoid applying more litter than needed, which could pollute waterways. The results also highlight poultry litter's capabilities as a fertilizer.
Research published in European Education examines how policies that are meant to help encourage inclusion of communities can in fact achieve the opposite.

The research examines how policy design and the general public in Slovakia construct Roma students and parents as irresponsible dependents and deviants who do not value education and are incapable of making wise decisions about their lives. This belief is held despite the pro-inclusive efforts in place, because negative social images of a certain societal group are embedded in the policies.

These findings can be considered relevant for policy formulation processes because pro-inclusive policies may sabotage their own goals.

For this study, the researchers analyzed data from two selected educational policies and five focus groups conducted in five regions in Slovakia.

Guest editor Eben Friedman said, "This research is particularly important insofar as it points to the need to examine carefully the assumptions on which policies designed to promote Roma inclusion are based. In so doing, it picks up on the broader theme of how the consequences of policies sometimes not only go beyond what was intended, but sometimes also work against the aims which the policies were to serve."

More information: Jozef Miskolci et al. Trying to Include but Supporting Exclusion Instead? Constructing the Roma in Slovak Educational Policies, European Education (2017). DOI: 10.1080/10564934.2017.1280337
The rare Large Blue (Maculinea Arion) species of butterfly

A British man has been convicted of capturing and killing two of Britain's rarest butterflies, the endangered Large Blues, which have been a prized collector's item since the Victorian era.

Judges at the court in the southwest city of Bristol late on Thursday found 57-year-old Philip Cullen guilty of killing the Large Blues, which have protected status, and he faces a possible prison sentence to be decided next month.

"It is a unique case. There has never been a prosecution in terms of capturing and killing in the past," prosecutor Kevin Withey told the court.

Conservation volunteers had spotted Cullen trapping Large Blues with a small net in two protected areas in Gloucestershire and Somerset in southwest England.

Police then raided his home in Bristol in February last year and found 30 trays of dead moths and butterflies, including the Large Blues in question.

Investigators discovered that Cullen was selling the butterflies on eBay while he claimed he had bought the Large Blues in his possession from a French farm.

First discovered in Britain in 1795, Large Blues had disappeared from the country by 1979. They were re-introduced from Sweden in 1983 at a dozen sites.

Butterfly Conservation, a non-governmental group, said there was a black market for mounted Large Blues mocked up to look like Victorian-era specimens that could sell for up to 300 (345 euros, $371) each.

 2017 AFP
In this undated photo provided by NOAA, an endangered Hawaiian monk seal known as RB18 lies on the shore of Hawaii's Big Island. The monk seal has died after wandering into a net pen and becoming trapped at a fish farm that was partially funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. Officials with NOAA said Thursday, March 16, 2017, the death of the 10-year-old monk seal happened at Blue Ocean Mariculture, the same fish farm that NOAA's National Marine Fishery Service has been using for research in conjunction with a plan to expand aquaculture into federal waters around the Pacific. (Julie Steelman/NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service via AP)

An endangered Hawaiian monk seal has died after wandering into a net pen and becoming trapped at a fish farm that was partially funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii.

Officials with NOAA said Thursday the death of the 10-year-old monk seal happened at Blue Ocean Mariculture, the same fish farm that NOAA's National Marine Fishery Service has been using for research in conjunction with a plan to expand aquaculture into federal waters around the Pacific.

Ann Garrett, the service's assistant regional administrator for protected resources, confirmed the farm was the same one used for the NOAA-funded research, but could not comment further on the agency's involvement.

NOAA is working on a plan to expand aquaculture into federal waters despite concerns by some environmental groups who say the industrial-scale farms could do more harm than good to overall fish stocks and ocean health.

The NOAA plan would create a regulatory and permitting scheme for the industry. The plan includes federal permitting and management of commercial fish farms in federal waters, the area of ocean from 3 to 200 miles offshore, around Hawaii and other Pacific islands.

The agency funded three rounds of research at Blue Ocean Mariculture operation.

NOAA officials said at a news conference Thursday that they believe the seal drowned after the farm operators opened one panel of a net pen to release a shark that had gotten inside. The seal died on March 5.

"We did not see any signs of trauma or entanglement or any gashes or lacerations. We also saw no gross signs, meaning obvious signs, of disease," said NOAA's National Marine Fishery Service's David Schofield, the marine mammal response coordinator for the region. "The seal, B18, had a stomach full of fish and otherwise appeared in good body condition so we can draw no other conclusion than that the animal did die in the fish pen likely due to drowning or suffocation."

Schofield said it was unclear if the fish that were found in the monk seal's stomach were farmed fish from the net pen, but further testing should help determine that.

In this undated photo provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an endangered Hawaiian monk seal known as RB18 lies on the shore of Hawaii's Big Island. The monk seal has died after wandering into a net pen and becoming trapped at a fish farm that was partially funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. Officials with NOAA said Thursday, March 16, 2017, the death of the 10-year-old monk seal happened at Blue Ocean Mariculture. (Julie Steelman/NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service via AP)

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair Suzanne Case said in a statement the death is a tragedy and the state will work with federal officials to prevent future problems with aquaculture operations.

There are only about 1400 Hawaiian monks seals left in the wild, according to official estimates.

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.

Former NOAA chief scientist and founder of ocean advocacy group Mission Blue Sylvia Earle told the AP in an interview in December there are more environmentally sustainable and economically viable options than open-ocean aquaculture, which uses 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?"

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. NOAA says the research being conducted at the farm is designed to better understand ways to make open ocean farming safe and efficient.

"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, in a 2016 interview.

A request for comment from Blue Ocean Mariculture was not immediately returned.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Matt Naglak, a student in the U-M Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archeology, records an exceptionally well-preserved ceramic finds from the niche of an infant tomb dating to the period of city formation, about 7th century B.C. Credit: University of Michigan

A team of archeologists has published its first volume about the Gabii Project, a large-scale dig of an ancient city in Italy, in a first-of-its-kind online format.

Gabii was a settlement located just east of Rome that, like its more famous neighbor, emerged as a major city in the 8th century B.C. At its economic height, Gabii jockeyed for position with Rome, according to Marcello Mogetta, managing director of the Gabii Project, which is housed at the University of Michigan and sponsored by U-M's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. The city eventually receded as Rome rose, and waned almost entirely by the late 3rd century A.D.

"This was a time when Romans were discovering themselves," said Nicola Terrenato, the Esther B. Van Deman Collegiate Professor of Roman Studies in the U-M Department of Classical Studies and leader of the Gabii Project. "This was before the Coliseum was built, a formative period when Roman people were figuring out what it's like to be rich and powerful."

In the new online publication by the University of Michigan Press, called "A Mid-Republic House from Gabii," readers can wander through a 3-D rendering of the excavated layers as well as a reconstruction of an elite house within the city that the archeologists have been excavating since 2009. Readers can pause over a representation of an archaeological feature, click on the image and read about how the archeologists suspect it was used.

"We're able to provide the reader with the experience of the actual excavation," said Mogetta, who is also an assistant professor of Roman art and archeology at the University of Missouri. "You can kneel down just like the excavator...depending on the level of engagement, you could re-excavate what we excavate."

In addition to the virtual walk-through, the researchers catalogued every artifact lifted from the dig and entered them into an online database. Casual readers and researchers alike can access the database from within the publication and use information from it for their own research.

"It's not very common for archeological projects to publish the entire excavation archive. In a traditional print book, you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of context sheets, forms and tables. Publishing all that would be absolutely daunting," Mogetta said. "This would be a great tool for a doctoral student writing a dissertation, say, on coinage in central Italy."

Gabii Project field director Anna Gallone and managing director Marcello Mogetta uncover the remains of a lead coffin. Credit: University of Michigan

In that example, Mogetta says, the student could adjust his or her search within the archive to extract data in very specific ways. The doctoral student writing a dissertation on coinage is able to search the archive for information relevant only to his or her research needs. Photos, artifacts, samples, maps and descriptions are all tied to a unifying number, and those are linked to the place in the digthe layer or wallwhere an artifact was found.

"Typically, even in contemporary excavations, you might have to flip through a folder or a stack of 500 photographs to find the one you need," Terrenato said. "We've structured this archive so that you can search by keywords, and if a photograph shows two layersa wall and the groundthe photo will appear in both records so that you always retrieve all the relevant images."

Going forward, Mogetta and Terrenato's team has three main research questions: to explore how Gabii became urbanized; to study when architecture started to become large scale; and to study how such an early city began to decay. Gabii provides a prime opportunity to study early urbanization because the city began dying as it became urbanized. Rome kept growingand its growth literally covered the roots of its urbanization.

"In Rome, it's very difficult to reach the early levels of the city," Mogetta said. "You have to get through modern buildings, medieval cellars and Roman imperial architecture. What you get is thumbnails of early city."

"Gabii was so close to Rome that eventually most of the well-off aristocrats moved to the capitalthat's where big politics was happening," Mogetta said. "It was much better to build your home next to the Roman forum where all the political bickering was happening than stay at Gabii, but the end result was that progressively, what was once a sizeable town shrunk to the level of a village."

City dwellers started repurposing parts of the city, Mogetta says. Aristocratic houses became "shady, stinky, smelly" industrial buildings like laundry shops. Other parts of the site were completely razed in order to quarry volcanic stone from the city's bedrock to be used in Roman imperial architecture.

"Everybody left, but whoever stayed recycled themselves in a way that they could thrive in the new condition of the city," Mogetta said. "It's easy to reference the case of Detroit, in which you saw this inevitable collapse and crisis, which was brought about by external factorsbut local communities found their way to live through a new situation."

The content of the lead coffin was excavated in the lab at the American Academy in Rome. The lead sheets wrapped the body of an adult male individual who died around the age of Nero, whose skeletal remains are visible on the left. No grave goods were found, but the disposal of 500 pounds of metal is in itself a sign of the high status of the deceased. Credit: University of Michigan

The researchers' next volume in the Gabii publication will examine, among other finds, the elaborate burial of an apparently wealthy man. The man had been buried in a 700-pound sleeve of lead wrapped around his body, leading the archeologists to dub the sarcophagus "the lead burrito."

Charles Watkinson, associate university librarian for publishing and director of the U-M Press, says the online publishing platform allows not only an immersive experience for the reader, but a faster way to publish research from archeological digs.

"Digital technologies are being used by the University of Michigan to transform the way research in archeology is done, and that includes how the work is published," Watkinson said.

"There have been concerns in the archeological community that delays in publishing the final results of big digs are too much of a negative factor in starting large excavations like ours," Mogetta said. "We're hoping this kind of publication will make the pipeline from excavation to final publication as streamlined as possible."

U-M will also maintain digital access to the book through the its library system, where researchers can access any piece of information associated with the dig through the publication's databaseeven handwritten notes. Terrenato said the online publication will also be safeguarded by the U-M libraries system which provides long-term preservation as well as access.

"This is about creating and distributing knowledge and being in the business of keeping it available, which is what libraries have been doing for the last three thousand years," Terrenato said.

More information: Publication: A Mid-Republic House from Gabii: quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gabii
FPX, a pioneering Minnesota software company that survived three decades of industry change, is accelerating its product development with an infusion of capital from a new owner.

The company has long provided software that lets businesses configure, price and quote their products - a souped-up version of the experience consumers get when they go to a car website and build and price a model.

The market for such software is getting bigger. For many years, companies used such programs, known as configuration engines or CPQ systems, chiefly to arm their sales forces with a tool that could price out a deal.

These days, more and more buyers of sophisticated products - from industrial tools to military helicopters and big data systems - want the capability to price the goods themselves. They have been shaped by the experience of making, as consumers, those build-to-order choices for cars and other items like PCs.

"The internet has spoiled all of us," said Chris Lords, head of product development. "No longer do we have to call a salesperson and try to figure out what we want and have them come back with a quote. We can educate ourselves. We can figure out everything we want."

In addition, businesses are seeing a big change in their sales forces. As older workers retire, companies are losing people who knew shortcuts and hurdles in putting deals together.

"The people that were used to working in Excel spreadsheets are retiring," Lords said. "It's a new, younger generation coming in that has different expectations. Because that generation doesn't understand all the configuration rules and all the complexities that the people who have been doing it for decades know, there's a need to drive that into the technology."

The market evolution is giving new life to FPX, a company that started in the southern Minnesota city of Mankato in the 1980s as Clear With Computers, one of the first makers of sales force automation software. It became known as Firepond Software in the 1990s.

Firepond went public in 2000, faded after the dot-com bubble burst a year later and was acquired. Over the next decade, it changed hands and names several times, but it survived because it had working capital and a base of steady, large corporate customers.

David Batt, who became the company's chief executive in 2013, said it has retained some customers, such as Daimler Trucks, from its start 30 years ago. It took "a little bit of luck" to last so long in an industry as volatile as software, Batt said. "The company invented a product that became a category," he said.

As demand for CPQ software morphed and the market grew, Batt drove the company to make its products available on more platforms. For years, Firepond worked chiefly with the products of Salesforce Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of customer relationship management software. As FPX, its products now work across SAP, Oracle and Microsoft CRM platforms.

With FPX software, companies sharply cut the length of time it takes to put together a price quote or an order for a customer. For one manufacturer of computer servers and related hardware used in data centers, FPX's software can configure a quote in less than 30 minutes, a process that used to take that company four weeks. In addition to the time savings, Batt said, "that eliminated million of dollars in discretionary discounts they had to offer to make errors right with their customers."

Last month, FPX was rated a "strong performer" in a report on CPQ products by market research firm Forrester, which gave the software firm its highest possible score on 15 criteria, including user experience. That accolade came just weeks after FPX was mentioned favorably by another influential market researcher, Gartner, in its survey of CPQ suppliers.

Both market-research firms estimate speedy growth for such software vendors as more business-to-business transactions occur online. Gartner estimates 20 percent annual growth for CPQ software in the U.S. through 2020. FPX, after several years of flat sales, is growing strongly again, Batt said, and is nearing $100 million in annual revenue.

With the industry changing so fast, mentions by analysts can affect not just the sales of FPX products but the company's market value and strategic prospects. The company was purchased in April by HGGC, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based private equity firm that provided more working capital and amped up its research and development budget.

FPX has since hired more developers in the Twin Cities area and Mankato, where it maintains strong ties with Minnesota State University, Mankato. It recently relocated its biggest office to a different tower in suburban Minneapolis and moved another office in suburban Dallas, where Batt works. The company has a direct sales force that is deployed around the country and two European cities but also relies on IT services firms like Accenture to sell its software.

FPX contends with several direct competitors, including comparably sized firms such as Apttus and larger ones like Salesforce and Oracle. But, in many companies, the biggest obstacle for FPX is the existing pricing system that was usually developed internally.

"Probably our biggest competitor is still an IT department," Lords said. "It's not really as much competing against other CPQ vendors as it is someone going back and forth between build vs. buy."

As a result, the decision to hire FPX often rises all the way to a company's chief executive. "You have to have buy-in all the way up because it is driving" return on investment, Lords said.

In addition to pushing its software onto a greater variety of enterprise systems, FPX in recent years has been focused on adapting its products to be used on mobile devices.

Now, FPX is working on two innovations that should speed up the time it takes for a user to put together a quote request. One is natural language capability, which would let a customer say what they want in a product or system rather than clicking through multiple menus. The second is a predictive capability that would fill in menus and options as the system sees what a customer is doing.

"This is a system that completes configurations based on past behavior," Lords said. "The secret sauce is the algorithms that learn this behavior."

Both capabilities exist in consumer e-commerce, but they require more sophistication for complex products businesses tend to buy.

2017 Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
We just held our Community Update Breakfast and had over 240 business professionals attend the event. It was great to see the support of our community and the interest of local business leaders. Tim Gover, the mayor of Mattoon, was very positive on the progress in Mattoon despite the state budget impasse and the announcement from GE regarding the plant closing later this year. He spent most of his presentation discussing all the new and future businesses here in Mattoon.

We have had a number of new businesses open up in Mattoon in the last year including, but not limited to, Artsy Chic Studios, Denny's Restaurant, Dogs 24-7, Fujiyama Japanese Steakhouse, Harbor Freight, O'Reilly Auto Parts, Osaka Sushi and Steakhouse, Suite Dreams Hotel, Team ITS, LLC and Village Square Real Estate. We also have many new businesses coming soon: Copper Creek Cottages Memory Care, Crave Coffee and Cafe, Planet Fitness, Starbucks and AT&T to name a few. With the addition of the new five-unit mall to the west of Cracker Barrel, three more yet-to-be-announced businesses will be joining Starbucks and AT&T as new retailers.

Many existing Mattoon businesses have announced expansions recently. The First National Bank has a new wealth management center opening very soon on the east side of town. Sarah Bush Lincoln opened their Cancer Center and will be opening their new stand alone walk in clinic this May. First-Mid Illinois Bank and Consolidated Communications both have been acquiring companies and expanding. LSC Communications obtained new equipment, expanding their operations and are looking to add up to 100 new employees. Justrite Manufacturing Co, LLC will be expanding operations in Dusseldorf, Germany, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Italy.

Consolidated Communications in collaboration with the City of Mattoon has opened the new Heritage Park on 17th and Broadway. The park was a destination for pictures during the Downtown Christmas Celebration. The cities of Mattoon and Charleston received a grant to help pave the entire length of the Lincoln Prairie Grass Trail and now will connect the Mattoon train depot with Eastern Illinois University.

The bottom line is we have a lot of great things happening in Mattoon. The mayor emphasized this in his presentation and said we need to focus on all of the positive things happening in our community. It is an exciting time for growth here in Mattoon and we look forward to our future success.
The lost townscape of sixteenth-century Edinburgh has been brought back to life by researchers at the University of St Andrews.

The new digital reconstruction is the first to be created of the period, and is based on a drawing from 1544, thought to be the earliest accurate depiction of the capital.

The virtual time travel technology  which will be released as an app in May  provides a unique window into the capital around the time of the birth of Mary Queen of Scots.

The technology is the result of a collaboration between St Andrews historians, art historians, computer scientists and University spinout company Smart History. The result is an interactive tour of the capital as it appeared in 1544, just before the city was sacked and burned by an English army led by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford.

Dr Bess Rhodes, an expert on sixteenth-century Scottish history who collaborated on the reconstruction, said:

"For the first time visitors and residents can compare the city they know with the capital of James V and Mary Queen of Scots. It has been amazing seeing the recreation of a lost townscape. I hope this project makes the public more aware of the layers in the capital's history, and furthers understanding of the complex way in which Edinburgh evolved."

The reconstruction is inspired by a sixteenth-century drawing of Edinburgh made by Richard Lee, an English military engineer who later designed the massive artillery defences at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Lee accompanied the Earl of Hertford's forces to Edinburgh in 1544, and his drawing is thought to be the first realistic portrayal of Scotland's capital.

The interdisciplinary team of St Andrews researchers supplemented the information from Lee's plan with archaeological evidence, sixteenth-century written sources, and information about the geography of the modern city, to create an updated reconstruction of Edinburgh.

Dr Rhodes continued: "The 1540s were a tumultuous period in Edinburgh's history. In December 1542 King James V of Scotland died, leaving his baby daughter Mary as monarch. Not long after the English King Henry VIII ordered an invasion of Scotland, with the aim of forcing the Scots to accept a proposed betrothal between the infant Mary and his young son (the future Edward VI of England).

"One of the first major actions in the conflict later known as the 'Rough Wooing' was the Earl of Hertford's attack on Edinburgh in May 1544. Hertford's forces failed to capture Edinburgh Castle, but set fire to the city, destroying much of the medieval townscape, before they retreated. Our reconstruction is the first digital representation of Edinburgh at this eventful moment in the capital's past."

The new reconstruction gives an overview of the townscape of the entire sixteenth-century city, with a particular focus on the Royal Mile  the historic spine of Edinburgh. The digital development was largely financed by a grant from Innovate UK.

The reconstruction will be available on a number of digital platforms (including a mobile app, a 3-D virtual experience, and more traditional web-based resources) from 1 May 2017.

The technology was premiered at the EPSRC Impact Accelerator Account (IAA) Industry Showcase in St Andrews yesterday (Thursday 16 March 2017). The aim of the all-day event was to stimulate long-term strategic industrial engagement, to increase collaboration and to widen public access to the latest physical sciences research at the University.

Other research on display included current projects in the fields of cancer recognition, explosives and water pollutant detection, low-cost organic solar cells, virtual museums and a smoking-cessation app.

More information: For more information, see www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/online  i00002u00056000.html
A sample of transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride with a diameter of approximately two millimeters, synthesized at DESY. Credit: Credit: Norimasa Nishiyama, DESY/Tokyo Tech

Scientists have synthesised the first transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic at DESY. The result is a super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride that can potentially be used under extreme conditions like in engines, as the Japanese-German team writes in the journal Scientific Reports. Cubic silicon nitride (c-Si 3 N 4 ) forms under high pressure and is the second hardest transparent nanoceramic after diamond but can withstand substantially higher temperatures.

"Silicon nitride is a very popular ceramic in industry," explains lead author Dr. Norimasa Nishiyama from DESY who now is an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. "It is mainly used for ball bearings, cutting tools and engine parts in automotive and aircraft industry." The ceramic is extremely stable, because the silicon nitrogen bond is very strong. At ambient pressures, silicon nitride has a hexagonal crystal structure and sintered ceramic of this phase is opaque. Sintering is the process of forming macroscopic structures from grain material using heat and pressure. The technique is widely used in industry for a broad range of products from ceramic bearings to artificial teeth.

At pressures above 130 thousand times the atmospheric pressure, silicon nitride transforms into a crystal structure with cubic symmetry that experts call spinel-type in reference to the structure of a popular gemstone. Artificial spinel (MgAl 2 O 4 ) is widely used as transparent ceramic in industry. "The cubic phase of silicon nitride was first synthesised by a research group at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999, but knowledge of this material is very limited," says Nishiyama. His team used a large volume press (LVP) at DESY to expose hexagonal silicon nitride to high pressures and temperatures. At approximately 156 thousand times the atmospheric pressure (15.6 gigapascals) and a temperature of 1800 degrees Celsius a transparent piece of cubic silicon nitride formed with a diameter of about two millimetres. "It is the first transparent sample of this material," emphasises Nishiyama.

Analysis of the crystal structure at DESY's X-ray light source PETRA III showed that the silicon nitride had completely transformed into the cubic phase. "The transformation is similar to carbon that also has a hexagonal crystal structure at ambient conditions and transforms into a transparent cubic phase called diamond at high pressures," explains Nishiyama. "However, the transparency of silicon nitride strongly depends on the grain boundaries. The opaqueness arises from gaps and pores between the grains."

Investigations with a scanning transmission electron microscope at the University of Tokyo showed that the high-pressure sample has only very thin grain boundaries. "Also, in the high-pressure phase oxygen impurities are distributed throughout the material and do not accumulate at the grain boundaries like in the low-pressure phase. That's crucial for the transparency," says Nishiyama.

"Cubic silicon nitride is the hardest and toughest transparent spinel ceramic ever made," summarises Nishiyama. The scientists foresee diverse industrial applications for their super-hard windows. "Cubic silicon nitride is the third hardest ceramic known, after diamond and cubic boron nitride," explains Nishiyama. "But boron compounds are not transparent, and diamond is only stable up to approximately 750 degrees Celsius in air. Cubic silicon nitride is transparent and stable up to 1400 degrees Celsius."

However, because of the large pressure needed to synthesise transparent cubic silicon nitride, the possible window size is limited for practical reasons. "The raw material is cheap, but to produce macroscopic transparent samples we need approximately twice the pressure as for artificial diamonds," says Nishiyama. "It is relatively easy to make windows with diameters of one to five millimetres. But it will be hard to reach anything over one centimetre."

More information: "Transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride"; Norimasa Nishiyama et al.; Scientific Reports, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/srep44755 Journal information: Scientific Reports
In the wireless industry, it's back to the unlimited future.

Years after three of the big four carriers ditched their unlimited data plans, all the major companies are offering plans that promise users they can access the mobile internet as much as they'd like. Well, kind of. If you read the fine print, you'll find that there are some notable limitations to the new so-called unlimited plans.

Still, if you use a lot of a data, you could save money by signing up for one of them. And they make a lot of sense for families who have multiple members needing to get connected.

Count Derek Anderson among those who are fans of the new plans. Anderson, a 30-year-old carpenter who lives in Northern California and recently switched to one of T-Mobile's unlimited plans, said he and his kids use a lot of mobile data.

"I'm constantly using my phone," he said.

You can thank Sprint and T-Mobile for the resurgence of the plans. Sprint never stopped offering an all-you-can-eat data plan even as the other carriers started discontinuing theirs six year ago. T-Mobile, which has been shaking up the industry left and right for several years now, got the other carriers to reconsider unlimited data when it started offering its One plan last August. Verizon and AT&T finally gave in last month and introduced all-you-can-eat plans of their own.

Mark Stevens remembers all-too-well the old unlimited plans. A longtime Verizon customer, the 58-year-old San Jose, Calif., resident and contractor was a subscriber to one of them until he was forced off of it by the carrier. He hasn't signed up for one of the new plans, but they have caught his attention.

"I'm glad to see they're doing that," Stevens said.

The unlimited plans share some common features. Each offers unlimited calling and texting to, from and within the United States, Canada and Mexico. Each plan offers a better per-phone rate the more lines you add.

Additionally - and here's where some of the fine print comes in - each deal offers unlimited data usage on its network to each device covered only up until a certain cut-off point. After users exceed that cap - which ranges from 22 to 30 gigabytes per month, depending on the plan - they won't be cut off or face extra charges, but may see their access speeds throttled severely.

The plans have other features in common. All of them except for AT&T's discount-priced Unlimited Choice deal include the ability to use your phone as a mobile Wi-Fi access point for other devices. Also - and here's another piece of fine print - each one of those plans limits the amount of data used through the hotspot feature to 10 gigabytes per month. And to get the advertised price for each plan, you'll have to agree to get all your bills electronically and set up an automatic monthly payment.

Except for the Unlimited Choice plan, all the plans allow users to stream videos in high-definition quality and to access the internet at the highest speeds available on their networks. By contrast, AT&T limits Unlimited Choice customers' speeds to a relatively slow 3 megabits per second, even before they hit the data cap, and restricts them to relatively low-resolution standard-definition videos.

Despite their similarities, the plans aren't simply carbon copies of each other. They vary significantly in price, for one thing.

For now, Sprint is the low-cost leader. Sprint's Unlimited plan - which is only open to new customers - costs just $50 a month before taxes for a single line and $90 a month for anywhere from two to five lines.

At the other end of the range, AT&T charges $90 a month before taxes for a single line for its Unlimited Plus plan and $205 a month for a family with four phones.

You should note that in all cases, the cost of buying or leasing a phone will be in addition to these prices.

In some cases, the pricing can be difficult to compare. T-Mobile's plans - it effectively has three of them - include any associated taxes and fees. So when T-Mobile says it charges $70 a month under its basic One plan for a single line, that's what you'll pay.

For other plans, you can expect to pay as much as 15 percent extra in some parts of the country on fees and taxes. That would make Sprint's $50 Unlimited plan cost around $57.50 and AT&T's $90 Unlimited Plus plan cost $103.50.

And there are other pricing differences. Among all the carriers, Verizon is the only one that doesn't charge new customers an activation fee when they switch from a rival carrier to its unlimited service. T-Mobile, on the other hand, essentially charges $25 per line to activate new customers and Sprint charges $30 a line.

Some of the plans offer ways to save money. With AT&T's Unlimited Plus plan, you'll get a $25 monthly discount if you also sign up for one of its pay TV services, such as U-Verse TV or DirecTV Now. If you use less than two gigabytes of data in a month, T-Mobile will knock $10 off your bill. Sprint will lease you an iPhone 7 for free - meaning all you'll pay each month is your monthly service bill - if you trade in a somewhat recent smartphone, like an iPhone 6 or 6s, from another carrier.

So should you sign up for an unlimited plan? And if so, which one should you choose?

For individuals, you likely don't need unlimited data. Although T-Mobile only offers unlimited plans, you can still get limited data ones from AT&T and Verizon. For families, especially those that consume a lot of data, the unlimited plans are likely to be a much better deal.

In terms of which carrier you should choose, Sprint's plan looks hard to beat, at least from a pure price perspective. But the carrier's service and coverage have a poor reputation. So you should make sure it has decent coverage where you need it before signing up.

If Sprint's not a good option where you live or work, I'd take a close look at T-Mobile's plans. It's been getting high marks lately for both its customer service and its coverage. And its prices are generally less than what you'll pay for unlimited service from AT&T or Verizon.

-

Here's what to expect from the unlimited data plans

Calls and texts: Unlimited to, from and within the United States, Canada and Mexico

Data: Nominally unlimited, but speeds might be drastically reduced after 22 to 30 gigabytes of usage, depending on the plan

Mobile hotspots: All the plans except AT&T's Unlimited Choice allow you to use your phone as a Wi-Fi access point and access as much as 10 gigabytes of data that way.

Family discounts: You'll see lower per line costs the more phones you attach to your plan.

E-bills: To get the advertised price, you'll have to sign up for electronic bills and automated payments.

Phones separate: The charges don't include the cost of purchasing or leasing a phone, except with Sprint's Unlimited plan, which is offering a cost-free iPhone 7 lease with the trade in of another high-end smartphone.

Prices and terms may change: The bargain prices on Sprint's Unlimited plan ($50 for one line, $90 total for up to five) only last until next March, when they'll revert to the much higher prices of its Unlimited Freedom deal. With the wireless industry in a lot of flux, the terms of other deals will likely change too.

2017 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
It seems like everyone wants their own swarm of small satellites.

SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing Co. and other companies have proposed putting constellations of small satellites in low-Earth orbit that could provide greater internet access in previously hard-to-reach areas of the globe.

Thanks to technological advances, the costs of developing and launching satellites have fallen to the point where even some schools can afford to send their own science missions into space.

The small-satellite boom has sparked development of new launch methods as well. Earlier this month, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism company spun off its small-satellite launching business, Virgin Orbit. Virgin Orbit is developing LauncherOne, a rocket that will drop from the wing of a modified 747 and carry satellites into space.

The Los Angeles Times spoke with Dan Hart, president of Virgin Orbit, about the new market. Hart previously was vice president of government satellite systems at Boeing, where he also worked on the space shuttle program and Delta launch system.

Here's an edited version of the interview.

Q: How small are these satellites?

A: You're talking about anything from a shoebox, to a microwave, to maybe a large washing machine or small refrigerator size.

The large geosynchronous satellites are the size of minivans, or a small bus, or a maybe a small car.

Q: Why are companies increasingly interested in launching and operating small satellites?

A: I think it all follows a general progression of expectations that we have for communication and imaging. We're seeing that we can build and launch small satellites much less expensively to cover new applications, and we can refresh those as technology changes every two to three years.

The old economy of geosynchronous is you build a large satellite, it's expensive, you want it to last a long time, so you put a lot of money into it ... and you hope it'll last 15 to 20 years.

Q: How is the development of small-satellite launch vehicles like LauncherOne different from that of bigger rockets, like the Delta you previously worked on?

A: Manufacturing technologies and design technologies have advanced significantly over the last five, 10, 20 years. And in composite (materials) and propulsion systems ... there have been huge advances that have helped us to improve the rate of manufacturing and launch costs.

Q: What kinds of processes do you need in place to effectively make affordable small-satellite launchers?

A: It's a combination of new technology, and honestly, what will really drive the cost down for launch is a steady, sustained rate.

What's happening with this whole low-Earth orbit revolution going on in the market is there's really a promise we're seeing for a host of different large-scale constellations for low-Earth orbit spacecraft. And that one will feed the other.

Q: What's the benefit of launching satellites from beneath a plane?

A: We have huge flexibility. We can go out over the ocean and launch it over a wide variety of angles and really get tailored orbits for our customers. And we don't have a big launch pad setup that we have to clean and refurbish.

Q: A number of these networks were proposed in the 1990s, and many ultimately failed to get off the ground. Are you concerned that today's constellation proposals could meet the same fate?

A: Not really because there's really quite a bit more momentum here, and the technology is so different. So what we're seeing is really proof points that are in orbit already from a number of companies that are already operating relatively large numbers of small satellites.

There were some courageous players back in the late '90s and early 2000s that I think had blazed the trail. Now the technology has really developed to where there's really no doubt that communications (and) remote sensing capabilities can be provided very cost-effectively from low-Earth orbit.

2017 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Public Domain

Slow wi-fi is a source of irritation that nearly everyone experiences. Wireless devices in the home consume ever more data, and it's only growing, and congesting the wi-fi network. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology have come up with a surprising solution: a wireless network based on harmless infrared rays. The capacity is not only huge (more than 40Gbit/s per ray) but also there is no need to share since every device gets its own ray of light. This was the subject for which TU/e researcher Joanne Oh received her PhD degree with the 'cum laude' distinction last week.

The system conceived in Eindhoven is simple and, in principle, cheap to set up. The wireless data comes from a few central 'light antennas', for instance mounted on the ceiling, which are able to very precisely direct the rays of light supplied by an optical fiber. Since there are no moving parts, it is maintenance-free and needs no power: the antennas contain a pair of gratings that radiate light rays of different wavelengths at different angles ('passive diffraction gratings'). Changing the light wavelengths also changes the direction of the ray of light. Since a safe infrared wavelength is used that does not reach the vulnerable retina in your eye, this technique is harmless.

No interference

If you walk around as a user and your smartphone or tablet moves out of the light antenna's line of sight, then another light antenna takes over. The network tracks the precise location of every wireless device using its radio signal transmitted in the return direction. It is a simple matter to add devices: they are assigned different wavelengths by the same light antenna and so do not have to share capacity. Moreover, there is no longer any interference from a neighboring wi-fi network.

Data capacity of light rays

Current wi-fi uses radio signals with a frequency of 2.5 or 5 gigahertz. The system conceived at TU Eindhoven uses infrared light with wavelengths of 1500 nanometers and higher; this light has frequencies that are thousands of times higher, some 200 terahertz, which makes the data capacity of the light rays much larger. Joanne Oh even managed a speed of 42.8 Gbit/s over a distance of 2.5 meters. For comparison, the average connection speed in the Netherlands is two thousand times less (17.6 Mbit/s). Even if you have the very best wi-fi system available, you won't get more than 300 Mbit/s in total, which is some hundred times less than the speed per ray of light achieved by the Eindhoven study. The Eindhoven system has so far used the light rays only to download; uploads are still done using radio signals since in most applications much less capacity is needed for uploading.

Five years

The work of doctoral student Oh is part of the wider BROWSE project headed up by professor of broadband communication technology Ton Koonen, and with funding from the European Research Council. Joanne Oh focused predominantly on the technology of data transmission via directable infrared light rays. Other PhDs are still working on the technology that tracks the location of all the wireless devices as well as on the essential central fiber-optic network connecting the light antennas. Koonen expects it will still be five years or more before the new technology will be in our stores. He thinks that the first devices to be connected to this new kind of wireless network will be high data consumers like video monitors, laptops or tablets.

Many devices at the same time

Koonen's group is not the only one working on 'indoor optical wireless networks'. A few other universities and research institutes around the world are also studying whether data can be transmitted via a room's LED lighting. However, the drawback here is that the bandwidth is not high and that the connected devices still have to share. A few other groups are investigating network concepts in which infrared light rays are directed using movable mirrors. The disadvantage here is that this requires active control of the mirrors and therefore energy, and each mirror is only capable of handling one ray of light at a time. The grating used by Koonen and Oh can cope with many rays of light and, therefore, devices at the same time.

The work of Oh and Koonen comes under the auspices of the TU/e Institute for Photonic Integration, one of the world's leading research institutes for 'photonics', the use of light (photons) rather than electricity (electrons) to transmit data.
Wildfire can leave posts damaged and in need of replacement, but the barbed wire could still be usable, according to a study. Credit: Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter

Don't assume that a grass fire has damaged the barbed wire on a fence.

That's the message of one Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialist in Amarillo to ranchers who saw wildfire rip through their fenced grassland beginning March 6.

"Fences are one of the range developments often damaged in fires," said Dr. Ted McCollum, beef cattle specialist in Amarillo."Certainly burned wooden posts and stays have to be replaced. But the damage to the barbed wire may be less than it appears and one assumes.

"Having the ability to reuse the barbed wire from a fence after a grass fire can reduce the recovery costs for the landowner."

Dr. Steve Amosson, AgriLife Extension economist in Amarillo, estimated fencing could be the second major expense tied to the fires on the 480,000 acres burned. Estimating half will be repaired and half replaced, he said the cost could be around $6 million to ranchers in the Texas Panhandle.

Amosson said an estimated 975 miles of fence were affected. To repair the fence, the cost is $2,500 per mile; to replace the fence, the cost is $10,000 per mile.

"Research provides information ranchers can use to make decisions related to fences," said Danny Nusser, AgriLife Extension regional program leader. "Knowing that a fence is stable and repairs are sufficient could be valuable in making economical decisions."

Research was conducted by Oklahoma State University to examine the effects of grassland fires on barbed wire, he said. The study examined Class 1, 12 1/2-gauge, double-strand barbed wire.

Intense flames sweeping away grassland may not have damaged the barbed wire on fences surrounding pastures. Credit: Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter

The wire was about 14 years old when the study was conducted, McCollum explained. All of the wire examined in the study originated from the same lot at purchase. The fences were constructed from the wire 13-14 years before the study. Samples of wire were collected from these fences and unused wire from the original purchase lot that had been stored since purchase.

According to the study, wire collected from the fences had been subjected to grass fires zero times, one time, two times or six times during the previous 13 years. These grass fires occurred in the dormant season between February and April.

The unused wire and wire collected from the fences was examined for effects of fire frequency on breaking strength and zinc coating remaining on the wire, McCollum said.

"In this study, compared to the unused wire and wire from the fences that had not been burned, the exposure to grass fire or the number of times the wire was exposed to fire did not adversely affect the breaking strength or zinc coating on the Class 1, 12 1/2-gauge barbed wire," he said.

The breaking strength and zinc coating, which provides corrosion resistance, were not different between the unused wire, or the wire from the fences that had been burned up to six times the previous 13 years, McCollum said.

"So, the study showed that grass fire did not affect the breaking strength, zinc coating or ductility of the wire," he said. "After a fire, the galvanized surface of the wire is often stained or discolored. But, this should not be interpreted as failure of the coating or galvanization of the wire. This discoloration comes from iron-zinc alloy layers in the wire and does not represent a failure of the pure zinc coating on the wire."

McCollum said the researchers concluded that subjecting zinc-coated barbed wire to grass fires will not reduce its service life or its corrosion resistance.

"So there may be occasions where they need to replace the fence, but they shouldn't automatically assume that the wire needs to be completely replaced because of the grass fire," he said.
Students join Nursing Honor Society

DANVILLE -- The following local residents were among the 24 students recently inducted into the Lakeview College of Nursing Honor Society.

Michaela Cline of Charleston, Sasha Edwards of Charleston, Ashley Giordano of Charleston, Allison Hagen of Sullivan, Brandy Hays of Paris, Aliesha Higgins of Gays, Kassidy Hunt of Greenup, Joselynn Jones of Mattoon, Emily Warner of Hindsboro, Erica Webster of Charleston, Whitney Wright of Shelbyville, Ashley Giordano of Charleston, Ashley Giordano of Charleston, Kassidy Hunt of Greenup, Erica Webster of Charleston.

Lakeview College of Nursing offers a bachelor of science in nursing degree. It is a single-purpose, private institution that has specialized in nursing education in the Danville area since 1894. Lakeview began offering a cooperative program with Eastern Illinois University in Charleston in the fall of 2001.

Jesgarz performed 'The Women of Lockerbie'

SEWARD, Neb. -- Anne Jesgarz was part of the Concordia University, Nebraska's, presentation of "The Women of Lockerbie" Feb. 24 and 25 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 26 at 2 p.m. The performance, a primarily student-directed and -designed show, was held in the Studio Theater of the Music Center on Concordia's campus.

The play takes place following the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988. The explosion scattered pieces of the plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as the remains of 243 passengers and 16 crew members. There were 21 houses in Lockerbie that were destroyed and 11 people there also lost their lives. A woman whose son died in the bombing discovers a group of women who are trying to collect the victims' clothing, accounting to over 11,000 items, before facing resistance from a U.S. official.

Hernandez honored in Who's Who

BOURBONNAIS -- Daneli Rabanalez Hernandez of Arcola has received national recognition as an outstanding campus leader for 2017 by the Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges program. She is the daughter of Cergio Rabanalez and Elia Hernandez.

Rabanalez Hernandez is one of a select group of 45 Olivet Nazarene University seniors who have been recognized for 2017. She is also part of a select group from more than 1,000 schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Majoring in multimedia studies with a concentration in radio broadcasting, Rabanalez Hernandez received this honor for her achievements while at Olivet, including: dean's list (five semesters); recipient, Carl L. Fletcher Media Catalyst Scholarship (2016); recipient, Naomi Larsen Excellence Award; treasurer, Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association's honor society; member, Marching Band, Pep Band, Concert Band (one year); president, Orpheus Choir; member, Proclamation Gospel Choir; worship leader, Kankakee (Illinois) First Church of the Nazarene Hispanic Ministry; English/Spanish translator for church services and District Assembly celebration service (Chicago Central District); evening on-air host, Shine.FM; music director, Brilla FM.

For more than 80 years, Who's Who Among Students has annually honored outstanding student leaders from institutions of higher learning across the country. It is one of the most highly regarded and long-standing honors programs, respected by college faculties and administrations.
A special assistant to former President Goodluck Jonathan on new media, Reno Omokri has revealed how Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state described President Muhammadu Buhari in 2010.

Reno Omokri calls El-Rufai a man who cannot effectively rule his state but has advice for another man who cannot rule the nation

Governor El-Rufai is reported to have sent a 30-page memo to the president on Thursday, March 16 allegedly accusing the All Progressives Congress (APC) of failing Nigerians and further accusing the Chief of Staff to the president of being totally clueless.

In his reaction, Omokri said: El-Rufai did not say anything new about President Buhari in his recent memo. Go back and read what he said about Buhari in 2010, it is like a prophecy of what is happening today.

This is an exact quote of what Nasir El-Rufai said on October 4, 2010: "Mallam El-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded.

His insensitivity to Nigerias diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known." Looking at what is happening today, did El-Rufai lie?'

READ ALSO: Omokri queries in-fighting in Buhari's government after second Magu rejection by Senate

Omokri had earlier described El-Rufai as a man who cannot rule his state but has advice for another man who is not capable of ruling the nation.

A man who cannot govern his state believes he can advise a man who does not know how to govern a nation. Do you see why we are where we are?

Parts of Kaduna are like a war zone. The state has not achieved any feat economically. The governor is in a power tussle with Shehu Sani, a Senator from the state.

Kaduna citizens complain about lopsided appointments at the state level. Yet, this busybody leaves all of that to teach the President his business. He cannot carry a rat yet he wants to carry an elephant! Omokri said.

READ ALSO: APC is sponsoring Ali Modu Sheriff to destablise our party - PDP

The mouth that Nasir El-Rufai used to bite Atiku Abubakar, then Olusegun Obasanjo then Umar Yar'Adua then Goodluck Jonathan has now been used to bite President Buhari!

A backbiter must always bite and a backstabber must always stab! President Muhammadu Buhari should go and buy former President Obasanjo's book, My Watch, to read what he said about El-Rufai. Said Obasanjo: I recognised his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but only to Nasir el-Rufai. Did Obasanjo lie? You be the judge!

At the time of filing this report, Governor El-Rufai was yet to react officially.

Source: Legit.ng
By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Airbnb expects to maintain its rapid growth in Africa this year and double its customer numbers to 1.5 million, its Chief Executive Brian Chesky and regional head told Reuters on Friday. The number of people using the online room rental service on the continent rose by 143 percent to about 765,000 guests in 2016 from the year before, said Nicola D'Elia, the firm's Africa and Middle East chief. "If you just look at 2017, it's going to double, you will have 1.5 million people at the end of this year," added D'Elia. Airbnb CEO Chesky confirmed that the California-based company expected to double African customer numbers this year. "Certainly that would be the forecast," he said in an interview in Cape Town, adding: "This is literally just the beginning. It (Africa) is still relatively under-penetrated." Chesky said the company had 77,000 homes across Africa - out of its 3 million globally - but that it could easily have "hundreds of thousands" in a continent that's home to over a billion people. The 77,000 homes represented an increase of 95 percent from 2015 to 2016, the company said. South Africa, which was an early adopter of Airbnb, is the top-ranked country in Africa in terms of listings and visitors, who mainly come from the United States, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. The top five cities in Africa are Cape Town, Marrakesh, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Casablanca, although listings are found in diverse locations from St Helena island in the south Atlantic Ocean to Freetown in Sierra Leone, and even a smattering in Somalia. Chesky, who described Africa as "an incredibly exciting emerging market for travel", was speaking to Reuters in Langa, Cape Town's oldest township where he put in an appearance to surprise graduates from an Airbnb training program. (Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Pravin Char)
Families across Central America are living in fear that US President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies will stem the vital flow of money sent home by migrants each year.

The concern is that relatives who have emigrated without authorization will be deported, suddenly ending the billions of dollars in annual remittances sent to their impoverished countries.

There are millions of Central Americans living legally in the United States -- but also 1.7 million unauthorized migrants from the region, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center.

Most of them come from the poorest, gang-ridden three countries known as the Northern Triangle -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Intipuca, a town south of El Salvador's capital, symbolizes the life-changing value of the US dollars sent back home.

The town features big, colored houses adorned with iron-forged moldings that stand empty. Their owners live in the United States, and return only for special occasions like Christmas, weddings and family events.

In the park in front of the town hall there is a statue dedicated to Sigifrido Chavez, who in 1967 became the first local to migrate to the United States.

Near the statue Jose Corpeno paces around as he speaks into a cellphone. He explains that he was talking with his daughter, who has been living in the US state of Maryland for a year and now "is living a nightmare."

"We are so worried. Immigration agents went to a place close to where she lives," Corpeno said.

The daughter paid a smuggler $10,000 to lead her up north, and now she is living without authorization in the United States.

"She's working. But she's afraid that at any moment she could be found out and detained," Corpeno said. The money the woman sends goes to a small plot of corn that her family depends on to survive.

"If she ends up being deported, then we'll be in a bad way. We are poor, and the money she sends helps us," Corpeno said.

- 'Unfair' -

The same anxiety is felt in Guatemala.

Story continues

Victoria Flores, 70, said she relies on her 50-year-old son Estuardo, who works as a dental technician in Los Angeles and whose remittances pay the mortgage, electricity, water and telephone service where she lived.

"This is a difficult situation, with worries every day because this president (Trump) has said that he will deport all the illegals from the United States," Flores told AFP.

The small woman called that policy "unfair." But she also lays part of the blame on Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama for overseeing changes in US migration law.

Remittances make up a significant chunk of the economy in the Northern Triangle countries, so any decline would be felt immediatly.

- A big impact -

"Ninety percent of remittances go to consumption, and any decline will impact consumption and tax income," said Mauricio Diaz, a coordinator in FOSDEH, a non-governmental Honduran body that monitors the country's external debt and development.

In Honduras, remittances received amounted to $3.9 billion last year. In El Salvador, it was $4.6 billion, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.

Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America, received more: $7.1 billion in 2016 -- an amount nearly as big as the $10 billion it makes in exports.

US aid to try to stem the violence and poverty in those countries was increased at the end of Obama's term, but has so far had little effect.

Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly visited Guatemala in February to say that, while citizens should not try to illegally enter the United States, there would be no mass deportations.

But the situation on the ground appears to contradict that. Kelly's department has issued internal memos setting out guidelines to boost arrests and accelerate the expulsion of undocumented immigrants.

Official figures for 2016 show that the United States deported 21,500 Salvadorans, the same number of Hondurans and 35,500 Guatemalans.
The Chilean government has received a giant donation of private land for national parks from the widow of US philanthropist Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the clothing brands Esprit and The North Face. The donation of 407,625 hectares (one million acres) -- the largest ever made in Chile's history -- will become part of Chile's National Patagonia Parks network, officials said. Tompkins, a billionaire environmentalist, died in 2015 at the age of 72 in a kayaking accident in southern Chile. The land, which includes forests and flora unique to the region, was offered by Tompkins's widow, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, a former CEO of the outdoor clothing and gear company Patagonia. McDivitt said she was following her late husband's wishes in making the donation. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet formally accepted the land in a ceremony on Wednesday in the town of Chaiten, some 1,260 kilometers (780 miles) south of Santiago. A presidential decree is still needed to complete the transaction. At the event, McDivitt said she hoped thd donation "will serve as a model for other countries." Bachelet's government also agreed to protect an additional 949,368 hectares, resulting in 4.5 million hectares of new parkland in eight regions of the country. Tompkins and McDivitt moved to the Patagonia region of Chile in 1990 as the country was transitioning to democracy after years of military dictatorship. The couple was initially met with skepticism and suspicion when they started buying vast tracts of land for preservation purposes in Chile and neighboring Argentina.
CHARLESTON -- An attorney representing a group of business owners fighting Coles County's reassessment of commercial and industrial property says a "lack of uniformity" could make it subject to a legal challenge.

Imposing the changes in only Mattoon Township so far will mean business owners in the township will pay a "disproportional share" of taxes, attorney Erick Kaardal said.

He also contended that information on which the county relied, that said the method being used is allowed, doesn't change its legality.

"It's allowed procedurally but it is illegal," Kaardal said.

He said a group of about 160 business owners hired him to possibly sue the county, a move that would come following county and state appeals of assessment changes.

Kaardal's office is in Minneapolis and he said much of his work addresses legal issues with governments. He said he plans to add a Coles County area attorney to the effort.

The county began reassessing commercial and business property for taxing purposes in 2015 because the property hadn't been reassessed since 2001.

The county opted to do the work in phases with Mattoon Township property reassessed first, leading to the complaints after township property owners received notices of their assessment changes late last year.

According to Kaardal, the lawsuit would address "was it right" for the county to apply the new assessments in Mattoon Township before they were used in the entire county.

"The question that needs to be answered is when they understood they had an issue of non-uniformity," he said.

It might mean Mattoon Township business owners could recover the additional taxes they will pay because the new property values weren't apply to all of the county at the same time.

State's Attorney Brian Bower, who serves as the county's legal counsel, said the method the county used is allowed by state law.

The Illinois Department of Revenue indicated doing the work in phases was allowed and the county went through the proper procedures with the department to do it that way, he said.

"I believe the county followed the statutory scheme," Bower said.

He said he thinks the state legislature "passed a constitutional statute" but if Kaardal challenges it "that's for the courts to decide."

The Illinois Department of Revenue indicated it would be "unprecedented" to restart a reassessment project at the point Coles County has reached, county board Chairman Stan Metzger said.

With the restrictions of the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, often called PTELL, overall tax levies shouldn't change much, though individual business property owners could pay more, he said.

That means that taxes on residential property will likely decrease, he added.

"If we were to ignore that, those property owners don't get that benefit," Metzger said.

Coles County Clerk Sue Rennels, whose office calculates the county's tax levies, confirmed that PTELL does not limit the taxes or the assessment of individual pieces of property. It only limits the overall amount of taxes collected in the county, she said.

The reassessment project began shortly after current county Supervisor of Assessments Karen Biddle, a longtime employee of the office, was appointed to the position in 2014.

According to Biddle and other county officials, a commercial-industrial reassessment began when two previous supervisors were in office but it stopped when Chad Turner, Biddle's immediate predecessor, was in the position.

On a related matter, Bower said he's reviewing whether the county needs to do more to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the reassessment project.

John Kraft of the online Edgar County Watchdogs organization recently filed a court case claiming his requests have been improperly denied.

Kraft indicated he requested a copy of the "study" used by Bob Becker, the appraiser the county to do the reassessment project.
Finance ministers from the world's top nations gather in Germany on Friday as fears grow of a looming trade war over US President Donald Trump's America First policy. Trump has already torn up a trans-Pacific free trade pact, threatened punitive tariffs against multinationals with factories outside the United States and attacked "currency manipulation" by export giant China. And his stated aim of keeping jobs at home by making it costly for American companies to outsource is likely to dominate talks at the G20 gathering of finance ministers and central bankers in the western German spa town of Baden-Baden. Trump's emissary, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, is set to face scrutiny from Washington's key trading partners for clues on whether the world's biggest economy fully intends to abandon its long-standing support of open markets and free trade. On the eve of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a rare joint pledge, saying they would "together fight for free trade and open markets". The statement by the leaders of the two major exporters also came a day before Merkel is due to meet Trump in Washington for the first time, when the chancellor is expected to make a push for open markets. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also issued a separate warning to Washington. "We don't want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries. That wouldn't make our trade fairer," Li told reporters Wednesday. - 'Buy American, hire American' - But Trump was elected on the back of voter anger over deindustrialisation in vast areas of the United States. He declared in his inauguration speech that "we will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American." Those caught in the crosshairs include German luxury carmaker BMW, against which Trump has threatened punitive taxes of 35 percent if it does not back down on building a factory in Mexico. On Thursday following talks with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, Mnuchin said Washington had no desire to have "trade wars" with other economic powers. "Our desire is that when there is imbalances in trading relationships that we have a need to address that," Mnuchin said after the pair met in Berlin. Mnuchin said Trump's administration would keep a close eye on the levels of key global currencies, but pursue policies in the interest of "economic growth that is good for the US and the rest of the world". According to sources involved in the preparation of the G20 meeting, the issue of free trade has emerged as a main sticking point with the US refusing to commit to a clear rejection of protectionism. - 'US position unclear' - For French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, the problem is that Washington did not appear to have a clear position on trade. "We don't have a well-argued position from the US and that's the main difficulty that we have today," he told AFP, adding that it's the "fear of a lack of position that's weighing on the debate". "It's possible that the US is unable to say what they plan to do beyond the simplistic declarations in a tweet," he added. Sources say host Germany is looking at a possible compromise that would remove the issue of trade from a final statement at the end of the two day meeting, deferring until heads of state meet at a summit in July. Amid the growing alarm, IMF chief Christine Lagarde urged the G20 to "collectively avoid self-inflicted injuries". "This requires steering clear of policies that would seriously undermine trade, migration, capital flows, and the sharing of technologies across borders," she wrote in a message that apparently primarily targeted Trump.
Greek authorities were on Friday trying to determine how a near-defunct militant group was able to sneak at least two parcel bombs through airport security, one of which exploded at the IMF's Paris offices. The investigation so far suggests that the booby-trapped mail sent to the IMF and the German finance ministry -- presumably by a far-left group called the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei -- failed to raise an alarm because it contained only a small amount of gunpowder. "The analysis so far... is that it was a small amount of gunpowder of the same type used in firecrackers... there was no detonator," Greek police minister Nikos Toskas told Skai TV on Friday, citing evidence from investigators in France and Germany. "Clearly they are from the same source, the same organisation... the leftovers of the Nuclei", which was dismantled by police in 2011, he added. A Greek police source told AFP that the hit, though largely symbolic, showed that Conspiracy "is an active group and there are residual members who want to make their presence felt." A source close to the investigation in Paris said the device consisted of two tubes of black powder and a makeshift electric trigger. But the small quantity of gunpowder used is "hard to trace", a spokesman for the airport's security company told the To Vima news website. It was not immediately clear if the device sent to the IMF offices was in an envelope or a small parcel. Toskas defended the screening procedures at Athens airport, saying the equipment was recently purchased from Germany and was "the best in Europe". "The main screening is done before the plane is loaded, and this is where our investigation is focused," he said, adding that there was "no sign" that additional parcels were sent. Fragments of Greek stamps were found at the IMF offices where the mail bomb exploded, injuring a secretary's face and hands. Citing police sources, the Greek daily Avgi said the intended recipient was the IMF's Europe director, Jeffrey Franks. In a further twist, the names of two senior officials in Greece's conservative New Democracy party were used as the alleged senders -- deputy leader Adonis Georgiadis and party spokesman Vassilis Kikilias, formerly a police minister himself. Toskas said there would be a "re-evaluation" of procedures in both Greece and abroad. IMF chief Christine Lagarde denounced a "cowardly act of violence" and said the fund would continue its work "in line with our mandate," a statement from her office said. The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei also claimed responsibility for the explosive device sent to the offices of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. The statement was also co-authored by the Italy-based Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI). The package was discovered on Wednesday, a day before Schaeuble was due to host his new US counterpart, Steven Mnuchin. The Italian group has not commented on the IMF parcel. - History of violence - Many Greeks blame Germany and the for imposing years of public-sector cuts and policy overhauls in exchange for bailout packages needed to prop up the debt-ridden country. The group, which is considered a terror organisation by Washington, sent mail bombs to foreign embassies in Greece and to European leaders in 2010. The organisation denounces capitalism and consumerism, as well as police repression and worker exploitation. Police say the name "Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei" had been used as a cover by urban militants carrying out minor arson attacks against car dealerships and police vehicles since the middle of the last decade. But their activities escalated starting in early 2008. In 2011, several of its members, many of them very young, were convicted of "participating in a criminal organisation" and given long prison sentences. Three years later, the group announced its return and has since been committing sporadic attacks.
Macedonia's opposition called on conservatives Friday to accept a peaceful transfer of power, as a refusal to allow them to form a government has plunged the Balkan nation deeper into political crisis. Though opposition leader Zoran Zaev of the Social Democrats (SDSM) has won the backing of a parliamentary majority, Macedonia's president has refused to grant him a government-building mandate. The impasse has left the country unable to exit from a long-running crisis that was supposed to be solved by an EU-brokered deal that included an election in December. "VMRO-DPMNE (conservative party) leadership should immediately stop manipulating people into protesting, stop provoking... violence and enable a peaceful transfer of power," an SDSM statement said. The inconclusive December vote saw the VMRO-DPMNE party secure 51 seats in the 120-seat parliament -- or two more than the Social Democrats -- but the conservatives failed to reach a deal with ethnic Albanian parties, who have a kingmaker role. Zaev went on to win the support of the Albanian parties, giving him 67 deputies in the assembly and clearing the way for him to form a government. However, President Gjorge Ivanov, who is close to VMRO-DPMNE, said earlier this month that he would not give a mandate to anyone supporting "a platform undermining Macedonia's sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence". He was referring to the controversial demand of minority ethnic Albanian parties, who have backed Zaev, that Albanian be made an official language across Macedonia. Ethnic Albanians make up around one quarter of the country's 2.1 million inhabitants. Ivanov's move was swiftly denounced by the opposition as a "coup" and condemned by the United States and the European Union, which Macedonia aspires to join. But thousands of Macedonians agree with the president and for the past three weeks have taken to the streets, chanting patriotic slogans and urging unity. Their main objection is to the demand to make Albanian an official language in Macedonia. Albania's President Bujar Nishani on Thursday warned Macedonia, saying "that attempts to turn the political crisis into an ethnic crisis could have serious consequences for everyone". Macedonia has been mired in deep political upheaval for the past two years sparked by a wiretapping scandal. The former Yugoslav republic aspires to join both NATO and the EU. However, its membership has been blocked by Athens over a dispute about the country's name -- a northern region of Greece is also called Macedonia.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) launched an observer mission in Turkey on Friday ahead of a vote on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers, but said there were limits on its movement. The mission follows an invitation from Turkish authorities, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights told reporters in Ankara. But Tana de Zulueta, head of the mission, admitted there were limitations on freedom of movement. "We already have limitations in place on freedom of movements for international observers in some parts of the country. We have to take these into account," Zulueta said. But, she added: "We would like to cover as extensive an area as possible." Zulueta did not give further details on the "limitations" but the Turkish military has been waging a relentless campaign in the southeast of the country against Kurdish militants. A team of 11 experts in Ankara and 24 observers from 13 countries will be deployed across the country. The Turkish public will vote on April 16 on whether to approve constitutional changes that would create an executive presidency. While the government argues that the changes are necessary for political stability, critics fear it will lead to one-man rule and a further erosion of democracy. Zulueta said part of the team's job would be assessing the media environment and the ability of Turkish citizens to make an informed choice, amid criticism from commentators that the 'no' campaign was struggling to make its voice heard. The observers will meet with representatives from civil society, media, political parties and Turkish officials as well as visiting polling stations across the country. But this will not constitute systematic observation, she added. The opposition and some NGOs also accuse Ankara of taking advantage of the state of emergency in force since the July 15 failed coup last year to silence any discordant voice through an unprecedented wave of purges. The goal of the mission will "observe the conduct of these elections in line with OSCE standards and requirements for democratic elections, but also in line with national legislation," Zulueta said. The day after the referendum, the mission will join with an observer delegation from the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe to issue a statement of preliminary findings.
Rental cars on Singapore roads soar more than 50%.

According to Bloomberg, 58-year-old retired policeman Peter Chiu rents a Honda Vezel from Lion City Rentals, a local subsidiary of Uber, and drives three to four hours a day for the car-hailing company to cover the cost. Outside those hours he drives the vehicle for personal use.

A Honda Vezel like Chius typically sells for more than S$100,000 ($71,000) in Singapore, almost four times the price in the US. On top of taxes, car owners in the city-state are forced to buy permits  called Certificates of Entitlement  which are limited in supply and auctioned by the government to help curb road congestion and pollution. At the most recent offering this week, the permit cost S$50,789 for the smallest vehicles, said Bloomberg.

Read more here.







More From Singapore Business Review


The use of electronic payments can boost competitiveness in Thailand



As the Governor of the Bank of Thailand, Veerathai Santiprabhob is looking to improve the use of electronic and online payments. He believes that these methods will be important for the competitiveness of the Thailand economy by reducing transaction costs and boosting good governance.

According to the Bank of Thailand Governor, online payments can also be used by government to provide welfare to low-income groups with transparency and efficiently.

According a report in The Bangkok Post the growth in e-payments is expected to grow in 2017, with the number of electronic data capture devices growing from 475,000 in 2016 to 800,000 this year.

Actively pursuing e-payments will create potential game-changing developments because companies will more easily be able to manage the cross-border transactions. This is why the government is expected to launch a three-year plan to support e-payments.

Also Read: Google Thailand to subsidise mobile websites for SMEs if they sign up for ad services programme

Santiprabhob even pointed to the embrace of bitcoin, and the blockchain it is built upon, as a potentially crucial technology for Thailand.

These are potential game-changers since they will be able to do cross-border transactions. Bitcoin and the technology behind it, blockchain, are one example, he said.

Fintech is considered to be an important factor that will affect the regulatory framework and governance of bank and financial institutions in the coming years.

Santiprabhob said the Bank of Thailand will monitor fintech developments and adjust to the impact of these new financial technologies. He added, Thailand would have a new payment legislation and the legislation has already been approved by the Cabinet and still waiting for the enactment from National Legislative Assembly.

The Master Plan of Thailand

In an August 2016 speech, Santiprabhob said that Thailands Financial Sector Master Plan Three was aiming to build a competitive, connected, inclusive and sustainable financial sector.

Story continues

According to the speech, Santiprabhob said the aim is to have a competitive Thai financial sector which can support more needs, accurate pricing models, promote regional trade while still maintaining the safety of the economy and the financial systems in Thailand.

In addition, the governor said that he predicted Thailands financial will look different in the future. He painted a picture in which the landscape will have more digital banking and electronic payment transactions, and increased competition from non-banks and foreign players.

In fact, the governor said that, for the economy in Thailand, this competition will reduce the transaction costs and increase financial access for the masses. Basically, Santiprabhob expected to see a number of technology startups such as data analytics, product or services comparisons, and crowd funding to impact the financial sector.

According to Santiprobhob, the Bank of Thailand will focus on the development of standards and infrastructures, while making sure that current rules and regulations are clear, supportive, innovative and efficient. The new Payment Systems Policy will combine all related regulations under different laws and will be include oversight from several different organisations.

The Bank of Thailand will promote nation-wide electronic payment systems such as:

The promotion of debit card usage for transfer and payment of welfare benefits

The development of Any ID payment infrastructure

Emerging fintech sector in Thailand and interesting startups leading the way.

Thailand is still lacking in the lending, remittance, financial research, consumer banking, banking infrastructure and institution investment sectors.

One of the services that Thailand fintech could improve is personal finance. One of the examples of personal finance application is Piggipo.

The function of Piggipo in Thailand is to allow users to monitor their expenses and track their credit card transactions. In other words, this personal finance helps a lot in managing customers money. For example, when a consumer buys online by using credit card, this app will tell the consumer the account balance and how much the transaction costs.

The second interesting startup is working in retail investment in Thailand. StockRadars aims to identify investment opportunities in Asias stock market. The startup is backed by CyberAgent Ventures and East Ventures.

In 2014, this retail investment was awarded as the Best Financial Software Asia Pacific by ICT and the Best Financial Software in that country. It shows that this is the best application for users to consume.



Also Read: Here are 9 Thailand startups that recently got funded



Also of note is the Southeast Asia payment gateway, MOLPay, which is also making its way to cater Thailand consumers.

With the aim to boost startup funding, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) announced earlier this year that it was their first venture capital fund in Thailand. The US$50 Million fund will be targeted at startups raising Series A or later-stage capital.

As fintech becomes evermore important in Thailand, expect to see more startups and investment opportunities start to pop up.



Copyright: stryjekk / 123RF Stock Photo

The post Thailand wants its future to be e-payments, presenting opportunities for an emerging fintech scene appeared first on e27.
AFP News

The UN's COP27 climate summit kicked off Sunday in Egypt with warnings against backsliding on efforts to cut emissions and calls for rich nations to compensate poor countries after a year of extreme weather disasters. An alarming UN report said the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record, with an acceleration in sea level rise, glacier melt, heatwaves and other climate indicators. "As COP27 gets underway, our planet is sending a distress signal," UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement, calling the report a "chronicle of climate chaos". Just in the past few months, floods devastated Pakistan and Nigeria, droughts worsened in Africa and the United States, cyclones whipped the Caribbean, and unprecedented heatwaves seared three continents. The conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh also comes against the backdrop of Russia's war on Ukraine, an energy crunch, soaring inflation and the lingering effects from the Covid-19 pandemic. But Simon Stiell, the UN's climate change executive secretary, said he would not be a "custodian of backsliding" on the goal of slashing greenhouse emissions 45 percent by 2030 to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above late 19th-century levels. "We will be holding people to account, be they presidents, prime ministers, CEOs," Stiell said as the 13-day summit opened. "The heart of implementation is everybody everywhere in the world every single day doing everything they possibly can to address the climate crisis," he said, noting that only 29 of 194 nations have presented improved plans as called for at COP26 in Glasgow last year. Current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and the Earth's surface heat up 2.8C, according to findings unveiled last week. Promises made under the 2015 Paris Agreement would, if kept, only shave off a few tenths of a degree. Britain's Alok Sharma, who handed the COP presidency to Egypt, said that while world leaders have faced "competing priorities" this year, "inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe." "How many more wake-up calls does the world -- and world leaders -- actually need?" he said. - 'Loss and damage' - The COP27 summit will focus like never before on money -- a major sticking point that has soured relations between countries that got rich burning fossil fuels and the poorer ones suffering from the worst consequences of climate change. The United States and the European Union -- fearful of creating an open-ended reparations framework -- have dragged their feet and challenged the need for a separate funding stream. After two days of intense pre-summit negotiations, delegates agreed on Sunday to put the "loss and damage" issue on the COP27 agenda, a first step towards what are sure to be difficult discussions. Stiell said inclusion of loss and damage on the agenda after three decades of debate on the issue showed progress. "The fact that it is there as a substantive agenda item I believe bodes well," he told reporters. COP27 president Sameh Shoukry of Egypt said it would be unproductive to speculate on what outcome the negotiations will lead to, "but certainly everybody is hopeful." "Anything that we do effectively has to be on the basis of our common efforts and that we leave no one behind," he said. Shoukry also noted that rich nations have not fulfilled a separate pledge to deliver $100 billion per year to help developing countries green their economies and build resilience against future climate change. He lamented that most climate financing is based on loans. "We do not have the luxury to continue this way. We have to change our approaches to this existential threat," he said. - US-China tensions - After the first day of talks, some 110 world leaders will join the summit on Monday and Tuesday. The most conspicuous no-show will be China's Xi Jinping, whose leadership was renewed last month at a Communist Party Congress. US President Joe Biden has said he will come, but only after legislative elections on Tuesday that could see either or both houses of Congress fall into the hands of Republicans hostile to international action on climate change. Cooperation between the United States and China -- the world's two largest economies and carbon polluters -- has been crucial to rare breakthroughs in the nearly 30-year saga of UN climate talks, including the 2015 Paris Agreement. But Sino-US relations have sunk to a 40-year low after a visit to Taiwan by House leader Nancy Pelosi and a US ban on the sale of high-level chip technology to China, leaving the outcome of COP27 in doubt. A meeting between Xi and Biden at the G20 summit in Bali days before the UN climate meeting ends, if it happens, could be decisive. One bright spot at COP27 will be the arrival of Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose campaign vowed to protect the Amazon and reverse the extractive policies of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro. bur-lth/mh/lg
VIENNA (AP)  Much of Europe is cheering this week's Dutch election as a defeat for anti-EU forces. Yet populist demands to weaken Brussels' clout are being embraced by some mainstream leaders, including one who may play a temporary role in shaping the bloc's future.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz sees reforms that would shift power from European Union institutions to member countries as essential for EU survival. Progress on such reforms is how he plans to measure the success of Austria's EU presidency when his country takes over the rotating role for six months in the second half of 2018.

"We need a change of course in the European Union," Kurz told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "The most important is the focus on the big questions and a European Union that steps back on the small questions."

Dutch politician Geert Wilders suffered an election defeat this week, in part because voters did not support his promise to take the Netherlands out of the EU. Populist politicians elsewhere already had recognized the unpopularity of too strong a Eurosceptic message.

Austria's powerful Freedom Party, for instance, now preaches more national rights and less oversight from Brussels, instead of an outright EU withdrawal.

Kurz is a member of the centrist People's Party. But his message is not that different from the Freedom Party's.

His comments reflect a greater European trend  mainstream parties encroaching on formerly populist positions to weaken the popularity of anti-establishment parties.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was the latest to benefit from such a strategy. Even before the Netherlands election, Rutte's People's Party of Freedom and Democracy had moved increasingly to the right to counter Wilders' popularity.

Kurz on Friday suggested less is more for the EU, which he said stands to benefit if it focuses more on issues that even skeptical members can accept.

Story continues

"More cooperation in questions like external security and defense," he said. "And at the same time, no more rules on what restaurant menus should look like in Europe."

Kurz says most bloc members agree in the wake of the large influx of migrants Europe saw in 2015 and 2016 that strong controls on EU external borders are needed.

He said that a willingness to send migrants who enter the continent illegally to centers outside Europe must be part of a common immigration strategy, a stance that until relatively recently only was advocated publicly by Europe's anti-migrant parties.

But Kurz rejects suggestions that such views mean a turn by Europe's political mainstream  and the EU itself toward views previously espoused only by populists and rejected by the establishment.

"Who is a populist, and who isn't?" he asked, refuting as false arguments that maintain "there is a certain group of parties that are good and right and the others are bad."

Instead, he speaks of a "democratic competition" and changing circumstances that shape fluctuating political messages.

In defense of Hungary and other East European members whose populist leaders are most critical of the EU, he says they have "the same right to express their opinion" as other member nations.
AFP News

The UN's COP27 climate summit kicked off Sunday in Egypt with warnings against backsliding on efforts to cut emissions and calls for rich nations to compensate poor countries after a year of extreme weather disasters. Just in the past few months, climate-induced catastrophes have killed thousands, displaced millions and cost billions in damages across the world. Massive floods devastated swaths of Pakistan and Nigeria, droughts worsened in Africa and the western United States, cyclones whipped the Caribbean, and unprecedented heatwaves seared three continents. The conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh comes in a fraught year marked by Russia's war on Ukraine, an energy crunch, soaring inflation and the lingering effects from the Covid pandemic. But Simon Stiell, the UN's climate change executive secretary, said he would not be a "custodian of backsliding" on the goal of slashing greenhouse emissions 45 percent by 2030 to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above late-19th-century levels. "We will be holding people to account, be they presidents, prime ministers, CEOs," Stiell said as the 13-day summit opened. "The heart of implementation is everybody everywhere in the world every single day doing everything they possibly can to address the climate crisis," he said. Current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and Earth's surface heat up 2.8C, according to findings unveiled last week. Promises made under the 2015 Paris Agreement would, if kept, only shave off a few tenths of a degree. "Whilst I do understand that leaders around the world have faced competing priorities this year, we must be clear: as challenging as our current moment is, inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe," said Alok Sharma, British president of the previous COP26 as he handed over the chairmanship to Egypt. "How many more wake-up calls does the world -- and world leaders -- actually need?", he said. In a dire warning, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record, with an acceleration in sea level rise, glacier melt and heatwaves. "As COP27 gets underway, our planet is sending a distress signal," UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement. - 'Loss and damage' - The COP27 summit will focus like never before on money -- a major sticking point that has soured relations between countries that got rich burning fossil fuels and the poorer ones suffering from the worst consequences of climate change. The United States and the European Union -- fearful of creating an open-ended reparations framework -- have dragged their feet and challenged the need for a separate funding stream. Delegates agreed on Sunday to put the "loss and damage" issue on the COP27 agenda, a first step toward what are sure to be fraught discussions. Inclusion of the agenda item "reflects a sense of solidarity and empathy for the suffering of the victims of climate induced disasters," said COP27 president Sameh Shoukry of Egypt. "We all owe a debt of gratitude to activists and civil society organisations who have persistently demanded the space to discuss funding for loss and damage," he said to applause. Shoukry also noted that rich nations have not fulfilled a separate pledge to deliver $100 billion per year to help developing countries green their economies and build resilience against future climate change. He also lamented that most climate financing is based on loans. "We do not have the luxury to continue this way. We have to change our approaches to this existential threat," he said, calling for solutions that "prove we are serious about not leaving anyone behind". - US-China tensions - After the first day of talks, more than 120 world leaders will join the summit on Monday and Tuesday. The most conspicuous no-show will be China's Xi Jinping, whose leadership was renewed last month at a Communist Party Congress. US President Joe Biden has said he will come, but only after legislative elections on Tuesday that could see either or both houses of Congress fall into the hands of Republicans hostile to international action on climate change. Cooperation between the United States and China -- the world's two largest economies and carbon polluters -- has been crucial to rare breakthroughs in the nearly 30-year saga of UN climate talks, including the 2015 Paris Agreement. But Sino-US relations have sunk to a 40-year low after a visit to Taiwan by House leader Nancy Pelosi and a US ban on the sale of high-level chip technology to China, leaving the outcome of COP27 in doubt. A meeting between Xi and Biden at the G20 summit in Bali days before the UN climate meeting ends, if it happens, could be decisive. One bright spot at COP27 will be the arrival of Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose campaign vowed to protect the Amazon and reverse the extractive policies of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro. bur-lth/fz
LIMA, Peru (AP)  The number of people killed in Peru following intense rains and mudslides wreaking havoc around the Andean nation climbed to 67 Friday, with thousands more displaced from destroyed homes and others waiting on rooftops for rescue.

Across the country overflowing rivers caused by El Nino rains damaged 115,000 homes, collapsed 117 bridges and paralyzed countless roadways.

"We are confronting a serious climatic problem," President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a statement broadcast live Friday afternoon. "There hasn't been an incident of this strength along the coast of Peru since 1998."

The highly unusual rains follow a series of storms that have struck especially hard along Peru's northern coast, with voracious waters inundating hospitals and cemeteries, and leaving some small villages entirely isolated. On Thursday, the National Police rescued eight people who had been trapped for three days in Cachipampa and removed the body of an 88-year-old man killed in the floods. In the highlands along the department of La Libertad, dramatic video showed crashing water inundating several buses and trucks, killing at least five people. Rescuers were searching Friday for survivors.

Even Peru's capital city of Lima, where a desert climate seldom leads to rain, police had to help hundreds of residents in an outskirt neighborhood cross a flooded road by sending them one-by-one along a rope through choppy waters. The muddy current channeled down the street after a major river overflowed. Some residents left their homes with just a single plastic bag carrying their belongings.

In total, more than 65,000 people in nearby Huachipa were unable to either go to work or return to their properties.

"There's no way to cross," said Henry Obando, who was rescued after leaving the factory where he works and making his way toward a rooftop where officers created a zip-line to cross. "Many people are trying to get to their homes."

Story continues

The storms are being caused by a warms of the surface waters in the Pacific Ocean and are expected to continue for another two weeks. Kuczynski declared Peru's Central Highway in a state of emergency Friday and announced he would be boosting funds for reconstruction. He said he was optimistic the country was in a strong position to make a swift recovery but urged residents to use caution.

"This hasn't ended," he warned. "And it will continue for some time more."

In 1998, another El Nino event brought heavy rainfall to the nation's coast, causing landslides, ripping apart homes and leaving hundreds dead.

On Friday, drinking water was cut off throughout most of Lima, spiking the price for bottled water and creating long lines at city tanks. U.S. Embassy helicopters typically used to eradicate coca crops in the Amazon were redirected to help in rescue efforts.

"People are desperate," said Doris Meza, who lives in one of the Lima districts most heavily inundated by the floods. "Water is entering everyone's homes. There aren't cars and drivers are charging whatever they want."

___

Associated Press writer Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
Two monthly reports from the state's leading economists predict starkly different paths for the state's economy over the next few months.

The latest leading economic indicator report from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln shows Nebraskas economic growth will improve significantly during the second half of 2017.

The indicator, a composite of economic factors that predict economic growth six months into the future, rose by 2.08 percent in February after rising by a revised 1.76 percent during January.

The rapid increase in the indicator over the last two months is a very positive sign for Nebraska economic growth, said economist Eric Thompson, director of the Bureau of Business Research at the university.

Businesses reported a very positive outlook during February. Respondents to the February Survey of Nebraska Business were optimistic about increasing sales and employment over the next six months.

Business expectations have been very strong the last three months, Thompson said.

In a positive sign for the Nebraska labor market, initial claims for unemployment insurance also fell again during February, the second straight decline.

In a departure from recent trends, the value of the U.S. dollar fell during February.

A declining U.S. dollar improves the competitiveness of Nebraskas exporting businesses, especially in agriculture and manufacturing."

The Rural Mainstreet Index produced by Creighton University showed starkly different conditions.

The overall index, which covers 10 Midwestern states, fell to 45.3 for March from 45.8 in February. The last time the overall index was at or above the growth-neutral level of 50 was August 2015.

Nebraska's Rural Mainstreet Index declined to 43.3 in March from 47.1 in February.

Weak farm commodity prices continue to squeeze Rural Mainstreet economies. Over the last 12 months, livestock commodity prices have tumbled by 6.6 percent and grain commodity prices have slumped by 0.9 percent, said Creighton University economist Ernie Goss.
Sidewalk must be the only skateboard magazine in history to have been dissed (some years ago now) for having too much Irish coverage: back in the mid 00s we seemed to be over there quite often as the scene was full of amazing skaters, events were plentiful and any trip over the water guaranteed a good time.

With this in mind, and in honour of today being St Patricks Day, we figured wed delve into the archives for a taste of some of the Irish skateboarding weve documented and/or published over the years.

This is by no means exhaustive, but contains a good mix of OGs, and more recent heads, in and around Ireland. Worth it for baby Denis Lynn alone.

Now go get a pint of Guinness!
No two customers are exactly alike. And that being the case, its highly unlikely their journeys to customer-hood are the same either.

As more channels and devices continue to proliferate, different people or companies will take several routes to becoming a customer. So its becoming more important everyday to find ways to make sure that path leads to your business.

That means having your organization ready to adapt early and often to changes in customer behavior. This makes it easy for them to move in your direction.

Michelle Huff, CMO of marketing automation platform Act-On, shares with us the idea of adaptive journeys, and how technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence can help you provide a more personalized pathway to engage individual customers and prospects at scale.

Heres an recap of our conversation. To hear the full interview click on the embedded player below.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Why dont you give us a little bit of your personal background?

Michelle Huff: Ive been in high tech for a long time and started off in marketing at a small company. Then headed to a mid-sized business selling website technology and content. Moved to, we were acquired by Oracle. I spent five years at Oracle, and then went to Salesforce, and so was actually there for four years. Ran marketing, product management, was their general manager before heading over to Act On here as their CMO. Its been a fun journey.

Small Business Trends: Describe what youre calling Adaptive Journeys, and how it compares to what we traditionally hear when we hear the term Customer Journey?

Michelle Huff: Thinking about marketing, weve always tried to find ways to make it personalized. We think in personas. We think about nurture tracks.

But I think as buyers, we dont like stereotypes of people, but in some sense when were always kind of forced down these predefined paths. I know it feels like no matter what I do I always end up getting the same white paper. It feels like a stereotype from a buying standpoint. Its a little frustrating when we hear from the company when they want something from us. The last interaction is when marketing thinks were done, right? We converted a lead to a customer. High five, were over, and we dont come back until were trying to do an upsell program.

I think marketing has been trying to adapt, and think about how we make that journey with the customer more personalized, more authentic. How do we start engaging with them on the channels that they want to? We know, its hard to adapt to make it much more authentic, and adapt to these channels.

Looking at all those challenges, we were thinking how can machine learning help this? Because in some sense, trying to track and score and measure and connect all the different interactions and learn from it is hard by that scale. What were wanting to do is build this into marketing automation, so that as marketers, when we build out these journeys and when people interact with us, it can adapt and change to the message that they want. The message thats right for them, at the time theyre ready to engage, and in the channel that they want.

Small Business Trends: How does all this wealth of information coming in from all these different channels and different perspectives, how does that help the modern marketer today connect and stay connected along that journey?

Michelle Huff: I think for me, when we think of artificial intelligence and insights, it needs to be actionable. Its really hard when you just have to, as marketing, go to some separate place to be learning from stuff, off cycle. Then thinking about how you want to apply it. One that weve tried to think about is something really specific like when to send an email.

Theres the marketing thing of, Do I send the email at nine AM on a Tuesday? Do I send it at 10 AM on a Wednesday? Often times well put in, especially for marketing automation well put in a few. Not just 10 AM at headquarters. Its 10 AM in this specific timezone. While thats great, if you think about how we come up with that decision, sometimes its literally just a thumb in the air. Finger in the air, Lets go for nine.

We do have separate insights. We look at our past campaigns and we try to take a look at the open rates and see, Guess what. Based on this we tend to get better open rates if we send it on this specific day of the week. It takes a little time. You have to look. You also have to take some risk and try different days and times with other messages. But its ultimately always a little bit of a guesswork. Its also an aggregate. No matter what, even if you pick nine AM because its a better open rate, theres a lot of other people where maybe thats not the optimal time, and you are kind of blanket applying that to everyone. Its that stereotype again.

Where I think about the insights, its not just knowing, but how do we take that information and apply it into what we do, and an easy way for marketers to do. Even if the answer was available but you had to answer hundreds of questions in a week, and all of them required an analyst to sit down and review things for days, its not really practical.

How do we take that and actually go through, and in real time continue to learn and apply it, so that ultimately what marketing has to do is just pick a button and say, Why dont you just send this email when its the optimal engagement time for each unique person, so when it goes out you might read yours at seven oclock in the morning.

Ive got two small kids. So I actually read a ton of my stuff at 10 or 11 oclock at night.

As a marketer, I just had to pick a button, and for me, one day my kids will grow up. I might not stay to be a 10 or 11 oclock person, and it might change. The nice thing is, artificial intelligence for all these insights will keep learning and adapting based on those changes.

Small Business Trends: How does this technology, and automated insights, change the relationship that marketing has with the sales folks?

Michelle Huff: How Ive always thought of marketing and sales is that, even as a business leader, if you had the ideal way to interact with your customers you would want the best sales rep to be one-to-one interacting with every single one of your customers. They would be the ones who would remember their birthdays, just check in to see how theyre doing, read about an article and be like, Based on this last conversation we had, I thought you might find this interesting.

Once they become customers  Hows it going? Just constantly interacting in a great way, and in a personalized way.

The challenge is, as we grow businesses, we cant have a one to one rep for every customer we have. Marketing has really helped scale that relationship, especially as the journeys disrupted and people start researching before they even reach out to anyone in the company. How do we make sure they have the right brand experience and provide the right set of information?

Once we get to know them, how do we remember them and say, Based on this last thing you thought were interested in, I thought you might find this article interesting too.

If we can find ways to have what we send out in marketing be more personalized and authentic, reaching out in the channel they prefer, when theyre most ready to engage. That really helps us align even closer with sales. Because it almost frees up their time in making their time the most optimal. It almost makes the partnership stronger.

Small Business Trends: How quickly do marketers have to get up to speed with this idea of adaptive journeys and leveraging the data and the machine learning, to have those nuggets delivered so that they can keep up?

Michelle Huff: It is a struggle. I feel like every time I talk to people in marketing were running. Were trying to adapt. I guess how Ive always thought about it is, its an evolution. If you look at social media, theres still many people marketing who are still trying to figure out better ways to interact and engage with people in those channels.

One way that weve thought about adaptive journeys have been some of the journeys we see in our own personal lives with Google Maps and Waze and how you put in your destination, and based on knowing all these different points of data, where youre at in your journey with your phone and your GPS, and layering in all these different data, it starts recommending and learning your frequent destinations. Your commuting hours. Your preferred routes. Its going and doing all of that.

Its providing this information, and from a marketing automation standpoint its going to be doing that too.

Theres still a lot of people I talk to in marketing that arent even using marketing automation. I feel like if you are wanting to take advantage of this, at least starting to think about, How do I start putting in and thinking about the full customer lifecycle? How do I start putting in a lot of my assets and programs and putting them into systems so its starting to track and score and measure?

Small Business Trends: With all this great technology folks like you and other companies put out that really improves the ability to understand whats on the mind of customers in real time, are you surprised at the slow adoption of marketing automation technology?

Michelle Huff: I am. Its interesting, It really depends on the industry too. We do see often times in high tech a lot of marketers, they take advantage of these types of technologies faster. Theres other types of industries where theyre just starting to. It does surprise me sometimes because Ive been in high tech for a while and Ive used it for a while. I keep thinking, How do people survive?. Because you can really do so much more.

But I do see a tipping point, and I do see more conversations, and people hearing about it.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it's an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.
Odds are your business has been talking about developing a mobile strategy. If you are not, you should move it to the top of your to-do list because theres an excellent chance that your competition is.

The first step in developing a mobile strategy is to understand just what a mobile strategy is. To many small businesses, mobile means logistics and shipping. But, to your millennial customer base, mobile is no longer moving products, its a lifestyle.

Its about communicating with people on their mobile devices. But you probably already knew that. What you may not know is how to do it, or why its so important. Lets deal with both of those questions, starting with the why.

The Importance of a Mobile Strategy for Your Business

It was roughly two decades ago that the rush for every business was to have a website. Nobody was quite sure what to do with their online presence, but they knew it was important to have one.

Web sites did a lot of things for businesses, and still do today. Some used them as storefronts or news hubs or ways to distribute content or only advertise themselves. But times have changed. Were a long way from that Wild West era of internet development. In fact, we know exactly whats happening right now.

Whats happening is that mobile device use is taking over. In 2008, 80 percent of digital media engagement was on a desktop or laptop computer, compared with only 12 percent on a mobile device. By 2015, not only had overall digital media consumption nearly doubled, but 51 percent of all digital media consumption was on mobile, compared to only 42 percent on desktop or laptop.

Thats a jump from an average of 0.3 hours per day on mobile to 2.8 hours on mobile, in just seven years.

The writing on the wall is clear. Mobile isnt the future  its the present. Its already upon us, and businesses all around you are finding new ways to connect with existing customers and draw in potential ones.

What a mobile strategy is for is to draw out a way to connect with these customers on the devices that keep them connected. If you join with them in the place they connect with the rest of the world, you keep yourself relevant in their fast-paced lives.

Now, I know what youre probably thinking. Hey, my company has a website, and we put a lot of money into making that website mobile-friendly. Isnt that enough?

A few years ago, that might have been enough. But the world is changing, and in todays mobile landscape, all thats good for is getting you left in the dust by your competition.

Dont believe me? You dont have to. The research is already out there that says only 11 percent of peoples time on mobile devices is spent on mobile websites. The other 89 percent is spent in apps. Interpreted a different way, that means if your businesss mobile strategy ends at our site is mobile-friendly, then youre missing out on at least 89 percent of your potential audience.

Put another way; youre missing out on a slice of a $3.1 trillion mobile market pie, which is expected to grow to over $3.7 trillion in 2020.

In all, Americans check their phones a total of 8 billion times a day. If youre not on their phones, youre missing 8 billion chances a day to connect with the people who keep your business going.

So, now that you understand whats at stake, were back to our initial problem: What does it even mean to have a mobile marketing strategy? What does it entail? How do you do it?

Heres a good place to start.

Creating an App

Oh, sure, you say. Just build an app. You make it sound so simple; like I can just snap my fingers and have an app.

Okay, fair enough. Its not as simple as just saying lets build an app. But its probably not nearly as difficult as you think it is. With the explosion of demand for mobile apps, so too has the ability for small and medium-sized businesses to create supply.

At one point, building an app may have meant hiring an entire development team to program something from scratch. Now, easy to use app builders let you take a pre-established, unbranded app template, fill it with your content and branding, and customize it to your needs.

All this costs a fraction of what a full-scale development project from scratch would cost, and it has allowed businesses of all sizes to get engaged in the mobile market. It gets you into the market faster, avoids the pitfalls of first-time development, and lets you focus on your customers.

See Also: How to Make Your Mobile Marketing Amazing in 2018

All you have to do is know what you want your app to do. Not sure about that either? No problem. A lot of white-label app services will walk you through it, but were going to do it here first.

What Your App Can Do

The basic functions of a mobile app arent anything unusual, and they mirror a lot of things websites can do, just in a streamlined way  providing a storefront, information about your business, content, etc.

These arent unique features by any stretch, just the basics that any business app will do. What you want is something thats going to drive interest, and create sales where there otherwise wouldnt have been.

Digital coupons are a good start for this. These are exactly what they sound like. Theyre coupons, special offers that compel people to buy something from you, delivered directly to a users mobile device. However, there is a huge advantage to app-delivered digital coupons over physical ones.

First off, physical coupons are something you have to spend money on printing and distributing. Then, once you do get them sent out, they tend to be circulated to a huge percentage of people who will deposit them directly into the nearest trash can.

Now, contrast this to a digital coupon strategy. If youre distributing your coupons directly through your app, not only does it cost you nothing to print and distribute them, but you also have a captive audience. These coupons are going directly to the people who have shown enough interest in your business to download your app. That translates to a much higher conversion rate.

Of course, people are going to have plenty of apps installed on their phones. How do you make them notice yours?

Push alerts are an option, where you can send a pop-up notification to the users phone, but they must be used sparingly. Send them out occasionally, when you have an offer or announcement thats critical. Otherwise, they may block the notifications, or worse, uninstall the app entirely.

You can also use a relatively new location-based technology called geofencing. This will allow you to send a custom-tailored message to people with your app within a certain distance from your actual business location.

For retail businesses, this can be a digital coupon or a special offer that is only available in-store. For restaurants, it can advertise the days special menu. Whatever your kind of business, you can use geofencing to give people that last push to get them in the door and ready to buy.

Putting It All Together

These are just a couple ideas to start putting together a fully-featured mobile strategy. You have a lot of options, but the basics of mobile strategy are simple: You want to engage your customers in a personalized way, on the device they spend most of their time with.

Mobile apps make this easier than ever, since most of the time, users will input their preferences about what theyre interested in voluntarily. This is valuable market research, simply given away for free by the very people you most want to target.

The best way for you to start is to think about what kinds of communication and marketing you want to do to engage with customers and create new ones. Once youve done that, you can put some time into finding the best white-label apps and services to do it for you.

Once youve done that much, youre off to claiming your piece of the $3.1 billion mobile market pie.
Oppo Electronics Corporation, the Chinese Multinational is all set to introduce two of its much-awaited smartphones in India on 23rd March of this year and the entire Indian smartphone market is going gaga over the premium features of the phones. Named as Oppo F3 and Oppo F3 Plus, both handsets will be coming with dual-camera set-up in their front panel. As officially tweeted by the Chinese Conglomerate, both F3 and F3 Plus will mark their commercial debut in India on 23rd March in an official event in New Delhi.

With the tagline of Selfie Expert, both phones are expected to ship with 16MP and 8MP dual camera modules on their front panel. Up to now, it is only confirmed that both F3 and F3 Plus will be launched in five key markets including India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam on 23 March, while there is no word on the pricing and the availability of the models in the retail outlets. However, as stated by a report of an Indian daily, pricing and availability of both phones may differ depending upon the areas and markets.

As said by Sky Li, OPPO Global Vice President and President of OPPO India, The F3 Series is Oppos first flagship to flaunt dual camera set-up on the front. The flagship is expected to take selfie technology to a new super-advanced level as well as it sets a new trend for other smartphone manufacturers to follow and a new standard for the buyers. There is no doubt that the series will be a great achievement for the company.

Regarding other specs, Oppo F3 and Oppo F3 Plus are expected to be pretty premium. Amidst all the leaks, gossips, and rumours about the arrival of the new smartphones, integrated with the revolutionary front dual camera, there are also numerous leaks that suggests that the OPPO F3 Plus will be presented in two colour variants like Gold and Black. In display department, we can expect the higher version to ship with a big 6-inch touchscreen display accompanied by a Cornings Gorilla Glass 5 protection.

Moreover, it will also feature an Octa Core processor, under the hood and will be backed by a 4000mAh battery. The storage part of the phone will sport 64 GB onboard storage, clubbed with 4 GB RAM and the expandable option up to 256 GB via micro-SD card slot. With dual SIM cards support, Oppo F3 Plus will run on Android 6.0 covered with ColorOS 3.0 out of the box.

If the rumoured are to be believed, the Oppo F3 Plus will seat at 7.35 mm thickness and weigh about 185g, which means it will be quite slim and elegant. Networks supports may include GSM, WCDMA, LTE, and TD, suggested some of the key leaks. In the rear panel, the phone will host a 16-mp camera, while the front part will accommodate 16mp+8mp sensors.

However, up to now, no data is available about the specifications of the Oppo F3.
2016 was no doubt one of the most perilous years for Australias iconic Great Barrier Reef. Though the year has already left, the unpredictably scorching temperature damaged the entire 700 kilometer (496.4 miles) long aquatic ecology. Now a team of international scientists has warned that, despite all the measures and recovery programs, the damaged coral reefs will never be as pristine as it was earlier.

Various parts of Great Barrier Reef  the iconic World Heritage Ecology of Australia will never recuperate from the harsh impact of unseasonably warm ocean waters, which was caused by the last years unexpectedly hiked temperature. As warned by the scientists on Thursday, over the year, the issue of global warming has been intensifying, and gradually more and more World Heritage Sites are coming under rehabilitated danger of temperature hike of oceans.

As stated by the scientists from ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrated Coral Reef Studies, the threat of temperature hike has been there since long. But after last years bleaching event, the risk of damage to reefs has taken a step forward, and from the recent spike in sea temperatures, it is confirmed that, if global warming has not been capped, it will soon completely extinct the Great Barrier Reef. As shown in the statistics of ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrated Coral Reef Studies, hot water of oceans around the Great Barrier Reef slaughtered nearly two-thirds of the entire 700 kilometer (496.4 miles) spread of coral reefs last year. In 2016, the temperature of ocean water unexpectedly hiked, and the hot water caused the coral to force out the algae living inside them, and this event is known as Coral Bleaching. As a result of algae expelling, the corals left their colourful look and turned into ashen.

The researchers also warned that the measures like restraining the overfishing near the site and improving the quality of water would also not be able to bring the pristine look of the reefs back. Human being needs to curb the global warming and emission of greenhouse gasses for rescuing the reefs from the harsh impacts of bleaching.

According to Janice Lough, a senior principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the lead author of the study, If given some more time, coral reefs will be able to pull through the insensitive bleaching trauma. But if the problem persists, and the history frequently repeats itself, then the coral reef community will lose their capability to recover from bleaching.
Elon Musks owned SpaceX has launched its Falcon 9 rocket into the starry moonlit sky of Thursday. The rocket, carrying a communication satellite successfully took wing to the Moon. After strong wind had delayed the earlier scheduled launch mission on Tuesday, the US-based space company re-scheduled the mission to Thursday.

The almost 23-chronicle rocket Falcon 9, powered by nine Merlin 1D engine, ignited and lifted off from NASAs historic Launch Pad 39A, located at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Thursday, sharp at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT), the Falcon 9 rocket, carrying commercial television broadcast satellite ignited and blasted off from the launch pad and turned towards east and roared skyward on top of 1.7 million pounds of driving force. Earlier the launch, due to the concerns of re-arrival of high winds, SpaceX postponed the take off of the fiery orange rocket 25 minutes afterward on Thursday. Strong winds also hold back the previous launch attempt of the same rocket on Tuesday.

After the successful launch, around 2:35 a.m. EDT, SpaceX confirmed the successful launch on Tweeter. In its tweet, the US-based company confirmed the victorious deployment of the EchoStar 23 satellite via Falcon 9 rocket into the geosynchronous transfer orbit.

The EchoStar Corporation powered the commercial television broadcasting satellite called EchoStar 23. The combined weight of the EchoStar 23 satellite loaded atop the Falcon 9 rocket was nearly 12,345 pounds or 5,600 kilograms at the time of launch. The satellite was designed by the California-based manufacturer Space Systems/Loral and after becoming operational; the satellite will transmit broadcasting signals to Brazil.

As declared by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX in its previous press release, the rocket will out the EchoStar 23 satellite into the geosynchronous transfer orbit, located some 35,000 kilometers on the top of the earth. The communication satellite, owned by EchoStar Corporation is intended to deliver superfast and high-end telecommunications service to Brazil.
It appears that each automaker enjoys revealing facts in small stages regarding their highly-anticipated oncoming cars. Last month, Tata Motors disclosed the sketches of the Tiago-based sedan and confirmed that itd be named Tigor and not Kite 5. Earlier this month, we tend to rumoured that the home-grown car manufacturer can launch the Tigor on 29th March 2017.

Various dealers around the country have already started accepting booking for the Tigor at an amount of Rs. 11,000 which will be refundable if one later changes its mind. Tata Motors has nevertheless to announce that formally. Now though, Tata Motors has uncovered the whole list of specifications of the Tigor and with none more delay, lets have a quick look on them.

Dimensions

Concerning the overall length, the Tigor measures 3,992mm, that is 246mm longer than a hatchback. Similarly, its 30mm wider and 2mm taller than the Tiago. Tata Motors has conjointly stretched the wheelbase for the Tigor  from 2,400mm to 2,450mm. This can be primarily to stabilise an extensive body on an equivalent chassis.

Ground clearance and therefore the fuel tank capability remains an equivalent at 170mm and 35 litres severally. Boot house within the Tigor (419 litres) has increased by 177 litres over the Tiago. Even once the extensive body, Tata Motors has managed to decrease the curb weight of the petrol-powered automotive by 18kg. However, the diesel-powered Tigor is 50kg heavier than the diesel Tiago.

While the wheel size for the diesel-powered Tigor remains equivalent to the Tiago (175/65 R14), the petrol-powered Tigor gets 175/60 section tubeless tyres, wrapped around 15-inch alloy wheels.

Engine & Transmission

Powering the Tigor are going to be an equivalent set of engines that ar offered within the Tiago hatchback. Whereas the one.2-litre, 3-cylinder gasoline engine produces 85PS of power and 114Nm of force, and the 1.05-litre 3-pot diesel mill generates 70PS of power and 140nm of strength. Transmission duties for the engines are going to be handled by a five-speed manual transmission.

Tata Motors hasnt disclosed any fuel-efficiency figures as of currently, however, each the engines, like within the Tiago, can feature twin drive modes (City and Eco). Tata Motors says the default town mode is tuned to deliver the most effective of each world  a bouncy driving expertise and sensible fuel potency. On the opposite hand, the Eco mode optimises engine performance to deliver the most effective doable fuel potency.

Features and Looks

Tata Tigor is that the third automotive to hold Tata Motors Impact style language (after Tiago and Hexa). To form it distinguishable from Tiago, the Tigor gets a dual-tone front bumper, companys signature grille style with chrome garnishing that extends all the approach into crystal-like preserved projector headlamps. At the rear, the Styleback features LED taillights and LED stop lamp strip above the rear windshield.

The Tiago is far and away the foremost feature-rich in its phase, and with the Tigor, Tata Motors had to lift the bar higher. The feature list includes a similar 8-speaker Harman-engineered music system that debuted with the Tiago. Within the Tigor, however, it comes paired with a 5-inch touchscreen documentary film show. This screen has video playback compatibility, voice command recognition, SMS readout practicality and acts as a show for the reverse camera. The Tigor conjointly gets automatic climate management, a further 12V charging purpose for rear passengers and backrest with cupholders.The

The Tigor appears like a head-turner and, on paper, a minimum of equates to be nicely proportioned moreover. We tend to ar wanting forward to its official launch at the top of this month as for Tata Motors theres only one unknown fact left to unravel  the price!

Source: cardekho.com
The Disney "live-action" remakes, of which the new "Beauty and the Beast" is but one in an assembly line, are starting to resemble an iPhone software update. Click a button and that old cartoon interface changes Belle into Emma Watson, the Beast into Dan Stevens and maybe fixes a few bugs in the system.

"Beauty and the Beast," that "tale as old as time" (or, to pinpoint it, 1740, when the French fairy tale was published), could certainly use a few tweaks. It is, after all, a fable about finding beauty within that ends, curiously, with the once superficial prince falling for a beautiful woman he's kidnapped, whose name literally means beauty. If you'd like to untangle those ironies, please, be our guest.

Director Bill Condon's film  let's call it "Beauty and the Beast 2.0"  often feels in search of a purpose beyond the all-but-certain dollar signs. Much of the live-action/digital effects makeover is less lifelike than the Oscar-winning 1991 animated film: It's gained a dimension but lost a pulse. The merely fine acting and the lavish production design (the sumptuous sets nearly swallow the performers whole) dutifully strive to make this a worthy enterprise.

Opposites attract, of course. And this "Beauty and the Beast" is equal parts dispiriting and enchanting: overflowing in handsome craft, but missing a spirit inside. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's songs still have their infectious kick, but most of the big musical moments feel more like very good covers of the originals. (There are also three less-memorable new songs by Menken and Tim Rice.)

And yet "Beauty and the Beast" finds its own verve  or, to quote Lumiere, "reason d'etre"  late. Condon (the "Dreamgirls" director who, having helmed much of the "Twilight" saga, knows a thing or two about young love and monsters), working from a script by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, has taken many of the old tale's more cringe-worthy gender roles and mixed them up in the movie's bright swirling medley.

Belle's bookishness is more pronounced, thanks partly to the "Harry Potter" credentials of Watson. Her performance is a little minor key, still, but Watson lends Belle an intelligence and agency that she has lacked. She's less of a Stockholm syndrome Victim and more deserving of young girls' admiration. And the Beast, a pile of horns, makeup and effects on top of the former "Downton Abbey" star Stevens, is more haunted and melancholy.

But as the film nears its celebratory coda, a buoyant pluralism bursts forth. Characters  large parts and small  are freed from their prescribed roles in a glorious dance, shortly after Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and the rest come to life. (Be sure to shake your living room and see which British star tumbles out of the furniture.) Here is where that already much discussed "gay moment," as Condon has called it, arrives. It comes and goes in a flash.

Josh Gad, the MVP of many a Disney movie, plays LeFou, the doting sidekick of the caddish Gaston (Luke Evans), the dopey pursuer of Belle's hand. LeFou spends much of the movie hinting at his affection for his lecherous friend, but LeFou, too, earns a chance for redemption toward the end. That's all it is  an easy to miss suggestion that LeFou might find another love. And yet this slightest wink of homosexuality has drawn the ire of some who, it's worth noting, raised no concerns over a romance between an imprisoned girl and a beast or, for that matter, a candelabra and a feather duster.

In fact, "Beauty and the Beast" would be better if it dared more such moments and went further with them. Nevertheless, the uproar suggests even this must count as progress. Perhaps we'll be ready for a truly up-to-date "Beauty and the Beast 3.0" in another few decades.
Learning Resources

G Suite for Education Now Open for Personal Google Accounts, Outside Domains

Homeschoolers, tutoring programs, lifelong learners and others without Googles G Suite for Education accounts can now access Google Classroom from their personal Google account. The company has also added controls for administrators to grant access to users from outside G Suite domains to join.

Google said in a blog post announcement that teachers and students now have the ability to use their personal accounts to teach or attend classes and manage assignments. (Plus, sometime over the coming weeks, personal accounts will be allowed to create their own classes.) Classroom administrators will notice updated settings with new controls that grant greater control over who can join their classes. For instance, administrators can now invite outside G Suite users by e-mail, like visiting teachers or students, to quickly integrate into their Classroom.

Opening up Classroom to more users was a move to provide teachers and students more flexibility in how they collaborate, the blog post explained. "We see value in bringing technology to people who want to learn, no matter the setting."

The company said that schools interested in using Google Classroom should still sign up for G Suite for Education.

To learn more about the changes, visit Google's FAQ page.
By Leika Kihara BADEN-BADEN, Germany (Reuters) - Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said he agreed with his U.S. counterpart Steven Mnuchin on the need to abide by the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy, including a warning that excess currency volatility is undesirable. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Japan of exploiting a weak yen to give exports an unfair trade advantage, leaving Japanese policy-makers worried that Washington may upend a G20 agreement that gives Tokyo room to intervene in the currency market to stem any unwelcome yen spike. "We agreed that it was important to maintain the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy," Aso told reporters after meeting with Mnuchin on Friday on the sidelines of a Group of 20 finance leaders' weekend gathering. The G20 economies have long agreed on three points on currency policy -- to refrain from competitive devaluations, avoid targeting exchange rates for competitive purposes and that "excess volatility and disorderly movements" in currency rates were undesirable. In their first face-to-face meeting, Aso said he agreed with Mnuchin on the need to respect all three of that points. They did not discuss recent currency moves or monetary policy, he said. The U.S. Treasury Department issued a statement after the meeting only to say Aso and Mnuchin discussed "latest developments in the U.S. and Japanese economies". The two also re-confirmed that currency issues should be left for respective finance leaders to discuss, instead of at a bilaterial economic dialogue kicking off next month, Aso said. Japanese premier Shinzo Abe has said he agreed with Trump to allow their finance leaders to debate currency issues, suggesting Washington may soften criticism Japan was manipulating the yen to gain a trade advantage. Aso said he also told Mnuchin it was important to resist protectionism as free trade has brought enormous economic benefits to many countries. "I didn't get any push back (from Mnuchin)," Aso said. The G20 financial leaders will renounce competitive devaluations and warn against exchange rate volatility, but have not yet found a common stance on trade and protectionism, a draft statement of their meeting showed on Friday. They may struggle to present a united front on protectionism after Trump's administration began considering imposing a border tax that would make imports more expensive. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said while there was a shared consensus in the global community of the need to promote free trade, it was uncertain how the G20 debate could unfold. "The U.S. administration has yet to lay out clear policies on trade, so it's inappropriate to speak about their approach with any preconception," Kuroda told reporters upon arrival for the G20 meeting. (Reporting By Leika Kihara, editing by Jan Strupczewski/Jeremy Gaunt)
* Nyhamna can export up to 20 pct of Britain's gas needs

* Plant's ownership could rise to 13 firms from five

* Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) set to relinquish operatorship to Gassco

By Lefteris Karagiannopoulos

OSLO, March 17 (Reuters) - The ownership of Norway's Nyhamna gas-processing plant, a major supplier of energy to Britain, could expand to 13 companies this year from five now when Gassco succeeds Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: 0LN9.L - news) as the facility's operator, Shell told Reuters.

Currently processing gas from the offshore Ormen Lange field, Nyhamna will also receive gas from Statoil (LSE: 0M2Z.L - news) 's Aasta Hansteen and other fields from late 2018 via the new Polarled pipeline.

The plant exports gas to Britain via the Langeled pipeline, which can meet about 20 percent of Britain's gas needs.

A new ownership structure will reflect the addition of more gas input sources, allowing the Polarled owners to take stakes in the plant, Gassco said.

"We can confirm that the Nyhamna gas plant will become part of a new joint venture," said a Gassco spokeswoman, declining to comment on how the ownership will be split.

Gassco said Shell was expected to remain technical service provider (TSP (Shenzhen: 300129.SZ - news) ) at Nyhamna, meaning the company will continue to handle daily operations, similar to the TSP role Statoil plays at the Gassco-operated Kaarstoe and Kollsnes gas plants.

"Shell is one of 13 parties with future ownership interests," Shell said in an email to Reuters, declining to elaborate further on the process.

The Nyhamna plant is currently owned by Ormen Lange license partners Norway's Petoro, Statoil, Shell, Denmark's DONG Energy (LSE: 0RHE.L - news) and ExxonMobil.

Potential future owners include France's Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) , Wintershall, the oil and gas subsidiary of Germany's BASF, Italy's Edison (Stuttgart: 1517689.SG - news) , ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP - news) and Austria's OMV (IOB: 0MKH.IL - news) .

Norway's oil and energy ministry must approve the new ownership structure and set gas transportation tariffs that will ultimately impact the profitability of the pipelines and processing system.

"The decision (on tariffs) will be made before start-up of operations of the new facilities ... after a proposal is sent on public consultation," a ministry spokesman said. (Additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Dale Hudson)
Ever since first mentioned by Jon Michell in a letter to the Royal Society in 1783, black holes have captured the imagination of scientists, writers, filmmakers and other artists. Perhaps part of the allure is that these enigmatic objects have never actually been seen. But this could now be about to change as an international team of astronomers is connecting a number of telescopes on Earth in the hope of making the first ever image of a black hole.

Black holes are regions of space inside which the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing  not even light  can escape. Their existence was predicted mathematically by Karl Schwarzchild in 1915, as a solution to equations posed in Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity.

Astronomers have had circumstantial evidence for many decades that supermassive black holes  a million to a billion times more massive than our sun  lie at the hearts of massive galaxies. Thats because they can see the gravitational pull they have on stars orbiting around the galactic centre. When overfed with material from the surrounding galactic environment, they also eject detectable plumes or jets of plasma to speeds close to that of light. Last year, the LIGO experiment provided even more proof by famously detecting ripples in space-time caused by two medium-mass black holes that merged millions of years ago.

But while we now know that black holes exist, questions regarding their origin, evolution and influence in the universe remain at the forefront of modern astronomy.

Catching a tiny spot on the sky

On April 5-14 2017, the team behind the Event Horizon Telescope hopes to test the fundamental theories of black-hole physics by attempting to take the first ever image of a black holes event horizon (the point at which theory predicts nothing can escape). By connecting a global array of radio telescopes together to form the equivalent of a giant Earth-sized telescope  using a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry and Earth-aperture synthesis  scientists will peer into the heart of our Milky Way galaxy where a black hole that is 4m times more massive than our sun  Sagittarius A*  lurks.

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NASA/wikipedia

Astronomers know there is a disk of dust and gas orbiting around the black hole. The path the light from this material takes will be distorted in the gravitational field of the black hole. Its brightness and colour are also expected to be altered in predictable ways. The tell-tale signature astronomers hope to see with the Event Horizon Telescope is a bright crescent shape rather than a disk. And they may even see the shadow of the black holes event horizon against the backdrop of this brightly shining swirling material.

The array connects nine stations spanning the globe  some individual telescopes, others collections of telescopes  in Antarctica, Chile, Hawaii, Spain, Mexico and Arizona. The virtual telescope has been in development for many years and the technology has been tested. However, these tests initially revealed a limited sensitivity and an angular resolution that was insufficient to probe down to the scales needed to reach the black hole. But the addition of sensitive new arrays of telescopes  including the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile and the South Pole Telescope  will give the network a much-needed boost in power. Its rather like putting on spectacles and suddenly being able to see both headlights from an oncoming car rather than a single blur of light.

The black hole is a compact source on the sky  its view at optical wavelengths (light that we can see) is completely blocked by large quantities of dust and gas. However, telescopes with sufficient resolution and operating at longer, radio millimetre wavelengths can peer through this cosmic fog.

The resolution of any kind of telescope  the finest detail that can be discerned and measured  is usually quoted as a small angle corresponding to the ratio of an objects size to its distance. The angular size of the moon as seen from the Earth is about half a degree, or 1800 arc seconds. For any telescope, the bigger its aperture, the smaller the detail that can be resolved.

The resolution of a single radio telescope (typically with an aperture of 100 metres) is roughly about 60 arc seconds. This is comparable to the resolution of the unaided human eye and about a sixtieth of the apparent diameter of the full moon. But by connecting many telescopes, the Event Horizon Telescope will be about to achieve a resolution of 15-20 microarcsecond (0,000015 arcseconds), corresponding to being able to spy a grape at the distance of the moon.

Whats at stake?

Although the practice of connecting many telescopes in this way is well known, particular challenges lie ahead for the Event Horizon Telescope. The data recorded at each station in the network will be shipped to a central processing facility where a supercomputer will carefully combine all the data. Different weather, atmospheric and telescope conditions at each site will require meticulous calibration of the data so that scientists can be sure any features they find in the final images are not artefacts.

If it works, imaging the material inside the black hole region with angular resolutions comparable to that of its event horizon will open a new era of black hole studies and solve a number of big questions: do event horizons even exist? Does Einsteins theory work in this region of extreme strong gravity or do we need a new theory to describe gravity this close to a black hole? Also, how are black holes fed and how is material ejected?

It may even even be possible to image the black holes at the centre of nearby galaxies, such as the giant elliptical galaxy that lies at the heart of our local cluster of galaxies.

Ultimately, the combination of mathematical theory and deep physical insight, global international scientific collaborations and remarkable, tenacious long-term advances in cutting edge experimental physics and engineering look set to make revealing the nature of spacetime a defining feature of early 21st century science.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Carole Mundell receives funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. However, the views expressed here are her own and not those of the research council.
Boris Johnson has made a surprise trip to Somalia for talks about the devastating drought facing East Africa.

The Foreign Secretary's first visit to the country came as four-time Olympic champion Sir Mo Farah threw his support behind a charity appeal to help the millions of people facing starvation in the region due to the drought.

Mr Johnson met Somalian President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who was elected last month, to discuss the situation.

He told the president: "It's a shame that you're facing the problems that you are, particularly drought and the risk of starvation.

"I think we're moving fast to try to tackle that this time round and the UK Government has pledged 110m to try to kick-start that work and make sure we get supplies to those who need it.

"Drought, a problem like that, is fundamentally something that is caused by human agency or lack of human agency, poor government, corruption, the struggle that you have against terrorism and there we are very proud to be supporting you as well."

Mr Johnson also saw demonstrations of the training provided by the British military in the country.

They also discussed security in the country, where terror group al Shabaab continues to carry out attacks.

The Disasters Emergency Committee's (DEC) East Africa Food Crisis Appeal is hoping to bring aid to more than 16 million people in the region "on the brink of starvation and in urgent need of food, water and medical treatment".

Money raised by the DEC appeal will go to those affected in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan, with the Government pledging to match public donations up to 5m.

The Queen is also making a personal donation to the appeal, a Buckingham Palace spokesman confirmed.

Sir Mo, who spent his early childhood in some of the worst affected areas of Somalia, said he was "completely devastated" by the crisis.

He said: "As a father of four, it hurts to see children without food and water, but this is a reality being faced by parents in East Africa right now."

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The UN children's agency has warned that 1.4 million severely malnourished children could die this year in Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

In February, the UN formally declared a famine in parts of South Sudan - the first time in six years such an announcement has been made.

DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed said: "We are hearing that families are so desperate for food that they are resorting to eating leaves to survive.

"This is something no family should have to endure. Unless we act now the number of deaths will drastically increase."

:: To donate to the DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal, visit www.dec.org.uk or call 0370 60 60 610.
By Tsvetelia Tsolova SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's caretaker prime minister said on Friday he was taking steps to prevent any attempts by Turkey to influence an election next week in favour of a political party that represents Bulgarian Turks, the country's largest ethnic minority. Last week, the government summoned Turkey's envoy to Sofia after reports that a Turkish minister had campaigned for the DOST party in Istanbul, where many Bulgarian citizens live. Late on Thursday, it also recalled its own ambassador to Turkey for consultations. "It is true that there is a certain tension linked with one of the political parties, which is receiving support from the Turkish state, but we are taking measures that this does not continue," caretaker premier Ognyan Gerdzhikov told reporters. Bulgarians will vote in a snap parliamentary election on March 26. Seeking to downplay the tensions with Bulgaria's southern neighbour, Gerdzhikov said Turkey had tried to influence other Bulgarian elections since the fall of communism 26 years ago, and "now, there is nothing that is a way different". More than 400,000 Bulgarian nationals live in Turkey, most of them Bulgarian Turks descended from Ottoman-era Turkish settlers in the Balkans. Bulgarian Turks are estimated to be more than half a million of Bulgaria's 7.2 million population. Recalling an ambassador for consultations is a way of protesting that stops short of suspending diplomatic relations. The move by Bulgaria's interim government, which has limited powers, follows a row between Ankara and The Hague in the run-up to this week's Dutch election which saw Turkish ministers banned from holding rallies in the Netherlands. Other European Union countries including Germany have also angered President Tayyip Erdogan by barring campaigning among Turkish expatriates to drum up support for a referendum in April that would increase Erdogan's powers. "The interim government is concerned that Turkey may create tensions that go beyond the normal diplomatic process, as it happened in the Netherlands," said Vessela Tcherneva, Sofia-based analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "The problem is that if Turkey presses on, the Bulgarian nationalists may try to block the border to prevent Bulgarian citizens from Turkey crossing into the country to cast their ballots, and that will create a scandal." The spat with Turkey was credited with giving centre-right Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte a last-minute boost in the polls after an election campaign in which immigration and integration were key issues. Opinion polls suggest the nationalist coalition United Patriots will come third in a tight race for the Bulgarian parliament and play a key role in forming the next government. Support for the party has grown as a result of Europe's migrant crisis. DOST, which split from the traditional ethnic Turkish MRF party last year, is not expected to pass the minimum threshold to win seats. Bulgaria seeks to maintain good relations with Turkey, which it shares a 260 km border with and relies on to stem a possible increase in migrant inflows. (Editing by Catherine Evans)
A pull quote on a poster announces that The Belko Experiment is Office Space meets Battle Royale. Thats not praise so much as a declaration of fact. Since the 2000 Japanese film about teens forced to kill each other in a government-sanctioned murder game, there have been many a riff on that cult classic  The Condemned, The Tournament, and most notably, and similarly, The Hunger Games. Its a story format with which weve become familiar: Unwitting civilians are placed in a controlled environment where they are compelled by a Big Brother type to kill each other or be killed themselves. The variable is always the why.

In The Belko Experiment, the why turns out to be social science, much like the 1961 Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which explored individual willingness to go against personal moral conscience in obeying commands. The Belko Experiment, written by Guardians of the Galaxy helmer James Gunn, is an extreme, gory and extremely violent take on research of that kind.

Director Greg McLean, best known for Aussie horror flick Wolf Creek, is a member of the unofficial group the Splat Pack, so named by Alan Jones in Total Film Magazine: Its a group of horror directors who, in the early 2000s, gained notoriety for their brutal, torturously violent horror films. While a few of those directors have branched out to other genres (Saw director James Wan is directing Aquaman), McLean stays close to his roots with the dark and bloody The Belko Experiment.

The film finds a group of 80 employees, mostly American, working at a Colombian recruiting firm. There are the standard office friendships, tensions and romances, which are all thrown into stark relief when impenetrable metal shutters come down and an ominous voice comes over a loudspeaker, instructing the group to kill each other or be killed themselves. The game, if you will, involves impossible ethical questions about whether or not to kill a certain number of innocent people in order to save a larger group of innocent people.

No one here is getting saved though. Mike (John Gallagher Jr.) is the first to pick up on that. His boss, Barry (Tony Goldwyn), insists on following the instructions, out of some deference to authority or hope that the ominous voice might actually let them survive. His actions unleash a torrent of violent chaos in the building, as the employees descend into savage barbarism.

Despite cutesy Spanish-language covers of American songs playing on the radio, the proceedings are relentlessly grim and violent. The sadism enacted on screen is directed at the audience, battering us with horrific, deadening images. McLean takes splat to a whole new level, and soon every surface is slick with blood.

Most of these Battle Royale tributes arent contained to a single location  they take place outside, so there are opportunities for suspense and individual confrontations that truly draw out the essential, intimate nature of this terrible exercise. Confined to this sterile office space, The Belko Experiment descends into a meaningless orgy of murder. By the end of the film, youre left with the unshakable feeling that that everyone involved, from actors to filmmakers to audience, is, and should have been, better than material like this.
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of South Korea's ousted president Park's friend Choi Soon-sil, will challenge the Danish public prosecutor's decision on Friday to extradite her to South Korea, her lawyer said. "We had hoped for a different outcome, but on the other hand, it was to be expected. Now we will bring it to the courts and fight it there," Chung's lawyer, Peter Martin Blinkenberg, told Reuters. Blinkenberg did not rule out appealing to the High Court if the District Court upholds the public prosecutor's decision. (Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
The appointment of George Osborne, a Conservative MP and former chancellor of the exchequer, as editor of the Evening Standard was, to put it mildly, a surprise to many. But the move only makes more explicit the newspapers close ties to the Conservative Party

I carried out research on the Standard when it was edited by Sarah Sands, who had vowed to be scrupulous in providing equal coverage in the run-up to the 2015 mayoral election. I found that the Standard gave Conservative Zac Goldsmith more favourable coverage than his opponent, Labour candidate Sadiq Khan. The same dog-whistle politics that were coming out of Goldsmiths campaign could also been seen on the pages of the London daily.

The fact that the Evening Standard has a monopoly position in left-leaning London, where it is distributed, free, on London transport, should alone be reason to steer clear of such nakedly political decision-making as appointing a sitting Tory MP as editor. But its owner, Evgeny Lebedev has form. The Independent newspaper, admittedly in its death throes at the time, came out for the Conservatives at the 2015 election, a move that directly contradicted both its editorial line and the expectations of its young Liberal readership.

According to Adam Bienkov, deputy editor of politics.co.uk, that was a decision dictated by Lebedev who, he maintains, is very close to the Conservative foreign secretary, Boris Johnson (then Mayor of London).

Now Osborne, a beneficiary of the Conservative bias in the British news media in print and online, will be at the helm of a Lebedev newspaper that is the only provider of London-wide news in print.

With Osborne running his own newspaper will we see the Evening Standard focusing on the continuing row within the Conservatives about the handling of Brexit? How will the paper, under his stewardship, report efforts to correct the impact of damaging housing policies that have seen the disappearance of genuinely affordable housing in the capital? Those are policies which he not only backed but, in some cases, initiated.

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Khan was quick to tweet his congratulations, despite his treatment by the paper in the past. It doesnt do for the Mayor of London to step out of line. He knows he is totally at the mercy of the London news ecosystem  which the Evening Standard dominates  for any reporting of his work at County Hall.

The UK already has a Conservative-dominated news media so it could be said that Osbornes appointment will make little difference. But it goes hand in hand with two other changes.

The first is the slightly more subtle politicisation of the BBC. The post that Osborne takes up, only became free because Sands, who is widely seen as supporting the Conservatives, has been recruited to run the BBCs flagship radio show, the Today Programme. The BBCs head of news, James Harding, is an ex-editor of the Conservative-supporting newspaper the Times (which is part of the Murdoch empire). He is also a close personal friend of George Osborne.

Music to Murdochs ears

While all this could be mere coincidence, there is a third issue of concern. Twentieth Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is in the process of trying to take over Sky TV. This is controversial because of the dominant position, online, in print and on social media, of Murdoch-owned (and Conservative supporting) news outlets: the Sun and the Times. The takeover is being referred to the Competition Commissioner.

Sky is one of the only three organisations currently producing TV news in the UK. Currently, it lags well behind ITN and the BBC in terms of audience but a merger could change all that. Cross-platform promotion across The Times and The Sun could bring in considerably more viewers.

Sky, like all broadcasters, is required to be balanced in its news coverage, thanks to regulations. However that was also the situation in the US, until a relentless campaign by right-wing Republicans to repeal the Fairness Directive in the late 1980s. Since then, American radio and TV has become more and more polarised. Fox TV (owned by Murdoch) cheerleads for the Republicans and dismisses all other mainstream American media as liberal and untrustworthy.

If Sky becomes a wholly owned part of Twentieth Century Fox and the BBC is dominated by Conservative supporters and ex-employees of Murdoch, where will any opposition to further changes to the laws governing plurality come from?

That might sound like conspiracy theory but, had those who watched the rise of the conservative media establishment in the US predicted that it would lead to the presidency of Donald Trump, they would have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists too.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Angela Phillips is a member of the Media Reform Coalition and the Labour Party.
In announcing the former chancellor, George Osborne, as its new editor, the London Evening Standard continues a strong tradition of political elites having easy access to employment within the media elite. They sometimes nab these jobs after their political careers have ended and, sometimes, they just do them on the side.

In Osbornes case, its hard to believe that his unremarkable year as an aspiring journalist in the early 1990s was what attracted the Standard. He, like others, has been given a job many professional journalists dream of, not because of his experience in the field but because of his career in politics.

Others who have recently trodden the path between political and media elite can at least be said to have some professional merit to warrant the roles they received. Most notably, former education minister and sitting MP Michael Gove has worked for and is once again in the employment of The Times. Boris Johnson did a stint as Spectator editor, too, before becoming foreign secretary. Johnson also notably served as the Brussels correspondent for The Telegraph, a stint which likely prepared him well for his later frontline role campaigning for Brexit.

Osborne however, in terms of professional merit for such a prestigious media job, has more in common with LBCs Nigel Farage than his Conservative Party colleagues. Farage  famously a commodities trader before turning his hand to politics  cannot be rationally explained as having deserved influential job in broadcasting without considering the appeal of his political reputation. Yet he finds himself at the helm of a hour-long nightly radio show on LBC.

A fine line

So Osborne is by no means the first (or likely the last) member of the political elite to slide effortlessly across the line into the media elite. Indeed, even a cursory glance across British history sees that line being frequently crossed. Politicians used to have much more access to media than isolated jobs as columnists or editors. As the historian JA Thomas once noted, the newly elected parliament in 1906 was home to dozens of MPs who also owned their own newspapers.

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Just over a decade later, David Lloyd George  Britains last Liberal prime-minister  would actually buy a daily newspaper, the Chronicle, to try to ensure a favourable press outlet for his politics. Going further back, the British press of the early 19th century was only classed as legal if it had government approval in the form of paying certain taxes and stamp duties. Anyone wishing to work on or launch a newspaper had to quite literally get the government stamp of approval.

Into more recent history, it is often forgotten that a newspaper owner was part of Winston Churchills wartime government. First as minister of aircraft production and later as lord privy seal, Baron Beaverbrook (then owner of the Daily Express) served alongside the likes of Clement Attlee to help Britain win World War II. For everyone who bemoans the political influence of Rupert Murdoch, at least they could be thankful he does not have a seat in cabinet.

Will it backfire?

In the wider historical context of political actors landing powerful roles in the media, Osbornes appointment to the Standard sits uncomfortably in the middle. Thankfully, his hiring does not mark a return to a time when politicians were often to be found buying, selling and controlling media outlets for personal political gain. However, his glaring lack of journalistic training and experience is a heavy indication that, like Farage, he has been given this job based solely on past political rank and reputation.

Besides the obviously dour message this may send to aspiring journalists  all those shorthand exams and hard freelancing hours cant match up to having experience and chums in Whitehall  Osbornes appointment may prove to be a double-edged sword for the Standard.

The justifications for hiring him  because he is such a big personality  may make sense to some, and he may well prove to be a fine editor of one of Britains most-read print publications. Indeed, he may well have delivered the best job interview performance of all time, and dissuaded any doubts over his lack of experience in journalism. But it sends out a powerful public message that a newspaper (one that often claims to represent all Londoners) would rather have a high-profile politician than an experienced journalist as its next chief.

This may not be a return to an age of direct political patronage of the British press, but come the next major political event, it will be hard to ignore Osbornes long shadow over his new newspapers political content.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Christopher Shoop-Worrall has received funding from the Royal Historical Society.
A young Iranian woman who faces the prospect of deportation made an impassioned plea to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton for permanent residency on March 17.

Mojgan Shamsalipoor told ABC that in Iran she was subjected to rape and torture and was forced to become a child bride. In 2012, when she was 18, she arrived via boat at Christmas Island, where she applied for refugee status. Seven months later she allowed out into Brisbane, where she studied and met her future husband at a youth camp.

When the Department of Immigration determined she did not qualify as a refugee, she was placed back in detention. Shamsalipoor said if she is not allowed to apply for permanent residency she would be sent back to Iran or face indefinite detention.

In 2016, Iran ruled that it would not take back asylum seekers who were forcibly returned to the country. If Shamsalipoor is refused residency, this could effectively leave her stateless.

Her case has garnered national attention, with state and federal politicians and activists advocating for her stay.

Duttons office stated in July that he would refuse to intervene in her case. Lawyers working on her behalf argued her application for a protection visa was not thoroughly assessed because it omitted her history of being victimised by sexual assaults.

This video of Shamsalipoor was released a day before she was reportedly due to meet with the Department of Immigration. Credit: Change.org/Mojgan via Storyful
Storyful

Activists glued their hands to the frames of two world-famous paintings by Spanish artist Francisco Goya at the Prado Museum in Madrid, on Saturday, November 5, in protest against inaction on global climate change.Futuro Vegetal, a Spanish activist group that has a history of carrying out non-violent civil disobedience to call for government action on climate change, said its members carried out the protest at the Prado Museum, where two activists glued themselves to the paintings The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja.Video released by Futuro Vegetal shows one person glueing one of their hands to the frame of the paintings while the other writes +1.5 degrees celsius on the wall between the two artworks. Both people were seen wearing t-shirts with the Futuro Vegetal logo.I am stuck here because last week the UN made it official that it is already impossible to contain global warming at 1.5 degrees celsius, exceeding the limits set in the Paris Agreement and compromising our food security, said one of the activists, Europa Press reported.Despite this, government policies continue to subsidize the industrial agri-food system, one of the main [industries] responsible for the #ClimateCrisis, the group tweeted.The Prado Museum said its paintings had not been damaged.We reject endangering cultural heritage as a means of protest, the gallery added.Europa Press reported that the two activists had been detained by police Credit: Futuro Vegetal via Storyful
VALLETTA (Reuters) - Customs inspectors in Malta have seized more than 300 kg (660 lb) of cocaine worth millions of euros on a container ship heading from Ecuador to Spain, Maltese officials said on Thursday. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat hailed the find as the biggest drugs seizure in the history of the Mediterranean island. "Well done to Customs and law enforcement authorities," he said in a tweet. The customs department said it had discovered the cocaine stuffed in black hold-all bags in a container that was meant to be holding canned pineapple. The unnamed ship had sailed from Ecuador and had docked at Malta Freeport. It was due to double back to Spain. "It is estimated that the haul has a street value of tens of millions of euro," the customs department said, without giving a precise figure. (Reporting by Chris Scicluna; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Richard Lough)
By Karolina Tagaris and Alkis Konstantinidis ATHENS/CHIOS, Greece (Reuters) - Refugees and migrants stuck in Greek camps, including children as young as nine, are cutting themselves, attempting suicide and using drugs to cope with the "endless misery", international charities said on Thursday. In reports marking one year since the European Union struck a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of refugees and migrants to Greece, Save the Children and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) found anxiety, depression and aggression were on the rise. Mental health was "rapidly deteriorating due to the conditions created as a result of this deal", Save the Children said. "One of the most shocking and appalling developments Save the Children staff have witnessed is the increase in suicide attempts and self-harm amongst children as young as nine," it said. One 12-year-old boy filmed his suicide attempt after witnessing others trying to kill themselves. "Save the Children staff have seen children ... turn to substance abuse as a way of coping with the seemingly endless misery they face," it said. The EU-Ankara deal came into force on March 20, 2016 after a million refugees and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond reached Europe in 2015, crossing over to Greek islands from Turkey. Under the deal, anyone who crosses into Greece without documents can be deported to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum in Greece. But long asylum procedures and a huge backlog have stranded 14,000 asylum seekers on five Greek islands, double the capacity. The EU has hailed the deal as a success for stemming the tide of refugees and migrants to Europe through Greece. The problems arising from the logjam do not just apply to children. Save the Children described conditions in overcrowded camps as "degrading", forcing asylum-seekers to fight for basics such as blankets, a dry place to sleep, food and warm water. "The living conditions have made them lose hope and made them feel like animals and objects," it quoted a staff member of Praksis, its partner organisation, as saying. On the island of Lesbos, where more than 3,000 asylum-seekers live, MSF recorded a 2.5-fold increase in the percentage of patients with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Symptoms of psychosis and cases of self-harm and suicide also rose. On nearby Samos, it found an escalation in suicide attempts in recent months based on 300 mental health consultations. "They are losing any hope that they will find a safer, better future than the one they fled," said Jayne Grimes, an MSF psychologist on Samos. In a bleak seaside tent camp on Chios island, hundreds more asylum-seekers wait for months with no clarity on their future. "Why I cannot leave? How long more I must wait?" asked Jafar, an 18-year-old from Pakistan who arrived in Greece a year ago, on his way to the doctor to treat a cold. "The conditions are turning children from young people who are calm and full of dreams to people who want to harm property, others and themselves," another Praksis member said. (Editing by Alison Williams)
Who ended the week with the upper hand in the constitutional battle between the UK and Scottish governments? It started with Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, wrong footing London with her plan for a second independence referendum in either late 2018 or early 2019. As a result, Theresa May appeared to delay triggering the Brexit clause, Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, until the end of March.

But on the eve of the SNP spring conference in Aberdeen, the prime minister sought to seize back the initiative: with the repeated message of now is not the time, she signalled she wouldnt discuss a potential referendum before the Brexit negotiations are complete. Sturgeons team responded by insisting that the vote would happen on her timetable, while the first minister hinted at other options if she is formally turned down by the UK government.

May looks to be in the stronger position. The Conservative government can in theory prevent a referendum by withholding permission, while opinion polls tend to indicate that a majority of Scottish voters do not want a referendum without knowing the results of the Brexit negotiations first. In appealing over the heads of the Scottish government, Mays position will play well both with voters most committed to Brexit and those fearful of greater uncertainty.

Risk and reward

Nevertheless the approach carries risks. After the Scottish parliament votes in favour of Sturgeons proposal on Wednesday March 22  all but inevitable because of the pro-independence majority between the SNP and Scottish Greens  Sturgeon will claim to have a democratic mandate. This will rally supporters and create a Scotland versus Westminster fight. The debate will shift from the pros and cons of independence to who has the right to decide on the vote.

The pro-independence side is guaranteed to exploit the Conservative democratic deficit to the hilt throughout. And May has the further weakness that she has no personal mandate at UK level either, relying instead on David Camerons victory in 2015. If she were to decide for other reasons to address this by calling an early election, it could provide Sturgeon with a fresh Westminster mandate for a referendum if the Scottish nationalists were to repeat their near clean sweep of 2015.

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In the short term, this polarisation between Sturgeon standing up for Scotland and May refusing to alter her course from hard Brexit might suit both their parties at the upcoming council elections in May. These are likely to be viewed as a test for both leaders  as a barometer of Mays early premiership and an opportunity for the SNP to take the last big prize in Scottish politics, Glasgow City Council. In this kind of nationalist/unionist battle, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are both likely to struggle.

The question though is how long the UK government can delay even discussing a potential referendum. To do so for the two years of Brexit negotiations will be difficult. This will depend on avoiding a sustained Yes lead in opinion polls and is unlikely to succeed without a concerted and risky campaign warning about the dangers of independence to the Scottish economy, currency and borders. Sturgeons latest hints about other options might mean there would be petitions and protests to contend with along the way.

Plan B?

Sturgeon no doubt expected the response that has come from Westminster. With May unwilling to agree to amendments over the Brexit bill from the House of Lords and fighting High Court battles over the process, she was hardly likely to discuss a referendum for Scotland until after Brexit negotiations were completed.

This being the case, might she be thinking about holding a referendum without Westminsters permission? Such an option is highly risky and the issues of legality would be paramount. Certainly the SNP government would want to avoid a situation where the process was blocked in the courts. As Catalonia demonstrated in 2014, holding such a referendum without permission can result in No voters boycotting it and rendering the result meaningless. The early indications from the nationalists are that they are not heading in this direction.

For May, fighting on two fronts is never advisable. And when she does finally agree to a referendum it will be treated by the SNP as a victory over Westminster. Mays recent response makes that seem inevitable sooner or later, while Sturgeon has indicated she is willing to negotiate on timing. One big question both sides will be asking themselves is who benefits more from holding the referendum after Brexit. Until more is known about the terms of the final Brexit deal, this is almost impossible to answer.

In the meantime, the SNPs focus will be working out a strategy of how to win a referendum while maintaining and increasing support in the polls for independence. Crucially it has still to formulate arguments on the currency and economy, both of which were key weaknesses in 2014; and also how to deal with the important minority of potential Yes voters who dont want EU membership.

Indeed, if May had wanted to wrong foot the SNP she could have offered an earlier referendum. The UK governments obsession with avoiding anything that makes it look weak to EU negotiators has limited its options, however.

Instead over the next few months the nationalists will have to work on the substance of their independence proposals. Sturgeon may score numerous political points over this second referendum, but lose sight of the underlying case and it will not matter much when it comes to the crunch.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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William McDougall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
North Korea said this month that it will retaliate with a nuclear strike if a single bullet is fired in confrontations with American and South Korean forces.

The statement, issued on March 8 by the DPRKs Foreign Ministry, blames America for rising nuclear tensions in the Korean peninsula  describing American actions as an undisguised nuclear war racket.

The statement said, The Korean Peoples Army will reduce the bases of aggression and provocation to ashes with its invincible Hwasong rockets tipped with nuclear warheads and reliably defend the security of the country and its peoples happiness in case the U.S. and the south Korean puppet forces fire even a single bullet at the territory of the DPRK.

North Korea says it has conducted five successful nuclear tests, and is believed to have more than 10 warheads, according to estimates by the The Washington-based Institute for Science and international Security.

MORE: Military action against North Korea is on the table says Rex Tillerson

MORE: Weapons expert saves hundreds of declassified nuclear test videos  and puts them on YouTube

Whats less clear is whether it has an ICBM which could strike America.

Prof Siegfried S Hecker of Stanford University said,, We must assume that the DPRK has designed and demonstrated nuclear warheads that can be mounted on some of its short-range and perhaps medium-range missiles.

Tensions between the dictatorship and the West rose this week as American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that 20 years of sanctions against the country had failed and that military action was an option on the table.

Tillerson said, Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict.

If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then, that options on the table.
Capitol Preservation Architect Tom Kaspar contributed to the design of the new courtyard fountains that are being installed this week and next.

He died March 4 at age 65, and never got to see the finished bronze bowls that began arriving this week. But he had a pretty good idea of what they would look like in his mind's eye, said Roxanne Smith, Capitol Commission tourism supervisor.

Kaspar did the architectural forms for the foundry of the various Native American icons, symbols for water that are imprinted in diamond shapes on the sides of the bronze bowls. They include symbols for rain, lightning, the turtle, groundwater, surface water, trees.

The first fountain bowl arrived this week, the only one shipped in two pieces to get it through a smaller door from the Capitol's cafe. Workers appeared to be finishing up the welding of the two pieces later Thursday afternoon.

The other three fountain bowls, 1,800 pounds each, were being shipped via semitrailer, and expected to arrive Monday or Tuesday, said Capitol Administrator Bob Ripley. The collars that go under the bowls are about 700 pounds apiece. There's also granite curbing waiting to be installed for the saucers below the bowls.

The bowls must be placed perfectly level so water will cascade evenly over them, Ripley said.

Once the bowls are in place, and the plumbing finished, the fountains will be ready to bubble in April or May. They will probably be dedicated this summer, Ripley said, as part of the yearlong state sesquicentennial celebration.

Legislation and then funds to pay for the fountains was put in place by former members of the Legislature, including Sens. John Nelson, Bob Wickersham, DiAnna Schimek and Vickie McDonald. Money will also be raised to restore the landscaping in the courtyards.

"When we get the landscape in place with the fountains it will be very impressive,"he said.

Bertram Goodhue included the courtyards in his original design to provide light to sheltered interior windows and corridors. Fountains were to provide natural air conditioning via evaporative cooling. But when the Capitol was being built, the fountains fell victim of the Great Depression.

The design of the fountains was finalized by Goodhue's associates following his death in 1924, and that design was used as the basis for the fountains being installed now.

"By the time the building is 100 years old, it will be complete," Ripley said.
As a Syrian architect, my enjoyment is complete when I wander through the districts of Old Damascus. I used to walk with my daughter and tell her stories about each significant place we passed. In Old Damascus  one of the longest inhabited cities in the world  5,000 years of history come alive. The tight network of traditional streets are complemented by stunning architectural masterpieces, such as the ancient Umayyad Mosque (completed in 715AD), the Roman Temple of Jupiter and the Byzantine arches.

Al Asruniyeh souk was our favourite destination on special occasions. Al Asruniyeh is a commercial neighbourhood located between the Citadel of Damascus and the Great Mosque of the Umayyads, inside the walls of the ancient city. The souks of Damascus are part of daily life  bustling marketplaces where political, social and cultural differences are forgotten.

Yet since the start of the armed conflict in Syria six years ago, much has changed in my home town. Although the city remains relatively safe compared to other parts of Syria, many have fled, lives and livelihoods have been lost and treasured cultural heritage has been destroyed.

In April 2016, a fire raged through Al-Asruniyeh. For the local community, losing part of Old Damascus is like misplacing part of their own soul, their memory and identity.

Yet history has shown that despite attempts to destroy Damascus, it has always risen from the ashes, stronger and brighter, powered by the local community. Time and time again, the Damascenes have proven adept at rebuilding their lives and their city in the wake of disaster.

Rising from ashes

For example, in 1860 when Syria was under occupation by the Ottoman empire, the quarter of Bab Tuma in the north-east of the city was ransacked. Over 3,500 houses, churches and monasteries were comprehensively looted and set ablaze. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands were displaced.

The district was rebuilt between 1863 and 1880, by local builders who returned after the clash. Elements of the old Bab Tuma were preserved by using traditional materials to create similar urban forms. Yet innovative features were also added. Builders used new decorative techniques, and added open windows to the facades as a reflection of new social needs, opening them up to the street outside.

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Again, on October 18, 1925, the city was bombed by the French army in an attempt to quell a revolution against French rule. As a result, the western district  known at that time as Sidi Amoud  was mostly destroyed. Several traditional masterpieces were burned or damaged, and hundreds of lives were lost.

The district was remodelled in 1926 by the French, this time according to modern European characteristics. The local community, who had no voice in this reconstruction, changed the districts name into Al-Hariqah  which means fire in Arabic  to commemorate the terrible event. This rebuilt area has a peculiar character. The orthogonal road network and the heights of the buildings differ from the organic urban fabric of Old Damascus, and the new structures do little to reflect what was lost.

Rebuilding Al Asruniyeh

Today, Damascenes are once again confronted with the task of rebuilding  and this time, they control the outcome. Yet the loss of Al-Asruniyeh raises critical questions about what should rise in its place.

The history of Damascus shows that when ruins are rebuilt by the local community, the new layer is imbued with the soul of the city. Rather than covering the citys history up, the new buildings become a part of it. For that reason, community input is needed now more than ever before.

The heritage of Syria has been a source of pride and dignity for the Syrians, despite differences in religion and political opinion. Their built heritage has been always a source of shared memory and history, as we all enjoy its authentic and aesthetic character. Old Damascus, with all its souks, khans and districts, embodies Syrians cultural, social, educational and economic values.

Because of this, safeguarding the architectural characteristics of the old city should be a cornerstone of the reconstruction process. City authorities must develop a plan to manage Old Damascus urban heritage, in a way that upholds its social and cultural integrity.

Whats more, rebuilding the Al Asruniyeh souk presents an opportunity for reconciliation. Although the armed conflict continues, Syria has been enduring it with dignity and pride. Starting the reconstruction now is vital, to encourage Syrians to return and participate in rebuilding their country, spreading a feeling of safety, ownership and pride in the city once more.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Ataa Alsalloum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
By Umaru Fofana FREETOWN (Reuters) - A Christian pastor has found one of the world's largest uncut diamonds - weighing 706 carats -- in Sierra Leone's eastern Kono region. The stone, a photograph of which was posted on the president's official website, is being stored in the country's central bank, government sources said. A local chief from Kono handed the stone to President Ernest Bai Koroma on behalf of Emmanuel Momoh who made the discovery. The government plans to auction it. The presidency said in a statement on Thursday that Koroma thanked the chief who acted as an intermediary for not smuggling it out of the country. Diamonds fueled a decade-long civil war that ended in 2002 in which 50,000 people were killed. Rebels forced civilians in the east to mine the stones and bought weapons with the proceeds, leading to the term 'blood diamonds'. "He (Koroma) underscored the importance of selling such a diamond here as it will clearly give the owners what is due them and benefit the country as a whole," the statement said. The stone is yet to be valued but could be worth millions of dollars. Sierra Leone's gross national income per capita stood at $620 in 2015, according to World Bank data. The United Nations lifted a ban on diamond exports from Sierra Leone in 2003. The International Monetary Fund expects the country to export $113 million worth of diamonds this year though the sector remains plagued by smuggling. Despite its size, this week's discovery is considerably smaller than the Cullinan diamond, which was found in South Africa in 1905. That 3,106-carat stone was cut into several polished gems and the two largest pieces are part of Britain's crown jewels. A 1,111-carat diamond was unearthed in a Botswana mine in 2015. (Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Pritha Sarkar)
In this photo provided Chile's presidential office, Chile's President Michelle Bachelet, right, walks with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, left, widow of late American conservationist Doug Tompkins in a natural reserve in Chaiten, Chile, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. The president received 407 thousand hectares donation from the Pumalin Foundation, as a donation from Tompkins widow Kris Mc Divitt. (Ximena Navarro/ Presidencia de Chile via AP)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP)  Tompkins Conservation signed an agreement with Chile's government Wednesday to donate 1 million acres for new national parks in the largest private donation of its kind for the South American nation.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed the deal with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the widow of American conservationist Doug Tompkins, who built a legacy protecting threatened ecosystems in Argentina and Chile.

"This is a key step to treasuring this giant source of biodiversity and safe keep it in the public interest," Bachelet said at a ceremony in southern Chile.

The agreement will provide land to create three new national parks, expand three existing national parks and unite some national forests into two national parks. Bachelet is expected to sign the decrees to create the parks before she ends her presidential term in March 2018.

The proposal will eventually help create the "Route of Parks," a network of 17 parks spanning more than 1,500 miles from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn. In all, the plan ultimately seeks to increase Chile's national parkland by more than 10 million acres. Tompkins Conservation said the area that will be protected is three times the size of the United States' Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined.

Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, used much of his fortune to buy large tracts of land in Patagonia, a sparsely populated region of untamed rivers and other natural beauty straddling southern Chile and Argentina.

At first, his purchases of land to preserve swaths of wilderness stirred suspicion and opposition by local politicians, loggers, power companies and nationalists who stirred rumors that he was trying to steal water resources. But he shrugged off the protests, insisting he would eventually return the land to both governments to be preserved as nature reserves or parks.

Since her husband's death in a kayaking accident last year, McDivitt Tompkins had been working non-stop to permanently protect from development the millions of acres the couple acquired over a quarter century.

"I wish my husband, Doug, whose vision inspired today's historic pledge, were here on this memorable day. Our team and I feel his absence deeply," she said. "But I know that if Doug were here today, he would speak of national parks being one of the greatest expressions of democracy that a country can realize, preserving the masterpieces of a nation for all of its citizenry."
It took only about 10 minutes.

In those minutes, seven senators withdrew more than 40 amendments piled onto a motion to adopt permanent rules for the Legislature.

They had squabbled over rules changes for 30 legislative days at the beginning of the session, including changes on filibusters and open voting on leadership positions. Then they took a break from that debate to get some business done.

Finally, on the 49th day of the session, they made permanent the rules that were in effect on Jan. 4, the beginning of this work term.

The Legislature had been doing its business based on temporary rules, because senators had squabbled over adopting various amendments to those rules.

They finally had agreed to continue on with temporary rules to the 50th day so the Legislature could get something done.

Weve been working on the floor productively. I have talked with a great number of you in relationship to the rules, Speaker Jim Scheer told senators first thing Friday morning.

He said it didnt appear there would be any fruitful purpose in continuing the debate on rules, as he saw no resolution.

The previous disagreement on rule changes came after a tumultuous start to the session that saw the election of almost all Republicans to committee chairs, the election of three freshman senators to committee leadership -- including Lincoln Sen. Mike Hilgers as chairman of the Rules Committee -- and controversy in the assignment of committee members.

The permanent rules adopted Friday on a 38-2 vote meant any changes made after the first day of the Legislature disappeared.

Adopting the permanent rules as they were is in the best interest of the Legislature and the state, Scheer said.

At the beginning of the session, senators had proposed 27 rule changes for their book of directives.

Those included changing the numbers of members on specified committees and how they are to be assigned, the number of days senators can introduce bills, the use of electronic devices in the chamber and committee hearings, and the production of fiscal notes. They also wanted to put in writing the number of hours considered full and fair debate for filibusters, and how offices and chairs in the legislative chamber are assigned.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP)  Tin, her husband and five children have cleared years of refugee hurdles to come to the U.S.: blood tests, interviews, DNA and fingerprints, background checks. She has her one must-bring possession within reach, a well-worn Bible, and keeps their phone charged for the U.S. Embassy to call.

But the odds of that happening dropped precipitously.

President Donald Trump's 16-page travel ban "to keep the bad dudes out" bars new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries and shuts down America's refugee program through mid-July. His executive order had been set to take effect Thursday, but a federal judge put it on hold hours before it was to take effect.

The order also includes a 55 percent reduction in refugee visas overall, from a planned 110,000 to 50,000 this year. This means, in some of the most desperate places in the world, 60,000 refugee visas are not going to be issued after all.

Who are the 60,000 people who may have lost their chance to resettle in the U.S. by September? An Associated Press analysis of 10 years of refugee data suggests that their most common country of origin is not any of the six nations in the travel ban, but Myanmar, also known as Burma. Thousands, like Tin and her family, are Christians who were persecuted in their native country.

They expected to resettle before September in the U.S., a place they consider home. More than 160,000 Burmese have resettled in the U.S. in the past decade, more than any other group. They account for nearly 25 percent of new U.S. refugees since 2007.

"America is really our fatherland in terms of religion," said Tin, 38. "They sent their missionaries to our country and taught us to be Christians. And now we had to escape. All we want is to be safe."

Christians face religious and political discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. Its nascent democracy is heavily influenced by a military that ruled for half a century and remains at war with several ethnic groups, some of which are majority Christian.

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Tin and her community fled Chin state, where Human Rights Watch says more than 90 percent of the residents were adhering to the tenets the American Baptist Church by 2009, pitting them against a military campaign to elevate Buddhism over all other religions.

Tin and others said that when they gathered for family prayers, people threw rocks at them. Soldiers busted into church services. They hid their precious Bibles for fear of attack.

School teacher Sang, 29, a Burmese refugee who learned English as a theology student, meticulously read through a copy of Trump's executive order last week and then looked up, nodding.

He said that while he agreed with the need to keep terrorists out of the U.S., "We are not terrorists, we are Christians. We will never be a problem in the United States. We will get educations, we will work hard. We only seek safety."

Tin and Sang are among more than 100,000 Christian Burmese refugees forced to flee in recent years. They live out of suitcases in abject poverty in Malaysia. Their kids can't go to school, and they risk deportation or detention if they try to report a crime.

And it's not just Christians. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have also been forced to escape the country of 51 million, where soldiers torched homes, raped women and killed them in a crackdown that began in October.

Trump's "Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States," says lowering the cap is necessary to U.S. interests. But the swift reduction in refugee visas interrupts work underway by federal law enforcement agencies and nonprofits around the world to vet 110,000 people in 2017, the highest number in decades. It was an attempt to put a small dent in the record 65 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons worldwide.

Nearly 38,000 have been admitted so far. Another 72,000 were preparing to arrive before the fiscal year ends in September. Instead, under Trump's order just 12,000 more will be allowed in. Exceptions can be made if the secretaries of State and Homeland Security agree.

"The safety and security of the American people is our highest priority," said a State Department official who provided a statement on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk on the record about it.

The U.S. defines refugees as people of "special humanitarian concern" who have been persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

An AP analysis found that nearly half the refugees who have arrived in fiscal year 2017 came from the seven majority Muslim countries named in an earlier executive order. Refugees from Syria, in particular, have arrived in greater numbers in the past twelve months. Burma's share has dropped from 26 percent of all spots in 2015 to just 8 percent of the refugee caseload so far this fiscal year.

The AP also found refugees from Bhutan and Afghanistan make up a smaller proportion admitted in 2017 than in previous years.

About 210,000 refugees, largely Vietnamese and Cambodians, came to the U.S. in 1980, the most in any year. Refugee arrivals dropped to less than 30,000 after 9/11 prompted strict new immigration rules. But they have increased fairly steadily since 2004, and overall refugee admissions reached 85,000 last year.

The journeys of Burmese refugees begin in some of the poorest places on Earth: remote villages in strife-ridden regions. They pay smugglers upward of $500 for the harrowing two-week journey. Some end up in Thailand, where an estimated 100,000 live in refugee camps, known locally as "temporary shelters." Thai officials did not allow AP to visit.

In Malaysia there are about 130,000 Burmese refugees awaiting resettlement. They live in Kuala Lumpur's poorest neighborhoods, their makeshift plywood walls dividing ordinary two-bedroom apartment into a half dozen stifling family units, a stark contrast to city's glimmering skyscrapers. They can stay for years, their belongings packed in baggage, so they can be near the United Nations and U.S. Embassy if called to get stamps on documents or meet with officials.

Earlier this week, Tin  the mother waiting for the Embassy to call  dropped off her youngest son at a volunteer-run school. A teacher wrote words on the board, and asked students for three descriptive phrases.

Bauri Ram, 11, stared at his word, President.

"Donald Trump," someone had written. "Help other people."

Bauri Ram took up the blue marker: "They help refugees."

___

Hoyer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalist Maureen Linke in Washington contributed to this report.
By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Gunmen on motorbikes killed Uganda's third highest ranking police officer on Friday, drawing condemnation from President Yoweri Museveni who ordered the installation of surveillance cameras in major towns and on highways. The unidentified shooters sprayed bullets at Assistant Inspector General Andrew Felix Kaweesi's car after he left his home in a northern neighborhood of the capital. The gunmen's motive was not immediately clear. Kaweesi was a former head of police operations in greater Kampala and gained a prominent public profile for overseeing the frequent arrests of Uganda's main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye. Local television showed a crowd gathered at the scene and a parked Toyota Landcruiser with both doors on the driver's side open. Blood was spattered on the ground. Crime is rampant in Uganda and most homicides go unsolved. Condemning the killing, Museveni's office said: "As a consequence of these repeated murders in the city ... the president has directed the immediate installation of cameras in all major towns of Uganda and along the highways." Last month the Daily Monitor newspaper reported that only 15 out of 1068 murders recorded in 2015 were prosecuted. A year earlier, only 19 murder cases were prosecuted out of 943 cases. Government critics have long accused police of cracking down on opponents of Museveni instead of fighting crime. The murder of a well guarded security official will further heighten fears over public safety. In power since 1986, 72-year-old Museveni won another five-year term last year. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Katharine Houreld and Richard Lough)
TOKYO  The Trump administration made a clear break Thursday with diplomatic efforts to talk North Korea out of a nuclear confrontation, bringing the United States and its Asian allies closer to a military response than at any point in more than a decade.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that 20 years of trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program had failed and that he was visiting Asia to exchange views on a new approach.

Soon after Tillersons remarks, in a sign of mounting tensions, the North Korean Embassy held an extraordinary news conference in Beijing to blame the potential for nuclear war on the United States while vowing that its homegrown nuclear testing program will continue in self-defense.

North Korea has amassed a huge nuclear stockpile and appears at the brink of being able to strike the U.S. mainland and American allies in Asia. The rising threat from the isolated military dictatorship has prompted the Trump administration to begin assessing its options for how to respond and serves as an early test for how the president will confront an increasingly volatile international situation.

One potential immediate response would be to strengthen existing South Korean missile capabilities or to provide Japan with new offensive missile ability. Japans defense chief told parliament this month that he would not rule out first strike capability, which would be a major departure from Japans postwar pacifist traditions.

The United States could also field the same THAAD missile-defense system in Japan that it is now installing in South Korea or take the potentially provocative stop of reinstalling American nuclear weapons at U.S. bases in South Korea. The North Korean threat could also rekindle the largely dormant idea of a domestic U.S. missile defense system.

North Korea has boasted of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and experts on Asia security generally agree that such a capability is within Pyongyangs reach. Preventing it outright would probably require a military strike on North Korean facilities, something the United States has considered an option of last resort because it would almost certainly result in an attack on South Korea and U.S. forces stationed there, perhaps with chemical or biological weapons.

I think its important to recognize that the political and diplomatic efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to the point of denuclearization have failed, Tillerson said.

The secretary of states reference to decades of failure alluded to the carrot-and-stick diplomacy that began with a 1994 deal between the United States and North Korea. Under it, Pyongyang would have received aid and two proliferation-resistant nuclear power plants in return for freezing and eventually dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

That deal collapsed in 2002, and North Korea achieved its first atomic test in 2006. The George W. Bush administrations efforts at a new deal collapsed, and Pyongyang has managed to build up its stockpile of nuclear material as well as refine its missiles despite what on paper look like crushing international sanctions.

North Koreas nuclear and missile efforts have intensified under dictator Kim Jong Un, who took power in 2011, and appear to have escalated further since Donald Trumps election.

The country last month tested a missile that uses solid fuel, a big leap in its technological development, then this month fired a salvo of four missiles, part of what it said was a drill to practice hitting American military bases in Japan. Three of the four missiles landed in waters within Japans exclusive economic zone.

Tillersons remarks reflected growing agitation in Washington that a tougher stance on North Korea is required.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month that the United States has three choices: what he called proactive regime change, to topple Kim; sanctions and other coercive measures; or military cooperation with Japan and South Korea that could include a preemptive strike on missile facilities. Otherwise, were staring down the barrel of an ICBM, Corker said.

Tillerson made a version of Trumps argument that the United States will demand clear benefits for its diplomacy and foreign aid and will walk away when necessary. Tillerson scoffed at the U.S. expense for trying to entice North Korea to drop its nuclear program  $1.35 billion by his count.

That encouragement has been met with further development of nuclear capabilities, more missile launches, including this month and last, Tillerson said. In the face of this ever-escalating threat, it is clear that a different approach is required.

On Friday, Tillerson will be in South Korea, where more than 20 million people live within range of North Korean artillery. South Korea is conducting joint military exercises with U.S. forces, and installation of the THAAD system begins this month.

The joint military exercises by the hostile forces are aimed at preemptive strikes against the DPRK, North Korean Embassy official Pak Myong-ho said, referring to the official name of his country, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Therefore, the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula is under serious threat, he said. Now the situation is already on the brink of nuclear war.

Pak said the exercises could turn into real combat at any time.

While strident North Korean warnings about the annual military exercises are common, calling a news conference in a third country to drive the message home was a dramatic step. China is North Koreas protector and only ally, and Beijing is the only capital where the North could so quickly summon Western reporters.

Tillersons last stop on his six-day trip will be in China, which remains skeptical of any U.S. military response.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that the United States and North Korea were like two accelerating trains on a collision course, while Premier Li Keqiang cautioned Wednesday that tension may lead to conflict.

There are sharply different views in the region about how to lower the North Korean threat, with China in particular unwilling to do anything that might destabilize the desperately poor agrarian nation on its border.

Under discussion in addition to potential military moves are tighter U.S. sanctions on the regime and secondary sanctions against its commercial allies. Those steps are considered largely symbolic unless China uses its economic leverage to slow or end North Korean import of critical missile parts. The Trump administration has signaled that it could increase financial penalties against Chinese companies and banks that do business with North Korea.

China has imposed a ban on coal imports from North Korea, a move that  if fully implemented  would deprive the regime of a crucial revenue stream. But many analysts doubt Beijing will uphold the ban, given the instability it could create on Chinas borders.

Tillersons remarks seemed to shut the door on any rekindling of international talks that had involved Japan, South Korea and China to persuade the dynastic regime to stop firing missiles and pursuing nuclear weapons.

The failed diplomatic outreach had coincided with U.S. efforts to reassure North Korea that it did not plan an unprovoked attack  something the North has long claimed is a Washington plot.

In his opening remarks in Tokyo, Tillerson appeared to give a nod to those reassurances, however. North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea, he said.

Tillerson is the former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil and has no previous diplomatic experience. He has kept a low profile since assuming his new job and has not attended some meetings with foreign leaders in the Oval Office, leading to speculation that he has little influence within the Trump administration.

Tillerson did not go to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to meet staff Thursday morning, as is often customary. He instead stayed in his hotel, where he read and received briefings from embassy officials, a spokesman said.



The Washington Posts Simon Denyer in Beijing contributed to this report.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  They called it legislative bingo.

The bill had picked up support from business groups, teacher unions, school districts and Gov. Susana Martinezs administration  a diverse mix of interests often at odds in the Roundhouse.

It was like hitting bingo, supporters joked. Each group testified in favor of allowing computer science to count toward the math requirement for New Mexico high school students.

Now that bill, along with a few other pieces of legislation, is at the center of a power struggle erupting in the Roundhouse as the session nears adjournment.

The governor and Senate dont even agree on what bills have become law and which have been vetoed.

The dispute started this week when Martinez  without explanation  vetoed eight bills that had passed with broad bipartisan support in both chambers of the Legislature, sometimes without a single dissenting vote. Her administration had even testified in favor of the computer science proposal.

Martinez offered no reason for the surprise vetoes  until Thursday, when she told senators that she may keep rejecting bills until they fulfill their constitutional requirements to send her a budget and hold confirmation hearings on her appointees.

Then legislators fired back: Three of Martinezs vetoes didnt come in time, meaning the bills will become law whether she likes it or not, they said.

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, told senators late Thursday that the governor simply hadnt met her legal obligation to specify her objections to the bills within three days of receiving them. That was the opinion of lawyers who work for the Legislature as a whole, not one particular party, he said.

Those bills, therefore, in the opinion for the counsel of the Legislature, became law without the governors signature, Wirth said.

Martinez called it ridiculous.

This stunt exposes the arrogance of the good ol boy system that is the state Senate, where they think they can enact laws on their own, Martinez spokesman Chris Sanchez said in a written statement. The Senate appears determined to shut down the government, and thats very disappointing.

The governor met every legal requirement necessary to veto the legislation, her administration contends. The veto messages may have been short, but they were legally sufficient and provided to senators in time, according to her office.

Budget battle

The tussle is part of a broader power struggle over the state budget. A downturn in oil and gas prices has created a fiscal crisis, lawmakers say, and New Mexico has already endured damage to its credit rating.

Negotiations behind closed doors  between the governor and legislative leaders  have focused on whether to increase taxes; which tax loopholes can be eliminated to produce new revenue; and how much money should be kept in reserve.

The Senate has already approved a $6.1 billion spending plan and a $350 million package of tax increases, though the House has not yet agreed. Martinez, in turn, has vowed repeatedly to veto tax increases, but she has suggested shes willing to support new revenue that results from fixing loopholes in the tax code.

The session ends at noon Saturday.

Vetoes

The governors eight unexplained vetoes, which came Tuesday and Wednesday, shook up the Roundhouse.

The lack of a clear explanation for the vetoes left legislators, lobbyists and others wondering about her motives. Did the governor have specific objections to the high school credits bill and other legislation, or was she sending a broader message?

Sen. Jacob Candelaria  an Albuquerque Democrat and co-sponsor of the computer science bill  said the governors vetoing of unrelated legislation hurts students and other constituencies who took time to testify in favor of the bills.

We dont have time to play these kinds of games, Candelaria said.

Martinez on Thursday provided her first explanation for the string of vetoes  at least as a whole.

In a one-page message to the Senate late Thursday, Martinez blasted Democrats in the House and Senate for failing  so far, at least  to send her a budget measure. And she expressed frustration over the Senates failure to consider eight of her appointments to boards of regents, including four to the University of New Mexico.

She still didnt outline specific objections to any of the eight bills, other than to say they arent necessary for the health, safety and welfare of New Mexicans. And she made it clear more vetoes may be on the way.

Until the Legislature sees fit to fulfill its constitutional obligations, including hearings (on regent nominees), I will continue to veto legislation that is not necessary for the well-being of this state and its citizens, Martinez said.

Grave concern

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they respect Martinezs constitutional right to veto their bills. But some also said a specific explanation, even a short one, might help them identify flaws in their proposals, allowing for compromise, regardless of whether its legally required.

Sen. William Burt, R-Alamogordo, acknowledged theres a perception that the governor is unhappy with the Senate over its veto override, which involved a bill on teachers sick leave. That happened earlier in the week, before the other vetoes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sen. Pete Campos, a Las Vegas Democrat in his 27th year at the Legislature, said the unexplained vetoes were a source of grave concern for legislators.

Its a signal that deeper communication definitely needs to occur, Campos said.

The state Constitution doesnt directly address veto explanations. It simply says the governor shall return the vetoed bill to the Legislature with his objections.

The dispute, it appears, will linger long beyond the tumultuous end of this years legislative session.

Journal Capitol Bureau Chief Dan Boyd contributed to this article.
Truckers in Wyoming really know how to fly down a highway, not that they do so on purpose. Flying is what happens when an errant gust smacks into a tractor-trailer, levitates it entirely for a few timeless seconds and then flips the rig right over. This happens fairly routinely to drivers in the Cowboy State and the windiest stretches of highway have been identified: Dead Horse Bend, Snavely Lane, Wyoming Boulevard, Arlington, Beaver Rim, Bordeaux, Elk Mountain and Dunlop, among others. During a bad blow, reports Wyofile, these blustery spots can lay trucks over like cordwood. Between 2012 and 2016, the Wyoming Department of Transportation says, 232 trucks got flipped. Lander trucker Wally West, who has been driving rigs for more than 50 years, knows about blow-overs first-hand. Hes survived two: one in 1998 and the other in late 2016, both in Red Canyon south of Lander. Its over before you know its started, he says. The first lift kind of puckers your butt. The lift occurs when a 70 mph wind escalates to 140 mph and causes a 32,000-pound truck to lose traction and briefly hover in mid-air before landing and toppling over. Then its a matter of coping with a reoriented world: Doors have become floors and ceilings, seat belts have become suspension harnesses, and the exit is a long, stiff climb away, writes Matthew Copeland. A highway patrolman helped West safely exit his upside-down truck after his most recent adventure. Then again, he said, Everybody stops to make sure youre OK. Of course they do. This is Wyoming.

Routt County commissioners in western Colorado were outraged when a skier and a snowboarder recently called volunteers to come rescue them for the second time in four years from the same steep, avalanche-prone canyon. Im incensed that those guys had to be rescued twice, Commissioner Cari Hermacinski told the Denver Post. Im (expletive) mad. What made it worse was hearing that the backcountry skiers failed to take with them any of the equipment theyd been strongly advised to take after the first rescue  basic gear such as avalanche beacons, additional clothes, an avalanche shovel and a compass. To add injury to insult, one of the search and rescue volunteers, Jay Bowman, suffered serious fractures to his arm and leg, as well as a laceration on his head, after being swept up in an avalanche and hitting aspen trees.

Legally, pets are property, but in Alaska theyve gained social status under an amendment to the states divorce statutes. Courts must now take into consideration the well-being of the animal in deciding the fate of a pet, reports the Washington Post. This might mean that Rover gets to live in two doghouses because commuting between owners is deemed best for him. The Alaska amendment was sponsored by two former state representatives; one handled a divorce case that resulted in joint custody of a sled dog team.

And in San Francisco, a dispute between dog owners and the managers of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area heated up recently with the online posting of WoofieLeaks. The leaks are actually emails between National Park Service staffers who worked on a policy that bars dogs from some beaches and trails in order to protect imperiled species, such as the threatened snowy plover. Dog owners insist that the emails show bias against their pets. Each year, however, the recreation area deals with some 300 dog-related incidents, reports E&E News.

You know the weather is bad when you find a moose in your basement, a headline in the Washington Post astutely observes. In Hailey, Idaho, a moose fell into a window well and crashed onto the carpeted floor. The moose refused to be coaxed upstairs, so it had to be sedated and carried outside, groggy and confused, but free. And in Estes Park, Colo., when the owner of the Water Wheel Gift Corner left his door open, an elk walked in and just browsed for about 45 minutes, Fox31 reports. Local officers lured the elk out to the sidewalk with apples but, 10 minutes later, it re-entered the store. No word on whether it purchased anything this time though, finally, the shop owner closed the door.

Thanks to the wonderful website, atlasobscura.com, weve learned that Las Vegas now boasts a common but little-known Sin City feature: the bunny refugee camp. The bunnies arent native wildlife; theyre the feral progeny of abandoned pets, with cute ears and fuzzy coats. There are lots and lots of them  untold thousands  occupying backyards, state parks and even a mental health facility, and no one knows what to do with them. The rabbits survive thanks to the kindness of volunteers who call themselves rogue bunny-lovers, but most people agree the animals need a permanent home in order to lead healthy lives.

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, the op ed service of High Country News (hcn.org). Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared, betsym@hcn.org.

Heard around the West
It might seem like New Mexico is headed for a bad wildfire season, but theres a lot of snow in the mountains and its still early.

While warmer weather has prompted New Mexicans to shed layers of clothing and enjoy the sunshine, near-record-high temperatures and windy conditions are also melting mountain snow quickly and increasing the threat of forest fires.

Right now, the snowpack looks pretty good, but we lose snow every day, said Andy Church, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.

Still, weather prognosticators are expecting help from Mother Nature as New Mexico moves into fire season.

The month so far has been dry, but the models are trending (toward wetter) weather for April, and theres agreement that May could be above average, Church said.

Bill King, the acting fire staff officer for both the Santa Fe and Carson national forests, said high winds cause moisture in the mountains to evaporate instead of soaking into the ground.

Fortunately, much of northern New Mexico has a big snowpack this year heading into spring. The Rio Chama basin, a collection of all the water sources that feed the Rio Chama, had a snowpack that was 156 percent of normal as of March 10, according to data from the NWS. The Cimarron River basin was 114 percent of normal, while the Jemez and Pecos river basins were 96 percent and 85 percent of normal, respectively.

The recent winds and heat, though, has reduced snowpack over the past several weeks. Church said 10 percent to 15 percent of the snowpack in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range has been lost in the past 10 days. More snow is going to melt in the coming week as northern New Mexico is going to see temperatures 15-20 degrees above average. Church said those temperatures are going to be more akin to mid-May average highs. Its pretty extraordinary, he said.

The melted snow is causing rivers to rise. The Rio Grande has risen about 9 inches in the past three days, Church said, while the Rio Chama has risen about 4 inches. The Pecos River is rising steadily, too, but the NWS keeps only hard data on the other two rivers.

But rising rivers dont bode well for fire season. According to Julie Anne Overton, a spokeswoman for the Santa Fe National Forest, melting snow means conditions are going to be drier as we head further into fire season.

Its not a good thing that were getting that kind of meltoff that early, she said.

The Jemez Ranger District southwest of Santa Fe, which is the southern-most district in the Santa Fe National Forest, is usually the first to dry out and is therefore often the first to spark, King said. To the north, theres a prescribed burn planned near the community of Mesa Poleo, south of Coyote in Rio Arriba County, that could be set as early as Tuesday if the Forest Service deems conditions are suitable.

Drought is the first thing King looks at when preparing for a fire season. He said a wet 2016 got New Mexico out of a severe drought, but fire danger could still be high.

King said the monsoon season, which usually starts by early July, is looking normal.

King also looks at fine fuel, which he said is at normal to above normal amounts in the forests. Fine fuel in a forest is any wood product that falls off a tree and any stick thats about a -inch in diameter that can feed a fire and cause it to spread.

It also doesnt help that the fuel doesnt go away easily, he said. Stuff doesnt rot here, so we get buildups of fuel in these forests, said Bill Armstrong, a fuel specialist with the Santa Fe National Forest.

Fine fuels are usually taken care of with prescribed burns, but Overton said the Forest Service will also let a wildfire take care of some of the fuels that crews were planning on burning anyway. A lot of factors go into making that kind of decision, she said.

We now have the authority to use wildfires to accomplish management objectives on the land, she said. Before, the Forest Service suppressed all wildfire but, as science progressed, we began to understand that these forests actually need fire. It may be a good idea to let wildfire just get rid of that fine fuel.

Church said above-average moisture last year caused other potential fire fuels like grass and weeds to grow, but Armstrong said those are really only a problem in range fires and not so much in the forest.

Although its hard to predict such things, King said that, starting in June, there could be heavy lightning, which is the only natural cause of forest fires.

Sometimes downed power lines can start a forest fire  the giant 2011 Las Conchas Fire, at the time the largest recorded fire in state history, the Tres Lagunas Fire north of Pecos and the Thompson Ridge Fire near Jemez Springs, both in 2013, were sparked by power lines  but King said thats still considered a man-made cause.
Santa Fe would be jumping on a national trend along with other communities around the country  all considered politically liberal, like the City Different  if it becomes the seventh U.S. city to impose a tax on sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

The 2-cent-per-ounce tax that the City Council voted last week to put before voters in a May 2 special election would match the largest such levy imposed so far.

Forty soda tax proposals across the country were defeated before Berkeley, Calif., broke the streak in 2014 when more than three-quarters of voters approved a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drink.

The trend gained traction last year when five more cities and Cook County, Ill., approved a tax.

The epicenter was the San Francisco Bay area, where Albany, Oakland and San Francisco joined neighboring Berkeley by also imposing a 1-cent-per-ounce tax via ballot measures approved on Election Day in November.

That same day, 54 percent of voters in Boulder, Colo., approved a 2-cent-per-ounce soda tax.

Thats the highest tax imposed on sugary drinks so far. and the measure being pushed by Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales would match it.

Also in November, the Cook County Commission approved its 1-cent-per-ounce tax for the Chicago area by a 9-8 vote.

Philadelphias City Council passed its 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks last summer. Mayor James Kenney originally proposed a 3-cent-per-ounce tax. That was negotiated down to 1.5 cents and the council approved the measure by a 13-4 vote. Revenues are to go toward expanding pre-K programs, as well as improving parks, recreation centers and libraries.

In other cities, the money goes to programs that promote good nutrition, and combat obesity and diabetes, or to the general fund. In some cases, advisory boards are set up to decide how the funds are distributed.

Revenue for the Santa Fe tax, which supporters expect will raise $7 million a year, would be targeted exclusively for early childhood education programs that the mayor hopes will make pre-K free or affordable for every family in the city.

Opposing reports

In every case where a soda tax has been enacted, the effort to approve the tax was met with stiff opposition by groups supported by the American Beverage Association.

The ABA reportedly spent more than $10.6 million in an unsuccessful bid to defeat Mayor Kenneys proposal in Philadelphia.

Coincidently, Santa Fe Mayor Gonzales shared the stage with Kenney during a panel discussion last Saturday in Austin at a South by Southwest symposium on governing. The topic was immigration policy, but Gonzales said he and Kenney talked soda tax behind the scenes.

We were able to spend some time talking about how things were going there, Gonzales said. I asked if they are getting the (tax) revenues they anticipated and his answer was yes, and in many cases they exceeded projections.

But what about those news reports of the devastating effects the tax was having on businesses, jobs and the economy?

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Pepsi-Co declared a 43 percent drop in business since the tax was imposed Jan. 1 and, on March 1, the local Pepsi operation announced that up to 100 employees would be laid off at three plants. A Teamsters union official warned that major layoffs of grocery store workers were inevitable. An owner of six supermarkets predicted that 300 jobs would be lost.

Gonzales said Mayor Kenney isnt buying it.

He was emphatic in his belief that nothing about the tax was having the kind of impact the soda industry was putting out. He didnt believe at all what they were saying, he said, adding that Kenney reminded him that Pepsi-Co made a $6 billion profit last year and its CEO makes $25 million a year. I left feeling good that, despite what weve heard about the sky falling in Philadelphia, in fact its not.

The ABA is part of Better Way for Santa Fe and Pre-K, one PAC opposing the Santa Fe tax proposal. The coalition also includes about 130 restaurants, grocery stores and organizations  including the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce and the local Coca-Cola distributor, which employs about 80 people  according to Better Ways David Huynh

All you have to do is Google Philadelphia and soda tax, and you will see the impact the tax there is having on everyday working families, said Huynh this week.

When told of the conversation between the Santa Fe and Philadelphia mayors, Huynh responded, It sounds like Mayor Kenney decided to join Donald Trump in believing that press coverage is fake news  . There is clear evidence that the soda tax is having a negative impact in Philadelphia, whether the mayor (Kenney) wants to admit to it or not. Facts are facts.

A fight looms

Better Way ran radio ads and sent out mailers to city voters prior to last weeks vote by the council to put the soda tax on the ballot. Having lost that round, the group took out full-page advertisements in the Sunday editions of both the Journal and the Santa Fe New Mexican. It was the start of what figures to be an active, and expensive, spring of electioneering leading up to the May 2 vote.

Tax supporters may also be able to raise a substantial war chest, both from small donors and billionaires who have become engaged in the soda tax effort on a national basis, based on whats happened in other cities.

In Boulder, about the same size as Santa Fe, more than $2.5 million was spent in the campaign, more than $1 million of that by the ABA. But a pro-tax group raised almost as much, with $200,000 provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charitable group headed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg that focuses its efforts on funding arts, projects, environmental causes, public health initiatives, government innovation and education. It has also helped fund pro-soda tax campaigns in other cities.

Bloomberg donated more than $18 million to support the 2016 soda tax propositions in both San Francisco and Oakland. In San Francisco, billionaire John Arnold and his wife Laura Arnold also gave $3.3 million in support of the tax.

According to the Center for Responsible Politics, the ABA spent $690,000 on lobbying efforts in 2008, but that had increased to $8.67 million by the 2010 election cycle. Media reports from the Bay Area say that the soda industry spent $10 million to defeat a referendum on a soda tax in San Francisco in 2014. The soda industry then spent $20 million on its failed attempt to beat the vote there last year.

Mayor Gonzales met with representatives of the Bloomberg group in New York in November. He said it was to find out what lessons theyve learned through their efforts, but he has not been in contact with them since.

Pre-K for Santa Fe, a political action committee supporting the tax and including some of the same political veterans that helped get Gonzales elected mayor, has been in contact with Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Sandra Wechsler, a spokeswoman for the group, said Pre-K for Santa Fe has solicited advice from Bloomberg Philanthropies about how to approach the Santa Fe campaign. Asked if Pre-K for Santa Fe will get any funding from the group, she said, We dont know. Wed certainly been honored to have their support, but at this point we dont know.

Bloomberg Philanthropies acknowledged, but did not respond to, phone messages and emails from the Journal this week.

On Wednesday, Pre-K for Santa Fe sent out an email soliciting donations.

In these next forty-eight days, were going to see a lot of misinformation from the Soda Industry. And theyre going to have an endless supply of money to back it up. Were asking for your help, it says. We will need your support, and that of all of your friends and family. This is going to be a fight, unlike anything Santa Fe has seen before.

Smart Progress New Mexico is another group against the tax. It was formed by a group of small-business owners. Loveless Johnson, a spokesman for Smart Progress New Mexico, calls it a grassroots group. Were not associated with Big Soda. Were just a local group, so the message were doing is very localized, he said.

Santa Feans should know soon how much the soda tax fight is costing. There are three campaign spending reports due to be filed by PACs prior to the election, the first on March 23, and one afterward.
The Judiciary Committee moved a bill Friday that would legalize medical cannabis to the full Legislature for debate.

The bill (LB622), introduced and prioritized by Lincoln Sen. Anna Wishart, was advanced on a 6-1 vote. Sen. Steve Halloran of Hastings was the lone no vote.

An amended version of Wishart's bill had a hearing this week. The bill maps out how medical cannabis would be produced and dispensed, including a patient registry. It could not be smoked, but only dispensed as liquid, pill, vapor from liquid or oil, topical creams or lotions, or suppositories.

It could be prescribed for only qualifying conditions or illnesses, including cancer with severe pain, nausea and vomiting, or wasting; glaucoma; AIDS; seizure disorders; ALS; Crohn's disease and others.

At the hearing, proponents of legalizing medical cannabis included doctors, veterans with combat injuries, out-of-state experts, and people who either suffered from diseases and conditions that could be treated with the drug, or had loved ones who do.

The opponents were mostly government and law enforcement officials, including Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner, Nebraska Assistant Attorney General David Lopez, Nebraska Chief Medical Officer Dr. Thomas Williams, and Joni Cover, executive director of the Nebraska Pharmacists Association.

Those voting to advance the bill were Chairwoman Laura Ebke, Vice Chairwoman Patty Pansing Brooks, and member Sens. Ernie Chambers, Matt Hansen, Bob Krist and Adam Morfeld.
Nonprofits play a critical role in filling gaps in health and social services that states cannot afford to address, particularly poor and economically struggling states like New Mexico. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush recognized nonprofits value to America, coining the term A Thousand Points of Light to describe the contributions of community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation, doing good.

New Mexicos primary care safety net provides points of light in 90 communities throughout the state. Relying on a fragile mix of federal, state and local support and patient fees, 18 New Mexico nonprofit corporations and a handful of local entities have built one of the most comprehensive safety nets in the nation.

They provide affordable access to high-quality primary care and in dozens of communities provide the only access to health care. They help 83,000 New Mexicans keep their diabetes and high blood pressure under control. They treat 18,000 patients for alcohol and substance abuse disorder. They provide critical mental health services to more than 55,000 New Mexicans suffering from depression, anxiety and PTSD and they provide over 250,000 dental treatments each year. They serve half of the states uninsured, and low-income patients are charged a nominal co-pay to ensure that high costs do not prevent patients from accessing the right care at the right time.

House Bill 412 seeks to reform New Mexicos gross receipts tax system and raise revenue by broadening the tax base through the closing of tax loopholes, which is a laudable goal. Many of those tax credits or loopholes were created on the promise that new jobs created and increased capital investment would generate more than enough increased taxes to offset the cost of the credits. Sadly, over the years, many of those rosy projections failed to materialize.

Unfortunately, HB 412 repeals the exemption of IRS-designated 501c3 nonprofit organizations from paying gross receipts taxes on their revenues. This exemption bears no resemblance to the loopholes the bills proponents say they are seeking to close. They have been in statute for over 50 years and are designed to allow nonprofits to reinvest the receipts from revenues to provide more charitable and educational services. The repeal ignores the benefits nonprofits provide for the state, such as the fact that every student educated at a nonprofit or religious school saves the state $8,000 they would otherwise have to spend on public education.

Repealing these exemptions will cost primary care clinics $14 million annually. Combine this with the loss of the $7 million in state support the Legislature and governor have already cut from the safety net funding in fiscal 2017 and 2018, and you have a major financial stability problem. If a clinic is forced to lay off a physician to save $200,000 in salary and benefits, they must also cut the $250,000 that the doctor generates each year in patient revenues. A nurse, a care coordinator, a community health worker and a billing clerk also lose their jobs, and 1,200 patients lose access to care. With this negative multiplier, the $21 million loss of funds will result in $40 million to $45 million in budget cuts.

The bills proponents claim that the removal of these exemptions will level the playing field in the health care sector. Will this leveling result in for-profit health providers flocking back to the rural communities they abandoned 50 years ago? Will the for-profits fill the newly created gaps in access caused by taxing the struggling nonprofits? Will the for profits provide over $100 million in uncompensated health care to this vulnerable and unprofitable population? Lets not be misled into believing that this is not a new and harmful tax on essential services. Upward of 50,000 New Mexicans in dozens of communities will lose many or all of the services that keep them healthy and help them avoid more costly care.
Growing up in New Zealand, Kane Strang had dreams of being a touring musician.

And one of those dreams was also to tour in the United States.

Well, its happening  finally.

Im so excited and I still cant believe its happening, he says during a recent interview from New York City. I was making music in my home a few years ago and now Im headlining a tour. Its insane.

Strang was born and raised in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Born into a family with several musicians, including his grandfather, uncles, and rock bassist father, Strang took to the guitar in his formative years, which also included some time with the clarinet in school. Shortly after secondary school, he co-founded the indie rock band Dinosaur Sanctuary.

In 2013, the band released a debut album titled A Public Toilet Told Me Nothing Gets Better, recorded before Strang briefly moved to Germany with a friend.

His first solo release, A Pebble and a Paper Crane, also from 2013, was a collection of demos recorded in a German bomb shelter from World War II.

After returning to Dunedin, he worked on writing new material that would become his label debut with Flying Nun Records in New Zealand and Ba Da Bing Records in North America. Blue Cheese arrived in February 2016.

I worked on the album for about two years. I self-released it, and then a few months later it was released by the label, he says. Whats crazy is that I already have another album completed. It should be out later this year.

Strang is known for his construction of lo-fi guitar pop with shades of British psychedelia.

For Blue Cheese, I recorded the album by myself in my home, he says. The new album, I was in a proper studio for the first time. It was an amazing experience.
WASHINGTON  The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

The novelist Anatole Frances mischievous observation came to mind when the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the Republican cut-taxes/gut-Medicaid bill and its defenders went into a continuous loop talking about freedom. Conservatives are fond of saying that freedom isnt free. This is entirely true, especially when it comes to health care.

Republicans speak of the wondrous things that will happen if they succeed in slaying the monster known as Obamacare. House Speaker Paul Ryan offered this rush of animated words to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: You need to have an individual market where people care about what things cost, where people have real freedom, where those providers of health care services, be they insurers, doctors or hospitals and everybody in between, compete against each other for our business based on value, based on price, based on quality, based on outcome.

Ryan spoke to Hewitt shortly before the CBO concluded that under his legislative contraption, 24 million fewer people would be insured over the next decade. Ryan dismissed the CBO in advance by accepting that the coverage numbers would, indeed, drop because people would be able to exercise a newfound right to be uninsured, much as they might be liberated to sleep under bridges or beg in the streets.

Were going to have a free market, and you buy what you want to buy, Ryan explained. Theyre going to say not nearly as many people are going to do that. Left-wingers are often cast as dreamy utopians, but its Ryan and his allies who pretend they can create a capitalist paradise in health care  something that not one wealthy capitalist country has ever done because the health care market is not like any other.

Older people, for example, are not an ideal market for private insurance companies. Thats why we have Medicare. Lower-income people cant afford to pay the full cost of a decent insurance policy. Thats why we have Medicaid, and why the Affordable Care Act subsidizes policies from private insurance companies.

Slash Medicaid and take away the subsidies and, presto, the ranks of the uninsured mushroom. There is thus something unseemly about Ryan declaring that he is so excited about eviscerating Medicaid. We are de-federalizing an entitlement, block-granting it back to the states, and capping its growth rate, he told Hewitt. Thats never been done before.

Of course, maybe its never been done before because enough politicians stood up to resist the cruel idea of tossing so many people overboard.

Defenders of this proposal try to argue that health care is radically different from coverage. They must think the American people are dunderheads. Coverage is not the end, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on MSNBCs Morning Joe Tuesday. People dont get better with coverage. They get better with care.

Well, sure, but try taking your kids to get care from a pediatrician if you dont have insurance coverage. Or do backers of the Coverage Destruction Act of 2017 just want people to get sicker and sicker until they have to get really expensive care in an emergency room  which may come too late?

Ryan urges people to read his bill. If you do, youll realize how many of its pages are devoted not to health care but to tax cuts. According to the CBO, the bill takes $1.2 trillion out of helping people get health care (including $880 billion from Medicaid) and then hands out about $600 billion of that in tax cuts, mostly for the well-to-do and various interest groups, the beleaguered tanning industry being my favorite. This could also be called the Make Inequality Worse Act of 2017.

In his youth, Ryan was a devotee of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is nicely summarized by the title of her book The Virtue of Selfishness. In her world, government should never take money from the better-off to help lesser souls. In the glorious future created by Ryans bill, they will now be even freer to try maintaining their own existence without health insurance.
Eight vetoes in two days. More than 50 stalled political appointments. Zero specific explanations.

Gov. Susana Martinez has apparently forgotten her plea for bipartisan cooperation during her State-of-the-State address that kicked off the 2017 session in mid-January.

Weve met challenges before in a bipartisan manner, and we can do it again, but it will take courage, she said when asking lawmakers to help craft a budget without new taxes that would promote economic growth, as well as address other signature issues, such as ending grade-school social promotions.

Lawmakers made it pretty easy to forget that plea by failing to go along with much of the Republican governors platform  rejecting once again her social promotion proposal and supporting legislation that would fund a budget, in part, with various tax increases.

And theyve allowed Martinezs political appointees to languish, refusing to even hold confirmation hearings on them, until March 1, when Martinez told the Senate she was withdrawing  at least temporarily  the nominations for 53 appointees to various state boards and commissions to try to get the Senate act more quickly on higher-profile appointees.

But that doesnt excuse why Martinez would veto bills that would help local governments across the state develop infrastructure for high-speed internet to attract jobs to their communities, one of the first of eight bills this week to hit the veto trash bin. Senate Bill 24 was unanimously passed by the House and only received one nay vote in the Senate.

The governors action drew a sharp rebuke from one of the bills two sponsors, Senate Majority Whip Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque. Its hard to imagine why Gov. Martinez would stand in the way of our cities and counties efforts to bring high-speed internet that would attract needed jobs and support local small businesses, he said in a written statement.

Perhaps it slipped Martinezs mind that New Mexico has the highest unemployment rate in the nation.

Other bills on the governors chopping block this week seem to be mostly housekeeping measures: Senate Bill 184 clarifying rules for horse race licenses and tests, House Bill 126 clarifying rules for medical students to repay loans, SB 134 allowing a computer science unit to count for a high school math credit, SB 222 defining political subdivisions, SB 64 removing a sunset clause from a school capital outlay law, SB 67 notifying county treasurers of the creation of tax diversion districts and SB 356 notifying county treasurers of public improvement districts.

Seven of the eight bills originated in the Senate, which historically  and with bipartisan support  voted Tuesday to override her veto of a bill to ease sick leave policy for public school teachers. It was the first time the Senate had ever overridden a Martinez veto.

Late Thursday, she finally sent a one-page explanation to the Senate, citing that logjam on confirming political appointees as well as lawmakers failure to send her a proposed budget.

And she appeared to issue an ultimatum: Until the Legislature sees fit to fulfill its constitutional obligations, including hearings (on regent nominees), I will continue to veto legislation that is not necessary for the well-being of this state and its citizens.

The Thursday message from Martinez said she had vetoed the bills because they arent necessary for the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of this great state.

If the governors motives appear petty, she does not hold the patent on it. Lawmakers have displayed their own brand.

The list of the governors nominees still awaiting Senate confirmation includes Cabinet secretaries, university regents and appointees to a wide range of boards and commissions. As of March 1, 34 appointees had been confirmed by the Senate during this years session. Two years ago, during the last 60-day session, the Senate held 112 confirmation hearings.

Cant somebody please take the high road for the good of the state?

If the governor has legitimate concerns that bills have so-called poison pills tucked in the legal language, she should explain why seemingly innocuous measures would be bad for the state. If the Senate has concerns about the qualifications of appointees, members should voice them and vote up or down.

Political payback is unbecoming of a governor and lawmakers who routinely drop the buzzwords of job creation, bipartisanship and improving the economy of this poor state.

Meanwhile, who do these partisan politics and tit-for-tat games hurt? Not anyone in the Roundhouse, but:

 Every board, commission and agency that is forced to operate at less than full-strength and every community that relies them.

 High school students who need a math credit.

 College students trying to pay off their loans.

 Public school children who benefit from responsible use of capital outlay funds for their districts.

 Rural governments that need all the help they can get to keep their communities viable and thriving.

Martinez, who is in the second half of her second term, doesnt need voters approval to stay in the governors mansion. Senators arent up for election until 2020. But all were elected to be champions of the residents of this state, and a lot of positives can  and should  happen in the next few years.

All any voters can ask of their governor and lawmakers is they leave the state in better shape than they found it.

Stop the pettiness. Swallow your pride and figure out how to work together for the good of New Mexico.

There are one and a half days left in the 2017 legislative session. Theres no question the governor and lawmakers are behind in what they need to do. And theres no question they still have time to lead.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Jordan Feliz always dreamed of being a musician.

Now, its a reality.

The 28-year-old is making waves in the Christian music scene with his 2016 album, The River.

And hes already begun working on his next effort.

I started writing in December, he says during a recent interview during a stop in Missouri. I wanted to remain authentic and genuine. I wanted to write about real things.

Feliz is a newcomer to the music scene  sort of.

After graduating from high school in California in 2007, he began to take music more seriously.

Like many other musicians, he played nightly gigs and worked odd day jobs to make ends meet.

He married his high school girlfriend, and the couple now have a daughter.

Being a dad changed my perspective on life, he says. Thats made its way into my writing.

Feliz says that in the past five years, hes felt a push towards the limelight.

This has also led him to a spot on the Rock & Worship Show, which will make a stop at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces.

I feel like the Lord has helped me so much, he says. Im grateful to be at this point in my life. I imagined being a full-time musician; I didnt expect it to happen this soon.

In writing for the new album, Feliz says hes putting some pressure on himself.

The label is perfect, because they arent pushing anything, he says. I want this album to surpass what I accomplished on The River. Its going to take a lot of hard work, and Im ready for it. Im more comfortable in my writing now that I have kept it up for years.

And being on the Rock & Worship Show is an opportunity to gain more experience.

Ive looked up to many of these artists, he says. Its great to have access to them for advice.

Rock & Worship Show

With Steven Curtis Chapman, Francesca Battistelli, Rend Collective, Passion, Family Force 5, Jordan Feliz

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, March 23

WHERE: Pan American Center on the campus of New Mexico State University, 1810 E. University, Las Cruces

HOW MUCH: $10 at the door
SANTA FE  A proposed $1.50-per-pack increase in New Mexicos cigarette tax rate was snuffed out Thursday in a House committee.

Members of the House Taxation and Revenue Committee voted 9-5 to table the measure, which would have also increased the tax rate on cigars and electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes.

Backers of the bill, which passed the Senate earlier this month, said it would generate an estimated $89 million annually and funnel the revenue to public schools.

Anytime that we invest in education and children is always good policy, said Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City, the measures sponsor.

But critics of Senate Bill 231 pointed out the proposed increase would mark the states second significant tobacco tax increase in seven years.

Two Democratic lawmakers  Reps. Carl Trujillo of Santa Fe and Roberto Bobby Gonzales of Taos  ultimately joined with the House committees GOP members in voting to table the legislation.

GAY CONVERSION: A bill headed to Gov. Susana Martinez would prohibit therapists and other licensed professionals from providing conversion therapy aimed at changing a young persons sexual orientation or gender identity.

The proposal, Senate Bill 121, was approved 44-23 in the House late Wednesday, and the Senate agreed to the House version Thursday.

It was co-sponsored by Sen. Jacob Candelaria and Rep. G. Andres Romero, both Albuquerque Democrats.

They said children shouldnt have to go through harmful attempts to change who they are.

The broad medical and psychological consensus is that its junk science, its abuse and it hurts kids, Candelaria said of conversion therapy.

Opponents said the proposal would have unintended consequences, perhaps discouraging a therapist from helping someone for fear of running afoul of the law.

In the end, however, the House vote wasnt close, as some Republicans joined Democrats in favor.

INFRASTRUCTURE: A pared-back plan to review New Mexico public infrastructure spending is headed to the House.

The bill, which would create an interim legislative committee to review state spending on bridges, buildings and other public works projects, was approved 29-10 Thursday in the Senate.

Its been scaled back significantly from its original form, which had called for the new committee to evaluate and rank potential projects.

But backers said the legislation, Senate Bill 262, could still lead to improvements in the states capital outlay system, which has come under fire for being wasteful and ineffective.

The perception we dont spend infrastructure funding the way we should is a consideration for businesses coming here, said Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, the measures sponsor.
Albuquerque High School has been named the national high school of the year by the Embassy of Spain for excellence in bilingual immersion programs.

The Premio Colegio del Anothe contest, organized by the embassy, is open to public, private and charter schools at the elementary, middle and high schools levels that seek to improve foreign language competence in their students, according to a brochure.

Albuquerque High received second place in 2013 but came back for the win this time.

We have been trying to get this award for awhile, said Cesar Hernandez, Albuquerque High assistant principal. It changes the school culture to have an award of this kind. It fills us with pride.

Roughly 500 students are involved in Albuquerque Highs dual-language program, which includes two Advanced Placement courses, along with over a dozen subjects taught in Spanish, from U.S. history to biology and algebra. The goal, Hernandez said, is empowerment in two languages.

Albuquerque High offers high-level classes in Spanish to create bilingual-biliterate students for our global economy, he added. Our program is more rigorous than any other in the district.

Principal Tim McCorkle credited Hernandez and other school staff for expanding the schools Spanish-language offerings.

In May, Hernandez and McCorkle will travel to Washington, D.C., to accept the Premio Colegio del Anothe award at the Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain, a palatial building near the White House.

This is a very special recognition, Superintendent Raquel Reedy said during Wednesdays board meeting. I am just thrilled.

Reedy, a former bilingual special education teacher, has long championed dual-language programs.

On Wednesday, the APS board of education formally adopted the states Seal of Bilingualism & Biliteracy, which recognizes graduating seniors who are fluent in two or more languages.

APS serves approximately 10,000 students in schools with bilingual education programs, according to the district website.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.
A lawsuit filed last month alleges that Albuquerque Public Schools employees physically restrained a nonspeaking special education elementary school student and left her soiled all day, according to court documents.

The child experienced restraint during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years when she was in kindergarten and first grade. During that time, she also needed help going to the bathroom, used pull-ups and was dependent on school staff to change her.

Because she cannot speak, the child had no ability to come home and report to her parents what had happened at school, leaving her parents dependent on APS for information about their daughters health and safety at school. But according to the lawsuit, the district does not have any policy requiring teachers and staff who work with nonspeaking students to offer daily reports informing parents of events that might affect their childs well-being.

Gail Stewart, the attorney representing the childs family, said that the restraint was a result of people with inadequate training being frustrated. And she said that kids who experience restraint or seclusion can regress, act out or respond emotionally. The lawsuit alleges that use of physical restraint on a young child is akin to corporal punishment, and has no teaching purpose or value and is known to cause trauma.

When a parent sees a response and has no narrative from the school about what the childs been through, she said, theres obviously no way to connect the dots.

Johanna King, APS spokeswoman, said the district does not comment on lawsuits.

APS policy is to train its staff who work with students who have disabilities to employ physical restraint as a response to nonconforming behaviors, and to withhold notice to parents when restraint is used in a special education classroom, the lawsuit argues.

These incidents do happen with some frequency; parents are not notified, Stewart said. And I think that the citizenry of New Mexico needs to understand that there is no law right now. School personnel are not accountable for this conduct or even for reporting it.

The family is seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial. They allege that the school district was negligent and breached its duty to care for the girl.
WASHINGTON  The closure of a regional airport could force residents of a small town in upper Michigan to drive eight hours to catch a flight. The elimination of funding to keep the Great Lakes clean could hurt business at a waterside Ohio boating club. Cuts to the nations flood insurance program could mean greater losses after a storm for homeowners on Floridas Gulf Coast.

In his first budget blueprint since taking office, President Donald Trump held to his promise to build up the U.S. military while slashing domestic spending  even for programs that benefit the rural and lower-income Americans who voted for him last November.

Some people might think its a betrayal, said Eric Waara, the Republican city manager of the 7,000-person town of Houghton on Michigans Upper Peninsula, who said he hoped the proposal was just a negotiating tactic. I think that we all hope its the first small step until something better.

Houghton sits more than 200 miles from a major highway and for many residents the Houghton County Memorial Airport is their connection to the outside world. Trumps proposed elimination of the Transportation Departments Essential Air Service program, or EAS, could force the airport to close or dramatically curtail service, leaving residents with a four-hour drive to Green Bay, Wisconsin, or eight hours to Chicago to catch a flight, Waara said. The administration said it would save $175 million a year.

Trump carried Houghton County with more than 54 percent of the vote as he became the first Republican to win Michigan since 1988. He got more than 50 percent of the vote in 86 of the 111 communities served by EAS, according to an Associated Press analysis of voting data.

The proposed $1.15 trillion budget distills much of Trumps sweeping campaign rhetoric into a set of hard choices and cold priorities. Trump is calling on Congress to boost defense spending by $54 billion, a move popular with many Republicans. A wall along the border with Mexico, a core campaign promise, would receive $4 billion to start construction.

Trumps campaign promises to gut ineffective programs and shrink a bloated bureaucracy translated into a plan that cuts environmental protections programs, community development funding, housing vouchers, scientific research, a commission to create economic opportunities in Appalachia and other programs.

Funding for popular social services like Meals on Wheels, which provides food to the elderly, and after-school programs for children, also are on the chopping block. The outline  the start of negotiations with Congress  leaves untouched Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Rural America stepped up to the plate behind the president in his last election, and were wholeheartedly behind him. We need to make sure that rural America at least gets its fair share, said Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, the Republican chairman of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee. Aderholt, who represents one of the highest Trump voting congressional districts in the country, said hes generally supportive of less federal spending but has concerns about cuts that would hurt several rural development programs.

It doesnt really reflect President Trumps support for rural communities, he said.

Trump administration officials said the proposal supports a desire to give states more flexibility and to protect taxpayers from seeing their dollars wasted.

Youre only focusing on half of the equation, right? Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said when asked about the cuts. Youre focusing on 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.

The budget proposal offered the promise of increased spending and services in some parts of Trump Country. The plan calls for a $500 million increase in spending to counter opioid epidemic, an acute problem in many rural communities. It proposes an additional $4.4 billion for veterans health care, including money to extend a program that allows eligible veterans to seek care from a private doctor outside the VA network.

Trumps proposed military buildup could be an economic boon to military contractors and military communities. In the areas surrounding Fayetteville, North Carolina, whats good for Fort Bragg is good for the community.

We cant help but look upon the budget favorably, said Robert Van Geons, head of Fayetteville-Cumberland County Economic Development Corp. Two of the counties that make up the sprawling Fort Bragg delivered more than 60 percent of its votes for Trump.

Others saw economic worries in the proposal. The blueprint would cut almost all the $300 million in funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, raising concern among some in the Ohio counties along Lake Erie.

The initiative was started to help limit invasive species such as the Asian carp, among other threats. It was meant to reduce dangers such as the outbreak of bacteria in 2014 that contaminated drinking water for nearly 500,000 people living around Toledo. Trumps budget plan says that these programs should be the responsibility of state and local governments.

At Catawba Island Club, a lakeside club with hundreds of boat slips, a golf course and 100 year-round employees in Ohios Ottawa County, President Jim Stouffer said a rise in pollution could hurt his business.

Our reason for being is our members being able to get out on the water, Stouffer said.

Trump won the county by 57 percent of the vote on his way to carrying Ohio.

The budget plan would also cut $190 million for mapping flood hazards for the National Flood Insurance Program, as well as grants to fund projects that would reduce damage from natural disasters. Without accurate maps of floodplains and the engineering projects funded by these grants, the costs from flood losses and natural disasters could be even higher for homeowners, businesses and taxpayers, said Don Griffin, a vice president at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

The three states with the most flood insurance policies, according to the government, are Florida, Texas and Louisiana, all of which supported Trump.

___

Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Joan Lowy contributed to this report.

___

Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com///twitter.com/@JoshBoak
SANTA FE, N.M.  A bill to allow transgender people in New Mexico to change the gender on their birth certificate without ever having a sex change operation was met with ridicule and impassioned debate in the state House of Representatives.

The bill received final legislative approval Thursday evening after an opponent filed an amendment suggesting that people who identify as younger or older than they really are should be able to change the age listed on their birth certificates.

Supporters of the bill sat and stood mostly in silence as Republican Rep. Dennis Roch of Logan fielded questions  both serious and in jest  from Republican colleagues about the amendment, which failed.

Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell of Roswell asked whether she could change her birth certificate from Caucasian to Native American.
The following is a rundown of family activities for the week of March 17-23.

Friday

Annual Gnome Hunt -- for entire family, daily through March 26, Arbor Day Farm Tree Adventure, Nebraska City. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Regular admission.

Friday morning storytime -- 11 a.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers, SouthPointe Pavilions.

Library movie day -- "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," movie, popcorn and movie-themed craft, 1:30-3 p.m., Eiseley Branch Library.

Saturday



Bilingual English-Spanish story time -- 10-11 a.m., Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St.

Fairy Faire -- 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Fontenelle Forest Nature Center, Bellevue. Build a fairy house from natural materials, find the fairy queen, make fairy wands, face painting and more activities. Register a fontenelleforest.org.

Live Happy event -- 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Gateway Mall, Center Court, 6100 O St. Create a "Happiness Wall."

Library all ages storytime -- stories, 10:30 a.m.; crafts, 11 a.m., Walt Branch Library.

Egg storytime -- 11 a.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5150 O St. and SouthPointe Pavilions locations.

Family Fun Day -- "Tales from Wales," 1-4 p.m., Nebraska History Museum, 131 Centennial Mall North. Video debut "Pobl y Paith/ People of the Prairie: the Welsh in Nebraska, 1:30 p.m.; live music by Ozark Soul, create Welsh-themed craft and enjoy Welsh tea and tea cakes, 2-4 p.m. Free.

"Gulliver's Travels" -- drama camp show, featuring Missoula Children's Theater, 3 p.m., Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2110 Sheridan Blvd. $5/person, ages 12 and younger/free.

Sunday

Family storytime -- 1:30-2 p.m., Eiseley Branch Library; 4-4:30 p.m., Bennett Martin Public Library. Stories and crafts.

Celebrate Spring -- 2-3 p.m., Bennett Martin City Library. Craft flowers from new and recycled materials. Free.

"Once Upon a Time" -- the Omaha Symphony Family Series, 2 p.m., Holland Performing Arts Center, 1200 Douglas St., Omaha. Come early for pre-concert activities. 402-345-0606.

Monday

Family storytime -- 6:30-7:30 p.m., Gere Branch Library.

Tuesday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10 a.m. and 10:35 a.m., Gere; 10:30 a.m., Bethany, Walt; 6:30 p.m., Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Anderson, Gere; 7 p.m., Eiseley.

Morning children's story time -- 10-11 a.m., Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St.

Wednesday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10:30 a.m., Walt; 10:35 a.m. Eiseley and Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Eiseley. Baby: 10 a.m., Gere.

Thursday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10 a.m., Gere; 10:35 a.m., Eiseley and Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Eiseley, Bethany, Gere. Baby: 10:30 a.m., Walt; 6:30 a.m., Gere.

Kidz Closet consignment sale -- 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. March 24; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. March 25; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. March 26, Saint Paul United Methodist Church, 1144 M St.

Shows and exhibits



Sesostris Shrine Circus -- 12:30, 7 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m., 2, 7 p.m. Saturday; 12:30, 5 p.m. Sunday, Lancaster Event Center, Pavilion 4, 84th Street and Havelock Avenue. $17/VIP reserved, $15/reserved, $15/handicapped, free reserved for 12 and younger. Tickets at lancastereventcenter.org.

Planetarium astronomy shows -- "A Planet for Goldilocks," 11 a.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (ages 9+). "Seeing," noon Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays (ages 10+). "Big Red Sky Tour," 2 p.m. Saturdays (ages 7+). Shows March 4 through May. University of Nebraska Museum of Natural History, Mueller Planetarium, Morrill Hall, south of 14th and Vine streets. 402-472-2641.

Hyde Observatory shows -- 7-10 p.m. Saturdays, Hyde Observatory, Holmes Lake. Free. Reservations available for Monday-Thursday nights. 402-441-7094.

"Tinker Theater" new exhibit -- demonstration space for science experiments, cooking lessons, engineering workshops and more. Programs will be posted throughout the museum. Lincoln Children's Museum, 1420 P St. Regular admission.

Coming up

Cooper YMCA community open house -- and 15th birthday celebration, all day March 24, 6767 S. 14th St. Swim in indoor pool, group exercise class, bounce houses, face painting, crafts and birthday cake. Free.

"Snow White" -- the Lincoln Midwest Ballet Company, 7 p.m. March 24; 2, 7 p.m. March 25, Lincoln North Star High School, 5801 N. 33rd St. Tickets: LincolnMidwestBallet.org.

Bunny Arrival Egg-travaganza -- kids activities and egg hunt, 10-11 a.m. March 25, Gateway Mall Playspace.

Create Your Own Little Golden Book storytime -- 11 a.m. March 25, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5150 O St. and SouthPointe Pavilions locations.

Spring Fling and egg hunt -- 10 a.m.-noon April 8, Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum. Free outdoor egg hunt for toddlers to age ten begins at 10 a.m. Activities include picture with Easter Bunny, face painting, coloring contest with prizes, kite building and more. Regular museum admission for indoor activities.

Register

Family Grief Series -- 6:30-8 p.m. Tuesdays, March 21-May 23, Mourning Hope Grief Center, 4919 Baldwin Ave. For ages kindergarten through 18 and their adult caregivers. Free, registration required. 402-488-8989, mourninghope.org or email cmason@mourninghope.org.

March Madness Camp -- 5:30 p.m. March 24 to 1 p.m. March 26, YMCA Camp Kitaki, Ashland. Find the Leprechaun's hidden gold, choose your own adventure, street dance, more activities and food. For ages 7-14. $120/child. Register at 402-434-9222 or ymcacampkitaki.org.

The Lincoln Boys Choir auditions -- by appointment only March 31 and April 1, Scottish Rite Masonic Center, 322 Centennial Mall. 402-499-4446 or lincolnboyschoir.org.

Capital City Blue Run for Autism -- 9 a.m., kids fun run at 10 a.m. April 1, The Railyard, Canopy Street. Online registration at arclincoln.org.

Get Smart Saturday workshop -- "Candy Science," noon April 8, SAC Museum. $7/child or $5/members. Advance registration: SACMuseum.org.

Run Now, Wine Later 5K Adventure -- benefit for Girls on the Run of Nebraska, April 15, James Arthur Vineyards, 2001 W. Raymond Road, Raymond. Information and registration at GOTRNebraska.org.
With a price tag of about $3 million, the U.S. Armys Patriot missile is among the most sophisticated, not to mention costliest, surface-to-air defense weapons in the world. Capable of flying five times the speed of sound, the 700-pound, five-meter-long Patriots main purpose is to intercept other missiles.

But according to an Army general, a U.S. ally recently used one to shoot down a different target: a $200 drone aircraft.

Gen. David Perkins, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, gave a brief account of the incident at an Army symposium on March 13 in Huntsville, Alabama, available on YouTube.

We have a very close ally of ours that was dealing with an adversary using small quadcopters, Perkins said, indicating the situation was not a drill. They shot it down with a Patriot missile.

The Patriot won, he added with a grin. That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against the Patriot.

A disproportionate response? No doubt. But thats exactly why Perkins brought up the anecdote in his talk, which focused on how military commanders should deal with new threats.

Though the Patriot easily took out the encroaching drone, he said, it wasnt a very cost-effective way of dealing with the problem.

Im not sure thats a good economic-exchange ratio, Perkins said. In fact, if Im the enemy, Im thinking, Hey, Im just going to get on eBay and buy as many of these $300 quadcopters as I can and expend all the Patriot missiles out there. 

Developed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, Patriot missiles have been purchased by 13 countries since they came into service in the 1980s, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Israel. The missiles are guided by radar, making them ideal for locking onto other projectiles, as well as fast-moving aircraft. Drones, for what its worth, would seem to fall into that category.

The research firm Forecast International has a handy (albeit jargon-laden) description of how the Patriot works in practice:



When launched, the PAC-3 missile flies to an intercept point specified prior to launch by its ground-based fire solution computer. Target trajectory data can be updated during flyout by the means of a radio frequency uplink/downlink. Shortly before arrival at the intercept point, the missiles on board Ka-band seeker acquires the target, selects the optimal aim point and initiates terminal guidance. The attitude control motors, located in the missile forebody, fire explosively to refine the PAC-3 missiles course to assure direct body-to-body impact.



While theres something absurd about a retail quadcopter taking on a surface-to-air missile designed for full-scale war, the threat of weaponized drones is no joke. In recent months, Islamic State fighters have used consumer-grade drones loaded with explosives to attack Iraqi security forces and Western troops in Iraq.

One of the first strikes came in October, when a drone carrying munitions detonated at a Kurdish and French position in northern Iraq, killing two soldiers and injuring two others. Dozens of similar attacks have been carried out since the beginning of the year when the Islamic State announced a new Unmanned Aircraft of the Mujahideen unit, as The Washington Posts Joby Warrick has reported.

Still, the incident related by Perkins seemed to invite a degree of mockery.

It is clearly enormous overkill, Justin Bronk, a researcher at the British defense think tank Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC. But, he added, it certainly exposes in very stark terms the challenge which militaries face in attempting to deal with the adaptation of cheap and readily available civilian technology with extremely expensive, high-end hardware designed for state-on-state warfare.

Andrew Liptak of the Verge explained the drone-versus-Patriot problem by way of analogy.

While a fly buzzing around is a nuisance, he wrote, a fly swatter is a better solution than a shotgun.
SANAA, Yemen  An apparent military strike targeted a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of war-battered Yemen, killing dozens of people along a dangerous migrant route that leads to Libya and smuggling ships heading to Europe, U.N. and Yemeni officials said Friday.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack early Friday, which caused heavy loss of life among Somalis who first to came to Yemen to escape violence in their own homeland.

Two security officials in the Yemeni capital, which is controlled by Houthi rebels battling a Saudi-led coalition, said the attack was carried out by a coalition Apache helicopter. The claim could not immediately be confirmed.

Yemeni and U.N. officials said more than 40 people were killed and about 80 injured, adding that the death toll could rise.

Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, said 42 bodies were recovered from the narrow channel across the mouth of the Red Sea. Abdiker also said there were conflicting messages on whether the refugee boat was targeted by a warship or an attack helicopter.

A Pentagon spokesman, Adam Stump, said Friday that no U.S. aircraft were involved in the reported attack. Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates operate U.S.-manufactured Apache helicopters in the Yemeni theater.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has said that Shiite Houthi rebels use the Red Sea strait to smuggle weapons into the country, which has been devastated by years of warfare.

Images showed bodies strewn on the ground at the port of Hodeida in western Yemen, their faces covered in blankets. Abdiker said some bodies were brought to a fish market in the town because the mortuaries were full.

Abdulmalik Jarrallah, head of the Health Ministry office in Hodeida, said fishing boats carried dead and injured refugees to the port early Friday. Some of the injured are in critical condition, he said. Unfortunately we expect that the death toll will go up.

U.N. officials have helped some Somali refugees in Yemen return home. But the boat that came under attack was headed for Sudan with 140 people aboard, the U.N. refugee agency said. That suggested it was following an increasingly active migrant route to try to reach Libya and the smuggler boats making the dangerous Mediterranean crossings to Europe.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is appalled by the deaths, said William Spindler, the refugee agencys spokesman. The International Committee of the Red Cross called for an immediate investigation.

The attack underscores the perils for any vessel operating off Yemen, which has been ravaged by a nearly two-year-old war led by Saudi forces against rebel fighters believed to be supported by Iran and others. The country is also a base for militant factions including an al-Qaida branch that was targeted by a U.S.-led raid in late January. The casualties in that raid included a Navy SEAL who was killed during a counterattack.

Thousands of Somali refugees  who once came to Yemen to escape their countrys own chaos  have once again fled. Some have returned to Somalia and others have tried to make it to Europe through Libya  a route marked by a sharp rise in deaths.

On Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) released a report documenting 7,763 migrant deaths in 2016 worldwide, a 27 percent increase from the 6,107 recorded in 2015. Two-thirds of those deaths last year occurred in the Mediterranean Sea.

U.N. officials said they believed the refugees killed Thursday were likely headed to North Africa and then probably across the Mediterranean.

As conditions in Yemen deteriorate as a result of the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis, refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly fleeing onward, following established migratory routes, including across the Red Sea to Sudan with the intention of heading onward to Europe, Spindler said.

Despite the conflict, Yemen still harbors 255,000 Somali refugees, according to UNHCR. Between March 2015 and January 2017, 34,760 people fled from Yemen to Somalia  a mix of Somali refugees returning home and Yemenis escaping their country, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a research organization.

Some of the area around the strait is controlled by Houthi rebel fighters, who overran Yemens capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and forced the Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia.

Somalia is still struggling with a powerful Islamist insurgency and a looming famine, prompting many Somali refugees in Yemen to pay smugglers to take them to Europe rather than return home.

It is unclear exactly how many Somalis are departing Yemen with hopes of arriving in Europe. Overall, more than 6,500 Somalis arrived in Europe by sea in 2016, making Somalia one of the most common countries of origin for refugees, according to the IOM.

  

Sieff reported from Nairobi. The Washington Posts William Branigin, Brian Murphy and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
LONDON  Downing Street said Friday that it had been promised by the White House that it would not repeat claims that Britains main surveillance agency spied on Donald Trump, in what appears to be an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers on this side of the Atlantic.

The intervention followed on the heels of an extraordinary statement by GCHQ, Britains eavesdropping agency, which slapped down allegations that the Obama administration used the British agency to spy on Trump.

At a press briefing Friday, a spokesman for Theresa May, the British prime minister, said: We have received assurances from the White House that these allegations would not be repeated. The spokesman would not confirm reports in the British media that the White House had apologized to Britain.

GCHQ is the British equivalent of the National Security Agency and it usually remains tight-lipped on allegations related to intelligence matters. Its normal practice is to neither confirm nor deny claims.

Not this time.

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, GCHQ said in a statement.

The agencys public denial followed a contentious news briefing in Washington on Thursday where White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted that Trump stands by his explosive charge that Obama spied on him during the 2016 presidential election. Spicer has, however, attempted to soften Trumps initial allegation, saying that Trumps use of the word wiretap was not meant to be taken literally, but to refer to surveillance more generally.

During the briefing, Spicer cited claims made this week by Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and a regular commentator for Fox News. He told Fox News that three intelligence sources had said that Obama went outside the chain of command and used Britains GCHQ so theres no American fingerprints on this.

Spicer recounted that interview at the briefing, telling assembled reporters:



On Fox News, on March 14, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. 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. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trumps conversations, involving president-elect Trump, hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this.



The Daily Telegraph, a right-leaning British newspaper, said Friday that intelligence sources told the paper that Spicer and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trumps national security adviser, have apologized for the claims.

The apology came direct from them, a source told the paper.

In Washington, a senior White House official said that British officials had expressed their concerns to the White House, which responded by saying that Spicer had only referenced a story, not endorsed it.

Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster. Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story, the official said.

Analysts said that GCHQs unusual reaction was an attempt to distance itself from the raging debate in the U.S.

They really dont want to get drawn into the toxic contest going on between the administration and the intelligence agencies in the U.S., said Ewan Lawson, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. They want to put some pretty clear space between them.

He noted that the agencys quick, robust statement was unusual, but to stay silent would have given space to conspiracy theorists.



The Washington Posts Abby Phillip and Philip Rucker in Washington contributed to this report.
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla.  Authorities in Florida have stopped searching for a Colorado State University student and a yacht crew member who went missing in choppy Tampa Bay-area waters.

The Coast Guard said Thursday evening that it had ended the search for 27-year-old Andrew Dillman of New York and 21-year-old Jie Luo of China.

The two men had been missing since Tuesday evening. Authorities said 15 college students chartered the yacht, and Luo was among five who jumped from the boat to swim off Shell Key.

Authorities said Dillman jumped into the water when he saw Luo was struggling in the swift currents. Neither man wore a flotation device.

The Coast Guard said search efforts covered nearly 1,600 square miles (about 4,100 square kilometers).

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Information from: Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.), http://www.tampabay.com.
NEW YORK  Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch made it clear in a book and other writings what he thinks about assisted suicide and euthanasia: Hes not a fan.

His reasoning is not based on religious conviction but rather stems from his investigation of the subject stretching from ancient Greece to modern times.

In his 2006 book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, Gorsuch derided the idea that a person could take their own life as a way of achieving death with dignity.

He wrote, Human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.

Gorsuch, whose nomination is to be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, favors the power of the states and sticking closely to the texts of laws and Constitution as they were understood when written. But his views on some controversial subjects, such as how widely the Second Amendment applies or whether abortion should be legal, are not known. Assisted suicide is a different matter.

Legalizing the practice, he said, could be a slippery slope. Doctors, insurance companies and the healthiest in society might wind up looking for ways to shorten the lives of the frail and the elderly to preserve resources for those with more promising futures. Doing so, he said, would have a disproportionate impact on the poor, the powerless and minorities who sometimes do not receive the same quality of medical care and pain-control management when they are ill.

If a right to consensual homicide is eventually accepted into the law, we might ask what other ripple effects it could have on social and cultural norms. Why not, for example, allow individuals to sell their body parts or their lives? he asked.

And he suggested that if killing became a professional duty under certain circumstances, medical care professionals may someday face wrongful life lawsuits from families upset their relatives suffered needlessly when a doctor or nurse failed to advocate for death.

Still, his book made clear that his views do not interfere with a right of individuals to choose through living wills to reject certain potentially life extending measures, such as the use of a ventilator. That right was established in a landmark court case brought after the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan asked doctors to remove the ventilator from their comatose and severely brain damaged daughter. After the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in the Quinlans favor in 1976, the respirator was removed. She did not die, however, until 1985, of pneumonia, at age 31.

Gorsuchs opposition to assisted suicide is among the reasons that abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups alike believe that Gorsuch generally would join conservative justices in voting to restrict abortion. Gorsuch himself has not had a lot to say about abortion, either in his book or in more than 10 years as a federal appeals court judge. He was careful to note in the book that in the seminal Supreme Court abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, a fetus does not qualify as a person.

Gorsuchs largely dispassionate analysis of assisted suicide and euthanasia was published by Princeton University Press the same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

In it, Gorsuch traced the history of assisted suicide from ancient Greece through the modern-day legalization of the practice in the Netherlands and the state of Oregon.

He notes, for instance, that it was referred to as self-murder in Rhode Island in 1647 in an age when the bodies of those committing suicide would be dragged around town, stakes driven through them. Sometimes, grieving families were forced into poverty as property was snatched away.

By 1939, he said, a poll showed up to 46 percent of Americans favored some form of legal euthanasia.

The book contains few religious references, but he wrote: Though the Bible nowhere explicitly forbids suicide, from its earliest days Christianity taught against the practice.

The book, catering to those interested in an in-depth legal analysis, had a limited audience until Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump. Amazon.com now lists it as its hottest-selling euthanasia book. It came out less than a decade after the Supreme Court in 1997 ruled unanimously against doctors and their patients who claimed a constitutional right to death assisted by physicians.

The court left states free to resolve the question for themselves by voting 6 to 3 to reject then-Attorney General John Ashcrofts directive to preclude doctors in Oregon from aiding suicides. The justices did not address the constitutionality of laws banning assisted suicide for terminally ill adults and Gorsuch wrote that he believed the courts language encouraged state legislatures to experiment.

Besides Oregon, laws permitting assistance in dying for individuals have been passed in California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Montana and Washington.

In his book, Gorsuch wrote that in Oregon, the first state to permit assisted suicide, those who sought to die in the first seven years after legalization were almost all white and highly educated.

That, he wrote, highlighted the question of whether assisted suicide was a matter of necessity or more of a lifestyle choice for persons who have always tended to control their lives and now wish to control their death.

Poll after poll, he said, suggests that ethnic minorities in the U.S. are more concerned about the potential impact of legalized euthanasia on them than are their white counterparts. He said their relative unease might not be irrational given the quality of medical treatment provided to minority groups.

Derek Humphry, an 86-year-old best-selling author of Final Exit, about the practicalities of assisted suicide for the dying, said he was not alarmed by Gorsuchs nomination while the right to die is gathering momentum.

He predicted more northern states would pass laws within the next two decades allowing physician-assisted suicide. And if the issue reaches the Supreme Court, its a matter of nine opinions, not just his, Humphry said.

Besides, he added, People can change their minds on this as they grow older or see suffering.

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Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report from Washington.

___

Find APs reporting on Neil Gorsuch here: http://apne.ws/2mfXk4V

___

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org
SANTA FE  Time appears to be running out on a bill that would have saved New Mexicans from changing their clocks twice a year.

Under last-minute pressure on lawmakers to convene on the House floor to complete a state budget, the daylight saving time bill withered in the House Judiciary Committee on Friday morning. The bill already had passed the Senate.

Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, chairwoman of the committee, said Friday in a brief morning committee meeting that Senate Bill 239 would require a long discussion that the committee wasnt likely to have time for.

She said measures to change the Electoral College system and the state Livestock Board enforcement process also were not likely to be heard because they would require lengthy debate.

This years bid to keep the state on daylight saving time year-round made it deeper into the session than similar attempts in previous years.
SANTA FE  Gov. Susana Martinez will have at least two minimum-wage bills to choose from after the Legislature heads home.

And, of course, she could turn them both down.

One proposal, House Bill 442, would push the minimum wage up about 23 percent, from $7.50 to $9.25 an hour. It would also prohibit cities and counties in New Mexico from enacting laws that regulate the scheduling of private workers.

That bill passed the Senate on a 24-15 vote Friday afternoon.

The other measure, Senate Bill 386, would raise the wage 20 percent, to $9 an hour. It also would allow employers to pay workers an $8 training wage for up to 60 days.

It passed the House 41-27 late Thursday.

Now that each measure has cleared the House and the Senate, Martinez can pick one or reject them both.

The Republican governor has suggested shes open to a wage increase of some kind, though she hasnt said whether either of the Legislature-approved bills would be acceptable.

Martinez supports raising the minimum wage so long that its in line with neighboring states and doesnt hurt small businesses, spokesman Michael Lonergan said earlier this month.

Arizona and Colorado have minimum wages over $9 per hour, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the minimum wages of Texas, Oklahoma and Utah are all set at the federal minimum  $7.25 per hour.
PHOENIX  For a second day, activists are holding a peaceful 12-hour stakeout outside the Phoenix district office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake.

The group is urging Flake to reject the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Members of MoveOn.org say a so-called TrumpCare plan would tear away health care from 24 million people, defund Planned Parenthood, destroy Medicaid, and raise insurance premiums.

Similar health care stakeouts are being held at 31 other congressional offices nationwide.

Activists are chanting and holding signs and symbols of the health care emergency such as crutches and arm slings.

Flake is a moderate Republican who has refused to do town halls.

Many GOP lawmakers returning to their home districts have faced constituents angry with the Trump Administrations stance on health care and immigration issues.
AUSTIN, Texas  A Texas school district says Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is raising unfounded concerns about religious freedom over a spare classroom where Muslim students pray.

Muslim students at Liberty High School in Frisco have been allowed since 2009 to pray in a classroom thats vacant for part of the afternoon. School officials say the initiative never has attracted controversy.

But Paxtons office sent a letter to the district Friday questioning whether students of other faiths are excluded from using the room to pray, and asking that the school ensure it is open to everyone. Paxtons letter cited a positive profile of the prayer room that ran on the high schools student-run news website.

School district spokesman Chris Moore says the room is available to students of all walks of life.
TUCSON, Ariz.  A former Tucson Fire Department captain was convicted Friday of killing his ex-wife and two others in his second murder trial.

The Pima County Superior Court jury found David Watson guilty on all charges after less than two days of deliberations.

Watson was charged with one count of second-degree murder in the death of his ex-wife Linda Watson, who went missing in August 2000.

He also was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the 2003 fatal shootings of Linda Watsons mother, Marilyn Cox, and Coxs friend, Renee Farnsworth.

Watson, 47, was arrested more than a decade after the killings.

In his first trial, a jury announced last Nov. 22 that it couldnt reach a verdict after a trial that took over two months. The second trial began in January.

Watson faces an April 17 sentencing date set in a case that doesnt involve the death penalty.

Prosecutors said he killed his 35-year-old ex-wife during a bitter custody battle. Her body was found in the desert in October 2003 but wasnt identified until 2011 through DNA evidence due to a backlog at the medical examiners office.

Cox was embroiled in a legal battle in 2003 with David Watson over visitation rights involving her granddaughter, who was 4 years old when her mother disappeared.

Cox, 63, and Farnsworth, 53, had just dropped off the girl after a court-ordered visitation when they were gunned down in May 2003, according to authorities.

Defense lawyers said Watson was innocent and there was no evidence linking him to the killings.

David Watsons second ex-wife, Rosemary Watson, testified that she had lied when she provided him an alibi during both killings.

Watson worked for the Tucson Fire Department for 20 years and was promoted to captain in 2007. He resigned shortly after his arrest in April 2015.
Larry Nedrows two-year legal fight with the city of Waverly over access to a sidewalk has ended in a $40,000 settlement with the city.

"I just wanted that curb cut fixed, the former Waverly councilman and disability rights advocate said Wednesday.

Nedrow first complained to the city in June 2015 after he couldn't get onto the sidewalk on Heywood Street north of Waverly Intermediate School because his electronic wheelchair couldn't navigate the curb.

After filing a second complaint with the city and taking the issue up with school officials, nothing changed, he said.

So he filed a federal lawsuit alleging the inaction of city officials amounted to discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Passed in 1990, the ADA required city sidewalks to be handicap-accessible by 1996, Nedrow's complaint alleged.

Waverly officials have said the city can only do so much to address sidewalk issues such as these because the owners of the property abutting sidewalks are responsible for ensuring compliance with federal guidelines.

The city has ensured sidewalk issues are addressed in new housing developments and continues to revamp sidewalks when work is done on stretches under the city's care, former city administrator Doug Rix said.

The sidewalk Nedrow took issue with was the school district's responsibility, city officials said.

Nedrow filed his lawsuit in March 2016, asking a judge to order the city to make changes to the sidewalks.

In January, Nedrow parted ways with his lawyers to pursue the lawsuit on his own.

He continues to battle medical issues and opted to settle the case after mediation.

"It just is not worth the toll that it has taken on me mentally and physically, the polio survivor said.

"It was just too much to bear alone.

Nedrow provided information about the agreement to the Journal Star after city officials declined to release details.

The matter was amicably resolved, said City Attorney Mark Fahleson.

As part of the settlement, the city doesn't admit any fault or wrongdoing.

The sidewalk issue was never resolved, Nedrow said, but a letter sent to the city by the Waverly School District indicates the sidewalks in question will be replaced in August.
SANTA FE  Time appears to have run out on a bill that would have saved New Mexicans from changing their clocks twice a year.

Under last-minute pressure on lawmakers to convene on the House floor to complete a state budget, the daylight saving time bill withered in the House Judiciary Committee on Friday morning. The bill had already passed the Senate.

Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, chairwoman of the committee, said Friday in a brief morning committee meeting that Senate Bill 239 would require a long discussion that the committee wasnt likely to have time for.

She said measures to change the states Electoral College system and the state Livestock Board enforcement process also were not likely to be heard because they would require lengthy debate.

This years bid to keep the state on daylight saving time year-round made it deeper into the session than similar attempts in previous years.

 Maggie Shepard, mshepard@abqjournal.com

ELECTIONS: Voters would head to the polls on the same day every two years to pick school board members and city councilors under a proposal endorsed by the state Senate on Friday.

Supporters say it would boost turnout because people would have one Election Day to keep track of instead of heading to the polls several times over the course of a year for separate elections for schools, cities and other nonpartisan agencies.

The election would be held in November of odd-numbered years. General elections  in which voters fill state and federal offices  would remain in even years.

The bill, however, allows cities to opt out if they still want to hold separate elections.

Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, said the consolidation of elections would reduce costs and confusion. School elections draw as little as 2 percent turnout, he said.

This is a good deal for the voters, Ivey-Soto said.

The proposal won approval on a 28-10 vote. The measure now goes to the governor.

 Dan McKay, dmckay@abqjournal.com

SOLITARY: New limits on the use of solitary confinement in New Mexico prisons and jail are headed to the governors desk this year.

The Senate on Friday voted 29-3 in favor of a bill that would prohibit solitary confinement for inmates who are pregnant, under 18 years old or struggling with a serious mental illnesses, with just a few exceptions.

The proposal, sponsored by Democratic Reps. Antonio Moe Maestas of Albuquerque and Patricia Lundstrom of Gallup, had already cleared the House.

The Senate made a minor change to the bill, but the House quickly agreed late Friday. Its labeled House Bill 175.

Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, said government agencies in New Mexico have spent $26 million as a result of litigation over solitary confinement  evidence of the need for a new law.

This is about humane treatment for people who are in our prison system, Papen said.

 Dan McKay

VETOES: The state House joined the Senate early Friday by announcing that two of its bills are law, despite the governors veto.

House Majority Leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton, D-Albuquerque, said the governors vetoes of two House bills came too late to block the legislation.

The bills in questions are House Bills 126, which centers on medical student loans, and 144, which focuses on industrial hemp.

Gov. Susana Martinez, of course, says her vetoes are legally valid.

 Dan McKay
TOPEKA, Kan.  Kansas highest court on Friday cleared a major obstacle to the long-delayed construction of a big, new coal-fired power plant, rejecting an effort by an environment group to force the state to regulate emissions linked to climate change.

The state Supreme Court upheld a 2014 decision by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to give Sunflower Electric Power Corp. the go-ahead for its project. The utility wants to build an 895-megawatt plant adjacent to an existing one outside Holcomb, in southwestern Kansas and estimates the cost at $2.2 billion.

The Sierra Club sued, partly because the department didnt impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from the new plant. The group also argued that the agency didnt impose stringent enough standards for other pollutants, including mercury and nitrogen and sulfur dioxide. It suggested that the department was using proper air-pollution models and was rushing its decision.

But in its unanimous ruling , the Supreme Court said the Sierra Club could not show that the agencys action was unreasonable or arbitrary. Justice Marla Luckert wrote for the court that the group must do more than raise policy arguments.

The company said it was pleased with the decision, though spokeswoman Cindy Hertel called it an incremental step and said the utility continues to evaluate its plans. State Attorney General Derek Schmidt also was please. His office defended the department and he supports the project.

Amanda Goodin, an attorney for Earthjustice , representing the Sierra Club, said the courts decision opens the door for a lot of pollution in Kansas. The group has estimated that the new plant would generate 8 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year.

Building this plant is a big step backward, she said in a telephone interview.

Sunflower has been seeking to build a new coal-fired plant outside Holcomb for more than a decade. The project has long had strong support among legislators, particularly those from western Kansas, who have viewed it as economic development.

State House Majority Leader Don Hineman, a Dighton Republican, said while its too early to tell how quickly the company could move toward building the plant, the Supreme Court decision is good news.

The economic benefit would accrue to the state, Hineman said.

Sunflower provides electricity to 350,000 central and western Kansas residents through six smaller cooperatives. Its plans for the new plant have called for selling much of the new power in Colorado, long a sore point for many environmentalists.

Sunflower didnt obtain a state air-quality permit until 2010, about 18 months after then-Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson brokered a deal with the company and the Republican-dominated Legislature that included approval of some green energy initiatives. The permit came just weeks before the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued its first rules on greenhouse gases.

The Sierra Club sued, and the state Supreme Court in 2013 ordered KDHE officials to make changes dealing with other pollutants. The department responded by issuing what it called an addendum to the original permit, and the Sierra Club sued again.

The department argued that because it wasnt issuing a new permit to replace the one issued late in 2010, Sunflower still was not be required to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The Supreme Court agreed.

The Sierra Club pressed its second lawsuit as the EPA under then-Democratic President Barack Obama pushed states to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called climate change a hoax, and new EPA chief Scott Pruitt has said he doesnt believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, rejecting mainstream science. Trumps budget proposes to eliminate funding for the effort to restrict power plant emissions.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjdhanna .
ANCHORAGE, Alaska  A federal wildlife agency studying the Steller sea lion decline in Alaskas Aleutian Islands is looking for help from citizen scientists. Volunteers dont need raincoats or rubber boots to pitch in, just eyeballs and a computer screen.

Fisheries researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration want them to sort through 500,000 images captured by 20 cameras at six remote sites. The job is simple: Flag photos that show sea lions.

NOAA Fisheries biologist Katie Sweeney is specifically looking for 256 Steller sea lions captured starting in 2011 that were permanently marked by branding, allowing them to track movement patterns. The image sorting tells researchers which photos are most important to review.

If we see these animals over time, we can estimate their survival, Sweeney said from her office at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

Steller sea lions are the largest members of the eared seal family. Adult males in the Aleutians can grow to 2,400 pounds and females to 800 pounds, Sweeney said.

They are found in the North Pacific from Japan and Russia to Alaska and as far south as the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California.

The western population, from Prince William Sound to the Aleutians, was listed as endangered in 1997. They fell to their lowest numbers in 2003 and the population since then has increased just 2.7 percent annually. Sea lions in the far western Aleutians were especially hard hit, declining by 94 percent over the last 30 years.

No one knows why. Tracking marked sea lions has indicated they are not simply moving east to other parts of Alaska or west to Russia. Contaminants and poor nutrition are among the possibilities, but answers dont come easy because of the expense and time needed to reach the remote locations where they live. NOAA in 2012 turned to remote cameras to gather more information.

The 20 cameras work year-round, snapping a digital photograph every 10 to 30 minutes during daylight.

We get on a research vessel and we are out 1,200 miles in the Aleutian Islands, Sweeney said. We go to each site and have to pull out the SD cards and download them.

A handful of people who volunteered to check the images could not keep up with the volume.

Computer analysis was not an option because creating an automated process would have been expensive and time consuming, Sweeney said.

We kind of need the human eye for it, she said.

Researchers turned to crowdsourcing. Theyre working with the Zooniverse platform, a team of programmers and researchers who have created web-based systems to enable citizen participation in research across the disciplines, from astronomy to zoology, according to spokeswoman Laura Trouille, director of citizen science at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

About 2,200 volunteers starting Wednesday took a short tutorial on how to help sort the first 30,000 images.

One volunteer was Charlene Andersson, a teacher at Meadows Elementary School in Valencia, California, who saw the project as an opportunity to engage her students in curriculum on animals and their habitats. That led to questions on endangered species and causes for sea lion decline.

Theyre so excited about contributing to the project, Andersson said. Theyre coming in and saying, Can we go on the site right now?'

Sweeney hoped volunteers would finish that first batch by June, when she leaves for the Aleutians to count sea lions and brand more of them. Instead, the citizen scientists surprised her and zipped through the first batch in a day and a half. Researchers have uploaded more images.

They have also launched a second phase of the project: Asking volunteers to look at photos with sea lions to see if any animals are carrying the permanent marks that reveal where the sea lions were born, their age and their gender.

The sorting will help researchers focus on the most important images.

Of these 10,000 images, these 100 are the good ones you want to look at, Sweeney said.

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Online:

Steller Watch: http://bit.ly/2n4jUgA
SANTA FE  A bid by the New Mexico House to follow in the steps of the Senate and override Gov. Susana Martinezs veto of a teacher sick leave bill has failed, leaving the veto in effect.

On a party-line vote, the House voted 36-31 this afternoon in favor of the override  or nine votes short of the two-thirds majority that was needed to approve it.

The veto override bid was launched by Rep. Christine Trujillo, D-Albuquerque, who said the vetoed bill would have helped teachers and students.

That view was backed by other House Democrats.

If a sick teacher has to force herself to come to work  that ultimately impacts student learning, said Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, D-Los Alamos.

However, Rep. Jim Smith, R-Tijeras, called the override attempt premature, and pointed out teacher attendance only makes up 5 percent of educators state-sanctioned evaluations.

Im confident we can work with the governor to come up with a reasonable solution, Smith said.

Martinez vetoed the bill last week, despite it having received overwhelming support in both legislative chambers. That included a 64-3 vote in the House on Feb. 20.

The Senate then voted 34-7 to override Martinezs veto, with Sen. Craig Brandt, R-Rio Rancho, leading the charge. The vote marked the first time either legislative chamber had moved to successfully override a Martinez veto.

However, without the support of House Republicans, whose leadership had vowed not to back the override attempt, the effort appeared doomed from the start in the 70-member House.

The legislation, House Bill 241, would have allowed teachers to take all their contractual free time  10 days annually in most school districts  without facing a deduction on their evaluations.

Under the current system, educators can be absent from the classroom for three days without penalty but lose points on the fourth unexcused day.

The second-term governor said in her veto message that she understood the desire to help teachers, but the proposal went too far. The attendance component of evaluations, she said, had resulted in a substantial drop in teacher absences, which saves money by decreasing spending on substitute teachers and helps students learn.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  In a story March 17 about a Kansas man accused of tainting a lab with radioactive waste, The Associated Press misstated the name of an organization he founded. Ahmed el-Sherif founded the American Muslim Council of Greater Kansas City. The words Kansas City were mistakenly left off in the original story.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Kansas man accused of tainting lab with radioactive waste

The former owner and operator of a Kansas City-area lab is accused in a federal indictment of illegally storing radioactive material that tainted the site in an industrial park, costing U.S. taxpayers $760,000 to clean up

By JIM SUHR

Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo.  A Kansas chemist is accused in a federal indictment of illegally storing radioactive material that contaminated his now-closed lab in a suburban Kansas City industrial park, costing U.S. taxpayers $760,000 to clean up as a Superfund site.

Thursdays indictment and federal prosecutors did not specify Ahmed el-Sherifs source of isotope Carbon-14 and Radium-226 that he used to process pharmaceutical compounds at his Beta Chem Laboratory in Lenexa, Kansas.

Radioactive materials commonly are used in research to create and test new medicines, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys website, which also notes research labs must follow strict rules when ordering, storing, using and disposing of radioactive material.

Radium that is swallowed or inhaled can accumulate in a persons bones. Long-term exposure increases the risk of developing several diseases, such as lymphoma, bone cancer, and diseases that affect the formation of blood, the EPA says.

Online court records Friday did not list an attorney for el-Sherif, the labs radiation safety officer accused of illegally storing hazardous waste and obstruction by providing bogus Beta Chem tax returns meant to demonstrate his ability to cover the sites cleanup costs.

El-Sherif is a prominent regional Muslim and interfaith leader, having founded the American Muslim Council of Greater Kansas City.

The indictment alleges el-Sherif was licensed by Kansas to use Carbon-14 and solvents but eventually lost that permission after an inspection found extensive radioactive contamination in the lab.

After the state seized the lab in October 2013, EPA investigators a few months later found numerous containers containing hazardous wastes and tainted with radiation. Of 1,134 at the lab screened, most contained hazardous waste and almost all of the containers had elevated levels of radiation, according to the indictment.

The indictment did not say if people other than el-Sherif had access to the tainted lab.

The EPAs completed the cleanup in March 2015.
Hyundai Motor India has appointed First Partners as its public relations consultant for India following a multi-agency pitch. First Partners mandate involves supporting Hyundais corporate communication and brand initiatives across all Hyundai offerings in India.

Speaking on the appointment, Atul Ahluwalia, Founding Partner, First Partners, said, We are pleased that Hyundai Motor India has chosen First Partners as their Public Relations partner. I am confident that our teams rich experience in the auto sector, coupled with the business outcome-focused communication approach of our firm, will help us further consolidate Hyundais position in the Indian market. We are looking forward to a long-term and successful association.

First Partners is a premier full-service communications consultancy which specialises in integrating communication solutions with a single-minded focus on delivering business outcomes. The firm has offices in Noida, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, with an execution delivery network totalling to 31 cities across India.
Salt Brand Solutions has roped in Namrata Nandan as their Chief Business Officer. Nandan comes aboard with the mandate to manage all existing businesses and drive growth for the organisation.

She joins Salt Brand Solutions with over 23 years of experience in advertising industry. Prior to her stint at Salt, Nandan had served as the Co-Founder of Conviction Brandworks. She has also worked with leading advertising and marketing firms like McCann Mumbai as Senior Vice President & GM, McCann Erickson India as Vice President & GM, J Walter Thompson as Account Director, O&M Advertising as Group Account Manager, and Y&R Brands as Account Manager. Her longest stint was with McCann, which spanned 12 years, during which she headed the agencys Bangalore and then, Mumbai office.

Nandan has partnered with a rich and diverse range of businesses and brands in the course of her career, including, Colgate, Unilever, TVS, Britannia, Marico, LOreal, Radio Mirchi, Piramal, and Bombay Dyeing, to name a few.

Commenting on Nandans appointment, Mahesh Chauhan, Founder, Salt Brand Solutions, said, As we now gear up for the next stage of our evolution as an organisation totally invested in building successful businesses, we felt the need to get another like-minded and driven leader. Namratas utopian world-view, love for building powerful brands and desire to succeed reverberated with us. I have known her for a couple of decades and have always wanted to work with her. The journey just got more exciting.

On her new role, Nandan said, Salt Brand Solutions is an essential ingredient in my quest to follow my heart. Mahesh Chauhan is one of those inspirational people I met in my journey of advertising and having this opportunity to work closely with him and his young, raring to go team is something I look forward to.
Federal Department of Finance

Bern, 17.03.2017 - Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer will take part in the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors under the German G20 presidency in Baden-Baden on 17 and 18 March 2017. Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan will accompany him. The topics to be discussed at the meeting include in particular the global economic situation, fiscal and monetary policy, budgetary policy, structural reforms, the free movement of capital, and tax and financial market regulation agendas. The Head of the Federal Department of Finance will also conduct bilateral talks on the fringes of the meeting.

Important topics at the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors under the German presidency are global growth and the resilience of economies to crises. Switzerland is committed to open markets  particularly in terms of capital flows  and is against protectionism in the financial sphere. Switzerland welcomes the agenda for more resilient economies and in the process reiterates the importance of balanced budgets. In terms of tax policy, Switzerland is of the view that the tax debate should be conducted with more emphasis on the growth perspective. Switzerland is determined to meet the international obligations in terms of tax policy and has been working hard on a swift new proposal entitled tax proposal 17 following the rejection of the third series of corporate tax reforms. In the area of financial market regulation, Switzerland is in favour of implementing the agreed central standards. However, no further standards should be created on detailed issues.

Switzerland is actively working to improve correspondent banking relationships. The objective under Germany's G20 presidency is also to create solid requirements for remittances and improve the dialogue between the players involved. As part of Switzerland's commitment to the financial sector, it will also organise a meeting of the G20 Green Finance Study Group in Basel.

At the invitation of Germany, which assumed the G20 presidency on 1 December 2016, Switzerland will take part in the meetings of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, as well as the deputies' preparatory meetings and the working groups dealing with financial and monetary issues in 2017. The other meetings at ministerial level will take place at the IMF meetings in Washington in April and October.

Switzerland's participation in the G20 Finance Track highlights its good relations with Germany as well as its significance in the international economic and monetary system. Switzerland is actively involved in the discussions both at the technical and ministerial levels.

Address for enquiries

Peter Minder, Head of FDF Communications

Tel. 079 437 73 61, peter.minder@gs-efd.admin.ch

Publisher

Federal Department of Finance

https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html



Federal Department of Finance

https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html




The trial of Samsungs chief Jay Y. Lee has been given to another judge on Friday after judge Lee Young-hoon was accused of being connected to the actors in the scandal that led to Lees arrest. The judge asked to be reassigned himself, a spokesman for Seoul Central District Court told the media, refusing to reveal what prompted the judge to make such a request. On Thursday, a South Korean lawmaker alleged that Lee Young-hoons father-in-law was a financial backer of Choi Soon-sil, one of the main actors in the aforementioned scandal. Choi was a close associate of former President Park Geun-hye who allegedly helped Lee facilitate a controversial merger of Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T in 2015 after Samsungs chief paid more than $37 million in bribes to several organizations to which she was connected.

Park was formally impeached by the Constitutional Court last Friday and has now been called in for questioning as a suspect in the investigation that led to Lees arrest. The organizations connected to Choi which allegedly received bribes from Samsung Groups Vice Chairman have also previously backed Parks policy initiatives. Lee Young-hoons father-in-law recently denied allegations that hes been in contact with Choi and her family after Parks father was assassinated in 1979. Lee Young-hoon has only presided over a preparatory hearing in the trial on March 9 and wont be involved in the case anymore. Both Samsung and Lees legal representatives have yet to comment on this turn of events.

The case against Lee that some have labeled the trial of the century is currently set to be concluded in late May, though the proceedings could be dragged out until September if the defendant ends up appealing the initial verdict. Prosecutors claim that Lee embezzled corporate funds to bribe Choi in an effort to secure his position as the de facto heir of Samsung Group. The merger outlined above gave more power to the part of the conglomerate controlled by the founding Lee family that currently only holds a minority share in Samsung. Lee allegedly paid bribes to Choi to obtain approval of the merger from the largest state pension fund in South Korea which owned a portion of Cheil Industries and ended up voting for the consolidation despite the fact that it lost a significant sum of money on the deal.
Yesterday, Sprint announced that they would begin pre-orders of the LG G6 today, and well its now official. You can pre-order the LG G6 in Ice Platinum and Black right now. You can pick it up for $0 down and $29.50 per month. Or you can but it outright at $708. That puts the Sprint LG G6 just below the price of the AT&T variant, but above both T-Mobile and Verizons pricing. Sprint notes on their website that pre-orders will ship on April 4th, likely in time for a April 7th release date, seeing as that is the date that Sprint will have them in store.

Sprint, like the other carriers and retailers, do also have a few freebies available for those looking to purchase the LG G6. Of course, the free Google Home offer still stands for the Sprint LG G6, but they are also giving out 49-inch LG Smart TVs with the purchase of LGs latest flagship handset. Those are some pretty cool freebies for a new smartphone, and of course if you dont want the freebies, you could sell them since they are yours to do with what you want.

The LG G6 is the latest from the South Korean manufacturer and it launched in South Korea earlier this month to quite a bit of fanfare. The LG G6 has already been doing quite well over in South Korea, and thats not really a surprise given the fact that the LG G6 is a fantastic smartphone. Its sporting a 5.7-inch 18:9 aspect ratio QHD+ display (sporting a 28801440 resolution), powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Now this is the US model, which means you are getting wireless charging included here. Which is a nice feature  especially to have it out of the box. The LG G6 does have a 3300mAh battery, but it is not removable this time around. The LG G6 is launching around the US on April 7th, so be sure to get your pre-order in now before shipping dates begin to slip. You can hit up the link below to get your pre-order in now.
A 41-year-old Lincoln man was sentenced to 18 months in prison Wednesday after authorities intercepted more than a half-pound of Ecstasy bound for his Lincoln house last summer.

Prosecutors charged Christopher B. Toman in June with delivering or having the intent to deliver Ecstasy and delivering or having the intent to deliver alprazolam.

The investigation began in San Francisco, where a Customs and Border Protection specialist opened a suspicious package addressed to Toman from the Netherlands on May 24 and found 9.1 ounces of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, an affidavit said.

The Customs specialist alerted a Homeland Security investigator in Omaha, who in turn contacted Lincoln police, according to the affidavit.

Toman was charged with possession of Ecstasy in September after officers intercepted another package containing a smaller amount of the drug concealed in candy wrappers.

He pleaded no contest to the charges.

After serving his sentence, Toman will be subject to 18 months of post-release supervision. He was fined $1,000.
Numerous leaks are helping Samsung promote the Galaxy S8, industry watchers believe, as reported by Business Korea. Samsung recently started its marketing campaign for its upcoming Android-powered flagship, and it seems that the South Korean company is off to a strong start as its This is a phone promotional video that you can see below was viewed over 22 million times in the first two weeks following its release. These are all good news for the largest phone maker in the world thats looking to use the Galaxy S8 to bounce back from the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco that saw the company discontinue its flagship device last fall following reports of numerous units catching fire and exploding.

Apart from the Galaxy S8 thats rumored to sport a 5.8-inch display, Samsung is also expected to release the Galaxy S8 Plus that is said to feature a 6.2-inch panel. Both devices are rumored to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip and Exynos 8895 in certain territories, as well as 4GB of RAM. In addition to a rear-facing fingerprint scanner, the Galaxy S8 will also likely ship with an iris scanner that Samsung initially introduced on the Galaxy Note 7, and the upcoming flagship is also rumored to feature full facial recognition capabilities, as well as IP68 certification, meaning it will be resistant to both dust particles and water. The phone is also expected to feature an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant called Bixby.

Sources from the securities industry believe that the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus will outsell the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge. Samsungs 2016 flagship duo sold approximately 50 million units to date and was considered to be tremendously successful, so it remains to be seen whether Samsung truly manages to achieve even greater results with the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus. In any case, more information on both devices is bound to follow soon seeing how the Seoul-based tech giant already confirmed it will unveil its next-generation flagship on March 29. According to recent reports, both the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus will start hitting the market in the second half of April.

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Spotify will make some of its music available exclusively to paid subscribers, the Financial Times reports. The popular streaming service is reportedly close to signing a new set of licensing deals with major record labels that have been in the works for months now. The deals are said to help Spotify advance its ambitions to go public as the company is rumored to be preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). The Stockholm-based music service is reportedly trying to strike deals that will see it lower the royalty fees it pays to music labels, but in exchange, it will also limit some songs and albums to its paying customers, thus going back on its year-long policy that made many labels and artists unhappy with the company.

Spotifys free plan generates revenue through advertising but its far less efficient than its premium subscription model, which is why music labels have been pushing for the company to limit some songs to the latter for years now. The popular streaming service has so far been unwilling to do so and has clashed with a number of major players in the industry as a result of that policy. Taylor Swift pulled all of her music from Spotify back in 2014 in protest of that issue and many other artists threatened to do the same. Following months of negotiations, Spotify could now finalize new music rights deals in the coming weeks, sources with knowledge of the matter claim, meaning the company might start limiting some music to premium subscriptions as early as this spring.

According to the report, music labels with whom Spotify will soon sign the agreements outlined above include Universal, Warner, and Sony, the so-called big three that owns the majority of the most popular music in the world. The service apparently conceded to some of their conditions as its looking to improve its general appeal before an IPO that its been rumored to be preparing for years now. While Spotifys revenue has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years, the increase in royalty fees that followed its growth is still preventing the company from becoming profitable, which is a major issue that the firm needs to resolve before going public and trying to convince investors to purchase its shares.
Advertising is Googles primary source of income, and the YouTube advertisements which contribute substantially to that income, have recently come under fire from the UK government because their ads were appearing next to extremist YouTube videos. The UK government has pulled all of their ads from Google until some guarantees can be made as to the placement of their ads  ones for the BBC, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy. The UK government is not the only complaint that Google has received and other companies, such as The Guardian, Channel 4, the FCA, Transport for London, and LOreal, have also reportedly suspended their advertising as well.

One of the problems is the way advertising is sold  the advertiser cannot specify where they want each ad to be placed, but they buy into a programmatic system that is entirely automated and places ads where they will target the most people. Sometimes these ads end up next to a video that has questionable tastes or is an outright hate video. Ronan Harris, Managing Director, Google UK said, Weve begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network. Google has worked hard in the past to shut down fake news stories and even banned publishers from its AdSense networks. Their policies are written to prohibit ads from appearing on the same pages as hate videos, or ones that are gory or offensive, but as Google notes  with over 400 hours of video uploaded every minute of every day, things are bound to slip through Googles scrutiny.

Last year alone, Google removed nearly 2 billion bad ads and prevented ads on over 300 million YouTube videos. But Harris said they have heard from our advertisers and agencies loud and clear that they expect Google to do more to prevent their ads from rubbing shoulders with questionable video content. Google says they are committed to reviewing all policies and controls, putting new controls in place, and working with their advertisers to gain back their trust. After all, Google is advertising, and in this politically correct world, advertisers are scrutinizing their advertising dollars more than ever.
Thirty-two people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Nebraska in a three-day operation spanning five Midwestern states, the agency said this week.

In all, 86 foreign nationals were apprehended in Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota, spokesman Shawn Neudauer said.

This month's operation was "routine" and focused on apprehending immigration fugitives, people who re-entered the U.S. after being deported and criminals, the release said.

Immigrants who illegally re-entered the U.S. after prior deportations and immigrants with orders for removal were both low deportation priorities under the Obama administration.

The agency didn't have a breakdown Thursday of where arrests were made in the state, Neudauer said.

However, among the arrests were a 35-year-old Mexican national found in Omaha who had been convicted of firearms offenses, and a 33-year-old Salvadoran national in Omaha convicted of assault and battery, disorderly conduct, carrying a concealed weapon and possessing marijuana, he said.

Of the 86 arrested, 52 had prior criminal convictions in addition to their illegal immigration status, 10 were lawful permanent residents with criminal convictions and 23 had re-entered the U.S. after previously being deported, which is a felony, the release said.

Nebraska saw more arrests than any other state. Officers arrested 26 in Minnesota, 23 in Iowa, four in North Dakota and one in South Dakota, the release said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of the Republic of Artsakh told Armenpress the Azerbaijani forces made more than 35 ceasefire violations across the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

The Ministrys statement reads: On March 16 and overnight March 17 the Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire regime more than 35 times by firing over 450 shots from various caliber small arms at the Armenian positions in the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

The Defense Army forces of Artsakh are in full control of the situation in the frontline and continue conducting the reliable protection of military posts.
Just a year after the funky crossover got launched, SsangYong decided to release a bigger version of it, thus coming up with the Tivoli XLV.

Based on the standard model, the XLV adds a lot more luggage and passenger space, while also coming with some redesigned elements. The bumpers, stoplights, rims, and other small details are different from the normal Tivoli to better differentiate the two models. SsangYong Tivoli XLV is offered with a choice of a Euro 6 compliant 1.6 litre petrol or 1.6 litre diesel engine, and matched with the option of a 6-speed manual transmission or 6-speed Aisin automatic, two-wheel drive or four wheel drive.
AMG

kW

With the advent of the DB11 , the British automaker gave the public a glimpse of where the company is heading toward concerning design. But with the 2018 Aston Martin Vantage, which is due to have its first public outing in late 2017. Around November, reportthe peeps over at Motoring, which is a month or so after the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA) opens its doors.Speaking to the Australian publication, Dr. Andy Palmer declared that the new Vantage will be bewitching. Its more revolutionary, Astons head honcho commented. To give you a hint, take a DB10, mate it with a Vulcan . Then you start to get somewhere close to how it will look. So lets make a quick recap: James Bonds car plus Astons track-bred hypercar equals new Vantage.The DB11 and Vantage are so clearly separated now, Palmer thinks no one will mistake one for the other, not even the elderly. One of the clear briefs I gave to Marek [ Aston Martin s design head] coming in, is that my now 79-year-old mother needs to be able to tell the difference between a Vantage and DB11.And just as if things couldnt get any better, Palmer reiterated that the company he manages will always offer a manual. Thats a particularly bold statement from such a small automaker, more so when you remember that big names such as Ferrari and Lamborghini have abandoned the stick shift.In the first instance, the next-generation Vantage will be available with the M178 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 from Mercedes-. Its not known if it will mirror the Mercedes-AMG GT specs in Astons tune, but then again, expect more ponies than what todays 4.7-liter V8 offers. More specifically, expect 476 PS (350) and 630 Nm at the very least from the M178 blunderbuss.These numbers translate to 4.0 seconds to 100 km/h (62 mph) in the facelifted Mercedes-AMG GT, and a top speed of 304 km/h (189 mph).
kWh

EV

kilowatt

The Soul EV went on sale in its domestic country in May 2014, with the Old Continent and the U.S. following soon after. The 27battery of the lithium-ion polymer variety is enough for 212 kilometers in the Euro-spec model, whereas the U.S. version offers an EPA range of 93 miles.For 2018, according to a leaked specs sheet from Kia-World , the Soulgets even better. Thanks to a 3 kWh increase in capacity, range is now up to 250 kilometers. In the U.S., that will translate to more than 100 miles, 113 miles tops. In other words, the electrified Soul is hot on the heels of the 107-mile/250-kilometer 2017 model year Nissan Leaf.The document, which is written in German and addressed to a German dealer, further reveals that the number of cells went up from 192 to 200. Theres also the matter of voltage: 360V versus 375V. As for weight, the bigger battery tips the scales at 290 kilograms compared to the 277-kilo pack in the current model year of the Soul EV. This, in turn, is a pointer that curb weight of the vehicle will also go up from the present-day 1,565 kg.From a German-spec 230V/10A plug, the 30 kWh battery can be juiced up to 100 percent in circa 20 hours. A 6.6-hour charging point is capable of doing the same in 5.5 to 6 hours. Slated to go official in the latter part of 2017 for 2018, the Soul EV is expected to soldier on as a great value and nicely equipped means of eco-friendly transportation.Its biggest competitor in the segment is, of course, the Nissan Leaf. But as the Leaf prepares to enter the 2018 model year with all-new bits and bobs (including a 60 kWh battery), Kia would better think long and hard about the limitations of the Soul EV.
Fortunately, the aftermarket side of the industry is more than glad to assist the high-riding Porscha with delivering the decibel fest that should accompany any model wearing the Porsche crest.And one of the developers that has inclided the four-pot Macan on its list is Armytrix. The Malaysian-based company produces some of the loudest exhausts in the world, so those in the market for a more vocal Macan have plenty of reasons to be excited."So, how does the two-liter Macan sound when gifted with Armytrix hardware?" we hear you asking. To answer the question, the developer has come up with the piece of footage at the bottom of the page.The clip offers us both a revving and dynamic perspective, so you'll get a respectable idea on the Porscha's newfound aural identity.And since we're discussing screaming Macans, we can't help but talk about the other end of the line-up. You know, the void found above the Turbo.Porsches have traditionally managed to top their class in terms of overall performance without being the most powerful in the lot, but it still feels like we'd need a more muscular model above the 440 hp Macan Turbo fitted with the Performance Package.And the competition also seems to fuel the demand for a more powerful Macan at the top. It's enough to look at the 510 hp Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio to understand that. Oh, and let's not forget that the Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 and the potential Range Rover Velar SVR could bring V8 power to the segment.Fortunately, Zuffenhausen will fill the said void with the help of the Macan Facelift , which should arrive by next spring.
SUV

Local magazine Auto Ifeng has just published photos of the updated Xavoda Octavia, which they understand will be on sale later this year. The Shanghai Auto Show is coming up next month, and that's where we bet it will be revealed, along with the re-named VW Arteon.Of the two body styles, the China-made Scout looks the worst. It's riding on what look like 16-inch wheels with equally small tires. What's more, the dual headlight design is even uglier when you take out all the LED magic and install regular xenon projectors. The Scout is also missing its roof rack.Still, it's the Octavia sedan that surprised us the most, as it features a totally different taillight design that looks remarkably similar to that of the bigger Superb, borrowing even the 3D cut.We made a little collage so that you guys can spot the increased width more easily. It's said that the sedan will be offered with an 116 hp 1.2-liter or a 150 hp 1.4-liter turbo. The wagon will have the latter too, but its base engine will be a naturally-aspirated 110 hp 1.6-liter.During the press days at the 2016 Paris Motor Show, Skoda CEO Bernhard Maier announced that the new Kodiaqwill be produced in China. The Czech carmaker will use the firm partnership between the Volkswagen Group and the local SAIC Motor. It's already yielded tremendous sales with the Yeti SUV.The Czech brand aims to double its sales volume in China to 300,000 units at the end of 2016 to 600,000 vehicles by 2021, and the Octavia is a core model. Too bad it looks so weird!
The latest in the series involves a law firm called Jones Day, which was hired by the German conglomerate to perform an internal investigation within the VW Group to find "the ins and outs" of the emissions cheat.Their conclusions were important for Volkswagen, and this was something that the investigators on the case acknowledged.Munich prosecutors then decided to raid the German offices of Jones Day two days ago, on the same day when the headquarters of Audi were surprised with an unannounced visit from the authorities. Evidently, the search was meant to help investigators find everyone responsible for developing and approving the defeat device.The raid on the law firms office has raised suspicion regarding the level of disclosure of the lawyers hired by Volkswagen. Some believe that authorities think that the legal team knows more than it divulged, which would be a severe blow for the automaker and its defenders.We do not believe that a company would take risks to this level after the Dieselgate scandal, and not when the entire world is watching the case.Volkswagen was not happy to hear that investigators raided the offices of the law firm it hired for an internal review. The company issued a press release to comment the situation, and the action was described by VWs officials as unacceptable in every respect, and a clear breach of the principles of the rule of law in Germany.The automakers officials have threatened to take all action at their disposal against these proceedings. If the investigators did find incriminating evidence in their search, but lacked the proper warrants and approvals, the German conglomerate could have a shot of dismissing the evidence in court . It all depends on legal matters that are too complicated to discuss on an automotive website.
SUV

HP

The first beneficiary of the deal is the C8 Preliator Spyder, which got delayed for a couple of months so that every unit will get a Koenigsegg-designed and built V8. The naturally aspirated unit replaced an older Audi-sourced V8 that had a supercharger.Koenigseggs engine for Spyker provides more power and more torque than the motor that it replaced. According to an interview for Road&Track , the boss of Spyker, Victor Muller, said that he had talks with five companies for the engine deal, and Koenigsegg won with flying colors.Apparently, the Swedish supercar maker was a perfect match for the Dutch company, whose boss was not happy with the superchargers whine of the previous V8 it used until this deal.The collaboration will be expanded in the future, as Koenigsegg will supply the V8 motor that will equip the firstfrom Spyker, which is still going to happen, if we consider the statements made in this interview.Another interesting detail about the new motor came from Christian von Koenigsegg, the founder of the homonymous brand, who said that the V8 is over-engineered for 600because it has the same components and technologies as a 1,500 HP motor from his company.Thanks to the over-engineering part, Koenigsegg went on to estimate that an engine like this could last for 200 years or something. Evidently, that is not a guarantee, but Mr. Koenigsegg meant that the unit is not flimsy in any way, and that its components will be unexpectedly durable for an exotic car with 600 HP on tap.The five liter V8 is described as a jewel of an engine, and the founder of Koenigsegg even admitted that it is easier to the company he runs to sell this kind of motor at a premium than changing is internals just to make them adapted to the desired power output.Should Spyker customers dream of attaining 1,360 HP? Not so fast, explains Mr. Koenigsegg, because they would still need various parts to accomplish that. The differences include higher flow injectors, changing the compression ratio, the exhaust headers, the intake, and fitting the dry-sump lubrication system.
The accident took place on Ventra Ionia Main assembly line , where a technician named Wanda Holbrook was performing regular maintenance duties on units installed in sector 104. A robot assigned to area 103 somehow ended up in the wrong sector, where it crushed the 57-year-old technician to death.Her spouse, William Holbrook, filed a wrongful death complaint in Michigan federal court, and it targets five robotics companies in North America.Those corporations are accused of negligence and other behaviors that have led to the death of his spouse, who was killed by a robot that was not supposed to be present in the sector where she was working.The assembly line manufactured bumpers and trailer hitches, and the company is a supplier for several automotive brands that have no relation to this incident.According to the complaint filed in the Michigan federal court , seen on Courthouse News , it appears that the said robot operated irregularly when the accident happened.Fortunately for all humans, not all robots can go haywire and kill us, but accidents can happen. Those accidents can be linked to programming errors that make let the robotic workers be present where they are not supposed to be, but they can also be related to labeling defects, which could lead to misguiding those robots. Regardless of the case, anything that is made by humans is subjected to error.Any programmer can tell you that mistakes happen, and that it does not matter how long an app or software gets tested, but bugs will occur, and they require frequent patches to keep things operational.The same goes for industrial robots, which need humans for repairs and maintenance. Evidently, they also need to be monitored, especially to prevent tragic situations like these.
This is an extremely important time in American politics. I attended the Town Hall on March 13 ("Jeff Fortenberry confronted by crowd at town hall meeting," March 14). There was some yelling. People are very passionate and fearful concerning what is happening in Washington. Many people could not hear questions being asked and Congressman Fortenberry would not share the microphone. He answered very few questions to anyone's satisfaction. He seemed uninformed on at least two things he was asked about. Some specifically asked for a yes or no answer. That only happened once.
According to the survey specialists , the service quality scores have received an improvement overall in 2016 over the previous year, reaching 809 in 2016 from 782 in 2015.If that was not enough, the analysts have also observed that the other four measures that are used to name a winner in this study have also been improved over the levels of 2015.The American survey company takes the following into consideration: service advisor, service initiation, service facility, and vehicle pick-up, on top of the service quality and customer service.The grades and ratings presented by J.D. Power were obtained after surveying owners and lessees of 1 to 5-year-old vehicles, who have used franchised dealers or independent service facilities for maintenance or repair work. However, the final grades were awarded for the first three years of the life of the vehicle, when it was still under warranty.An interesting detail observed by JDP was that 55% of the customers who were contacted by phone said that they would definitely return for paid service.The loyalty factor jumped to 67% when customers were contacted through text message updates. According to J.D. Power, this preference for text communication has increased from 2015, and dealerships should take this into consideration, and even make it a priority. Lexus has managed to get the best score among luxury brands, where it bested Audi, Lincoln, Porsche, and Cadillac. The Japanese brand owned by the Toyota Motor Corporation had a score of 874 out of 1,000 points. Audi was rated with 869, Lincoln had 868 points, and Porsche got 867.Meanwhile, in the volume segment, Buick was the star performer. GMs brand managed a score of 860. It was followed by MINI, with 850 points, GMC with 837, Chevrolet with 829, and Nissan with 822.Kia, Subaru, and Toyota ranked over Volkswagen and Hyundai, which were still over the mass market brand average. Brands like Honda, Ford, Mitsubishi, Chrysler, and Mazda were below that "bar."The core brands of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group had the worst results from the listed brands, with Dodge, Ram, Jeep, and Fiat graded between 771 and 739 out of 1,000 possible points.
The International Energy Agency has just reported that 2016 global carbon emissions from energy were flat for the third year in a row.

Why it matters: The Paris-based agency calls the latest findings more evidence of the "decoupling" of emissions from global economic growth. IEA executive director Fatih Birol calls it a "cause for optimism" but warns it's too soon to say emissions have peaked. The IEA findings note that the world still isn't on track to keep the global temperature increase less than 2C above preindustrial levels, the goal of the Paris climate accord.

The details: U.S. carbon emissions fell 3% thanks to gas and renewables' ongoing displacement of coal in power production. The country's CO2 output is at its lowest level since 1992. Emissions in China, the world's biggest CO2 source, fell by 1% even as the economy grew by 6.7%, IEA said. Renewables, nuclear and gas have an increasing share of electricity generation, and efforts to clean up China's polluted air are driving a shift from coal to gas at industrial plants and buildings, the agency said.
The House Oversight Committee has obtained new documents showing that former national security advisor Mike Flynn received thousands of dollars from Russian companies in late 2015, per the WSJ. The payments came just before he became an official for the Trump campaign and while he still held top-secret clearance.

The payments: $11,250 from a Russian charter cargo airline and $11,250 from a Russian cybersecurity company  that's in addition to the more than $45,000 he received from Russian state news network RT for speaking at a gala attended by Vladimir Putin.

The response from Elijah Cummings, ranking member of the Oversight Committee, "I cannot recall any time in our nation's history when the President selected as his National Security Advisor someone who violated the Constitution by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from an agent of a global adversary that attacked our democracy."
Luxury winter jacket maker Canada Goose raised around $255 million in its IPO today, and has begun trading on stock exchanges in both New York and Toronto. The most obvious winner here is Bain Capital, the private equity firm that acquired Canada Goose in April 2013, and has watched revenue and profit continue to climb.

But a less noticeable beneficiary are a pair of charities that were gifted Canada Goose shares from Bain Capital partners and employees: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund (1.9m shares) and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (454,000 shares).

The nonprofits each sold all of their stock at the IPO price, netting more than $30 million in total.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat of their nuclear weapons program gets to a point "that we believe requires action," reports the AP.

Tillerson is in South Korea today. His response when asked if the U.S. would use military force against the North:

All of the options are on the table ... but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces, that would be met with [an] appropriate response...
Kawasaki has launched the 2017 Z650 and the Ninja 650 in Malaysia, priced at RM 35,609 (Rs 5.25 lakh) and RM 37,189 (Rs 5.49 lakh) respectively. These bikes are expected to go on sale in India in the next couple of months.

While their predecessors took a conservative approach, the new Z650 and the Ninja 650 have been given a design overhaul for more sporty appeal. Based on a revised platform, the Z650 and Ninja 650 have managed to shed 19kg compared to their predecessors. They now feature a redesigned swingarm with a centrally-mounted monoshock in place of the older bikes offset unit. Powering the Z650 and the Ninja 650 is a 649cc parallel-twin engine delivering 66bhp and 65Nm of torque. The engine is mated to a six-speed gearbox with a slipper clutch. The brake setup consists of dual 300mm discs up front and a single 220mm disc at the rear. ABS is standard.

Both the Z650 and Ninja 650 will be locally assembled at the companys facility in Pune. The Z650 is the successor to the ER-6n. With the launch of the Z650 on the cards, the company has started offering discounts on the existing stock.




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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Once again, our Legislature is considering doing away with one of the things which makes Nebraska unique, our method of allocating electoral votes based on the winner in each congressional district ("Vote battle begins," March 10).

Secretary of State John Gale contends that a change to winner-take-all "maximizes our power in presidential elections." I suggest the opposite is true. If we change to a winner-take-all approach, we will be reduced to becoming a flyover state, shunned by both Republican and Democratic candidates. One would know we are a lock while the other would view us as a waste of time and resources.

I'd think that Republicans in a state like California or Democrats in a state like Texas would love to have a system like Nebraska's or Maine's. They would then be in play for at least a portion of their respective state's large electoral vote harvest each four years.

Perhaps our state's Republicans should just concede that they'll never get over the fact that Barack Obama received one Nebraska electoral vote in 2008.

Bill Davenport, Lincoln
Rural Nebraskas farm-centric communities, bastions of support for President Donald Trump in last year's election, stand to lose programs that support small businesses and basic infrastructure under the White Houses America First budget.

Dubbed a Blueprint to Make America Great Again, the budget seeks $17.9 billion in discretionary funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a cut of $4.7 billion from 2017 levels.

Rural groups and lawmakers Thursday criticized parts of the plan that would ax programs popular in agrarian states such as Nebraska while downplaying the importance of the presidential budget blueprint.

"Every President lays down budget directives in stark terms. It is ultimately Congress' responsibility to find the proper balance," Congressman Jeff Fortenberry said in an emailed statement.

Programs on the cutting block at the USDA cover rural business development, conservation and research funding, food safety, rural water infrastructure, statistical capabilities and an international food-aid program that doubles as support for farm products.

The cuts dont touch programs such as the Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, or the farm insurance safety net.

Nebraska Farm Bureaus director of national affairs, Jordan Dux, said the budget reflects Trumps campaign promises to cut wasteful government spending and job-killing regulations, but portions of the USDA proposal leave you to scratch your head a little bit.

I cant say that were overly supportive, Dux said.

Nebraska Farmers Union President John Hansen said the USDA cuts would be painful for the heartland.

These are programs that the general public may or may not be well aware of, but these are certainly programs that we use for infrastructure and to help connect the dots and make things work in rural America.

One such program that would be eliminated is the USDAs water and wastewater loan and grant program that in 2016 supported 37 projects in small Nebraska towns to the tune of $16 million. Trumps budget proposal called those programs duplicative, saying those dollars could be provided by the private sector or the EPAs state revolving funds.

USDA is still being piloted by an acting deputy. Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has been nominated to lead the department but has yet to be confirmed.

That could leave the Agriculture Department at a disadvantage when it comes to fighting for funding as Congress begins budget debates, said Dan Steinkruger, who served as the head of the USDA Farm Service Agency in Nebraska under former President Obama.

Hes not in a position to put together his staff to evaluate the programs and defend USDAs budget for 2018 as things go forward, Steinkruger said. Normally a secretary gets in there and gets the immediate political staff around them and starts to build that team that is going to manage things. USDA is at a disadvantage right now in that matter.

The budget also would end the International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which buys U.S. agricultural commodities, often supporting markets suffering from oversupply, then sends the food to school and child nutrition projects around the world.

In 2015, the USDA used the program to buy $14.5 million worth of surplus Great Northern and pinto beans, a major crop in western Nebraska, after the market crashed because of a combination of factors.

The program has been wildly popular with international food-aid advocates and farmers. The Trump administration said there is no evidence to show it has been effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity.

The budget proposal also seeks another $95 million in savings from the USDAs Rural Business and Cooperative Service, which supports the development of small businesses and job training for rural people through loans, technical and educational support, as well as broadband access.

In Nebraskas farm and ranch counties, more than 70 percent of the net job growth comes from small businesses of the type that program is designed support, said Johnathan Hladik of the Lyons-based Center for Rural Affairs.

That is where job growth is coming from in rural areas, Hladik said.

Also possibly facing cuts is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which supports the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center.

Archie Clutter, the dean of the Agricultural Research Division at UNL, said he was glad to see the president's proposal offers support for farmer-focused research and extension partnerships at land-grant universities. It calls for holding the line on the USDA's competitive research grant program at the 2017 level of $350 million.
ELKHORN -- Sen. Ben Sasse stepped into a buzzsaw of opposition to the House Republican health care reform plan Friday along with sharp criticism of President Donald Trump's budget proposals during a contentious town hall meeting with more than 700 constituents.

Sasse was confronted by hostile questions and often interrupted by shouting or occasional boos as he stood alone on the Elkhorn South High School auditorium stage responding to inquiries during a noisy 90-minute session.

A vast majority of the participants who attended the early-morning event at the western edge of Omaha raised their hands when Sasse at one point asked how many people would prefer a system of socialized medicine.

"This is not representative of the Nebraska view," the Republican freshman senator said.

Earlier, when questions from the audience were critical of efforts by Trump and Congress to ease or erase a swath of environmental and financial regulations, Sasse suggested critics are "broadly out of step with 8 or 9 out of 10 Nebraskans."

Despite the sharp clash of political views in the room, Sasse patiently and politely worked his way through questions for almost 90 minutes, extending the time that had been allotted for the town hall by almost a half-hour.

"The House bill is not a sufficient answer" to the nation's health care policy challenges, Sasse said. "The House bill is not going to be passed in its current form."

"The American health care system is terribly broken," the senator said.

"I am completely open to a diversity of solutions," he said.

As for government regulation, Sasse said it should be centered at the local and state level, not in Washington.

Sasse agreed with a questioner who said "we need to see the president's taxes" and suggested that "things that are said today, even from the Oval Office, are not always fact-based."

One questioner broke down in tears while criticizing health care and budget proposals that would "throw sick old people out on their own," remove needy people from Medicaid coverage and wipe out Meals on Wheels assistance for elderly people who often live alone.

Sasse said policymakers need to center more on in-home care so parents and grandparents can remain in their homes.

At one point, Sasse said he believes the investigation of Russian cyber intrusion in the United States "should be moving much faster."

"I want to understand all that Russia was trying to do in 2016," he said.

Sasse mounted the stage shortly after 8 a.m. dressed in khakis and shirtsleeves, with the cuffs rolled up. He carried a bottle of water and answered questions delivered by a long line of participants who took their turns at a microphone.

About 30 people still were standing in two lines when the 90-minute session ended.

One questioner wore a large sign that proclaimed: "America is great because of women, people of color, LGBT people, immigrants, people of diverse religions."

Most of the participants carried cards that allowed them to signal agreement or disagreement with an answer by holding them aloft. A few dozen chose to yell.

"Sir," Sasse said to one man in a red sweatshirt, "you keep shouting, but shouting doesn't help."

Sasse said he does not believe the United States spends too much on national defense and he believes the country "needs better vetting systems" to protect itself from would-be terrorists.

"The United States is not at war with Islam," he said, "but with people who would kill in the name of religion."

Sasse said entitlement reform should protect benefits for people who are retired or within 10 years of what had been considered to be the retirement age of 65 or so when the programs were instituted.

"He hears us, but I'm not sure he listens to us," Ania Szary-Berkowitz of Lincoln said following the event.

"For him to say, this is not what Nebraskans want" is concerning, she said. "We are Nebraskans."

Szary-Berkowitz praised Sasse for being respectful in giving people a microphone so that everyone could hear and be heard, but she said, "I'm worried he see things in black and white (and) it seems he is not willing to change much."

Interviewed by phone after the event, Sasse said: "It's democracy and it's important to hear from Nebraskans."

Sasse emphasized that "I have not taken any final position on the (House Republican health care) bill" and he is certain that the proposal championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan will evolve.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: In Atlanta: Rennie Sloan, rennie.sloan@cartercenter.org

In Monrovia, Liberia: Janice Cooper, janice.cooper@cartercenter.org

ATLANTATwenty-one clinicians specializing in child and adolescent mental health graduated today in Kakata City, Liberia, from a training developed by The Carter Centers Mental Health Program in partnership with the Liberia Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. These graduates, the second cohort of clinicians focused on children and youth from the partnership, will provide mental health and psychosocial care in schools, clinics and other child and youth-centered settings.

The graduates add to the 187 mental health professionals previously trained in the collaboration to significantly increase access to mental health services in Liberia. Those clinicians are now working in primary care clinics and hospitals across all 15 counties to provide much needed care as the country seeks to strengthen its mental health services. The group of Liberian nurses, physician assistants, and registered midwives completed a free, six-month, Child and Adolescent Post-Basic Mental Health Training Program at the Kakata Rural Teacher Training Institute, in Margibi County, Liberia.

"Liberia is making a brighter future for all of its citizens by investing in the mental health of adults, children, and adolescents," said former U.S. First Lady and Carter Center Co-founder Rosalynn Carter.

Liberia is on course to reach its goal of expanding access to mental health care to 70 percent of the population within the next few years. Previously, this nation of 4.3 million had one psychiatrist to meet the needs of at least 300,000 Liberians suffering from mental illnesses.

Graduates of The Carter Center program passed a credentialing exam in February from the Liberian Board of Nursing and Midwifery and the Liberia Physician Assistants Association to practice as licensed mental health clinicians. This allows them to return to their counties of practice as child and adolescent mental health specialists and to practice in primary care settings that focus on children and adolescents or to begin working in school-based clinics. These graduates are also critical to Liberia's post-outbreak psycho-social response to Ebola.

"This class of graduates greatly enhances our mental health services in Liberia. The Carter Center program graduates have provided life-changing mental health and psychosocial support services throughout Liberia, especially for those facing the aftermath of the Ebola epidemic," said Dr. Bernice Dahn, Minister of Health in Liberia.

Since 2010, mental health clinicians trained by the Carter Center program have made a lasting impact in their communities by establishing new services at the ground level. Clinicians have opened 14 clinical practices in prison systems, trained nurse midwives to screen for maternal depression, treated refugees from the Ivory Coast conflict, supported the nation's first mental health consumer organization, worked in Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) and provided psychosocial supports to individuals and families affected by the Ebola virus. This new cohort of child and adolescent mental health clinicians is assisting in these efforts by providing specialized care to Liberian youth. Seven schools now have clinicians in their clinics or have regular visits by mental health clinicians.

"With every group of clinicians trained, there is enthusiasm around how they will contribute to gaps in the still emerging mental health system. As a child mental health specialist, it is a personal fulfillment to have child and adolescent health mental health providers in our workforce. We are proud to add to our specialized group of child and adolescent mental health clinicians from all over the country," said Dr. Janice Cooper, a native Liberian and project lead for the Carter Center's mental health initiative in Liberia.

The Child and Adolescent Post-Basic Mental Health Training program is part of a three-year initiative to address the psychological effects of Liberia's Ebola crisis and to promote psychosocial health in the country. The project, Supporting Psychosocial Health and Resilience in Liberia, is funded by Japan through the Japanese Social Development Fund, a trust fund administered by the World Bank. The project is expected to reach approximately 18,000 beneficiaries in Montserrado (housing Monrovia) and Margibi counties.

In addition to promoting long-term health and resilience through the newly credentialed child and adolescent mental health clinicians, the project provides support to respond to the intermediate psychosocial impact of Ebola. The Carter Center, in collaboration with Liberian stakeholders, has trained Ebola first responders in self-care, facilitated Community Healing Dialogues for Ebola-affected families, and trained health and social workers to provide community-based mental health care and family psycho-education. These and other efforts through this project offer support and capacity-building for individuals and communities affected by Ebola.

The psychological impact of more than a decade of civil conflict, which ended in 2003, has contributed to a mental health crisis in Liberia that has been intensified by: misconceptions, stigma, and the resulting discrimination surrounding mental illnesses; lack of mental health care training for health professionals; and inadequate supplies of necessary medications. The Ebola crisis exacerbated these needs.

While every Liberian county now has at least three mental health clinicians, there remains a need to build up services in places with immense treatment gaps. The largest concentration of Carter Center-trained clinicians, 56, serves a population of more than 1 million in Montserrado County, where the capital, Monrovia, is located. Outside Montserrado, the average number of mental health clinicians per county is seven. Remote counties like Sinoe, Grand Gedeh, Lofa, River Gee and Grand Kru all boast of mental health clinicians leading and shaping mental health services.

The Carter Center's Mental Health Program in Liberia is supported by contributions from individuals, governments, corporations, and foundations such as the UBS Optimus Foundation and the John P. Hussmann Foundation.

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"Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope."

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.
Our portfolio of high quality UK commercial property is focused on London Offices and Retail around the UK. We own or manage a portfolio valued at 13.7bn (British Land share: 10.3bn) as at 30 September 2020 making us one of Europe's largest listed real estate investment companies. Our strategy is to provide places which meet the needs of our customers and respond to changing lifestyles - Places People Prefer. We do this by creating great environments both inside and outside our buildings and use our scale and placemaking skills to enhance and enliven them. This expands their appeal to a broader range of occupiers, creating enduring demand and driving sustainable, long term performance. Our Offices portfolio comprises three office-led campuses in central London as well as high quality standalone buildings and accounts for 65% of our portfolio. Our Retail portfolio is focused on retail parks and shopping centres, and accounts for 31% of our portfolio. Increasingly our focus is on providing a mix of uses and this is most evident at Canada Water, our 53 acre redevelopment opportunity where we have plans to create a new neighbourhood for London. Sustainability is embedded throughout our business. Our places, which are designed to meet high sustainability standards, become part of local communities, provide opportunities for skills development and employment and promote wellbeing. In April 2016 British Land received the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development, the UK's highest accolade for business success for economic, social and environmental achievements over a period of five years.
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara shot an arrow into the air, but it didnt land anywhere near Bill de Blasio. The same can be said for Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, who concedes that New Yorks mayor may have twisted campaign-finance laws into a pretzel, but thats okay, because his lawyer said so. So ends a year-long, two-pronged investigation of de Blasio and a clutch of his top aides into practices that clearly compromised state and federal campaign-finance statutes, but did not break themor, at least, did not break them so egregiously as to warrant prosecution, which effectively is the same thing. Now de Blasio is free to turn his full attention to seeking a second term, which he should win in a cakewalk, and which, in turn, should help enormously when he starts soliciting public contributions to pay down what must be prodigious legal bills.

Meantime, taxpayers are on the hook for at least $12 million in lawyers fees incurred by de Blasio staffers caught up in the probes. Also among the losers is the publicity-conscious Bharara himself, who rode the investigation like a carnival pony for months, to a less-than-dramatic outcome. Bharara, fired by the Trump administration earlier this month as part of a national housecleaning of U.S. attorneys, now awaits appeals court rulings on his signature public-corruption conviction: that of former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver. And trials are months away for Cuomo administration figures and others indicted by Bharara for bribe-receiving, kickbacks, and other alleged offenses. To say that Bhararas legacy hangs in the balance would be an understatement.

The de Blasio investigation involved the alleged solicitation of money from people seeking official favors from the city. Bhararas office concentrated on at least one political nonprofit created by de Blasiothe now-defunct Campaign for One New Yorkwhile Vance probed contributions allegedly meant to subvert state campaign-finance laws. Nobody seriously disputes that money was solicited, and common sense dictates that favors were expected. Why else would contributions have been made?

Indeed, Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kims office found several circumstances in which Mayor de Blasio and others acting on his behalf solicited donations from individuals who sought official favors from the city, after which the mayor made or directed inquiries to relevant city agencies on behalf of those donors. And Vance determined that Team de Blasios funneling of money to upstate Democrats appears contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits. But, added Vance, because the mayor and his aides had been advised by lawyers that the solicitations were legal, there was no basis for prosecution. This conclusion, said the DA, is not an endorsement of the conduct at issue.

One would hope not. But in New York, nothing should be taken for granted. So the bottom line appears to be this: neither prosecutor found evidence that personal bribes were acceptedunlike, say, in the Silver caseand so they found no compelling case for indictments. And that may well be the law, which, after all, was written by politicians motivated to protect both their sources of campaign cash and themselves.

But no reasonable person can look at this case and conclude that justice was well served. The mayors team shook New Yorks donor class vigorously and oftenand millions of dollars fell out. Donors consistently benefited from this, and as Kim said, the mayor regularly intervened with relevant city agencies on behalf of those donors.

Clearly, in Bill de Blasios New York, big bucks spoke loudly. And this renders the mayors response to the prosecutors announcementswe held ourselves to a very high standard and we will continue tomore than a little ridiculous. But such cynicism is to be expected in New York, a state long since given over to special-interest money and those who dole it out.

After Bharara convicted Silver and Dean Skelos, his state Senate counterpart, and then indicted Governor Cuomos closest aide and others, it looked like times might be changing. More likely, once the dust settles, the big-bucks influencers will be back stronger than ever. Preet Bharara took his shot in New York Cityand missed.

Photo by Dimitrios KambourisGetty Images
State and federal prosecutors announced simultaneously yesterday that they were dropping their criminal investigations into Mayor de Blasios various scandals, even though New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance says that the mayors fundraising efforts appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits. While many New Yorkers were surprised at the news that no indictments would be forthcoming, nobody was taken aback by Vances qualified exculpation about violating the spirit of the laws. Indeed, anyone who has been listening has heard Mayor de Blasio say the same thing himself, repeatedly.

Over the last few years, de Blasio has spoken frequently about his strict adherence to the law while defending his fundraising practices. Last April, for instance, he said the law is lawwhat we dideverything was very carefully and scrupulously checked for consistency with city, state, and federal law for absolute consistency with any other standards that had to be held. We didnt do any of this lightly.

A month later, on May 13, 2016, the mayor again noted his careful observance of legal limits, saying, we can show you how we very scrupulously followed the law and followed the ethical guidance. A week later, he twice repeated that he had scrupulously followed the law and that we have laws governing whats appropriate . . . thats what we used as our guidepost.

With all his talk about scruples and scrupulousness, it is hard to understand how the mayor wound up in the middle of a multiyear ethics investigation involving multiple jurisdictions and at least half a dozen lines of inquiry. After all, if he was so painstaking about minutely charting the limits of legality, and so intensely conscientious about staying within those lines, isnt it bizarrealmost like something out of Kafkathat de Blasio somehow fell under so much prosecutorial scrutiny?

The mayor spoke to this seeming injustice himself last year, musing, Im really concerned about a double standard here where we do everything to the letter of the law . . . meanwhile, a lot of people are doing a lot worse and not getting much examination. He used the phrase letter of the law repeatedly, emphasizing how closely he and his team hewed to every jot and tittle of the code.

The curious thing about scrupulously following the letter of the law is that it sounds like an excuse for bad behavior. When someone gets away with something on a technicality, it usually means that under the letter of the law they couldnt be convicted. Bragging about having scrupulously observed the letter of the law sounds a bit like saying under oath, I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Bandying or mincing words, parsing or stretching the truth, hemming and hawing: there are many phrases describing the way people (especially politicians) try to get away with something. Think of I followed the letter of the law as basically synonymous with I violated the spirit of the law. Mayor de Blasio seems to have been telling us for years that he was doing just that. All we had to do was believe him.

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Have we not seen, then, in our lifetime the end of the Western way of war? Two decades ago, I concluded The Western Way of War with that question. Since Western warfare had become so lethal and included the specter of nuclear escalation, I thought it doubtful that two Western states could any longer wage large head-to-head conventional battles. A decade earlier, John Keegan, in his classic The Face of Battle, had similarly suggested that it would be hard for modern European states to engage in infantry slugfests like the Battle of the Somme. The suspicion grows, Keegan argued of a new cohort of affluent and leisured European youthrebellious in spirit and reluctant to give over the good life to mass conscriptionthat battle has already abolished itself.

Events of the last half-century seem to have confirmed the notion that decisive battles between two large, highly trained, sophisticated Westernized armies, whether on land or on sea, have become increasingly rare. Pentagon war planners now talk more about counterinsurgency training, winning the hearts and minds of civilian populations, and smart interrogation techniquesand less about old-fashioned, blow-em-up hardware (like, say, the F-22 Raptor) that proves so advantageous in fighting conventional set battles. But does this mean that the big battle is indeed on its way to extinction?

Big battles sometimes changed entire conflicts in a matter of hours, altering politics and the fate of millions. It is with historys big battles, not the more common dirty war or insurgency, that we associate radical changes of fortune as well as war poetry, commemoration, and, for good or ill, the martial notions of glory and honor. Had the Greeks lost their fleet at Holy Salamis in 480 bc, instead of beating back the Persian invaders, the history of the polis might well have come to an end, and with it a vulnerable Western civilization in its infancy. Had the Confederates broken the Union lines at Gettysburg and swept behind Washington, Abraham Lincoln would have faced enormous pressure to settle the Civil War according to the status quo ante bellum. If the band of brothers had been repulsed at Normandy Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944, it is difficult to imagine that they would have reattempted an enormous amphibious invasion soon afterbut easy instead to envision a victorious Red Army eventually camped on the Atlantic Coast and occupying Western Europe.

Yet set engagements, its important to note, have never been the norm in warfare. The 27-year-long Peloponnesian War saw only two major ground engagements, at Delium (424 bc) and Mantinea (418 bc), and a few smaller infantry clashes, at Solygeia and outside Syracuse. In the asymmetrical struggle between Athenian naval power and premier Spartan infantry, the most common kinds of fighting were hit-and-run attacks, terrorism, sieges, constant ravaging of agriculture, and sea and amphibious assaults. True, during the murderous Roman Civil War (4931 bc), frequent and savage battles at Actium and elsewhere claimed more than a quarter-million Roman lives. Yet after the creation of the Principate by the new emperor, Augustus, much of the Mediterranean world was relatively united and free of frequent major battles for nearly half a millennium. And after the fall of the Roman Empire, for most of the Middle Ages, sieges and low-intensity conflict were more common than major engagements such as Poitiers (732), Hattin (1187), and Crecy (1346).

In fact, the course of military history has been strikingly cyclical. The eminent military historian Russell Weigley once described an Age of Battlesa uniquely destructive two centuries of pitched warfare between Gustavus Adolphuss victory at Breitenfeld (1631) and Napoleons defeat at Waterloo (1815)in which European armies of multifarious rivals, often in vain, sought to decide entire wars in a few hours of head-to-head fighting. That age ended with the agreements following the Congress of Vienna, which (along with military deterrence) kept a general peace in Europe for nearly a century. Set battles were common only in colonial theaters (Tel el Kebir, Omdurman), in Asia (Tsushima), and in the Americas (the decisive battles of the Mexican, Spanish-American, and American civil wars).

Then, during the first half of the twentieth century, came another Age of Battles, with the First and Second World Wars witnessing the most destructive fighting in the history of arms. The details of Iwo Jima, Kursk, Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Okinawa, Passchendaele, the Somme, Stalingrad, and Verdun still chill the reader. Asia saw horrors of its own: most Westerners know little about the Huaihai campaign (late 194849), in which the Nationalist Chinese lost an entire army of 600,000 to the Communists in mostly conventional fighting.

Today, the world is clearly enjoying another respite from huge set battles. Except for the daring American landing at Inchon (September 1950) and the subsequent first liberation of Seoul, few battles of the last seven decades resembled the Battle of the Bulge. Far more common in the past half-century have been the asymmetrical wars between large Westernized militaries and poorer, less organized terrorists, insurgents, and pirates. The list of theaters where conventional forces have battled guerrillas is long: Afghanistan, Grozny, Iraq, Kashmir, Mogadishu, the Somali coast. Seldom does an indigenous force dare to come out in the open, marshal its resources, and test head-on the firepower and discipline of a Westernized force. Historys record on that scorefrom Tenochtitlan to Omdurmanis not encouraging for those who try.

Those who have successfully attacked the United Statesin Lebanon (1983), at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia (1996), at Americas East African embassies (1999), on the USS Cole (2000), and in New York and Washington in 2001did so as terrorists. If nation-states sponsored such radical Islamist groups, they nearly always denied culpability, avoiding an all-out conventional war with the United States that they would inevitably loseas the brief rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan demonstrated in 2001.

Amid the murderous fighting between well-organized armies during the Vietnam War, North Vietnam as a matter of practice did not attempt to engage Western forces in formal set engagements. (The sieges at Khe Sanh and, earlier, against the French at Dien Bien Phu proved the exceptions rather than the rule and were themselves not traditional collisions of infantry.) In its failed attempt in the 1980s to take over Afghanistan, the Soviet army may have killed more than 1 million Afghans without once engaging in a set collision with tens of thousands of jihadists. We still do not know all the gory details of the Iran-Iraq war (198089), in which more than 1 million combatants and civilians perished. But despite the carnage that characterized that war, set engagements, out in the open, between two massed armies were not a major part of the conflict, so far as we know.

Even the Mother of All Battles in the 1991 Gulf War was largely a rout. The tank battle at Medina Ridge involved hundreds of armored vehicles but lasted little more than an hourthe Americans suffering neither casualties from enemy fire nor a single Abrams tank destroyed, while obliterating 186 Iraqi tanks. Today, few Americans even know what Medina Ridge was. In other engagements, most of Saddams army disintegrated rather than fight advancing American armoras was commonly the case again during the three-week war of 2003.

Some decisive fighting took place between British and Argentinean units during the Falklands War of 1982, but on a minuscule scale compared with the twentieth centurys bloody engagements. Tank battles raged in the Golan Heights during both the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). For a few days, also in 1973, the Israelis and the Egyptian Third Army fought each other openly in the desert expanses of the Sinai Peninsula. But the far more usual pattern of the inconclusive Israeli-Arab conflict has been terrorism, intifadas, bombings, and missile strikes.



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Why does decisive battle wax and wane in frequency, and why has it become rarer again? The political landscape certainly explains much. Empire of any sort can lessen the incidence of warfare. Unified, central political control transforms the usual ethnic, tribal, racial, and religious strife into more internal and less violent rivalries for state representation and influence. Once Philip unified Greece under a Macedonian hegemony after Chaeronea (338 bc), set battles between city-states, so common earlier in the fourth century bc, became a rarity. For now, anyway, the European Union lacks the interstate rivalry that plunged Europe into murderous battles for much of the first half of the twentieth century.

When the world is divided into larger blocs that have sizable, competent conventional forcessuch as the Soviet and American spheres during the Cold Warconfrontation can potentially turn catastrophic, given the vast resources available to each side. Yet its also possible that in such a bipolar world, battling along nationalist lines, among a variety of state players, will be less frequent. No nation of the Warsaw Pact fought the Soviet Republic; American allies like Iran did not threaten American allies like Israel; Tito and Yugoslavian Communism for a time kept Bosnians, Croats, Kosovars, Macedonians, and Serbs from killing one another.

In the present age, many of the most powerful economies in the world are united under the loose rubric the West, which includes some former nations of the British Empire (Australia, Canada, New Zealand), the transatlantic NATO alliance (most of the European Union and the United States), and democratic nations of the Pacific (Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan), along with miscellaneous allies, capitalist and democratic, such as India and Israel. At present, there is virtually no likelihood that we will see decisive battles between any of these similarly minded democratic states, even though a mere 70 years ago, when consensual government was less widespread among them, most of them squared off in various temporary alliances against one another in terrible engagements.

Technology also helps explain the current decline in conventional battles. The battlefield can now be seen and mapped to the smallest pebble through aerial photography, often by unmanned drones that update pictures second by second. Surprise is rare. Potential combatants know the odds in advance. They can use the Internet to download the most minute information about their adversaries. Generals can see streaming video of prebattle preparations and calculate, to some degree, the subsequent cost.

Uncertainty and the unknown were often essential to the outbreak of decisive battles, since each opposing force usually felt it had some chance of operational success. Had the British enjoyed satellite reconnaissance of the German lines in the days before and during the Somme, they might have curtailed their suicidal assaults. Had the Americans possessed live streaming video of Japanese forces fortifying bunkers on Okinawa, they might not have chosen to assault the Shuri Line frontally. Picketts Charge up Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg was predicated on an erroneous assumption that there was an especially weak spot in the Unions linea conjecture that General Robert E. Lee would have easily corrected if hed had a Predator drone at his disposal.

Weaponry is not static. It resides within a constant challenge-and-response cycle between offense and defense, armor and arms, surveillance and secrecy. Body armor may soon advance to the point of offering, if only for a brief period, protection against the bullet, which centuries ago rendered chain and plate mail useless. The satellite killer may render the satellite nonoperational. Sophisticated electronic jamming may force down the aerial drone. Yet for now, the arts of information-gathering about an enemy trump his ability to maintain secrecy, thus lessening the chance that thousands of soldiers will be willing to march off to massive battle.

The cost of todays military technology, too, renders big battles more unlikely. To wage a single decisive battle between tens of thousands of combatants along the lines of a Gaugamela or a Verdun would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, a figure far beyond the resources of most belligerents. A single B-1 bomber on patrol overhead represents a $1 billion investment. Abrams tanks go for over $4 million. A single cruise missile can cost over $1 million. One GPS-guided artillery shell may cost $150,000; one artillery platform could expend over $10 million in ordnance in a few hours. Even a solders M-4 assault rifle runs well over $1,000. The result is that very few states can afford to outfit an army of, say, 100,000 infantry, supported by high-tech air, naval, and artillery firemuch less keep it well supplied for the duration of battle. Even in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when weapons were cheap compared with todays models, both Egypt and Israel needed massive amounts of new weaponry from the Soviet Union and the United States shortly after the commencement of fighting.

Globalizationaccelerated by technologyis another reason that decisive battles are uncommon today. Instant cell-phoning and text-messaging, the Internet, access to DVDs, and satellite television have created a world culture that depends on uninterrupted communications. It frowns on massive disruptions in airline flights, banking, and the easy importation of consumer goods. Electronic togetherness hinges on our shared appetitesand a growing communal comfort factor. When Russia invaded Georgia, its oil buyers became upset. So did its own aristocratic grandees, who saw international capital flee Moscow. European states worry about oil shortages, should the U.S. bomb Iran; China frets about its vital American export market, should it invade Taiwan.

Finally, changing mores have changed military tactics. The current ascendant belief in the West that war is unnatural, preventable, and the result of rational grievancesthat it can, with proper training and education, be eliminatedhas probably made battle less tenable among the general public. The bombing of fleeing Iraqi bandit brigades from Kuwait on the so-called Highway of Death in the first Gulf War was halted by popular outrage because of the televised carnage. The abhorrent images of death on millions of television screens easily trumped the argument that the enemy, who had just committed rapine in Kuwait, should be punishedor preempted, since he was likely to regroup in Iraq to slaughter Kurdish and Shiite innocents again. Russias shelling and destruction of Grozny escaped world condemnation only because a news blackout ensured that Westerners saw little of mass death.

We shouldnt assume, though, that these various forces will always prevent set battles. Similar predictions have proved wrong before. In 1909, Norman Angells The Great Illusion argued that Europe had achieved too great an interdependence of financial credit, economic integration, and prosperity to throw it all away on nihilistic warmaking. The Somme, Passchendaele, and Verdun shortly followed.

Human beings remain emotional, irrational, and guided by intangible calculations, such as honor and fear, that collectively can induce them into self-destructive behavior. Armed struggles that at times result in horrific collisions are as old as civilization itself and are a collective reflection of deep-seated elements within the human psychetribalism, affinity for like kind, reckless exuberancethat are constant and unchanging. We are not at the end of history.

Can big battles, then, haunt us once more? If the European Union were to dissolve and return to a twentieth-century landscape of proud rivals, or if the former Soviet republics were to form a collective resistance to an aggrandizing Russia (as they did for much of the nineteenth century), or if the North Koreans, Pakistanis, or Chinese were to gamble on an agenda of sudden aggression (as they have on previous occasions when they were confident of achieving political objectives), then we might well see a return of decisive battles. The U.S. military still prepares for all sorts of conventional challenges. We keep thousands of tanks and artillery pieces in constant readiness, along with close-ground support missiles and planes, in fear that the Peoples Army of Korea might try to swarm across the Demilitarized Zone into Seoul, or that the Chinese Red Army might storm the beaches of Taiwan.

Waterloos or Verduns may revisit us, especially in the half-century ahead, in which constant military innovation may reduce the cost of war, or relegate battle to the domain of massed waves of robots and drones, or see a sudden technological shift back to the defensive that would nullify the tyranny of todays incredibly destructive munitions. New technology may make all sorts of deadly arms as cheap as iPods, and more lethal than M-16s, while creating shirts and coats impervious to small-arms fireand therefore making battle cheap again, uncertain, and once more to be tried. Should a few reckless states feel that nuclear war in an age of antiballistic missiles might be winnable, or that the consequences of mass death might be offset by perpetuity spent in a glorious collective paradise, then even the seemingly unimaginablenuclear showdownbecomes imaginable.

In short, if the conducive political, economic, and cultural requisites for set battles realign, as they have periodically over the centuries, we will see our own modern version of a Cannae or Shiloh. And these collisions will be frightening as never before.

Top Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
KeyCorp operates as the holding company for KeyBank National Association that provides various retail and commercial banking products and services in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer Bank and Commercial Bank. The company offers various deposits, investment products and services; and personal finance and financial wellness, student loan refinancing, mortgage and home equity, lending, credit card, treasury, business advisory, wealth management, asset management, investment, cash management, portfolio management, and trust and related services to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides a suite of banking and capital market products, such as syndicated finance, debt and equity capital market products, commercial payments, equipment finance, commercial mortgage banking, derivatives, foreign exchange, financial advisory, and public finance, as well as commercial mortgage loans comprising consumer, energy, healthcare, industrial, public sector, real estate, and technology loans for middle market clients. In addition, the company offers community development financing, securities underwriting, brokerage, and investment banking services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of approximately 999 branches and 1,317 ATMs in 15 states, as well as additional offices, online and mobile banking capabilities, and a telephone banking call center. KeyCorp was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is defending itself at trial against more than 300 farmers and other landowners who say the agency's management of the Missouri River has contributed to major flooding in five states, most notably 2011 flooding that caused billions of dollars in damage.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, argues that the Corps has altered its practices regarding the river's water storage, release and flow management since the mid-2000s, de-emphasizing flood control while pushing to restore habitat for endangered species. It contends that the Corps unconstitutionally deprived plaintiffs of their land, essentially taking it without compensation.

Although the lawsuit doesn't specify the amount of damages being sought, the landowners' attorney has said it could exceed $250 million. The plaintiffs believe case law is on their side, given a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in December 2012 that the federal government is not automatically exempt from paying for damage caused by temporary flooding from its dams.

The case, which isn't expected to be decided until this summer at the earliest, reflects longstanding debate about the Corps' management of the river as the agency tries to strike a balance among competing interests  landowners, the barge industry, water suppliers, hydropower utilities, environmentalists and recreational users of the waterway, notably on upriver reservoirs. Regulating the river's levels comes through the Corps' management of discharges from a half-dozen large upstream reservoirs, each meant to hold snow melt and other excess water during the spring before the Corps gradually releases it the rest of the year.

In court filings, the federal government argues that authorities never promised to stop all flooding along the 2,341-mile-long Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. The Corps, which has said it is required by Congress and the courts to act in the river's best interest, maintains that providing habitat for endangered species didn't exacerbate the inundation six years ago  a claim echoed by a top Midwest volunteer for the Sierra Club.

The trial started last week. The Corps typically does not comment publicly about litigation, and it didn't reply to recent messages by The Associated Press.

Outside experts who reviewed the 2011 flooding said the Corps did the best it could in dealing with record amounts of water that flowed into the river after unusually heavy spring rain in Montana and North Dakota.

That flooding lasted more than three months after the Corps began releasing massive amounts of water from swollen upstream reservoirs. It overwhelmed levees, carved gouges up to 50 feet deep, created sand dunes 15 feet high, deposited debris in farmers' fields and devastated hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly farmland in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Caroline Pufalt, the St. Louis-based chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Missouri River Network, said blaming the Corps on environmental grounds is "a red herring," and that while the Corps may make decisions in the interest of habitat, such actions are rare.

Pufalt said the Corps did the best it could six years ago, given "unusual circumstances" involving so much water in the Missouri River system.

"These floods were kind of unavoidable," Pufalt said. "The folks who have filed this lawsuit mistakenly think there's some magic thing the Corps can do, given the current river, that will take away their flood risk, and that's not going to happen."
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
03/16/2017

One way or another, flights to Europe are going to be cheaper. Norwegian Air recently unveiled $65 one-way fares on some trans-Atlantic routes and now JetBlue says it is doing a "major review" of its fleet with an eye towards European flights.

Air Canada's CEO, meanwhile, says he thinks President Trump's plans to cut taxes and regulations will be good for U.S. carriers but won't hurt his company's growth prospects.

New York-based JetBlue must decide whether it thinks it can profitably fly the Airbus A321LR (the LR stands for "long-range") from the East Coast to the United Kingdom and perhaps other Western European destrinations, according a report in Skift, an industry newsletter.

JetBlue and other airlines recently inaugurated service to several destinations in Cuba, only to scale back after passenger levels were below expectations.

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said the decision boils down to whether it can make a higher rate of return flying the aircraft to Europe than to other destinations.

JetBlue has lately been making waves in the transcontinental market with its Mint business class cabin, which features lie-flat seats and other amenities at lower fares than those offered by legacy carriers. Even road warriors who have elite status on other carriers have switched to JetBlue for coast-to-coast flights because of the cut-rate premium class, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.

Hayes made the comments Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Aviation, Transportation & Industrials Conference in New York.

Canada flights

Canadian airlines have been working to increase their trans-Atlantic business by routing passengers -- including many from the U.S. -- through their Toronto and Vancouver hubs. But Air Canada's CEO says the Trump Administration's plans to cut taxes and regulations may make it harder for Canadian carriers to compete.

"The U.S is about to become even more competitive," Calin Rovinescu said in a Bloomberg report. He said Canadian carriers will be hurt if Canada proceeds with plans for a carbon tax and if a plan to privatize airports raises costs.

Trump has said he wants to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but Rovinescu says he doesn't expect any changes to hurt Air Canada.

We will be able to do a lot of business with the U.S., he said, according to Bloomberg. My sense of the border dynamics between Canada and the U.S. is that it wont become more complicated, indeed it may well become more transparent from a commercial perspective.
03/15/2017

The widow of a Vermont man who died after eating raw milk cheese has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a New York creamery, alleging his death was caused by Listeria-contaminated cheese.

Richard Friedman, who died Nov. 2, 2016, was one of two fatalities resulting from a multi-state Listeria outbreak traced to a soft raw milk cheese made by Vulto Creamery, according to a Food Safety News report. Six others were hospitalized between Sept. 1, 2016, and Jan. 22, 2017.

Vulto has recalled a total of eight raw milk cheeses that were sold nationwide after an investigation of the outbreak was conducred by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The lawsuit says the Friedmans bought the contaminated cheese in early October. Friedman was first treated at Brattleboro Hospital, then transferred to Dartmouth-Hitchock Medical Center. He later suffered a massive stroke at a rehab center in Vermont and died a short time later.

People think of food poisoning as inconvenient rather than really dangerous, said William D. Marler, a Seattle attorney representing Friedman's widow, according to Food Safety News. But the reality is that what you eat can seriously damage or even kill you. Food providers have a responsibility to protect the lives of their customers, especially when producing raw milk products, which pose a higher risk to consumers.

Listeria causes an estimated 2,600 cases per year of the severe invasive illness called listeriosis.

Cheese recalled

Vulto Creamery, Walton, New York, is recalling all of its cheeses which include by name the following: Ouleout, Miranda, Heinennellie, Willowemoc, Hamden, Walton Umber, Andes, & Blue Blais due to potential contamination of Listeria monocytogenes.

Consumers who have any of these cheeses from Vulto Creamery should return the cheese to the purchase location for a refund. Food and cheese wholesalers and retailers with any Vulto Creamery cheeses on hand should immediately remove these products from common storage coolers and quarantine these cheeses in a secured area of a cooler.

Raw milk risks

The FDA cautions that raw milk products can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks. According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1993 and 2006 more than 1500 people in the United States became sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk.

CDC has reported that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products.

Raw milk is milk from cows, sheep, or goats that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful bacteria. This raw, unpasteurized milk can carry dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

These harmful bacteria can seriously affect the health of anyone who drinks raw milk, or eats foods made from raw milk.
NYKs Asuka Cruise brand will pull in its deployment for 2017, staying a bit closer to home aboard the luxury 50,142-ton, 872-passenger Asuka II as there was no world cruise planned at press time. This follows in the footsteps of other Japanese brands and guest preferences.

The lines six-week 2017 Asia and Pacfic cruise left in late January sailing round-trip from Yokohama with planned calls to Guam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia and other ports in Southeast Asia.

Also on the schedule is a month-long sailing from Kobe with visits to a host of Japanese ports, as well as Russia and Taiwan.

Otherwise, spring and summer see the Asuka II staying in Japan, with cruises as short as one-night and extending to a week with heavy port content in Japan. Embarkation points include Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya.
Credit union trade groups Thursday vowed to fight President Trumps plan to kill the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI) program, as proposed in the administrations FY2018 budget plan.

The Administrations dramatic reduction of funding to the CDFI Fund will negatively impact its stated goal to invest in Americas infrastructure, Cathie Mahon, CEO of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions. CDFIs are one of the most effective mechanisms to channel capital into under-resourced communities.

The federation represents more than 280 credit unions that are certified as CDFIs. They serve more than 7.4 million members in 46 states and have combined assets of more than $70 billion. Mahon said CDFI credit unions leverage more than $12 in private sector funds for every $1 in public money.
Stephen Dedene, VP/compliance and risk at $1.1 billion CUES Executive Group and Board member Credit Union ONE, Ferndale, Mich., says visiting legislators in person is almost always the most effective way to bring about change. I think its effective having direct contact with them, whether its through staffers or the lawmakers themselves, he says. It can involve writing letters to them on a regular basis, or calling their office.

But aside from actually descending en masse onto Capitol Hill or state capitol grounds, what are the most effective ways credit unions can get their message to lawmakers? Our sources offer a few ideas.

1. If you believe in them, lend a hand. At different times, [politicians] may have different needs, says Tom Johnson, president/CEO of STCU ($2.4 billion), Spokane, Wash., a CUES member. Sometimes they want to get a small group of supporters together to raise some money for their campaign, so being alert and willing to participate in that is helpful. Also, we have not done this here, but I know of other credit union executives in the state of Washington who have hosted evening receptions or events to raise funds for state legislators.

2. Work with state credit union leagues. Dedene says he initially brought up an ATM skimming incident his credit union experienced with the Michigan Credit Union League. He then traveled to visit three lawmakers with representatives of the league. When youre trying to effect change, it helps to have backup.
Its hard to imagine a convocation ceremony without music. From the singing of the national anthem to the fanfare of the classic Pomp and Circumstance theme, music adds spirit and energy to one of the universitys most celebratory times.



Fitting, then, that for Dals 200th anniversary celebrations next year, Dalhousie is looking for a new musical composition  one that would be a perfect fit for ceremonies like convocation and its introductory counterpart, induction.



An initiative led by the Fountain School of Performing Arts, the Call for Works was issued earlier this year and is open to all professional Canadian composers. The university is looking for a short piece (less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds) that is to be performed by a brass quintet (two trumpets, French horn, and tenor and bass trombones).



Why a brass quintet? Because its a brass quintet  the Symphony Brass Quintet, which includes Fountain School trombone instructor Eric Mathis  that performs the musical accompaniment for Dalhouises convocation ceremonies.



It seems fitting for an occasion like that, explains Fountain School faculty member Jerome Blais. Theres something ceremonial there, a certain majesty to those instruments.

A piece of music that fits Dalhousie





Dr. Blais teaches composition in the Fountain School, and is part of the team that will be helping select the successful piece from the various submissions (which are due no later than September 15, 2017). Others involved in the jury will be other Fountain School faculty, members of the quintet and other individuals from the university community.



We dont know what pieces we will get, and we want to be surprised, says Dr. Blais. That said, this is a very specific occasion, so we want the piece to meet certain criteria of celebration, of joyfulness.



The successful piece will be premiered at the Bicentennial Address  the formal introduction to Dals 200th year  on February 6, 2018, with hopes that the piece could then be used at future convocation ceremonies. The successful composer will also be awarded a monetary prize of $2,000.



As a composer, Im thrilled that one of the ideas thats been put forward to celebrate the 200th anniversary is a musical composition, says Dr. Blais. Im very excited about this.



See the full Call for Works on the Fountain Schools website.



This article is part of an ongoing series highlighting planning for Dalhousies 200th anniversary celebrations in 2018. For more information on Dal 200, visit dal200.ca.


Katie Flanagan is a bit of a veteran.

Every March, for the last four years, the Rowe School of Business commerce student has slept outside for five days to raise funds and awareness for those who struggle with homelessness.

This year was a bit different, though.

Coming into the campaign as a fourth-time participant I kind of knew what to expect, but at the same time, weathers so unpredictable that you never really know whats going to happen, she says.

Flanagan and the other student sleepers endured temperatures of -17 C, rain and wind that left their sleeping bags soaked and unexpected snow. It was hard, but as Flanagan reflects, You have to go back to that original idea that some people deal with this on a regular basis. For us, sure, its been a bit of a challenge, but its nothing compared to what they go through.

Raising awareness





Katie is talking, of course, about those who are homeless. She and her commerce classmates  Breanna Buhler, Max Georgopoulos and Kenny Johnston  are part of the national campaign 5 Days for the Homeless, which was started at the University of Alberta in 2005. The object of the annual campaign  which has now spread to 22 campuses across the country  is to raise awareness of the prevalence of homelessness in Canada, and to raise funds for organizations that help those who are homeless or at risk of becoming so.

The core student group, plus different guest sleepers each night, spend five nights outside and follow strict rules. These include eating only what is donated to them; refraining from communicating on cell phones; and only using washrooms in open campus buildings. The students collect cash and online donations.

Dalhousie is the only university in Atlantic Canada to participate, with the Rowe School running the campaign for four years. The students raise funds each year for Phoenix Youth Programs, which provides shelter and a variety of services to homeless or at-risk youth in Halifax. Katie says each year taking part has given her more appreciation for Phoenix.

Its such an incredible organization and provides so much for youth who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk, she says. They have so many different programs. For me, its great to be able to give them the monetary donations, but also to support them in other ways: raising awareness, especially media attention, is really great for Phoenix because it helps people understand what services they are providing.

In fact, 2017 is a milestone year for Phoenix, as the organization celebrates its 30th birthday. Its huge, says Katie. It just makes it that much more special.

The 5 Days campaign closes Friday with a ceremony at 11:00 a.m., at which Phoenix staff members will be present.

Meeting their goal





The Rowe team has a goal of raising $10,000 for Phoenix this year.

So far weve been incredibly blessed with donations, says Katie. As of [Wednesday] night we were at $6,500 online. Were also collecting cash during the day, so the total is adding up.

Aside from funds and awareness, the team is also donating food to the shelter. The national 5 Days campaign mandates that extra food donations to teams should be donated, and Dalhousies team, says Katie, made a pact to eat only the bare minimum so that they can donate more to Phoenix.

The communitys always generous and quick to support us. We see that year after year, says Katie. Weve been able to bring a lot of the food to the shelter, which has been a really big deal for us.



Dean Sylvain Charlebois (left) and Dal President Richard Florizone (right) pay the team a visit.

With community support like this  which has even involved a faculty member leaving her dog during the day to lend some body heat to the group  the Dal sleepers know theyre lucky.

People who are homeless have to deal with the same things we do night after night, and they might not have the warm sleeping bags we have and they cant go in somewhere at 7:00 a.m. to warm their toes, so it really puts this in perspective, says Katie. Thats the whole reason were doing this. Year after year, its very eye-opening, and its a huge reminder about homelessness.

And dealing with a few days of bad weather also deepens appreciation of organizations that help those who need it.

Phoenix supports all these youth who have to deal with the things that we found challenging, but there is so much more to deal with on top of the weather, and Phoenix provides so many other things, she says. Its incredible that we get to support them through the campaign.

Donations to Dalhousies 5 Days for the Homeless campaign can be made at http://5days.ca/schools/dalhousie-university/ until March 31.
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A Nebraska ethics official says a state regulator's side job with a private telecommunications consulting firm isn't a conflict of interest.

Jeff Pursley is executive director of the Nebraska Public Service Commission, which regulates telecommunications companies along with major oil pipelines and electric transmission lines, natural gas providers and taxi cabs.

He also works part-time with the Washington, D.C.-area consulting firm Parrish, Blessing & Associates, which represents some clients that are regulated by the PSC.

The arrangement has been in place since Pursley became leader of the commission in July 2015, and was approved by the commission's five elected members at the time.

It came under scrutiny recently when Windstream, one of the private firm's clients, approached the commission to be sure the deal wasn't unlawful.

The situation has caused some anxiety among lobbyists and others who watch the commission closely. Some questioned how it could possibly be ethical; others said Pursley's outside work hasn't colored his regulatory decisions.

"If it smells like a conflict of interest, I would just as soon it go away," said state Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson, chairman of the Legislature's Transportation and Telecommunications Committee, earlier this week. Others who expressed concern asked not to be named because they have business before the commission.

But Friday, staff at a different state agency tasked with enforcing government ethics laws issued an informal opinion that Pursley's regulatory work is "distinct" from the services Parrish Blessing provides.

"The fact that you are a part-time employee of Parrish Blessing and Windstream is a client of Parrish Blessing does not, by itself, constitute a conflict of interest when matters involving Windstream come before the Public Service Commission," wrote Frank Daley, executive director of the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

Pursley had requested the opinion March 6, and said he would decide what to do after seeing the response.

"I will not have a conflict," he said in an interview Wednesday.

Pursley said he doesn't interact directly with any clients who are also regulated by the Public Service Commission, and he never does private work on state time or using state resources.

The main component of his role with Parrish Blessing is maintaining a complex digital-filing system for telephone companies to comply with federal regulations, he said. And while he helps other companies upload their data into the system, he doesn't do that with Windstream.

Until recently, Parrish Blessing's website listed Pursley as a director. He characterized that as a mistake.

"I had made it very clear that they could not use my name in lobbying or recruiting people," he said.

He still expects the issue to come up again Tuesday during the Public Service Commission's weekly meeting, but noted that his employment contract with the commission is good for another three years.

Commissioner Crystal Rhoades of Omaha has objected to the Pursley's private work, saying she thought it was only temporary.

Others sprung to his defense.

Chairman Tim Schram of Gretna said Pursley has always been "up-front" with commissioners.

Commissioner Frank Landis of Lincoln described Pursley as a nationally recognized expert on federal telecommunications issues whose private work in no way overlaps with his duties in Nebraska.

"I don't see there's a problem."
1.4 million Pennsylvanians asked to vote by mail. How fast will ballots be counted?
The authors compared the CD4+ T-cell counts and HIV-1 RNA viral loads of 383 patients who were either mono-infected with HIV or co-infected with HTLV-1/HIV. They confirmed that co-infected patients were more likely to have higher CD4+ T-cell counts prior to treatment initiation with no immunologic benefit--a result that has been well documented in scholarly literature. Any differences in the CD4+ T-cell counts were expected to disappear once the co-infected and mono-infected patients began to fail their antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens.

Instead, the authors found that HTLV-1/HIVco-infected patients continued to have elevated CD4+ T-cell counts, on average 115 cells/L higher than their HIV mono-infected counterparts, over the two-year study period. But when the authors compared the HIV viral loads over the same period, they could not find any statistically significant difference between the two groups of patients.

HIV viral load testing is currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an accurate strategy for monitoring a patient's response to ART. Nevertheless, CD4+ T-cell testing is often used in resource-limited settings because it is perceived to be more affordable. The continued use of CD4+ T-cell testing has implications for the clinical management of HIV-positive patients. Results from the present study suggest that HTLV-1/HIV co-infection could delay the identification of patients who are failing ART with adverse consequences.

Against this background, recent scientific research has begun to show that HIV viral load testing can be both an accurate and cost-effective treatment monitoring strategy. The present study was based in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa and used patient data from a poor and rural community at the epicentre of the global HIV epidemic.

###

For more information about the research, please visit: http://www.eurekaselect.com/150147

Reference: Vandormael, A.; (2017). CD4+ T-cell count may not be a useful strategy to monitor antiretroviral therapy response in HTLV-1/HIV co-infected patients. Current HIV Research., DOI: 10.2174/1570162X15666170216114917
Scientists have synthesised the first transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic at DESY. The result is a super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride that can potentially be used under extreme conditions like in engines, as the Japanese-German team writes in the journal Scientific Reports. Cubic silicon nitride (c-Si3N4) forms under high pressure and is the second hardest transparent nanoceramic after diamond but can withstand substantially higher temperatures.

"Silicon nitride is a very popular ceramic in industry," explains lead author Dr. Norimasa Nishiyama from DESY who now is an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. "It is mainly used for ball bearings, cutting tools and engine parts in automotive and aircraft industry." The ceramic is extremely stable, because the silicon nitrogen bond is very strong. At ambient pressures, silicon nitride has a hexagonal crystal structure and sintered ceramic of this phase is opaque. Sintering is the process of forming macroscopic structures from grain material using heat and pressure. The technique is widely used in industry for a broad range of products from ceramic bearings to artificial teeth.

At pressures above 130 thousand times the atmospheric pressure, silicon nitride transforms into a crystal structure with cubic symmetry that experts call spinel-type in reference to the structure of a popular gemstone. Artificial spinel (MgAl2O4) is widely used as transparent ceramic in industry. "The cubic phase of silicon nitride was first synthesised by a research group at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999, but knowledge of this material is very limited," says Nishiyama. His team used a large volume press (LVP) at DESY to expose hexagonal silicon nitride to high pressures and temperatures. At approximately 156 thousand times the atmospheric pressure (15.6 gigapascals) and a temperature of 1800 degrees Celsius a transparent piece of cubic silicon nitride formed with a diameter of about two millimetres. "It is the first transparent sample of this material," emphasises Nishiyama.

Analysis of the crystal structure at DESY's X-ray light source PETRA III showed that the silicon nitride had completely transformed into the cubic phase. "The transformation is similar to carbon that also has a hexagonal crystal structure at ambient conditions and transforms into a transparent cubic phase called diamond at high pressures," explains Nishiyama. "However, the transparency of silicon nitride strongly depends on the grain boundaries. The opaqueness arises from gaps and pores between the grains."

Investigations with a scanning transmission electron microscope at the University of Tokyo showed that the high-pressure sample has only very thin grain boundaries. "Also, in the high-pressure phase oxygen impurities are distributed throughout the material and do not accumulate at the grain boundaries like in the low-pressure phase. That's crucial for the transparency," says Nishiyama.

"Cubic silicon nitride is the hardest and toughest transparent spinel ceramic ever made," summarises Nishiyama. The scientists foresee diverse industrial applications for their super-hard windows. "Cubic silicon nitride is the third hardest ceramic known, after diamond and cubic boron nitride," explains Nishiyama. "But boron compounds are not transparent, and diamond is only stable up to approximately 750 degrees Celsius in air. Cubic silicon nitride is transparent and stable up to 1400 degrees Celsius."

However, because of the large pressure needed to synthesise transparent cubic silicon nitride, the possible window size is limited for practical reasons. "The raw material is cheap, but to produce macroscopic transparent samples we need approximately twice the pressure as for artificial diamonds," says Nishiyama. "It is relatively easy to make windows with diameters of one to five millimetres. But it will be hard to reach anything over one centimetre."

###

Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ehime University, the University of Bayreuth, Japanese National Institute for Materials Science, and Hirosaki University were also involved in this research.

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY is the leading German accelerator centre and one of the leading in the world. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association and receives its funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (90 per cent) and the German federal states of Hamburg and Brandenburg (10 per cent). At its locations in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin, DESY develops, builds and operates large particle accelerators, and uses them to investigate the structure of matter. DESY's combination of photon science and particle physics is unique in Europe.

Reference

"Transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride"; Norimasa Nishiyama et al.; Scientific Reports, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/srep44755
New York, NY--March 15, 2017--FAIR Health announced today that as a result of its designation last year by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a Qualified Entity (QE), it is adding four full years of Medicare claims data to its database of more than 23 billion private healthcare claims. FAIR Health is one of only four organizations certified by CMS under its Qualified Entity Certification Program (QECP) to receive Medicare Part A (hospital and facility services), Part B (medical services) and Part D (prescription drug services) claims data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. To date, FAIR Health has received from CMS 100 percent of claims for Parts A and B services rendered nationwide from January 2013 through September 2016, and all Part D claims from 2013 through 2015. FAIR Health expects to receive the balance of the data by April 2017, giving the organization all Parts A, B and D claims from 2013 through 2016. Moving forward, FAIR Health is scheduled to receive Parts A and B data quarterly and Part D data annually.

CMS is providing FAIR Health with claims that represent the experience of more than 55 million individuals enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B coverage. These claims will supplement FAIR Health's collection of private claims from both fully insured and self-insured plans that represent more than 150 million individuals. FAIR Health regularly receives private claims from approximately 60 of the country's national and regional commercial insurers and thus holds data assets offering a uniquely comprehensive record of healthcare costs and utilization across the country. FAIR Health's private claims database now includes more than 23 billion medical and dental records dating back to 2002, with more than 2 billion private claims added each year.

Public and Non-Public Reports to Include Medicare and Private Claims Data

As part of its QE responsibilities, FAIR Health will produce and publish public quality reports and data analytics--based on its database of private insurance claims, in combination with Medicare information--to support efforts to promote transparency, improve the quality of care and reduce costs. FAIR Health also plans to use the Medicare data for internal analyses that will contribute to the evolution of its products and analytics and enrich its offerings in support of transparency in policy making and health systems research.

In addition, with its QE designation, FAIR Health is able to create, for clients who contribute their private claims data to FAIR Health, non-public aggregate reports that reflect information from Medicare Parts A, B and D claims data. The reports will incorporate data from the privately billed claims from the vast FAIR Health repository and/or the client's own data. These types of comprehensive analyses can open up a broad range of opportunities for an organization to evaluate its claims data for strategic, operational, clinical, budgetary and other purposes.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd remarked, "FAIR Health's QE certification demonstrates the trust the healthcare sector places in our data security and mission-driven activities. It also gives us the opportunity to conduct analyses incorporating vast amounts of Medicare and private claims data, offering a unique, overarching perspective on the workings of the healthcare system today."

###

About FAIR Health

FAIR Health is a national, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information through data products, consumer resources and health systems research support. FAIR Health oversees the nation's largest repository of private healthcare claims data, comprising over 23 billion billed medical and dental charges that reflect the claims experience of over 150 million privately insured Americans. FAIR Health licenses its data and data products--including data visualizations, custom analytics, episodes of care analytics and market indices--to commercial insurers and self-insurers, employers, hospitals and healthcare systems, government agencies, researchers and others. FAIR Health has been certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a Qualified Entity, eligible to receive all Medicare Parts A, B and D claims data for use in nationwide transparency efforts. FAIR Health data are referenced in statutes and regulations around the country and have been designated as the official, neutral source of cost information for a variety of state health programs, including workers' compensation and personal injury protection (PIP) programs. Many states have approached FAIR Health with respect to proposed consumer protection laws governing balance billing for surprise out-of-network bills and emergency services, and two states have made FAIR Health a standard in their balance billing legislation. FAIR Health uses its database to power a free consumer website, available in English and Spanish and as an English/Spanish mobile app that enables consumers to estimate and plan their healthcare expenditures. FAIR Health also offers a rich educational platform on health insurance on its website and app. The website has been honored by the White House Summit on Smart Disclosure, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), URAC, the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, appPicker, Employee Benefit News and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. For more information on FAIR Health, visit fairhealth.org.

Contact:

Dean Sicoli

Executive Director of Communications and Public Relations

FAIR Health

646-664-1645

dsicoli@fairhealth.org
(New York - March 17, 2017) -- Major depressive disorder (MDD) impacts 15 million Americans and is the leading cause of disability, yet current treatments possess limited efficacy. Ketamine, which has been repurposed as a rapidly acting antidepressant, has emerged as an experimental and potentially promising compound to treat severe depression through a novel drug action mechanism that blocks glutamate receptors.

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and other institutions reviewed progress made in using ketamine and other therapies to treat depression. While they found that glutamate modulating agents including ketamine may represent the first major advance in treating MDD in decades, fundamental questions remain regarding safety, tolerability, and efficacy. The review will be published online, March 17, in Nature Reviews/Drug Discovery .

Neurotransmitters, including glutamate, are substances that conduct signals from one nerve cell to another. Glutamate is the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter that promotes the flow of signals between nerve cells. Mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia stem in part from an inability of the central nervous system to effectively use glutamate. Experimental drugs that block glutamate receptors in the central nervous system or lower glutamate brain levels may represent the next generation of antidepressant medications, and offer potential advantages over current drug treatments.

"The ongoing clinical trial research focusing on the glutamate system may lead to a completely new class of antidepressants that may significantly change the way patients with depression, and in particular, treatment-resistant depression are treated," said the study's first author, James Murrough, MD, Director, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Targeting glutamate receptors could transform care for patients for this devastating disease."

Researchers at Mount Sinai's Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program (MAP) are conducting studies and clinical trials on agents, including ketamine, which modulate the glutamate system. No glutamate modulator has been approved for the treatment of depression worldwide.

Ketamine, a schedule III controlled substance drug with a potential for abuse, has been studied in patients with depression. The drug has been given in low doses and in a controlled environment.

The review identifies key outstanding issues related to the development of ketamine and other glutamate modulators for use in depression. For example, most studies have selected patients who have failed to respond to one or more trials of conventional antidepressants and have not accounted for other factors, including trauma history or genetic predisposition for depression.

"Although substantial progress has been made over the past decade in identifying ketamine as a prototype rapid-acting antidepressant, there is a large gap in the literature, which represents a crucial unmet research need to examine its safety and efficacy beyond a single treatment administration," said Dr. Murrough. "An important unknown is the relationship between glutamate modulation and conventional therapeutic approaches for depression, which may shed light on the strengths and limitations of this approach."

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is a co-owner of a patent covering the use of ketamine for the treatment of treatment-resistant depression, has entered into a licensing agreement with a pharmaceutical company for rights to the patent, and will receive payments related to the use of ketamine if it is approved for the treatment of treatment-resistant depression. Dr. Murrough is not named as an inventor on the patent and will not receive any payments.

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About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient services--from community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.

The System includes approximately 7,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is in the "Honor Roll" of best hospitals in America, ranked No. 15 nationally in the 2016-2017 "Best Hospitals" issue of U.S. News & World Report. The Mount Sinai Hospital is also ranked as one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Geriatrics, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Nephrology, Neurology/Neurosurgery, and Ear, Nose & Throat, and is in the top 50 in four other specialties. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 10 nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's, and Mount Sinai West are ranked regionally. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report in "Best Children's Hospitals."

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/, or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
A new study reveals the sub-antarctic island of South Georgia -- famous for its wildlife -- was covered by a massive ice cap during the last ice age.

The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications. South Georgia, the remote UK territory where Sir Ernest Shackleton landed during his dramatic voyage from Antarctica to rescue the team of his Endurance expedition, is home to various species of penguins and seals, and has featured on documentaries including Frozen Planet and Planet Earth II.

The island's unusual plant communities and marine biodiversity, which are protected within a large Marine Protected Area, have survived and evolved through multiple glacial cycles for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.

But a research team led by the University of Exeter has discovered that at the peak of the ice age, about 20,000 years ago, ice thickened and extended tens of kilometres from the island -- far further than previously believed.

This would have driven its biological communities to small mountain and seabed refuges to survive.

The researchers also found the ice has been sensitive to short-lived cooling and warming -- growing and shrinking dramatically as the climate changed.

"Although the island is small framed against Antarctica's great ice sheets, the discovery of an extensive past ice cap on South Georgia is an important result," said lead author Dr Alastair Graham, of the University of Exeter.

"The survival of ocean ecosystems is linked heavily to patterns of glaciation, so it is very interesting to know where and how sea-bed creatures lived through the ice age, and how the cycles of ice-cap change have influenced the biodiversity.

"Life must have really only survived at the edges, at and beyond the ice margins.

"Our work also provides a key data point for ice sheet and climate models, which will now need to simulate a large ice field on South Georgia during the last ice age if they are to have confidence in their outputs."

The team from the UK, Germany and Australia travelled to the island on British Antarctic Survey's RRS James Clark Ross in 2012, and the German RV Polarstern in 2013 to carry out sonar mapping using sophisticated sonar technology mounted to the hulls of ice-breaking vessels.

They also used weighted gravity corers to retrieve samples of ancient sediment from the ice-carved troughs that radiate from the island to reveal past patterns of glacier expansion and melting.

The researchers discovered hundreds of distinct ridges bulldozed into the seabed by glaciers, showing that -- contrary to previous estimates -- the ice extended across South Georgia's vast continental shelf.

Co-author Duanne White, from the University of Canberra, said: "Glaciers in the sub-Antarctic are retreating dramatically today, in response to an ever-warming atmosphere and ocean.

"It is perhaps unsurprising that South Georgia's glaciers were sensitive to climate change in the past, but our work has really shown that they were dynamic and underwent big changes over geological time.

"Improving the history of glacier behaviour on South Georgia even further is now essential so that we have a long-term context for the alarming recession we are witnessing right now."

Co-author Dominic Hodgson, from British Antarctic Survey, said: "The sub-antarctic is a region experiencing massive climate changes with rapidly shrinking glaciers and the loss of several ice caps in recent decades.

"Studying the longer-term history of glacial changes in the region is key to understanding the sensitivity of glaciers to climate change, and their impacts on biodiversity and species survival."

The paper is entitled: "Major advance of South Georgia glaciers during the Antarctic Cold Reversal following extensive sub-Antarctic glaciation."

###

The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
People with asthma should be given tailored support to help them manage their condition, experts say.

Helping people with asthma take control of their own illness reduces symptoms, improves quality of life, reduces emergency use of health services and even prevents deaths, research has shown.

Supported self-management has been recommended in asthma guidelines for the past three decades, but implementation is patchy.

Clinicians and healthcare organisations should prioritise making sure that every person with asthma has access to support to help them control their illness, researchers say.

A team led by the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research at the University of Edinburgh, Queen Mary's University of London and University of Manchester reviewed results from 270 studies that evaluated the success of supported self-management.

People of all ages and from a range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds benefit from tailored support to help control their own symptoms, the review found.

Asthma is a common condition, affecting 334 million people worldwide. In the UK, asthma accounts for more than six million GP consultations and 100,000 hospital admissions each year, costing an estimated 1 billion annually.

Supported self-management helps people recognise early signs that their asthma is worsening and to take action accordingly.

Each patient is offered a personalised action plan with details of what medicines to take and advice on when to seek help if symptoms are getting worse. Patients have regular check ups to review their progress and their action plan is updated as needed.

Studies have shown that the approach saves lives, yet a 2014 review of asthma deaths suggested more than three-quarters of patients did not have an action plan to help them manage their condition.

The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research Programme.

Professor Hilary Pinnock, of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Evidence is compelling that supported self-management for asthma works. The challenge is in making sure it is implemented across the health service, so that every person with asthma has access to a personal action plan and knows what to do if their condition is worsening.

"Supported self-management is being promoted across all long-term conditions and asthma has the best evidence base, so it should be an exemplar. We hope our review will be alert those commissioning or delivering services for people with asthma to the importance of ensuring that supported self-management for asthma is implemented now."

Dr Samantha Walker, Director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK, said: "It is well known that self-management is essential in helping people with asthma achieve good asthma control; whilst self-management can be complex, this research shows that it can significantly improve quality of life and reduce the rates of hospital admissions and visits to A&E.

"Two out of three asthma deaths are preventable with good basic care, and this research shows the difference supported self-management can make. We must take a bold new approach and take advantage of digital health solutions that could transform the way asthma care is delivered and support self-management. Digital action plans, smart inhalers and automated GP alerts are just some of the ways asthma care could be brought up to date and reduce the risk of potentially fatal asthma attacks."

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Drs. Marie-Josee Hebert and Melanie Dieude have discovered a new cell structure responsible for previously unexplained rejections following an organ transplant. They have also identified a drug capable of preventing this type of rejection. Recipients of the Award of Excellence in Research - Science Contribution of 2016 at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center (CRCHUMM), they explain that this discovery could one day revolutionize transplant practice. VIDEO: bit.ly/2n6aEbE

With the collaboration of the Canadian National Transplant Research Program, they continue their research to learn the language of organs.

Drs. Hebert and Dieude have discovered a new cell structure responsible for previously unexplained rejections following an organ transplant. Before transplanting an organ, physicians check compatibility between the donor and recipient. Despite these precautions, approximately one in ten transplants ends up being rejected by the recipient.

"We have found the mechanism that causes a person to react against components in his own blood vessels even before receiving an organ transplant. We have also identified a drug capable of preventing this type of rejection," says Dr. Marie-Josee Hebert, transplant specialist and CRCHUM researcher. One day, this discovery could revolutionize transplant practice by changing the assessment of rejection risks in heart, lung, kidney or liver transplant recipients.

###

To find out more http://bit.ly/1OwBPiH

About the original study

The article "The 20S proteasome core, active within apoptotic exosome-like vesicles, induces autoantibody production and accelerates rejection" was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on December 16, 2015. The Canadian National Transplant Research Program, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-15447), the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (311598 and 386598) funded this study. Marie-Josee Hebert holds the Shire Chair in Nephrology and Renal Transplantation and Regeneration. For more information, see the study: DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aac9816

About the CRCHUM's Research Awards of Excellence

Awarded yearly since 2012, the CRCHUM's Research Awards of Excellence are honorary awards given to CHUM researchers who make significant contributions to the advancement of health research. The award winners are selected from among the approximately 150 regular researchers within the institution.

About the CRCHUM

The University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) is one of the largest hospital-based research centres in North America. Our mission is to improve the health of adults through a continuum of research from basic science, to population health, to clinical research. More than 1,750 people work at the CRCHUM, including 439 researchers and 700 students and research trainees: crchum.chumontreal.qc.ca/en

Source: University of Montreal Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM)

Information:

Isabelle Girard

Information advisor

CRCHUM

Phone: +1 514 890-8000, extension 12725 | @CRCHUM

isabelle.girard.chum@ssss.gouv.qc.ca
Sexual Assault Victimization Disproportionately Affects Certain Minority College Students; Inclusive Campus Climates May Lower Risk

PITTSBURGH, March 17, 2017 - Students who perceive that their college campus is more inclusive and welcoming of sexual- and gender-minority people have lower odds of being victims of sexual assault, according to a study led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and published today in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

In a complementary study, the researchers found that some minority groups are at considerably higher risk for sexual assault in college than peers in majority groups. Published recently in the journal Prevention Science, it is among the first analyses to explore how populations with intersecting minority identities have varying risks of sexual assault victimization.

"Despite the formation of The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault in 2014, few interventions have been shown to be effective in preventing such assault. Even fewer interventions are tailored for racial and ethnic minorities, and not one intervention has been evaluated with sexual- and gender-minority people," said Robert Coulter, M.P.H., a doctoral candidate in Pitt Public Health's Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and lead author of both studies. "Our studies highlight the need for college prevention and treatment programs to focus efforts on sexual, gender, racial and ethnic minority groups."

Coulter and his team analyzed surveys completed by 71,421 undergraduate students from 120 U.S. post-secondary education institutions between 2011 and 2013.

Non-transgender women had nearly 150 percent greater odds of being sexually assaulted in the past year than non-transgender men.

But transgender people were at even greater risk: They had nearly 300 percent higher odds of being sexually assaulted than non-transgender men.

Among non-transgender men, gay and bisexual men had higher odds of sexual assault than heterosexual men, and black men had higher odds than white men.

Among non-transgender women, bisexual women had higher odds of sexual assault than heterosexual women. Compared with white women, black women had higher odds of sexual assault, while Latino and Asian women had lower odds.

Among transgender people, black transgender people had higher odds of sexual assault than white transgender people.

"What is particularly unique about this analysis, aside from being one of the largest studies to examine sexual assault on college campuses, is that it provided insights into how sexual assault varies among populations with multiple and intersecting marginalized identities--such as being both transgender and black," said Coulter.

In their other study, Coulter and his team examined surveys completed by nearly 2,000 sexual- and gender-minority undergraduates from colleges in all 50 U.S. states.

Students who perceived that their campus was more inclusive of sexual- and gender-minority people had 27 percent lower odds of having been sexually assaulted than their peers who felt their campus was less inclusive.

The researchers hypothesize that sexual- and gender-minority inclusive campus climates may embolden bystanders to stop, or attempt to stop, sexual assault of sexual- and gender-minority people. Such campuses also may dissuade perpetrators from targeting sexual- and gender-minority people. Additionally, inclusive campuses may empower people to reduce their likelihood of becoming sexual assault victims by, for example, being cautious when drinking alcohol.

Examples of potential ways to make colleges more inclusive include programs that train faculty, staff and students how to be allies for sexual- and gender-minority people; forming resource centers and student groups for these minorities; as well as creating and enforcing anti-discrimination policies that protect these groups.

"If sexual assault prevention efforts solely focus on heterosexual violence, they may invalidate sexual- and gender-minority people's assault experiences and be ineffective for them," said Coulter. "To overcome this, existing programs could be augmented to explicitly address homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and racism. And new interventions could be created specifically for sexual, gender, racial and ethnic minorities."

###

Susan R. Rankin, Ph.D., of Rankin & Associates Consulting in Howard, Pa., is co-author on the Journal of Interpersonal Violence study.

Additional authors on the Prevention Science study are Christina Mair, Ph.D., and Derrick Matthews, Ph.D., M.P.H., both of Pitt; Elizabeth Miller, M.D., Ph.D., of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC; John R. Blosnich, Ph.D., of the Department of Veterans Affairs; and Heather L. McCauley, Sc.D., of Michigan State University.

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants F31DA037647, K12HD043441 and R01AA023260, Department of Veterans Affairs grant CDA 14-408, and Campus Pride.

About the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health

The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, founded in 1948 and now one of the top-ranked schools of public health in the United States, conducts research on public health and medical care that improves the lives of millions of people around the world. Pitt Public Health is a leader in devising new methods to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, cancer and other important public health problems. For more information about Pitt Public Health, visit the school's Web site at http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu.

http://www.upmc.com/media
The battle over Whiteclay beer sales is heating up in the final weeks before a planned showdown in front of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission.

The state attorney generals office recently accused Whiteclays four beer stores of committing 22 violations of state liquor laws, including selling to bootleggers, keeping inadequate records and selling alcohol after hours.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the beer stores are trying to prevent the liquor commission from potentially denying reissuance of the stores licenses.

The activity comes as beer store owners prepare to face off next month with critics who want them shut down. A hearing is scheduled April 6-7 at the Capitol on whether law enforcement in Whiteclay is adequate to let beer sales continue.

The liquor commission scheduled the hearing and ordered the beer stores to reapply for their liquor licenses last year, citing concerns about law enforcement in the unincorporated village in northwest Nebraska.

Whiteclay is home to about a dozen permanent residents and sits just 200 yards from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where alcohol is banned. Yet the four beer stores sell millions of cans of beer and malt liquor each year, much of which is consumed by people on the reservation.

Hobie Rupe, the Liquor Control Commissions executive director, said an audit of the stores that began in fall 2015 uncovered significant irregularities that ultimately resulted in the citations from the attorney generals office, which were filed Feb. 27.

We consider these serious violations and are prepared to provide evidence in support of the allegations, Attorney General Doug Peterson said in a statement.

Rupe said the liquor commission wont consider those citations until at least May or June, after it has weighed in on renewal of the liquor licenses.

Wednesday, attorneys for the beer stores asked a judge in Lincoln to block any action by the liquor commission other than to quickly reissue the licenses, arguing renewal is their clients constitutionally protected right.

The request was made in a filing in Lancaster County District Court. The beer stores made a similar motion with the liquor commission Tuesday, which Rupe will discuss with the parties involved in a phone conference March 21.

Andrew Snyder of Scottsbluff, an attorney representing the beer stores, did not return a message left at his office late Thursday.

Rupe said he assumed the hearing will still take place as planned next month, but declined to comment further.

Activists who have fought for years to have the stores shut down celebrated the attorney generals decision to pursue legal action against the stores.
AUSTIN, Texas -- The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull -- a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and The University of Texas at Austin.

Compared with other primates, the large hole at the base of the human skull where the spinal cord passes through, known as the foramen magnum, is shifted forward. While many scientists generally attribute this shift to the evolution of bipedalism and the need to balance the head directly atop the spine, others have been critical of the proposed link. Validating this connection provides another tool for researchers to determine whether a fossil hominid walked upright on two feet like humans or on four limbs like modern great apes.

Controversy has centered on the association between a forward-shifted foramen magnum and bipedalism since 1925, when Raymond Dart discussed it in his description of "Taung child," a 2.8 million-year-old fossil skull of the extinct South African species Australopithecus africanus. A study published last year by Aidan Ruth and colleagues continued to stir up the controversy when they offered additional criticisms of the idea.

However, in a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, UT Austin anthropology alumna Gabrielle Russo, now an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, and UT Austin anthropologist Chris Kirk built on their own prior research to show that a forward-shifted foramen magnum is found not just in humans and their bipedal fossil relatives, but is a shared feature of bipedal mammals more generally.

"This question of how bipedalism influences skull anatomy keeps coming up partly because it's difficult to test the various hypotheses if you only focus on primates," Kirk said. "However, when you look at the full range of diversity across mammals, the evidence is compelling that bipedalism and a forward-shifted foramen magnum go hand-in-hand."

In this study, Russo and Kirk expanded on their previous research (published in the same journal in 2013) by using new methods to quantify aspects of foramen magnum anatomy and sampling the largest number of mammal species to date.

To make their case, Russo and Kirk compared the position and orientation of the foramen magnum in 77 mammal species including marsupials, rodents and primates. Their findings indicate that bipedal mammals such as humans, kangaroos, springhares and jerboas have a more forward-positioned foramen magnum than their quadrupedal close relatives.

"We've now shown that the foramen magnum is forward-shifted across multiple bipedal mammalian clades using multiple metrics from the skull, which I think is convincing evidence that we're capturing a real phenomenon," Russo said.

Additionally, the study identifies specific measurements that can be applied to future research to map out the evolution of bipedalism. "Other researchers should feel confident in making use of our data to interpret the human fossil record," Russo said.

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Friday, March 17, 2017

(NewsUSA) - For college students who aspire to work in financial markets, there is no better way to experience trading than participating in CME Group's annual Trading Challenge.

This year, students at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., beat out nearly 600 teams to take the top prize in the 14th annual contest -- the first time in three years that the winning team was based in the United States.

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Columbia University in New York City, N.Y.; Imperial College in London, England; and California University Chico in Chico, Calif., rounded out the top five.

CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives exchange, hosts its complimentary, electronic trading competition each year to help educate the next generation of finance professionals on derivatives markets in today's interconnected global economy.

During the four-week competition, students learn hands-on techniques and gain experience that they might not otherwise get by trading up to 10 different CME Group derivatives products from multiple-asset classes on a real-time professional trading platform. Live data and news are also provided to students free of charge.

In addition to the $1500 cash prize awarded to each member of the first-place team, the top five teams receive a cash prize. The top 10 percent of teams are also invited to attend a one-day market education conference in Chicago at CME Group in April.

This year's competition saw record participation from more than 2,300 students from 35 countries around the world. Students can also try their hand at trading year-round by using CME Group's Futures Fundamentals site, an innovative resource that offers interactive demonstrations of the role of futures markets in everyday life, along with a trading simulator.

"We are continually impressed with the participants, who are students studying business, finance, agriculture and economics at some of the world's best universities," says Anita Liskey, CME Group Managing Director, Corporate Marketing & Communications. "For many, this is their first hands-on experience in the markets. Inspiring the best and brightest students is a priority for CME Group around the world, and we think the Challenge does just that."

Registration for next year's competition will open in early 2018. To learn more about the Trading Challenge, visit http://www.cmegroup.com/education/trading_challenge.html

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Urgent economic modelling work should be carried out due to David Davis' statement that the UK Government has done no economic assessment of crashing out of the EU with no deal, the Farmers Union of Wales has warned.

Giving evidence to MPs (Wednesday, March 15), Mr Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, insisted it was not possible to calculate the impact of the Brexit talks failing  adding: I may be able to do so in about a years time.

The Brexit Secretary dismissed the Treasurys pre-referendum forecasts of an economic crash if Britain left the EU with no fresh trade agreement.

However, when he was asked by the chairman of the Brexit select committee, if a new assessment had been carried out, Mr Davis replied: Under my time, no.

The admission came despite Mr Davis ordering Cabinet colleagues to prepare for what is widely seen as the growing prospect of negotiations with EU leaders breaking down.

'Extremely worrying'

FUW President Glyn Roberts said Mr Davis' statement is 'extremely worrying'.

Roberts said: We are about 2 weeks away from triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and our UK Government has no plan as to what will happen if we dont strike a positive deal with the European Union.

If the status quo remains and we continue to have tariff-free access to the EU, then of course there is not much the agricultural sector has to worry about from a trade point of view.

However, if things dont go to plan, and we know that Prime Minister Theresa May has already said she would walk away with no-deal, rather than a bad deal, we will find ourselves operating under World Trade organisation (WTO) rules.

And thats where it gets difficult, as we could face tariffs of up to 40%. Nobody knows what will happen if we dont get a deal. Of course, we can fall of the cliff edge and operate under WTO rules but what will that mean for our economy?

Urgent modelling work

The FUW is advocating 'urgent' modelling work to be carried out to assess the potential impact on how many businesses will go out of business, how many jobs will be lost and how much money the rural economies will be losing out on.

Roberts continued: Both the UK and Welsh Government must do some spade work to assess the situation and explore different options. We have asked for this work to be undertaken even before the referendum result was announced. Comments like those made by David Davis are in that sense extremely unhelpful.

The recent Annual Farm Business Survey tells us that the average farm business income dropped by 23% to 22,000 in 2015-16 compared to the previous year. If we have the nightmare scenario of no access to EU markets that means that, for example, sheep meat producers will lose 35-40% of their market overnight.

That can only cause severe pain to both the farmers concerned and also to other rural businesses. We must develop models to understand that impact. The economic and social cost of some scenarios could be enormous.
Farmers who pass on professional rodenticides to unauthorised users are being warned they could pay the penalty.

The supply of anticoagulants has been subject to strict regulation under the UK Stewardship Regime since October 1 and the introduction of strict Point of Sale limitations means less regulated supply routes have now disappeared.

Pest experts say growing numbers of qualified users are being approached to sell part of their own supply as a result.

But theyre warning passing on products to third parties who are not trained and certified is in breach of label conditions  and could land farmers in hot water.

Dee Ward-Thompson, technical manager of the British Pest Control Association, said: Farmers using anticoagulant rodenticides in their operations must now be officially competent in their use  or be members of an approved farm assurance scheme.

But those selling or passing on any of their supply must make sure each recipient is also fully compliant.

Failure to adhere to the requirements may result in the withdrawal of supply  which means theyd be unable to use rodenticides in their business.

They may also be in breach of the Biocidal Products regulations, which would mean they could also be prosecuted.

'Follow the rules'

The British Pest Control Association (BPCA) is urging farmers to follow the rules carefully and report anyone operating outside the law.

Ms Ward-Thompson added: The Stewardship scheme is a chance for everyone to demonstrate that anticoagulants can be used safely and effectively.

These products are among the most effective on the market so its crucial to anyone carrying out pest management activities to help ensure theyre not banned completely.

The only way to avoid that is to abide by the restrictions, so Id urge farmers to ignore the temptation of selling to neighbours or friends who arent certified.

Anyone who hears of people or companies attempting to sell products without carrying out the necessary checks should notify the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) and the authorisation holder of the products concerned, with full details of the incident.
A Norfolk company has been fined 50,000 for safety offences after a farmer's son died whilst cleaning a grain silo.

21-year-old Arthur Mason died at Hall Farm in Fincham near Swaffham in 2014. He climbed inside the silo but became immersed under tonnes of grain.

His colleagues heard his "muffled shouts" but he could not raise his head above the grain, and efforts to use a pipe to help him breath failed.

Maurice Mason Ltd which is owned by Arthur's father Hugh Mason, were sentenced at Norwich Crown Court, after having previously admitted failing to discharge its duty to ensure health, safety and welfare at work.

The health and safety executive called the young man's death a 'tragic and avoidable' incident.
A leading solicitor is urging farmers to write to their MP rejecting government proposals which could see a 9,000% rise in death fees.

John-Paul Dennis, partner at Kirwans law firm says the Ministry of Justices plans to overhaul probate fees could leave bereaved individuals struggling to gain control of their loved ones assets and affairs.

The proposals are due to come into force from May this year, subject to parliamentary approval, and will see a huge hike in the fees charged by the governments Probate Registry to hand over the rights to deal with a deceased persons estate.

Currently, probate fees are fixed at 155 if applying through a solicitor, and 215 if going through the process unaided.

Under the new plans, which 97% of respondents to the 2016 consultation disagreed with, those flat-fee figures would make way for a banded structure.

The new system would see costs rising to 300 for an estate worth 50,000 - 300,000, 1,000 for estates worth over 300,000, and 4,000 for estates over 500,000. Estates over 2m would trigger probate fees of more than 20,000.

The move is part of a drive to raise an extra 250m a year to fund the courts and tribunals system.

'Real hardship for farmers'

John-Paul said: This is just another form of death duty without any real justification. Like Inheritance Tax, it will need paying upfront, which means that those applying for probate could have to find thousands of pounds just to go through the process.

I believe that this will result in real hardship for farmers, and find it hard to understand how a vulnerable surviving spouse is expected to fund these costs. If they are elderly, they are going to find it impossible to re-mortgage, and may have to undertake equity release just to get probate if their loved ones estate is mainly comprised of property.

There is no difference in the amount of work that the Probate Registry will have to undertake to process a Grant for an estate worth 200,000 or 800,000 and yet the fees will be 3,700 more. The Probate Registrys most expensive fee will be 66 times its cheapest fee.

I would urge farmers to contact their MP as soon as possible and express their concerns ahead of parliamentary approval being given, or risk being hit by this stealth tax at a later date.
Leaving the EU will present 'huge challenges' as well as opportunities for the businesses and organisations that manage Britain's countryside, a high-level conference heard today.

Current European regulation and funding affected farming and the environment on a multitude of fronts - and detailed consideration would have to be given to what would stand in their place after Brexit, the audience heard.

The conference, titled What Next for the Countryside Post Brexit?, was organised by Julie Girling MEP, Conservative MEP for the South West and Gibraltar.

More than 100 delegates gathered at the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester to hear presentations from representatives of the Cotswold Conservation Board, the Country Landowners and Business Association (CLA), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Farmers Union, as well as rural strategist Richard Wakeford.

'Unfair and ineffective'

Mrs Girling, outlining the scope of the conference, said the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was expensive, unwieldy, unfair and ineffective in terms environmental protection.

She did, however, admit that it put 3.5 billion into the UK Treasury and something would have to replace it.

She outlined the current impact of the EU on the UK countryside and landscapes, including environmental legislation, pesticides, food safety and chemicals regulations, labelling, animal welfare, research, climate change and biodiversity.

Delegates heard a list of key issues which must be addressed post-Brexit including jurisdiction for enforcement, budgets for enforcement and grants, international competitiveness, trading relationships, the trans-boundary nature of policy and Government commitment to the environment.

'Dirty Man of Europe'

Martin Lane, Director of the Cotswold Conservation Board, said the EU had benefited the UK environment and recalled that before 1973 Britain was labelled the "Dirty Man of Europe" because of its pollution levels.

But he hoped that helpful regulation, funding and systems of administration could be replaced by something simpler, more flexible, but equally effective.

John Mortimer, South West Director of the CLA, warned: "The success of Brexit will depend on the success of the rural economy."

Nick Bruce-White, South West Regional Director of the RSPB, said one of the biggest benefits of Brexit which had already been seen was a coming together of environmental organisations to form the Greener UK coalition to co-operate over future policy.

Mrs Girling, a member of both the European Parliament's Environment Committee and its Agriculture Committee concluded: "It is not going to be easy - the EU will not make our exit straightforward, and we will have to negotiate long and hard to get the deal we need."
Welsh dairy farmers have pressed the Government for an end to unfair trading practices and for the possibility for the introduction of Dairy Producer Organisations.

Mid Gwynedd dairy farmers have recently met with Sian Gwenllian AM to call for the principles behind the voluntary code of practice for dairy contracts to be made compulsory.

Farmers have voiced their concerns on issues within the dairy industry and highlighted the inadequacy of some dairy contracts. They also expressed their disappointment that not all milk buyers had signed up to the voluntary code of practice for dairy contracts.

Aled Jones NFU Cymru Milk Board Chairman said: Any falls in world market commodity prices are immediately felt in milk prices but any gains are extremely slow to manifest themselves in prices paid to dairy farmers.

Too often we see unreasonable conditions placed in contracts and unreasonable notice for specification changes. This really isnt acceptable and creates great uncertainty, making future planning very difficult for the farmer.

This is why were asking for the principles behind the voluntary code of practice to be made compulsory and for the Grocery Code Adjudicator to have the powers to oversee the code. We want an end to unfair practices and one sided contracts so that we have a level playing field for the whole supply chain.

Dairy Producer Organisations

The benefits of Dairy Producer Organisations (DPO) have also been discussed at length and how farmers, processors and retailers can best work together.

Aled Jones said: There is now an opportunity to develop DPOs in Wales and we asked Sian Gwenllian to support the formation of these producer organisations to help combat price volatility that currently exists in the milk sector.

We have to reverse the trend of people going out of dairy farming by making the sector more attractive. The farming industry supports a myriad of other rural businesses and its importance to the rural economy is clear to see.

A report from last year shows that European farmers who belong to a DPO have earned better or more stable milk prices for their farmers
The Yorkshire Agricultural Society (YAS) is to submit expert testimonies about the impact of Brexit on UK farming to the Government.

The Society will submit four summary reports that identify key concerns of the farming industry and highlight policies which need to be reformed.

The YAS created a Brexit working party via its Farmer-Scientist Network to look at the effect of Brexit and to inform the farming community as the Government moves towards developing new farming polices.

Wyn Grant, professor of politics at the University of Warwick and leader of the working party, said: New agricultural policies will require careful consideration, need to rely on sound scientific evidence and be led by the industry itself.

Our findings were that basic payment subsidies are unlikely to survive Brexit, but there needs to be a transitional period to allow the industry to adjust.

Seasonal migrant labour is of vital importance to some sectors and a new scheme is needed to facilitate the use of temporary workers from both inside and outside the EU.

Agri-food trade policy is very much a work in progress and at least four alternative models are available. If policy variation in the devolved territories increases after Brexit, there is the potential for the emergence of un-level playing fields and variations in the treatment of farmers across the UK.

As Article 50 will be triggered by the end of March, Britain should officially leave the EU by April 2019.
The first 100 days in office for an incoming president are often viewed under a microscope by the American public. It's the period when the American people find out whether a president's campaign rhetoric and promises turn into reality while in office.

Trump unveils his 2018 budget

On Thursday, March 16, President Trump took the next step in his whirlwind of tasks to tackle by releasing an outline for his 2018 budget proposal. It should be noted up front that this outline strictly tackles discretionary spending -- which does amount to more than $1 trillion -- while leaving mandatory spending programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid out for the time being. Despite not including these components, which account for well over half of the federal budget, we got a really good glimpse of the president's approach to budget management -- namely, boosting defense spending and cutting practically everything else.

When taken as a whole, Trump's 2018 budget outline looks to corral discretionary spending by 1.2%, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Trump vowed during his campaign to reduce government waste by trimming the size of government, a common goal of the Republican Party, and he appointed Mick Mulvaney, an ardent fiscal hawk who seeks a balanced budget and isn't afraid to voice his opinion against popular programs, as his budget director.

What you need to know about Trump's budget in one chart

So what exactly does Trump's budget entail? The following chart should give you a generally good idea of what's being cut and where all that extra money is headed.

Just three agencies -- defense, homeland security, and veterans affairs -- are expected to see an increase in spending based on Trump's 2018 budget outline. The proposed $52.3 billion increase in defense spending makes up the bulk of the nearly $59 billion being cut from 14 other agencies.

Which agencies get more money?

With regard to the Defense Department, Trump's proposal would repeal the sequestration of $52 billion in annual defense spending that was enacted via the Budget Control Act, beginning in 2013. The proposal primarily suggests the importance of spending additional funds to upgrade the U.S. military to fight ISIS and for the purpose of military readiness. It specifically lists out spending for additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, a fighter jet manufactured by Lockheed Martin (LMT 1.43%), and strongly hints at the need for new technological defense advances for all branches of the military. However, there aren't too many specifics of where the added $52.3 billion would go.

The Department of Homeland Security would get a $2.8 billion raise over what it was divvied out in 2017, with $1.5 billion being added for the removal of illegal immigrants, and $314 million being spent to recruit, hire, and train 500 new border-patrol agents.

Last in the plus column is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which would see a $4.4 billion year-over-year increase. The proposal specifically lists a $4.6 billion increase in VA healthcare to "improve patient access and timeliness of medical care services for over 9 million enrolled veterans." This highlights the important role that pharmaceutical and device companies will be expected to play in the years and decades to come as veterans, and Americans as a whole, age and live longer.

These agencies would receive less under Trump's proposal

On the other side of the equation, 14 agencies would receive less money in 2018 if the budget outline were passed in its current form. In fact, 11 of the 14 agencies (energy, treasury, and NASA excluded) would see a double-digit percentage decline in federal funding from the 2017 baseline.

In terms of aggregate percentage, no agency would be dealt a steeper budget cut than the Environmental Protection Agency. Even though it was a relatively small budget component in 2017, with baseline funding of $8.2 billion, Trump's proposal knocks off nearly $2.6 billion, or 31%. As part of the president's push for deregulation, some 3,200 jobs would be eliminated, funding for the Clean Power Plan would be entirely redacted, and roughly 50 EPA programs would be terminated.

The State Department would also take a pretty sizable monetary and percentage hit, losing $10.9 billion in funding year over year, or 29% in percentage terms. With a focus on keeping U.S. spending in America, Trump's budget would strip all funding to United Nations-based climate initiatives, and it would reduce funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations.

In terms of pure monetary reductions, no department gets hit harder than Health and Human Services, with a $12.6 billion spending cut from the 2017 baseline, or 16% overall. A pretty hefty 18% spending cut ($5.8 billion) at the National institutes of Health and the elimination of $4.2 billion in community-service programs explains the bulk of the cuts.

One major hurdle to consider

This so-called "skinny budget" gives the American people a good idea of where federal spending may head in the years to come. However, it completely disregards one critical component: Any major change in defense sequestration is going to require 60 votes in the Senate to pass. Even if Republicans were to vote along party lines, they would fall eight votes short if Democrats do likewise.

I believe the key takeaway here for readers is that Trump's budget outline is a starting point for discussion. Rarely, if ever, are budget proposals passed quickly and intact. Congress typically debates spending provisions within a proposed budget for weeks, if not months. Chances are pretty good that what we're looking at now from Trump won't be the exact budget that gets passed for fiscal 2018.

For investors, the macroeconomic implications of this federal spending can indeed matter. This means it's in your best interests to pay close attention to the expected wheeling and dealing that'll be associated with this budget outline in the weeks to come.
A Nebraska man who challenged a state law barring felons from having knives lost his lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John Gerrard dismissed Wa'il Muhannad's case against the state this week.

Muhannad, who started a halal meatpacking business in Dodge County in 2006, stopped five years later after learning a Nebraska law bars him from possessing knives with blades longer than 3 inches because of convictions from the 1980s.

Around 2011, he went to jail and later prison on false-imprisonment charges. Muhannad was released in January 2016.

He filed a lawsuit last summer saying the Nebraska law preventing felons from possessing deadly weapons was overly broad and unconstitutional.

He asked the judge to stop the state from enforcing it and direct state officials to eliminate the statute.

But Gerrard on Monday rejected Muhannad's claims the Nebraska law violated his constitutional rights.

Muhannad failed to present facts that the law was too vague, Gerrard wrote in his order. And Muhannad's allegation that the law is overly broad fails because a challenge under that legal doctrine is limited to First Amendment freedom of expression claims, the judge said.

"And nowhere in his complaint or his brief does Muhannad assert an infringement on expressive or associative conduct that would indicate how the statutes he challenges are properly subject to an overbreadth challenge," Gerrard said.

Gerrard dismissed Muhannad's claim that the law violates his Second Amendment right to bear arms, saying that laws prohibiting felons from possessing firearms have long been held constitutional and that Muhannad failed to provide a basis for the judge to see he is no more dangerous than a law-abiding citizen.

Lastly, Gerrard rejected Muhannad's claim the law is a burden on his religious exercise.

His practice of Islam may require him to eat halal food, the judge wrote. "But he does not allege that to be an observant Muslim, he must operate a halal slaughterhouse."

And the law he brings his claim under only applies to land-use regulations and persons in an institution, the judge said.
DeWITT  Thursday was an afternoon of adventurous eating for the students at Tri County Schools.

The school held its first farmers market, which included veggies picked from the schools greenhouse and foods provided by local businesses.

There were some old favorites, such as ice cream and carrots, on hand, but some of the veggies  such as jicama, a root vegetable with an apple-ish consistency; and kohlrabi, a member of the cabbage family that tastes kind of like a sweet broccoli stem  were a bit of a novelty.

Every class of students gets to go through our farmer's market today and try local produce, said Jane Niemeier, the school nurse at Tri County, who worked to organize the event. We have new vegetables out today, and we're all still learning how to spell them.

The farmers market was the culmination of a grant received from Nebraska Team Nutrition. The schools Wellness Committee used the money to help the school build a hydroponic growing system in the greenhouse.

Currently, the hydroponics are being used to grow lettuce, completely free of dirt. Sophomore Tiffany Pearson, who is in the schools horticulture class, said she's impressed at its efficiency compared to conventional methods.

Our hydroponic system is really incredible, Pearson said. I planted some lettuce in regular, loamy soil in November and we planted lettuce, same breed, same variety, in the hydroponic system. And they grew, like, three or four times faster than the stuff in the soil.

So far, Pearson said, the horticulture class has grown and eaten carrots, turnips, radishes, lettuce, kale, peas and green beans.

I love plants, she said. It's so fun that we have the opportunity to have the greenhouse.

Aside from the school-grown veggies, students got a chance to taste some foods from Prairieland Dairy, Classic Dairy and Franks Smokehouse.

In the cafeteria, hummus, whole-grain breads, beef sticks, ice cream, cheese sticks and other healthy snacks were laid out for hungry students at lunchtime.

One of the more popular items was the Shamrocks and Gold fruit smoothie prepared by University of Nebraska Extension that had apple juice, baby spinach, pineapple, yogurt and bananas. Some fourth-graders gave it a big thumbs-up as they slugged down a small cup of smoothie, even if the spinach did sound a bit weird at first.

I am a picky eater, said junior Shae Wattjes, who was serving sausage and sauerkraut to students. I hope that they learn to try new things, even if it looks kind of funny. It actually tastes pretty good.

Students seemed eager to try just about anything in front of them, which was kind of the point of the event, Niemeier said.

We wanted to start bringing local production, local produce into the school system. It just makes sense."
New EMV approved mobile credit card payment on the marketplace

Commercial Merchant Services is celebrating the launch of their Groov MPOS in the Atlanta Georgia area by First 100 customers get free terminals. Further information can be found at http://visamachine.com.

--

In a slightly different approach to launching its Groov MPOS,Commercial Merchant Services , a Business that needs wireless EMV credit card processing in Atlanta Georgia has decided it will First 100 customers get free terminals, and this is expected to take place Wednesday March 15th 2017.

Where most businesses tend to just Some offer lower prices CMS is giving terminals away, Commercial Merchant Services has decided to be a little more Exciting with it's Groov MPOS launch.

Julian Johnson, Head of Marketing at Commercial Merchant Services , says: "CMS wanted to be Exciting with our Groov MPOS launch because CMS wanted to give the small business owner an EMV approved way to accept mobile transactions.

It should be really worthwhile and we're hoping it hope. It should go great unless CMS anger the Gods in some way!"

Commercial Merchant Services has always made a point of standing out when compared to other Business that needs wireless EMV credit card processings in the Atlanta Georgia area. This launch celebration is just one of the many ways it does so.

This is a great chance for Atlanta Georgia residents to This is a great way for the company to acquire new customers as well as help current ones and support a Only the latest EMV approved credit card equipment local business.

Commercial Merchant Services has been serving the Atlanta Georgia area since 1996. To date it has served over Over 100,000 customers and has become recognized as one of the most popular in the area. It can be found on 3100 Briarcliff Rd near I-85.

Julian Johnson also said: "While Commercial Merchant Services may not be the only business with this kind of offering, local residents are choosing Commercial Merchant Services because Great service low rates no contracts."

When asked about the Groov MPOS, Julian Johnson said: " CMS thinks it's going to be a hit because All businesses must be EMV compliant when taking credit cards".

Further information about Commercial Merchant Services can be discovered at http://visamachine.com.

Contact Info:

Name: Julian Johnson

Email: dbsproducts@gmail.com

Organization: Commercial Merchant Services

Address: 3100 Briarcliff rd, Atlanta, Ga 30329, United States

Phone: +1-866-223-0190

For more information, please visit http://visamachine.com

Source: PressCable

Release ID: 178255

For more information visit r



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Veerhouse Voda Selected to Build New Caracol Medical Clinic and Dialysis Center

Veerhouse Voda, maker of disaster-resilient structures, buildings and housing in Haiti, is proud to announce plans to build a new world-class medical facility in Caracol. For more information about Veerhouse Voda, visit VeerhouseVoda.com.

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Veerhouse Voda, selected by NOAH New York Inc., has announced plans to build a world-class medical facility in Caracol, Haiti. Veerhouse Voda, which is well known for its disaster-resilient buildings and emergency shelters, will be utilizing its proprietary building system to ensure the project is completed in a time-efficient manner, without sacrificing quality.

For more information about Veerhouse Voda's disaster-resilient structures, go to VeerhouseVoda.com.

At present, Northern Haiti does not have a dialysis center at all, nor does northeastern Haiti have a CT scanner. The new facility will be the first of its kind in the region, providing both CT scanning services and dialysis, as well as conventional radiology, two operating rooms, and general medical services. When complete, the medical center will offer 475 square meters of space to serve local residents.

"We are pleased to be selected by NOAH NY to bring world class medical facilities to the North of Haiti," said Veerhouse Voda representative Brendon Brewster. "This facility will create jobs as well as save lives and improve the general health of the people of Haiti. The facility itself will be built with technology that is faster and more energy efficient than traditional structures and we are pleased to be entrusted by NOAH NY to create this important facility."

To help NOAH New York with their continued efforts in providing quality healthcare to Haiti please visit; www.noahny.org

Veerhouse Voda's involvement in the project is a key component to its success, as the company creates structures using a proprietary building method and materials. This enables structures to be put up as much as five times faster than traditional building methods, allowing for significant time and cost savings. The Veerhouse Voda building system is used to create disaster-resilient housing, commercial buildings, worship centers, and medical facilities while following rigorous Eurocodes standards. The Caracol medical facility is expected to take just 12 weeks to construct.

NOAH NY is a nonprofit organization that was created in 2008 with the mission to deliver quality healthcare to the underserved in Haiti. Presently, NOAH NY is completing the construction of its second building of its urgent care center in Caracol Haiti. The first building has a laboratory, a pharmacy and 5 examination rooms. The second building will have the followings: two operating rooms, an 8-10 bed recovery room, and a radiology unit that is equipped with a brand new, state of the art CT scanner. The next phase of the project will include a 3 suite dental clinic, and the first and only dialysis unit in the North East. NOAH NY, in partnership with Howard University and HealthFirst Inc., started a yearly Continuing Medical Education conference at the University of Haiti - Limonade Campus last year in an effort to teach the local students, residents and healthcare professionals. The conference will be held in June this year. To learn more about NOAH NY, go to www.noahny.org

About Veerhouse Voda

Veerhouse Voda has a global presence, creating disaster-resilient structures and emergency shelters of all types. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Veerhouse Voda began working extensively in Haiti, helping the country to rebuild. To enhance their efforts, the company later added a local factory in Port-au-Prince, making their building process even more economical and allowing for rapid responses to emergencies. To learn more, go to VeerhouseVoda.com.

Contact Info:

Name: Brendon Brewster

Organization: Veerhouse Voda

Address: 14 Rector Street Floor 4, New York 10006, United States



For more information, please visit http://www.veerhousevoda.com/

Source: PressCable

Release ID: 178573

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Vairengte, Mizoram : The Indian Army is training soldiers of the Vietnamese Army in the forests of Mizoram at Counter Insurgence and Jungle Warfare School.

As per a report in NDTV, three Vietnamese Army officers who are being trained will be transferred to regular infantry soldiers of the Vietnam Army.

Captain Sun of the Vietnamese Army was quoted as saying by the media house  I like India. India is very good. India is a beautiful country. And India is friendly. They help me in many things. The training is very good. I think that after this training, I know many, many things about counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations. It is very useful for operations in my country.

Moreover, India has offered Vietnam BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which was successfully test-fired on March 11 this year from a test range along the Odisha coast and is capable of carrying a warhead of 300 kg.

At the same time, India has also reportedly offered Vietnam the indigenous Akash surface to air missile system now in service with the Indian Air Force.

Moreover, as per NDTV, Vietnamese sailors are also being trained to operate Russian Kilo class diesel electric submarines at INS Satvahana  Navys submarine training school in Visakhapatnam.

The report said that though training of officers of a friendly partner-nation is not uncommon, the context of the training was critical as India is concerned about an expansionist China, which is stepping up its military cooperation with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

It was reported in August last year that Pakistan was to acquire at least eight modified diesel-electric attack submarines from China by 2028 in a nearly USD 5 billion agreement, said to be the biggest arms export deal for the Communist giant.

The first four submarines are expected to be delivered by the end of 2023 while the remaining four will be assembled in Karachi by 2028, as per PTI.

These are expected to form the sea-based arm of Pakistans burgeoning nuclear second-strike triad.

China is Pakistans biggest supplier of military hardware which included battle tanks, naval ships as well as fighter jets. The two jointly manufacture J-17 Thunder warplane.

Earlier, India has also expressed concern over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project being built in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and has maintained that it violates the countrys sovereignty.

Beijing has invested more than $60 billion in CPEC aimed at connecting the western China with the Pakistani port of Gwadar near Karachi.

This ambitious multi-billion dollar joint venture is a combination of road and rail links that connect with Gwadar.

The venture has evoked a lot of reactions in India with some security analysts accusing China of encircling India to flex its geopolitical muscle in the region.

The project also passes through the restive Baluchistan province in Pakistan.

The Baloch people have been fighting for a sovereign homeland and have been accusing Islamabad of occupying their territory.

Source : Zee News
Jolie Varela with her "Mni Wiconi" (Water Is LIfe) patch at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. "They can TRY to make me take it off," she wrote on Facebook on March 11, 2017, after a security guard said she couldn't wear the symbol on her jacket. Photo: Jolie Varela



The National Museum of the American Indian is apologizing for the way a group of Native women were treated in Washington, D.C.

A security guard asked the women, who were in the nation's capital for the historic Native Nations Rise event, to remove their jackets before entering the facility on March 11. When asked why, they were told they were weren't allowed to bring signs or banners inside.

The explanation was troubling to Jolie Varela, a citizen of the Tule River Tribe who lived at the #NoDAPL encampment in North Dakota for two months last year. She and other members of her group were wearing jackets with the familiar "Mni Wiconi" (Water Is Life) patches that are typically pinned or stitched on the backs of items of clothing.

"I endured freezing weather, tear gas, verbal abuse, abuse at the hands of law enforcement to stand up for water," Varela said on Facebook after the incident. "To stand up for our rights as humans and our rights as Natives. When asked to remove these items that are so much a part of me now I was in utter disbelief."

But it turns out the security guard was wrong. After conducting a review of the incident, museum staff said the employee "misinterpreted" a rule barring signs or banners inside the facility.

"The two water protectors were allowed into the building but unfortunately and incorrectly they were asked to remove their jackets," the museum said in a statement, referring to Varela and one other woman in her group. "The rule has been clarified with all of our officers."

"It is not the museum's intention that people  and certainly Native people  ever feel unwelcome or unacknowledged here," the museum said.

"We sincerely regret this happened," the statement concluded.

Varela and her group indeed entered the museum after the holdup at the security check. They offered a song and prayer in the atrium of the facility that drew attention to the struggles facing Native people and showed why they came to D.C. for Native Nations Rise in the first place.

"I just want to thank the powerful women who stood with me yesterday and everyone who followed," Varela said on Facebook afterward. "This movement started with standing against DAPL but it's become so much more."

Native Nations Rise drew about 5,000 tribal citizens and their allies for a march from the headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the White House last Friday. They came to send a message to President Donald Trump , who previously discounted Native opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline as he approved the controversial project without consulting the affected tribes.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe are now hoping to secure justice in the federal courts. They are hoping to stop oil from flowing through the pipeline, which is all but complete except for a small portion in North Dakota.

"We faced a lot of obstacles and we faced a lot of setbacks," Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said at the March 10 rally in front of the White House. "But we're not defeated. We're not defeated."

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Hammond, Indiana  ME2 Productions Inc. of Carson City, Nevada filed an additional lawsuit in the Northern District of Indiana alleging copyright infringement of the action thriller Mechanic: Resurrection.

The lawsuit lists nine anonymous Doe Defendants, accusing them of infringing the copyright of the movie, which has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office under Registration No. PA-1-998-057. Plaintiff contends that the Doe Defendants illegally distributed a screener copy of the film via BitTorrent, a file-sharing protocol. Plaintiff further asserted that this was done in a collective and interdependent manner with other Defendants via the Internet for the unlawful purpose of reproducing, exchanging, and distributing copyrighted material.

The movie, which is the sequel to the 2011 action film Resurrection, stars Jason Statham, Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones. Plaintiff contends that the Doe Defendants are Indiana residents, stating that it determined through the use of geolocation technology that each had an Indiana Internet Protocol address.

This litigation, filed by a copyright lawyer for ME2 Productions, lists a single count  copyright infringement  and asks the court to award injunctive relief, damages, costs and attorneys fees.

The case was assigned to District Judge Philip P. Simon. and Magistrate Judge Micahel G. Gotsch, Sr. in the Northern District and assigned Case 3:17-cv-00186-PPS-MGG.

Complaint
The late Captain Dara Fitzpatrick leaves behind her three-year old son Fionn, her parents, three sisters, and a brother.

Her sister Niamh has spoken of her familys heartbreak after losing Capt Fitzpatrick but says the family has no regrets because she lived her life to the very fullest.

As a family, were heartbroken but weve no regrets where Dara is concerned, Niamh said.

She lived her life to the full and she loved what she did. She wanted to be a mother, she adopted Fionn. She absolutely adores him. They say it takes a village to raise a child and he has a village around him now who will raise him on her behalf.

The family spent the previous night at the mortuary in Castlebar because they couldnt bear to leave Capt Fitzpatrick on her own, Niamh said.

Capt Dara Fitzpartick: Leaves behind her son Fionn, aged 3.

Her love of family also influenced them to stay, she added. During the interview, Niamh kept referring to her sister in the present tense.

I cant say was yet. I know shes not with us but she ... its still Dara is. She is all about family.

Ms Fitzpatrick recalled a recent talk her sister gave to a group of scouts about her role as a captain.

Dara loved talking to them, you know listening to the children and asking the questions and telling them everything, she told RTEs Morning Ireland.

She loved that as well as she loved the hard, awful, harrowing parts of the job, when youre recovering, doing what her colleagues are doing now, which is recovering bodies but she loved it because she was about helping people.

That sounds trite but it actually was true. Thats what she was about, she added.

The family had often spoken to the crew about the risks involved with the job, Niamh said.

What they always said to us is  were trained. Even the week before last Dara did whats called the dunker. They take them to a place, I think its in Cork, they put them into a huge helicopter-like machines, they dunk the machine into a huge tank, turn the machine upside down and turn the lights off and its their job to get them out, get themselves out.

And so when something happens, their training kicks in. They dont panic the way the rest of us would, they go straight into training.

And anytime weve ever talked to her about risks she would say Of course there are risks but were prepared, were ready and we need to save people so we have to take that risk. 

A trailblazer, Capt Fitzpatrick was not only the first female commercial pilot in the country, she was also the first female captain.

She had originally wanted to sign up for training with Aer Lingus, Niamh said, but the airline was not taking on pilots at the time.

Somebody gave her a half hour lesson on a helicopter and because years ago wed been in a small little helicopter with a thing called the eye in the sky, looking at traffic over Dublin, she loved the helicopter.

And because we had grown up on a farm riding horses, she had soft hands and light hands. I remember the instructor saying to her that she didnt go after the controls the way a lot of other people did, she was gentle. And she showed promise, she got sponsored. She was the first female commercial pilot in the country and then went on to be the first female captain in the country.

It never occurred to Dara that she couldnt do this because she was female. That didnt come into it at all. Id say it wasnt easy for her crew to work in a male environment with just one female and it wasnt easy for her to be the only female in a male environment, Niamh said.

But in terms of doing the job, there was never any question of her gender having anything to do with being able to do it or not. She just loved it and she worked hard at it and she was excellent at it.

Ms Fitzpatrick thanked the search and rescue community for their support.

We stayed with Dara all night and they stayed with us. Theyre not just random strangers, they have flown with her, they love her and theyre her friends as well as her colleagues and they could not be nicer to us. That support has been incredible.

It will take us weeks and months to get through all the messages, all the cards, all the texts all the emails but we will do each and every one because the way she has touched people and the stories that are coming back to us, they do help. They really do help.
From the Archive Bertil Lintner: China is the Most Important Foreign Player in the Peace Process

Bertil Lintner pictured in Rangoon in 2016. / The Irrawaddy

China has long had interests in neighboring Burma and will play an ongoing role as the peace process continues. Beijing says it supports internal peace in Burma but holds onto its leverage and links to ethnic armed groups including the Wa and Kokang on the border.

Chinas Special Envoy of Asian Affairs Sun Guoxiang has met with both Burma Army and Northern Alliance representatives, and on Tuesday requested that the Northern Alliance cease fighting with the Burma Army during a meeting in Kunming, the capital of Chinas Yunnan Province.

The Irrawaddy revisits this article from 2016 about Chinas ongoing interests in Burma.

Its complicated: In an interview with The Irrawaddy, longtime Burma expert Bertil Lintner assesses the many interests at play during State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyis visit to China on Wednesday.

As a Burmese government delegation led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi leaves for a state visit to China, what can the Burmese expect from this trip?

It is quite possible that China would want to restart the Myitsone project, but that would be political suicide for any Burmese government. If China wants to improve its tarnished image in Burma, it should drop Myitsone altogether, and also make a public announcement to that effect.

The Burmese have always been concerned about China interfering in Burmas internal affairs. In the North, China continues to support ethnic rebels including the Wa and Kokang.

At the last ethnic summit in Mai Ja Yang, the Chinese envoy said that it supports and backs all forces working to achieve internal peace in Burma. It seems Beijing wants to see more stability along the border.

It is important to remember that China, not some Western, self-appointed peacemakers and interlocutors, is the most important foreign player in the peace process. China wants peace and stability along the border, but it will not give up the leverage it has inside Burma by severing ties with the UWSA [United Wa State Army], the MNDAA [Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army], the NDAA [National Democratic Alliance Army, also known as the Mongla Group] and other ethnic armed organizations. Chinas relations with those groups gives it bargaining chips, and a much stronger position in the peace process than any Norwegian, Swiss or Australian entity could ever hope for.

Do you think China is more pragmatic in dealing with Suu Kyi? In the past, Beijing officials reportedly complained about Burmese generals intransigence and corruption. Can you tell whether Suu Kyi and President Xi Jinping are prepared to turn a new page? What are the key challenges in improving ties?

It is obvious that China, at least for the time being, seems more comfortable dealing with Suu Kyi than the Tatmadaw, which is eager to re-establish military-to-military relations with the West in order to lessen the dependence on China. But at the same time, China knows that the military, not the elected government, is the countrys most powerful institution.

The military controls the Defense, Home and Border Affairs ministries, and the Tatmadaw is an autonomous institution that takes orders from the commander-in-chief, not the president or the state counselor. China would have to play a delicate balancing act here, and, perhaps, even play the government against the military.

How do you see China evaluating and viewing the substantial rise of Western influence in Burma? Beijing seemed to be caught off guard when the country began opening up in 2011 and 2012. But since last year, it has been more aggressively engaging Burma and has launched more public relations offensives, inviting opposition membersincluding Suu Kyito Beijing. Last week we saw Song Tao, the head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China meet almost every key leader in Burma.

China is no doubt worried about Western inroads into Burma, especially the possibility of military-to-military relations with the US, which was suggested by William C. Dickey, ex defense attache to Burma, in a recent article. Dickey stated that moves by other Western as well as Asian countries to develop bilateral military ties with Myanmar suggest it is time for the US to change its approach and actively assist in transforming the countrys armed forcesjust as Washington has successfully done with other Southeast Asian military forces. Many would argue that the US has a very poor record of transforming its allied military forces into more democratic institutions, just look at Thailand, Egypt and Turkey.Although Dickey doesnt mention it, it is clear to any observer that he is talking about getting Burma away from its hitherto heavy dependence on China. Regional security issues, not human rights and democracy, are at the top of Pentagons priorities in the region.

Western governments, including the US, usually take the moral high ground by maintaining sanctions and making statements on human rights issues. But it seems Beijing is more pragmatic and more focused on not losing its important geopolitical strategic partner and business interests at all costs. Who is going to be winner in this so-called great game over Burma in the end?

Although human rights are not the most important issue for the US, it cant ignore such concerns and it has to raise objections if human rights are being violated. China has no such problem, and would not risk losing the influence it still has in Burma because of any human rights issue. Thats a severe dilemma for the US and the West.

How do you see Suu Kyi rebalancing Burmas foreign policy with rest of Asia and beyond, as she has been seen as pro-West in the past? She once said that she wants to make friends with the rest of the world.

It remains to be seen how she, as Burmas foreign minister, is going to balance relations with China and Japan and the West. But one has to remember that China is an immediate neighbor with vital strategic interests in Burma. The US, and even Japan, are far away. It would be impossible for any government in Burma to ignore the importance of China.

Aside from controversial Myitsone project, the oil and gas pipeline and proposed rail link between Sittwe and Yunnan is much more important. With it, China will gain access to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. To China, Burma will serve as a geo-political strategic buffer zone. Do you see India and Japan as major players in the future to counter Chinas comprehensive strategic ambition?

Absolutely, and we can see how the prime ministers of the two countries, Shinzo Abe in Japan and Narendra Modi in India, are becoming close friends and allies. What they have in common is concern over the rise of China. India has long considered the Indian Ocean their lake, and do not want China to establish footholds there. Japan is worried about Chinas increasingly assertive policies in the entire region.
OMAHA  Police said an Omaha woman embezzled more than $1.2 million from her employer and blew it gambling at casinos.

Annie Carbullido, 79, pleaded no contest Tuesday to two counts of theft by deception and two counts of tax evasion. Her sentencing is scheduled for May 17.

Investigators said Carbullido was a bookkeeper at Travel Faire Inc. and repeatedly wrote checks for cash, hiding her theft as expenses so she could obtain money for gambling. A court affidavit said Carbullido had gambled and lost roughly $1.9 million since 2003 at the Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Carbullido's attorney, Steve Lefler, said he hopes the judge will take into account his client's years of solid citizenship and health concerns.

"We are hoping that the judge recognizes that our client has not just been a good citizen but a great citizen her entire life," he said. "Given her age and her medical condition ... we're hoping that the judge decides that probation is the better option."

Travel Faire's owners discovered the theft last summer after they hired a temporary employee to replace Carbullido while she took a medical leave of absence. A police investigation revealed the temporary employee found several checks written by Carbullido to "cash." Authorities then received information about Carbullido after contacting the casinos.

"It's a real issue and a real problem  and there's a lot of good people who have gone down that path," Lefler said of the gambling. "Just a lot of really sad stories. Good people, successful people. From their experience, I can tell you  gambling is as addictive or more addictive than most of the drugs that are out there. The grip is real."

Carbullido could be sentenced to up to five years of probation or up to 50 years in prison. She's out on bail.
In Person Karen State Chief Minister: IDP Repatriation Before De-Mining Would be Like Living in a Prison

Nang Khin Htwe Myint pictured in her office in March 2017. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy

HPA-AN, Karen State  Since the National League for Democracy (NLD) government took office in March 2016, Karen State has led by a female chief minister, a leader within the NLD since its inception. Nang Khin Htwe Myint recently sat down with Irrawaddy reporter Nyein Nyein to discuss the progress and challenges following the peace process in the state.

In the first part of the interview, the chief minister talks about armed conflict and obstacles to repatriation of internally displaced populations.

Karen State has now started to enjoy greater peace after decades of civil war, but armed conflict continues in places. As the states chief minister, are you satisfied with how youve been tackling the states challenges in this regard?

It is not that I am satisfied, but I can say that we have succeeded to some extent. As our area is at peace, the most immediate challenge is about the land; the non-state armed groups have claimed that certain areas of land are under their control. For instance, the Karen National Union (KNU) created the land plots in accordance with their land policy, in their control areas. We said, they could not manage it like that. As the management of the land is carried out by our government, we must be the one who does this. We explained this to them, as well as to the villagers. We try to convince them that there is only one policy. In our region, peace talks are happening, and we also have gained peace, but we have to follow up on such sequels to the peace process.

Refugee repatriation is one of the key issues following the peace process. Firstly, people internally displaced by fighting last September have been unable to return to their homes in Karen State. What is the state government doing to help them?

We have been providing support since the beginning, when there were many civil society donors who came to support them and we only had to worry about their healthcare. Now, we have to support their weekly basic needs. We give them rice, cooking oil, salt, vegetables and medicines, as well as water. We transport these goods to them on time. The Karen State government responds to their needs without delay. We must spend around 10 million kyats every week to support nearly 4,000 people.

What is the state government doing to promote stability in the region, so that the IDPs can return to their homes?

Only their villages are stable, but not the areas beyond their villages, where they work for a living. There are dangers of landmines. We cannot guarantee for their safety if they need to work outside of their villagefor example, if they collect bamboo shoots or cut bamboo or to go to rubber plantations, it is risky for them. I really pity them. They have had to stay [in the temporary camp] for a long time and they surely face troubles. Many families have to share the common room and they have no privacy, which further causes social and health-related consequences. I also worry about them because I do not want them to feel lazy because they have no job to do. The children are not able to learn properly. Even if we say we support food and solar energy for electricity for them to return, it would be like they are being put in prison. As we cannot give any guarantees, we now provide care as-is.

What are you doing to de-mine those areas, not only for the IDPs, but also for the safety those refugees who are still on the Thailand-Burma border?

We are collaborating with the UNHCR as they have dispatched the experts. But we are not yet doing de-mining, and have started with awareness raising about mines. They have gone to [Mae Tha Waw] and the surrounding villages twice, I believe. The awareness raising was also done in schools. We told them to start with [Mae Tha Waw] in sweeping mines. The cost is expensive, and we could not provide security for themwe cannot even guarantee our own safety. If the mines were cleared, there would be no problem.
In Person Karen State Chief Minister: Our State Needs Electricity: Coal Could Be The Answer

Nang Khin Htwe Myint pictured in her office in March 2017. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy

HPA-AN, Karen State  Since the National League for Democracy (NLD) government took office in March 2016, a female chief minister, who has been involved with the NLD since its inception, has led Karen State. Nang Khin Htwe Myint recently sat down with Irrawaddy reporter Nyein Nyein to talk about the progress and challenges following the peace process in the state.

In the second part of the interview, the chief minister talks about boosting tourism, damage inflicted by mining operations, and the future of coal in Karen State.

In 2018, Burma is due to join the Asean Economic Community (AEC), a body that promotes the economic integration of Southeast Asia. As Karen State borders with Thailand, how are you preparing for membership in the AEC?

Our state has many untapped natural resources compared to Kachin State [in the north]. We have quartz, which is mostly used for cement, but some of the quartz is old enough to use for decor, creating more revenue than cement. Instead we have been making powder for the cement. This is not good. We have invited experts to study the rocks in Myawaddy, Kawkareik and Kyainseikgyi townships so that we can use the mineral for decorated stones and interior decorations.

I noticed on the way to this interview that the mountains near the highway are shrinking because of mining. What are you doing to prevent this from happening?

We have banned activities such as rock mining near the road so what you saw was the remnants of previous mining operations. We mine in areas far away from people but if we want roads, we have to get the rock to build them. We want roads connecting villages, towns, and districts, and as the Asian Highway is under construction, we need to provide the standardized rock. However we limit the extraction of the rock below what we could take. As far as I know, the permits we give in Karen State allow less extraction of rock than other states and regions.

Why did you extend the permit for mining operations near Taungkalay village despite the protests from local people in February who were concerned that the project was damaging their health and destroying their homes?

We extended the permit to fulfil the needs of our state. We sent an inspection team led by Upper House lawmaker U Saw Moe Myint, a member of the parliamentary committee of natural resources and environmental preservation, to the site. For this extension we obtained their pledges [to follow rules set out by the government] before granting permission. The projects duration is one year, but they would be suspended if they dont follow the agreement in a month or two. If they respect the agreement, we would consider giving them further extensions in the year to come. We have a supervisory committee for the mining operations, too.

So you dont allow them to use heavy machinery for extractions?

Of course we dont. We only allow small mining operations.

There are many caves in good condition in Karen state, something that has proved popular among tourists who have shared images of the attractions on social media. Is your government doing anything to promote eco-tourism?

Yes, we invest in eco-tourism because this is a good way of making money from this natural beauty. Our attractions are all naturalnothing artificialand tourists love that. We try to provide good services for visitors in order to earn a good reputation and attract even more visitors. We also invite people to Mt. Zwekabin and other mountains. In addition to that, Burmese hoteliers are planning to build more eco-lodge style hotels around Mount Than Taung.

How much would attracting more tourists to Karen State contribute to creating jobs for local people? Also, are you creating any job opportunities to draw back people who have migrated to Thailand?

We have been trying to create many job opportunities. The garment factory, which had about 700 workers, is now asking for 300 more women and 30 more men to iron and wash clothes. After talking to the Labor Ministry, more jobs were created and the womens positions were filled. We also focused on creating jobs in the hotel industry, and solar companies who came to the state followed our instructions to hire local people. They hired and trained 40 locals who had basic knowledge of electrical power and computers. We have provided some jobs for unemployed people so that migration would lessen; even if we cannot yet create enough jobs to lure back migrants to Thailand, we are trying our best.

You have been in the Karen State administration for one year. What percentage of jobs have you created for people in your state?

Its too low to tell.

Why is it that low?

The main challenges are the supply of electricity and the demands [of investors] to adhere to an international standard. They asked whether we could provide electricity, and whether we have enough fire stations and police. We could only provide what was from the electricity grid and couldnt guarantee it would meet their needs. Although we could provide raw materials such as land, they would have to obtain other materials themselves. To attract investors, easing restrictions is possible. As Karen State is in the category of Zone A, investors would be tax exempt for seven years. Our land is also sold at a reasonable price. We have talked with many potential investors almost everyday over the last year. Companies that are interested in building a tyre factory, a chopstick factory and a factory to decorate ceilings with quartz have talked to us about land plots. We will have a memorandum of understanding with [mostly Thai and Japanese companies] within days. As we are in process of negotiating, we cannot yet tell the percentage although I think we could this time next year.

As the Asian Highway passes through your state, what benefits does the project bring and what do you need to give to it?

With more restaurants, petrol stations, parking lots, and other businesses expected, locals near the highway should have more job opportunities. Land needs to be made available for investors, so we have to review land compensation for locals. For instance, take the [Thailand-Burma] Friendship Bridge No. 2; it was stopped before we took office because the government was unable to compensate people for their land, but we resolved this and now the road will open at the end of this month.

A possible coal plant in the state has been criticized. How is the Karen State government tackling this issue?

We have not started the plant yet but Karen State uses the least amount of electricity in the whole country. We need the plant because electricity usage in Karen State has increased annually by 15 percent: our people and state need it to develop but we are unable to distribute it. Other countries such as India and China get up to 70 percent of their energy through coal, and others get about 40 percent this way. In Myanmar we use coal to provide electricity for 2 percent of the country but none of that comes from Karen State. Mon State has a railroad, harbour, and airport, yet we have nothing because of the civil war. Nine out of 10 townships in Mon State have access to the national power grid but only three out of seven townships do in Karen State. Out of more than 2,000 villages, 700 have access to electricity in our state. We want to distribute it cheaply for 35 kyats per unit but to do so our efforts must double. We have the materials, now we have to utilize them. We wont, however, accept any development that damages the health of people and the environment. Experts from countries such as Japan are advising us how to implement the projects without causing damage. If coal is useful for our state, I want to start using it. I would have to persuade more people and create awareness about it. Were at the stage of trying to educate the public about it so that we might use coal in the future.
Burma Arakan State Advisory Commission Releases Interim Report

Arakan State Advisory Committee member Ghassan Salame addresses the media / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  The Kofi Annan-led Arakan State Advisory Commission released a list of urgent recommendations for the Burmese government to improve the situation in Arakan State in an interim report at a press conference in Rangoon on Thursday.

The reportwhich the commission said had been presented to both civilian and military

sections of the governmentcalls for immediate and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid organizations and the media to areas of northern Arakan State. Access to the region has been restricted since Burma Army clearance operations began in response to insurgent attacks on police border guard posts on Oct. 9 of last year.

In a recorded statement, head of the commission and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan acknowledged that the crisis facing Arakan State had changed since the advisory commission was established by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in September last year. Yet he emphasized that the commissions mandate to tackle long-standing obstacles to peace and development, had not changed.

He did, however, call on the government to ensure that perpetrators of serious human rights violations would be held accountable and recommended that security forces in the area be properly trained to respect human rights and cultural and religious diversity.

Commission member Ghassan Salame told reporters at the press conference that a recent trip to Bangladesh by three of the commission memberswhere they met with national and local officials as well as Rohingya refugees in camps near Coxs Bazarhad prompted a recommendation to establish a joint committee between Burma and Bangladesh to address the crisis in Arakan State.

This committee should facilitate the return of refugees and combat human trafficking, illegal trade, illegal migration, and terrorism taking place across the border, according to the report.

He and the advisory commission also endorsed an impartial and independent investigation into reports of abuses by security forces in Arakan State since last year, which include the displacement of 75,000 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings, and widespread sexual violence. But the commission, he pointed out, did not have the mandate or the forensic expertise to carry out such an investigation.

While the commission did not refer to the Rohingya by nameadhering to a Burmese government policy that recognizes only the Muslim community of Arakan StateGhassan Salame also urged the government to increase Muslim representation in political and civil society. As an interim step, the report notes, the government should establish consultative mechanisms which give voice to the states Muslim inhabitants.

He also encouraged the police force to better represent the composition of Arakan State and include more Muslim members.

The report calls for the closure of all internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in Arakan State and the return or relocation of IDPsdisplaced since violence broke out in 2012to a place where they feel safe.

Salame said that IDP camps were not a natural state in which state residents should be living. The report outlines Ramree, Kyein Ni Pyin, Ka Nyin Taw as three camps that could be dissolved as an initial step toward re-integration of displaced communities.

The government should establish a clear timeline for the citizenship verification process in Arakan Stateonly 2,000 Rohingya have been granted citizenship through this process to dateand that those granted citizenship be afforded all the rights, benefits, and freedoms associated with citizenship, the report advises.

An estimated 1 million Rohingya have been made stateless by Burmese laws that define citizenship along ethnic lines, and do not recognize the Rohingya as one of the countrys ethnic groups.

A birth registration campaign should be rolled out, according to the report. It is not natural, in any country in the world, that babies do not have birth certificates, Ghassan Salame told journalists.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Burmas State Counselors Officeheaded by Daw Aung San Suu Kyithanked the advisory commission and said that it concurred with the recommendations put forward.

The large majority of the recommendations will be implemented promptly, with a view to maximum effectiveness, the statement said.

At its launch in September last year, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said that she believed the nine-member commission would bring credible advice in confronting tension in Arakan State.

The commission includes two Rangoon-based Muslim representatives, two Arakanese Buddhists and two government representatives, in addition to three members of the international community.

It will deliver its final report later this year.
Burma Children Among Hundreds Detained in Arakan State

A view outside the prison in Arakan State capital Sittwe. / Wa lone / Reuters

SITTWE, Arakan State & COXS BAZAR, BangladeshChildren as young as 10 years old are among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims detained on charges of consorting with insurgents, according to a police document seen by Reuters that sheds new light on a security campaign in Arakan State.

Thirteen juveniles are among more than 400 people arrested since Oct. 9, when insurgents attacked three police border posts in northern Arakan State, also known as Rakhine State, near the frontier with Bangladesh, the March 7 dated document shows.

Police said some of the children had confessed to working with insurgents and that they were being detained away from adult suspects.

A government spokesman confirmed children were detained in the operation, but said authorities had followed the law. He said he knew of only five juveniles currently being held.

Burmas leader and Nobel laureate DawAung San Suu Kyi, who took power almost a year ago, is under international pressure over alleged abuses including killings, gang rapes, and mass detentions against the stateless Rohingya, about 1.1 million of whom are prevented from travelling freely and accessing basic services in Burma.

The government has released few details about the hundreds detained in the Arakan operation or the charges they face.

The document seen by Reuters lists 423 people held under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act. All appear from their names to be male. Their average age is 34, but the youngest is 10 and the oldest 75. One has been crossed out and marked dead.

Two police captains in Maungdaw, the district at the center of the violence, confirmed the veracity of the 11-page document.

We police have to arrest those related with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty, we cannot decide, said Police Captain Than Shwe.

Controversial Law

Burma has ratified international conventions that require additional protections for children accused of crimes.

Reuters was unable to establish whether all those provisions, such as whether they have been able to communicate with their families or have legal representation, were being followed.

All 13 juveniles below the age of 18 were sent to be detained outside of prison at a Border Guard Police (BGP) facility in the town of Buthidaung, and were not shackled, said the second police captain, who did not want to be identified.

Some of the children already confessed that they are involved with the attackers group during interrogation, the police captain said. They were not beaten during questioning, he said.

Domestic law says children aged between seven and 12 are only criminally responsible if mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Two listed detainees are under 12, while two more are 13.

U Zaw Htay, director general of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis office, told Reuters he was only aware of five children currently detained at the Buthidaung BGP camp.

Authorities were under strict orders not to violate detainees rights, U Zaw Htay said, adding: We will not forgive anyone who does.

Cases had been opened against all 423 people on the list under the Unlawful Associations Act, said the second police captain. Many on the list, which is not a complete record of all those detained in the operation, were also charged with additional crimes, including murder, he said.

We suspect that these people joined the attackers training or supported them with funding, or they cooperated during the attacks or were involved in the attacks, he said.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International say the Unlawful Associations Act has long been used to arbitrarily arrest and detain ethnic and religious minorities in Burma.

Special Courts

In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Burma said 526 people were under interrogation relating to the conflict. Eight detainees had died in custody, the government said.

The government has set up two special courts in Buthidaung, said Arakans senior state judicial official, advocate general Kyaw Hla Tun. The government would not block the accused from accessing lawyers, he added.

We want to process them quickly. There are security concerns with the prison being over capacity, he said.

UN human rights envoy Yanghee Lee visited Buthidaung prison, where most detainees are being held, in January. Most did not have lawyers, were not informed of the charges against them and had not been able to contact their families, she said.

Reuters also spoke to people who had been released from detention and later fled across the border to Bangladesh, a journey made by about 75,000 refugees since the conflict began.

Di Dar, 22, said he spent 10 days in a military camp after his village was burned in mid-November. The 300 or so people detained with him were constantly handcuffed and beaten during interrogations, and he witnessed two men killed, he said.

Reuters was unable to corroborate his account, or similar accounts from three other former detainees.

The soldiers would come three times a day and would beat us for about an hour at a time, Di Dar said. They asked, Did you fight us? Were you involved in the insurgency?
Burma EU Seeks UN Probe into Crimes in Arakan State

A boy walks at a refugee camp in Sitwe in Arakan State on March 2. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

GENEVA The European Union called on Thursday for the United Nations to send an international fact-finding mission urgently to Burma to investigate allegations of torture, rapes and executions by the military against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

A UN report last month, based on interviews with survivors in Bangladesh, said the Burma Army and police had committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya in a campaign that may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

The EU draft resolution, submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, strengthens language in an earlier draft circulating that stopped short of demanding an international probe into alleged atrocities.

The 47-member forum, currently holding a four-week session, is to vote on resolutions from March 23-24.

If adopted, the Council would dispatch urgently an independent international fact-finding mission to Burma to investigate violations with a view to ensure full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims.

Some 75,000 people have fled Arakan State to Bangladesh since Burmas military began a security operation last October in response to what it says was an attack by Rohingya insurgents on border posts in which nine police officers were killed.

The UN Security Council will be briefed behind closed doors on Friday on the situation in Arakan State, at the request of Britain, diplomats said in New York.

The EU resolution calls on the government of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to fully cooperate with the fact-finding mission, including by making available the findings of the domestic investigations.

Activists say that national efforts have not been credible and have called for an international inquiry.

Burma has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in northern Arakan and says a lawful counterinsurgency campaign is under way.

Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur to Burma, told the rights council on Monday that the government may be using bureaucratic means to get rid of the Rohingya. She cited dismantling of homes and use of a household survey whereby those absent may be struck off the list that could be the only legal proof of their status.

A panel led by former UN chief Kofi Annan said earlier on Thursday that Burma should immediately start allowing Rohingya to return home and ultimately close rundown camps for the displaced.
Burma Legal Adviser: Article 66(d) Case Against Ko Swe Win No Longer Valid

Ko Swe Win (left, seated) meets with police at the Myanmar Journalist Network on Wednesday. / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  A legal adviser to Ko Swe Win has claimed that a complaint filed against the Myanmar Now journalist for allegedly insulting nationalist monk U Wirathu is no longer valid.

U Kyaw Myo Shwe, a follower of U Wirathu in Mandalay, recently filed a complaint against Ko Swe Win at a police station in Mandalays Maha Aungmyay Township. He accused the reporter of defaming U Wirathu when he shared an abbots quote stating that U Wirathu was no longer a member of the monkhood because he had thanked the assassins of National League for Democracy legal adviser U Ko Ni for their act.

The Mandalay police station accepted the case under Article 66(d) of Burmas Telecommunications Law and came to Rangoon on Wednesday to proceed with the case.

The police and Ko Swe Win, together with his legal adviser, met at the Myanmar Journalist Network.

It is no longer valid to charge Ko Swe Win, U Khin Maung Myint, the legal adviser, told the police.

He said that a judge was not able to decide whether U Wirathu is still a member of the monkhood. Only the state Buddhist authority, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, often known by its Burmese acronym Ma Ha Na, can do that, U Khin Maung Myint added.

Because of the official statements from Ma Ha Na and the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture, the complainants accusations are already void, he said.

Three days after the complaint filed, Ma Ha Na and Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture issued the statements that banned U Wirathu from preaching sermons for one year. The nationalist monk was repeatedly accused of engaging in hate speech against other religions to cause communal strife, hinder the rule of law, and taking sides with political parties in order to inflame tensions.

A Friday statement from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture also said that the restrictions on the monk were due to his criticism of the current government, as well as religious hate speech made at his Dhamma talk at Kyunku, Irrawaddy Division, and his praise on Facebook of suspects involved in the murder of U Ko Ni.

If you [the police] want to continue the case, you will need the statement from the Ma Ha Na and the minister of religious affairs and culture on the case, and also will need to go through the media council as mediator since Ko Swe Win is a journalist, U Khin Maung Myint said.

He said if Ma Ha Na decides U Wirathu is no longer a member of the monkhood, charges against Ko Swe Win would need to be dropped.

Police officers from Mandalays Maha Aungmyay Township replied that they would report back to the senior officials during the meeting.

Everyone knows that he [U Wirathu] engaged in religious hate speech at his Dhamma talks. And also I didnt directly accuse him of no longer being in the monkhood. It was an excerpt from the story, the quote of abbot. But in the complaint, he accused me dishonestly, as if that is my [own] accusation, Ko Swe Win told the police.
Burma Refugees Who Fled Arakan State Fear Losing Right to Return

Rohingya men carry a stingray from the port in Sittwe, Arakan State. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

SITTWE, Arakan StateSince security forces swept into their villages in Arakan State late last year, around 75,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh. Many now fear that the authorities in Burma could make their displacement permanent.

At least once a year, local administrators go house-to-house in the Rohingya villages of northern Arakan State, lining up families to check their names against official lists.

The names of those Muslims found missing are crossed through with a red pen, residents say.

The government says it is not using the household count to try to force the Rohingya out of the country and is holding off from finalizing the latest list. But officials confirmed that people eventually struck from the list face legal action under immigration laws if they try to return.

Muhammad Ismail, 30, escaped the recent violence and is now living in a makeshift settlement in Bangladesh. His father told him by phone that officials had visited his home village of Dar Gyi Zarin January, checking who was still there.

Im scared that if I go back, Ill be jailed, he told Reuters. This is the law. This is how we understand the rules.

The household survey, which is not conducted elsewhere in Burma, is one of a series of measures that rights activists say amount to a system of apartheid against the 1.1 million Rohingya living in northern Arakan.

We have to stand for a group photo as a family, said a Rohingya community leader, who did not want to be named. They ask us if all the family is there and if anyone is missing.

The authorities have also surveyed and marked for demolition allegedly unauthorized buildings in Muslim villages, residents and officials say. And Rohingya say their movements are being restricted if they do not accept new temporary identity cards.

The democratically elected civilian government of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi says the identity card scheme will give the stateless Muslim minority more rights, but many Rohingya say they fear it is a ruse to deny them citizenship.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized abroad for failing to confront her countrys persecution of the Rohingya, who many in the Buddhist majority view as unwanted illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

A Red Line

Burmas armed forces launched a crackdown in northern Arakan after Rohingya insurgents attacked border guard posts on Oct. 9. Tens of thousands of people fled across the border during the subsequent violence, amid multiple allegations of mass killings and gang rapes by troops.

Accounts gathered by Reuters from 10 residents and refugees, and confirmed by two Burma government officials, show an administrative push to record those who had left began soon after the military campaign started.

The household survey is usually carried out in January and February.

A senior immigration official in northern Arakan, who declined to be identified, said the count was complete this year aside from those villages worst hit by the conflict.

But he said officials had only marked those missing in pencilnot the feared red penand were awaiting orders to finalize the survey.

This year, because it might create conflict, weve delayed the list, said Kyaw Swar Tun, General Administration Department (GAD) director based in the state capital, Sittwe. Were waiting for them to come back.

The GAD oversees Burmas sprawling local bureaucracy and is controlled by the military.

He declined to show the list to Reuters, citing confidentiality for official documents, or to say when it would be finalized. But, he added, Once theyre on the list, they cant come back.

On Monday the UNs special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, warned pressing ahead with the exercise while so many people were displaced could be seen as an attempt to depopulate Rohingya districts.

Conducting a household surveywhere those absent may be struck off the list that could be the only legal proof of their status in Burmaindicates the government may be trying to expel the Rohingya population from the country altogether, she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. I sincerely hope that that is not the case.

Police Maj. Kyaw Mya Win at Maungdaw police station, in northern Arakan, said authorities in the area have in the past filed charges against those who had been marked off the list.

People who fled to Bangladesh have been charged with illegal immigration acts when they returned to the country, he said, declining to outline the specific charges.

We Are Not Foreigners

Administration along Burmas rugged frontier with Bangladesh is largely in the hands of the paramilitary Border Guard Police (BGP).

Residents say that, soon after the conflict erupted, the BGP also began identifying structures in Rohingya villages that had been built without formal permitsincluding homes, mosques and Arabic schools.

The GADs Kyaw Swar Tun said more than 3,300 buildings had been listed for demolition, but said none had so far been pulled down.

Min Aung, a minister and spokesman for the Arakan State government, said officials had ordered a halt to the checks, recognizing that they could cause tensions.

However, since the buildings were illegal they would have to be demolished eventually, said Min Aung, a member of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy, insisting that the same action would be taken anywhere in the country.

The government just removed illegal buildings like stores, houses, religious building, but they are merely huts, not really big buildings, he said.

Although many Rohingya trace their roots in Burma back generations, years of discriminatory policies have left most without valid identification.

Temporary cards issued in the 1990s, which gave them voting rights, were invalidated in 2015.

Muslims in northern Arakan say they are under pressure to accept a National Verification Card (NVC). If we dont take it we cant travel from place to place, said the community leader.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyis civilian governmentwhich is not in charge of security and does not oversee the BGP, but has been pushing the ID card schemesays that holders will be able to apply for citizenship.

But Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya lawyer in Sittwe, said the scheme fell short of the groups demand to officially identify themselves as Rohingyaa term Burma does not recognise.

NVC is not related to usits for foreigners, he said.

Officials denied the government was coercing people to accept the document.

The roadblocks are not stopping people from movingbut they are checking NVCs, said state minister Min Aung. We cant allow people to travel without documents.
Burma Two Civilians Killed in Clashes Between Burma Army, TNLA

A civilian injured in clashes in Kutkai Township, Shan State. / Mettashin Social Organization

RangoonTwo civilians were killed and two others were injured in fresh clashes between the Burma Army and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in the village of Nam Phat Kha in Kutkai Township of northern Shan State on Tuesday.

A Palaung (Taang) ethnic mother, 42, and her 5-year-old daughter, were killed by artillery fire early Tuesday morning when TNLA troops launched attacks on Burma Army outposts near the village, said TNLA Maj Mai Ai Kyaw.

Clashes took place in four places in Kutkai Township from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the major told The Irrawaddy. The two sides also clashed for an hour on Wednesday, he added.

The artillery shell fell near their bamboo house, and the mother and her girl were killed on the spot, said local resident Lway Poe Jaing Kee from the Palaung Womens Organization.

Two other people were injured in the shelling and sent to Lashio Hospital, according to Lway Poe Jaing Kee. Ten cows were also killed, she said.

Both the TNLA and its ally the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) are active in the area.

Locals of Nam Phat Ka village tract have not yet fled their homes but often sleep together with other families at night for fear of artillery fire and interrogation by armed troops.

Mai Mai, a Kutkai resident and member of the Kachin Peace Network, said: Locals were hit not because they were stuck between clashes, but because [troops] were carelessly firing artillery fire.

The Burma Army has been conducting large-scale offensives deep into our forest bases. So, we have to carry out counter-attacks on the streets, TNLA Maj Mai Ai Kyaw said.

The military has not made an official statement about the recent clashes, and The Irrawaddy was unable to obtain a comment from a military spokesperson.

The Burma Army previously said it would not allow the TNLA to join the peace process unless it disarms.

Tensions between the Burma Army and ethnic groups along the Burma-China border have been mounting since Northern Alliance troops launched attacks at Muses 105th mile border trade zone in November last year.
Burma UNFC Affirms Internal Disagreements

The UNFC says top leaders have different views on how to proceed with the peace process. / Saw Yan Naing / The Irrawaddy

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  The United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) alliance of ethnic armed organizations says top leaders within the bloc have different views on how to proceed with the peace process.

The comment came after a three-day emergency meeting in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. UNFC spokesperson Nai Hong Sar said some members do not want to engage in peace talks in line with the governments nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), while others want to push forward with the NCA, on which the current political dialogue framework rests.

Eight ethnic armed groups have so far signed the NCA.

Cracks in the UNFC became more visible after its chair, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), and another UNFC member, the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP), attended an ethnic summit in Panghsang organized by the China-backed United Wa State Army, the most powerful ethnic armed group.

Members of the Northern Alliance who did not sign the NCAthe Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA)also attended the summit.

Nai Hong Sar said some UNFC members wanted to negotiate peace in line with the NCA while others wanted to engage in line with the Panghsang summitwhere attendees criticized the NCA and called to replace it with a new agreement.

There are two sides. Our opinions arent totally divided. We have to adjust in accordance with the situation, said Nai Hong Sar.

One group went to negotiate the nine points [of the NCA]. Another group wants to negotiate in line with the Panghsang meeting decision. This is a bit contradictory. We need time to resolve the disagreement, said Nai Hong Sar.

Sources within ethnic armed groups say the KIO and SSPP do not want to negotiate based on the current NCA.

Other UNFC members such as the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) and the New Mon State Party (NMSP) still hope to achieve peace in line with the NCA.

Nai Hong Sar said the UNFC postponed its annual conference which was scheduled for March 23 in order to allow time to resolve the differences. A new conference date has not yet been disclosed.

Observers say there will be a shake-up in the UNFC leadership after the second conference, saying the KIO might quit the UNFC if it loses its chairmanship position.

KIO spokesperson Naw Bu told the BBC Burmese service on Monday that the KIO will only decide what to do after the conference is held.

Nai Hong Sar has said UNFC members agreed to discuss restructuring the UNFC in line with the current political situation.

The UNFC has experienced divisions since former President Thein Sein introduced peace talks with ethnic armed groups.

Its former leading member, the Karen National Union (KNU), withdrew its membership in August 2014, stating the UNFC failed to carry out organizational reforms.

The PaO National Liberation Organization and the Chin National Front were suspended from the bloc in Nov. 2015 after signing the NCA, and the TNLA and MNDAA are on a pending list of suspensions from membership.
Burma Workers Replaced by Automation Demand Jobs Back

Workers stage a sit-in protest. / Thazin Hlaing / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  Despite negotiations on Tuesday, management and employees of the Myanmar Mayson Industries Co. Ltd. did not reach an agreement regarding a massive dismissal of factory workers.

Myanmar Mayson Industries Co. Ltd., which manufactures Good Morning brand bread and pastries, fired 193 workers from its factory in Hlaing Tharyar Industrial Zone on March 8, stating that it was automating its production process.

Around 400 workers, including the dismissed employees, staged a sit-in protest in front of the factory that began on March 9.

We could not negotiate an agreement. The factory owner did not show up. He sent a representative who was not authorized to make decisions. So we had to proceed to Rangoon Division [industrial dispute settlement] arbitration, said Ko Zaw Lin Khaing, chairman of the factorys trade union.

U Kyaw Kyaw, the secretary of the trade union, said the workers were made redundant without prior notice.

The Irrawaddy was not able to obtain a comment from company management.

The employer is in the wrong. The strike happened because they [the employer] did as they wished without carefully consulting with employees and employee leaders, said Ma Win Theingi Soe, an arbitrator on the Hlaing Tharyar Township industrial dispute settlement arbitration committee.

According to the workers, many who were dismissed had worked at the factory for more than 10 years, some for nearly 20 years since the establishment of the factory.

Management has said compensation would be provided but workers said they wanted their jobs back and would continue to protest until they were re-employed.
Politics Religious Affairs Minister: Constitution Goes Against Buddhist Beliefs

Union Minister for Religious Affairs and Culture U Aung Ko. / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYIDAW  Burmas 2008 military-drafted Constitution should be amended because it contradicts Buddhist beliefs, the Union Minister for Religious Affairs and Culture has argued.

U Aung Ko said, as a fundamental belief of Theravada Buddhism, the most widely practiced religion in the country, people should face the consequences of their actions, or reap what they sow.

This is the essence of Theravada Buddhism but a provision says retrospective actions shall not be taken against both legal and illegal deeds. This goes against Theravada Buddhism, the minister told reporters at the Union Parliament on Wednesday.

The minister was referring to Article 43 that states, no penal law shall be enacted to provide retrospective effect.

Widely criticized as being undemocratic, the Constitution was adopted in a national referendum in 2008. It provides the Burma Army with 25 percent of seats in national and sub-national legislatures and affirms the armys grip of three key ministries.

Critics have speculated that military officials deliberately included Article 43 to give themselves impunity after the political transition.

The legal experts who took part in drafting the Constitution are supposed Buddhists, said U Aung Ko.

People were forced to approve it, he said, adding that it was not formulated to serve the interests of the people, but to protect a particular group.

The former Burma Army Brigadier-General and lawmaker of the then-ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) between 2010 and 2015 said that unless the Constitution is amended, the aspirations of the people would not be achieved.

According to him, these aspirations include the pursuit of national reconciliation and peace, adherence to the rule of law, as well as the establishment of a federal Union.

Considering these things, the Constitution must be changed. Will [the Burma Army] cling to the 2008 Constitution or protect the wishes and interests of people? he asked.

Everybody knows the Constitution was made purposefully difficult to amend. It will be amended by history, by the people. This is the answer, and that time wont be far away, U Aung Ko said.

The amendment of any clause requires the support of at least 75 percent of parliamentary members but the quota of 25 percent military in the legislative body maintains the armys powerful influence.

Clarifying that he did not mean the military should immediately leave Parliament for the barracks, U Aung Ko suggested following Indonesias example of gradually reducing military participation in politics.

This depends on national reconciliation, and internal peace, which in turn depend on constitutional amendment.

Burma Army Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing has said in several interviews that the army would leave politics after peace prevails across the country.

The government, the military and ethnic armed groups must give-and-take. All sides must make compromises, magnanimity is also necessary, added the minister.

Leaders of civil society organizations (CSOs) called for reform of Burmas 2008 Constitution at the first national forum of CSOs held in Naypyidaw in February.
Commentary What is Wrong With the NLDs Policy?

The recently named General Aung San Bridge between Moulmein (Mawlamyine) and Chaungzon townships on the Salween River in Mon State. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy

When taking office, the National League for Democracy (NLD) government declared its first priority was to achieve national reconciliation and build peace in the country.

But the NLDs actions in the Lower House of the Union parliament on Tuesdayhave deeply undermined that promise by renaming a bridge in Mon State after Burmas late independence hero Gen Aung San.

Despite local protests against the proposed name, the Lower House made the decision to go ahead with the name General Aung San Bridge. The motion was passed with a majority vote of 217. There were 43 lower house parliamentarians who voted against to the proposal, while 116 abstained.

Lawmakers said the name of the 1.5-kilometer bridge linking Moulmein (Mawlamyine) and Chaungzon townships on the Salween River was to honor Gen Aung Sans integrity, to remember his legacy, and to commemorate the spirit of the Union which he launched.

Plowing ahead with a controversial decisionwhich many people believed could be easily resolved with negotiations between the local people and the governmentthe NLD-dominated Parliament and the administration turned a blind eye to the desires of many local residents.

Originally, the structure was simply named Salween Bridge (Moulmein) during its inception under the former government; the state government led by former chief minister U Min Min Oo had agreed on it.

For weeks, the issue has been widely criticized by locals, both on the ground and on social media.

Minority ethnic groups growing lack of trust towards the NLD, and antipathy towards the Burman majority, is plain to seethough many Burmans have also expressed distress at the Parliaments decision.

Omitting locals desires does not reflect a democratic state and results in further division.

Burma has more important and pressing affairs to deal than naming a bridge, which should purely be the task of the government ministry.

The NLD-dominated Parliaments have failed to fulfill their responsibility to listen to the local voices (a pledge made by all parliamentarians) in the case of the Salween Bridge.

It is sad that many NLD members have not spoken out against the decision and have instead shown blind obedience to the NLD bureaucracy.

This case should never have been brought to the legislature.

General Aung San has always been in the heart of the people of Burma and the act is like killing him again, observers have said.

It has been reported that NLD lawmakers are strictly under the control of the partys central committee and that they must seek approval from NLD secretariat member U Win Htein before submitting proposals to Parliament.

The decision on the Salween River bridge reportedly comes from the top.

It is time to reflect on what has gone wrong with NLD policy. Steps towards national reconciliation must not be approached by only the armed forces of the Burma Army and the ethnic armed groups, they should involve the public.

The NLD government got the name of the bridge that it wanted, but it will be remembered for the dispute it caused.The government is losing the trust of minoritiestrust that is absolutely key for national reconciliation and building unity.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Note: Apparently the Trump administration at Israeli urging threatened to defund the UN if this report was not withdrawn. The UN Secretary-General caved, and the executive director of ESCWA (who was also an under-secretary general of the UN), Rima Khalaf, has resigned. The legal case built by the ESCWA report remains sound.

A shouting match has been provoked this week by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which issued a report this week concluding definitively that Israel is guilty of Apartheid practices toward the Palestinians. The report is careful to say that it is not using the term merely as a pejorative but is rather appealing to a body of international law with precise definitions, definitions that Israels policies toward the Palestinians easily and transparently meet. Heres the short blog version of the report, which runs to 76 pages.

Apartheid is a Dutch word meaning apartness and was used to describe the system of racial segregation deployed by the ruling Afrikaner minority in South Africa 1948-1991. In international law, however, it has been generalized to any government practicing systematic racial domination.

Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973) defines it this way:

The term the crime of apartheid, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

The 2002 Rome Statute, which has 123 signatories among the nations of the world, and which established the International Criminal Court, contained a definition of Apartheid.

The crime of apartheid means inhumane acts . . . committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime

Apartheid is one of the listed crimes against humanity along with enslavement, torture, war rape, and forcible deportation. A crime against humanity is the systematic and continuous commission of war crimes

Because of these international law instruments (the Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty), Apartheid now refers to a generalized crime, not just the policy of the old South African government.

As a result, the Court can under some circumstances charge individual politicians with the crime of Apartheid. Those circumstances are that 1) the country has signed the Rome Statute or 2) that the UN Security Council has forwarded the case of a war criminal to the ICC. Neither of these circumstances fits Israel, since it is not a signatory and the US would veto any attempt to charge a major Israeli politician at the International Criminal Court. This inability to bring Israeli officials to the Hague, however, is merely procedural. As a matter of law, Israel can still be guilty of Apartheid practices.

The UN report is concerned with specific legal infractions as spelled out by international law, and with the intention behind those infractions. Intent to dominate another people is important to the definition of Apartheid.

The report points out that

The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews.

Going back to the colonial Jewish National Fund, there has been a practice that once land is owned by Zionist institutions, including the Israeli state, it can never be sold to a non-Jew it is permanently taken off the market on a racial basis.

The Law of Return is another discriminatory practice. Any Jew anywhere in the world can emigrate to Israel. But no Palestinian family expelled in 1948 can return to their ancestral homeland.

Jewish councils may reject applications for residence from Palestinian-Israelis. An Israeli Jew who married an American Christian is allowed to bring the spouse to Israel; but an Israeli Jew who married a West Bank Palestinian may not.

The report argues that in the Israel-Palestinian context, Palestinians are a race. I would add that the exclusion of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens underlines this definition, since one characteristic of race is endogamy or marrying within the in-group.

Other UN decisions have recognized the Palestinians as a people entitled to self-determination (and indeed such recognition goes back to the correspondence of League of Nations states overseeing the British Mandate over Palestine in the 1920s).

The document says:

This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid how the history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the Palestinian people being divided into different geographic regions administered by distinct sets of law. This fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a unified and effective resistance.

As for the specifics of Apartheid in the Occupied West Bank, the UN document observes that this territory is virtually a textbook case in Apartheid governance:

Domain 3 is the system of military law imposed on approximately 4 .6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestini an territory, 2 .7 million of them in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip. The territory is administered in a manner that fully meets the definition of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention: except for the provision on genocide, every illustrative inhuman act listed in the Convention is routinely and systematically practiced by Israel in the West Bank. Palestinians are governed by military law, while the approximately 350,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. The racial char acter of this situation is further confirmed by the fact that all West Bank Jewish settlers enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime when coupled with the racially discriminatory management of land and development administered by Jewish  national institutions, which are charged with administering State land in the interest of the Jewish population.

The Executive Summary is here.



Related video:

Al Jazeera English: Is Israel imposing apartheid on Palestinians?  Inside Story


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By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) |  

If you want to know where President Donald Trump came from, if you want to trace the long winding road (or escalator) that brought him to the Oval Office, dont look to reality TV or Twitter or even the rise of the alt-right. Look someplace far more improbable: Iraq.

Donald Trump may have been born in New York City. He may have grown to manhood amid his hometowns real estate wars. He may have gone no further than Atlantic City, New Jersey, to casino-ize the world and create those magical golden letters that would become the essence of his brand. He may have made an even more magical leap to television without leaving home, turning Youre fired! into a household phrase. Still, his presidency is another matter entirely. Its an immigrant. It arrived, fully radicalized, with its bouffant over-comb and eternal tan, from Iraq.

Despite his denials that he was ever in favor of the 2003 invasion of that country, Donald Trump is a president made by war. His elevation to the highest office in the land is inconceivable without that invasion, which began in glory and ended (if ended it ever did) in infamy. Hes the president of a land remade by war in ways its people have yet to absorb. Admittedly, he avoided war in his personal life entirely. He was, after all, a Vietnam no-show. And yet hes the president that war brought home. Think of him not as President Blowhard but as President Blowback.

Go Massive. Sweep It All Up

To grasp this, a little escalator ride down memory lane is necessary  all the way back to 9/11; to, that is, the grimmest day in our recent history. Theres no other way to recall just how gloriously it all began than amid the rubble. You could, if you wanted, choose the moment three days after the World Trade Center towers collapsed when, bullhorn in hand, President George W. Bush ascended part of that rubble pile in downtown Manhattan, put his arm around a firefighter, and shouted into a bullhorn, I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

If I were to pick the genesis of Donald Trumps presidency, however, I think I would choose an even earlier moment  at a Pentagon partially in ruins thanks to hijacked American Airlines flight 77. There, only five hours after the attack, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, already aware that the destruction around him was probably Osama bin Ladens responsibility, ordered his aides (according to notes one of them took) to begin planning for a retaliatory strike against yes, Saddam Husseins Iraq. His exact words: Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not. And swept almost instantly into the giant dust bin of what would become the Global War on Terror (or GWOT), as ordered, would be something completely unrelated to 9/11 (not that the Bush administration ever admitted that). It was, however, intimately related to the deepest dreams of the men (and woman) who oversaw foreign policy in the Bush years: the elimination of Iraqs autocratic ruler, Saddam Hussein.

Yes, there was bin Laden to deal with and the Taliban and Afghanistan, too, but that was small change, almost instantly taken care of with some air power, CIA dollars delivered to Afghan warlords, and a modest number of American troops. Within months, Afghanistan had been liberated, bin Laden had fled the country, the Taliban had laid down their arms, and that was that. (Who in Washington then imagined that 15 years later a new administration would be dealing with a request from the 12th U.S. military commander in that country for yet more troops to shore up a failing war there?)

Within months, in other words, the decks were clear to pursue what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. saw as their destiny, as the key to Americas future imperial glory: the taking down of the Iraqi dictator. That, as Rumsfeld indicated at the Pentagon that day, was always where they were truly focused. It was what some of them had dreamed of since the moment, in the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, when President George H.W. Bush stopped the troops short of a march on Baghdad and left Hussein, Americas former ally and later Hitlerian nemesis, in power.

The invasion of March 2003 was, they had no doubt, to be an unforgettable moment in Americas history as a global power (as it would indeed turn out to be, even if not in the way they imagined). The U.S. military that George W. Bush would call the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known was slated to liberate Iraq via a miraculous, high-tech, shock-and-awe campaign that the world would never forget. This time, unlike in 1991, its troops would enter Baghdad, Saddam would go down in flames, and it would all happen without the help of the militaries of 28 other countries.

It would instead be an act of imperial loneliness befitting the last superpower on planet Earth. The Iraqis would, of course, greet us as liberators and we would set up a long-term garrison state in the oil heartlands of the Middle East. At the moment the invasion was launched, in fact, the Pentagon already had plans on the drawing boards for the building of four permanent U.S. mega-bases (initially endearingly labeled enduring camps) in Iraq on which thousands of U.S. troops could hunker down for an eternity. At the peak of the occupation, there would be more than 500 bases, ranging from tiny combat outposts to ones the size of small American towns  many transformed after 2011 into the ghost towns of a dream gone mad until a few were recently reoccupied by U.S. troops in the battle against the Islamic State.

In the wake of the friendly occupation of now-democratic (and grateful) Iraq, the hostile Syria of the al-Assad family would naturally be between a hammer and an anvil (American-garrisoned Iraq and Israel), while the fundamentalist Iranian regime, after more than two decades of implacable anti-American hostility, would be done for. The neocon quip of that moment was: Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran. Soon enough  it was inevitable  Washington would dominate the Greater Middle East from Pakistan to North Africa in a way no great power ever had. It would be the beginning of a Pax Americana moment on planet Earth that would stretch on for generations to come.

Such was the dream. You, of course, remember the reality, the one that led to a looted capital; Saddams army tossed out on the streets jobless to join the uprisings to come; a bitter set of insurgencies (Sunni and Shia); civil war (and local ethnic cleansing); a society-wide reconstruction program overseen by American warrior corporations linked to the Pentagon that resulted in vast boondoggle projects that achieved little and reconstructed nothing; prisons from hell (including Abu Ghraib) that bred yet more insurgents; and finally, years down the line, the Islamic State and the present version of American war, now taking place in Syria as well as Iraq and slated to ramp up further in the early days of the Trump era.

Meanwhile, as our new president reminded us recently in a speech to Congress, literally trillions of dollars that might have been spent on actual American security (broadly understood) were squandered on a failed military project that left this countrys infrastructure in disarray. All in all, it was quite a record. Thought of a certain way, in return for the destruction of part of the Pentagon and a section of downtown Manhattan that was turned to rubble, the U.S. would set off a series of wars, conflicts, insurgencies, and burgeoning terror movements that would transform significant parts of the Greater Middle East into failed or failing states, and their cities and towns, startling numbers of them, into so much rubble.

Once upon a time, all of this seemed so distant to Americans in a Global War on Terror in which President Bush quickly urged citizens to show their patriotism not by sacrificing or mobilizing or even joining the military, but by visiting Disney World and reestablishing patterns of pre-9/11 consumption as if nothing had happened. (Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.) And indeed, personal consumption would rise significantly that October 2001. The other side of the glory-to-come in those years of remarkable peace in the United States was to be the passivity of a demobilized populace that (except for periodic thank-yous to its military) would have next to nothing to do with distant wars, which were to be left to the pros, even if fought to victory in their name.

That, of course, was the dream. Reality proved to be another matter entirely.

Invading America

In the end, a victory-less permanent war across the Greater Middle East did indeed come home. There was all the new hardware of war  the stingrays, the MRAPs, the drones, and so on  that began migrating homewards, and that was the least of it. There was the militarization of Americas police forces, not to speak of the rise of the national security state to the status of an unofficial fourth branch of government. Home, too, came the post-9/11 fears, the vague but unnerving sense that somewhere in the world strange and incomprehensible aliens practicing an eerie religion were out to get us, that some of them had near-super powers that even the worlds greatest military couldnt crush, and that their potential acts of terror were Topekas greatest danger. (It mattered little that actual Islamic terror was perhaps the least of the dangers Americans faced in their daily lives.)

All of this reached its crescendo (at least thus far) in Donald Trump. Think of the Trump phenomenon, in its own strange way, as the culmination of the invasion of 2003 brought home bigly. His would be a shock-and-awe election campaign in which he would decapitate his rivals one by one. The New York real estate, hotel, and casino magnate who had long swum comfortably in the waters of the liberal elite when he needed to and had next to nothing to do with Americas heartland would be as alien to its inhabitants as the U.S. military was to Iraqis when it invaded. And yet he would indeed launch his own invasion of that heartland on his private jet with its gold-plated bathroom fixtures, sweeping up all the fears that had been gathering in this country since 9/11 (nurtured by both politicians and national security state officials for their own benefit). And those fears would ring a bell so loud in that heartland that it would sweep him into the White House. In November 2016, he took Baghdad, USA, in high style.

In this context, lets think for a moment about how strangely the invasion of Iraq, in some pretzeled form, blew back on America.

Like the neocons of the Bush administration, Donald Trump had long dreamed of his moment of imperial glory, and as in Afghanistan and again in Iraq in 2001 and 2003, when it arrived on November 8, 2016, it couldnt have seemed more glorious. We know of those dreams of his because, for one thing, only six days after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in the 2012 election campaign, The Donald first tried to trademark the old Reagan-inspired slogan, Make America great again.

Like George W. and Dick Cheney, he was intent on invading and occupying the oil heartlands of the planet which, in 2003, had indeed been Iraq. By 2015-2016, however, the U.S. had entered the energy heartlands sweepstakes, thanks to fracking and other advanced methods of extracting fossil fuels that seemed to be turning the country into Saudi America. Add to this Trumps plans to further fossil-fuelize the continent and you certainly have a competitor to the Middle East. In a sense, you might say, adapting his description of what he would have preferred to do in Iraq, that Donald Trump wants to keep our oil.

Like the U.S. military in 2003, he, too, arrived on the scene with plans to turn his country of choice into a garrison state. Almost the first words out of his mouth on riding that escalator into the presidential race in June 2015 involved a promise to protect Americans from Mexican rapists by building an unforgettably impregnable great wall on the countrys southern border. From this he never varied even when, in funding terms, it became apparent that, from the Coast Guard to airport security to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as president he would be cutting into genuine security measures to build his big, fat, beautiful wall.

Its clear, however, that his urge to create a garrison state went far beyond a literal wall. It included the build-up of the U.S. military to unprecedented heights, as well as the bolstering of the regular police, and above all of the border police. Beyond that lay the urge to wall Americans off in every way possible. His fervently publicized immigration policies (less new, in reality, than they seemed) should be thought of as part of a project to construct another kind of great wall, a conceptual one whose message to the rest of the world was striking: You are not welcome or wanted here. Dont come. Dont visit.

All this was, in turn, fused at the hip to the many irrational fears that had been gathering like storm clouds for so many years, and that Trump (and his alt-right companions) swept into the already looted heartland of the country. In the process, he loosed a brand of hate (including shootings, mosque burnings, a raft of bomb threats, and a rise in hate groups, especially anti-Muslim ones) that, historically speaking, was all-American, but was nonetheless striking in its intensity in our present moment.

Combined with his highly publicized Muslim bans and prominently publicized acts of hate, the Trump walling-in of America quickly hit home. A drop in foreigners who wanted to visit this country was almost instantly apparent as the warning signs of a tourism Trump slump registered, business travel bookings took an instant $185 million hit, and the travel industry predicted worse to come.

This is evidently what America First actually means: a country walled off and walled in. Think of the road traveled from 2003 to 2017 as being from sole global superpower to potential super-pariah. Thought of another way, Donald Trump is giving the hubristic imperial isolation of the invasion of Iraq a new meaning here in the homeland.

And dont forget reconstruction, as it was called after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In relation to the United States, the bedraggled land now in question whose infrastructure recently was given a D+ grade on a report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Donald Trump promises a trillion-dollar infrastructure program to rebuild Americas highways, tunnels, bridges, airports, and the like. If it actually comes about, count on one thing: it will be handed over to some of the same warrior corporations that reconstructed Iraq (and other corporate entities like them), functionally guaranteeing an American version of the budget-draining boondoggle that was Iraq.

As with that invasion in the spring of 2003, in 2017 we are still in the (relative) sunshine days of the Trump era. But as in Iraq, so here 14 years later, the first cracks are already appearing, as this country grows increasingly riven. (Think Sunni vs. Shia.)

And one more thing as you consider the future: the blowback wars out of which Donald Trump and the present fear-gripped garrison state of America arose have never ended. In fact, just as under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, so under Donald Trump, it seems they never will. Already the Trump administration is revving up American military power in Yemen, Syria, and potentially Afghanistan. So whatever the blowback may have been, youve only seen its beginning. Its bound to last for years to come.

Theres just one phrase that could adequately sum all this up: Mission accomplished!

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffers dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Tom Engelhardt
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 17, 2017) - CKR Carbon Corporation. (TSXV: CKR) (FSE: CB81) ("CKR" or the "Company") an anode and value-added graphite development Company and operator of the Aukam vein-graphite project in Namibia is pleased to announce that it has retained First Republic Capital Corporation ("First Republic") to act as its exclusive lead agent in respect of a brokered private placement to raise up to CAD$750,000.

First Republic will act as agent on a commercially reasonable efforts basis to sell up to 8,333,334 units ("Units") of the Company at a price of CAD$0.09 per Unit to raise proceeds of up to CAD$750,000. The Company has granted First Republic the option to sell a further 5,000,000 Units to raise a further CAD$450,000 for aggregate proceeds of up to CAD$1,200,000 (collectively, the "Private Placement").

Each Unit is comprised of: (i) one common share of the Company (a "Share"); and (ii) one common share purchase warrant of the Company, with each common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant") entitling the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at an exercise price of CAD$0.20 for a period of three (3) years from the date of issuance of the Units (the "Warrant Expiry Date"). In the event that the closing price of the Company's common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (or such other exchange on which the Company's common shares may become traded) is CAD$0.30 or greater per common share during any 10 consecutive trading day period at any time subsequent to four months and one day after the closing date, the Warrants will expire, at the sole discretion of the Company, at 4:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on the 30th day after the date on which the Company provides notice of such accelerated expiry to the holders of the Warrants and First Republic.

The Company has agreed to pay First Republic cash compensation of: (i) a corporate finance fee equal to 2% of the gross proceeds of the Private Placement, and (ii) a sales commission up to 8% of the gross proceeds of the Private Placement, and to issue broker units (on the same terms as the Units) in respect of the sale of Units ("Broker Units") to First Republic exercisable for a period of 24 months in the following amounts: (i) corporate finance Broker Units equal to 2% of the aggregate number of Units sold in the Private Placement, and (ii) selling compensation Broker Units up to 8% of the aggregate number of Units sold in the Private Placement.

All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four-month hold period from the date of closing of the Private Placement. The Private Placement is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The net proceeds from the sale of the Units will be used for ongoing underground drilling and sampling at the Aukam Graphite Mine in Namibia, remaining studies required for a mining permit application, construction of a pilot plant and for working capital.

About the Aukam Project

CKR has, through a binding Farm Out Agreement with Next Graphite Inc., an option to acquire 63% of the Aukam graphite project by meeting certain milestones and making cash payments. It also has the option to buy an incremental 10% of Next's remaining interest in the License subject to agreement by Next. CKR has acquired 52% of the project and is on track to acquire the full 63%.

The Aukam Graphite Project is located on 34,082.15 hectares in southern Namibia close to the port city of Luderitz. The property hosts three underground adits which were mined periodically between 1940 and 1974. Five dumps from the historical mining occur on the property and 73 composite samples taken from the lower three dumps were assayed and averaged 42% Cg. While these composite samples were selected from a much larger screened sample of the dumps, they are not considered representative of the mineralization on the property as a whole.

CKR recently completed a bulk sampling program at Aukam, and has a letter of intent to sell the graphitic material produced during the program. CKR is currently undertaking studies to support an application for a mining license. The company maintains high safety and environmental standards and has a comprehensive strategy of social engagement.

About CKR Carbon Corporation

CKR Carbon Corporation is focused on high quality, natural graphite suitable for use in lithium-ion batteries, graphite foil, graphene and other value-added high growth technology applications. We only select projects requiring low capital and a short time to market. The company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CKR and has 33.2 million shares outstanding.
SEXSMITH, AB--(Marketwired - March 16, 2017) - Angkor Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE: ANK)( OTC PINK : ANKOF) ("Angkor" or "the Company") is pleased to announce it has successfully renewed five exploration licenses totalling 983 km2 in Cambodia.

The Cambodian Ministry of Mines has renewed the following exploration licenses held by Angkor Gold:

Andong Meas (187 km 2 )

) Banlung (150 km 2 )

) Koan Nheak (189 km 2 )

) Oyadao (222 km 2 )

) Oyadao South (235 km2)

The five license renewals have been granted to Angkor for an initial 3 year term with the option to extend a further 4 years. The Company chose not to renew the Banlung North and Trapeang Kraham licenses as part of its policy to pursue only the areas showing the best mineral potential.

Of specific interest, as reported in a press release dated June 14, 2016 (http://www.angkorgold.ca/1810-2/), Angkor entered into a Joint Exploration Agreement with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") to explore Angkor's 100% owned Oyadao South license. The agreement gives JOGMEC the option to acquire 51% of the Oyadao South license for a total investment of US$3 million in exploration expenditures over a 3 year period. As reported (June 4, 2015 http://www.angkorgold.ca/angkor-discovers-a-third-mineralized-porphyry/ and Nov. 15, 2015 http://www.angkorgold.ca/work-resumes-at-okalla-west-and-halo-prospects-in-cambodia/), the 7.25 square kilometre Halo Prospect is a mineralized porphyry system discovered by aeromagnetics, termite mound geochemistry, detailed geological mapping, a clay alteration survey and a single reconnaissance IP line.

With the license renewal, work under this agreement will now commence, and the Company has invited tenders for IP work on the Halo Prospect.

Dr. Adrian G. Mann, P.Geol., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"), has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure in this document. Matters pertaining to QA/QC relating to all geological, chemical and physical analysis have been dealt with in the referenced previous press releases.

ABOUT ANGKOR GOLD CORP.

ANGKOR Gold Corp. is a public company listed on the TSX-Venture Exchange and is Cambodia's premier mineral explorer with a large land package and a first-mover advantage building strong relationships with all levels of government and stakeholders.

Website at: http://www.angkorgold.ca or follow us on Twitter @AngkorGold.
By Jun Ji-hye



Cheong Wa Dae faced allegations Thursday that it has "systematically" destroyed evidence concerning the corruption scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye since the affair surfaced last September.



Rep. Back Hye-ryun of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said that the presidential office bought a total of 26 paper shredders between September and February, citing data from the Public Procurement Service.



The lawmaker said such a purchase was unusual, given that Cheong Wa Dae had not bought any shredders for six months before the scandal.



It bought two shredders Sept. 27, a week after the media reported Park's longtime friend Choi Soon-sil, a central figure in the corruption scandal, was behind the establishment of the K-Sports Foundation. Choi is suspected of pursuing her own interest through the foundation set up allegedly after she and Park extorted a large sum of money from leading conglomerates.



It bought six shredders Oct. 25, a day after cable TV network JTBC reported the discovery of Choi's tablet PC, which contained confidential presidential documents.



The office again purchased six shredders Nov. 7, a few days after Choi was arrested; and six more Jan. 11 during the investigation by an independent counsel into the high-profile scandal.



Another six arrived Feb. 2, a day before the independent counsel team attempted to search Cheong Wa Dae. At the time, the search and seizure attempt was blocked by the presidential office.



"The intensive buying of shredders shows Cheong Wa Dae systematically attempted to destroy evidence," Back said during a party meeting. "It is a grave offense. The problem is the presidential office can continue to destroy evidence even now."



The opposition parties called on state prosecutors to immediately conduct a search of Cheong Wa Dae.



Back said, "If the presidential office stops the investigators' search attempt again, it will show that it is a criminal group, no more, no less."



DPK spokeswoman Rep. Park Kyung-mee said, "The presidential office is destroying evidence including presidential records."



The suspicion of destruction of evidence is expected to be one of the main issues during Park's face-to-face questioning set for Tuesday.







Denial of allegations



Meanwhile, the office denied the allegations, saying the purpose of the purchase was not to destroy evidence, but just to replace aging paper shredders.



"The shredders need to be replaced every 11 years," spokesman Jung Youn-kuk said. "Those replaced in recent months were purchased and handed over by the Roh Moo-hyun government."



Park was removed from office on March 10 after the Constitutional Court upheld a National Assembly impeachment bill. She left Cheong Wa Dae, March 12, and moved to her private residence in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul.



The former president was impeached by the National Assembly in December for allegedly letting her friend Choi Soon-sil meddle in state affairs and colluding with her to extort millions of dollars from local conglomerates including Samsung Group.



Park has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, indicating that she does not accept the court ruling.



In a statement read by her former spokesman, Rep. Min Kyung-wook of the Liberty Korea Party, she said, "Although it may take time, I believe the truth will eventually be revealed."



Meanwhile, prosecutors questioned three former and incumbent senior executives of SK Group in their investigation into the bribery charges levelled against Park.



A senior prosecutor on the investigation team said they may summon officials from other conglomerates, such as Lotte and CJ, if necessary.




Caleres, Inc. engages in the retail and wholesale of footwear in the United States, Canada, China, and Guam. It operates through Famous Footwear and Brand Portfolio segments. The company offers licensed, branded, and private-label athletic, casual, and dress footwear products to women, men, and children. Its retail shoe stores provide brand name athletic, casual, and dress shoes, including Nike, Skechers, adidas, Vans, Converse, Crocs, Puma, Birkenstock, New Balance, Asics, New Balance, Under Armour, Bearpaw, Timberland, Sperry, and Dr. Martens, as well as company-owned and licensed brands, such as Dr. Scholl's Shoes, Blowfish Malibu, LifeStride, Naturalizer, Zodiac, Circus by Sam Edelman, Franco Sarto, and Ryka. The company also operates naturalizer.com, naturalizer.ca, vionicshoes.com, samedelman.com, allenedmonds.com, drschollsshoes.com, lifestride.com, francosarto.com, ryka.com, bzees.com, and zodiacshoes.com, as well as Vince.com, blowfishshoes.com, and veronicabeard.com websites. In addition, it designs, sources, manufactures, and markets footwear to retail stores, such as national chains, online retailers, department stores, mass merchandisers, independent retailers, and catalogs. Further, the company wholesales men's apparel, leather goods, and accessories under the Allen Edmonds brand; footwear for women under LifeStride brand; Italian footwear Franco Sarto brand; athletic footwear for women under the Ryka brand; women's shoe collection under the Vince brand; and women's footwear under the Bzees brand; other footwear under Zodiac brand; and women's footwear collection under Veronica Beard brand, as well as Via Spiga brand. It operates approximately 980 retail stores. The company was formerly known as Brown Shoe Company, Inc. Caleres, Inc. was founded in 1878 and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
Kumi Guitar

17.03.2017 LISTEN

Highlife artiste Kumi Guitar has denied he is under pressure to produce hit songs and make huge money for his new record label, Zylofon Media.

According to him, he is focused and taking things slowly regarding an agreement he had with the label.

Not at all. This thing is not pressuring me to do anything. As a matter fact, I have time lines to work. I have a number of songs to produce in a month and all that. We sat down and talked about all that because they didn't want it to look like they are pushing me to do something beyond me. But we have plans on the number of songs I should churn in a year, within the five years the number of albums I should produce and all that. We have spoken about that. So I am in a comfortable lead, Kumi said on Wednesday at a press soiree to release his first single titled 'Brown Sugar' at the Zylofon Media offices in Accra.

Late January 2017, the highlife musician, born Nana Yaw Kumi, signed a five-year management contract with Zylofon Media.

As part of the deal, he was to earn a sign-on fee of $100,000 and was also presented with a 3/4 bedroom house and a Hyundia Sonata 2016 model.

'Brown Sugar', produced by King Dee which features Obibini, is his first musical product announced to the public.

'Brown Sugar' is a mid-tempo highlife song which is expected to bring the missing highlife euphoria in the country. Kumi Guitar is now ready for the industry in terms of performance and appearances.

The idea behind the song is healthy relationship. Your know brown sugar is always the healthy oneI mean the refined one. So I was relating the song to a healthy relationship, he explained was the inspiration behind the song.

Kumi is a prolific songwriter, vocalist and highlife musician with an unquestionable talent. He has once worked with top players such as Appietus, Sugar Tone Production, Mark Okraku Mantey, among others. He also had features with other artistes such as Guru, Flowking Stone and other artistes.

By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected] )
'' And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of glory in Christ Jesus

Philippines 4:19

 tasking the GRA to collect 33% more revenue this year was based on the Finance Ministry's test of the system which led to the discovery of loop holes which could be sealed to increase revenue.

Honourable Ken Ofori-Attah, Minister of Finance.

Daily Graphic report: Friday, March 10, 2017

BESIDES THE PRESIDENT, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo and his Vice, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the next person who needs the prayers of Ghanaians most is the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori Attah. Following on the heels of the Minister of Finance is the Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Mr Kofi Nti. Theirs is a herculean task, but they need to fulfil the mandate of satisfying the populace- at all costs, and not render the campaign promises mere rhetoric.

The 2017 Budget was bold in its attempt to free Ghanaians of the burden brought by a variety of taxes introduced by the NDC to fill the revenue shortfall in the country. The NPP had described some of these taxes as 'nuisance taxes.' A 'nuisance tax' is generally described as tax imposed on very small amounts on the purchaser, and same transmitted to the taxing authority.

Among the many luscious tax reliefs and tax incentives were the following strategic things government seeks to do: abolish taxes on raw materials and machinery, abolish special import levy: abolish the 17.5% VAT on financial services: abolish 5% VAT on real estate sales: abolish the 17.5% VAT on domestic airline tickets: reduce VAT for micro and small enterprises from the current 17.5% to the 3% flat rate introduced by the Kufour Government: give tax credits and other incentives to businesses that employ young graduates: reduce tax exemptions: review withholding taxes imposed on various sectors, including mining: abolish the duty on spare parts; abolish the levies on 'Kayayei; reduce the 17.5% VAT on the Ghana stock Exchange to 3.5%.

Besides these, there was mention of free education for all, beginning the coming 2017/2018 academic year. The one district one factory would start. Each constituency was to be given $1m to help combat poverty. There was going to be one dam in every village in the north.

Before Mr Ken Ofori Attah had exhausted the litany of reliefs and tax- incentive packages in his 'asempa' budget, the opposition NDC MPs had got ready and were displaying cards which read '419' Budget; thus depicting the budget as a scam from confidence tricksters; the implications were that the budget was deceptive; that the budget was not going to achieve the stated objectives.

'419' refers to a section in the Nigerian Criminal Code which deals with fraud, and the charges and penalties related thereto. It is like calling the budget a 'West African scam' or a 'Nigerian scam'. The '419' in Nigeria is like Section 131-135 in Ghana (Act 29: Criminal Offences Act of 1960) which deals with 'fraud by false pretences'. It is not clear why the Parliament of Ghana would adopt a pejorative term from Nigeria, and apply it in Ghana- could this not be a breach in diplomacy?

Meanwhile, there was spontaneous jubilation in all the cities, towns and villages of Ghana. The Abossey Okai, Kokompe and Suame Magazine Spare parts dealers were all-praise for the Government for removing the duty on spare parts. To be a devil's advocate, it could be that the spare parts dealers may presume that the abolition of duty on spare parts means the abolition of all taxes- but VAT and other imposts are still there to be paid. The 'Kayayei' were dancing because the 'nuisance levy' of 50 pesewas (GHC 0.50) imposed by local authorities per day had been removed. For some people, even if such a coin drops from their pockets, they would not stoop to pick it up; but not so in the case of these 'mmoborowas', whom Frantz Fanon would describe as 'The Wretched of the Earth'. The Finance Minister interpreted the NDC reaction thus: '' I thank you, honourable members for the somewhat fire baptism you gave me. I saw 419 budgetIt reminded me of the Bible: Philippines 4:19, and that gave me strength.''

For some of the NDC Members of Parliament, the 2017 Budget was flawed. Honourable Richard Quashigah, MP for Keta thinks the NPP failed to put forward original ideas to create jobs and also there was no originality on how to implement other initiatives. Haruna Iddrisu criticises the NPP for not making provision for the payment to the DKM customers swindled by that financial institution in Sunyani, especially. But Afenyo Markins, the NPP MP for Efutu rather thinks the NDC is gaining notoriety for spreading falsehoods. Mr Kwabena Duffuor, the Ex-Minister of Finance is careful not to unduly criticise the budget:We agree that accelerated growth of the economy is critically needed, but that cannot be achieved in adverse fiscal and macro-economic environments. Once the economic fundamentals become stabilised and strong, it is easier to achieve growth.

At a post-budget forum in Accra, the Finance Minister noted that government would improve revenue collection- to cover shortfalls in tax reliefs. As reported in the Daily Graphic of Friday, March 10, 2017, one of the loopholes detected was:  where the (value) on a Final Classification and Valuation Report (FCVR) was GH 31,000. However, after the taxpayer negotiated to pay GH 1,000 to an officer, the value on the FCVR was reduced to GH 8,000 for the same consignment''.

For the ordinary reader, such an observation may mean next to nothing. But for those who know what goes on in the valuation and classification of goods, this is seen as a serious indictment. It leaves one wondering whether the report was issued by one of the private destination inspection companies ( DICs). If not, then it should be the Customs Classifications and Valuation Report (CCVR) issued by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, and that is where one who has been 'there' before must show concern. The 'big issue' is that some people fought hard- at the risk of their lives and comfort- to return the Classification and Valuation to Customs as their core functions. The private companies fought hard to keep the job ceded to them by the Customs Authorities on the government's directives. In the end, good sense prevailed, and the job was taken over by Customs- without fanfare and without a thank you to those who fought to get this restoration. People do not even know how it all began; how many Customs officers fell victim to the evil machinations-from within and from without. Until investigations of what really happened, and the 'officer' is identifiedsome of us will keep asking questions. For the meantime, officers at the unit responsible for Classification and Valuation now will only be advised to keep their hands clean. This has been the same way Customs had been labelled or mislabelled just to deny the institution of its desserts.

Of course, money will be needed for the various activities government has undertaken to perform. Fortunately, honourables, Carlos Ahenkorah (MP for Tema West and Kofi Brako (MP for Tema Central), as well as Titus Glover (MP for Tema East), belong to the NPP. They know the loopholes in the system, and they can assist the government with relevant advice and strategies on how to get the funds. There is money at the Ports (Tema and Takoradi). Let's go for it. More anon.

Africanus Owusu- Ansah

[email protected]
17.03.2017 LISTEN

A community youth leader of Ahwiaa, in the Kwabre East district of Ashanti, Abu Yussif, has cautioned Muslim youth who engage in homosexual activities to beware of the consequences if found.

He said such activities and conduct go to denigrate the Islamic faith and religion and that those who indulge in them should not consider themselves as true Muslims. Such people are not fit to be recognized as Muslims, he said.

Abu Yussif's admonition comes at the heels of attempted lynching of a 36-year-old entrepreneur, simply called Sumaila at his family residence at Awhiaa, near Kumasi, early February, by some angry youth in the community.

He was said to have been involved in homosexuality with another young man in the area as a result of which Muslims and youth in the community rushed to Somalia's family residence with the intention of lynching him.

Sumaila was said to have been seen with his gay partner entering the house hence the invasion but Sumaila was lucky enough to have had a tip off of the intentions of his assailants and flee together with his gay partner before the angry youth got to the residence.

The youth leader indicated that this is the second time Sumaila had allegedly escaped their wrath for his known involvement in homosexuality activities.

According to Abu Yussif, Sumaila was nearly apprehended and subjected to mob brutality in a nearby community some time ago when he went to a young man who was alleged to be his gay partner. The youth, dominantly Muslims have warned Sumaila (now at large) and his likes to beware of their indulgence in homosexual acts.

Sumailas aunt who showed disapproval for the actions of the youth group was seriously attacked and is currently suffering severe head injuries and a broken ligament.

Umar Harrun, a member of Sumailas family described Sumailas homosexual acts as unfortunate and evil, since it is against the tenets and culture of Islam.

Meanwhile, the youth of Awhiaa and nearby communities have stepped up a search for Sumaila to unleash a just punishment to him to serve as deterrent for other homosexuals in the area. Sumaila's family has since declared him missing and lodged a complaint with the Old Tafo Police station to that effect and asked members of the public to alert the family of his whereabouts.

From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi.
17.03.2017 LISTEN

The paramount chief of the Essikado Traditional Area in the Western Region, Nana Kobina Nketsiah V has told the Minister in Charge of Railways Development, Joe Ghartey that he has the responsibility to transform the railways which has completely collapsed.

The eloquent chief and historian, warned that if after two years he did not see any appreciable development in the Railway sector, he would force his son (the Minister who is also the Member of Parliament for the Essikado Ketan constituency) to resign from his position as sector Minister.

If in two years I do not see any appreciable development in the Railway sector, I will force you to resign, the outspoken Essikado chief told his subject.

Speaking last Friday at the maiden National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of Railway Workers Union in Takoradi, Nana Kobina Nketsiah, known for his advocacy for railway development, told the sector Minister in the face that: Your failure to transform Railway will translate into political suicide for you, the president and your party.

Continuing, Nana Kobina Nketiah, who is also a member of the National House of Chiefs (NHC) gave the minister guidelines as to how to succeed as a Minister.

He cautioned him to see to it that people appointed to serve as Board Members were people committed and competent to see to Railway development. Where possible, he said members of the board should cut across the political divide.

He said anytime partisan politics enters the Railway sector, anything Railway does not succeed. He advised the Minister to consider setting up an advisory Council where necessary.

Responding, Joe Ghartey assured Nana Kobina Nketiah and the Railway workers that the NPP government was going to transform the sector.

According to him, the Railway will form the backbone of Ghana's economic transformation under the new government.

This is not a dream, it is a vision and we shall, in due course, be spelling out in detail how we aim to achieve this.

Minister Joe Ghartey continued: Nana, I can assure Railway workers that within three years, the GRC will become a completely solvent company and will be able to pay dividends to its shareholders, the government of Ghana.

The Minister's optimism of transforming the Railway is apparently based on investor's interest in the sector.

According to him, the interest that is being shown in the railways sector is more than encouraging. This month, a group of foreign investors who intend to build a factory in this city to manufacture and supply some of the inputs in building railways infrastructure will be visiting us to commence negotiations.

On his part, the General Secretary of Ghana Railway Workers Union (GRWU), Mr. Godwill Ntarmah observed that the creation of Ministry of Railway Development alone would not result in automatic revamping of the sector.

Adequate investment and proper planning was required to ensure that the Railway sector was brought back to life.

We have every conviction that the government will stand up to the test of time to ensure that the right thing is done. It is our prayer that things will go according to plan as announced in the 2017 budget statement which has rekindles the spirits of Railway workers.

As workers of Railway, we see the creation of the Ministry as a good omen though this is not the first time a ministry is being created for Railway. It is worth mentioning that the difference between the earlier creation and the new one is the appointment of someone who understands the Railway and also an MP for a constituency dominated by railway workers and their family members and therefore cannot afford to fail. 

From Alfred Adams, Sekondi-Takoradi.
17.03.2017 LISTEN

Parliament has approved the Financial Policy of the Government of Ghana for the year ending December 31, 2017, but without most of the Minority members.

The approval followed days of heated debate from both sides of the political divide, arguing for and against.

The debate became necessary, as the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, presented the budget policy in Parliament, in accordance with the constitution, and under the authority of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Concluding the debate on the Budget Statement on the floor, Ken Ofori Atta prayed Parliament to fully support the approval of the budget, while the Minority began trooping out, one after the other.

After monitoring the extensive debate on the 2017 Budget, I have found the debate by Honourable Members as very educative, robust and revealing. I wish to thank all contributors and the passion you went through the debate, Ken Ofori Atta said.

The Finance Minister assured the House that the government was committed to plugging the loopholes in the revenue leakages that the country has been deviled with.

Mr Ken Ofori Atta was confident that government would meet the revenue targets to make the economy stand on its feet.

According to the Finance Minister, the NPP was ready to change the fundamentals of the economy given by our forefathers sixty years ago.

He said the government was optimistic the projections in the budget were achievable, notwithstanding the underperformance of last year, mainly as a result of reduction in non-realisation of income and property tax revenues, and non-realisation of proceeds from non-tax categories.

He said the government was also committed to upholding the Constitution, with regards to the administration of the statutory funds, and ensure adequate allocations are made to the funds.

The Minister pledged to sustain and restore the macro stability, sustain the environment for the private sector to thrive, and also make public sector work free from corruption.

He said the government looks forward to helping small businesses in small and rural and deprived areas. On taxes, he said the NPP government will support a pro-growth economy to create jobs, instead of the traditional constrictions of the IMF policies the government had inherited.

He said the government would do all-inclusive policy programmes to inspire hope in the people to become more productive. He promised that the government of the NPP will deliver all



thought-out programmes and bring a prosperous economy.

The Finance Minister was hopeful that the House will, by next week, take time to debate on the appropriation of the funds to the various ministries, departments and agencies.

By Maxwell Ofori, Parliament House
17.03.2017 LISTEN

The Medical Officer at the Upper East Regional Hospital, Bolgatanga, who examined the 13-year old girl defiled at Namolgo in Talensi District, but refused to release the results until the parents paid the GH300 cost involved, has rescinded his decision.

He has agreed to release the report of the examination to the regional office of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, to enable them prosecute the case.



This follows the intervention of the Upper Regional Director of the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)

Dr Abraham Tiitigah examined the victim, who reported at the hospital with a police medical form, following her defilement, sometime in November 2016.

However, the parents of the victim failed to raise GH300 as service charge for the examination. As a result, the report was not released to the police, and that has stalled investigations and prosecution of the case.

But, Dr. Patrick Atobrah, Medical Director of the regional hospital, told The Chronicle last Sunday that it was not out of place for the Medical Officer to charge for the service he provided. According to him, the fees the doctor charged was meant to facilitate his movements to and from the court, because he would be the principal witness.

However, following The Chronicle publication of the story, Mr. Abdulai Jaladeen, Upper East Regional Director of CHRAJ, led some members of Regional Child Protection Committee to the Medical Director of the Regional Hospital, Bolgatanga, to try and convince him to let the Medical Officer to release the result.

Their discussion was successful, as the Medical Director prevailed on the senior Gynecologist who conducted the examination to release the results to pave way for the police to prosecute the case.

Dr. Atobrah hinted that the report will be ready this week and presented to the police. He said the hospital will pay the expenses to be incurred by Dr. Tiitigah, because he will be going to court on the matter, as the principal witness.

Meanwhile, the Upper East Regional Director of CHRAJ has bemoaned the habit of some parents who care so much about their animals to the neglect of their children.

Following the defilement of a 13-year old girl last year at Namolgo in the Talensi District of the Upper East Region, Mr. Abdulai Jaladeen blamed the parents of the girl for failing to detect her ordeal, until a video clip on the disgusting abuse went viral in the community, before her mother reported to the police.

Talking about the case at stake, it is so devastating. If you hear without watching the video, you will think that it is just a normal event. It is so bad, and as parents, we should be conscious as to what is happening to our children.

It is not for mothers, it is not for fathers, it is for parents, and so we should be conscious as to what is happening to our children, the human rights lawyer said.

This means that we should be watchful over our children, not only our animals. We are more concerned about the animals, because if the animals don't come home, we are asking, but if our children don't come home, we are okay.

We should not also dwell on poverty. If you call yourself a poor person, live within your means. That is why we have family planning. Why should you give birth to many children when you cannot take care of them? he quizzed.

He, therefore, charged parents to maintain their children, by giving them quality training that will make them responsible adults in future.

He emphasised: If we fail now, it means that we are coming out with irresponsible adults tomorrow.

From William Nlanjerbor Jalulah, Bolgatanga
17.03.2017 LISTEN

Some unidentified group of persons from Banda-Ahenkro in the Banda District of Brong-Ahafo, have created some sense of insecurity in the area, after issuing threatening notices to drive away all persons who are not natives of the town.

The xenophobic threat notices were posted all over the Banda township over the weekend, informing 'strangers' working in the community that they (the faceless group of persons) were not ready to stay peacefully with them.

According to the notice, if the strangers fail to leave the community as ordered, their safety could not be guaranteed, and that it would be like what happened to foreigners in South Africa.

These threats by the faceless group of persons have led to several people working within the community fleeing for their lives. The most affected facility is the Banda-Ahenkro Health Centre, and workers at the Ghana Education Services (GES), where almost all staff have left the town for fear of their lives.

Workers in other departments, such as the District Assemblies, have also decided to leave if the security agencies fail to act swiftly to the threats.

To help avert the situation from escalating, the Banda Traditional Council, led by its Paramount Chief, Osabarima Kwadwo Sito, has vowed to collaborate effectively with the security agencies to help look out for those faceless beings behind the xenophobic threats, for the laws to deal with them as expected.

According to Nana Sito, the Traditional Council is to meet today, together with the District Security Council, to assess the situation and devise means of apprehending those faceless people for peace to prevail in the area.

Before the meeting, the Banda Traditional Council had performed some rituals and invoked curses on those yet-to-be-identified persons, for the gods to deal ruthlessly with them.

The Paramount Chief of Banda has, therefore, appealed to all workers who have fled the town to return, since their security would be assured, for them to continue serving the district and the people for the development of the area.

From Michael Boateng, Banda-Ahenkro.
Melcom, the number one stop shop in the country for fifth conservative times is hosting a festival to showcase and promote products made in Ghana to encourage local patronization.

The festival is exhibiting over 1500 products which include GIHOC products, Poly Star, Fan Milk, Golden Tree Chocolate, Unilever products, Nestle, Accra Brewery products, Ashfoam, Century Plastic products, and Kasapreko.

Other products on the exhibition stands are Voltic, Beauty Secrets, Tomatoes Puree, Best food Ghana, Eva Pac, Akono Ginger and many others.

Mr. Godwin Avenorgbo, Communications Director-Melcom Group of Companies said most shop outlets in Ghana periodically organize the show to support local industries thrive by creating favourable environment for injection of capital expansion and employment generation.

The festival will showcase quality Made In Ghana products by 100 Ghanaian companies and by Ghanaian Citizens. We have over 1500 products on display.

These includes paper products, cosmetics, food & beverages, water, plastics, foam and mattress, he said.

He used the opportunity to wish the Ghana well on its 60 years anniversary and pledged the company's ready support to any government that has been given mandate of the people to serve. The Made in Ghana show started last weekend in Accra and would last for a month.

Mr. Avenorgbo also used the occasion to handover a cheque for GH3, 000 from the chairman of the group, Mr. Bhagwan Kubchandani to Daily Graphic foundation to help 3-year old Latifa Karim, who needs to undergo Cancerous eye surgery.

Bernice Bessey.
RACINE  The City of Racine is beginning to create a tax-increment district to help fund redevelopment in the retail area encompassing Regency Mall, Target, High Ridge Centre, Home Depot and Toys R Us.

Tax incremental financing allows a municipality to pay for improvements in a district with the future taxes generated as development occurs there.

The primary purpose of the TID is to provide the necessary incentives and public infrastructure improvements needed to encourage economic development and increase property values, a city press release states.

The reason were looking at this is: Were really concerned about the trajectory of Regency Mall, City Development Director Amy Connolly said.  And were just very concerned that if we dont do something to create incentives and address the retail in this area that were going to lose mass.

Limited property reinvestment, increasing vacancy and eroding tax base is a significant cause for concern for the city, Mayor John Dickert stated in the release. Without an intervention, the retail cluster could continue to erode and leave the area with more vacant properties.

Developer incentives

The proposed TID includes 24 parcels and totals 134 acres. It is divided into three redevelopment areas, A, B and C, each with different types of investment planned.

Were kind of in a position with a unique opportunity right now when theres some new interest in the area with a new owner of the actual mall area and David Israel who bought the JC Penney area earlier, said Jordan Brown, business recruitment specialist for Racine County Economic Development Corp.

But with that, there needs to be substantial improvement in that area because it has been so neglected for a while.  And the thing is: Its a huge investment up front for a lot of these developers and a lot of these retailers that want to be there.

The plan to create TID No. 20 has a 22-year expenditure period, with estimated total city expenditures of $15.7 million during that time. The plan also details what the city can and cannot spend the TID money on, Connolly said.

The TID can provide money for development incentives. Brown said the strategy would be to offer incentives off gained assessment, called pay as you go. The developer would first invest money that would increase the property value and thereby the tax base  then get cash to be able to reinvest in the property.

So, its up-front money from them, they get more money back to put back into the property and gain more tax base, and it just grows incrementally like that, Brown said.

The project plan does not set a particular percentage of what a developer would recoup on investment. To offer an incentive, the city would negotiate a development agreement with a particular developer, Connolly said.

Pay as you go is a performance-based incentive, she said, so if theyre not creating tax increment, they dont get anything.

Flexibility

City spending within the TID could be accomplished via bonding, and could be used, for example, to supply the citys share for the amenities or streetscape along Highway 11 which the state Department of Transportation plans to upgrade in a few years.

Transportation-related amenities could be made on private property with TID money, such as a bus shelter or lighting in the parking lot, Connolly said.

Its very flexible, Brown said, so you can tailor it to whatever needs come forward.

And the city isnt obligated to spend any of (whats in the plan) at any time, he added.

Connolly said if the city is to see redevelopment at High Ridge, where the Kmart store is nearing its end, developer incentives will be important.

Construction and rehab costs in that area are prohibitively high without having incentives available to help offset costs, Brown said.

The very important part of this is: Were not sharing anything but (tax) increment, Connolly said. And were not going to share anything that isnt generated by the economic investment.

The city would also hope the TID could spark redevelopment in other spots within that zone, such as two corners northeast and southeast of Target and along part of the malls southern edge.

A base value will be set for all properties in the TID. Connolly said the value of Regency Mall, excluding the out-lot properties that are not part of the mall proper, would likely be set at the $9.6 million that Hull paid for it.

Any additional tax increment value created across all taxing jurisdictions (Racine County, Racine Unified School District, Gateway Technical College and City of Racine) would be available the following year to make identified expenditures in the TID plan or share the increase with developers according to agreements in place.

The Joint Board of Review, comprised of a representative from all taxing jurisdictions, is scheduled for March 28. The City of Racine will hold a public hearing on the proposed TID on March 29 in conjunction with the Citys Plan Commission. Final City Council consideration is expected April 18.

The TID would become effective Jan. 1. But in the meantime, Connolly and Brown said, the city could start working on developer agreements with those interested in investing within the TID.
By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA

Accra, March 16, GNA  The Right Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, the immediate past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, has urged Ghanaians to prioritise the strict enforcement and compliance of the laws of the land towards building a strong and prosperous nation.

Those in leadership positions, he said, must set the pace for the citizenry to emulate; explaining that when laws were not enforced they would become impotent, while applying force without laws would result in anarchy.

Prof Martey gave the advice at a roundtable discussion, organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a policy think tank, to review the 2017 Presidential Transition Act (PTA) in Accra, on the theme: 'Strengthening Presidential Transitions in Ghana''.

He emphasised that the country would only achieve accelerated sustainable development when the citizenry respect the laws.

Commenting on lapses identified in the implementation of the PTA, the Reverend Professor observed that successive governments had failed to abide by some of the provisions.

He said although the Presidential Transition Act 2012, (Act 845) stipulated that 30 days before the conduct of the general election, the outgoing government must submit the handing over notes to the Administrator-General's Office, successive governments had failed to comply.

This negative practice, Prof Martey advised, should not be repeated in the future.

Prof. Martey also expressed misgivings over the employment of people on the eve of the previous government's departure, saying while those appointments were being made; some workers were not receiving their salaries. 'So what is the intention of bringing in more labour force at the last-minute?' he asked.

The roundtable discussion brought together various stakeholders, including representatives of political parties, civil society organisations and donor partners, who dispassionately discussed the shortcomings in the Transition Law.

The meeting discussed also proposed amendments to the Law in order to strengthen Ghana's democratic credentials.

Some participants argued that the State's provision of accommodation and offices for former presidents, as part of their retirement remuneration, was not sustainable and should be scrapped so that it would not drain the public purse.

They suggested that Parliament review the law that mandated government officials to purchase their vehicles after using them for more than two years.

They also suggested that the Administrator-General's Office be well resourced in order to perform its mandate of managing State assets efficiently.

GNA
New York (AFP) - More than a century after a long-hushed genocide took place in Namibia while under German colonial rule, descendants of the victims had their day in court in New York for the first time Thursday.

In one of the darkest chapters of African colonial history, tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people were killed from 1904 to 1908.

Germany and Namibia have been in talks for the past two years about a joint declaration on the massacres.

The tribes filed their class-action lawsuit in January seeking compensation for "incalculable damages" and demanding that they be included in the negotiations between the two countries.

The 15 or so tribal representatives at the hearing -- who came from Namibia, Canada and midwest America, some wearing colonial-era traditional dress -- won their first victory Thursday when Judge Laura Taylor Swain scheduled another hearing for July 21.

"When I heard that she said the hearing can take place -- that was the greatest success we have achieved. This is the sign that we are the winners," said Ida Hoffmann, 69, a Namibian MP and Nama representative.

Reparations refused

While some German officials have acknowledged that a genocide occurred, the government has fallen short of an official declaration.

And Berlin 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."

A foreign ministry spokesman described the aid as "generous," saying it includes "record" amounts per individual and points to Germany's "responsibility."

Herero chief Vekuii Rukoro (C) speaks during a news conference while other members of the delegation listen on March 16, 2017 in New York

German settlers grabbed land, cattle and other means of subsistence from the locals, triggering a Herero revolt on January 12, 1904 in which they killed 123 German civilians.

In the bloody Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, around 80,000 Herero fled with women and children toward Botswana. German troops went after them across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 Herero survived.

In October 1904, colonial military commander General Lothar von Trotha ordered that the Herero be exterminated.

The smaller Nama tribe faced a similar fate. Around 10,000 of them were killed as they sought to rebel against the Germans during the conflict.

'Blind eye to rape'

The lawsuit alleges that from 1885 to 1903, about a quarter of Herero and Nama lands -- thousands of square miles -- were 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 settlers of Herero and Nama women and girls, and the use of forced labor.

In addition to land and property grabs, there were concentration camps, exterminations and scientific experiments on "specimens" of what the settlers considered to be an inferior race -- as if setting the stage for the major genocides of the 20th century.

Members of the Namibian delegation and members of the press wait for the arrival of Herero chief Vekuii Rukoro to a news conference on March 16, 2017 in New York

"What happened to the Jews was only a perfection of what happened (to us)," said Vekuii Rukoro, identified as the paramount chief of the Herero people, who attended Thursday's hearing.

"I'm sure Germany will ask, 'How many billions?' I don't know, we need to sit around a table and hammer this out on the basis of give and take."

The lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Statute that allows non-US citizens to make claims in US federal court for international law violations.

Berlin has been tight-lipped about details of the deal being negotiated with Namibia, but the two tribes claim that their exclusion from the talks violates a United Nations declaration on indigenous people.

Kenneth McCallion, lawyer for the tribal groups, said he hoped Germany would "reconsider its position" on including them in the negotiations, and respond to the lawsuit if possible before the July hearing.
Harare (AFP) - She bears scars from police beatings, has been arrested many times, detained for months, and become the first person to be convicted over mass anti-government protests last year.

But Zimbabwean activist Linda Masarira, a 34-year-old widow with five children, vows to fight on.

"I am not deterred," she told AFP after a magistrate's court in Harare last week sentenced her over her role in the protests against President Robert Mugabe as the country's dire economic crisis worsens.

"Zimbabwe's situation is bad," Masarira said, her voice quivering with anger.

"Look at the economy. There are no jobs. Hospitals have no medicines and people are dying.

"We have a mandate to demand a free, just and democratic Zimbabwe -- not a Zimbabwe for an elite few."

Since becoming involved in activism in 2009, Masarira has emerged as a ubiquitous figure at the front of anti-government protests, often leading the singing and chanting.

She was found guilty of blocking traffic and pedestrians during countrywide protests in July last year, but she dismisses the case as "a travesty of justice" and insists she committed no crime.

Magistrate Stanford Mambanje sentenced her to a hefty penalty of 385 hours of community service, with a suspended 18 months in jail.

"I have been arrested at least 10 times and all the times I was beaten by police. Last year I was arrested six times. The state has no right to assault people for demanding their rights," Masarira said.

She said she has had an arm broken by police and has suffered bad bruising to her back and legs in beatings.

'No fear'

Masarira was among the founders of the Tajamuka movement that led last year's protests against 93-year-old Mugabe's government.

She has also backed other groups such as This Flag, led by pastor Evan Mawarire, and has marched at night vigils for fellow activist Itai Dzamara who was abducted in 2015 and remains missing.

His fate provides a stark warning of the potentially fatal risks that dissidents have taken throughout Mugabe's 37 years in power.

As Zimbabweans endure 90 percent unemployment and wait to see if Mugabe's ailing health will usher in a new era, she vows she will not be cowed into silence.

While in prison, Zimbabwean civil rights activist Linda Masarira led fellow inmates in protest over alleged abuse and poor conditions

"I have no fear of anything," she told AFP. "There is no easy struggle. When you see a struggle becoming easy then it is not a struggle. I always get stronger whenever I face challenges.

"I want to see a better Zimbabwe. I want my children to have hope."

Earlier this month Masarira was admitted to hospital for treatment after she was beaten by police while staging protests in support of striking doctors.

She trained as a computer technician but now works for the Zimbabwe Women in Politics action group, as well as raising her children -- three boys and two girls, aged six to 17.

'Injustice intolerant'

While in detention last year, she led inmates in protests over alleged abuse and poor conditions.

"The food and treatment were terrible," she said, describing herself as "injustice intolerant".

Prison authorities transferred her to a maximum-security jail where she was held in solitary confinement.

She has two other cases hovering over her -- one for insulting Mugabe in a speech and the other for being a "criminal nuisance".

Last year's protests were quashed in a brutal crackdown by Mugabe's security forces who crush any signs of opposition activity.

Despite the dangers, Masarira called on fellow Zimbabweans to be brave and challenge Mugabe's government head-on.

"Everyone has to play their role, we have to fight for the Zimbabwe that we want," she said.
The News Editor

Ghanaian Times Newspaper

Accra, Ghana

We have noted with concern, two front page stories in the Ghanaian Times newspaper under the headings 8 TOP FIRE OFFICERS HOT and EOCO INDICTS 7 GNFS TOP BRASS which were published on Wednesday, March 08, 2017, and Thursday 09, 2017 and same reproduced on www.ghanaweb.com today, Thursday March 16, 2017

The facts are:

1. The subject under reference published in the Ghanaian Times of Wednesday, March 08, 2017, and Thursday 09, 2017 is a subject that occurred in 2010 but has been twisted, skewed and published in 2017 as though it was a new story.

2. The Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) investigated the case and concluded with no findings of wrongdoing whatsoever on the part of the officers your news paper mentioned. For Two (2) years, Five (5) months the Officers were on interdiction so as to allow an uninterrupted investigation by EOCO. No adverse findings were made against the officers so they were subsequently recalled for duty with pride.

3. The case was exhaustively concluded six years ago. Two of the persons investigated later died and currently three are not in good health.

4. It was later revealed that Mr. Albert Brown Gaisie masterminded the interdiction apparently to push the top officers out of the service to pave way for himself to become the Chief Fire Officer which he eventually did.

5. It is an interesting and rather curious coincidence that the editorial team of the Ghanaian Times decided to publish this non issue only at a time promotions are ongoing in the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), especially when the content of the story is six years old the findings of the investigations made public as far back as 2010.

6. Again the newspaper did not consider it fair and useful to contact any of the persons it was publishing the report against.

7. This raises suspicion that the publication is inspired by malice and a possible vendetta against some officers who have been penned for promotion.

8. The Chief Fire Officer Albert Brown-Gaisie joined the Service in 1990. He joined at the time when his mates (cadet course 2) had already started training for 5 months. He never took part in any mandatory fire drill.

9. At training he was DO II without any special or professional qualification. Four (4) years after training he was seen wearing the Deputy Chief Fire Officer rank. This is the highest senior officer rank in the Service. Mr. Albert Brown Gaisie had not passed through any formal promotion interview as required in the GNFS.

10. The rapidity by which he was promoted over others has baffled the rank and file, including retired officers and fire associations worldwide.

11. We are also disturbed that the entire editorial team of a reputable State-owned news organization like the Ghanaian Times would publish a story on the basis of second-hand information without bothering to verify such supposed details from the persons they are writing about.

12. This conduct is a clear and blatant breach of the ethics of journalism and an unprofessional conduct which should be condemned.

13. Equally disturbing is the fact that the entire editorial team of a reputable State-owned news organization like the Ghanaian Times would simply grab a piece of propaganda material inspired by malice and selfish interest and use that as a base to destroy the hard earned reputation of individuals.

14. This is a blot on the reputation of Ghanaian journalism in general and Ghanaian Times in particular and we wish it did not happen.

Yours Faithfully



(Concerned GNFS Officers)
Ghana has made a case at the United Nations that there is an inextricable link between economic empowerment of women and gender equality, therefore the continued gender disparity is a denial of a fundamental human right and affects social economic development.

Consequently, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms. Otiko Afisah Djaba has said, her country believes that the economic empowerment of women has a direct correlation with the development of the country.

The Minister stated this in her statement at the High Level Interactive Dialogue at the on-going 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Speaking on Building Alliances to Promote Womens Economic Empowerment In the Changing World of Work, she pointed out that the global disparities in the economic well-being of women as against men are clearly fueled by various gender norms and values that do not promote women as skilled enough, strong enough and as smart as their male colleagues.

This is wrong. This is deceptive and this is an injustice to humankind. I believe that any such value or norm which promotes the devaluing of women in the work force does not have a place in todays world and must be done away with, she argued.

Admitting that Ghana also faces gender disparities at various levels of her workforce which go against women, particularly, in the formal sector and also in the decision making positions, where they remain underrepresented, she said there is much economic gain to be made from recognizing the value of womens work and enhancing their participation in national development through deliberate and well-targeted policies.

Quoting from the Ghana Living Standards Survey (2014), she said that 29.9 per cent of males are engaged in wage employment as against 11.7 per cent for females.

Such disparities, she said also existed in other key areas such as politics, where currently 37 out of 275 Members of Parliament are women.

To address this disparity, the Government of Ghana has taken steps to ensure a strong legal and policy environment that supports womens inclusion and welfare. Ms. Djaba noted.

She added that an Affirmative Action Bill, currently under consideration in Parliament, when passed will enable the country to correct the imbalances seen in many decision-making positions in the country.

The Minister called for a clear commitment to work with Civil Society Organizations, development partners and donors to advance the economic empowerment of women in the changing world of work.

African Governments, in particular, must show commitment by undertaking gender budgeting and allocate resources to areas where gender disparities need to be addressed. Enough talk, the time is now to walk the talk she stated.
A former Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Sylvester Mensah, has described as unethical, the number of ministers appointed by President Akufo-Addo.

The president has appointed over a hundred ministers and deputies to serve in his government.

But according to Mr. Sylvester Mensah, whos also a strategic management expert, although the President has the constitutional mandate to do so, his actions are inappropriate in the practice of management and efficiency.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, March 16, 2017, Mr. Sylvester Mensah said some of the president's appointments were unnecessary.

He said the president had appointed people as ministers to supervise specific projects and programs that had clearly defined lifespans, hence such offices will become redundant when such projects or programmes had been completed.

He argued that some of those projects could be supervised by other ministries and did not need a new minister to oversee them.

You don't create a ministry for a project or program that has a clearly defined lifespan. In the current circumstances we find ourselves creating ministries and appointing ministers for projects, for instance, if you talk about procurement, having a minister for procurement doesn't sit well.

We have a procurement law that is clearly defined and we have a Public Procurement Authority with a Chief Executive who operates under the confines of a clearly defined law that vests all authority and power in the Chief Executive, and so if you have a CEO responsible for public procurement and you have a minister, is the minister coming to develop policies or develop a regulation for the implementation of a law and running the organization. I find this very troubling and very disturbing, he said.

Ghanaians have expressed varied opinions about Akufo-Addo's appointment of a hundred and ten (110) ministers  including deputies, to serve in his government.

The number is the highest in the country's history, surpassing the immediate past John Mahama government by more than 20 appointees.

Many have criticized Akufo-Addo over the development which they say appears to be a betrayal of trust following pre-election assurances from Akufo-Addo that he will ensure a prudent and efficient government.

But the Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid , has defended government's large size of ministers.

According to him, the poor economic situation the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government inherited from the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) requires a good number of ministerial hands to help develop the country.

He also discredited claims that the many ministers in the government will have a negative impact on the state coffers.



By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @jnyabor
All rivers were not polluted in a day. All of us including you, yes you my reader saw the rivers polluted bit by bit, but we gave no attention to it. Each of us felt it was the work of that man. Perhaps we said to ourselves that people are paid with our taxes to carry out that function, so why must we worry about it.

Some of us did not even have any clue that the brownish rivers we all see and pass by are the same that end up in our taps. Go to the Daboase Treatment Plant and see how the yellowish Prah River is scooped and sent to our homes on daily basis.

I guess if many of us had visited these plants, we might have been angrier enough and called for immediate end to galamsey by whichever means practicable.

That said; let us see how we got here and how we can get out of this mess.

Genesis of today's trouble

Galamsey gave birth to small scale mining in 1989 when the government realized that, apart from the large scale mining companies like the Anglogolds, revenue could be generated from those traditional dig and wash [the pick-axe and shovel] method.

As a result, PNDC Law 218 legalizing small scale mining came in. Prior to this new act, people were doing the dig and wash.

Until sometime around 2006-2007, people who acquired licenses to do this small scale mining [dig and wash], were doing it somehow the right way. They were not digging down farmlands and in river bodies.

Didn't the regulators notice the mess?

But, after 2006, a new phenomenon came up. Global demand for gold was increasing whilst the population was also increasing. Contribution of other means of supply of gold other than the multi-national mining companies was very much appreciated.

Small scale miners realized the primary tools were not efficient enough to catch up and so they required some heavy equipment in order to increase their yield.

Some of the miners resorted to banks, politicians and other businessmen for loans to acquire the equipment. By 2011 and 2012, a good number of excavators had been introduced into the sector which was supposed to be called small-scale mining.

Some businessmen and politicians at various levels realized the potential and then bought equipment and lands.

The Minerals Commission was needed to streamline this new form of mining because the face of small scale mining was changing. However, the regulatory environment did not match up with the trends. Was it that the regulators did not see it transitioning or it that they were coerced?

Why chiefs involvement?

About the same time, some chiefs in resource rich communities saw the benefit of giving out lands to these investors because, their share in the form of cash was paid instantly to them by the one coming for the concession.

They had also found an antidote to the Mineral's Commission attitude of giving concession to miners without the knowing of the traditional authority in the communities. When they get to know, their royalties also take only God knows how long before it gets to their reach, amidst all manner of statutory deductions.

So this time, the chiefs were going to give the concessions to the miners before the Minerals Commission even dreams of it. It was nice doing business with the politicians and the businessmen.

The coming of the Chinese

The Chinese, with their African Gold Invasion policy, have heard of the booming small-scale turned medium scale mining in Ghana.

Apparently, some Ghanaians who had spotted the lapses in the law, and were capitalizing on it spoke to their Chinese counterparts. As businessmen too, they came in their numbers.

Anti-galamsey taskforce dragging away an asian believed to be involved in galamsey

They came with huge amounts capable of buying heavy equipment, as well as paying huge untaxed instant monies to chiefs and land owners in the name of doing small scale mining.

With new methods, they could get more alluvial gold in places already mined by the dig and wash methods. It's a new dawn! Already mined sites were resold.

Why carats over cocoa

The excitement of getting the cash fiili fiili [Physically or tangibly], got cocoa farmers with reserves on their lands to get their Gh.1million cash instantly without waiting for a crop season to be paid peanuts by COCOBOD.

Also, the corruption at Agric district offices during the John Mahama administration; the period which saw escalating abuse in mining in post 2000s, over free fertilizers to revitalize old cocoa trees, and the cumbersome procedure to acquire the inputs were enough incentive to end it all by selling the trees instantly for a cold hard cash. And the Chinese and politicians and other businessmen were ready!

Why increased mining in major rivers

The pollution of the major rivers did not start today. It started when there was a shift from primary tools to mechanized methods of small scale mining. Indeed, the Water Resources Commission's report points back to this period.

How did the shift from use of primary tools to earth moving equipment and the changfan pollute our rivers? This is it. People have bought this equipment, but there was a challenge in securing lands for their operations.

The reason is that the big mining firms had acquired almost all the concessions. Occasionally, they were crashing with these small scale miners on their concessions.

But these miners, despite the prohibition from mining in river bodies, saw these rivers rich in alluvial gold lying unprotected by the state. That explains the abuse. Even the Ghana Water Company Limited whose primary existential relevance hinges on these rivers did very little to protect its sources. It only engaged in the business of complaining about water levels and turbidity.

The surge and the driving forces

The main factor driving the surge in the menace is the inability of the Minerals Commission to rise to the occasion. The Commission could not foresee the transition when small scale miners shifted their focus on use of primary technology to heavy equipment.

If it had foreseen, it would have proposed and facilitated the right regulations to create the medium scale mining law to streamline their operations.

Over 10 years, we still have not realized the miners have graduated to medium scale which requires new regulations. This laxity has led to acute shortage of water to some parts of the country, and the situation isn't getting any better.

Sekondi-Takoradi has lost 3 million gallons of water from the Daboase Water Treatment plant due to low levels of water and artificial islands created by illegal miners at the intake point.

The discolored Pra River affected by galamsey.

Suyani and its environs are not spared. Basic necessity such as water, Ghana cannot ensure it constant supply 60 years on. This country is sick!

Truth is that, when the resource and the means to extract are available, it makes no economic sense to keep it there. People would want to mine it. This is where the regulator needs to sit up. Speed up the introduction and passage of a medium scale mining law.

Surge has nothing to do with unemployment

The real people who own the excavators and the changfans used in abusing the environment are not poor people. That's a fact! They have the means to buy excavators and the changfans at prices over a million cedis. Will you consider someone with a million cedis as a poor person in Ghana?

Truth is that, perpetrators of the illegality have hidden behind unemployment to advance their greed and their quest to get rich quick in a manner that defies logic and common sense.

Which company in Ghana is allowed to work against the laws of the land, but is allowed to continue on the grounds that it employs people? That is it. So the fact that those behind the illegality are employing some youths does not mean they do that on the back of joblessness of the youth. Greed is the driving factor.

Stay tuned for solutions to the threat posed to our rivers and the environment.



By: Obrempong Yaw Ampofo

E:mail: [email protected]
The National Organizer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams, has clarified that he worked to acquire the five vehicles that were seized, and later released by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID).

Speaking on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News, Mr. Adams said : I worked for the vehicles. I worked and acquired them. If anybody wants to check they can check further.

The vehicles; two land cruisers and three pick-ups, were seized following allegations that some officials of the previous government had misappropriated some state assets including vehicles.

But they were later released after the CID established that the vehicles did not belong to the state.

Two others to be sued for defamation

Kofi Adams, who sued a Deputy General Secretary of he NPP, Nana Obiri Boahen for alleging that he stole the five vehicles from the state, said two others will also be dragged to court for defamation.

I know Lawyer Obiri Boahen has been served and I am told he has entered appearance. We are looking for the other two persons to serve, but we are not getting them. I am sure tomorrow my lawyers will file for substituted service. They are David Asante and Abronye DC, said Kofi Adams.

How the seizure occurred

Mr. Adams, who earlier narrated how the seizure occurred, explained that before he traveled to the UAE in January, some six officials claiming to be National Security personnel visited his House in an attempt to seize the cars in his absence.

Kofi Adams said he managed to stop them when he was called at a funeral grounds, and later confirmed that the men were not ordered to carry out the act by the National Security Minister.

He said he found it strange to receive a call whiles outside the country later, that the same six men with others, had returned to seize his five vehicles.

It doesn't matter who bought my 5 cars  Kofi Adams

Mr. Adams at the time, could not state emphatically if he personally purchased the five cars alleged to have been seized from his home by national security operatives.

When the Host of Citi Eyewitness News, Richard Sky, asked whether he owned all the vehicles, Mr. Adams said I am the owner of the two land cruisers and a pick-up. They are registered in my name. If something is registered in your name don't you own it? he asked.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah
17.03.2017 LISTEN

Since January this year the number of suicide cases in Ghana, especially among young people, has risen and shocked the Nation. Many are left behind with the fearful question for the cause of the tragic pictures seen on TV.

The highest suicide rate among young people can be found in Japan due to the traditional high pressure put on them to excel in school education and achieve maximum results to attend the best Universities of the country.

When countries are poor, people have the tendency to depart voluntarily from earth creating the illusion human someone will have peace in the afterlife while in fact, many religions state the opposite. Desperation makes people confused to engage in unfortunate situations.

On Independence Day 2017 (March 6th) at Black Star Square TV Cameras were capturing the Ceremony unfolding with a Traditional Priest and his Entourage to poor Snaps onto the Square and speak mystic words of blessings into the life of the Nation. Late Prez. Atta-Mills and Prez. Mahama did not allow such occurrences to happen but insisted that only Christian and Muslim traditions find their place in public space.

Traditional Leaders (Kings and Chiefs) are openly or secretly worshiping Gods and Demons in their hearts and spirits performing traditional JuJu rituals while at the same time have Christianity on their lips for the occasions that make them look more acceptable in society. It is therefore not surprising that Ghana still has 7 Witch Camps open for new Admissions.

A converted Evangelist worshiping at Glorious Wave Church Int., Sakumono, in the past took Pastors and Politicians from Ghana to Benin to JuJu Masters to worship Idols and perform tradition rituals to have an effect back in Ghana and kill opponents. When he speaks out, the Nation of Ghana will be surprised.

As the NPP stole the 2016 election from NDC, they have done so by collaborating with evil forces that demand their payment now. The payment is the blood of the people of Ghana for which reason the high and unexpected numbers of suicide cases can be easily explained with more to come.

The Snaps that was poured on Black Star Square by the order of Prez. Nana Akufo-Addo is a very visible sign for the spiritual state the country is currently in and the road to misery ahead. This spirit has captured his mind by setting up his Cabinet and choosing the new Ministers with a High-Light in the Greater Accra Deputy Regional Minister, a Lady unable to write a proper CV and answer simple questions from the Vetting Committee brought before her.

The 2017 Budget is a Manifestation of incompetence and a blueprint for the further downfall of Ghana to the extent, that on the horizon Prez. Mahama might have the chance to win the next elections easily.

BBC World Service, Outside Source, 16.03.2017, 11.17 am described the new 110 Minister Cabinet of Prez. Akufo-Addo (Prez. Atta-Mills had 75, Prez. Mahama had 84 Ministers) as an Elephant Cabinet that certainly gives a negative impression around the world to Private Investors, Governments and Tax Payers that need to work hard to make ends meet and share part of it with developing countriesthey might start to think now twice.

GOD may help Ghana!

Author: Dipl.-Pol. Karl-Heinz Heerde, Sakumono Estate, Tema West, Ghana, phone +233(0)265078287, [email protected] , 15.03.2016
Unfortunately we have still not weaned ourselves from the indiscipline of some men in uniform. Another incident has been reported in Takoradi. It is instructive that the one before it happened in the same regional capital of Western Region.

We are compelled to ask: what is it about some military personnel in Takoradi that makes them think they can descend upon their civilian counterparts at will?

Have they forgotten so soon that they are in a disciplined organization that is different from a militia somewhere in Somalia where anything goes?

The story about some 20 uniformed personnel descending upon any civilian they spotted in a suburb of Takoradi a few days ago made worrying reading.

That a similar incident occurred when some Air Force personnel assaulted some police officers on duty in a suburb of the Western Regional capital a few months ago calls for drastic measures against soldiers who breach the laws governing their conduct.

Such brutalities define rather worryingly our level of mental development as a people.

Some uniformed persons simply do not understand the system in which they struggled to get into and would therefore not think before they act under provocation.

Although those who suffered the brutality were unable to identify which arm of the Ghana Armed Forces the military persons originated from, the defaulters were nonetheless soldiers bound by both civil and military laws, the former superseding the latter.

So many years after independence it is unfathomable that we still record such uncouth and uncivilized behavior from those, who by virtue of their training and the regimented life under which they live, should not be seen to be conducting themselves as such.

There is no over-flogging the issue of indiscipline among some soldiers, especially since discipline is the bedrock of any successful military.

The Ghana Armed Forces has earned an enviable renown over the years, from the Kasavubu crisis in the Congo to Mali and recently the Gambia, because of the discipline exhibited by our troops.

The UN continues to draw personnel from our population of military personnel for the maintenance of law and order in restive parts of the world and so any blemish of the kind which triggered this commentary should not be entertained under any circumstance whatsoever.

The military hierarchy should be worried that we still have within the colours such soldiers who leave their barracks simply to go and beat up civilians because one of their kind lost a mobile phone to a hoodlum in town.

If the training regimen fails to teach the recruit during their training programme at the recruit training centre that taking orders and being orderly is part of the discipline that is required of them, then something needs addressing.

Any soldier worth his salt must not do anything that breaches morality. We are beginning to feel that insufficient punitive actions have been meted out to those involved in earlier misdemenours.

Had these being sufficient, the deterrence that such actions should provide would have been achieved.

That the said defaulters failed to report the case to the police and took the laws into their hands by beating up anybody they chanced upon underlines how ignorant they are about good behavior and the overwhelming nature of civil law.

We want to see the military take action against these soldiers and same brought to the public domain.
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17.03.2017 LISTEN

Take your personal security very serious. Make your personal security a priority. Don't trust everything you see. Question everything you see. Ask questions, and report suspicious characters to the police always.

It is better to be too known about the earth and live than to shut up and regret under the earth.

Your suspicions about what happens around your immediate environment are your first line of personal protection mechanism.

Your suspicions can save you so whenever you suspect something around you that makes you feel uncomfortable, please don't hesitate to report at the nearest police station.

Your instincts are your best bet for personal safety. When you mind speaks to you about something going to happen, about to happen or even has happened somewhere that you shouldn't be there. Just listen to yourself.

Sometimes, what we call in Africa as "juju" usually come about as a result of someone been smart and conscious about the environment he finds himself in.

Take your personal security seriously. Don't take chances, don't play around with your safety. Take your life seriously.

The world is darker during the day than it is during the night on most occasions.

When you are driving or walking around town or perhaps going home and you suspect that you are being followed by strange characters, don't panic but hold your cool and drive to the nearest police station.

Always take note the car numbers, color and make of the vehicle that follow you after about two roundabouts or a kilometre drive.

Record any noticeable information you see on the sides those cars that may be useful in tracing the vehicle or its occupants in case of anything.

Don't wait to verify surveillance before you report it. Criminal gangs make use of surveillance just as the security services do. And remember that most successful criminals are those that have security background, dismissed from security services, are friends with security officers or lived with security officers.

Also, be alert to people come to your neighbourhood disguised as public utility workers ie, ecg, vra, road workers, mobile vendors, etc.

They are most likely to station themselves near your home or office to spy on you or report your movements to another team to come at you.

Always keep your phone closer to you and make sure you know at least one emergency number.

Before you go to bed, call someone you can trust who is closer on your phone so that his or her number comes top on your phone so that incase you of emergency, you don't suffer to alert the person.

Abdul Hanan Mohammed EL-Saeed

0244087295

[email protected]
Kampala (AFP) - Uganda's second most prominent policeman was shot and killed in his car on Friday along with two other officers as he left his home in Kampala, police said.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Kaweesi served as the force's spokesman and was one of the country's most high-profile officers.

"He was shot dead this morning as he was leaving his home coming to work," Inspector General Kale Kayihura told AFP.

"Kaweesi had two police officers guarding him who were also killed. The motive is yet to be established," he added.

A large crowd of local residents gathered at the scene where the officers' dead bodies slumped inside a black vehicle, blood pooling under shattered glass alongside the car. The bodies were later taken away.

A local resident described seeing four men on two motorcycles attack the car the police officers were travelling in at around 9:30 am (0630GMT) as they left for work.

"Two motorbike drivers and two men with guns fired at the car. They shot very rapidly with guns that looked like AK47s," said Mohammad, a motorcycle taxi driver who lives and works in the area.

"The motorbikes came from behind as the car was leaving Kaweesi's house. The car driver tried to increase speed but they drove past the car and shot into it," said the 30-year old who declined to give his surname.

"The motorbikes were new and the shooters looked professional. They weren't wearing masks but I didn't see their faces because I ran for cover."

'Shower of bullets'

Local mayor Charles Sserunjogi said he heard "a shower of bullets -- many shots -- from my house nearby".

He said Kaweesi had lived in the neighbourhood of Kulambiro for about 10 years.

"I don't believe what I'm seeing right now. I knew Kaweesi well and met with him about a week and a half ago to discuss tarmacking the road he was shot on."

Kaweesi rose to prominence as he spearheaded the police response to widespread opposition party protests following a controversial 2011 presidential election.

After a stint as commander of Kampala Metropolitan Police he was appointed director of operations and then head of human resources before assuming the role of main police spokesman in August 2016.

He appeared regularly on television talk shows, his most recent appearance being Thursday night on NTV, one of the major private channels in the country.

Kaweesi's killing resembles the assassinations of other high profile legal and military personnel.

In March 2015 Joan Kagezi, a senior public prosecutor, was shot in the street and the assailant escaped with an accomplice on a motorcycle.

In November last year Ugandan army officer, major Sulaiman Kiggundu -- a former Allied Democratic Forces rebel -- was shot in his car by gunmen travelling on two motorcycles. Both crimes remain unsolved.
I have observed that in this country, when some institutions or organizations are given statutory or constitutional powers to execute certain policies on behalf of the state, some leaders or managers of those institutions tend to use the powers so vested in them in such capricious and whimsical manner which in the long run, tend to affect the nation in a very negative way. Common sense dictates that even when we have all the powers to engage in certain activities, the overall interest of the nation, not only for today but for the future, must be the guiding principle and consideration for the actions we take within the framework of the law. In a country where laws do not lend themselves to regular repeal and amendment, even in the face of changing situations and circumstances, one expects leaders to use more of their brains in protecting this nation without offending the law.

Today, one of the institutions set up by Parliament on the orders of the 1992 Constitution which is fast- tracking the destruction of this nation in a very profound manner, is the Minerals Commission. The Minerals Commission was established under Article269 of the 1992 Constitution and its own Act 450 of 1993. The Commission is responsible for 'the regulation and management of the utilization of the mineral resources of Ghana and the coordination and implementation of policies relating to mining'. It also 'ensures compliance with Ghana's Mining and Mineral Laws and Regulation through effective monitoring'.

The Commission also has a number of functions primary among them is 'to formulate recommendations of national policy for exploration and exploitation of mineral resources with special reference to establishing national priorities, having due regard to the national economy'. The Commission is also required by law to monitor the implementation of laid down Government Policies on minerals and report on this to the Minister as well as monitoring all bodies or establishments with responsibilities for minerals and again report to the Minister. The Minerals Commission in addition to its functions also has the responsibilities to 'ensure that Ghana's mineral endowment is managed on a sustainable economic, social and environmental basis.' That Ghana is richly endowed with gold is no news to tell anybody since gold exploration and exploitation began in this country so long ago.

The question to ask the Minerals Commission is, going by their stated primary function above, what national policies are being used in the exploitation of this non-renewable resource in a manner that does not endanger the collective survival of our generation and the generations unborn? None, absolutely none! Yes, it may well be that from Hamile to Half Assini, and from Aflao to Cape-Three Points, there exists pure unadulterated gold. Does that mean we should allow the exploitation of the resource simultaneously all over the place in Ghana when the Commission does not even have the capacity to monitor and bring violators of the rules and regulations of mining to book? When the Commission has given licenses to miners to mine and in the process, water bodies have been polluted and in some cases totally destroyed, the Commission then turns round and expects other agencies which did not issue the licenses in the first place to chase out the perpetrators of those acts. When the Regional Coordinating Councils, in collaboration with the security agencies move on erring gold miners to stop them from their deadly activities, does the Commission know how much it costs them to deal with the situation?

Can't the Commission, in its 'national policy for exploration and exploitation of mineral resources' demarcate certain areas of the country and allow exploration and exploitation of gold over a certain number of years, say 30 years, without touching other reserves until those demarcated zones had been fully exploited to the best of our economic, social and environmental benefit before we move on to another area? Under such circumstances, will the Commission not be in a better position to monitor the activities of gold miners and ensure full compliance of the laws and regulations?

What is happening today in this country is that, yes, the gold exist so let us exploit it regardless of their negative effects on our country in the short, medium and long terms. There is no national plan for the exploitation of this very resource in a very sustainable manner, economically, socially and environmentally. In the process, both our own nationals and foreign nationals have found liberty in digging for gold anywhere they find them. They are destroying our environment, water bodies are being polluted all over the place, arable lands for agriculture are at the mercy of the gold exploiters across this beautiful country. Is Ghana the only country in which gold is being exploited? Does the criminal and reckless destruction of our environments have a counterpart in South Africa for example? Why do we always want what is supposed to be a blessing to turn into a curse?

From what is happening to us in this country, the presence of gold has become a curse rather than a blessing. For the reason that there is an omnibus exploitation of gold resources, the Commission has become so overwhelmed with the damage that is being inflicted on this nation by gold miners, particularly those in the informal sector, such that the Commission cannot insist and ensure that the right things are done to protect the environment and also protect other economic activities and acceptable social lives of the people.

My biggest worry, and in my thinking, the greatest damage the Minerals Commission is inflicting on this country is the fact that it allows Multi-National Mining Companies to cut down cocoa trees and extract gold from both the surface and the belly of the land. This is the most senseless act of the Commission and by extension, those who take the decisions there, and I will tell you why. Even though there is so much gold deposit in this country, cocoa as an agricultural produce has remained the single largest foreign exchange earner for this country. While governments subsidize inputs for the purposes of increasing cocoa production, the Minerals Commission goes behind governments and gives cocoa lands out as gold mining concessions to companies who come and cut down the cocoa trees which are our major sources of foreign exchange. This is madness and senseless.

Why should this country give more preference to gold production in cocoa producing areas than the cocoa itself? Apart from the fact that cocoa gives the nation more foreign exchange than gold, the farmers themselves earn more for their labour on the cocoa farms with its attendant social security than workers in the mining sector. Uncontrolled gold mining, as it is being witnessed in Ghana today, destroys the environment, cocoa regenerates the land, protects the flora and fauna, preserves the water bodies and streams and are passed on from one generation to another. Cocoa farms are not just economic ventures, they are sources of social status for the owners and the security for their children and grandchildren. The wards of cocoa farmers enjoy scholarships from COCOBOD for secondary school education as long as they produce cocoa. Once they lose their farms, that opportunity for their children to benefit from the COCOBOD sponsorship is lost. This nation is today confronted with an evil of an economic activity which is drowning all of us and endangering our future.

Can't people entrusted with public office, for once, reason and act in a manner that will ensure the collective safety and security for all of us instead of thinking of what they can get as individuals, while the nation bleeds? Today, no one knows the volume of mercury that has been pumped into our water bodies, which are the major sources of water for both domestic and industrial consumption, because of mining activities. As for lands destroyed without the opportunity to reclaim, the least talked about, the better it is, all in the name of mining.

The efforts by the state to deal with the ongoing destruction of the environment must be a national security affair and not the District Assemblies since they do not have the resources to deal with it. God 'shave' us. Davi, my mahogany bitters please.

[email protected]
Mr. David Prah, the Eastern Regional Communications Director

17.03.2017 LISTEN

Mr. David Prah, the Eastern Regional Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party has downplayed the criticisms of the AKufo-Addo led Government of running a large government. Mr. Prah who was responding to the criticisms on a radio interview said, people who are complaining of the size of the Akufo-Addo government should first consider the enormity of work these government appointees will be doing and the level of mess created by the incompetent NDC government which this government has to clean.

Mr. Prah added that efficiency should be the watch word and not the size of the government. The NDC government claims to have ran a lean government but the lean government only bestowed on Ghanaians dumsor and unbridled high level corruption, he said.

When asked if he doesnt think the size of the government will put unnecessary pressure on the public purse, Mr. Prah said let us be concerned about the calibre of people appointed and what they seek to bring on board and not just the cost.

There has been a huge debate on the size of the Akufo-Addo government. 54 ministers of state and deputies appointed by the president increases the number of ministers and deputy ministers to 110, a number which many believe is unprecedented in the history of the country.
One would have thought that National Democratic Congress now in opposition would be seeking to fortify its front in readiness for 2020 by reaching out to those who have left the party. But that is not the immediate plans of the party as the National Vice Chairperson Anita Desooso says there is no way the NDC will apologize to former first lady and founder of 31st December Womens Movement Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings in a bit to bring her to the party.

The NDC former National Womens Organizer who was on Onua Fm morning show Yen Nsem Pa was sure that the NDC has not offended the former First Lady in any way which will warrant the party to go on its knees to apologize. When the host of the show Bright Kwesi Asempa enquired if the party is ready and willing to bring back the President of the 31st December Womens Movement to the folds of the NDC, Anita Desooso responded, Asempa, am sure you are aware of the Bible Parable about the lost sheep. Is it possible to go after one sheep and leave the 99, is that possible, tell me if it is possible. I am not sure it is possible, NDC does not owe her an apology, we dont

She explained that if there is anyone who should apologize, then it should be the former first lady, maintaining that Her Excellency Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has offended the NDC as a party in several ways. When she was asked to mention the ways the former first lady offended her husbands party, Anita Desooso was evasive but only asked where is the 31st December Womens Movement, what happed to the people who helped her (Nana Konadu) to form and run the movement, where are they now, do you know

We wento an elections to elect our flag bearer which she went into against all wise counsel, after she lost what happened, she deserted us and formed her own party, so tell me if she had not offended the party rather Madam Desooso asked passionately.

The National Vice Chairperson of the opposition NDC noted that the former first lady was seen as mother of the NDC, adding that even if the party has offended her in any way, she should have forgive the party with motherly love. But what did we see, she queried. Madam Desooso went on to explain that should the founder and leader of NDP comes out to tell the whole world how the NDC offended her, she Anita Desooso will go to her and apologize.

If she can tell us our offences, I will go to her personally to render a sincere apology to her

When she was asked about the last time she went to the residence of the first family, Anita Desooso said In fact it is been a while but I will go there soon
Female staff of Vodafone Ghana have held a mentoring session for 500 girls from various schools in Accra as part of activities to commemorate the International Women's Day.

The Vodafone ladies shared their experience with the girls to motivate them.

Vodafone Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Yolanda Cuba, who led the group, identified with most of the children who were being raised by single parents, particularly women at home.

Ms Cuba said most great women were from homes headed by only mothers but have been able to overcome the odds to achieve their dreams, urging them to take inspiration from such people.

She said with the era of technology, girls no longer have an excuse not to excel since they have all the information they need to do extremely well at their disposal.

Grab the opportunity to make it in life, she said.

Ms Cuba said Vodafone, which believes in empowering girls and has adopted initiatives to support girls in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

You are here because we believe in you and there is a spark in you that we want to nurture, so go after your dreams and make it work, she said.

Hannah Ashiokai Akrong, HR Director at Vodafone, said the International Women's Day was significant for Vodafone because women's equality and issues were central to the company.

She said the telecom company sets aside a whole week for women empowerment activities because it believes that women can contribute just as their male counterparts.

The theme for the international week is 'Be Bold for Change' and today what we are going to say is that it is so important that you are bold and confident by just taking the extra step to stand up and ask to lead, and so that is the message we want to give the girls, she stated.

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri


The BBC Hausa Service will be celebrating its 60th anniversary next week. Various events, recognising the history and success of the service, have been lined up for its Diamond Jubilee in London and Nigeria.

The service, which has one of the biggest audiences of the BBC World Service languages, will run a series of special programmes from the 21st of March .

Events include a lecture in Abuja on the role of the media in promoting Hausa language and culture. It will be delivered by Media and Culture Scholar, Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu and host invited dignitaries.

The service will also recognise and celebrate its former employees in London and Nigeria with some of them guest-presenting programmes.

BBC Hausa made its first broadcast on the 13th of March 1957 when Nigeria and other African countries were struggling for independence from colonial rule. It has continued to be a source of trusted and impartial news to millions of people in Nigeria and to diaspora communities around the world.

Francesca Unsworth, Director of the BBC World Service Group, says: We are very proud of the BBC Hausa service and the many years of vital broadcasting it has provided for our audience. This fantastic milestone shows its great success, and long may it continue.

Jimeh Saleh, Acting Head of BBC Hausa, says: The anniversary is an opportunity to reconnect with our audiences whose trust has kept us ahead of the competition through the decades. It is also a time of reflection for us on the challenges we face as we seek innovative ways of serving them better on the fast-changing digital landscape.

The service has evolved from a radio station to a broadcaster offering a breadth of multimedia content. BBC Hausas audience online and on social media platforms includes Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , Google+ and Youtube .
President Akufo-Addo, Alan Kyeremanten, Minister of Trade and Industry with the GGBL delegation

Executive management and Board members of Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL), Ghana's leading total beverage business and a subsidiary of Diageo PLC, have paid a courtesy call on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

Francis Agbonlahor, Managing Director of GGBL, told the President that as the leading beverage business in the country, Guinness Ghana was committed to developing a sustainable supply chain through its local raw material sourcing programme.

In the past year, for instance, we have invested over GHC1 million to ensure quality and consistent supply of sorghum which is used in the production of many of our premium brands.

The company also uses cassava starch from Ayensu Starch Factory and maize as part of its raw materials. Through this programme, we have impacted about 16,300 farmers, including their families in the three Northern regions, as well as Central and Brong Ahafo Regions in Ghana.

We believe there is an enormous opportunity in this area where industry can collaborate with government on its Planting for Food and Jobs, as well as its One District One Factory initiatives, he said.

President Akufo-Addo, on his part, acknowledged the contribution of GGBL to the socio-economic development of Ghana and expressed the commitment of the government to creating the enabling environment by developing the appropriate policy framework for businesses to grow and thrive.

He also commended GGBL particularly for taking advantage of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) to export some of its products to the West African sub region and encouraged other Ghanaian businesses to do same.

Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten, Minister of Trade and Industry, said that his ministry would support the growth of GGBL and industry in totality.

Some staff of the company, who accompanied the Managing Director, were Martyn Mensah, a board member, Isaac Tosu, Supply Chain Director, Helen Opoku-Agyemang, Director of Controls, Compliance and Ethics, Eric Adadevor, Human Resources Director and Rita Agyeiwaa Rockson, Communications and Employee Engagement Manager.


Martin Ofori, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Crystal Capital & Investments Limited, an emerging markets investment management and financial advisory firm in Ghana, has called for tough financial interrelations regime to help support the holistic development of the financial industry in Ghana.

Mr. Ofori made the call on Thursday in Accra during a press soiree organized by Crystal Capital & Investment Limited at its office off the Spintex Road.

The soiree formed part of events and initiatives that Crystal Capital & Investments Limited is embarking on this year to build a culture of investment through right partnerships, trust and bespoke financial solutions, Mr. Ofori said.

Giving an overview of the financial sector in Ghana right from colonial times, Mr. Ofori said Ghana's economic development strategy along the supply-leading finance path since independence has continued to evolve along the same philosophy.

He called for focused financial strategy implementation model to help create well-defined financial interrelations with real sector.

Transition to a buoyant private sector-led growth economy, like one that has been ushered by a stimulus budget, requires substantial amount of investment that creates a stronger financial interrelation, other things being equal.

Decades after the major reforms in Ghana's financial industry, followed by several other regulatory, policy and institutional re-arrangements, right from independence in 1957, he said we can only confidently say that the banking system remains good at what it does best, an efficient pivot of the financial system, creating a culture of trust and confidence that is crucial for an efficient payments and savings mobilization.

However, growth cannot be sustainably achieved by a culture of savings and loans, unless funds are efficiently channeled into investment, he said.

The objectives set forth at independence, I am sure are achieved only on incremental basis, according to Mr. Ofori.

We of Crystal Capital believe that the status quo cannot drive the required transformation.

He contended that the time has come to develop specific initiatives that will promote sustainable investment into viable cutting-edge projects that will propel growth.

The capital market and the general investment banking space, which I consider as the next big thing can only break out and bring about a significant transformation if specific initiatives drawn from international best practice are allowed to create appropriate investment vehicles to harness long-term investment domestically and potentially attract matching off-shore funds to propel indigenous growth.

However, policy regime must understand the required cooperation in this regard and help to strategically position the financial sector to create the desired financial interrelations.

He appealed to all and sundry to invest in Crystal Capital's recently launched investment schemes namely Crystal Wealth Fund and Entrepreneur Fund.

By Melvin Tarlue


Okumkom blessing Hon. Osei Assibey Antwi, when the Kumasi Mayor Nominee visited him at his residence

NANA AKWASI Agyeman, the longest serving Mayor of Kumasi, has praised President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for appointing Mr. Osei Assibey Antwi, a respected person, as the next Kumasi Mayor.

According to him, Kumasi needs a competent, hard working, patriotic and a visionary to occupy the hot mayor seat.

Nana Akwasi Agyeman aka Okumkom, stated that Mr. Osei Assibey, without doubt, was the suitable person as Kumasi Mayor.

Speaking in an interview with DAILY GUIDE, he said Mr. Osei Assibeys appointment indicates that President Akufo-Addo really means business and wanted to see massive transformation in Kumasi within a short period.

He described the presidents nominee as a respectful and development oriented person, who performed excellently when he was the deputy Ashanti Regional Minister.

Nana Akwasi Agyeman stated that Mr. Osei Assibey can easily bring the needed transformation that Kumasi had been hankering for over the years.

Okumkom, who is from the royal Oyoko clan of Asanteman, therefore urged the assemblymen in Kumasi to confirm the presidents nominee on Friday.

I will personally accompany Osei Assibey to the election venue on Friday for all to see that I support him totally, he remarked.

Meanwhile, traders in the Kumasi Central Market have also praised President Akufo-Addo for settling on Mr. Osei Assibey as the Kumasi Mayor.

They said the presidents nominee is a team player and a competent person, so he can lead the city into affluence with support from all and sundry.

At a press conference in Kumasi on Wednesday, the traders also appealed to the assemblymen to confirm Mr. Osei Assibey as mayor on Friday to bring honour to President Akufo-Addo.

By I.F Joe Awuah Jnr
Ghana has been selected to host a uniquely packaged professional seminar which focused on the challenges of conflicts.

The programme has been put together by Socio-religious Foundation, a UK cutting-edge Leadership Development Organisation based in London.

Themed Dealing with Conflict  Steps to Resolving Personal and Corporate Conflicts, the seminar will take place in Accra on Saturday 18th March 2017 from 10.00am to 4:00pm at The LAINE Office Complex, Kojo Thompson Road, Adabraka.

The Foundation which has developmental projects in 33 nations worldwide has recently opened a branch in Accra. The President of the Foundation, Rev Celia Apeagyei-Collins, a celebrated Motivational Speaker and Consultant for Civic and Community Development Agencies in UK, who flew into Accra yesterday from London, expressed joy for the seminar which she believed would be a blessing to Ghanaians.

She said, in selecting Accra, the Foundation took into account the post election peace that the country is enjoying which, according to her, must be sustained.

The seminar content, she said, identifies and deals with sources of conflicts, negotiation skills, win-win endings and a lot more needful subject matters.

Rev Celia has been listed as one of the top 10 most influential Black Christian Women in the UK. She runs mentoring programmes together with the training of young and emerging leaders for effective and dynamic leadership in their various sectors in life.

A regular voice in the London Socio-religious circles, her work has taken her to many countries in Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Caribbean and Africa.

The world-renowned Motivational Speaker, Dr Myles Munroe of blessed memory, of the Bahamas Faith Ministry International, celebrating Rev Celia described her in the following terms: Your contribution to this world is an asset to humanity and the world is a better place because of you.

Rev Eastwood Anaba of Fountain Gate Chapel, Ghana, also wrote: Pastor Celia has a world class Ministry that is compelling, convicting and constructive with a selfless and sacrificial lifestyle, she provides leadership to the body of Christ and the world as a whole.

The Accra seminar is opened to all individuals as well as groups, churches and corporate organisations.
Accra, GHANAThe United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Global Health Corporate Champions Program held its closeout ceremony today in Accra. The ceremony celebrated the completion of a month of service in Ghana by 13 Global Health Corporate Champions from around the world. U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Jackson joined members of Ghanaian health organizations, the Ghanaian government, and the private sector at the closeout ceremony, at which the Champions discussed their service.

Through this program, individual corporate champions are sponsored by their private-sector employers to participate in a one-month pro bono consulting opportunity. These Champions are accomplished professionals from American companies Dow Chemical, PIMCO, and WE Communications, and German company SAP. Over the past month, the 13 Champions leveraged their business and operational expertise to build the capacities of four Ghanaian public health organizations: the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in the Water and Sanitation Sector, Hope for Future Generations, the Ghana Registered Midwives Association, and the Nneka Youth Foundation.

The Global Health Corporate Champions program exemplifies the U.S. governments approach to development, said Ambassador Jackson at the closing ceremony. Partnerships are central to everything we do, in Ghana and around the world. Our partnerships have enabled us to make the best use of our resources, make the most out of every dollar spent, and ensure development gains are sustainable. Most importantly, our partnerships have enabled the people of Ghana to benefit from the combined resources, know-how, and reach of this broad coalition, he said.

USAID engages in a number of partnerships with national and local government bodies, civil society, and American and Ghanaian businesses to promote development in Ghana. For example, it partners with the Coca-Cola Company to improve water and sanitation access in Ghana, with Hersheys to improve child nutrition, and with John Deere to increase access of Ghanaian farmers to improved technologies.
Members of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA)have overwhelmingly voted to confirm Mr. Osei Assibey Antwi as the new Mayor of Kumasi.

He polled 132 votes of the 133 valid votes cast to secure a 99.2% confirmation from the jubilant Assembly Members.

The election, which was supervised by the Ashanti regional officials of the Electoral Commission, was smoothly held at the True Vine Hotel at Ahodwo.

This brings to an end months of long wait for the hot KMA seat to be occupied after the resignation of the former Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr. Kojo Bonsu.

High ranking political and traditional authorities in the Kumasi metropolis, including the Ashanti Regional Minister, Hon. Simmon Osei Prempeh, graced the confirmation process to ensure victory for Mr. Asseby Antwi, who was a former deputy regional minister.

Mr. Asseby Antwi becomes the first nominee of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the metropolitan assembly to be confirmed. It is now widely expected that the nominees for Accra, Tamale and Takoradi will receive similar endorsement from their Assembly Members.

Hon. Simmon Osei Prempeh (R) introducing me. Osei Asseby Antwi to the Assembly Members
Former Acting CHRAJ Commissioner and strong lady, Anna Bossman, has reportedly been penned down as Ghanas Ambassador to France.

Since leaving the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice about a decade ago, Ms Bossman has not been publicly known to engage in any public service.

Her fearless leadership at the Commission, some say, makes her a perfect candidate for Office of Special Prosecutor which President Akufo-Addo has promised to create as part of efforts to fight corruption.

But the president appears to have other plans for her.

She is not the only one slated for an ambassadorial appointment, former Attorney-General, Mr. Ayikoi Otoo is believed to be heading to Canada.

Editor of private newspaper, Daily Guide, Mrs. Gina Blay, is also believed to be heading to Germany as Ghanas Ambassador.

Mrs. Blay and her newspaper have been ardent supporters of President Akufo-Addo for years.

She is wife of acting Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Freddie Blay.

Also on the list of possible Ambassadors is Mr. Edward Boateng who is said to be heading to China as Ghanas Ambassador.

Former Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Rashid Bawa is to be appointed as Ghanas High Commissioner to Nigeria.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Boko Haram's elusive leader has made his first appearance in months, claiming responsibility for a spate of suicide bombings and rejecting claims scores of his fighters have been killed.

Abubakar Shekau spoke for nearly 20 minutes of a 27-minute video obtained by AFP on Friday, in a trademark pose in front of a sub-machine gun, flanked by two masked militant fighters.

Speaking in the local languages Hausa and Kanuri, as well as Arabic, Shekau said the recording was made on Thursday and that he was "in good health", contrary to claims he may be injured.

But he appeared subdued compared with previous appearances.

Criticising regional leaders, he singled out Cameroon's President Paul Biya, whose government on Wednesday said troops had killed 60 Boko Haram fighters and arrested 21 others in recent weeks.

Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary also said more than 5,000 civilian "hostages" had been freed in operations along the border with Nigeria from February 27 to March 7.

But Shekau said: "We fought along the Cameroonian border. You lied that you killed 60 of our fighters, that you arrested 20 of our men, that you freed 5,000 of your people.

"Paul Biya, is it that you can't live off lies? Is it with this that you are going to convince the West, your leaders? It is unfortunate. Be careful, Paul Biya."

Caliphate 'running smoothly'

Shekau was last seen on camera in a video message in December last year after Nigeria's military claimed it had flushed out Boko Haram fighters from its Sambisa Forest stronghold.

Troops, with the help of regional forces from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as Benin, have since early 2015 managed to claw back most of the territory lost to the radical Islamists in 2014.

But Shekau insisted "our caliphate is running smoothly". The militant leader declared an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria in August 2014.

Despite its loss of territory and claims from the military it is on the verge of defeat, suicide bomb attacks remain a threat to civilians, particularly in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

At least two people were killed on Wednesday when four female suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the city.

Shekau said the group was "responsible for all the suicide explosions in Maiduguri and we will continue with them".

Boko Haram released another video on Monday showing the execution of three men said to be government spies. But the message did not feature Shekau.

The latest video ends showing militant fighters in combat fatigues with assault rifles and apparently confiscated Cameroon police and army uniforms.

One fighter speaks in heavily-accented French, lending weight to theories that Boko Haram has recruited from parts of Nigeria's Francophone neighbours.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) government's policy of creating an enabling environment to encourage investors to set up a factory in every district of the country  'one district, one factory'  has received a major boost from the Government of the Republic of China.

This became glaring when the Director of Finance and Administration of the ruling party, Dr. Charles Dwamena popularly known as Dr China, interacted with Wang Zhe, Director of the Bureau of Economic and Information Technology of Zhaoqing City in the Guangdong Province of China.

Wang Zhe applauded the Ghana Government for creating a friendly business environment for the private sector to flourish.

Not too long ago, he indicated that China is no different from what Ghana is today and that a similar policy was implemented by the then government of the Republic of China and the results are what China is today.

Promise

We will champion and support the Ghana Government to implement the policy successfully, he assured.

He thus indicated, We are committed to setting up an organization to assist the Ghana Government and Chinese private investors with operational and technical advice and expertise, a strategy to mobilize investors and create educational and investment platform to boost the two countries' economies.

Wang said these on Monday during an interaction with representatives who honoured the Zhaoqing Municipal Government invitation.

Speaking to the Ghanaian representatives in an investment conference organized by ACIG and Zhaoqing Entrepreneur Management Association, the Managing Director of Zhaoqing Television Station, He Jing Ming, described the Ghana Government's policy as a transformational plan to change the face of Africa into an industrialized economy.

He indicated that the media have a role to play to see to the realization of this policy.

Ming disclosed that a lot had been said about African countries to the West and the East and no one could tell the African story better than Africans, saying, Its time for African leaders to go out there boldly and tell the world about the good things on the continent.

Faith

For him, The 'one district, one factory' policy of the government is one of the best plans on the African soil to help private investors flourish, no matter which country they come from, he concluded.

On his part, Dr. Dwamena, who is also the past Chairman of China branch of the ruling NPP, indicated that the vision of President Akufo-Addos government is to see Ghana being in a position to add value to its many natural resources and by so doing, create employment and wealth for the thousands of Ghanaians who are either unemployed or underemployed.

Dr Dwamena and his team, comprising Nana Kyei Baffour, NPP China Organizer and Daniel Dwamena, a US-based Financial Analyst, were taken round to see some companies that expressed interest in helping to make the government's policy a reality.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu


An Accra Human Rights court yesterday deferred judgement on the case in which DSP Gifty Mawuenyega Tehoda is battling the Ghana Police Service over her wrongful dismissal.

The court, presided over by Gifty Agyei-Addo, had set yesterday for judgemnet after it had granted an application by lawyers of the embattled former police chief to adopt proceedings and the addresses in the court of the now dismissed high court judge, Justice Kofi Essel Mensah.

At the hearing of the case yesterday, the judge said the court had discovered a conflicting suit by the applicant that was filed in November 2012 and thus, needed clarification on which of the cases the court was to deliver its judgment on.

The said conflicting suit has however, been removed from the records, paving the way for the court to reschedule the judgement date to March 31.

The case involving DSP Tehoda began in September 2011 when one Nana Ama Martins was arrested for allegedly possessing large parcels of a substance suspected to be cocaine, which later reportedly turned into bicarbonate or baking soda.

DSP Tehoda was linked to the disappearance of the suspected cocaine and its replacement with the said soda. She was interdicted and subsequently dismissed from the Police Service.

However, an Accra circuit court consequently acquitted and discharged her of any criminality.

DSP Tehoda sued the Police Service for wrongful dismissal.

She is praying the court to compel the Service to reinstate and compensate her for being out of the Service for the past six years.

Both parties in the suit completed their cases before the previous judge, Mr Kofi Essel Mensah, was dismissed as a result of his involvement in the Anas Aremeyaw Anas judicial bribery and corruption scandal.

DSP Thehoda is seeking a declaration that her prosecution by the state over the alleged swapping of cocaine is malicious.

She also wants a declaration that her detention in cells beyond 48 hours by the BNI was unlawful.

[email protected]

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson


THE Ashanti Region has been ranked first with an average score of 63 percent in the 2016 Ghana District League Table (DLT) that accesses actual progress in development and wellbeing in various districts across the country.

It beat the Greater Accra Region  that it shared honours with in the 2015 edition  with one percentage point after 21 out of 30 districts in the region (Ashanti) scored 60 percent and above.

Ambassador Francis Alex Tsegah, a senior Research Fellow at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), speaking at the regional launch of the DLT in Kumasi yesterday, said the Ejura Sekyeredumase municipality topped the Ashanti Region with an average score of 72.4 percent.

According to him, the Afigya-Kwabre District, which came last in the region, had the lowest average score of 52.4 percent  showing a decline in terms of level of development.

The DLT, a simple ranking tool developed by UNICEF and CDD-Ghana, is used to track national progress in terms of delivering developmental projects across the country's 216 districts.

It is aimed at drawing the attention of central government to weak areas of development in order to better target district support, aside ensuring social accountability.

The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei-Mensah, said the launching of the DLT would provide space for top Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the region to share their best practices.

The low-ranked ones, according to the minister, would be able to bring out the challenges they face and could seek support of government and development partners.

He stated that since the DLT was intended to track development and identify where targeted support is needed, it is important for government officials to be accountable to the people they serve.

This is because without the people the district officers have no business working in the districts. Social accountability is an approach towards building government's responsiveness that relies on civil engagement whereby ordinary citizens and other civil societies participate directly or indirectly in achieving accountability, Mr. Osei-Mensah asserted.

In the minister's view, decentralization has helped to transfer development and governance of local communities to district assemblies, making participation by ordinary citizens in the governing process practical and possible.

From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi


17.03.2017 LISTEN

Like a great number of Ghanaians, we at OCCUPYGHANA look with great concern at the number of ministerial appointments that the President has made to date. As of 16 March 2017, there were 110 ministerial appointments.

We are aware of the plans of the new administration to enact significant changes to the way the business of government is done, in enacting its vision to help this nation develop. We are also aware that some of these changes require the requisite manpower to achieve success.

We are however concerned at the apparent overlap in the portfolios of a number of ministers, and at the number of deputies named for several ministries.

It is our firm view that a government bureaucracy must be big enough to achieve the aims of the governing administration, yet lean enough to not waste the resources of state. Both the President in his State of the Nation Address, and the Minister of Finance in his budget presentation, lamented the dire state of the nations economy. Can Ghana with its present economic situation afford 110 ministers? Can we not do more with less?

The problems that beset this nation are known to all. Paramount among them is the issue of corruption. In creating such a huge bureaucracy, have we not increased the chances of corrupt officials plundering the little that we have left as a nation?

In his inaugural address, the President promised to protect the national purse. The appointment of 110 ministers who, in comparison to the average Ghanaian, will be earning a considerable amount of money in salaries, allowances and benefits over the next 4 years (in addition to enjoying a range of ex-gratia benefits when they leave office) does not sound to us like a diligent attempt to protect a sorely-depleted purse.

The economy of this great nation can only grow if we let the private sector flourish. Large bureaucracies are not known to facilitate the growth of any private business sector. Do we not run the risk of crowding out and suffocating a struggling private sector with a gargantuan government bureaucracy?

We therefore call on the President to reconsider the size of his ministerial appointments. Are there positions that may be consolidated? Do the ministers with several deputies really need that very many? Do we still need deputy regional ministers when there are district, municipal and metropolitan chief executives?

Additionally, as part of the Minister for Monitoring and Evaluations duties, a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) should be urgently developed for each ministerial position, published on the ministerial website, and assessed by the President, Vice President and Minister for M&E on an annual or preferably biannual basis. Such KPIs must be designed to ensure there is no overlap of duties so as to duplicate responsibilities between ministers. The government should commit to dismissing any ministers who are found wanting under such an assessment scheme, and to a constant and robust evaluation of the effectiveness of ministers and ministries. The breadth of skills and experience from the private sector that have been introduced by this government should mean that many in the ministerial ranks adapt easily and perform well under such accountability.

It is going to take all citizens working together and harnessing our creativity and skills to move our dear nation forward. In doing so, in current financially constrained circumstances, we must find a way to do more with less. Bigger is not always better. In this case, bigger might in fact be wasteful and corruption-inducing.

As always, for God and Country.

OccupyGhana
Cotonou (AFP) - Many Africans have become accustomed to their leaders trying to cling to power at all costs, but in tiny Benin, the president appears to be trying to do the opposite.

President Patrice Talon, a former businessman dubbed the "cotton king" of Cotonou, has put forward a proposal to limit the head of state to a single term of office.

Reform of the "political model" was a central part of his election campaign last year, which saw him beat then-prime minister Lionel Zinsou in the race to replace Thomas Boni Yayi.

He also proposed setting up a court of auditors and revamping political party funding.

But a lack of clarity over the one-term presidency plan has stoked some controversy, and after months of waiting it is only now that parliament is getting to study the proposals.

For some, the plan indicates that Talon wants to be considered a modern head of state.

Opponents, however, have condemned what they say is a stifling of public debate on the issue and questioned Talon's motivations.

"It's too easy to argue a revision is necessary because the constitution is 27 years old," said Victor Topanou, who was justice minister under Boni Yayi, Talon's predecessor.

Revising the constitution is just to "satisfy your ego, to prove you've succeeded here where other regimes have failed," added Topanou, who is now a law lecturer.

Talon himself has said he recognises that "touching the constitution is the subject of a lot of anxiety and worry" but that "technical modifications" are needed to develop democracy.

Exactly what that might entail, though, is causing widespread concern, with details of the proposal not yet made public.

'Complacency and corruption'

Several political and civil society figures were appointed to a special commission to look into changes to the constitution, and they delivered a 60-page report last June.

Talon had promised a referendum on the changes, but he now appears to be backtracking on that promise by instead taking it to parliament, where he has strong support.

The west African nation, which is dwarfed by its giant neighbour to the east, Nigeria, is often cited as an example of regular, democratic transfers of power.

But the idea of a single presidential term has divided the political class.

President Patrice Talon's proposals have divided the political class in Benin

For one lawmaker, who asked to remain anonymous, having a single mandate makes "taking risks for development" an absolute necessity.

"Once someone is elected, he starts the campaign for re-election and that becomes a fertile ground for complacency and corruption," he added, saying the single term would probably be capped at six years.

But opponents fear that holding office for a single term could have the opposite effect if a president does not have to court the favour of voters at the end of his term.

"The logic of a single mandate is that the president is answerable to no one," said opposition lawmaker Hugues Agonkan.
Former President, John Mahama, has said that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will bounce back.

It is unclear what may have inspired the former Presidents comment, and what message he seeks to carry across, especially when there is uncertainty as to whether or not he would be contesting the 2020 elections.

But according to him, members of the party must help to strengthen the partys base to ensure that it returns to power.

In a social media update via his Twitter page, the former president said the cause of the party's loss was multifaceted but called for calm among supporters.

The NDC will bounce back!! Cause of our loss is multifaceted. We need calm nerves & hard work to strengthen the base of party. #JMLegacy .

John Mahama lost in his bid to remain president for another 4-year term. He was defeated by the New Patriotic Party's Nana Akufo-Addo who had unsuccessfully contested to be president on two previous occasions.

Nana Akufo-Addo polled 5,716,026 votes, representing 53.85 percent of valid votes cast, against John Dramani Mahama's 4,731,277 votes.

Many described the victory as historic, since no incumbent president in Ghana's recent history had lost by such margin. The National Democratic Congress (NDC), subsequently formed a 13-member committee to investigate the cause of the party's defeat in the December 7 polls.

The committee, formed by the NDC's National Executive Committee (NEC), and approved by its Council of Elders, is being chaired by a Former Minister of Finance and Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Kwesi Botchwey.

The Committee is currently meeting various stakeholders across the country in carrying out its mandate, although some of the meetings have been engrossed in confusion.

Angry NDC members hold executives 'hostage' over election defeat

Some foot soldiers of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Eastern Region, on Thursday prevented their regional party executives from engaging in a scheduled meeting at the Koforidua Eredec Hotel.

The irate foot soldiers blocked the entrance of the hotel with logs, stones and motorcycles, which caused some regional party executives to flee the scene.

Below are the members of the fact-finding committee:

Kwesi Botchwey Edward Doe Adjaho (Former Speaker of Parliament) Alhaji Hudu Yahaya Naval Capt. Asase Gyimah William Ahadzi (director of research at the NDC headquarters) Ibrahim Zuberu, (Lecturer at Accra Technical University and member of NDC) Razak Abu (Researcher at NDC's Development Challenge) Juliana Azumah Mensah (Former MP for Agotime-Ziope) Barbarah Serwah Asamoah Four (4) members from NDC parliamentary caucus (including Minority Leader)



By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @jnyabor
Rwanda and Mauritius are countries that Ghana can emulate from in strengthening the economy of GhanaAfricans will only get the respect of the rest of the world if we emancipate ourselves economically. We dont have to take begging bowls around the world. We should look for investment, cooperation and partnerships (Ghana Can Learn from Mauritius and RwandaBawumia, Ghanaweb, March 12, 2017).

THE FLIPPANT HYPOCRISY OF GHANAIAN LEADERSHIP: THE IRONY OF BAWUMIA

One wonders why Bawumia is not using the economy under Kufuor as a model of unparalleled excellence, if indeed the economy under Kufuor was the best thing that ever happened to Ghana, as he has been trumpeting since the birth of time.

What makes Rwandas economy better, more sustainable and vibrant than Ghanas under Kufuor? The Holy Grail of comparative economics seems to have completely lost its bearings in Bawumias confused world of extreme partisan politics and politics of convenience. Not surprising!

We have long thought it was the New Patriotic Partys property-owning democracy, and not rather Rwanda or Mauritius, that is the absolute answer to Ghanas mounting manifold challenges.

Now the economic model touted by this gang of all-knowing partisan caliphs, has suddenly assumed a new language of existential ambiguity for the role it has to play in Ghanas purported economic redemption, where it is deferred to the primary examples of Rwanda and Mauritius.

No one is disputing the fact that it is strategically wrong to learn from others, at least from resourceful ones.

We dont object to this path of learning as ideas are not concentrated in any island.

After all, that is what strategically and tactically intelligent people do when they find themselves disadvantaged in a relationship built around the notion of unequal dichotomy.

But what we strongly object to among other things, is the flippant hypocrisy of this new leadership in matters of political strategy, whether its sticking to its fiduciary responsibilities to Ghanaians in honoring its manifesto promises, or not, a dicey situation that has made us wondering what its confused and internally jarring political philosophy is all about.

Akufo-Addo and Bawumia confidently assured Ghanaians that they had the men and women who capable of transforming Ghana, and bringing economic prosperity to Ghanaian citizens, all in just eighteen months.

As far as we can recall, this new administration never so much as mentioned Rwanda and Mauritius as economic success stories worthy of emulation, during the lead-up to the 2016 general elections.

Thus Bawumias auxiliary verb, can, may be masking a deep sense of strategic and tactical cluelessness on how to effectively manage Ghanas bleak political economy.

It is not surprising that he will tendentiously moralize about the state of the national economy, from the point of view of the exclusive examples of Rwanda and Mauritius, while conveniently refusing to tell his audience that he was indeed part of a very corrupt government that traveled around the world with leaking begging bowls.

His statement that Africa cut its dependence on foreign aid and handouts is laudable but, regrettably, not the kind of strategic answer we seek. African governmentsincludinghis must put an immediate stop to this shameful act of begging.

Even today, Bawumia and his boss Akufo-Addo are taking foreign aid and grants from the West. Politicians like Bawumia do not practice what they preach.

Ghanaian leaders will not cease amazing us with their conscious narrative omissions when actually doing otherwise exposes their diabolical intentions. Political morality means nothing to them.

They also see no practical need to pay serious attention to whether our political constitution and what we might preferably call constitutional economics are actually opposed to each other.

Of course, all this is not to say Rwanda is not a better example than Ghana in many important respects. It is generally environmentally cleaner than Ghana, the latter being a giant heap of rubbish. It is also more disciplined than morally chaotic Ghana. Rwanda appears to have a better grip on institutional corruption than Ghana.

But, unlike Ghana, Rwanda is a one-party state where multi-party democracy, freedom of expression and, finally, of political association are not existential luxuries. Again, it also appears to enjoy better gender relations than Ghana. Here is how one journalist Richard Grant succinctly puts it:

Rwanda is now the safest, cleanest country in Africa, with no slums and virtually no begging or street crime. It has one of the highest sustained rates of economic growth on the continent, the least amount of corruption and red tape, and it is the only country in the world to have a majority of women in its parliament

Plastic bags are outlawed for environmental reasons, and in Kigali, the capital city, skyscrapers are rising, and the streets are swept clean every morningThere is a national health system, 19 out of 20 children are now in school, and rural Rwanda, while still in severe poverty, has better internet service than rural Britain, and a good network of immaculately paved roads

Then Kagame, who is Tutsi and runs a Tutsi-dominated government

Kagame is therefore an astute champion of ethnic politics for the most part. The underlying assumptions ofand path tothe so-called Rwandan Miracle are unlike anything we have witnessed in the entire political history of the Fourth Republic. For instance, in Part 8 of our March 11, 2014 article What Amiri Baraka Said About Kwame Nkrumah published on Ghanaweb, we wrote:

Dambisa Moyo capitalizes on the sharp contrasts between the West and China to make her case, pointing out that private capitalism, liberal democracy, prioritized political rights, sociopolitical qualities we readily associate with the West, the Western Model, she calls it, are not necessarily ironclad ingredients for economic success.

Alternatively, her observations are bolstered by the fact that state capitalism, de-emphasized democracy, prioritized economic rights over political rights, in other words, what she refers to as the Chinese Model or Beijing Consensus, equally promises better standard of living in the shortest possible time.

In short, Dambisa believes democracy is not a prerequisite for economic growth. Moreover, she has also cited Chile, Thailand, and Chile to buttress her arguments (See How the West Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly).

Yet what Bawumia did not say was that, Paul Kagames Rwanda literally feeds off the lifeline of foreign aid mostly from Western donor countries, while, he, namely Kagame, looks to Asia, especially Singapore, for his model of economic and political development, a creative irony of sorts, from countries associated with the so-called East Asian Miracle. As Masoud Movahed notes:

Contrary to Smiths assertion, a cursory revision of the titanic economic growth of the late 20th century developers, namely Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, clearly reveals that economic growth in those countries has been due to anything but non-state intervention.

Quite the contrary, it was not the invisible hand of the market that kindled rapid growth in those countries but rather the visible hand of the state, which directed the flow of capital to the industries the state thought would be the most productive

Without vigorous state intervention, massive industrialization would not have been feasible in the post-World War II giant industrialized economies, namely Germany, Japan, and recently the East Asian Tigers.

The state in those late developers not only provided macroeconomic conditions conducive to capital accumulation and economic dynamism, but also strived to reduce uncertainty and risk for the local firms through various provisions of subsidies such as cheap credit, low or no taxes, as well as subsidized equipment and machinery

We quoted Movahed at considerable length to demonstrate that Kagame is state-intervention itself, and also that the Rwandan economy is a centrally planned economy based on the Beijing Model, another important observation Bawumia glossed over.

The other shocking truth is that a chunk of donor aid makes up the Rwandan budget. The Ghanaian economy is likewise addicted to donor aid.

We should add that the much-touted property-owning democracy of the NPP and the Beijing Model are far from similar.

In fact, Prof Lungu and this author explored aspects of the general issues in their joint article, When Did Akufo-Addo and His NPP Discover that Socialism Works?

We also exposed the escapist hypocrisy of Akufo-Addo and the NPP in that regard, in this same article.

In simple terms therefore, comparing Rwanda and Ghana is just like comparing apples and oranges, just like comparing the Beijing Consensus and the Washington Consensusrestating our case.

And, finally, here is what our good friend Milton Allimadi has to say about Kagame:

Rwanda and Uganda ended up occupying mineral-rich eastern Congo. Eventually that part of the country became the epicenter of disaster: resource plunder; massacres; ethnic displacement; and, mass sexual assaults against women and men so pervasive that Congo became known as the rape capital of the world

Rwandas and Ugandas support for various warring militias through the years including CNDP and later M23both countries use the manufactured chaos as cover to steal Congos resources have led to unimaginable suffering. No one really knows how many Congolese have died. Some estimates place the toll at six million

What Allimadi calls resource plunder is in fact part of the ideological complication and mystery of the Rwandan success story, the Rwandan Miracle. This much-touted success story is not even sustainable as foreign aid to Rwanda is on the decreaseprogressivelyto say the least. This Paul Kagame is the economic model Bawumia wants Ghana to take inspiration from, to replicate.

Granted, all available evidence points to the fact that Ghana is a morally mindless society lacking the kind of bold assertion, of the critical wavelength of authoritarian discipline which Kagame has progressively imposed on his country, many a time in stark violation of constitutional stipulations, has made Rwanda what it is today to the extent that Bawumia sees Ghanas potential salvation in Rwandas relative economic success. Furthermore, the extent of state intervention in the economic life of Rwanda is probably also deeper than Ghanas.

Is Bawumia suggesting that we toe these paths too? Is Bawumia a proponent of the end-justifies-the-means too? Since when? Bawumia does not seem to have any moral qualms about stealing ideas from Kagames authoritarian state.

But, even all that said, the concept of property-owning democracy which implies lean government or diminished state intervention in the economic activities of a nation, admittedly has taken on a new dimension of policy controversy measured in terms of bloated government, expanded bureaucracy, and unnecessarily preventable functional duplication and overlaps in ministerial and bureaucratic structuring.

The public purse of the Ghanaian body politic has been unstitched. Unhindered savaging and bleeding of the public purse has just begun!

Well, we shall have our say on Mauritius later.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: SOME CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Dependence on donor aid is part of the general reasons for our underdevelopment. That is why international economist Dambisa Moyo calls foreign aid dead aid, dead aid because it has killed the natural initiative of Africans to harness their creative potential for national and continental development.

Foreign aid has gone on to enrich and sustain the big men and strongmen of Africa rather than developing the continent, empowering and improving the standards of life and quality of life for the vast majority of Africans who otherwise need assistance the most.

In one sense, foreign aid shares some of the debilitating symptomatology of the Dutch Disease and the Resource Curse. And quite in another sense, it boldly comes across as a serious agathocacological conundrum. Foreign aid is palliative chemotherapy disguised as effective panacea.

Then also gross mismanagement of the national economy and natural resources on the part of the Ghanaian leadership, and what Walter Rodney appropriately called How Europe Undeveloped Africa, factor into our arrested development.

We, herefore, need to wean ourselves from donor aid if we want to truly harness our natural capacity for internal development and growth.

This is because we have come of age, and it looks as though we have exhausted all available explanatory excuses for our predicament and continued underdevelopment.

The unpalatable irony is that, if Bawumia truly wants Africans to get the respect of the rest of the world, then he should have first impressed upon the Kufuor to reject foreign aid and, for all intents and purposes, we should be expecting him to be doing same in the Akufo-Addo government.

Lone wolf he must be even if others refuse to join forces with him on that progressive quest. But he and his boss are cannot reject donor aid outright because the reality has finally set in when they assumed political office.

Surely they will need donor money to help them unburden the existing pressure on fulfilling some of their many campaign promises, namely, to enable them free financial and logistical resources for other development priorities.

Besides, doesnt Bawumias investment, cooperation and partnerships already exist? Finally, we need to take a hard look at our laws, our tax laws particularly, which provide easy avenues for foreign investors to rape the country (and Africa) via illicit financial flows from Ghana and Africa.

We need to put an end to kill constitutional circumlocution on these important matters of immense national import. We may recall ex-President Mahama appearing before the United States and appealing to its members to come up with effective regulations, or something to that effect, to deal with illicit finncial flows from Ghana when, ironically, Ghanaian laws endorse and aid the practice.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: SOME HIGHLIGHTS

Like so many rebel generals who have made the switch to civilian leadership, Kagame places a high premium on loyalty and discipline, likes to operate in secrecy, is comfortable using violence and threats of violence against his enemies, and tends to equate criticism with treason. Unusually, he doesnt appear motivated by wealth or luxury, either for himself or his relations (Richard Grant).

Bawumia is partly right though, and there is so much we can learn from others including Mauritius and Rwanda.

And yet we also need to tread cautiously. We must not copy uncriticallythat is. These are the same people, who have decried Nkrumahs one-party state but do not find anything morally objectionable about Kagames one-party state, or about that of Malaysias Lee Kuan Yew, and about those the Western donor countries have supported and continue to support.

Intellectual, moral and political revolution is what we need to overthrow the status quo, not necessarily copying others.

And Rwanda has been on this path for some time now in spite of its terrible human rights record under Kagame, and of its involvement in the protracted conflict in Eastern Congo.

The question of political morality should therefore override any serious attempt to copy ideas, wholesale, from our sister nations.

We need to weigh the merits and demerits of moral relativism and moral equivalence as part of the overall political strategy of cultural appropriation and industrial espionage. .

On the other hand, the burdensome crises of moral chaos in Ghana today will not be conducive to the implementation of imported progressive ideas.

The onus now is on Akufo-Addo and Bawumia to repair Ghanas economic image which their sustained pre-election rhetoric, both in Ghana and abroad, damaged somewhat.

It never occurred to them that traveling around the world, to the metropolitan West mostly, the same West they are now implying we should not approach with begging bowls if we want respect, little did they know that their staged-managed concoction of truths, half-truths, and outright lies about the economic health of Ghana will eventually turn away potential investors, local and foreign, and also that the repercussions of this approach to electioneering tactics will come back to bite them in a way they never probably anticipated.

The pig thinks swimming in mud will render it wholistically clean. It surely did. But it also surely did not. Catch-22!

Bawumia is like that clever, sophisticated thief and cheat who is also a saint, a Mother Teresa, an angel, a Virgin Mary, a god!

Ghana is a monumental failure and flip-flopper Bawumia is part of it.

We shall return

REFERENCES

Masoud Movahed. The East Asian Miracle: Where Did Adam Smith Go Wrong? Harvard International Review, Oct. 26, 2014 (see also A World Bank Policy Research Report: The East Asian Miracle (Economic Growth and Public Policy), Oxford University Press, 1993).

Milton Allimadi. (2017). Breaking the SilenceNYC Conference Examines 20 Years Since Congo Invasion.

Richard Grant. (2010, July 22). Paul Kagame: Rwandas Redeemer or Ruthless Dictator? The Telegraph.
By Albert Futukpor, GNA

Kanvilli (N/R), March 17, GNA - A group calling itself Concerned Citizens of Sagnarigu, has appealed to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to appoint Mr Peter Tisakia Zongbil as District Chief Executive (DCE) for Sagnarigu.

The group said Mr Zongbil, who is a Contractor and Assembly Member for Kanvilli, in the Sagnarigu District, was capable of driving the developmental agenda of the district area, given his track record as an Assembly Member for two consecutive terms.

Mr Alhassan Zakaria, Secretary of Concerned Citizens of Sagnarigu, who addressed a press conference at Kanvilli, a suburb of the District, said Mr Zongbil used his links with non-governmental organisations to bring social development to the area and would do more if appointed DCE for the District.

Mr Zakaria touted Mr Zongbil's experience as the Chairman of the Finance and Administration Sub-Committee of the District where he suggested innovative ways that raised revenue.

He also described Mr Zongbil as a unifier saying: 'His people management skills have led him to make peace among clans and families, who would have taken their conflicts to a bigger and more dangerous dimension.'

He said Mr Zongbil was a committed member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who in diverse ways, supported the NPP's 2016 Parliamentary Candidate for the area as well as defended the Party at various platforms leading to its victory in the 2016 elections.

GNA
By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA

Tampaala (U/W), March 17, GNA - Eight out of 14 teenage girls from Tampaala community in the Jirapa District of the Upper West Region who became victims of child marriage during last school vacation have been rescued.

The arrest of two of the abetting parents and further threats of action against all perpetrators made them return the girls, who were either forced or abducted.

Two of the victims have already been impregnated by their husbands, another two have also fled down south after the rescue, and one of the cases is in court while, the rest have returned to school.

The girls were rescued through joint efforts by ActionAid Ghana, the Jirapa police and the Chief of Tampaala, Naa Mwinsaama Bondegbee II.

Madam Abiba Nibaradun, End Child Marriage Campaign Programme Officer, ActionA id, said her interactions with the victims showed they were either forced or tricked by young men into early marriage.

She said it implied that the girls were either raped or defiled during the period they lived with the men; and would have stayed in the marriage against their will for the rest of their lives.

Madam Nibaradun said ActionAid had created the awareness that practicing child marriage was a violation of the rights of the victims.

'It is time for action, it is to enforce the law and make perpetrators of child marriage to face the full rigorous of the law,' she emphasised.

She called on other chiefs and community elders to emulate the chief of Tampaala by taking similar actions against perpetrators of the negative practice to protect girls.

In another development, Kantunane Dabuo, the Landlord of Tampaala who appeared not to see anything wrong with the practice and is alleged to be in bed with one of the perpetrators whose case is in court, has issued a threat to the Chief to either withdraw the case from court or face being diskinned as the Chief of Tampaala.

But Naa Bondegbee who is very committed to end child marriage in his community, said he was not perturbed by the empty threats.

He said he was prepared to fight anyone who wanted to destroy the future of teenage girls in his community through legal means if even it would cost him his life.

GNA
By Josephine Nyarkoh/Mispah Tumtuo, GNA

Kumasi, Mar 17, GNA - The campaign to roll back the high rate of teenage pregnancy in the Ashanti Region has been scaled up - drawing in queen mothers, health professionals and parents.

This is being done under the Ghana Adolescent Reproductive Health Project (GHARH), funded by United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID).

A total of 18, 359 teenagers got pregnant in the region, last year, and out of this number of teenage mothers, were 323 minors, aged between 10 and 14 years.

Mr. Ebenezer Amankwaah, the Regional Adolescent Health Coordinator, speaking at one of the public education campaigns held in Kumasi, said six of the teenage mothers lost their lives during childbirth.

He indicated that 2,000 of the pregnancies also had to be aborted.

He described the development as deeply troubling and asked that everybody found space to contribute the effort of providing adequate protection for young girls.

Bad peer influence fueled by irresponsible parenting should not be allowed to continue.

He also spoke against forcing children into early marriages, a practice he said, was unhelpful to their growth and development.

Mr. Samuel Kobina Otu, Secretary of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) of Prempeh College, called for harsher punishment of men, who impregnated underage girls.

He said strong signal needed to be sent to everybody that they could mess up the lives of the young people.

Nana Ama Achiaa, the queen mother of Asem in Kumasi, said 'traditional puberty rites (bragoro)' must be revisited.

That, she noted, would provide the motivation for young girls to remain chaste until they came of age.

Miss Roseline Lodonu, GHARH Project Coordinator, Hope for Future Generations, said the project would run for nine months.

It is targeting the Kumasi metropolis and the Atwima-Kwanwoma Districts, where teenage pregnancy is more pronounced.

GNA
By Elsie Appiah-Osei/Cecilia Diesob, GNA

Accra, March 17, GNA - Dr Samuel Kaba, the Director of Institutional Care of the Ghana Health Service, has challenged healthcare professionals to exhibit good customer care and quality health care delivery towards their clients.

He said the graduating of nurses every time was the beginning of solution confronting the health sector but not the solution to their own problems in the sector.

"We expect you to go back not to only practice but to train other people too with the knowledge acquired," Dr Kaba stated at the maiden Plastic Surgery and Burns Nursing graduation held in Accra.

In his address, Dr Stuart Waston, the Head of Resurge Africa and Canniesbun Plastic Surgery, Glasgow, said the three week training had upgraded the professional skills of beneficiaries.

He said the course which brought together all strands in the health sector would help the 36 beneficiaries to be committed in delivering excellently based on the knowledge acquired.

"Over the past three weeks you have worked hard, learnt a lot but you also need to carry the message along to people to make the true difference," he advised.

He lauded the graduands for their professionalism, commitment and dedication to learning new techniques.

Dr Samuel Assiamah, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, called for accreditation to be accorded the course.

He advised the graduands to make their faculty proud by putting into practice the new skills acquire.

"Let us make this course proud, let us make the faculty proud and you can do so by letting your deeds reflect in your duties," he said.

Dr Dela Kemavor, the Deputy Director of Administration at the Ministry of Health, said the sustainability of the programme was key stressing that health was an important area that needed to appreciate innovation and that with the new innovation on board, a critical attention needed to be accorded to it.

Dr Prince Arhin, the Deputy Director of Human Resources, thanked Resurge Africa Canniesbun Plastic Surgery, Glasgow, for the extensive education given to the graduands and urged the graduands to move ahead and not settle at where they had found themselves.

"Do not settle with the certificate acquired today but work hard to improve yourselves as continuous education is very expensive when it comes to healthcare," he said.

Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, the Director of National Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre, Korle-Bu (NRPS&BC) Teaching Hospital, bemoaned the neglect of nurses who were at the centre of all healthcare programmes.

The collaborative course between the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre, and the Resurge Africa and Canniesbun Plastic Surgery Glasgow Korle-Bu, saw 36 postgraduate students from Ghana and other African countries graduating with Diploma in Plastic Surgery and Burns Nursing.

The NRPS&BC is a 68 bed capacity facility that treats patients with deformities, ulcers, burns, cancers and various degrees of injuries, restoring them to a normal state where possible.

The programme was organised by NRPS&BC in collaboration with ReSurge Africa and Canniesbun Plastic Surgery Glasgow, with sponsorship from Tropical Health Education Trust and UKAID.

GNA
Aden (AFP) - More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida but the boat managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

Conflict in Yemen

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," the spokesman said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was headed for Sudan.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

Civilians bear the brunt

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting the UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

On Friday, a rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of the pro-government forces in a camp east of the capital Sanaa, officials at a hospital in Marib town said.
17.03.2017 LISTEN

Confusion broke out in the Eastern Region Friday afternoon between some executives of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), at a sitting of the Dr. Kwesi Botchwey-led committee, aimed at diagnosing the partys loss in the December 2016 elections.

This comes after some foot soldiers of the party prevented regional executives for engaging in a similar meeting with the fact-finding committee on [Thursday] at the Eredec Hotel in the Eastern Regional capital, Koforidua.

The committee was scheduled to meet NDC branch executives from Asougyamang, Asesewa, Odumase and Somanya constituencies, to deliberate on issues which led to their defeat in the December elections.

Denis Astu Benya,the spokesperson for a group calling itself The Concerned Youth of NDC in Lower manya, who confirmed the clash to Citi News, accused a branch chairman of the party, David Hormenu Walter of assaulting their leader, Doe David, a former TEIN Vice President.

They claimed that he ordered his body guards to descend on them as they tried to present a petition to Dr. Kwesi Botchwey calling for the resignation of all party branch executives.

A member of the NDC injured as a result of the confusion.

He said we heard that Kwesi Botchwey committee will be meeting party executives so we decided to organize ourselves once again and send our petition to him and also tell him our grievances, as our leader tried to approach Dr. Kwasi Botchwey to hand over our petition to him, chairman David Walter walked to him tried to prevent him from doing so and started assaulting him, he then called their body guards to descend on us and the scene was not pleasant at all

The spokesperson added that, the police was later called in to restore order. The police swiftly moved in to separate us but our leader has lodged a complaint of assault at the police station against chairman Walter.

The group on several occasions this year locked the party office, preventing branch executives from operating, and also petitioned both Regional and National executives of the party calling for their branch executives to step down as they believe they caused the partys poor performance during the December elections.

All attempts to reach the party chairman Mr. David Hormenu Walter for his reaction, have proved futile.

NDC will bounce back  Mahama

This comes barely hours after former President, John Mahama, said on twitter that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will  bounce back . He said members of the party must help to strengthen the party's base to ensure that it returns to power.



By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Police in the Brong Ahafo Region are searching for members of an unidentified group who have issued threats of attacks on residents of Banda Ahenkro.

Wenchi District Police Commander, ASP Asamaoh-Agyekum, told Joy News Friday residents are living in fear because of the groups threats.

He explained the arrest of the members of the group for interrogation will calm the tension in the community.

Scores of residents including teachers, health care personnel, and traders have fled Banda following a threat of attacks by an unidentified group.

An empty classroom in Banda

In a letter severally duplicated and scattered in the community, the group accused non-indigenes of taking their jobs and warned to leave the community.

It warned non-locals to vacate the area without delay else they will be murdered in broad day light.

Already, about 40 basic schools have been shutdown following the threat, a development education authorities have described as worrying.

The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) have weighed in on the issue calling on security personnel to secure the community.

But the police have urged residents not to entertain fear since a joint contingent of police and military personnel have been dispatched to protect them and their properties.

Banda Member of Parliament, Ibrahim Ahmed, has also waded into the issue charging the police to arrest members of the group.

He said they are working hard to ensure the schools that have been closed are opened.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brako-Powers | [email protected]
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - South Sudan's government is spending oil revenue on weapons as the country descends into a famine largely caused by President Salva Kiir's military campaign, a confidential UN report says.

The report obtained by AFP on Friday calls for an arms embargo on South Sudan -- a measure that has been backed by the United States but was rejected by the Security Council during a vote in December.

"Weapons continue to flow into South Sudan from diverse sources, often with the coordination of neighboring countries," said the report by a UN panel of experts.

The experts found a "preponderance of evidence (that) shows continued procurement of weapons by the leadership in Juba" for the army, the security services, militias and other "associated forces."

South Sudan derives 97 percent of its budget revenue from forward sales of oil. From late March to late October 2016, oil revenues totaled about $243 million, according to calculations from the panel.

At least half -- "and likely substantially more" -- of its budget expenditures are devoted to security including arms purchases, the 48-page report said.

The government continued to sign arms deals as a famine was declared in Unity State, where 100,000 people are dying of starvation and a further one million people are near starvation.

"The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine in Unity State has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of repeated military operations undertaken by the government in southern Unity beginning in 2014," said the report.

The government is blocking access for humanitarian aid workers, compounding the food crisis, while significant population displacement is also contributing to the famine.

An upsurge in fighting since July has devastated food production in areas that had been stable for farmers, such as the Equatoria region, considered the country's breadbasket.

The total number of South Sudanese facing famine could rise to 5.5 million in July if nothing is done to address the food crisis, the experts said.

Weapons pour in

The report was released ahead of a special Security Council meeting on South Sudan on Thursday that will be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

The meeting could once again revive calls for an arms embargo, which was rejected despite warnings from the United Nations of a risk of genocide in South Sudan.

While the previous US administration pushed for a ban on weapons sales, President Donald Trump's government has yet to make clear its stance on ending one of Africa's worst conflicts.

Borders with Sudan and Uganda continue to be key entry points for weapons supplies to South Sudanese forces and some shipments are also entering from the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the report.

The panel cited information from high-ranking South Sudanese military and intelligence officers that Egypt had shipped military equipment, small arms, ammunition and armored vehicles to South Sudan over the past year.

Experts are investigating the delivery this year of two L39 jets from Ukraine that were sold to Uganda, but may have ended up in South Sudan, as well as a contract with a Seychelles-based company for a very large quantity of armaments.

In comparison, opposition forces have received limited supplies of light weapons ammunition, the report said.

After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and 3.5 million people displaced.

The United Nations is pushing regional leaders to exert pressure on Juba to end the violence that has turned tribal, pitting Kiir's Dinka community against ethnic Nuer, Shilluk and other groups.
RACINE COUNTY  A wide variety of cuts to domestic programs proposed in President Donald Trumps first budget would leave a mark in the Racine area.

Trumps budget eliminates the Community Development Block Grant program, which funds a variety of projects in Racine  from demolishing blighted homes to road construction to technical assistance for small businesses.

The proposal also removes funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service, which officials say would impact the Volunteer Center of Racine County. The organization gets just under $95,000 from a subset of the program, which funds about one-third of the organizations overall budget, officials said.

Trumps plan also includes cuts to programs like Meals on Wheels and energy assistance, which are administered locally.

And local officials have previously criticized a proposed 97 percent cut to a Great Lakes cleanup program and fear a proposed project to stabilize the bluff in Mount Pleasant, where homes have been threatened by severe erosion, could be in jeopardy.

To be sure, Trumps proposal still has a long way to go before becoming law and changes are expected as it moves through Congress. While the budget cuts domestic programs, it significantly increases spending on the military and provides money for a wall between the United States and Mexico, fulfilling Trumps campaign promises.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who represents Racine County in Congress, said the budget is a blueprint that turns the page from the last eight years.

We are determined to work with the administration to shrink the size of government, grow our economy, secure our borders, and ensure our troops have the tools necessary to complete their missions, Ryan said in a statement. I look forward to reviewing this with the Appropriations Committee and our entire conference.

Money a godsend

The volunteer centers roughly $95,000 allocation comes from the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). Its part of the $771 million Corporation for National and Community Service program, which Trumps budget would eliminate.

Bruce Davis, the RSVP project director, said the money helps offset costs associated with the volunteer centers MyRide program, including partially reimbursing drivers mileage and insurance costs. The RSVP program also works with Meals on Wheels, a local senior companion program, the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry, AARP and other programs, he said.

For somebody who is volunteering for a driving activity like Meals on Wheels or MyRide, its a godsend because it helps defray some of the wear and tear and costs of fuel, said Davis, who declined to comment directly about the proposed cut.

The volunteer center is already pondering changes should the cuts become law, executive director Al Volmut said.

Its not like the doors will close, but certain programs would have to be altered, he said.

City of Racine officials said they were assessing Community Development Block Grant funding and had no immediate comment on the proposed cuts. Racine County officials, who are involved with some programs at risk of losing federal funding, also had no immediate comment.

The Trump administration formally unveiled the proposal, which would take effect in 2018, on Thursday. The plan will now make its way through Congress, which also must address a temporary spending bill for the current year that expires April 28.
Windhoek (AFP) - Namibia is to launch a 30-billion-dollar (28-billion-euro) lawsuit against Germany over genocide committed during colonial rule, when tens of thousands of people were killed, according to documents seen by AFP on Friday.

The Namibian government has previously avoided demanding financial compensation, but it changed its stance as two indigenous groups filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany.

Legal documents provided to AFP and The Namibian newspaper show that the government has engaged lawyers in London to pursue a case of violation of human rights and a "consequent apology and reparations process."

Over 65,000 people are believed to have been killed when colonial Germany massacred Namibian tribes such as the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908.

Namibian Vice President Nickey Iyambo issued a statement on Friday saying it had sent a report to Germany last year on the genocide, an official apology and reparations.

"We trust the government of the federal republic of Germany is giving serious attention to the position," Iyambo said, giving no details on the level of reparations sought.

Namibia could approach the International Court of Justice in The Hague to advance its case, the documents show.

While some German officials have acknowledged a genocide occurred, the government has refused to pay reparations, saying aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

Germany seized the territory of modern-day Namibia in the late 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, as part of the so-called Scramble for Africa by European colonisers.

It was called German South West Africa during Germany's 1884-1915 rule, and then passed under South Africa rule for 75 years, finally gaining independence in 1990.

The separate US class-action suit was filed by the Herero and Nama people in New York on Thursday, seeking compensation for "incalculable damages".

Chief Vekuii Rukoro of the Herero, one of the tribes believed to have 65,000 members killed by colonial Germany between 1904 and 1908, speaks at a conference in New York

They are also demanding to be included in negotiations between the two countries.

Tensions boiled over in 1904 when the Herero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

In the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, around 80,000 Herero fled including women and children.

German troops went after them across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 Herero survived.

The Namibian government case alleges Germany was guilty of slave labour, mass murder, sexual abuse, human trafficking and theft of land.

The two governments have been in talks about a joint declaration on the massacres for two years.

Iyambo said Namibia wanted an "amicable closure to this sad history".
It finally happened. Beaten-down legal firm Slater & Gordon Ltd [ASX:SGH] made its first significant stock market rebound today.

Year-to-date, SGH has fallen 60.4%. But, this morning, existing investors received a glimmer of hope as the stock rocketed up 57.3%, to a high of 14 cents.

What happened to Slater & Gordon?

This morning, SGH released a market update about their capital structure. The law firm has been having confidential discussions with its lenders regarding the stabilisation of its capital structure.

The media has speculated that SGHs lenders would let the company go bust.

But it seems SGH will continue to have its debt facility  just not from any of the Big Four banks. Instead, more than 94% of SGHs debt has been bought by secondary debt buyers.

The new lenders have ensured SGH that they will restructure their debt and stabilise the company.

What now for SGH?

Will SGH continue to rocket up? Maybe. Another positive announcement stating the company is on track to record a profit will likely cause shares to jump again. But how likely is it?

SGHs situation still isnt great. Big lenders have deserted them, and they still remain unprofitable. Their glory days are long behind them.

If you intend to buy the stock, know that youre not investing, youre speculating. Sure, the stock could rocket up again, but its a long shot. The stock could easily fall back down if the company cannot bring net income back into the black.

Regards,

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Its not always easy to find growth among billion-dollar stocks. Unless they can significantly increase earnings, youd be lucky to get double-digit returns. Thats why some investors prefer the smaller end of the market.

Small-cap stocks are a riskier investment. There is no running away from it. But they can potentially grow earnings 10-fold in a short space of time.

Small-cap specialist Sam Volkering has been on the other end of small-caps running up 1,000% or more.

So far in 2017, Sam hasnt recommended a losing stock yet. In his advisory service, Australian Small-Cap Investigator, his top three active investments are up 304.57%, 466.04% and 1,624.49%.

To find out more, click here.
MOUNT PLEASANT  Village President Jerry Garski says he will not attend a Racine Taxpayers Association candidate forum scheduled for next week.

Garski said he declined to participate due to several open records requests filed by the taxpayers group president, Sam Wahlen. According to a news release, the requests asked for various communications to and from Garski; documents related to Garskis campaign; and an assortment of other records.

The taxpayers association had said a forum between Garski and Trustee Dave DeGroot would be held March 22. The two are running for village president in the April 4 general election.

Garski said he did not know what Wahlen was looking for but it was clear Wahlen had an agenda and he felt uneasy participating in the forum.

Debates should be unbiased and give candidates a fair chance to present their ideas, Garski said in a statement. Since they havent asked for campaign documents from my opponent, I feel like I wouldnt be playing in a fair game.

Wahlen is the son of former Village Administrator Kurt Wahlen, whom the Village Board forced out last year. He said the taxpayers group has done open records requests concerning every elected official in Mount Pleasant, adding the group would have given Garski and DeGroot time to discuss those inquiries at the forum.

The Racine Taxpayers Association is very disappointed that President Garski is going to forgo the only scheduled forum in his election, Wahlen said.

He said the forum will still be held as scheduled, from 7 to 8 p.m. March 22 at Village Hall, 8811 Campus Drive.

A forum for Mount Pleasant trustee candidates is planned for 7 to 8 p.m. March 23 at Village Hall.
Insurance business in Nigeria has begun its development long before it received political independence. Since then, it has traveled a long evolutionary path due to the dynamics of the policy, the peculiarities of formation of the real sector of the economy and state social policy. Today, insurance companies in Nigeria have sufficiently developed in order to protect the property interests of householders and businessmen, although not without the help of foreign reinsurance companies.

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

Nevertheless, in comparison with other regions of the world, insurance in Nigeria is poorly developed. The reasons for this should be sought not so much in the sector of insurance services, but in the peculiarities of economic development of the African continent; it is known that economic basis of insurance is primarily the real sector of the economy. Meanwhile, industry, agricultural production, and infrastructure are the most backward areas in most African countries.

The insurance markets of African countries due to various social, economic and political reasons are at different stages of development. Most highly developed insurance market is in South Africa - in 2011 it accounted 82% of all insurance premium collected on the continent. Moreover, the share of insurance deposits in GDP in South Africa is 18,78% - the highest in the world.

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

Relatively developed insurance companies, comparing with other African countries, are considered to be in:

Morocco - 4%;

Egypt - 1.8%;

Zimbabwe - 1.5%;

Nigeria - 1.3%.

Now, you will see insurance companies in Nigeria ranking  a list of top insurance companies in Nigeria:

Aiico Insurance PLC

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

This company deals with comprehensive insurance service. This company is believed to be the largest one corporation which aims at LIFE insurance. By the way, speaking about insurance companies in Lagos, this company headquarters are exactly there.

In 2011, African insurers collected a total sum - 31 billion dollars, or just over 1% of global premiums. Most of the insurance premiums collected in life insurance -71%, or 22 billion dollars, while other types of insurance are developed much weaker.

NAICOM

Just the best from top insurance companies in Nigeria.

It seems true that in order to understand all the modern tendencies on the insurance market, you should inquire into its development and progress since its conception.

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

READ ALSO: Army presents cheque worth N400m to 197 families of fallen heroes

By 1998, Africa has developed insurance market with relatively liberal state regulation and the prevalence of non-state forms of ownership. In general, at that time on the continent there were 580 insurance companies, including 157 in Nigeria, 120 in South Africa, 41 in Kenya. In 2004, the total number of African insurers was 550.

FAIR

A significant contribution to the development of the insurance market in Africa was made by FAIR or Federation of Afro-Asian insurers and reinsurers. It was established in 1964 with the aim of strengthening of business cooperation between Afro-Asian insurers and reinsurers. Currently, it consists of 188 insurance and reinsurance organizations. Under the auspices of FAIR, there are several insurance pools, including Aviation insurance pool, the headquarters is in Casablanca.

Custodian Insurance PLC

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

Such a company occupies one of the positions among top 10 insurance companies in Nigeria.

Lasaco Assurance PLC

Lasaco insurance company has become one of the major players in the field of insurance companies in early 80s. So, the company has gained a lot of experience in the aforementioned sphere.

Linkage Assurance PLC

The company is licensed by NAICOM, the n bofficial share capital of the company is more than N4 billion.

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

Oasis Insurance PLC

Its authorized share capital is N3 billion, this proves the effectiveness of the work of the company.

UNIC insurance

This corporation deals with providing security to your financial reserves and gives you an opportunity for receiving Underwriting Expertise.

Health insurance companies in Nigeria

Insurance companies in Nigeria ranking

Total Health Trust Limited

More than 270.000 Nigerians have already applied to the services of this company.

Hygeia HMO Limited

Clearline International Limited

It can boost 13 centers and 2000 health care providers.

Healthcare International Limited

This organization takes care of international travelers.

Mediplan Healthcare Limited

It serves all the representatives of federal ministries, apart from this, Mediplan Healthcare Limited looks after Nigerians from rural areas.

READ ALSO: 3 million Nigerians lost N18billion to MMM - NDIC

Now, hope that you have got acquainted with top insurance companies in Nigeria and know what company should be chosen for the successful job of your company, what to choose for safe trip, where to turn for your finances safety.

Source: Legit.ng
The Federal Government says it has deployed epidemiologists and vaccines to arrest the outbreak of a new a strain of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) in parts of the country.

The presidency under Muhammadu Buhari and Professor Yemi Osinbajo are poised to fight the new discovered meningitis

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole said this on Thursday in Abuja that the new strain, which is not common in Nigeria, was imported from Niger Republic.

Adewole said that the new strain requires a different type of vaccine and a team of epidemiologists have been deployed to address the challenge.

He described the outbreak of meningitis in Sokoto and Zamfara states as an unfortunate incidence, stressing that the ministry is working hard to contain the situation.

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It has become an annual ritual under this administration; we would want to put an end to annual outbreak of meningitis in some of the northern states.

I have just spoken with the commissioner for health in Zamfara who is appreciative of what the Federal Ministry of Health has been doing through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

We have sent field epidemiologists; they are actually called disease detectives, to support them at the state level, Adewole said.

The minister said that government have provided vaccines and would continue to do more in terms of whatever was needed with respect to material and technical support to overcome the outbreak.

What we know in public health is that there is always an outbreak, but what is uncertain is where and the type.

We want to be ready at any time, he said.

Adewole said he has scheduled a meeting with the commissioners of health from the Northern states to plan a resilient and strong strategy to put an end to meningitis outbreak in the country.

He said all the states in northwest region are prone to the disease and the states would be treated equally when confronted by outbreaks such as this.

READ ALSO: Pay salary now: Buhari orders CBN, finance ministry to release Paris Club refunds to states immediately

While calling for more vigilance, the minister appealed to Nigerians to report all cases of unusual fevers to health facilities and avoid overcrowding.

When people are coughing let them be referred to facilities, open windows and ensure that we do not get infected easily.

Children are more susceptible and when they have unusual fever they should also be referred to the hospital, Adewole said.

According to him, many ailments like Lassa fever, meningitis and other diseases usually occur during the dry season and we expect many health challenges.

Global warming had changed many things; as far as we are concern we would be ready for many things, he said.

An outbreak of CSM has claimed five lives in Gada and Wauru towns of Gada Local Government Area of Sokoto State.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr Balarabe Kakale, said that the victims died at the Gada General Hospital and Wauru Primary Health Centre.

He said: Three of the deaths were recorded at the Gada General hospital, while two were recorded at the Wauru PHC.

A similar report outbreak was also reported from Zamfara on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in the video below, Nigerians have continued to speak against the small budget of the FG on health per individual.

Watch video

Source: Legit.ng
Aero Contractors Airline is said to have fired 900 of its workers which represented about 60 per cent of its workforce in efforts to cut operational costs.

Days after the resumption of the president, Aero Contractors has fired 900 workers in Nigeria

The Airline, which is under the management of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) sacked the workers during the week.

According to the airline's Media Consultant, Mr Simon Tumba, the workers would be paid their pension and gratuity.

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As at last September, the Airline was said to have had about 1,500 workers on its payroll before it suspended flights.

In 2013, AMCON took over the airline.

Tumba reported argued that the airline had been grappling with huge and unrealistic personnel cost as well as other operational challenges, worsened by lack of enough aircraft to keep all the workers meaningfully engaged.

The issuance of notification of redundancy is a business decision that will ensure Aeros survival.

The current situation where over a thousand people are basically not engaged due to lack of serviceable aircraft is not sustainable for the airline.

The huge monthly salary associated with a bloated workforce will eventually kill the airline, which is not the intention of the current government, he said.

According to him, governments intervention in Aero was to save it from total collapse.

READ ALSO: Pay salary now: Buhari orders CBN, finance ministry to release Paris Club refunds to states immediately

This decision will immediately reduce the whopping operational cost, which has been stifling Aero; enable the management bring in more aircraft through savings from overheads and pay for C-checks.

It will also enable Aero have a more manageable and committed workforce in line with international best practices of 50 to 60 personnel to one aircraft unlike what obtains in Aero at the moment.

Meanwhile, in the video below, Nigerians have continued to react to the return of President Muhammadu Buhari after 51 days of absence.

Source: Legit.ng
Nigeria is remarkably endowed with minerals, fertile agricultural lands, and huge oil and natural gas deposits. The country is sub-divided into36 states and one federal capital territory, with each state being a semi-autonomous political unit that shares powers with the Federal Government. The states vary in size, population, and wealth. Which are the richest states in Nigeria, what are their GDPs, and their main economic activities?

Colours of the Nigerian flag. Photo: pixabay.com, @Chickenonline

Source: Getty Images

The range of economic activities, governance, and abundance of natural resources are the primary factors determining a state's wealth in Nigeria.

Which are the richest states in Nigeria?

Which states are the richest in Nigeria? Here is a look at the 20 wealthiest Nigerian states.

20. Plateau

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP : $5.20 billion

: $5.20 billion Annual budget: $260 million

$260 million Main economic activity: Tourism

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Plateau is considered Nigeria's tourism hub as its home to a wide range of tourist attractions, including the Kurra Falls, Kerang Highlands, Assop Falls, Wase Rock, The Museum of Traditional Nigerian Architecture, the Wildlife Safari Park, and the National Museum.

19. Borno

A vast wheat farm. Photo: pixabay.com, @TheDigitalArtist

Source: UGC

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $5.18 billion

$5.18 billion Annual budget: $414.2 million

$414.2 million Main economic activity: Fishing and agriculture

Borno's economy is mainly agrarian driven with large deposits of mineral resources. Locals typically rely on crop and livestock farming, fishing, and trade. The state borders Cameroon, Chad and Niger, making it a major trading hub.

18. Niger

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $6 billion

$6 billion Annual budget: $508 million

$508 million Main economic activity: Power generation

Niger is the largest state in Nigeria, with a landmass measuring 76,363 square kilometres. Surprisingly, while Niger is the biggest state in Nigeria, it is also among the least populated ones, with a total population of slightly over 4 million inhabitants. The state is home to Kainji and Shiroro dams, making it Nigeria's power generation centre.

17. Katsina

Year of creation: 1987

1987 GDP: $6.08 billion

$6.08 billion Annual budget: $819 million

$819 million Main economic activity: educational institutions

Katsina is situated in Nigeria's northwest and occupies 24,192 square kilometres. The state's population is primarily comprised of the Hausa people.

Katsina is renowned for its appreciation of education and a remarkably high number of academic institutions, including the Umar Musa Yar' Adua University, Al-Qalam University, and the Federal University Dutsin-Ma.

16. Anambra

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $6.76 billion

$6.76 billion Annual budget: $409 million

$409 million Main economic activity: Mining

Located in the Southern region of Nigeria, Anambra is the second smallest state, stretching across a mere 4,844 square kilometres. The State is largely dominated by the Igbo people and has large deposits of minerals, crude oil, and natural gas.

15. Benue

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $6.86 billion

$6.86 billion Annual budget: $376 million

$376 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Benue is among the wealthiest states in southeast Nigeria and is home to over 4.5 million people. The state is renowned for its agricultural production capacity. Its residents are mainly involved in the growing of yam, rice, cocoyam, sesame, beans, millet, cassava, sorghum, potato, maize, and soybeans.

14. Osun

Yams next to a ready dish. Photo: pixabay.com, @Vu_Pham

Source: UGC

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $7.28 billion

$7.28 billion Annual budget: $313 million

$313 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Osun was created in 1991 from a section of Oyo state. Its economy is primarily based on agriculture, with the main crops being yams, cassava, corn, beans, millet, plantains, cacao, palm oil and kernels, and fruits.

Osun is also home to numerous industries, including brass work, woven cloth, and wood carving. In addition, Oshogbo, the state capital, has vibrant food processing, steel-rolling, and textile industries.

13. Ondo

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $8.41 billion

$8.41 billion Annual budget: $243 million

$243 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Ondo is one of the states in western Nigeria. It was created in 1976 out of the former Ondo province. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with the primary crops being cacao from the central part, cotton and tobacco from the north, and rubber and timber from the south and east. Additionally, palm oil and kernels are cultivated for export throughout the state.

12. Abia

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $8.68 billion

$8.68 billion Annual budget: $354 million

$354 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Abia State is located in east-central Nigeria and was administratively created in 1991 from the eastern half of Imo state. Most of Abia's population is engaged in agriculture, growing yams, taro, corn, rice, cassava, and oil palm. The state's mineral resources include huge deposits of lead and zinc.

11. Cross River

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $9.29 billion

$9.29 billion Annual budget: $665 million

$665 million Main economic activity: Industrial wood processing

Cross River state has a significant portion of Nigeria's forest resources and supplies a sizable amount of the country's industrial timber both for export and domestic markets.

The population of Cross River State consists largely of the Ekoi and Efik people. Food crops including yams, cassava, rice, and corn are widely cultivated, with deep-sea fishing also being economically important.

10. Kaduna

Year of creation: 1967

1967 GDP: $10.33 billion

$10.33 billion Annual budget: $672 million

$672 million Main economic activity: Textile manufacturing

Kaduna is home to the largest textile-manufacturing industry in Nigeria, making it one of the top ten richest states in Nigeria. Additionally, the state has significant oil refining, tobacco, and cottonseed processing industries. Traditional crafts, especially cotton weaving and dyeing, leather processing, raffia weaving, and pottery designing, also retain considerable economic importance in Kaduna

9. Ogun

An open pit mine. Photo: pixabay.com, @RitaE

Source: UGC

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $11 billion

$11 billion Annual budget: $845 million

$845 million Main economic activity: Mining and manufacturing

Ogun was created in 1976 and is well known for the Aro granite quarries near Abeokuta, the state capital. The quarry provides building material for much of southern Nigeria. The state's natural resources include huge limestone deposits, chalk, phosphates, and clay.

Ogun's industries produce canned foods, foam, tires, rubber, paints, plastics, and aluminium products. The state's capital is an important transport hub and serves as a convergence point for roads and railways coming from Lagos and other major cities and states near Ogun.

8. Akwa Ibom

Year of creation: 1987

1987 GDP: $11.09 billion

$11.09 billion Annual budget: $1.4 billion

$1.4 billion Main economic activity: Mining and agriculture

Akwa Ibom was formed in 1987 from the Cross River State. Its population consists mainly of Ibibio people, renowned for their proficiency in farming yams, rice, cowpeas, corn, cassava, oil palms and cocoa. The state's residents also rear pigs, sheep, goats, and rabbits on a large scale.

Deep-sea fishing, lignite mining, and offshore oil extraction are also essential economic activities in Akwa Ibom. The numerous economic activities in Akwa Ibom make it one of the top 10 richest states in Nigeria.

7. Edo

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $11.89 billion

$11.89 billion Annual budget: $537 million

$537 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Edo state was formed in 1991 from the northern portion of Bendel state. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with yams, cassava, palm, rice, and corn being the major subsistence crops. The state's main cash crops include rubber, timber, palm oil and kernels.

Besides the vibrant agricultural sector, Edo State also has vast mineral deposits, including limestone and lignite. Various industries produce pharmaceuticals, rubber, plywood, beer, sawn wood, and furniture.

6. Kano

Year of creation: 1967

1967 GDP: $12.39 billion

$12.39 billion Annual budget: $532 million

$532 million Main economic activity: Manufacturing

Kano State was formed in 1967 from the former Kano province. In 1991, its northeastern portion was split off to form the current Jigawa State. Kano city, the capital, is a manufacturing and processing centre for canned foods, textiles, furniture, cement, rolled steel, and light trucks.

Most of the state's inhabitants are Hausa or Fulani, but there are also Nigerians from other parts of the country, Arab traders, and Europeans

5. Imo

A crude oil refinery. Photo: pixabay.com, @127071

Source: UGC

Year of creation: 1976

1976 GDP: $14.77 billion

$14.77 billion Annual budget: $917 million

$917 million Main economic activity: Oil refinery

Imo is the wealthiest state in Southeastern Nigeria. The state's economy is fueled by vibrant infrastructural development, numerous manufacturing companies, and huge deposits of zinc, crude oil, natural gas, limestone, sand, and white clay.

Imo is currently home to several large oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, Agip, Chevron, and Addax Petroleum.

4. Oyo

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $16.12 billion

$16.12 billion Annual budget: $711 million

$711 million Main economic activity: Agriculture

Oyo State measures 28,454 square kilometres and is among Nigeria's top states when it comes to food production. The state is home to numerous farms dealing with the farming, processing, and packaging of wide-ranging food crops, including cocoa, rice, millet, cassava, yams, and maize.

3. Delta

Year of creation: 1991

1991 GDP: $16.75 billion

$16.75 billion Annual budget: $1.12 billion

$1.12 billion Main economic activity: Mining

Delta State is home to about 4 million people and 17,689 square kilometres. The state has one of the largest deposits of minerals and other natural resources such as industrial clay, silica, limestone, lignite, kaolin, and tar sand.

2. Rivers

Year of creation: 1967

1967 GDP: $21.15 billion

$21.15 billion Annual budget: $1.13 billion

$1.13 billion Main economic activity: Crude oil extraction

Rivers State is situated in Southern Nigeria and is the second-richest state in the country in terms of GDP. The state is home to slightly over 5 million people. Economy-wise, Rivers State has more than 60% of Nigeria's oil reserves, making it a strategic area for the entire country's economy.

Additionally, the state has vast deposits of natural gas.

1. Lagos

Shipping containers at a port. Photo: pixabay.com, @pexels

Source: UGC

Year of creation: 1967

1967 GDP: $33.68 Billion

$33.68 Billion Annual budget: $4.2 billion

$4.2 billion Main economic activity: Ports, oil refineries, automotive assembly, manufacturing, and processing

What is the richest state in Nigeria? the answer is Lagos, home to the Port of Lagos, one of Africa's largest and busiest ports. The port handles numerous vessels, including oil/chemical tankers, container ships, bulk carriers, and fishing vessels. The state is also among the oldest in Nigeria, having been established in 1967.

Besides the ultra-busy port, Lagos' economy is also widely supported by vibrant manufacturing, processing, and oil refining industries.

Which is the poorest state in Nigeria?

Sokoto State is widely considered the poorest state in Nigeria, with a poverty level of about 87.73%. The state has barely any investments from foreign entities or individuals. Additionally, Sokoto has numerous abandoned road projects, resulting in challenges transporting the agricultural produce grown in the region.

The top richest states in Nigeria

Here is a recap of the wealthiest Nigerian states and their respective GDPs in 2022.

Lagos: $33.68 Billion

$33.68 Billion Rivers : $21.15 billion

: $21.15 billion Delta : $16.75 billion

: $16.75 billion Oyo : $16.12 billion

: $16.12 billion Imo : $14.77 billion

: $14.77 billion Kano : $12.39 billion

: $12.39 billion Edo : $11.89 billion

: $11.89 billion Akwa Ibom: $11.09 billion

$11.09 billion Ogun : $11 billion

: $11 billion Kaduna : $10.33 billion

: $10.33 billion Cross River: $9.29 billion

$9.29 billion Abia : $8.68 billion

: $8.68 billion Ondo : $8.41 billion

: $8.41 billion Osun : $7.28 billion

: $7.28 billion Benue : $6.86 billion

: $6.86 billion Anambra : $6.76 billion

: $6.76 billion Katsina : $6.08 billion

: $6.08 billion Niger : $6 billion

: $6 billion Borno : $5.18 billion

: $5.18 billion Plateau: $5.20 billion

The richest states in Nigeria have reached their status by leveraging the natural resources, human capital, infrastructure, and climate conditions prevalent in their borders. These states are essential to the Nigerian economy and significantly contribute to the country's GDP.

READ ALSO: 10 ways of fighting and reducing political apathy in Nigeria

Legit.ng recently published an article detailing the various ways governments and other institutions can use to fight political apathy in Nigeria. Political apathy is a situation whereby citizens seclude themselves from political activities and affairs in their country.

Typically, this apathy is caused by negative feelings or experiences resulting from elections and the general political space. While it may seem harmless initially, political apathy impacts a country negatively by slowing down social, political, and economic development.

Source: Legit.ng
Pastor Reno Omokri, the former aide to Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan on electronic media, has lashed out again at Malam Nasir El-Rufai, over his latest statement regarding President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari bashing: Reno Omokri attacks El-Rufai

El-Rufai had recently sent a powerful memo to President Muhammadu Buhari arguing that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has made the situation in Nigeria worse than it met it by failing to be proactive in taking key decisions in a timely manner.

In reaction to El-Rufai's memo, Omokri wrote: "The mouth that Nasir El-Rufai used to bite Atiku Abubakar, then Olusegun Obasanjo then Umar Yar'Adua then Goodluck Jonathan has now been used to bite President Buhari!"

Adding: "A backbiter must always bite and a backstabber must always stab! President Muhammadu Buhari should go and buy former President Obasanjo's book, My Watch, to read what he said about El-Rufai. Said Obasanjo "I recognised his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but only to Nasir el-Rufai." Did Obasanjo lie? You be the judge!""

Omokri further said: "A man who cannot govern his state believes he can advise a man who does not know how to govern a nation.

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Do you see why we are where we are? Parts of Kaduna are like a war zone. The state has not achieved any feat economically.

The governor is in a power tussle with Shehu Sani, a Senator from the state. Kaduna citizens complain about lopsided appointments at the state level. Yet, this busybody leaves all of that to teach the President his business. He cannot carry a rat yet he wants to carry an elephant!"

Recall that earlier today, March 16, Legit.ng reported that Omkri too a swipe at the Kaduna state governor of the scandal involving Apostle Johnson Suleman.

Omokri said If Malam Nasir El-Rufai can make slanderous comments about Jesus Christ, then he can equally do anything to get at Apostle Suleman, just as the General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries, has alleged.

The former aid to GEJ made a couple of remarks on Facebook regarding the adultery scandal that has continued to evolve and generate great buzz around Nigeria.

He said: "Not that I agree With Omega Fire Ministry's allegation that Nasir El-Rufai is behind Stephanie Otobo, but there are many coincidences and it begs questions. On March 29, 2016, Suleman challenged Elrufai over his Preaching License Bill. On April 3, 2016, Elrufai responded.

"A man who can pay herdsmen (as he himself admitted) instead of arresting them shouldn't be underestimated. What is Suleman accused of? Sleeping with Otobo. Okay, El-Rufai tweeted on January 28, 2013 that if Jesus criticises Jonathans government, Maku, Abati or Okupe will say that he slept with Mary Magdalene.

READ ALSO: Karma! God is now punishing Magu for arresting enemies of Buhari only - Reno Omokri

"That tweet betrays a mindset. If a man can say this about Jesus, one wonders what will happen to a mere mortal. Also, of all the states in Nigeria, why did the second faceless accuser ask for the protection of the Kaduna state govt.

"Does Kaduna have a reputation for peace or security? And why would a govt confirm such a thing to Premium Times?

"Then consider what President Obasanjo, Elrufai's boss of 8 years, wrote about him in his book 'My Watch Vol 2 Nasirs penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological. What is happening to Suleman today? Is it not 'reputation savaging'?"

Source: Legit.ng
- Christian Oyovweyho, alias Femi Adesina, has been arraigned for allegedly trying to swindle a professor of economics at Bayero University Kano of N300,000

- The defendant allegedly demanded the money to help the professor secure appointment in the presidency

- Christian Oyovweyho was arrested after he was reported to the EFCC

Christian Oyovweyho was allegedly claiming to be Femi Adesina.

An alleged impersonator of the special adviser on media and publicity to the president, Femi Adesina, has been arraigned by the EFCC before a Federal High Court in Kano.

READ ALSO: Former Chief of Naval Staff forfeits N1.8b to Nigeria's government

Christian Oyovweyho, alias Femi Adesina, allegedly impersonated the presidential aide and attempted to obtain N300,000 from a professor of Economics at Bayero University Kano, Dalhatu Galadanci, Premium Times reports.

According to the complainant, sometime in July 2016, the defendant sent him a text message claiming to be Femi Adesina, S.A to the president on media and publicity.

Dalhatu said the defendant fraudulently claimed to be speaking on behalf of the president and that the name of the professor has been forwarded for appointment in the presidency.

The complainant further stated that the defendant claimed to be searching for a better office for him.

The professor said he got suspicious when the defendant asked him to make payment of N300,000 to facilitate his appointment to Nigeria Port Authority or Nigerian Railway Cooperation and Rural Electrification.

It was at that point, that the complainant reported the alleged impersonator to the EFCC

After listening to the charge, the defendant pleaded not guilty.

Prosecution counsel Musa Isah requested a date for trial in view of the plea of defendant.

The counsel representing the defendant, T.M. Oyedema however brought a motion for bail, praying the court to admit his client to bail pending the hearing and determination of the case.

The trial judge, Justice Z. B. Abubakar granted the defendant bail in the sum of N500,000 and two sureties in like sum.

READ ALSO: How four judges received bribe from senior lawyer Nwobike

According to the bail conditions, one of the sureties must be a state or federal government official not below grade level 8.

The other surety must be a respected member of the society with a landed property within the jurisdiction. Also certificate of Occupancy in respect of the landed property shall be deposited with the Deputy Chief Registrar of the court.

The defendant was remanded in prison pending the perfection of his bail terms.

The case was adjourned to April 11, 2017 for commencement of trial.

Meanwhile, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has identified inefficient leadership as the major challenge retarding the growth and development of Nigeria after 56 years of its being created.

Ribadu, who delivered the convocation lecture of the 11th convocation ceremony of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, in Anambra state on Wednesday, March 15, also stated that the nation had grappled with challenges of mutual suspicion and ethnic jingoism, which he said had deprived the people of reason, fairness and sense of justice.

Source: Legit.ng
RACINE  Businesses and philanthropists looking to have part of a high school named for them might soon have a more streamlined process.

Racine Unified School District Superintendent Lolli Haws said as the district continues to develop the Academies of Racine they anticipate some businesses might want to contribute and, in return, Unified is considering ways to incorporate the business name.

If a company or business would like to name a portion of the building based on a donation  then we have something lined up for how to do that, Haws said of the regulation. It tells us, administration, how you want us to proceed.

The regulation change states, The Board of Education shall be the sole body authorized to approve any official naming agreement with an entity (sponsor) for a district facility or educational space.

It goes on to say the School Board can consider cash donations of a significant value, along with in-kind donations that could be product donations, field trips, internship opportunities, mentoring, scholarships, services as it relates to the sponsors place of business and other contributions.

As part of the process, the School Board may appoint an ad-hoc committee made up of staff, a student representative and community representatives to recommend names to the board for a final decision.

The change will most likely be in the consent agenda for the April School Board meeting. Currently the changes are on Unifieds website for a 30-day review to allow the public to provide feedback. It will be under review until March 20.

School Board, administration linked

Changes to administrative regulations dont normally come before a committee, School Board member Julie McKenna said at a Board of Education Governance Committee meeting on Tuesday.

Thats why its confusing to me, McKenna said. Because usually well say the administrative regulation belongs to the administration and they can change it as they will. The board doesnt get involved in all the changes. The board doesnt really tell the administration how to change their policies.
- President Muhammadu Buhari has apologized for not allowing governors come visit him, while he was away in London

- The president says he did not want to move the seat of government to a foreign land

- Buhari says all he has done and all he will do, is in the best interest of the Nigerian people

President Muhammad Buhari has revealed why he barred state governors from visiting him while he was on his medical vacation in London, United Kingdom.

Buhari finally reveals why governors were barred from visiting him in London

The president who eventually returned last week after his prolonged vacation, made this known at the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting, stating that he didnt want the Nigerian Government to move to London.

Buhari made a public apology to the governors saying:Buhari made a public apology to the governors saying: I also apologized to the Governors for barring visits while I was awayI didnt want Government to move to London; I wanted it to remain in Abuja

The president further stressed that the interest of the Nigerian people would as always be considered first in whatever his endeavors may be.

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Buhari officially took charge of his duties on Monday, 13th March as Vice President Yemi Osibanjo had been in charge throughout the Presidents health vacation in London.

Source: Legit.ng
- Crude oil deposit was discovered in Niger State by the Ibrahim Badamasi Babaginda University Research Centre

- The NNPC is expected to take action after the presidency has been duly informed

- The centre said it has a technology that helps crude oil and mineral resources discovery fast

Large crude oil deposits have been found in the Bida Basin located in Niger state and President Muhammadu Buhari has been duly informed of this development.

Vanguard reports that this was made known by Professor Nuhu Obaje who is the director of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babaginda University Research Centre, Lapai at the at the exhibition of raw materials and local products in the Manufacturing and Equipment EXPO Nigeria 2017, in Lagos on Thursday, March 16.

READ ALSO: Adoke indicts Obasanjo, says ex-president authorised first agreement

Obaje explained that his centre has introduced a technology for that will make crude oil discovery and drilling quick and that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Niger state government have been duly informed of the discovery of the oil deposits.

President Buhari has been informed of the crude oil discovery in Niger state

He said: We have a technology that finds oil faster. We found crude oil at Bida Basin and we used our technology to locate more areas.

We have communicated it to Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and the State Government and soon, the drilling machine will muster to site

They will use our research and produce oil faster and in abundance. Already, the Niger State Governor, Bello Sani, has written to the presidency.

We are aware that they have acted on it. The ball is in the NNPCs court because we are waiting for them although the response has been good so far.

The professor explained that he and his team were at the exhibition to showcase their technology and its advantages.

He said: We have moved to another level of application, innovation and domestication. We are here to demonstrate the research we have been doing over the years.

We have developed a new technology of using clean coal for electricity generation, smokeless fuel production and power generation.

We are using clean coals to stop the generation of fumes that are dangerous, so that people can use it without it being injurious to their health.

Ordinarily, coal emits green house gases that negatively affect the climate but at IBB University Research Centre, we have had that dangerous part of the coals removed.

We are hoping that solid minerals and agriculture will complement crude oil as we are keying into the Federal Governments policy of diversification.

Dr Naomi Dadi-Mamud who is the deputy director of the centre also said they were using oil and dead plants to generate bio-gas.

READ ALSO: Lagos geared to receive fund as oil-producing state

My research on bio gas renewable technology was to convert such invasive plants on water bodies, like water lilies, and turn it to something useful.

We cut the water lilies and dry before we convert them to either cooking or chemistry gas. Soon, we will begin to bottle the biogas and sell it commercially.

Already, with a ton of water lilies, we produce 10,000 cubic meters of bio-gas daily and our goal in the future is to increase capacity.

Source: Legit.ng
- A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has given the police, DSS and the NSA to justify their arrest and detention of peace corps members

- The presiding Judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, also mandated the NSA, police and DSS to justify in their affidavit evidence why previous judgments of the court in favour of PCN were not complied

The courts has said the Police, DSS, NSA must appear in court on March 28, 2017 to explain their clampdown on the peace corps.

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has given the inspector general of police (IGP), the national security adviser (NSA), and the director general of department of state security services (DSS), a 12-day ultimatum within which to justify the clampdown on the peace corps of Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Peace Corps sues AGF, police for N2bn over 'harassment' of members

According to Leadership, the court also ordered the respondents to defend the arrest and detention of the national commandant of Peace Corps, Amb. (Dr.) Dickson Akoh and 49 other members of the corps.

The presiding Judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, said the respondents must appear in court on March 28, 2017 with affidavit evidence on why an order of interim injunction restraining them from further arresting members of the Corps should not be granted against them.

The judge also asked them to show in the affidavit evidence to be filed in court before March 28, why the court should not order them to unseal or vacate the headquarters of the PCN.

READ ALSO: Police raid peace corp office in Abuja, arrests commandant

Justice Kolawole mandated the NSA, police and DSS to also justify in their affidavit evidence why previous judgments of the court in favour of PCN were not complied with in spite of directive to that effect in writing by the AGF.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Police has revealed that it carried out a raid on the office of the Peace Corps of Nigeria as it has no right to parade itself as a security outfit no wear uniforms.

The raid was carried out on Tuesday, February 28 while the national commandant of the corps, Ambassador Dickson Akoh was also arrested.

Daily Post reports that in a statement released by the police and signed by Jimoh Moshood, it said the peace corp was a threat to national security as there was intelligence report that it has been infiltrated by terrorists.

Source: Legit.ng
- The Indigenous People of Biafra accuses the British government of being selective in its fight against human rights abuses

- The group alleges that the British government is the supplier of the destructive weapons used against IPOB and other Biafra agitators in Nigeria

- IPOB compares its request for the Biafra restoration to the BREXIT which was voted for by British citizens

IPOB has alleged that British government is ignoring the injustices being meted out on the Biafran agitators by the Nigeria government.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has condemned the British government for not being vocal against ill treatment the Nigerian government under President Muhammadu Buhari has meted out on the Biafran agitators and other freedom agitators in Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Fayose tackles Buhari again, demand unconditional release of Dasuki, Nnamdi Kanu

IPOB in a statement by its media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, accused the British government of being selective in its fight against human rights abuses, by ignoring the injustices meted out on the Biafran agitators and other freedom agitators in Nigeria, Vanguard reports.

The self-determination group alleged that the British government is the supplier of the destructive weapons used against IPOB and other Biafra agitators, adding that its persistent refusal to openly condemn the frequent alleged public slaughter of countless innocent IPOB members by the Nigerian Army, made it culpable.

The group said: IPOB finds it appalling that a supposedly civilized country such as Britain, at the forefront of upholding standards in human decency, could exhibit so much bias when it comes to the issue of upholding the rights and dignity of the indigenous populations particularly the Biafra agitators.

Such overt expression of hatred by the civilized British Government leaves much to be desired, if we consider the media and public uproar that greeted the news of the Tianamen Square massacre and mass arrest of pro-democracy activists in China.

READ ALSO: Rights group ask Buhari to pay $5bn compensations to victims of human rights abuses

IPOB alleged that Britain was vocal in pointing out the human rights limitations of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for Islamic terrorists, but has made a volte face in condemning human rights abuses against IPOB members and Biafra agitators, describing the situation as quite an unfortunate for a country such as Britain.

The group wondered the reasons why British government developed such hatred for everything Biafra.

It likened its request for the Biafra restoration to the BREXIT which the British citizens voted for, adding that it is asking for self determination, the same way SNP in Scotland and Sein Fein in Northern Ireland is.

Meanwhile, the Indigenous People of Biafra on Sunday, March 12, concluded its exhibition tagged: "The Biafra Genoocide Exhibition (BGE).

The event which took place in Vitoria Spain plans is expected to spread to other countries of the world, IPOB said in a statement.

Powerful Emma, IPOB spokesperson who described the event as a success said there are plans by the group to move to the next stage of the Biafra struggle.

Source: Legit.ng
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1933

This week we observe Sunshine Week (http://sunshineweek.rcfp.org/), a national initiative to open dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. In recognition of Sunshine Week and in honor of Wisconsins once proud history of transparency in government, I am reintroducing the Sunshine on the Caucuses Act, which would apply Wisconsins open meetings law to our own legislative partisan caucuses.

Currently, under the open meetings law, meetings of state and local governmental bodies must be preceded by public notice, must be held in places that are reasonably accessible to the public, and must be open to the public at all times. The open meetings law, however, includes an exception for partisan caucuses of members of the state Senate or state Assembly.

This loophole means that the majority of Wisconsins most important political decisions are made by legislators behind closed doors with no access to Wisconsins citizens. By the time legislation sees the light of day and is debated before the public, the majority party has already made up its mind that the proposed law will pass as is, without amendment, and without feedback from ordinary voters. This undemocratic process may serve legislators and special interests, but it makes a mockery of the democratic process.

I have introduced the Sunshine on the Caucuses Act both when my Democratic Party is in the majority, and when I have served in the legislative minority. Whichever political party happens to benefit from closed partisan caucuses at a given time, the people of Wisconsin always lose.

We have learned through court testimony on the photo ID bill that legislators were giving one reason for the law in public, but behind closed doors in closed sessions they were congratulating each other for how the bill will disenfranchise voters from voting. Regardless of how you feel about photo ID, most people would agree that the real reason for legislation should stand up to scrutiny in public.

The partisan, gerrymandered legislative maps adopted by Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans are another notable example of the real harm caused by closed partisan caucuses. These maps were adopted only after legislators sworn to do the peoples business signed secret non-disclosure oaths promising not to discuss the maps with their constituents. The Sunshine on the Caucuses Act would have made this clandestine political behavior impossible, and saved taxpayers millions of dollars spent by Republicans defending unconstitutional legislative maps in court. Under the Sunshine on the Caucuses Act, every Wisconsinite will have a voice on issues like redistricting, not just politicians and the wealthy private law firms they hire at taxpayer expense.

For decades, Wisconsin was once a proud leader in open government. This is a role our state should reclaim. The Legislature should stop exempting itself from the rules all local governments in Wisconsin must play by. Sunshine remains the best disinfectant, and Wisconsinites understand that more accountable government is better government.
- The Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has returned back to school

- El-Rufai has commenced receiving lectures as a part-time PhD student of philosophy in governance and policy analysis

- He is currently a student at the United Nations University-Merit, Netherlands

The Kaduna state governor, Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai, has commenced receiving lectures as a part-time PhD student of philosophy in governance and policy analysis at the United Nations University-Merit, Netherlands.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai

The Kaduna state government made this known in a statement after rumours started flying round that the governor was ill and has been flown abroad for medical attention.

An online publication by the university dated Tuesday, March 7, at 8.23pm noted that the university had received new intakes and among them was El-Rufai.

The university said: Yesterday a new batch of students started our Dual Career Training Programme to obtain a PhD in governance and Policy Analysis (GPAC2). Good luck to all!

READ ALSO: Governor El-Rufai sends an explosive memo to President Buhari

Dr Joe Abah, the director-general of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms in Nigeria, who is a lecturer at the school, also confirmed El-Rufai's participation in the course via a tweet.

The governor is not sick but he is attending a programme abroad. That is why the deputy governor, Mr Barnabas Yusuf Bala, is presently the acting governor pending the return of the governor after the programme, an official of the state government told The Punch.

READ ALSO: Apostle Suleman blasts Governor El-Rufai over his ordeal

The rumours about the governor started after he was absent to receive President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, March 10, after his medical vacation in London.

Deputy governor of Kaduna state, Barnabas Bala (left) was on hand to welcome President Buhari

Source: Legit.ng
- The Indigenous People of Biafra has expanded the Biafran struggle to the America through radio broadcast

- Leonard Anemene, a leader of the organization, discloses that the maiden edition of its broadcast will be aired on Sunday, March 19, 2017

IPOB has said it will begin radio broadcast in America on Sunday, March, 2017.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is set to launch radio Biafra in the America.

READ ALSO: Biafra exhibition kicks off in Spain (photos)

This was disclosed by Leonard Anemene, a leader of the organisation, in a statement issued on Friday, March 17, The Cable reports.

Anemene said but for some challenges, the project would have been out earlier.

He however, did not disclose the exact location where the station will be operating from.

On the 12th of January 2017, the leadership of IPOB in unison with the leader, deputy leader and the Directorate of State (DOS), decided to expand the broadcasting services of the Biafran struggle through the creation of a new broadcasting service in the Americas, he said.

So, a live broadcast of Radio Biafra International (RBi) from the Americas has been imminent for a very long time now but was delayed due to logistic bottlenecks.

READ ALSO: Nnamdi Kanu's family petition USA, EU, other groups over Kanu's life

However, we are proud to announce to you all today, that we are going live on air on Sunday, the 19th of March, 2017 with a maiden broadcast, starting from 10.00 am Biafra time.

Recall that In July, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) jammed Radio Biafra signals as a result of inciting messages transmitted by the station.

The commission also said it was working with security agencies to get those that are behind that radio which it described as an illegal radio.

In a related news, the IPOB has condemned the British government for not being vocal against ill treatment the Nigerian government under President Muhammadu Buhari has meted out on the Biafran agitators and other freedom agitators in Nigeria.

IPOB in a statement by its media and publicity secretary, Emma Powerful, accused the British government of being selective in its fight against human rights abuses, by ignoring the injustices meted out on the Biafran agitators and other freedom agitators in Nigeria, Vanguard reports.

The self-determination group alleged that the British government is the supplier of the destructive weapons used against IPOB and other Biafra agitators.

Source: Legit.ng
Editors note: The claim by Stephanie Otobo that she had a romantic relationship with Apostle Johnson Suleman spurred a lot of Christians into coming to the defence of the religious leader with many tagging the lady as a blackmailer.

In this opinion by Ezugwu Okike, he points out that religious leader like Apostle Suleman are considered infallible by their supporters who throw away their sense of justice blindly in defence of their pastors.

The place of religion

In a clime predominantly populated with persons addicted to the opium named religion, men of God, both the ordained and the self-proclaimed, are thought impervious to criticism. Any measure taken to hold them to account is viewed in the grave light of heresy and concluded as an infringement of the divine injunction which issued stern warning against getting close to God's anointed. The implication of this is similar to the reaction which accompanies the unlocking of a Pandora's box. Our society has become flooded with industrious cheats, hardened fraudsters and base charlatans masking as men of God.

READ ALSO: Extra-marital Affairs: Christian group defends Apostle Suleman

I viewed a video clip yesterday shared by an online news channel. The chief character was a pastor being mercilessly beaten by an irate mob for sleeping with the wife of a church member. He was literarily caught pants down and left with no straw of defence. His hands were bound like those of a miserable criminal as he sat tonguelessly and watched as boys took turns to knock vexation-intensified blows into his face.

Apostle Johnson Suleman is embroidered in a romantic scnadal

The other day I was scandalized to watch security operatives unearth half-decayed bodies from the foundation of a church in Imo state. I can write an encyclopedia of darker instances. These sort of infernal men drive their nefarious impetus from backers and fanatical followers who regard them as unquestionable and unaccountable gods. The time for demystification has come. .

TB Joshua's prophecies

TB Joshua prophesised that Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to win the US presidential election. With an outstretched hand he spoke of seeing a woman becoming the next president of America. That was a safe gamble then as both domestic and international media were abuzz with predictions favorable to Clinton and Donald Trump was heedlessly courting controversies and calling everybody's bluff. Trump swept into the oval office. I was awestruck to see rabid Christians shielding TB from the backblow of a fake prophecy. This attitude is informed by the absurdity that men of God, like the English Crown, can do no wrong.

On Apostle Johnson Suleiman many tales hang. Johnson Suleiman has long removed every shadow of doubt as to whether he has an active monkey business running. That was why some of us did not take uncritical leap into the bandwagon to bypass Otobo as a fly by night blackmailer.

Apostle Suleman's prophecies

When the 2015 general elections were in full swing, Suleiman prophecized that the election would be inconclusive but nonetheless, Jonathan would be elected and returned. I need not tell you again that Buhari won and that the election was not deadlocked.

The same talk-hungry Suleiman said that even if Mallam Nasir El Rufia moved mountains, he would not get close to the government house of Kaduna state. He told us that God rejected him as he did Saul the Benjamite for profaning and disrespecting the name of Christ. El Rufia was an odious aspirant. We waited with bated breath for the fullfillment of that prophecy. Mallam beasted the gloomy prognostication and emerged triumphant. Apostle did a swift volte face and said that El Rufia would die. Against the governor's request, he refused to appoint a date for his death. The only phenomenon we are yet to see is that mortal who has obtained immunity over death. . Like TB Joshua, Suleiman foretold that Clinton would win. Clinton lost. Apostle went taciturn. Maybe lying spirits impersonated God and assailed him with spurious revelations.

Apostle also said that Obama needed to be mindful of his health that he going to pieces healthwise. He enjoined Americans to go into seasonless prayers. That was also a soulless and reckless lie. Obama today is as fit as fiddle and would doubtlessly travel down in history as the healthiest former American president.

Stephanie Otobo claimed Apostle Suleman was involved in a sexual relationship with her

READ ALSO: Apostle Suleman's wife knows he is cheating - Stephanie Otobo

Still in a bid to keep his credulous followers busy, he said that England needed to pray for her Queen. That was the cheapest and of course the absurdest prophecy ever to escape the lips of a religious personage. Only a person born yesterday would not know that a woman over 90 years of age is naturally standing at death's door.

These mendacious gamblings were crowned and carried much more higher when he said that Rochas Okorocha would cross carpet to the PDP. Today we all know the magnetic pull and influential lobbyist drawing prominent southners to the APC. .

I suppose you can now decipher the fount of our skepticism. I have no strings attached. I was among the cyber warriors who defended him when he announced his fearless stance on the jihad being unscrupulously executed in southern Kaduna. I also admired his firmness when he read the riot act to members of his congregation who were greedily plunging into ponzi schemes. These not withstanding, Suleiman already left much to be desired. I cannot vouchsafe for him. . Let him defend himself evidentially instead of resorting to blame storming, propaganda and open threats. If the Euros and dollars were deployed to save the soul of a mere Canadian stripper, it wouldn't be a bad idea if unemployed Nigerian youths attempt venturing into stripping.

Ezugwu Okike is a public affairs commentator and studies Law

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A 53-year-old woman, Christy Adejo, on Friday in Abuja asked an FCT High Court to dissolve her seven-year-old marriage due to husbands inability to impregnate her.

Christy Adejo a 53-year-old woman is seeking divorce over her husband's inability to impregnate her

Adejo made the request during her testimony in her petition against her husband, Emmanuel Oluseye.

The petitioner told the court that she was almost 46-years-old when she got married to the respondent and that she made it clear to him then that her objective was to have children.

READ ALSO: I regretted divorcing my former husband, the beating I receive now is worse, wife tells court

The wife accused her husband of failure to perform his conjugal rights, alleging that they sometimes made love only four times in a year.

He has had four children from two previous marriages, but I wanted a child of my own and he promised to support me.

I was still menstruating when we got married, but sometimes he chooses not to sleep with me when I am ovulating.

He travelled a lot and always gives the excuse of pressure of work.

He claimed that he doesnt know when I ovulate, yet I lived in the same room with him in the few years of our marriage.

How do I begin to tell the court that sometimes we make love only four times in a year, she said.

Adejo testified that she was desirous of having her own child and decided to go for assisted conception in a hospital which her husband was familiar with.

Yet, he still did not give me the desired support, she said.

According to her, the respondent claimed the cost for assisted conception was too high and the possibility of its success was narrow.

The wife told the court that she never saw the result of her husbands sperm count test which made her to seek for divorce.

 I moved out of his home in 2015, by then I was over 50 years and I was not getting the support I needed, I wasnt getting younger and my chances of conceiving was getting thinner.

I want a formal dissolution of this marriage, she pleaded with the court.

Oluseye, led in evidence by his Counsel, Mr A. S Elouku, however, said he was not contesting the request for dissolution of the marriage.

If the court grants her prayers, so be it; it is God that gives children, I am not God.

While being cross examined by the petitioners counsel, Mr Gabriel Anu, the respondent told the court that he knew that his wife was close to menopause when they got married.

He said that his schedule of work, as a veterinary doctor, made it impossible for him to be with her always.

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Oluseye told the court that he shuttled between Minna, Abuja and Kwara, while she remained in Abuja.

He said that he now had time for her when the job was over, but she had decided to leave the house.

I have no problem, but she had issues; I even suggested that if it has to do with her eggs, we should meet her sister in South Africa to donate eggs to her, but she declined after sometime.

Presiding judge, Justice Bello Kawu, adjourned the case til May 3 to continue the hearing.

Source: Legit.ng
Despite efforts by the federal government of Nigeria and the government of South Africa to curb xenophobic attacks on Nigerians, a renewed attack has reportedly been launched.

Channels TV reports that a new attack has been launched on Nigerians working as estate agents in Turffontein, South Africa.

The timely intervention of the police however quelled the tension in the area.

The Nigerian real estate agents complained that they were attacked by indigenes who alleged that the Nigerians were illegally acquiring houses.

The Nigerians complained that the local residents accused them of acquiring houses illegally

One of the estate agents however said the South Africans accusations were untrue as all business transactions done by the agents are legitimate and whatever benefits they received from their business were proceeds from their hard work.

READ ALSO: Top Nigerian lawyer Falana writes Zuma, demands justice for xenophobia victims

Another victim of the relaunched attack said: "They say we are driving nice cars, wearing expensive clothes, getting married to their women  It's by Gods grace, we work hard for it."

Nigerians estate agent shows documents to proof their business transactions are legal

Recall that the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said recently that the attacks on Nigerians by South Africans was fuelled by inciting statements reportedly made by South African political leaders.

Dabiri-Erewa said the political leaders told South Africans citizens that the foreigners are taking their jobs and women and statements like that are the harbinger of xenophobic attacks.

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Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, has said that Nigeria could have declared war against South Africa over the xenophobic attacks targeted at Nigerians and other nationals.

Onyeama noted that the government opted for dialogue because the crisis was not sponsored by the South African government.

He made this statement when he met with the Nigerians resident in South Africa at the Nigerian High Commission in Pretoria on Tuesday March 14.

He said: When this issue came up, we look at the options before us; we could have declared war with South Africa.

Source: Legit.ng
The Commissioner of police for Benue state Bashir Makama has said that the governor Samuel Ortom cannot banish Fulani herdsmen from the middle-belt state.

Governor Ortom has been told by police that he cannot stop Fulani herdsmen from working in Benue state.

Daily Post reports that Makama said this while reacting to the recent directive by Governor Ortom that Fulani herdsmen should vacate the state within 72 hours.

READ ALSO: Suspended lawmaker Jibrin advises Buhari on dwindling value of naira

The herdsmen should have been advised to leave. And if they discover that the people are not receptive to them, they would have left quietly rather than push them out. The state belongs to all Nigerians, the police commissioner said.

Legit.ng recalls that Ortom gave Fulani herdsmen in Tombo-Mbalagh, Buruku local government area, a two-day ultimatum to leave the area.

The ultimatum followed a fresh clash between the herdsmen and inhabitants that resulted in the killing of eight persons.

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The governor's order came just when 30 bodies of inhabitants of a community in the state were recovered from a river.

Meanwhile, there was drama at the National Assembly complex in Abuja on Thursday, March 16 when for over two hours, students from various tertiary institutions, barricaded the busy Makurdi-Lafia, in protests over herdsmen killings in Benue state.

The protesters went on to shake the National Assembly in Abuja, and Makurdi, the state capital of Benue state.

Source: Legit.ng
- Acting EFCC boss Ibrahim Magu, in the query to him by attorney-general of the federation Abubakar Malami, told President Buhari that he never did anything wrong as an officer in the agency

- In replies to questions in the query, Magu denied that he ever lived in an apartment worth over N80million as claimed by the DSS

- Magu also admitted flying twice in the aircraft of a man under investigation by the Commission but said he did not know it at the time

Magu told President Buhari in his reply to a query by the attorney-general Malami that he had done nothing wrong

After the Nigerian Senate rejected him for a second time on Thursday, March 16, Premium Times is reporting about the details of acting EFCC chairman Ibrahim Magus response to President Muhammadu Buharis query to him over allegations by DSS.

According to the report, Magu admitted official documents relating to cases under investigation were found in his private home when raided on the order of Mrs. Farida Waziri when she succeeded Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as the chairman of the EFCC.

READ ALSO: Shehu Sani blames presidency for Magu's second rejection by Senate

But said it was not intentional. He explained: The documents found in my house were actually found in my office bag where I kept documents relating to investigations.

I was in the process of handing over and it would be wrong to suggest that I wilfully kept the Commissions files at home.

He however claimed that he was victimized by powerful interests because of his closeness to former EFCC boss Nuhu Ribadu.

It is important sir, to draw your attention to the fact that some of us that worked closely with Ribadu were victimised after his exit. And my ordeal was orchestrated as punishment for being the chief investigative officer for most of the high profile cases involving politically exposed persons some of whom became very influential in government at the time.

Magu also denied that he was immediate past EFCC chairman Ibrahim Lamordes hatchet man and was recalled to work closely with him after Waziris exit.

My job schedule as Deputy Director, Department of Internal Affairs, under Lamorde, was simply handling issues of professional responsibility in the Commission. I had no inputs in core operations duties of the Commission, Magu said.

Magu further denied living lavishly in an apartment reportedly worth over N40million and furnished with even more than that.

The entire cost for both two-year rent and the furnishing of the house is N39.628million.

Details of the transaction are contained in the contract award letter and payment schedule which are attached to this letter.

The acting EFCC chief also admitted that he did fly twice on the aircraft of Colonel Mohammed Umar, a man who was under criminal investigation, but he did not know it.

These, for me, were harmless gesture as we were both members of the presidential investigative committee on arms procurement. At the time I had no knowledge that he was under investigation for any alleged crimes, he said.

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He added: The claim that EFCC documents, including EFCC letters addressed to the Vice President and being investigation reports on the activities of Emmanuel Kachikwu and his brother Demebi Kachikwu, were found in his home during a search by the DSS came to me as a surprise.

If that is correct, he should be made to disclose how he came by such documents. I never discussed my official duties with him let alone give him documents pertaining to investigations being conducted by the Commission.

Meanwhile, a report by Sahara Reporters claims that Magu might have been a victim of power play backed by acts of corruption.

In a tweet on Friday, March 17, the US-based online newspaper claimed that Senators Dino Melaye and Phillip Aduda coordinated the collection and sharing of bribes among senators to frustrate Magu's confirmation.

Source: Legit.ng
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that it is looking into reports that it was allegedly defrauded out of oil products by some Nigerian oil companies.

Premium Times reports that this follows an earlier report that the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), more popularly known as petrol, which was stored with Capital Oil & Gas and MRS Petroleum by a subsidiary of the oil corporation called NNPC Retail, based on a special arrangement, went missing under suspicious circumstances.

Maikanti Baru's NNPC is displeased that its products have gone missing

Now Henry Ikem-Obi, NNPC's Chief Operating Officer, Downstream, said in Abuja that part of the measures considered to facilitate the recovery of the products included its decision to alert the Department of State Service, DSS, and the Economic Financial Crime Commission, EFCC.

READ ALSO: REVEALED: What Magu told President Buhari about DSS allegations against him

He said the alleged scam was discovered sometime in January when it needed the fuel it stored with the oil companies but could not access them.

We instructed the Nigerian Products Marketing Company (NPMC) a subsidiary of NNPC, to send additional trucks to those locations to move products for distribution aimed at meeting a supply shortfall we discovered in the market.

Uba says his company Capital Oil and Gas has done nothing wrong

But after days of not being able to access the terminals, we had to take a decision as NNPC Management to invite auditors and inspectors to go and do a physical check on the inventories The visit revealed that there was no molecule of product for the NNPC to evacuate, he said.

But one of the oil companies, Capital Oil and Gas has denied any wrongdoing. Its chairman Ifeanyi Uba said it is the NNPC that needs to settle with his company.

PAY ATTENTION: Get the latest news on Legit.ng News App

NNPC has been owing us (Capital Oil) on petroleum products supplies over the last two years. We have written several letter to them calling for reconciliation without success. We have written to them calling for total reconciliation of accounts, and they have agreed, Uba told Premium Times on telephone on Friday, March 17.

Meanwhile, large crude oil deposits have been found in the Bida Basin located in Niger state and President Muhammadu Buhari has been duly informed of this development.

This was made known by Professor Nuhu Obaje who is the director of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babaginda University Research Centre, Lapai at the at the exhibition of raw materials and local products in the Manufacturing and Equipment EXPO Nigeria 2017, in Lagos on Thursday, March 16.

Source: Legit.ng
The word innovation has become a catchall marketing term. Every new product touts itself as the most innovative thing to hit the market since sliced bread, and all too often that innovative" product or idea fails miserably. But every once in awhile, you stumble upon something that makes you take a step back and say, that product really is innovative, and I want to learn more."

Thats exactly what happened to me when I attended AAK USAs grand opening of its new Innovation Centerdubbed the AAKtion Labin Edison, New Jersey, on March 2. Invited guests included leading global chocolate & confections, bakery companies and members of industry media. Terry Thomas, president AAK USA Inc. and Anne Mette Olesen, chief marketing officer, AAK AB cut the ribbon to officially open AAKs AAKtion Lab, a 3,000-plus-square-foot lab based at AAKs U.S. headquarters that will serve as the flagship application lab for the companys co-development process. The Innovation Center features the Bakery Application Lab, Chocolate & Confectionery Lab, AAK Academy and conference area.

Terry Thomas, president AAK USA Inc. and Anne Mette Olesen, Chief Marketing Officer, AAK AB, cut the ribbon to officially open AAK's AAKtion Lab in Edison, New Jersey. Terry Thomas, president AAK USA Inc. and Anne Mette Olesen, Chief Marketing Officer, AAK AB, cut the ribbon to officially open AAK's AAKtion Lab in Edison, New Jersey.

Thomas said: We couldnt be happier to share this important day in AAKs history with so many of our key customers, local dignitaries, industry press and our hardworking AAK team. AAKtion Lab allows us to fully execute our co-development approach and will be a huge benefit to AAKs customer partners. Customers can come to us with any of the Bakery and Chocolate & Confectionery industrys toughest formulation challenges and our team of industry experts will work hand in hand with them to deliver value-adding solutions and forward-thinking innovation to create finished products that consumers will love."

As one of the worlds leading manufacturers of high value-adding specialty vegetable fats and oils, AAK puts a heavy emphasis on being a co-development company that helps customers find solutions to formulation challenges. Five main tenants make up that co-development commitment: Ideate, Create, Prove, Implement and Launch.

Todays manufacturers are faced with some tough formulation challenges, such as converting from PHO to non-PHO and addressing clean label concerns," said James S. Jones, Ph.D., vice president of Customer Innovation. AAKtion Lab will allow us to provide new solutions for customers and will primarily be used for the first three stages of our co-development process: Exploration and Ideation, Solutions Creation, and then testing in application."

Jones said the AAKtion lab also will be used to organize practical courses and classes (AAK Academies) on bakery, chocolate/compound coatings, and combination bakery/coatings & fillings. These academies will promote new product innovation and educate our customers.

Tasting Innovation

AAKs Customer Innovation team developed several prototypes and demos for the grand opening event, highlighting cutting-edge technology in the facility and including AAKs brand of multi-functional fats that are non-hydrogenated, zero trans and low in saturated fat.

The Pan de Chocolate showcased elements of both the AAK bakery and CCF labs using new lamination and sheeting equipment. Cisao 8120, a votated shortening, is incorporated in the dough to offer ease of handling and dough machinability. Cisao 8285 is incorporated as the lamination fat in place of traditional butter. It contains no color or flavors, allowing the end user to customize it to their and consumers desires. It provides the traditional flakiness associated with high end butter croissants, reduces saturated fat by 30 percent, and improves handling tolerances over crucial temperature ranges.

The Shortbread Cookie featuring compound coating included Cisao 8312, a pliable shortening with a texture that allows for better machinability, creaming and better processing tolerance. The compound coating was created with the confectionery labs enrobing machine and cooling tunnel and utilized Cebes NH, a non-temper fat based on lauric fats that provides excellent gloss and a pleasant and fast meltdown.

Chocolate covered shortbread cookies made in AAKs confectionery lab. Chocolate covered shortbread cookies made in AAKs confectionery lab.

Biscuits included Cisao 8253-12-05, a shortening flake with cinnamon, and 8253-61-02, a shortening flake with natural butter flavor and beta-carotene. The flakes provide an even distribution of fat, a flaky texture, and the visual appeal of bits of cinnamon and butter, all without a traditional roll-in process. Cisao 8120, a pliable shortening with a texture that allows for better machinability and better process tolerance, is incorporated into the dough.

The Molded Milk and Dark Chocolate Bar showcased the CCF labs tempering machine and cooling tunnel, as well as hand tempering by the innovation team. The bars confectionery coating fats have the same physical properties and triglyceride composition as cocoa butter, offering a smooth meltaway, and uniform distribution of fat, for a smooth mouthfeel.

Brioche, a traditional yeast leavened butter egg bread, featured Cisao 8285 margarine containing no color or flavor, which enables customers to customize it to fit their needs. It replaces traditional butter, lowering saturated fats, and providing increased tolerance to temperature variations in the production process.

This brioche was one of the first items made in AAKs bakery lab. This brioche was one of the first items made in AAKs bakery lab.

Sustainability Top of Mind

AAK USA is part of AAK AB, headquartered in Malmo, Sweden, one of the worlds leading producers of specialty vegetable fats and oils. AAK USA operates four manufacturing plants located in Port Newark and Hillside, New Jersey, Louisville, and Richmond, California.

AAK offers a wide range of raw materials including coconut, palm, palm kernel, soybean, cottonseed, canola, shea, high erucic acid rapeseed (H.E.A.R.), corn, non-GMO Project Verified soy, high oleic sunflower and high oleic safflower oils. With their broad process capabilities and expertise in oils and fats, AAK develops innovative and value-adding solutions to address formulation challenges of all kinds.

AAK has been working together with customer partners to provide unique value-adding vegetable oil solutions without trans fats for more than 10 years. The company is committed to meeting todays consumer and legislative requirements without sacrificing quality, turnaround time or competitive prices.

Mark Becker, vice president, sales and marketing, said AAK keeps sustainability top of mind and continues to lead sustainability efforts and traceability of its raw materials, while making a clear difference to the environment and the local communities where the raw materials are grown and harvested. The company is a founding member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and offers RSPO-certified material. AAKs products are derived from renewable crops, with ingredients grown and sourced responsibly as part of a continued commitment to sustainability.

More Innovation on the Way

AAK is opening two more innovation centers later this year. The Louisville Innovation Center is under construction and expected to open no later than 3Q17, and construction began mid-March on the California Innovation Center that is expected to open no later than 4Q17.

AAKtion Lab, along with bakery application labs in Louisville, Kentucky, and Richmond, California, and our acquisition of California Oils in Richmond, California, last year, deliver on our brand promise to provide vegetable oils and fats that bring a local, regional and global approach to solving some of our customers toughest formulation challenges," Thomas said. We wouldnt be here today without our customer partners; we will continue to invest in the latest technology and ensure that our team of innovation experts can deliver value-adding solutions to our customer partners, every day."
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Humanity has tried to limit war on moral terms since Cicero first outlined the Just War Ethic, an effort that continues to this day. In war, the reversion to barbarism can be tempting in the heat of battle, and as passions and hatreds rise between peoples. However, even here, humanity has managed to place moral limits.

In the modern world, the Just War Ethic may seem like a distant abstraction; but its effects influence the relationship between war and society in profound ways. Michael Walzer, perhaps the most influential living philosopher of just war theories, articulated the importance of seeking to establish moral principles there: War is the hardest place: if comprehensive and consistent moral judgments are possible there, they are possible everywhere.

The Just War Ethic provides the foundational principles on which the laws of war have been constructed; when policy makers seek to justify the use of force, they employ the language of the Just War Ethic; they speak in terms of the principles of just cause, last resort, necessity, proportionality and the reasonable prospects of success. Although often overshadowed by the horrors of war, the principles of the Just War Ethic do limit wars worst excesses by underpinning the discourse, decisions, behaviors and accountability related to war.

Of course, the Just War Ethic suffers from a problem: The normative ideal in this case is the absence of war, yet the reality of war precludes that ideal. Therefore, any applied ethics of war are by definition morally flawed. The question for the ethicist then is this: Is it more ethical to make continued (and often ignored) normative pronouncements against the existence of war, or to engage with the temporal reality of war with ethics that seek to limit the cases in which war is undertaken, to moderate its effects, and to guide it toward the normative goal, with the understanding that this goal is not immediately or fully achievable? Obviously, advocates of the Just War Ethic, myself included, come to the latter conclusion.

The question is not one of moral perfection, but of moral improvement. It is a step in the right direction.

If we can seek to regulate war in terms of morality, there is no reason such morality cannot be equally applied to the economy, as Walzer indicates. When faced with illegal or immoral orders, it is the duty of professional soldiers to refuse such orders. When such a refusal occurs, it is followed by thorough investigations, and potentially courts-martial or war crimes prosecutions for those who issue such orders. In the case of the former Wells Fargo employees, the opposite occurred. Imagine the moral and societal hazard if the military permitted such retaliation against those who reported illegal and immoral behaviors.
Mr. Cohn has recused himself from Goldman matters on the job, the White House has said. Goldman officials who are close to Mr. Cohn and other former colleagues now in government have said they are restricting their communications largely to social conversations.

If there is a mind meld between Goldman and the Trump administration, it has been fractured at times.

Some of the White Houses early policies, including the Jan. 27 travel and immigration ban and moves to roll back lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, have sat poorly with senior Goldman executives, whose thinking on social issues has proved to be more liberal than Mr. Trumps.

Conversations between Goldman employees and their former colleagues in Washington, meanwhile, have come under scrutiny. Two Democratic senators recently demanded records of any communications between Goldman and its alumni in the Trump administration that involved discussions of certain economic policies. Goldmans lawyer denied involvement by the firm.

And being intimately linked to a president whose incoming approval ratings were at a historic low may not burnish the firms image as ties to past administrations did.

My guess is that whatever benefit Goldman would have from its senior executives leaving to go to the Trump administration, the reputational effects may well be more severe, said Peter Conti-Brown, a financial historian who teaches at the Wharton School.

Among other things, he added, Mr. Trumps more polarizing policies on issues that a younger generation of workers hold dear could create recruitment problems for the bank. For instance, Mr. Conti-Brown said, most of the business school students he encounters at Wharton espouse a more globalist view than the America First brand of economic nationalism championed by Mr. Trump and his chief strategist, the onetime Goldman investment banker Stephen K. Bannon. And they expect to work in places that value diversity of gender and sexual orientation.
Some members of the elite legal community are making an unusual appeal to one of their own, asking that he speak out against the White Houses attempt to restrict travel to the United States by people from several predominantly Muslim countries.

A group of 27 former associates from the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell sent a letter on Thursday to Walter J. Clayton, who is known as Jay, a Sullivan & Cromwell partner and President Trumps nominee to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the letter, the group urge Mr. Clayton, whose Senate confirmation hearings are set for next week, to publicly denounce Mr. Trumps proposed travel ban.

The former Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers ask that Mr. Clayton speak out during his confirmation hearings and stand up for the legal profession by unequivocally opposing the presidents executive orders and the unlawful, cruel and shameful actions of this administration.
The White House economic adviser Gary D. Cohn is selling a significant holding in the worlds largest bank  which happens to be in China  as he clears potential conflicts of interest to serve in his new role.

The stock that Mr. Cohn is selling is in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which with nearly $3.5 trillion in assets is the biggest on the planet, and it would be valued at about $16 million based on Thursdays trading, according to details of his holdings in a set of documents issued by the Office of Government Ethics.

The Chinese bank position appears to be the largest stock, private equity or hedge fund holding  apart from his shares in Goldman Sachs, where he was president  that Mr. Cohn will have to sell because of his new job. The timing of his initial purchase of the Industrial and Commercial Bank shares and of his planned sale are not clear.

Neither Mr. Cohn, who is now the director of the National Economic Council advising President Trump, nor a White House spokeswoman responded to requests for comment. A Goldman spokesman referred questions to the White House.
Rachel Maddows slow-walk reveal of President Trumps decade-old tax records on Tuesday night did not earn her much journalistic praise.

But it certainly earned her a lot of viewers.

More than 4 million people tuned in on Tuesday to watch Ms. Maddows report on MSNBC, the biggest audience in her shows nine years on the air. It was the third-ranked show across all of television at 9 p.m., beating the broadcast networks ABC and Fox.

Ms. Maddow drew 1.1 million more viewers than her Fox News rival, Tucker Carlson, who typically dominates the 9 p.m. time slot. And excluding major events like elections, conventions and debates, her program on Tuesday was the second-highest rated show ever to air on MSNBC, the network said, narrowly missing a Keith Olbermann episode in October 2008.

The ratings may have been stellar, but the response was anything but. Since the report aired, Ms. Maddows approach  dragging out the revelation for more than 20 minutes, past the first commercial break  has been mocked by the late-night host Stephen Colbert and criticized as overly dramatic by political reporters.
_________

Text 2: Excerpt from the 2013 Times review,  A Master, Between the Lines  Hopper Drawing, at the Whitney Museum

Sometimes it seems that Hopper (1882-1967) could have eternized almost any undistinguished moment of introspection or inaction in anyones life. Thats why his paintings can make us wonder about the opportunities for consciousness and revelation we have been blind to in ourselves. It is also why we strive to get behind the curtain of Hoppers stillness and figure out whats going on.

In Hoppers work it is emotion, not motion, that counts, the feelings that roil beneath the surfaces of his images. These are conveyed but not explicit in the figures; the isolated buildings and houses; the offices, coffee shops and bedrooms; the empty roads and deserted gas stations; the honeyed annunciating light and the very atmosphere. And then there are the feelings the images arouse in us.

Theres not much action in the art of Edward Hopper , who revealed the American soul by freezing and monumentalizing the American scene. His paintings give quiet moments of everyday life an Egyptian stillness; they are fixed in an eternal present, shorn of superfluous detail, rendered as if carved in stone. Their blocky immobility is part of their psychological weight.

_________

Text 3: Excerpt from Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl. (Find the complete story here.)

Listen, he said. Ive got something to tell you.

What is it, darling? Whats the matter?

He had now become absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down so that the light from the lamp beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow. She noticed there was a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.

This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, Im afraid, he said. But Ive thought about it a good deal and Ive decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you wont blame me too much.

And he told her. It didnt take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.

So there it is, he added. And I know its kind of a bad time to be telling you, but there simply wasnt any other way. Of course Ill give you money and see youre looked after. But there neednt really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldnt be very good for my job.

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadnt even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadnt been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

Ill get the supper, she managed to whisper, and this time he didnt stop her.

When she walked across the room she couldnt feel her feet touching the floor. She couldnt feel anything at all  except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now  down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

For Gods sake, he said, hearing her, but not turning round. Dont make supper for me. Im going out.

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.
As Mr. Lichtenstein prepared to report to prison, federal prosecutors hinted that their case against him had yielded new evidence of money he was spreading to other police officers, throughout Brooklyn.

The other officers were not named, but prosecutors said that the list included high-ranking officers, and that the United States attorneys office in Manhattan had evidence of individual payments.

He kept detailed records, Russell Capone, an assistant United States attorney, said of Mr. Lichtenstein. I have them right here, he told Judge Sidney H. Stein. But Mr. Capone did not describe them much further, saying only that the records contained more than 100 entries of payments made to  or things bought for  police officers across Brooklyn.

Mr. Capone disclosed the existence of the records in arguing that Mr. Lichtensteins bribery scheme was not limited to the small gun-licensing division in Police Headquarters. But it was not immediately clear whether the United States attorneys office intended to pursue these cash payments and gifts as a criminal matter.

Mr. Lichtenstein was arrested last year amid a major F.B.I. investigation into influence-peddling and bribery within the New York Police Department. F.B.I. investigators ultimately charged three businessmen, including Mr. Lichtenstein, in court papers that described how self-appointed police liaisons within the Orthodox community, such as Mr. Lichtenstein, exercised such influence within Police Headquarters that police commanders would turn to them for support when seeking a promotion. In Mr. Lichtensteins case, the charges were related to bribing officers in return for rubber-stamping handgun license applications.
A New York park honoring President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair for years, is not fully accessible to disabled people, according to a class-action suit filed against the state and the conservancy that runs the park.

The strongly worded complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, accuses the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island of the systemic, discriminatory exclusion of people who use wheelchairs, scooters and other motorized devices from full access of the park. The complaint says that this is not only in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which prohibits discriminating against people with disabilities in public facilities, but also violates state and local statutes.

Such blatant violation of disability law is tragically ironic in light of the fact that President Roosevelt himself used a wheelchair for mobility after becoming paralyzed from polio, the lawsuit states.

The four-acre park on the southern tip of the island was designed more than four decades ago by the renowned architect Louis Kahn, before the A.D.A. took effect. But construction did not begin until 2010, as the lawsuit notes, and it opened in 2013.
A lawyer for Sheldon Silver cited a unanimous Supreme Court decision that narrowed the definition of what kind of conduct can serve as the basis for a corruption prosecution, as he argued on Thursday that the disgraced former speaker of the State Assembly should be acquitted or granted a new trial.

The lawyer, Steven F. Molo, invoked the 2016 Supreme Court decision  which was handed down seven months after Mr. Silvers conviction and involved former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Virginia Republican  in arguments before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan.

But a federal prosecutor told the panel that the evidence at Mr. Silvers trial overwhelmingly established that Sheldon Silver abused the immense power that he had as the speaker of the Assembly, and that his case was nothing like the McDonnell case.

The McDonnell ruling has become a focal point of Mr. Silvers appeal and the appeals of Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, and his son, Adam, who last year were both also convicted of corruption charges. The Skeloses appeals have not yet been argued.
He would cut the State Department by 29 percent, enfeebling diplomacy and international aid, while relying more on military might to protect national interests. He would cut the Department of Health and Human Services by 16 percent, undermining vital research by the National Institutes of Health. Smaller agencies that promote justice, arts and letters would be eliminated entirely, including the Legal Services Corporation, which finances legal aid groups; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The budget would raise spending in only three of 17 major categories  Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs  while slashing it in most of the rest. Hardest hit would be the Environmental Protection Agency, with a cut of 31 percent. These cuts would end climate change research  a global setback. They would eliminate money to carry out President Obamas plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants  the centerpiece of his strategy to combat global warming. They also would disadvantage states that went for Mr. Trump. For Wisconsin and Michigan, for example, the budget would zero out initiatives to restore the Great Lakes. For Virginia, it would end restoration of Chesapeake Bay, whose watershed affects Pennsylvania also. Farm states, which largely supported Mr. Trump, would face a 21 percent reduction in the Department of Agriculture. Rural Americans would also be hurt by the elimination of federal aid to rural airports and reductions in subsidies for long-distance Amtrak services, while low-income Americans in general would see the end of $3 billion in block grants to states and localities for Meals on Wheels, housing aid and other community assistance.

And yet, for all the pain it proposes, the budget summary is pathetically weak on substance and analysis. It deals only with discretionary spending, the roughly one-third of the budget for which Congress is supposed to appropriate money annually. Unlike the first-year, so-called skinny budgets offered by presidents going back to Ronald Reagan, it omits any figures on mandatory programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as estimates of tax revenues, interest payments or deficits, and any explanation of the documents underlying economic assumptions.

The excuse being floated in Washington for these omissions is that Mr. Mulvaneys confirmation hearing in the Senate was drawn out. But the Trump team had as much or more time between confirmation of a budget director and release of the budget as Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton. In any event, if it needed more time to do a good job, it could have taken it.

One possible, even plausible, reason for the substance-lite nature of the document, which makes meaningful debate about it impossible, is incompetence. Or the administration could be deploying a piecemeal strategy to make it harder for the public to follow its thinking.
Arthur Millers The Price, from 1968, is a tragedy disguised as a rummage sale. It plucks the slipcovers off the autobiographical material that Miller worked over for so much of his career  what sons owe to fathers, what brothers owe to each other, what the world owes to men of reasonable integrity. Women might owe things, too, but that was rarely Millers concern.

Sympathetically directed and ardently acted, theres much to enjoy in this Roundabout Theater Company revival, which opened Thursday night at the American Airlines Theater. Yet it shows The Price as a smaller, more stolid work than it wants to be  still just a little out of style.

As the play opens, Victor Franz (Mark Ruffalo), a policeman 28 years on the beat, arrives at the attic of a Manhattan brownstone mounded with dusty furniture. Chests jostle with tables; sofas and wardrobes tumble together. Victor winds up an old phonograph and puts on a novelty record of people laughing. He also laughs. Why not? Its either that or sneeze.
Conversion therapy has drawn the support of conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. But many mental health and medical groups oppose it, taking their lead from the American Psychiatric Associations decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Therapeutic efforts to change sexual orientation, the association said, represent a significant risk of harm.

The American Psychological Association says there is insufficient scientific evidence to show that conversion therapy is effective at fixing something that is not a mental illness.

Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist who has written about conversion therapy and spoken to some of Dr. Nicolosis former patients, said in an interview that Dr. Nicolosis approach was to train patients to learn a story line about who did something to them in childhood as a way to feel less bad about themselves, but the story often had no basis in fact.

And learning to recite the story didnt lead to changes in their sexual orientation, he said.

Ive met a lot of people whove been through these treatments, Dr. Drescher said, and the setup is always that if change is going to happen, you the patient are going to make it happen, which leads to patient-blaming when the treatment doesnt work.

In a tribute to her husband on the website forevermissed.com, Linda Nicolosi wrote: Gay activists have such a stranglehold on psychology that no one dares defy them. Joe, however, did defy them. And I thank him for his courage.

The Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, said that six states and the District of Columbia had banned licensed mental health providers from practicing conversion therapy on minors. Twenty other states have introduced legislation to do so.
Mr. Gaymons worries echoed across the countrys urban centers on Thursday as city leaders, nonprofits and poverty experts lamented Mr. Trumps proposed budget, which would make drastic cuts to programs aimed at helping the countrys inner cities and some of its most vulnerable populations. Mr. Trump spent months on the campaign trail promising to fix broken inner cities, appealing to African-Americans with the question, What do you have to lose?

In terms of money, the answer turns out to be: plenty. Mr. Trump would cut the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 13 percent and eliminate programs like the Community Development Block Grant, which cities have used to fund programs like Meals on Wheels as well as homeless shelters and neighborhood revitalization initiatives.
Mr. Trumps new executive order sought to address judicial objections to the earlier one, issued in January, which had caused chaos and drawn protests at airports. It was blocked last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

The new orders 90-day suspension of entry from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen was more limited and subject to case-by-case exceptions. The new order omitted Iraq, which had been listed in the earlier order. It removed a complete ban on Syrian refugees. And it deleted explicit references to religion.

Viewed in isolation, Judge Watson wrote on Wednesday, the new order was just fine. It is undisputed that the executive order does not facially discriminate for or against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus nonreligion, he wrote. There is no express reference, for instance, to any religion nor does the executive order  unlike its predecessor  contain any term or phrase that can be reasonably characterized as having a religious origin or connotation.

The problem, the judge said, was that Mr. Trump and his surrogates had made plain what the order meant to achieve: discrimination on the basis of religion in violation of the First Amendments establishment clause.

Mr. Trumps most explicit statements about banning Muslims came during the campaign. In a news release in December 2015, for instance, his campaign said, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. In a television interview last March, Mr. Trump said, Were having problems with the Muslims, and were having problems with Muslims coming into the country.

After he was elected, Mr. Trump was less direct, but he did say he meant to favor Christian refugees. Rudolph W. Giuliani, an adviser to Mr. Trump, said he had helped draft the first executive order after Mr. Trump asked him, about a Muslim ban, the right way to do it legally.
WASHINGTON  Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was on the other side of the planet on Thursday when the Trump administration announced that it would slash his departments budget by 31 percent, potentially eliminating thousands of jobs.

Instead of announcing the cuts in person, Mr. Tillerson sent a nine-sentence email from Japan to his staff stating that U.S. engagement must be more efficient, and that the budget was a genuine opportunity to set a new course.

The passive tone fit the message of the presidents budget: Use less soft power, the cajoling and persuading of allies and enemies, and replace it with the projection of hard power by the nations military.
WASHINGTON  The biggest beneficiary in President Trumps budget  the Defense Department  released a broad wish list on Thursday, signaling what it would do with its proposed $54 billion windfall, filling its shopping cart with desires including Apache helicopters for the Army, anti-submarine planes for the Navy, fighter jets and more training for selected personnel.

Few people expect that the Pentagon will emerge from what are expected to be protracted budget negotiations in Congress with all of its requests intact, given the threat of mandatory spending cuts that have acted as a brake on military spending. But now, the start of the budget process, is the time for dreams, and military officials unveiled proposals that sprinkled extra money throughout the enormous Pentagon bureaucracy.

To help the Pentagon figure out how to spend all that money, Mr. Trump announced that he intended to nominate a Boeing executive, Patrick M. Shanahan, for deputy secretary of defense. If confirmed, Mr. Shanahan would succeed Robert O. Work, a holdover from the Obama administration who stayed on at the behest of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
3.51m travellers pass through Kathmandu airport

Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) rebounded strongly from a slump caused by the April earthquake and jet fuel shortage caused by an Indian trade embargo in 2015 recording double-digit growth in passenger numbers in 2016.
WASHINGTON  Late one Friday night in 2014, Ohios environmental agency received word of a frightening test result from Toledos water supply: A toxic greenish substance had rendered the drinking water of half a million Toledo residents unsafe to drink.

Immediately we reached out to the Environmental Protection Agency, said Craig Butler, the director of Ohios environmental agency. Because of the scale of the problem, and the technical knowledge required, we needed their expertise.

State officials flew water samples from Toledo to an E.P.A. laboratory in Cincinnati, where staff scientists identified the substance as microcystin, a rare but toxic substance that is produced by algae blooms in water and causes liver damage in humans.

The resources to respond to those emergencies, along with much of the other state-level work performed by the agency, would be eliminated or sharply reduced by President Trumps proposed budget for fiscal 2018, which cuts the E.P.A. by 31 percent, more than any other agency.
The New York Timess coverage of the cuts is here and the reaction is here.

The State Department

Thousands of jobs could be lost at the State Department because of the 31 percent funding cut that the White House has requested.

Many educational and cultural exchange programs designed to improve the image of the United States would be abolished or pared back to pay for an increase in military spending. The Global Climate Change Initiative and a number of envoys and offices created during the Obama administration are slated for elimination.

U.S. engagement must be more efficient, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said.

Our coverage is here.

Housing and Urban Development

As a candidate, Mr. Trump promised to put an end to urban blight. But now that he is in office, he does not appear interested in putting federal government resources behind that goal.

Mr. Trump would cut the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 13 percent. He would also eliminate programs like the Community Development Block Grant, which cities have used to fund programs such as Meals on Wheels as well as homeless shelters and neighborhood revitalization initiatives.

These are people who are trying to better themselves, said Karen D. Stokes, the chief executive officer of Strong City Baltimore, a nonprofit that operates an adult learning center that gets about 8 percent of its funding from the block grant.

The story is here.

The Environment

Another agency among the hardest hit by the budget was the Environmental Protection Agency, which would be slashed by 31 percent.
TOKYO  The leader of a scandal-tainted Japanese education group known for extreme right-wing views said Thursday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had donated money to it in 2015, a claim that directly contradicted accounts by Mr. Abe.

The assertion, if true, has the potential to inflict significant political damage on Mr. Abe. The groups leader, Yasunori Kagoike, did not immediately offer evidence to back up his claim.

Accusations that Mr. Kagoike received improper financial favors from the government have escalated into a scandal that has dominated headlines in Japan and hurt Mr. Abes approval ratings.

Network news crews followed a group of parliamentarians to Mr. Kagoikes home in Osaka in Thursday, broadcasting live as the lawmakers waited to question him.
Ms. McKenna was in Washington on Thursday to press her American counterparts to maintain United States funding for the program, about $300 million annually. Since it was established in 2009 by President Barack Obama, over $2.2 billion has gone to fund more than 2,000 projects across eight states. The projects have been aimed at removing toxic waste, restoring wildlife habitats and girding against invasive species such as the Asian Carp in the vast freshwater bodies, which hold one-fifth of the worlds fresh surface water. Canada contributes over $13 million in annual funding for Great Lakes restoration, government officials said.

Although the budget cuts would target projects in the United States, Canadian towns and cities that rely on the lake system would also be affected, advocates say. These include five binational Areas of Concern, like the Detroit River, a long-polluted waterway between Ontario and Michigan, as well as nutrient management projects in Lake Erie that focus on preventing algae blooms triggered by industrial contaminants.

Since word of the proposed cuts to the program leaked earlier this month, dozens of Canadian mayors and other officials have spoken out about the harm their cities and towns would suffer if the proposal were to go into effect.

As the largest city on Lake Huron, the cuts will undo decades of work by many to clean up the Great Lakes on both sides of the border, said Mayor Mike Bradley of Sarnia, Ontario. What good is it having lower taxes when you cant drink the water?

Sarnia, at the mouth of the St. Clair River, on the Michigan border, began working to remove water contamination in 1985, when the city discovered a 200-foot-long oily slick of pollution beneath the river that turned out to be 2,900 gallons of perchloroethylene, a chemical used for dry cleaning that had been spilled by a nearby Dow Chemical plant. Despite marked progress in cleaning up the river and surrounding habitats, the city remains designated as an Area of Concern by the Canadian government.
MOSCOW  Before United States prosecutors accused him of having orchestrated one of the largest computer thefts, Dmitry A. Dokuchaevs legal problems were deepening in Russia, where he was once known by the hacker alias Forb and specialized in purloining credit card numbers.

Mr. Dokuchaev, a stocky 33-year-old who appears on an F.B.I. wanted poster wearing a blue suit and with a mop of sandy hair, is emerging as a central figure in fraught relations between the United States and Russia on cybersecurity issues.

Those relations went into a deep chill in December, when the Obama administration accused Russian intelligence agencies of having meddled in the 2016 election by hacking computers of the Democratic National Committee to help Donald J. Trump win.

Mr. Dokuchaev, a hacker-turned-security-officer in Russia, is a villain in the narratives of both countries about this conflict, for different reasons.
WASHINGTON  The United States military said that it had carried out an airstrike against a meeting of Qaeda militants on Thursday in Syria and that a number of the extremists had been killed.

The American military statement came as Syria activists reported that a mosque had been bombed and that scores of innocent civilians had been killed and wounded.

A spokesman for the United States Central Command said the American aircraft had struck a nearby building, but did not hit the mosque.

We did not target any mosques, said Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for the Central Command, which has responsibility for American military missions in the Middle East. What we did target was destroyed. There is a mosque within 50 feet of that building that is still standing.
For Mr. Guterres and the United Nations, the stakes are extremely high, as they are for people around the world who depend on the organization for such diverse things as childhood vaccinations, food in times of famine, peacekeepers to protect them from marauding armies, and envoys who try to bring warlords to the negotiating table. (The stakes are less critical for the United States, at least fiscally speaking: Funding for the United Nations is less than 0.1 percent of the total federal budget.)

And so, Mr. Guterres, who took office Jan. 1, has pulled out all the stops to engage Ms. Haley.

He hosted her for lunch in his 38th-floor dining room on the day she presented her credentials and promised a muscular American approach to diplomacy. Were taking names, she said about countries that crossed the United States, before going upstairs to meet him. Mr. Guterres has since met with her at least a half dozen times and spoken to her by phone on other occasions.

A former prime minister of Portugal, Mr. Guterres, 67, has tried to cast himself as the man who can deliver a leaner, nimbler United Nations  and therefore one deserving of United States support. He has deferred to the United States  perhaps too much, his critics have said. And while he has criticized the global tide of populism in generic terms, he has said little directly about Mr. Trumps pronouncements or his policies.

I think the S.G. has found the right balance, the French ambassador, Francois Delattre said on Thursday, using United Nations parlance for the secretary general. I believe he has established excellent relations with Nikki Haley. Mr. Delattre added: I believe that for the S.G., and for us, too, the U.N. reform is a key priority and will remain so, which helps in current circumstances.
The modern dance tree has many branches, but three of its sturdiest belong to the groundbreaking choreographers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor. Their influence  on stages, in studios and in schools  is just as crucial as ever. Squabbles aside  and, yes, theyve had a few  Graham, Cunningham and Mr. Taylor are tied by choreographic blood.

On Sunday, March 19, Paul Taylor American Modern Dances Icons: Graham, Cunningham, Taylor grants audiences what seems  incredibly  like the first chance to see their work back to back to back. In this one-off program, Mr. Taylors Promethean Fire (2002) will be performed alongside Grahams Diversion of Angels (1948) and Cunninghams Summerspace (1958).

How are the dances related? How did these choreographers forge individual paths? Both Cunningham and Mr. Taylor danced with Graham, who based her vocabulary on the bodys expressive reach as it originated in the pelvis. Cunningham, a proponent of using chance operations in his choreographic process, paved the way for explorations of nonrepresentational dance. Mr. Taylor bridges the two worlds, with dances that invest as much in emotion as they do in structure.

So why these pieces? Of Diversion, Mr. Taylor said: I knew it was a big one and they could do it. But he added that neither his dancers nor the Graham companys current ones can perform the contraction, a deep movement initiated in the pelvis, the way it was originally. It was deeper and more central, he said. In the groin, really.
MIAMI BEACH  The third times the charm. Following two postponements caused by construction delays, Miami Beachs city-owned Bass art museum has announced its October 2017 reopening following a $12 million renovation project.

The overhauled museum, housed in a 1930s-era Art Deco building, will include four new galleries, adding 4,100 square feet of exhibition space, as well as an additional 4,000 square feet for educational activities. The reopening also continues a programming shift away from the Basss permanent collection of Baroque and Renaissance-era artworks donated in 1964 by the museums namesakes, John and Johanna Bass, and toward contemporary art. (Some of the Old Masters art later turned out to be either fake or misattributed.)

To that end, in October, the Bass is to feature a retrospective of work by the artist Ugo Rondinone, who was born in Switzerland and is now based in New York, filling the museums entire second floor, and a solo show by the multimedia artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, who was born in Cameroon and is based in Belgium.

Which raises a question. With the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (which moves into its own new building in December), and North Miamis Museum of Contemporary Art all focusing on the same au courant corner of the art world and, not least, pursuing the same donor base here, is there room for a fourth institution to thrive in that same niche?
CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER, MARCH 12

Ambiguous Love

If love is good, why is it killing me? Thats the sobering question the 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch puts to himself in one of the innumerable love verses he wrote to a young married (hence unavailable) woman. The composer Jonathan Berger includes this text as the last of seven Petrarch settings in Rime Sparse (Scattered Rhymes), his new work for soprano, violin, cello and piano, recently introduced by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The beguiling soprano Julia Bullock drew out the wrenching ambiguity of this moment in her plaintive singing, backed by hazy instrumental sonorities that resist harmonic mooring. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Read our review of the concert.

AMERICAN CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA SYMPOSIUM, MARCH 13

Unsavory Sound in a Sainted Work

The symposium, hosted by this orchestras artistic director, Thomas Crawford, at St. Michaels Church, amounted to little more than a preconcert lecture for a performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony on April 11 at David Geffen Hall. But it offered a particularly amusing moment, when Andrew Schwartz, the principal bassoonist, demonstrated the contrabassoon that will be used at the concert. The contrabassoon is the instrument that begins the march in the finale with a low B flat blat  lower yet on this replica of an antique played at period pitch  which is infamous for sounding like  well, like a whoopee cushion. With the main tubing extending straight up rather than wound around, and with a needed extension, it stands some 10 feet tall. You wont miss it. JAMES R. OESTREICH
4 people including 2 Nepal Police Sub Inspectors arrested for looting

Police has arrested four people including two Nepal Police Sub Inspectors for their involvement in first kidnapping and then looting a manpower supply company proprietor.
And the contours of the political battle itself have changed since those earlier fights in the 1980s and 90s. The arguments then were over ideology, taste, free speech and the size of government; today they are about economic investment, federal priorities and how people feel about Mr. Trump remaking America to his liking.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is the chairwoman of a crucial Senate appropriations panel that oversees the endowments, said in a statement, I believe we can find a way to commit to fiscal responsibility while continuing to support the important benefits that N.E.A. and N.E.H. provide.

Her backing, like that of some other Republicans, comes after years of federal funds have flowed to artists in her state. Since 1995, the endowment has sent more than $18 million in grants to Alaska  a state which, partly because of its small population, ranks near the top when it comes to arts grants per capita.

Two other Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, signed their names last month to a letter urging continued support for the endowments, which together get $300 million a year. A spokeswoman for Senator Capito, who is on the appropriations committee, said Friday that she would advocate for her priorities, including funding for the arts and humanities, which are important to our economy and communities.
THE LUCKY ONES

By Julianne Pachico

254 pp. Spiegel & Grau. $26.

Julianne Pachicos The Lucky Ones offers a blunt, fresh and unsentimental look inside Colombias last 30 bloody years. She assembles a diverse cast of characters and through them we see it all: the ravages of war; the social climbing of drug-traffickers; the complicated relationships between the well-intentioned rich and the poor who serve them; the abducted who spend years as captives of a peasant Marxist movement that uses children as soldiers; the feeling of displacement and deracination among young Colombians who grow up in the United States and are now bicultural and Latino, and are still obsessed by and conflicted about their country of birth. Colombia is fertile land these days if youre searching for writing material  think of Netflixs Narcos.

The Lucky Ones is presented as a novel, but it feels more like a collection of interconnected stories. A few are set in New York and in Cali (Colombias third-largest city, where the author grew up), but others take place in the part of Colombia that is mostly jungle, in the canopied camps of rogue armed groups. Pachico takes us on an enjoyable and freaky joy ride. We travel from the monkey bars in the yard of an expensive private school to the dire playgrounds of displaced children living in the citys slums. We go from a drug lords Xanadu to streets right out of Mad Max; from 20-day marches in the jungle with daily activities like Spiderweb Inspection and Toucan Watching to scoring cocaine in a parking lot in Queens with a spoiled calenita  a young woman from Cali.

Pachicos characters are all seductive, but what really drew me in is her ability to describe emotions. The book opens inside the privileged house of Stephanie Lansky, saying goodbye to her parents. She cant wait to spend the weekend on her own. By Page 5, the teenagers idea of the perfect plan turns into a horror film when a stranger rings the doorbell. She knows that he could be there to yank her away.

Image

Pachico conveys the fear that Colombian children grow up with  she made that pit in my stomach open up again. Next, she takes us deep into the jungle and inside the head of a kidnapped American teacher who, to control impending madness, resorts to teaching Hamlet to a class of twigs and rocks. Then, its a love story between two outsiders in Stephanies elite school, a scholarship boy and the chubby daughter of a drug kingpin who keeps a lion in his backyard. We then endure a chapter in which descendants of the girls coke-addicted pet rabbits start speaking to one another. Give in to them  at the end youll come out of this ride with a better understanding of Colombias surreal state of affairs.
IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY

By Sarah Dunant

429 pp. Random House. $28.

In her latest novel, Sarah Dunant returns to the Borgias, that flamboyant family of 15th-century clerics and cutthroats, a larger-than-life clan that includes Pope Alexander VI, also known as Rodrigo; his son Cesare, a reluctant cardinal turned conqueror; and the infamous Lucrezia, whose reputation Dunant has done much to restore. In Dunants view, Lucrezia isnt nearly as bad as, say, Victor Hugo or Alexander Dumas led us to believe  or Donizetti in his opera. And historians now agree, having dismissed as gossip the notion of Lucrezia as a murderer with a love of poison.

To a degree, In the Name of the Family has less excitement than its predecessor, Blood and Beauty, in which Dunant followed the rise of Rodrigo as pontiff, describing his galvanic lust for attention, for women, for power, and his willingness to make use of his helpless daughter, who becomes a pawn in his machinations, forced to marry men who would advance her fathers worldly kingdom. To compensate, Dunant has added another character, Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, who provides us, at the outset, with a snapshot of the Italy of his time, a boot whose surface has been discolored by the vicissitudes of history. This is a reminder that the action will take place centuries before unification, that the Italy of the period is still a loose collection of city-states, each with its own internal tensions, its own rivals and potential invaders. In the midst of all this, the Borgias have risen, a family with a talent for conquest  just the sort of people to captivate Machiavelli, the master of expediency. Its material that, in the hands of a gifted storyteller like Dunant, will captivate readers.

Dunant has written best-selling novels in the past. And in both her thrillers and her historical novels, she occasionally leans on the sort of ready-made language that merely carries this sort of story along. One gets any number of overly familiar descriptions, as when admirers of the pope hang on his every word or a bishops expression is one of stone. Elsewhere, a government official throws up his hands in frustration and a dukes feelings are shrouded in cold clouds of secrecy. But more often than not, Dunant surprises us with fresh and inventive imagery, as when, near the end, we see the ailing pope in his bedchamber in late summer:

He has a cramp in his left leg, his gut is grumbling and his farts are a long way from the scent of orange blossom. The sounds and smells of old men: Such things had been repugnant to him when he was young and he feels no differently now. He heaves himself over onto his other side, his stomach collapsing like a small landslip next to him.

Image

Machiavelli comes to the Borgias as a diplomatic envoy, bathing in the glow of Cesares ambitions and ruses. After meeting him, Machiavelli writes back to his superiors in Florence: This lord is truly splendid and magnificent. Indeed, he arrives in one place before it is known that he left another. Not surprisingly, Machiavellis Florentine handlers find his swooning less than helpful. Less opinion,  they demand. More facts.
These stories of ordinary women feel inclusive at first but soon become part of a political argument. The masses are portrayed as a movement that underpins Johnson Sirleafs candidacy. Its because the outdoor kitchen is so hot and the market so poor and the fields so hard, Cooper suggests, that Johnson Sirleaf decided to get into politics. Johnson Sirleafs own evolving ambition is treated either as incidental, or as an inevitable reaction to the events around her. It is, of course, neither.

The great men of history are typically presented as determined individuals rather than team players, and Cooper treats Johnson Sirleaf no differently, telling the story of Liberias momentary and ultimately unsuccessful push against female genital mutilation as if it originated with the presidents overwhelming humanitarian impulse. Theres no mention of another strong Liberian woman, a journalist named Mae Azango, whose investigative work on the issue lit up the country, pushing her and her daughter into hiding. A few months before Johnson Sirleaf declared a national day for Intensifying Efforts for Elimination of Female Genital Cutting Azango was given the prestigious International Press Freedom award. Journalists in Liberia say without Azangos work, its unlikely the government would have made public statements against cutting.

Cooper seems to take Johnson Sirleafs point of view as a structural blueprint, supplementing the presidents memoir with interviews she conducted with her. Even where the historical action of the narrative is happening far away from Johnson Sirleaf, we feel as if were in her head. But this perspective risks making the book complicit in her political project. Writing about Johnson Sirleafs service under the dictator who killed her friends and colleagues, Cooper makes plain the danger that may have forced such early collaboration but paddles quickly past those who took a more jaundiced view and considered her an opportunist. Cooper acknowledges that the appointment of Johnson Sirleafs sons to key financial posts  after a career built against corruption  was tone-deaf, but counters that ending corruption in Liberia would mean starting again from scratch after performing a countywide lobotomy. On Liberias Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recommended barring Johnson Sirleaf from public office for 30 years, Cooper points out that the crimes of other Liberians were often much, much worse.

Liberian politics, like politics anywhere, involves moral compromises and hypocrisy, and theres no doubt Johnson Sirleafs political enemies exploited the commissions findings (or that the commission itself was influenced by politics). But one wishes here, as elsewhere, that Johnson Sirleafs biographer would reckon directly with the presidents responsibility for her more expedient choices, rather than depicting her as a victim of circumstance.

One also yearns for another kind of context in the books last chapters, which cover the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Cooper attributes the unprecedented assistance of the American government solely to Johnson Sirleafs efforts. In Coopers telling, Johnson Sirleaf softened the ground with overtures to her political allies in Washington and sealed the deal with a personal plea to President Barack Obama. Her letter so moved him, Cooper writes, that he announced a response so massive it stunned even his own advisers: 3,000 American troops would build 17 Ebola treatment centers across the country.

The size of the intervention may have owed something to Johnson Sirleafs request, but according to Coopers own Times article about the letter, Obama had named Ebola a national security priority several days before he received the letter. And a week before the letter, the international president of Doctors Without Borders had asked, in an unprecedented request delivered at the United Nations, for a military role in the crisis response.

Theres little joy in auditing history to ensure that balances are paid where credit is due. But theres no harm in widening how we understand political leadership, even in a biography, or interrogating how the people who collectively propel societal change work in concert with one another. In Coopers book, there is only one force  a woman whose sheer willpower overwhelms the odds and wins the day. Such a story may be moving, but its also a myth.

To be fair, it might be a myth we need. Perhaps the corrective to the Great Man approach is not a more collective vision, but more gender equality. Still, one cannot help wishing for both.
 If you disappear in a town or a city, the local police department is responsible for finding you. If you disappear in the wild, all bets are off. When it comes to public land, we dont have federal guidelines dictating who is responsible for recovering missing persons if the initial rescue mission comes up short. Thats why when one 18-year old went missing in the Rio Grande National Forest, he joined scores of others who have disappeared without a trace. [Outside Magazine]

 Youve likely read articles castigating the isolated young man who lives in his parents basement, devotes hours to video games and doesnt contribute to society. But here is a nuanced defense of this young mans decisions. Drawn from personal experience and interviews with multiple gamers and economists, the author of this piece presents a fresh perspective on the trade-offs we make in work and leisure. [1843 Magazine]

 There is an unthinkably detailed plan in place for when Queen Elizabeth dies: Cold War-era alarms will be activated; radios will play prepared lists of somber music; a thousand other contingencies will be considered and enacted. Operation London Bridge, will be set in motion. [The Guardian]

From The New York Times
1. President Trump stood by his wiretapping claim at a news conference with Angela Merkel.

The background: On Thursday, his top spokesman, Sean Spicer, had repeated an unverified claim that Britains spy agency monitored Mr. Trump during the campaign at the behest of President Barack Obama.

The British were furious, but Mr. Trump made clear that he saw no reason to apologize.

During the Obama years, Ms. Merkel, the German leader, had been angered by reports that the U.S. had tapped her phone. Turning to her at the White House on Friday, Mr. Trump said, At least we have something in common, perhaps.
The Justice Department on Friday took the rare step of opposing another federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in court, arguing that the bureaus structure is unconstitutional and should be changed.

But the departments argument, laid out in a brief filed in a lawsuit brought against the consumer agency, stopped short of endorsing the solution urged by the plaintiff in the case: shutting the bureau down entirely.

Giving the president the ability to remove at will the consumer bureaus director  currently Richard Cordray, who was appointed by President Barack Obama  would be a sufficient remedy, Justice Department lawyers wrote in an amicus brief.

The brief, highly anticipated by consumer advocates and financial services companies, opens a window into the Trump administrations view of the consumer bureau. Created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the agency is a frequent target of the wrath of some Republican lawmakers, who would like to see the bureau curtailed or abolished altogether.
Mr. Eitel did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, and Bridgepoint declined to comment on his work and status at the company, citing privacy concerns.

Guidelines from the Office of Government Ethics bar federal employees from engaging in decisions directly affecting a company in which they have any financial interest.

Even former employees without direct financial ties are subject to impartiality rules when they join the government. They are supposed to avoid doing anything that  in the eyes of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts  creates the appearance that they are violating the law or the ethical standards set forth, and are advised to bring any potential conflicts to the agencys ethics officer.

Other industry insiders have also been brought into the agency, including Taylor Hansen, a former lobbyist for the for-profit sectors trade association.

Theres no question that theres a fast-moving revolving door between the Education Department and the industries that it regulates, said Rohit Chopra, former assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a former special adviser to the secretary of education. This is a bipartisan problem.

For-profit higher education has repeatedly been tarnished by scandal. But since the election in November, stocks in the sector have soared  Bridgepoints has climbed more than 40 percent  as President Trumps White House has made clear that it is undertaking a campaign to slash government regulations. Ms. DeVos and other administration officials have indicated that they do not plan to continue President Barack Obamas regulatory crackdown on career-training colleges.

Last week, the Education Department extended the deadline for vocational schools to appeal the agencys application of the gainful-employment rule. That provision has been criticized by the industry as unfairly taking aim at colleges focused on helping the most disadvantaged students.
LONDON  Britain is no stranger to its leading figures moving between journalism and politics. Now, George Osborne, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, is set to be prominent in both spheres at once.

Mr. Osborne, who was long mentioned as a potential successor to David Cameron as prime minister and who is thought to still have ambitions to lead Britain one day, was announced on Friday as the new editor of The Evening Standard, a London weekday newspaper that is among the countrys most read.

The job will be the latest in a series of posts that Mr. Osborne has taken since he was replaced as chancellor last summer. In addition to retaining his seat in Parliament, representing the constituency of Tatton in northwestern England, Mr. Osborne joined the investment firm BlackRock as a part-time adviser this year. That position pays him an annual salary of 650,000 pounds, or about $800,000, and includes stock in the company, in return for 48 days of work a year.

He has also delivered several paid speeches and receives $150,000 in stipend costs and travel expenses as a fellow at the Washington-based McCain Institute, according to his most recent entry in the British Parliaments register of members financial interests.
BADEN BADEN, Germany  Ferdinand Piech, the scion of an automaking dynasty who dominated Volkswagen for two decades, is trying to sell his substantial indirect stake in the company to members of his extended family, which could create uncertainty in the aftermath of the carmakers diesel deception.

Mr. Piech, a former chief executive and supervisory board chairman at Volkswagen, was often a source of discord among the quarrelsome Piech and Porsche clans, which own more than 50 percent of Volkswagens voting shares. His exit might make it easier for them to push through changes needed for Volkswagen to recover from an emissions deception that weighs heavily on the company.

The tight control, through Porsche Automobil Holding, has led to criticism that the family has been too slow to make the changes in management and company culture that are needed to move beyond the scandal. Most of the rest of Volkswagens shares are owned by the German state of Lower Saxony and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, which tend to side with the family.
Accommodate all before going to vote: India

India has suggested Nepal to go for local polls accommodating the aspirations of all sections of society in what appears to be a clear indication that the demands of Madhes-based parties must be addressed through constitution amendment.
MONTREAL  The part of Quebecs government responsible for luring tourists to this city singles out one star attraction in particular.

Food is a Montreal passion, the tourism ministry boasts prominently on its website. The city has the largest number of restaurants per resident in all of North America. Several of them sit reliably atop lists of the continents best.

But when the part of the same government that owns Montreals casino  one of the citys must-see attractions, according to the tourism ministry  decided it needed an attention-getting restaurant, it didnt turn to any of the successful locals. Loto Quebec, which oversees the gambling industry, instead chose Joel Robuchon, one of Frances most celebrated chefs.
My new favorite heirloom white beans are the small, round Italian purgatory beans, fagioli del purgatorio, which have a tender, creamy texture. Purgatory beans have been cultivated in the Lazio region of Italy for centuries, ever since the first ones arrived from the New World. They are eaten year-round, but tradition calls for whole villages to gather on Ash Wednesday and eat the beans communally at long tables.

The custom is to cook purgatory beans quite simply, simmered with a few sage leaves, and eat them plain, with a sprinkling of salt and a generous spoonful of fruity olive oil. Actually, I would say thats the perfect way to eat any good dried beans. From a purists point of view, why would they need anything else?
If you want to shoot fashion in New York, youre probably going to hang out in very trendy spots, the photographer Emilie Regnier said.

If you want to photograph fashion in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, you do the same thing.

In the citys vibrant markets, every day feels like fashion week, Ms. Regnier said. This is the place you go to get your clothes, or to be beautiful, she said.

Ms. Regnier, who lives in Paris, was born in Montreal and grew up in Gabon. This winter, while spending time in Abidjan, where she lived for a year in 2014, she wandered the citys markets. Her target wasnt necessarily fashion; instead, she sought to photograph women with style and attitude.
Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times. In this podcast, the opinion columnist Andrew Rosenthal talks about the news  the good, the bad and the most maddening.

The bad news this week, says Mr. Rosenthal, is the Trump administrations proposed budget, which he calls a recipe for disaster for ordinary Americans.

Identifying some favorite right-wing Christmas presents contained in the proposed budget  including an end to funding for Planned Parenthood and the national endowments for the arts and humanities  Mr. Rosenthal notes that the administration also wants to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency, cut programs that aid working mothers, and slash funding for helping older people find work and for training disadvantaged young people. This, Mr. Rosenthal concludes is is not small government, except for working Americans. For the rich, richer and richest, its a nice, big government."

Identifying the most maddening recent news, Mr. Rosenthal looks to Florida, which plans to expand its Stand Your Ground laws, making it that much easier for people in the Sunshine State to get away with murder.
I moved to Qatar a few years ago, after being invited to study at one of the schools there. Born and raised in Pakistan, I was excited for the experience of living in Doha, although there were a few things I was concerned about. For one, the heat: In August, when I was to arrive, the sun scorches the earth with temperatures well above 100 degrees. I had also heard that in Qatar, my faith might cause problems.

In my country, although religion matters a lot, and Sunnis and Shias sometimes clash with each other because of beliefs, I never experienced any such conflicts. I am a Shia Muslim, while most of my friends from Pakistan are Sunnis. They all know that I am Shia, but being friends matters most, and nobody cares about the rest. In Qatar, where things were different, I tried to be as cautious as possible.

I was fascinated by Doha, with its glittering area around the corniche, the long waterfront promenade, and I very much enjoyed living near several American, British, French and Qatari universities. It is a place that blossoms with a diversity of people from all over the world. I had never experienced anything like it.

There were people from Pakistan as well, and we often got together in somebodys room, cracking jokes in Urdu, discussing politics, comparing life at home with our lives in Doha. There were Pakistanis from Lahore, Islamabad, even Karachi. Some were Shias; everybody knew, but nobody cared.
This poem takes its title from a poem by Lord George Byron, the most notorious of the 19th-century English Romantic poets. Byron wrote his poem  at age 29  to lament his weariness and loss of energy for youthful misbehavior. McCraes poem adapts the poems basic structure to explore a different sort of weariness: His seems to be a song of postelection despair, an exhausted giving up on the possibility of ever escaping the legacy of slavery.
The woodcock, a short, rotund bird with a long beak that can be quite accurately described as cute, is known for its elaborate courtship routine, which begins with a song, continues with an ascent into the air and finishes with a spiraling return back to the ground and perhaps a mate. It is not a rare bird, but it is shy and it is uncommon for the casual bird-watcher to spy one in New York, experts said.

The birds spend the colder months as far south as Florida. During the rest of the year, they are found across the Northeast and into Canada. They migrate early in the spring season, and as falls turns into winter, they are some of the latest birds to migrate back down south.

The late-winter snowstorm, which likely caused masses of the bird to break, or in birding terms fallout, from their migration, seems to have grounded many in New York, at least temporarily. Some may have been planning to stay here already.

Rita McMahon the director of the Wild Bird Fund, a nonprofit organization that treats sick wildlife in New York, said that the group had received about 55 woodcocks after the storm  and that it had treated about 75 during all of 2016. Ms. McMahon said the storm had done more than simply obstruct the birds progress  it had left them starved, unable to find or forage for food in the snow-covered city.

If the ground is frozen, then they cant get bugs or insects, she said. Were seeing a lot of emaciated birds.
The flight was the sort where they assign your seat after you step on a scale  kind of like Weight Watchers, except nobody says: Down 0.6. Good job! Then you are pushed onto the tarmac by a guy with a cattle prod. I made that last part up. What I have noticed with these flights is that the passengers bravado is in inverse proportion to the sturdiness of the plane; our little band was practically break dancing up the planes rickety stairs. Not me, of course. Ive downed an Ed Harris and it takes all my concentration to remember where you put your feet when you walk. I take my assigned seat, Herb sits down behind me and I toss back the last of the vodka.

The pilots, whom we can see in the open cockpit, kick over the noisy engine and the plane starts climbing. Its not a fast climb; it reminds me of my 87-year-old grandmother getting out of the car after a four-hour drive. If the plane spoke Yiddish it would say it was kricking, that it was a struggle to get up because every bone in its body ached.

My Miata has more power than this plane, I tell Herb, over my shoulder.

Then I look across the aisle and notice a woman staring at the propeller.

Its not moving, she says. That isnt right, is it?

Im not very mechanical and with half a milligram of Clonazepam neither is my brain, so my first thought is that shes just a worrier. This is the New York way, anyway: Whatever the other guy says you automatically disregard because what do they know?

Then I realize that if the propeller is not moving the engine is out. But there havent been any scary drops. Ive heard that two-propeller planes can fly on one engine and that even if both engines fail the plane can glide. And were already in what appears to be a normal descent back to the airport.

I am strangely calm. The other passengers seem to be, also. Nobody even speaks. Maybe weve all seen the same movies and nobody wants to be Shelley Winters.

We land smoothly. Later I learn that our group includes a pilot. His name is Bill Hamm, and he has 3,600 hours of flight time as a single-engine pilot in Alaska. He tells me he was not overly concerned during our flight; regulations and design standards dictate that the plane be capable of maintaining flight with one engine, just slower. Professional pilots are trained for this sort of emergency, he says, and ours did their job very well.
Frederic Solis Nathan, the New York City legal officer whose prosecution of the striking teachers union in the late 1960s helped transform its pugnacious president, Albert Shanker, into a national figure by sending him to jail for a month, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 94.

His daughter, Jean Nathan, said the cause was Parkinsons disease.

As the citys first assistant corporation counsel, Mr. Nathan was assigned by Mayor John V. Lindsays administration to enforce the new Public Employees Fair Employment Act, known as the Taylor Law, which prohibited work stoppages by state and municipal employees. It was the first test of the state law, which took effect on Sept. 1, 1967.

In court, union officials at first insisted that what occurred later that month  an effort to press their demands for higher wages and more control over their classrooms  was not a strike but a mass resignation. After 17 days, the longest stoppage in the school systems history, State Supreme Court Justice Emilio Nunez disagreed.

He fined the United Federation of Teachers $150,000 and held Mr. Shanker in contempt of court, sentencing him to 15 days, served over the Christmas holiday, in the Civil Jail in Manhattan.
What both men said was boilerplate. But the dishonesty behind the cliches makes one wish that the ghost of Maureen OHara would rise from the mists and slap them both across the head. Because those sugared words fail to acknowledge the Irish sons and daughters living here now, without legal status, who are terrified by the Trump administration.

They make up a small fraction of the national unauthorized population of 11 million. But these 50,000 or so Irish, like the others, are stranded by the failure of immigration reform, and threatened by the administrations deportation regime. Many have lived here for decades. They have bought homes, built businesses, reared children. They are doing what immigrants here have always done, while the administration puts new effort into hunting them down and removing them.

The fears are real. The Ireland Funds, the very group Mr. Pence praised on Wednesday, pledged $100,000 last week to a coalition of Irish-American centers around the country to give humanitarian and legal assistance to unauthorized Irish immigrants. On Thursday afternoon, Irelands minister for the diaspora and international development, Joe McHugh, visited one of the sites, the Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers, which offers social services, health screenings and other assistance to those it calls the forgotten Irish. Staff members there said anxiety among undocumented Irish is peaking because of Mr. Trump. There is more talk of moving back to Ireland, or to Canada.

They live in fear, said Mr. McHugh.

Fear, of course, is even greater among Latino unauthorized immigrants. Police raids and racial profiling are less a problem for the Irish in the Bronx than for Mexicans in Arizona and California. The Irish are not, as a group, as traumatized and destitute as the Central Americans fleeing to the border, and they are not  yet  seeking sanctuary in churches. They blend in better than the Latinos who are shadowed by immigration agents and the local police.
Attack on migrant boat off Yemen coast 'kills 31'

A number of Somali refugees were killed when their boat was hit in an air strike off the coast of Yemen, the UN says.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, attended a performance on Wednesday of a new Broadway musical, Come From Away. Its based on the true story of a little town in Newfoundland that suddenly became host to thousands of air travelers stranded by 9/11.

The show, written by Canadians, is about country people making room for strangers, including Muslims and gay couples. It has won enthusiastic reviews for its skillful evocation of Canadian goodness  a portrait of heroic hospitality under extraordinary pressure, said Ben Brantley in The Times.

Mr. Trudeau spoke briefly onstage before the performance. When you go through difficult times, thats when you turn and you lean on your friends, he said. Drawing together through dark times is what is very best about the human spirit.
Worse, the Ryan health care plan punishes the very people Trump and Bannon had vowed to help. It would raise premiums by as much as 25 percent on people between 50 and 64, one core of the Trump voter base. It would completely hammer working-class voters whose incomes put them just above the Medicaid threshold.

The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help expand opportunity for the working class and almost everything to serve defense contractors and the national security state.

Why is Bannonism being abandoned? One possibility is that there just arent enough Trumpians in the world to staff an administration, so Trump and Bannon have filled their apparatus with old guard Republicans who continue to go about their jobs in old guard pseudo-libertarian ways.

The second possibility, raised by Rich Lowry in Politico, is that the Republican sweep of 2016 was won on separate tracks. Trump won on populism, but congressional Republicans won on the standard cut-government script. The congressional Republicans are better prepared, and so their plans are crowding out anything Bannon might have contemplated.

The third possibility is that Donald Trump doesnt really care about domestic policy; he mostly cares about testosterone.

He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.

But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.
To the Editor:

Re Its Legal for 14-Year-Olds to Marry. Cuomo Disapproves (news article, March 14): Some Americans may be astonished that child marriage still takes place in the United States, but we should not be. Cultural and religious norms that block access of girls and women to education and participation in public life, confining them to traditional roles, are deeply rooted and resistant to change.

The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women explicitly prohibits child marriage and calls for legislation setting a minimum marriage age, as the State of New York is now undertaking. The United States Senate has not ratified the convention, even though President Jimmy Carter signed the treaty and sent it over for ratification in 1980.

New York, and every other state, should prohibit child marriage through legislation, and the Senate should do its part by ratifying the convention, joining the 187 other countries that have adopted the treaty in a global effort to end the scourge of child marriage. Lets pursue practices that advance women and girls rights. Their health and welfare are at stake.

MARY ANN PETERS, ATLANTA

The writer is chief executive of the Carter Center.
AUSTIN, Tex.  I saw my first loose gun in 2014 here in Austin. I was headed to lunch with a friend at a homey Mexican place near the University of Texas campus, where I was a graduate student. As we pulled into a parking spot on the side of the road, I noticed a white man  tall, with dirty yellow hair and crumpled white clothes  on the sidewalk. Seconds later, he had pulled out a pistol and was waving it at someone outside the restaurant. My friend ducked. I backed out, spun the car around, and drove off.

Before this, Austin had begun to feel hostile for another reason: my skin color. (I am a United States citizen of Indian origin; I moved to the United States for college in 2001.) When I first arrived in Austin in 2012, from Bangalore, I was well apprised of its mythos of liberalism and weirdness.

But what I experienced in my first week there was neither liberal nor weird: A landlady ignored my queries. A post had gone up on Craigslist describing a perfect small place in the pretty, largely white, downtown neighborhood of Clarksville; I responded seconds after it appeared. I got no reply, not even when I tried a day later.

I understood. This is the life of an Indian on Craigslist. But now I had a white girlfriend. Suspecting racism, she decided to apply. She got a response immediately.
The Republican health bill doesnt have many outside supporters. Groups representing doctors, nurses, hospitals, retirees, patients of various diseases and even insurers have all criticized it. Some of the only outside praise has come from the chief executive of Anthem, the countrys second largest insurer.

And therein lies another tale of the Trump administrations conflicts of interest.

It turns out that one of the bills few high-profile fans may not even support it on the merits. Instead, Anthem appears to be providing political cover to the administration at the same time that company officials are lobbying the administration for a favorable decision on another matter. Its pretty brazen.

Here are the details: Anthem, which is based in Indiana, is already the largest insurer in California, Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere. Two years ago, its chief executive, Joseph Swedish, made a big bet. He decided to put public pressure on Cigna, another major insurer, to accept a merger. Eventually, Swedish succeeded, and Anthem agreed to pay $48 billion to buy its rival.

But the Obama administrations Justice Department filed suit against the merger, arguing that it would force consumers to pay higher prices. Last month, a federal judge agreed and blocked the merger. Cigna isnt happy with the deal anymore either and has filed a $14 billion lawsuit against Anthem. None of it makes Swedish look good.
If President Trump really feels the need to cut foreign aid, he should take a close look at the Pentagons shadow security assistance programs  programs that are buried deep in the departments budget, where they are largely shielded from scrutiny by the news media, the public and most members of Congress.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon has created dozens of new arms and training programs within its own budget, at a cost of about $10 billion per year, in support of activities in more than 130 countries, according to the Security Assistance Monitor. This is small change by Pentagon standards, but more than three times the value of the domestic programs that are on the White Houses hit list, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and funding for Planned Parenthood, Legal Services, AmeriCorps and the Export-Import Bank.

This is more than an issue of simple budget trade-offs. The truth is, Pentagon arms and training programs often do more harm than good. Over $500 million has gone to programs aimed at arming and training Syrian rebels that have essentially collapsed, with the unintended consequence of having United States-supplied arms fall into the hands of the Islamic State via the black market. In Yemen, $500 million in American weapons went missing in the middle of that countrys civil war and are believed to now be in the hands of either Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or the Houthi rebels.
But civilization is not a people. Its not a race. Its a process. A refinement from tribal hatreds and primitive fears to common bonds. Certainly, much of American civilization was built on the backs of human property. The war fought over that original sin, and the hundred years of struggle afterward to grant full citizenship to the formerly enslaved, is the process  that upward arc that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about.

Count me as a proud Celt, and a Europhile, a lover of everything from tiny French villages to the Gothic vastness of a thousand-year-old cathedral to the ruins of Greek theaters on Sicilian slopes. Of course, that same Europe gave us religious wars that killed three million in the 16th century, and up to eight million in the 17th. And what savagery from any other civilization can match the Holocaust, the slaughter of six million Jews by the blue-eyed and the blond?

The Irish were once hailed for saving civilization, after monks and scribes maintained the rich record of Greek, Latin and Christian writers that was being destroyed elsewhere in Europe. By the time theyd clustered, poor and unwanted on American shores, a prominent writer, George C. Foster, said their New York community was the very rotting skeleton of city civilization.

The Mexicans and refugees from Muslim countries targeted by Trump commit fewer crimes than Americans born here, and certainly fewer as a percentage than the immigrant Irish did. Imagine what Sean Hannity would say if Mexicans burned down much of New York City, as the Irish did in 1863, in what may have been the bloodiest riot in American history.

Those four days of carnage, spurred in part by the disproportionate number of Irish drafted to fight in the Civil War, was a spasm of racial hatred and mob violence at its worse. Blacks were hanged. Pro-Union Irish who tried to stop the rioters were pummeled. The New York Times used a Gatling gun to defend its headquarters.

This horrid episode was followed, just a few years later, by the Fenian Brotherhood raids into what was known as British North America. Their song was a call to arms:

And well go and capture Canada,

For weve nothing else to do.

No ethnic group, and very few religions, are immune from violent madness. The Sunni versus Shiite savagery in so much of the world today was preceded by all the bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics in Europe.

We raise a glass on the saints holiday for that part of civilization saved by the Irish, that part of civilization enriched by the Irish and that part of the Irish story that shows a path of redemption after no small amount of crimes.
It was spring when a gray-eyed Irishman named Richard Michael Cawley first left Ireland.

Fleeing poverty and violence, he got on a steamship in 1923, at age 20, and set off for New York. He began his new life in the United States amid a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment: Congress had just passed a restrictive immigration law, and there were fears that some Irish immigrants could be radical.

You might not care about Mr. Cawley at all except that his grandson, his namesake, is Michael Richard Pence, the vice president of the United States.

On todays episode:

 As a candidate, Donald J. Trump called for a total Muslim ban, and the courts wont let him forget it now that hes the president. Adam Liptak, The New York Timess Supreme Court reporter, explains why Mr. Trumps words as a candidate are being used in courts to block his actions on immigration.
This week letters to our inbox came in at a leisurely clip. Perhaps our East Coast readers were busy shoveling their driveways and sidewalks  not that were complaining. But it left this weeks mailbag short and sweet. If you missed them, the public editors column addressed two issues this week.

A number of readers took issue with the headline of a story on Judge Neil Gorsuchs ties to the billionaire, Philip Anschutz. The headline? Neil Gorsuch Has Web of Ties to Secretive Billionaire.

When I saw the headline, I naturally expected some sort of scandalous expose. After reading the article, its apparent that the headline is way over the skis of the information reported in the article. There was no there, there. For the headline to use the phrasing web of ties and secretive with reference to Judge Gorsuch clearly suggests that the article will reveal evidence of something nefarious going on. But I sure didnt discern that to be the case. As a practicing lawyer, he represented an important client. (Thats what we do.) The client liked his work and was inspired to write letters supporting the lawyer for a prospective judgeship. Likewise, that strikes me as being in the natural order of things. The lawyer and some other guys (one of whom worked with the former client) went in together to buy a fishing retreat. Thats a bad thing? And Judge Gorsuch seems to have made a conscientious effort to recuse himself from cases involving that former client. The headline represents powerful innuendo, but its not warranted by the reporting in the article. The reporters obviously spent a lot of time on this piece, but my takeaway is that they had to stretch to try to come up with something to justify their investigative efforts, namely, they (and your editors) felt compelled to hint that theres a secretive web (did someone mention spiders?) of something untoward going on. Wilson Neely, New York, N.Y.

Headline writers, pressed for time, can be the bane of careful reporters: Is that what our article implies? Why not a headline that just says, Court Nominee Has Web of Ties To Philip F. Anschutz? Im secretive. Arent you? In fact isnt everyone? Sorry to pick nits. It is a terrific article. The NYT is a terrific newspaper. Please dont give the conservatives any more ammo to bash it as a liberal rag. Tom Siebert, Camarillo, Calif.

The public editors take: I agree with the readers that the headline on the Gorsuch piece suggests far more than the story delivers. The article itself was a well-reported look into a curious aspect of the judges Colorado practice, one that has remained out of sight to most readers. But the piece was careful in characterizing Gorsuchs relationship to a local billionaire, at one point saying its not clear how closely the two know each other. A headline that referred to a secretive billionaire and a web of ties prepared readers for a story they werent going to get.

Inflation F.A.Q. Card 1 of 5 What is inflation? Inflation is a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys. What causes inflation? It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems. Is inflation bad? It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth. How does inflation affect the poor? Inflation can be especially hard to shoulder for poor households because they spend a bigger chunk of their budgets on necessities like food, housing and gas. Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.









An illustration accompanying a story arguing that President Trump ought to turn to professional economists for advice drew the ire of one reader.

We asked Amanda Cox, the editor of The Upshot, for her take.

I read the gentleman in the back as a person of color. And only 12 percent of full professors of economics are women. Of course, [Janet] Yellen would have been a fine choice too. (I see [Ben] Bernanke in the gentleman on the left, though Im not certain that was the illustrators goal.)

The public editors take: I too thought one of the people was non-white, but theres no doubting that theyre all male. If you have to be a full professor to be a candidate for inclusion in an illustration of economists, then I guess this accurately depicts reality. But with a woman as the countrys top economist, surely having a woman among the three could at least be taken under consideration.

Thats all for this week, folks. On to the next.
Maligned though New Yorks rental market may be, a fortunate few do manage to stumble onto the ideal apartment early and easily. Such was the case with Sacha Moore, who scored a charming one-bedroom with a working fireplace in Brooklyn Heights (with the help of her sister) when she and her husband moved back to the city from New Orleans in 2003.

At 350 square feet, however, it seemed an unlikely candidate for the long haul. But 14 years, two children, two cats and a bunny later, Ms. Moore is still in her beloved Middagh Street walk-up.

As soon as I moved to this neighborhood, I was like, I love it  good job, sister! Ms. Moore said. She was delighted by its prettiness, how much everyone who lived there seemed to like it and how it felt both idyllic and down-to-earth, a place of not only stately houses but long-term renters.

Her husband attended law school and she got a masters in social work. He went to work for Brooklyn Defender Services. She prepared court reports. Though small, the apartment felt suitable for two. The birth of their daughter in 2008, however, made them reconsider. (The couple separated three years ago and are now divorced.)
Britain's GCHQ agency denies wiretapping Donald Trump

Britain's communications intelligence agency GCHQ has issued a statement denying it wiretapped Donald Trump during the US presidential campaign.
NeighborhoodScout, a paid service starting at $79 a month, goes deeper. Subscribers can evaluate various locations, even so-called micro-neighborhoods  there are 13,631 of them within a 50-mile radius of Midtown, according to the company  using hundreds of search criteria, including real estate data, demographics, crime rates and schools.

For many city residents, the decision to leave is difficult, and often fraught with a whole new set of compromises. You may be happily trading an overcrowded co-op for a commodious colonial, but you may have less time to enjoy it because of the long train ride home from work. And youre responsible for maintaining it, rather than relying on a super. Forget, too, about hailing a cab to get you around town.

We knew we had to give up something somewhere, said Alexandra White, 34, a grant writer, who recently moved to Bedford, N.Y., in Westchester, from the Upper West Side with her husband, Nulty White, 32, who specializes in corporate branding. While she works from home, his commute to the city now takes roughly an hour and 45 minutes each way. He doesnt mind, Ms. White said. He says its like coming home to vacation every day.

Once you have made up your mind to leave the city, for whatever reason, how then should you begin the journey to suburbia?

First, think about why are you leaving, said Alison Bernstein, the founder of Suburban Jungle, which requires clients to fill out a questionnaire before they begin their search. Are you looking for more space? A better school system? How do you want to raise your kids? How far are you willing to commute? You need to take inventory of your family life.

Another important consideration: where your extended family and close friends reside. Are they going to be part of your life? This can anchor you to an area, Ms. Bernstein said.
So: Montclair, a town long popular with Times friends and colleagues. We bought a Victorian, not a colonial, to avoid, at least in part, completely becoming my parents. It has a lovely if not particularly large yard, which we reseeded last fall, and which we plan on mowing ourselves. I am a little embarrassed to admit how easy the readjustment to a suburban idyll has been.

I love having a driveway rather than endlessly circling the block for a parking spot. I love hearing the sound of my kids feet creaking on our steps rather than the movements of strangers in surrounding apartments. Of course I love the expansive parks and lovely library my high property taxes pay for. I was flooded with warmth the other day, when my son saw some boys he knew kicking a ball in an adjacent yard, ran outside and jumped the fence to join them.

I do miss having a trash chute. And there is no replacement for the rich ethnic tapestry of Brooklyns Atlantic Avenue; the sounds and smells of Coney Island; the awesome playgrounds along the Dumbo waterfront. (My son would add street-cart hot dogs.)

And I did cringe when my brother-in-law, who raised his children in quintessentially suburban Short Hills, N.J., referred to my daughter as a Jersey Girl. When people ask where were from and the children answer New Jersey, I find myself correcting them: Montclair.

Maybe Im just kidding myself, but I see Montclair as a city persons suburb. It is filled with some 85 restaurants, ethnic and cheffy and twee. Fast-food chains are banned, and the Saturday farmers market goes year-round. We have an art museum (where my daughter went to digital photography and green-screen camp) and a film festival (through which my husband teaches improv). There are no cul-de-sacs or cookie-cutter developments; Montclair became a township in 1868, so our hundred-year-old home is in good company.

Nearly everyone we meet, starting with that real estate broker, seems to have moved here from Brooklyn. At Rosh Hashana services we reconnected with a family we faintly recognized from Tot Shabbat singalongs in Park Slope circa 2010. The guy who ran Music for Aardvarks? His wife is on the PTA with my husband.

With 38,000 people, Montclair is about half the size of Newton, where my parents still live, but bigger than most suburbs. Its also, famously, more racially diverse: 23 percent of the residents are black, 9 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian, 59 percent white.
Recreational cannabis may be legal in California, but buying the actual stuff still makes Scott Campbell, a celebrity tattoo artist and fine artist, feel like a class-cutting teenage stoner.

You go in to buy weed, and its like visiting your parole officer, said Mr. Campbell, who lives in Los Angeles. You get buzzed through three metal gates. Inside, cannabis products are often packaged with loopy Deadhead-style graphics and goofy dorm-humor strain names like Gorilla Glue and Purple Urkle.

Mr. Campbell hopes to change that with Beboe, an upscale line of cannabis vaporizers and edible pastilles that he founded with Clement Kwan, a former fashion executive, that caters to design-savvy professionals who value premium goods manufactured with an artisanal sensibility.

Beboe, which is starting to be embraced by the Hollywood A-list as the Hermes of marijuana, was unveiled at a lavish dinner party on Thursday in West Hollywood, where the likes of Orlando Bloom, Sharon Stone and Justin Theroux attended. You know where you would go to a dinner and bring a fancy bottle of wine? Mr. Campbell said. Thats what we want, dinner-party culture.
A day after federal officials indicted four men  two of whom were Russian intelligence agents  on charges they hacked into the internet company Yahoo and breached 500 million customer accounts, a portrait emerged of one of the suspects.

Image Dmitry Dokuchaev is one of the two F.S.B. officers charged with cyber offenses in the Yahoo case. Credit... FBI

Dmitry A. Dokuchaev, a Russian intelligence officer who was one of the two agents who allegedly directed the Yahoo attack, was once known by the hacker nickname Forb and had specialized in purloining credit card numbers, writes Andrew E. Kramer, a Moscow correspondent for The New York Times.
For 20 minutes or so after settling into your seat at the 59E59 Theaters to see White Guy on the Bus, you may have the uncomfortable feeling that your ticket has bought you an annoying lecture about race by, well, a white guy and his family.

You neednt worry. The opening scene is a deliberately moralistic prelude that soon opens into a riveting, thought-provoking piece of theater.

The play, by Bruce Graham, is indeed about race, and specifically about the dynamic between low-income blacks and economically comfortable whites. But its not headed in the direction that the opening moments suggest.

The title character, expertly played by the reliable actor Robert Cuccioli, is Ray, a financial consultant whose job, as he explains, is to make rich people richer. On one-half of the stage we see Ray in his blissful domestic bubble, which includes his wife, Roz (Susan McKey), who teaches in a tough school in Philadelphia where the faculty has a betting pool on how often students will call her white bitch in a given week.
This opening is a little like being buttonholed by a guy at a party before youve even had a drink, but his line of chat is so persuasive that eventually you forget about the drink, the party and pretty much everything except the world hes creating with his words.

Mr. Lepage treats us to a brief survey of the buildings other inhabitants and a more detailed look at his own family  a taxi-driver father, a homemaker mother and three siblings, as well as a grandmother succumbing to dementia. (These sections may owe a debt to Life: A Users Manual, the inventive novel by the French writer Georges Perec that also anatomizes an apartment complex.)

The revolving set reveals interior and exterior views of the building. Sometimes it also shows Mr. Lepages current apartment and once the counter of a poutine-slinging greasy spoon, which appears for no reason except to delight. And to make you crave poutine.

The play, performed in English and French with occasional supertitles, has its excessively tangential moments and some indulgent ones, too. Mr. Lepage has never been an especially modest artist. Hes the guy who recently gave BAM a nearly nine-hour meditation on the human voice and spent $16 million creating a spectacular and largely disliked Ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera.
After the Controversy, Opportunity

Tara Rubin (casting director) After Jonathan Pryce, who was absolutely brilliant in the role, there was never another Caucasian person who played the part in this country. We knew that the Asian-American acting community had an incredibly good point, and it was the beginning of a huge shift in the way we think about casting. And I cant help but wonder if the increased opportunity has helped increase the number of Asian-American actors who enter the field.

Manu Narayan (actor in second national tour) With all the trouble they had had  and rightfully so  casting Jonathan Pryce, the total turnaround they then did to make sure Asians were cast in the roles going forward is a testament to Cameron Mackintosh. It doesnt negate what happened, but a lot of people wouldnt have seen that error. In 1995, I had gone to New York for a wedding, and in Backstage I saw an open call for Chrises and Johns, so I went and stood in line and danced on the Broadway stage. I was cast in the ensemble for the national tour and stayed for four years.

Raul Aranas (actor in multiple productions) I can safely say Ive done over 2,000 performances as the Engineer  I did it for the first national tour, and then they moved me to Broadway, and then Cameron offered me London, and then I pinch-hit on Broadway and did a few venues that were not as large. And after this, I did The King and I; I did Pacific Overtures; I did Flower Drum Song; and I did Oliver. Miss Saigon enabled me to save enough money to have a nest egg, start a family and find a home, and now Im retired  another thing Miss Saigon enabled me to do is have a great pension.

Margaret Ann Gates (actress in multiple productions) I heard that they were looking for actual Asians to be in the show  not people who were face-painting, and I went into the ensemble a month or two after graduating from college. Then they offered me the role of Ellen (an American woman who marries a returning G.I.) in 1998. I was the first Asian to hold the role, and when I started, people were like, Thats not right! Ellens supposed to be white!, which of course is ridiculous  just because somebody is American doesnt mean she has to be white.



Ethan Thoi (actor in Australian production) I couldnt believe there was a musical about Vietnam, where I was born. I was born in 1973, and my mom had some involvement with a Western guy at that time  her pregnancy was not accepted, and she had to give me away. In 2007, when the show came to Sydney, I was lucky to be in the ensemble. I did the whole national tour (in Australia)  about 14 months  and every night I was crying at the part where she sings, Id give my life for you, and crying at the part where the refugees are climbing up the walls, because I was also a refugee, from Vietnam to Australia.


Forte dei Marmi is a tale of three seaside resort towns. You have Miami Beach, home to this pale, airy and nicely tailored restaurant that opened in late 2016. Then there is its name, which comes from a popular Tuscan beach town. Finally, there is Nerano, down on the Amalfi Coast, where the chef, Antonio Mellino, has had a restaurant since 1983. It all adds up to food kissed by a sea breeze, always a good idea in a sun-drenched location.

At the Miami Beach spot, an indoor-outdoor affair, the Italian accent dresses local, and often organic, ingredients like stone crabs by tossing the sweet crustaceans with Sicilian tomatoes and chile oil over a bundle of homemade tagliolini.

I was all set to import most of my ingredients, Mr. Mellino said. But Im finding most of what I need right here. Theres great seafood  people in Miami love sea things  and there are farms that are growing just for us.
Rates

Doubles from $120.

Basics

Maison Vy, a stark-white, colonial-style hotel, is from Trinh Diem Vy, the doyenne of food in Hoi An, a charming Unesco World Heritage town in central Vietnam. Ms. Vy (pronounced Vee) runs four of the most popular restaurants in the town, and Maison Vy is her first hotel venture. She opened the 35-room, multilevel property in October 2015, providing a tasteful and contemporary place to sleep in an otherwise Old World city with ancient pagodas and colorful lanterns floating in the Thu Bon River. In May, Maison Vy began offering a complimentary high-tea buffet in the lobby-area restaurant where calming shades of blue are accented against paisley-patterned floor tiles. Elsewhere, black and white checkered floors line an open-air central corridor, while bamboo and wrought-iron light fixtures illuminate the property.

Image Black and white checkered floors line an open-air central corridor.

Location

Da Nang International Airport is about an hour away, and the hotel is a 10-minute walk from the pedestrian streets of Hoi Ans Old Town.

The Room

After requesting a room with an outdoor shower, I was brought a mere 10 steps from the lobby to a ground-level deluxe room with a bathing area that seemed ripe for prying eyes because of its proximity to the street. I decided to forgo washing in nature for a third-floor room facing the pool. This one brought the outdoors in with a vase of fresh palm leaves and tropical flora wall art over the queen bed that faced a spacious balcony with two navy blue Adirondack chairs. There was a linen lounge sofa cater-cornered next to the standing closet, which hid a long mirror (a rare Southeast-Asia find) and two large umbrellas. A mini bar offered free water bottles and traditional Vietnamese snacks like dried ginger, peanuts and coconut, and, for a surcharge, soft drinks and beer. The bed had down pillows (another rare Southeast Asia find), while a flat-screen TV sat on a dark-wooden credenza. All rooms have air conditioning and leaf-shaped rattan ceiling fans.
As long as the guy didnt break any laws and his accountants figured out the tax code better than other people, I dont have an issue with it. As long as hes not breaking any I.R.S. rules or any laws, then God bless him.

Until we have full returns, I dont think that it really matters what we can glean from two pages.  I think we have a lot of other problems with the Trump administration rather than just seeing his taxes, but it would be nice to see his taxes.

Im more concerned about political issues.

Jason Sinclair, 43, oil and gas contractor

From: Grand Junction, Colo.

Voted for: Jill Stein

His tax bracket: 25 percent

His thoughts: I do not care about his tax returns. Im more concerned about political issues. Mr. Trumps tax returns are not a political issue. The tax laws are a political issue and need to be the focus in Washington and the media.

I feel President Trump did what every business owner does: have a strategy to pay as little in taxes as possible. No matter the socioeconomic status of an American, we do not like to pay into the system anymore than necessary.
Cabinet approves Electricity Regulatory Commission Bill

The proposed Nepal Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has moved a step closer to reality with the Cabinet approving the Electricity Regulatory Commission Bill 2017 on Thursday.
It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the little-known story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa.

But its not true.

Historians say the idea of Irish slaves is based on a misreading of history and that the distortion is often politically motivated. Far-right memes have taken off online and are used as racist barbs against African-Americans. The Irish were slaves, too, the memes often say. We got over it, so why cant you?

A small group of Irish and American scholars has spent years pushing back on the false history. In 2016, 82 Irish scholars and writers signed an open letter denouncing the Irish slave myth and asking publications to stop mentioning it. Some complied, removing or revising articles that referenced the false claims, but the letters impact was limited.

Image A meme made from the 1908 Barbados photograph uses several false claims about Irish-American history to criticize African-Americans.

Fact vs. Fiction

The Irish slave narrative is based on the misinterpretation of the history of indentured servitude, which is how many poor Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean in the early colonial period, historians said.
After the accusations were made public this week, Mr. Shorteys colleagues in the Legislature moved swiftly, passing a resolution on Wednesday condemning his alleged disorderly behavior and stripping him of nearly all his power and authority in the State Senate. He is allowed to keep his $38,000 salary, but the resolution allows the senators to expel him in the future. Numerous lawmakers, including Gov. Mary Fallin, have called on him to resign.

On Thursday, Mr. Shortey, 35, turned himself in to the authorities and was charged with three felonies, including engaging in child prostitution. He was released a short time later on a $100,000 bond.

He told reporters outside the jail after being charged that he would have a comment soon. But on Friday afternoon, he still had not commented, and he did not respond to email messages or telephone calls to multiple numbers associated with him. An operator at the state legislature building said no one was in his office, and it could not be determined whether he had a defense lawyer.

It has been a staggering rise and fall for Mr. Shortey, who was 28, unemployed and living on his wifes savings when he first ran for office in 2010, winning as an underdog. Representing an urban area in southern Oklahoma City, he depended on volunteers from his Baptist church for campaign help and made the centerpiece of his platform a promise to protect families.
In recent days, Mr. Ryan has blitzed the news media, including several Trump-leaning outlets often hostile to the speaker, to make the case for the bill more forcefully than the president has seemed interested in doing himself.

But Mr. Ryan has made clear that he alone does not bear the weight of the present challenge.

Its not my bill, he told CNN, noting that the White House had helped Congress draft it. Its our bill. As if for emphasis, he also noted that he talks to the president almost every day.

For the president and the speaker, passage of the bill is about more than the health care debate; it is a matter of demonstrating that major legislation  with the weight of the White House behind it  can sweep through a Republican Congress.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are already confronting concerns that a stumble on the first major agenda item would imperil future efforts on tax reform and a border wall.

The legislative window closes a lot sooner than people imagine, said Peter Wehner, a former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush, who has known Mr. Ryan for two decades. Its open the first year, and you better get things done. If you win, that builds on itself. And if you lose, that builds on itself.

In an effort to appease conservatives, the White House is warming to a shortening of the Medicaid phaseout period in the current bill, among other changes, aiming to move the bill through the House and daring moderate Senate Republicans to stand in its way. Soon, Mr. Trump could take to the road himself to pressure potentially reluctant members in their states, according to a person briefed on the discussions.
WASHINGTON  Facing criticism over proposed spending cuts in arts, education and antipoverty efforts, President Trumps budget director repeatedly argued Thursday that at-risk programs neither help nor work.

I cant go to the autoworker in Ohio and say please give me some of your money so that I can do this program over here someplace else that really isnt helping anybody, Mick Mulvaney said on MSNBC.

Later that day, Mr. Mulvaney reiterated this point in a news briefing, adding that effectively spending the tax dollars of the coal miner in West Virginia or the single mom in Detroit is as compassionate as you can get.

Heres an assessment of his claims.

Mulvaney suggested that Meals on Wheels is ineffective.

We cant spend money on programs just because they sound good. And great, Meals on Wheels sounds great. Again, thats a state decision to fund that particular portion, to take the federal money and give it to the states, and say look, we want to give you money for programs that dont work. I cant defend that anymore. We cannot defend that anymore.

False. Meals on Wheels helps 2.4 million people each year, including 500,000 veterans and 226,000 older citizens in the three states Mr. Mulvaney specified. And a body of research shows that it does work.
WASHINGTON  President Trump and conservative lawmakers in the House agreed Friday to significant changes to Medicaid that could impose work requirements on able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries in some states and limit federal funds for the program, as Republican leaders tried to rally balking lawmakers behind legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

I want everyone to know, Im 100 percent behind this, Mr. Trump said at the White House, where he met with House members in the conservative Republican Study Committee. At a news conference hours later, the president predicted, Its going to be passed, I believe  I think substantially and pretty quickly.

On Capitol Hill, the outlook was far less clear. The House is tentatively scheduled to vote Thursday to repeal President Barack Obamas signature domestic achievement, exactly seven years after Mr. Obama signed it into law. As some lawmakers came out for the measure, some others  in the House and Senate  were stepping forward to oppose it.

Fundamentally, I dont believe this proposal provides an adequate market-based option for insurance access, nor does it address out-of-control costs, Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, said in a statement on Friday. Further, I am confident the proposal would harm hospitals across my district.
Turnout in the 2016 presidential election, initially characterized as low, actually exceeded that of the 2012 race in which President Barack Obama won re-election. The candidates devoted virtually all their time and money to 14 battleground states, regarding the vote in the rest of the country as a foregone conclusion. Elections to the House of Representatives were the least competitive since political junkies began rating them in 1984. And unsurprisingly, states that made it easier to register and vote usually experienced significantly higher turnout than states that did not.

Those findings, and a raft of others, are in the latest edition of America Goes to the Polls, a distillation of election statistics compiled every two years by Nonprofit VOTE and the United States Elections Project, an election-information clearinghouse run by Michael P. McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor.

A few of the highlights:

Voter turnout: 60.2 Percent

The share of the voting-eligible population that cast ballots  voting eligible means all adults who were legally entitled to cast a ballot, regardless of whether they registered  was the third best since 1972, slightly below the 60.7 percent turnout in the 2004 presidential race and slightly better than the 58.6 percent turnout in 2012. (Mr. Obamas 2008 victory holds the crown for largest recent turnout.) Among the four in 10 who did not vote, a Pew Research Center survey suggested that about 25 percent believed their ballot would not change anything, and 15 percent believed the election outcome was in little doubt.

Highest state turnout: 74.8 Percent

Minnesotans exercised the franchise more than any other states residents, followed by voters in Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado and Wisconsin. The five share a common trait: Each allows same-day voter registration. The 15 states that have adopted that policy have consistently had higher turnout rates than most others. One surprise: Although Wisconsin made the top five, its turnout rate actually fell compared with 2012. Professor McDonald said the drop appeared related to changes in the states voting laws  particularly a contentious requirement that voters produce an acceptable ID. The bottom five states? Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and, bringing up the rear, Hawaii.
As a Marine infantry sergeant, James LaPorta once led an intelligence team in Afghanistan. Now, as a private citizen, he is doggedly tracking the moves of an online group that has been secretly compiling and sharing nude photos of hundreds of women in the Marine Corps.

With top generals admitting before Congress that they are unsure how to protect members of the Marine Corps from nameless, faceless social-media predators, Mr. LaPorta is among an unlikely scattering of can-do young veterans who have decided to take that assignment upon themselves.

He and his comrades in online vigilance have been gathering intelligence and making counterstrikes, tracking the members of illicit groups, including Marines United, as they try to hide, and stripping away the anonymity that has allowed the group to thrive. They are also feeding information back to Marine Corps investigators.

The Marines response is to be careful and slow, but the people they are after move very fast, Mr. LaPorta said. If you want to catch them, you have to move at their speed.
BEIJING  Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson signaled on Friday that the Trump administration was prepared to scrap nearly a decade of United States policy toward North Korea in favor of a more aggressive effort to eliminate the countrys nuclear weapons program. Whether that means pre-emptive action, which he warned was on the table, will depend a great deal on how China responds.

North Korea relies on Chinese trade and aid to keep its economy afloat, and China has long been unwilling to withdraw that support. Up to 40 percent of the Norths foreign currency  essential for buying goods abroad  comes from a network of about 600 Chinese companies, according to a recent study by Sayari Analytics, a Washington financial intelligence firm.

Mr. Tillerson went to China on Saturday, a day after saying in Seoul, South Korea, that the United States would not negotiate with North Korea on freezing its nuclear and missile programs. His interactions with his hosts in Beijing, and whether he takes a hard line with China over its support for North Korea, will be closely watched  as will be Chinas response.

A sign of the administrations stance came on Friday as President Trump criticized both North Korea and the Chinese government. North Korea is behaving very badly, he said on Twitter. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!
DHAKA, Bangladesh  The police in Bangladesh said they foiled an apparent bombing attempt at a checkpoint of Bangladeshs elite police force on Saturday, less than a day after an attempted suicide attack outside another police facility.

A young man, suspected to be involved in a militant group, was shot while crossing a Rapid Action Batallion checkpoint, and the police found two bombs in his bag, said Lieutenant Colonel Tuhin Mohammad Masud, a R.A.B. officer in eastern Dhaka.

The Islamic State extremist group said it was responsible for the botched suicide attack on Friday, which brought an apparent end to an extended lull in militant activities.

On Thursday, police made a bloody raid on a hide-out in Chittagong that they said was used by militants affiliated with a branch of Jamaat-ul-Mujahedeen. The branch is widely understood to be affiliated with the Islamic State.
Although tai chi may have its roots in self-defense, in recent years it has gained broad popularity as a therapeutic exercise, promoting physical fitness while reducing stress. Across China and beyond, its practitioners can be seen gathered in parks and other public spaces, moving slowing in unison through prescribed routines.

But that very popularity is adding to its advocates concerns. During the recently concluded session of the National Peoples Congress, a delegate from Henan, Zhang Liyong, stressed the urgency of the matter.

Both South Korea and Japan are competing with us to get tai chi registered, Mr. Zhang told reporters. Especially South Korea. Some people there are claiming tai chi was invented by Koreans. And since South Korea has already registered the Dragon Boat Festival as theirs, we should be alarmed.

Chinas Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the ancient poet Qu Yuan with boat races and a public holiday. When Unesco added South Koreas Gangneung Danoje Festival to its list in 2008, some Chinese objected that it was derived from the Dragon Boat Festival and accused the United Nations of endorsing Koreans appropriation of Chinese culture. The Chinese festival was accepted in 2009.

Recognition confers prestige rather than a monetary prize. But that prestige means a lot to Mr. Yan. So far, he has not heard whether the Chinese government will nominate tai chi, and he says he is getting anxious. The deadline is March 31.
Children among hundreds of Rohingya detained in Myanmar crackdown

Bangladesh Children as young as 10 years old are among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims detained on charges of consorting with insurgents, according to a police document seen by Reuters that sheds new light on Myanmar's security campaign in the country's northwest.
In their lawsuit, 137 former residents had sued for damages of 11 million, about $97,000, per person, and the court awarded damages to half the plaintiffs. About half of them had left on government evacuation orders while the other half had decided to leave on their own. Each case was evaluated individually.

The court weighed whether Tepco and the government had paid adequate damages to the nearly 160,000 people who evacuated from the towns around Fukushima. About 90,000 people have returned or settled in other places, and Tepco has already paid about 7 trillion in compensation.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said that the central government and Tepco should have foreseen the possibility of a tsunami of the magnitude that hit the plant and that they should have done more to protect the plant.

The March 11, 2011, meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, which is on the eastern coast of Japan, occurred when 32-foot waves breached the power stations protective sea walls, flooding buildings and destroying diesel-powered electricity generators that were designed to keep critical systems functioning in a blackout.

Tepco did not deny responsibility in a statement on Friday.

We again apologize from the bottom of our hearts for giving great troubles and concerns to the residents of Fukushima and other people in society by causing the accident of the nuclear power station of our company, Isao Ito, a spokesman, said. Regarding todays judgment given at the Maebashi local court today, we would like to consider how to respond to this after examining the content of the judgment.
Negotiations can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, he said  a step to which the North committed in 1992, and again in subsequent accords, but has always violated. Only then will we be prepared to engage them in talks.

His warning on Friday about new ways to pressure the North was far more specific and martial sounding than during the first stop of his three-country tour, in Tokyo on Thursday. His inconsistency of tone may have been intended to signal a tougher line to the Chinese before he lands in Beijing on Saturday. It could also reflect an effort by Mr. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to issue the right diplomatic signals in a region where American commitment is in doubt.

Almost exactly a year ago, when Donald J. Trump was still a presidential candidate, he threatened in an interview with The New York Times to pull troops back from the Pacific region unless South Korea and Japan paid a greater share of the cost of keeping them there. During Mr. Tillersons stops in South Korea and Japan, there was no public talk of that demand.

On Friday afternoon, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone and peering into North Korean territory in what has become a ritual for American officials making a first visit to the South, Mr. Tillerson explicitly rejected a Chinese proposal to get the North Koreans to freeze their testing in return for the United States and South Korea suspending all annual joint military exercises, which are now underway.

Mr. Tillerson argued that a freeze would essentially enshrine a comprehensive set of capabilities North Korea possesses that already pose too great a threat to the United States and its allies, and he said there would be no negotiation until the North agreed to dismantle its programs.
LONDON  The killer, a former body builder, stalked his frail victims at nature reserves, in one case clambering over a locked gate armed with a net, before he chased them down, trapped them and carried them away, dead or alive.

In what prosecutors are calling Britains first conviction of its kind, Phillip Cullen, 57, was found guilty this week of capturing, killing and possessing specimens of the Large Blue butterfly, the countrys rarest butterfly, admired for its beauty and expressionist blue wings. Mr. Cullen, who had denied the charges, could face a maximum of six months in prison when he is sentenced next month.

It is an offense to capture, kill or possess that butterfly because it is a protected species in the U.K. It is a unique case, the prosecutor Kevin Withey, told a magistrates court in Bristol, in southwest England. There has never been a prosecution in terms of capturing and killing.

The Large Blue (Maculinea arion), first documented in Britain in the 1790s, was declared extinct here in 1979, but can now be found in 33 sites in southwest England thanks to David Simcox, an ecologist who drove his van to Sweden in 1983, collected some eggs and reintroduced them into southwest England.
Calling Turks the future of Europe, Turkeys president on Friday implored his compatriots living on the Continent to have multiple children as an act of revenge against the Wests injustices.

Go live in better neighborhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the best houses, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday in the city of Eskisehir, while campaigning for a referendum that would solidify his power. Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you.

The remarks come at a time of increasingly fraught relations between Europe and Turkey in the wake of the migrant crisis, the concurrent rise of Islamic terrorism and right-wing nationalism in Europe, and a crackdown on civil liberties in Turkey.

Turkish citizens have lived in Europe for decades and have often been the focus of anti-immigrant sentiment. Mr. Erdogan has found that addressing overseas Turks is a convenient way to stir his own citizens nationalism and attack a Europe that has become increasingly hostile to Turkey as his government becomes ever more authoritarian.
ETA, the Basque separatist group, is expected to turn over its remaining weapons next month, the Basque regional leader and a Basque activist said Friday, a development that brought a cautious response by the Spanish government as the organization has not followed through on similar pledges in the past.

The Spanish government, which has called for the unilateral and unconditional dissolution of ETA, made disarmament an essential condition of its willingness to declare that the group had ended its five-decade campaign of terror, but experience led officials in Madrid to take a wait-and-see approach.

ETA needs to disarm and dissolve itself  and that position has not changed, not even by a centimeter, in six years, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, the culture minister and the spokesman for the Spanish government, said at a news conference in Madrid on Friday.

ETA promised to hand over its weapons unconditionally by April 8, according to a report in Le Monde, the French newspaper, that was based on a statement provided by Jean Noel Etcheverry, a Basque separatist and environmentalist militant.
The president tried making a joke about it, turning to Ms. Merkel, who was angered during Mr. Obamas administration by reports that the National Security Agency had tapped her cellphone and those of other leaders. At least we have something in common, perhaps, Mr. Trump said. She made a face that suggested she had no interest in getting involved.

After the news conference, Mr. Spicer echoed Mr. Trumps unapologetic tone. I dont think we regret anything, he told reporters. As the president said, I was just reading off media reports.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Shortly afterward, Fox backed off Mr. Napolitanos claim. Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitanos commentary, the anchor Shepard Smith said on air. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.

Mr. Trumps unremorseful tenor further stunned British officials, who thought they had managed to contain the matter. Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the United States, had raised the matter on Thursday night with Mr. Spicer at a St. Patricks Day reception in Washington. Mark Lyall Grant, the national security adviser to Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, had contacted his American counterpart, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.

On Friday morning, a spokesman for Mrs. May said the White House had backed off the allegation. Weve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored, the spokesman said, on the condition of anonymity in keeping with British protocol. Weve received assurances these allegations wont be repeated.

But White House officials, who also requested anonymity, said Mr. Spicer had offered no regret to the ambassador. He didnt apologize, no way, no how, a senior West Wing official said. The officials said they did not know whether General McMaster had apologized.
CAIRO  The Pharaonic statue that was discovered in a Cairo slum last week, believed to depict Ramses II, one of ancient Egypts best-known rulers, most likely is of a lesser-known pharaoh, the Egyptian authorities said Thursday.

Khaled El-Enany, the Egyptian antiquities minister, said that the royal colossus found on March 7 in Matariya, an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, was probably a statue of Psamtik I.

The colossus bore a strong resemblance to Ramses II, one of the most influential figures of the ancient world, who was celebrated for architectural wonders and military conquests. During his long reign, from 1279 to 1213 B.C., the Egyptian empire extended all the way from Sudan in the south to modern-day Syria in the east.

The assertion on Thursday was based on the hieroglyphic inscription found on the back of the colossus, which bore one of the five names of Psamtik I, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt for about 50 years six centuries after the time of Ramses.
BEIRUT, Lebanon  Saudi Arabia said on Friday that Iranians would be able to participate in this years hajj pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a rare bright spot in relations between the two regional rivals.

No Iranian pilgrims attended the hajj last year because of deepening tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iranian participation in the pilgrimage had become yet another flash point in their sectarian and strategic conflict.

The tensions have risen in recent years as they have supported opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, ruled by a Sunni Muslim monarchy, accuses Iran of weakening Arab states by funding militias. Iran, a revolutionary Shiite state, accuses Saudi Arabia of spreading an intolerant interpretation of Islam that has fed terrorism and endangered minorities.

Relations between the two countries worsened after the 2015 hajj, when a human crush killed more than 2,400 pilgrims, including more than 464 Iranians, according to a count by The Associated Press. Iranian leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Saudi Arabia of having mismanaged the holy sites and called on the worlds Muslims to reconsider Saudi control of them.
JERUSALEM  The Syrian armed forces fired antiaircraft missiles at Israeli warplanes that had struck targets deep in Syria early Friday, in what appeared to be the most serious clash between the two militaries since the start of the Syrian civil war six years ago.

The Syrian Armys General Command asserted that its forces downed one of four Israeli aircraft that conducted operations around the ancient city of Palmyra, and hit another, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported. The Israeli military denied that assertion, saying in a statement that at no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the I.A.F. aircraft compromised, referring to the Israeli Air Force.

Activists opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad ridiculed the Syrian Armys assertion, sharing a post on social media showing the evidence: a photograph of a paper plane, singed at the edges, with crude drawings of a Star of David on its wings.

A few months ago, Syria claimed, falsely, to have downed an Israeli warplane and a drone with surface-to-air missiles during a border clash.
SANA, Yemen  More than 30 Somali migrants, including children, were killed in the Red Sea on Friday when a military helicopter opened fire on their boat, according to Yemeni and United Nations officials.

The boats Yemeni captain was shot in the leg, but piloted the boat toward the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah, where rescue workers were so overwhelmed that they put the dead in coolers normally used for fish, Dawood Fadal, the head of security at the port, said by phone.

Our hospitals did not have room for them so we had to put them in the fish fridges, he said. Can you imagine what that looks like?

The boat was attacked overnight by a Saudi-led military coalition, Yemeni officials said. A spokesman for the coalition did not respond to requests for comment, but Saudi officials have accused Iran of smuggling weapons by sea to Yemens Houthi rebels, who control the territory around the port, and vowed to stop it.
Coalition partners fail to convince Morcha to take part in local polls

The agitating Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha has refused the request of the governing partiesCPN (Maoist Centre), Nepali Congress and the Rastriya Prajatantra Partyto join the local polls even as the coalition expressed its readiness to sort the row over provincial boundaries before holding the state elections.
Rafat and Zoreen Ansari, medical doctors who were born in Pakistan, have spent the last four decades working and raising their three children in a suburb of South Bend, Ind., where they also have earned a reputation as civic leaders.

By their estimation, they have given at least $1 million and thousands of hours of their time to nonprofits focused on children with autism, which afflicts their youngest child, Sonya.

But a year and a half ago the couple and their children, all Muslim, began working on a larger gift in terms of money, impact and risk: Their goal was to fund something that would foster better understanding of religion, including Islam, Judaism and Christianity, with the belief that all religions should be treated with equal respect.

The familys inclination to leave a legacy is not uncommon among people who have grown wealthy. But their focus could land them in the middle of one of the most charged issues of the day.
If older workers have difficulty adjusting, theres a good reason: It goes against the natural order that the subordinate would have several decades on the supervisor. Research shows that older workers are not as responsive to that younger boss, because they feel he or she shouldnt be in that position, said Orlando Richard, an associate professor of management at the University of Texas at Dallas, who recently completed a study on status incongruence.

There are implications for the organization, too. The older workers with younger bosses are less committed to the company, Professor Richard said. Theyre not as engaged in the job. If theyre close to retirement, they may not leave, but they may not work as hard.

Of course, there are plenty of older workers who continue to give the job their all, even though they now report to someone who thinks of Nirvana as an oldies band. The way they see it, though, that younger boss sure doesnt make it easy.

Faye Keller, a public affairs specialist in the health care field in Salt Lake City, was 60 when she got a boss who was half her age. At the beginning, I wasnt too concerned  I was ready to look for his strengths, Ms. Keller said

But then she started being excluded from certain meetings. At those meetings she did attend, Id say something, and my boss would respond yeah, uh-huh, and move on to another topic.

Colleagues closer to her bosss age were invited to hang out in his office. I felt ostracized, said Ms. Keller, who is now 64.

She also felt micromanaged. I would go out of the building to meet with prospective clients, and when I explained that I was trying to develop relationships, he would tell me I could do it over the phone and through email, Ms. Keller said. I dont believe Im old school in my ideas, but I think face to face is essential in building successful relationships, and he didnt value that. The boss stayed; she went.
Dutch election: European relief as mainstream triumphs

European leaders have welcomed the result of the Netherlands election, which saw the anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders fail to become the largest in parliament.
Morang fire yet to be brought under control

The fire that broke out at the Magic Chappal Industry, a slipper factory, at Tanki Sinuwari in Morang district is now 80 percent contained, police said.
From Consortium News



Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

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Former Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, remains undaunted in her belief that the only real and significant change in U.S. politics will come through a third party that can finally break the headlock that the Democrats and Republicans hold on the electoral system.

Stein, who has been running for state and federal office since her unsuccessful run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, has yet to win an election and received about 1.4 million votes (or about 1 percent of the total) in the presidential election of 2016.

I spoke with her on March 10 about what comes next for her and the Green Party, as well as her thoughts on the policies of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Dennis Bernstein: You are here in San Francisco, doing a bunch of things. But you're going to be participating a little bit later in an action in support of Standing Rock and indigenous rights. And I want to ask you for your gut reaction to seeing that almost the first thing that Donald Trump did was go after the indigenous communities, and get those pipelines pumping heavy crude.

Jill Stein: It's a sign of what we're up against: this incredibly authoritarian, neo-fascist, anti-human rights predator, and who has pretended to be a friend of the working people, and who has really been revealed in all of his glory with his billionaire cabinet composed of people who are attacking the very cabinet departments that they are said to be head of. Who is enlarging the military, expediting the pipelines, expediting all sorts of destructive fossil fuel projects, attacking immigrants. It's really reigning down on all sides.

The issue of indigenous rights, and pipelines and Standing Rock, brings so many of these issues together. With incredible courage, and vision, and passion, that so engaged the hearts and minds all across America, that we all saw that we are all Standing Rock. That this is where democracy... our rights to protest, indigenous rights, human rights, and our right to air, and water, and the climate that we can live in. They all converge.

And, it's like the match here that lit the fire is just the passion of our indigenous brothers and sisters who are ready to stand up. Not just for them: they're standing up for us all. And that passion is not going away. They may be evicted for now, but the fight is going on. It's continuing in court. It's continuing in the local struggles against, I guess, what's called the Klamath River Pipeline [Pacific Connector Pipeline], and LNG [liquid natural gas] Pipeline, that's going to go under the Klamath River, and put it at great risk.

The important thing here is that we've been successful in stopping fossil fuel projects over the past two years. That has really put the fear of God into this industry. They are in the process of becoming stranded assets. They're trying to hurry up and get them built before they are no longer financially viable.



Protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 13, 2016

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DB: The price is so low, they can't even sell the stuff.

JS: And so, the important thing here is for us to just... to double down. And to be strengthened, to be encouraged, to get past their propaganda of powerlessness, and to know that we still have the numbers, in spite of the election of Donald Trump, which was an obvious distortion of the system.

But even more than that, it's a system that's become so toxic, so predominated by big money, corporate money, and corporate media, that it's become unhinged. We have an unhinged, toxic political system. Donald Trump represents, really, the breakdown of this bi-partisan system that people have lost faith in.

Polls last year, well, early on in the election, showed 90% of Americans have lost confidence in our political institutions, in the bi-partisan system in Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary. You can't get more explicit than that, 90%.

At the other end, at the very end of the election, it was 80% of the people who described their feelings towards the election as one of disgust. And the American people are ready to move on. Had we... we were like one open debate from totally throwing out the bums, and moving forward to the future we deserve.

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It has long been argued that Congressional representatives and Senators have but one job while serving and that is to get re-elected. I am sure that there are those elected who do not fall into this category, but how else to explain why when running for office they use the "I will fight for you" mantra. It's always a fight -- Democrats and Republicans want to be elected to fight and fight some more.

We've had representatives in the House for 20 or more years and every 2 years for reelection they tell us, "I will fight for you." So either they are piss poor fighters or they are not fighting at all. The same thing in the Senate --- every 6 years, they will fight for us and they drag the fight for decades without winning -- hell, I am not even sure if they've had at least a draw.

Part of the chicanery in the "fight" is to make it look like they are actually doing something concrete. That they are getting ahead of the game and we, the citizens, are getting our money's worth.

When Democrats are in the majority, the idea is to give us more and more benefits geared to make our lives easier and better, while the Republicans will fight to not allow this to happen. Then the roles change when Republicans are the majority (as is the case now), they will fight to repeal what the Democrats have "fought" for and "fight" for us to lower spending and taxes.

And here is the kicker, they pass legislation that on the surface looks good, makes sense, and if properly administered and enforced would probably be good. But this cannot be allowed, otherwise what the heck would there be to fight over?

This essays, deals with the "fight" since soon after WWII -- illegal immigration issue. Mind you they've had several decades in which to figure it out and do something, but instead they have chosen to fight, fight and fight some more.

Let's do a quick review. Soon after the US entered WWII, farms and factories emptied out as men were needed in the military. Factory jobs were mostly filled by women, but the farms needed strong backs, long hours, and heat of the day endurance. The US and Mexico came to an agreement, Mexican farm workers were brought allowing food to continue to flow into American homes. This arrangement was known as the Bracero Program. After the war the arrangement continued as the former farm boys, after being exposed to a different lifestyle didn't want to return to farming, and with the Veteran's educational benefits by the thousands they went to college never to set foot for work at a farm.

Farms found it more convenient and cheaper to not contract the Mexican workers under the Bracero program. So they began hiring workers without contracts and the required temporary visa becoming "illegal immigrants." As early as 1947, President Truman requested Congress to pass laws prohibiting hiring undocumented workers -- but there was no "fight" from either party as their members were receiving substantial campaign donations to ignore the issue.

In 1963, when the Bracero program was officially terminated, Congress passed legislation creating a "temporary agricultural guest worker visa" classified as H-2 visa. There was a "fight" in creating the special guest worker visa, but there was no "fight" to enforce the requirement so it was mostly ignored and the practice to hire undocumented farm workers continued unabated until there were several million such workers among us.

Finally in 1984, President Reagan began the process of urging Congress to enact immigration reform legislation -- and the "fight" was on. But Reagan was a great communicator and persuader so by 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed and Regan signed it into law.

On the surface it seemed that Republican Reagan had won a major battle -- and he had. The act was made up of 3 major clauses: 1. It became illegal to hire undocumented workers (provided fines and possible prison time), 2. It gave temporary amnesty to illegal immigrants who had continually resided in the US for at least 5 years prior to the enactment of the law (also provided a path to permanent residency after 5 years and eventual citizenship after another 5 years), 3. I made some changes to the temporary agricultural workers visa renaming it H-2A which was an improvement over the one issued in 1963.

Democrats liked the legislation as it would provide a few million more potential Democrat Party members, while the right-wing of the Republican Party didn't like the idea. So on the surface the "fight" was on.

Of the 3 clauses on the legislation the only one that worked as written was the second one -- the amnesty -- the other two were ignored by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress --- why? Because neither Democrats nor Republicans will "fight" when political contributions are to be had.

Take California as an example --- agriculture represents $30-billion in annual sales -- undocumented workers put in 60 hours per week without overtime, no benefits, no health insurance, and no one to complain to if mistreated or abused. Complying with the H-2A visa requirements farmers would have to pay a wage equal to that paid to a US legal worker, which would have been around 3 times more than pay to the undocumented. In California there are around 350,000 such workers representing over $200-million in weekly payroll savings.

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How Not to "Broaden the Base"

The GOP, trying to "broadening its base" , is faced with the choice between their fast and furious, gun toting honky base; those poor shlubs they've been cultivating for decades to bulk out their own obvious old money minority constituency, (never mind that they abandon those shlubs anyway, right after each election); and virtually everybody else. They can't have gays and Jews and blacks on their podium; because at the sight of them, their actual largest base, inebriated, gun-toting, white bigots across the land, will walk away, finally feeling betrayed; when the actual betrayal is to their health, their infrastructure, their wilderness, their schools, and their jobs. The GOP will cotton to mega industry in the end because wherever they get their votes, corporations are the source of their financial support.

These would-be champions of everything backward are the people who pay no taxes, hide their money in the Caribbean, ship jobs overseas (Trump certainly has!), send our children to fight illegal wars, have all the abortions they need while denying them to others, crap on the environment, women, Muslims, and in general feel that they themselves are above the law. Those betrayals somehow escape the very loyal, entrenched, poorly educated far Right, and the GOP would like to keep it that way. Consequently, early education will get short shrift in their budget plans.

They decry "creeping Socialism",when Socialism in the US is out of the bag, the barn, and the closet. The only taxes that diminish with the GOP in charge are those of the filthy rich. The question is not which is the Capitalist, as opposed to Socialist party, the question is which party will spend our money wisely? The GOP wants to collect our taxes, and give us nothing in return. I'm OK with the Feds not giving us anything in return. I'm confident the states have all they need to provide for their citizens. And I'm equally OK with hanging on to my Federal Income taxes and giving it to the State instead. Let the Feds give a bake sale the next time they want to decimate a small Middle Eastern country. I will continue to support my State only until further notice. The GOP has miles to go before they sleep, and so many ugly promises to keep!
As the 2014 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was litigated in the court of public opinion, Ferguson's police department released video which appeared to show Brown robbing a local store a few minutes before his fatal encounter with Wilson.

A new documentary, Stranger Fruit, includes additional, mostly previously unnoticed, footage which seems to call that interpretation (and the attendant perception of Brown's character) into question. Filmmaker Jason Pollock believes it shows that what happened was not a robbery, but an exchange of marijuana for cigarillos.

I'm no more sure what to believe about the footage and its import than I am of precisely what happened that day between Brown and Wilson. But I am sure that the last person entitled to have his opinion on the matter taken seriously is St. Louis County, Missouri prosecutor Robert McCulloch.

McCulloch calls Pollock's theory "just stupid" and "just nonsense." But it was McCulloch whose epic, and apparently intentional, mishandling of the formal investigation made speculative inquiries like Pollock's inevitable. Stranger Fruit exists because Robert McCulloch wanted neither to do his job nor to be seen as not doing it.

As a prosecutor, McCulloch had discretion to do one of three things.

He could charge Wilson with a crime, presenting evidence to sustain the charge in a public preliminary hearing.

Or he could take the case to a grand jury where the evidence would be considered in secret.

Finally, he could decide not to pursue the matter further if he didn't believe the evidence was there to convict Wilson.

At all times when taking any of these three courses, McCulloch's job remained the same: To pursue charges if he believed he could prove the case, to not pursue charges if he didn't.

Instead, McCulloch set up shop as Wilson's defense attorney behind the closed doors of the grand jury proceedings. For all intents and purposes he quit his job as prosecutor and concentrated solely on NOT doing what he was supposedly there to do, which was to get an indictment.

McCulloch's machinations created the impression that "the fix was in" -- because it was. His priority wasn't to do his job, or to reach the truth, or to serve justice. It was to exonerate Darren Wilson because, and only because, Wilson was a police officer.

McCulloch has a long and legendary record of bending over backward to ensure that no police officer is ever held responsible for his or her actions, even when those actions are clearly criminal.

Granted, his personal history plays a role. When he was 12, his father, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty. But that's no excuse. He's supposedly a prosecutor, but instead works tirelessly to exonerate accused cops, including the killers of two unarmed men at a Berkeley, Missouri restaurant in 2000.

Wilson may or may not be one of those rare bad apples we always hear about from defenders of police as such. McCulloch undoubtedly is. Stranger Fruit, meet rotten fruit.
Rand "Neo" Paul US Senator disagrees with John McCain, US Senator and prisoner of war, that allowing Montenegro into Nato is in the US' national interest

This is so dense that I can not do it justice by commenting on it. This is an abbreviated version. You are going to want to download and read the document for yourself.

MONTENEGRO'S ACCESSION INTO NATO



John McTrump

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Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be in the company of the distinguished Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee and one who is most knowledgeable on issues of national security and foreign policy. I believe that Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire will be joining us.

This is an issue that I am sorry has to be brought up in this fashion. It concerns a little country that wants to be a part of the European Union, that wants to be a part of the values, customs, and ideals of the West and has been under significant pressure and even assault from Russia.

Its membership in NATO would improve the stability in the region, where, I know my colleagues would agree, there is great instability.

The United States has benefited tremendously from peace and stability in Europe, and the foundation of that peace and stability is NATO. That is why we should stand with Montenegro or risk undermining our vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.

First, I would like to yield to my colleague from Maryland, Senator Cardin.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

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Over the past year, a remote area of North Dakota has been the improbable and prophetic site of a struggle with profound ramifications for us all. The confrontation has pitted the Water Protectors -- the Standing Rock Sioux, other Native American tribes, and their allies -- against the oil profiteers of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners. The source of conflict is completion of the $3.8 billion, thousand-mile Dakota Access Pipeline -- the Black Snake -- that Energy Transfer Partners has built to carry fracked oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

The current planned route for the pipeline takes it beneath the Missouri River treacherously close to the Standing Rock and other Sioux reservations. A serious leak will threaten the water supply of these tribes and millions of people who live further downstream. Meanwhile, pipeline construction has already caused irreparable harm to Native American ancestral burial grounds and sacred sites.

The Water Protectors

Beginning last April, Water Protectors from across the country -- indigenous and non-indigenous alike -- began to gather in the thousands at the Oceti Sakowin Camp, established just north of the Standing Rock reservation. Around the camp's sacred fires, they shared and honored the rituals, stories, and principles of community fundamental to the traditional values of the Lakota tribes: prayer, respect, compassion, honesty, generosity, humility, and wisdom.

At the same time, the Water Protectors sought to block construction of the final section of pipeline. Their non-violent acts of civil resistance were met with attack dogs, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, percussion grenades, water cannons, aerial surveillance, and hundreds of arrests by militarized law-enforcement personnel. The standoff ended a few weeks ago when the Governor of North Dakota, citing safety concerns, issued an emergency evacuation order. Shortly thereafter, authorities forcibly shut down and razed the camp.

Assaults like those that took place at Standing Rock are really nothing new for our nation's Native peoples. Their history of removal, dispossession, degradation, attempted forced assimilation, and betrayal at the hands of White America runs as long and as deep as the Missouri River itself. Spanning centuries, these experiences form a chronicle of unresolved grief and historical trauma, which Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart has described as "the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over one's lifetime and from generation to generation following loss of lives, land, and vital aspects of culture."

The consequences of these brutal colonization practices are visible too in a range of cold, hard statistics. Today Native Americans have a median household income barely two-thirds that of the general population, and their poverty rate is nearly twice as large. They're half as likely to have a college degree, and their life expectancy is six years shorter. They also suffer from higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, incarceration, depression, and PTSD, as well as suicide among their youth.

The survival of Native Americans, their diverse communities, and their rich cultures -- despite hardship and oppression, and against such long odds -- is a powerful testament to their extraordinary resilience. This abiding strength deserves greater recognition than it receives; like historical trauma, it too is transmitted across lives and generations. Shared narratives, traditional practices, spiritual teachings, the prayerful appreciation of time and place, and respect for the interconnectness of all things serve as crucial protective factors for indigenous tribes and their members.

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Outside observers looking at U.S. foreign and military policy since World War II can wonder at its essential global imperialism, its heavy reliance on military force, either threatened or actual, and its many negative outcomes for millions of people, ranging from eternal poverty to premature death, all around the world. They may also wonder at the mentality of the tens of thousands of U.S. government employees who, over the years, have developed and implemented these policies. Mean, evil, totally unethical, totally lacking in principle, totally devoted to the expansion of finance/Petro capitalism, in total denial of what their polices produce. And then we might possibly add, none of the above but totally self-delusional.

Roger Cohen writes regularly for the (newly re-named) Opinion Page of The New York Times. In a recent column he quotes extensively from comments made by one Daniel Fried, a specialist in Central and Eastern Europe, who, on the arrival of the Trumpites in Washington, retired from the Foreign Service, which had employed him since 1977. Cohen published a lengthy quote from Mr. Fried's retirement statement, which is really quite revealing. First on Eastern Europe:

"Few believed that Poland's Solidarity movement could win, that the Iron Curtain would come down, that the Baltic States could be free, that the second of the 20th century's great evils -- Communism -- could be vanquished without war. But it happened, and the West's great institutions -- NATO and the E.U. -- grew to embrace 100 million liberated Europeans. It was my honor to have done what I could to help. I learned never to underestimate the possibility of change, that values have power, and that time and patience can pay off, especially if you're serious about your objectives. Nothing can be taken for granted, and this great achievement is now under assault by Russia, but what we did in my time is no less honorable. It is for the present generation to defend and, when the time comes again, extend freedom in Europe."

Then on the U.S. and its essential nature (according to Fried):

"We are not an ethno-state, with identity rooted in shared blood. The option of a White Man's Republic ended at Appomattox. On the contrary, we are 'a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' "And so, ...that rough sense of equality and opportunity, embedded in us, informed the way that we brought our American power to the world, America's Grand Strategy. We have, imperfectly, and despite detours and retreat along the way, sought to realize a better world for ourselves and for others, for we understood that our prosperity and our values at home depend on that prosperity and those values being secure as far as possible in a sometimes-dark world."

I suppose that in order to continue to serve the U.S. State Department, one has to really believe what Mr. Fried says he believes (and I would not doubt that he believes it), for one reason or another. But let's take a look at some reality. Take for example, the "Iron Curtain." So many like to think that it was set forth across Europe by the Soviet Union, as Winston Churchill told us in his famous speech made at Fulton, MO on March 5, 1946.

It was actually a creation of the Western Powers, not the Soviet Union, announced by Churchill and attributed by him to the USSR. Stalin had actually thought that one of the original leaders of the Intervention against the Russian Revolution that started shortly after that revolution occurred in 1917, that is Winston Churchill, after opportunistically joining in an alliance with the Soviet Union to defeat Nazi Germany, would not once again turn against it. But Churchill did.

Stalin actually wanted to engage in peaceful co-existence with the capitalist West (see Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-53, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2206, chaps. 10-12). Stalin thought that the Soviet Union could be one of the beneficiaries of the Marshall Plan. Stalin actually thought that what would in the end become The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union by the Western Imperialist powers, of which Winston Churchill was one of the primary architects, would not be renewed. As for the "captive Eastern Europe," since Russia/the Soviet Union had suffered two massive invasions from the West in a 27-year period (1914-41), at Yalta it was recognized that they would have a "sphere of influence" in Eastern Europe, as a buffer against the power they feared most -- a resurgent Germany. For in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany the Soviet Union had suffered about 25,000,000 dead, civilians and military. In the Battle of Berlin alone, the Red Army lost about 80,000 dead, or one fifth of the total dead the U.S. sustained, 1941-45, in all the theaters of war in which it was engaged.

But then this buffer was gradually undermined. The final round started with by the accession of the "Polish Pope," John Paul II. One of his primary tasks was to work closely with the Catholic Church in Poland to help undermine the Polish Government, in part by supporting, openly and covertly, the "Solidarity" movement. But then, further, as the Communist governments in Eastern Europe were falling apart (with the assistance of the State Department, the CIA and various U.S. NGO's, as more recently happened in Ukraine, this time against Russia), the then Soviet Union was guaranteed (but unfortunately for them, not in writing) that NATO, which had been formed as an openly anti-Soviet military arm of Western imperialism, would not expand into Eastern Europe. We know for how long that promise was kept by Mr. Fried's State Department, following the final victory of U.S.-led Western Imperialism in The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, in 1992.

As to the second quote from Fried, one could write a book about it, and many have. And, I could write a very long column on it, but I won't. Just a few comments. The U.S. is indeed a multi-cultural state. The problem is that going back to its founding the 1850s, when one of its original coalition member was the nativist American Party, with a few exceptions over time, following the end of Reconstruction the Republican Party has never accepted this.

Rep. Steven King is only the latest in a long line of Republican xenophobes. This battle has only been re-intensified by the election of Donald Trump. As for the "White Man's Republic," that concept as a stand-alone has never died. It has just taken different forms, as the Doctrine of White Supremacy spread over the whole nation from the South, following the end of the First Civil War.

Then there is that "rough sense of equality and opportunity." Well let's see, since the killing off of the major parts of organized labor, as is well-known, wealth in the United states has become ever more concentrated. An increasing number of people think that their children will be worse off than they are. And then, according to Mr. Fried, that "rough sense" "informed the way that we brought our American power to the world." Really? Oh my. That's why wealth concentration around the world is getting ever-tighter, I suppose.

Finally, the U.S. "sought to realize a better world for ourselves and for others." Tell that to the people of those countries in which since the end of World War II the U.S. intervened in "seeking to realize a better world" (and this list is far from complete): Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Vietnam (1956-75), the former Belgian Congo (1960), South Africa (1948-93), Brazil (1965), the Dominican Republic (1965), Argentina (the 1970s), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1977-present), Honduras, Korea (1945-present), The Philippines (1945-1954), Nicaragua (1981-89), Iraq (2003-present), Syria (2011-present).





And so on and so forth. Anyone who thinks, given the above list, that the U.S. has done great things around the world since World War II either thinks that U.S. Imperialism is just a great thing or is just self-delusional. Some choice, eh wot?


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[International Solidarity Movement]

Today, March 16th, 2017, marks 14 years since the day that Rachel Corrie had her life taken. And though her life ended early, her courageous heart and defiant spirit will be carried onward, and continue to inspire many activists now and into the future.

Holding a megaphone, and wearing bright colors, Rachel Corrie stood in between a Palestinian house awaiting its demolition and the bulldozer about to demolish the house, in the town of Rafah in Gaza. For several days, ISM activists had been serving as protective presence in the homes that were on their way to being destroyed. Just hours before, a group of activists entered a Palestinian house about to be demolished, shouting at the military that they were inside, and they backed out.

The definition of a bulldozer: 1) a powerful track-laying tractor with caterpillar tracks and a broad curved upright blade at the front for clearing ground. 2) a person or group exercising irresistible force, especially in disposing of opposition.

A solidarity activist with ISM, Rachel Corrie used her body, her voice, her heart, and her will to try to stop one of many house demolitions plaguing the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation forces. The driver of the bulldozer, a Russian immigrant, claimed that he did not see her. And, as the driver began to drive towards the house, he scooped up the dirt and took this beautiful human with him. Not once, but two times, as other activists shouted to stop through the loudspeakers. Rachel's skull was fractured, and though she was still alive after the incident, not long after she was rushed to the hospital, she passed away. Rachel was twenty-three years old.

The case after her death proved to be controversial and contentious. Rachel's parents sued the state of Israel, and many organizations criticized Israel for their one-sided investigation of the case. As of 2015, the court has rejected the appeal.

Rachel's parents continue to do her work through the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and launched projects in memory of their daughter. They have also advanced investigation into the incident and asked the U.S. Congress and various courts for redress. Rachel's story has inspired a play entitled "My Name is Rachel Corrie", followed by a book "Let Me Stand Alone" that includes journal entries and emails from her experience in Gaza.

This is a poem written by Rachel Corrie only a couple of months before her tragic death.

Leaving Olympia

January 2003 We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure -- to experience the world as a dynamic presence -- as a changeable, interactive thing? If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn't be a metaphor, it would be a reality. And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless. This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges. I can't cool boiling waters in Russia. I can't be Picasso. I can't be Jesus. I can't save the planet single-handedly. I can wash dishes.

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Ghimire presents letter of credence to Russian prez

Ambassador of Nepal to the Russian Federation, Rishi Ram Ghimire presented his Letters of Credence to Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, amid a special official ceremony organised at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow on Friday. He also presented the Letter of Recall of his predecessor.
From Wallwritings

Writing in the current issue of In These Times, American History scholar Theo Anderson follows the modern political conservative movement's rise to power from the founding of the Heritage Foundation in 1973 through Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017.

It is a story of an ideological movement dedicated to the creation of "an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish." (Heritage Foundation mission statement)

In 1980, that movement rode initially to White House power on the coattails of an amiable movie actor, Ronald Reagan, while picking up crucial political allies among evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Christians played a major role in elevating a non-religious Reagan to the White House, even as they helped toss out one of their own, a born-again Southern Baptist, President Jimmy Carter.

Co-founders of the Heritage Foundation in 1973, Paul Weyrich (above) and Edwin Feulner (below), were funded lavishly by beer baron Joseph Coors.

Many Evangelical Christians frown on consumption of alcohol beverages, except, it appears, when profits from those beverages fund their political ambitions.

Weyrich and Feulner were shrewd political operatives who knew their targets: Americans who were rich, and Americans who believed they should be rich. Both targets believed in liberty for themselves, less so for "others."



In These Times April 2017 Issue

(Image by In These Times) Details DMCA



Anderson writes that "Weyrich's dogged institution-building was driven by a burning vision: Organize evangelical Christians into a powerful voting bloc, reinvent the Republican Party and radically reconstruct the nation."

He adds:

"In the late 1970s, Weyrich used anger over encroachments on 'religious liberty' -- namely, the liberty to deny African Americans entrance to religious private schools -- to mobilize the Christian Right. His efforts propelled Reagan to victory in 1980 via another organization Weyrich cofounded, the Moral Majority. "Weyrich, who belonged to a Catholic sect, spoke a language of personal responsibility that resonated with evangelicals. He believed that individualism was the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its great nemesis was the growth of government."

Heritage had long been knee-deep in the religious liberty crusade of the Christian Right. It built a successful on-line publication, The Daily Signal, which claims to have more than 2 million readers

The Daily Signal looks for "what it considers outrageous government intrusions on Christians' rights, especially their right to discriminate against LGBT people. These stories often involve the travails of fundamentalist bakers, florists and wedding planners."

"For libertarians and corporate conservatives, freedom means low taxes and little or no regulation. When the influential libertarian economist Milton Friedman died in 2006, Heritage posted a tribute to him on its website, claiming that 'his powerful insights' had 'saved millions or billions of people from decades of oppressive statism.'"

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[I would like to preface this, my call to action, with this powerful video by Chris Hedges and recommend that you view it before proceeding to read my offering. He details what has happened to us, in this era of Trump, and provides guides to solutions, as I've also attempted with this article.]

--------------------------

The standard way battles were fought, in the 18th century, was really brutal. The opposing forces would, once within musket range, line up in staggered ranks facing their opposition and take turns shooting at each other. Because it took 30 seconds to a minute to reload and aim a musket "by the numbers," after the front lines had fired their shot they would, in unison, move to the back and reload while the next rank stepped forward to take their shots.

Once the colonist decided that they could take no more of King George's madness and the economic oppression that the out of control British corporations were inflicting on their economy, they declared their independence from England and the Revolutionary War began.

From the start, everyone acknowledged that the rebellious colonist were no match for the well-trained and well-equipped British "Red Coats." So, in order to buy time for George Washington to build a structured army, a rag-tag group of the colonist developed a unique form of guerrilla warfare.

The way it worked, and it worked VERY well, was that the rebels would wait until the Redcoat armies were being marched from one location to another. Of course, they would all march in formation and in long columns. A small group of the rebel terrorist would sneak up on the trailing end of the marching Redcoats and shoot a few of the last Redcoats in the columns. Immediately, the rebels would disperse back into their native woods and by the time the Redcoats could organize a search party, nobody could be found.

At first, this tactic was simply declared a nuisances. But as time wore on, it began to wear down the nerve and resolve of the British soldiers. Many Redcoats at the rear of these columns would just drop out and become Turncoats. Eventually, by the time Washington formed an army, he was confronted by British forces who were less than eager to fight and it is believed that the terrorist tactic edge was instrumental in winning our War of Independence.

[Before you read any further, I would like to state that I am not very optimistic about the future of our country, especially due to recent laws that are being put into place, in various states, regarding demonstrations by activist. As a result, be forewarned that what I'm advocating could involve being arrested.]

I would like to propose that we update, revise and adopt a similar technique. Currently, when we discuss having a general strike or a marching demonstration (like standing in lines shooting at each other or marching in lock-step columns) we are talking about a rather elaborate, expensive, time consuming, environmentally damaging, organizational challenge involving large numbers of people physically congregating at a central location in order to make a statement or protest an issue and hope that the message is relayed through a compromised media and eventually received by the intended audiences. I contend that this process is cumbersome, wasteful, outdated and has lost much its' effectiveness. A perfect example is the largest, but useless, worldwide protest/demonstrations that took place to stop the invasion of Iraq by our country.

Instead, imagine the following scenario:

Being a registered OpEdNews patron, one day you get an email notification that invites you to participate in a "Spread The Word" type demonstration on your local courthouse steps. You locate the address of your local courthouse. You gather up your sign(s) and maybe put on your tee shirt -- which will say something like:

Hi!

I'm with Occupy U.S.

If you would like to know what I'm doing here,

visit our website at:

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From Counterpunch

The Trump regime has defended its plan to cut the "Meals on Wheels" program by saying it "doesn't show any results." What kind of "results" are they talking about? The program delivers meals to shut-ins; the shut-ins eat the meal; they don't starve to death. That is the result, and it happens all day every day. It is one of the most "resultful" programs in existence. But notice that the Trumpists aren't saying we can't afford the program; they are clearly saying it's not delivering the results they want to see. And what are the only "results" produced by not delivering meals to the sick and shut-in who can't provide for themselves? THEY WILL DIE.

Therefore, we can only conclude that the "result" Donald Trump and his ideological Svengali, Stephen Banon, are looking for is a higher death count for the sick and elderly. We know that throughout his public life, Trump has often expressed his belief in genetic superiority, that the right genes, the right blood are responsible for success in life. (Particularly his succes!) The flipside, of course, is that those who haven't "succeeded" according to his lights, the people who are "weak" and "losers" (to quote two of his favorite epithets), are therefore genetically inferior. We know this is his belief from his own statements.

Bannon too pushes the idea of "nationhood" as a kind of ethnic purity, something beyond political, legal or economic factors. As Mother Jones pointed out this week, Bannon is a fan of French philosopher Charles Maurras, a rabid anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator. The story notes: "Bannon approvingly cited Maurras' distinction between what the French philosopher called the 'real country' of the people and the 'legal country' led by government officials." (MJ also notes that Maurras referred to the Third Republic as "the Jew State, the Masonic State, the immigrant State." Anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the fever-swamps of the alt-right -- of which Bannon claims proud godfathership -- will instantly recognize this language.)

Maurras's distinction of the "real county" and the "legal country" is precisely what Bannon was referring to in his recent CPAC appearance, where he declared that the goal of the Trump regime is the "deconstruction of the administrative state." It is clear that he and Trump aim to destroy the "legal country" -- the country of laws, institutions, constitutional citizenship, etc. -- and replace it with the "real country" of a more ethnically pure state: a land of blood and soil, under the hand of authoritarian leaders who act according to mystical dictates of "race wisdom," not the "alien" system of democracy and laws which apply to all citizens equally.

Trump ally King also made this crystal clear this week, explicitly saying you can't "restore civilization" with "other people's babies" and openly longing for that "homogenous" society of people who "look like each other."

So by their own words, Trump and his allies believe in a biologically based "nation" led by "genetically superior leaders." By their own words, that is what they are seeking to create. But how can you make a nation "great again" with so much "inferior" material out there? Why, you cull the herd, you cut off the "weak" and the "losers" and let them wither away and die.

I don't think it can be denied any longer that this attitude -- this aim -- is an intrinsic element in the policies of the Trump regime and the Congressional extremists. The weak, the sick, the different, the "impure" and the "inferior" are to be made to disappear: by deportation, by bans, by walls -- and by dying. For the moment, it doesn't look like actual systematic mass extermination is on the cards; so perhaps we can call their present approach the "Semi-Final Solution."

But who knows what wonders await us down the line. As the late, great Leonard Cohen said: "I've seen the future, brother: it is murder."
For this series, well be following Pastes own Curmudgeon, Geoffrey Himes, as he sets out on a massive road trip across the South, exploring musical landmarks, traditions and history along the way. Eighth stop: Port Aransas, TX.

Travel by car connects the dots in a way that air travel never can. Sure, driving long distances is slower and not really cheaper than flying, if you factor in motels and meals, but a road trip gives you a feel for the way the landscape alters mile by mile. It allows you to size up each piece of the puzzle and how it fits with the next.

As I drove south on I-55 through Mississippi on February 21, I could feel the countryside changing. The flat cotton fields of the Delta gave way to the wooded hills that cover most the state. Im always surprised to be reminded how empty Mississippi and Alabama are. You expect Western states such as Wyoming and Utah to be sparsely populated, but you dont expect it in the more crowded East. But I often drove for miles through Mississippi without seeing a buildingand then many miles more before seeing a second one.

But as I crossed the Louisiana border, the land flattened out again, filled with ponds, swamps and bayous. The white, snake-like shape of the great egrets could be spotted pecking at fish at the waters edge.

Entering Louisiana is almost like leaving the United States and arriving in a Caribbean nation. The vegetation is sub-tropicalpalmettos spread their spiky fans here and there; cypress knees push up through the water, and Spanish moss drips from the live oak trees. The architecture is more French, the soil more soggy. The animal life is differentyou almost never see wild alligators in the U.S. more than 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The air itself is differentheavier with all its additional moisture.



Jean Lafitte National Park, Barataria, Louisiana

Such surroundings inevitably shape human behavior. Everythings less efficient and more sensual. It can take forever to get your food served, but when that oyster po-boy comes, it will be the best sandwich you ever tasted. The band may not play a million notes a minute, but the trumpeter or fiddler will fill each note with as much flavor as it can hold.

Its hard to glimpse this connection in New Orleans French Quarter, throughout the city are glimpses into the habitat that inspired the culture. Right in the middle of New Orleans is Audubon Park, and right in the middle of the park is Bird Island, which offers some of the best bird watching in the state.

Crowded along the bayou that cuts through the park are snowy ibises and roseate spoonbills, birds that one never sees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The black-bellied whistling duck, a stunning bird with a neon-orange bill and a black mohawk running down his gray head, is a Mexican bird that has taken up permanent residence in New Orleans in recent years.



Black-bellied whistling ducks, Audubon Park, New Orleans, Louisiana

That was another theme of this tripthe early arrival of spring. February saw t-shirt weather in Kansas City, azaleas blooming in New Orleans and blue bonnets blooming in Houstonall two or three weeks earlier than normal. You cant say that climate change is responsible for any one weather event, but you can safely say that man-made warming has made such events more frequent and more intense. And while the early spring was a boon for a February traveler, it was probably a harbinger of a hellish summer to come.

Much of the Gulf Coast didnt have a really hard freeze this past winter, and a lot of vegetation that usually dies off in January was still thriving. When my friend Julianna and I visited Jean Lafitte National Park in Barataria, Louisiana, the natural bayous and man-made canals were choked with water hyacinth, a fast-spreading invasive species.

On the other hand, the alligators were thriving as well. We saw 12 alligators on our walkthe highest total in 32 years of hiking the Palmetto Trail and the Bayou Coquille Trail. Many of them were youngsters, an indication that the warming climate has also encouraged reptile propagation. Though gators can move surprisingly fast when provoked or hungry, these specimens were digesting their food in the sun, with no desire to move more than a foot or two in any direction.



American alligator, Jean Lafitte National Park, Barataria, Louisiana

Contrary to how theyre depicted in cartoons, logos and illustrations, alligators are not green. The young are gray, and the adults are a dark black, which makes the armored ridges running from their eyebrows to their tail tips look all the more antediluvian in the sun-glazed water. They look more like dinosaurs or dragons from a natural history museum or fantasy film than creatures of our own time period. I never get tired of watching them.

The day after Mardi Gras, I headed west towards Texas, passing all the farms with square, shallow ponds that combine rice farming and crawfish. Than small flat-bottom boats propped on the bank are for pulling the mudbugs out of the lantern-sized wire traps that float in rows in each pond.

I stopped along the way at the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge near Hackberry, Louisiana, home of the great Cajun band the Hackberry Ramblers. Within the refuge is preserved the landscape that gave rise to that music in the 1930s. Flocks of black-winged blackbirds leapt from shrub to shrub ahead of me as I walked the trail. A young gator curled in the brittle winter reeds, and three roseate spoonbills flew overhead. The soil was soggy just off the trail, just like the local music that seems to slide around the beat and the melody in dizzying delight.

I picked up my wife Liz at the Houston Airport and we drove down to Port Aransas, Texas, on Mustang Island. We took the ferry to the town and found our hotel, Amelias Landing, where every room had a different aviation themewe were in the Wright Brothers Roomand a continental breakfast was delivered to your door each morning. This was the week before the Texas schools went on spring break, so it was like the eerie calm before the hurricane lands: it was easy to get tables at restaurants, but hand trucks full of beer cases were being rolled into each kitchen. But every place we went, the seafood was terrific.

Most of the town seems trapped in the 1950s with small bungalow homes, modest motels and wood-frame restaurantsthe high-rise hotels and condos that ruin most beach communities have been pushed to the edge of town. This time-capsule feel is enforced by the inconvenience of the ferry and by the ugly presence of three giant oil rigs parked by the ferry dock. But this lack of progress has allowed four splendid birding sites to flourish right in town with many more a short drive away.



Port Aransas, Texas

The bird watching was spectacular. In Port Aransas itself, I saw white-tailed hawks, reddish egrets, a clapper rail and a horned lark for the first time. At the San Padre Island National Seashore, I saw an aplomado falcon, a black-bellied plover and an American kestrel. At the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the most remote and most rewarding spot of all, I saw a giant whooping crane at the far side of a lake and a black rail in a slough near two swimming alligators.

The Gulf Coast of Texas is so different from the standard view of Texas that its hard to believe its part of the same state. Its green and wet, while most of the state is brown and dry; its more like Louisiana than its like any part of Texas north of Livingston or west of Victoria. The music is different too. The Zydeco Belt runs from Lafayette to Houston, and the slippery syncopation of swamp-pop and New Orleans funk can be heard in the great R&B singles from Houstons Duke-Peacock Records.

After four nights on the barrier islands, I returned Liz to the Houston Airport so she could return to grad school. But I stayed over in Houston a few more days to savor the humid music and spicy food that links that city to New Orleans. Both towns are sliced through by lushly green bayous and canals; both boast remarkable folk art and nightclubs where people are eager to dance. Its a different world from the rest of the South, from the rest of the nation. Its a showcase for the lubricating effects of moisture on music, food and social interaction.
If youre Australian and you were in school or university during the noughties, theres a pretty high chance you read or at least encountered Rusty Youngs 2003 book Marching Powder, purely by virtue of the fact that it was about cocaine. It really doesnt take much to encourage Aussies to read about cocaine.

But for Young, a University of New South Wales law graduate, Marching Powder was about one of the most fortuitous events of his life. He was backpacking in South America when he encountered the story about Thomas McFadden, an English drug trafficker who was incarcerated in the notorious San Pedro prison in La Paz, Bolivia. San Pedro is a unique setup for a prison  it operates more like a miniature city, with inmates buying and renting their accommodation within the complex, a drug-based economy flourishing, and elected leaders maintaining a remote semblance of law and order. Usually through stabbings.

Young bribed guards to allow him to stay within the prisons walls for three months, with McFadden, and Marching Powder was the result. More than a decade later, a unique project gave him the opportunity to return to La Paz and explore more deeply the drug trade he first experienced in Bolivia.

McFadden and Young in San Pedro

That project is the documentary Wildlands, released in conjunction with the recently launched tactical shooter Tom Clancys Ghost Recon Wildlands, an Ubisoft game set in a speculative near-future Bolivia which has been turned into a narco-state by a drug cartel.

The doco, hosted by Young, was an opportunity to reconnect with McFadden and the world he documented in Marching Powder, and also to gain a broader understanding of the supply chain of illegal drugs.

McFadden and Young, returned to La Paz

Along the way he spoke to a number of people, from DEA agents to cartel hitmen and even legendary American cocaine smuggler George Jung  the man best known to contemporary audiences via Johnny Depps performance in Blow. Of all of them, his favourite moment was reconnecting with his friend McFadden.

Being with Thomas in San Pedro was definitely a highlight, Rusty told PEDESTRIAN.TV. After all these years it was still very friendly and casual. You know  like Hey Rusty! Hey Thomas! That kinda thing.

He was also the most pleasant interview, too, of course.

He says the least pleasant was John Popeye Velasquez  a former hitman for legendary cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar. Whereas Rusty expected to run into people whose perspectives on the drug trade he couldnt relate to and might not agree with, the sheer ruthlessness with which Popeye recounted his many murders  including women  was a little hard to swallow.

Yeah, he was clearly a pretty bad dude. Perhaps a slightly understatement for a guy who has admitted to killing 300 people and is suspected of being responsible for up to 3,000 more.

John Popeye Velasquez at Pablo Escobars grave

By revisiting Bolivia, Rusty says hes fleshed out his perspective on the drug war through Wildlands. Even speaking to retired DEA agents Mike McManus and Mike Vigill  who he assumed he was going to virulently disagree with when it came to US policy in Central and South America  was eye-opening.

I mostly had a perspective from being in Bolivia so much, Rusty tells me. In Bolivia, the problems that the DEA are concerned with  cocaine, drugs, all that  are considered a Western problem, not a problem for Bolivians. So theres obviously some animosity there.

But speaking to Mike McManus and Mike Vigill changed my perspective a little bit  I met two guys who were just doing their bit and genuinely wanted to make things better, which I didnt necessarily expect. You know, it wasnt a politics thing so much.

The one question that kept coming up at the Q&A screening of Wildlands from the audience was a simple one: how do we solve the problems presented by the drug war and cartels? Is it legalisation? But Young says that it is a complex question with a number of influences and considerings  and not something that the documentary set out to answer.

I wanted to come in with no prejudices and no preconceptions, and just explore the different personal perspectives and experiences on this thing  obviously centred on Bolivia. Views are always skewed and theres always stuff we dont know  I wanted to just meet these people who are on the ground and basically amongst it all.

We didnt really set out to find solutions, we just wanted to see the drug war as it is.

The Wildlands doco is coming soon. Ghost Recon Wildlands is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.

Photo: Rusty Young.
(left) Realto Jersey & Pinner Shorts, (right) Renegade Jersey & Badass Shorts.

Darren Berrecloth in the Realto Jersey & Pinner Shorts.

Ridgeline Jersey in Grey Melange (left) and Fire Truck Red (right).

Bryn Atkinson brings a side order of style to the new 2017 Duster Jersey & Rev Shorts.

(left) Duster Jersey, (right) Rev Shorts.

Jump lines with Sombrio Cartel riders Darren Berrecloth and Bryn Atkinson.

The new award-winning Riff Jeans featuring Action Denim Technology.

dri

dri

Berrecloth in the new Sombrio Riff Jeans and Vagabond Riding Shirt.

2017 men's Glove Collection: (left) Cartel Gloves, (centre) Prodigy Gloves, (right) Spun Gloves

Noble Jersey & V'al Shorts (left), Vista Jersey & Summit Shorts (right).

Jill Kintner in the V'al Shorts (left) and Lily Gloves (right).

2017 women's Glove Collection. (left) Lily Gloves in Grape Pine Cone, (right) Oso Gloves in Green Retro. Additional colors available.

Sombrio grom Cam McCallum showing off the new 2017 Grom's Duster Jersey and Rev Shorts.

About Sombrio Cartel:

For almost two decades, Sombrio has been leading the charge with durable, fashion-forward riding apparel. The 2017 Sombrio collection continues to highlight durability through lightweight fabrics with added mobility, comfort, and protection from the elements while drawing graphic inspiration from the coastal BC landscape.Here is a preview of the new Sombrio line. To view the whole collection visit sombriocartel.com While Sombrio updated Freeride classics like the men's Realto Jersey and Pinner Shorts with new colors and graphics for 2017, they have also introduced the Renegade Jersey and Badass Shorts to their Freeride lineup. The Renegade Jersey fits like a classic tee and features BC forest photography by Margus Rigaa part of the Sombrio X Margus Riga Forest Collection. The new Badass Shorts offer 4-way stretch and a slightly longer length in the front to deliver mobility and knee pad coverage without the bulk behind your knee.New for 2017, Sombrio has introduced the ultimate warm weather jersey. The Ridgeline Jersey combines a semi-slim cut with Sombrio's Chill Mesh Technology throughout. Chill Mesh is a fully perforated fabric treated with Xylitol which produces a chilling effect when it comes in contact with sweat to help regulate body temperature.The retro surf-inspired men's Duster Jersey features Sombrio's marble print which combines the spray of a dirt roost with the swirl of the ocean's white wash. The matching Rev Shorts also received a color update, but don't worry, there's a more subtle color option for those who prefer a little less flash.Sombrio has introduced Action Denim Technology for 2017 with the Riff Jeans . Built for action, the Riff Jeans come loaded with stretchyrelease denim that wicks moisture away from the body to help regulate temperate while in motion, an articulated knee that allows enough room for a low-profile knee pad, zipper pockets and more. The Riff Jeans also received an innovation award fromrelease at Outdoor Retailer last fall.The Sombrio Glove Collection also received some fresh color options, with the Spun Gloves featuring Sombrio X Margus Riga Forest Collection graphics.Sombrio has always been known for their premium women's offering and this year is no exception. The new Noble Jersey features Sombrio's ombre print utilizing watercolor brush strokes to mimic the aerial view of a progressional surf wave. The Noble also blends silky Cool Wik fabric with Sombrio's Chill Mesh to offer a Freeride Jersey that cools you down when you sweat making it ideal for hot summer park days when you still want the protection offered from a 3/4 length jersey. Sombrio women's classics like the Vista Jersey V'al and Summit Shorts all got a fresh coat of paint.Sombrio has taken their most durable men's gear and shrunk it down to provide the next generation of shredders with stylish threads. The Grom's Collection includes both long-sleeve and short-sleeve jersey options, Sombrio's most popular gravity-driven shorts and gloves.The 2017 Sombrio Apparel Collection is backed by a Lifetime Guarantee Sombrio is the original, authentic Freeride apparel brand from Vancouvers North Shore. Today, Sombrio continues to innovate fashion-forward, functional elements, to live and breathe the two-wheeled culture, while supporting a unique roster of athletes, who along-side Sombrio, strive to make the mountain bike world a more vibrant place.
Tin whistle, Cajun French and fiddle filled the Popdust board room as very special guests Spider Stacy and Lost Bayou Ramblers paid us a visit while doing a run of sold out shows in NYC.

Stacy is probably best known best for co-founding legendary Celtic punk band, The Pogues in London, as well as his role on Treme. These days he's a certified 'Naw-land-er,' and Louisiana is where he linked up and began performing with the Grammy-nominated cajun music group, Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Watch our exclusive video of the gang performing "If I Had Wings," live! The sonic blend of these artists is nothing short of awesome. It wasn't the Irish punk sound, nor the southern-fiddle experience you might expect; its an entirely new sound with a ton of history behind it. After the performance we discussed the common roots of Celtic and Cajun music, a tour van that went lost-and-found and the legacy of Dennis McGee. Fans of the Pop Dust Presents series may recall another interview we did with a New Orleans-based group, The Revivalists.



Be sure to share the video and check out tour dates on the band's site to catch them in person!



Cajun hot!
Writings on the Wall

Many years ago, I got a phone call from Troy Torres at a political candidates office. He had seen an election estimate I had written and didn Read morePower of polls and weekend talks
Aroma Ingredients Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:24:55

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Aroma chemical is a complex fusion of natural and/or synthetic ingredients that are added to various products in order to incorporate desired odor. These ingredients are widely used in consumer care and personal care products. Personal care industry is one of the major application industry for aroma ingredients market. The global aroma ingredients market has witnessed steady growth over the recent past owing to increasing demand for natural aroma ingredients. Soaps and detergent is estimated to account for a significant share in the global aroma ingredients market followed by cosmetics and toiletries applications. The global aroma ingredients market is expected to register a steady growth during forecast period.Global Aroma Ingredients Market: DriversIntroduction of innovative and novel products especially in cosmetics, toiletries, and skin care and hair care products has driven the overall growth of the global aroma ingredients market. The increasing demand for natural ingredients coupled with change in consumer preferences are considered to be the important driver for global aroma ingredients market. Furthermore, significant technological advancements have also fuelled the growth of the market. Moreover, the increase in demand from the emerging and developing nations for natural fragrance due to health concerns related to synthetic chemicals is likely to act as an opportunity for the growth of the global aroma ingredients market. These factors are likely to drive the global aroma ingredients market during the forecast period. A key trend witnessed in global aroma chemicals market is that the key aroma chemical producers are responding to growing opportunities by expanding their global presence. One of the major factor that is likely to restrict growth in demand for natural aroma ingredients is high costs associated with switching from synthetic chemical to natural ingredients.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1833 Global Aroma Ingredients Market: SegmentationThe global aroma ingredients market can be segmented on the basis of type, application and region. On the basis of type, the global aroma ingredients market can be segmented intoessential oilsaroma chemicalsEssential oils segment can further be sub-segmented into menthe arvensis, cedar wood, orange, eucalyptus, citronella and others (basil, clove, jamrosa, litsea cubica, sassafras, coriander, patchouli, camphor and lemon grass) Whereas, aroma chemicals segment can further be sub-segmented into turpenes, musk chemical, benzenoids and others (alicyclic, heterocyclic and aliphatic compounds).On the basis of application, the global aroma ingredients markets can be segmented intocosmetic and toiletriessoap and detergentsfine fragranceOthers (household products, aroma therapy and pesticides).Global Aroma Ingredients Market: Region Wise OutlookOn the basis of regions, Europe is expected to be a promising revenue generating region for the global aroma ingredients market and is expected to grow at steady growth rate during forecast period. Latin America and Asia Pacific are anticipated to witness relatively faster growth both in terms of value and in terms of volume. Potential opportunities in Asia Pacific and Latin America due to availability of labor and low cost of raw materials are expected to drive growth in these regions over the forecast period. North America and Middle East & Africa are also expected to show positive growth in the near future.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1833 Global Aroma Ingredients Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global aroma ingredients market are as follows:BASF SEMane SAInternational Flavors and Fragrances Inc.Givaudan SAFermenich International SAFrutarom Industries Ltd.Symrise AGAgilex Flavors and Fragrances, Inc.Hindustan Mint & Agro Products Pvt. Ltd.
Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Automotive Clean Cold Technology Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" report to their offering.

Automotive Clean Cold Technology Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 06:00:38

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Automotive clean cold technology is an emerging zero-emission technology which is especially design to provide power and refrigeration for automotive which used for transportation and logistics of variety of temperature sensitive goods. This technology uses a mature process of liquefaction, in which liquid nitrogen is used to provide power and refrigeration to an automotive. The technology offers advantages such as potential savings in fuel consumption, reduced emissions, and better cold chain temperature control and stability.Delivery truck using refrigeration system is operates through two diesel engines, primary engine provides optimum power to drive truck and secondary engine is used to provide cold space inside truck. According to the report published by 19th European Cold Chain Conference, secondary engine used for providing cold space is consume up to 20% of vehicle diesel, releases 6 times more mono nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 29 times more particulate matter than Euro VI engine, and also leaks up to 30% refrigerants. Refrigerants have high global warming potential and emission of refrigerants can impact adversely air quality. Hence there is a need of clean technology which not only provides efficient cooling function but also ensure low emission for an automotive. Clean cold technology is a novel approach to overcome fuel efficiency and pollution problems associated with an automobiles. This technology utilize vast amount of cold lost to environment during regasification of liquefied natural gas or nitrogen or liquid air. Cold lost to environment can be used to boost efficiency of engine at low temperature, to provide zero emission cooling and power for an automobile.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1736 Automotive Clean Cold Technology Market: Market DynamicsTransportation and logistics plays an important role in keeping the product handling and transportation among the safest in the world. Refrigeration is an essential need of transportation industry, to deliver intact temperature sensitive products such as food, beverages, pharmaceuticals and vegetables among other. Growing demand for energy efficient cooling technology for automobile and governments regulation over pollution control are two key drivers for adoption of clean cold technology in automobiles. Growing food and beverage and pharmaceuticals industry which highly rely on clean cold technologies, is expected to increase adoption of this technology across the globe. Additionally, rising government regulation over emission of air pollutants is expected to boost adoption of clean cold technology across the globe. However sustainability of the global clean cold technology market is majorly depends on further innovation and product development.Automotive Clean Cold Technology Market: Market SegmentationOn basis of fluid used, global market of automotive clean cold technology can be segmented as follow as:Nitrogen, Liquefied AirLiquefied Natural Gas (LNG)On basis of end-use industries, global market of automotive clean cold technology can be segmented as follow as:North America, Latin AmericaWestern Europe, Eastern EuropeAsia Pacific Excluding Japan, JapanMiddle East and AfricaAutomotive Clean Cold Technology Market: Regional OutlookGrowing demand for sustainable cold chain of refrigerated warehousing and transport is expected to drive adoption of automotive clean cold technology across the world. North America and Europe are expected to be most attractive segments in global market of automotive clean cold technology market. According to a study published by the University of Birmingham, almost 20% of temperature sensitive pharmaceuticals products are delivered damage or degraded due to inefficient cold chains in India. This can offers an opportunity to clean cold technology developer to penetrate in to high potential market of India. China is the largest market in Asia-Pacific followed by India in 2020, and is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. This is primarily because of growing industries such as food and beverages and pharmaceuticals which are highly rely on efficient refrigerated transportation in China.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1736 Automotive Clean Cold Technology Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in global market of automotive clean cold technology are as follow as;The Dearman Engine Company, Carrier CorporationRinac India Limited, United Technologies Corporation
Improving power lines next on NEAs agenda

After achieving the miraculous feat of eliminating load-shedding at major places in the country, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has prioritized the upgradation of old transmission lines and the construction of new ones in a bid to ensure smooth distribution of power.
Car Wash Detergents And Soaps Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:31:56

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Automotive industry is one the prime contributors to the overall GDP, which is anticipated to increase significantly in the foreseeable future. Factors such as increased vehicle population, growing disposable income of consumers leading to consumer inclination towards improved car care services are driving the demand for auto detailing among consumers across the globe. Auto detailing involves a process of making an automobile look better including waxing and cleaning from in and out to top and bottom of an automobile. Automotive detailing process includes car wash, paint, trim, wax, wheels and tire cleaning, interior vacuum, polishing, cleaning for reconditioning and others. Among all aforementioned, car washing is gaining significant traction among consumers across the globe.Car Wash Detergents & Soaps Market Segmentation:Car wash detergents and soaps market is segmented on the basis of product range, volume capacity, price range, product type, distribution channel and end users - for both car wash detergents and car wash soaps. On the basis of product range, car wash detergents and soaps market segmentation includes complete care, wheel, wheel and tire, and others. On the basis of car wash detergents, the Car Wash Detergents and Soaps market is segmented into 1 gal, 48 oz., 10 oz., 11 oz., 12 oz., 14 oz., 16 oz., 18 oz., 20 oz., 23 oz., 24 oz., 26 oz., 28 oz., 32 oz., 33.8 oz., 4 oz., 40 oz. and 5 oz. Based on price of different car wash detergents, the market is segmented into below US$ 5, between US$ 5 to US$ 10, between US$ 10 and US$ 15, between US$ 15 and US$ 20, between US$ 20 and US$ 75 and above US$ 75.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1861 Similarly, on the basis of volume capacity, car wash soaps are segmented into 20 oz., 64 oz., 48 oz., 16 oz., 23 oz., 10 oz., 8 oz., 11 oz., 18 oz., 26 oz., 28 oz., 32 oz., 24 oz., 33.8 oz., 12 oz., 14 oz. and 40 oz. Based on price of different car wash soaps, the market is segmented into below US$ 10, between US$ 10 to US$ 20, between US$ 20 and US$ 50, between US$ 50 and US$ 100, between US$ 100 and US$ 150, between US$ 100 and US$ 150, between US$ 150 and US$ 200 and US$ 250, between US$ 250 and US$ 500, between US$ 500 and US$ 750, between US$ 750 and US$ 1000, between US$ 1000 and US$ 1250, between US$ 1500 and US$ 2000, between US$ 2000 and US$ 2500 and above US$ 3000. Based on the type of product, the car wash detergents and soaps market is segmented into liquid-based, gel-based and foam-based. On the basis of distribution channel, car wash detergents and soaps market is segmented into department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, online retailing, and automotive parts and accessories outlets. Car wash detergents and soaps market is used for both residential and industrial purpose.Geographically, the Car Wash Detergents and Soaps market is segmented into seven regions including Japan, Middle East and Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Western Europe, Latin America and North America. North America is anticipated to witness significant growth in the next five to six years. This is attributed to new product launches and technological advancements by car wash detergent and soap manufacturers, catering to the demand for consumers. Owing to increasing consumer inclination among consumers for car washing, Asia Pacific excluding Japan is expected to be potential market for car wash detergents and soaps market in the foreseen future.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1861 Car Wash Detergents & Soaps Market Dynamics:Increasing per capita income has led to paradigm shift in consumer lifestyle, resulting in consumer inclination towards discretionary services. In addition increasing growth of automotive industry, awareness about improved car washing methods have led to surge in consumer database especially for commercial car washing services. This is in turn anticipated to drive the demand for car wash detergents and soaps among consumers. In addition, shift from manual washing to automatic washing has fueled the demand for car wash detergents and soaps among automotive service stations at a significant rate in recent years. However, water conservation is a concern, which restricts the adoption of commercial car washing among consumers and thus, might restrain the car wash detergents and soaps market growth. Although, water conservation is a concern, development of equipment such as pressure washer, wherein the pressure of water stream and amount of water used is preset is an added advantage for car washing among both industrial and domestic end-users.Car Wash Detergents & Soaps Market Key players:Some of the players in the Car Wash Detergents and Soaps market include Meguiar's Inc., Griot's Garage, Chemical Guys, 3M Co., Yac Chemicals Limited, Mothers and The Armor All/STP Products Company, among others. Car wash detergents and soaps market is fragmented in nature with large number of players at regional level. There leading car wash detergent and soap players are engaged in developing biodegradable formulas ensuring compliance with eco-friendly environment.
Centre And Drag Link Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:32:50

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Center link is used for transmission of motion from inner tie rods to pitman arm on both sides of a vehicle as compared to center link, which connects to an idler arm. While driving, center link allows the driver to turn front wheels in desired direction. Center and drag link assemblies offer smooth functioning of the vehicle and result in less vibrates and wobbles, thus easy to drive. Center and drag link assemblies are essential components of steering wheel, which is intended to maintain front wheel and front axle lineup. Center and drag link manufacturers are keen on developing products, which overcome challenges such as extreme temperatures, uneven terrain, bad ground conditions, safety and reliability. With increasing end user inclination towards better and efficient vehicle components, the vehicle component manufacturers need to design products meeting aforementioned challenges especially for commercial vehicle vehiclesCentre and Drag Link Market Segmentation:Center and drag link market is segmented on the basis of Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW), ball size range, end use industry and product type. Based on the type of GVW applications, the market is segmented into less than 8,000 lb. GVW, between 8,000-15,000 lb. GVW, and more than 15,000 GVW. On the basis of ball size type, the segmentation includes 1 to 1.5 inch, 1.5 to 1.75 inch and 1.75 to 2.75 inch. Center and Drag link assemblies are used across various end use industries including agriculture, forestry, off-road vehicles, mining, and military. The segmentation is also done by the product type, which majorly includes light-duty vehicle, medium-duty vehicle and heavy-duty vehicle. Geographically, the center and drag link market is segmented into seven regions namely North America, Western Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Also, Asian countries offer low-cost labour, the developed products are less expensive as compared to those manufactured in developed regions of the world.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1862 Centre and Drag Link Market Dynamics:Technological advancements in automotive industry is one of prominent factors driving the demand for development of more durable and strong products such as center and drag links. Moreover, due to fragmented nature of market, number of players in the center and drag link market has increased in recent years. This has further led to improved product development at affordable prices, which is fuelling the market growth. In addition, growing automotive industry particularly across countries such as India and China is further expected to increase demand for steering wheel components such as center and drag link among the end-users. Manufacturers of steering wheel system are focused on extensive research and development (R&D) in order to achieve a defined top-line growth. Apart from R&D gaining significant share in the aftermarket is a concern for manufacturers in North America. Thus, improvement in stock keeping units (SKUs) with an aim to increase coverage of products for different vehicle models might offer surge in unit shipment sales and result in competitive pricing. Furthermore, this is predicted to lead towards enhanced product availability at affordable prices for end users particularly in North America and increase in market share of respective companies. However, large number of suppliers does lead to increased product availability, which results in low quality and less efficiency and thus, hampering the market growth of high-end center and drag link assemblies.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1862 Centre and Drag Link Market Key players:Some of the players in the centre and Drag link market include Federal-Mogul Corporation, KOREA Central CO., LTD., Rane (Madras) Ltd., Powers & Sons, LLC, ZF TRW and Moser Engineering among others. Original steering parts manufacturers across the globe are focused on developing quality products in compliance with reliability and durability. This has thus, led to slow replacement rates, which is indirectly leading towards market demand for center and drag link shipments in the aftermarket.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 18:00:09

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for 8020 Connect Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Calgary, Alberta (FSCWire) - 8020 Connect Inc. (TSX Venture:SHM). has issued a press release with the following headline:8020 Connect Inc. Locking Horns - SynStream Energy Corp.To view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on 8020 Connect Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/8020 Connect Inc.Source: 8020 Connect Inc. (TSX Venture: SHM)Date: March 17, 2017Time: 1:00 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of 8020 Connect Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Klondike Gold Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Klondike Gold Corp. (TSX Venture:KG). has issued a press release with the following headline:Klondike Gold Announces $1,750,000 Private PlacementTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Klondike Gold Corp., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Klondike Gold Corp.Source: Klondike Gold Corp. (TSX Venture: KG, ISIN: CA4989033010, WKN: A119BJ)Date: March 17, 2017Time: 5:15 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Klondike Gold Corp. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 13:28:11

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Issue 45 of Nanotech Magazine ( www.nanotechmag.com ), the worlds only monthly business magazine for nanotechnology products and innovation features analysis of the global market for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT). This sector could be set to take off as production capacities increase and price drops dramatically to commercially acceptable levels, especially for advanced technology applications in:Printed electronics and sensors; Printed batteries; Printed supercapacitors; Micro supercapacitors; SWCNT anode additives ; Biosensors; Thermally tolerant plastics; Wiring and cables; SCWNT wafers; SWCNT electrodes; Flexible solar cells; Rubber additives; SWCNT Rubber tire reinforcement; SWCNT-silicon hybrid solar cells.The market for SWCNTs in electronics is the most exciting future application, and has been identified by leading semiconductors companies such as IBM as one of the key technologies for future transistors, components and memory devices. This sector is analysed, plus details on producers, production capacities and production processed for SWCNTs. Recent product innovations by producers such as Zeon Corporation and OCSiAl are also covered. Also featured in this months issue, published March 13 2017:Investment and funding news- Funding and research agreements in graphene and quantum dots.Product and production news- Carbon nanotube (CNT) heater based technology for aircraft electrothermal ice protection.- Graphene quantum dots in flash memory.- Mass production of graphene oxide developed in Japan.- Carbon nanotube electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC).- Samsungs new Quantum Dot QLED Q9, Q8, and Q7 TV series.- Sponge bikini incorporating nanomaterials.- Nanocellulose packaging.Government, regulation, funding and policy news- Regulating nanomaterials in the EU.- Nano safety roadmap.- South Korea invest in nanotech.- Multi-million dollar funding for anti-microbial nanotechnology packaging.Graphene product and business news- Polymer nano-porous membrane for Li- Ion battery applications.- Graphene textile products.- Graphene vanadium redox batteries.- Wastewater treatment technology using graphene oxide technology.- Graphene lithium-ion AA rechargeable batteries.- Graphene ski jackets.- Infrared detectors based on graphene.- New graphene production process.- New graphene purification technique.- Manufacturing organic light-emitting diode electrodes from graphene.- Transparent, flexible cryogenic temperature sensor with graphene.- Mass produced graphene based biosensor.- Graphene phone charger.- Graphene eyewear.- Graphene oxide sensors.- Ultrafast optical modulator based on graphene.Nanocoatings product and business news- Super-slippery nanocoatings.- Nano-coating technology that increases solar cell efficiency using advanced light trapping.- Durable highly hydrophobic coatings.- Waterproofing nanocoating technology.- Anti-fingerprint nanocoating technology.- Graphene coatings.- NanoCoated Coronary Stent System.New nanotech company profiles- Silicon quantum dots in luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) for application in photovoltaic windows.- Affordable, environmentally-conscious quantum dot cores.- Nanoparticle filters.- Nanocellulose compostable, suspended ceiling tile.- Conductive films.- Graphene producer in South Korea.- Wireless electronics for retinal prosthesis.Read issue 45 at http://www.nanotechmag.com/latest-issue-1/
2-Methylfuran Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:23:44

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The global pharmaceuticals market is expected to increase at a CAGR of over 4-5% during forecast period. 2-Methylfuran is expected to gain traction in the near future as it is primarily used in pharmaceuticals industry. It is a light yellowish green volatile organic compound with an ethereal odor and is also known as sylvan. 2-Methylfuran changes its shading to black or yellow when exposed to sunlight. It is highly flammable and hence is stored in a ventilated, cool dry place far from heat & fire. 2-Methylfuran is widely used in manufacturing of drugs like atropine, sodium acetate, furadantine, anisodamine and thiamine furan. In pharmaceuticals industry, synthesis of vitamin B1 is done using 2-Methylfuran. It is less dense than water but its vapors are heavier when contrastedwith air. 2-Methylfuran also finds application as a tool for screening of lung cancer and production of anti-malarial drug like chloroquine. It is also used to produce methyl furfural, aliphatic compounds and sulfur and nitrogen heterocycles. Moreover, 2-Methylfuran is also used for making pesticides, flavors or fragrances and has narcotic effect. Hence, the global 2-Methylfuran market is expected to grow at a moderate CAGR during the forecast period.Global 2-Methylfuran Market Dynamics:2-Methyl furan is soluble in alcohol and ether and has the potential to be used as an alternative fuel. This factor is expected to drive the demand for 2-Methylfuran in chemical industry. The growing pharmaceutical industry is also anticipated to be the major driving factor for the growth of global 2-Methylfuran market. Moreover, increasing demand for pesticides coupled with growing agricultural sector is expected to set an opportunity for the growth of 2-Methyl furan market. One of the major factor restricting the growth of the global 2-Methylfuran market is its high flammability and lower flash point. This makes the transportation of 2-Methylfuran difficult, which in turn is expected to restrain the growth of 2-methylfuran market in the near future. Moreover, environmental regulation are imposed for limited usage of 2-Methylfuran because of its toxic effects and thus expected to challenge the overall growth of the market. Additionally, the key players are responding to the challenges and are expanding their global presence in order to sustain their share in the global 2-Methylfuran market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1832 Global 2-Methylfuran Market: SegmentationThe global 2-Methylfuran market can be segmented on the basis of applications and regions. On the basis of applications, the global 2-Methylfuran market is segmented into pharmaceuticals, agricultural and chemical industry. Pharmaceutical industry is estimated to account the largest share in global 2-Methylfuran market. On the basis of regions, the global 2-Methylfuran market can be segmented into North America, Western Europe, Middle East and Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan and Eastern Europe.Global 2-Methylfuran Market: Region wise OutlookNorth America is expected to be the most dominant region in global 2-Methylfuran market. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the most promising revenue generating region for 2-Methylfuran and is expected to grow at significant rate. Due to availability of labor and low cost of raw material, China is projected to be one of the highest revenue generating country in Asia Pacific region in 2-Methylfuran market. Middle East & Africa and Latin America are also expected to show positive growth in the near future.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1832 Global 2-Methylfuran Market: Key PlayersSome of the major key players identified in the global 2-Methylfuran market are as follows:Capot Chemical Co. Ltd.Angene ChemicalA&J Pharmtech Co. Ltd.Sigma-AldrichFinetech Industry Ltd.ChemExper Inc.MP Biomedicals, LLC.Amadis Chemical Co. Ltd.AN PharmaTech Co. Ltd.Tractus Company Ltd.Haihang Industry Co. Ltd.
Industrial Operational Intelligence Solutions Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:38:42

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Industrial operational intelligence is a business analytics and real time dynamic solution that provides greater insights and visibility for businesses. Operational intelligence is used by organisations for real time capabilities to take immediate decisions like stopping any business process or making changes in any traditional systems. Operational intelligence helps in improving and analysing business data through understanding the information related to shortfalls and finding simple ways of responding to any issues. Operational intelligence is simple and easy to be managed by skilled professionals. It helps to acquire information on financial performance of industries and enterprises, thus it has become a major trend in financial services sector. Another major trend observed in operational intelligence is adoption of mobile tools for its operations. Thus in short operational intelligence automated the process of decision making that eliminates delays in process, and improves market responses and decision making. The industrial operational intelligence solutions market is anticipated to expand at a modest CAGR in the forecast period.Global Industrial Operational Intelligence Solutions Market  Drivers and RestrainsFocus of companies to improve market responses and performance as well as the necessity to upgrade their processes are the major driving factors for the growth of global industrial operational intelligence solutions market. The ever increasing automobile and other manufacturing industries and their need to reduce the delays in decision making, automatic decision and real time access to the information are some factors that would bolster the global industrial operational intelligence solutions market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1867 However, skilled professionals are required to operate the operational intelligence solutions and also they need to be trained for its handling and these can slowdown the growth of global industrial operational intelligence solutions market. Also the initial cost of operational intelligence solutions is very high and can act as a restraining factor for operational intelligence market.Global Industrial Operational Intelligence Solutions Market  SegmentsOn the basis of types, global industrial operational intelligence solutions market can be segmented as follows:Enterprise Manufacturing Operational IntelligenceEnterprise Operational Intelligence SoftwareIT Service IntelligenceEnterprise SecurityOn the basis of applications, global industrial operational intelligence solutions market can be segmented as follows:Supply chain and logisticsAssembly line quality assurancePreventive maintenanceExploration & production optimisationSmart meter analysisOn the basis of end-use industry, global industrial operational intelligence solutions market can be segmented as follows:AutomobilesFood & BeveragesElectronicsLogisticsOil & GasAviationRequest For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1867 Global Industrial Operational Intelligence Solutions Market  Region Wise OutlookThe global industrial operational intelligence solutions market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. North America is anticipated to be the leader in the global operational intelligence solutions market owing to its services and other flourishing industries particularly in the countries of US and Canada. Asia Pacific is expected to be the next major region in global operational intelligence solutions market because of the upcoming food & beverages sector, electronics and logistics industries. China and India and supposed to be the countries in this region having major applications of operational intelligence solutions. Europe also contributes significantly in the global industrial operational intelligence solutions market due to its dominance in automobiles market and leadership in meat market. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage and are projected to have a modest CAGR in the forecast period.Global Industrial Operational Intelligence Solutions Market  Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global industrial operational intelligence solutions market are:APRISOIFSMapR Technologies, IncSiemens AGARC Advisory GroupAB&R (American Barcode and RFID)Flexeye LtdSplunk CorpStarview Inc.Vitria Technology Inc
Packaging Design And Simulation Technology Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:28:29

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Product packaging designers are faced with conflicting requirements throughout the development process. Good pack aesthetics are vital for the success of the product, whilst unit costs must be minimized and suitability for stacking and transportation maintained. Packaging design depends on choosing the right materials to pack, 3-dimensional look of the package, and how is it unpacked so that it can or cannot be reused. Packaging design process is scattered across multiple groups and suppliers. These suppliers use multiple steps such as quality checks, recalls, and incur higher costs which gradually delays the process. Simulation technology used in packaging design enables the groups and suppliers to collaborate together and create designs which allows to monitor the physical behavior of the products and materials in order to improve the performance, reliability, safety having the benefit of reduced development time and manufacturing costs. Packaging design and simulation technology market has led from constant innovation and evolution in various departments such as packaging development, optimization technology, and automated simulation. Simulation technology makes packaging more sustainable by helping in several ways like reducing the costs, enabling secure shipment and minimizes the impacts on environment.Packaging Design & Simulation Technology: DriversCompanies invest in R&D to improve the brand portfolio and have rewarding product experiences by improving their packaging design which impact positively to the packaging design and simulation technology market. The shift towards usage of recyclable products reduces the packaging material cost, whose feasibility is inspected by simulation technology this phenomenon drives the packaging design and simulation technology market. With the advancement of technology and automation, majority of the companies are looking forward to packaging design and simulation technology encouraging the packaging design and simulation technology market. Consumer product packaging designers are confronted with differing requirements throughout the improvement process. Factors such as good packing is important for the success of the product, at the same time unit costs must be reduced and aptness for transportation needs to be maintained which urges the companies to use simulation technology for their package designing driving the packaging design and simulation technology market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1837 Packaging Design & Simulation Technology: ChallengesCosts such as initial investment is high for the software, proper training to the staff to use the software correctly which again is included in expenses. Such challenges can affect packaging design and simulation technology market growth.Packaging Design & Simulation Technology: SegmentationSegmentation for the packing design and simulation technology market can be done based on industry. On the basis of industry, packing and simulation technology market can be segmented into consumer goods, food and beverages, pharmaceutical, auto components, consumer electronics and others. The market can be further segmented into software and service providers.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1837 Packaging Design & Simulation Technology: Regional OutlookNorth American region dominates among all the other regions in the packaging design and simulation technology market as a few players have decided to standardize the simulation process for their respective vendors. This would help in simulation process and test performance in fast decision making. European and Asia Pacific regions are considered to have the most potential with advancement of technology and the raising awareness among the consumers about the environmental hazards. Middle East and Africa and Latin America are also among the potential markets but are listed after APAC and Europe region.Packaging Design & Simulation Technology: Competition LandscapeKey vendors of packaging design and simulation technology include 3 Dassault Systems, Altair Product Design Inc., ANSYS inc., MSC Software Corporation, NEFAB Group, Axiom Consulting, Mentor Graphics, ESI Group, Bosch Rexroth AG, and AVID Technology Inc.
Kanchanpur killing:India stops short of saying SSB, firing

India on Thursday was frugal with words for the last weeks border firing by its security forces in which a Nepali national was killed, as it refused to mention firing or Sashastra Seema Bal.
Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:41:01

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Real Time Store Monitoring Platform enables the retailer better understand consumer behavior as well as stores performance. Online shopping has raised customer expectations, standards. Stores have historical information on products, orders, inventory, and customers. The data provides retailers a clear idea on stores performance. The real time store monitoring platform enables view all store activity effectively with integrated platform. The platform offers information on inventory visibility such as sales, return on exchange, out of stocks, receipts and people count, shopper conversion, path analysis etc. Retailer can track the information of loss event details, vendor fraud, and internal theft. Retailers can understand how consumers shop, which item is moving, reasons for out of stock. The platform enables optimize stores performance and reduce risks by provides information on missed items and inventory management. The technological advancements in store management offers new opportunities for the companies in Real Time Store Monitoring Platform industry. Global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market is expected to exhibit a robust growth over the forecast period.Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market: Drivers and restraintsAdvanced Technologies in store management enables reduce risks associated with inventory management and store traffic. Which attract customers to adopt the real time store monitoring platform. The integrated platform enables maintain effectiveness and accuracy. Increased awareness among people to manage the store in effective manner by adopt to advanced technologies such as real time store monitoring platform drives the market. This, in turn, would lead to increase in demand for integrated platform. Adoption of Real Time Store Monitoring Platform has been observed modest in lower and middle-income countries due to low awareness and less disposable income, this can diminish the global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market. Real Time Store Monitoring Platform is costlier than the conventional methods, it can be hampered global real time store monitoring platform market.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1879 Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market: SegmentationGlobal Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market can be segmented as following typesBy Product TypeSoftwareHardwareEnd UserIndependent storesChain StoresLeased DepartmentsReal Time Store Monitoring Platform Market: OverviewGlobal Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market is getting traction due to increased awareness across the globe. Major retail giants are inclined towards advanced technologies in order maintain the accuracy in store management. The global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market expected to witness a significant CAGR over the forecast period.Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market: Region-Wise OutlookGlobal market is segmented into seven key regions, those are North America (N.A), Latin America (L.A), Eastern Europe (E.EU), Western Europe (W.EU), Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, and Middle East and Africa (MEA).Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1879 North America is anticipated to have a maximum market share in global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market due to increased adoption rate to advanced technologies to maintain store, followed by Europe. Asia Pacific region is witnessed for lucrative market in global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market due to stable and healthy economic growth rate in the region and particularly in countries like China and India. Europe is having a considerable contribution in global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market due to its use in the commercial sectors. Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage in global Real Time Store Monitoring Platform market and is expected to have a moderate CAGR in the forecast period.Real Time Store Monitoring Platform Market: Key playersSome of the key players areSoftware AGRetail Next, Inc.iVend RetailAralco Point of sale SystemsReal Time POS, Inc.Netsuite, INC.Comcash, Inc.NovateK
Refractometers Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 06:06:43

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A refractometer is used to measure the extent of light bending, when it travels from air to any other medium. Refractive index is determined till five digit precision and for most of the compounds, reactive index is between 1.3000 and 1.7000. Refractive index is based on the wavelength of light and temperature of the sample. Refractive index identification is done for various applications including petroleum, agriculture and food and beverages. Most common industrial application is determination of dissolved solute in liquid samples.Refractometer is mainly used for measuring dissolved content or substances in solutions, particularly related to sugar content. Refractometers are thus, used to measure critical angle of refraction of a sample. Refractometer helps to analyse different properties of a particular sample such as salinity or sugar content, sweetness in beverages, hydrocarbon content of motor fuels, and blood protein in the given sample. Factors such as accuracy, location of measurement, compatibility with other instruments, sample throughput have an impact on the selection of proper refractometer.In measuring sugar content, BRIX measurement has gained significant traction in recent years. Increasing consumer inclination towards nutritional information among food products has led manufacturers to develop measures to analyse such information. For instance, to analyse sugar concentration, BRIX instruments are used by food manufacturers. Conventionally, BRIX measurement was done through pycnometer, BRIX hydrometer and Abbe refractometer. Nowadays, BRIX measurement is done through digital refractometers and digital density meters. Refractometers are a modern way of measuring BRIX ensuring reproducible and rapid results.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1739 Refractometers Market Segmentation:Refractometers market is segmented on the basis of refractometer type, product type and end-use industry. On the basis of refractometer type, the refractometer market segmentation includes portable and benchtop refractometers. Portable refractometers are anticipate to gain significant traction among end users, which is mainly attributed to factors such as ease of use, comprehensive result storage and easy handling of the refractometer when compared to benchtop refractometers. Different types of refractometers include traditional handheld refractometers, laboratory refractometers, inline refractometers and digital handheld refractometers. Of which, digital refractometers are anticipated to gain significant traction among end use industries. On the basis of end-use industry, refractometers market is segmented into gemology, food processing, oil industry, pharmaceuticals, paint, sugar refineries, research centers and schools.Geographically, refractometers market is segmented into seven regions including Japan, Middle East and Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Western Europe, Latin America and North America. North America is one of the prominent market for refractometer, which is anticipate to remain dominant over the forecast period. However, adoption of refractometers for analysing food and beverage industry is expected to record significant growth during the forecast period.Refractometers Market Dynamics:Increasing technological advancements leading towards shift from manual to automatic measures for analysing refractometry is driving the demand for refractometers among end users. In addition, quality analysis of parameters in food and beverage products such as composition and concentration of a juice, information regarding sugar content in food and beverage products has led towards development of enhanced refractometers. This is intended to ensure reliable and quick analysis resulting in valuable information about composition in the finished product. However, proper calibration is a concern for manufacturers, as it leads to less adoption among end users. This indirectly restricts the refractometers market growth globally. In order to mitigate calibration issue, few refractometer manufacturers have developed products ensuring proper calibration through self-calibration property at an affordable price.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1739 Refractometers Market Key players:Some of the players in the refractometers market include Mettler-Toledo International Inc., Anton Paar GmbH, Hanna Equipments India Pvt.Ltd ., Rudolph Research Analytical and Xylem Analytics, among others. Refractometer manufacturers are focused on developing products ensuring real-time measurement of advanced features such as color, conductivity, oxygen content, sugar inversion, alcohol content and others.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 08:02:02

Sequa Petroleum N.V. (the "Company") today announces that consultation procedures with Tellus Petroleum AS ("Tellus") employee representatives have concluded and Tellus board and shareholder meetings have resolved to commence the Tellus liquidation process in accordance with the Norwegian Companies Act.

As stated in the Company's press release of 9 February 2017, the cessation of its business in Norway, now followed by the commencement of liquidation, constitutes under article 10 (g) of the Terms and Conditions of the Bonds a potential default of the Bonds.

The Company expects this potential default, together with the potential default related to the outstanding Q4 2016 Bond coupon as stated in the Company's press release of 14 November 2016, to be resolved with Sapinda's support as the Company understands that the required majority of the Bonds is held by Sapinda and affiliates.

While amounts received to date have not matched the timing or quantum requested, the Company currently expects to be able to draw sufficient funds from its convertible loan facilities with Sapinda Invest Sarl and Sapinda Asia Limited to enable it to continue to trade and complete the liquidation of Tellus.

The net funds expected from the repatriation of liquidated assets together with debt restructuring and possibly new equity and/or debt funds will enable the Company to progress selected high quality appropriately sized acquisition targets of production and development assets elsewhere that are value-accretive and provide cash flow.

Contacts:

Jacob Broekhuijsen, Chief Executive Officer

+44(0)203-728-4450 or info@sequa-petroleum.com

This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Sequa Petroleum NV via Globenewswire


Beta Thalassemia Testing Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 06:04:54

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Beta thalassemia can be simplified as a diseased state of blood in which there is reduced hemoglobin production. Hemoglobin is a protein containing iron and is present in Red blood cells and the major function of hemoglobin is to carry oxygen to the body cells throughout the body. Low hemoglobin content in the beta thalassemia patients usually leads to the lack of oxygen in many parts of the body. Due to shortage of blood in the body patient, skin becomes pale yellow and the other symptoms like weakness and fatigue are prominent. Risk of abnormal blood clotting highly persist in the patients suffering from beta thalassemia.According to the symptoms severity the disease can be classified into three thalassemia major (Cooley's anemia), thalassemia intermediate and thalassemia minor. Amongst all the forms of thalassemia, major is considered to be the most dreadful. Diagnostics tests associated with Beta Thalassemia CBC Complete blood Count: CBC determines the amount of hemoglobin and RBC in the blood. Carriers possess regular hemoglobin level but may have a marginally reduced count of RBC. Patients having more severe type of thalassemia will have a lower RBC and hemoglobin levels. The detection of the diseased state comprises of measuring mean corpuscular volume which is the size of the RBC. Therefore the mean corpuscular volume is usually found declining in the patients of thalassemia. . Further tests are needed to be performed in patients with decreasing RBC count (anemia), to determine if thalassemia is the cause of the anemia. To rule out the possibility of iron deficiency anemia iron levels in the blood are checked. DNA testing can also prove as an effective technique for detecting mutation of gene that may cause beta, alpha, or delta thalassemia and also DNA tests verify and confirms other tests, such as blood tests. Prenatal Genetic testing Thalassemia in fetus can be detected by analyzing the amniotic fluids which is surrounding the fetus. Blood from the developing fetus can also be as good source of sample for detecting thalassemia but aspirating blood sample may cause some damage to a developing fetus, hence taking of amniotic fluid samples is generally preferred. Chorionic Villus sampling (CVS) is another technique of diagnosing genetic problems in the fetus. Sample is collected from the placental tissue or chorionic villus. There is risk of miscarriage involved with every prenatal test. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a new procedure that may be performed on embryos which are produced by in vitro fertilization. This test is performed on the embryos which are produced artificially and also allows parents to carry and implant only those embryos that are not carrying the mutated thalassemia genes.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1738 Most commonly prone area for beta thalassemia are Mediterranean countries, African countries, and Southeast Asian countries. Thalassemia trait almost affects 5% to 30% of the population in these ethnic groups. The growing population in these countries act as the drivers for beta thalassemia testing kit market. A number of factors such as high implementation cost of sophisticated clinical and preclinical imaging systems, High cost of maintenance, low life span of accessories used are restricting the growth of the global imaging market.Based on technology, the beta thalassemia testing Market is segmented into the following:Perinatal Testing, Complete Blood Count (CBC)DNA Testing, Prenatal TestingPrenatal Genetic TestingChorionic Villus sampling, PreimplantationBased on end user, the in vivo imaging systems market can be segmented into following:Hospitals, Biotechnological LaboratoriesDiagnostic Laboratories, Educational research institutesPharmaceutical IndustriesBased on geography, the in vivo Imaging Systems 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)The testing market for beta thalassemia has a growing trend in the countries with ethnic groups like, Mediterranean countries, African countries and few countries in Asia Pacific. As migration has become more common, population of beta thalassemia can be seen rising in the developed countries as well. There are several prenatal test available in the market to determine the possibility of beta thalassemia including both invasive and noninvasive technique. A recent advancement in the testing of beta thalassemia may determine the risk of the disease by in vitro examination of the embryo. Even though there are many such testing available in the market but lack of awareness leads to the negligence and delayed diagnosis of the diseased state. Approximately 50k  100k children with -thalassemia major in middle and low income countries die every year.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1738 The topical regions are more prone to possess high numbers of patients with beta thalassemia like Nigeria, Sudan, Chad, Columbia etc. followed by few South Asian countries. Research Institutes and Pharmaceutical companies, growing usage for beta thalassemia testing and technological advancements, rising awareness are factors driving market growth. Few Asian countries like Myanmar and Thailand also have high number of beta thalassemia patients.
Whole Genome Amplification Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-03-17 07:40:15

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Whole genome amplification was being developed in 1992. This technique is used for amplifying the entire genome from very small amount of genomic DNA; this helps in increasing the quantity of limited DNA samples, and so any gene can be studied in the organism by preserving the limited sample. Whole genome amplification is a useful technique and has various applications such as forensics and genetic disease research, apart from this, there are new techniques such as array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and next-generation sequencing, where a few DNA quantities but analyses is required. There are also various whole genome amplification techniques that are developed wherein they differ both in the protocol as well as replication accuracy. Whole genome amplification techniques utilize the principals of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) so as to copy enzymatically the DNA contained within a sample. Moreover, the amplification of the whole genome is non-specific and theoretically provides an increased amount in the copy number of all genomic sequences. The application of whole genome amplification is mostly in research studies where small DNA samples are regularly encountered. These applications comprise creation of probes from microdissected or flow-sorted chromosomes, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and study of ancient DNA samples.Whole Genome Amplification Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global whole genome amplification market is driven by the rising incidence of genetic disorders owing to rising population. According to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the study conducted by National Center for Health Statistics the estimated prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is 22.4 per 1,000 children in the age group of 3 to 17 years in 2013. In addition to this the whole genome amplification kits are easier and faster, apart from this only small amount of DNA is required for multiple samples. Growing awareness of applications of whole genome amplification techniques is expected to provide high growth opportunities for the whole genome amplification products such as kits manufacturers over the forecast period. Moreover, technological developments and emphasis on specificity and sensitivity of the kits is expected to provide significant growth opportunities for whole genome amplification product manufacturers. However, the whole genome amplification makes it difficult to derive accurate genomic information from single-cell genomes is expected to hamper market growth over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1873 Whole Genome Amplification Market: SegmentationThe global whole genome amplification market are segmented into product type and end userSegmentation based on product typeKitsSingle Cell WGA KitWGA and ChIP DNAWGA Reamplification KitComplete WGA KitDNA Amplification KitOthersSegmentation based on applicationMedical ApplicationsGenetic disordersForensicsPaternityFood safetyVeterinaryAgriculture researchSegmentation based on end userResearch CentersAcademic InstitutesHospitalsClinicsPharmaceutical and Biotechnology CompaniesRequest For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1873 Whole Genome Amplification Market: OverviewGlobally the whole genome amplification market is expected to witness robust growth over the forecast period owing to forensics labs trying to genotype five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), and researchers collecting DNA from a buccal swab that only contains a few cells. The procedure is fast--six hours from start to finish are expected to gain traction over the forecast period, moreover increasing distribution network of manufacturers is expected to create high growth opportunities for the stakeholders of whole genome amplification market.Whole Genome Amplification Market: Region  Wise OutlookRegionally, whole genome amplification market is segmented into seven key regions, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ (Asia-Pacific excluding Japan), Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA)North America is expected to dominate the whole genome amplification market over the forecast period. Western Europe is expected to follow next after North America owing to increasing awareness of whole genome amplification in this region. Increasing application of whole genome amplification in forensic and genetic disorders in Japan is expected to boost demand for whole genome amplification in this country. APEJ is expected to follow next regarding revenue growth owing to technological developments and the introduction of new products from the local players. Latin America and MEA regions are also expected to witness significant growth in whole genome amplification market over the forecast period.Whole Genome Amplification Market: Key PlayersSome key players in peripheral embolization market are Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC., QIAGEN, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., New England Biolabs., General Electric Company, LGC Limited, Genetica DNA Laboratories - a LabCorp brand, NuGEN Technologies, Inc., Illumina, Inc. and others. The companies are focused on understanding the fundamental epigenomic and genomic regulatory pathways underlying normal cell growth and tissue differentiation.
NEIF II Fund (Next Estate Income Fund II), managed by BNP Paribas Real Estate Investment Management Luxembourg, has been very active on the investment side over the past months. The fund acquired two new assets late 2016 in Munich and Milan and signed another transaction in Frankfurt early 2017. All

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With the majority of votes counted in the Dutch election and reports that a coalition government is likely to be formed, M&G Real Estate predicts positive prospects for Dutch real estate. The Dutch election marks the start of a busy and important year in European politics and follows the UKs

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International Trade Fair throws open its doors

The 6th International Trade Fair kicked off at Bhrikutimandap Exhibition Hall on Thursday with the aim of promoting Nepali goods by bringing together national and international exhibitors to exchange knowledge and new ideas in product development.
Arianespace has announced it plans to launch the Koreasat-7 broadcasting and telecommunications satellite for KT SAT on 21 March Universal Time.





The third satellite to be launched by Arianespace for KT Corp subsidiary KT SAT, Koreasat-7 will provide video and data applications, including Internet access, direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting, Government communications and connectivity for very small aperture terminal (VSAT) networks.Koreasat-7 will provide higher throughput and extended coverage over Korea, the Philippines, the Indochinese Peninsula, India and Indonesia from its orbital location of 116 East.The Ariane mission from French Guiana, designated Flight VA236, will also include the launch of SGDC for Visiona Tecnologia Espacial on behalf of the Brazilian operator Telebras. Both satellites were built in France by Thales Alenia Space using Spacebus platforms.The news comes shortly after KT Sat announced it would lease four transponders on another of its satellites, Koreasat-5A, to provide direct-to-home (DTH) services for Mongolias DDISH TV, starting next year. DDISH TV is Mongolia's largest satellite broadcasting company, attracting 320,000 subscribers since it launched in 2008. As a result of the extra capacity, the operator plans to deliver more than 90 HD TV satellite channels.The contract came as a result of successful collaboration between KT SAT and our satellite broadcasting provider affiliate, KT Skylife, the company said. Both companies are expected to strengthen competitiveness in the satellite broadcasting sector, seeking next-generation growth areas.The contract allows KT SAT to secure another revenue source and strengthen its foothold in the global satellite-based TV market.
As hinted over the last few weeks, the UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley, has officially asked broadcast regulator Ofcom to consider the public interest aspects of 21st Century Foxs proposed takeover of Sky.



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On 3 March, when the UK Government formally notified the European Commission of the 21st Century Fox acquisition of the pay-TV giant, Bradley noted that the deal, which will see 21st Century Fox make a second attempt to buy the shares in Sky that it does not already own, had potential public interest issues . She has now requested Ofcom to report by 16 May 2017 on the effects of the proposed transaction on two public interest grounds: media plurality, and commitment to broadcast standards.The public interest test that Ofcom has been asked to make will assess whether a licensee is fit and proper are separate legal processes. However, Ofcom noted that the issues it has been required to consider in the public interest may overlap with its own consideration of Skys fitness to hold broadcasting licences in the event of a change of control. Ofcom has now published a guidance note setting out the process and timetable for preparing its report on the public interest considerations set out by Bradley. Ofcom has also published an invitation to comment, and invites written submissions to be sent toby 30 March 2017.
The world's most valuable copper deposits, known as porphyry deposits, originate from cooling magma. But how can we predict the size of these deposits? What factors govern the amount of copper present? Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have studied over 100,000 combinations to establish the depth and number of years required for magma to produce a given amount of copper. The same scientists have also devised a model that can detect the quantity of copper held in a deposit by means of a simple factor analysis. The research, which is published in the journal Scientific Reports, will make it possible to estimate the potential for mining the metal before beginning any drilling. It is a model that will undoubtedly be of great benefit to mining companies.

Porphyry copper deposits account for 75% of natural copper worldwide. They are formed by magma chambers situated between 10 and 15 km beneath Earth's surface. At this depth, the magma heats to around 900C but when it comes into contact with the surrounding rock, it cools and crystallises. The water in the magma can then no longer be in solution: it forms bubbles that escape to the surface, carrying with them a substantial part of the copper originally contained in the magma. At a depth of around 2-3 km, the bubbles cool down in the porosities of the rocks, and precipitate the copper they contain as sulphide, creating deposits that may include from 1 to >200 million tons of copper. This explains why Massimo Chiaradia and Luca Caricchi, researchers in the Earth sciences department in the faculty of science at UNIGE, were so keen to discover what dictates the amount of copper in a deposit and whether it was possible to anticipate its size.

More magma means more copper

The volume of magma determines the amount of copper, but under what conditions does the volume of the initial magma form? Chiaradia explains: "We used models that incorporate the depth and timescale at which the magma accumulates, the duration of the build-up that forms the deposit, the water content of the magma and the quantity of copper in the water. We then varied these parameters from a minimum to a maximum based on actual measurements." By modifying the parameters, the scientists obtained 100,000 simulations that they compared with the actual data available to them, which helped define the ideal conditions for the formation of a huge deposit. As Caricchi adds: "The optimum conditions for creating a magmatic system that results in the formation of a deposit of 30 to 240 million tons of copper is a depth of over 20 km and a continuous injection time of molten magma of over 2 million years."

In search of the ideal deposit

Magma contains water, copper and various other chemical components, including Strontium (Sr) and Yttrium (Y). We know that when the Sr divided by Y ratio is between 50 and 150 in the magma, there is a high probability of finding copper in the deposit. The researchers at UNIGE integrated this ratio into their new model and merged it with the estimated formation time for deposits. Other minerals are associated with copper in these deposits, which allows scientists to date them thanks to the natural decay of uranium into lead and rhenium into osmium. This enabled the scientists to establish the age, i.e. the birth, but also the length, i.e. the number of years, for forming a copper deposit, which can range from tens of thousands of years to two million years. "These two items of data -- the Sr / Y ratio and the duration of the formation -- meant we could design a table of probabilities for determining the amount of copper in the deposit under analysis," continues Chiaradia. Mining companies will be able to use this model to assess the size of a copper deposit at the initial research stage, before starting any significant drilling work. "Our model," says Caricchi, "which we have compared to real data, has an excellent match rate, and it can save an enormous amount of time and money during mining explorations."
China's severe winter air pollution problems may be worsened by changes in atmospheric circulation prompted by Arctic sea ice loss and increased Eurasian snowfall -- both caused by global climate change.

Modeling and data analysis done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest that sea ice and snowfall changes have shifted China's winter monsoon, helping create stagnant atmospheric conditions that trap pollution over the country's major population and industrial centers. Those changes in regional atmospheric conditions are frustrating efforts to address pollution through emission controls.

"Emissions in China have been decreasing over the last four years, but the severe winter haze is not getting better," said Yuhang Wang, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Mostly, that's because of a very rapid change in the high polar regions where sea ice is decreasing and snowfall is increasing. This perturbation keeps cold air from getting into the eastern parts of China where it would flush out the air pollution."

To be reported March 15 in the journal Science Advances, the research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency. The paper presents a clear example of how large-scale perturbations caused by global climate change can have significant regional impacts, and is believed to be the first to link sea ice and snowfall levels to regional air pollution.

Haze problems in the East China Plains -- which include the capital Beijing -- first gained worldwide attention during the winter of 2013 when an instrument at the U.S. embassy recorded extremely high levels of PM 2.5 particles. The haze prompted the Chinese government to institute strict targets for reducing emissions from industry and other sources.

Though these emission controls appear to be working, the haze during December and January continues. So Wang and colleagues Yufei Zou, Yuzhong Zhang and Ja-Ho Koo wondered if other factors may be playing a role.

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Long-term air quality measurements aren't available in China, so the researchers had to piece together estimates based on visibility measures and satellite data. To analyze the historical records, they created a new Pollution Potential Index (PPI) that used air temperature gradient anomalies and surface wind speeds as a proxy for ventilation conditions over eastern China.

"Once we generated the PPI and combined it with the visibility data, it was obvious that January 2013 was well beyond anything that had ever been seen before going back at least three decades," said Wang. "But in that month emissions had not changed, so we knew there had to be another factor."

The East China Plains consist of interconnected basins surrounded by mountain ranges to the west and the ocean to the east, a mirror image of the polluted Southern California. Pollution generated by industry and vehicles can be removed effectively only by horizontal dispersion or by vertical mixing in winter, and when those processes fail to move out stagnant air, pollution builds up. It seemed likely that something was preventing the ventilation that would have kept the air cleaner.

The researchers next looked at climate features such as sea ice, snowfall, El Ninos, and Pacific Oscillations. They conducted principal component and maximum covariance analyses and found correlations of stagnant air conditions over China to Arctic sea ice -- which reached a record low in the fall of 2012 -- and snowfall in the upper latitudes of Siberia, which had reached a record high earlier in the winter. They then used atmospheric model simulations to study how those factors change large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and pollution ventilation over eastern China.

"The reductions in sea ice and increase in snowfall have the effect of damping the climatological pressure ridge structure over China," Wang said. "That flattens the temperature and pressure gradients and moves the East Asian Winter Monsoon to the east, decreasing wind speeds and creating an atmospheric circulation that makes the air in China more stagnant."

The results of the model were consistent with observations that Korea and Japan had been unusually cold that winter, while eastern China had been unusually warm -- both suggesting that the cold center had moved.

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The winter of 2017 saw the same factors, with low levels of Arctic sea ice in September 2016, high snowfall -- and severe haze. Wang says those factors are likely to continue as the global climate change disrupts the normal structure of the atmosphere.

"Despite the efforts to reduce emissions, we think that haze will probably continue for the future," he said. "This is partly climate-driven now, so it probably won't get much better in the winter. Emissions are no longer the only driver of these conditions."

Wang hopes to continue the study using new data from China's air quality monitoring network. The impact of global climate change, he said, may be unique to China because of its geography and sensitivity to changes in atmospheric circulation structure. Though the problem is now manifested in air pollution, he said the results of the study should encourage the nation to continue addressing climate change.

"The very rapid change in polar warming is really having a large impact on China," he said. "That gives China an incentive to not only follow through on air pollutant emission reductions, and also to look at the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our research shows that cutting greenhouse gases would help with the winter haze problem."
You've just discovered a unique, eyeless catfish from the murky bottoms of the Amazon River. What do you do?

If you're Mark Sabaj of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, you name the new fish after your adventuresome daughter, of course.

"I named it Xyliphius sofiae as an expression of love for my daughter and appreciation for everything she has taught me," said Sabaj, PhD, interim curator of Ichthyology at the Academy. "Like Sofia, this specimen is unique."

For the past two years, since she was 5, Sofia has joined her father on fieldwork, which he said is his "favorite part of the job."

"Naturally, I want to bring my daughter on trips to the field," Sabaj explained. "The best part is the shared thrill of discovery as we pull our net out of the water."

That's just how the X. sofiae specimen was obtained. Sofia was yet to be born when the specimen was initially pulled from the middle of the Amazon River near Iquitos, Peru by Sabaj and local fishermen.. The fish was officially described in a paper published in Copeia, authored by Tiago Carvalho, then of the Academy, and co-authored by Sabaj and Carvalho's advisor, Roberto Reis of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

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Just over 44 millimeters from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail, the X. sofiae is relatively small for Xyliphius, a genus of banjo catfish native to South America.

"It has two characteristics that are relatively rare among catfishes: The complete loss of its eyes and its pale -- almost extreme lack of -- pigmentation," Sabaj said. "Most catfishes with similar features inhabit underground aquifers and other cave environments."

The habitat of X. sofiae does bare some similarities to dark waters below ground, though.

"The Amazon River carries a lot of sediments from the Andes Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, so light does not penetrate far below its surface," Sabaj explained.

Xyliphius sofiae is extremely well-adapted to such dark environments. Being blind isn't an issue at such murky depths in part because the catfish has long barbels (whiskers) and fin filaments that likely allow it to feel its way around.

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Although it's unclear what the fish eats, the best guess is that it sifts around the bottom of rivers for micro-invertebrates.

All of this points to the X. sofiae being at the pinnacle of evolution for banjo catfishes in a lightless aquatic environment.

"Perhaps most the most interesting aspect of the X. sofiae is its habitat, the dark depths of the Amazon channel," Sabaj said. "Until recently, such habitats remained poorly explored and the diversity of its denizens was poorly documented."

The fish named for Sofia now resides at the Academy in Philadelphia, the only known museum specimen in the world. If things keep up, Sofia may continue to follow in her father's footsteps and add more specimens to the Academy's vaunted collections.

Sofia's excitement for fieldwork isn't her only chip off the old block, it turns out. Having species named for them is in the family blood. In total, Sabaj has five species, including three catfish, named after him, starting with the Peckoltia sabaji, a popular pleco named in 2003 by Jon Armbruster, a long-time friend from Auburn University who was Sabaj's office mate in gradute school.

"Taxonomists can name a new species almost anything they want, so I'm humbled to be recognized by my colleagues for my contributions to taxonomy," Sabaj said.
Delirium is associated with a five-fold increase in mortality in acute cardiac patients, according to research published in European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care.1 Delirium was common and affected over half of acute cardiac patients aged 85 years and older.

Delirium is a clinical syndrome caused by a disturbance in the normal functioning of the brain. Delirious patients are less aware of, and responsive to, their environment. They can be disorientated, incoherent, and in a dream-like state, with hallucinations, disordered speech and memory disturbances.

Delirium affects at least one in ten hospitalised patients and is more common in the elderly. These patients have worse long-term prognosis and more complications during their hospital stay.

"Among hospitalised patients, those admitted to an intensive care unit are more likely to develop delirium and there are strategies to limit its consequences," said lead author Dr Giovanni Falsini, interventional cardiologist, San Donato Hospital, Arezzo, Italy. "Less is known about delirium and its significance in patients admitted to cardiac intensive care units. This study investigated the incidence and clinical impact of delirium in patients with acute cardiac diseases."

The study included all patients aged 65 years and older admitted to two cardiac intensive care units during a period of 15 months. Only non-intubated patients were enrolled. Validated score systems and questionnaires were used to detect and diagnose the presence of delirium at admission or during the hospital stay.

Delirious patients were closely followed by nursing and medical staff who used a flowchart for delirium treatment. This included treating pain and anxiety, and discontinuing medications known to cause delirium. Patient survival at six months was determined by telephone call.

The investigators found that delirium was a frequent condition among elderly patients with acute cardiac diseases. The study population consisted of 726 patients with an average age of 79 years, of whom 15% had delirium (at admission or during the hospital stay). More than half (52%) of patients aged 85 years and older were delirious.

Patients with delirium had a worse prognosis, with a five-fold increase in both in-hospital and 30-day mortality and a two-fold increase in six-month mortality. Delirium was not only a strong and independent factor in predicting mortality, but was also associated with longer hospital stay and more frequent rehospitalisations during follow-up.

"Delirium is a common and serious condition in acute cardiac patients," said Dr Falsini. "They stay in hospital longer, return to hospital more often, and are more likely to die in the short- and long-term."

Dr Falsini said elderly patients may be at higher risk because they usually have pre-existing issues that can predispose to delirium such as dementia, visual and hearing impairments, depression, use of psychoactive drugs, infections, or electrolyte disturbances.

He said: "The more complex and frail the patient is, the higher the rate of delirium and subsequent worse outcomes. It is unknown whether delirium can be treated to improve prognosis in critically ill patients, or whether it is a marker of organ dysfunction or systemic disease and an early sign that complications are likely. Monitoring delirium has been linked with reduced in-hospital mortality in mechanically ventilated patients and it is possible that similar benefit might occur in acute non-intubated patients."

Dr Falsini concluded: "Delirium is common, serious, costly and under-recognised. A protocol is needed to identify and treat delirium in high-risk settings, like cardiac intensive care units."
They are able to predict how much the on-board battery will in fact be utilized in the course of the satellite's mission. The efficiency achieved here is about five times greater than with conventional systems. And electric cars on Earth are already benefiting from the procedure as well. The researchers will present their methods at the Cebit computer fair in Hannover (Hall 6, Stand E28).

"As far as we know, there is nothing like it in Earth orbit so far," says Holger Hermanns, professor of Computer Science at Saarland University. In collaboration with his doctoral student Gilles Nies and student Marvin Stenger, Hermanns has developed a procedure that allows for far more accurate predictions of the amount of battery power needed for a particular operation in space. Until now, space logisticians have tended to plan with overly large and heavy batteries, conceding valuable space needed for other equipment and experiments. "Amongst other things, not enough attention has been paid to the recovery effect, a phenomenon well-known from mobile phones. If the phone dies due to an empty battery, it often takes just a few minutes of waiting, then you can turn the phone back on again and use it, for a short time at least," Hermanns says. The new battery model can be used to monitor the exact amount of energy currently available, and determine how much of it is present in chemically bound form, that is, not immediately usable. This lets the computer scientists calculate the probability of the battery being discharged at any given moment.

The Saarbruecken computer scientists' findings can also be applied on Earth. "Batteries are ubiquitous -- and a good battery model helps in a lot of situations," says Holger Hermanns. Consider, for instance, the energy demands of an electric car: "So far, we could only answer the following question: Under ideal conditions, will the battery charge be enough for this electric car to make it to Frankfurt Airport? Now we can see whether the air conditioning system can be operated in such a way that you have a chance greater than 99 percent at all times to make it to your plane in time with the current charge," explains Hermanns.

Group website "Dependable Systems and Software": http://depend.cs.uni-sb.de/
Iraqi forces besiege Islamic State around Mosul Old City

Iraqi government forces besieged Islamic State militants around Mosul's Old City on Thursday, edging closer to the historic mosque from where the group's leader declared a caliphate nearly three years ago.
States where Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act have had a significant increase in prescribing of buprenorphine -- a medication that plays an important role in addressing the opioid epidemic, reports a study in the April issue of Medical Care. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

"Our findings suggest that Medicaid expansion has the potential to reduce the financial barriers to buprenorphine utilization and improve access to medication-assisted treatment of opioid use disorder," write Hefei Wen, PhD, of University of Kentucky College of Public Health, Lexington, and colleagues. The study also highlights the need for adequate numbers of physicians approved to prescribe buprenorphine.

Increased Buprenorphine Prescribing in States with Medicaid Expansion

The researchers analyzed trends in Medicaid-covered prescriptions for buprenorphine in states that did and did not expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Buprenorphine is an "opioid partial agonist" that is effective in reducing opioid use, promoting abstinence, and aiding recovery.

Twenty-six states (and the District of Columbia) implemented Medicaid expansion in 2014. These states showed "upward trends" in Medicaid-covered buprenorphine prescriptions after the expansions. In contrast, buprenorphine prescribing did not significantly increase in states that did not expand Medicaid or expanded it after 2014.

After adjustment for other factors, Medicaid expansion was associated with a 70 percent increase in buprenorphine prescriptions. The increased number of prescriptions was accompanied by a 50 percent increase in Medicaid spending on buprenorphine.

In addition to Medicaid coverage, the number of physicians approved to prescribe buprenorphine was also an important contributing factor in access to buprenorphine. Because buprenorphine is a controlled substance, there are strict federal regulations on the qualifications of the physicians who can prescribe it for patients with opioid use disorder and the number of patients they can treat.

For each ten percent increase in the number of physicians approved to treat up to 100 patients in a given year, there was a 45 percent increase in buprenorphine prescriptions and a 31 percent increase in buprenorphine spending associated with the increase in the number of approved physicians. In areas with fewer approved prescribers, Medicaid expansion had a limited impact on buprenorphine prescribing.

Buprenorphine -- the most commonly prescribed medication for opioid use disorder -- is an important part of strategies to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States. Lack of health insurance coverage has been a major barrier to buprenorphine treatment. Medicaid expansion has the potential to increase availability of medication-assisted treatment to low-income groups with disproportionately high rates of opioid use disorder.

The new study provides evidence of a substantial increase in buprenorphine prescribing in states that expanded Medicaid. Further improvement is expected as states implement additional measures to facilitate access to Medicaid coverage and medication-assisted treatment for low-income patients with opioid use disorders

Dr. Wen and colleagues also emphasize the importance of physician prescribing capacity -- increasing access to health insurance seems to have a limited impact on buprenorphine use in areas where there are not enough approved prescribers. The authors conclude, "Sufficient physician prescribing capacity is necessary for ensuring that Medicaid expansion achieves its full potential in improving buprenorphine utilization."
Many public and private efforts focus on research in precision medicine, the process by which genomic information and other characteristics of a patient's disease are used to predict which treatments will be most effective. Scientific initiatives alone, however, will not deliver such medicines without strong incentives to bring them to market. An article to be published in Science on Friday, March 17, 2017, examines the unique economics of precision medicines in the United States and the factors that impact their development, pricing, and access.

The authors -- Assistant Professor Ariel D. Stern of Harvard Business School; Associate Professor Brian M. Alexander, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (DF/BWCC); and Professor Amitabh Chandra of Harvard Kennedy School -- also outline the principal reasons why prices for precision medicines are likely to be higher than prices for conventional therapies and discuss the types of policies that are likely to increase patient access to these medicines.

In their discussion of the incentives needed for precision medicine innovation, Stern, Alexander, and Chandra cite the passage of the U.S. Orphan Drug Act of 1983 (ODA), which created incentives -- tax credits of 50 percent of clinical trials expenses and marketing exclusivity for seven years rather than the usual five -- to encourage manufacturers to develop new drugs for so-called orphan diseases, those affecting fewer than 200,000 people.

"The incentives provided by the ODA," the authors write, "mean that manufacturers of precision medicines should be particularly eager to find biomarkers that allow them to bring their medicines to market as orphan drugs, including salvaging some projects by showing effectiveness in narrower populations."

In addition, taking note of several existing FDA regulatory designations that encourage the development of innovative medicines, including Priority Review, Fast Track, and Breakthrough Therapy, the authors assert that "A better understanding of how precision medicines will be considered for such programs will be important for understanding which precision medicines are developed."

Stern, Alexander, and Chandra next consider the factors that will drive up prices for new precision medicines as opposed to conventional therapies: First, after the launch of a new product, competition in small markets from other new entrants will be limited, which means that there is less brand-to-brand competition early in a product's life cycle. Further, competition from a generic equivalent or follow-on biologic drug is delayed by statute.

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Second, since precision medicines are more likely to be biologic drugs derived from living organisms (for example, isolated from tissues from humans, animals, or microorganisms), prices will reflect their more costly and technologically-intensive manufacturing, with limited relief in sight from "biosimilars," which are unlikely to be treated as direct substitutes by US physicians and pharmacists in the near future, as a result of current FDA and state-level policies.

Third, since biomarkers identify the subtype of patients for whom a treatment will be most effective, more efficient targeting enables manufacturers to charge higher prices to reflect higher effectiveness.

Fourth, if R&D costs are higher for precision medicines than for traditional therapies, then the medicines launched will be only those with potential prices high enough to justify those R&D expenses.

According to Stern, Alexander, and Chandra, since the promise of precision medicine relies on identifying patient or disease factors that predict the effectiveness of a given therapy, it is important to understand the incentives to develop biomarkers and diagnostic capabilities.

"One motivation," they explain, "is trial 'enrichment,' in which a patient characteristic such as a biomarker is used to define a study subpopulation so as to maximize the likelihood of finding a drug's effect." Another motivation stems from the ability to segment the patient population and charge higher prices to patients who will benefit most from a precision medicine. A third reason, say the authors, is motivated by payers and capitated providers who have financial incentives not to overuse high-cost drugs. "These entities have potential to generate additional demand for biomarkers for high-cost drugs," they write.

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In light of all these issues, what kind of access will patients have to the medical breakthroughs that precision medicine can make possible? After all, the inability of insurers and patients to pay for such drugs will reduce firms' incentives to develop them.

One proposed solution is the creation of new financial instruments that would function like mortgages to spread the costs of high-value, high-price treatments over time, thus decreasing the upfront financial burden for patients and payers alike. Others include publicly financed "high-risk pools" that may help cover high-cost therapies, policies that would help spread risk by decoupling insurance from specific companies by encouraging employers to purchase insurance on exchanges where multiple employers pool patients, and creating price competition to provide financial relief for both patients and payers.

"Clear characterization of the precision medicine development pipeline -- including its sensitivity to economic incentives such as exclusivity periods, effective patent length, public funding, and the roles of early stage companies and more mature players -- will allow policy makers to more accurately anticipate the likely profiles of medicines that will reach the market in years to come," the authors conclude. At the same time, "Reduction in both the cost and length of trials means that more drugs can clear the hurdle of commercial viability."

"My colleagues and I hope that this article will help to build further understanding of incentives to develop and use precision medicines," said Professor Stern. "This is a topic that resonates deeply at the institutions where we work. For example the DF/BWCC has one of the most comprehensive precision medicine initiatives through the Profile project, a systematic way to match patients to precision trials through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Match Miner, and it is developing novel clinical trial designs to support precision medicine.

"In addition, Harvard Business School is deeply committed to the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator, a partnership between HBS, The Robert and Myra Kraft Family Foundation, and the Broad Institute -- all made possible by a $20 million endowment from the Kraft Foundation under the leadership of Robert Kraft (MBA 1965) and Jonathan Kraft (MBA 1990)."
Chapman University has published the results of a state-wide study on the communication campaigns California has been employing to address its ongoing drought. The study looked at current message strategies aimed to reduce residential water use in California.

"What we learned was counterintuitive to what we expected," said Jake Liang, Ph.D., assistant professor in Chapman's School of Communication, and lead author on the study. "Conservation campaigns, regardless of the strategy -- in general -- led to participants having an attitude change in a negative direction -- meaning they were less inclined to take action to conserve water after seeing the messages. This calls for a re-examination of the conservation strategies that the state is currently using."

The study was conducted in three phases. The first phase identified 12 strategies of ongoing water conservation messages in California. These were: conservation tips, loss aversion, evidence of drought, social norms, social comparison, social identity, referrals and redirections, policies, goal setting, commitment, humor and direct requests. The most common strategies were conservation tips, which refer to messages that directly provide the individual with any type of content, tips and/or strategies to save water; and referrals and redirection, which refers to messages that aim to direct a person to another source of information about conservation.

The second phase looked at current California conservation campaigns, such as Save Our Water, and categorized them according to the strategies used in phase 1. In phase 3 participants' attitudes were assessed before reading a water conservation message and again afterward. In this phase the researchers focused specifically on three strategies: loss aversion, evidence of drought, and conservation tips and how effective they were individually and used in combinations. These three strategies were chosen for testing because they are directly related to message design. They can be implemented by campaign practitioners immediately after reading the study. Other strategies require additional information or efforts such as legislation if a campaign practitioner is to employ policies.

Surprisingly, the data revealed that exposure to pro-conservation messages actually decreased participants' attitude toward water conservation. These results suggest that initial attitudes are generally highly favorable toward conservation but can be negatively affected after message exposure. Given this finding, campaign practitioner may need to reconsider using these strategies or at least monitor if their use indeed leads to the well-intended results.

Although their study did not test directly for the specific reason for the negative effect, they discussed some possibilities:

People feel that conservation messages threatened their freedom to choose,

Which message strategy is used,

The possibility that an individual simply cannot conserve water,

The source's credibility is questioned.

"Communication messages remain a golden opportunity to influence people's attitudes and water use without incurring the high financial costs of legislating or retrofitting water systems in the midst of such an ongoing crisis," said Dr. Liang.

"If carbon emissions continue to increase, NASA projects a dramatic increase in the likelihood of a mega-drought in the Southwest and Central Plains within the next 35 years," said Kerk Kee, Ph.D., associate professor in Chapman's School of Communication and a co-author on the study. "Therefore the need to develop effective message campaigns for water conservation is more crucial than ever."

The study called, "Running out of Water! Developing a Message Typology and Evaluating Message Effects on Attitude toward Water Conservation," is published in the journal Environmental Communication. The sample of participants was 180 U.S. adults who reside in California. The average age was 49 and 50 percent of the participants were female. Conservations messages were randomly sampled from campaigns in 2014 and 2015. The dataset reflects a sample of 23 conservation organizations, with a total of 100 conservation messages.
A research team investigating the mental health burden and treatment-seeking behaviors of student veterans attending rural community colleges in the southern United States has found that this population has difficulty integrating into the campus community and needs support to help it succeed.

The study, published in the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, is the first, to the authors' knowledge, to report on the mental health burden faced by veterans at the community college level.

"Of the 211 student veterans who participated in our study, we heard the stories of 23 veterans who struggled with the aftermath of trauma exposure, and suffered from sleep disturbance, hypervigilance, irritable or aggressive behavior, and difficulty concentrating," said Ann Cheney, an assistant professor in the Center for Healthy Communities in the School of Medicine and a coauthor on the study. "Student veterans often have physical and mental injuries, deployment- and combat-related stress, and family/relationship disruption after deployments. Our findings underscore the need for supportive services in higher education to integrate student veterans into campus communities and refer them to mental healthcare resources toward improving their academic success."

Veterans returning from overseas combat often struggle with trauma-related psychological distress that can affect their daily lives and academic performance. Because of this mental health burden, student veterans are more likely to show lower academic achievement and are at higher risk of dropping out of college.

The research paper notes that returning veterans with psychological trauma often experience recurrent or involuntary memories, flashbacks, and negative alterations in mood. The authors write that student veterans may have difficulty relating to others, and may perceive student peers as immature and/or their comments as disrespectful. They add that veterans feel separate from the rest of the student body because of their extended gap between high school and college, older average age, and deployment experiences, thus creating additional challenges for them to integrate with the rest of the classroom. Student veterans also may struggle to find a sense of belonging, leading to feelings of isolation.

Cheney and her colleagues did their research in Arkansas, where, by 2010, more than 5,500 veterans used the post-9/11 GI Bill to obtain a higher education. Many veterans attended two- and four-year colleges in rural, underserved areas of the state. Because rural areas have limited resources and healthcare services, the researchers conducted the study at 11 community colleges in rural regions throughout Arkansas, including the medically underserved areas of the Mississippi Delta Region and the Ozark Mountains.

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The study was supported by a Department of Defense grant to senior author Geoffrey Curran at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

"Understanding the impact of psychological trauma on classroom performance and integration is critical," Curran said. "Events or situations on campus can trigger combat-related traumatic memories. Crowded situations, classroom discussion topics, on-campus accidents, such as someone having a seizure, can trigger traumatic memories and interfere with classroom integration and academic success."

Many of the veterans in the study returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and were involved in combat patrols. The researchers used screening tools self-administrated through online surveys to identify student veterans who screened positive for PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and/or depression. They used in-depth interviews and conducted focus group discussions to arrive at their results. The main conclusions of the research paper are:

Many student veterans struggle to relate with the civilian world and their student peers.

Many struggle to successfully juggle the demands and expectations of marriage and parenthood, employment, and education.

Events or situations on campus that trigger memories related to combat further complicate the ability of veterans to integrate into the classroom and achieve academic success.

Student veterans' combat-related trauma exposures do not always fade with the passing of time and can leave enduring psychological scars.

By following guidelines put forth in VA campus toolkits, higher education can help student veterans who have psychological trauma histories.

"What surprised us was that, even though veterans in our study received GI benefits -- full tuition, monthly housing stipends, and textbook money -- it was not enough," Cheney said. "They struggled to get by. Consequently, many sought full- or part-time employment, which made it challenging to make it to class, complete homework assignments, and study for tests."

Curran stressed that as veterans increasingly transition from the battlefield to the classroom, more colleges and universities will need to address the unique needs of this student population.

"College and university service providers need to be aware of local VA services and resources so they can refer veterans appropriately," he said.

Cheney and Curran were joined in the research by Joshua Medley (first author) at Harding University; and VA health services investigators Tracy Abraham, Kathleen Grubbs, Liya Lu, John Fortney, and Justin Hunt. Medley, who was a student veteran at the time of the study, was mentored by Cheney. Today he is a captain in the Army National Guard.

"Josh's insight as a student veteran was critical to the interpretation of our data," said Cheney, who led the qualitative component of the study, including the analysis. She worked on the study when she was on the faculty at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences from 2011 to 2014. She joined UC Riverside in 2015.
Flock, muster ostentation, cluster, lek, pulchritude, pride or bawl, no matter what a group of peacocks is called, Texas A&M University at College Station is now home to 40 of them, thanks to a Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist.

Dr. Jessica Yorzinski with the university's wildlife and fisheries sciences department, said her research flock arrived in College Station last fall and are settled in and happily enjoying Texas weather.

Yorzinski uses the birds to conduct a variety of behavioral studies. She trapped the original set from feral populations in Florida and California about eight years ago.

"I chose peafowl as study subjects because I was looking for a species in which males exhibited elaborate ornaments that females could use to assess their mates and other males could use to assess their rivals," she said. "That was one reason, and the other reason was they are relatively large birds, so they are able to easily sport the equipment I use in my studies."

One such study, Selective Attention in Peacocks During Assessment of Rival Males, was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology on March 15. In the study Yorzinski looks through the eyes of the birds to actually see what the animals are paying attention to, in this particular case, how males size up their competition.

"It is important to understand how males are evaluating each other during the breeding season because their ability to compete with other males can impact their chances of copulating with females," she said.

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She found the males look at the lower regions of the other male's display, mostly looking at the lower eyespot areas as well as the body of the rival. They also pay more attention to their rivals when said rivals are moving around or shaking their wings, but not when they are shaking their long train of decorative tail feathers. That particular movement apparently only interests the "girls."

Yorzinski said peacocks set up territories, which they defend against rivals, and peahens visit these territories to check out potential mates.

"What we learned is that the males are evaluating similar traits when inspecting their rivals as females are evaluating when choosing their mating partners, but they are doing this, of course, for very different reasons.

"Competition among males can be costly in terms of energy expended and injuries, so males tend to spend a good amount of time, almost a third, sizing up the competition," she said. "However, unless they are actively courting a peahen, the girls only get a glance from the males about 5 percent of the time."

So how does one look through the eyes of a peacock? Yorzinski said that's done through a novel approach called eye-tracking. The birds are equipped with cameras able to monitor their precise gaze behavior. The cameras were left on the birds about an hour as called for in the trial, so they didn't have to wear the equipment continuously.

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"Peafowl only mate a few months out of the year," she said. "The males generally start displaying in early spring and continue until mid summer when they drop all their feathers and start growing a new set for the next season.

Since in the wild, being eaten by a predator is always a risk when one is distracted by too many stimuli or by a rival or prospective mate, the birds, both male and female, have likely evolved the ability to selectively shift their gaze among competing interests.

"It would be fascinating to extend this work to other species, including our own, to determine how animals are checking out their competition," she said.

In the meantime, Yorzinski said one of the next projects she's working on is using a system that tracks both of the birds' eyes at the same time.

"So far, we've had to put a patch over one of their eyes due to technological limitations, so the next step is to look at all the visual information that the birds use and extend this current work into other contexts like navigation and foraging."
The Wildlife Conservation Society Canada and Alberta Environment and Parks announced today the discovery last month of the largest Alberta bat hibernation site (based on estimated bat count) ever recorded outside of the Rocky Mountains.

The newly-discovered cave is being used as a hibernaculum by at least 200 Little Brown Myotis bats, listed as Endangered under Canada's Species at Risk Act. Formed by weak sulphuric acid dissolving bedrock, conditions in the narrow, muddy cave make it impossible to fully inspect hand-sized pockets, cracks and fissures that compose roosting sites. "This means population numbers could be significantly higher," suggests Dave Hobson, Senior Wildlife Biologist of Alberta Environment and Parks.

Said Dave Critchley of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), who co-coordinates WCS Canada's BatCaver program in Alberta, and was one of the cave explorers: "Finding a cave in Alberta's boreal forest inhabited by several hundred bats is a real breakthrough. It demonstrates that this kind of bat habitat may well exist in other non-mountainous areas throughout the boreal forest."

Said Shannon Phillips, Minister of Environment and Parks: "This is a fascinating and important find. Understanding where Alberta's different bat species are living is a crucial part in preventing the spread of white-nose syndrome and in protecting sensitive habitats."

The discovery of hibernation spots has become extremely urgent in western Canada since the 2016 discovery of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in Washington State. Bats with WNS are infected with a fungus that wakes the individual bats and forces them to burn through their precious stored winter fat long before the return of insect season. It spreads throughout hibernation sites and can kill more than 90 percent of resident bats. WNS has devastated bat colonies in Eastern North America and could be about to erupt in the West.

Said Greg Horne, who is co-leading the BatCaver efforts in Alberta: "Cavers are helping to locate hibernacula so that more can be learned about the bats before the disease arrives."

The four-person crew that explored the Alberta cave collected DNA and guano samples for analysis. In addition, they placed ultrasonic bat detectors along with temperature and humidity loggers in the cave to learn more about this newly discovered bat colony, including when the bats are entering and exiting the cave and more about their behavior during hibernation.

Said WCS Canada Associate Conservation Scientist and bat specialist Dr. Cori Lausen: "Bats are the No. 1 nocturnal consumer of insects such as mosquitos. Losing vast numbers of the night-feeders will have cascading impacts for backyard enthusiasts and ecosystems, and for industries such as forestry and agriculture. It's urgent we develop plans for protecting bats and ensuring they are in a position to eventually recover should WNS hit the western provinces."
The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull -- a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and The University of Texas at Austin.

Compared with other primates, the large hole at the base of the human skull where the spinal cord passes through, known as the foramen magnum, is shifted forward. While many scientists generally attribute this shift to the evolution of bipedalism and the need to balance the head directly atop the spine, others have been critical of the proposed link. Validating this connection provides another tool for researchers to determine whether a fossil hominid walked upright on two feet like humans or on four limbs like modern great apes.

Controversy has centered on the association between a forward-shifted foramen magnum and bipedalism since 1925, when Raymond Dart discussed it in his description of "Taung child," a 2.8 million-year-old fossil skull of the extinct South African species Australopithecus africanus. A study published last year by Aidan Ruth and colleagues continued to stir up the controversy when they offered additional criticisms of the idea.

However, in a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, UT Austin anthropology alumna Gabrielle Russo, now an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, and UT Austin anthropologist Chris Kirk built on their own prior research to show that a forward-shifted foramen magnum is found not just in humans and their bipedal fossil relatives, but is a shared feature of bipedal mammals more generally.

"This question of how bipedalism influences skull anatomy keeps coming up partly because it's difficult to test the various hypotheses if you only focus on primates," Kirk said. "However, when you look at the full range of diversity across mammals, the evidence is compelling that bipedalism and a forward-shifted foramen magnum go hand-in-hand."

In this study, Russo and Kirk expanded on their previous research (published in the same journal in 2013) by using new methods to quantify aspects of foramen magnum anatomy and sampling the largest number of mammal species to date.

To make their case, Russo and Kirk compared the position and orientation of the foramen magnum in 77 mammal species including marsupials, rodents and primates. Their findings indicate that bipedal mammals such as humans, kangaroos, springhares and jerboas have a more forward-positioned foramen magnum than their quadrupedal close relatives.

"We've now shown that the foramen magnum is forward-shifted across multiple bipedal mammalian clades using multiple metrics from the skull, which I think is convincing evidence that we're capturing a real phenomenon," Russo said.

Additionally, the study identifies specific measurements that can be applied to future research to map out the evolution of bipedalism. "Other researchers should feel confident in making use of our data to interpret the human fossil record," Russo said.
Swarms of midges rise out of a lake in northern Iceland in such enormous numbers every spring and summer that they can impair breathing and darken the sky, giving the lake its name -- Myvatn, or "midge lake."

Ecologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are trying to understand why the midge population can fluctuate by 100,000-fold across a decade, and what impact these massive swarms have on the surrounding landscape. It's becoming clear that the billions of midges falling on land fertilize and alter the vegetation on the lakeside, but the cause behind such large fluctuations in the insects' population remains a mystery.

The research aims to better understand lake-dominated environments, including those of Wisconsin.

Lake Myvatn sits at the edge of the Arctic Circle, where the sun barely sets during summer field work from May to August. The ecosystem is extreme, yet simple -- a relatively small number of species, like the midges, dominate. This bare-bones environment is perfect for exploring complex interactions within ecosystems.

In 2005, when Claudio Gratton, a UW-Madison professor of entomology, first saw the huge numbers of midges rising out of the lake and dying on land, he thought of them as a living transfer of nutrients from water to shore. Gratton calculated that the midges were the nutritional equivalent of scattering a half-million Big Macs around the edge of the lake, which is about the size of Lake Mendota in Madison. He wondered how the lakeside responded to this nutritional glut.

To test how the midges alter the landscape, Gratton's laboratory set up experimental plots in the vegetation around the lake. In some, they added dead midges; in others, they used netting to exclude them.

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Over the years, Gratton's team saw that where they added midges, grasses flourished. Normally starved of nutrients in the poor soil and outcompeted by heartier plants, the grasses took off in response to the influx of rotting-midge fertilizer. The research explained why grass grew in some areas and withered in others.

"Only by understanding the linkage between midges and grass can you explain this pattern in nature," says Gratton. "The lake is causing that to happen."

Local shepherds have long called the grass in midge-infested areas "midge grass" -- they harvest the grass and feed it to their flocks. Gratton's work suggested that the shepherds' folklore contained a kernel of truth, and that midges might indirectly nourish the sheep by encouraging more grass growth.

Gratton was originally introduced to Lake Myvatn by Tony Ives, a UW-Madison professor of zoology, who has a lifelong connection to the island.

"I've been going to Iceland since I was a kid," says Ives, whose middle name, Ragnar, was given to him in honor of an Icelandic farmer and friend of his father.

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Ives learned about the unpredictable and large swings in midge population through Arni Einarsson, the director of the Lake Myvatn research station, who has studied the lake since the 1970s.

In a 2008 article in the journal Nature, Ives, Einarsson and their collaborators laid out a straightforward mathematical framework that might explain how the midge population spikes and crashes so dramatically and unpredictably. They suggested that small, random environmental changes -- too much wind one year, or a late spring the next -- could send the population crashing. But the true causes of this hair-trigger sensitivity remain elusive.

In the nine years since, the team has been searching for clues that can help them understand the population changes better. Each year, they measure water quality, nutrient concentrations, and the amount of lakebed algae among other factors that might affect the insects. Then they wait for the midges.

"Every year around this time I start holding my breath," wondering how the dynamic midge population will respond in spring, says Ives. "It's kind of like slow-motion suspense."

Supported by a 10 year National Science Foundation grant for long-term research, Ives and his collaborators are waiting for the natural experiment to proceed through an entire population boom and bust. This year, the researchers might see the population crash -- but they don't know.

As the ecologists work to better understand the spare Lake Myvatn ecosystem, they are also extending their studies to the lake-filled Wisconsin landscape. Gratton and UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher Mireia Bartrons, now at the University of Vic in Spain, developed a model of how insect emergences from Wisconsin lakes affect lakeside ecosystems. With more than 15,000 lakes and 34 percent of the state lying within 200 meters of a lake or stream, the scientists expect aquatic insects to affect a large share of the state.

Gratton sees ecosystems, whether in Iceland or the American Midwest, as an interwoven tapestry of interactions rather than isolated patches of land or water.

"The character of the land would change without these lakes," says Gratton. "Our landscapes are completely interconnected."
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Since the March 6 th resumption of the crackdown on illegal drugs there has been a lot less violence. The revived war on drugs limits the number of police involved to those who have already been screened and known to be uncorrupt. So far the revised anti-drug tactics have led to about 75 percent fewer arrests per week and 84 percent fewer deaths. Part of that is due to the fact that so many known drug gang members were arrested or killed during the first seven months of the operation. It will take another month or so to determine if the new approach is continuing to reduce the distribution and use of illegal drugs. The initial campaign certainly reduced crime.

The war on drugs was suspended on January 30th because of an expanding investigation of police corruption, especially of police involved in anti-drug operations. Since the anti-drug campaign began in July 2016 to the end of January 2,512 suspects were killed. During that time there were 51,882 arrests during 42,798 police investigations. Most of the dead were suspects who violently resisted arrest or searches but nearly 40 percent were the result of local vigilantes or drug gangs killing suspected informers or rivals. The extent and intensity of these efforts caused over 1.1 million people to turn themselves in. Since 93 percent of those surrendering were users nearly all were released, especially if they provided information about their suppliers. So far the police and military have suffered fewer than 120 casualties, mostly wounded but including 38 dead.

The war on drugs was accompanied by a less visible effort to deal with police corruption. While recent opinion surveys showed 85 percent of Filipinos approve of the violent crackdown on illegal drugs at the same time 78 percent were fearful they, or someone they know, may become a victim of the increased violence. This unease was based on the growing instances of corrupt cops using their new license to kill for personal gain. The fear became headline news when a group of corrupt cops were arrested in January for kidnapping and murdering a wealthy South Korean. Months of looking into police corruption had uncovered much evidence that has resulted in a growing number of police being dismissed or indicted.

President Rodrigo Duterte took officer in mid-2016 and admitted that he got elected because he had demonstrated as a mayor of a large city that radical solutions can work. Duterte said he would eliminate drug crime (including addiction) and the related corruption. Most Filipinos know that complete eradication is unlikely but that other countries in the region have managed to greatly reduce drug use and related criminal activity. Nearby Singapore is the best example but Singapore has never been as ethnically and culturally diverse as the Philippines nor did it have a centurys long tradition of corruption and widespread criminality. Still, most other nations in the region have less crime and drug addiction and most Filipinos see progress as a possibility. Duterte is responding to the widespread feeling that some kind of radical solution is needed. Duterte apparently realizes that he has a short period of time to make some fundamental changes before public enthusiasm wanes and his powerful opponents (major drug gangs and corrupt senior politicians and bureaucrats) get organized. He apparently sees the recent police corruption revelations as an opportunity. Catching and punishing corrupt cops is popular but the corruption is a persistent and difficult problem to eliminate. For example back in 2008 the army and national police were cracking down on corruption and sloppiness. A lot more readiness inspections, and investigations were taking place. Dozens of corrupt police were being fired each month and soldiers of all ranks were charged with corruption or incompetence. That crackdown did not gain the expected momentum and only reduced the problems a bit. Despite that the anti-corruption investigations continued and even increased when the new president took power in mid-2016. Reformers have pushed for a massive and sustained effort and now they may have some momentum.

Islamic Terrorism Backfires

In the southeast (Sulu and Basilan) the search continues for Abu Sayyaf factions that are holding 25 kidnapping victims, including 19 foreigners (Malaysians, Indonesians and Vietnamese ) and six Filipinos for ransom. The search down there has been more energetic in the last year because of Abu Sayyaf has turned to piracy and kidnapping crews from ships belonging to neighboring countries. This has brought demands that this sort of thing cease or else there would be economic repercussions. There is a lot of trade between southern Philippines and neighboring nations and interfering with that would cause much hardship in the Philippines and neighboring countries. That got the attention of many Moslem leaders in the south. There were other incentives to help destroy Abu Sayyaf. ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is trying to establish a larger presence in the Philippines and so far has over 500 local followers. Most of them belong to Abu Sayyaf but about a hundred are from what is left of the Manute and BIFF (Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters) groups. Since early 2016 the government and MILF have cooperated (mainly in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur provinces) on destroying rouge MILF factions like BIFF and the Maute Group. Abu Sayyaf by contrast may still have as many as 400 active members. BIFF has tried to keep up but has not been as ruthless and reckless as Manute. The actions of Manute forced the larger Moslem separatist groups MNLF and MILF to crack down on Moslems who work with the Islamic terrorists. Now Abu Sayyaf is considered unworthy of local support by the Moslem community and the Abu Sayyaf leaders know that is the worst thing that could happen to them.

The Incredible Divided Communist Threat

Until February 4th the government kept the peace negotiations with the NPA (the illegal armed wing of the local Communist Party) going despite persistent NPA demands that hundreds of jailed NPA members be freed first. For most of February the army and police were ordered to exert maximum pressure on the NPA and that apparently worked because the operations concentrated on the NPA groups known to be hostile to a peace deal. The third round of peace talks took place in early January and were not a success mainly because too many NPA factions refuse to make peace and by the end of January the ceasefire was over because of many attacks by these factions. Until the NPA can regain control over (or disown) disobedient factions the government will resume its efforts to destroy the leftist rebel group. Peace talks got started in Norway during August 2016 and some progress was made. But it became obvious that many NPA leaders opposed peace talks and could not accept the fact that many, if not most, veteran NPA members were fed up with their career of banditry. Thus it is no surprise that NPA violence declined since the ceasefire began and in some areas there have been no incidents since the August 21 ceasefire began. But for a minority of NPA members peace is not seen as a solution.

China Offers A Taste

China continues to insist the South China Sea areas it has seized from the Philippines and others now belongs to China and it is best to take whatever China offers than to try and fight back. That appears to be working with the Philippines. Recently China announced that it is building an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal, which is 220 kilometers from one of the main Filipino islands (Palawan) and 650 kilometers from Chinese territory (Hainan Island) and according to international law (and a recent international court decision) it is Filipino. The Chinese say they have prior claim to most of the South China Sea and basically dares the rest of the world to try and stop them. This makes sense to most Chinese because the Chinese have long called China Zhongguo, which is usually translated into English as middle kingdom. But a more literal and accurate translation is everything under the heavens. Until the 21st century this mainly meant adjacent land areas. But now China points out that everything means the South China Sea as well.

Most Filipinos are willing to fight but president Duterte has recently made deals with China that will allow Filipino farmers to sell nearly two billion dollars worth of farm products in China over the next year. In addition China will finance over $3 billion in infrastructure projects in the Philippines with work to begin this this year. Also being negotiated is a six hear trade and development deal.

Duterte has not abandoned Filipino claims on the contested territory but has given China vague assurances that he would expel the Americans and support Chinese claims. The Chinese appeared reluctant to pay for this at first but soon changed their minds despite fears that Duterte is playing them. The Chinese realized that Duterte dares not go against the will of his people and military advisors. The poll numbers seem to show Filipinos appreciate whats going on here even if a lot of foreign critics dont. So despite all the nice things Duterte says to China his Defense Minister openly denounces the continued Chinese efforts to build artificial islands in Filipino waters so China can claim the new islands as part of China. Duterte is seen as trying to avoid having a war between China and the United States take place so close to the Philippines. Filipino military leaders point out that the U.S. would operate at a disadvantage against Chinese military moves without access to some Filipino bases and that the Philippines would probably be attacked by China no matter what. That happened to many neutral countries during World War II and for Chinese territorial expansion to work the Philippines is an obstacle with or without Americans involved. The eventual annexation of the Philippines by China is openly discussed in Chinese media. Despite all this Duterte believes China will pay well for a few kind words. Thats how Chinese diplomacy has been conducted since antiquity.

March 16, 2017: In the south (Maguindanao province) four days of using artillery and mortars to hit remote areas where BIFF members are at least ten of the Islamic terrorists were killed and several of the wounded were carried away to a new hiding place. Some this information comes from fleeing civilians. Over a thousand local villagers have fled their homes to escape the fighting. The army showed up here because they had learned that Zulkifli bin Hir, an Indonesian Islamic terrorist bomb expert was present with a small group of BIFF men he was training in a series of temporary camps. BIFF has been on the run since it was formed in 2011 after splitting from MILF. There is a $500,000 reward for information that leads to the death or capture of Hir and that has been attracting a growing number of tips from the remote areas around here.

March 15, 2017: In the south (Sulu province) the army confirmed that Abu Sayyaf had killed one of the six Vietnamese crewmen they had taken from a freighter in February. Troops are searching Sulu and Tawi-Tawi Islands for the remaining Vietnamese captives as well as about twenty other people Abu Sayyaf is holding.

March 6, 2017: In the south (Sulu province) another known Abu Sayyaf leader, and four of his followers, were killed during an encounter with soldiers.

The nationwide crackdown on illegal drugs resumed after having been suspended on January 30th because of police corruption problems.

March 5, 2017: In the south (Sulu province) four Abu Sayyaf men were killed during a pre-dawn clash with marines.

March 4, 2017: In the south (Sulu province) troops found the headless body of German hostage Juergen Gustav Kantner. So far this month Abu Sayyaf has lost 16 men killed, at least six wounded and four arrested. The army suffered 24 wounded.

In mid-February Abu Sayyaf released a video threatening to kill their German hostage if a ransom of $600,000 were not paid by the 26th. Thats about 90 percent less than is usually demanded for foreigners but Abu Sayyaf is desperate and this particular German has not got a lot of popular support back in Germany (thats another story).

March 2, 2017: In the south (Sulu province) soldiers and marines located a large (over a hundred gunmen) group of Abu Sayyaf led by Radullah Sahiron, a senior (and well known) Abu Sayyaf commander. Clashes with this group over the next week led to over fifty casualties, mostly among the fleeing Islamic terrorists. This large group gradually dispersed to avoid destruction. The military had helicopters and UAVs constantly watching the area and a large group of Abu Sayyaf gunmen were easy to track.

February 27, 2017: The army revealed that since they launched a major offensive (36 separate operations) against the NPA in the south (Agusan del Sur and Davao Oriental provinces) the leftist rebels have suffered 14 dead, 17 captured and 51 voluntarily surrendered. There have been about two clashes a day since February 4th and that has left seven soldiers dead and 30 wounded. The soldiers are also seeking to locate and free six NPA prisoners (three soldiers, two policeman and a civilian).

February 26, 2017: Abu Sayyaf beheaded their German hostage because the ransom was not paid. The killing was recorded and the video posted on the Internet. The government ordered the military to continue the search for the Abu Sayyaf group responsible.

February 24, 2017: In the south (Lanao del Norte province) police killed two Islamic terrorists belonging to the Manute Group and arrested another.

February 19, 2017: In the south (in the Sulu Sea off the south coast) Abu Sayyaf seized a Vietnamese freighter, killing one crewman while doing so. The Islamic terrorists took whatever valuable portable items they could find and then left with six senior crew members as hostages. Filipino police and coast guard showed up a little later and released the other 17 crew and had the ship moved to an anchorage off nearby Tawi-Tawi Island so police could search the ship. Abu Sayyaf will quietly contact the ship owner to demand ransom. That is illegal in the Philippines but foreign government can quietly pay to get their citizens freed.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. operates as an omni-channel specialty retailer of various products for home. It offers cooking, dining, and entertaining products, such as cookware, tools, electrics, cutlery, tabletop and bar, outdoor, furniture, and a library of cookbooks under the Williams Sonoma Home brand, as well as home furnishings and decorative accessories under the Williams Sonoma lifestyle brand; and furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs, table essentials, and decorative accessories under the Pottery Barn brand. The company also provides home decor products under the West Elm brand; kids accessories under the Pottery Barn Kids brand; and an organic bedding to multi-purpose furniture under the Pottery Barn Teen brand. In addition, it offers made-to-order lighting, hardware, furniture, and home decors inspired by history under the Rejuvenation brand; and women's and men's accessories, travel, entertaining and bar, home decor, and seasonal items under the Mark and Graham brand, as well as operates a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and decor industry. The company markets its products through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs, and retail stores. It operates 544 stores comprising 502 stores in 41states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; 20 stores in Canada; 19 stores in Australia; 3 stores in the United Kingdom; and 139 franchised stores, as well as e-commerce websites in various countries in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, and India. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
After people all across the country learned that countless bald eagles are dying because of lead poisoning - and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke just overturned a ban on lead bullets that previously helped protect them - another bald eagle was admitted to the Blue Mountain Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Oregon.

Blue Mountain Wildlife

The bird couldn't eat. And the level of lead in her body was dangerously high. It's likely that she ingested an animal carcass that was left to rot after it was shot with lead bullets by a hunter, or ingested lead fishing tackle. Because lead bullets and fishing tackle are so prevalent, bald eagles keep dying of lead poisoning. If hunters opted for non-lead ammunition, so many needless deaths could be prevented.

Blue Mountain Wildlife

"Sadly, we admitted another bald eagle yesterday," Blue Mountain executive director Lynn Tompkins, who has been trying to save bald eagles and other raptors in need for the past 30 years, told The Dodo at the time. "Her lead level is 385 micrograms per deciliter. It is nearly 20 times what is considered toxic." Wildlife rehabilitators examined the bird and found that there was lead in her digestive tract. Tompkins and her staff did all they could for the bird, but she became another victim of a totally preventable problem. They tried to force-feed her rabbit fur in hopes that it will help her regurgitate the lead before it poisoned the rest of her body, but she absolutely refused to eat. "She died a few hours later," Tompkins said. "We could not get the lead in her gut out." Sadly, so many other bald eagles suffer the same fate.

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) researchers examining 58 dead bald eagles in 2012. Sixty percent had detectable concentrations of lead; 38 percent had lethal lead concentrations. | USFWS

But some eagles who are poisoned are able to overcome the toxicity - and rescuers keep trying to save them. As the bald eagle was dying in Oregon, wildlife rehabilitators in Texas were celebrating a success story.

This browser does not support the video tag. Facebook/Alyssa Goard

A bald eagle had been admitted to the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (SPWRC) in Lubbock, Texas, in early February and was obviously suffering - his head tilted and he was lethargic. "When we first got the eagle in we thought he had head trauma," Gail Barnes, wildlife rehabilitator and executive director of SPWRC, told The Dodo.

SPWRC

At the veterinarian, the eagle got an X-ray and blood work - tests came back positive for lead poisoning. "We have had birds die of lead poisoning before," Barnes explained. "That's why it's a standard test we give them when they come into our center."

SPWRC

For the next five days, Barnes gave the eagle special injections to get the poison out of his body. Because he refused to eat, she had to force-feed him to keep him alive. After treatment, the eagle started to perk up a bit. And soon he was flying around his enclosure. A month later, he was much stronger. Finally, on Saturday, rescuers decided he was strong enough to fly free again.

SPWRC

Barnes and her staff drove for three hours to bring him back to the land where he was found, in Hartley, Texas. "It's important because he knows the area and he may have a mate waiting there," Barnes said. And they watched as he flew away, hoping he'd stay strong.

This browser does not support the video tag. Facebook/Alyssa Goard
Rhinoceroses are already one of the most threatened animals on the planet because their horns can rack up a fortune in the black market. Now, after poachers stormed a zoo in France and slaughtered Vince, a 4-year-old captive-born rhino, for his horn earlier this month, even zookeepers are taking new measures to protect their rhinos from killers.

Eighteen black and white rhinos at the Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic are about to be sedated so that their horns can be removed - in hopes it will save their lives should attackers come along.

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"It's for the sake of rhino safety," Andrea Jirousova, a spokeswoman for the Dvur Kralove zoo, told The Guardian. "The attack [in France] put us on the alert - the danger is really intense."

Worth more than its weight in gold, rhinoceros horn is made of keratin, a material each one of us grows right on the tips of our fingers. But the keratin from a rhino horn is illegally trafficked by organized crime groups across borders because of the unfounded superstition in that it cures everything from hangovers to cancer. "This is poaching on a whole new level," Azzedine Downes, president and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told The Dodo at the time of Vince's death. "Wild rhinos have been in the sights of poachers for many years. It's horrifying to imagine a captive rhino falling prey to poachers' bullets."

"Any and all methods, including dehorning, should be supported as a deterrents to save the lives of the rhinos," Paul Oxton, founder and director of Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation, told The Dodo. Oxton said that in the long-term there need to be educational campaigns in countries where there's high demand for rhino horn, to ultimately save lives.
Last October, Jiyoon Yi was wandering through a market in Daegu, South Korea, when she saw something that tore into her heart. In front of shop, a mother dog and five puppies whimpered in a tiny, rusted metal cage. They look terrified. The shop wasn't selling these dogs as pets, but for something more sinister - dog tonic, a drink that some Koreans believe has medicinal qualities.

The dog tonic shop where Yi rescued the five puppies | Free Korean Dogs

To make dog tonic, dogs are killed, skinned and cut into pieces. Then the dogs' meat is boiled for hours with herbs until it becomes a black liquid. At this particular shop, the mother dog and the puppies were being kept inside the cage until it was their turn to be made into dog tonic.

Different dogs at the Korean dog tonic shop | Free Korean Dogs

Ek Park, the founder of Free Korean Dogs, an organization that rescues dogs from the meat trade, is certain that the caged dogs would know what was was going to happen to them. "Even though they don't speak English or Korean, they know where they are," Park told The Dodo. "They are sensitive creatures, and they all shiver and get scared. They've probably seen other dogs taken out, and it would probably create a lot of fear and anxiety."

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Different dogs at the Korean dog tonic shop | Free Korean Dogs

Yi returned home, but she couldn't stop thinking about the dogs in the cage. So two days later, she returned to the shop, prepared to pay for the dogs' freedom. But when Yi approached the cages, the mother dog was gone - she'd probably been killed. The puppies, however, were still there.

Jiho, a puppy rescued from a Korean dog tonic shop | Free Korean Dogs

Unfortunately, buying the puppies wasn't going to stop the shop owner from making dog tonic - once the puppies were gone, the owner would probably just get more dogs to use. Even so, Yi knew she had to save them. So she went inside the shop, paid for them and took the puppies home with her. She named the five puppies Geum, Eun, Dong, Jiho and Jini. Geum, Eun and Dong were siblings, and Jiho and Jini were siblings from another litter.

Jiho and his sister Jini | Free Korean Dogs

For a couple months, the puppies lived with Yi in South Korea, but Yi needed to find them forever homes so she could rescue more dogs. Then, last November, Yi met Park, who was visiting Korea to make a documentary about the dog meat trade. Park had actually just rescued a starving kitten named Nimo, whom she found eating dirt at a local dog meat farm. Park needed a temporary foster home for Nimo until she could take the cat back to her home in Canada, and Yi needed forever homes for the puppies. So they struck a deal - Yi would foster Nimo if Park transported the puppies to North America and found them homes.

Free Korean Dogs

Both women followed through. A little over a month ago, Park flew Geum, Eun and Dong to New York City, where they already had homes lined up for them, and then flew Jiho and Jini to Toronto.

Free Korean Dogs

Jini was quickly adopted, but Jiho is still looking for the perfect family. In the meantime, he lives with Park.

Free Korean Dogs

"He's gentle, sweet and snuggly," Park said about Jiho. "He is the best puppy."

Free Korean Dogs

Jiho enjoys going for walks with Park's other dogs, and he absolutely loves hugs and snuggles.

Free Korean Dogs

"We've been getting lots of requests for him, so hopefully he gets adopted very soon," Park said.

Free Korean Dogs

If you're interested in adopting Jiho, or another dog rescued from the dog meat industry in Korea, contact Free Korean Dogs. You can also help the organization save more dogs in Korea by making a donation.
This week, baby rhinos at Rhino Revolution, an orphanage in South Africa, got an unexpected, and very snuggly, surprise - blankets. Not just any blankets, but hand-knitted quilts made by people who belong to a group called Blankets for Baby Rhinos.

Rhino Revolution

Believe it or not, blankets play a vital role in keeping baby rhinos healthy, especially small rhinos who have been injured and traumatized after poachers killed their moms. The blankets regulate the rhinos' body temperatures, keep any wounds clean and provide comfort. A volunteer for the group, Angie Goody, drove five hours from Pretoria and Limpopo in South Africa to personally deliver the blankets to five rhino orphans - Ringo, Ubuntu, Masingita, Chipoko and Nkonzo.

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Rhino Revolution

"The babies were very interested in these blankets," Natalie Rogers, a veterinary nurse at the rhino orphanage, told The Dodo. "The new material was something new to them, and they had a huge interest in the new smells and gave them a good sniff."

Rhino Revolution

While these rhino babies clearly enjoyed receiving the gifts, the blankets aren't actually meant for them - they were produced with much smaller rhinos in mind. "The blankets we received will be used for future neonate calves that are admitted," Rogers said. "It was an absolute delight to receive the blankets and you can rest assured they will be put to very good use with future neonate calves and carers sleeping with these young babies, bringing comfort to both. The love and attention that has gone into each and every blanket we have received is clear to see."

Rhino Revolution

That love is well and truly needed after everything the baby rhinos have been through. "The babies who will be wrapped in these blankets are likely to have been through the worst possible trauma after losing their mothers," Rogers added. "In the war against poaching, kind gestures such as these are vital in supporting the rehabbers on the ground."

Rhino Revolution

While the rhino orphans at the sanctuary are all under a year old, they're still vulnerable to poaching. Earlier this month, armed men broke into Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage and killed two baby rhinos for their horns. To prevent a similar tragedy from happening at Rhino Revolution, the caretakers have decided to keep even the younger rhinos dehorned.

Rhino Revolution

"We dehorned all our rhinos at the facility as one of many security measures," Rogers said. "We would normally wait till our calves are weaned off milk, but with recent escalations with poachers targeting hand-reared calves, we made the decision to dehorn Nkonzo at 11 months."

Rhino Revolution
Kanchanpur incident: Indian PM assures of action against those found guilty

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modhi has said that facts behind the Kanchanpur incident would be brought out soon by carrying out a fair investigation and action would be taken against those found guilty.
By the end of the month, Britain will have committed itself to separating from the European Union (EU). What lies ahead for the U.K. are years of wrenching disruption. There is no significant gain to be had from the divorce, and much potential for sweeping loss.

The historic rupture began, of course, with the British referendum last June 23 on continued membership in the 28-member-country EU, the worlds largest free-trade zone. By a narrow margin, Brits voted to leave the EU.

Theresa May, the British PM, will commence the formal process of exiting the European project as early as this week. Britain has a maximum of two years to negotiate its EU exit, or Brexit.

Those talks are near certain to go badly for Britain.

Read more:Brexit explained: Whats next on the U.K.s road out of the EU

U.K. Parliament gives government green light to begin EU exit

EU says it expects British economy to slow during Brexit negotiations END

May is seeking continued access for Britain to the EUs common market, while refusing to accept the quid pro quo of free movement of people from the EU to Britain. Each of the EU27 members condemn that notion.

But unaware how weak her hand is, May is immovable on pledging to restrict further immigration from EU countries. If that shuts Britain out of the common market, worlds biggest economy, so be it. May is willing to walk away from the divorce talks empty-handed. No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain, May has said.

The prospects for no deal are dismally high.

By way of retained EU benefits post-Brexit, the EUs hardline negotiators will present May with a desiccated carcass to pick from.

Berlin wants a painful hard Brexit (a clean break) to dissuade potential future EU defectors. An almost vindictive France goes further. There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price for Brexit, French President Francois Hollande has declared.

Hollandes successor in elections this year, provided its not the anti-EU Marine Le Pen, will maintain that stance. France will also seize the chance to assert greater French influence in the EU.

Its doubtful most Brits know how much theyre about to lose in quitting the European project. Here are some of the losses that lie ahead.

Diminished economic prospects. The EU takes about 45 per cent of Britains total exports. Exports make a $306-billion contribution to the U.K. economy, projected to rise to $454 billion by 2030. (All figures in Canadian dollars.) But the U.K.s withdrawal from the EUs common market means Britain forfeits the chance to further strengthen its export prowess. Quite the opposite: the U.K. will struggle to maintain its existing level of exports.

Diminished global influence. Outside the EU, the U.K. will be powerless to affect EU laws and regulations that have an impact on Britain.

In science, medical research, geopolitics and the arts, quitting the EU risks Britons losing leadership and agenda-setting ability in multi-state projects, warns Stephen Curry, a professor of structural biology at Imperial College.

Robin Niblett elaborates: For a mid-sized country like the U.K., which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

Niblett, director of the U.K. think tank Chatham House, adds: In the U.K.s case, this means committing to be a leading member of the worlds principal civilian power, the European Union.

Loss of EU funding. Between 2014 and 2020, U.K. farmers were to receive more than $40 billion in EU subsidies. The EU also funds scientific projects in the U.K. and pan-European projects in which Brits participate. The EU has funded U.K. museums, orchestras, performing arts companies and film and TV productions, including Slumdog Millionaire and The Kings Speech.

May and her cabinet colleagues insist Britain can replace the lost EU funding. That seems unlikely, given the extended period of economic weakness Britain is steering herself into.

With Brits outraged over a decaying social safety net  the decline of the National Health Service (NHS) being a prime example  its more likely Westminster will find itself short of funds rather than sufficiently flush to restore post-Brexit funding gaps.

Labour shortages. Currently, a welder in Manchester can take up work in Naples or Warsaw on the strength of her U.K. passport alone. May has pledged a new British regime of visas and work and residency permits post-Brexit that ends the current free flow of talent between Britain and the EU.

Employers across the U.K. say this constraint on their post-Brexit recruiting will put EU firms at a competitive advantage.

For instance, an agriculture sector that relies on Romanian nationals for grape harvesting in West Sussex will need a total of 90,000 seasonal workers by 2021, most of them drawn from the EU. The British construction industry relies on about 175,000 workers who are EU nationals, their legal status in limbo post-Brexit.

London no longer a capital of global finance. London and New York are the worlds two financial capitals. Londons enormous financial sector accounts for a whopping 12 per cent of British GDP.

But now, London is bracing for its exclusion from the EUs passporting regime. International banks, brokers and insurers with an EU office and passport can operate freely throughout the EU. Cosmopolitan London has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of passporting.

London bankers, insurers and securities firms are hoping that their use of the passport system can be retained in the divorce settlement. They argue that a disrupted European financial market wouldnt be able to raise capital for European companies.

But no one is buying that pitch.

To the surprise of no one, Paris, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Madrid and Milan, and even Vilnius and Valletta  the capitals of Lithuania and Malta, respectively  are among those already angling to take business away from London.

Londons financial sector could suffer the loss of as many as 232,000 Brexit-related jobs, in the estimation of London Stock Exchange chief Xavier Rolet. Already, more than 10,000 job relocations from London to the EU27 have been announced by major international financial firms.

Brexit has revealed one of the most supposedly grown-up countries to be in the throes of an identity crisis. Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted to remain in the EU by wide margins. So did scientists, entrepreneurs, artists in every cultural field and Britains youth, the countrys future.

Was it H.L. Menckens uninformed booboisie that voted to end a 44-year relationship of mutual benefit? Thats a tempting conclusion. But the many Euro-skeptics whove long distrusted the continent are to be found in all walks of British life.

And they have voted for isolation. It wont be splendid.

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In the first two months of this year, 33 new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were launched in Canada. Expect to see a lot more going forward. Wealth management companies are eager to grab a share of the rapidly growing market for this product.

The numbers explain why. Investors are pouring money into ETFs at a much faster pace than traditional mutual funds. ETFs still trail mutual funds by a huge margin in terms of assets under management (AUM), with $1.34 trillion invested in funds versus $120 billion in ETFs. But the growth rate favours ETFs by a wide margin. Year-over-year, their assets grew by almost 36 per cent, as of the end of February. That compares to 11 per cent, the one-year growth rate to the end of January reported by the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC), which represents the mutual fund industry.

Some traditional mutual fund companies are now offering ETFs, including three of the major banks: BMO, RBC and TD. Dynamic launched five new products in the first two months of this year while Mackenzie Financial added one more to its stable. In the U.S., fund giants like Fidelity and Franklin Templeton have started their own ETF lines and a similar move in Canada is likely.

At one time, Blackrock Canadas iShares dominated the industry, with about 80 per cent of total ETF assets. The company is still the leader but its market share has dropped as more players have entered the field. As of the end of January, it has $53.9 billion in AUM, about 47 per cent of the industry total. BMO Asset Management is coming on strong, with $34.8 billion in AUM or just over 30-per-cent market share.

As of the end of January, there were 616 ETFs on sale in Canada, according to data from the Canadian ETF Association (CEFTA). On top of that, we have access to the thousands of funds that trade on U.S. exchanges. Thats a lot of choice, and the list grows longer every month. So how do you choose which ones are right for you? Here are some tips.

Keep it simple. ETFs are supposed to be easy to understand, at least that was the original intention. The first ones tracked the performance of a specific stock index, such as the S&P 500, the Dow, or the TSX Composite. The performance reflected the movement of the underlying index, less a small management fee. If the index went up, so did the value of your units. If it went down, you lost money. This is called passive investing. No one picks the stocks in the portfolio; it simply mirrors an index. Nothing complicated there.

You can still buy those no-frills ETFs. However, the growth of the market has spawned hundreds of new options that can leave investors scratching their heads. You can buy ETFs that invest in specific countries, such as China, India, Japan and Brazil. There are funds that invest in specific sectors of the economy like energy, water, infrastructure and utilities. There are ETFs that focus on certain regions, such as Europe and Asia-Pacific. Some funds zero in on a specific share class, such as preferreds. There is a huge range of fixed-income ETFs, including target maturity bond funds and emerging markets bond funds.

If your head is spinning, Im not surprised.

If youre just starting out, ignore all the fringe funds and stick to the core products. Theyre the easiest ones to understand and track and they usually have the lowest management fee. Apply the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and youll do fine.

Build a small portfolio. You dont need a dozen ETFs to build a well-diversified portfolio. In fact, you can get by with only four.

Start with a basic Canadian equity fund. The iShares Core S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF (TSX: XIC) provides coverage of the broad domestic market. If you prefer to focus only on the top blue-chip stocks, opt for the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF (TSX: XIU). Its the largest ETF in Canada and the direct descendant of the worlds first exchange-traded fund, launched by the TSX in 1990 as Toronto 35 Index Participation units (TIPs).

Youll want some exposure to the American market so a U.S. equity ETF should be next on your list. The two largest in Canada are the iShares Core S&P 500 C$-Hedged ETF (TSX: XSP) and the BMO S&P 500 Index ETF (TSX: ZSP).

Use an international fund to round out your equity holdings. The BMO MSCI EAFE Index ETF (TSX: ZEA) is slightly larger but the iShares MSCI EAFE Index ETF (CAD-Hedged) (TSX: XIN) has the better performance record over one and three years (to Feb. 28).

Finally, youll want some fixed-income exposure. There are dozens of bond funds from which to choose but lets apply the KISS rule once again and go for something basic. The BMO Aggregate Bond Index ETF (TSX: ZAG) offers a portfolio of investment-grade federal, provincial, and corporate bonds. It produced an average annual compound rate of return of 3.65 per cent for the three years to the end of February.

Thats it  four ETFs will provide all the coverage you need and are easy to monitor.

Avoid high risk. All ETFs carry some risk, but some offer it in duplicate and even triplicate. These funds are designed for high rollers (some might say gamblers) and allow people to place leveraged bets on how certain segments of the market will perform. Most of these are offered by Horizons Exchange Traded Funds and the performance swings are often dazzling. You can bet on whether the oil market will rise or fall, on how gold will do, on the performance of the Australian dollar, on the outlook for copper, and more.

These funds are best suited to highly sophisticated investors who are accustomed to rapid trading. They are not suited to conservative, buy-and-hold people.

For one example of how wild the swings can be, look at Horizons BetaPro Crude Oil 2x Daily Bear ETF (TSX: HOD). When you put money into it, you are betting on a drop in the price of oil. The pay-off if you win is 200 per cent the inverse of the daily performance of the NYMEX light sweet crude oil futures contract for a subsequent delivery month. Anyone with money here made a huge profit of almost 150 per cent in 2014 and another big gain of 75 per cent in 2015. But last year, when oil prices rallied on OPECs agreement to limit production, this ETF lost almost 53 per cent. These things are not for the faint of heart.

Look at the costs. ETFs were intended to be a cheap way for investors to hold a wide range of securities and some of them still are very inexpensive with management fees under one-tenth of a per cent. The Vanguard funds are the industry leaders in pricing; there is not an ETF in the group with an MER higher than 0.35 per cent.

But some funds have become quite pricey. Horizons leveraged funds all have management expense ratios in excess of 1 per cent. Some of the covered call ETFs are also in the 1 per cent plus range as are several of the new actively managed funds, where professional decide what to buy and sell.

Here again, go back to basics. ETFs were created to be simple and cheap. Make your selections with that thought in mind.

Gordon Pape is editor and publisher of the Internet Wealth Builder and Income Investor newsletters. His website is BuildingWealth.ca

Follow Gordon Pape on Twitter @GPUpdates

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A lot of people first became acquainted with Kal Penn after he starred as a stoner with a serious case of the munchies in the cult classic Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. But in the years leading up to his breakout, he, unlike most struggling actors, faced an added layer of difficulty: most roles were stereotypical parts that entailed heavy accents and broken English.

Penn aired his early career grievances on Twitter after he stumbled onto some scripts from his younger years.

He wanted to avoid having to do accents, but casting directors would insist.

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Actor Kal Penn raises over $600K for Syrian refugees in name of Internet troll

Hollywood puts a thin mask on racial stereotyping

Aziz Ansari will be SNLs first South Asian-American host

Tried to convince them to let me speak without an accent & make it funny on the merits (was told no), he tweeted.

He also said that when he was asked to make his accent more authentic, it usually meant they wanted Apu, as in the immigrant Kwik-E-Mart owner from The Simpsons. The parts entailed cologne jokes and profuse sweating, not to mention names like Ravi Tulu Singh Shankar Ramanji.

Penn has had a varied, successful career since playing Kumar, and hes managed to mostly avoid stereotypical Indian characters.

He was a series regular on House and How I Met Your Mother, and hes currently starring opposite Kiefer Sutherland on Designated Survivor, playing the White House press secretary. But he had to weather quite a few indignities to get where he is. And hes not alone. His experiences mirror those of actor Aziz Ansari, who mined his early career obstacles for comedy on his Netflix show Master of None.

On that series, Ansari plays Dev, a struggling actor. At one point, hes trying out for a bit part as a cab driver on a cop show and the casting director tells him to read his lines with an Indian accent. Dev refuses, even though he knows hell lose the part. Later, he complains to his friend Ravi (Ravi Patel), whos also an actor but doesnt mind putting on an accent to get a paycheque.

Isnt it frustrating so much of the stuff we go out for is just stereotypes? Dev asks Ravi. Cab driver, scientist, IT guy.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, many nonstereotypical roles for actors of colour are being given to white actors  think of Scarlett Johansson cast in the adaptation of the manga series Ghost in the Shell or Rooney Mara as Tigerlily in Pan. Ridley Scott claimed he had to hire big-name actors to get financing for Exodus: Gods and Kings.

I cant cast Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such, Scott famously quipped.

But, as Ansaris Master of None co-creator Alan Yang explained to the Hollywood Reporter, the only way for Asian-American actors to make it to A-list status is for someone to take a chance on a non-A-list Asian-American actor.

I understand the argument that the business is risk-averse, but thats just an excuse to be cowardly, Yang said during the interview. (Hollywood) cast Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World. He wasnt a movie star until they put him in those movies. For people who are making decisions, you have to take that risk.

Penn took a break from acting for a while to serve in the Obama administration, so he isnt shy about politics. This also isnt the first time hes openly discussed discrimination. Earlier this year, someone left a hateful comment when Penn posted an Instagram that was critical of the travel ban.

You dont belong in this country, you f---ing joke, one commenter wrote. (Penn, by the way, is from New Jersey.) The actor responded by starting an online fundraiser to benefit the International Rescue Committee, titled, Donating to Syrian Refugees in the name of the dude who said I dont belong in America.

He was hoping to raise $2,500 (U.S.). He managed to pull in more than $860,000.

Some of Kal Penn's other tweets

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Khadka addresses UNs CSW session

Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare Kumar Khadka briefed the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) about the policies, legal provisions and institutional mechanisms adopted by the Nepal government to narrow down gender disparities at the general debate session in New York on Thursday.
Its been three decades since Stefan Brogren played Archie Snake Simpson on CBCs Degrassi Junior High. But he will forever be known as the guy who was the first to use the F-bomb on Canadian television.

I was actually so excited to say it, says Brogren. We had two versions. One where I say Screw it. The other was when I used the F-word. I didnt know which one CBC went with until they broadcast the show. There was a huge uproar.

The scene appeared in the 1992 Degrassi High TV movie Schools Out, when Snake confronts his friend Joey Jeremiah (Pat Mastroianni) about his romantic choices.

Brogren, 44, is the longest running regular cast member of the franchise, which has had a head-spinning number of permutations including Degrassi High, Degrassi: The Next Generation and the new Netflix Degrassi: Next Class, which is introducing the show to a new global audience.

Hes also been behind the camera, directing many of the Degrassi episodes over the years.

In honour of the 30th anniversary of the show, Brogren, along with fellow Degrassi Junior High alumni Mastroianni, Stacie Mistysyn (Caitlin Ryan), Kirsten Bourne (Tessa Campanelli) and Dan Woods (Mr. Raditch) are having a long awaited reunion at Toronto ComiCon on Sunday.

The Degrassi stars headline the convention, alongside the likes of Ray Park (Darth Maul from Star Wars) and wrestler Bret The Hitman Hart.

Its the first time that were reuniting under this kind of convention experience so its super exciting. But another part of me is saying I just hope people show up, laughs Brogren.

When the show came out it was kind of a surprise hit. There was no 90210 or Dawsons Creek back then that spoke to teens. It became very popular very fast in a country with no star system.

It also didnt have much of a budget when creator Linda Schuyler, a schoolteacher in Torontos east end, thought a teen show about kids facing real-life issues would make a good series.

There was no makeup department. There was no hair. We used to take clothes out of milk cartons. And they were probably from Value Village. We werent living the high life back then, says Brogren.

Brogren was a 13-year-old at North Yorks Claude Watson School for the Arts when producers came searching for teen actors.

It was a very painful year for me. I was a 120-pound, six-feet-tall kid and all bones. But it gave me a really cool summer job and I made new friends. I didnt think it would last this long.

When Brogren first starred in the show (and later as a principal in Degrassi: The Next Generation) he estimates it was already being seen in as many as 50 countries. The reach of Netflix brings the show to almost 200 territories globally.

I walk down the street and every day someone might come up. It might be a 12-year-old girl who remembers me from one show or her mom from another. Its incredible to think that this show was so important to so many people and they were touched by it.

Degrassi pushed the boundaries for teen fare by talking about topical issues such as homosexuality, AIDS, teen pregnancy and bullying. In more recent episodes it has tackled racism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think the success of Degrassi is that its relatable, says Brogren. If youre a teenager in Israel or Brazil there may be cultural differences, but you have the same feelings, you frequently have the same issues about growing up. Its hard at that age.

Degrassi, of course, has become a training ground for some of Canadas best known actors including Stephen Amell (Arrow), Nina Dobrev (Vampire Diaries) and musician Drake.

Degrassi has been a big part of my life and its chronicled all my most embarrassing moments, says Brogren. I dont think we understood the impact of the show then and were still figuring it out now.

Toronto ComiCon runs until March 19 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 222 Bremner Blvd. The Degrassi Junior High Q&A is at 3 p.m. Sunday. See http://comicontoronto.com/schedule/ comicontoronto.com END for details.

How much for an autograph?

Fan conventions have become a lucrative way for stars to earn money.

Its also a market-based way to gauge the popularity of some stars. The higher the fee for a selfie or autograph, the more in demand the celebrity. According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Walking Deads Norman Reedus charges $100 (all figures U.S.) per photo while Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame gets $195 for a photo and an autograph.

Heres a look at whos charging what at Toronto ComiCon.

Degrassi stars, including Stefan Brogren: $30 for individual autographed headshot

Robert Picardo, the Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager: $45 for a photo

Kevin Sussman, Stuart on The Big Bang Theory: $55 for a photo

Ray Park, Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode 1  The Phantom Menace: $50 for a photo

Laurie Holden, Andrea on The Walking Dead: $60 for a photo

Bret (The Hitman) Hart, wrestler: $60 for a photo

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To celebrate Canadas 150th birthday, well be exploring all 10 provinces and three territories. Todays issue is devoted to Newfoundland and Labrador. Watch for our Nova Scotia coverage on April 1.

FOGO ISLAND, N.L.-Theres something brilliant about what 69-year-old retired fisherman Ed Foley said about his island home off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.

We were whipping around on three snowmobiles with two of his five brothers and an Irish-American couple, visiting family and friends in various cabins, singing folk songs, ice fishing for trout with scrunchions as bait, hand-feeding Canadas proposed national bird the gray jay and waiting for the sun to set and moon to rise.

You all right? Foley asked in between the first and second cabin visits.

Oh yeah, I replied, dazzled by the hospitality.

Foley nodded knowingly and shot back: If youre not all right here, theres something wrong with ya.

Those 11 words say it all.

Maybe youve never heard of Fogo. I hadnt until 2013, when social entrepreneur Zita Cobb plowed some of her fibre-optics fortune into building the Fogo Island Inn in Joe Batts Arm, on the bewitching but floundering island where she grew up poor.

Yes, its an architectural stunner and yes, its crazy expensive to stay in one of the 29 rooms. Yet what most people dont realize is the Cobb familys charitable Shorefast Foundation runs the inn as a community asset to help Fogo Islanders save themselves with tourism.

Fogo is more than just one inn. Its home to 2,400 people in 11 communities. Theres a school, arena and health centre, fish co-op, crab and shrimp processing plants, museums, craft shops, galleries, studios, hiking trails, festivals, places to stay and eat, caribou herd and seasonal icebergs and whales.

The Museum of the Flat Earth is here, too, since the islands rocky outcrop known as Brimstone Head is touted as one of the four corners of Earth.

Trouble is, the population is aging and people leave for work, but some young islanders are returning and everyone I met seemed eager to be part of this great social experiment.

After unpacking with a pot of tea and warm bread with molasses, I met community host Blanche Bennett. The inn sends every guest out for a drive with a host for a freewheeling introduction to island life.

Im glad to be taking you around  I call this out and about, the 67-year-old retired town clerk said. I just love to show people where I live, or as Zita says, where I belong.

We talked about the harsh lives of fishermen, poverty, hunger, isolation and hardship. We discussed the widows two sons, one fur baby and positive outlook on life.

We stopped by Herring Cove Art Gallery & StudioHerring Cove Art Gallery & Studio in Shoal Bay to meet artist Winston Osmond. Seeing things through the eyes of global tourists, they said, gives locals a whole new appreciation for Fogo Island.

We dropped in on Tom Earl, who ran the Westerly restaurant in Toronto before buying a B and B in Tilting. Theres nothing to not love here, Earl said, though its a little lonely in the winter for sure.

The Fogo Island Inn has defined seven seasons: winter, pack ice, spring, trap berth, summer, berry and late fall. My February visit  in winter  revolved around a slower pace, cabin visits and outdoor adventures.

I spent a couple of hours hiking near the inn with P.J. Decker, a maintenance man turned outdoor events co-ordinator, and two American couples. Decker loves raising his two young kids here. We saw his sisters seasonal restaurant, Nicoles Cafe, from a snowy hill.

Fogo Islanders are understandably interwoven.

On that rollicking, five-hour snowmobile jaunt with the Foley brothers, Fergus (another community host and a retired fish cop) took us to his brother Phillips cabin and warned this is a gathering place so there could be 80 people here in an hours time.

This is where we communed with friendly gray jays and tried Maureen Foleys stew with doughboys (dumplings), but I shouldnt say any more since the folksy sign on the wall warned: What happens in the cabin stays at the cabin.

My only regret is we lingered too long by the rustic, homemade cabins wood stove to make it to Phils shed back in Tilting for one of his famous shed parties.

I consoled myself with wise words from Bennett.

Fogo Island is on the map, she declared with a little wonder and a lot of pleasure. We were there before, but now were really on the map. People know about us now and they want to come here.

Come once, Ill add, and youll be desperate to come back.

Jennifer Bain was hosted by Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism and the Fogo Island Inn. They didnt review or approve this story.

When you go

Get there: Fly to Gander International Airport and rent a car. Its about a 75-minute drive to Farewell to catch the ferry to Fogo Island. The ferry takes 45 to 75 minutes and costs $25.50 for a vehicle and driver. It can hold 64 vehicles so arrive an hour in advance, especially during high season.

Stay: I stayed at the Fogo Island Inn (fogoislandinn.ca) in Joe Batts Arm. There are about a dozen other accommodation options in the islands 11 communities, from campgrounds and B&Bs to salt box house rentals and small hotels. Tilting Harbour B&B in Tilting (tiltingharbourbnb.ca) is run by former Toronto restaurateur Tom Earl.

In Toronto: The ROM has just launchedOut of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story with a massive whale skeleton. ROM scientists worked with Newfoundland and Labrador communities that recovered two rare blue whale bodies that washed ashore in 2014 and offered an unprecedented chance for research.

Do your research:townoffogoisland.ca, adventurecentralnewfoundland.ca

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OTTAWAThe presumptive front-runner of the Conservative leadership race is alleging a rival camp is fraudulently signing up new party members using prepaid credit cards.

Kevin OLearys camp made the surprising allegations in a press release Thursday night. Providing no proof, the television personality and businessman accused an unnamed rival of committing widespread vote rigging and potentially breaking our electoral and financing laws to try to buy a leadership victory.

When asked to substantiate the claim, a spokesperson for OLeary said they turned information over to the Conservative Party.

Thats all with the party right now and were going to let the party do its investigation, Ari Laskin said Thursday night.

What weve heard from some people that approached our campaign and some people who have noticed this in person is theres been a series of prepaid credit cards that a specific campaign has been using and  theyre going through the provincial members list in Ontario and signing up members that way.

Laskin claimed thousands of members had signed up using that method, but refused to name the campaign theyre accusing of fraud.

Two sources not connected to OLeary told The Canadian Press it appeared the campaign of his main rival in the race, Maxime Bernier, was the one under scrutiny.

Read more:

The next leader of the Conservatives is  one of these 14

Would-be Conservative leaders set sights on Kevin OLeary in TV stars first debate

A source inside Berniers campaign shot back at the rumours they were involved in the alleged fraud.

If Kevin spent more time in Canada campaigning he would be winning instead of whining, the source said, speaking anonymously because they had not been authorized to provide an official response.

OLeary has faced criticism for continuing to do events and interviews in the U.S. long after he launched his leadership bid officially in January.

He is currently on a cross-Canada tour, telling Conservative MPs earlier this month he planned to spend 24 days on the road in March, according to a leaked copy of a letter he circulated to the Conservative caucus and obtained by The Canadian Press.

He also told MPs he is signing up 700 new members a day.

Brad Trost, one of the 14 candidates in the race, called on OLeary to provide proof of his allegations.

If Mr. OLeary has evidence to substantiate this hack he should make it public immediately, Trost said in a statement.

If this is nothing but a publicity stunt, and Mr. OLeary has no evidence then he should be sanctioned to the greatest extent possible by the party.

Conservative Party spokesperson Cory Hann said the party is aware of the allegations and is investigating them, but did not address the substance of OLearys claims.

Were aware of the allegations and we are looking into it through our verification process, as we would in any nomination, whether it be in a single riding or for the leadership of our party. Any membership obtained contrary to the rules will be struck from our membership list and ineligible to vote, Hann said in a statement.

Our rules are clear, any person looking to join our party must do so by paying the membership fee out of their own pocket, and we will ensure that principle is followed.

The Conservative Party constitution requires all members to personally pay for their membership, not belong to any other federal party, and actively support the principles of the party.

On Twitter Thursday night, longtime Ottawa MPP Lisa MacLeod said OLeary should identify the campaign hes accusing of massive voter fraud.

Name names. This is a serious allegation presumably against party loyalists who have been with our party for many years, MacLeod wrote.

OLeary himself has faced questions over campaign finance issues after he told the Globe and Mail that he used a private jet to travel to campaign events.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Depending on who you ask, Lisa Marion represents either the bane of condo owners or the future of short-term rentals in Toronto.

Marion, a self-described short-term rental expert, is co-owner of a small property rental company specializing in Airbnb-style rentals.

Its been going on for so long, what the condo boards dont realize is for the most part there are no problems, says Marion, co-owner of a small property rental company specializing in Airbnb-style rentals.

This is the way accommodations are going now, and I feel like its a much better idea to work together to see how this can benefit all parties involved rather than us getting into nasty fights about things.

This spring, expect to hear a lot more about Airbnb, the biggest player in the burgeoning short-term rental market that has become particularly bedeviling to condominium boards, owners and property managers across Toronto.

After tackling Uber and renegade pot dispensaries, the city will soon begin public consultations as it studies how to regulate transient rentals, which critics say are reducing the supply of badly needed units for long-term tenants and driving up rents in Toronto.

With hundreds of thousand of Toronto residents living in a condo, theres lot at stake and depending on your perspective its either a great opportunity, or a giant problem.

Theres been a very large disruption in the world of living in condos caused by short-term rentals, Ryerson University Hospitality and Tourism Researcher Chris Gibbs said during a recent panel discussion called Whos Been Sleeping in Your Neighbours Bed: Airbnb & Toronto Condominium Disruption.

I think the new normal is going to be different, Gibbs said citing research that one in three Toronto residents is a condo dweller.

On one side are no-Airbnb-in-my-condo critics who say these rentals are nothing more than illegal hotels that compromise building safety and could drive up maintenance costs, never mind bypassing rules, bylaws and taxes.

Why on Earth are condominiums allowed to be hotels when theyre supposed to be multi-family residential properties, says Linda Pinizzotto, president of the Condo Owners Association.

Read more:

To snitch or not to snitch? Airbnb in the city is a complicated thing: Micallef

Soaring Toronto housing costs tapped in new Airbnb ads

Toronto should require Airbnb permits, says report

On the other side are supporters of Airbnb, a San Francisco-based company that casts itself as a benevolent force, offering home-sharing to thrifty travelers while earning cash-strapped hosts extra money for rent or mortgage payments. Airbnb collects fees for every reservation.

Marion plans to fly the Airbnb flag during the citys upcoming consultations. She co-founded the fledgling Canadian Host Association, representing, according to the web site, Canadian short-term rental hosts from coast to coast.

Until we have a formal registration/membership process in place, we speak for all short-term rental hosts (the home sharers and the "commercial" hosts alike,) Marion wrote in an email to the Star.

Marion and her partner received a $5,000 grant from the city to start up their full-service property management company, H & P Properties, which featured eight listings on Airbnb this week, some offering spring special rates.

As is typical on the website, the listings do not provide a specific address, only the general area in Toronto.

In January, while appearing as a panelist on TVOs The Agenda, Marion described the company as being on the up and up and the owners of the condos they manage have permission from condo boards to do this.

We dont believe in circumventing the rules, she said on the program.

This week, Marion offered a qualified answer when asked if shes certain all the rental properties comply with building rules.

As far as Im aware, yes.

Marion confirmed H&P rents out two units, on a short-term basis, in the downtown Pantages hotel and residential complex. The rentals are permitted in the condo declarations, the document explaining a buildings conditions or restrictions, she said.

Deepak Ruparell, CEO of the Silver Group, which owns the 92-room Pantages Hotel and Spa, said that may be the language but the issue is what is short term.

Short-term rentals are for residential purposes, not to run an active defacto hotel, he wrote in email. Majority of owners living there are quite upset.

Fairbnb, a coalition of rental association and hotel industry groups pushing the city to restrict the short-term rental market, says companies such as H&P are pretending to be home-sharing.

At the same time they are turning residential housing stock into ghost hotels, skirting rules and regulations and not contributing to the citys property tax base as other businesses do, said spokesman Thorben Wieditz.

Marions response? We never pretended to home-share we have been up-front about what we do, she wrote in email. Were property managers blended with hospitality. Nor do they skirt rules and regulations, the fact is that we dont have any from the city yet. When we do, we will follow them.

She added her units are used by owners from time to time so would never be in a rental pool.

Condo Association president Pinizzotto, a veteran realtor, and former government relations chair for the Toronto Real Estate Board, is familiar with Marion and her company  they appeared on The Agenda together. Pinizzotto said H&P is taking advantage of the current situation, which is confusing and a huge mess.

She blames the province for dropping the ball after years of industry warnings.

For instance, the government, in its review of the Condominium Act, ignored a request to introduce standard or generic declarations, for all condo boards, which has left them in a fog of ambiguity and differing interpretations of what is and what is not allowed.

Its insane. There are 3,500 different condo buildings and everyone has a different declaration and its written up in such mumbo jumble nobody understands anything, she said this week.

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The embattled president of the TTCs largest union has resigned, following a dramatic struggle over the groups affiliation with its U.S.-based parent organization.

In an emailed statement Friday afternoon, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 announced that Bob Kinnear, who had led the organization since 2003, had stepped aside effective immediately.

With this distraction behind us, were now focused on what matters most  representing Torontos hardworking transit workers, Kevin Morton, secretary-treasurer of the local, said in the statement. More united than ever, were moving forward to fight the TTCs plans for alcohol and drug testing and to prepare for next years important collective bargaining.

Kinnear did not immediately return a request for comment.

Read more:

Two sides in TTC union fight agree to mediation after Bob Kinnear tries to get rival sent to jail

Showdown over TTC union averted

Unifor enters fight for TTC workers union

A fiery and often controversial figure, Kinnear was known for his confrontational style, which often rankled TTC officials when he showed up to make deputations at the agencys board meetings.

He joined the TTC in 1988 as a maintenance worker and became a transit driver before becoming union president 14 years ago.

Kinnear presided over two strikes during his tenure. In 2006, TTC workers abruptly walked off the job in a one-day wildcat strike that left stranded commuters fuming. Two years later, TTC workers went on strike again after the membership declined to ratify an agreement the TTC and union executive had reached on a new contract.

Kinnear and the unions clout has been somewhat diminished since 2011. Thats when the province declared the TTC an essential service and stripped the union of the power to strike legally, following a successful campaign led by then-mayor Rob Ford.

Kinnears resignation follows a tumultuous six weeks at Local 113, which represents more than 10,000 workers at the transit agency. In the early hours of Feb. 3, representatives from the locals U.S.-based parent union, Amalgamated Transit Union International, abruptly locked out Kinnear and the rest of Local 113s executives from their headquarters on Wilson Ave., removed Kinnear from his post and placed the local under a trusteeship.

ATU International, which is headquartered in Maryland, claimed that Kinnear was attempting to disaffiliate from the U.S. organization without the consent of the locals membership or executive.

Two days earlier, Kinnear had written to the Canadian Labour Congress to request a process that could have led to the membership taking a vote on whether to leave the union. The local said Friday that the CLC process had been stopped.

On Feb. 7, Kinnear appeared at a press conference with Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, which is Canadas largest private sector union. Dias and Kinnear argued that ATU International had ignored the interests of the Canadian local and that the membership had the right to vote on whether to leave the parent union and join another labour group.

ATU International officials accused Kinnear of plotting in secret to disaffiliate and deliver Local 113s membership to Unifor.

An Ontario Superior Court judge reinstated Kinnear on Feb. 21, finding that ATU International had deprive(d) the membership of their duly elected leader. The judge also placed an injunction against the trusteeship.

The decision was vindication for Kinnear but unrest continued to roil the local, with some members picketing outside the unions headquarters and calling for him to step down.

A spokesperson for the local said that the injunction remained in place but that he expected it to be rescinded soon. He said there was no date set to elect a new president.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross issued a statement Friday afternoon in which he said the transit agency wishes Mr. Kinnear well in his future endeavours.

He added that internal union matters wouldnt affect transit service.

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Transit advocates and residents have organized a panel on the future of transit in Scarborough just a day ahead of a meeting at city hall where council members will again be asked to contend with a controversial subway plan.

The panel  scheduled for March 27 at 6:30 p.m. at the Scarborough Village Recreation Centre (3600 Kingston Rd.)  will include proponents of both the one-stop subway and the light-rail alternative, a release from groups Scarborough Transit Action and Scarborough Residents Unite said Friday. Those panelists have yet to be confirmed.

Read more:

Subway, LRT, SRT? What we know about transit in Scarborough

Some SmartTrack stations could lower transit use and create more drivers, Metrolinx report says

Tory encourages Scarborough residents to support single subway stop extension

Residents deserve a chance to see these, the two transit options for Scarborough, compared side-by-side, Scarborough Transit Action Chair Brenda Thompson is quoted as saying in the release. We want to encourage a discussion that presents all the facts about the options in an objective way and that addresses their transit access needs of Scarboroughs priority neighbourhoods.

The panel follows a recent town hall hosted by ConnectScarborough, backed by developer Oxford Properties, and Renew Scarborough, both of which have advocated for the current plan to build a one-stop subway extension to the Scarborough Town Centre.

That line, what would replace the existing five-stop Scarborough RT, is currently estimated to cost at least $3.35 billion. At that price, the subway plan prices out a pledge by Mayor John Tory to build a 18-stop LRT from Kennedy Station along Eglinton Ave. East to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

The $1.67 billion line could be funded by the provincial and federal governments, Mayor John Tory has claimed recently. Neither government has committed to those funds.

There is a total $3.56 billion committed to transit in Scarborough from all three levels of government.

Those backing a plan that would replace the SRT with a seven-stop LRT  for which the province has a signed agreement with the city to fully fund  the city could use $910 million in tax dollars and $660 million pledged by the federal government to build the Eglinton East LRT.

At the town hall this week, Tory rallied residents to support the subway plan  one that has changed significantly in scope and cost since he promised to build it during the 2014 campaign.

We are ending years of indecision and waffling with transit across the city, Tory told the packed crowd, which rose one-by-one when it was time to ask questions to inquire about how a lack of transit stops anywhere else in the region.

Council meets starting March 28, where they will debate moving forward with a subway alignment along McCowan Rd. and giving city staff permission to move ahead with that design.

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National-identity testing is shaping up to be the political fashion trend of 2017.

Extreme vetting and travel bans are feeding that trend in Donald Trumps America. But here in Canada, too, a new poll this week showed that two-thirds of people were inclined toward the idea of values tests for would-be immigrants  as Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch has been controversially proposing.

The poll conducted for Radio-Canada found that 35 per cent of respondents strongly agreed with subjecting newcomers to a Canadian values test, while another 39 per cent said the idea was mostly favourable.

I dont know if this is connected to what seems to be the rising popularity of consumer DNA testing  the type were seeing advertised on TV, in which people discover their Scottish, Italian or indigenous roots merely by putting a saliva sample in the mail. I noticed this week that ancestry.ca was offering a St. Patricks Day sale, offering $20 off for anyone looking to find out how Irish you really are.

This surge of interest in identity testing  coming from governments and citizens  is notable for whats being used as measuring sticks: passports or birthplaces, values, genes or strands of DNA. All these tests presume that national identity is defined by what you feel or whats in your genetic makeup  not by your knowledge. Whats more, citizenship tests are only for non-citizens, at least if its being administered by a government.

Karina Gould, the new minister of democratic institutions, gave the keynote address last week at an Ottawa conference on governance. Her remarks were brief, but they contained some interesting hints about whats on the mind of the federal government, now that Trump is president of the United States and Canada has walked away from its plans for electoral reform.

She talked about how her government would soon be taking steps toward improved security for political data  stay tuned, Gould said, for further developments. She also talked about the important, democratic role of the media and how politics needs to wrestle with the rapid speed of the digital world.

But with all this business of nationality tests in the news these days, it was this part of Goulds speech that leaped out at me.

Citizens need to have the right democratic vocabulary, and democratic literacy. Active citizenship in our digital age demands this, and we have to come to grips with how we can help Canadians navigate this new landscape, she said. What does it mean to be a citizen in our democracy? What obligations do citizens have to be informed, to be accountable for their ability to hold government to account?

In case those remarks send up red flags, I dont think Gould was sending out any early warnings about a coming civic-literacy test for Canadian voters. But its not the first time that weve heard concerns expressed about how the rise of angry populism is linked to literacy and education  or more precisely, the lack of it.

In the wake of Trumps victory last November, noted poll guru Nate Silver was poring through numbers, partly to see how he and other prognosticators had failed to see that result coming.

One important finding revolved around education. While many pollsters were trying to connect political support to income, Silver found that Americans level of education was a better indicator of whether people supported Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Sometimes statistical analysis is tricky, and sometimes a finding just jumps off the page, Silver wrote. Clintons support among educated Americans was the latter, he said. Hillary Clinton improved on President (Barack) Obamas 2012 performance in 48 of the countrys 50 most-well-educated counties. In contrast, Clintons support collapsed in the 50 least educated counties in the U.S.  and many of these were in swing states that helped to clinch Trumps victory.

The electoral college may have formally elected him, in other words, but lack of college education among Americans may have got him there.

Of course, findings such as these run the risk of antagonizing the very populist sentiment theyre trying to explain. There go the elites again, blaming their defeat on stupid, uneducated people.

Thats probably why were seeing Gould very tentatively raising the idea of citizens obligations to be informed, and why civic-literacy testing doesnt seem to be as popular these days as DNA or values tests.

But maybe it is time to talk about testing that goes beyond answers to provocative values questions or what your saliva reveals about your ancestors. And maybe we should be asking all Canadians, just not would-be citizens, what they know about the country and how it works.

It may not be as fashionable an idea as those other tests, but civic literacy is a better antidote to those other worrying trends toward demagogues and fake news.

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EAST HARTFORD, CONN.A 3-year-old girl lived alone with her dead mother for several days in their apartment with nothing to eat but cereal that had spilled on a floor, police officials said.

Authorities said the childs 37-year-old mother was found dead in a bedroom of the East Hartford home on Monday when a social worker went to check on the girl because she hadnt been in daycare for several days. Police identified the mother on Thursday as Twanna Toler.

Lt. Joshua Litwin said investigators do not know exactly how long the girl had been living alone but said it was definitely more than a couple of days. The girl was dehydrated but is expected to be OK, Litwin said. She was taken to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford.

Police said they found no evidence of a crime or break-in. Investigators are awaiting results of an autopsy by the medical examiners office.

A neighbour, Susan Tash, said the television in Tolers apartment was very loud over the past week, and she heard the girl scream and cry. She said she just thought the child was being fussy. She said she had no idea anything was wrong.

I was mortified, Tash said after Tolers body was found. It hit me hard because the noise upstairs and I felt kind of responsible.

The social worker who went to the apartment Monday knocked on the door and got the child to unlock it, Litwin said. The girl believed her mother was sleeping, the officer said.

It wasnt immediately clear who has custody of the child. The state Department of Children and Families was called in.

Court records show Toler had a criminal record that included narcotics possession. Records show she was arrested on a misdemeanour larceny charge in October and was supposed to appear in court for the case Thursday. She had pleaded not guilty.

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WASHINGTONA businesswoman whose lifestyle brand is struggling with liberals. A liberal-multilateralist prime minister who needs an in with a conservative-nationalist president.

Diplomacy is rooted in interests. And Ivanka Trump and Justin Trudeau both have an interest in hanging out with each other.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

The prime minister sat with the presidents daughter Wednesday night at the Broadway musical Come From Away, the Canadian show about the Newfoundland town that took in stranded Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. It was his second olive branch to her in just over a month.

Some U.S. news outlets suggested Trudeau had been sending a kind of passive-aggressive message: Justin Trudeau brought Ivanka Trump to a Broadway show that celebrates generosity towards foreigners in need, the New York Times tweeted to its 34 million followers. Whether or not that was true, he was also offering a kind of cashless donation to her company.

Trudeau joked of his bromance with former president Barack Obama. Shared youth and mutual interest in womens issues notwithstanding, his new bilateral bestiehood appears much more a marriage of convenience.

It is just so Game of Thrones, said John Higginbotham, a former Canadian diplomat in Washington, referring to the television show in which warring family dynasties strike strategic alliances in ruthless pursuit of power.

Like Donald Trump before her, Ivanka Trump has made a brand out of her name. Her name has been tarnished, in the eyes of millions of progressive American consumers, by her fathers xenophobia and sexism. Who better to be seen with than the fashionable foreign progressive feminist who hugs refugees?

For Trudeau, daughter diplomacy offers the prospect of a lifeline to a president who shares almost none of his principles but who often appears to value personal relationships over ideology and policy  and who appreciates a political gift. Donald Trump has lavished praise upon chief executives who have let him take undeserved credit for their investments.

It looks as if foreign leaders think the way to approach Trump is by direct or indirect appeals to his ego and personality, rather than in terms of national interests, said Charles Stevenson, a former State Department policy planner who teaches foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University. Business leaders have already discovered this, so they bring their announcements of job creation as if they had birthday presents for the king.

Donald Trump, not Ivanka Trump, was Trudeaus original invitee to the play, communications director Kate Purchase said. Trump told Trudeau he couldnt make it, Purchase said, but suggested that perhaps Ivanka Trump could join instead.

We were happy to arrange that, she said.

Were friends and neighbours, partners and allies. We are committed to continuing to build on that relationship in a positive, constructive way. That means talking to U.S. senators, members of Congress, governors, Cabinet secretaries, business leaders, and importantly: the president and those close to him.

Ivanka Trump has been portrayed in anonymously sourced stories as a powerful figure in the administration, a kind of de facto first lady. In February, Politico reported that she helped convince her father not to roll back protections for LGBT people. In March, Reuters reported that she was a key advocate for the more measured, less combative tone he adopted in his address to Congress.

But there is considerable skepticism in Washington that the leaks are anything other than self-serving public relations  and that Ivanka Trump has either the inclination or the ability to push her father toward moderation. The president has so far pursued a hard-right agenda that has betrayed few hints of liberal influence.

Ivankas the only one of his children I think he listens to. But its just very, very small, and around the edges, said Joshua Kendall, author of the book First Dads, about presidents as parents. I think every once in a while he pays a little lip service to child-care, but I think those tiny inroads have led to sort of a feeding frenzy. Everyone says, Maybe we can go much further than that. And I dont think thats going to happen.

It is not only the president with whom Ivanka Trump might help Trudeau. Her husband, Jared Kushner, has emerged as one of the most powerful people in the country. As Donald Trump sidelines the professional diplomatic corps, Kushner, a 36-year-old with no government experience, has been shovelled responsibilities that range from soothing Mexico to striking Middle East peace.

Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat, praised Trudeau for astute realpolitik, saying his rapport with Ivanka Trump serves Canadian interests. But the NDP has criticized his friendly posture toward a president whose policies foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere calls racist.

Justin Trudeau took Ivanka Trump to an excellent Canadian play about kindness to strangers. Its a play President Trump really should see. However, Trudeau continues to give Trump and his family political cover, Laverdiere said.

Trudeaus early work with Ivanka Trump has paid at least superficial dividends. Trump boasted in his high-profile address to Congress of the new Canada-U.S. council on women in business; Trudeau was the only foreign leader he mentioned by name.

The council was an invention of Trudeaus office designed specifically to include Ivanka Trump. She sat next to him at the inaugural meeting at the White House in February, cameras clicking away. Their Broadway appearance made new international headlines  some of the stories wrongly framing it as a quasi-date, omitting the presence of Trudeaus wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau.

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WASHINGTONIrish Prime Minister Enda Kenny is urging President Donald Trump to help Irish people living in the U.S. illegally, saying they just want to make America great.

Kenny spoke at a luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday as part of a series of events celebrating St. Patricks Day, including a one-on-one meeting with Trump at the White House, where the two discussed immigration, trade and the Irish economy. In the evening, the pair participated in the annual shamrock ceremony, a decades-old tradition in which Trump was presented with a bowl of Irelands famous greens.

On people living in the U.S. illegally, Kenny said: We would like this to be sorted. It would remove a burden of so many people that they can stand out in the light and say, now I am free to contribute to America as I know I can. And thats what people want.

Kenny also urged Trump to consider providing more work visas for young people who want to come to America and to work here.

Some estimates put the Irish natives living in the country illegally in the tens of thousands. Kenny has made a similar pitch on immigration in the past, but the current U.S. administrations position on illegal immigration has heightened the underlying tension.

Trump ran on a promise to curtail illegal immigration. His revised travel ban, affecting travellers from six Muslim-majority nations, was set to go effect Thursday before it was put on hold Wednesday by a federal judge in Hawaii.

Kenny also sought to impress upon Trump the difficulties Ireland will face as a result of Britains decision to leave the European Union. During an evening reception at the White House, he described Ireland as a committed member of the EU.

Trump supported the British vote to leave the 28-country bloc  known as Brexit  saying earlier this year that it would end up being a great thing.

Trump welcomed Kenny to the White House, proclaiming his love for Ireland. At the luncheon, he called Kenny a new friend and quoted an Irish proverb to remember friends that have stuck by you. Trump added, Politically speaking, a lot of us know that.

During the evening St. Patricks Day reception, Trump hailed the relationship between the two countries and pledged to be an ever-faithful partner and an always loyal friend.

Kenny was the first EU politician to meet with Trump after British Prime Minister Theresa May. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was scheduled to come to the White House on Tuesday, but that visit was moved back to Friday because of the snow.

The St. Patricks Day event at the White House dates back to the 1950s and has become an important standing engagement for Ireland, which has strong emotional and ancestral ties to the United States.

Speaking after Trump at the luncheon, Kenny showed off his countrys famed wit.

They say the Irish have the capacity to change everything, he said. I just saw the president of the United States read from his script, entirely.

But Kenny was also complimentary.

Let me congratulate you, President Trump, on your election, he said. You beat them all.

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Lightening kills one, injures two

A young boy was killed and two girls seriously injured after they were struck by a lightening in Rugin-4 of Bajura district on Thursday night.
MANILA, PHILIPPINESA Philippine opposition lawmaker filed an impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday, accusing him of murder and crimes against humanity in connection with his bloody anti-drug campaign, as well as corruption.

With Dutertes allies overwhelmingly dominating the House of Representatives, there was little chance that the president would actually be impeached. But the move could eventually make it easier to bring charges against Duterte at the International Criminal Court, as at least one Philippine lawyer has pledged to do, by showing that domestic attempts to stop Dutertes crackdown have failed, a human rights lawyer said.

It is high time that President Duterte is punished for his sins against the country, Gary Alejano, the opposition lawmaker who filed the complaint, said Thursday. We are of the firm belief that he is unfit to hold the highest office of the land and that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy to this situation.

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Ex-Philippine officer links President Duterte to nearly 200 killings as mayor

Philippines Duterte backs bill lowering age of criminal responsibility to 9 years old

Dutertes boasts of killing could get him impeached, Philippine senators say

Thousands of drug users and dealers have been killed by police officers or vigilantes since Duterte, who routinely threatens criminals with death and has boasted of killing them personally, took office in June. Human rights groups have said the president may have committed crimes against humanity by inciting such killings, many of which witnesses have described as being carried out in cold blood, despite police claims of self-defence.

Alejanos complaint accuses Duterte of murder in connection with the killings, saying he implemented a state policy that encouraged them in the name of fighting drugs. It also accuses him of running a death squad when he was mayor of the southern city of Davao, before becoming president. Two professed hit men have testified that they belonged to such a death squad, which they said was overseen by Duterte.

The impeachment complaint also accuses Duterte of maintaining thousands of fictitious employees on Davaos payrolls when he was the mayor, in order to collect their salaries, and of having as much as $40 million in undeclared bank accounts, an accusation previously made by an opposition senator, Antonio Trillanes.

One third of the House of Representatives must support an impeachment motion for the case to go to the Senate for trial, and with more than 260 of the bodys 292 members allied with Duterte, there was little chance of that happening. The speaker of the House, Pantaleon Alvarez, a close ally of Duterte, said all of the charges had been fabricated.

They seem to believe their own lies, Alvarez said of Alejano and other opposition lawmakers. We are entitled to our own stupidity.

Aides to Duterte called the impeachment bid an attempt to destabilize the government  apparently alluding to the involvement of Alejano and Trillanes, when both men were junior military officers, in a 2003 coup attempt against then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Both men were imprisoned but were later pardoned, and went on to enter politics.

Alejano said there was nothing extralegal about his impeachment complaint. We are not staging a coup detat or any other means to oust Duterte, he said.

The complaint, however, appeared to have been timed to support an effort by a lawyer for Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascanas, the two men who say they belonged to the Davao death squad, to bring a case against Duterte at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, alleging crimes against humanity. The lawyer, Jude Josue Sabio, has said he would do so by April.

Romel Regalado Bagares, a human rights lawyer at the Center for International Law in the Philippines, said that bringing such a case to the international court now would be premature. The court can only have jurisdiction if domestic remedies  like impeachment  have been exhausted, he said.

Even if an attempt to impeach the president fails, it will make for a stronger case that the alleged offences cannot be addressed by Philippine institutions and that the international court is needed, Bagares said.

Bringing a case to the international court before then could unintentionally lead to the further escalation of impunity, as a prompt dismissal of the case because of its fatal flaws could only give the perpetrators a deepened sense of invincibility, Bagares said.

The last impeachment of a Philippine leader was in 2000, when then-president Joseph Estrada was accused of corruption and violating the Constitution. His impeachment trial stalled in January 2001, triggering mass protests that forced Estrada out of office after serving just 2  years of his 6-year term. Estrada was eventually convicted of corruption charges and later pardoned.

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Rachel Maddows slow-walk reveal of U.S. President Donald Trumps decade-old tax records Tuesday night did not earn her much journalistic praise.

But it certainly earned her a lot of viewers.

More than 4 million people tuned in Tuesday to watch Maddows report on MSNBC, the biggest audience in her shows nine-year history. It was the third-ranked show across all of television at 9 p.m., beating broadcast networks ABC and Fox.

Maddow drew 1.1 million more viewers than her Fox News rival, Tucker Carlson, who typically dominates the 9 p.m. time slot. And excluding major events like elections, conventions and debates, her program Tuesday was the second-highest rated show ever to air on MSNBC, the network said, narrowly missing a Keith Olbermann episode in October 2008.

The ratings may have been stellar, but the response was anything but. Since the report aired, Maddows approach  dragging out the revelation for more than 20 minutes, past the first commercial break  has been mocked by late-night host Stephen Colbert and criticized as overly dramatic by political reporters.

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Donald Trump wrote off $105 million on his 2005 taxes. Heres what else we learned in last nights shock disclosure

Theres not much to see in Donald Trumps 2005 taxes

White House releases Trump tax info ahead of MSNBC report by Rachel Maddow

In the end, what Maddow revealed was less than scandalous: two pages of a single federal tax return from 2005, in which Trump paid a 25 per cent effective tax rate totalling $38 million.

But the vast audience she attracted, after teasing viewers with a vague post on Twitter about 90 minutes before airtime, points to an large interest in Trumps tax records, which the president has declined to make public.

And Maddow seemed to strike a nerve at the White House. The presidents press secretary, Sean Spicer, denounced the report as despicable and reprehensible. Trump, in an interview with Foxs Carlson on Wednesday, dismissed the journalist who obtained the tax forms, David Cay Johnston, as not much.

MSNBCs audience Tuesday peaked between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m., around the time Maddow was informing viewers of Trumps tax payment. Viewership dipped slightly after that, but enough viewers stuck around to boost MSNBCs 10 p.m. host, Lawrence ODonnell, to a rare victory over Sean Hannity on Fox News, according to Nielsen figures.

As for Carlsons interview with Trump on Wednesday, cable-news ratings for that evening were not yet available Thursday. Viewership figures in the television industry have been delayed this week because of an electrical problem at a Nielsen company facility near Tampa, Florida.

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Former Russian domestic intelligence officer Dmitry Dokuchaev wont appear in a U.S. court to face charges related to the mass 2014 hacking of the Yahoo! Inc. user database.

Thats because he already sits in a Moscow jail, accused of treason. Dokuchaevs rare achievement in being wanted by both the U.S. and Russian authorities sheds light on what is widely said in the West to be state-sponsored Russian hacking, but would more accurately be described as a combination of freelance theft and a concept known in Russian as krysha.

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Charges against Canadian in Yahoo hack may be politically motivated: lawyer

Social media posts detail lavish lifestyle of alleged Yahoo hacker

Yahoo security lapses laid bare as Russia blamed for hack

Dokuchaev is a former hacker from Yekaterinburg. He was reportedly blackmailed into joining the FSB, Russias domestic intelligence agency, after his private exploits became known to the service, but then built a successful career, rising to the rank of major.

The Russian investigation appears to link him to a group called Shaltai Boltai, or Humpty Dumpty, which broke into electronic mailboxes, mostly of Russian officials and business people, obtained compromising information about them and then either sold or published it. The groups work was a combination of blackmail, competitive intelligence and public relations; Dokuchaevs alleged role was to direct the group toward particular victims and cover up its activities while pretending to investigate it.

The U.S. indictment appears to tell a similar story. One of the four defendants in the Yahoo case is Igor Sushchin, identified both as Dokuchaevs superior in the FSB and as someone embedded as a purported employee and head of information security at a Russian financial firm.

This would be an unorthodox arrangement: a case officer given a cover job at a company is unlikely to be the direct superior of someone working at the FSB. More likely, the chain of command was informal.

Dokuchaev is said to have hired Alexey Belan, a Latvian-born hacker sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 2012 for breaking into the networks of various U.S. companies, hacking the Yahoo user database and providing access to email accounts on the free service. Belan seems to have used spear phishing  a plausible-looking email with a fake link  to steal the credentials of a Yahoo employee, got into the database and started minting cookies, or tracking files, that allowed him to get into Yahoo email accounts without the need to crack passwords.

Sushchin and Dokuchaev then identified accounts whose contents they wanted. Since hardly anyone uses Yahoo email for anything private or important, Belan or the FSB officers fished for information about other email accounts. Then, a Canada-based hacker, Karim Baratov, was paid to hack into those more useful accounts for about $100 apiece.

They may have simply found Baratov on the Internet. He advertised cheap email hacking services, and he didnt make much of an effort to be inconspicuous, driving, for example, an Aston Martin DBS with the vanity plate Mr. Karim. Baratov has been arrested in Canada, and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. Sushchin and Belan remain at large in Russia.

The victims listed in the U.S. indictment fit the profile of a Shaltai Boltai-type private intelligence operation rather than government spying. Sushchin wanted the dope on executives in his financial company; businesspeople working in a country bordering on Russia, and a former economics minister of that country, were hacked.

A couple of mid-ranking Russian politicians and functionaries and an assistant to the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation are also on the list. (The latter is a nonexistent title, possibly indicating a deputy prime ministers aide; Shaltai Boltai hacked the email of Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich in 2014.)

Western targets were mainly private sector employees at transport and tech companies. Its not clear what the FSB officers wanted with them, but Belan wasnt above searching their accounts for credit card and even gift card data. He also redirected Yahoo traffic to an online pharmacy to earn a commission.

Its likely that the FSB, which arrested Dokuchaev and a number of alleged accomplices late last year, and the FBI caught the same activity from two different ends. Some of it may have been government or quasi-government business; but most of it was probably freelancing for cash, both on the part of the intelligence operatives and the hackers they hired. The latter could be paid for their work, the way small-time email break-in artist Baratov allegedly was, or they could be provided with krysha  which in Russian means a roof.

A British court exposed to the notion in the course of litigation between two Russian oligarchs described it as involving either the provision of political influence or protection for money or moneys worth, or criminal violence, or both. Belan, who had narrowly escaped arrest in Europe and had to lay low in Russia, needed it to continue operating. Working for FSB officers fit the bill.

U.S. commentators these days often speak of a deep state. In Russia, it would more appropriate to discuss deep business. President Vladimir Putins corrupt system functions as a network of business relationships. Its a kind of secondary nervous system inside the Russian bureaucracy, running parallel to the official one, creating parallel chains of command and serving different goals than the official system whose tools it uses.

But its easier for western law enforcers and even intelligence agencies to see the Russian state as a monolithic force, Putins obedient machine in the service of his revanchist goals. Freelancing FSB majors who hire freelancing hackers to steal information they can then sell is a harder narrative to internalize; but the truth is that much of Russias hacking activity, even when it appears to be government-connected, is about money, not power.

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WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALANDNew Zealand police shot and killed a young security dog at the Auckland Airport on Friday after it escaped its handler and ran loose for more than three hours on the tarmac, disrupting at least 16 flights.

Many people in New Zealand were upset that the dog was killed and some questioned why it couldnt have been tranquilized instead.

Named Grizz, the dog was being trained to detect explosives by New Zealands Aviation Security Service and was about six months from graduating.

Police Inspector Tracy Phillips said in a statement that the security service and airport staff had made considerable efforts over several hours to recapture the dog and had called in police as a last resort.

This is not an outcome which anyone wanted, Phillips said.

Radio New Zealand said the 10-month-old bearded collie and German short-haired pointer cross had run from its handler when it was being loaded into a van and slipped through a security gate when it was opened to let a truck through.

Airport staff unsuccessfully used toys, other dogs, food and a range of handlers to try to coax the dog away from the tarmac, the radio station reported.

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LIMA, PERUThe number of people killed in Peru following intense rains and mudslides wreaking havoc around the Andean nation climbed to 67 Friday, with thousands more displaced from destroyed homes and others waiting on rooftops for rescue.

Across the country overflowing rivers caused by El Nino rains damaged 115,000 homes, collapsed 117 bridges and paralyzed countless roadways.

We are confronting a serious climatic problem, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a statement broadcast live Friday afternoon. There hasnt been an incident of this strength along the coast of Peru since 1998.

The highly unusual rains follow a series of storms that have struck especially hard along Perus northern coast, with voracious waters inundating hospitals and cemeteries, and leaving some small villages entirely isolated. On Thursday, the National Police rescued eight people who had been trapped for three days in Cachapampa and removed the body of an 88-year-old man killed in the floods. In the highlands of La Libertad, dramatic video showed crashing water inundating several buses and trucks, killing at least five people. Rescuers were searching survivors Friday.

Even in Perus capital city of Lima, where a desert climate seldom leads to rain, police had to help hundreds of residents in an outskirt neighbourhood cross a flooded road by sending them one-by-one along a rope. The muddy water channelled down the street after a major river overflowed. Some residents left their homes with just a single plastic bag carrying their belongings.

In total, more than 65,000 people in nearby Huachipa were unable to either go to work or return to their properties.

Theres no way to cross, said Henry Obando, who was rescued after leaving the factory where he works and making his way toward a rooftop where officers created a zip-line to cross. Many people are trying to get to their homes.

The storms are being caused by a warming of surface waters in the Pacific Ocean and are expected to continue for another two weeks. Kuczynski declared Perus Central Highway in a state of emergency Friday and announced he would be boosting funds for reconstruction. He said he was optimistic the country was in a strong position to make a swift recovery but urged resident to use caution.

This hasnt ended, he warned. And it will continue for some time more.

In 1998, another El Nino event brought heavy rainfall to the nations coast, causing landslides, ripping apart homes and leaving hundreds dead.

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CASTRIES, SAINT LUCIADerek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean and became the regions most internationally famous writer, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott died early Friday at his home in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, according to his son, Peter. The family planned to issue a statement later.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity of his writings including the 1990 Omeros, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as majestic.

In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet, said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the very rich and complicated experience of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

In the poem Islands, from the collection In a Green Night, he wrote:

I seek,

As climate seeks its style, to write

Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight,

Cold as the curled wave, ordinary

As a tumbler of island water.

With passions ranging from watercolour painting to teaching to theatre, Walcotts work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Walcott to regional status because of an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man.

Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer, he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. The English language is nobodys special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets.

Walcott was born in St. Lucias capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

In his autobiographical essay, What the Twilight Says, he wrote: Both the patois of the street and the language of the classroom hid the elation of discovery. If there was nothing, there was everything to be made. With this prodigious ambition one began.

Walcott once described straddling two worlds during his childhood in St. Lucia, then a sleepy outpost of the British Empire.

Colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles; that being poor, we already had the theatre of our lives. In that simple schizophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives: the interior life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect, he wrote.

Early on, he struggled with questions of race and his passion for British poetry, describing it as a wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body, as if the flesh were coal from which the spirit like tormented smoke writhed to escape. But he overcame that inner struggle, writing: Once we have lost our wish to be white, we develop a longing to become black.

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called 1944, in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play Henri Christophe was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St. Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaicas University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theatre in Trinidads Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcotts treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, The Star-Apple Kingdom, he wrote of the groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream.

For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including Dream on Monkey Mountain and The Last Carnival, and founding theatres such as the Boston Playwrights Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries.

Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write The Capeman story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics.

His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St. Lucia.

With files from the New York Times

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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREAThe United States signalled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.

Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend. China has been advocating diplomacy to avoid a conflict on the divided peninsula.

Also Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!

Past U.S. administrations have considered military options against North Korea and have publicly said that an attack on the U.S. or its allies would prompt a devastating response.

Tillersons comments were unusual, however, as he appeared to be implying, in public, that the U.S. would consider military force as a way of preventing an attack by Pyongyang, and not just as a means of retaliation. It also comes amid a greater sense of urgency about the threat because of North Koreas rapid progress toward developing the means to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile. Risks of military action are high as North Korea could unleash a massive artillery barrage on Seoul in retaliation.

Read more:

UN Security Council strongly condemns North Korea missile test

Tillerson says diplomacy with North Korea has failed and its time to take a different approach

North Korea launches 4 banned ballistic missiles, South Korea, Japan say

The Trump administration says it is conducting a review of North Korea policy. At a news conference in Seoul, alongside his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said U.S was exploring the new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures and emphasized that Obama administrations policy of strategic patience that saw tightening of sanctions to try and get North Korea back to negotiations aimed at denuclearization  had ended.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against North Korea, he said, all of the options are on the table.

Tillerson said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.

Former members of the Clinton administration have said that the U.S. considered a strike on a North Korean nuclear facility in 1994 when it appeared on the brink of producing weapons-grade fissile material and refused U.N. inspections. A diplomatic deal was struck to avert conflict.

Since then, North Korea has violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and has been undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Last week, after the U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills that the North views as rehearsal for invasion, it test-fired four missiles into seas off Japan.

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains North Koreas most powerful ally and dominant trading partner. China recently announced it was suspending coal imports that are an important source of revenue for North Korea for the rest of the year in adherence with U.N. sanctions.

Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement the sanctions. He criticized Chinas opposition to a U.S. missile defence system being deployed in South Korea and accused it of waging inappropriate and troubling economic retaliation against the South. China sees the system as a threat to its own security although the U.S. says it is only targeted against North Korea. Tillerson said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary.

Tillerson also rejected Beijings proposal of halting the U.S.-South Korean military drills in exchange for a nuclear freeze by North Korea. He said the allies had no intention to stand down the exercises that are defensive in nature and conducted transparently, unlike North Korean missile launches. He further sounded skeptical about the idea of negotiating a freeze that would leave the North with significant capabilities that could threaten the region and U.S. forces.

The U.S. retains nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, and nearly 50,000 in neighbouring Japan.

More broadly, Tillerson poured cold water on the idea of resuming negotiations with Pyongyang, saying, 20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today.

Its important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks, he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North recommitted to the goal of denuclearization, something it has shown little interest in doing.

Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 metres from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed. He is flying this week without the usual contingent of journalists who normally cover the secretary of state.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it was the first trip by the new Trump administrations senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with landmines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

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WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump refused to back down on Friday after his White House aired an unverified claim that Britains spy agency secretly monitored him during last years campaign at the behest of president Barack Obama.

Although his aides in private conversations since Thursday night had tried to calm British officials who were livid over the claim, Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.

We said nothing, Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didnt make an opinion on it. He added: You shouldnt be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

Trump, who has stuck by his unsubstantiated assertion that Obama ordered his telephone tapped last year despite across-the-board denials, wryly used Merkels visit to repeat his contention. Merkel was angry during Obamas administration at reports that the United States had tapped her cellphone and those of other foreign leaders. Turning to her, Trump said, At least we have something in common, perhaps.

After the news conference Spicer echoed Trumps defiant tone. I dont think we regret anything, he told reporters. As the president said, I was just reading off media reports.

Shortly afterward, Fox backed off the claim made by its commentator, Andrew Napolitano. Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitanos commentary, the anchor Shepard Smith said on air. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States as surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain said Friday that the White House had backed off the allegation.

Weve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored, the spokesman said on the condition of anonymity in keeping with British protocol. Weve received assurances these allegations wont be repeated.

Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to Washington, spoke with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a St. Patricks Day reception in Washington on Thursday night just hours after Spicer aired the assertion at his daily briefing. Mark Lyall Grant, the prime ministers national security adviser, spoke separately with his U.S. counterpart, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster, a White House official said on the condition of anonymity to confirm private conversations. Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.

Other White House officials, who also requested anonymity, said Spicer had offered no regret to the ambassador. He didnt apologize, no way, no how, said a senior West Wing official. The officials said they did not know whether McMaster had apologized.

The controversy over Trumps two-week-old unsubstantiated accusation that Obama had wiretapped his telephones last year continued to unnerve even fellow Republicans. Rep. Tom Cole said Friday that Trump had not proven his case and should apologize to Obama.

Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling truth, I think president Obama is owed an apology, Cole told reporters. If he didnt do it, we shouldnt be reckless in accusations that he did.

The flap with Britain started when Spicer, in the course of defending Trumps original accusation against Obama, on Thursday read from the White House lectern comments by Napolitano asserting that the British spy agency was involved. Napolitano said on air that Obama had used Britains Government Communications Headquarters, the signals agency known as the GCHQ, to spy on Trump.

The GCHQ quickly and vehemently denied the contention Thursday in a rare statement issued by the spy agency, calling the assertions nonsense and utterly ridiculous. By Friday morning, Spicers briefing had turned into a full-blown international incident. British politicians expressed outrage and demanded apologies and retractions from the U.S. government.

Trumps critics assailed the White House for alienating Americas ally. The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated, Susan E. Rice, who was Obamas national security adviser, wrote on Twitter. And from the PODIUM.

Trump has continued to stick by his claim about Obama even after it has been refuted by a host of current and former officials, including leaders of his own party. Obama denied it, as did the former director of national intelligence. The FBI director has privately told other officials that it is false. After being briefed by intelligence officials, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees have in the last few days said they have seen no indication that Trumps claim is true.

Spicer tried to turn the tables on those statements during his briefing on Thursday by reading from a sheaf of news accounts that he suggested backed up the president. Most of the news accounts, however, did not verify the presidents assertion while several have been refuted by intelligence officials.

For instance, Spicer read several articles from The New York Times, which has written extensively on an investigation into contacts between associates of Trump and Russian officials. The Times has reported that intelligence agencies have access to intercepted conversations as part of that investigation. But it has never reported that Obama authorized the surveillance, nor that Trump himself was monitored.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said this week that its possible that Trump or others were swept up in the course of other surveillance. But when it came to the presidents assertion that Obama authorized the tapping of Trump Tower, he said, clearly the president was wrong.

His Senate counterpart, Republican Sen. Richard Burr issued a joint statement on Thursday with Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, saying they saw no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.

In pointing the finger at Britain on Thursday, Spicer read from comments made by Napolitano on Fox this week.

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command, Spicer read. 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? Spicer continued. Its the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, The president needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trumps conversations involving President-elect Trump, he was able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this.

In London, outrage quickly followed. Its complete garbage. Its rubbish, Malcolm Rifkind, a former chairman of Parliaments intelligence committee, told BBC News.

GCHQ was the first agency to warn the U.S. government, including the National Security Agency, that Russia was hacking Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign. That warning stemmed from internet traffic out of Russia containing malware, British officials said.

British officials and analysts were surprised at the tough language in the GCHQ response, especially from an agency that traditionally refuses to comment on any intelligence matter.

There was some annoyance and eye-rolling as well. Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the last British coalition government, described Spicers repetition of the claims as shameful and said Trump was compromising the vital U.K.-U.S. security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment.

Dominic Grieve, the current intelligence committee chairman in Parliament, noted that no president can instruct the GCHQ to act. He pointed to elaborate safeguards that prevent spying on the United States and require a valid national security purpose for any monitoring. It is inconceivable that those legal requirements could be met in the circumstances described, he said in a statement.

But Downing Street clearly wanted to avoid adding to any embarrassment in Washington while making it clear that Britain had no part in any such wiretapping, and that Britain would not be a party to circumventing the laws of a closely allied country.

We have a close relationship which allows us to raise concerns when they arise, as was true in this case, the prime ministers spokesman said. This shows the administration doesnt give the allegations any credence.

British officials said that London had initiated calls of complaint and denial to the White House after Spicers briefing. They also said that British officials had discussed responding earlier, after Napolitanos comments were made on air, but acted quickly after those remarks were repeated by the presidents official spokesman.

I doubt if there will be any long-term damage  the intelligence links between the U.S. and the U.K. are just too strong, said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States. It was unfortunate that the White House spokesman repeated what hes heard on Fox News without checking the facts. But once hed done so, GCHQ had no choice but to set the record straight.

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For weeks, Ontarians have watched the conflict between Metrolinx and Bombardier Transportation with growing concern.

On Tuesday March 21, the fate of key Metrolinx projects and its contract with Bombardier go before the courts.

Today, we are writing to ask both parties to stop. Stop the legal proceedings. Stop the fighting. Get back to the negotiating table.

The Eglinton Crosstown and Finch LRT projects are key to our future. These projects will decongest our largest population centres, move millions of people to and from work, connect the region and enhance economic performance. They are critical, and their success must be assured.

Bombardier has confirmed that their work is on track and has committed to on-time and on-target delivery of high-performance rail cars. We understand Metrolinxs view is less optimistic and their needs and timelines may have changed since the contract was first negotiated in 2010. These are not insurmountable differences if the parties agree to talk and work through them.

Today, as key suppliers to Bombardier, as research partners and educators, and as leaders of businesses, trade associations and communities here in Ontario, we encourage compromise and negotiation. We ask that the Government of Ontario intervene, support reconciliation and facilitate an outcome where everyone benefits. This is what enlightened leaders do: they talk, and they find solutions.

The alternative to negotiation is not acceptable. Whatever legal outcome materializes, Metrolinx, Bombardier and the people of Ontario will pay the price  no one will benefit.

The success of the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch LRT projects could be jeopardized, and the cost for Ontario taxpayers could be in the millions of dollars to engage a new supplier who will have to catch up to several hundred thousand hours of engineering and development already conducted by Bombardier and their partners.

Moreover, Bombardier, which employs 6,000 Ontarians, and their over 1,000 Ontario suppliers may have to lay off staff as work once conducted here moves to new jurisdictions. This, after investing over $11 million to transform Bombardiers Kingston facility into a global centre of excellence in light rapid transit.

We believe that a negotiated agreement that delivers a fair deal to all parties is the only path that protects jobs, ensures the success of key transportation projects and serves the people of Ontario.

We ask that Metrolinx and Bombardier, supported by the Government of Ontario, take the heat out of this debate and get back to the negotiating table. Ontarians deserve no less.

Sincerely,

Ric Bresee, Deputy Mayor, Loyalist Township

Aaron Brough, Owner, R.T. Connor LTD

Bobby Buchkowsky, Business Development Manager  Transit, CCI Thermal Technologies Inc.

Jason Copeman, Director of Sales, MGM Electric

Greg Durocher, President, Cambridge Chamber of Commerce

Robert Gagne, President & CEO, TDG Transit Design Group Inc.

Mark F. Green, Professor and Associate Head, Civil Engineering, Queens University

Keith P. Hobbs, Mayor, City of Thunder Bay

Bill Lowry, Mayor, Loyalist Township

Roy Pelletier, general manager, Pelletier's Powder Coating Inc.

Peter Renzullo, Branch Manager, Eecol Electric Ltd.

Martin Sherris, chief executive officer, Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce

David S. Strong, P.Eng., Professor & NSERC Chair in Design Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science, Queens University

Craig Urquhart, President, Intercity Industrial Support

Dean Xamin, President, TEXIT Canada Inc.

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Re: Undercover at the animal test lab, March 11

Undercover at the animal test lab, March 11

Thank you for printing the article on ITR Labs Canada and exposing the truth about mistreatment of animals in their care.

Redundant, money-making experiments on defenceless animals are outdated and must be immediately re-evaluated or stopped. Not only must ITR take responsibility, but the corporations on whose behalf they test should also be exposed.

As consumers, we have the right to know about such vile activities and, if we choose, to boycott these companies. All involved need to be held accountable, implement a complete overhaul and to know that such horrible cruelty to animals is not now nor will ever be acceptable.

Gail Clark, Fredonia, N.Y.

Drug toxicity tests like the ones carried out at ITR are notoriously inaccurate and crude. Over 90 per cent of drugs that test successfully in animals will fail in human clinical trials.

Its long past time to end the physical agonies and extreme mental and emotional deprivations animals in laboratories suffer. As a Canadian citizen, I urge Canadian scientists to use modern, non-animal research methods that actually offer hope to human patients.

Alka Chandna, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Washington, D.C.

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Merkel and Trump to discuss trade and defence in US talks

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet President Donald Trump in Washington, with transatlantic trade and Nato ties high on the agenda.
Re: U.S. action on climate could affect Canada, March 15

U.S. action on climate could affect Canada, March 15

President Trump, having declared climate change a Chinese hoax, now wants to gut U.S. environmental regulations. Some Canadian politicians say we should harmonize our rules with his to protect our competitiveness. Perhaps theyve forgotten that Canada made a commitment in Paris to fight climate change with 194 other nations. Are we supposed to turn our backs on the rest of the world and march in lockstep with a science-denying bully back to the age of coal?

The climate crisis is real and imminent. If we bury our heads in the sand and pretend its not happening, well fall behind as other countries build their prosperity on a more sustainable foundation.

Worldwide, the long-term trend is clear: jobs and investment dramatically rising in renewable energy and falling in fossil fuels. Canadians can accept this new economic reality, embrace a clean energy future and pass on a livable environment to our children and grandchildren. Or we can follow a soon-to-be lame-duck president who thinks that money and power are the only things of value in the world.

Norm Beach, Toronto

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Re: Report a rail safety wake-up call, March 13

Report a rail safety wake-up call, March 13

After the Mississauga derailment in 1979, there was some analysis done of relative risk of rail freight in the Toronto area. The rail corridor that runs through the west-Toronto and Annex area had the highest degree of risk assigned to it in a 1983 report.

Oh, 34 years later, we have a problem still? Maybe instead of helping squander billions in Scarborough for a less-wise subway extension, the federal level should be making the rerouting of the worst of the hazardous materials a priority, including something called the missing link west of Toronto that would allow for easier and somewhat safer shipping of bad goods through the Toronto area.

As consumers, we could help by trying to limit what we use, including volatile fossil fuels.

Hamish Wilson, Toronto

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Re: Paralegals need larger family law role: report, March 7

Paralegals need larger family law role: report, March 7

As a paralegal and a sole custodian father, I have been waiting for Madam Justice Bonkalos report on improving access to family legal services.

Since R. v. Jordan, the public has become aware of the cost of delay in criminal matters; civil matters are also delayed by the consequences of unrepresented litigants. Sixty per cent of litigants in family court have no representation. For every hour a court is bogged down by an unrepresented litigant, we pay for it as taxpayers.

Legal advice and representation is expensive. Paralegals are qualified to help in many of the circumstances that bog down the family court as borne out in the Bonkalo report; it is time to permit them the opportunity to fill this role.

Adam Pearce, Toronto

Years ago I hired a divorce lawyer. After giving a generous retainer, escalating costs and precious time passing, I got no results. Child support, return of joint assets, etc., did not happen.

After hiring a second lawyer, an experience many people share, we realized that many family law lawyers revictimize the victims. Already experiencing the biggest trauma (second to the death of a loved one), these lawyers prolonged the case and collected as much as possible. All the better if the client owns a home.

Would I recommend a paralegal experienced in family law? Hell, yes!

Elaine Mancini, Mississauga

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Shares of tech giant Intel (INTC) slid before the markets opened on Monday following the announcement that the company will be purchasing project partner Mobileye (MBLY) in a deal worth roughly $15.3 billion.

The purchase catapults Intel into the middle of the autonomous vehicle space. But are investors doing the smart thing by reversing out of its stock?

Monday's announcement caught investors by surprise. Although Intel has been venturing into the self-driving car scene-partnering with Mobileye and German carmaker BMW (BAMXF) to test 40 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2017--the company had previously maintained that it would cap spending on this technology at $250 million.

However, in Monday's announcement, CEO Brian Krzanich explained that he has reversed this stance because he believes the autonomous vehicle technology market could net the company as much as $70 billion by 2030. Given that Intel's sales fell just shy of $60 billion in 2016, that would give the company a giant boost.

But will this gamble be worth the risk? The Mobileye purchase doesn't come cheap. At $15.3 billion, the deal values the smaller company's stock at $63.54 per share, a 50% premium over Friday's closing price.

Mobileye is based in Israel and creates sensor and mapping technology for self-driving vehicles. And perhaps the biggest ace up its sleeve is the long list--27--of carmakers with which the company has already cemented deals.

The company garnered headlines last September when it initiated a nasty breakup with former partner Tesla (TSLA) . Mobileye had cited concerns over Tesla's autopilot safety as a reason for the split.

Intel's hefty offer sure looks good to the company on the rebound, and investors would agree. On Monday morning, shares of Mobileye had shot up by more than 30%.

Intel is best known for its domination of the personal computer semiconductor market. The ubiquitous "Intel Inside" stickers can still be found on roughly 99% of all desktop systems.

But PC sales are beginning to weaken as consumers become more reliant on mobile devices to satisfy everyday computing needs. So Intel has had to look elsewhere for profits.

All told, it's probably a smart move for Intel to plunge further into the self-driving car pool. However, we'll have to wait to see if the Mobileye purchase was worth the cost. Although car companies are growing closer to rolling out autonomous vehicles by the day, there are already plenty of players in this market--tech companies such as Alphabet (GOOGL) , Apple (AAPL) and even BlackBerry undefined have already been venturing into this space and made strategic partnerships with car companies. It's unknown what sort of market share Intel and its investors should be expecting. Plus, the mountain of regulations that will need to be resolved could cause substantial headwinds.

Still, investors who are looking for the potential to profit from this market might want to consider grabbing Intel shares on price dips. The company pays out a decent dividend yield just under 3%. And the company's other departments still generate profit, such as its high-end, expensive semiconductor chips marketed toward desktop gaming systems. Sales here rose by 8% in 2016.

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European automaker shares fell across the board Friday after Germany's Economy Minister warned of a potential legal challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump's border tax plans ahead of a meeting with Angela Merkel in Washington.

The Stoxx 600 Europe Automobiles and Parts Index was quoted 1.4% lower in the opening hour of trading, with marked declines seen for German automakers Volkswagen AG (VLKAY) , BMW (BMWYY) and Daimler (DDAIY) . In Paris, Europe's second-biggest carmaker, PSA Peugeot (PUGOY) , was trading 1.9% lower while domestic rival Renault (RNLSY) extended its declines by a further 0.91% amidst a storm of allegations related to diesel emissions cheating.

Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Germany's' Deutschlandfunk radio that Trump's aim to apply a 35% tax on cars manufactured in Mexico and imported into the United States could elicit a reaction from the German government via the World Trade Organisation.

"There are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that you're not allowed to take more than 2.5% taxes on imports of cars," Zypries said.

Chancellor Merkel and President Trump are scheduled to meet later Friday in Washington to discuss trade, climate change and European security, with the former likely to ignite tensions between the two leaders.

Last month, Trump's senior economic adviser, Peter Navarro, said Germany was using a "grossly undervalued" euro to gain competitive advantage in export markets and accused Europe's biggest economy of being a currency manipulator.
Airbus Group SE (EADSF) stock lost altitude Friday after the European plane maker said French authorities had launched an investigation into potentially illegal activities relating to the financing of aircraft sales.

The French probe mirrors an ongoing investigation by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office, or SFO, which in August announced that it was looking into possible fraud, bribery and corruption in the civil aviation business of Airbus relating to irregularities concerning third party consults, said Airbus.

The SFO launched its inquiry after Airbus reported evidence of false declarations relating to the use of agents during application for export credits. UK Export Finance, a government agency that provides financing for exporters, responded by suspending export credit to Airbus. That move was followed by France and Germany and has resulted in Airbus having to self-finance some customers in order to secure their orders.

Airbus shares fell 1.3% in the wake of the announcement, before paring declines to 0.83% by 13:00 CET to change hands at 69.73 each.

France's Parquet National Financier, a judicial unit established in 2013 to investigate significant fraud, will run its inquiry both in parallel too and in co-operation with the British inquiry.

The French investigation concerns the same practices as the U.K. probe and is "not a new issue," Airbus CEO Tom Enders told a press conference on a visit to New Delhi to mark the opening of a pilot training facility.

Airbus, which makes the world's largest passenger plane the A380 and it the main competitor to Boeing (BA) , could face fines, while individuals could also face criminal charges if the company is found guilty of illegal practices.

Aircraft engine maker Rolls Royce, in January, was fined a record 497 million ($615 million) by the SFO following a four year investigation that resulted in 12 counts of conspiracy to corrupt, false accounting and failure to prevent bribery in relation to the sale of aircraft engines. Rolls Royce was also fined by the US Department of Justice and Brazilian authorities.

France last year introduced regulation enabling it to levy so-called deferred prosecution agreements, which enables prosecutors to suspend criminal prosecution of a company in exchange for agreements to meet certain conditions, typically the payment of a fine and the implementation of procedures to avert further regulatory breaches. The law is designed to avoid prosecutions that could damage a company's ability to tender for certain contracts.
Germany's top U.S. business lobbyist warned Friday that protectionist policies in the United State could harm both countries and its Economy Minister suggested the government could take legal action if border taxes are put in place by President Donald Trump.

The rhetoric comes shortly before a delayed meeting in Washington between Trump and Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, where the two leaders are expected to talk trade, climate change and European security. It also follows reports that G20 Finance Ministers and central bankers meeting in Baden-Baden will drop a long-standing reference to free trade and open markets when they issue their draft communique this weekend.

"We call on those responsible to do everything possible to avoid a standstill or even a worsening of our trade relations," wrote Bernhard Mattes, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany in an op-ed published Friday. "In a trade war, there can be no winners as the global economy is too networked and our supply chains too international."

Reuters said the G20 communique, which has traditionally emphasized free trade and cautioned against protectionism, has instead focused on foreign exchange markets and competitive devaluations by governments in order to gain export advantage over international rivals.

"There are differing views on this subject," Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said, according to Reuters. "It's possible that we explicitly exclude the topic of trade in Baden-Baden and say that can only be resolved at the summit of the state and government leaders."

Last month, Trump's senior economic adviser, Peter Navarro, said Germany, which has a 50 billion ($53.7 billion) trade surplus with the United States, was using a "grossly undervalued" euro to gain competitive advantage in export markets and accused Europe's biggest economy of being a currency manipulator.

Earlier Friday, Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Germany's' Deutschlandfunk radio that Trump's aim to apply a 35% tax on cars manufactured in Mexico and imported into the United States could elicit a reaction from the German government via the World Trade Organisation.

"There are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that you're not allowed to take more than 2.5% taxes on imports of cars," Zypries said.
ExxonMobil (XOM) is considering the sale of half of its 2,500 petrol stations in Italy, for about $537 million, sources told Reuters. The private equity firm Apollo is said to be contemplating acquiring Exxon's Italy subsidiary Esso.

Through Esso, Exxon is the largest oil company looking to curb its exposure in Italy's oversupplied retail petro market, Reuters noted.
While we show no judgment if you opt to drink green beer (you understand there's food dye in it, right?), there are tons of ways to celebrate the anniversary of St. Patrick's death with wine.

So whether you choose to go with color, conservation or something for your corned beef, consider this your all-inconclusive St. Patrick's Day green wine guide.

Pour Green in the Glass

If you're looking to match the color of your green-beer compadres, pick a Pinot Grigio, Albarino, Chenin Blanc or Muscadet wine. While they have a much lighter green hue than that doctored beer, there are hints of green nevertheless.

Most these wines need to be served cold and are even called "green," because they are young.

Or pour a Vinho Verde. "This Portuguese wine's name translates to 'green wine' -- not because it is literally green, but because it is young and fresh," says Chicago's James Beard award-winning sommelier Belinda Chang.

It has a little effervescence and is low in alcohol, so you can drink it all day if you're starting early at a parade.

Go Green

While this whole organic wine thing is somewhat of a joke because winemakers are farmers and they always put Mother Earth first, the greenies still want to see a mention on the label.

So if you're looking to "go green" on St. Pat's, here's a quick cheat-sheet to your wine label's eco-friendly terms.

-Organic. Organic wine must be made from organically grown grapes and the farming process must utilize renewable resources and conserve soil and water. In addition, no sulfites, a type of preservative, can be added to the wine. This is the only case where you'll see an actual government seal from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on the label if it truly is 100% organic.

-Biodynamic. Being biodynamic is more of a belief system based on the findings of Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who at the beginning of the 1900s, believed that the crops and livestock should all be considered in the farming decisions. But some wineries will mention this on the label.

-Sustainable. Sustainable vineyards do as much good as they can for the environment while still paying the bills. But if saving the Earth gets too costly, they may back down on those sustainable practices until they have the money to do it again.

Big note: And if your favorite wine doesn't have any of those three words on the label, don't fret. It probably just means the company doesn't feel the need to broadcast the fact that it is saving the Earth every day.

Pair With Your Irish Meal

"It's probably best to go with a wine that's slightly sweet with all that salt and sour that comes with Irish food," says Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, Master of Wine and author of the upcoming Rose Wine: The Guide to Drinking Pink.

So here are a few suggestions to go with your favorite Irish fare.



-Irish Stew: Pick a Cabernet Sauvignon

The classic Irish stew includes lamb and root vegetables, a hearty dish that immediately calls for a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon. Emblem is a structured wine with firm tannins, and yet it shows delicate aromas of blackberry and earthy tones, which complement this dish perfectly.

Consider the 2013 Emblem Cabernet Sauvignon.

-Corned Beef and Cabbage: Either a Cabernet or Vinho Verde

Chang loves a Vinho Verde with her corned beef and cabbage, but no surprise, Cabernet Sauvignon will work great too. You need a wine with earthy and sweet notes to complement and neutralize the salty nature of corned beef.

Consider the 2015 B.R. Cohn Cabernet Sauvignon North Coast Silver Label.

-Irish Soda Bread (American Style): Grab a Riesling

The classic Irish soda bread does not include dried currants or raisins, but American bakers love to add them. And no surprise, we tend to add sugar too. So to complement the light sweetness of the bread, you need a wine that's also slightly sweet. So look for a Riesling that has the word "Spatlese" on the label - which means its slightly sweet.

Consider the 2014 J.J. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Spatlese Riesling

-Shepherd's Pie: Needs a Pinot Noir

This hearty savory meal usually has peas, corn and lamb in it, so it needs an earthy wine with some fruit, like fresh raspberry and plum, to balance all those flavors.

Consider the 2014 Trinity Hill Hawkes Bay Pinot Noir

-Brisket: Sky's the Limit

"If you're going with brisket, the sky is the limit," says Sharon Sevrens, sommelier and owner of Amanti Vino wine shop in Montclair, N.J. You just need a big red, so think Bordeaux, California Cabernet or a Northern Rhone Syrah.

Consider the 2014 Leoville Barton. Owned by the Barton family, Thomas Barton was part of the Bordeaux wine trade movement with Ireland, says Andrew McMurray, vice president at Zachys Wine & Liquor in Scarsdale, N.Y. Barton left Ireland for Bordeaux in 1722. "This Bordeaux is tannic with structure that is the perfect accompaniment to brisket and other fatty meats," says McMurray.

"And if you really want to have some St. Patty's Day fun, pull out your porron," suggests Chang (Check out this video to watch us use one!) Then you can pour your favorite wine right into your drinking buddy's mouth. "Tie a napkin around the neck of any first timer," she says.

Because like all things St. Patrick's Day, it could get sloppy.

Editors' pick: Originally published March 17.
Updated from 11:50 a.m. with additional information.

MuleSoft (MULE) , the second tech unicorn to go public this year after Snap (SNAP) , had an extremely auspicious start on Friday, opening trading at $25.02 a share and closing at $23.75 per share, just about 40% higher than its initial offering price of $17. At the closing price, MuleSoft'smarket capitalization stood at $3.1 billion.

The company priced its shares late Thursday, slightly above the top of its proposed range of $14-$16.

"The 'IPO pop' is in line with my expectations. Given the proliferation of applications within enterprises and MuleSoft's offering that helps to connect them and work with them, we believe MuleSoft sits in the sweet spot of spending," said Santosh Rao, head of research at Manhattan Venture Partners.

Rohit Kulkarni, managing director at SharesPost, concurred. "It's healthy and indicative of heavy interests and strong demand by investors," Kulkarni said. "If MuleSoft keeps doing well, that bodes well for a dozen other enterprise software companies set to go public in the next few months. SharesPost provides private investment research.

To be sure, a first-day surge this high is not always a good thing.

"A well-priced tech IPO should go up 20% after market. When it surges almost 50%, it usually means that they are under-priced," said Duncan Davidson, partner at venture capital firm Bullpen Capital. "But when there's so few of these tech IPOs in 2016, you can't blame the company or bankers for being cautious."

At $17 a share, MuleSoft is valued at more than $2 billion. The enterprise software maker was last valued at $1.5 billion by venture capitalists in May 2015, when it raised $128 million in private investments. Mule raised about $221 million in its IPO.

MuleSoft's public debut comes at a good time for initial offerings, just one day after that of trendy parka maker Canada Goose (GOOS) , whose shares rose 26% on their first day of trading, and two weeks after Snap (SNAP) 's blockbuster IPO, which raised $3.4 billion and saw shares gain 44% on their first day.

As the first major enterprise software IPO of the year, MuleSoft's IPO performance is being watched closely by analysts and investors.

Fellow tech unicorn Snap had a huge debut, but the company is B2C and shares have since returned to earth. The only two other tech companies with comparable valuations, Uber and Airbnb, are both unlikely to go public this year.

MuleSoft's IPO performance will also be a signal for industry peers deciding whether to go public or stay private. The software company provides an integration platform for connecting SaaS (software as a service) and enterprise applications in the cloud and on-premise, a market where companies from traditional tech behemoths such as IBM (IBM) , Oracle (ORCL) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) are vying with nimble startups like Apigee (APIC) and Jitterbit for market share.

Mulesoft makes money from subscribers to its application programming interface (API) management and application integration software services. The company counts Coca Cola (KO) , McDonalds (MCD) , Spotify and Bank of America (BAC) as major clients, but hasn't turned a profit yet. In 2016 MuleSoft posted a $49.5 million loss on $187.7 million in revenue, compared to a $65.4 million loss on $110.3 million in revenue in 2015.

According to market research and consulting firm MarketsAndMarkets, the system integration market size is estimated to grow from $270 billion in 2016 to $388 billion by 2021, for a compound annual growth rate of 7.5%. One of MuleSoft's major rivals, Apigee was also snapped up by Google last September for $625 million.

Investors are paying close attention to the MuleSoft IPO to see whether the tech IPO market has recovered from the downturn last year. 2016 was the worst U.S. tech IPO market performance in a decade, with only 16 public offerings raising a total of $1.8 billion. While Snap's IPO has boosted market confidence, its abnormally high valuation makes MuleSoft a better barometer to gauge the market's health.

Venture capital backers are likely to cash in big from the MuleSoft IPO. The company has the support from a roster of well-known Silicon Valley vanture capital firms, including Salesforce (CRM) Ventures, software company ServiceNow (NOW) , Cisco (CSCO) Investments, Adage Capital Management, Bay Partners, Brookside Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed holds the largest stake at 17.1% and is also a major investor in Snap.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the offering. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is acting as an active book-running manager. Allen & Company LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., and Jefferies LLC are acting as book-running managers and Canaccord Genuity Inc., Piper Jaffray & Co., and William Blair & Company, L.L.C. are acting as co-managers. Citadel Securities is acting as the NYSE Designated Market Maker for the offering.

Watch the lastest videos from Jim Cramer:
Murky waters

Water geopolitics in South Asia is no more just an undercurrent; it could already be shaping regional order
Airbnb expects to double its African customers to 1.5 million in 2017, CEO Brian Chesky told Reuters today.

"Certainly that would be the forecast," Chesky said in an interview in Cape Town. "This is literally just the beginning. It (Africa) is still relatively under-penetrated."

The number of African users of the online room sharing service increased by 143% to roughly 765,000 guests in 2016 compared to the previous year.
IBM (IBM) is the latest company to roll out a jobs announcement in an effort to impress the Trump administration.

The company announced plans to hire 2,000 U.S. veterans over the next four years at the White House on Friday, March 17, during a meeting between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding workforce development and vocational training. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty attended the meeting, along with a handful of other executives, including Dow Chemical's (DOW) Andrew Liveris and Salesforce's (CRM) Marc Benioff.

"I'm glad that the leaders of so many companies represented today have recently launched successful programs right here in the United States. And we need that because we're training people as the jobs are pouring back in," Trump said while addressing press during the meeting. Rometty sat to his left and later announced the initiative, which is part of a larger push to hire 25,000 workers through 2020.

"The men and women who have served in our country's armed forces have unique talents and skill sets that make them a natural fit for some of the technology industry's most exciting fields," said Diane Gherson, IBM's Senior Vice President of Human Resources, in a statement.

IBM said it has also expanded its nationwide program to train veterans in software and touted its "new collar jobs" program for positions that don't require college degrees. It is also opening 20 more of its P-TECH schools, which allow students to get combined high school and associates degrees, in the United States.

Rometty has had an interesting dynamic with the Trump administration since the real estate magnate's November election.

She penned an open letter to Trump soon after his victory to voice support for his tax reform plans and outlining other initiatives where she perceives overlap with IBM. The outreach garnered backlash, prompting one employee to quit.

Rometty, 59, is a member of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of executives tapped to advise Trump led by Blackstone's (BX) Stephen Schwarzman.

IBM sent a memo to workers in the wake of Trump's first immigration ban in January to offer support to affected employees, stressing that the path forward "is a path of engagement and openness to the world." In February, Rometty sent a letter, obtained by Fortune, to her team addressing the order and her participation in the president's business advisory group.

"Some have suggested that we should not engage with the U.S. administration. I disagree," she wrote. "Our experience has taught us that engagement -- reaching out, listening and having authentic dialogue -- is the best path to good outcomes. IBM does not espouse a partisan or political point of view."

She said she had discussed with the president and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly ways to use advanced technology to drive national security imperatives "while also permitting lawful implementation and travel." She said she explained that "this is not an either/or choice."

IBM's Friday announcement seemingly is designed to be a Trump-pleaser. The president has often spoken about his attention to vets, and on Friday morning, he attended a listening session on veterans' affairs with VA Secretary David Shulkin.

IBM is the latest in a string of companies to make jobs and investments announcements in an effort to impress Trump, even if the initiatives aren't always new. Intel (INTC) in February announced a $7 billion factory in Arizona. It made the same announcement in 2011.

Trump has developed an affinity for naming companies that have publicized jobs initiatives under his watch, including General Motors (GM) , Walmart (WMT) and Ford (F) . With Friday's veterans reveal, IBM might soon join his list.
Apple (AAPL) said today that it would double the number of research facilities that it has planned for China from two to four and increase its investment in the country.

Apple will reportedly invest more than $500 million in research-related initiatives. The latest research hubs will be in the eastern Chinese cities of Shanghai and Suzhou. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is already planning to open centers in Beijing and the southern city of Shenzhen.

Apple is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPL? Learn more now.

Apple said it would work more closely with China partners and higher local talent.

"We are looking forward to working with more local partners and academic institutions through the expansion of R & D centers in China," said Dan Riccio, senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple. "We are honored to have excellent talent and positive entrepreneurial spirit in China And the developers and suppliers here to work together to make our business in this market to flourish. "

Apple shares fell slightly in Friday trading.

The announcement comes amid Apple's effort to regain momentum in the world's largest smartphone market. The company has seen iPhone sales, a huge growth-engine, slow significantly over the past year. That's come as Apple has faced increased competition from foreign phone manufacturers, including China's Huawei, Vivo and Oppo. China consumers have taken to their own brands in increasing numbers, although Apple has also blamed a weak Chinese currency for its problems.

Last year was the first in four years in which Apple didn't have the best-selling smartphone in China. That honor went to Oppo's R9 model, which sold 17 million units and has a 2% market share in China. Apple's iPhone 6 had a 2% market share.

The decline in China iPhone sales was reflected in the company's disappointing earnings.

Perhaps even more concerning, Apple has struggled to introduce iPhone innovations on a similar level to breakthroughs that bested its rivals and made the iPhone a must-have personal device. The company believes that the 10th anniversary of its iPhone release will juice the public's interest.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has acknowledged the recent China headwinds, but vowed to boost its business there.

European regulators said that they would take action against Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter unless the companies changed their user agreements to provide better protection for consumers and prevent activities that EU countries.

The EU is looking for tighter control over objectionable content by ensuring it is removed expeditiously. Regulators are also looking to ensure that consumers are aware of their rights and the types of content that they are receiving, including sponsored content. They are also seeking to ensure that users' privacy is protected and to reduce their risk of being victimized by fraud or scams.

Alphabet and Facebook are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells GOOGL and FB? Learn more now.

This comes as many countries have seen the sprouting of nationalist movements and increases in incendiary or violence-oriented comments online and have sought to reign it in without compromising free speech.

Regulators have said that the companies could face fines for failing to comply with EU rules.

Germany has already threatened to fine social media companies up to $50 million Euros for not deleting threatening or slanderous speech.

In December, regulators sent letters to Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter notifying them that they were in violation of EU law. The companies outlined several ways to fix the problems.

Will the striped shirt go with the blue pants? Should you wear boots or lace-ups?

Prime members can now ask Amazon (AMZN) via the company's "Outfit Compare" feature.

The program enables Prime Members to send photos of themselves wearing different outfits. An Amazon stylist will then rate which one looks best based on such criteria as what's in style, color and fit. Outfit Compare will be accessible to Prime Members in the sidebar navigation's "programs and features section.

Amazon introduces this feature as it continues to grow its apparel and accessories business and pursue its goal of touching almost every aspect of consumers' lives. Some retail experts doubted that Amazon could make inroads into fashion because consumers want to try on clothes for size and look. But the company is rapidly overcoming this obstacle by offering many options and creating a user friendly experience based on short delivery times and flexibility to its users' needs.

Over the past year, it has made a huge investment into its logistics and transportation network, and has even test flown a delivery drone in the U.K.

Outfit Compare stylists respond to user photos in under a minute, according to one test. The photos are viewable only by Amazon staff and users can delete them from the app. The stylists work in retail, media and other aspects of the fashion industry.

Amazon shares fell slightly in Friday trading.
NEW YORK  Thomson Reuters (NYSE, TSX: TRI) announced today that its first-quarter 2017 earnings will be issued via news release on Friday, April 28, 2017.

Jim Smith, president and chief executive officer, and Stephane Bello, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will host a conference call and simultaneous webcast that morning at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Discussions may include forward-looking information.

You can access the webcast by visiting the Investor Relations section of the Thomson Reuters website. Registration for the webcast is now open. Additionally, an archive of the webcast will be available following the presentation.

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the worlds leading source of news and information for professional markets. Our customers rely on us to deliver the intelligence, technology and expertise they need to find trusted answers. The business has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges (symbol: TRI). For more information, visit www.thomsonreuters.com.

CONTACT

Media

Andrew Green

Director, Corporate Affairs

Tel: +1 646 223 4228

Email: andrew.green@tr.com

Investors

Frank J. Golden

Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Tel: +1 646 223 5288

Email: frank.golden@tr.com
NC CWC meeting on March 23

Nepali Congress (NC), the largest party in the Parliament, is holding its Central Working Committee meeting at party central office in Sanepa on Marcha 23.
The Government will implement measures to stop trade with enterprises located on territories beyond Ukraine's control.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman said this during an Hour of questions to the government, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The National Security and Defense Council decision was made public yesterday, and the Government will work on it. But I want to emphasize that this blockade led to serious energy and economic problems," Groysman said.

In his opinion, the blockade was directed "against the Ukrainian state".

ish
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko says that the lawsuit to the United Nations International Court of Justice (UN ICJ) has become the first step of Ukraine on bringing Russia to justice for crimes committed against Ukrainian citizens in annexed Crimea and Donbas.

President Poroshenko said this at a meeting with Ukraines representative in the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on European Integration Olena Zerkal, Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and Head of the Security Service Vasyl Hrytsak.

Our team in the UN ICJ fights for the fair punishment of those guilty in thousands of casualties as a result of terrorist attacks in the Ukrainian Donbas; those who supplied tanks, modern artillery, MLRS, armored vehicles, ammunition, missiles used to shell Avdiivka, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, civilian bus in Volnovakha and shoot down the MH-17 flight, President Poroshenko said.

Ukraines representative in the UN ICJ Olena Zerkal, in turn, thanked the President and ministers for support and joint work in representing the reasoned position of Ukraine on this case.

We continue to protect the interests of Ukraine in line with the Maritime Convention, and early as in May, the first hearings will be held that will be dedicated to issues on the procedure," she added.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, in turn, said that more than 800 volumes of evidence were collected in the case "Ukraine vs. Russia", of which 300 volumes were marked as "classified" and "highly classified". During the preparation of materials, 1,400 victims, 2,000 witnesses were questioned, 1,800 forensic examinations were held and 100,000 pieces of material evidence were gathered. Also, according to Lutsenko, the Prosecutor Generals Office prepared bills of indictments that had already been sent to the leaders of terrorist organizations and to the court.

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Canada has expressed concern about the numerous cases of Russia's harassment of the rights of Crimea residents.

This was stated by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Chrystia Freeland, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Canada is deeply concerned about the politically motivated use of the anti-terrorist and anti-extremist legislation; human rights violations against activists, journalists and lawyers; arbitrary detentions, disappearances and harassment of Crimean Tatars and other minorities," Freeland said.

She also condemned the Russias oppression of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. "We condemn the ban on the activity of the Mejlis and call on Russia to abolish its illegal and immoral decision," the Canadian Foreign Minister said.

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The telecommunication tower has been officially opened on the administrative border with Crimea in Kherson region. The tower will broadcast across the northern regions of the Russian-occupied peninsula.

The press service of the Ministry of Ukraine for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons posted this on Twitter.

"Construction of a 150-meter tower in the village of Chongar has been completed, and broadcasting across some districts of Kherson region and Crimea will start today," the statement says.

The opening ceremony was attended by Information Policy Minister of Ukraine Yuri Stets, Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine Vadym Chernysh, Chairman of the National Council of Ukraine for Television and Radio Broadcasting Yuriy Artemenko, MP of Ukraine, Chairman of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People Refat Chubarov and Chairman of the Kherson Regional State Administration Andriy Hordeyev.

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NC leader Dhungel no more

The Nepali Congress and its President Sher Bahadur Deuba have expressed sorrow over the demise of party leader and former assistant minister for agriculture Ramhari Dhungel, who died at his rented residence in Dillibazaar on Thursday.
Ncell tax row: CPN-UML slams govt for promoting policy corruption

The main opposition CPN-UML has accused the government of promoting policy corruption by taking the capital gains tax (CTG) controversy surrounding Ncell, the largest private telecom operator in the country, to the Cabinet meeting.
Nepali migrant worker found dead in Malaysia

A man from Dhanusha who had gone to Malaysia for work has been found dead in suspicious circumstances.


An Indiana Southern Railroad train is loaded with coal at the Peabody Energys Somerville Central Mine in Oakland City, Ind. Peabody is preparing to come out of bankruptcy. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)

The battered U.S. coal industry is showing flickering signs of life. Yet the prognosis for Big Coal remains dim.

Coal prices are about double what they were a year ago. Rail car deliveries of coal are up 16 percent this year. The more than 50 coal mining companies that went bankrupt over the past couple of years have unloaded billions of dollars of debt. And President Trump has vowed to roll back environmental regulations that the industry says are part of a war on coal.

The stocks of coal companies have enjoyed a Trump bump, thanks to the presidents pledges to bring the coal industry back and put our great miners and steelworkers back to work. Half a dozen big companies have seized the moment to issue stock or sell bonds to raise money from investors willing to wager on the effects of a friendlier Trump administration. Peabody Energy, the nations biggest coal behemoth, hopes to win court approval to come out of bankruptcy in April.

But the obstacles on the other side of the ledger remain daunting: Coal-fired power plants continue to shut their doors. Bountiful supplies of U.S. shale gas are keeping natural gas prices low and competitive, and renewable sources of power generation are growing rapidly. Though most experts expect U.S. coal sales and output to top last years levels, they also expect the decline to resume in 2018.

The coal industry is saying its back. Its not back, said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. This is a fools errand. The institute is supported by a variety of liberal philanthropies.

Some coal companies will survive, and some could thrive. Metallurgical coal will be needed to make steel in India and China and in the United States, especially if there is a boost in infrastructure spending. And thermal coal will still be used to generate electricity for years, even if at lower rates.

But to show profits, coal operators will have to trim output from the oldest, least-efficient mines in Appalachia (where Trump garnered crucial votes in the election) and shift their focus to the Illinois Basin and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

Those big open-pit mines need fewer workers  doing nothing to help Trump bring back jobs for our great miners.

A lot of people conflate two primary things: the coal industry and coal jobs, said Chiza B. Vitta, a coal analyst at Standard & Poors. Even if the coal industry were to do better, that doesnt translate into coal jobs. Over time the process has become more and more efficient, and theyre able to mine with fewer and fewer people working.

Some analysts dont even expect the industry to do better.

Trumps rhetoric on the campaign trail would also suggest that coal is about to see a big lift in the post-Obama era, but the reality may be less rosy, Citigroup said in a series of reports to investors this year.

The regulatory environment for coal should improve under Trumps presidency, the bank said. But, it added, comparative economics for coal, renewables and gas place clean coal firmly at the bottom of the stack in the U.S.



Bulldozers ready to work at Peabody Energys Somerville Central coal mine in Indiana. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)

The saga of Peabody Energy

Coal has had a tough decade. In 2007, it fired 50 percent of U.S. electricity production. In 2016, that share dropped to 31 percent of a somewhat smaller total, according to the Energy Information Administration. The EIA expects the share to creep back up a point or two, but then head down again.

Citigroup expects coal plants with a capacity of about 5 gigawatts will be retired this year  thats enough to power roughly 3.4 million homes for a year. Even though the average age of a U.S. coal-fired plant is 39 years, there hasnt been an application to build a new coal plant in years. But over the past 15 years, thanks to plentiful shale gas reserves, natural gas plants with nearly 228 gigawatts of capacity have been built.

To make matters worse, the biggest companies in the industry borrowed heavily to buy other coal companies, loading up on debt just as natural gas supplies soared and coal prices tumbled.

[Coal titan Peabody Energy files for bankruptcy]

The saga of Peabody Energy tracks the industrys story. Peabody got out of Appalachia in 2007, spinning off its mines there to a company called Patriot. For a short while, Patriot did better than Peabody, but later it went bankrupt.

Peabody made a ill-timed $5.2 billion acquisition of Macarthur Coal of Australia in 2011, near the peak for coal prices. The coal titan underestimated rival suppliers in Asia and overestimated the growth of Chinese coal consumption.

It also lost money hedging against currencies, according to Vic Svec, senior vice president for investor and corporate relations at Peabody.

Now, Peabody hopes to emerge from bankruptcy with just $2 billion in debt, down from $7 billion. It has reduced its workforce even at sites that remain open and operating. It has idled its highest-cost mine, the Burton mine in Australia. It has sold off a mine in New South Wales and an interest in a port in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.

The company coming out of bankruptcy is very different from the one that went in, Svec said.

The company still has to iron out disputes with stakeholders, especially bondholders who say that Peabody executives are in cahoots with hedge funds and making the business sound worse than it was last year so that it pays old bondholders less than they deserve. At the same time, now Peabody has an interest in sounding good enough to attract investors, the less fortunate bondholders say.

Fast-shifting fortunes

Vitta, the analyst at Standard & Poors, thinks that coal companies can make money again. Youll see reports that this is a shrinking industry, he said. That can be separated from the ability of companies to be profitable.



The bucket of a dragline excavator moves earth while mining coal at the Peabody strip mine. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News)

That assessment can also be separated from the politics of coal, which hinge on jobs. Trump wants to revive the business, and during the campaign he said he would get those miners back to work. Optimism about the new president helped Peabody Energy shares, which surged 49 percent the day after Trumps election win.

But while Vitta said that we expect the companies to be in much better shape than they were, he added that I wouldnt expect the expansion in production to continue.

Svec said that certainly the position of the new administration has been positive and could be good on a number of fronts, not least the pro-growth policies that would improve the economy. When the economy is doing well, power generation does better.

But he added that our view is not predicated on overall jobs.

The industrys fortunes can be mercurial because changes in the U.S. and global coal markets can be sharp and fleeting. A year ago, the price of metallurgical coal, used in making steel, dipped to about $75 a ton. Then metallurgical coal prices more than tripled, to about $300, after China said it would shut down many of its aging coal mines.

It didnt last. Chinese demand was lower than expected, and coal prices fell back, to about $150 a ton.

U.S. exports of metallurgical coal have dropped 45 percent since their 2013 peak. The consulting firm Wood Mackenzie projects a further slide.

That has dampened optimism and prompted at least one company to shelve plans. The coal company Cloud Peak Energy paid $51 million to BNSF railway and a harbor terminal manager to extricate itself from a plan to boost its coal exports from the West Coast to Asia.

The price of natural gas, thermal coals major competitor, followed a similar path as metallurgical coal. Prices hit a historic low, driving much thermal coal offline, in the first half of 2016. Then natural gas prices climbed to $3.71 per thousand cubic feet, raising hopes in the coal and gas businesses. But after a mild winter and more supplies of shale gas, natural gas spot prices tumbled to $2.68.

With the tough domestic coal market, exports of thermal coal could help. But Chinas National Energy Administration in January announced it was scrapping the construction of 85 planned coal plants, according to a McKinsey report. That pushed thermal coal prices down, too.

And these market jolts happened extremely fast, making it difficult for coal industry executives to make plans. The shares of Ramaco Resources, a small metallurgical coal company in Appalachia, have slid 25 percent since Feb. 6, when it launched a rare initial public stock offering.

Peabody says that its business plan uses projections that natural gas will fluctuate between $3.05 and $3.50 per thousand cubic feet  above current prices.



A coal miner identified as Kevin shakes hands with President Trump after the president signed legislation rolling back a regulation on coal debris dumped in streams. (Pool photo by Ron Sachs/European Pressphoto Agency)

A pro-coal president

How will Trump deal with this?

Some coal supporters pin their hopes on the president supporting clean coal technology, which removes and stores carbon dioxide from coal-burning plants. That technology, which is costly and relies on federal aid, doesnt actually make coal clean; it addresses climate concerns.

In light of recent calls for dramatic cuts to the federal budget, we want to stress that every dollar allocated to fossil energy research is an investment in the long-term future of Americas coal and fossil fuel industry, three coal company chief executives and three union leaders wrote in a March 10 letter to Trump. Federal support plays a major role in commercializing technology and making it cost-viable for the private sector.

Trump, however, has shown no signs of backing that technology. His budget proposal for the Energy Department would cut $2 billion from a number of programs that help fund basic science as well as full-size, carbon-capture plants.

[Did Trump save 77,000 coal miner jobs?]

Instead Trump, who has voiced skepticism about climate change, on Feb. 16 signed legislation rolling back a regulation on coal debris dumped in streams. At the signing ceremony at the White House were Kentuckys senators, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both Republicans; Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.); and Murray Coal executives and miners.

One of the miners, a 45-year veteran of the business, praised Trump. Im very proud to be here with my president of the United States who keeps his word, and we thank you very much, sir, he said, wearing a blue work shirt and a hard hat.

But it will be hard for Trump to deliver. To bring jobs back in Kentucky is a tough proposition unless theres a subsidy, because it doesnt make economic sense, Vitta said.

Thats been true for years, notwithstanding some of the political rhetoric.

Our folks are so excited to have a pro-coal president, and we thank you so much for being on our side, McConnell said at the White House event, adding that the last eight years brought a depression to Eastern Kentucky.

In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reports the unemployment rate in Clay County, one of the hardest-hit counties in the states eastern coal region, at 8.4 percent in December, half the rate it was at its peak in January 2010. It was 14.1 percent when President Obama took office.

In Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station could also provide an early test for the president. Its owners have decided to close the massive coal plant. The Native American tribe, whose members hold about 90 percent of the more than 400 jobs there, is appealing to the Trump administration for help in keeping the plant running. Yet doing that would be expensive. Sanzillo estimates that the Navajo station produces electricity at rates about 50 percent higher than market rates.

Theres no good economic reason to keep NGS on life support, and indeed the time for closure has come, Sanzillos group said in a blog post. The plant is emblematic of a core challenge facing the traditionally hidebound U.S. electricity-generation industry, as the market for coal-fired electricity is shrinking.

And, he added, thats regardless of recent political events.

Read more:

Can coal companies afford to clean up coal country?

A dilemma with aging coal plants: Retire them or restore them?

The Wests largest coal-fired plant is closing. Not even Trump can save it.




In his first budget proposal, released Thursday, President Trump proposed drastic cuts to many of the nations agencies and programs to offset nearly $60 billion in additional spending on defense, a down payment on the border wall and funding for school choice programs, among other things. If enacted, the proposal would be one of the most dramatic redistributions of funds since Reagans military build-up during the Cold War in the early 1980s.

Discretionary spending limits, the only portion of the budget addressed by this proposal, are set by congressional budget resolutions. Mandatory spending, by contrast, is set by other laws and primarily includes interest on the debt and entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Here, the funding level is often determined by the size of the benefit and the eligible population.

Infrastructure





The Agriculture Department, Interior Department, Energy Department, Transportation Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development control much of the nations vast infrastructure.

These departments, especially HUD, lost significant funding as Reagan took office. His promise to shrink the size of the government included significant reductions in federal housing funds.

Much of the other fluctuation in these budgets has been driven by political and financial turmoil. In the late 1970s, increased oil production in response to the energy crisis caused a spike in the Energy Departments budget. A few years later, in the early 1980s, the farm crisis  a period of falling crop prices and lower incomes for farmers  led to large payouts from the Agriculture Department. More recently, as part of the stimulus following the 2008 financial crisis, many of these departments, most notably Transportation, received large budget increases.

With Trumps 2018 proposal, all of these departments are looking at cuts of between 12 and 21 percent. Much of this money would be taken out of research and climate-change-related programs.

The economy





The Treasury Department and Commerce Department are concerned with the governments finances and the countrys economic growth, respectively. Their funding levels are largely driven by the state of the economy and government budgets.

Treasury saw a large bump in spending in the mid 1970s because the department loaned more than $1.3 billion (nearly $6 billion in todays dollars) to New York City. The city government at the time was facing bankruptcy.

The departments funding similarly responds to nationwide financial crises; after the 2008 housing bubble burst, the Commerce Department got increased funding to respond. Financial agencies outside these departments, such as the FDIC, which insures Americans bank deposits, also saw spending spikes during that period (though that money is funded by insurance premiums, not Congress).

With Trumps 2018 proposal, Treasury would see a modest 4 percent cut, largely aimed at the IRSs funding. Commerce would see a steeper 16 percent decrease, cutting from many programs that aim to help communities struggling with the effects of climate change or manufacturing automation.

Foreign relations and law enforcement





The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, which focus on diplomacy and law enforcement, have grown almost continuously for the past 40 years.

A major disruption came after the 2001 terrorist attacks, after which the Department of Homeland Security was founded. (The number youre seeing before that date is the funding allocated to all the then-independent agencies that are now part of DHS, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.) From 2001 to 2002, the funding for these programs  which primarily focus on counterterrorism and immigration  nearly doubled. A smaller bump occurred in 2006 as part of FEMAs response to Hurricane Katrina.

Trumps budget proposal would make substantial changes to some of these departments. DHS is one of three departments that would see an increase in funding, which would be put toward building a wall along the southern border and increasing the number of agents throughout the immigration enforcement system, among other things. In total, the departments funding would increase by 7 percent.

The State Department, on the other hand, would face deeper cuts than any other department, losing 29 percent of its budget. In line with Trumps America first agenda, the budget proposal slashed foreign military and humanitarian aid, as well as funding to the United Nations and other international organizations. The proposal would inflict milder cuts on the Justice Department  4 percent  and shifts money away from prison construction toward counterterrorism and the system for removing undocumented immigrants from the country.

Health, education, and labor





The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Labor Department have among the largest discretionary budgets in the government.

Like many other portions of the budget, they often fluctuate with the state of the economy. The biggest spikes came after the 2008 financial crisis. Between 2008 and 2009, the Labor Departments budget went up by about 50 percent to fund more job training programs as part of the stimulus. The stimulus also increased HHSs budget by half, funding everything from the promotion of medical technology to Head Start.

In Trumps proposal, these departments fared quite differently. VA would see a 6 percent increase in funding to ease the backlog in the veterans health-care system. The Education Department is slated for a 14 percent decrease overall but an increase in funding for programs related to school choice. The Labor Department and HHS budgets would decrease by 21 and 18 percent, respectively.

Independent agencies





The agencies functions vary as widely as their budgets, and they have faced many different peaks and troughs over the past 40 years.

The 2009 stimulus had one of the biggest impacts. The budget for the General Services Administration, which helps the other agencies function, went up nearly twentyfold between 2008 and 2009, in part funding the construction and repair of government buildings around the country. The Environmental Protection Agencys budget nearly doubled, and in the aggregate, agency budgets went up by about a third.

But many of those increases have since been reversed, and a number of these agencies face cuts in Trumps budget. The EPA would take one of the hardest hits, losing 31 percent of its 2017 budget and a fifth of its workforce. These cuts are aimed at the agencys research programs, particularly with regard to climate change and environmental cleanup programs. The proposal dictates smaller decreases for other agencies, like the Small Business Administration and NASA, which would receive 5 and 1 percent budget cuts, respectively.

Defense





Defense has long been one of the largest items in the budget, this year comprising nearly 50 percent of discretionary spending. The largest driver of defense spending over the past 40 years has been war.

Spending increased by nearly two-thirds during the Reagan administration as he built up the military during the Cold War. It increased drastically again during the Bush administration, largely to fund the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[ Trumps defense spending increase isnt extraordinary, but its impact could be]

Trumps proposal would increase defense spending by 9 percent, about $52 billion. Thats a bit larger than what Obama was projecting for 2018, and smaller than what congressional defense hawks wanted, according to Todd Harrison, the director of Defense Budget Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Its in line with what youre expecting to see, he said.

Whether the changes in Trumps proposal actually get enacted is an open question. Congress writes the budget and typically makes changes to the presidents proposal. Last year, lawmakers disregarded Obamas budget altogether.

Despite a Republican-controlled Congress, Trumps cuts may not pass so easily. Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), Sen. Dean Heller (Nev.) and Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.), have criticized portions of the budget. And Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) did not mince words after seeing a blueprint: Its dead on arrival.

Sources: Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, The Office of Management and Budget

Note: Figures have been adjusted for inflation.




The champagne was flowing as hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah hosted a reception during the Cannes Film Festival last May to promote Clinton Cash, a film by their political adviser Stephen K. Bannon and the production company they co-founded, Glittering Steel.

The Mercers, Republican mega-donors who had spent millions on the failed presidential bid of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Bannon, then executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, were still weeks from formally aligning with Donald Trumps campaign. But the festivities that balmy evening aboard the Sea Owl, the Mercers luxurious yacht, marked the growing influence of their financial and political partnership in shaping the 2016 campaign  and in encouraging the populist surge now reverberating around the world.

The Mercers approach is far different from that of other big donors. While better-known players such as the Koch brothers on the right and George Soros on the left focus on mobilizing activists and voters, the Mercers have exerted pressure on the political system by helping erect an alternative media ecosystem, whose storylines dominated the 2016 race.

Their alliance with Bannon provided fuel for the narrative that drove Trumps victory: that dangerous immigrants are ruining the country and corrupt power brokers are sabotaging Washington.

(Bastien Inzaurralde,Dani Player/The Washington Post)

The wealthy New York family and the former investment banker-turned-media executive collaborated on at least five ventures between 2011 and 2016, according to a Washington Post review of public filings and multiple people familiar with their relationship. The extent of their partnership has not previously been reported.

Through those projects, the Mercers and Bannon, now chief White House strategist, quietly built a power base aimed at sowing distrust of big government and eroding the dominance of the major news media.

The Mercers provided the money, while Bannon, working in tandem with Rebekah, acted as business partner and political guide. The familys overarching strategy, according to people familiar with their giving, is to test various tactics to see which is most effective.

The Mercers have a Silicon Valley approach to politics: Let a thousand entities bloom, and lets see what works, said one associate, who, like others close to the Mercers, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private family.

The Mercers poured money into Breitbart News, the media outlet they now partly own that under Bannons leadership gave voice to the nationalistic fervor Trump embraced. The family helped finance an investigative think tank that Bannon co-founded, the Government Accountability Institute, whose president wrote Clinton Cash. Glittering Steel, the Mercer film production company, then brought the books findings to the screen, portraying Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a mass audience as a captive of wealthy interests.

The alliance continued with Cambridge Analytica, a data science company that did work for the Trump campaign, with the Mercers as investors and Bannon on the board. And they joined forces on a nonprofit watchdog group that is putting the spotlight on how public money is spent in the Mercers home state of New York.

While other donors gave more to support Trumps presidential bid last year, the Mercers are now arguably the most influential financiers of the Trump era. Bannon, who went on to manage the final months of Trumps campaign before joining the White House, is the senior architect of the presidents policy vision. He is joined in the West Wing by counselor Kellyanne Conway, a friend of Rebekah Mercer who led the family-funded super PAC that backed first Cruz and then Trump in the 2016 race.

People who know them say the Mercers, who soured on traditional political operatives, appreciated Bannons business savvy and share his belief that the conversation around politics must be changed for their ideas to prevail. For all of their power and privilege, both the family and their longtime adviser see themselves as outsiders, fighting the grip of elite institutions.

Driving the Mercers is a belief that there is too cozy a relationship between the established media and the political class, and that there needs to be more accountability, said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of Clinton Cash. They loathe the fact that Washington has become a very wealthy town because of government power, at the expense of the American people.

The Mercers declined to comment. Bannon declined to comment through a White House spokeswoman.



President-elect Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up to reporters upon arriving for a party at the home of Robert Mercer, one of his largest campaign donors, in Head of the Harbor, N.Y., in December.

Kellyanne Conway, then campaign manager for President-elect Donald Trump, arrives at the Mercers annual costume party as Supergirl. (Photos by Evan Vucci/AP)

Trump himself paid homage to the family in December, weeks before moving into the White House, when he attended the Mercers elaborate annual costume party at their Long Island mansion. In a nod to the Villains and Heroes theme, Rebekah Mercer dressed like the Black Widow and her father as Mandrake the Magician, a comic-book superhero known for hypnotizing his targets.

Trump  who did not wear a costume  told the crowd that when the famously taciturn Robert Mercer urged him to hire Bannon and Conway last August, he knew he should listen because Mercer so rarely speaks, according to people in attendance.





Just a decade ago, few could have predicted the Mercers swift ascent in the money world. In the 2006 midterms, the family contributed only $37,800 to federal candidates and political committees  including $4,200 that Robert Mercers wife, Diana, gave to Clintons Senate reelection campaign, federal records show. The familys foundation was similarly low key, giving away $292,000 in 2007, with nearly half going to a nonprofit math foundation started by one of Robert Mercers hedge fund colleagues, tax documents show.

But, after the election of Barack Obama, the family started to increase its political giving, tapping into newfound wealth.

In 2010, Robert Mercer was elevated to co-chief executive of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, whose closely held quantitative formulas have generated staggering returns. The following year, he began drawing annual earnings of $100 million and up, according to Institutional Investors Alpha list.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision in 2010 paved the way for new forms of unlimited political spending  an opening seized upon by mega-donors on the right opposed to the Obama administration.

Between 2008 and 2016, they pumped at least $77 million in political donations and gifts from their family foundation into a vast universe of causes across the conservative landscape, according to campaign finance reports and tax filings.

Their foundation financed groups focused on international affairs, religious freedom, state policies, judicial issues and free enterprise. They poured millions into the Koch network and super PACs that promoted Republican candidates across the country.





Much of the Mercers political spending came in 2016 alone, when they funded a family super PAC with $15.5 million, including $2 million to support Trump once he secured the GOP nomination, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The Mercers ideology resembles that of many conservative donors and opinion leaders. They believe in limited government and free markets, according to people who know them. They both have a staunch antipathy to the Clintons. Rebekah Mercer, who home-schools her four children, is strongly antiabortion, associates said.

But what sets the Mercers apart is their interest in finding new ways to shape the environment in which policy issues are debated, an impulse driven by their background in technology and finance.

[How a reclusive computer programmer became a GOP money powerhouse]

Robert Mercer is a renowned computer programmer who helped pioneer the field of machine translation. He made his fortune after leaving IBM for the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in the early 1990s. He bought an estate with a harbor view on Long Island and a 203-foot yacht, which includes flourishes such as a four-deck-high tree carved from Peruvian mahogany and a rosewood self-playing Steinway baby grand piano.

Rebekah Mercer, 43, a former Wall Street trader, lives with her family in a sprawling triplex in a Trump-branded condominium on Manhattans Upper West Side and sits on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History and the Heritage Foundation. She and her two sisters also run an online gourmet cookie company.

She is the most political of Mercers three daughters, largely directing where the family puts its resources, and is known in conservative circles for her unyielding and skeptical questioning of candidates and established political operatives.

They are right-wing nerds, said George Gilder, an economist and former Ronald Reagan adviser who met Robert Mercer when the hedge fund executive began attending speeches Gilder has given touting bitcoin and a return to the gold standard.

[Robert Mercer] believes in free markets, and he believes that technology is a positive force and that a lot of government is overregulating and suppressing economic creativity, Gilder added.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Mercers donations over the past eight years has been the conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which collected $13.5 million from the Mercer Family Foundation between 2008 and 2014, tax records show.

The centers projects include a website called CNSNews.com that publishes stories it says are ignored by the mainstream media  an early precursor to Breitbart News.

L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Media Research Center, did not return requests for comment. But in an interview with The Post last year, he called the family visionaries when it comes to recognizing new ways to communicate with the public.

What they are looking to do is build a movement, not just fund a movement, Bozell said. I dont know where it is all leading, but I can tell you they are in it for the long haul.





The Mercers partnership with Bannon began in 2011, thanks to an encounter that Robert and Rebekah had with Andrew Breitbart.

During a spring meeting of Club for Growth donors at the Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach, Fla., the Mercers sought out Breitbart after watching him deliver a talk about how to co-opt the political strategies used by liberals.

The conservative media entrepreneur, who liked to denounce the mainstream press as the Democrats dominant partner in crime, was arguing at the time that government policies could not be changed until conservatives seized control of the media narrative. The message resonated with the Mercers, according to a person familiar with their views.

Breitbart introduced them to Bannon, then a screenwriter and producer in Southern California who was directing a movie called Occupy Unmasked that featured Breitbart. It was co-produced by the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, whose allied foundation would later receive Mercer funds.

Bannon, whose peripatetic career had taken him from Wall Street to Hollywood, was at the time increasing his political focus, directing and producing a slate of conservative documentaries.

He had grown close to Breitbart and was urging the writer to expand his website, which originally operated out of Breitbarts basement. As part of that effort, the Mercers invested $10 million in the enterprise in the summer of 2011, according to a person familiar with the transaction. When Breitbart died of a heart attack the following March, Bannon became executive chairman of the news outlet. The Mercers co-ownership of Breitbart News, along with chief executive Larry Solov and Breitbarts widow, Susannah, was confirmed by the company last month.

The site was an early champion of Trump and the anti-establishment, populist movement that buoyed his campaign. It has also fielded intense criticism for airing inflammatory stories about immigrants, refugees and radical Islamists. Bannon once touted it as a platform for the alt-right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state and whose adherents have espoused racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view.

Breitbart officials have disputed charges that their content promotes racism or Islamophobia. Solov did not respond to requests for comment.



From left, Rebekah Mercer, Robert Mercer and Diana Mercer attend the World Science Festival Gala at the Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on April 7, 2014. (Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image)

The sundeck of the Sea Owl is shown. The Mercer familys luxurious yacht includes flourishes such as a four-deck-high tree carved from Peruvian mahogany and a Steinway baby grand piano. (Feadship)

According to a person familiar with her views, Rebekah Mercer has taken pride in the fact that Breitbarts stories have affected the political debate by filtering into the mainstream media  an impact that has been affirmed by some independent researchers.

They view Breitbart as a business and as a brand that gets a lot of traffic that is steering and shifting the way other outlets are covering these issues, the person said.

While he was running Breitbart News, Bannon was also serving as the familys political adviser, assessing the impact of think tanks, policy groups and super PACS they were considering financing, according to multiple people familiar with his role.

For Bannon, the partnership with the Mercers proved profitable.

In 2013, he reported earning $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News, according to a rental application previously reported by The Post. He also received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, first reported by The Post.

[During his political rise, Stephen K. Bannon was a man with no fixed address]





A strategic turning point came in 2012. The Mercers put $3 million behind super PACs that backed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, filings show, and when he lost, they became disenchanted with the Washington political class, according to multiple people familiar with their thinking.

Bannon urged them to take a different approach: Instead of helping consultants get rich, they should create their own network, according to associates.

In 2013, the Mercers became the principal investors in the data science firm Cambridge Analytica, which says it can target voters based on their personality types. It was spun out of a British company that advises governments around the world on how to conduct effective psychological operations.

Bannon served as vice president and secretary of Cambridges board, corporate filings in Delaware show, and was instrumental in pushing its expansion into the U.S. market, according to people familiar with his role.

[After working for Trumps campaign, British data firm eyes new U.S. government contracts]

Other Mercer-Bannon projects had narrower aims. Together, Rebekah Mercer, her sister Jennifer and Bannon started a watchdog group in 2013 called Reclaim New York, which is using the states freedom-of-information law to try to disclose every local public expenditure.

One of the familys most effective plays was helping finance the organizations that produced Clinton Cash.

The Mercer foundation gave $2 million between 2013 and 2014 to the Government Accountability Institute, the Tallahassee-based investigative think tank founded by Bannon and Schweizer.

Schweizer began writing Clinton Cash in late 2013, using the institutes research about Clinton Foundation donors, much of the material plumbed from obscure foreign websites. The book was release in 2015, just as the presidential race was heating up.

That same year, the Mercers set up a production company called Glittering Steel, which Bannon co-founded, according to people familiar with his role.

At the Cannes screening of the Clinton Cash documentary, which kicks off with the image of a blood-stained $100 bill, Bannon told reporters that he envisioned the target audience to be liberals who might grow disenchanted with Clinton.

I want as many progressives to see this as possible, because I think you have to understand how the Clintons, who proclaim that they support all your values, essentially have sold you out for money, Bannon told Reuters.

The 2016 race offered an opportunity for the Mercers to deploy the network of groups they built with Bannon.

Breitbart News, whose coverage echoed Trumps dark warnings about illegal immigrants and radical Islam, helped shape the campaign climate. A new study by a team of Harvard and MIT researchers, funded by a Soros-backed foundation, found that Breitbart drove coverage of the election in the conservative media and influenced mainstream news organizations.

Glittering Steel produced videos for the Mercer-funded super PAC Make America Number 1, which paid the production company about $700,000, according to campaign finance filings.

The super PAC directed another $5.5 million to Cambridge Analytica for consulting, data and ads. Cambridge was also paid at least $6 million for the work it did helping the Trump campaign identify and target voters, finance filings show.

Since the election, its parent company, SCL Group, has stepped up its pursuit of U.S. government contracts.

Bannons ascension last August as Trumps chief adviser forced him to walk away from the Mercer operation. He stepped down from the Government Accountability Institute last summer when he joined the campaign and formally resigned his post at Breitbart after the election, according to information Solov gave a panel of congressional journalists last month.

In his absence, the Mercers are forging ahead. Rebekah Mercer is spearheading a new group called Making America Great to support Trumps agenda, according to people familiar with the plans and corporate documents filed in Virginia.It remains unclear what relationship that group will have with an entity called America First Policies that has already been launched by other former Trump advisers.

The Mercers are looking to produce more film projects through Glittering Steel, as well as graphic novels. The graphic novel based on Clinton Cash was a New York Times bestseller.

And down in Tallahassee, one of their major causes, the Government Accountability Institute, is pressing forward with investigative projects.

Overseeing the effort as the groups new chairwoman and Bannons successor: Rebekah Mercer.

Alice Crites and Ann Hornaday contributed to this report.
Ncell capital gains tax issue: PAC decides to summon PM

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament on Thursday decided to summon Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal over the capital gains tax (CTG) controversy surrounding Ncell, the largest private telecom operator in the country.
Migrant deaths rose sharply last year, particularly in the Mediterranean, as smugglers made ever-riskier attempts to ferry migrants and refugees on increasingly unseaworthy vessels, according to United Nations statistics released Friday.

The International Organization for Migration documented 7,763 migrant deaths in 2016 worldwide, 27 percent more than the 6,107 recorded in 2015.

Two-thirds of the deaths took place in the Mediterranean, where 5,098 people lost their lives trying to make the trip from North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East to Europe, according to information collected by the IOMs Data Analysis Center in Berlin.

The number of Mediterranean casualties last year was 35 percent higher than in 2015, despite more organized rescue efforts and fewer people trying to make the journey. Most of the 2016 deaths were in the central Mediterranean, where 4,581 migrants died attempting the longer trip from northern Africa to Italy.

The migration organization cautioned that better monitoring and reporting might account for part of the increase in recorded deaths in the Mediterranean. The area has received greater focus as more asylum seekers streamed into Europe in recent years.

But evidence shows that along with several large shipwrecks, there also were more small, fatal incidents as smugglers pursued strategies such as launching multiple boats simultaneously  making rescue operations more difficult  and taking to rough seas during the winter, the IOM said.

This is not something completely new, but there is a reckless behavior on the part of smugglers who only want to increase their profits, said Frank Laczko, director of the IOMs analysis center.

There are huge sums of money to be made for each of those boats that cross the Mediterranean, so the more people you can cram into a boat, the more money you make, Laczko added.

He also said the situation in Libya, a key departure point, could have deteriorated to the point that people have become increasingly desperate to get out and thus willing to take incredible risks.

The report notes that the death count for the Mediterranean is considered a minimum figure, since it is thought that many shipwrecks go unreported.

The number of migrants attempting to reach Europe via the Mediterranean declined from more than 1 million in 2015 to 363,348 in 2016. In northern Africa, the report tallied 1,279 migrant deaths in 2016, up from 672 the previous year. In western Africa, 169 migrant deaths were recorded, up from 84 in 2015. The Middle East saw 113 deaths, up from 32 the year before.
More than 30 years after winning a National Book Critic Circle award for her first novel, Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich has won again. LaRose, the tale of two Ojibwe families linked by tragedy, took the NBCC fiction prize Thursday night in New York.

One of the most celebrated authors in the country, Erdrich based LaRose on a true story she heard years ago about a man who accidentally shot a boy and then gave up his own son to be raised by the grieving parents.

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood accepted the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her many short stories, poems, childrens books, works of nonfiction and 16 novels. Coming to the stage at the New School before an audience of critics, writers and publishing professionals, she joked, They let me cross the border!

Atwoods classic dystopian story The Handmaids Tale (1985) has enjoyed a dramatic spike in sales since Donald Trump was elected, and the novel has been adapted for a new TV series that will debut on April 26.

Speaking of the importance of independent critics, Atwood said, Never has American democracy felt so challenged. Never have there been so many attempts from so many sides of the political spectrum to shout down the voices of others to obfuscate and confuse, to twist and manipulate and to vilify reliable and trusted publications.

The other NBCC winners announced last night included:

Nonfiction: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. One of The Washington Posts top 10 books of 2016, Evicted describes poor people in Milwaukee struggling to find and keep a place to live in a real estate market and a legal system stacked against them. Desmond, a sociologist at Harvard University, was awarded a MacArthur genius grant in 2015.

Biography: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. The Lottery shocked New Yorker readers when it first appeared in 1948, but Franklins biography demonstrates that Jacksons career included much more than that single famous short story.

Autobiography: Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, whose book blends science writing with the story of her career as a geobiologist.

Poetry: House of Lords and Commons, by Ishion Hutchinson, a Jamaican poet who teaches at Cornell University. His collection was praised by the chair of the NBCC poetry committee for tracing the landscapes of memory, childhood and his native Jamaica.

Criticism: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, by Carol Anderson. This work of cultural criticism about the subtle function of racism in America grew from an essay that Anderson published in The Washington Post in 2014.

Two award winners who had been previously announced in January accepted their honors Thursday night, too:

Yaa Gyasi accepted the John Leonard First Book Prize for Homegoing (Knopf), her novel about the descendants of two half-sisters born in Ghanas coastal Fanteland in the mid-1700s. Gyasi said she was especially grateful to receive this award at a time when it seems immigrants are being met every day with new affronts to their humanity.

Michelle Dean, whose criticism appears regularly in the Guardian, the New Republic and other publications, accepted the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

The NBCC is an organization of nearly 1,000 reviewers and book section editors. The finalists and winners were chosen by the groups 24-person board.

Ron Charles is the editor of Book World and a member of the board of the National Book Critics Circle.
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, walk to Marine One at the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.

March 17, 2017 President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, walk to Marine One at the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

The beginning of the presidents term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the media.

The beginning of his term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the media.

The beginning of his term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the media.

See what President Trump has been doing since taking office

See what President Trump has been doing since taking office

No, Mr. President, the New York Times didnt say that.

In bolstering his claim that the administration of former president Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the fall campaign, President Trump has repeatedly cited a New York Times story that Trump claims made that assertion.

Asked by Fox News host Tucker Carlson Wednesday night how he learned of the alleged surveillance, Trump said, Well, Ive been reading about things. I read in, I think it was a January 20 New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article. I think they used that exact term.

Carlson followed up by asking if the president should wait to make such a serious allegation until proof emerged. Dont you devalue your words when you cant provide evidence? he said.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Well, replied the president, because the New York Times wrote about it.

The Times didnt, at least not in the way Trump suggested.

The story in question was published on the papers front page on Jan. 20  the day Trump was inaugurated  under the headline, Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.

So, in fact, the word wiretapped appears. But at no point does the article, produced under the bylines of four reporters, make the assertion that Obama ordered a wiretapping of candidate Trump or that any such surveillance took place at Trump Tower in New York.

Instead, the Times story speaks to a broader and more diffuse FBI investigation of possible links between unnamed Russian officials and Trump associates. The article identified the associates under investigation as former campaign manager Paul Manafort and advisers Carter Page and Roger Stone.

The closest the story comes to President Obama is this vague assertion: One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.

Thus, Trumps reading of the story is a gross misreading of it.

It is, of course, not what we reported, Times editor Dean Baquet said Thursday. The only reason there has been confusion is that the administration keeps misstating what we reported.

Conservative media sources have also picked up on the Times story, apparently triggering a game of telephone that has contorted and disfigured the original facts. The Times article was cited by radio host Mark Levin on March 2 as part of what he called Obamas silent coup against Trump. From there it jumped to Breitbart News, which apparently then led the next day to Trumps shocking tweets. In the early hours of March 4, Trump accused Obama of McCarthyism and being a bad (or sick) guy for tapping my phones in October.

The Times has tried to keep the record straight several times, most recently on Thursday when it published an article fact-checking several of Trumps inaccurate or misleading statements.

Trump and his spokesman, Sean Spicer, have sought to defend the claim, despite the absence of hard evidence. At first, the White House declined to comment, saying the matter should be investigated by Congress. Under mounting criticism, however, they have sought to change the terms of the issue, saying the definition of wiretapping could include broad surveillance or intelligence-gathering in general.

On Thursday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said they have seen no evidence for the allegation. The leaders of the House intelligence committee made similar statements on Wednesday.

This led to a heated series of exchanges between Spicer and reporters at the White Houses daily briefing on Thursday. Challenged by journalists to provide any evidence to validate the claim, Spicer cited a vast amount of reporting, ranging from the New York Times to Fox News host Sean Hannity, that suggested some kind of monitoring had occurred. He continued to insist evidence would emerge but declined to say if Trump would apologize or retract the claim if it didnt.

Baquet said the Times hasnt faced much direct fallout from the Jan. 20 Times article, just the occasional reader who needs a bit of explanation.

But he noted the irony of Trump invoking the paper as his source, considering that Trump has repeatedly slammed the Times as failing, dishonest, FAKE NEWS and the enemy of the American people, among many other things. As Ive said before, the presidents description of us as failing does not bother us since it is demonstrably false, he said.
Dear Heloise: We are retired and spend two weeks a year in hotel rooms. I am an early riser; my wife is not. This causes a problem with the lighting in hotel rooms.

Our grandkids got a toy miners headlamp for Christmas. We watched them play with it, then purchased one to see if it would work while traveling. I put it on the bedside table and wear it after I wake up. I can get ready, read books, read the newspaper, do crossword puzzles, etc., while wearing the headlamp, and it allows my wife to sleep.

Duane W., via email

Duane W.: I love it! My husband, David, gets up early, too; I sleep in, if possible. When I have to get up early for a speech for a charity, civic or business group, here is my hint: I have a small travel flashlight that sits on the desk and shines up. It illuminates the dark room enough for me to move around. It also serves as a night light in the bathroom.

Dear Heloise: In the Bradford (Pa.) Era, your hint titled Are We There Yet? was an excellent one.

I think parents should teach their children to read a map and an atlas. I have met adults who cannot read a map. What a shame! GPS is great technology, but if you are in an area without service or your battery is dead, it does not help you.

Keeping an atlas in your vehicle and being able to use it is something everyone should know. I realize you probably cant keep maps of everywhere, but you could print a local map before going to the town or location.

What a great skill, learning opportunity and parent/child connection!

Tim and Sue M., Smethport, Pa.

Dear Readers: Laundry is one chore in life that is guaranteed! Here are some quick hints to help:

 Close zippers and fasteners on garments.

 Check pockets for tissues, gum and pens!

 Wash sweaters inside-out to prevent pilling.

 Use laundry pretreaters on the back of the stain to force it out.

Many of my favorite hints for clothes care are in my handy stain and laundry pamphlet, If youd like to receive one, please visit my website, Heloise.com, to order, or send a long, self-addressed, stamped (70 cents) envelope, along with $5, to: Heloise/Stain, P.O. Box 795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-5001. I often refer to a glug of vinegar or household bleach. What is a glug? When you tip a bottle for just a second and the liquid comes out, it makes the sound glug, glug!

Dear Readers: If you have young children in the back seat and need to keep them occupied, fill an old tote bag or purse with puzzles, games and toys, and hang it over the seat. This will promote playtime and teamwork!

Heloises column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com.


Charlotte Le Bon stars as an Armenian woman raised in France, and Christian Bale as an outspoken American journalist in The Promise. (Jose Haro/Open Road Films)

Turks and Armenians have been in a bitter, long-running dispute over the deaths of more than 1 million Armenians during World War I in the Ottoman Empire. Armenians call it a genocide; the Turkish government says the killings were not systematic, occurring in the midst of war.

Now, the dispute has come to Hollywood. Two films this spring feature an intense love triangle that unfolds in this historic setting  but their political agendas are vastly different.

The Promise, opening nationwide April 21, is the first major Hollywood movie to portray what a consensus of historians calls the Armenian genocide, which involved forced-march deportations and mass killings over several years starting in 1915.

Oscar Isaac plays a young Armenian man who moves from his small village to Istanbul in 1914 to study medicine. There, as the predominantly Muslim Ottoman Empire enters the war on the side of Germany and turns on its own minority Christian Armenian population, he meets and falls in love with an Armenian woman raised in France (Charlotte Le Bon of The Walk), who is romantically involved with an outspoken American correspondent for the Associated Press (Christian Bale).

Talaat Pasha, considered the mastermind behind the killings, is one of the real-life figures in the film, which spares none of the Turkish atrocities against the Armenians, from the brutal labor camps for young men to the massacres of women, children and the elderly.



Michiel Huisman, as an Ottoman military officer who seeks the affections of a headstrong American nurse, in The Ottoman Lieutenant. (Anne Marie Fox/Paladin)

Though The Ottoman Lieutenant appears similar on the surface, it offers a very different interpretation of history. The film  which opened March 10 with a limited release  tells the fictional story of a headstrong American nurse (Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar) who travels to eastern Anatolia (now Turkey) to work at an American Mission Hospital. During the war, she is pulled between two men seeking her affections: an American doctor (Josh Hartnett) and a Muslim Ottoman lieutenant (Michiel Huisman of Game of Thrones).

The film takes an approach similar to the position of the Turkish government, which has long held that there was no state-organized policy of ethnic cleansing against Armenians. Rather, Turkey insists, during the fighting on the Ottoman Empires eastern front against the Russians, Turkish and Armenian civilians alike died in the course of wartime violence.

Taner Akcam of Clark University, one of the few historians from Turkey to recognize the events as a genocide, says that the countrys government refuses to acknowledge Turkish culpability partly because of the sensitive issue of reparations for survivors and their descendants. But the stance also stems from deeper roots: the countrys founding in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

If you acknowledge the Armenian genocide, then you have to acknowledge that an important number of Turkish founding fathers were either involved directly in genocide or became rich during the genocidal process through the seizure of Armenian property, said Akcam.

Both films were in the works well before the April 24, 2015, centenary of the tragedy , which helped increase awareness of the subject.

The Armenian genocide is one of the most well-documented humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th century, said Eric Esrailian, lead producer for Survival Pictures, which produced The Promise  his first film, as hes also a physician at UCLAs David Geffen School of Medicine. It was, in real time . . . frequently written about in U.S. newspapers. There was a huge humanitarian relief effort.



Oscar Isaac and Le Bon in The Promise. (Jose Haro/Open Road Films)

It is largely due to Turkish pressure on the film industry that a movie like The Promise was not made sooner. In the 1930s, MGM acquired the film rights to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfels best-selling novel inspired by the true story of several thousand Armenians who survived a mountaintop siege. But lobbying by Turkish Ambassador to the United States Mehmet Munir Ertegun (whose son Ahmet went on to found Atlantic Records) forced the studio to drop the project.

Recent years have seen a couple of small-scale indie features that deal with the tragedy, including Armenian Canadian director Atom Egoyans Ararat (2002) and Turkish German director Fatih Akins The Cut (2014).

The Promise was also developed outside the studio system, financed entirely by the late mogul Kirk Kerkorian, who owned MGM for many years and later founded Survival Pictures in 2012.

The promise means so much to us personally, said Esrailian. The promise was from Mr. Kerkorian to make the film. The promise was from us to complete the film. The promise is for us to never forget. And the promise is for us to also vow to do something so that it never happens again.

With a budget of nearly $100 million, the film is one of the most expensive independent films ever made, according to Variety. And the entire endeavor is not-for-profit: Survival Pictures has committed to donating all proceeds to nonprofit organizations, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation and other human rights and humanitarian groups.

The Ottoman Lieutenant was also made with private financing, in this case from a group of Turkish producers working in film, TV and advertising. They teamed up with producer Stephen Joel Brown (Seven), as well as an American director, Joseph Ruben (The Forgotten), and screenwriter, Jeff Stockwell (Bridge to Terabithia), to make a feature that would have high production values.

In an interview, Brown maintained that their film was not seeking to promote a particular political agenda, describing it as a classic love story, set at a time and place that we really havent seen in cinema.



Hera Hilmar and Huisman in The Ottoman Lieutenant. (Anne Marie Fox/Paladin)

While foregrounding the clandestine romance between the American nurse and the Ottoman lieutenant, the movie does not completely shy away from showing the suffering of the Armenians, particularly in one crucial scene involving Turkish soldiers. That [scene] seems kind of unequivocally saying, Turks force-marched Armenians and then slaughtered them along the way, said Stockwell, the screenwriter. Whatever you want to quibble about, there it is. Now, is there enough? Is it soft-pedaled?

Nevertheless, focusing the action on the town of Van and showing one of the few Armenian insurgencies, which took place there in April and May 1915, has the effect of promoting the Turkish narrative, which points to the Van resistance as a justification for repression of the Armenians.



The official Turkish argument is that deportation of Armenians was a response to Armenian uprisings, said Akcam (who has not seen The Ottoman Lieutenant). This is the reason the Van event is crucial in Ottoman Turkish historiography. This argument is not correct, because . . . we know that the decision for deportation was already taken before the Van uprising.

(The studio did not make the Turkish producers available for interviews.)

A sizable contingent of Turks, as well as many in the Armenian diaspora, have been aware of The Promise for some time. Last October, outlets including the Independent reported that it had more than 85,000 ratings on IMDb, nearly all of them either 1 or 10 stars. Given that the film had had just three public screenings by that point, it seemed clear that users who had not even seen it were rating it based purely on their politics.

Similarly, before The Ottoman Lieutenant had even opened, it was quickly dismissed in Armenian American publications and in YouTube comments sections as Turkish propaganda.

While neither movie is likely to settle the debate over the events of World War I, these portrayals might prompt some Americans to look into the historical record  and draw their own conclusions.
Jennifer Smith, director of the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences, listens in a hearing room at the Wilson Building as she is questioned by a D.C. Council committee about the city's botched Zika virus testing. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

At least one woman with the Zika virus and four others who may have been infected but were mistakenly told last year they were healthy  because of botched tests at a D.C. government lab  have since given birth, according to health-care providers.

There have been no reports of babies born in the District during that time with microcephaly, the extreme neurological disorder associated with Zika that causes a babys head to be small.

But Zika can result in other birth defects that may not show up until a year after birth or longer, including hearing loss, irritability, difficulty swallowing, and cognitive, sensory and motor-skill problems. Children born to Zika-infected mothers need to be regularly monitored, health experts say.

The births ensure that it could be years before the full impact of mistakes made at the Districts public-health lab can be tallied.

The D.C. lab erroneously told at least nine pregnant women that they tested negative for Zika between July and December of last year. Thats when a new lab director discovered lab workers had overdiluted a solution used in testing and erred in entering a math formula in a spreadsheet used to calculate results.

The mistakes, first made public Feb. 9, prompted officials to ask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public-health laboratories to redo more than 400 tests that had been performed at the D.C. lab, including those for nearly 300 pregnant women.

Jennifer Smith, director of the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences, which oversees the public-health lab, said on Feb. 23 that retesting was about halfway completed and had yielded one case in which Zika had been confirmed and eight others in which results were inconclusive. In those cases, patients had markers that suggested either Zika or a similar virus, such as dengue. Smith told the D.C. Council at the time that she expected retesting to be completed within weeks.

But the department has since declined to provide results of that retesting.

Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), chairman of the public safety committee, said he was briefed Friday morning by Smith, who told him that the number of updated retests that confirmed a Zika infection or were inconclusive was higher than nine. He declined to elaborate, saying it was an unofficial tally and that he was told final numbers would be made public by the health lab in the coming days.

The Washington Post surveyed major health-care providers to see if any had been informed of patients with new test results that differed from their original results.

Unity Health Care, the citys largest network of health centers, said it had been informed that six of its patients  all pregnant women  had their results changed upon retesting.

One woman had a confirmed case of a Zika infection, while results from the other five were inconclusive, said Diana Lapp, Unitys deputy chief medical officer and vice president for medical administration.

The woman with Zika and four of the five others have since given birth, Lapp said.

The Districts public-health lab was one of 45 entities across the country approved to perform one of three tests for Zika.

The District appeared to be the only jurisdiction in the country to have mishandled the test, according to the CDC.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) visited the lab at the end of February to review its operations and investigate how the mistakes were made. It is not clear what kind of disciplinary action regulators may take, if any, as a result of the fumbled virus testing.

[Botched Zika testing at D.C. lab was a failure of basic arithmetic]

Lapp said doctors have been working since they were informed of their patients new results, some of which were delivered last week, to locate and meet with the women.

Unity serves a largely low-income community that includes many immigrants.

Health-care literacy is very low among some of our patients, Lapp said, to explain the results, and what they mean, and could mean, and the follow-up testing thats required is not something that we have wanted to do by phone.

Unity may also be contending with a problem of undocumented immigrants who are reluctant to be identified and placed in a national registry for tracking future health-care complications related to Zika.

Lapp said doctors are trying the best they can to explain the lab error to patients and prepare them for future testing and uncertainty about the health of their children.

The amount of follow-up that they are being requested to do is not simple, she said. Its not Okay, youre born, youre fine. Its a long road now.

[Lifelong care, heartache for babies born in U.S. with Zika]

Lapp and other health-care providers said they were informed last week on a conference call with the D.C. Department of Health that they would be responsible for locating and informing their affected patients, and reporting any issues related to the retesting.

Allen said the responsibility to inform patients should lie with the citys health officials, not private providers.

It feels like there should be a higher sense of priority and urgency by [the agencies] to give these women clear information, not just for their own sake but for their childrens, he said. It makes me angry.

Allen said he was told Friday that some of those who were possibly infected now live in Maryland. Lapp said another has since moved to Utah.

Interviews and public documents show that the testing debacle unfolded over a period of months last year during which the D.C. lab was in a state of turmoil  understaffed, lacking permanent leadership, spread thin on competing projects and relying on new employees to test for the emerging public-health threat in Zika.
THE DISTRICT

Man fatally shot in Southeast Washington

A man was fatally shot Friday morning in Southeast Washington, police said.

At around 9 a.m., officers went to the 2200 block of Minnesota Avenue SE to investigate the report of a shooting, a spokeswoman for D.C. police said. On the scene, a man was found unconscious. He was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said. The victims name was not immediately released.

Benjamin Orr Elementary, a school on the block where the shooting occurred, was placed on lockdown after the incident, a spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools said.

 Justin Wm. Moyer

MARYLAND

Third suspect arrested in slaying of rapper

A third man has been arrested and charged in the slaying of a Washington rapper, authorities said.

Davion Antonio Foster, 20, of Southeast Washington, was arrested Thursday in Tysons Corner, Va., according to Montgomery County police. He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Waasi Harron Raheem Young, 20. Young went by the names YC or TrapFlavaCee, according to court records.

Montgomery County police say Young was part of a group that planned to rob a marijuana dealer. Young was shot Feb. 10, in Montgomery Village, by one of the other robbers. The suspected dealer also was shot, but he is expected to survive.

Police said Foster is being held in a Fairfax County jail and will be extradited to Montgomery County.

 Dana Hedgpeth and Dan Morse

VIRGINIA

Three indicted in scam targeting inmates

Inside jails in Newport News and Norfolk, inmates would get a recommendation for a bail bond company that could give legal help.

But the recommended company, FamUnited, was fake, federal prosecutors in Virginia say. They say the inmates identities were stolen, along with their cellphones, wallets and credit cards, in exchange for promised bonds that never came.

According to an indictment in federal court, the conspirators sent forged property release forms to the jails even for inmates who didnt go along with the scam.

One of those charged, 31-year-old Delanio Vick, of Norfolk, was an inmate at the jail, according to federal prosecutors.

Vick, Teresa Gallop, 49, of Norfolk and Jessie Davis, 20, of Portsmouth were indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges including conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

 Rachel Weiner
Jeevan Baniya is the Assistant Director of Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility at Social Science Baha.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) called Friday for a ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state, adding a new twist to a legislative debate over whether to prohibit the controversial gas-extraction method or extend a moratorium on it for another two years.

Hogan has said in the past that he would support the practice, commonly called fracking, in Western Maryland if he believed it could be done in an environmentally sensitive matter. At a hastily called news conference Friday, he said he did not think there was a way to frack safely, and therefore would support a bill to ban the practice altogether.

The possible environmental risks of fracking simply outweigh any potential benefits, Hogan said. This legislation, I believe, is an important initiative to safeguard our environment.

If Maryland bans fracking, it would be the third state to do so, joining New York and Vermont.

Before Hogans announcement, the Democratic-majority legislature had appeared unlikely to enact a ban this session. A bill to prohibit fracking passed the House last week 97 to 40  a veto-proof majority that included eight Republicans. But there was resistance in the Senate from key members who feared a veto by the governor and instead wanted to extend the moratorium.

On Thursday, anti-fracking activists demanding a Senate vote on a ban blocked an entrance to the State House and were arrested as lawmakers made their way to the building.

Hogan said he decided to back a ban in part because the legislatures regulatory review committee put a hold on fracking rules that the state proposed last year. He said those guidelines would have been the most stringent in the nation, strict enough to deter any companies from fracking in Maryland.

Ive decided that we must take the next step and move from virtually banning fracking to actually banning fracking, the governor said.

Hogan said he also decided to back the ban because Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) recently expressed support for letting jurisdictions hold a referendum in 2018 on whether to allow fracking locally.

He was referring to a bill sponsored by Senate environmental committee chair Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore) that would also extend the moratorium on the gas-extraction method that is to expire in October.

I am not for fracking, never have been for fracking, never will be for fracking, Miller said in a statement. The advocates for fracking have claimed that the people of Western Maryland are for fracking, and I believed it was important to let those residents opinions be heard.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll last fall found that Marylanders opposed fracking by a 2-to-1 margin. Big majorities of independents (66 percent) and Democrats (69 percent) were opposed. But Republicans supported fracking, 49 percent to 36 percent.

Del. Wendell R. Beitzel (R-Garrett), one of the legislatures strongest opponents of a fracking ban, said he was very disappointed with the governors move. I guess the war on Western Maryland is not over, he said.

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said he was shocked by Hogans announcement but also pleased. The governors decision sends a message to West Virginia, Virginia, California and Ohio, who have seen the negative impacts of fracking, Tidwell said.

Conway said Friday that advocates were told this week that bills calling for a ban and a moratorium would be on the Senate floor next week. She also told them that, given the governors position at the time, they would need a veto-proof majority.

Conway said Friday that the ban would not have to wait if Hogan issued an executive order.

Del. Kumar P. Barve (D-Montgomery), chairman of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, said that Hogans decision removes the last obstacle to enacting a fracking ban. I would advise the Senate to move either the House bill, Zirkins bill or both, Barve said. Zirkins bill was a reference to a ban introduced in the Senate by Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), which had stalled in Conways committee.

We only need 24 votes in the Senate, and we have that, Barve said.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.
Montgomery County will hire a mediator in an attempt to resolve an emotionally charged dispute over the search for a lost African American cemetery that has pitted a Baptist church in Bethesda against planning officials and a real estate developer.

The cemetery is believed to be under land north and northeast of the Westwood Tower Apartments on Westbard Drive. The area includes a paved parking lot and driveway. Records describing an early 20th century cemetery on the site were discovered by county staff in the process of evaluating a proposal for new construction from Equity One. The New York firm recently merged with the Florida-based Regency Centers Corp.

In a letter Thursday to Montgomery Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson, County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and Council President Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), said added measures were necessary to assist those who believe their ancestors were buried on this site.

Equity One hired a cultural resource firm to conduct a study of the site, but members of Macedonia Baptist Church on River Road objected to having the consultants work for the developer. The church has also said it wants to see a memorial and museum at the site honoring the black community that lived in Westbard from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.

County Planning Director Gwen Wright agreed to hire two independent anthropologists chosen by the congregation to serve as peer reviewers. But Wright and the anthropologists have not been able to come to terms on the scope of their work.

Leggett and Berliner recommended that the Planning Board, church leaders and county representatives sit down with a mediator.

Because the community remains understandably concerned about the process thus far, we agree that it would be wise for us to pause for a moment, bring all the parties together to address the various concerns that have been expressed and seek a solution, they wrote.
The burglar almost got away.

He jumped off a second-floor balcony from a Franconia apartment. But when he landed, he broke his leg. He then crawled from the scene.

But in the fresh snow from the day before, he left detectives a clue  his tracks.

Fairfax County police followed the tracks, and then a 911 call came in for a report of a man who had fallen on the ice and broken his leg. Officers nabbed him.

Police said they expect to charge the 21-year-old man with burglary after he is released from a hospital, where he is being treated.

[Man steals snowplow truck the day before the snowstorm, police say]

The break-in happened about 9 p.m. Wednesday when a woman was moving into a new apartment in the 6000 block of Archstone Court. She left the apartment for a bit, and when she came back, she saw a man climbing over her second-floor balcony.

When police eventually found the man with the broken leg, he was wearing clothing that matched the description given by the victim. It wasnt immediately clear whether anything was taken from the apartment.
A man was fatally shot Friday morning in Southeast Washington, police said.

At around 9 a.m., officers responded to the 2200 block of Minnesota Avenue SE for the report of a shooting, a spokeswoman for D.C. police said. A man was found on the scene unconscious. He was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said. The victims name was not immediately released.

Benjamin Orr Elementary, a school on the block where the shooting occurred, was placed on lockdown after the incident, a spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools said.
Davion Antonio Foster, 20, was charged with murder in the Feb. 10 death of Washington rapper Waasi Harron Raheem Young, also known as YC or TrapFlavaCee. (Montgomery County Police Department)

A third man has been arrested and charged in the slaying of a Washington rapper, authorities said.

Davion Antonio Foster, 20, of Southeast Washington, was arrested Thursday in Tysons Corner, Va., according to Montgomery County police. He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Waasi Harron Raheem Young, 20. Young went by the names YC or TrapFlavaCee, according to court records.

Montgomery County police say Young was part of a group that planned to rob a marijuana dealer. Young was shot on Feb. 10 at the Montgomery Village townhouse community by one of the other robbers. The dealer was also shot, but he is expected to survive.

[You are shooting me! Alleged plan to rob dealer leaves D.C. rapper dead]

Two other men have been arrested and charged in Youngs slaying. Police said Foster is being held in a Fairfax County jail and will be extradited to Montgomery County.
A 14-year-old girl was pushed into a boys bathroom at Rockville High School on Thursday morning and raped by two other students during school hours, according to Montgomery County District Court records filed Friday.

Police arrested two ninth-graders, Henry E. Sanchez, 18, and Jose O. Montano, 17, who appeared in court Friday and were ordered held without bond.

I believe that you are a danger, District Judge Eugene Wolfe told Sanchez.

On Thursday morning, Montano forced the girl, who told police she knew him as a friend, into a bathroom after asking her to have sex with him, which she refused, according to court documents.

The girl tried to resist being dragged into a bathroom stall, clinging to a sink, as Montano pulled her then shoved her into a stall, the court records state.

Henry Sanchez (Montgomery County Police)

The two took turns holding the girl down and sexually assaulting her as she cried out, fought back and repeatedly told them to stop, according to police affidavits filed in court.

A noise at the bathroom door caused Sanchez to leave the bathroom, and Montano to put his hand over the girls mouth to keep her quiet, according to the affidavits.

The girl eventually got out of the bathroom and told a staff member what happened. Detectives interviewed Sanchez and Montano and found evidence in the bathroom, according to authorities.

Sanchez, a native of Guatemala who arrived in the United States about seven months ago, has a pending alien removal case against him, court officials said Friday. He is a substantial flight risk, Montgomery County Assistant States Attorney Rebecca MacVittie said in court Friday.

Montano has been in the United States for about eight months, MacVittie said. Details about Sanchezs removal case, or Montanos immigration status, couldnt immediately be learned Friday.

John Lavigne, a public defender who represented Montano and Sanchez in court, did not give an account of their version of the events.

Montano and Sanchez were charged with first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offense, police said. Montanos address was not provided by police. Sanchez lives in Aspen Hill.

Montano was charged as an adult in the case, but because of his age, police said, they did not release his photograph after the arrest.

The school acknowledged the incident in a letter sent to parents Friday, saying the alleged assailants were arrested at the school, which has about 1,300 students.

Ensuring a safe, secure and welcoming learning environment for all of our students is our top priority, the letter from Principal Billie-Jean Bensen said. Our staff remains vigilant in the monitoring of our school each and every day.

Gboyinde Onijala, a schools spokeswoman, said she could not comment on why Sanchez and Montano are only in ninth grade.
Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. attorney general, is coming to Virginia to support Democrats trying to hold on to the governors mansion, the first stop for his new national campaign to reverse years of Democratic losses on the state level by reshaping legislative maps that have favored Republicans.

Holder will deliver the keynote address at the Democratic Party of Virginias annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner on June 17, four days after voters cast their ballots in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

He will be speaking as chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), formed last year to undo what it calls partisan gerrymandering by Republicans, who took control of 26 state legislatures in the tea party wave of 2010. The group is coordinating with Democratic campaign groups to fund gubernatorial candidates who would veto any new legislative map that appears to be gerrymandered. The group is also funding legal challenges to legislative maps and supporting ballot initiatives to create independent redistricting commissions.

Former president Barack Obama has said supporting the groups efforts would be one of his top priorities after leaving office.

Virginia and New Jersey are the only states electing a new governor in 2017, while governors are on the ballots of 36 states in 2018. The next Virginia governor will have sway over the restructuring of congressional districts, where Republicans hold seven of 11 seats, despite Democrats having won all statewide offices in recent years.

(Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

This Novembers elections in Virginia are a top priority for Democrats and give us the opportunity to undo Republican gerrymandering and have a legislature and Congress that truly represent the views of the people, Holder said in a statement.

[Holder urges wounded Democrats to focus on state-level races]

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), barred from seeking reelection, helped create NDRC and is raising money for the group.

Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former U.S. House member Tom Perriello are competing for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Virginia. The NDRC says it will support the Democratic primarys winner.

What we hope to do is make sure Democrats all over the country understand the significance of the Virginia governors race and hope to elevate the significance of winning the race, NDRC Executive Director Kelly Ward said in an interview. We want to play a big and heavy role in the resources that its going to take to win the Virginia governors race.

She would not say how much money the group will spend. Under IRS rules, it can raise unlimited contributions but cannot coordinate with a campaign. The most recent financial disclosure shows it raised $65,000 before formally launching in January and expanded its fundraising efforts.

The NDRCs general counsel also argued a case to challenge Virginias state legislative maps, which the U.S. Supreme Court map has ordered a lower court to re-examine for signs of racial bias. In the House, where Republicans were in charge when the legislative districts were redrawn after the 2010 Census, Democrats are outnumbered 66 to 34. In the Senate, where Democrats were in control at the time of reapportionment, the GOP has a much slimmer advantage of 21 to 19.

Last year, a federal court ordered one of the states congressional districts redrawn after deciding that the existing map illegally packed African American voters into a district. Democrats picked up an additional seat in Congress after that ruling.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party of Virginia is ramping up its coordinated campaign for the general election, when all 100 House of Delegates seats and all statewide offices are on the ballot.

A spokeswoman for the party said that McAuliffe transferred $100,000 from his political action committee this week to support its organizing and data-sharing efforts. The party hired Lauren Brainerd, a former field director in Virginia who most recently led the coordinated campaign for Hillary Clinton in Florida, to lead the coordinated campaign and rebuild a statewide organizing program.

The original version of this story mistakenly implied that the NDRC is funding legal challenges to ballot initiatives that would create independent redistricting commissions. The story has been clarified.
Prestige at stake

Laws need to be made to ensure that competent people are appointed as ambassadors
Protesters shouted over Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart as he gave interviews to local television stations about his opposition to removing a Robert E. Lee statue from a Charlottesville park on Feb. 11. (Fenit Nirappi/The Washington Post)

At a public celebration last summer, Corey Stewart, Prince William Countys top Republican, praised his countys diversity and welcomed the renaming of a middle school once christened for a prominent segregationist.

Five months later, in the throes of his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia, Stewart joined a group railing against the planned removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park in downtown Charlottesville.

Weve got to defend our culture. Weve got to defend our heritage, Stewart barked before supporters that included men holding Confederate flags, according to a video on his Twitter page.

With a ravenous appetite for rhetorical bombast, Stewart is campaigning as an unapologetic disciple of President Trump, echoing the presidents populist diatribes against the Republican establishment, undocumented immigrants, political correctness and the media.

Yet in purple Virginia, the only Southern state that Trump lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton, Stewart is struggling to captivate voters. Three months before the June 13 primary, polls show him in single digits, far behind front-runner Ed Gillespie, a former lobbyist and adviser to President George W. Bush, in a field that also includes state Sen. Frank W. Wagner (R-Virginia Beach).

Rick Thompson, 60, holds his new AR-15 semiautomatic rifle after winning a drawing from Stewarts campaign. The campaign raised $10,000 in the drawing, which attracted 3,000 participants. (Antonio Olivo/The Washington Post)

Hoping to raise his profile, Stewart, 48, has adopted Lees statue as a cause celebre and deployed showman-like antics such as raffling off a semiautomatic weapon to raise campaign cash. On Twitter, he lacerates Gillespie with Trumpian flourish, referring to the former chairman of the Republican National Committee as Establishment Ed.

Yet Stewart had only a quarter of the nearly $2 million that Gillespie amassed by the start of this year, according to campaign finance records, and recently sent out fundraising pleas that he said would help cover the cost of gas, a sound system and security needed to stage a rally.

Corey has labeled himself as Trumps Mini-Me, but the mojo aint there, said Shaun Kenney, the former executive director of Virginias Republican Party. Trump had the advantage of monopolizing the national narrative. Corey is the echo of that, but no one likes what theyre hearing. Virginia is barely a state that voted for Trump.

Even in his own county, where for a decade he has served as chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, Stewart has encountered resistance. On a recent Saturday, 62 percent of those in a straw poll conducted by the countys Republican Party chose Gillespie, while 24 percent backed Stewart.

At a supervisors meeting on Valentines Day, dozens of speakers  including a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty  criticized Stewart after he made a public show of encouraging the federal government to deport undocumented immigrants residing in the county.

The speakers included Rafi Uddin Ahmed, a leader of the Muslim Association of Virginia who has donated $1,500 to Stewarts previous campaigns. Im not happy when theres anyone who can divide us and put a minority under the microscope, Ahmed, the owner of a car repair shop, said in an interview. Asked if he would support Stewart in the future, Ahmed said, Id rather not comment.

Stewart, in a telephone interview, expressed no concern about disagreements with allies, saying they are a routine fact of his combative political life. He offered a broad rebuke of those who criticized him at the supervisors meeting as the same old liberal wack jobs who have been protesting me for 10 years.

Stewart attends a campaign kickoff rally at a restaurant in Occoquan, Va., on Jan. 23. (Steve Helber/AP)

Stewarts credentials as a self-styled voice of Trumpism may seem dubious, since the presidents own campaign dismissed him as its Virginia co-chairman in October. Stewart had ignored the campaigns order to refrain from protesting the national Republican Partys treatment of Trump.

He got fired for not following directions, said John Fredericks, Trumps Virginia co-chairman. He may own the Trump style, but he doesnt own the Trump brand. The Trump people dont like him.

Told about Frederickss remarks, Stewart said, I hate that guy, and contended that he was fired because I was too loyal. He remains devoted to Trump, he said, and is confident that he can ride the anti-establishment spirit the president unleashed to the governors mansion.

In-your-face conservatism, Stewart said, describing Trumpian politics. Im the anti-establishment candidate whos going to burn the s---house down.

Mixed reviews of approach

Four years ago, during Virginias previous gubernatorial race, a civil war erupted within the states Republican Party between the business-oriented establishment and grass-roots activists who included libertarians and tea party loyalists.

The activists won the struggle, nominating at the partys convention Ken Cuccinelli II, then the states attorney general, though the division helped lead to Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffes victory. Delegates also anointed E.W. Jackson as the partys choice for lieutenant governor, over a field that included Stewart.

The rift within the states GOP, Republicans say, has largely dissipated. A key reason is that Gillespie forged relationships with grass-roots activists once aligned with Cuccinelli during his unsuccessful 2014 run for the U.S. Senate, they say.

Gillespie has been the marriage counselor that the Republican Party needed, said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. He has managed to spread himself across the divide. He has inoculated himself because he has talked to a lot of people.

Stewarts strategy rests on the faulty assumption that Trumps blueprint will work in Virginia, Kidd said. I dont think Trumpism is as powerful a force in Virginia as it is elsewhere, he said. And where it is powerful  in southwest, for example  a lot of people dont know about Stewart because hes from Northern Virginia.

Stewart has cultivated his own network of grass-roots alliances, a group that includes veterans of Trumps Virginia campaign such as Waverly Woods, former chair of the Hampton Roads tea party. Woods, now working for Stewarts campaign, said the candidates loyalty to Trump is a virtue.

The people who turn out at the polls are the Trump supporters, she said. The people who liked Trump know what Corey was doing during the presidential campaign. The passion Stewart exudes for issues such as the Lee statue helps endear him to voters, she said. I love the fact that he talks about sticking up for our heritage, she said.

During a rally for the statue in mid-February, counter-demonstrators shouted Stewart down. He cited the altercation with what he described as radical left-wing agitators in subsequent fundraising pleas.

While he was at the rally, Stewart met the leaders of a fledgling right-wing group known as Unity and Security for America, who asked him to return the following week for a news conference. He accepted the invitation.

The group, which has fewer than a dozen members, supports immigration laws that require that most immigrants come from Western countries, according to its website. Jason Kessler, the leader of the group, tweeted in November that Trump is the savior of Western Civilization and that his acts of bravery have inspired a movement that will outlive us all.

Corey Stewart showed up when we needed him, said Isaac Smith, a spokesman for the group. He stood by us.

Yet other Republican activists, including those who agree that the statue should remain in its spot in downtown Charlottesville, said Stewart should be more focused on substantive issues. The statue does not get me a job or reduce taxes  Im against moving it, but its not something I would crusade on, said Rich Buchanan, chairman of Virginias tea party, who is backing Gillespie.

Buchanan, who supported Stewarts unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2013, described his current campaign as one of the most derogatory, negative Ive seen in a while.

I dont think its working, he said. Theres no one in my circle whos saying, Hey, look at Corey go! 

Stewart equates the removal of Lees statue to historical vandalism and said its about political correctness gone mad. This is an opportunity to crush the throat of political correctness. He also noted that a video clip of him defending the statue had drawn over 100,000 views on Facebook.

Since his forays to Charlottesville there has been a palpable change in the direction of the campaign, he said, predicting that his standing in future polls will have dramatically shifted.

He reinvents himself

After his 2006 election as Prince Williams chairman, Stewart captured national attention with his public campaign to deport undocumented immigrants  or criminal illegal aliens, as he calls them.

At the same time, Prince William was growing more diverse and its politics shifted leftward, enabling President Obama to win the county in 2008 and 2012. While he never changed his position on immigration, Stewart chose to focus on more pragmatic concerns, such as education, traffic and budgetary issues.

Stewart, a lawyer who grew up in Minnesota, has won election as chairman four times in campaigns fueled by contributions from developers and other establishment types. He said that qualifies him as part of the Prince William establishment but not the Virginia establishment.

The establishment in Virginia is in Richmond and all those guys are supporting Ed, he said, referring to Gillespie.

At various points in his political career in Prince William, Stewart told reporters he did not want to be known as the immigration man and said he hoped to build ties to Latinos and other minorities. To win in Northern Virginia, Republicans needed to be inclusive and emulate his minority outreach, he said two years ago.

In August, Stewart spoke at the renaming ceremony for the Mills E. Godwin Middle School, a Woodbridge building originally named in honor of a former governor who, as a state lawmaker in the 1950s, led the massive resistance movement against school integration. The countys board of education renamed Godwin for an African American philanthropist, George Hampton.

Its been a long, long, long time in coming, thats for sure, Stewart told the audience at the ceremony. A lot of things have changed in Prince William County since 1970, and let me tell you something: Those changes have been good.

He described Prince William as the most progressive, futurist county in the United States.

Recalling the moment, Willie Deutsch, a conservative school board member, said it suggested that Stewart is more focused on winning over audiences he is speaking to than sticking with a core set of principles.

At times he may be hard right, at other times he may be more of a pragmatic conservative, Deutsch said. He reinvents himself to create the version of himself he thinks he needs to be to move to the next level.

Stewart waved off that depiction, saying that his views on immigration and diversity have remained consistent. He said he had opposed removing Godwins name from the school despite his remarks at the ceremony.

I wasnt going to rain on the parade, he said.

Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report.
FLORIDA

Prosecutor removed from police-killing case

Floridas governor took a case involving the killing of a police officer out of the hands of its prosecutor Thursday, hours after she announced that her office would no longer seek the death penalty.

Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed the order to remove Markeith Loyds first-degree murder case from the office of State Attorney Aramis Ayala, which serves metropolitan Orlando in central Florida. Scott transferred the case to State Attorney Brad King in a neighboring district northwest of Orlando.

Loyd is charged with killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton.

Ayala said she made the decision after conducting a review and concluding that there is no evidence to show that imposing the death penalty improves public safety for citizens or law enforcement. She added that such cases are costly and drag on for years.

Ayala was elected last fall in a judicial district that has grown from being moderately conservative to liberal over the past two decades.

After Ayala announced her decision, Scott asked her to recuse herself from the case, but she refused. The reassignment applies only to Loyds case and not Ayalas other duties. Florida law allows a governor to reassign a case for good and sufficient reasons.

Ayalas decision ignited condemnation from some law enforcement leaders but praise from some civil liberties groups.

 Associated Press

NEW YORK

Al-Qaeda fighter guilty in killing of 2 soldiers

An admitted al-Qaeda fighter has been convicted in New York of federal charges that he was in a firefight in Afghanistan that left two U.S. soldiers dead.

A jury in federal court in Brooklyn deliberated for only about two hours Thursday before reaching the guilty verdict against Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun.

Harun, 46, was extradited from Italy in 2012. Prosecutors told jurors that while in Italian custody, he confessed that he threw a grenade and shot at an American military unit in a 2003 ambush that killed Army Pvt. Jerod Dennis of Antlers, Okla., and Air Force Airman Ray Losano of Del Rio, Tex.

The Saudi-born defendant had insisted he is a warrior who should face a military tribunal rather than a civilian court prosecution. He refused to attend his trial.

 Associated Press

PENNSYLVANIA

Mother convicted

in drowning of sons

A Pittsburg woman charged with drowning her two youngest sons in their bathtub because she wanted to be a better mother to their older brother was found guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill.

Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning on Thursday found that Laurel Schlemmers mental capacity was diminished by her illness, meaning she couldnt form the specific intent to kill that was required of the first-degree murder conviction prosecutors sought for the April 2014 killings.

Schlemmer, 43, faces as much as 20 to 40 years in prison on each third-degree murder count, but because she was found mentally ill, shell begin any sentence in a state mental hospital and then will be moved to prison if doctors ever deem her cured.

 Associated Press
Student marching band members from Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton, Mass., prepare to march during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City. (Joe Penney/Reuters)

ARKANSAS

Robert E. Lee removed from MLK holiday

Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval Friday to legislation removing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The state House approved the proposal with a 66-to-11 vote and sent it to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had urged lawmakers to end the dual holiday. Once the bill is signed into law, Mississippi and Alabama will be the only states that honor Lee and King on the same day.

The bill sets aside the second Saturday in October to honor Lee with a memorial day, not a state holiday, marked by a gubernatorial proclamation. It also expands what is taught in schools about the Civil War and civil rights.

Hutchinson, who promised last year to push for ending the dual holiday, made the unusual move of testifying in front of two legislative committees this month to speak in support of the proposal. Hutchinson said that King deserved his own day of recognition, and that ending the dual holiday would be a healing moment for the state.

A similar effort to remove Lee from the King holiday repeatedly failed before a House committee two years ago. Opponents of the measure said the legislation belittled the states Confederate heritage by not giving Lee his own holiday.

 Associated Press

oregon

Backyard houses to be built for the homeless

A pilot program in Portland will put homeless families in little modular homes built in the backyards of willing homeowners.

In exchange, the homeowners will own the fully plumbed tiny houses after a five-year lease and can rent them out.

The idea will start with just four units, but Multnomah County officials hope to expand.

Its believed to be the first project nationally to join homeowners with the homeless.

Its a way for Portland to bridge a gap while affordable housing is built in a city where nearly 1,900 people sleep outside each night.

County housing officials say 200 homeowners have signed up to learn more after the pilot was made public.

A critical housing shortage has led officials to experiment with sleeping pods and tiny house villages.

 Associated Press

idaho

Coyote trap kills dog and injures boy

Federal authorities have confirmed that a cyanide trap intended to kill coyotes in eastern Idaho instead killed a dog in an incident that local law enforcement officials say also injured a 14-year-old boy.

The Agriculture Department acknowledged Friday that workers with its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services Wildlife Services placed the device, called an M-44. It activated and killed a 3-year-old Lab named Casey on Thursday near Pocatello.

APHIS Wildlife Services confirms the unintentional lethal take of a dog in Idaho, the agency said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press. Wildlife Services has removed M-44s in that immediate area.

Its not clear how many other devices had been set.

Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen said in a statement that the boys father reported that his son had been covered in an unknown substance and the dog had died.

 Associated Press

Gun bills vetoed: South Dakotas Republican governor has vetoed a pair of bills that would have loosened restrictions on carrying concealed guns in the conservative state. Gov. Dennis Daugaard had warned he would reject the bills  one to let people carry concealed handguns without a permit, and one to open up the Capitol building to concealed weapons. The governor has said South Dakotas current gun laws are reasonable.

 From news reports
ISRAEL

U.N. official quits over apartheid report

The head of a U.N. agency responsible for publishing a report this week calling Israel an apartheid regime resigned Friday after U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres pressured her to withdraw the document.

Rima Khalaf, a U.N. undersecretary general and executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), headquartered in Beirut, said her decision to resign followed a request from Guterres to remove the report from the agencys website.

The study, which was published Wednesday, was immediately slammed by Israel and its closest ally, the United States, which denounced it as anti-Israel propaganda. Guterres also distanced himself from the report, saying it was released without prior consultation with the U.N. Secretariat.

Israeli officials welcomed Khalafs departure as long overdue.

 Ruth Eglash

NIGERIA

Soldiers use gunfire to clear Lagos slum

Thousands of people were fleeing a Nigerian slum as security forces used gunfire and tear gas to make way for demolitions in defiance of a recent court order, rights groups said Friday.

The operation was unfolding in Lagos, the sprawling commercial hub of one of Africas largest economies, Amnesty International and Slum Dwellers International said.

Both the military and police were at the scene in the Otodo-Gbame waterfront community, said Amnesty International researcher Morayo Adebayo, calling the situation chaotic and dangerous. Bulldozers have destroyed the homes there, Amnesty International said.

A High Court ruling in January prohibited such evictions, with the judge calling them degrading and telling authorities to seek a settlement with residents instead.

 Associated Press

SOUTH SUDAN

Panel blasts budget priorities amid famine

South Sudans government is spending at least half of its budget on security and weapons while 100,000 people are dying of starvation as a result of famine caused mainly by a surge in military operations, U.N. experts say in a new report.

The experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against the worlds newest nation said that an additional 1 million people are near starvation and that the number of South Sudanese desperately in need of food is expected to rise to 5.5 million in the lean season in July . . . if nothing is done to curb the severity and breadth of the food crisis.

The panel of experts called on U.N. Security Council members to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan.

 Associated Press

Thousands stage anti-militia protests in Libyas capital: Thousands of Libyans staged mass demonstrations in a rare show of defiance against powerful militias encroaching into Libyas capital, Tripoli, after days of clashes that have effectively chopped the city into warring fiefdoms. Protesters chanted slogans against the militias and called for a unified army and police force. Some voiced support for the eastern-based army commander Khalifa Hifter, who is opposed by his Tripoli-based rivals, which include the U.N.-brokered government and militias in the capital.

Iranians to resume hajj in Saudi Arabia: Iran says it has reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia for 85,000 Iranian pilgrims to attend the hajj after Tehran boycotted last years annual Muslim pilgrimage. Iran spurned the 2016 hajj after a stampede of pilgrims killed at least 2,426 people the previous year. Iran had the highest death toll of any country, 464. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals who support opposite sides in conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

Death toll in Peru climbs to 65 from rains, flooding: The number of people killed in Peru following intense rains and mudslides wreaking havoc around the Andean nation has climbed to 65. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said Perus coastal region has not seen such environmental calamity since 1998. Across the country, overflowing rivers have damaged 115,000 homes, collapsed 117 bridges and left people trapped on roofs waiting for rescue.

 From news services
Several years ago, a sensible restriction was established for how long medical fellows and residents are allowed to work: 16 continuous hours, which I daresay most of us would not care to confront on a routine basis, particularly if lives depended on our decisions.

I was therefore surprised to learn from the March 11 news article Doctors-in-training may soon draw longer shifts  that as of July 1, the permitted work time will be extended to 24 and sometimes 28 hours. Senior members of the medical profession maintain this will provide necessary time for learning. And yet, the medical profession provided justification for regulations that forbid commercial airline pilots from working more than eight hours, or, under special circumstances, nine hours at a stretch, providing in each case that the individual has enjoyed 10 uninterrupted hours beforehand.

This discrepancy is difficult to understand until one realizes there is little chance that senior medical doctors will have to rely on sleep-deprived students for medical assistance but most certainly will be flying with commercial airline pilots.

Ellicott McConnell, Easton, Md.
Bethany McLean is an author and contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

To be complacent is to have smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or ones achievements, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Tyler Cowen believes that as Americans we have become complacent about the way things are, and thats a risk to our countrys future. Most Americans dont like change very much, unless it is on terms that they manage and control, he writes in his provocative, yet in some ways unsatisfying, new book, The Complacent Class, and they now have the resources and technology to manage their lives on this basis more and more, to the countrys long run collective detriment.

The complaceny that Cowen detects affects Americas ability to solve its many problems. In his most compelling chapter, on political stagnation  the single reason to read this book  Cowen points out that only about 10 percent of the countrys budget today hasnt effectively already been spent, because its committed to existing programs or will be consumed by interest payments on our debt, vs. about two-thirds of the budget back in the 1960s. That leaves us with limited flexibility to adapt to a rapidly changing world  a flexibility that will only decrease further as interest payments on our debt rise.

[In The Age of Acquiescence Steve Fraser asks how Americans became weenies]

"The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream," by Tyler Cowen (St. Martin's)

At the end of the day, there is a complacency about this issue, because in the meantime life in the United States just doesnt seem that bad, Cowen writes. And so we pile up more and more issues of this kind, namely ones not requiring resolution right now. The end result is likely to be that we lose our capacity to resolve them at all.

Cowen also points out some highly counterintuitive facts. Such as: The rate of business start-ups has been declining since the 1980s. This is true despite Silicon Valleys much-lauded successes. In fact, Cowen says, even when it comes to the information and related high tech sectors, the growth in dynamism, as measured by the creation and growth of new firms, stops at about the year 2000 and then declines. He argues that this leads to increased market concentration and a corresponding lack of innovation. You might quibble with his choice of Google as an example of a company that has ascended the mountain and now plays it safe, given that Google has created an entirely new corporate structure just to enable disruption, but if you dont get nitpicky, the point is an interesting one.

Cowen can be an original and provocative thinker, such as when he describes how the new dress code of casual individualism, which is part of what he calls countersignaling, might actually be more oppressive than the old code of Organization Man in his suit and tie. Countersignaling is when you go out of your way to show you dont need to go out of your way, he writes. But this is a harder code for people who werent raised in it to master, which might not be accidental. As a result, Cowen writes, Dont be fooled  this new form of status seeking is no less oppressive than older practices, and in some ways it is less conducive to upward mobility. The problem is this: if everything is casual, what exactly do you do to show your seriousness?

[Peter Diamandiss Bold a reminder of how entrepreneurs will control the worlds fate]

More: He points out that segregation is growing, even if the reason isnt overt racism. In the South, the percentage of black students in majority-white schools peaked in 1988 at 43.5 percent and is now at 23.2 percent, lower than the integration level in 1968, a time when civil rights battles were close to their peak activity. He says that the most heavily segregated cities across education, social class and sometimes race tend to be the high-tech, knowledge-based metros. In other words, we cluster together with like-minded people of similar backgrounds, creating a world that is far more exclusive than it is inclusive, and then pride ourselves on our moral superiority over those in the hinterlands. (Welcome to the bubble!) Its not clear whether this is happening because we are complacent or whether it is causing us to become complacent. But, Cowen argues, it all has an economic cost. If it were cheaper to move into Americas higher productivity cities, the U.S. gross domestic product would be 9.5 percent higher due to the gains from better jobs.

As fascinating as Cowens analysis can be, his grand thesis is ultimately unconvincing. I had a hard time understanding who exactly composes the complacent class. Initially, Cowen argues that the entire country  from the privileged class to those who dig in to those who get stuck  is complacent, that despite the huge divisions of race and income in America, we are all more or less OK with this division of the spoils. Can this be right? I wanted Cowen to offer some evidence, but I was hard-pressed to find it other than in Cowens assertions. Throughout the book, he redefines who it is hes calling complacent. At one point, he calls millenials the most committed ideological carriers of complacency, but at another point, the complacent class are those who benefited from the Reagan revolution. Then, the complacent class is very often . . . the most vociferous advocates for greater discretionary spending from government, which makes you think hes talking about wealthy liberals. But later, Cowen equates the complacent class with Trump voters, writing that it is no accident that Donald Trump came from a very wealthy family, and we can expect further rebellion into a vacuum from the privileged class in the years to come.

Partly because Cowen isnt clear as to who the complacent class is, its also not always clear that his data supports his thesis. For instance, he points out that we just arent moving that much anymore. He notes that the interstate migration rate has fallen 51 percent below its 1948 to 1971 average and has been falling steadily since the mid-1980s. This is a well-covered and important phenomenon. But the overall statistics Cowen cites reflect all of America. Does this mean that all of America is complacent? Well, not necessarily: Cowen also cites data showing that African Americans today have become especially immobile, and to an unprecedented degree. Are they really smug? Or are they just stuck? To put this differently, maybe immobility and complacency are correlated. But Cowen doesnt show that, let alone demonstrate any kind of causal relationship. (In fact, its possible that those who are most likely to be complacent are also most likely to be highly mobile, at least if mobility consists of moving to or between New York and San Francisco.)

Even Cowen is unsure about the other part of his argument, which is that whatever it is hes calling complacency is a bad thing. For instance, he contends that technology-enabled matching, whether to life partners, music, travel, jobs or connections, is the new grand project of our time. In his thesis, this is bad, because it is making life more bland, and enforcing an unwritten code of segregation in our personal lives and in the workplace by enabling people and employers to find suitable prospects more readily. He writes, The great adventures of life, the surprise of strangers, of strangeness, of the electric and eclectic moments of happenstance, and also of extreme ambition, are slowly being removed by code as a path to a new contentment.

But then again, Cowen points out that in the old world, over a third of urban Americans married people who lived within five blocks. So does online dating decrease the potential for the surprise of strangers in our lives  or increase it? Indeed, he writes that theres also a case to be made that matching truly is beneficial. While matching may lead to segregation of a sort, Cowen points out that the tighter that segregation for worker quality evolves, the more corporations will ignore a lot of other dimensions of traditional discrimination, such as race and gender. (Which might be wishful thinking, but its his argument.) If the takeaway is still supposed to be that matching is bad, Cowen added to my confusion by ending the section with this statement: What you will not find so easily  in successful firms  is large numbers of slacking, untalented, destructive people who infest the prevailing corporate culture with ideas and practices of their own. Okay, then!

Near the end, Cowen talks about how the idea for this book came about because of the time hes spent in another country whose economy is much closer to his ideal. Get ready: Its . . . China! China has a culture of ambition and dynamism and a pace of change that hearken back to a much earlier America, he writes. Its an observation that feels cliched at this point. And given that China is now confronting its own problems of slowing growth and immense debt  oh, and human rights  the pros and cons of life in America vs. life in China would seem to be a bit more nuanced than Cowen expresses.

In the end, his point might be that some of us are complacent about certain aspects of life, and while there might be some benefits to this, there are also dangers lurking. Which makes for a book that accomplishes the laudable goal of making you think, if not one that delivers on its title.
Quandary over election symbol allocation

The Election Commission on Wednesday consulted with the Office of Attorney General on how to provide electoral symbols to some of the parties represented in Parliament which have undergone merger and or have split from the original party.
Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East.

Turkey and the Netherlands warred this past week  expelling and barring diplomats  over whether Turkish officials could campaign among expatriate Turks for an illiberal new constitution. Turkey has long been an important ally of the West, but despite all the diplomatic, political and military links, Americans understand very little about it. What they do know seems to be based on gauzy notions that were either never accurate or have become false over time. Here are five of the most stubborn.

Myth No. 1

Turkey has been a democracy.

It is commonplace to believe that under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become authoritarian. In 2015, Turkish author Mustafa Akyol lamented his countrys authoritarian drift  in a New York Times op-ed. A few months later, social scientist Jason Brownlee wrote in these pages about Turkeys authoritarian descent.

The truth, however, is that the country has never been a democracy, despite having continuous free and fair multi-party elections since 1946. Between 1960 and 1997, Turkeys senior military command disposed of four governments it did not like. The General Staff oversaw anti-democratic constitutional changes, including a 1982 constitution geared more toward protecting the Turkish state from the people than guaranteeing political and civil rights. In 1997, the military ousted Turkeys first Islamist-led government because the prime minister refused to implement rules that undermined freedom of expression, weakened the independence of the press and criminalized thought.

When Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2002, it reduced the role of the military in politics, promised Turks personal freedoms, and made it harder to close political parties and ban politicians. But Turkish leaders soon began to backslide on reforms, and over the past decade Erdogan has used the bureaucracy to undermine his political opponents and resurrect something akin to the state security courts, which his government previously abolished.

Myth No. 2

Turkeys president is a dictator.

Since a failed coup detat last July, Erdogan has overseen an unprecedented purge of about 200,000 people, from police officers to academics to bureaucrats. News outlets such as Der Spiegel, the Independent, the Guardian, the Telegraph, Newsweek, the Huffington Post and the New Yorker have all called Erdogan a dictator. He has even embraced the label: If the West calls someone a dictator, he said, in my view that is a good thing.

Still, Erdogan  who served as prime minister from 2003 until 2014, when he became head of state  has a more complicated relationship with Turkish citizens than tin-pot dictators like former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali or Syrias President Bashar al-Assad. The AK Party has prevailed in 10 consecutive elections because Erdogan has delivered. Turks are wealthier, healthier and more mobile than ever before. Erdogan has made it possible for Turks to explore their religious identities in ways they were never permitted under previous governments. For his supporters, his time in office represents a revolution in rights and personal liberties. Turkish women are now free to wear the hijab in places where it was previously banned; it is now safe for pious Turks to participate in politics. If election results are any indication, about half the Turkish electorate dislikes Erdogan for his corruption, arrogance and power grabs, while the other half reveres him for the freedoms he has given them.

Myth No. 3

Turkey is secular.

Commentators often invoke secular Turkey  (the Wall Street Journal) or the countrys staunchly secular military (a Turkey-focused commentary site that should know better), conveying a set of ideas that are misleading.

Turkey never was secular in the way Americans think about secularism, embodied in the First Amendments establishment clause, which prohibits Congress from making laws establishing a state religion or abridging the free exercise of ones faith. In Turkey, the government has long controlled the expression of religious beliefs in the public sphere. There is an entire government apparatus dedicated to the production of state-sanctioned religious interpretation. Turkish leaders even use faith to advance their political agendas. The governing AK Party is an Islamist party. When opposition groups tried to outflank it by recruiting the former head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to run against Erdogan in 2014, they failed, partly because Erdogan is already seen as authentically pious.

Even the Turkish military, a supposed bastion of secularism, is deeply linked to Islam. After the 1980 coup, the junta that ruled the country went on a mosque-building binge and injected religion into the state education curriculum. The leader of that intervention, Gen. Kenan Evren, often boasted that he had memorized the Koran. This was done based on the belief that religion would depoliticize society after a decade of intense political polarization.

Myth No. 4

Turkey has a Kurdish problem.

It is hard to read anything about Turkey without reference to its Kurdish problem. The Kurds are a minority that does not share the ethno-nationalist myths of the dominant Turkish ethnic group. The decades-long war between the government and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) only reinforces the idea that there is a problem with the Kurds.

But while 20 percent of the countrys population is ethnically Kurdish, the overwhelming majority of them consider themselves Turks. Ankaras problem is with the PKK and an offshoot of that group called the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK). The PKK was originally a separatist Marxist group with affinities for the Soviet Union; it began waging war against Turkey in 1984. In those 33 years, somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people have been killed. The TAK, too, has recently been responsible for a variety of attacks in Ankara and Istanbul. In response, the Turkish government has used the full force of the military and police to crush the low-level insurgency in the countrys southeast. The horrifying violence has not yet drawn in Turkeys broader Kurdish population.

No doubt, Kurds have suffered. For years, their ethnicity, language and culture were denied. Even so, many of Turkeys 15 million Kurds are well integrated into the political, economic and cultural life of the country. Turgut Ozal, Turkeys prime minister in the 1980s and president in the early 1990s, was of Kurdish origin, as is the current deputy prime minister, Mehmet Simsek. The countrys Kurdish voters have been a reliable constituency for the AK Party, and not just religious Kurds. The AK Party has invested in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, and the partys emphasis on religious values and Muslim solidarity has helped drain support for the PKK. That group cannot be said, in an overly simplistic way, to represent the Kurds.

Myth No. 5

Turkey is an ancient power.

When analysts write about the Middle East, they often include Turkey alongside Egypt and Iran as nations with a pre-colonial history. After all, these countries are inheritors of great civilizations, unlike some post-World War I contrivances such as Jordan, Syria or Iraq.

Its true that Europeans did not conjure Turkey by drawing it on a map. But the country is a product of the imagination of one man: Mustafa Kemal, known more commonly as Ataturk, or Father Turk. He created an ethno-national state where one had never existed in a central part of what had been a multi-ethnic and multicultural Ottoman Empire. To be successful, Ataturk and his associates had to alter the values and allegiances of the inhabitants of Anatolia. In place of a predominantly Muslim community loyal to leaders who derived their political and religious legitimacy from Islam, Ataturk suffused his state-building project with myths about Turkish ethnicity, language, and the linkage between Turks and the land.

Henceforth, from the time of the republics founding in 1923, the people of Anatolia were to be Turks, devoted to a nation-state whose prestige and authority came from its Turkishness and its adherence to progressive ideals and science, which drove the reforms of the early republican era, including abolishing the Ottoman alphabet, dictating the way Turks should dress and undermining religion as a source of authority. Yet many of these measures failed to embed themselves in the minds of all Turks, so their success depended on the use of force and coercion.

Over the past nine decades, Turks have developed a sense of Turkishness. But this sense is vulnerable to destabilization and fragmentation in ways more commonly associated with countries in other parts of the Middle East. This is precisely why the idea of Kurdish cultural autonomy or recognition of the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Anatolia in 1915 as genocide is so sensitive in Turkeys political discourse.

Twitter: @stevenacook

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Caitlin Flanagan is the author of Girl Land and a contributing editor to the Atlantic.

Were two months out from the peaceful transition of power, and right on schedule, here come the staffer memoirs from the Obama White House. Alyssa Mastromonaco  who worked for the president for more than a decade, including as his deputy chief of staff  has written one for a particular audience and with an appealing slant. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? is intended for young people starting their professional lives, and it is a combination memoir and compendium of very good suggestions about how to get ahead  very far ahead  at an early age.

A self-described townie from pre-posh Rhinebeck, N.Y., Mastromonaco worked as a grocery checker in a supermarket, one of many jobs at which she excelled at excelling  loving double-coupon day as well as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because it put my bag-packing skills to the ultimate test. A good (-ish) student, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and then found work as a paralegal at a Manhattan law firm, a job known for neither excitement nor glamour. Yet she vowed to give it her all, leading her roommate to call her the Super Para, which she thought at the time was a compliment. After that, she went to work as the assistant to a high-end real estate broker at Sothebys. Instead of mocking his love of luxury property I went with it, she reports. I liked making brochures and talking to clients; I had my favorite properties. It was really pretty fun.

The Sothebys experience, to many young, left-leaning job-seekers (in particular those who had interned for Bernie Sanders, as Mastromonaco had), might have seemed so impossibly unhip and one percent-ish as to make another year in the childhood bedroom seem preferable. But as Mastromonaco explains, it proved invaluable to her later success. When she decided she wanted to work in politics and interviewed for a staff position on John Kerrys presidential campaign, she didnt think she had much hope. But after her interview, she overheard someone talking about her: She worked at Sothebys  she must be good, which leads her to impart an important piece of advice about work: Forward motion is always better than no motion.

And so it is that our heroine goes from the checkout aisle of a Rhinebeck supermarket to the indescribably mismanaged Kerry campaign, then to Obamas finely tuned Senate office, then to his presidential campaign, and then to the White House  and to what our author might describe as a s--- ton of responsibility.

And now: a word about the tone and style of the book. Among the many celebrities she met during her White House years, one who became a close friend was Mindy Kaling, whose two very appealing books  Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and Why Not Me?  seem to have been major stylistic influences. While there is a strong, feminist own your own power through-line, there is also a clear intention to present herself as a cheerful, chubby everygirl. She is part Moneypenny (her chaste, consuming ardor for her dreamy boss), part unembarrassed oversharer (splitting a skirt with her fat campaign ass), part always-the-bridesmaid (her live-in boyfriend has three life rules: rent, dont own; no pets; and never get married). There is also a good bit of information about her mishaps with irritable bowel syndrome. We are not in the hands of Jane Austen; but Jane Austen never wrote a book advising young people to treat all informational interviews as the real deal, because you never know, which is why I pre-ordered a copy of this book  and not Northanger Abbey  to give to my teenage sons. (Its intended for young women, but anyone who wants to tell young people that hard work and a good attitude can take you further than you could ever dream is getting my 27 bucks.)

Mastromonaco, who wrote the book with the help of Lauren Oyler, who offered a millennial POV, is a woman of great achievements, and although she is committed to the cartoon version of herself, she makes no pretense of hiding her accomplishment. During her White House years she had two secure phone lines in her apartment; the White House response to Hurricane Sandy required her to become a quasi expert on transportation infrastructure and refined fuel in a handful of days; and her assessment that she was helping run the country, in a small way is patently true. She was included on a list of Washingtons most powerful, least famous people. Throughout her tenure, she had to wrestle with something most people at the start of their careers do not: the particular complexities of holding such a weighty job when youre really young. This may be a story of career success and empowerment, but like more-conventional girl books of yore, it has a marriage plot. Her reluctant boyfriend finally surprises her with a proposal, and the next day, in true rom-com fashion, she is sharing a champagne toast with Michelle Obama on Air Force One. Not long after, she resigned from the high-stress job, and her teary farewell  to the president and to the White House itself  is moving.

I read the book on the day the world was treated to photographs of Kellyanne Conway kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office, knees partly splayed and spiked heels digging deeply into the brocaded fabric, her eyes on her ever-present iPhone and not on the group of presidents of historically black colleges and universities who had been invited to meet President Trump. Mastromonacos guidebook/memoir has a powerful if unplanned secondary theme: the profound respect that the previous administration held for the office of the presidency and for the White House itself. On her first days orientation in the building, Mastromonaco and a co-worker are taken to see the Oval Office: The door was open, but we were so nervous we just stood there at the threshold. We were being such tools, but we knew no other way to be. Finally, they coaxed us in, she says. The wallpaper is the best wallpaper youve ever seen; the artwork would be in a museum if it werent in the White House; the desk is the presidents desk.

No one was jabbing heels into the furniture, no one was sending out a press secretary to lie about crowd size, no one was parking Harley-Davidson motorcycles on the front yard. He never yelled or demeaned people, she writes of Obama; his most common way of expressing displeasure with a staffer was a raised eyebrow. Goodbye to all that.
Deanell Reece Tacha is dean of Pepperdine University School of Law and former chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Robert Henry is president and chief executive of Oklahoma City University and a former chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

As the country prepares to watch the hearings on a nomination to the Supreme Court, predictions abound as to how Judge Neil Gorsuch  if confirmed  would lean or even vote on this or that case. Indeed, toward the end of the presidential campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump detailed their ideal Supreme Court justice in debates by predicting how she or he would vote on a given issue or case. But these essentially political discussions tend to distort the role of judges in our government.

Our primary Framer for the courts was none other than Alexander Hamilton, of recently renewed fame. Describing the judiciary in Federalist 78 as the least dangerous of the three branches of government, Hamilton emphasized that the complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. This independence of the judges is a most sacred tradition in U.S. constitutional law, requiring all judges to have no obligations to those who nominated or confirmed them.

Besides  as history has revealed  it is not even possible to select Supreme Court justices based on how they might rule on given topics. Detailed discussions during the confirmation process on issues that might come before a judge are not proper; in fact, they would in all likelihood require recusals from the cases discussed. Litmus tests are not acceptable. Furthermore, the controversies that go before the court often bring unique and complicated facts that could completely change a judges sincerely espoused view.

Another critically important input into judicial decisions is precedent. Our common-law system venerates precedent, most specifically when that precedent is old and long-settled by many judicial cases. Precedent might override previously held views or even logical interpretations of legal text.

These factors  tradition, independence, precedent and unique facts  often combine to lead judicial nominees to change their views when confronted with specific cases, which may conflict with the interests of the appointing administration.

We are both former chief judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. One of us is a lifelong Republican; the other, a lifelong Democrat. We both had the opportunity to serve with Gorsuch for several years on the 10th Circuit. He was, like most good judges, assiduously attentive to the facts and law in each case. All of the matters mentioned above (and others) should influence  or even change  a judges decision dealing with the specific set of facts in any case before him or her.

Gorsuchs body of work is surely informed by both textualism and originalism, but he was, in our experience, always open to consideration in the proper cases of precedent, history, tradition and the bones of our federal republics structure. Other important traits of Gorsuch that are not likely to change: his fair consideration of opposing views, his remarkable intelligence, his wonderful judicial temperament expressed to litigants and his collegiality toward colleagues.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once described his fellow justices as nine scorpions in a bottle. Having that view was not a good way to win friends and influence people, and does much to explain why Holmess best work was often expressed in dissent. Gorsuch, in contrast, writes beautifully and accessibly; he will find no need to wield an acid pen or improperly characterize his colleagues.

If we seek to confirm to the Supreme Court a noted intellect, a collegial colleague, and gifted and eloquent writer  as well as a person of exhibited judicial temperament  Gorsuch fits that bill. He represents the best of the judicial tradition in our country. We think that Hamilton would concur.
J.P. OMalley is a journalist based in Budapest.

In the final chapter of Stalin and the Scientists, Simon Ings recalls how by the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union boasted twice as many scientists as the United States and Western Europe combined. Decades after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the ambitious dream of a truly scientific-atheist Soviet superstate had finally been achieved.

At least in theory.

As Ings shows, a great paradox lay at the heart of the Soviet state: While rapid scientific progress was needed on a mass scale to advance the cause of a utopian socialist nation, the Soviet regime didnt want to grant the science community within Russia any intellectual freedom or autonomy, fearing that it might end up undermining the so-called science of Marxism.

[Review: Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928]

"Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953," by Simon Ings (Atlantic Monthly)

The Bolsheviks regularly made public pronouncements on the importance of scientific matters for the advancement of world socialism, which Ings reproduces here in some detail. Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and one of the leading intellectual voices of the revolution in its early days, prophesied in 1922, for instance, how man will put forward a goal [to] raise himself to a new level to create a higher socio-biological type. Six years later, the mass murderer, paranoid dictator and then-leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, declared that young people must seize the fortress of science if they want to truly replace the old guard.

And yet, as Ings explains, just as Stalin was publicly championing science in the name of the coming communist utopia and setting up a number of institutes and prizes, he was also arranging the sacking, imprisonment and murder of individual scientists who dared to question the official party line on Soviet science.

Ings details how top Russian scientists had to deny the works of Newton, Einstein, Mendel and others if they wanted to avoid arrest, the gulag or death.

[Book review: Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, by Anne Applebaum]

The author provides two excellent examples of Stalinist-type purges relating to science that were typical of the era. In 1927, Trotsky, always more internationalist and cosmopolitan in outlook than Stalin, published Culture and Socialism, which strongly made the case for understanding the work of Sigmund Freud. But three years later, the Russian Psychoanalytic Society was disbanded, and Freuds work ceased to be published in Russian. Trotsky eventually was murdered in Mexico on Stalins instructions.

Russian physicist Boris Hessen also suffered. Hessen, who publicly argued that scientists had to defend their work beyond simple philosophical conclusions, was arrested in 1935 and died in a Soviet prison in 1938.

Ings underscores the brutal human cost that accompanied scientific advancement in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. And yet, the author shows that despite the oppressive conditions, Soviet science did manage to produce some achievements. In particular, the Soviet Union transformed a backward peasant society into a giant superpower at the forefront of global technological advancement. It was the Soviet Union, after all, that sent the first satellite  Sputnik 1  into space in 1957.

Ingss finely crafted and informative book is a must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union, all in the service of the most ambitious experiment in social engineering the world has ever witnessed.
A man named Jim at a bar in Cheyenne, Wyo. The author Linh Dinh hung out at bars and bus depots, homeless encampments, in an attempt to gauge the countrys decline. (Linh Dinh, 2013 )

Sam Quinones is the author, most recently, of Dreamland The True Tale of Americas Opiate Epidemic, which won a 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Linh Dinh spent more than two years trekking across America, encountering people on the losing end of the economy. Dinh, a poet, blogger and photographer, hung out at bars and bus depots, homeless encampments and more bars, attempting to gauge the countrys decline.

The result is his uneven Postcards From the End of America.

Accompanying Dinh on his desolation triptych, we see the collapsed towns of Chester, Pa., and Vineland, N.J., as well as the Bottoms neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. We meet barmaids, alcoholics and hapless baby daddies. The culture of poverty is drenching. About a Chester barmaid called Misfit, Dinh writes, Misfits job is probably safe, but like many people these days she must be willing to switch jobs at a moments notice, do something entirely different to survive.

[A hillbillys plea to the white working class]

"Postcards from the End of America," by Linh Dinh (Seven Stories Press )

Instead of stories, though, most of the short chapters involve a relentless search for the next bar and a perfunctory conversation with its occupants  as if to say this is the edge of America and here is where the countrys truths are found. There may be something to the idea that the only place to properly assess todays America is from atop a barstool  I dont know. But it quickly gets old, and feels too easy, when the scene is repeated over and over.

Dinh, who arrived in the United States as a Vietnamese refugee in 1975 at age 12, offers little understanding or analysis of why these people are where they are. Perhaps we should expect this from a book titled Postcards, but were never long enough in one place to feel the depth of the people Dinh writes about  even as we see his photos of some of them in the book.

More often were left with mere glimpses. Eric Hurt is a homeless 55-year-old born in Compton who once was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Dallas Cowboys. He averaged 17.8 yards in four kickoff returns for the team and carries around a photo of the 1980 team to prove he was once a member of it. Thats a tempting sketch of a man I wish I knew more fully.

Dinh also likes to go off on rants. Much of one chapter, before his stop at the towns lone bar, is taken up against a criminal government. Barack Obama is a lying psychopath guilty of staggering historical crimes. He spends almost an entire page questioning fundamental events of Sept. 11, 2001. Youre liable to get into a fistfight if you merely point out the absurdity of a skyscraper collapsing at free-fall speed without being hit by anything, he writes. Dinh gives us no evidence, or reason, for what convinces him of any of this, yet these asides accompany us throughout Postcards.

The problem is, its hard to keep rants and bar tabs going for 368 pages. Its also disappointing. It feels as though after traveling our country, Dinh found little that challenges what seem to be the ideas he had when he set out. If travel doesnt change you, then its hard to see what will.

[White Trash  a cultural and political history of an American underclass]

America may be collapsing. But railing and quickly interviewing drinkers and bartenders seems a thin way to tell that epic. Stories are out there that will pack the punch he seeks. (How I wished Calvin Trillin would have walked into one of those bars.) Yet finding them requires spending more time than Dinh invests, and its never clear why he has to rush off to catch his next bus just as hes learning a town. The concept of a book as a set of postcards is intriguing until most of the pictures end up resembling each other. For it to work, a gripping prose postcard actually requires a lot of reporting.

He does hit a nice stride at times. A set of postcards from Bensalem, Pa., to Upper Manhattan to Levittown, Pa., and Wolf Point, Mont., are wicked sharp in their mix of detail with observation and commentary. He weaves Scorceses Taxi Driver railing at the scum with todays taxi drivers from Pakistan or Ghana who are barely making it. His snapshot of Anwar from Pakistan, who sells purses, and his obese wife, who wont venture out of their Bensalem apartment, is the kind of story I was waiting for.

Globalization is not just about exporting decent jobs, he writes, but also about importing cheap labor until everyone everywhere makes just about nothing. Thats the master plan, dude, so although ningun ser humano es ilegal is self-evidently true, its also a smoke screen to make slaves of us all. Alone, that might sound like ranting. Juxtaposed with imaginative reporting  Manhattan alone has 74 McDonalds, 194 Starbucks and 200 Subway sandwich stores, Dinh points out  it works, and you begin to feel there might be an original American voice rustling around in his prose.

Dinh may be a crank or a documentarian  his book provides evidence of both. He possesses the admirable pluck to rummage around in worlds not his own in hopes of telling a larger story. Next time out, I hope he digs deeper, leaves his soapbox at the barroom door, and lets the people he meets and their messy stories do the preaching for him.
John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign, served as counselor to President Barack Obama and chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

This column has been updated to note Virginia gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriellos previous affiliation with the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank founded by the author.

The recent race for Democratic National Committee chairman was frequently presented as a fight for the partys future between its activist wing, which backed Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.), and the establishment wing, which backed former labor secretary Tom Perez. That framing was misleading: Ellison and Perez are both longtime progressives. It was a big choice, but one thing was always clear about the Democratic Partys direction: Progressivism would win.

Now, in Virginia, another battle for the future of the Democratic Party is being waged by two progressives: Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former congressman Tom Perriello. Both are strong candidates for Virginia governor, but Perriello is the better choice for the partys future during a Trump presidency.

Each candidate has impressive credentials. Northam has served his country as an Army physician for eight years and the commonwealth of Virginia as an elected official for the past nine years. He has the support of much of Virginias senior elected officials, including Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Perriello was elected to the House of Representatives in a conservative district in 2008. He was defeated two years later because he put people before politics, casting politically courageous votes for the Affordable Care Act and President Barack Obamas stimulus package. He later served with distinction in the Obama administrations State Department. (Disclosure: From 2011 to 2014, Perriello was president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress Action Fund and a policy adviser at the Center for American Progress, the progressive advocacy group I founded and remain involved with as a board member.)

Because, as with Ellison and Perez, both men are progressives, the differences on issues are relatively minor, particularly compared with the gulf between Democrats and Republicans. But picking the best nominee is crucial, because Virginia provides the first big electoral test of the Trump presidency. Its the first chance to take to the ballot box and make President Trump the thing he hates most: a loser. Historically, Virginias off-year gubernatorial election has foreseen big trends to come. In 2005, Tim Kaines victory set the table for the 2006 Democratic wave, when the party regained control of the House and Senate. In 2009, Robert F. McDonnells victory presaged the tea party wave of 2010, when those Democratic majorities were decimated.

In 2017, Virginians will serve as a bellwether on not just whether the nation will repudiate Trump, but also what kind of Democrat can thrive in this new political order. Northams establishment support should not be ignored, but the real question before Virginians is who can harness the enthusiasm and energy unleashed by Trumps assault on traditional American values during the early months of his erratic presidency. Here, Perriello has the edge.

I met Perriello more than a decade ago, when he was unifying the progressive faith community to resist the efforts of the Bush administration and religious right to divide Americans and wage culture wars. He is running as an avowed critic of Trump  decrying his Muslim ban and deportation raids, joining the Womens March and the protests at Dulles International Airport and holding Trumps feet to the fire about the bill of goods he sold working Americans.

Whats particularly impressive about Perriello is that he has his ear to the ground. He speaks to the economic anger and anxiety of families he meets and is offering new ideas to grow their incomes; he opposes natural-gas pipelines that threaten private land, and hesupports clean-energy development and real solutions to our climate challenge; and he is elevating racial justice and poverty as central problems to be addressed by a state with a checkered past. Hes also vowing to veto any redistricting map drawn on a partisan basis, one of any governors most significant responsibilities in 2020.

The future of the Democratic Party will be defined by who can tap the anxieties, frustrations and energy of millions of Americans rising up to resist the Trump administration and forge a different path forward. Tom Perriello is offering a blueprint. Democrats should pay attention.
Regarding the Feb. 27 World article Dutertes drug war takes aim at 9-year-olds:

The proposed bill lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 9 seeks to arrest the rising incidence of Filipino children being used by drug syndicates to perpetuate their crimes. It is one of many proposed measures intended to rid the country of the menace of illegal drugs and improve law and order in the Philippines for the benefit of present and future generations of Filipinos.

The Philippine House of Representatives is reviewing this bill with the highest degree of diligence and transparency, bearing in mind its possible ramifications not only on the welfare of Filipino youths but also on the entire Filipino society.

The Philippine government is strongly committed to eradicating the scourge of illegal drugs with full respect of the law and the general principles of justice, peace and democracy.

Darell Ann R. Artates, Washington

The writer is the public diplomacy officer for the Embassy of the Republic of the Philippines.
President Trumps first budget is an attempt to reshape the federal government in his own image  crass, bellicose, shortsighted, unserious and ultimately hollow.

Unsurprisingly, Trump titled it America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again. The reality is that if Congress were to accept these numbers  which it cant possibly do  America would be made dumber, dirtier, hungrier and sicker. That may be Trumps idea of greatness, but its certainly not mine.

Would we at least be safer? I doubt it. Trump wants to boost defense spending by $54 billion, or about 9 percent. But at the same time, he proposes cutting funding for the State Department by an incredible 28 percent, slashing the relatively modest hands-across-the-sea assistance and advice the United States gives to other nations. Most of the generals and admirals I know believe in projecting U.S. strength through soft power as well as hard power. Trump apparently disagrees.

As is becoming customary with this administration, the document billed as a budget is really more of a preliminary sketch. Many of the cuts it proposes are transparently designed to play to Trumps populist constituency rather than save any meaningful amount of money.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, confessed as much. When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was, can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? he said Thursday on MSNBC. The answer was no. We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we cant ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Thus the Trump budget would eliminate $445 million that goes to support public broadcasting. Never mind that the millions who listen to All Things Considered while driving home from work include single moms, or that the millions who loved Downton Abbey include coal miners. The budget would also end all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

All told, ending governmental support for these cultural institutions saves a bit less than $1 billion  not even a pittance in the context of nearly $4 trillion in government spending. But the point isnt to save money, its to punish the fancy-dancy elites who define and consume high culture. (The presidents personal idea of cultural refinement, as we know, includes a Fifth Avenue penthouse that Louis XIV would find a bit gaudy and a six-foot portrait of Donald J. Trump paid for by his charitable foundation.)

Ive worked in Washington far too long to believe the federal bureaucracy is fat-free. But the proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agencys budget by 31 percent can only be seen as a first step toward dismemberment. The president wants a smaller EPA, Mulvaney explained. He thinks they overreach.

Trump wants to eliminate more than 3,200 EPA jobs, representing more than 20 percent of the workforce. It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who founded the agency, and it is another Republican president who apparently wants to end the federal governments role in protecting the environment. It is perhaps no surprise that Trump wants to end EPA programs and regulations aimed at halting global warming, since he has ventured the opinion that climate change is a Chinese hoax; NASA programs to study warming would be cut as well. But the budget would also eliminate federal funding for efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes. Make Americas Water Dirty Again!

The Energy Departments Office of Science would see its $5 billion budget cut by nearly 20 percent, while the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy would see its $300 million budget zeroed out. The National Institutes of Health would suffer a 19 percent cut, sharply reducing the amount of federal money available for research grants to universities.

Theres barely a peep in Trumps budget about Medicare or Medicaid. Given the angry reaction to the Republican health-care plan, Trump must have decided  for once  that silence was the best choice.

Many of the programs Trump wants to slash or eliminate have support in Congress. The budget could never pass the Senate in this form, and probably not the House. But Trump will get some of what he wants, and consequently the nation will suffer. We get what we pay for  rather, what we elect.

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.
When Donald Trump recently laid a wreath at the tomb of Andrew Jackson, the 45th president was sending a message by choosing a hero.

It is difficult to imagine that this selection was the result of vast reading in presidential history. Rather, it was the appropriation of Jackson as depicted on the $20 bill  the long-haired, steely-eyed, bad-assed disrupter. The end of the effete, philosophical founding generation. The embodiment of a populism that venerated and served the people. The avatar of American nationalism.

This was, in fact, the way Jackson was viewed by many contemporaries, both supporters and detractors. He was the original, and prototypical, testostero-president. He took on the British, the national bank, the Congress, the early secessionists with a determined application of will and power. He consistently pressed the boundaries of executive authority.

[Trump is trying to compare himself to Andrew Jackson. Wrong Andrew.]

George Washington had viewed swagger as a moral failure. Jackson made it an American political virtue. His movement, quite literally, broke china at the White House. It essentially created the idea of congressional party loyalty. It devalued civility. In all these ways, we still live in Jacksons America.

(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Jackson was a large, complex figure. (The best starting point to learn about him is Jon Meachams American Lion, which is brilliant in everything except its reverence for its subject.) But it would be typical of Trump to admire Jackson, not only for his virtues, but for his vices, too. Jackson was the first president who made dueling, gambling and horse-racing parts of his public persona. He was prickly, demanding and mercurial. He was no stranger to sexual scandal. His opponents regarded his presidency as unimaginable, until he beat them.

But Jacksons vices were not merely personal. Many of the Founders had been internally conflicted slaveholders. Jackson was not one for psychic struggle. Meacham recounts that Jackson once authored an Advertisement for Runaway Slave that offered $50 for the return of the slave and ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him. Such attitudes were not disqualifying in Jacksons America.

And much of Jacksons reputation depended on being a frontier Indian fighter. This was a president who once earned the Indian nickname Sharp Knife. In a battle against the Red Stick Creeks, Jackson set about to exterminate them (his words). Hundreds of fighters and civilians were killed trying to flee across the Tallapoosa River. By one account, the river ran red with blood. A sharp knife indeed.

Jackson was also one of the nations leading advocates of Indian removal, which amounted to the ethnic cleansing of Creeks and Cherokee across the lower South. His Indian Removal Act was a signature legislative achievement, opening up tens of millions of acres for cotton cultivation. These efforts culminated soon after Jacksons presidency in the Trail of Tears, on which 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children died of hunger, cold and disease during their forced expulsion to the west. This is close enough to genocide to spark a continuing debate over application of the word.

[Donald Trump, Steve King  and some very happy white nationalists]

Why discuss this ancient history (which is not really so ancient to the Cherokee)? Because Trump, in visiting Jacksons Hermitage, has invited us. Jackson was wrong  badly, culpably wrong  on the largest issue of his time: the dignity and value of people of color. The tragedy of Jacksons life, admits Meacham, is that a man dedicated to freedom failed to see liberty as a universal, not a particular, gift.

There is no refuge in the argument that Jackson merely reflected the values of his time. Jacksons opponent in two elections, John Quincy Adams, viewed slavery as the great and foul stain upon the North American Union. Henry Clay called Indian expulsion a foul and lasting stain upon the good faith, humanity and character of the nation. And Jacksons reputation will always bear those indelible marks.

1 of 83 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  See what President Trump has been doing since taking office View Photos The beginning of his term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the media. Caption The beginning of the presidents term has featured controversial executive orders and frequent conflicts with the media. March 17, 2017 President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, walk to Marine One at the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

These issues are directly applicable in our politics. Like Jackson, Trump has become the champion of poor, voiceless, white Americans. But does he view liberty as a universal gift? His dehumanization of migrants and Muslim refugees would indicate otherwise. And there has been talk of expulsion as well. Is American identity really related to ethnicity? Does American nationalism require the identification of internal enemies? Does putting America first always involve the organization of resentments and a search for scapegoats?

No American hero is perfect. But it is hard to summon one who didnt see the evil of the Middle Passage and the Trail of Tears. And this makes Trumps choice of heroes a self-indictment.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
We do not yet have the official agenda for next months meeting in Florida between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But after 75 years of U.S. leadership on the world stage, the Mar-a-Lago summit might mark the beginning of a handover of power from the United States to China. Trump has embraced a policy of retreat from the world, opening a space that will be eagerly filled by the Communist Party of China.

Trump railed against China on the campaign trail, bellowing that it was raping the United States. He vowed to label it a currency manipulator on his first day in office. But in his first interaction with Beijing, he caved. Weeks after his election, Trump speculated that he might upgrade relations with Taiwan. In response, Xi froze all contacts between Beijing and Washington on all issues, demanding that Trump reverse himself  which is exactly what happened. (Perhaps just coincidentally, a few weeks later, the Chinese government granted the Trump Organization dozens of trademark rights in China, with a speed and on a scale that surprised many experts.)

The Trump administrations vision for disengagement from the world is a godsend for China. Look at Trumps proposed budget, which would cut spending on soft power  diplomacy, foreign aid, international organizations  by 28 percent. Beijing, by contrast, has quadrupled the budget of its foreign ministry in the past decade. And that doesnt include its massive spending on aid and development across Asia and Africa. Just tallying some of Beijings key development commitments, George Washington Universitys David Shambaugh estimates the total at $1.4 trillion, compared with the Marshall Plan, which in todays dollars would cost about $100 billion.

Chinas growing diplomatic strength matters. An Asian head of government recently told me that at every regional conference, Washington sends a couple of diplomats, whereas Beijing sends dozens. The Chinese are there at every committee meeting, and you are not. The result, he said, is that Beijing is increasingly setting the Asian agenda.

The Trump administration wants to skimp on U.S. funding for the United Nations. This is music to Chinese ears. Beijing has been trying to gain influence in the global body for years. It has increased its funding for the U.N. across the board and would likely be delighted to pick up the slack as the United States withdraws. As Foreign Policy magazines Colum Lynch observes, China has already become the second-largest funder of U.N. peacekeeping and has more peacekeepers than the other four permanent Security Council members combined. Of course, in return for this, China will gain increased influence, from key appointments to shifts in policy throughout the U.N. system.

The first major act of the Trump administration was to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty that would have opened up long-closed economies such as Japan and Vietnam, but also would have created a bloc that could stand up to Chinas increasing domination of trade in Asia. The TPP was, in Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongs words, a litmus test of U.S. credibility in Asia. With Washingtons withdrawal, even staunchly pro-American allies such as Australia are hedging their bets. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has raised the possibility of China joining the TPP, essentially turning a group that was meant to be a deterrent against China into one more arm of Chinese influence.

The United States global role has always meant being at the cutting edge in science, education and culture. Here again, Washington is scaling back while Beijing is ramping up. In Trumps proposed budget, the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the national laboratories face crippling cuts, as do many exchange programs that have brought generations of young leaders to be trained in the United States and exposed to American values. Beijing, meanwhile, has continued to expand Confucius Institutes around the world and now offers 20,000 scholarships for foreign students to go to China. Its funding for big science rises every year. The worlds largest telescope is in China, not the United States.

The Trump administration does want a bigger military. But that has never been how China has sought to compete with U.S. power. Chinese leaders have pointed out to me that this was the Soviet strategy during the Cold War, one that failed miserably. The implication was: Let Washington waste resources on the Pentagon, while Beijing would focus on economics, technology and soft power.

Trumps new national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, once remarked that trying to fight the United States symmetrically  tank for tank  was stupid. The smart strategy would be an asymmetrical one. The Chinese seem to understand this.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Students unlikely to get textbooks on time

Hundreds of thousands of students of public schools may not get their textbooks on time this new academic session as well, as the state-owned printer will have to dedicate one third of its capacity to printing ballot papers for local level elections set for May 14.
GOVERNMENT WASTE is not a myth. Consider the overlap between President Trumps newly announced plan for federal spending and President Barack Obamas last proposed budget. Mr. Obama would have, as Mr. Trump would, eliminated several nice-sounding but dispensable programs, such as the Justice Departments State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, Agricultures Water and Wastewater and Community Facilities Loan Guarantees and the Environmental Protection Agencys Targeted Air Shed Grants.

If two of the least ideologically similar presidents in history could agree on cutting these items, they should probably be cut  if only to establish the principle that spending is not on autopilot and that the federal government does indeed care about even the minor details of its vast budget, which totaled $3.9 trillion in 2016. Such care for taxpayer funds also could have a positive effect on employee recruitment and morale.

What is a myth, however, is that waste is the fundamental cause of excessive federal debt and deficits. The three programs mentioned above cost less than $1 billion combined. Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly fostered that myth, whether by invoking management as a deficit cure during the campaign or by his irresponsible promise to deal with the fiscal future while simultaneously boosting defense spending, massively cutting taxes and protecting Social Security and Medicare. True, you could have eliminated the federal deficit in 2016 by cutting all $600 billion in non-defense discretionary spending  but that would have meant closing the national parks, shutting the federal courts and putting the Coast Guard in dry dock.

The plan released by the White House on Thursday did not even claim to address taxes and entitlement programs; it focused exclusively on the $1.1 trillion discretionary budget for fiscal 2018, both non-defense and defense. This emphasis only underscores the folly of keeping revenues and mandatory spending programs out of the discussion, given the need to raise the former and trim the latter. Shifting $54 billion from non-defense discretionary spending to defense, as Mr. Trumps plan would do, required big cuts to vital accounts. The State Department would lose almost 29 percent of its budget, and EPA, 31 percent; the National Institutes of Health would lose close to 20 percent.

As members of both parties on Capitol Hill quickly pointed out, Congress actually writes the budget, so Mr. Trumps statement is relevant mainly for what it indicates about the executive branchs policy priorities. In that sense, it is remarkably, if unsurprisingly, unrealistic and, as regards the United States posture in the world, shortsighted. America First reads the title of this document, which calls for spending $2.6 billion on securing the U.S.-Mexico border, including Mr. Trumps wall. Some of that money would be taken from programs to help people abroad.

Once the uproar over Mr. Trumps misguided, unworkable and essentially demagogic proposal dies down, Congress will have to take up the work of hammering out a real fiscal policy.
THE SPEED and enthusiasm with which two federal courts halted President Trumps latest travel executive order might suggest that the revised policy is as obviously problematic as the last, which was a sloppy rush job that the government poorly defended in court. In fact, the revised policy, while still more likely to harm than help national security, is legally far more defensible. Decades of precedent instruct judges to defer to the executive branch on immigration and national security matters such as this. It should surprise no one if the Supreme Court eventually allows the Trump administration to proceed.

Among other problems, Mr. Trumps first order essentially broke faith with foreigners who already had commitments from the government, violating their right to due process. In contrast, the revised order would not deny entry to lawful permanent residents or visa holders.

Two federal district court judges nevertheless blocked implementation of the new order this week, finding that it violates the First Amendments establishment clause, which demands separation between church and state. Judge Derrick K. Watson relied on previous rulings that government actions must have a primary secular purpose as he rejected the national security rationale the Trump administration offered and concluded that Mr. Trumps transparent aim was temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims. Mr. Watson used the presidents previous calls for a Muslim ban, along with a variety of more recent statements from Trump associates, as evidence of Mr. Trumps discriminatory intent.

But as a thoughtful counterpoint from five judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit pointed out, the Constitution expressly stipulates that Congress can set naturalization policy, and Congress did so in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952  which delegates the president broad authority to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants. In the past, when the executive branchs use of that authority has conflicted with other constitutional principles, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association, courts have been deferential to the executive, acknowledging that immigration policy is a complex subject in which a variety of interests can and do motivate decisions and in which the courts should be wary of substituting their judgment for that of the political branches. In general, courts bow to the government as long as it provides a facially legitimate and bona fide reason to act.

Even using that deferential standard, critics could argue that the national security justifications the Trump administration has provided for its order are too thin; as a policy matter, the order lacks the support of logic or evidence, despite the Trump administrations late efforts to locate some. They could also argue that the establishment-clause interests are so strong that the courts must try to ascertain the presidents authentic motivations, as they have in other contexts.

But judges may well flinch at the prospect of conducting a trial to ferret out the presidents intentions and to craft new boundaries for the nations immigration policy, restrictions that could be binding on Mr. Trumps successors, too. The critics have a strong case that the presidents executive order is self-defeating and offensive to American values. But it is far from clear that the courts will deem it illegal, too.
Among the memorabilia in Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfeins office is a fragment of the Wright brothers first airplane. But the most intriguing items may be two small plastic satellites on sticks that can be maneuvered to simulate a dogfight in space.

Space is now a potential battle zone, Goldfein explains in an interview. The Air Force wants to ensure space superiority, which he says means freedom from attack and freedom to maneuver.

If you think cyberwar raises some tricky issues, get your mind around this next big threat worrying the Pentagon. Similar problems exist in both the cyber and space domains: U.S. commercial and military interests are interwoven but deeply suspicious of each other; the technologies are borderless but are being weaponized by hostile nation-states; and attacks on satellites and other systems may be invisible and difficult to attribute.

Todays digital world hangs on the satellite networks that invisibly circle the globe. Theyre the wiring system for many commercial and military operations down below, and theyre highly vulnerable to attack. Russia has jammed GPS reception in Ukraine; China has hacked U.S. weather satellites; North Korea has jammed signals over the demilitarized zone.

The cloud overhead is thickening: As of mid-2016, the Union of Concerned Scientists counted 1,419 satellites orbiting the globe, including 576 from the United States, 181 from China and 140 from Russia. More than half are in low Earth orbit; most of the rest are geostationary, about 22,000 miles from Earth. Roughly 350 satellites, or 25 percent of the total, are for military use. At least 12 nations now have space-launch capability.

Space warfare has been a staple of science fiction for decades, but real-world fears were checked by a 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which banned the use of nuclear weapons there. But the treaty didnt ban the use of conventional weapons in space, and Russia began its first anti-satellite weapons program in 1961, according to leading expert Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. After the Cold War ended, fears eased about space conflict.

A wake-up call came with Chinas 2007 test of an anti-satellite missile that destroyed a Chinese target in space (creating more than 3,000 dangerous fragments). The Chinese have now conducted a total of eight tests of satellite-killer rockets, Weeden says. Russia, too, has resumed similar tests. The United States is also thought to have what amount to anti-satellite rockets in the midcourse leg of its missile-defense system.

Rocket attacks against satellites worry the Pentagon less these days than electronic ones. Satellites could use jammers to sabotage other satellites. Ground systems can already create electronic bubbles that block GPS signals. The Russians used this technology to disable a Ukrainian drone in 2014, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cited by Weeden.

Keeping space systems safe is crucial for the planet, but protection is dispersed among a jumble of overlapping and conflicting authorities. The military and the intelligence communities barely talked to each other for decades on this issue, but last year the Air Force created a Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center that will soon have about 200 representatives coordinating operations across agencies.

But military liaison with private space users is still primitive. A commercial integration cell at the Air Force Joint Space Operations Center (yes, its a different entity) works with six big companies. But most commercial concerns share their satellite-location data through the Space Data Association, based in the Isle of Man. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration is eager to extend supervision of commercial flights to space activity, said Marcia Smith of Space Policy Online.

The United States is even warier of sharing its space secrets than its communications intelligence. Theres no Five Eyes partnership yet, though Britain, Australia and Canada are creating space-operations centers that could someday share data with an Air Force unit that was established 11 years ago. One little-discussed U.S. snooping operation is the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, which has four satellites monitoring the other traffic 22,000 miles above the planet.

As on Earth, the hidden danger is hacking, official or otherwise. Orbits can be changed; sensors can be blinded; data can be corrupted. Facts could become as fragile in space as on Earth, if systems arent protected. But first, suspicious space mavens must learn to talk with each other.

When space is a battleground, such cooperation is difficult. As Goldfein said in a recent speech, There really is no such thing as war in space, its just war.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Reading about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Krissah Thompsons March 12 Book World review Rise of an Iron Lady in a proud, complex country reminded me of a critical role I played in her life, one not known to most. On April 12, 1980, when a coup took place in Liberia, it appeared certain that the key players of the previous regime, including Sirleaf, who had been minister of finance, would be killed. They were being marched in chains through the streets.

At the time, I was the director for West Africa at the World Bank and responsible for Liberia, among other countries. Sirleaf had been a World Bank staff member before she joined the Liberian government. The rules of the bank require that the relationship with the bank be cut off when someone leaves to take a government job.

As we were uneasily watching events unfold in Liberia, I was informed by our human resources department that because of a screw-up, Sirleaf was still a bank staff member. Upon learning this, I informed rebel leader Samuel Doe that any harm to Sirleaf would be viewed very seriously by the World Bank.

As it turned out, she was one of only a handful of government ministers whose lives were spared.

Bilsel Alisbah, Hilton Head, S.C.
A collection of liberal and conservative legal activists were asked by The Washington Post to point to cases that best illustrate how Judge Neil Gorsuch sees the law. Somewhat surprisingly, their choices often matched. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

Some liberals wary of Judge Neil Gorsuchs fitness for the Supreme Court point to the Case of the Frozen Trucker. As an appeals court judge, Gorsuch ruled against a driver who claimed hed been wrongly fired because he ignored his supervisors demands by unhitching his unheated truck from its malfunctioning trailer and driving away in subzero weather in search of safety.

Heres a twist: Some conservatives supportive of Gorsuch cite the exact same case, in admiration.

In his more than a decade at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, President Trumps nominee for the Supreme Court has written hundreds of opinions and participated in thousands of panel decisions.

[Trump picks Neil Gorsuch for Supreme Court]

(Peter Stevenson,Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

A collection of liberal and conservative legal activists were asked by The Washington Post to narrow that voluminous jurisprudence to a handful that they say best illustrate how Gorsuch sees the law.

Somewhat surprisingly, their choices often matched.

For instance, the frozen trucker decision, in which Gorsuch was the lone dissenter among judges who considered the case, strikes the liberal Alliance for Justice as illustrative of the efforts Judge Gorsuch takes in his judicial opinions to deny critical remedies to workers wronged by their employers.

But Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network, one of the leaders of the effort to confirm Gorsuch, sees the dissent as a principled interpretation of a statute, even when the facts include a sympathetic plaintiff. Liberals would have liked him to find a way to skirt the law in such a case, according to Severino. The fact that he wasnt willing to do so illustrates his integrity.

Gorsuchs 10-year record is unwieldy and, at the same time, incomplete. He has never issued on-point rulings on the kinds of issues that traditionally cause controversy in Supreme Court nominations: abortion, affirmative action, voting rights, the reach of the Second Amendment, same-sex marriage.

[Neil Gorsuch: Steadfast and somewhat surprising]

That doesnt mean there is disagreement over Gorsuchs ideology. Conservative legal groups enthusiastically endorse his approach to the law, certain that it reflects their view of gun rights, religious protections and support for business. Liberals are equally convinced Gorsuch is a danger to reproductive rights, inadequate on questions of discrimination and the kind of jurist who instinctively sides with corporate interests over the little guy.

But beyond which side he might be on, Gorsuchs rulings give clues of the kind of judge he is, and perhaps promise a glimpse of the kind of justice he would be.

Those on both sides of the battle over Gorsuchs confirmation point in particular to three cases  a legal fight over funding Planned Parenthood in Utah, the deference courts should grant government agencies implementing a broad array of federal laws and the case of Alphonse Maddin, who left the load he was hauling by the side of a freezing Illinois highway. Both sides say the judges three rulings deserve closer looks.

[Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. Herbert]

In 2015, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) was like a lot of other politicians who said they were shocked by videos that purported to show officials of Planned Parenthood discussing the sale of fetal tissue from abortions.

Investigations would later show the videos were heavily edited, and the officials were cleared of wrongdoing. Although he acknowledged that the groups officials were not implicated, Herbert still tried to shut off the federal funds the state gave to the Utah organization.

A district judge said Herbert was within his rights to withhold the funds, about $250,000.

But a panel of the 10th Circuit reversed the lower courts decision. The judges said it was likely that Herbert saw the videos as an opportunity more than an outrage and that he opposed Planned Parenthood because it offered abortions, though no state or federal money was used to perform them.

After the panel ruled, Herbert said he accepted the loss, and the money for the organizations work on a disease-control and sex-abstinence program was restored.

But weeks later, one undisclosed judge requested the entire court review the panels decision, even though the state had not asked for reconsideration and had clearly moved on, in the words of Judge Mary Beck Briscoe, who had written the panel decision.

The judge almost surely was Gorsuch, because he later wrote a detailed opinion saying the panels flawed decision should not have been allowed to stand.

He methodically but respectfully  he used the word seven times in a 12-page opinion  listed the panels mistakes. It had not properly respected the district judges findings; it had relaxed Planned Parenthoods burden of proof; it had discounted Herberts explanation and failed to show the sort of comity this court normally seeks to show the states and their elected representatives.

It is undisputed that when the governor announced his decision to discontinue funding he contemporaneously explained that his decision came in direct response to the videos, Gorsuch wrote. And it is undisputed, too, that the governor was free as a matter of law to suspend the funding in question for this reason.

The court voted 6 to 4 not to rehear the case.

When Trump announced Gorsuchs nomination to the Supreme Court, the judge won the endorsement of antiabortion groups. Those groups point as well to Gorsuchs opinion in two other cases that took the side of businesses and nonprofit organizations that said for religious reasons they could not offer contraceptive care to their employees.

Abortion rights groups took notice as well. And Caroline Fredrickson, president of the liberal American Constitution Society, said it was significant to her that Gorsuch had reached out to reopen a case that appeared settled.

He just seems to be looking for reasons to make reproductive rights hard to access, she said.

[Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch]

Congress writes the laws, although often not very well. Sometimes, the words are ambiguous or unclear, and sometimes federal agencies are called upon to make decisions about how the law will be implemented.

In 1984, the Supreme Court decided a case called Chevron v. NRDC, and said that when the words of a statute are ambiguous, judges should defer to the expert opinions of the federal agencies charged with carrying out the law.

It is called Chevron deference, and it is a phrase heard routinely in federal courts  the decision by Justice John Paul Stevens has been cited more than 15,000 times  and almost never outside of them.

But in a case involving the length of time an illegal immigrant named Hugo Rosario Gutierrez-Brizuela had to wait before trying to win lawful residence in the country, Gorsuch called for reconsidering Chevron. This is one area in which Gorsuch makes a significant break with the man he would succeed on the court  the late Justice Antonin Scalia  but one that endears him even more to some conservatives.

They fear that Chevron deference gives the executive branch an ability to write the law instead of simply enforcing it.

In a separate opinion, Gorsuch launched a broadside at the Chevron decision. Gorsuch wrote that the decision and a subsequent ruling along the same lines permit executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers design. Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth.

Some in the conservative legal movement have grown wary in part because they disagreed with what they called overly aggressive regulations put out by agencies controlled by President Barack Obama.

The first Supreme Court nomination hearings of the post-Obama era may ultimately be remembered as focusing on Gorsuchs view of an issue that defines the Obama years: the modern administrative state, Adam J. White wrote in a glowing profile of Gorsuch in the conservative Weekly Standard.

Liberals are leery. Elizabeth Wydra, president of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, said that regardless of which political party controls the executive branch, deference to federal agencies helps make government work.

It is also surely not a coincidence that progressives are far more likely than anti-regulation conservatives to use agencies to enact rules  and thus trigger Chevron deference  that promote the social safety net, combat discrimination, protect voting rights, and ensure clean air, unpolluted water, and safe food, she said.

Gorsuch said if the goliath of modern administrative law were to fall, little would be lost.

Surely Congress could and would continue to pass statutes for executive agencies to enforce, he wrote. And just as surely agencies could and would continue to offer guidance on how they intend to enforce those statutes. The only difference would be that courts would then fulfill their duty to exercise their independent judgment about what the law is.

[TransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board]

Alphonse Maddin, the frozen trucker, appeared with Democratic senators this week to highlight the human toll of Gorsuchs jurisprudence.

Seven different judges heard my case  one of those judges found against me, Maddin said. That judge was Neil Gorsuch.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said cases such as Maddins show Gorsuch prefers CEOs over truck drivers, executives over employers, and corporations over consumers.

The facts in Maddins case are not in dispute. Hauling a load along Interstate 88 in Illinois for a Kansas-based trucking company, Maddin missed a refueling stop and pulled to the side of the road to decide his next step. In the subzero weather, the brakes on his trailer froze. He radioed for help, and the dispatcher told him to stay put and a repair truck would come.

Maddin said he awoke hours later in the unheated truck cab, numb and with his speech slurred. Ignoring orders, he unhooked the truck from the trailer and drove off to look for help. He turned around when the repair truck came.

Later he was fired.

An administrative law judge and a review board of the Labor Department concluded Maddin was fired in violation of whistleblower provisions. They protect an employee who refuses to operate a vehicle because . . . the employee has a reasonable apprehension of serious injury to the employee or the public because of the vehicles hazardous safety or security condition.

Gorsuchs two colleagues on the appeals court panel agreed Maddins actions were consistent with refusing to operate his truck in a dangerous way.

But Gorsuch dissented. The trucker in this case wasnt fired for refusing to operate his vehicle, Gorsuch wrote. Perhaps TransAm should not have fired him, Gorsuch said, but Maddins only legally protected option was to sit and wait.

Theres simply no law anyone has pointed us to giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their employers forbid, Gorsuch wrote. Maybe the [Labor] department would like such a law, maybe someday Congress will adorn our federal statute books with such a law. But it isnt there yet. And it isnt our job to write one  or to allow the department to write one in Congresss place.

Edward Whelan, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the lesson of the case should be that Gorsuch strictly follows the words of a statute despite the sympathetic nature of one of the parties.

But even anyone who disagrees with his textualist approach would have to strain hard to depict his dissent as evidence that Gorsuch is hostile to workers, Whelan wrote in the National Review Online.

Critics say it is a devotion to text carried to extremes, and ignores that the intent of the law is to protect the health and safety of workers and the public.

Gorsuch would have held that the truck driver had two choices  stay with his trailer indefinitely in subzero temperatures . . . or lose his job, said Daniel Goldberg, legal director at the Alliance for Justice. To call his dissent callous and contrary to law would be an understatement.
In blocking the administrations second attempt at a travel ban from terror-prone countries, a federal judge in Hawaii laid the blame squarely on President Trump and his advisers, who had suggested the policy was aimed at barring Muslims.

A different politician might have expressed disappointment and moved on. But Trump, taking the stage barely an hour later at a rally Wednesday night in Nashville, let loose on the terrible ruling  and doubled down on the sentiments that got the policy into trouble in the first place.

The order blocked was a watered-down version of the first order, Trump thundered, adding later: Let me tell you something. I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way.

The episode was just one of numerous examples of Trump and his advisers pushing incendiary language and unfounded claims, even in the face of opposition from federal judges and top lawmakers of both parties.

On Thursday  for the 12th day in a row  the White House defended Trumps unfounded claim that his predecessor, Barack Obama, ordered wiretaps of Trumps New York City offices during the presidential campaign, despite a growing chorus of declarations from intelligence officials and members of Congress that nothing of the sort happened.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016, the Democratic and Republican chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday in a statement.

He stands by it, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said of Trumps original claim.

[Federal judge halts Trump travel ban hours before it was to take effect]

Trump boosters say his freewheeling rhetoric, in person and on social media, is a large part of his appeal and has kept him in good stead with his political base. But it is also making governing more challenging.

In recent weeks, Trump has pledged that he would provide insurance for everybody at a lower cost, setting an impossible standard for congressional Republicans as they seek to craft a bill to scale back Obamas signature health-care law.

Trump has sent conflicting signals on whether he supports a border adjustment tax, a key component of efforts to reduce taxes that has divided Republicans in the House and Senate who are eager for Trumps guidance.

The presidents repeated pronouncements of admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin have forced his ambassador to the United Nations and his secretary of state to reassure allies by talking tougher about an adversary blamed for meddling in last years U.S. election.

And Trumps allegations on Twitter  without citing any evidence  that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower last year has eaten up investigative resources in Congress and chipped away at his credibility among GOP leaders key to advancing the presidents ambitious agenda.

But perhaps nowhere have Trumps words been as damaging as his attempts to implement the travel ban  which may have been damaged further by Trumps remarks at his Nashville rally. Trump inflamed controversy during the campaign by calling for a temporary ban on all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, then later shifted to vague pledges to ban people from countries with a history of Islamist terrorism.

I am sure that challengers will use the presidents comments last night as further evidence that the true intent of his executive order is to bar Muslim immigration, said Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School.

[Trump stands by unproven allegation that Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower]

In rulings halting both the first and second attempts at a ban, judges have cited comments by Trump and his close advisers as evidence of the administrations intent to target Muslims in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution  even as lawyers for Trump insist that is not the case.

The somewhat narrower version of the ban put on hold Wednesday would have temporarily barred the issuance of new visas to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries and suspended the admission of new refugees. Early Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland issued a second injunction against the measure, suspending only the portion that stopped the issuance of visas.

While some legal experts say Trump still has a strong chance of prevailing at the Supreme Court, based on arguments about executive powers, others have questioned whether comments coming from his administration have made it impossible to credibly argue that the ban is secular in nature.

Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University, said Trump and his advisers seem to be validating the courts concerns every chance they get.

They seem not to know when they need to keep their mouths shut, said Elleithee, who worked on Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign.

The proposed policy can be traced back to December 2015, when Trump  reading in dramatic fashion at a campaign rally  called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what is going on. The statement is still available on Trumps campaign website.

Later in the campaign, amid continuing uproar, Trump began referring to the ban as being aimed at particular nations rather than a religious group. But at times he also disputed the idea that the proposal had changed or narrowed.

I actually dont think its a rollback, Trump said in July 2016. In fact, you could say its an expansion. Im looking now at territories. People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you cant use the word Muslim. . . . And Im okay with that, because Im talking territory instead of Muslim.

Also undermining the administrations claim of secular intent was Trumps statement on the Christian Broadcasting Network on Jan. 27  just before the first ban went into place  that he saw persecuted Christians as a priority in accepting refugees.

And when he actually signed the measure, Trump declared: This is the protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States. We all know what that means. He did not explain further.

The next day, a close Trump adviser, Rudolph W. Giuliani, appeared on Fox News and seemed to offer an explanation.

Ill tell you the whole history of it, Giuliani said. So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, Muslim ban. He called me up. He said, Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally. 

In his blistering 43-page opinion issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson in Hawaii referred to those comments as well as a recent Fox News appearance by Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who said the second attempt at a ban would have mostly minor technical differences and that Americans would see the same basic policy outcome for the country.

At Wednesday nights rally in Nashville, Trump took aim at Watson and suggested there was little difference between the intent of his first executive order and his second.

The order he blocked was a watered-down version of the first order that was also blocked by another judge and should have never been blocked to start with, Trump said.

During a news briefing Thursday, Spicer said the administration had tailored the second order to address concerns raised about the first and said he was confident the president would ultimately prevail. Spicer said comments made by Trump and his aides, including those on Twitter, were non-germane and not in keeping with how [judges] are supposed to interpret the law.

Leon Fresco, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation in Obamas Justice Department, said anything the president or those in his administration say now will likely become part of the ongoing litigation. The strongest evidence the challengers have to prove Trump intended the ban to disfavor Muslims, rather than protect national security, comes from the presidents own words and those of his close advisers, he said.

But Fresco said it is possible Trump would ultimately prevail at the Supreme Court. In particular, he said, the judge in Hawaii had not addressed head-on whether Trump and his advisers comments irrevocably stain the ability to ever issue an order like this, period.

The Justice Department has argued that the comments by Trump and his advisers should not be considered because, in the departments view, the courts should not look beyond official statements and the order itself to determine its purpose.

Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University, said Trump had an opportunity after he was elected to set a different course but has not.

As president, he should have said he was wrong to advocate for a Muslim ban, Naftali said. Hes never done that. What it appears hes doing now is trying to do it in a way that squeaks by.
A White House summit Friday aimed at easing friction between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was undermined by the visible lack of warmth between the two leaders and sharp differences on immigration and trade.

Trump used his first meeting with Merkel to affirm his strong support for NATO and to declare he is not an isolationist on free trade after a campaign in which he questioned U.S. policies on multilateral security and economic alliances in Europe and elsewhere.

But the two remained far apart on immigration in the wake of Trumps efforts to impose a temporary travel ban on refugees and immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations in the Middle East and Northern Africa, a move that contrasts sharply with Merkels more liberal policies.

For a second time, federal judges this week suspended the presidents executive order, though his administration has vowed to appeal the rulings.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, Trump said at a joint news conference with Merkel, adding, the safety of our citizens must always come first.

(The Washington Post)

Merkels decision to welcome large numbers of Syrian refugees stands in sharp contrast to Trumps insistence that the U.S. refugee program has made the country vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.

Merkel on Friday acknowledged the need to secure borders and work to integrate immigrants into society, but she emphasized that such goals have to be done while looking at the refugees as well, giving them opportunities to shape their own lives . . . [and] help countries who right now are not able to do so, sometimes because they have civil war.

Beyond policy, their summit was marked by an Oval Office photo op during which Trump appeared to disregard Merkels suggestion that they shake hands and he generally avoided making eye contact with her as news photographers captured the scene.

And Trump put the German leader on the spot during their news conference when he made an awkward joke about them having something in common over his unfounded allegations that President Barack Obama had ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to wiretap Trump Tower in New York.

He appeared to be referring to reports in 2013 that the Obama administration authorized eavesdropping on Merkels personal cellphone calls, a point of tension between her and Obama.

Merkel, looking uncomfortable, chose not to respond to Trumps remarks.

Its always better to talk to one another than about one another, Merkel said through an interpreter during her opening remarks.

The disharmony between Trump and Merkel is a sharp contrast to Merkels warm relationship with Obama, whose world view was largely aligned with the German chancellor on many issues. Trump was sharply critical of Merkel during the presidential campaign, accusing her of ruining Germany  a longtime U.S. ally  over her more liberal policies on free trade and refugees. He has also expressed support for Britains decision to leave the European Union  an alliance deeply important to Merkel.

Beyond their seemingly divergent worldview, the two leaders could not be more different in terms of personality. Trump is a brash, outspoken businessman and Merkel a staid and reserved trained scientist.

The summit was being closely watched at home and abroad for signs of how the two leaders would engage each other. As much as Trump has questioned the multilateral alliances of the post-World War II international order and Merkel has defended them, German officials insisted that her visit was aimed at finding common ground.

Yet unlike Trumps White House summits with several other world leaders  such as prime ministers Shinzo Abe of Japan, Theresa May of Britain and Justin Trudeau of Canada  there were few signs Friday that he and Merkel had built much personal rapport.

Hoping to get reassurances from Trump on trade ties, Merkel arrived in Washington with an entourage that included German business executives to emphasize the economic ties between the nations. Trump has opposed multilateral trade deals, and talks on a major U.S.-European pact called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which had been negotiated by the Obama administration, have stalled.

Trump said he is not anti-trade, but wants fair trade, and he reiterated his past criticism that U.S. policies have harmed American workers.

Despite his endorsement of NATO, Trump reiterated his campaign-trail criticism that member nations are not paying their fair share to support the security alliance.

Trump said some countries owe vast sums in dues, which is very unfair to the United States  an allegation that appeared to be based on an incomplete understanding of how the alliance is funded.

Trump stated that each nation agreed to contribute 2 percent of its gross domestic product to NATO. In fact, the alliance had long ago set a goal that each member would devote at least 2 percent of GDP to defense in their own budgets.

The members contribute their capabilities to NATO, not monetary assessments. Those who havent reached 2 percent, which is the majority of nations, dont owe or have to make up shortfalls of the past.

These nations must pay what they owe, Trump said.
UN official calls on PM Dahal

Visiting Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) Shamshad Akhtar called on Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal at the latters office in Sindha Durbar on Friday.


Supporters cheer as President Trump walks out to speak during a campaign rally in Nashville on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

 Soon after Charla McComics son lost his job, his health-insurance premium dropped from $567 per month to just $88, a blessing from God that she believes was made possible by President Trump.

I think it was just because of the tax credit, said McComic, 52, a former first-grade teacher who traveled to Trumps Wednesday night rally in Nashville from Lexington, Tenn., with her daughter, mother, aunt and cousin.

The price change was actually thanks to a subsidy made possible by former president Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act, which is still in place, not by the tax credits proposed by Republicans as part of the health-care bill still being considered by Congress.

It has been difficult for many Americans to keep up with the changes brought by Obamacare and exactly how the Republican proposal, if enacted, would affect their lives. But for Trumps most dedicated supporters, its simply easier to trust the president is making things better and will follow through on his promise to provide insurance for everybody and great health care for a fraction of the price.

McComic said shes not worried about her disability benefits changing or her 3-year-old granddaughter getting kicked off Medicaid or her 33-year-old sons premiums going up.

So far, everythings been positive, from what I can tell, she said, waiting for Trumps rally here to begin Wednesday night. I just hope that more and more people and children get covered under this new health-care plan.

McComic says she has never trusted a president the way she trusts Trump. Ahead of the election, she and her relatives turned their cars into a Trump train and drove across Lexington, waving flags and shouting: Trump! Trump! Vote for Trump!

We said: Who else would we do this for, besides Trump?  McComic said. We agreed on the Lord. We would stand here for the Lord, but thats about it.

Trump waited until the final minutes of his speech that night to discuss health-care restructuring. He glossed over the details of the legislation, blaming its troubles and complex path to enactment on Democrats and urging his followers to not believe their dishonest attacks. And he did just enough to distance himself from the bill, describing it as a plan created by House Republicans based on the principles I outlined.

The end result is . . . its going to be great, the president said to gentle applause. Its going to be great.

Tennessee has become one of the GOPs go-to examples of why the Affordable Care Act is not working. Premiums for plans offered to state residents through a federal exchange skyrocketed last year  especially for those who earn too much to qualify for subsidies  and competition has dried up, with residents of most counties having access to only one insurance company.

Serge Martin, a 63-year-old optometrist from Murfreesboro, said he doesnt particularly like the proposed legislation but considers it a framework to get started with that will be strengthened before it passes.



Serge Martin, 63, a doctor of optometry and Trump supporter, in an exam room in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Martin and his wife purchase health insurance through the exchange and have watched the price climb each year. For 2017, there was only one insurance company offering coverage in his area, UnitedHealthcare, and the couples bill now totals $1,800 per month, with prescriptions costing another $250. With a deductible of $6,400, they rarely go to the doctor.

There just arent any alternatives, he said. Thats the problem. There are no choices.

Martin earns too much money to qualify for subsidies, but under the Republican legislation, he would be likely to receive a tax credit of several thousand dollars  although by the time that perk kicks in, Martin will probably be old enough to switch to Medicare. In the meantime, hes using savings to pay the bills.

His friend Tim Weinberger, a 48-year-old owner of a small maintenance company, doesnt have that kind of cash and hasnt had insurance in at least a decade. The last time he saw a doctor was six years ago, after an accident. When Obamacare first started, Weinberger said, it would have cost him about $250 per month for a plan, which he couldnt afford. He assumes the price is even higher now. So Weinberger goes without insurance, as do his two employees. When filing his taxes, Weinberger says, he claims to have insurance to avoid having to pay a penalty he considers unfair.

It would be nice to have a doctor, he said, just to check in on every once in a while.

As several thousand of Trumps supporters converged in the historic Municipal Auditorium on Wednesday, more than 2,500 protesters gathered outside. They urged their fellow Tennesseans to not trust the presidents vague promises and to study the Congressional Budget Offices score of the bill, which estimates 24 million fewer people will have health insurance coverage by 2026 and that Medicaid would be cut by $880 billion over 10 years.



Tim Weinberger, 48, a maintenance-business owner and Trump supporter in his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Many of these activists have been fighting for years for the state to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which it never did, and now they face a future thats even bleaker. They warn that the proposed legislation is likely to lead to fewer children and pregnant women receiving care, less funding for nursing homes and rural hospitals, dramatic cuts to mental health and drug treatment programs, and less support for the disabled.

People are going to die, and thats the bottom line. People are going to die because of what were doing with this legislation, said Sharon Cox, a former pediatric nurse who was once a director at a childrens hospital, during a news conference ahead of Trumps visit.

As Trumps supporters walked past these protesters, some said they werent sure what or whom to believe. Several said that while the Republican plan isnt perfect, they believe its probably better than the Affordable Care Act and its plans, which can cost more than a mortgage payment.

A 51-year-old history teacher from Alabama said his 27-year-old son was kicked off the family plan on March 1 and has yet to find an affordable alternative. A 53-year-old self-employed construction worker watched his premium go from $133 per month several years ago to $803 this year, even though his income didnt change. A couple in their 50s who own a manufacturing plant in Decaturville say they stopped offering their 60 employees health insurance several years ago when plans on the exchange were cheaper  only to see the cost of those plans skyrocket beyond their employees means.

When the federal health exchange launched, Nancy Ware, 58, researched plans for her son, who works in the service industry and is now 35. At first, she said, he covered the cost of a $250-per-month plan. When it jumped to about $500, she covered half of the cost. Last year, when it grew to $700 per month, he decided to go without coverage and pay the fine, according to Ware. Now, she said, the price tag is $900 per month, which would have been half of his wages.

Ware is a landscaper and often works near Section 8 housing in the Nashville area, and she becomes furious when she sees residents who drive better cars than I do, they have weaves and hair color better than I can, they have manicures. As Ware, who is white, waited in line for the rally to start, a group of young African American protesters walked by, and she yelled at them, Go cash your welfare checks!

He gets penalized on his income taxes, while these people that dont know how to pull their pants up can go get it for free, said Ware, whose employer covers the full cost of her health care. Make it even. Make it balanced.

Ware hopes that Trump can change this, although she says she wont fault him if he cant. She doesnt believe news reports saying that 24 million people could lose their coverage under his plan.

Nothing is in concrete yet. Give the man a chance, she said. Until you hear it from Donald J. Trump himself  and not the news media  then dont even worry about it. Wait until you hear the man say it, because he will tweet it, he will Facebook it or he will go onto national television and tell everybody at the same time.
House Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) speaks during the Friends of Ireland Luncheon at the Capitol on Thursday. (Olivier Douliery / Pool/EPA)

Arch conservatives have come to define the House Republican brand this decade, pushing the Treasury to the edge of default in 2011, shutting down the government in 2013 and supporting the most right-wing contenders in last years presidential primary.

Now, however, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) is dealing with a different rebellious flank within the House Republican Conference as he pushes a massive health-care bill toward the floor next week. Larger in number but softer in tone than their conservative counterparts, moderate Republicans are shaping up to be at least as big a hurdle to achieving the long-held goal of repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a more market-oriented series of policies.

These Republicans are getting their share of meetings with Ryan and his leadership team, voicing their concerns about the impact specific pieces of the bill would have in their districts. They are making clear that any negative fallout from these policy moves would place their seats in jeopardy in next years midterm elections, a fate that Ryan understands would open the door to losing the House majority.

And, of course, these moderates are making their case in a much quieter fashion than members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly 30 conservatives who have used their high-profile media appearances to gain several audiences with President Trump to question Ryans direction in the health-care fight.

We have our own way of evaluating things and making our points heard, and its not necessarily through the press, the way that they do it, Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), a second-term lawmaker from the Philadelphias western suburbs, said Thursday.

This is new math for Ryan. In his first year on the job, he mostly faced the same battles that his predecessor, John A. Boehner, had in his five years as speaker: The right wing always caused the most trouble.

Eventually those rabble-rousers from the Freedom Caucus helped push Boehner (R-Ohio) out the door by threatening to oppose his hold on the speakers gavel, and they had enough votes to likely block him.

[GOP health-care plan: Key House panel calls for work requirements, additional cuts in Medicaid]

For sure, conservatives far outnumber moderates in the increasingly right-tilting caucus that Ryan oversees. But the vast majority of those conservatives are amenable to Ryans policy provisions, leaving 30 or so members of the Freedom Caucus as the biggest troublemakers.

Meanwhile, according to an analysis by the FiveThirtyEight blog, there are roughly 60 Republicans who are either members of the mainstream Tuesday Group or sit in districts that leaned toward Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

The speaker can afford just 21 defections from his ranks and still pass the bill by the slimmest of margins, so Ryan convened a meeting Thursday with three representatives each from the ideological caucuses, including the Freedom Caucus, the more traditionally conservative Republican Study Group and the moderates in the Tuesday Group.

In the fight over Ryans health bill, the American Health Care Act, Republican strategists suggest the members of the far-right corner of the conference do not have enough votes to sink the legislation on their own.

Theres also a particularly strong belief among House GOP leaders that if Trump puts his full force behind the legislation, these Freedom Caucus members will buckle.

Take Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the caucus chairman, who is currently leaning against the legislation. Trump won Meadowss district in western North Carolina by nearly 30 percentage points, a much bigger margin than Republican Mitt Romney won there in 2012.

Thats not the case with almost three dozen Republicans who come from districts that Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 4 percentage points.

These Republicans saw the Congressional Budget Office estimate of 24 million more uninsured from Ryans legislation and gasped. They know their constituents might be frustrated with Obamacare, but they tend to be more diverse and from the suburban professional ranks, unwilling to throw people off insurance with no substitute.

We just need to make sure that we are helping the people who are most in need, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said.

Curbelo won a second term from his South Florida district in a rout even though Trump lost there by 16 percentage points.

But 2018 will be a very different race. Like the vast majority of Republicans in tough districts, Curbelo has never run with a Republican holding the presidency.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a longtime reliable ally of leadership, also wont commit to supporting the health legislation despite a meeting Wednesday with Ryan. He barely survived his 2016 election after his suburban Southern California district swung sharply to Clinton.

Many of these wavering Republicans come from states that adopted the expanded Medicaid rolls the ACA allowed, a provision that would be phased out under the current Ryan proposal.

Thats one of the great concerns for Rep. Daniel Donovan (R-N.Y.), whose district in Staten Island and Brooklyn actually supported Trump by a wide margin. His meetings with local health industry officials have been brutal.

Theyre all against the current form of the bill, theyre all concerned, Donovan said.

He wants to prevent his Freedom Caucus counterparts from speeding up the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion.

Our health-care system is broken, it needs to be repaired, but I think we have to help those people that were harmed by the Affordable Care Act without harming the people that were helped by it, Donovan said Thursday.

The underlying theme of the Tuesday Group Republicans is to make their voices heard quietly, in the speakers office or on the House floor, to try keep the bill from going too far to the right. You sort of want to keep your powder dry until youre able to look at everything and sift through it, Costello said.

Ultimately, however, the test for these Republicans will be how they respond if Ryan and Trump appease the conservatives.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), chairman of the Tuesday Group, delivered a warning that his moderates might be willing to topple the entire legislation if it means a bad deal for their districts.

He wouldnt commit to how many were in those ranks, but for the first time these moderates have leverage, if they choose to use it.

Enough to make a difference, Dent said.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Right-wing populist leader Geert Wilders, center right, arrives for a meeting of party leaders with the chairwoman of the parliament to discus first steps in forming a new Dutch coalition government in The Hague, March 16, 2017. (Peter Dejong/AP)

If the Dutch anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders were any other politician, his robust election showing this week would warrant a shot at joining a political coalition.

But the bleached-blond agitator says Moroccans are scum, mosques are havens of terrorism and the Koran is a blueprint for destruction, positions no mainstream Dutch leader will endorse.

The anxious conventional leaders of Europe, fearful that an anti-establishment surge was unstoppable, breathed with relief after Dutch voters in Wednesdays election failed to make Wilders the biggest politician in the Netherlands. They hope for a repeat in France and Germany later this year. But for those who think that the Netherlands is now as placid as its canals, Wilderss followers have a message: They are furious that they have been locked out of power. And they say their ranks will continue to grow.

This is a very big shame. Its unacceptable. There are so many people who are just being put aside, said Katherine ter Weide, an elegantly dressed 72-year-old in the Wilders stronghold of Almere who said Friday that she feared how the world for our children and grandchildren is being destroyed.

All the things hes been warning over all these years have come true, she said. Theyve always been closing their eyes.

(Michael Birnbaum,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

First it was the headscarves in the streets of her tidy planned community, a three-decade-old city just outside Amsterdam built on land reclaimed from the sea.

Then it was the gang of Moroccan men who she said assaulted her 19-year-old granddaughter, a memory so painful that it brings her to tears.

And when a dark-skinned man zoomed down a pedestrian shopping plaza and ter Weide yelled at him that he needed to go back on the street, he rode up and threatened her, she said, draining any remaining sense of security.

They are afraid of him, she said of her nations establishment leaders and their view toward Wilders. And they dont want him to be right. But hes right all the time.

For now, Wilders can enjoy the luxury of being his nations largest opposition force, armed with an outsize megaphone but deprived of the responsibilities of power. He need not compromise  as he once did during a spell inside a coalition from 2010 until 2012  and he therefore need not disappoint either his loyalists or those who might be swayed into his camp. He has vowed to emerge on top after the next election.

The fight against Islamization and the E.U. will now simply be tougher, stronger and more effective as the second largest party in the Netherlands! Wilders wrote on Twitter on Friday, embracing the expansion of his seats in parliament by a third.

In the end, he gathered 1.7 million votes  a robust force in a nation of 15.9 million eligible voters, especially given the fractured political landscape where voters could choose among 28 parties. It was the best-ever showing for Wilders in absolute votes, even if it yielded fewer seats in parliament than after the 2010 elections. And the recent campaign was held on his terms, orbiting around issues of immigration, integration and Islam.

1 of 30 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Scenes in the Netherlands during the election View Photos Dutch voters headed to the polls in an election that will set the tone for a year of ballot-box drama in Europe, as anti-immigrant, anti-establishment campaigners test their strength against long-serving politicians and parties. Caption Dutch voters headed to the polls in an election that will set the tone for a year of ballot-box drama in Europe. March 15, 2017 A woman leaves after casting her vote at the Kerkhovense Molen, a windmill turned polling station in Oisterwijk, Netherlands. Peter Dejong/AP Wait 1 second to continue.

The advantage he might derive from his exclusion from power could be seen in Almeres streets Friday, as even some people who did not vote for him said that he ought to be included in a coalition.

Its not right. He should have the chance to join the government, said Rina van Dijk, 59, who lost her job at a Dutch window-blind manufacturer when production was outsourced to Poland. Van Dijk cant find another job  Im too old, she said  and she says parts of Wilderss message make sense, even if she doesnt always like the way he says it.

People are on a waiting list for 10 years, and they dont get a place to live. These refugees come here, and they get a place to live right away. I understand those tensions, she said.

She said she wanted Wilders to be handed a scrap of power, even though she voted for the center-right party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

I would like to see, with all the things Wilders is saying, whether he can do anything, she said.

The exclusion also carries a cost for those who want Wilders to moderate his tone, analysts said.

He is more isolated than he ever was before. The risk in this is that he has no option but to further radicalize, said Job Janssen, a Dutch political analyst who lives in Berlin. To continue to dominate debate, the only option is a confrontational course.

Even so, Janssen said that Wilders probably has hit his ceiling. He did little to build a campaign structure, and his shoestring budget limited his appearances. A constellation of new far-right parties also drained some of his support.

Further, he has given little indication of an effort that would help him transcend his status as perpetual gadfly and object of media fascination.

This is not the behavior of a man who is trying to become a coalition partner, said Koen Vossen, who wrote a book analyzing Wilderss political appeal and organization.

But a growing number of Dutch voters truly want a political revolution in their country, pollsters say  and their faith in their institutions is cratering when the leaders they support are excluded from office.

There are a lot of Muslims. There are a lot of black people. The white people, the Dutch people, theyre getting less and less, said Linda Muis, 51, a bartender at Cafe Cheers in Almere.

She said that her nation needs to fight back. When a Moroccan kid commits a crime, the whole family should be sent back to Morocco, she said.

Or lock them up for life, she said. Wilders said women shouldnt wear headscarves. I agree with that.

Wilderss shutout from power infuriates her, she said  and she said her faith in Dutch democracy was going out the window.

So many people voted for him. But nobody wants to do a coalition with him, she said. Nobodys going to let him win.

michael.birnbaum@washpost.com

Annabell Van den Berghe contributed to this report.

Read more:

Wilders vows to be player in forming of Dutch government despite 2nd-place finish

A Trump bump to reorder European politics? Not so fast.

Meet Europes far-right leaders

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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US speaks of N Korea military option

The US has said its policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea is over, and suggested it may decide to take pre-emptive military action.
The body of a Somali refugee, killed in an attack on a boat off the coast of Yemen, is carried at the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Yemen, on March 17. (Abduljabbar Zeyad/Reuters)

An apparent military strike targeted a boat carrying Somali refugees off the coast of war-battered Yemen, killing dozens of people along a dangerous migrant route that leads to Libya and to smuggling ships heading to Europe, U.N. and Yemeni officials said Friday.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack early Friday, which caused heavy loss of life among Somalis who first came to Yemen to escape violence in their homeland.

Two security officials in the Yemeni capital, which is controlled by Houthi rebels battling a Saudi-led coalition, said the attack was carried out by a coalition Apache helicopter. The claim could not immediately be confirmed.

Yemeni and U.N. officials said more than 40 people were killed and about 80 injured, adding that the death toll could rise.

Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM), said 42 bodies were recovered from the narrow channel at the mouth of the Red Sea. Abdiker said there were conflicting messages on whether the refugee boat was targeted by a warship or an attack helicopter.

Belongings of Somali refugees killed in an attack off the coast of Yemen lie scattered on a boat in the western Yemeni city of Hodeida on March 17. (Zahir Mohamed/European Pressphoto Agency)

A Pentagon spokesman, Adam Stump, said Friday that no U.S. aircraft were involved in the reported attack. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates operate U.S.-manufactured Apache helicopters in the Yemeni theater.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has said that Shiite Houthi rebels use the Red Sea strait to smuggle weapons into the country, which has been devastated by years of warfare.

Images showed bodies strewn on the ground at the port of Hodeida in western Yemen, their faces covered with blankets. Abdiker said some bodies were taken to a fish market in the town because the mortuaries were full.

[For Saudi Arabia, struggles in Yemen have deep roots]

Abdulmalik Jarrallah, head of the Health Ministry office in Hodeida, said fishing boats carried dead and injured refugees to the port early Friday. Some of the injured are in critical condition, he said. Unfortunately we expect that the death toll will go up.

U.N. officials have helped some Somali refugees in Yemen return home. But the boat that came under attack was headed for Sudan with 140 people aboard, the U.N. refugee agency said. That suggested it was following an increasingly active migrant route to try to reach Libya and the smuggler boats making the dangerous Mediterranean crossings to Europe.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is appalled by the deaths, said William Spindler, the refugee agencys spokesman. The International Committee of the Red Cross called for an immediate investigation.

The attack underscores the perils for any vessel operating off Yemen, which has been ravaged by a nearly two-year-old war led by Saudi forces against rebel fighters believed to be supported by Iran and others. The country is also a base for militant factions including an al-Qaeda branch that was targeted by a U.S.-led raid in late January. The casualties in that raid included a Navy SEAL who was killed during a counterattack.

Thousands of Somali refugees  who came to Yemen to escape their countrys own chaos  have once again fled. Some have returned to Somalia, and others have tried to make it to Europe through Libya  a route marked by a sharp rise in deaths.

On Friday, the IOM released a report documenting 7,763 migrant deaths in 2016 worldwide, a 27 percent increase from the 6,107 recorded in 2015. Two-thirds of those deaths last year occurred in the Mediterranean Sea.

U.N. officials said they believed the refugees killed Thursday were probably headed to North Africa and then across the Mediterranean.

As conditions in Yemen deteriorate as a result of the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis, refugees and asylum seekers are increasingly fleeing onward, following established migratory routes, including across the Red Sea to Sudan with the intention of heading onward to Europe, Spindler said.

Despite the conflict, Yemen still harbors 255,000 Somali refugees, according to UNHCR. Between March 2015 and January 2017, 34,760 people fled from Yemen to Somalia  a mix of Somali refugees returning home and Yemenis escaping their country, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a research organization.

Some of the area around the strait is controlled by Houthi rebel fighters, who overran Yemens capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and forced the Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia.

Somalia is still struggling with a powerful Islamist insurgency and a looming famine, prompting many Somali refugees in Yemen to pay smugglers to take them to Europe rather than return home.

It is unclear exactly how many Somalis are departing Yemen with hopes of arriving in Europe. Overall, more than 6,500 Somalis arrived in Europe by sea in 2016, making Somalia one of the most common countries of origin for refugees, according to the IOM.

Sieff reported from Nairobi. William Branigin, Brian Murphy and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

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Syrian Civil Defense volunteers, known as the White Helmets, dig through the rubble of a mosque following a reported airstrike in the village of Al-Jineh in Aleppo. The U.S. military says it carried out an airstrike against an al-Qaeda target but denies deliberately hitting a mosque, where dozens were killed.

March 16, 2017 Syrian Civil Defense volunteers, known as the White Helmets, dig through the rubble of a mosque following a reported airstrike in the village of Al-Jineh in Aleppo. The U.S. military says it carried out an airstrike against an al-Qaeda target but denies deliberately hitting a mosque, where dozens were killed. Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

The Pentagon said an attack killed scores of al-Qaeda militants, but local residents said a mosque crowded with civilians was hit.

The United States said it carried out an airstrike against al-Qaeda but denies that it deliberately targeted a mosque.

The United States said it carried out an airstrike against al-Qaeda but denies that it deliberately targeted a mosque.

U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles and dropped a 500-pound bomb outside Aleppo on Thursday in an attack that the Pentagon said killed scores of al-Qaeda militants but that local residents described as an assault on a mosque crowded with civilians.

U.S. officials said the strikes in the town of Jinah killed dozens of militants at a meeting of the terrorist group. But local activists and a monitoring group reported that at least 46 people died, and more were trapped under rubble, when the attack struck a mosque during a religious gathering.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring network, described the scene in Jinah as a massacre, saying the dead were mostly civilians. Photos from the area showed rescue workers pulling mangled bodies from a mound of rubble.

Bodies filled the space, said Mohamed al-Shaghal, a journalist who arrived at the scene shortly after the attack. He said the mosque had been destroyed.

The disputed strike occurred

as the Trump administration makes plans to expand its troop presence in Syria, part of a push to intensify counterterrorism operations across the Middle East, and weeks after a U.S. operation against al-Qaeda left civilians dead in Yemen.





It also takes place as the White House considers lifting rules enacted by the Obama administration that sought to avoid civilian deaths, another sign of President Trumps more aggressive approach to dealing with terrorist threats overseas.

If confirmed, Thursdays killing of civilians would mark one of the worst instances of errant deaths alleged against the United States since it began its air campaign in Iraq and Syria more than two years ago. Pentagon officials said they had no credible allegations of civilian casualties in the strike but would begin an investigation if any surfaced.

While the ongoing U.S. air campaign in Syria has mostly targeted the Islamic State, the U.S. military has also launched a parallel effort against what is described as a growing al-Qaeda presence there.

U.S. aircraft have struck dozens of locations in northwest Syria, where an al-Qaeda-linked alliance of rebel groups known as Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is now the ascendant force. The area is also home to an assortment of other rebel groups active in Syrias ongoing civil war.

[Syria fires missiles at Israeli warplanes on bombing run]

Residents in Jinah described powerful blasts Thursday night that shook the ground and sent civilians fleeing, many of them dazed and bleeding. Three residents said that at the time of the attack at least 200 people were gathered in the mosque and a nearby building for religious instruction.

Aerial imagery appeared to confirm that much of the northern section of Jinahs mosque was destroyed, although it was unclear whether the strike was a direct one.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that the American munitions struck a partially constructed community hall that was being used by al-Qaeda fighters. He said there was a mosque nearby but it had not been hit.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record, insisted the decision to conduct the strike was based on verified intelligence. He said that militants had gathered to discuss future operations.

Eric Pahon, another Pentagon spokesman, said the fighters used the half-built hall as a place to educate and indoctrinate al-Qaeda fighters.

Thursdays attack involved two Reaper drones, which fired more than four Hellfire missiles and dropped at least one 500-pound guided bomb in a follow-up strike, the U.S. official said.

Mohamed Shakourdi, a local activist, said the final explosion came as people streamed out of the mosque. They were running as a fourth rocket hit, he said.

The mosque was believed to have housed several displaced families from the nearby city of Aleppo, much of which was leveled by Syrian government forces during an extended campaign to recapture the eastern half of the city from opposition forces.

[WorldViews: Syrias war isnt stopping for Trump]

Whether U.S. drones directly targeted the mosque at al-Jinah, as some allege  or it was instead caught up in a U.S. drone strike in the immediate vicinity  a significant number of civilians died at the scene, according to the White Helmets, local media and casualty monitors, said Chris Woods, director of Airwars, a Britain-based group that tracks allegations of civilian casualties.

The organization said the rate of civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, as well as unilateral U.S. actions, had been rising steeply in Syria and Iraq.

Minimizing harm to noncombatants on the battlefield needs to remain a central priority, not an afterthought, Woods said.

While the U.S. military has placed an emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths since the Islamic State operation began, it has acknowledged at least 200 such casualties since 2014.

Now, U.S. officials are reviewing whether to roll back rules, put in place by President Barack Obama, that subject counterterrorism strikes to close scrutiny by the White House and require the United States to have near certainty that strikes outside war zones will not kill civilians.

The change would hand greater decision-making power back to the Defense Department and CIA, but activists say it would also alienate people in countries with counterterrorism problems and create additional national security threats in the long run.

It is not clear whether the strike in Jinah would have been affected by any changes to those rules.

Six years after the Syrian conflict began, neither the government, backed by Russia and Iran; a small moderate rebel force backed by the United States; nor an array of other armed groups appears to have a clear path to victory.

The northwestern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo are home to hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by fighting between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebels present in a shrinking sliver of territory along the countrys border with Turkey.

In addition to U.S. aircraft, Russian and Syrian aircraft are also known to operate in the area, turning the battlefield into a microcosm of the geopolitical tensions that have come to define Syrias long war.

As the conflict has dragged on, it has allowed Tahrir al-Sham, with its deep ties to al-Qaeda, to play an increasingly powerful role.

[Opinion: Syrian defector who documented Assads atrocities heads to D.C.]

The expanding U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda in Syria is believed to have spread fear among the groups ranks. Its second-in-command in Syria, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, was killed in an airstrike on his car in late February. The U.S. Central Command said a separate bombing raid on an al-Qaeda training camp in January killed more than 100 militants.

Activists and journalists in northeastern Syria said the group has become more cautious about large gatherings, including those such as the one the U.S. military described as taking place Thursday in Jinah. Members often choose to travel by motorcycle instead of by car, and without circulating movement plans ahead of time.

Gibbons-Neff and Ryan reported from Washington. Heba Habib in Stockholm and Zakaria Zakaria in Sanliurfa, Turkey, contributed to this report.

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Demonstrators rally in New York on Thursday during a small protest of President Trumps travel ban and suspension of the country's refugee program. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Trump administration filed court papers Friday hoping to salvage its second version of a travel ban after two judges in separate cases this week found that it probably violated the Constitution.

The Justice Department filed papers in federal court in Maryland, setting up a new legal showdown in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, located in Richmond.

This week, federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued orders against the travel ban, finding that it violated the First Amendment by disfavoring a particular religion. If the Justice Department had appealed the Hawaii order, the case would have gone to the same San Francisco-based appeals court that rejected an earlier version of the travel ban.

William Jay, a former Justice Department lawyer specializing in appellate cases, said the government may have a very simple reason for challenging the Maryland case first: The judge there issued a preliminary injunction, which is more easily appealed in federal courts than temporary restraining orders like the one issued in Hawaii.

There may be another strategic reason to challenge the Maryland case first, said University of Richmond law professor Kevin Walsh.

In Richmond, Walsh said, the government has the benefit of a fresh set of eyes, unclouded by a precedent of the prior order.

He added that a ruling reversing the Maryland injunction could cast doubt on the enforceability in the 4th Circuit of the Hawaii judges order that purports to reach nationwide.

But Walsh cautioned that if the administration were to win its case in Richmond, that could, at least in theory, set up a confusing situation in which the travel ban was enforced in one part of the country but not another.

Critics of the executive order call it an attempt to fulfill President Trumps campaign promise to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. The administration denies it is a Muslim ban and says the order aims to prevent terrorism by blocking visitors from terror-prone countries where screening of individuals seeking U.S. visas may not be effective.

Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer representing plaintiffs in the Maryland case, said that the presidents executive order has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason  it violates fundamental provisions of our Constitution. We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled against the first version of Trumps executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program and temporarily barring visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries: Libya, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. A three-judge panel found that executive order violated the due process rights of people who had previously been approved to visit the United States.

In response to the legal setback, the White House crafted a new version that dropped Iraq from the list of countries and exempted holders of valid visas and green cards.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

But the new version also quickly ran afoul of the courts.

In Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watsons 43-page ruling used the public statements of the president and his senior advisers to conclude that there was a strong likelihood of success that opponents of the travel ban would be able to prove it violates the Constitution.

The First Amendment prohibits any law respecting an establishment of religion, meaning the government must remain neutral among religions  or between religions and nonreligion  and not favor or disfavor a particular faith.

A reasonable, objective observer  enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance  would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, Watson wrote.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Nashville shortly after the judges decision, insisted he would not back down. Were going to fight this terrible ruling, he said, to applause from the crowd. Were going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The second version of the travel ban is a watered-down version of the first one, the president said. And let me tell you something. I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.

The Justice Department has said it will continue to defend the presidents order in court.

In the Maryland case, U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang wrote that the origins of the travel ban suggest that religious screening, not national security, was the primary purpose.

The fact that the White House took the highly irregular step of first introducing the travel ban without receiving the input and judgment of the relevant national security agencies strongly suggests that the religious purpose was primary, and the national security purpose, even if legitimate, is a secondary post hoc rationale, the judge wrote.

Read more:

7 things Trump and his advisers have said about the travel ban that wound up hurting them in court

Trump and his advisers cant keep quiet  and its becoming a real problem
Israeli soldiers take part in a military training exercise in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the Syrian border on Feb. 21. (Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty Images)

Syria launched antiaircraft missiles Friday at Israeli jets returning home from a bombing run over central Syria, marking a serious escalation between the two Middle East foes.

In a rare communique, in which Israel took responsibility for usually clandestine airstrikes, the Israeli air force confirmed that its warplanes had struck several targets in neighboring Syria.

Israeli military spokesmen said the jets had returned to Israel-controlled airspace over the occupied Jordan Valley when the Syrian army fired antiaircraft missiles.

Israel responded to the incoming Syrian rockets by deploying its own missiles. At least one of the Syrian missiles was intercepted by Israels cutting-edge Arrow antimissile system, Israeli media reported. The Arrow is designed to knock down incoming ballistic missiles and was developed with financial and technical assistance from the United States.

Israeli news media reported that this was the first time that the Arrow system had been deployed to respond to a real threat.

(The Washington Post)

The sounds of two distinct booms could be heard in Jerusalem soon after the arrival of the Syrian projectiles. The incoming missiles also set off warning sirens in the Jordan Valley, home to the ancient city of Jericho as well Palestinian farming villages and Jewish settlements.

Over the past five years, Israeli jets have from time to time struck what Israeli military analysts describe as weapons caches and convoys of arms being transferred from Syrian stockpiles to the Lebanon-based Shiite militia Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy fighting alongside troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel fears that as the Syrian civil war possibly winds down, Hezbollah could receive a windfall in sophisticated arms from Assad and Iran. Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war along the Israel-Lebanon border in 2006, and both sides say they are prepared for another.

Israel also occupies two-thirds of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israeli officials say they will never return the territory to Syria.

Israel reported no injuries or damage to its pilots or aircraft. The Israeli army did not reveal the target of its overnight airstrikes. Israels Channel 10 said the mission was to destroy a weapons convoy destined for Hezbollah.

Syrias military and media said the Israelis hit sites in central Syria near Palmyra, and claimed that Syrias antiaircraft batteries had downed an Israeli jet. Our air defense engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one, and forced the rest to flee, the Syrian army said in a statement reported by state news agency Sana.

Israeli military spokesmen said the claim was false.

Read more:

Hezbollah, Russia and the U.S. help Syria retake Palmyra

U.S. forces in Syria try to keep warring allies apart

Our journey to the front lines in the fight against ISIS

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Sen. Alejandro Guilliers likely presidential campaign in Chile could benefit from the anti-establishment upsurge in global politics. ( Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

Right-wing candidates have been winning races across Latin America lately, and with Chiles economy sagging, conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera appears headed for a return to power in the presidential election scheduled for November.

But Pinera, who led Chile from 2010 to 2014, may be at risk of running into one of the other prevailing forces in global politics: an antiestablishment upsurge, which could benefit his likely opponent, leftist senator and former news anchor Alejandro Guillier.

The campaign will be closely watched in the coming months. Chile is one of Latin Americas leading economies, and the country is often held up as an example of clean, technocratic governance.

With their campaigns not yet official, Pinera and Guillier are polling virtually even. That alone is no small feat for Guillier, 64, an independent and relative political newcomer with little support from Chiles established parties. With Pinera nagged by accusations of unscrupulous business deals and conflicts of interest, Guillier could pull off an upset, analysts say.

If economic growth isnt the central theme of the election, and it becomes a referendum on the establishment and Chiles political class, then the winner will be Guillier, said Roberto Mendez, president of GFK Adimark, a leading pollster.

After a decade during which leftists dominated South American elections, right-wing candidates have won the presidency in Argentina and Peru, with conservatives also faring well in Brazils recent municipal contests.

Pinera promises to restore the sheen to the so-called Chilean model, a message that has broad appeal at a time when the countrys current government, led by leftist President Michelle Bachelet, has been plumbing the depths of voter disapproval. Hobbled by scandals, stumbles and natural disasters including Chiles worst-ever wildfires, the once-popular Bachelet saw her approval rating slump to 23 percent in GFK Adimarks February survey.

[South Americas rightward turn]

Guillier, 64, won a senate seat in 2013 after a long career on Chiles nightly news, during which he was often rated by audiences as the countrys most trusted broadcaster. Its as if Walter Cronkite decided to run for office, Mendez said.

The biggest knock on him, analysts say, is that hes untested and hasnt laid out a plan for change. And though Guillier is not part of the Bachelet government, he hasnt broken with her either.

Guillier has a very narrow path to victory, said political analyst Ascanio Cavallo. This election is going to be very difficult for the center-left because of what its inherited from the current government.

Pinera, 67, appeals with a message akin to make Chile great again  albeit less as a matter of nationalism than one of managerial competence and efficiency. With an estimated $2.7 billion fortune from investments in banking, airlines and other industries, Pinera may be the only politician in the Americas whose wealth could rival President Trumps.

Pinera ended his first term with mixed ratings, but he won high marks for his handling of an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in 2010 and for freeing 33 trapped miners whose plight captured the worlds attention that year. Chiles system does not allow presidents to serve consecutive terms.

Anger at the governments handling of this years wildfires, which have killed at least 11 people and scorched more than a million acres, has translated into support for a leader who can steer the country through a crisis.

One of Chiles wealthiest men, Pinera is viewed as a center-right moderate and not a figure associated with the hard-right conservatism of the countrys 1973-1990 military dictatorship. Yet Pinera became the target of student rage at the end of his first presidency, when huge street protests challenged the countrys neo-liberal economic model.

Those demonstrations helped in the electoral victory of Bachelet, who had served as Chiles first female president from 2006 to 2010. But her current term has been far rockier, and a corruption scandal involving her son and daughter-in-law seems to have irreparably damaged her public image.

Her proposals for sweeping changes to Chiles tax codes and public education system have come up short.

[Chile tax overhaul aims to tackle one of the worlds highest rates of inequality]

Bachelet is so unpopular that former president Ricardo Lagos, who finished his term in 2006 with high marks, has fallen far behind Guillier as the candidate of the center-left in the current race, because hes viewed as close to the government.

Whats in crisis is the left, here just as everywhere, said Cavallo. They dont have a plan, other than to expand welfare benefits and the size of the state, even when resources arent available to do it.

Pinera appeals to Chileans who think the country has gone off the rails and needs to return to the laissez-faire formula credited for decades of growth. Chiles economy has been expanding at roughly 2 percent in recent years, about half as fast as it did a decade ago, when South Americas commodity exports were booming.

Pinera made a fortune during those years, but now his biggest liability may be his sprawling investment portfolio.

He has come under fire in recent months for revelations that his family invested in a Peruvian fishing company that may have benefited from maritime accords Pinera negotiated while in office. His defenders counter that the investments were made through a blind trust.

Prosecutors say they also are looking at claims that Pineras government blocked a hydroelectric plant, the construction of which would have affected his stake in a mining company.

Pinera has not faced any charges and denies any wrongdoing, accusing Chiles Communist Party of mounting a dirty campaign to keep him out of office.

Still, analysts say the current anti-establishment political climate leaves voters especially sensitive to claims of impropriety, and Pinera will pay a steep price if the accusations linger.

With no other leading figure on the right aside from Pinera, the beneficiary of voter dissatisfaction would be Guillier. His many years on television make him a familiar, likable figure to many Chileans, and he is not viewed as part of the countrys political and business elite.

In perhaps the clearest sign that the race will be Pineras to lose, 45 percent of the 1,051 Chileans who responded to Adimarks February survey said they expected Pinera to win, regardless of whether they planned to vote for him or not. Only 28 percent predicted a victory for Guillier.

Read more:

More than 100 vineyards decimated in Chiles worst forest disaster in history

How a scandal that started in Brazil is now roiling other Latin American countries

Brazil swings to the right, setting the stage for a Trump-like leader

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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The Trump administration challenged China to do more to pull its ally North Korea back from the nuclear brink as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson bluntly declared Friday that the United States will do whatever is necessary to prevent a North Korean attack.

All options are on the table, Tillerson said in Seoul, where he underscored U.S. commitment to Asian allies threatened by North Korea and said he would lean on China during a visit there Saturday.

In Washington, President Trump goaded China, which has extensive economic and political ties to North Korea but has resisted choking off the flow of money and military materials to its ally.

North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been playing the United States for years, Trump wrote on Twitter. China has done little to help!

China has repeatedly pledged to do more, but the Trump presidency, like the Obama and George W. Bush administrations before it, accuses Beijing of going easy on Pyongyang.

A North Korean soldier takes a picture of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from outside the window during his visit Friday to Panmunjom, the truce village on the border between South and North Korea. (Pool photo by Yonhap/via European Pressphoto Agency)

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley went further, telling an interviewer Friday that the Trump administration is making a sharp pivot away from what she said was an ineffectual Obama strategy regarding China and North Korea.

There was a soft approach to China in the past presidency and what I can tell you now is were going to go harder on China, Haley said on Fox News. Were going to say, Look, if you really are wanting to partner with this, if you really are wanting to stop the nuclear testing that is going on in North Korea, prove it. 

[As North Koreas arsenal grows, experts see heightened risk of miscalculation]

At the least, the United States wants China to enforce existing sanctions on North Korea and police what U.S. officials have said are illicit Chinese business and banking deals that benefit the North Korean regime and its steadily improving missile-development program.

We are going to go through and ask them to push towards sanctions and push towards talks with North Korea, Haley said.

China says threats of military action by the United States or its allies South Korea and Japan, both within range of existing North Korean missiles, are unhelpful. Beijing favors further efforts to negotiate with North Korea, and hosted the last such international effort, which failed.

North Korea is known for its exaggerated and bellicose rhetoric, but the combination of threats and missile launches, coinciding with Chinese anger at South Korea for deploying an American antimissile battery, has raised tensions in the region to a level seldom seen in recent years.

Tillerson will be the first high-level Trump administration official to go to China, whose leaders were angered by Trumps frequent bashing of Beijing over trade policies during the presidential campaign and his decision to speak with the elected leader of Taiwan in December.

Trump has tried to smooth the waters by assuring Chinese President Xi Jinping that the United States does not want a trade war and will not upend the decades-old one China policy regarding Taiwan, which Beijing considers a province. Trump is expected to host Xi for a visit next month at Trumps Florida estate.

In contrast, the Trump administration has never let up on campaign-trail criticism of China over North Korea. China is also incensed by ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises this month and the installation of the U.S. missile defense system in South Korea.

The decision to put in the system was made by the Obama administration, and U.S. officials have always insisted it is intended solely for protection against North Korea. But Chinese officials are expected to confront Tillerson with complaints that the system could be used to spy on China.

The Chinese government is now banning many imports from South Korea and stopping Chinese tourist groups from traveling there to try to prompt Seoul to change its mind on the missile system.

Against that backdrop, Tillersons meetings in China probably will be the most difficult and most important of his trip.

We will be discussing with them the serious threat that North Korea poses to peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula, but even beyond, Tillerson said in Seoul.

The United States and its allies still have options on the spectrum between diplomatic talks and military action for persuading the North Korean regime to give up its nuclear weapons, he said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said earlier this year that his country is working on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland. Trump responded in a tweet: It wont happen!

Tillerson has used his three-country Asian tour to underscore that the new Trump administration is fed up with years of North Korea policies that it sees as all carrot and no stick.

Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said at a news conference in Seoul with Yun Byung-se, the South Korean foreign minister. He was referring to the Obama administration policy of trying to wait North Korea out, hoping that sanctions would prove so crippling that Pyongyang would have no choice but to return to denuclearization negotiations.

In recent months, North Korea has been making observable progress toward its goal of building a missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.

In a surprise, Yun appeared to suggest that South Korea would support military options.

We have various policy methods available, said Yun, who is unlikely to remain in his position for much longer, as elections for a new government will be held in early May.

Yun likened the diplomatic effort to restrain North Korea to a building and said military deterrence would be one of the pillars.

[Heres how a North Korean soldier got inches from Rex Tillerson]

Sanctions and diplomatic engagement so far have failed to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But U.S. administrations have long considered military action as nearly impossible because North Korea has artillery aimed at Seoul, a metropolitan area of more than 20 million people just 30 miles south of the demilitarized zone that divides the two Koreas. Thousands of U.S. troops are also within range of potential North Korean shelling or chemical and biological attacks.

Earlier Thursday, Tillerson toured the joint security area in the demilitarized zone, a spot President Bill Clinton once famously described as the scariest place on Earth. North Korean soldiers in helmets were taking photos of Tillerson from just a few feet away as the secretary stood at the line and inside the meeting hut.

The Korean peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel at the end of World War II, a line that was arbitrarily drawn by one of Tillersons predecessors as secretary of state, Dean Rusk, who was an Army colonel at the time. A reporter asked Tillerson on Friday if being at the demilitarized zone brought home the threat of North Korea, but he did not respond.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the time when Dean Rusk drew the line across the Korean peninsula. It was at the end of World War II, not at the end of the Korean War.

Fifield reported from Tokyo.

Read more:

U.S. military deploys advanced defensive missile system to South Korea, citing North Korean threat

North Korea launches more missiles; 3 land in Japanese waters

N. Korea says it was practicing to hit U.S. bases in Japan with missiles

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The head of a U.N. agency responsible for publishing a report earlier this week calling Israel an apartheid regime resigned Friday after U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres pressured her to withdraw the document.

Rima Khalaf, a U.N. undersecretary general and executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) headquartered in Beirut, said her decision to resign followed a request from Guterres to remove the report from the agencys website.

The report, published Wednesday, was immediately slammed by Israel and its closest ally, the United States, who denounced it as anti-Israel propaganda. The U.N. secretary general also distanced himself from the report, saying it was released without prior consultation with the U.N. Secretariat.

On Friday, a spokesman for Guterres told Reuters news agency that the secretary general had accepted Khalafs resignation.

[Is Israel an apartheid state? This U.N. report says yes.]

This is not about content, this is about process," said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. He said the report was published under the U.N. name and using the U.N. logo but without consulting the competent departments.

The report, entitled Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, no longer appears on ESCWAs website.

Israeli officials welcomed Khalafs departure as long overdue.

Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the U.N. It is time to put an end to the practice in which U.N. officials use their position to advance their anti-Israel agenda, said Israels ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon.

He said the secretary generals call to remove the report was an important step in ending what Israelis have long maintained is bias against Israel at the world body.

In a news conference held to announce her resignation, Khalaf, a Jordanian citizen, said she had expected Israel and its allies to pressure the secretary general to renounce the report.

But, she said, she stood by the reports findings. She called the research the first of its kind from a U.N. agency shedding light on "the crimes that Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity," Reuters reported.

[John Kerry condemns Israeli settlements as obstacle to peace]

Authored by Richard Falk, a former U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories known for harsh criticism of both Israel and the United States, and Virginia Tilley, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, the report concluded that Israel has created an apartheid regime aimed at maintaining domination over the Palestinians.

It recommended reviving the U.N. Center Against Apartheid, which closed in 1994 after South Africa ended its apartheid practices, to investigate Israels actions. It also urged support for a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.

The reports authors said although apartheid is associated with South Africa's former system of minority white rule, the term now applies more broadly to crimes against humanity under international law and the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court.

The report identified four distinct groups of Palestinians: those who live within Israels borders, residents of East Jerusalem, Palestinians in the West Bank and refugees. It pointed out that while they are treated differently by Israel, they all face racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime.

[Netanyahu blasts U.N., Obama over settlements resolution]

Israelis, who say the term apartheid is both inaccurate and inflammatory when applied to their conflict with the Palestinians, immediately blasted the report. On Twitter, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon compared it to the Nazi-era tabloid Der Sturmer, which promoted Nazi propaganda and was virulently anti-Semitic.

The report also drew sharp criticism from the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who called it anti-Israel propaganda.

In recent weeks, the U.S. government has indicated that it would consider halting its funding for and participation in various U.N. programs due, among other things, to the United Nations perceived anti-Israel stance.

The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the U.N. system and around the world, Haley said in a press release.

The U.N.'s top donors, including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Canada, must stop funding U.N. bodies obsessed with demonizing Israel, said Gilad Erdan, Israels minister of public security and strategic affairs.

This obsession with condemning Israel does nothing to advance peace or help the Palestinians. All countries concerned with promoting a peaceful solution should stop funding bodies that discriminate against Israel, and insist that the U.N. undergo fundamental reforms, Erdan said.

Read more:

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The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders did not make the breakthrough that was long predicted in yesterdays Dutch election. With 13.1 percent of the vote, it came in second behind the right-wing Liberals (VVD) of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who won the election with 21.3 percent of the vote.

However, Wilders poorer than expected result by no means signals an end of the sharp shift to the right in European politics. Ruttes VVD and the Christian Democrats (CDA), which came in third with 12.4 percent, have largely taken over the xenophobic, anti-Islamic rhetoric of Wilders, who set the tone for the entire election. Their only difference with Wilders is over the European Union. While Wilders is calling for a referendum on exiting the EU, Ruttes VVD and most of the other bourgeois parties are strongly defending it.

Wilders will continue to play a major political role. While he did not meet the expectations raised by the polls, he improved his vote by 3 percent since the 2012 election. PVV-voters, thank you! We have won seats! The first win is in. And Rutte is far from rid of me!! read his first response to the result on Twitter.

Notwithstanding Ruttes victory, the vote of the ruling coalition collapsed, almost halving the number of its seats in parliament from 79 to 42. This is far from the 76 seats needed to form a majority in the 150-seat parliament.

While Ruttes right Liberals lost eight of their previous 41 seats, the biggest loser in the election was their coalition partner, the Labour Party (PvdA). Labour was punished for its support for austerity and its massive attacks on social welfare. Its vote collapsed from 25 percent to less than 6 percent. With only nine seats left, it is now in seventh placebehind the Greens and the ex-Maoist Socialist Party.

The vote of the Socialist Party, which supported the anti-immigrant drive of the main bourgeois parties, went slightly down from 9.6 to 9.1 percent. In contrast, the Green-Left vote quadrupled from 2.3 to 9 percent. Among voters under 34, it received more than a third of the vote, and in Amsterdam it was the strongest party, with almost a fifth of the vote.

The entire election campaign was highly polarized. This led to a large turnout of 82 percent, the highest for 31 years and 6 percent more than in the last election.

The Green Left, as well as other smaller parties and the left Liberals (D66), who increased their vote from 8 to 12.1 percent, clearly benefitted from the opposition to Wilders fascistic campaign, particularly among younger people. But both, the Greens and D66, seek to channel the opposition to Wilders behind staunch support for the EU and are quite prepared to back a right-wing government led by Rutte. Basing themselves on sections of the middle class, they play a similar role to those in the United States who try to divert the opposition against Trump into the dead end of the pro-Wall-Street and pro-war Democratic Party.

Governments all over Europe welcomed the Dutch election result with relief. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it was a success for Europe. He said he was now optimistic about the coming election in France. The head of Chancellor Angela Merkels office, Peter Altmaier, wrote on Twitter: The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!... Congratulations on this great result.

Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian prime minister, said the anti-EU right has lost the elections, and urged supporters to work to revitalise the Union.

French President Francois Hollande pontificated, The values of openness, respect for others and a faith in Europe's future are the only true response to the nationalist impulses and isolationism that are shaking the world.

However, Wilders is a symptom, not the cause, of the turn to the right in European politics. This turn is the response of the bourgeois parties to a profound crisis of capitalist society in the Netherlands and across the continent.

Neither the EU nor any of the European governments are opposed to Wilders xenophobic and anti-Islamic line. The maltreatment and rejection of refuges has become the official policy of the EU.

At the beginning of the month, Rutte published an open a letter to immigrants, telling them, If you dont like it here, you can leave. And three days ago, he staged a calculated provocation against the Turkish government, banning its ministers from entering the Netherlands in an attempt to stir up nationalist hysteria and win the backing of a section of Wilders potential support.

The only concern of Merkel, Hollande, Gentiloni et al. is the defense of the EU as a basis for escalating militarism, including colonial-style interventions and hostile action against Russia, and for the development of repressive police state measures internally as well as even more sweeping austerity attacks on the working class.

The idea that, after Wilders was boosted by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, his election setback will undermine the prospects of Marine le Pen of the National Front in the French presidential election does not stand up to scrutiny.

Le Pens party has much stronger organizational and historical roots than the PVV, which is very much a one-man band. The FN has been better able to capitalize on the betrayals of Frances Socialist Party government, the crisis of Francois Fillon and the Gaullist right, and the neo-liberal economic agenda of the candidate presently favoured to win, the independent Emmanuel Macron, to combine hostility to the EU with a claim to represent the interests of working people against the establishment.

For the Netherlands, the election opens what is likely to be a period of massive political instability and fierce political and class struggles. The small country of 17 million inhabitants is riven by deep social and cultural divisions. As a former colonial power, it has a huge immigrant community that has been hit very hard by growing social inequality. Liberal cities like Amsterdam stand in contrast to the religious bible belt, one of the most conservative areas in Europe.

In the post-war period, these contradictions were bridged by an elaborate culture of political consensus, which found its highest expression in the collaboration since the 1980s of the neoliberal right, the Labour Party and the trade unions in dismantling the previous social gains of the working class. This has led to sharp social polarization and the virtual collapse of the bourgeois left.

The political situation in the Netherlands is reminiscent of the conditions that existed in Weimar Germany between 1919 and 1933, where a parliament paralyzed by intense conflicts presided over conditions that gave rise to the coming to power of Hitler.

With hardly more than a fifth of the seats in a parliament of 14 or 15 parties, and the country deeply divided, Rutte needs at least three, if not four, coalition partners to form a viable government. It is expected that it will take weeks, if not months, of intense horse-trading and backroom deals to establish a new coalition.

Everything depends now on an independent intervention by the working class. This demands the establishment of a Dutch section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, opposed both to nationalism and the European Union and capable of working with co-thinkers across Europe and internationally to unite workers of all countries on the basis of a socialist program for the overthrow of capitalism.
On Wednesday, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Dennis Williams joined with President Donald Trump and the CEOs of the Big Three US automakers to promote a reactionary program of extreme economic nationalism, corporatism and war.

The event was a campaign-style speech by Trump before UAW bureaucrats and a section of workers bused in by the auto bosses to the decommissioned Willow Run auto plant in Ypsilanti, a suburb of Detroit.

Trump reprised the fascistic themes of his inaugural address, with a heavy emphasis on the unity of workers, employers and the state in defense of the national interest and in opposition to foreigners. That is how we will succeed and grow togetherAmerican workers and American industry side by side, the president declared. Nobody can beat us, folks. Nobody can beat us. Because whether we are rich or poor, young or old, black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.

As a matter of fact, during the Vietnam years, Trump was able to take advantage of the political connections of his millionaire father to stay out of the military and make sure that none of his red blood was spilled in an imperialist war that cost the lives of 58,000 Americansmostly poor and working classand upwards of 3 million Vietnamese.

Trump made explicit the warmongering essence of his corporatist ideology, which fraudulently claims that the corporations, the capitalist state and the working class have identical interests. He hailed as the model for today the united effort of the auto companies, the UAW and the state in producing the B-24 bomber at the now-closed plant during World War II.

At peak production, Trump said, listen to thisits not the country that weve been watching over the last 20 yearsthey were building one B-24 every single hour. We dont hear that. We dont hear that anymore, do we?

Alluding ominously to his plans for a massive military buildup, he continued, Well be back. Well be back soon.

The head of the UAW signaled his support for these policies by appearing on a panel with Trump and the auto bosses prior to the presidents speech. Williams was tellingly seated between the ultra-right-wing billionaire Trump and Ford CEO Mark Fields.

The UAW president declared his support for Trumps trade war agenda against China and Mexico last month and announced that the UAW was reviving its Buy American campaign. Hes the first president that has addressed this issue, Williams said. I have to give him kudos for that.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who sits on Trumps Manufacturing Jobs Initiative panel, promised to partner with Trump in promoting economic nationalism and attacking immigrant workers.

The UAWs last Buy American campaign in the 1980s and 1990s included union officials banning Japanese- and European-built cars from union parking lots, bashing in the windshields of foreign-made cars, and whipping up such hatred that Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American worker in Detroit, was murdered by a Chrysler foreman.

The results of the UAWs previous efforts to promote American nationalism can be seen in the closed factories and devastated former auto-producing cities across the Midwest. Under the corporatist banner of union-management partnership, the union collaborated with the companies in imposing plant closures, mass layoffs and wage cuts so as to promote the competitiveness of American automakers against their overseas competitors.

Wednesdays event underscored a basic reality: The ultra-right-wing nationalist ideology of Trump and his chief strategist, ex-Breitbart News chief Stephen Bannon, is the ideology of the UAW, AFL-CIO and official unions as a whole. They are all seeking to divert the social anger of workers over deindustrialization, inequality and the ravaging of their living standards along the lines of xenophobia and militarism.

The unions, in lockstep with Bannon, insist on the necessity for national unity, so that American business can dominate its foreign rivals. This requires the suppression of the class struggle. The union leadership misdirects workers by promoting the lie that their problems are caused not by capitalism, but by immigrant workers and the theft of American wealth by foreign powers (and workers) benefiting from unfair trade policies.

This UAWs embrace of corporatism is not a new development. It is the outcome of a protracted process that has extended over the course of many decades.

Leon Trotsky warned of the danger of the incorporation of the unions into the state at the very outset of the CIO in the late 1930s and early 1940s, just as the antisocialist bureaucratic leadership was tying the new industrial unions to President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.

The intensification of class contradictions within each country, the intensification of antagonisms between one country and another, produce a situation in which imperialist capitalism can tolerate (i.e., up to a certain time) a reformist bureaucracy only if the latter serves directly as a petty but active stockholder of its imperialist enterprises, of its plans and programs within the country as well as on the world arena, Trotsky wrote in 1940.

During and after World War II, UAW President Walter Reuther played a particularly reactionary role in the anticommunist evolution of the union. He promoted and signed a no-strike pledge and guaranteed the unions collaboration with the war effort in return for the dues checkoff and the institutionalization of the unions by the state. After the war, the union bureaucracy carried out a vicious purge of left-wing union militants while actively supporting US imperialism and the Cold War. The CIOs merger with the AFL in 1955 established the defense of capitalism and imperialism as the official policy of the union.

The development of union corporatism accelerated along with the decline in the global economic position of American capitalism and the rise of European and Asian rivals to the Big Three auto companies. The establishment of a host of joint union-management bodies, along with various slush funds, was part of an effort to obliterate class consciousness and totally subordinate workers to the demands of the corporations and the government.

During the 1980s, every form of resistance was crushed with the collaboration of the unions. A major turning point was Ronald Reagans firing and blacklisting of the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, whose bitter strike was broken with the assistance of the AFL-CIO and UAW bureaucracies. PATCO was followed by a series of bitter and often violent strikes, including Phelps Dodge, Continental Airlines, Greyhound, Hormel and AT Massey Coal, all of which were isolated and betrayed by the union leadership. The bureaucrats argued that strikes and work actions had to be suppressed in an era of globalization in order to ensure the profitability of American corporations.

Analyzing the 1984 UAW-GM contract, which established the legal and technical foundations for the direct collaboration of the union bureaucracy with the corporations and the state, the Workers League, the forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, wrote: The practice of anti-communism is a corporatist alliance with the auto bosses against the auto workers, the abandonment of any defense of the gains made by the union in the past 50 years, the surrender of jobs, wages, benefits and work rules. It is a total sellout and betrayal of the independent interests of the working class, in order to defend the capitalist system.

Staffed and run by right-wing bureaucrats, the unions are today a savage industrial police force that works with the government and corporations to suppress the class struggle. They are the direct enforcers of cuts in wages, pensions and health benefits. The income of the top bureaucrats and their aides, which can reach well into six figures, is entirely dependent on this parasitic arrangement.

The UAW has not called a single national strike in nearly 40 years. Once considered a fact of daily life, strikes and walkouts have all but disappeared from the scene. Limited and deliberately isolated strikes are called on occasion to divide the working class and wear down and starve militant workers into submitting to company demands. Not surprisingly, a drastic decline in union membership has accompanied the unions ever more direct and open collaboration with the corporations to cut living standards and shut down factories.

Williams appearance with Trump is only the latest confirmation of the far-sighted analysis of the trade unions made by the Socialist Equality Party.

The reality is that workers are totally without any form of representation in their fight for decent wages and working conditions. The unions role as an industrial police force and their open alignment with the fascistic policies of the Trump administration raise sharply the need for the building in every workplace of democratic rank-and-file committees, which can take the struggle in defense of jobs and living standards out of the hands of the bureaucracy and place the initiative back in the hands of the working class.

This industrial fight must be combined with an independent political strategy, based on a break with the two-party system of American big business and the building of a mass socialist movement of the working class.
A woman breast pumping. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Affordable Care Act, along with many state laws, mandates that all workplaces provide nursing mothers with breaks and a private room  that is not a bathroom  in which to express breastmilk. It doesnt mention jury duty, however, as one mother in Minnesota unpleasantly discovered this week. As one does when subjected to injustice, she shared her ordeal on Facebook.

Terrible experience at jury duty today. As a nursing mother I was completely disappointed with the lack of regard and dismissal I felt when trying to pump (express breastmilk) on a schedule today, Amanda Chandler wrote on Tuesday. She needed to pump four times a day, but was only allowed two breaks, and on her second day at the Hennepin County Government Center, she was shown to a bathroom with a chair next to a urinal.

This afternoon I was thankful to just finally be able to pump, she wrote. Tonight Im pissed. Seems pretty ironic that the very place which is supposed to uphold and enforce the laws would not follow or adhere to them.

For those of you who havent had the pleasure: Breast-pumping is one of the most uncomfortable experiences women put themselves through (for the best reasons, but still). Even in the most ideal environment, you can feel like a cow in a factory dairy farm as a loud motor and ugly plastic suction cups attempt to take the place of your dear sweet babys mouth. In a cramped bathroom next to a urinal, its, well, dehumanizing, uncomfortable, and gross. To make matters worse, if a woman doesnt pump as frequently as she usually pumps or nurses, her breasts can become painfully engorged, shes at risk of developing an infection, and her body may slow its production of milk.

After Chandlers post went viral, Hennepin County issued a statement to local news station KARE 11. It was all a miscommunication, apparently: District Court has a quiet room on the 24th floor near our jury assembly room that was designed with nursing mothers in mind, which features a locking door for privacy, a sink and a chair. Through a miscommunication, which we regret, a jury panelist was not originally advised of the availability of this room. District Court strives to respect the physical and medical needs of all its jurors.

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This is not the first time a juror has gone viral for her pumping room complaints. In 2014, when a Memphis woman shared photos of the dirty bathroom designated at the Nursing Mothers Restroom in a courthouse, officials quickly promised to create new accommodations.

On Wednesday, Chandler was dismissed from jury duty, an option many nursing mothers take. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 17 states (not Minnesota) and Puerto Rico exempt nursing mothers from serving on a jury. Even with such a law in place, some women may want to serve this civic duty without sacrificing their ability to feed their children.

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A 35-year-old mother of three is crediting her faith as the reason she miraculously survived stage 4 brain cancer a decade ago after being told she had days to live.

A month into her first pregnancy, Ashley Hallford of Douglasville, Georgia, felt a knot in the back of her head that became hard and painful.

I actually discovered [the knot] right before I got pregnant, she told Atlantas 11 Alive. But I wrote it off to be a lymph node because it didnt really hurt.

But as the pain worsened, so did her symptoms. By the time she was 32 weeks pregnant, she was concerned it was something serious, and soon got the devastating news that the lump was indeed cancerous.

Pathologists from all over the country studied the lump, Hallford told the news outlet. They all agreed that it was a rare and very aggressive, possibly hormonally fueled cancer. But nobody could diagnose it.

On Nov. 17, 2007, at 33 weeks, she was induced so that she could begin treatment with her husband, David, by her side.

We were preparing for our son to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit, she says, But when he was born, he didnt have to. He got to go home two days later. The NICU doctor came in to see us, and he said that never in his career had he seen a 33-week term baby not go to the NICU, even for evaluation. That was just a miracle.

She underwent surgery to remove the mass just four days after giving birth. The results, which came back five weeks later, showed that the cancer had spread to her brain, both lungs and a spot on her liver. She was diagnosed as stage 4.

It was then, in Jan. 2008, that doctors told her the brain tumor was inoperable. They also performed a full body scan that showed other cancerous spots throughout her body.

At that point, they stopped trying to figure out what it was, saying, We need to start treating her, or shes gonna die.  she recalls.

Despite receiving the lifetime maximum dosage of radiation in just six weeks, the tumors continued to grow.

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She then turned to faith.

In February or March 2008, at my church, they started praying and fasting, for the whole month, she told 11 Alive. I continued chemo through July 2008, and then had more scans to check progress. I was praying because if there was no change or things were worse, I would be out of options.

Doctors told her it was time to start recording every memory with her family because they didnt know how many more shed be able to make.

So thats what we did, Hallford says. Thats where we were at the end of July. They didnt even know what they were battling, so there would be no other options.

When she went back in for scans, she was prepared to hear that her final days had arrived. Instead, she was told she had many more ahead.

They said, The radiologist report shows no evidence of disease present,  she recalls. I was so dumbfounded by what she said that I was like, What does that mean? She said, It means youre in remission. 

Her medical oncologist, Dr. Debra Miller, told the news outlet that she admitted to Hallford that, I never thought you would have made it.

Theoretically, with stage 4 cancer, youre not curable, says Miller. I met Ashley when she was pregnant, when she had the neck mass. After her first round of treatment, more disease was found in her lungs, and she was retreated. After that, shes been disease free its nothing short of miraculous.

Hallford said that she fought to stay alive for her son. In July, shell have been in remission for nine years.

I credit my recovery to God, 100 percent, she said.

FROM COINAGE: You Dont Need Superpowers to be Batman Just This Much Money

Her miracles only continued from there. After a fertility doctor told her that she was in full-blown menopause and that there was no chance she could have another biological child, she went on to have two more -a boy in 2013 and a girl in January.

I just want to spread hope, she says. When I speak at churches, I speak about the fear. The fear and uncertainty, especially not knowing what I had. Its scary.

She added: I want to give people the strength to go on - even when it comes to infertility. And if thats what I could do in life, I would die happy one day.

This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com
A Tennessee teen and the 50-year-old teacher who allegedly abducted her on Monday are still missing, and investigators are concerned about the alarmingly low number of tips for the AMBER Alert.

They could be anywhere now, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh Devine tells PEOPLE Friday. We need the public to keep an eye out for them.

On Tuesday night, an AMBER alert was issued in several states including Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, for Mary Catherine Elizabeth Thomas, 15, who is believed to be with Tad Cummins, a former health teacher at her high school in Culleoka, Tennessee.

Since then, only 125 tips have come in, says Devine.

We consider this to be an alarmingly low number, he says. When we have an AMBER Alert, typically we have phones ringing off the hook. Thats just not happening in this case.

DeVine adds, That leads us to believe they are holed up and not being seen by the general public right now - or they are outside of the original net we cast, which was across the southeast. Thats why its important that everyone in this nation know about these individuals.

Mary Catherine Elizabeth Thomas

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Authorities believe Cummins is armed with two handguns and that Thomas is in extreme danger.

They also believe Cummins is driving a Silver Nissan Rogue with a Tennessee license plate, with numbers 976ZPT.

The car and the license plate thats the key right now, says Devine.

A warrant has been issued for Cummins arrest for alleged sexual contact with a minor, according to the TBI. The charge stems from an earlier alleged sexual interaction on school property between him and Thomas, say authorities.

Teacher Allegedly Tried to Lure and Potentially Sexually Exploit Her

Cummins and the teen were last seen on Monday morning in Columbia, Tennessee, say investigators. Authorities do not yet know if Thomas was taken against her will.

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But the TBIs investigation allegedly has revealed a troubling pattern of behavior by Cummins, suggesting that he was allegedly abusing his role as a teacher to groom Thomas to try to lure and potentially sexually exploit her, says Devine.

He declined to reveal any more details for now.

Her familys lawyer, Jason Whatley, says that whether Thomas went willingly or not, she is a victim regardless.

This is a 15-year-old girl - and if they are together, she has been groomed by a 50-year-old authority figure, so how could we even define willingly?  Whatley told PEOPLE.

According to Whatley, a student reported to school administration on Jan. 24 that he saw Cummins kissing Thomas in his classroom the day before. One week later, law enforcement informed the teens family of the allegations.

I'll be on with @Michaela on @HLNTV shortly to discuss the latest in the #TNAMBERAlert. Glad to be getting this in front of more folks! pic.twitter.com/gdomujahsH  Josh DeVine (@TBIJoshDeVine) March 17, 2017

My client was as mad as a wet hen when he learned he was kept in the dark, Whatley says. But Cummins was not penalized for the alleged kiss and continued teaching at the school, he claims.

The Maury County Public School District, where Cummins taught and Mary Catherine attended school, released a statement on Tuesday addressing the alleged sexual interaction.

Maury County Public Schools suspended the Culleoka Unit School teacher involved in the law enforcement investigation once we were notified of the allegations, the district said in its statement, according to WKRN.

Since then, the teacher has been dismissed as a result of the investigation, the district said. The district does not tolerate any manner of behavior that is alleged in this incident and will take swift action to remove parties from school campuses who are involved with investigations of this type.

The school district could not be reached by for comment Friday.

Pick up PEOPLEs special editionTrue Crime Stories: Cases That Shocked America,on sale now, for the latest on Casey Anthony, JonBent Ramsey and more.

On Feb. 6, two weeks after the alleged kiss, Whatley says he sent a letter to the school district on behalf of the family, expressing their concerns.

It was only later that same day, after the letter, that Cummins was suspended, Whatley says.

[Maury County Public Schools] already dropped the ball when they failed to tell my client anything for a week, and then didnt get rid of this guy while they investigated, Whatley says. Even if they believe [Cummins] was falsely accused, you get the teacher [and student] out of the situation.

According to Whatley, the school districts decision to allow Cummins to continue teaching was the talk of the school.

I had to get on the school board about talking to their teachers about talking about it in school, in front of pupils, even in front of Mary Catherine herself, Whatley says.

Mary Catherine was last seen wearing a flannel shirt and black leggings. She is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 120 lbs., with blonde hair and hazel eyes.

Cummins is 6 feet tall and weighs 200 lbs., with brown hair and eyes.

Anyone with information on Cummins or Mary Catherine should call the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.

Anyone who sees them or a Silver Nissan Rogue with a Tennessee license plate 976ZPT should call 911.

This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com
Gone Girl kidnapper Matthew Muller - a former Marine and a Harvard-educated lawyer who was later disbarred - will spend 40 years behind bars for the 2015 abduction of a woman that was revealed only after police publicly dismissed her story, PEOPLE confirms.

Muller, 39, was sentenced Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California. The hearing closes out a series of bizarre twists that began when the victims boyfriend reported her missing almost two years ago.

In September, Muller pleaded guilty to a kidnapping charge stemming from the March 23, 2015, abduction of Denise Huskins from her home in Vallejo, California.

Huskins case became erroneously known as the Gone Girl kidnapping, in reference to the popular book and movie about a deceitful disappearance, after investigators called her story a hoax.

The city later apologized - though Huskins brought a lawsuit against them last year - and Muller was arrested in July 2015.

During the sentencing, Huskins, 31, and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, spoke about their terrifying ordeal.

I knew this was probably it for me, she said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. My life was coming to an end and I made peace with that.

Once released, I couldnt fathom the pain that was to come, she continued. I felt like a little girl, scared, wanting to hear the voices of my parents saying, Its OK.

Quinn told Muller that he strategically destroyed our lives. I cannot and will not ever be the same, my family will not ever be the same, he said.

Muller addressed the court next.

Theres nothing I can say, he said, according to the Chronicle. Im sick with shame that my actions have brought such devastation. I hope my imprisonment can bring closure to Aaron and Denise and Im prepared for any sentence the court imposes.

Ahead of his sentencing Thursday, federal prosecutors sought to keep Muller in prison until he is old and weak, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

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In his sentencing recommendation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Segal asked the judge impose a term of 40 years in prison - a request that was granted.

Mullers attorney, however, asked the judge to sentence his client to 30 years in prison and highlighted Mullers mental state, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Muller, Thomas Johnson wrote, suffers from anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder and would have never committed this crime had he been properly medicated.

Thirty years is exactly where Mr. Mullers sentence should end up, Johnson wrote, according to the Chronicle. It means Mr. Muller is not released until he is over 60 years old.

Johnson could not be reached for comment Thursday.

But Segal alleged that Muller was a serial predator - with Huskins abduction among several crimes - and there was no evidence to show that psychological treatment could ever make him less dangerous.

From left: Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn in July 2015.

In March 2015, Huskins boyfriend Aaron Quinn told police that kidnappers had broken into the couples Vallejo home and taken Huskins, demanding $8,500 in ransom.

In fact, Segal wrote in his sentencing recommendation, Muller had conducted reconnaissance on Huskins and Quinn and came prepared to use artifice to terrorize them.

Muller acted alone, but he brought tools in order to appear as though he was with a group, according to Segal.

On the night of the kidnapping, Muller was carrying a water pistol painted black and duct-taped to a flashlight and laser pointer and headphones for the couple, with a pre-recorded message in which the group threatened to punish noncompliance with electric shock or facial laceration, Segal wrote.

Muller was wearing a military-style vest which had a wireless speaker attached to its mesh pockets, according to Segal. He wrote that the speaker was attached to Mullers computer and played sounds of a group of people urgently whispering to each other during the kidnapping.

Miller also brought with him a blow-up mannequin dressed in military-style fatigues, Segal wrote. The mannequin was connected to large bendable wires so it would stand upright.

Muller is extremely dangerous, Segal wrote in his recommendation, describing Mullers abduction of Huskins as depraved and egregious.

Just punishment requires that Muller suffer a severe sentence that accounts for the entirety of his culpable conduct, Segal wrote.

The families of Huskins and Quinn also submitted letters to the judge, ahead of Mullers sentencing, KCRA reports.

Matthew Muller is a very dangerous character. He should never be given the freedom to commit these acts again, Huskins father wrote, according to the station. Im pleading with you to show no mercy on this criminal and please sentence him to the maximum sentence allowed by law.

This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com
Heather Mack, who was convicted of killing her mother and hiding her body in a suitcase, said goodbye to her 2-old-year daughter Stella this week in Bali, Indonesia, where the two have been living together in a prison cell since Stellas birth.

For nine months and two years I have loved and cared for my baby in the strangest of situations, Mack tells PEOPLE shortly after handing over her daughter to a woman who has agreed to care for the child until Macks release from prison in 2025.

Stella never dreamed of being born into a life here with me at Kerobokan prison. But for us, it has been a beautiful two years. We wake up together and we hold each other when we fall asleep. She is everything to me.

Mack agreed to allow an Australian-Balinese woman named Oshar Putu Melody Suartama - who befriended Mack shortly after she and former boyfriend Tommy Schaefer (Stellas father) were arrested - to become the childs guardian.

The transfer took place at Balis Kerobokan Prison, which was surrounded by journalists and photographers, at the tail end of Stellas birthday party - complete with cake and stacks of gifts.

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Mack, who friends say has been transformed by her time spent caring for her daughter, was in tears for much of gathering. She clutched Stella until the very last moment when it was time to hand her off to Suartama at the prison door.

It was a very emotional situation, Macks Bali-based attorney Benjamin Seran tells PEOPLE. There were lots of tears. But Stella looked happy. She was starting to see a life shed never seen before from inside the prison. 

RELATED VIDEO: Convicted Killer Heather Mack on Night of Her Mothers Murder: I Think It Was Half-Premeditated

Stella was born in 2015 during her parents high-profile murder trial, one month before a panel of judges convicted them in the grisly 2014 murder of Macks mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack at a five-star Bali resort.

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The two Chicago residents faced death by firing squad, but Mack was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison and Schaefer received an 18-year sentence.

Under Indonesian law, Stella had been allowed to live in a cell with her mother at Kerokokan Prison until she turned 2 on Friday.

Suartama - who is married to a Balinese man and has two young sons - met Mack shortly after her arrest for the grisly murder as Suartama was at the Bali police station translating for visitors who didnt speak Indonesian.

She spotted the pregnant Mack sleeping on the floor and soon began bringing food and prenatal vitamins to the expectant mother and paying for her medical care.

More than two years ago I opened up my heart to Heather and Stella and today we open up our home to Stella who I will love as my own, Suartama tells PEOPLE not long after she completed the hour-long drive from the prison to her familys home. This isnt goodbye. Stella and her mom will continue their precious bond for the years to come.

The mother and daughter will have regular weekly visits at the prison.

Earlier this week, a Chicago judge turned down Schaefers mothers request to become the little girls guardian, but her attorney has filed an appeal.

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Heather is heartbroken, says Macks Los Angeles-based attorney Brian Claypool. But shes thankful for Oshar, who has been involved in every phase of Stellas life.

During the couples 2015 trial, Macks defense attorney argued Schaefer killed von Wiese-Mack with a metal fruit bowl following an argument over Macks pregnancy while Mack hid in the bathroom of their luxury hotel suite. Schaefers bloody body was found hours later stuffed in a suitcase in the back of a taxi.

This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com
By Michael Saponara

Authorities discovered the horrifying sight of more than 250 human skulls in a Veracruz, Mexico mass grave. Colectivo Solecito, an activist group made up of the mothers of the states estimated 2,400 people missing people played a role in discovering the graves. The victims were most likely involved in the underground drug cartel that has plagued Mexicos gulf coast as an infamous battle zone.

Mexico violence: 250 skulls found in Veracruz mass grave pic.twitter.com/I2uYhJL3eo  Lydia Vaughan  (@Veshenskaja) March 14, 2017

When they finish opening the clandestine cemetery in the state it will be seen as the largest grave, State Attorney General Jorge Winckler Ortiz told Televisa, per NPR, because for years organized crime has disappeared and murdered people with the complicity of the authorities.

Colectivo Solecito raised money for the excavation with bake sales and raffles after a cartel member handed over a map of possible grave sites at a Mothers Day rally in 2016. Lucia Diaz, a spokeswoman for the group, has been in search of her missing son since 2013. What we have found is abominable and it reveals the state of corruption, violence and impunity that reigns not only in Veracruz, but in all of Mexico, Diaz told the New York Times.

Veracruz is an enormous mass grave, he said. It is the biggest mass grave in Mexico and perhaps one of the biggest in the world. https://t.co/8DqqSH3j86  Arely Cruz-Santiago (@arycruzant) March 14, 2017

For some of the victims family members, this could finally bring the closure theyve been yearning for. Martha Gonzalez, whose son disappeared along with five others in 2013, told CNN en Espanol, They give us just the bones, but at least I can have them, I can keep it some place where it wont be rained on, where I can put a flower on it.

This post Mass Grave In Mexico Linked To Drug Cartel Finds More Than 250 Human Skulls first appeared on Vibe.
A lot of kids love to read, but not many kids take that passion and harness it into a full-on movement.

That's exactly what Sidney Keys III is doing. The 11-year-old started Books N Bros, a book club for him and his peers to celebrate African-American literature and promote literacy. And to say it's a success is an understatement.

SEE ALSO: Endlessly creative bookstores show how much we still need more books from women

Books N Bros is a book club for boys and we read books and African American literature because every time I go to the library at my school, there arent many African American literature books there, Keys explained to St. Louis on the Air.

During a visit to EyeSeeMe, an African-American children's bookstore in Missouri, his mother filmed a Facebook live video that eventually went viral.

He hadnt seen [a bookstore] like that before and I certainly never had, so he was making himself comfortable on the floor, reading a book, Key's mom, Winnie Caldwell told St. Louis on the Air. "I would like to make sure he sees himself in being whatever he can be.

Homework still is most important. Knocking it out with a glass of milk before bed!  Mug: booksnbros.com/shop  #booksnbros #blackboyjoy #blackboymagic A post shared by Sidney Keys III (@booksnbrosllc) on Mar 15, 2017 at 7:17pm PDT

I already love to read and since we dont get that much time to read in school, we just discuss in groups. I wanted to read a book but I also wanted to discuss it with other people, Keys said.

He can do just that every month with seven to 10 boys from the ages of 8-12 years in a local Microsoft storeand when they are done discussing everything from Hidden Figures to Danny Dollar Millionaire Extraordinaire, 30 minutes are reserved for video games.

We specifically reach out to boys around ages 8-10 because that is statistically the age they stop reading  we wanted to combat that, Caldwell told St. Louis on the Air. A partnership with a similar book club for young girls, called Nerdy Girls, seems to be in the works, too.

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My motivation is I already love to read, but it would be awesome, even better, to read with other people, Keys said. I want to keep doing it because I dont know what will make me stop reading because I love to read.

[H/T St. Louis on the Air]
Jerusalem (AFP) - An identical replica of a 2,500-year-old merchant vessel that ran aground off the coast of present-day Israel set sail from the port of Haifa on Friday.

The original ship ran aground 500 years before Christ's birth, but was discovered in 1985 south of the northern Israeli city.

The small vessel was pulled from the depths three years later, a statement from the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

It had been exceptionally conserved as it was buried under sand for two millennia and was therefore protected from erosion, archaeologist Avner Hilman of the Antiquities Authority said.

"The ship was loaded with a very heavy cargo of shale coming from Cyprus, and following a navigation error it ran aground on a sandbank near the coast and was buried," he told AFP.

He said the wreck's state was "exceptional" considering its age.

The keel, numerous wooden plates, 14 cross bars and the base of the mast were found intact, offering researchers rare insights into how such ships were built, the statement said.

Work on building a replica began two years ago using ancient techniques, including a toolbox found in the wreck.

Hilman said that shipbuilding techniques were so different back then that they had to work out things for themselves.

"No boatbuilder could help us," he said.

He gave as an example the fact that the ribs of the ship were installed last, after the keel and the outer shell.

Today the ribs are among the first sections to be put in place.
Do you remember which pizza you bought at Wal-Mart recently? You might want to double check.

Vernon, California-based RBR Meat Company, Inc. recalled 21,220 pounds of frozen pizza product due to possible listeria contamination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The Wal-Mart owned Marketside pizza was sold in 11 states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, according to Larry Vanden Bos, vice president of Rose & Shore, a company within the same facility as RBR . Wal-Mart has withdrawn the product from all their stores.

The specific product in question, made Feb. 23, 2017, is the "Marketside Extra Large Supreme Pizza" bearing lot code 20547 and establishment number "EST. 1821" within the USDA's inspection mark. It's in a 50.6 oz box with a 16-inch shrink wrapped pizza inside. Consumers can see what it looks like here. The pizza is topped with sausage, pepperoni, peppers, black olives and onions.

The company found out the issue while conducting routine sampling. "We are unaware of any illnesses to date linked to purchases," Wal-Mart spokesperson Molly Blakeman said in a statement. Both the company as well as the FSIS are worried consumers could have the product sitting in their freezers.

If consumers did purchase the product, they should either dispose of it or take it back to the store, according to a FSIS press release.

Eating listeria-contaminated food could result in listeriosis, which can be treated with antibiotics. The infection mostly impacts older people, those with weakened immune systems as well as pregnant women and their newborns. It could mean fever and loss of balance, among other symptoms. It might even cause miscarriages or stillbirths in pregnant women.

Those exposed in these higher-risk categories -- and those having flu-like symptoms within two months since exposure -- should let their health care provider know about what they consumed.

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Top Reasons Children End Up in the Hospital

Can You Trust Your 'Yuck' Reflex?

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.
An Irish woman arrived in Goa Feb. 23 to celebrate the Holi festival on Palolem beach Monday, but she never left. That's because the body of 28-year-old Danielle McLaughlin was discovered by a local farmer the following day. She was raped and killed.

Read: India Rape Suspects Tortured As Ordered By Female Minister Uma Bharti

"We had sent the body for a post mortem examination. Reports confirmed that Danielle was raped before the murder," Deputy Superintendent Sammy Tavares of the Goan police told the Agence France-Presse Thursday. Her body was, Lying in a pool of blood without clothes and there were injuries on the head and face, he said.

Police charged 23-year-old Indian man Vikat Bhagat with the murder of McLaughlin. Locals spotted him with the victim on the beach, according to Hindustan Times. "He has confessed to raping the victim and later killing her in order to hide his identity," Tavares told the publication Thursday.

He continued: "Besides the earlier charge of murder we have also booked him for rape. The accused will be in police custody until March 22 after which he'll be produced in court."

Over the past decade, several foreigners died in Goa, including 15-year-old British student Scarlett Keeling in 2008. Her bruised, half-naked body was found at Anjuna beach.

Mclaughlin hailed from Liverpool, but grew up in Irelands Buncrana in County Donegal, The Independent reported. She worked at a local bar in Liverpool, called The Pumphouse Albert Dock, which paid tribute to her Wednesday.

"Very sad to hear we have lost one of our old team members Danielle McLaughlin in Goa this week," the pub wrote in a public post. "She was only 28. Goodbye, Danielle. Deepest condolences to her family in Ireland."

McLaughlins mother, Andrea Brannigan, issued a statement Wednesday. "The family would like to express our thanks to all who have got in touch since receiving this awful news," McLaughlin said. "As you can expect, we are finding it very difficult at this trying time. Danielle will be sadly missed by us all."

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Three women went blind after receiving an unproven stem cell treatment on their eyes at a Florida clinic, according to a new report of the cases.

The women, in their 70s and 80s, all had macular degeneration, a progressive eye disease that leads to damage of the retina, and can cause vision loss. They underwent the stem cell therapy in 2015, in the hopes that it would treat their disease.

However, there's no evidence that the stem cell treatment the women received can help restore vision in people with macular degeneration, wrote the authors of the new report. Several of the report's authors treated the women for complications after the stem cell treatment; none of the authors were involved in the original treatment.

In addition, there is a lack of information on the safety of this treatment, and some of the techniques used by the Florida clinic were unsafe, the report said. Shortly after the procedure, the women experienced a number of complications, including vision loss, detached retinas and bleeding. [7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe]

"There's a lot of hope for stem cells, and these types of clinics appeal to patients desperate for care, who hope that stem cells are going to be the answer," Dr. Thomas Albini, an associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at the University of Miami and a co-author of the report, said in a statement. "But in this case, these women participated in a clinical enterprise that was off-the-charts dangerous," Albini said.

What's more, some of the patients believed they were participating in a clinical trial of the stem cell treatment, according to the report. And they had good reason to think so  a trial describing this treatment was listed on the website ClinicalTrials.gov, a registry database run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. However, the consent forms that the women signed before they underwent the procedure did not mention the trial, and the patients were required to pay $5,000 for the procedure. Patients who participate in clinical trials typically do not need to pay to do so, the researchers said.

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"I'm not aware of any legitimate research, at least in ophthalmology, that is patient-funded," Albini said.

The researchers wrote that they hope their report raises awareness about the potential risks of these types of procedures performed at for-profit stem cell clinics that lack data to support their practices. The report is published today (March 15) in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In recent years, there has been a rise in clinics offering unproven stem cell treatments in the United States. There are now calls for more regulation of these clinics, and last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed new rules that would require a more rigorous approval process for using such treatments in patients.

At the Florida clinic, called U.S. Stem Cell, Inc. (formerly BioHeart, Inc.), the three patients received a treatment that uses cells called adipose tissue-derived stem cells. For this treatment, the patients had fat cells removed from their abdomens, and this tissue was then processed with enzymes, which the company said would isolate stem cells. These cells were then mixed with a sample of the patient's own blood plasma that was enriched with platelets (a component of blood that aids in blood clotting). This mixture was then injected into the patients' eyes.

Each patient had both eyes treated at the same time, but this protocol is unsafe, the new report said. Most doctors using any experimental eye treatment will treat only one eye at a time, to see how the eye responds to the treatment, the researchers said.

All three patients are now blind, and it is extremely unlikely that they will regain their vision, Albini said.

The complications seen in these patients are likely due to the stem cell preparation they received, the report said. For example, it could be that the material injected into the patients' eyes was contaminated with an enzyme that can damage the eye. Another possibility is that, when they were injected into the eye, the stem cells transformed into myofibroblasts, which are cells that are linked with scarring, the authors said.

In a statement to Live Science, U.S. Stem Cell said it could not comment on specific patients' cases due to "patient confidentiality or legal confidentiality obligations." The company said that since 2001, its clinics have conducted "more than 7,000 stem cell procedures with less than 0.01 percent adverse reactions reported." The company also noted that it does not currently treat eye patients.

In 2013, the company listed a trial on ClinicalTrials.gov titled, "Study to Assess the Safety and Effects of Cells Injected Intravitreal in Dry Macular Degeneration," according to the ClinicalTrials.gov site. However, the current listing for this trial says, "This study has been withdrawn prior to enrollment." In other words, the company claims the study was stopped before patients were enrolled.

It's important to note that stem cell therapies do hold promise for treating a number of human diseases, the case reports' authors said. And there are numerous institutions conducing legitimate clinical trials on stem cell therapies that have appropriate safety and regulatory oversight. However, it can be difficult for patients to distinguish between trials that are legitimate, and those that are not, the authors wrote.

Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, a professor and chair of ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who co-authored the new report, recommended that patients considering stem cell treatments consult the website A Closer Look at Stem Cells. It is maintained by the International Society for Stem Cell Research and contains information on stem cell therapies.

Goldberg also recommended that patients check if a trial is affiliated with an academic medical center.

Original article on Live Science.

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SANAA, Yemen  A boat packed with Somali migrants came under attack overnight off Yemens coast close to a strategic Red Sea strait, in an incident that killed 31 people, a U.N. agency and a Yemeni medical official said Friday.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the victims carried UNHCR papers. Laurent De Boeck, the IOM chief in Sanaa, Yemens capital, said the agency believes all the people on board the stricken vessel were refugees but it was not immediately clear where they came from in Somalia.

The SABA news agency in Yemen, run by the countrys Shiite rebels, said the attack was an airstrike that took place off the coast of Hodeida province, close to the Bab al-Mandab strait. It did not say who was behind the airstrike.

De Boeck added that 77 survivors who were pulled out of the water were taken to a detention center in Hodieda. He said the IOM is in contact with the hospital, clinics, and the detention center to provide the necessary medical care the victims.

In Geneva, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told reporters that he was unable to confirm news reports indicating that an Apache helicopter gunship was responsible for the attack. Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths and many dozens of survivors brought to hospitals, he told The Associated Press.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is fighting alongside Yemens internationally recognized government, has accused the Shiite Houthi rebels of using Hodeida as a smuggling route for weapons. There was no immediate comment from the coalition.

The coastal province has been under heavy airstrikes over the past two years since the coalition joined the conflict in support of the government. African migrants continue to head to Yemen, a transit point to Saudi Arabia where they seek jobs and a better life.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said bodies of the dead were being retrieved from the sea and taken to the morgue of a hospital in al-Thawra. Only 14 bodies had arrived at the morgue so far, the Yemeni official said, adding that women were among the dead.

There were also 25 wounded, including those who lost arms and legs, who were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to speak to the media.

On its Twitter account, the UNHCR said it was appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen.
Four sitting Republican governors have come out against the GOP health care bill.

In a joint letter sent Thursday to the leaders of the House and Senate, the governors of Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and Arkansas argued that the current version of the American Health Care Act in the House hurts states.

It provides almost no new flexibility for states, does not ensure the resources necessary to make sure no one is left out, and shifts significant new costs to the state, the letter says.

It is signed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. All four states accepted federal money to expand Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act.

There are currently 33 Republican governors in the U.S., 16 of which head states that expanded Medicaid. Other Republican governors have raised concerns about the health care effort, particularly on Medicaid.

The House bill would freeze the Medicaid expansion in all states by 2020, gradually shrinking the programs enrollment over time, and cap Medicaid spending on individual enrollees.

The four governors said they support fundamental reform of Medicaid, outlining an alternative approach that would give states the option to embrace their own reform or stick with the current formula with less federal money.
Ankara (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged Turks resident in Europe to have five children, telling the millions-strong diaspora they were the continent's "future" as a bitter dispute festered between Ankara and Brussels.

Turkey and Europe are locked in diplomatic crisis after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from campaigning for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused EU states of behaving like Nazi Germany over what he sees as discrimination against Turks, in comments that have caused outrage across the continent.

"From here I say to my citizens, I say to my brothers and sisters in Europe... Educate your children at better schools, make sure your family live in better areas, drive in the best cars, live in the best houses," said Erdogan.

"Have five children, not three. You are Europe's future."

"This is the best answer to the rudeness shown to you, the enmity, the wrongs," he said in a televised speech in Eskisehir, a city south of Istanbul.

Some 2.5 million Turkish citizens resident in Europe are eligible to vote in elections in their homeland. But millions more people living in EU states have Turkish origins.

Erdogan, a father of four, has previously urged women in Turkey to have at least three children to help boost the population, in comments denounced by women's rights activists.

- Dutch 'banditry' -

Last weekend, just days before the Dutch election, police in Rotterdam used horses and dogs to disperse pro-Erdogan protesters demonstrating against the ban on Turkish ministers.

Erdogan said there was no difference between the tactics used by the police "and the gladiators in ancient Rome."

Several days later, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw off a challenge from far-right politician Geert Wilders at the ballot box, to the relief of other EU leaders.

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But Erdogan said there was to be no reconciliation with The Hague.

"You use all kinds of banditry for your own ends against a state like Turkey and then you act as if nothing happened and continue as before."

Rotterdam's mayor had initially granted permission for a pro-Turkish protest to take place on Friday over the police's tactics at the weekend, but the organisers later called it off, a city council spokesman said.

Analysts say Erdogan is seeking with his volcanic rhetoric to woo nationalist votes in the April 16 referendum on constitutional change, which analysts believe is heading for a tight outcome.

Also Friday, a Turkish pro-government newspaper ran a front-page mock-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform under the slogan "Frau Hitler".

German deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: "We are not taking part in a game of provocation."

- 'Blow Europe's mind' -

Erdogan also lashed out at a decision by the top EU court allowing European firms to ban employees from wearing political or religious symbols -- including the Islamic headscarf.

A day after accusing the EU of starting a "crusade" against Islam by the ruling, he said the court should "ban the kippa ban too" -- although in theory the Jewish skullcap should be included in the decision which covers all religious symbols.

"They are hypocrites!" said Erdogan.

With no end in sight to the tensions between Turkey and the EU which have raised new doubts over Ankara's long-standing membership bid, the government has also threatened to walk away from a key migration deal.

The deal, which was reached on March 18 last year, substantially reduced the flow of migrants to the EU which had peaked in 2015, and was exploited by the European far right.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, a hardliner who is close to Erdogan, threatened to "blow the mind" of Europe by sending over 15,000 refugees a month.

"Let us remind you that you cannot play games in this region and ignore Turkey," he said.

The EU says it expects Turkey to continue implementing the deal.

But the United Nations children's agency UNICEF on Friday said the agreement had been plagued by broken promises, and although it had curbed migrant flows, it had increased the suffering of children.
Discover safe, affordable and impressive destinations worth visiting alone.

When traveling on your own, you can prioritize self-fulfillment on a journey to remember. After all, you can relax, reflect and step out of your comfort zone in a variety of ways while globe-trotting alone. As you face new challenges on a boundary-pushing adventure, you'll not only gain self-awareness, but also enjoy the luxury of creating your own itinerary, avoiding kitschy tourist attractions and dining and sightseeing at your own pace. From checking out the night markets in Taipei, Taiwan, to biking across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, here are five solo getaway ideas to spark your wanderlust.

Taipei

Taipei is located at the tip of Taiwan, within the Taipei Basin along the Tamsui River. If you're a student on a budget traveling on your own, there's plenty to see and do, from exploring storied shrines to contemporary galleries to cutting-edge shops. Get to know the city on a leisurely bus ride. And at night, you can't miss getting your culture fix at the city's famous night markets, which stretch across 10 blocks and feature everything from pop-up shops to lively street vendors selling local dishes. What's more, there are plenty of places to hike around the city (hat tip: Yangmingshan National Park) to take in beautiful views.

Toronto

A diverse and welcoming city, Toronto offers a wonderful mix of big-city life and alluring green spaces. And though upscale hotels tend to lean toward the pricier side, you can save money on transportation since most top attractions are situated within walking distance of one other. During your visit, you won't want to miss strolling through the historic St. Lawrence Market, which features vendors ranging from crafters to farmers, or strolling along the Harbourfront Centre. After crossing top sights off your list, explore the Toronto Islands on a scenic ferry ride. Once there, you can bike, walk and enjoy people-watching over a leisurely picnic.

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Dublin

Dublin, with its plentiful free walking tours, fun-loving locals and vibrant green spaces, offers an appealing place to explore on your own. If you're a beer or whiskey lover, don't skip checking out the best pubs and Irish whiskey distilleries, the Guinness Storehouse or the Irish Whiskey Museum. Best of all, there are a wealth of free attractions and budget-friendly accommodation options to pick from, including hostels, bed-and-breakfasts and boutiques. What's more, getting around Dublin is easy. You can walk, bike or take the DART bus system to explore outside the city and the pastoral countryside.

Johannesburg

South Africa's largest city offers plenty of historical sights and urban thrills that cater to intrepid types. Home of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, Johannesburg's rich heritage especially appeals to history buffs. You won't want to miss checking out the Apartheid Museum, the Mandela House or Maboneng Precinct. After taking in must-see attractions, catch some amazing views from atop the Carlton Centre. South Africa also has unique natural wildlife and scenery to explore, and food and drinks are generally very affordable for tourists, making it an ideal pick for adventure-seeking soloists on a budget.

San Francisco

A breezy, easygoing and culturally rich city, San Francisco offers plenty of enticements for outdoorsy types, foodies and art aficionados alike. From the Ferry Building Marketplace to Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, there are plenty of areas worth exploring. Plus, the BART, the city's transit system, makes exploring each neighborhood quick and easy. If you're an art enthusiast, pick up a map of the many art galleries in the Mission. Another highlight: biking across the Golden Gate Strait, a 7-mile-long stretch of the Golden Gate Bridge. Catch a view of the fog rolling out from the bay and the sun shining over the bridge.

Kacey Mya is a travel and lifestyle blogger for The Drifter Collective, an eclectic lifestyle blog that expresses various forms of style through the influence of culture and the world around us. Kacey graduated with a degree in Communications while working for a lifestyle magazine. She has been able to fully embrace herself with the knowledge of nature, the power of exploring other locations and cultures, all while portraying her love for the world around her through her visually pleasing, culturally embracing and inspiring posts. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
The Hill

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) on Sunday said that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) should be deported as she rallied for Georgias Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker. Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days, Haley said at the Hiram, Ga., rally. They worked to come into America and they love America.
What do you consider lucky?

While Ireland and its shamrocks remain synonymous with good fortune, the idea of a particular object bestowing positive karma upon its owner isn't unique to the country.

In fact, the word "luck" isn't Irish at all, according to Dictionary.com, which suggests the term's origins may be Middle Dutch, a shortening of the word "gelucke." Here's a look at trinkets and symbols considered good luck around the world.

Rabbit's foot

From knocking on wood to horseshoes to ladybugs, United States popular culture idolizes many tokens and rituals believed to bring good fortune. None are seemingly as strange, however, as the rabbit's foot: a severed mammalian paw often dyed and fastened into a keychain for safe keeping.

The origins of this tradition depend on who you ask.

Numerous websites trace the belief to ancient Celts who thought rabbits -- creatures that burrow into the Earth -- could communicate directly with gods and spirits. Meanwhile, quoting folklorist Bill Ellis, Scientific American attributes the good luck charm to "African American magical traditions" and the witty character of B'rer Rabbit, known to use his brain to overcome adversity.

Carp scales

This Christmas Eve carp dinner is a tradition of sorts in certain parts of Europe. But it's not as simple as it might sound.

In Poland, Austria, Germany and other nearby countries, the fish must live in the family bathtub for days beforehand, according to NPR. After the meal, people collect the carp scales -- a sign of good luck for the new year. Some people even carry them around in their wallets.

Scarabs

A beetle that eats poop to survive hardly seems like the type of creature that ought to be idolized or worshiped.

In ancient Egypt, however, people found purpose watching scarabs roll feces across the sand. "For the Egyptians, that was symbolic of the sun moving across the sky," Gene Kritsky, author of "Insect Mythology," told NPR affiliate WKSU.

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Thus, the culture viewed the dung beetle as the embodiment of the sun god Khepri, according to National Geographic. The insect's likeness, adopted as a good luck charm, still appears in jewelry today.

Acorns

The squirrels are onto something.

In Norway, the acorn is a token of good luck taken from Viking folklore. In Norse legend, the oak tree represents Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, according to DailyMail. To protect their homes from lightning, ancient Norse filled their homes with acorns.

Swastikas

Before it appeared in logos for white supremacist groups, the swastika had a more innocent connotation.

Derived from the Sanskrit word "svastika," meaning "good fortune" or "well-being," the symbol -- a cross with hooks -- is a common sight on temples or homes in India or Indonesia, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Prior to World War II, the good luck emblem was even adopted in western advertising and architecture. In the 19th century, German scholars translating Sanskrit noticed a similarity with their own language. "They concluded that Indians and Germans must have had a shared ancestry and imagined a race of white god-like warriors they called Aryans," writes BBC. From there, a symbol of luck became a symbol of hate.

"Evil eye" beads

Stroll through any bazaar in Turkey and you'll likely find ceramic amulets featuring a dark blue circle surrounding the shape of an eye.

The Nazar Boncugu, as it's called, is an eye-shaped pendant thought to ward off the "evil eye." Placed on anything from rings to wall hangings, it is believed to absorb bad energy, protecting its owner from curses and illness.

The color red

China, a culture of symbolism, has no shortage of objects representing strength, health, longevity and other positive characteristics.

There's the "laughing Buddha" for happiness and bamboo, which brings a year of prosperity. Another widespread symbol, especially during Chinese New Year, is the color red.

People hang up red lanterns, wear red clothing, and give each other red envelopes containing money. According to Reader's Digest, the tradition begins in Chinese folklore with Nian, a red beast that destroyed crops and ate children on the New Year. Once Nian was defeated, the color became a symbol of good fortune -- even worn by brides on their wedding days.

Lauren Boyer is Social Media Editor at U.S. News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or reach her at lboyer@usnews.com.
Harare (AFP) - She bears scars from police beatings, has been arrested many times, detained for months, and become the first person to be convicted over mass anti-government protests last year.

But Zimbabwean activist Linda Masarira, a 34-year-old widow with five children, vows to fight on.

"I am not deterred," she told AFP after a magistrate's court in Harare last week sentenced her over her role in the protests against President Robert Mugabe as the country's dire economic crisis worsens.

"Zimbabwe's situation is bad," Masarira said, her voice quivering with anger.

"Look at the economy. There are no jobs. Hospitals have no medicines and people are dying.

"We have a mandate to demand a free, just and democratic Zimbabwe -- not a Zimbabwe for an elite few."

Since becoming involved in activism in 2009, Masarira has emerged as a ubiquitous figure at the front of anti-government protests, often leading the singing and chanting.

She was found guilty of blocking traffic and pedestrians during countrywide protests in July last year, but she dismisses the case as "a travesty of justice" and insists she committed no crime.

Magistrate Stanford Mambanje sentenced her to a hefty penalty of 385 hours of community service, with a suspended 18 months in jail.

"I have been arrested at least 10 times and all the times I was beaten by police. Last year I was arrested six times. The state has no right to assault people for demanding their rights," Masarira said.

She said she has had an arm broken by police and has suffered bad bruising to her back and legs in beatings.

- 'No fear' -

Masarira was among the founders of the Tajamuka movement that led last year's protests against 93-year-old Mugabe's government.

She has also backed other groups such as This Flag, led by pastor Evan Mawarire, and has marched at night vigils for fellow activist Itai Dzamara who was abducted in 2015 and remains missing.

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His fate provides a stark warning of the potentially fatal risks that dissidents have taken throughout Mugabe's 37 years in power.

As Zimbabweans endure 90 percent unemployment and wait to see if Mugabe's ailing health will usher in a new era, she vows she will not be cowed into silence.

"I have no fear of anything," she told AFP. "There is no easy struggle. When you see a struggle becoming easy then it is not a struggle. I always get stronger whenever I face challenges.

"I want to see a better Zimbabwe. I want my children to have hope."

Earlier this month Masarira was admitted to hospital for treatment after she was beaten by police while staging protests in support of striking doctors.

She trained as a computer technician but now works for the Zimbabwe Women in Politics action group, as well as raising her children -- three boys and two girls, aged six to 17.

- 'Injustice intolerant' -

While in detention last year, she led inmates in protests over alleged abuse and poor conditions.

"The food and treatment were terrible," she said, describing herself as "injustice intolerant".

Prison authorities transferred her to a maximum-security jail where she was held in solitary confinement.

She has two other cases hovering over her -- one for insulting Mugabe in a speech and the other for being a "criminal nuisance".

Last year's protests were quashed in a brutal crackdown by Mugabe's security forces who crush any signs of opposition activity.

Despite the dangers, Masarira called on fellow Zimbabweans to be brave and challenge Mugabe's government head-on.

"Everyone has to play their role, we have to fight for the Zimbabwe that we want," she said.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Warplanes struck a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jina, in northwest Syria, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Thursday. The jets struck the village, southwest of Atarib near Aleppo, as the mosque was full of worshippers at evening prayer, said the Observatory, which monitors the Syrian war via a network of contacts across the country. The U.S. military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday against al Qaeda militants, killing several, at a meeting location in Idlib province, but it was unclear if it was referring to the attack on Al-Jina. The statement from U.S. Central Command made no mention of civilian casualties. Syrian and Russian military have also carried out many air strikes in Idlib and Aleppo provinces during the war. Al-Jina is located in one of the main rebel-held parts of Syria, the northwest that includes Idlib province and the western parts of Aleppo province, and its population has been swollen by refugees, U.N. agencies have said. Rebels in northwest Syria fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad also include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies. (Reporting by Angus McDowall. Additional reporting by Idrees Ali.; Editing by Robin Pomeroy & Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Estelle Shirbon TUAM, Ireland (Reuters) - Catherine Corless has been haunted all her life by childhood memories of the skinny children from the local Catholic home for unmarried mothers and their babies in the small cathedral town of Tuam in the west of Ireland. Known locally as the home babies, the children lived in secrecy behind the dark, high walls of the home run by nuns from the Bon Secours order. Some of them attended the same school as Corless, but they were kept apart from the other children. Once, egged on by classmates, Corless played a trick on one of the home babies, handing over what looked like a sweet but was in fact only an empty wrapper. "I'm so sorry for that. It's stuck me with, that memory. It was only later I thought 'that poor child never got a sweet, they would have loved a sweet'," Corless told Reuters in an interview at her home in the countryside outside Tuam. Now a grandmother and amateur local historian, Corless has spent years painstakingly researching records to discover what happened behind those high walls, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to have their babies in secret. Alone, often met with silence and obstruction from Church and state bureaucracies that held long-forgotten records, Corless eventually exposed the existence of a mass grave of babies and toddlers in a sewer on the grounds of the home. The discovery, confirmed last week by the results of archaeological excavations, has horrified Ireland and caused a new wave of soul-searching about how women and children were treated at Catholic institutions in the past. TENDERS FOR COFFINS "The recent horrifying revelations of a mass grave of babies in Tuam, discovered as a result of the relentless work of local historian Catherine Corless, often impeded, rarely assisted, is another necessary step in blowing open the locked doors of a hidden Ireland," said President Michael D. Higgins on Wednesday. Born in 1954, Corless grew up on a farm near Tuam, worked as a typist-receptionist as a young woman, then married and raised her four children at home. In the 1990s, she became interested in local history and took a part-time course on how to conduct historical research using primary sources. In 2012, she offered to write an article for a local journal on the mother-and-baby home about which very little was known. At first she tried archival newspapers, but all she could find were advertisements tendering for child-sized coffins for the home. There were precise size specifications and the coffins were required to have brass handles and a brass crucifix on top. "That got me thinking, there must have been a lot of deaths in the home if they were putting out tenders for coffins every six months," said Corless. The breakthrough came when she obtained the death certificates of all the children who died at the home. She had no idea how many there would be. When the answer came, she was stunned: in the 36 years the home was open, from 1925-1961, 796 children died. "It was like a bolt of lightning. It just went through me. Is that possible?" said Corless, describing that moment. There was no trace of those children in any of the local cemeteries, and no written records of their places of burial. Government records show that in the 1930s-1950s more than one in four babies born out of wedlock in Ireland died, a rate more than five times that of children born to married parents. The records do not show how many children were living in the Tuam home at any given time, but suggest mortality rates that were even higher. In 1947, 49 babies were born in the home and 30 more admitted under the age of one. Forty-six children died there, most before their first birthday; the oldest was three. "A MOTHER'S GRAVE" The vacant home was demolished in the 1970s. A housing estate was built in its place, with a large playground tucked away behind some of the back yards. It had long been rumored locally that there was an unmarked children's graveyard on the site, and a grassy corner near the playground had been tended for years by residents who installed a small grotto with a statuette of the Virgin Mary. By comparing old and new maps of the site, Corless established that the mysterious, informal children's graveyard was located in the same place as a very old sewage tank. Her research was published locally, and eventually made national and international headlines in 2014, causing widespread revulsion and prompting the government to set up a commission of inquiry into the Tuam home and 17 other mother-and-baby homes. So far, there have been two test excavations at Tuam and only a sample of remains were recovered for analysis. They were found to range from 35-week-old fetuses to three-year-old children. "It's only the start. They have to find out. Are they all there?" said Corless. "They have to be counted if it's possible, because if they're not all there the question remains: where are they?" Since her research became public, Corless has been contacted by more than 100 people with connections to the home, and has helped some of them locate long lost relatives or the graves of mothers who were forced to part from them when they left the home. "I'm here for them. I'm happy I can help them. A lot of the time it's just a grave I find for them, a mother's grave. My work continues. I have a box of files of people who are looking for help," said Corless. She said many of the siblings of the lost babies wanted them re-interred in a consecrated graveyard. "They want a place to come to visit. It's hard for them to come in there and stand over a patch of ground in the middle of a housing estate and pay their respects." (Editing by Peter Graff)
President Donald Trump wants the United States to be at the top of the pack with nuclear weapons. But his goal already hit a snag: The infrastructure that supports the countrys nuclear weapons is crumbling to alarming levels, a Congressional panel warned Thursday.

Much of the infrastructure that supports the U.S. nuclear weapons programs, including labs, production facilities, and weapons storage complexes themselves were built six decades ago.

The aging buildings require constant upgrades and renovations to ensure the safety of the government employees handling the weapons  and secure the weapons themselves. But its not happening.

Theres a $3.7 billion backlog in deferred essential repairs to the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure, overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous arm of the Department of Energy. The maintenance problems are quite alarming and pose the risk of a dangerous nuclear accident, said Congressman Tom OHalleran (D-Ariz.), during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on infrastructure needs of the nuclear security enterprise.

The warnings come as the U.S. government begins to pour over $1 trillion into modernizing its nuclear weapons stockpile over the next 30 years. Its a top priority for Energy Secretary Rick Perry  who once ran a presidential campaign that called for abolishing the Department of Energy entirely  but the sorry state of NNSA facilities may bog down modernization efforts from the start.

Much of the NNSAs facilities dat[e] to the Eisenhower Administration and, in some cases, the Manhattan Project era, said Frank Klotz, administrator of the NNSA and under secretary of the Energy Department. I can think of no greater threat to the nuclear security enterprise than the state of NNSAs infrastructure, he said.

As they maintain or research nuclear weapons, NNSA employees are subject to leaky roofs, faulty ventilation, and even routine encounters with snakes and rodents, according to Michelle Reichart, a top managing contractor for nuclear weapons sites.

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The NNSA has sounded the alarm bell on its aging infrastructure before, and in years prior Congress set aside funds to curb the ballooning deferred-maintenance issues. But it wasnt until last year that the NNSA halted the growth of the problem.

Congressional members on the panel appeared willing to earmark further funds, but the NNSA ran into a roadblock of its own making. Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ky.) asked Perry and the NNSA in January for a list of specific infrastructure projects that in the intermediate-range could use stopgap funding. As of Thursdays panel, the NNSA still hadnt provided the list to Congress. That is disappointing, Rogers told Klotz at the hearing.

When the presidents budget request is transmitted to Congress in a few weeks time, we will then be able to provide additional details, an NNSA spokesperson told Foreign Policy when pressed on why the agency hadnt furnished any list.

Beyond the crumbling infrastructure, security experts worry the weapons themselves could be at risk. Historys proved them right in the past.

In 2012, three anti-nuclear activists including an octogenarian nun broke into one of the countrys most secure nuclear weapons facilities, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In an embarrassing lapse in security, they spent two hours in the facility painting protest signs on buildings that processed weapons-grade uranium inside. The incident sparked immediate rebuke from Congress and the Department of Energy pledged to take action.

Meanwhile, that trillion dollar nuclear weapons modernization program will require thousands of warheads to be shipped across the country. But the office in charge of shipping those weapons is mired in problems, as a new Los Angeles Times investigation revealed. The energy departments Office of Secure Transportation grappled with widespread alcohol problems from its workers, who are responsible for driving nuclear bombs in aging semi-trucks across the country.

Update: This article was updated to include comments from an NNSA spokesperson.

Photo credit: Jeff T. Green/Getty Images
Archaeologists have dug up someones head  a fossil that holds clues about human history and evolution.

The cranium is the oldest ever found in Portugal, dating back to about 400,000 years ago, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains. It is also the westernmost noggin from that time period to be uncovered. But the skull itself is not the only treasure: The study says the cranium, found in the Aroeira cave site, is connected to nearby stone tools like hand axes and animals remains, including burnt bones [that suggest] a controlled use of fire.

According to the authors, the skull and its associated materials speak to the origin of the Neanderthals and the pattern of human evolution in Europe during that prehistoric period.

Neanderthals are thought to have emerged a few hundred thousand years ago and were eventually replaced by modern humans.

Binghamton University, which had an anthropologist on the international team that made the discovery, said in a statement that the newly uncovered cranium is strongly tagged to 400,000 years ago, which sets it apart from other similar fossils that are poorly dated or lack a clear archaeological context.

cranium-portugal

Photo: Javier Trueba

Those poorly dated fossils have been one reason experts still debate when exactly Neanderthals emerged and where that happened. But the Aroeira 3 cranium is different, and the PNAS study describes it as having features that are characteristic of its era yet in a combination that is unique among the other fossils of its era, perhaps because separate populations looked different from one another.

Observing features  both similar and distinct  will help piece together the Neanderthal timeline, by seeing how far off skulls from different time periods are from a typical Neanderthal head.

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Although the Aroeira find is only just being announced, it was actually dug up in 2014  but it was firmly cemented in sediment and was removed from the site in a large, solid block, Binghamton University said. It took two years to clear and restore.

See also:

DNA Proves the Same Aboriginals Have Been Living in Australia for 50,000 Years

Fossil News: These Two Extinct Reptiles Are Actually the Same Animal

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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said anti-aircraft missiles were fired on Friday at its air force, which was operating in Syria. Rocket sirens had sounded in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and two Reuters witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later. The military said in its statement that one of the anti-aircraft missiles had been intercepted. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Paul Tait)
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump says the border with Mexico is already "getting extremely strong" and would-be illegal crossers are giving up because they think, "we can't get in." All without the wall he promises to build, or any reported boost in deportations, or any surge in patrol agents.

The boast was one of a number at a Tennessee rally Wednesday night that did not track with the facts. A look at some:

TRUMP: "And by the way, aren't our borders getting extremely strong? ... We've already experienced an unprecedented 40 percent reduction in illegal immigration on our southern border, 61 percent  61 percent since Inauguration Day. Sixty-one percent; think about it. And now people are saying we're not going to go there anymore 'cause we can't get in, so it's going to get better and better."

THE FACTS: There's not much evidence yet that Trump is driving down illegal immigration. It's true that the number of border arrests dropped about 44 percent from January to February. But it's too early to know if that will hold or what prompted it. Monthly and seasonal fluctuations are common.

Trump hasn't expanded the ranks of the Border Patrol or any other immigration or border-security agency. His orders haven't yet changed the way the Border Patrol operates and so far there is no evidence that more people are being deported. The wall he's promised to build isn't up.

The number of border arrests is the primary measure of the flow of illegal immigration at the border, though an imperfect one. If fewer people are arrested, that's taken to mean fewer people are trying. Over recent decades, presidents have tried to have it both ways. They cite low arrest numbers to illustrate how their policies are dissuading people from crossing illegally. When arrest numbers are high, they say that's because they're being aggressive in enforcing the border.

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TRUMP: Speaking of the appeals court that on Wednesday overturned his latest action limiting immigration from six Muslim-majority countries, "That 9th Circuit  you have to see. Take a look at how many times they have been overturned with their terrible decisions. Take a look."

THE FACTS: Other appeals courts have seen their decisions overturned at a higher rate than the 9th Circuit.

In the most recent full term, the Supreme Court reversed eight of the 11 cases it heard from the San Francisco-based court. But the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit went 0 for 3  that is, the Supreme Court reversed all three cases it heard from there. And over the past five years, five federal appeals courts were reversed at a higher rate than the 9th Circuit.

The 9th Circuit is by far the largest of the 13 federal courts of appeals. In raw numbers, more cases are heard and reversed from the 9th Circuit year in and year out. But as a percentage of cases the Supreme Court hears, the liberal-leaning circuit fares somewhat better, according to statistical compilations by the legal website Scotusblog. The very act of the Supreme Court's agreeing to hear a case means the odds are it will be overturned; the high court reverses about two-thirds of the cases it hears.

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TRUMP: "Even liberal democratic lawyer Alan Dershowitz, good lawyer, just said that we would win this case before the Supreme Court of the United States."

THE FACTS: Not exactly. Dershowitz predicted Trump would win a Supreme Court showdown over his immigration action if the court focuses heavily on the law that gives him broad authority on the matter. If the court takes Trump's campaign statements into account, though, Dershowitz told CNN, "he will lose."

Many experts think the case would be close because the president does have a lot of leeway in immigration. But if a policy is seen as having a religious test, that could run afoul of the First Amendment in the eyes of the justices. In the campaign, Trump openly called for keeping Muslim visitors out of the country. As president, his executive action is not explicitly against Muslims but would apply to people coming from six countries with mainly Muslim populations.

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TRUMP: Speaking of the request in his new budget for a $54 billion increase for the Pentagon, "Our budget calls for one of the single largest increases in defense spending history in this country."

THE FACTS: Trump's proposed increase, 10 percent higher than the Defense Department's current budget, is large, but a long way from the highest boost ever. In just the past 40 years, there have been eight years with larger increases in percentage terms than the one he's now proposing.

In the early 1980s, for example, defense spending was increased dramatically as the Cold War with the Soviet Union intensified. The 1981 Pentagon budget saw a nearly 25 percent increase.

And the proposed expansion pales in comparison with earlier times. Military spending consumed 43 percent of the economy in 1944, during World War II, and 15 percent in 1952, during the Korean War. It was 3.3 percent in 2015, says the World Bank.

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TRUMP: "I've already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline. I've also directed that new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. They want to build them here, they use our steel. We believe in two simple rules. Buy American and hire American."

THE FACTS: His executive action calls for U.S. steel and pipes to be used "to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law." With all that wiggle room, it's not a guarantee of U.S. content. It's also not the final word on the matter  the memorandum gives the commerce secretary until July to deliver a plan supporting the initiative.

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TRUMP: "We are going to repeal and replace horrible, disastrous Obamacare. If we leave Obamacare in place, millions and millions of people will be forced off their plans" as insurers flee the market. "It's a catastrophic situation. And there's nothing to compare anything to because Obamacare won't be around for a year or two. It's  it's gone."

THE FACTS: President Barack Obama's health care law has problems, including premium increases and decisions by some insurers to leave the marketplace. But Trump's dire characterization is overblown in the eyes of many, including the Congressional Budget Office, which this week described the market for individual policies in most places as "stable." It said the market also would be likely to remain stable under the proposed GOP replacement legislation.

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Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Jim Drinkard contributed to this report.

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Find all AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
Refugees crossing oceans to flee war and famine have to contend with the risks drowning, dehydration and other perils on their journey. Now add Apache helicopters to the list.

On Friday, an Apache military helicopter reportedly opened fire on a boat packed with over 140 Somali migrants off the coast of Yemen.

Forty-two people were killed in the attack, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). All 42 were reportedly carrying official U.N. refugee papers. Eighty survivors were rescued from the water after the attack and taken to a detention center in Hodieda, Yemen, the International Organization for Migrations Laurent De Boeck told AP. He added the IOM is liaising with hospitals to ensure the survivors get the care they need.

The boat, filled with refugees attempting to flee war-torn Yemen including women and children, had made it about 30 miles offshore when a helicopter swooped in and opened fire. A local coast guard official from the Houthi-rebel controlled coast of Yemen told Reuters an Apache helicopter attacked the boat, though it remains unclear who is responsible for the attack.

Saudi Arabia, which leads an Arab air campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, owns U.S.-made Apache helicopters. A spokesperson for the Saudi-led coalition said the coalition didnt operate in the region of the attack Thursday.

The boat was en route to Sudan through the Bab-el-Mandeb, a strait between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

The attack raises the death toll on civil war already infamous for high civilian casualties. Aid organizations and human rights groups lambasted Saudi Arabia for indiscriminately targeting civilians in its bombing campaign.

UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency said.

The conflict has killed over 10,000 people. Some 500,000 Somalis lived in Yemen when the conflict first broke out in 2014. International aid groups worry the Somalis who fled their home country for fear of violence will be displaced yet again if the conflict doesnt end.

On Wednesday, the U.N. also warned the country is facing one of the worlds worst hunger crises. Humanitarian organizations called on the international community to send more aid to Yemen, where as many as 17 million people could be on the brink of famine.

Photo credit: SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP/Getty Images
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Crystal Snyder was trying to figure out life as a single mom when she lost her job at a West Virginia T-shirt factory.

The 37-year-old had no college degree, mostly because she married at 16, divorced at 19 and had two children. Unsure what to do, Snyder heard about a program through the Coalfield Development Corp. that would hire her and pay for her to get an associate degree. Now she works full time for one of the nonprofit's agriculture offshoots.

"I'm learning how to be a farmer. I'm growing food, I'm going to school," she said. "It has helped me in ways I can't even understand yet."

Coalfield Development Corp. is a nonprofit funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The ARC is a 52-year-old federal agency that seeks to create jobs in 420 counties across 13 states, including the West Virginia and Kentucky coalfields.

It's also targeted for elimination by President Donald Trump.

Trump's budget proposal has alarmed much of the region, including longtime Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, who represents the mountainous eastern Kentucky coal region where Trump won every county, a first for a Republican presidential candidate.

"I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the President's skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive," Rogers said.

The ARC began its work in 1965 as part of former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's famous "war on poverty." In the past two years, the agency has spent $175.7 million on 662 projects that is says has created or retained more than 23,670 jobs.

That investment has paid off: In Kentucky, the commission has awarded $707,000 to the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, which used the money to train 670 people who now have full time jobs earning a combined $13.6 million in wages.

Some of those wages were earned by Heather Smith, a 41-year-old in Annvile, Kentucky, who works from home for U-Haul.

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"It has brought a lot of jobs to our region," she said. "I really am for our president and I really like him. But that part I wish they could work on."

In Alabama, where Trump won with 62 percent of the vote, the commission awarded $5 million last year to projects in 37 rural counties for jobs, technology upgrades and school programs and materials.

"We are concerned about the ability to help rural Alabama," said Jim Byard, head of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, the state agency that helps administer the grants.

Kentucky has been a focal point for federal anti-poverty programs for decades, resulting in billions of dollars of public investment. Last year, the ARC received $146 million, its largest federal appropriation in more than three decades.

Yet much of the region is still crippled by poverty, and a new generation of Republicans frustrated with government programs now run several states. That includes Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin. He spoke this week at an eastern Kentucky event meant to celebrate a $2.75 million ARC investment that resulted in 35 jobs in Paintsville.

"The war on poverty. How's that working out? We've spent a lot of money. Here's what the answer isn't: The answer isn't another government program," Bevin said.

It's unclear if Bevin supports the Trump budget. His spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he's pleased with Trump's proposal to spend more money on national security and veterans, but he vowed to "work with the delegation to protect essential Kentucky priorities in the final budget."

In West Virginia, construction work funded by the ARC is the only job 21-year-old Jacob Dyer has had since high school. He's a few classes away from his associate degree, and hopes to stay in the program for another two years to get another degree.

He hopes Trump will reconsider.

"I think if he knew how this program helps others and what it's really done, what it supports, I think that would change his mind, possibly," Dyer said.

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Associated Press reporter Kim Chandler contributed reporting from Montgomery, Alabama.
President Donald Trump has butted heads with Apple Inc. (ticker: AAPL) in the past over the company's stance on user privacy and its reliance on Chinese labor. But regardless of their personal feelings toward the president, Apple investors could be major beneficiaries from Trump's proposed corporate tax repatriation holiday.

Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves says Apple could use repatriated cash to double its dividend in the years ahead. Apple has $227 billion in cash held overseas, more than any other American company. At Trump's proposed repatriation rate of only 10 percent, Apple could free up more than $200 billion of that cash to return to shareholders.

"In a repatriation scenario, we believe the company could comfortably double the per-share payment to $4.56 while still leaving ample capacity for continued buybacks or strategic acquisitions," Hargreaves says.

Apple expects to pay less than $13 billion in total dividends to shareholders in 2017.

If Apple chooses to double its payout, the stock's yield could exceed 3.2 percent. Pacific Crest is projecting iPhone unit sales growth to reaccelerate to 5 percent in fiscal 2017 and 7 percent in fiscal 2018. In addition to those solid growth numbers, a 3.2 percent yield would make Apple one of the best dividend stocks in the world.

[See: 7 Things That Happened When Donald Trump Met With Tech Leaders.]

Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors Trump's repatriation holiday would be "very good for the country and good for Apple."

Trump's 10 percent proposed holiday tax rate is significantly lower than the 35 percent rate U.S. companies would pay to repatriate cash today. The last time the government provided a repatriation holiday for U.S. companies was back in 2004 when corporations were allowed to pay a one-time tax rate of 5.25 percent.

[Read: Apple Desperately Needs a New Brilliant Product.]

Wayne Duggan is a freelance investment strategy reporter with a focus on energy and emerging market stocks. He has a degree in brain and cognitive sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and specializes in the psychological challenges of investing. He is a senior financial market reporter for Benzinga and has contributed financial market analysis to Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha and InvestorPlace. He is also the author of the book "Beating Wall Street With Common Sense," which focuses on the practical strategies he has used to outperform the stock market. You can follow him on Twitter @DugganSense, check out his latest content at tradingcommonsense.com or email him at wpd@tradingcommonsense.com.
Jerusalem (AFP) - An Arab Israeli lawmaker has agreed to admit charges of smuggling mobile phones to Palestinian prisoners in return for a reduced sentence, the justice ministry and his spokeswoman said Friday.

Basel Ghattas, of the Arab-dominated Joint List, will plead guilty to handing mobile phones and SIM cards to Palestinian detainees in the high security Ketziot prison during a visit in December, the justice ministry said.

He will also announce his resignation from parliament, a ministry spokesman said.

"It was concluded between the parties that they would apply to the court for a two-year sentence."

Ghattas could have faced up to 10 years in prison.

Speaking to AFP, he confirmed the deal, saying it came after "lengthy negotiations and after they removed from the list of charges terrorism and threatening state security".

He will resign from the Israeli parliament on Sunday.

"I decided (to accept) after consultation with my lawyers and taking into account my personal and family situation," Ghattas said.

Israeli media have reported that 12 mobile phones were found on two separate prisoners in searches after Ghattas visited.

The 60-year-old Christian allegedly used his parliamentary immunity to avoid being searched.

One of the prisoners is serving time for the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier in 1984, the Ynet news website reported.

Ghattas said in an earlier statement his action was motivated by his "humanitarian and moral positions towards prisoners and he is ready to assume full responsibility for it".

Lawmakers of the Joint List, the third largest bloc in parliament with 13 seats, frequently clash with Israeli authorities.

Arab Israelis make up some 17.5 percent of the country's population and are descended from Palestinians who remained on their land after the creation of Israel in 1948.

They hold Israeli citizenship but most see themselves as Palestinians.

Ghattas's party, Balad, is especially critical of Israeli policies.

Its three lawmakers triggered outrage among Jewish Israelis last year when they met relatives of Palestinians who authorities say were killed while carrying out attacks.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval Friday to legislation removing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The state House approved the proposal with a 66-11 vote and sent it to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had urged lawmakers to end the dual holiday. Once the bill is signed into law, Mississippi and Alabama will be the only states that honor Lee and King on the same day.

The bill sets aside the second Saturday in October to honor Lee with a memorial day, not a state holiday, marked by a gubernatorial proclamation. It also expands what is taught in schools about the Civil War and civil rights.

Hutchinson, who promised last year to push for ending the dual holiday, made the unusual move of testifying in front of two separate legislative committees this month to speak in support of the proposal. Hutchinson told the panel that King deserved his own day of recognition, and that ending the dual holiday would be a healing moment for the state.

Hutchinson's office said he would likely sign the measure into law on Monday with a ceremony the governor said would emphasize "historic dynamic of this new day."

"The support for a separate holiday to recognize Martin Luther King far exceeded my expectations and speaks well of the General Assembly and our state," Hutchinson said in a statement released by his office.

A similar effort to remove Lee from the King holiday repeatedly failed before a House committee two years ago. Opponents of the measure said the legislation belittled the state's Confederate heritage by not giving Lee his own holiday.

"We are not separating Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King," Republican Rep. Jana Della Rosa told lawmakers before the vote. "We are taking Robert E. Lee and we are putting him in the basement and we're acting like we're embarrassed that he ever existed."

Both Lee and King were born in January. Arkansas has had a holiday honoring Lee since 1947, and one for King since 1983. That year, state agencies required employees to choose which two holidays they wanted off: King's birthday on Jan. 15, Lee's birthday on Jan. 19 or the employee's birthday. In 1985, the Arkansas Legislature voted to combine the holidays.

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Supporters of ending the dual holiday include the state NAACP, along with the city of Little Rock and Pulaski County, which passed resolutions last year endorsing the move.

The 2015 effort to end the dual holiday was fueled in part by photos widely circulated on social media of a sign noting the shared King and Lee day.

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New York (AFP) - The art world is voicing horror at President Donald Trump's push to eliminate US cultural funding entirely, saying that poor and rural Americans will be hardest hit.

In his first budget outline Thursday, Trump called for the complete end of federal support to public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts as part of a trimming of government spending.

Trump has also pushed for sweeping cuts to environmental protection, social services and foreign aid, although he is also advocating a major hike in military expenditure.

"I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio, the coal-mining family in West Virginia, the mother of two in Detroit, and I'm saying, okay, I have to go ask these folks for money and I have to tell them where I'm going to spend it," Trump's budget chief Mick Mulvaney told reporters.

"Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye and say, look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation (for) Public Broadcasting?"

But arts advocates say that those most adversely affected will in fact be rural Americans and not a big-city elite against whom Trump frequently rails.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which this year marks its 50th anniversary, provides educational programming -- which can be rare on US television -- including seminal children's show "Sesame Street."

A 2012 study by the corporation found that, in the case of a total end to federal funding, 54 local public television stations and 76 radio stations would risk shutting down.

The elimination "would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media's role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history and promoting civil discussions -- for Americans in both rural and urban communities," Patricia Harrison, CEO and president of the CPB, said in a statement Thursday.

The National Endowment for the Arts -- which Trump hopes to shut down in two years -- brings music and other cultural programs to rural areas, some ravaged by addiction.

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- Sliver of federal spending -

Previous Republican presidents also sought with mixed success to curb funding for the cultural world -- long a bugbear for conservatives who complain of artists' left-wing tiltings.

Cultural funding is already far lower in the United States than in most of Europe, where governments often directly subsidize major institutions.

The CPB in 2016 took $445 million, or 0.01 percent, of US federal spending, and the National Endowment of the Arts received $146 million, or 0.004 percent, in 2015.

Public stations rely largely on donations, although sponsors only run announcements and not advertisements like on commercial networks.

At WNET in New York City, federal funding accounts for only 15 percent of the budget, said Jeanne Ammermuller, the public station's director of institutional marketing.

But that figure can go up to 50 percent in rural areas, said Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University.

Television choices have grown enormously in the past 50 years, with a growing number of viewers going online.

Thompson, however, noted that public television produced much local programming that is often taken for granted, from history specials to local children's shows.

And not all Americans can afford high-speed internet connections.

"Those who are not purchasing broadcast services to cable or satellite -- those are the ones who are the most likely to be impacted," said Dominic Caristi, a professor at Ball State University in Indiana.

- Fight ahead -

In the art world, the most vulnerable institutions will paradoxically be the least expensive ones -- smaller museums and modest theater and music programs that do not have deep pockets.

Thomas Campbell, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, said that federal funding was essential to smaller institutions around the country.

The budget plan "is shortsighted and does a terrible disservice to the American people," he said in a statement.

But many in the cultural world were confident about fighting to retain funding through Congress, which controls appropriations and where Trump's proposals have been met with skepticism.

"We've been through this fight before, and we know that our legislators on both sides of the aisle appreciate our value," Ammermuller said.
LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca said on Friday that U.S. regulators had rejected the British company's new drug for high potassium levels, in the latest setback to the product. AstraZeneca said it had been issued with a complete response letter (CRL) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its ZS-9 drug. Such letters typically outline concerns and conditions that must be addressed to gain U.S. approval. The rejection is the second time the FDA has failed to approve the drug which Astra acquired when it bought ZS Pharma for $2.7 billion in 2015. "The CRL followed an inspection by the FDA of the ZS-9 manufacturing facility," Astra said. "The CRL does not require the generation of any new clinical data. AstraZeneca and ZS Pharma are committed to working with the FDA to resolve the remaining matters under review as soon as possible." ZS-9 treats hyperkalaemia, or high potassium levels, which is typically associated with chronic kidney disease and chronic heart failure. (Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Costas Pitas)
Beirut (AFP) - In Aleppo, portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin hang shoulder-to-shoulder with those of his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, signalling Moscow's rise at the expense of Damascus's other ally, Iran.

The rivalry between the two primary backers of the Syrian government is becoming increasingly palpable, according to Syrian officials and a Russian analyst.

Iran is proud to have intervened early on in Syria's six-year war, bolstering the Assad regime with men, weapons, and economic aid.

But it was Russia, which entered the conflict with its first air strikes in support of Assad on September 30, 2015, that transformed its trajectory.

"Although both countries support the regime, their strategies on how to defeat the uprising differ," said a Syrian member of parliament, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The primary divergence is over Turkey, a years-long rebel backer with which Syria shares its long northern border.

Moscow has formed an unlikely alliance with Ankara since 2016, envisioning an end to the Syrian conflict as a compromise with Turkey.

But Tehran abhors this approach.

Iran has "differences of views with Turkey with regard to Syria, and they're very serious differences of views, but we have found a common ground," its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently told Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television.

Tabnak, a website run by the former chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai, presents a less diplomatic view, suggesting in January that "the inclusion of Turkey in efforts to put an end to war in Syria" could pose "a threat" for Iran.

- 'Price we had to pay' -

Those differences truly crystallised in December as Syrian government forces battled to retake Aleppo's devastated opposition-held east.

Iran and allied militias sought total surrender from rebels encircled in the second city, a source close to the regime told AFP in Aleppo.

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But, the source added, Russia had already agreed with Turkey on safe passage for east Aleppo's 34,000 residents.

The deal infuriated Iran and its allies in the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah, who tried to spoil the agreement.

As a consolation prize, however, Iran and its allies successfully included the evacuation of Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages besieged by rebels, in the deal.

"The agreement with Turkey was indispensable for finishing with Aleppo because every time the Syrian army advanced, Ankara allowed hundreds of rebels in," a retired Syrian officer told AFP.

"To avoid yet another failure, Moscow got Ankara to agree to close the border, strangling the rebels. Russia then secured a safe exit for them," the officer said.

"It was certainly difficult for those that were fighting on the ground but it was the price we had to pay to win," he said.

Tensions have only grown since, with Russia and Turkey leaving Iran out of a cessation of hostilities they brokered in late December.

Tehran joined Ankara and Moscow in sponsoring the first talks between regime forces and rebels in January in Kazakhstan.

- 'Interests align' -

After Aleppo's fall, all eyes turned to the largest remaining rebel bastion: Idlib, the northwestern province controlled by an increasingly tense alliance of rebels and jihadists.

Tehran has advocated a blitz assault on Idlib, mainly to break the rebel siege of Fuaa and Kafraya, but Russia has vetoed the idea.

A new front so close to the border and against Ankara-backed rebels would risk direct confrontation with Turkey, a possibility Moscow is unwilling to entertain.

"Russia is wary of Turkey, but it prefers squeezing it and limiting its movement, instead of mounting a full-frontal attack," a political figure in Damascus said.

Turkish forces and allied rebels have indeed been left with little wiggle room in northern Syria. They seized the town of Al-Bab from Islamic State group jihadists in February without a word of protest from Russia.

But now, surrounded by government forces and US-backed groups, they are unable to push further east to fulfil Ankara's goal of leading the battle for IS's stronghold in Raqa.

Much of Iran's strength is drawn from the thousands of militiamen it commands in Syria, which "represent a huge contingent of fighters with which (the Russians) must find a way to cooperate," Russian military analyst Pavel Felguenhauer told AFP.

"Our ties with them are very complicated," he admitted.

But Russia is also increasing its own boots on the ground in Syria, even after scaling back its aircraft there.

"Russia's presence in Syria is rapidly growing. Since the fall, the number (of military personnel) has nearly doubled and will soon be 10,000," Felguenhauer said.

Russia is also cultivating its own proxies on the ground just like Iran, for whom Hezbollah, as well as Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, have become indispensable.

"We've created an 'indigenous infantry' which is cheaper than Russian mercenaries," Felguenhauer said, comparing them to US-backed Iraqi tribes that fought Al-Qaeda or Moscow's Chechnyan allies.

Russia has already helped form, finance, or arm two Syrian factions -- the Desert Falcons and the Fifth Legion -- as well as the Palestinian Quds Brigade.

"Russia is a great power with a geostrategic vision that includes Syria, while Iran is a Shiite regional power," the Syrian political figure said.

"Their interests can align, but they are not always identical."
Brussels (AFP) - Belgium on Friday opened a tender for the replacement of its ageing US-built F-16 jet fighter fleet, a contract potentially worth 15 billion euros over its 40-year lifespan.

"The current 54 F-16 fighters will be replaced by 34 new multi-role aircraft," the ministry of defence said, arguing that because of technical advances, fewer planes would be needed to meet the same mission.

The cost of the 34 aircraft is put at 3.6 billion euros ($3.85 billion), with another 1.2 billion euros to cover training and maintenance, ministry spokesman Laurence Mortier told AFP.

Over the planes anticipated 40-year lifespan, the total cost could come to around 15 billion euros, Mortier said.

The ministry said the supplier would likely be named in 2018 but the government had shortlisted five manufacturers in NATO or European Union member states.

The likely favourite is America's Lockheed-Martin fifth generation stealth fighter, the F-35, which many US allies are acquiring but which has come in for harsh criticism as being too expensive and failing to meet project targets on time.

Meanwhile US aerospace giant Boeing is offering a new, much upgraded version of the F-18 Hornet, the main strike jet for the US Navy.

The other three contenders are the Rafale of French manufacturer Dassault, the Typhoon built by the British-led Eurofighter consortium and Sweden's Saab Gripen E.

When Belgium acquired its F-16 fighters in the 1970s, it joined forces with the neighbouring Netherlands, plus Denmark and Norway, all of which have opted for the F-35.
The Trump administration will release a preliminary 2018 budget proposal at 7 a.m. EDT Thursday, which will include the revised amounts allocated for the federal governments spending.

Among the biggest gainers and losers from the budget revision are the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who are set to gain 9 percent and lose 31 percent respectively. Here's how the Trump administrations allocated budget will affect the two departments in the time to come, given the budget is passed.

Department of Defense:

Trump's proposal to allocate an extra $52 billion to the existing $587 billion defense budget is the highest single-year increase the department has seen. The administration has pledged to boost combat against the Islamic State group, form a stronger military and boost cyberwarfare capabilities.

The budget request comes after Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the president last month for not boosting defense spending enough. In a white paper released in January, McCain outlined his vision for $640 billion budget for 2018, with annual increases thereafter. He expressed anger over a mere 3 percent increase above former President Barack Obamas defense budget proposal for 2018.

Such a budget request would represent an increase of $18.5 billion above the level proposed by President Obama for fiscal year 2018, he said in a statement. In other words, President Trump intends to submit a defense budget that is a mere 3 percent above President Obamas defense budget, which has left our military underfunded, undersized, and unready to confront threats to our national security.

With a world on fire, America cannot secure peace through strength with just 3 percent more than President Obamas budget. We can and must do better, McCain said in the statement Monday.

Since Trump was sworn in as president, the military has sent hundreds of troops to Syria and also launched a number of airstrikes and conducted ground raids in Yemen.

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Environmental Protection Agency:

The budget proposal has slashed the EPA budget by a massive 31 percent  nearly a third  from the current $8.1 billion to $5.7 billion. It would cut 3,200 jobs, or more than 20 percent of the agencys current workforce of about 15,000.

In the proposed form, the new budget would discontinue funding for Obamas signature Clean Power Plan, designed to combat climate change by reducing emission of carbon dioxide from power plants.

Trump also aims to eliminate over 50 EPA programs with the Energy Star program, which aims to improve energy efficiency, and save consumers' money; discontinue funding for international climate change programs; cut funding for the Office of Research and Development in half; and also cut funding for the Superfund cleanup program and the Office of Enforcement and Compliance.

The plan to be released is a skinny budget, a first draft of the line-by-line appropriations request submitted by first-term administrations. A broader budget will be released later, which will include Trumps proposals for taxation along with the bulk of government spending.

As for other losers in Trump's first budget blueprint, the proposal suggests a massive 20 percent, amounting to $6 billion, cut in the budget allocated for the National Institutes for Health (NIH), various media houses reported. Furthermore, the Department of Energy will also receive almost a 20 percent cut, meaning a reduction of $900 million to its budget allocation, from the total of $5 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services will also see a massive 18 percent cut.

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Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Boko Haram's elusive leader has made his first appearance in months, claiming responsibility for a spate of suicide bombings and rejecting claims scores of his fighters have been killed.

Abubakar Shekau spoke for nearly 20 minutes of a 27-minute video obtained by AFP on Friday, in a trademark pose in front of a sub-machine gun, flanked by two masked militant fighters.

Speaking in the local languages Hausa and Kanuri, as well as Arabic, Shekau said the recording was made on Thursday and that he was "in good health", contrary to claims he may be injured.

But he appeared subdued compared with previous appearances.

Criticising regional leaders, he singled out Cameroon's President Paul Biya, whose government on Wednesday said troops had killed 60 Boko Haram fighters and arrested 21 others in recent weeks.

Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary also said more than 5,000 civilian "hostages" had been freed in operations along the border with Nigeria from February 27 to March 7.

But Shekau said: "We fought along the Cameroonian border. You lied that you killed 60 of our fighters, that you arrested 20 of our men, that you freed 5,000 of your people.

"Paul Biya, is it that you can't live off lies? Is it with this that you are going to convince the West, your leaders? It is unfortunate. Be careful, Paul Biya."

- Caliphate 'running smoothly' -

Shekau was last seen on camera in a video message in December last year after Nigeria's military claimed it had flushed out Boko Haram fighters from its Sambisa Forest stronghold.

Troops, with the help of regional forces from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as Benin, have since early 2015 managed to claw back most of the territory lost to the radical Islamists in 2014.

But Shekau insisted "our caliphate is running smoothly". The militant leader declared an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria in August 2014.

Despite its loss of territory and claims from the military it is on the verge of defeat, suicide bomb attacks remain a threat to civilians, particularly in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

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At least two people were killed on Wednesday when four female suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the city.

Shekau said the group was "responsible for all the suicide explosions in Maiduguri and we will continue with them".

Boko Haram released another video on Monday showing the execution of three men said to be government spies. But the message did not feature Shekau.

The latest video ends showing militant fighters in combat fatigues with assault rifles and apparently confiscated Cameroon police and army uniforms.

One fighter speaks in heavily-accented French, lending weight to theories that Boko Haram has recruited from parts of Nigeria's Francophone neighbours.
Despite a looming government shutdown over President Donald Trump's proposed border wall, American property owners living in the U.S.-Mexico region said theyve been warned of a new neighbor arriving in their own backyards in just a matter of time.

U.S. residents near the Rio Grande received letters in the weeks ahead of Trump's presidency called Declarations of Taking. The binding documents, sent to landowners by the Department of Homeland Security, informed the residents they would be paid to have portions of their land used by the federal government under Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of building a wall across the southern border.

Read: Stopping Border Immigration: As Trump Builds His Wall, A Battle Wages Over Human Rights Conflicts

If residents refuse to sign away their land in a Declaration of Taking, the government could still seize their property through eminent domain loopholes.

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Photo: Reuters

Yvette Salinas, a Texan who received one of the official letters a week before Trump took office, described a state of shock when she initially read the 21-page document.

"Its scary when you read it, you feel like you have to sign," Salinas told the Texas Observer in a report published Wednesday. "We dont want this wall  the town is pretty much united on that, but we dont want to get sued by the U.S. government either."

Salinas said she and other local residents dont believe Trumps border wall  projected to cost nearly $20 billion  will do much to prevent illegal immigration from taking place throughout the region.

Meanwhile, Democrats were warning they will allow a government shutdown to occur if Republicans tie border wall funding into must-pass legislation in the following weeks.

"If they put those poison pill amendments in and try to shove them down the American peoples throats, of course they might be responsible for shutting the government down," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Tuesday. "To stick it on a must-pass bill, just like defunding Planned Parenthood, would be a huge mistake and they would be responsible for shutting the government down."

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A small New York town is reeling after a 10-year-old boy died tragically this week after apparently being smothered in a snowbank.

Authorities in Niagara County believe Benjamin Wasik climbed atop a 15-foot snowbank Wednesday before he became trapped.

Read: 97-Year-Old Twin Sisters Both Die After Falling Outside in Freezing Temperatures

"The parents did everything they could to keep an eye on him and as soon as they didn't see him they started to look for him," Sheriff James Voutour told WIVB.

The sheriff said Benjamin was trapped under the snow for about 20 minutes by the time first responders arrived, soon after being called.

"The first responders did an excellent job yesterday under very difficult circumstances. I think all their efforts gave the best possible scenario for Ben to survive. Unfortunately in this business we don't save everybody," the sheriff said.

The parents of the boy have not spoken publicly in the wake of the tragedy. Sheriff Voutour asked that they be given privacy.

"They're great people, they're known by a large number of our deputies. Some of our first responders knew them, knew the little boy, that were at that scene," he said.

Benjamin was a fourth grader in the Starpoint School District, whose superintendent, Dr. Sean Croft, released the following statement after Benjamin's death:

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the tragic, accidental death of Benjamin Wasik, a 4th grade student at Regan Intermediate School. The entire Starpoint community expresses our sincere condolences to the Wasik family and friends. Benjamin will be greatly missed and will always be a part of the Starpoint family.

I was made aware of the tragic news Wednesday afternoon through the Niagara County Sheriffs Office and our team immediately began planning to provide appropriate emotional support to students and staff on Thursday morning. The District Crisis Team met early Thursday morning and finalized a plan to provide support to the students and staff. Extra care was given to students in the childs classroom. Throughout the day, psychologists, counselors, social workers have been meeting with students and staff to assist them in working through the grieving process.

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Boy, 3, Found Dead on Porch After He Apparently Wandered Outside During Cold Night: Cops

It is our utmost priority to support the wellbeing of our students in the difficult days and weeks ahead. This afternoon a letter will be sent home to all parents with students in the Regan Intermediate School. The parent letter indicates that each student may react differently to a tragic occurrence such as this. We are encouraging parents to listen carefully to their children, answer questions openly and honestly, and let them know it may not be possible to answer all of their questions. We are also reassuring parents that appropriate social/emotional support systems will be in place at Starpoint to assist students in the days and weeks ahead.

Watch: Bus Driver Saves 5-Year-Old Boy Found at Midnight with No Shoes in the Cold

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Brasilia (AFP) - Brazil's prosecutor general wants to investigate more than 100 politicians as part of the massive Petrobras corruption probe, a source close to the case said.

The latest list of suspects in the highly explosive case remains secret.

But speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said there were "probably... more than 100" politicians who currently enjoy immunity from prosecution in ordinary courts as sitting members of Congress or cabinet ministers.

Top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot on Tuesday asked Brazil's Supreme Court -- the only one that can try such suspects -- for permission to open 83 new investigations into a sprawling corruption scheme centered on state oil company Petrobras.

Each of those investigations may involve more than one person, and a given suspect may be targeted in more than one investigation.

The total number of politicians targeted has not been officially released.

Several Brazilian news sites say at least five ministers in President Michel Temer's center-right government are in the crosshairs, including his recently appointed foreign minister Aloysio Nunes, as well as the presidents of both houses of Congress.

Leftist ex-president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor and mentor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a huge figure in the Brazilian political scene, were also on the list, Brazilian media reported.

The complaints against the politicians ramp up the so-called Car Wash probe, which has uncovered massive embezzlement at Petrobras.

The accusations in Janot's list are based on a deluge of testimony given in plea bargains struck with 77 former executives of the giant Odebrecht construction firm, which was at the heart of the Petrobras scheme.

The former Odebrecht employees, including ex-chief executive Marcelo Odebrecht, have confessed to systemic bribery of politicians in exchange for inflated contracts with Petrobras and favorable legislation in Congress.

The case has upended politics in Brazil just as Latin America's largest economy struggles through the worst recession in its history.
By Brad Haynes and Sergio Spagnuolo SAO PAULO/CURITIBA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian police raided the premises of global meatpacking companies JBS SA and BRF SA on Friday, as well as dozens of smaller rivals, in a crackdown on alleged bribery of health officials that could threaten $12 billion in annual exports. The probe, known as "Operation Weak Flesh," found evidence of meatpackers bribing inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary practices such as processing rotten meat and shipping exports with traces of salmonella, police said. Police investigator Mauricio Moscardi Grillo said there was evidence of some companies manipulating certificates for meat exports to European markets, raising the risk of foreign restrictions on Brazil's powerhouse protein industry. "We've never seen a scandal like this in the sector ... It's horrifying," said Alex Silva, a livestock analyst with Scot Consultoria. "This stains the entire system that Brazil has spent years building." Brazil exported $6.9 billion of poultry and $5.5 billion of beef last year, according to industry groups, as producers ramped up shipments to China and started sending fresh beef to the United States. Shares of JBS and BRF plunged 11.0 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively, in Sao Paulo. JBS, the world's biggest meat producer, booked net revenue of 170 billion reais ($55 billion) last year from sales in 150 countries. BRF, the largest poultry exporter, booked net revenue of 39 billion reais in 2016. Police said they arrested three BRF employees and two from JBS in Friday's raids, as well as 20 public officials. JBS said in a securities filing that three of its plants and one of its employees were targeted in the probe, but its senior executives and headquarters were not targeted. The company said it followed rigorous quality standards and sanitary regulations. BRF also said it followed industry regulations and was cooperating with authorities in the investigation. Court documents cited recordings of BRF director Andre Luiz Baldissera allegedly discussing on March 13 how health officials could help defend the company after inspectors in Italy found traces of salmonella in four containers shipped from a plant in Goias state in central Brazil. The ruling by federal judge Marcos Silva also included transcripts of BRF government relations executive Roney Nogueira allegedly discussing bribery of health inspectors, including one called on to help avoid the closure of the same Goias plant. The judge also ordered that BRF Vice President Jose Roberto Pernomian Rodrigues be brought in for questioning. Baldissera, Nogueira and Rodrigues could not be reached for comment. PLANTS CLOSED Brazil's Agriculture Ministry temporarily closed three plants cited in the investigation, one run by BRF and two run by smaller rival Grupo Peccin, and began removing their meat products from supermarkets. Eumar Novacki, the ministry's executive secretary, said there was some concern that other countries would begin blocking shipments of Brazilian meat. Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi will meet on Monday with foreign ambassadors to allay concerns. Sergio De Zen, a livestock expert at the University of Sao Paulo, said other countries may be eager to block Brazilian exports in the fiercely competitive protein market. "But the impact will not be as big as it would be if another country had discovered this problem," he said. "It is Brazil itself that is revealing this." United States food safety body FSIS said it was in contact with Brazil's government and monitoring the situation. It said food supply in the U.S. was safe due to a re-inspection system applied to all imported meats. The food industry investigation is the latest in a string of corruption probes in Brazil, as a tougher judiciary takes on cozy relations between the government and powerful businesses, backed by public outrage during a deep economic s8lump. After investigations into political kickbacks on public works and oil and gas contracts, Friday's probe struck at the heart of the booming agricultural sector, one of the few bright spots in Brazil's economy and a major source of exports. Police said there was evidence that meatpackers falsified documentation for exports to Europe, China and the Middle East. Judge Silva wrote in his ruling that employees of some meatpackers, including BRF, arranged bribes and favors for inspectors ranging from political donations and favorable bank loans to small bribes including hams and other meat products. In some cases, those inspectors would then allow employees of the meatpackers to enter government offices, access computers and issue their own export certificates, investigators said. (Reporting by Brad Haynes; Additional reporting by Sergio Spagnuolo in Curitiba, Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro, Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Brad Brooks, Marcelo Teixeira and Alberto Alerigi in Sao Paulo, Mark Weinraub in Washington; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Marguerita Choy and Bernard Orr)
By Jeff Mason and Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump stood by unproven claims on Friday that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race and shrugged off a dispute with Britain over the notion their spy agency had a hand in it. British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman earlier in the day dismissed the charge against Britain's GCHQ spy agency as "ridiculous" and said the White House had promised not to repeat it. But at a news conference Trump brushed aside a question about whether it was a mistake to accuse British intelligence of eavesdropping. "We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn't make an opinion on it," Trump said. He was referring to Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano who on Tuesday accused Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) intelligence agency of having helped Obama, a Democrat, wiretap Trump, a Republican. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday quoted Napolitano's comments about GCHQ during a testy briefing with reporters. But speaking at the White House news conference, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at his side, Trump distanced himself. "That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, and so you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox. OK?" Trump said while standing by his initial charge that the previous U.S. administration eavesdropped on him. "As far as wiretapping, I guess by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps," he said to Merkel. U.S. ties with Germany were frayed by news reports in 2013 citing leaked intelligence documents that Washington had bugged Merkel's mobile phone. NO APOLOGY A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said British officials had voiced concern to senior Trump aides but the official declined to explicitly apologize for Spicer's citation of the Fox News allegations. The Republican Trump, president since Jan. 20, tweeted this month that his Democratic predecessor had wiretapped him during the late stages of the 2016 campaign. Trump offered no evidence, and an Obama spokesman has said the claim is "simply false". Leaders of both major parties in Congress have joined a growing chorus disputing it. On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department said it had responded to a request by committees in Congress for documents that could shed light on Trump's claim. A government source, who requested anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said an initial examination indicated it contained no evidence to support Trump's charge. On the "Fox & Friends" program, Napolitano, a political commentator and former New Jersey judge, said that rather than ordering U.S. agencies to spy on Trump, Obama had obtained transcripts of Trump's conversations from GCHQ so there were "no American fingerprints" on it. Late on Friday, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said: "Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano's commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop. Dominic Grieve, chairman of the British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, said a U.S. president cannot task the GCHQ to intercept an individual's communications. In a rare public statement, the GCHQ, Britain's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency which monitors overseas electronic communications, said the claims should be ignored. Reuters reported earlier this week that an unidentified British security official had denied the allegations about Trump. GCHQ, based in western England, is one of three main British spy agencies alongside the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service and the MI5 Security Service. (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; Writing by Howard Goller; Editing by Mary Milliken)
President Donald Trumps boldest effort at political misdirection is threatening to become a foreign policy mishap.

Struggling to justify Trumps charge that he was wiretapped by his predecessor, the White House repeated Thursday allegations that a British spy service wiretapped the President at the orders of former President Barack Obama. Within hours a spokesperson for the agency issued a rebuttal of the charge and a rebuke of the White House for elevating the claim.

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, a spokesperson for GCHQ said in a rare statement Thursday.

GCHQ, the British governments signals intelligence agency and the equivalent to the U.S. National Security Agency, was brought into the spiraling controversy over Donald Trumps claims that he was the subject of surveillance ordered by Obama on March 14 by Napolitano, a conservative Fox News personality.

In an interview with Fox & Friends, Napolitano claimed he had learned that Obama called on the British agency to spy on Trump, citing three unnamed sources. On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeated the claim, as he argued that the existence of media reports justified Trumps March 4 tweets accusing Obama of espionage targeted at his successor.

The Administration has struggled to justify Trumps charge for more than a week, as the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee jointly stated Thursday theyve seen no evidence of any surveillance of Trump Tower. Even Trump allies in Congress are staying away from the claim, though Trump maintained Wednesday in an interview with Fox News that he would be vindicated by new information very soon. The White House has argued that Trumps use of quotation marks around the phrase wires tapped implied he meant all manners of surveillance against him, but hasnt offered any official proof of the claim, beyond reports in the press.

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Reading a long list of media reports that mentioned alleged signals intelligence about Trump and his ties to Russia, Spicer quoted comments.

Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, Spicer said during the daily White House briefing. Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. 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 Spying Agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, The President needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trumps conversations involving President-elect Trump, he was able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this.'

Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot, Spicer said, by way of trying to offer proof for Trumps claim, but at the same time lending credence to the unfounded claim.

Asked by a reporter whether the subject of GCHQs alleged involvement had raised between the two governments and whether it would affect the so-called special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., Spicer backtracked.

No, no, it has not been raised, Spicer said. But I do think that, again, were not  all were doing is literally reading off what other stations and people have reported, and I think that casts into concern some of the activities that may have occurred during the 16 election. Were not casting judgment on that. I think the idea is to say that if these organizations, these individuals came to these conclusions, they merit looking into.

The U.S. and the U.K., along with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, form the Five Eyes  a decades-old intelligence sharing operation in which the countries share much of their signals intelligence and pledge not to spy on each another.
REIMS, France (AP)  Five years after his brother killed seven people in the name of Islam, Abdelghani Merah is walking across France to preach tolerance and warn against the dangers of religious radicalism.

Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers in southern France in March 2012. He then turned his anger on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, where he killed a rabbi and his two sons, aged 4 and 5, and an 8-year-old girl.

Abdelghani has denounced the attacks and the radicalization of Mohamed and another brother, Abdelkader. Mohamed was killed in a police shootout and Abdelkader faces trial.

Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan before returning home. He was 23 when he attacked paratroopers and a Jewish school, claiming links to al-Qaida.

Abdelghani told The Associated Press on Friday that "before becoming a monster, Mohamed Merah was a child like all the others, happy, he wanted to live. People are not born terrorists, they become terrorists."

His brother "became a terrorist via the people who manipulated him, who used him for their propaganda and who have dehumanized him. He had been brainwashed," he said. "They simply stole his heart and his brain."

Abdelghani left Marseille on Feb. 8 for his walk across France and hopes to meet the justice minister Sunday in Paris to encourage stronger de-radicalization measures.

He says he knows that some people in France are offended by his trek.

"I know that the name 'Merah' is hated. I can understand that. I won't change it," he explained, adding that he does not want Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group to use his brother's name for their propaganda. "I want this name, for once, to raise awareness."

Islamic extremists have killed 235 people in France since January 2015.

___

Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this story.
Sofia (AFP) - A senior figure in Bulgaria's Turkish community lashed out Friday at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a further escalation of a spat ahead of elections in the EU country and a referendum in Turkey.

In a rare outburst, Ahmed Dogan, who headed the main party representing the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, said Turkey's vote on expanding Erdogan's powers was "madness".

"On April 16 neighbouring Turkey will hold a referendum to turn Kemal (Ataturk's) Republic of Turkey into a sultanate," the 62-year-old said in a statement.

Bulgaria is home to a 700,000-strong ethnic Turkish minority, a legacy of the Ottoman empire.

Turkey, its neighbour, is home to more than 200,000 ethnic Turks with Bulgarian passports who left Bulgaria during the communist era.

Around a third of those over 200,000 people regularly turn out for Bulgarian elections and are expected to cast ballots in the March 26 vote.

Sofia has accused Ankara in recent weeks of meddling in its election, summoning Turkey's ambassador and recalling its own envoy from Turkey for consultations.

Turkey's envoy openly backed Dost, a new party that split from Dogan's Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in 2016, which is the third biggest in parliament.

Ognyan Gerdzhikov, Bulgaria's interim prime minister, on Friday acknowledged there was a problem.

"There is a certain amount of tension linked to one of the political parties that receives backing from the Turkish side but we are taking measures to stop that," Gerdzhikov said.

The State Agency For National Security (DANS) said Friday that it had expelled one Turkish national from Bulgaria and withdrawn the right of entry and residence of two more after seeing them as "threatening national security".

One of the men was accused of inciting anti-Bulgarian feelings in regions with a mixed Bulgarian and Turkish population, the agency added.

A wider row is raging between Turkey and the European Union ahead of the Turkish vote, with a number of countries preventing Ankara's ministers from attending referendum rallies.

An angry response by Ankara has seen German and Dutch politicians called "Nazis" and Turkey threaten to scupper a 2016 deal with the EU to prevent migrants entering the bloc.

This could be a major problem for Bulgaria, the EU's poorest country, since it shares a 270-kilometre (165-mile) border with Turkey.
By Tsvetelia Tsolova SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's caretaker prime minister said on Friday he was taking steps to prevent any attempts by Turkey to influence an election next week in favor of a political party that represents Bulgarian Turks, the country's largest ethnic minority. The Balkan country's national security agency later said it had expelled a Turkish citizen and banned two others from entering the country over what it described as activities against Bulgaria's sovereignty and national unity. It did not give details. Last week, the government summoned Turkey's envoy to Sofia after reports that a Turkish minister had campaigned for the DOST party in Istanbul, where many Bulgarian citizens live. Late on Thursday, it also recalled its own ambassador to Turkey for consultations. "It is true that there is a certain tension linked with one of the political parties, which is receiving support from the Turkish state, but we are taking measures that this does not continue," caretaker premier Ognyan Gerdzhikov told reporters. Bulgarians will vote in a snap parliamentary election on March 26. Seeking to downplay the tensions with Bulgaria's southern neighbor, Gerdzhikov said Turkey had tried to influence other Bulgarian elections since the fall of communism 26 years ago, and "now, there is nothing that is a way different". More than 400,000 Bulgarian nationals live in Turkey, most of them Bulgarian Turks descended from Ottoman-era Turkish settlers in the Balkans. Bulgarian Turks are estimated to be more than half a million of Bulgaria's 7.2 million population. Recalling an ambassador for consultations is a way of protesting that stops short of suspending diplomatic relations. The move by Bulgaria's interim government, which has limited powers, follows a row between Ankara and The Hague in the run-up to this week's Dutch election which saw Turkish ministers banned from holding rallies in the Netherlands. Other European Union countries including Germany have also angered President Tayyip Erdogan by barring campaigning among Turkish expatriates to drum up support for a referendum in April that would increase Erdogan's powers. "The interim government is concerned that Turkey may create tensions that go beyond the normal diplomatic process, as it happened in the Netherlands," said Vessela Tcherneva, Sofia-based analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations. "The problem is that if Turkey presses on, the Bulgarian nationalists may try to block the border to prevent Bulgarian citizens from Turkey crossing into the country to cast their ballots, and that will create a scandal." The spat with Turkey was credited with giving center-right Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte a last-minute boost in the polls after an election campaign in which immigration and integration were key issues. Opinion polls suggest the nationalist coalition United Patriots will come third in a tight race for the Bulgarian parliament and play a key role in forming the next government. Support for the party has grown as a result of Europe's migrant crisis. DOST, which split from the traditional ethnic Turkish MRF party last year, is not expected to pass the minimum threshold to win seats. EU member Bulgaria seeks to maintain good relations with Turkey, which it shares a 260 km border with and relies on to stem a possible increase in migrant inflows. Amid the rise in tensions with EU countries, Turkey's foreign minister said this week that Ankara may cancel a deal with bloc over migrants. (Editing by Catherine Evans)
Intipuca (El Salvador) (AFP) - Families across Central America are living in fear that US President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies will stem the vital flow of money sent home by migrants each year.

The concern is that relatives who have emigrated without authorization will be deported, suddenly ending the billions of dollars in annual remittances sent to their impoverished countries.

There are millions of Central Americans living legally in the United States -- but also 1.7 million unauthorized migrants from the region, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center.

Most of them come from the poorest, gang-ridden three countries known as the Northern Triangle -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Intipuca, a town south of El Salvador's capital, symbolizes the life-changing value of the US dollars sent back home.

The town features big, colored houses adorned with iron-forged moldings that stand empty. Their owners live in the United States, and return only for special occasions like Christmas, weddings and family events.

In the park in front of the town hall there is a statue dedicated to Sigifrido Chavez, who in 1967 became the first local to migrate to the United States.

Near the statue Jose Corpeno paces around as he speaks into a cellphone. He explains that he was talking with his daughter, who has been living in the US state of Maryland for a year and now "is living a nightmare."

"We are so worried. Immigration agents went to a place close to where she lives," Corpeno said.

The daughter paid a smuggler $10,000 to lead her up north, and now she is living without authorization in the United States.

"She's working. But she's afraid that at any moment she could be found out and detained," Corpeno said. The money the woman sends goes to a small plot of corn that her family depends on to survive.

"If she ends up being deported, then we'll be in a bad way. We are poor, and the money she sends helps us," Corpeno said.

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- 'Unfair' -

The same anxiety is felt in Guatemala.

Victoria Flores, 70, said she relies on her 50-year-old son Estuardo, who works as a dental technician in Los Angeles and whose remittances pay the mortgage, electricity, water and telephone service where she lived.

"This is a difficult situation, with worries every day because this president (Trump) has said that he will deport all the illegals from the United States," Flores told AFP.

The small woman called that policy "unfair." But she also lays part of the blame on Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama for overseeing changes in US migration law.

Remittances make up a significant chunk of the economy in the Northern Triangle countries, so any decline would be felt immediatly.

- A big impact -

"Ninety percent of remittances go to consumption, and any decline will impact consumption and tax income," said Mauricio Diaz, a coordinator in FOSDEH, a non-governmental Honduran body that monitors the country's external debt and development.

In Honduras, remittances received amounted to $3.9 billion last year. In El Salvador, it was $4.6 billion, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.

Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America, received more: $7.1 billion in 2016 -- an amount nearly as big as the $10 billion it makes in exports.

US aid to try to stem the violence and poverty in those countries was increased at the end of Obama's term, but has so far had little effect.

Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly visited Guatemala in February to say that, while citizens should not try to illegally enter the United States, there would be no mass deportations.

But the situation on the ground appears to contradict that. Kelly's department has issued internal memos setting out guidelines to boost arrests and accelerate the expulsion of undocumented immigrants.

Official figures for 2016 show that the United States deported 21,500 Salvadorans, the same number of Hondurans and 35,500 Guatemalans.
By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The chief justice of California's Supreme Court on Thursday asked the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to prevent immigration agents from arresting undocumented immigrants inside the state's courthouses.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said she was gravely troubled by recent reports that federal agents were "stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make arrests," in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly.

"Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country's immigration law," Cantil-Sakauye wrote.

Trump has vowed to increase deportations and has widened the net of illegal immigrants prioritized for detention and removal.

"We will review the letter and have no further comment at this time," Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said in an email.

Immigrant rights groups say federal agents have entered courthouses with increased frequency this year, including in California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Texas, said National Immigration Law Center staff attorney Melissa Keaney.

"It's definitely an issue we're seeing a tremendous increase in under the new administration," Keaney said by phone on Thursday.

Reuters could not independently confirm whether there has been an uptick in arrests at courthouses.

Cantil-Sakauye stopped short of questioning the legal right of federal agents to enter courthouses to locate and detain unauthorized immigrants.

Her letter said the presence of immigration agents in California courthouses could undermine "public trust and confidence in our state court system," which serves "millions of the most vulnerable Californians."

It could also discourage even legal immigrants from seeking justice, said Cathal Conneely, a spokesman for the Judicial Council of California, a branch of state courts.

Green-card holders, those who are permanent U.S. residents but not citizens, already leery of the justice system because of experiences in their countries of origin could be further dissuaded from entering courthouses, he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Patrick Enright and Leslie Adler)
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada on Friday formally apologized to three Canadian men of Arab descent who said they had been tortured in Syria and blamed Canadian secret services for their ordeal. The Liberal government also said it had agreed a cash settlement with Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin, who had pressed their case for a decade. All three men were arrested separately when entering Syria between 2001 and 2003. They say they were tortured and interrogated, and some of the questions they were asked were based on information that could only have come from Canada. In a statement, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland apologized to the three "for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to their detention and mistreatment abroad and any resulting harm". Goodale spokesman Dan Brien declined to answer how much the men would be paid. The Toronto Star newspaper, which reported in February that a settlement was imminent, said the deal would run into millions of Canadian dollars. Amnesty International said the settlement and apology would "send a strong message that what was done to them cannot and must not ever be done to others". Toronto law firm Stockwoods, which represented the men, said in a statement the three men and their families "are pleased that their long legal ordeal is over". An official inquiry into the case concluded in 2008 that Canadian security services most likely contributed indirectly to the trio's torture. Ottawa ordered the probe after an earlier inquiry found Canadian Maher Arar had been deported to Syria in 2002 by the United States, and tortured there, after what the inquiry said was false identification of him as an Islamic extremist by Canadian police. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bernard Orr)
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Canada is committed to keeping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a trilateral accord, Canada's trade minister said on Thursday, in a sign of support for Mexico as it prepares for tough negotiations with the new U.S. administration. "For me it is quite clear. NAFTA is a three-nation agreement. So the way to renegotiate a three-nation agreement is on a trilateral basis," Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at an event in Mexico City organized by Canadian and Mexican business groups. U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to submit to Congress his plan to renegotiate NAFTA, and could call for bilateral talks that analysts say would put smaller neighbors Mexico and Canada at a bigger disadvantage. Champagne later met with Mexico's economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo and the two together said NAFTA talks should be three-way and guided by a "win-win-win vision," according to a statement from the economy ministry. Trump has said he only wants to "tweak" U.S.-Canadian trade, while he would seek to change an "unfair" deal with Mexico. The United States and Canada face a different set of issues, such as lumber trade, compared with Mexico and the United States, where Trump is concerned about the U.S. deficit with Mexico and the loss of factory jobs south of the border. Champagne said that Canada was ready to sit down at the table and update NAFTA by including such issues as e-commerce, which was in its infancy when the deal took effect in 1994. He added that it would be more clear what was at stake once Trump submitted his plan to U.S. lawmakers. (Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Jonathan Oatis & Simon Cameron-Moore)
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb detonated near an army base in the eastern Afghan province of Khost on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding several before the army repelled at attack on the base by four gunmen, the district chief said. The blast, 50 metres (yards) from the base, was heard several miles away and damaged several shops, homes and a school, Akbar Zadran, the chief of Sabari district, told Reuters. Four gunmen attacked the base but were killed after an hour-long gun battle, Zadran said. In a statement, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had caused heavy casualties. The Islamist movement often exaggerates casualties caused by its operations. The attack follows an assault on a military air base in Khost province last week, and comes just ahead of the normal start of the spring fighting season, when Taliban insurgents and the Afghan army step up operations. The Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the country after territorial gains by the insurgents since NATO-led forces ended their combat operations at the end of 2014. U.S. and Afghan officials have warned about increased fighting this year as the Taliban look to widen their influence. The Taliban are seeking to expel foreign troops, defeat the U.S.-backed government and reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster. The head of U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, this month asked for more American troops to join the roughly 8,400 already stationed in Afghanistan to break the stalemate. (Reporting by Ahmad Shah in KHOST; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Nick Macfie)
New York (AFP) - Poet, playwright and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott died Friday after a long illness at his home on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, his publisher said. He was 87.

"Derek Walcott passed away this morning," said a statement emailed by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

"He had been battling an illness for some time."

Born on St Lucia on January 23, 1930, Walcott started writing as a young child, encouraged by his teachers, and published his first collection of poems in his late teens.

After studying in Jamaica he moved to Trinidad, where he worked as an arts critic and in 1959 set up the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, which produced a number of his plays.

He leapt to prominence in the literary world with the 1962 publication of "In a Green Night," which brought together poems he wrote between 1948 and 1960.

He went on to become hugely prolific, publishing around 20 books of poetry and dozens of plays, with recurring themes including the Caribbean and its turbulent history, colonialism and post-colonialism.

His best-known work is his epic poem "Omeros," published in 1990 and freely inspired by Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment," the committee said.

Even then he remained relatively little known, even if fellow writers had long recognized his talent.

"He has a better command of the English language than any living English writer," said British poet and novelist Robert Graves.

Walcott himself never published in a novel during his career, which spanned nearly seven decades.

"Towards my twentieth year, I wrote the worst novel that could be written, and it was a blessing to lose the manuscript," he told France's Le Figaro newspaper, shortly after his Nobel win was announced.

Walcott's father died when he was very young and in a BBC interview in 1992 he recalled showing his first poems to his mother, a schoolteacher, who liked to recite verse around the house.

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Walcott, a thrice-divorced father of three, enjoyed reciting his poems in his deep timbre.

In 2009, Walcott withdrew from the race to become Oxford University's poetry professor after 200 academics were reportedly sent a dossier detailing a sexual harassment claim against him in 1982.

The poet told London's Evening Standard newspaper he did not want to be part of the race "if it has degenerated into a low and degrading attempt at character assassination."

St Lucia, which is home to fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, has produced two Nobel laureates, the other being Arthur Lewis, who won the prize for economics in 1979 and died in 1991.
Hong Kong's troubled flagship airline Cathay Pacific said Friday it would slash staff costs by 30 percent as part of a major overhaul as it struggles to repair its bottom line.

The announcement came two days after the firm posted its first annual net loss in eight years, saying it had been hit by intense competition and a drop in demand from business travellers.

Cathay had already revealed its biggest shake-up in 20 years in January, saying some jobs would go but providing little detail.

Analysts had said the company need to reveal more about its restructuring plans to encourage investor confidence.

Its stocks in Hong Kong closed up 1.44 percent Friday after the latest news.

Cathay said middle and senior management at its Hong Kong head office would be targeted, although it gave no further indication of how many jobs could be axed.

"It is clear that there is a need for an organisational structure that will allow the Cathay Pacific Group to succeed," it said in a statement.

The firm added that it was seeking to create a "leaner, simpler structure" and that management changes would be announced in June.

The move is part of a three-year "transformation programme" designed to breathe new life into the airline.

Cathay has been struggling despite an expansion of international air travel in the region as lower cost carriers, particularly from mainland China, eat into its market share.

The airline is also losing premium travellers as it comes under pressure from Middle East rivals that are expanding into Asia and offering more luxury touches.

That has led to promotional prices for Cathay's top tickets as they are sold to leisure travellers.

Its $74 million net loss in 2016 reversed a $773 million profit in the previous year, with chairman John Slosar warning 2017 would be similarly "challenging".

It was the firm's first annual loss since 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
At least 80 Roman Catholic dioceses across the United States have said its OK to enjoy corned beef and cabbage on St. Patricks Day this year  despite the fact that the holiday falls on a Friday during Lent, when practicing Catholics are typically required to abstain from eating meat.

As of March 9, more than 80 of the nearly 200 dioceses in the U.S. had announced a St. Patricks Day exemption to the no-meat rule, according to the Catholic News Agency. That gives Catholics permission to eat corned beef and cabbage, a meal traditionally served in the U.S. on St. Patricks Day. Archdioceses in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco are among those that have granted a dispensation.

Exemption details differ by diocese, and Catholics have been advised to check in with their local parish. Some church leaders have asked Catholics to, instead, abstain from eating meat on another day this week or to perform an additional act of charity.

If a Catholic residing in the Archdiocese of New Orleans wishes to participate in St. Patricks Day activities and desires to eat meat, they may be dispensed and choose another day of the week for abstinence or may choose to perform an act of penance that is a greater sacrifice, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond said in a statement to priests reported by the Times-Picayune.

Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda, who leads the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minnesota, encouraged churchgoers to perform another act of penance, according to the Catholic News Service.

When you get a dispensation  and I think its coming  you should do penance on another occasion, Hebda said last month. So, its like a get-out-of-jail-free card, but you have to pay sometime.
Santiago (AFP) - The Chilean government has received a giant donation of private land for national parks from the widow of US philanthropist Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of the clothing brands Esprit and The North Face.

The donation of 407,625 hectares (one million acres) -- the largest ever made in Chile's history -- will become part of Chile's National Patagonia Parks network, officials said.

Tompkins, a billionaire environmentalist, died in 2015 at the age of 72 in a kayaking accident in southern Chile.

The land, which includes forests and flora unique to the region, was offered by Tompkins's widow, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, a former CEO of the outdoor clothing and gear company Patagonia.

McDivitt said she was following her late husband's wishes in making the donation.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet formally accepted the land in a ceremony on Wednesday in the town of Chaiten, some 1,260 kilometers (780 miles) south of Santiago. A presidential decree is still needed to complete the transaction.

At the event, McDivitt said she hoped thd donation "will serve as a model for other countries."

Bachelet's government also agreed to protect an additional 949,368 hectares, resulting in 4.5 million hectares of new parkland in eight regions of the country.

Tompkins and McDivitt moved to the Patagonia region of Chile in 1990 as the country was transitioning to democracy after years of military dictatorship.

The couple was initially met with skepticism and suspicion when they started buying vast tracts of land for preservation purposes in Chile and neighboring Argentina.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will begin preparatory work this year for an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, an official said, as two U.S. senators introduced a bill to impose sanctions on its activities in the disputed waterway. China seized the strategic shoal, which is also claimed by the Philippines, in 2012 and the United States has warned Beijing against carrying out the same land reclamation work there that it has done in other parts of the South China Sea. This week, Xiao Jie, the mayor of what Beijing calls Sansha City, an administrative base for disputed South China Sea islands and reefs it controls, said China planned preparatory work this year to build environmental monitoring stations on a number of islands, including Scarborough Shoal. The monitoring stations, along with docks and other infrastructure, form part of island restoration and erosion prevention efforts planned for 2017, Xiao told the official Hainan Daily. The report comes ahead of a visit to Beijing at the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, where he is expected to reiterate U.S. concern about Chinese island building. Tillerson has called the activity "illegal" and last June, then U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned that any move by China to reclaim land at Scarborough Shoal would "result in actions being taken by the both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions, but isolating China." A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Anna Richey-Allen, said it was aware of the Chinese report and reiterated a call on South China Sea claimants to avoid building on disputed features. The Philippine foreign ministry declined to comment, saying it was trying to verify the reports. Washington stresses the importance of free navigation in South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year. China claims nearly all of the sea and Washington is concerned its island-building is aimed at denying access to the waters. This week, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin introduced the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, which would ban visas for Chinese people helping to build South and East China Sea projects. It would also sanction foreign financial bodies that "knowingly conduct or facilitate a significant financial transaction for sanctioned individuals and entities" if China steps up activity at Scarborough Shoal, among other actions. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the bill "extremely grating" and said it showed the "arrogance and ignorance" of the senators. Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said it was unclear if China planned dredging work at Scarborough Shoal, something that could wreck efforts to agree a code of conduct for the region that Beijing professes to support. She noted that parties to a 2002 declaration of conduct had agreed to refrain from inhabiting uninhabited features. During his January confirmation hearing, Tillerson said China should be denied access to islands it has built up in the South China Sea. He subsequently softened his language, saying that in the event of an unspecified "contingency," the United States and its allies "must be capable of limiting China's access to and use of" those islands to pose a threat. (This version of the story was corrected to fix spelling of Glaser in paragraph 13) (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd; Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and James Dalgleish)
By Chen Aizhu BEIJING (Reuters) - China needs to speed up building planned nuclear reactors and make quick new approvals over the next few years to meet a target for 2020 and keep projects rolling beyond that, an ex-chairman of China National Nuclear Corporation [CNNNC.UL] said. CNNC aims to start up around November this year - nearly four years behind an original timeline - the world's first Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, said former chairman Sun Qin in an interview this week. China currently operates 35 nuclear reactors, which supply 3 percent of China's total power use, and it is building another 31 units as part of an ambitious program to put a total of 58 gigawatts into operation by 2020. Several former top nuclear powers, including Germany and Switzerland, announced plans to withdraw from the sector in the wake of Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, the world's worst since Chernobyl. With Japan and the United States also scaling back on nuclear, China could emerge in the next decade as the most significant developer of nuclear-fired power if it accelerates its building schedules. "The successful start-up of AP1000 will boost industry morale ... and will be replicated along the coast as we've planned a series of both AP1000, and (Areva's) EPR reactors," Sun said. Delays at so-called third-generation reactors, both the Westinghouse AP1000 and French state firm Areva's European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), have dragged on China's pace of nuclear power development for the past few years, after Beijing had already suspended new project approvals for three years following the Fukushima meltdowns. At the world's maiden AP1000 project in the eastern province of Zhejiang, developed by Westinghouse and its struggling Japanese parent Toshiba, delays for the fine-tuning of designs have inflated costs of the first two reactors by at least 10-20 percent, said Sun, who retired last December after working in the industry for over 30 years. Sun didn't give the initial cost estimates, but state media reported in 2009 the first two reactors then cost 40 billion yuan ($5.8 billion). Beijing will need to approve six to eight new reactors a year between 2018 and 2020, to accelerate post-2020 development, said Sun, adding that another slowdown would waste China's recently developed nuclear equipment manufacturing capacity. The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) developed by French Areva and being built in South China's Guangdong province has also seen delays, similar to EPR projects in Finland and France, said Sun. China, however, is not relying on foreign technology alone to develop its nuclear power sector. CNNC and domestic rivals China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and State Power Investment Corp [CPWRI.UL] all aim to export their own technologies after proving them at domestic plants. Sun said China's own third-generation reactor Hualing-1, jointly developed by CNNC and CGN, was progressing smoothly in the southeastern city of Fuqing, where first operations are expected in 2020. China is building an identical Hualong-1 unit in Pakistan and is waiting for Argentina to finalize another Hualong-1 deal. State Power Investment is also developing an enhanced version of AP1000, called CAP1400 with a pilot project planned in eastern Shandong province. Sun also said CNNC remains in talks with French nuclear fuel group New Areva - a unit being spun off from parent Areva - over a potential stake of at least 10 percent and a board membership. (Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Henning Gloystein and Tom Hogue)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China, backed by Russia, blocked a short U.N. Security Council statement on Myanmar on Friday, diplomats said, after the 15-member body met to discuss the situation in Rakhine state, where the country's military is conducting a security operation. The U.N. human rights office last month accused the military of mass killings and rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burning their villages since October in a campaign that "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman briefed the council behind closed doors. Britain requested the meeting. "We did put forward ... some proposed press elements but there was not consensus in the room," British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, president of the council for March, told reporters after the briefing. Such statements have to be agreed by consensus. Diplomats said Myanmar neighbor China, backed by Russia, blocked the statement. The short draft press statement, seen by Reuters, would have "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all effected areas." Some 75,000 people have fled Rakhine state to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military began a security operation last October in response to what it says was an attack by Rohingya insurgents on border posts in which nine police officers were killed. The European Union called on Thursday for the United Nations to send an international fact-finding mission urgently to Myanmar to investigate allegations of torture, rapes and executions by the military against the Rohingya Muslim. Following a closed-door council meeting in November and as Western nations became increasingly concerned about how Aung San Suu Kyi's government was dealing with violence in the divided northwest, Suu Kyi told diplomats in the capital, Naypyitaw, that her country was being treated unfairly. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols)
China and Russia blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement on Friday that would have expressed concern over the tense situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state, diplomats said.

Myanmar's military carried out a four-month offensive against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine that UN human rights investigators have said likely resulted in atrocities and crimes against humanity.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters "there was no consensus in the room" for the statement.

Diplomats said China and Russia had raised objections, but the diplomatic missions of the two countries did not respond to requests from AFP for information.

The proposed British-drafted statement "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all the areas."

"We support the peace process and are one of the largest bilateral humanitarian aid donors, including in Rakhine state," said Rycroft, whose country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

An agreed statement expressing concern could have led to further action, but the move by China and Russia -- which both have veto power -- was seen as a clear signal that Myanmar should be left off the council agenda.

UN rights officials have accused the Myanmar military of extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and probable ethnic cleansing during the campaign against the Rohingya.

The 1.1 million Rohingya are loathed by many from the Buddhist majority, who insist they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have lived in the country for generations.
Photo credit: Alexandre Jean

From Popular Mechanics

Around 4.3 billion years ago, a planetary blob of hot molten rock named Earth cooled just enough to start forming a crust. Billions of years later, humans evolved. And now, two of those humans have discovered that a chunk of that original crust is actually still around on the surface today.

A duo of geologists led by Jonathan O'Neil at the University of Ottawa have just announced the discovery of an ancient chunk of Earth's original crust. It was found near the eastern shore of the Hudson Bay in Northwestern Quebec, in Canada. The rock is a basalt, which O'Neil's team believes was, at one point, underneath the Earth's first oceans. It is surrounded by a cocoon of granite rock that O'Neil and his fellow researcher, Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington D.C., say is also just one geological step away from Earth's original crust. The geologic findings were published today in the journal Science.

"I think that it's a piece of the original crust. It was cooked, but I think it's still very close to what it used to be," O'Neil tells Popular Mechanics.

Ancient Fingerprint

This fascinating research is based on a "scientific technique that's relatively new, only about 10 years old," says O'Neil. Only a handful of geology labs across the globe are using it.

The technique is basically a method of aging rocks by tracking the decay of an isotope called samarium-146. This isotope is interesting because it existed on Earth only for a short period of time after the planet formed-up until around 4 billion years ago. By then all of Earth's samarium-146 had decayed into another isotope of the element neodymium, and it's now functionally extinct on our planet.

"It was cooked, but I think it's still very close to what it used to be."

By studying the ratio of different flavors of neodymium in a given rock, you can gauge how far removed that rock is from rocks that formed during Earth's early cooling. Newer rocks that have melted and reformed a dozen times since the dawn of Earth will have a slightly different ratio of neodymium isotopes.

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Near the shores of the Hudson Bay way up in Canada, O'Neil's team analyzed a collection of granite rocks that we know (through other dating methods) are only 2.7 billion years old. Now, granite cannot have be part of Earth's original crust because you have to form granite by melting and reforming other rocks. But the samarium-146 decay of the granite they discovered strongly suggests it is only one step removed from Earth's original crust. What we the researchers think happened, O'Neil says, is that after 1.3 billion years of existing on the surface, part of Earth's original crust was forced underground, where the intense heat and pressure forged it into the granite we see today.

The First Crust

Photo credit: Alexandre Jean

This discovery alone would be an impressive find. If you know a sample of rock is only one step removed from Earth's first crust, terra primum, then "by studying the makeup of these rocks, you almost piece together the DNA, so to speak, of these old continents," says O'Neil.

But alongside these firstborn granite rocks, O'Neil's team also found a basalt that they believe actually is the original crust-which somehow survived its multi-billion-year trip underground relatively unscathed. It's a basalt rock, and it perfectly "fits the composition of the precursor rock we believe formed everything around it," he says. That is, the ratio of neodymium isotopes exactly fits what the geologists would expect to find in Earth's original crust.

Don Francis, a geologist at McGill University who was not involved in the research, agrees that the find really does look likely to be part of Earth's original crust. "It may indeed represent very early [4.3 billion year old] basaltic crust," he says.

That's music to O'Neil's ears. "Its an original piece is basaltic crust, I'm convinced it is," he says.

Photo credit: Jonathan O'Neil

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Kevin Hart is so famous in Philly, he now has an official holiday here.

City Council on Thursday approved a measure from Councilman David Oh to honor the comedian with Kevin Hart Day on July 6, Harts birthday. Oh, in a release, said he introduced the resolution as a simple way to show [Hart] gratitude for being a fantastic ambassador for the City of Philadelphia.

Whether through his hilarious sense of humor or through his heartfelt generosity towards his hometown, Kevin Hart knows how to bring a smile to everyone in Philadelphia, Oh said.

Raised in North Philadelphia near 15th and Erie, Hart attended George Washington High School, and later the Community College of Philadelphia and Temple University. He broke into comedy by performing at amateur nights here in Philadelphia, and was a regular performer at the Laff House on South Street.

Since then, Hart has moved on to become on of comedys biggest stars, and last year was named the highest-paid comedian in the business by Forbes, topping even Jerry Seinfeld with an estimated $87.5 million made between June 2015 and June 2016.

Hart has worked to spread that success back to his hometown, particularly through donations to the Philadelphia School District. The comedian in 2013 donated $250,000 to Philly schools for new computers (four of which were later stolen), and followed that up in 2015 with four $50,000 college scholarships for Philly high school students in partnership with the United Negro College Fund.

Hart currently is back in town working with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston on Untouchable, a remake of the hit 2011 French film, The Intouchables. The pair have been spotted a couple times recently.

While Philadelphias newly establish Kevin Hart Day is the comedians latest tribute holiday, it is not Harts first. Last year, the entire state of California named Feb. 22, 2016 as their own Kevin Hart Day.

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Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, is expected to be named deputy administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Politico reported Thursday.

Wheeler, a former aide to Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., worked for the EPA early in his career.

Politico quoted sources as saying the nomination is not yet locked in, and there was no indication when an announcement would be made. Wheeler would need to obtain a waiver to be able to serve at the EPA.

Read: Turn Coal Into Gold?

Wheeler is a registered lobbyist for Murray Energy, which regularly challenged the Obama administrations environmental regulations in court. He also lobbied for Underwriters Laboratories of Illinois and cheesemaker Sargento. Former clients included Xcel Energy and Bear Head LNG, Politico said.

During the presidential campaign, President Donald Trump pledged to revitalize the coal industry, which said had been decimated by environmental regulations. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt repeatedly sued the EPA over regulations, saying it should be up to the states to decide what environmental protections are necessary.

Read: Donald Trump Seizes Coal Country Voters On Promise To Revive Hard-Hit Industry

Inhofe, 82, who rejects scientific conclusions on climate change, has put his mark on the administration. At least a half-dozen of his aides have found their way into the Trump administration. Inhofe has called the EPA an activist organization that has placed unfair burdens on everyone from farmers to fossil-fuel companies.

Trumps fiscal 2018 budget, which was unveiled Thursday, slashes the EPA, eliminating 3,200 of its 15,000 workers, cutting funding for climate change research and Superfund cleanup and scraping more than 50 programs.

Literally and figuratively, this is a scorched earth budget that represents an all out assault on clean air, water, and land, Gina McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator during the final years of the Obama administration, said in a statement. You cant put America First when you put the health of its people and its country last.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  The U.S. Coast Guard said that a kayaker from Florida who went missing off Puerto Rico's west coast was found Friday on a nearby, uninhabited island.

The agency said 25-year-old Josh Kaufman was spotted on a cliff on Desecheo island, which lies between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Officials said he had last been seen early Thursday afternoon after he took off in a green kayak from the popular tourist town of Rincon. Kaufman was not wearing a life jacket.

Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad said Kaufman was found in good condition.

Authorities said they did not have a hometown for him.
Some common pain relievers may increase the risk of cardiac arrest, according to a new study from Denmark.

In the study, researchers found a link between the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)  including ibuprofen  and an increased risk of cardiac arrest, which is when the heart suddenly stops beating.

The findings add to those of previous research, which has also found a link between NSAID use and a higher risk of heart problems, including heart attack, stroke and heart failure. The new study is the first to look specifically at the impact of NSAIDs on cardiac-arrest risk.

"The findings are a stark reminder that NSAIDs are not harmless," study author Dr. Gunnar Gislason, a professor of cardiology at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, said in a statement. People should be aware of the link, so that they can balance the benefits of taking one of these drugs against the risks, the researchers said. "NSAIDs should be used with caution and for a valid indication," Gislason said.

The researchers recommended that people not take more than 1,200 milligrams of ibuprofen (or six 200-mg tablets) per day. [Top 10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration previously warned that NSAIDs, particularly at higher doses, may increase people's risk of heart attack or stroke. Consumers who use these drugs should take the lowest dose that works, for the shortest time possible, and people with heart disease or high blood pressure should speak with a doctor before using NSAIDs, the FDA advises.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed information from more than 28,000 people in Denmark who had a cardiac arrest somewhere other than a hospital during a 10-year period.

The researchers looked at each person's use of NSAIDs within the 30-day period immediately before his or her cardiac arrest, called a "case period." They compared that use to the person's use of NSAIDs during another 30-day period before the case period.

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To identify NSAID use, the researchers looked at whether people had redeemed a prescription for NSAIDs, including diclofenac, naproxen, ibuprofen, rofecoxib and celecoxib. (In Denmark, most of these drugs are available only by prescription.) The researchers calculated whether a patient would have been taking NSAIDs during the case period by using information about the daily dose of the treatment and the number of tablets in the prescription.

Among the patients in the study, 3,376 were treated with an NSAID during the 30-day period before their cardiac arrest.

The use of ibuprofen was linked with a 31 percent increase in the risk of cardiac arrest, and the use of diclofenac was linked with a 50 percent increase in the risk of cardiac arrest. The researchers did not find a link between the use of naproxen, celecoxib or rofecoxib and the risk of cardiac arrest, but this might have been because these drugs were used less commonly, the researchers said. [5 Surprising Facts About Pain]

The researchers noted that their study found only an association between the use of these pain relievers and the risk of cardiac arrest, and thus it cannot prove that taking NSAIDs caused a person's cardiac arrest. But because the study compared each person's use of NSAIDs during the case period to that same person's use during another period, this takes into account many factors that might otherwise differ among different people, such as the presence of chronic diseases. However, the study could not account for temporary changes that might happen to a person, such as the occurrence of an acute disease, the researchers said.

In addition, the study obtained information only about NSAIDs that people took as prescription drugs, so the researchers don't know whether some people were taking over-the-counter NSAIDs. (In Denmark, ibuprofen is the only NSAID sold over the counter.)

The study is published in the March issue of European Heart Journal-Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.

Original article on Live Science.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit the White House today. Her trip to Washington D.C. was delayed due to the Tuesday snowstorm in the northeast. NATO and trade are expected to be among the issues discussed. Caterpillar is seeking the counsel of an Ex-Attorney General as it fights a government investigation into its import-export practices. Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr will help the company address an ongoing investigation by the government. Earlier this month, U.S. law enforcement officials raided the heavy machinery manufacturers Illinois facilities as part of an Internal Revenue Service investigation. Some supporters of President Donald Trump want to boycott Hawaii. They are taking issue with the Judge who is standing int he way of the latest travel ban. 25% of Hawaii's income is from tourism.
TOKYO (AP)  A court held Japan's government and a utility liable on Friday for neglecting tsunami safety measures at the Fukushima nuclear plant and ordered them to pay more money to dozens out of the thousands of people who fled radiation released during the March 2011 disaster.

The ruling is the first from about 30 lawsuits filed by thousands of evacuees and could set a precedent for the other cases. About half of the 150,000 people forced to leave their homes still cannot return, six years after a massive earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant and caused reactor meltdowns.

The Maebashi district court ordered the national government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. to pay damages ranging from 70,000 yen ($620) to 3.5 million yen ($31,000) to 62 plaintiffs, or 38 million yen ($336,000) altogether, in addition to the compensation TEPCO has already paid them. The rest of the 137 plaintiffs in the case were not awarded additional compensation.

The court said the disaster was preventable and that TEPCO ignored safety steps despite knowing of the tsunami risk, while the government failed to oversee the utility. Even though TEPCO deserved severe blame because of its negligence, that does not lighten the government's responsibility, the court said, adding that they should split the cost of the damages.

The court upheld the plaintiffs' argument that TEPCO could have foreseen a massive tsunami as early as 2002, when a government panel predicted a 20 percent chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake triggering a tsunami along the Fukushima coast within 30 years. TEPCO also ignored another chance to implement safety measures in 2008 when a government study group warned of a major tsunami triggering a power loss at the plant.

At the Fukushima plant, the reactor buildings were not watertight and backup power generators were stored in the basement. The tsunami that swept into the plant on March 11, 2011, knocked out the reactors' cooling system and destroyed the backup generators that could have kept it running and kept the nuclear fuel stable.

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In the ruling, Judge Michiko Hara said TEPCO should have moved the generators to higher floors.

Government, parliamentary and private investigations have blamed complacency over safety, inadequate crisis management skills, a failure to keep up with international safety standards, and collusion between regulators and the nuclear industry.

The government and the utility have argued that a tsunami as high as what occurred could not have been anticipated and the accident was unavoidable.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and TEPCO President Naomi Hirose told separate news conferences that they will respond after examining the ruling closely.

The Maebashi lawsuit was filed in 2013 and sought a total of 1.5 billion yen ($13.2 million) in damages for the 137 plaintiffs. The court decided on a lower amount because of the compensation already paid. The varied amounts for the plaintiffs were based on family makeup and whether they were forced to evacuate from the no-go zone or left voluntarily.

Katsuyoshi Suzuki, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, welcomed the decision's acknowledgement of the defendants' liability, including the government for the first time. But he said he was dissatisfied with the level of compensation that the court awarded. "For the suffering and sorrow of the people who had no choice but leave their homes, the amount is way too small," he said.

___

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/mari-yamaguchi
Zagreb (AFP) - Croatian Jews said Friday they would boycott for the second consecutive year a commemoration for victims of the country's most notorious World War II camp, blaming authorities for failing to react to a pro-Nazi ideology revival.

Ognjen Kraus, who heads an umbrella association of Jewish groups, said they would "not attend" the official ceremony in Jasenovac on April 22 due to the ongoing trivialisation of the role of the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime and its symbols.

"Nothing was done (about it) in the past year," he told N1 television. "We cannot and will not ever reconcile with such politics."

The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians, all of whom boycotted last year's commemoration for Jasenovac victims over a resurgence in pro-Ustasha sympathies.

In January, the Jewish community also snubbed the official ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day for the same reasons.

Around three-quarters of the Jewish community, which numbered around 40,000, were killed by the Ustasha. They now make up less than one percent of Croatia's population of 4.2 million.

Central to the issue is a memorial plaque with an Ustasha slogan that was unveiled in Jasenovac in November by former paramilitaries to honour fellow fighters killed in the area at the start of Croatia's 1990s independence war.

Ethnic Serbs said they would attend this year's commemoration if the slogan was removed.

Conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who came to power following snap elections in October, has pledged to move away from extremism.

Under the previous centre-right government, there was a growing climate of intolerance which included nostalgia for a pro-Nazi past and attacks on independent media and minorities, notably ethnic Serbs.

Critics say the current administration has not done enough to move away from its predecessor's policies.

In January, a Croatian school refused to display an exhibition on Jewish diarist Anne Frank because it included panels on the Ustasha crimes.

And the next month, dozens of a far-right activists marched through downtown Zagreb chanting a pro-Nazi salute. Their leader was eventually arrested.
From pints of guinness to parades and green dye, St. Patricks Day often gives politicians and those working in Washington ample opportunity to get into the spirit. Although some tried to do so this year, politicians including House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump made some blunders.

Heres a roundup of some of the faux pas and how the reactions unfolded.

President Trump and the proverb (that very likely could have been from a Nigerian poem)

Speaking at a Friends of Ireland lunch during a visit from the Irish Prime Minister, President Trump invoked a proverb. 

As we stand together with our Irish friends, Im reminded of that proverb  and this is a good one, this is one I like; Ive heard it for many, many years and I love it  Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue. But never forget to remember those that have stuck by you, Trump said. Its a great phrase.

But, as some on Twitter noted, the quote sounded very similar to the words of a Nigerian man, Albasheer Adam Alhassan.

Trump's favorite Irish proverb that he struggled to read aloud was written by Albashir Adam Alhassan, a Nigerian. https://t.co/sk8yIcRgiD  Fuzzy Dunlop (@BillsNewAccount) March 16, 2017

Alhassan told CNN, I posted those things when I was back in school, over 10 years ago. I never thought it would get to this level.

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The proverb was originally provided by the State Department as a building block for the event, The Hill reports.

Paul Ryan Struggled With a Pint of Guiness

Twitter had a field day after an image of Paul Ryan holding up a pint of Guinness at that same lunch went viral. The beers head, which is typically served thick and foamy, appeared to be lacking.

First Mike Pence says 'top of the morning', then Paul Ryan holds up this appalling pint, grave missteps by the US pic.twitter.com/U4ktqf0Aag  Naomi O'Leary (@NaomiOhReally) March 16, 2017

This isn't a pint of Guinness. It's a sample of Paul Ryan's blood. pic.twitter.com/9Vg67Gub4w  Mallow News (@MallowNews) March 16, 2017

"In a subtle yet cavalier act of diplomacy, Enda has given Paul Ryan the worst pint of Guinness imaginable," https://t.co/VSKEZG8RTN  John Herbert (@jherbertwriter) March 17, 2017

"In a subtle yet cavalier act of diplomacy, Enda has given Paul Ryan the worst pint of Guinness imaginable," https://t.co/VSKEZG8RTN  John Herbert (@jherbertwriter) March 17, 2017

tfw you see Paul Ryan's pint of Guinness pic.twitter.com/iEpsmg2Dqs  The Memeon King (@FanSince09) March 16, 2017

Sean Spicers Green Tie

Melissa McCarthy could have more fodder for a Saturday Night Live appearance. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wore a kelly-green tie to his daily press briefing Thursday, provoking one Twitter, Buzzfeeds Jesse McLaren, user to transform it into a green screen for a viral video that has been viewed more than a million times.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The daughter of the former confidante of South Korea's ousted president can be extradited from Denmark for prosecution there, a top Danish prosecutor said Friday.

Mohammad Ahsa said Chung Yoo-ra is wanted as part of a corruption investigation at home, and the extradition request has been reviewed thoroughly and all conditions have been met.

Ahsa added that Chung, 20, who was arrested in Aalborg, northern Denmark, on Jan. 1 on an international warrant, has three days to decide whether she will bring the decision before the Danish courts.

Peter Martin Blinkenberg, her lawyer, said he informed Denmark's top prosecutor that they would appeal the decision and test it before Danish courts.

"We believe this is highly political and we have a fear that they want her to be able to press the mother," Blinkenberg told The Associated Press.

No date for an appeal was immediately set but Blinkenberg said it could take up to six months. "We need to coordinate our calendars and find a date."

Chung is the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, jailed in South Korea on suspicion of bribery and receiving favors from companies in return for manipulating government affairs.

President Park Geun-hye was removed from office last week on allegations that she colluded with Choi.
Iron Fist might pack a powerful punch, but lately he's been on the receiving end of a critical pummeling.

The first reviews for Netflix's latest Marvel superhero show have not been good, to put it mildly. In most normal circumstances, I'd stay the hell away from a series with reviews that bad. But Iron Fist has the Marvel name on it, and I'm a Marvel obsessive. That's how they get you.

SEE ALSO: 'Iron Fist' reviews: Does the show live up to to its Marvel predecessors?

So when Iron Fist finally hit Netflix this morning after months of loud buzz  some of it good, most of it bad  I fired up my television to give the show a go.

The first thing that happened when I sat down to watch Iron Fist was I discovered that Enter the Dragon was playing on HBO (or Cinemax, or one of those other premium cable channels). Bruce Lee is definitely subtweeting me from beyond the grave.

The second thing that happened was that I noticed all the episode titles had these weird bullshit titles meant to sound vaguely "Asian." "Under Leaf Pluck Lotus." "Black Tiger Steals Heart." "Dragon Plays with Fire."

We are not off to a good start here.

But it's my job to watch this thing, so I proceed. Here are some thoughts I had while watching the first two episodes, "Snow Gives Way" and "Shadow Hawk Takes Flight."

1. Our guy is first introduced walking down a New York City sidewalk in bare feet. Bare feet!

I am immediately disgusted by Danny, but if they're trying to make me feel sorry for Finn Jones it's working.

Oh, and "So Fresh, So Clean" is playing because irony, I guess. I realize later that I should have treasured this joke because it is one of the very few we'll get in the entire series.

2. Danny waltzes into a heavily guarded corporate building and demands to see the CEO. Needless to say, security does not take kindly to this.

So Danny beats them all up and makes his way up the elevator. This is horrifying! That receptionist and those guards were just trying to do their jobs, which is to protect the people in the building from creepy weirdos who walk in off the street.

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It also makes Iron Fist kinda-sorta a story about white privilege, but not in a good way.

First, it takes a special kind of pampered obliviousness on Danny's part to just assume that every single person in the building will take him at his word that he's the presumed-dead heir to the company. And second, imagine what would happen if literally anyone but a white guy beat up a bunch of security guards to sneak into a Manhattan high-rise in the middle of a work day. There would be lockdowns. Evacuations. Calls to the NYPD.

What there would definitely not be is a bunch of people standing around in the lobby, looking kind of cranky about the whole thing but just kinda shrugging it off.

Danny Rand talks about stuff.

Image: netflix

3. Surprise, surprise: the Meachums are not happy to see him, which seems very freaking understandable to me?

I know the Meachums are supposed to be the bad guys of this story, or at least that some of them are, but I've gotta say, I'm #TeamMeachum to start. It's hard to blame these people for being angry and scared that some total stranger has breached security and infiltrated their building and is now spouting nonsense about everyone's dead parents.

4. Danny Rand reacts to being turned away from the office building by ... breaking into Joy Meachum's house. What?

Guys, I'm starting to think Danny Rand is not a good person.

I was told Iron Fist would be a superhero show about Loras Tyrell having magical martial arts powers, but so far it's looking like the story of a nice family and their terrifying stalker.

5. Let's talk about Danny Rand's hair for a second.

While rooting around Joy Meachum's house, Danny has a flashback to childhood, where he and Joy and Ward Meachum were all sitting around playing a game. In this flashback, Danny, who is about 10, has straight-ish hair with just a slight wave.

Is it normal for a straight-haired 10-year-old kid to grow up to become a ramen-haired 25-year-old man? Does this mean the younger version of Danny used to straight iron his hair? Or that the older version of Danny is perming his? I have so many questions.

6. With nowhere else to go, Danny heads to the park for the night. To entertain himself, he whips out a first-generation iPod.

This is actually the most upsetting part of the entire two episodes I watched, but for once it's not Iron Fist's fault. My initial reaction was "Ha! You done fucked up, show! Danny's been gone for 15 years! Why would he have an iPod??"

Then came the chilling reaction that Danny has an iPod because iPods are over 15 years old. Holy shit, where has the time gone? What have I done with my life? Why am I so old? Have I lived a life of value? Will my next 15 years go by so quickly?

Danny Rand frowns at stuff.

Image: netflix

7. Danny befriends a homeless person who lives in the park.

Kind of. He's a real dick about it. This guy clearly just wants to help but Danny is amiably condescending toward him and laughs in his face about the notion that the outside world would see the two of them together and assume they're "pretty much alike." Later, Danny will quote Buddha at this poor fellow. Anyway, don't get too attached to him, because nothing good happens to him later.

8. A CG eagle flies around the Manhattan skyline.

What's that about? Is Danny a warg or something?

9. Colleen Wing tries to be nice to Danny, so of course he immediately starts being obnoxious to her.

Danny and Colleen have a brief exchange in perfect, relatively unaccented* English, and yet Danny decides that now he is going to start speaking to her in Mandarin. Danny is every white guy who has ever beamed at me with smug satisfaction after mangling a basic greeting to me in whatever he thinks my "native tongue" is.

(* Finn Jones and Jessica Henwick are both British. His American accent is perfect. Hers is less so.)

Colleen shuts that down right away, which I think is the show trying to demonstrate that they totally get it! They do not get it. Danny demands a job at her dojo, and when she refuses, he shows up there later and tries again. He tells her how to run her dojo ("Do you teach kung fu? You probably should, you'd get more students") and then, I dunno, lectures her about practice swords or something.

Honestly, I kinda tuned out at this point.

Look at these nice people minding their own business.

Image: netflix

10. Danny continues his tour of terrorizing Manhattan by cornering Ward in his car.

Danny admits he has not driven since he was a small child sitting on his dad's lap and pretending to drive, but slams the accelerator anyway like he's Vin Diesel or something. Ward is understandably terrified and threatens Danny with a gun. Danny grabs the gun, points it back at Ward, and lectures Ward about how Ward was mean to him 15 years ago.

Danny is so hell-bent on proving his identity that it never seems to occur to him that even if he is the real Danny Rand, no one owes him the time of day.

11. Dad Meachum is alive, and he's a dick.

After his exhausting misadventure with Danny, Ward returns home where we learn his dad, whom we had previously learned died several years ago, is still alive. Surprise! Of course, if you recognized character actor David Wenham from Lord of the Rings or Top of the Lake or Lion or Iron Fist's own promotional campaign, you probably could've guessed that already.

Anyway, Dad Meachum is a total irredeemable asshole in a way that makes me feel really sorry for Ward Meachum. It's probably not a good sign for the show that Ward seems like a way more relatable and interesting character than Danny does.

12. Danny wakes up in a mental ward, which is probably where he belongs, honestly.

The Meachums manage to drug Danny and get him to a mental hospital, where he wakes up at the start of Episode 2. This seems like a reasonable way for them to react to Danny, frankly! For all they know, he's a maniac or a con man trying to cheat them out of their money. (Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention  a lot of the Meachum stuff is boring corporate intrigue.) He's been harassing them at work and at home and even put Ward's life at risk. Why wouldn't they get him committed?

Danny, of course, is very put out by this whole thing and starts throwing temper tantrums. This entire show is people reacting sanely to Danny's insane story and Danny beating them up for it.

What a shame this kickass heroine is stuck playing second fiddle to Danny Rand.

Image: netflix

13. Colleen is already too good for this show.

A bunch of young people on the street attack Colleen while she's going about her day, and she handily takes them all down. It turns out they're not random muggers, but her students, so she gives them some snarky advice.

Colleen's moves honestly look way better than anything we've seen Danny do so far. For a martial arts show, the martial arts in this show are not very good. They're just generic fight scenes, and they're slow and clumsy in a way that suggests Finn Jones maybe has not done his homework. Henwick (or her stunt double) moves way more fluidly, and the character has more personality. Can we pull her out of this show and give her and Misty Knight a Daughters of the Dragon spinoff already, please?

14. We flash back to Danny's childhood for like the 10,000th time.

It is actually amazing how repetitive this show feels just two episodes in. The show's already gotten what feels like hours of mileage out of the one day they shot Child Danny's plane crash scene. The dialogue is mostly people repeating information back at each other. Danny keeps having to convince people over and over that he really is Danny. Et cetera.

15. Ward Meachum speaks for all of us.

At one point in the second episode, Ward gets a phone call from his dad, who scolds him for plot exposition reasons. "He says he is the sworn enemy of The Hand. Do you realize how important that could be?" yells Father Meachum.

Ward kinda just rolls his eyes and responds, "Not really!"

Ward is me.

Side note: In an effort to be sneaky  because, remember, no one's supposed to know Older Meachum is still alive  Ward has his dad listed in his phone as "Frank N. Stein." Dude.

Danny Rand punches stuff.

Image: netflix

16. After two excruciatingly long episodes, Danny finally unleashes his superpower.

He has a really strong fist that glows. It sounds stupid and it looks stupider.

Incidentally, this comes after a long talk with Danny and the psychiatrist in which the doc notes that "Ever since the incident, I'm seeing a lot more people who honestly believe they have superpowers." I'd kind of like to see this guy's story. Does he ever believe these patients, or does he just spend all his time unintentionally gaslighting them? If he doesn't believe them, why not? He lives in a world where the existence of Captain America, the Hulk, and Luke Cage are public knowledge! Why wouldn't people have superpowers?

17. Why is Iron Fist part of the Netflix-Marvel universe?

I mean, I think I know why  if you're gonna have Luke Cage, the comic book fans are gonna demand Iron Fist. But in all other respects, he's an odd fit for this gritty little corner of the MCU. Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage are all ground-level heroes with moderate goals, dealing with immediate and personal threats. They've got powers, but they're worried about paying the bills or dealing with obnoxious neighbors or getting caught up in awkward entanglements.

Meanwhile, Iron Fist is the rightful heir of a billion-dollar fortune who has actual magic powers. Not only does he stick out like a sore thumb, his story feels mind-numbingly familiar. He's Tony Stark minus the charisma, Stephen Strange minus the brilliance. Why is he here?

18. What does Iron Fist want?

Danny Rand wants people to understand he's Danny Rand. He feels obligated to protect the world from The Hand, or something. And ... that's about all I understand of his driving motivation here. I shouldn't be wondering what the point of this entire series is, two episodes in.

19. And now I'm worried about the Defenders.

When Marvel TV first got into business with Netflix, they announced they were making five shows: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. The first three of those have all been good enough that the prospect of a Defenders team-up down the line sounded intriguing and exciting.

But Iron Fist is the franchise's first real misfire. It's boring and repetitive and poorly cast. I'm a lot less excited about seeing this character return. It's clear Netflix is setting us up for an Iron Fist / Luke Cage partnership of some sort, since the characters are BFFs in the comics  but it's honestly difficult to imagine what this version of Luke Cage could possibly want with this version of Iron Fist. And don't even get me started on the queasy possibility of a comics-accurate Iron Fist / Misty Knight romantic pairing.

It's too late for The Defenders to do anything about this, since shooting on that series has been going on for months already. To be clear, I still think The Defenders will be fun. But Iron Fist should prove an interesting test case about the downside of Marvel's meticulously planned, hyper-connected approach to franchise-building.

Can they pivot, or are we stuck proceeding with whatever grandiose plans they had for Iron Fist before he turned out to be a dud?
My 4-year-old daughter, Elle, is in the fight of her life. Her older sister, Milla, lost her fight last November. Their opponent? Batten disease, a rare, fast-moving, and fatal condition that destroys the central nervous systems ability to function.

Elle has a chance to help manage, or maybe even beat, her disease that Milla didnt have: a clinical trial in which an investigational protein is infused directly into Elles brain every 14 days.

As I have watched Elle bravely confront Batten disease, I have also been following discussions within President Trumps administration about potential changes to the Food and Drug Administration. Some of these are highlighted in a STAT article, others in the presidents first speech to Congress, which just happened to be delivered on Rare Disease Day. I cant help but wonder how the administrations desire to streamline the FDA might affect my family, which has already been irrevocably changed by a rare and devastating disease.

Batten disease is the result of a genetic mutation that inactivates a specific enzyme. In that way it is similar to the condition that affects Megan Crowley, whose story President Trump highlighted in his address to Congress. The mutation makes it difficult for the body to break down fats and proteins. Their buildup damages the nervous system. Batten disease is largely unknown, since it occurs in only about two to four of every 100,000 people.

So far, there is no FDA-approved treatment for Batten disease. Fortunately for Elle and others with this disease, research into new treatments is ongoing.

Before Batten disease entered our lives, Milla was your typical toddler: silly and playful, a daredevil who would leap off anything she could

climb. In August 2013, just before Millas third birthday, she had her first seizure. She also started to show developmental delays in her speech, motor skills, and walking. Her condition declined rapidly. By January 2014, she was having hundreds of seizures per day. Fourteen months after her symptoms started, a genetic test revealed that Milla had a form of Batten disease called CLN2. At the time, there was nothing that doctors could do to save her life.

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We were heartbroken to lose our precious Milla shortly after her sixth birthday  just two years after her diagnosis.

Since Batten disease is inherited, we had our other two daughters tested. Elle, at age 2, tested positive. We reached out to the Batten Disease Support and Research Association and learned about a clinical trial for children with CLN2. We now travel from our home in Memphis, Tenn., to Columbus, Ohio, twice a month for Elles infusions, and are seeing small improvements in her seizure frequency, speech, strength, and balance.

Why am I sharing my story? Because we are so thankful to have access to a therapy that is showing early promise for Elle. Is the four-hour infusion process easy? No. But it is priceless to us, especially when we think of other families affected by rare diseases who have no options to even consider. Scientists will learn from children like Elle, and this knowledge can affect how other diseases are treated as well.

When reflecting on my familys journey with Batten disease, Im hesitant to support sweeping deregulation of the FDA, as suggested by President Trump. Following his speech to Congress, the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) issued a statement that agreed with the president that the FDA review process can be improved, but disagreed with him that restraints must be slashed, or that the approval process at the FDA is preventing advances from reaching those in need.

I agree with NORD that improvements to the FDA review process can and should be made to expedite the review of orphan drugs to help families like mine who are facing the near certain death of our children. The FDA should consider each disease and the circumstances of the patient population on a case-by-case basis when determining the requirements for approval. This will help ensure that lifesaving medicines reach patients in dire circumstances as quickly as possible.

Read more: A treatment for Zoe: Inside the race to build a therapy for a devastating rare disease

I believe that developing drugs for rare diseases is far different than developing them for more common diseases, such as diabetes or heart disease, that affect millions. In the case of rare disorders such as Batten disease, in which death at a young age is inevitable for the small number of patients affected, small clinical trials should be sufficient for the approval process and the expedited review period for treatments should be assured.

I also believe that the perspectives and experiences of rare disease patients and their families should be more integrated into drug development

and review. Our view of risk and benefit is vastly different from those of people facing more common diseases with established treatments. In Elles case, for example, the risk of her trying an experimental therapy that replaces the defective enzyme in her body with a working one was small compared to the high possibility of her dying. It made our choice an obvious one.

The FDA has clearly made great strides over the last 10 years in its efforts to better partner with industry for the good of people facing rare diseases. I believe more can be done. But I also believe that work this should be done within the FDAs existing framework, not in a streamlined version of the agency that protects pharmaceutical companies and device makers more than patients.

And I will continue to tell my familys story and champion the researchers and doctors who are dedicated to saving lives, one rare disease at a time.

Frazer Gieselmann is a banker living in Memphis, Tenn., with his wife, Dana. Together, they have three daughters, Ann Carlyle, Milla, and Elle.
South Korea's Chung Yoo-ra, then known as Chung Yoo-yeon, bites her gold medal as she poses after winning the equestrian Dressage Team competition at the Dream Park Equestrian Venue during the 17th Asian Games in Incheon September 20, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/Files

By Teis Jensen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will extradite to South Korea the daughter of the central figure in an influence-peddling scandal that led to the ouster of its president, the Danish public prosecutor said on Friday, but her lawyer said she will fight the order in court. South Korea has been thrown into political turmoil by the widening corruption and influence-peddling scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye and her friend Choi Soon-sil, and will now gear up for an early May election to choose a successor for Park. Chung Yoo-ra, a 20-year-old dressage rider and daughter of Choi, "is to be extradited for the purpose of prosecution in her home country," the public prosecutor said in a press release. Choi is accused of colluding with Park to pressure large South Korean businesses to contribute to non-profit foundations. Both Choi and Park have denied wrongdoing. Chung has been accused of criminal interference related to her academic record. South Korean authorities have also been investigating whether Samsung Electronics channelled money to a German firm controlled by Choi to sponsor Chung's equestrian career in return for favours from Choi and Park. Chung's lawyer told Reuters that she will challenge the public prosecutor's decision to extradite her all the way through the courts if necessary. "We had hoped for a different outcome, but on the other hand, it was to be expected. Now we will bring it to the courts and fight it there," lawyer Peter Martin Blinkenberg told Reuters. Blinkenberg said earlier this week that Chung was ready to claim political asylum in Denmark as she fears for her safety if she's forced to return home. Chung was arrested by Danish police in northern Denmark on Jan. 1. Deputy Director Mohammad Ahsan from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said in a news release that the South Korean Authorities had answered questions from the Danish prosecutor to help them decide on the extradition request. "I know that the case has been subject to great attention in South Korea. Therefore, I am pleased that there has been a prevalent understanding of the fact that the case has taken the necessary time, for it to be handled both thoroughly and in accordance with our legislation," Ahsan said. (Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by Jason Neely and Hugh Lawson)
Gotham star David Mazouz, who plays the young billionaire Bruce Wayne, revealed that the Court of Owls will play a significant role in the show when the series returns this April following its winter break.

Mazouz told Comic Book Resources that Bruce and his butler, Alfred (Sean Pertwee), are busy training in order to prepare for his future role as the Batman.

Read: David Mazouz films more scenes with Sean Pertwee

The Court of Owls will become extremely present in the last eight episodes. At the center of their plans is Bruce Wayne  Bruce and 514A are instrumental to that plan. Something huge will happen with Bruce and the Court of Owls that will change him forever and ultimately help transform him into the man we know he has to become, he said.

It seems like Mazouz is excited for these episodes to unfold because theres a huge twist that would tie it back to the beginnings of Gotham. They have a plan. As I said, Bruce is going to be at the center of their plans. They do something to him that goes back to the very beginning of the show, he said. Its something I would say is emotional, but its beyond that. It shakes the core of Bruces being. Hell never be the same. It will transform him, and thats going to be his arc in the last eight episodes.

Another thing that fans can look forward to is the appearance of Harley Quinn, Jokers (Cameron Monaghan) girlfriend. When executive producer John Stephens was asked by Cinema Blend when this would happen, he answered, We might see [her] in episode 22.

His co-executive producer Ken Woodruff also told IGN that Gotham fans had already seen Harley in past episodes, they just didnt know it was her. You may have already seen Harley as a person that you thought you had met and known for a long time. So we always reserve the right to sort of do that as well, said Woodruff.

Gotham airs every Monday at 8 p.m. EST on Fox.

David Mazouz

Photo: Getty Images/Jamie McCarthy

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You don't win friends with salad. But maybe salad disguised as cake will buy you some time before social ostracisation kicks in.

Behold: The salad cake. It's basically a bunch of vegetables that are smashed together to look like a delicious, sugary dessert  but is actually very good for you. How disappointing.

SEE ALSO: If you like pinatas and cakes, you'll love candy-filled smash cakes

Misuki Moriyasu is the genius creator of this cruel trick of the eye. Her Vegedeco Salad Cafe located in Nagoya, Japan, will serve you healthy cake that's "fun to look at, fun to eat and full of joy using a new shape of salad."

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on Sep 13, 2016 at 4:05am PDT

And they are stunning to look at, even if they take the fun out of eating things you know are bad for you.

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on Apr 11, 2016 at 12:41am PDT

If youre someone who enjoys eating healthy and isnt a garbage bin of a person, however, youll be pleased to know that everything about the cakes is clean.

The sponge is soy flour, the icing is tofu cream and theyre all 100 percent gluten free, sugar free, low carb and vegan.

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on May 2, 2016 at 12:26am PDT

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on Jan 5, 2017 at 12:19am PST

Naw, look how cute and colourful they are! Even if you find the whole idea of salad cake kind of blasphemous, youd have to admit: They look amazing and yum.

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on Jul 13, 2016 at 4:22am PDT

A post shared by Vegedecosalad (@vegedecosalad) on Aug 2, 2016 at 6:19am PDT
Denmark's prosecution authority said Friday it had decided to extradite the daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the centre of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea's 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 detained in Denmark on January 1 for overstaying her visa, after South Korean authorities issued a warrant for her arrest. Seoul then sought her extradition.

"After having reviewed the South Korean request for extradition thoroughly, it is our opinion that all conditions for extradition in the Danish Extradition Act are met," Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, said in a statement.

Chung, who has denied any wrongdoing, has three days to appeal against the decision to the Danish courts.

The equestrian, who has reportedly bought horses and trained in Denmark in the past, has told police that she was in the country because of her involvement in the sport.

Chung's mother, a confidante of Park, is 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.

The revelation touched a raw nerve in education-obsessed South Korea.

Several professors at Ewha Women's University, including a former school president, have been investigated for allegedly giving Chung preferential treatment.
By Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While he has swallowed a big budget cut, had his chosen deputy vetoed, and been dismissed as invisible in his own building, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is playing a patient game to gain influence by avoiding public conflicts with the White House, six current and former U.S. officials said on Thursday. The former Exxon Mobil Corp CEO faces multiple challenges in his unfamiliar role as chief U.S. diplomat, including a boss in U.S. President Donald Trump who makes unpredictable policy pronouncements and does not take kindly to criticism or contradiction, said four current officials. Relations between U.S. presidents and their chief diplomats have varied widely in history, but those between Trump and Tillerson are especially important because of potential conflicts between the unsettled state of the world and Trump's "America First" agenda, two of the officials said. As a result, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Tillerson is trying to keep a low profile, which is his natural instinct, and seeking a way to make his case on foreign policy without being drawn into losing battles. One case in point is Thursday's White House proposal to cut spending on U.S. diplomacy and foreign aid by some 28 percent, a sign that the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development are not Trump priorities.On Thursday in Tokyo, Tillerson said the State Department's current spending is "simply not sustainable," and accepted the "challenge" Trump had given in proposing to cut more than a quarter of his agency's budget. "He is making a very sensible calculation," said a former U.S. official, noting that Congress, not the president, holds the purse strings. "You state your loyalty to the president, and then you know that you will not actually have to live with the president's budget." NO WAY TO WIN 'HEAD-TO-HEAD' BATTLES Two current and former officials said Tillerson is no stranger to cost cuts, having lived through waves of them at Exxon, and they suggested that he had convinced the White House to allow him to make many of the cuts himself. "Tillerson isn't opposed to cutting the budget at all, but he figured out that he couldn't win head-to-head battles with the president and the people close to him, so he's pursuing a different strategy, arguing that he can't make wise decisions about what to cut until he's more familiar with his department and its budget," said one veteran State Department official. Michael Anton, a National Security Council spokesman, said Tillerson is held in high regard at the White House. "President Trump has the utmost confidence in the Secretary of State and looks forward to Mr. Tillerson implementing a bold agenda to revitalize American foreign policy," Anton said. While he is delaying some of the drastic cuts the White House wanted, it is far from clear that Tillerson can prevail over Trump aides such as Steve Bannon who want to dismantle parts of the federal government and limit U.S. engagement with the world, said three of the current and former officials. The White House veto of Elliot Abrams, Tillerson's choice for deputy secretary, the department's second-highest post, "drove that point home," one of the current officials said. Despite that defeat, a White House official said Tillerson has good access to the president, including multiple lunches, dinners and meetings. Tillerson dined with Trump on Monday, the night before he flew to Asia. INVISIBILITY CLOAK? Tillerson's low profile - he held his first news conference on Thursday in Tokyo seven weeks after becoming secretary of state - has brought criticism from the media and many State Department officials that he remains invisible and has failed to cultivate potential allies in Trump's cabinet and on Capitol Hill. Chas Freeman, a retired diplomat who served as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and as the lead interpreter for former President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, said Tillerson's low-key style might be a survival tactic. "If he says something, he runs a big risk of getting crosswise with Trump," Freeman said. "This may be a Fabian strategy," referring to the Roman statesman Fabius who defeated the Carthaginian general Hannibal by avoiding frontal conflict. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Photo credit: Science Photo Library/Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

Tardigrades are the most resilient animals known in existence. The tiny eight-legged creatures can easily survive in conditions that would kill most other creatures instantly. One of those conditions is total dehydration, and scientists looking at their genome have figured out how they survive this usually fatal circumstance.

Tardigrades have a unique group of proteins called TDPs, or "tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins." Unlike almost all other proteins, they have no set shape. This gives them a flexibility that other proteins don't have. Lead researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Thomas Boothby, describes them to NPR as "wiggly spaghetti springs where they are constantly changing shape."

TDPs, it turns out, create "a glass-like matrix within cells, physically preventing protein denaturation, protein aggregation, and membrane fusion," to quote Boothby's paper.

"TDPs are required to protect the tardigrades themselves from desiccation [extreme dryness], but they also increase desiccation tolerance when put into bacteria and yeast," Boothby tells Gizmodo. "Amazingly, TDPs are sufficient even in a test tube to protect purified biological material like desiccation sensitive enzymes. The glassy solids that they form are thought to coat desiccation sensitive molecules and physically prevent them from breaking apart, unfolding, or fusing."

While that's great for the tardigrade, it might also be good news for humanity. Boothby's paper hopes that these results will prove to be foundational for the study of desiccation. This could mean that the TDP process would be copied into "engineering of desiccation-tolerant crops and the development of technologies for the dry preservation of pharmaceuticals, cells, and tissues."

Drought-resistant crops might prove to be even more popular than apples that never turn brown.

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Source: Gizmodo

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SEWELL, N.J. (AP)  A dog rescued from the dinner table but left with half a face in Thailand has found a new home in New Jersey and is thriving.

Karen Quigley and Michelle Weirich raised more than $11,000 through a fundraising website to adopt and care for the 2-year-old mixed breed dog, named Teresa. A man unsuccessfully tried to butcher the animal for food.

"Unfortunately in Thailand people do eat dog meat, and a person had a machete and he was trying to cut her head off," Quigley said.

In Thailand, catching, selling and killing dogs for meat is not illegal, but exporting them without an official certificate is. Dog meat is not popular in Thailand but is considered a delicacy in Vietnam.

Teresa was left without a nose and parts of her top jaw. The money paid for her travel and surgery to remove teeth and mend her tongue.

Teresa is doing well at Quigley's home in Sewell. She does everything a normal dog would do, Quigley told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia (http://6abc.cm/2mzwdO6 ).

"She can do everything and that's what's so remarkable about Teresa," Quigley said. "She's so amazing because she's really so happy. She wakes up happy. She loves to run in the yard."

The animal's Robbinsville surgeon, Dr. John Lewis, said the animal is doing well besides some cosmetic issues.

"She can always breathe through her mouth, but the fact she can breathe through her nose just increases her quality of life. She's able to eat and drink, can play with toys, so that's the important thing," he said.

Quigley eventually wants to get Teresa certified as a therapy animal so she can comfort disfigured patients at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
By Shereen Lehman (Reuters Health)  - Walking a dog and spending time with grandchildren keep people with impaired lung function more active than their peers who dont have these outlets, researchers say. Staying physically active is important for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and finding things that motivate patients to move is central to tailoring physical activity recommendations and planning interventions, the authors write in Thorax. Patients with COPD who regularly engage in physical activity, even of mild to moderate intensity, have a better prognosis, said senior study author Dr. Judith Garcia-Aymerich of the Barcelona Institute of Global Health in Spain. The effect of physical activity is "very consistent . . . regardless of subjects characteristics, geography, and methods to measure activity, she said by email. COPD are lung diseases that make breathing difficult and can cause wheezing or coughing. The most common forms are emphysema and chronic bronchitis. They most often occur in smokers and former smokers. About 30 million Americans currently have COPD, according to the COPD Foundation. Garcia-Aymerich and her colleagues analyzed data on 410 COPD patients living in Barcelona and four other seaside cities in the Spanish province of Catalonia. Participants answered questions about their daily activities, marital and working status, health conditions and how their health affects their quality of life. Researchers also used participants addresses to determine if they lived within a 15-minute walk of green spaces like parks, or blue spaces like the ocean, lakes or rivers. For one week, participants wore activity trackers that allowed researchers to tally their physical activity and its intensity. About 85 percent of the participants were men, 69 years old on average. Nine percent had mild COPD, 53 percent had moderate disease, 31 percent had severe COPD and 7 percent had very severe COPD. About 12 percent of participants reported walking their dog and about 38 percent said they cared for their grandchildren. Half of them lived near green or blue spaces. The week of activity tracking showed that participants spent an average of three hours each day being active, about half of that moderately intense. Participants who walked their dogs were active about 18 minutes more each day than those who didnt walk a dog. And people who took care of their grandkids were active an average of 9 minutes more each day than those who didnt. Nearness to green or blue space did not seem to influence activity levels. Walking the dog and playing with grandchildren relates to better health, specifically higher levels of physical activity, even in subjects with moderate-severe respiratory disease, Garcia-Aymerich said. One challenge about observational studies such as this is that we dont know if people with COPD who chose to have (and walk) dogs or be involved in grandparenting are different in difficult-to-measure ways from those that dont do these things, said Dr. William Ehlenbach, a pulmonologist with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison who wasnt involved in the study. Patients with COPD who are not physically active are much more likely to develop progressive activity limitation than those with similar severity of disease who are active, he added. Muscle weakness can become a significant problem in patients with COPD and contributes to disability in these patients. With COPD, the adage move it or lose it really seems to be true, Ehlenbach told Reuters Health by email. He found it interesting that proximity to green space was not associated with increased physical activity and added that its hard to translate these findings into specific recommendations since some people dont have grandkids or like dogs. In general, I try to encourage my patients not to let fear or anxiety associated with shortness of breath prevent them from being active. I also encourage going for walks outdoors (weather permitting) or walk in a store or shopping center; even short walks at a slow pace are beneficial, he said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2m5miEq Thorax, online March 1, 2017.
Aden (AFP) - More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," he said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

- Civilians bear the brunt -

The attack drew condemnation from UN agencies and the International Committee for the Red Cross, with the ICRC also demanding an immediate investigation.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

The UNHCR says that Yemen is hosting more than 255,000 Somali refugees.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

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It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

The ICRC's Eric Christopher Wyss, quoting survivors at the scene, said many people on the boat "were refugees from Somalia or Yemen, fleeing the conflict".

"It was a gruesome and heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded," he said.

The IOM said it believed the boat had been headed for Sudan.

"We strongly condemn this attack and deplore such a tragic loss of life," the ICRC's director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

"These people were themselves fleeing conflict, in search of safety and a better life. We call on the warring parties to conduct an immediate investigation into what happened."

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting the UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

On Friday, a rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of the pro-government forces in a camp east of the capital Sanaa, officials at a hospital in Marib town said.
Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trumps deputy advisor on national security affairs, has emerged as an extremely visible defender of the administration on television and radio, especially on counterterrorism policy. Apart from his full-throated defense of policies such as the immigration and travel ban, Gorka likes to boast of his credentials and denigrate his predecessors, as when he told Fox News that I think the message is deadly clear to our enemies and our adversaries. We dont have a national security team made out of 28-year-old grad school students who have degrees in fictional writing. Gorka maintains that the West is locked in an existential ideological struggle with Islam  a view that plays well in the Trump administration.

But Gorkas own credentials have already come under scrutiny. Before his appointment, he was not a well-known figure among terrorism experts. A report in Politico noted that several experts  puzzled over the gap between the numerous military academic credentials listed by Gorka  a political science Ph.D. who unfailingly uses the title Dr.  and their unfamiliarity with his work and views. This dovetails with a number of reports that raise doubts about his knowledge of Islam and terrorism, as well as about his ties to Hungarian far-right groups  including one, Vitezi Rend, whose members are presumed to be inadmissible to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act  and his claim to have access to confidential information within the White House, despite no confirmation that he has security clearance. The biggest concern: Despite casting himself as an expert on radical jihadi ideology, Gorka does not speak Arabic and has spent no time in the Middle East.

Its possible for relative outsiders to produce important work. Often, those scholars extend their intellectual reach beyond their area of immediate expertise and bring fresh or disruptive perspectives to research communities. But sadly, Gorkas scholarship is as shaky as his credentials, as I discovered when I went to one of the few available sources: his dissertation. I wanted a better understanding of Gorkas views and their scholarly foundations. As he has, to my knowledge, published only one article in a peer-reviewed journal  a slim, multi-authored piece cautioning against overthinking complexity when it comes to grand strategy  my pickings were slim.

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I should stress that I am not a terrorism expert, either. However, I have advised many dissertations, including a few on counterterrorism policy and insurgencies, in nearly 15 years as a practicing academic. I am also currently the lead editor of a well-regarded international studies journal, for which I read hundreds of academic manuscripts (of varying quality) in any given year.

I have assessed plenty of rushed, incomplete, and problematic academic manuscripts, including doctoral theses. When I read dissertations, therefore, I anticipate something less than perfection. What I do expect, however, is to see substantive works of scholarship. I would particularly expect this from the only scholarly work produced by a man who loves to wave his doctorate as though its a big deal.

But I was shocked by the lack of scholarly merit. This is particularly troubling because Gorkas work constantly recycles core ideas found in his dissertation.

Gorka submitted his thesis in 2007 and defended it in 2008. He received his doctorate from Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary. His dissertation advisor, Andras Lanczi, has no academic expertise in terrorism or national security issues  but is, for the record, a strong supporter of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Lanczi became rector of Corvinus in 2016 after seeking the position unopposed.

In his dissertation, Gorka makes three major arguments, all of which are central themes of his subsequent policy work and now, one worries, U.S. national security policy.

First, al Qaeda represents a fifth wave of terrorism, which he calls irrational, transcendental terrorism. The terrorist in this wave represents a wholly different category of threat, since due to the fact that he is completely uninterested in political resolution, he can justify the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Second, the organization of the modern state and its security apparatus is unsuited to deal with this threat; thus, the entire structure of Western security that evolved in the context of the Cold War requires a radical overhaul. Third, the ideal solution would involve a tightly integrated supranational security apparatus, but since we are unable for various reasons (foremostly political) to create supranational solutions, the only viable alternative is for states to develop a unified multi-agency approach.

This last one involves getting rid of the internal barriers between the police force, the army and various intelligence services, although Gorka implies that constitutional barriers might pose a problem. In other words, he wants a unitary body which conglomerated all the skills of the various separate agencies and units into a new structure better suited to facing threats transcendental terrorist threat such as al Qaeda. (See also this paper by Gorka.) This sounds like the stuff of totalitarian nightmares  or perhaps just a lot of interesting details for security professionals. Gorka likes big ideas but is not big on fleshing out the specifics.

Indeed, the dissertation is particularly thin on the central topics that Gorka trades on: Islam, terrorism, and Islamic terrorism. For example, Gorkas discussion of Islam and democracy is sourced pretty much exclusively to Louis Milliots 1953 book, Introduction a letude du Droit Musulman  a scholarly, but dated, work by a French academic born in Algeria during the colonial period. He writes: In fact of the few Western scholars who have written on the subject it is the French speaking world that has most to offer with Louis Milliots Introduction a letude de Droit Musulman being a seminal work. Gorka also cites conversations with leading Hungarian Arabist Miklos Maroth. Maroth is a Hungarian academic and government advisor who has argued that European Muslims should be stripped of their citizenship and that Muslims who fail to assimilate should be wrapped in pig skin. From these two sources, Gorka confidently asserts that:

Without over-exaggeration it must here be noted that the two starting points are very different. For the Muslim understanding of law and political order the bedrock is faith and more specifically the will of Allah. Subsequently human action primarily depends upon God and only secondarily upon the human himself. As a faith-system Islam believes completely in the concept of predestination. All is determined by God and as a result there is no room for free-will. As a result the status of unbelievers is very different from that say of the Christian faith. For the Muslim, the concept of converting the unbeliever has little importance since the separation of believers from non-believers has been determined already by the Creator.

It follows, argues Gorka, that our version of democracy cannot be sustained in a Muslim context, for if there is no free will, if the world and the future are predetermined, then the peoples choice as prerequisite is irrelevant. Gorka shows no interest in the varied and careful literature on the subject of, or related to, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East nor concern about generalizing a large and diverse community of believers with different theological and pragmatic religious commitments. He also fails to explain how, if doctrines of predestination frustrate democracy, Europes Calvinist republics ever got their act together. One also has to wonder, as a Middle East expert commented to me, how Islam is now the majority religion of countries from Morocco to Pakistan if the concept of converting the unbeliever has little importance in its theology.

Gorkas ridiculous understanding of Islam is only one part of a pattern of consistent carelessness and narrowness that runs through his dissertation. At the outset, Gorka does list some hypotheses and what he will do to demonstrate them. But he includes nothing resembling a methodology, very little in the way of consideration of alternative explanations, or any of the other basic requirements of scholarship. For example, Gorka relies on very few sources and shows little interest in engaging with more than a handful of works on terrorism.

Sometimes the results are unintentionally amusing, as when he makes claims about the state of terrorism studies in 2007 based on a book chapter written in 1988  which itself uses field surveys conducted in 1982 and 1985. Twenty-two years is an eternity in most scholarly fields, but this means his claims about the state of the field are sourced to a period before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Oklahoma City bombing, the emergence of al Qaeda, the Good Friday accords, the conflicts of the North Caucasus, 9/11, the attack on the Parliament of India, and the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Other parts are just plain weird. He includes a brief and pointless survey of past apocalyptically motivated terrorism. It discusses only the Zealots-Sicarii, the Assassins, and the Thugs. This is something of a cliche in histories of terrorism, and his account of the latter two groups comes almost entirely from a 1998 book called Warrior Cults: A History of Magical, Mystical and Murderous Organizations. This section showcases a pattern found elsewhere in the dissertation: Gorka drops a footnote indicating that relevant material comes from a particular source unless he indicates otherwise. He then proceeds without additional references, leaving the reader in the dark as to how to check his research. At least in some places, this leads him to pass off direct quotations from source material as his own language.

Given its overall tone and lack of depth, its perhaps not surprising that at least 5 percent of the doctoral thesis is cut-and-pasted from his prior nonscholarly writings. One of these is a Human Events opinion essay that Gorka co-authored with his wife. Another is a policy piece that he first drafted in 2004, which Gorka does not bother to update. In consequence, a crucial claim in his 2007 dissertation  that terrorism is increasing in lethality  rests entirely on data from the period between 1993 and 2003. As he writes in his dissertation, For the years 1998 until 2003, the average number of terrorist victims per attack jumped to 13.71. In 1992 the number of victims per attack was 2. In 2003, the number was 20.5 victims per terrorist attack.

When we zoom in on this claim, we can see the sloppiness of Gorkas methods. Not only is this an unacceptably truncated period, but the aggregate, descriptive statistics he gives just arent remotely good enough. The period from 2001 to 2003 covers not only the 9/11 attacks but also the first years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He does not even bother attempting to identify the proportion of such attacks carried out by groups  including in the Middle East and Central Asia  that would qualify as irrational, transcendental terrorists rather than, say, secessionists or guerrilla movements. In other words, this is an exercise without any evidentiary value.

Figure 1: Average number of fatalities per terrorist attack, per the Global Terrorism Database. Prepared by Peter Henne.

It gets worse. The data Gorka relies on does not extend beyond 2012, so I asked former students to run the same measure using counts from the Global Terrorism Database (for some of the limitations of this data, see, for example). The lethality of attacks  that is Gorkas own measure  while consistently rising, remains consistently lower than Gorka reports. It does not, to be blunt, seem like evidence of growing hyper-terrorism that would require a total paradigm shift in how Western states secure themselves against threats.

Whats going on? Is this a function of the different datasets? Well, Gorka writes that the lethality of attacks is increasing, but his footnote discusses victims. His table on page 205 has the same discrepancy. He labels it Lethality of Terrorist Attacks, 1993-2003, but the relevant column reads Number of victims. Until I started to look at the data he uses, I assumed that Gorka was using the terms as synonyms. Hes not. If we check his numbers against the 2004 report that he draws on, its obvious that hes conflating dead and wounded in his lethality analysis. Big spikes in the number of wounded from attacks tell us something about terrorism, but this kind of semantic obfuscation also tells us something about Gorkas modus operandi.

Indeed, Gorkas thesis reads like one of his interviews: Its full of strong claims, boldly and confidently stated, backed up with very little evidence. Gorka tells us about Turkish-European relations. He opines on globalization. He confidently proclaims on the sacrosanct nature of sovereignty that would later lie behind the creation of the balance-of-power system that would be so important to Europe in following centuries. Sometimes his assertions make sense. Sometimes, as in his claims that sacrosanct sovereignty explains the creation of the balance-of-power system, they dont. (For these and more quotations, and a longer discussion of them, see here.) But seldom does Gorka provide actual evidence, let alone citations, to support them.

If his dissertation is any guide, then Gorka is, in fact, bluster all the way down. His thesis is part smoke and mirrors, part testament to self-importance, and not at all serious scholarship. Gorka believes what he believes. In the case of his dissertation, that we face a new phase of historically lethal terrorism carried out by irrational actors, this can only be met by radically overhauling the state. Indeed, in 2010, Gorka asserted that the terrorist threat is so supreme that [w]e need not prepare in the short or even medium terms for conventional warfare between nationstates, using tanks and aircraft carriers. For the foreseeable future our enemies will be nonstate actors  with or without state sponsorship  using irregular means against us. Regardless, evidence, methodology, and analytical rigor are nuisances that can be shunted aside, whether in the pursuit of a credential or in the formulation of policy.

Much has been written on the factually challenged echo chamber of the far-right. In the United States, its descent into a world of suspect facts has even alienated some longtime conservative commentators. President Trump himself has a fraught relationship with the truth  whether the size of his inauguration crowd, claiming credit for long-planned corporate hiring initiatives, accusing former President Barack Obama of having him wiretapped, or asserting that the American murder rate is at an all-time high. When a Department of Homeland Security report concluded that Trumps travel ban would not reduce the threat of terrorism on American soil, the administration simply dismissed its findings.

In a powerful essay, Jacob Levy argues that such post-truth politics move us in the direction of authoritarianism. As he concludes, insisting on the difference between truth and lies is itself a part of the defense of freedom. [T]he power to tell public lies and to have them repeated is evidence of, and a tool for the expansion of, a power that free people should resist and refuse. But there are many consequences of post-truth politics short of autocracy.

To the extent that members of any ideological movement  right or left  respond to inconvenient facts not by adjusting their beliefs and preferences but by creating alternative facts, they are likely to support and enact counterproductive, and downright dangerous, policies.

It is precisely attention to the significance of inconvenient facts that distinguishes good scholars and true experts from pretenders. Pretenders present themselves as scholars and experts. They adopt the language, get the credentials, and perform as they  or, at least, their audience  imagine scholars and experts sound. Rather than speak truth to power, they peddle what their ideological compatriots want to hear, wrapped up in the trappings of intellectual authority.

The more that political movements, politicians, and leaders move into a universe of alternative facts, the more they render themselves vulnerable to these intellectual grifters. And the more these fake experts influence actual policy, the more damage that they can do. I do not believe that a doctorate, let alone an academic background, is a prerequisite for good policymaking. But the president of the United States is best served by advisors who place facts before ideology, who care about the substance more than the credential, and who would never make sweeping judgments about millions of people grounded on essentially no evidence at all. This is particularly the case for a new president who has repeatedly demonstrated that when ideology  or even vanity  runs into inconvenient facts, he expects the facts to bend. In this sense, Gorka seems a perfect fit for the worst impulses of this administration.

Photo credit: ALEX WONG/Getty Images
(This version of the story corrects name of professor to Mudde instead of Muddle, adds Erdogan's first name.) By Anthony Deutsch and Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - EU leaders lined up on Thursday to congratulate Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on beating far-rightist Geert Wilders in the first of a series of European elections this year in which populist insurgent parties are hoping to rock the establishment. The center-right prime minister had trailed in opinion polls for much of the campaign but emerged the clear victor of Wednesday's election, albeit with fewer seats than before. Wilders, who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and wanted to shut mosques and ban the Koran, won a third more seats than at the last election but was thwarted in his bid to become the biggest party. Rutte, whose win helped boost the euro and European shares, called it an "evening in which the Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said 'stop' to the wrong kind of populism." A win for Wilders would have been seen as a boost for French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, running second in opinion polls before a presidential election in April and May, and for populist parties elsewhere that want to curb immigration and weaken or break up the European Union. The sense of relief among European leaders was palpable. "The Netherlands are our partners, friends, neighbors. Therefore I was very happy that a high turnout led to a very pro-European result, a clear signal," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will run for re-election in September. French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, expected to face Le Pen in a two-way run-off on May 7, said: "The Netherlands is showing us that a breakthrough for the extreme right is not a foregone conclusion and that progressives are gaining momentum." The risk premium demanded by investors to hold French government bonds rather than safe-haven German bunds sank in early trade to its lowest level in two weeks, although it later widened again as France released new supply into the market via a debt auction. GIFT FROM TURKEY With 99 percent of votes counted, Rutte's VVD Party had won 33 of parliament's 150 seats, down from 41 at the last vote in 2012. Wilders was second with 20, and the CDA and centrist Democrats 66 tied for third with 19 each, data provided by the ANP news agency showed. Rutte is now virtually guaranteed a third term, leading a government that can be expected to continue tightening immigration policy in the Netherlands, already among the strictest in the EU. A number of parties including the VVD and the third-placed Christian Democrats (CDA), have already adopted most of Wilders' anti-immigration platform, if not his fiery anti-Islam rhetoric. With his strong second-place finish, Wilders warned Rutte that he had not seen the last of his Party for Freedom. He added that he wanted to participate in coalition talks, even though mainstream parties have ruled out working with him. "We were the 3rd largest party of the Netherlands. Now we are the 2nd largest party. Next time we will be number 1," Wilders said. Rutte got a last-minute boost from a diplomatic row with Turkey, which allowed him to take a tough line on a majority Muslim country during an election campaign in which immigration and integration have been key issues. "Rutte profited from moving to the right, but also from Wilders having radicalized a lot over the last years and being invisible in the campaign," said Cas Muddle, associate professor at the University of Georgia, referring to Wilders' decision to forego election debates until the final week. "On top of that, Turkish President (Tayyip) Erdogan gave (Rutte) a beautiful gift." Turkey has been locked in a deepening row with the Netherlands after the Dutch barred Turkish ministers from speaking to rallies of overseas Turks. Turkey's foreign minister said the views of Wilders - who wants to close all mosques and ban the Koran - were shared by rival parties and were pushing Europe towards "wars of religion". Erdogan on Thursday said that while Rutte may have won the election, he had lost his country's friendship. FOCUS NEXT ON LE PEN With 13 parties set to enter a fragmented parliament under the proportional Dutch voting system, it will likely take months for Rutte to negotiate a ruling coalition. He will need at least three other parties to reach a majority. At 80 percent, turnout was the highest in a decade in an election that was a test of whether the Dutch wanted to end decades of liberalism and choose a nationalist, anti-immigrant path by voting for Wilders and his promise to "de-Islamicise" the Netherlands and quit the EU. Outgoing French President Francois Hollande called the result a "clear victory against extremism", and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called it "an inspiration for many". France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault tweeted: "Congratulations to the Dutch for stemming the rise of the far-right." But Mabel Berezin, professor of sociology at Cornell University in the United States, said defeat for Wilders should not be considered a sign that European populism is waning. "The real bellwether election will be Marine Le Pen's quest for the French presidency, starting April 23  that is where the populist action is and that is what we should be focusing upon," she said. While Rutte overtook Wilders in the closing stages of the campaign, years of austerity pushed down his share of the vote. His junior partner in the outgoing coalition, Labour, suffered its worst ever result, winning just nine seats, down from 38 last time. Wilders' tally of 20 seats is five more than before, but still well below a 2010 high of 24 seats. Support for the two most pro-EU parties, the progressive D66 and GreenLeft, was way up. Denk, a party supported by Dutch Turks, looked set to win three seats and become the first ever ethnic minority party in parliament. (Additional reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, Phil Blenkinsop, Thomas Escritt, Brian Love, Alastair Macdonald, Abhinav Ramnarayan and Madeline Chambers; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
(THE HAGUE, Netherlands)  Dutch voters showed Europe that populism isnt always inevitable.

The disappointing showing by firebrand Geert Wilders in the Netherlands election has energized traditional parties across Europe from left and right. But its unlikely to extinguish the anti-immigrant, anti-establishment sentiment that has been blazing around Europe.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister who had pushed the electorate through five years of tough economic measures, emerged victorious in a bruising battle with Wilders, whose relentless invective against all things Muslim and anything from the European Union failed to earn him the breakthrough that many had come to count on as a given.

After boosts in Britain and the United States over the past year and Wednesdays setback in the Netherlands, populism now heads to France for its next test of political viability. Now it is for Marine Le Pen of the National Front to carry the torch in presidential elections starting next month.

When French, German, Italian and Bulgarian voters cast ballots in the year ahead, they wont be out to mimic Dutch voters. Instead, theyll be driven as much by local issues as global concerns.

The challenge now for candidates like Frances Le Pen is to keep up the momentum of her gospel against immigrants, the political elite and European unity. It has resonated so widely that shes likely to come out on top of the first round of presidential voting April 23, though is much less likely to win the May 7 final round.

And the challenge for Europes more moderate candidates  like Le Pens chief rival, independent Emmanuel Macron  is to reconnect with voters alienated by European Union bureaucracy and frustrated by economic stagnation. They could also take some lessons from the Dutch.

Mark Rutte just highlighted the fact that, when you deliver clear speech, when you explain what you do, what your constraints are in your country, you can defeat the extremes, Macron said Thursday.

Story continues

Le Pen, unusually, didnt comment on the Dutch vote result.

In the wake of the victory of Donald Trump as U.S. president in November, Wilders surged, and at one point looked like he could get close to one of four Dutch voters behind him. Now, instead of becoming the biggest party in the Netherlands, Wilders was a very distant second, with barely 13 percent of the vote.

Instead Prime Minister Rutte was the toast of most of Europe, where he and other officials expressed relief at proof the populist tide could be weakened, if not stopped.

Rutte said he now wants to listen to the people who felt disenfranchised in their own nation, but was glad the dominos pushed over by the wrong kind of populism had been halted.

Such was the relief that German Chancellor Angela Merkel called to congratulate him at a time when only exit polls were in.

The Dutch election was a good day for democracy, she said during a speech in Berlin on Thursday. I was very glad, and I think many people are, that a high turnout led to a very pro-European result.

Germany holds a general election next September when the virulent anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party is expected to enter Parliament for the first time.

Such is the threat of populism that German Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz immediately looked beyond the historic defeat of his Dutch left-wing political comrades and congratulated Rutte  a paragon of free trade and tough austerity.

Wilders failed to win the Dutch elections. I am relieved, Schulz said.

Another socialist did likewise. French President Francois Hollande congratulated Rutte for his election success and his clear victory against extremism.

He said that the values of openness, respect for others, and a faith in Europes future are the only true response to the nationalist impulses and isolationism that are shaking the world.

There also was relief in the European Union. The Dutch elections are a perfect start for the electoral year because the populists and the anti-Europeans failed, said Manfred Weber, the leader of the EUs Christian Democrat EPP group.
MANILA (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang met Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's in his home city on Friday, becoming the most high-profile visitor from Beijing since two countries long at odds sought to chart a new course in relations. Wang went to Davao City, where Duterte was mayor for 22 years before he became president in 2016 and sought a dramatic change in approach towards China at the height of a row over South China Sea sovereignty and amid the fallout of a bitter legal dispute that went to international arbitration. The vice premier signed a six-year development program to work together on trade and investment, part of Duterte's strategy to engage China as a buyer of Philippine farm and fisheries produce and a builder and financier of its much-needed infrastructure. "Wang Yang noted the need to focus on common interests that bring more benefits than differences," presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said after the closed-door meeting between Duterte and Wang. "The president said bilateral ties are found stronger, particularly in trade and commerce, and reaffirmed the importance of peaceful settlement of disputes." The relationship has for years been characterized by disputes, with the Philippines repeatedly opposing China's island-building in parts of its exclusive economic zone and its repelling of fishermen from the disputed Scarborough Shoal. Though Duterte has persuaded China to end the blockade and let fishermen operate around the shoal, China has continued to fortify some of its artificial islands with military hardware. It was unclear, however, if Wang and Duterte discussed China's decision to start preparatory work this year for an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal. The Philippines has recently said it was assured China would not carry out any building work there. The six-year business deal covers loans, support with feasibility studies, grants for bridge construction, a proposed Philippines-China industrial park, dams, railways and agribusiness training. China last week committed to finance at least three Philippine infrastructure projects worth $3.4 billion, two of which could be rolled out in the first half of this year.. Wang's visit to Davao comes two months after that of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was the first foreign leader to visit the Philippines under Duterte, signaling Tokyo's intent to bolster its influence amid a changing geopolitical landscape. Abe brought with him a 1 trillion yen ($8.77 billion) aid package. Wang's trip was more businesslike than that of Abe, who has a close personal bond with the firebrand Philippine leader and had breakfast in his humble Davao home. Duterte typically spends three days each week in Davao, or more. He is there visiting his newborn grandson, who is named "Stonefish". Duterte was also visited on Friday by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who announced a A$90 million ($69.2 million) program to support education and policy development in Mindanao, an impoverished Muslim region in the predominantly Catholic nation. Mindanao has been plagued by decades of separatist rebellion and the Philippines is concerned it could become a hotbed of extremism if Islamic State gains a foothold. "Both underscored that terrorism and violent extremism are serious threats," spokesman Abella said of their meeting. (Reporting by Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Nick Macfie)
By Alexandre Assis DILI (Reuters) - East Timorese flocked to political rallies on the final day of campaigning ahead of Monday's presidential election, as Asia's youngest democracy grapples with persistent poverty and corruption at a time when oil revenues are rapidly running dry. This year's presidential poll and parliamentary elections in July come as concerns mount over the failure to use wealth generated by oil and gas sales to support development and create jobs. "The next five years with new leadership is a critical time because money from the currently used oil fields is mostly depleted," said Charles Scheiner of La'o Hamutuk, a Dili-based think-tank. The challenge for any incoming government would be to wean the nation of 1.2 million people off oil and diversify its sources of income into agriculture and manufacturing, he said. The energy sector accounted for around 60 percent of GDP in 2014 and more than 90 percent of government revenue. Monday's election, the fourth since independence in 2002, is being contested by eight candidates. Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres, backed by the party that led the independence struggle, Fretilin, is a favorite to win the election. His chances were further enhanced by the endorsement of resistance hero Xanana Gusmao and his CNRT party, said Michael Leach of Australia's Swinburne University. Police on Friday were keeping an eye on possible unrest as candidates held rallies around Dili. Supporters of Guterres in convoys of trucks chanted "Viva Lu Olo, Viva Fretilin, Viva CNRT" on their way to a rally about 15 km (9 miles) from the capital in Tasitolu. "If I am later chosen to be president of East Timor, I will prioritize the economic and education sectors, to support the welfare of the people," Guterres said while campaigning. Another leading candidate is Democratic Party politician Antonio da Conceicao. The education minister has called for "peaceful politics" in a country that has suffered communal violence. He has the backing his own party as well as the newly formed People's Liberation Party (PLP) of the incumbent president Jose Maria de Vasconcelos. The president plays a largely ceremonial role, but it is an important post for underpinning unity, particularly with unemployment running at around 60 percent. Vasconcelos, also know by his former guerrilla nickname "Taur Matan Ruak" (two sharp eyes), is expected to run for the more powerful prime minister's post in the July elections. The new government will inherit a looming budget crunch as its main source of revenue, the Bayu-Udan field, operated by ConocoPhillips, is set to dry up in the next five years. That will put pressure on the government to resolve disputes with Australia that are holding back the development of a potential new source of revenue, the Greater Sunrise field. The field is estimated to hold 5.1 trillion cubic feet of gas and 226 million barrels of condensates, which have been estimated to be worth $40 billion. The former Portuguese colony was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. A 24-year resistance movement achieved independence in 2002 and many of its key figures still feature prominently in the running of the country. (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in JAKARTA and Ben Weir in SYDNEY; Editing by Ed Davies and Nick Macfie)
By Valerie Volcovici WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday it had awarded $100 million to upgrade Flint, Michigan's drinking water infrastructure to address a crisis that exposed thousands of children to lead poisoning. The grant to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will enable the city to "accelerate and expand" its work to replace lead pipes and make other improvements, according to the EPA. Estimates of the upgrade's cost range from $200 million to $400 million. Friday's announcement made the disbursement official. Last year, Congress passed and former president Barack Obama signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act to allocate $100 million to aid Flint. The EPAs state revolving funds, which Congress can allocate to help with cleanup efforts, were one of the few programs that the Trump administration did not slash in its proposed budget for the agency. EPA will especially focus on helping Michigan improve Flints water infrastructure as part of our larger goal of improving Americas water infrastructure, said a statement from agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. The EPA will make $31.5 million immediately available for lead pipe replacements and upgrades, and Michigan will provide a $20 million required match. The remaining $68.5 million will come after the city and Michigan complete additional public comment and technical reviews. Today we have good news for families in Flint who have already waited far too long for their water system to be fixed, said a statement from U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, and Congressman Dan Kildee, all Michigan Democrats. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, also a Democrat, said the funds would help the city reach its goal of replacing 6,000 pipes this year. She met briefly with President Donald Trump on Wednesday. In January, 1,700 Flint residents filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Michigan, saying the EPA failed to warn them of the dangers of the toxic water or take steps to ensure that state and local authorities were addressing the crisis. The plaintiffs seek $722 million in damages. Midwestern politicians are worried about the elimination in the proposed U.S. budget of funding for an effort to clean up the Great Lakes, from which some states draw their drinking water. Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its water source to the Flint River from Lake Huron in April 2014. The more corrosive river water caused lead to leach from pipes and into the drinking water. The city returned to its original water source in October 2015. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
By Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday proposed a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programs and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality. The EPA would sustain the biggest cut of any federal agency in the White House 2018 budget, as Trump seeks to clear away regulations he claims are hobbling U.S. oil drillers, coal miners and farmers. The proposed cuts are a starting point, and Congress could temper them in its budget deliberations. The proposal would slash funding for enforcing regulations, fighting water pollution, cleaning up sites contaminated by toxic waste and promoting energy-efficient appliances. It would eliminate 3,200 EPA employees, or 19 percent of the agency's workforce. It would effectively erase former President Barack Obama's initiatives to combat climate change by cutting funding for the agency's signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. "Consistent with the President's America First Energy Plan, the budget reorients the EPA's air program to protect the air we breathe without unduly burdening the American economy," a summary of the proposed EPA budget said. Some lawmakers from Trump's Republican party praised the proposed cuts, but some expressed concern about cuts to programs affecting their region of the country. Environmentalists blasted the plan, saying it would return America back to 1977 when smoggy skies and polluted rivers pushed lawmakers to strengthen federal clean air and clean water laws. Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, disputes the scientific consensus that human actions are the lead cause of climate change. In his former position as attorney general of oil-producing Oklahoma, he sued the EPA more than a dozen times. Pruitt believes Congress should determine whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that needs regulation. With both chambers currently led by Republicans, and influential committees headed by lawmakers from oil-producing states, that is unlikely anytime soon. The budget would also eliminate some $100 million in spending on research and international programs on combating climate change. Trump also doubts the science of climate change and has said the country can reduce green regulations drastically without compromising air and water quality. Asked about climate change programs, Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, told reporters "we consider that to be a waste of your money." "I think the president is fairly straightforward. We're not spending money on that," he said. The EPA had already faced sharp cuts under Obama. Janet McCabe, a former EPA air official, said Trump's proposed budget would harm the EPA's ability to respond to emergencies and also hurt day-to-day efforts on keeping air and water clean to protect human health. TURN BACK THE CLOCK The proposed cuts would cut $427 million aimed at regional pollution cleanup programs, including in the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay. Funding for the Superfund program to clean up the nation's most contaminated sites would drop by $330 million to $762 million. The summary said the budget seeks to give local and state governments responsibility for such clean-up efforts. Many states and municipalities also face severe budget constraints in the current fiscal environment. Trump's proposal includes a 31 percent budget cut for the enforcement division, which fines companies for pollution. It would ax dozens of other programs including the popular Energy Star appliance efficiency program aimed at reducing U.S. energy consumption. "Turning back the clock to 1977 will not 'Make America Great Again'. It will 'Make America Gag Again,'" said Conrad Schneider, the advocacy director at Clean Air Task Force. One area that would see a small boost is for State Revolving Funds, low-interest loans for investments in water and sanitation infrastructure. The plan would add $4 million to the funds, bringing its budget up to $100 million. While employees at EPA headquarters in Washington worried about their jobs, some hoped opportunities might open up at the other side of the country. Representatives of California, where state energy commissions and a clean air agency are hiring, handed recruitment fliers to EPA employees on their way to work. The fliers said: "Fight Climate Change, Work for California." (Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Leslie Adler and Chizu Nomiyama)
A landslide at a large garbage dump on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa over the weekend has killed 113 people, local authorities said Wednesday as the search for missing people continued at the site.

The landfill is named Koshe in Amharic, which translates to "dust" in English, and has been serving the capital of roughly 4 million people for decades. It is the home to hundreds of residents who live in makeshift homes constructed on top of garbage and trash. The landslide struck Saturday and buried homes as well as concrete buildings, NPR said. As many as 500 people work as scavengers at the landfill everyday, searching for items to refurbish and sell.

Read: Ethiopia Hacks U.S. Citizen: Court Rules Citizen Can't Sue Government Over Spying

A resident told the Associated Press there were about 150 people at the landfill when the collapse occurred. Local authorities said bodies were still being recovered and excavation could continue through Thursday. A government official said it was not clear what caused the landslide.

"There is no explanation for this accident except naturally the pile of this trash may have been shaken," Communications Minister Negeri Lencho told CNN Wednesday. "The investigation... is still going on."

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Photo: Reuters

But resident Assefa Teklemahimanot told the AP garbage dumping had restarted in recent months after it was halted for several years, and that's what likely caused the landslide. The possibility of a landslide is a constant danger to the the people who live and work on Koshe, Assefa said, especially as several smaller collapses in recent years have killed two or three people.

In December 2015, BBC News reported on efforts to build Africa's first waste-to-energy plant next to the landfill. The facility is currently under construction, and when it's completed it will convert the garbage into electricity in order to power 30 percent of Addis Ababa households. Rapid economic growth of 10 percent a year over the past decade has strained the city's power supply, according to BBC News.

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The European Union Court of Justice has rejected an effort by the European Medicines Agency to release clinical trial data to third parties over the objections of a pair of drug makers.

The regulator had appealed two separate rulings by the General Court of the European Union, which last September temporarily blocked its attempt to release certain data for drugs sold by Merck and PTC Therapeutics. In rejecting the appeals, the Court of Justice determined the lower court did not err in concluding the companies could suffer financial harm if their data was released. As a result, the EMA must now wait until the cases are fully decided.

Read the rest...
London (AFP) - Former British finance minister George Osborne on Friday was appointed as the surprise new editor of the London Evening Standard newspaper.

Osborne, 45, said he was "thrilled" to take on the job and wanted to make the daily "the definitive voice of the world's most exciting city".

Osborne, a conservative lawmaker, was the chancellor of the Exchequer in prime minister David Cameron's 2010-2016 government, dealing with the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

He was a prominent Remain campaigner in last year's referendum on Britain's membership in the European Union.

About 60 percent of the eligible voters in London wanted Britain to remain in the EU, but the UK as a whole voted for Brexit.

"We will judge what the government, London's politicians and the political parties do against this simple test: Is it good for our readers and good for London? If it is, we'll support them; if it isn't we'll be quick to say so," Osborne said.

Osborne reportedly never saw eye to eye with Theresa May, and when she became prime minister in July after Cameron resigned in the wake of Brexit, she replaced him with Philip Hammond as finance minister.

- Social media mockery -

The Standard has the fourth-largest circulation of any British daily newspaper, at nearly 900,000 copies.

The freesheet's Russian owner Evgeny Lebedev said Osborne was someone of "huge political achievement, and economic and cultural authority".

His "political viewpoint -- socially liberal and economically pragmatic -- closely matches that of many of our readers," Lebedev said.

Osborne will remain the member of parliament for Tatton in northwest England.

He will edit the paper an average of four days out of five, working at the newspaper in the morning and in parliament in the afternoon once it has gone to print.

Last week it was announced he had secured a post as a global economy adviser for US asset management giant BlackRock worth A650,000 ($800,000, 750,000 euros) a year.

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A spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour party, said Osborne's newest appointment made a "mockery" of media independence.

It was "yet another example of the establishment revolving door, a closely knit clique who are holding back the British people", he said.

Some on social media mockingly questioned Osborne's qualifications for the job, announcing their candidacies for unlikely posts.

Before entering politics, Osborne briefly did some freelance work for The Daily Telegraph, in 1993.

The Standard, Britain's biggest-circulation evening newspaper, is typically available at transport stops in London for commuters heading home.

The paper stopped charging a cover price in 2009, shortly after Lebedev and his Russian businessman father, Alexander, took it over.
By Tom James

(Reuters) - A Harvard-educated lawyer was sentenced on Thursday to 40 years in prison for a high-profile 2015 California kidnapping that drew comparisons to the film "Gone Girl," ending a bizarre abduction saga that police first dismissed as a hoax.

Matthew Muller, 39, pleaded guilty in September to kidnapping Denise Huskins in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco, after breaking into the home where she and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, were sleeping, then tying up and drugging the couple.

Muller released Huskins, then a 30-year-old physical therapist, after holding her for two days and demanding ransom. She reappeared unharmed nearly 400 miles (644 km) away in her hometown of Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, then went into seclusion and retained an attorney.

The case drew national media attention as Vallejo police disputed Quinn's claim that Huskins was forcibly abducted, suggesting instead that the incident was "an orchestrated event."

The odd circumstances drew comparisons to the plot of the 2014 "Gone Girl," which starred Ben Affleck as a writer whose wife fakes her own abduction.

Muller was indicted in the case only after being arrested for a different home invasion in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation found evidence linking him to Huskins kidnapping.

Vallejo police later apologized to Huskins and Quinn, who sued city authorities in March 2016 for smearing their reputations and other damages stemming from police actions during and after the kidnapping.

Huskins and Quinn declined through a spokesman to comment after the sentencing.

Prosecutors had agreed as part of their plea deal with Muller, a former Marine and disbarred attorney, to seek a 40-year prison term for him, rather than the maximum penalty of a life sentence.

In letters to Judge Troy Nunley before the sentencing, Quinn and Huskins parents argued against leniency. Huskins mother also objected specifically to the fact that Muller was receiving a sentence only for kidnapping, despite her daughter's allegations that she was sexually assaulted as well.

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According to authorities' account of the kidnapping, Muller was armed with a stun gun and a replica firearm when he crept into the couple's home, ordered them to lie still while he bound and blindfolded them and forced them to drink a sedative.

He also played a prerecorded message threatening to slash or electrically shock the victims if they resisted, then drove Huskins away in the trunk of his car, court documents said.

(Reporting by Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Steve Gorman)
PHILADELPHIA (AP)  At first, Pennsylvania state trooper Joseph Miller said he was as far as 10 feet away cleaning his gun when it accidentally discharged, killing his pregnant wife.

Later, he told detectives he was 2 feet away.

On Friday, three years after the shooting, Miller was under arrest after prosecutors said new tests showed the gun was 3 to 6 inches from her head when it went off.

Miller, 36, was arraigned Friday on two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of JoAnna Miller and their newborn baby, prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia said.

JoAnna Miller was 24 weeks pregnant when she was shot in the head in the family room of their East Norriton home on March 7, 2014, as she organized children's clothes. She died at a hospital after delivering a girl via an emergency C-section. The baby, named Gillian, died shortly thereafter.

In a call Joseph Miller placed to 911 after the shooting, he tells a dispatcher: "I, ah, was cleaning. I was about to clean my gun, and I didn't realize there was a round ... I shot my wife." He can then be heard consoling children, saying, "Guys, guys, guys, it's OK."

The couple has four other children.

Miller told detectives he was disassembling his personal gun in the family room so he could clean it when it discharged and struck his 34-year-old wife, who was sitting on the floor sorting clothes for donation, according to a criminal complaint.

He initially told police he was about 8 to 10 feet away from his wife but later changed his estimate to about 2 feet away.

However, a coroner ruled JoAnna Miller's cause of death was a "perforating close range gunshot wound of the head." A two-year investigation involving ballistics and forensic tests showed the gun was 3 to 6 inches from JoAnna Miller's head when it went off, according to a statement by the Montgomery County district attorney's office.

Joseph Miller also told detectives he didn't check to see whether the gun was unloaded before cleaning it.

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In an interview transcript released Friday, investigators asked Miller: "Did you intentionally shoot your wife?"

"I did not," he replied. "It was an accident. I love her to death."

Prosecutors say Miller had extensive firearms safety training as part of his job as a state trooper and disregarded the essential standards and procedures for handling weapons the day he shot his wife, according to the criminal complaint.

In June 2014, the district attorney's office concluded the shooting was negligent but accidental.

Authorities at the time said all evidence indicated the Millers were "a close-knit, loving family excited about the pending arrival of a new baby."

However, the investigation remained open as evidence was examined.

A message seeking comment from Miller's lawyer wasn't returned. He is free on $100,000 bail and was ordered to surrender his passport and firearms.
By Wa Lone, Simon Lewis and Krishna N. Das SITTWE, Myanmar/COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Children as young as 10 years old are among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims detained on charges of consorting with insurgents, according to a police document seen by Reuters that sheds new light on Myanmar's security campaign in the country's northwest. Thirteen juveniles are among more than 400 people arrested since Oct. 9, when insurgents attacked three police border posts in northern Rakhine State near the frontier with Bangladesh, the March 7 dated document shows. Police said some of the children had confessed to working with insurgents and that they were being detained away from adult suspects. A government spokesman confirmed children were detained in the operation, but said authorities had followed the law. He said he knew of only five juveniles currently being held. Myanmar's leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who took power almost a year ago, is under international pressure over alleged abuses including killings, gang rapes and mass detentions against the stateless Rohingya, about 1.1 million of whom are prevented from traveling freely and accessing basic services in Myanmar. The government has released few details about the hundreds detained in the Rakhine operation or the charges they face. The document seen be Reuters lists 423 people held under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act. All appear from their names to be male. Their average age is 34, but the youngest is 10 and the oldest 75. One has been crossed out and marked "dead". Two police captains in Maungdaw, the district at the center of the violence, confirmed the veracity of the 11-page document. "We police have to arrest those related with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty, we cannot decide," said Police Captain Than Shwe. CONTROVERSIAL LAW Myanmar has ratified international conventions that require additional protections for children accused of crimes. Reuters was unable to establish whether all those provisions, such whether they have been able to communicate with their families or have legal representation, were being followed. All 13 juveniles below the age of 18 were sent to be detained outside of prison at a Border Guard Police (BGP) facility in the town of Buthidaung, and were not shackled, said the second police captain, who did not want to be identified. "Some of the children already confessed that they are involved with the attackers group during interrogation," the police captain said. They were not beaten during questioning, he said. Domestic law says children aged between seven and 12 are only criminally responsible if mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Two listed detainees are under 12, while two more are 13. Zaw Htay, director general of Suu Kyi's office, told Reuters he was only aware of five children currently detained at the Buthidaung BGP camp. Authorities were under strict orders not to violate detainees' rights, Zaw Htay said, adding: "We will not forgive anyone who does." Cases had been opened against all 423 people on the list under the Unlawful Associations Act, said the second police captain. Many on the list, which is not a complete record of all those detained in the operation, were also charged with additional crimes, including murder, he said. "We suspect that these people joined the attackers' training or supported them with funding, or they cooperated during the attacks or were involved in the attacks," he said. Rights groups such as Amnesty International say the Unlawful Associations Act has long been used to arbitrarily arrest and detain ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar. SPECIAL COURTS In a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Myanmar said 526 people were "under interrogation" relating to the conflict. Eight detainees had died in custody, the government said. The government has set up two "special courts" in Buthidaung, said Rakhine's senior state judicial official, advocate general Kyaw Hla Tun. The government would not block the accused from accessing lawyers, he added. "We want to process them quickly. There are security concerns with the prison being over capacity," he said. U.N. human rights envoy Yanghee Lee visited Buthidaung prison, where most detainees are being held, in January. Most did not have lawyers, were not informed of the charges against them and had not been able to contact their families, she said. Reuters also spoke to people who had been released from detention and later fled across the border to Bangladesh, a journey made by about 75,000 refugees since the conflict began. Di Dar, 22, said he spent 10 days in a military camp after his village was burned in mid-November. The 300 or so people detained with him were constantly handcuffed and beaten during interrogations, and he witnessed two men killed, he said. Reuters was unable to corroborate his account, or similar accounts from three other former detainees. "The soldiers would come three times a day and would beat us for about an hour at a time," Di Dar said. "They asked, 'Did you fight us?' 'Were you involved in the insurgency?'" Click http://tmsnrt.rs/2n4lsXE for graphic on Rohingya detainees (Reporting by Wa Lone and Simon Lewis in Sittwe, Myanmar and Krishna N. Das in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh; Editing by Alex Richardson)
By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - "Europe is our common future," the European Union's 27 leaders plan to declare in Rome next week, in defiance of its worst blowback ever - Brexit. A one-and-a-half page draft, seen by Reuters in advance of the meeting to mark 60 years of the bloc and entitled "The Rome Declaration", is an effort by the 27 to chart a course for their future after Britain leaves in 2019. "We are determined to make the EU stronger and more resilient, through even greater unity and solidarity amongst us. Unity is both a necessity and our free choice," it reads. "Taken individually, we would be sidelined by global dynamics. Standing together is our best chance to influence them, and to defend our common interests and values ... Our Union is undivided and indivisible." The draft, dated March 16 and prepared by the chairman of EU leaders' summits Donald Tusk, will be debated among the capitals next week and may yet change before it is finally adopted in Rome next Saturday. "In the 10 years to come we want a Union that is safe and secure, prosperous and sustainable, with an enhanced social dimension, and with the will and capacity of playing a key role in the global world," it says. It pledges more security cooperation between EU states and their defense industries, effective management of immigration and tight external borders. It vows to promote global trade despite the new U.S. President Donald Trump's criticism of international agreements, to develop the bloc's single market and promote jobs and innovation. "Europe is our common future," the last sentence of the declaration reads, an exact repeat of the final line of the EU text signed in Berlin in 2007 to mark 50 years of the bloc. MULTI-SPEED EU The Tusk draft is very soft on the idea of a multi-speed EU, or allowing willing countries to foster closer ties in areas they can agree on, while leaving reluctant ones behind. Tusk has warned against such a scenario, but it has been increasingly backed by Germany and the bloc's executive in Brussels. They see it is as the only way for the EU to stave off a wave of euroskepticism, nationalism and populism engulfing the bloc. "We will act together whenever possible, at different paces and intensity where necessary ... leaving the door open to those who want to join later," reads the only reference to multi-speed Europe in the text. Another delicate issue is further enlargement, which is anathema to some member states. Others say the doors must not be shut, as EU entry criteria promote democracy and stability in neighboring countries. "We want a Union which remains open to those European Countries that fully share our values," the text reads. Other tricky areas include the concept of fostering more "social Europe", where the idea is to fight discrimination and ensure equal opportunities in education and jobs. The draft calls for "A social Europe: a Union which promotes economic and social progress as well as cohesion and convergence, taking into account the variety of social models and the key role of social partners..." Eastern states fear their cheap workers may lose out if the wealthier West uses that goal to demand equal treatment for local and migrant laborers in their markets. (Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Andrew Roche)
By Julia Edwards Ainsley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes, according to two administration officials. How many judges will be reassigned and when they will be sent is still under review, according to the officials, but the Justice Department has begun soliciting volunteers for deployment. The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona. They were chosen because they are cities which have high populations of illegal immigrants with criminal charges, the officials said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, confirmed that the cities have been identified as likely recipients of reassigned immigration judges, but did not elaborate on the planning. The plan to intensify deportations is in line with a vow made frequently by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime. The Department of Homeland Security asked for the judges' reshuffle, an unusual move given that immigration courts are administered by the Department of Justice. A Homeland Security spokeswoman declined to comment on any plan that has not yet been finalised. Under an executive order signed by Trump in January, illegal immigrants with pending criminal cases are regarded as priorities for deportation whether they have been found guilty or not. That is a departure from former President Barack Obama's policy, which prioritised deportations only of those convicted of serious crimes. The policy shift has been criticized by advocate groups who say it unfairly targets immigrants who might ultimately be acquitted and do not pose a threat. The cities slated to receive more judges have more than half of the 18,013 pending immigration cases that involve undocumented immigrants facing or convicted of criminal charges, according to data provided by the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review. More than 200 of those cases involve immigrants currently incarcerated, meaning that the others have either not been convicted or have served their sentence. The Justice Department did not provide a breakdown of how many of the remainder have been convicted and how many are awaiting trial. As part of the Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Justice Department is also sending immigration judges to detention centres along the southwest border. Those temporary redeployments will begin Monday. 'AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING' Former immigration judge and chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Schmidt said the Trump administration should not assume that all those charged with crimes would not be allowed to stay in the United States legally. "It seems they have an assumption that everyone who has committed a crime should be removable, but that's not necessarily true. Even people who have committed serious crimes can sometimes get asylum," Schmidt said. He also questioned the effectiveness of shuffling immigration judges from one court to another, noting that this will mean cases the judges would have handled in their usual courts will have to be rescheduled. He said that when he was temporarily reassigned to handle cases on the southern border in 2014 and 2015, cases he was slated to hear in his home court in Arlington, Virginia had to be postponed, often for more than a year. "That's what you call aimless docket reshuffling," he said. Under the Obama administration, to avoid the expense and disruption of immigration judges travelling, they would often hear proceedings from other courthouses via video conference. The judges' reshuffling could further logjam a national immigration court system which has more than 540,000 pending cases. The cities slated to receive more judges have different kinds of immigrant populations. Imperial, California, for example, is in one of the nation's largest agriculture hubs, attracting large numbers of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico and Central America. Bloomington, Minnesota, near St. Paul, is home to a large number of African immigrants, many of whom travelled from war-torn countries like Somalia to claim asylum in the United States. (Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Alistair Bell)
On Monday, the Senate will start several days of hearings involving Neil Gorsuch, President Trumps nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Here is a quick overview of what to expect.

1. The hearings start at 11 a.m. on Monday in the Senate Judiciary committee. They will be broadcast live on C-SPAN and other media television and Internet outlets. Here is a link to the official live stream: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/nomination-of-the-honorable-neil-m-gor



2. The first day of hearings wont feature much of Gorsuch. Committee members are expected to make speeches that day, with Gorsuch in attendance. He will also read a statement later in the day. Testimony about Gorsuchs nomination will be at the committees conference room at the Hart Senate Office Building.Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee chair, will run the hearings, with as many as 20 Senators making statements and asking questions.

3. Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee chair, will run the hearings, with as many as 20 Senators making statements and asking questions. There are 11 Republicans and 9 Democrats on the commitee.

4. The committee will be reviewing Gorsuchs past judicial decisions and other public comments. If you are really interested, the Judiciary Committee has published, on its website, the candidate questionnaire and other materials collected related to his nomination, with nearly 200,000 pages of documents. Here is the link: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/nominations/supreme/pn55-115

5. Gorsuch is expected to testify on Tuesday, March 21. He has been preparing for questions over the past few weeks, with help from the White House counsels office and former Senator Kelly Ayotte.

6. The Democrats will grill Gorsuch over some of his decisions on the 10th Circuit bench. In all, Gorsuch wrote 240 opinions over a decade of service at that federal court.

7. Gorsuchs in-person testimony may only last one day- but that could be a long day! That was the hope expressed by Grassley when he scheduled the hearings back in February. That could be a short day if weve got one round. Or if weve got two rounds or three rounds, it could get to be a long day, but  my intention is to get it done that one day, Grassley said last month.

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8. The remaining day (or two) will add testimony from expert witnesses. Outside witnesses and members of the American Bar Association are expected to testify on the final day of hearings.

9. Will the hearings last for just three days? The hearings for Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor each lasted four days. Kagan testified for two full days back in 2010 as did Sotomayor in 2009. In 2006, Samuel Alito testified for 18 hours over a 2  period and answered about 700 questions, according to official transcripts. Alitos entire hearing process lasted five days.

10. What kind of questions will Gorsuch get? In prior years, past e-mails, memos, law review articles, and public statements have been questioned by the Senators, along with case decisions and general questions about the Constitution.

After the hearings, the committee will vote to recommend the nomination to the full Senate for a vote in the weeks following the hearing. Once a committee recommendation is made, then the full Senate will take up the debate, including the threat of a filibuster from the Democrats.
By David Ingram (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is clashing in court with Democratic state officials and civil liberties advocates over his plan to temporarily ban entry to the United States by refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. After a pair of rulings this week stopped parts of the ban from being enforced, the president vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to save the executive order he signed on March 6 after an earlier effort was blocked in the courts. Below are some questions and answers about the legal fights. Q: In recent days, two judges ruled against the administration on parts of the travel ban. How do those rulings differ? A: A Hawaii federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday against Sections 2 and 6 of Trump's executive order. Those are the heart of Trump's plan, restricting nationals from six "countries of particular concern" for 90 days, as well as all refugees for 120 days. On Thursday, a Maryland federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against one provision of Section 2, which deals with travel restrictions, but it leaves the temporary refugee ban in place. Although the Maryland ruling is narrower in scope, the Hawaii order covers refugees nationwide. Q: Does this mean the Trump administration has lost the cases and its executive order is defunct? A: No. The order has a section that says if any provision of it is found to be invalid, the remainder will not be affected. So any part of the order not covered by the court rulings took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) on Thursday. Also, complex lawsuits such as these have many steps and the Trump administration may ultimately prevail as the cases get full hearings in court and on appeal. Q: What parts of the ban are left standing after the rulings? A: Section 4 of the executive order requires "thorough review" of Iraqi nationals seeking a visa or admission to the United States, although such reviews are already extensive. Section 5 orders changes to the screening of all immigration applications, including "a mechanism to assess whether applicants may commit, aid, or support any kind of violent, criminal, or terrorist acts." Q: What happens next in the legal fight? A: The Trump administration, through its lawyers at the Justice Department, is expected to appeal against one or both of this week's court rulings to regional appellate courts. Both the 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit, where the appeals would be heard, have more judges appointed by Democrats than by Republicans. Last month, a panel of 9th Circuit judges upheld an order from a court in Washington that barred the first executive order from being implemented. Q: What is the Trump administration likely to say in its appeal? A: The White House will assert the authority of the chief executive to issue orders limiting entry to the United States in service of national security. It laid out its justification for the action in the text of the executive order itself: "It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, including those committed by foreign nationals." Improving the screening and vetting procedures is crucial to meeting that goal, the administration says. Q: After the appellate courts rule, what is the next step? Is it a certainty that the U.S. Supreme Court would take the case? A: The only certainty at the Supreme Court is the justices' three-month summer vacation. They have the authority to accept or reject cases, and sometimes stay out of divisive cases, for procedural reasons or otherwise. This year they declined to hear a potentially landmark case about transgender rights that they had previously said they would hear. Q: Is it possible that Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, could be seated before the case goes to the Supreme Court? A: Yes, but it is unlikely he would be seated in time to hear an emergency appeal. Gorsuch is due to appear next week for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where senators are likely to ask him about the travel ban. Republicans hope the Senate confirms him to the court by mid-April. That could mean he would be seated if the appeals follow a more traditional timeline, although it seems doubtful the administration would want to wait considering the urgent need for the order that it has asserted. (Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Tait)
Geert Wilders

With far-right politician Geert Wilders' disappointing showing in the Netherlands election on Wednesday, populism might have just failed its first test in Europe.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte's ruling People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is set to win the most seats in the Dutch parliament for the third time in a row, dealing a blow to populist leader Wilders, who wanted to pull the Netherlands from the European Union and curb Muslim immigration.

Rutte said the win is in part a reaction to the Dutch witnessing the fallout from Britain's vote to leave the EU and America's election of Donald Trump as president.

"The Netherlands, after Brexit, after the American elections, said 'whoa' to the wrong kind of populism," Rutte said after as election results rolled in. "Today was a celebration of democracy. We saw rows of people queuing to cast their vote all over the Netherlands  how long has it been since we've seen that?"

Election turnout was the highest the Netherlands has seen in decades, The New York Times reported. This year's election was especially prominent as geopolitical observers watched the sentiment in the Netherlands for signs of what's to come for the rest of Western Europe, where far-right parties threaten the establishment in some countries.

"During this election campaign, the whole world was watching us," Alexander Pechtold, leader of the left-leaning Democrats 66 party, said. "They were looking at Europe to see if this continent would follow the call of the populists, but it has now become clear that call stopped here in the Netherlands."

Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, also praised the result of the election, which he said was "a vote for Europe, a vote against extremists."

German's foreign office echoed this message on Twitter.

"Large majority of Dutch voters have rejected anti European populists," the office tweeted. "That's good news. We need you for a strong #Europe!"

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Germany is facing its own election this year, with far-right parties on the rise there as well. France's political establishment is also contending with far-right insurgents in its election this year.

Some political observers have suggested that an anti-Trump wave has overtaken the populist wave that has swept Europe.

"Is there an anti-Trump wave in Europe?" Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, tweeted Wednesday. "Yes, that seems to be the case. Saw it in Austria. Stronger in Netherlands."

Martin Schulz, the German leader of the Social Democrats party, also took Wilders' loss in the Netherlands as a sign of what could come in Germany's elections later this year.

"I am relieved," he tweeted. "But we have to continue fighting for an open and free Europe."

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, a centrist who will face right-wing Marine Le Pen in France's coming elections, also seemed relieved at the Dutch result.

"The Netherlands is showing us that a breakthrough for the extreme right is not a foregone conclusion and that progressives are gaining momentum," he tweeted.

Marine Le Pen Geert Wilders

The establishment's victory in the Netherlands doesn't mean that the populist wave has been completely beaten back  Rutte's VVD is projected to win 33 seats, eight fewer than in the 2012 election, while Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) is set to grab 20 seats, a gain of five on the 2012 election, in a second-place finish.

Wilders, meanwhile, is vowing to remain relevant in Dutch politics.

"We were the 3rd largest party of the Netherlands," he tweeted Wednesday night. "Now we are the 2nd largest party. Next time we will be nr. 1!"

The tweet contained an image of Wilders' face next to the phrase "stop Islam."

Wilders has enjoyed some crossover appeal in the US and has been referred to as the "Dutch Donald Trump."

He was a featured speaker at a right-wing event during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. During his speech, he decried European immigration policies and said Europe was "imploding" under the threat of Islamist terrorism.

And, more recently, Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, tweeted in favor of Wilders, linking to a cartoon of Wilders plugging a cracked wall with "Western civilization" written on it.

"Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny," King wrote. "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

The tweet prompted backlash from both sides of the aisle, but King stood firm in his support of Wilders' politics.

Wilders doesn't seem to see this election as a loss. Earlier in the evening, he celebrated the results in another tweet, saying, "The first victory is in! And Rutte has not seen the last of me yet!!"

Barbara Tasch contributed to this report.

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By Elizabeth Piper LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May pledged on Friday to fight for the "precious, precious union" of the United Kingdom, unveiling what she called her Plan for Britain with a warning to Scotland not to pursue its independence plans. May, appointed prime minister soon after Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum last June, said she would negotiate a Brexit deal for the whole country but needed everyone to pull together to get the best outcome. Facing two years of what are likely to be difficult talks for Britain, May wants to stamp her authority on a new agenda for the country but is struggling to repair the deep divisions exposed by the Brexit vote. Nationalists in Scotland have condemned her move to block their demands for a new independence referendum before the EU talks end as an "outrage", and Northern Ireland's largest Irish nationalist party says it wants a vote on splitting from Britain after both regions voted to stay in the bloc. "The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom ... It is essential that we get the right deal, and that all of our efforts and energies as a country and focused on that outcome," May told her party. "We need to do so united, as one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome," she said, promising to ensure all the voices and interests in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented. "I will always fight to strengthen and sustain this precious, precious Union," she added. It will not be an easy fight. The ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in Edinburgh has refused to back down over its demand for a new independence vote after May said: "Now is not the time". Angus Robertson, deputy leader of the SNP, received a standing ovation at the party's conference in Aberdeen when he said: "Scotland's referendum is going to happen, and no UK prime minister should dare to stand in the way of Scottish democracy." In her speech, May tried not to linger on the complexities of Brexit, saying simply she would adopt a "phased approach" to deliver a "smooth and orderly Brexit" and offer certainty wherever possible. Instead, she wanted to reinforce her pitch for the political center ground and move the conversation away from the EU and Scotland. She pledged to boost technical training, reform energy markets and increase selective schools. "Our Plan for Britain is a plan for a brighter future," she said. (additional reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary in Aberdeen, Editing by Stephen Addison)
Washington (AFP) - The diplomatic spat between Britain and the United States, after the White House claimed that London's spies had snooped on Donald Trump, is just the latest incident to put focus on Five Eyes, an international intelligence alliance.

The White House insisted Friday that spokesman Sean Spicer had not accused Britain of spying on Trump but was "simply pointing to public reports," following a story broadcast by Fox News that indicated Trump's predecessor Barack Obama had used Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency for the wiretaps.

- Who are the 'Five Eyes?' -

A GCHQ spokesman labeled the wiretapping allegations as "nonsense," but the scandal revived focus on the intelligence network grouping Anglo-Saxon allies the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The agencies involved are the National Security Agency, GCHQ, the Australian Signals Directorate, Communications Security Establishment Canada and New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau.

The NSA and GCHQ cemented their collaborative efforts in 1946 under the UKUSA Agreement that provides for cooperation on signals intelligence, or SIGINT, between the services.

The three other countries added their "eyes" in 1955.

- Sophisticated surveillance platform -

Over the years, Five Eyes has developed a massive platform for espionage, interception, collection, analysis and decryption of communications. Each country shares with the other four information and a huge amount of data.

A former British spy recently told AFP that cooperation between the countries is so close that it sometimes becomes challenging to determine who does what.

- Snowden revelations -

The breadth of data collected by the alliance -- itself long a secret collaboration whose limits were unclear -- was first revealed by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose 2013 leak of documents showed a mass global surveillance network.

The documents showed that Five Eyes members intentionally spied on citizens of allied countries and shared this information with the other allied countries in order to circumvent laws barring countries from wiretapping their own citizens.

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Snowden described Five Eyes at the time as a "supra-national intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries."

- Four eyes? -

Early last year, Canada announced it would no longer share metadata with its Five Eyes allies because Canadian citizens' private lives cannot be compromised by those intelligence services' communications surveillance.

America's neighbor did not leave the alliance, but its decision reflected additional privacy concerns.

Ottawa's participation had already suffered a blow in 2012, when a Canadian Navy sub-lieutenant was arrested for having provided top secret intelligence to Russia since 2007.
Its been a big week for Europe; so big that it has the potential to shape the trajectory of the continent for years to come. Here are the stories you need to know.

UK

Rumors swirled that this was the week Prime Minister Theresa May would finally pull the Brexit trigger, kicking off the two-year countdown till the UK formally departs the EU. And it looked like the major hurdle to the decision had been cleared: the British House of Lords voted down two amendments to the Brexit bill on Monday. That still left serious questions: Will May be able to negotiate the divorce and terms of a new relationship simultaneously? Can the EU maintain a unified front in driving a hard bargain? And while those questions will bother markets through 2018, at least it looked as if the process would move forward after months of uncertainty.

But then despite Parliaments green light this week, Downing Street set itself a new deadline for triggering Brexit: the end of the month. The cause of the delay? One Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister for Scotland.

Scotland

In last years Brexit referendum, 62 percent of Scots voted to remain. Scotland has been flirting with its own independence from the UK for some time now. It held a referendum on a Scottish independence in 2014, opting to stay part of the UKand part of the EUby a 10-point margin.

Sturgeon has been floating another Scottish referendum ever since the Brexit vote, but it was just this week she revealed plans to hold the vote between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019in the thick of Brexit negotiations. Reports suggest May was caught flat-footed by the move, and has no intention of acceding to the Scottish referendum (which British parliament has to approve) until Brexit is over and done with. That might be in Scotlands interest, too: the last time Scotland was eyeing independence, oil was at $115 per barrel and being touted as a crucial source of state revenue. Its currently at $52 per barrel.

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If Sturgeon plays the independence card, and voters choose no, it will be many years before Scotland can try again. Then theres the issue of EU membershipBrussels has made clear that if Scotland wants to join the EU, it will need to apply for membership again. Wont Spain block them to discourage Catalans from trying the same? More uncertainty coming down the pike.

France

And political developments in France arent helping any. Former front-runner Francois Fillon of the center-right Les Republicains was placed under formal investigation this week for misusing public funds to hire his wife and children as aides. There is scant proof that his wife worked to earn that salary (more than 900,000 paid over several years), and while Fillon claims that his children were paid as lawyers to do legal work, neither was a qualified lawyer at the time. While the investigation has been ongoing for months (dropping Fillons polling to 20 percent), this is the first time Fillon is being named specifically in the formal investigation. Bad timingFrance is only one month out from the first round of its presidential election.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the Front National, is widely expected to make it through to the second round run-off. But she has legal problems of her owntax authorities are looking into whether she undervalued two properties she owns. This is in addition to allegations she misused funds from the European Parliament, where she currently holds a seat. That would theoretically open the door wide for centrist Emmanuel Macronexcept that prosecutors this week opened up an investigation into whether the economy ministry favored certain companies while he was economy minister.

The Netherlands

Dutch parliamentary elections typically fly below the global radar. Not this year. Two reasons for that: the first is Geert Wilders, an outspoken Eurosceptic, xenophobe and Islamophobe from a time before those views became politically fashionable. Wilders has been under police protection since 2004, and his rhetoric has spawned hundreds of death threats. Its also led Dutch police to create a special form for citizens to file complaints specifically against Wilders. Dutch elections were the first major elections in the West to sport a populist as openly hostile to the Western order as Donald Trump, and people were looking to it as a bellwether ahead of French and German elections. Wilders and his Freedom Party underperformed expectations, coming in a distant second with just 20 seats; the big winner of the night was sitting Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his center-right VVD party, which captured 33 seats out of the 150 total.

The next step is forming a coalition government, which is something the Dutch know how to do better than almost anyoneevery Dutch government since 1945 has been formed through coalitions. And while Wilders came in second, he wont get to governmost major Dutch parties had dismissed joining him in any coalition government prior to elections. So once again, Wilders is on the outside looking in.

Turkey

The second reason the world was paying attention to Dutch elections? A dust-up with Turkey. Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is gearing up for a constitutional referendum that would give him more powers. When Germany decided, for security reasons, to cancel a rally aiming to mobilize the 1.4 million Turks living in Germany who are eligible to vote in the constitutional referendum, Erdogan called the Germans Nazis. He did the same thing with the Dutch, who also cancelled a pro-referendum rally out of security concerns. Erdogan then doubled down, calling for all Turks and Muslims to vote against Rutte and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in upcoming elections.

This isnt just bluster. Turkey still houses 2.9 million Syrian refugees, preventing them from crossing over into Europe as part of an EU-Turkey deal which promises Turkey 3 billion, visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe and reenergizing talks for Turkeys possible EU membershipprovided that Turkey undertake reforms of its domestic terrorism and press laws, among others. But Erdogans march toward soft authoritarianismand his recent spitfire rhetoricdoesnt make that look likely. And if the refugee deal breaks apart, a new wave of migrants will impact all five of these stories.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- The Florida prosecutor who thrust herself into the forefront of the anti-death penalty movement is a political novice who was elected just seven months ago.

Aramis Ayala, a Democrat and former public defender and assistant state attorney, surprised many of her own supporters when she announced this week that her office would no longer seek capital punishment in a state that has one of the largest death rows. In response, the state's Republican governor promptly transferred a potential death penalty case  the killing of a police officer and a pregnant woman earlier this year  to another Florida prosecutor.

"I understand this is a controversial issue but what isn't controversial is the evidence that led me to my decision," said Ayala, the first black State Attorney elected in Florida.

She said there is no evidence that shows the death penalty improves public safety for citizens or law enforcement, and it's costly and drags on for years for the victims' families.

Advocates seeking to abolish the death penalty said Ayala sent a powerful message. Her decision reflects decreasing support for capital punishment in the U.S., said Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

"There are some prosecutors who in practice are following her lead. They just haven't spoken out like she has," Clifton said. "It would be wonderful if they spoke out and we could have a louder voice."

Ayala spent the first decade or so of her career as an assistant state attorney and public defender. She was a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office for Orange and Osceola counties for about two years before she decided to seek the top job. The county is home to Walt Disney World and other tourist attractions and has grown more liberal over the past two decades.

Ayala was a political newcomer last year when she took on her former boss, then-State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who had been one of the prosecutors in the Casey Anthony case. Anthony was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

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Ayala didn't run on an anti-death penalty platform when she campaigned, since at the time Florida's death penalty law was in question after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. A new death penalty bill was signed into law this week.

She instead emphasized during her campaign that she would engage with average citizens if elected. She acknowledged that her husband had served time in prison for drug conspiracy and counterfeiting checks years ago.

Even some of Ayala's supporters said Friday they were taken aback by her decision.

Lawson Lamar, a former State Attorney and sheriff, who backed her run for office, said: "Anyone who raises their hand and takes the oath to be State Attorney must be able to go with the death penalty even if they feel it's distasteful."

Ayala's campaign was helped by a Washington-based political action committee with ties to liberal Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros. The committee gave Ayala's campaign almost $1 million, as well as millions of dollars to candidates in local races around the nation.

When asked if the donations influenced her decision, she said it did not.

Florida has 381 inmates on death and shows no sign of slowing down future prosecutions. The other State Attorneys in Florida issued a statement Friday saying they would continue to seek the death penalty.

Rafael Zaldivar, whose son was murdered in Orlando in 2012, said Ayala's decision is part of a political agenda and has no place in the State Attorney's Office. He demanded her resignation.

"She is an activist. She isn't a prosecutor. She has an agenda," said Zaldivar, whose son's killer was sentenced to death in 2015. Questions over Florida's death penalty law have cast doubt over the sentence. His case is currently on appeal.

After Ayala announced her decision, Gov. Rick Scott transferred the case of Markeith Loyd from her authority to another State Attorney in a neighboring district. Loyd is charged in the killing of police Lt. Debra Clayton, as well as Sade Dixon, who was Loyd's pregnant ex-girlfriend.

Dixon's mother said she supported Ayala's decision, saying the death penalty would drag out the process for her family.

"I would love for him to die right now, but that isn't going to happen," Stephanie Dixon-Daniels said at a news conference outside the Orange County Courthouse.

Ayala's decision could play into any future political aspirations. In California, then-District Attorney Kamala Harris faced similar circumstances a dozen years ago when she decided not to pursue the death penalty against a man accused of killing a San Francisco police officer. Harris went on to become the state's attorney general and a U.S. senator.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikeschneiderap . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/Mike-Schneider
Berlin (AFP) - Volkswagen's powerful ex-chairman Ferdinand Piech, credited with its rise from the brink of bankruptcy to world leader status, is in talks to sell his stake in the group, its holding company said Friday.

The 79-year-old owns 14.7 percent in Porsche SE, which in turn controls the Volkswagen group with 52 percent of its voting rights.

The stake owned by the former 'Mr VW' is worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion), according to Spiegel Online, which first flagged the talks and said they followed differences with Porsche's founding families.

The negotiations cover the sale of "the major part" of Piech's Porsche SE holding to the Porsche and Piech families, which have first dibs on the purchase, Porsche SE said in a statement.

"At present, it is still unforeseeable whether the aforesaid changes in the shareholder structure of Porsche SE will in fact occur," the statement said.

Relations with the current management and the other co-owners of Volkswagen became strained after Piech claimed that company chiefs, including CEO Martin Winterkorn, knew about emissions cheating which led to the so-called 'dieselgate' scandal earlier than they admitted.

After fitting 11 million cars with devices allowing them to fool emission tests, Volkswagen in January agreed to plead guilty and pay $4.3 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle charges that it defrauded the United States and conspired to violate the Clean Air Act.

- Dieselgate got personal -

This added to the $17.5 billion that the company already agreed to pay in settlements with car owners and dealers for environmental cleanup.

Last month, the board members targeted in Piech's allegations rejected them as "false".

An internal investigation had examined Piech's claims last year and found no evidence, they said.

According to German tabloid Bild, Piech told prosecutors in the German city of Brunswick that he heard rumours about the emissions fraud in February 2015, while he was still chairman of the supervisory board.

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He reportedly put the allegations to then-chief executive Martin Winterkorn, who denied them, and to some members of the board.

The allegations have explosive potential as so far VW has always denied that senior management knew of the cheating before it became public knowledge in September 2015.

As the grandson of the inventor of the VW Beetle and a member of the Porsche-Piech clan that owns much of the group, Piech long ruled VW with an iron fist.

But a confrontation with Winterkorn, his former protege, cost him his place at the head of the supervisory board in April 2015.

Germany media have said that his last remaining post as a supervisory board member at Porsche SE itself is now also on the line.
Four men accused of plotting the murder of a prominent Myanmar lawyer and adviser to de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in a Yangon court on Friday.

Ko Ni was shot in the back of the head in late January in broad daylight outside Yangon's airport while waiting for a taxi with his infant grandson in his arms.

He was a vocal critic of the army's lingering grip on power under Myanmar's new elected government and Suu Kyi's party has branded his killing a "terrorist act" designed to thwart their policies.

The gunman, Kyi Lin, was arrested at the scene after also shooting dead a cab driver who tried to stop him escaping.

The four heard the murder charge against them at a Yangon court on Friday.

Kyi Lin and Aung Win Zaw, who allegedly paid him to carry out the killing, were also charged with possessing an illegal weapon, a court official told AFP.

"We are standing for justice for U Ko Ni, who was assassinated. We are working for justice," prosecution lawyer Nay La told reporters, using an honorific.

Two of the men in court were ex-military.

A fifth man accused of ordering the killing who remains on the run also has army ties, fuelling suspicions Ko Ni was murdered for trying to abolish a 2008 constitution.

The charter, brought in under Myanmar's former junta, bars Suu Kyi from becoming president and enshrines military control by guaranteeing them a quarter of parliament seats.

But commentator and friend of Ko Ni, Bertil Litner, said it was "common knowledge" that the lawyer was close to finding a loophole.

"Ko Ni told several people, not only me, the same thing: it's useless to try to change or amend the constitution because the military controls 25 percent of all seats," he said.

"But there's nothing in the 2008 constitution that says it can't be abolished by a majority vote in the parliament."

Military officials have denied having any part in the shooting and pledged to bring the killers to justice.
(PARIS)  A 16-year-old student who had troubled relations with his peers opened fire at a high school in southern France on Thursday, wounding three other students and the principal who tried to intervene, officials said.

Police moved into the Alexis de Tocqueville school in the town of Grasse  the countrys picturesque perfume capital  and quickly arrested the still-armed suspect, identified by the Interior Ministry spokesman as Killian Barbey.

The government minister for victims affairs, Juliette Meadel, told BFM television there were 4 people shot three students and the high school principal  and 10 other victims.

The Grasse prosecutor said some of the victims were suffering from emotional shock. None of the injuries was considered life threatening.

Prosecutor Fabienne Atzori said the young man  armed with a rifle, several pistols and a small grenade  entered a classroom then left, not finding the person or people he was searching for.

The motivation of the student appears linked to bad relations with other students in this high school in which it appears he had some difficulty integrating, Atzori said.

She said there was no reason to suspect the shootings were terrorism-related, whatever the origin of the terrorist enterprise. A national police official said earlier there did not appear to be any other suspects.

Investigators were now trying to find out where did the suspect get the arms, she said.

Officials variously gave 16 and 17 as the age of the suspect. His Facebook page indicates he is 16.

After the suspect started shooting, students alerted the principle, who was wounded while courageously intervening, the prosecutor said. Some students only discovered shrapnel in their bodies once home, she said.

Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who visited the school Thursday, called it the crazy act of a fragile young man fascinated by firearms  We just missed the worst.

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The suspects Facebook is filled with violent or gory images.

During the attack, some students hid at the school and others were evacuated. A police helicopter circled overhead in what is normally a relatively quiet corner of France.

Police cordoned off the area and worried residents gathered outside in the town, which is 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the southern city of Nice, site of last years Bastille Day terror attack that killed 86 people.

The president of the region, Christian Estrosi, said the principal suffered an arm wound and told him that after being alerted to the presence of the armed student, he tried to interpose  to try to calm him, and unfortunately he didnt succeed.

Student Charlotte Camel, 18, told The Associated Press she was in the school library when a teacher ran into the room shouting, Theres someone with a gun, go hide! Thats what we did from the very beginning.

We all very much panicked. I thought a lot about the other students in my class who were in class and I wandered if they were ok. I thought about my friends and the teachers too, Camel said.

The attack came amid Frances state of emergency, a response to a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks over the past two years.

While no terrorism link has been identified, all this justifies the state of emergency, President Francois Hollande said, adding that it would remain in place until July 15, as planned.

The government sent out an alert warning of an attack after police reported that shots were fired, but later lifted it. The alert is part of a system implemented by the government after the deadly November 2015 attacks in Paris
Baden-Baden (Germany) (AFP) - Finance ministers from the world's top nations gather in Germany on Friday as fears grow of a looming trade war over US President Donald Trump's America First policy.

Trump has already torn up a trans-Pacific free trade pact, threatened punitive tariffs against multinationals with factories outside the United States and attacked "currency manipulation" by export giant China.

And his stated aim of keeping jobs at home by making it costly for American companies to outsource is likely to dominate talks at the G20 gathering of finance ministers and central bankers in the western German spa town of Baden-Baden.

Trump's emissary, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, is set to face scrutiny from Washington's key trading partners for clues on whether the world's biggest economy fully intends to abandon its long-standing support of open markets and free trade.

On the eve of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a rare joint pledge, saying they would "together fight for free trade and open markets".

The statement by the leaders of the two major exporters also came a day before Merkel is due to meet Trump in Washington for the first time, when the chancellor is expected to make a push for open markets.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also issued a separate warning to Washington.

"We don't want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries. That wouldn't make our trade fairer," Li told reporters Wednesday.

- 'Buy American, hire American' -

But Trump was elected on the back of voter anger over deindustrialisation in vast areas of the United States.

He declared in his inauguration speech that "we will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American."

Those caught in the crosshairs include German luxury carmaker BMW, against which Trump has threatened punitive taxes of 35 percent if it does not back down on building a factory in Mexico.

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On Thursday following talks with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, Mnuchin said Washington had no desire to have "trade wars" with other economic powers.

"Our desire is that when there is imbalances in trading relationships that we have a need to address that," Mnuchin said after the pair met in Berlin.

Mnuchin said Trump's administration would keep a close eye on the levels of key global currencies, but pursue policies in the interest of "economic growth that is good for the US and the rest of the world".

According to sources involved in the preparation of the G20 meeting, the issue of free trade has emerged as a main sticking point with the US refusing to commit to a clear rejection of protectionism.

- 'US position unclear' -

For French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, the problem is that Washington did not appear to have a clear position on trade.

"We don't have a well-argued position from the US and that's the main difficulty that we have today," he told AFP, adding that it's the "fear of a lack of position that's weighing on the debate".

"It's possible that the US is unable to say what they plan to do beyond the simplistic declarations in a tweet," he added.

Sources say host Germany is looking at a possible compromise that would remove the issue of trade from a final statement at the end of the two day meeting, deferring until heads of state meet at a summit in July.

Amid the growing alarm, IMF chief Christine Lagarde urged the G20 to "collectively avoid self-inflicted injuries".

"This requires steering clear of policies that would seriously undermine trade, migration, capital flows, and the sharing of technologies across borders," she wrote in a message that apparently primarily targeted Trump.
Baden-Baden (Germany) (AFP) - The United States on Saturday challenged long-standing global principles surrounding free trade, refusing to renew past anti-protectionist pledges and threatening to reopen negotiations on World Trade Organization deals.

In an early taste of what Donald Trump's "America First" push spells for the world, finance ministers from the G20 group of developed and emerging nations failed to get Washington to sign off on a pledge to reject protectionism in a closing statement.

Commitments of support to the existing multilateral trade system, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), were also conspicuously missing from the final communique.

And an entire section on action against climate change was dropped, sparking dismay among America's partners as well as environmental activists.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shrugged off the outcry, saying the "historical language" was not relevant.

"What is relevant is what we agreed as a group: to strengthen the contributions of trade to our economies," he said.

"We will strive to reduce excess global imbalances to promote inclusiveness and fairness and reduce inequality," he added, stressing that what Washington seeks is "free and fair trade" that is good for both Americans and the world.

But trade deals that currently exist are not always balanced, he said, warning that Washington will not hesitate to renegotiate them.

"We want to reexamine certain agreements, we have talked about reexamining NAFTA," he told journalists, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States.

"We think there are parts of the WTO that are not being enforced, and will look to aggressively enforce things in the interest of American workers," he added.

"To the extent the agreements are old agreements and need to be renegotiated, we'll consider that as well."

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- 'Free but fair trade' -

Carried to power on the back of a political storm over deindustrialisation in vast areas of the US, Trump vowed in his inauguration speech to "follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American."

His strategy includes threats to penalise companies that manufacture abroad by heavily taxing their products.

Since taking office, Trump has withdrawn the US from a trans-Pacific free trade pact and attacked export giants China and Germany over their massive trade surpluses.

His stance has been condemned by Washington's trading partners, and led Beijing to issue a stern warning against sparking a trade war.

Trump himself insisted at a tense Washington press conference Friday, following his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that "I'm a free trader but also a fair trader".

He rejected a description of his policies as "isolationist".

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin expressed "regret that our discussions today were unable to reach a satisfying conclusion on two absolutely essential priorities," trade and climate.

"Our world and France would have liked to see the G20 continue to take firm and concerted action," he added.

Host German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble however struck a conciliatory tone, suggesting that Mnuchin was not empowered to act on some issues.

And IMF chief Christine Lagarde said the new White House simply needed time to "adapt and learn".

- 'No sense in fighting' -

The US treasury chief himself acknowledged that environmental issues such as the 2015 Paris agreement were "not in my track".

"President Trump is looking at the Paris treaty and other treaties and the administration will have views on that as they consider their policies," Mnuchin said, adding that was "more of an issue for G20 leaders and less of an issue for finance ministers".

But activists say the exclusion of climate marked a new setback for environmental action, after Trump proposed to take an axe to green financing.

Under his first national budget proposal, he suggested cutting financial resources for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by a third, as well as eliminating contributions linked to UN climate change programmes.

On the campaign trail, Trump had threatened to pull the US out of the Paris Accord on combating climate change.

Greenpeace East Asia's Li Shuo blamed Washington for a G20 statement that he said showed a "lack of attention to climate change".

"Other countries should not allow this to happen again," he added.

EU Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici acknowledged that "it was a complicated meeting with a temporary conclusion that could be better but we are working on it.

"And I hope for a better conclusion in four months in Hamburg," he said, adding that given it was the "first contact with this new administration, it would have made no sense to enter into a fight."
BERLIN (AP)  German police have detained a 27-year-old man wanted by Bahrain on suspicion of terrorism.

A spokesman for the Berlin prosecutors' office says the Bahraini, whom he didn't identify, was detained in the German capital Thursday.

Martin Steltner said Friday that a decision about the man's extradition will be taken by a judge.

He said the suspect belongs to Bahrain's Shiite Muslim majority.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel questioned how Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan would know that an arrested German-Turkish journalist was a spy before he went on trial. Relations between Ankara and Berlin have been strained in recent weeks after Deniz Yucel, a journalist for German newspaper Die Welt, was arrested in Ankara last month. In addition bans on planned rallies by Turkish ministers in Germany to drum up support for Erdogan have also caused anger. "If Turkey really is a state under the rule of law as Mr Erdogan claims, I ask myself how he already knows and can say before the start of a trial that Deniz Yucel is a terrorist and a spy," Gabriel told German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview that will be published on Saturday. Berlin says Turkey's claim that Yucel was working as a German spy is "absolutely baseless". Der Spiegel reported that Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had promised German Chancellor Angela Merkel consular access to Yucel in a telephone call on March 4 but Ankara had not followed up on the promise. "It would be disappointing if we could no longer rely on the Turkish prime minister's word," Gabriel said. Yucel was arrested last month on charges of propaganda in support of a terrorist organization and inciting the public to violence. The 43-year-old, the first German reporter to be held in a widespread crackdown that has followed the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, was jailed pending trial. (Reporting by Michelle Martin, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
Athens (AFP) - Greek authorities were on Friday trying to determine how a near-defunct militant group was able to sneak at least two parcel bombs through airport security, one of which exploded at the IMF's Paris offices.

The investigation so far suggests that the booby-trapped mail sent to the IMF and the German finance ministry -- presumably by a far-left group called the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei -- failed to raise an alarm because it contained only a small amount of gunpowder.

"The analysis so far... is that it was a small amount of gunpowder of the same type used in firecrackers... there was no detonator," Greek police minister Nikos Toskas told Skai TV on Friday, citing evidence from investigators in France and Germany.

"Clearly they are from the same source, the same organisation... the leftovers of the Nuclei", which was dismantled by police in 2011, he added.

A Greek police source told AFP that the hit, though largely symbolic, showed that Conspiracy "is an active group and there are residual members who want to make their presence felt."

A source close to the investigation in Paris said the device consisted of two tubes of black powder and a makeshift electric trigger.

But the small quantity of gunpowder used is "hard to trace", a spokesman for the airport's security company told the To Vima news website.

It was not immediately clear if the device sent to the IMF offices was in an envelope or a small parcel.

Toskas defended the screening procedures at Athens airport, saying the equipment was recently purchased from Germany and was "the best in Europe".

"The main screening is done before the plane is loaded, and this is where our investigation is focused," he said, adding that there was "no sign" that additional parcels were sent.

Fragments of Greek stamps were found at the IMF offices where the mail bomb exploded, injuring a secretary's face and hands.

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Citing police sources, the Greek daily Avgi said the intended recipient was the IMF's Europe director, Jeffrey Franks.

In a further twist, the names of two senior officials in Greece's conservative New Democracy party were used as the alleged senders -- deputy leader Adonis Georgiadis and party spokesman Vassilis Kikilias, formerly a police minister himself.

Toskas said there would be a "re-evaluation" of procedures in both Greece and abroad.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde denounced a "cowardly act of violence" and said the fund would continue its work "in line with our mandate," a statement from her office said.

The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei also claimed responsibility for the explosive device sent to the offices of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

The statement was also co-authored by the Italy-based Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI).

The package was discovered on Wednesday, a day before Schaeuble was due to host his new US counterpart, Steven Mnuchin.

The Italian group has not commented on the IMF parcel.

- History of violence -

Many Greeks blame Germany and the for imposing years of public-sector cuts and policy overhauls in exchange for bailout packages needed to prop up the debt-ridden country.

The group, which is considered a terror organisation by Washington, sent mail bombs to foreign embassies in Greece and to European leaders in 2010.

The organisation denounces capitalism and consumerism, as well as police repression and worker exploitation.

Police say the name "Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei" had been used as a cover by urban militants carrying out minor arson attacks against car dealerships and police vehicles since the middle of the last decade.

But their activities escalated starting in early 2008.

In 2011, several of its members, many of them very young, were convicted of "participating in a criminal organisation" and given long prison sentences.

Three years later, the group announced its return and has since been committing sporadic attacks.
GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  A judge in Guatemala has ordered the arrest of Edgar Justino Ovalle, a lawmaker and adviser to President Jimmy Morales.

Attorney General's office spokeswoman Julia Barreda said Friday that Ovalle is sought for suspected crimes during the nation's 1960-1996 civil war when he was a military officer.

Now a member of Congress, he had immunity from prosecution but the Supreme Court lifted that protection earlier this week.

He is suspected of murder, forced disappearance and crimes against humanity in connection with the kidnapping of multiple people in 1983 and 1984, when he was second in command of a military zone in Coban, north of Guatemala City.

The victims were later killed and buried in clandestine graves on a military base.
Photo credit: Hagerty

From Road & Track

As new cars get more complex, fewer manufacturers are giving buyers the option to choose a traditional manual transmission. The love for the stick shift is dying in America, but classic car insurance provider Hagerty could have the solution to saving the manual.

Hagerty, new home of former R&T Editor in Chief Larry Webster and Deputy Editor Joe DeMatio, has put together a program to teach young people age 15-25 how to drive manual transmission vehicles. Using classic cars, classroom sessions, and a closed parking lot course, the Hagerty Driving Experience aims to pass on the skills of stick-shift driving to the next generation.

This year, Hagerty is hosting events in four U.S. cities-Golden, Colorado; Traverse City, Michigan; Austin Texas; and Scottsdale, Arizona-for young people to attend. The cars are sourced locally from owners who are brave enough to let unexperienced adolescents drive their treasured classics.

Some cars that have shown up in the past include a 1928 Packard Phaeton, a 1950 Willys Jeepster, and even a 1962 Aston Martin DB4. If you're the type who wants to spread the pleasure of three pedals to people who want to learn, you can volunteer your car and your teaching abilities here.

Teaching kids how to drive stick isn't the only lesson on offer. Each course goes over simple car care and maintenance to make sure all aspects of car ownership are covered, whether you're driving a valuable classic or a family hand-me-down.

If you're itching to learn how to drive a manual, or there's a new driver in your life who wants to learn the art of the third pedal, go here to check out dates and sign up. Not many young people know how to drive stick, but with this program, the joy of changing gears won't be lost on the new generation of drivers.

via /r/cars

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Washington (AFP) - A new cholesterol-lowering drug evolocumab helps high-risk patients reduce the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke, but its high cost raises questions about how many patients will benefit, researchers said Friday.

The results of a two-year clinical trial on the drug sold as Repatha by Amgen Phamaceuticals that costs more than $14,000 a year were released at the American College of Cardiology annual conference in the US capital.

The randomized trial involved 27,564 people who had experienced a prior heart attack or stroke, or who had significantly clogged arteries that limited blood flow to their limbs.

Evolocumab reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol, by 59 percent.

It also decreased the risk of heart attack or stroke or cardiovascular death by 15 percent in the first year and 25 percent in the second year.

"The drug was safe and well-tolerated," said lead study author Marc Sabatine, chair of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Experts not involved in the study described it as "exciting" and "major," but urged caution due to the high cost of the medication.

"This is very expensive stuff," said Valentin Fuster, physician in chief at Mt Sinai Medical Hospital in New York.

Fuster also noted that in absolute numbers, the drug saved about two percent of lives.

"We have to be very cautious in terms of the enthusiasm," he told reporters at the conference.

Roxana Mehran, professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, described the findings as "probably the most important trial here" at the ACC meeting, which is the largest annual gathering of cardiologists in the United States.

"Certainly America cannot afford to be giving this to every patient," she added.

"While we don't want to ration great care, we do need to figure out how to pay for this."

- New class -

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Evolocumab is part of a new class of drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors, which are monoclonal antibodies that help lower cholesterol.

Some patients who are unable to take traditional cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, due to their side effects, may be able to take PCSK9 inhibitors instead.

Patients report few side effects from Repatha, which acts differently than statins and does not cause the muscle pain and weakness that some statin users experience.

Repatha gained US Food and Drug Administration approval in 2015.

But its price, and the lack of data on its effectiveness until now, have limited its use.

"The biggest challenge is getting it covered by insurance," Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women's heart health at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told AFP.

"When we see a trial like this, I think that the use is going to up exponentially," she added, describing the study -- the largest and most extensive of its kind to date when it comes to Repatha -- as "pretty exciting."

"As demand and use goes up, the insurance companies usually follow," Steinbaum said.

- Epidemic of heart disease -

Heart disease and stroke are the number one killers worldwide, taking 15 million lives in 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

In the United States, heart disease accounts for one in every four deaths, and kills more than 600,000 people every year.

Stubbornly high cholesterol is a key risk factor.

The study showed evolocumab reduced LDL cholesterol by 59 percent, from a median of 92 to 30 mg/dL.

This made "a dramatic difference," even if the drug could save just two percent of patients' lives, said Kevin Marzo, chief of the division of cardiology at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York, who was not involved in the study.

"In a disease that affects hundreds of thousands, that is a big difference, preventing a lot of heart attacks, a lot of urgent hospitalizations," he told AFP.

Financial analysts were more critical of the drug's high cost, and Amgen shares fell 6.6 percent by midday, following the release of the study.

"At a cost of $7,000 a year, this translates to $958,000 per event saved," Bernstein analyst Ronny Gal wrote in a note published by CNBC.

"Thus, in our view, payers will continue to restrict access to the drug."

The study showed the drug prevents only one cardiovascular event per 137 treated patients, he said.
Three young Hong Kong protesters were jailed for three years Friday on "riot" charges for their part in anti-China protests last year as tensions rise ahead of a vote for the city's next leader.

The sentencing came just over a week before a vote for Hong Kong's new chief executive, which pro-democracy campaigners dismiss as a rigged election weighted towards Beijing.

Activists have said they will come out in protest on March 26, the day of the leadership selection, which is made by a committee of 1,194 mainly pro-establishment members of special interest groups.

The three activists jailed on Friday had taken part in the "fishball riots" of February 2016, which tapped in to fears Beijing is tightening its grip on semi-autonomous Hong Kong.

None of the three jailed Friday are well-known campaigners.

The riot's alleged ringleaders from "localist" campaign group Hong Kong Indigenous, which advocates more autonomy for the city, face trial next year.

"Anyone participating in such riots needs to understand there is a cost," said district court judge Sham Siu-man Friday.

The defence had argued the three protesters -- two of whom were students and one reported to be a cook -- had been expressing their disapproval of the Hong Kong government, which activists say is a puppet of Beijing.

But Sham said: "Violence is violence," as he delivered the sentence to the grim-faced accused, Hui Ka-ki, 23, Mak Tsz-hei, 20 and Sit Tat-wing, 33, who were then led away.

Sham said all three defendants had hurled glass bottles, with Mak throwing bamboo polls at officers.

The clashes erupted after official attempts to remove illegal hawkers from the busy commercial neighbourhood of Mong Kok during Lunar New Year celebrations.

The battles were dubbed the "fishball revolution" after a favourite Hong Kong street snack sold by the hawkers, and reflected underlying tensions over the erosion of the city's traditions.

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Police fired warning shots in the air, while demonstrators hurled bricks levered up from pavements, charged police lines with homemade shields and set rubbish on fire.

About 100 people were injured, including police officers, journalists and protesters, and 65 were arrested in the rare outbreak of violence.

Mong Kok, on the city's Kowloon peninsula, was the scene of some of the worst clashes during largely peaceful mass pro-democracy "Umbrella Movement" rallies in 2014, which failed to win political reform.

Friday's sentencing was the harshest handed out to those who took part in the fishball demonstrations, and the first convictions for rioting.

Three other participants were last year sentenced to between three and nine months on lesser charges.

Activist Ray Wong from Hong Kong Indigenous, who is also facing a riot charge, said protesters were willing to risk jail.

"Every young Hongkonger loves their home, that's why they come out to pay the price," he told reporters outside the court.

Police welcomed the verdict, saying it gave a message to the public that violence would not be tolerated.
The U.S. Capitol's St. Patrick's Day rituals did not bring President Donald Trump any luck this year.

On St. Patrick's Day eve, Trump was put in an awkward position when Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny stood beside him and subtly called out his immigration policy in front of everyone.

SEE ALSO: Hawaii joins the list of beautiful things Trump supporters are boycotting

After Trump discussed the country's "high levels of optimism" and vowed America would remain a loyal friend to Ireland, he introduced Kenny, who explained the tradition of gathering at the White House every year to honor Ireland's patron saint.

Then he packed the punch. "He too, of course, was an immigrant," Kenny said. "And though he is of course the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe he is also a symbol of the patron of immigrants."

For a brief moment, it appeared the two leaders might clash as hard as their green striped and polka dotted ties.

Instead, Trump gave Kenny some serious side eye as he continued: "Ireland came to America because, deprived of liberty, deprived of opportunity, of safety, of even food itself, the Irish believed, four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the wretched refuse on the teeming shore.

"We believed in the shelter of America in the compassion of America, in the opportunity of America. We came  and we became  Americans."

At the Friends of Ireland Luncheon on Thursday, Kenny also addressed Trump's plans to remove illegal immigrants from the United States in a more direct way.

"Id just like to say in finality, this is what I said to your predecessor on a number of occasions: We would like this to be sorted. It would remove a burden of so many people that they can stand out in the light and say, now I am free to contribute to America as I know I can. And thats what people want," Kenny said.

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"There are millions out there who want to play their part for America  if you like, who want to make America great," he said, using Trump's own campaign slogan as the ultimate troll. "Heard it before? Heard that before?" Kenny said over laughter and applause.

Sick burn, Kenny. Sick. Burn.
Jimmy Gomez speaks at a generationOn and Hasbro holiday gift distribution event this past December. (Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for generationOn and Hasbro)

Of all the special congressional elections set to take place over the next few months  the first big electoral battles of the Trump era  the least competitive, in a partisan sense, is the one to replace former Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra, who became Californias attorney general in January.

Thats largely because of how California runs its primaries: jungle style, with candidates of all parties competing to win 50 percent of the vote in an initial round of balloting, followed by a runoff between the top two finishers  again, regardless of party label  if no one manages to clear that threshold.

As a result, the April 4 primary in Californias 34th Congressional District  a longtime Democratic stronghold in northeastern L.A.  has attracted 23 (yes, 23) candidates. Nineteen of them are Democrats. One is a member of the Green Party. One is a Libertarian. One has no party affiliation.

Only one is a Republican.

So, yes, CA-34 is probably going to be the least competitive of the upcoming special elections. But it may also be the most fascinating  especially when it comes to the fight for the future of the Democratic Party.

Political reporters have been trying for weeks to impose some sort of national narrative on the race. Politicos David Siders sees it a test of the so-called resistance, where the basic issue is if people will take their increased interest in politics and convert that to the more mundane act of voting, as California data guru Paul Mitchell explained in Siders story. For Christine Mai-Duc of the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, the CA-34 race is all about Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.  a preview of how Berniecrats can affect future Democratic races across the country.

Theres truth to both these theories. Sanders narrowly won the district in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, and at least three candidates say the firebrand populist lawmaker inspired them to run. It also will be interesting to see if antipathy toward President Trump and his agenda inspires more Angelenos to turn out.

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But ultimately, voter participation is likely to be dismal  perhaps in the single digits, according to the campaigns and outside observers  and ideological differences probably wont decide the race. (Nearly all of the Democratic candidates are true-blue progressives.)

Xavier Becerra, Californias new attorney general, talks to reporters in Sacramento in January. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

The real question that CA-34 will address  and may, at least in part, answer  is both simpler and more fundamental to the future of the party: Will the establishment decide that future? Or, in the Age of Trump, can outsiders and newcomers elbow their way in?

Of all 19 Democrats running to replace Becerra, only one  Jimmy Gomez  is what you might call a traditional politician. The son of Mexican immigrants, Gomez, 42, graduated from Harvard University and served as both a teacher and a union official before winning a seat in the California State Assembly in 2012.

The rest of the field is basically politician-free.

This is a unique situation. Because of the jungle primary system and the districts safely progressive slant, 18 Democrats whove either never held office or never even run before have decided to try their luck and see if they can force a June 6 runoff  at which point all bets will be off (or so the thinking goes).

At a time when national Democrats are despairing over the state of the party and worrying about whether they have the bench of candidates necessary to rebuild  Republicans now control 33 governors mansions and 32 statehouses, as well as the presidency and Congress  various activist organizations have been working to persuade members of the newly riled-up, anti-Trump left to run for office. Emilys List, VoteRunLead and the Center for American Women and Politics are recruiting and training women; Run for Something is recruiting and training millennials; and 314 Action is recruiting and training scientists.

In the week since weve kicked off, more than 1,200 people have said theyre not willing to stay quiet, Run for Something founder Amanda Litman, a former email director for Hillary Clinton, said in January. They want to step up and lead the resistance by not just showing up at the polls or at the protests, but by being on the ballot.

The special election in CA-34 is the first  and, so far, the best  test of whether this strategy could actually pay off. Of the 23 candidates, a majority are women. At least 16 are Hispanic. (The district itself is 65 percent Hispanic.) Half have their own immigration stories. Thirteen are in their 20s or 30s.

Theres a labor activist, former journalist and radio personality who was an early Sanders supporter and spent several weeks at the Dakota Access Pipeline protest (Wendy Carrillo, 36).

Theres a former Obama White House staffer who was raised on welfare, graduated from Harvards Kennedy School of Government, modeled for Maxim and recently learned that she has a genetic mutation that means she is extremely likely to develop breast cancer (Alejandra Campoverdi, 37).

Theres a longtime Boyle Heights activist who, as the daughter of immigrants, helped co-found the East Los Angeles Community Corp., a nonprofit focused on economic development and housing (Maria Cabildo, 49).

Theres a former deputy political director for Sanders presidential campaign who lived in Mexico as a child and most recently worked for Latino digital startup network Mitu (Arturo Carmona, 38).

Theres a former downtown director for L.A. City Councilman Jose Huizar who worked for a time as a teacher and launched a nonprofit that helps students obtain scholarships to elite private schools (Sara Hernandez, 33).

Theres even a rocket scientist: Tracy Van Houten, 34, who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover as an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, but accelerated her plan to enter politics after Trump was elected.

And the list of newcomers and outsiders goes on.

You need to have a seat at the table, Van Houten recently told the Atlantic. The only way well change Washington is if we change the people who we send there.

Maria Cabildo (Photo: maria4losangeles via Instagram)

Right now, Gomez, the assemblyman, has most of the traditional advantages. His most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission shows him leading the field in fundraising (as of Dec. 31), with a total haul of $301,493  including $292,935 cash on hand. And the race for endorsements isnt even close. In addition to key local and national Hispanic leaders  including California Reps. Grace F. Napolitano, Pete Aguilar and Juan C. Vargas, Texas Rep. Filemon Vela and Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego  Gomez has locked down the support of pretty much every establishment figure and organization in California: the state Democratic Party, the major labor unions, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, recently reelected L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sen. Kamala Harris and even Becerra himself.

But Gomezs rivals arent clearing the way for a coronation. The Los Angeles Times has endorsed Cabildo, calling her a new kind of candidate for a new kind of Democratic Party. Hernandez raised an impressive $200,232 during her first two weeks in the race, ending 2016 with $194,214 in the bank; shes one of the few candidates airing ads on TV. Campoverdi is also well funded, and also up on the air. A January Latino Decisions poll found Carmona with the highest favorability ratings of the bunch, at 73 percent, and a narrow lead over Gomez. And a less formal (but more recent) survey showed former Los Angeles school board member Yolie Flores, 54, with significant support in the district.

Because so many candidates are competing, and because everyones name recognition is relatively low, experts dont expect Gomez to hit the 50 percent mark, which means theres likely to be a two-person runoff in June. Its possible that the races sole Republican  William Rodriguez Morrison, 54, an apartment building manager and perennial vanity candidate who has also run for L.A. City Council, the state Senate and L.A. mayor  could squeak through with unified support from the districts tiny GOP minority. But its also possible that one of Gomezs fellow Democrats will finish in second place, setting up a much higher profile  and much more direct  confrontation between the old guard and the new two months later.

At a recent fundraiser, Carmona, the former Sanders campaign staffer, railed against machine politics and accused party insiders of picking favorites. According to them, this race is over, he told the crowd. But were going to surprise them.

Whether its Carmona who earns that opportunity  or someone else  remains to be seen. But with low turnout, a sprawling field and lots of left-wing voters, its hard to imagine a better place or time for him and his fellow outsiders to prove that they can win elections.

Read more from Yahoo News:
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's second line of fences on its border with Serbia will be built by the end of May and will be able to prevent any new wave of migrants coming from Turkey, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday. Orban also said it was a mistake by the European Union to rely solely on Turkey in stopping migration while at the same time criticize the Turks. "It is definitely not smart policy that we place our safety in the hands of the Turks, and at the same time we keep pestering them, attacking them, criticizing them that they are not democratic enough ... and generating conflicts with them," Orban said. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
President Donald Trump's first few weeks in the Oval Office set a precedent for the new White House administration to adopt his hardline stance on illegal immigration and undocumented immigrants. The radical overhaul of former President Barack Obamas policies alarmed federal judges, who warned Thursday that the new presidents agenda could turn courthouses nationwide into "stalking" sites for immigration officers looking to make arrests.

Tani Cantil-Sakauye, California's chief justice, called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly to bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents from targeting and detaining undocumented immigrants visiting courts across the country. Multiple arrests of immigrants have taken place within the nations courthouses since Trump was sworn into office Jan. 20.

Read: How Donald Trump May Be Creating Fake News About Immigrants Every Week

"Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our countrys immigration laws," Cantil-Sakauye wrote in a letter published Thursday. "Enforcement policies that include stalking courthouses and arresting undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom pose no risk to public safety, are neither safe nor fair."

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Photo: Reuters

Lawyers throughout California have complained in recent weeks of ICE agents intervening during their court sessions while representing undocumented immigrants. George Gascon, district attorney of San Francisco, described the phenomenon as a "very shortsighted" way of enforcing immigration policies, as most immigrants will catch on and simply avoid entering courthouses altogether.

"The chilling impact that has on an entire community is devastating," Gascon told the Los Angeles Times Wednesday.

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Cantil-Sakauye said policies allowing immigration officers to continue making arrests within courthouses "not only compromise our core value of fairness but they undermine the judiciarys ability to provide equal access to justice."

"I respectfully request that you refrain from this sort of enforcement in California's courthouses," the chief justice wrote.

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Athens (AFP) - Investigators suspect a Greek far-left group -- known as the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei -- was behind a letter bomb that wounded an IMF secretary in Paris on Thursday, the same day the group claimed responsibility for an explosive device found in Berlin.

The following is a factfile on the background and activities of the elusive outfit, which is known for its letter bombs.

Who are they?

Police say they are militant youths with no proven links to other Greek extremist organisations.

In contrast to other groups who have used industrial explosives and assault weaponry, Conspiracy tends to use common materials in their attacks such as gas cannisters, gunpowder extracted from firecrackers, and pressure cookers.

The organisation denounces capitalism, consumerism, police repression and worker exploitation.

Police say the name "Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei" has been used as cover by urban militants carrying out minor arson attacks against car dealerships and police vehicles since the middle of the last decade. But their activities escalated from early 2008 onwards.

How do they operate?

The group aims for maximum effect with minimum risk. In January 2008 they carried out a late-night arson barrage against Athens luxury car dealerships and banks. Nobody was injured.

At the time, gas cannister bombs were their weapon of choice, but the outfit quickly upgraded to explosives hidden in pressure cookers as well as dossiers and carved-out books.

In most cases, anonymous telephone calls were used to alert authorities before the explosives went off.

The device found at the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where the letter bomb exploded appeared "to have been a firework or a big firecracker, according to the city's police chief, who described the device as "relatively rudimentary and nothing like a bomb".

Main strikes

The group began to be taken more seriously by police in February 2009 after planting a gas cannister bomb outside the home of a senior prosecutor. It caused minor damage.

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In July 2009, another bomb hidden in a pressure cooker detonated outside the home of Greece's former police minister and in early 2010, it targeted the Greek parliament. Nobody was hurt in either incident.

In late 2010, the group began to expand their range of targets, sending a series of letter bombs to European leaders including Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi and Jose Manuel Barroso, the then-president of the European Commission. Again, there were no victims.

Brush with police and resurgence

In 2011, several of its members, many of whom were very young, were convicted of "participating in a criminal organisation" and given long sentences in prison.

But three years later the group announced its return and has since committed sporadic attacks, including on the headquarters of the Greek socialist party PASOK, who at that time were sharing power with the right-wing New Democracy.

Many Greeks blame Germany and the IMF for imposing years of public sector cuts and reforms in exchange for bailout packages needed to prop up the debt-ridden country.
India has boosted security at the Taj Mahal after a pro-Islamic State group reportedly warned of attacks in the country and threatened the 17th century monument to love, police said Friday.

Images published in local media showed a fighter in combat fatigues and black headgear at the Taj Mahal, India's biggest tourist attraction, and the words "new target" as the backdrop.

The US-based Site Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadi activity, said the pro-IS Ahwaal Ummat Media Center had originally published the graphic on Telegram on Tuesday.

"There have been no specific intelligence inputs or any official alerts, but going by media reports we have stepped up security at the Taj," senior police superintendent Preetender Singh told AFP on Friday.

"Security drills are being carried out on a six-hourly basis instead of the usual daily drill."

Members of the bomb disposal squad and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team have been deployed with additional personnel patrolling the Yamuna river which flows next to the Taj, he said.

India's leaders say the IS group does not have influence in the country of over 1.2 billion people, which has a large but traditionally moderate Muslim population.

There have been some reports of Indians going to fight for the group in Iraq and Syria, but the numbers are low relative to the size of the population.

Last week, police said an IS sympathiser accused in a train explosion that injured 10 people had been killed in a stand-off as they tried to arrest him.

Singh said the nature of any threat remained unclear but police did not want to leave anything to chance.

"Based on the inputs so far, we have beefed up the security and are fully prepared to handle any eventuality," he said.

"The Taj is in safe hands."
Indonesia summoned the British ambassador Friday after a cruise ship on a voyage organised by a London-based company smashed into coral reefs in a popular tourist spot and caused extensive damage.

Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse marine habitats on Earth, and attracts intrepid travellers and divers to its palm-fringed islands surrounded by coral and fish.

The accident happened this month when the 4,200-ton Caledonian Sky smashed into the reefs at low tide around Kri, one of hundreds of small islands in Raja Ampat, after taking tourists on a bird-watching expedition.

The boat, which was carrying 102 passengers and 79 crew, was grounded on the reefs and only refloated later on a high tide. Numerous attempts to free it using a tug boat failed, causing further damage to the corals.

The incident in West Papua province infuriated the government, who say the British captain could face criminal charges, while local residents believe it will impact the tourism industry and the livelihoods of fishermen.

On Friday Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Panjaitan, a senior figure in the cabinet who is close to President Joko Widodo, summoned the British ambassador to Indonesia, Moazzam Malik.

After the meeting at Panjaitan's office in the capital, Malik told reporters he had a "very good discussion" with the minister.

"I'm disappointed to learn about the damage to this coral reef in West Papua, as we are with any environmental incident that occurs in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world," he said.

"We hope the matter can be resolved quickly between the Indonesian authorities and the company that is responsible for this accident and was managing the ship."

- Serious concern -

However, Malik also noted that the ship was in fact owned by a Swedish company. The tour operator Noble Caledonia, which organised the voyage to Indonesia, is based in London.

Panjaitan said authorities were taking the reef destruction "very seriously".

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"He (the captain) attempted to break free from the reefs and made the damage even worse even though he was ordered to stop," he said, adding it could take up to 100 years to restore the corals.

Authorities have expressed anger that the Bahamas-flagged vessel left Indonesia and sailed on to the Philippines without waiting for a full damage assessment to be completed.

The government has set up a task force to investigate the devastation of the reef and promised to take firm action.

Ricardo Tapilatu, a marine researcher from the University of Papua who headed a team assessing the impact, has said the March 4 accident damaged an estimated 13,500 square metres (145,000 square feet) of coral reef which could cost up to $16.2 million to restore.

Noble Caledonia has apologised for the accident and said they are working to reach a settlement with the government.

In a statement earlier this week, the company said: "We value our relationships around the world with local people and we are sorry to have impacted the local community."
Jerusalem (AFP) - Intel's $15-billion purchase of Israeli firm Mobileye could help fuel the country's rise in the driverless car industry -- not as a builder of vehicles, but as the brains behind them.

Monday's deal, the largest ever in Israel's tech sector, could help boost trade despite the fact no commercial cars are assembled in the country.

The self-styled "startup nation" has no real tradition of auto manufacturing: an ignoble previous stint in the 1960s and 70s produced the fibreglass Sussita car, parts of which, according to legend, were edible for camels.

But the rise of new technology including driverless cars has opened space for the tech-savvy country to excel.

In 2013, Google paid more than $1 billion (900 million euros) for Waze, an Israeli crowd-sourced app that plots the quickest journeys in real time, followed by Monday's $15 billion Mobileye deal.

The company makes advanced driver assistance and accident avoidance systems for car manufacturers, and has already collaborated with Intel and BMW on self-driving car technology.

It was founded in 1999 but Yossi Vardi -- considered one of the fathers of Israel's high-tech startup scene -- said the automobile industry's growth in Israel really began in 2007 when General Motors established a research and development centre.

"It surprised everybody that a company like General Motors would go to Israel to source innovation and technology."

In the last three years, Vardi said, Honda, Ford, Volkswagen, Volvo and others have followed suit.

Most Israeli companies in the field don't involve production, but ways to make driving more efficient.

Among them are Otonomo, which provides in-depth data on car usage; Argus, one of the market leaders in protecting cars from cyber hacking; and VocalZoom, dubbed "Siri for cars."

Elan Zivotofsky, general partner at the OurCrowd equity platform that invests in a number of companies working on autonomous cars, compared it to smartphones, laptops and other sectors where Israeli technology is heavily used but the final products are still made elsewhere.

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"Israel is not going to be in the business of building cars," he said.

"Israel is in the business of building some of the most important core elements that will enable autonomous driving."

- 'Doors will open' -

Vardi said the country's military experience, with some of the world's most advanced monitoring, laser-guiding and other technologies, place it in a good position.

"When you drive a car, you cannot stop the car and wait 15 minutes for the computer to process. It has to be immediate," Vardi said.

"This kind of talent you find in the military -- in airplanes etc."

The impact of Mobileye could be significant, said Yaniv Feldman, editor-in-chief of the Israeli Geektime tech blog.

There are dozens of companies in the sector and Feldman reckons Israel is already one of the leading players in autonomous driving behind the United States and China.

In 2016, around $70 million was invested in automotive tech in Israel, he said, but that will increase by "somewhere between 25 to 40 percent."

"We will probably start seeing much more activity in the space and investor interest rising," he told AFP.

None of the other companies were as advanced as Mobileye, though, he added.

Aquarius Engines, an Israeli firm that claims to have developed a radically improved combustion engine, is currently seeking $10 million in a second round of funding.

Chairman Gal Fridman said they had already noticed a change.

"Since Mobileye happened, our phone is ringing all the time," he told AFP.

"Until now, when I came and told (car companies) I was an Israeli developing an engine, it was a bit odd as the country has no history of automobiles," he said.

"Now, after Waze and Mobileye, we have more credibility, I think, and doors will open easier."
Riyadh (AFP) - Iranian pilgrims will participate in this year's annual hajj, Saudi Arabia said on Friday, despite ruptured ties between the regional rivals.

For the first time in nearly three decades Iran's pilgrims -- which would have numbered about 60,000 -- did not attend last year's hajj after Riyadh and Tehran failed to agree on security and logistics.

Tensions remain as Saudi Arabia repeatedly accuses Iran of fuelling conflicts by supporting armed Shiite movements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

But after talks between the two sides, the Iranians will join this year's ritual which takes place at the beginning of September.

"The ministry of hajj and the Iranian organisation have completed all the necessary measures to ensure Iranian pilgrims perform hajj 1438 according to the procedures followed by all Muslim countries," the official Saudi Press Agency said, referring to this year in the Islamic calendar.

The hajj ministry said that the kingdom, home to Islam's holiest sites, welcomes "all pilgrims from all the different nationalities and backgrounds".

Iran rejects accusations of regional aggression and says Riyadh must stop its alleged support for Sunni "terrorists" like the Islamic State jihadist group and Al-Qaeda.

Although the verbal sparring continued, Saudi media reported in December that the Saudi minister in charge of pilgrimages, Mohammed Bentin, had invited Iran to discuss arrangements for this year's hajj.

An Iranian delegation visited Saudi Arabia in February for talks with Bentin.

In early March, Iran said there had been progress.

"Most of the questions up for discussion have been resolved and a couple of issues are remaining," Iran's ISNA news agency quoted Ali Ghazi Askar, the Iranian supreme leader's representative for hajj affairs, as saying.

"If those questions are resolved, we hope pilgrims will soon be sent to Saudi Arabia."

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A major issue was compensation for the families of hundreds of people killed in a stampede during the 2015 hajj. Iran says 464 of its citizens died in the disaster.

More than 1.8 million faithful took part in last year's hajj. The pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims who can must perform it at least once in their lives.

Iranian pilgrims have for the past two years not attended the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in western Saudi Arabia, known as umrah, which occurs outside hajj.

Tehran suspended its umrah participation over the sexual assault of two Iranian teenage boy pilgrims by Saudi police at Jeddah airport in early 2015.

Ghazi Askar said Iran had raised this issue as well, and if the culprits were punished, "the lesser hajj will also be restored".

Despite agreement on the hajj, Riyadh maintains its criticism of Iran, as highlighted in talks on Tuesday between Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump.

The two leaders "noted the importance of confronting Iran's destabilising regional activities", the White House said.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran's hardline judiciary has sentenced the daughter of late Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to jail for "anti-state propaganda, spreading lies against the judiciary and the Revolutionary Guards Corps", the opposition website Kalemeh reported on Friday. The Islamic Republic has piled pressure on the pro-reform opposition ahead of a presidential election on May 19, when hardline rivals of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani hope to regain control of executive power. "Again Faezeh Hashemi has been sentenced to six months' jail because of her critical remarks about Judiciary and the Guards," Kalemeh reported. Judicial officials were not immediately available to comment. The 55-year-old Hashemi, a women's rights activist and a former member of parliament, has 21 days to appeal the sentence. She was also jailed for six months in 2012 for "spreading anti-state propaganda". In 2009, Hashemi was detained briefly after street protests against the re-election of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Protesters said it was rigged in favour of the hardline president. Hashemi's father, one of the founding figures of the Islamic Republic and a close aide to the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died in January. Allies of Rouhani have criticised a crackdown on social media and the arrest of at least 15 moderate activists ahead of the election, in which Rouhani is expected to run for a second term. The deputy head of Iran's parliament, Ali Motahari, has called on the judiciary and the Intelligence Ministry to shed light on the arrests, condemning them as election engineering, Kalemeh reported. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Iran says it has reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia for 85,000 Iranian pilgrims to attend the hajj after Tehran boycotted last year's annual Muslim pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency said Friday that the agreement was reached between an Iranian delegation and Saudi officials.

Iran boycotted last year's hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims in 2015 killed at least 2,426 people. Iran had the highest death toll of any country, with 464 killed.

Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals who support opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen. Riyadh cut diplomatic relations with Tehran last year after demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Washington (AFP) - Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny caused a stir at the White House on the eve of Saint Patrick's day Friday, pointedly telling President Donald Trump that the festival is in honor of an immigrant.

Before a sea of green-clad revelers in the East Room of the White House Thursday night, Kenny made a pointed reference to controversies over Trump's immigration policies, as the president looked on.

"It's fitting that we gather here each year to celebrate St. Patrick and his legacy. He, too, of course, was an immigrant," Kenny said.

The saint is believed to have been born somewhere in Britain.

"And though he is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe, he is also a symbol of, indeed, the patron of immigrants," Kenny said.

Around 35 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, ensuring that successive presidents have put on a green tie and greeted the Irish prime minister -- or Taoiseach -- to the White House on or around Saint Patrick's day.

Trump praised Ireland as "a truly great country" and the Irish as "tough." "I know a lot about the Irish -- they fight. They're tough," he joked.

This year Saint Patrick's falls on the day that Trump's ban on refugees and migrants from six majority Muslim countries was due to have gone into effect.

The ban was halted by a federal judge, but Trump has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Kenny, amid controversy in Ireland over whether he should have met Trump at all, pressed his point further.

"The Irish have contributed to the economic, social, political and cultural life of this great country over the last 200 years," Kenny said.

The Irish "came to America because, deprived of liberty, deprived of opportunity, of safety, of even food itself, the Irish believed, four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the 'wretched refuse on the teeming shore','" Kenny said.

"We believed in the shelter of America, and the compassion of America, and the opportunity of America. We came, and we became Americans."
President Trump and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, right, hold up a bowl of Irish shamrocks during a St. Patricks Day reception in the East Room of the White House on March 16, 2017. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

THE SHELTER OF AMERICA. Irish Taoiseach Enda Kennys remarks Thursday at the White House gained new attention the next day, St. Patricks Day, as a clip from the United Kingdoms public service station Channel 4 showed him defending United States historic role as a beacon for immigrants seeking refuge.

Irish PM @EndaKennyTD tells @realDonaldTrump that for over 200 years, millions of Irish immigrants have called America home #StPatricksDay pic.twitter.com/Fx6vQp8yv1  Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) March 17, 2017

Its fitting that we gather here each year to celebrate St. Patrick and his legacy. He, too, of course, was an immigrant. And though he is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe, he is also a symbol of, indeed, the patron of immigrants, Kenny said in remarks that seemed intended as a broad, if gentle, rebuke of President Trumps hardline immigration policies.

Here in America, your great country, 35 million people claim Irish heritage, and the Irish have contributed to the economic, social, political and cultural life of this great country over the last 200 years. Ireland came to America because, deprived of liberty, deprived of opportunity, of safety, of even food itself, the Irish believed, four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the wretched refuse on the teeming shore.

We believed in the shelter of America, and the compassion of America, and the opportunity of America. We came, and we became Americans.

L.A. STORY. A recent AFP video provides a good overview of whats happening on the undocumented immigration front in Los Angeles, where authorities are seeing daily protests.

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Los Angeles rallies around undocumented immigrant community pic.twitter.com/K9ERemJcca  AFP news agency (@AFP) March 16, 2017

Notable: Hispanics are the largest racial/ethnic group not just in Los Angeles, but in all of California, the most populous state. Thats been the case since 2014, when California joined New Mexico as the second state with a Hispanic plurality. New Mexico is the state with the highest percent of Hispanics, although it is so sparsely populated that the overall numbers are low. California and Los Angeles County have the largest Latino populations of any state or county in the nation, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015.

WALL WATCH. One of the emerging areas of conflict regarding Trumps border wall is the question of Big Bend National Park in Texas, an expanse of extremely rough (and beautiful) terrain that flattens out into ranch land in one of the least populated counties in the United States. Indeed, the park is such an intense landscape that a Republican member of Congress from Texas recently joked that anyone who can traverse it deserves to be an American:

Louie Gohmert on the wall: "If you can hike across Big Bend National Park with all the water you need, I think you need to be an American."  Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) March 16, 2017

The Austin American-Statesman reports on the controversy, as Republican congressmen from the region  as well as Texas GOP governor  oppose building a wall through the park, even though public lands will be the easiest places to build on, administratively speaking:

At first blush, the construction of a wall through Big Bend would seem unlikely: Illegal crossings in sparsely populated, unforgiving Brewster and Presidio counties are a fraction of what they are in more populated areas, such as the Lower Rio Grande Valley; wall construction in this undeveloped area would be expensive and key Texas politicians have suggested Big Bend should be off limits.

Todd Beckett, Republican Party chairman for Presidio County, says flatly, There is not going to be a wall in Big Bend, adding, Its not necessary.  We already have a barrier. God built it.

And yet, an internal Department of Homeland Security report calls for a second phase of construction of 151 miles to include Big Bend, among other places; a third phase seals off the entire border. The wall could be as high as 30 feet.

While it may seem like building walls in Big Bend would be completely insane, that could be said about many of the walls that already exist, such as the section that cuts through Californias Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, said Scott Nicol, a McAllen-based coordinator of Sierra Clubs borderlands initiative. And the biggest challenge to Trumps timeline is going to be the fact that Texas, where there are currently 110 miles of wall on our 1,200 mile border, is almost entirely private property. Land condemnation suits will take years, but Big Bend National Park and some remaining tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge down here are federally owned.

TAX DAY PROTESTS GET MORE BACKERS. NBC News Alex Seitz-Wald reports: [D]ozens of liberal groups and activists have signed on to help organize the Tax March on April 15. They are expecting tens of thousands to attend the main march in Washington, D.C., or one of the dozens of other demonstrations in cities across the country.

On Friday, 11 new groups joined the effort, including Common Cause, CREDO, Daily Kos, the Economic Policy Institute and Public Citizen. They joined major unions like the American Federation of Teachers, organizing groups like MoveOn.org and the Indivisible Project, Sen. Bernie Sanders Our Revolution, and the liberal Working Families Party.

STAKEOUTS. MoveOn.org has been running stakeouts of congressional district offices these past two days, stationing small huddles of protesters across a wide array of sites to oppose the Republicans American Health Care Act repealing substantial parts of Obamacare. Here are some examples, this one from Plattsburgh, N.Y.:

And from Colorado:

SPOTTED. In Johnstown, Pa., a call for Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, to hold more town halls was posted by a local Indivisible group.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli aircraft carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, prompting the launch of ground-to-air missiles in response, one of which was intercepted, the army said on Friday.

It was the most serious incident between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (army) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles."

None of the missiles hit their targets, the army added.

Both Israeli and foreign media have reported Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeting arms convoys of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

But normally Israel makes no official comment.

The missile fire prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

The missile was intercepted north of Jerusalem by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.
By Maayan Lubell JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said it shot down one of numerous anti-aircraft missiles launched on Friday at its air force which was operating in Syria, in a rare such incident that spilled over into neighboring countries. The Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli jet during the operation. Israel denied this, saying that all its aircraft had returned unscathed. "At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft compromised," an Israeli military spokesman said. Rocket sirens had sounded in the early morning in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and two Reuters witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later. The military said in its statement that one of the anti-aircraft missiles had been intercepted. The blast was heard as far away as Jerusalem, dozens of miles away. There were no reports of casualties or damage. A Jordanian civil defense source said a projectile had landed in a village on the outskirts of the northern Jordanian city of Irbid, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Syrian and Israeli borders, causing light damage. The source said army engineers were examining the object, believed to be fired from Syrian territory in the direction of Israel. Video posted on social media purported to show remnants of a rocket, possibly parts of the intercepting missile, though Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage. "Overnight IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defense Force) Aerial Defense Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the Israeli military said in its statement. Israel has carried out dozens of strikes to prevent weapons smuggling to the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting rebels alongside the Syrian army. However, the interception of a missile making its way over the Syrian border was an uncommon incident. Syria's army high command said in a statement on Friday that Israeli jets had breached Syrian air space early in the morning and attacked a military target near Palmyra, in what it described as an act of aggression that aided Islamic State. It said its air defenses shot down one of the Israeli jets over what it called "occupied ground" and damaged another. Israel denies this. Israeli media said the Syrian army had fired surface-to-air missiles at the Israeli aircraft. The military would not provide further details on the targets it struck, nor on the amount or type of projectiles launched at its forces. An Israeli military source said Israel's Arrow ballistic missile shield had identified an "incoming threat" and shot down one of the projectiles. Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss what he charged were Iran's attempts to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria. Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's staunchest backer and has provided militia fighters to help him. Israel is concerned Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006, is trying to obtain sophisticated weapons it could use against Israel. (Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Jordan, Angus McDowall in Beirut; Sabreen Taha in Jerusalem and Jeffrey Heller in Modiin; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Toby Chopra)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said on Friday none of its aircraft were damaged in an overnight operation in Syria, after the Syrian army said it had shot down an Israeli jet. Israel confirmed earlier on Friday that anti-aircraft missiles targeted its aircraft while on a mission in Syria. "At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft compromised," an Israeli military spokesman said. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Gareth Jones)
The Israeli military said Friday it shot down one of the many anti-aircraft missiles launched at its air force operating in Syria. The move is seen as the most serious incident between Israel and pro-Assad forces since the beginning of the civil war in Syria six years ago.

Israeli Air Force planes struck several targets in Syria when the Assad regime, in response, deployed air defense systems and fired a number of missiles toward Israeli jets. While none of the Israeli aircraft were hit, one of the missiles was intercepted north of Jerusalem by Israel's "Arrow" missile defense system.

"Overnight IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defence Force) Aerial Defence Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the military said in its statement.

Israel has carried out dozens of strikes to prevent weapons smuggling to the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006.

In Syria, Hezbollah, along with Russia, has established itself as one of the primary forces backing President Bashar Assad in Damascus' war against ISIS and various opposition groups, which have captured large swathes of land in Syria.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss alleged attempts by Iran to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria.

Israel's freedom of action over Syria has long been threatened by Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missile systems  including most recently S300 launchers - in the region despite an agreement with Moscow to avoid clashes with Russian aircraft supporting the Assad regime.

While Israel has long avoided getting involved in the war in Syria, its jets have been striking targets in the region since at least 2013, when U.S. officials told CNN they believed IDF jets had struck targets inside Syrian territory.

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"We will do whatever is necessary to stop the transfer of weapons from Syria to terrorist organizations. We have done it in the past and we will do it if necessary the future," a source in the Israeli defense establishment told CNN at the time.

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Israel has denied a claim by Syria that it shot down an Israeli plane carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra (AFP Photo/)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli warplanes struck several targets in Syria early Friday, prompting retaliatory missile launches, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.

Syria's military said it had downed an Israeli plane and hit another as they were carrying out pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from jihadists this month.

"Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one, and forced the rest to flee," the army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

The Israeli military denied that any planes had been struck. The Syrian government has made similar unfounded claims in the past.

"The safety of Israeli civilians or the Israeli air force aircraft was at no point compromised," Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner told AFP.

Nevertheless, analysts said the incident represented a significant shift in Syria's response to Israeli airstrikes inside its territory.

The air force said earlier that it had carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, but that none of the ground-to-air missiles fired by Syrian forces in response had hit Israeli aircraft.

It was an unusual confirmation by the Jewish state of air raids inside Syria.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (Israeli) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles," it said.

None of the missiles fired from Syria hit their targets, the army added.

One missile was intercepted by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.

It would be one of the first times the system has been used.

A Jordanian military source said shrapnel from one missile fell in the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

- 'Significant shift' -

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In April 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

The Jewish state does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid but may have been led to do so this time by the circumstances of the incident.

The missile fire from Syria prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict broke out.

Assaf Orion, senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, said Syria's response was a "significant" shift.

Until now, he said, when Israel attacked Hezbollah convoys in the country, it "usually went without a response or with an insignificant response from the Syrian side."

"(With this attack) the Syrian regime is trying to tell Israel it can't stand it anymore and those actions will not be free of charge."

President Bashar al-Assad's position has been strengthened in recent months with his forces reclaiming the whole of Syria's second city Aleppo, as well as enjoying continuing Russian support.

Orion said the Syrian leader was feeling emboldened.

"Assad is not feeling he is looking down a gun barrel so his future is now more guaranteed than it was in the past."

"He is saying: 'Dont push me. I am not as weak as I used to be.'"

Yaakov Amidror, a former head of Israels National Security Council, said weapons convoys of the Iran-backed Hezbollah remained a "red line" for the Jewish state and that Israel would continue to attack them when deemed necessary.

Witnesses cited by the Israeli press reported two explosions that could have been caused by the launch of the anti-missile system.

The Arrow 3 interceptor, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, was handed to Israeli air force ground crews in January after successful testing by Israel and the United States.

Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel pays close attention to developments in the Syrian conflict for fear that it could be exploited by its arch-rival Iran to install allies close to the armistice line on the Golan and Israel's borders.
Rome (AFP) - A bishop in Sicily has banned known mafia criminals from acting as godfathers at baptisms in churches in his diocese.

Michele Pennisi, bishop of Monreale, near Palermo, said Friday he had issued a decree to that effect in a bid to challenge any notion that the bosses of organised crime have a paternalistic side to them.

"The mafia has always taken the term Godfather from the Church to give its bosses an air of religious respectability, whereas in fact the two worlds are completely incompatible," the bishop told AFP.

Pennisi's diocese includes Corleone, a vendetta-haunted village inland from Palermo which was the birthplace of Don Corleone, the fictional Godfather in Mario Puzo's novel and Francis Coppola's films.

In February the bishop made headlines by criticising a priest who had allowed the son of one of Sicily's most notorious mobsters, Toto Riina, to act as godfather at a baptism.

That episode led to this week's decree, which he admitted would be tricky to enforce given the culture of 'omerta' - the law of silence - that has hampered Italy's efforts to bring organised crime under control..

"If someone has not been convicted we cannot judge people on rumours, without proof," he said, stressing that his decree did not close the door to mafia figures seeking to repent.

"If one of them admits to having done wrong, asks to be pardoned for the bad they have done, in that case we can discuss a path of conversion."

In a previous post, in 2008, Pennisi received death threats from the mob after he banned religious funerals for known gangsters.
A Japanese court on Friday ruled for the first time that the government bears responsibility for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and ordered it and the plant operator to pay damages, officials and news reports said.

A massive tsunami triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake smashed into the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on Japan's northeastern coast on March 11, 2011.

The water overwhelmed reactor cooling systems and sent three into meltdown, spewing radiation over a wide area in Japan's worst postwar disaster and the world's most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

More than 10,000 people who fled over radiation fears have filed various group lawsuits against the government and operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).

In Friday's ruling, the Maebashi District Court, north of Tokyo, found both the government and TEPCO liable and ordered them to pay a total 38.6 million yen ($340,000) to plaintiffs, a court official told AFP, without specifying the number of plaintiffs.

Public broadcaster NHK, citing the court, reported that only 62 out of 137 participants in the case were awarded compensation as the court ruled that the decision was based on the individual situation surrounding their evacuation.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed in relation to various aspects of the disaster, but Friday's ruling marked the first verdict in a group lawsuit by evacuees seeking compensation from both the government and TEPCO over the catastrophe, local media said.

The amount awarded, however, was far below the 1.5 billion yen the plaintiffs had sought.

But the court ruled that the disaster could have been averted if government regulators had ordered TEPCO to take preventive safety steps, Kyodo News reported.

"The government is authorised to order (TEPCO) to take such measures and it was possible to prevent the accident," the court said, according to NHK.

TEPCO said no decision had yet been made on whether to appeal the ruling, adding that it would consider how to respond after examining the decision.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesman, also declined to comment but said the ruling would have no impact on nuclear power policies.

Anti-nuclear sentiment runs high in Japan but the government says the country needs nuclear power and has moved to restart reactors that were shuttered in the aftermath of the disaster.
Japan launched a new spy satellite on Friday, the country's space agency said, as the region grows increasingly uneasy over North Korea's quickening missile programme.

The Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan's mainstay H-2A rocket from a launch site in the country's southwest.

It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is coming to the end of its mission.

Japan started putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003 after North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile over the Japanese mainland and into the western Pacific in 1998.

The threat has steadily accelerated and just last week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with three landing provocatively close to Japan.

Tokyo currently maintains three optical satellites for daytime surveillance and three radar satellites for nighttime monitoring. Two of those are backups.

The new satellite will succeed one of the three radar satellites that was launched in 2011.

The satellites are officially for "information-gathering" -- a euphemism for spying -- but are also used to monitor damage in the wake of natural disasters.
With the London Book Fair taking place from March 14-16, a number of major book deals were announced over the course of the week. Among them, former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has a title on the way, Man Booker winner Eleanor Catton is readying a new novel, and model Cara Delevingne is trying her hand at fiction.

Jarvis Cocker



One of the fair's most buzzed-about auctions resulted in a six-figure deal for a book by former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. The Bookseller reports that "This Book is a Song" will offer a mix of biography, essay, texts, illustrations and photographs, as the musician shares his experiences of creativity. A publication date is not yet confirmed.



Toto in Oz



From former UK Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo is a re-telling of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" that takes the perspective of Dororthy's dog. "Toto: The Amazing Dog-gone Story of the Wizard of Oz" is illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, who previously collaborated with Morpurgo on a Pinocchio re-telling. It will publish on September 7.



Cara Delevingne



Model Cara Delevingne announced her first foray into writing on the eve of the London Book Fair. Scheduled to publish on October 5, "Mirror, Mirror" is a young adult novel that Delevingne describes as "a twisty coming-of-age story." The plot revolves around a group of 16-year-old friends navigating school and relationships.



Eleanor Catton



A new book by New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton, whose novel "The Luminaries" won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, is to come at the end of 2017 and was a hot title at the fair. Called "Birnam Wood," the psychological thriller is set in a remote area of New Zealand, where rich foreigners are preparing for a global catastrophe.



Cumberbatch in "How to Stop Time"

Film and TV rights are a major element of the London Book Fair, and this week it was revealed that Matt Haig's upcoming novel "How to Stop Time" is being slated for film. Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star in the adaptation, according to Deadline, playing a man who looks like an ordinary 41-year-old but, due to a rare condition, is in fact centuries old.
Photo credit: Getty

From Woman's Day

Former child star Jonathan Lipnicki made a name for himself in the '90s starring in movies like Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little. But more than 20 years after starring in these beloved films, the now 26-year-old is opening up about his struggle with depression and anxiety following years of being bullied as a child.

On Monday, Lipnicki shared a message to his followers on his Instagram account, saying: "As a kid/teen, I was made fun of relentlessly by some people who are now even my friends on [Facebook]. I was told I was a has-been and would never book a job again. I was made to feel like garbage every day of middle school to the point where I had a panic attack every night before school, because I wondered how I would get through the next day."

In the comment section of the post, the actor wrote: "I'm sharing a little of my experience. It gives me anxiety being this open, but being bullied is a universal problem. I am not a victim, but rather empowered because I was able to turn to my art. I am grateful for the amazing life I have and I hope I can pass on that it DOES get better. As much as it is easier said than done, overcoming being bullied is a reality and I hope this resonates with all of you."

The bullying Lipnicki experienced in school ended up being a contributing factor his battle with anxiety and depression. But the actor, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of Jerry Maguire, isn't looking for sympathy, nor does he want to be labeled as a victim.

On Wednesday, the actor posted: "Thanks to everyone for the support and I would like to tell you I don't need sympathy. I'm here because I am tough."

He went on to say that he hopes his personal experiences will inspire those who have struggled with the same problems. "I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor and kids will hopefully see that they can be too. I'm telling this story on my own terms. My confidence is built on the many, many failures I've had. My confidence is built on the fact that I won't quit."

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The actor ended by saying that he was proud of his success in the industry and looks forward to doing what he loves. "Chase your dreams, it's amazing how mean people peak in their teens," he wrote. "Thank you to everyone who has supported and continues to support me. I love you and I hope that sharing this can shed a little light in a positive way."

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  About 1,500 workers at three Indiana factories are facing layoffs despite hopes that President Donald Trump would convince the companies to reverse plans for moving production to Mexico.

United Technologies confirmed Friday that the first wave of about 50 layoffs happened last week at its electronics plant that had about 700 workers in Huntington. The plant in the northeastern Indiana city is slated for closure.

Steps are also being taken toward about 550 job cuts anticipated at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis, where Trump's intervention last fall curbed job losses but didn't halt them altogether. Layoffs could start within a month at a 350-worker Rexnord industrial bearings factory in Indianapolis, according to United Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones, who represents workers at the Carrier and Rexnord plants.

Trump visited the Carrier factory on Dec. 1, touting his role in the decision of parent company United Technologies to reverse about 800 of its some 1,400 planned job cuts at the furnace plant and only partially move operations to Mexico. Trump told a crowd of workers and company officials: "Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences. It's not going to happen."

The following day, Trump tweeted: "Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!"

Connecticut-based United Technologies and Milwaukee-based Rexnord have since pushed on preparations for the jobs cuts, taking steps such as removing equipment from the Indiana factories without any signs of additional Trump intervention.

"We haven't heard anything at all. With that being said, I have to assume the Rexnord and Carrier situations are both done deals," said Jones, who was chastised by a Trump tweet in early December after complaining that Trump had given false hope to workers by inflating the number of Carrier jobs being kept in Indianapolis.

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Fifty-three people worked their final shifts at the United Technologies Electronic Controls factory in Huntington on March 10, and about 100 more job cuts could come within the next week, said Julie Marsh, who was vice president of the plant's union local before taking a voluntary layoff from her job of 17 years last week.

"I couldn't take it anymore," Marsh said in a phone interview Friday. "It was hard to see the equipment going out. It's hard to watch people's faces because everybody knows it's coming now."

Company officials have said the Huntington factory could be shut down in early 2018.

Jones said about 300 Carrier workers applied to accept voluntary layoffs, which could begin in September. Those workers will receive a severance package including one week's pay for every year of employment and six months of paid medical insurance.

A spokeswoman for Carrier confirmed the plans for voluntary layoffs but didn't respond to questions about whether additional rollbacks of the production shifts had been considered.

Rexnord officials didn't reply to requests for comment. Rexnord CEO Todd Adams said in a February conference call with analysts that he didn't see anything from Trump's talk on tariffs and possible foreign trade restrictions to change the company's decision about operating in Mexico.

"We're very much a U.S. manufacturer, but we have global customers and serve global markets, so we sort of have to manufacture in a lot of different places to be an effective participant in the marketplace," Adams said.

Indiana Secretary of Commerce Jim Schellinger said in a recent interview that state officials unsuccessfully tried to talk with Rexnord about its decision. He said government officials lacked leverage with Rexnord that they had with United Technologies  which also owns Pratt & Whitney, a big supplier of fighter jet engines that relies in part on U.S. military contracts.

"We don't have the federal contracts to hold over their head, like we had, like the president had, on Carrier," Schellinger said. "But we tried to reach out."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday said it delivered documents to congressional committees responding to their request for information that could shed light on President Donald Trump's claims that former President Barack Obama ordered U.S. agencies to spy on him.

The information was sent to the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

A congressional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the House Intelligence Committee was examining the documents and might issue a public statement about them later on Friday.

Another government source, who also requested anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said an initial examination of the material turned over by the Justice Department indicates that it contains no evidence to confirm Trump's claims that the Obama administration had wiretapped him or the Trump Tower in New York.

Leaders of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, including from Trump's Republican Party, have said they have found no evidence to substantiate Trump's claims that Obama ordered U.S. agencies to spy on Trump or his entourage. The White House has publicly offered no proof of the allegation.

On Monday, the House panel sent the Justice Department a letter asking for copies of any court orders related to Trump or his associates which might have been issued last year under an electronic surveillance law or a wide-ranging anti-crime statute.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Warren Strobel, Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker)

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"Star Wars Beyond" director Justin Lin is set to direct new Netflix movie "The Stand Off" reports Deadline.

Lin is teaming up with "Black Swan" writer Mark Heyman for the project, which will be his first for the streaming giant.

The film is set during December, 1969, when a newly formed Police unit known as the "SWAT team" embarked on their first major operation: to raid the Los Angeles Headquarters of the Black Panther Party.

Seen from both perspectives, the resulting face off would be the most intense in the city's long history, with its ramifications still felt today.

Lin's previous directing credits also include four of "The Fast And The Furious" films.
Kellyanne Conways husband will be tapped to lead the Justice Departments civil division, the Wall Street Journal reports.

If confirmed, George Conway would be involved in defending the Trump Administration from lawsuits and fighting for Trumps immigration executive order, which has recently been blocked by judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Conway, a partner at Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz who specializes in securities litigation, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

He was previously in the running to be solicitor general. At the time, Lewis Liman, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP who has known Conway since they were classmates at Yale Law School, told TIME that Conways background dovetails with the ethos of the Trump Administration.

I think he would be able to talk the same language as the business lawyers [and] the people the Administration is populating Washington with, Liman said.
By Duncan Miriri NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya has sent troops to restore order in the northern region of Laikipia after months of clashes, a statement from the presidency said on Friday, a move welcomed by Britain's foreign secretary during his visit to the Kenyan capital. There have been numerous attacks in the drought-stricken region of Laikipia in recent months as armed cattle herders searching for scarce grazing have driven tens of thousands of cattle onto private farms and ranches. A dozen people have been killed. A recent victim was Tristan Voorspuy, a dual British-Kenyan national, who was shot dead earlier this month. Some Laikipia residents said politicians were encouraging herders to invade private land, hoping to win votes in national elections scheduled for August. "Assuring citizens of safety and order is the pre-eminent duty of any nation," Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement. Kenyatta said the national security council would send troops into other violent areas as well as Laikipia to restore security and disarm residents. "I value the announcement today that has been made about the strong measures that the Kenyan government is taking to deal with disturbances that threaten Kenyans in regions of this country, including UK nationals," British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is visiting Nairobi, told reporters. Kenya has a history of ethnic clashes and political violence. The last election, in 2013, passed relatively peacefully but more than 1,200 people were killed following a disputed poll in 2007. The Kenyan military will also be deployed into the Rift Valley region of Baringo, where a single attack killed 11 women and children on Tuesday after a series of clashes. (Editing by Katharine Houreld and Toby Davis)
Kid Rock hates products that are made in China  and he wants you to know it in perhaps the most American way possible.

The music star and possible future senator has released a video in which he is seen shooting down a foreign-made grills with a shotgun.

SEE ALSO: America First, India Second? This video makes a strong case for it.

The grill is first catapulted into the sky, before being shot down by Rock.

Image: kid rock/instagram

You know whats American? Catapulting foreign-made grills through the sky and shooting them down because they stink. If it's not made in America, you don't want it, says the video's narrator.

The video is an ad to promote his own line of grills, which are coincidentally named "American Badass Grills"  a possible reference to a song of his.

This is what we think of 'Made in China'," says Rock in the video before repeatedly shooting the grill down. "In your face, China!"

Rock's new "American Badass Grills" are, according to his website, made by American workers for American workers, and "primarily with parts from the USA".

Image: american bad ass grill

Wait  primarily?

"Were not going to lie to you; we have to say 'primarily' because there are two components that are currently manufactured overseas," says a statement on the website.

"We have looked high and low  and are still looking  for a U.S. manufacturer for these pieces."

People have been pretty quick to call Rock out.

"I bet that electrical switch and those bullets were Made in China," said one netizen on Facebook.

"That Trebuchet [catapult] is French, the ammo is Chinese and the device used to record the video is probably Japanese," another said.

"This is why people don't like America," one added.

This is not the first video in which Rock blows up Chinese-made grills.

Talk about shooting out the competition.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  The Latest on the case of a man who was acquitted in a 1978 rape case that attracted national attention who has been convicted of rape in a new case. (all times local):

3:50 p.m.

An Oregon man who gained notoriety in 1978 when he became the first U.S. man to be tried for raping his wife has been sentenced to more than 16 years in prison. He was convicted of raping and sodomizing two other women.

John Rideout received the two 100-month sentences, to be served consecutively, on Friday after speaking at length to the court and his accusers.

He was led out of the courtroom by a sheriff's deputy, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist.

It had been almost 40 years since he stood trial for allegedly raping his wife at their Salem apartment in front of their 2-year-old daughter. Rideout was unanimously acquitted in the case that spawned a TV movie starring Mickey Rourke and Linda Hamilton.

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7:05 a.m.

An Oregon man who gained notoriety in 1978 when he became the first U.S. man to be tried for raping his wife while they were living together has been convicted of sexually assaulting two women.

The Statesman Journal reports (https://is.gd/kEKylE ) John Rideout was found guilty Thursday of rape and sodomy. The verdict in Marion County followed a trial that included testimony from Rideout and the two victims  an acquaintance from his church and an ex-girlfriend.

It had been almost 40 years since he stood trial in the same county for allegedly raping his wife at their Salem apartment in front of their 2-year-old daughter. Rideout was unanimously acquitted in the case that spawned a TV movie starring Mickey Rourke and Linda Hamilton.

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Information from: Statesman Journal, http://www.statesmanjournal.com
DELPHI, Ind. (AP)  The Latest on the investigation into the killings of two northern Indiana teenage girls (all times local):

6:20 p.m.

An attorney for an Indiana man who owns the land where two teenage girls were found slain says his client wasn't involved in the killings.

Investigators served a search warrant Friday at the home and Delphi-area property of 77-year-old Ronald Logan.

Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby (tohb LEHZ'-ehn-BEE') stressed that Logan isn't considered a suspect in the killings of 14-year-old Liberty German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams. The Delphi girls' bodies were found Feb. 14 on the edge of Logan's property.

The (Lafayette) Journal and Courier reports that Logan's attorney, Andrew A. Achey, released a statement Friday on Logan's behalf, saying that Logan "had no involvement in this heinous crime" and maintains his innocence.

The statement said Logan urges anyone with information about the killings to contact police.

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3:20 p.m.

Indiana authorities are searching the home and property of a man who owns the land where the bodies of two slain teenage girls were found last month.

Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby (tohb LEHZ'-ehn-BEE') says investigators obtained and served a search warrant Friday at the property as they follow up on thousands of tips they've received.

He stresses that 77-year-old landowner Ronald Logan isn't considered a suspect in the killings of 14-year-old Liberty German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams. The Delphi teens' bodies were found Feb. 14, a day after they vanished while hiking.

Logan was arrested last Saturday on probation violations in a previous conviction for driving under the influence.

State Police Sgt. Kim Riley says authorities previously searched a rugged, wooded area of Logan's property where the bodies were found.

___

This update has been corrected to show that Logan is 77, not 70.

___

9:50 a.m.

Indiana authorities say investigations into the killing of two teenage girls have led to 13 arrests, but that none of them are linked to the slayings.

Story continues

State Police Sgt. Kim Riley tells WLFI-TV (http://bit.ly/2ngNe3I ) those arrests were based on pending warrants all unrelated to the slayings of 14-year-old Liberty German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams.

Police have questioned more than 300 people in the killings based on over 13,000 tips from the public.

Riley says some people questioned by investigators haven't been truthful because they have criminal records.

That's forced police to devote time to clearing them as potential suspects in the killings.

The teens were found slain Feb. 14, a day after they vanished while hiking on trails near Delphi, about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on President Donald Trump's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (all times local):

3:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump's first meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel produced a slightly awkward moment when the president didn't shake the German leader's hand in front of photographers in the Oval Office.

Trump told photographers to "send a good picture back to Germany, please." He said the leaders had had "very good" talks so far, while Merkel praised the "friendly reception."

Photographers then shouted "handshake!" Merkel quietly asked Trump "do you want to have a handshake?"

There was no response from the president, who looked ahead with his hands clasped.

German weekly Der Spiegel commented that "the overall impression of this meeting was rather cool." German daily Bild wrote on its website: "Trump didn't want to give Merkel his hand in his office!"

Trump had earlier welcomed Merkel with a handshake. The two leaders later held a news conference.

___

2:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump says his White House shouldn't be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who accused British intelligence of helping former President Barack Obama spy on him.

There is no evidence such spying took place and GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, has called the allegation "utterly ridiculous."

Trump says during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that "we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television."

He says, "you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."

He's also doubling down on his unproven wiretapping allegation with a reference to 2013 reports that the U.S. listened in on Merkel's phone calls.

He says that when it comes to wiretapping, "At least we have something in common, perhaps."

Story continues

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2:40 p.m.

President Donald Trump is pushing back on whether his "America First" agenda is isolationist.

In a Friday news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said: "I don't believe in an isolationist policy."

Trump has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements. Yet the president suggested that he is only trying to revise them to better serve U.S. interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany was $64.9 billion last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

Trump bristled at the indication from a German reporter that this could be interpreted as isolationist.

He said: "I don't know what newspaper you're reading, but I guess that would be an example of fake news."

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2:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he expects the House Republican health plan will be passed "substantially pretty quickly."

Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday, Trump calls it a "great plan" and says it is "getting more and more popular with the Republican base, the conservative base and with people generally."

Trump repeated his claim that so-called Obamacare is "a disaster." He said that in the end of the process it will be a great plan.

Several Republicans have said they can't support the law as it stands and are demanding changes.

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2:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he has "strong support" for NATO but that allies "must pay what they owe."

Trump, making his first appearance with Merkel, opened their White House news conference Friday by saying that "many nations owe vast sums of money" and that situation is "very unfair to the United States."

Trump said these nations need "to pay their fair share" in order to receive the promise of defense from the rest of the alliance.

The president has long complained that the U.S. shoulders too much of the burden of the cost of the alliance, which now comprises 28 nation.

Merkel said she was encouraged that Trump supports NATO, stressed its vital role and pledged that Germany will increase its own payments.

___

2:20 p.m.

President Donald Trump is stressing the need to protect the U.S. from what he calls "radical Islamic terrorism" in his joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The remarks come days after a federal court again struck down his executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. refugee program and barring people from a handful of Muslim-majority countries.

Trump says that both countries must protect themselves from the threat.

He says, "Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first, without question."

Trump spent a good part of 2016 bashing the chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees into Germany.

While Merkel insists that Germany will continue to take in people who genuinely need protection, her government has toughened asylum rules.

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2:20 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says of her visit with President Donald Trump that it's "much better to talk to one another than about one another."

She says the two discussed apprenticeship programs, and international politics during the early part of their visit. She says they will continue speaking over lunch, with a focus on fair trade and other matters.

Trump is listening to her remarks through a translation earpiece.

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12:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he is discussing a myriad of topics with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key European leader he harshly criticized for opening the door to refugees from Syria.

The two leaders posed for photographers in the Oval Office before a one-on-one meeting. Trump joked: "send a good picture back to Germany, please."

They are expected to discuss strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraine's conflict  all matters that require close cooperation between the U.S. and Germany.

A joint news conference will be held in the afternoon.

___

11:45 a.m.

President Donald Trump has welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House.

Merkel arrived Friday morning for a series of meetings with Trump. The itinerary includes discussions on strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraine's conflict.

Trump spent much of 2016 bashing the chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.

Merkel was originally supposed to visit the White House Tuesday. That meeting was delayed due to snow.
By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's proposal to defund programs to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, two of the country's largest water systems, brought scorn on Thursday from a bipartisan array of lawmakers who vowed to fight the cuts. Members of Congress said the proposal to wipe out Environmental Protection Agency funds to clean up the Great Lakes and the fragile Chesapeake Bay ecosystem threatened the environment as well as tens of billions of dollars in economic benefits. Senator Rob Portman, a Republican of Ohio, rejected the proposed spending cut for the Great Lakes program. "I have long championed this program, and I'm committed to continuing to do everything I can to protect and preserve Lake Erie," he said in a statement, referring to the Great Lake that forms his state's northern border. Without specifically addressing the clean-up program cuts, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said the administration's proposed 31 percent reduction in EPA spending reflected the president's view that a big shift was needed in government policies on the environment. "You can expect reductions in the EPA that don't line up with the president's view on things like global warming and alternative energies," Mulvaney told reporters during a briefing on the budget plan, which would slash the EPA budget by $2.6 billion. Trump has called climate change "a hoax." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about lawmakers' criticism of the programs' elimination. Trump's proposal would eliminate $73 million a year that six states and the District of Columbia receive to clean up the Chesapeake, the largest U.S. estuary. The bay is slowly recovering under a federal-state plan to reduce inflows of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments from farms and urban development. Also on the block is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which has disbursed about $300 million a year to help eight states in the region recover industrial sites in harbors, block invasive species like the Asian carp and stem fertilizer run-off from farmland. Trump's budget proposal, released on Thursday, says states and local governments should shoulder the funding burden for such projects, while the EPA focuses on top national priorities. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat whose state of Michigan borders four of the five Great Lakes, in a statement called the proposed cuts "outrageous." The clean-up program, she said, "has always received bipartisan support and continues to be absolutely critical to protecting our Great Lakes." A Brookings Institution study last year found that carrying out the Great Lakes clean-up plan would generate $80 billion to $100 billion in economic benefits, including tourism, increased property values and reduced costs to local governments. Portman and Stabenow were among 11 senators who sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt before the proposed budget came out. The lawmakers urged him to keep Great Lakes spending intact. Another 17 lawmakers sent a similar letter to Trump about the Chesapeake Bay program. Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, called the planned cuts short-sighted because the Chesapeake Bay generated millions of dollars in revenue each year and supported thousands of fishery and tourism jobs. "I will be working with all my colleagues from the region to urge congressional appropriators to reject the Presidents request and ensure we dont endanger the years of progress that have been made in restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay, he said in a statement. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat of Maryland, also said the spending cuts would damage the environment and threaten jobs that depend on a healthy Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Representative Andy Harris, the sole Republican in Maryland's congressional delegation, defended the budget proposal. He said he would work with the Trump administration to prioritize EPA programs that would preserve the bay clean-up, but increases in defense and national spending were needed to keep Americans safe. Amelia Chasse, a spokeswoman for Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan, said in an email that if the proposed Chesapeake Bay cuts program went through, Hogan's administration would try to deal with them in the state budget next year. "He will always fight to protect our states most important natural asset, she said. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a conservation group, called on supporters to urge Congress to fight the proposed cuts. Bob Irvin, president of American Rivers, an environmental group, said the cuts threatened the success that had been made with the Chesapeake Bay. "I can't imagine that any people of the people in the Chesapeake Bay region, when they voted in the last election, that they were voting to stop the clean-up of the Chesapeake Bay," he said in a telephone interview. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan statement on Thursday rejecting President Donald Trump's assertion that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign. The top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, added his voice to a growing chorus of lawmakers saying there was no sign of a wiretap. In a testy briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended the president, citing news reports of intelligence collection on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia in the presidential campaign. "There is no question that there were surveillance techniques used throughout this," Spicer said. The Republican president, without providing evidence, has accused his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, of wiretapping him near the end of the campaign. An Obama spokesman said that was "simply false." "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement. Ryan also said there was no evidence of surveillance. "The point is, the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom - at least so far - with respect to our intelligence community that - that no such wiretap existed," the House speaker told reporters. 'HE STANDS BY IT' Pressed at the White House briefing on whether Trump would back down from his wiretap accusations, Spicer said: "He stands by it." Spicer also chastised the media for focusing so much attention on comments disparaging Trump's claim about surveillance. He said reporters had not focused enough on comments from officials denying evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The Russian government has rejected an accusation by U.S. intelligence agencies that it worked to influence the election in Trump's favor by hacking computer systems, among other methods. Trump has been dogged by allegations that his associates had ties to Russian officials. Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month after he failed to disclose contacts with Russia's ambassador before Trump took office on Jan. 20. An official familiar with the investigations by Congress and intelligence and law enforcement agencies said investigators had looked as aggressively and thoroughly as they could for evidence of any spying on Trump or his associates but had found none. On March 4, six weeks after he took over from Obama, Trump made the wiretap accusations in a Twitter post. "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump wrote. At least four congressional committees included the startling accusation in their investigations of possible Russian meddling in the election campaign and Russian ties to Trump and his associates. On Wednesday, House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and top Democrat Adam Schiff told reporters they had seen no evidence that Trump Tower was tapped and said they would ask Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey about the issue during a public hearing on Monday. On March 9, Comey briefed Nunes, Schiff, Ryan, Burr, Warner and three other top congressional officials on the same intelligence. Trump appeared to back away from his accusation of wiretapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday night. "But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump said. (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)
BEIJING (Reuters) - At least ten North Korean ships have arrived at a Chinese port after being stranded for the past three weeks following the top global coal consumer's ban on imports of the fuel from its isolated neighbor, a report said on Friday. Six North Korean merchant vessels, including Sai Nal 3 and Jin Hung, entered the port of Longkou in China's eastern Shandong province as of Thursday, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Friday, citing a Voice of America report. Reuters ship tracking data shows that Sai Nal 3 from North Korea has been moored at the port for at least the past three weeks. It is listed at maximum draft, meaning it is likely fully laden with cargo. Another four North Korean ships arrived at the same port on Thursday morning before heading back to the North Korean port of Nampo, Yonhap also reported, citing Voice of America. Beijing said last month it would ban coal shipments from North Korea, starting Feb. 19, as part of its efforts to implement United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang. It's not clear what the vessels were carrying. The vessels had previously been holding some 10 kilometers out from Longkou port in international waters since the Chinese ban took effect, Yonhap news reported, citing VOA. (Reporting by Hallie Gu and Josephine Mason; Editing by Tom Hogue)
Lindsay Lohans acting career has been pretty nonexistent lately, but the actress has expressed her desire to star in The Little Mermaid should Disney decide to pursue a live movie adaptation.

Vulture even asked Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon about Lohans possible comeback. The actress said that shes willing to take on the role of Ariel, if Disney gets Condon to direct.

Read: Lindsay Lohan drops hints about starring in The Little Mermaid

For his part, Condon was touched by Lohans statements and said he hopes she gets the role. I know! It was sweet, it was very sweet of her. I hope she gets to make that movie. I feel like I was so lucky in getting this crown jewel, but Ill go see her in Little Mermaid, absolutely, he said.

Earlier, Lohan teased fans about The Little Mermaid when she shared a photo collage on Instagram showing her beside the animated Ariel.

She wants the role so badly that she even mentioned it during an interview with Turkish television about her humanitarian work.

Whatever the case, Disneys The Little Mermaid still has no leading lady. The studio got Lin-Manuel Miranda on board for the film project, but the Hamilton star confessed to Vulture that hes quite intimidated by whatever they need him to do.

We're in super-early talks  I literally don't have a title for what my job on The Little Mermaid is yet, he said. Right now, it's the guy who wears the don't mess it up hat. If I could sign a contract with that job title on it, that would be great! But that's sort of where we are.

Universal Pictures was supposed to make its own live movie adaptation of The Little Mermaid and tapped Chloe Grace Moretz to star as Ariel. The studio got Rebecca Thomas as director, while the script will be written by Richard Curtis, according to Movie Web.

However, Moretz later turned down the role because she wanted to be more selective of the roles shes going to do. I pulled the plug on all my movies because I want to reassess who I am and find myself within my roles again, she told The Hollywood Reporter. I'm realizing that I can slow down.

Story continues

Lindsay Lohan

Photo: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

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With the election of President Donald Trump, a disturbing trend has manifested among Americas European allies. Worries have been voiced over U.S. commitment to the postwar international order and values promoted by the United States after World War II. In his recent trip to Munich and Brussels, Vice President Mike Pence recalled the memory of our soldiers who paid the ultimate price to guarantee the freedom of our European allies. Lets be clear: Starting with the blood of those American troops, the United States has poured itself into ensuring a peaceful Europe.

However, it is important to remember what those brave young men died for. Democracy is messy and often disappoints. As Winston Churchill once observed, it is the worst form of government, except for all those others. Churchill himself was on the wrong end of electoral surprises  not least when he lost at the ballot box, months after defeating the fascist menace. While we cannot ascertain his view of Britains decision to leave the European Union  he is revered by Euroskeptics and hailed as an EU founding father by Europhiles  it is difficult to imagine him ignoring resounding public mandates.

The Brexit vote on June 23, 2016, represents such a mandate, although it is not the first democratic repudiation of internationalist projects. Once again, a look into our darkest moments can serve a didactic purpose: the freshly minted French Fifth Republic once abandoned NATO. Although it did not opt for a hard Frexit  unsigning the North Atlantic Treaty  it is important to underline that France did not re-establish full membership in the allied forces until as late as 2009, under President Nicolas Sarkozy. The organization nonetheless survived and thrived, defeated its ideological foe, and remains the cornerstone of the American-led world order, even if it needs to be re-engineered for the future as President Donald Trump now argues.

There are already signs that Brexit may have given Brussels a push so that it, too, can update itself, survive, and thrive. This month, European Commission President Jean-Claude Junckers office published a vision of five directions toward which the EU can move, in order to emerge from its current impasse. In doing so, he effectively recognized the right of sovereign member states to decide which direction they will pursue. It is not for the United States to say how Europeans should vote in any election, but Juncker should be congratulated on this act of humility; let us hope he, and Brussels generally, will continue to recognize diversity of opinion among Europeans into the future.

Europeans would rightly be offended if America sought to interfere with the exercise of democratic prerogatives by the citizens of the EU. It thus behooves us to address the alarmism to which some European figures are still resorting in the wake of the U.S. elections. Comparisons to dark historical figures are far too common. Hillary Clinton greatly erred in comparing President Vladimir Putins actions in Ukraine with those of Adolf Hitler in the Sudetenland. We ought to remember that the Soviets lost nearly 30 million of their own citizens  two-thirds of whom were civilians  in their war with the Third Reich. So, too, did prominent European politicians evoke the specter of fascism with respect to the U.S. election. Such allusions  once taboo  are a great disservice to the victims of the Holocaust, Guernica, and other fascist atrocities. Scoring cheap political points by insulting the president of the United States or his representatives is no way to show a commitment to a Europe whole and free. Just as it was an American president who coined this phrase, it was the American security guarantee that enabled European unity and freedom after the Cold War.

I consider myself a friend of Europe and a strong believer in liberal democratic ideals that unify the West. Those who spent the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall spreading democratic values across the former Soviet Union can always count on my admiration and respect. And yet political figures denounce me, believing that now is Europes last chance. We clearly have more in common than they admit. It would be wise to focus on what brings us together.

Yes, the Trump administration has its own political priorities: the American people. President Ronald Reagan  another Republican accused of insufficient commitment to Europeans  famously won the Cold War by outspending the Soviets in the arms race. Part of this victory, of course, grew out of his call for a strong commitment on the part of our allies to NATO. Reagan issued an early appeal for increased defense spending from our European allies, yet since the end of the Cold War, that commitment has flagged. President Barack Obama called some of our allies free-riders, to widespread bipartisan criticism. Even so, Vice President Pence said it best when he said the patience of the American people is finite.

There are always excuses in Brussels: the post-9/11 world led to controversial out-of-area operations; the bugbear of modern Europe  the eurozone crisis  has taken up time and political capital. And yet in 2016 Germany posted a 6 billion euro budget surplus. It is difficult to see that figure and accept the gradualism with which NATOs 2 percent target is being complied. During the financial crisis, the EU used its powers to decide spending priorities. Im sure the great minds of the European institutions can find creative ways to direct those powers toward our common objectives. America should welcome recent commitments by European allies to increase spending, but it must insist on results. Europe is rich and should shoulder its fair share of the burden for its own defense.

It remains to be said that some notions need updating. The burden sharing evidenced during the Libyan intervention was disastrous. President Obama set out to lead from behind and ended up purveying the bulk of hardware, as well as the vital logistical functions: in-air refueling, submarine-launched missiles, and other mighty pieces of American muscle. Devoid of American political commitment to the mission, it was a failure. Malta and Italy bore the brunt of the costs for this failure, but the EU as a whole paid in political legitimacy during ensuing bickering over refugees. Syria offered a redux: Once again, Europe was the main Western stakeholder, and its failure to address the crisis fostered infighting among member states while millions of refugees streamed into neighboring countries and then into Europe itself. This was a problem tailor-made for Brussels to step up and solve. As it stands, Europe cannot fulfill its security responsibilities to its own citizenry. The question of defense spending is only the beginning.

President Trump won on a platform of noninterventionism. Coming on the heels of 15 years of war, this should come as no surprise. The Founding Fathers of the American Revolution did not believe in foreign entanglements. Indeed, every successful revolution tempers its resolve to enlighten the rest of the world, preferring to consolidate gains at home. President George Washington once said, Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God. The EU has expanded very quickly but hasnt been raising a standard toward which its own citizens can always cast admiration. In a different context, President George W. Bush once spoke of the soft bigotry of low expectations. By expressing high expectations for European leadership in Europes own backyard, Trump shows himself a true friend of Europe.

When the Soviets became tired of Leninist vanguards and permanent revolution, they invented the concept of socialism in one country. President Trump has something similar: His platform is freedom in one country. America is and always has been committed to defending democracy where it exists, especially in Europe, but today it has renounced the liberal-interventionist, neoconservative notion of spreading democracy throughout the world. The United States again will raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.

Make no mistake, Europe: America under Trump is your best friend, your security shield, and your trading partner. But no longer is the United States an idle participant, a cash machine, or a quiet do-nothing partner. America has a new mission  greatness. This mission need not clash with Europe; indeed, it should revolve around a continued alliance and common Western values that have served us all so well.

Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - A lobbyist whose firm made payments to a law firm employing the son of late New York state senator Thomas Libous, at a time it regularly lobbied the once-influential politician, agreed to pay $10,000 to settle ethics charges related to a corruption probe. The state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics on Friday said Fred Hiffa arranged for payments totaling $50,000 over one year to the Westchester County law firm Santangelo, Randazzo & Mangone, which employed Libous' son Matthew. Hiffa was accused of violating the gift ban provision of a New York lobbying law by causing his former Albany-based firm Ostroff, Hiffa & Associates Inc to make the payments starting in 2006, while he lobbied the senator on behalf of clients. Prosecutors have said the payments were meant to defray the cost of Matthew Libous' salary and a lease of a Range Rover. Mark Glaser, a lawyer for Hiffa, declined to comment. Once the state senate's second-highest ranking Republican and chairman of its transportation committee, Thomas Libous was found guilty by a federal jury in July 2015 of lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents investigating the law firm's hiring of his son. The former senator, from Binghamton, was later sentenced to six months of home confinement, after he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. He died in May 2016 at age 63. Matthew Libous was separately convicted in January 2015 on tax charges, and sentenced to six months in prison. Hiffa's former firm is now known as Ostroff Associates Inc. It had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Years before Russian intelligence agencies stood accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential election and of orchestrating a massive Yahoo data breach, there was lingerie model Anna Chapman and her band of "Illegals"  Russian spies who assumed false identities and lived as deep-cover agents in middle-class America.

The busting-up of that spy ring, along with the arrest two years ago of a Russian spy who posed as a Manhattan banker and this week's announcement of an indictment of Russian agents in the Yahoo email hack, underscore long-running efforts by the American authorities to closely monitor and occasionally interrupt the Kremlin's intelligence-gathering operations.

Though allegations of meddling in the political process represent a stunning new flare-up in relations between the two countries, U.S. intelligence agencies for years have been concerned by Russian efforts to infiltrate American society and government.

"What we have seen as far as the arrests is really only scratching the surface of the real Russian activity here," said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis at the Texas-based Stratfor intelligence firm.

Many counterintelligence investigations can last for years without resulting in criminal charges, preventing the public from having a complete grasp of evidence collected or tactics that are used.

But a few sensational Justice Department prosecutions in the last decade have brought to light Russian efforts to recruit university students, gather information on the stock market and on sanctions, sway public opinion and cultivate well-placed contacts. And recent hacking allegations make clear that old-fashioned spying techniques have now been augmented by cyber expertise that can in some cases accomplish similar goals.

"They want to understand how the White House is going to work, and how Washington will respond to what Russians are doing in Europe and the Middle East," said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former foreign service officer focused on Russia.

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It's not surprising that once the public understands the capabilities and motives of Russian intelligence "that there's a great deal of concern about their ability to gather intelligence and use it to influence real-world events," said Adam Fee, who helped handle the 2015 prosecution of Evgeny Buryakov, who posed as a banker in New York while spying on the U.S. for the Russian Federation.

"It's interesting to see an area you worked on splash in the forefront of the national consciousness," Fee said.

Public interest in counterintelligence operations spiked with the U.S. assessment in January that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking of Democratic email accounts and for sharing that information with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website, with the goal of aiding the Trump campaign.

That interference remains under federal investigation, but some experts see parallels between those cyberattacks and prior Russian espionage efforts.

Alarmingly to American authorities, Russian hackers engaged in more conventional crimes, such as stealing credit and debit card account information, have in some cases piggybacked off Russian intelligence services. The Justice Department this week announced charges against two Russian intelligence agents and two hired hackers. The four were accused in a 2014 breach of at least 500 million Yahoo user accounts.

"I view cyber as merely being a new tool of espionage to pursue the same goals of espionage  whether that's recruiting, stealing information, it's basically the same things they've always done," Stewart said. "It's just a new tool to accomplish those tasks."

Probably the most notable prosecution is the 2010 case of "The Illegals"  a ring of Russian sleeper spies who burrowed into workaday America instead of more customary positions inside Russian embassies and military missions.

Tasked with developing contacts with government policymakers, the Russians took civilian positions in cities throughout the country and in some cases lived as husband and wife.

A long-running FBI investigation called "Operation Ghost Stories" revealed how the secret agents relied on specially coded radio transmissions, invisible ink and furtive cash drops as they patiently worked to develop sources and send information back to Russia.

Once captured, 10 spies charged with acting as foreign agents were swapped for four Russians who'd been imprisoned for spying for the West. An 11th suspect accused of delivering money and equipment to the secret agents was freed by a court in Cyprus and later vanished.

Chapman herself became a model and corporate spokeswoman upon her return to Russia, the saga said to have been an inspiration for the hit FX show "The Americans."

The motive was different than last year's election hack, said Glen Kopp, a prosecutor in the case.

What's similar, he added, is "the obsession with seeing the world as us versus them."

More recently, Buryakov was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for his spying efforts, which in addition to working to gain information about the New York Stock Exchange, also included an attempt to shape political opinion.

He admitted to working to sway union opinion about a Canadian company's planned deal to build aircraft in Russia  efforts known among experts as "active measures." That political engagement in some ways resembles what U.S. officials say was a Russian effort to use an email hack to politically harm Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"What I see in the cyberattacks last year, it's a modernized version of those active measures," Pifer said.

Counterintelligence concerns faded in the post-Cold War era as the Soviet Union splintered and as counterterrorism fears from the Middle East rose to the forefront. But more recent events have brought renewed focus on Russia, Pifer said.

The cyber realm, he said, "creates possibilities for the Russians to do things that they couldn't do before."

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
Skopje (AFP) - Macedonia's opposition called on conservatives Friday to accept a peaceful transfer of power, as a refusal to allow them to form a government has plunged the Balkan nation deeper into political crisis.

Though opposition leader Zoran Zaev of the Social Democrats (SDSM) has won the backing of a parliamentary majority, Macedonia's president has refused to grant him a government-building mandate.

The impasse has left the country unable to exit from a long-running crisis that was supposed to be solved by an EU-brokered deal that included an election in December.

"VMRO-DPMNE (conservative party) leadership should immediately stop manipulating people into protesting, stop provoking... violence and enable a peaceful transfer of power," an SDSM statement said.

The inconclusive December vote saw the VMRO-DPMNE party secure 51 seats in the 120-seat parliament -- or two more than the Social Democrats -- but the conservatives failed to reach a deal with ethnic Albanian parties, who have a kingmaker role.

Zaev went on to win the support of the Albanian parties, giving him 67 deputies in the assembly and clearing the way for him to form a government.

However, President Gjorge Ivanov, who is close to VMRO-DPMNE, said earlier this month that he would not give a mandate to anyone supporting "a platform undermining Macedonia's sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence".

He was referring to the controversial demand of minority ethnic Albanian parties, who have backed Zaev, that Albanian be made an official language across Macedonia.

Ethnic Albanians make up around one quarter of the country's 2.1 million inhabitants.

Ivanov's move was swiftly denounced by the opposition as a "coup" and condemned by the United States and the European Union, which Macedonia aspires to join.

But thousands of Macedonians agree with the president and for the past three weeks have taken to the streets, chanting patriotic slogans and urging unity.

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Their main objection is to the demand to make Albanian an official language in Macedonia.

Albania's President Bujar Nishani on Thursday warned Macedonia, saying "that attempts to turn the political crisis into an ethnic crisis could have serious consequences for everyone".

Macedonia has been mired in deep political upheaval for the past two years sparked by a wiretapping scandal.

The former Yugoslav republic aspires to join both NATO and the EU.

However, its membership has been blocked by Athens over a dispute about the country's name -- a northern region of Greece is also called Macedonia.
DETROIT (AP)  A man was charged with attempted murder Friday in the shooting of two Detroit police officers and also named as the "prime suspect" in the slaying of a college officer who was gunned down while on patrol in November.

Raymond Durham's arrest Wednesday night apparently was the big break in the investigation of Sgt. Collin Rose's death. Detroit Chief James Craig said DNA evidence links him to the fatal shooting of the Wayne State University officer.

"This is a first step," said Craig, who called Durham the "prime suspect" but declined to release more details.

Separately, Durham, 60, is charged with shooting two officers who stopped him while he was on foot earlier this week. The prosecutor's office said he pulled a gun from his waistband and fired.

Durham was arraigned in a hospital room where he's recovering from multiple gunshot wounds. He asked for a court-appointed lawyer.

The injuries suffered by the two officers aren't life-threatening, although one was shot in the neck.

"Make no mistake: This suspect was violent. He was dangerous," Craig said.

Emory Durham told The Detroit News that his brother has been living in abandoned houses and unable to work full-time but is "not the type to hurt people."

"He would ride his bike or walk or fix bikes, doing whatever anybody else out there is doing," Emory Durham said.

Prosecutor Kym Worthy praised the "round-the-clock collaboration" between Detroit police, state police and other law enforcement groups.

Durham wasn't the first suspect in Rose's death. Worthy in December dropped a murder charge against another man.

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Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwhiteap
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP)  A New Jersey man has been charged in a fire that killed his 1-year-old son and damaged a church and seven other buildings.

Authorities say 26-year-old Eddie Gonzalez Sr., of Union City, was charged in the March 4 blaze that took the life of his son, Eddie Gonzalez Jr. Another man, 20-year-old Edwin Diaz, also of Union City, is charged in the case.

Prosecutors described the fire as "incendiary" but did not elaborate on how it started. It began in an apartment building. Strong winds caused it to spread.

Gonzalez suffered burns in the fire and was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.

Both men are accused of causing and creating the risk of widespread damage. It's not known if they have lawyers. They have a court date in April.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP)  A 39-year-old baby sitter who recorded himself abusing a toddler will spend 60 years in prison.

A South Florida judge sentenced Jason Barber on Thursday. Barber previously pleaded guilty to charges including producing and distributing child pornography.

In a news release, prosecutors said co-defendant Benedict Shaw asked Barber, who lived in Las Vegas and was the boyfriend of the child's mother, to record himself sexually abusing the child. He sent Barber a package containing diapers, a cellphone and other items to record the abuse. Shaw was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2014.

Prosecutors say tips to a task force led them to Shaw in South Florida. Barber was arrested in Las Vegas. Authorities say a man who bought a cellphone from Barber found child porn images and contacted police.
By Ardo Abdullahi BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - A man purporting to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram denied in a video posted on Friday that 5,000 people held by the group had been freed by West African forces earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Cameroon said regional forces had rescued the hostages, who were held in villages by the jihadist group, in an operation along the Nigeria-Cameroon border. "You are telling lies that you killed 60 of our men and rescued 20 children, and that you rescued 5,000 of your people, Paul Biya," said the man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, referring to Cameroon's president. He also claimed responsibility for attacks earlier this week which included suicide bombings in the city of Maiduguri and a raid on the town of Magumeri, both of which are in the northeast Nigerian state of Borno. Nigeria's military has said on multiple occasions in the last few years that it has killed or wounded Shekau. Such statements have often been followed by video denials by someone who says he is Shekau, but poor footage makes it difficult to confirm if the person is the same man as in previous footage. Boko Haram has killed around 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to strict Islamic laws in the northeast of Africa's most populous nation. The jihadist group, whose attacks have increased since the end of the rainy season in late 2016, also carries out cross-border attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
A California man who spent over 30 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit has finally been set free.

Andrew Leander Wilson had maintained his innocence since his arrest in the 1984 murder of 21-year-old Christopher Hanson, who was stabbed to death in a late night attack in Los Angeles.

Watch: Man Who Served 27 Years in Prison for Rape and Murder Was Framed by Police

With the help of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent, those decades of tenacity paid off Wednesday when a judge ordered the 62-year-old's release.

The decision came after Deputy District Attorney Erika Jerez said in a Superior Court ruling that there were errors in the case against Wilson.

Judge Laura Priver expressed her gratitude to the DAs office and Wilson then reportedly thanked the judge.

You are welcome, Mr. Wilson," the judge replied.

The following day, when he was reunited with his family members as a free man outside the downtown Los Angeles jail, Wilson said he felt no bitterness.

Wilson hugged and kissed members of his family as news crews clamored to capture the emotional moment.

"Those are my sisters right there," he said. "Ive got a lot of sisters and brothers."

Cameras continued to roll as Wilson walked away, smiling while arm-in-arm with his family members.

Wilson plans to travel to St. Louis to spend time with his 96-year-old mother, Margie Davis, according to The Associated Press.

Davis spent decades working to right what she knew was her son's wrongful conviction.

Read: Exclusive: Although Court Says Woman Was Wrongfully Convicted of Killing Son, Her Ex Believes 'She Killed Him'

"I wrote letters to the governor, to the police, to the Justice Department. I wrote to everybody over 30 years, she told the wire service. The system were living in, you never know whats going to happen. But I never gave up."

The Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office has said it will not re-try Wilson.

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Watch: Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for 31 Years Gets Just $75 for His Trouble

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Somewhere inside Marvels Iron Fist theres an interesting show struggling to get out, like the powers inside Danny Rand that could make him great, if they werent constantly in combat with his smugly mystical non-sequiturs and his bratty sense of entitlement. As the titular superhero, Danny (Finn Jones) is unfortunately the central focus of the Netflix show, whose first season is released Friday. But theres more to be intrigued by on the peripheryin the boardrooms of Rand, Dannys fathers corporation, and in the dojo where Danny consistently plagues Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), a martial-arts teacher. Its enough to make Iron Fist worth struggling through, if only to get caught up for the next chapter.

This, at least, is what Marvel is banking on. Later this year comes The Defenders, a miniseries uniting all four of the Netflix superheroes: Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Danny Rand. So Iron Fist exists not as a standalone show that has to worry about things like an engaging central character and stylistic consistency, but as a preview viewers will likely endure to be ready for the main event. Could it be better? Almost certainly. But Iron Fist fits neatly into the Netflix concept of television, where entire 13-episode seasons are prequels to the real action (this vision wobbles a bit if youve seen Season 2 of Daredevil), and structure is less important than grabbing back viewers attention with periodic spurts of violence.

The six episodes made available to critics establish Dannys origin story as the Iron Fist, one in a long line of living weapons granted extraordinary powers to battle a nefarious organization called The Hand. In the first episode, Danny arrives back in New York City with the world-weariness and tatty clothing of a gap-year backpacker, shoeless, and wafting stale sweat and privilege. Lacking a real sense of purpose, he breaks into corporate offices, a private home, and an East Village dojo. And he tries only weakly to persuade people that hes Danny Rand, a billionaires kid who went missing 15 years ago with his parents in a plane crash in the Himalayas. In the interim, Danny sleeps in the park and is befriended by a homeless man who gifts him sandwiches. Im guessing people think were pretty much alike, Danny tells him, smiling at the joke that people think hes poor.

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Soon enough, hes restored to wealth, thanks to Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), a sharklike lawyer last seen in Jessica Jones, and a former protege of Dannys father. This involves battling Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey) and Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup), Dannys childhood friends, and the two children of his fathers business partner. Ward and Joy are one of the shows most intriguing elements, with his slicked-back hair and her glossy perfection emitting a distinct Donald Jr. and Ivanka vibe. Joy sympathizes with Danny, while Ward resents him. But neither seems particularly compelled to let Danny disrupt the business theyve dedicated themselves to since their own fathers supposed death from cancer.

Recommended: Murder by Craigslist

Iron Fist, shot with a pallor that borders on grayscale, often feels like Mr. Robot or The Matrix in its use of contrasts, juxtaposing the sterile lives of the uber-rich with the teeming underbelly that exists below the penthouse level. The obvious comparison for Danny is Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, who leaves Gotham after college to seek out injustice around the world, and is trained as a warrior in the League of Shadows. But Jones, infinitely more convincing and charismatic as the petulant Loras Tyrell in Game of Thrones, cant muster the complexity to make Dannys mission persuasive. Although his immaturity is clearly part of the characters development, it doesnt jibe with Dannys tai chi poses and incessant Eastern mansplaining. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions, he tells Joy pompously in the first episode, as if he were Confucius instead of a grating kid with a scraggly beard. You are really pushing the limits of karma, he warns Ward later on.

And its here that the show really struggles with its 1970s-era source material, inspired by the success of martial-arts films at the time. Iron Fist was always going to be a tough sell for contemporary viewers, based on a billionaire orphan whos trained as a fighter by monks on a celestial dimension, and whose superpower is literally appropriated from another culture. Marvel could have dealt with the problem by hiring an Asian American actor to play Danny Rand, as many fans campaigned for, instead of showing a white guy posture himself like Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury. (You chatter like monkeys, Danny tells squabbling kids in the dojo. Your kicks and punches are like lace curtains.) Instead, they went all in on the Orientalism, setting a fight scene in the very first episode in the middle of a Chinatown parade, in which Danny actually puts on a mask he purchases from a street vendor in order to blend in. Its an accidental metaphor that speaks volumes about the shows clumsy footprint.

Recommended: Why Trump Cant Let Go of His Wiretapping Claim

Perhaps the shows creator, Scott Buck, will be tempted to blame its poor critical reception on heightened cultural sensitivity and the PC police. Jones, for his part, has blamed Trump, assuming that a white billionaire is a tough sell in this current moment. But neither is right. Iron Fists decided unwokeness is notable, particularly when Danny lectures Colleen, who is of East Asian descent, on the right way to channel her internal force. But its just one of a list of flaws, with Joness miscasting the most obvious issue. When Danny is less sympathetic and compelling than Wards potentially sociopathic CEO, theres a problem. Ditto when its more entertaining to watch Danny strapped down on a gurney in the psych ward than it is to see him dispatch ninjas, special powers or no.

Still, Iron Fist has its momentsHenwicks Colleen injects energy and passion into her fight sequences in a way that makes Dannys own rote punches look even more forced by comparison. And the shows exploration of New Yorks wealthiest denizens adds an interesting (and more realistic) layer to Marvels alternate portrayals of the city. Ultimately, though, the real gratification in watching the show comes from seeing where it slots into the larger picture. Its rewarding, in an indistinct way, to encounter Hogarth, and Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), and the devilish Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho). And: to anticipate that Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or the Punisher might be just around the corner. Not enough to make 13 ponderous hours feel like less of a slog, but thats the cost of buying into a cinematic universe. Not every hero will be worth the effort.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
UPDATE, 11:58 p.m.  The cause of the fire that broke out Thursday night in an under-construction building in downtown Raleigh is still under investigation, according to Raleigh Police Department. There have also been no reported injuries.

UPDATE 11:43 p.m. EDT  Following a large fire in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, that began at a construction site, people staying in nearby buildings were evacuated and taken to the Church of the Good Shepherd at 125 Hillsborough Street, local TV station WRAL, an NBC affiliate, reported. There was also a power outage in the area, with the only lights coming from the fire and police vehicles.

UPDATE: 11:30 p.m. EDT  Firefighters are still trying to douse the flames of a large fire in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, that started shortly after 10 p.m. EDT as a four-alarm blaze Thursday, before escalating to five-alarm fire around 11 p.m. There are no reports of any casualties so far.

However, the smoke from the fire seems to be enough to be seen by the radar of the National Weather Service, prompting some health concerns.

UPDATE: 11:10 p.m. EDT  The fire in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, that began Thursday night in an under-construction building is still ongoing. According to local media outlet, WSOC-TV, an ABC affiliate, the fire was upgraded to a five-alarm blaze at some point, but it seems to be back to a four-alarm fire now.

A Raleigh local also posted an earlier picture of the construction site that is on fire, as well as of the crane that fell in the blaze.

Original story:

A massive fire is currently raging through several buildings in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, near North Street, West Street and Harrington. According to early local media reports, the fire is a four-alarm blaze right now.

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How the fire started in an under-construction building, to the west of the General assembly building, is still unknown. A construction crane also fell down, causing additional panic among bystanders. Flames soon spread to other structures nearby, including several buildings. Firefighters continue to douse the fire.

Social media users are expressing concern for those who were present in nearby buildings during the fire. It is not known whether anybody was injured, but police are warning travelers to avoid the area.

This is a developing story.

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By Lisa Baertlein LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp quickly deleted a tweet sent from the company's handle slamming President Donald Trump on Thursday and said its official Twitter account had been compromised. The tweet, which was copied and shared widely before being deleted, came a day after the Twitter accounts of a number of major news organizations, chief executives, government agencies and other high-profile users were hijacked. "Based on our investigation, we have determined that our Twitter account was hacked by an external source. We took swift action to secure it, and we apologize this tweet was sent through our corporate McDonald's account," McDonald's spokeswoman Terri Hickey said in a statement. Corporate accounts are attractive targets due to their large followings and the media attention that errant tweets can attract. Twitter Inc allows for two-factor authentication, a security feature that would deter many attempts to seize an account. Twitter declined comment on Thursday citing "privacy and security reasons". The tweet sent from @McDonaldsCorp on Thursday morning read: "@realdonaldtrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands." Trump did not respond to the incident on Twitter. High-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked on Wednesday to send anti-Nazi messages in Turkish in the midst of a diplomatic spat between Turkey, the Netherlands and Germany. Twitter said on Wednesday that the source of that attack was a third-party app, whose permissions have since been removed. Trump, one of the more fast-food friendly presidents in recent years, had tweeted pictures of himself eating food from McDonald's and other chains during the U.S. election campaign. A 2002 ad campaign featured Trump and the chain's Grimace mascot promoting an "amazing" $1 deal for McDonald's since-discontinued Big N' Tasty burger. The incident came as McDonald's is bolstering its digital capabilities with mobile and kiosk ordering to help modernize the 60-year-old chain. Analysts said the hack raised questions about security at Twitter, but was unlikely to do much damage to the restaurant chain's brand. "As long as Trump doesn't tweet at them directly, which could be pretty disastrous, this will be a short-term thing for them," said Mike Froggatt, director of intelligence at L2, which monitors the digital performance of brands. "Twitter trending topics last for maybe 6 hours, a backlash for 10 to 12 hours and then it goes and the herd moves on," said Froggatt. The message from the account of the world's largest restaurant chain caused a sensation on Twitter, where users shared copies of the deleted tweet and offered jokes and comments. Vanessa Veasley and other users speculated that Trump supporters could attempt to launch a boycott of the chain, as they threatened to do when Starbucks Corp Chief Executive Howard Schultz vowed to hire 10,000 refugees after Trump's first executive order temporarily banning refugees from certain countries. "McDonald's already deleted the tweet? lol Well at least Trump supporters can finally boycott something they can actually afford," Veasley (@VanessaVeasley) wrote. Other users praised the fast-food chain, which has been fighting to reverse two straight years of customer traffic declines. "Suddenly I want a Big Mac, well done @McDonalds," tweeted Shay Steward Bouley (@blackgirlinmain). Some Trump supporters said McDonald's had not done enough to atone for the tweet and advocated for a boycott. "Hey @McDonaldsCorp YOU can't just undo a tweet!!! Since you don't support America, Americans will not support YOU!!! #BoycottMcDonalds," wrote Deborah Brewer (@Debbie92083). McDonald's is not the only high-profile company to be compromised with fake tweets over the years. Brands including Burger King, Jeep and Sony Music also have been hit. (Reporting Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, David Ingram in San Francisco, Gina Cherelus and Angela Moon in New York, Dustin Volz in Washington, D.C., Nandita Bose in Chicago and Sweta Singh and Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Meredith Mazzilli)
By Bill Berkrot WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medtronic Plc's non-invasive transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) system proved as safe as traditional surgery in intermediate-risk patients in a two-year study presented on Friday, paving the way for its use in a wider patient population. Medtronic's TAVR systems succeeded in demonstrating non-inferiority with no statistically significant difference in a combination of all-cause mortality and disabling stroke. The rate was 12.6 percent for TAVR and 14 percent for surgical valve replacement. For death rates alone, the two procedures were virtually identical at 11.4 percent for TAVR and 11.6 percent for surgery. For disabling stroke the difference was more pronounced at 2.6 percent for TAVR and 4.5 percent for surgery, which researchers said just missed statistical significance. "These are excellent, outstanding results," said Dr. Michael Reardon, the study's co-primary investigator who presented the results at the American College of Cardiology scientific meeting in Washington. TAVR systems, which spare patients open heart surgery to replace a diseased aortic valve, are considered among the most important growth drivers for Medtronic and rival Edwards Lifesciences Corp. Both companies have U.S. approvals for use in patients deemed too frail or at high-risk from surgery. Edwards also has U.S. approval in intermediate-risk patients, or those seen as having 3-15 percent chance of not surviving surgery. Allowing TAVR use in larger groups of patients is considered critical to sales growth. In the more than 1,600-patient trial, 84 percent of the TAVR patients received Medtronic's CoreValve system and 16 percent the smaller second generation Evolut. "I believe this will lead to rapid approval by the FDA for CoreValve and Evolut in intermediate-risk patients," said Reardon, professor of cardiothorasic surgery at the Houston Methodist Debakey Heart and Vascular center. He said clinical guidelines should be changed to allow TAVR use for more patients. In a previous trial in high-risk patients, CoreValve proved superior to surgery rather than simply non-inferior. Reardon said that did not happen this time primarily because of how well the surgery patients fared. "This was the lowest surgical mortality we've seen in a randomized trial," he explained. "And TAVR did just as well." In the first 30 days, patients treated with TAVR experienced lower rates of stroke, of new atrial fibrillation, less acute kidney injury, fewer transfusions and reported improved quality of life, researchers found. "We found exceedingly low mortality at one and two years, which should give us great confidence as we move into lower risk (patients)," Reardon said. (Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
(WASHINGTON)  Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was paid more than $67,000 by Russian companies before the presidential election, according to documents released Thursday by a Democratic congressman.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland asked the Trump administration to provide a comprehensive record of Flynns contacts with foreign governments and interests.

Flynn accepted $33,750 from Russias government-run television system for appearing at a Moscow event in December 2015  a few months before Flynn began formally advising President Donald Trumps campaign  and thousands more in expenses covered by the network and in speech fees from other Russian firms, according to the documents.

Flynns financial relationship with the RT network may violate a constitutional provision against gifts from foreign governments, said Cummings, who released documents obtained during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms inquiry into Flynns activities before Trump appointed him to become national security adviser.

In addition to the record of Flynns foreign contacts, Cummings, the senior Democrat on the committee, also asked the Defense Department to compel Flynn to pay the money he received to the U.S. government.

I am writing to request information about whether Gen. Flynn fully disclosed  as part of the security clearance and vetting process for his return to government  his communications with Russian agents, Turkish agents and other foreign agents, as well as his payments from foreign sources, Cummings wrote. Last week, Flynn registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent whose lobbying work may have benefited the Turkish government. The lobbying occurred before Election Day from August to November, during the period when Flynn was Trumps campaign adviser.

Trump fired Flynn as national security adviser last month, saying the former U.S. Army lieutenant general misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with Russias ambassador to the U.S. Flynns ties to Russia have been scrutinized by the FBI and are part of House and Senate committee investigations into contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians.

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The newly-released files show that RT  designated by the U.S. intelligence community as a propaganda arm for Russias government  also paid for luxury hotel stays and other expenses incurred by Flynn and his adult son, Michael Flynn Jr., during the Moscow trip.

Flynn, who was fired in August 2014 as chief of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the climax of the televised RT gala.

Cummings said Flynns acceptance of payments from RT violated the emoluments provision of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits retired military officers from accepting gifts from foreign powers. RT identifies itself as an independent news network, but a report by U.S. intelligence agencies made public in January said RT has long been considered by the U.S. government a Russian propaganda arm.

In letters sent to Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis and FBI Director James Comey, Cummings said Flynn violated the Constitution by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from an agent of a global adversary that attacked our democracy. Cummings was referring to the intelligence agencies conclusion that Russia instigated cyber-hacking of Democratic party officials and organizations in the months before the presidential election.

The Defense Department has said retired military officers are covered by the emoluments clause because they could be recalled to military service. The department has also noted that the prohibition on accepting foreign gifts includes commercial groups controlled by foreign governments or others considered instruments of the foreign government.

A Flynn spokesman said Flynn informed the DIA before he went to Moscow and after his return. Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said that as many former government officials and general officers have done, Gen. Flynn signed with a speakers bureau and these are examples of that work.

DIA spokesman Jim Kudla said Thursday that Flynn did report to the agency in advance that he was traveling to Moscow in accordance with standard security clearance procedures.

Separately, the Army is looking into the matter of Flynns reporting and compensation, but has found no answers yet, according to spokesman Col. Pat Seiber.

Emails indicate Flynn initially asked for a higher fee than the $45,000 paid to his speakers group, Leading Authorities Inc., but was asked to reduce his price. Flynns take from RT was ultimately $33,750 after Leading Authorities received its commission.

If Gen. Flynn is coming, we would like him to be front and central at the Moscow conference, an RT official told Flynns representatives in a November 2015 email. During his Moscow stay, Flynn was interviewed by an RT personality on national security affairs before attending the lavish RT gala with Putin.

In an addition to the RT payments, Flynn was also paid $11,250 for two speeches in Washington  one in August for Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian charter cargo airline, and a second, in September, for Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based cybersecurity firm.

Flynn and his son also received an unspecified amount in expenses paid by RT for business-class flights to and from Moscow and for their three-day stay at the Hotel Metropol. RT representatives said the stay offered tours of the Kremlin, RT headquarters, the Bolshoi Theater and art museums. Another attendee who took part in some of the tours told The Associated Press they did not see Flynn at those events.

Cummings said he has given the Trump administration, the FBI and the Defense Department until April 7 to produce documents related to Flynns contacts with foreign nationals and any documentation of funds he received from foreign sources.

Cummings also asked for documents about Flynns security clearance over the past 10 years. They include how Flynn answered questions about his contact with foreign nationals, his work for foreign governments and businesses, and any international real estate holdings.

The release of the documents comes one week after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group, registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents whose lobbying work may have benefited the government of Turkey.

The registration involved $530,000 worth of lobbying that Flynns firm performed for a company owned by a Turkish businessman. In that filing, Flynn acknowledged the lobbying on behalf of the company, Inovo BV, could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.

The AP reported last week that while Flynn was under consideration for the top national security post, his attorneys informed the presidential transition team that it was likely he would have to register as a foreign agent. After Flynn was appointed, his attorneys then notified the White House counsels office that a filing was imminent.

The White House initially said it had no recollection of the second discussion but later acknowledged such a contact had occurred.

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to build dozens of new warships in one of the biggest peace-time expansions of the U.S. Navy. But interviews with ship-builders, unions and a review of public and internal documents show major obstacles to that plan.

The initiative could cost nearly $700 billion in government funding, take 30 years to complete and require hiring tens of thousands of skilled shipyard workers - many of whom don't exist yet because they still need to be hired and trained, according to the interviews and the documents reviewed.

Trump has vowed a huge build-up of the U.S. military to project American power in the face of an emboldened China and Russia. That includes expanding the Navy to 350 warships from 275 today. He has provided no specifics, including how soon he wants the larger fleet. (For graphics on projected strength of U.S. Navy, shipyard employment see: http://tmsnrt.rs/2n3vOr0)

The Navy has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis a report that explores how the country's industrial base could support higher ship production, Admiral Bill Moran, the vice chief of Naval Operations with oversight of the Navys shipbuilding outlook, told Reuters.

He declined to give further details. But those interviewed for this story say there are clearly two big issues - there are not enough skilled workers in the market, from electricians to welders, and after years of historically low production, shipyards and their suppliers, including nuclear fuel producers, will struggle to ramp up for years.

To be sure, the first, and biggest, hurdle for Trump to overcome is to persuade a cost-conscious Congress to fund the military buildup.

The White House declined to comment. A Navy spokeswoman said increases being considered beyond the current shipbuilding plan would require sufficient time to allow companies to ramp up capacity.

The two largest U.S. shipbuilders, General Dynamics Corp <GD.N> and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc <HII.N>, told Reuters they are planning to hire a total of 6,000 workers in 2017 just to meet current orders, such as the Columbia class ballistic missile submarine.

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General Dynamics hopes to hire 2,000 workers at Electric Boat this year. Currently projected order levels would already require the shipyard to grow from less than 15,000 workers, to nearly 20,000 by the early 2030s, company documents reviewed by Reuters show.

Huntington Ingalls, the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, plans to hire 3,000 at its Newport News shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, and another 1,000 at the Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi this year to fulfill current orders, spokeswoman Beci Brenton said.

Companies say they are eager to work with Trump to build his bigger Navy. But expanding hiring, for now, is difficult to do until they receive new orders, officials say.

"Its hard to look beyond" current orders, Brenton said.

Smaller shipbuilders and suppliers are also cautious.

"You cant hire people to do nothing," said Jill Mackie, spokeswoman for Portland, Oregon-based Vigor Industrial LLC, which makes combat craft for the Navys Special Warfare units. "Until funding is there ... you cant bring on more workers."

SCALING UP WORKFORCE

Because companies won't hire excess workers in advance, they will have a huge challenge in expanding their workforces rapidly if a shipbuilding boom materializes, said Bryan Clark, who led strategic planning for the Navy as special assistant to the chief of Naval Operations until 2013.

Union and shipyard officials say finding skilled labor just for the work they already have is challenging. Demand for pipeline welders is so strong that some can make as much as $300,000 per year, including overtime and benefits, said Danny Hendrix, the business manager at Pipeliners Local 798, a union representing 6,500 metal workers in 42 states.

Much of the work at the submarine yards also requires a security clearance that many cant get, said Jimmy Hart, president of the Metal Trades Department at the AFL-CIO union, which represents 100,000 boilermakers, machinists, and pipefitters, among others.

To help grow a larger labor force from the ground up, General Dynamics' Electric Boat has partnered with seven high schools and trade schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island to develop a curriculum to train a next generation of welders and engineers.

It has historically taken five years to get someone proficient in shipbuilding," said Maura Dunn, vice president of human resources at Electric Boat.

It can take as many as seven years to train a welder skilled enough to make the most complex type of welds, radiographic structural welds needed on a nuclear-powered submarine, said Will Lennon, vice president of the shipyard's Columbia Class submarine program.

The Navy envisioned by Trump could create more than 50,000 jobs, the Shipbuilders Council of America, a trade group representing U.S. shipbuilders, repairers and suppliers, told Reuters.

The U.S. shipbuilding and repairing industry employed nearly 100,000 in 2016, Labor Department statistics show. The industry had as many as 176,000 workers at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s as the United States built up a fleet of nearly 600 warships by the end of that decade.

SUBMARINE CRUNCH

Apart from the labor shortage, there are also serious capacity and supply chain issues that would be severely strained by any plan to expand the Navy, especially its submarine fleet.

Expanding the Navy to 350 ships is not as simple as just adding 75 ships. Many ships in the current 275-vessel fleet need to be replaced, which means the Navy would have to buy 321 ships between now and 2046 to reach Trump's goal, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report in February.

The shipyards that make nuclear submarines - General Dynamics' Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington's Newport News - produced as many as seven submarines per year between them in the early 1980s. But for more than a decade now, the yards have not built more than two per year.

The nuclear-powered Virginia class and Columbia class submarines are among the largest and most complex vessels to build. The first Columbia submarine, which is set to begin construction in 2021, will take seven years to build, and two to three additional years to test.

Retooling the long-dormant shipyard space will take several years and significant capital investments, but a bigger problem is expanding the supply chain, said Clark, the former strategist for the Navy and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Makers of submarine components such as reactor cores, big castings, and forgers of propellers and shafts would need five years to double production, said a congressional official with knowledge of the Navys long-term planning.

"We have been sizing the industrial base for two submarines a year. You cant then just throw one or two more on top of that and say, 'Oh here, dial the switch and produce four reactor cores a year instead of two.' You just can't," the official said.

In his first budget proposal to Congress on Thursday, Trump proposed boosting defense spending by $54 billion for the fiscal 2018 year  a 10 percent increase from last year. He is also seeking $30 billion for the Defense Department in a supplemental budget for fiscal 2017, of which at least $433 million is earmarked for military shipbuilding.

A 350-ship Navy would cost $690 billion over the 30-year period, or $23 billion per year - 60 percent more than the average funding the Navy has received for shipbuilding in the past three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who will have a major say in approving the defense budget, said in a statement to Reuters that he supported Trump's vision to increase the size of the Navy to deter adversaries.

"However, this is not a blank check," he said.

(Click here for a graphic on 'Fleet expansion' http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-TRUMP-SHIPBUILDING/0100406B0E6/index.html)

(Additional reporting by Luciana Lopez in New York, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Ross Colvin)
A mothers graduation from nursing school was all the more worthwhile when the son she thought was deployed overseas turned up to congratulate her in person as she walked across the stage.

Read: Soldier-to-Be Hides in a Box to Surprise Younger Brother He Left for the Army

Penny Pearson, 50, was on stage at Wednesday at Rasmussen College to accept her pin, designating her a graduate of their nursing program, when she spotted her son, Dustin Pearson, 29, joining her.

Penny thought her husband would be presenting her with the pin, but it was Dustin who enveloped her in a hug, and presented the pin himself.

"I couldnt even hear what [the presenter] was saying, I lost it," Penny told InsideEdition.com. "He was my rock through all this, we missed him a lot."

Dustin is a sergeant in the military, and has been deployed in Kuwait and Iraq for the last year.

"We missed my 50th birthday together; we missed his birthday together; we missed [his sons] first birthday," she said. "Theres a lot to make up for."

When it came time for Pennys graduation from the 20-month program, Dustin told her he wouldnt be able to return home for several more days.

"I didnt think he was going to be there," Penny explained. "When I called him before graduation, I cried on the phone. It was a lot of emotion."

Penny said she was all the more hurt, since Dustin had been her biggest supporter of returning to school for additional certification.

He kept saying, 'You need to go back, mom. You arent getting any younger,'" Penny said.

Read: With Honors: 6 Graduation Stories That Will Inspire You for the New School Year

Instead, Dustin had been home already for several days, staying with other family members who helped him plan the big surprise.

"I raised some pretty darn good kids," she said.

Watch: Boy Who Missed Pre-K Graduation for Transplant Gets Surprise Ceremony in Hospital

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Good morning. These are todays top stories:

President Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Trump will welcome Merkel to the White House today, the first face-to-face meeting between the two world leaders, who disagree on several key issues, including immigration and trade. During his campaign, Trump was outspoken in his criticism of Merkels policies, accusing her of ruining Germany with her handling of the Syrian refugee crisis. The two are expected to discuss NATO, the conflict in Ukraine and ISIS.

Secretary of State raises possibility of military action against North Korea

In Seoul, South Korea today, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned that the U.S. might take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, the Associated Press reported. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said the country is preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. Tillerson told a news conference today that all of the options are on the table, and he ruled out the possibility of negotiations unless North Korea gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Scientists expect an unusually warm spring

Federal climate scientists on Thursday said the U.S. should expect spring temperatures that are higher than average  a prediction that follows the sixth warmest winter on record. A region from Texas to New England is likely to experience the hottest temperatures, while areas in the Midwest and parts of California could become more vulnerable to flooding.

St. Patricks Day celebrations begin

Today is St. Patricks Day, a holiday that many Americans will celebrate by donning the color green, per a tradition that spans centuries. New York Citys parade will march down Fifth Avenue this morning, and businesses across the country are celebrating with shamrock-themed deals.

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Also:

Scientists in Britain have received approval to create babies using DNA from three people.

France has banned a hoverboard inventor from taking flight.

A Maryland city is removing a statue of the Supreme Court Justice who said slaves werent citizens.

Someone apparently hacked McDonalds Twitter account and called Trump disgusting.

Soon, Saturday Night Live will actually be live in every time zone for the first time in the shows history.

Chelsea Clinton is writing a childrens book called She Persisted.

The Morning Brief is published Mondays through Fridays. Email Morning Brief writer Melissa Chan at melissa.chan@time.com.
Rabat (AFP) - Morocco's king on Friday appointed a new prime minister to end a political deadlock that left the North African country without a government for five months, the royal court said.

King Mohammed VI named Saad-Eddine El Othmani, a former foreign minister who belongs to the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), to form a new government.

El Othmani will replace Abdelilah Benkirane, who had been previously asked by the king to form a new government after his PJD won the most seats in elections in October 2016.

The prime minister-designate is a trained psychiatrist who served as secretary general of the PJD from 2004 to 2008 and as foreign minister from January 2012 to October 2013.

The PJD had come to power after the king relinquished some of his near-absolute control following Arab Spring-inspired protests in 2011, with Benkirane heading a previous coalition government for five years.

But the party failed after last October's polls to form a majority despite five months of intense negotiations -- the longest time Morocco has been without a government in its recent history.

The palace announced on Thursday that the kind had decided to appoint another PJD member to lead the government "within the shortest possible time".

Benkirane said he would bow to the king's wishes and also told AFP he would step down from the leadership of the PJD in the coming months.

"We cannot comment on decisions taken by the leadership. All I can say is that of course I accept this decision, which falls in line with the constitution. One cannot say no to His Majesty," he said.

Benkirane had proposed to rebuild his outgoing coalition, an alliance comprising a range of parties including other Islamists, liberals and ex-communists.

But he faced opposition from Aziz Akhannouch -- leader of the National Rally of Independents (RNI) and a billionaire former agriculture minister who is close to the king -- and the resulting power struggle led to a political impasse.

The PJD was the first Islamist party to win an election in Morocco and the first to lead a government, raising concerns among many in a country traditionally among the more secular of Arab nations.

Its 2011 win came after the king, whose family claims descent from the Prophet Mohammed and has ruled Morocco since the early 1600s, gave up some of his power when thousands took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations inspired by the wave of uprisings across the Arab world.
RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan authorities said on Friday they had arrested 15 people suspected of ties with Islamic State in the latest raid officials say targeted militant networks. The suspects had been active in Casablanca, Marrakech, Tangiers, and Agadir, among other cities, and were involved in inciting or threatening to carry out attacks, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by MAP state news agency. "Certain individuals arrested acquired knowledge in making explosives and were in the process of acquiring material to make explosive charges to carry out terrorist operations targeting sensitive locations," the statement said. It said one suspect was conducting surveillance in Casablanca with the intention of creating a video claiming an attack in the name of Islamic State. Other suspects had attempted to acquire firearms to target public figures. A Moroccan security source previously told Reuters the government believes nearly 2,000 Moroccans have fought in Syria's war and in Iraq with Islamic State. The source said around 200 were known to have returned home and all of them were arrested, mainly at the airport when their flights landed. The North African kingdom has suffered attacks in the past by militants. In 2011 a blast in a cafe in Marrakesh killed 15 people including 10 foreigners. It was the worst attack since 2003, when suicide bombings killed more than 45 people in Casablanca. (Reporting by Samia Errazzouki; editing by Patrick Markey and Richard Lough)
Windhoek (AFP) - Namibia is to launch a 30-billion-dollar (28-billion-euro) lawsuit against Germany over genocide committed during colonial rule, when tens of thousands of people were killed, according to documents seen by AFP on Friday.

The Namibian government has previously avoided demanding financial compensation, but it changed its stance as two indigenous groups filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany.

Legal documents provided to AFP and The Namibian newspaper show that the government has engaged lawyers in London to pursue a case of violation of human rights and a "consequent apology and reparations process."

Over 65,000 people are believed to have been killed when colonial Germany massacred Namibian tribes such as the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908.

Namibian Vice President Nickey Iyambo issued a statement on Friday saying it had sent a report to Germany last year on the genocide, an official apology and reparations.

"We trust the government of the federal republic of Germany is giving serious attention to the position," Iyambo said, giving no details on the level of reparations sought.

Namibia could approach the International Court of Justice in The Hague to advance its case, the documents show.

While some German officials have acknowledged a genocide occurred, the government has refused to pay reparations, saying aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

Germany seized the territory of modern-day Namibia in the late 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, as part of the so-called Scramble for Africa by European colonisers.

It was called German South West Africa during Germany's 1884-1915 rule, and then passed under South Africa rule for 75 years, finally gaining independence in 1990.

The separate US class-action suit was filed by the Herero and Nama people in New York on Thursday, seeking compensation for "incalculable damages".

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They are also demanding to be included in negotiations between the two countries.

Tensions boiled over in 1904 when the Herero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

In the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, around 80,000 Herero fled including women and children.

German troops went after them across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 Herero survived.

The Namibian government case alleges Germany was guilty of slave labour, mass murder, sexual abuse, human trafficking and theft of land.

The two governments have been in talks about a joint declaration on the massacres for two years.

Iyambo said Namibia wanted an "amicable closure to this sad history".
Photo credit: NASA

From Popular Mechanics

The Trump administration has released a preliminary budget report titled, "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again," and contained within are the new priorities for NASA in 2018. The report has NASA receiving a 0.8 percent decrease in funding from 2017, although the final budget will need to be approved by congress. The report highlights the Europa Clipper flyby mission, Mars 2020 rover, and development of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft as priorities for NASA. The report also identifies fostering private-public partnerships in space exploration as a priority moving forward.

One space mission that got the ax is the Asteroid Redirect Mission, a proposed mission to send a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid to grab a multi-ton boulder with robotic arms and then deposit it in orbit around the moon for further study. Another mission to get the kibosh is the proposed Europa lander. Both of these missions were in very early stages of planning and development, but they will likely not receive funding for fiscal year 2018. There is a NASA town hall meeting to discuss the viability of the proposed Europa landed scheduled for this Sunday, March 19.

Two of the biggest proposed cuts are to the Earth Science program, which will have four missions terminated, and the NASA Office of Education, which will be eliminated outright. The four Earth science missions that are being canceled are the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3), the already-launched Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), and the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder Project, which is a proposed instrument to be launched to the International Space Station to measure how much solar radiation is reflected back from the Earth's surface-an important measurement for tracking the rate of climate change. Particularly glaring is the termination of the DSCOVR satellite, jointly operated by NASA and NOAA, which has already been launched into orbit and is currently conducting scientific research.

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Photo credit: NASA/NOAA

The budget also eliminates NASA's $115 million Office of Education, arguing that "The Office of Education has experienced significant challenges in implementing a NASA-wide education strategy and is performing functions that are duplicative of other parts of the agency." It may be that the Office of Education performs similar functions to other departments, but cutting the program will surely result in fewer scholarships, internships and student programs sponsored by NASA in the future.

An interesting area of focus in the report is additional funding "for eventual over-land commercial supersonic flights and safer, more efficient air travel with a strong program of aeronautics research." NASA is working with Lockheed Martin to build a Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) demonstrator aircraft to reduce the noise of sonic booms and supersonic flight. It is currently illegal for a commercial aircraft to fly at supersonic speeds over U.S. land because of the resulting noise pollution.

The report also discusses restructuring plans to build a refueling and maintenance satellite that could autonomously perform satellite repairs and refuelings in orbit. Research is currently being conducted with NASA's Raven optical instrument on the ISS to develop the necessary technology for autonomous rendezvous and repairs by the future Restore-L satellite. It is not clear how the new budget will restructure this program.

You can download and read the entire NASA budget report here, starting on page 43:

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Israel has denied a claim by Syria that it shot down an Israeli plane carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra (AFP Photo/)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli warplanes struck several targets in Syria early Friday, prompting retaliatory missile launches, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes targeted weapons bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah, and that the Jewish State would do the same again if necessary.

Syria's military said it had downed an Israeli plane and hit another as they were carrying out pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from jihadists this month.

The Israeli military denied that any planes had been hit. The Syrian government has made similar unfounded claims in the past.

"The safety of Israeli civilians or the Israeli air force aircraft was at no point compromised," Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner told AFP.

Netanyahu said in footage aired on Israel's major television networks: "When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah and we have intelligence and it is operationally feasible, we act to prevent it.

"That's how it was yesterday and that's how we shall continue to act," he added.

"We are fully determined and the evidence of that it that we are acting. Everybody must take that into account -- everybody."

The Israeli air force said earlier that it had carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, but that none of the ground-to-air missiles fired by Syrian forces in response had hit Israeli aircraft.

It was an unusual confirmation by the Jewish state of air raids inside Syria.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (Israeli) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles," it said.

None of the missiles fired from Syria hit their targets, the army added.

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One missile was intercepted by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.

It would be one of the first times the system has been used.

A Jordanian military source said shrapnel from one missile fell in the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

- 'Significant shift' -

In April 2016, Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

Israel does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid, but it may have been led to do so this time by the circumstances of the incident.

The missile fired from Syria prompted air raid sirens to sound in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict began.

Assaf Orion, senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, said Syria's response was a "significant" shift.

Until now, he said, when Israel attacked Hezbollah convoys there, it "usually went without a response or with an insignificant response from the Syrian side".

"(With this attack) the Syrian regime is trying to tell Israel it can't stand it any more and those actions will not be free of charge."

President Bashar al-Assad's position has been strengthened in recent months with his forces reclaiming all of Syria's second city Aleppo, as well as enjoying continuing Russian support.

Orion said the Syrian leader was feeling emboldened.

"He is saying: 'Dont push me. I am not as weak as I used to be.'"

Yaakov Amidror, a former head of Israel's National Security Council, said weapons convoys of the Iran-backed Hezbollah remained a "red line" and that Israel would continue to attack them when deemed necessary.

The Arrow 3 interceptor, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, was deployed to Israeli air force ground crews in January after successful testing by Israel and the United States.

Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel pays close attention to developments in the Syrian conflict for fear that it could be exploited by its arch-rival Iran to instal allies close to the armistice line on the Golan and Israel's borders.
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari marked his return from medical leave in London with a rare appearance at a meeting on Thursday of the government's top advisory body. Buhari attended a session of the National Economic Council, which is chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and whose members include state governors, the central bank governor and the finance minister. He does not usually attend NEC meetings. Buhari returned on Friday from London, where he had been receiving medical treatment for seven weeks. His longer than expected absence and the fact that the nature of his illness was not disclosed had raised concerns over the 74-year-old's health. Osinbajo has stressed that Buhari is ready to return to work. The president said on Friday he was feeling "much better" but wanted to rest over the weekend. His appearances since he landed have been restricted to the presidential offices and the State House. At Thursday's NEC meeting, Buhari directed the central bank and finance ministry to release funds to the federal states to pay salaries of civil servants delayed due to a shortfall in oil revenues, the presidency said. "One of these basic things is the issue of salaries. It is most important that workers are able to feed their families, pay rent and school fees, then other things can follow," Buhari told the meeting, according a presidency statement. The combined debts of Nigeria's 36 states, including unpaid salaries, were around 658 billion naira ($2.15 billion) as of July 2015. The government loaned its states 90 billion naira in June 2016 in the most recent attempt to provide assistance. The NEC also said Nigeria would offer a six-month window from May for tax defaulters to pay up in a bid to boost state revenues. Nigeria could raise $1 billion from the scheme, according to a finance ministry presentation. "Tax payers will be allowed up to three years to settle their liabilities," the NEC said. During Buhari's absence, when Osinbajo was acting president, the central bank devalued the naira for retail customers after the NEC called for an urgent review of the bank's foreign exchange policy. Buhari has consistently opposed devaluing the naira since taking office in May 2015. Journalists were asked to leave the NEC session before Buhari spoke. (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Alexander Smith and Giles Elgood)
Nintendo is planning to double production of its Switch console, which launched on March 3, due to high demand, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Although Nintendo had initially intended to manufacture eight million Switch consoles, the company is said to produce 16 million during the fiscal year starting in April 2017. That means Nintendo is hoping to sell more than 10 million Switches in a 12-month period, according to the Journal.

Read more: Review: The Switch is the Nintendo System Weve Been Waiting For

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime recently told TIME that within five days of availability, the Switch had cemented itself as the fastest-selling system the company has ever had in the United States  a much-needed success following the Wii U. Nintendos previous generation console, launched in 2012, is said to have been the companys slowest selling console ever.

Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima has previously said the company will ship two million units globally this month, but the Journal says that number will likely be closer to 2.5 million. The success comes even though the Switchs roster of games available at launch is notably slimmer than the selection that was available for the Wii U upon its release. In response to TIMEs request for comment, Nintendo said it doesnt have any updates to share regarding production plans for the Switch.

The Switch, which was sold out at many retailers as far back as January, also comes off the success of Nintendos NES Classic. Despite supply shortages, the company sold 1.5 million units of it revamped retro console as of February 2017.
MIAMI (AP)  A judge has rejected an immunity claim by a former Haitian coup leader and recent senator-elect who is charged in a U.S. drug case.

The Miami federal judge ruled Friday that Guy Philippe cannot use his Nov. 20 election to the Haitian Senate to avoid prosecution in the U.S. Philippe was arrested four days before he was to officially take office on Jan. 9.

The judge also rejected Philippe's attempt to get the charges dismissed for several reasons, including claims that he was essentially kidnapped and illegally brought to the U.S.

Philippe has pleaded not guilty to drug smuggling and money laundering conspiracy charges that carry a maximum life prison sentence. The trial is set for April 3.

Philippe led a 2004 uprising that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New Jersey judge on Friday ruled for the third time that a special prosecutor will not be appointed to investigate a citizen's criminal complaint against Governor Chris Christie over the Bridgegate lane-closure scandal.

The decision from state Superior Court Judge Bonnie Mizdol may finally close the book on the official misconduct complaint filed in September by retired firefighter and activist Bill Brennan, though Brennan vowed to appeal.

The complaint accused Christie of knowing about a plot to shut down access lanes at the busy George Washington Bridge in September 2013 as an act of retribution against a local mayor who declined to endorse the governor's re-election campaign.

Two former Christie associates, Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni, were convicted in November of orchestrating the scheme, while a third, David Wildstein, pleaded guilty and appeared as a prosecution witness at trial.

Christie, who was not charged, has denied any involvement or wrongdoing, but the three associates all testified at trial that the governor was at least aware of the closures at the time.

The scandal helped scuttle Christie's presidential run and damaged his political standing in New Jersey.

A municipal court judge found probable cause for Brennan's complaint to be referred to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. But prosecutors decided not to pursue the case, saying it would be impossible to secure a conviction.

Brennan, who has announced a run for governor, argued that a special prosecutor was needed to avoid obvious conflicts of interest.

But Mizdol ruled that Brennan had no standing to question prosecutors' decision as a private citizen and pointed out that the Bergen County prosecutor, who is appointed by Christie, had recused himself from the case.

"It is the responsibility of the prosecutor to investigate and prosecute crimes," she wrote. "The role of the victim or the concerned citizen is to report knowledge of criminal activities to law enforcement."

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
It's time to give the hijab a warm and long overdue welcome  at playtime and beyond.

A new initiative called Hello Hijab wants to encourage wider acceptance of hijabs, creating tiny headscarves for children to put on their Barbies and similar dolls. The effort aims to make playtime more inclusive, while also getting children used to seeing headscarves in order to help fight stigma.

The $6 handmade hijabs will be available for U.S. order starting April 1, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to nonprofits serving multicultural communities.

SEE ALSO: Spunky self-defense videos empower Muslim women with confidence and skills

Hello Hijab is the first initiative from For Good, a small, Pittsburgh-based nonprofit supporting social good projects in the area. The nonprofit's goal is to uplift marginalized people, like the Muslim community, around the U.S.

"During these tense and very charged times, this concept might sound naive  and maybe it is," For Good creators Gisele Fetterman and Kristen Michaels wrote on the nonprofit's site. "But we believe that there has never been a better time to reach out and do something positive for someone else."

Image: MARANIE STAAB/Hello Hijab

Fetterman came up with the idea after making a conscious effort to diversify the types of dolls her 5-year-old daughter, Grace, played with. Looking at her daughter's collection of dolls, she realized Grace didn't have any who looked like the mothers and grandmothers of so many of her Muslim friends  and that no such dolls were easily accessible on the market.

"I think little girls and little boys should have access to these [doll hijabs] to familiarize themselves with people who look different than they do, and who believe in different things," Fetterman said.

She brought the idea to her friend, Safaa Bokhari, who decided to team up with For Good to create Hello Hijab. Bokhari, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, helped For Good conceptualize the project responsibly with her firsthand experience of Muslim culture.

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"When I heard the idea, I was hooked," Bokhari said. "My daughter usually plays with my hijabs at home, but I need this for her future."

Image: MARANIE STAAB/Hello Hijab

Hijabis have long been "othered" in the United States for wearing headscarves. But recent actions by the Trump administration targeting Muslim populations (like the travel ban) and the president's anti-Muslim rhetoric has made the current social climate especially unwelcoming to Muslims.

Research suggests that anti-Muslim hate crimes have tripled over the past year with the rise of Trump, which makes wearing a visible symbol of religion like the hijab potentially dangerous.

Hello Hijab hopes to curb that discrimination by reaching children, who the creators believe have less bias and more openness toward the Muslim community. While recent studies suggest children as young as 6 show anti-Muslim bias, it could be curbed with more exposure to Muslim culture.

To help create more understanding, the doll hijabs come with a card written for children, explaining what a hijab is and why it's important.

Image: Hello Hijab

Some headscarves made by Hello Hijab are made from new materials, but many of them are created from repurposed headscarves donated by Muslim women who want their hijabs to have new life and meaning.

"My house has been flooded with hijabs to be repurposed," Bokhari said. "[These women] feel the same way as I do  feared, but filled with hope. We all want a better future for our daughters."

For Good, which was founded through a small community grant, is funding the initial production of the tiny hijabs.

The proceeds will benefit four specific organizations: the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, Community Blueprint, the ACLU of Pittsburgh, and the Jewish Family & Children's Services of Pittsburgh, which is a leading refugee resettlement organization in Pittsburgh.

Fetterman and Bokhari said their greatest hope for Hello Hijab is to reach a "kinder, gentler generation"  children who can spread more acceptance of hijabis and Muslim culture.

"They will realize that when Barbie wears a hijab, she doesn't become a different creature," Bokhari said. "She's the same Barbie."
Whatever your spring food traditions, you likely have a family favorite dish that is the star of your dinner table. Or maybe you have memories of a treat you enjoyed as a child, but the recipe has been lost to time. If you grew up in an Italian-American household, you can probably identify your Nonna's traditional Easter bread by smell alone. But have you ever made it?

This Colomba di Pasqua recipe from The Culinary Institute of America is the opportunity to reclaim a memory or start a new one of your own. Colomba di Pasqua is a traditional Italian Easter bread that might remind you of panettone, stollen, or other rich, fruit-filled breads from around the world. Paired with a cup of coffee or tea, this bread is the perfect breakfast, mid-afternoon treat, dessert, or midnight snack. What we're saying is, you'll have to pace yourself.

Each loaf is specially shaped to look like the iconic Easter dove. Though it can be baked in more common baking pans, it is traditionally prepared in a special Colomba di Pasqua mold. Good news, though: this mold will not be one more thing to clutter your kitchen cabinets because the bread is typically made using disposable (but still sturdy) paper molds, which can be easily purchased online.

Colomba di Pasqua is traditionally studded with candied orange peel. This ingredient can be challenging to find in stores, but it is easily prepared at home (we've included a recipe if you want to try it), or you can substitute any dried fruit.

The texture of the dough may surprise you, especially if you're an experienced at-home bread maker. It is very soft and sticky, and it takes a fair amount of mixing for it to come together. In your final dough, the use of chilled butter and eggs will help keep your dough firm enough to handle.

By now, you might be assessing this multi-part recipe with that how-much-free-time-do-you-think-I have face, but don't turn the page yet. Yes, this recipe requires some advance planning, and yes, it will take a few days. But the hands-on work is literally minutes at a time, and then you get to ignore it for hours. Once the smell fills your kitchen, you'll know it's worth it.

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EASTER BREAD

Makes 1 loaf (10 servings)

Start to finish: 26 hours and 45 minutes (Active time: 45 minutes)

PREFERMENT DOUGH

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast

1 tablespoon room temperature water

FIRST DOUGH

Preferment Dough

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

2 tablespoons whole milk, room temperature

1 large egg yolk, room temperature

FINAL DOUGH

First Dough

4 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon instant dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large egg yolks (reserve 1 white for topping)

1 teaspoon lemon zest

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold

4 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup chopped candied orange peel

1 tablespoon almond paste, broken into pieces

Topping

1/3 cup corn flour

1 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons almond flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons canola oil

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg white

1/3 cup slivered almonds

To prepare the preferment (see Chef's note), combine the flour and yeast in a small bowl and mix to combine. Add the water and mix by hand until a dough forms, about 1 minute. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place until bubbly and doubled in size, about 10 hours.

To prepare the first dough, place the preferment dough in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the flour, yeast, sugar, butter, milk, and egg yolk. Using the dough hook, mix on medium-high speed until a dough forms and the butter is incorporated, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm place until doubled in size, about 12 hours or overnight.

To prepare the final dough, place the first dough in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the flour, yeast, salt, vanilla, egg yolks, and zest. Using the dough hook, mix on medium speed for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally. Increase the speed to high, and mix until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl, about 4 minutes.

Add about one-third of the butter and mix on high speed until the butter is incorporated and the dough begins to form around the hook, about 4 minutes. With the mixer running, add half of the sugar and half of the remaining butter. Add the remaining sugar and remaining butter, then increase the speed to high and mix until the dough has pulled away from the sides of the bowl and formed a ball around the dough hook, about 5 minutes. The dough will be very sticky, but should be firm enough to handle (it may be helpful to dust your hands with flour).

Add the candied orange peel and almond paste, and fold into the dough, kneading gently just until incorporated.

Transfer the dough to a lightly-oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside to rest for 10 minutes. In the bowl, fold the dough in half, then in half again. Re-cover and rest for an additional 10 minutes.

Shape the dough into a loose loaf and transfer to a Colomba di Pasqua mold (or 8- by 4-inch loaf pan). Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to ferment until nearly doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Meanwhile, to prepare the topping, combine the corn flour, all-purpose flour, almond flour, sugar, oil, vanilla, and egg white in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until small crumbs form, about 30 seconds. Remove from the mixer and add the almonds, tossing gently to combine. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Gently stretch the sides of the dough to fit the shape of the mold (skip this step if using a loaf pan). Sprinkle the bread with the topping (depending on the mold, you may not use it all) and set aside to rest for one more hour. When pressed gently, the dough should spring back about halfway.

Bake until the topping is golden brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Place on a rack to cool completely before serving.

Chef's Note:

With some simple planning, this dough can be prepared in two days. In the morning, prepare the preferment dough. It will be ready by that evening, when you can mix the first dough. After it rests overnight, you can prepare the final dough the next morning.

CANDIED ORANGE PEEL

Makes about 1 cup (40 servings)

2 navel oranges

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups water

Cut across the stem ends of each orange to remove the top and bottom "caps." Use a sharp knife to score the skin from top to bottom, without slicing into the flesh, around the four quarters of each orange.

Peel the skin from the oranges and scrape away any flesh, leaving the white pith. Slice the peels into 1/4-inch strips.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Add the orange peels and simmer for 2 minutes. Drain, then repeat the process with clean water.

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the orange peel and reduce to a simmer. Cook, covered, until the orange peel is soft and translucent, about 40 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely.

Transfer the peels, with their syrup, to a jar or covered container and refrigerate until needed.

Chef's Note:

The resulting cooking liquid is a flavorful syrup that can be used in cocktails, to soak cakes, or as a sweetener in sorbets and popsicles. Simmer it over low heat to reduce it further, if desired.

Nutrition information per serving of bread: 197 calories; 109 calories from fat; 12 g fat (5 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 75 mg cholesterol; 108 mg sodium; 19 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 7 g sugar; 4 g protein.

Nutrition information per serving of candied orange peel: 21 calories; 0 calories from fat; 0 g fat (0 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 0 mg cholesterol; 0 mg sodium; 6 g carbohydrate; 0 g fiber; 6 g sugar; 0 g protein.

___

This article was provided to The Associated Press by The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
PARIS (AP)  A Tahitian official says Barack Obama has arrived in French Polynesia on a private trip.

A press office official in Tahiti who was not authorized to be named told The Associated Press on Friday that the former U.S. president landed Thursday in Tahiti then took a plane on to a private island.

His destination, she said, was "The Brando"  a luxury resort popular with celebrities on Tetiaroa Island. It's named after the late Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, who bought the spot, the hotel website says, after becoming enchanted with its rare beauty during the filming of 1962's "Mutiny on the Bounty."

The official did not elaborate further on the visit. French Polynesia is a French territory in the South Pacific.
Ankara (AFP) - The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) launched an observer mission in Turkey on Friday ahead of a vote on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers, but said there were limits on its movement.

The mission follows an invitation from Turkish authorities, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights told reporters in Ankara.

But Tana de Zulueta, head of the mission, admitted there were limitations on freedom of movement.

"We already have limitations in place on freedom of movements for international observers in some parts of the country. We have to take these into account," Zulueta said.

But, she added: "We would like to cover as extensive an area as possible."

Zulueta did not give further details on the "limitations" but the Turkish military has been waging a relentless campaign in the southeast of the country against Kurdish militants.

A team of 11 experts in Ankara and 24 observers from 13 countries will be deployed across the country.

The Turkish public will vote on April 16 on whether to approve constitutional changes that would create an executive presidency.

While the government argues that the changes are necessary for political stability, critics fear it will lead to one-man rule and a further erosion of democracy.

Zulueta said part of the team's job would be assessing the media environment and the ability of Turkish citizens to make an informed choice, amid criticism from commentators that the 'no' campaign was struggling to make its voice heard.

The observers will meet with representatives from civil society, media, political parties and Turkish officials as well as visiting polling stations across the country.

But this will not constitute systematic observation, she added.

The opposition and some NGOs also accuse Ankara of taking advantage of the state of emergency in force since the July 15 failed coup last year to silence any discordant voice through an unprecedented wave of purges.

The goal of the mission will "observe the conduct of these elections in line with OSCE standards and requirements for democratic elections, but also in line with national legislation," Zulueta said.

The day after the referendum, the mission will join with an observer delegation from the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe to issue a statement of preliminary findings.
A California pastor was stabbed to death by a parishioner who'd asked to pray with him, cops say.

Pastor Herbert Valero invited a man over to his home in Salinas early Tuesday night when the pastor told his family he was going to be outside, praying.

Watch: Pastor: 'I Don't Feel Like Forgiving' My Pregnant Wife's Suspected Killers

A few minutes later, the clergyman who folks called "Pastor Herb" ran back into his home holding his neck.

Cops say Valero told his family he'd been stabbed by 37-year-old Servando Ayala Silva. The family called 911 as they say Silva fled in a truck.

When officers arrived, they performed CPR until medical personnel arrived.

"Unfortunately, due to the injury to his neck, the victim was pronounced dead at the scene," Salinas police said in a statement.

The motive for the stabbing is unknown, police said.

What started off as what seems to have been a peaceful meeting  for some reason it went south," Salinas police Cmdr. Stanley Cooper told The Mercury News.

Silva has since been located and police believe the pastor was his only victim.

The suspect was arrested and charged with homicide. He remained held at Monterey County Jail as of Friday on a $1 million bond.

Read: Naked Pastor Flees Home After He's Caught in Adulterous Tryst by Woman's Husband: Cops

A vigil was held Wednesday at Victory Outreach Church, where Valero preached. Among those from the congregation mourning his passing is Angelina Juarez, who posted about Valero on Twitter.

"Pastor Herb, one of the strongest men I knew, Juarez wrote. He did so much for Salinas, helping people, so honored to say he was my pastor."

Watch: Police Search for Man Who Stabbed 23-Year-Old Nurse to Death in Her Bedroom

Related Articles:
Washington (AFP) - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says diplomacy has failed and military action against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table," and President Donald Trump insists a long-range nuke from Pyongyang "won't happen."

While war with North Korea may be unlikely for now, Pentagon planners and private analysts have given deep thought to how US military intervention with the reclusive country would play out.

Hint: There are no easy options, and the risks are enormous.

- Surgical vs. all-in -

Preemptive military action against North Korea would mean the United States and its allies won't wait until a North Korean nuclear ballistic missile is launched, even though dense defense networks could likely shoot one down.

So first question would be whether to go all in -- a la Iraq -- and push for regime change, or whether to limit intervention to surgical strikes on nuclear program targets.

Stratfor, a US private intelligence firm that recently published a paper looking at possible Pentagon options, said Washington does not want a long-term intervention in North Korea, meaning "levels of violence would be limited."

A broader military campaign would risk full-scale war, and Pyongyang would inevitably be forewarned, making it more likely it would carry out its own preemptive strikes.

Bruce Klingner, who formerly worked for the CIA and now specializes in Korean and Japanese affairs for the Heritage Foundation think tank, warned that any preemptive allied strikes or missile shoot-downs should only occur in the event of an imminent North Korean attack.

- War hardware -

The United States has an "ironclad" alliance with South Korea and has stationed thousands of troops there since the end of the Korean War, with about 28,000 currently based in the South.

The two countries are also currently running joint military drills called the Foal Eagle exercises.

A strike on the North would likely come via US stealth bombers, which can penetrate deep into enemy territory without leaving a significant radar trail.

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While North Korea has good air defenses, these would be no match for stealth planes like the B-2 bomber, the F-22 fighter and, eventually, the F-35.

America also has ships and submarines in the region, so firing cruise missiles from unexpected locations is also an option.

- What to strike -

B-2 stealth bombers carrying Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs and other armaments could easily incapacitate North Korea's known nuclear production sites and weapons storage facilities.

Stratfor says an initial wave of bombing could be followed up by a massive barrage of F-22 strikes and cruise missiles that would focus on wiping out North Korea's weapons delivery vehicles.

Pyongyang has about 200 of the so-called Transporter Erector Launchers (TELs) dotted around the country.

But destroying Pyongyang's obvious military targets does little to prevent North Korea delivering a nuclear device through other means -- perhaps via a civilian fishing boat -- that would be detonated by a suicide operative.

- The North's response -

Leader Kim Jong-Un is well aware he has limited -- but powerful -- options when it comes to retaliation.

An all-out attack on South Korea, Japan and US military bases would most likely bring about a massive international response and hasten the end of his regime.

But even a limited response would be devastating.

North Korea has amassed artillery units along its border with South Korea.

The capital, Seoul, is only about 35 miles (55 kilometers) away and some of the canons could rain shells onto the city of 10 million.

Even limited shelling and rocket fire would likely lead to mass casualties.

But that would end badly for the North, said Stratfor analyst Sim Tack, who co-authored the report.

It would put "the United States and its allies into a position where they have no choice but to come in and try and destroy the entire military capability of North Korea," Tack told AFP.

- Unknowns -

Stratfor warns the US and its allies lack perfect intelligence on North Korea, so they would not be certain they had destroyed all nuclear devices and delivery vehicles.

"The longer the North Korean program evolves, the more this becomes a reality," the Stratfor report states.

"Realistically, absent the use of nuclear weapons or the invasion and occupation of North Korea, the United States and its allies are already at a point where they cannot guarantee the complete removal of the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack."

Another big unknown is China.

Beijing likes having North Korea as a buffer between itself and US-allied South Korea, but also has shown signs of impatience over North Korea's continued nuclear testing.
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Friday it would strengthen its military facilities on islands and shoals in the disputed South China Sea and announced initial plans to build a new port and pave an existing rough airstrip. Defense Minister Delfin Lorenzana had been scheduled to inspect an outpost on Thitu, one of the disputed Spratly Islands, but his trip was canceled because of "safety issues" and he spent the day instead at a military base where he unveiled the development plans. "We will build a runway and a port, a pier, for our ships" on Thitu, Lorenzana told troops at the Western Command's 41st anniversary. "We are a bit blind in that area." Thitu is close to Subi Reef, one of seven manmade islands in the Spratlys that China is accused of militarizing with surface-to-air missiles and other armaments. The Philippines has squabbled with China for years over the South China Sea, but relations appear to have improved under President Rodrigo Duterte, who was scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang in Davao City in the southern Philippines on Friday. The minister said Duterte had given approval to upgrade facilities not only on Thitu but on the eight other features in the South China Sea it occupies. Defense ministry spokesman Arsenio Andolong said landing on a porous runway on Thitu after heavy rains would have been dangerous. A senior Philippine general said, however, the military also blocked a planned trip by a group of lawmakers to Thitu on Thursday, more because of concern over how China would react. "That is a contested area, that is not 100 percent ours," Lieutenant-General Raul del Rosario told a Congressional hearing on Thursday. "That's why we are concerned if you fly there. Every time an aircraft flies there, it gets a warning and there are times they fire flares towards the aircraft." The military declined to comment on Rosario's statement. A fishing community of about 110 people live on Thitu. China has troops on islands it occupies but not civilians. China claims most of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which about $5 trillion of goods passes each year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Andrew Roche)
St. Patricks Day is the time to break out a green sweater, pin a shamrock brooch to your chest, and sip a pint of Guinness. But for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, its an occasion to go above and beyond with green fashionand, yes, beer consumption.

On Friday, the royal representatives met with soldiers of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards in west London after their parade; Will is the honorary colonel of the troupe. Will and Kate showed off their on-point attire and a penchant for festooning themselves with holiday-appropriate greenery during the festivities, as is traditional. They even got their fill of Guinness, the famously rich and dark Irish brew.

Another all-important attendee of the festivities: Domnhall, the giant Irish wolfhound who serves as a mascot for the battalion. Kate distributed shamrocks to officers during the parade, too, although its hard to imagine them stacking up to the verdant decoration she pinned to her own coat.
Iceland is a hot place to visit right now, and it's not just because of its smoky volcanoes and otherworldly geothermal pools. A variety of quick, nonstop flight routes from the U.S. have made the country more accessible than ever, and stopover options are helping Iceland earn a top spot on many travelers' vacation itineraries.

[See: 12 Great Destinations in Europe You Can Afford.]

The best way to get a taste of Iceland in a short amount of time is to base yourself in Reykjavik and split your time between the city and some of the nearby regions to explore natural wonders and fascinating landscapes. In a few days, you can sample the country's impressive culture, cuisine and awe-inspiring landscapes. So, if you're ready to experience the Nordic island nation's beautiful scenery and incredible, must-see attractions, here are a few tips and recommendations for planning the perfect long weekend in Iceland.

Day 1

If you arrive before 5 p.m., your first stop should be a trip to the iconic Blue Lagoon. (If you arrive later in the evening, plan to visit the lagoon before your flight when you depart.) Located about 20 minutes from Keflavik International Airport, the Blue Lagoon is Iceland's most popular attraction. Its geothermal pool with milky blue water sits surrounded by black volcanic rocks. You can swim in the lagoon, soak in a sauna, get a massage or silica mud mask, dine in the restaurant and drink at the swim-up bar, among other activities. Just make sure to book tickets and transport before you arrive.

After checking out the lagoon, head into Reykjavik to check in to your accommodations. There are a handful of hotels and hostels downtown and around the harbor and Airbnb options have become increasingly popular here. Depending on the time of year, it will get dark very early -- or it will stay bright all day long. Regardless, Reykjavik's nightlife is buzzing year-round, so if you're a night owl, you can head out on the town and stay out until the wee hours of the following morning.

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[See: 7 Family-Friendly Spring Trips You Can Afford.]

Day 2

Devote a day to experiencing the best of Reykjavik, the country's vibrant capital and most populous city. The downtown area is easy to explore by foot, with most attractions clustered near the harbor and along Laugavegur, the main shopping and dining thoroughfare.

One of the most visited sites is Hallgrimskirkja, the expressionist stone church that dominates the skyline. Head to the top of the main tower for a picturesque view of Reykjavik's colorful houses and rooftops, the harbor and Esja mountain range in the distance. Other top attractions include the Harpa, a stunning prismatic waterfront opera house, the Old Harbour with its fishing boats and whale-watching tours and the National Museum of Iceland, where you can dive into the country's Viking heritage.

It won't take long to notice Iceland's quirkier side during your visit. Embrace the city's offbeat charms, and make a visit to attractions such as the Icelandic Phallological Museum, the bars dedicated to Chuck Norris and "The Big Lebowski" or the Icelandic Elf School.

Day 3

Iceland's true allure lies in its incredible natural beauty, and the best way to experience the best of the country is to spend at least a day exploring its vast landscapes. You can join an organized tour, such as those from reputable outfitters Reykjavik Excursions or Gray Line Iceland, or rent a car explore on your own.

The most popular loop for daytrippers from Reykjavik is the Golden Circle tour. This circuit includes some of Iceland's most visited attractions: Thingvellir National Park, where you can see the continental drift between the North American and Eurasian plates; the Strokkur geyser and Gullfoss (or Golden Falls), two enormous waterfalls.

Two other popular daytrips include a journey along Iceland's South Coast and a day exploring the Snaefellsnes Peninsula to the north and west of Reykjavik. The South Coast is a heavy hitter when it comes to big attractions. You'll see impressive waterfalls like Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss, black-sand beaches and the picturesque village of Vik. Snaefellsnes is wild and remote with small fishing villages and windswept coastlines and the frequently photographed Kirkjufell mountain.

[See: 9 Affordable Spring Outdoor Adventures.]

Day 4

If you have an extra day to spare in Iceland, it's an ideal time to explore anything in Reykjavik that you didn't have a chance to see, or take a quick excursion from the city, like a whale-watching cruise. If you didn't make it to the Blue Lagoon on arrival, take a dip here before your flight.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)  A robber in Virginia ruined his own getaway  first by breaking his leg in a jump off a balcony, and then by calling the authorities to help him.

Police say 21-year-old Leoul Yosef will be charged with burglary for robbing an Alexandria apartment on Wednesday and then jumping off the second-story balcony after the owner returned home.

Fairfax County Police Officer Don Gatthardt says Yosef left tracks in the snow when he jumped.

Officers say they were following the snow trail when they received a 911 call from a man in the vicinity saying he'd broken his leg. Responding officers matched the identity of the caller to the burglary suspect.

Gatthhardt says Yosef will be charged after his release from the hospital.

It's unclear if Yosef has an attorney.
ALAMO, Tenn. (AP)  A Tennessee deputy has fatally shot a New Orleans man who tried to strike deputies with his vehicle, authorities said.

Crockett County sheriff's deputies initially responded Thursday after 36-year-old Rodney James Hess blocked traffic on a highway near Alamo, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Hess was acting erratically, refused to obey orders and tried to strike the deputies at least twice with his vehicle, the statement said.

While events escalated, police say at least one Crockett County deputy fired his gun and struck Hess, who was taken to a Memphis hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Hess is black. Neither the bureau nor the Crockett County Sheriff's Office would release the name of the deputy involved.

Hess' fiancee, Johnisha Provost, told The Jackson Sun that Hess was asking for help "and they shot him down."

Provost, who lives in Texas where she shared a home with Hess, said she wants people to know he was a great father and loved life. She said he suffered from bipolar disorder and said she could tell from videos that he was disoriented and lost.

Hess was in Tennessee visiting his mother, who lives in the Memphis area, and was on his way back to Texas when he died.

A woman identifying herself as an aunt of Hess' posted a video to Facebook that she says was taken by Hess moments before he was shot.

A relative of Hess' declined comment when reached by phone by The Associated Press.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine said the agency is aware of the video but could not confirm its authenticity. He said the agency plans to examine the video as part of its investigation.
SEOUL (Reuters) - A policy of strategic patience with North Korea has ended, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday, adding that a "comprehensive set of capabilities" was being developed to deal with the isolated country. South Korea and the United States share the goal of the complete denuclearization of North Korea, South Korean Foreign Minster Yun Byung-se told a joint news conference with the visiting U.S. secretary of state. Yun also said a U.S. anti-missile system that South Korea is deploying is only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country. China is vehemently opposed to South Korea's agreement with the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, saying it undermines its security. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
SEOUL (Reuters) - A policy of strategic patience with North Korea has ended, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday, adding that a "comprehensive set of capabilities" was being developed to deal with the isolated country. South Korea and the United States share the goal of the complete denuclearisation of North Korea, South Korean Foreign Minster Yun Byung-se told a joint news conference with the visiting U.S. secretary of state. Yun also said a U.S. anti-missile system that South Korea is deploying is only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country. China is vehemently opposed to South Korea's agreement with the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, saying it undermines its security. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland's main opposition party, the liberal Civic Platform (PO), on Friday said it would table a motion of no confidence against the conservative government to protest its "demolition of democracy".

The move comes a week after the Law and Justice (PiS) government lost a diplomatic campaign to oust rival Donald Tusk -- a former Polish premier from the PO -- from his current post as European Council president.

The PO said it would lodge the motion next week. It has no chance of succeeding, since the PiS enjoys an absolute majority in parliament.

"For 17 months now, the government of (Prime Minister) Beata Szydlo has been demolishing Poland," PO lawmaker Slawomir Neumann told reporters.

"It's been demolishing democracy, the state of law, especially civil liberties. It's been attacking self-governing local institutions, the independent judiciary," he added.

Since coming to power in November 2015, the PiS has introduced several controversial reforms, including an overhaul of the constitutional court and moves to increase state control over public broadcasters.

"Over the course of the last few days and weeks, it discredited Poland on the world stage," Neumann added, referring to last week's clash at the Brussels summit of EU leaders.

The bloc's leaders voted by 27 to one to give Tusk a fresh two-and-a-half-year term -- with only Szydlo voting against.

The outcome led Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski to accuse the European Union of "cheating" and announce a "negative" policy towards Brussels.

Fellow opposition parties, Nowoczesna and the PSL, said they would back the motion of no confidence.
Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Friday advised priests who hear troubled confessions from parishioners to not hesitate to call on the services of an exorcist.

A good confessor has to be very discerning, particularly when he has to deal with "real spiritual disorders," the 80-year-old pontiff told priests at a Vatican training seminar on the art of hearing believers recount their sins.

Disorders could have their roots in all manner of circumstances, including supernatural ones, he suggested.

In such circumstances the confessor "must not hesitate to refer to exorcists... chosen with great care and prudence."

It is not the first time the pope has talked about exorcising demons from a believer's person, and he generally refers more frequently than his predecessors to the devil, characterising him as a physical presence in this world.

Francis has described jihadists who stabbed a French priest to death as satanic and the acts of priests who sexually abuse children as akin to participating in a satanic mass.

Vatican universities also regularly hold training courses for would-be exorcists despite the practice being frowned upon by some Church intellectuals.

Francis also presided on Friday over a celebration of penitence in St Peter's cathedral, during which he confessed himself before hearing confessions of several of the faithful.
Riyadh (AFP) - A Saudi Islamic leader with more than two million Twitter followers has been banned from writing by a court that convicted him of jeopardising public order.

Awad al-Qarni, previously accused of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, was also fined 100,000 riyals ($27,000), Okaz newspaper reported on its website late Thursday.

It did not name the "famous preacher" but Qarni himself confirmed the verdict on his @awadalqarni Twitter account late Thursday.

"I am prevented from writing" on the account, he wrote, before issuing a Twitter message early Friday thanking his followers.

Qarni was "one of the key clerics of the Sahwa movement," British scholar Toby Matthieson has written.

The Sahwa emerged in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 70s as "a modern form of Islamic activism" which had wide impact and whose founders were exiled Muslim Brothers, according to another expert, Stephane Lacroix.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have all declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a "terrorist group".

Okaz said Riyadh's Specialised Criminal Court, which handles "terrorism" cases, convicted the preacher on Thursday of spreading content on Twitter which "could jeopardise public order and provoke public opinion."

It said the content "could affect the relationship of the people with the leadership, and the relationship of Saudi Arabia with other countries."

There were no further details but Okaz said Qarni was tried without having been arrested.

"We have appealed the case," Qarni said on Twitter.

Lacroix, of Sciences Po university in Paris, told AFP in December that changes late last year to the kingdom's highest religious authority confirmed an "anti-Sahwa, anti-Muslim Brotherhood" trend.

In 2010, Qarni was charged in absentia by an Egyptian court with funding the Muslim Brotherhood.
Photo credit: Porsche

From Road & Track

We automotive enthusiasts live in weird times. Soon, the most powerful car in Porsche's lineup will be, not a 911, but a 680-hp sedan, the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. Now, we find out that Porsche's also working on sticking this hybrid drivetrain into the Cayenne because, yes, of course the world needs a 680-hp SUV.

Pictured above is a Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid.

Porsche CEO Oliver Blume confirmed development of the Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid in an interview with Australia's Motoring at the Geneva Motor Show. This 680-horse mega-SUV should make its debut some time next year.

Blume told Motoring that the idea is "to promote the electric power and therefore make the top-of-the-line model a hybrid version, like the Turbo S."

As Blume explained, Porsche has no plans to introduce a hybrid version of its current 991-generation 911. The next generation car, codenamed 992, can accommodate a plug-in hybrid drivetrain, Blume said, but Porsche hasn't decided whether it would bring such a variant into production.

While it might be hard to wrap your head around a near-700-hp SUV, the Cayenne Turbo S E-Hybrid will have some genuine competition when it eventually arrives, with the Hellcat-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk and the Lamborghini Urus coming soon, and others doubtless following.

Weird times, indeed.

via Carscoops

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President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning to criticize North Korea during a moment of heightened tensions between the two countries, accusing the hermit kingdom and nuclear power of playing the United States.

North Korea is behaving very badly, he said. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!

The tweet comes just after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Seoul that the U.S. would not return to the bargaining table to dissuade North Koreas nuclear buildup, but would consider pre-emptive military intervention as an option. When asked if the U.S. would consider military action to stop North Koreas nuclear development, Tillerson said we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict, but added that if they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then that options on the table.

North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2017

The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said, signaling an end to the Obama Aministrations strategy of increasing sanctions and covert action in the hopes of dissuading North Korea from further nuclear development. North Korea has conducted nuclear and missile tests, and has publicly boasted that it intends to develop a nuclear-armed ballistic missile that can reach the continental U.S. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced on New Years Day that the country was preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, and experts say the countrys nuclear program is four to five years away from fully achieving that goal.

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Tillerson is expected to travel to China on Saturday.
When President Trump accused Barack Obama of wiretapping him when he was a candidate, Obama denied it and Democrats criticized him for levying the claim without evidence. Now, even Trumps allies are backing away from the accusation.

Although the White House is standing by the claim, key Republican leaders are breaking with the President and mounting pressure for Trump to retract the statement.

Heres a look at the top Republicans who have distanced themselves from Trump on the issue.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.): At least so far with respect to our intelligence community, no such wiretap existed, the House Speaker said Thursday. We see no evidence of that.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman delivered a joint statement with the panels top Democrat Thursday, which said, Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.): I dont think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower, the House Intelligence Committee chairman said at a press conference Wednesday. Referencing Trumps original claims on Twitter, Nunes added, Are you going to take the tweets literally? And if you are, then clearly the president was wrong.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions: Look, the answer is no, the Sessions said Wednesday when asked whether he had given Trump any reason to believe that he was wiretapped by the previous Administration.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): Well hold up the deputy attorney generals nomination until Congress is provided with information to finally clear the air as to whether or not there was ever a warrant issued against the Trump campaign, Graham said on NBC Wednesday, jumping off Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassleys saying that the committee would hold up the nomination until it received an FBI briefing on ties between the Trump Administration and Russia. Graham also threatened to subpoena the Justice Department for any evidence wiretapping warrants or applications.

Mike Pence: On March 8, Trumps own vice president shied away from defending his claim. What I can say is that the President and our Administration are very confident that the congressional committees in the House and Senate that are examining issues surrounding the last election, the run-up to the last election, will do that in a thorough and equitable way, Pence said when WEWS asked him whether he believed Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
President Trump repeated that he might have been wiretapped by Barack Obama Friday, even as he held a White House claim that British intelligence was involved at arms length.

Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump alluded to reports that the United States monitored Merkels cell phone under the Obama Administration.

As far as wiretapping by this last Administration  at least we have something in common, perhaps, he said.

But Trump also tried to distance himself from White House allegations that the British spy service GCHQ might have wiretapped Trump at Obamas behest  something the GCHQ called nonsense in a rare public statement.

After noting that he very seldom regrets tweets, Trump argued that the White House was only repeating something Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano had said.

We said nothing, he said. All we did was quote a very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying it on television. I didnt make an opinion on it. 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.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer added that he was simply reading media accounts when he made the claim about British intelligence.

I dont think we regret anything, he told reporters Friday. We literally listed a litany of media reports that are in the public domain.

Several ranking members of both the House and Senate Intelligence committees have also said there is no evidence for Trumps claims.

With Zeke J. Miller
David Clarke, the mustachioed and cowboy-hatted sheriff of Milwaukee County, made a request to the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month.

In a March 9 letter to acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Clarke said he was deeply concerned about the potential threats that he said undocumented immigrants pose to citizens under his jurisdiction. He asked ICE to empower his officers to round up undocumented immigrants in his community.

Clarke, a cheerleader of President Donald Trumps hardline immigration policies, wanted Milwaukee County to join an ICE program called 287(g). Named after a provision in a 1996 immigration law, the voluntary program lets the feds deputize state and local officers to perform some of the duties of federal immigration agents. Clarke wanted to participate in a version of the program that screens for undocumented immigrants in local jails and allows trained officers to patrol the streets and identify undocumented immigrants in the community for removal.

The controversial sheriff is one of several to make such a request in the early weeks of the Trump Administration. Officials in Anne Arundel County, Md., have applied to join the program. Bill Waybourn, the sheriff of Tarrant County, Tex., wants deputies in his jail to be able to identify undocumented immigrants. Sheriff P.J. Tanner of Beaufort County, S.C. applied to revive the task force model of 287(g), which would allow certain officers in his jurisdiction to arrest and detain the worst of the worst among undocumented immigrants, including gang members, drug dealers and other violent criminals.

Those requests are pending, and formalizing the agreements will take time. But Trumps support for 287(g) alarms immigration-reform advocates. I thought that we were close to closing the chapter of the ugly history of the 287(g) program, says Chris Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Since the first 287(g) agreements were signed in 2002, the program has been a source of controversy. The Obama Administration reduced its use, instead focusing on a mandatory program that identified criminal undocumented immigrants in police custody. The number of places participating in 287(g) dwindled during Obamas presidency, from 72 in 2011 to 37 in 16 states as of this month.

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That could change under Trump. The President asked DHS to enter into more 287(g) partnerships in his January executive order on immigration. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly called the program a highly successful force multiplier in memos outlining the orders guidelines. Empowering state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law is critical to an effective enforcement strategy, Kelly said. Between 2006 and 2015, more than 402,000 immigrants were identified for removal as a result of the program.

Trump has ordered DHS to hire 15,000 new agents and taken aim at so-called sanctuary cities places where local officials choose either to limit engagements with ICE or not actively enforce civil immigration lawby threatening to block some federal funding. But hiring officers takes time, and getting the money to pay them takes an act of Congress. To fulfill his pledges, the President could use the help of local and state officials. Through 287(g), ICE can tap into local resources to carry out its mission.

The program has a fraught history. Initially, its focus was supposed to be narrow: officers apprehended only dangerous criminals, and its application was limited to jails. But that changed in 2006, when Jim Pendergraph, a sheriff in the Charlotte, N.C., area, allowed his officers to screen for violations of civil immigration law. Pendergraph, whose goal was to get as many undocumented immigrants out of the area as possible, went on to become the chief of ICEs Office of State and Local Coordination, and his model informed the departments approach as the programs use grew, especially in the South.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio ran the most notorious program, using it to justify massive sweeps during which Latinos were racially profiled and suffered civil rights abuses. In Arpaios Maricopa County, there were people in yellow suits running around catching Hispanics, recalls Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, which published an in-depth study on the programs in 2011.  There was a lot of bad imagery.

Given this history, some law enforcement leaders have come forward to say they wont participate in the program, no matter Trumps wishes. Local law enforcement is pushing back because [287(g)] doesnt serve their interests in terms of public safety, says Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum. In late February, the newly elected sheriff of Texass Harris County, which includes Houston, announced he would no longer participate in the program. The Los Angeles Chief of Police said in November he planned to maintain separation between his departments activities and those of immigration enforcement officials. After a recent raid in Santa Cruz, Calif., the citys police chief denounced the feds tactics.

Were not here to enforce federal, civil immigration laws. We dont enforce federal civil debt collection laws. Were a criminal law agency, says Lawrence Byrne of the New York City Police Department. Our mission is to prevent crime, investigate crime, and prevent acts of terrorism.

On March 1, the 63 police chiefs and sheriffs who make up the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force signed onto a letter that said they dont want their officers acting as immigration enforcement agents. Mike Tupper, the chief of police in Marshalltown, Iowa, was one of the signatories. He says programs like 287(g) make it hard for immigrant communities to trust local officers. If immigrants cannot differentiate between the local police and immigration-enforcement officers, Tupper says, they wont know who to trust if they witness or are the victim of a crime. The nuts and bolts of policing is daily interaction with the community that youre serving, the chief told TIME. Its very difficult to do that when youre engaged in federal immigration enforcement.

This view has been criticized by Trump and fellow immigration hardliners. The Federation for American Immigration Reform says that local authorities that shun enforcement responsibilities are being unfair to legal immigrants, and create an environment where terrorists and other criminal aliens can go unnoticed and uninterrupted.

Like other opponents of the 287(g) program, Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez says it is not that he doesnt want to work with ICE, or even that he will not. He told TIME he backed out of the 287(g) program earlier this year not only because of the controversy it generated, but also because of his departments limited resources. The county spent $675,000 staffing the program, money Gonzalez says could be used to buy new patrol cars or bolster his investigative unit. I felt that it would also be appropriate, Gonzalez says, to separate ourselves from that program and to focus instead on community policing.

The 287(g) program is more popular among sheriffs than police chiefs. Newman, of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says that may be because police chiefs are more pragmatic, while elected sheriffslike Clarke, a celebrity among the far-right grassrootscan be driven by politics. Of the 37 existing 287(g) agreements, only two are with metropolitan police departmentsone in Las Vegas and one in Carrollton, Tex. In the city of Milwaukee, the seat of Clarkes county, Police Chief Edward Flynn has said he does not intend to have officers act in an immigration-enforcement capacity.

Pro-immigration advocates like Newman says they hope that racist policies like the 287(g) program are not on the rise again under Trump. I think in the future, he says, we will look on this period with embarrassment.
Meta Athena is the most inventive team in Overwatch right now, and their unpredictability has made them unstoppable in the professional scene. Almost nobody had heard of them before last month.

In December, Meta Athena qualified for the second season of OGN's Overwatch Apex, one of the most premiere Overwatch leagues in the world and the team's first competition of that caliber. Since the start of the qualifiers, the team has been tearing through the competition, racking up seven straight wins in an undefeated run straight to the playoffs.

The South Korean team, which is primarily made up of high school-aged players, consistently manages to outplay and outmaneuver its opponents using strategies that nobody has ever seen before and it's turning the pro Overwatch meta on its head.

In today's match against KongDoo Panthera, Meta's star player Kim "Libero" Hye Sung took everything you thought you knew about Sombra and threw it out the window, resulting in one of the most aggressive pushes toward the first point on Hanamura ever seen.

SEE ALSO: Crafty high school teens create a fully immersive VR setup for 'Overwatch'

Typically Sombra's Translocator is used to get out of danger in a flash but Libero used it to jump into the action. Libero hacked the enemy Zarya in mid-air and helped take her out while the rest of Meta charged forward. The method worked, primarily because no one would expect a Sombra to appear behind enemy lines like that.

During the same match on the earlier map Numbani, Libero assisted with yet another aggressive and inventive offensive strategy, utilizing Mei's Ice Wall to give the team an advantageous boost to take the high ground above the payload capture point.

Meta Athena moves like a single entity as they push forward toward the point, moving at the same time in their perfectly coordinated advance. After boosting up the team, Libero used Mei's Ice Wall a second time as the perfect cover as the team continued. The push is so fast and unexpected, KongDoo Panthera couldn't help but stand there and get steamrolled.

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Earlier this week, Meta pulled off a similar move against Afreeca Freecs Blue, this time on Eichenwalde.

Libero, playing as Mei again, used Ice Wall to boost the team up and around the normal first choke point toward the payload. The team moved around the back of Afreeca Freecs and engaged in a fight inside the house overlooking the payload, which is typically a pretty solid hold for the defensive team. After that move, that game was pretty much over.

Because the ever-dropping time limit is so crucial to Overwatch, these extremely aggressive and surprising plays to overwhelm the defense on the first point are key. The defense has a long walk back after they spawn and by then they're likely too flustered to gather a strong defense, never sure of what shenanigans Meta might pull next.

Plus, Meta Athena is made up of a bunch of amazingly talented players.

The semifinals of Overwatch Apex Season 2 take place next week, and the finals wrap up on April 4. Meta Athena will definitely be one of the top teams to watch.
As President Trump faces yet another challenge to the immigration restrictions he has tried to implement since the first month of his term in office, opponents of his efforts might see a judges blocking the restrictions as a victory for an idea that has been expressed repeatedly in the weeks since the original travel ban was issued: that such an order is antithetical to the United States identity as a nation of immigrants.

That concept of a nation of immigrants has been invoked since the 1950s to advance the notion of the United States as a land of opportunity, founded and built by immigrants. This narrative, according to historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, emerged within the context of the social justice activism of the period (i.e. the Civil Rights Movement), which was instrumental in raising moral consciousness about an immigration system that banned certain groups from entering the U.S. solely on the bases of race. As Dunbar-Ortiz noted, What emerged to replace the liberal melting pot idea and the nationalist triumphal interpretation of the greatest country on earth and in history, was the nation of immigrants story.

But, while its easy to see why the narrative might appeal to the Presidents critics, it is not without its own critics. The main problem with the nation of immigrants narrative is a simple one: its not true.

A hint at the problems with the idea made headlines on March 6, the same day Trump rolled out his revised immigration ban, when Dr. Ben Carsons first speech as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development described slaves as immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, drawing criticism from those who noted that it would have been more accurate to describe them not as immigrants but as trafficking victims. But, as Dunbar-Ortiz posits, the American narrative about immigration has always had an aspect of masking issues such as settler colonialism, slavery and structural inequality, by promoting a benign narrative of American progress.

John F. Kennedy, whose forebears emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. in the 1840s, was the staunchest advocate of this narrative in its early years. He used his office as Senator (1953-1960) and later as President (1961-1963) as a bully pulpit to push for immigration reform that would overturn immigration policy, which at the time centered on a quota system based on national origins, which had been enacted in the 1920s.

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Though Kennedy would not live to see immigration reform enacted in 1965, his sentiment was cemented in a book he wrote in 1958, which was published posthumously in 1964 under the title A Nation of Immigrants. Despite the fact that Columbus never set foot on the North American continent known by its indigenous inhabitants as Turtle Island, Kennedy followed the conventional wisdom of the discovery story with the assertion that the countrys history of immigration began with three ships sailing under the Spanish flag commanded by an Italian sea captain and included in their crews an Englishmen, an Irishman, a Jew, and a Negro. The Negro, according to legend, was Pedro Alonso Nino, who came from a sailing family and piloted the Santa Maria during Columbus first voyage. The slave trade is absent from Kennedys account. His only mention of slavery was to acknowledge that Negro slaves did not have the same freedom of opportunity as their European counterparts. Notwithstanding, they were included within the immigration narrative. As Kennedy asserted, every American who ever lived with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants.

Though Kennedy did acknowledge that the indigenous population was the exception, he noted that some anthropologists believe that the Indians themselves were immigrants from another continent who displaced the original Americansthe aborigines.

Both Vine Deloria Jr. in his book Red Earth, White Lies and Dunbar- Ortiz in her book All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans discuss the inclusion of Native Americans in the nation of immigrants narrative. Their inclusion is often premised on what became known as the Bering Land Bridge Theory, which aimed to explain how the original inhabitants came to occupy the Americas. The Land Bridge Theory, which began to spread in the early 19th century and was popularized in the 1920s, proposed that Asia and North America had at one point been connected, which allowed for peoples of the East to migrate to the West during the original spread of homo sapiens across the globe, in one single mass migration. This theory has long been accepted as fact by many people, even though scientific evidence suggests that in fact migration took place over a longer, earlier spread of time than the theory suggests. Misunderstanding of that past, and the idea that Native Americans came to North America later than they in fact did, has been used against tribes seeking legal redress for infringements on their sovereignty. If, as Deloria puts it, the indigenous inhabitants were latecomers who had barely unpacked before Columbus came knocking at the door, then tribal sovereignty could be rendered meaningless.

Case in point, Deloria describes an occasion in the 1960s when California Indians, protesting the Indian Claims Commission decision to file a number of land claims as one complaint rather than as separate claims, were told by former Senator Arthur V. Watkins to go back where you came from! In 1973, a woman gleefully told Deloria, after the Bering Land Bridge Theory was Introduced during a court hearing in Nebraska for Sioux Indians involved in Wounded Knee II, Well dearie, we are all immigrants from somewhere.

In short, when the U.S. is seen as a nation of immigrants, Native Americans are either excluded from the national narrative or included to their detriment.

So where does this leave those who would invoke the nation of immigrants narrative in opposition to President Trumps executive orders on immigration?

While this mythology was effective 60 years ago to bring about immigration reform, its use continues at the expense of indigenous peoples and descendants of slaves. For certain, some Americans are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, but others are descendants of those who were here since time immemorial and others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. It shouldnt be necessary to generalize that the U.S. is all about one of those categories in order to acknowledge that all have contributed to the building of this nation in the past, in the present and for the future.

The Long View

Historians explain how the past informs the present

Arica L. Coleman is the author of That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia and chair of the Committee on the Status of African American, Latino/a, Asian American, and Native American (ALANA) Historians and ALANA Histories at the Organization of American Historians.
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP)  Protesters demonstrated Friday in the Armenian capital of Yerevan for a second consecutive day over the death in prison of an opposition activist.

Over 1,000 people gathered in downtown Yerevan to criticize the government and demand a proper investigation into the death of 49-year old Artur Sarkisyan, who was in prison on charges of aiding terrorists.

Sarkisyan went on a hunger strike last month to protest his incarceration. He died of heart failure on Thursday after being transferred from prison to a hospital, where he immediately underwent emergency surgery.

Investigators have opened a criminal case into his death.

Senior Armenian officials have expressed regret over his death. Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan said Friday he was experiencing "deep pain" about what happened.

The demonstration Friday was significantly larger than a smaller protest Thursday evening in Yerevan. The unrest comes ahead of a parliamentary election on April 2.

Sarkisyan had been accused of breaking a police cordon to deliver food to gunmen amid a two-week standoff in July.

Two people died and several were wounded in the standoff, when about 30 armed members of a radical opposition group took hostages and barricaded themselves inside a police station. The group was calling for the release from prison of their leader and the resignation of the Armenian government.

The violent confrontation triggered political unrest in the southern Caucasus nation, galvanizing the opposition and leading to repeated clashes between protesters and police.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  A doctor in Puerto Rico has been sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty in a $1.2 million health care fraud case.

A federal judge on Friday also ordered Dr. Juan Jose Tull Abreu to pay more than half a million dollars in restitution to six Medicare Advantage insurance carriers.

Dr. Tull was accused of submitting Medicare claims for services that federal authorities said were never rendered. He was convicted last year after witnesses testified that he submitted invoices for office and home visits when in reality his office was closed or he was traveling outside the U.S. territory.

Dr. Tull's attorney could not be immediately reached for comment.
Many things about it scream "Surf's Up!"

Tom Carroll has the bright-yellow board, the sun is shining -- well, trying to -- and the eyes of the Australian surfing legend twinkle at the prospect of riding the crashing waves.

But this is no Bondi Beach, board shorts are definitely not an option and instead of sand there is snow, lots of it.

Because this is Unstad, Norway, where mountains provide a stunning backdrop and the 55-year-old Carroll is surfing the freezing-cold waves.

"It's a big change coming from a Sydney summer to winter here," Carroll, a former two-time world surfing champion, told AFP, crediting advancements in wetsuits for keeping him alive in the frigid waters.

Carroll said that on the US East Coast and in Japan surfers have similarly pushed the boundaries in surfing in dangerously bone-chilling climates, but he added: "The Scandinavians in general are really pushing the limit.

"But this feels natural for them. I've just watched them in the water -- it's so normal for them.

"It's like, 'Let's get changed on the snow, outside the car.'

"There was a girl, changing in the snow, outside the car. My daughters would never think of doing that.

"They would look at you like you're crazy."

Carroll is in far-northern Norway at the invitation of Tommy Olsen, a pioneer of Arctic surfing and owner of a surf school in Unstad, where temperatures dip below freezing this time of year.

Carroll, who retired from the competitive surfing circuit in 1993 but remains one of its biggest ever names, added: "This is an exotic experience for me.

"It's an extraordinary place. It feels really clean, the water, the ocean, the air... it's all so clean here.

"Crisp and clean. That's just a lovely feeling."
London (AFP) - A British man has been convicted of capturing and killing two of Britain's rarest butterflies, the endangered Large Blues, which have been a prized collector's item since the Victorian era.

Judges at the court in the southwest city of Bristol late on Thursday found 57-year-old Philip Cullen guilty of killing the Large Blues, which have protected status, and he faces a possible prison sentence to be decided next month.

"It is a unique case. There has never been a prosecution in terms of capturing and killing in the past," prosecutor Kevin Withey told the court.

Conservation volunteers had spotted Cullen trapping Large Blues with a small net in two protected areas in Gloucestershire and Somerset in southwest England.

Police then raided his home in Bristol in February last year and found 30 trays of dead moths and butterflies, including the Large Blues in question.

Investigators discovered that Cullen was selling the butterflies on eBay while he claimed he had bought the Large Blues in his possession from a French farm.

First discovered in Britain in 1795, Large Blues had disappeared from the country by 1979. They were re-introduced from Sweden in 1983 at a dozen sites.

Butterfly Conservation, a non-governmental group, said there was a black market for mounted Large Blues mocked up to look like Victorian-era specimens that could sell for up to 300 (345 euros, $371) each.
By Robin Respaut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Republican-proposed bill to replace Obamacare would be a credit negative for U.S. states, according to Moody's Investors Service, because it would shift a greater share of the cost of Medicaid to the states.

The bill, known as the American Health Care Act, aims to replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The bill proposes to shift federal funding for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, from a state-match to a per capita cap, resulting in a greater financial burden on states, Moody's reported.

The proposal would also phase out funding for expanded Medicaid by 2020, leaving states to pick up the difference or to drop enrollees from their Medicaid programs.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the proposed reform would cut federal spending by $880 billion between 2017 and 2026, reaching a 25 percent lower level by 2026 compared to current-law projections.

"States will face difficult decisions in this regard," Moody's reported on Friday. "If states maintain the expansion programs for non-elderly adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, they will be on the hook for a larger portion of expenses related to new enrollees."

Already, state Medicaid spending is expected to consume a larger portion of state revenues, growing by 28 percent of tax revenue by 2025, up from 24.5 percent in 2017, the rating agency estimated.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Bernard Orr)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans' proposed healthcare plan to unravel Obamacare likely will be changed to adjust its tax credits to help older Americans buy health insurance coverage, two Republican lawmakers said on Friday.

House Budget Committee Chairman Diane Black said it was very likely there would be such changes to do more for older, lower-income people. U.S. Representative Tom Cole said House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier on Friday had "pretty much committed" to altering the plan's tax credits to help older Americans.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP)  It sounds like an idea that would warm a conservative Republican's heart: Kill funding of a regional environmental cleanup that has lasted seven years and cost the federal government more than $2 billion, with no end in sight. If states want to keep the program going, let them pick up the tab.

That is what President Donald Trump's 2018 budget plan proposes for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ambitious push to fix problems that have long bedeviled the world's largest surface freshwater system  from invasive species to algal blooms and toxic sludge fouling tributary rivers.

During the Obama administration, the program generally got about $300 million a year. Trump's offer is zero. His spending plan released Thursday says it "returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities."

The response from Republicans in Great Lakes states: No, thanks.

"I think it makes sense for us to continue to make prudent investments in protecting and improving the Great Lakes," Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told The Associated Press, adding that he would lobby the Trump administration and congressional leaders to put the money back.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan considers Great Lakes funding "very important to Michiganders, therefore we know there is strong support among Michigan's congressional delegation and we will work with them to preserve the funding," spokeswoman Anna Heaton said.

GOP lawmakers from the region also rushed out statements defending the program. It "helps protect both our environment and our economy," U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said.

The reaction illustrates a political fact of life: Whether you consider something in the budget valuable or wasteful can depend a lot on where you're from.

And it underscores the resistance Trump may encounter to some spending cuts he is proposing for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior and other agencies that draw frequent attacks from congressional Republicans yet fund projects and services with support back home.

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The president's spending blueprint also targets a Chesapeake Bay cleanup begun in 1983 that received $73 million last year, plus other "geographic programs." It doesn't identify them, but a proposal by the Office of Management and Budget this month called for cutting all or most funding for San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked for more details, EPA released a statement saying the plan "reflects the president's priorities" and that Administrator Scott Pruitt "is committed to leading the EPA in a more effective, more focused, less costly way as we partner with states to fulfill the agency's core mission."

Before his confirmation as EPA chief, Pruitt told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee he would "continue EPA's support" of the initiative. In a written response to questions, Pruitt made no promises about funding, but said he would consider what the program received previously when making budget recommendations.

The Great Lakes region includes swing states crucial to Trump's election  Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. There's also New York, Minnesota and Illinois. And Indiana, whose former governor, Mike Pence, is now Trump's vice president.

Coincidentally, the budget plan was released as about 100 Great Lakes advocates paid a yearly visit to Washington, D.C., in support of the restoration initiative. They flocked to the offices of home-state lawmakers, reminding them that Congress voted only last year to extend the program another five years.

"We are going to turn once again to our bipartisan congressional champions," said Todd Ambs, director of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

While Democratic lawmakers excoriated Trump's proposal  "incredibly short-sighted and reckless," said Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan  Republicans noted that former President Barack Obama at times recommended more modest reductions to the initiative, which Congress rejected.

Some also pointed out that former President George W. Bush signed initial legislation authorizing a wide-ranging Great Lakes cleanup, although he sought little money for it.

The initiative has funded nearly 3,000 projects across the eight states. Among them: efforts to prevent Asian carp from invading the lakes, prevent nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algal blooms, rebuild wetlands where fish spawn and remove sediments laced with PCBs and other toxins.

Nearly all the federal grants require cost-share payments from a state, local or tribal agency, or perhaps a nonprofit organization. But Ambs said they can't afford to shoulder the burden alone.

Without federal support, "all of this restoration work would come to a halt," he said.

___

Contributing to this story were Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia.

___

Follow John Flesher on Twitter at https://twitter.com/johnflesher
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillersons use of an alias email address while he was chief executive officer at Exxon Mobil Corp was entirely proper, attorneys representing the company said in a letter to a New York court on Thursday.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating whether Exxon misled shareholders and the public about climate change, wrote to a judge on Monday accusing Exxon of not previously disclosing the alias and Tillersons communications through it.

Tillerson had used the alias email address while at the oil company to send and receive information related to climate change and other matters.

It (alias email address) allowed a limited group of senior executives to send time-sensitive messages to Mr. Tillerson that received priority over the normal daily traffic that crossed the desk of a busy CEO. The purpose was efficiency, not secrecy, attorneys at the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP said.

Had Tillerson set up the alias email address with the purpose of secrecy, emails to the account would have avoided any reference to Tillerson as the intended recipient, the attorneys said.

Obtaining publicity, not information, appears to have been the real goal of the New York Attorney Generals March 13 letter, the attorneys said.

The New York Attorney Generals March 13 letter asked the judge to order Exxon to explain whether documents from the alias email and 34 additional accounts assigned to other Exxon executives and board members had been preserved.

Exxon has provided 2.5 million pages of documents in response to a subpoena from Schneidermans office.

More than 16 months after receiving our subpoena, Exxon is just now admitting it may not have preserved or produced the emails of its former CEO, who used an alias email account. We look forward to addressing these, and the other issues our letter raised, in court, Amy Spitalnick, press secretary at the office of the New York attorney general, said in an email.
SEOUL, South Korea  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level that we believe requires action.

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Koreas nuclear threat after visiting the worlds most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rivals Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about the possibility of using military force, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, all of the options are on the table.

He said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.

But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the U.S. is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.

Past U.S. administrations have considered military force because of North Koreas development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, but rarely has that option been expressed so explicitly.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the U.S. within a few years.

Tillerson met Friday with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se and its acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn on the second leg of a three-nation trip which began in Japan and will end in China. State Department officials have described it as a listening tour as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy, well-coordinated with its Asian partners.

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Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter Friday at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But its the first trip by the new Trump administrations senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. Land mine explosions in 2015 that Seoul blamed on Pyongyang maimed two South Korean soldiers and led the rivals to threaten each other with attacks.

Hordes of tourists visit both sides, despite the lingering animosity. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options  including military ones  for halting the Norths weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of threatening the U.S. mainland.

Tillerson declared an end to the policy strategic patience of the Obama administration, which held off negotiating with Pyongyang while tightening of sanctions but failed to prevent North Koreas weapons development. Tillerson said U.S was exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures.

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains the Norths most powerful ally. Tillerson will meet with top Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping in Beijing this weekend.

While the U.S. and its allies in Seoul and Tokyo implore Beijing to press its economic leverage over North Korea, the Chinese have emphasized their desire to relaunch diplomatic talks.

Tillerson, however, said that 20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today.

Its important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks, he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something that North Korea has shown little interest in doing.

Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

He also accused China of economic retaliation against South Korea over the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system. He called that reaction inappropriate and troubling and said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary. China sees the system as a threat to its own security.

Last week, North Korea launched four missiles into seas off Japan, in an apparent reaction to major annual military drills the U.S. is currently conducting with South Korea. Pyongyang claims the drills are a rehearsal for invasion
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Supreme Court is to consider whether Jehovah's Witnesses is an "extremist" organization after the justice ministry applied for an order to shut down the group's national headquarters near St Petersburg. The U.S.-founded Jehovah's Witnesses says it numbers about 8 million people worldwide. The religious organization is known for its foreign ministries as well as its door-to-door campaigns, but has had problems for years with Russian authorities, who view it as a pernicious cult, an allegation it denies. Authorities have put several of its publications on a list of banned extremist literature, and prosecutors have long cast it as an organization that destroys families, fosters hatred and threatens lives, a description the organization says is false. A filing on the Supreme Court's website said it would convene on April 5 to consider the justice ministry's application to order the closure of the organization's Russian headquarters and ban its activity. The Russian branch of Jehovah's Witnesses said it rejected the charge it was an extremist organization. It said such a ban would directly affect around 400 of its groups and impact on all of its 2,277 religious groups in Russia which it said united 175,000 followers. "Millions of believers all over the world consider the ministry's actions a big mistake," it said in a statement. "If this lawsuit is successful, it will entail catastrophic consequences for freedom of religious worship in Russia." Russian investigators conducted a large-scale inspection of its national headquarters near St. Petersburg earlier this year, carting off many documents. According to Amnesty International, 16 members of the group in southern Russia were found guilty of organizing and participating in a banned "extremist organization" in late 2015. Rights activists have criticized Russia for the way it applies a 2006 law which widened the definition of extremism. (Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Toby Davis)
When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, half of its foreign-born delegates were born in Ireland. For St. Patricks Day, heres a look at these mostly forgotten figures.

William Paterson

By the time of the convention in May 1787, almost all of the 55 delegates who took part in the discussions that summer were born in America. The exceptions were Alexander Hamilton (from the West Indies), James Wilson (Scotland), William Richardson Davie and Robert Morris (England), and the four delegates born in Ireland.

Heres a look at the four men who played varying roles in the Constitutions creation.

William Paterson

Paterson represented New Jersey at the convention, but he was born in County Antrim, Ireland, in 1745. He came over to America at the age of two with his family. Young William graduated from Princeton at the age of 18 and soon became a prominent lawyer.

Paterson served as New Jerseys attorney general before the Constitutional convention. He was only at the convention until late July, but he co-authored the New Jersey, or Paterson, Plan, which sought to protect smaller states against larger ones. Under the Paterson Plan, there would be one legislature, with equally representation for each state.

Part of the Paterson Plan was kept in the Connecticut Compromise, which established the House of Representatives (with representation based on population) and the Senate (which embodied part of Patersons plan).

After the convention, Paterson became a Senator, the Governor of New Jersey, and then a Supreme Court Justice for 13 years until his death in 1806.

James McHenry

mchenry100

Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland, in 1753, McHenry is better-known today for the fort that was later named after him in Baltimore. McHenry was educated in Ireland and came to America in his late teens, with his family soon following him over.

McHenry continued his education here and studied medicine for two years with Dr. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia. He also was on General George Washingtons staff and he served at Valley Forge, and with the Marquis de Lafayette.

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Unfortunately, a family illness kept McHenry away from much of the Constitutional Convention. McHenry later served as Secretary of War for Presidents Washington and Adams.

Pierce Butler

Butler was born in 1744 in County Carlow, Ireland, and his father was Sir Richard Butler, who was a member of Parliament and a baronet. He also served in the Kings military for a time.

Butler moved to South Carolina when he married into a wealthy family. He became a planter and a local political leader, and he was elected to represent South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention. Once there, Butler attended most of the sessions in Philadelphia and he was part of the James Madison-James Wilson caucus. Butler also supported slavery in the South.

Thomas Fitzsimons

Fitzsimons was born in Ireland in 1741, and like James McHenry, he made the journey across the Atlantic in his late teens.

Fitzsimons started a mercantile career in Philadelphia and he went into business with one of his brothers-in-law. Their firm, George Meade and Company, was one of the leading commercial houses in Philadelphia. He also supported the revolutionary cause and paid for supplies to help in the fight against the British.

After the war, Fitzsimons served in the Continental Congress and while he attended the Constitutional Convention as a delegate from Pennsylvania, he was not involved in the proceedings. After the convention, Fitzsimons served three terms in the U.S. House, until he went back to his private life.

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The Saudi king has cancelled a scheduled visit to the politically-troubled atoll nation of the Maldives because of an outbreak of swine flu in its capital, the government in Male announced Friday.

The Maldives was to be the final stop in the monarch's ongoing Asian tour that has already taken him to Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Japan.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim said a new date for King Salman's trip to the Indian Ocean archipelago would be announced later.

Dozens of people tested positive this month for the H1N1 influenza strain, also known as swine flu, Maldivian health authorities said. Two people have died so far.

The government has ordered the closure of schools in the one-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometre) capital island of Male to prevent the spread of the disease and has discouraged residents in neighbouring islets from visiting.

The country's main opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), had protested the planned state visit, accusing President Abdulla Yameen of planning to sell an atoll to Saudi investors, a charge the government has denied.

"With growing public outrage and strong opposition to President Yameens attempts to sell-off Faafu atoll to the Saudi royal family, the MDP feels that the time is not right for the royal visit," the party said in a statement.

Yameen lifted a ban on foreign ownership of real estate in 2015.

Land is scarce in the Maldives where 99.9 percent of its territory is sea and the nation's 1,192 tiny coral islands account for just 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of land.

However, the islands are strategically located -- scattered some 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator -- straddling the main East-West international shipping lanes.

The country is a popular upmarket holiday destination but its image has been hit by political unrest in recent years.

Opposition leader and former president Mohamed Nasheed is currently living in exile in London after he was jailed on terror-related charges widely criticised as politically motivated.


Theresa May has been accused of making a blunder of epic proportions after saying she intends to block demands for a second Scottish independence referendum.

The Prime Minister said that now is not the time for a vote on independence, in a move that is likely to put her on a collision course with the SNP.

Mrs May said that a repeat of the 2014 referendum was not appropriate because the country was going through a huge transitional change as a result of Brexit  and claimed that it would be unfair on the people of Scotland.

Theresa May has said now is not the time for a second referendum (PA)

She said: My message is very clear. Now is not the time. Ive explained the reasons why.

We should be working to get the right deal for Scotland and the UK with our future partnership with the European Union.

It would be unfair to the people of Scotland at the moment that they would be being asked to make a crucial decision without the information they need to make that decision.

Nicola Sturgeon responded to the Prime Ministers statement on Twitter, branding the move undemocratic and calling it proof that the Tories fear the verdict of the Scottish people.

.@scotgov is not proposing #scotref nowbut when the terms of Brexit clear and before it is too late to choose an alternative path. 1/4 https://t.co/ZR6LDtA8v8  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) March 16, 2017

2/4 a section 30 order must be discussed and agreed now to enable that timescale.  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) March 16, 2017

3/3 If the Tories refuse to do so, they would effectively be blocking Scotland's right to choose when the Brexit terms clear  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) March 16, 2017

4/4 this would be undemocratic given @scotgov clear mandate and also proof positive that the Tories fear the verdict of the Scottish people.  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) March 16, 2017

A spokesman for the First Minister described Mrs Mays statement as disastrous:

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He said: If we do get clarity that what the PM means is that discussion about a referendum should not even begin until some point after Brexit, then effectively what the PM is doing is unilaterally blocking a referendum. That would be a democratic outrage.

I think it would play disastrously [in Scotland]. I think it would be a miscalculation and a blunder of epic and historic proportions.

The Prime Ministers defiant stance comes only days after Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced her plans to seek a second independence referendum in the wake of Britains decision to leave the European Union.

Speaking on Monday, the SNP leader confirmed that she would seek a second referendum to take place towards the end of the two year Brexit talks.

She said: I will take the steps necessary now to make sure that Scotland will have a choice at the end of this process.

Confirming Mrs Mays comments, Scottish secretary David Mundell said any request for a referendum would be blocked by Downing Street.

This argument isnt about mandates, its about holding a referendum on established criteria which were set on in the Edinburgh Agreement, he said.

That established that a referendum must be legal, fair and decisive.

The proposal brought forward is not fair, people will not be able to make an informed choice.

Neither is there public or political support for such a referendum.

Therefore we will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a section 30 agreement and any request at this time will be declined.

Next week, the SNP is expected to call on MSPs to back plans for a referendum and a section 30 order  the legal requirement for Holyrood to create one.

Mr Mundell added that the PMs announcement will inform next weeks debate.
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Authorities in Florida have stopped searching for a Colorado State University student and a yacht crew member who went missing in choppy Tampa Bay-area waters.

The Coast Guard said Thursday evening that it had ended the search for 27-year-old Andrew Dillman of New York and 21-year-old Jie Luo of China.

The two men had been missing since Tuesday evening. Authorities said 15 college students chartered the yacht, and Luo was among five who jumped from the boat to swim off Shell Key.

Authorities said Dillman jumped into the water when he saw Luo was struggling in the swift currents. Neither man wore a flotation device.

The Coast Guard said search efforts covered nearly 1,600 square miles (about 4,100 square kilometers).

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Information from: Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.), http://www.tampabay.com.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  The Australian government hit a legal setback Friday in its bid to ban cell phones from immigration detention centers  a policy that critics argue would treat asylum seekers like criminals.

A judge rejected the government's submission that the Federal Court of Australia did not have jurisdiction to hear a challenge to the proposed ban.

The government has two weeks to decide whether it will appeal Justice Steven Rares' ruling. If there is no appeal, the Federal Court will hear a class-action suit by detainees who say a blanket ban on phones in all Australian immigration detention centers would be illegal.

The ban would affect hundreds of detainees on the Australian mainland and on the Australian territory of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

The phone ban would not apply to asylum seekers who attempted to reach Australia by boat and have been sent to immigration camps on the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Most asylum seekers arrive in Australia by plane and are kept in mainland detention centers along with foreign nationals who have breached their visa conditions and criminals who are awaiting deportation after serving prison sentences.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection had planned to confiscate all phones last month, but human rights lawyers obtained an injunction allowing inmates to keep in contact with the outside world until the legality of the new policy is decided.

George Newhouse, a senior lawyer at the National Justice Project that initiated the legal challenge, said that while phones are banned in Australian prisons, asylum seekers should not be treated like criminals.

"Seeking asylum does not make you a criminal. Mobile phones provide asylum seekers with vital access to the outside world, to loved ones and to advocates  their mental health and their families depend on this," Newhouse said.

"The blanket ban on phones punishes innocent men, women and children and demonstrates the increasing criminalization by this government of asylum seekers who have committed no crime," he added.

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Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg told a Senate committee last month the ban was needed to prevent plotting of escapes and drug crimes.

"I cannot countenance running a custodial setting ... that allows mobile phones to be used as an enabler to crime," he said.

The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the court decision.
Photo credit: Drew Angerer / Getty

From ELLE

Reports of sexual assaults increased at two of the three military academies last year and an anonymous survey suggests sexual misconduct rose across the board at the schools, The Associated Press has learned.

The new data underscore the challenge in stemming bad behavior by young people at the military college campuses, despite a slew of programs designed to prevent assaults, help victims and encourage them to come forward. The difficulties in some ways mirror those the larger military is struggling with amid revelations about Marines and other service members sharing nude photos on websites.

Assault reports rose at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, while dropping at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. The Air Force decline was sharp, going to 32 last year from 49 in 2015, contributing to an overall decrease in the overall number of reported assaults at the academies. The total reported cases fell to 86 from 91 in 2015, according to details obtained by The Associated Press.

Pentagon and military officials believe more people are reporting sexual assaults, which they see as a positive trend because it suggests students have more confidence in the system and greater willingness to seek help.

But the anonymous survey results suggest more assaults and crime occurring. They showed more than 12 percent of women and nearly 2 percent of men saying they experienced unwanted sexual contact.

Photo credit: AP

In that survey, the largest increases in sexual misconduct were also at the Navy and Army academies. A vast majority of students said they didn't file a report on the assault because they didn't consider it serious enough. Many women said they took steps to avoid the perpetrator, while more than a third of the men said they confronted the person.

Senior defense officials expressed disappointment. They were particularly concerned that more men and women said they experienced unwanted sexual contact. The rate two years ago was about 8 percent of women and 1 percent of men.

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"This is almost a new population of folks every four years and that makes it a little bit more difficult for the messages to build up and gather momentum," said Nate Galbreath, deputy director of the Pentagon's sexual assault prevention office.

Officials struggled to identify a reason. They said some blame may fall on student leaders and how much they are willing to emphasize and enforce sexual assault prevention programs among peers.

"Unless the students have a bit of accountability on their own, unless they take the charge themselves, (senior) leadership can really only take them so far," said Elizabeth Van Winkle, who is currently the assistant defense secretary for readiness. "If the students aren't taking the charge themselves, you won't make as much headway in this population."

Galbreath said sexual assault prevention instruction may be getting lost amid the many messages about social behavior, including not drinking and driving, or texting and driving.

The Pentagon, he said, is encouraging the academies to increase the amount of time they spend talking about how future leaders must foster a climate of dignity and respect. He said students should know that enforcing good conduct is something they will need to do as officers when they graduate and lead troops in combat.

Photo credit: AP

In recent months, military leaders have met to try and find what Galbreath called the "holy grail of prevention."

One example, he said, would involving taking more to the students about when and how to intervene when they see a bad situation developing. Such scenarios include when they are in a bar drinking or in a workplace in which a boss is the problem.

"What we want those folks to do at the academies is to find those things that seem to really be hallmark situations and help people be better scouts and identify those precursors earlier and also give them a wider range of things that they might be able to do to intervene," Galbreath said.

Galbreath and Van Winkle said drinking remains a major concern, factoring in about 60 percent of incidents women cite and nearly half of those men cite. They said the academies have been putting alcohol programs in place, including some that require students to take a class before turning 21.

Sexual harassment reports filed by students dropped at all three academies.

The overall total fell to 10 last year from 28 in 2015. The anonymous survey showed roughly half of the women and slightly more than 10 percent of men saying they were sexually harassed, near the same level as the previous survey. The surveys are conducted every two years.

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By Hyun Oh OGA, Japan (Reuters) - Sirens blared and loudspeakers broadcast warnings in Japan's first civilian missile evacuation drill on Friday, conducted in a fishing town by officials wary about the threat of North Korean missiles. The exercise comes more than a week after North Korea launched four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan's northwest coast, with one rocket landing about 200 km (124 miles)from the town of Oga. Friday's drill played out a scenario in which North Korea had fired a ballistic missile on the Japanese islands. "The missile is seen to have landed within a 20-km (12-mile) boundary west of the Oga peninsula," a speaker blared during the evacuation. "The government is currently examining the damage." (For a graphic on missile evacuation drill in Oga, Japan, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2ngq11y) Residents of the largely rural peninsula jutting into the ocean about 450 km (280 miles) north of the capital, Tokyo, made their way to a designated evacuation center equipped with emergency kits and protective gear. Schoolchildren in another part of town crouched down to the ground before hurrying inside a gymnasium. "I've seen missiles flying between foreign countries on television, but I never imagined this would happen to us," said Hideo Motokawa, a 73-year-old who participated in the drill. Officials said the exercise was prompted by growing concern about the regional security situation. "Anything can happen these days, and it's even more true when we cannot anticipate the behavior of our neighboring countries," said Osamu Saito, a security supervisor in the prefecture of Akita where Oga is located. North Korea is also developing nuclear-tipped missiles, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions, and conducting nuclear tests in what U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described during a visit to Japan as an "ever-escalating threat." Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday the missile drill was worthwhile, to help educate the public. Some Oga residents worried about how they would react in a real attack. "It's a scary thing," said participant Emiko Shinzoya, 73. "If it did actually happen, I don't think we can do what we practiced today. We'll just be panicked." (Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Clarence Fernandez)
Sometimes, Siri gets it right.

Just kidding. Siri, you're a piece of trash.

An owner of an esports bar in Toronto says that his establishment has been getting some pretty odd calls recently, and he's pointing the blame at Siri.

SEE ALSO: RIP Siri? You can use Alexa in Amazon's app now, and it's really smart

Alvin Acyapan, co-owner of the bar Meltdown Toronto, says that if you ask Siri to locate a sex worker in the Toronto area, it will suggest their bar.

Hi @AppleSupport , could you please explain why #siri is saying that people can find prostitutes at our place? This is kinda #awkward pic.twitter.com/5f2HqqAt4u  Meltdown Toronto (@MeltdownToronto) March 13, 2017

The bar also posted images of Siri's response to Reddit, where they went into a little bit more detail.

"We've been getting calls about it for a few months now. Thought it was just a prank or that my number is somehow similar to an actual brothel," Acyapan wrote on Reddit.

Acyapan says he was finally tipped off when someone called and asked, admitting they found the bar's number through Siri.

Another Redditor successfully replicated the response on his own device.

Acyapan told the Toronto Star that he initially dismissed the calls as a joke, possibly by someone who submitted their number on a adult services website.

"I thought people were getting the wrong number or maybe it was a prank by someone listing our phone number on some unscrupulous website," Acyapan told the Star.

Considering that the bar is an esports bar, Acyapan thinks it's possible that Siri confused the words "escort" and "esports," though it's not entirely clear why this would happen.

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Acyapan reached out to Apple tech support as well as their Twitter account for help, but was unsuccessful with getting a response.

Apple did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment.

While annoying, at least Acyapan is keeping a good attitude about the whole thing.

I see the humour in it, Acyapan told the Star. I always thought of it as a funny anecdote to share with my friends: Hey, we run a bar and sometimes I get this kind of call.

[h/t:UPI]
By Feisal Omar MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali Islamists are letting civilians in drought-hit regions under their control move with relative freedom to find food, the group and a U.N. official said on Thursday, but they are continuing to restrict the access of international aid groups. Somalia, struggling to recover from more than 25 years of civil war and an ongoing battle between its U.N.-backed government and Islamist insurgents, could sink into famine if the April rains fail. About quarter of a million people died during the last famine in 2011, when al Shabaab's restrictions on movement and its refusal to allow many aid groups access pushed up the death toll, aid groups say. This time, the insurgents say people can move. "We do not stop those who want to leave for other places, they are free," Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed, the chairman of al Shabaab's drought emergency committee, told Reuters. Al Shabaab, an al Qaida linked Islamist group, has lost large swathes of territory in recent years to pro-government regional militias and African Union peacekeepers supporting the weak federal government. Although it lost control of most major cities, it is still strong in parts of rural southern Somalia. Justin Brady, the head of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said he had met several residents who recently left al Shabaab territory and were concerned they would be unable to return. "If they return from areas of government control, they will be viewed with suspicion and subject to abuse," Brady said. "It will be unfortunate, if there are decent rains, that they cannot go back with tools and seeds." Brady said al Shabaab still restricted aid workers' access. Death rates related to cholera and diarrhoea in al Shabaab-held areas were 4.5 times higher than in government-held areas, the United Nations says. "We cannot reach people with the most basic interventions such as water purification tablets, soap, or jerry cans to improve their water," Brady said. Cholera has broken out in 11 of 18 regions as wells dry up and families drink infected water. Al Shabaab's Mohamed said that international aid agencies in Somalia were ineffective and al Shabaab provided its own aid. "They just talk and dying people need action to save them," Mohamed said. "We have started giving food and water to the most drought-hit Somalis." He said that the insurgents used 70 trucks to supply water and provided food rations to 400 families on Thursday. Residents, though, were sceptical the militants could do enough. "Al Shabaab gave us water and food and we have seen them taking food and water to others in the area, but the needs of the entire people cannot be met," resident Abdullahi Mohamed said from Hindheer district in the central Galgadud region. "Some people are in the jungle where there are no roads. Some are dying under trees," he said. The U.N. said it fed 1.1 million Somalis last month and provided clean water to 570,000. (Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by Richard Lough)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  Quinton de Kock and Temba Bavuma reached half centuries in an unbroken 124-run partnership for the seventh wicket which stabilized South Africa's first innings after lunch on day two of the second test against New Zealand.

South Africa was 104-6 at lunch, struggling in its reply to New Zealand's 268. But through de Kock and Bavuma's efforts on a flattening wicket at the Basin Reserve the Proteas were 218-6 at tea, trailing by only 50 runs.

De Kock, the aggressor, reached his eighth half century in tests from 55 balls, in 78 minutes with six fours and two sixes and was 63 not out at lunch. Bavuma, the perfect foil for de Kock, took 88 balls and 132 minutes to reach his fifth half century, which included five boundaries, and was 61.

The second session featured a continuation of the developing rivalry between de Kock and New Zealand off-spinner Jeetan Patel. The 36-year-old Patel has dismissed de Kock four times in tests and one-day internationals in New Zealand this summer, including twice  for 10 and 4  in the drawn first test in Dunedin.

Playing his first international match on his home ground in Wellington, Patel hoped to continue that ascendancy but, though he caused the batsman a few nervous moments early on, he found de Kock in better form than in Dunedin.

De Kock was able to settle in and regained the confidence and fluency missing in Dunedin. New Zealand failed to apply the pressure necessary to staunch his scoring shots and which led to his downfall earlier in the series,

Instead, the Proteas wicketkeeper was able to score freely, especially with pull shots and drives down the ground, helping tip the balance of the match a little in South Africa's favor.

The first session belonged to New Zealand as it claimed four wickets to reduce South Africa from 24-2 at the resumption to 104-6. Colin de Grandhomme claimed two wickets, Tim Southee and Neil Wagner one each, and first innings century-maker Henry Nicholls took two catches at midwicket as New Zealand appeared to take charge.

But the second session was South Africa's as de Kock and Bavuma added 114 runs in what was the first session of the series to pass without a wicket, after 16 had fallen in the previous four sessions in Wellington.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's High Court in Pretoria said on Friday that the appointment of Berning Ntlemeza as head of an elite police investigation unit is unlawful and must be revoked. Ntlemeza was appointed in 2015 to lead the powerful Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation, known as the Hawks. Critics have accused the unit of sometimes carrying out politically motivated probes to discredit those who have fallen out of favour with President Jacob Zuma and his inner circle. "Our take is very simple: we will abide by the ruling," Hawks spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi told Reuters. Two local non-governmental organisations, Freedom Under Law and the Helen Suzman Foundation, had applied to the court to have Ntlemeza removed on the grounds that he was not fit to hold the office. On its website, Freedom Under Law said: "The appointment was irrational and unlawful as there have been damning findings by the courts against (Ntlemeza's) integrity." The Hawks' integrity has been questioned by the local media and NGOs after it played a role in a graft case against Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, which critics say was part of a political agenda. Charges in that case were withdrawn last year. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Catherine Evans)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Friday welcomed a top court decision ordering the government to pay social grants on April 1 via its current provider, a bid to end a fiasco threatening the flow of benefits to 17 million people. "The ANC holds the view that the regrettable events over the past few weeks were unnecessary and should have never happened ... Government must thoroughly investigate actions of those involved and act decisively against those responsible for this embarrassing and undesirable situation," it said. The ANC's tone was a striking contrast to President Jacob Zuma who told parliament on Thursday there was no crisis while defending Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, who has been widely blamed for the debacle. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), which claims to have 350,000 members, said on Friday it was calling for a national strike over state-run power utility Eskom's decision to shut down several coal-fired power stations. "NUMSA is gearing up for the mother of all strikes in its bid to fight the looming crisis at Eskom... (and) is calling for a national shutdown," the union said in a statement. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
By Tanisha Heiberg JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Constitutional Court ordered the government on Friday to pay social grants on April 1 via its current service provider, seeking to end a fiasco that had threatened the payment of benefits to 17 million people. The court also sharply censured Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, calling her inaction to resolve the crisis incomprehensible. The saga is the latest example of allies of President Jacob Zuma being called to account for incompetence or poor performance since he took office in 2009. It has prompted scathing criticism of the government, including from Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. "The fact that it has come to this underlines the moral bankruptcy of the Zuma regime," Tutu said in an opinion piece published on Business Live. Pauline Masiq, a 74-year old mother of six who walks with a crutch and lives in Johannesburg welcomed the court ruling. She receives 1,600 rand ($125) a month in social grants. "I'm very much pleased," she said. "It means a lot to me because I have to pay for burials, pay food, pay rent and buy water and electricity... it helps me a lot." The chaos over the grants stems from the social welfare department failing to take responsibility for social service payments or find a new provider after the Constitutional Court ruled in 2014 that the tender won by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a unit of technology company Net1, was illegal. Net1 and CPS on Thursday expressed concern at government comments that they had acted arrogantly. "The sole reason for this litigation is ... the minister's failure to keep its promise to the people of South Africa," Justice Johan Froneman said on behalf of the court. APOLOGY The court gave Dlamini until March 31 to show why she should not pay the costs of the case from her own pocket. The minister, who this week denied the welfare system was in crisis, said she was sorry for the fiasco. "I apologise to the grant beneficiaries," Dlamini was quoted as saying by ANN7 News channel. She told the South African government's news agency: "This judgment will ensure that there's no interruption in the provision of social grants." The court said it would take oversight over the welfare payments and ordered the grant-paying company to continue distributing the grants under the terms of its current contract for 12 months before a new arrangement could be adopted. Zuma has said he does not intend to sack Dlamini, who heads the Women's League in the ruling African National Congress party. But his stance jarred with the tone of the ANC, which in a statement called for an investigation and action "against those responsible for this embarrassing and undesirable situation". Tutu called Zuma's defence of Dlamini "incomprehensible". He said Dlamini had "shown by her inaction that she has no regard for the poor," Tutu said. The grants are a lifeline for the country's most vulnerable and includes more than 11 million child support grants, many of whom would go hungry without the monthly payment. The welfare scandal threatened to instigate a shareholder revolt with investment firm Allan Gray saying could call a meeting for the removal of the board over the service provider's handling of the crisis. ($1 = 12.7622 rand) (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard and TJ Strydom; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Alison Williams and Richard Lough)
By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday there was no "crisis" as doubts mounted over the payment of welfare benefits to 17 million people because of a court battle involving the service-provider. The welfare system is a lifeline for South Africa's most vulnerable and includes more than 11 million child support grants. Each month long queues form at pay points as people wait for money needed to feed their families. Zuma told parliament his government was "doing everything possible" to ensure welfare payments are distributed. "There is no crisis," Zuma said in response to a question from the opposition in parliament. The chaos in South Africa's social security agency comes three years after the Constitutional Court ruled that the tender won by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a unit of technology company Net1, was illegal. The government had until April 1 of this year to take responsibility for social service payments or find a new provider, but failed to do so. The country's top court is now hearing a case brought by applicants who want it to take oversight of a new contract. The Constitutional Court said it would rule on Friday. Earlier this week the country's chief justice placed the blame for the debacle squarely on the shoulders of Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, calling her inaction incomprehensible. Zuma, however, defended his minister and rebuffed opposition calls for her removal. "Why punish somebody before anything happens? That's a funny democracy," Zuma said. The chief executive of CPS has said a resolution is needed urgently if April's payments are to be made on time. Officials at the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) have said privately the agency has opted to negotiate a new deal with CPS despite the 2014 court order. There has been no public confirmation. A cabinet minister on Thursday said any negotiations for a new deal between SASSA and CPS were void. Net1 said on Thursday: "Notwithstanding the uncertainty regarding its arrangements with SASSA, CPS has not in any way reduced or downgraded its operational capabilities to deliver grants." (Additional reporting and writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia and)
PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota's Republican governor on Friday vetoed a pair of bills that would have loosened restrictions on carrying concealed guns in the conservative state.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard had warned he would veto the bills  one to let people carry concealed handguns without a permit, the other to allow concealed weapons in the Capitol building. Daugaard has said the state's current gun laws are reasonable.

"As a longtime member of the NRA, I support the right to bear arms," Daugaard said in his veto letter for the permitless carry bill. "It is paramount that our state protect the rights of our citizens while at the same time protecting the lives of our citizens. I believe our current laws appropriately protect both interests, and I ask that you sustain my veto."

Supporters of both bills plan to attempt overrides  and if that's not successful, to try again next year. Neither bill got the two-thirds support that suggests an override would succeed. Both passed one chamber only narrowly.

Daugaard's vetoes are the latest evidence of a split between a more moderate GOP governor and a Republican-held Legislature that grew even more conservative after the last election. Daugaard is in his second term and can't immediately seek a third, and has said he's looking forward to leaving politics in 2019.

The governor rejected a permitless carry bill in 2012. In the sessions since, he has won a pair of tax increases and also vetoed a bill to restrict the school facilities transgender students could use. When a transgender bill came back this session, he threatened another veto before it was pulled.

But Daugaard, described by confidants as a thoughtful, pragmatic leader, has also supported ideas backed by conservative lawmakers. Last week, he signed a bill to give legal protections to faith-based organizations that refuse based on their religious beliefs to place children in certain households.

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This session, the so-called constitutional carry bill would have allowed people who can legally carry a concealed handgun in South Dakota to do so without a permit. Right now, it's a misdemeanor for someone to carry a concealed pistol or to have one concealed in a vehicle without a permit.

Republican Rep. Lynne DiSanto, who sponsored the constitutional carry bill, said that it should be a "no-brainer" for the Republican supermajorities in the statehouse to override the veto, urging people to contact their GOP lawmakers to support gun rights.

"Gov. Daugaard just continues to disappoint," she said. "You can call him a Republican governor, because he has the, 'R,' but I wouldn't necessarily agree that he is."

The Capitol carry bill would have let people with an enhanced permit bring concealed handguns inside if they registered beforehand with security. There are no metal detectors or other security checks at the Capitol entrances to enforce the current prohibition on most people carrying guns in the building.

"During the legislative session, meaningful debates among the public and legislators are frequent and oftentimes passionate," Daugaard wrote in his veto message. "Our law enforcement officers are uniquely able to protect the public, and I believe this bill would complicate that work."

House Majority Leader Lee Qualm, its main sponsor, said he hopes to override the veto when lawmakers gather in Pierre on March 27 for the final day of the 2017 session.
When South Koreas Constitutional Court finally upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, ousted for cronyism and corruption, the massed protesters who spent months demanding her resignation breathed a collective sigh of relief. Their country can now emerge intact from a serious political crisis  and the light of its democracy still burns bright. Or does it?

Parks impeachment, triggered by the Choi Soon-sil corruption scandal, wasnt just a career-ending personal scandal; it also revealed fundamental flaws in South Koreas constitutional setup that a change of president alone cannot fix.

The country has already been without an elected leader for three months, and there are still two more months to go until the public votes for Parks replacement. This could scarcely be happening at a more inconvenient time, since the country faces all sorts of other challenges.

Among them are President Trumps flip-flopping on US support for Seoul in the face of North Koreas nuclear tests and missile launches; Chinese anger with South Korea for deploying the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) missile system; and corruption charges linking Parks office to the industrial heart of the Korean economy.

Combined with the uncertain political climate, these all threaten to send the country spiralling into the abyss while lumbered with a system of government thats showing some dangerous cracks.

Public attitudes to Park were always deeply divided, not just on the question of trust  or rather, the lack of it  but along generational lines, too. For many older South Koreans, a vote for Park was a vote for her father, assassinated president and strongman Park Chung-hee. In the younger Park, they saw a symbol of economic success through enormous sacrifice. Her impeachment undermines their trust in the Korean political system and their faith that the sacrifices were worth it.

For those who have come of age in democratic Korea, Parks impeachment is an appropriate end to a presidency that threatened to turn back the clock to the bad old days of high-handed rule and human rights abuses.

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Corruption is just part of the problem. Parks tenure was plagued by a series of crises and controversies, including infringements of freedom of speech, blacklists of prominent cultural figures, and allegations that she bungled the response to the Sewol ferry disaster.

These are exactly the sort of political divisions that a democratic system is supposed to help channel and reconcile. But the Choi scandal tested that system to breaking point: it brought raw emotion into the public realm in a way not seen since the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s, and Korean democracy was unable to properly channel that massive outpouring of emotions. With that failure, it proved that the Korean Constitution, the countrys last bastion of democratic legitimacy, doesnt hold up under pressure.

The imperial presidency

Much of the problem stems from the way power is divided at the top. Chapter four of the South Korean Constitution regulates the role and powers of the executive. This system is semi-presidential, meaning that power is shared between a popularly elected president and a prime minister confirmed by the National Assembly. Or at least, thats how it works on paper. In reality, the system empowers the president.

As in other countries with semi-presidential systems (such as France or Romania), the balance of political power is strongly influenced by the way the constitution is interpreted, meaning political culture plays a crucial role in determining how the system works in practice. South Koreas particular political culture has created a sort of imperial presidency in which the president controls every aspect of the executive and their own party, giving them a strong grip on the legislature.

This is precisely the dynamic that played out in the Choi scandal, which lit a flame under the public discontent that had been simmering in Koreas body politic. Park and her party were defeated in the legislative elections of April 2016, underlining the level of public discontent with her leadership, but she ploughed on with business as usual. The anger, resentment and suspicion that greeted her actions needed a release valve, but only Chois arrest ultimately provided it.

This is not a trivial problem. Arguably the most important part of a democratic states constitutional framework is to provide a safety net in times of constitutional and political crisis. In this respect, the South Korean constitution failed.

Some commentators, comparing South Korea to North Korea, have hailed Parks impeachment as itself indicative of a successful democracy. But the system was failing to respond to the political will of the people long before the Choi scandal broke. Small surprise then that it ultimately failed so badly as to leave the country without an elected leader during a time of intense regional instability.

Clearly, the system needs to be fixed. But instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and reforming the whole constitutional system, South Korea must simply decide how it really wants its political system to work. Given the security threat from North Korea, a strong leadership with popular legitimacy and complete control of the military is probably the best option. But at the same time, the country would benefit from upgrading the role of prime minister from first head on the chopping block to a position of real power and responsibility to the legislature.

A meaningful counterweight to the president, a beefed-up prime ministerial office would introduce some badly needed pluralism and openness to government, and empower the National Assembly and the party system. That in turn would give the countrys civil society an effective voice, and channel raw public emotions into the constitutional system.

But as yet, no such fundamental change is afoot. Park continues to deny wrongdoing, and the candidates to replace her are lining up for Mays elections. In the meantime, the domestic and international challenges are mounting, and all eyes are still on South Korea.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - South Sudan's government is spending oil revenue on weapons as the country descends into a famine largely caused by President Salva Kiir's military campaign, a confidential UN report says.

The report obtained by AFP on Friday calls for an arms embargo on South Sudan -- a measure that has been backed by the United States but was rejected by the Security Council during a vote in December.

"Weapons continue to flow into South Sudan from diverse sources, often with the coordination of neighboring countries," said the report by a UN panel of experts.

The experts found a "preponderance of evidence (that) shows continued procurement of weapons by the leadership in Juba" for the army, the security services, militias and other "associated forces."

South Sudan derives 97 percent of its budget revenue from forward sales of oil. From late March to late October 2016, oil revenues totaled about $243 million, according to calculations from the panel.

At least half -- "and likely substantially more" -- of its budget expenditures are devoted to security including arms purchases, the 48-page report said.

The government continued to sign arms deals as a famine was declared in Unity State, where 100,000 people are dying of starvation and a further one million people are near starvation.

"The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine in Unity State has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of repeated military operations undertaken by the government in southern Unity beginning in 2014," said the report.

The government is blocking access for humanitarian aid workers, compounding the food crisis, while significant population displacement is also contributing to the famine.

An upsurge in fighting since July has devastated food production in areas that had been stable for farmers, such as the Equatoria region, considered the country's breadbasket.

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The total number of South Sudanese facing famine could rise to 5.5 million in July if nothing is done to address the food crisis, the experts said.

- Weapons pour in -

The report was released ahead of a special Security Council meeting on South Sudan on Thursday that will be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

The meeting could once again revive calls for an arms embargo, which was rejected despite warnings from the United Nations of a risk of genocide in South Sudan.

While the previous US administration pushed for a ban on weapons sales, President Donald Trump's government has yet to make clear its stance on ending one of Africa's worst conflicts.

Borders with Sudan and Uganda continue to be key entry points for weapons supplies to South Sudanese forces and some shipments are also entering from the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the report.

The panel cited information from high-ranking South Sudanese military and intelligence officers that Egypt had shipped military equipment, small arms, ammunition and armored vehicles to South Sudan over the past year.

Experts are investigating the delivery this year of two L39 jets from Ukraine that were sold to Uganda, but may have ended up in South Sudan, as well as a contract with a Seychelles-based company for a very large quantity of armaments.

In comparison, opposition forces have received limited supplies of light weapons ammunition, the report said.

After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead and 3.5 million people displaced.

The United Nations is pushing regional leaders to exert pressure on Juba to end the violence that has turned tribal, pitting Kiir's Dinka community against ethnic Nuer, Shilluk and other groups.
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Sudan's government is mainly to blame for famine in parts of the war-torn country, yet President Salva Kiir is still boosting his forces using millions of dollars from oil sales, according to a confidential United Nations report. U.N. sanctions monitors said 97 percent of South Sudan's known revenue comes from oil sales, a significant portion of which is now forward oil sales, and that at least half of the budget - "likely substantially more" - is devoted to security. "Revenue from forward oil sales totaled approximately $243 million between late March and late October 2016," the panel of U.N. monitors said in the report to the U.N. Security Council, seen by Reuters on Thursday. "Despite the scale and scope of the political, humanitarian, and economic crises, the panel continues to uncover evidence of the ongoing procurement of weapons by the ... Government for the SPLA (South Sudanese army), the National Security Service, and other associated forces and militias," the report said. The United Nations has declared a famine in some parts of the world's youngest country, where nearly half its population - some 5.5 million people - face food shortages. A civil war erupted in 2013 when Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who has fled and is now in South Africa. "The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine ... has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of military operations undertaken by the SPLM/A in Government in southern Unity state; denial of humanitarian access, primarily by the SPLM/A in Government; and population displacement resulting from the war," the report said. The United Nations says at least one quarter of South Sudanese have been displaced since 2013. 'NOT CORRECT' South Sudan's government rejected the report on Friday. "We have not bought arms for the last of two to three years," government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters after a cabinet meeting. "We have rights to buy arms for self-protection or self-defense ... So this idea of the U.N. saying the government of South Sudan doesn't care about its people and they are fan of buying arms all the time is not correct," he said. The annual report of the sanctions monitors to the 15-member Security Council comes ahead of a ministerial meeting of the body on South Sudan next Thursday, which is due to be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. While the previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama was heavily involved in the birth of South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and led Security Council efforts to try to end the civil war, the policy of new U.S. President Donald Trump toward the African state is unclear. In December, the Security Council failed to adopt a U.S.-drafted resolution to impose an arms embargo and further sanctions on South Sudan despite warnings by U.N. officials of a possible genocide. The U.N. monitors again recommended in their report that the council impose an arms embargo on South Sudan. The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015 and has blacklisted six generals - three from each side of the conflict - by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban. The U.N. monitors said all parties to the conflict continue to commit widespread human rights violations "with near complete impunity and a lack of any credible effort to prevent these violations or to punish the perpetrators." U.N. peacekeepers have been in South Sudan since 2011. (Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
Madrid (AFP) - The Basque separatist group ETA, which has waged a decades-long campaign for independence, plans to fully lay down its weapons by April 8, the head of the regional Basque government, Inigo Urkullu, said Friday.

He asked French and Spanish governments to help facilitate talks with the group, which has said it will give up its arms for amnesties or improved jail terms for imprisoned members.

But the central government in Madrid, a fierce opponent of ETA, reacted with scorn, demanding that the group simply "dissolve" and never reappear.

Urkullu confirmed the possibility that ETA was ready to give up its arms after decades of conflict in Spain and France, and said he hoped it would be "definitive, unilateral, irrevocable, complete and legal".

"The Basque government judges credible the potential for a final disarmament in the short term," Urkullu said.

"It asks... the Spanish and French governments to show ambitious vision and open direct lines of communication" in order to reach "a goal with historic importance for our society."

ETA, founded in 1959 and considered a terrorist group by the European Union, has been seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for its roughly 350 members held in Spain and France.

The group is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings for an independent Basque homeland, which straddles northern Spain and southwestern France.

But Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy bluntly said disarmament should be unilateral, and ETA should then consign itself to oblivion.

Speaking at a regional conference of his conservative party in Madrid, Rajoy said: "ETA has decided to unilaterally disarm. May it do so, and while it's about it, may it dissolve itself."

Ruling out any special treatment for ETA, he said: "The Spanish government will apply the law equally to everyone."

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Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido reiterated the tough line.

"What ETA must do is dissolve itself and disappear," he wrote on Twitter.

"It has had time to disarm and it must know that it won't get anything in exchange."

Earlier Friday, an activist in Bizi, a Basque association, told French daily Le Monde that the group's disarmament should be completed if possible before France's upcoming presidential election, whose first round of voting is set for April 23.

"ETA has given us the responsibility of disarming its arsenal and, on the evening of April 8, ETA will be completely disarmed," said the activist, Txetx Etcheverry.

Arnaldo Otegi, spokesman for the pro-independence party Sortu, which counts old ETA members among its elected leaders, echoed Urkullu's statements.

"We hope that, this time, the process for disarming will be absolute and that this time it will be complete, that it will go all the way and to its ultimate consequences," he said.

- Recent arrests weakened ETA -

Its last deadly attack was in 2010, when a policeman was killed during a shootout with ETA militants in a Paris suburb.

It declared a ceasefire in October 2011 but has refused to give up its weapons.

But a source later confirmed to AFP that "ETA will take steps to make this happen" before April 8.

Both France and Spain have long refused direct negotiations with the group, demanding its complete dissolution with nothing in return.

The separatist group has been severely weakened in recent years after hundreds of its members were arrested and some of its weapons were seized.

In November, the most senior ETA leader still at large, Mikel Irastorza, was arrested after a raid on a home in southwest France.

Earlier this month, Spain's Guardia Civil police force discovered seven drums of explosives in a rural area near the town of Irun on the border with France, which they suspect belonged to ETA.
Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

From Road & Track

At the Geneva Motor Show, I chatted with both Spyker CEO Victor Muller and Christian von Koenigsegg, Spyker's freshly announced engine supplier to talk about the specifications, future collaborations and their plans in general.

But the first thing you need to know is that the silver Spyker lettering on the displayed engine was hand-painted by Koenigsegg. Apparently, he didn't like it in base orange and grabbed a brush with a can of paint just before the show. Talk about hand-crafted!

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Needless to say, Victor Muller could have not been happier. His 50 Preliator coupes are all sold out, and now, he had to tell his customers that their cars will be delayed by nine months, only so they can be supplied with Koenigsegg V8s instead of the ancient Audi engine with a supercharger bolted on its top. That's not a bad trade, and the kind of news that made his new Preliator convertibles even more desirable in an instant.

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Mr. Muller told me he never liked the supercharger's whining noise, and has been looking into a partnership with five different engine suppliers in his quest to find Audi's replacement.

Koenigsegg won the competition with flying colors, and as Spyker moves towards building its SUV using the very same V8, Victor Muller is already fantasizing about the time when his cars can get Koenigsegg's Freevalve cylinder heads as well. Either way, this is an absolute game-changer for the Dutch supercar company.

Spyker's main man believes 600 is a very conservative horsepower estimate and his engine is basically the same as Koenigsegg's own V8s, except for being naturally aspirated without any bits made out of "meteorite" like in a Regera. Plus, his version gets linked to a six-speed manual with an exposed linkage, of course.

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Christian von Koenigsegg was a bit more specific:

So basically, for us to have time to do this and resources, since we're a small company, we only change what we have to change, and remove what we have to remove to make it work. So, it's over-engineered for their needs, because the structure can take 1500 horsepower and they're having 600. So, basically they have the same crank, connecting rods, camshafts, cylinder headsbut we changed what we needed to. The dry-sump lubrication, the exhausts, the intake for normal aspiration, bumping up the compression ratio, and the injectors are smaller because there's no need for that kind of flow. We maintain the dual injectors not because they're really needed, but because it makes it easy for us because we're used to controlling dual injectors, and at the same time, with duals, the injectors can be super small, which means super accurate, so we turn it into a benefit, even though it's an extra cost you might not need. And of course are engines are bulletproof with 1360 horsepower, our customers don't kill engines, so that engine will last for I don't know200 years or something. All this means they're paying a little bit of a premium for the engine because they're getting stuff they don't need, but it makes it easier for us, and they get a jewel of an engine. With this optimized engine for natural aspiration, from five liters, we get 600 horsepower at 8000 rpm. A beautiful setup for the car.

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Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

For Spyker's customers, that "little bit of premium" is certainly a no brainer in exchange for a bespoke engine by Koenigsegg. When asked whether he'll continue to expand their portfolio and share their technologies, Christian had this to say:

Our main focus is getting our own cars to the highest level and deliver them to the waiting customers as soon as possible. At the same time, we are developing so many systems, technologies, electronic platforms and Freevalve engines, this and that. And to only develop those things for twenty cars a year? Well, we can make that work. We have a good business with that. But it's a bit of a shame not to let others use the technology, to make it come to use in a bigger picture. And it's also potential income for the company of course, improving economic spread. We are kind of at the beginning, but in the long term, it should make sense. Because if we have a software or an electronic circuit board or something, that's so easy to produce thousands ofor hundreds of thousands of. It doesn't make any difference, you just put a different number into the machine, or copy paste the software more times, so, why only put that technology into 20 cars a year? From that point of view, I would say yeah, we'll probably see more of these. We're collaborating with more and more other car manufacturers as well. Of course our smaller friends like Spyker and so on who don't have the technology, we're happy to share with them. We think the world is still a big place, we're not competitors with Spyker at all, and not even with companies similar to us, like Pagani or Bugatti. I almost don't see them as competitors, because we all sell out our cars, so it's not like we're fighting over the customers. So, we can help each other, basically.

Sounds like a plan!

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

Photo credit: Mate Petrany/Road&Track

A naturally-aspirated V8 revving to 8000, connected to a six-speed manual in a car looking as special as a Spyker. That's a real thing now.

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By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Kneeling on a patch of flat earth with a shovel in hand, Thea Nonce Jean tips cement where a floor is about to be laid. His house is the first to be built in a tiny Haitian community on the edge of Tijuana, Mexico, a city just south of the U.S. border. "There's room for around 100 families on these plots, that means around 400 people. They can't keep living in the shelters," said Gustavo Banda, a local pastor who gave up the land for the construction of the settlement. Jean, a 32-year-old Haitian stranded thousands of miles from home after hopes of asylum in the United States faded last year, is one of hundreds from the poor Caribbean nation now seeking to make a life in Tijuana. "Our country has hit rock bottom," said Jean, part of a steady stream of Haitians leaving the island since a devastating earthquake struck in 2010, killing around 200,000 people. "Now we've decided to stay in Tijuana." Paying thousands of dollars to human traffickers and crossing up to seven countries, Jean's American dream ended when the United States decided to deport all who tried to enter illegally. "When we heard the news it was very sad. We thought the decision would be temporary, but it wasn't," said Jean, who is building a wooden house for himself and his wife. "Now we have no money, nothing at home and we have to find a place to live." Some 3,500 Haitians are now in the border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, according to Mexican government data. Amid the hammering of tools and the swell of songs from their homeland, dozens of Haitians are working to build the "Haitian Villa" in the Canon de Alacran (Scorpion's Canyon) on the western flank of Tijuana. Some of them who were interviewed by Reuters said they were waiting to hear from Mexico's National Migration Institute to see if they would be allowed to stay and work in Mexico. The institute told Reuters that "legalization for migrants is not immediate, and there are various requirements foreigners need to fulfill." Come what may, the Haitians are not looking back. Click https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/haitian-migrants-seek-new-home-on-mexico-us-border to see a photo related essay (This story has been refiled to add correct link to photos at end of story) (Editing by Diane Craft)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  A suicide truck bomber struck a military checkpoint in Afghanistan on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding 10, while another suicide bomber elsewhere in the country killed the brother of a local religious leader he had targeted for assassination, officials said.

Mohammad Akbar Zadran, a district governor in the eastern Khost province, said the early morning truck bomb attack damaged nearby houses and a school. After the blast, two Taliban gunmen opened fire at the troops, triggering a shootout that left both militants dead, he said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed the attack in a media statement.

In the eastern Nangarhar province, a suicide bomber tried to kill a local religious affairs director outside a mosque following Friday prayers, but the official's brother intervened, wrapping his arms around the bomber before he set off his payload, killing both of them, said Ajmal Omar, a member of the provincial council. He said the religious affairs official, Zahir Aqhani, was unharmed.

No one immediately claimed the attack.

The Taliban has been at war with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul since the 2001 invasion that drove the Islamic militants from power. The insurgents have expanded their reach and stepped up attacks since the U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014.
Brussels (AFP) - SWIFT, the inter-bank money transfer system, said Friday it has cut off the last North Korean banks on the network, as international pressure mounts on Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

"The DPRK banks remaining on the network are no longer compliant with SWIFTs membership criteria. As a result, these entities will no longer have access to the SWIFT financial messaging service," the Brussels-based group said in a statement.

"Given the increased ongoing international attention on the DPRK, SWIFT has informed the Belgian and EU authorities," it said, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.

The statement did not say how many North Korean banks were involved.

The move is significant as it means North Korea no longer has access SWIFT's global financial transfer system, further isolating the already heavily-sanctioned country.

The United States has led efforts to force Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, fearing that its ultimate aim is to be able to hit the US mainland.

US Secretary of State Max Tillerson warned Friday on a visit to South Korea that the North's ambitions had to be halted and that all options, including military, remained on the table.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then that option's on the table," Tillerson said in Seoul.
ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland has rejected a Turkish request for legal assistance in prosecuting a suspect accused of insulting President Tayyip Erdogan, ruling that the comments in question were protected by Swiss free speech provisions. Switzerland helps foreign prosecutors only if the crime they are investigating is a criminal offense in Switzerland as well, and that was not the case here, a spokesman for the Federal Office of Justice said on Friday. "If similar criticism of a member of the government were expressed in Switzerland within the framework of a political discussion, this would be tolerated as a free expression of opinion," he said. He did not identify the suspect in the case, which arose in part from postings on social media. Three similar requests from Turkey are still pending and would be judged individually on their merits, he added. Ties have become increasingly fraught between Turkey and many European countries over Turkish campaigning for a referendum next month that would give Erdogan more power. The Swiss government said last week, however, there was no reason to ban Turkey's foreign minister from addressing a rally in Zurich despite local authorities' opposition. The speech was eventually canceled for lack of a venue. Swiss government statistics show around 68,000 Turkish citizens live in Switzerland, a nation of 8.3 million whose population is a quarter foreign. The Turkish embassy's website refers to around 130,000 Turkish citizens. (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Toby Chopra)
JERUSALEM  Syria said it launched anti-aircraft missiles against Israeli warplanes in Israeli-controlled territory early on Friday, following a series of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria  a rare military exchange between the two hostile Mideast neighbors that was confirmed by both countries.

The Israeli military said its warplanes struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said, but did not elaborate. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but it said the safety of Israeli civilians and the safety of the Israeli aircraft were not compromised.

The army said the incident set off sirens in Jewish settlement communities in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is extremely rare, though Israeli military officials said there was a shoulder-fired missile a few months ago.

A Syrian military statement said four Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace  flying into Syria through Lebanese territory  and targeted a military position in central Syria.

Damascus said Syrian anti-aircraft systems confronted the planes and claimed one of the jets was shot down in Israeli- controlled territory and that another was hit. The Israeli military denied the allegation and there was no sign that any of the jets had been hit or downed.

The Syrian statement, in line with typical anti-Western rhetoric from Damascus, further said the blatant aggression was an attempt by Israel to support terrorist gangs of the Islamic State group inside Syria and deflect from the victories of the Syrian army in the countrys civil war, which this week entered its seventh year.

Israeli Channel 10 TV reported that Israel deployed its Arrow defense system for the first time against a real threat and hit an incoming missile, intercepting it before it exploded in Israel.

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The TV also showed footage from Jordan of what was described as remnants of the missile. It said the Israeli military had been on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

There was no immediate comment from the Lebanon-based group.

In Jordan, which borders both Israel and Syria, the military said in a statement that parts of the missiles fell in rural areas of northern Jordan, including the Irbid district. The military said the debris was the result of the Israeli interception of missiles fired from Syria toward Israeli positions and bases.

Radwan Otoum, the Irbid governor, told the state news agency Petra that the missile parts caused only minor damage.

Other Israeli media also reported that the Arrow was deployed. The Haaretz daily said the interception took place north of Jerusalem. However, the Arrow is designed to intercept missiles in the stratosphere so it remained unclear why the system would have been used in this particular incident.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the reports.

The Arrow is mainly designed for ballistic missiles. It is part of what Israel calls its multilayer missile defense comprised of different systems meant to protect against short and long range threats, including the thousands of missiles possessed by Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and rockets used by Hamas and other Islamic militant groups in Gaza.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering mostly sporadic incidents of spillover fire over the frontier that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors by Syrian President Bashar Assads government forces. Israel has responded to these cases lightly, with limited reprisals on Syrian positions in response to the errant fire.

The Syrian bloodletting, which erupted in March 2011 as a popular uprising against Assads rule, quickly descended into a full-blown civil war with Syrian government forces fighting an array of opposition and rebel groups, including Western- and Turkey-backed factions and U.S.-allied Kurdish forces.

The chaos has further allowed al-Qaidas affiliate in Syria and the Islamic State group to gain a foothold. In addition, the skies over Syria are crowded, with Russian air force backing Assads warplanes while U.S.-led coalition aircraft are battling IS.

Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes on advanced weapons systems in Syria  including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah positions  but it rarely confirms them.

Hezbollah is a close ally of the Syrian government and is fighting alongside Assads forces in Syrias civil war. The Shiite Lebanese militant group is a fierce enemy of Israel and fought a bitter month-long war with the Jewish state in 2006.
Paris (AFP) - Staccato lyrics may be no match for Bashar al-Assad's military firepower, but two brothers, who fled to Paris from Syria and perform as "Refugees of Rap", find sniping with words a liberating experience.

Having grown up officially stateless in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Yaser and Mohamed Jamous rap in Arabic about the war they have fled and their new life in France.

"We chose the name because for us, rap represents a country where we can say what we think," Mohamed, 28, told AFP.

"And we're seeking asylum there."

Over a pounding beat, solemn music blending high piano keys and low violin tones, the brothers "spit", or speak, the chorus in unison: "We have to wake up, stop dreaming. The time for silence is long gone, swept away by words."

The lyrics are from their 2011 song "The Age of Silence", one of the last they sung before fleeing Syria via Lebanon.

Performing their hip-hop at a Paris community centre, the brothers said the song had been the "first time we dared speak up openly against the (Assad) regime" despite the risk in doing so.

"One word, and you got 20 years (in prison) or death. Here, we wanted to say that the time for silence is over."

The duo were born and raised in the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of Damascus, which was once home to 160,000 people -- including Syrians -- but has been ravaged by fighting.

Their grandfather fled to Syria from Haifa in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.

Yaser and Mohamed left Syria in early 2013 as fighting for control of the camp intensified. The rest of their family also fled and is in Sweden.

- Inspiration in revolt -

The brothers created "Refugees of Rap" in 2007 with two friends, an Algerian and a Syrian, and were one of the first such groups to emerge out of Syria.

It now comprises just the two of them -- the Syrian member refused to leave and the Algerian went to Germany.

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Released in 2010, their first album recounts living in the overcrowded camp, as they advocate for the Palestinian cause.

Then, after 2011, the revolt provided inspiration.

They penned "The Age of Silence", "Haram" ("Forbidden"), which is about the horrors of the war, "Aysheen" meaning "We Live", and "Corruption in the Country".

They had completed eight tracks for the second album when they began receiving anonymous threats on social media.

- Got touring -

"We received two or three messages on Facebook," Yaser, 29, said.

"The messages said 'We know you're preparing an album and if you don't stop... it's over for you. We're going to destroy your studio, we're going to stop you. We're going to kill you.' "

It was not the only hurdle they faced.

During fighting in Yarmuk in 2012, the group's recording studio was destroyed in bombings. Their younger brother was then jailed for 40 days for an unknown reason.

"When he was released, he was in a horrible state," recalled Mohamed, who now works in a hotel. "He'd been tortured."

Shortly afterwards, they decided to leave Syria. They were granted refugee status in France, with the mention "nationality undetermined, Palestinian origin" a few months later.

"When we got here, there was no housing... no aid," Yaser said. "You had to wait for months to get set up, so we chose to book some concert dates and get to work."

They toured in Denmark, Sweden and France, where they completed "The Age of Silence" and released the album in 2014.

- 'Not from nowhere' -

"In Syria, people understand (Arabic)," Yaser said. "That's what we miss here."

The brothers work on their language skills by listening to French rappers.

But on stage, they get around the language barrier by reading translated lyrics and then leading the audience in chants of the Arabic chorus before each track.

For their upcoming third album, the group will "tell the story of our time here in France, our exile," said Yaser, who now works in a souvenir shop.

But they have not forgotten Syria.

They have little hope of returning but "in exile, the future is never clear," said Yaser.

"We are exiles everywhere but we're not from nowhere," said Mohamed. "We are proud to be Palestinian because it's our history, and in Syria, we were made to feel like we were Palestinians.

"But we also grew up feeling Syrian because we were raised there. Now, we feel Parisian."
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's army said Friday it shot down an Israeli plane that had been carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra, the famed desert city it recently recaptured from jihadists.

"Four Israeli planes penetrated our air space at 2:40 am (0040 GMT) via Lebanese territory and hit a military target on the way to Palmyra," the army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

"Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one and forced the rest to flee," it added.

The incident is the most serious between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.

The Israeli air force had earlier said it carried out several strikes on Syria overnight and that Syria had fired surface-to-air missiles in response.

But it said none of those missiles had hit their targets.

"This flagrant attack is part of the Zionist enemy's persistent efforts to support the terrorist gangs of Daesh," the Syrian army said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group.

"It will be responded to directly with all possible means," it added.

The Syrian army recaptured Palmyra from IS on March 2, three months after losing it to the jihadists for a second time. Syrian troops backed by Russian forces had first retaken it in March last year.

In January, the army accused Israel of carrying out missile strikes on the Mazzeh air base near Damascus.
Several U.S. carriers have now confirmed that the LG G6 release date will be April 7. T-Mobile and AT&T have also revealed their prices for the 2017 flagship.

T-Mobile will sell the LG G6 for $650 or $26 down and $26 per month for 24 months as per the networks payment plan. T-Mobile is also offering customers who purchase the LG G6 before April 30 a free Google Home AI assistant.

AT&T will sell the LG G6 for $720 or $30 per month for 24 months as per the networks payment plan. In addition to a free Google Home, AT&T is also offering a second LG G6 for free when starting a new service line. Customers can alsu purchase a LG Watch Sport for $50 on a 2-year contract.

Verizon will release the LG G6 March 30 and will sell the device for $672 or for $28 per month for 24 mother as per the networks payment plan. In addition to a free Google Home, Verizon is offering customers up to $200 to trade in an old device as well as up to $650 when switching from another carrier. New subscribers can get a 43-inch LG TV and can also take advantage of the Verizon FIOS $500 bundle.

While Sprint has not yet revealed its price for the LG G6, the carrier is also expected to release its model between April 7 and 10 and will likely also offer Google Home for free.

Reports also suggest several Canadian carriers, including Bell, Eastlink, Fido, Freedom Mobile, Koodo Mobile, Rogers, SaskTel, TELUS, Videotron and Virgin Mobile will release the LG G6 April 7, with preorders beginning March 15.

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A 14-year-old boy named Kalel Langford found a 7.44 carat diamond at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, Arkansas. The boy and his father were surprised to know that the diamond they found was the largest brown diamond to be found at the park in 40 years.

The officials also said that this was the seventh largest diamond to be discovered since the establishment of the park in 1972, according to several media reports published Thursday.

Kalel Langford found the pinto bean-sized brown stone while he was walking along the side of a riverbank in the park on Saturday. He knew it was not an ordinary rock and showed it to his father. Craig Langford, Kelal Langford's father said they both "knew we needed to have it looked at." Kelal Langford named his diamond "Superman Diamond" because he is a fan of the superhero and as per the park's policy, he was allowed to take the precious stone home as a souvenir.

The Crater of Diamonds Park allows its visitors to look for diamonds themselves and keep it as souvenirs. As their website reads: "Crater of Diamonds offers park visitors a one-of-a-kind experience  the adventure of hunting for real diamonds. Youll search over a 37 -acre plowed field that is the eroded surface of the world's eighth largest diamond-bearing volcanic crater. If you find a diamond, it is yours to keep. Park staffs at the Diamond Discovery Center provide free identification and certification of diamonds found here. Amethyst, garnet, jasper, agate, quartz, and more rocks and minerals may also be found at the Crater of Diamonds, making the park a rock hounds paradise."

Several others have also found diamonds at the park in the past few years. In April 2015, Susie Clark found a white, 3.69 carat teardrop-shaped diamond and named it as "Hallelujah Diamond." In October 2016, Dan Frederick and his daughter Lauren Frederick found a 2.03 carat diamond on their first visit to the park. Vanessa Yurkevich of CNN Money also tried her luck but failed in 2015.

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"Uncle Sam," a 40.23 carat diamond was the largest diamond ever to be unearthed on land in the United States in 1924, according to the Associated Press.

Related Video:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

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BANGKOK (AP)  What is believed to be the world's first elephant hospital says it may have to close because of budgetary problems after a decade of declining contributions.

The Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, which operates the hospital in Lampang in Thailand's hilly north, says it is facing bankruptcy unless it receives financial assistance from the Thai government. The hospital has cared for more than 4,600 elephants in 25 years of operation and currently has five animals.

The hospital drew worldwide attention in 2008 when it developed the world's first prosthetic elephant leg. At least 15 of its patients have been land mine victims.

Foundation head Soraida Salwala said Friday that the group has barely enough money to continue operating until the end of the year, with a monthly average of $12,000 in donations falling far short of $28,000 in expenses.

She took some hope in a surge of contributions seen since she publicized the problem on Monday on the foundation's Facebook page.

She remains grim, however, about the hospital's long-term prospects.

"If we cannot find more people and resources, then yes, we would have to shut down," Soraida said. "What I want to see most is for the government to have an Elephant Fund, which I have sought for over 20 years."

Elephants are the de facto national animal of Thailand, and for a brief period graced the country's flag.

"I'm still working. I still love elephants. I'm asking for the government to please help us," Soraida said.
By Alex Bregman

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been called the most powerful woman in the world. Shes now about to come face to face with the most powerful man in the world: President Donald Trump. So who is she and why does she wield so much power?

Merkel was born in West Germany in 1954 but grew up in Soviet-controlled East Germany. Before entering politics, she studied physics and received a doctorate in quantum chemistry. Then in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It marked the end of the Cold War and the beginning of Merkels political career.

Merkel joined the conservative Christian Democratic Union political party and was elected to the Bundestag, Germanys version of Congress, in 1990. Her political star quickly rose  she became the youngest person to serve in Chancellor Helmut Kohls cabinet.

After Kohl lost the 1998 election, Merkel was appointed her partys secretary-general before being elected its first female leader in 2000. Then, in 2005, Merkel made history again, elected the first female chancellor of Germany.

Some Germans affectionately call her Mommy, and on her watch, Germans have seen their country become the most economically competitive in Europe, overtaking France.

James Kirchick, author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, told Yahoo News, The approval ratings that shes enjoyed for most of her time in office are things that are basically unheard of in America.

Shes also become the de facto leader of Europe as several countries have struggled to rescue their economies. After some hesitation, Merkel agreed to give aid to countries such as Greece, but only in exchange for major austerity measures. As Kirchick explained, Its been a tough road obviously these past seven or eight years of this crisis, but she has, I would say, implemented a policy that is popular amongst the majority of Germans who tend to look at Greece and Greeks as responsible for their own fate.

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Most recently, Merkel took center stage in the refugee crisis, opening Germanys doors to almost half a million Syrian refugees, which is the most in Europe by far. President Trump took issue with the policy on the campaign trail, saying things like Now Merkel, what did she do? She has destroyed, I mean she is in the middle of the process of destroying Germany with the migration.

Much to the disappointment of Trump, Merkels handling of the refugee crisis and Europes economic crisis  as well as her tough stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin  earned her the title of Time magazines person of the year in 2015.

However, her stance on the refugee crisis has received significant backlash from voters, weakening her standing at home and allowing for the first time in three terms the real possibility of defeat in the 2017 election. Kirchick noted to Yahoo News, Really, for the first time since shes been chancellor, theres a serious question of whether or not shell be able to win again.

Up until now, Merkels popularity made her one of the countrys longest-serving chancellors, outlasting previous European allies such as Tony Blair in the U.K. and Nicolas Sarkozy in France.

Over the years, she forged close relationships with her U.S. counterparts, presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. However, things got awkward with President Obama in 2013, when leaks from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. had been monitoring Merkel since 2002, including tapping her cell phone. Her response: Spying among friends is never acceptable.

But by the end of Obamas tenure, the two world leaders had formed a bond. Kirchick said, They had a very good relationship and I think even through the NSA scandal, because she respected Obama so much and he respected her; it couldve been a lot worse if it had been another type of German politician who was involved in this.

As Angela Merkel begins her visit to the U.S., when it comes to her power and influence in Europe and around the world, you can say, now I get it.
Forget everything you thought you knew about fake news. Or snake news. It's all about lizards. Lizards called Justin Bieber.

Look, we know the internet is a place where theories about world leaders and celebrities being reptiles in disguise abound, but when said theories make it to mainstream news, it's time to worry.

According to some ~very~ reputable sources we've never heard of, Australian news website Perth Now published a story during Bieber's recent visit that claimed hundreds of witnesses saw their idol turn into "a giant reptile." Gawd, not this again.

SEE ALSO: Justin Bieber is sick of overeager fans, and he ain't afraid to say so

The alleged story allegedly interviewed several witnessed, who served up some very exciting quotes like: "There were girls hiding in toilets, crying. Guys were running for the exits, jumping in taxis to get out of there." Because I know the first thing I do when a pop star shapeshifts into a lizard in front of me is notice how each gender of witnesses respond.

Celebrity conspiracy fans assemble, Australians think Bieber might be a giant lizard https://t.co/Usa9M54Whd pic.twitter.com/m6PW7pvQUr  Michael Richardson (@HRFMichael) March 16, 2017

Apparently, Bieber as a reptile has a "black stripe down the middle" and "big scaly claws" that "lash out angrily."

Your Newswire (who keep suggesting we're living in a "golden age" of reptilian citings) claim the article was deleted without a trace, within an hour of publication. Suspicious? Maybe. Ridiculous? Hey, you're the one still reading.

Hundreds Report Justin Bieber Shape-Shifted Into a Giant Lizard in Public https://t.co/YLatPuKKyV pic.twitter.com/IgD4xbPced  Cosmopolitan (@Cosmopolitan) March 16, 2017

Being a reputable news source, Your Newswire have found some witnesses of their own too, albeit from the morning after the airport incident. You see, a "local skater" reportedly told them he saw Bieber transform into a lizard at Leederville skate park in Perth.

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"He was hanging around with this big guy, his bodyguard I guess, and we were just staring because he kept turning into a huge reptile," said the unnamed and definitely real skater.

why am I reading a theory about justin bieber being a reptilian instead of doing my work  Gunny  (@eyesonewww) March 16, 2017

where do I apply to be an illuminati reptilian person like Beyonce and Justin Bieber? pic.twitter.com/upyKm5xKRl  Trenton Smith (@TrentonWSmith) March 16, 2017

"His bodyguard was pointing at us, shouting that he'd kick our teeth in if we didn't put our phones away." Cool story, bro. Interestingly, "witnesses" also allegedly say Bieber is a female reptilian. Get it right, media!

Poor Perth Now, being brought into this mess. For the record, the publication's editor, Emily Moulton, says "clearly the 'article' screenshotted did NOT appear on PerthNow. Ever. There is no full URL and we don't use capitals for every word in headlines."

She would say that though, wouldn't she? Jks. But the truth is out there. Wake up, sheeple! etc.

"fans were distressed after witnessing justin bieber shapeshift into a lizard at perth airport" pic.twitter.com/SYToEBPLwS  lexi (@gallexiii) March 16, 2017

Cue the robot-voiced YouTube videos!

[h/t Buzzfeed]
BENGHAZI, Libya (AP)  Thousands of Libyans have staged mass demonstrations in a rare show of defiance against powerful militias encroaching into Libya's capital, Tripoli, after days of clashes that have effectively chopped the city into warring fiefdoms.

Pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft weapons attacked the Friday protests, forcing many to flee, according to TV network Libya Channel.

Protesters chanted slogans against the militias and called for a unified army and police. Some voiced support for the eastern-based army commander Khalifa Hifter, who is opposed by his Tripoli-based rivals which include the U.N.-brokered government and militias in the capital.

"We won't go home until our demands are met," said 27-year-old protester Mohamed Zein. "We ask for all militias that have come from outside of Tripoli to leave immediately."
By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - China is likely to express its anger at being told to rein in nuclear-armed North Korea when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives in Beijing on Saturday, his first visit to the country since taking office last month. Beijing is expected to call on Washington to share responsibility in lessening tensions in the region, while strongly opposing this month's deployment of a sophisticated U.S. missile defense system in South Korea. Tillerson issued the Trump administration's starkest warning yet to North Korea on Friday, saying that a military response would be "on the table" if Pyongyang took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces. He was speaking in South Korea, the second leg of an Asia visit that has also taken him to Japan. In Beijing, he may raise the prospect of imposing "secondary sanctions" on Chinese banks and other firms doing business with North Korea in defiance of sanctions, a U.S. official told Reuters in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Friday that North Korea was "behaving very badly" and accused China, Pyongyang's neighbor and only major ally, of doing little to resolve the crisis over the North's weapons programs. Tillerson however is also expected to firm up a trip by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United States next month for his first summit with Trump, and could choose to tone down any differences between the world's largest economies, at least for now. A former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, Tillerson will meet China's two top diplomats on Saturday and Xi on Sunday. On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula. "As a close neighbor of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing. North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year. Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States. "BLIND WORSHIP" Washington has been pressing Beijing to do more to stop North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. China has called for a dual track approach, urging North Korea to suspend its tests and the United States and South Korea to suspend military drills, so both sides can return to talks. Beijing has been irritated by suggestions it has not been doing enough, with the official People's Daily on Friday denouncing what it said was Washington and Seoul's "blind worship" of sanctions and pressure. "There has been a narrative in the West suggesting that China holds the key to the North Korea nuclear issue. That is a misguided statement," said Wang Dong, associate professor of international studies at China's elite Peking University. "The bottom line is that the DPRK is not a puppet regime. We do not control them, and we have strongly opposed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons from the very beginning," he said, referring to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The state-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times said on Friday that it was in China's interests to stop North Korea's nuclear ambitions. "The North Korean nuclear issue is caused by (the)Washington-Pyongyang confrontation. China has no obligation to shoulder all the responsibilities," it said in an editorial. China has also been infuriated by the deployment of the THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, missile defense system in South Korea, which it says will both harm China's own security and do nothing to ease tensions. China says the system's powerful radar will extend into the country's northeast and potentially track Chinese missile launches, and maybe even intercept them. Russia also opposes THAAD, for the same reasons. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Where in the world is the secretary of state?

According to the Korea Herald, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cut short his public visits with South Korean officials on Friday, citing fatigue.

South Korea was the second of Tillersons three stops on his trip to Asia, after Japan. He was scheduled to go to China on Saturday and Sunday. It is unclear if he went to Beijing early; the lone reporter he brought with him on the trip  Erin McPike of the Independent Journal Review  has not shed any light on the matter.

Even without a press corps, Tillerson managed to make headlines. At a press conference in South Korea on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that use of military action against North Korea is on the table.

I think its important to recognize that the political and diplomatic efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to the point of denuclearization have failed, Tillerson said.

Certainly we do not want for things to get to a military conflict. But obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces then that would be met with an appropriate response, adding, If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe that requires action, that option is on the table.

Tillersons comments toward North Korea dont necessarily mark a real rupture with U.S. policy  the United States has maintained thousands of troops in South Korea for decades for a reason, after all.

The deeper departure, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, may be in Pyongyang. Previous North Korean provocations have been attempts to prod negotiations or intimidate South Korea. But this particular North Korean leader is not much interested in negotiating, although some might say that makes the purpose of all the saber rattling unclear.

Meanwhile, Tillerson did appear to amend longstanding U.S. policy toward South Korea, telling Fox News that he wouldnt rule out nuclear weapons for U.S. allies in Asia, a line President Donald Trump had used during the campaign.

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Tillersons statement comes the week after the first deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea, and just days after South Korea, the United States, and Japan began naval drills off North Korea. Both moves upset Beijing, which warned of escalation and urged the renewal of talks on North Koreas nuclear and missile programs.

And if Tillersons diplomatic mission in Beijing was already going to be delicate enough, his boss helpfully sent out this tweet to smooth things along:

North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2017

Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Seoul (AFP) - Washington's top diplomat visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself Friday, a day after he declared 20 years of efforts to denuclearise it had failed.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, and was to hold talks with South Korea's Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn later, after China challenged him to come up with a new way to confront the North Korean nuclear stand-off.

Under the glaring eyes of alert North Korean soldiers, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks on the ground. At one point they were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one taking either video or photos.

Tillerson did not comment to reporters.

Earlier, he landed at Osan air base in South Korea from Japan and transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter for his trip to the DMZ, where he met the commander of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the South to defend the country.

He vowed in Tokyo on Thursday to press Beijing to rein in its neighbour but, speaking after meeting Japanese officials, offered no new details of his plan to defuse the threat posed by Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests.

He warned that past policies and punishments have had virtually no effect on Pyongyang's ambitions and that a new course was needed.

"I think it's important to recognise that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed," he said.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to China to press the North's key diplomatic protector and trade partner to back tougher sanctions -- but Beijing has been infuriated by the deployment of a US missile defence system to the South.

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North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

It has continued to defy the international community, even after two rounds of UN-backed sanctions, and last week test fired a salvo of missiles that fell in waters off Japan.

- 'Unwavering commitment' -

"In the face of the ever-escalating threat it is clear that a new approach is required," Tillerson said.

And he reiterated Washington's vow to back key regional allies Japan and South Korea in the event of attack.

"The US commitment to the defence of Japan and its other treaty allies through the full range of our military capabilities is unwavering," he promised.

US President Donald Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves.

But since his victory he has twice met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and has been careful to offer complete support, as Tillerson reiterated.

US officials have been spooked by North Korea's accelerating progress towards building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten US mainland cities.

But China is perhaps the last country with significant leverage over Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime.

"We do believe they have a very important role to play," Tillerson said. "We will be having discussions with China as to other actions that they should be undertaking."

Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Thursday that Beijing stood by its call for a halt to joint US-South Korean exercises, to lower tensions.

"If the US or another country has a better plan, a better proposal, they can bring it out," she said.

In the absence of specific details on how to increase pressure on Pyongyang from either Tillerson or his Japanese host, observers see a range of stark options.

They include a pre-emptive strike against missile and nuclear facilities or stepped up sanctions.

But the United States could also open a dialogue with the North -- something it has currently made conditional on a tangible commitment by Pyongyang to stop the programmes.
By Ju-min Park and James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday issued the Trump administration's starkest warning yet to North Korea, saying that a military response would be "on the table" if Pyongyang took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces. Speaking in Seoul after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula and some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, Tillerson said former President Barack Obama's policy of "strategic patience" towards Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs was over. "We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told a news conference. He said any North Korean actions that threatened U.S. or South Korean forces would be met with "an appropriate response," turning up the volume of the tough language that has marked President Donald Trump's approach to North Korea. "Certainly, we do not want for things to get to a military conflict," he said when asked about possible military action, but added: "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table." In spite of Tillerson's warning, U.S. officials have stressed that while an ongoing review on North Korea policy includes military options, such contingency planning has been conducted for decades and that the preferred course is to press Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs through increased sanctions and other diplomatic pressure, particularly on China. Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, travels to China on Saturday, where he will press Beijing, North Korea's only ally, to do more to rein in its neighbor. The main focus of Tillerson's trip, his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, has been on developing a "new approach" to North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to persuade it to denuclearize. Tillerson also visited Japan on his trip. Trump said on Friday that North Korea was "behaving very badly" and accused China of doing little to resolve the crisis over the North's weapons programs. "They have been 'playing' the United States for years." Trump said in a tweet, referring to North Korea. "China has done little to help!" ACTION WOULD BE HIGHLY RISKY For now, U.S. officials consider pre-emptive military action against North Korea far too risky, given the danger of igniting a regional war and causing massive casualties in Japan and South Korea and among tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in both allied countries. Such ideas could gain traction, however, if North Korea proceeds with a threatened test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Just before he took office in January, Trump tweeted: "It won't happen!" when Kim said North Korea was close to testing an ICBM. Any preemptive attack on North Korea carries huge risks. "As a practical matter I dont see the administration deciding to preemptively strike North Koreas capabilities," Asia expert and former White House official, Mike Green of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies said this week. "We wouldn't get them all and theres a risk North Korea would open fire with its hundreds of missiles and thousands of artillery tubes and its nuclear and chemical and biological weapons on Japan and Korea and even China." Tillerson will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the weekend and press him to do more on North Korea. He called on Beijing to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea. China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security. North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year. Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told a joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country. China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people. It has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula. "As a close neighbor of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Christine Kim in SEOUL and David Brunnstrom and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alistair Bell)
(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's use of an alias email address while he was chief executive at Exxon Mobil Corp was "entirely proper," attorneys representing the company said in a letter to a New York court on Thursday. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating whether Exxon misled shareholders and the public about climate change, wrote to a judge on Monday accusing Exxon of not previously disclosing the alias and Tillerson's communications through it. Tillerson had used the alias email address while at the oil company to send and receive information related to climate change and other matters. "It (alias email address) allowed a limited group of senior executives to send time-sensitive messages to Mr. Tillerson that received priority over the normal daily traffic that crossed the desk of a busy CEO. The purpose was efficiency, not secrecy," attorneys at the law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP said. (http://bit.ly/2ntj6mk) Had Tillerson set up the alias email address with the purpose of "secrecy," emails to the account would have avoided any reference to Tillerson as the intended recipient, the attorneys said. "Obtaining publicity, not information, appears to have been the real goal of the New York Attorney General's March 13 letter," the attorneys said. The New York Attorney General's March 13 letter asked the judge to order Exxon to explain whether documents from the alias email and 34 additional accounts assigned to other Exxon executives and board members had been preserved. Exxon has provided 2.5 million pages of documents in response to a subpoena from Schneiderman's office, but those documents include only 160 emails from Exxon management. "More than 16 months after receiving our subpoena, Exxon is just now admitting it may not have preserved or produced the emails of its former CEO, who used an alias email account. We look forward to addressing these, and the other issues our letter raised, in court," Amy Spitalnick, press secretary at the office of the New York attorney general, said in an email. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Gopakumar Warrier)
By Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday distanced itself from a news report it embraced a day earlier that Britain's top-secret eavesdropping agency monitored Trump Tower at former U.S. President Barack Obama's behest. The White House had cited the report by a Fox News analyst as it sought to defend President Donald Trump's charge that Obama's administration wiretapped him during the 2016 election. Over the past two weeks, Trump and his aides have pressed the claim in numerous ways, including suggestions that Trump may have been monitored through microwaves and television sets. The White House has provided no proof to support Trump's allegation and the heads of U.S. House and Senate intelligence panels, including from Trump's Republican Party, have rejected it. Here is a chronology of the administration's assertions: MARCH 4: In a series of early morning tweets, Trump accuses Obama of having his wires tapped and calls him a "bad (or sick) guy." Trump spokesman Sean Spicer says the White House's top lawyer was examining options for pursuing the claim. MARCH 5: The White House cites reports of potentially politically motivated investigations, and says Trump wanted the congressional intelligence committees to examine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016. MARCH 6: Spicer suggests monitoring may have been broader than a wire tap, might have been conducted under a secret foreign intelligence eavesdropping warrant and that "there is substantial reporting out there from individuals and from sources" that such surveillance occurred. MARCH 7: Spicer says while there is no new proof of Trump's allegation, the president has absolutely no regrets about his tweets and that he was "not walking anything back or regretting." MARCH 12: Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway suggests in an interview with the Bergen County Record newspaper that the monitoring may have been conducted through television sets or "microwaves that turn into cameras." MARCH 13: Conway says her comments the previous day were misconstrued but continues to air the allegation about the president and wiretapping at Trump Tower. Spicer says Trump's charges were based on reporting by a number of news organizations, including Fox, the BBC and the New York Times. Trump's use of the word "wiretapping ... spans a whole host of surveillance types of options," Spicer says. MARCH 14: Spicer says Trump is extremely confident the Justice Department would find evidence proving his allegation. MARCH 15: Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence Committee say they have seen no evidence of wiretapping. The White House defends Trump's allegation, and Trump says in a Fox News interview that, "We will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasnt been submitted as of yet. But its potentially a very serious situation." MARCH 16: The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, separately say there is no proof of Trump's charge. Spicer says there is no question that surveillance techniques were used. He cites a litany of news reports to justify the allegation. They include an assertion by a Fox News analyst, former New Jersey Judge Andrew Napolitano, that he had been told by unidentified intelligence officials that Obama obtained transcripts of Trumps conversations from Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the British agency that monitors overseas communications. MARCH 17: The administration backs away from the Fox News report after the British government said it was assured by the White House that it would not repeat Napolitano's allegation, dubbed "nonsense" by a GCHQ spokesman. "Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story," said a White House official. (Writing by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Erika Snyder thought she was in the clear. An Obamacare policy covered surgery to remove a tumor from her lungs, leaving her with minimal costs for the $200,000 ordeal and a chance for a manageable semi-retirement.

But now, the 63-year-old Denver resident said she is not just worried about the cancer coming back. Shes afraid that passage of the House Republicans plan to repeal Obamacare will leave her with no coverage if it does.

I cant imagine being in a situation where Id have to get chemo, said Snyder, who collects early social security and works part-time at a greenhouse. I mean, what are we supposed to do?

Just shy of Medicare eligibility, Snyder is part of the age 50 to 64 demographic that would face much higher insurance costs under the GOP plan, known as the American Health Care Act. The law would eliminate Obamacare subsidies that 3 million Americans in that age bracket currently rely on to purchase insurance. It would also allow insurers to charge older people up to 5 times as much as younger Americans for individual policies, while providing an age-based tax credit that experts say would fall far short of covering these additional costs.

Although the changes would be phased in over time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts the laws passage would have an immediate impact, causing 14 million people to lose coverage next year. By 2026, as the number of people losing coverage jumps to 24 million, premium costs for a 64-year-old would increase to $14,600 under the replacement plan, compared to $1,700 under the current law, according to the CBO.

Read more: Hospitals could bear the financial brunt of the American Health Care Act

The proposed legislation narrowly passed a committee vote Thursday amid opposition from conservative members who said it does not go far enough to dismantle Obamacare. It is expected to come up for a vote on the House floor next week.

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Meanwhile, many older Americans, who have paid Medicare taxes for years on the promise of having that safety net down the line, are postponing retirement plans to cling to jobs that provide insurance coverage. For some who are staring down chronic diseases and other health problems, the costs of paying for health insurance before Medicare eligibility could undermine their financial stability before they even reach retirement age.

Peter Crowe, 50, is hoping to keep his teaching job, but he also suffers from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the bodys connective tissue and often leads to heart problems and an array of other complications. I hope to stay employed until at least 65, but given my health condition, that may not be possible. Its certainly a worry, said Crowe, who is hopeful for one thing in the Obamacare fight. There is also a big chance this (legislation) could implode.

Read more: Medical groups voice opposition to Republican plan to replace Obamacare

House Speaker Paul Ryans office did not respond to a request for comment on the bills impact on people between 50 and 64. But he and other Republican backers of the overhaul have argued the legislation would be phased in carefully and would allow more people to purchase the kind of coverage they want, free of mandates from Washington.

The provision allowing insurers to charge seniors five times more than younger Americans for coverage (current law allows a 3-to-1 ratio) is set to take effect in 2018, but it might not be reflected in premiums until 2019, the CBO says. In 2020, the law would would replace Obamacares cost-sharing subsidies  which are based on income and the actual cost of insurance in a persons market with a flatter, aged-based credit.

The GOP plan would provide the biggest credit, $4,000, to people over 60. But that amount would be much less than many seniors currently receive and would fall far short of covering the expected increase in premiums, making it hard for many people between 50 and 64 to afford coverage.

The AARP recently published a report that concluded low-income seniors would be hurt the most by the plan. Premiums for a 64-year-old making $15,000 would increase by nearly $8,400 under the Republican plan, the report found. Meanwhile, the tax credit changes would drop their financial assistance by as much as $5,900.

How do you have an increase with those kinds of numbers? For some of these folks, I dont see how theyll be able to afford insurance, said David Certner, legislative counsel for AARP.

For Mary Longcore, a 56-year-old Michigan resident who works in health care technology, the potential legislative changes create uncertainty. Longcore has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, an inherited disorder that can cause a wide array of medical issues, including unstable joints, chronic pain, and skin and eye problems.

She has excellent insurance coverage through her job at a university, but she knows she must keep it until age 62, when she will trigger employment provisions that give her insurance coverage after she retires. If I go on disability at this point, I really dont have enough to pay my bills and pay for whatever insurance I end up having to get, Longcore said.

But for her, the political issue is far from black and white. She worries about her own coverage circumstances, but she also counts herself as a conservative and is concerned about the crushing costs of health care in the United States. She would like to see broader reforms, including changes that might help reduce the costs of prescription drugs.

Im holding out for hope here, she said. Because without hope we have nothing.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  The United States signaled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction. "Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table." Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend.

TOKYO (AP)  Back in 1976, all it took to bring the Korean Peninsula back to the brink of a war was a brawl over an attempt to trim a poplar tree. That escalated quickly into the death of two American GIs by ax-wielding North Korean soldiers. Three days later, with an aircraft carrier battle group and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers at the ready, the tree was chopped down. For sure, the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Koreas is one of most volatile strips of Cold War-style weirdness left on the planet. On Friday it was weirder than usual, with President Donald Trump's new top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, standing on one side of the North-South demarcation line with his coterie and North Korean soldiers standing at one point just a meter (a few feet) away.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  New Zealand authorities say they're unable to investigate an incident involving a U.S. Embassy staffer based in Wellington after the U.S. government elected to shield him by invoking diplomatic immunity. Police said Saturday they responded to an incident in Lower Hutt near Wellington early on March 12. They said the American had left the scene before police arrived, and nobody was taken into custody. In their statement, police declined to release further details of the incident but said they're keeping the investigation open. The day after the incident, police asked New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to seek a waiver of immunity from the U.S.

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BEIJING (AP)  China plans to build the first permanent structure on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, in a move likely to renew concerns over Beijing's robust assertions of its claims in the strategically crucial waterbody. The top official in Sansha City that has administered China's island claims since 2012 was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying that preparations were underway to build an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines. The preparatory work on the stations and others on five other islands in the strategically vital waterway was among the government's top priorities for 2017, Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie was quoted as saying in an interview published in the paper's Monday edition seen online Friday in Beijing.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP)  Four men accused of involvement in the murder of a top legal adviser to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party appeared in a Yangon court on Friday to hear the charges against them. The alleged hired gunman, Kyi Lin, and three accused plotters were read the murder charge against them for the Jan. 29 shooting of lawyer Ko Ni. A fifth suspect is on the run. Ko Ni was noted for criticizing army interference in politics and advised Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy on ways to get around articles in the army-imposed constitution that give the military wide powers even after Myanmar's transition to democracy last year.

TOKYO (AP) _ A court held Japan's government and a utility liable on Friday for neglecting tsunami safety measures at the Fukushima nuclear plant and ordered them to pay more money to dozens out of the thousands of people who fled radiation released during the March 2011 disaster. The ruling is the first from about 30 lawsuits filed by thousands of evacuees and could set a precedent for the other cases. About half of the 150,000 people forced to leave their homes still cannot return, six years after a massive earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant and caused reactor meltdowns.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  From the deserts of southern New Mexico and Nevada to islands in the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. government conducted dozens of nuclear weapons tests from the 1940s until the early 1960s. Vintage rolls of film collected from high-security vaults across the country show some of the blasts sending incredible mushroom clouds into the sky and massive fireballs across the landscape. Others start with blinding flashes of light followed by rising columns of smoke in the distance. A team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory this week published more than five dozen films salvaged from government installations where they had sat idle for years.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  New Zealand police shot and killed a young security dog at the Auckland Airport on Friday after it escaped its handler and ran loose for more than three hours on the tarmac, disrupting at least 16 flights. Many people in New Zealand were upset that the dog was killed and some questioned why it couldn't have been tranquilized instead. Named Grizz, the dog was being trained to detect explosives by New Zealand's Aviation Security Service and was about six months from graduating. Police Inspector Tracy Phillips said in a statement that the security service and airport staff had made considerable efforts over several hours to recapture the dog and had called in police as a last resort.

BALI, Indonesia (AP)  An American woman convicted in her mother's "suitcase murder" in Indonesia gave custody of her young daughter on Friday to an Australian woman until her release from prison. Heather Mack is serving a 10-year sentence for assisting her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder, in which the body was stuffed in a suitcase. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison. The baby girl, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan prison until she turned 2 years old on Friday.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP)  Tin, her husband and five children have cleared years of refugee hurdles to come to the U.S.: blood tests, interviews, DNA and fingerprints, background checks. She has her one must-bring possession within reach, a well-worn Bible, and keeps their phone charged for the U.S. Embassy to call. But the odds of that happening dropped precipitously. President Donald Trump's 16-page redone travel ban "to keep the bad dudes out" aims to stop people from six Muslim countries from entering the U.S. this year and suspends refugees from arriving for 120 days. But the order also includes a sweeping 55 percent reduction in refugee visas overall, from a planned 110,000 to 50,000 this year.
By Yeganeh Torbati and James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - The liberal South Korean politician most likely to become the country's next president would, if elected, review how the government would deploy an advanced U.S. missile defence system and would consult China, two of his top advisers said on Friday. If Moon Jae-in, front-runner for the May 9 presidential election, reverses policy on the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, it will place him at odds with the United States, South Korea's biggest ally. The conservative government of impeached president Park Geun-hye agreed to deploy the THAAD to guard against attack by North Korea, but the decision sparked outrage in China, which responded with restrictions on some companies doing business with and in South Korea. China says the system's radar can be used to spy into its territory. Moon would likely "do a review of the validity of the decision", Choi Jong Kun, an adviser to Moon on foreign policy told Reuters. "While doing it, he will consult with the United States, as well as China." "At the end of the day, if the reality unfolds in a way that South Korea's national security and the economy were damaged because of the THAAD, not because of the North Korea issue, then it's not really a rational situation, is it?" The comments are at variance with a tough stand taken by the new U.S. administration on North Korea. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, visiting Seoul for the first time since taking office, said on Friday a U.S. policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea has ended and military action would be "on the table" if North Korea if Pyongyang took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces. Tillerson also said he expected the next South Korean government would "continue to be supportive" of THAAD. A Pentagon spokesman said THAAD deployment was "a critical measure" to defend South Koreans and U.S. forces against North Korean missiles. China is South Korea's largest trading partner and the dispute over THAAD has left shopping districts in Seoul devoid of their usual crowds of Chinese tourists. In China, the row has led to a freeze of South Korean television dramas and music, and product boycotts. Moon, a liberal facing little in the way of a significant conservative challenger, said in a debate this week China should stop the economic retaliation and South Korea had to make diplomatic efforts to assuage Chinese anger. "It's only right for the THAAD deployment issue to be decided by the next administration," Moon told foreign media recently. RAPPROCHEMENT A 63-year-old human rights lawyer, Moon has said he will extend an olive branch to North Korea if elected and visit Pyongyang before making a trip to the United States. Just two North-South summits have been held since the 1950-53 Korean war. Choi said the decision to deploy the THAAD battery had been made hastily. China's reaction was foreseeable and yet was largely ignored by Park's government, he said. "We had a strategic partnership with Beijing, until this THAAD issue," Choi said. "Our relationship had been pretty OK and pretty good." Kim Ki-Jung, another foreign policy adviser to Moon, said he had tried to convince U.S. military officials and diplomats in Washington last month that the deployment of the THAAD should be left to the leader who succeeds Park. "We are going to acknowledge that two governments made an agreement ... but the actual process of deployment, that should be given to the next government," he said. Instead, the United States started to deploy the first elements of the system this month, after North Korea fired off four ballistic missiles into the sea off northwest Japan. Moon has criticized the two former conservative presidents  Park and her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak - for derailing progress made in inter-Korean relations under previous liberal administrations. He calls for a "two-step" approach on North Korea, with talks leading to "economic unification" and ultimately "political and military unification." His viewpoints could spark friction with Washington, but Moon would have no problem distancing South Korea's interests from those of the United States, Kim said. "The basic assumption is that we are going to maintain the success of our bilateral alliance," Kim said. "We are going to keep it ... as long as we admit that South Korea is not the 51st state of the United States. We are an independent country, we have our own national interest, and we should have our own foreign policy strategy." (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalkrishnan)
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - For newborns, skin-to-skin contact with parents and caregivers may help shape how their brains respond to touch, a sense necessary for social and emotional connections, a new study suggests. Plenty of previous research has linked skin-to-skin touch with developmental benefits for both premature and full-term babies, ranging from improved growth and sleep to better motor development. Research has also tied breastfeeding and other forms of supportive touch to less discomfort during from needle sticks and other painful medical procedures. In the current study, researchers tested how 125 premature and full-term infants responded to gentle touch. Overall, the preemies were more likely than the full-term babies to have a reduced response to this contact, the study found. But preemies who had more gentle contact with parents and caregivers had a stronger response to touch than the preterm infants who didnt get this type of support. The preterm babies who had more exposure to painful medical procedures also had a reduced response to touch. Our findings add to our understanding that more exposure to these types of supportive touch can actually impact how the brain processes touch, a sense necessary for learning and social-emotional connections, said lead study author Dr. Nathalie Maitre of Nationwide Childrens Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. What is surprising is that painful procedures which are known to impact processing of pain in the brain also impact processing of touch, in a negative way, Maitre said by email. Pregnancy normally lasts about 40 weeks, and babies born after 37 weeks are considered full term. In the weeks immediately after birth, premature babies often have difficulty breathing and digesting food. They can also encounter longer-term challenges such as impaired vision, hearing, and cognitive skills as well as social and behavioral problems. The preemies in the study were born between 24 and 36 weeks gestation, while the full-term infants arrived between 38 and 42 weeks. They all participated in the touch experiment before they were discharged from the hospital where they were born. Newborn development, especially in the first few months, is heavily shaped by touch and sound, as the visual system is still very immature, Maitre said. Touch is a way for infants to learn about their surroundings and an early way to communicate with their parents. To evaluate how newborns respond to touch, researchers exposed all of the infants in the study to a light puff of air and a fake puff of air and measured their brain responses. Researchers chose a puff of air because it does not generate enough pressure to activate any pain receptors, Maitre said. If the infant brain can respond to this touch, babies can also learn how to tell the difference between different textures, for example the difference between their mother's skin and a hard object, or even their father's stubbly cheek and their sister's soft one. Preemies who were in the neonatal intensive care unit and spent more time in gentle contact with parents and caregivers had a stronger response to touch in the experiment than the preterm infants who didnt get this gentle contact, researchers report in Current Biology. However, the more painful medical procedures those premature infants had to endure, the less their brain responded to gentle touch later. That was true despite the fact that the babies were given pain medications and sugar to make those procedures easier to endure. One limitation of the study is that researchers couldnt control for opiate use, because all infants undergoing painful procedures received some type of analgesia, the authors note. Researchers also lacked data on the intensity of pain infants might have experienced during different treatments or tests. Still, promoting gentle touch for all newborns - and especially preemies - may help develop building blocks needed for cognition, behavior and communication, the authors conclude. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2nAc6kv Current Biology, online March 16, 2017.
Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - It was always an uncomfortable paradox for Ukraine's warring sides: while Kiev and Russian-backed rebels battled each other for nearly three years, trade kept flowing across the frontline.

Now even those tenuous links have finally ruptured after Ukraine's leader Petro Poroshenko ordered a halt to all goods deliveries to the eastern separatist regions, ramping up tensions in the festering conflict.

The move was a last resort for Kiev, as coal from their former industrial heartland remains a key energy source and authorities are reluctant to sever the few threads binding the insurgent fiefdoms to Ukraine.

But Poroshenko's hand was forced after irate nationalist protesters imposed their own trade blockade and the rebels responded by seizing Ukrainian enterprises on their turf and stopping supplies to government areas.

"Thanks to the joint efforts of those behind the blockade and the terrorists, Ukraine lost its businesses and this created a whole new reality," Poroshenko told security chiefs on Wednesday.

"The decision that we have had to take is not an easy one."

The sudden collapse in trade ties between the two sides has sparked fears among Kiev's Western allies that it will now be even harder to make peace in Ukraine, with a European-brokered plan to end the conflict long stalled.

EU ambassador Hugues Mingarelli said that Poroshenko's decision "is not going in this direction" towards reconciliation.

The Kremlin -- which Ukraine and the West see as the puppetmaster of the rebellion -- blasted Kiev for trying to wreck the peace deal.

"Such actions aimed at cutting off whole regions of the country will lead to a further escalation of tensions," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

- 'Not going anywhere' -

Poroshenko's nationalist opponents hailed his decision as a victory after they forced him into a corner by maintaining their own blockade of rail and road links since January.

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"We welcome the decision by the president," Sergiy Akimovich, one of the blockade leaders, told AFP.

"But we are not going anywhere yet and will carry on."

Kiev resisted using force to shift the protesting military veterans and nationalist politicians despite it disrupting vital fuel supplies and drawing ire from both Kiev and the rebels.

This week they dispatched police to break up the demos but after the operation turned violent, protests broke out elsewhere around the country and Poroshenko backed off, accusing his opponents of wanting to stir bloodshed.

But it wasn't just the protesters that pushed Kiev to act.

While the authorities were struggling with the blockade, the rebels on the other side were taking their own unilateral measures in response.

As work at major enterprises on their territory ground to a halt, they began seizing control of dozens of Ukrainian-owned firms still operating there.

Poroshenko said the takeovers -- which mainly targeted the businesses of Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov -- have cost the country "billions of dollars".

For some observers, that meant Kiev no longer had the incentive to maintain trade ties.

"While Ukraine could collect taxes and foreign currency earnings from the companies located in the rebel-held regions, it was worth protecting them," columnist Oleg Gavrysh wrote in Novoye Vremya magazine.

- Rebels look to Russia -

Across the de facto border in rebel-held territory, the separatist leadership has insisted that Ukraine's decision will not hit those living under their rule too hard.

Insurgency chief Alexander Zakharchenko claimed on Friday that more than 84 percent of imports into the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic already come from Russia.

Now they will look to bolster trade as well in the other direction to make up.

"There will be some difficulties on this path but the process is already started and is developing intensively," Zakharchenko said.

At a market in the de facto rebel capital of Donetsk biscuit trader Igor, 22, told AFP that residents already rely mainly on Russian products.

"In general we don't bring anything from Ukraine, most imports come from Russia," he said.

"That means the blockade can be remedied -- people are like cockroaches, they can adjust to anything."
Almaty (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - The trial in absentia of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive banker and Kazakh opposition figure wanted on embezzlement charges by Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine began Friday, a court in the Central Asian country said.

"The process began on March 17 at 10.00 (0400 GMT)," a representative of the special inter-district criminal court in oil-rich Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty told AFP by phone.

Ablyazov, a former energy minister and banker in Kazakhstan and his associates are accused of embezzling billions of dollars from BTA bank, once a leading lender in the authoritarian republic.

He has always denied the charges, claiming they are linked to his political opposition to 76-year-old Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

His three alleged accomplices were all facing trial Friday, the court representative confirmed.

Ablyazov, currently based in France, is widely believed to have bankrolled opposition groups and media in Kazakhstan, a republic of 18 million that Nazarbayev has maintained a vice-like grip over since before independence in 1991.

He promised to topple the Kazakh government "in the space of three years" after France's highest administrative authority decided to halt extradition proceedings against him in December.

Ablyazov was set to be extradited to Russia, where he is also wanted on charges connected to alleged corruption at BTA, but the council saw a "political goal" behind Kazakh ally Russia's extradition request.

The banker predicted he "would have been killed" in the space of "one month to a year" had the extradition -- which could have been followed by extradition to Kazakhstan -- gone ahead.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture advised France against the extradition, citing a serious risk of torture.

Ablyazov spent more than three years in custody after being arrested by French authorities in the Cote d'Azur region in 2013.
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump on Friday accused China of not doing enough to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, after his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against Pyongyang was an option.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said on Twitter.

Earlier in Seoul, Tillerson said military action would be a possibility if the threat posed by North Korea were to escalate.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."

Tillerson announced the end of Washington's "strategic patience" -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

The secretary of state is currently touring northeast Asia, after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

Tillerson is expected in China on Saturday. Beijing is North Korea's main diplomatic ally and trade partner.

China shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  A federal judge should let President Donald Trump's travel ban apply to a Syrian family trying to relocate to Wisconsin, U.S. Justice Department attorneys argue in a new court filing.

The case revolves around a Syrian Muslim who fled the war-torn country in 2014 and settled in Wisconsin. He's been working since last year to win asylum for his wife and 3-year-old daughter, who remain in Aleppo. They were trying to obtain visas when Trump issued his first travel ban in January.

The man filed a federal lawsuit in Madison asking a judge to block the ban from applying to his family so they could continue the visa process. U.S. District Judge William Conley declared that request moot last month after a federal judge in Washington blocked the ban. The family is now slated to travel to the U.S. embassy in Jordan next month for visa interviews.

Trump has since issued another ban, however, temporarily prohibiting travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria, from entering the United States. The new order prompted the man to renew his request last week.

He argued the new ban is anti-Muslim and violates his rights to freedom of religion and due process. Conley issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting immigration officials from enforcing the ban against the man's wife and daughter, saying they're in danger daily. Now the man wants Conley to issue an injunction, which would further cement the court's protection.

Conley has set a hearing on the injunction request for Tuesday. The Justice Department filed a brief late Thursday night arguing against an injunction.

Agency attorneys wrote that the man's request is unnecessary since federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland completely blocked the ban this week. The order also includes waiver provisions for people who seek to reside with a family member admitted to the United States legally and the man can't show he's been harmed, they wrote.

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The attorneys went on to say that the ban is a valid exercise of the president's authority to temporarily suspend certain classes of aliens from entering the country and the ban draws distinctions based on the risk of terrorism, not religion.

"More fundamentally, Plaintiff misses the point: the Order's objective is to prevent future terrorist attacks before they occur," the government's brief said.

According to the Syrian man's lawsuit, he fled his country to avoid near-certain death at the hands of two military factions, one fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's regime and another that supports it. Both sides thought he was working for the other; each faction tortured him and threatened to kill him. He didn't identify himself in the lawsuit to protect his family.

His attorney didn't immediately respond to an email message Friday morning.

___

Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trumps main counter-terrorism adviser, was reportedly linked to a Hungarian group that the U.S. State Department previously tied to the Nazis during World War II, The Forward reported Thursday.

Gorka, who faced accusations of connections to anti-Semitic groups last month, was called a formal member of a Hungarian group named Vitezi Rend, leaders of the group told The Forward. It was started under a former Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy. Horthy, according to the report, enforced laws against Jews and worked with Adolf Hitlers Nazi regime to deport hundreds of thousands of Jews to the Nazis.

Read: Trump Cabinet Can Cause Another Economic Crash

Since the Nazis defeat in the World War II, the group split off into two others. Historical Vitezi Rend is the one where Gorka is an alleged member.

The 46-year-old Gorka is an American citizen, but was born in the United Kingdom to Hungarian parents. A previous report by The Forward last month found that between 2002 and 2007, while he worked in politics and journalism in Hungary, he worked with far-right Hungarian groups like the political party Jobbik.

The Anne Frank Centers executive director Steven Goldstein called for Gorkas resignation after the report was released, taking directly to Twitter and tagging the president.

Since Trump appointed Gorka in January, his credentials and experience for such a critical role in the administration and the globe were questioned. Gorka was an editor for the right-leaning Breitbart News and is a friend to White House political adviser Steven Bannon, according to The New York Times.

Read: Who Is Angela Chen?

At one of Trumps inauguration balls, many claimed a medal Gorka wore was a tip towards Horthy. However, Gorka said in a video posted to his official Twitter account Feb. 14 that the medal was worn in honor of his father.

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President Donald Trump has proposed to boost federal spending on the production of nuclear weapons by more than $1 billion in 2018 while slashing or eliminating spending on many federal programs related to diplomacy, foreign aid, and social needs, in a budget proposal that reflects the first tangible expression of his defense priorities.

The $1.4 billion budget increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration amounts to just a small fraction of the overall $54 billion boost he requested over the militarys roughly $639 billion 2017 budget, but it is a proportionally higher increase (11 percent) than the Defense Department itself would get (8 percent), signaling that he and his advisers feel the U.S. nuclear weapons program deserves special treatment.

The 64-page budget document released by the White House on March 16  and entitled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again  contained only a few sentences about the proposal, which would give the NNSA a total of $14.3 billion in fiscal year 2018. But the blueprint said the new spending would support the goals of moving toward a responsive nuclear infrastructure and advancing the existing program of record for warhead life extension programs.

That language refers to an existing effort to modernize three types of warheads, so they can be deployed with bombers, submarine-launched missiles, and land-based missiles, some of which will themselves be modernized in years to come. That warhead work is well under way, although the budget document suggested it had been slowed by Obama-era defense spending caps. Some independent experts have cautioned, however, that the speed of the work is limited mostly by its sheer complexity, rather than by fund shortages, and expressed doubt that it could be accelerated.

Trumps budget proposal also says the additional NNSA funds would address its critical infrastructure maintenance needs  which is Washington-speak for everything from laboratories and test tracks to office buildings  which NNSA director Frank Klotz has pegged in public statements at roughly $3.7 billion. That tally includes both nuclear weapons-related work and nonnuclear work related to the cleanup of wastes from past weapons production activities.

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Much of the agencys infrastructure is antiquated, having been built during the Cold War, Klotz told a well-timed hearing before the House Armed Services Committees oversight and investigations subcommittee just a few hours after the proposed budget was released. NNSA is presently busier than we have been for many, many years but operations are subject to increasing risk due to spending shortfalls.

When Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) asked Klotz to provide more detail about how the new funds would be expended, however, he declined to answer. In a written statement, the Department of Energy  of which the NNSA is a part  said the current proposal represents only an overview, and that further details will be divulged in May.

Many in Washington say that Congress is unlikely to approve Trumps budget. Nonetheless, the special status Trump has assigned to nuclear weapons work is exemplified by the fact that even as the NNSAs budget would expand under his proposal, the rest of the Energy Departments budget would decline by around 20 percent, or $1.7 billion.

Gone would be the departments weatherization, gas mileage, and clean energy programs. The Office of Science, which supports research into new technologies and basic physics as well as climate change, would be cut by nearly twenty percent. Elsewhere in the government, the State Department would get a 28 percent budget cut, funds for U.N. peacekeeping would be scaled back, humanitarian aid would be focused on fewer nations, and all federal spending for the U.S. Institute of Peace would disappear.

This story is part of Up in Arms. National security-related events, reports and findings that deserve more attention. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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The current U.S. nuclear weapons modernization program, which was initiated and strongly supported by former President Barack Obama, was already estimated to cost $1 trillion or more over the next three decades. But Trump, in a Dec. 22 tweet, said the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability  implying that this should be beyond what Obama had set in motion.

As if to hammer that point home, Trump on March 16 also announced the appointment as principal deputy Pentagon policy chief of a defense analyst who helped write a new U.S. nuclear policy in 2001 that supported research on new types of nuclear warheads. The policy, overseen in part by Trump nominee David J. Trachtenberg, a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary under President George W. Bush, also downplayed the significance of arms control, and supported an expansion of U.S. ballistic missile defense programs.

In Feb. 2013, Trachtenberg joined other conservative analysts in sending a letter to Obama that urged the president to withdraw his public pledge to pursue the global elimination of nuclear weapons. This agenda, the letter said, would only result in the unilateral disarmament of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. It also urged Obama not to endorse further cuts in Americas nuclear arsenal, arguing that such a move would put our country, its allies, and our peoples at ever-greater risk. Trachtenberg separately has criticized Obamas nuclear policy for ruling out new nuclear weapons, missions or capabilities.

Trumps budget document says his choices demonstrate the Administrations strong support for the United States nuclear security enterprise and [it] ensures that we have a nuclear force that is second to none.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the budget choices Trump has made will send a signal that will worry our erstwhile adversaries, Russia, China. But it will also puzzle our allies, Kimball said, because they recognize American diplomacy is critical to their security.

This story is part of Up in Arms. National security-related events, reports and findings that deserve more attention. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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Copyright 2017 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
When it was announced that President Trump would receive German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House, there was immediate speculation that the meeting could be tense, to say the least. After all, Trump spent much of his campaign attacking Merkel, going so far as to invoke her name to insult his opponent, Hillary Clinton, who he said wanted to be Americas Angela Merkel.

Footage of the two seemed to confirm the icy relationship. After the world leaders met privately in the Oval Office, press photographers and videographers were allowed to enter and captured an awkward exchange.

In one clip, photographers can be heard asking for the two to shake hands. Trump not only ignores them, but ignores Merkel when she leans over to ask him if he wants to shake hands. In the footage, the two dont address one another or even make eye contact, although Trump tells the press in the room they had a very good meeting discussing many things.

The two did shake hands when Trump greeted Merkel upon her arrival at the White House.

Trump and Merkel have differed publicly on a number of issues, most notably immigration. Germany adopted an open-door policy to admit Syrian refugees, which Trump called a catastrophic mistake.

The Oval Office snub was notable in part because Trumps handshakes with other world leaders have been closely scrutinized, mainly for their length and vigor. The president has a grab-and-yank style, which was on full display when he greeted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House. During a photo op with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, their handshake lasted a whopping 19 seconds.

Read more from Yahoo News:
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP)  President Donald Trump's proposed deep cuts to humanitarian aid go against the global development goals the United States committed to in 2015, the European Union's international development chief warned Friday.

"Any withdrawal or cut in the development assistance would actually go contrary to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda," the EU commissioner for international cooperation and development, Neven Mimica, told The Associated Press.

The ambitious set of global goals take aim at eradicating poverty, reducing disease burden and ensuring clean water around the world, among other issues, by 2030. They were adopted by the international community at a United Nations summit.

The EU official was responding to a question about Trump's budget proposal, which would carve $17 billion from funding for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. That's a drop of 31 percent, a dramatic shift for the world's top humanitarian donor.

The budget proposal still requires Congress' approval.

Mimica added that "the EU, however, shall do its best to be the best donor in the world."

He was in Ethiopia's capital to announce 165 million euros ($177 million) of support for Somalia and South Sudan, which are suffering from drought and famine.

Both countries are part of what the United Nations has called the largest humanitarian crisis since the world body was founded in 1945, with more than 20 million people in four countries  including Nigeria and Yemen  facing starvation and famine.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump hosts Germany's Angela Merkel at the White House Friday, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of words between the two ostensible allies.

The cautious German chancellor and the impulsive US president will hold talks in the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues.

Talks had been scheduled for Tuesday, before a blizzard in the eastern United States forced a postponement.

For years, Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.

With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a 140-character Twitter missive.

Before coming to office the US president called Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and said she was "ruining Germany."

He also demanded countries like Germany step up defense spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytizes fiscal prudence.

In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind the real estate mogul of democratic values.

Any "close cooperation," she said, must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."

Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world," a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House.

- Voice of Europe -

Between meetings, the pair will hold a joint press conference at 1:20 pm (1720 GMT) that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements.

"Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence," said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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"Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain," he added.

"And Germany has placed all of its security eggs in multilateral baskets."

Since coming to office, Trump has tempered his comments slightly, but is still likely to press for higher defense spending.

And European officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.

Bannon who has championed trade protectionism and opposed the European Union and other multilateral institutions that underpin the world order.

Merkel is sure to raise the issue of a proposed US border tariff that would hit German manufacturers hard. To underscore the point she will bring a host of German business leaders along for the trip.

Before departing for the United States, Merkel also noted she was going to Washington as an envoy not just of Germany, but of Europe too.

"I will of course point out that for us, our country and our membership in the European Union are two sides of the same coin," Merkel said ahead of the visit.

Hours before the pair was set to meet, Germany's Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries warned that Berlin could take Washington to an international trade court if it insists on imposing punitive tariffs on German goods.

Amid the heightened rhetoric, she acknowledged that "a lot is at stake" as Merkel meets Trump on Friday, calling for clarity and "creating a reliable base" for relations to reduce the "poisonous" uncertainty clouding the economic outlook.

In a conciliatory tone, a White House official said that Trump will seek out Merkel's views on Russia.

That is a nod to her years on the international stage and experience growing up in communist East Germany, where she learned Russian.

"The president will be very interested in hearing the Chancellor's views on her experience in interacting with Putin," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Of course she has been doing this for more than a decade," the official said. "He's going to be very interested in hearing her insights on what it's like to deal with the Russians."

Trump's own background may also help break the ice.

His family hails from Kallstadt, a tidy village nestled in southwest Germany's lush wine country.

His grandparents left for America more than a century ago fleeing poverty and later, after a brief return, trouble with the law.
Donald Trumps favorite crutch to lean on these days is the idea that he inherited a mess. But with respect to the ongoing U.S.-led war against the Islamic State, Trump actually inherited a campaign that is approaching military success. As Colin Kahl and I noted in a previous Shadow Government post, the Islamic State is reeling from the synchronized blows being inflicted by the U.S. military in cooperation with its coalition partners and Iraqi and Syrian partners. The self-proclaimed caliphates morale, resources, manpower, and territory have been severely reduced; the organization is hanging on for dear life in its remaining strongholds. Barring some catastrophic U.S. policy misstep, the defeat of the Islamic State  at least in Iraq and Syria  is probably just a matter of time.

This victory, however, will create new dilemmas for the Trump administration. There will be thorny questions about what sort of political endgame to pursue in Syria and whether to leave a residual U.S. military presence in Iraq. More broadly, there will be the question of how to wage the broader global war on terror (GWOT), a struggle that has been ongoing for 15 years now and will certainly outlive the defeat of the Islamic State. After all, liberating Mosul and Raqqa will not defeat other international jihadist groups such as al Qaeda and its affiliates, nor will it rule out the possibility that elements of the Islamic State will go underground and then resurface a few years down the road  as indeed happened with its forerunner, al Qaeda in Iraq. Nor will it solve the broader problem of radicalization and extremism in the Muslim world. And so a key question for Trump is what politico-military strategy the administration should pursue in an ongoing struggle against violent jihadist organizations.

In one recent article, as well as a longer report, my good friend (and Elephants in the Room contributor) Peter Feaver and I answer that question by outlining and assessing the strategic options available to U.S. policymakers. We argue that there are four broad options for the GWOT after the Islamic State  all of which have some appeal, but all of which also have real, and in some cases crippling, liabilities.

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Military disengagement

At one extreme, the United States could try military disengagement, which would essentially entail pulling all U.S. forces  even trainers and advisers  out of the greater Middle East in hopes of averting the ideological blowback that is often alleged to cause the jihadist threat. This approach is often favored by academic critics of the GWOT, but as we argue, it is both politically infeasible  given the significant fears Americans have regarding terrorism  and unlikely to reduce the threat as significantly as its proponents argue. The result could be dangerous indeed: the United States would still be in the jihadists cross-hairs, but would have handcuffed itself in fighting back against that threat.

GWOT surge

At the other extreme, America could choose a GWOT surge  a heavy-footprint, heavy-investment approach comparable to that taken in Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of our post-9/11 conflicts there. This strategy would involve decisive military operations, featuring tens of thousands of U.S. troops if necessary, to rapidly defeat the most dangerous terrorist organizations and clear out their safe havens. Crucially, it would also entail intensive efforts (a la the Bush-era freedom agenda) to address root causes by fostering political liberalization and effective, pluralistic governance in societies from which terrorist groups emerge. The problem here, of course, is that it is questionable whether this strategy can be executed effectively at any price  and it certainly cannot be executed at a price that the American people and their leaders are willing to pay over a long enough period to succeed. The result might thus be strategic failure at an exorbitantly high cost.

Light footprint

That leaves two middle-ground options. First, the light-footprint approach. This would resemble the strategy pursued by the Obama administration after the killing of Obama bin Laden in 2011 but before the Islamic State fully emerged three years ago. It would rely on drone strikes and other limited-liability forms of attack to hold the most dangerous terrorist organizations at bay, while assiduously avoiding any significant ground operations and relying on local partners to provide boots on the ground where needed. During the 2011-2014 period, this approach delivered good operational results  for a time  in places like Yemen, and it entails far less military risk and financial cost than GWOT surge.

The trouble, though, is that even in the best circumstances it simply contains the threat and thus involves something akin to perpetual conflict  mowing the grass, as the Israelis would say. And as the collapse of Iraq in 2014 demonstrates, light-footprint may not be robust enough to keep the most dangerous jihadist organizations from defeating local partner forces and carving out safe havens from which they can consolidate their strength and plot major attacks. The United States may thus fall into a dangerous pattern whereby its strategic position in the GWOT deteriorates and, as happened in Iraq and Syria from 2014 onward, it therefore finds itself forces to intervene more decisively under more adverse circumstances than before.

Counter-ISIS plus

That leaves the final option, which we call counter-ISIS plus. As the name implies, counter-ISIS plus resembles and perhaps modestly exceeds the culmination of the Obama administrations response to the Islamic State  in other words, the level of effort reached in Iraq and Syria by 2015-2016. This approach would combine aggressive air campaigns involving both manned and unmanned platforms, special operations forces raids, advise-and-assist operations, and deployment of modest numbers of ground combat forces as part of a continuing effort not just to contain the most dangerous terror groups but to roll them back and defeat them militarily. The total footprint of this option would be between 5,000 and 15,000 troops  significantly more than the light-footprint option, but far less than the GWOT surge  and would operate according to permissive rules of engagement that would allow them to take the initiative both in direct action missions and in supporting partner forces.

As is the case today, this strategy would not include military efforts to remake Middle Eastern societies, although it would include diplomatic engagement aimed at modestly improving governance in countries such as Iraq. In essence, counter-ISIS plus aims not to cure the disease but to treat its worst symptoms  safe havens and undisrupted plotting that can lead to high-casualty attacks  quite aggressively.

To be sure, this strategy has plenty of liabilities. It risks greater U.S. casualties than the light-footprint approach. It requires a great deal of time and patience to produce results: witness the steady but painfully slow pace of the counter-Islamic State campaign since 2014. But this option nonetheless represents the best of a bad lot. The resource requirements are non-trivial but certainly affordable, if the current campaign  which cost roughly $6.2 billion over its first 18 months and was projected to cost another $7.5 billion for fiscal year 2017  is any indication. This strategy also has a record of operational success when employed aggressively, as under the Bush administration in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 and under the Obama administration against the Islamic State since 2014. If employed aggressively today, it would bring a significant amount of combat punch to the task of destroying terrorist organizations, eviscerating their leadership and middle management, killing their foot soldiers, and denying them their safe havens. Finally, this approach is probably the most politically viable option available today. It involves robust military action against a dangerous threat, thereby guarding against charges of doing nothing or doing too little, but it does not require a politically unsustainable tolerance for exorbitant economic and military costs.

You can find deeper analysis here. But the basic point  and perhaps the most important piece of advice for the Trump team  is that the United States must choose its GWOT strategy with eyes wide open. It is tempting to think  and Trump has often led his audiences to believe  that there is a silver bullet strategy that will allow the United States to defeat its jihadist enemies conclusively and at a tolerable cost. Yet this is probably not the case.

The affordable options will not deliver conclusive victory; the options that promise to defeat the threat once and for all cannot be executed at an acceptable price. The best any administration can do is to pursue an aggressive strategy of symptom management, one that will require great patience and persistence to produce even acceptable results over time. Even counter-ISIS plus will certainly not allow the United States to declare victory in the GWOT anytime soon  and Trump would make a big mistake if he took the Islamic States looming defeat in Iraq and Syria as an opportunity to do so. But it is the strategy best suited to allowing the United States to defend itself at a tolerable cost in an age of enduring terror.

Photo credit: Iraqi forces advance on the Islamic State in Mosul on March 17, 2017. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
WASHINGTON  President Trump on Friday knocked China for not doing enough to curb North Koreas nuclear and missile programs  even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson headed to Beijing as part of a high-stakes diplomatic swing through Asia.

North Korea is behaving very badly, Trump said on Twitter. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!

It was hardly the first time that the president has complained that China wasnt doing enough to help rein in the secretive Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. But the timing of this salvo was unusual: It came as Tillerson was bound for Beijing as part of a trip that has also taken him to Japan and South Korea, where he warned that the U.S. may use force against North Korea.

Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said Friday at a press conference in Seoul. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.

Asked about the possibility of preemptive U.S. military action, Tillerson replied: Certainly, we do not want for things to get to a military conflict. We are quite clear in that, in our communications, the secretary said. But obviously, if North Korea takes action that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that would be met with an appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table.

Tillerson added that he would press China to step up efforts to punish North Korea economically.

But the secretary of state also was slated to use his stop in Beijing to lock down the dates and location for a visit to the U.S. by Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S. officials told Yahoo News last week that the tentative plan was for an early April meeting at Trumps private Mar-a-Lago club and estate in Florida.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, shakes hands with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se during a news conference. (Photo: Jung Yeon-Je/Reuters)

In recent days, however, Washington and Beijing have stepped up mutual criticisms, leading to questions about whether the timing is right for a summit, and what concrete benefits such a meeting might have.

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North Korea is one of Trumps most difficult national security challenges. On Barack Obamas watch, Pyongyang made enough progress on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that, experts predict, it could strike the U.S. mainland, possibly even the East Coast, in two to three years.

The Obama administration enlisted China and other world powers in two rounds of international sanctions, and left Trump options for further tightening the economic vise, according to administration and congressional sources. China is the key to North Korea policy because its the smaller countrys patron  its source of food and fuel.

Punitive economic measures havent deterred North Korea, which announced in January that it could launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at any time. The U.S. responded that it would shoot down any missile, but the back-and-forth highlighted how international diplomacy and economic sanctions have not worked to date, leaving Trump very few options for facing down an escalating threat.

North Koreas growing capability is one of the most significant challenges the next administration will face. There are no simple solutions, then-Vice President Joe Biden said in a January speech about nuclear policy. We must continue working closely with the international community  including China  to convince North Korea to reverse course.

After Pyongyangs January missile threat, Trump tweeted: 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!

Trump, then the president-elect, added, China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but wont help with North Korea. Nice!

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a ballistic-rocket launch drill in this undated photo released by North Koreas Korean Central News Agency. (Photo via Reuters)

Beijing doesnt want North Korea to collapse, which would potentially send refugees streaming into China, to say nothing of raising doubts about the security of North Koreas nuclear weapons. It also doesnt want North and South Korea to reunite, fearing that the result would be a U.S.-aligned country on its borders.

I think we have to be clear-eyed as to how far China will go and not get overly optimistic as to how far theyll go, Tillerson told a Jan. 11 hearing on his confirmation as Trumps secretary of state.

If China is not going to comply with  U.N. sanctions, then its appropriate for us  for the United States  to consider actions to compel them to comply, he added.

That statement raised eyebrows even among some Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who wondered privately how the Trump administration would compel China to do something it considers profoundly risky  choking off trade and therefore risking North Koreas collapse.

Theres probably no bilateral relationship that carries more significance and where theres also the potential if that relationship breaks down or goes into full conflict mode that everybody is worse off, Obama told reporters in a December press conference.

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President Donald Trump is hosting German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House Friday. The two met in the Oval Office for a discussion about NATO and the Islamic State group, among other topics. (March 17)
President Donald Trump has tapped a leading executive from Boeing (NYSE:BA) to serve in the No. 2 role at the Pentagon, underscoring Trumps plans to enhance defense spending.

The White House said Thursday it will nominate Patrick Shanahan, Boeings senior vice president of supply chain and operations, for deputy secretary of defense, the top position under Secretary James Mattis.

The announcement came the same day as Trumps budget proposal for fiscal year 2018, which calls for a 10% increase to the Pentagons budget. The administration is asking Congress to approve a defense budget of $639 billion, or $54 billion more than the current budget.

Shanahan was named to his role with Boeing in April 2016. As head of the aircraft makers supply chain and operations, Shanahan is responsible for implementing advanced manufacturing technologies and global supply chain strategies, according to Boeings website.

Shanahan led the 787 Dreamliner program from 2007 to 2008.

Prior to that, he held various executive positions in defense programs. He was vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, starting in December 2004. Shanahan also oversaw U.S. Army aviation programs for Rotorcraft Systems, a Boeing subsidiary.

Trump publicly clashed with Boeing and aerospace rival Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) over the costs of the new Air Force One jets and Lockheeds F-35. He later met with the CEOs of both Pentagon contractors. Military stocks have soared since Trump became president; Boeing is up 25% since Election Day, while Lockheed Martin is up 12%.

Its not just the Pentagon getting an injection of business acumen. Trump selected former Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) CEO Rex Tillerson to serve as Secretary of State and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for Commerce Secretary. Former Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) executives Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn are serving as Treasury Secretary and chief economic advisor, respectively.

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President Trump will come face to face with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House Friday  after relentlessly mocking and criticizing her for months on end during last years presidential campaign.

The new U.S. president and the longtime German stateswoman are expected to discuss the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Trump has criticized, and the Wests relationship with Russia.

The meeting has the potential to be awkward.

Trump and Merkel, leaders of two of the worlds most powerful and influential countries, are widely seen as diametrically opposed on issues such as immigration and the Syrian refugee crisis.

The former businessman frequently accused Merkel of having ruined Germany with insane policies that relocated hundreds of thousands of refugees to her country. According to Trump, the threat of terrorism renders the admittance of refugees a foolish and gullible action that would make a nation more vulnerable to attacks.

In January, during the week leading up to his inauguration, Trump told the Times of London and Germanys Bild that Merkel made a catastrophic mistake and that the refugee crisis was the straw that broke the camels back, prompting the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from, Trump said.

President Donald Trump greets German Chancellor Angela Merkel outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Last August, on the campaign trail, Trump compared rival Hillary Clinton to Merkel while arguing that Clintons immigration policies would destroy the United States. He said Clinton wants to be Americas Angela Merkel, and you know what a disaster the massive immigration has been to Germany and the people of Germany.

He added, Crime has risen to levels that no one thought they would ever, ever see. It is a catastrophe.

Michael Roth, Germanys European affairs minister, told Reuters at the time that this was incorrect and that the level of crime was mostly consistent. Roth said this statement was based on fears, lies and half-truths and that its important to correct it, given the United States influence throughout the world.

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Im sorry that the Republican presidential candidate trumpets out things like that without any factual basis, Roth told Reuters.

Around the same time, Trump bashed Merkel during a rally in Virginia: You watch what happens to Angela Merkel, who I always thought of as a very good leader until she did this. I dont know what went wrong with her.

What went wrong? Angela, what happened? he added.

The New York real estate tycoon also bristled in December 2015 when Time magazine selected Merkel as person of the year, even though the title is not necessarily intended to be an honor. It is given to the person who has done the most to influence the events of the year  for better or for worse. Regardless, Trump was named person of the year in 2016.

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

For her part, Merkel has taken digs at the still new Trump administration, urging people to be skeptical of propaganda campaigns that perpetuate fake news at the expense of the truth.

There needs to be an understanding of persuading people with facts instead of fakes, she said in late January, according to a translation by The Local news site.

Trump signed an executive order barring citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., and called for a freeze on accepting refugees. Merkel, on the other hand, has led Germany to accept an extraordinary number of refugees  an act that, in part, led to the Time magazine nod.

Its still too early to determine how the Merkel-Trump relationship will play out. She had close relationships with Trumps predecessors  former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama  and she has been known to stand up to political strongmen in the past, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who brought a large dog to their meeting.

Their meeting had originally been scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed following reports of a snowstorm set to hit the Eastern Seaboard.

Read more from Yahoo News:
By Dan Levine and Mica Rosenberg HONOLULU/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A defiant President Donald Trump has pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to fight for his revised travel ban, parts of which were halted by two different federal judges in recent days. The legal path forward will be challenging, though, as lawsuits work their way through federal courts on opposite sides of the country, in Hawaii and Maryland. On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington state said he was also weighing a temporary restraining order. The Justice Department's first step would likely be filing an appeal in either or both of the cases it lost this week, an action likely to come within days. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment on the administration's intentions. In granting a temporary restraining order against the ban challenged in a lawsuit brought by the state of Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson found on Wednesday that "a reasonable, objective observer ... would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion." Trump's executive order would temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. The president has said the ban is needed for national security. Early on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in a case in Maryland brought by refugee resettlement agencies represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center. Chuang ruled that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the travel ban portion of the executive order was intended to be a ban on Muslims, and as a result, violates the U.S. Constitution's religious freedom guarantee. He did not enjoin the refugee portion of the ban. "To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation's identity plainly serves a significant public interest," Chuang wrote in his ruling. The court orders, while victories for the plaintiffs, are only an early step in litigation and the government could ultimately win its underlying case. Watson and Chuang were appointed to the bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama. Trump, speaking after the Hawaii ruling at a rally in Nashville on Wednesday, called his revised executive order a "watered-down version" of his first. The president said he would take the case "as far as it needs to go," including to the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling that the ban is legal. The Trump administration won a small legal victory later on Thursday. U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who last month blocked Trump's first travel ban, ruled that the second travel ban was different enough from the first that he would not simply apply a preliminary injunction he issued against the first ban to the second one. He said he was weighing a request for a temporary restraining order on the new travel ban. The likely next stops if the administration decides to contest the two rulings that it lost this week would be the 4th and 9th U.S. circuit courts of appeal. Both may be frosty venues for Trump's arguments, with majorities of the judges in each appointed by Democratic presidents. Three judges on the 9th Circuit upheld Robart's order last month on the first travel ban. Rather than appeal further, the administration withdrew the ban, promising to retool it in ways that would address the legal issues. The Supreme Court is currently split between four conservative and four liberal justices, with no ninth justice since the death of Antonin Scalia more than a year ago. Trump's nominee to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat, Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative, is likely to be asked about the travel ban next week when he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing. Republicans are hoping that the Senate votes to confirm Gorsuch for the court by mid-April, which would likely be too late for him to weigh in on an emergency appeal about the travel ban. Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order, which caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before Robart stopped its enforcement in February. Watson's order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing schedule to determine if his ruling should be extended. (Reporting by Dan Levine in Honolulu, Mica Rosenberg in New York and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Toby Chopra and Leslie Adler)
Washington (AFP) - Stark differences between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on everything from trade to immigration were in full view during an icy first meeting at the White House.

In a frequently awkward joint press conference, Trump and Merkel showed little common ground as they addressed a host of thorny issues including NATO, defense spending and free trade deals.

For most of the 30 minutes in the East Room, Merkel was stony-faced as Trump ripped into Washington's NATO allies for not paying for their "fair share" for transatlantic defense and demanded "fair and reciprocal trade" deals.

The veteran German chancellor had arrived at a snowy White House hoping to reverse a chill in relations after Trump's incendiary election rhetoric.

The visit began cordially, with the pair shaking hands at the entrance of the White House.

But later, sitting side-by-side in the Oval Office, Merkel's suggestion of another handshake went unheard or ignored by Trump -- an awkward moment in what are usually highly scripted occasions.

There was never going to be an easy rapport between the cautious German chancellor and impulsive US president.

For years, Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.

Before coming to office in January, Trump had set the tone by calling Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and suggested she was "ruining Germany."

In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind -- some in the White House would say lecture -- the real estate mogul about democratic values.

Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world" -- a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House.

During the press conference, Merkel said "it's much, much better to talk to one another and not about one another, and I think our conversation proved this."

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But even the lighter moments were tinged with tension.

Amid a furor over Trump's unfounded allegations that he was wiretapped by Obama, the new president cracked a joke referring to past revelations that Merkel's phone had also been bugged by his Democratic predecessor.

"As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps," he said.

Merkel appeared not to find the humor in what had been a major political scandal.

And neither side tried to make small talk about Trump's own background.

His family hails from Kallstadt, a tidy village nestled in southwest Germany's lush wine country. His grandparents left for America more than a century ago fleeing poverty and later, after a brief return, trouble with the law.

- Voice of Europe -

Although Trump has tempered his criticism of NATO and the personal attacks against European leaders, officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.

Bannon has championed trade protectionism and opposed the European Union and other multilateral institutions that underpin the world order.

Trump on Friday pledged to "respect historic institutions" but Bannon, also in the East Room, gave a chuckle as Merkel was asked whether she believed Trump had lied and treated the European Union disrespectfully.

Trump insisted he was not isolationist, saying: "I'm a free trader but also a fair trader."

Merkel rejected Trump's suggestion that individual European countries should negotiate free trade deals with the United States, rather than under existing EU-US negotiations.

"I hope we can come back to the table and talk about the agreement" between the EU and US, she said.

Trump departed Washington later Friday, arriving in Florida where he will spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate, accompanied by his youngest son Barron, wife Melania and the first lady's parents.
Tackling the thorny issue of North Korean nuclear aggression is a key theme for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as he tours Asia this week, but he will have to tread carefully as he leaves Japan for South Korea on Friday, followed by China on Saturday.

President Donald Trump, known to elude conventional foreign policy, is expected to seek out new solutions to reign in a belligerent Pyongyang, instead of continuing former President Barack Obama's strategy of economic sanctions. Speaking in Tokyo on Thursday, Tillerson highlighted the need for a fresh approach, acknowledging that two decades of American efforts to denuclearize North Korea have failed.

But while Tokyo may be open to a more forceful stance, the same isn't true for Beijing and Seoul.

South Korea's new president and Chinese sovereignty concerns could emerge as key obstacles to Washington's goal of a unified, confrontational stance against North Korea.

China and secondary sanctions

While Trump has yet to publicize his North Korea strategy , many believe he could focus on secondary sanctions, i.e. focusing on companies who do business with Pyongyang.

This particular type of punishment is fundamentally defensive in nature, according to Stephan Haggard, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. It's an effort to protect the U.S. and its allies against North Korean capabilities, rather than bringing Pyongyang back to the bargaining table, he explained in a recent note.

Secondary sanctions would likely feature in Tillerson's talks this week, a senior U.S. State Department official said at a March 10 press briefing.

But that may be problematic for Sino-U.S. ties , which are already strained from Trump's trade and currency rhetoric.

Beijing is a traditional ally of Pyongyang and several Chinese firms regularly buy goods from North Korea  a matter that's long been a concern for Washington. In December, Obama's administration sanctioned Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development for using front companies to avoid sanctions.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang has previously stated that while Beijing is willing to cooperate, it opposes any country extending the jurisdiction of its domestic laws internationally.

Earlier this month, Chinese telco ZTE admitted to violating American export controls and got slapped with $1.19 billion in penalties  the biggest criminal fine in a U.S. sanctions case.

The case is notable in that ZTE acknowledged culpability and Beijing's response was muted, said Haggard. If Chinese government officials were involved, it would be a good sign for the future of secondary sanctions, he continued.

Tillerson may also start a conversation around the idea of Beijing enforcing more sanctions against North Korean imports, but that will require a lot of cooperation from Chinese officials, noted David Adelman, former U.S. ambassador to Singapore and partner at law firm Reed Smith.

The mainland recently suspended North Korean coal imports , but it's traditionally been reluctant to pursue stringent punishments that could send millions of North Koreans fleeing to China's border.

"Washington's view is that China is North Korea's chief enabler," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. Right before China banned North Korean coal imports, they ramped up coal purchases worth $180-190 million and then imposed the ban, he noted. "So, it doesn't seem like China is on board with sanctions."

New South Korean policy

Left-leaning politician Moon Jae-In, seen as the front-runner for South Korea's presidential election on May 9, has urged for friendlier inter-Korean relations and criticized previous conservative governments for their heavy-handed, pro-sanction approach to North Korea.

"The likely new president opposes hardline approaches, he wants more engagement and isn't keen on accelerated deployment of THAAD," said Kingston, referring to the controversial American anti-missile technology. "Tillerson has a real tightrope to walk there."

For now, strategists agree that Tillerson's job is merely setting the stage for more concrete talks next month when Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Trump at a scheduled summit in Florida.



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WASHINGTON (AP) -- An essential element is missing from President Donald Trump's plan for boosting the budgets of the U.S. military services by $54 billion in 2018. How, exactly, does the commander in chief intend to use the world's most potent fighting force?

Beyond the threat posed by the Islamic State and other militant groups, Trump doesn't articulate what he's defending the country from. Defeating what Trump and his aides call "radical Islamic terrorism" doesn't require an additional investment of tens of billions of dollars. And Trump, whose "America First" mantra suggested an isolationist approach, has viewed Russia as a potential partner, not an adversary.

Trump's proposed defense budget of $639 billion, which includes $65 billion for ongoing emergency war-fighting, totals more than the next seven countries combined. Yet documents released Thursday by the White House provide little detail about where all the money will be spent, other than to say the goal is to rebuild an American military that Republicans have accused former President Barack Obama of allowing to fall into disrepair.

The Trump budget makes no specific mention of Iran, North Korea or China. Instead, the documents employ broad strokes to cast the $54 billion increase as "the groundwork for a larger, more capable, and more lethal joint force, driven by a new National Military Strategy that recognizes the need for American superiority not only on land, at sea, in the air, and in space, but also in cyberspace."

Republican defense hawks in Congress immediately panned Trump's 2018 proposal. GOP lawmakers including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of Armed Services Committee, want at least $37 billion more than what Trump is recommending to begin to reverse an erosion in the military's readiness for combat.

"It is clear that this budget proposed today cannot pass the Senate," said McCain, who called Trump's defense plan only slightly better than what Obama would have crafted if he were still in office.

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And much more money will be needed over time to buy all the ships, missiles, jet fighters and more needed to replace an arsenal heavily taxed by 15 years of war, according to McCain and like-minded congressional colleagues. He envisions defense spending increasing steadily in the coming years, culminating with an $800 billion budget for the armed forces in 2022.

Still, Trump's 2018 plan would be welcomed at the Pentagon. Senior U.S. military leaders have warned Congress that strict caps on government spending imposed in 2011 have squeezed them so hard that beating powers such as Russia or China is far tougher than it used to be as aging equipment stacks up, waiting to be repaired, and troops don't get enough training.

Military leaders have told Congress they've been forced to rob their maintenance and procurement accounts to help pay for missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. That's led to critical maintenance being postponed and lengthy delays in the acquisition of new equipment, according to the Pentagon's top brass.

"It's a simple matter of supply can't meet demands," Adm. William Moran, the vice chief of naval operations, told the Senate Armed Services readiness subcommittee during a February hearing.

Despite Trump's focus on the Islamic State group, that's a war under control, according to top defense officials. "We're fully ready and have shown repeatedly that we can fight today's fight against a violent extremist organization," Gen. Stephen Wilson, the Air Force's vice chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee last month.

Trump's budget avoids a knock-down fight with Congress over base closings. The Army and Air Force have said that shuttering excess installations would save billions of dollars. But they remain open because the GOP-led Congress has so far refused to allow a new round of base closures. Military installations are prized possessions in congressional districts.

Conservatives gave Trump's defense plan high marks because the increase is paid for by slashing spending for foreign aid and domestic agencies that had been shielded under Obama.

But Rep. Raul Labrador, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he and other deficit hawks have no intention of giving the president's plan a free pass.

"We should make sure we're using military spending wisely like we look at every other item in the budget," the Idaho Republican said. "I think we make a mistake as Republicans when we say it's OK to plus-up (defense) spending and decrease everything else without really looking closely."

___

Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rplardner
NEW YORK (AP)  Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch made it clear in a book and other writings what he thinks about assisted suicide and euthanasia: He's not a fan.

His reasoning is not based on religious conviction but rather stems from his investigation of the subject stretching from ancient Greece to modern times.

In his 2006 book, "The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia," Gorsuch derided the idea that a person could take their own life as a way of achieving "death with dignity."

He wrote, "Human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong."

Gorsuch, whose nomination is to be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, favors the power of the states and sticking closely to the texts of laws and Constitution as they were understood when written. But his views on some controversial subjects, such as how widely the Second Amendment applies or whether abortion should be legal, are not known. Assisted suicide is a different matter.

Legalizing the practice, he said, could be a slippery slope. Doctors, insurance companies and the healthiest in society might wind up looking for ways to shorten the lives of the frail and the elderly to preserve resources for those with more promising futures. Doing so, he said, would have a disproportionate impact on the poor, the powerless and minorities who sometimes do not receive the same quality of medical care and pain-control management when they are ill.

"If a right to consensual homicide is eventually accepted into the law, we might ask what other ripple effects it could have on social and cultural norms. Why not, for example, allow individuals to sell their body parts or their lives?" he asked.

And he suggested that if killing became a professional duty under certain circumstances, medical care professionals may someday face "wrongful life" lawsuits from families upset their relatives suffered needlessly when a doctor or nurse failed to advocate for death.

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Still, his book made clear that his views do not interfere with a right of individuals to choose through living wills to reject certain potentially life extending measures, such as the use of a ventilator. That right was established in a landmark court case brought after the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan asked doctors to remove the ventilator from their comatose and severely brain damaged daughter. After the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in the Quinlans' favor in 1976, the respirator was removed. She did not die, however, until 1985, of pneumonia, at age 31.

Gorsuch's opposition to assisted suicide is among the reasons that abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups alike believe that Gorsuch generally would join conservative justices in voting to restrict abortion. Gorsuch himself has not had a lot to say about abortion, either in his book or in more than 10 years as a federal appeals court judge. He was careful to note in the book that in the seminal Supreme Court abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, "a fetus does not qualify as a person."

Gorsuch's largely dispassionate analysis of assisted suicide and euthanasia was published by Princeton University Press the same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

In it, Gorsuch traced the history of assisted suicide from ancient Greece through the modern-day legalization of the practice in the Netherlands and the state of Oregon.

He notes, for instance, that it was referred to as "self-murder" in Rhode Island in 1647 in an age when the bodies of those committing suicide would be dragged around town, stakes driven through them. Sometimes, grieving families were forced into poverty as property was snatched away.

By 1939, he said, a poll showed up to 46 percent of Americans favored some form of legal euthanasia.

The book contains few religious references, but he wrote: "Though the Bible nowhere explicitly forbids suicide, from its earliest days Christianity taught against the practice."

The book, catering to those interested in an in-depth legal analysis, had a limited audience until Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump. Amazon.com now lists it as its hottest-selling euthanasia book. It came out less than a decade after the Supreme Court in 1997 ruled unanimously against doctors and their patients who claimed a constitutional right to death assisted by physicians.

The court left states free to resolve the question for themselves by voting 6 to 3 to reject then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's directive to preclude doctors in Oregon from aiding suicides. The justices did not address the constitutionality of laws banning assisted suicide for terminally ill adults and Gorsuch wrote that he believed the court's language encouraged state legislatures to experiment.

Besides Oregon, laws permitting assistance in dying for individuals have been passed in California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Montana and Washington.

In his book, Gorsuch wrote that in Oregon, the first state to permit assisted suicide, those who sought to die in the first seven years after legalization were almost all white and highly educated.

That, he wrote, highlighted the question of whether assisted suicide was "a matter of necessity or more of a lifestyle choice for persons who have always tended to control their lives and now wish to control their death."

Poll after poll, he said, suggests that ethnic minorities in the U.S. are more concerned about the potential impact of legalized euthanasia on them than are their white counterparts. He said their relative unease might not be irrational given the quality of medical treatment provided to minority groups.

Derek Humphry, an 86-year-old best-selling author of "Final Exit," about the practicalities of assisted suicide for the dying, said he was not alarmed by Gorsuch's nomination while the "right to die is gathering momentum."

He predicted more northern states would pass laws within the next two decades allowing physician-assisted suicide. And if the issue reaches the Supreme Court, "it's a matter of nine opinions, not just his," Humphry said.

Besides, he added, "People can change their minds on this as they grow older or see suffering."

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Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report from Washington.

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Find AP's reporting on Neil Gorsuch here: http://apne.ws/2mfXk4V

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org
SEATTLE (AP)  Federal law gives the president broad authority over immigration. Jimmy Carter used it to deny some Iranians entry to the U.S. during the hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan to bar Cubans who didn't already have relatives here and President Barack Obama to keep out North Korean officials.

So why does President Donald Trump keep running into legal trouble with his efforts to freeze immigration by refugees and citizens of some predominantly Muslim nations?

When federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland blocked Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect, the judges spelled out their major concern: the unusual record of statements by the president and his advisers suggesting the executive order's real purpose was to discriminate against Muslims, in violation of the Constitution's ban on officially favoring or disfavoring any religion.

As the legal fight moves into the appeals courts, two key issues will be the extent of the president's broad immigration powers  and whether Trump's own record stymies his plans.

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THE RULINGS

Neither U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland nor Judge Derrick Watson bought the administration's reasoning that the travel ban is about national security.

"The history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the second executive order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban," Chuang wrote.

Watson criticized what he called the "illogic" of the government's arguments and cited "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" behind the travel ban. He also noted that while courts should not examine the "veiled psyche" and "secret motives" of government decision-makers, "the remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry."

"For instance, there is nothing 'veiled' about this press release: 'Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,'" he wrote, referring to a statement Trump issued as a candidate.

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But the scope of the rulings differed. In a challenge brought by Hawaii, Watson blocked the federal government from enforcing its ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries and its suspension of the nation's refugee program. Chuang only blocked the six-nation travel ban, saying it wasn't clear that the suspension of the refugee program was similarly motivated by religious bias.

On Friday a federal judge in Seattle said he wouldn't rule on requests from the state of Washington and an immigrant rights group to halt Trump's revised travel ban because the two other judges have already halted it.

Judge James Robart said the parties could ask him to reconsider should circumstances change. Last month, Robart granted a request by Washington to halt the initial travel ban ordered by Trump.

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APPEALS COMING

Speaking Wednesday evening at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump called the ruling in Hawaii an example of "unprecedented judicial overreach" and said his administration would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which he said he wished he could implement.

"We're going to win. We're going to keep our citizens safe," the president said. "The danger is clear. The law is clear. The need for my executive order is clear."

The Justice Department filed a brief notice Friday saying that it would appeal the Maryland ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. A day earlier, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the government planned to seek clarification of the Hawaii order before appealing to the 9th Circuit. That circuit is where a three-judge panel unanimously declined to reinstate Trump's original travel ban when it was put on hold by a Seattle Judge last month.

Despite the legal victories for critics of the ban, it's far from clear that they will continue to win. A different panel of judges in the 9th Circuit will probably hear the appeal of Hawaii's case. And on Wednesday, five judges signed a dissent criticizing the court's decision not to reconsider and throw out the panel's ruling on the original travel ban.

"Whatever we, as individuals, may feel about the president or the executive order, the president's decision was well within the powers of the presidency," Judge Jay Bybee wrote for the five.

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THE PRESIDENT'S AUTHORITY

In 1952, with the nation fearful of communist infiltration, Congress gave the president the authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to take action:

"Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may ... suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate," the law says.

That power has been invoked dozens of times. But legal experts say those examples were more limited than what Trump has sought.

Citing a report that reviewed White House administrations going back to Reagan, Chuang noted in his ruling that no president has issued a ban on the entry "of all citizens from more than one country at the same time, much less six nations all at once."

Chuang found that the travel ban likely violated another aspect of federal immigration law, barring discrimination on the basis of nationality in the issuance of immigrant visas. That law was passed in 1965 as part of an effort to end longstanding immigration quotas that had been criticized as racist.

Ultimately, the cases will come down to the ways in which that law and the Constitution constrain the president's authority.

"That's the tug of war that is going to play out and, I suspect, go before the Supreme Court," said Ted Ruthizer, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "I think it will be a very seminal decision as to what are the limitations on the executive's powers."

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Thanawala reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Ben Nuckols in Greenbelt, Maryland; Jessica Gresko, Sarah Brumfield and Jill Colvin in Washington, D.C.; and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.
Geneva (AFP) - "Broken promises" have plagued the EU's year-old migrant pact with Turkey, the UN said Friday, indicating the agreement had increased suffering notably among children, despite curbing migrants flows.

"We really need to rethink the frame of this agreement," said Lucio Melandri, senior emergency specialist with the United Nations children's agency UNICEF.

Under the accord reached on March 18 of last year, Turkey agreed to crack down on migrant flows, mainly of Syrians, in exchange for more aid, visa-free travel and the speeding up of Ankara's long-stalled EU accession talks.

But with Turkey now threatening to scrap the deal following a bitter diplomatic spat with several European governments, UNICEF's remarks came as a warning to those who view the pact as a success.

"While there has been a major decrease in the overall numbers of children on the move into Europe since last March, there has been an increase in the threats and distress refugee and migrant children endure," UNICEF's migrant crisis coordinator Afshan Khan said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Melandri said a central part of the deal was the relocation within the European Union of at least 120,000 migrants from Greece and Italy.

But so far, only 14,412 people have been relocated, according to figures correct to March 15.

- Refugees as 'bargaining chips' -

"We are observing what we call broken promises," he said, noting that only a few dozen of that number were unaccompanied migrant children.

Children separated from their parents have made up a significant percentage of those heading for Europe to escape conflict, but estimating their numbers has been difficult, the UNICEF official added.

The war of words between the EU and Turkey over the migrant deal has escalated in recent days after Ankara blasted Germany and the Netherlands for preventing Turkish ministers from campaigning ahead of a key April referendum.

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The EU said it expects Turkey to honour the deal after Turkey threatened to bin it.

Melandri scolded those seeking to use asylum seekers as "bargaining" chips.

"Refugees and migrants should not be manipulated for political reasons," he told reporters.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Twenty two people were killed in an attack on a mosque during Friday prayers inside a military base in Yemen's Marib province, local officials said. Two missiles were fired at the mosque located inside the military camp of Kofal in the west of Marib after a rocket was fired, the officials said. Most of Marib is under the control of forces loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi. Iran-allied Houthis are battling his internationally recognized government. (Writing By Maha El Dahan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Travis Blue knew he wanted to be a filmmaker after watching Twin Peaks  not only did he love the '90s cult show, he lived it. As such, this would not be his first sighting of FBI Special Agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper.

The 38-year-old grew up near Snoqualmi Valley in Washington, and sometimes camped out to watch the cast and crew film the seminal David Lynch series that aired on ABC from 1990-1991.

The series, which Showtime is bringing back in May, follows Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) after he travels to the (fictional) small town of Twin Peaks to solve the murder of high schooler Laura Palmer.

SEE ALSO: New 'Twin Peaks' posters give us the first real clue about Showtime's revival

"Twin Peaks to me was to me kind of a film school because I got to see it be made and the show also references a lot of cinema history so it was a real education," Blue told Mashable while hanging out at The Showtime House at South by South West. "The Double R Diner and I go way back."

Blue was among the 15 "superfans" selected by Showtime via social media who got to be the first to step into the world of the show and experience the Twin Peaks Lodge at The Showtime House (located at Clive Bar on Rainey Street).

There, fans were greeted by themed cocktails, merch, donuts, a photo booth and most importantly: MacLachlan.

The actor surprised the superfans as part of Showtime's event on Thursday.

"We are not worthy!" Sara Sanderford, 33, who was dressed as Twin Peaks character Audrey Horn, told MacLachlan as she gave him a hug.

MacLachlan shook the hand of every superfan after he walked through the back entrance of the bar. The fans also posed for photos with the actor on stage.

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"I was not expecting him to be here, my heart was pounding," Courtney Hazlett, a 29-year-old fan from Austin, said.

"I was like I'm just going to stand here and smile and stare at you, so hopefully I didn't freak him out too much," Stephanie Lowe, a 28-year-old fan from Austin, added. She was sporting a ladies of Twin Peaks t-shirt and a Twin Peaks tatto.

The new series is set 25 years after the original and fans lined up for their time in the Lodge couldn't have been more excited.

"The show is an escape into a different world that's magical, scary and mysterious," said Dominque Patton, 27, who was holding a box filled with Twin Peaks memorabilia, including a cast signed copy of an Us Weekly magazine from May 1990.

She said the Twin Peaks immersive experience "was a big part" of why she traveled from Fort Worth, Texas to Austin for South By.

Ryan Allison,32, and Dominique Patton,27, came to #twinpeaks #sxsw house with lots of memorabilia pic.twitter.com/DP8KSFDIVz  Saba Hamedy (@saba_h) March 16, 2017

As part of the Twin Peaks activation, The Showtime House is also hosting a two-day musical lineup with afternoon and evening sessions featuring music inspired by the show's chanteuse performances and spectral, noir-ish soundtrack.

Performers include Neko Case, Real Estate, M. Ward, Agnes Obel, Holly Macve, Julie Byrne, Alex Cameron, Aldous Harding, Alexandra Savior, Cameron Avery and Annie Hart (of Au Revoir Simone), Tim Darcy, L.A. Salami and Lets Eat Grandma.

"Fans I think are a big reason why we are here," MacLachlan said.

The actor then exited the house and walked around Rainey Street, stopping to take selfies with any fan who asked.

.@Kyle_MacLachlan has exited the house but is now taking selfies with #twinpeaks fans outside #sxsw "he's so nice" says a fan pic.twitter.com/4bsmxKSV2h  Saba Hamedy (@saba_h) March 16, 2017

Twin Peaks will return with a two-hour premiere on May 21.
On the list of documents that changed history, the Balfour Declaration  the 1917 statement of official British support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine  has surely earned a place.

So its no wonder that the declaration is one of the focal points of a new exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH), which takes a deep dive into a strange, history-shaking year. The show  1917: How One Year Changed the World, which opens Friday and will run through July 16 before traveling to the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City  also examines the U.S. entry into World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

The final text of the Balfour Declaration, issued by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild on behalf of the British government on Nov. 2, 1917, was just one simple sentence: His Majestys Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

But, as explained by Josh Perelman, NMAJHs Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions & Collections, even that single sentence was the product of a long process  part of which involved Lord Balfour requesting help from the leaders of the British Zionist movement to craft the language. On July 17, 1917, the Zionist Political Committee met at the Imperial Hotel in London to do just that.

Two drafts to come out of that meeting, from the collection of attendee Leon Simon, are included in the NMAJH exhibition. One draft is handwritten by Simon on hotel stationery and the other is a typed draft with his notes.

The version on hotel stationery plainly stated that His Majesty accepted the principle of the National Home of the Jewish People in Palestine, and that he would endeavor for the achievement of that goal. The typed version expanded on that idea. Some of the text in the version the group gave to Balfour  for example, a mention that the Zionist Organization would be consulted moving forward  was deleted in the final version, while Balfour added an extra level of explanation about what the statement of support meant for other residents of the area and for Jews elsewhere in the world.

Together, [the drafts] are able to show the iteration of process that led up to the official statement we know today, Perelman says. You can see them working through the vernacular.
Photo credit: REPUBLIC KOREA OUT -- AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS CLIENTS / AFP / KCNA / KNS

From Popular Mechanics

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level "that we believe requires action."

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat after visiting the world's most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rivals Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about the possibility of using military force, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, "all of the options are on the table."

He said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, "but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table."

But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the U.S. is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.

Past U.S. administrations have considered military force because of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, but rarely has that option been expressed so explicitly.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the U.S. within a few years.

Tillerson met Friday with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se and its acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn on the second leg of a three-nation trip which began in Japan and will end in China. State Department officials have described it as a "listening tour" as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy, well-coordinated with its Asian partners.

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Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter Friday at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it's the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. Land mine explosions in 2015 that Seoul blamed on Pyongyang maimed two South Korean soldiers and led the rivals to threaten each other with attacks."

Hordes of tourists visit both sides, despite the lingering animosity. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options - including military ones - for halting the North's weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of threatening the U.S. mainland.

Tillerson declared an end to the policy "strategic patience" of the Obama administration, which held off negotiating with Pyongyang while tightening of sanctions but failed to prevent North Korea's weapons development. Tillerson said U.S was exploring "a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures."

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains the North's most powerful ally. Tillerson will meet with top Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping in Beijing this weekend.

While the U.S. and its allies in Seoul and Tokyo implore Beijing to press its economic leverage over North Korea, the Chinese have emphasized their desire to relaunch diplomatic talks.

Tillerson, however, said that "20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today."

"It's important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks," he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something that North Korea has shown little interest in doing.

Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

He also accused China of economic retaliation against South Korea over the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system. He called that reaction "inappropriate and troubling" and said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary. China sees the system as a threat to its own security.

Last week, North Korea launched four missiles into seas off Japan, in an apparent reaction to major annual military drills the U.S. is currently conducting with South Korea. Pyongyang claims the drills are a rehearsal for invasion.

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By Mica Rosenberg NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government took the legal battle over President Donald Trump's travel ban to a higher court on Friday, saying it would appeal a federal judge's decision that struck down parts of the ban on the day it was set to go into effect. The Department of Justice said in a court filing it would appeal a ruling by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Chuang on Thursday issued an emergency halt to the portion of Trump's March 6 executive order temporarily banning the entry of travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. He left in place the section of the order that barred the entry of refugees to the United States for four months. Another federal judge in Hawaii struck down both sections of the ban in a broader court ruling that prevented Trump's order from moving forward. The decisions came in response to lawsuits brought by states' attorneys general in Hawaii and refugee resettlement agencies in Maryland who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center. Detractors argue the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a press briefing the government would "vigorously defend this executive order" and appeal the "flawed rulings." He said the plan was to appeal at the 4th Circuit first and then seek clarification of Hawaii's ruling before appealing to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The 9th Circuit court last month upheld a decision that halted an original, more sweeping travel ban signed by the President on Jan. 27. The new executive order was reissued with the intention of overcoming the legal concerns. Trump has vowed to take the fight all the way to U.S. Supreme Court. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and David Gregorio)
By Heather Somerville SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge gave final approval on Thursday to a settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit against Lyft Inc, ending a legal case that challenged the independent contractor status of the ride-hailing service's drivers. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco gave his final approval to the $27 million settlement, after granting preliminary approval in June, according to court filings. The judge had previously rejected a $12.25 million settlement offer because it "short-changed" drivers. Lyft drivers in California had sued the company, arguing they should be classified as employees and therefore be entitled to reimbursement for expenses, including gasoline and vehicle maintenance. Drivers pay those costs themselves. The settlement agreement keeps drivers as independent contractors. In his order, Chhabria cautioned, "The agreement is not perfect. And the status of Lyft drivers under California law remains uncertain going forward." Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] faces a similar class-action lawsuit from drivers in California and Massachusetts. A settlement offer in that case valued at up to $100 million was rejected last year by a judge who deemed it inadequate for drivers. Lyft has more than 700,000 drivers nationally and Uber has more than 1.5 million globally. The profits and valuations of these companies would be severely affected if they had to reclassify drivers as employees. Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents the Lyft drivers, said on Thursday she was "very pleased to be at the end of this process." The lawsuit was filed in 2013. A Lyft spokeswoman said the settlement agreement "will preserve the flexibility of drivers to choose when, where and for how long they drive with Lyft." The company has said that driver surveys show that more than 80 percent of Lyft drivers prefer being independent contractors because of the flexibility that status allows. The settlement provides thousands of dollars to Lyft drivers who logged the most miles, although infrequent drivers will see a nominal amount of cash. As part of the agreement, drivers also get benefits such as more protections from getting kicked off the app. "The question of whether the drivers are appropriately classified as employees or independent contractors will just have to wait for another day," Liss-Riordan said. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Reports of sexual assault increased last year on two out of three military college campuses in the U.S., according to data recently obtained by the Associated Press. Reported instances of sexual misconduct also spiked across all three military academies.

The two campuses that experienced a rise in reported assaultsthe U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New Yorkalso saw the largest increases in sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado saw a slight decrease in reported assaults, from 49 in 2015 to 32 in 2016.

Overall, reported assaults across all three campuses fell from 91 in 2015a 54 percent increase from the previous yearto 86 in 2016. (For perspective, each academy has around 4,000 to 4,500 students.)

For the last few years, Pentagon and military officials have attributed the rise in assault cases to students feeling more confident and safe reporting such instances. And yet, even when military students were surveyed anonymously, the data show an increase in unwanted sexual contact since 2015, with 12 percent of women and 2 percent of men having endured some form of sexual misconduct.

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Issues of sexual assault and misconduct are nothing new for the military. According to a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense, over 20,000 active members of the military were sexually assaulted in 2014. Reports of sexual assault were also significantly higher in an active-duty environment than in the military reserves.

Bottom line is that if this were an easy problem, we would have solved it years ago," Nate Galbreath, the deputy director of the Pentagons sexual-assault prevention office, told the AP last year. Unfortunately, this is a very hard problem to solve. This year, Galbreath said the Pentagon has been encouraging military academies to stress the importance of proper conduct and teach students to intervene if they spot a problem.

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When my colleague Emily DeRuy spoke with Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson, the superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, last year, Johnson identified a similar priority. Unlike some of her predecessors, Johnson was making a concerted effort to introduce conversations about sexual assault onto the Air Force campus.

But the biggest concern among military officials isnt always a lack of dialogue. In conversation with the AP, a few officials expressed frustration with prevention messages getting lost in the quick turnover of students. This is almost a new population of folks every four years and that makes it a little bit more difficult for the messages to build up and gather momentum, Galbraith said.

Whether or not turnover is the issue, its clear that efforts to prevent sexual assault on military college campuses havent had the desired effect. Perhaps this is because officials still struggle to address the main question at hand: Why are these assaults happening in the first place?

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have expanded a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks to include the leak of Central Intelligence Agency documents to the website, a source familiar with the inquiry said. The source, who is familiar with the investigation and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the probe is focused on who leaked descriptions and technical information on techniques and tools the CIA has used to eavesdrop on intelligence targets to the website. U.S. agencies have made only vague public comments on the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, but security and law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said in the wake of the leaks that it is focused on whether an intelligence contractor was responsible. At this point, they said, investigators do not think Russia or another foreign government was involved. U.S. officials have confirmed that Alexandria-based prosecutors have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its sources. Some court documents on elements of the inquiry have been made public. The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the CIA, which has not publicly confirmed the authenticity of the material made public by WikiLeaks. The website said the material it published comprised thousands of pages of internal CIA discussions about hacking techniques and the use of popular products such as Apple Inc iPhones; Google Inc Android devices; and Samsung Electronics television sets to spy on people. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his website would provide technology companies with access to the CIA hacking tools it acquired, enabling the companies to patch software vulnerabilities. (Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Bernard Orr)
The Pentagon is scrambling to figure out just what happened with an airstrike in al-Jinah, Syria, that killed dozens on Thursday night. Videos have emerged online of a bombed building attached to a mosque there, but a U.S. military official says those images dont correlate with surveillance images taken after the strike.

Most public images circulating Friday show a building attached to a small mosque, with reports of at least 40 dead. The official added that the number of casualties being reported at the mosque correlates roughly with U.S. assessments of the number of al Qaeda fighters they say they killed in the strike.

But U.S. Central Command says it has intelligence showing that the mosque was across a street from the building where the al Qaeda leaders were meeting. Theres a small street and cars parked on both sides of the street, and the building is about a 50 ft. away from the mosque, which is still fully intact, the official said.

The official added that the U.S. strike and videos of dazed and bloodied civilians might be from two separate strikes, and suggested that the Syrian government or Russian planes may have conducted the strike. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that Moscow was certain the attack was carried out by the Americans.

Of course, there should be a probe into what happened in al-Jinah in order to figure out what target was hit and who are the victims that the so-called witnesses are talking about. However, we dont have any doubts that the U.S. airstrikes targeted terrorists, Zakharova said.

The strike comes as the U.S.-led coalition has ramped up attacks in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State, now that commanders on the ground have more control over the fight.

Aleppo and Idlib have been the site of numerous American air strikes on al Qaeda targets, as the group gains influence in the country with Islamic State increasingly squeezed. The groups second-in-command, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, was killed in a strike last month, and Centcom said that a separate bombing raid on an al Qaeda camp in January killed more than 100 militants.

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In periodic reports detailing the civilian casualties it has been able to confirm, Centcom has admitted to having killed at least 220 civilians in carrying out more than 18,900 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since the air war began in 2014. But independent monitoring groups put the number at hundreds, and at times, thousands more.

In a statement, Federico Borello, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, called for a U.S. investigation, and urged more measures to reduce innocent casualties.

Relying on local armed groups for targeting intelligence in populated areas requires the U.S. to take additional measures to vet information to reduce risk to civilians, he said.

Photo credit: OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images
By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen killed the spokesman for Uganda's police force and also his bodyguard and driver early on Friday as the official left his home in the capital Kampala, a government spokesman said. Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Andrew Felix Kaweesi and the two other victims were killed in Kulambiro, a suburb in the north of the capital, government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told Reuters. "He (Kaweesi) was waylaid this morning by yet unknown gunmen. All the occupants of the vehicle were killed," Opondo said. Details of the attack, including the motive, were unclear but Opondo said the perpetrators must have used a "powerful weapon", given they knew they were attacking armed people. In the moments after the attack, images on local television showed a large crowd gathered at the scene and a parked Toyota Landcruiser with both doors on the driver's side open. There was blood spattered on the ground. The driver appeared to have died while struggling to exit the vehicle while at least one other body was also visible in the back seat. Crime is rampant in Uganda but the shooting dead of high ranking security personnel is rare. Kaweesi gained a prominent public profile when, as head of police operations in greater Kampala, he oversaw frequent arrests of Uganda's main opposition figure, Kizza Besigye. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Kampala (AFP) - Uganda's second most prominent policeman was shot and killed in his car on Friday along with two other officers as he left his home in Kampala, police said.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Kaweesi served as the force's spokesman and was one of the country's most high-profile officers.

"He was shot dead this morning as he was leaving his home coming to work," Inspector General Kale Kayihura told AFP.

"Kaweesi had two police officers guarding him who were also killed. The motive is yet to be established," he added.

Police killings are rare in Uganda, and the murder resembles the assassinations of an army officer in November last year and a senior public prosecutor in March 2015.

A large crowd of local residents gathered at the scene where the officers' dead bodies were slumped inside a black vehicle, blood pooling under shattered glass alongside the car. The bodies were later taken away.

A local resident described seeing four men on two motorcycles attack the car the police officers were travelling in at around 9:30 am (0630GMT) as they left for work.

"They shot very rapidly with guns that looked like AK47s," said Mohammad, a motorcycle taxi driver who lives and works in the area.

"The motorbikes came from behind as the car was leaving Kaweesi's house. The car driver tried to increase speed but they drove past the car and shot into it," said the 30-year old who declined to give his surname.

"The motorbikes were new and the shooters looked professional. They weren't wearing masks but I didn't see their faces because I ran for cover."

- 'Shower of bullets' -

Local mayor Charles Sserunjogi said he heard "a shower of bullets -- many shots -- from my house nearby".

"I don't believe what I'm seeing right now. I knew Kaweesi well and met with him about a week and a half ago to discuss tarmacking the road he was shot on," he said.

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President Yoweri Museveni condemned the killing and "directed the immediate installation of cameras in all major towns of Uganda and along the highways," his office said in a statement.

Kaweesi rose to prominence as he spearheaded the police response to widespread opposition party protests following a controversial 2011 presidential election.

After a stint as commander of Kampala Metropolitan Police he was appointed director of operations and then head of human resources before assuming the role of main police spokesman in August 2016.

He appeared regularly on television talk shows, his most recent appearance being Thursday night on NTV, one of the major private channels in the country.

In March 2015 Joan Kagezi, a senior public prosecutor, was shot in the street and the assailant escaped with an accomplice on a motorcycle.

In November last year Ugandan army officer, major Sulaiman Kiggundu -- a former Allied Democratic Forces rebel -- was shot in his car by gunmen travelling on two motorcycles. Both crimes remain unsolved.
London (AFP) - The White House will not repeat again claims that British spies snooped on Donald Trump, Britain said Friday after the UK eavesdropping agency branded them "utterly ridiculous" in a rare public denial.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman reiterated the GCHQ agency's denial of a Fox News report -- which had been repeated by the US president's spokesman on Thursday -- and said the claims "should be ignored".

"We have made this clear to the administration and have received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated," the PM's spokesman said.

Britain's ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch and UK National Security Adviser Mark Lyall Grant spoke directly to the White House, the spokesman said, although he refused to specify whether the US administration had apologised.

The White House said Friday that Spicer had not accused Britain of spying on Trump but was "simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story".

May's spokesman pointed to the limits on employing intelligence capabilities imposed on Britain and the US -- along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand -- under the so-called "Five Eyes" pact.

The pact is an intelligence-sharing alliance forged from the embers of World War II.

"It's a situation that simply wouldn't arise," the spokesman said of the spying claims.

"We have a close, special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case," he added.

Late on Thursday, a spokesman for GCHQ said: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then-president elect are nonsense."

The press office of GCHQ -- the Government Communications Headquarters -- told AFP on Friday that it was "not unusual" for the agency to make public comment but acknowledged that "perhaps the tone of it was unusual".

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The electronic eavesdropping agency does not normally comment on intelligence matters, though it has stepped up its public relations in recent months, including for recruitment drives and warnings on cyber-security.

- 'Get a grip' -

Trump had accused former US president Barack Obama on March 4 of a wiretapping plot that would almost certainly be against US law.

In a subsequent media report, Fox's legal analyst Napolitano claimed that "three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that president Obama went outside the chain of command" to order the surveillance.

"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice," Napolitano said, claiming that Obama used Britain's GCHQ to circumvent US law.

Spicer repeated the allegations on Thursday, quoting from that Fox News report.

Members of Congress from both parties who are investigating the wiretapping allegations have found no evidence to support them.

Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign minister, said the White House should now make clear there was no evidence of any GCHQ involvement.

"That's just foolish and very, very dangerous stuff, and President Trump better get a grip," he told BBC radio.

"We're talking about the president of the US. You cannot have his official spokesman making allegations against a fellow NATO government.

"The White House needs to make it clear that they do not have, and have never had, any evidence that suggests that GCHQ or any British involvement in these matters was ever justified," he said.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A new appeal by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for funding to help Haiti's cholera victims has fallen short, with only Britain responding to the call, UN officials said Friday.

With only two percent of the needed $400 million raised, Guterres had written to all member-states last month to appeal for aid to Haiti, where more than 9,000 people died of cholera in a 2010 epidemic.

Britain was the only country to come forward, pledging $622,000.

That amount will be added to earlier contributions to the UN fund from South Korea, France, Liechtenstein, India and Chile -- totaling about $2 million.

Canada and Japan have separately granted about $7 million to help Haiti.

The United Nations is hoping to raise $400 million over two years to reduce the current cholera caseload of 30,000 to 10,000 by the end of 2018 and provide clean water and sanitation.

Only 25 percent of Haitians have access to toilets.

In his letter, Guterres had asked member-states to come forward with pledges by March 6 and said that if not enough was raised, he would be looking for other solutions.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the search for funds to help Haiti continues.

"We will continue our efforts to mobilize the funds necessary to this new approach to cholera in Haiti in order to diminish the incidence of cholera in the country and support Haitians most directly affected by the disease," Dujarric said.

Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon was forced to apologize to the Haitian people after tests showed that cholera was introduced by infected Nepalese UN peacekeepers sent to Haiti after a devastating 2010 earthquake.

The United Nations insists it is not legally responsible for the damages and invokes diplomatic immunity from lawsuits linked to the cholera outbreak.
Beirut (AFP) - UN official Rima Khalaf announced her resignation on Friday, saying the secretary general had asked her to withdraw a report in which she accused Israel of being an "apartheid state".

UN chief Antonio Guterres accepted the resignation of Khalaf, a Jordanian national, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York, while denying that the secretary general had acted under US pressure.

Khalaf, under-secretary general and executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told a news conference: "The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report).

"I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN.

"We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it," she added.

"It's only normal for the criminal to attack those defending the cause of his victims, but I cannot accept being subjected to such pressures," she told reporters in Beirut, quoting from her resignation letter.

On Wednesday, the United States demanded that Guterres withdraw an ESCWA report entitled "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid".

The report concluded that "available evidence established beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid".

Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon and Washington's ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley, welcomed Khalaf's resignation.

"Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN. It is time to put an end to practice in which UN officials use their position to advance their anti-Israel agenda," Danon said.

"Her removal from the UN is long overdue," he added.

Haley in a statement said: "When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign.

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- 'Not about pressure' -

"UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the secretary general's decision to distance his good office from it," she added.

Khalaf's analysis showed that "Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, which amounts to the commission of a crime against humanity".

Dujarric said the report had been withdrawn from the ESCWA website at the request of Guterres because it was done without consultations with the UN secretariat.

He also denied that the UN chief had accepted Khalaf's resignation under pressure.

"This is not about pressure. This is about the secretary general having the authority to manage the organisation in a way that is done effectively and that can deliver on its goals," Dujarric said.

"The secretary general cannot accept that an under-secretary-general or any other senior UN official who reports to him would authorise the publication under the UN logo without consulting the competent departments and even himself."

Dujarric insisted the report's findings were not the issue.

"It's not about content... it is about following process," he said.

"The secretary general has been very clear in his advocacy for the rights of the Palestinian people. From the start of his mandate, he has been advocating for a two-state solution and against any unilateral moves that would undermine that goal."

ESCWA, which works to strengthen cooperation and promote development, is based in Beirut and comprised of 18 Arab countries, according to its website, which lists the state of Palestine as a full member.

On Wednesday, Haley said in a statement that "the United States is outraged by the report", branding it "anti-Israel propaganda".

One of the authors is Richard Falk, a former special UN rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

Haley in Wednesday's statement described Falk as "a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories".
Beirut (AFP) - The US military says it carried out an air strike in northern Syria against an Al-Qaeda target, but denies deliberately targeting a mosque where at least 42 people were killed according to an independent monitor.

The US-led coalition has been bombing jihadist groups in war-torn Syria for several years, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

"We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target -- which was where the meeting took place -- is about 50 feet (15 metres) from a mosque that is still standing," said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: "US forces conducted an airstrike on an Al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists."

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

"We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike," he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people had died in the attack on the village mosque, most of them civilians.

The head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said "the raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians".

"More than 100 people were wounded," he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

- Body parts in the debris -

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said.

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Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time when there is usually religious lessons for men in it".

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

An AFP reporter at the scene said rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris.

Footage published by Halab Today, an online media group focused on news in Aleppo, showed piles of rubble where the mosque allegedly stood.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began six years ago with anti-government protests.

A cessation of hostilities was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued across much of the country.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

But the skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out air strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition, meanwhile, has been bombing jihadist groups in Syria since 2014.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.

Critics say the real number is much higher.

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Al-Jineh (Syria) (AFP) - The US said Friday it carried out an air strike in Syria against an Al-Qaeda meeting but denied hitting a mosque where a monitor said 49 people were killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in the late Thursday raid on the village of Al-Jineh in the northern province of Aleppo were civilians.

In Washington, the Pentagon insisted a mosque was not hit but rather a nearby building containing "dozens" of Al-Qaeda members, "several" of whom were killed.

"The mosque is still standing and relatively unscathed," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said. "The building we targeted was adjacent" and the strike "clearly hit the intended target".

He showed a black-and-white image of what appeared to be an old mosque with a flattened building a short distance away.

Another Pentagon spokesman later said: "Intelligence indicated that Al-Qaeda leaders used this partially constructed community meeting hall as a gathering place, and as a place to educate and indoctrinate Al-Qaeda fighters."

An AFP correspondent who visited the area Friday said there are two Omar bin al-Khattab mosques in Al-Jineh, adjacent to each other. The old one was damaged and the new one totally destroyed.

Rescue workers in white helmets were still hoping to dig people out of the rubble, and managed to extract the body of a man.

Dusty Korans lay on the ground, the correspondent said.

US warplanes have been bombing jihadists in war-torn Syria as part of an international coalition since 2014, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

The US Central Command said Friday it would "look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike", which was carried out unilaterally by the United States.

- Some bodies 'unrecognisable' -

Saleh Saeed al-Sheikh, whose brother Mustafa was killed in the air strike, said there was a Koranic school inside the mosque.

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Much of the building, identified outside by a black placard as a mosque, had been flattened.

Fearing additional air strikes, weekly Friday Muslim prayers were cancelled in towns and villages across northern Syria, AFP's correspondent said.

Rescuers had earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning come from the rubble.

"More than 100 people were wounded," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said on Thursday, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village some 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

Al-Jineh is held by Islamist groups, but the Observatory said no jihadist factions are present.

Resident Abu Muhammed told AFP that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after prayers at a time when there are usually religious lessons for men in it.

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he said.

- Syria says shot Israeli jets -

The strike was condemned by Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, which said targeting mosques was a war crime under international law.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests six years ago.

A ceasefire between government forces and non-jihadist rebel groups was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued.

The skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its attacks.

The US-led coalition said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.

Critics say the real number is much higher.

Israel also carried out pre-dawn air strikes in Syria, hitting several targets near the famed desert city of Palmyra which prompted Damascus regime forces to retaliate.

The Syrian army said it had downed one Israeli plane and hit another, but Israel's military insisted the safety of its aircraft had not been compromised.

Israel said it intercepted one missile. Jordanian military sources said missile shrapnel hit the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes -- the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 -- targeted "advanced" weapons bound for Hezbollah.

The Lebanese Shiite movement fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006 and is now fighting alongside the Syrian government.
Washington (AFP) - The US Justice Department on Friday took the unusual step of siding against another government agency in a high-stakes court case, another signal of the Trump administration's move away from regulation.

The court case hinges on whether President Donald Trump can fire the head of an agency designed to protect consumers from abuses by banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions.

Trump has vowed to scale back the reforms adopted in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, including creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) -- part of his broader moves to strip back regulations that the administration says hampers business.

The Justice Department argued that the structure of the CFPB was unconstitutional, and the president should have the power to fire the bureau's director.

The bureau was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation in the wake of the crisis, other aspects of which have come under attack from Republicans in Congress.

Like multi-member government commissions, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the president can only dismiss the CFPB director for some serious misconduct or other legitimate complaint.

In the so-called friend-of-the-court brief, the Justice Department said the bureau should not have that protection and the president should be able to dismiss the CFPB chief at any time for any reason, like other cabinet members.

"There is a greater risk that an 'independent' agency headed by a single person will engage in extreme departures from the president's executive policy," the filing said.

The arguments sided with PHH Corp, a mortgage lender suing the CFPB and challenging its authority in a case now before a federal appeals court in Washington.

The court in October found the CFPB's independence was unconstitutional, a ruling the bureau is now seeking to have reversed.
Seoul (AFP) - Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said Friday.

The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.

Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.

Even so, Tillerson announced the end of United States' "strategic patience" -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under the earlier policy, the US ruled out diplomatic engagement with the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."

But in separate remarks Russia's deputy foreign minister called for an end to a "vicious circle" of tough US reactions to nuclear tests by Pyongyang, which in turn further escalate tensions on the peninsula.

"We suggest looking at the situation in a multi-dimensional way in order to break the vicious circle of tensions," Igor Morgulov told Japan's JiJi Press in an interview posted on the foreign ministry's site Friday.

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North Korea has a long-standing ambition to be recognised as a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

- China is key -

Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but Pyongyang's main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

The accusation that China is not doing enough was repeated by Donald Trump Friday, when the US president said on Twitter: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.

Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South.

Its reaction was "unnecessary" and "troubling", Tillerson said.

- North's gaze -

Earlier, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area in the Demilitarized Zone, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks -- and at one point were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one pointing a camera towards him.

US officials have been spooked by North Korea's accelerating progress towards building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten US mainland cities.

Analysts said that Tillerson's comments could signal a sweeping change in Washington's stance.

"It could be rhetoric to pressure both North Korea and China but considering the current atmosphere in Washington, it doesn't seem like it will end as 'just words'," said Choi Kang of the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

"We will have to see how far they will be willing to go with the military option," he added. "But what he is trying to show is that Washington is not interested in engaging in dialogue with North Korea."

Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves.

But Tillerson has sought to reassure Tokyo and Seoul of Washington's backing in the event of an attack by the North.
A Spider-Man villain named Venom is getting his own movie. The idea for the spinoff, which premieres Oct. 5, 2018, has been gestating for nearly a decade. But now that Spidey is getting another featurehis most recent reboot, Spider-Man: Homecoming, comes out in JulySony has decided that its time to give one of his greatest foes his very own feature. Heres everything you need to know about the character and how he could affect the future of the Spidey-verse.

Venom is kind of like a darker Spider-Man.

Venom is technically not a person but a black goo that latches onto a host and imbues him or her with dark powers. In the comics, the goo first attaches to Spider-Man and controls his actions while he sleeps. Spider-Man eventually scares it away with the help of the Fantastic Four heroes. The symbiote later bonds with Eddie Brock, a reporter who hates Spider-Man, and together they became the villain known as Venom. Venom has all of Spider-Mans powersexcept his Spidey senses.

Over the years Venom has found different hosts, and sometimes hes more anti-hero than supervillain. Venom has even inhabited Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy.

MORE Spider-Man: Homecoming Will Be Like a John Hughes Superhero Movie

He first appeared onscreen in Spider-Man 3.

Remember when Tobey Maguire went emo with those awful side-swept bangs in Spider-Man 3? That was because of the black goo. Like in the comics, it attaches first to Spider-Man, then to Turner (Topher Grace) and becomes Venom. There were so many villains in that much-maligned movieSpidey was fighting Sandman, New Goblin, Venom and, well, himselfthat it became a muddled mess, and fans werent exactly clamoring to revisit the sludge that turned the Spider-Man movies into a bad musical.

Sony has been trying to make a Venom movie for a long time.

Sony first announced plans for a Venom spinoff after Maguires last outing Spider-Man and again during the Andrew Garfield era. Both attempts stalled. Now were getting a third Spider-Man reboot, this time with actor Tom Holland, so its inevitable that Venom is getting another shot. Scott Rosenberg (Jumanji) and Jeff Pinkner (who is adapting Stephen Kings The Dark Tower) are writing the new script.

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The news may affect future Spider-Mans films.

Sony keeps rebooting Spider-Man to keep the rights to the character, so Holland is the third actor to play Spidey in a little over a decade.

However, Sony hopes this summers Spider-Man movie will be more successful than the lower-grossing Andrew Garfield ones because this time the studio is joining forces with Disney and Marvel to fold Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Holland appeared in last years Captain America: Civil War fighting alongside Iron Man, Black Widow and the other Avengers, and Robert Downey Jr. will be showing up as Iron Man in Hollands standalone flick.

Sony said last year its Venom plans are totally separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its unclear whether the Venom film will exist in a separate, parallel universe from the Marvel films or whether it will have to deal with the events of Spider-Man: Homecoming or the Infinity Wars saga that will involve all the Marvel heroes, including Spidey. At this point, we dont even know if Holland will show up in the Venom movie.

MORE Heres Why the New Spider-Man Movie Is Called Homecoming

So are we looking at a cinematic Spider-verse?

Probably yesfor better or for worse. Sony has long nurtured ambitions to create a larger superhero universe, a la the Avengers for Disney, the X-Men for Fox and the Justice League for Warner Bros. That means more Spider-Man characters or versions of Spider-Man swinging onto the screen, including Spider-Gwen and Miles Morales.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting President Donald Trump at the White House today.

The meeting was originally set for Tuesday but was pushed back due to snow. It is the two leaders first face-to-face press conference and the Chancellors first trip to the United States in more than two years.

Trump will welcome the German leader at 11:20 am ET, followed by meetings at 11:30 and 11:45. The President will then lead a roundtable discussion on vocational training with U.S. and German business leaders followed by a joint press conference at 1:20. The pair will have lunch together at 1:50.

Merkel and Trump have a tense history. The U.S. president criticized the German chancellors handling of the Syrian refugee crisis and openly disagreed with TIMEs decision to name Merkel Person of the Year in 2015 instead of him. Merkel has been leading the European criticism of Trumps controversial travel ban. But White House officials have said the pair will put their differences aside in order to deepen already close German-American relations in the coming years.
By Anthony Deutsch and Thomas Escritt AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - After fending off nationalist Geert Wilders at Monday's election, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte must patch together a stable coalition that reflects the rise of fringe parties that made huge gains on the left and right. The once tiny Green Left and 50Plus parties ate away at support for the mainstream parties. They will have to be considered by Rutte's center-right VVD, which lost ground but remains the largest party with 33 seats, as it seeks a majority of at least 76 in the 150-seat house. The process cannot formally begin until Rutte's VVD has been asked to head formation talks and preliminary election results have been declared official by the Electoral Council on Tuesday, and could take weeks or months. Talks could drag on until after the summer as parties dig in their heels on their policy red lines, according to NRC newspaper commentator Tom-Jan Meeus. "Because we have a budget surplus now there is no rush to set up a coalition," he said. Signing up to a coalition is not without its risks, as the Labour party of Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem found out. Rutte's partner of the past four years was almost wiped out, tumbling from 38 to 9 seats, punished by voters for backing Rutte's austerity program. The consensual traditions of the Dutch proportional system dictate that the largest party leads talks and the parties which gained most ground must be seriously considered. Wilders' Party for Freedom, which rose to second place with 20 seats, has been ruled out by all the major parties, for whom policies like quitting the European Union, closing the border to Muslim immigrants and banning the Koran are anathema. Labour will likely be replaced as junior partner by the Christian Democrats and the progressive centrist Democrats 66, which would leave Rutte five short of a majority. The highly fragmented field, with 13 parties in the new parliament, gives Rutte plenty of options - but each brings its own difficult policy compromises. In coming days, Edith Schippers, the health minister chosen by Rutte's party to lead exploratory talks, will consult with all winning parties, ranging from Wilders's anti-Muslim party to Denk, which aims to represent Dutch Muslims. On the fringes are likes of the Party for the Animals, whose environmentalist, animal-rights message won it 328,000 votes and five seats, must also be consulted. On one issue, there is relative unity: with Wilders all but certain to play no role in the next government, nearly all parties are broadly supportive of the European Union. STICKING POINTS Some of the key issues: Immigration and duel citizenship: Rutte's VVD pledged to carry on tightening immigration controls during a campaign dominated by questions of identity. But the Greens want to do the opposite, restoring the country's reputation as a haven of tolerance by accepting refugees. The Christian Democrats (CDA) want to do away with dual nationality to force immigrants to integrate, a measure opposed by several other parties. Pensions, retirement, elderly care: As part of a punishing austerity program, Rutte's government cut spending on elderly care and raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. 50Plus, the pensioners' party, wants to undo these changes. Energy, climate and fossil fuel: Rutte cut spending on fighting climate change and on renewable energy and opened new coal-fired power plants. The Greens want to close them and channel an extra 8 billion euros into renewables. Healthcare and elderly benefits: Rutte's government introduced a compulsory "own contribution" to healthcare costs, before insurance coverage kicks in. In 2016 and 2017, it was set at 385 euros a year. The Greens and 50Plus want to abolish it. Taxation: Rutte and the Christian Democrats want to lower taxes, while the Greens want to introduce a pollution tax and increase the rate of social security contributions for people with an annual income above 150,000 euros by 10 percentage points to 17.5 percent. Euthanasia and medical ethics: D66, for decades the champion of progressive reforms from drugs decriminalisation to equal marriage, called for euthanasia to be an option for people who were not ill but who merely felt that their life was "complete". The Christian Democrats and two smaller, more radical Christian parties, strongly oppose this measure. (This version of the story corrects the name to Tom-Jan Meeus in paragraph 4) (Reporting by Anthony Deutsch, Thomas Escritt, Stephanie van den Berg and Toby Sterling)
White House officials tried to calm the concerns of British allies after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer repeated an unfounded claim that the British spy service spied on President Trump. But the White House is stopping short of saying it offered an apology to its closest foreign ally.

[British Ambassador to the U.S.] Kim Darroch and [National Security Advisor] Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster, a White House official said Friday. Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr. Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.

Several British outlets reported Friday that the White House apologized to the U.K. government, but the White House would not confirm those accounts.

The row began Thursday, as Spicer repeated the claim of Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano, who suggested that former President Obama had ordered GCHQ, the U.K.s equivalent of the National Security Agency, to spy on his successor. For nearly two weeks the White House has been struggling to justify Trumps assertion in a March 4 tweet that Obama had him wire tapped.

On Thursday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee jointly stated theyve seen no evidence of any surveillance of Trump Tower. Even Trump allies in Congress are staying away from the claim, though Trump maintained Wednesday in an interview with Fox News that he would be vindicated by new information very soon. The White House has argued that Trumps use of quotation marks around the phrase wires tapped implied he meant all manners of surveillance against him, but hasnt offered any official proof of the claim, beyond reports in the press.

Reading a long list of media reports that mentioned alleged signals intelligence about Trump and his ties to Russia, Spicer quoted comments.

Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, Spicer said during the daily White House briefing. Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. 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 Spying Agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, The President needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trumps conversations involving President-elect Trump, he was able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this.'

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Within hours GCHQ responded in a rare statement calling the claim utterly ridiculous.

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then President Elect are nonsense, a GCHQ spokesperson said. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

Asked by a reporter whether the subject of GCHQs alleged involvement had raised between the two governments and whether it would affect the so-called special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., Spicer backtracked.

No, no, it has not been raised, Spicer said. But I do think that, again, were not  all were doing is literally reading off what other stations and people have reported, and I think that casts into concern some of the activities that may have occurred during the 16 election. Were not casting judgment on that. I think the idea is to say that if these organizations, these individuals came to these conclusions, they merit looking into.

The claim is all the more incendiary given the close intelligence-sharing relationship between the two countries. The U.S. and the U.K., along with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, form the Five Eyes  a decades-old intelligence cooperative in which the countries share much of their signals intelligence and pledge not to spy on each another.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May told The Independent that the White House would not float the claims again. Weve made clear to the Administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and weve received assurances they wont be repeated.

On Friday, Fox News Shepard Smith responded to Trumps call to ask Fox about Napolitanos claim, saying Fox could not confirm it in any way.

Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitanos commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now President of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way, full stop, Smith said.
(WASHINGTON)  The White House on Thursday stood by President Donald Trumps unproven accusations that his predecessor wiretapped his New York skyscraper, despite growing bipartisan agreement that theres no evidence to back up the claim and mounting pressure to retract the statement.

Angrily defending the presidents statement, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Trump stands by the four tweets that sparked a firestorm that has threatened Trumps credibility with lawmakers. Spicer denounced reporters for taking the presidents words too literally and suggested lawmakers were basing their assessments on incomplete information.

Spicers comments were a rebuttal to the top two members of the Senate intelligence committee, who released a statement earlier Thursday declaring there is no indication that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by the U.S. government before or after the 2016 election. Spicer suggested the statement from Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mark Warner, D-Va., was made without a full review of the evidence or, incorrectly, a briefing from the Justice Department.

They are not findings, he said.

The standoff between the White House and lawmakers came four days before FBI Director James Comey is slated to testify before Congress, when he will inevitably be asked whether the presidents accusations are accurate. The White Houses refusal to back down raised the stakes for Comeys appearance before the intelligence committee on Monday.

Trump tweeted earlier this month that President Barack Obama was tapping my phones in October and compared the incident to Nixon/Watergate and McCarthyism.

Trump, in an interview Wednesday with Fox News, said hed learned about the alleged wiretapping from news reports referencing intercepted communications, despite the fact that he and his advisers have publicly denounced stories about government agencies reviewing contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

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Trump said there would be some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.

In the two weeks since the tweets, the White House has tried to soften the statement, but not disavowed it.

Spicer on Thursday asserted that Trump meant to broadly refer to surveillance, rather than a phone wiretap.

onThe presidents already been very clear that he didnt mean specifically wiretapping, he said.

In an attempt to bolster his case, the spokesman spent nearly 10 minutes angrily reading from news reports which he said pointed to possible evidence of surveillance. The list included a report from The New York Times, which Trump has dubbed fake news, as well as conservative commentary, a little-known blog and several reports based on anonymous sources, which Trump has said cannot be believed.

Among the items he quoted from was a transcript of a recent appearance by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano on the network, in which Napolitano suggested GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, had helped with the alleged tapping. Obama, he claimed, went outside the chain of command so there were no American fingerprints on this.

The agency, which rarely comments on allegations about intelligence matters, flatly denied the claim, responding with a statement calling the allegations nonsense.

They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, read the statement, which was issued on condition that it be attributed to an anonymous spokesperson to protect the identity of agency staff.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the senators statements Thursday.

Burr and Warner were among eight senior congressional leaders briefed by Comey on March 10. A Senate aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the senators private briefings, said Spicer was incorrect in claiming Burr and Warner had not been briefed on the matter.

Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016, Burr and Warner said in a one-sentence joint statement Thursday afternoon.

The phrasing of the statement left open the possibility that tenants or employees working in the tower may have been monitored. In response to Trumps claims and a request from the House intelligence committee, the Justice Department is doing its own review of whether Trump or any of his associates were the subject of surveillance. The department is slated to provide a response to the committee by Monday.

Burr and Warner are leading one of three congressional investigations into Russias interference in the 2016 election, including whether Trump associates were in contact with the Kremlin.

The senators joined a growing, bipartisan group of lawmakers who have publicly disputed Trumps accusation in the lead up to Comeys testimony.

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin pushed back on the accusations as well.

Weve cleared that up, Ryan said, adding that hed received a briefing and seen no evidence of Trumps wiretap claims.

But the issue is unlikely to pass as quickly as some Republicans hope.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Thursday that he still believes the FBI or Justice Department should comment publicly in a simple statement that goes to the heart of the matter  without jeopardizing classified information.

I believe such a statement would serve the public well, and I fear that without an official answer this issue will continue to linger, Graham said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he had not given Trump any reason to believe he was wiretapped by Obama. Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he had seen no information to support the claim and then went further. He suggested the U.S. presidents assertion should not be taken at face value.

Are you going to take the tweets literally? Nunes said. If so, clearly the president was wrong.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
On Friday, President Donald Trump opted to reopen a painful rift in U.S.-German relations, part of his continued claim to have been wiretapped by his predecessor, just a day after the White House drove another close ally, Britain, ballistic by implying its intelligence service was somehow involved.

Trumps claims have been thoroughly debunked by President Barack Obama, the intelligence community, and top lawmakers, but nevertheless, he persisted. Asked by a German reporter at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the discredited claims Obama had eavesdropped on him, Trump gestured to Merkel and said, At least we have something in common.

That was a reference to the 2013 revelations that the United States spied on her mobile phone, the beginning of a diplomatic row between two longstanding allies that culminated in the expulsion of a CIA agent from Germany and led to hard feelings for years. It was an odd path to take in Trumps first face-to-face meeting with Europes most influential politician, who now bears the additional burden of defending the liberal international order Washington built and once buttressed.

But Trumps off the cuff comment, which gobsmacked the chancellor

"As far as wiretapping by, i guess, this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps" pic.twitter.com/dv9MJwJ0d2  Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) March 17, 2017

was in tune with the rest of Trumps press conference. After meeting with Merkel in the Oval Office for a photo opportunity  and pointedly ignoring her request for a handshake  and hosting a roundtable with U.S. and German business leaders, the president slipped back into his familiar campaign mode. (The economic roundtable focused on Germanys use of apprentices for vocational training. Thats a word I like, the former reality TV host said.)

In between remarks about his crowd size at a recent rally in Tennessee, boasts about the supposed unity of the Republican Party, jibes at fake news, and attacks on Obamas healthcare plan, Trump returned to familiar themes. He reiterated his belief that bad trade deals had somehow hollowed out U.S. manufacturing (U.S. manufacturing output is at an all-time high) and warned of the dangers of terrorism.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first, without question, he said, defending his administrations recent effort to ban travel for people from six Muslim countries. (Federal courts have frozen that order, too.)

The irony is that Merkel, unlike Trump, actually faces a general election this year, but she did not campaign. Rather, after explicitly noting that she is in the United States to defend the interests of all Germans, she subtly repudiated many of the factually incorrect claims the president made, all while defending free trade, the trans-Atlantic alliance, European integration, and the importance of immigration  in other words, much of what, until recently, it it was customary for the leader of the free world to defend.

She thanked U.S. support  especially the Marshall plan  for helping Germany recover economically after the war, even as Trumps budget, proposed Thursday, would gut foreign aid.

Merkel noted that Germanys success is inseparable from European integration and security; Trump has openly praised Brexit and is reportedly considering appointing Ted Malloch, who likens the EU to the Soviet Union, to be U.S. ambassador to the EU. After Trump spoke of advantages afforded German trade negotiators, Merkel reminded him that EU member states cede trade talks to Brussels. She also noted that free trade pacts increased employment, despite some initial fears at home.

Merkel said she was personally gratified to hear Trump is committed to NATO; this, after Trump said, Many nations owe vast sums of money. It is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe.

When it comes to refugees, Merkel stressed the reasons they cant go home, such as civil war, to quietly refute Trumps opening remarks on the supposed dangers of immigration.

The chilly oval office meeting and the awkward press conference with one of Americas closest allies will do little to reassure those in Washington and Europe who worry about the Trump administrations commitment to Europe, NATO, and the international order. With questions still swirling about Trumps ties to and intentions toward Russia, thats probably not what Merkel  or most of Europe  wanted to hear.

Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
There was a collective sigh of relief from E.U. supporters this week, when it became clear that incumbent Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had fended off a populist challenge and will almost certainly form the Netherlands next government. But, even though Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders won fewer seats than expected in Wednesdays parliamentary elections, the threat of far-right populism still looms over Europe.

The Dutch election were widely seen as a precursor to upcoming elections elsewhere in Europe. Wilders loss gave mainstream politicians, battered by the rise of populist movements, a moment of optimism. Commentators suggested that the electoral appetite for populist parties is waning, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Ruttes win a good day for democracy and said it signaled a very pro-European result.

But Wilders loss had more to do with a unique set of local circumstances than with broader European trends. A diplomatic spat with Turkey the weekend before the election  in which Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan called the Dutch Nazi remnants after his Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was blocked from entering the Netherlands for a political rally  helped Rutte look like a strong leader, Politico reports.

And the 53-year-old Wilders, who is often referred to as the Dutch Trump, had his own challenges. He was likely harmed by the U.S. Presidents unpopularity in Europe, and shifted his strategy accordingly late in the campaign, to begin pointing out issues with the Trump administration. Probably because he noticed [supporting Trump] was hurting him in the polls, said Pepijn Bergsen, Netherlands analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit. Wilders also may have been hurt by the political chaos surrounding Brexit. Dutch support for leaving the E.U. went down to 20% following the June 23 Brexit vote.

But voters in the Netherlands didnt entirely reject the messages of the far-right. In fact, Rutte built momentum in the final weeks of the campaign by adopting some of the movements anti-immigration message, telling immigrants to leave if they failed to adapt to Dutch culture.

Still, analysts said Wilders loss does not mean his ideological allies, like Frances National Front or the Alternative for Germany, will be hindered.

These elections are mainly about domestic factors Bergsen said. As the saying goes, all politics is local.'

The next country to hold elections will be France, which has a first round of voting April 23, followed by a May 7 runoff. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen of the National Front is expected to make it to the second round, and Sarah L. de Lange, an expert on radical right-wing parties at the University of Amsterdam, thinks the conditions in France are more conducive for a populist win than in the Netherlands. Thats partly to do with Frances political system, in which the presidential vote ends with two candidates going head-to-head, unlike the Netherlands proportional representation system, which requires coalition-building. Le Pen has yet to respond to Wilders loss, but National Front secretary-general Nicolas Bay has given it a positive spin. Its a real success, Bay told France Inter radio, noting that Wilders captured three more seats in Parliament this year. Bay called the gains a partial victory, even if not the final victory.
The Hague (AFP) - Geert Wilders may have been beaten into second place in the Dutch elections but the far-right MP will enjoy a magnified role in parliament and remain a force to be reckoned with, analysts said.

While he failed in his aim of starting a "patriotic revolution," Wilders has already succeeded in shifting the debate and the tone in Dutch politics on immigration and integration, observers said.

Campaigning on an anti-Islam ticket, the peroxide-haired politician saw his hopes wilt from an all-time high in January when opinion polls had said he could win as many as 37 seats in the 150-seat Dutch lower chamber.

Instead, he captured a more sobering 20 seats in Wednesday's general elections, behind the 33 won by the Liberal party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, but enough to place his Freedom Party (PVV) second.

"It would have been great if we were the largest, but we're willing to talk and help govern. That's my hope," Wilders told journalists Thursday.

But he warned his party would "show our hard opposition side" if he were excluded.

The long process to form the next government has begun with the VVD sounding out other parties to try to cobble together a coalition.

Most parties leaders, including Rutte, have already vowed not to work with Wilders, alienated by his fiery anti-immigrant, anti-EU rhetoric, and his go-it-alone attitude.

- Long shadow -

But analysts say Wilders, who quit the VVD in 2006 to set up his party, will continue to cast a long shadow across the Dutch political landscape and has already succeeded in pulling the lowlands country to the right.

"What's telling is that many parties, including Rutte's VVD, have already taken on some of the PVV's viewpoints and content... particularly when it comes to immigration policies," said Matthijs Rooduijn, a political sociologist at Utrecht University.

"That doesn't mean that parties like the VVD... suddenly moved to the far-right, but there certainly is a shift in that direction," he said.

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"Most parties have become more nationalist and that's because of the PVV's influence," he said.

With Wilders likely to end up the largest party in opposition, more clashes are also forecast, such as with rising young green-left star Jesse Klaver, whose GroenLinks party upped their seats from four to 14.

Wilders will also likely lock horns with the progressive leader of Democracy party D66, Alexander Pechtold, which the PVV beat into third place with 19 seats.

Should D66 or GroenLinks enter government with Rutte "the clash is going to continue when it comes to social and cultural topics. And the sparks are going to fly," Rooduijn said.

- 'Bland political elites' -

Wilders, who already triggered the collapse of one Rutte government in 2012, could also seek to exploit the fragmented nature of the next coalition which will be made up of at least four and maybe five parties, Rooduijn said.

"He could argue the new cabinet is making too many compromises and back-room deals -- it will give him extra ammunition for his populist message that there's a bland political elite who still won't listen to voters' concerns," he said.

"The outcome of this election does not at all mean the end of Geert Wilders and the issues that he is advocating," said Claes de Vreese, politics professor at the University of Amsterdam.

"He remains an important force in Dutch and European politics. He had more votes and increased his number of seats, even though it was not this 'people's revolution' that he was claiming."

Wilders was hailed by European far-right leaders too, ahead of other key elections in France and Germany this year, who said his polls performance was far from a defeat.

His success "proves that the ideas we share are advancing in the various European countries," said Marine Le Pen, leader of France's National Front, who is hoping to upset the French presidential elections.

"Ignore the froth: whilst the establishment did cling on, they took a beating at this election," wrote the new anti-establishment British blog Westmonster.

Wilders's notoriety has already spread across the Atlantic.

Trevor Noah, who hosts the popular US late night programme "The Daily Show", gave Wilders and his "hateful" message a roasting Thursday, comparing his blond mesh to Donald Trump, and likening him to a blond villan played by the actor Christopher Walken's in "Batman Returns."
No matter how hard we want it to, 2016's election never seems to fully go away.

For many women who chose to watch President Trump's joint press conference with Angela Merkel on Friday, the experience hit far too close to home. Not only did Trump's body language mirror his movements on the debate stage with Hillary Clinton (when will that memory go away?) it reminded them of their own personal interactions with powerful men who seemed to resent their presence.

SEE ALSO: That 'paid protester' is actually your mom, and she's taking over Facebook to fight Trump

If you haven't watched the full conference, please don't. Watch this very brief clip instead, where Chancellor Merkel asks Trump for a handshake, only to have it be rejected. It's not just that Trump refuses to shake her hand. He doesn't even look her in the eye.

Prominent feminists, comedians and women on Twitter struggled to watch this insulting viral moment. It wasn't easy watching one of the most powerful women in the world  and a prominent American ally  get ignored, regardless of you think of his actual handshakes.

I think a lot of women will find Trump refusing to even look at Merkel during that presser pretty familiar  Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 17, 2017

There have been so many times I've been introduced to men who won't look me in the eye, or talk as if I'm not there.  Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 17, 2017

Trump probably didn't count on the presidency forcing him to spend time with so many women over the age of 35.  Maggie Serota  (@maggieserota) March 17, 2017

Trump's body language n scowl while #Merkel speaks. Rarely even looks her in eyes. His disrespect for women is clear.

Unless shes a 10.

Ass  Claudia (@theClaudiaInez) March 17, 2017

Of course Trump wouldn't shake hands with Merkel. He's afraid if he makes contact with an intelligent women he might catch human decency.  beth loves cake,so (@bourgeoisalien) March 17, 2017

The body language differences are just so striking. https://t.co/GDnCMmdS6H  ...she persisted.  (@leahmcelrath) March 17, 2017

Trump's refusal to look Angela Merkel in the eye or to shake her hand belies his abject disrespect for all women. Today we are all Angela. pic.twitter.com/0vlXIBuSFP  Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 17, 2017

It's clear that women have been in this position before: sitting or standing there awkwardly, while powerful men refuse to acknowledge their presence.

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Remember this sad viral moment?

Election 2016 has *officially* ended, but its awkward body language lives on.
By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday charged two Russian intelligence agents and two hackers with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts, the first time the U.S. government has criminally charged Russian spies for cyber offences. The charges came amid a swirl of controversies relating to alleged Kremlin-backed hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible links between Russian figures and associates of U.S. President Donald Trump. This has given rise to uncertainty about whether Trump is willing to respond forcefully to any action by Moscow in cyberspace and elsewhere. The 47-count Justice Department indictment included charges of conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identify theft. It painted a picture of the Russian security services working hand-in-hand with cyber criminals, who helped spies further their intelligence goals in exchange for using the same exploits to make money. "The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBIs point of contact in Moscow on cyber crime matters, is beyond the pale, Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord said at a press conference announcing the charges. Russias Federal Security Service (FSB) is the successor to the KGB. The Kremlin, which denies Russia tried to influence the U.S. election in any way, said on Thursday Moscow had received no official notification of the indictment, but hoped it would. However, Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, dismissed out of hand the idea that FSB employees could have been involved in the Yahoo hack. "We have said repeatedly that there can be no discussion of any official involvement of any Russian agency, including the FSB...in any unlawful cyber activities," said Peskov, who has cast U.S. allegations against Russia as part of a political campaign to kill off a U.S.-Russia rapprochement. Yahoo said when it announced the then-unprecedented breach last September that it believed the attack was state-sponsored, and on Wednesday the company said the indictment "unequivocally shows" that to be the case. The charges announced Wednesday are not related to the hacking of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have said they were carried out by Russian spy services, including the FSB, to help the campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump. The indictment named the FSB officers involved as Dmitry Dokuchaev and his superior, Igor Sushchin, who are both in Russia. Dokuchaev was arrested for treason in December, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. Reuters sent a request for comment to the FSB in Moscow on Wednesday evening but there was no response. The alleged criminals involved in the scheme include Alexsey Belan, who is among the FBI's most-wanted cyber criminals and was arrested in Europe in June 2013 but escaped to Russia before he could be extradited to the United States, according to the Justice Department. Karim Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan but has Canadian citizenship, was also named in the indictment. The Justice Department said Baratov was arrested in Canada on Tuesday. Mark Pugash of Toronto police later confirmed the Tuesday arrest. McCord said the hacking campaign was waged by the FSB to collect intelligence but that the two hackers used the collected information as an opportunity to "line their pockets." The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but McCord said she was hopeful Russian authorities would cooperate in bringing criminals to justice. The United States often charges cyber criminals with the intent of deterring future state-sponsored activity. The administration of former President Barack Obama brought similar charges against Chinese and Iranian hackers who have not been extradited. In a statement, White House spokesman Michael Anton said the charges "are part of a broad effort across the government to defend the United States against cyber attacks and cyber-related crimes." 'RED NOTICE' Yahoo in December announced another breach that occurred in 2013 affecting one billion accounts. Special Agent Jack Bennett of the FBI's San Francisco Division said the 2013 breach is unrelated and that an investigation of that incident is ongoing. The hacks forced Yahoo to accept a discount of $350 million in what had been a $4.83 billion deal to sell its main assets to Verizon Communications Inc . At least 30 million of the Yahoo accounts in the 2014 breach were the most seriously affected, with Belan able to burrow deep into their accounts and take user contact lists that were later used for a financially motivated spam campaign, according to the indictment. Belan also stole financial information such as credit card numbers and gift cards, it said. Yahoo had previously said about 32 million accounts had fallen victim to the deeper attack, which it said leveraged forged browser cookies to access accounts without the need for a password. According to the indictment, FSB officers Sushchin and Dokuchaev also directed Baratov to use the information gained in the Yahoo breach to hack specific targets who possessed email accounts with other service providers, including Google. When Baratov was successful, Dokuchaev would reward him with a bounty, the indictment charged. Examples where Google accounts were targeted include an assistant to the deputy chairman of the Russian Federation, an officer of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a physical training expert employed by the Russian government. Details in the indictment reflect the often murky relationship in Russia between criminal hackers and government intelligence officers. Interpol issued a "red notice" on Belan in relation to an earlier hacking campaign, according to the indictment. Instead of arresting Belan, however, the FSB recruited him to help with cyber espionage and provided tools to evade detection from other authorities. Belan later gained unauthorized access to Yahoo's network that he shared with FSB, the indictment said. (Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Julia Edwards in Washington and Alexander Winning and Dasha Afanasieva in Moscow; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish)
NEW YORK (AP)  New York City was awash in green and Irish pride Friday as throngs from both sides of the pond celebrated at the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The marchers came from all walks of life  military members, teachers and students, police and firefighters, politicians, plumbers and steamfitters.

"On a cold day, it warms your heart," Richard Grogan, a marcher from Dublin and a member of Ireland's national police service, said of the cheering crowd. "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

John Brauer, a spectator from Rye, New York, got on a 5 a.m. train  both to get a good spot and because he was excited. "I don't sleep when I know it's St. Patrick's Day," he said.

Heavily armed officers kept a no-nonsense eye on security around the parade route as a pipe band played "God Bless America."

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny marched with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He paused to greet Cardinal Timothy Dolan outside St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was adorned with the American and Irish flags; a special Mass was held there before the parade stepped off.

"Proud Irishman, proud Englishwoman," said Tracy Gilmartin of Northampton, England, who was there with her husband, Joe. "Our kids have paid for us to come here today for their dad to be able to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in New York. He's always wanted to do it."

The couple, who decorated a police barricade with an Irish banner, said their plane was full of travelers bound for the New York parade.

The parade route also passed Trump Tower, the home of President Donald Trump and his family.

The city's first St. Patrick's Day parade was on March 17, 1762. That was about 14 years before the signing of America's Declaration of Independence, organizers note, and it was comprised of "a band of homesick, Irish ex-patriots and Irish military members serving with the British Army stationed in the colonies in New York."


Credit: Harold Cunningham/Getty

Angelina Jolie gave a moving speech today at the UN Office in Geneva, Switzerland, concerning the current refugee crisis we are facing in the world. Jolie was given the honorable and weighty task of delivering the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation lecture, named after a UN diplomat who was killed while on assignment in Iraq in 2003.

As a Special Envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency, Jolie has traveled to countries around the world, visiting refugee camps and raising awareness of the growing international refugee crisis. According to the UNHCR website, "Jolie focuses on major crises that result in mass population displacements, undertaking advocacy and representing UNHCR and the High Commissioner at the diplomatic level. She also engages with decision-makers on global displacement issues. Through this work, she has helped contribute to the vital process of finding solutions for people forced to flee their homes."



Credit: Harold Cunningham/Getty

RELATED: Watch Angelina Jolie in the First Promo for Her New Film

In her speech, Jolie pointed out the discrepancy between the need for monetary aid in many countries, and the lack of funding they actually receive: "There is not a single humanitarian appeal anywhere in the world that is funded by even half of what is required," she said. "Appeals for countries on the brink of famine today are 17 percent, 7 percent, 5 percent funded for example."

Jolie, clad in a smart blue dress with 3/4-length sleeves, also pointed out, however, that funds and monetary aid won't necessarily solve the problems many countries face: "They do not want to be dependent. It would be far better to invest all of our funding on infrastructure on ... enterprises ... the UN can only change when the government changes their policies, and when we as citizens ask them to do that."

RELATED: Professor Angelina Jolie Gives Her First Lecture at LSE on a Very Empowering Subject

Earlier in the day, Jolie reaffirmed her commitment to refugees worldwide, renewing her contract with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency: "I am with you for life." Watch the full moving speech and followed by a discussion with UN Refugees Chief Filippo Grandi and BBC's Lyse Doucet above.
Photo credit: GoFundMe

From Good Housekeeping

Editor's note: The images below may be disturbing to some.

Two days after Christmas, Kevin Breen, a 44-year-old husband and father of three, felt like he was coming down with something. It wasn't exactly a surprise - his three-year-old son had just gotten over strep throat.

The avid skier and boat-enthusiast pushed through the common symptoms of achiness and stomach pain, assuming that he had a textbook case of strep - doctors at a local urgent care center treated it as such and sent him home with some medication.

Photo credit: GoFundMe

Come morning, Breen knew that something was drastically wrong. He went to the ER, where he was diagnosed with acute pancreatitis (sudden inflammation of the pancreas) and admitted. By evening, there was no amount of medication that could soothe his pain.

After a telltale rash appeared on Breen's torso, his team of doctors connected strep to his extreme pain and distended stomach. They performed an exploratory surgery to confirm and when they opened him up, they found 1.5 liters of infected pus teeming with streptococcal bacteria - the very same infection that causes strep throat. The bacteria had migrated to his stomach and had never showed up on a blood test.

"He was one of the sickest patients I have ever taken care of," Dr. Elizabeth Steensma, an acute care surgeon on Breen's case, told Wood TV. Breen was placed on a ventilator and his family was told to prepare for the worst.

Photo credit: GoFundMe

He fought for his life, though, and with the help of high doses of medication to keep his blood pressure up, he pulled through - but at an unbelievable cost. The same medication that stopped Breen from dying led to necrosis (tissue death) of his extremities. His fingers and toes began to turn black and his kidneys failed. Breen became dependent on dialysis to filter his blood.

Photo credit: GoFundMe

Despite this, Breen recovered enough to move to an acute rehab facility, where he worked tirelessly to regain strength and relearn the most basic of independent skills. His strength returning, his body began to respond - dialysis, just a month out of the hospital, was a thing of the past.

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Breen was able to go home to his wife, Julie, and his children, Lilly, Bella and Blake, but the most difficult moments are ahead. After losing all movement in his hands and feet, Breen must undergo at least four amputation surgeries to remove his entire left hand and multiple fingers of his right hand. He must also endure partial amputations on both of his feet.

Breen's doctors claim that he is the second man in all of documented medical history to have strep travel from his throat to his stomach - there are 32 reported cases involving female patients and urinary tract infections.

Photo credit: GoFundMe

"I never thought (I'd be) going in for a stomachache and coming out a totally different person. It's life-changing," Breen explained to Wood TV. His demeanor, while incredulous, is anything but bitter - Breen has been remarkably positive throughout the experience and is "an inspiration" to those around him, reads his GoFundMe page.

Breen's loved ones in the Oxford, Michigan area will run the Michigan tough Mudder race in his honor, and hope to raise $25,000 for the family by Saturday, June 3rd. If you're local and want to support the Breens, you can sign up at toughmudder.com and join the group Team Breen. If you're not local, consider donating to the family. Donations will help cover the costs of Breen's growing medical expenses. His first amputation is scheduled for today.

"Life is forever going to be different," Breen's wife said. "But different doesn't necessarily have to be bad. It's just going to be what we make it and we just have to figure it out, figure it out for our kids. Dad's going to have cool hands, Dad's going to have cool feet. We have to be positive."

[h/t Daily Mail]

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The shirt doesnt pull any punches. (Photo: Twitter)

Its one thing to have a dress code in middle school. Its an entirely different thing to have middle school teachers give girls the side eye for what theyre wearing. Thats what happened when 13-year-old Grace Villegas, from Wichita, Kan., wore a new off-the-shoulder Charlotte Russe shirt to school this week.

I just wish one of them would have pulled me aside and said, Hey, can you go check about this? See if its all right, instead of giving me looks that made me uncomfortable in my own skin, she told Yahoo Style. Some teachers made comments about the amount of chest and shoulders she was showing, and eventually, Villegas decided to change into a different shirt.

When she got home and told her parents and sisters about it, they were all upset about how it was handled. Elder sister Isabella, 18, took some unconventional action. She took out a marker and made Grace a T-shirt that says, Dress code: promotes the objectification and sexualization of young bodies, blames the wearer for the onlookers perceptions/actions, perpetuates rape culture, is BS.

She got the first three bullet points from articles shed read, and, yeah, that last one is her own. Then, of course, she tweeted out a photo of her project.

my 13 year old sister was dress coded for her shirt today for "revealing too much chest and shoulder" so i made her a shirt to change into pic.twitter.com/NdRQws91HB  isabella rossellini (@bellavillegas_) March 13, 2017

Showing the girls that its their problem that the boys are getting excited, its their fault that the boys cant handle it, taking time away from their education just so the boys can get a better education  its just teaching them so many things that are wrong, Isabella said.

Isabella has gleaned such feminist notions from both her mother  who privately shares her opinions, but doesnt express them openly  and her own research. Now, the high school senior feels she needs to educate Grace and Graces twin, Gaby, before she leaves them for college in the fall.

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Im not saying my reaction was the most appropriate, but they should be informed, and I encourage them to do research of their own and know what their rights are and  how to go about standing up for themselves, she said.

Grace seems to appreciate the lesson, to a point. She has the shirt ready to wear at school but said she probably wont. I want to stand up for what it says, but I dont want to start a problem that could potentially get me in trouble, she said.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:
Apple is preparing for its iPhone 7 successor. This week, new information about the device surfaced online, and it claims that the iPhone 8 could support wireless charging.

As rumors indicate Apple will release the iPhone 8 (iPhone X) with an OLED display screen this fall, a new report by DigiTimes says the company will receive 75 million OLED panels from Samsung Display this year.

Apple and Samsung will dominate the OLED supply this year, by taking 70 percent of global production of OLED panels between 2017 and 2018, while other companies struggle to secure OLED panels for their devices.

Apples 75 million OLED panels account for 14 percent of global OLED panel production for this year. Samsung will take 56 percent of OLED panel, thanks to its in-house production of the displays.

Other Companies Facing OLED Panel Shortage

Meanwhile, other companies are will receive smaller amounts of OLED panels because of insufficient supply. Huawei will only have 8 percent of its total production of smartphones featuring AMOLED panels in 2017. Other Chinese vendors, Oppo and Vivo will get 13 percent and 10 percent, respectively, of the global production of OLED panels this year.

The companies are relying on Samsung Display for OLED panels, since other OLED suppliers wont have the products of time. LG Display is expected to start shipping OLED panels in 2018, BOE Technology may not be able to ship its products until 2020, according to the report.

iPhone 8 (iPhone X) To Come With Curved OLED Screen

Apple is expected to release three models this year, iPhone 7S, iPhone 7S Plus and a 10th anniversary iPhone, which may be called the iPhone 8 or iPhone X. The iPhone 8 is rumored to feature a curved OLED screen that is gentler than screens in Samsungs Galaxy S7, according to a recent report by Nikkei . The new iPhone is expected to be better visually but have less functionality. However, other rumors suggest Apple will stick with a flat display, which wont take full advantage of OLED displays. Because the iPhone 8 will feature an OLED display, the smartphone is rumored to sell at more than $1,000.

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The iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus are expected to come with LCD panels. The iPhones are expected to be introduced in September. However, the launch date for the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) could be after the other two iPhones, a recent report. Some key components of the iPhones rumored front 3D camera might not be available on time for the September release date.

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To attract new customers, many banks are now offering lucrative cash bonuses  anywhere from $100 to $2,000  for simply moving money into their various savings and checking accounts. A recent Reddit thread highlighted dozens of first-hand accounts of people earning thousands of dollars by moving their money to various bank accounts to get the bonuses, and then moving on. Indeed, you may simply be better off with a high-interest savings account as many of those are paying more than they have in a decade (see some of the best savings account rates you can get now here).
By Cate Cadell BEIJING (Reuters) - Ant Financial Services Group, the world's largest financial technology company, is confident of closing a deal for U.S. money-transfer firm MoneyGram International Inc, a top executive told Reuters, despite a higher bid from a U.S. rival. The proposed $880 million deal is a first major step by Ant, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, to expand its business overseas, as the firm, valued at $60 billion, sets itself up for a public offering. "MoneyGram we view as very attractive because it gives a global network of remittance capability and kind of an omnichannel approach that connects us," Douglas Feagin, head of Ant's international strategy, said in a phone interview. "That's why we've entered the transaction and look forward to completing the deal with them." But the plan faced a major hurdle this week as U.S. electronic payments firm Euronet Worldwide Inc launched a higher $1 billion bid for MoneyGram on Tuesday, arguing that its all-American deal would face less regulatory scrutiny than a lower bid by Ant. Ant said earlier that it was making progress and on schedule to obtain all required regulatory and shareholder approvals, while MoneyGram has yet to decide whether it will recommend Euronet's higher offer to its shareholders. Feagin, who had worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc for more than two decades before joining Ant in 2016, declined to say whether Ant would raise its offer for MoneyGram, but said the deal was important for the firm's global push. "Today with our wallets you can transfer money in a country quite easily, and we want to enable that more broadly around the world. That's what MoneyGram would help us to do," he said. MoneyGram, which was rescued through a $1.5 billion financing deal in which Goldman participated after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, has long dominated the global money transfer industry with its large network of retail locations. The Dallas-based firm has about 350,000 outlets in shops, post offices and banks in nearly 200 countries and territories. Its rivals include Euronet and Western Union Co. A combination of Ant's technological expertise and MoneyGram's brand could be a game-changer for the global payment industry, analysts say, with scope for more consumers to use online transfer services rather than taking cash to storefronts. Feagin added Ant would look longer-term to grow its business in developed markets, though it would take a cautious approach. "We're going to be more careful about that in terms of designing the strategy and the kinds of customers we can access. We don't go in with a blind eye to the competitive nature of certain markets," he said. SOUTHEAST ASIA Ant, which dominates China's online payment market but has been ramping up investment overseas amid fierce rivalry at home with peers such as Tencent Holding Ltd's popular WeChat Pay, is also eying several new deals around Southeast Asia this year, Feagin said. "We're focused on larger markets there in terms of the population and the opportunity set. So I would expect to see some other partnerships this year," Feagin said. Ant Financial is currently in talks with Indonesian media conglomerate Emtek to launch a payment joint venture, a source with direct knowledge of the discussions told Reuters. Feagin declined to comment on specific deals. The push underlines Ant's ambitions to create a network of financial assets around the region. Ant has made a series of investments in foreign payment firms in recent months as it looks to create an international network. The spate of deals since the end of last year include tie-ups with Ascend Money in Thailand, Kakao Pay in South Korea and Mynt in the Philippines, following earlier investment in Indian firm PayTM. "(Southeast Asia) is quite attractive because it has the fundamental characteristics of high mobile phone usage and rising per capita income, but still has a large population that is not banked," said Feagin. According to analysts, the competition for payment and remittance assets in the region has spiked as firms look for deals to avoid the regulatory hurdles involved in entering the markets alone. "There's pressure in these markets because there's only a limited number of quality assets," said Hong Kong-based EY Fintech analyst Lames Lloyd. "It wouldn't surprise me if other technology companies, Chinese and otherwise, are equally engaged in these markets, looking at what viable payments or remittance players they could link to a global network," he said. Ant Financial has confirmed plans for an IPO but it is not expected until 2018 at the earliest. It raised $4.5 billion in a record funding round in April, valuing the firm at around $60 billion, the same as American Express Co or insurer Chubb Ltd and more than any other privately held fintech firm. Last month Reuters reported that Ant, whose hallmark payment app Alipay boasts around 450 million users, was in early talks to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion in debt to fund acquisitions and foreign investments. (Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Will Waterman and Alex Richardson)
BERLIN (AP)  Germany plans to test software that can automatically recognize a person's dialect to help determine whether asylum-seekers are really where they claim they're from.

Germany's Office for Migration and Refugees confirmed a report on the pilot project Friday by the Die Welt newspaper.

An agency spokeswoman says the software would complement existing methods used to verify a person's identity.

Andrea Brinkmann told The Associated Press that officials would still rely on a range of information, including documents presented by the asylum-seeker and an expert opinion, before reaching a final conclusion.

Authorities have expressed concern that some asylum-seekers from Arab countries are claiming to be from Syria in hopes of increasing their chances of staying in Germany.

Last year officials commissioned 1,405 language analyses, up from 431 in 2015.
One of the next big things in tech that were going to experience in the coming years is autonomous cars. Various companies are developing self-driving car systems right now, with Google, Tesla, and Uber among the current leaders in the emerging space. And two of those companies are about to clash in a court battle that might determine the early winner of the self-driving car race.

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Google, some would say, is in an advantageous position. Its not a car maker, but it has developed a self-driving car project thats probably ahead of anything in the works from bigger players in the automotive industry.

But Google recently lost a key engineer whos been working on Googles self-driving cars for a decade. Anthony Levandowski went on to found Otto, a self-driving truck company that was acquired by Uber last year for $700 million. A few weeks ago, Waymo, which is Googles driverless car spinoff  sued Uber for trade secret theft and patent infringement after discovering that Levandowski developed a lidar system for Uber that copies the lider setup he created for Google.

Whos right and whos wrong? Bloomberg Businessweek has the inside story on this particular dispute, which reveals the complexities of these emerging technologies, but also their potential.

Google started investigating Levandowski last summer after Uber bought Otto, and discovered he allegedly used a company laptop to copy about 14,000 design files from Waymo to a card reader, before wiping all the data from the laptop. Google, however, did not act on its findings until December 13th, when a Google employee received an email that a supplier wanted to send to Otto. In the message was a drawing of a lidar circuit board that had Ottos name on it but looked identical to Google.

Bloomberg explains that its a Google policy not to sue former employees for patent infringement, something engineers frequently find out about during orientation. If, however, Google does decide to move to a patent-based trial against a former employee, then it means the person has done something seriously wrong, the report says.

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Lidar is a component that allows cars to see their surroundings, which is obviously a key feature for self-driving cars. A multi-lens off-the-shelf sensor costs $80,000, but Google developed a single-lens lidar system thats a lot cheaper. The report reveals that it was actually Levandowskis lidar team that came up with the creation.

Bloomberg explains that Levandowski founded two other companies before Otto that were developing self-driving car products while he was working on the same products at Google. Google eventually purchased both firms. The report also goes on to say that Google decided to let Levandowski work on his side projects, even if that meant skipping work. After one internal dispute between the engineer and his boss Chris Urmson, Levandowski skipped work for months to focus on his other projects.

Levandowski butted heads with Urmson about the way Google was supposed to sell self-driving technology. Levandowski wanted each innovation (self-parking or highway pilot) to be sold when ready and retroactively fitted on commercial cars, while Urmson argued for an all-in-one solution, a car thats able to drive itself in all conditions.

Levandowski wasnt necessarily the most popular guy inside Google. Larry Page had to appoint Urmson instead of Levandowski to lead the car team exactly because of the latters controversial style, which drew criticism among his peers. But the report seems to cement the idea that Levandowski was an essential Google employee, and that hell further influence the autonomous car market regardless of who prevails in Googles court battle with Uber.

In addition to his engineering skills and his desire to push the technology to the limits of what was possible both from a technical and legal point, the engineer also took matters into his own hands in seeking to legalize self-driving car tests. Levandowski hired a lobbyist in Nevada and wrote a law to allow companies to test autonomous cars with a human driver behind the wheel. He did so without telling Google, which found out only when the person who lobbied for the law sent the company an invoice. The law passed at the end of 2011.

The full report is available at this link, and its definitely worth a read.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government said it was not considering steps to support embattled Toshiba Corp <6502.T> and will share information with Washington on developments involving the firm and its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga added the government would closely monitor the sale of Toshiba's chips business - the world's biggest NAND flash memory producer after Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS>. While the government has been adamant that it will not be stepping in to rescue Toshiba, sources familiar with the matter have said a state-backed fund may invest as a minority shareholder to prevent a sale to bidders deemed risky to national security. "Toshiba's chip business is highly competitive globally and important in terms of keeping jobs in Japan," Suga told a news briefing. "Flash memory is also expected to increase in importance from the standpoint of information security." Toshiba's crisis has only deepened this week. It missed submitting audited third-quarter earnings for a second time and said it would consider selling a majority stake in Westinghouse which is at the center of its financial troubles. On Friday, Standard & Poor's cut its long-term credit ratings for Toshiba by two notches to CCC-, saying that it was increasingly likely that the conglomerate would be unable to fulfil its financial obligations in timely manner. It added that Toshiba's creditor banks are likely to find it difficult to accept any potential request for further funding, given that the stock exchange has place Toshiba's stock under supervision having seen insufficient improvement in its internal controls. Sources have said bankruptcy lawyers have been hired as an exploratory step for Westinghouse which has been plagued by huge cost overruns at two U.S. projects in Georgia and South Carolina. Toshiba has flagged an upcoming $6.3 billion writedown for the nuclear unit and is worried about the future potential losses. The Yomiuri newspaper reported earlier on Friday that the White House was opposed to a Chapter 11 filing for Westinghouse, citing an identified source familiar with Department of Commerce deliberations. Suga said he was not aware that this was the White House's stance. The agreement to share information was reached between a meeting with Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as well as other U.S. officials on Thursday. (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko and Hitoshi Ishida; Additional reporting by Umesh Desai; Writing by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia's head of mobile networks, the division which accounted for more than half of Finnish telecom network equipment maker's sales last year, is leaving the company. Nokia said on Friday it would break out services as a distinct business group from mobile networks following the departure of Samih Elhage, who joined the company in 2012 and helped to turn around its network business at a time when it was a troubled joint venture with Siemens . Services were growing in importance because of the weak global outlook, Nokia said. The global networks market is expected to fall this year as telecom operators' demand for faster 4G mobile broadband equipment has peaked, and upgrades to next-generation 5G equipment are still years away. "He has been a close friend and advisor... I fully support his desire for a change," Nokia chief executive Rajeev Suri said in a statement detailing Elhage's departure and the changes. These involve Marc Rouanne, currently Chief Innovation and Operating Officer, becoming head of the mobile networks products business while another Nokia veteran Igor Leprince will take over the new service organization. (Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell)
Helion Energy CEO David Kirtley shows off a prototype for a fusion reactor during Washington Gov. Jay Inslees visit to Helions headquarters in Redmond, Wash. The research is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energys ARPA-E program, which is slated for elimination. (Jay Inslee via Flickr)

Todays White House outline for a skinny budget covering $1.15 trillion in discretionary spending aims a sharp blow at federally funded research on topics ranging from agriculture to zoonotic diseases  and is prompting sharp responses from researchers as a result.

Among those hardest hit would be the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health. The EPA would be in for a 31 percent overall cutback, and research into climate would be eliminated. NIHs $31.7 billion budget would be reduced by 18 percent.

Related: Seattle health leaders say proposed NIH budget cuts will cost patient lives

Spending for the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Science would be reduced by nearly 20 percent. The Energy Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-E, which is funding fusion research at Helion Energy in Redmond, Wash., would be completely eliminated.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Sea Grant program, which funds marine research and outreach at the University of Washington, would face the same grim fate.

The America First budget blueprint released by the Office of Management and Budget calls for reductions across a wide spectrum of agencies in order to balance big increases for defense and border enforcement, including a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The plan doesnt address mandatory spending, which accounts for the bulk of the $4 trillion federal budget, and it has lots of blank spots that need to be filled in by mid-May. In the realm of research, the outline doesnt address agency-wide spending for NOAA or the National Science Foundation.

Even when those blanks are filled in, President Donald Trumps first budget proposal is likely to face drastic rewrites as it moves through Congress. This is not a take-it-or-leave-it budget, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told reporters.

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Some cuts in research funding are likely to be restored  and members of the Seattle areas scientific community were quick to raise an outcry. Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, weighed in even though his funding comes from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen rather than the federal government.

Im very thankful that we are not affected by the budget  but Im very concerned about the impact on my colleagues in academia, Etzioni told GeekWire in an email. Moreover, the Trump administrations policies on immigration and budget undercut key foundations of American scientific success. It is the opposite of Make America Great Again.'

University of Washingtons president, Ana Mari Cauce, said in a statement that the proposed budget blueprint marks a major step backward for American scientific research and innovation, and reduces opportunities for millions of deserving young people.

She said shed work with Washingtons congressional delegation to advocate for policies that keep America the global leader in innovation and opportunity.

Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the proposed cuts would ultimately make America, and the world, less prosperous and less safe:

US investments in health & development have created healthier, more stable societies at home & abroad. It's critical they remain a priority. pic.twitter.com/cX4F9YDwcO  Sue Desmond-Hellmann (@SueDHellmann) March 16, 2017

Gary Gilliland, president of Seattles Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, noted that federal revenue accounts for about 85 percent of the centers total sponsored funding.

We are at an inflection point in our efforts to develop cures for cancer and related diseases, he said in a statement. In that context, the proposed cuts are indefensible and would severely impede our progress. Patient lives are at stake.

On a different front, NASAs total budget would be trimmed by less than 1 percent, to $19 billion for fiscal 2018. However, the White House plan calls for scrapping four climate science missions as well as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was a big part of the Obama administrations space vision.

NASAs acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, acknowledged in a statement that the agency would not pursue the asteroid mission, which would have involved bringing back a piece of an asteroid for study in lunar orbit in the mid-2020s.

Asteroid exploration is a big deal for Redmond-based Planetary Resources, which plans to start mining near-Earth asteroids sometime in the next decade. The companys president and CEO, Chris Lewicki, said in a statement emailed to GeekWire that he considered NASA a valuable partner even if the Asteroid Redirect Mission is no longer in the picture:

Regardless of the status of the ARM mission, NASAs core charter is to explore space. We expect NASA to replace ARM with a new exploration program leveraging both robotic and human endeavors, and hope they are aimed towards enabling a permanent human presence in space through public-private partnerships and cost-effective ways for advancing science. NASA is now one of many of groups exploring the solar system, and as humanity explores farther and longer into space, the resources provided by Planetary Resources will be required. Our mission remains unchanged.

Heres a sampling of other reactions registered on Twitter:

Statement from President Obama's science advisor, Dr. John P. Holdren, on @realDonaldTrump budget released today pic.twitter.com/rNPetmkJ0l  philliplarson (@philliplarson) March 16, 2017

We need to strengthen our country through strategic investments in education, research, clean energy & infrastructure, not reckless cuts.  Rep. Suzan DelBene (@RepDelBene) March 16, 2017

President Trump's budget undercuts our ability to keep the people of Washington safe and healthy. https://t.co/zQZssTPsUV  Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) March 16, 2017

More from GeekWire:
In a drab meeting room of San Francisco's city hall this week, the city's leaders briefly confronted a brave, new world.

Robots will upend the very nature of work and further concentrate wealth among their owners, said Supervisor Jane Kim, who's seen as a progressive in a city without a single elected Republican.

It's time to consider taxing them.

"We must start redirecting a small percentage of these new profits to retrain and then re-employ human beings that are being replaced by these machines," Kim said, calling for a hearing on the matter.

Elsewhere in the city, that future doesn't seem so far off. Sleek delivery bots are gliding along sidewalks at a local permit rate of $66 per block, and driverless cars are back on the streets after a scuffle over a $150 state license.

Spotted on 19th Street: A delivery robot named "Carry" https://t.co/l8mXp2GqCH pic.twitter.com/EC1HGZUCuk  Mission Local (@MLNow) February 22, 2017

Kim may have been simply grandstanding about something in the headlines, as politicians are wont to do. The fact remains, though, that governments will probably have to grapple with some of these questions sooner rather than later.

Her proposal was a reaction to some buzzy comments made by Bill Gates during an interview last month.

The billionaire philanthropist told Quartz a tax on automated machinery would slow the incoming wave of worker displacement by keeping people competitive with their sub-human counterparts. It would also compensate for the massive loss in income tax revenues governments would see if everyone were out of work.

Bill Gates, Luddite

Economists and policy wonks have spent the weeks since debating how crazy this notion is. Some have gone so far as to call Gates, the guy who ran the biggest tech company of his time, a Luddite.

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Among his circle of billionaire friends, Gates seems to be alone in his opinion at the moment. But others in Silicon Valley are similarly worried about the shock wave their big ideas might soon cause the labor market, and thus the fabric of society.

Elon Musk, Marc Andreeson, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar and Y-Combinator head Sam Altman have all rallied around a universal basic income  a program in which the government regularly pays every citizen a fixed sum  as a possible fix. A robot tax could conceivably fund that vision.

One would think that such an imposing business burden might chafe at the worldview of some of those techno-libertarians, however.

Musk might talk a big game about basic income  which appeals to the libertarian vision of a pared-down social state  but when it comes to the tax that might supplement and bankroll it, he has a duty to Tesla shareholders to oppose it, for one thing.

The chief criticism of the robot tax is that it would hamper the innovation needed to drive the economy. New technology helps keep the economy growing, and its current rate is already lower than many economists would like.

To this, Gates essentially refers to the lessons of a basic economic textbook. Taxes should be set incrementally in a way that minimizes worker displacement while maximizing growth  the same push-and-pull approach used for most public constraints on capitalism.

In this case, gradually leveling the tax will help ease the sharp impact of displacement, which Gates says will probably come in devastating bursts as each new technological advance is adopted. Some economists have cosigned this prescription.

Former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard economist Lawrence Summers claims the proposal would lead down a slippery slope. It's too hard to determine the net social benefit of each new piece of technology, he says  some displace workers but others, like ATMs and word processors, make things more efficient for everyone. One could even argue that vaccines reduce jobs for medical workers, he says.

Picking on robots wont deal with job destruction https://t.co/3q2QhfVNjL by @LHSummers  Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) March 6, 2017

Like most slippery-slope arguments, however, this view operates in a theoretical vacuum that ignores the particulars of reality. In his original interview, Gates argues that taxes can be targeted judiciously at industries harmed the most at any given time.

Okay, what about the communities where this has a particularly big impact?" Gates suggests regulators should ask. "Which transition programs have worked and what type of funding do those require?

A coming cliff

The country may be barreling towards one of those aforementioned bursts of job loss.

City delivery bots and self-driving Ubers are one thing, but it's America's heartland that will likely suffer the most from the next wave of automation.

There are approximately 3.5 million truck drivers in America, according to the American Trucker Association  it's the most common job in more than half of the country's states.

It's also one of the last middle-class jobs that doesn't require a college degree, and many of those who do it live in rural areas that have been ravaged by the loss of factory jobs in recent decades.

A huge number of these people could be out of work within the next decade. Companies like Uber-owned Otto are already working towards unmanned big-rigs. A convoy of them recently journeyed across Western Europe.

Uber-owned Otto makes driverless trucks.

Image: screenshot

All but three of the states in which trucking is the biggest job voted for Donald Trump last November. Yet the problem has never featured in a presidential tweet or rally speech, despite Trump's supposed economic populism.

And given the Trump administration's general aversion to regulations and taxes, a sweeping public toll is probably not in the cards.

Moreover, most of these states also have Republican governors eager to attract business investment.

Trump's transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, did however pay lip service to the problem recently, without offering much concrete detail on a potential solution.

As a former secretary of Labor, I am very, very concerned about that and very cognizant of those challenges," she said, according to Politico. "So we do have to transition people and we need to keep that in mind."

The bigger picture

A recent study from the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about half of all the world's jobs could be replaced by technology that exists now or is currently being developed. That's around $16 trillion in lost wages.

The good news is that the report estimates that this change will happen at a much slower pace than other forecasts predict. It's not just about developing the technology  many other estimates ignore the time it takes for the market to make it feasible for wide-scale adoption, the researchers say.

The number is also by no means universally accepted. A study by the OECD last year pegged the portion of jobs replaced in developing companies in the next 20 years at as low as 9 percent.

Still, the overarching conclusion is that the march of technology is more or less inevitable.

"Automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing...the rise of AI is likely to extend this job destruction" pic.twitter.com/tQ6yyVPTO9  Baris (@barislui) March 5, 2017

As other studies show, the shift will mostly benefit the rich.

Meanwhile, the United States currently has one of the highest corporate tax rates of any developed country, though Trump has promised to cut it from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Even so, the share of federal taxes paid by corporations has been in a general decline since the 1950s.

Because of offshore tax havens and other loopholes, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that between 2008 and 2012, the average corporation effectively paid around 15 percent less than the set rate  profitable corporations paid an even lower amount  and two thirds of companies paid no income tax.

Even if a robot tax were politically viable, the chances of getting the biggest companies to pay it are uncertain.

Like many regulatory ideas considered radical in this country, a robot tax has already been proposed in Europe. But European Union legislators shut it down last month because of many of the same criticisms mentioned above.

The real problem

A robot tax makes for appealing headlines, but it really just amounts to a tax on a specific type of capital  the non-labor physical means by which businesses produce things.

There are other policy tools through which governments can effectively redistribute the growing portion of wealth concentrated in capital and preserve jobs, but they wouldn't necessarily generate the same public interest as stories involving a big-name mogul and a suggestion of a futuristic dystopia.

The first step is acknowledging the problem.

In the microcosm of San Francisco, fancy new high-rises and tech riches haven't stopped the famously left-leaning city's politicians from tangling with Silicon Valley, though they've had mixed success. The city has a unique spot on the forefront of both progressive politics and technology.

As such, it tends to be ground zero for a lot of the clashes between tech and government that spread throughout the rest of the country.

Perhaps robot regulation may be one of the next fights.
Samsung Group chief, Jay Y. Lee arrives at the office of the independent counsel team in Seoul, South Korea, February 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/Files (Reuters)

By Se Young Lee and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court said on Friday it has reassigned Samsung Group chief Jay Y. Lee's bribery trial to another judge, following questions about the previous judge's connection to a woman Lee is accused of bribing.

A Seoul Central District Court spokesman said the case had been reassigned following a request from judge Lee Young-hoon, who presided over the March 9 pre-trial hearing for Jay Lee and four former and current Samsung Group executives in what has been dubbed by some as the "trial of the century".

The spokesman declined to comment on the reason for the reassignment.

But the decision comes a day after an opposition lawmaker accused Lee Young-hoon's father-in-law of being a financial sponsor for Choi Soon-sil, a confidant of former president Park Geun-hye and a central figure in the graft scandal that led to Park's removal from office and the Samsung chief's indictment.

Park was dismissed as president by the Constitutional Court on Friday last week and has been summoned by prosecution for questioning as a suspect in the graft investigation.

The special prosecution team that indicted the Samsung chief accused Park of colluding with Choi to pressure big businesses to contribute to non-profit foundations backing her administration's initiatives.

The court said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday that Lee Young-hoon's father-in-law had denied the allegations and had not met or contacted Choi or her family since the assassination of Park's father, former president Park Chung-hee, in 1979.

Legal representatives for Jay Y. Lee, vice chairman and director at Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, could not be immediately reached for comment, and Samsung Electronics declined to comment.

Jay Y. Lee was indicted on Feb. 28 by a special prosecution team on several charges including pledging 43 billion won ($38.03 million) in bribes to a company and foundations backed by Choi to curry favor, and a verdict is required within three months of the indictment.

Jay Y. Lee and Samsung have denied wrongdoing.

(Reporting by Se Young Lee and Joyce Lee; Editing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)
Here on Earth, most people celebrate St. Patricks Day by heading down to their local watering hole for a pint of Guinness or maybe a couple glasses of green beer. Up on the International Space Station, however, such a thing just isnt possible, but that doesnt stop them from recognizing Earthen traditions all the same. NASA Commander Shane Kimbrough and ESA pilot Thomas Pesquet took the opportunity to peer down from their perch some 200-odd miles above the surface to catch a glimpse of the city that is probably partying harder than anyone tonight: Dublin, Ireland.

Don't Miss: Yet another new Galaxy S8 feature was uncovered that no iPhone can match

Dublin at night, Pesquet tweeted, along with a photograph of the sight. Always a great city to visit with a fantastic atmosphere. Kimbrough later tweeted his own greeting, saying Enjoy the #StPatricksFest Parade down there!

The photo is absolutely fantastic, and it was snapped at a high enough resolution to make out individual city streets. The center, downtown area is the brightest of all, and is undoubtedly filled with many revelers as the shot was taken. You can view the image in its full resolution on the NASA site here.

The International Space Station, which makes about 15 orbits per day around our planet, is potentially nearing the end of its lifespan. It was originally launched in the late 1990s and has seen many repairs and upgrades since then. The stations final days were originally estimated to fall somewhere in 2020, but Boeing, the crafts principal contractor, has discussed with NASA the possibility of keeping it alive through 2028. The Trump administrations various cuts to NASA funding could potentially impact that, as could many other factors.

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LG is the first big-name smartphone vendor to debut a new flagship device in 2017, and its new LG G6 is pretty spectacular. I gave readers a hands-on look at the G6 and some first impressions back in late February when it was first announced, and now LGs US carrier partners have finally announced the LG G6s release date. Verizon subscribers will be able to pick up the hot new flagship phone in just two weeks on March 30th, while the rest of the major wireless carriers in the US will release the phone a week later on April 7th.

Reports suggest that G6 pre-sales have exceeded everyones expectations, but that shouldnt be much of a surprise to anyone who has seen the device in person. The G6 is the first in a wave of next-generation flagship phones with displays that take up almost all of the front, and LGs new handset packs plenty of power to compliment that pretty face. Ive been using a pre-release version of the phone for the past few weeks though, and as great as the G6 is, there are two major design flaws that are driving me crazy.

Don't Miss: Theres a mysterious new Google phone in the works and it isnt the Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL

Newsflash: design is a big deal. Smartphone functionality has been relatively stagnant for the past few years, and that isnt expected to change very much in 2017. What will change this year, however, is smartphone design. Vendors finally have technology at their disposal that will allow them to create handsets that come closer than ever before to the all-screen smartphone of our dreams.

Samsungs Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ will feature a fresh new design with no side bezels and barely any bezels above or below the screens. Apples iPhone 8 will reportedly sport a similar design when it debuts in September. But theres only one big-name phone company that has already unveiled its new kind-of-sort-of-all-screen flagship phone, and Ive spent the last few weeks with it.

Its awesome. The fact that LG has managed to cram a gorgeous 5.7-inch QHD+ display into a smartphone thats about the same size as Apples iPhone 7, which features a 4.7-inch screen, is incredible. Thats an extra inch in diagonal size, not to mention the G6s pixel density of 564 ppi compared to 326 ppi on the iPhone 7.

Story continues

The G6 is beautiful, powerful, and ridiculously compact for a phone with such a big screen. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

Apple separates its phones from the pack in a number of ways, and attention to detail is somewhere near the top of the list. Apples high standards when it comes to design and quality have forced rivals to elevate their game; it seems like forever, but Samsungs flagship phones were made out of flimsy plastic as recently as three years ago. LG has also made great strides this year with the G6, but there are to design issues that are setting off every OCD alarm in my body.

Both of these problems are inexcusable, but for me, the first one is by far the worst.

Whats the one part of your smartphone you look at and interact with more than anything else? Yes, the screen, and the G6s FullVision Display is a sight to behold. Its big, its bright, colors leap off the phone, and the contrast is outstanding. Beyond panel quality though, there are two signature display features. The first is the design, which weve covered. The second is the round corners that give the phone a very cool look.

Except, the corners arent round. 

In each of the screens four corners, LG hasnt sloped the pixels on the panel properly. So instead of smooth, round corners on the G6 youre left with rough, jagged edges that look horrible. I find that they constantly draw my eye away from the content on the screen, which is just awful, needless to say. Its difficult to capture the full horror in a photo, but heres a picture from xda-developers to at least give you an idea of what were dealing with here:

It might seem like a silly gripe, but I assure you its not. The screen is the most important component of a smartphone when it comes to user interaction, and a mistake like this is inexcusable. I actually get angry every time I look at this phone, because the screen is so stunning aside from this misstep. Its impossible to unsee.

I would be remiss if I failed to remind readers once again at this point that the G6 Im using is a pre-release handset. It is possible that the release version of the phone doesnt have this issue. That said, Ive seen a dozen different units at this point and they all had the same jagged edges in each corner. From what Ive heard, thats how the phone will ship.

My second problem with the G6s design isnt quite as infuriating since its not literally staring you in the face each and every time you use the phone. Its still another bizarre misstep that should never have made it to production though, and it involves the shape of the phone.

Most phones are symmetrical from front to back. For example, if you look at the side edges of the iPhone 7, youll see a perfectly round curve that slopes evenly from the front to the back. Thats not the case with the G6. Instead, looking at the phone from its top side, the shape is like a rounded trapezoid  the sides are wider at one end of the slope than they are at the other.

This is done intentionally, and its actually a very good idea. Theres just one problem: Its backwards. 

Instead of following the contour of a hand and placing the wider edge in front like the Galaxy S7, LG made the G6 wider in the back. As a result, the phone is very comfortable to hold when the display is face-down in your hand. When you hold the G6 properly with the screen facing you, it doesnt feel good at all. Again, its not terribly easy to explain, but once you notice it youll never un-notice it.

The simple fact of the matter is that its troubling to me that LG would greenlight any phone with issues like these, let alone the companys 2017 flagship phone. LG has never been a leader where attention to detail is concerned, but little mistakes like this ruin the experience.

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1. Yes. Taxpayers are funding its operation; they should have a voice in the naming process.

2. Yes. The city should operate with a spirit of inclusivity. Residents will be responsive.

3. No. Public input can be problematic; rejection of suggestions can be divisive for residents.

4. No. Residents elect council members to make decisions on their behalf. No input is needed.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether public input would be more of a benefit or a hindrance.

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Three people including Police Spokesperson, Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi have been shot dead. Kaweesi and two other police officers were shot dead by unknown assailants about 100 metres from his home in Kulambiro, Nakawa Division in Kampala. Presidential Press Secretary Ms Linda Nabusayi confirmed the incident to our reporter. It is true and its so sad, Ms Nabusayi said when asked to confirm whether Mr Kaweesi was one of the three police officers killed in the Friday morning shooting.

Its not yet clear how Kaweesi was killed but the Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura and other senior security officers have rushed to the scene to ascertain what could have happened.

Kaweesi who also held the position of director human resource was in August 2016 appointed by IGP Kayihura the special police spokesman as the Force attempted to repair its image tainted by a string of brutality incidents and public relations nightmares.

Mr Kaweesi, whom Gen Kayihura had earlier removed from the Kampala Metropolitan Police command and later from the Directorate of Operations for being in the media too often, had been tasked to reclaim the Forces lost public trust.

Kayihura is expected to address the media about the incident.
By Damali Mukhaye

The Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda has called for a thorough investigation into the murder of police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi.

Kaweesi was gunned down this morning, a few meters from his home in Kulambiro as he left for work.

His driver Kenneth Erau and his body guard Godfrey Mambewo were also shot dead.

Dr Rugunda says police should investigate the assailants who have been killing innocent citizens.

He has described the late Kaweesi as a person who loved his job and the country at large.

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PM calls for a thorough investigation into the murder of Felix Kaweesi.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi shot dead.
President Yoweri Museveni has condemned in the strongest terms the killing of (the Assistant Inspector General of Police) Andrew Felix Kaweesi by thugs riding on motorcycles.

To curb the repeated murders in the city and other towns, the President has now directed the immediate installation of cameras in all major towns of Uganda and along the highways.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the presidents Press Secretary Linda Nabusayi, says the project had been delayed on account of other priorities like the roads and electricity.

The president has thus directed the Minister of Finance to work with Police to immediately close this gap.

Meanwhile, the security personnel and all citizens are asked to be vigilant and on the lookout for these assailants who have made it a habit to use motorcycles to kill people.

Senior prosecutor Joan Kagezi, Major Muhammad Kigundu and a number of Sheikhs have all been killed in the same manner.

The Uganda communications commission has warned media houses and those using social media against circulating gruesome pictures of the late Kaweesi.

The commission has noted with concern repeated broadcast and posting of pictures of the deceased in a manner which does not befit his caliber.

Now according to a letter signed by the commissions executive director Godfrey Mutabazi, all media houses must stop use of such pictures which contradicts the mandate of media houses as par the Communications Act.

The Uganda Christian University has released a statement saying it is saddened to learn of the unfortunate death of police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi.

Kaweesi was one of the scheduled speakers at a UCU Finalist Career Seminar held in Mukono today.

The seminar which is held every semester brings together professionals to offer career tips to prepare finalists for life beyond the university.

According to the university communications and Marketing manager Michael Mubangizi, Kaweesi was due to speak at 10:00 am on the theme, Career opportunities in the Armed forces and how to find them.

He was to speak alongside the UPDF Spokesperson Brig. Richard Karemire and Frank Baine, the spokesperson Uganda Prisons Service.

The university has conveyed its sympathies to Kaweesis family, Uganda Police Force and the entire country.

The Electoral Commission has also eulogized the late Felix Kaweesi, praising his efforts in the 2016 elections.

The commission spokesperson Jotham Taremwa says Kaweesi was always available to be consulted for advice about security during the election period and responded swiftly.

Former Police Spokesperson Judith Nabakooba has asked security organs to mount a joint operation to crack down on the racket involved in the gruesome murder of prominent citizens in the country.

Hon Nabakooba also Woman Member of Parliament for Mityana District and chairs parliaments committee on Defence and Internal Affairs was speaking to the media at the sidelines of parliaments tribute to former Toroma County MP the late Cyrus Amodoi.

The late Andrew Felix Kaweesi has been described as a great states man who was always passionate on law enforcement.

Speaking to media today, Col Felix Kulaigye one of the UPDF representatives in Parliament said that Kaweesis murder cannot be treated lightly and thorough investigations must be conducted to apprehend culprits.

Meanwhile human rights activists are saying these numerous murders are an indication that government has failed to protect Ugandans.

Speaking to KFM, the Executive director of foundation for human rights initiative Dr. Livingston Ssewanyana says the government has a responsibility of protecting its citizens against such violence.

Related Stories

PM calls for a thorough investigation into the murder of Felix Kaweesi.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi shot dead.
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ANGOLA  After two days of testimony and about 45 minutes deliberation, a Steuben County jury found Chad M. Farrell guilty of rape and criminal confinement Thursday evening in Steuben Circuit Court.

Farrell, 45, of Angola, has been in Steuben County Jail since his arrest more than a year ago. He will remain there until his sentencing on April 10 at 1 p.m. by Judge Allen Wheat.

The conviction of Level 1 felony rape by use of a weapon carries up to a 40-year prison term and Level 3 felony criminal confinement carries up to a 16-year penalty.

The jury began deliberating around 5:15 p.m. and reached a verdict at around 6 p.m.

Farrell showed little reaction as the verdict was read, though Prosecutor Jeremy Musser pointed out the crime occurred after getting himself worked up into this angry, jealous tizzy.

In his closing arguments, Musser read aloud a series of text messages published to the jury. The texts started at 5:41 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2016, with Farrell telling his victim, his exgirlfriend, he was dizzy and his heart hurt, that she was causing him undue stress due to her continued contact with her teenage sons father, Matt Laisure. The texts crescendoed over about an hour, with Farrell saying, I hope it kills me and You used me  ruined my life.

Earlier that day, Farrell had been at the home of the victim, who testified Wednesday afternoon.

The evening of Feb. 18, 2016, Farrell went to work, but claimed a serious medical problem and was told to leave. The victim agreed to pick him up and take him to his home at Silver Lake Trailer Court.

Thursday, several law enforcement officers testified, including the first officer at the scene, Indiana State Trooper Matt Lazoff. Lazoff was on patrol that night and ran the victims license plate at 11:57 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2016 going south on Wohlert Street in Angola. He said as the car approached the intersection with Mill Street, it signaled to go west. Lazoff, turning east, said he looked inside the car and saw a female driver and male passenger with his head leaning against the car frame.

A half hour later, Lazoff was dispatched to Silver Lake, arriving at 12:34 a.m. on Feb. 19, 2016. Farrell, who started driving the victims car after she leaped out, pulled into the driveway in front of Lazoff, then stopped about 15 feet into the drive.

Lazoff said a female was running toward him, screaming at me  Its him, its him, its him in a frantic voice.

According to her testimony, the victim said she helped Farrell into his bare-bones trailer and he threw her on his bed, forcing sexual intercourse with a knife held in one hand. After he finished, he stood in front of the trailer door, still holding the knife, until she said he slumped to the floor, apparently passing out. The knife fell from his hand; the victim hid it in couch cushions, then slid out the door.

The 6-inch knife was recovered by Steuben County Sheriffs Detective Mike Meeks, and was shown to the jury Thursday. The jury also saw a sexual assault examination kit, explained by Cameron Memorial Community Hospitals sexual assault nurse examiner Kathy Dirrim. Analyzed by the Indiana State Police laboratory in Fort Wayne, the rape exam revealed Farrells DNA as did the knife, which also had traces of the victims DNA. A vice data report was created from Farrells cell phone by Gary Cox of Ligonier Police Department.

The jury read some technical documents following a stipulation by the defense that eased some evidentiary details. Burns and Musser agreed that sexual intercourse occurred, both parties touched the knife, the analysis of the kit and the knife could be admitted as evidence and the text messages could be admitted as evidence. Some contents were redacted from the exhibits as a matter of pretrial agreements and state statute.

Meeks and Detective Chris Emerick testified Thursday. Emerick interviewed Farrell at the hospital and again at the sheriffs department on the morning of Feb. 19, 2016. Both times, Farrell told him he did not remember any of the events of the evening, only leaving work and arriving at the hospital.

When jail Capt. Jason Hufnagle was on the stand, the jury heard a recorded telephone conversation from Farrell in the jail to his brother the morning of May 18, 2016. In it, Farrell told a story where the victim was supposed to take me to the hospital but she took me home, had consensual sex and an argument that ended with him at the hospital.

The defenses case, which started after lunch on Thursday, included short testimony from coworkers at the factory where both Farrell and the victim worked, a clergyman who lent Farrell his truck for several months and Laisure. Laisure characterized the victim as his sons mother, and said he was not aware she was involved with Farrell until Laisure received an unusual text message the night of the rape. He said he did not immediately react to the early-morning message.

In Indiana, jurors can pose questions to witnesses. After Laisures testimony, a jurors hand-written question asked if Laisure ever read it, and if so, what the text said. In one of many short dismissals, jurors were sent from the courtroom while the question was discussed.

Laisure said the message said something to the effect of I was screwing Chad when you stopped over this afternoon.

Musser said it was one of the most significant statements of the trial, but it was not clear who actually wrote the message. Laisure testified he received the text around 12:30 a.m. The victim called 911 at 12:26 a.m. and threw her phone to the floorboards and fled after Farrell got into her running, unlocked car.

It was that 911 call that punctuated Mussers closing statements. The recording was played on Wednesday for the jury, and Musser played it again in its entirety Thursday at the close of proceedings. The tape is about a minute and a half long and concludes with terrified screams; as it ended Thursday, several members of the court audience fell into tears.

Farrell also took the stand Thursday, talking about a love triangle and insisting he did not commit rape. He admitted he lied to Emerick due to a distrust of law enforcement from a former burglary conviction. He said he was upset and woozy during the incident.

Much of the case seemed to be hinged on Farrells medical condition. After Musser and Burns finished their questioning, a juror posed the question: What is your medical issue? Farrell told Wheat he felt uncomfortable sharing the information, but Wheat said he must answer. Farrell told the jury hed been diagnosed with anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder and sleep deprivation.
ST. PAUL, Minn.  Senate Republicans said Thursday theyll propose cutting Minnesotas lowest income tax rate as part of a $900 million tax relief package, an opening bid that will clash with Gov. Mark Daytons vision for a slimmed-down tax bill.

Top Senate GOP lawmakers wouldnt specify how far their bill will cut the states first-tier tax rate below its current 5.35 percent level. Whatever the cut, most Minnesota residents would benefit  even higher earners would pay the lower rate on their first roughly $18,000 of income.

Combined with the GOPs hopes of phasing out the state tax on Social Security income and creating a new college tuition tax credit, its a sign that Republicans will press Dayton to put more of a projected $1.65 billion budget surplus toward tax relief than the $300 million bill he laid out earlier this year. Sen. Roger Chamberlain, the Senates Tax Committee chairman, said a big tax break is overdue after the government has piled up years of consecutive budget surpluses.

There are gobs of money pouring into the state coffers, Chamberlain said. It is time to give the money and some relief back to the workers in the state.

The Legislatures attention is quickly turning to setting a two-year budget. With Republicans now controlling the entire Legislature and a three-year gap since the last tax bill was passed, tax relief will play a prominent role in that debate.

Dayton devoted $300 million to a tax bill that prioritizes child care tax credits and increasing a tax credit for low-income residents. The Democratic governor was expected to release a revised budget proposal Friday, while House Republicans were aiming to unveil their own tax and budget bills next week.

In a letter to legislative leaders earlier this week, the governor warned against making drastic cuts to existing government programs to pay for a hefty tax bill. Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka signaled their budget would make some cuts but held off on providing details until Friday.

The marquee item in the Senate GOPs tax proposal was their plan to reduce the states lowest of four income tax tiers  the first rate reduction in nearly two decades. Because residents pay graduated rates as their income grows, roughly 80 percent of Minnesota taxpayers would get a break  only the lowest earners whose tax payments are offset by tax credits wouldnt see a cut.

Democratic senators quickly criticized the proposal as benefiting Minnesotas millionaires. And Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, said their proposal to phase out Social Security income would become very costly.

I hope the Republicans plan will be cognizant of this risk and not jeopardize the long-term stability of our states fiscal outlook in an attempt to score political points, Rest said.

There are gobs of money pouring into the state coffers. It is time to give the money and some relief back to the workers in the state. Minn. State Sen. Roger Chamberlain
The weighty dilemma of how to pay for Wisconsins roads and bridges has a simple solution: spend less, the new state Department of Transportation Secretary Dave Ross told lawmakers Thursday.

The testimony came in a hearing with the state Senate Transportation committee. The committee later voted on party lines, 3-2, with Democrats dissenting, to forward Ross nomination as DOT secretary to a vote in the full Senate.

Ross said the states transportation funding woes stem in part from past decisions to move forward with too many large highway projects at once. Those decisions likely were linked to findings of a recent state audit of the department, which showed it drastically underestimated the cost of large highway projects over a period of decades.

Its a spending problem, not a revenue problem, Ross said.

That contradicts legislative Democrats and some Republicans who say the state needs more revenue for transportation, likely through a gas tax or vehicle registration fee increase. They say a growing backlog of highway projects and mounting transportation debt mean that an infusion of revenue must be part of the solution.

But Ross stance matches Gov. Scott Walkers position of holding the line on taxes and fees in the next state budget. Walker named Ross in December to succeed former DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb.
The Rev. Patrick Desbois has dedicated his life to making sure the Holocaust is never forgotten.

The historian, author and Georgetown University professor will present Holocaust by Bullets at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 23, in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Main Theatre.

A powerful exhibit of Desbois work, also called Holocaust by Bullets, documents this lesser-known side of the Holocaust with eyewitness testimonies, photographs and archival materials. It will be on display in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Atrium Lobby until Monday, March 27, and is free and open to the public.

Desbois has devoted his life to researching the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism and furthering relations between Catholics and Jews. He is the president of YahadIn Unum, a global humanitarian organization he founded that is dedicated to identifying and commemorating the sites of Jewish and Roma mass executions perpetrated by Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, during World War II.

In 2004, he initiated an effort to thoroughly detail the nearly forgotten history of the genocide by asking the aging witnesses to share their memories and videotape their testimony. With their help, his organization is able to locate the evidence that validates the historical facts of this chapter of the Holocaust.

Desbois is author of The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priests Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews, which won the National Jewish Book Award, and the recently released The Fabric of Terrorists: Into the Secrets of Daesh, based on his investigation of the Yazidi genocide in Iraq.

This presentation by Desbois is part of the Teaching the Holocaust Workshop held at Viterbo University and is part of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leaderships spring lecture series. It is free and open to the public. No tickets are necessary, but seating is limited. For a full schedule of D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership events, visit viterbo.edu/ethics.
State legislation passed in 2013 largely took away local governmental bodies rights to reject cell towers, but the La Crosse County Board rejected one anyway Thursday night.

After a lengthy debate, the board voted 22-5 to reject an application by Bug Tussel Wireless to erect a 200-foot tower at W7520 Old Hwy. NA, west of Hwy. 35 in the town of Holland. Board members Jerome Gundersen, Dan Ferries, Dan Hesse, Dave Holtze and Roger Plesha voted in the minority.

A county committee earlier voted to recommend denial of the conditional-use permit, but county staff had recommended approval of the tower, noting that the application met all the requirements as set out in state statute. Under the state law, Bug Tussel Wireless now can take the county to circuit court to settle the matter.

Megan DeVore, the countys corporation counsel, didnt hold out much hope for the countys chances, noting that its likely outside legal representation would be required, costing $2,000 to $3,000 or more if the case went past initial motions.

Its my opinion that any defense of a denial of the permit will likely be unsuccessful, DeVore said. Its relatively clear that as long as certain conditions are met the permit needs to be approved.

However, board member Matt Nikolay said Bug Tussel had not appealed after permit rejections in Lafayette County. Were assuming that theyre going to appeal this decision. We dont know this, he said.

Much of the opposition to the tower centered on an engineers certification that the towers fall zone would be a 75 foot radius. Because of the state law, the county couldnt require a setback greater than 75 feet from the road as long as an engineer said the tower would fall within that radius.

Nikolay said the engineers letter was written as if the tower design had not yet been completed, so the engineers opinion on the fall zone was suspect. Hes basing it on something that hasnt even been designed yet. Im just not willing to take that chance, he said.

In arguing against denying the permit, Holtze and Gundersen were concerned that the county would lose the chance to impose the conditions contained in the permit, such as requiring a $20,000 bond to ensure the company dismantles the tower when it is no longer in use.

I am very concerned that if we deny this, well be on the hook for taking this tower apart someday, Gundersen said. I just want to make sure we maintain some grip on the situation.

Board member Ralph Geary said he never likes to base his votes on the threat of litigation, and board member Steve Doyle agreed. If we deny, the ball is in their court, Doyle said. We have really not jumped off a cliff by going with what the committee recommends.

It would likely be cheaper and simpler for the company to apply for a new permit with a greater setback than it would be to sue the county, added board member Patrick Barlow.

PRAT session

Only six people (other than county board members) showed up for the first of three information sessions on a proposed premier resort area tax that is the subject of a referendum on the April 4 ballot.

Phil Ostrem, who represents one of the poorest areas of La Crosse on the Common Council, expressed concern that the tax would unfairly burden his low-income constituents, many of whom cant even afford a car.

None of the other people who attended offered statements opposing the half-percent sales tax that would be charged at about half the retailers in the county  those designated as tourism related. But the questions asked of county officials indicated skepticism at the very least.

Larry Vangen asked how much of the sales tax would be collected from people outside La Crosse County, pressing officials on their assertion that this referendum boils down to whether residents want to get help from visitors paying for roads or put it all on property taxes.

County board Chair Tara Johnson answered that 11 percent would come from tourists and another roughly 25 percent of the sales tax revenue would come from residents in nearby counties who come to the area to shop.

Chris Muller asked why the county couldnt shift money from other areas of the budget to put more money into roads.

There are many unmet needs, not just in roads, Johnson replied, noting that those other needs dont have an alternate funding source available like the so-called tourism tax.
WINONA, Minn.  A pro-frac sand group made good on threat to bring legal action against Winona County over its frac sand ban Tuesday.

The suit, filed by Minneapolis-based law firm Larkin Hoffman, seeks to nullify the amendment to the countys zoning ordinance preventing the mining and processing of industrial silica sand  a classification which includes frac sand.

Prior to the meeting in November approving the ban on a 3-2 vote, Winona County commissioners received a letter from Larkin Hoffman threatening to sue the county on behalf of unnamed clients.

Those clients are still largely unnamed in the complaint.

Two parties are suing the county, a non-profit formed in January called Southeastern Minnesota Property Owners, and Roger Dablestein, a Saratoga County resident who owns property in Winona County.

The complaint alleges that Dablsteins Winona County land holds significant industrial silica deposits which are estimated to be in the range of 12 million tons located on approximately 38 acres.

The complaint said the ruling was unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious and violates the United States and Minnesota Constitutions, including, specifically, the equal protection, due process and takings clauses of these constitutions and the interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution.

The complaint seeks a ruling that agrees with that, as well as a prohibition on the enforcement of the ban on industrial sand mining.

The arguments reflect those offered in debates during the year-and-a-half leading up to the ban.

Those opposed to the ban, including representatives of the Minnesota Industrial Sand Council, argued that the restrictions constituted unconstitutional takings and unreasonably discriminated against a particular industry.

Winona County Administrator Ken Fritz said that while the county was aware of the potential for a lawsuit during the proceedings, the county didnt go about its business as if it was anticipating a suit.

They passed it, we implemented it, Fritz said. That was it.

Fritz couldnt comment on specifics because the suit is ongoing.

County Attorney Karin Sonneman had advised that the county had sound legal standing and that the ban did not create any constitutional or legal problems.

An amendment to the ban was drafted by Sonneman and drew from several examples, including Goodhue Countys Florence Township ban on silica sand mining for fracking and the Land Stewardship Projects proposed ban language.

The legal analysis made several additions to the initial language, including an argument for the amendment as it relates to the values in the countys comprehensive plan and the purpose of the countys zoning ordinance.

It also clarifies the distinctions among restrictions on different types of mineral excavation, extraction and land alteration by defining some uses as commercial minerals as opposed to industrial minerals.

The county maintained that it would not affect the inter-county or interstate commerce of sand by truck, rail or barge, and would only apply to new mines.

No landowners have attempted to apply for a new mine since the ban was implemented.

The Land Stewardship Project has come out strongly against the lawsuit, saying that the decision had been supported by the majority of the countys residents.

Johanna Rupprecht, policy organizer for the Land Stewardship Project, said the county had done its due diligence and she thought it would hold up legally.

Were confident, Rupprecht said, and see this ultimately as the industry attacking our democratically made decision.
WASHINGTON  Culture and demographics are our destiny. Stop.

But Iowa Rep. Steve King didnt stop there. He continued to feed his foot deep into his gullet: We cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies.

Well, now. Lets pause to parse.

First, one never speaks of somebody elses babies except to exclaim how precious they are  each and every one. For a politician to say this, the exclamation is best accompanied by a warm smile and an unmistakable tone of admiration for the infants heroic mother. (Note: All mothers are heroic.)

Second, whats all this about restoring civilization? Did we lose it? Is civilization crumbling beneath our noses?

Admittedly, Ive mentioned more than once that civilization hangs by a thread, which for me means Americans must promptly learn the difference between your and youre. Youre proud of your baby, though heaven knows why (Im not a politician).

Of equal urgency, its fewer than, not less than, when speaking of things that can be counted. As in, fewer than one in a million Americans know who Steve King is.

Kings comment came in the form of a tweet, apparently in support of Geert Wilders, the Dutch nationalist politician hoping to become prime minister of the Netherlands after Wednesdays election.

Both Wilders  who once called Moroccans scum  and King do seem cut from the same cloth. Both men are apparently concerned that immigrant encroachment is posing a danger to civilization-as-we-know-it, especially among certain recurring arrivals, including: (1) Muslims, whose faith is sometimes used by certain fanatics to justify murdering the rest of us; (2) people from a variety of nations who, importantly, do not have white skin, or, inferentially, Western values coursing through their veins.

To the Kings and Wilders (and Trumps?), the problems are obvious and undeniable. Even to the less knee-jerk, the fast-changing demographic landscape has created at least some level of discomfort and uncertainty. Suddenly, the majority has to ponder the imponderable: Who, me, a minority?

Im as happy as anyone to dismiss extremists of any sort as this -ist or that -phobe. But such labeling seems both facile and unproductive. Swaddling ourselves in righteous indignation, we settle by the fire, cooing to our superior intellects, and noticing too late the hungry mob building a pyre beyond the window.

King speaks stupidly and carelessly, to be sure. His ineloquent tongue could reduce the Gettysburg Address to a cartoon caption. But hes addressing an idea that is far from alien to a large percentage of Western civilizations acolytes and beneficiaries.

Wilders, too, is a symptom of something real and profound. He didnt invent himself out of nothing. His scum comment followed the shocking 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim claiming to defend the name of Allah.

Just as 9/11 caused the United States to lose its rose-hued glasses, van Goghs fatal shooting and throat slashing ruptured the Netherlands long-standing and proud tradition of tolerance. Loss of innocence becomes its own empty vessel that is quickly filled with lust for revenge born of ultimate betrayal. As in: We welcomed you to our home and you turned our goodwill against us. Or killed our artists. Or blew up our buildings  and destroyed our hearts.

The forces that escort people such as King, Wilders and Donald Trump to the dais are not, in other words, primarily hateful, though they easily can so evolve. At their root, theyre Something Else. It is this something else that slips into the gulf of deferred aspirations when labels are substituted for the hard work of thinking.

Undergirding Kings remarks, of course, is the false notion that those people come to the U.S. only to propagate and take advantage of our generosity without contributing in return. In addition to being ignorant, Kings words are mean  and possibly speak more to his sense of women as breeders than to Latinos, Hispanics and others as freeloaders. Too much time on those Iowa sow farms, perhaps?

What is needed are new voices to articulate these fundamental concerns, recognize them with respect and work toward solutions that dont require that our neighbors be marginalized. This would seem especially compelling to those now considering what it might be like to become a minority in their own country.

In the new age upon us, our best hope is that our nations values linger on through coming generations of all varieties of Americans. Who knows? Maybe a more enlightened future actually is in gestation, eventually to be fashioned by somebody elses baby.
Of all the arguments to make for repealing and replacing Obamacare, the very worst is that people dont need health insurance.

Yet this is a Trump administration talking point. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters last week, When we get asked the question, How many people are going to get covered? thats not the question that should be asked. Pressed on the merits of the bill by George Stephanopoulos on ABCs This Week, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney shot back, Youre worried about getting people covered. As if thats a woeful mistake.

This is a strange rhetorical tack for officials in an administration led by a president who pledged to cover everyone. Nor is it substantively or political defensible. Repealing and replacing Obamacare will require every ounce of persuasiveness that Republicans can muster, especially with the Congressional Budget Office now estimating that under Trumpcare, 14 million fewer people will be insured in 2018. The early signs arent encouraging.

It is true that health insurance isnt a panacea. There is an academic debate about whether having health insurance leads to longer lives, and all sorts of factors besides insurance affect health and the quality of medical care (geography, for instance, can have more of an impact on care than whether someone is insured).

Still, there is abundant evidence of the benefits of insurance. Research has found that Romneycare in Massachusetts improved measures of physical and mental health. A Rice University study of the Houston area found that people with insurance report being in better health than those who lack it. If nothing else, insurance is protection against catastrophic health expenses and provides a sense of security.

This is true even of Medicaid, an insurance program so inadequate that it is the next best thing to having no insurance at all. A landmark study of Medicaid in Oregon examined what effect the program had on recipients. The study didnt find better health outcomes. What it did find is that recipients were less likely to need to skimp on other payments or borrow money due to medical expenses, and had better mental health. These are not small things, and it is foolish to minimize them.

Republicans obviously shouldnt accept the premises of their detractors. By all means, they should hit the dubious methodology of the CBO, which vastly overestimated how many people would be covered on the Obamacare exchanges in the first place. And they should point out Obamacares manifest failings, including an overreliance on the deeply flawed Medicaid program and insurance exchanges that are shaky at best (the executive of Aetna recently said they are in a death spiral).

But the best response to criticisms that Trumpcare doesnt cover enough people is simple and more fundamental  to get the coverage numbers up. If the headline-grabbing numbers from the CBO dont prompt the GOP to realize this, nothing will. Making the tax credit in the Republican plan more generous further down the income scale would be a start. President Trumps promises about universal coverage arent achievable, but to lurch in the other direction and dismiss the significance of health insurance is politically poisonous.

At its best, the Trump phenomenon pointed to a GOP more grounded in the economic realities of working-class life. It is remarkable, then, that the first major legislative priority out of the box is being sold, in part, in stereotypically Republican terms, and by Trumps own team. The arguments that they are making in public are the kinds of things you might have expected to hear at a private fundraiser of the sort that undid Mitt Romney when he famously dismissed the 47 percent.

Before going further down this road, they should think about why Trump, with his keen gut-level political instinct, never told audiences or interviewers that hed be fine with fewer people having insurance, and adjust their rhetoric and their plan accordingly.
The vexing challenge of how to pay for Wisconsins roads and bridges has a simple solution: Build less and prioritize more, new state Department of Transportation Secretary Dave Ross told lawmakers Thursday.

Its a spending problem, not a revenue problem, Ross said.

Ross, testifying to the state Senate Transportation committee, placed new emphasis on what he called a key contributor to excessive transportation spending: committing to build too many large highway expansion projects at once.

After Ross testimony, the committee voted on party lines, 3-2, with Democrats opposed, to forward Ross nomination as DOT secretary to a full Senate vote.

Ross testimony complements Gov. Scott Walkers no-new-tax stance heading into a potential transportation budget battle with Assembly Republicans. That fight could escalate in the coming months as Walker and lawmakers craft the states next two-year budget.

Minority Democrats on the committee pushed back during Thursdays hearing.

They said mounting transportation-borrowing costs and a growing backlog of highway projects mean an infusion of revenue  likely through a gas tax or vehicle registration fee increase  must be part of the solution. Some Republican lawmakers, including Assembly GOP leaders, also are open to such an increase.

We have a governor whos placing, in my own personal humble opinion, is placing his own re-election (ahead) of taking care of the crisis in our transportation system, said Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee.

Ross cited the list of major and mega state highway projects now underway  17 were listed on a report last month to the Transportation Projects Commission  as evidence of what he described as the DOT taking on more than it could handle.

He noted federal highway officials urged the DOT in a December letter to better prioritize projects, while voicing concern with the number of large-scale highway projects that have encountered construction delays.

But Ross suggested lawmakers werent entirely to blame for green lighting so many projects. He cited the findings of a recent state audit of the department, which showed it underestimated the cost of ongoing highway projects by a combined amount of more than $3 billion over a period of decades.

Without accurate cost estimates, weve put too much into the pipeline, Ross said. We decided to remodel our kitchen, our bathroom and our rec room all at the same time.

Ross did not cite examples of projects that should be removed from the departments building schedule.

Two major Dane County highway projects, expansions of Interstate 39-90 and Verona Road, would avoid delays under Walkers proposal for the states next transportation budget.

But future projects already are on the chopping block.

The department announced last month its scrapping a study of whether to expand or rebuild Interstates linking Madison to Wisconsin Dells.

Carpenter, a member of the Transportation Projects Commission, also dinged the department for quietly sidelining a pricey segment of the I-39-90 project.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported last month that the DOT, with little fanfare, had separated the Beltline interchange with I-39-90 from the larger 39-90 rebuild, of which it originally was part.

This information was given to the TPC; we voted on it and Oops! Half a billion dollars wasnt listed, Carpenter said.

The department later announced the interchange would cost $550 million to rebuild, bringing the total cost estimate for the project, as it originally was defined, to $1.75 billion. The latter figure compares to an initial estimate given to lawmakers in 2011, when the project was approved, of $715 million.

Ross told lawmakers in a report filed Wednesday that the $550 million Beltline interchange estimate is totally unacceptable and the department will re-evaluate it.
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Kennebunk Post

"We need to invest in our kids," said resident Brenda Robinson. "That's how we keep graffiti out of Waterhouse Center and mischief out of the downtown on Saturday night."
Brazilian labor unions, government employees and rural workers held protests on Wednesday against proposed changes to work rules and aid for retired workers.

One of the largest protests took place in Sao Paulo, Brazils largest city. Bus and train service was affected. Small street demonstrations around the city slowed traffic.

The Associated Press says traffic was slowed partly because of a partial transport strike that began Tuesday night. Later in the day, teachers, union members, and activists went into the streets of Sao Paulo to protest the proposed changes.

In Brasilia, the capital, over 1,500 hundred protesters broke into the Finance Ministrys offices and occupied it for several hours.

Protesting reforms despite progress

The demonstrators were protesting Brazilian President Michel Temers plan to change labor rules and the social security pension system. Critics are saying his plan would reduce job security for workers. They also say it would force many people to work longer to meet requirements for a pension. It would also reduce government aid for many retirees.

The changes would give businesses fewer restrictions on employment. Companies would have the ability to set up longer, temporary agreements with workers. They could require longer work days and use more part-time workers.

The Reuters news service says President Temer and leading lawmakers have redoubled their support of the pension plan. They believe that limiting pension benefits and raising the retirement age are necessary to fix the countrys economic problems.

Brazil is currently in one of its worst recessions in more than a century. Temer says that without changes, the financial system could collapse. In a speech, he said his plan would keep Brazil from having to make the changes that European countries like Portugal and Greece were forced to make to rescue their economies.

On Wednesday, Moodys Investors Service amended its ratings for Brazils sovereign credit rating from negative to stable. The service said it was making the change because of Brazils fiscal reforms.

Moodys said it expected the pension plan to pass Congress in the second half of 2017. And it said Latin Americas largest economy was preparing to end its deepest recession on record.

Temer said Moodys decision was a recognition of his governments efforts to recover credibility in the Brazilian economy.

Moodys last cut Brazils sovereign debt rating in February 2016, downgrading the country as then-President Dilma Rousseff struggled to keep public finances under control.

Im Phil Dierking.

The Associated Press and Reuters reported this story. Phil Dierking adapted the reports for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

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

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

benefit  n. money that is paid by a company (such as an insurance

company) or by a government when someone dies, becomes sick, stops working, etc.

fiscal  adj. of or relating to money and especially to the money a government, business, or organization earns, spends, and owes

pension  n. an amount of money that a company or the government pays to a person who is old or sick and no longer works

sovereign  adj. having independent authority and the right to govern itself
A Dutch political party known for its anti-Muslim statements has failed to win the most seats in parliamentary elections in the Netherlands.

The Party for Freedom, or PVV, led by Geert Wilders, won the second most seats in parliament. It was second behind the Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Recent opinion surveys had suggested Wilders Party for Freedom might have had enough support to gain a plurality, or the most seats in parliament.

With most votes counted for the 150-seat legislature, the VVD had 33 seats. That is eight fewer seats than in the previous election in 2012. The Party for Freedom won 20 seats, gaining five since the last election.

The Christian Democrats and progressive D66 party won 19 seats each. Thirteen parties won seats in parliament.

The results mean Prime Minister Rutte will begin talks with other parties to form a coalition government. Until now, he has rejected the possibility of working with Wilders and his Party for Freedom.

Now we are the 2nd largest party, Wilders tweeted about the results. Next time we will be number 1."

Wilders campaigned for strong limits on immigration. He also called for pulling the Netherlands out of the European Union and frequently spoke out against Muslims. He proposed shutting down mosques and banning the Koran across the country. The Koran is the Muslim holy book.

Other candidates have denounced Wilders strong language against Muslims and immigration. However, most support policies that limit immigration in the Netherlands.

The results were seen as a setback for European populist movements that strengthened after a migrant crisis hit many countries.

Political observers believe a win for Wilders may have helped Frances far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Her public support is nearly equal to more moderate candidate Emmanuel Macron before a first round of elections next month.

Le Pens National Front party has called for anti-immigration policies to win voter support. It has spoken out against Muslim immigration after several major terrorist attacks hit France.

Macron said the voting in the Netherlands showed that a breakthrough for the extreme right is not a foregone conclusion. He said he believes progressive candidates are now gaining momentum in Europe.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union party suffered a political setback in elections last year. The losses were blamed partly on her decision to accept more than one million refugees during Europes migrant crisis.

Growing anti-immigrant feelings in Germany have fueled support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

Merkel will seek re-election in September. She reacted to the Dutch elections by calling the outcome a very pro-European result and a good day for democracy.

The head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Dutch voters confirmed the importance of European values for free and tolerant societies.

In a letter to the Dutch prime minister, Juncker said he looked forward to continuing good working relations, in particular our work on the future of Europe.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on material from the Associated Press and Reuters. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Do you think the Dutch election result sends a message about upcoming voting in other European nations? Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

foregone  adj. something in the future that is sure to happen or be true

momentum  n. strength or force that allows something to continue or grow

tolerant  adj. able to accept feelings or beliefs that are different from your own
Fast-moving water spilled onto streets and into homes on Thursday during intense rainstorms in Lima, Perus capital.

The heavy rains killed at least 12 people in Peru, the Associated Press reported. It said the water, much of it dirty, now threatens to flood the city.

Peruvian officials said on Thursday they expect the extreme weather to continue for another two weeks.

Weather experts are blaming the intense rains on the weather event called El Nino. It produces a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

To date, the storms are reported to have killed more than 60 people and destroyed 12,000 homes across Peru this year.

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has declared a state of emergency in the affected areas. He said the government is prepared to provide shelter and assistance to those left homeless by the storms.

Schools nationwide have suspended classes.

In the past three days, the rains and mudslides have brought severe destruction to Peru. And, the storms have caught people in Lima by surprise. The city, where it almost never rains, is home to 10 million people.

One extreme incident happened about 50 kilometers south of downtown Lima. Shocked city residents watched and captured video on their mobile phones as a woman escaped from a mixture of mud, wood and farm animals.

Evangelina Chamorro had just left her two daughters at school when, soon after, she and her husband were pulled into a landslide. They were feeding their pigs when the landslide seized control of them.

Armando Rivera, Chamorro's husband, told a Peruvian radio station that he and his wife climbed a tree but the tree broke in two. They held on to each other's hands, but Chamorro eventually lost hold and got separated.

Then, Chamorro appeared near a bridge, lifting herself from a flood of debris and walking toward land covered head to toe in mud.

"There's a person there!" an observer cried out.

Chamorro collapsed as she reached land and was quickly carried by several men to an emergency vehicle. She suffered only minor injuries.

Last week, during heavy rainfall, more than 15 people were killed when a bus fell into a ravine in central Peru, Alliance France-Presse reported.

This week in Lima, the rising Huaycoloro River washed away two trucks and nearly destroyed a bridge.

Seven of the nation's most dangerous criminals were temporarily transported to another detention center after a river near the prison threatened to overflow.

President Kuczynski said in a statement Wednesday that Peruvians should not take unnecessary risks. He urged them to avoid flooded roads and weak bridges.

Im Alice Bryant.

The Associated Press, Alliance France-Presse and United Press International reported on this story. Alice Bryant adapted the information for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

mudslide - n. landslide

mud - n. soft, wet earth

debris - n. the pieces that are left after something has been destroyed

ravine - n. a small, narrow valley
This is Whats Trending Today.

Hawaii was the 50th state added to the United States. It joined the U.S. in 1959.

Before that, it was a U.S. territory.

Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is made up of eight islands, including Oahu, Maui and the largest island, called Hawaii.

Hawaii is known for its unique culture, beautiful rainforests, volcanoes and sandy beaches.

Many Americans like to visit Hawaii on vacation.

But people now say they will not travel to Hawaii. The hashtag #BoycottHawaii is trending on Twitter.

The online call for a boycott began on Wednesday evening. That is when a federal judge in Hawaii froze President Trumps executive order banning visitors to the U.S. from six mostly Muslim countries for 90 days.

The ban prevents all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days.

Judge Derrick Watson said the presidents order discriminated against Muslims, and likely violated the U.S. Constitution.

He described the order as fundamentally flawed.

A federal judge in Maryland supported Watsons decision on Thursday. That judge said the order was an attempt to ban Muslims from coming to the U.S.

Supporters of the president are saying on social media that people should protest Judge Watsons decision by not traveling to Hawaii.

For example, one Trump supporter asked: Why should Hawaii  control who can come in? I dont think so! He said Hawaii is too far away from the rest of the U.S. to be able to make such big decisions.

Others wondered if they should make plans to visit other beaches, instead of those in Hawaii. A user named Theresa said she was making plans to visit Florida.

But, many people supported the judges rulings. They, too, used the hashtag #BoycottHawaii on Twitter to express their opinions.

Some Twitter users celebrated the fact that Trump supporters would not visit Hawaii anytime soon. They said that would make Hawaii even nicer and more enjoyable.

Actor Jeffrey Wright wrote, Kids, pack everything. Were moving to the North Shore.

The North Shore is on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

Some people said Judge Watson put the U.S. in danger by rejecting Trumps ban. They said people in Hawaii do not have the same concerns about safety as other Americans do.

But, one political writer asked if some Twitter users have forgotten what happened on December 7, 1941, during the Second World War. That is when the U.S. Navy, in Pearl Harbor, near Hawaiis capital Honolulu, was attacked by Japan. That day, more than 2,000 Americans were killed.

And thats Whats Trending Today.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

Will you plan a trip to Hawaii sometime soon? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

territory  n. an area of land that belongs to or is controlled by a government

unique  adj. used to say that something or someone is unlike anything or anyone else

executive order  n. an order that comes from the U.S. President or a government agency and must be obeyed like a law

flaw  n. a small physical problem (such as a crack) that makes something less valuable

echo  v. to have a feature or quality that repeats or resembles (something else)

discriminate  v. to unfairly treat a person or group of people differently from other people or groups
Angelina Jolies latest directorial effort is a first for her and many others.

The movie, First They Killed My Father, was filmed entirely in Cambodia and in the Khmer language.

Last month, Jolie and the movies producers invited thousands of Cambodians to attend first showings of the film in cities across the country. For many, it was the first time they had seen a major movie in their native language.

First They Killed My Father tells of a young girl, Loung Ung, growing up in Cambodia in the 1970s. The violent Khmer Rouge government controls the country.

It will be released to an international audience on Netflix in September.

Filming in Cambodia and using the native language was Jolies idea. Native Khmer speakers and language experts say it might lead to a new interest in Khmer.

Rim Tith Panha is a Khmer language and literature student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. He says Khmer is not a popular subject among students.

He says, I want to conserve Khmer identity and culture, which could be lost one day if no one cares to promote it.

Panha says social media could be a special threat. He says it is quicker and simpler to romanize the script when communicating with friends online.

The Khmer language is believed to contain the largest alphabet in the world, with 74 characters. About 20 million people speak Khmer. That is a small group when compared to the worlds major languages, like Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, and Arabic.

Sok Soth is a linguistics expert from Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. He says Khmer is on the rise because the language has gained the attention of scholars and researchers in the last five years.

He says many new Khmer words have been created.

The newer words are often more true to their meaning than those invented by older generations. For example, the new word for calculator means calculate machine. But the word for television, created by an older generation, means distant vision.

Chan Samnop is President of the National Council of Khmer Language. He says there is support for updating the Khmer language.

The mechanism for correcting spelling in formal documents, as well as improving the education system, are mechanisms which we have been using to ensure that the Khmer language is still good and strong, he says.

Professor Teri Yamada is with the Department of Asian and Asian-American Studies at California State University in Long Beach. She sees a need for more creative writing in Cambodian schools.

Writing Khmer wellin clear and descriptive sentences with a story line other than for passing testsis not a high priority in the public schools, she said.

She told VOA Khmer that the Cambodian officials need to work with people who write stories and other literature in Khmer.

If the government were serious about supporting Khmer language and literature, they would need to establish publication support for new writers, she said.

There will likely be renewed interest in the Khmer language with the Netflix release of the movie, First They Killed My Father. But, Yamada says, that movies are less effective in conserving language than books.

Im Dorothy Gundy.

Ith Sothoeuth and Khan Sukummono reported on this story for VOA Khmer. Dorothy Gundy adapted this story for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.



We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

___________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

vision  n. the ability to see: sight or eyesight

formal  adj. made or done in an official and usually public way

romanize  v. bring (something) under Roman influence or authority
On Nov. 1, Linn Benton Food Shares warehouse in Tangent received two truckloads of food and household supplies arranged by the local branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
scholarship, news and new ideas in legal history
Here's a cautionary tale that is a useful reminder about why one should sometimes suspend judgment in these cases:

Hennepin County prosecutors dropped all charges Thursday against a University of Minnesota professor accused of raping and stalking an ex-girlfriend.

Francesco Parisi, 54, had been in the Hennepin County jail for the past three weeks after prosecutors charged him with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and stalking....

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"Efforts to corroborate or verify a number of specific allegations against the defendant that were made to the Minneapolis Police Department and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office were unsuccessful," Assistant County Attorney Justin Wesley wrote in a court filing. "Considering all of the evidence that we have now, the charges are no longer supported by probable cause and are hereby dismissed in the interests of justice...."

Court records show that the 55-year-old accuser and Parisi already had an extensive legal history and were locked in a contentious property dispute.

"If the prosecutor had taken a few minutes to look, just five minutes of due diligence, it could have prevented an enormous embarrassment to all parties involved and a gross abuse of the legal system," said one of Parisi's attorneys, John Braun.
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The Student Hotel group, pioneers of hybrid high-quality co-living, co-working hospitality and student accommodation to open in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

The Student Hotel will increase its European portfolio to 16 properties following the introduction of three new locations by 2019.

Hotels in Eindhoven (already open) and Delft will add to its business in the Netherlands, which includes two properties in Amsterdam and one in Rotterdam, The Hague, Groningen and Maastricht. Delft is due to open in September this year.

Plans are agreed to open a third property in Italy as Rome joins Florence and Bologna, while Madrid marks The Student Hotel's entry into the Spanish market.

While the buildings are all different, they share a mix of contemporary student rooms, hotel rooms and co-living studios. The ground floors are accessible to the public and house study areas, meeting rooms, TSH Collab - co-working space for start-ups and local business - restaurant, bar, games room, gym and garage to house guest bicycles.

Charlie MacGregor, The Student Hotel's CEO and founder, says: "Wherever we are, The Student Hotel connects students and hotel guests with start-ups, freelancers and the local neighbourhood. This expansion into new markets is just the start, expect many more acquisition announcements as we aim to fulfil our goal of 41 hotels by 2021."

Madrid

The group's first co-living and co-working Spanish location will be in the heart of Madrid at the "La Imprenta" building, the former printworks at Cuesta de San Vicente 28. The building, which has been empty for 10 years, will be transformed into a 300-room hotel set to open in September 2019.

The Student Hotel Madrid is near to the city's Gran Via, close to Principe Pio metro and suburban railway stations, and within walking distance of the Complutense and Politecnica Universities, plus other learning centres including ICADE, ICAI and IED.

Rome

The third Italian property will be located in the heart of Rome's San Lorenzo district, an up and coming area popular with artists, artisans, writers, intellectuals and actors.

The group has acquired a site in Viale dello Scalo S. Lorenzo, which currently houses two buildings. It will refurbish one and demolish and rebuild the second to create the 649-room Student Hotel Rome, scheduled to open in August 2019. Construction will begin in February 2018.

The Student Hotel Rome is a short walk from Sapienza, the city's main university where 113,000 students are enrolled, and 15-minutes walk from the main train station, Termini.

Delft

The 342-room Student Hotel Delft is a central location right on the Station Delft and the future Van Leeuwenhoek quarter. The most striking part of the hotel is the open front facing the station and park development. Designed by KCAP Architects & Planners, construction is scheduled for 2018 with the opening slated for summer 2019.

Eindhoven

Now operational, The Student Hotel Eindhoven is a complex with 400 rooms located next to Central Station and adjacent to the campus of the Technical University Eindhoven, the renowned Design Academy Eindhoven and the city centre. The site is part of a larger redevelopment project, Light Courts, which was dormant from 2008 until The Student Hotel became the first investor to kick start the project in 2015.

European Expansion

The Student Hotel will add eight properties to its current eight-strong portfolio by 2019. The four new announcements join Florence, Maastricht, Bologna and Berlin as properties that will open between 2017 and 2019 to bring the total number of Student Hotels in operation or in development to 16.

In Paris, where The Student Hotel operates under the Melon District brand, the property has been refurbished and will rebrand as The Student Hotel Paris this summer.

In Barcelona the Melon District properties will be refurbished and brought in line with The Student Hotel, focusing on international students and study abroad groups. It will launch in September this year.

Future

By 2021 The Student Hotel plans to have 41 properties across Europe that will offer 17,550 rooms and over 620,000 square meters of co-living and co-working space in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

The Student Hotel seeks out and develops dormant and unloved buildings that, once renovated, bring positive economic and social benefits to their neighbourhoods. Each property is open to the community at large and encourages people who live and work in the hotel, or in the neighbourhood, to use its connecting space and facilities.

Click here for company profile or here for profile video.

About The Student Hotel

The Student Hotel concept started with one simple observation: that students deserve better. Today, that vision has become reality and grown to encompass all guests with a "student spirit". From design-savvy travellers to next-gen entrepreneurs, TSH welcomes thousands of guests annually to its expanding portfolio of urban campus-style properties across Europe. Purpose-built or housed in historic converted buildings, TSH's industry-leading concept provides blended spaces to learn, stay, work and play for a night, a week, a month or a year. TSH guests, businesses and local communities embrace its positive impact-driven programming and inclusive culture.

First opened in 2012, TSH is headquartered in Amsterdam and employs 650 people. All TSH properties offer a mixed-use campus with accommodation, bars, restaurants, gyms, retail shops, meeting and event spaces and high-profile, co-working space. With over 10,000 rooms in Europe open and under development, TSH aims to offer a unique experience to its community of international guests. As of today, TSH is operating in 15 European locations: two hotels in Amsterdam and in Barcelona and one in Berlin, The Hague, Delft, Vienna, Groningen, Eindhoven, Maastricht, Rotterdam, Paris, Florence and Bologna. www.thestudenthotel.com

Sarah Sheehan

+44 7770 235564

The Student Hotel Group
MADRID  NH Hotel Group has signed a new four-star NH Collection hotel in Frankfurt; opening its second establishment of the company's upscale brand in the city and the seventh in Germany.

NH Collection Frankfurt Messe will be part of the 120-meter high skyscraper, located on the corner of Mainzer Landstrasse and Guterplatz and planned by Frankfurt-based project developer Gro & Partner. The hotel is set to open in early 2021 and will offer 416 rooms and just under 22,000 square feet of space reserved for meetings and events.

The new flagship of NH Collection in Frankfurt will benefit from being located in a prime area of the city, in the heart of a booming business district and near the trade fair site. With more than 2.5 million visitors each year and some 6.5 million square feet of exhibition space, the Frankfurt trade fair is the second largest exhibition venue in the world. The hotel is within walking distance to important shopping centers such as the Skyline Plaza Frankfurt and Shopping Center MyZeil, a central train station, and is only two underground stops away from Frankfurt's opera and old city.

In addition to opening the hotel under NH Hotel Group's upscale brand, the distinctive high-rise building will house office spaces in the upper levels. Plans for the building concept include a restaurant, bar, and fitness area, along with parking facilities. This new NH Collection in Frankfurt consolidates the great international growth of the upscale brand for NH Hotel Group, which currently operates 67 NH Collections in key cities across 13 countries in Europe and Latin America. The brand has 10 additional NH Collections set to launch before 2021.

NH Hotel Group's business plan, implemented three years ago, was created to reposition the brand's hotels and has since allowed NH to sign 56 new hotels. The group's innovative, long-term leasing model and transparency with new developments has gained a great deal of support from the market. It has also received positive feedback from leading hospitality ratings agencies.

About NH Hotel Group, part of Minor Hotels

NH Hotel Group (www.nhhotelgroup.com) is a consolidated multinational player and a benchmark urban hotel operator in Europe and the Americas, where it operates more than 350 establishments. Since 2019, the Company has been working with Minor Hotels on integrating all of its hotel trademarks under a single corporate umbrella brand with a presence in over 50 countries worldwide. Together they have articulated a portfolio of more than 500 hotels operating under eight brands: NH Hotels, NH Collection, nhow, Tivoli, Anantara, Avani, Elewana and Oaks - to forge a broad and diverse range of hotel propositions in touch with the needs and desires of today's world travellers.

Elyse Eisen

NH Hotel Group
Shenzhen has rapidly developed into a city with an economic status and output to rival that of Shanghai, Chinas very own global financial hub.

Barry Wilson, chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shenzhen, predicted yesterday that Hengqin, which is currently undergoing development, will develop in a similar manner to Shenzhen.

Theyre going to produce exactly what they say theyre going to produce. [] its a great opportunity for Macau to integrate with Hengqin, he said.

Wilson, who is the director of a construction consultancy firm and also a scholar, argued that Shenzhen has outperformed Guangzhou in several areas as the leading city in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, particularly in technology and design-

related industries.

He attributed the citys economic growth to its ability to attract talent, due to the jobs offered by internet and finance companies headquartered in the area, as well as local property prices.

Last year, Shenzhen surpassed Beijing and Shanghai as the mainlands most expensive housing market, Wilson pointed out.

Speaking on the sidelines of the British Business Association of Macaus (BBAM) monthly breakfast talk, Wilson acknowledged that the significant and rapid growth of the modern metropolis was due to the visionary government.

The government has been given a mandate for this to happen and theyve done it. The environment theyve created has absolutely been pro-business; theres been all sorts of incentives for companies, he explained. That is why, he argued, Shenzhen is slated to be Chinas second most prominent city, outstripping Shanghai.

Questioned by the Times as to how and why Hong Kong and Macau have lagged behind Shenzhen in their development of industries such as technology and design, Wilson noted that the two SARs were unable to strategically plan for the long term.

They have had the central government quite happy to give them freedom to carry on in their own way, but at the same time the government here has not felt totally in control to make their own vision, he said.

Hong Kong has not really moved forward in 20 years; it hasnt been able to adapt. Its trying to protect a lot of the cornerstones and benchmarks of its economies in a very changing landscape, and I think you need to be flexible in todays world in business and strategic [planning].

In an article he had written, Wilson proposed that nothing much has changed since the SARs handover to China from the British. He cited his belief that Hong Kong is experiencing a long period of economic stagnation, saying its can do moniker [is] being replaced by a wont do determination.

Shenzhen  a former fishing community turned industrial and financial megacity, with a current population of over 10 million  is embracing its reputation as Asias emerging Silicon Valley. Its 2016 GDP rose 9 percent to RMB1.95 trillion.

The chairman also proposed that Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen start to strategically plan and collaborate in different areas in order to provide much-needed services in the PRD.

Macau has to think of where it is in the Pearl River Delta, whats our function and how we play with everybody else [] rather than to compete, Wilson added. Weve got to stop thinking about Macau, Shenzhen and Hong Kong and start thinking in the Pearl River Delta [region].
Tompkins Conservation signed an agreement with Chiles government yesterday to donate 1 million acres for new national parks in the largest private donation of its kind for the South American nation.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed the deal with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the widow of American conservationist Doug Tompkins, who built a legacy protecting threatened ecosystems in Argentina and Chile.

This is a key step to treasuring this giant source of biodiversity and safe keep it in the public interest, Bachelet said at a ceremony in southern Chile.

The agreement will provide land to create three new national parks, expand three existing national parks and unite some national forests into two national parks. Bachelet is expected to sign the decrees to create the parks before she ends her presidential term in March 2018.

The proposal will eventually help create the Route of Parks, a network of 17 parks spanning more than 1,500 miles from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn. In all, the plan ultimately seeks to increase Chiles national parkland by more than 10 million acres. Tompkins Conservation said the area that will be protected is three times the size of the United States Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined.

Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, used much of his fortune to buy large tracts of land in Patagonia, a sparsely populated region of untamed rivers and other natural beauty straddling southern Chile and Argentina.

At first, his purchases of land to preserve swaths of wilderness stirred suspicion and opposition by local politicians, loggers, power companies and nationalists who stirred rumors that he was trying to steal water resources. But he shrugged off the protests, insisting he would eventually return the land to both governments to be preserved as nature reserves or parks.

Since her husbands death in a kayaking accident last year, McDivitt Tompkins had been working non-stop to permanently protect from development the millions of acres the couple acquired over a quarter century.

I wish my husband, Doug, whose vision inspired todays historic pledge, were here on this memorable day. Our team and I feel his absence deeply, she said. But I know that if Doug were here today, he would speak of national parks being one of the greatest expressions of democracy that a country can realize, preserving the masterpieces of a nation for all of its citizenry. AP
More than 200 people have been arrested after thousands of demonstrators clashed in an anti-Vietnam war protest outside the United States embassy in London.

The St John Ambulance Brigade said it treated 86 people for injuries. Fifty were taken to hospital including up to 25 police officers.

The trouble followed a big rally in Trafalgar square, when an estimated 10,000 demonstrated against American action in Vietnam and British support for the United States.

The mood at the rally was described as good humoured. The violence broke out when the protesters marched to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

The embassy was surrounded by hundreds of police. They stood shoulder to shoulder to cordon off the part of the square closest to the embassy.

Tensions rose as the crowd refused to back off and mounted officers rode at the demonstrators.

The protesters broke through the police ranks onto the lawn of the embassy, tearing up the plastic fence and uprooting parts of a hedge.

During a protracted battle, stones, earth, firecrackers and smoke bombs were thrown.

One officer was treated for a reported serious spinal injury, another for a neck injury.

One officer had his hat knocked off and was struck continuously on the back of the head with a stick from a banner as he clung, head down, to his horses neck.

Earlier the actress Vanessa Redgrave was allowed to enter the embassy with three supporters to deliver a protest.

She had been one of the speakers at the rally in Trafalgar Square.

Labour MP Peter Jackson, has said he will be tabling a private question for answer by the Home Secretary about what he called police violence.

He told The Times newspaper: I was particularly outraged by the violent use of police horses, who charged into the crowd even after they had cleared the street in front of the embassy.

Courtesy

of

BBC

In

context

There was another big anti-Vietnam war demonstration on 27 October 1968. An estimated 25,000 took part in the march and once again trouble flared outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

But security was very tight. There were 1,000 police outside the embassy and officers lined the streets of the march to prevent a repeat of the trouble in March.

The last American troops left Vietnam on 29 March 1973.

The following year there were frequent violations of the peace treaty.

In 1975, fullscale warfare resumed between North and South Vietnam -without American intervention. In 1976 the first elections were held to a National Assembly, finally reuniting North and South.
Senior executives are currently facing multi-generational workforce challenges in managing the needs and expectations of millennial team members.

Mark Cosgrove, director of Training at Dale Carnegie Training Hong Kong and Macau explained to the Times this week that millennial and ageing employees in workplaces present a diverse style of working attitudes.

Speaking on the sidelines of his seminar titled Become an Inspirational Leader, which was hosted by the France Macau Business Association (FMBA), Cosgrove remarked that current corporate leaders are required to be flexible in their leadership style.

I think thats a huge challenge that people are facing: what theyve been doing all along no longer works because the world has changed, he stressed.

People have changed and I think thats especially true of millennials in Hong Kong and Macau.

Chinese millennials born between 1984 and 1996 number around 250 million, representing more than 18 percent of the population for the worlds second largest economy.

Cosgrove, a human resources expert, went on to stress the importance of executives being the type of individuals that people want to work with and work for.

Tech-savvy, civic-oriented, practical and adventurous are just a few of the many characteristics attributed to the millennial generation currently entering the labor market.

Thus, without flexibility of senior executives, Cosgrove noted, the demands of the various generations who work for them will not be met.

He suggested that senior executives should interact with their younger team members, explaining to employees how and why particular tasks assist the goals of the firm.

[Millennials] want to know why theyre doing the work and how its related to the overall mission of the company [] and thats a challenge for older managers, he explained.

In the old days it was just do your work and go home. Now they have to be in a conversation about the work and thats different, Cosgrove continued.

He then remarked on the importance of creating a dialogue that involves listening to their ideas and suggestions with these employees.

I think previous generations in Asia, in Hong Kong and Macau, they were quite happy to do what theyre told and move on. It was a little more one-directional than it is today, the expert argued.

Meanwhile, during the session, the expert also discussed the tripartite of success: skill, attitude and knowledge.

Cosgrove stressed that some managers  who are knowledgeable and skilled about the job  do not acquire leadership skills.

Theres a skill of actually leading and being a manger, which are not necessarily the same as the skills of whatever your company [needs]. The critical piece for companies to get is that leadership skills are different from job skills, Cosgrove proposed.
Being known as Hong Kongs flagship carrier may best represent whats wrong with Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. The city of about 7.3 million people may no longer be capable of supporting a premium-service airline, especially when the 48 passenger-service operators based across the border in mainland China routinely launch price wars.

Cathay reported its first annual loss since 2008, skipped a second-

half dividend and warned that the year ahead may not be any better as travelers continually hunt for cheaper fares. The troubles are yet another economic blow for a city grappling with fewer Chinese tourists, declining retail sales and falling rankings in quality-of-life surveys.

Cathay and Hong Kong have been dwarfed, completely overwhelmed, by Chinas growth, said Shukor Yusof, founder of aviation consulting firm Endau Analytics in Malaysia. China doesnt need Hong Kong as a gateway. Its position has become a lot less important than 10 years ago.

Cathays net loss totaled HKD575 million (USD74 million) in 2016, while sales dropped 9.4 percent to HKD92.8 billion, the airline said Wednesday. Passenger yields, the money earned from flying a traveler for one kilometer, dropped 9.2 percent to 54.1 Hong Kong cents last year.

Losses from fuel hedging totaled HKD8.46 billion last year, compared with HKD8.47 billion in 2015. Cathay said it expects more hedging losses this year, though they should be lower. The companys American Depository Receipts fell 3.7 percent on Wednesday, after the Hong Kong-listed stock dropped 1.4 percent.

In response, Asias largest international airline announced a three-year corporate transformation plan to reduce costs by as much as 3 percent. Chief Executive Officer Ivan Chu wants to increase passenger capacity by as much as 5 percent a year through measures including nonstop flights to new markets.

Our commitment to Hong Kong and its people remains unwavering, Chairman John Slosar said. Weve got to become better, lower cost, more agile in terms of how we approach the market.

That approach needs to consider the booming aviation market next door. Breakneck economic growth and rising incomes are creating more first-time fliers who want to see the world, and the Communist Party leadership is adding more capacity to get them there.

China plans to build more than 50 airports by 2020 to accommodate the crowds, raising the nations total of civil transport facilities to 260. The government wants to build six airport clusters nationwide and elevate airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to international hubs. Construction of a second airport serving Beijing already is underway.

The combined number of Chinese passenger and cargo airlines increased 28 percent to 55 in just five years. The number of planes in the air more than tripled in a decade to 2,650, according to the Civil Aviation Industry Statistics Report.

Chinese carriers are giving better prices, said Mohshin Aziz, an analyst at Maybank Investment Bank Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. Chinas No. 1 priority is to get as many international flights for the next five or so years. Because of this, Hong Kong is becoming less attractive as a hub.

Thats shown by an economy that grew by just 1.9 percent last year, compared with Chinas 6.7 percent. Retail sales by value fell for 21 straight months as fewer Chinese tourists visited Hong Kong for shopping, eating and taking trips to Macau.

Not helping matters is the perception that Hong Kong isnt holding up well in comparison to its Asian neighbors when it comes to quality of life. The city ranked 71st in the index released this month by consulting firm, Mercer, a unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos. That trailed Singapore and Tokyo, though was still ahead of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Tourism Board Chairman Peter Lam has predicted that the number of visitors to Hong Kong will decline 2.2 percent this year after falling 4.5 percent last year. To try to keep pace, Hong Kong is pushing ahead with its plan to build a third runway at the international airport. The new budget waives HKD137 million in license fees for travel agents, hotels and restaurants, and the government said it will introduce a bill offering tax concessions to attract aircraft leasing companies.

Su Baoliang, a Beijing-based analyst at Sinolink Securities Co., said that may not be enough. Hong Kong used to be the gateway to Asia, but now you have three hubs rising from the Chinese mainland, Su said. For Cathay, theres very little leeway for adjustment. Theyre in a dead end. Bloomberg
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on North Korea yesterday to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, saying the isolated nation need not fear the United States.

Tillerson made that declaration after meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, where they discussed possible new approaches in dealing with Pyongyang.

He said 20 years of U.S. diplomatic and other efforts to get North Korea to denuclearize have failed, but gave no specifics about how the Trump administration, which is currently doing a policy review, would tackle the issue. Tillerson described the weapons programs as dangerous and unlawful.

The former Exxon Mobil CEO is making his first trip to Asia as the top U.S. diplomat. Tensions are running high on the divided Korean Peninsula, and North Korea last week launched four missiles into seas off Japan and where the U.S. is currently conducting annual military drills with South Korea. Pyongyang views this as a rehearsal for invasion.

North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea, the secretary of state told a news conference in Tokyo. With this in mind, the United States calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and refrain from any further provocation.

He later met separately with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In Beijing, a North Korean diplomat said yesterday that Pyongyang must act in self-defense against the U.S.-South Korea military drills, which he said have brought the region to the brink of nuclear war. He said the drills were aimed at using atomic weapons for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Washington says the maneuvers are routine and defensive.

The United States holds a joint military exercise every year to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to a serious situation, and that is the source of the super tough measures we must take, Pak Myong Ho told reporters in a rare briefing at the North Korean Embassy in the Chinese capital. He spoke through a translator.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and despite tough sanctions levied against it. Last year, the North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the United States within a few years.

Citing the continued North Korean missile launches this year, Tillerson said that in the face of this ever-escalating threat it is clear that a different approach is required. He said his trip was intended to get input from other governments. Tillerson, who is traveling without the usual contingent of journalists who normally cover the secretary of state, will be in South Korea today and then China on tomorrow.

Both Tillerson and Kishida urged China to use its economic leverage with North Korea to push it to change course.

During last years election campaign, presidential candidate Donald Trump called into question U.S. security alliances and called for Tokyo and Seoul to contribute more for their defense. Tillerson, however, stressed that cooperation with Japan and South Korea was critical.

Kishida said the U.S. and Japan had an unwavering bond. In a sign of that, Tillerson reiterated that a U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty covers Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea also claimed by China.

Japan and South Korea both host tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Washington has been urging its two allies to step up security cooperation despite their historically strained relations. This week, the three nations navies have conducted missile defense information-

sharing drills in the region. Matthew Pennington, Tokyo, AP
Malaysian officials said yesterday that the family of Kim Jong Nam, who was killed last month, has given its consent to Malaysia to decide what to do with his body.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said police confirmed Kims identity using DNA from his son which was obtained overseas and brought to Malaysia, local media reported. Kim was holding a diplomatic passport bearing the name Kim Chol when he was attacked Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpurs airport by two women who smeared the banned VX nerve agent on his face, officials say. He died within 20 minutes.

Deputy national police Chief Noor Rashid Ibrahim said Kims family will let the government decide what to do with his body. I was made to understand that they are leaving it to our government to deal with it [body] yes, they have given their consent, Noor Rashid said.

He said any decision will be subject to negotiations between the two countries amid a diplomatic standoff over the killing. Kim was the estranged half brother of North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un, and relations between Malaysia and North Korea have deteriorated sharply since Kims death, with each expelling the others ambassador.

North Korea blocked Malaysians from leaving the country until a fair settlement of the case is reached. Malaysia then barred North Koreans from exiting its soil. The two countries have also scrapped visa-free travel for each others citizens.

Noor Rashid declined to comment on whether the two women had been given different components that would form a binary version of VX, but described it as a professional job.

National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar separately told reporters that four North Korean suspects who left Malaysia on the same day as the killing have been put on Interpols red notice list, which is a request to locate and hold a person pending extradition.

Police say three other North Korean suspects, including a North Korean diplomat and an employee of Air Koryo, North Koreas state airline, are believed to be in the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

There are currently nine Malaysians in North Korea  three embassy staff members and their family members. About 315 North Koreans are in Malaysia.

Although Malaysia has never directly accused North Korea of being behind the attack, many speculate that it must have orchestrated it. Experts say the VX nerve agent used to kill Kim was almost certainly produced in a sophisticated state weapons laboratory, and North Korea is widely believed to possess large quantities of chemical weapons.

In Beijing, a North Korean diplomat said yesterday that the killing was a political conspiracy engineered by Washington and Seoul.

Pak Myong Ho, a minister at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, said the death was a despicable and extremely dangerous plot by the U.S. and South Korea aimed at smearing North Koreas image and subverting its regime. AP

N. Korea: Malaysia killing was US, S. Korea conspiracy

A North Korean diplomat said yesterday the killing of a man confirmed by Malaysian police to be the estranged half-brother of North Koreas leader was a political conspiracy engineered by Washington and Seoul. Pak Myong Ho, a minister at North Koreas embassy in Beijing, said the Feb. 13 murder of Kim Jong Nam in Malaysia was a despicable and extremely dangerous plot by the U.S. and South Korea aimed at smearing North Koreas image and subverting its regime. Pak said indiscriminate claims of behind-the-scenes manipulation would fail, referring to allegations by South Koreas spy agency that North Korea masterminded the assassination.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte yesterday [Macau time] claimed a dominating parliamentary election victory over anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, who failed the years first litmus test for populism in Europe.

Provisional results with over half the votes counted suggested Ruttes party won 32 seats in the 150-member legislature, 13 more than Wilders party, which took only third place with 19 seats. The surging CDA Christian Democrats claimed 20.

Following Britains vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trumps election as U.S. president, the Netherlands said, Whoa! to the wrong kind of populism, said Rutte, who is now poised for a third term as prime minister.

We want to stick to the course we have  safe and stable and prosperous, Rutte added.

Wilders, who campaigned on radical pledges to close borders to migrants from Muslim nations, close mosques, ban the Quran and take the Netherlands out of the EU, had insisted that whatever the result of the election, the kind of populist politics he and others in Europe represent arent going away.

Rutte has not seen the back of me, Wilders said after the results had sunk in.

His Party for Freedom clinched 24 seats in 2010 before sinking to 15 in 2012, and yesterdays total left him with about 12 percent of the electorate, far less than populists in Britain and the United States have scored.

Those are not the 30 seats we hoped for, Wilders told reporters, adding that hed rather have been the biggest party.

Both France and Germany have elections this year in which far-right candidates and parties are hoping to make an impact.

French President Francois Hollande congratulated Rutte on his election success and his clear victory against extremism.

In Germany, Socialist leader Martin Schulz tweeted. I am relieved, but we need to continue to fight for an open and Free Europe.

Rutte, who for much of the campaign appeared to be racing to keep pace with Wilders, may have profited from the hard line he drew in a diplomatic standoff with Turkey over the past week.

The fight erupted over the Netherlands refusal to let two Turkish government ministers address rallies in Rotterdam about a referendum that could give Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more powers. It gave Rutte an opportunity to show his statesmanship by refusing to bow to foreign pressure, a stance with widespread backing in the nation.

I mean this is your electoral campaign dream, right? You cant script this if it was a movie, Amsterdam Free University political scientist Andre Krouwel said. Its really helped Mark Rutte to take the lead and a big lead over Geert Wilders.

Under brilliant skies, the Dutch went to vote in huge numbers, with turnout estimated to have reached at 82 percent.

In a subplot of the elections, the Green Left party registered a historic victory, turning it into the largest party on the left wing of Dutch politics, together with the Socialist Party.

The provisional results showed the Greens leaping from four seats to 14 in parliament after a strong campaign by charismatic leader Jesse Klaver, who invites comparisons to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It remains to be seen if the 30-year-old Klaver will take his party into the next ruling coalition, which looks likely to be dominated by Ruttes VVD and other right-leaning parties.

The Labor Party of Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem appeared to have been punished by voters in the election, plunging from 38 seats at the last election to just nine, according to the Ipsos exit poll.

Because of the result, it looked unlikely Dijsselbloem would be able to hang on to his post of leading the 19-nation Eurogroup, which manages the currency of the European Union nations that use the euro.

Rutte had framed the election as a choice between continuity and chaos, portraying himself as a safe custodian of the nations economic recovery and casting Wilders as a far-right radical who was unprepared to make tough decisions.

Although he drove through unpopular austerity measures over the last four years, the Dutch economic recovery has gathered pace and unemployment has fallen fast under the prime minister.

Wilders, meanwhile, attempted to tap into discontent among voters who said they were not benefiting from the economic recovery.

Even if his party had placed first in the election, Wilders stood a remote chance of becoming prime minister in the Netherlands, where a proportional representation system all but guarantees coalition governments.

The main political parties, including Ruttes, had ruled out forming a coalition government with the Party for Freedom.

The left-leaning Dutch Labor Party appeared to be hammered by its supporters for its role over the last four years in pushing through a tough austerity package as junior member in a two-party Cabinet with Ruttes VVD.

The coalition Ruttes VVD party had with Labor can no longer be replicated and the prime minister is likely to look to the right for new coalition partners.

Rutte has been resolute about not wanting to share power with Wilders, so that tightens the market in which he can acquire the necessary 75-seat threshold.

Weeks, if not months of coalition-building talks may be required before a new government is installed. Mike Corder & Raf Casert, The Hague, AP
Brian Castro is an author and academic in Australia who has published 11 novels and a volume of essays, some of which have connections to Macau. He was invited to speak this week at the Macau Literary Festival  The Script Road.

Born in Hong Kong of Portuguese, Chinese and English parentage, Castro did not explicitly refer to himself as Macanese during the session, though acknowledged that he has connections to Macau. He added that identity is somewhat of a confusing issue for him, but he regards his troublesome identity as an advantage.

Castro has previously claimed that he was born on a boat traveling between Hong Kong and Macau, however when pressed for details during the discussion this week, Castro was elusive, stressing that he is a fiction writer and noting that authenticity has a very foggy [unclear] meaning.

The Times sat down with Castro to understand his perspective of Macau and his thoughts on the citys development since he last visited about 10 years ago.

Macau Daily Times (MDT)  Can you tell us a little about your history and how you came to be a writer?

Brian Castro (BC)  I was born in Hong Kong and sent to boarding school in Australia when I was 11 years old. My father was Portuguese and my mother was Eurasian [Chinese and European] and that made me interested my whole life in what it means to be so mixed. Other people consider it a disadvantage, but I consider it an advantage as a writer to [be able to] cross all of these boundaries of nationalities and language. I first started writing in 1981 and had no interest from publishers except for a competition that I entered. [ After winning the competition] I started as a full-time writer and I was always half a writer and half an academic  working in the university and teaching students creative writing not that you can really teach someone that, but you can mentor them.

Macau Daily Times (MDT)  Having lived in Australia for most of your life, do you regard your connection to Macau as a little romantic?

BC  I think so. Macau [retains] a place in my memory. My father spent some time here and he used to tell me things [] and I became thrilled with revisiting his past. [] So, it is about the past, and I am concerned that China will just swap everything here in the future  and I hope that doesnt happen. The preservation of culture is very important. I think that the really old Macau has great stories to tell; great stories that can turn into novels.

MDT  What do you make of the citys development in the past decade since you last visited?

BC  It was a surprise to me. Its fine as long as the casino world doesnt consume and destroy what is of value  and this question of value is ineffable and cannot be measured in money. [The old Macau] needs to be preserved and not developed over, even though I know a lot of people wont be pleased with [the reminder of] Macaus colonial history. I think that it is essential that we value what we have and dont dismiss it for the sake of the next skyscraper.

This [land] reclamation came as a shock to me because this used to be water, it used to be a harbor. And now it has been filled in. It used to be this grand sea wall and now thats five street back. I havent been here for 10 years and I am quite surprised. I see this kind of unrestrained development as a real danger.

MDT  How is Macau portrayed to the rest of the world in art, literature and film?

BC  Macau is still an enclave in the past  thats how people see it. Not so much has changed in that respect. My take on it is to preserve the food, the music and the family photographs [in terms of culture]. These are memories. I dont know much about art, but I think that visual artists tend not to recall memory so much. They are recording the present and the future and I would like to see more art and texts that use the idea of [historical] Macau.

In literature, I actually dont see a lot of themes [when it comes to] Macau. I think that there is only now an identity starting to be formed. After the handover in Hong Kong [in 1997], there was an eruption of Hong Kong culture. Now thats faded away quite dramatically and has become political. One would hope to see that happen in Macau this efflorescence of Macau culture, that doesnt fade away once China takes the whole [territory] back.

MDT  You said in the discussion that the Chinese influence on Portuguese culture is often neglected. Why do you think this is?

BC  There is a lot of talk about the Portuguese influencing the Chinese [in Macau], but not so much about the other way around  the Chinese influencing Portuguese culture; the great imperial trading power in this part of the world.

I think because literature is language-based, not like painting or visual arts. I guess in terms of the European [conception] of great literature, there are not many Chinese writers and poets [that meet these standards]. The Chinese were, after Confucius at least, quite embedded in certain classics. In order to become a civil servant [mandarin] you needed to pass all of these exams on these particular authors and so on. So it was very restricted in terms of experimentation.
Saudi Arabias King Salman began a visit to Beijing yesterday that highlights growing ties underpinned by Chinas thirst for Saudi oil and the kingdoms status as a key link in Beijings bid to connect China to Europe through infrastructure development.

Salman went immediately into talks with President Xi Jinping following a formal welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of Chinas legislature. The 81-year-old monarchs visit is part of a monthlong swing through Asia in a push to develop a less oil-dependent growth strategy.

Beijing for its part is rolling out a trade and investment initiative across Central Asia and the Middle East called One Belt, One Road, and sees the desert kingdom as a regional linchpin.

In opening remarks at their meeting, Xi said he looked forward to discussing projects under development, and said results so far have surpassed our expectations.

Security ties between the two have also grown significantly, with the Saudi air force deploying Chinese unmanned attack drones and the two militaries holding joint counter-terrorism exercises in western China. Chinese navy vessels have also visited the Saudi port of Jeddah as part of increasingly active maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden.

Chinese officials say their overriding security interest in the Middle East is to prevent ethnic Uighur fighters who have left western China and joined militant groups in Syria and Iraq from returning to strike at China.

Chinas Uighur ethnic minority is a key if sometimes under-appreciated factor in Beijings Middle East strategy, said Andrew Scobell, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Xi has signaled his desire to play a bigger role in the region as part of Chinas quest for resources, markets and increased global influence on a par with its economic heft. In a major speech before the Arab League in Cairo last year, Xi indirectly alluded to how the U.S. presence had waned and how China hoped to present an alternative.

Instead of looking for a proxy in the Middle East, we promote peace talks, Xi said. Instead of attempting to fill the vacuum, we build a cooperative partnership network for win-win outcomes.

A relative newcomer to the Middle Easts complicated politics, China has tried to maintain friendly ties with all sides, despite sometimes conflicting geopolitical interests.

Beijing has backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conflict, while Saudi Arabia has insisted on Assads ouster and has supported the Syrian opposition, including Islamic militant groups unfriendly to China over Beijings sometimes harsh treatment of its Muslim minority.

China has also maintained close ties to Saudi Arabias bitter enemy Iran.

Salman, who is traveling with a 1,500-strong company of businessmen, princes and support staff in close to a dozen aircraft, is next due to visit the Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives. Along with Japan, he earlier visited Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Gerry Shih & Christopher Bodeen, Beijing, AP

Saudis study USD65b in China investments

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. may deepen investment in Chinas oil industry as part of USD65 billion worth of potential deals signed between the two countries in everything from energy to manufacturing and a theme park.

Amin Nasser, chief executive officer of the Saudi state crude producer, signed a memorandum of understanding with China North Industries Group Corp. yesterday to explore downstream oil opportunities. Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, is already a partner in refineries and petrochemical plants in the country. The Chinese company, known as Norinco, manufactures weapons and machinery and also has a refining unit.

Companies from both countries signed 22 agreements to study joint investment opportunities at a ceremony in Beijing. Chinese firms will look at a $2 billion petrochemical plant in Jazan, in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, supplying solar energy material, building e-commerce businesses and investing in a cultural theme park in the Middle East.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz is in the midst of an Asia-wide trip thats already seen Saudi Arabia pledge investments including $13 billion in Malaysian and Indonesian energy projects. The Middle East nation is also courting foreign investors as it seeks to diversify its economy and gears up for what may be the largest-ever initial public offering. The country plans to float a 5 percent stake in Aramco, which Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said is worth $2 trillion.

The visit is part of Saudis Look East policy that intends to broaden trade with Asia and particularly China, said Yao Kuangyi, Chinas former ambassador to Turkey. Saudi Arabia also needs new markets and economic partners to help the country with its economic transformation from its dependence on oil, and China is a perfect target as a major economy with huge demands.

Officials from the two countries have discussed the possibility of China Investment Corp., the countrys sovereign wealth fund, investing in the Aramco initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. China National Petroleum Corp. may also be involved, they said Thursday. No formal agreement has been reached, according to the people.

Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore are among Asian locations that have been identified as possible venues for the listing of Aramcos shares. The companys primary listing will be on Saudi Arabias domestic exchange and its also evaluating other markets including as New York or London. Bloomberg
Australia urged Southeast Asias regional bloc and China to conclude a legally-binding code of conduct in the South China Sea, voicing opposition yesterday to the scale of reclamation and construction by China in the disputed territory.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, speaking in Manila, urged the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China to exceed the ongoing discussions to craft a framework of the code of conduct and to instead conclude an enforceable code of conduct as soon as possible.

We believe that ASEAN should drive for an enforceable code of conduct, Bishop told the forum of the ADR Institute for Strategic and International Studies. I would urge ASEAN under the Philippines leadership to go further and conclude a code of conduct as soon as possible.

She said the Hague-based arbitration tribunals recommendations on a case filed by the Philippines against China can form the basis of that code of conduct.

The tribunal last year invalidated Chinas sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea and ruled that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal, which lies off the northwestern Philippines. Beijing had seized Scarborough in 2012 after a dangerous standoff with Philippine vessels.

China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal, but it does not recognize the tribunals ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea.

Australia opposes the scale of reclamation and reconstruction that has occurred and certainly we do not support militarization by any party of the islands and the other features in the South China Sea because it would raise tensions, it would raise the prospect of conflict, Bishop added.

She said a rules-based international order is fundamental to prosperity and stability of countries in the region and we should all advocate for its preservation and be prepared to defend it, even fight for it, should that be necessary.

Australia supports U.S. leadership to preserve that order and safeguard international peace but is also committed to a strong Australian defense force to defend its own security interests, she said. Australia will spend USD195 billion over the next decade on improving its military and intelligence capability, Bishop added. AP
Taiwan plans to raise military spending by about 50 percent next year as President Tsai Ing-wen attempts to offset Chinas growing might and support the local defense industry.

Military expenditures are targeted to rise to 3 percent of gross domestic product next year, up from about 2 percent this year, Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan said yesterday while presenting a report outlining Tsais first major security review since becoming president. Taiwan plans to develop indigenous ships, airplanes, weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles, he told lawmakers in Taipei.

The report cited Chinas capacity to blockade Taiwan or invade its outer islands as a main reason to increase this years NTD356 billion (USD11.6 billion) budget. Tensions between the long-time rivals have been simmering since Taiwanese voters swept Tsais pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party into power last year, raising concern locally about Chinas recent military-modernization drive.

While China saw improved relations under Tsais predecessor, it still considers Taiwan a province to be united with the mainland, by force if necessary, and points some 1,200 missiles at the island. Authorities in Beijing have expressed increasing frustration with Tsais refusal to endorse their One China negotiating framework, under which both sides agree they belong to the same country even if they differ on what that means.

It may make sense from Taipeis perspective to invest more in defense at this juncture, said Ja Ian Chong, an assistant professor with the National University of Singapore, who specializes in Asia-Pacific relations. Beijing is currently already dissatisfied with Taiwan. Unless Beijing wishes to escalate matters, relations between the two sides are unlikely to get worse, just as they are unlikely to get better.

President Donald Trumps election in the U.S., which sells weapons to Taiwan and is obligated to defend the island under a 1979 law, has also increased uncertainty. Tensions escalated after Trump publicized a protocol-breaking phone conversation with Tsai in December. He later reaffirmed U.S. support for the One-China policy in a call with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Premier Li Keqiang earlier this week reiterated Chinas opposition for Taiwanese independence and support for peaceful reunification. We are one family, Li said.

Taiwans defense-spending boost may also help Tsai support hi-tech industries and stimulate an economy expected to grow 1.9 percent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Local companies such as Aerospace Industrial Development Corp., which is planning to develop jets for the air force, and CSBC Corp., Taiwan, which is designing submarines, are among those that could benefit.

Local defense expenditures have declined since the 1980s, when Taiwan spent more than 5 percent of GDP on its military, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Taiwan hasnt spent 3 percent of GDP on the military since 1999, according to Sipri.

The increase would help fulfill a campaign pledge by Tsai. Defense Ministry spokesman Chen Chung-

chi said defense expenditures last exceeded 3 percent in 2008. We hope for an increase to 3 percent next year, but the government also needs to consider revenue and balance it among other ministries, Chen said.

China earlier this month announced plans to increase defense spending by 7 percent to 1.044 trillion yuan ($151 billion) this year, although independent estimates put actual expenditures much higher. Either way, China now spends more than any other country apart from the U.S.

Liu Fu-kuo, executive director of National Chengchi Universitys Taiwan Center for Security Studies, said the security review shows Tsais administration realizes its disadvantage and is focused on asymmetrical defense strategies.

It would be difficult for Taiwan to compete with Chinas world-class military power, Liu said. The wisest choice for Taiwan would be refraining from provocative measures and refraining from giving any excuses for China to take military actions. Adela Lin and Ting Shi, Bloomberg
The Idaho Senate on Thursday voted against an amendment that would have expanded Medicaid.

The proposed amendment was to a bill sponsored by Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, a $10 million plan to provide primary care coverage to about 15,000 chronically ill uninsured people, many of whom would fall in the Medicaid gap group where they dont make enough to qualify for tax credits for subsidized insurance on the exchange but also dont qualify for traditional Medicaid.

Sen. Maryanne Jordan, D-Boise, who offered the amendment, said Medicaid expansion would still make sense even if the Republican proposal in Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act passes. That bill allows Medicaid expansion to continue at the current rate of federal funding until 2020.

Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, argued her proposal would result in people who currently have insurance through the state exchange being thrown off, citing an estimate that 50,000 people who are on the exchange now could fall into that group if Medicaid were to be expanded to people making up to 133 percent of the poverty level.

Thats half the enrollees on the exchange, he said. That would make our exchange insolvent. It would destroy it. And this at a time when it is not clear what our Congress will do.

Sen. Jamie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, said it would be a better use of the money in Hagedorns bill, which would come from the states Millennium Fund, to expand Medicaid, given the federal 90-10 match ratio.

That would be $100 million we could use to help this gap population, she said.

The Senate killed Jordans amendment on what sounded like a party-line voice vote, then proceeded to approve another amendment to the bill, brought by Sen. Steve Thayn, R-Emmett, that would create a pilot program within Hagedorns program to provide managed care and other services 250 people. The language is the same as in a larger proposal Thayn introduced earlier in the session.

The bill could come to a vote before the full Senate early next week, after which it would head to the House. Its chances there look bleak at the moment  Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane, R-Nampa, said Thursday he doesnt expect the House to pass anything on health care, and with lawmakers hoping to adjourn on March 24 there isnt much time to change peoples minds.

I dont think were going to move anything, he said.
TWIN FALLS  An inmate in the Twin Falls County Jail viciously beat a fellow inmate because of an argument over oatmeal, smashing the victims face and fracturing his nose and orbital bone, police said.

Robert Dean Fravel, 48, of Twin Falls made an initial appearance Thursday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on a felony charge of aggravated battery. Hes accused of violently beating Payton Lewis, 24, on Jan. 27 inside Lewis cell.

Lewis told me this all started over oatmeal, Deputy Christopher Boyd wrote in a sworn affidavit. He stated that he and Fravel started to get worked up about both of them trying to trade another inmate for oatmeal, and Lewis told him to chill out.

The argument spilled into Lewis cell, where deputies say Fravel struck Lewis in the face.

(Lewis) doesnt remember anything from that point on until he was getting up off the floor, Boyd wrote. At this point he realized that his injuries were pretty bad and he needed to let us know.

At first, Lewis told deputies he suffered the injuries after falling off his bunk, court documents said. But he later admitted they were suffered at the hands of Fravel.

Medical staff at the jail checked Lewis and sent him to the emergency room at St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center, where doctors closed a cut under his eye with five stitches, court documents said. Lewis also had a fractured nose and orbital bone, bruised back and a likely concussion.

Boyd also reported twice witnessing Lewis vomit blood, though doctors said he did not suffer internal bleeding. Fravel admitted to beating Lewis, court documents said, but told deputies he only hit Lewis a couple times.

Fravel was in jail at the time of the beating awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty Jan. 10 to burglary and drug possession charges. Prosecutors will argue for a four-year prison sentence on those charges and his March 20 sentencing. He faces up to 15 years on the aggravated battery charge.

Lewis was in the jail at the time serving a 120 days for four misdemeanors.

Fravel is still in custody in lieu of $50,000 bond in his new case and is set for a preliminary hearing March 24.
TWIN FALLS  Sheriffs deputies seized nearly six pounds of marijuana Tuesday while arresting a Twin Falls man suspected of making marijuana extract in a home where he lived with his girlfriend and her two children, police said.

Dale Wayne Jensen, 47, was charged Wednesday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court with felony counts of trafficking in marijuana, manufacturing a controlled substance and unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

His girlfriend, Jessica Marie Savage, 38, was charged with a felony count of unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and a misdemeanor count of injury to child.

Twin Falls County sheriffs deputies served a warrant about 9:30 a.m. at the home on Fourth Avenue West, where they found Jensen, Savage and her two children, court documents said. Jensen immediately claimed all drugs in the house belonged to him.

(Jensen) stated he was manufacturing marijuana concentrate in the house by the use of Isopropyl alcohol to extract the THC from the marijuana plant, Twin Falls County Sheriffs Deputy Jeremy Compton wrote in a sworn affidavit. When asked what he was doing with the marijuana, (Jensen) stated that he did not want to answer because it would only hurt him.

In the freezer, deputies found marijuana soaking in an unfrozen solvent inside a jar, court documents said. Deputies identified this as the process used to manufacture marijuana extract.

Some form of marijuana is legal in all of Idahos neighboring states, but all forms of it are still outlawed here.

Inside the couples bedroom, deputies found at least 18 bags of marijuana weighing a total of 5.9 pounds, court documents said. They also found evidence of marijuana having been smoked in the house.

Deputies also found half a dozen guns in the master bedroom, including two .22 caliber rifles and a .38 caliber revolver they determined belonged to Savage, court documents said. Both Savage and Jensen were prohibited from owning firearms for past felony convictions  Savage for a drug conviction and Jensen for convictions on drug, burglary and aggravated assault charges.

Savage posted $25,000 bond and was released from custody, while Jensen is being held in lieu of $150,000 bond. Both are set for preliminary hearings March 24.
FILER  Twin Falls County Sheriffs Sgt. Rick Beem told investigators he locked eyes with a suspect Feb. 12 as the man accelerated toward him in a Jeep while Beem stood outside his patrol vehicle waving his gun.

As the suspect barreled toward him, Beem said he was afraid for his life and fired at the Jeep, causing the SUV to swerve and crash into a ditch.

The suspect in the incident, Dennis Leroy Barnes, II, 37, was charged Friday with two felonies after initial charges were dismissed, while Beem was identified for the first time as the deputy sheriff who fired his gun.

Barnes was not hit by the bullets but was injured when he crashed into the ditch.

Sgt. Beem said he made the decision to fire his handgun at the vehicle because he feared for his life, court documents said. As the vehicle approached Sgt. Beem he felt his life was in danger because he could be killed if he was struck by the vehicle.

Barnes was charged Friday with felony counts of eluding police and aggravated assault on law enforcement with the use of a deadly weapon.

Cassia County Sheriffs Cpl. Michael Phillips investigated the incident as part of a critical incident task force responsible for investigating officer-involved shootings and other serious incidents in which police conduct is in question.

That investigation has been turned over to Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs, who subsequently turned it over to the Ada County prosecutors office for an independent review.

Friday, Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Lori Stewart said Sheriff Tom Carter is pleased with the the investigation so far.

Beem is the same deputy who was shot at Nov. 4 while pursuing a suspect. After the suspect in that case was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, Sheriff Tom Carter praised Beems restraint in not firing back.

Sgt. Beem is a professional, and he acted like a professional that night, Carter said following the February sentencing. He made a determination that he was going to affect an arrest without shooting him. Thats good.

According to the affidavit filed Friday in Barnes case, Beem joined the late-night pursuit that began in Filer and followed Barnes Jeep onto a dead-end lane at 3750 North and 2250 East. At the end of the lane, Barnes circled a house and returned the way he had just come, where Beem had stopped in case Barnes fled on foot.

Beem had positioned his patrol vehicle just prior to the driveway where a canal crossed under the lane  to be in position in the event Barnes bailed out of the Jeep and fled on foot, court documents said.

He was standing in front of his vehicle by the drivers side headlight when he saw the Jeep accelerating toward him.

Sgt. Beem had his pistol drawn and with his support hand he waved it in the air motioning for Barnes to stop, Phillips wrote in his investigation report. Beem stated he locked eyes with Barnes. Barnes did not look away. On both sides of Beems patrol vehicle were fences and a deep ditch.

With no other options, Beem fired, causing the Jeep to swerve into the ditch, court documents said. Barnes was flown to a Boise hospital to be treated for his injuries.

Barnes was originally charged with felony eluding and misdemeanor obstructing arrest. Those charges were dismissed when prosecutors were not ready to go forward with the case at a first preliminary hearing.

Since then, Barnes has been charged with falsifying a doctors note in a forgery case in which hes set to stand trial. A judge set his bond at $250,000 on Friday on the new charges, and a preliminary hearing is set for March 24.

Beem was placed on administrative leave after the shooting, but his status now is unknown. Any possible disciplinary action will be decided based off the Ada County prosecutors review of the investigation, but Loebs said theres no timetable for that to be complete.
TWIN FALLS  For 18 seconds Friday, two mothers, each with four children, embraced in front of a packed courtroom. One was Aime Franklin, left widowed last May when her husband, Twin Falls firefighter Ryan Franklin, was killed in a hit-and-run crash while cycling south of Kimberly. The other was Hollie Marie Winnett, the woman who killed Franklin when she fell asleep at the wheel.

The tearful hug was a window for the packed courtroom into the lives of two women devastated by the fatal crash: One widowed and left to raise her four children without her husband and best friend, the other torn apart emotionally and ravaged by guilt for the pain she never meant to cause.

Winnett, 33, of Hollister was sentenced Friday to 90 days in jail and seven years of probation. She pleaded guilty in January to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter and felony leaving the scene of a fatal crash. District Judge Randy Stoker also ordered Winnett to pay child support to Franklins children and will order more restitution at a future hearing.

Seated just feet apart from one another, Franklin turned and addressed her victim impact statement directly to Winnett.

I really hoped that when I was given the chance to speak to you, that I would tell you what was in my heart, that I would be able to say, I love you and that I forgive you, Franklin said. I have learned that those two things will take time to achieve, but please know that I am working to forgive you and to love you as you are.

As Franklin stood and ended her intimate statement, she added one final request: Let me hug you.

Winnett sobbed as the women embraced, whispering a single word: Sorry.

Her attorney, Brad Calbo, said the hug was one of the most beautiful things hed ever witnessed and praised the dignified conduct of the Franklin family throughout this horrific event. He also told the court the word sorry was woefully inadequate.

That word is so commonly used to make it almost meaningless, Calbo said. And yet Im unaware of another word, or a more powerful word, that would accurately describe or correctly portray the deep regret and remorse that this woman feels. And so despite its inadequacy, I feel compelled to say it: Were so very sorry.

Calbo argued that Winnett, likely suffering from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, should only serve probation for the crime, and that jail time would only punish her husband and four children. Rosemary Emory, deputy prosecutor for Twin Falls County, argued 90 days in jail was necessary so as not to make light of the crime.

Stoker sided with Emory, sentencing Winnett to 90 days in the county jail after asking Aime Franklin if she was still in agreement with the plea deal.

These are, by far, the absolute hardest cases in the world, Stoker said, before adding that he had no doubt Winnetts remorse was sincere, and the crash was a tragic accident.

Winnett admitted when pleading guilty that she fell asleep while driving her Jeep Liberty on May 18, and Calbo explained Friday why she was so tired: She spent the previous night moving her family from eastern Twin Falls County to Hollister, then drove her children to their school the next morning. On her way back to Hollister, she fell asleep and hit Franklin, an avid cyclist, as he rode at 3375 E. 2900 N.

Winnett panicked and fled the scene but later returned with her husband.

Franklin, 34, had worked at the Twin Falls Fire Department for 2  years. Before that, he taught middle-school English and coached basketball at Lighthouse Christian School for six years.

Aime Franklin and Ryans parents remembered him Friday as a man of great faith whose death has left a gaping hole in the lives of those who knew him.

Before the emotional embrace, Aime compared Ryans death to her fathers death.

He was surrounded by loved ones and held my moms hand as he breathed his last breath, Franklin said. We all got to say goodbye to him, and we got to tell him how much we loved him before he died and faced the Lord. On May 18, my husband and my best friend, and the loving father of my kids, died face down on the side of the road, completely abandoned and alone. No one got to say goodbye to him, no one got to hold his hand as he entered into the presence of the Lord.

Mark Franklin, Ryans father, told the court his sons legacy continues to affect (Lighthouse Christian), affect the community and affect his family, even in his absence. We know what he stood for; we know who he was.

Franklins mother, Margaret, told Winnett how devastated she was when Aime called and told her that her oldest son had been killed.

People can say shame on you, but the Lord always says shame off you, Margaret Franklin said. You can choose that, and I have a choice to forgive. I pray that we both make the right choice.
TWIN FALLS  University of Idaho student Alaina Heuring is majoring in international studies, but meeting refugees in Twin Falls is giving her a new perspective.

It really humanizes the whole statistics we learn in school, the 21-year-old Boise native said.

Instead of spending her spring break on a beach or with family, Heuring is learning about how refugee resettlement agencies operate and what the integration experience is like for newcomers.

Shes among nine UI students volunteering this week at the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center through UIs alternative spring break program.

Its the second year a UI group has helped out at the center.

Students arrived Saturday night and began service projects Sunday morning. Those included helping students at the Twin Falls School Districts Newcomer Centers at Robert Stuart Middle School and Canyon Ridge High School, doing an art project in a hallway at Lincoln Elementary School, organizing donated items at the Refugee Center, and providing one-on-one tutoring for adult refugees learning English as a second language.

On Monday, a group of children transitioned out of Newcomer Centers into their home school, Reese said. UI students were paired one-on-one with students to help them on their first day.

Theres one question the groups student leader, 22-year-old Boise native Masen Matthews, has heard a lot this week: Is he getting any class credit for this project? The answer is no.

Were strictly here to volunteer, which I think is a really cool thing, he said.

For Heuring, one highlight of this week was talking with a 20-year-old woman whos a refugee from Rwanda.

They started chatting in English during an ESL class and we really bonded within those four hours, she said. They even found out they like the same music.

After college, Heuring  who graduates in May  plans to take a year off and go to law school with the goal of practicing international law. Her ultimate dream is to work for the United Nations.

For Matthews, its his third alternative spring break trip and his second time as a team leader. In previous years, he volunteered to help the homeless population in Atlanta and inmates at a correctional facility.

He said the group has gained an understanding this week of how refugee resettlement agencies operate, where they receive funding and the political back and forth.

Weve learned about really specific aspects of the refugee intake process, Matthews said.

Hes studying sociology at UI and said this trip is special because hes interacting with the populations he has studied.

On Wednesday afternoon, UI students were split into two groups to volunteer. One helped in a classroom at Lincoln Elementary, while another worked on a project to create artwork on a wall near the Newcomer Center classrooms.

Matthews traced the word Sudan onto a wall, using an image displayed using a projector.

He also traced an outline of the countrys shape, the word for hello and the name of the countrys native language.

Students planned to do that for every major country where the CSI Refugee Center receives newcomers. They also planned to write Welcome in multiple languages along one wall.

Besides volunteering, students also had a chance to do some sightseeing this week, such as visiting Shoshone Falls and Miracle Hot Springs near Hagerman.

Once the trip ends, students will head back to classes in Moscow.

Matthews said he plans to spread awareness about refugees and fight back against stigmas associated with resettlement.
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BOISE  Idahos governor is strongly opposed to repealing the sales tax on groceries, which could be a problem for lawmakers who want to pass grocery tax repeal.

Gov. C.L. Butch Otter sent Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill and House Speaker Scott Bedke a letter Thursday expressing his opposition.

While Otter didnt explicitly say he would veto the bill were it to reach his desk, the letter leaves no doubt that he is against repeal. He says repeal would make it more difficult for the state to fund education, hurt local governments and destabilize the states revenue stream, because people must buy groceries no matter how the economy is doing.

Our current system of grocery tax credits provides relief to individuals purchasing groceries while providing a steadier stream of revenue, Otter concluded. I see no reason to change our current system and I oppose efforts to do so.

The state Senate voted Thursday to scrap an income tax cut that had passed the House in February, replacing it with a bill that would repeal both the grocery tax and the accompanying tax credit.

The bill would still have to go through House if it passes the Senate, where it could see some changes. Passing tax cuts of some kind is one of the things the GOP leadership has said it wants to do before the Legislature adjourns. Lawmakers are hoping to wrap up for the year on March 24.
BOISE  Senators have voted to eliminate the states tax on groceries, snubbing a House plan that would have cut income taxes instead.

The Senate was set to amend an income tax cut the House had passed in February, scaling it down from $51 million in cuts to $28 million. When the Senate entered its amending order Thursday afternoon Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, offered his amendments, and Sen. Cliff Bayer, R-Meridian, offered his  to repeal the sales tax on groceries and the accompanying tax credit. Bayer is the main sponsor of a bill to abolish the grocery tax that has yet to be scheduled for a hearing since he dropped it off two weeks ago. Idaho taxes groceries at the same 6 percent rate as most other purchases.

The bill would also eliminate the state grocery tax credit.

I have an obligation to many supporters and sponsors to address this issue straight-forward, Bayer said.

Bayer said polling supports the idea and that Idahos border communities are losing shoppers and businesses to neighboring states. The only neighboring state that taxes groceries is Utah, and its tax is lower than Idahos.

Tax relief has to have meaningful implications, Bayer said. I believe this does.

Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, argued against eliminating the tax, saying he doesnt hear many businesses that locate in Idaho complaining about it.

This is just another exemption, he said. And it further complicates our system. If we keep giving these exemptions over and over and over, pretty soon were going to have a 7 percent sales tax.

The Senate voted on the amendments by standing up and down, rather than the voice vote that is usual on amending bills. For the first vote, about 15 senators stood with Hill, including most of the Magic Valley delegation: Lee Heider, R-Twin Falls, Kelly Anthon, R-Rupert and Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, took his side. Sens. Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum and Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, took Bayers.

After Hills amendments were rejected, all but about five senators voted to approve Bayers amendment, with Siddoway and Heider among the remaining opponents.

Bayer said after the vote he knew it would be close, but he wasnt sure if he would prevail.

The Senate expressed its disposition, he said. Theres still a long road to go.

Getting rid of the grocery tax, when the savings from eliminating the credit is factored in, would cost the state $18.6 million and local governments $9.4 million in 2018.

Many Republicans went into this years session saying they wanted to cut taxes, with income taxes as their focus. Those same Republicans say passing some tax relief remains a goal for many before the session ends.

In the House, Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star, has pushed income tax cuts in past sessions only to see them stall in the Senate. It happened again Thursday, but Moyle said he is not opposed to killing the grocery tax  he has sponsored similar legislation in the past, too.

Its not necessarily a bad thing in Mike Moyles eyes because thats his old bill, Moyle said after the Senate vote.

Moyle said he expects more back-and-forth if the bill is voted out of the Senate.

Lawmakers are still hoping to adjourn for the year on March 24. Transportation funding is another issue that still needs to be resolved and that could compete for money  a Senate committee passed a $300 million plan Thursday that the House leadership has said it will likely amend.

Also in the mix is Idahos deal with Amazon to collect sales tax on Amazon purchases, which will kick in on April 1 and which Gov. C.L. Butch Otters office confirmed to Boise TV station KTVB. Moyle said this would bring in an estimated $15 million to $30 million a year.

I would assume that could alleviate some of the other concerns with some of the other issues were talking about, he said.
BOISE  Following a harsh winter that left the states roads crumbling, the Senate Transportation Committee cleared a bill Thursday to take out $300 million in bonds to fund new road projects.

The committee voted 4-5 on Thursday to reject a larger proposal, which included the $300 million plus $200 million more in bonds plus changes such as getting rid of the sales tax on road materials, shifting the Idaho State Polices share of the fuels tax to roads, renewing a surplus eliminator that commits some excess revenues to transportation and letting municipalities levy a local option sales tax for specific transportation projects.

Then, the committee voted to approve the smaller bill, which would borrow $300 million to fund some of about a dozen projects that were identified in 2005 and pay it back with future federal highway payments. These are known as GARVEE, or Grant Anticipation Revenue bonds. It momentarily appeared that bill might not pass either, until Sen. Chuck Winder, R-Boise, who had supported the bigger bill, said he was voting yes.

I dont think this is what we negotiated in good faith with the House about, said Winder, who said he had originally planned to vote against the GARVEE-only version.

But, he continued, if we vote no, were totally stymied. So even though I dont want to vote for just the GARVEE funding, I will vote aye. At least to put something on the calendar and give the House something to throw some darts at.

Both proposals were brought by committee Chairman Bert Brackett, a Republican from Rogerson.

The Idaho Transportation Board would decide which projects to fund with the GARVEE money. A new bridge across the Snake River near Twin Falls is one of the possible projects on the list, although Brackett has said he expects this to be a lower priority and less likely to get funded than some of the others. In particular, some improvements to Interstate 84 in the Treasure Valley will likely be viewed as more urgent.

Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, said Canyon County is in dire need of improvements to the highway.

I live 33 miles from here, she said. In the morning, it takes me about an hour-and-a-half to get here.

Transportation funding is one of a handful of big issues lawmakers are hoping to deal with before their expected adjournment on March 24.

This bill probably isnt the end of the story  assuming it makes it out of the Senate in its current form, House leadership says they expect to make additions when it comes to their side.

We could respond and I think we will, said Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star. I hope we will.

Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane, R-Nampa, called the Senate committees vote a good first step but said he expects changes in the House.

Weve got a good product, he said, but we could make a better product.

This years harsh winter damaged roads throughout the state, moving the issue even higher on lawmakers priority lists. A separate $52 million emergency road repairs bill has passed the Senate already and is awaiting a vote in the House.
BOISE  A bill to expand Idahos self-defense law has been held for the year.

The bill, brought by Sen. Bert Brackett, a Republican from Rogerson, would have said a person who unlawfully and by force enters anothers residence is presumed to do so with the intent to commit a felony, and that killing them in self-defense is justifiable homicide. This part deals with the castle doctrine, or the law that deals with self defense in ones own home.

It also would have specified there is no duty to retreat before using deadly force to defend ones self or another, while in any location. This is similar to the stand your ground laws that some states have passed, and it contrasts with other states that impose a duty to retreat before using deadly force.

Some gun-rights supporters thought the bill didnt go far enough, and some lawmakers on the Senate State Affairs Committee thought it might go too far, or that it didnt take enough of existing case law into account.

Between everyone, the concerns were enough that the committee agreed the bill should be held. It could come back next year, and a working group could study the issues before the 2018 session, said Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg.

Brackett said he decided to carry the bill after someone broke into his Boise apartment early in the session. While Brackett and his wife werent there at the time, he said he wondered what might have happened had they been.

Brackett got his enhanced concealed carry permit after the incident, and part of that process is learning about Idahos self-defense laws. Brackett said his bill would clarify when deadly force is and isnt justified.

We need to think about these things ahead of time, he said. How would you respond. Under what circumstances would you use this kind of force.

Unlike some states, Idaho law doesnt impose a duty to retreat from a violent confrontation, but there is no specific stand your ground law either.

Zach Brooks, board chairman of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, asked the committee to hold the bill, saying it didnt improve current law. So did Rep. Christy Zito, R-Hammett, who had been working on similar legislation she has been unable to get introduced.

Zito told a story about a time she was driving with her then-11-year-old daughter when two men in a pickup truck ran them off the road in a spot where they were trapped by construction. The men got out of their truck and approached Zitos, but fled after she pointed her handgun at them.

A bill should include elements such as a presumption of innocence for someone who uses deadly force in their own home and saying that, if someone who kills in self-defense is charged and cleared, the state should pay their court costs, she said.

When we do the castle doctrine and stand your ground, lets make sure we do it and do it right, Zito said. Lets make sure it covers the bases.

Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, worried Bracketts bill didnt take existing case law into account enough. He also worried it might go too far. Hagedorns concerns, too, come from experience  a man broke into his house once and Hagedorn held him at gunpoint. It turned out the man was just drunk and thought he was entering his own home.

Somehow, we need to make sure that the language here protects and specifies that there is a point when you pull that trigger that you need to know that someone is trying to do harm and not inadvertently making a mistake, Hagedorn said.

Brackett argued his bill was a reasonable compromise that would let people defend themselves without opening the door to unintended consequences.

I think this bill strikes a good balance with responsible citizenship with the ability of citizens to protect themselves and ones family, he said.

The committee, though, felt it would make more sense for everyone to work on a bill that could pass next year.

I appreciate your passion and what drove you to fix this, Hagedorn said. But I just dont think its ready for prime time.

Assistant House Majority Leader Brent Crane, R-Nampa, said Thursday that expanding the castle doctrine and passing stand your ground were among his priorities before the end of the session, and that he backed Bracketts bill. Lawmakers want to adjourn on March 24.

Crane gave no indication after the vote that the issue would hold up the Legislatures adjournment, saying they would work on it over the interim.

Were a very strong pro-Second Amendment state and a very strong pro-Second Amendment Legisature, he said. And well just continue to do the hard work to get something passed on this important issue.
Azriel Shaw, Jr.

HEYBURN  Azriel Shaw, Jr. of Heyburn, memorial service at 11 a.m. Friday, March 17, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E 16th St, Burley.

Ronald Lee

JEROME  Ronald Lee of Jerome, celebration of life at 3 p.m. Friday, March 17 at Living Waters Presbyterian Church, 821 East Main Street, Wendell.

Martha McRill

TWIN FALLS  Martha McRill of Twin Falls, memorial service at 1 p.m. Friday, March 17 at the Parkes Funeral Home, 2551 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls.

Terry Bailey

WYOMING  Terry Bailey formerly of Twin Falls, celebration of life from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Friday, March 17 at the Southwest Sublette County Pioneers Senior Center at 111 Rakestraw Ave, Marbleton, Wyoming.

Earl Bird

CALIFORNIA  Earl Bird,formerly of Jerome, memorial service at 11:30 a.m. Friday, March 17 at Demarays Jerome Memorial Chapel, 629 3rd Ave E.

Gene Kincheloe

TWIN FALLS  Gene Kincheloe, service at 10 a.m. Friday, March 17 at Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home, Twin Falls.

Mary Jo Fries

RUPERT  Mary Jo Fries of Rupert, funeral services at 1 p.m. Friday, March 17 at the Rupert West LDS 2nd Ward Building, 26 S 100 W. A viewing will be held one hour prior to the service.

Lawrence Harris

BURLEY  Lawrence Harris of Burley, funeral at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 18, at the Star LDS Church, 100 S 200 W, Burley. A visitation will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Friday, March 17 at Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E 16th St, Burley and from 1 until 1:45 p.m. Saturday, preceding the service at the church.

Colleen Sorensen

FLORIDA  Colleen Sorensen, funeral at 12 noon Saturday, March 18, in the Burley 2nd Ward Building at 515 E 18th Street. A viewing will be held from 10:30 until 11:30 a.m. prior to the service.

Kiana Nichole Booth

TWIN FALLS  Kiana Nichole Booth of Twin Falls, funeral at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 18 at Twin Falls LDS Church, 541 Orchard Dr., Twin Falls. White Mortuary Chapel by the Park

Cheryl Ringenberg

TWIN FALLS  Cheryl Ringenberg of Twin Falls, celebration of life 11 a.m. Saturday, March 18 at the Rock Creek Community Church, 262 Fifth Avenue East, Twin Falls.

Verna Jean Carrico

TWIN FALLS  Verna Jean Carrico of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 18 at the First Christian Church in Gooding.

Marie Simpson

JEROME  Marie Simpson of Jerome, funeral services at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 18 at the Carey LDS Chapel. Visitation will be held one hour prior to the service.

Robert Miller

JEROME  Robert Miller of Jerome, celebration of life at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 18 at the Snake River Elks Lodge, 412 E 200 S, Jerome.

Mary Mort

JEROME  Mary Mort, celebration of life at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 18, at Life Church, 425 East Nez Perce Avenue, Jerome. Cremation was under the direction of Parkes Funeral Home.

Wayne Hughet

HEYBURN  Wayne Hughet of Heyburn, celebration of life from 1 until 4 p.m., Saturday, March 18 at the Rupert Elks Lodge. Serenity Funeral Chapel Life Celebration Center & Cremation Services of Idaho, Twin Falls.

Jonathan Denton

TWIN FALLS  Jonathan Denton of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 22 at St. Jeromes Catholic Church, 216 2nd Avenue East.. A viewing will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. with a Vigil Service beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, March 17 at the church.
TWIN FALLS  If last years shows were about testing the waters, this year is about casting a light on the journey ahead.

A spotlight shone on a microphone on an empty stage Wednesday night at Marilyns Bar. In a corner, women congregated on red chairs and black couches. They sipped ice water from red straws, their faces illuminated by a blue rope light around a mirror on the wall.

People started to fill tables, drinking from glasses, as they flipped through a program of Wednesday nights preview show of The Vagina Monologues.

This is the second year the play  based on Eve Enselers interviews with women about the feminine experience  will be presented in Twin Falls. The show is co-directed by Liyah Babayan and Sergio Larios.

Last years play was considered a success with all three shows selling out and raising $4,500 for a future womens resource center at the College of Southern Idaho.

So this year, Babayan wanted to bring even more awareness to the topics of domestic violence and sexual abuse in the Magic Valley  especially when it comes to children.

Last year I was approached by child advocates and counselors, she said. They made me more aware of how important it was.

Child Protective Services agencies data indicates that from 2009 to 2013, 63,000 children a year were victims of sexual abuse. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network says exposure to domestic violence has been linked to poor school performance. Children who grow up with domestic violence may have difficulty in completing school work and lower scores on measures of verbal, motor and social skills.

On Tuesday, a public forum tackling domestic violence and sexual assault was held at the theater inside Marilyns Bar. The forum featured eight local experts in domestic violence who answered submitted questions and talked about how their agencies help victims and abusers.

Another goal of The Vagina Monologues is to raise $10,000 to start an endowment for the proposed womens resource center at CSI.

We really wanted to focus on the fact there are no preventive resources, Babayan said. But we need more preventative education in the school so children know what healthy relationships are. We really think the Womens Resource Center could be a powerhouse for that.

Babayan said this year she plans to have a petition available at the shows to gauge public support for the womens center on campus.

We want to make sure its something the community wants, Babayan said.

The Vagina Monologues is now an unincorporated nonprofit that has raised $1,500 through donations before a single ticket was sold. To accommodate expected large audiences, the three shows will be in the CSI auditorium. The show will be presented in English, with a monologue in Mandarin Chinese. The Saturday evening show will also be in American Sign Language.

Anne Loebs was in the show last year and performed the monologue The Flood. Its about a teenage woman who has a disastrous first date, and its an experience that haunts her for the rest of her life. The character is now in her 70s and has been single all her life. Barbara Fors will perform The Flood in this years show.

I really related to that role, Loebs said. Im not an activist, but the writing was really tight and succinct.

Loebs said she grew up in a family where sexuality was not discussed even though her mother was a doctor. Loebs mother taught other children sexual education, but not her own children.

Loebs monologue this year is called My Vagina Was My Village, which is about rape camps in Bosnia.

Its night and day, Loebs said. The other will make you laugh. This one is more emotional.

The introduction to My Vagina Was My Village highlights the refugee crisis and the situations women are fleeing. Between 1992 and 1995, nearly 60,000 women were raped in eastern European countries like Bosnia as a war tactic. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1,152 women were raped every day between 2006 and 2007.

When we think of The Vagina Monologues, we think of western women and not women around the world whose experiences are really different, Babayan said. We really are an international city, and we get a lot of these consequences.

Lindsey Good will revive her role in The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy. The monologue is an inside peek of the life of a sex worker whose clients are women.

Good didnt think shed last past the first rehearsal last year, but her wife convinced her to commit.

I left thinking there is no way Im going to do this, she said.

The former chemotherapy clinical assistant got involved on a whim. She had just turned 30 last year and wanted to do something spontaneous.

This monologue is way out of my comfort zone, Good said. The purpose is a great reason. Its for a purpose we need in Twin Falls.

Bonna Rapp moved to Twin Falls from Washington state six years ago. She came across a posting for The Vagina Monologues on social media and decided to join the cause. Her husband saw The Vagina Monologues on Broadway and encouraged her to get involved. Rapps husband and 8-year-old son have even helped her memorize her lines for My Angry Vagina, a monologue that touches on topics such as tampons, thongs and pap smears.

Its kind of a fun way to poke at all the irritations and obstacles women go through in their lives, Rapp said. I read for a couple of parts, but thats the one I connected with the most strongly.

Rapps husband and their son plan to attend the show.

I want him to grow up and be a good member of society and treat other people with respect, she said. I think it is a really critical time we are in now. Its easy for people to feel like we made it. We changed a lot from my lifetime but we are not there yet.

Angela Chapin is performing three monologues. One of the monologues is considered the most controversial of the show because it talks about statutory rape and under age drinking. It was a monologue that was omitted in last years show.

Despite the fact The Vagina Monologues is 23 years old, Chapin said, it opens dialogue, especially in a conservative community like the Magic Valley.
The speaker of the House, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman and the ranking Democrat on the committee said Thursday that they've seen no evidence of President Donald Trump's accusation that he was wiretapped last year by his predecessor.

"We have not seen any evidence that there was a wiretap or a (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court order against Trump Tower or somebody in Trump Tower," Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview Thursday on CNN's "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer.

Ryan said, however, that he still trusted Trump, and that the apparently false claims the President aired on Twitter would not damage the White House's credibility.

"I think the President's going to be marked and judged by his record," Ryan said.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr and ranking member Mark Warner issued a statement earlier Thursday, saying "based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."

The statement from the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee marks the clearest and strongest refutation of Trump's allegations since the President first made them two weeks ago. The senators statement also addresses Trump's more recent statement that he was not merely speaking about wiretapping specifically.

The White House on Thursday said the statement did not shake their confidence in the accusation. Press secretary Sean Spicer, asked to respond to the accusation, read an extensive litany of news reports from the podium that showed intelligence agencies' interest in Trump's activities, but none that actually corroborated Trump's claim.

"He stands by it," Spicer said, characterizing the Intelligence Committee's statement as not final. "They have yet to go through the information."

Spicer engaged in a lengthy exchange with CNN's Jim Acosta over whether the President stands by his allegation that he was wiretapped specifically and not under surveillance in general.

"We talked about this several days ago," Spicer said. "The bottom line is that the investigation by the House and Senate has not been provided all the information."

The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have said they have yet to see any evidence of wiretapping, but have yet to flatly rule out all surveillance. House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that it was possible that Trump aides were surveilled via "incidental" collection.

Nunes said the following day "you can't rule out surveillance" in response to Senate Intelligence Committee statement.

Ranking Democrat of the House committee Adam Schiff told CNN that he expects FBI Director James Comey to also say that he's seen no evidence of Trump's claim when the director testifies before his committee Monday.

"Because there's no evidence of this at all," Schiff told CNN. "But again you can see the President trying to say, 'Well I didn't mean what I said or what I said could mean various different things'  he was very specific in what he said. So we'll ask the director to address that very specific allegation."

Their statement came hours after Ryan said at a news conference that "no such wiretap existed," citing intelligence reports to House leaders.

"The intelligence committees, in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigations of all things Russia, got to the bottom -- at least so far with respect to our intelligence community -- that no such wiretap existed," Ryan said in response to a question from CNN.

The comments from leaders in Congress follows Trump and the White House retreating from the President's stunning accusation in a tweet two weeks ago.

"When I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers -- because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff -- but that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that's a very important thing," Trump told Fox News Wednesday.

CNN's Eli Watkins contributed to this report.
The following editorial appears on Bloomberg View:

When President Donald Trump claimed on Twitter that his predecessor had tapped his phones, he created something of a metaphysical crisis. No one  not the Justice Department, not Congress and least of all the president himself  seemed able to ascertain the truth about the accusation. Now that theyve had some time to look into it, what do they say?

We dont have any evidence, says the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. No evidence, says his Democratic counterpart. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks, muses the president, citing no evidence.

Trumps press secretary now asserts that while the presidents tweets were inaccurate, they nonetheless conveyed a deeper truth about surveillance and other activities. The official position of the White House seems to be that Trumps claim, like Schroedingers cat, lies in superposition, simultaneously true and not true.

It would probably be best to just leave it at that. Except that, in his uncanny way, Trump has stumbled onto a few important questions. For starters: Are federal investigators still probing the Trump campaigns relationship with the Russian government? If so, were Trump or his associates ever under any kind of surveillance? If so, did it yield any evidence of wrongdoing?

If intelligence or law-enforcement agencies were lawfully eavesdropping on Trumps associates, either they had a court order to do so or those associates were in contact with foreign agents who were already under surveillance. Either possibility, to put it mildly, would require some explaining.

That has not been a strong suit of Trumps White House  or, for that matter, the rest of the executive branch. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, says its being stonewalled by the Justice Department. The House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russias meddling in the election, says the same of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The result of this generalized chaos is that the public has no idea what to think. When Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, said that the president has created a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, he was exaggerating  but not by much.

The only thing that can restore that trust is transparency. The Justice Department must be far more forthcoming with the public about this episode. The White House needs to stop dissembling about it. And Congress should establish an independent commission to publicly investigate it.

The regular order is not working, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. He might have been referring to the political universe as once understood.
A HUMAN Rights Action Plan will be crafted in the Philippines, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said Friday.

The Action Plan is intended to combat corruption, human trafficking, poverty, unemployment, and underemployment or other concerns pertaining to human rights defenders and the strengthening of the Commission on Human Rights, the group said.

As a way forward, Presidential Human Rights Committee Undersecretary Severo Catura informed the body the country would be embarking on the formulation of the 3rd Philippine Human Rights Action Plan, 2018-2022.

The action plan will set out the activities and targets, including monitoring and reporting activities, covering the eight core human rights treaties to which the Philippines has committed to, he said.

In addition, the PHRC will spearhead the institutionalization of the National Mechanism for Reporting and Follow-up to coordinate and track national follow-up and implementation of recommendations from human rights mechanisms like Universal Periodic Review, Treaty Bodies, and UN Special Rapporteurs.

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Cynthia Veliko of the United Nations Development Program for her part emphasized the importance of conducting regional and national consultations and engaging the various UN agencies working in the area of economic, social and cultural rights.

She noted agencies like Unicef, UNFPA, UNDP, ILO, WHO, FAO, WFP, UNHCR, and UNAIDS would be able to provide expertise and guidance during thematic consultations to ensure that international standards were considered.

Meanwhile, lawyer Jesus Torres of the CHR pointed out that the concluding observations did not elaborate concerns on cultural rights.

He suggested the issue be discussed in the next Philippine report.

He shared with the body that the CHRs current system of monitoring of and reporting on ESCR concerns is guided by the O-Pe-R-A Framework (Outcomes, Policy Efforts, Resources, Assessment).

The dissemination forum was attended by the members of the Technical Working Group on the ICESCR (TWG-ICESCR) and other relevant government agencies, along with representatives from the CHR and UNDP.

The constructive dialogue last September in Geneva, Switzerland discussed and validated the committees observations on the Philippines combined 5th and 6th periodic report.

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THE United States government, through the US Embassy in the Philippines United States Agency for International Development, recognized 10 research scholars and 37 grant recipients in science, technology, and innovation who support the Philippine governments push for innovation-led and inclusive growth.

The grants and scholarships were awarded by USAIDs Science, Technology, Research, and Innovation for Development (Stride) project, which boosts science and technology research in the Philippines to stimulate inclusive economic growth.

US Ambassador Sung Y. Kim personally acknowledged the individual scholars and the research grant recipients.

Our grantees represent the best scientific minds in the Philippines, said Ambassador Kim.

We look forward to the results of their research projects that will upgrade industries, generate jobs and investments, and build skills and capacities in communities, academic institutions, and companies.

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The awards included 24 P5 million ($100,000), one-year research grants to Philippine universities to undertake collaborative research with US universities on disciplines that contribute to high-growth sectors, including electronics, chemical industries, alternative energy, agri-business, and information technology.

USAID also funded 10 prototype development research grants, valued at P1.15 million ($23,000) each, and three innovation development grants that address human development challenges, valued at about P4 million ($80,000) each.

The universities which received research grants include University of the Philippines-Diliman, Western Philippines University, University of Southeastern Philippines, and the Technological Institute of the Philippines.

USAIDs $32 million Science, Technology, Research, and Innovation for Development (Stride) Project is the US governments largest higher education project in the Philippines.

The five-year project strengthens the Philippines capacity for innovation-led inclusive growth through strengthening applied research capabilities in Philippine universities and industries, and bolstering human capacity development in science, technology and innovation.

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DAVAO CITYPeace promotion programs that focus on education of children will help the country realize its visions that are laid down in the Philippine Development Plan 2017 to 2022.

This was the message of National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Ernesto Pernia during the launching of the Australian governments new flagship education program in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao at the Marco Polo Hotel here on Friday.

The program, dubbed as Education Pathways to Peace in Mindanao, will be funded with A$90 million (P3.4 billion) by the government of Australia.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced the opening of the program that will start in July 2017 until June 2026.

Communities in conflict-affected areas will be provided with assistance through the 2017-2022 development plan to attain just and lasting peace, Pernia said.

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As he expressed gratitude to the Australian government, Pernia also acknowledged the potential of the said education program, saying that the same will give opportunities to the children in ARMM to achieve their goals in life.

He also announced that the program is already approved by the Investment Coordinating Committee and being processed for approval by the Neda Board.

Foreign Minister Bishop described the education program as transformative as it serves as pre-condition to peace and development.

Australia is a friend and partner of the Philippines, Bishop pointed out, adding that this is not the first time her country provided support to the education program in the Philippines.

Three education programs were funded by the Australian government in previous years until this year. These programs include the Basic Education Assistance to Mindanao program from 2002 to 2009; the Philippine Response to Indigenous Peoples and Muslim Education program from 2011 to 2014; and the second round of BEAM program from 2012 until this year.

The new program will be implemented in partnership with the Department of Education in ARMM and will focus on priority education reform areas in improving teacher quality; contextualizing the national curriculum to address Bangsamoro issues and culture; improving data collection, quality and use in policy making; and stakeholder engagement in education policy.

ARMM Executive Secretary Laisa Masuhud Alamia, who represented Governor Mujiv Hataman, thanked the Australian government for its continued support in the region.

She said the BEAM program is instrumental in the improvement and accessibility of basic education in ARMM.

The program allowed us to do more to improve the education sector in our region, Alamia said.

The program was also joined by Secretary Jesus Dureza of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process and Representatives Karlo Nograles and Mylene Albano-Garcia of Davao City.

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Morocco and Cote dIvoire have voiced their shared resolve to pool efforts to fight all new forms of crime, namely terrorism, cybercrime, maritime piracy and drug trafficking, and urged the international community to unite to put an end to these scourges.

This came in the joint communique released at the end of the just concluded friendship visit of King Mohammed VI to Abidjan. The visit was marked by tete-a-tete talks between the Moroccan ruler and President Alassane Ouattara on bilateral relations as well as on national, regional and international issues.

During the talks, President Ouattara informed his guest on the progress made by Cote dIvoire in the areas of democracy, the fight against poverty and the fight against terrorism.

The two Heads of State reiterated their determination to endeavor for a more united, solidarity-based Africa, able to fight effectively and victoriously all new forms of crime, namely terrorism, cybercrime, maritime piracy and drug trafficking, says the Joint communique, adding that they also called for sustainable and inclusive political solutions to crises on the continent.

In this regard, King Mohammed VI hailed the decisive role that President Ouattara continues to play in the peaceful settlement of these conflicts, as President Felix Houphouet-Boigny has always advocated.

President Ouattara who welcomed Moroccos return to the African Union, stressed the decisive role that the North African Kingdom will play within its institutional family and in consolidating peace and security in the continent, says the joint statement.

This return clearly shows the will and determination of the King of Morocco to engage in South-South cooperation and to participate fully in the development of the continent, as shown by the Morocco-Nigeria pipeline project, which will cross West African countries including Cote dIvoire and which will benefit the whole region, underlines the document.

For his part, King Mohammed VI pledged to back this African countrys candidacy as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the 2018-2019 term.

At the bilateral level, the two heads of State voiced satisfaction at the two countries cooperation, already cemented by 143 Accords, and underlined the need to implement these agreements for the development of the two countries and the well-being of their peoples.

They called in this regards on the follow-up mechanisms to hold regular meetings to supervise the implementation of bilateral accords.

They also welcomed the Second Session of the Morocco-Cote dIvoire Economic Impetus Group, which works to promote a genuine strategic partnership between the public and private sectors and to make of bilateral cooperation a genuine model of South-South cooperation for the whole of Africa.

During the royal visit, King Mohammed VI visited a number of structuring projects being carried out part of Moroccan-Ivorian cooperation to oversee the progress of works. One of these major projects underway is the rehabilitation and upgrade of the Cocody Bay.

In this vein, President Ouattara expressed his countrys gratitude to Morocco for its inestimable contribution to the development of Cote dIvoire, where it now stands as one of the main investors.
Israel has confirmed that that its air force carried out a mission overnight in Syria but they were targeted by anti-aircraft missiles.

The statement from the Israeli military pointed out that the aircrafts targeted several goals in Syria without stating the number involved and whether the mission was successful. Following the execution of the mission, several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria and one of the missiles was intercepted by the Aerial Defense Systems. The sirens that sounded because of the missiles were heard up to 10 kilometers away.

However, the Syrian army said the early Friday morning attack by Israel was an aggressive movement in support of ISIS and claimed to have shot down one of the warplanes while damaging another. The army added that the Israeli jets struck a military site near Palmyra during the attack.

The anti-aircraft missiles are reported to have not done any damage in Israel according to the statement from Israel which claimed that at no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft compromised even though it didnt state where the other missiles landed. The aircrafts were already in Israeli airspace when the missiles were launched. The missile brought down by the anti-missile system is said to be among those being possessed by the Syrian military but it is not among their most recent ones.

Israels confirmation of carrying out a military mission in Syria hardly comes by despite being accused of several covert missions in the country; mostly targeting members of Hezbollah. It has often bombed armed shipments that it believes are destined for Hezbollahs operations in Syria due to fears that it could be used against it. The Lebanese-based armed group, a close ally of Iran, is a sworn enemy of the Jewish State.

Tel Aviv continues to closely monitor the Syrian war and it is determined to stop it from spilling over to its territory.
There is hope at the end of the tunnel, if both sides willingly discuss the security aspect that will safeguard the political roadmap outlined during the talks held in Kuwait last year, despite the numerous challenges, claims the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

Ismail told France 24 that a solution in Yemen will be built on military and political basis so its a bit shameful that opposing parties dont want to sit down at the table to discuss it.

While revealing that a solution is close, the Special Envoy warned that it would continue to be farfetched as long as there is an external authority or militias controlling the security situation in the country. He stated that the Houthi Movement and their allies, singling out former president Abdellah Saleh, should work towards that direction by withdrawing from the areas under their control and handing over their weapons. Ismail also raised concerns about the rebels refusal to adhere to the implementation of the political solution.

With regards to the fate of President Hadi who enjoys the support of the Saudi-led coalition, Special Envoy Ismail outlined he cannot be sidelined in the talks. No solution can be achieved without taking into consideration the presence of Hadi, he said.

Amid the ongoing crises, Yemen is on the brink of famine and starvation has already begun to claim lives; especially that of children and the elderly.

The countrys Minister for Human Rights Dr. Mohammed Askar said the Yemeni government is working to establish peace but the desired peace is difficult to achieve because the rebel militias have not yet surrendered arms.
Dakhla, the pearl of the southern provinces, is hosting the annual Crans Montana forum, which brings together leading figures in the fields of economy and politics.

The event opened with a Royal Speech highlighting Moroccos steadfast commitment in support of Africas development.

Morocco believes in Africas capacity to rise to the challenges facing it and to ensure sustainable human development for its peoples, thanks to its vast natural and human resources, said King Mohammed VI in a message read out by president of the Dakhla oued Eddahab region.

The King commended the topics of the current edition of the Crans Montana forum which centers on characteristics and features of A New Africa for the 21st Century, saying that unlocking Africas potential hinges on how much belief we have in ourselves, how far we rely on our own capacities and potential, and how well we exploit them, within the framework of mutually-beneficial South-South cooperation and solidarity-based, strategic partnerships.

The Monarch added that Africa is buoyed by a new generation of pragmatic leaders working with a high sense of patriotism and responsibility to achieve their countries stability, political openness, economic development and social progress.

South-South cooperation, which is based on the culture of sharing and solidarity, is the mechanism that will enable our countries to exchange their expertise directly and immediately. It will help improve our field experience, make the most of our complementarities and expand our national markets. It will also open up new opportunities for efficient and beneficial investment and achieve effective sustainable human development, while respecting each countrys national sovereignty, as well as the principles of mutual esteem and equality, underscored the Monarch.

The King expressed Moroccos willingness to share its expertise in economy, agriculture, industry, energy, banking, insurance, transport and logistics as well as in the social and cultural, security and religious domains with fellow African countries.

He also highlighted the Kingdoms contribution in the field of security and stability and its contribution to UN peace-keeping operations and mediation aiming at peacefully settling conflicts in the continent.

In his address, the King placed special attention on the need to take joint climate action in Africa. In this respect, he recalled the convening of the Africa Action Summit, which was launched on the side-lines of the UN climate summit in November in Marrakech with a view to addressing the climate challenges Africa is facing.

The King also stressed the need for more cooperation to help African countries secure their energy transition and underscored Moroccos leadership in the field of renewable energies.

On Moroccos bid to join the West African Economic Community, ECOWAS, the Monarch highlighted the time-honored human, civilizational and spiritual bonds, as well as special relations based on fruitful cooperation and active solidarity shared between Morocco and West Africa, noting that the Kingdom joined word to action through the launch of the gas pipeline between Nigeria and Morocco, which stands as an example of regional cooperation that will benefit eleven African countries.
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.
Medical practitioners including Doctors, nurses in Mali have put down their tools, demanding bonuses and pending allowances.

The protest comes weeks after teachers, magistrates, clerks and foreign affairs officials also went on strike.

According to Youssouf Maiga, Deputy General Secretary of the national Union of Health, Social Action and Family Promotion, there is no more room for negotiation.

For us today it is not negotiation, but it is a question of implementing the commitments that the government made in November 2016. For us there is no question of negotiations but rather the implementation of the existing memorandum of understanding, he said.

Only Emergency services are still working in hospitals in the west-African nation.

Professor Kassoum Sanogo, Director at Gabriel Toure CHU Hospital said diseases that do not seem serious in the beginning become complicated after two or three days. Then the costs of care increase and hospitalization time as well. So there are many consequences in this kind of displacement at the hospital level.

Mali is the third biggest gold producer in Africa behind South Africa and Ghana; however the country remains one of the worlds poorest nations suffering from endemic corruption and instability.
Fresh cross-border raid by suspected south Sudan gunmen on Monday and Tuesday left 28 people dead and 43 children abducted in Ethiopia.

The attackers came from South Sudan last weekend and killed civilians, including women and children at Gambellas Gog and Jor areas in Ethiopia territory, a regional government spokesman told Reuters.

The Ethiopian military is pursuing them. The assailants havent crossed over to South Sudan yet, Chol Chany said.

Ethiopia shares a long border with South Sudan and cross-border attacks are not uncommon in the Gambella region.

The region hosts thousands of South Sudanese refugees who fled after war broke in their country in December 2013.

The worlds youngest nation plunged into internal strife in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his rival, former Vice-President Riek Machar of plotting a coup. The two camps have broken a series of peace deals.

Last year, leaders of Ethiopia and South Sudan have signed a series of cooperation agreements, including a security arrangement to stop hosting armed opposition groups in their respective countries.

Juba called on Ethiopia not to support armed groups, probably targeting members of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) under the leadership of the controversially exiled former First Vice President, Riek Machar.
Regional joint security forces have rescued over 5,000 Boko Haram hostages in a week-long operation, dubbed Thunder 2, in mountains along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, official said.

The hostages freed consisted mostly of women, children and elderly people, Cameroons Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a news conference.

According to him, 21 Boko Haram suspects had been arrested in the raid in the Mandara Mountains between Feb. 26 and March 7, which destroyed a fuel depot and recovered weapons, motorcycles, around 50 bicycles and various propaganda objects of the Islamic State-affiliated group.

The Nigeria-based Islamist group has been fighting since 2009 to try to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region.

However, coordinated operations by the militaries of the four nations has dismantled much of the territory Boko Haram once held, but the group remains capable of launching lethal attacks, often targeting the civilian population.

The Boko Haram group regularly uses suicide bombers, including women and girls.

Several thousands of women and girls have been abducted since the start of the armed insurgency, according to human rights bodies. In 2014 alone, the group abducted 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian village of Chibok.
King Mohammed VI on Wednesday made a decision to put an end to the deadlock in forming a new government that lasted more than five months. He dismissed the designated Head of the Government, Abdelilah Benkirane, Secretary General of the Party for Justice and Development, and decided to name another member of the same party as Head of the Government.

Benkiranes moderate Islamist PJD party came in first in the October 7 general elections winning 125 seats. Just 48 hours after the proclamation of the results, Benkirane was named Head of the Government and tasked with forming a coalition cabinet. Five months later, he made no progress in the negotiations to form a new cabinet, paralyzing the judicial apparatus and threatening to bring the economy to stagnation.

Out of his concern to respect the constitution and the countrys democratic choice, the Sovereign, in his quality as supreme referee and custodian of the supreme interests of the nation and in conformity with his prerogatives under the 2011 Constitution with a view to ensuring the smooth functioning of institutions, choose, among other options, to replace Benkirane by a member of his own party.

The King will receive this figure as soon as possible and will instruct him to form the new government, said the royal office announcing the kings decision.

The statement recalled that the King had repeatedly urged the designated Head of Government to speed up the formation of the new Government.

But, consultations led by Benkirane came to a deadlock, over the participation of the Istiqlal Party (PI) wanted by Benkirane and the participation of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), backed by the National Rally of Independents (RNI) and his leader Aziz Akhannouch.

Each side considering the conditions put forth by the other side inacceptable, negotiations stopped.

The Kings decision is more than timely and complies with the spirit and letter of the Constitution, mainly article 47 which stipulates that the Head of Government is picked from the party that wins the largest number of votes in the elections and does not specify that the position of Head of Government must necessarily go to the leader of the winning party.
Georgia to introduce energy efficient building code for 2017-2022

Georgia is on a path to become more energy efficient in the construction sector by using greener technology that is more sustainable and cheaper to operate.Throughout 2017-2022 Georgia will implement energy efficient projects in the construction sector that will affect all new private and public buildings.Soon all new buildings in Georgia will be energy efficient. Meanwhile, we will take actions to make the old and existing buildings more energy efficient. This will contribute to Georgias economic security and will reduce our citizens expenses, said deputy Minister of Economy Irma Kavtaradze, who today met with the delegation of the European Union (EU).The main goal of the meeting was to discuss ways of incorporating EU standards for building energy efficient buildings in Georgia.Government officials presented their action plan for energy efficiency, while EU partners promised aid in the implementation of the plan.
Gas tariff may increase

By Messenger Staff

Georgias Energy Minister, Kakhi Kaladze, doesnt exclude the possibility that gas tariffs may increase.The Minister says the increase will be related to the national currency's devaluation against the US dollar.Kaladze says if the State Regulatory Commission establishes new tariffs for the population of Georgia, the government will consider the subsidy for the countrys vulnerable population, as this already happens in terms of electricity.Experts anticipate increases in gas bills from the summer and say the increase will allegedly stand at 8-10 tetri.However, in his previous statements, when the new agreement was signed with Gazprom, Kaladze claimed there would be no increase in gas and electricity tariffs.Moreover, the Georgian Dream authorities promised during the election period that communal fees would decrease in Georgia.Kaladze says that in the event of an increase, the state budget would allocate funds to pay the increased gas tariff instead of the countrys vulnerable segment of population, which amounts to about 80% of the whole country, as their monthly incomes are frequently insufficient even for food, communal fees and low price clothes.As gas tariffs are lower than those for electricity, many people use gas for heating in cold periods; this means people will have to pay higher tariffs in winter period.The government has already increased excise tax for oil products, and so its price is increasing.In addition, the national currently was about 1.78 for 1 USD before November 2014, but now equals more than 2.50 .The economic situation of the Georgian people has not improved, and unemployment still remains the key social problem in Georgia.The governments economic policy currently experiences difficulties it places huge burden on the countrys population and country has to overcome the crisis.
The News in Brief

Abkhazia: Crossing Points Closure Not Subject to Revision



Authorities in Sokhumi responded to the international reactions on the closure of the two crossing points - Nabakevi-Khurcha and Meore Otobaia-Orsantia - between Abkhazias predominantly ethnic Georgian Gali district and its adjoining Zugdidi district of Samegrelo region.



A number of countries and international organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom, Lithuania and Japan, spoke against the decision stressing that it would restrict the freedom of movement for locals, including schoolchildren and patients requiring medical treatment.



The regions authorities issued three statements in response.



In its latest response, Abkhaz Foreign Ministry noted that the U.S. State Departments statement repeated hackneyed incantations on the humanitarian implications of the crossing points closure.



The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia is forced to reiterate that the decision taken by the Government of the Republic of Abkhazia fully complies with national legislation, meets the security interests of all of its citizens and is not subject to revision, the statement said.



The Ministry also stated that all kind of calls to re-open the crossing points, is senseless and can cause nothing but misunderstanding.



We call on all friends of Georgia, including international organizations, to stop speculating on the exclusively internal affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia, it added.



Responding to the unjustified appeals of NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu, the Abkhaz Foreign Ministry stated on March 1 that the steps are in line with international standards and are guided by the security needs of both Gali district residents and all citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia and is in no way aimed at creating any obstacles to the freedom of movement of Gali district residents.



The statement explained that the regions authorities closed the two crossing points once all necessary conditions were fulfilled, including repair of the road running to the main crossing point over the Enguri River, close to village Chuburkhinji, increasing the crossing points capacity and launch of the shuttle service to it.



It is symptomatic that such a call, which sounds more like a demand, was voiced by a NATO representative. It seems that the North Atlantic Alliance decided to exert an open pressure on Abkhazia, the statement said referring to NATOs call to reconsider the decision.



Earlier, on February 28, the Sokhumi officials commented the statement of Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, saying that the EUs concern over the freedom of movement looks very cynical, considering the attitude of European institutions towards the problems of Abkhazia.



The Ministry specified that the letter sent to Federica Mogherini in December 2016 requesting clarifications on the possibility of recognizing the Abkhaz passports as travel documents, giving the right to freedom of movement, was left unnoticed.



The decision to close the crossing points, made on December 28 by authorities in Sokhumi, has raised concerns locally as well.



Residents of Nabakevi and surrounding villages in Gali district, who used the two crossing points to travel to the neighboring Zugdidi district for schooling, medical services and commercial activities, organized a protest rally against the decision on January 25.

(Civil.ge)







Campaigners in Georgia urge President to veto surveillance bill



An activist group in the former Soviet republic of Georgia urges the President to veto a secret surveillance bill and plans to sue the government in the European Court of Human Rights over the bill.



The bill on secret surveillance was adopted by Parliament in March at the third and final hearing and sent to the president for him to sign.



The law on wiretapping was passed almost single-handedly, by Georgian Dream, Eka Gigauri, chair of Transparency International Georgia, said on Friday.



Neither the President nor the opposition parties nor non-governmental organizations support this model.



Non-governmental organization (NGOs) in Georgia ran a campaign five years ago called This Affects You Too (es shen gekheba) to focus on the problem of secret surveillance during the National Movements rule. The campaign was revived a few years into the Georgian Dream government to call attention to a lack of progress in reining in the use of such surveillance.



TAYT has objected to several different versions of the bill because the proposals gave too much power to law enforcement agencies.



The contentious part of the bill is the system for allowing the intelligence service to keep the keys that technically give them direct access to carrying out wiretapping.



In a statement released on January 31, the NGOs emphasized that the new amendment creates risks of unreasonable infringement of human rights.



We would welcome it if the president vetoed the bill. From our side, we will definitely appeal to [the European Court of Human Rights in] Strasbourg, Gigauri said.



Human rights cases have often been brought before the ECHR in the past, and the Strasbourg based court recently temporarily suspended a ruling by Georgias Supreme Court in a case over the ownership over the largest TV station in the country, Rustavi 2.

(DF watch)




@MichaelAuslen

Nineteen of Florida's 20 state attorneys announced Friday they would continue to seek the death penalty in cases they feel it is justified, a rebuke to the Orlando-area prosecutor who this week declared she would no longer push for capital punishment.

"We affirm that the responsibility of enforcing the laws of Florida is paramount to our oath of office," the state attorneys said in a statement. "Throughout 19 of the 20 circuits of Florida, the death penalty will continue to be sought in those cases which qualify for its implementation."

On Thursday, Aramis Ayala, the newly elected state attorney in Florida's Ninth Judicial Circuit, which covers Orange and Osceola counties, said she would not pursue the death penalty in any case, including the high-profile prosecution of Markeith Loyd, a man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and the execution-style shooting of an Orlando police officer trying to capture him.

Ayala's declaration this week elicited anger from others in the criminal justice community and among Republican elected officials. Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday removed her from the Loyd case, granting it instead to State Attorney Brad King, whose district includes Hernando County.

The statement from the Prosecuting Attorneys Association is the latest rebuke of Ayala -- and the most prominent bipartisan one.

"The victims' families of Florida deserve our dedication to implement all the laws of Florida," the prosecutors' statement continues. "That is why the people of Florida have elected us."

A spokeswoman for Ayala did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

At least one of the other 19 state attorneys publicly supported Ayala's right not to seek the death penalty.

"The Florida Constitution affords discretion to the constitutional officers in that locality," Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said Friday. "Ms. Ayala was exercising her discretion as the elected state attorney in her jurisdiction. She's accountable to the voters in that county for the next four years."

However, Warren said Scott was also within his right under the constitution to remove the case from her jurisdiction.

"It's not a question of whether I agree with it," he said. "Just as Ms. Ayala has the discretion not to seek the death penalty in a particular case, the governor apparently has the discretion to remove her from the supervisory responsibility of prosecuting the case."

-- Times staff writer Tony Marrero contributed reporting.

Photo: On the steps of the Orange County Courthouse on Thursday, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces to reporters that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty. (Orlando Sentinel)
@amysherman1

Gov. Rick Scott visited a Jewish school in Broward County Friday morning that faced bomb threats twice earlier this year.

Scott toured the David Posnack school and neighboring Jewish Community Center in Davie.

"We gave him a tour of the campus and we were talking about the most recent bomb threats around the country at all of the different sites in the state of Florida and how we can deal with it," JCC director Scott Ehrlich said.

The governor didn't offer any new assistance in response to the bomb threats but Ehrlich said he expressed that Florida won't tolerate discrimination against any group including Jews.

Scott requested to visit the campus -- the event was organized by the Jewish Federation of Broward County, Ehrlich said.

Scott had previously visited the center in 2016 for a ceremonial bill signing related to a memorial in Tallahassee for Holocaust survivors. For that visit, Scott was accompanied by Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera shortly after he had a quickie Bar Mitzvah in Israel.

The Posnack school faced bomb threats Feb. 27 and March 7 and is one of the several Jewish institutions in South Florida that have faced bomb threats this year. So far in 2017, there have been 165 bomb threats to Jewish institutions in 38 states and three Canadian provinces, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League through March 15.

Scott's press office did not respond to an email seeking comment. Scott's daily schedule did not reflect any additional events in Broward County.
For picture posts from 2010 and earlier, see the Earlier Picture Posts Page
In a year's span, Crista Ann Ames lost two uncles, one on each side of her family.

The experience  watching how cancer can transform someone's body  spurred thinking about how we hold on to loved ones in memory, and "what sort of features get lost in that process and what features get exaggerated."

Her large-scale, abstract ceramic figures at the Radius Gallery are a response to those losses, she said, examining "how the power of memory can change reality. It's a very emotive and transformative thing," said Ames, who's finishing up a long-term residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula.

Simplifying and exaggerating the figures took work: she'd find herself instinctively making them too realistic. To help, she broke with her previous process of using models or photos.

"This was purely me doing really rough sketches and working from my mind to embrace that idea of memory," she said. She'd revisit sections of a sculpture if, for instance, a leg muscle became too lifelike.

While there are some variations, the figures lack eyes, mouths, eyebrows and often ears  the places we instinctively read for familiarity or expression.

"I was thinking more about mannequins, or hollow forms that people could impose their own idea of what the features would be," she said. The resulting figures are stark and contemplative, some are whimsical.

The first piece she made in the show, after the death of one of her uncles, renders the figure from the mid-chest up. The figure cranes its neck up and to the right. With semi-regular patches of white and gray on a semi-regular, rough texture, it looks more like weathered rock than fired clay.

"It's the mark of my hand," she said. "In some of them it's pretty prevalent: you can even see fingerprints." She prefers that surface because of the pits and cracks for her washes, which she uses to create that stone-like contrast in colors.

She titled that piece, "Taut." Like most in the show, it has a thematic twin. "Supple" has an elongated neck, that though unnatural seems more fanciful and at ease than the stoicism in "Taut." Another pairing, "Closed" and "Open," utilizes contrasting arm motions to telegraph their emotional moods.

She designed the palette to reflect those dispositions, "the idea of the energy that people have, that they put out into the world."

In "Extended," a full-body piece with a single arm lengthened to reach to the floor, she chose a deep blue. In "Upside Down," a distorted figure in a hand-stand, the pressure-bearing hands are an orange tint, the arms and torso an energetic yellow, and the legs and feet a cool green.

Some of the figures have distinctive, wide lines, seemingly symbolic but deliberately vague.

"I look at a lot of high fashion and how they appropriate different cultures. Thinking about the way we ornament ourselves in different cultures and what that might represent, but keeping it vague enough that people can find their own meaning in those marks," she said.

***

Ames grew up on a sheep farm in Kennewick, Washington. Her high school had a dedicated ceramics program, so she "started out the way most people do: being enchanted by the potters' wheel."

At Washington State University, she took courses from Ann Christenson, who had studied under the influential ceramic sculptor and Bozeman native Peter Voulkos. Christenson told Ames' class, "the wheel is a tool, and you need to learn other tools." It opened Ames' perspective to the "possibilities that there are with clay  because clay can be anything."

Two pieces of her work, one from the first year of graduate school and one from last year, show the rapid change. Both were accepted in the Missoula Art Museum's annual auction. The first piece, "My Super Sweet Sixteen," is a narrative porcelain sculpture based on her childhood. Situated atop at 10-inch wide birthday cake is a girl birthing a lamb  how Ames spent her 16th instead of getting her driver's license.

The second, "Encircled While Wandering," situates a life-scale ceramic lamb from the torso up. The bottom half comprises a flurry of wooden posts that are angled but still hold the weighty ceramic piece up. It was one of the largest pieces in the auction.

She enrolled at the University of Montana for her master's, where she worked with ceramic artists like Beth Lo, Trey Hill and Julia Galloway.

She saw graduate school as a chance to scale up from the intricate miniatures she had been creating. She had access to larger kilns for one. For another, the physical work on tiny pieces had become tiresome.

"I didn't like the effect it was having on my body," she said. She had re-embraced an old hobby, dancing, and it played into the desire to work larger. You physically move around the piece in addition to looking at it differently.

"There's a relatability when you're working in life-size scale," she said, especially with pieces that lean toward abstraction. In the small pieces, she would focus on traits. In larger pieces, less so.

After graduating from UM, she had a summer residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, followed immediately by the Clay Studio. There, she's been working on a "car kiln" that allows the extra space needed to fire large pieces. Without a larger kiln, an artist has to split a sculpture into sections to be joined afterward. She's used that technique to her benefit: One of her Radius pieces, "Centered" has a torso section carved from wood.

The change in environment, from campus, professors and their resources, and working with undergraduates, to the community environment at the Clay Studio, led to down different ways of thinking about her work.

Her "exit show" from the Clay Studio is in the fall. She'll have to return to Missoula for that one  she'll already have moved for a long-term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center.
HELENA  It might soon be easier for Montana leaders to extend the termination date of leases for coal development on public land rather than having to open them up for bid again.

The Senate approved on a party-line, 32-17 vote a measure that Sen. Tom Richmond, R-Billings, said would give the Land Board more flexibility when managing the more than 5 million acres of state trust lands leased to generate revenue for schools.

It does not extend any coal lease. It does not build a railroad. It does not permit a coal mine, he said Thursday. It simply gives the people that have a duty to our state to do whats in the best interest of the school trust to do their duties and make that determination of whether or not to extend the term of a coal lease.

Senate Bill 235 does not mention Otter Creek, but it is the clearest example of the measures potential impact. The proposal by Arch Coal to build a mine east of Billings and south of Ashland has been the focus of heated debate and the center of energy policy discussions for years. First, Montanans were divided about whether the pristine area should become a mine at all and others, primarily ranchers and farmers, were concerned about the route of a proposed new railroad along the Tongue River which could mean the loss of land through eminent domain. The Land Board  whose members were all Democrats at the time  approved a permit for the project on a split vote in 2010. Gov. Steve Bullock, then the attorney general, opposed the permit because he said the terms could have been strengthened to bring in even more revenues.

The mine proposal has been put on hold several times in response to weakened coal markets, as lead developer ArchCoal entered bankruptcy and with companies uncertain about the future permitting climate upon the departure of Democrat President Barack Obama.

Promises made by new Republican President Donald Trump as well as his reversal of some executive orders related to environmental regulations have given many GOP leaders and mineral producers hope that it could soon be easier to start new projects.

The bill by Richmond would, in theory, encourage delayed projects to start up again by guaranteeing the length of their lease would be long enough to turn a profit.

Sen. Mary McNally, D-Billings, opposed the bill Thursday and said the current leasing process works.

We have other types of resources in the state where we dont extend (leases). Oil and gas is still a 10-year time frame. I would rather see the leases have a definite end point then have more competitive bids because I think its better off for the state, she said, later referencing Otter Creek. I understand that down the road this could be economically viable. Im fine with that. But I think extending it and extending the uncertainty for apparent reason  I oppose that.

The Land Board, which makes leasing decisions about state trust lands, is composed of Montanas five statewide elected officials: the governor, attorney general, secretary of state, auditor and superintendent of public instruction.

For decades Democrats held all or most of those seats, but in November voters put Republicans in three more offices. Now, Gov. Steve Bullock remains the lone Democrat.

With Thursdays Senate approval, Richmonds bill moves to the House to be considered in committee.
President Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget sends some troubling messages to both rural American and the wider world, according to Montanas former senator and U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus.

Its very sad to see a budget proposal like this, Baucus said. Its red meat on a surface level to Trumps supporters, but it will hurt rural America.

The 62-page budget released on Thursday calls for a 21 percent cut to the Department of Agriculture and a 12 percent reduction at the Department of Interior, which together manage Montanas national forests, parks and public lands. Baucus called it a disturbing indication of Trumps instinct to fight with people rather than work with them.

It comes down to a realization I had in Congress 34 years ago, Baucus said in a telephone interview from his home in Bozeman. We in rural states have to fight hard or were going to be taken advantage of when Washington starts doling out dollars. I dont want to take advantage of other parts of the country, but I dont want them to take advantage of us.

"I see this budget especially giving a big boost to defense states  mainly southern and coastal states. We have all this federal land. Eastern and coastal states dont have as much federal land, so they have a tax base that supports higher standards of living and greater commerce. We need programs like PILT and SRS to balance things out.

Trumps budget proposes unspecified cuts to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program Baucus helped create to support communities dominated by federal land management. The related Secure Rural Schools (SRS) forms a major part of many county budgets and recently expired.

On Thursday, Congress heard testimony about how Beaverhead County recently lost $330,000 in SRS funds needed to match almost $2.4 million for a 17-mile county road infrastructure project. The county commissioners had to nearly zero out its budget reserves to sustain the project.

Baucus spent the past three years as President Barack Obamas ambassador to China after serving six terms in the Senate and two in the House. Trump has not named a new ambassador.

Thats kind of pertinent, with Secretary (of State Rex) Tillerson visiting as we speak, Baucus said. Theres a big power vacuum in the State Department. The Chinese will notice. We still dont have a full American ambassador to China, and we dont have one in Japan, either. I noticed he (Tillerson) didnt stop at the American embassy in Japan when he was there. Thats a big morale-booster when the secretary stops by. Instead, theyre looking at a 30 percent cut in the Department of State budget.

Baucus pointed to the recent example of North Koreas belligerent missile launches and nuclear testing. On Friday, Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" And Tillerson told South Korean officials that Obamas policy of strategic patience with North Korea could be replaced by a more military approach.

Kim Jong Un is giving us fits, and it's getting existential, Baucus said. Thats something where only the United States can lead. South Korea cant solve the Kim Jong Un problem. China doesnt want to. Its up to us.

On the other hand, Baucus said Trumps rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement would hurt American business opportunities.

If we send signals that were maybe not as engaged, we lose influence, Baucus said. Countries around the world want America to lead. We are the economic powerhouse  the country of free enterprise and rule of law and independent judiciary. Theyre saying, 'Please, please stay involved. We get a lot of pressure from the Chinese, and we need the United States to be here as a counter-balance.' With the U.S. leaving, that gives the Chinese a lot more influence. It leaves a big void.

However, the Chinese and American citizens probably will see very different spending proposals as Congress puts its priorities on the budget process, Baucus said.

I think (Democratic Sen.) Jon Tester is doing a great job, and (Republican Sen.) Steve Daines is doing a great job, Baucus said of Montanas current congressional delegation. Theyve been around. Well just have to fight. I think Jon and Steve will be fierce in their opposition.
The Missoula Redevelopment Agencys board of commissioners met Thursday and approved giving $1,512,105 in Tax Increment Financing assistance to Stockman Bank. The money  which eventually will be paid back by property taxes from the project  is for work the bank did on demolition and public improvements to the site where it is constructing a new six-story, $30 million building in downtown Missoula.

Construction of the 68,000-square-foot bank and the attached two-story, 78,0000-square-foot, 137-space parking garage, is well underway and is expected to be completed in December of this year.

The new building sits within the Riverfront Triangle Urban Renewal District, and the developers applied to get reimbursed with TIF money for burying overhead utility lines, constructing new sidewalks and landscaped boulevards, building a small landscaped plaza and installing pedestrian-scale street lighting. The bank also will improve pedestrian crossings and build a landscaped bulb-out at the corner of Woody and West Broadway. Additionally, the bank is paving the alley and installing new curbs and street trees.

This is a nice example of an urban infill development project that anchors an important corner at the western edge of downtown, said Annette Marchesseault, a MRA redevelopment specialist, in a memo to the board. The Downtown Master Plan envisioned this type of use on this site. The new building is an attractive and durable structure that fits well within the downtown urban fabric. The need for surface parking is eliminated with the attached parking structure which establishes a building edge along Broadway and incorporates the drive-thru facility.

Marchesseault said the landscaped boulevard on West Broadway, pedestrian-scale street lighting, bulb-outs and lack of overhead utility wires will enhance the pedestrian experience and the overall urban character of downtown.

The new building on the corner of Orange and West Broadway will be Stockman Banks largest facility in western Montana. The first two floors will be occupied by the banks financial services, and floors 3-5 will contain tenant lease spaces. The top floor will contain meeting rooms and gathering spaces with access to a terrace with an incorporated vegetated roof overlooking downtown and the river. The basement will include storage and building support services. The drive-up banking facility will be incorporated into the ground floor of the parking structure.

The building is being designed with the goal of being one of the most environmentally-friendly buildings in the state. The architects are hoping to achieve Leed v4 Platinum certification, which is one of the most rigorous green building ratings. The building will have solar panels and re-use of stormwater for irrigation and toilet flushing (no stormwater will be discharged directly to the sewer or the Clark Fork River). The building also will have state-of-the-art efficient utility systems, durable building materials and abundant natural interior light.

Marchesseault said Stockman anticipates a downtown staff of approximately 50 people within five years, and other branch offices in Missoula could add another 40 employees within 10 years.

The developer will be reimbursed over time with the TIF assistance. Because the site is in an Urban Renewal District, the new property tax revenue generated by new projects doesnt go into the citys general fund. Rather, it is reinvested back into projects in the site in the form of TIF to eliminate blight and encourage development in underdeveloped areas. Marchesseault estimates this project could generate more in TIF revenue than will be needed to service the reimbursement debt, meaning there would be additional money for funding the Riverfront Triangle Master Development Plan.
The Missoula Police Department will spend Friday evening out on the town, making sure that the people who are celebrating St. Patrick's Day are doing so safely.

Sgt. Travis Welsh said that in addition to officers who will respond to general calls, there will also be police on foot patrol downtown, and units specifically on the lookout for impaired drivers. Other officers will respond to larger disturbances, should they arise.

Recent weekends have seen higher-than-usual numbers for DUI arrests in Missoula, with eight in the city limits last weekend. During the final weekend of February, Missoula police arrested 12 people on suspicion of driving under the influence, a figure Welsh believed was a record high.
A great many things in Missoula would disappear without federal funding of the arts, and some existing events may never have come to be.

President Donald Trumps Thursday proposal to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  which together make up about 0.07 percent of the federal budget  would slash Montanas art programs and grants, financially crippling many of the agencies.

Humanities Montana receives about 80 percent of its budget  around half a million dollars  from the National Endowment for the Humanities, according to Programs and Grants Director Kim Anderson.

Without the National Endowment for the Humanities, rural states like Montana would really struggle to have access to history and literature, Anderson said. It would certainly be dramatic, and deeply impact our ability to serve Montanans.

The nonprofit funds more than 300 programs around the state in schools and small communities, trying to reach underserved areas first, Anderson said.

All its programs are free.

Humanities Montana awards grants to county historical museums, local libraries and state parks for historical and educational purposes.

Its just such a broad array, Anderson said. People are surprised when they learn they have been taking advantage of Humanities programs throughout the years.

Without the federal money, Anderson supposed Humanities' only choice would be to raise the $500,000 a year from private donations.

Thats a huge chunk to make up through fundraising, she said. In a state like Montana there arent necessarily the funds to be raised.

***

The Montana Book Festival, now in its third year, got its start from the state National Endowment for the Humanities affiliate Humanities Montana, which ran the Montana Festival of the Book for 15 years, from 1999-2014.

Humanities Montana refocused its programs in 2014, leaving the book festival to local organizers, with some support as needed.

So began the Montana Book Festival, which received a three-year $15,000 grant from Humanities Montana in 2016.

"We know we're OK this year, but the next two years?" said Barbara Theroux, one of the festival organizers. "To have arts completely cut...it's not serving humanity."

***

The Montana Arts Council, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts along with matching grants from state funds, gives out about $250,000 a year to arts programs, $120,000 for Artists in Schools and another $36,000 as strategic investments, doled out in $1,000 grants.

We reach almost every county, Cinda Holt, the councils interim co-director, said. If we lost the NEA funding, we would lose about half our activities.

Funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has comprised around 30 percent to 40 percent of the Montana Arts Council's budget for the last 50 years. It totaled nearly $800,000 in 2017, with the state matching more than $500,000, Holt said.

According to the councils website, Missoula program partnerships alone received about $45,000 from the council, as well as around $20,000 for Artists in Schools and Communities programming in 2017.

Recipients included Zootown Arts Community Center, Montana Repertory Theatre, Montana Museum of Arts and Culture, Missoula Cultural Council, Missoula Art Museum, Clay Studio of Missoula and CoMotion Dance Co.

Lewis and Clark Elementary, Lowell School and Missoula County Public Schools all received Artists in Schools grants.

What would our world look like if it was half-sized? Holt said. That would be the broad-stroke sample.

Other area programs that received funding from the NEA last year include the Missoula Childrens Theatre, which won a $30,000 grant to tour a play in underserved communities and U.S. military bases.

MCT has received 13 grants form the NEA since 1998, ranging from $15,000 to $55,000.

The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes received a $20,000 grant for the Missoula Writing Collaborative to establish creative writing residencies taught by professional writers. It was the third year the collaborative received funding for reservation residencies.

The International Choral Festival, which is held every three years in Missoula, has received $10,000-15,000 grants five times in a row since 2003, for every event it puts on.

***

Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants make up around 20 percent of Montana PBS budget and 10 percent of Montana Public Radios.

Well over half of MTPRs funding comes from private donations, while around 40 percent of PBS funding comes from donors.

Loss of CPB funding for us would be devastating, Director Eric Hyyppa said. It would have a cascading effect on public broadcasting.

PBS stations around the country share programs with each other, Hyyppa said, so a loss of funding would eliminate more than just Montana-made shows from the schedule.

Montana PBS has the largest reach of any TV network in the state, with more than 80 percent of Montanas population able to tune in for free with an antenna.

Hyyppa was most concerned that it keep up its early childhood education programs, which are so popular they have a dedicated channel, airing shows 24/7 aimed at pre-kindergarten-age children.

In many Montana households its the only quality pre-K programming available to them, Hyyppa said.

Holt, Anderson and Hyyppa said they were in contact with Republican Steve Daines and Democrat Jon Tester (both of whom sit on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee) and urged all Montanans who appreciate their local artists, theater programs, book readings, history museums and dance classes to do the same.

Montana PBS has already linked to an online petition Protect My Public Media on their website in response to the proposed cuts.

Were very hopeful, Hyyppa said. But we also take the threats very seriously.
The University of Montana emailed roughly 400 employees this week with a survey about voluntary early retirements.

UM spokeswoman Paula Short said Thursday the campus doesn't yet have a target amount of money it would like to save through such a program or a set timeline. The deadline to respond to the survey is Tuesday, March 21.

"We are still in an exploratory phase regarding options for such a program," Short said. "This survey is an important step in understanding what our potentially eligible employees feel are the benefits or barriers to considering such a program."

The survey was sent to all faculty and staff who had worked there at least five years and whose years of service, combined with their age, totaled at least 75. In other words, a 50-year-old employee who had worked at UM for 25 years would be included.

In recent years, UM has been tightening its budget in response to enrollment declines, and President Sheila Stearns is exploring buyouts as one way to save money.

In the Wednesday email about early retirements, UM noted it aimed to cast the net broadly, but that people receiving the survey may not ultimately qualify.

The seven questions include requests for age, years at UM, interest in early retirement, employment classification (faculty, staff, administrator), year planning to retire, earliest retirement possibility with adequate incentive, and biggest concern.

The questions also ask people to rank the most important components of a program, such as health coverage, career counseling, tuition and other benefits.

"This will assist us with identifying what might be most important to you in a possible VERIP program and what concerns you might have about participating in such a program," the email said of a voluntary early retirement incentive program.

***

Reaction to the idea was mixed.

Albert Borgmann, who retired in 2015 but still teaches at UM, said he was pleased the administration was considering the option. He said one alternative is a painful and laborious process  retrenchment  that doesn't protect tenure.

"I think the university should extend itself in making the buyouts numerous and attractive," said Borgmann, in philosophy.

The faculty's collective bargaining agreement defines retrenchment as "the termination of tenured faculty members for financial or programmatic reasons."

"The fact that they have an early retirement program tells me that they're not hastily reaching for retrenchment, although they could," Borgmann said.

He said even the possibility that retrenchment is on the table would put the campus on pins and needles.

"The specter of retrenchment is just terribly destructive," said Borgmann, who went through one such process at UM about 30 years ago. "It makes people hunker down. It makes them defensive. (It) makes them less cooperative than they would otherwise be."

UM spokeswoman Short said the president has been asked questions about retrenchment but has not discussed it as a possibility at UM and is not putting together a plan for it. Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian also has not discussed retrenchment, said spokesman Kevin McRae.

Professor Michael Mayer, on the other hand, said UM doesn't pay its faculty nearly enough money to make early retirements worthwhile. UM brings up the idea every time there's a financial crisis, he said, but the math doesn't add up because of salary compression for longtime employees.

"The longer you're here, in general, the farther you'll fall behind national norms of salary," said Mayer, in history.

In Michigan, for instance, he said faculty earn enough money to make early buyouts sensible: "In many cases here, there's just not that much in the way of savings."

A handful of faculty earn a lot of money for a variety of reasons, such as outside offers and merit increases, he said. But he doesn't believe UM has enough faculty earning at high levels to save significant money.

Mayer also said saving those dollars means a different loss to the campus, one that could affect recruitment.

"A lot of times, these are the biggest names in a department or a school or a college, and those are the people who attract graduate students and enhance the reputation of the department," Mayer said.
We almost certainly will never see an election quite like 2016s presidential race. Lost among the national spectacle was an emerging trend around public lands issues in the Mountain West. With Montanas special election on the horizon, candidates would do well to heed the lessons from last November and listen to what voters are saying about public lands, access and outdoor recreation.

In the Center for Western Priorities recently released Winning the West report, we found that the biggest untold story this election cycle was the rise of public lands and the outdoors as key issues in Mountain West races. In Montana, for example, public lands were arguably the defining issue in the governors race.

In examining six of the highest-profile contests in Colorado, Montana and Nevada, our report found that protection and management of public lands played an outsize role across the region. Advertising and media coverage shaped the discourse of the campaigns, and candidates of both parties highlighted pro-outdoors positions, designed to demonstrate a respect for the Western way of life.

At the same time, Mountain West voters consistently rejected extreme views on public lands issuesshying away from Ammon Bundy and land seizure proponents represented by Montana Sen. Jennifer Fielder and the Americans Lands Councilin favor of a balanced and commonsense approach, which is becoming the consensus position for winning in the West.

In race after race, candidates won in part by using their commitment for public lands as a wedge issue. At the same time, candidates who took an extreme position in favor of giving away public lands and putting them at risk of private developmenta growing third rail in Western electoral politicsfaced stunning defeats. For example, Idaho politicians Sheryl Nuxoll and Jim Chmelik, both high-profile advocates for transferring national public lands to state ownership, lost their re-election bids in the primary election.

Questions on how we balance conservation with recreational use and energy development on public lands have long been a topic of debate in the region. But 2016 marked a key turning point in which standing up for protection and access to American public lands became a prerequisite for electoral success. And that momentum isnt going anywhere, especially in Montana where over 1,000 people turned out for the Public Lands Rally held earlier this year in Helena with Gov. Steve Bullock.

When Montana's former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke ran for re-election last November, he quickly pivoted away from the GOP platform supporting the disposal of American public lands. He even took the unusual step of resigning his position as a party delegate, citing his disagreement with his partys position. During a debate, then-Representative Zinke defended his record on the issue, saying: Let me make it clear. I am not in favor of selling or transferring public landssomething he repeated in his recent confirmation hearing to become secretary of the Interior.

As Greg Gianforte and Rob Quist vie for the House seat vacated by now-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, there will certainly be fierce policy debates. But what shouldnt be up for debate is the role American public lands play in Montanas economy, the importance of providing sufficient resources to our land managers, the importance of stream access for all in Montana, and the need to permanently fund Americas most important conservation programthe Land and Water Conservation Fund.

I look forward to watching how the candidates for Montanas congressional seat demonstrate that they understand the importance of accessing and protecting our public lands. If 2016 is any indication, outdoor issues will play an even more decisive role in future elections.
HELENA  After failing to win support for an increased wine tax last month, the governor's office returned to lawmakers Friday to pitch a revenue-raising plan that would broaden the request to include beer and spirits.

It's unclear how much more consumers would have to pay for a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer because the tax would be charged on producers or retailers, not directly on consumers as a sales tax.

The bill heard Friday comes about a month after the Senate Taxation Committee dashed an earlier effort sought by Gov. Steve Bullock to raise taxes on wine to establish a revenue stream to bolster the state's unrestricted spending account and pay for health and education programs included in his budget proposal.

"We heard out in the hall that the state is short of a couple bucks. We're willing to pitch in and pick up our share of the tab," said John Iverson, who represents the Montana Tavern Association.

However, most other alcohol industry and business groups stood against the new proposal, arguing that the tax would be a downer on business because of the possibility of higher prices.

Kristi Blazer of the Montana Beer and Wine Distributors Association called the tax selective and regressive.

Andy Bixler, a lobbyist for the Montana Associated Students, suggested many of his group's 40,000 members probably wouldn't mind passing along some of their beer money to the state's coffers.

"This is a counterintuitive position for students to take," Bixler joked, "but anything we can put back into the general fund that can find its way back to education would help us."

The initial bill sought only to tax wine, but met fierce opposition from wine producers and retailers, who objected to being singled out.

As a result, Democrats regrouped and Sen. Lea Whitford of Browning, who carried the original proposal, offered a new bill that now includes beer and spirits, as well as wine.

If adopted, the tax would raise $3.8 million in its first year, with $2.7 million going to the state's general fund and the rest going to Native American tribes and the state health department.

Under the proposal, the tax on wine would rise from 27 cents per liter to 30 cents  which is a much more modest boost than the doubling that had been initially proposed.

The new tax on beer would vary, depending on the size of the brewer, ranging from $1.43 per barrel for smaller operations to $4.73 for large ones. A barrel generally translates to about 250 pints of brew.
Months after opening a Planet Fitness in Helena, Dave Leon of Albany, New York, says hes bringing the New Hampshire-based franchise to Butte in addition to four other new locations throughout the state.

Leon, who has been a franchise owner with Planet Fitness since 2004, told The Montana Standard by phone Wednesday hes in the process of bidding on two properties in the Mining City, one of which is the old Hastings books and music store, 2307 Harrison Ave. He declined to name the other potential location but said both properties were between 20,000 and 23,000 square feet.

Should everything go according to plan, Leon said, the Butte Planet Fitness should open January 2018 and be similar to the Helena location, which boasts more than 100 cardio machines among other fitness equipment.

The gym will employ 20 to 25 people  with four full-time employees and one manager  and will be open 24 hours a day Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Leon said.

Basic memberships will be $10 per month while Black Card memberships will be $21.99 per month and include access to tanning, massage, and hydrotherapy among other amenities. All members will have free access to certified instructors.

Leon also has locations planned for Great Falls, Billings, Bozeman, and Missoula; the latter is slated to open in 30 days.

He said he was hesitant at first to open in smaller markets like Helena and Butte, but so far the Helena Planet Fitness has been generating interest and given him confidence that a Butte location can be successful.

A 30-year veteran of the fitness industry, Leon plans on relocating to the Big Sky State. He said hes always loved the pristine landscapes and wide open spaces of Montana and is an avid outdoorsman.

Leon has a development agreement with Planet Fitness for a territory that includes Wyoming and Montana, and he also has current and planned locations in Colorado and North Dakota.

It may seem like a risk to dive headfirst into franchise ownership, but this isnt Leons first time at the rodeo when it comes to owning Planet Fitness locations.

(The intermountain west) is a market Ive been working on for three years, said Leon, who owned 20 franchises in New York, which he has since sold in order to embark on his new enterprise.

Leon said when he started working with Planet Fitness in 2004, the company had just nine locations and was an industry outlier. It offered a judgment free atmosphere that was open to people of all shapes and sizes. Instead of juice bars and body builders, Leon said, Planet Fitness was filled with mere mortals  mothers, grandmothers, and everyone in between.

It was an unusual model, Leon said, noting that the company managed to tap into a niche market and now has over 1,300 locations.

We go after first-time fitness users, Leon said. Weve created a very comfortable, non-intimidating environment.

The world judges you. We dont at Planet Fitness, he continued, staying on brand with the company credo.

He added that Planet Fitness extends its company culture to its charitable efforts.

Last year the company gave $1.5 million to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and has collaborated with the organization on an anti-bullying campaign called the Judgment Free Generation. Leon said he makes contributions to local chapters in areas where he owns gyms.
A Butte man charged with shoving his wife's 13-year-old daughter into a door and kicking her 11-year-old brother in the ribs in 2015 was sentenced by Judge Brad Newman in Butte district court Thursday to five years in the Department of Corrections, with another five years deferred consecutively.

Taron Kifer, 32, originally pleaded not guilty in February 2016 to two felony counts of assault on a minor, but pleaded guilty to both charges without a plea deal on the day of his September trial after the prosecution revealed an incriminating suicide note Kifer had written.

A pre-sentencing investigation by the Montana Department of Corrections Probation and Parole Division recommended two consecutive five-year sentences to a facility determined by the DOC, with the second sentence deferred.

After cross-examining Kifer, Deputy County Attorney Ann Shea requested two five-year consecutive sentences to the Montana State Prison, saying the assaulted children and their siblings deserved justice.

"We have four children who will take forever to learn how to trust an adult again," Shea said.

Kifer's defense attorney Ed Sheehy said there's better treatment to be found in the community than in the Department of Corrections by the Montana Supreme Court's own admission, and that the Montana State Prison is no place for treatment.

"I'm not sure these children really understand what punishment in the criminal justice system is," Sheehy said.

Sheehy said his client was remorseful, and had undergone treatment for anger management for prior assault convictions, including four hours of treatment he had completed online last week.

The defense requested two consecutive deferred three-year sentences.

Newman said the case was difficult. While the judge agreed with the defense that it is customary for first time felons like Kifer to receive suspended sentences, the sentence must still be balanced with Kifer's previous three assault misdemeanors, two of them domestic.

"This is not the first time he chose to hurt someone," Newman said, "Obviously the treatment didn't hold."

Newman said that although he did believe Kifer to be remorseful that remorse had no bearing on his sentencing and does not prevent him from being a danger. He said four hours of anger management before sentencing wasn't enough.

Kifer's attorney requested his client not be arrested at the conclusion of the trial and instead be allowed to voluntarily surrender himself to law enforcement once the Department of Corrections had determined his placement.

Newman declined the request and Kifer was remanded to the custody of the sheriff.
One man is in the Butte jail facing four felony charges following a vehicle pursuit Wednesday night that ended in a collision at Ottawa and Farragut.

No one was seriously hurt, but Capt. Gary Becker of the Montana Highway Patrol said the incident included a chase that started from Montana Street around Front Street. He said the driver, Michael DeShazo, was driving erratically and several times drove into oncoming lanes.

The pursuit continued out Centennial Avenue, up Excelsior, over Park Street, down Utah, over Front, and onto Harrison Avenue, where DeShazo, in the wrong lane, forced oncoming traffic to dodge his car.

Becker said DeShazo then turned onto Ottawa, ran a stop sign at Farragut, and collided with a southbound pickup truck entering the intersection.

Becker said the chase started around 6 p.m. when the trooper saw DeShazo commit a traffic violation and attempted to pull him over. The vehicle fled with the trooper following. The trooper was in town as part of the Safety Enforcement Traffic Team, which rotates at locations throughout the state to deter impaired driving, Becker said.

The pickup truck driver was alone; DeShazo had one passenger. DeShazo was taken to St. James Healthcare and then to jail, Becker said.

DeShazo remained in jail Thursday afternoon, where charges include four felonies  possession of dangerous drugs, theft, and two counts of criminal endangerment  and four misdemeanors  fleeing/eluding police, DUI drugs or alcohol, possession of drug paraphernalia, and habitual offender operating a motor vehicle.
A bunch of 4-year-olds decked out in flashy St. Patrick's Day green can't all be wrong.

The Butte Head Start students were not shy in spoiling the plot line for Gov. Steve Bullock, who read aloud two St. Patrick's Day-themed picture books to them on Thursday.

It was Bullock's way of reinforcing his $12-million preschool grant program proposal to the Montana Legislature while celebrating pre-St. Patrick's Day festivities with the age group most affected by the legislation.

House Bill 563 would allow school districts, Head Start programs, and high-quality private providers to offer preschool for 4-year-olds at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.

"From my perspective, it's atrocious that Montana is one of a small handful of states that hasn't made these investments," said Bullock after the reading session.

Every dollar spent on high-quality preschool programs creates at least $7 in future savings to the communities and states that invest, according to his office.

"We know what a meaningful difference it makes for the kids. So I'm confident that the other states have figured out how to do this  and we ought to figure it out as well."

Before reiterating the benefits of early childhood education and encouraging lawmakers to support the bill, he read to attentive little ones in teachers Kathy Sundberg and Lee Ann Tierney's class.

Students eagerly shouted out next lines in "The Night Before St. Paddy's Day" and "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover," two of their familiar favorites.

The kids know the goal is to find a pot of gold for safekeeping, much like Bullock's ultimate wish for funding.

"It would be another resource for funding for 4-year-olds," said Margie Seccomb, executive director of Action Inc., the umbrella for Head Start in Butte. "It's important for Head Start and the school district to be partners as we expand preschool services in our community."

She said Action Inc.'s goal "is to deepen that funding."

Montana is one of only six states without a publicly funded pre-kindergarten option for 4-year-olds.

Studies show that children who take part in high-quality early childhood education programs are more likely to read at grade level, less likely to repeat a grade or require special education, more likely to earn a high school diploma, and less likely to become teenage parents, require public assistance, abuse drugs, or end up in jail.

He's trying to sway legislators, parents, educators, and business leaders. But in the classroom, the littlest folks are his constituents, one of whom said the governor is "like the president of Montana."

If passed, the bill would help free up time for elementary teachers to work with more students. But the Head Start kids at Thursday's gathering were too absorbed in story time to care.

"They were correcting me, but look  we were talking to 4-year-olds," he said. "It's about being ready to learn  to listen, to engage, to have the basic letters and numbers, giving those kids all those skills. It was great fun."

The first hearing on HB563 is scheduled for Monday.
So far, St. Patricks Day leprechauns brought good luck to the region by keeping potential flooding at bay as warm temperatures hasten the snow melt.

Sheriffs in southwest Montana reported no flooding Friday morning despite a National Weather Service warning that it could occur.

Beaverhead County Sheriff Franklin Kluesner said a normal runoff is seeing water washing over dirt roads in the Upper Big Hole River Valley, but nothing has washed out.

The dirt Bannack Road near Bannack State Park, about 25 miles west of Dillon, washed out last weekend, but it has since reopened, he said.

Anaconda Police Chief Tim Barkell said he drove along Warm Springs Creek Friday morning in advance of Anacondas St. Patricks Day parade, and the creek looked pretty good.

He added that there has been no flooding reported in the county at this time.

Madison County Sheriff Roger Thompson said a creek swelled over its banks for about an hour in Virginia City last week, but he has seen no other flooding since.

Powell County Sheriff Scott Howard said flooding could happen, you never know, but as of Friday morning, he had not heard of any streams spilling.

Kluesner said Dillon experienced a record high of 60 degrees this week, so residents should be aware that flooding could happen as winters snowpack melts.

Water is a pretty powerful force, Kluesner said. Just be aware this time of year.
MISSOULA  President Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget sends some troubling messages to both rural American and the wider world, according to Montana's former senator and U.S. ambassador to China Max Baucus.

"It's very sad to see a budget proposal like this," Baucus said. "It's red meat on a surface level to Trump's supporters, but it will hurt rural America."

The 62-page budget released on Thursday calls for a 21 percent cut to the Department of Agriculture and a 12 percent reduction at the Department of Interior, which together manage Montana's national forests, parks and public lands. Baucus called it a disturbing indication of Trump's instinct to fight with people rather than work with them.

"It comes down to a realization I had in Congress 34 years ago," Baucus said in a telephone interview from his home in Bozeman. "We in rural states have to fight hard or we're going to be taken advantage of when Washington starts doling out dollars. I don't want to take advantage of other parts of the country, but I don't want them to take advantage of us.

"I see this budget especially giving a big boost to defense states  mainly southern and coastal states. We have all this federal land. Eastern and coastal states don't have as much federal land, so they have a tax base that supports higher standards of living and greater commerce. We need programs like PILT and SRS to balance things out."

Trump's budget proposes unspecified cuts to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program Baucus helped create to support communities dominated by federal land management. The related Secure Rural Schools (SRS) forms a major part of many county budgets and recently expired.

On Thursday, Congress heard testimony about how Beaverhead County recently lost $330,000 in SRS funds needed to match almost $2.4 million for a 17-mile county road infrastructure project. The county commissioners had to nearly zero out its budget reserves to sustain the project.

Baucus spent the past three years as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China after serving six terms in the Senate and two in the House. Trump has not named a new ambassador.

"That's kind of pertinent, with Secretary (of State Rex) Tillerson visiting as we speak," Baucus said. "There's a big power vacuum in in the State Department. The Chinese will notice. We still don't have a full American ambassador to China, and we don't have one in Japan, either. I noticed he (Tillerson) didn't stop at the American embassy in Japan when he was there. That's a big morale-booster when the secretary stops by. Instead, they're looking at a 30 percent cut in the Department of State budget."

Baucus pointed to the recent example of North Korea's belligerent missile launches and nuclear testing. On Friday, Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" And Tillerson told South Korean officials that Obama's policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea could be replaced by a more military approach.

"Kim Jong Un is giving us fits, and it's getting existential," Baucus said. "That's something where only the United States can lead. South Korea can't solve the Kim Jong Un problem. China doesn't want to. It's up to us."

On the other hand, Baucus said Trump's rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement would hurt American business opportunities.

"If we send signals that we're maybe not as engaged, we lose influence," Baucus said. "Countries around the world want America to lead. We are the economic powerhouse  the country of free enterprise and rule of law and independent judiciary. They're saying, 'Please, please stay involved. We get a lot of pressure from the Chinese, and we need the United States to be here as a counter-balance.' With the U.S. leaving, that gives the Chinese a lot more influence. It leaves a big void."

However, the Chinese and American citizens probably will see very different spending proposals as Congress puts its priorities on the budget process, Baucus said.

"I think (Democratic Sen.) Jon Tester is doing a great job, and (Republican Sen.) Steve Daines is doing a great job," Baucus said of Montana's current congressional delegation. "They've been around. We'll just have to fight. I think Jon and Steve will be fierce in their opposition."
MISSOULA  A great many things in Missoula would disappear without federal funding of the arts, and some existing events may never have come to be.

President Donald Trump's Thursday proposal to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  which together make up about 0.07 percent of the federal budget  would slash Montana's art programs and grants, financially crippling many of the agencies.

Humanities Montana receives about 80 percent of its budget  around half a million dollars  from the National Endowment for the Humanities, according to Programs and Grants Director Kim Anderson.

"Without the National Endowment for the Humanities, rural states like Montana would really struggle to have access to history and literature," Anderson said. "It would certainly be dramatic, and deeply impact our ability to serve Montanans."

The nonprofit funds more than 300 programs around the state in schools and small communities, trying to reach underserved areas first, Anderson said.

All its programs are free.

Humanities Montana awards grants to county historical museums, local libraries, and state parks for historical and educational purposes.

"It's just such a broad array," Anderson said. "People are surprised when they learn they have been taking advantage of Humanities programs throughout the years."

Without the federal money, Anderson supposed Humanities' only choice would be to raise the $500,000 a year from private donations.

"That's a huge chunk to make up through fundraising," she said. "In a state like Montana there aren't necessarily the funds to be raised."

The Montana Book Festival, now in its third year, got its start from the state National Endowment for the Humanities affiliate Humanities Montana, which ran the Montana Festival of the Book for 15 years, from 1999-2014.

Humanities Montana refocused its programs in 2014, leaving the book festival to local organizers, with some support as needed.

So began the Montana Book Festival, which received a three-year $15,000 grant from Humanities Montana in 2016.

"We know we're OK this year, but the next two years?" said Barbara Theroux, one of the festival organizers. "To have arts completely cut...it's not serving humanity."

The Montana Arts Council, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts along with matching grants from state funds, gives out about $250,000 a year to arts programs, $120,000 for Artists in Schools and another $36,000 as "strategic investments," doled out in $1,000 grants.

"We reach almost every county," Cinda Holt, the council's interim co-director, said. "If we lost the NEA funding, we would lose about half our activities."

Funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has comprised around 30 percent to 40 percent of the Montana Arts Council's budget for the last 50 years. It totaled nearly $800,000 in 2017, with the state matching more than $500,000, Holt said.

According to the council's website, Missoula program partnerships alone received about $45,000 from the council as well as around $20,000 for Artists in Schools and Communities programming in 2017.

Recipients included Zootown Arts Community Center, Montana Repertory Theatre, Montana Museum of Arts and Culture, Missoula Cultural Council, Missoula Art Museum, Clay Studio of Missoula, and CoMotion Dance Co.

Lewis and Clark Elementary, Lowell School, and Missoula County Public Schools all received Artists in Schools grants.

"What would our world look like if it was half-sized?" Holt said. "That would be the broad-stroke sample."

Other area programs that received funding from the NEA last year include the Missoula Children's Theatre, which won a $30,000 grant to tour a play in underserved communities and U.S. military bases.

MCT has received 13 grants form the NEA since 1998, ranging from $15,000 to $55,000.

The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes received a $20,000 grant for the Missoula Writing Collaborative to establish creative writing residencies taught by professional writers. It was the third year the collaborative received funding for reservation residencies.

The International Choral Festival, which is held every three years in Missoula, has received $10,000-15,000 grants five times in a row since 2003, for every event it puts on.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants make up around 20 percent of Montana PBS's budget and 10 percent of Montana Public Radio's.

Well over half of MTPR's funding comes from private donations, while around 40 percent of PBS funding comes from donors.

"Loss of CPB funding for us would be devastating," Director Eric Hyyppa said. "It would have a cascading effect on public broadcasting."

PBS stations around the country share programs with each other, Hyyppa said, so a loss of funding would eliminate more than just Montana-made shows from the schedule.

MontanaPBS has the largest reach of any TV network in the state, with more than 80 percent of Montana's population able to tune in for free with an antenna.

Hyyppa was most concerned that it keep up its early childhood education programs, which are so popular they have a dedicated channel, airing shows 24/7 aimed at pre-kindergarten-age children.

"In many Montana households it's the only quality pre-K programming available to them," Hyyppa said.

Holt, Anderson, and Hyyppa said they were in contact with Republican Steve Daines and Democrat Jon Tester (both of whom sit on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee) and urged all Montanans who appreciate their local artists, theater programs, book readings, history museums, and dance classes to do the same.

Montana PBS has already linked to an online petition "Protect My Public Media" on their website in response to the proposed cuts.

"We're very hopeful," Hyyppa said. "But we also take the threats very seriously."
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As a longtime adversary of EPA, Trumps selection of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency should give Montanans pause. More to the point and close to home, our own Senator Steve Daines is willing to diminish the billion-dollar Superfund cleanup of the upper Clark Fork watershed for a soundbite.

Just before voting to confirm Pruitt to head the EPA, Daines made a startling promise  he and Scott will clean up the Berkeley Pit. It has been on the list for over 20 years. It is time to fix it.

Evidently, Senator Daines in his eagerness to condemn the EPA for complacency, missed the fact that EPA, with the support of Montana Department of Environmental Quality, selected a remedy for the Berkeley Pit way back in 1994. Here are the underlying facts that lie hidden in plain view.

FACT. In the Record of Decision for the Pit, the Agencies acknowledged that contaminated groundwater filling the Pit could never be cleaned up because it is technically impracticable to do so.

That reality bears repeating  the Berkeley Pit cant be cleaned up.

Instead, the remedy entails pumping and treating extremely contaminated pit water to constantly keep up with inflow to the Pit and discharging the cleaned water into Silver Bow Creek, headwaters of the Clark Fork of the Columbia. And it will continue in perpetuity  a legal term for eternity.

FACT. The parties that are responsible for that remedy and for paying the bill - oil giant British Petroleum and the current mining company, Montana Resources - willingly signed up for that remedy under a consent decree, which was approved by a federal court in 2002.

Why willingly? Because technical impracticability evaluation is a regulatory tool that EPA established to protect industry from ineffective remedies or clean ups that are inordinately costly.

The evaluation looked at four scenarios and rejected three. It was simple to discard the truly absurd notion of removing the source of acid and toxins  the ore body itself. That would require a pit 60 times bigger than the Berkeley and would remove Butte from the face of the earth.

Less absurd but still not feasible  fill up the Berkeley Pit and the inter-connected 10,000 miles of underground mine workings with grout or neutralizing lime. The price tag for grouting or neutralizing - somewhere between 9 and 13 billion dollars, with the caveat that even at that price, it might not be effective.

Through that process of elimination, it becomes evident that there is only one reliable remedy  manage by pumping and treating mine impacted water forever.

FACT. The Berkeley Pit is not the largest Superfund site in the United States as Daines so heedlessly stated. It is, in fact, at the very headwaters of what is arguably the largest Superfund Complex. Mining damages to the upper Clark Fork of the Columbia extend 120 miles, from Butte to Missoula - the result of over 100 years of unregulated mining. Without question, the EPA, Montana DEQ and British Petroleum have been largely successful in tackling a world-class environmental problem.

The Clark Fork Complex and the Berkeley Pit are environmental cautionary tales for Montana voters.

If we treasure clean rivers and a healthy environment we will depend on political leaders who are brave and willing enough to tackle the complexities of environmental management and regulation through sound science. Leaders who recognize that the decisions we make today  will have consequences that last forever.

Steve Daines has shown his stripes.

In Montana we like to say  whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting. Montana voters need to elect fighters that aim carefully before pulling the trigger.

-- Joe Griffin is a hydrogeologist who focused the last 26 years of his career on the Butte and Anaconda Superfund sites. He is retired from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality where he was the State Project Officer for Butte Priority Soils.

-- David Williams of Butte is a geoscientist with over 30 years of dealing with environmental issues related to active and inactive metal mines.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  "Gawkers" and communication were two challenges Muscatine agencies agreed made response to the recent tornado more difficult.

Muscatine agencies, including Muscatine County Emergency Management, the Muscatine Police Department, Muscatine Fire Department, Muscatine Public Works and Muscatine Power and Water, gathered Thursday morning to review the response to the tornado that swept through Muscatine on March 6.

All agreed agencies responded well, but they hope to improve the response to future events.

Matt Shook, the Muscatine County emergency management director, said he hopes bringing the agencies together to review the response will help them understand their agencies' functions.

"The first thing would be I think people are getting a better awareness of other agencies and what their process is," Shook said.

Response

Muscatine County Joint Communications received 220 administrative calls, 66 calls for service, 104 911 calls, and more than 840 radio transmissions between 10 and 11 p.m. the night of the tornado.

"I think our group that we had here was extremely professional and got everything done that they needed to," said Chris Jasper, the lead dispatcher for MUSCOM.

Most agencies prioritize their response in events like the tornado.

Muscatine Public Works began by clearing the main thoroughfares, similar to how snow removal works, said Randy Howell, the street maintenance supervisor.

Other priorities included school routes and routes to the hospital, Howell said.

Muscatine Power and Water had lineworkers out working to pick up downed power lines, focusing on areas where the lines were live and could have caused injury, and moving down the list of priorities.

The Muscatine Police Department had an officer circling locations around the town that had been hit on a map, and letting the officers on the streets, about 14, know where help might be needed.

Then, Capt. Steve Snider said, officers went through the areas going door-to-door to see if people needed assistance. The process was "organized chaos," he said.

Lt. Jeff Jirak said the multiple agencies working together, like when the police department asked for barricades to be set up and road crews responded to help, made the process go more smoothly than it otherwise could have.

"We work very well together," he said.

Challenges

One challenge agencies said they faced was the number of people who were out on Tuesday looking at the storm damage. Many of the "gawkers," said Jeff Hedrington, the assistant director of utility services delivery at Muscatine Power and Water, were people ignoring barricades that blocked damaged areas.

Safety was one concern, Hedrington said, as crews from Muscatine Power and Water were trying to reach all the wires that had been knocked down.

"Until the wires are picked up you have to assume they are energized," he said.

Muscatine Public Works crews also were trying to clear roads of debris the next day, and Howell said he had been concerned about safety.

Snider said the police department tried to help when other agencies called about citizens coming to look at damage.

Another concern raised was the need for redundancies. Shook said because MUSCOM lost internet in the storm, they were unaware that some calls were not going out. Communication, he said, could have been improved.

Possible Solutions

"We need to have triple redundancy," Shook said.

Having a backup for the internet, like a group messaging app on cell phones, would allow communication to go out more efficiently.

Jason Wake, with Supreme Radio Communications, said he has seen agencies use a kind of call tree, where dispatch could let a commanding officer know that officers were needed in an area, and the commander could then pass that message to those in the field.

Although many of the agencies set up their own command posts, mapping out the damage and communicating with MUSCOM and people out on the streets, Shook said an emergency operations command center would help coordination.

The EOC would be set up at the Public Safety building, with representatives from entities mapping out the damaged areas and keeping track of where help was needed.

A command post out in the field, he said, would also help coordination and communication.

Shook said he hopes the meeting will help agencies know how to best help each other, and continue to improve response in case of another large-scale emergency.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
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 []
NTV business journalist Wallace Kantai has spoken of a very interesting conversation he had with Central Bank Governor Patrick Njoroge.

Apparently, most mobile phone loans (Mshwari, KCB Mpesa etc.) are taken during some very unusual hours. Upto a third of all loans are taken between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.

It would make sense that the people driving this habit (at this time) are drunkards paying for their night out, but the actual reason for this habit is quite noble.

Small business-people, the kind who work in vibanda and markets, are actually the ones behind this habit.

This is how Wallace explained it on Facebook.

**********************************************

Was told a very interesting story by the Central Bank Governor: Turns out that, for one of the mobile phone credit services, up to a third of loans are taken between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Most are repaid within twenty four hours. When the CBK dug deeper into this statistic, here is what they found out: a mama mboga (fruit and veg seller, for the non-Kiswahili speakers among us  typically a woman) will be awake at that hour, and borrow around 5,000 bob.

She will then send money to her wholesaler at Marikiti. Once shes placed her order, she then sends money to her mkokoteni  handcart  dude, who knows where to drop off the consignment. She then wakes the children up, prepares them for, and dispatches them off to, school. She then calls her nduthi  motorbike  guy, who picks her up at home and drops her off at her trading location. She trades all day, and by evening, repays the mobile loan, only to begin the process again a few hours later.
A nursery school pupil with serious gunshot injuries was turned away from a private hospital after her parents failed to raise the Sh20,000 admission fee, The Standard reports.

Senteiyo Kateiya, 6, lay in deep pain for one-and-a-half hours inside an ambulance at St Marys Hospital as Red Cross officials and relatives pleaded with hospital administrators to admit her.

Kateiya, a pupil at Mukutani Primary School, survived an attack that left 11 dead when suspected members of the Pokot community attacked homes belonging to members of the Ilchamus community on Tuesday night.

According to her uncle, Benjamin Parkitore, they pleaded with the hospital managers from 11 am to 12 pm.

She was later taken to the Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital in Nakuru by Red Cross officials.

When contacted, St Marys Hospital administrator Seth Manera said according to the hospitals procedures, patients are required to pay cash deposits before being taken in for further observation.

He said according to the nursing officer who received the girl, she was stable and did not require any emergency attention.

The case was not an emergency, said Mr Manera.

Doctors at Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital said the girl sustained serious head and chest injuries.

Additional Reporting by The Standard.
SEOUL, South Korea  The United States signaled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend. China has been advocating diplomacy to avoid a conflict on the divided peninsula.

Also Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!

Past U.S. administrations have considered military options against North Korea and have publicly said that an attack on the U.S. or its allies would prompt a devastating response.

Tillersons comments were unusual, however, as he appeared to be implying, in public, that the U.S. would consider military force as a way of preventing an attack by Pyongyang, and not just as a means of retaliation. It also comes amid a greater sense of urgency about the threat because of North Koreas rapid progress toward developing the means to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile. Risks of military action are high as North Korea could unleash a massive artillery barrage on Seoul in retaliation.

The Trump administration says it is conducting a review of North Korea policy. At a news conference in Seoul, alongside his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said U.S was exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. He said the Obama administrations policy of strategic patience that saw tightening of sanctions to try and get North Korea back to negotiations aimed at denuclearization  had ended.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against North Korea, he said, all of the options are on the table.
WASHINGTON  Though presenting a study in contrasts, President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a similar tack Friday in sidestepping differences after their first meeting at the White House. Trump asserted with a smile they had at least one thing in common: being wiretapped by the Obama administration.

Trump, the celebrity real estate developer and former reality television star, repeated his contention that former President Barack Obama may have tapped his phones in Trump Tower. He sought to turn the explosive charge into a light joke when asked about concerns raised by the British government that the White House is now citing a debunked claim that U.K. spies snooped on Trump.

At least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump said casually, referring to 2014 reports that the U.S. was monitoring Merkels cellphone conversations. As for the most recent report, Trump said he shouldnt be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who had accused British intelligence of helping Obama spy on him. The German chancellor maintained her composure during the awkward diplomatic moment.

When a German reporter asked Trump if he regrets any of his commentary on Twitter, Trump said, Very seldom.

On another subject, Trump also pushed back against the notion in Europe that his America First agenda means hes an isolationist, responding firmly, I dont believe in an isolationist policy. The president appeared to bristle at the suggestion from a German reporter, adding, I dont know what newspaper youre reading, but I guess that would be another example of, as you say, fake news.

Merkel often attempted to project a more conciliatory approach, saying she and Trump had not yet had much time to discuss economic issues. She said the success of Germans has always been one where the German success is one side of the coin and the other side of the coin has been European unity and European integration. Thats something of which Im deeply convinced.

Those comments appeared aimed at making a case to Trump on the benefits of the European Union. Trump backed Britains departure from the EU and has expressed skepticism of multilateral trade agreements.

The two leaders tried to express their common bonds but showed minimal rapport in their first encounter, a departure from Merkels warm relations with Obama during his eight years as president. During a photo op in the Oval Office, the two did not shake hands before reporters. At the start of the news conference, Merkel sought to break the ice, saying that it was much better to talk to one another than about one another.

Merkel said delicately that while she represents German interests, Trump stands up for, as is right, American interests. That is our task respectively. She said they were trying to address also those areas where we disagree but tried to bring people together.

We need to be fair with each other, Merkel said, saying both countries were expecting that something good comes out of it for their own people.

The meetings at the White House included discussions on strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group, the conflict in Afghanistan and resolving Ukraines conflict, all matters that require close cooperation between the U.S. and Germany.

The talks, postponed from Tuesday because of a snowstorm, aimed to represent a restart of a relationship complicated by Trumps rhetoric on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Trump frequently accused the chancellor of ruining Germany for allowing an influx of refugees and other migrants from Syria and accused his campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, of wanting to be Americas Angela Merkel.

During the news conference, Trump predicted that a new health care law would be passed by a substantial margin and pretty quickly, expressing optimism for his top legislative priority.

The new president reaffirmed the United States strong support for NATO but reiterated his stance that NATO allies need to pay their fair share for the cost of defense. Trump said many countries owe vast sums of money but he declined to identify Germany as one of the nations.

Prior to his inauguration, Trump declared NATO obsolete but has since modified his stance, telling European leaders the alliance remains of strategic importance. Only the U.S. and four other members currently reach the benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. Germany currently spends 1.23 percent of its GDP on defense, but it is being increased.

Both leaders pointed to their work on the conflict in Afghanistan and efforts to combat terrorism.

When the topic moved to trade, Trump said the U.S. would do fantastically well in its trade relations with Germany. The president has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements but suggested he was only trying to revise trade deals to better serve U.S. interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany was $64.9 billion last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

The negotiators for Germany have done a far better job than the negotiators for the United States, but hopefully we can even it out. We dont want victory, we want fairness, Trump said.

Merkel emphasized the need for trade deals that fairly benefit both countries. That is the spirit I think in which we ought to be guided in negotiating any agreement between the United States of America and the EU, she said.
Napa County transportation leaders are weighing whether adding Highway 29 lanes in the south county is a congestion-easing solution or an expensive way of running in place.

That made for a lively discussion at Wednesdays Napa Valley Transportation Authority retreat. The agency with representatives from the county and its five cities looks at regional transportation issues. The NVTA in 2014 approved a $349 million vision for Highway 29 in American Canyon and Napa. Among other things, this plan calls for someday widening the highway through American Canyon to the Highway 12/Jameson Canyon entrance from four lanes to six lanes, if the money can be found.

NVTA Executive Director Kate Miller broached the topic of rethinking that vision and sticking with todays four lanes, two going each direction.

If you build a six-lane road, traffic is going to follow, Miller said. People go where theres capacity.

The lane-widening portion of the Highway 29 plan could cost more than $80 million, not counting right-of-way purchases.

Miller said the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has restrictions on funding road expansions. Plus, a new state environmental law requires taking a look at how road expansion projects would increase vehicle miles traveled.

With all of these factors, she doesnt foresee federal and state money flowing to Napa County for the widening project.

Basically, well be responsible for funding the whole thing if we decide to widen, Miller said.

Though she didnt mention the topic, one money-raising option suggested by local transportation leaders in the past is for voters to pass a county tax for new transportation projects.

We could spend the rest of the day talking about adding two more lanes through American Canyon and nobody has money to pay for it, Yountville Mayor John Dunbar said.

Miller also talked about self-driving vehicles that can communicate with each other easing traffic congestion. These vehicles will virtually eliminate the 25 percent of delays caused by accidents and braking/acceleration decisions, she said. They will increase opportunities for sharing vehicles.

Her question to NVTA board members  does it make sense to invest tens of millions of dollars into a highway widening project that might become obsolete in a decade?

The American Canyon contingent had doubts about jettisoning the highway-widening vision, including skepticism that self-driving vehicles will make a big traffic difference anytime soon.

I wouldnt kid myself and say, OK, in the next five years there will be auto dealerships all over the place selling these things, American Canyon Mayor Leon Garcia said. Or in 10 years.

American Canyon City Councilman Mark Joseph said rush-hour congestion in American Canyon is miserable, with traffic oozing from the highway into neighborhoods. He didnt like the idea of saying it will stay miserable while waiting for a hoped-for technological solution.

Somewhere along the line, youve got to do the old-fashioned thing and thats create the capacity to address the traffic thats there, Joseph said.

The NVTA Board of Directors didnt resolve the Highway 29 widening issue. With no money available to add lanes, an instant resolution wasnt needed. In the short term, the agency is looking at improving express bus service and bike and pedestrian paths. American Canyon is looking at building parallel roads in the city.

Another project in the 2014 Highway 29 plan is to build an interchange at the signalized, Highway 12 entrance to Jameson Canyon leading to Fairfield. But Miller said the $80 million design proposed by the state Department of Transportation would only marginally ease the bad congestion at this chokepoint.

Transportation leaders need to rethink this project, she said.

The signal at Highway 29 and Highway 221 intersection is another chokepoint. The NVTA for years has planned to build a $50 million flyover there, with environmental studies well underway.

A new, and possibly cheaper, version of the project calls for ditching the flyover. Instead, Highway 29 would cross over Highway 221/Soscol Ferry Road. Two roundabouts, one on each side of the overpass, would route Highway 221 and Soscol Ferry Road vehicles to their desired destinations.

It just feels more Napa-ish and less freeway-ish, Miller said.

The northernmost Highway 29 chokepoint addressed in the 2014 vision is the signalized, three-way Highway 121 intersection, where Highway 121 goes west to Sonoma County. The NVTA has a $500,000 reconfiguration plan that would leave traffic in Highway 29 northbound lanes always flowing.

I think this is an improvement we are all anxious to make, Miller said.

The NVTA Board of Directors held its transportation retreat at the Christian Brothers Retreat and Conference Center in the Mayacamas Mountains a few miles west of the city of Napa.
My grandfather all his life had to deal with two words in this valley: "Diego" and "Wop."

Diego he had no problem with because it referenced him as an Italian from a region in Italy. Even though he was not from that region he knew the meaning behind it was (uninformed) but a meaning of acknowledgement of him being an Italian in origin. Whereas WOP meant Without Papers. That was a derogatory slur meaning he was not an American.

Well, in his heart he was such an American where he even tried to enlist in WWII to fight the Italians. He was not allowed because he was actually born in Brazil, which was neutral. But most of my family did fight. Grandpa became a naturalized citizen.

My point: the Indian mascot is a representable symbol that can have dual meanings based upon actions. The actions representing the Napa High Indian logo has been nothing but positive in strength, integrity, passion, and knowledge. The fact is that the actions since the beginning have not only reinforced those ideals but strengthened the image of the Indian image. It also strengthens the image of an educational facility whereas both compliment each other in the aspiration of honesty and integrity. A noble pursuit.

You can take the negativity on any word in the dictionary but the symbols associated with each dictionary word can have positive or negative allegiance, and the Napa High Indian symbol in this case has stood for the best since its inception. I can think of no other more critical proof than actions and the actions related to this symbol for Napa High propels it to a positive level especially for whom it represents.

Tragedies have been done but this is a symbol representing in action a reminder of the best of what was lost and it should not be hidden. Only the reminder like the Indian symbol will keep alive a memory. Actions make it derogatory or respected and since the inception of this symbol for Napa High, actions have proven it's been a respected symbol.

Dennis Bertolucci

Napa

Editor's note: Historians say the ethnic slur "wop" did not derive from "Without Papers," but rather is most likely a shortening of the Italian word "Guappo," then a slang term for a dandy or fancy person and often used to imply that the person was a gangster or mafia member.
According to the Napa Valley Unified School District's website, the sale of Vintage High School Farm is still pending approval. It appalls me that no fight to preserve this jewel of open space has emerged, at the Register, at City Hall, or in the Parks and Rec Department.

The farm is currently in the public domain, owned by the taxpayers, yet we are idly sitting by and allowing it to be sold to developers for more million-dollar homes. It is ironic, I think, that the school district says it is a "unique community resource" and in the next breath says the property should be sold for its Highest and Best Use, anticipated to be for a residential subdivision.

The state of California attempted to stop this kind of profiteering and ensure preservation of public open space by passing the Naylor Act, under which the city can acquire the 10-acre parcel for as little as 25 percent of market value. Where is the vision we need in this town?

Brian Hunt

Napa

Editor's note: The Register asked the school district about the points in this letter and spokeswoman Elizabeth Emmett said the district's lawyers do not believe the parcel is covered by the Naylor Act, which has many caveats and applies only to certain kinds of properties. She also said the district remains committed to using the proceeds to develop a new replacement farm on a site adjacent to the high school. The old farm site will be sold with the provision that the farm will remain in operation until the new one is built, so there will be no interruption of service to the students. The district is in the process of developing a committee, including some students, to make plans for the new site.
NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Rose Gottemoeller, will meet with the Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia, H.E. Mr. Giorgi Mghebrishvili, at NATO Headquarters on Monday, 20 March 2017.

There will be no media opportunity.

Still imagery of the meeting will be available after the event on the NATO website.

Follow the Deputy Secretary General on Twitter (@Gottemoeller). Also follow us at (@NATOPress).
According to NPOMash, a Bastion battalion includes eight launchers on the MZKT-7930 high-mobility chassis. Each launcher carries two Oniks (SS-N-26 Strobile) supersonic missiles ready for launch on warning. There also are launcher-loaders with reloads.



According to the Tactical Missiles Corporations website, the table of organization and equipment of the Bal battalion resembled that of the Bastion battalion much. However, each Bal launcher has eight missiles for the enemy, rather than two.



Expert Dmitry Boltenkov reminds that coastal defense missile battalions were stationed on the Kurils in Soviet times.



"Units equipped with the Redut [SS-C-1 Sepal] and Rubezh [SS-C-3 Styx] antiship systems were stationed on the Kuril Islands in the 1980s," Boltenkov says, "specifically at Simushir and Iturup. However, they were withdrawn from the islands and disbanded in the earlier 1990s."



According to former Russian Ambassador to Japan Alexander Panov, Russias reinforcement of its Kurils-based forces is a signal of its resolution to retain the southern Kurils, presumably.



"Most probably, the Japanese will turn the blind eye to the Russian Federations steps, because there have been positive dynamics in the bilateral relations," the diplomat says. "No one needs a row. It is possible, however, that they will ask for an explanation of the military build-up via the diplomatic channels. Tokyo is quite content with the status quo."



Panov stressed that the dynamics of the Russian-Japanese relations have been very positive.



"Premier Abe has a good strategic view and realizes that Japan should become more independent and needs close partnership with the Russian Federation for this purpose," the expert tells the Izvestia daily. "This will allow offsetting the growing influence of China and ensure an economic growth through cooperation with the Russian Far East."



 Copyright 2017 TASS. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A few days before President Trump issued his first executive order limiting travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Emory University staff and administrators were already working behind the scenes to strengthen a support network for international students and scholars.

Since rumors about the Jan. 27 order had circulated earlier that week, Shinn Ko, director of Emorys International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), knew there would be questions and concerns.

When the order was finally released  with little clarification and a demand that it go into effect immediately  there was a lot of confusion, not just for Emory, but for everybody, recalls Ko, who oversees immigration and advising services for the universitys growing international community.

Amid the chaos, her goal was simple: Secure the best, most accurate information, understand thoroughly the implications for Emorys international community, and communicate those facts as quickly as possible.

Through the swift collaboration of colleagues within the Division of Campus Life, the Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives, and top university administrators, Emorys international students and scholars were receiving emails offering support and resources within hours. ISSS advisers also reached out to individual students and scholars with offers of assistance.

That weekend, Emory President Claire E. Sterk issued an all-Emory email sharing her concern about the impact of the order, promising to monitor the situation closely and affirming the universitys commitment to protecting the rights of all our faculty, staff and students irrespective of their country of origin.

By the following week, the university had quickly assembled a public town hall, with a panel moderated by Polly Price, associate dean of faculty at Emory Law. Panelists included two immigration attorneys who addressed how they anticipated the executive order would impact Emorys roughly 4,000 international students and scholars  40 to 50 of whom are from countries targeted by the initial travel ban, says Philip Wainwright, vice provost for global strategy and initiatives.

The biggest barrier was the uncertainty  there were things that we just didnt know, and for students, it was hard to know if what they were hearing (about the ban) was real, Wainwright recalls.

More than 100 people packed Winship Ballroom that day, including international students, faculty and campus staff  a turnout Ko found encouraging.

I saw lots of interest, not just from those who were affected, but from people at the university who really wanted to offer support, she says. I know our students and scholars felt that.

Meeting uncertainty with support

The initial Jan. 27 executive order  later put on hold by a federal court  and a new 90-day travel ban issued earlier this month to replace it have left Emory, like other universities across the nation, navigating largely uncharted waters.

For Emorys international community of students, scholars and faculty, lingering uncertainties surrounding the ban created anxiety and confusion. Rick Huizinga, coordinator for the Office of International Student Life in the Division of Campus Life, recalls attending a regular lunch-hour coffee held at Brooks Commons in the Cannon Chapel each Friday that routinely draws 80 to 100 international students.

Visiting with a group of graduate students from Iran that day, he found the mood gloomy and students brimming with questions. It was all about visas, he recalls. They were wondering if they would be okay to leave for the summer, to pursue overseas job prospects, or even attend long-planned conferences in Europe.

There was an overwhelming sense of not knowing what to do, he says.

Like ISSS, Huizingas office would reach out that weekend to connect with students and scholars from countries targeted by the travel ban. The swift work of ISSS, which deals directly with student immigration issues, made their job much easier, he says.

A week following the Jan. 27 announcement, Huizinga says he could see that Emorys efforts were already making a difference. The mood wasnt gloomy  there were still concerns, but the student outlook was definitely more positive, he says. After two weeks, you could see a resilience in students, who were trying to block out the noise going on at the national level and focus on their studies and research.

Between the work of ISSS, public forums of support at individual schools and units, and steady communication from Sterk  who was among 48 American college and university presidents who wrote a letter urging President Trump to rectify or rescind the executive order  initial anxieties began to recede.

Their work really helped make it better for our students, Huizinga says.

Connecting, communicating, caring

When Trump issued a revamped executive order on immigration March 6, Emory was ready with a strategy in place for how to connect and communicate with international students, including a system for sharing developing news and updates through the ISSS website.

Legal challenges have already been filed against the recent order, and a judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide temporary restraining order March 15 preventing it from going into effect as scheduled on March 16.

Wainwright says the university will keep tracking developments in three distinct areas: bans against travel from certain countries; bans against certain refugees; and possible delays in obtaining entry visas.

While Emorys Office of Government and Community Affairs works to educate elected officials about Emorys international students and scholars, the university continues to respond to the challenges these students and scholars face, reaching out to offer support through the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life as well as the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services.

At last months University Senate meeting, Sterk issued a call to action, challenging the senate to create a working group comprised of faculty, staff and students to propose activities that could help foster a sense of community and self-care and to gather information to produce an inclusive assessment of the wide range of views that exist within the campus community.

In Campus Life, work has begun to secure summer housing for international students who may feel uncertain about going home for the semester, and Emory is working with international students whove already made plans to study abroad.

The Office of Admissions is also monitoring international enrollment applications  a trend being watched closely at colleges and universities across the country, according to a report published in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week.

Currently, international students comprise about 17 percent of the overall student body. Maintaining a robust international student population is vital to the Emory experience, Wainwright says.

The world our students will be living and working within is going to involve reaching across borders and across cultures, he says.

Its essential for the education of our students to encounter students from other countries and cultures, which enriches classroom experiences and enriches our research.
Law school ranked among Best Schools for Practical Training

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill.  For a fourth consecutive year, the SIU School of Law earned recognition as one of National Jurist magazines Best Schools for Practical Training.

The magazine ranked the law school one of the top 64 in the nation for practical training for 2017. The law school has been ranked annually since 2014.

The ranking assesses areas that include clinical experience, externships, simulation courses, interschool competition, and other areas, such as whether schools require students to perform pro bono work. The rankings, which are in the spring 2017 issue, also rely on data from the American Bar Association and individual law schools.

To receive this recognition for four straight years demonstrates how practical legal education is part of SIU Laws DNA, Dean Cynthia L. Fountaine said. We recognize the importance of providing opportunities for our students to get practical skills training, and we provide numerous opportunities for them to do so.

SIU Law is well-known for producing lawyers who can hit the ground running, she said. We have earned this reputation by providing educational opportunities that equip students with the practical skills they need and also giving them a thorough grounding in doctrinal law.

The law school provides a variety of practical experience opportunities for students including legal clinics, public interest and judicial externships, semester-in-practice, Illinois Innocence Project, and the Immigration Detention Project. SIU was also the first law school in Illinois to implement a pro bono requirement for students.

Some of the new opportunities include a public interest law specialization, family law practicum, electronic discovery practicum, asylum and refugee law course, and pro bono opportunities involving asylum applications and human trafficking research. The law school is one of the few schools in the country to guarantee its students an opportunity to participate in a legal clinic or field placement experience.


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Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), predicts Turkey will vote against increasing the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP photo)

by Burak Akinci

ANKARA, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The leader of Turkey's main opposition party has predicted the country will vote against increasing the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an April referendum, arguing that such powers would drive Turkey head-on into "catastrophe."

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), told Xinhua in an exclusive interview in the headquarters in downtown Ankara that he is convinced that the "no" vote will prevail because Turks have largely understood that the proposed changes to the constitution would enhance a single man reign in Turkey.

"One person having this much power would impose risks in the future for Turkey and drag the country in an unforeseeable adventure," he said.

President Erdogan argued that he considered the referendum a historic opportunity to free the country of unstable coalition governments and would bring Turkey in line with political systems in France and the United States.

The new constitution would replace the basic law drown up in 1982 after a military coup. It seeks to establish for the first time a presidential system for ruling the modern republic created from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

"We have to seize this opportunity to boost Turkey on a global scale and place her in the place that she deserves in the world," said Erdogan during a recent rally, claiming that the new system would also facilitate combat against terrorism emanating from the Islamic State and the People's Workers Party.

Critics have claimed that the changes are part of a power grabbed by Erdogan, three time prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and president ever since, for one man rule after a failed coup last summer.

"We absolutely do not favor that the future of Turkey should be handed to a single man, that's why we are saying no, in order to prevent chaos and catastrophe," said Kilicdaroglu heralded by his supporters as the Ghandi of Turkey because of his mild-mannered ways and humble reputation, in strong contradiction with the aggressive and dominant yet very popular Erdogan.

"The powers that Mr. Erdogan wants were not even given to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk when he was leading a war of independence against western occupation forces before the creation of the Turkish republic in 1923," Kilicdaroglu said.

Asked what would be the most important keyword to describe what Turkey needed at this point, the main opposition leader replied without hesitation, "democracy."

Turkey has decreed an emergency state after last June coup attempt masterminded according to the government by the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who lives in the United States and thousands have been jailed or suspended in a major crackdown ever since.

Ankara is also entangled in a row with Europe where several countries have banned rallies by Turkish politicians to drum support for a "yes" in the referendum.

Turkey announced late Monday a series of sanctions against the Netherlands where a Turkish cabinet member was forced to leave the country and barred by the police from entering the Turkish consulate on Saturday.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus denied Tuesday claims by critics of a "conspiracy" organized by the government to trigger a crisis with Europe in order to rally his support base and the nationalists that Erdogan is trying to woo before the referendum next month.

Many European nations have expressed concern about Turkey's response to the coup attempt after which massive civil servants, academics and journalists have been removed from their posts or jailed.

The bitter dispute could even risk breaking for good thorny accession talks between Turkey and the European Union as Turkey's EU affairs minister Omer Celik called on Wednesday for a revision of an important refugee deal sealed by the two sides to stem mass migration especially from Syria to Europe.

Just weeks before the crucial vote, Kilicdaroglu predicted a very close race in April and expressed determination of listening and understanding every layer of the Turkish society, including conservative masses which constitute the backbone of the ruling Justice and Development Party supporters in his political campaign "in a spirit of solidarity."
by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The booby-trapped letter which exploded on Thursday at IMF's premises in Paris, injuring an employee, was also mailed from Greece, Greek Public Order Minister Nikos Toskas said.

As dispatcher of the letter was cited conservative main opposition New Democracy (ND) party spokesman and former Public Order Minister Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek official said in an interview with Greek Ant1 television.

On Wednesday evening, Toskas had announced that a parcel bomb addressed to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble which was intercepted at the ministry's mailroom earlier in the day was mailed from Athens. The sender in this case was cited ND vice president Adonis Georgiadis.

On Thursday morning in a short proclamation posted on an anarchist website, the Greek guerilla group "Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" claimed responsibility for the package sent to the German Finance Ministry, warning with more attacks.

According to German police, the parcel bomb was designed to cause considerable injuries when being opened.

The guerilla group did not clarify why the German Finance Ministry was chosen as a target.

Greek police was investigating how the explosives passed airport controls, Toskas said on Thursday.
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts, believed to severely affect UN funding, could "undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts" of the world organization, a UN spokesman said here.

"The secretary-general is totally committed to reforming the United Nations and ensuring that it is fit for purpose and delivers results in the most efficient and cost-effective manner," UN spokesman Stephan Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

"However, abrupt funding cuts can force the adoption of ad hoc measures that will undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts," Dujarric said.

"The secretary-general stands ready to discuss with the United States and any other member state how best we can create a more cost-effective organization to pursue our shared goals and values," Dujarric said.

Guterres vowed in taking office in January to reform the United Nations and the U.S. president had called for reform during his campaign.

Earlier Thursday the White House released Trump's 2018 budget blueprint which indicated a 28 percent cut in funds for the U.S. State Department, USAID and the United Nations, dropping from 54 billion U.S. dollars to 39 billion U.S. dollars.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, described in a statement issued on Thursday how she has been working with Guterres to "reform the peacekeeping process and UN management" as promised during the campaign.

"In many areas, the UN spends more money than it should, and in many ways it places a much larger financial burden on the United States than on other countries," she said. "I look forward to working with Members of Congress to craft a budget that advances U.S. interests at the UN, and I look forward to working with my UN colleagues to make the organization more effective and efficient."

The United States was assessed 22 percent of the 5.4 billion U.S. dollars UN regular two-year 2016-2017 budget and 28 percent of the 7.87 billion U.S. dollars July 2016-June 2017 peacekeeping budget. The percentages are based on estimates of gross national income.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)'s Chairman of Council of Ministers Denis Zvizdic (R) speaks during a press conference in the Parliament in Sarajevo, BiH, on March 16, 2017. Western Balkans must have a European perspective, Bosnia and Herzegovina's Chairman of Council of Ministers Denis Zvizdic said here on Thursday. (Xinhua/Haris Memija)

SARAJEVO, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Western Balkans must have a European perspective, Bosnia and Herzegovina's Chairman of Council of Ministers Denis Zvizdic said here on Thursday.

Zvizdic made the comment at a meeting of the Western Balkans in Sarajevo.

"The most frequent terms at the meeting were European integration, economic cooperation, infrastructure connecting of the Western Balkans, and most importantly, the issue of maintaining peace and stability in the region," said Zvizdic.

Meanwhile, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said that he would do his best, make maximum efforts and all the time it takes to achieve stability and peace in the region.

"As long as we have peace and stability, it is something commendable,"said Vucic.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn stressed that the summit was an indicator of progress.

"The citizens often doubt there is progress and I know that the problems are undoubtedly present. However, in the long run, these activities are an indicator of further progress and development of the region," he said.

The aim of this meeting is to bring the Western Balkans closer to the EU and discuss projects concerning transport and energy infrastructure. The participants also discussed cooperation in the field of youth and education.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks at a press conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, Britain, June 24, 2016. Sturgeon said here a second independence referendum was "highly likely" after Britain voted to leave the EU. (Xinhua/Scottish government)

LONDON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- A war of words over Scottish independence erupted Thursday after Britain's prime minister ruled out an early referendum.

Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) said in a statement in Edinburgh that it would be a democratic outrage if Theresa May tried to block the people of Scotland from having a choice over their future destiny.

Earlier this week, Sturgeon announced she plans to ask the Scottish Parliament next week to back her call for a new referendum to decide if Scotland should remain as part of Britain. The people of Scotland in 2014 voted to remain in the EU by a large margin.

Sturgeon wants a new referendum next year or early 2019, saying Britain's decision to leave the EU changes the situation for Scotland which voted remain last June.

May said she was opposed to a second independence referendum while Brexit talks with Brussels were continuing.

Though May did not comment on or rule out a second referendum in Scotland at some future date, she said now is not the time for a referendum and instead Scotland should work with the government to seek the best deal with the EU for Scotland and the rest of Britain.

May's statement drew am angry response from Sturgeon. In a statement she said: "We are not proposing a referendum now. We are proposing to give the people of Scotland a choice once Brexit is clear but before it is too late. We will put our proposition to the Scottish Parliament next week and then we will put our formal proposals to the UK government."

"It is for the Scottish Parliament -- not Downing Street -- to determine the timing of a referendum, and the decision of the Scottish Parliament must be respected. It would be outrageous for the Scottish Parliament to be frozen out of the process," she added.

Former SNP leader Alex Salmond, now a Westminster MP, described May's action as a miscalculation, stating: "This finger-wagging at Scotland, this Theresa May laying down the law, it's not going to work."

The Labour Party in Scotland said it would vote against a second independence referendum.

Earlier on Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II gave royal assent to May's Brexit bill giving the prime minister official authority to trigger the Article 50 process to signal the start of Britain's exit from the EU.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said: "By the end of the month, we will invoke Article 50, allowing us to start our negotiations to build a positive new partnership with our friends and neighbors in the European Union, as well as taking a step out into the world as a truly global Britain."
General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Allied Command Operation attends a joint press conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, on March 16, 2017. Scaparrotti is conducting his first official visit in Lithuania since assuming the duties last May. (Xinhua/Alfredas Pliadis)

VILNIUS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the commander of the U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, on Thursday assured Lithuania on security commitments during his first official visit to the country.

The commander of U.S. forces in Europe described the meetings with Lithuanian officials as "meaningful", noting that his visit continues to affirm U.S. "commitments to security and stability throughout the vital Baltic region."

"Our forces are present to support Europe that is whole, free and at peace," Scaparrotti told a local press conference.

"Thousands of U.S. service members will rotate through the Baltic region, participating in exercises and training events," pledged the commander.

U.S. rotating forces have been present in Lithuania since 2014. U.S. personnel in Lithuania have been recently joined by the first military units from NATO enhanced forward presence (EFP) battalion, sent to Lithuania under NATO agreement made at Warsaw summit last summer.

"Once the EFP is fully operational in Europe, there will be a substantial increase in security and troops in the Baltic region," noted the commander.

Scaparrotti said he was encouraged by the Baltic state's efforts to increase defense spending to meet the 2 percent of GDP defense spending goal. Lithuania and its neighbors faced criticism from the new U.S. administration and other allies for not meeting defense spending targets.

During a meeting with the commander, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said the allocation of bigger funds to defense is a priority to his government, and pledged to reach 2.07 percent of GDP defense spending next year.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite at her meeting with Scaparrotti emphasized the need to reform NATO amid tensions in eastern Europe."It is necessary to redeploy allied forces to the Eastern flank," Grybauskaite said.
ANKARA, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Turkish president accused a European Court of Justice ruling, which allows employers to ban employees from wearing the Islamic headscarf, of starting a struggle between Christian "cross" and "crescent" of Islamic world, local media reported.

"Where is the liberty of religion? They have started a struggle between the cross and crescent," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday at a rally in Sakarya province ahead of April 16 referendum campaign for constitutional amendment.

He suggested that Europe is moving toward the days just before World War II, private NTV reported.

The controversial decision drew criticism from Turkish politicians. Turkey's EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Omer Celik stated during an interview with the A Haber news channel Wednesday that "the decision was influenced by the trend of Islamophobia (in Europe)."

Bekir Bozdag, Turkish Justice Minister, described the decision as the "apocalypse of justice."

"It is a violation of human rights," he said on Wednesday, adding that "forcing people to choose between practicing their religion and their jobs does not comply with human rights, EU values or with law and justice."

"The European Court of Justice, which is responsible for protecting the joint justice in Europe, has bombarded justice," the minister said.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan attends a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York, March 16, 2017. The United Nations announced on Thursday the establishment of the Inter-agency Group on Microbial Resistance to be co-chaired by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohamed and WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations announced on Thursday the establishment of the Inter-agency Group on Microbial Resistance to be co-chaired by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohamed and World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan.

It will be comprised of high level representatives of relevant UN agencies, other international organizations and individual experts across different sectors, including animal health, agriculture, environment and others, according to a statement by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"The objective of the group will be to provide a practical guidance for approaches needed to ensure sustained effective global action to address antimicrobial resistance, including options to improve coordination, taking into account the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance," Guterres said.

With resistance to antibiotics, both for humans and animals, having become a global problem, the UN General Assembly last September adopted a resolution seeking formation of this ad hoc group which now includes 15 international experts from various concerned disciplines and representatives of UN and other international agencies.

"Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing issues globally and not only for human health," Mohamed told reporters here. "It's a multi-sectoral problem involving animal health, agriculture, environment, trade and many other sectors."

"AMR really does pose a formidable threat to attainment of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), particularly in all developing countries," she said. "AMR has profound affects on our ability to insure clean water, sustainable food production and to eliminate poverty."

Antibiotic resistance "can prolong illness or require expensive second or third line antibiotics to get well," said Chan.

"It is also important for poverty elimination, sustainable food production, the environment, particularly water and sanitation," she said. "Because of the multi-sectoral nature of the issue, we require a multi-sector response."

"I look forward to working with all the agencies, and with governments, to support them to implement the global health action plan on AMR to reduce misuse and abuse of antibiotics in both human health and the agricultural sector," Chan said.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohamed (R) and World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan attend a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations announced on Thursday the establishment of the Inter-agency Group on Microbial Resistance to be co-chaired by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohamed and World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan.

It will be comprised of high level representatives of relevant UN agencies, other international organizations and individual experts across different sectors, including animal health, agriculture, environment and others, according to a statement by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"The objective of the group will be to provide a practical guidance for approaches needed to ensure sustained effective global action to address antimicrobial resistance, including options to improve coordination, taking into account the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance," Guterres said.

With resistance to antibiotics, both for humans and animals, having become a global problem, the UN General Assembly last September adopted a resolution seeking formation of this ad hoc group which now includes 15 international experts from various concerned disciplines and representatives of UN and other international agencies.

"Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing issues globally and not only for human health," Mohamed told reporters here. "It's a multi-sectoral problem involving animal health, agriculture, environment, trade and many other sectors."

"AMR really does pose a formidable threat to attainment of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), particularly in all developing countries," she said. "AMR has profound affects on our ability to insure clean water, sustainable food production and to eliminate poverty."

Antibiotic resistance "can prolong illness or require expensive second or third line antibiotics to get well," said Chan.

"It is also important for poverty elimination, sustainable food production, the environment, particularly water and sanitation," she said. "Because of the multi-sectoral nature of the issue, we require a multi-sector response."

"I look forward to working with all the agencies, and with governments, to support them to implement the global health action plan on AMR to reduce misuse and abuse of antibiotics in both human health and the agricultural sector," Chan said.
MOGADISHU, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Oceans Beyond Piracy, a privately funded and independent non-profit organization, announced late Thursday on its Twitter account that pirated Aris 13 oil tanker is now free and the crew are safe.

John Steed, a former British army officer with the NGO, also confirmed the release and said the ship is proceeding to Bossaso, a port city in the Bari region of Puntland state in northeastern Somalia.

Pirates on Monday hijacked an oil tanker with eight crew from Sri Lanka off the coast of Somalia, the first hijacking of a large merchant vessel by Somali pirates since 2012.

Local media said the release occurred after negotiations by local elders and officials with the pirates. The details of the negotiations could not be disclosed yet.

Earlier Thursday, fighting broke out between Puntland anti-pirate forces and armed pirates.

The hijacking came against a backdrop of reduced piracy activities in Somalia.
SYDNEY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The new leader of Australia's union movement has defended comments advocating breaking the law.

Sally McManus, the new secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) based in Melbourne, came under fire when she said she had no problem with unions breaking "unjust" laws.

"I believe in the rule of law when the law is fair and the law is right," McManus told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in her first major interview since assuming the position.

"But when it's unjust I don't think there's a problem with breaking it."

McManus' comments provoked an outcry from politicians, with Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne saying there would be "chaos" if McManus got her way.

The ACTU boss clarified her comments but refused to back down on her belief that unions breaking the law can be justified, saying that the Australian union movement only won workplace rights by defying the law.

"Australia has been built by working people who have had the courage to stand up to unfair and unjust rules and demand something better," McManus told News Limited on Friday.

"Working people only take these measures when the issue is one of justice, like ensuring workers' safety on worksites, a fair day's pay for a fair day's work or to uphold and improve rights for working people."

McManus, a long-time political activist and first female leader of the ACTU, said that if she was forced to choose she would pick the union movement ahead of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the major political party in Australia which has been strongest on workers' rights.

"I'm a unionist first, second and third. I'm a member of the Labor Party and I believe in the Labor Party but, if I had to choose, the movement comes first and our members come first," she said.

Bill Shorten, leader of the ALP and former secretary of the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), earlier in the week distanced himself from McManus, saying breaking the law was never justifiable.

"There are unfair laws in workplaces, I don't disagree with that summary, I don't support the cuts to penalty rates. But the way you best handle unfair laws is you change the law, and the best way to change an unfair law is to change the government," Shorten told the ABC.
SYDNEY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Victoria's Port of Melbourne, which is part-owned by a Chinese consortium, is set to receive a huge boost from the state government, with a 1.9 billion U.S. dollars road to be built to accommodate the port's rapid growth.

The "Freight Link" will travel for five km from the bottom of the West Gate Bridge through Port Melbourne and join with the planned Western Distributor toll road.

The government proposes to roughly triple the Port of Melbourne's capacity to between 7 to 8 million shipping containers a year to extract maximum value from the facility.

But the move may come at a cost, with the new road set to increase traffic congestion in the inner city as well as new suburbs planned for the Fisherman's Bend area where 80,000 people are expected to soon be housed.

Increases in traffic, noise and pollution will be many of the consequences for these communities, with night-time freight movement seen as one solution to reducing some of those problems.

Analysis done by logistics experts believe increasing the operating capacity of the port by two to five times will increase community conflicts and infrastructure problems within a decade.

While the report by engineering consultancy Jacobs suggesting the road does need to be built with the pace of growth in the container trade, experts have warned that sophisticated planning will be needed.

Professor of Urban Policy at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Jago Dodson told Fairfax Media on Friday "If the port is going to intensify its operations for the increased demand for freight travel, then very clear strategy is needed so we don't end up with very poor outcomes."
By Will Koulouris

SYDNEY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- A former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, urged Chinese businesses on Friday to find an Australian partner when looking to invest in Australia.

Howard told The Australian, that "if you can get some Australian investment, get it", as it would lead to better outcomes for both sides, and streamline the process of investment into Australia.

The former Australian PM was adamant that despite the commentary of some, there was not too much foreign investment in Australia, as the figures speak for themselves, and warned that certain narratives that are being pushed in terms of investment from China, were wrong.

"Provided Chinese investors abide by the rules, we have to be non-discriminatory. We can't apply a different standard to Chinese investment to investment from Japan or America," Howard said.

Australians need to understand that Chinese investment was crucial to Australia's ability to further develop, according to Howard, and is a natural circumstance of the stronger ties that are being continuously built by the two nations.

Howard contends the attitudes to Chinese investment, are really no different to those that were directed at the United States back in the 1970's.

"When I first came into parliament in 1974, people were complaining about the stranglehold that the Americans had on the car industry in Australia," Howard said.

"Now we would go down on bended knees to have Detroit running something in Australia."

This is a sentiment shared by Former Trade Minister Andrew Robb, a contemporary of Howard's when he was the leader of the country, who told Xinhua earlier this year, that Australia relies on foreign investment, despite there having been those who protest the influx of capital from overseas.

"Australia now is one of the wealthiest countries in the world because foreign investment has been allowed to come in and help Australia develop its potential," Robb said.

"And that's the message every Australian needs to understand."

Robb also shared the same views on partnerships, stressing that not only should Chinese businesses be looking at partnering with Australians, Australia should also be looking for similar cooperation in Asia.

"Investing in China, in India, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, and taking our world class services, hundreds of different services; aged care, healthcare, design, agricultural, resource management, financial; we should be looking to take those into the region in many cases through joint ventures with the locals," Robb said.

"If we don't put down roots now in the region, we miss out in the future, or when all these countries go towards the developed stages."

The opportunities in China made it pivotal for Australian businesses to establish partnerships with Chinese companies, Howard said, despite the difficulties that may be experienced in Asia, due to the cultural and business practice differences.
PARIS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Manchester United's progress to the Europa League quarterfinals was overshadowed by the world's most expensive player Paul Pogba's injury, while their biggest rival in the tournament emerged as Lyon eliminated Roma on Thursday.

The Red Devils beat Russian side Rostov 1-0 at Old Trafford, bringing it to an aggregate of 2-1 after both sides tied at 1-1 on a bad-quality pitch in the first leg.

However, the Premier League side had no reason to feel happy about their success, as Pogba was replaced by Marouane Fellaini due to an apparent hamstring injury early in the second half.

The only goal came from Juan Mata, who benefited from Zlatan Ibrahimovic's back-heel pass inside the box on 70 minutes.

Man United has focused on the tournament, as the titleholder will book an automatic spot in next season's Champions League. Now ranked sixth in the Premier League, the Red Devils might find that the second-tier European tournament is an easier path to complete that mission, as only the top four in the league can secure Champions League qualification.

Team manager Jose Mourinho expected Pogba to be sidelined around three weeks, forcing him to withdraw from the clash with Middlesbrough in the league, in addition to his French national duties.

Meanwhile, Lyon visited Roma with a 4-2 advantage after the first leg. Mouctar Diakhaby put Lyon ahead in the 16th minute, before Roma made a comeback through Kevin Strootman's shot and Lucas Tousard's own goal, but it was not enough to turn around the matchup as Lyon went through on 5-4.

In an all-German clash, Schalke saw off Moenchengladbach on away goals, after both sides tied at 3-3 after two legs.

The other five quarterfinalists are Anderlecht, Ajax, Celta Vigo, Beskitas and Genk.

The draw for Europa League quarterfinals will be held in Nyon on Friday.
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang speaks at an opening ceremony of the China-ASEAN tourism cooperation year in Manila, the Philippines, on March 16, 2017. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday sent congratulatory messages to an opening ceremony of the China-ASEAN tourism cooperation year, which was held in Manila, the Philippines. Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang presented Li's congratulatory message while attending the ceremony in Manila. (Xinhua/Yang Ke)

MANILA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Thursday officially launched the China-ASEAN Year of Tourism, with two sides vowing to enhance tourism cooperation.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang attended the launching ceremony and made a speech in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, where he is on a four-day visit.

Wang Yang said China and ASEAN have been enjoying rapid economic development and people's livelihood has greatly improved, adding that a mass tourism era has come.

"China and ASEAN are close friendly neighbors. We have been each other's largest destinations of overseas visits and largest sources of overseas visitors," he pointed out.

The Chinese vice premier noted that tourism cooperation between the two sides enjoys bright prospect, vowing China will work with ASEAN countries to take the China-ASEAN Year of Tourism as an opportunity to further upgrade the industry.

"We need to build more platforms for tourism cooperation to translate the consensus of our leaders into more outcomes of practical cooperation," Wang Yang said.

Wanda Teo, tourism secretary of the Philippines which holds the rotating chair of the ASEAN, said connectivity inside ASEAN has improved gradually in past years, and that people move more freely within ASEAN with it as a single tourism destination.

"We celebrate today the tourism cooperation year between China and ASEAN, we hope tourism organizations of the two sides strengthen their cooperation, which will in turn bring more job opportunities and investments with it," she said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte respectively sent their congratulatory messages for the event.
YANGON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar government has expressed welcome of the interim recommendations of its Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, chaired by former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, to address the issues in the state.

Referring to the interim report of the commission released here Thursday, the State Counselor's Office issued a statement late on the day welcoming the recommendations that include a renewed call for unimpeded access for humanitarian groups and journalists to the affected areas in northern Rakhine and for independent and impartial investigation of the allegations of crimes committed on and since Oct. 9, last year.

Thanking the commission for their constructive approach to the need for stability, peace and prosperity in Rakhine, the statement said the government concurs with the recommendations set forth in the report, believing that it will have a positive impact on the process of national reconciliation and development and assuring that the large majority of the recommendations will be implemented promptly.

In the video press conference given by the commission, Annan also recommended that Myanmar should allow the Muslim communities of Rakhine state to return to their villages and ultimately close down camps accommodating 120,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) since bouts of communal violence roiled the state in 2012.

Annan called for allowing those, who have gone through the citizenship verification process, access to freedom of movement and all rights of citizenship.

The statement of the State Counselor's Office went on to say that the Myanmar government is delighted to cooperate with the commission in its endeavor to assist in finding viable and sustainable solution to the complex situation in the Rakhine state.

The final report of the advisory commission on Rakhine State is said to be presented later this year.

Annan's nine-member advisory commission was formed by the Myanmar government in August last year with aim of resolving the protracted Rakhine regional issue.

The commission was to undertake assessments and make recommendations by focusing on conflict prevention, humanitarian assistance, rights and reconciliation, institution building and promotion of development of Rakhine state.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Li Jia, former Party chief of Zhuhai City in south China's Guangdong Province, is under investigation on suspicion of taking bribes, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) announced Friday.

Li, also a former Standing Committee member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Guangdong Provincial Committee, was expelled from public office earlier in March for "severely violating political discipline and rules".

He has been placed under "coercive measures," which could include summons by force, bail, residential surveillance, detention and arrest.

Further investigation into his bribe-taking case continues.
PARIS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The European aerospace giant Airbus group announced Thursday that the French authorities had opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of fraudulent practices concerning selling planes and arranging aircraft financing in Britain.

Airbus said in a press release the Parquet National Financier (PNF) joined the investigation into the same subject that Britain had conducted before.

On Aug. 7, 2016, Airbus announced that Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had launched a probe into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption in the civil aviation business of the group concerning third party consultants.

Airbus said it would cooperate fully with both authorities, which will act in coordination.

On Feb. 16, Austria filed a lawsuit against Airbus over a 2-billion-euro (2.15-billion U.S. dollars) 2003 order for Eurofighters, citing it had been a victim of "fraudulent deception." It is claiming 1.1 billion euros in damages.

In 2012, Austrian and German authorities launched a probe into Airbus, previously called EADS, to investigate whether officials had been paid millions of euros through advisory firms to secure the contract.

Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2016, it generated revenues of 67 billion euros and employed a workforce of around 134,000.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (L) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the Iikura Guesthouse in Tokyo, Japan, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Ma Ping)

TOKYO, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's calls for a new approach to tackle the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s missile and nuclear ambitions could be a step in the right direction if such moves are of a conciliatory and not incendiary nature, experts here said.

Tillerson is in Tokyo as part of the first leg of his inaugural Asian tour since he took office on Feb. 1 and will also visit South Korea and China.

His trip comes on the heels of the DPRK launching four ballistic missiles toward Japan last week, which has raised tensions on the peninsular and in the region in general.

Experts here said Tillerson's visit was of paramount importance and that each country being visited played an integral role in issues pertaining to the peninsular as well as in the broader region and the globe.

But they also said there was no use in "flogging a dead horse" and a change in direction could see tensions reduced and progress made on an increasingly thorny situation if those made were the correct ones.

"It's fair to assume that Tillerson's Asian visit, beginning with Tokyo and meetings with the prime minister and foreign minister here and concluding in China after South Korea, will be vital source of information gathering that will go on to inform the United States' policy on issues in the region," political analyst Teruhisa Muramatsu told Xinhua.

"Tillerson will also be able to gauge individually and collectively the tone in the region and the extent to which some form of regional collaboration on avoiding the current deadlock with the DPRK could play out," Muramatsu said.

He further elucidated by saying that it is no secret that there remains separate issues between Japan and its neighboring countries, but that it was of equal importance to address the current impasse (with the DPRK) and unite in finding an alternate way to proceed positively.

Though Tillerson himself conceded that while the last two decades of political and diplomatic efforts regarding the DPRK's perceived provocations had essentially failed and that a new path should be perused, he didn't go as far as to explain exactly what this new route could be.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (2nd R) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (1st L) at the Iikura Guesthouse in Tokyo, Japan, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Ma Ping)

But as experts like Muramatsu attest, the current situation is verging on catastrophic and could only lead to a further escalation or a regional arms race unless the tension in the region can be eased.

"The current direction is a precarious one wants to see how such a volatile chapter might conclude, were there to be no thoughtful intervention," Muramatsu said.

"And while there have been difficulties in the past, a layered approach involving multilateral dialogue and concrete action on all sides to 'take a step back' is needed right now to create some breathing space," said the expert.

He said the worst-case scenario was unimaginable, but also stressed that major economies and forces in the immediate region all undergoing their own paradigmatic shifts; be these economical, social, political or a combination of all three, meant that another 20-years of deadlock over the DPRK issue was "not an option."

"The main six-party talks may have ostensibly failed up until now, but multilateral talks between the key stakeholders here must be at least one indispensable tool to be used in deescalating the current situation," said Muramatsu, adding that a prelude to this might be a concerted effort on all sides to not "rattle their sabres."

It remains an ever-increasing challenge for all government's diplomacy but a "flash-point" need not be reached that itself could lead to a point of no return, said Muramatsu. He also said stakeholders need to take a "quid pro quo" approach, with no one party overstepping its authority.

The expert went on to traverse the notion of "pivot to Asia" and its realignment of forces and assets to the Pacific region, and while quoting Newton's third law, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," said that both actions and reactions need to be carefully measured.

"Particularly at this time, as the region is something of a powederkeg, in one way or another, and cool heads need to prevail. I hope Tillerson is mindful of this and while reiterating certain policy standpoints that remain unwavering, his remarks thus far seem more conciliatory that incendiary."

"This will hopefully continue to be his stance throughout his Asian tour and this tone may be the right one to be adopted by the new administration to which he belongs," Muramatsu concluded, echoing the position of U.S. officials who also said regarding future policy that "all options are on the table."
Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, smiles during his testimony before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be U.S. secretary of state in Washington, U.S. January 11, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here Friday morning for the second stop of his East Asian tour to talk with his South Korean counterpart over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

The airplane carrying the top U.S. diplomat arrived in the Osan air base, some 60 km south of the capital city Seoul, at about 10:10 a.m. local time, TV footage showed.

Tillerson visited Japan on Thursday, meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to leave for Beijing on Saturday.

Tillerson is scheduled to meet South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as acting president as former President Park Geun-hye has been ousted through impeachment.

After the meeting, he will hold a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul.

Key agenda on the table for Friday's talks between Yun and Tillerson would be the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

Tillerson said in Tokyo Thursday that diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula have failed, stressing the need for a new approach to the issue.
Representatives and guests attend a ground-breaking ceremony for a railcar assembly plant in Chicago, the United States, March 16, 2017. As the investor, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) Sifang America held a ground-breaking ceremony for a railcar assembly plant in Chicago's Southeast Side on Thursday. The investment by Chinese firm CRRC Sifang in Chicago will bring more job opportunities and contribute to the local economy, said Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, in a letter to congratulate a new railcar assembly plant Thursday. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)

CHICAGO, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The investment by Chinese firm CRRC Sifang in Chicago will bring more job opportunities and contribute to the local economy, said Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, in a letter to congratulate a new railcar assembly plant Thursday.

Cui hailed the investment as "a new way of cooperation between China and the United States, and will certainly be followed by many more in the future."

As the investor, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) Sifang America held a ground-breaking ceremony for a railcar assembly plant in Chicago's Southeast Side on the day.

Many distinguished guests, including two U.S. senators, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chinese Consul General in Chicago Hong Lei all showed up at the ceremony to give their congratulations.

CRRC Sifang America in 2016 won a 1.3-billion-dollar contract to supply 846 new 7000 Series railcars to Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to replace nearly half of the agency's current railcar fleet.

As part of its proposal to the CTA, CRRC Sifang America committed to assembling the railcars in Chicago, creating some 170 new jobs for local residents.

Chicago Mayor Emanuel hugged CRRC Corporation Ltd. Vice President Sun Yongcai, saying the new facility in Chicago will bring economic development to the Southeast Side, "creating good-paying jobs for hundreds of workers."

"Construction and operation of the plant will provide many job opportunities for Chicago, and bring back to Chicago the manufacturing of railcar which left the city 36 years ago," said Hong.

Hong also expressed the hope that the plant will produce products not only for the City of Chicago, but also for many other states and cities in the United States and serves as an important manufacturing hub based in Chicago.

According to CRRC Sifang officials, the plant will begin production in 2019, with delivery of railcars starting in 2020.

Official statistics show the two-way investment between China and the United States totalled more than 170 billion dollars. China's direct investment in the United States reached 45.6 billion dollars in 2016, doubling the amount in 2015, while U.S. actual investment in China grew 55.4 percent in 2016.

Trade between the two has also skyrocketed in recent years. In 2016, bilateral import and export came to 578.59 billion dollars. China is now the United States' third largest export destination, the largest import source and the largest trading partner; while the United States is China's largest trading partner, the largest export destination, and the fourth largest import source.

The United States has 22 percent of its cotton production and 56 percent of soybean production exported to China.

To be specific, trade volume between China and the nine states in U.S. Midwest reached 92.6 billion dollars in 2015. Chinese enterprises invested nearly 13 billion dollars in U.S. Midwest, creating some 30,000 jobs, statistics provided by Chinese Consulate in Chicago showed.
CANBERRA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has for the first time formally backed a controversial decision to cut the nation's penalty rates -- or pay rates on Sunday and public holidays -- amid concerns it could slash thousands from the annual income of the nation's lowest income earners.

Malcolm Turnbull has previously distanced himself from the independent Fair Work Commission's decision to reduce higher rates of pay on Sundays for fast food, retail, hospitality and pharmacy workers from this July but told Macquarie radio on Friday that the government was fully behind the move.

"We do support it," Turnbull said. "I have been very clear about that."

"The Fair Work Commission decided to back small business and (my government) backs small business."

The prime minister reiterated that last month's decision to cut penalty rates which was done in order to promote growth in small business was not a government decision; it was an independent panel which deemed the changed to be in the nation's best interests.

"It is important to remember this was not a decision from the government, it was an independent considered decision of the independent umpire of the Fair Work Commission, every member of which was appointed by a Labor government, three of who were appointed by (Opposition Leader) Bill Shorten."

While the government has backed the Fair Work Commission's plan to phase in the new penalty rates "over two years, possibly longer, but not as long as five", the opposition has vowed to take the issue to the election, after sustained backlash from low income workers and the unions.
HANOI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese government has accused Australia of "causing serious damage" to its prawn farmers and exporters as well as asked the Australian government to reconsider the ban on uncooked prawn imports.

According to Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh, the ban had damaged his country's aquaculture industry, reported local Vietnam News online newspaper on Friday.

"In our view, the ban is not in line with common practices and the spirit of nurturing and enhancing the existing good trade relationship between Vietnam and Australia," Khanh said.

The official added that a number of Vietnamese exporters specializing in the Australian market are facing the risk of going bankrupt due to the suspension.

Australian authorities are still investigating how white spot disease spreads to Australia, while prawn farmers have blamed it on Asian imports.

Khanh suggested Vietnam should be allowed to keep exporting raw prawns to Australia until there is proof that imported prawns were the source of the outbreak.

"If Australia continues to maintain the ban, Vietnam requests that it provides adequate scientific evidence as soon as possible showing a causal relationship between prawn imports from Vietnam and the outbreak of white spot disease in Australia," Khanh added.

Earlier, Vietnam and Australia have had disagreements over bilateral agricultural trade. In 2015, Vietnam temporarily banned the importation of fruits from Australia following a disagreement over Mediterranean fruit fly.
SYDNEY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- A delightfully cute, baby pygmy hippopotamus has made her debut at Sydney's Taronga Zoo on Friday, waddling into the hearts of visitors, alongside her proud mother, Kambiri.

The 5 kilogram female calf, currently unnamed, was born at the zoo in February, and spent the day paddling in the water, and stretching out her little legs as guests watched on in delight.

Currently an endangered species, there are only 2000 to 3000 pygmy hippopotami in the wild, primarily in Liberia, with some venturing into Sierra Leone, Guinea.

Usually a reclusive and nocturnal creature, pygmy hippos are under threat from the loss of habitat in West Africa, and breeding programs, such as the one at Taronga Zoo, are crucial to their survival.

Renae Moss, zookeeper at Taronga, said that the gorgeous little calf is eating voraciously, and has nearly doubled in size since she was born.

"She's putting on weight every day and she's already got little rolls of fat around her neck," Moss said.

"Pygmy hippos naturally spend a lot of time in the water, so the calf is already having a great time learning to swim next to mum and even practicing holding her breath underwater."

The zoo will be holding a competition to name the baby calf over the coming weeks.
WELLINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said Friday his government is committed to supporting the fight against IS insurgents in Iraq and Syria.

McCully said he would attend the Counter-ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) Foreign Ministers meeting being hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington on March 22.

"New Zealand is committed to supporting Iraq as it addresses the threat posed by ISIL and works to stabilize affected communities," McCully said in a statement.

"The defeat of ISIL is more than a military campaign. The coalition will review progress across all lines of effort, including the important work being done to undermine ISIL's propaganda and cut off its finances," he said.

"As ISIL finds itself on the back foot in Iraq and Syria, we want to work with our coalition partners to ensure that ISIL does not find safe haven elsewhere."

New Zealand has contributed around 26 million NZ dollars (18.17 million U.S. dollars) since 2012 in humanitarian assistance for those affected by the violence in Syria and Iraq.

New Zealand has also been contributing troops to a joint force with Australia to train Iraqi forces in the fight against IS since May 2015.

The New Zealand government announced in June 2016 that it had extended the military contribution to the training mission until November 2018.
A Thai Customs official displays a piece of seized rhino horn during a press briefing at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb. 28, 2014. (Xinhua file photo /Rachen Sageamsak)

HANOI, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Customs officers at the Noi Bai International Airport in Vietnam's capital Hanoi have seized over 100 kg of suspected rhino horns imported from Africa.

The haul of wildlife parts were discovered in two suitcases on board of a flight from Kenya's Nairobi to Hanoi, local Tuoi Tre (Youth) online newspaper reported on Thursday.

The luggage did not bear the name of the recipient as well as its total weigh.

Anti-smuggling division under the General Department of Vietnam Customs investigated the shipment, discovering that one of the suitcases weighed 57.1 kg and the other weighed 60.84 kg. Both contained animal horns appearing to be from rhinos, according to officers.

Local relevant authorities were carrying out further probe while the wildlife parts had been transferred to the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources under the management of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology for an examination.

On Dec. 29, 2016, customs officers at Noi Bai Airport also seized a 50-kg shipment of rhino horns shipped from Kenya to dubious recipients.

The shipment had an estimated black market value of some 20 billion Vietnamese dong (879,097 U.S. dollars), reported Tuoi Tre.
HANOI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's anti-corruption fight has only met half of the government's expectations, according to a new anti-corruption assessment index.

The Provincial Anti-Corruption Assessment (PACA) issued by the Government Inspectorate of Vietnam (GIV)'s Anti-Corruption Bureau showed that the national average index reached 58.11 points out of 100 points, reported local VNExpress online newspaper on Friday.

"It indicates that the distance still left to meet the anti-corruption objectives set by the party and government," said Pham Trong Dat, the bureau chief, at a launch in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

PACA is a pilot anti-corruption index developed by the GIV in coordination with South Korea's Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, and funded by the United Nations Development Program.

The index was first initiated in 2016 in all 63 localities nationwide, asking municipal people's committees to self-score with documents and evidence to prove their achievements in multiple criteria relevant to anti-corruption work. Their performances were also scored independently by the GIV.

However, the PACA Index 2016 was not made public "as it is a pilot program and yet to earn consensus between all localities," said GIV Deputy General Inspector Nguyen Van Thanh, promising that PACA 2017 will be published in full.

In addition, some criteria in the PACA Index demonstrate ineffectiveness in preventing corruption. For example, gift offering gained the worst score but the country failed to detect a single violation via inspection.

"The implementation of the measure is not strict and it is very difficult to manage as it also relies on self-discipline and ethics of public servants," Dat said.
HO CHI MINH CITY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- With rich traditional cultures and unspoiled landscapes, Con Dao in Vietnam's southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province is one of 12 crowd-free sea paradises in Asia, US Cable News Network (CNN) has recently stated.

Once a penal colony known as the Devil's Island of French Indochina, Con Dao, a 16-island archipelago off the Mekong Delta, has turned to more peaceful pursuits in modern times. It offers coral reefs, palm-shaded beaches, rainforest trails and chic beach hotels like the Six Senses Con Dao.

History buffs will revel in the island's role in the age of ocean exploration -- Marco Polo allegedly stepped ashore at Con Dao on his long return journey to Venice, according to CNN.

To learn more about the island's war-plagued past, travelers can explore the Revolutionary Museum -- located in the former French commander's residence -- or tour the old prisons on the main island.

Con Dao is a haven for outdoorsy types too, with plentiful scuba, snorkeling and fishing opportunities. Between May and October, visitors can watch sea turtles lay their eggs, while the infants hatch and scramble into the sea.
HANOI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Four members of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), who are also the signatories to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will discuss the future of the TPP in Vietnamese capital Hanoi in May, according to a Vietnamese official.

Tran Tuan Anh, Vietnamese minister of industry and trade, was quoted by local Tien Phong (Pioneer) online newspaper on Friday as saying that on the occasion of the ASEAN Economic Ministers' Meeting held recently in the Philippines, Vietnam had bilateral exchanges with other ASEAN countries, including Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, on the TPP.

"It's too early to make decisions on TPP. ASEAN countries reached a consensus that the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting in Hanoi in May will provide a chance for TPP members to evaluate the situation more thoroughly and bring about measures for integration among TPP members in the new context that the U.S. withdrew from the deal," said Anh.
ISLAMABAD, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan army said Friday that at least three security men and eight terrorists were killed in two incidents in the country's northwest.

The military spokesman giving details of the incidents said that two security personnel and six terrorists were killed in clashes along the Afghan border.

The army spokesman said that terrorists from across the Pak-Afghan border attempted physical attacks on a Pakistan post of Frontier Corps in Khyber tribal agency. Frontier Corps or FC are responsible for the security of border with Afghanistan.

"Pakistani troops effectively responded. six terrorists killed. In exchange of fire two FC soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom)," the spokesman said in a statement.

There was no claim by any militant group. The outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and splinter Jamaat-ul-Ahrar groups had previously been involved in attacks on border posts. Pakistani security officials say that the armed groups operate from the Afghan side of the border.

In another incident, a suicide bombers' bid to attack a FC Training center in the northwestern town of Shabqadar in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province was foiled early Friday, the military said.

Two suicide bombers and a security man were killed in the clashes. One security man was injured and operation in the area is in progress to apprehend facilitators of the attackers, an army statement said.
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Companies from Germany, France and Switzerland have won the right to operate four major airports in Brazil, with bids totaling nearly 1.20 billion U.S. dollars, the Brazilian government said on Thursday.

German company Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services won the concession to run both the international airport of Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil and the Porto Alegre airport in the South, with a bid of 484 million dollars and 123 million dollars, respectively.

Switzerland's Zurich International Airport bid 78 million dollars to run the Florianopolis airport in southern Brazil and France's Vinci Airports bid 511 million dollars to operate the airport in the northeastern city of Salvador.

No Brazilian companies have bidden to run the four airports, among which, the airport in Porto Alegre was conceded for a period of 25 years, and the other three for 30 years each.

The privatization of airports and other infrastructure projects is part of the Brazilian government's strategy to pull the country out of a recession, its worst in at least eight decades.
PHNOM PENH, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Forty-two Cambodian soldiers, including five females, will be sent to participate in the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) multinational training exercise in Nepal for two weeks, a senior military official said on Friday.

Gen. Sem Sovanny, director-general of the Cambodian National Center for Peacekeeping Force, said that the group will leave Cambodia for the exercise on March 19 and will return on April 4.

"It is a good opportunity for our troops to share experience with their peers from other countries about strategies in peacekeeping," he said.

He added that the exercise will focus on patrol, cordon and search, check point, convoy and escort, safeguarding a humanitarian distribution site, and disarmament and demobilization.

The exercise will be led by the Nepalese Army and sponsored by the U.S. Pacific Command.
LIMA, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Peru is bracing for more deadly rain that is likely to continue until April, Transport and Communications Minister Martin Vizcarra said on Thursday.

Flooding has claimed at least 62 lives and left countless people homeless, with 750 towns in 13 regions declared to be in a state of emergency.

"There is a lot of damage, but we can overcome them," President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said as he and Vizcarra toured an affected community in the capital Lima near the Huaycoloro River, which overflowed, leading to the closing of a major avenue.

The weather phenomenon called Coastal Nino is blamed for the heavy downpours. Coastal Nino is marked by high sea temperatures, which have gone from an average of 22 degrees centigrade to 27 degrees, according to national weather monitoring center ENFEN.

The National Civil Defense Institute said that since December, rain and flooding have damaged 18,262 km of roads in the region of Piura; washed away six bridges and damaged dozens more; left 100,000 people homeless; and destroyed several thousand hectares of crops.

Government estimates put financial losses at between 150 million U.S. dollars and 600 million U.S. dollars.

In Lima, schools will be closed until March 20, and water supply is limited in 27 districts.

Both Venezuela and Colombia have offered aid, according to the ministry.
VIENTIANE, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The number of foreign tourists visiting Laos dropped for the first time in 2016 after several successive years of visitor growth, according to the Tourism Development Department of the Lao Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism.

Laos registered average annual growth in foreign tourist arrivals of 10.7 percent on average over the past five years. But last year, just over 4.23 million foreign visitors came to the Southeast Asian country, representing a drop of 10 percent compared to 2015, the department said Thursday.

Collectively, visitors from the other nine member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) dropped by about 14 percent to just over 3 million people. Tourists from the Asia-Pacific region decreased by 11 percent to just over 3.9 million people, while visitors from the Americas dropped by 3 percent to just 86,211 people.

Visitors from Thailand and Vietnam, the main sources of foreign visitors to Laos, fell significantly by more than 400,000 and 100,000 people respectively.

An official in charge of the department's analysis section said that the Thai authorities had been encouraging people to take tours in their homeland by offering special incentives.

These included allowing Thai nationals who spend their vacation in the country to claim a reduction in their personal income tax corresponding to what they spent while on holiday. This was believed to have resulted in a decline in Thai visitors to Laos.

Additionally, the number of foreign tourists coming to Laos in the previous years was boosted by Vietnamese workers entering the country on tourist visas. But governments within ASEAN, of which Laos is a member, have tightened measures to regulate foreign workers, which is believed to have discouraged Vietnamese workers from coming to Laos, thus contributing to a drop in the number of Vietnamese entering Laos on tourist visas, Lao daily Vientiane Times quoted the official as saying on Friday.

The increasing cost of living in Laos could also be a reason for the decline, the official said, adding that living costs in neighboring countries like Thailand were lower than in Laos. He also observed that Laos needs to do more to attract tourists from Muslim countries such as by providing prayer rooms in public places along with promoting halal restaurants, saying that the absence of such facilities, especially in the provinces, could discourage Muslims from visiting Laos.

Statistics suggest that visitors from Muslim-majority countries like Brunei and Indonesia dropped by 44 percent and 17 percent to just 484 and 5,010 visitors respectively in 2016.

In addition, the Lao tourist authorities need to do more to better promote tourism, such as by creating an official comprehensive website where all tourism-related information is available. This should include tourist attractions, transportation, accommodation and related costs, the official said, adding that the absence of such a website makes things difficult for visitors.

Tour operators have occasionally commented that a lack of variety in tourist activities, underdeveloped facilities at tourist sites, and the absence of direct flights to many countries appear to discourage some people and are factors that should be addressed.

In a related move, the Lao government is accelerating its preparation of key documents necessary to secure World Heritage Status for the Plain of Jars in nothern Xieng Khuang Province and the Hin Nam No Protected Area in southern Khammuane Province.

The Plain of Jars, mostly known in Lao as Thong Hai Hin, are the prehistoric stone megaliths which attract thousands of tourists to Xieng Khuang each year. Hin Nam No is a national protected area comprising scenic landscapes, rugged karst mountains, and highly bio-diverse flora and fauna.

Currently there are two World Heritage sites in Laos including the town of Luang Prabang listed by UNESCO in 1995 and Vat Phou and associated ancient settlements within the Champassak cultural landscape, which was nominated by UNESCO in 2001.
HONG KONG, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Three people convicted of rioting in Mong Kok were each sentenced to three years in prison on Friday at Hong Kong's District Court.

The District Court had convicted them of rioting in the violent clashes that took place during the Lunar New Year holidays in February last year.

Hui Ka-ki, Mak Tsz-hei, and Sit Tat-wing, aged between 20 to 33, are the first to be convicted of rioting in Mong Kok clashes. The three defendants were convicted of throwing items like water bottles and bamboo poles at police officers.

Judge Sham Siu-man said, "Violence is violence." He said the court has to pass a deterrent sentence, to let others know that there are consequences in rioting.
Liu Jieyi (C), China's permanent representative to the United Nations, speaks during the UN Security Council debate on non-proliferation at the UN headquarters in New York, March 16, 2017. Liu called Thursday on the international community to foster a new vision of security and build a shared as well as cooperative security environment for all countries. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday called on the international community to foster a new vision of security and build a shared as well as cooperative security environment for all countries.

Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, made the appeal at a Security Council debate on non-proliferation.

Liu said the issue of non-proliferation is highly complex and its complexity is further compounded by a range of factors including historical grievances, regional conflicts, security concerns and terrorism.

"The fundamental way forward lies in discarding cold-war mentality, shaping a security architecture for all and by all on the basis of justice and nurturing a concept of shared, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security," said Liu.

Liu also appealed for upholding the rule of law and consolidating the international non-proliferation regime.

"Efforts should be made to safeguard the authority and efficacy of the international non-proliferation regime, formulate and improve relevant international norms and effectively prevent non-state actors, in particular terrorists, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and related materials and technologies," he said.

In addition, Liu said the international community should stay committed to multilateralism and handling hot issues related to proliferation by political and diplomatic means.

"Any action that may cause further tensions can only lead to an escalation and spillover of conflict which in turn will increase the risk of proliferation," he said.

Liu called on all parties to remain committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, resolve differences through dialogue and consultation, and maintain peace and stability on the peninsula.

He also asked relevant parties to the Iran nuclear deal to build political mutual trust, deliver on their commitments in their entirety and push for steady progress in the implementation of the deal.

"China will continue to contribute to the improvement of the international non-proliferation regime, strengthen global governance in the area of international non-proliferation, and safeguard world peace and security," said Liu.
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday urged Congress to raise the debt limit as soon as possible to avoid a potential federal government default.

"I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible," Mnuchin said in a letter sent to Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress.

Mnuchin warned that beginning Thursday, the federal government's outstanding debt was at the statutory limit. It means the Treasury has no room to borrow under standard operating procedures from Thursday.

In order to temporarily prevent the government from defaulting on its obligations, the Treasury begun using "extraordinary measures" to continue to finance the government's activities, said Mnuchin.

These extraordinary measures could help the Treasury have sufficient cash to make essential payments "until sometime in the fall of this year" without an increase in the debt limit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

At that time, the Treasury will have exhausted extraordinary measures and would need to borrow more money to avoid a government debt default.

The debt limit is the maximum amount of debt that the Treasury can issue to the public and to the other federal agencies. The amount of outstanding debt subject to limit has now risen to about 19.9 trillion U.S. dollars.
KHOST, Afghanistan, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Two people including the attacker were killed and seven others injured as a car bomb went off next to a military base in Yaqubi area of Sabari district in the eastern Khost province on Friday, army official captain Abdullah said.

"A car bomb was detonated next to a military base in Yaqubi area of Sabari district at 07:00 a.m. local time today martyring one Afghan soldier and wounding seven others," Abdullah told Xinhua.

The attacker was also killed in the blast, the official added. Without giving more details.

The official said that investigation has been initiated into the case.

Meantime, locals said that windowpanes of several houses at nearby were smashed due to the blast.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Taliban militants who are active in Khost province and usually condcut suicide and roadside bombings against government interests haven't commented on the situation.
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy to the UN said Thursday that China is ready to make renewed contributions to peace in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, made the remarks at a Security Council meeting at which senior officials called for strong political support and adequate resources for the UN peacekeeping force in CAR, where half of the population urgently needs aid.

Speaking at the meeting, which was also attended by CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera, Wu said: "China is ready to make renewed contributions to the ... durable peace, stability and development in the Central African Republic."

"CAR had concluded a critical transition and ushered in a new chapter in state building," he said, noting China "highly welcomes this development and commends the CAR government for their effort under the leadership of President Touadera."

Noting that the situation in CAR "allows no complacency," Wu said that there is a long way to go to rebuild this state as challenges still remain before achieving durable peace and stability.

"The issue of CAR can only be resolved through inclusive national dialogue led by CAR aiming to achieve national reconciliation, and find a final solution that is durable and appropriate," he said.

The dialogue led by Touadera "has provided golden opportunities" for the country to achieve stability and development, Wu said, urging all parties in the country to act for the long-term interests of the country and people, to settle their differences through dialogue and consultations, and to work together towards enduring peace, stability and development in CAR.

At the meeting, UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous also lauded the efforts of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) in helping to pave the way for the gradual stabilization and restoration of state authority in CAR.

"As MINUSCA illustrates, when peacekeeping has the right leadership and capabilities, it can play an irreplaceable role in supporting national efforts, and with international partners, promote and support reforms that are essential to the sustainable resolution of a country's conflict," Ladsous said.
SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Ousted South Korean President Park Geun-hye has left behind nine dogs, which were given to her as a gift when she took office four years ago, in the presidential Blue House since she moved to her private home on Sunday.

According to local newspaper Donga Ilbo's report Friday, Park was given two Jindo dogs, the South Korean breed of hunting dogs, as a gift by a neighbor when she entered the Blue House on Feb. 25, 2013.

The neighbor, who was living near Park's private home in the southern district of Seoul, gifted the Jindo dogs to Park in hopes that she could remove the deep-rooted regionalism in South Korea.

The dogs originate from the Jeolla province, the country's southwestern region, while Park has a political support base in the southeastern Gyeongsang province.

However, it was not a voluntary gift but a request by Park's then transition committee as part of efforts to create an image of the president uniting the rival regions.

The two dogs had recently given birth to seven puppies, but those were left behind in the Blue House when Park left the president complex for her private home on Sunday night.

Park vacated the complex two days after the constitutional court unanimously upheld a motion to impeach her on March 10. Park became the first South Korean leader to be removed from office by impeachment.

An animal rights group on Monday accused Park of abandoning pet dogs in violation of an animal protection law. The alleged abandonment caused searing criticism on the Internet.

It is not clear whether Park has violated the law. The presidential office was quoted as saying two Jindo dogs and two puppies were sent to an association to preserve the pure breed of Jindo dogs.

The other five puppies are reportedly waiting for new owners.
KIEV, March 16 (Xinhua) -- As more and more Chinese are turning to Ukraine thanks to the eased visa policy introduced last year, the East European country is seizing opportunities to win the Chinese market, the largest outbound tourism market around the world.

The number of Chinese visitors to Ukraine rose to a 10-year-high in 2016 thanks to the liberalization of the visa regime, under which Chinese tourists can obtain a visa on arrival in two Ukrainian airports -- in the capital city of Kiev and in the southern Black Sea resort of Odessa.

Ukrainian statistics showed a record of 20,555 Chinese citizens visited the country last year compared with 13,602 visitors a year ago and the number is expected to further increase in 2017.

FIRST STEP TO ATTRACT MORE TOURISTS

A Ukraine-China tourism forum organized by the Hospitality Industry Association of Ukraine was held in Kiev this week, marking the first step to promote Ukrainian tourism.

At the forum, more than 20 leading Ukrainian travel agencies presented their programs aimed at luring Chinese tourists.

Yanina Gavrylova, chairperson of All-Ukrainian Guides Association, said that Ukraine has a lot to offer Chinese tourists, from traditional sightseeing trips to unique thematic tours.

"Ukraine has several aspects that are of Chinese tourists' interest -- culture, history and gastronomy. Also, we could offer the so-called dark tourism -- visits to Chernobyl, World War II facilities and industrial facilities," Gavrylova told Xinhua.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, located some 110 km away from the Ukrainian capital Kiev, witnessed one of the worst nuclear accidents in human history on April 26, 1986. The disaster has caused irreparable damage to the local environment and public health.

To make trips in Ukraine completely comfortable, the East European country is preparing high-skilled Chinese-speaking tour guides, Gavrylova said.

To become a guide, Ukrainians who knows the Chinese language or Chinese nationals living in Ukraine are undergoing professional training lasting at least three months, she added.

SPECIAL TOURS FOR CHINESE TRAVELERS

Some Ukrainian travel agencies have introduced special tours for Chinese tourists, considering their interests and preferences.

One of the agencies, the Kolos, is offering themed trips across Ukraine inspired by "How the Steel Was Tempered," a socialist realist novel which was very famous in China and adapted into a television series of the same title in 2000 by Chinese director Han Gang.

Victoria Zarutskaya, head of the Kolos agency, said she conducted in-depth research to create customized trips for Chinese visitors.

"Chinese tourists are interested in Soviet objects. In this regard, Ukraine can offer a lot. In addition, we know that the Chinese love amber and we can offer them individual tours to Rivne region, which is the birthplace of the sun stone," Zarutskaya told Xinhua.

Another attraction, which could be interesting for Chinese visitors, is the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Since 2010, Chernobyl has been officially open for tourists as the environmental situation in the area has improved. The place now is completely safe if tourists strictly follow the instructions of tour guides.

"We are offering bus tours to Chernobyl and tours in a light aircraft and a helicopter. Besides, this spring we will launch tours in a hydrofoil boat around the Chernobyl area," said Sergii Mirnyi, head of Chernobyl tour agency.

He said that prices of Chernobyl tours range from 29 U.S. dollars for a regular one-day bus tour to 500 dollars per person for an individual helicopter voyage.

Besides, targeting Chinese couples, local agencies are offering romantic tours to the Tunnel of Love in western Ukraine -- a botanical phenomenon, where trees and bushes are creating a 4-km-long tunnel in a dense forest.

MULTI- EUROPEAN COUNTRY TOURS

Although individual tourism is gaining momentum, traditional package tours remain the most popular among the majority of Chinese tourists as they want to see as many places as possible when traveling abroad.

Therefore, Ukraine is cooperating with neighboring countries to jointly receive travelers from China.

Maryna Ignatusha, head of the Brandberg agency, which specializes in business, cultural, gastronomic and shopping tourism, said her company is working with partners from Poland and Hungary to prepare combined tours for Chinese tourists.

The agency also plans to arrange trips across the countries of the former Soviet Union.

"Taking into consideration the preferences of the Chinese tourists and the geographical position of Ukraine, we plan to jointly organize tours with Belarus, Baltic countries and Moldova," Ignatusha told Xinhua.

In recent months, more and more international travel agencies are turning to Ukraine as the country's image has improved and many people get to understand that the concerns about Ukraine's security situation were exaggerated, she said.

"The opinion that Ukraine is unsafe is due to the lack of information. Of course, there is a troubled region where a conflict is underway. But tourists will never enter there," Ignatusha said.

She introduced that Ukraine is completely safe for travellers as all tourism destinations are far away from the conflict area in eastern Ukraine.

Kiev lies about 750 km away from the restive Donetsk and Lugansk regions, Odessa resort is about 800 km away, while the ancient Lviv city is located in another part of the country -- more than 1,200 km away from the conflict area.
by Levi J Parsons

SYDNEY, March 17 (Xinhua) -- International trade deals, bilateral agreements and strategic business partnerships are often considered the most important aspects of international relations.

But the richest foundation for cross-cultural communication between China and Australia lies with the 90,000 Chinese students studying in Australia and living among Aussie families.

"If it's your first time being in a foreign environment, something that reminds you of home is a good thing and a host family usually creates that similar atmosphere that you have when you're back at home," University of Sydney master's student Jony Sun told Xinhua.

"I would say in order to really experience studying abroad you should try living with a host family because you will find it very rewarding and there are a lot of cultural aspects you gain from it."

"One thing that is different from Hong Kong, is the indigenous culture here, at the opening ceremony for University I saw a didgeridoo for the first time!"

Over the past two years, the number of foreign students living with Australian host families has risen by 20 percent.

The unique experience offers borders a more cost effective way of engaging with Australian culture and for many, there is no better place to start than the family household.

"They treat you as a guest, so it's not like your mom telling you to go do chores or anything, although you still have that comforting home feeling," Sun said.

"When I first moved here, my host family was very enthusiastic about Aussie culture!"

"There is a difference, I feel like the people here are much more relaxed than in Hong Kong."

For Sun's host family, the experience has also been rewarding and a great opportunity to make new friends.

"It's been good! I like different cultures, I like new things and I feel personally coming from Maori culture in New Zealand, it's very similar to Chinese culture in regards to how they treat young people, children, the elderly and your family," Miri Furlong told Xinhua.

"It's a very inclusive way of life and on a personal level it's been extremely good for my kids, they have no prejudices and they've learnt to accept people, no matter who they are or where they're from."

The mother of four began offering her family home to visiting students seven years ago, in order to help with the cost of living.

"The area in Sydney where I live [Chatswood] is not the cheapest place to live but it's really good for family life," she said.

"I always include everything like meals in the price of boarding, because if I have a big family dinner, it's nice to have everyone sitting at the table."

As for life outside the home, the challenges of academia can be exhausting, especially when English is not your native language.

"I would say it's hard to start off, English is my second language and even though I'm fluent, it can be very hard," Sun said.

"When I went to class on the first day, the lecturer walked in the door and said I'm sure you've all heard of this'... and everyone nodded, but I was like, what the heck is going on?"

Despite the challenges, Sun is adamant that if you can pull through it, it is an extremely fulfilling process.

"The best thing about studying in Australia is that the environment is really nice, it's very spacious and people have a good pace of living," he said.

"They don't make assumptions about you, so I'm an Asian kid, Okay? Join our group!"

For those on the other side of the arrangement, a corresponding level of fulfilment is also reached by sharing a part of Australian life with others.

"I think it's a healthy thing because people's prejudices and negativity toward other cultures comes from not understanding them and not being familiar, but having someone in your home like this, you learn about them in a personal way," Furlong said.
Cambodian troops attend a farewell ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on March 17, 2017. Cambodia will send the fourth batch of its peacekeepers to the war-torn West African nation of Mali next month to replace the third team whose one-year mission comes to an end, officials said on Friday. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will send the fourth batch of its peacekeepers to the war-torn West African nation of Mali next month to replace the third team whose one-year mission comes to an end, officials said on Friday.

Gen. Sem Sovanny, director-general of the Cambodian National Center for Peacekeeping Force, said that some 80 of the 309 soldiers will depart for Mali on Friday evening in order to manage tasks in advance, and the rest of them will leave on April 28.

He said the peacekeepers are divided into two groups. One will be responsible for airport repairs and maintenance and the other in charge of explosive ordnance disposal.

Since 2006, the Southeast Asian nation has dispatched 4,180 troops to join the United Nations peacekeeping missions in eight countries, namely Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Lebanon, Mali and Cyprus.

Speaking during a farewell ceremony here, Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn advised them to be extra-vigilant since Mali continued to be at high risk for terrorist attacks and armed conflicts.

"Among our missions in eight countries, Mali is the most dangerous country," he said.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a testing method, using yeast genes marked with fluorescence, to give a real-time warning when substances hazardous to humans appear in smog.

Scientists with the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering of Peking University said Friday that they had obtained a national patent for the air pollutant warning system.

Yao Maosheng, a chief scientist with the Peking University program, said PM2.5 was fine particulate matter that caused smog.

The research team has selected yeast genes that have reactions to particulate matter from smog air samples obtained from different regions around the world.

Yao explained that the research team used brewer's yeast for testing PM2.5. The gene sequencing of yeast was completed in 1996, and scientists have now been able to trace genes in yeast that have reactions to PM2.5 and mark them with fluorescence.

By monitoring the movement of the fluorescence-marked genes, scientists can give real-time alerts when the density of poisonous substances in PM2.5 rises.

"In future research, the team hopes to determine which substances in the smog are disease-causing virulent strains," Yao said.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is China's most heavily air-polluted area.

China has deployed equipment for round-the-clock online monitoring of PM2.5, and strengthened research on smog to improve the precision of measures to fight it.

Premier Li Keqiang said Wednesday that China would set up a special fund and pool the country's best scientists to find out the unique cause of smog that frequently blankets northern China.

Speaking at a press conference after the conclusion of the annual national legislative session, Li said the government was determined to spend as much as needed for the research to fight and win the battle against smog.
XI'AN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- A Silk Road expo will be held in June in Xi'an city in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the eastern end of the ancient trans-Asian trade routes, provincial authorities announced Friday.

The Silk Road International Exposition, or the 21st Investment and Trade Forum for Cooperation between East and West China, will be held from June 3 to 7, according to the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shaanxi Sub-Council.

There will be 12 exhibition halls, with a total area of 300,000 square meters. About 20 meetings and forums focusing on the economic belt and common development will be held during the expo.

The Republic of Serbia has been confirmed as the guest of honor of this year's expo. The expo is expected to enhance cooperation on food processing, tourism and manufacturing industry between the two countries.

Other countries along the Silk Road, including India and Uzbekistan, will also participate.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan welcome German Chancellor Angela Merkel before a banquet for the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

Hi, here's what you need to know about China:

BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday morning held a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the topic of strengthening bilateral relations.

"We're willing to work together with Germany to push the China-Germany comprehensive strategic partnership further forward. As both being two of the world's most important economies and firm advocates of globalization, China and Germany are obliged to push all parties to jointly build an open global economy, maintaining the effectiveness and authoritiveness of multilateral trade rules and systems," Xi said. xhne.ws/hLTjj

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BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday sent congratulatory messages to an opening ceremony of the China-ASEAN tourism cooperation year, which was held in Manila, the Philippines.

China and the ASEAN countries, either connected by mountains and rivers or only separated by the sea, have a long history of friendly cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, Li said in his message. xhne.ws/TXsEV

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CHICAGO, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The investment by Chinese firm CRRC Sifang in Chicago will bring more job opportunities and contribute to the local economy, said Cui Tiankai, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, in a letter to congratulate a new railcar assembly plant Thursday.

Official statistics show the two-way investment between China and the United States totalled more than 170 billion dollars. China's direct investment in the United States reached 45.6 billion dollars in 2016, doubling the amount in 2015, while U.S. actual investment in China grew 55.4 percent in 2016. xhne.ws/E5c4k

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LONDON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese mainland is home to two of the top three universities in Asia, according to research published on Thursday by the Times Higher Education (THE).

The THE Asia University Rankings for 2017 rated Peking University and Tsinghua University, both in the Chinese capital of Beijing, as the second and third best universities in the continent. National University of Singapore is ranked the best. In total, Chinese mainland has 54 institutions in the listing of top 300 universities in Asia. xhne.ws/8Elld
JERUSALEM, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel's army confirmed that it intercepted one of several anti-aircraft missiles that were launched at its air force as it was bombing "targets" in Syria.

As a result, sirens were heard in Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. The blasts were heard as far as Jerusalem, tens of kilometers away. No injuries or damage were reported.

A military spokesperson said in a statement that one anti-aircraft missile was intercepted by its Arrow anti-missile system.

"Overnight, IAF (Israel Air Force) aircrafts targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Aerial Defense Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the statement read.

"At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF aircraft compromised," the statement added.

The statement was a rare confirmation of Israel's airstrikes in Syria, where Israel bombs weapons shipments to Hezbollah, a Lebanese group linked to Iran that fights alongside the Syrian army.

Last Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ask him to prevent what he claimed to be an Iranian attempt to establish a permanent military force in Syria.
TUNIS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Assembly of People's Representatives (PRA) in Tunisia approved on Thursday night the candidacy of two new members of Youssef Chahed's National Unity government.

They are the Minister of Religious Affairs Ahmed Adhoum and the Secretary of State for Trade Abdellatif Hmam, respectively with 119 and 120 votes in favor.

Forty deputies voted against both candidates without any abstentions.

"Tunisia and its people are currently facing a series of challenges that are the result of a legacy and an accumulation of government stewardship failure for years or even decades," said Mohamed Ennaceur, the President of the PRA.

The current government, he added, "will have to ensure the necessary reforms and reconstruction as well as the satisfaction of the major aspirations of the population."

According to Ennaceur, the delicacy of the Tunisian economic situation is complemented by a constant social unrest with protests throughout the country and strikes over legitimate demands."

For his part, the Head of the Tunisian National Unity government Youssef Chahed considered that his cabinet was able to fulfill certain feats set out in the "Carthage Agreement," a consensual reference document signed last July and which defines the priorities of the government.

"The government has been able to fulfill several promises, including those related to the fight against terrorism, regional development and the radicalization of corruption and smuggling."

Concerning the fight against terrorism, Youssef Chahed argued that "the battle is not only won by weapons and equipment but also by culture and knowledge."
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Moscow on March 9, 2017. (AFP Photo)

JERUSALEM, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel's army confirmed that it intercepted one of several anti-aircraft missiles that were launched at its air force as it was bombing "targets" in Syria.

As a result, sirens were heard in Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. The blasts were heard as far as Jerusalem, tens of kilometers away. No injuries or damage were reported.

A military spokesperson said in a statement that one anti-aircraft missile was intercepted by its Arrow anti-missile system.

"Overnight, IAF (Israel Air Force) aircrafts targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Aerial Defense Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the statement read.

"At no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF aircraft compromised," the statement added.

The statement was a rare confirmation of Israel's airstrikes in Syria, where Israel bombs weapons shipments to Hezbollah, a Lebanese group linked to Iran that fights alongside the Syrian army.

Last Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ask him to prevent what he claimed to be an Iranian attempt to establish a permanent military force in Syria.
LONDON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The Diaoyu Islands is an inherent territory of China. This indisputable fact is backed by the photocopy of Shun Feng Xiang Song (Voyage with a Tail Wind), the earliest historical record of the Diaoyu Islands, which is on display at the London Book Fair.

Shun Feng Xiang Song, likely written during the Ming dynasty, contains 127 sailing directions related to capturing weather conditions, topographic features in different parts of the country and voyages to different destinations.

The book is published by Zhonghua Book Company under China Publishing Group Corp (CPG) and debuts along with another book, Zhi Nan Zheng Fa (Compass Directions), both from Oxford University.

Specifically, "From Fujian to Ryukyu" chapter records the voyage from Fujian to Ryukyu, with names of "Diaoyu Yu" (Diaoyu Islands) and "Chikan Yu" (Chiwei Yu) appearing for the first time in written history.

This writing section is the most persuasive historical evidence that the Chinese people were the first to discover, name and utilize these islands. Zhi Nan Zheng Fa was probably written in late Ming and early Qing and records facts about the Diaoyu Islands too.

These two ancient books were discovered and transcribed by Chinese historian Xiang Da when he was sent by Peking Library to work at Bodleian Libraries between 1935 and 1936 on an exchange program.

Xiang's transcribed version allowed his contemporaries at home to have the first glimpse of the sailing and compass directions that used to be confined to the knowledge of captains, and provided valuable materials for studying the history of geography, navigation, Sino-foreign relations and of relations between Asian countries.

In 1961, Zhonghua Book Company published Two Sets of Sailing and Compass Directions, the combined issue of Shun Feng Xiang Song and Zhi Nan Zheng Fa, both checked and annotated by Xiang Da.

The only existing handwritten copy of these two books is kept by Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University. David Helliwell, former director of the Chinese Section of Bodleian Libraries, is a huge fan of traditional Chinese culture and dedicated to the sorting and studies of ancient Chinese books.

He showed the original of the two books to the visiting CPG delegation in 2016 and suggested Zhonghua Book Company publish their photocopy. Zhonghua's version is exquisitely designed and true to the original. To highlight the value of this book, sections mentioning Diaoyu Islands are extracted and printed on the containing box.

CPG Vice President Jiang Jun told Xinhua on the ceremony that "we the CPG have always been committed to promoting Chinese culture overseas ... And we feel duty-bound to publish the Shun Feng Xiang Song & Zhi Nan Zheng Fa as a state-owned publishing group, in an attempt to serve our national interests, safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity and promote Chinese culture overseas."

"It also means a lot for preserving and sorting out ancient books and sets an example for international cultural exchange and cooperation," said Jiang.

Gillian Evison, head of the Bodleian Library's Oriental Section and Indian Institute Librarian, said that CPG is an ideal place to help the Bodleian to continue to fulfill its mission by bringing the libraries precious collections to light in China in digitalization and facsimile copy.

David Helliwell, the preface writer, briefed the audience on the book's circulation.

Among the 50-plus crowd at the launch ceremony were European sinologists, faculty members and students from Chinese studies majors at Oxford University, as well as CPG representatives.
DAMASCUS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli warplane, which was one of four Israeli war jets carrying out airstrikes on Syrian military positions in the central province of Homs before dawn Friday, the Syrian army said in a statement, adding that the targeted warplane fell down inside the Israeli airspace.
DAMASCUS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli warplane, which was one of four Israeli war jets carrying out airstrikes on Syrian military positions in the central province of Homs before dawn Friday, the Syrian army said in a statement, adding that the targeted warplane fell down inside the Israeli airspace.

Four Israeli warplanes infiltrated the Syrian airspace at 2:40 am Friday, over the Braij area and targeted one of the military positions near the city of Palmyra in the eastern countryside of Homs, said the military statement.

It added that the Syrian air defenses responded to the attack, shooting down one Israeli jet inside the Israeli airspace, and hit another while forcing the rest to flee.

"This flagrant attack comes to show the Zionist enemy's support to the terrorists gangs of the Islamic State, and a desperate attempt to lift their collapsed morale," the statement contended.

The Syrian army, meanwhile, stressed resolve to confront any future Israeli attack on Syrian positions, adding that the response will be direct by all available means.

The Syrian army has been on a crushing offensive in the eastern countryside of Homs against the IS group, succeeding recently to capture the old city of Palmyra and moving forward toward capturing key gas fields in the countryside of that area.

But the Israeli media said the airstrikes were targeting Hezbollah-bond weapons shipment.

The Israelis said the incident was dramatic, as it was the first one when the Syrian army responded directly in such a way to the repetitive Israeli strikes on Syrian military positions in Syria throughout the six-year-old war.
MOSCOW, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Russia's first upgraded Borei-class nuclear-powered strategic submarine will be delivered as scheduled, the Russian United Shipbuilding Corporation said Friday.

The Knyaz Vladimir "is expected to be floated out in the second quarter of this year," Igor Ponomarev, the company's vice president for military shipbuilding, was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

"Its commissioning will take place on schedule," he said.

He added that the submarine envisions a number of improvements, including arming it with enhanced Bulava-M sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles.

By 2020, the Russian Navy plans to operate a total of eight Borei-class strategic submarines. Currently there are three such submarines in the Russian Navy.
ADEN, Yemen, March 17 (Xinhua) -- About 30 African immigrants including women, were killed in an airstrike launched by suspected Saudi-led helicopters on their boat on the western coast of Yemen, a security official told Xinhua Friday.

The local Yemeni official based in the Houthi-controlled western port city of Hodyada said that a boat carrying more than 30 African immigrants including women from Somalia all died in the aerial bombardment by helicopters that occurred late on Thursday.

Most of the immigrants were coming back voluntarily from Yemen and heading towards Sudan, Somalia and other African countries, the security source said.

He added that scores of others managed to escape and have been rescued after the attack.

Other local sources said that a number of Yemeni fishermen were killed when the same warplanes struck their boat near Yemen's Red Sea Coast.

During the past few weeks, the Saudi-led Arab coalition intensified airstrikes on areas along Yemen's Red Sea Coast in an apparent attempt to support Yemeni government forces to kick the Shiite Houthi group out of the port city of Hodyada.

Yemen has been suffering from a civil war and a Saudi-led military intervention for around two years. The civil war began after the Houthi militants with support from forces loyal to the former president ousted the UN-backed transitional government and occupied capital Sanaa militarily in September 2014.

The legitimate government controls the south and some eastern parts, while the Houthi-Saleh alliance controls the other parts including the capital Sanaa.

The UN has sponsored peace talks between the warring factions several times, but the factions failed to reach common ground.

The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have already killed more than 10,000 people, half of them civilians, injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two million, according to humanitarian agencies.
SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that all options are on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.

Tillerson said during a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all of diplomatic, security and economic measures and all options will be reviewed for the peninsula's denuclearization.

"All options are on the table," said the top U.S. diplomat who arrived here earlier in the day for the second stop of his first East Asian tour since taking office.

He visited Japan on Thursday, meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to fly to China on Saturday.

Before the press conference, Tillerson toured the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the two Koreas since the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice. He also visited the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ.

Tillerson said a so-called "strategic patience" policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has ended, referring to the U.S. foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearization.

The top U.S. diplomat indicated a need for tougher UN Security Council sanctions on the DPRK's nuclear program and other weapons of mass destruction, but he did not go so far as to say that a military action is required.

Tillerson said Washington does not want to cause conflicts, but he said that if the DPRK conducts any provocative act to threaten South Korea and the U.S. forces stationed here, his country will take action against it.

The United States, he said, would come to the dialogue table for the peninsula's denuclearization only if the DPRK gives up its nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

The South Korean foreign minister said it was urgent to tackle the DPRK's advanced nuclear missile threats, noting that he will discuss future countermeasures against the threats with his U.S. counterpart who has said Washington is examining a new approach to the peninsula's nuclear issue.

Yun said no change has been made in the joint goal of the two allies to achieve a complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative has become the most popular public goods and platform for international cooperation with the brightest prospects in the world amid rising protectionism and unilateralism, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sideline of the recently concluded China's Two Sessions.

Proposed in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the initiative has witnessed continuous expansion of its "friend circle", and yield tangible benefits for countries along its routes.

It will provide unprecedented opportunities for the economic and social development of countries involved, as "it is the way leading to the community of shared future for mankind," said Gerrishon K. Ikiara, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

IDEAL OF OPENNESS, INCLUSIVENESS

With its guiding principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, the initiative has become a chorus instead of a solo.

Inspired by the ancient major trading route that linked China with Asia, Europe and Africa for a long time, the initiative aims to modernize the ancient trade route while aspiring to create common prosperity within those areas.

While the trends of protectionism and unilateralism are rising, the Belt and Road Initiative has become the common cause of the world which will help rebalance the economic globalization by making it more universally-beneficial and inclusive, said Wang Yi.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is against narrow-minded protectionism and isolationism," said Sergei Luzyanin, director of the Far Eastern Studies Institute under the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We only had the Western European-American option of integration and economic development in the 1990s, now there is a new option from China."

GLOBAL GROWTH STIMULATOR

The construction of the Belt and Road Initiative benefits not only China itself, but also countries along the routes. Against the backdrop of insufficient global demand, the blueprint will make contribution to the world economic growth.

A report issued by China's Renmin University said China has already begun the coordination of its signature initiative with the development strategies of many countries along the route, such as Kazakhstan's Bright Road program as well as the Sustainable Development Strategy of Kyrgyzstan.

So far, Chinese enterprises have established 56 economic and trade cooperative areas in more than 20 countries along the routes, invested accumulatively more than 18 billion U.S. dollar, and created 1-billion-dollar revenue and 160,000 jobs.

Last year, China's direct investment in 53 countries along the routes reached 14.53 billion dollar and the total value of contracts China signed with 61 related countries reached over 126 billion dollars.

This year, the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative will continue to be a growth point of the global economy, and the further expanding of trade exchange, infrastructure connectivity and financial intermediation will drive the development of production capacity cooperation, cross border e-commerce and other fields.

NEW ENGINE FOR GLOBALIZATION

Globalization currently is facing various problems and challenges, and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will become the engine for the future of globalization, said Pascal Lamy, former chief of the World Trade Organization, while addressing a public session recently in Jakarta.

Globalization in the past was basically driven by the West and now the new globalization will be motivated more by the East than the West, Amitav Acharya, writer of the popular book "The End of American World Order," told Xinhua in a recent interview.

When the West moves backward by erecting "walls", the East is building its gateway to the outside world, embracing globalization via China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, Malaysia's New Straits Times said in an article published on its website.

Proposed in 2013, the initiative has so far gained the support of over 100 countries and international organizations, and more than 40 of them have signed cooperation agreements with China.

"China's initiative to jointly build the Belt and Road, embracing the trend towards a multipolar world, economic globalization, cultural diversity and greater IT application, aims at being highly efficient in terms of the allocation of resources, and at achieving a deep integration of markets among the countries concerned," said Keith Bennett, vice chair of the London-based 48 Club Group.

"It will thereby jointly create an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture that benefits all," the British business leader told Xinhua.




South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se (R) shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Seoul, South Korea, on March 17, 2017. Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that all options are on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue. (Xinhua/Newsis)

SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that all options are on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.

Tillerson said during a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all of diplomatic, security and economic measures and all options will be reviewed for the peninsula's denuclearization.

"All options are on the table," said the top U.S. diplomat who arrived here earlier in the day for the second stop of his first East Asian tour since taking office.

He visited Japan on Thursday, meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to fly to China on Saturday.

Before the press conference, Tillerson toured the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the two Koreas since the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice. He also visited the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ.

Tillerson said a so-called "strategic patience" policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has ended, referring to the U.S. foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearization.

The top U.S. diplomat indicated a need for tougher UN Security Council sanctions on the DPRK's nuclear program, but he did not go so far as to say that any immediate military action is required.

Tillerson said the United States is prepared to take a military action if necessary, but he said Washington do not want to cause military conflicts.

He said that if the DPRK conducts any provocative act to threaten South Korea and the U.S. forces stationed here, his country will take action against it.

The United States, he said, would come to the dialogue table for the peninsula's denuclearization only if the DPRK gives up its nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the South Korean foreign minister said it was urgent to deal with the DPRK's advanced nuclear threats, and that he will discuss countermeasures against the threats with his U.S. counterpart who has said Washington is examining a "new approach" to the peninsula's nuclear issue.

Yun said no change has been made in the joint goal of the two allies to achieve a complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang carried out its fourth and fifth nuclear tests last year, the latest in September, while test-firing ballistic missiles over 20 times in 2016 alone.

The DPRK test-launched four ballistic missiles earlier in the month, after testing a new type of missile the previous month that uses solid fuel and is fired from a mobile launcher, two key features indicating its advanced ballistic missile technology.
COLOMBO, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government on Friday confirmed that eight local crew members aboard an oil tanker allegedly hijacked by Somali pirates had been released safely without a ransom.

Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha De Silva told a media conference in capital Colombo that the crew had been released on Friday morning and he thanked all countries who had helped coordinate the safe release of the crew.

"We thank the U.S. government and the President of Puntland, the semi autonomous region of Somalia in whose waters the hijacking took place," De Silva said.

The Minister also thanked the U.S. Ambassador in Sri Lanka Atul Keshap for taking up the matter with Washington, the EU, the Combined Maritime Force and the Sri Lanka Navy.

"This task would not have been made possible without their unstinted and active effort," De Silva said.

"The US took up the matter with the Puntland administration and got the men released. The combined Maritime Force also persuaded the Puntland army to stop firing on the tanker as it would endanger the lives of the captives on board," De Silva said.

The Aris 13, a Comoros-flagged tanker belonging to a Greek company, was en route from the Somali capital Mogadishu to Djibouti, Somalia's northern neighbor, when it went missing off the coast near a town called Alula.

It was the first major hijacking in the east African nation in almost five years.

International media reports had said that the pirates had demanded an undisclosed ransom for the vessel's return.
NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The entire crew of MT ARIS 13, a commercial vessel hijacked by Somali pirates on March 13 were on Thursday released and are in stable condition, said a statement from Oceans Beyond Piracy, a non-governmental organization.

"The crew is unharmed and under the care of Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF). The MT ARIS 13 is now proceeding to the Somalia port city of Bosasso," said the statement on Thursday night.

Somali pirates on March 13 hijacked the oil tanker that was heading to Mogadishu in a daring move that shocked the global shipping fraternity.

The incident marked the first hijacking of a large commercial vessel since 2012.

Earlier on, the pirates engaged in a heavy gun fight with Puntland Maritime Police Force though no casualties were confirmed.

The Puntland forces and clan elders negotiated for the release of MT ARIS 13 crew.

A statement from Oceans Beyond Piracy hailed the release of crew belonging to the hijacked oil tanker terming it a milestone in war against piracy.

"This operation marks a success in the maritime policing of Somali waters by local law enforcement," noted Oceans Beyond Piracy.
NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan government must allocate adequate funds to support nuclear research and innovation in a bid to hasten industrial transformation, an expert said on Thursday.

Director of the Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology at the University of Nairobi, David Maina, said Kenya should allocate sufficient funds in the nuclear technology arena if the country is to realize the target of commissioning a nuclear plant by 2027.

"There is no need to train students in nuclear science when you don't know what to do with them later. Many undergraduates study the subject but later divert to other fields due to lack of research funds to further their studies," Maina remarked on the sidelines of the Kenya Nuclear Week and Conference in Nairobi.

During the 2016 financial year, the Kenya Nuclear Energy Board got a budget allocation of 3.4 million U.S. dollars for its nuclear power development.

The director said the university offers scholarships to two students to study nuclear science, out of the 17 students who are sponsored by the government annually.

The forum brought together nuclear energy experts from Kenya, China, South Korea, and Russia to discuss issues related to nuclear energy with the aim of bringing the concerns to the front burner of the national conversation, harness the capacity, knowledge and expertise of the three leading nuclear-producing countries.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attended the commissioning of the new Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) processing plant in Msasa, Harare, Zimbabwe, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Stringer)

HARARE, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday commissioned a Chinese-built cement manufacturing plant owned by the country's largest cement producer, Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) Zimbabwe.

The 85 million U.S. dollars cement plant, situated in Harare and poised to become a regional cement export hub, was built by Chinese firm Sinoma over two years up to 2016.

A general view of the new Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) processing plant in Msasa, Harare, Zimbabwe, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Stringer)

The state-of-the-art cement plant, with an annual production capacity of 700,000 tonnes, is the firm's third plant in Zimbabwe and boosts the firm's installed production capacity to 1.8 million tonnes annually from 1.1 million tonnes.

Mugabe thanked the South African-owned firm for the investment, which will enable the company to meet Zimbabwe's national cement demand estimated at a million tonnes annually.

"I am informed that PPC plant, the newest and among the largest in the country, uses newest and exceptional technology," Mugabe said.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attended the commissioning of the new Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) processing plant in Msasa, Harare, Zimbabwe, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Stringer)

"I wish to commend and congratulate PPC Zimbabwe for investing in this state-of-the-art plant," he added.

Mugabe thanked the Chinese contractor Sinoma for its expertise and installation of cutting edge technology at the cement plant, the first ever in Zimbabwe.

"The plant's design and construction was done in adherence to global emissions standards, thanks to the technology and expertise from PPC's Chinese partners," he said.

The plant has a state-of-the-art palletizer and plastic cover wrapping machine. The machine is automated and packs 40 bags of cement into a pallet in a neat unit. The palletizer helps to improve output, making life easier and improving service delivery to customers.

A general view of the new Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) processing plant in Msasa, Harare, Zimbabwe, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Stringer)

Zimbabwean industry minister Mike Bimha said the integrated cement milling plant was a milestone in the advancement of Zimbabwe's economy.

He said by building the plant, PPC had shown its commitment to the growth and development of Zimbabwe's economy.

PPC Limited group chairman Peter Nelson said the new plant will enable the firm to become a cement export hub in the region.

Apart from PPC Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe has two other cement producers, Larfarge Zimbabwe and Sino-Zim with installed capacity of 450,000 tonnes and 250,000 tonnes respectively.
Local residents gather at the site where a massive garbage dump landslide occurred at the outskirts of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, March 12, 2017.(Xinhua/Wang Shoubao)

ADDIS ABABA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government has set up a team to investigate the cause of the garbage dump landslide that killed 113 people in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

A committee consisting of professionals from the Addis Ababa University and the University of Texas, has been assembled to investigate the incident, according to Diriba Kuma, Addis Ababa city mayor.

The East African country Thursday is on its second day of the three-day national mourning to remember victims of Saturday's landfill collapse, with its flags lowered at half mast.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, while briefing members of the Ethiopian House of People's Representatives, on Thursday expressed his "deep condolence" to families of the victims and the Ethiopian people.

Dagmawit Moges, Head of Addis Ababa City Administration Communication Affairs Office, told Xinhua the number of people found dead had remained unchanged at 113 since Wednesday night.
MANILA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank announced on Friday that its board has approved the first bus rapid transit or BRT system in Manila, the Philippine capital with 12.8 million people.

In a statement, the Wold Bank said that the BRT system would provide safe and comfortable rides for about 300,000 commuters daily along Espana Boulevard and Quezon Avenue.

Like trains, it said, BRTs runs on dedicated lanes, carrying passengers in large numbers. Unlike trains that run on rails, however, the bank said BRTs deploy buses, making the system simpler and cheaper to construct, operate, and maintain.

The statement said the Metro Manila BRT Line 1 Project will cost 109.4 million U.S. dollars, of which 64.6 million will come from the World Bank and the Clean Technology Fund, the Philippine government will provide funding equivalent to 44.8 million.

"By providing an affordable and convenient public transport option, this project will help make job and education opportunities more accessible, especially for the poor residing around the BRT route," said WB Country Director Mara Warwick.

"High-capacity transport systems like BRT help reduce greenhouse gases, boosting the country's contribution to the global fight against climate change," Warwick added.

Warwick said the project will also develop support infrastructure along the busy Espana Boulevard-Quezon Avenue route, including bus terminals and stations, segregation barriers, sidewalks, warning and direction signs, and pedestrian crossing facilities, among other facilities.

"Bus systems like BRT are cost-effective options for reducing emissions of harmful gases that cause climate change," said Zhang Zhihong, senior program coordinator of the Clean Technology Fund.

He said implementation of this project alone will prevent the release of around 2.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere in the next 20 years. "Transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions globally and projects like this show the road to a cleaner future," Zhang said.

Managed by the World Bank, the Clean Technology Fund provides developing countries and emerging economic with resources to scale up clean technologies that have strong potential for reducing greenhouse emissions.

Globally, the fund has provided 3.8 billion U.S. dollars to support clean technologies such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and transport.

To be implemented by the Philippine Department of Transportation in coordination with the local governments of Manila and Quezon City, the Manila BRT Line 1 is expected to be operational by 2020.

Pioneered in Curitiba, Brazil in 1974, BRT systems are growing in popularity throughout the world for efficiency and affordability. Over 150 cities in the world operate or are developing BRT.
JAKARTA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia plans to open a hospital and apply community development program in Myanmar's Rakhine State, as part of its humanity assistance to the restive region, officials said Friday.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister A.M. Fachir said the Indonesia-initiated hospital would be built in city of Mrauk U, Rakhine State where most of internally displaced people sheltered in.

"Besides the hospital, we also planned to build a market which is expected to inclusively facilitate trade of staple needs for locals regardless their different religious backgrounds. So we have moved from sending relief aid to rehabilitation efforts through community development program," Fachir said.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting in the vice presidential palace to discuss Indonesia's assistance to Rakhine State.

Indonesia previously sent relief aids in January this year for the people suffering from the conflict in Rakhine State.
MIGORI, Kenya, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Amid an ever rising cost of paraffin in Kenya, adoption of solar lamps for night fishing is rapidly becoming a cheaper source of power for fishermen at the expansive Lake Victoria in Western Kenya.

A liter of kerosene cost an average of 0.55 dollars in March, 2015 against the average 0.7 dollars in early 2017 thus increasing the cost of input for the fishermen who spend 12 hours in the waters searching for a healthy catch.

However, solar lamps are providing a better option for the fishermen and to some extent cutting their expenditure on fuel.

"Solar lamps are such a cost relief to us," said Okoth Odhiambo,who has been fishing for the past three decades at Migori County's Muhuru Bay waters, part of the larger Lake Victoria shared among Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the three out of the six nations forming the East African Community.

"It is very cheap recharging the solar lamps than refueling it with kerosene. We would spend two dollars on paraffin for one lamp and we use four so that adds up to eight dollars. But we now use a total of two dollars because we are charged only 0.5 dollars for each lamp," he explained.

Odhiambo said the 18 fishermen stationed at the Muhuru Bay have for the last two years embraced solar lamps which he said are also safe.

"There is no fear of burning should the lamp fall or contaminating the fish with paraffin or even polluting the lake with the lamp oil," he said.

Fishermen are crucial to Kenya's aquaculture sector directly influencing the nation's total economic performance.

More than 129,000 Kenyans draw their livelihood from fishing and fish farming activities, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

In 2013, the sector contributed 0.54 percent to the country's GDP with Lake Victoria making up 90 percent of the total fishery and aquaculture production in the same year.

Experts view access to solar energy as a means of increasing income for the fishermen and improving their lives.

The high cost of kerosene eats into the profits of fishermen leaving them in a cycle of poverty, said Professor Herick Othieno, an expert in solar energy and who has done studies looking into the economic value of using paraffin among the fishing communities in the Lake Victoria ecosystem.

"Fishermen make so little money because the cost of input is actually too high, "said Professor Othieno.

"Kerosene is one of the inputs the fishermen have to cater for since they need the lamps to fish at night. And it is too expensive," he added

He said the fishermen have been enslaved in poverty as they are left with nothing to invest since they make little profits.

He said solar power is a more affordable, clean and safe alternative whose use among the fishing communities can greatly transform their lives.

The solar expert said use of solar lamps also lowers pollution of the lake as a result of reduced spillage from the paraffin lamps.

Professor Othieno said fishing was crucial to the lakeside communities thus the need to increase their access to solar energy which enhances their economic activities and in the long-term lifting them out of the cycle of poverty.

While the fishermen such as Odhiambo would continue to need solar energy in their future fishing activities due to its cost effectiveness, more investments are needed to expand their capacity as its generation is currently very minimal.

Currently, solar energy contribute less than one percent of the total electricity produced and consumed in Kenya, according to the Energy Regulatory Commission.
DHAKA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese language skill has now become a key tool in Bangladesh for people to shape a brighter future, language learners said at a ceremony in capital Dhaka on Friday.

Since China is Bangladesh's biggest investment and trading partner, they said demand for Chinese language skills is shooting up in the country.

Currently over 200 Chinese companies are operating or cooperating different fields of development in Bangladesh. About 100,000 Chinese nationals are now working in Bangladesh, the speakers said at the Chinese language skill certificate awarding ceremony in Dhaka on Friday.

Thousands of locals have access to employment in those enterprises but lack of knowledge of Chinese language has become a bottleneck in the area.

Shanto Marium-CRI Confucius Classrooom (CSCC), which is one of the country's few language and culture institutions that teach Chinese to feed the spiraling demand, organized the passing out ceremony for as many as 50 of its students of four categories on Friday.

CSCC is also an institute in Bangladesh that teaches Chinese martial art.

Officials from the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka, vice president of Overseas Chinese Association in Bangladesh,

Shanto-Mariam Foundation Chairman Md. Imamul Kabir Shanto and Vice Chairman Ahsanul Kabir, among others, were present at the ceremony.

The speakers said it was indeed a happy occasion that Bangladeshi Chinese language students got the passing out certificates. The Chinese language skill is more important than mere a certificate as it shapes the future of the students.

Many of the speakers said since Chinese is our biggest investment and trading partner, Chinese language has become a part of our life.

Shanto-Mariam Confucius Classroom, a Chinese language and culture institution of the Shinto-Mariam Foundation and China Radio International, taught over 2,000 students, many of whom are employed in different firms and about 40 got scholarship for higher studies in China.
COPENHAGEN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's public prosecution office announced Friday it has decided to extradite Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of a longtime confidante of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Chung, who has been in police custody in Denmark since January, is accused of involvement in the corruption scandal that led to Park's removal last week.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecution said in a press release that all conditions to extradite Chung to South Korea have been met.

"After having reviewed the South Korean request for extradition thoroughly, it is our opinion that all conditions for extradition in the Danish Extradition Act are met," said Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Nothing that the case has been subject to great attention in South Korea, Ahsan said "there has been a prevalent understanding" that the case has been handled in line with Danish legislation.

Chung has three days to decide whether she will appeal.

Chung was arrested by Denmark's North Jutland Police on Jan. 1 at the request of Interpol. Her mother Choi Soon-sil is charged with using her friendship with Park to extort funds from large businesses and meddling in state affairs.

Chung, 20, is alleged to have received illegal favors when entering a prestigious South Korean university. She is also accused of being behind economic crimes in collusion with her mother.
TOKYO, March 17 (Xinhua)-- "Such scams are a shame to Japan," said a reporter from Tokyo Metropolitan Television Broadcasting Corp., referring to a recently-exposed scandal involving labor dispatch agencies duping foreign refugees into doing decontamination work in Fukushima.

Various local media have exposed recently that some Japanese companies have swindled foreign refugees into doing decontamination work in Fukushima with empty promises that such work might help extend their visas to stay in Japan.

Fifty-year-old Hosein Moni and 42-year-old Hosein Deroaru from Bangladesh were both caught in such a scam, according to a recent report by the Chunichi Shimbun, one of the largest newspapers in Japan.

The two came to Japan in 2013 seeking to be recognized as political refugees. In Japan, foreigners are given temporary permission to stay for up to six months at one application before they are recognized as refugees and given status as residents.

According to government data, the number of refugees actually afforded recognition as refugees in Japan is disproportionately low among developed nations, while the numbers of those applying for refugee status has been rapidly increasing in recent years in Japan.

The government received some 5,000 such applications in 2014, but only 11 were granted refugee status, according to the data.

Moni and Deroaru were told by a so-called labor dispatch agency in Nagoya that they could do decontamination work in exchange for an extension of their visa.

The two, knowing little Japanese and trying to seize every opportunity they could, accepted the job and worked in Fukushima for three months in 2015.

But when they finished their work and went to the local immigration bureau to extend their stay, they were told by officers there that they knew nothing about such a policy.

They later found out that the construction company that had hired them had changed its company name, and its Fukushima branch had closed.

Half of the 20 workers that they had worked with in Fukushima were foreigners, many of whom had been applying for refugee status in Japan, the pair later recalled.

Their work mainly involved clearing away contaminated soil with spades, and while they were at work might well have been affected by high levels of radiation. "The radiation detectors we brought with us kept sounding alarms, which was rather scary," they were quoted as saying.

The incident, after been exposed by local media, also caused a splash on social network sites. Many Japanese netizens felt indignant that such scams were happening in their homeland.

"Earthquake, nuclear plant, poverty... there are always some people trying to cheat or hurt other people here just for money," remarked Kojima on Twitter.

"Why has my home country degenerated to such a low place," said "Hootoo," another netizen here.

They also called on the Japanese government to strengthen regulations on the Japanese companies to prevent such scams from happening.

Japan's immigration bureau, for its part, said that the incident was with "vile nature", and it would conduct investigations soon.

In fact, however, for a long time, due to lack of manpower, many of Japan's "three-K" (kiken, kitanai, kitsui, which means dangerous, dirty and tiring) jobs have been done by foreign immigrants, as the Japanese are reluctant to do such work.

"As Japanese people don't want to do the work, it has to be done by foreigners," said Ishikawa, a Brazil-born Japanese who was in charge of coordinating foreign workers in decommissioning work linked to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, according to a report published by the Mainichi Shimbun last year.

Most of the foreign workers could hardly speak Japanese. As anti-radiation brochures provided by the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), were only available in Japanese or English, many of the workers could not understand it, Ishikawa was quoted as saying.

The foreign workers, to some extent, saved the contractors and TEPCO by pushing forward the decommissioning work of the nuclear plant, remarked the report.

A magnitude-9.0 earthquake in 2011 triggered a massive tsunami which destroyed the emergency power and then the cooling system of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and caused a serious nuclear disaster, forcing some 300,000 people to evacuate.

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, has said it plans to decommission the crippled reactors in about four decades.

However, the difficult tasks such as processing contaminated water, cooling the reactors and removing nuclear fuel and debris, continue to pose serious challenges to the power company as well as the government.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying (Photo source: fmprc.gov.cn)

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday said its opposition to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) was justified and sufficient, urging the Republic of Korea (ROK) to cease deployment of the U.S. missile defense system.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to reports that many people in the ROK do not understand why China opposes the deployment.

"China understands the ROK's concerns with maintaining its own security, but THAAD harms strategic balance in the region and is not conducive to stability on the Korean Peninsula," Hua said, noting that THAAD may even make the ROK less safe.

Hua said the coverage of the THAAD missile defense system, especially the monitoring scope of its X-Band radar, went far beyond the defense needs of the Korean Peninsula and reached into the hinterlands of Asia, and could peer deep into Chinese territories.

"We do not oppose necessary measures that the ROK takes to maintain its national security, but such measures cannot be pursued at the expense of China's security," the spokesperson said.

"We again urges relevant parties to face up to the essence of the issue as well as China's legitimate concerns and stop the deployment," Hua added.

Yonhap news agency reported Thursday that the X-band radar, a core element of the U.S. missile defense system, will arrive the ROK in the near future.

"The ROK Foreign Ministry has clarified the issue, with the Chinese side, that the reports are untrue," Hua said, noting that China's opposition to the deployment of THAAD was clear and consistent.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, March 17 (Xinhua) -- At least one person has been confirmed dead and a few others injured as a suicide bombing rocked Surkhrod district in the eastern Nangarhar province on Friday, a local official said on the condition of anonymity.

"A suicide bombing occurred in Hijrat Kalai neighborhood of Surkhrod district today afternoon killing one person and injuring a few others," the official told Xinhua but declined to be identified, saying authorized officials would brief the media.

Since Friday is weekly off day in Afghanistan, no official was immediately available to make comment.

This is the second suicide attack in the eastern region of the conflict-hit Afghanistan since Friday morning.

In the previous bloody incident a suicide car bomb against army base in the eastern Khost province had killed two persons including the bomber and a soldier and injured seven others.
KUNMING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have described a new primitive fish that evolved some 423 million years ago, before the period known as the "Age of Fish," after studying fossils unearthed in Qujing in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Recent discoveries found at the Kuanti Formation led to descriptions of the new fish species, which is believed to have been 20 cm long and covered in thick rectangular scales, according to Zhu Min, research professor and overall coordinator of the Silurian-Devonian fish research at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Brian Choo from Flinders University, Australia, has worked with Zhu since 2009. He explained that the fossil was initially thought to be a new species of Psarolepis, a fish discovered in slightly more recent sediment.

"When we started looking at this beautifully preserved specimen in detail in 2010, we immediately noticed it was a quite different animal," said Choo in an e-mail to Xinhua.

The new fish, Sparalepis tingi, is a close relative of Guiyu and Psarolepis from the same region, but displays unique characteristics, with distinctive bone ornamentation and extremely tall, thick scales, he noted.

Specifically, it has unique interlocking structures on the scales at the front of its body, which help to illustrate that, even at this early stage, bony fish were displaying considerable diversity and anatomical advances, Choo explained.

Zhu and Choo view the Kuanti Formation as unique window into what is still a largely unknown chapter in the history of vertebrate life.

Only tiny fragments of Silurian jawed fish were known up until the end of the 20th century, from sites scattered around the globe. Almost all understanding of the early evolution of jawed vertebrates was based on more complete discoveries from the later Devonian Period (419.2-358.9 million years ago).

Thus, the Devonian Period is often called "The Age of Fish," due to the apparent increase in vertebrate size and variety over the preceding Silurian Period.

In the past few years, however, there have been some major discoveries at Qujing, forcing scientists to re-evaluate what they thought they knew about vertebrate evolution, Choo said.

For instance before Kuanti, little evidence of large jawed vertebrates from before the Devonian were available for scientists to study. Silurian fish were thought to be generally small and occupy low positions on the food chain, with the top marine predators being invertebrates such as sea scorpions.

The discovery of Megamastax, which Choo named in 2014, however, revealed that large predatory fishes, well over a meter in length, prowled the Silurian seas of south China.

The excitement surrounding Kuanti comes from the unparalleled quantity and quality of Silurian fossilized fish available for study.

In other Silurian sites around the world, jawed fish are generally only represented by a handful of small forms. Whereas at Qujing, which back then was situated near an equatorial coast, researchers are learning of a pre-Devonian fauna with dozens of bizarre species, some growing quite large.

"It seems that the "Age of Fish" arrived early in south China, although we still don't have enough information to know exactly why this was the case," said Choo.

"The ongoing discoveries at Qujing have drastically enhanced our understanding. This is the only place on Earth to have yielded articulated remains of jawed fishes from before the Devonian, beginning with Guiyu described in 2009," said Choo.

"Scientists were shocked and exhilarated by these fossils finds, revealing that Silurian fishes were larger, far more diverse and much weirder than expected," he said.

Zhu said that his research team have identified a growing number of bizarre fish living with Sparalepis tingi, including Guiyu oneiros, the first completely preserved Silurian bony fish fossil.

Sparalepis tingi was the second such well-preserved fossil from this group and provided significant new evidence for the understanding of the early diversification of jawed vertebrates and the origin of bony fish, Zhu said.

Another major Kuanti discovery, announced in 2013, was the description of Entelognathus, a fish combining a placoderm-like trunk armor with the jawbones of a bony fish, which demonstrated that the bones in our human face originated among the placoderms, Choo explained.

Before that finding, placoderms (an extinct group of jawed fish with bony armor) were considered an evolutionary dead end. The skulls of modern bony vertebrates, including humans, were thought to have evolved independently.

"With great quantities of Kuanti fossils awaiting description, representing multiple species of previously unknown fish, we can expect more surprises in the future," said Choo.

A detailed research article written by Choo and Zhu was published March 8 in the international journal "PLOS ONE."
JAKARTA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian national police will verify information about the death of an Islamic State (IS) high profile figure from Indonesia in Syria, a police spokesman said here Friday.

Bahrumsyah alias Abu Muhammad Al Indonesi reportedly died in a suicide attack in Palmyra, Syria.

He was in charge of giving orders for launching strikes in Indonesia and acted as a connector for Indonesians wishing to have a linkage with the IS in Syria, according to the police.

National police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said that the police would seek information from the police attache in a country near Syria.
RABAT, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Morocco believes in Africa's capacity to rise to the challenges facing it and to ensure sustainable human development for its peoples, thanks to its vast natural and human resources, King Mohammed VI said on Friday.

"Achieving the African renaissance we yearn for hinges, however, on how much belief we have in ourselves, how far we rely on our own capacities and potential, and how well we exploit them, within the framework of mutually-beneficial South-South cooperation and solidarity-based, strategic partnerships," the king said in a message addressed to the participants in the 2017 edition of the Crans Montana Forum, which kicked off in the southern city of Dakhla.

"I am sure we can rise to these challenges," he insisted, saying that Africa is governed today by a new generation of pragmatic leaders, uninhibited by outdated ideologies who are working with a high sense of patriotism and responsibility to achieve their countries' stability, political openness, economic development and social progress.

The King said that South-South cooperation, which is based on the culture of sharing and solidarity, is "the mechanism that will enable our countries to exchange their expertise directly and immediately. It will help improve our field experience, make the most of our complementarities and expand our national markets."

This cooperation "will also open up new opportunities for efficient and beneficial investment and achieve effective sustainable human development, while respecting each country's national sovereignty, as well as the principles of mutual esteem and equality," the Sovereign noted.

Crans Montana Forum is attended with the participation of more than 150 countries represented by high-level personalities.
KATHMANDU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Nepal has stressed on the need for greater investment in children to capitalize on the country's rapid and unique demographic transition and reap the maximum benefits for the future. Nepal made such call during the launch of a new report titled "Study on Demographic Changes in Nepal: Trends and Policy Implications" here on Friday.

The report has been jointly launched by National Planning Commission and UNICEF Nepal.

According to the study, Nepal has been experiencing rapid demographic changes over the last few decades as a result of declining birth and death rates, while it has an improvement in life expectancy within a relatively short span of time.

According to the study, Nepal has a finite "demographic window of opportunity" period, the number of years between the time when the percentage of working-age population vis-a-vis the total population starts to increase and the time when the same percentage starts to decrease.

During the demographic window of opportunity, the number and proportion of working-age population is particularly high compared with dependent-age population, which provides very favorable conditions for a country's socio-economic development.

Launching the report, Min Bahadur Shrestha, Vice Chairman at National Planning Commission said, "We should make prioritized investment in today's children and generations to come in a time-bound manner so that they become much more productive than today's adults by the time they grow into adults themselves. Only then can they adequately support the growing number of old-age people of the country."

Nepal is projected to transition into an "aging society" by 2028 and an "aged society" by 2054. It has been claimed that this period provides very favorable conditions for a country's socio-economic development.

The government has claimed that it is committed to making investment for children in such areas like Early Childhood Development, Health, Nutrition, Education, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Child Protection, adolescents' development and Social Protection.

According to the latest study, the demographic window of opportunity for Nepal began around 1992 and will start to close in another 30 years around 2047. The number of years Nepal would take to transit from aging society to aged society is 26 years.

Tomoo Hozumi, UNICEF Representative to Nepal said that Nepal can cope effectively with this situation only if today's children become far more productive by the time they become adults themselves and need to support the elderly people of the society while continuously developing the society.

"Nepal requires in this context is not mere 'children in number' but children who are raised to their fullest potential to be able to move the society forward," Hozumi said.
RIYADH, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia announced on Friday that the required procedures for the participation of Iranian pilgrims in the upcoming Hajj season have been completed, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah highlighted in a statement that Saudi Arabia welcomes Muslims from all over the world, regardless of their nationalities.

In February, the ministry met with an Iranian delegation to discuss its citizens' Hajj to Mecca in 2017.

Iran boycotted the 2016 Hajj season over a series of rifts between the two countries.

In 2015 Hajj, Iranian pilgrims were among the killed in a stampede in Mina area.

In early 2016, angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran after Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including Shiite cleric Nemer Baqar Al-Nemer, on terrorism charges.

In response, Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran later and banned its citizens from entry into the kingdom.
GENEVA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday that 31 Somalis reportedly lost their lives in an alleged helicopter attack on a refugee boat late on Thursday.

"Our people said they know that Somalis were killed in 'an attack,' they do not know if it was a helicopter," IOM spokesman Joel Millman told the press here.

"The press is reporting that it was a helicopter, and apparently coastguard officials have confirmed it," he added.

Millman confirmed that the vessel "was full of Somalis" and that over 80 survivors were rescued. He warned however that the death toll could be higher since 24 of those saved are in critical conditions.

It remains unclear who carried out the attack on the vessel which was believed to be bound for Sudan after setting off from the Yemeni town of Houdaydah.
KABUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants have stepped up activities in conflict-hit Afghanistan as people prepare to celebrate Nawroz or the New Year falling on March 21.

The armed insurgents launched a series of offensives in a single day on Friday.

In a suicide car bomb against an army base in the eastern Khost Province, two people including the bomber and an army soldier had been confirmed dead and seven more soldiers sustained injuries, according to an army official in the province.

The Taliban outfit in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the attack, insisting the bombing inflicted huge casualties to the soldiers.

In a similar attack also in the eastern Nangarhar Province on Friday afternoon, at least one person was killed and a few others injured.

According to a local official who declined to be identified, the target of the attacker was Zahir Haqqani, the director of Hajj and Religious affairs of Nangarhar Province but he escaped unhurt. However his brother was killed in the blast.

Although no group has claimed responsibility, the locals do not rule out the involvement of Taliban insurgents in the attack.

Similarly, Taliban militants in attack against government interests set on fire some oil tankers on the highway linking the northern Baghlan Province to Kunduz city on Friday morning.

Hundreds of travelers were stranded on the highway, according to local media reports.

Taliban militants traditionally intensify activities in spring and summer commonly known as the fighting season in the war-battered country.
NEW DELHI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "a very good learner" who has acquired "in-depth knowledge" on every subject.

"Be it foreign relations or economy, Modi has acquired in-depth knowledge on every subject. One can win the election by a majority but you need consensus to rule. This aspect of PM Modi is very good," he said at a media conclave in the Indian capital.

Stating that Modi is "a very good learner," Mukherjee said that the prime minister has his own way of dealing with things and "we must give him credit for that."

"I am part of this democracy. I am part of the mass and will melt into it without leaving a legacy," he added.

Modi assumed power in May 2014 general elections after decimating the then ruling Congress party which was embroiled in corruption.

Since then, there was no stopping back. His charisma has helped the country's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party win assembly polls in several states.

The Indian prime minister, who is one of the most followed politicians in the world on Twitter, has successfully used the micro-blogging site for his pet campaigns like #MakeInIndia, #SwachBharat, #MannKiBaat and #SelfieWithDaughter to reach citizens.

Although Modi prefers speaking mostly in India's national language Hindi, his tweets are always in English, preferred for business in a nation with 22 official languages.
HANOI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City will launch its first passenger riverway route in early June to help reduce road traffic congestion, the municipal Transport Department said Friday.

The 10.8-km route will run through the four districts of 1, 2, Binh Thanh and Thu Duc and will take passengers some half an hour to cover the distance on Saigon River, or two-third of the time needed to complete a similar bus route on land.

According to the route's operator, a Vietnamese company, the route's fare will be some 30,000 Vietnamese dong (over 1.3 U.S. dollars), but Ho Chi Minh City should subsidize the fare so that it will stand at only 15,000 Vietnamese dong.

The second passenger riverway route with 10.3 kilometers in length will run through the five districts of 1, 4, 5, 6 and 8.

The two routes, which will be connected to bus routes, will receive total investment of over 120 billion Vietnamese dong and built in the mode of Build-Own-Operate. (1 Vietnamese dong = 0.000044 U.S. dollar)
GIMCHON, South Korea, March 17 (Xinhua) -- As the U.S. missile defense system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is scheduled to be deployed soon in South Korea, residents near the site started waves of protests against the plan.

The system is scheduled to be deployed at Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province by the end of this year.

Anti-THAAD banners can be seen on the streets of Gimchon, a neighboring city with a population of 140,000, located 7 km north of the deployment site.

"NO THAAD, NO WAR," "We want peace back," some of the banners read.

"Let's sell THAAD out of South Korea, and GET RICH!" one said with bitter humor.

Over 200 protests have been held in the small city recently. Almost every night, about 100 people, including the elderly, women and students, gathered in the city's train station square in the chilling wind to protest against THAAD deployment.

"The business is not as good as before, many guests and visitors are afraid of the THAAD system. We heard that the radar's radiation is bad for the environment," a shopkeeper said.

A market vendor said THAAD will bring war to them and their peaceful life will be gone. The radiation from the radar will also compromise the quality of local agriculture produce, such as grapes and melons.

"Our mayor is also against THAAD, but it doesn't work," he said.

Gimchon-Gumi, a newly developed district of Gimchon just a few kilometers away from the downtown, has a high-speed train station linking to Seoul and Pusan. Real estate developers plan to build apartments for commuters working in big cities.

Over 20 apartment buildings are for sale in this district, but few have moved in. Many windows hang yellow banners of "NO THAAD."

At mid-noon, only a few people can be seen on the streets. Most of the ground floors designed for commercial use are empty, with advertisements saying "For rent, good price."

"Apparently the THAAD makes it more difficult to develop (the Gimchon-Gumi district) as planned," a hotel staff member said.

In July last year, South Korea and the United States agreed to install one THAAD battery by the end of this year. The schedule was brought forward to June and August and now as early as April.

China and Russia have strongly opposed the U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea as it breaks regional strategic balance and threatens security interests of the two countries.

THAAD's X-band radar can peer deep into the territories of the two countries.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping received the credentials of eight new ambassadors to China on Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The ambassadors are Zvi Heifetz from Israel, Ahmad T.A.Berwari from Iraq, Antonia Hugh from Jamaica, Mbelwa Kairuki from Tanzania, Dusan Bella from Slovakia, Jose S.L.Sta.Romana from the Philippines, Piriya Khempon from Thailand and John McCallum from Canada.

Xi welcomed the ambassadors to their posts and asked them to convey his greetings to the leaders and people of their countries. He said the Chinese government will support their work, calling on them to contribute to cementing people's friendship and developing ties with China.

Xi appreciated China's friendly ties with those countries, adding that China is ready to enhance political trust with them, step up substantial cooperation in various areas and cultural exchanges, and strengthen cooperation in global affairs.

The ambassadors congratulated China on the success of this year's two sessions, and hailed China's development achievements and as well as its role in global affairs.

They conveyed greetings from their state leaders to Xi, adding their countries highly value their relations with China and expect to participate in the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative.
VIENTIANE, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Approximately 6,000 children under five years old in Laos reportedly die every year resulting from a lack of proper nutrition, according to the latest survey.

As many as 36.5 percent of children in Laos are facing stunting that will pose negative impacts for long term national development, the survey said.

The statistics were reported at a meeting on Research and Intervention, Maternal Health and Infections under the theme "Important Elements for the Development of Healthy Fetuses, Infants and Young Children" held in Lao capital Vientiane on Friday.

The lack of proper nutrition is estimated to cost the Southeast Asian country some 197 million U.S. dollars or 2.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product per year, Lao state-run news agency KPL quoted the survey, which was conducted in 2015, as saying.

"The rate of stunting has been recorded as high as 40 percent for children from the nine provinces of Phongsaly, Luang Namtha, Luang Prabang, Huaphan, Xieng Khuang, Xaysomboun, Salavan, Sekong and Attapeu," said Deputy Director of the Nutrition Center Ratthiphone Ula.

Four in 10 children under five years in Laos are anaemic. Among children, 9.6 percent of those under five years of age had acute malnutrition or wasting (low weight for height/length). In the three provinces of Khammuane, Savannakhet and Salavan, wasting exceeds the World Health Organization's "serious" threshold of 10 percent, said Ratthiphone.

Nutrition remains a challenge for Lao government in achieving its millennium development goals by 2017 and sustainable development goals, which has targets for zero hunger underlined in the national development plan on nutrition for 2016-2025 and the action plan for 2016-2020.

In a related situation, UNICEF has provided 7.2 million U.S. dollars for interventions in health, nutrition, and the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program in rural areas of Laos.

The cooperation will strengthen district health systems to ensure the implementation of the essential service package along the continuum of care approach and support the implementation of nutrition specific interventions including the feeding of infants and young children.

The work plan 2017-2018 will also support community service delivery of high impact new-born and child interventions to address morbidity due to common complications and implement WASH and climate change resilience policies, including the national strategy on rural water, sanitation and hygiene, and conduct reviews of guidelines, standards and designs of packages for WASH facilities in communities and schools.
MOGADISHU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Six high ranking members of the Al-Qaida linked terror group Al-Shabaab were on Friday killed in southern Somalia's Jubaland state during an operation by special forces.

The spokesman of security agencies in Jubaland, Sayid Ahmed Mohamed Arab told reporters that the operation that led to the death of six Al-Shabaab militants near the port town of Kismayo was successful.

"Our special forces carried out a successful operation at Mugambow location in lower Juba region this morning and killed six high ranking Al-Shabaab militants that were planning vicious attacks against civilians," said Mohamed Arab.

He added that the covert operation targeting Al-Shabaab hideouts will intensify in the days ahead.

Al-Shabaab fighters have staged numerous attacks against civilians and security forces inside Somalia despite a relentless onslaught to vanquish them.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- At the invitation of Egyptian Defense Ministry, the Central Military Commission (CMC) will send a delegation to Egypt and hold a Chinese military culture week there in late March.

Activities, such as military band performances and exhibitions, will be held in major Egyptian cities including Cairo and Alexandria, a CMC statement said Friday.

It will showcase the development of the Chinese army, boost exchanges, friendship and mutual trust between the Chinese and Egyptian militaries, and promote a sound development of the relations between the two countries, said the statement.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st R) pose for a photo with Rwanda President Paul Kagame (2nd L) and his wife in Beijing, capital of China, March 17, 2017. Xi held a welcome ceremony for Kagame's China visit before their talks on Friday. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with visiting Rwanda President Paul Kagame on Friday, and the two leaders agreed to upgrade bilateral strategic cooperation.

Xi hailed the growth of bilateral ties over the past 46 years, citing enhanced political trust, trade cooperation and cultural exchanges.

He called on both sides to further deepen trust, boost personnel exchanges, share governance experience and keep close contact in global and regional affairs.

Xi vowed to support Rwanda in building an economic zone, calling for stronger bilateral cooperation in the areas of industrialization, agricultural modernization, capacity, infrastructure building, tourism and security. China will encourage more enterprises to invest in Rwanda's major infrastructure projects.

During his visit to Africa in 2013, Xi proposed developing relations with Africa with sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith and the correct viewpoint of righteousness and benefit.

"The essence of this is to combine China's growth with helping Africa's development, in a bid to realize win-win cooperation and common development," Xi told Kagame.

China is not only a supporter of Africa's sustainable development, but a pioneer leading global cooperation with Africa, said the Chinese president.

"No matter how the international situation changes, China's policy towards Africa remains unchanged, and China will not reduce its efforts to boost win-win cooperation with Africa," Xi said.

China hopes to work closely with African countries to implement the decisions of the summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in South Africa's Johannesburg in 2015, he added.

Kagame, in his turn, said Rwanda cherishes its friendly ties and cooperation with China, and appreciates China's contribution to his country's reconstruction and development.

He welcomed more Chinese investment in Rwanda's agriculture, mining, tourism and infrastructure.

Rwanda appreciates China's friendly policy towards Africa, and spoke highly of China's adherence to equality and mutual respect while developing ties with Africa, Kagame said.

Before their talks, Xi held a welcome ceremony for Kagame's China visit.
NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Five people are reported to have died while several others sustained injuries when a boat capsized on Thursday night in Lake Victoria.

Kenyan media reported that seventeen people were aboard the ill-fated boat that capsized while en route to Musoma in Tanzania after it was hit by heavy storms.

According to Fredrick Kagari, an administrator in western Kenya, the loaded boat swerved and later capsized as heavy storms swept across Africa's largest fresh water lake.

"We can confirm we lost five fishermen when the boat capsized in Lake Victoria. Three bodies have already been recovered and the search for the rest is ongoing," said Kagari.

He revealed that both Kenyan and Ugandan fishermen were traveling in the ill fated boat when it capsized.

Kagari added that an elite team of divers has been dispatched to search for missing fishermen.

Boat accidents have escalated in Lake Victoria waters despite enhanced patrols by security forces and regular training of drivers and crew on safety.

Overloading, natural storms and faulty engines are to blame for boat accidents that have claimed many lives in Lake Victoria.

At the same time, water hyacinth that has carpeted a huge swathe of the shared fresh water body has also complicated movement of fishing boats and large commercial vessels.
LUSAKA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that it has registered more than 3,000 asylum seekers who have entered Zambia in the first two months of 2017.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the asylum seekers from neighboring countries were registered as of February 2017.

About 232 have since been taken for resettlement in refugee camps, it added in a statement.

Zambia has in recent months seen an influx of asylum seekers mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi fleeing from unrest.

The UNHCR is currently working with the Zambia Red Cross in assisting the authorities to enhance reception capacities for new arrivals.

According to the refugee agency, Zambia currently has a total of 56,051 persons-of-concern as of February 28.
ZHENGZHOU, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Li Xiangting knew there must be something wrong with their party secretary, Wu Shulan, since he had not heard from her in two months.

Wu, 60, brought hope to 2,000 locals who were trapped in a cycle of deep poverty in the mountainous Xiwanglou village in central China's Henan Province since she took charge of local poverty-relief work in 2014.

To Li, 70, the disappearance of Wu was odd, as the illiterate old man knew how often she came.

Over the past two years, Li marked all of Wu's visits with a line on his door. In 2014 he drew 25 lines; last year it was 42.

Asking around, he learned that Wu was recovering from heart surgery, but was relieved to see her in stable condition in hospital.

Wu has made her name by helping people escape poverty.

In 2010, while working at the provincial poverty relief office, she offered to take the job as party secretary in her home village, poverty-hit Dawuzhuang in Henan.

Back then, she was the only female and the oldest of a first batch of 19 officials in the province responding to the country's call for higher-level officials to assist in poverty-relief in rural areas.

She was surprised to find her village had not changed in 32 years.

"There is no road, the primary school is still shabby," Wu wrote in her diary.

Dawuzhuang is in a typical plain area in Henan. For centuries, local residents have fed themselves by growing grain, such as corn and wheat.

But low literacy and lack of industry kept the region in extreme poverty. It was as if there was no way out.

In 2010, over half of Dawuzhuang's 1,700-plus residents survived on an annual income of about 2,600 yuan (377 U.S. dollars) per person, below the national poverty line of 2,300 yuan.

China has targeted eradicating poverty by 2020, but it is an arduous task given that there were still 43.35 million people living in poverty at the end of last year.

For grassroots-level officials like Wu, escaping poverty is not the stuff of empty words but something to be carried-out step by step.

To raise startup funds for a dairy farm and textile mill in the village, Wu withdrew all her savings and called her daughter, who works in Beijing, countless times to borrow money.

"Once my daughter came to see me, the first thing she said was 'Mom, I don't have a penny,'" Wu said.

During her tenure in Dawuzhuang between 2010 and 2013, she arranged for the repairing of the the school, building of 11 roads and opening of a nursing home. The average per capita annual income in Dawuzhuang doubled to 5,600 yuan, and 76 families were lifted out of poverty.

But overwork hurt Wu's health. She suffers from diabetes and renal dysfunction, but has chosen to stay on the front line.

Xiwanglou village where she works now is even poorer.

With a population of 2,000, many people in the village live in isolated mountain areas, without roads. Children had to hike several kilometers to school every day.

To raise local incomes, Wu arranged a 28-km mountain route for hikers, as well as a 107 hectare farm growing prunella vulgaris, an herbaceous plant used to treat wounds, which is expected to bring in an annual income of 6.4 million yuan.

She also helped local entrepreneurs receive bank loans of over 3 million yuan to start their own business and build roads to give locals access to the outside world.

"We are very grateful to our dear party secretary," a villager said.

Aged 60, Wu should have retired by now, but she is unwilling to stop.

"My work is a race against time. I don't want to disappoint the government and the people who count on me," she said.
JERUSALEM, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Israel's prosecution announced Friday a plea bargain was signed with Israeli-Arab lawmaker Basel Ghattas, who was charged with smuggling mobile phones for Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail.

Under the deal, Ghattas admits smuggling mobile phones and documents to Hamas prisoners, providing means that could be used for acts of terror and breach of trust.

Ghattas agreed to spend two years in prison.

The Be'er Sheva Magistrate Court is expected to approve the deal in the next few days.

As a result, Ghattas will have to resign from the parliament, the Knesset, on Sunday.

In December, Ghattas was arrested after he was caught on security cameras smuggling an envelope with 12 mini cellular phones, 16 SIM cards, two chargers, an earphone, and documents.

Ghattas, 60, is a lawmaker with Balad, an Arab nationalist party that frequently confronts with the Israeli establishment over Palestinian issues. Balad is part of the Joint List faction, a coalition of Arab and Jewish-Arab factions that holds 13 seats in the 120-member Knesset.

Israel's Arab minority makes up about a fifth of the Israeli population. Arab citizens in Israel are Palestinians who stayed put during Israel's 1948 Independence War.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 17, 2017. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that China is ready to work with Saudi Arabia on development strategies and production capacity.

Li made the remarks when meeting with Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in Beijing.

China respects the right of all countries to choose their own development path according to their national conditions, he said.

He said China is willing to work with Saudi Arabia to cement political mutual trust, explore new space for energy and high-tech cooperation, enhance coordination in international and regional affairs, so as to make new progress in the development of bilateral ties.

Against the background of uncertainty and instability in the world political and economic situation, China will deepen cooperation with countries including Saudi Arabia to cope with all kinds of risks and challenges, safeguard world peace and security and promote development and cooperation, said the premier.

King Salman lauded the long-term friendship and extensive consensus on practical cooperation between the two countries.

Saudi Arabia is confident about future cooperation with China and will continue to give full play to the role of the high-level joint committee to enhance bilateral cooperation, said the king.

He also called on the two sides to deal with the threats of terrorism and extremist forces, to safeguard regional and world peace and stability.

Earlier Friday, Chinese top legislator Zhang Dejiang also met with King Salman at the Great Hall of the People.
RABAT, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI has appointed Former Foreign Minister Saadeddine Othmani as the new prime minister with the task to form a new government, according to a statement on Friday.

Othmani, number two in the leadership of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), was received by the king at the Royal Palace in Casablanca, a statement by the Ministry of the Royal Household, Protocol and Chancellery announced.

Othmani, who was Morocco's foreign minister between 2012 and 2013, replaces PJD leader and former PM Abdelilah Benkirane after he failed to form a government in five months.
ANKARA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Altogether 31 regions in Tunceli, a province in eastern Turkish, were banned entery for security operation targeting PKK since March 17, according to local media.

The authorities declared the 31 regions as "special security regions" for 15 days. In those regions, the Turkish military is going to launch a security operation to "neutralize" 400 outlawed PKK militants.

Turkish authorities use the word "neutralize" in their statements to imply the militants were either killed, incapacitated or captured.

"In order to protect our citizens' lives and properties, it is banned to enter special security regions without the permission of authorities," the Tunceli Governor's Office said in a statement, adding that the operations are ongoing "continuously with great determination and ambition."
MOSCOW, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Russia is ready to help enhance the combat capacity of Afghan armed forces, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.

He made the remarks at a meeting with Afghan national security adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar, according to a statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

In addition, Lavrov told Atmar that Russia wants to advance partnership with Afghanistan in trade, economic and humanitarian fields.

According to Lavrov, Russia is planning new steps to promote national reconciliation in Afghanistan and will try to mobilize the international community to move in this direction.

Fighting between government forces and Taliban militants has claimed hundreds of lives from both sides, and has forced thousands of families to leave their homes for safer places over the past couple of years.
RABAT, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI has appointed Former Foreign Minister Saadeddine Othmani as the new prime minister with the task to form a new government, according to a statement on Friday.

Othmani, number two in the leadership of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), was received by the king at the Royal Palace in Casablanca, a statement by the Ministry of the Royal Household, Protocol and Chancellery announced.

Othmani, who was Morocco's foreign minister between 2012 and 2013, replaces PJD leader and former PM Abdelilah Benkirane after he failed to form a government in five months.

Benkirane has gained support of two parties few weeks after the October elections last year, yet he has been unable to make a deal with a third party to secure the majority of 395-seat parliament.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI decided late on Wednesday to appoint another PM from PJD to form a new government in the shortest terms.

While Morocco's constitution says nothing on the question of a prime minister-designate being unable to form a majority, it notes that the king appoints PM from within the political party that wins the most votes in the elections of the Chamber of Representatives.

Following the king's decision, PJD leadership held on Thursday a meeting saying it would deal "positively" with Benkirane's replacement. The party's leadership called for a meeting of its national assembly, the parliament, to decide on the matter on Saturday.
ADDIS ABABA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has announced a new support of 165 million euros to drought-affected countries in the Horn of Africa.

An EU delegation led by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU, on Friday met and held talks with the new Chairperson of AU Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat at the AU Headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Adds Ababa.

The two regional organizations told the press after their meeting that they have discussed ways of further deepening their partnership.

The chairperson of the AU Commission said the pan-African bloc coordinates cooperation with EU in light of the continent's 50-year development agenda and its 10-year action plan.

Reiterating that the EU and the AU have been cooperating in different areas, Mogherini said they discussed issues related to security and humanitarian crisis in Africa, the coming move towards addressing the situation in Libya, and issues related to supporting African youth.

Neven Mimica, EU Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, said the EU is deeply concerned with the current situations, especially in Somalia and South Sudan.

From the new package of support, 100 million euros will be allocated to respond to the humanitarian crisis caused by the violent conflict in South Sudan, according to Mimica.

"With this additional support, the EU shows the way to other members of the international community to also respond urgently," he said.

The remaining amount will support South Sudan's neighboring countries, notably Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Sudan, to continue providing protection and addressing the needs of South Sudanese fleeing conflict and seeking shelter in their territories, according to the Commissioner.

The two sides also discussed the preparation for the upcoming EU-Africa summit to be held in November this year in Cote d'Ivoire, which is expected to focus on issues related to the youth in Africa and Europe.
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The White House has apologized to the British government after alleging that former U.S. President Barack Obama used a British intelligence agency to spy on President Donald Trump while he was a candidate last year, U.S. media reported Friday.

CNN reported that U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with his British counterpart Mark Lyall Grant on Thursday about White House press secretary Sean Spicer's comment about a Fox News report that said British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

CNN quoted a White House official as saying that the conversation was "cordial" and McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional."

McMaster also told his counterpart that "their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House."

On Thursday evening, Spicer repeated the Fox News claim that British intelligence agency GCHQ was used by Obama to spy on Trump Tower in the lead-up to last November's election.

The comments prompted GCHQ to issue a public statement that said,"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday the White House has assured the British government that the allegations that British intelligence services spied on Trump will not be repeated, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.

Britain "made it clear" to the United States that the "ridiculous" claims should be ignored and received assurances in return that they will not be repeated, showing that the administration does not give them any credence, May's spokesman said.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Over four million rural residents in eight ethnic minority autonomous regions and provinces escaped poverty last year, said a forum on poverty relief hosted by Minzu University of China on Friday.

The total poor population in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai, has dropped to 14.1 million from 2015's 18.1 million.

According to the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, the central government spent about 28 billion yuan (4 billion U.S. dollars) on poverty alleviation in the eight autonomous regions and provinces last year, up 39.8 percent, accounting for 41.9 percent of the total poverty alleviation funds.

Zhang Lijun, president of the school of economics of Minzu University of China, said ethnic regions are the most difficult in China's war against poverty, and still need more targeted policies.
Morocco's King Mohammed VI has appointed Former Foreign Minister Saadeddine Othmani as the new PM. (AFP photo)

RABAT, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI has appointed Former Foreign Minister Saadeddine Othmani as the new prime minister with the task to form a new government, according to a statement on Friday.

Othmani, number two in the leadership of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), was received by the king at the Royal Palace in Casablanca, a statement by the Ministry of the Royal Household, Protocol and Chancellery announced.

Othmani, who was Morocco's foreign minister between 2012 and 2013, replaces PJD leader and former PM Abdelilah Benkirane after he failed to form a government in five months.

Benkirane has gained support of two parties few weeks after the October elections last year, yet he has been unable to make a deal with a third party to secure the majority of 395-seat parliament.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI decided late on Wednesday to appoint another PM from PJD to form a new government in the shortest terms.

While Morocco's constitution says nothing on the question of a prime minister-designate being unable to form a majority, it notes that the king appoints PM from within the political party that wins the most votes in the elections of the Chamber of Representatives.

Following the king's decision, PJD leadership held on Thursday a meeting saying it would deal "positively" with Benkirane's replacement. The party's leadership called for a meeting of its national assembly, the parliament, to decide on the matter on Saturday.
Britain's Prince William (R), the Duke of Cambridge, and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, arrive at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) at Royal Albert Hall in London, Britain, on Feb. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

PARIS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton visited the French capital on Friday, in a diplomatic move that analysts believe is intended to soften a divorce between Britain and the European Union.

At the request of Britain's Foreign Office, the royal couple flew to Paris, a first stage in a scheduled European tour to prepare Britain's exit form the EU and to bolster bilateral relationships.

"This visit opens a new chapter of this long Franco-British relationship turning towards a promising future," British Ambassador Edward Llewellyn was quoted as saying by local media.

William and Kate will meet French President Francois Hollande "given the historical relations between France and the United Kingdom," the Elysee Palace said.

The royal couple will visit the military museum Les Invalides with senior French politicians, victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks at the Bataclan theatre in Paris as well as the lorry attack in Nice on Bastille Day last year.

The duo will also attend a reception at the British embassy as guests of honor to launch the "Voisins" (Neighbors) project, aimed at celebrating cultural ties linking the two countries.

William and Kate are also planning to attend the Six Nations rugby international between France and Wales at the Stade de France on Saturday.

The two-day visit is Prince William's first official trip to the French capital since the tragic death of his mother Diana, the Princess of Wales, in a car accident at the Pont de l'Alma tunnel two decades ago.
by Chris Mgidu and Christine Lagat

NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday announced deployment of the military to four counties that are reeling from banditry, inter-tribal skirmishes and invasion of private ranches.

Kenyatta said the Kenya Defense Forces would complement regular police and reservists in Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet, West Pokot and Laikipia to combat a wave of insecurity there.

He said the deployment would also aid disarmament and surrender of firearms illegally held by civilians in the volatile counties.

The military deployment followed weeks of inter-communal clashes, cattle rustling and invasion of private ranches that led to loss of lives and massive destruction of property.

Eleven people died early this week during retaliatory attacks staged by rival nomadic communities in Baringo and West Pokot counties.

Insecurity in Kenya's northern frontier districts worsened early this year amid biting drought that fuelled inter-tribal clashes over water and pasture.

While cattle rustling and retaliatory attacks featured prominently in Baringo, West Pokot, Elgeyo Marakwet and Laikipia experienced a wave of illegal invasion of private ranches by herders.

Tristan Voorspuy, a British co-owner of Sosio ranch in Laikipia, was on March 5 killed by invading raiders who were in search for water and pasture.

Kenyatta in his state of the nation address on Wednesday reaffirmed his government's commitment to enhance security and peaceful co-existence in the arid northern counties.

"We have agreed today that the military will join hands with the police to enhance rapid response to insecurity and unrest in the northern counties," said Kenyatta, adding that individuals who incite communities to take up arms will be punished.
ADEN, Yemen, March 17 (Xinhua) -- About 29 pro-government soldiers were killed and 89 others injured when missiles fired by Shiite Houthi gunmen struck a mosque in Yemen's northern province of Marib on Friday, a military official told Xinhua.

According to the local official, the pro-Houthi forces fired ballistic missiles and struck the mosque inside a military base of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces in Marib.

Witnesses said that huge fire and smokes were seen rising from the Kowfal military camp where the attack happened and many ambulances rushed to the area.

An army commander in Marib province said that the missile attack occurred while scores of soldiers gathered to perform Friday prayers inside the mosque.

The oil-producing northern province of Marib is controlled by Yemen's legitimate government and thousands of Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces stationed there.

The Shiite Houthi group repeatedly fire ballistic missiles against government-controlled provinces but most of the attacks were aborted by air defense systems of the Saudi-led coalition.

Yemen has been suffering from a civil war and a Saudi-led military intervention for around two years. The civil war began after the Houthi militants, with support from forces loyal to the former president, ousted the UN-backed transitional government and occupied capital Sanaa militarily in September 2014.

The legitimate government controls the south and some eastern parts, while the Houthi-Saleh alliance controls the other parts including the capital Sanaa.

The UN has sponsored peace talks between warring factions several times, but the factions failed to reach common ground.

The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have already killed more than 10,000 people, half of them civilians, injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian agencies.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader and Scottish First Minister, speaks during a ceremony to launch SNP's general election manifesto in Edinburgh, Britain, on April 20, 2015. The ruling SNP launched on Monday its general election manifesto for a stronger Scotland. (Xinhua/Guo Chunju)

CARDIFF, Britain, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Nicola Sturgeon's Scottish National Party (SNP) were on Friday accused by British Prime Minister Theresa May of using Brexit as a pretext to engineer a second independence referendum for Scotland.

Addressing the Conservative Party's Spring Conference in the Welsh capital, May continued her war of words after the first minister of Scotland said she planned a new referendum to vote on a break-up of Britain.

In her keynote speech, May did not refer directly to Sturgeon, but she did launch an attack on the SNP. "The precious bond between four nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is more than just a constitutional artifact. It is a union between all of our citizens. Our plan for Britain will put strengthening and sustaining that union at its heart," said May.

She described the Conservatives as the party of the new center-ground of British politics, rejecting the extremes of Labour's socialist left, UKIP's libertarian right, and the "divisive and obsessive nationalisms" of Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales) and the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party).

"We have seen that tunnel vision on display again this week. The SNP argue we should break up the UK because we are leaving the EU, but three years ago they campaigned for a result that would have taken Scotland out of the EU altogether," she said.

"Brexit would be bad for Scotland, bad for the United Kingdom, and bad for us all. The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom," May stated.

Even so, May insisted that Britain's best days lie ahead, after the country has left the EU. She said Britain stands on the threshold of one of the most significant moments the country has known for many years.

"During the next two weeks, we will trigger Article 50 and begin the negotiations to secure Britain's departure from the European Union. We can look forward with optimism and hope. Or give in to the politics of fear and despair. I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days lie ahead," May told hundreds of party members gathered for the conference.

May described Brexit as a moment of opportunity to shape a brighter future for Britain and "ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be."

May added that while the road before the country may be uncertain at times, she believes, with the British people, that it leads towards a brighter future for the nation's children and grandchildren.

"That brighter future won't just happen. The stronger, fairer country we want won't just emerge. It will take effort and focus, discipline and hard work," said May.

May said the referendum result was not just a vote to leave the EU, it was also an instruction to change the way the country works forever.

It was a call to change the balance of Britain, to make the UK a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few, added May.

"It is essential that we get the right deal, and that all of our efforts and energies as a country are focused on that outcome," she said.

In Edinburgh, Nicola Sturgeon said she would be "up for" a discussion with May about the timing of a new independence referendum. The Scottish Parliament is expected next week to back Sturgeon's call for a new vote. But May has ruled out a referendum while Brexit negotiations with Brussels are taking place.
Choi Soon-Sil (2nd R), 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, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's public prosecution office announced Friday it has decided to extradite Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of a longtime confidante of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Chung, who has been in police custody in Denmark since January, is accused of involvement in the corruption scandal that led to Park's removal last week.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecution said in a press release that all conditions to extradite Chung to South Korea have been met.

"After having reviewed the South Korean request for extradition thoroughly, it is our opinion that all conditions for extradition in the Danish Extradition Act are met," said Mohammad Ahsan, deputy director from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Nothing that the case has been subject to great attention in South Korea, Ahsan said "there has been a prevalent understanding" that the case has been handled in line with Danish legislation.

Chung has three days to decide whether she will appeal.

Chung was arrested by Denmark's North Jutland Police on Jan. 1 at the request of Interpol. Her mother Choi Soon-sil is charged with using her friendship with Park to extort funds from large businesses and meddling in state affairs.

Chung, 20, is alleged to have received illegal favors when entering a prestigious South Korean university. She is also accused of being behind economic crimes in collusion with her mother.
by Burak Akinci

ANKARA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Days before the first anniversary of a landmark refugee deal with the European Union, Turkey's foreign minister has vowed to "cancel" it, widening the diplomatic row with the Netherlands and Germany amid a general debate on Ankara's long standing bid to join the block.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Wednesday threatened to suspend a refugee deal with the EU, sending shock waves across Europe.

"We may cancel the readmission agreement unilaterally. The EU has been wasting our time on the visa liberalization issue. We are not applying the readmission agreement at the moment, and we are evaluating the refugee deal. All of this is under our hands," said Turkey's top diplomat during a televised interview.

Ankara has threatened to scrap the deal many times before. But Cavusoglu's remarks on TV 24 channel came only three days before the one-year anniversary of a deal brokered between Brussels and Ankara that would allow for irregular migrants in Greece, the starting point of the trek to northern Europe, to be returned to Turkey in exchange for Syrian refugees hosted on Turkish soil.

Under the deal, Brussels said it would speed up EU accession talks and visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, which is far from becoming reality.

However, relations between the EU and Turkey have soured after Germany and the Netherlands prevented Turkish politicians, including Cavusoglu, from campaigning for April 16 referendum that would, if approved, give executive powers to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The dominant Turkish leader accused Germany and the Netherlands of "fascist actions" for cancelling several planned rallies of his ministers.

Ankara also suspended high-level relations with Amsterdam and blocked the Dutch ambassador to Turkey from returning to his post after leaving the country.

Erdogan wants to win the votes of large Turkish populations ahead of the key referendum which critics argued that will confirm his authoritarian rule. The diaspora's votes could prove critical in what is expected to be a closely fight contest.

More than one million migrants entered the EU in 2015, many of them fleeing conflict and extreme poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Before closing the Balkan route in early 2016, a significant portion of migrants heading to the bloc departed from Turkey's Aegean coast amid tragic sea accidents.

But Erdogan said that the EU had broken its promise of granting visa free for Turks, and his country is paying high price of welcoming more than three million refugees, making it the country with the largest refugee population.

The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, went even further on Friday warning of opening the way "to send 15,000 migrants per day towards Europe."

Other Turkish politicians, on the other hand, urged calmness to resolve this explosive crisis with Europe, such as the leader of the nationalists in the parliament, Devlet Bahceli.

"Migrants should not be used as a diplomatic weapon. Patience is needed," said Bahceli, who supports Erdogan's bid for a presidential system in Turkey.

Despite criticism from human rights organizations, political leaders across Europe have hailed the refugee deal with Turkey as a successful maneuver, saying it helped de-escalate a widening political crisis between member states on how to tackle the wave of migration.

After the arrests of journalists and academics, and detention of tens of thousands in the wake of a failed coup last summer in Turkey, along with a suggestion of restoring the death penalty, the EU has been very critical of human rights violations infuriating Ankara, tired of being kept waiting at the EU's doorstep for decades.

EU leaders also staunchly backed Germany and the Netherlands in its row with Ankara. "Turkey is distancing itself from the EU," declared the commission president Jean-Claude Junker.

"Is it the EU or Turkey which is parting ways? We have been waiting for so long and our membership demands are dragging on an

d on for ages," said an official from the ruling Justice and Development party in Ankara.

"They (EU) have to decide if a Muslim country will be a full member of the union. We have done everything for that and the Turkish people are fed up of waiting," he said, preferring to stay anonymous.

Cengiz Aktar, senior scholar at Istanbul's policy centre, told Xinhua that if things go worse, there could be a potential risk of rupture in the accession talks launched between Ankara and Brussels in 2005.

"There is a risk of a formal breakdown but let's not forget that these negotiations at now already at a still stand because of Austria's refusal to open new chapters of accession, so nothing will actually change," Aktar said in a pessimistic mood while Turkish opinion support to the landmark project is at a record low.

"Turkey-EU is a closed file," added the European affairs expert.

Related:

Seeking refuge in Europe "mission impossible" after EU-Turkey deal: NGO report

ATHENS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- One year after the Balkan border closures and the EU-Turkey deal, seeking refuge in Europe after reaching Greek shores has become "mission impossible", according to a report released on Friday by NGOs operating in Greece.
BRUSSELS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) heaped praise on the EU-Turkey deal in a factsheet published on Friday, a day ahead of its one-year anniversary, saying it remarkably reduced migratory flows from Turkey to Greece and the loss of life at the sea.

"Despite challenging circumstances, the first year of the EU-Turkey Statement has confirmed a steady delivery of tangible results," announced the factsheet.

According to the document, daily crossings from Turkey to Greece have plunged by a striking 97 percent.

And the number of deaths in the Aegean decreased from 1,145 in the year before the deal to 80 in the following year.

"One year later, that's around one million people who have not taken dangerous routes to get to the EU, and more than 1,000 who have not lost their lives trying," said the factsheet.

It noted that Turkey has followed up on its commitment to step up measures against people smuggling and has been cooperating closely on resettlement and return.

The factsheet also highlighted the EU's financial support, which amounts to 3 billion euros in 2016 and 2017 for Turkey to host Syrian refugees, stressing that the money goes directly to projects on the ground to address the needs of refugees and host communities.

"While continuous efforts need to be made by all sides and all EU member states, the EU-Turkey Statement has become an important element of the EU's comprehensive approach on migration," said the factsheet.

The factsheet came in the midst of diplomatic spats between Turkey and some EU member states, which squabbled over Turkish ministers wooing support from expatriates in Europe for constitutional reforms granting greater powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The EU, although voicing its grave concern over the reforms, called on Turkey early this week to refrain from using excessive statements and actions that would risk further exacerbating the situation.

Sweeping aside the EU's remarks, Turkey's EU affairs minister and foreign minister earlier this week threatened to tear up the migration deal, accusing the EU of reneging on its promise to grant visa exemption for Turkish citizens.

In the Turkey-EU migration deal signed on March 18, 2016, Turkey agreed to work to keep migrants from crossing into the EU in return for a 6 billion-euro (6.8 billion U.S. dollars) aid package to support some 3 million refugees hosted in the country.

The agreement also included the acceleration of Turkey's EU membership bid and visa-free travel for Turkish nationals within the Schengen area.
NICOSIA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Cypriot government approved contracts that granted three energy companies concessions for gas exploration in Cyprus' continental shelf, Minister of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism Yiorgos Lakkotrypis said on Friday.

He said contracts will be signed on April 4 and 6 with Italian ENI and French Total in block 6, ENI in block 8 and ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum consortium in block 10 of Cyprus' exclusive economic zone.

He said that on signing the contracts the energy companies will pay a total of 103.5 million euros (111.2 million U.S. dollars) to Cyprus.

Lakkotrypis said that ENI plans to drill this year in block 11 in which Total assigned 50 percent of its rights to the Italian company.

He added that ENI had scheduled two more drillings but he did not specify where and when.

ENI has obtained licenses for drilling in a total of six blocks, one in which it has full control, three in association with South Korean KOGAS and in two blocks in which Total has also got rights.

ENI chief exploration officer Luca Bertelli told journalists earlier this week that the company is optimistic that it will make a gas discovery the size of the Egyptian Zohr find, which contains an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas.
by Chrispinus Omar

NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Visiting British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Friday pledged to bolster military and wildlife cooperation with Kenya.

Speaking in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, on the second day of his Kenya visit, Johnson pledged support to the Kenyan operation under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has been battling the Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia.

He applauded the Kenyan troops for their excellent contribution to the efforts to pacify Somalia.

Johnson has held talks with his Kenyan counterpart Amina Mohammed on a range of issues including trade, military cooperation and consular affairs.

The talks came shortly after a joint military exercise between the British troops and the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) at the Archers Post, 185 miles northeast of Nairobi.

"The Kenyan military is doing vital work in Somalia. The UK and the Kenya joint military exercise has also been a vital part of this interesting partnership. We want to continue this partnership with Kenya," Johnson told reporters during a joint news conference with the Kenyan foreign minister.

Mohammed said Kenya and Britain are committed to continuing collaboration in defence and security-related issues, and this would enhance security in Kenya and the region.

Johnson on Friday also pledged to advance the wildlife conservation agenda in Kenya, saying the British agencies were already cooperating with the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) to conserve elephants and to increase the number of British tourists to Kenya.

Several British charities such as the David Sheldrick Trust have been involved in elephant conservation in Kenya.

Johnson earlier paid a visit to British nationals living in Laikipia, an agriculturally productive region that has been at the center of a mass raid by cattle herders escaping drought.

The latest incident involved the killing of a British rancher Tristan Voorspuy, who was shot dead while inspecting farm damage following a raid by the armed pastoralists.

The Kenyan government has announced plans to send the military to help restore stability in Laikipia.

Johnson said he was happy the Kenyan government agreed to take what he called tough measures to deal with the crisis in Laikipia, where British nationals were affected.
EU-Turkey refugee deal has sought to stem the flow of migrants from Turkey to the EU, in particular Greece, by land and sea routes. (AFP photo)

ANKARA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Days before the first anniversary of a landmark refugee deal with the European Union, Turkey's foreign minister has vowed to "cancel" it, widening the diplomatic row with the Netherlands and Germany amid a general debate on Ankara's long standing bid to join the block.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Wednesday threatened to suspend a refugee deal with the EU, sending shock waves across Europe.

"We may cancel the readmission agreement unilaterally. The EU has been wasting our time on the visa liberalization issue. We are not applying the readmission agreement at the moment, and we are evaluating the refugee deal. All of this is under our hands," said Turkey's top diplomat during a televised interview.

Ankara has threatened to scrap the deal many times before. But Cavusoglu's remarks on TV 24 channel came only three days before the one-year anniversary of a deal brokered between Brussels and Ankara that would allow for irregular migrants in Greece, the starting point of the trek to northern Europe, to be returned to Turkey in exchange for Syrian refugees hosted on Turkish soil.

Under the deal, Brussels said it would speed up EU accession talks and visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, which is far from becoming reality.

However, relations between the EU and Turkey have soured after Germany and the Netherlands prevented Turkish politicians, including Cavusoglu, from campaigning for April 16 referendum that would, if approved, give executive powers to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The dominant Turkish leader accused Germany and the Netherlands of "fascist actions" for cancelling several planned rallies of his ministers.

Ankara also suspended high-level relations with Amsterdam and blocked the Dutch ambassador to Turkey from returning to his post after leaving the country.

Erdogan wants to win the votes of large Turkish populations ahead of the key referendum which critics argued that will confirm his authoritarian rule. The diaspora's votes could prove critical in what is expected to be a closely fight contest.

More than one million migrants entered the EU in 2015, many of them fleeing conflict and extreme poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Before closing the Balkan route in early 2016, a significant portion of migrants heading to the bloc departed from Turkey's Aegean coast amid tragic sea accidents.

But Erdogan said that the EU had broken its promise of granting visa free for Turks, and his country is paying high price of welcoming more than three million refugees, making it the country with the largest refugee population.

The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, went even further on Friday warning of opening the way "to send 15,000 migrants per day towards Europe."

Other Turkish politicians, on the other hand, urged calmness to resolve this explosive crisis with Europe, such as the leader of the nationalists in the parliament, Devlet Bahceli.

"Migrants should not be used as a diplomatic weapon. Patience is needed," said Bahceli, who supports Erdogan's bid for a presidential system in Turkey.

Despite criticism from human rights organizations, political leaders across Europe have hailed the refugee deal with Turkey as a successful maneuver, saying it helped de-escalate a widening political crisis between member states on how to tackle the wave of migration.

After the arrests of journalists and academics, and detention of tens of thousands in the wake of a failed coup last summer in Turkey, along with a suggestion of restoring the death penalty, the EU has been very critical of human rights violations infuriating Ankara, tired of being kept waiting at the EU's doorstep for decades.

EU leaders also staunchly backed Germany and the Netherlands in its row with Ankara. "Turkey is distancing itself from the EU," declared the commission president Jean-Claude Junker.

"Is it the EU or Turkey which is parting ways? We have been waiting for so long and our membership demands are dragging on and on for ages," said an official from the ruling Justice and Development party in Ankara.

"They (EU) have to decide if a Muslim country will be a full member of the union. We have done everything for that and the Turkish people are fed up of waiting," he said, preferring to stay anonymous.

Cengiz Aktar, senior scholar at Istanbul's policy centre, told Xinhua that if things go worse, there could be a potential risk of rupture in the accession talks launched between Ankara and Brussels in 2005.

"There is a risk of a formal breakdown but let's not forget that these negotiations at now already at a still stand because of Austria's refusal to open new chapters of accession, so nothing will actually change," Aktar said in a pessimistic mood while Turkish opinion support to the landmark project is at a record low.

"Turkey-EU is a closed file," added the European affairs expert.
by Ejidiah Wangui

NAIROBI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Aflatoxin infestation continues to be a threat to Kenya's food security as confirmed by a recent study by Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

The research concluded that most Kenyan households were consuming unprecedented levels of aflatoxin, a

carcinogenic substance, hence putting their lives in danger while hampering efforts to reduce the country's growing cancer burden.

The study focused on maize, sorghum and milk, which are critical staples in both rural and urban households.

Led by Johana Lindahl of ILRI, the researchers also attributed poor development among children living in Dagoretti and Korogocho slums of Nairobi to consumption of cereals infested with aflatoxin.

"Over 41 percent of children who consumed cereals infested with aflatoxin were found to be stunted and underweight," noted the research findings.

Of concern is the lack of awareness on the dangers of consuming aflatoxin-infested staples as many Kenyans residing in these areas purchase flours from kiosks where storage and safety are not given priority.

Mary Odhiambo, a mother of three and a resident of Dagoretti, one of the regions where the research was conducted, confessed her ignorance of aflatoxin, saying it was an alien term that hardly swayed her choice of maize flour or sorghum.

"What else would I feed my children with, if not porridge and ugali, most of us here can not afford any other food apart from maize and sorghum, we hope the government will do the necessary to safeguard our livelihoods," noted Mary.

Researchers from Kenya, Japan, Sweden and the United States have expressed worries that the aflatoxin menace was slowly turning into a disaster that threatened millions of lives.

They analyzed samples collected from over 400 food retailers in Dagoretti and Korogocho.

The researchers also noted that exposure to aflatoxin is rampant in raw milk that is heavily consumed by low-income urban households.

To minimize infestation, researchers urged the government and private sector to invest in modern storage technologies and promote awareness targeting small holder farmers.

"Farmers, traders and the general public need to be educated on the dangers of aflatoxin to the environment and human health," said the researchers

Their findings correlated with a recent study conducted by Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) that revealed a quarter of pregnant women in Western Kenya were consuming toxic levels of aflatoxin.
LISBON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Portugal has extended an investigation into former prime minister Jose Socrates, the country's attorney general said on Friday in an official statement.

Prosecutors now have until the end of April to conclude their case regarding Socrates, who is suspected of corruption, money laundering and fraud. The investigation had been extended twice, with the latest deadline to reach a decision being Friday.

However, the attorney general's office said Friday that the investigation had been extended due to a delay in replies from Angola and Switzerland. It said Britain only replied last week, and that there were new facts relating to the case being identified.

"The analysis of evidence collected has not been completed, in some cases, for reasons beyond control, and in others, due to the quantity and complexity of the information," the statement explains.

The investigation into Socrates has been going on for over two years. Socrates was arrested at Lisbon airport in 2014 while arriving from Paris. He had been taken to prison for nine months, before he was released on bail.

Socrates was the country's prime minister, from the center-left Socialist Party, from 2005 to 2011. According to the prosecutor, Socrates received tens of millions of euros for political favors, though he denies any wrongdoing.
NICOSIA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities are slowly moving towards resuming peace negotiations, which were suspended a month ago amid acrimonious accusations traded between both sides, party officials said on Friday.

Averof Neophytou, leader of the ruling DISY party, told state television that he met Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci on Thursday to discuss the prospects of resuming negotiations aimed at a settlement of the decades- old Cyprus problem.

Akinci quit the negotiations on Feb. 16, claiming that a vote by the all-Greek Cypriot parliament to commemorate in school classes a 1950 referendum in favor of uniting Cyprus with Greece denoted a move-away from the stated aim of the negotiations.

Neophytou said that he explained to Akinci that neither the ruling party nor the Greek Cypriot community have suddenly changed their policies on Cyprus.

"I told him that I had no knowledge that a so-called 'enosis' (union) amendment would be tabled by ELAM (an extreme-right two-seat party) and I further explained how a miscalculated abstention by my party gave the opportunity to several small parties to form a factitious parliamentary majority," said Neophytou, adding that Akinci seemed to understand the situation.

Before the meeting, Akinci softened his hardline stance, saying that it was a matter of time to iron things out and resume negotiations.

But he still insisted that corrective measures should be taken towards the draft law tabled by DISY.

Neophytou said that discussion of his party's draft law by a parliamentary committee will start next Wednesday, with a view of a debate by the full chamber within two or three weeks.

But Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told the newly-established CNN Greece television station in an interview on Thursday that even if negotiations resume soon, he does not expect substantive talks before the referendum in Turkey on April 16.

Anastasiades is scheduled to meet UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres next Wednesday during a visit to New York to seek ways to defuse the situation.
ADDIS ABABA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia and Djibouti have expressed desires to take their strong bilateral relations to a greater height.

The announcement was made on Friday when the visiting Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

The two East African countries have signed agreements on extradition and on mutual legal assistance on criminal matters, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the fields of justice and legal training.

They have expressed commitment to ensuring the implementation of various agreements signed between the two countries at various times.

Desalegn and Guelleh have expressed commitment to further extending and cementing the bilateral relations by deepening, diversifying, and widening the scope of cooperation.

Acknowledging that free movement of people and goods is pre-requisite to expedite economic integration between the two countries, they also called for rapid operationalization of the recently inaugurated railway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti.

Alarmed by the humanitarian crisis caused by drought that has affected the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region, the two leaders called upon IGAD member states to stand together to withstand the looming disaster.

They also appealed to the international community and humanitarian agencies to deliver assistance to the affected people in a matter of urgency.

The Djiboutian president has been on an official visit to Ethiopia from March 16 to 18.
RIYADH, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Saudi-led coalition has intercepted three boats of Houthis near Midi port in Yemen trying to attack the coalition's vessels, Al Madina local newspaper reported on Friday.

The incident was reported on Thursday night, in which the coalition destroyed one boat, arrest the crew of the second, while the third boat managed to escaped.

Meanwhile, the Saudi Press Agency reported that the royal Saudi air defense forces intercepted a missile launched by the Houthis militia, targeting Jizan city at the Saudi-Yemeni border.

Coalition statement said that a missile launched from inside the Yemeni territories was intercepted and destroyed by the Saudi forces Friday.

In addition, the coalition air force pinpointed the launching ground of the missile and, immediately, retaliated by airstrikes.
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Friday said that it was "appalled by the deaths of refugees" after a boat carrying them across the Red Sea from Yemen to Sudan was reportedly attacked overnight on Thursday.

A UN spokesman told reporters here at a daily news briefing that although details were still unconfirmed, "it appears that a number of Somali refugees were among those killed or injured."

Meanwhile, the conflict in Yemen is continuing along the Taizz governorate's western coast and has now moved into areas adjacent to southern Hudaydah governorate's coastal districts, the spokesman noted.

As of March 10, the fighting has resulted in the displacement of more than 48,000 people, who have largely sought shelter in more secure areas of Taizz and Hudaydah, he said.

"Humanitarian partners have so far provided direct, in-kind relief to nearly 120,000 people, including internally displaced people, host communities and residents of affected areas."

"In addition, partners are supporting critical services through assistance to local water networks and health facilities, as well as offering protection," he said.

"Access to the most affected areas of Taizz remains challenging due to ongoing clashes and movement restrictions imposed by parties to the conflict."

Over the past two years, intense fighting has been going on between Saudi-backed government forces and Shiite Houthi rebels in western Yemen.

In September 2014, Houthi rebels, with support from forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted the UN-backed transitional government and seized Sanaa, the capital.

Latest UN figures showed that deliberate war tactics are accelerating the collapse of key institutions and the economy, thereby leaving some 18 million people, more than two thirds of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance.

An estimated 10 million people are acutely affected and need some form of immediate humanitarian assistance to save and sustain their lives, including food, health and medical services, clean water, sanitation and protection, according to UN figures.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 17, 2017. (Xinhua/ AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The White House has apologized to the British government after alleging that former U.S. President Barack Obama used a British intelligence agency to spy on President Donald Trump while he was a candidate last year, U.S. media reported Friday.

CNN reported that U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with his British counterpart Mark Lyall Grant on Thursday about White House press secretary Sean Spicer's comment about a Fox News report that said British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

CNN quoted a White House official as saying that the conversation was "cordial" and McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional."

McMaster also told his counterpart that "their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House."

On Thursday evening, Spicer repeated the Fox News claim that British intelligence agency GCHQ was used by Obama to spy on Trump Tower in the lead-up to last November's election.

The comments prompted GCHQ to issue a public statement that said,"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday the White House has assured the British government that the allegations that British intelligence services spied on Trump will not be repeated, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.

Britain "made it clear" to the United States that the "ridiculous" claims should be ignored and received assurances in return that they will not be repeated, showing that the administration does not give them any credence, May's spokesman said.
CAPE TOWN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- South African President Jacob Zuma launched the Invest South Africa One-Stop Shop on Friday as part of efforts to improve business environment by improving the ease of doing business and lowering its cost.

"We are aware that it is imperative to maintain or improve in these areas in order to have a sustainable and competitive economy," Zuma said at a ceremony in Pretoria.

The government has thus taken a firm decision to make South Africa more investor-friendly, he said.

The One-Stop Shop will be the focal point of contact for investors and government departments involved in regulatory, registration, permits and licensing.

Key departments like Home Affairs, Labor, Environmental Affairs, Trade and Industry and agencies such as the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, SA Revenue Service and electricity utility Eskom will be available at the One-Stop Shop.

"We're doing this because foreign direct investment is critical to assist us to meet our National Development Plan economic growth objectives of growing the economy and to create much-needed jobs," said the president.

Zuma first announced the intention to set up the One-Stop Shop in August 2015.

"Today, we are ready to launch this service. Three Provincial One-Stops will also be launched this year in KZN (KwaZulu-Natal), Gauteng and Western Cape," Zuma said.

Other provinces will open their One-Stop Shops over a period of three years, according to Zuma.

The One-Stop Shops is designed to attend to the needs of local and foreign investors who have complained about the difficulties and hassles they face when wanting to establish new businesses.

They have to visit many departments to obtain various licenses and go to different offices for water, electricity and immigration services such as visas.

The government has acknowledged that bureaucratic red tape has been stifling the growth of business.

"Officials at the One-Stop Shop will ensure that we drastically reduce the red tape," Zuma said.

An investor will make an appointment, meet with a government representative to explain the services required and be guided by the representative, Zuma explained.

"The One-Stop Shop will provide a more coordinated, streamlined and professional service to those who wish to set up a business," he said.

The South African government passed the Protection of Investment Act in December 2015 to strengthen legal safeguards for foreign investors as the country continued to suffer from a number of legislative uncertainties that discourage foreign investors.

Nonetheless, South Africa dropped by a large number of places in the doing business ranking published by the World Bank, which ranked the country 73rd out of 189 countries in 2016 compared to 69th of 189 in 2015.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President DonaldTrump listen to a question during a press conference in the East Room of the White House March 17, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his support to NATO, but urged its members to "pay their fair share for the cost of defense."

"Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe," Trump said at a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Trump added that he thanked Merkel for Germany's commitment to increase defense spending and work toward contributing at least two percent of GDP to defense.

Merkel said Germany has committed to this two percent goal by 2024, adding that last year the country's defense spending grew by 8 percent. She also said she is "gratified" to know that Trump underlined how important he thinks NATO is.

In a January interview with European media, Trump said NATO was "obsolete because it was not taking care of terror," and he complained that various members of the bloc were not paying their dues, which was "very unfair to the United States."

Following his inauguration, Trump has toned down his criticism on NATO, reaffirming on several occasions his strong support to the bloc. However, he continued to call on NATO members to meet their financial obligations.

At the press conference, Trump defended the White House for quoting a Fox News report on Britain's alleged role in tapping his phone, amid a diplomatic row between the close allies.

On Thursday evening, White House spokesman Sean Spicer repeated a Fox News report that British intelligence agency GCHQ was used by former U.S. President Barack Obama to spy on Trump Tower in the lead-up to last November's election.

The comments prompted GCHQ to issue a public statement that said "recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Trump said on Friday that "we did nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television."

"You shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox," he added.

U.S. media reported that the White House has apologized to the British government after Spicer's comment. U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with his British counterpart Mark Lyall Grant on Thursday about the incident, saying that Britain's "concerns were understood and heard," according to CNN.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday the White House has assured the British government that the allegations that British intelligence services spied on Trump will not be repeated, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.

Britain "made it clear" to the United States that the "ridiculous" claims should be ignored and received assurances in return that they will not be repeated, showing that the administration does not give them any credence, May's spokesman said.

At Friday's press conference, Trump also repeated his claim that Obama had tapped his phone, despite that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has found no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the U.S. government.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said to Merkel, in reference to reports that the U.S. tapped the German leader's phone during the Obama administration.
by Samuel Okiror

KAMPALA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan police on Friday said its spokesperson was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Kulambiro, a suburb in the capital Kampala.

The police in a brief statement said Andrew Felix Kaweesi, who was also director of human resource development in the force, was shot on Friday together with his bodyguard and driver.

Emilian Kayima, Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, told reporters at the scene of the crime that security agencies have launched a joint investigation to establish the cause and motive of the killings.

"We ask the public to remain calm. All experts have been put together to manage the situation," said Kayima.

Eyewitness accounts according to local radio stations said Kaweesi was shot by gunmen moving on a motorcycle.

Similar shootings have in the recent past occurred in Kampala as gun wielding men killed Muslim clerics.
A picture taken on March 17, 2017 shows bodies lying on the ground of people who were killed in aboat carrying Somali refugees, arriving at the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeida. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Friday said that it was "appalled by the deaths of refugees" after a boat carrying them across the Red Sea from Yemen to Sudan was reportedly attacked overnight on Thursday.

A UN spokesman told reporters here at a daily news briefing that although details were still unconfirmed, "it appears that a number of Somali refugees were among those killed or injured."

Meanwhile, the conflict in Yemen is continuing along the Taizz governorate's western coast and has now moved into areas adjacent to southern Hudaydah governorate's coastal districts, the spokesman noted.

As of March 10, the fighting has resulted in the displacement of more than 48,000 people, who have largely sought shelter in more secure areas of Taizz and Hudaydah, he said.

"Humanitarian partners have so far provided direct, in-kind relief to nearly 120,000 people, including internally displaced people, host communities and residents of affected areas."

"In addition, partners are supporting critical services through assistance to local water networks and health facilities, as well as offering protection," he said.

"Access to the most affected areas of Taizz remains challenging due to ongoing clashes and movement restrictions imposed by parties to the conflict."

Over the past two years, intense fighting has been going on between Saudi-backed government forces and Shiite Houthi rebels in western Yemen.

In September 2014, Houthi rebels, with support from forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ousted the UN-backed transitional government and seized Sanaa, the capital.

Latest UN figures showed that deliberate war tactics are accelerating the collapse of key institutions and the economy, thereby leaving some 18 million people, more than two thirds of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance.

An estimated 10 million people are acutely affected and need some form of immediate humanitarian assistance to save and sustain their lives, including food, health and medical services, clean water, sanitation and protection, according to UN figures.
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, on Friday kicked off his visit to Mali and South Sudan with his successor, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, who was appointed to replace Ladsous next month, a UN spokesman told reporters here.

Ladsous "is travelling today to Mali for a two-day trip," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "He is expected to meet with government officials, the UN Mission (MINUSMA)'s leadership and UN personnel."

Ladsous, who has been the UN peacekeeping chief for six years, will then proceed to South Sudan on March 19, where he will engage with the government and the humanitarian and diplomatic community, Dujarric said, adding that he is expected to address the press in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on March 21.

"The under-secretary-general-designate for peacekeeping operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, is accompanying Mr. Ladsous on both trips," the spokesman said.

On Feb. 14, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Lacroix, a French diplomat, as under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations for one year.

Lacroix, 56, will assume the position on April 1, 2017 after Ladsous steps down. Lacroix is currently director for the United Nations and International Organizations at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
LJUBLJANA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Slovenian people staged a small protest on Friday in downtown Ljubljana against the planned deployment of some 50 Slovenian Army to NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia.

The protesters, called on by various Slovenian organization and the opposition United Left (ZL), labelled the government's deployment decision as "senseless" and "unacceptable".

Violeta Tomic of the ZL, according to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), said Slovenia must not be part of NATO's geostrategic policy of conflict generation.

She spoke of participation in "the revival of the Cold War that violates common sense, basic human values and rights".

The Slovenian government decided last month to deploy up to 50 members of Slovenian Armed Forces in NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia, declaring that the deployment was a demonstration of Slovenia's solidarity, responsibility and credibility as a NATO member.

Slovenian troops will join in a 1,000- to 1,200-strong multi-national battalion under Canadian command in several rotations, according to the NATO deployment scheme.
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday met with representatives of UN Women's civil society groups and both exchanged ideas and views about issues affecting women and girls around the world.

"During the discussion, the secretary-general pointed out that even though the existing protection instruments were important, the reality remains that we live in a male-dominated world and culture," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The central question was one of empowerment, which had many dimensions, he said. "It is essential to ensure that women were able to participate in all aspects of societies, including the political, economic, social and cultural spheres."

The meeting took place on the sidelines of annual meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which opened here Wednesday to examine the impact of the rapid transformation of work on women and girls, including in the areas of equal pay, unpaid care work, the informal economy and in technology.

According to UN Women, the priority theme of this year's largest inter-governmental meeting is "Women's economic empowerment in the changing world of work."

The annual meeting is also reviewing the challenges and achievements for women and girls in implementing the Millennium Development Goals, a set of 17 targets which serve as the guideline for global development efforts for the years running up to 2030.
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's exports to China nearly doubled in value in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2016, the government said on Friday.

The value of Brazil's China-bound exports rose 94.3 percent, buoyed by a price rise for raw materials such as oil and iron, the Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade said.

In January and February, those exports brought in 6.246 billion U.S. dollars, mainly in sales of oil and iron, as well as soybeans, wood pulp and beef.

"China has a fixed demand for iron and soy. The increase in the value of Brazil's exports only reflects the increase in the price of commodities on the international market," economic consultant Alberto Pfeifer, of the Institute for Higher Studies at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), told Xinhua.

While "this increase in commodities is very beneficial for Brazil," said Pfeifer, in general "we can characterize Brazilian exports as mediocre, because ... they have been unable to bounce back in the segment of value-added goods, like manufactured and industrial" products.

In effect, oil, iron and soybeans represented 77 percent of the total Brazilian exports to China.

The ministry figures also confirm China as the world's leading destination for Brazil's exports, far ahead of the second-ranking country the United States, which took in 1.896 billion U.S. dollars worth of Brazilian exports over the same period.

"It is very positive for Brazil to continue to reinforce its trade ties with China, as it has to date, because the world is going to gravitate towards China in the next 50 or maybe 100 years," said Pfeifer.

China is also the leading destination market for Brazilian agricultural products, receiving 23.9 percent of Brazil's shipments in February, about nine percent more than over the same period last year due to higher soybean exports.
SANAA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 33 Somali refugees were killed and 29 others wounded when a total of 150 refugees traveling in a boat off the Yemeni coast came under an air attack, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Sanaa said on Friday.

The ICRC "is shocked by last night's attack on a civilian ship carrying around 150 passengers, including women and children, near the port of Hodeida," it said in an emailed statement.

The attack left 33 dead and 29 wounded, while other passengers are either still missing or under the care of local authorities, the ICRC said.

"It was a heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded," said Eric Christopher Wyss from the ICRC.

"Survivors told us that many of the passengers were refugees from Somalia or Yemen, fleeing conflict," he added.

Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that the Somali refugees came under an air attack late night of Thursday, blaming a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia which is having tight control of the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb off the western Yemeni coasts.

There was no comment by the coalition forces yet.

A spokesperson of the International Immigration Organization office in Sanaa, Sheba al-Muallimy, told Xinhua that the organization has no hand in coordination Thursday night's journey of the Somali refugees.

Al-Muallimy said the organization has learnt very late that the Somali refugees were travelling to Sudan, escaping the conflict here in Yemen.

Xinhua conducted the UNHCR Refugees Agency in Sanaa for comment, but the office in Sanaa said no official is on duty at the weekend.

Houthis have been controlling north of Yemen, including Hodeida, after they ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in late 2014.

In March 2015, a coalition of Arab armies led by Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's conflict to back Hadi troops against Houthi fighters, who have seized control of most of the northern Yemen, including Sanaa, to restore power to Hadi.

The coalition forces have been imposing tight control over the Red Sea and strategic strait of Bab al-Mandab which links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemeni people, half of them civilians, and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian agencies.
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Justice Department on Friday filed a brief notice saying it would appeal a Maryland federal judge's ruling that halted a key portion of President Donald Trump's revised immigration order which was set to take effect one day before.

The Justice Department has not yet filed its formal appeal in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Richmond, Virginia, where the case will eventually be heard, said local media reports.

The ruling in Maryland and another in Hawaii earlier this week claimed Trump's temporary barring U.S. entry to global refugees and immigration from six predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, citing statements by Trump and his advisers suggesting the real purpose of the disputed immigration order was to discriminate against Muslims. The Trump administration denied it is a Muslim ban, arguing the order aims to prevent terrorism by suspending visitors from terror-prone countries where visa vetting may not be effective.

So far the U.S. Justice Department didn't move to appeal the Hawaii federal judge's ruling, which would bring the case to the same San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected an earlier version of the immigration order.

Hours after the Hawaii federal judge's ruling on Wednesday, Trump slammed it as "an unprecedented judicial overreach", pledging to take the legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

"We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court," Trump said Wednesday night at a campaign rally in Nashville, the state of Tennesse, suggesting the ruling was made for "political reasons."

Derrick Watson, the federal judge in Hawaii, noted that Trump's adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News last month that the revised order was intended to have "the same basic policy outcome" as the first one, aside from a few changes designed to bolster the administration's legal standing.

In the Maryland case, federal judge Theodore Chuang wrote that the origins of Trump's immigration order suggests that religious screening, not national security, was the primary purpose.

Under President Trump's order, a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. will be imposed on citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, while freezing refugee resettlement for four months.
TIRANA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian politics was engulfed by strong debates and trade of barbs on Friday following the publication of the 2017 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report by the U.S. State Department.

The report underlined that Albania remained a significant source country for marijuana, as well as a transit route for cocaine and heroin destined for European markets.

Such findings brought several accusations raised by the Albanian opposition representatives, but also triggered strong debates within the ruling coalition.

According to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, the U.S. report proved "how much Albania had done in the fight against cannabis" while he stressed that much more remained to be done.

But Albanian opposition head Lulzim Basha said the report included Albania in the blacklist of the countries known for money laundering.

Basha said the report also confirmed opposition's claims on the increasing cultivation of narcotics as well as huge growth of corruption in the country.

He blamed the government for such situation, and said that the report was yet another proof that the cause of opposition's protest was right.

The opposition has been protesting in capital's main boulevard since Feb. 18, and it has constantly declared its unwavering decision to continue protest till Rama resigns and paves the way for creation of a caretaker government.

Meanwhile, the report also spurred debates within the ruling coalition, namely, between the Socialist Party (SP) and Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI).

While calling the situation alarming, Luan Rama, General Secretary of SMI, called on law enforcing agencies to react more responsibly.

Reacting to such statements, the recently dismissed Minister of Interior Sajmir Tahiri said that such claims were inaccurate.

The latest findings from the U.S. report come only a few days after prime minister Edi Rama dismissed Tahiri over allegations of police involvement with drug cultivation and trafficking networks in the country.

Although Albanian authorities have reported an increase in arrests as well as destruction of cannabis plantations in 2016, there were also reports of increased cannabis cultivation within the country.

According to the report, major proceeds-generating crimes in Albania include drug trafficking, tax evasion, smuggling, and human trafficking while the country has a substantial black market for smuggled goods, which facilitated by weak border controls and customs enforcement.
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council Friday adopted a resolution to renew the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) , which also urged further efforts to implement the Belt and Road Initiative and other regional development efforts.

The 15-member UN body decided to extend the mandate of the UNAMA for another year, until March 17, 2018. The political mission will focus on providing good offices, working with and supporting the Afghan government, promoting peace and reconciliation, monitoring and promoting human rights and the protection of civilians and promoting good governance.

The council "welcomes and urges further efforts to strengthen the process of regional economic cooperation, including measures to facilitate regional connectivity, trade and transit, including through regional development initiatives such as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (the Belt and Road) Initiative, and regional development projects ...," said the resolution.

In Resolution 2274 which was adopted in March 2016, the council also called for strengthening the process of regional cooperation, including through regional development initiative such as the Belt and Road.

Proposed in 2013, the initiative has so far gained the support of over 100 countries and international organizations, and more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China.
HELSINKI, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Credit rating agency Standard & Poors maintained on Friday the credit rating for Finland at AA+, although the agency expressed concerns over the impact of the True Finns party leadership struggle on the functions of the coalition government.

S&P feared the current reform actions by the three party coalition may be hampered by the leadership change in the True Finns.

While its vista for Finland was stable, S&P believed the biggest problem of the Finnish economy is structure as it singled out the high ratio of long-term unemployment.

The agency said that growing investments and private consumption support the economy for the time being. Average growth for the Finnish GDP for 2017-2020 is predicted as 2.3 percent, and the state debt may reach 68 percent of the GDP by 2020.

Two other international credit rating agencies, Fitch and Moody's, have also listed Finland as AA+.
HARARE, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Black market in Zimbabwe is gaining popularity as cash shortages persist, with many people moving onto streets in search of the now elusive U.S. dollar.

Among the busiest spots is a trans-border bus terminus to the east of the Central Business District and around a shopping mall in the city center, where dealers wave wads of foreign currency to potential clients.

As at Friday morning, 107 dollars worth of bond notes were buying 100 U.S. dollars while the same amount of bond notes fetched 1,200 South African rand.

Other dealers charge up to 15 percent of the needed cash and require clients to transfer funds electronically into their accounts before they give them hard cash.

The U.S. dollar and rand remain the most commonly used currencies in Zimbabwe.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) introduced bond coins and notes, which were supposed to trade at par with the U.S. dollar, between 2014 and 2016 in a bid to improve liquidity, but the continued flight of dollars has stirred up public concerns.

The interchangeability of the surrogate currency with the U.S. dollar remains a thorny issue with only the banks maintaining it while some retailers and traders have found subtle ways of charging a premium for the use of bond notes.

An illegal foreign currency dealer told Xinhua that many people were coming over in search of foreign currency for various reasons ranging from financing their businesses to paying tuition and accommodation fees for their children who are studying abroad.

"They come here, get their U.S. dollars and go to the bank where they deposit the money in their children's visa accounts," she said.

RBZ in 2016 established a list for foreign currency disbursements that leaves college fees payments at the lowest rung of priorities, so the parents have devised other means to send money to their children, including using mobile money transfer platforms.

Also falling into that category are cash depositing clients in the retail and wholesale industry and other borrowing clients engaged in the importation of non-strategic goods.

Donations, capital remittances from disposal of local property and from cross-border investments, funding of offshore credit cards, importation of goods and services readily available in Zimbabwe have been declared non-priority areas.

As a result of the priority list, the black market has found ready clients as people go for the elusive foreign currency, some of which they are reportedly hoarding.

In a previous interview with Xinhua, economic analyst Clemence Machadu said it seemed the U.S. dollar now had sub currencies as the black market took advantage of cash shortages.

"Bond currency may have come as a savior that will decongest demand for the greenback and ensure that some domestic transactions happen in bond notes, relieving the hard currency to meet imports," said Machadu.

"However, the challenge is when it comes to exchanging bond notes for hard currency by those who may now want to import more supplies. It is obvious that hard currency won't be conveniently available and that will create an arbitrage whereby a premium will be charged to exchange bond notes for the greenback," he said.

The Zimbabwe dollar became moribund in February 2009 and made way to a multiple currency regime dominated by the U.S. dollar and, in the initial stages, the rand.

The others are the Australian dollar, British pound, Botswana pula, euro, Indian rupee, Chinese yuan and Japanese yen, but these have hardly been in use.

RBZ governor John Mangudya earlier this week blamed the emergence of the black market on indiscipline and general lack of confidence in the market.

He said 102 million dollars worth of bond notes and coins were now circulating in the economy, accounting for 1.8 percent of deposits in the banks.

The bond notes and coins are supported by a 200 million dollar facility supported by Afreximbank meant to inject liquidity into the market after the central bank realized that the country had run short of the U.S. dollar.
By Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is at odds with the nation's courts over a recent immigration order, and he may fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, experts said.

At issue is an executive order Trump issued in January, when he temporarily banned a small group of citizens from Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, on fears that terrorists could sneak in among them. The so-called visa ban grabbed headlines worldwide, amid images of protesters at airports.

Since then, Trump has amended the ban, but a federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday stopped it, sparking a fight with the White House that may end up at the Supreme Court.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday that the administration plans to appeal the federal judge's ruling, explaining that the danger from terrorism is real.

There are two sides to the issue. The U.S. Constitution forbids discrimination based on religion, and the courts have ruled that the ban, which bars entry of citizens from six Muslim-dominant countries for 90 days, amounts to blanket discrimination against Muslims and is thus unconstitutional.

Supporters of the ban contend it is not a ban on the Muslim religion, noting that it only covers Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The ban does not cover dozens of majority Muslim nations across the world, such as Indonesia, for example, the world's largest Muslim nation by population.

Supporters of the ban also point to a 1952 U.S. law that says the president has the right to bar any class of aliens into the United States if he thinks their entry would be detrimental to the interests of the country.

Former President Harry Truman blasted the 1952 law, vetoing it more than 60 years ago and calling it a "slap at millions of Americans whose fathers were of alien birth." But Congress supported the law and was able to override it.

Supporters of the travel ban also argue that the federal judges who blocked Trump's ban are making decisions based on politics and not on law.

Experts said the fight between the White House and the courts is likely to continue until the case is heard by the nation's highest court.

"Trump is likely to continue the court fight over his travel ban and take it all the way to the Supreme Court," Darrell West, vice president and director for governance studies of the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

"He has been defeated by federal judges, but hopes if the Senate confirms his court nomination, the Supreme Court will decide in his favor. They may overturn lower court decisions in favor of a ruling that supports the ability of presidents to make border entry decisions," West said.

Judges see Trump's travel ban as discriminating based on religious beliefs and being arbitrary because most of the terrorists have come from countries not included in the ban. For them, the policy is a clear case of executive overreaching and a violation of constitutional principles, he said.

Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Xinhua that she does not know whether the arguments the judges have made about constitutionality of the visa ban will pass muster in the Supreme Court.

While the initial law caused a media frenzy in January, that has died down quite a bit. Now, there are questions over whether the ban has hurt Trump's public image.

"Public opinion is not as engaged as it was when the initial order came down. I don't think (Trump) is hurt by the new order with the public -- views hardened very early on this one -- but he probably isn't helped," Bowman said.

The executive order also calls for a 120 day suspension on refugees entering the United States.

"Historically, Americans have been skeptical about accepting refugees," Bowman said. "So in that sense, (Trump) isn't hurt. The news cycle is moving so fast now. I doubt he is helped by it. The damage was done earlier."

West said Trump already has lost the public opinion battle on his travel ban, as many Americans feel that it is misguided and wrong-headed.
RIGA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- The Latvian government is likely to look into a deal in which Swedish media giant Modern Times Group (MTG) is selling its Baltic media business, a representative of the Latvian Economics Ministry said on Friday.

Sweden's MTG announced on Friday that it is selling its broadcasting business in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to U.S. asset management firm Providence Equity Partners for 115 million euros (123.5 million U.S. dollars).

For the deal to be closed, it has to be approved by the Baltic states' national regulators.

On Thursday, Latvian lawmakers passed in the first reading draft amendments to the National Security Law and the Commercial Law to empower the Cabinet of Ministers to suspend sale of strategic enterprises. The last reading of the draft legislation is scheduled for next week.

The Economics Ministry's parliamentary secretary Vilnis Kirsis told Latvian public media website lsm.lv that it was not clear whether the sale of MTG's Baltic business had already been closed, but if the above amendments are adopted before the deal is closed the parties involved in the transaction will have to ask the government to approve it.

If the deal is closed before the bill is passed in the final reading, the government, most probably, will look into the transaction anyway to vet the new owners of the media business from the standpoint of national security.

If Providence Equity Partners are found to be unacceptable, "the government may ask to sell the stake in the last resort scenario," the ministry's representative said.

Visvaldis Valtenbergs, a researcher at the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute at the University of Latvia, said the deal represents risks to the diversity of media content.

The expert believes that because of the current uncertainty in the private media sector it would be necessary to strengthen public media.

The Latvian Competition Council, whose permission will be needed to close the deal, has not yet received an officially notification about the deal, its spokeswoman Paula Vilsone said.

Providence already owns Bite, a mobile services provider operating in Latvia and Lithuania.

In Latvia, MTG owns TV3, TV3+, TV6, Kanals 2 and LNT TV channels, StarFM radio station, as well as TVPlay and Skaties online portals.
KHARTOUM, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)/northern sector on Friday criticized selection of Sudanese official as Deputy Chairman of Executive Council of Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

"Claims by Amnesty International said Sudan government has used chemical weapons in Darfur, and clear indication of using chemical weapons at the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile," said Yasir Arman, Secretary-General of the SPLM/northern sector, in a statement Friday.

"This matter constitutes evidence of the contradicting standards by some international organizations and lack of responsibility towards the victims of genocide, war crimes and chemical weapons used by Sudan government," he noted.

He regarded the matter as a reward and encouragement for Sudan government to continue war crimes and violation of human rights.

Last week, Sudan's Ambassador to the Netherlands and its Permanent Envoy to the OPCW, Rahma Salih Al-Ebaid, won the position of OPCW deputy chief.

In September last year, Amnesty International accused Sudanese government forces of killing dozens of civilians, including children, in attacks in which chemical weapons were allegedly used at Jebel Marra area.

However, the Sudanese army and foreign ministry strongly denied the accusation.
LISBON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Evidence of Portugal's progress will soon be reflected in the evaluation of rating agencies, the Portuguese ministry of finance said in a statement on Friday.

The statement came after Standard & Poor's decided on Friday to maintain the country's rating at BB+.

"Standard & Poor's (S&P) rationale recognizes that, in 2016, Portugal exceeded expectations of economic growth and employment, the government outperformed its fiscal adjustment target and contributed effectively to the stabilization of the financial sector," the statement said.

The statement adds that S&P pointed to an acceleration of economic growth, estimating 1.4 percent growth in 2016 and projecting 1.6 percent growth for 2017.

"The accumulation of evidence of progress of the performance of the economy proves that Portugal enjoys solid conditions to grow in a sustainable way," the statement adds.

Portugal signed a 78-billion-euro bailout program with international lenders in 2011 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The only main agency that didn't cut Portugal's bonds from investment grade after the bailout was Toronto-based DBRS.

The European Commission said in a country report last month that while Portugal's economy has improved in the past four years, the country's fiscal outlook still faces risks.
BRASILIA, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian meatpackers paid state inspectors bribes to overlook the sale of meats past their expiration date, the Federal Police (PF) said on Friday.

A wide-ranging investigation, dubbed Operation Weak Flesh, is looking into the systematic bribery of inspectors from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, PF Commissar Mauricio Moscardi Grillo told reporters at a press conference.

Some of the country's biggest meatpackers are being investigated, Agencia Brasil (EBC) said.

Shares for those companies involved in the bribery plummeted on news of the investigation, dragging down the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange with them.

As part of the operation, 309 arrest warrants were issued in seven states, for search and seizure of company premises and the homes of suspects, and for questioning those involved, the agency said.

According to Moscardi, at least some of the bribes went to the treasuries of key political parties.

"As part of the investigation, it became clear that part of the bribes went to political parties ... throughout the investigation two parties were named: the PP (Popular Party) and the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party)," which is the party of President Michel Temer.

The companies, which sold meat for both domestic consumption and export, treat meats with chemicals to mask any stale odors, and inject meats with water to boost poundage.

Following the PF's press conference, the Agriculture Ministry said it suspended 33 inspectors linked to the scheme.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Nashville, Tennessee on March 15, 2017, during which Trump vows to challenge travel ban block at the Supreme Court if needed. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

By Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is at odds with the nation's courts over a recent immigration order, and he may fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, experts said.

At issue is an executive order Trump issued in January, when he temporarily banned a small group of citizens from Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, on fears that terrorists could sneak in among them. The so-called visa ban grabbed headlines worldwide, amid images of protesters at airports.

Since then, Trump has amended the ban, but a federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday stopped it, sparking a fight with the White House that may end up at the Supreme Court.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday that the administration plans to appeal the federal judge's ruling, explaining that the danger from terrorism is real.

There are two sides to the issue. The U.S. Constitution forbids discrimination based on religion, and the courts have ruled that the ban, which bars entry of citizens from six Muslim-dominant countries for 90 days, amounts to blanket discrimination against Muslims and is thus unconstitutional.

Supporters of the ban contend it is not a ban on the Muslim religion, noting that it only covers Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The ban does not cover dozens of majority Muslim nations across the world, such as Indonesia, for example, the world's largest Muslim nation by population.

Supporters of the ban also point to a 1952 U.S. law that says the president has the right to bar any class of aliens into the United States if he thinks their entry would be detrimental to the interests of the country.

Demonstrators gather near the White House to protest President Donald Trump's travel ban on March 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

Former President Harry Truman blasted the 1952 law, vetoing it more than 60 years ago and calling it a "slap at millions of Americans whose fathers were of alien birth." But Congress supported the law and was able to override it.

Supporters of the travel ban also argue that the federal judges who blocked Trump's ban are making decisions based on politics and not on law.

Experts said the fight between the White House and the courts is likely to continue until the case is heard by the nation's highest court.

"Trump is likely to continue the court fight over his travel ban and take it all the way to the Supreme Court," Darrell West, vice president and director for governance studies of the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

"He has been defeated by federal judges, but hopes if the Senate confirms his court nomination, the Supreme Court will decide in his favor. They may overturn lower court decisions in favor of a ruling that supports the ability of presidents to make border entry decisions," West said.

Judges see Trump's travel ban as discriminating based on religious beliefs and being arbitrary because most of the terrorists have come from countries not included in the ban. For them, the policy is a clear case of executive overreaching and a violation of constitutional principles, he said.

Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Xinhua that she does not know whether the arguments the judges have made about constitutionality of the visa ban will pass muster in the Supreme Court.

While the initial law caused a media frenzy in January, that has died down quite a bit. Now, there are questions over whether the ban has hurt Trump's public image.

"Public opinion is not as engaged as it was when the initial order came down. I don't think (Trump) is hurt by the new order with the public -- views hardened very early on this one -- but he probably isn't helped," Bowman said.

A protester holds a sign near the White House to protest President Donald Trump's travel ban on six Muslim countries on March 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Xinhua/ AFP PHOTO)

The executive order also calls for a 120 day suspension on refugees entering the United States.

"Historically, Americans have been skeptical about accepting refugees," Bowman said. "So in that sense, (Trump) isn't hurt. The news cycle is moving so fast now. I doubt he is helped by it. The damage was done earlier."

West said Trump already has lost the public opinion battle on his travel ban, as many Americans feel that it is misguided and wrong-headed.
Grigor Porozhanov, Ambassador of the Republic of Bulgaria to China, gives exclusive interview to Xinhuanet in Beijing, on March 14, 2017. (Xinhuanet/Xu Xin)

By Tian Shaohui

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- China's economy will maintain its leading position as the world economy recovers slowly, said Grigor Porozhanov, Bulgarian ambassador to China, during an exclusive interview with Xinhuanet on Tuesday.

Statistics and figures show that China's economy remains stable and will stimulate the development worldwide, added the ambassador.

He said he is convinced China will continue to actively participate in global economic activities and stick to the policy of multilateral cooperation with other countries.

Meanwhile, China is playing an increasing role in global governance with initiatives of regional and inter-regional importance, he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a case in point, said the ambassador, which is the evidence that China remains open to foreign investors.

This initiative is an innovative idea for global governance, he said, noting Bulgaria is very interested in it and wishes to play an active role in its projects.

He commended the G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development endorsed at last year's G20 Hangzhou Summit.

Given that China's success in poverty alleviation is widely recognized, he believed that the two countries have a common goal and challenge to lift the remaining poor people out of poverty.

The ambassador hoped that high-level visits between the two countries could be maintained.

He also welcomed more Chinese direct investment in Bulgaria, especially in energy, transportation, infrastructure and machinery.

Academic and student exchanges will continue to be strengthened, he said, as more educational programs and plans are underway.

Besides, Bulgaria is preparing for the EU-China Year of Tourism 2018, he noted, referring to plans to attract more Chinese visitors with beneficial visa polices.
BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The Belt and Road Initiative will help revitalize the global economy, curbing trade protectionism and enhancing connectivity, Masood Khalid, Pakistani ambassador to China, told Xinhuanet in a recent exclusive interview.

The ambassador said that he is expecting a high-level participation from Pakistan in the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in May in Beijing.

Being part of the Belt and Road Initiative, Pakistan is interested in topics such as connectivity, infrastructure and liberalization of trade, he said.

The ambassador noted that China is a major driver of global trade and is playing an important role in the international community in facing challenges such as terrorism, climate change and trade protectionism.

He also praised Chinas remarkable accomplishment in poverty reduction, and said that China and Pakistan are cooperating well in this particular area.

One example of that is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through which employment will be generated in both Pakistan and China, he said.

In particular, Chinas western region will benefit from it as the CPEC passes through it and will connect it with Gwadar, he added.

It is a project of win-win cooperation which will benefit the people of the two countries, the ambassador concluded.

He also spoke highly of Chinas economic growth over the past three decades.

During the past few years, we have seen global economic recession which has affected China as well. However, it also showed how much the global economy is dependent on Chinese economy, said the ambassador.

A healthy and stable growth of Chinese economy, therefore, bodes well for the future of global economy, he added.
Photo taken on March 15, 2017 shows the damaged building of government of national salvation's TV channel which was set on fire by a group of gunmen in Tripoli, Libya. Violent clashes erupted in the Libyan capital Tripoli since early Tuesday morning and lasted to Wednesday morning between rival militias, according to witnesses. The fighting is between two militias loyal to the two rival governments in Tripoli: the UN-backed government of national accord and the deposed government of national salvation that is attempting to take over the city and get back to power. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)
Children paint graffiti on a wall during a campaign in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 15, 2017. A campaign was staged for people to express their wishes for peace and rejection of violence and war by painting graffiti on the walls of Sanaa's streets here on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)
People enjoy scenery among cherry blossoms at the Yuyuantan Park in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2017. A cherry blossoms cultural festival will be held here as from March 17. (Xinhua/Li Jundong)
Visitors view the cherry blossoms at a park in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, March 16, 2017. (Xinhua/Lin Yiguang)
Judge: Charge main suspect or free him

If he is not charged by then, the Sea Lots man must be immediately released from custody.

Justice Nadia Kangaloo gave this order yesterday after hearing a habeas corpus application filed by lawyers representing the 36-year-old Sea Lots man who is challenging his detention since Friday last. Ag Superintendent Suzette Martin, who is leading the investigation, told Justice Kangaloo the police need three more days to complete their investigation.

She also said they were awaiting the result of Josephs autopsy, which was performed at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, yesterday. Martin said investigators still have to interview three persons of interest detained after Josephs body was discovered in the waters of the Gulf of Paria, close to the mouth of the Caroni River.

Joseph, mother of a four-yearold girl, went missing on Thursday.

The suspect was brought to court yesterday by several police officers and sat silently during the proceeding. Justice Kangaloo said she accepted that the police required additional time but expressed concern that the suspect was being held at the Homicide Investigation Bureaus office at Riverside Plaza in Port-of-Spain.

The mans lawyer, Criston J Williams said housing his client at the office was improper as there are no holding cells at this location.

Ag Supt Martin said it was the suspect who asked to be held at this office. I am not at all satisfied with him being able to choose to remain there. It is not for an accused to determine the place of detention but for the police to do the right thing, Justice Kangaloo said.

After discussions with lawyers for both sides, Justice Kangaloo said the suspect could remain at the Homicide office. Also appearing for the suspect are attorneys Shirvani Ramkisson and Kirby Joseph. Kangaloo has ordered that the police return to court next Monday to provide an update.
Bullet to head, man critical

Police say Rakesh Ramkarran, 27, of Red Brick Trace, South Oropouche was on duty during the early morning hours yesterday at Ramphals Roofing in Katwaroo Trace, Penal.He was shot by one of two gunmen who had exited a vehicle.

They then fled the scene without stealing anything from the business place.

Police reported that at 2.10 am, Ramphal was at the store when he was confronted by the gunmen, one of whom whipped out a revolver and shot him in the forehead.

At 3.15 am, the report went on to say, Ramkarrans supervisor Nicholas Rajnath of Travtech Security of Duncan Village, San Fernando arrived on a routine visit only to find him in the guard booth, unconscious and bleeding from the gunshot wound.

He was rushed to the Siparia Health Facility before being transferred to the General Hospital.
Arouca man murdered

His body was found on Wednesday morning.

While relatives were reluctant to speak to reporters, Newsday understands Austins body was discovered at about 7.30 am by a passer-by who was on his way to work. The man alerted police and officers arrived and cordoned off the crime scene.

The District Medical Officer ordered Austins body removed to the Forensic Science Centre.

Homicide detectives are still trying to determine a motive for the murder of the elderly man.

No arrest has been made and investigations are continuing.
Cesspit cleaner recovers knife from latrine

The mother, Ria Ramlocan, 26, the jury heard, had three stab wounds on the chest and her child, Ishmael Timothy Ragbir suffered several stab wounds and one of his ears was severed.

Anand Baboolal, 40, is on trial for those murders which took place in August 2005 at Solomon Street, Mafeking Village.

The womans mother has testified and the second day of the trial yesterday saw the State leading evidence from police draughtsman Sgt Gregory Hood.

He testified that he made a sketch of the latrine where Ramlochans body was discovered and the Mafeking River.

Six formal witnesses evidence were read to the jury, beginning with that of District Medical Officer (DMO) Kamalludin Amin, who viewed the childs body, which was floating in the Mafeking River.

Timothys forehead appeared to have suffered trauma.

The evidence of DMO Lionel Clair was also read, which stated that he had on August 13, gone to Solomon Street, where, in the presence of police, he examined the body which was in a foetal position in the latrine pit.

There were stab wounds on the chest. The judge and jury heard the evidence read of Roger Jaggernauth who had said that he heard a news report and contacted Ramlochans sister Maria, then went the following day to the Mayaro Police Station.

The next witness statement was that of Angelo Caesar, a cesspit cleaner with the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation.

On that fateful August 14, he accompanied police to Solomon Street where he retrieved a brown handle knife from the cesspit.

The evidence of Police Constable Adesh Bachu, who stated that he escorted the bodies of Ramlochan and the child to the Forensic Sciences Centre was also heard.

The jury heard that the autopsy on Ramlochans body revealed that she died from stab wounds. The DMO report relating to the body of Timothy listed his age as two-years-old and the autopsy report stated that the child suffered multiple stab wounds. His left ear was cuff off, the report stated.

The judge and jury heard the evidence of Steadman Joseph, who stated that his wife was Veronica and that between July 2004 and August 2005, she cared for Timothy.

Ramlochan worked at the Resource Centre, Mayaro, he stated, and the last day his wife saw the child at her home was on August 10, 2005.

Ramlochan had left their home with Timothy between 5 pm and 6 pm that day. On August 13, Joseph stated, he went to the Mafeking River and saw the body of a child wearing the same clothes which Timothy was wearing when he left their home.

Joseph went to Ramlochans home and according to his statement, he got a foul smell.

State Attorney Shabaana Shah is prosecuting the case while attorney Rekha Ramjit, instructed by her daughter Gina Ramjohn, is representing Baboolal.
Carmona calls for justice that heals rather than bleeds

Crime is never a one-way street. Carmona said, It is about all of us, the failure of all of us to be our brothers keeper by giving everyone an even and fair chance to succeed to aspire and to dream. The establishment of a library at the Port-of- Spain Prison is a telling and undeniable symbol and manifestation of the fervent and eternal hope of visionaries in our society that were prepared to do something rather than talking about doing something. Education is the key that opens not any door but all doors. This initiative recognises that it is in societys best interest.

that when persons leave prison, they must leave being better men and women than when they were incarcerated for what they had done Carmona also called for the support of corporate bodies to support the philosophy of restorative justice, by being willing to hire ex-offenders, and taking on children and young adults from challenging communities .

The prison reading and library project is the brain child of the Childrens Ark, a non-profit organisation which focuses on at risk children .

The Childrens Ark recognised the loss and disadvantage that young children experienced with the imprisonment of their parents .

The group partnered with Prisons Commissioner Sterling Stewart and other stakeholders to transform the upper level of the Port-of-Spain Gaol, where death row inmates were held.

into the library. The library is expected to have furnishings and specially recommended books, selected by its director.

Debbie Jacobs so children can read to their fathers, and fathers to their children .

The Childrens Ark also intends to construct similar facilities in the Womens Prison at Arouca
EOC joins advocates gay rights challenge

The first hearing of the constitutional claim came up before Justice Devindra Rampersad in the Port of Spain High Court yesterday.

It has been adjourned to next Friday and will be heard in the San Fernando High Court.

At yesterdays brief sitting, attorneys for the EOC informed Justice Rampersad of their intent to join the proceedings as an interested party.

And although the Solicitor Generals Department was served notice of the lawsuit and yesterdays hearing date, there was no legal representative present to appear on behalf of the Attorney General, who is the defendant in the claim. Jones constitutional claim challenges Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act, which criminalises buggery and serious indecency even between consenting adults.

The very existence of these sections continuously and directly affects the claimants private life by forcing him to either respect the law and refrain from engaging __ even in private with consenting male partners __ in prohibited sexual acts to which he is disposed by reason of his homosexual orientation, or to commit the prohibited acts and thereby become liable to criminal prosecution, Jones fixed date claim form states.

Jones is also claiming that the long-standing legislation contravenes his constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of thought and expression in addition to being in direct contradiction to this countrys international human rights obligation.

His lawyers are also contending that the legislation opens his client to public prejudice and ridicule as it labels him and other homosexuals as criminals.

He is accordingly the subject of extensive societal prejudice, persecution, marginalisation, a lifelong entrenched stigma that he is an unapprehended criminal by virtue of being homosexual and he experiences the lifelong fear of being punished for expressing his sexuality through consensual conduct with another adult, the lawsuit adds.

He is being represented by Richard Drabble, QC, Rishi Dass and Antonio Emmanuel.

The lawyers will also argue that since the controversial legislation amended in 1986 and 2000 repealed and replaced pre-Independence sexual offences legislation, covered by the savings clause, it is open to review
Spoken word can be libellous

Slander is the spoken word, but Justice Frank Seepersad yesterday delivered a lawsuit in San Fernando in which he struck out a defence by a radio station which submitted that the defence, led by Senior Counsel and former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, should have been pleaded on the basis of slander and not libel.

On behalf of Junior Sammy and Jusamco suing MORE FM Radio Limited for libel, attorneys for the station submitted that the issue stemmed from words spoken.

Libel relates to the written word that offends and slander is in reference to words spoken such as via the medium of the radio or television.

But agreeing with Maharaj, Justice Seepersad ruled in his judgment that the formats in which statements can be reduced so as to be considered as being in a permanent form, has evolved and extended beyond the sphere of written or typed text.

As a result, audio, visual and electronic formats are capable of having a degree of permanency that transcends geographical boarders.

Seepersad stated therefore, In this context, the law in relation to libel and slander can no longer be viewed through the myopic lens of written word versus the spoken word, as technological advances have created circumstances by virtue of which the spoken words can easily encrypted into a permanent irreversible format which can be accessed from a global platform. The judge stated that having regard to how Maharaj has pleaded the case on Junior Sammys behalf, he cannot accept the radio stations contention that the case is improperly premised. He ordered the station refrains from further publishing and broadcasting the offending words. The judge reserved ruling on costs after the substantive hearing of the trial of the case is completed.
GHRC, Caroni Green going too

GHRS was created in 2006 to facilitate the enhancement of the human resource capacity in the Public Service. The company falls under the ambit of the Public Administration and Communications Ministry. GCL was formed in December 2013 and commenced commercial operations in September 2014. This company focuses on the production and processing of hot peppers.

The Prime Minister said an examination of the State Enterprises sector showed, some entities have outlived their usefulness...some entities have lost their way...some entities are grossly underperforming for one reason or another. Rowley said the Cabinet will look at the recommendations and take the appropriate decisions.

He said Cabinet decided yesterday to close GHRS. On CGL, Rowley asked, Now taxpayer...Do you really want to spend $6 million in taxpayers money to sell less than $1 million in peppers? Saying an Opposition MP hailed CGL as a success, Rowley said an examination of the history and numbers shows, it does not make any sense for the Government to be funding CGL to grow peppers. He added, We should provide support to farmers to grow peppers. On TDC, Rowley rejected the claim from the Communications Workers Union (CWU) that the decision to dissolve the company came out of the blue. He explained, We set up a lot of advisory committees...and authorised and empowered them to consult with the public. Observing at one time that the PNM was being accused of being a government by committee and too much consultation, the Prime Minister said, We took our time. All of 2016...

We very slowly...very methodically...

carefully brought our economy downwards...and created a platform for some decision-making. He reiterated that Government has spoken publicly about its tourism thrust and dissatisfaction with previous tourism marketing efforts.

In closing the TDC, Rowley said there will be a three-pronged arrangement with the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), will have a greater interest and direct responsibility for marketing and promoting Tobago....because Tobagonians want that. The Prime Minister said the tourism product which TT puts out to the world, must be regulated to maintain its standards. He also dismissed the CWUs call for Tourism Minister Shamfa Cudjoe to resign. Reminding reporters this was a Cabinet decision, the Prime Minister declared, I led the Cabinet that took the decision.
SWUTT says Govt is deceitful

In an address to the media on Monday regarding the unions protest outside the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Minister in the OPM Stuart Young was reported as saying that the union had not yet presented the identity of its proposed investor to the Government.

The union answered Youngs claim in a press release yesterday.

Contrary to the claim of ignorance of the potential investor by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, we the Trade Union would like to say categorically that information on said investor was sent by letter (dated 11 February, 2017) via email, and hand delivered to the office of the Honourable Minister of State in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Mr Stuart Young. The Union said the letter was sent in response to a government request for information on the investor the day before, and gave details of the investors history, mission, and financial standing. The union has been vying for the restart of the plant ever since its closure last March which left more than 600 of its workers unemployed and without benefits. Though some workers have been able to find work since, many have not. They have had their cars and houses repossessed and some have reported experiencing added hardship in the marriages due to the financial strain.
Gualbance driving school founder dies

Praimchan Gual- .bance, 80, started teaching people to drive since 1971 and established the school starting off with one car at his home in Libertville. The driving school fraternity mourns his passing, Gualbance having built his driving school business into a fleet of over 15 vehicles which taught many prominent politicians, medical doctors and attorneys to learn the art of driving on our nations roads.

He passed on the driving school business to his children.

Gualbance leaves to mourn his wife Teresa and children Frankie, Carlo, Kenny, Buma, Dilip, Tara and Angela.

A driving school instructor in San Fernando, Edward Rattan, in expressing sadness over his passing, said that Gualbance taught former minister and Central Bank Governor Winston Dookeran and former FIFA vice-president and minister Jack Warner who are originally from Rio Claro, how to drive.

Gualbances brother, Sam Sieunarine Lal Gualbance who left the driving school business and migrated to Canada, is a well known philanthropist who for the past several years, have donated thousands of dollars worth in items to primary school children in Rio Claro and Biche. Lal Gualbance is president of one of Canadas thriving sea food distribution companies.
Over 1200 African businessmen and senior government officials from nearly 40 countries are taking part in the 5th International Africa Development forum which opened doors Thursday in Casablanca, Moroccos economic capital, under the theme: New Inclusive Growth Models in Africa.

The two-day event seeks to promote trade and investment between African countries which are urged to enhance South-South cooperation and dialogue to take up development challenges.

About 5,000 B-to-B meetings are scheduled during the forum which offers the opportunity to look into the investment opportunities offered in Africa particularly in agriculture, electrification and energy harnessing.

The program also includes workshops on the role of businessmen in creating shared value in Africa, how to speed up financial inclusion and the role of urbanization in fostering social inclusion.

Besides the business meetings, debates and interactive presentations, the forum program features South-South Cooperation awards to be handed to three African companies which contributed to developing intra-African trade through partnership or productive investment in the continent.

The Best African young entrepreneurs will also receive awards for their innovation, noteworthy contributions to sustainable development and society.

According to experts, in a bid to develop effective trade patterns, Africa must embrace structural and regulatory reforms and enhance financial integration to accelerate efforts that have led to increased exchanges with emerging countries in the rest of the world and between its own countries and regions.

They also say that African countries must foster macro-economic stability and improve the investment environment to strengthen the role of pan-African banks in facilitating trade finance and boosting capital markets. Success in stimulating trade and growth depends on the policy and investment climate, depth of financial integration and commitment to reform.
Moroccan counter-terrorism forces Thursday netted three alleged Islamic State group (IS) militants in the city of Fes, in the northeastern part of the North African country.

The credit for this latest successful operation again goes to the Bureau Central des Investigations Judiciaires (BCIJ) known as Moroccos FBI.

The three militants were arrested in a morning operation, local Arabic daily Assabah reports.

The first militant, a student aged under 18, was arrested in his familys house, at Hay Al Massira Bensouda in the city. The second, a fruit vendor in his forties, was arrested at Hay Zouagha. The third considered as the figurehead of the cell is aged 28 and works as security guard.

Their arrest was possible after BCIJ established links between the three militants and IS fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Security forces discovered during the search of their dwellings cell phones, books and computers, Assabah says.

The three alleged terrorists were handed to the judiciary.

Since its creation in 2015 as a tool meant to reinforce the legal and security anti-terrorism efforts, the BCIJ dismantled over 45 terrorist cells and arrested at least 548 terrorists who were brought before justice (275 in 2015 and 273 in 2016.)
Italy Thursday flew out of Benghazi injured Libyan forces aligned with Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar known as Russias man in the Libyan crisis.

Twenty-two fighters of the Marshall were carried in C130-J hospital plane from Benina airport to the Celio Military hospital in Rome, Libya Herald reports.

Haftar froces have been fighting Jihadists in and around the second Libyan city. Italy has officially aligned itself with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and its leadership establishment; the Presidency Council (PC) led by Faiez Serraj.

Rome formerly provided medical assistance to GNA forces, which fought Jihadists in the city of Sirte. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano noted that the Benghazi operation was part of a larger effort by Italy to provide humanitarian assistance for Libyan forces fighting against terrorism.

Our action does not stop here he added.

We will continue to provide assistance with the provision of emergency medical kits to hospitals across the country.

Italy, former colonial power of Libya, was the first foreign country to re-open its embassy after two years of closure. It is also engaged in combatting illegal migration business taking place in the North African country.

Russia has also been receiving injured Haftar forces for medical treatment. Around 70 forces of the east-based army were flown early last month to Russia for treatment. Moscow has pledged to receive additional 500 injured fighters.
Morocco believes in Africas capacity to rise to the challenges facing it and to ensure sustainable human development for its peoples, thanks to its vast natural and human resources, said Friday King Mohammed VI.

The African renaissance we yearn for hinges on how much belief we have in ourselves, how far we rely on our own capacities and potential, and how well we exploit them, within the framework of mutually-beneficial South-South cooperation and solidarity-based strategic partnerships, said the King in a message addressed to Crans Montana Forum 2017, which opened works in the southern city of Dakhla.

I am sure we can rise to these challenges. Today, Africa is governed by a new generation of pragmatic leaders, uninhibited by outdated ideologies. They are working, with a high sense of patriotism and responsibility, to achieve their countries stability, political openness, economic development and social progress, he stressed.

We are pleased to work hand in hand with these leaders, who are keen to ensure the unity and progress of Africa, the continent of the future, and to serve the interests of its peoples. We look forward to working together with them to enhance its growing role and the important status it henceforth enjoys at the international level, added the royal message.

South-South cooperation, which is based on the culture of sharing and solidarity, is the mechanism that will enable our countries to exchange their expertise directly and immediately, said the Monarch.

He went on to say that this cooperation will help improve our field experience, make the most of our complementarities and expand our national markets. It will also open up new opportunities for efficient and beneficial investment and achieve effective sustainable human development, while respecting each countrys national sovereignty, as well as the principles of mutual esteem and equality.

King Mohammed VI said Morocco adopts a multidimensional development model encompassing all sectors of the economy: agriculture, industry and energy production, services -which include banking, insurance, transport and logistics  as well as an array of complementary social, cultural, security and religious domains

In this context, the Kingdom of Morocco pays particular attention to human development, both through training and sustainable human development programs which have a positive impact on the living conditions of African citizens, said the Monarch.

He also expressed Moroccos determination to consolidate security and stability all over the continent, hence its contribution to UN peace-keeping operations and mediation initiatives aimed at finding peaceful solutions to conflicts, as well as its involvement in security cooperation to fight terrorist groups.

The North African Kingdom shares with African countries its experience in the religious field, which is based on promoting moderate Islam and fighting radicalism and reclusion, added the Sovereign.

Our sincere African orientation is motivated by a deep belief in Africas capacity to address the challenges it faces. It also illustrates our eagerness to contribute, along with our brothers, to developing our continent, he explained.

The King who reaffirmed that Morocco will never give up defending its supreme interests, particularly its national unity and territorial integrity, pointed out that the Moroccan Sahara region, and Dakhla in particular, play a special role in the Kingdoms African orientation, as a historic platform connecting Morocco to Africa.
King Mohammed VI appointed Saad Eddine El Othmani, President of the national council of the Party for Justice and Development, Head of Government in place of Abdelilah Benkirane who failed to form a coalition government after five months of negotiations.

The King received Saad Eddine El Othmani, former Foreign Minister, at the Royal Palace in Casablanca on Friday and tasked him with leading negotiations to form a new government, announced the royal Office in a statement.

The King took the decision to replace Benkirane in his quality as supreme referee and custodian of the supreme interests of the nation and in conformity with his prerogatives under the 2011 Constitution with a view to safeguarding the nations democratic choice and the smooth functioning of its institutions, a Royal official statement announcing Benkiranes dismissal had explained last Wednesday.

The staggering formation of a new government was hinted at with a serious tone by King Mohammed VI, in his speech on the occasion of the Green March (in November), when he said that the future cabinet should not be the result of calculations aimed at fulfilling political parties wishes, based on electoral arithmetic, as if there were spoils to be shared out. The government should involve an efficient, coherent structuring effort, consonant with programs and priorities, the King had said.

Born in 1956 in Inzegane, near Agadir, Saad Eddine El Othmani is a psychologist who was elected head of the Islamist moderate PJD party in 2004.

The stalemate in negotiations put the country on the verge of a political crisis and had an impact on the countrys public spending as the adoption of the 2017 appropriation bill hinges on the formation of a new government.

Negotiations reached a deadlock after the leaders of the PJD and the RNI, Abdelilah Benkirane and Aziz Akhennounch, failed to overcome their disagreements. The RNI leader conditioned participation on the inclusion of three other parties with minor results in the October 7 elections. These are the MP, the UC and the USFP.

Benkirane rejected the RNIs conditions which he labelled as an attempt to sabotage negotiations.

After five years in government, the PJD won 125 seats in Octobers elections followed by its archival the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) with 102 seats, while the conservative PI won 46 seats.

The fragmentation of Moroccos political landscape makes no party able to win an outright majority. To secure the majority of seats needed to form a coalition government, the PJD has at least to enter into a coalition with 4 parties, putting the distribution of ministerial portfolios on a rocky road, not to speak of compromises on the policies of the different partners in the future government.

With 12 parties represented in the lower house, the Moroccan stalemate indicates how too many parties can spoil politics giving way to incoherent governmental coalitions involving odd bedfellows including Islamists, former communists and conservatives as was the case with the previous government.
Why cant we be friends? Photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

On Wednesday, John McCain advocated on the Senate floor for a vote that would have advanced Montenegros ascension to NATO. But Kentucky GOP senator Rand Paul busted in and objected to McCains stance, stymying the vote. McCain was displeased. He has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, McCain said, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.

McCain punched first, accusing his colleague of being a foreign agent for an adversary at a time when that actually doesnt seem insane, but Rand Paul came right back at him with a personal attack. Well, I think he makes a really, really strong case for term limits, he responded Thursday on Morning Joe. I think hes past his prime, maybe hes gotten a little bit unhinged. Fight!

This is not the first time the two senators, who are at completely opposite ends of the foreign-policy spectrum, have sparred. Here are some highlights:

March 2013: Wacko birds.

This animosity probably all began with the infamous wacko birds comment, which is how McCain described right-wing colleagues including Paul who were trying to block the confirmation of CIA director John Brennan over U.S. drone policy.

You know, I think hes just on the wrong side of history, and on the wrong side of this argument, really, Paul said later, adding: I treat Sen. McCain with respect. I dont think I always get the same in return.

September 2014: Dissembler or crackpot.

The McCain-Paul war has involved proxies. Mark Salter, McCains former chief of staff, penned an op-ed in response to Pauls false claim that McCain had met with members of ISIS:



Rand Paul is either a liar or too easily captivated by the kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories that excite many of his and his fathers supporters, a cohort long overrepresented by political fringe dwellers.



I would give him the benefit of the doubt but Im not sure which characterization  dissembler or crackpot  would be more generous. Nor are they mutually exclusive. Its quite possible, likely even, that he is both.



A spokesman for Paul fired back: Mark Salter advised the Republican Party down a losing electoral path that paved the way for two terms of President Obama, so people should read his angry screed in that context and disregard it.

April 2015: Obamas lapdog.

While criticizing President Obamas foreign policy, Paul called McCain and his hawkish pal Lindsey Graham lapdogs who have been wrong about every policy issue over the last two decades.



McCain later responded by barking to a reporter. I mean, cmon.



McCain says he and Lindsey thot of as more Doberman than lapdog. "He then mimicked a dog barking. 'I mean, cmon'."http://t.co/i3w7CKCIKQ  Katie Glueck (@katieglueck) April 22, 2015

And by calling Paul, on Fox News, the worst possible candidate of the 20 or so that are running on the most important issue which is national security.

May 2015: Theres a new breed in the Senate.

Paul successfully blocked an extension of the Patriot Act. McCain said: Theres a new breed in the Senate. Some time ago senators would try to sit down and work things out and obviously these individuals dont believe in that, and Im sure its a great revenue raiser.

The [fundraising] emails are out now and they were out during the 11-hour performance a couple days ago, McCain added. Paul only said the veteran senator shouldnt question his sincerity.

May 2015: The senator from Kentucky needs to learn the rules of the Senate.

Paul opposed an extension of the Patriot Act that would have continued NSA surveillance, putting him in conflict with fellow Republicans. During a Senate debate, Paul tried to cut in as fellow Republican, Indiana senator Dan Coats spoke. Enter McCain.

February 2017: I would say John McCains been wrong on just about everything over the past four decades.

After McCain slammed President Trumps tweet calling the media the enemy of the American people, Paul criticized McCains criticism on ABCs This Week. Everything that he says about the president is colored by his own personal dispute hes got running with President Trump, and it should be taken with a grain of salt, because John McCains the guy whos advocated for war everywhere, he said. He would bankrupt the nation. Were very lucky John McCains not in charge, because I think wed be in perpetual war.

Paul continued: I would say John McCains been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades. He advocated for the Iraq War, which I think destabilized the Middle East.
An FDNY emergency medical technician was killed in front of her partner on Thursday evening when a man stole her ambulance and ran her over. Yadira Arroyo, 44, was a mother of five and a 14-year FDNY veteran.

Arroyo and her partner Monique Williams were responding to a call in the Bronx around 7:10 p.m. when passersby told them a man was riding on the rear bumper of their ambulance. When the EMTs exited the vehicle to confront him, he ran around them and got behind the wheel.

They were acting very bravely. They certainly wanted to continue on their way to the call. This person had no business being in this ambulance, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.

The EMTs tried to stop him, grabbing at the sides of the ambulance, but he threw the vehicle into reverse, fatally striking Arroyo and injuring Williams. He reversed so hard and she was dragged, said one witness. He ran over her and she went under the wheels.

The man then drove up onto the sidewalk and crashed into parked cars on Watson Avenue. A K-9 officer and several bystanders prevented the man from fleeing.

Video of the incident shows Williams wailing over her partner, then trying to kick the man before being pulled away.

She was screaming, My partner, my partner! She was screaming hysterically. I cant forget her screaming, witness Nancy Montavo told the Daily News. All the police came running and they put her in an ambulance.

The 25-year-old suspect is in custody but police havent identified him. A source told the Daily News he has a lengthy criminal record and was incoherent and talking to himself.

Officials said Arroyo is the eighth member of the New York emergency medical services to be killed in the line of duty.

An EMT was lost in the line of duty, bravely doing her job and encountering the kind of danger that our EMTs should not have to confront, said Mayor Bill de Blasio. They should not ever have to be subjected to violence, and yet that danger always exists for them.
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is enforcing obscure budget rules that limit the scope of GOP health-care legislation. Photo: U.S. Senate

All the talk of Paul Ryan, House Freedom Caucus members, Senate moderates, and even Donald Trump as key Republicans involved in the rolling disaster of the partys effort to repeal and replace Obamacare misses one key GOP hireling who could have as much impact as any of them: Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.

Shes the professional referee who (among other duties) advises the Senate leadership about what can and cannot be included in the budget reconciliation bill that is being used by Republicans this year to repeal and replace Obamacare. The key issue is enforcement of the so-called Byrd Rule (named after the late Democratic senator and procedural stickler Robert Byrd), which creates a point of order against non-germane items in reconciliation bills  i.e., matters that do not directly produce fiscal consequences. Waiving that point of order requires 60 votes, which is the equivalent of allowing a filibuster. Since the whole point of using reconciliation is to avoid filibusters and pass legislation by a simple majority, senators will go to a lot of trouble to avoid Byrd Rule conflicts. Indeed, there is a procedure informally known as a Byrd bath where lawyers for both parties debate hypothetical provisions in the presence of the parliamentarian, and design their bills accordingly.

All this arcane stuff matters a great deal right now because Paul Ryan and other GOP congressional leaders are citing Byrd Rule problems as the reason more of the Republican vision for health care isnt included in the American Health Care Act. More specifically, the repeal of Obamacare regulations involving minimum benefits and preexisting conditions exclusions are left alone, and such conservative policy fetishes as Health Savings Accounts, interstate insurance sales, and high-risk pools are left out, on grounds they might trigger a Byrd Rule point of order and screw everything up when the bill goes to the Senate.

And that has a bad effect on the provisions that are left, as conservative health-policy wonk Philip Klein explains:

Largely because of the regulations it keeps in place, the Republican plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, does not do much to lower premiums and even raises them in the short-run. At the same time, dictating the type of policies that insurers must offer inhibits choice. Yet the core Republican message for years had been that they want to lower premiums and improve choice.

So Republicans, and especially conservatives who hate anything that looks like a continuation of Obamacare, are stuck defending a bill they dont much like, and muttering vague promises about additional prongs of their repeal-and-replace initiative that fall outside reconciliation and sound a lot like well do it manana. Indeed, even AHCA could yet have Byrd Rule problems, despite Byrd bath simulations that guided its drafting.

Ted Cruz, among other rebellious conservatives, has an answer, which he has been voicing repeatedly like Cato the Elder intoning Carthage must be destroyed. He expressed it most recently in a Wall Street Journal op-ed he signed along with House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows:

We cannot give voters a procedural excuse for why we couldnt get the job done 



[T]he Senate parliamentarian does not ultimately determine what is allowable under reconciliation. That authority falls to the Senate and the vice president, the chambers presiding officer. As the former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove once explained, the vice president is the ultimate decider on reconciliation: The parliamentarian only can advise. It is the vice president who rules.

In other words, if AHCA fails to fully repeal and replace Obamacare to conservatives satisfaction, Cruz and Meadows will blame not just Paul Ryan or Elizabeth MacDonough, but the vice-president of the United States, and through him Donald Trump. The message is not subtle: Trump should tell his junior partner to let Senate Republicans do whatever the hell they want.

The response, as Klein describes it, is the ever-popular floodgates argument:

Leadership sources, however, warn that were Republicans to disregard the advice of the parliamentarian, in practice, it would end the ability of the minority party to filibuster legislation. In the future, Democrats with unified control of government would be able to pass anything through reconciliation (even full-fledged government-run healthcare) by simply having the presiding officer of the Senate ignore the determination of the parliamentarian. Thus, in the long run, they argue that deferring to the parliamentarian is the more conservative, limited government position.

You have to figure Mitch McConnell, who reveres Senate traditions he has not chosen to disregard for partisan purposes, is the real leadership source for that argument.

The real question is whether McConnell, Pence, and Ryan will wind up deciding the risk of gutting the filibuster is acceptable if the only alternative is the complete collapse of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace process, leading to angry red-state mobs inspiring a new tea party movement, and perhaps a fatal intra-party split. They could always spin the squashing of poor MacDonough as the Peoples Representatives stopping a power grab by an unelected bureaucrat who may well secretly watch Samantha Bee late at night.

If nothing else, this approach could be a break glass in case of an emergency fallback if all else fails, as it certainly looks like it may.
Counterrrorism in action. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted President Trumps budget for undermining the lives of New Yorkers. Governor Andrew Cuomo described it as a wrecking ball. Based on initial estimates, the city stands to lose hundreds of millions in funding for public schools and public housing and even for phase two of the Second Avenue subway (which was supposed to be part of Trumps infrastructure plan).

The proposal would also slash approximately $190 million in Homeland Security funding from the NYPDs budget, much of it coming from a chunk of nearly $667 million cut from FEMA and local Homeland Security grant programs nationwide. This funding is absolutely critical, NYPD Commissioner James ONeill said Thursday. It is the backbone of our entire counterterrorism apparatus. It is the cornerstone of preparedness and prevention against terrorist threats, and enables us to do what we can do to keep the city secure.

Under @POTUS budget, virtually all fed funding to #NYPD eradicated. Entire counterterrorism apparatus in nation's top terror target hobbled. pic.twitter.com/Vetyv1aZrH  Commissioner O'Neill (@NYPDONeill) March 16, 2017

The NYPD uses those grants for counterterrorism investments such as the departments bomb squad, dog training, intelligence analysis, active training, and equipment for radiological and chemical attacks, says the New York Daily News.

The Department of Homeland Security, overall, gets an almost 7 percent boost under Trumps budget  most of which goes to building the big, beautiful border wall ($2.6 billion) and immigration enforcement. But cutting money from counterterror efforts in the nations cities doesnt exactly make sense for a president that says his responsibility is to keep America safe.

Though New York City is also at risk of losing funding because of its sanctuary city status, its unlikely that these particular Homeland Security cuts will play with Congress, particularly New Yorks delegation. Long Island Republican Peter King already said any reduction to New York Citys funding is dead on arrival.

Everyone who lives in, works in, and visits New York City, this moneys critical to keeping everybody safe, ONeill also said, about the funding.

And speaking of, that includes Donald Trumps family. The NYPD spends a little more than $100,000 per day guarding Trump Tower when the First Lady and Barron are there, and about $300,000 when Trump is in town. This is as much for Trump as it is for everyone else in New York  by dint of the building being the commander-in-chiefs residence, it remains a terror target. And the federal government has only picked up $7 million of the nearly $25 million tab that the then-president-elect racked up before Inauguration Day. To say nothing of the interruptions to the St. Pattys Day Parade route.
Das boob. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

During Angela Merkels visit to the White House Friday, President Trump refused to shake the German chancellors hand in front of a crowd of cameras. And then things got awkward.

WATCH: Pres. Trump ignores German Chancellor Merkel when she asks him if he wants to do a handshake during photo op in Oval Office today. pic.twitter.com/1piyf4hze5  NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) March 17, 2017

At a joint news conference following the leaders sit-down meeting (and handshake snafu), a German reporter asked Trump about his administrations recent spat with another major U.S. ally.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer had suggested that Barack Obama ordered British spies to wiretap Donald Trumps phone, during the final month of the 2016 campaign. British spies were not pleased by this speculation. And on Friday morning, U.K. prime minister Theresa Mays official spokesman said that the Trump administration had promised never to make that allegation again.

Are there other suspects, or do you think it was a mistake to blame British intelligence for this? the German reporter asked Trump Friday.

As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump replied, 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.

There was a moment of silence, a confused look from Merkel, and then raucous laughter.

Trump had accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones in a Saturday-morning tweet earlier this month. The president has since said that this allegation was based solely on media reports (which do not actually support his allegation) and that his tweets should not be taken literally. But he has also sworn by the truth of his claim  and is, reportedly, furious that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have both said that there is no evidence to back up his (baseless) assertion.

Trump did not defend the substance of his accusation on Friday afternoon. But he did defend Spicers slander of GCHQ.

We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television, Trump said. 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.

The very talented lawyer whom Sean Spicer quoted was Judge Andrew Napolitano  a conservative pundit who has said that 9/11 couldnt possibly have been done the way the government told us.

Which is to say: The president of the United States just 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.
Are you still mad about the Time thing? Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump finally met with German chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House on Friday. The sit-down was bound to be slightly tense: Merkel has criticized the the presidents travel ban and beat out Trump for Time Person of the Year in 2015. Trump, in response to losing, tweeted that Merkel was ruining Germany and described her open-door refugee policy as an utterly catastrophic mistake. But this scene in the Oval Office between two key allies was something else:

Just to recap: Photographers asked Trump and Merkel to shake hands. Merkel leans in and quietly asks, Do you want to have a handshake? Trump continues to sit with his hands clasped between his knees. Like weve said before, Trump does not forget.
Photo: Alexander Aksakov/Getty Images

Since the election of Donald Trump, a chasm has opened in American views of Vladimir Putin. Liberals see him as a murderous autocrat and kleptocrat who hacked the election and might somehow be manipulating the president. Meanwhile, hes enjoyed a surge of popularity among GOP voters, thanks largely to Trumps consistent praise.

But how does Putin look in his own country, where his approval ratings are sky high? What does he give Russians? What really motivates him? Whats his long game? Unfortunately, much American journalism has been content to give lazy answers or brush these questions aside altogether.

Alexander Vershbow was the U.S. ambassador to Russia under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, and later an ambassador to South Korea and the deputy secretary general of NATO. Hes also been a student of Russian language, history, and culture since his teens. Vershbow believes that Putin still thinks in Cold War terms of spheres of influence and sees NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe as encroachment on a sphere that rightfully belongs to Russia. Below, Vershbow discusses possible Trump campaign ties to Putin, how Russia could influence elections in Western Europe, and how his vision for Russia is different from that of earlier Soviet leaders.

How unusual is it for an ambassador to meet with members of different campaigns or of incoming administrations?

Its not that unusual. One of the duties of any embassy in a foreign country is to report back to their capital on whats going on in politics, and the likely positions of different candidates, so in that sense Ambassador Kislyak was doing his job. There are more questions about what the Trump campaign representatives were trying to achieve in these contacts. Were they sending signals about future policies of the administration? That wouldnt be totally inappropriate either. Or was there something related to the hacking, to WikiLeaks, et cetera? That would raise serious questions.

Clearly the Russians have many different agendas, but I dont think the ambassador is likely to be engaging in subversive activities. He has plenty of people on his staff who do that. I keep chuckling because Ive known Kislyak in many stages of my career, probably going back 25 years, and hes the last person I would label a superspy as hes being labeled in some of the media coverage. Hes a relatively low-key, self-effacing figure whos really an expert on security and arms control. Thats his passion: being a professional arms-controller and problem-solver.

Its the administrations secretiveness thats leading to questions about possible collusion with the Russian hacking effort. Do we know there was any such collusion? No. But Im convinced that having either a 9/11-style commission or a bipartisan select committee would be appropriate, given that undermining our democratic system is a pretty big deal  a bigger deal than things that have been the subject of select committees in the past, like Benghazi.

Assuming all the intelligence agencies are right that Russia meddled in the election, why do you think they would do so?

It reflects a broader kind of hostility on the Russians part towards the West. It was brewing for some time, and I think it burst into full flower after Putin came back into the presidency in 2012. He became convinced that the Western strategy was a regime change vis-a-vis Russia. Thats his distorted version of history. He believes that even Gorbachev may have been an unwitting dupe of the West, but he certainly sees Yeltsin, and the whole experience of Russia in the 90s, as a period in which the West took advantage of Russia and tried to marginalize it as a global power. He and his fellow KGB veterans never viewed Gorbachev and Yeltsin as legitimate, and in a sense are restoring the status quo ante  but without the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Its the same kind of fervent Russian nationalism and the same defensive view of the relationship with the West  defensive and zero-sum.

He became convinced that the Western strategy was a regime change vis-a-vis Russia. Thats his distorted version of history.

Why did Putin feel that way so much more strongly after he returned to power in 2012?

I think the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia in the mid-2000s convinced him that by supporting democracy and civil society, the West was in fact aimed at bringing about regime change and reorienting traditional Russian and Soviet neighbors towards the West. Fast-forward to 2008, when he saw Georgia trying to use force to recover territory that Russia had been occupying since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Again, he saw the West having instigated an effort to tear a country under Russias influence away from Russia. Then I think the big tipping point was the Arab Spring and the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi as the leader of Libya.

He came back into office convinced that the West was once again on the march against Russian interests, and then when the demonstrations took place after his election, he claimed the protests were instigated, financed, orchestrated by the West, and the U.S. in particular. Thats why theres such animus against Hillary Clinton. He said at the time that she was the godmother of these protests, and I think he really believed it.

What do you think the proper response to the hacking should be?The most important thing is to fully appreciate our vulnerabilities, and if not eliminate them, at least reduce them. Russia has proven that it can undermine confidence in our own institutions and traditions.

Youve said that the prospect of Russia interfering in other European elections is one of the biggest and most immediate threats that we face this year. Could you elaborate on that?

There are already patterns emerging in the behavior of RT, which has German service, and the Sputnik news agency, which is pumping out stories clearly aimed at boosting Kremlin-friendly candidates like Marine Le Pen in France and the Alternative fur Deutschland party in Germany, and trying to run down the more mainstream candidates.

They seem to be gunning for Angela Merkel, because she has been the linchpin of the European unified response to the aggression against Ukraine. Shes kept the EU in line when it comes to renewing the sanctions every six months, and so I think theyre trying to undermine her. Theyre portraying her as out of touch with the people on migration issues, and theyre promoting messages similar to what we saw in Trumps campaign: about the dangers of migrants, crime, murder, violence being perpetrated by these thousands of Syrians and others who Merkel has imposed on us, that kind of stuff. Its not necessarily without some factual basis, but its playing to the disgruntled and to the dissatisfied, in identifying Merkel with their biggest grievances. Whether it will be decisive or just an irritating influence remains to be seen. The German election is not until September.

Of course, the Russians also do this in smaller countries that are less noticed by the U.S.: countries where theyve historically had influence, like Bulgaria and Serbia and Moldova. Moldova recently elected a president who is very pro-Russia. Of course, they have very corrupt mainstream parties, so theres also popular rejection of the status quo in these kinds of countries. Russia is just one of many factors, but they dont seem at all inhibited from trying to do what they did in the U.S. in other places.

Youre always saying, on Twitter and in interviews, that Western countries shouldnt forget Russia still has troops stationed in eastern Ukraine. Why do you think its so important to keep this in mind?

Because it represents the biggest challenge to the whole European security order since the end of World War II. Allowing the Russians to get away with it only creates the likelihood that Putin will strike again somewhere else, perhaps against other vulnerable neighbors like Belarus or Kazakhstan, where there are also potential inter-ethnic disputes that could be exploited.

The economic sanctions on Russia were imposed for a very specific reason: the things theyve done, including the aggression and the changing of Ukraines borders by force, have been ruled out by international law. The Russians have torn up the rule book, and its important that we not let them get away with it.

It would be unfortunate if the new administration decided to basically trade Ukraine for the illusion of cooperation on fighting ISIS or something else, or even for the reality. If Russia wants to fight ISIS with us, good for them, lets do it, but we dont have to sell out Ukraine in order to get that kind of cooperation.

Its often difficult, when youre going from American media, to get any sense of how Putins actions look to him or his supporters. What does he think hes doing in Ukraine? What does he want to achieve there?

Hes trying to prevent Ukraine, in a broad sense, from joining the West but in particular, from joining NATO and the EU. Just as he was trying to prevent Georgia from joining the West in 2008. He was quite angry when, at NATOs 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO said, We agree that Ukraine and Georgia will one day be members of NATO. Some people say it pushed him over the edge in attacking Georgia.

The Russians have maintained a naval base in Crimea since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin was clearly worried that his lease on the Port of Sevastopol would be swept away by the popular revolt. He even said in his celebratory speech after the annexation, basically, If we hadnt done this, NATOs fleet would be in Sevastopol before you know it. It comes back to European integration, but NATO is sort of the bogeyman.

It would be unfortunate if the new administration decided to basically trade Ukraine for the illusion of cooperation on fighting ISIS .

That explains the motive for seizing Crimea, but what about other parts of eastern Ukraine where hes dispatched troops?

He may have succumbed to delusions of grandeur. He really believed some of his own propaganda: that those people in Ukraine, who used Russian as their first language, wanted to be part of Russia, and that instigating an insurrection in some of these Russian-speaking areas would lead to a chain reaction, and all of Ukraine would fall apart and fall in his lap.

Even though this whole project to stir up pro-Russian rebellions across the southern and eastern part of Ukraine failed, it was still a success for Putin by creating this smaller renegade state-within-a-state in eastern Ukraine. It keeps the country unstable for as long as Russia really wants to keep the pot boiling. That too prevents Ukraine from being an attractive candidate for NATO. Keeping at least eastern Ukraine in a state of semi-chaos is in and of itself an objective.

Why is he so afraid of NATO enlargement?

For Russians, its psychological. They lost their empire, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and NATOs still there. Of course, now theyve reawakened NATO by what they did against Ukraine. NATOs now spending more. Were building up collective defense, and not just doing expeditionary operations in Afghanistan. Putin has created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

NATO has more reason to be concerned about Russian military capability, which has substantially expanded and improved qualitatively after the Georgia war, when they discovered that their forces were really third-rate and had been under-maintained. Theyve been spending a fortune with new generations of everything from strategic nuclear missiles to new tanks, flamethrowers, air-to-air missiles, surface- and ship-to-shore missiles. Theyve got new everything, and now Trump is going to see them and raise them with the defense budget that hes about to announce.

What do you see as the outlook for U.S.-Russian relations under Trump?

As somebody whos worked on U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian relations over the last 40 years, I can understand why Trump would want to try to improve the relationship and reduce tensions. At the same time, I worry that important principles could be sacrificed for the sake of a so-called reset in the relationship. Russia might be able to help in fighting ISIS, but their objectives in Syria have not been the same as U.S. objectives. Theyve been doing everything to preserve Assad and destroy all opposition to him, including the more moderate strands of opposition in Syria.

On Ukraine, I hope that Trump will try to succeed where Obama failed, which would be to try to negotiate a durable political solution that gets the Russians to disengage from eastern Ukraine and reintegrates the occupied territories into the rest of the country. Putin claims he wants to do that, but the challenge is to come up with incentives. Obama wasnt able to do it. The Germans and the French have been unable to do it. Can Trump get a good deal for Ukraine? That would be great. I hope he tries, but the odds are not necessarily all that favorable.

Have the sanctions produced any visible effect?

I think theyve deterred Putin from going further. There were concerns in 2014 and early 2015 that he might try to recapture additional cities. Russias economy has clearly been affected. It had negative growth two years ago, and last year they were pretty close to zero growth. Part of that is because of lower oil prices, and part of it is because of failure to reform their economy. But the sanctions have been a factor. Theyve made Russia a reputational risk for Western investors, so theres an intangible effect as well.

Putin clearly wants to get them lifted. Russian leaders have talked bravely about how Were becoming more self-sufficient, and we dont need the West, but sooner or later the Russian man on the street will get tired of nationalism and will want better food and a better standard of living. The Russians are actually eating less in the last three years. Theyre consuming 18 or 20 percent less food, because the sanctions are really cutting into peoples incomes. Putins still popular, but the famous, Its the economy, stupid, eventually will become applicable to Russia.

What about Russias involvement in Syria? Do you see any upside? For instance, weakening the overall power strength of ISIS?

I think the outcome remains to be seen. They clearly prevented Assad from falling, which was their main objective. That may make it much more difficult to ever get to a political solution thats consistent with the many U.N. resolutions that have been passed, all of which talk about a transition of power to a new leadership that would be representative of all the different elements in Syrian society.

Now the Russians are basically saying, Assad isnt going anywhere. He isnt even going to be eased out over a transition period. If the U.S. and Turkey and other key players grudgingly agree, the question is whether the rebels will compromise and accept bit parts in a postwar Syria. Its hard to see that country ever being put back together again under stable governance.

What do you think Putin wants for Russia 20 years from now? Whats his long-term vision?

I think he does want Russia to permanently have at least a soft empire, involving long-term dominance over Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics, maybe even over the eastern flank of NATO. In this vision, the West pays deference to Russian interests to a far greater degree. I dont think he thinks of the future Russia as a powerhouse in science and medicine and aerospace exploration, all the things that the Soviet Union, with all its weaknesses, still aspired to do. He doesnt mind being a giant gas station in terms of the economy. Its more about just naked power than about achieving greatness through the achievements of Russian people.

If I were writing a tweet on that, I would put sad at the end. Thats why theres huge brain drain. Most of the really innovative Russian inventors and scientists have emigrated to Europe or the U.S. Since these people tend to be renegades, the Russians say Good riddance, and that too is sad.
U.K. prime minister Theresa May. Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images

Two weeks ago, President Trump announced that Barack Obama had tapped his phones, during the final month of the 2016 presidential 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

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

This claim was not based on conclusive intelligence, but, rather, on Trumps wild extrapolations from news reports he misread.

That may sound like the snarky presumption of a liberal blogger. But it isnt. Its the presidents official story. Asked by Tucker Carlson how he came to discover that his predecessor had spied on him, Trump replied:

Well, Ive been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20 a New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, Wait a minute; theres a lot of wiretapping being talked about. Ive been seeing a lot of things



 So if I tweet two or three or four or five times a day, and if most of them are good  and I really want them all to be good  but if I make one mistake in a month  this one, I dont think is going to prove to be a mistake at all.

The Times article that Trump cites  as his primary source  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.

Notably, the president has previously described precisely this kind of article  a report by the failing New York Times, based on anonymous sources, insinuating a connection between Trump and Russia  as fake news that should not be believed.

In that same interview with Carlson, Trump said that the word wiretap covers a lot of different things  a claim that makes little sense, given that the president repeatedly said his phones had been tapped.

So, to review, the president says that his claim:

(1) Was based solely on news reports (which do not support his claim).

(2) Should not be interpreted literally.

(3) Probably wasnt a mistake, although, if he makes one mistake in a month on Twitter, thats actually pretty good.

On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee joined the House Intelligence Committee in saying it had found no evidence to support Trumps claim.

Considering that the president has (essentially) admitted that he doesnt have any evidence to support it either, youd think the White House would throw in the towel. After all, if were not supposed to take Trump literally, then, ostensibly, the president is merely accusing the Obama administration of investigating ties between his associates and Russia. This is probably true  but it is, also, a claim that the Trump administration has previously denied.

In other words: The Trump administration doesnt want to admit that the president made a bad tweet. But it also doesnt want to admit that American intelligence agencies found cause to investigate ties between the president and Russia. And its hard to see how it can do both.

But on Thursday, Sean Spicer found a way  and soured diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, in the process.

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command, the White House press secretary said Thursday, quoting Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano. 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. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trumps conversations, involving President-elect Trump, hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot.

Obama deputized the redcoats!

Apparently, Spicer was so taken by how elegantly this reconciles 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 has promised the British government that it will not accuse its spies of wiretapping Donald Trump ever again, U.K. prime minister Theresa Mays official spokesman said Friday.

Barmy.
Richard Spencer. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Richard Spencer runs the National Policy Institute, an anodyne name for a white-supremacist think tank. He is also, according to a new report from Reveal, one of the absentee landlords on his familys 5,200-acre cotton and corn farm in a poor, rural area of Louisiana. That farm is also heavily supported by the United States government; between 2008 and 2015, the operation received $2 million in federal farm subsidies.

Spencer reportedly owns the farm  which was passed down from his maternal grandfather  with his mother and his sister, and it is likely worth millions. Spencer refused to comment on how much money he receives from the business, telling Reveal, Im not involved in any direct day-to-day running of the business. Im going to navigate the world as it is, and Im not going to be a pauper.

According to the report:

The Spencers have received payments from two federal farm programs. One is the commodity subsidy program, intended to guarantee income for farmers who are helping to maintain supplies of certain crops deemed important by the government. The other is the conservation reserve program, which pays farmers for environmentally sound farming practices. Most of the $2 million paid to the Spencers has been in commodity subsidy payments for growing cotton.

Spencers racist shtick focuses on how Americas success  past and future  relies on the achievements of white men. America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity, Spencer said at a conference after the election, where attendees gave Hail Trump salutes. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.
Photo: Science Photo Library/Getty Images/Science Photo Libra

Britains Newcastle University has been granted permission to create babies using the DNA of three people, reports the Chicago Tribune. While the country made it legal last year, Newcastle is the first facility to receive approval to actually use the technique, which prevents the passage of genetic diseases.

Using DNA from the mother, the father, and a donor, the procedure addresses issues in mitochondrial DNA by using gene splicing and IVF. From the Tribune: Scientists remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the donor DNA has been removed. This can happen before or after fertilization. The resulting embryo ends up with nucleus DNA from its parents but mitochondrial DNA from a donor. This way, fatal and severe conditions found in a mothers mitochondrial DNA, like muscular dystrophy, are prevented.

Leigh syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, is one such condition linked to mitochondrial DNA. And in 2016, it was the impetus for the worlds very first so-called three-parent baby, born to a Jordanian mother with the genetic mutation that causes the disease. The American doctors who performed the procedure did so in Mexico, where regulations are light. Approval in the U.S. does not exist.

Though Newcastle University has permission to perform the procedure, the clinic must apply for each individual patient to be treated, writes the Tribune, and no patient application has yet been approved.
Prosecco will shore up ailing wine sales for years to come

Prosecco sales are forecast to grow 17.3% to 8.3 million cases by 2020 and Brits insatiable thirst for the Italian sparkler will prop up an otherwise declining category.

IWSR research shows that still UK wine volume sales have fallen 6.3% since 2011, and it anticipates they will fall another 1.6% by 2020.

But that loss of 1.9 million cases will be compensated by sparkling wine sales growing by 2.4 million cases, with Prosecco in the driving seat.

Guillaume Deglise, chief executive at Vinexpo, which commissioned the research, said: The sparkling category will benefit from expanding the consumption occasion. Prosecco is already huge in the UK and took over from discounted Champagne.

It is perceived as less serious than Champagne in the UK. Cavas image is not as positive. It is not seen as an everyday luxury. It doesnt have a glamorous effect.

Prosecco hits a price point, which is very important, but more than that the Prosecco people have managed to create a brand. Prosecco is seen as an affordable, everyday luxury. There is a spectacular drive for Prosecco.

IWSR also believes spirits sales will soar between now and 2020, with gin, rum and US whiskey leading the way. It predicts sales of spirits will rise 8.6% by volume, with gin up 23.8%, rum up 22.8% and US whiskey up 26.7%.

Millennial Brits are increasingly lured by the charms of craft spirits, which will cause those categories to come to the fore, said IWSR, while it also warned that fruit cider poses a huge threat to wine, particularly rose wine.

The researchers expect the off-trade to continue to flourish at the expense of the on-trade, which has been hit by stricter drink driving laws.

IWSR chief executive Mark Meek told OLN: A key trend is convenience.

Staying in is the new going out, and you see home delivery mechanisms such as Deliveroo making it much easier to have high-quality meals and your alcoholic drink of choice delivered at the same time.

Wine has some way to go, because already the spirits guys have moved into that space. Diageo has linked up with Deliveroo and Heineken has linked up with Deliveroo. The UK wine trade hasnt really taken advantage at this stage of that home delivery mechanism, whereas other countries have.

Between now and 2020, IWSR predicts that UK white wine sales will drop 0.6%, red wine by 1.5% and rose by 4.4%. Rose makes up 11.4% of the UK wine market, more than the global average of 10%, but the emergence of fruit cider is damaging the category in Britain, as is Prosecco.

Meek said: For a lot of younger consumers rose was a nice, easy, approachable drink, and there has been quite a bit of switching from that to Prosecco and to flavoured ciders.

Prosecco and rose are competing for the aperitif moment and Prosecco is winning. It is worth noting, however, that pale French rose sales are soaring, while sales from other countries are in trouble.

IWSR forecasts that Australia will consolidate its position as the UKs number one country of origin for still wine by 2020, with sales growing 0.6% to 25.2 million cases. It has great confidence in the US and expects volume sales to grow 7% by 2020 on this side of the pond.

Chile, New Zealand and Argentina are all forecast to post strong growth, and Old World countries are all predicted to continue haemorrhaging sales.

IWSR believes the sub-5 wine category will decline by 17% by 2020 as those prices will be difficult to maintain in the wake of exchange rate volatility post-Brexit and rising duty.

It believes the 5-7.99 category will grow 2%, the 8-15 category will be up 4.7% and the 15-plus segment of the market will decline 0.9%.

Deglise said: We expect the market to be affected by the results of the EU referendum. There is economic uncertainty now. Also some price increases. This is a very price sensitive market.

We expect the category of 5 per bottle to experience significant decline, as this price will be difficult to maintain in future. A lot will depend on the results of the Brexit trade negotiations.

Other reasons to explain the decline in the UK are on-trade sales declining, probably due to drink-driving limits, for instance in Scotland.

But there are lots of positive trends in the UK, which we should not forget. The level of knowledge in the UK is very strong compared to other European countries. The younger consumers especially know much more about wines than previous generations. They know more about grape varieties and can name them rather than just asking for a red wine and a white wine.

Also in the UK internet sales are picking up fast. Operators such as Naked Wine and Amazon are playing a significant role. London is a key driver of trends in the UK, but also in the world. What happens in London often happens a bit later in other capital cities of Europe.

Related articles:
I didn't read the source, but Angie and Johnnie Depp in The Tourist for me. ZERO chemistry. It was like they picked two big names out of a hat and said ok.

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Yes! It's like they just assumed because they were some of the biggest movie stars at the time that they would mesh. It didn't work.

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oh god I thought they were supposed to be siblings when I watched it

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she tried a bit, he looked like he was in an alcohol induced coma throughout it. i bet they hated each other during filming too

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"he looked like he was in an alcohol induced coma"



as always.

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Yeah, and she's someone who I would assume could have chemistry with a paper bag, which made it extra-baffling.

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this is so fucking accurate lol

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This





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"I've been dying a little bit each day since the day I met you I love you."



the WHM episode is one of my favorites - "I would rather kiss the two of you than these two people wanna kiss each other!"



Honestly I don't even hate Padme/Anakin but it's not good in the movies.

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Lmao, yes! I loved their thing about how they're like two people who met at summer camp and then had nothing in common years later...but got married anyway. 

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this is how i feel about anakin/padme. looks good on paper but goddamn hayden and natalie just had zero spark. like a lot of things in the prequels, they could've easily been great, but just... weren't.

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both of them had more chemistry with Ewan, lmao

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Hayden and Natalie actually had good chemistry...when they weren't speaking the shitty dialogue Lucas gave them. There was nothing wrong with their chemistry except for the dialogue, which they had no control over.

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Anakin/Padme was awful on every level including the lack of chemistry and idt it's even down to dialogue tbqh. Neither of them even looked like they wanted to be there.



Like the comment above said - great on paper but awful to watch. Like the prequels in general.

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I know they have their stans but I find Connor/Oliver from HTGAWM to have zero chemistry. They bore me to death but it probably doesn't help I find them to be such a pathetic couple lol.

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Separately I don't mind them. Though Connor was such an asshole this season. But together as a couple they are insufferable.

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the oliver actor is hella bad at emoting tbh

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connor's worse 

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Add Wes and Laurel to that.

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HTGAWM has truly one of the worst ensemble casts on television. Not an actor among those youths.



They should be honored to work with Viola - but she deserves better.

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coliver was an annoying mess for most of the season but there's no way they're worse than the frank/laurel/wes disaster imo



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they started off having good chemistry and then got worse which is baffling

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Dawson and Joey in Dawson's Creek. They seemed like siblings. I SAID IT.

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Ia tbh

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I agree

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That's why everyone was rooting for Joey and Pacey.

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YES SIS



I still root for them tbh. I basically only watch The Affair because in my mind Josh is playing Cowboy!Pacey and will end up with Manhattan!Joey.

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FACT

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Actually, serious question: does Katie Holmes have chemistry w/ anyone else ever? Because she certainly didn't on the show...

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i've been sporadically rewatching DC lately and my god. how were they taken seriously

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What in the cc hell. True though

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mte

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what they said at the source makes sense I think... the longer their relationship when on, it was like their chemistry just evaporated

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MTE I thought they had great chemistry

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i stopped watching soa long before she died because i was so fucking tired of the violence against women (i know with the subject matter it's to be expected, but like jax beating the porn star for example, was presented as deserved...) but ia, they had amazing chemistry.

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As much as i love sandra bullock, her and ryan reynolds had zero chemistry in the proposal



Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, on the other hand, is one of the best onscreen couples of all time.









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I honestly, can't stand Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan combo. I tried watching Sleepless in Seattle and was I so irritated.

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sleepless in seattle is bad though. I never understood why it's so revered. You've Got Mail is better for the tom/meg team-up.

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I like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail when they have their flirt on, but when they kiss at the end I always recoil. IDK there's something off about it. Like they both just seem really asexual.

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Ug everyone told me to see the Proposal and--it was so bad. No chemistry at all.



I enjoy both Sandra and Ryan a lot. And they were both actually really cute in that movie until they started having the ~feels. Awkward as hell.

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I loved the proposal but ia

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Completely agree about The Proposal.

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16. RACHEL AND BRUCE IN BATMAN BEGINS

15. CARRIE AND BRODY IN HOMELAND

14. DAPHNE AND NILES IN FRASIER

13. JAX AND TARA IN SONS OF ANARCHY

12. REED AND SUE IN FANTASTIC FOUR

11. HUCK AND QUINN IN SCANDAL

10. AMSTERDAM AND JENNY IN GANGS OF NEW YORK

9. MIKE AND PAIGE IN MAGIC MIKE

8. RICK AND GIGLI IN GIGLI

7. BUFFY AND RILEY IN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

6. IZZIE AND GEORGE IN GREYS ANATOMY

5. DEAN AND LISA IN SUPERNATURAL

4. LOIS AND CLARK IN MAN OF STEEL

3. HARRY AND GINNY IN HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

2. CHRISTIAN AND ANASTASIA IN 50 SHADES OF GREY

1. PADME AND ANAKIN IN STAR WARS

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lmao harry/ginny should be first. They were sooo bad it was embarrasing to watch

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I actually can go for Harry and Ginny in the books where her character is more fleshed out and it's implied that they could have actually bonded over the fact that they both suffered some pretty up close and personal trauma from Moldy Voldy (in Ginny's case being possessed as an eleven year old, in Harry's case..basically his entire childhood).



..but yeah, they didn't even hint at that in the movies. X_X

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Dude, nothing is worse than Anakin/Padme. Nothing. They are in their rightful place.

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mte

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i was literally about to comment this lol, even padme and anakin at least TRIED to show emotion, these two talked in monotone it was a mess

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I still maintain harry should've ended up with luna instead of basic ginny fucking weasely

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I almost brought up Buffy and Riley but I thought he was really cute. I think part of it is that you know the relationship had an expiration date because of the Angel and Spike connections - Riley was never going to be end game.

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NILES AND DAPHNE?!?!?! STOP NOW.



actually i think they were great before they hooked up, then of course after they got together it was like meh ok that's done.



and with padme and anakin... aesthetically they look beautiful together, but when they start speaking and moving and... engaging in life, then fucking nope



also lmao at harry and ginny

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Disagree with Lois and Clark in MOS, and Daphne and Niles? Jesus h christ they're obviously blind on that one.

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Daphne and Niles!? The fuck??

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smh at three of the choices for not believable couples being openly gay actors playing straight - fraiser, scandal, gray's - whatever screen rant. i see you villain.

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this is a great list.

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BUFFY AND RILEY IN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER







They were so boring. Riley was so boring.

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Daphne and Niles are by far one of the worst TV couples ever. Legit don't know what people see in them. The way Niles obsessed over her was so fucking creepy and disgusting.

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bless u

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This list is INVALID b/c of Daphne x Niles -- I LOVE those two!! :(



*The earlier seasons were Everything... *Later seasons, yeah... but I still loved them.

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they should add nic cage and angelina jolie in "gone in 60 seconds"



badddd

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rofl i forgot about huck and quinn.

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I love Huck and Quinn; they're so gross together.

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ty for the full list, I feel like we should actually do this in all list posts.



Anakin and Padme are absolutely in their rightful place, but I disagree on Buffy and Riley - they were actually ok together at the start and it was nice to see her not miserable for once but Angel fans remain salty all these years later.

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Harry and Ginny still confuses me. Such a bad pairing.

Damon/Elena sucked too. He was better suited for Bonnie.

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Steve and Sharon in Capt America need to be on here, somewhere high up. Together, they are like a black hole where chemistry goes to die and don't even look good together. Neither of them look like they even want to be there, esp Steve right before the kiss, he looks like he's steeling himself to kiss a camel or something. Steve has great chemistry with Peggy and even Natasha who is supposed to be "just a friend" so clearly he's quite capable of having chemistry with the right match. Then there's Staron and it's like "there is something slightly repulsive about this".



Bruce/Natasha gets a lack of chemistry call out too.



Edited at 2017-03-17 05:50 am (UTC)

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Mike and Adam had more chemistry in Magic Mike.



Izzie and George was the worst thing ever on Grey's.



I wanted Dean/Lisa because I adored Ben.

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Aw, I really like the relationship in Magic Mike! I'm probably the only one tho lol. More often than not, I find romance storylines to be tiresome but that one just worked for me. But wasn't her name Brooke, and not Paige...



Otherwise, this is a great list. Usually there are a lot of duds on these things, but this is damn accurate.

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Blaine and kurt from glee. Lmao you could see how much chris colfer hated darren criss

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And yet they just wouldn't let that ship die I don't understand.

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ryan murphy was in love with darren criss and we all know kurt was his self insert

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Weren't they one of the first "main" gay couples in a teen show, and I think the first gay couple to get the cover of Entertainment Weekly? They were among the first, anyway. I never liked them but I understand why the writers stuck with them, from an "importance in the television landscape" POV, a lot of things about them were groundbreaking.

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I hated that pairing. So bland.

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chris colfer was definitely trapped in an abusive relationship of sorts when he was filming those scenes, ryan murphy pretty much forcing him to work with darren criss, i bet he was so relieved when glee ended and he didn't need to be a part of that shit anymore.



i still think kurt deserved better.



Edited at 2017-03-17 06:23 am (UTC)

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carrie and brody on this list crack me up since they both won emmys for that particular season too

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What were the writers smoking when they had Izzie/George hook up? They were GREAT as bffs. Nothing more.

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Lol @ George and Izzie. I hated George. I was happy when he was killed off.



I also agree with Lois and Clark.



I barely remember Riley and Buffy.



If I had to add a recent tv couple to the list it would be James and Kara from Supergirl. Glad they killed that. It was painful to watch. Hope they never revisit it.



I've also never seen it for Jackson and April from Grey's Anatomy.



Joan and Mycroft didn't make a lick of sense.



Oliver and Laurel never had a spark between them.



Edited at 2017-03-17 01:41 am (UTC)

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Jackson/April are terrrrrible. That relationship has been so unhealthy from day one; they have such fundamental differences. I adore Jesse, but he indulges ~Japril stans way too much. 



I forgot about Joan/Mycroft til this post! Just ridic.

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I'll never get over April blaming him because she chose to have sex with him before marriage. Like, take some responsibility, asshole. 

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Agree on James/Kara. Although I'd gladly welcome them the longer season 2 goes on.

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I actually like Jackson/April. He's being a real dick right now, but I have hope for them.

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I literally stopped watching Elementary right after they had Joan and Mycroft hookup for the first time. Never will I be subjected to that again. Also I agree with you in everything related to Grey's.

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Fucking hated George. Finding out he got hit by a truck was amazing.

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I shipped Izzie/George. :(



Granted, the show put them together in an awful way, but I felt their bond from the beginning. They always just felt like they had genuine affection and care for each other.

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For the two seconds they hinted Jackson/Cristina (the drunken kiss) I was more excited about that than I ever was about Jackson/April.

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i feel sorry for hayden bc like....how on earth would you act this? the dialogue is straight up trash. i hate that he gets the flack (mostly) for something out of his control

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He stick sucks out of star wars too lol



Hell he sucked on his little Canadian show HIgher Ground

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lol yeah and hayden's not actually a bad actor



it fucking sucked for everyone all round in those movies. it was edited to hell and back and even natalie said they were given basically no direction when it came to certain lines so nobody knew what they were up to. people try to say 'ewan tho' but he was just as bad lmao 'he killed ... younglings *deep gasp*'

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That dress didn't deserve that scene

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Iconic

true love tbh



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It's been so long since I've seen this scene. The music in the background had me laughing

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I only clicked bc I thought this would be the video where they put a laugh track on it lmao

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lmao I can't even watch this again, so much secondhand embarrassment. This movie and love story are so cringeworthy

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They had some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue ever. I always skip their scenes.

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i'm fucking dying, i forgot about this

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I fucking quote this all the time lmao

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Cumberbatch was terrible in that movie, omg. He couldn't hold onto his American accent, he had no charisma or comedic timing at all. I liked him fine in Sherlock and The Imitation Game, but lord, that was bad.

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Angel and Cordelia......

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THIS TOTAL LIE AND FABRICATION

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No they reminded me of siblings more than anything else. Angel was always supposed to end up with Buffy.

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Alternative facts

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Cordelia/Connor was leagues worse than Angel/Cordelia. I liked Angel & Cordelia as friends more, but if the show had gone there I think I would have been okay with it.

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I think they had chemistry as actors, but it felt more weird for the audience seeing Angel/Cody together given both character's histories with each show

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you speak truth sis

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Great as friends, zero romantic chem.

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Gurl.....





They were my fave. And then they fucked it up.

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if we're talking angel the series and not putting btvs into account, angel and spike had more chemistry than anything. (kind of still stands true on btvs though)

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Seriously. Cordelia deserved better.

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Yep, their sex scene was *painfully* bad. It's a shame because they made for really cute friends, but they just did not work as a romantic couple, it was all so forced with everyone telling them that two champions should be together

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I think when Izzie and George became a couple was when I checked out of Grey's Anatomy. They were so good as friends. SO. GOOD.

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Did people know he was an asshole?

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i legit did not know any of this, but i've never really been a fan/paid much attention to him.

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Same. I was interested in buying one of his albums to get into him too but now... No thanks...

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i read another prince biography and they touched on some of his issues, but nothingggg like this

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Yes, and i say this as a major stan

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A lot of people I know have excused Prince for his relationship with Mayte. It's really disgusting how they'll make an exception for him.

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I mean, I figured he was an ass as in like, a super diva, etc. I didn't know anything like THIS though.

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No one will know how to read suddenly.

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was bowie #problematic or something? I missed whatever you're alluding to

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I remember reading that he had sex with a minor? I think she was a groupie? Idk, I am not a crazy fan but I saw something like that on ONTD.



Edited at 2017-03-17 06:58 am (UTC)

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Pretty much every 70's rock star of any note slept with girls who were about 12-16, usually around 14-15.

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He slept with very young teen girls in the 1970s, including Lori Mattix (who was later essentially kidnapped by that pos Jimmy Page). All rock stars were hedonistic assholes, if we're being honest.

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Nah, Prince ain't shit. Also, normally, it's MOC who get hated on while white men get a free pass for their bullshit, so your comment ESPECIALLY doesn't sit right with me.

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Also, GROSS at using this post to defend David Bowie's predatory ways.

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nah...prince has definitely been dragged here before, but you tried it.

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yea the contrast between the Bowie posts and the Prince ones were kind of startling.

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So he was a grade A asshole. Poor Mayte

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omg this poor woman i hope she's found some happiness

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Holy shit! I had no idea, that's insane re: the Oprah thing. :/

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eek



The first half of the story is straight out of the Elvis creeper handbook.



The second half about how he treated her and what happen with her baby is very tragic. :(



Edited at 2017-03-17 05:31 am (UTC)

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the Elvis and Priscilla parallels are really striking, down to the first meeting in Germany.



Edited at 2017-03-17 05:38 am (UTC)

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as a hardcore elvis fan (not so much anymore but from ages like, 15-18) i totally agree :(

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Also I find this, "didn't have sex until she was legal" disturbing. Like he was waiting for her to turn legal, that's creepy. And like how is a 19 yr old far more mature than a 16-17 year old?

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well it's better than him not waiting lol.

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Yeah, super creepy. Reminds me of that Mary-Kate and Ashley online countdown :/

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im always a bit grossed out by guys who are like 19-20 dating like a 16 year old...there is literally like not that much in common anymore

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it fucks me up that people try to defend ages 14-16 as legal ages "SO IT'S OKAY!!!!!" while totally ignoring the fact that they're fuckin minors at heart and will be until, imo, at least past 20-21

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seriously, like if that isn't predatory behavior, nothing is. i wasn't a fan before, but i have zero respect for that man now. that poor woman... to go through that, and let's be real, go through it alone... :(

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I mean its slightly better than not waiting so...

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Considering that he was probably grooming her prior to being of age, it's creepy as fuck

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You mean like Cheryl and Liam? Yes, it's super creepy.

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men are awful

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yup, as a single woman in this world

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this is partially why I don't date lol. I feel like it's just too much hassle trying to find someone who isn't a complete POS

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i can't help but to think that her youth was taken from her

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It definitely was. This is an excerpt from her wikipedia page:



"Her parents are Janelle "Nelle" Garcia and Major John Garcia, USA - Ret., both of whom are of Puerto Rican descent. John flew aircraft in the U.S. military; Nelle, a school and dance teacher, passed her dancing skills along to Mayte. She began belly dancing at age three and became a professional at age eight, at which age she appeared on the American television program That's Incredible! as the world's youngest professional belly dancer."



So basically her mom made her a professional dancer when she was 8 and then gave her away to creepy Prince when she was 16/17

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Stage parents are the worst

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that is creepy stage mom Courtney Stodden type shit right there

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OH my god

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jfc her parents failed her



i hope she's living her best life now

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when science figures that one out, i want to be personally contacted...



also, A+++ on your profile pic, jeongyeon's expression is perfect :)





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Ok I didn't know why I expected this sentence

"Prince, who was 31 at the time, asked her if she was really 16 and..."

to conclude with

"... cut off contact until a decade later when they met again"



Ofc he proceeded to call her everyday. Ofc.

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As a gay guy, i never fell into that Prince homophobe shit. Why you ask? Because this bitch was the most androgynous, "feminine", gay as fuck straight guy in pop music. I wasn't buying that midlife crisis bullshit when he suddenly went all religious.

Nope. You can change your tune all you want, but you built your career off of gay aesthetic, a large gay audience, and sex. So the holier-than-thou attitude he came with never felt genuine. Especially since he had no problem collecting royalty checks from past work.



Basically what I'm saying is, i like his music and it's hard to write all that off. But i recognize he was a huge cunt.

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I never bought his religious shit either.

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I never worshipped this mother fucker and I'm from fucking Minneapolis. Prince ain't shit.

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I'm learning about this for the first time. But I noticed the same happening in David Bowie posts but I got pushback when I pointed out how gross he was with baby groupies.

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ia w/ you but also i'm confused as to how he became a ~queer~ icon lol. i mean... idr that being the case when he was alive. ETA actually i'm not surprised but still..... lmao



Edited at 2017-03-17 01:48 pm (UTC)

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The panel brings on Tomi Lahren and talk about the 45's travel ban and his treatment of women. Lahren supports the second travel ban and believes that it should have held up via the Establishment clause.



STOP.GIVING.HER.ATTENTION.

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I am not giving her attention. She got invited to the show. I wouldn't have invited her. I was rolling my eyes all throughout her fucking portion of the show.

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LMAO, Not you specifically OP. I mean, society as a whole.

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I love how everyone is suddenly a constitution lawyer/scholar/expert now.

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STOP.GIVING.HER.ATTENTION.



MTE

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Right?



Pretty sure she wants to be Ann Coulter or some shit.

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Didn't people find video of her being somewhat sane before she started working for Fox when she started trying to be Ann Coulter 2.0 and saying whatever idiotic thing she could to get attention and gasps? Ugh, she's so annoying.

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get lost

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THIS

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Yea. I turned off my recording as soon as I saw she was coming on. NO THANKS. and Jed needs to get a clue she's a wolf in sheep's clothing.

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I missed out on adding this. They talk about how Ciara and Miranda Kerr are now Born-Again Virgins.







While still on the topic of the View, they are currently beating CBS' The Talk in the following demographics W25-54 and W18-49.



Guests for next week:



Monday, March 20  Sanaa Lathan and Mack Wilds (Shots Fired); View Your Deal with hottest items at affordable prices.



Tuesday, March 21  Joe Manganiello (Smurfs: The Lost Village).



Wednesday, March 22  Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show); Bruce Feiler (author, The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us).



Thursday, March 23  Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard (CHiPs).



Friday, March 24  Anthony Anderson (ABCs black-ish).

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Rachel's gonna be on, huh? I might actually have to watch this annoying show.

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same gdi

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I make a post everyday about the show. Do you watch the VODs? Just asking...

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lol mte. i mean i at least watch some of the clips on these posts so it's not too bad...

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I'm a born again virgin, I haven't had sex in a while.

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Ciara and Miranda Kerr have fucking kids.

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"the fruit all tastes the same"



lolllll

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i haven't watch the vids yet, but why the fuck do ppl still give tomi lahren platforms like this?!?! ugh.

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I don't even know why they invited her when they've got Jed and Paula today. Twice this week we got Jed and Paula.

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ugghhhh she's a horrible person and her voice is like nails on a chalk board

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she's a blonde white woman

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but lol at this shade.



Things I learned today. https://t.co/lM2xAjIg3H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 17, 2017

Tillerson is such a fucking joke. He escalates already tense relations with NK, leaves SK to deal with his mess so he can go take a nap.but lol at this shade.

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oh snap

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drumpf is STILL talking about her at "rallies". it's obvious she gets to him so i hope she keeps it up tbh!

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Screaming

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And to think people tried to question Hillary's stamina.

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i legit cackled in my office when i saw this





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Il her, shady Hillary is the best thing we can have rn

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MHHHHHM!!!! Lol

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It still breaks me to think about what could have been - but no, we had to put a racist, moronic millionaire bully in the WH for funsies. The People's President at the 2017 Global Leadership Awards honoring the work of women and girls around the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sP8DXQRboU It still breaks me to think about what could have been - but no, we had to put a racist, moronic millionaire bully in the WH for funsies.

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i'm so so fucking disgusted that he's cutting not only public broadcasting funds but meals on wheels which is such a necessary program that so many elderly and low-income people rely on for nutritious and accessible meals.



also the EPA funding is fucking bullshit.



and all for more military money and that stupid fucking wall. CAN HE PLEASE BE IMPEACHED OR ASSASSINATED ALREADY.

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meals on wheels which is such a necessary program that so many elderly and low-income people rely on for nutritious and accessible meals.



didn't you know that it's a community thing and it hasn't shown to be effective?? Or some other completely bullshit excuse? Same with aftercare programs, which are supposed to be educational, but there's no proof that it's effective and they're actually doing~ what they say their doing!!!11!!!!





These people make me sick.

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ughghghghhghg that shit is going to give me an aneurysm

like ffs the average parent works past school hours hence the need for after care.



but y'know, the trumpfucks and their part-time jobs and/or lack of employment means they're able to pick up their kids from school.



my mom worked part time until i was 10 or 11 when she was ok with my sister and i walking home from school and wouldn't have had to leave work early to come pick us up.

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WTF does "not effective" mean??? Like the goal of the program is to feed hungry people and that is exactly what it does. god help me rn these motherfucking prune dicks are straight up EVIL

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Those oldies and infirmed won't get out and work if they get given free food smh!!

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"but only 3% of M.O.W. funding is from the federal gov!!"



let's try cutting 3% of YOUR salary and see how well you do, ya fucks

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Meals on Wheels is SO important. For many it is their ONLY meal of the day. And the only time they interact with other humans as they are housebound.



All of these idiots are so out of touch with reality its not funny.

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and the low income home energy assistance program. literally leaving people who can't afford to heat their gd houses out in the cold. its all so fucked

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Public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts are very dear to my heart. Without art and culture, what is any civilized society worth?



Also all of those things could be funded together for nearly a decade if Melania would live in the White House for a month.

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And the national endowment for the arts, and wildlife conservation programs, and the Appalachian regional commission (which was actually working to revitalize the same coal communities that voted him in lmao).



The most infuriating thing for me is the claim that these agencies haven't proven their effectiveness. Were it not for before-and-after school lunch programs, many of my classmates in k-12 wouldn't have been able to eat.



Edited at 2017-03-17 06:45 pm (UTC)

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ikr?



time to make it RAAAAIIIINNNNN on MOW



and cutting WIC and letting kids go without food? its fucking disgusting.

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How can anyone think they have the right to allow their own people to starve? Meals on wheels is essential. So many people depend on it and it very well might be their only meal of the day. Cutting it is cruel. Why the fuck should any of us have to pay taxes if none of the money goes toward programs that will actually benefit us and instead goes to a wall we don't want, more military spending we don't need and golf holidays and the administration business interests? Keep it up Republicans. Might wanna brush up on how the French Revolution went down. Just saying.

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i know these are used for politics posts but going off one of the vids here, there hasn't been a post about william's ski trip yet right?

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I don't think I've seen a post about it yet.

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UGH TALKING ABOUT THE DEBT. the 1% can afford a tax increase so fuck these two, paula and jeb, trying to excuse 45s budget. thankfully sunni was shutting her down. talking about cutting funding to necessary programs when our defense spending is getting an increase?!?! i cant deal.

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sunny looked like she was trying not to crawl over the damn table and pull jedidiah's hair out one by one. she was shaking a bit. i don't blame her, i was ready to reach into my tv screen and slap trashidiah when she started quoting margaret fucking thatcher of all people

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lol at Prince William's dancing being a disgrace to Caucasians. tbh, it runs in the family:

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If you put on Benedict Cumberbatch glasses, Charles was kind of cute back then?

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Cumbersnatchers would have been all over him..

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I can see it!

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Lol no

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He wasn't ugly back then imo just not ~conventionally handsome~

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Charles was never cute IMO but I'm dyinggg @ "Benedict Cumberbatch glasses"

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what he is getting down

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im not mad at this at all. hit a jig, inbred swine

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The full video is even better. I watch it every few months for a giggle.

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Toni Lauren? Really?



That was autocorrect's doing but I'm not changing it

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So how many Congresspeople can afford to vote to eliminate things like meals on wheels and still get reelected?! Not every R is as immune to criticism as Tr*mp is.

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R's are incredibly fearful of diversity. They will vote Republican even as their congress people dig their graves.

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it's incredible. there's STILL so much in party fighting about the 2016 dem candidate. republicans don't GAF, they'll hold their nose and vote for whoever the republican candidate is.

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Well, I mean, realistically speaking, they're base is probably going to be dead by the next election the way this shit is going---

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they're all rich fucks who will never know what food insecurity is

also, i hope that when they a rotten bags of wrinkles who can't fend for themselves anymore that they're not given access to the programs they want to cut.

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People will justify anything to keep voting R, it's just an identity for them they don't want to give up. My mother in law is a capital R Republican and volunteers with Meals on Wheels. I'm sure she'll think this is just fine based on some backward non-logic she picked up from her Republican Women's Group and Fox.

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A lot of them.

If something is lacking in the Democrats' side is voting!

Like, get your assistance up and go to vote. Republicans are stupid, racist and a bunch of crybabies but they go to vote every election.

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I was listening to NPR earlier and some journalist was like "hmm, I don't feel comfortable calling Gorka a Nazi" - bitch he's a literal member of a Nazi group, is open about his hate for immigrants/Muslims/women/gays/everyone who isn't a ugly ass white dude, how much more do you need for you to feel comfortable?

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It's hilarious how quick journalists will be to jump on "Mike Brown was no angel" or blame Tamir Rice for his father's violence, but calling a literal Nazi a Nazi "ummmm, I'm not comfortable with that."

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His budget is a disaster. His foreign policy is a disaster. Tillerson talked about military action against N. Korea. Trump wants to send more troops to Syria. The budget has 10% increase in military spending. And I was told Hillary was the war hawk.

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Regardless of your spin of HRC, she would never cut Meals on Wheels, CDBG, Weatherization Assistance, LIHEAP, Nat'l Endowment Arts, Big Bird https://t.co/wq681G0gYT  Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) March 16, 2017



All those cuts to pay for what? Fucking military! Now the Boeing VP is going to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Say hello, to unnecessary military spending.



Edited at 2017-03-17 04:56 pm (UTC) Like Ellison says here:All those cuts to pay for what? Fucking military! Now the Boeing VP is going to be the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Say hello, to unnecessary military spending.

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i would love to be stuck in the discourse quagmire of the hillz-verse then this basic-survival-of-democracy nightmare

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but at the same time my nana was a fucking badass so i feel like channeling her and using this energy to fight like hell (which i've already been trying to do, but u know.)



my nana relied so much on meals on wheels in the last several years of her life, not only for the food but for the companionship. she passed a month ago and ngl i cried a lot last night thinking about her/it/how much i fucking hate republicans.but at the same time my nana was a fucking badass so i feel like channeling her and using this energy to fight like hell (which i've already been trying to do, but u know.)

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yeah, exactly. anything to do with seniors in general makes my heart break bc they are treated so badly by our society, and so many of them have lived through SO MUCH. i actually thought about going into gerentology but thought it might be depressing af. :(

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aw bb your nana sounded awesome. i'm sorry for your loss. i'm sure she would be so proud that you are standing up to fight this bullshit

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This is really touching. I'm sorry for your loss, but she sounded wonderful, and by genetics you are probably wonderful as well. Keep fighting the good fight sis

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We're 100% going to war with NK. Trump doing diplomacy over fucking Twitter and pissing off countries we will rely on is going to end us. RIP America

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What does that mean for our relationship with China?

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He does not have the balls to declare war on N. Korea. China will step up to the plate right away. Although their relationship has been a bit iffy since the recent assassination. This is Donnie trying to act tough.

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China is already annoyed as hell with the US. They'll call him up and threaten his businesses which will stop him for a bit - until he gets bored and creates another conflict.

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for real. my popup notif from washpo this morning on my phone about this put me legit on high alert. we are 3 months in. if we make it to december without a war on invasion somewhere else in the world i will be shocked.

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Mr. We Have Neglected Our Vets is going cause their deaths or worse PTSD/mental health issues

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but like if nk actually comes to the usa, half the people are going to fucking run and never look back tbh

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We will "liberate" the people of NK from their fascist regime, and it will probably go down as a "success," lbr. NK can't do shit, they have no money and no food, they can barely fire a missile. The government there should be overthrown. But I wouldn't trust Trump to scoop my cat's litter box.

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im planning on throwing parties when the CDC (if it exists) releases studies about how red states are dying due to lack of insurance. same with hunger. fuck em.

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CDC won't exist, they'll never know the full impact.



Seeing red state dipshits advocate for CA to break off is cracking me up, red states wouldn't fucking exist without CA/NY/etc giving them money.

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I feel like the blue states always pay for the red states.

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I'm waiting to California to just cut the IRS off and tell Trump to go fuck himself. I don't even know how you would do that, but goddamn, my body is ready.

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MTE. It sounds callous, but it's a lesson that will have to be learned.

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Assuming the CDC still exists to be able to give such a report, even if it had hard, irrefutable numbers, pictoral evidence, and first-hand testament given by dozens of willing participants affected by the plan, Trump & Co. would still immediately dismiss it.



And then disband the CDC for having the audacity to make them look bad.

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The past decade has been riddled with rumors of flying vehicles and autonomous taxis. Indeed, it seems every year is the last before the culmination of dreams, first wrought in Back to the Future, finally become reality. 2017 is no different.

Flying driverless vehicles might take to the airways this summer. A test run conducted in February by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has proven successful. Pioneered by Chinese company Ehang, the Ehang 184 is expected to bring passengers to their destinations automatically, and is queued to begin doing so in the near future.

The battery operated, drone-like vehicle utilizes 8 propellers as its flight mechanism, and will be able to transport someone who weighs up to 220 pounds, including a small carry-on. The battery allows for a half-hour flight, which can travel approximately 31 miles. Once depleted, the battery requires 8 hours to recharge. The vehicle will be able to reach altitudes of 300 meters (about 1000 feet), and travel at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour (about 62 miles per hour). Like an Uber, the passenger simply selects his or her destination and the car begins the journey, utilizing 4G mobile internet.

Unlike previous attempts to create the flying-car market, the Ehang 184 does not require the passenger to be a learned pilot. The co-founders of Ehang boast that one of the vehicles main differentiators is that you do not need a license to operate it. In fact, there is basically no human operation at all. A fail-safe mechanism within the vehicle will find the nearest, safest place to land at even the slightest fault. Further, Ehang claims that a 24/7 flight control center monitors all flights, and can take control of the vehicle in case of an emergency. Related: Saudi Arabia Tries To Reassure Markets After Oil Price Plunge

The vehicle is expected to capture 25 percent of the individual-trip market in Dubai, changing them into self-driving journeys. In fact, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates has echoed similar sentiments, proclaiming that he wants 25 percent of all passenger journeys to be autonomous by 2030. It could provide an intriguing alternative to carbon-based vehicles, with enough hype to attract market share. Authorities in Dubai have addressed the security aspects of the vehicle and have approved its design and production. Ehang hopes that these assurances will provide peace of mind to the passengers, which, in turn, enhances what public transportation means.

Dubai is quite familiar with inventive technology and autonomous transportation, as it has been home to the worlds longest driverless metro line since 2011. The city has even partnered with Hyperloop One to begin working on a hyperloop line linking the city to Abu Dhabi.

However, it does not seem like a vehicle of this caliber will be available any time soon in the United States. As it stands, the Federal Aviation Administration is requiring all drone fliers, even hobbyists, to register their vehicles on a government website. And this registration process only applies to drones weighing less than 55 pounds. Anything more is restricted from U.S. airways. The Ehang 184, by comparison, weighs 440 pounds and stands at 5 feet tall. While this may seem minute for a car, it is large for a drone.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
- WTI traded to a 3.5 month low on Tuesday at $47.09 after OPEC members shook production cut deal confidence for a second straight week. Saudi Arabia contributed to bearish concerns by reporting February production of 10.01m bpd for a 263k bpd m/m increase (secondary source estimate for Feb was less than 9.8m bpd) while Iraq released a goal of producing 5m bpd by the end of 2017.

- We continue to have a short term positive view of sub $50 WTI choosing to focus on IEA estimates that OPEC is 90 percent compliant with their 1.2m bpd production cut goal (other analysts see +100 percent compliance) rather than the mixed rhetoric from members. To help their effort Bloomberg reported that non-members cut exports by 240k bpd in February. In terms of rhetoric, Saudi Arabia also worked to walk back some of the concerns they created (and perhaps intimidate short positions) in the last two weeks stating that Februarys production jump was an effort to reload domestic tanks and also that they will do what it takes to bring the industry back to a healthy situation. As for exempt members, disruptions in Nigeria and Libya continue to support prices with output limited to 1.4m bpd and 620k bpd, respectively.

- This weeks EIA data showed the leanest U.S. crude imports since September 2016 (signaling OPEC cuts in action) which helped lead a seasonally abnormal inventory draw. U.S. gasoline and distillate inventories both enjoyed large draws and fell into y/y deficits. On a more bearish note U.S. demand remains problematic with U.S. refiner runs flat YTD and U.S. gasoline consumption -2 percent y/y over the last month. Nevertheless, we continue to see OPEC + non-OPEC production cuts, solid emerging market demand growth and modest OECD demand growth driving significant stock draws this spring which should support prices in the near term.

- Away from the oil market WTI and Brent received a bid this week from a stronger EUR/USD as Janet Yellen delivered a mixed assessment of the U.S. economy in prepared remarks which accompanied the expected 25 bp rate hike. Markets were dovishly surprised to see that Fed officials still expect to raise rates three times in 2017 instead of four, and the Fed looked dovish opposite surprise ECB talk of potentially tighter rates.

(Click to enlarge)

Syncrude disruption, falling imports lift spreads

WTI spreads moved sharply higher this week as fire disrupted a 350k bpd Syncrude facility near Fort McMurray. The lost output pushed Syncrude-WTI to +3.50 for a nine-month high and within $1.50 of levels reached last winter during massive Canadian wildfires. The fire at the plant was extinguished as of Thursday but the continued bidding of Syncrude and Bakken crude in late Friday trading suggested continued stress on northern supplies. WTI spreads were also helped by a drop to 2.69m bpd in PADD III imports (6-month low) following a recent buildup of floating storage in the US Gulf Coast.

(Click to enlarge)

The disruptions in Canada were the main drivers of spreads this week and helped push WTI M17/Z17 from -1.21 on Tuesday to a top of -0.67 on Friday. On a more bearish note there was large size buying of 1H17 -75 and -100 puts (for 2-3 cents premium) this week in the CSO market with certain traders seeing sluggish demand and elevated U.S. output increasing the odds of Cushing congestion this spring. Cushing stocks added 2.1m bbls last week (their largest build since December) to 66m bbls and are expected to increase again next week. In Europe, brent spreads were relatively calm and moved slightly higher on continued OPEC-cut confidence. Brent M17/Z17 rallied from a weekly low of -0.78 on Tuesday to a high of -0.45 towards the Friday close. Related: Saudi Arabia Undermines The OPEC Deal By Increasing Production

U.S. producer data has continued its relentless bearish trend starting with a jump in the rig count to 631- its highest mark since September of 2015. In NYMEX WTI producers and merchants added 9k to their gross short position bringing the grand total to 710k contracts. Increased hedging and rigs have helped bring U.S. crude production back over 9.1m bpd for the first time since February 2016. North of the border rigs in Canada continued to decline last week falling to 180 and are lower by 27 over the last month.

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Sub $50 oil keeps option bid alive

WTI M17 option values were mostly unchanged w/w aside from a slight selloff in downside risk as crude oil rebounded on Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon WTI M17 implied vol traded 28.5 percent, 25 delta puts traded 31 percent and 25 calls implied 27 percent showing a slightly flatter skew to the put w/w. 20-day realized volatility was steady near 27 percent. Overall directional demand for options remained strong as oils dip below $50 inspired new directional ideas for trading in both directions. Away from the oil market volatility was fairly inexpensive with the VIX trading near 11 while EUR/USD was near 6.5 percent.

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EIA shows OPEC cuts at work but demand remains bearish

 U.S. crude inventories made a seasonally abnormal w/w draw with help from a sharp decline of imports into PADD III

 In product markets U.S. gasoline and distillate inventories are now at y/y deficits following sharp draws

 U.S. refiner demand and U.S. gasoline demand continue to lag and are both lower y/y by roughly 2 percent

U.S. crude inventories fell 237k bbls w/w due to a 7-month low print in USGC imports at 2.69m bpd. Overall stocks are now higher y/y by 7 percent, PADD I inventories have ballooned to +25 percent y/y, PADD II inventories are +2 percent y/y and PADD III stocks are +10 percent y/y. Overall imports printed 7.4m bpd this week and are lower y/y by 4.4 percent with help from OPEC cuts. Exports fell to 717k bpd and have averaged 764k bpd YTD. Crude inventories in the Cushing hub had a surprise 2.1m bbl jump to 66.5m bbls.

(Click to enlarge)

DOE inventory data was generally bullish across crude oil, gasoline and distillates but the demand side of the ledger for US crude continues to disappoint. U.S. refiner inputs fell 20k bpd w/w and are lower y/y by 2.4 percent over the last month which could point to bearish problems beyond normal seasonal maintenance. On a regional basis east coast inputs are now lower y/y by 20 percent while PADD II and PADD III inputs are flat y/y. The WTI 321 crack traded near $17/bbl this week while RBOB/Brent traded $16/bbl/.

U.S. gasoline stocks continued to fall sharply with a w/w decline of 3m bbls. Overall gasoline stocks are now lower y/y by 1.4 percent over the last month. PADD IB stocks are higher y/y by 6 percent over the last month but rapidly normalizing towards appropriate seasonal levels due to a slowdown in imports. Overall east coast gasoline inventories are now flat y/y while PADD II stocks are higher by 2 percent and PADD III inventories are lower y/y by 1.6 percent. Domestic demand remains bearishly low at -2 percent y/y while exports at 535k bpd are +34 percent y/y.

(Click to enlarge)

RBOB futures were mostly flat near the $1.60/gl mark and are lower by 10-cents in the lst week weeks. In spread markets RBOB J17/K17 rallied to a 6-week high at -1.58 Thursday for a 1.4 cpg rally over the last two weeks with help from decreased PADD I imports. Related: Chinas Crude Oil Production Falls 8% Year Over Year

U.S. distillate inventories fell by 4.2m bbls w/w and are now lower y/y by 2.5 percent over the last four months. PADD II stocks fell 700k bbls and are lower by 2 percent y/y while PADD III stocks fell 530k bbls and are lower by 6.6 percent y/y. More bearishly, PADD IB stocks fell by 500k bbls but are still higher y/y by 5 percent over the last month. As for demand, domestic consumption enjoyed another large jump to 4.4m bpd and is higher y/y by 13 percent. Exports declined by more than 350k bpd to 964k bpd and are lower y/y by 28 percent.

Heating oil futures continued to sink this week despite the aforementioned inventory draw. On Tuesday afternoon prompt futures touched $1.4784/gl for a 3.5 month low and a 15-cent drop on the month. The prompt heating oil spread went in the opposite direction trading to a 6-week high over -0.60 for a 60 tic rebound in two weeks.

In Europe, gasoil stocks in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub had a modest weekly increase for the second straight week but are still lower y/y by 15 percent. Fuel oil stocks in the ARA hub increased by nearly 20 percent in just the last week to their highest mark on record. Further east, Singapore distillate stocks fell by 610k bbls w/w and are lower y/y by 7 percent. Floating refined product in Southeast Asia is lower by about 2m bbls over the last month at 13m bbls. In spread markets gasoil j17/k17 jumped from -2.75 on March 14th to -2.00 late in the week.

(Click to enlarge)

By SCS Commodities Corp.

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Oil prices have given up some of the gains achieved since the OPEC deal was agreed to in late November, and confidence in the buoyancy of crude prices is starting to falter. There are plenty of reasons why: U.S. shale is coming back; OPEC cuts led to higher prices in December, but have had little effect since then; crude and refined product inventories are still extraordinarily high; and speculative bets are looking overly optimistic at this point.

But the major investment banks tracking oil markets are surprisingly steadfast in their predictions that the market is proceeding steadily towards balance, albeit at a slow pace. A roundup of the latest research notes from Wall Street banks show little fear of a major downslide in prices. Bloomberg points out that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup are all sticking to their predictions of moderate price gains this year.

The outlook is no less bullish, said Seth Kleinman, global head of energy strategy at Citigroup, while reiterating his call for oil prices to rise above $60 a barrel later this year. Bringing oil inventories down is a messy process, but the OPEC cuts are real, demand in Asia is decent and ultimately the market is tightening.

That is a totally reasonable position, but one major uncertainty cropped up this week with news that Saudi Arabia appears to have actually increased production in February, raising questions about its commitment and belief in the coordinated production cuts.

Goldman Sachs was unfazed by this news, citing Saudi assurances that the uptick in output was diverted into storage, and in any event, it would be consistent with higher refinery runs locally in February. As a result, the investment bank stuck to its belief that the oil market rebalancing is still progressing, with continued evidence of strong demand over the past weeks comforting us in our forecast that oil demand is finally set to overtake supply in 2Q2017, helped by the cuts and despite the expected rise in U.S. shale output. Related: Saudi Arabia Undermines The OPEC Deal By Increasing Production

That echoed a prior report from Goldman Sachs that said that the recent fall in oil prices makes bullish bets much more appetizing. [W]e believe with oil at $48/bblthe risk-reward supports re-entering these markets from the long side now if not invested or staying long if already invested as we are in our top trade recommendation, Goldman analysts advised investors. So sub-$50 oil looks cheap.

Citi agrees. Citi views this sell-off as a buying opportunity for 2017, analysts from the investment bank wrote in a recent note.

But the banks diverged on what happens next with OPEC. First, Citi thinks that Saudi Arabia will do what is necessary to prevent oil prices from falling again, and that means extending the deal for another six months. The oil markets are always noisy, but it looks like the Saudis are sending a clear signal that the kingdom will defend prices over market share for the remainder of this year, Citi analysts wrote.

However, Goldman Sachs disagrees, cautioning against assuming the OPEC deal will be rolled over for the rest of 2017. Moreover, the investment bank said that it wouldnt even be in OPECs interest to do so because the goal of coordinated production cuts is to normalize inventories, not support prices. Then, Goldman analysts offered a sobering prediction: As a result, our base case remains that the production cuts will be followed by new production highs.

If Goldman is correct, the implications for oil prices are enormous. If Saudi Arabia returns to higher production levels in order to regain market share, crude will be moving well below $50 per barrel for quite a while. Related: Saudi Arabia Tries To Reassure Markets After Oil Price Plunge

The Wall Street Journal offered some insight into this possibility, reporting on March 16 that Saudi Arabias energy minister Khalid al-Falih is fed up with several OPEC members not living up to their production cuts pledges. Al-Falih reportedly spoke to his Russian and Iraqi counterparts in Houston on the sidelines of the CERAWeek Conference last week, where he was visibly frustrated as he implored them to cut their output. The WSJ reported that sources familiar with the matter say that Saudi officials cannot support the output cuts for long without help, as low oil prices combined with a cutback in output are hurting state finances.

To sum up, we have a growing pile of evidence suggesting that Riyadh is in the midst of a rethink about what to do next: Saudi Arabia is fed up with its OPEC peers; al-Falih warned the oil markets last week that Saudi Arabia would not bear the burden of free riders; and on top of that, Saudi Arabia reversed its cuts in February, boosting production by 263,000 bpd. Saudi officials are sending clear signals that an extension of the OPEC deal should not be assumed.

Wall Street investment banks might be forced to revisit their bullish predictions for crude oil for the second half of 2017.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A stipulation in the draft skinny budget released by the Trump administration has put the government at odds with the state of Nevada as it envisages a $120-million allocation to be spent on restarting licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and initiate a robust interim storage program.

The summary of the draft goes on to add that this investment would accelerate progress on fulfilling the Federal Governments obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security, and reduce future taxpayer burden, making it sound like a done deal.

Opposition to the Yucca Mountain project has been rife in Nevada and in Congress, led by Democratic Senator and Senate vet Harry Reid, who managed to put the brakes on the proposal. Now, however, as the Nevada Independent reports, with Reid retired, it is doubtful if the Nevada Senate delegation has what it takes to once again stop the project.

Both Nevada Senators, Republican Dean Heller and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, were quick to express their vehement opposition to the proposal in a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and to the director of the office of management and Budget, which released the draft.

In the letter, they reminded the recipients that Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval had already warned that the state will contest any license application, which will cost the federal government more than a billion dollars and will drag for years. Heller and Cortez Masto added that the federal government would do the smart thing if it selects another location for nuclear waste storage, in areas that are willing to store it, rather than trying to force it on Nevadans.



Related: EIA And OPEC Send Oil Prices Tumbling

The Yucca Mountain site was proposed as nuclear waste storage back in 2008. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved it six years later. When Harry Reid effectively killed it, the case resulted in potential legal liabilities for the federal government north of $50 billion. Meanwhile, Americas 99 reactors create waste that has no permanent long-term storage site.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Exports from southern Iraq in the first 14 days of March have averaged 3.25 million bpd, according to Reuters shipping data. According to official data, the countrys southern terminals have edged even lower so far this month, to 3.20 million barrels per day, although still not as much as expected.

Despite its commitment to the OPECs decision to cut production to counter a global glut, Iraq pumped 4.57 MMbopd in February, and plans to boost output later in the year, in what could potentially raise questions over the country's compliance with OPEC production cuts.

Iraqs Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said that country plans to increase output to 5 MMbopd by the end of 2017.

Iraq agreed in November to cut 210,000 bpd from its crude oil output beginning in January, taking as baseline an average daily of 4.56 million bpd. In January, however, Iraqs daily average production was 4.47 million bpd  nowhere near the 4.35-million-bpd target set in the agreement.

Though OPEC has managed to achieve a high standard of compliance, it has mostly been due to the oversized cut by Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the actions and statements of the Iraq and Iran, second and third largest producers in OPEC, are throwing worrying signs at the oil bulls. Like Iraq, Iran is also keen on increasing its production to 5 million bpd by 2021.

Earlier this month, Minister al-Luaibi said that the countrys compliance rate with the OPEC crude oil production cut agreement had reached 85 percent. Al-Luaibi also told media that Iraq will be able to pump 5 million barrels daily in the second half of the year, suggesting that it wont support a production cut extension.



Related: Is Kurdish Oil A Gamble Worth Taking?

Iraqi oil exports are also on the rise, although the central government in Baghdad is not the only one responsible for this. In February, total Iraqi oil exports reached 3.85 million bpd, up 1 percent on a monthly basis, but most of the rise came from the Kurdistan autonomous region, with increase of 9 percent for last month.

There were brief stoppage in flows earlier this month when Kurdish forces stormed an oil facility in protest at the Iraqi government's oil policy.

By Damir Kaletovic for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A Lagos High Court has ordered the National Agency For Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to immediately direct the manufacturers of soft drinks; Fanta and Sprite (Nigeria Bottling Company PLC) to include a written warning that the content of the bottles cannot be taken with Vitamin C.



This was the result from a suit filed against the NBC and NAFDAC by Lagos businessman, Dr Emmanuel Fijabi Adebo and his company, Fijabi Adebo Holdings Limited.



His lawyer alleged that sometime in March, 2007, his client's company purchased large quantities of Coca-Cola, Fanta Orange, Sprite, Fanta Lemon, Fanta Pineapple and Soda Water from NBC for export to the UK for retail purposes and supply to their customers. When the packages arrived there, fundamental health related matters were raised on the contents and composition of the Fanta and Sprite products by the UK Health Authorities, specifically the Stockport Metropolitan Borough Councils Trading Standard Department of Environment and Economy Directorate.



The findings from the United Kingdom were corroborated by the Coca-Cola European Union and products were found to have excessive levels of Sunset Yellow and Benzoic Acid which are unsafe for human consumption. Due to the irregularities and harmful content of the soft drinks which can cause cancer to the consumer, the claimants could not sell the Fanta and Sprite products resulting in appreciable losses, as they were certified unsuitable for consumption and were seized and destroyed by the United Kingdom health authorities



Adebo's Lawyer urged the court to declare that the Nigeria Bottling Company was negligent and breached the duty of care owed to their valued customers and consumers in the production of contaminated Fanta and Sprite soft drinks with excessive benzoic acid and sunset addictive. They also urged the court to direct NAFDAC to conduct and carry out routine laboratory tests of all the soft drinks and allied products of the company to ensure and guarantee the safety of the consumable products, produced from the Nigeria Bottling Company factory.



Although the Nigeria Bottling Company contended that the claimants claims are speculative, frivolous and vexatious and should be dismissed with substantial costs, NAFDAC did not file any defence.



In a judgment delivered by Justice Adedayo Oyebanji declared that NAFDAC has failed Nigerians by its certification as satisfactory for human consumption, products which in the UK failed sample test for human consumption and which became poisonous in the presence of Vitamin C. He therefore ordered:



That NAFDAC shall forthwith mandate Nigeria Bottling Company to, within 90 days hereof, include on all the bottles of Fanta and Sprite soft drinks manufactured by the company, a written warning that the content of the said bottles of Fanta and Sprite soft drinks cannot be taken with Vitamin C as same becomes poisonous if taken with Vitamin C.



In consideration of the fact that this case was filed in 2008 and that it has been in court for 9 years, costs of N2 million is awarded against NAFDAC. Interest shall be paid on the costs awarded at the rate of 10% per annum until liquidation of the said sum.

Source: pmnewsnigeria









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The victim at the centre of the Mawarko saga, Evelyn Boakye, has been admitted at the psychiatric department of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.



According to a source close to her family, she has been experiencing suicidal tendencies.



She is said to have been receiving treatment over the past few days. But she was admitted yesterday [Thursday] when her situation worsened with serious abnormalities after she left court leading to her admission.



Meanwhile, a lawyer for the assault victim, Francis Xavier Sosu, has indicated he intends to file a civil lawsuit against Mawarko Fast Foods after an Accra Magistrate Court on Thursday, granted bail to Jihad Chabaan, the supervisor who has been charged with assault.



Mr. Chabaan is alleged to have dipped Evelyns face into blended pepper at the Abelemkpe branch of the fast food chain. The Management of Marwako suspended the supervisor after the allegations emerged.



The Lawyer noted that the suit and any related actions will be on the instruction of the victim and her family.



Jihad Chaaban

The Police granted Mr. Chaaban bail to the sum of GHc 20,000 with two sureties, and as part of his bail conditions, he is expected to report to the Tesano District Police Station every Tuesday and Friday.



The magistrate court adjourned the case to March 20, 2017, to allow the defence counsel continue the cross-examination of the victim.





Source: citifmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Evans Aggrey-Darko, says ministerial appointments should not be reduced to a numbers game, but aimed at what results we want to achieve as a country and how to achieve that.



It must be aimed at what results we want and how we want to achieve those goals. As a developing country, Ghana has the task of ensuring that it makes decisions that will bring about results and not just because it falls in line with tradition, he said.



Dr Aggrey-Darko however explained that the decision must be guided by the public interest while ensuring that the nation follows a democratic developmental process. He was contributing to a discussion on 3FMs Current Affairs show, the Late Edition on the back of the 110 ministers appointed by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



He noted that there was no evidence that a low or high number of ministers will bring the needed results explaining that the President has the opportunity to prosecute an agenda and should not have his hands tied. He has the task of retooling and realigning the task to arrive at set goals that brings benefit and profit to the people, he stated.



Dr Aggrey-Darko explained that because previous administrations had numbers ranging between 80 and 90, the tendency with the emergence of 110 under this administration is to complain; but we must look at how it serves the public good. Such a trajectory must be examined and properly advised.



Dr Kwame Nkrumah under the Convention Peoples Party government had 41 ministers while Dr Kwesi Abrefa Busias Progress Party had 49. Dr Hilla Limanns Peoples National Party inched the numbers up to 51. Under President Jerry John Rawlings, the number went up to 82 while President John Kufuor had 93 ministers. Professor John Evans Atta-Mills had 75 ministers with John Dramani Mahama coming on with a total of 84 ministers under his government. Dr Aggrey-Darko said governments are given power to rule and Nana Akufo-Addo has a four-year mandate to deliver on his promises.



I am not saying that we should wait till after four years before complaining or responding to concerns; as we go on, people can speak and grumble, which is good for the practice of democracy and liberty.



He conceded to the host of the show, Johnnie Hughes, that the total number of ministers, including the yet to be confirmed deputies, will be the largest in the history of the country, but asked that Ghanaians monitor what it would bring to the nation. Dr Aggrey-Darko was however not happy that Ghanaians are usually only interested in what appointees will get and not what they are expected to do and actually do for the state.



Mr Sammy Darko, a former BBC journalist on his part said it was the peoples expectation that the NPP government runs a lean system to reflect the times, and in the light of tradition of lower numbers.



He called for a 7-point strategy to discourage the surge in political office seeking, including the amendment or scrapping of article 71, give each minister a 1.8 litre saloon car instead of the current luxury V8 vehicles and the establishment of a central pool of four wheel drives where appointees and ministers will sign for it as and when they require them for travel.



He also called for an amendment of the constitution to be able to set up a truly independent prosecutor separate from the control of the Executive to be appointed by two-thirds majority of the members of parliament, include their salary and rent and accommodation, cancelling out free accommodation, house helps etc, reduce the package for Article 71 holders and reserve calling appointees honourables for only those on the floor of Parliament.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition apart from the odd Welsh Tory. The Daily Post reports that the Conservative Party has distanced itself from one of its own prominent Brexit campaigners after he appeared to call for the return of religious persecution.They say that Dr Felix Aubel, who was the West Wales co-ordinator for the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign, responded to a Swedish far-right blogger by asking: When will todays Christian Europe say Enough is Enough, just like the Christian Spaniards did at the end of the Middle Ages?As the paper points out, in the Middle Ages the Spanish Inquisition saw the persecution of Muslims, Jews and others that the Catholic Church saw as heretics.The process resulted in the expulsion of Jewish and Muslim communities that had called Spain home for centuries and has become notorious for its cruelty and violence, at the end of a period which saw Spains Christian kingdoms usurp Muslim kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula.Dr Felix Aubel has been quite rightly disowned by virtually every organisation he has any connection too for this tweet.
For Immediate Release

A court in the southeastern Turkish city of Srnak has ordered the continued arbitrary detention of Dr. Serdar Kuni, a member of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey and former president of the Srnak medical chamber, this week extending his five-month confinement by at least another month.

Dr. Kuni is charged with providing medical treatment to alleged members of Kurdish armed groups. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)  which attended and moitored the trial on March 13  demands the immediate dismissal of all legal actions against Dr. Kuni and a stop to the ongoing persecution of health workers in Turkeys southeast.

Dr. Kuni was arrested and detained on October 19, 2016 on charges that he provided medical treatment to alleged members of Kurdish armed groups while they clashed with Turkish security forces in 2015 and 2016. In a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, PHR wrote that the charges against Dr. Kuni are part of a wave of arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of health workers throughout Turkeys southeast. At the conclusion of this weeks trial, a judge ordered that Dr. Kuni remain in custody until a second hearing set for April 24.

By bringing criminal charges against doctors who treat patients, Turkey is sending a chilling message that undermines the medical profession and prevents access to health care, said Susannah Sirkin, PHRs director of international policy and partnerships. We observed similar tactics of intimidation and harassment used against doctors attempting to treat protesters at Istanbul's Gezi Park in 2013 and against doctors all over Turkey standing up for human rights during the state of emergency imposed after last Julys attempted military coup.

It is unlawful for the Turkish authorities to punish Dr. Kuni for simply doing his job, said Sirkin. A doctor's duty is to treat the sick and wounded, regardless of a patients race, nationality, political affiliation, or status as a party to a conflict.

The continued detention and prosecution of Dr. Serdar Kuni runs counter to Turkeys obligations under international human rights law to provide effective protection for health care workers, including during times of conflict, unrest, or emergency. Such obligations also allow health professionals to provide care for all without discrimination, in accordance with international medical ethics. The UN General Assembly resolution on the Principles of Medical Ethics (A/RES/37/194), which is applicable in and outside of armed conflict situations, likewise obligates states not to compel medical personnel to undertake actions that contravene medical ethics, including refusing to provide treatment. The arrest of medical professionals for delivering treatment may amount to arbitrary arrest and detention under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Turkey is a state party.

PHR also said Turkey is failing its obligation under international law to conduct proceedings against Dr. Kuni that meet international fair trial standards. PHR observed four witnesses withdraw their statements against Dr. Kuni on March 13, alleging they had been tortured in police custody and coerced into signing statements that were then used as evidence to detain and charge Dr. Kuni. International law prohibits the use of evidence elicited by torture, ill-treatment, or coercion. The prohibition applies at all times, including during times of emergency and regardless of the seriousness of the alleged crime. Turkish domestic law also prohibits the use of evidence obtained through torture, ill-treatment, or coercion.

Despite the lack of evidence and the witnesses withdrawal of their statements, the judge remanded Dr. Kuni to custody. The judge also failed to order inquiries into the allegations of torture from the witnesses, but did request medical records kept during their time in custody.

Turkish authorities should immediately drop all legal actions against Dr. Kuni and release him from detention, said Sirkin. Turkish authorities must also ensure that all legal proceedings meet international fair trial standards. The legal proceedings against Dr. Kuni in Srnak raise serious questions about the independence and impartiality of Turkish courts in the current climate within the country, and represent an alarming assault on medical neutrality.

Background

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) conducted an investigation in April 2016 into reports of violations of human rights and medical neutrality in southeastern Turkey starting in July 2015. The Turkish government sent thousands of Turkish soldiers and special operations police forces into the southeast to quell an uprising of youth militias seeking greater Kurdish autonomy. The government imposed dozens of curfews on entire towns and cities, cutting off access to water, food, electricity, and health care, even in emergency situations. In response, some health professionals living in neighborhoods under curfew treated the wounded and sick from their homes, or remained stationed around-the-clock at hospitals.

PHR documented several incidents in which health professionals, including ambulance drivers, were shot at or killed while responding to calls for emergency care in neighborhoods under curfew. Between July 2015 and June 2016, numerous health care workers were either charged with the crimes of making terrorist propaganda and being part of an illegal organization, or were subjected to administrative inquiries by the Ministry of Health, in some cases for treating alleged members of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement or Kurdistan Workers Party in hospitals in areas under curfew. For more detail, see PHRs August 2016 report Southeastern Turkey: Health Care Under Siege.

Legal actions, both criminal and administrative, that punish health professionals for carrying out their duties are in direct violation of the Turkish states international human rights obligations. International humanitarian law and international human rights law both mandate the protection of health professionals in order to allow them to fulfill their duties to provide care for those in need, without regard to any element of identity, affiliation, or political opinion. These medical professionals should therefore not be criminalized.

PHR has also repeatedly called for Turkish authorities to cease the ongoing harassment of medical professionals, lawyers, academics, journalists, and other human rights defenders in Turkey since the outbreak of hostilities in southeastern Turkey in July 2015, and exacerbated by last years attempted military coup.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.
AstraZeneca and Circassia enter strategic collaboration in respiratory disease

Details Category: More News Published on Friday, 17 March 2017 10:57 Hits: 2296

Circassia will lead promotion of Tudorza and prepare for potential launch of Duaklir in the US

Strategic collaboration further sharpens AstraZenecas respiratory focus on Symbicort, Bevespi Aerosphere, benralizumab and other development programmes

LONDON, UK I March 17, 2017 I AstraZeneca today announced it has entered a strategic collaboration with Circassia Pharmaceuticals plc, a respiratory biopharmaceutical company, for the development and commercialisation of Tudorza and Duaklir* in the US. Tudorza and Duaklir are inhaled respiratory medicines for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Tudorza was approved and launched in the US in 2012. Duaklir is expected to be submitted for US regulatory review in 2018.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Circassia will lead the promotion of Tudorza in the US and has been granted an option to gain the full commercial rights in the future. Circassia has also been granted the rights to Duaklir in the US. AstraZeneca will receive a minority equity stake in Circassia. AstraZeneca will complete ongoing development activities and continue to manufacture and supply both medicines.

This collaboration reinforces AstraZeneca's commitment to maximise patient access and value across the portfolio in all geographic regions, in particular as the pipeline is delivering numerous new medicines and technologies, driven by increased R&D productivity. Circassia has ambitious plans to strengthen its respiratory presence in the US, which provides the potential to expand the collaboration in the future.

Mark Mallon, Executive Vice President, Global Product & Portfolio Strategy at AstraZeneca, said: Tudorza and Duaklir are important components of AstraZenecas respiratory franchise globally and this collaboration will support their commercialisation in the US for the benefit of the millions of COPD patients. It also further sharpens our focus on Symbicort, Bevespi Aerosphere, benralizumab and other respiratory development programmes. Circassia will be an important strategic partner for AstraZeneca in the US and we look forward to working closely together.

Steve Harris, Chief Executive of Circassia, said: This proposed transaction is an ideal fit with Circassias strategy and respiratory focus. It represents a transformational opportunity for the company. As part of the long-term strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca, we will immediately double our US sales force to promote Tudorza as our priority, as well as our existing NIOX products, transforming Circassia into a world-class respiratory business.

Financial considerations

The agreement is expected to complete in the second quarter of 2017, subject to approval by shareholders of Circassia and customary closing conditions.

Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will receive $50 million in Ordinary Shares in Circassia, calculated by reference to the lower of the weighted average share price of Circassia over the period 20 days (i) prior to signing or (ii) prior to closing (subject to a maximum number of shares). Circassia will also pay $100 million at the earlier of approval of Duaklir in the US or 30 June 2019. Should Circassia decide to exercise the option to sub-license the commercial rights to Tudorza in the US, Circassia will pay up to a further $80 million.

The two companies will share US profits from Tudorza equally. AstraZeneca will continue to book US Product Sales of Tudorza until Circassias potential exercise of the option. Circassia will pay AstraZeneca tiered percentage royalties on potential future US sales of Duaklir. In addition, Circassia will contribute up to $62.5 million towards the development activities for the medicines.

As AstraZeneca will retain a significant, ongoing interest in the medicines, income will be reported as Externalisation Revenue. This includes an expected $60 million at closing, as well as any potential future royalties, deferred income and any future payment for the option to gain the US commercial rights to Tudorza. Any potential future supply of the medicines to Circassia will be reported as Product Sales.

The agreement does not impact AstraZenecas financial guidance for 2017.

About Tudorza and Duaklir

Tudorza and Duaklir are inhaled respiratory medicines for the treatment of COPD. Tudorza has been approved and marketed in the United States since 2012. Duaklir is approved and marketed in the European Union and a number of additional rest of the world countries, and is subject to two ongoing clinical trials to support a planned regulatory submission to the US FDA. Both medicines are presented as a dry powder for inhalation and are delivered via a breath-actuated multi-dose dry powder inhaler, Pressair. The Pressair device is marketed in some countries under the trade name Genuair.

*Duaklir is a registered trademark in certain European countries. The US trademark is to be confirmed.

About Circassia

Circassia is a specialty pharmaceutical business with established commercial infrastructure, marketed products and a portfolio of particle-engineered treatments targeting major market opportunities. Circassia sells its novel, market-leading NIOX asthma management products directly to specialists in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Its products are also promoted in a number of other countries by the Companys network of partners.

Circassia's broad-based development pipeline includes a range of respiratory medicines. The Company's lead asthma treatment, Fliveo, targets substitution of GSK's Flixotide pMDI and is approved in the UK. Circassia is also developing a direct substitute for Seretide pMDI, Seriveo. In addition, the Company's pipeline includes a number of inhaled medicines for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, including single and combination dose products. For more information on Circassia please visit www.circassia.com.

About AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialisation of prescription medicines, primarily for the treatment of diseases in three main therapy areas - Oncology, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Diseases and Respiratory. The Company also is selectively active in the areas of Autoimmunity, Neuroscience and Infection. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more information, please visit www.astrazeneca.com and follow us on Twitter @AstraZeneca.

SOURCE: AstraZeneca
Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.
FORT EDWARD  A special prosecutor has been assigned to handle the case of a Fort Edward woman who is accused of seriously injuring her stepdaughter in September.

The case has lingered in Town Court for nearly six months with little action and has frustrated the victims family.

The Washington County District Attorneys Office asked off the case last month after it hired a former assistant county public defender. Because the public defenders office has represented Marissa T. Bickford-Rice, the woman accused of injuring 4-year-old Kaiden Starr Rice, the prosecutors office has had to seek a special prosecutor because of the potential conflict of interest created by the former defense lawyers switching of offices.

Bickford-Rice, 23, was charged with felony assault Sept. 21, the day Kaiden was hurt and then hospitalized at Albany Medical Center in critical condition with a severe head injury. Police said Bickford-Rice told them she slammed the girls head on a kitchen floor.

Kaiden was released from a rehabilitation center earlier this month and is recuperating at home. She continues to have limitations from her brain injury and a stroke she suffered at some point shortly after she was hurt, and had surgery last month to permanently repair her fractured skull.

When the conflict of interest arose, the Washington County District Attorneys Office and Bickford-Rices lawyer, Washington County Public Defender Michael Mercure, were negotiating a plea agreement that would require Bickford-Rice to plead guilty to a felony and serve a state prison sentence.

Mercure said the defense has agreed to the delays as a possible disposition is discussed. A related Washington County Family Court case is pending before Judge Ted Wilson.

Schenectady County just got the case, and they need time to look over the file, Mercure said.

Schenectady County Assistant District Attorney Christina Tremante, who is head of the agencys special victims unit, has been assigned the case. Her office said she was not available for comment Friday.

Colleen Kelley Lyon, a close friend of Kaidens family and founder of Hands Across NY, a child abuse awareness organization, said the delays have been frustrating for the family.

The sad part is that none of them will ever truly see or know the real damage that woman has caused this beautiful little girl, she said. The pictures and videos show everyone the great things, but she has taken so much else from our princess.

Bickford-Rice is being held in Washington County Jail pending an April 11 appearance in Fort Edward Town Court. No preliminary hearing has been held, and the case has lingered in Town Court instead of been transferred to Washington County Court, where felony cases are heard.
Its the time of year when the Warren-Hamilton Counties Community Action Agency is starting to receive requests for emergency fuel assistance from families that have used up their annual allotment of Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding.

With March being the weather that it was the last couple of weeks, we are getting a lot of requests, said Lynn Ackershock, executive director of the agency that has offices in Glens Falls and Indian Lake.

Individuals and families will find themselves in fuel crisis about five months earlier if the federal heating assistance program is eliminated, as President Donald Trump has proposed, she said.

Trump, in his budget plan, said the heating assistance program has a lower impact in comparison to other federal assistance programs, and is unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes.

Local human service agency directors disagree.

A lot of them (families) depend on that to help them get through the middle of the winter with the high utility bills, said Kim Sopczyk, director of Family Services Association of Glens Falls. A lot of them are in such a low income that it helps them stay on budget if they can get that HEAP grant one or two times through the winter.

The increased need for assistance would come as many human services agencies would lose funding under a related Trump budget proposal to eliminate the federal Community Service Block Grant program, which provides money to states to fund services for the poor, elderly and unemployed, including Meals on Wheels and food pantries.

The federal government allocated $4.2 billion for the heating assistance and community service programs combined in the previous budget for the current federal year that began in October, according to the presidents budget proposal for the new federal fiscal year.

Many local agencies receive federal health care funding, which also is threatened, as well as human services funding, said Duane Vaughn, executive director of Tri-County United Way, which raises funding and awareness for charitable organizations in Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties.

Its hard enough on a lot of these agencies if one piece drops. But if you have two pieces, when youre running on a shoestring as it is, it could close peoples doors, he said.

Community Action Agency would lose about $1 million in annual funding, under President Trumps budget proposal.

We would go from a million-and a-quarter budget to maybe a quarter-of-a-million budget and that would mean we would not be here anymore, Ackershock said.

The Community Services Block Grant program funds the two-county agencys food pantry, transportation, case management and home energy efficiency programs, as covers the entire budget for the agencys office in Indian Lake.

That office would be eliminated immediately, she said.

Unlike the Hamilton County office, the Glens Falls office has limited funding from other sources that could keep it open temporarily.

Family Services Association receives very little federal funding, Sopczyk said.

Were privately funded, but I imagine that (federal program cuts) will increase our assistance requests. So were definitely keeping an eye on it, she said.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, will work hard in the budget process to make sure that needs are met, said Tom Flanagin, the congresswomans spokesman.

Its because of proposed cuts to programs such as these that she does not support the presidents budget proposal, Flanagin said. The presidents budget proposal is the first step in the process, but ultimately Congress controls the power of the purse and will write the federal spending plan.

Ackershock, of Community Action, said Congress has rejected previous presidential proposals to reduce or eliminate Community Service Block Grant funding, but the chances of elimination this time seem more realistic.

Ive been here for 30 years, and this has happened before, she said. I am the least optimistic that I have ever been. I am not in panic mode yet, but its waking me up in the middle of the night.
QUEENSBURY  Warren Countys decision to open its municipal center on Tuesday did not sit well with a number of county workers who thought they shouldnt have had to come to work as a snowstorm hit the region.

Acting County Administrator Kevin Geraghty called for the center to be closed at 10 a.m. Tuesday, a decision he said he made after consulting with Ron Conover, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, as a forecast that called for blizzard conditions became more clear.

He said it was discussed Monday night whether to open the building at all, but the forecast was not as bad Monday night as it turned out to be early Tuesday, and there was the possibility of the storm going off the coast and sparing upstate New York.

Geraghty, who is also the Warrensburg town supervisor, said the union leadership was understanding, but many workers werent as charitable.

Geraghty said he received phone calls and correspondence from a number of workers who were upset that the building opened at all. Most of them live in Queensbury, he said, minutes from the county center.

No good deed goes unpunished, he said.

Most of the region had only a few inches of snow as of mid-morning, with the worst of the storm hitting in the afternoon and early evening. All local schools did not open for the day, and many businesses and municipalities did as Warren County did, making the decision Tuesday morning to close early, including Washington and Saratoga counties, the city of Glens Falls and town of Moreau.

Geraghty praised the highway crews who worked through the storm, keeping roads cleared during very heavy snow.

Not everybody got to go home, Geraghty said.

But he said some county workers who worked during the storm have wondered how equitable it was to let others off with a paid day when they only worked a couple of hours, he said.
QUEENSBURY  Gov. Andrew Cuomos proposal to create a statewide network of biking and walking trails caused some strife among Warren County supervisors on Friday, as a resolution to support it drew significant opposition.

Supervisors argued that the state shouldnt be spending tens of millions of dollars on trails when state highways in the region are being neglected.

Warrensburg Supervisor Kevin Geraghty, the countys acting administrator, said it was particularly concerning in light of information coming from Albany that road repair funds might be cut this year.

Geraghty and other supervisors pointed to the conditions of routes 418, 8 and 9N, all state highways, that need attention.

418 is really a mess, Geraghty said.

Geraghty said he understood part of Route 9N will be improved this year, though it was unclear which portion.

Cuomo has proposed creating a trail system dubbed the Empire State Trail, a 750-mile pathway that would include development of 350 miles in new trails across the state. Part of it would likely pass through Saratoga, Washington and Warren counties.

The project has been estimated to cost $53 million or so, funds that many said could be better used on existing highways.

I cant vote to expend $53 million on a new project, said Stony Creek Supervisor Frank Thomas, the countys budget officer. I cant support a bike trail when the state makes no effort to fix the roads.

Horicon Supervisor Matt Simpson also questioned who will maintain the new trails.

Supporters, though, said the trail will help tourism and could help keep young people in the state at a time when they are leaving.

I think we are really comparing apples and oranges here. Its really two separate issues, Glens Falls 2nd Ward Supervisor Peter McDevitt said.

Glens Falls 1st Ward Supervisor Dan Girard pointed out that the county had been guilty of neglecting its own roads and funding other projects.

Were talking about tourism, he said.

The Empire State Trail is still in development, but is expected to include the Warren County Bikeway and potentially run along the Champlain Canal.

The board ultimately voted narrowly to support the resolution that gets behind the plan, but eight of 19 members who were present voted against it.
Medicaid caps and changing eligibility criteria proposed in the Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act could drastically curtail access to opioid addiction treatment, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office released earlier this week.

I worry anytime access to health care services is going to be cut, said Susan Roberts-McManus, a licensed clinical social worker and director of the Washington and Warren County Centers for Recovery at Glens Falls Hospital. Related to the Medicaid funding, we are concerned if they dont have access to services.

In a report released on Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, analysts point to such caps and a nearly 25 percent pullback over time of Medicaid eligibility for individuals who currently qualify as Medicaid expanded adults under the Affordable Care Act.

Under this expanded coverage, treatment for opioid addiction, including buprenorphine medication-assisted treatment, millions of Americans have been able to receive treatment for addictions.

The decreased availability of these services will seriously impact those seeking treatment with Suboxone or Vivitrol, said Charles Moak, director of outpatient services at Conifer Park in Glens Falls on Friday. Many of these individuals have already required Narcan reversals due to overdose. We shouldnt be losing individuals due to lack of life-saving services.

Moak added that its only been recently that there are providers available that accept insurance. Many had been fee-for-service, cash-only providers, he said, adding that those who lose this coverage would be at an increased risk.

According to CBO estimates, the House bill  American Health Care Act  would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $880 billion over 10 years by capping federal Medicaid spending and ending enhanced federal funding for Medicaid expansion adults.

On Friday, Kaiser analysts said that by 2026, federal Medicaid spending would be 25 percent lower than expected under current law, and 14 million fewer people would be covered by Medicaid.

In states grappling with the heroin epidemic, losing insurance coverage for treatment means that fewer people will get the care they need and more may die from overdoses.

In New York state, heroin and opioid addiction is a major public health crisis. Over the past decade, the state has seen a 222 percent increase in admissions to certified treatment programs for young people addicted to heroin and other opioids, according to the states Heroin and Opioid Task Force 2016 Report.

And according to the state Department of Health in 2015 and half of 2016, there were multiple opioid deaths in our region: Albany County, 18; Saratoga County 12; Warren County 3; and Washington County, 0.

Considering the epidemic, this is a rough time to consider cuts, said Jerry Gretzinger, a Glens Falls Hospital spokesman.

And Roberts-McManus said that in the midst of an epidemic, more treatment is needed, not less.

Currently, at the hospitals two outpatient treatment centers in Washington and Warren counties, they treat 250 individuals, she said.

We do serve children as well, she said, adding that some as young as 13 are addicted to heroin. We have just added great new programming.

Nonetheless, if the American Health Care Act makes its way to President Donald Trump for his signature, many in the area will not be able to access such care.

It is about levels of access and who is eligible for Medicaid, Roberts-McManus said, adding that if they lose Medicaid, they will not be able to afford the insurance. Our biggest concern is the portion who will be cut out of Medicaid and cant afford insurance. If you have to choose between paying the rent or health care, you will pay the rent to house your children.
A total of 472 students from 42 schools tested their reading knowledge on Monday at the 2017 Battle of the Books tournament.

The event took place at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Teams of students from grades 3 through 6 competed a quiz bowl-style event that tested how much they knew about the 10 books they have been reading since September, according to Bridget Crossman, school librarian at Lake George Elementary School.

Here are the results of the competition:

Third grade  first place: Hudson Falls Primary School; second place: Lake Avenue Elementary School, Saratoga Springs; third place: Harrison Avenue Elementary School, South Glens Falls; fourth place; Bolton Central School.

Fourth grade  first place: Schuylerville Elementary School; second place: Harrison Avenue Elementary School, South Glens Falls; third place: North Warren Central School; fourth place: William H. Barton Intermediate School, Queensbury.

Fifth grade  first place: St. Marys-St. Alphonsus Regional Catholic School; second place: Lake George Elementary School; third place: Hartford Central School; fourth place: William H. Barton Elementary School, Queensbury.

Sixth grade  first place: St. Marys-St. Alphonsus Regional Catholic School; second place: Hudson Falls Middle School; third place: North Warren Central School; fourth place: Glens Falls Middle School.

 Michael Goot

When the lights go out

Power outages from windstorms in recent weeks showed that many drivers have forgotten, or never learned, what to do at an intersection when a traffic light is out.

Drivers at the intersection of Route 9 and Feeder Dam Road in South Glens Falls on March 9 saw several near-accidents as drivers on Route 9 wrongly believed they had the right of way when the light was out of commission. South Glens Falls firefighters were eventually called in to help control traffic there.

Under state Vehicle & Traffic Law, traffic lights that are not working are to be treated as stop signs, meaning that all drivers must stop and the right of way is treated as if it is a three-way or four-way stop sign.

 Don Lehman

Pi Day

A Washington County mans Pi Day celebration potentially set a new world record for recalling Pi from memory in a snowstorm.

Brad Zupp, a memory expert from Greenwich, had planned a different Pi record attempt at SUNY Empire State College in Saratoga Springs. That attempt had to be rescheduled due to the snow hitting the area Tuesday.

Instead, he walked outside and recalled the first 1,000 digits of Pi while standing in the storm.

The cold and wind were much more distracting to my memory than I thought they would be, Zupp said in a statement.

Zupp hopes to reschedule his original attempt for next week. He will try to break a record that has been called The Everest of Memorization Tests. It involves not only knowing the first 10,000 digits of Pi in five-digit segments but also being able to instantly identify any of the segments.

Zupp will be given 50 random segments and must be able to correctly recall the five digits both before and after every given segment.

Pi is the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter, approximated as 3.14159, and has an infinite number of digits with no apparent pattern. March 14 is often referred to as Pi Day.

The rescheduled attempt will be held in Saratoga Springs, but a date hasnt been set yet. After the record attempt, Zupp will answer questions and offer memory tips.

 Gretta Hochsprung

Right to work

Newly appointed Thurman Town Clerk Susan Staples got right to work on Wednesday.

Minutes after being appointed and sworn in, Staples was asked to open bids for a water system project.

I wasnt expecting to jump right in tonight, Staples said.

Well, its how you learn, said Supervisor Cynthia Hyde, who held the town clerks position from 2008 through 2015.

Hyde encouraged Staples when she was wading through a stack of documents to find the listed bid price.

They can be really tricky to look through sometimes, she said.

Staples is eager to get started.

 Michael Goot

Future engineers

Seventh-grade students at Glens Falls Middle School got some insight this week into microchip manufacturing.

Engineers from GlobalFoundries in Malta came to the school on Thursday to lead students in a hands-on activity involving putting a layer of copper only a few atoms thick onto a quarter. This process is called electroplating and is used to make parts of a microchip, according to science teacher Jason Brechko.

Students enjoyed learning about possible careers in this field.

I thought it was really cool to be able to use electricity to move copper atoms from the copper pipe onto the quarter and back again, said student Cate Barclay in a news release.

GlobalFoundries worker Alison Snyder will be the keynote speaker at the schools science fair, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in the middle school auditorium.

 Michael Goot

Special education praised

Bolton Central School got good marks in a recent survey of parents of special education students about how the district was providing services.

The district had 13 out of 14 surveys returned to the district. A total of 100 percent of people who responded gave positive marks to the district.

School psychologist Terry Begly, who is the chairwoman of the districts committee on special education, told the Board of Education that she attributes the high satisfaction to involved parents, good communication and excellent teaching staff.

The teachers in this district are very child-centered and again, their number one priority is helping the kids succeed, she said.

Superintendent of Schools Michael Graney also praised the work Begly has done since she took over the program.

Board of Education President Kathleen Pfau said the district had some problems in special education and Begly helped turn it around.

 Michael Goot
Its happening. But not the way people thought it would.

In recent weeks, people began streaming from the United States into Canada. But theyre not disappointed Democrats, disgruntled Californians or, for that matter, anyone who might have voted for Hillary Clinton.

The majority of the estimated 3,800 individuals illegally stealing across the worlds longest unprotected border into Canada since Feb. 3 are anxious refugees and undocumented immigrants fearing detention or deportation and seeking asylum.

According to Londons Daily Mail, most of those slipping across Americas northern border this winter are carrying passports from Syria, Somalia, Burundi, Eritrea, Ghana, Sudan, Turkey, Columbia or Mexico. Many obtain tourist visas to the United States then jump into airport taxis and deliver themselves to Canadian border checkpoints where they ask for asylum. Others, laden with luggage still bearing airline tags, walk across fields, wade through ditches and push baby strollers in deep snow from Quebec to Manitoba to elude Canadian border patrols and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Some have lived in the U.S. for years.

When seeking office, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to deport or incarcerate 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records living in the United States. The surge of asylum seekers has grown since now-President Trump issued his ban temporarily barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. They are now flowing into Canada in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus offer to welcome those in need with open arms and open hearts.

Since Jan. 1, according to the RCMP in Manitoba, located to the north of North Dakota, almost 200 asylum seekers have braved freezing temperatures and sometimes waist-deep snow to cross the border into Emerson, Manitoba  population 689. An estimated 1,200 have illegally entered Quebec since November, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.

Although border patrol union officials are calling for 1,000 more workers and conservatives in Parliament are calling for a refugee strategy and housing and support service resources are being stressed in rural areas where the crossings are happening, on Saturday Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, the increase isnt enough to warrant additional border security measures. But, he said, the government is following closely the recent accelerated rate of crossings.

Canada adheres to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement of 2004. In this, any one in the US, which is considered a safe country, cannot request to be admitted into Canada as a refugee. However, refugee status may be requested once the individual is on Canadian soil. Generally 60 percent are accepted.

Border patrols at official border crossings are turning back those who have already made refugee claims in the United States  prompting the increase in illegal entries.

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States may now fear for their future. Canada, which has vast, unpopulated spaces and dwindling family sizes, may be looking to a wave of immigrants to fill their nation. But Canada has also not experienced its own 9/11 attack by irrational militants determined to destroy America.

The Nation to the North is free to open its borders to anyone it wants. But to avoid its own Trump-like backlash somewhere down the road, Canada should heed the warnings of their own government officials who are calling for a strategy to cope with these unexpected visitors, as well as the call of the Canadian border patrol to have more workers.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
Based out of Barcelona, Spain, the airline will use operated by Iberia's pilots and flight attendants.

LEVEL is expected to begin passenger operations this June with service from Barcelona to Los Angeles and Oakland, California. The company will also launch flights from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic this summer.

Tickets are already on sale with fares starting at just $149 for a one-way ticket.

Flight between Barcelona and LA will launch first on June 1, with service twice a week. Service to Oakland will launch one day later with three flights a week. Punta Cana flights will commence on June 10 and Buenos Aires service will launch on June 17.
US President Donald Trump has apparently identified North Korea as his most serious external challenge, and he has reportedly declared the country the single greatest threat to the US. On Friday, Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years." He also blamed China, the North's biggest ally, for not doing more to help.

In reality, taking out North Korea's nuclear capabilities, or toppling the Kim regime, would pose serious risks to even the US military's best platforms.

Business Insider spoke with Stratfor's Sim Tack, a senior analyst who is an expert on North Korea, to determine exactly how the US could carry out a crippling strike against the Hermit Kingdom.

First, a decision would need to be made.

Military action against North Korea wouldn't be pretty. Civilians in South Korea, and possibly Japan, and US forces stationed in the Pacific would be likely to die in the undertaking no matter how smoothly things went.

In short, it's not a decision any US commander in chief would make lightly.

But the US would have to choose between a full-scale destruction of North Korea's nuclear facilities and ground forces or a quicker attack on only the most important nuclear facilities. The second option would focus more on crippling North Korea's nuclear program and destroying key threats to the US and its allies.

Since a full-scale attack could lead to "mission creep that could pull the US into a longterm conflict in East Asia," according to Tack of Stratfor, the US would most likely focus on a quick, surgical strike that would wipe out the bulk of North Korea's nuclear forces.

Then, the opening salvo: A stealth air blitz and cruise missiles rock North Korea's nuclear facilities.

The best tools the US could use against North Korea would be stealth aircraft like the F-22 and the B-2 bomber, Tack said.

The US would gradually position submarines, Navy ships, and stealth aircraft at bases near North Korea in ways that avoid provoking the Hermit Kingdom's suspicions.

Then, when the time is right, bombers would rip across the sky and ships would let loose with an awesome volley of firepower. The US already has considerable combat capability amassed in the region.

"Suddenly you'd read on the news that the US has conducted these airstrikes," Tack said.

While the F-22 and the F-35 would certainly operate over North Korean missile-production sites, it really is a job for the B-2.

As a long-range stealth bomber with a huge ordnance capacity, the B-2 could drop 30,000-pound bombs on deep underground bunkers in North Korea  and it could do it from as far away as Guam or the continental US.

The first targets ...

The initial targets would include nuclear reactors, missile-production facilities, and launching pads for intercontinental ballistic missiles, Tack said.

Cruise missiles would pour in from the sea, F-22s would target North Korea's rudimentary air defenses, and B-2s would pound every known missile site.

Planes like the F-35 and the F-22 would frantically hunt down mobile missile launchers, which can hide all over North Korea's mountainous terrain. In the event that North Korea does get off a missile, the US and South Korea have layered missile defenses that would attempt to shoot it out of the sky.

Next, the US would try to limit North Korean retaliation.

Once the US has committed the initial strike against North Korea, how does Kim Jong Un respond?

Even with its nuclear facilities in ashes and most of its command and control destroyed, "North Korea has a lot of options," Tack said. "They have their massive, massive conventional artillery options that can start firing at South Korea in a split second."

But as the graphic below shows, most North Korean artillery can't reach Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Additionally, Seoul has significant underground bunkers and infrastructure to quickly shield its citizens, though some measure of damage to the city would be unavoidable.

According to Tack, much of this artillery would instead fire on the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, detonating mines so North Korean ground forces could push through. Also within range would be US forces near the DMZ.

Some 25,000 American troops are stationed in South Korea, and they would face grave danger from North Korea's vast artillery installations.

But the North Korean artillery isn't top of the line. It could focus on slamming US forces, or it could focus on hitting Seoul, but splitting fire between the two targets would limit the impact of its longer-range systems.

Additionally, as the artillery starts to fire, it becomes an exposed target for US aircraft.

The next phase of the battle would be underwater.

North Korea has a submarine that can launch nuclear ballistic missiles, which would represent a big risk to US forces as it can sail outside the range of established missile defenses.

Fortunately for the US, the best submarine hunters in the world sail with the US Navy.

Helicopters would drop special listening buoys, destroyers would use their advanced radars, and US subs would listen for anything unusual in the deep. North Korea's antique submarine would hardly be a match for the combined efforts of the US, South Korea, and Japan.

While the submarine would greatly complicate the operation, it would most likely find itself at the bottom of the ocean before it could do any meaningful damage.

What happens if Kim Jong Un is killed?

"Decapitation," or the removal of the Kim regime, would be a huge blow to the fiercely autocratic Hermit Kingdom.

Reports have indicated Kim Jong Un has engaged in a vicious campaign to execute senior officials with packs of dogs, mortar fire, and antiaircraft guns for a simple reason, according to Tack: They have ties to China.

Kim's removal of anyone senior with ties to China means he has consolidated power within his country to a degree that makes him necessary to the country's functioning.

Without a leader, North Korean forces would face a severe blow to their morale as well as their command structure, but it wouldn't end the fight.

"Technically North Korea is under the rule of their 'forever leader' Kim Il Sung," Tack said, adding that "a decapitation strike wouldn't guarantee that the structures below him wouldn't fall apart, but it would be a damn tricky problem for those that remain after him."

North Koreans aren't shy about putting their leader first, however, and at the first indication of an attack, Kim would most likely be tucked away in a bunker deep underground during the attack.

Then the US defends.

"If North Korea doesn't retaliate, they've lost capability and look weak," Tack said.

Indeed, few would expect North Korea to go quietly after suffering even a crippling attack.

Through massive tunnels bored under the DMZ, North Korea would try to pour ground troops into the South.

"The ground-warfare element is a big part of this," Tack said. "I think that the most likely way that would play out would be the fight in the DMZ area," where the US would not try to invade North Korea but rather would defend its position in the South.

Though North Korea's air force is small and outdated, it jets would need to be a target of the US and allied forces.

Meanwhile ...

US special operations forces, after North Korea's air defenses have been destroyed, would parachute in with the goal of destroying or deactivating mobile launchers and other offensive equipment.

The US would face a big challenge in trying to hunt down some 200 missile launchers throughout North Korea, some of which have treads to enter very difficult terrain where US recon planes would struggle to spot them.

It would be the work of US special forces to establish themselves at key logistical junctures, observe the North Koreans' movements, and then relay that to US air assets.

So how does this all end?

North Korea is neither a house of cards nor an impenetrable fortress.

Additionally, the resolve of the North Koreans remains a mystery. North Korea successfully estimated that the international community would be unwilling to intervene as it quietly became a nuclear power, but that calculation could become its undoing.

North Korea would most likely launch cyberattacks, possibly shutting down parts of the US or allies' power grids, but US Cyber Command would prepare for that.

North Korea would most likely destroy some US military installations, lay waste to some small portion of Seoul, and get a handful of missiles fired  but again, US and allied planners would stand ready for that.

In the end, it would be a brutal, bloody conflict, but Tack said even the propaganda-saturated North Koreans must be aware of their disadvantages.

Even after a devastating missile attack, some of North Korea's nuclear stockpile would most likely remain hidden. Some element of the remaining North Korean forces could stage a retaliation, but what would be the point?
The person who wrote the article is Joel Pollak, an editor at the far-right website Breitbart News. He said in an interview on MSNBC's "Meet the Press Daily" that the idea of potential spying at Trump Tower during the 2016 election came to him while he was washing dishes and listening to a popular conservative radio host.

"It was late at night and I was washing dishes, listening to Mark Levin's show from earlier in the day, and I thought, 'Wow, that's amazing,'" Pollak said. "I had seen all these articles, but nobody had actually put the case together the way Levin had."

Host Chuck Todd challenged that, asking Pollak whether he had oversold Levin's conclusions in writing his story. The Breitbart editor cited numerous well-reported stories from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and others that have indicated US intelligence officials were investigating possible ties between Russian operatives and people in Trump's inner circle. (None of those stories, however, made the specific claims Trump did.)

Pollak said the stories, which almost exclusively cited anonymous sources, were being "treated as established reality" to build a case about Russian influence in the 2016 US election. He said that in writing in his own story, he relied on the wiretapping scenario pitched by Levin.

Trump made the claims in tweets nearly two weeks ago. In a Fox News interview Wednesday night, the president indicated he had no concrete evidence to support his claims. "I've been reading things," Trump said, while pointing to a New York Times article and remarks that a Fox News host made on the subject.

Trump implied that some evidence would eventually surface.

"I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," he said.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chair, said on Wednesday that there was no such evidence.
Since then, Republicans and Democrats have denounced Trump's allegations. The president on Wednesday night effectively acknowledged that he has no evidence to back up his original assertions. The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee echoed that there were no indications to believe any wiretapping had taken place.

CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night took it a step further.

"Tonight, we know the president of the United States has no facts. No facts to back up his startling allegation that the former president of the United States, President Obama, wiretapped him in Trump Tower during the campaign," Cooper said at the opening of his program.

Cooper pointed to a heated exchange that unfolded between White House press secretary Sean Spicer and reporters on Thursday, in which Spicer attempted to defend Trump's unsubstantiated wiretapping claims. He also referenced comments Trump made during a Fox News interview Wednesday night.

"I've been reading things," Trump said, pointing to a New York Times article that he indicated backs up his assertions  as well as remarks a Fox News host made about investigations into potential ties between Trump associates and Russia.

Congressional inquiry turns up nothing

Trump said he wanted a congressional investigation over the unsubstantiated wiretapping claims. House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes said on Wednesday that the committee found no such evidence of an Obama-ordered spying operation against Trump.

"Clearly, the president is wrong," said Nunes, a Republican, if Trump's tweets are taken "literally."

Senate Intelligence Committee leadership said in a joint statement on Thursday there is no indication that Trump Tower was targeted for surveillance during the 2016 election.

Despite the rebukes, the president and the White House have persisted.

Spicer indicated earlier this week that he was "extremely confident" the Department of Justice would find evidence to back up Trump's claim. Trump intimated similar assertions on Wednesday night, saying, "I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks."

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in a CNN interview on Thursday night that Trump's relentless wiretapping assertions are starting to hurt him.

"We're not in an election anymore, and it's not his opponent he's throwing off," Santorum said. "I think it's him that he's throwing off."

Watch Cooper's monologue below:
The jab was a reference to reports in 2013 that said the National Security Agency, under President Barack Obama, had been intercepting Merkel's phone calls and spying on German officials. Der Spiegel reported at the time that the NSA had been using the US embassy in Berlin as a listening station.

Merkel called Obama in October 2013 and demanded he explain the reports, and Germany launched an investigation into the matter. The White House denied that Merkel had ever been a surveillance target, and the probe was ultimately dropped. But many experts later said that it was fairly standard practice for friendly nations to spy on one another.

Trump made the comment as the White House faced a new wave of backlash related to Trump's allegations against Obama. On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer read from unverified reports that said a British intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, conspired with Obama to wiretap Trump before the election.

The accusation was first leveled by Andrew Napolitano, a former judge, on Fox News.

Spicer's comment prompted a near-immediate reaction from GCHQ, which released a rare public statement categorically denying any involvement and calling the accusation "utterly ridiculous."

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense," the statement read. "They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

When asked on Friday if the White House regretted accusing the UK of helping Obama wiretap Trump Tower, Trump said that "all we did was quote" a Fox commentator, so "you should be talking to Fox."

Fox released a statement on Friday saying that Napolitano stood by his reporting, but Fox News host Shep Smith later said, "Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano's commentary.

"Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop," Smith said.

Watch the exchange between Merkel and Trump:
"North Korea is behaving very badly," Trump wrote. "They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

The tweet comes as Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of state, is on a trip to Asia.

While Tillerson was in South Korea on Friday, he said that if North Korea elevated "the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action," a military response from the US would be on the table.
The Friday-night interview, which occurred just hours before Trump's tweets the next morning, contained an exchange between Baier and Ryan. A misunderstanding during that exchange appeared to make it seem as if the House speaker had confirmed the wiretap allegations about Trump Tower.

"There's a report that June 2016, there's a FISA request by the Obama administration, foreign intelligence surveillance court, to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several other campaign officials," Baier said. "Then they get turned down, and then in October they renew it and they do start a wiretap at Trump Tower with some computer and Russian banks and it doesn't show up anything, by reporting. Have you heard that?"

Ryan, speaking from Janesville, Wisconsin, answered that he had no proof any Trump officials had colluded with Russia.

Here's how the exchange progressed (emphasis added):

Ryan: "Well, again, like I said, none of us in Congress or anybody I know in Congress has been presented with anything to the contrary of what you just said."

Baier: "So you believe it to be true?"

Ryan: "Yeah, we have seen no evidence that anybody in this campaign or any other American was in on it with the Russians to meddle in our elections. ..."

Baier: "I got it, but by point is is that the Obama administration was pretty aggressive, a couple of FISA requests."

Ryan: "No, I hear your point. I see nothing of that. I've seen nothing come of that. That's my point."

It was reported previously that Trump was presented with a Breitbart article discussing claims of wiretapping that originated on conservative radio host Mark Levin's program. Trump reportedly posted the tweets after he was presented with the Breitbart piece.

But in his interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson Wednesday night, Trump also repeatedly mentioned Baier as a source of his claims.

"I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping," Trump said. "I said, wait a minute, there's a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I've been seeing a lot of things."

"And I think if you watch  if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name," he later added. "He mentioned it. And other people have mentioned it."

Speaking at his Thursday news conference, Ryan was asked about Trump's Carlson interview, which the House speaker said he had not seen. Ryan said the claims from Trump were found to lack evidence, based on statements from the leading members of the House Intelligence Committee.

He also said he was unaware of the claims until asked by Baier in his Fox interview.

"After we heard about this, we did see a number of press reports that made this allegation, that made this suggestion," Ryan said. "So, yeah, those press reports did exist. Frankly, I didn't know about it until Bret Baier asked me about it. So this was something I was unaware of until we did see a few press reports on this."
Trump tweeted earlier this month, without presenting evidence, that Obama had Trump Tower's "wires tapped" during the presidential campaign.

"Fifty-one thousand people retweeted that," Carlson said. "So a lot of people thought that was plausible. They believe you. You're the president  you're in charge of the agencies. Every intelligence agency reports to you. Why not immediately go to them and gather evidence to support that?"

The White House released a statement shortly after Trump leveled the accusations "requesting that ... the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016."

Many experts have said, however, that Trump could find out immediately if a warrant had been obtained by the Obama administration to surveil Trump Tower. There is no indication that the White House has directly asked the FBI whether that warrant exists.

Trump told Carlson that he didn't "want to do anything that's going to violate any strength of an agency."

"We have enough problems," he said. "We will be submitting certain things, and I will be perhaps speaking about this next week, but it's right now before the committee, and I think I want to leave it. I have a lot of confidence in the committee."

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, on Wednesday said the committee had not found any evidence to support Trump's claim that Obama had Trump Tower's phones tapped.

Carlson doubled down, asking why Trump wouldn't have waited "to tweet about it until you can prove it."

"Don't you devalue your words when you can't provide evidence?" Carlson asked.

Trump said he tweeted the accusation because he had read about wiretapping in The New York Times and heard Fox News anchor Bret Baier "mention the word 'wiretap.'"

"Well, because The New York Times wrote about it," Trump said. "Not that I respect The New York Times. I call it the 'failing New York Times.' But they did write on January 20 using the word 'wiretap.'"

The New York Times reported on January 19 that the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the CIA were investigating possible links between Trump associates and Russian officials based partly on intercepted communications that had been obtained via wiretapping. The Times did not report that Obama had ordered the wiretapping, or that the wiretapping had directly targeted Trump associates.

Instead, Trump's tweets appeared to have been based largely on a Breitbart article that had been placed in his reading pile before he tweeted. The article based its claims on a theory floated by the conservative radio host Mark Levin that Obama had mounted a "silent coup" against Trump using "police state" tactics that included wiretapping.

Carlson again told Trump that he was the president and therefore had "the ability to gather all the evidence" he wanted.

"I do. I do. But I think that, frankly, we have a lot right now," Trump said. "And I think if you watch  if you watched Bret Baier and what he was saying, and what he was talking about, and how he mentioned the word 'wiretap,' you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it. And other people have mentioned it."

Trump said that in the tweet, the words "wires tapped" were in quotes. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last week that Trump meant the Obama administration had been surveilling him generally, not that "President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally."

"Don't forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes," Trump told Carlson. "That really covers  because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff, but that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that's a very important thing. But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks."

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that he had "seen no evidence of illegality of any electronic surveillance" and that "there was no substance to the accusation that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower."

Nunes, the House intelligence chair, said FBI Director James Comey had still not told the committee directly whether the bureau had sought and obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil anyone who might have communicated with Trump associates during the campaign. Nunes said Comey had agreed to testify at a public House Intelligence Committee hearing next week about the FBI's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

The FBI also briefed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon.
According to Dr. Bawumia his visit was borne out of governments desire to chart a new course and solve the challenges facing the Authority.

READ ALSO: New MiDA board under pressure to list ECG on the stock market

If you look at corruption in the sector, I say probably 95 per cent plus of it is from procurement, and so we are trying to give the public procurement authority as much as we can to execute its mandate. The Chief Executive has basically made it clear that he wants to chart a new course which is what we want to support.

He reiterated that the NPP administration will ensure due diligence and value for money in every procurement.

For every procurement, there is going to be due diligence and value for money. This is new and a new team is going to be set up here to do this.

Dr. Bawumiah also hinted of governments plans to run the activities of the authority through the use technology so as to ensure transparency in the procurement process.

The procurement authority say, it is putting measures in place to ensure that every procurement will have its identification number which can be easily tracked.

This the authority believes will breed some transparency in procurement.

READ ALSO: Parliament approves tax cut bills

The NPP administration has appointed Adwoa Sarfo as the Minister of state in charge of public procurement.

She is the Member of Parliament for Dome Kwabenya, and Deputy Majority Leader.
Like many other Ghanaians, A Plus real name Kwame Asare Obeng, thinks Nana Addo's government is too huge for a small country like Ghana.

"Ghana does not need many career politicians in the government, we need many volunteers."

The UK has a population of about 65 million and the Kingdom is effectively being run by about 105 ministers including cabinet members even in its "chaotic" post-Brexit state.

Ghana has a population of just about 27 million, yet we appoint 110 ministers to run it? Perhaps, our problems are "plenty" so we need more hands but we all know the [cost]. While a huge number of the UK ministers ride trains and public transport to work, our own will be riding in total luxury.

And the irony is, we will go and beg this same UK for aid and grant so our plenty high maintenance ministers will continue to enjoy their lavish lives, funded by the state.
The award-winning actor revealed this in an interview with Hitz FM.

"You can visit Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital to check on the patients. From there you can also visit Manhyia to see Otumfour.

READ ALSO: Ghanaian actress says she was a lesbian

Kojo Bonsus park he established around Golden Tulip Hotel (Rattaray Park) is also there for the tourist. Tafo cemetery is the biggest in the world.

READ ALSO: Ed Sheeran just rated Fuse ODG above all the artistes he met in Ghana

Kumasi Mall they are building is also a tourist site Lilwin told MzGee.
According to the veteran actor who is currently responding to treatment.

Im currently doing well and I have been discharged from the 37 Military Hospitalsbutthe doctor has advised me to abstain from sex and any form of hard work.

The veteran actor was rushed to the Trust Hospital in Osu by a coconut seller in what is suspected to be mild stroke on Friday, 3rd March, 2017 but was later referred to the 37 Military Hospital.

READ ALSO: Jujuman ends up at intensive care unit after daring someone to shoot him

Speaking to broadcast journalist, Kofi Adoma Wawani, he emotionally narrated a recent near-death ordeal. He admitted he was basically deceased and only made it out of the jaws of death due to a timely divine intervention.

We had gone for rehearsals to prepare for the Ghana at 60 celebrations. When we closed and I got home, I started feeling uncomfortable. I woke up at dawn but didnt look at the time. I realized my heart was beating and was sweating profusely which I hadnt encountered before so I was worried.

Waakye further asked for public support saying, he spends over Ghc 800 on medication every week which he said has extremely crippled his finances.
The middle-aged man was rushed to the hospital after his expensive stunt as one of the fishes known as pond loaches had swum up into his abdomen, broken through the bowel wall causing severe abdominal pain.

ALSO READ: Drunk man tries to have sex with postbox

Daily Mail reports revealed that man claimed to have been drinking on March 10 and put the fishes into his body by himself.

Following signs of low blood pressure and severe stomach pain, the man whose identity has been withheld, was rushed to the hospital.

After carrying out an abdominal digital radiography, the loaches were located.

Surgeons diagnosed the patient with perforation of the intestine and was at risk of septic shock due to infection.

The Doctors were able to find one but only identified a wound on the intestinal wall giving a clue as to where the second loach had gone.

Speaking with reporters, the doctors said that the second pond loach was found stuck in the upper left section of the patient's abdomen.

One of the doctors said:

"The second fish is four inches long and 0.8 inches wide. He could have lost his life if this loach swam further and reached upper organs.

"The fish had caused serious infection in the patient's abdominal area and he has now been transferred to intensive care for further treatment."
The accused, whose address is unknown, is facing a three count charge of armed robbery, impersonation and unlawful possession of Army camouflage.

The prosecutor, Insp. Sunday Eigbejiale, told the court that the accused committed the offences on March 1 at about 5.00 p.m. behind the Railway Police Station, Lafenwa, Abeokuta.

Eigbegiale said that the accuse, armed with a toy gun, allegedly robbed a man, Abdullahi Ibrahim, of his Intel phone valued at N12,000 and N4,000 cash.

He alleged that on the same day and place at about 6.20 p.m. the accused unlawfully had in his possession a pair of army camouflage and shorts.

The accused also impersonated a military officer by putting on an army camouflage.

The prosecutor said that the accused was arrested by a police officer in Lafenwa, Abeokuta.

The offences contravened Section 1 (2),(a) of the Robbery and Firearms Act. Laws of the Federation, 2004 and Sections 109 and 430 of the Criminal Code, Laws of Ogun State, 2006.

Magistrate Oriyomi Sofowora, who did not take the plea of the accused, ordered that the accused be remanded in prison pending his release on bail and legal advice from the State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) which effected the arrests has given the names of the four policemen as RSM John Sovor, Corporal Baleto Buafuor, Lance Corporal Ignatius Asamoah Mensah, Detective Lance Corporal Cyrus Conduah, Detective Corporal John Maloni Juaba  all stationed at the East Legon Police Station and Detective Sergeant Charles Owusu Boateng of the Achimota School Police Station.

The civilian suspects are Anthony Yaw Osei, alias Wofa; Frederick Kofi Appiah, alias Nana Agyei; William Hansua and George Yeboah, Nana Kofi Mensah, Joseph Boakye and Nana Adjei.

READ MORE: Court grants accused bail over alleged marriage scam

Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Cephas Arthur, said the police personnel and their civilian counterparts were arrested for their involvement in two separate gold fraud cases.

He said the complainant in the gold deal that exposed DSP Basintale was Green Global Resources, a licensed dealer in gold and other minerals.

Supt Arthur said in November last year, the company contacted one Adedayo Jalil Adedotum to assist it to purchase gold bars for export.

After he had agreed to help, Adedayo arranged a meeting among the company, its bankers, Courage Gesepe, a gold dealer, and another person whose name was given only as Frank, also a gold dealer.

During the meeting, Gesepe offered 20 kilogrammes of gold for sale at $31,000 per kilogramme, to which the company agreed, but requested that it would have to test the gold.

Green Global Resource on November 10, 2016, reportedly contacted one Adedayo Jelil Adedotum, a businessman, who has a track record in the purchase of gold to assist them buy gold.

Mr. Adedayo then arranged a meeting for officials of the company and suspects Courage Gegepe and one Frank, who claimed to be a gold seller, at a hotel in Accra.

During the said meeting, Courage allegedly offered for sale to the Green Global officials 20 kilograms of gold at USD31,000 per a kilogram.

Two others, a chief and a queenmother from Tarkwa in the Western Region are currently at large
He noted that government will deal with the menace if not Ghana may soon lose all of its water bodies.

The galamsey operation has led to an indiscriminate and rampant pollution of the country's water bodies and must be addressed head-on.

Contributing to discussions at an event on the theme: "Efficient Utilisation of Natural Resources for Sustainable Socio Economic Growth in the Country", he said the recent water crisis in the country is as a result of illegal mining.

The galamsey menace continues to serve as a threat to water bodies, aquatic life and agriculture in the country, however several efforts by government including setting up an inter-ministerial taskforce in the previous administration proved futile.

Dr Bawumia said "The scourge of galamsey is something that we are all witnesses to. Its very disturbing. If you go across the country and look at what is happening to our water bodies they are essentially red in colour Water treatment plants have been shut down in a few places because of the pollutants in the water and the impact of galamsey. This is not something that as a country we should take lightly.

READ ALSO: Police officers arrested for robbing miners

"The water shortages that we are seeing across this country are very much linked to environmental degradation and the scourge of galamsey and illegal small-scale mining in the vicinity of many water bodies in this country. Weve been in office for about two months now and the president has requested that we come up with a policy paper. Some experts are currently working on this, specifically on galamsey.

"It will have to take a lot of political will to deal with it, but it has to be dealt with because the damage is going to be irreparable if we leave it as it is," he added.
President Nana Akufo-Addo appointed Osei Assibey Antwi as the Metropolitan Chief Executive of the KMA.

Osei Assibey Antwi polled 132 votes out of 133 ballots cast.

Only one vote was rejected.

Profile:

Hon.Osei Assibey Antwi was born some 52years ago at Kuwawu Wonoo.

He holds MBA in Marketing.

He is a certified Member of the Institute of Commercial Management.

Mr Assibey was the Former Deputy Regional Minister from 2006 t0 2009 January.

He was the Assistant Inspector of Taxes responsible for Financial and Administrative at Ghana Revenue Authority the then IRS.

He has richly endowed with Governance and Leadership Trustworthy and Reliable ethically team player.

He has an In-depth appreciation of work relating to Local Government Administration.

Over 20 years working experience in a senior management position within the public and private sector.

READ ALSO: KMA finally gets Presiding Member

As a member of the NPP, he has been the V-16 National Director of operations in 2016 till today.

He was the V-16 Zonal Coordinator for Ashanti and BA regions Director of operations for Ashanti regional campaign team in election 2016.

Mr Assibey was the Ashanti regional 1st vice chairman NPP 2004-2008.
A close family source told Accra-based radio station, Citi Fm that she was admitted on Thursday, 16th March 2017 after her situation worsened when she returned from court.

Ms Boakye was also said to have been receiving treatment at the same facility for her post stress and trauma disorder before she was admitted.

A lawyer for the victim, Francis Xavier Sosu has revealed that he plans to file a civil suit against the owners of Marwako Fast Food after the culprit, Jihad Chabaan was granted bail by an Accra Magistrate court on Thursday. He also noted that the suit and other actions will be under the instruction of Evelyn and her family.
The aftermath of the partys defeat has been characterized by uncertainties, with a committee being set up to investigate the reasons for their loss.

However, with the committee still yet to present its final report, the partys flagbearer for the last elections has called for calm, insisting with hard work the NDC will soon be back in power.

According to him, the cause of the NDCs loss is multifaceted, while issuing a rallying call on all supporters and members to help strengthen the partys base.

TWEET

In a tweet, John Mahama wrote: The NDC will bounce back!! Cause of our loss is multifaceted. We need calm nerves & hard work to strengthen the base of party.

Most party members have been faced with the uncertainty of whether Mahama was still interested in contesting on the partys ticket come 2020.
He explained that the problems facing the country, with the persistent decline in the agricultural sector, low growth rate, major issues of corruption and leakage of revenue, demanded bold and ambitious measures to address them.

READ MORE: This is why Nana Addo has appointed 110 ministers

According to him, "I dont believe that my government in the Fourth Republic has big numbers in view of the swollen challenges."

In an interview with the Daily Graphic and Ghana Television (GTV) at the Flagstaff House, President Akufo-Addo said "These are the background and circumstances that were facing my government and the people of Ghana, hence they need a new paradigm shift to solve the problems.

READ MORE: Nana Addo names deputy ministers

"We have a problem and what is the best way? It is better to have men and women capable of serving the nations interest and work to grow the economy. If I succeed, you will soon find out that the brouhaha is nothing, compared to the success."

READ ALSO: Nana Addo releases list of 50 deputy ministers

"If I succeed, you will soon find out that the brouhaha is nothing, compared to the success, he added.

Some Ghanaians have since argued that the ministerial appointments are too many and would be a waste of the tax payers money.

The President, Nana Akufo-Addo has named 110 ministerial and deputy nominees, some are yet to be vetted and approved by parliament.
According to him, the President has broken no law in appointing 110 ministers.

Ghanaians have since argued that the ministerial appointments are too many and would be a waste of the tax payers money.

But the former MP in an interview on Accra-based Citi FM said, "I am speaking like a Ghanaian. The thing is that, we have a constitution and our politics is being ruled by a constitution. If the President decides that within the bounds of the constitution to appoint many Ministers, thats up to him. But the thing is that, it is within the constitutional mandate. So there is nothing wrong with that."

The President has come under heavy criticisms for appointing 110 ministers, deputies and ministers of state of which some ministries have more than two deputies.

Mr Fritz Baffuor said it is too early to criticise the President based on the number of appointees.

He added that Nana Addo can only be criticised if he fails to deliver his promises made to Ghanaians.

"But the thing is that, if he has a very a large number of appointees and you dont deliver, then you are in trouble. Thats what I am saying.
Anyidoho was however known to have a very good relationship with John Mahamas predecessor, John Evans Atta Mills.

In an interview with Accra-based GHOne TV Anyidoho reiterated his love and dedication to John Mills.

I will never regret working for him President Mills, I salute you in your grave. Nobody will take that away from me, he declared.

When asked whether the love was translated John Mahama after the demise of John Mills, he said they had an obligatory working relationship.

He stated that he loved the NDC as a party and that leadership will rotate adding that I loved President Mills; I worked for President Mahama.

John Mills died on July 24, 2012, making him the first President to die in office. He died at the 37 Military Hospital aged 68.

He had reportedly been battling with throat cancer and in the days leading up to his death, he had been in the US for some medical attention.

As Ghanas constitution demands, John Mahama, who was the Vice-President, took the oath of office as Head of State before parliament hours after the announcement of Mills death.
As a result, the companies that make insulin have been under fire from the public and politicians including US Senator Bernie Sanders.

In response, one of those insulin-makers, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, said Thursday that it's partnered with CVS Caremark to provide $25 vials of insulin, roughly $100 less than the list price.

The insulins that will be part of the deal for now are Novolin R, Novolin N and Novolin 70/30. These are human insulins, which scientists discovered in the 1970s. It uses recombinant DNA to manufacture real human insulin, so that it no longer had to come from animals.

It's the precursor to a type of insulin called analogue, the most prescribed insulin at the moment. Analogue insulins are slight variations of human insulin that aim to help diabetics' bodies function more closely to how they would if they were able to produce the insulin themselves, and they tend to be more expensive than the human insulins.

The $25 insulin prescription savings program is the first step as part of Novo's pledge to keep out of pocket costs low to consumers. In December 2016, Novo also said it will limit all future drug list price increases from the company to single digit percentages.

"Were committed to developing sustainable solutions with customers and will continue to pursue opportunities to ensure that patients have access to insulin that is affordable," Doug Langa, senior vice president and head of North America operations at Novo said in a news release.

In December, Novo's rival, Lilly began offering more than 40% discounts off the list price of its insulins through an app called Blink Health, which lets users pre-pay for your prescriptions to lock in discounts.

The partnership comes at a time when the high list prices for prescription drugs has been called into question, with many focusing on the role that middlemen including pharmacy benefits managers  like CVS Caremark  play in that rising price. Pharmacy benefit managers are the companies responsible for negotiating rebates to the prices drugmakers set, and they are meant to favor the most effective drug. This is meant to help keep prices low.

Many question how effective they are at doing that, especially when it comes to people with high deductible health plans who are on the hook for the full list price of the drug.
Last January, Netflix CPO Neil Hunt told Business Insider that Netflix wanted to do away with the stars, since it considered it a bad rating system.

The problem, Hunt said, is that people subconsciously try to be critics. When they rate a movie or show from one to five stars, they fall into trying to objectively assess the quality, instead of basing the stars on how much enjoyment they got out of it.

Here's an example. Let's say you had fun watching a crappy movie, but still gave it a two-star rating because you know it's not a "good" film. That presents Netflix with a problem. The system thinks you hated the movie.

Hunt told Business Insider that the two methods Netflix was tinkering with were a simple like/dislike signal and some form of percent match.
Fayemi made the disclosure on Thursday, March 16, during a town hall meeting in Lagos.

The steel industry still remains the backbone of industrialization in any country. Any country that wants to make headway in manufacturing and industrialization must pay particular attention to steel development, Fayemi said according to The Nation.

In Nigeria, we utilize about 7 million metric tons of steel on annual basis and we produce less than 3million tons and from scrap mainly. And even the scrap is being depleted now; so we run the risk of depending almost solely on importation.

We spend over $3.5 billion importing steel products into Nigeria annually; you can see the opportunity cost and the importance of ensuring that Ajaokuta comes on stream.

Thats why government has been determined to ensure that the litigation around it was resolved and we can put it to those who have the technical knowledge and financial capacity to intervene and bring it to life in a manner that liquid steel can be produced from our own iron ore endowment in the country.

Then the liquid steel will be made available to rolling mills across the length and breadth of Nigeria to use for direct steel production rather than depending on scrap metals.

The timeline for the Expression of Interest (EoI) will happen in the next six months. Im not saying we are bringing it to life in the next six month but the process of those who have an interest in coming to put Ajaokuta into practical use within the period I mentioned. We have had a number of players both local and foreign that have shown interest, he added.

ALSO READ: Fayemi distributes rice, cash to Ekiti residents for yuletide celebration
The conference is billed to hold on March 31st, 2017 at theOriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The event themed Social Media: Language of Expression is opened to other industry key players such as company social media managers, content creators, social media enthusiasts, web designers, graphic designers, SEO Analysts and others.

The conference which will serve as a convergence point for individuals and organisations leading the charge in the Nigerian social media space will feature Japheth Omojuwa; Mercy Aigbe- Gentry; Aliyu Giwa; Tosin Ajibade; Osagie Alonge and Olusola Amusan.

Others are the Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Red Media Africa, Sola Obagbemi; Founder Slum2School Africa, Otto Orondaam; International Development Specialist, Dayo Israel; CEO of LifeBank, Temie Giwa Tubosun and more.

Speaking on the purpose of the conference, Olufemi Oguntamu, CEO of Penzaarville Africa said: Over the years, we have looked for avenues that people with common interests can meet to share innovative ideas on the future of social media, that is why we created Handle it Africa".

The conference will bridge the gap between innovation, communication and development, hence facilitating the growth of industry at large, he concluded.
The duo of Babatunde, 23, and Bashorun, 19, were sentenced to eight months each after they pleaded guilty to the charges of breach of public peace, damage and conspiracy.

The Magistrate, Mr A. A. Adesanya, who pronounce the verdict, gave them eight months on each of the counts, but ordered that the sentences should run concurrently.

You are hereby sentenced to eight months imprisonment each without an option of fine, he ruled.

Babatunde and Bashoru had during their arraignment on March 7 admitted that they committed the offences, attributing it to the handiwork of the Devil.

The accused urged the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing them.

When the case came up on Thursday for facts and sentence, they still admitted guilt and the court sent them to prison.

Earlier, the prosecutor, Insp. George Nwosu, told the court that the accused with some others still at large committed the offences on March 4 at the popular transportation hub, Oshodi, Lagos.

Nwosu said the accused also conducted themselves in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace by destroying a commercial bus with registration no. AKD 616 XA.

The accused willfully damaged the front and rear windscreens and all the windows of the bus.

Nwosu said the driver of the bus, who accidentally hit somebody, abandoned it and ran away when he saw some miscreants running toward him.

The vehicle hit one miscreant, popularly called `area boy under the bridge at Oshodi and some of the hoodlums decided to damage the vehicle with stones, sticks, iron rods and other weapons.

When the police team got to the scene, some of the accused persons were arrested, while the others escaped, he said.
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The accused, who lives at Midland Estate in Amuwo-Odofin, a suburb of Lagos, is facing a charge of attempted rape at an Ikeja Chief Magistrates Court.

The accused, according to the prosecutor, Insp. Clifford Ogu, committed the offence on Feb.3 at his apartment.

Ogu said the accused accommodated the 17-year-old girl in his house when she was stranded.

The man took advantage of the girls situation and made an attempt to rape her.

It was the girls screaming that attracted neighbours, who moved in and got the accused apprehended, he told the court.

The offence contravened Section 260 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

The accused, however, denied the charge.
In his address, Trump quoted his favourite proverb which he said was Irish. "As we stand together with our Irish friends, Im reminded of an Irish proverb  and this is a good one, this is one I like, Ive heard it for many, many years and I love it. Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue, but never forget to remember those that have stuck by you" said President Trump.

The problem with this proverb that it isn't Irish. People on Twitter immediately picked on the wrong attribution.

After some research it was discovered that the proverb was actually from a poem titled 'Remember To Forget'. Nigerian writer Albashir Adam Alhassan actually wrote the poem.

You can read the full poem below;

Always remember to forget,

The things that make you sad,

But never forget to remember,

The things that make you glad.

Always remember to forget,

The friends that proved untrue,

But never forget to remember,

Those that have stuck to you.

Always remember to forget,

The trouble that passed away,

But never forget to remember,

The blessings that come each day.

Always remember to do your duty,

And some kindness day by day,

But never forget to live a useful and happy life,

That is the only way.

Albashir Adam Alhassan was born in Kano in the mid 80s but is from Niger state. He attended the Aminu Kano Commercial College, Kano and Bayero University Kano.
The decomposing corpse suspected to be his was found in a bush in Umunede, along the Benin/Asaba Expressway, one month after he was abducted, Punch reports.

According to the reports, some of the kidnappers reportedly behind the abduction of the SP while he was on his way back to his duty post in Asaba from Agbo, Delta state, have been arrested and have admitted to the murder.

Punch reports that SP Mbalu was abducted at about 4 pm on March 5, 2017, after spending the weekend with his family in Agbor.

The deceased was reportedly kept incommunicado by his abductors until the Police Command received the news of his death on Friday, March 17, 2017.

However, the state commissioner of police, CP Zannah Ibrahim, discredited the news of the officer's death, claiming that the information lacked credibility.

CP Ibrahim added, Its not true. We are still investigating his abduction. If somebody dies, are we going to hide it? All these stories are hear-say.

ALSO READ: Police superintendent found murdered in car

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a reliable source revealed that the decomposing corpse was found on Friday morning and the command has been gloomy over the discovery.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the suspects are from Kot ward in Tambes village of Pankshin, where the two women were killed on Feb. 17, 2017.

Mr Tyopev Terver, the Plateau Police Commands Publice Relations Officer (PPRO), who confirmed the incident on Thursday in Jos, also confirmed the arrest and detention of the suspects.

Terver claimed that two of the suspects had confessed to committing the crime.

We are investigating the case; two of the suspects have already confessed to committing the crime.

The Criminal Investigation Department is currently handling the matter; as soon as we are through with our investigation, we shall charge the suspects to court, he added.

NAN sources indicated that the trouble began in November 2016, when a girl in Kot ward took ill and was reported to have repeatedly mentioned the name of the husband of the deceased.

When the girl died, the man was accused of killing her through witch craft, one of the sources said.

The source continued: The man was forced to carry the corpse of the girl to her grave and was later banished from the village.

The man felt that he had been wrongly accused and challenged his banishment in court where the matter is ongoing.

But on Feb. 17, 2017, the mans wife and daughter were killed in their compound by unknown person.

The source further said that the matter was reported to the Divisional Police Office, Pankshin, which swung into action and arrested six persons suspected to have a link with the incident.

We have gone very far in our investigation and shall fish out the killers and bring them to justice, Terver told NAN.
The Pepsodent Oral Health Walk which kicked-off from Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba through to Ojuelegba is in line with the activities leading up to celebrate this years World Oral Health Day Celebration themed Live Mouth Smart.

"The oral health walk is part of Unilevers vision to help millions of Nigerian families adopt the best oral health practices, said Ibironke Ugbaja, Oral Care Category Lead, Unilever Nigeria.

Since the launch of the Pepsodent Oral Health Schools program in 2014, Unilever Nigeria has so far reached 2.5 million Nigerian children directly in over 3,500 public primary schools with products (toothpaste and toothbrushes) educational materials and a 21-days oral hygiene program, teaching them to imbibe the culture of brushing twice-daily using a fluoride containing toothpaste such as Pepsodent. Our goal is to reach 10 million children by 2020, she concluded.

Sensitization materials, Pepsodent toothpaste and toothbrushes were handed over to commuters and residents within the neighbourhood of the areas covered by the health walk.

Addressing journalists during the walk, the President, Nigerian Dental Association, Dr. Olabode Ijarogbe said: The health work is part of efforts to prevent and check the spread of oral diseases.

He further emphasized that it is imperative that Nigerians brush twice a day and the annual health walk is one of the ways we create awareness about oral hygiene and its importance.

The 2017 celebration of World Oral Health Day is set to take place on Monday March 20, 2017 at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.
The victims were shot dead inside their vehicle and left in the pool of their own blood.

ALSO READ: Police superintendent found murdered in car

Daily Monitor reports that the government spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, revealed details of the attack. Although the motive behind the killings is unclear, the assailants reportedly used "powerful weapons" seeing as they knew that the victims were armed.

According to eyewitnesses, the shooting lasted for over 10 minutes, and there had been at least 50 shots.

The culprits reportedly shot at the police car from both sides.

Confirming the incident to the Daily Monitor, Presidential Press Secretary, Linda Nabusayi said:

"It is true and it's so sad."

Daily Monitor reports that the Inspector-General of Police Kale Kayihura and other senior security officers rushed to the scene of the murder to ascertain what could have happened.

The Police spokesperson who doubled as the Director Human Resource was appointed the Special Police Spokesman by IGP Kayihura in August 2016.

ALSO READ: Decorated officer killed in shootout with robbery gang
Obi, whose address is unknown, is being tried for damage and stealing.

According to the prosecutor, Insp. Clement Okuoimose, the accused committed the offences on March 5 at Shoprite premises, Alausa, Ikeja, near the Lagos State Government Secretariat.

He said the accused vandalised a Lexus Jeep to steal a right side water spray sensor valued at N15,000, property of the complainant, Mr Kingsley John.

Okuoimose said the complainant parked his car at Shoprite to buy some things and also watch a movie at the Silverbird galleria.

The accused went to where the complainant parked his car at the parking lot and damaged the car and stole water spray sensor.

He was caught by security personnel at the complex, who handed him over to the police, he said.

The offences contravened Sections 285 and 348 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015 (revised).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Section 285 prescribes three years jail term for offenders.

The accused pleaded innocence of the offences.

The Magistrate, Mrs Y.O. Ekogbule, granted bail to the accused in the sum of N10,000 with one surety in like sum.

She said the surety must be gainfully employed and show evidence of two years tax payment to the Lagos State Government.
The disclosure was made by the Commissioner of Police, Bauchi State Command, Garba Umar, during a press conference at his office on Thursday, March 16, 2017, Punch reports.

He spoke of the progress made by the command in stemming the flow of kidnap, rape and armed robbery in the state.

Umar said that the suspects, Sani Abubakar, 39, and Usman Hassan, 33, both of Dutsen Tanshi, were arrested on March 8th, 2017 at about 9:00 am for gang-raping the minor in question.

The CP said, The suspects lured a six-year-old girl and had unlawful carnal knowledge with her at a Primary School in Dutsen Tanshi.

Unfortunately, two of the suspects are the victims teachers at the same Primary School.

In a similar development, a 20-year-old man was arrested by police officers attached to the Burra Division, on 12th March, 2017, in Burra town in Ningi Local Government Area of Bauchi State for raping his 4-year-old relative.
The young man identified as Kawan Okoye Gaidowsky admitted to driving a gray, 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt up next to a woman in the Shopko parking lot, pulling out his penis and masturbating in front of her on Wednesday, March 15, around 8:42 a.m., the police said.

ALSO READ: Austrian Woman Fined For Roaming Naked

The woman identified as Ashlee Libolt, who was accosted by the young man, reported the situation to the police with the car's description and license plate.

Following the report, an officer checked the car's record's and discovered that it was registered to Gaidowsky.

Gaidowsky admitted his actions to the police of his own free will while he was being interviewed by the police.

He added that he also exposed himself to two other female victims who found themselves trapped in his public nudity.

According to the police, one of the incidents occurred last month while the third was not reported.

One Sgt. Les James revealed that Okoye was subsequently arrested for investigation of indecent exposure and booked at the Shasta County Jail.

According to the police reports, there may be more victims because Okoye had agreed that it was hardly the first time he had exposed himself in public.
This is contained in a statement issued by Mrs Akinola Boade, the Director, Media and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Health, on Friday in Abuja.

She said the explanation followed a stakeholders meeting summoned by the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, to address related issues on the recent court judgment on the case filed by Fijabi Holdings against the Nigeria Bottling Company and NAFDAC.

Adewole explained that both benzoic acid and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) were ingredients approved by International Food Safety regulators and used in many food and beverage products around the world.

Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) is the organisation established by Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to set internationally recognised standards, codes of practice, guidelines relating to foods, food production and food safety.

In the case of benzoic acid, the standard set by Codex was 600mg/kg until recently reviewed to 250mg/kg and adopted in 2016.

With reference to the Codex standard and other relevant documents, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in consultation with and relevant stakeholders elaborated the standard of benzoic acid in soft drinks to be at 250mg/kg based on the national climatic and storage conditions.

This standard has been in existence since 1997 and revised in 2008, the levels of benzoic acid in Fanta (1 batch) and Sprite (2 batches) presented by the claimant in the court are 188.64mg/kg, 201.06mg/kg and 161.5mg/kg, respectively, he said.

The minister stressed that the levels were in compliance with both the Codex and Nigeria Industrial Standards, stressing that the Coca-Cola products manufactured in Nigeria were safe for consumption in view of the following reasons:

Risk assessment was conducted to ascertain maximum limits of food additives acceptable in foods. This takes into consideration the environmental, storage and distribution conditions as well as the shelf life of food products.

NAFDAC and SON regularly monitor the manufacturing practices of food industries and conduct laboratory analysis to ascertain continuous compliance with required national standards.

There was a routine inspection conducted at Nigeria Bottling Company by NAFDAC officers in December 2016, which was satisfactory.

With reference to the Codex standards, each country or region is permitted to adapt a standard and limit based on country specific scientific evidence such as environmental, storage and distribution conditions, he added.

Adewole noted that benzoic acid as a preservative prevents the growth of micro-organisms which thrive more at higher climatic temperatures like in Nigeria.

He said that due to the different environmental conditions obtainable in the UK, the standard for benzoic acid was set at a lower limit of 150mg/kg, while in Nigeria it was set at 250mg/kg even below that of Codex (as at time of production of that batch; Codex limit was 600mgkg).

Besides, the minister said that food products being imported into a country must comply with the relevant standards of the destination country.

ALSO READ: Taking Vitamin C with Fanta or Sprite is dangerous

He said NAFDAC has processes in place to ensure products imported into the country are evaluated to ascertain compliance with required Nigeria Industrial Standards.

Adewole further said that the claimant did not obtain NAFDAC certification before export; otherwise, he would have been advised on the required standard of the destination country.

He therefore advised Nigerians to take medicines with potable water as this would help to prevent unexpected drug-food interactions.
A Lagos court has ordered the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to pay a N2 million fine after it found that drinking Fanta or Sprite with Vitamin C posed a health risk.

I have instructed NAFDAC to liaise with SON to address Nigerians immediately concerning the safety of Coca-Cola products made in Nigeria, Adewole said via Twitter.

Is Coca-Cola being produced in Nigeria safe? Is the acidity level acceptable? What is the difference between Coca-Cola products in Nigeria and the United Kingdom?

The issue goes beyond legal aspects of the court verdict. It is about morality. Nigerians can trust us to put their safety first. God bless, he added.

ALSO READ:Don urges NAFDAC to enforce standard in garri production
The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja that the new strain, which is not common in Nigeria, was imported from Niger Republic.

He described the outbreak of meningitis in Sokoto and Zamfara states as an unfortunate incidence, stressing that the ministry is working hard to contain the situation.

It has become an annual ritual under this administration; we would want to put an end to annual outbreak of meningitis in some of the northern states.

I have just spoken with the commissioner for health in Zamfara who is appreciative of what the Federal Ministry of Health has been doing through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

We have sent field epidemiologists; they are actually called disease detectives, to support them at the state level, Adewole said.

The minister said that government have provided vaccines and would continue to do more in terms of whatever was needed with respect to material and technical support to overcome the outbreak.

What we know in public health is that there is always an outbreak, but what is uncertain is where and the type.

We want to be ready at any time, he said.

Adewole said he has scheduled a meeting with the commissioners of health from the Northern states to plan a resilient and strong strategy to put an end to meningitis outbreak in the country.

He said all the states in northwest region are prone to the disease and the states would be treated equally when confronted by outbreaks such as this.

While calling for more vigilance, the minister appealed to Nigerians to report all cases of unusual fevers to health facilities and avoid overcrowding.

When people are coughing let them be referred to facilities, open windows and ensure that we do not get infected easily.

Children are more susceptible and when they have unusual fever they should also be referred to the hospital, Adcewole said.

According to him, many ailments like Lassa fever, meningitis and other diseases usually occur during the dry season and we expect many health challenges.

Global warming had changed many things; as far as we are concern we would be ready for many things, he said.

NAN recalls that an outbreak of CSM has claimed five lives in Gada and Wauru towns of Gada Local Government Area of Sokoto State.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr Balarabe Kakale, said that the victims died at the Gada General Hospital and Wauru Primary Health Centre.

He said: Three of the deaths were recorded at the Gada General hospital, while two were recorded at the Wauru PHC.
A Presidential source, who preferred not to be named, gave the clarification in Abuja, saying the No Fly Zone ban issued by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President is still in force.

The ban prohibits any helicopter flight into Abuja city, particularly the Three Arms Zone; military barracks, The Presidential Villa; other military establishments and the Central Business District, and around Abuja.

The source said in every country you have areas designated as `No Fly Zone and that is the case and Nigeria cannot be different.

He added that there was no time that the government lifted the `No Fly Zone order in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

According to him, the No Fly Zone ban has been there, and it is still there.

 I think there was a misinformation as to the order.

The true position is that Julius Berger Construction Company complained that it would be difficult for helicopters to land at the designated location at the airport claiming that such operation would delay and disrupt their work.

The excuse they gave was that helicopter landing at the airport would disrupt their work but we have insisted that the area designated for them to land must be made available and we have settled on that.

This is not the time for us to shut out anybody by denying them easy access to Abuja at this time the airport is closed.

That is why we compelled Julius Berger to open up the designated helicopter landing position at the airport.

We need investors in Nigeria at this time of our economic recession, and we must do everything to encourage them, the source stated.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Minister of State for Aviation Sen. Hadi Sirika, had on Wednesday announced that helicopters could now fly freely in and out of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja (NAIA).

Sirika, who was fielding questions from State House correspondents, however, stated that the office of the National Security Adviser had already modified its earlier directive banning the helicopters from the NAIA.

He said On the helicopter issue, the National Security Adviser has the constitutional responsibility vested on him by his Excellency Mr President to advise the president on national security matters."

He had earlier on sent out letters banning the helicopters operation into the airport but the NSA earlier this morning (Wednesday), said that helicopters would of course continue to fly to Abuja airport from wherever.

But the National Security Adviser announced earlier this morning that helicopters will of course continue to fly to Abuja airport from wherever.

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Then the procedure that they will use to approach the airport under landing spot will be advised accordingly before the end of (Wednesday) today.

This means that helicopters can come into Abuja and out bearing in mind that within the metropolitan city of Abuja, there are no-fly zones and this is very normal in every country.

They have areas where there are no-fly zones but the National Security Adviser this morning approved that helicopters should enter Abuja airport in and out.
The Magaji Nda of Ilorin, Alhaji Saliu Woru, represented the traditional ruler at the occasion.

Gambari said every Nigerian leader, either as the President, Governor, Senator or legislator deserved regular prayers from the people for God to guide him or aright in the herculean task of governance.

President Buhari is doing great work to sanitise the country and return it to the path of greatness.

Nigeria problems are not caused by this present Federal Government, they have always been there, Buhari just happen to come at the rough time.

We need to pray for pray for his health, Gods guidance, protection, wisdom and knowledge to lead the country, he said.

Earlier, the Chief Imam of Ilorin, Alhaji Mohammed Bashir, prayed to Allah to continue to give the President good health to be able to lead the country well.
According to Daily Post, Brimah said the cabal forced Buhari back to London so they could wield influence.

You will recall that the Governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, in a leaked memo to Buhari also spoke about the so-called cabal.

El-Rufai said Mr. President, there is a perception that our government has been captured by a shadowy public service/PDP cabal such that we have won elections but the country is still run largely by these elements that are hostile to you and to us all.

"Mr. President, there is an emerging view in the media that you are neither leading the party nor the administration and those neither elected nor accountable appear to be in charge, and therefore the country is adrift.

According to Brimah, President Muhammadu Buhari is not well. It is impossible to deny how severely emaciated, weak and discombobulated he has appeared since returning to Nigeria.

Buhari is clearly unable to fulfill the requirements of his office. The question is why the cabal bought him over, seeing how thin and weak he is.

The media had severally reported that the cabal had been trying hard to bundle Buhari over against medical advice. Finally they succeeded in bringing him down, giving him immense stress, potentially worsening his condition and putting his life at greater risk.

No one will bring his father or friend over, looking as Buhari does and stress him as they are. These cabal are extraordinarily wicked.

There is clear evidence the cabal are hurrying to use the exhausted and physically stressed president to sign themselves juicy deals and sign off Nigerias assets and oil endowment to themselves and their cronies at the expense of Buharis health and the nations progress.

If there is a time Nigeria needs Saraki the most, perhaps this is the time. Fortune and resistance have made and kept publicly indicted, embattled Saraki as Nigerias Senate president.

It is only the National assembly that can rescue Buhari from these predators and assist him to return to the United Kingdom as soon as possible to receive the health care and rest he deserves, protected from a greedy, insensitive exploitative cabal.

Nigeria is in grave risk as the cabal hurry to manipulate an indisposed, frail Buhari to sign away on documents he is unable to decipher.

The Senate is urged to assist Buhari and Nigeria by ensuring Buhari is protected from the mischievous, corrupt plots and relieved of the daunting task of manning the nation and allowed to rest and hopefully recover as medically advised.
The Senate, on Wednesday, March 15, refused to confirm Magu as the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The upper legislative chamber based its decision on a report by the Department of State Services (DSS) in which it accused Magu of corruption and said he had failed the integrity test.

Magu is a victim of the civil war in the Presidents kitchen cabinet. It is high time the President stood his feet to stop power blocs who are desirous of undermining and subverting his efforts, Sani said on Thursday, March 16, during a meeting with law students in Abuja.

But Buhari is alone in the fight against corruption in the sense there are many persons around him who are corrupt. They did not declare their assets publicly like the President, Osinbajo and myself, hiding under the secrecy law, he added.

Magu had earlier also been rejected by the Senate in December 2016, based on the same report.
Buhari also called on state Governors to use the funds to off-set the salaries of civil servants in their various states.

Speaking on the issue, the Executive Chairman of CACOL, Debo Adeniran expressed fear that the funds might be diverted for other purposes.

Adeniran also said We are impressed by the decision of the President to order the release of the loan Refund and the further instruction given by him that Governors should make sure that the funds gets to the end beneficiaries. But we recall the bail-out funds given out to some states previously by the Federal government never got to be used for the purpose they were meant to serve, that is, to pay arrears of workers salaries. The funds which were given to governors then in order to help people out of economic hardship were mismanaged by some state governors which increased the sufferings of the end beneficiaries at the end of the day.

Such funds are supposed to be sacred given the fact that the beneficiaries had served the country so loyally and diligently for years only to die of hunger at the hands of the operators of the states.

ALSO READ: 7 Govs reportedly under investigation by EFCC over alleged diversion of Paris Club loan refund

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offence Commission, ICPC and other anti-corruption agencies should be pro-active by keeping their lenses on the movement and handling of the funds and how it is been allocated in each state. This will help in reducing the impunity with which some the governors divert, mismanage or embezzle funds meant for specific purposes leading to socio-economic crisis that increases the sufferings of the ordinary Nigerian.
Dambazau made the disclosure at joint news conference in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the visit of Nigerian delegation to South Africa.

Dambazau and his Foreign Affairs counterpart, Geoffrey Onyeama had on Monday led a delegation to South Africa over the incessant xenophobic attacks on Nigerians living in that country.

He said he had a meeting with his counterpart, the Home Affairs Minister in South Africa and discussed general issues particularly on migration.

The minister said they also discussed Nigerians involved in some criminal activities.

These are in the minority because equally we have Nigerian professionals who are contributing positively to development of the economy of South Africa.

However, that is not to say that they should fold their arms and not to do something about somebody involved in criminality.

But in doing that, we emphasised that due process of the law should be taken in terms of the assumption of innocence, being proven guilty and in terms of fair hearing.

I understand that there are about 400 Nigerians who are in their prison for various offences, he said.

The minister said their offences included prostitution and drug, among others.

He said the offenders would finish their jail terms in South Africa because there was no prisoner exchange arrangement between Nigeria and South Africa as it were with some other countries.

He however said that efforts would be made to ensure that such arrangement was put in place in due course.

Dambazau said he also emphasised that due process of the law should be taken in dealing with suspected criminals.

When we met with the Nigerian community, we also emphasised that those who are involved in criminal behaviour should not be allowed to spoil the good names of themselves and Nigeria.

So they have that moral responsibility to report where necessary, he said.
Olukoya said that the NUT believed in dialogue and would not engage the state government in any litigation on the matter.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the state government sacked the three teachers and other people for allegedly organising a protest to disrupt the 2016 World Teachers Day celebration.

The three are the state NUT Chairman, Comrade Dare Ilekoya, Mr Eniola Atiku of St. Peters Primary School, Obafemi-Owode and Mr Nola Balogun of Oke Owa United Primary School, Ijebu Ode.

It also dismissed eight others, while 16 were suspended, based on the recommendations of a panel set up to investigate their individual roles during the celebration.

The state government, in its magnanimity, recalled some of the dismissed workers and pardoned all suspended workers, following intervention by stakeholders in the state.

Olukoya reiterated that none of the NUT members was part of any action against the government because the NUT declined to be part of the protest.

We believe that our appeals will be attended to by government. We believe that our teachers will be let off the hook. We believe that mediation is the best approach to resolve this problem.

Our language is to further appeal; we have made mistakes and we dont need to threaten or embark on industrial action against the state government.

Our first plea yielded results because our members that were involved were pardoned. We believe the three will be pardoned too.

We have a robust relationship with the state governor. The governor was disappointed with the attitude of our members.

We wish to appreciate the governor for his magnanimity in pardoning 31 of the 34 teachers. We are appealing that the remaining three be pardoned," he said.
The retirees under the auspices of the League of Federal Service Contributory Pension Retirees, led by the Coordinator, Mr Chike Ogbechie said that workers who retired 15 months ago were yet to receive their pension.

The next time we come here, we are going to occupy this premises; we are going to bring our mattresses; we are going to stay here.

When PENCOM submits the budget for accrued pension, they slash it arbitrarily.

Against 2016, the figure was N91 billion based on actual people captured. It is not just an estimate; it is based on people captured, in that office they slashed it to N51 billion.

This year again, N113 billion was submitted including deceased public servants, they slashed it again to N50.1 billion.

In other words, this backlog is going to remain.

Ogbechie said the way retirees were currently being treated was counter-productive to governments drive against corruption.

He called on the Federal Government to prioritise the payment of accrued pensions to enable retirees access the funds immediately they retire.

A retiree of the Office of the Head of Service, Mr Okikiolou Kayode, said that he has yet to access his pension funds 13 months after retirement.

It has been very difficult even to eat. I had to borrow money to come here this morning. The most painful thing is my house rent.

My landlord and I, even though we were friends before, are enemies now because I do not pay the actual money I am supposed to pay.

So it is not easy, it has been an awful experience for me.

Another retiree, Mrs Joyce Okorafor, who explained that she was a widow and mother of five, said that she had to sell her assets to pay her childrens school fees and put food on their table.

I am worried that I have exhausted my savings and have resulted to selling my properties to make ends meet. I am at the end of my resources, please Mr President, come to our aid, Okorafor said.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Finance said that government was working assiduously to address the challenges faced by the retirees.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, some cabinet ministers; National Security Adviser Chief, retired Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno and Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari were among those who joined the president in performing the prayer.

Accordng to reports, Magu was also seen exchanging pleasantries with the president immediately after the prayer.

Magus re-nomination as substantive chairman of the EFCC was rejected by the Senate via a voice vote at plenary session on Wednesday, after a letter from the Department of State Services (DSS), indicated that he failed another integrity test.

However, Magu said the accusations against him were unfounded, stressing that the DSS did not give him fair hearing before writing to the Senate.

NAN also reports that the Director-General of the Department of State Service (DSS), Lawal Daura and the Comptroller-General of Customs (C-G), retired Hammed Ali were also at the mosque.

The Senate on Thursday turned back the Comptroller-General (C-G) for not appearing in customs uniform.

Senators by a voice vote directed him to return to the senate on Wednesday, March 22 in proper uniform designated for the office of Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service.
Presiding judge, Justice John Tsoho, had on January 26, revoked the companies ownership of the oil block based on a motion by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The EFCC had asked the court to temporarily return OPL 245 to the government while it continued its investigation of alleged corruption in the sale of the block.

However, Shell and ENI challenged the ruling and urged the court to reverse it because the rights of the parties to fair hearing was breached in reaching the judgment.

However, the transaction was nullified by former President, Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 and assigned to Shell.

The $1.3 billion deal was finally struck in 2011 with Shell and ENI paying $1.1 billion to Malabu to transfer its ownership rights.

The Malabu deal has been plagued with controversy over allegations that Nigerian officials were bribed to facilitate the deal.
If you are fighting corruption, it must be at all levels, it must scale down to the states, he said.

He said the level of corruption in some states was unprecedented, Nigerians must demand for accountability from their leaders, as vanguards of democracy.

He also called on them to demand from the state governors that, the second tranche of the Paris Club refund loan, about to be released to them, must be judiciously spent.

We must be proactive by ensuring that government at the centre is on top of the situation and demand for accountability.

What we are saying is that, let the government also muster the will to make sure that the first tranche that was released is accounted for," he said.

The NLC president called on the governors to spend part of the money to settle outstanding salaries, pensions and gratuities of their workers.

The NLC boss urged employers of labour at all levels to see workers as partners in progress, a people that create wealth,not as a liability and give priority to their welfare.

If not, we will not have social stability, cohesion and we will not get out of recession.

The labour leader said the recession being experienced in the country was man-made, adding, however, that ghe present leaders must put things right.

The outgoing president of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, Mr Anthony Emmanuel, said that the survival of the countrys economy depended on the workability of the maritime sector.

Emmanuel said the countrys maritime sector suffered due to policy inconsistencies.

Therefore, any government policy that affects efficiency of the ports and quality service delivery is bound to have collateral effect on the entire economy, he said.

He said that within his four years he was at the helm of the union, 6,000 members of the union were trained locally and 300 attended overseas training.
He made the assertion while presiding over an inter-ministerial follow-up meeting with relevant government ministries, departments and agencies involved in rebuilding the Niger Delta.

Osinbajo was reflecting on the past leadership and governance failures which explained the worrying conditions of residents in the oil-producing communities.

The people still deserve a fair deal, he explained, noting that this is the position of Buhari.

He said it was also the reason that the Buhari-led administration was advocating a New Vision for the people of the region.

The President believes that the people of Niger Delta deserve justice and, for me also, it is a very important point.

It is the resource base of the country and in spite of the past leadership failure, the Niger Delta people deserve a fair deal, he said.

The vice president told the inter-ministerial team that the meeting was to ensure we are faithful to the promises and the spirit of the presidential engagements with the people of the Niger Delta.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was attended by the Niger Delta Affairs Minister Usani Uguru Usani; Petroleum Resources Minister of State Ibe Kachikwu, and the Environment Minister of State Ibrahim Jubril.

Others were the Presidential Adviser on Amnesty Programme, retired Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh, and the Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr Nsima Ekere.

The ministers and officials made presentations about the next steps in the process to effectively meet the commitments and deliver the promises made by the Federal Government during the interactive engagement tours led by the vice president.

In his presentation, Jubril disclosed that the ministry had fully engaged the Ogoni Clean-Up Project Coordinator, Dr Marvin Dekil, himself an indigene of Ogoni.

He also said that potential contractors had been visiting the site to demonstrate available and suitable technology to be used for the Clean-Up.

The vice president later received a delegation of western diplomats from countries involved in the oil industry in Nigeria.

The delegation was led by Amb. John Groffen, the Dutch envoy in Nigeria, as well as the ambassadors and High Commissioners or their deputies from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, U.S. and the European Union.

Osinbajo told the diplomats that the idea of the interactive engagements with the oil-producing communities resulted from President Buharis meeting with leaders from the region in November 2016.

He said that the Buhari-led administration was working on how to make a positive and long-lasting impact in the region in a way that would transform the lives of the people.

The vice president also said that the federal government would welcome the partnership and support of western countries in that effort.

Amb. Groffen, on behalf of the delegation, said that the countries represented at the meeting would like to stay involved in the dialogue.
They were also ordered by the court to defend the arrest and detention of the national commandant of Peace Corps, Dickson Akoh and 49 other members of the corps.

Delivering ruling in an ex parte motion filed by the Incorporated Trustees of PCN, Justice Gabriel Kolawole said the respondents must appear in court on March 28, 2017 with affidavit evidence on why an order of interim injunction restraining them from further arresting members of the Corps should not be granted against them.

More so, the court asked them to show in the affidavit evidence to be filed in court before March 28, why the court should not order them to unseal or vacate the headquarters of the PCN.

In the ruling that followed submissions of the former Attorney General of the Federation, Kanu Agabi for the applicant, Justice Kolawole said that the NSA, Police and DSS must also justify in their affidavit evidence why previous judgments of the court in favour of PCN were not complied with in spite of directive to that effect in writing by the AGF.

Justice Kolawole said he was tempted to grant the prayers of the applicant in the ex parte motion and in view previous judgments delivered by the court, but decided to give the defendants until March 28, 2017 to enable them respond in affidavit evidence to the brazen breach of fundamental rights of the applicants.

He said when he perused several judgments of the court which had affirmed Peace Corps as a registered body by the Federal Government, and which had earlier restrained the defendants from molesting, intimidating and harassing the applicants, he was at a loss as to why the defendants chose to ignore the judgments in spite of letters from the AGF for compliance.

The court further frowned at the used of so called intelligence report to cause infraction to the fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens as guaranteed under the 1999 Constitution.

In view of this, Justice Kolawole vowed that the court shall not surrender it's constitutional role of protecting the citizen.

"I should state that, judicially speaking, there is nothing magical about intelligence/security reports that a court of law should upon its being mentioned, turn it's tail and shirk from its constitutional duty to uphold the constitution and protect the rights of citizens because by the provisions of Section 36, there is no legal impediment that can prevent a court of law before whom a so called intelligence/security report is being brandished by agents of the state to justify an infraction of any of the rights guaranteed by the constitution.
According to the Azeez, the area boys had injured him, the producer, Kemi Afolabi and some members of the crew during their film shoot in Ikorodu. Further reports state that the actress lost her pregnancy after the incident.

Shittu Waheed Olawale has addressed the accusations against him, taking to a YouTube channel to share his own side of the story.

According to him, the film crew had parked their vehicle in front of his shop and placed their equipments in his shop without his permission.

According to him, he confronted them and the camera man accused him of being a tout who is just out to extort them.

The argument turned into a fight and according to Olawale, he was beaten up by the film crew and had to run for his life at a point.

He also expressed his displeasure at Kemi Afolabi and crew, who have destroyed his good name by calling him a tout on social media.

Ijaduade Ololade Azeez's complaint came after Omoni Oboli shared her experience with area boys while shooting a recent movie.
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.

Starring: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans

Synopsis: An adaptation of the Disney fairy tale about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love.

Friday - Thursday: 10:50am, 12:35pm, 1:30pm, 3:55pm, 6:20pm

Fri & Mon - Thu: 12:40 PM, 2:00 PM, 3:15 PM, 4:40 PM, 5:50 PM, 10:00 PM

Sat & Sun: 12:40 PM, 2:00 PM, 4:40 PM, 5:50 PM, 10:00 PM

(--VIP SHOWS--)

Fri & Mon - Thu: 2:00 PM, 4:40 PM, 10:00 PM

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae

Synopsis: Based on a true story. A team of African-American women provide NASA with important mathematical data needed to launch the program's first successful space missions.

Friday - Thursday: 11:10am

Daily: 4:30 PM

Daily: 10:45AM, 5:05pm,9:15PM

Daily: 11:10AM, 1:40PM, 4:10PM, 6:40PM, 9:10PM

Starring: Nicole Ndigwe, Efe Irele, Shawn Faqua, Patience Ozokwor and Segun Arinze.

Synopsis: ZAHRA (15), a young girl in the North of Nigeria, dreams of career success and happiness in marriage. when terrorists attack her village, she ends up in an IDP camp where she hopes to find succour and a comfortable space to grieve the loss of her kin and dreams.

Showing:

Daily: 12:30PM, 4:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 5:00PM, 9:30PM

4.

Starring: Bisola Aiyeola, Omowunmi Dada, Timini Egbuson, Keira Hewatch, and Emem Ufot, Okey Uzoeshi, Adesua Etomi, Ivie Okujaye, Ireti Doyle

Synopsis: Something Wicked is the story of a widow (Hauwa), whose recently orphaned nephew Abel, moves into her home from the violence riddled Northern Nigeria, after the murder of his parents.

Abel has a difficult time fitting into his new family, whilst Hauwa struggles with the challenges of balancing a failing business and single parenthood.

This family's bond is tested when they are thrown in a life threatening situation and we see how easily misunderstandings lead to misconceptions and premonitions are sometimes the only warning we get, in this game of life and death.

Daily: 2:35PM

Friday -Thursday: 4:55PM

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson

Synopsis: A team of explorers and soldiers travel to an uncharted island in the Pacific, unaware that they are crossing into the domain of monsters, including the mythic Kong.

Showing:

Fri & Mon - Thu: 1:00 PM, 2:40 PM, 5:10 PM, 7:40 PM, 10:10 PM

Sat & Sun: 1:00 PM, 2:40 PM, 7:40 PM, 10:10 PM

Daily: 1:30pm, 3:40pm, 6:00pm, 8:30pm

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen

Synopsis: In the near future, a weary Logan cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan's attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces.

Showing:

Daily: 1:40 PM, 3:20 PM, 4:25 PM, 6:00 PM, 7:10 PM, 8:45 PM, 9:50 PM

Friday -Thursday: 3:00pm, 5:35pm, 7:15pm, 8:10pm

Daily: 1:20PM, 3:50PM, 4:35PM, 6:20PM, 8:50PM

Daily: 12:25PM,2:15pm, 4:35pm,8:45PM

Starring:Majid Michel, Hafiz Saka Oyetoro, Mercy Johnson Okojie

Synopsis: Light Will Come tells the story of Lukas (Hafiz Oyetoro) a bumbling and comical personal assistant to his chronic bachelor boss Raymond (Majid Michel).

Raymonds parents have mandated him to get married and the desperate search together with Lukas to find the ideal wife his elite parents would approve of repeatedly goes wrong. Times running out on Raymond and he secretly engages the services of an escort agency who presents Jessica (Nuella Njubigbo Chikere) to pose before his parents as his fiancee but a fall out shatters the plan.

Showing:

Friday -Thursday: 1:15AM, 3:05PM,5:00pm

Friday - Thursday:1:00PM, 2:40PM, 4:20PM, 6:00PM, 7:40PM

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:

Daily: 8:25 PM

Friday -Thursday: 8:45pm

Friday -Thursday: 12:35PM, 6:55PM

Friday - Thursday:12:40PM, 2:20PM, 6:20PM, 7:00PM

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: 6:00PM, 8:00PMMonday and Wednesday: 4PM, 6:00PM, 8:00PM

Starring: AY Makun, Nadia Buari, Emma Nyra, Evan King, Anita Chris

Synopsis: An exuberant, adventurous young, white American man in search of a job lands himself a drivers job of transporting African films stars coming to America for an award show in this extremely funny comedy.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:30PM, 7:30PM

Starring: Linda Ejiofor, Zainab Balogun, Ali Nuhu, Kayode Olaya, Kunle Remi, Gbolahan Olatunde Somkele Idhalama, Hafiz Ayetoro and Wale Ojo

Synopsis: The movie unwraps an intriguing tale about a money-strapped manager of a shady Petrol Station who decides to rob his employers but along the line finds out in a sudden twist that he is not alone in his ambition and that a good reason isnt always a right one.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 2:40PM, 9:20PM

Friday - Thursday: 12:00PM, 2:10PM, 4:20PM, 6:30PM, 8:40PM

Daily: 1:00pm, 5:10pm, 7:00pm

Daily:2:10 PM, 7:05 PM, 9:30 PM

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Jenny Slate, Rosario Dawson

Synopsis: : Bruce Wayne must not only deal with the criminals of Gotham City, but also the responsibility of raising a boy he adopted.

Showing:

Daily: 12:00 PM

Friday -Thursday: 10:30AM

Friday - Thursday: 2:00PM, 4:00PM

Daily: 11:00am

Starring: Enyinna Nwigwe, IK Ogbonna, Nancy Isime, Bayray Mc Nwizu, Keppy Ekpeyong, Shaffy Bello and Daniel Lloyd.

Synopsis: The movie was directed by Desmond Elliot (who also plays a role in the movie) and tells the story of a young lady who hires a man to pose as her fiance at a family event, after her younger sisters engagement.

Showing:

Friday -Thursday: 10:25pm,3:00pm,9:25pm

Friday - Thursday: 12:20PM, 4:20PM, 8:20PM
Someone guessed Magu is not very holy or angelic enough to lead the anti-corruption squad that'll sweep the country clean of corrupt practices in both high and low places.

Yes. That guess is not wrong.

The Senate rejection of Magu is based on the conclusions of the Department of State Security Service that he failed the integrity test and confirming him as the substantive EFCC Chairman would make him a liability to the Buhari Administration.

The DSS is an arm of the executive and one would have expected that, when the president appoints someone to lead the fight against corruption, which is the sole focus of Buhari's administration, the DSS would investigate the candidate and give him an easy pass.

ALSO READ : The real reason behind Senate rejection of Magu

However, it is worrisome that the Department of State Security seems to be the obstacle blocking the president's chances of getting his anointed man confirmed by the Senate as the DSS unashamedly nullified Magu as the man for the job.

In the face of a regime that promises to fight corruption and bring national thieves to book, rejecting Magu is a smart move to get rid of the mad dog and usher in a lapdog, that will not have the will to look through the files let alone bark at corruption.

Some of the senators who voted against the confirmation of Magu are being prosecuted or investigated for one corruption charge or the other and confirming Magu is tantamount to self-destruction. It is like opening the door to Kirikiri for oneself.

This is the reason corruption has to fight back. Corruption will do everything to ensure EFCC chairmanship does not get a Magu or his likes. Corruption is a strong fat cat in the Nigerian political system and ironically, Magu is procedurally at the mercy of corruption to lead the fight against corruption.

As the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Magu has exposed a number of high profile corruption cases against some big names in the country. Some of these fellows form the honourables that have the constitutional right to determine who calls the shot at EFCC.

ALSO READ : Presidency yet to receive Senate's decision on Magu

However, while we blame corruption for everything, it is important to note that President Muhammadu Buhari is losing control of his administration.

The president should be worried more than all of us that his subordinates truncated his desire to have Magu as EFCC boss.

The senate may claim to have rejected Magu simply because of DSS damning report about him, but they won't deny the anti-corruption maxim that the fear of Magu is the beginning of wisdom.

In October 2016, the DSS reports indicted Magu for a number of allegations such as living in a house allegedly paid for by someone being prosecuted for corruption and flying first class in an Emirate Airline to Saudi Arabia for lesser Hajj.

Based on these, Magu was rejected when the president first sent his name forward for confirmation.

It is unbelievable that Buhari didn't deem it necessary to clear the controversial matters hanging on the neck of Magu with the DSS before he sent his name to the Senate again for confirmation.

Magu appeared before the Senate again and a DSS report dated Tuesday, March 14 was brandished and read out loud by Senator Dino Melaye.

"In the light of the foregoing, Magu has failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption stand of the current government"

Magu must have left the hallowed chamber very embarrassed.

Is this the end of the Magu appearance and rejection session in the Senate ? Maybe.

The President may decide to re-forward his name or look elsewhere. But if Magu must face the senators again, it is expected of the president to restrain the State Security Service from sabotaging his fight against corruption.
The tone of the memo was classic El-Rufai--blunt, ruthless and not holding back a thing.

We present 10 shots that caught the eye from that 30-page memo:

1. El-Rufai calls Buhari a failure

Everyone (well, almost everyone) now concedes that the Buhari administration hasn't lived up to pre-election billing.

El-Rufai is a 'Buharist' to the core and he too hasn't been impressed.

ALSO READ: Kaduna Governor slams Buhari in leaked memo

Below are his words:

In very blunt terms, Mr. President, our APC administration has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight change but has failed to deliver on even mundane matters of governance outside of our successes in fighting BH insurgency and corruption.

Overall, the feeling even among our supporters today is that the APC government is not doing well".

Oh well....

2. El-Rufai calls members of the President's kitchen cabinet 'clueless'

Look away now, Chief of Staff Abba Kyari and Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal, because El-Rufai doesn't like you both.

The two officials whose titles may enable them function as such generally alienate those that contributed to our success.

The Chief of Staff is totally clueless about the APC and its internal politics at best as he was neither part of its formation nor a participant in the primaries, campaign, and elections.

In summary, neither of them has the personality, experience, and the reach to manage your politics nationally or even regionally".

Wow!

El-Rufai is not alone here.

Recall that even the President's wife, Aisha, had thrown shades at these two before she was asked to go to the 'other room'.

There's also plenty of commentary from political pundits and news sites on how allegedly corrupt Lawal and Kyari are.

3. Buhari is not a good politician, El-Rufai says

If you ever felt Buhari's political game is crap or piss poor, you have an ally in El-Rufai.

Here's the Kaduna Governor to drive home the point:

"This situation is compounded by the fact that some officials around you seem to believe and may have persuaded you that current APC State Governors must have no say and must also be totally excluded from political consultations, key appointments and decision-making at the federal level.

These politically-naive advisers fail to realize that it is the current and former State Governors that may, as members of NEC of the APC, serve as an alternative locus of power to check the excesses of the currently lopsided and perhaps ambivalent NWC."

One other point to draw from this: Buhari hired horrible advisers, according to El-Rufai.

4. El-Rufai says there's a cabal in the Buhari Presidency

For months now, Pulse and other news sites have written tons of articles on the heinous activities of a cabal acting with plenty of impunity within the Buhari Presidency.

ALSO READ:

El-Rufai also mentioned the activities of this cabal.

Again, look away now, Kyari, Lawal, Mamman Daura etc.

Mr. President, there is a perception that our government has been captured by a shadowy public service/PDP cabal such that we have won elections but the country is still run largely by these elements that are hostile to you and to us all.

"Mr. President, there is an emerging view in the media that you are neither leading the party nor the administration and those neither elected nor accountable appear to be in charge, and therefore the country is adrift.

5. Buhari is sectional

There was a time when all you needed to know how clannish Buhari was, was to look up his list of appointees.

El-Rufai serves the dish ice cold here:

There is a strong perception that your inner circle or kitchen cabinet is incapable, unproductive and sectional. The quality and the undue concentration of key appointments to the North-East and exclusion of South-East are mentioned as evidence of this".

6. Ministers have no access to Buhari

The Buhari cabinet is certainly not working and it may just be because some of the Ministers have no access to Baba.

Not our words, El-Rufai's.

"There is a perception that your Ministers, some of whom are competent and willing to make real contributions, have no clear mandate, instructions and access to you. Ministers are constitutional creations Mr. President and it is an aberration that they are expected to report to the Chief of Staff on policy matters".

Hear, hear...the Ministers are grumbling because they've been forced to run all ideas, policy proposals through Kyari.

7. Buhari isn't communicating enough

The last presidential media chat was two years ago.

The Presidency hasn't deemed it necessary to put together another.

So, the Nigerian people have been reduced to banal press statements from Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu; or clips of the President addressing the media abroad.

This worries El-Rufai as much as it worries you.

The President must communicate actively and directly with the Nigerian public about his vision  the governments plans, strategy and roadmap to take the country out of the current, dire economic situation.We need a five-year national development strategy and plan, urgently.

The President should speak to the nation  something akin to a State of the Union address on December 1 or January 1. Preferably in a joint session of the National Assembly during which he will explain away some of the perceptions and lay out the national plans, strategies, and roadmap".

8. The Buhari administration is adrift

"I am distressed that our government is seen not to be succeeding mostly due to the failures, lack of focus and selfishness of some you have entrusted to carry on and implement your vision. I am troubled that our own missteps have made the PDP and its apparatchiks so audacious and confident, El-Rufai said.

He added that: We were elected precisely because Nigerians knew that the previous administration was mismanaging resources and engaged in unprecedented waste and corruption".

9. Buhari needs a high profile economic adviser

Certainly, managing a faltering economy isn't Buhari's strong suit.

Olusegun Obasanjo has told us this before.

El Rufai wants Buhari to appoint a high profile economic adviser.

El-Rufai also wants the President to set up a two-level economic team  one at a political level to be chaired by the Vice President, and another at a technical level consisting of the heads of key economic agencies to do the more detailed technical analysis and present options for decision and action.

10. The President is passing up a golden opportunity

In El-Rufai's words, You have both a crisis and opportunity in your hands to turn around our country in the right direction. We pray that Allah gives you the strength and good fortune to succeed. This is an honest, frank and objective view of an admirer, a mentee, and a loyalist. I hope it helps, and I apologize if it displeases you. My duty to you is to tell you the truth as I see it. I have no interest other than the progress of our party, our president, our government, and our country.

That was the definition of a take-down--a frank, brutal one.

Shots were certainly fired!!!
Fayose also said that the ex-presidents attempts to be seen as an anti-corruption fighter a hypocritical.

It is on record that the out-of-court settlement on the controversial Malabu Oil Block was initiated in 2006 during Obasanjos administration, Fayose said via a statement released by his media aide, Lere Olayinka on Thursday, March 16.

We saw how Obasanjo was when he became president and the magnitude of both direct and indirect investments that he has now. Can he in all honesty tell Nigerians that he acquired his wealth through legitimate means?

Even the National Assembly affirmed him (Obasanjo) as the grandfather of corruption in Nigeria and it is on record that it was this same Obasanjo, who is always claiming holier than thou that introduced politics of ghana-must-go bags to the National Assembly.

Has Obasanjo forgotten how many billions of naira was deployed to lobby National Assembly members to support his third term agenda? Has he forgotten so soon that it was during his tenure that sacks of money were displayed on the floor of the House of Representatives, as bribe money given to some Reps members to impeach the then Speaker, Ghali Nabba?

Someone like Obasanjo, who used his position as President to extort money from governors, businessmen and contractors to build his presidential library lacked more rights to accuse anyone of corruption.

Other Nigerians who left offices as President are still relevant to their people, but can the same be said about Obasanjo? Was he useful to the Yoruba race as President and now as former President? The bad state that he left major roads linking the Southwest to other zones in Nigeria, especially the Lagos-Ibadan expressway remains a pointer to this. Yet, he goes about postulating as if he is the only honest Nigerians who can make things right in the country, he added.
A recent investigation revealed that the cause of death was linked to contaminated water which led to 16 students being hospitalised due to the severity of their cases.

While the Ministry of Health ordered the closure of the school indefinitely, the biggest victims in all of this, is of course the students. Besides losing out on school time, the final year students are supposed to begin exams in less than a week. In fact, the official resumption date for all students is the 19th of March.

The sister of one student: "The PTA sent out messages to parents over a week ago saying that students were going to resume this week".

The text read:

"Dear Parents, This is to welcome our stdts to the college on the 19/3/17. Stdts are to come with a medical certificate of fitness& medication where applicable. Asthmatic stdts should come with their original inhalers&stdts generally should come with their 4Liters kegs,blazers&ties. Thank You. MGT"

The school remains under lock and key at the time of reporting this.

When we spoke to a source at the ministry regarding the closure, we learned that the school hadn't released any information regarding WAEC candidates.

According to the source, the school will very likely sort out the problem before exams begin. Another scenario might see the students being relocated to another school to write their exams. All of this, is without confirmation from the school who have we have been unable to reach.

The parents are not relenting,

A parent spoke to Vanguard about a planned protest

The planned protest is still under wraps because some of us have been meeting and we have plans to unveil our displeasure should we find that by Sunday, March 19 when our children are expected to return to school, there are unresolved grey areas to guarantee healthy living for the girls.

Neither is the Lagos State Government.

The Commissioner for Health insists that the school remain closed till appropriate measures are taken to make sure it never repeats itself.

He said:
The spokesman of security agencies in Jubaland, Sayid Arab told reporters that the operation that led to the death of six Al-Shabaab militants near the port town of Kismayo was successful.

Our special forces carried out a successful operation at Mugambow location in lower Juba region this morning and killed six high ranking Al-Shabaab militants that were planning vicious attacks against civilians, said Arab.

He added that the covert operation targeting Al-Shabaab hideouts will intensify in the days ahead.

NAN recalls that Al-Shabab once controlled much of southern and central Somalia and imposed a harsh form of Islamic law that banned music and led to public amputations for accused thieves.

Government and African Union troops have recaptured most of the territory, but the militants were still able to kill several members of parliament last year, and launch two major assaults on the presidential palace.

The Somali government first offered amnesty to al-Shabab fighters last September, after al-Shababs top leader Ahmed Godane was killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Since Godanes death, al-Shababs leaders have been divided, but it has remained a strong fighting force and challenge to the Somali government.

In words directed at the militants , then president Hassan Mohamud said he knows many al-Shabab members joined for reasons that made sense at the time, including the need for money, or a sense they were proving themselves to be good Muslims or good Somalis.

But, he added, What you did does not have to dictate the rest of your life.

Mohamud acknowledged some Somalis are uneasy about amnesty for al-Shabab members. He said those who defect go through a process of supervised rehabilitation and are monitored by Somali security forces to ensure they continue to reject the militant group.
"The current NATO command structures and military forces were positioned according to the Cold War logic - in Europe's West and South," Grybauskaite said.

With the "growing threat from Russia, it is necessary to redeploy allied forces to the Eastern flank," he said.

In recent years, NATO has activated small command centres in eight central and eastern European nations.

However, NATO has only major headquarters behind the former Iron Curtain -- Szczecin in western Poland.

Asked by reporters to comment the request, Scaparrotti said he had confidence in current structures, and advanced technologies enabled the US-led alliance "to command and control from different locations".

The alliance is currently deploying four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis to counter frequent Russian military exercises near the region.

The move is designed to reassure Lithuania and other NATO eastern members that were once part of the Soviet bloc and are rattled by Russia's intervention in Ukraine and military buildup in the region.

As part of the deployment, the US and Germany have recently moved hundreds of troops along with tanks and heavy equipment to reassure Lithuania, a nation of three million.

Similar units are being set up in neighbouring Latvia, Estonia and Poland.
"Nothing was done (about it) in the past year," he told N1 television. "We cannot and will not ever reconcile with such politics."

The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians, all of whom boycotted last year's commemoration for Jasenovac victims over a resurgence in pro-Ustasha sympathies.

In January, the Jewish community also snubbed the official ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day for the same reasons.

Around three-quarters of the Jewish community, which numbered around 40,000, were killed by the Ustasha. They now make up less than one percent of Croatia's population of 4.2 million.

Central to the issue is a memorial plaque with an Ustasha slogan that was unveiled in Jasenovac in November by former paramilitaries to honour fellow fighters killed in the area at the start of Croatia's 1990s independence war.

Ethnic Serbs said they would attend this year's commemoration if the slogan was removed.

Conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who came to power following snap elections in October, has pledged to move away from extremism.

Under the previous centre-right government, there was a growing climate of intolerance which included nostalgia for a pro-Nazi past and attacks on independent media and minorities, notably ethnic Serbs.

Critics say the current administration has not done enough to move away from its predecessor's policies.

In January, a Croatian school refused to display an exhibition on Jewish diarist Anne Frank because it included panels on the Ustasha crimes.
Syria's military said it had downed an Israeli plane and hit another as they were carrying out pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from jihadists this month.

"Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one, and forced the rest to flee," the army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

The Israeli army denied any planes had been struck and the Syrian government has made similar unfounded claims in the past.

"The safety of Israeli civilians or the Israeli air force aircraft was at no point compromised," army spokesman Peter Lerner told AFP.

The Israeli air force said earlier that it had carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, but that none of the ground-to-air missiles fired by Syrian forces in response had hit Israeli aircraft.

It was an unusual confirmation by the Jewish state of air raids inside Syria.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (army) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles."

None of the missiles fired from Syria hit their targets, the army added.

One missile was intercepted north of Jerusalem by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.

It would be one of the first times the system has been used.

A Jordanian military source said shrapnel from one missile struck in the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

Air sirens wail

Both Israeli and foreign media have reported a number of Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeting arms convoys of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

The Jewish state does not usually confirm or deny each raid but may have been led to do so this time by the circumstances of the incident.

The missile fire prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

In April 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah.

Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict broke out.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been fighting inside Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad against the rebels.

While there has been periodic stray fire into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that has prompted retaliatory strikes, Israel has largely avoided getting sucked into the conflict directly.

Witnesses cited by the press also reported two explosions that could have been caused by the launch of the anti-missile system.

The Arrow 3 interceptor, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, was handed to air force bases in Israel in January after successful testing by Israel and the United States.

Israel seized most of the Golan Hights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel pays close attention to developments in the Syrian conflict for fear that it could be exploited by its arch-rival Iran to install allies close to the armistice line on the Golan and Israel's borders.
The rivalry between the two primary backers of the Syrian government is becoming increasingly palpable, according to Syrian officials and a Russian analyst.

Iran is proud to have intervened early on in Syria's six-year war, bolstering the Assad regime with men, weapons, and economic aid.

But it was Russia, which entered the conflict with its first air strikes in support of Assad on September 30, 2015, that transformed its trajectory.

"Although both countries support the regime, their strategies on how to defeat the uprising differ," said a Syrian member of parliament, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The primary divergence is over Turkey, a years-long rebel backer with which Syria shares its long northern border.

Moscow has formed an unlikely alliance with Ankara since 2016, envisioning an end to the Syrian conflict as a compromise with Turkey.

But Tehran abhors this approach.

Iran has "differences of views with Turkey with regard to Syria, and they're very serious differences of views, but we have found a common ground," its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently told Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television.

Tabnak, a website run by the former chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai, presents a less diplomatic view, suggesting in January that "the inclusion of Turkey in efforts to put an end to war in Syria" could pose "a threat" for Iran.

'Price we had to pay'

Those differences truly crystallised in December as Syrian government forces battled to retake Aleppo's devastated opposition-held east.

Iran and allied militias sought total surrender from rebels encircled in the second city, a source close to the regime told AFP in Aleppo.

But, the source added, Russia had already agreed with Turkey on safe passage for east Aleppo's 34,000 residents.

The deal infuriated Iran and its allies in the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah, who tried to spoil the agreement.

As a consolation prize, however, Iran and its allies successfully included the evacuation of Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages besieged by rebels, in the deal.

"The agreement with Turkey was indispensable for finishing with Aleppo because every time the Syrian army advanced, Ankara allowed hundreds of rebels in," a retired Syrian officer told AFP.

"To avoid yet another failure, Moscow got Ankara to agree to close the border, strangling the rebels. Russia then secured a safe exit for them," the officer said.

"It was certainly difficult for those that were fighting on the ground but it was the price we had to pay to win," he said.

Tensions have only grown since, with Russia and Turkey leaving Iran out of a cessation of hostilities they brokered in late December.

Tehran joined Ankara and Moscow in sponsoring the first talks between regime forces and rebels in January in Kazakhstan.

'Interests align'

After Aleppo's fall, all eyes turned to the largest remaining rebel bastion: Idlib, the northwestern province controlled by an increasingly tense alliance of rebels and jihadists.

Tehran has advocated a blitz assault on Idlib, mainly to break the rebel siege of Fuaa and Kafraya, but Russia has vetoed the idea.

A new front so close to the border and against Ankara-backed rebels would risk direct confrontation with Turkey, a possibility Moscow is unwilling to entertain.

"Russia is wary of Turkey, but it prefers squeezing it and limiting its movement, instead of mounting a full-frontal attack," a political figure in Damascus said.

Turkish forces and allied rebels have indeed been left with little wiggle room in northern Syria. They seized the town of Al-Bab from Islamic State group jihadists in February without a word of protest from Russia.

But now, surrounded by government forces and US-backed groups, they are unable to push further east to fulfil Ankara's goal of leading the battle for IS's stronghold in Raqa.

Much of Iran's strength is drawn from the thousands of militiamen it commands in Syria, which "represent a huge contingent of fighters with which (the Russians) must find a way to cooperate," Russian military analyst Pavel Felguenhauer told AFP.

"Our ties with them are very complicated," he admitted.

But Russia is also increasing its own boots on the ground in Syria, even after scaling back its aircraft there.

"Russia's presence in Syria is rapidly growing. Since the fall, the number (of military personnel) has nearly doubled and will soon be 10,000," Felguenhauer said.

Russia is also cultivating its own proxies on the ground just like Iran, for whom Hezbollah, as well as Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, have become indispensable.

"We've created an 'indigenous infantry' which is cheaper than Russian mercenaries," Felguenhauer said, comparing them to US-backed Iraqi tribes that fought Al-Qaeda or Moscow's Chechnyan allies.

Russia has already helped form, finance, or arm two Syrian factions -- the Desert Falcons and the Fifth Legion -- as well as the Palestinian Quds Brigade.

"Russia is a great power with a geostrategic vision that includes Syria, while Iran is a Shiite regional power," the Syrian political figure said.
Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Kaweesi served as the force's spokesman and was one of the country's most high-profile officers.

"He was shot dead this morning as he was leaving his home coming to work," Inspector General Kale Kayihura told AFP.

"Kaweesi had two police officers guarding him who were also killed. The motive is yet to be established," he added.

Police killings are rare in Uganda, and the murder resembles the assassinations of an army officer in November last year and a senior public prosecutor in March 2015.

A large crowd of local residents gathered at the scene where the officers' dead bodies were slumped inside a black vehicle, blood pooling under shattered glass alongside the car. The bodies were later taken away.

A local resident described seeing four men on two motorcycles attack the car the police officers were travelling in at around 9:30 am (0630GMT) as they left for work.

"They shot very rapidly with guns that looked like AK47s," said Mohammad, a motorcycle taxi driver who lives and works in the area.

"The motorbikes came from behind as the car was leaving Kaweesi's house. The car driver tried to increase speed but they drove past the car and shot into it," said the 30-year old who declined to give his surname.

"The motorbikes were new and the shooters looked professional. They weren't wearing masks but I didn't see their faces because I ran for cover."

'Shower of bullets'

Local mayor Charles Sserunjogi said he heard "a shower of bullets -- many shots -- from my house nearby".

"I don't believe what I'm seeing right now. I knew Kaweesi well and met with him about a week and a half ago to discuss tarmacking the road he was shot on," he said.

President Yoweri Museveni condemned the killing and "directed the immediate installation of cameras in all major towns of Uganda and along the highways," his office said in a statement.

Kaweesi rose to prominence as he spearheaded the police response to widespread opposition party protests following a controversial 2011 presidential election.

After a stint as commander of Kampala Metropolitan Police he was appointed director of operations and then head of human resources before assuming the role of main police spokesman in August 2016.

He appeared regularly on television talk shows, his most recent appearance being Thursday night on NTV, one of the major private channels in the country.

In March 2015 Joan Kagezi, a senior public prosecutor, was shot in the street and the assailant escaped with an accomplice on a motorcycle.
The move was a last resort for Kiev, as coal from their former industrial heartland remains a key energy source and authorities are reluctant to sever the few threads binding the insurgent fiefdoms to Ukraine.

But Poroshenko's hand was forced after irate nationalist protesters imposed their own trade blockade and the rebels responded by seizing Ukrainian enterprises on their turf and stopping supplies to government areas.

"Thanks to the joint efforts of those behind the blockade and the terrorists, Ukraine lost its businesses and this created a whole new reality," Poroshenko told security chiefs on Wednesday.

"The decision that we have had to take is not an easy one."

The sudden collapse in trade ties between the two sides has sparked fears among Kiev's Western allies that it will now be even harder to make peace in Ukraine, with a European-brokered plan to end the conflict long stalled.

EU ambassador Hugues Mingarelli said that Poroshenko's decision "is not going in this direction" towards reconciliation.

The Kremlin -- which Ukraine and the West see as the puppetmaster of the rebellion -- blasted Kiev for trying to wreck the peace deal.

"Such actions aimed at cutting off whole regions of the country will lead to a further escalation of tensions," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

'Not going anywhere'

Poroshenko's nationalist opponents hailed his decision as a victory after they forced him into a corner by maintaining their own blockade of rail and road links since January.

"We welcome the decision by the president," Sergiy Akimovich, one of the blockade leaders, told AFP.

"But we are not going anywhere yet and will carry on."

Kiev resisted using force to shift the protesting military veterans and nationalist politicians despite it disrupting vital fuel supplies and drawing ire from both Kiev and the rebels.

This week they dispatched police to break up the demos but after the operation turned violent, protests broke out elsewhere around the country and Poroshenko backed off, accusing his opponents of wanting to stir bloodshed.

But it wasn't just the protesters that pushed Kiev to act.

While the authorities were struggling with the blockade, the rebels on the other side were taking their own unilateral measures in response.

As work at major enterprises on their territory ground to a halt, they began seizing control of dozens of Ukrainian-owned firms still operating there.

Poroshenko said the takeovers -- which mainly targeted the businesses of Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov -- have cost the country "billions of dollars".

For some observers, that meant Kiev no longer had the incentive to maintain trade ties.

"While Ukraine could collect taxes and foreign currency earnings from the companies located in the rebel-held regions, it was worth protecting them," columnist Oleg Gavrysh wrote in Novoye Vremya magazine.

Rebels look to Russia

Across the de facto border in rebel-held territory, the separatist leadership has insisted that Ukraine's decision will not hit those living under their rule too hard.

Insurgency chief Alexander Zakharchenko claimed on Friday that more than 84 percent of imports into the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic already come from Russia.

Now they will look to bolster trade as well in the other direction to make up.

"There will be some difficulties on this path but the process is already started and is developing intensively," Zakharchenko said.

At a market in the de facto rebel capital of Donetsk biscuit trader Igor, 22, told AFP that residents already rely mainly on Russian products.

"In general we don't bring anything from Ukraine, most imports come from Russia," he said.
Russian energy giant Gazprom plans to build a pipeline called Nord Stream 2 under the Baltic along an existing line to boost gas delivery capacity to Germany from Russia, thus bypassing Ukraine and Poland.

"For many years we've said that both Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II are political tools, used above all by Russia on Europe... Russia can use these two lines for blackmail at any time," Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin.

Waszczykowski also said that his country, a member of the European Union, and Ukraine, which is not a member of the EU, would "probably join forces" to use all legal means including international courts to convince the EU about the pipeline's alleged "political" nature.

"Our opinions on cooperating with Russia and on energy security differ from views held by many western European states," Waszczykowski said, adding that he thought Western views were "naive".

Under Moscow's thumb during the communist era, Warsaw and Kiev have long lobbied for energy independence from it, arguing that Russia could turn off the tap on gas supplies to press client states into complying with its wishes.

Klimkin said the EU ought to ask itself whether it wants to be "dependent on another state, because Gazprom is part of the Russia that nobody trusts."

Waszczykowski said that thanks to its new Baltic LNG terminal and new deliveries via a pipeline from Norway, Poland would be able to wean itself off Russian natural gas within five years.

"We have limited confidence... in European institutions," he said, adding Poland was doing its all to be "free from the diktat" of relying on gas deliveries from Russia.

Klimkin said that Ukraine halted gas purchases from Russia more than a year ago. Moscow seized Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and has since backed a separatist insurgency in the east of the country.

A peace plan brokered by France and Germany in February 2015 to end the conflict in Europe's backyard has stalled and bloody clashes continue regularly along the frontline.
"On April 16 neighbouring Turkey will hold a referendum to turn Kemal (Ataturk's) Republic of Turkey into a sultanate," the 62-year-old said in a statement.

Bulgaria is home to a 700,000-strong ethnic Turkish minority, a legacy of the Ottoman empire.

Turkey, its neighbour, is home to more than 200,000 ethnic Turks with Bulgarian passports who left Bulgaria during the communist era.

Around a third of those over 200,000 people regularly turn out for Bulgarian elections and are expected to cast ballots in the March 26 vote.

Sofia has accused Ankara in recent weeks of meddling in its election, summoning Turkey's ambassador and recalling its own envoy from Turkey for consultations.

Turkey's envoy openly backed Dost, a new party that split from Dogan's Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in 2016, which is the third biggest in parliament.

Ognyan Gerdzhikov, Bulgaria's interim prime minister, on Friday acknowledged there was a problem.

"There is a certain amount of tension linked to one of the political parties that receives backing from the Turkish side but we are taking measures to stop that," Gerdzhikov said.

The State Agency For National Security (DANS) said Friday that it had expelled one Turkish national from Bulgaria and withdrawn the right of entry and residence of two more after seeing them as "threatening national security".

One of the men was accused of inciting anti-Bulgarian feelings in regions with a mixed Bulgarian and Turkish population, the agency added.

A wider row is raging between Turkey and the European Union ahead of the Turkish vote, with a number of countries preventing Ankara's ministers from attending referendum rallies.

An angry response by Ankara has seen German and Dutch politicians called "Nazis" and Turkey threaten to scupper a 2016 deal with the EU to prevent migrants entering the bloc.
But Tana de Zulueta, head of the mission, admitted there were limitations on freedom of movement.

"We already have limitations in place on freedom of movements for international observers in some parts of the country. We have to take these into account," Zulueta said.

But, she added: "We would like to cover as extensive an area as possible."

Zulueta did not give further details on the "limitations" but the Turkish military has been waging a relentless campaign in the southeast of the country against Kurdish militants.

A team of 11 experts in Ankara and 24 observers from 13 countries will be deployed across the country.

The Turkish public will vote on April 16 on whether to approve constitutional changes that would create an executive presidency.

While the government argues that the changes are necessary for political stability, critics fear it will lead to one-man rule and a further erosion of democracy.

Zulueta said part of the team's job would be assessing the media environment and the ability of Turkish citizens to make an informed choice, amid criticism from commentators that the 'no' campaign was struggling to make its voice heard.

The observers will meet with representatives from civil society, media, political parties and Turkish officials as well as visiting polling stations across the country.

But this will not constitute systematic observation, she added.

The opposition and some NGOs also accuse Ankara of taking advantage of the state of emergency in force since the July 15 failed coup last year to silence any discordant voice through an unprecedented wave of purges.

The goal of the mission will "observe the conduct of these elections in line with OSCE standards and requirements for democratic elections, but also in line with national legislation," Zulueta said.
Beatty resident Miguel Mendoza knew he had to risk his own property and safety to help capture an alleged carjacker outside of town.

Beatty resident Miguel Mendoza knew he had to risk his own property and safety to help capture an alleged carjacker outside of town.

Mendoza, 23, and his girlfriend Trista Eastman, 21, were on their way out of Beatty on Highway 95 around noon on June 5 when they saw Beatty town secretary Carrie Radomski, 46, lying on the ground by Mels Diner.

She looked like she was in a lot of pain, says Mendoza. We stopped, and some people from the diner told us what happened.

Radomski had given a ride to a stranger who had flagged her down claiming vehicle trouble. When they arrived at Reverts tire shop, which is next to the diner, Radomski exited the vehicle and motioned for the man to follow her into the business. Instead, he slid over into the drivers seat. She ran back toward the vehicle and he struck her with it as he fled south on Highway 95 out of Beatty.

They told us he was an Asian guy, and hed stolen Carries big blue truck, said Mendoza, who knew the vehicle well, as his family owns Mama Saras Mexican Restaurant, just across the street from Beatty Mercantile, which is owned by Radomskis husband George.

Mendoza and Eastman continued on their way south on U.S. 95, where he planned to go to Sterling Mine to pick up some respirator cartridges. However, they spotted Radomskis truck in the desert on the opposite side of the highway from the Big Dune turnoff.

It looked like he was trying to hide behind the mountains, said Mendoza.

Eastman called Nye County Sheriffs dispatch on her cell phone. The dispatcher asked for the license plate number, then told them to maintain visual contact with the truck until deputies could arrive.

I tried to pick a spot where he was going to come out, Mendoza said. He spotted us watching him, and I guess he got worried. He blew through the barbed wire fence he had gone through already. Then he got stuck in the dirt, and I was going to try to get him then, but he got out.

Mendoza decided to follow the suspect, staying close to the trucks bumper.

He was trying to elude me, going into the oncoming traffic, Mendoza said. Then he came back onto the right side and slowed down. I seized the opportunity and hit him on the left side and got him to stop.

The reason I hit him is that I didnt want to put anyone else in danger because he was swerving on both sides of the highway.

Mendoza and Eastman said that all during the chase, the driver, later identified as Lea Meng Che, 29, from Brampton, Ontario, Canada, kept reaching into a bag. They thought he might be tossing drugs out the window or trying to make them think he had a gun to scare them off.

After Che stopped, Mendoza said he was about to get out of his truck to go after the suspect when deputy Alan Lynn arrived and made the arrest.

According to the Nye County Sheriffs Office, Che voluntarily told deputies that he had stolen cars in Las Vegas, and they found that the car he had abandoned in Beatty when he got a ride from Radomski was stolen.

Che also reportedly told the deputies that he had luggage at McCarran International Airport that contained something that would harm a lot of people there. This triggered notification of the Southern Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Radomski was taken to the hospital to be evaluated and treated for her injuries. The next day she said she was doing okay with a dislocated shoulder, broken humerus, and a banged-up foot.

On Tuesday, Che remained in custody on numerous felony charges in the Nye County Detention Center in Pahrump on $22,000 bail.
DES MOINES  The Iowa House on Thursday approved an overhaul of the states 104-year-old workers compensation law that majority Republicans said was needed to rebalance a lawyer-driven system thats making it hard for businesses in Iowa to compete.

The system was established so employees would have a certain and easy process to follow in case of a workplace injury, floor manager Rep. Gary Carlson, R-Muscatine, said in introducing House File 518. The idea was to avoid the costs and complications associated with litigation for workers and limit overall costs for employers.

Today, Carlson said, due to a number of court rulings and commission rulings, Iowas workers compensation system has lost its intended balance.

Some fixes might be necessary, but not the wholesale changes envisioned in the business- and industry-backed bill, argued Rep. Jerry Kearns, D-Keokuk.

If youre going to do me wrong, do it right, Kearns said, quoting from a country western song. Majority members, youre far from doing this one right.

The bill's critics argued Iowa already has a good workers comp system with premiums 11 percent below the national average, according to the Iowa Economic Development Authority, and have decreased in three of the last four years. Iowas system also received an A rating from the Insurance Journal, which found no weaknesses and said its strengths were low politicization, efficiency and market competitiveness.

This bill is not necessary, said Rep. Marti Anderson, D-Des Moines. This bill guts the rights for injured workers. I dont understand why were doing this at this point.

As an example, Rep. Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, the owner of a trucking firm with one-and-a-half employee positions, said he pays $991 a month for workers comp insurance. Across the state line in South Dakota, his rate would be $412 a month less. That works out to about 2.7 cent per mile traveled.

I compete every day with South Dakota trucks in an industry where we measure improvements in tenths of a cent per mile, he said.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines, cited a case in which an Iowan who worked in another state filed a workers comp claim in Iowa.

He also referred to a ruling that allows injured workers receiving workers comp benefits to also collect unemployment insurance.

When youre on workers comp, youre being compensated for being injured at work, but cant work, he said. If youre on unemployment, youre supposed to be looking for a job.

After more than six hours of debate, the House voted 55-38  mostly along party lines, but with Rep. Rob Taylor, R-West Des Moines dissenting  to send the bill to the Senate, where a similar bill is on the debate calendar.

A Democratic amendment to replace the changes with a study committee representing labor, management, insurers, agriculture, lawyers and health care was rejected 37-58.

Republicans also refused to defer a vote until Monday that would give lawmakers time to gather more information.
An 18-year-old East St. Louis, Illinois, man is facing 25 years in prison for selling drugs near Davenports Monroe Elementary School in early March.

Dyon Armongelo Thomas, of 1520 N. 45th St, East St. Louis, is charged with one count of distributing a drug within 1,000 feet of a school. The charge is a Class B felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

Thomas also is charged with possession with intent to deliver marijuana, a Class D felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

According to the arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Detective Bill Thomas, at 11:30 p.m. March 4, Thomas sold marijuana to a 14-year-old male in the parking lot of the Sugar Shack, located at 1939 W. 4th St.

The Sugar Shack is located directly across the street from and within 1,000 feet of Monroe Elementary School. The delivery was captured on video from a nearby business. The address of the school is 1926 W. 4th St.

Thomas was arrested Wednesday and was being held Thursday in the Scott County Jail on $50,000 bond.
Quantrell L. McDaniel was sentenced Thursday to up to 50 years in prison for fatally shooting Brandon M. Smith in September 2015.

The man who prosecutors say gave him the gun, Dantawn L. Cole, was sentenced to up to five years in prison.

The two men, 20 and 25, respectively, were sentenced Thursday in separate 30-minute hearings in Scott County District Court.

McDaniel declined to make a statement before District Court Judge Mark Lawson handed down the sentence.

In a written statement to the court, Cole apologized for his immature and rash decision the night Smith was killed.

I want to apologize to the family of Brandon Smith for causing such havoc  for that Im truly sorry from the bottom of my heart, he said.

About 9:30 p.m. Sept. 24, 2015, McDaniel and Cole went to the EZ Mart, 2923 Brady St., where they saw Smith make a purchase and leave the store, according to police.

After exchanging words, Cole retrieved a stolen .22-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun from a home in the 2800 block of Brady Street and gave it to McDaniel, who used it to shoot Smith twice around East Garfield and Dubuque streets, according to police.

Smith, 29, of Davenport, was taken to Genesis Medical Center-East Rusholme Street, Davenport, where he died from his injuries.

McDaniel, who originally faced a first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Feb. 28, the day attorneys finished selecting jurors to hear his case.

During the plea hearing, McDaniel admitted that he did not act in self-defense and apologized to Smiths family.

On Wednesday, he filed a handwritten motion seeking to take back his guilty plea, saying that he was a little pressured by my attorneys to take the plea agreement and had very little time to think on my own.

During Thursdays sentencing hearing, he decided not to pursue his motion to take back his plea.

During the emotional hearing, Smiths sister, Sharice Hanson, said her brother was her protector, someone who helped her when she was in the lowest times of my life as an early adult.

He came and saved me, drove hours to find me across cities to bring me home, to feed me, give me a place to stay, give me the love I needed to get back on my feet, she said through tears. The biggest thing that hurts me and the biggest things that hurts my heart is that I couldnt protect him from you. I couldnt save him the way he saved me. You stole his life, you stole my brother.

April McIntire, a victims advocate with Horizons Survivors Program, read letters at both sentencings on behalf of Smiths mother, Jennifer Pieper, who sat in the courtroom gallery.

In the letter read by McIntire, Pieper wrote that she will not stand here and speak of my loss, my heartache, precious moments I hold dear of my son, his hopes his dreams, with the very killer who took his life.

Those precious things belong to me, our family, friends and those who loved Brandon, she said.

Pieper wrote in the letter read at McDaniels sentencing that she will never forgive him.

If there is a breath in my body or muscle that moves in 35 years, I will be there to remind everyone why you should never be paroled, she said. Maybe then Ill be able to speak of my pain. And if I cant be there, Brandons sister will be there. His daughter will be there to speak of her life without her father. We will never forget, and we will never forgive. Brandon Smith mattered. My son mattered.

Lawson sentenced McDaniel to up to 50 years in prison, the mandatory sentence under Iowa law.

McDaniel must serve 70 percent, or 35 years, before he can be considered for parole. He will be given credit for time already served in the Scott County Jail. He also must pay $150,000 in victim restitution.

Cole, who also faced a first-degree murder charge, pleaded guilty in March 2016 to involuntary manslaughter by commission of a public offense and going armed with intent, both Class D felonies, each punishable by up to five years in prison.

Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said Cole was cooperative from the beginning of the case and he thinks Cole acted without premeditation that night.

However, Cole did make a choice to give McDaniel the weapon that was used to kill Smith, Walton said.

Smiths father, David, said at Coles sentencing that everything started with Cole when he made the decision to give the gun to McDaniel.

You need to take responsibility for your actions, and the court should consider your direct involvement in this crime, he said.

David Smith talked about Coles plea hearing, where he was asked to tell the judge in his own words what happened that night. Cole, David Smith said, asked his attorney and asked him what his sons name was.

You didnt know, he said. After everything that happened, after all that time in jail, after all the proceedings, you didnt know the name of the man you helped to murder. His name is Brandon Smith, and although not perfect, and none of us are, he was precious and loved, and he was kind and generous.

Coles attorney, Jonathan Stensvaag, asked Lawson for a sentence of probation or, if prison was appropriate, to run the sentences concurrently, or at the same time.

Cole said during his statement to the court that he has participated in programs at the jail, one of which that has helped him to control his anger, and is working toward getting a GED and that he has a family support system in the community.

Im done making immature decisions and (am) starting to think before I act, he said. Your Honor, Im ready to accept any punishment you feel I deserve for my ignorant decision.

Lawson said the fact that a death was involved makes probation problematic.

Frankly, in this community, settling disputes with guns has simply been entirely too prevalent, he said. I believe that sentencing you to a term of imprisonment, I hope, does some small part in sending a message to the community that this has got to stop.

Lawson ruled that Coles sentences will run concurrent, for a total of up to five years. Lawson said he based that decision on Coles cooperation in the case, his lack of a significant criminal history and a lack of infractions committed during his time in the jail.

He added that he thinks Cole was willing and able to change and that he hopes this will be a watershed moment for you.

Lawson also ordered Cole to pay $150,000 in victim restitution.

Both men have 30 days to file a notice of appeal.
Asrielle Allen of Rock Island has achieved the Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouts, through Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois.

Her project was to empower girls in the Rock Island-Milan School District to become leaders.

She created Girls Leading the Way, a student organization for girls at Rock Island High School. Through the student organization, girls learned to become aware of their talents, utilize them in leadership positions and then teach other girls to do the same.

To share their message, Girls Leading the Way members organized a conference for younger girls at Rock Island elementary schools.
Thirty-six million dollars. That's how much President Barack Obama's administration spent in its final year trying to keep the public in the dark, reports the Associated Press.

In Iowa, casinos are looking for cover from public disclosure through legislation that would exempt them from it. Pistol permit holders will probably get shielded from the Freedom of Information Act through yet another exemption. And it took a Supreme Court decision for Davenport city officials to end closed-door meetings that flew in the face of Open Meetings Law.

Transparency is under attack, folks. It's a frontal assault on your right to know. It's a direct challenge to your ability to hold accountable the elected class. It's a reality that, if left unchecked, will result in the greatest ceding of power in decades.

Sunshine Laws exist for a reason. They became vogue after Watergate. They swept through the states, as the public became aware of the widespread grift that plagued every level of government. But each and every year, in statehouses throughout the nation, FOIA is eroded as a hand-out to some monied interest or another.

Unfortunately, the winnowing of public access has become a favorite gift too often bestowed on the well connected.

Right now, any citizen can request a casino's annual audit. They pay for the increased police protection and social services that comes with such an establishment, after all. They're constituents of local and state governments that  as a function of gambling regulation  are in partnership with the casinos themselves.

The citizens, by every right, should have full access to information about a casino's financial situation. Like any public-private partnership, those footing the bill have a right to know what their investment funds.

The industry, however, doesn't like that access. Iowa law bars the gambling industry from funding campaigns. But it sends lobbyists to Des Moines. And, predictably, it gets a legislation that would rob the citizenry of the very information it deserves.

There are signs of improvement in the Quad-Cities, as shown in our Sunshine Week report card published Sunday. Davenport Mayor Frank Klipsch and the City Council increased transparency at City Hall, particularly on the open meeting front. If only the people would hold up their end and show up to the now-open meetings. Rock Island County's jump in our ratings coincides with the hiring of a professional, nonpartisan administrator.

But things are getting worse in Washington. Government transparency has dwindled with each successive presidency. Obama pledged in 2008 to be the "most transparent president" in history. Bunk.

The man cracked down on clearly public information. The existence of his drone program  a morally questionable military technique  hit newspapers only because of leaks. He hassled journalists simply looking for the truth on any number of issues. He spent millions in court fighting those seeking access to basic information.

And, now, President Donald Trump is expanding Obama's war on openness. His constant attacks on "leakers" and the media are only the beginning. Just this week, Trump secretly expanded the drone program to permit CIA strikes against suspected terrorists. Again, none of this would have been known without the very people whom Trump loves to vilify.

Too often, "national security" is an excuse to keep the people footing the bill in the dark.

Over all, things look dire for your right to know. Bills are kicking around some statehouses that would exempt lawmakers' emails from FOIA. Staff are embracing untraceable texting apps in order to end-run FOIA.

It's natural for officials to resent laws requiring policy discussions to occur in public view. Openness applies pressure.

But pressure is, after all, the point. It's the only way of assuring it's the peoples' interests that are being served.
DEADWOOD | Concerned about the threat of illegal drugs plaguing South Dakota communities, veteran Lawrence County States Attorney John Fitzgerald Friday announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for state attorney general.

The spread of it, the cost of it, the toll its taken on our communities, threatens our social fabric and our way of life, Fitzgerald said Friday morning.

A graduate of Black Hills State University and the University of South Dakota Law School, Fitzgerald was first appointed Lawrence County States Attorney in January 1995, after being elected Butte County States Attorney in 1980. He was elected as Lawrence County States Attorney in 1996, and has been re-elected every four years since, most recently in last Novembers general election.

Fitzgerald said he had prosecuted thousands of cases and tried several hundred jury trials, including capital murder  experience he said would benefit state residents as South Dakotas attorney general.

I just think with my age and experience, I can really give back something to the whole state, which is what Ive learned being a lawyer and prosecuting attorney for as long as I have been, Fitzgerald said. I love this state and I want to do something on a larger scale, because South Dakota is a great place to live.

Fitzgerald, 61, and his wife, Mary, live outside Spearfish and are the parents of three grown children and are grandparents to five.

Fitzgerald said he would face opposition for his partys nomination during the November 2018 state Republican Party convention, whose delegates will select their nominee. Charles McGuigan, the current deputy state attorney general, and Yankton attorney Jason Ravnsborg already have announced their intention to seek the GOP nod for the post, he said.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. | Gov. Matt Mead vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have allowed people to carry concealed firearms into government meetings and signed another that will allow teachers and other school officials to carry guns at school.

The guns-in-meetings bill is murky and could have allowed concealed weapons into local government meetings but not state legislative meetings, Mead wrote in his veto message.

Proponents said the measure was needed as a safety measure to protect against people who would start shooting at a government meeting.

Lawmakers decided against changing the bill to allow local officials to decide whether or not they wanted concealed firearms in their meetings. Mead sided with those who opposed the bill because local officials would have had no say on the issue.

The Wyoming Association of Municipalities opposed the bill and particularly the loss of local control, he pointed out.

"We place great value on government closest to the people, in cities, towns and counties," Mead wrote.

He urged lawmakers to consider studying the issue over the interim.

Wyoming's constitution is clear that gun ownership is a right and the veto sends a message that state officials don't trust the voters, bill supporter Republican Rep. Anthony Bouchard, of Cheyenne, said.

"There are 18 states that are now allowing open-carry in public meetings," Bouchard said. "We're just taking a step backward."

The guns in schools law would allow school boards to decide if they wanted school officials to carry or have close access to guns in school to protect against shooters. The gun would need to be carried by the school official at all times or kept in a locked container within the designated official's control.
SIOUX FALLS | Truckloads of hay from South Dakota farmers are headed south to states where ranchers have been devastated by wildfires.

More than a dozen trucks loaded with hay bales left South Dakota Wednesday and Thursday destined for ranches in Colorado and Kansas. Organizer Jed Olbertson says a load has already arrived in the southwest Kansas community of Ashland.

Olbertson tells the Capital Journal six or more truckloads organized by a rancher from the Garretson area are also headed for Colorado.

Ranchers in Texas alone are facing at least $21 million in agricultural damages from wildfires that blackened more than 750 square miles.

Governors in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to halt grazing restrictions on federal land to give surviving cattle more places to feed.
OPAL | A Meade County man died in a plane crash near his home early Friday morning.

Officials confirmed Friday afternoon that the victim was Barry Vig, a 67-year-old Opal man. Friends said Vig, a longtime pilot, ranched about 14 miles east of Opal and had a landing strip at the ranch.

"They expected him home at a certain time, and he wasn't," said Kay Ingalls of Opal. "I got a call about 2 a.m. from the prayer chain asking for prayers."

A release from the Meade County Sheriff's Office said Vig was piloting the airplane and was the only person on board. The plane crashed on Vig's property, according to the release.

Lt. Col Bruce Kipp, director of public affairs for the South Dakota Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, confirmed that the CAP had been called out to search for the plane.

Opal is an unincorporated community in Meade County, about 96 miles northeast of Rapid City. Kipp said the plane was en route from Rapid City to Faith, about 30 miles east of Opal, when the crash happened. The landscape around Opal includes large swathes of rolling grass and farm land dotted with small ranches.

"We picked up the beacon and spotted the wreckage near Opal," he said. "We guided the Meade County Sheriff's deputies ground team to the site."

Kipp said the CAP call went out about 2 a.m. and the Meade County Sheriff's Department recovered the body about 3:50 a.m.

"The weather was clear when we found the plane, but we know a rain storm had passed through about two hours previous," he said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and Meade County Sheriff's Office are investigating.
Montana has more at risk than most states as the Trump Administration takes aim at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The legacy of historic mining, mills and manufacturing remains in Buttes Berkeley Pit, 50 billion gallons of water so toxic that it has killed thousands of migrating geese on contact; the Anaconda Smelter site, 300-square miles of mining wastes laden with arsenic and other poisons; Libby, a community sickened by asbestos exposure from a vermiculate mine; the Clark Fork River with 44 miles of polluted waterway in the process of cleanup; and the Columbia Falls Aluminum Plant.

All told, Montana has 16 EPA Superfund sites. Most are west of the Continental Divide, but theres also Mouat Industries in Columbus, Barker Hughesville Mining District and Carpenter Snow Creek Mining District in Cascade and Judith Basin counties.

Last November, EPA held a public meeting to update Lockwood residents about their local Superfund site, the 580-acre Lockwood Solvents site. Chlorinated solvents exceeding drinking water standards have been found in groundwater and soil near Beall Trailers Inc. and Soco West. Because these chemicals pose long-term health hazards, the EPA adopted a cleanup plan in 2005. As of November, the agency said the work would be completed by 2021 at an estimated cost of $14.3 million.

What will happen to the last four years of that work if EPAs budget is chopped 20 percent, as the Trump Administration has proposed in a budget blueprint?

Earlier this month, Missoulian reporter David Erickson compiled a list of Montana cleanups at risk if the EPA is reduced by 3,000 employees under the Trump plan.

That prospect is a grave concern in Missoula where the citys biggest toxic site isnt officially on the Superfund list. Smurfit-Stone was a paper pulp mill from 1957 till 2010. Now its 3,200 acres with tons of chemicals hazardous to humans and wildlife. About 900 acres of the site is unlined ponds used to store wastewater and sludge.

As the Missoulian reported, a few gravel berms are all that separate the Clark Fork River from polluted areas. Residents are concerned that a big spring runoff could cause the berms to fail.

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Smurfit-Stone is a proposed Superfund site, but the designation isnt yet final.

Under the Trump budget blueprint, EPA spending would be slashed by $2 billion a year and some grant programs would be cut 44 percent, according to reports first published in the Washington Post.

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The EPA is in charge of the Montana cleanups, and works to hold the polluting companies financially accountable.

We need the EPA to have a good legal staff, a good project management staff, and management at the EPA in order to contend with companies of this nature that have the resources to put into resisting cleanup, Peter Nielsen of the Missoula City-County Health Department told the Missoulian.

EPA is a dirty word to many people. But its mission is to protect and restore clean air and clean water for Americans. The anti-regulation crusade in Washington, D.C., threatens to throw out the agencys good work.

Before budget votes are taken on Capitol Hill, Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester must listen to their constituents: Crippling the EPA will hurt Montana communities waiting for massive cleanups that will take years. The alternative  doing nothing  leaves local residents holding the bag for messes made mostly by large out-of-state corporations. Polluters should be held accountable, regardless of whos in the White House or which party controls Congress. Montana desperately needs a resurgence of the bipartisan cooperation that enacted our federal clean air and clean water laws.

Theres still much work to do that wont get done without the EPA Superfund.

 Billings Gazette
MISSOULA  Dr. John Osborn took a break from his day job at a Spokane emergency room to diagnose a much larger but little-known crisis  the Columbia River Treaty.

Were trying to get at what happens when you exchange one of the worlds richest salmon rivers for an integrated power system, the organizer of the Ethics and Treaty Project said during a Tuesday visit to Missoula. This community is located along two wonderful rivers  the Clark Fork and the Bitterroot  and theyre part of the basin of the Columbia River  one of the most remarkable rivers on the planet. But ever since Lewis and Clark walked over Lolo Pass, profound things have happened here.

In a nutshell, the United States and Canada agreed to leash the 1,200-mile Columbia with a series of dams and flood-control projects that affect 259,000 square miles of British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Oregon, Utah and Nevada. The system has been governed by a treaty signed in 1964 that expires in 2024. Two years ago, the United States government agreed to start renegotiating a new treaty.

But this time, a few more people will be at the table. While just the two federal governments hammered out the original Columbia River Treaty, this time at least 15 American Indian and Canadian First Peoples nations have claimed seats in an exercise of their own treaty rights. And improved scientific understanding of how the river influences its landscape has raised a new issue to discuss  ecosystem functions.

So in addition to negotiating how to keep the electricity flowing to Seattle and how to keep Portland from flooding, the new treaty must also consider whats owed the thousands of people who had their homes, livelihoods and culture downed when the big dams went up. It must consider how to adapt to a changing climate that may overwhelm the water storage capacities of the reservoirs behind those dams.

This is an example of us being able to go back in time and look at the development of a treaty for multiple groups of people, said Natalie Dawson, director of the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana, which invited Osborn to lecture. We need to look at what did we do right and what did we do wrong as we go forward.

Members of the Ethics and Treaty Project will meet in Revelstoke, British Columbia, in May to discuss participation in the international negotiation process. Osborn said another meeting may be planned for Missoula to raise involvement with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and communities affected by Selis Ksanka Qlispe (Kerr), Kootenai and Hungry Horse dams.

Its important we dont kick the can down the road to 2024 and suddenly realize were staring into the headlights of potentially dramatic change, Osborn said. We can continue the present course, with an iceberg dead ahead, or we can sit down and work with the Canadians in good faith and come up with solutions, based on the ethics of stewardship and justice.
HELENA  Montana is unique in the world of aviation.

Since it's the last state to operate a system of airway beacons through the rugged western mountains, pilots today may fly the same way as early U.S. Mail planes, soaring through the night skies from beacon to beacon on the way to their destination.

The 1920s saw a buildup of airway beacons across the country primarily as a means of postal transportation, according to a history written by Brenda Spivey for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. By 1933, 1,550 beacons guided pilots along 18,000 miles from the Midwest to the West.

During the 1960s the FAA decided the beacons no longer served a great public purpose, and began efforts to decommission them. By 1972, Montana was the last state still operating a beacon system, down from a statewide high of 84 to 17 in the western mountains.

But as history meets the realities of budgeting priorities, late last year the state of Montana decided to decommission 14 of the 17 remaining beacons. Funding technology of long ago does not make sense, supporters of the decision say, given the time to maintain them and the limited usage of their intended navigational purposes.

The decision has irked some pilots, however, who see history as important but also the beacons as a failsafe particularly for pilots flying visually. It is a familiar debate for many that have seen the beacons on the chopping block in the past only to have them saved when they pushed back.

We wish we could do everything for everyone, said Debbie Alke, administrator of the Aeronautics Division at the Montana Department of Transportation. Here at the division and in the state I just think that we have to prioritize to give our customers the best bang for their buck.

To keep or not to keep?

In late 2015 the division decided to test the beacons usage by simply allowing them to go out, and waiting for the response. What came over the next few months was overall few calls and messages, save a passionate group of Helena pilots, Alke said.

In December, Aeronautics, after dialogue with pilots, announced that it would only continue to maintain easily accessible beacons on MacDonald Pass, Spokane Bench east of Helena and a site called Strawberry northwest of Bozeman. The beacons would light a path from the pass to Helena to Townsend to Bozeman.

With keeping the last three, it is to try to compromise and hope to please all of our customers, Alke said. Montana will continue to be the only state to have any of them so pilots can still have that experience.

Aeronautics is funded through a tax on aviation fuel and fees. The division has a variety of obligations, including search and rescue, administering grant programs, operating 15 state-owned airports, offering training programs and registering aircraft.

Maintaining all the beacons, some of which require snowmobiles to access, costs about $35,000 per year. Cutting the system to three will save about $30,000 needed for other programs given a tight budget, Alke said.

Thats the fork in the road -- does anyone use them as they were intended and designed, said Scott Newpower, former president of the Montana Pilots Association. Invariably everybody loves the beacons when you ask them, but when you ask if theyre used as intended, the answer is well, no. With all the other technology we have theyre simply irrelevant.

Newpower believes the beacons have carried on in Montana largely due to nostalgia and says he enjoys them as well. For practical flying purposes, the beacons are not monitored by anyone such as the FAA. Often Aeronautics only learns of an issue from a pilots call.

It could be days or weeks before someone calls, he said. You cant count on that.

Theyre cool and they bring you back to the old days, but is that worth spending valuable taxpayer resources when theyre not used as intended?

Pilot surveys showed stronger support for funding Aeronautics other obligations, Newpower said, and other aviation organizations have come to similar conclusions. He also pointed out that Montanas safety record as far as crashes does not standout compared to other states.

If theyre being used as intended -- flying low at night in the mountains in marginal weather -- we should get a hint through accident rates, he said. Its not a scientific study but you take the clues you find to make as good a decision as you can.

Last month the association passed a resolution acknowledging the divisions budget and staffing challenges, and supporting the maintenance of as many beacons as Aeronautics deemed possible.

Mike Rogan retired from Aeronautics in 2015 where he worked as an aviation support officer. Among his duties was maintaining the beacons -- a task divided up within the agency.

Mike Rogan, now retired, conducts beacon maintenance atop the MacDonald Pass Beacon, performing a routine check of the machinery and bulb.

Pilots earn various certifications with higher grades allowing more complex flying, such as by instruments only. The majority of Montanas 3,000 pilots are certified for visual flight rules or VFR, meaning they must be able to use landmarks to fly.

Theyre a good failsafe for VFR pilots to fly and they just dont cost that much to continue operating, Rogan said. Sure it is an old antiquated system, but it is still functional.

Stories of pilots who have used the beacons are common throughout the aviation community, he said.

Rogan recalled one search and rescue flight looking for a wrecked airplane near Helena. As he flew listening for an ELT transmitting from the plane, snow squalls made visual flying difficult. The beacons showed a safe path and helped us get back, he said.

They still have the same manpower so its just an internal decision to shut them off, he said. Theyre near and dear to me so I do get a bit sentimental, but theyre more than just historical.

Helena pilot Mike Korn was also critical of Aeronautics decision in an opinion piece submitted to the Independent Record and other newspapers. Korn echoed the historic and safety factors of the beacons, but also focused on the internal decision to shutter the majority of the system as against good government principles.

Aeronautics did not land at this point by reaching out and engaging the public, leading an open, thoughtful discussion and dialogue about the issues, and then arriving at an informed choice, he wrote. Instead, they talked amongst themselves and a handful of other people and then rendered a verdict.

In the course of that they overlooked a wide range of citizenry outside their limited, narrow circle, ignoring many people who have a legitimate stake in the beacons future.

Alke defended the process and said an agency legal review determined the decision did not rise to a significant level of public interest which would have triggered a more public review process.

What now?

What will happen to the beacons Aeronautics will no longer maintain remains unclear.

Leases continue for the properties where the towers sit, and contracts call for reclamation of those sites if the state walks away. Restoration estimates are $500,000 or more.

Landowners may have an interest in keeping them on the property or they could be taken down and sold. Towers could also be repurposed for other uses, such as cellphones, Alke said, adding that some organizations have expressed interest in taking over care.

Newpower said he would love to see another agency, perhaps the Montana Historical Society, see to the towers as historic sites. The state could face a worst case scenario in paying for reclaiming the sites, but nobody knows until those questions are asked, he said.

From a historic standpoint, the beacons provide a window into Montanas aviation past, said Kate Hampton, community preservation coordinator for the Montana Historical Society.

This system is really important and it is a system and its important to save what we can, she said.

The loss of beacons along the system brings a loss of understanding for their historic use, she said, adding that she believes no one beacon is more important than another in that story.

Efforts to do away with the beacons as a money saver seem to come up about every 20 years, with pilots the vocal group that has kept them lighting up the sky, Hampton said.

Theres this wonderful history of activism that goes along with saving this pieces of history that remain functional and close to our hearts, she said.

MacDonald Pass is the lone beacon registered on the National Register of Historic Places. Hampton and others are in the process of seeking designation for the entirety of the system as time and resources allow.

The MacDonald Pass airway beacon west of Helena is one of three in the state that the Aeronautics Division at the Montana Department of Transportation will keep maintaining.

As the beacons are historic state property, registration would not overtly change any process surrounding the states obligation to them as agencies must already consult with MHS, she said.

Theyre so important to understanding how people traveled in the 20th century, how lighthouse people and others put up these technological marvels in these remote locations and the connection to the air mail is really significant, Hampton said. The whole line of them is really a physical vestige of aviation in Montana through the 20th century.

We dont always realize what were driving past and flying over is national and Montana aviation history.
Miss Rodeo Montana Sarai McCollaum from Darby invites the community to her fundraising event 'Boots and Bling' at the Ravalli County Fairgrounds, March 18.

Its my big fundraiser for the year, McCollaum said. Miss Rodeo Montana is a non-paid position and I have to raise all the funds Ill need for traveling across the state this year.

McCollaum said she would do around 30,000 miles and about $40,000 worth of traveling this year.

Some of the money raised will support me during Wrangler National Finals Rodeo where Ill compete for National Miss Rodeo, she said. I want to be the first Montanan to win Miss National rodeo. Thats a goal.

The National Miss Rodeo competition takes place in December in Las Vegas, Nevada.Contestants compete in a fashion show, public speaking and horsemanship.

It is very expensive and lasts at least seven days, McCollaum said.

The fundraising event on Saturday in Hamilton is an opportunity to meet Miss Rodeo Montana and have a great evening.

We have lots of silent and live auction items, McCollaum said. There is a package of four tickets to Wrangler National Finals Rodeo to bid on. Well have yummy food by Smokin Pups that includes Tri tips, baked potatoes, green beans, cake and cheesecake. 'Last Chance Band' will play. They are just getting back from recording their first album in Nashville.

There will also be a no host bar by Marleys, a photo area full of fun props, a kiddy rodeo area and a puppy raffle.

Im raffling my 6-week-old purebred border collie, McCollaum said. Weve named him Huckabee which is short for Huckleberry. Hes a great dog.

Admission to the 'Boots and Bling  Its a Rodeo Queen Thing' event costs $30 for adults and $15 for kids. There is also the option of being a table sponsor.

If they buy a table they get extra goodies like drink tickets, tickets to the event and eight raffle ticket chances on a gun, McCollaum said. They all sit together and get to enter at 5 p.m. for a meet and greet with me.

McCollaum is the second Miss Rodeo Montana from the Bitterroot Valley. Lori Dodge Hope from Stevensville was Miss Rodeo Montana in 2003. McCollaum graduated from Darby High School in 2014. She has attended the University of Montana and been a Sunday school teacher. She is currently doing online classes to become an occupational therapist.

The Boots and Bling event begins at 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, at the Ravalli County Fairgrounds Interstate Building, 100 Old Corvallis Rd, Hamilton.

Fundraising is important and Im really thankful for everyones generosity, McCollaum said.

For tickets and information contact Tara Boulanger at 406-207-4057.
A woman on parole for a 1987 murder in Missoula was arrested for felony assault in Hamilton for allegedly hitting her husband with a stick.

Lucy Marie Redcrow, 50, appeared Thursday before Ravalli County Justice Jennifer Ray on the felony charge and misdemeanor charges of partner or family member assault and criminal possession of marijuana.

This was the second time Redcrow has been arrested in Hamilton after being released on parole May 20, 2014. Last June, she arrested on a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence.

In this case, Redcrow was arrested on March 14 after Hamilton police were dispatched at about 10 a.m. to a Hamilton motel for a report of a disturbance.

Redcrows husband, John Fortner, reported the couple had been in an argument and Redcrow had grabbed a stick and struck him in the face, hip and arm. There were noticeable marks on his body, according to an affidavit.

When Redcrow was questioned about the alleged assault, she said the couple had been arguing and she had blacked out. She admitted hitting her husband with her hand, but claimed she didnt remember anything about hitting him with a stick.

During a search at the detention center, officers found a baggie containing marijuana and a pipe hidden in Redcrows clothing.

Redcrow was convicted in Missoula of the 1987 murder of Marie Richie, 22, who was stabbed to death in what was then the Sweet Rest Motel.

On the night of the murder, Richie angered Redcrow when she stole the jacket of Redcrows friend. The two women beat Richie as they walked west along the south shore of Clark Fork River.

When police responded, they found Richie covered in blood, but she refused help.

The three women returned to a room at the Sweet Rest Motel, where Redcrow stabbed Richie more than 30 times while her boyfriend watched television, according to trial testimony in 1988.

Richies body was discovered on an island in the Clark Fork River.

Redcrow admitted stabbing Richie, but later requested a new trial claiming she suffered battered womens syndrome. She also claimed her boyfriend killed Richie.

Redcrow appealed her case twice to the state Supreme Court. The court affirmed her conviction in 1990 and 1999.

Redcrow was initially sentenced to 50 years in prison for deliberate homicide and another 10 years for the use of a weapon. The state review board increased her sentence to from 60 years to 90 years, but suspended 40 years of the term. The result was her prison term was trimmed by 10 years, which made her eligible for parole earlier.

In 1994, Redcrow escaped from the new womens prison in Billings by climbing over a brick wall and wrought-iron fence. She was captured three months later in New Hampshire and was returned to Montana.

She remained in prison from 1998 to 2009, when she was sent to a pre-release center in Butte. Redcrow was back in prison in 2010.

She was first released on parole in July 2011. The parole was revoked in 2012 after she violated conditions of no drug or alcohol use.

In the current case, Ray set bail at $15,000.
NOME, Alaska -- Jessie Royer, a part-time Darby resident who grew up on a cattle ranch near Ennis, finished fifth early Wednesday morning in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race -- her second-best finish in 13 Iditarods.

Royer, 40, arrived under the burled arch in downtown Nome at 1:08 a.m. Alaska time Wednesday as the top womens finisher in the grueling race, and without having to drop any of her 16 dogs. Her total race time was 8 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes and 54 seconds.

She finished fourth in 2015.

Royers fifth-place finish comes a month after competing for the first time in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, where she finished in 11 days, 5 hours and 38 minutes, also without dropping a single dog.

Royer, who has also lived in White Sulphur Springs and Philipsburg and spends about two-thirds of the year living north of Fairbanks, Alaska, started racing at age 11. At 17 she became the first female and youngest musher ever to win the Race to the Sky near Helena.
HELENA  Firefighters say they will continue to face challenges when seeking workers compensation for lung diseases contracted on the job if a House committee does not reverse course on a bill it tabled Wednesday.

This is our eighth session weve been trying to get a firefighters bill passed. With much compromise this year, we were able to pass that through the Senate on a 33-14 vote, said Great Falls Fire Rescue Battalion Chief David Van Son, who also serves on the board of the Montana State Council of Professional Fire Fighters.

This bill not only affects me as a Montana firefighter but, he said, pausing to collect himself as he choked up, It affects me because I have a brother firefighter at home battling lung cancer. He was unable to travel from Great Falls to Helena today because he is too weak. That condition was caused by his work as a firefighter protecting the citizens of Great Falls and of Montana.

Rep. Sue Vinton, R-Billings, joined Democrats in supporting Senate Bill 72, but other GOP members of the House Business and Labor Committee voted against the measure, which effectively kills the proposal unless someone moves to reconsider.

Under the bill introduced by Rep. Pat Connell, R-Hamilton, firefighters would not have to prove their cancer or other serious illness was caused by the job when applying for workers compensation, a form of presumptive coverage already available in 46 other states.

Historically, lobbyists for insurance companies, towns and counties have fought the bill, worried about increased costs. Those groups did not oppose the bill this session because of limits added to the measure.

To be eligible, firefighters would have to have received a medical exam within 90 days of hiring to rule out a pre-existing condition or family history. Firefighters who smoked would not qualify. Coverage would be capped at 5 years, with some receiving less depending on their length of service. The Senate also amended the bill to exclude firefighters who had only worked desk duties or other jobs without smoke exposure.

Connells bill would use a portion of the states tax on fire insurance premiums, which currently flows into the general fund for any purpose, to create a new special fund that would pay for the care of firefighters receiving presumptive coverage. The bill would cap the fund at $1 million. Only enough collections to meet that cap would go to the fund to replenish anything spent the previous year. He does not expect the fund to ever be depleted in a single year. State health officials estimated, at most, a handful of eligible cases each year, based on the numbers seen in neighboring states.

Before Wednesdays vote, no one disputed mounting scientific evidence that shows firefighters are much more likely to develop lung diseases and cancer from hazardous exposures on the job. No one disputed that existing protective equipment does not completely prevent the absorption of toxins through the skin. No one disputed that the design of workers compensation makes it difficult for firefighters to receive coverage because the illnesses develop from longterm, incremental exposure rather than a single, identifiable incident like when someone breaks a leg.

The debate instead focused on expected increases in state costs for providing presumptive disease status for firefighters, the potential that future Legislatures would expand the protections to more types of diseases or other careers, and whether firefighters should just accept the risks of the job.

I take my hat off to the men sitting back here. My son is a firefighter, Rep. Steve Gunderson, R-Libby said before voting against the bill. The cause and effect of what were talking about, I understand the implications, but I think were shifting a huge liability to the state we just cannot consume.

Chairman Mark Noland, a Bigfork Republican, called firefighters courageous and said he is so grateful for their service.

But they do know. They do enter this with their eyes wide open That is what they choose and we do not want to slight them in any way, shape or form, but this is something they are going into with their eyes wide open, he said, later adding: We see a need. We love ya, but the presumptive thing is an issue that hurts. Its probably too big to get to where we should be going to win this bill. We have tough decisions to make. Some of us wont sleep tonight. Some of us havent been sleeping anyway because of the calls weve been getting and the emails.This is a big deal. This is a lot of money.

Rep. Moffie Funk, D-Helena, said she could not look toward the firefighters seated in the audience because I hear all these words of gratitude and thankfulness and how wonderful they are but those words ring hollow when we dont take action.

You have said several times we have to make a hard decision here, Funk said, looking at Noland. We dont have to make the wrong decision.

Rep. Casey Schreiner, D-Great Falls, said he was disgusted by the vote to kill the bill. He took issue with Nolands suggestion that firefighters dont deserve public assistance for diseases contracted while providing a public service.

We would never sit here or go on the House floor and say those sorts of comments about those who go overseas to fight for our country. And wed never say were not going to cover their costs if they get shot in the line of duty because they had their eyes open and knew what they were getting into, he said. Im disgusted at this notion that its not the states responsibility and theres not some kind of public responsibility to these public employees. They do a public service. If they get sick in the line of work, we should cover those costs.

Gov. Steve Bullock also condemned the vote.

"Montana's brave, selfless firefighters will run into a burning building to protect lives, but Republican legislators can't even pass a bill to protect their health and wellbeing, the Democrat said in an emailed statement. This is a slap in the face to all of Montana's first responders who put their lives on the line every day to protect our families and our communities."
CLEVELAND, Ohio - A local developer expects to start construction in June on a 203-bed residence hall for the Cleveland Institute of Art, northeast of the school's recently consolidated campus in University Circle.

The Cleveland City Planning Commission approved initial designs for the project Friday. Renderings created by the Vocon architecture firm show a four-story building that will replace a parking lot at 11702 Euclid Ave., the site where the Cleveland Food Co-op operated until 2011.

The residence hall, scheduled to open for the 2018-19 school year, will make it possible for the school to house most first- and second-year students on or near campus. The institute already controls 130 beds for first-year students at the nearby Uptown apartment complex, at Euclid Avenue and Ford Drive.

The new building will accommodate sophomores who hail from at least 35 miles away, said Grafton Nunes, the school's president.

"I think parents are becoming more and more interested in schools that can house their children for longer, rather than having them go into the rental market," he said.

An overhead map shows the residence hall site, northeast of the Cleveland Institute of Art's consolidated campus.

The institute started off the current school year with 614 students, the largest group in the school's history. Many students rent apartments or portions of houses in nearby Little Italy or Cleveland Heights, Nunes said.

Adding a residence hall across the street from the educational building will reduce demand for on-campus parking and make it easier for second-year students to come and go from their studios, which are accessible until 2 a.m.

The art college already requires non-local first-year students to live on campus. Starting in September 2018, the school will implement a similar requirement for second-year students.

CIA charges $7,630 for a full year of housing at Uptown, with a slight upcharge for single-occupancy apartments. Full-time, full-year tuition is $36,980.

Initially, at least, the school won't own its new residence hall.

The developer, NewBrook Partners of Rocky River, will own the building. CIA will control the space through a master lease agreement. That structure will make it easier for NewBrook to obtain financing, based on the school's creditworthiness as a tenant, while giving the institute time to consider whether it wants to be a long-term tenant or an owner.

The lease deal between NewBrook and CIA gives the school an exclusive right to buy the building during the first six months after the residence hall opens. "We would most likely hold it if CIA doesn't bite," Guy Totino, a principal at NewBrook, said during an interview.

He wouldn't divulge the total cost of the project, which also involves a long-term lease on the underlying land. Nonprofit neighborhood group University Circle, Inc., owns the former food co-op site and has agreed to a 99-year ground lease with the developer. The group struck similar land-lease deals for the nearby Centric and One University Circle apartment projects.

"The land lease is fair," said Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle, Inc. "It's more or less replacing what we were otherwise receiving in parking revenues. ... This is both mission and margin for us. On the mission side, we are thrilled to be a partner to a consolidated campus at CIA. It's really a unique urban arts college on a prominent stretch of Euclid Avenue."

The project requires several zoning variances, related to the square footage of the 53-unit building, how close it will stand to the property lines and the limited amount of parking, which will be along the street and reserved for faculty members. The Cleveland Board of Zoning Appeals will evaluate the developer's request for those exceptions.

The school wrapped up a six-year, $75 million campus consolidation in mid-2015. That project, a mix of historic preservation and new construction, unified the college's facilities at a single address for the first time in almost 40 years.

"This is the next stage," Nunes said of the planned residence hall. "After our campus consolidation and moving into Uptown, this is the logical next step for us in terms of serving our students and anchoring University Circle and ... contributing to building a vital culture all the way to East Cleveland."
Comments and links to reports on science, and its applications.
Frank Crimi

As frustration mounts over North Korea's expanding nuclear arsenal, the despotic regime's latest series of provocations may have placed its demented leader Kim-Jong-un squarely in the crosshairs of Allied retaliation.

Concerns over the North Korean dictator began to percolate in February, when, in a scene lifted out of a James Bond movie, he had his half-brother Kim Jong-nam assassinated in public view at Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur Airport by two women who rubbed his unsuspecting face with a highly toxic VX nerve agent.

While it's still unclear what transgression his cross-bred relation committed to spark the ordered hit, the bar for indiscriminate killing has been set pretty low ever since Kim Jong-un assumed hereditary control of the Hermit Kingdom in 2011.

To that end, North Korea's supreme leader has ordered the termination of scores of government officials for committing such damaging state crimes as dining illegally, insufficient funeral grieving, and detrimental "alternative dreaming." While on the surface those types of misdeeds might be considered by any sentient being as nonsensical, the punishments exacted are quite serious  a litany of gruesome executions carried out by anti-aircraft guns, mortars, and flamethrowers.

Still, before international outrage could fully play out on the Malaysian gangland slaying, the North Korean despot quickly diverted attention by launching four intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward Japan, three of which landed several hundred miles from the Japanese shoreline.

The rocket salvo served as the latest indicator of North Korea's growing missile delivery capability, moving the pariah nation one step closer to achieving its articulated goal of fielding long-range nuclear missiles capable of striking the American mainland.

Kim's provoking actions evinced a clear level of frustration from American officials, irritation best encapsulated by U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who exclaimed, in an understatement for the ages, "This is not a rational person."

To be fair, given the obsessively secretive nature of North Korea, assigning an accurate psychological assessment of its supreme leader's mental stability is like gleaning clues of rational soundness from the entrails of a butchered animal. Nevertheless, it stands to reason that if even a slim percentage of the crazy rumors circulating about the brutally oafish Kim are true, his is an apple not far removed from the genocidal Kim family tree, which has been rooted firmly in North Korean soil since 1948.

At that time, Kim Il-sung's ascension to power came with his establishment of Juche, North Korea's official religion, a denomination that required all North Koreans to worship him as a god. Deity status was handed down to his son, Kim Jong-il, and eventually his now homicidal grandson, Kim Jong-un.

Maintaining the Kim family's cult of personality has required a pliant, brainwashed citizenry, indoctrination that begins with impressionable school-age minds taught the godlike features of the ruling Kim, lessons centered on his supernatural abilities, such as an ability to control the weather or his not needing ever to urinate or defecate. From there, the propaganda machine continues through adulthood via a tightly controlled government media narrative that ensures that televisions and radios receive only government programing, coupled with forbidden access to the internet or other international information sources.

Despite a mind-controlling system that would make any American public school official drool with delight, a stick is still needed to keep in line any free-thinking person who chafes at swallowing the whole propaganda pie. As such, the Kim family has created a network of slave-labor camps, home to more than 200,000 North Koreans, one third of whom are believed to be children, in which their inhabitants are subjected to starvation, torture, and rape. Moreover, no prisoners are ever released from the death camp system, which often hold up to three generations of North Koreans, many of whom have been born into permanent captivity.

While the overall effect has been to turn North Korea into a Hobbesian nightmare, the totalitarian regime isn't content to enjoy its gulags and genocidal abuses. Rather, it exports that misery to the rest of the world through nuclear force.

Like the Little Engine that Could chugging up the hill with dogged determination, North Korea has been on the trek to nuclear statehood for over thirty years. Admittedly, its initial efforts produced a lot of guffaws, its weapons tests reminiscent of the early American space program. Failures included rockets drifting far off course and others never making it off the launch pad.

Unfortunately, those halcyon days are now a distant memory, as the communist state has produced some threatening results. Since 2006, it has conducted six atomic tests, the last of which in 2016 had an explosive force two times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Its nuclear arsenal is now believed to contain 20 similar nuclear bombs, along with enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to make dozens more.

Adding fuel to the nuclear fire, North Korea is believed to have produced a small compact nuclear bomb capable of fitting into the nose cones of its ballistic missiles, which is particularly worrisome, given that the rogue state can reportedly already target South Korea and Japan with its medium-range ballistic missiles.

With its short game in shape, the North Koreans have now taken out the driver and are focused on shoring up a long-range nuclear arsenal, with reports that the nation is within a year of conducting intercontinental ballistic missile tests and a few years removed from achieving full long-range missile capability.

Not surprisingly, all of this has prompted restrained panic among the United States and its Japanese and South Korean allies over how to slow down North Korea's expanding armory and keep it from being used by the mentally unhinged Kim Jong-un.

An immediate first step has been to speed up the deployment to South Korea of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) in an attempt to stave off nuclear immolation for the ROK and the thirty thousand American troops stationed there. Yet the defensive missile system is not scheduled to be fully operational until the end of 2017, making it uncertain to have an effect if the unpredictable Kim employs nukes before THAAD's installation is complete. Until that point, some suggest plying the well worn route of imposed trade sanctions and restrictions, joined with very sternly worded diplomatic statements of condemnation, as the most reasonable path, despite decades of similar such actions having failed to whet the insatiable North Korean hunger for nuclear weapons.

A third avenue of recourse may be an appeal to North Korea's longtime ally China to rein in the unbalanced Kim, but time has proven China unsuited to the task, whether through simple disinterest or the realization that, like an indulgent parent, it can no longer control its unruly child.

Surrounded by these unlikely solutions, the Trump administration, which has announced that all options remain on the table, may be considering a more dramatic choice, which is to just simply get rid of Kim Jong-un permanently.

Speculation on this front arose during the recent joint military exercises held between the U.S. and South Korea. According to South Korean news reports, participants in the air, land, and sea drills included Navy SEAL Team 6, these a first-time addition whose inclusion was reported to "simulate a 'decapitation attack' on North Korea's leadership."

Whether this was a metaphorical or literal description, the Pentagon wasted little time in tamping down speculation that it would lop off Kim's head by stressing that "the U.S. military 'does not train for decapitation missions' of any kind."

Aside from American military prohibitions, Kim's sudden removal from the scene by beheading or even a spoiled serving of kimchi may produce only unintended consequences, as was the case with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, whose death created a broken state filled with warring militant Islamist factions awash in high-grade weaponry, including chemical weapons.

While such an outcome in North Korea would certainly raise troubling issues, it's equally certain that a final viable solution to the nuclear-induced madness of Kim Jong-un needs to be addressed before the ticking Doomsday Clock strikes zero.

Frank Crimi is the author of Divine Roosters & Angry Clowns. He can be reached at frankcrimi@politicallyunbalanced.com.
Guwahati : Assam police is yet to trace Subodh Biswas, who was earlier declared as most wanted, the main accused in the Silapathar incident in which miscreants attacked and vandalized a local All Assam StudentsUnion (AASU) office.

To arrest the national president of Nikhil Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samanvay Samiti (NIBBUSS), a 6-member team of Assam police went to Delhi on Thursday and also contacted with the Maharashtra, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh counterparts.

Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay said that, a team including three officials of Special Investigating Team (SIT) had gone to Delhi to trace Subodh Biswas.

The top Assam cops said that, Subodh Biswas had managed to flee from Silapathar on March 10 with help from some local persons and some persons identified.

Meanwhile, Assam police had arrested three more persons in connection with the March 6 Silapathar incident.

Dhemaji police had arrested Sadhan Biswas, vice president of NIBBUSS Dhemaji unit and other two persons Pallav Seal and Bharat Rajbongshi.

Assam police had arrested 48 persons so far in connection with the AASU office attack incident.

On the other hand, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that, police will arrest the main accused person of the Silapathar incident soon.

'Assam police has already formed a SIT specially for the incident,'A the Assam CM said.

On the other hand, protests are continued by several organizations including AASU across the state and demanded the state government to arrest the main accused who triggered turmoil in Assam in past 10 days.

On Thursday, AASU activists staged protests across the state against the state government failure to arrest Subodh Biswas.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
I picked four modern Raft-based distributed systems (Etcd, CockroachDB, RethinkDB & TiKV) and tested them with default settings to demonstrate that they all are affected by the mentioned issue.

Crashed leader Isolated leader Version Etcd 2s 2s 3.1.0 (8ba2897) RethinkDB 0.6s 15s rethinkdb 2.3.5~0xenial (GCC 5.3.1) CockroachDB 12s 10s beta-20170223 TiDB 18s 2m 40s Bug pd: f5744d7

tikv: eb185b3

tidb: a8d185d

Crashed leader a case when I stopped a leader with "kill -9" Isolated leader a case when I isolated a leader with iptables Time interval a duration of unavailability when no one node of storage was able to serve requests

I tested the systems with the default settings. Of course, a test with the defaults settings is the test of the default settings so it can't be used to decide which system handles the leader issues better. Each system can be tuned to have a lesser unavailability window. However, the lesser leader election time means the more sensibility to the network glitches. The point of the test is to demonstrate that all Raft implementations have this tradeoff.

Later in post I'll show that the tradeoff isn't essential to the problem of consensus and it can be avoided with a different consensus algorithm.

The systems were tested on the cluster of 4 machines. Three nodes hosted a storage, and the 4th was a client. The client used three coroutines, each of them opened a connection to its dedicated node of a storage and were executing the following loop:

read a value by a key if the wasn't set then use 0 increment the value write it back increment a number of successful iterations repeat the loop

Each coroutine used its own key to avoid collisions. If there was an error during the loop, then it closed the current connection, opened a new one and began next iteration of the loop.

Once in a second (100ms in the case of 10x) the app dumped the number of successful iterations since the last dump per cluster and each node. Such simple metrics helped to analyze a behavior of a cluster when a leader was disturbed.

I picked a leader empirically as a node with the highest rate of successful iterations.

Etcd (10x) 261 51 16 16 19 262 44 14 13 17 RethinkDB (10x) 175 74 23 23 28 176 72 22 21 29 CockroachDB 146 489 217 134 138 147 512 234 133 145 TiDB 498 426 120 171 135 499 436 126 171 139

1st column of a storage's subtable nth second of the experiment 2nd number of successful iterations per last second per all nodes 3rd 4th 5th number of successful iterations per second per 1st (2nd or 3rd) node

In the case of Etcd and RethinkDB the 3rd node is the leader, in the case of CockroachDB it's the 1st node and with TiDB it's the 2nd. Let's kill a leader and see how it affects the health of the cluster.

Etcd (10x) 266 39 13 12 14 267 4 1 1 2 268 0 0 0 0 ... 286 0 0 0 0 287 23 13 10 0 288 28 15 13 0 RethinkDB (10x) 179 68 21 21 26 180 61 20 19 22 181 0 0 0 0 ... 186 0 0 0 0 187 41 23 18 0 188 42 23 19 0 CockroachDB 150 549 250 143 156 151 410 186 109 115 152 0 0 0 0 ... 161 0 0 0 0 162 106 0 106 0 163 221 0 167 54 164 310 0 188 122 TiDB 501 476 134 192 150 502 133 37 54 42 503 0 0 0 0 ... 517 0 0 0 0 518 57 56 0 1 519 211 146 0 65 520 294 163 0 131

You can see that the duration of the unavailability windows corresponds to the data provided in the first table.

For more information see the tests repository.
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iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- When doctors told a Georgia woman that her husband would likely die if he did not receive a kidney transplant, she turned to social media and made it her mission to find an eligible donor for him.



Over the years she has connected recipients in need of kidneys with donors from across the country, saving at least 23 lives since she started this endeavor.



ABC News' Good Morning America honored the work of Kristi Callaway as part of its "We are GMA: 50 Hearts in 50 States" campaign, celebrating ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things for their communities.



More than 26 million Americans are affected by kidney disease, and most dont even know they have it, according to the National Kidney Foundation. When someone's kidneys fail, they will either need a transplant or to go on dialysis just to stay alive.



In 2014, Callaway used Facebook as a means of reaching out to her community after she found out that her husband's kidneys were failing to the point that it could become fatal if he did not receive a transplant.



"I explained to Kristi that I didn't know what to do," Raleigh Callaway, a longtime police officer for the Greensboro Police Department, told ABC News. "She said, 'Baby, we're going to find you a kidney.'"



Kathryn Sorrells, Kristi Callaway's mother, described how she leaped into action.



"She decided that she would...have a picture taken of her and Raleigh and the girls, with a sign that says 'Our Daddy needs a kidney,'" Sorrells said.



The photo went viral, and eventually the Facebook post helped connect Raleigh Callaway with a kidney donor -- a total stranger who lived 900 miles away.



Even after her husband found a kidney, Kristi Callaway continued her mission of supporting organ donations and helping to connect individuals in desperate need of a kidney with donors from across the country.



"It's a big need, I mean theres over a hundred thousand people waiting for a kidney transplant," Kristi Callaway said when asked what made her continue her efforts. "So to have that kind of following...you know to have that kind of platform and not use it, just seemed like a waste."



Kristi Callaway's social media pleas, which put a face and story to families desperately in need of a kidney donation, have saved 23 lives so far.



"We didn't know it was going to do what its done," Raleigh Callaway said. "It just touches my heart."



One person whose life Kristi Callaway helped save is Bret Reiff, 58, from Atlanta, who found a kidney donor, Carley Teat, 23, from Easley, South Carolina, through Callaway's Facebook page.



"Carley messaged my wife on Facebook and said she was a match for me," Reiff said.



Teat added that she has now formed a close bond with the family of the man whose life she helped save.



"They call me their donor daughter, I call him my donor Dad," Teat said. "We go to camping trips, they came to my graduation last year, we're really close."



Reiff added, "We love her, she's like the daughter we never had...but it's all due to Kristi."



Raleigh Callaway said he thanks his wife every morning for everything she has done.



ABC News' Rob Marciano surprised Kristi Callaway, bringing along over 20 of the kidney donors and recipients who were matched through her extraordinary work. RetailMeNot also surprised Callaway by donating $10,000 to the National Kidney Foundation in her name.



"I don't have words...blessed and thankful," Kristi Callaway said of the surprise. "I know that that money is going to be put to the absolute best use and is needed."



One of Kristi Callaway's most recent cases that she has taken on is finding a kidney for James "Randy" Daniel, of Jonesboro, Georgia. Pat Daniel told ABC News that her husband was born with polycystic kidney disease, and had to have his first surgery at age 16. Pat Daniel said that her husband will have been on the waiting list for a kidney for 10 years this May, and he is still waiting to find a match.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
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For the first time in 99 years, US province is all set to witness the universal treat. On August 21, 2017, a total Solar Eclipse is about to appear that will hide the Sun for the entire day. The Solar Eclipse will stretch from Oregon to South Carolina. Some say its an act of God.

For states like America, Oregon, Carolina, and Portland will witness a solar eclipse which will appear like somebody has switched off the lights. Other countries will also observe an effect of this Solar Eclipse. The temperature will experience a sudden change. Several degrees of heat is about to fall during that day. Environmentalists informed that even bird would stop chirping and cold winds might blow the entire day.

The total solar eclipse that will cross America this summer on August 21st will be an event that last happened 99 years ago. It will be an important and historic moment for American. Scientific observers are expecting a massive nationwide spectator event. It will also, for many people of faith, be evidence of Gods majesty and even, to a few, a harbinger of the coming end of the world.

Hugh Ross who is an astronomer and also a minister said, I dont think its an accident that God put us human beings here on Earth where we can see total solar eclipses. I think God wants us to make these discoveries. I would argue that God on purpose made the universe beautiful, and one of the beauties is a solar eclipse.

Ross informed that he would be leading a trip to watch the eclipse for about 80 people interested in finding spirituality in science. They will initiate their travel itinerary down a dirt road into a field in Eastern Oregon, where they will wait for the sun to be blotted out. Across the country, other church groups will do the same.

The Washington Post has named this total Solar Eclipse as the Great American Eclipse. In 1918, US last observed such kind of a Solar event. The prime spot to witness this event is Carbondale, in Illinois. Interested people have already started to book hotel rooms t observe this event.

The Adler Planetarium has come up with an exhibit called Chasing Eclipses. This exhibition will be open to the public sometime next week and delves into the history of solar eclipses, as well as upcoming celestial events. Visitors can stand in the shadow of the moon, study artefacts used by scientists of yore and build tools for viewing eclipses themselves.

NASA will be live-broadcasting the event, and researchers speculate that this may be the most celebrated eclipse ever, garnering the highest number of opinion. The next solar eclipse is set to occur in 2024, but Chicago will again witness an eclipse in such proximity in 2099.

Scientists have suggested no to look directly to the Solar Eclipse since the ultraviolet rays might be harmful to the eyes and can damage the eyesight. Hence, you can use high sun protection glasses to observe this Solar Eclipse event.
After debuting at Hot Docs in Toronto last year, Jared P. Scott's documentary The Age of Consequences enjoyed a theatrical run in January and now it's heading to home video. We have an exclusive link for advance purchase of the climate change doc.

First, here's the official synopsis:

The Age of Consequences investigates climate change impacts on increased resource scarcity, migration, and conflict through the lens of national security and global stability.

Through unflinching case-study analysis, distinguished U.S. military admirals, generals and veterans lay bare how climate change stressors interact with societal tensions and spark conflict. Water and food shortages, drought, extreme weather and sea-level rise function as 'accelerants of instability' and 'catalysts for conflict' in volatile regions of the world that will lead to grave implications for peace and security in the 21st century.

Directed by Jared P. Scott, The Age of Consequences will be playing at the Laemmle NoHo in Los Angeles this coming Monday, March 21. The film will also screen for NASA at the AmesResearch Center south of San Francisco on April 20.

It will be available digitally on April 4, 2017. Here's an exclusive link for an advance purchase.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 85F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds. Low 67F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
 Taking a critical perspective on the work of former US Attorney for SDNY Preet Bharara | Main | "Good, Bad and Wrongful Juvenile Sex: Rethinking the Use of Statutory Rape Laws Against the Protected Class" 

This lengthy local article, headlined "Gov. Scott appoints special prosecutor after Ayala says she won't pursue death penalty," reports on a set of interesting developments in the heart of Florida concerning the heart of prosecutorial discretion and application of the death penalty. Here are the details:

Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday removed Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala from the case of accused cop killer Markeith Loyd after she announced that she would not pursue the death penalty in his or any other case during her tenure.

In an executive order, Scott gave the case to Lake County State Attorney Brad King. Earlier today, I called on State Attorney Ayala to immediately recuse herself from this case, Scott said in a statement. She informed me this afternoon that she refuses to do that. She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice, and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case. Scott cited a state law allowing Floridas governor to appoint a different prosecutor if he finds a good and sufficient reason to take it away from the original prosecutor.

Ayala issued a statement late Thursday, implying that her office would abide by Scotts order. Upon receipt of any lawful order, my office will follow that order and fully cooperate to ensure the successful prosecution of Markeith Loyd, she said.

Ayala created a firestorm of criticism Thursday morning when she announced she would not seek the death penalty against Loyd or anyone else. I have determined that doing so is not in the best interest of the community or the best interest of justice, she said.

During a Thursday afternoon press conference, law enforcement leaders and families of victims expressed disappointment in Ayalas intentions. Orlando Deputy Police Chief Robert Anzueto stood in front of Claytons widower, Seth Clayton, and spoke on his behalf. My closure will be when Markeith Loyd is six-feet under, Clayton told Anzueto....

Ayalas announcement was a surprise and a position she had not made public before, despite a five-month campaign for public office, during which she was repeatedly asked about her stance. It also ran counter to information her employees had provided the Orlando Sentinel as recently as Tuesday.

Reaction came swiftly from state and local law enforcement officials, who were sharply critical. Attorney General Pam Bondi called the announcement dangerous and a neglect of duty.

But Ayalas decision was heralded by death penalty opponents. Ending use of the death penalty in Orange County is a step toward restoring a measure of trust and integrity in our criminal justice system, said Adora Obi Nweze, president Florida State Conference NAACP. Orlando pastor Gabriel Salguero said, By naming a broken program, Ms. Ayala creates hope in the community for working together to find better alternatives." Salguero leads the Calvario City Church and is president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition....

Law enforcement officials, meanwhile, expressed their anger with the decision. Demings said he supported Scotts decision to take the case away from Ayala. To put it bluntly, the law enforcement officers of Central Florida are outraged, Demings said....

State attorneys have wide discretion in who to charge with a crime, what charge to file and what penalty to seek. State law does not require them to seek the death penalty. Ayala, 42, has been state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties since Jan. 3. She upset incumbent Jeff Ashton in a primary election in August with the help of $1.4 million in donations from a political action committee with ties to billionaire George Soros, a liberal activist.

Ashton said Thursday that when Ayala worked for him, she did not oppose the death penalty. He called her newly-declared position ridiculous.... When he was her boss, she was assigned the capital murder case of David Lewis Payne, whos accused of abducting his ex-girlfriend, putting her in the trunk of her car then killing her in 2015. She came to me. She was really excited because she got her first death penalty case, he said of Ayala.

During her news conference, Ayala cited several reasons she will not pursue the death penalty. Studies have shown, she said, that it provides no public safety benefits, that it is not a deterrent and that it winds up costing the state more than cases in which a defendant is sentenced to life in prison. It also gives victims families false hope, she said.

Some victims will support and some will surely oppose my decision, but I have learned that death penalty traps many victims families in decades long cycle of uncertainty, she said.   I cannot in good faith look a victims family in the face and promise that a death sentence handed down in our courts will ever result in execution....

Former State Attorney Lawson Lamar, who served six terms prior to Ashton, and before that was Orange County Sheriff, had this reaction to Ayalas announcement: I, frankly, was flabbergasted.  When you dont have a death penalty, bad things happen. He predicted it would mean more homicides in Orange and Osceola counties. Murders, rapists and criminals whose crimes carry a life sentence now have an incentive to kill witnesses, knowing that they face no greater penalty, he said.

Ive been telling people, Give Aramis a chance.  Shes smart. Shes well spoken. I think this is a big mistake. I hope the backlash from it causes her to reconsider, because in life, as an elected official, youre supposed to protect, defend and represent the people.
 New Sentencing Project report on "Immigration and Public Safety" | Main | Taking a critical perspective on the work of former US Attorney for SDNY Preet Bharara 

March 17, 2017

Eleventh Circuit panel declares Alabama murderer incompetent to be executed

A panel of the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday reached the rare conclusion that an Alabama death row prisoner was not competent to be executed. The majority opinion authored by Judge Martin in Madison v. Commissioner, No. 16-12279 (11th Cir. March 15, 2017) (available here), gets started this way:

Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of a person who is incompetent. Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 40910, 106 S. Ct. 2595, 2602 (1986). The Court has since clarified that a person cannot be executed if he lacks a rational understanding of the reason for his execution. Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 95460, 127 S. Ct. 2842, 285962 (2007). This standard requires the prisoner to be able to rationally understand the connection between the crime he committed and the punishment he is to receive. See Ferguson v. Secy, Florida Dept of Corr., 716 F.3d 1315, 1336 (11th Cir. 2013). The Supreme Court told us that if the prisoner does not understand this connection, the punishment can serve no proper purpose and cannot be carried out. Panetti, 551 U.S. at 960, 127 S. Ct. at 2862. This habeas petitioner, Vernon Madison, is a 66-year-old man on death row for the murder of a police officer over three decades ago. In recent years, Mr. Madison has suffered strokes resulting in significant cognitive and physical decline. His lawyers argue here that he is mentally incompetent to be executed under Ford and Panetti. Finding that Mr. Madison had made a substantial threshold showing of incompetency, an Alabama trial court held a competency hearing. At the hearing, Mr. Madison presented unrebutted testimony from Dr. John Goff that his strokes caused major vascular disorder (also known as vascular dementia) and related memory impairments and that, as a result, he has no memory of committing the murder  the very act that is the reason for his execution. To the contrary, Mr. Madison does not believe he ever killed anyone. Dr. Goff testified that due to his memory impairments, Mr. Madison does not have a rational understanding of why the state is seeking to execute him. The State presented expert testimony from Dr. Karl Kirkland. Dr. Kirkland testified that Mr. Madison was able to accurately discuss his legal appeals and legal theories with his attorneys and  on pretty much this basis alone  concluded that Mr. Madison has a rational understanding of [his] sentence. Accepting the testimony of Dr. Kirkland, the Alabama trial court decided that Mr. Madison is competent to be executed. Mr. Madison argues that the trial courts decision relied on an unreasonable determination of the facts and involved an unreasonable application of the law. We agree. In so holding, we are mindful of the great deference due to state court decisions on federal habeas review, particularly when the state court is applying a general standard like the one in Panetti. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101, 131 S. Ct. 770, 786 (2011) (The more general the rule, the more leeway courts have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations. (quotation omitted)). But even a general standard may be applied in an unreasonable manner. Panetti, 551 U.S. at 953, 127 S. Ct. at 2858. Panetti may set out a general standard for competency, but the focus of the inquiry is clear. Panetti doesnt ask whether the prisoner can talk about the history of his case or legal theories with his attorneys. Instead, Panetti requires courts to look at whether the prisoner is able to rationally understand the connection between the crime he committed and the punishment he is to receive. See Panetti, 551 U.S. at 960, 127 S. Ct. at 2862. One of the experts testified that due to a mental disorder, Mr. Madison was not able to make this connection. The other expert never addressed this question at all. This record is therefore wholly insufficient to support the trial courts decision. We conclude that the state courts decision that Mr. Madison is competent to be executed rested on an unreasonable determination of the facts and involved an unreasonable application of Panetti. We therefore reverse the District Courts denial of habeas relief.

A dissent authored by Judge Jordan gets started this way:

After reviewing the record, I believe that Vernon Madison is currently incompetent. I therefore do not think that Alabama can, consistent with the Constitution, execute him at this time for his murder of a police officer three decades ago. See generally Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 958 (2007) (explaining that a state cannot put to death a prisoner who cannot reach a rational understanding of the reason for the execution). But Congress has chosen to generally prohibit federal courts from adjudicating constitutional claims anew on habeas review, so Mr. Madisons competency (or lack thereof) is not our initial call to make. Under the restrictive standards we are required to apply, see 28 U.S.C.  2254(d), and given the way we interpreted Panetti in Ferguson v. Secretary, 716 F.3d 1315 (11th Cir. 2013), I do not think Mr. Madison can obtain habeas relief.

March 17, 2017 at 12:04 AM | Permalink

Comments

All of it is awful lawyer double talk, worthless bull shit to coddle a vicious murderer, and to generate more lawyer make work jobs. These judges should be impeached for stealing tax money.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 17, 2017 12:09:18 AM

Hi , David.

On this case I respectfully disagree.

What is to be gained from executing one who does not recall killing another ?

Our mother had vascular fementia shortly before she died.

At times she would not recognize her own adult child !

Docile the Kind Soul in Oregon

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul in OR | Mar 17, 2017 2:31:11 AM

Thank you! It is very interesting

Posted by: beltranslations | Mar 17, 2017 5:04:30 AM

If the justification for the death penalty is incapacitation (something I think is somewhat dubious), I think one could make an argument that there's no problem killing someone who is incompetent as long as they were competent at the time of trial. If it's retribution, the idea that someone is aware they're receiving a punishment for what they did is certainly part of it, but it also seems somewhat facile. After all, they're only going to appreciate it for ten minutes longer (unless the chemicals don't quite work, then it'll be a couple hours longer). After that, there's no more appreciation for what they did and the consequences of it. Plus, if a person was high on cocaine or completely drunk when he committed a murder, it's not like they'll have any more awareness of what they did. If it's a deterrence argument, subsequent incompetence isn't going to have much of an effect either way.

Given that, this rule is a somewhat strange one. I certainly think there's a fascinating argument about punishing someone who isn't the same person as the one who committed the crime. A complete memory loss of what had happened, such as these strokes that led to being incompetent, is on the far end of the spectrum. But a true reformation is on the other and that's never been cause to call off the execution. The best justification I can think of is it's usually a rule affecting the mentally ill and there's something problematic about executing the mentally ill, but we still do that in many situations.

Posted by: Erik M | Mar 17, 2017 8:37:09 AM

All behavior, including superior performance, has strong biological determinism.

The primary argument is incapacitation. If insane, the death penalty needs to be immediate.

If the argument is retributive, then Prof. Berman needs to return his above average salary. He has not earned it, being highly intelligent and hard working as a personal trait. That trait is involuntary, and paying him a high wage violates the Equal Treatment clauses. The same applies to sports players with 1 in a million skills. Those are involuntary attributes. They need to return their $10 million a year for being able to pitch at 95 mph.



Posted by: David Behar | Mar 17, 2017 9:07:51 AM

If the state requests an en banc hearing, this panel's ruling can be reversed. Jordan overwhelmingly votes with the capital defendant on most cases but was willing to accept the state court findings here. I think the majority of the circuit would concur.

Posted by: DaveP | Mar 17, 2017 9:33:49 AM

What I am unclear on is the rationale basis for the court's holding. It seems to me logical that the proper timing on the standard is not whether he is incompetent when the sentence is carried out but when the sentence is imposed. In other words, he comprehended the connection between the sentence and the crime when sentence was imposed so why should the fact that he now one longer comprehends it change the analysis?

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 17, 2017 12:28:28 PM

Daniel asks why we don't execute the incompetent. Here's and exerpt from what the Supreme Court said in Ford v. Wainwright, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 260002, 477 U.S. 399, 40610 (U.S.,1986):

"We begin, then, with the common law. The bar against executing a prisoner who has lost his sanity bears impressive historical credentials; the practice consistently has been branded savage and inhuman. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries * 24-* 25 (hereinafter Blackstone). Blackstone explained:[I]diots and lunatics are not chargeable for their own acts, if committed when under these incapacities: no, not even for treason itself. Also, if a man in his sound memory commits a capital offence, and before arraignment for it, he becomes mad, he ought not to be arraigned for it: because he is not able to plead to it with that advice and caution that he ought. And if, after he has pleaded, the prisoner becomes mad, he shall not be tried: for how can he make his defence? If, after he be tried and found guilty, he loses his senses before judgment, judgment shall not be pronounced; and if, after judgment, he becomes of nonsane memory, execution shall be stayed: for peradventure, says the humanity of the English law, had the prisoner been of sound memory, he might have alleged something in stay of judgment or execution. Ibid. (footnotes omitted).Sir Edward Coke had earlier expressed the same view of the common law of England: [B]y intendment of Law the execution of the offender is for example, ... but so it is not when a mad man is executed, but should be a miserable spectacle, both against Law, and of extream inhumanity and cruelty, and can be no example to others. 3 E. Coke, Institutes 6 (6th ed. 1680) (hereinafter Coke).

Other recorders of the common law concurred. See 1 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown 35 (1736) (hereinafter Hale); 1 W. Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 2 (7th ed. 1795) (hereinafter Hawkins); Hawles, Remarks on the Trial of Mr. Charles Bateman, 11 How.St.Tr. 474, 477 (1685) (hereinafter Hawles).

As is often true of common-law principles, see O. Holmes, The Common Law 5 (1881), the reasons for the rule are less sure and less uniform than the rule itself. One explanation is that the execution of an insane person simply offends humanity, Coke 6; another, that it provides no example to others and thus contributes nothing to whatever deterrence value is intended to be served by capital punishment. Ibid. Other commentators postulate religious underpinnings: that it is uncharitable to dispatch an offender into another world, **2601 when he is not of a capacity to fit himself for it, Hawles 477. It is also said that execution serves no purpose in these cases because madness is its own punishment: furiosus *408 solo furore punitur. Blackstone

More recent commentators opine that the community's quest for retribution-the need to offset a criminal act by a punishment of equivalent moral quality-is not served by execution of an insane person, which has a lesser value than that of the crime for which he is to be punished. Hazard & Louisell, Death, the State, and the Insane: Stay of Execution, 9 UCLA L.Rev. 381, 387 (1962). Unanimity of rationale, therefore, we do not find. But whatever the reason of the law is, it is plain the law is so. Hawles 477.

We know of virtually no authority condoning the execution of the insane at English common law.1Further indications suggest that this solid proscription was carried to America, where it was early observed that the judge is bound to stay the execution upon insanity of the prisoner. 1 J. Chitty, A Practical Treatise on the Criminal Law * 761; see 1 F. Wharton, A Treatise on Criminal Law  59 (8th ed. 1880).

This ancestral legacy has not outlived its time. Today, no State in the Union permits the execution of the insane. It is clear that the ancient and humane limitation upon the State's ability to execute its sentences has as firm a hold upon the jurisprudence of today as it had centuries ago in England. The various reasons put forth in support of the common-law restriction have no less logical, moral, and practical force than they did when first voiced. For today, no less than before, we may seriously question the retributive value of executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life. See Note, The Eighth Amendment and the Execution of the Presently Incompetent, 32 Stan.L.Rev. 765, 777, n. 58 (1980). Similarly, the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity is still vivid today. And the intuition that such an execution simply offends humanity is evidently shared across this Nation.

Faced with such widespread evidence of a restriction upon sovereign power, this Court is compelled to conclude that the Eighth Amendment *410 prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane. Whether its aim be to protect the condemned from fear and pain without comfort of understanding, or to protect the dignity of society itself from the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance, the restriction finds enforcement in the Eighth Amendment."

Posted by: Peter | Mar 17, 2017 2:27:37 PM

"and if, after judgment, he becomes of nonsane memory, execution shall be stayed: for peradventure, says the humanity of the English law, had the prisoner been of sound memory, he might have alleged something in stay of judgment or execution.

That is an exceptionally weak justification in this case where he has been on death row for decades. The odds of anything coming up at the last moment are remote. Given the tremendous barriers that have to be overcome to put someone to death in this country it strikes me that this concern is simply not relevant in modern times.

Posted by: Daniel | Mar 17, 2017 10:36:12 PM

Ford was found to be sane a few years later but died in prison in 1991.

Posted by: Joe | Mar 18, 2017 5:25:05 PM

Peter. If anyone quotes a Supreme Court decision, argument is over. The Supreme Court is wrong 100% of the time. It is an anti-victim, pro-lawyer employment set of mentally crippled lawyer rent seekers. Among the stupidest group of specialists, lawyers, they are the stupidest of all of them.

They should all be impeached, and replaced by members of the jury pool of surrounding Virginia counties.



Posted by: David Behar | Mar 18, 2017 8:54:54 PM

Committing a crime in an alcoholic memory blackout, is not considered an excuse to a crime.

Andrea Yates was taken off her meds by a psychiatrist afraid of being sued for a long term side effect. The tort bar was 100% responsible for her killing her 5 children in a tub, begging for their lives, to save their souls from the Devil.

She should have been summarily executed, despite being a normal and productive nurse on her medications. This execution would have been her beneficial to her. She was restored to sanity by her prison psychiatrist. She is now a normal mother who has to stare at the pictures of her 5 children and remember what she did.

As an aside, I was sued for the same side effect. I attacked the other side, and destroyed their lives, the plaintiff, the plaintiff lawyer, the plaintiff experts. No such lawsuit has ever been filed since that time. The lawyer moved to another subject. The plaintiff experts never testified again. Had I known more about the law, I could have orchestrated their arrests and imprisonment. I later met a patient who had suffered that side effect to a pitiable, horrifying extent. She told me, she could not find a lawyer to take her case within 200 miles of Philadelphia. It gave me pause.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 18, 2017 9:06:47 PM

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 Eleventh Circuit panel declares Alabama murderer incompetent to be executed | Main | Capital debates in central Florida after new prosecutor says she will no longer bring capital charges 

March 17, 2017

Taking a critical perspective on the work of former US Attorney for SDNY Preet Bharara

David Patton, executive director of the Federal Defenders of New York, penned this notable commentary for the Daily News concerning the work of fired SDNY US Attorney Preet Bharara. The piece is headlined "An honest assessment of Preet Bharara's record: Harsh prosecutions put more African-Americans and Hispanics behind bars," and here are excerpts:

Last week the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, was fired by President Trump, and the news media rushed to characterize his seven-year tenure. Was he the "sheriff of Wall Street" for his insider trading prosecutions, a "showy pragmatist" for his affinity for television cameras, or the drainer of political swamps for his political corruption cases? At least in part, he was surely all of those things. But none of the tags do much to describe the actual work of his office and the overwhelming number of prosecutions it brings that have nothing to do with Wall Street or Albany. Federal criminal cases rarely involve the rich or powerful. Consistent with the rest of the country, 80% of federal defendants in the Southern District of New York are too poor to hire a lawyer. Seventy percent are African-American or Hispanic. The most commonly prosecuted offense type, by far, is drugs. Last year, 45% of all federal criminal prosecutions in the Southern District were for drugs. Two other leading offense types are firearms and immigration. The firearms cases are mostly gun possession cases transferred from state prosecutions in the Bronx. They arise when NYPD officers search a car, apartment or person and claim they find a gun. Those arrested are plucked out of state court and brought to federal court for the express purpose of imposing lengthier sentences. The immigration cases, so-called "illegal re-entry" cases, are prosecutions of people who were previously deported from the United States and came back. Depending on their criminal history they typically face anywhere from two to seven years in prison before being removed from the United States again. Bharara surely deserves credit for his efforts to clean up the financial industry and the political system. But federal prosecutors should be judged primarily on how wisely, or not, they use the awesome power of their office to impose the many years of imprisonment on the thousands of people they choose to prosecute. And choose to prosecute they do. Unlike state and local prosecutors who largely react to police investigations and arrests, federal prosecutors have enormous discretion to decide who and what to prosecute. Their jurisdictions are wide-ranging and overlapping, and many of the people they charge would otherwise be prosecuted in state court under less punitive laws. Judging Bharara by those standards, his tenure was decidedly mixed. His office greatly increased the prosecution of poor people of color using sprawling conspiracy and racketeering statutes to charge many low level drug dealers and addicts together with bigger players in the same indictments. Some of the people charged were already serving time in state prisons for the same conduct. Many others were caught up in "sting" operations in which the criminal conduct was initiated by agents and informants. He also continued the programs begun by his predecessors in the Bush administration of prosecuting people for street crimes that were once considered the exclusive province of state courts. Once again, those charges are brought almost entirely against poor people of color from the Bronx. And across the board in drug and immigration cases, his office too often sought unnecessarily severe sentences.... When we evaluate the performance of top prosecutors, we should pay attention to whether they advance the goals of maintaining public safety while also reducing unnecessary and unequal terms of punishment. And we should spend a lot less time concerned about how they handle the small sliver of cases that make the headlines.

March 17, 2017 at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Comments

The reaction to the firing has far less to do than legal tactics. It has far more to do with Bharara's political goals. Being fired publicly by a sitting president is the most credible way for an individual to gain political capital, particularly national recognition. I doubt Bharara could give a hoot about his legal tactics as much as he does about being mayor or state A.G., which will make him the frontrunner for U.S. AG next time a Democrat takes offic.

Posted by: Eric Knight | Mar 17, 2017 12:31:13 PM

He followed the trends of prosecutions that a federal defender would not like.

The thing to ask is if something atypical was there that made him stood out. I don't know how unique he is here, but his prosecutions of crooked politicians impresses some people there. Another NY Daily News piece praised his efforts dealing with inmate abuse: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/preet-bharara-legacy-jail-justice-article-1.2999321

His efforts, against both parties, against public corruption was something that people was thinking about when concerned with Trump firing him. Trump specifically is someone where an independent minded US attorney would be important. The other thing notable here is that originally Trump told him that he should stay. This was seen as a good move by the Trump Administration. Trump changing his mind is not exactly surprising, given his fickle nature, but very well bothered PB here especially if he felt that instead of being kept on long term, he was fired abruptly.

Posted by: Joe | Mar 17, 2017 1:37:57 PM

I'm sure Sessions had someone calling in markers in the southern district.

Posted by: Fat Bastard | Mar 17, 2017 7:59:57 PM

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LOS ANGELES | Sometimes it takes a singing candlestick more than one try to light up a room. Ask Ewan McGregor.

He recorded his Beauty and the Beast dialogue twice, largely because the first run at it sounded a bit too Spanish. He asked director Bill Condon for a second shot and we improved it. I got a handle on my French accent.

Surprisingly, the actor says, he should have nailed his Lumiere accent. His wife is French and his children speak the language. My house is full of French every day.

The rub: Arriving in London after a long plane ride from Los Angeles, I was jet-lagged and there was an enormous amount of pressure. Dozens of people stood outside a window watching while he recorded. There were like 50 people in there, speaking to each other and I couldnt hear them.

Every time I stopped, theyd go, OK, and I became terribly scared.

Condon agreed to let him have another shot at it  in New York  and the result is what youll hear in the new live-action film opening this week.

Considering he was also the star of Moulin Rouge, McGregor didnt think another musical would be difficult.

Im a musical person  I love music and singing and dancing, he says. Its very much in my wheelhouse. If you sing, I love you to someone with a full orchestra behind you, its very powerful. Its hard to get that feeling just by saying the words.

Be Our Guest, however, came with its own baggage. Jerry Orbach nailed the song in the animated version and set the bar high.

Usually, I never think about who has done something before me, McGregor says. Youre trying to find your own version of it.

The sole exception: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Following Alec Guinness in the role (for the Star Wars prequels) required more than a little study, just to make sure the performances meshed.

When McGregor did Guys and Dolls in London, he won raves and no comparison to his predecessors.

Moulin Rouge, he says, was poised to begin a new era in film musicals. The next thing that happened was Chicago and it was a filmed version of the stage play, which wasnt pushing the musical into a new area like Hedwig and the Angry Inch had done.

La La Land, McGregor says, could be the film that opens the door.

Meanwhile, Beauty and the Beast could light the way to more McGregor movies.

It arrives the same time as T2 Trainspotting, a sequel to the film that helped launch McGregors career. His character  Mark Renton  returns to Scotland and has to deal with the fall-out that ended the first film.

It was amazing to step back into the shoes of a character that is, for me, so important. Trainspotting was a huge deal. When I read John Hodges script, I had no doubt it was something that I really wanted to do.

Now finishing the third season of Fargo (in which he plays two characters), the 45-year-old Scottish actor says hes not limiting his options.

It doesnt matter where it is anymore. Now, youre looking for the right work  the work that satisfies you.

Having directed films that went into theaters and disappeared have made McGregor less finicky about the platform. Its not a coincidence that Im doing television right now. Somehow, its the way the planets have lined up.
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.

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.
ORLANDO, Fla. | For most of its 50 years, Florida's Wycliffe Associates built offices, guesthouses, training centers and airport runways for volunteers who traveled to other countries to assist Bible translators.

But in the past two years, the nonprofit has transformed the way it goes about its mission.

Now, as it celebrates its golden anniversary, the organization's ambitious goal is to have the Bible translated by 2025 into all of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide.

"The magic is really unlocking the potential of the local people and encouraging and supporting them as a team as they do the work," President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Smith said.

Through computer tablets, custom-designed software and desktop printers, Wycliffe Associates helps native speakers in their home countries translate and print copies in a fraction of the time it once took. The New Testament, for example, can be translated in a few months instead of the 25 or 30 years required when it was done by hand, printed elsewhere and then shipped, Smith said.

In 2014, Wycliffe Associates shifted from American to foreign translators working through their local churches. The nonprofit, using a new translation method, provides a version of the Bible free of copyright restrictions and translation tips for complicated sections. As a result, the book was translated into 600 languages in two years, with the goal of adding 400 more this year.

"These people are the experts in their language and culture, and that's what translation is about," Smith said.

The backbone of Wycliffe Associates is its 7,000 volunteers worldwide. They serve in key management roles and also do a variety of jobs, including train other volunteers. Many are winter residents who live in an RV park on the campus during their stay.

"We want to give as many people as we can that opportunity to know about and accept Christ into their lives," said Carlyle Kilmore, 78, a retired software developer from Rome, N.Y., who helped the ministry's annual auction raise $65,000 this month.

A shared sense of purpose has nurtured friendships. The women who work in the postage-stamp ministry, for example, toil side by side from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, exhibiting the patience of Job as they sort thousands of donated stamps by color, type, year and whether they are canceled.

They recharge by taking weekend trips together and participating in social activities. Recently, they saw manatees at Blue Spring State Park in Volusia County and went to a play in Cocoa. On campus, they go to movies, potlucks, pizza and game nights _ and, of course, prayer services.

Volunteers operate in 76 countries _ including Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Africa and South America _ some where Christians are persecuted.

Four translators were killed last year by suspected militants in the Middle East, who also destroyed equipment, Wycliffe Associates officials said. They would not reveal the country the attack occurred in, saying it would endanger more lives.

"The nature of our work takes us into places that are risky," Smith said. "There's worse ways to lose your life."

Wycliffe Associates was founded in 1967 by three men who saw that Bible translators were spending time on tasks such as constructing buildings and raising money _ time that could better be accomplished by others working in support roles.

In 2015, the nonprofit received $41.1 million in contributions and other revenue and spent $27.6 million on translation-ministry programs, according to its annual report.

It moved its headquarters from Southern California to Central Florida 13 years ago and shares a campus with Wycliffe Bible Translators, but the two are now separate. To add to the potential confusion, there's also a Wycliffe Global Alliance, which Wycliffe Associates withdrew from a year ago over translation disagreements.

All three groups were named for John Wycliffe, a 14th-century English theologian who, with help from his associates, was the first to translate the complete Bible into English.

"We have a God of love and we want to give people peace of mind that they are forgiven for their wrongdoing," said Dia Terhaar, 71, who lives near Toronto and handles sales for the stamp ministry. "Once they learn about forgiveness and love, it can change their life, and it's nice to be able to spread that message."
SIOUX CITY, Iowa | Two people were charged with first-degree robbery Wednesday in connection with a shooting in the parking lot of the Singing Hills Wal-Mart last week.

At 3 a.m. on March 9, Kelsey Kritzer, 23, arranged to meet two subjects at the store to collect money for a previous drug debt, court documents said.

The Sergeant Bluff woman asked Luis Lira, 22, also known as "Lil Cholo," to come with her during the collection.

When the subjects arrived, Lira walked up to the passenger side of the vehicle and told them to roll down the window and demanded the money, the documents said.

When the window was down three inches, Lira pointed a pistol at the victims, which caused them to speed away.

Lira then fired the pistol at the fleeing car. The documents said one bullet entered through the rear window and struck the driver in the back of the right shoulder.

The documents did not say the severity of the victim's injuries.

Lira, of Sioux City, was arrested Wednesday morning following a traffic stop. A glass pipe, a scale and 1.5 grams of meth were found inside the car.

Lira was booked into the Woodbury County Jail for a number of drug charges and first-degree robbery, reckless use of a firearm and a felon in possession of a firearm. His bond amount is $300,000.

Kritzer was also arrested and booked Wednesday evening on charges of first-degree robbery and driving on a suspended license. Her bond has been set at $100,000.

Both have court dates on March 27.
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City-based logistics management, linehaul and parcel delivery company plans to relocate downtown after receiving more than $45,000 in withholding tax credits from the state.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority Board on Friday voted to provide C2C Express Inc. $45,570 in withholding tax credits over a five-year period through the Iowa Targeted Jobs Withholding program.

Incorporated in 2012, C2C Express is headquartered in Sioux City with additional locations in Des Moines and Ottumwa, Iowa, and Norfolk, Nebraska. The company serves several Midwestern customers, including FedEx.

State documents say the company plans to expand locations to Kansas City, Missouri and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. With the potential of increased office staff, the company has outgrown its current office location in the Pioneer Bank Building in downtown Sioux City. The company had considered relocating in alternate locations, including South Sioux City, according to city documents.

C2C Express plans to lease approximately 3,000 square feet on the sixth floor of the Insurance Exchange Building, 507 Seventh St., in Sioux City's downtown. The company will retain 15 employees and plans a $175,000 investment in new computer equipment and software.

Thirteen of the 15 retained jobs qualified for Iowa's Targeted Jobs Withholding program.
SIOUX CITY | The Woodbury County Board of Supervisors invites rural residents to a special town hall meeting in Correctionville on March 27.

The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the downtown Correctionville Community Center.

Board Chairman Matthew Ung will share an update on county business and the fiscal year 2017-18 budget, and other county elected officials will be present to provide input on rural services.

The county in 2015 began the quest to visit each rural town so residents can speak with the supervisors about key issues. Ung said the meetings will have a more regional nature in 2017, and the Correctionville event is aimed at people from the eastern part of Woodbury County.

Ung said a new strand for the regional meetings is that some county department heads will share updates on projects of particular relevance to residents in the area.

City mayors in attendance will also be invited to participate in a panel discussion of topics, such as U.S. Highway 20 corridor expansion possibilities for growth, rural services and feedback on the county-funded comprehensive plans now underway.
This week on the podcast, reporters discuss Rep. Steve King's latest comments regarding Western Civilization, as well as the 2018 Election cycle.

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, Bret Hayworth and Ed Tibbetts.

This week's show was produced by Richard Pratt and the music heard in the podcast is courtesy of Helforstout. 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
Maas assaulted his mother on May 12 at her Sioux City home after she refused to go with him to pick up another person. After she offered him money for a cab, he hit her repeatedly in the face and tried to strangle her.
Dickinson County authorities said that on Feb. 20, Meysenburg and Jordaen Duhn went to a home in the 1700 block of Lakeside Avenue in Wahpeton and forced Chance Roberts into a vehicle. Roberts was driven to a rural area where he was assaulted. Meysenburg and Duhn then drove to Milford, where Roberts was able to escape by crawling out of the vehicle's window as they traveled on U.S. Highway 71.
President Donald Trumps proposed cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture drew bipartisan concern Thursday, even as Republicans praised him for tackling spending and Democrats accused him of abandoning education, infrastructure and other priorities.

The White House released an outline of the presidents 2018 budget Thursday, proposing a 21 percent cut to the USDA. That would shrink the departments budget to $17.9 billion, a $4.7 billion cut.

The plan would eliminate a $498 million water and wastewater loan program and reduce staffing at USDA service center agencies in order to streamline county office operations. It also says it would save $95 million in what it called duplicative and underperforming programs in the Rural Business and Cooperative Service, which helps with business development and job creation in rural areas.

This budget cuts investments in programs that have a proven record of creating jobs and growing the economy, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, said.

The cuts would affect only what are known as discretionary programs, the funding for which Congress can change through the budget process. They would not affect most commodity and conservation programs or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is better known as food stamps. That would require a change in the law. The budget does cut $200 million from a nutrition program for women, infants and children.

Loebsack also pointed to proposed cuts in grants for teacher training, subsidies for rural airports and a program to help low-income Americans pay their heating bills.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said she was troubled by how dramatic his proposed cuts are to programs across the USDA that our rural communities rely on.

However, she did praise the president for focusing on the countrys debt, saying, Washington cannot continue the excesses of the past 

The proposal also would cut spending at the EPA by 31 percent and the Department of Education by nearly 14 percent.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, did not comment on the proposed USDA cuts in a statement his office provided Thursday. He said the president is right to take a close look at spending." He said the budget proposals arent specific enough to know exactly how Iowans would be affected.

He and others said they would scrutinize the budget plan carefully.

In the budget submission, the administration said the USDAs core missions are maintained while eliminating duplicative, redundant or lower priority programs where the Federal role competes with the private sector or other levels of government.

The White House already has announced plans to boost defense spending by $54 billion in 2018. The budget blueprint says that the plan insists on $54 billion in cuts to non-defense programs and that the government is going to do more with less."
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.
COLUMBIA, Md.

(March 17, 2017)Starting next year live C-Span style deliberations of the Maryland House and Senate could be televised and live streamed during the last two weeks of each session, under a provision in a bill to support Maryland Public Television should Congress cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as President Trump has proposed.The bill, SB1034, cleared the Senate 47-0 on Thursday and now heads to the House of Delegates for a vote.The measure would mandate the administration fill any shortfalls in grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and provide additional state funds when general fund revenues grow.The bill also provides for the administration to include up to $500,000 annually to televise and live stream deliberations of each chamber during the last two weeks of each session, not a mandate under the bill but merely expresses "the intent of the General Assembly" to be more transparent.State expenditures total $14.5 million through fiscal 2022 ( mgaleg.maryland.gov/2017RS/fnotes/bil_0004/sb1034.pdf ).Larry Unger, president and CEO of Maryland Public Television, told the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee last week that potential cuts in annual grants from CPB are a serious threat to MPT's future."As you are aware from recent news reports there has been conversation on the national level about defunding CPB," Unger said at the bill's hearing on March 8. "The loss of CPB's community service grant to Maryland Public Television would be crippling.""The bill ensures that Marylanders will not lose their MPT service no matter what happens in Washington, D.C.," he said.Before passage in the Senate, Sen. Justin Ready, R-Carroll, tried to postpone a final vote with a motion to bring the bill back to floor debate with an amendment to broadcast floor deliberations during the entire 90-day session.The motion failed 32-15.The bill sponsor, Sen. Nancy King, D-Montgomery, and Budget and Tax Chair Ed Kasemeyer both said there was not enough money in the budget to broadcast an entire session. King said the additional coverage would cost $2 million."Were in the process of trying to get a budget wrapped up," King said. "There just isn't money to put that in the budget."Ready's amendment mirrored parts of The Legislative Transparency Act of 2017 ( mgaleg.maryland.gov/webmga/frmMain.aspx?pid=billpage&stab=03&id=hb0438&tab=subject3&ys=2017RS ) offered by Gov. Larry Hogan at the start of the session ( marylandreporter.com/2017/01/19/hogan-proposes-ethics-reform-more-openness-for-legislature/ ).The governor's proposal and King's bill are fundamentally different. Hogan's bill would provide live streaming and archiving of legislative sessions over the Internet using low-definition equipment similar to what is currently used to stream Senate and House committee hearings.This would be far less expensive and more comprehensive than a broadcast television production.Currently only audio streaming is available during the session.
WASHINGTON (March 17, 2017)Maryland Democrats on Thursday voiced their displeasure with the Trump administration's budget proposals, citing federal cuts to Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the National Institutes of Health.



"The Trump budget is great if you can get on a plane every weekend and fly to Mar-a-Lago, but it stinks for everybody else," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said at a Capitol Hill press conference. "If you look at the cost to the taxpayer to fly to Mar-a-Lago each weekend, it's about $3 million, estimated."



To put that number into perspective, Van Hollen said that the federal budget for Meals on Wheels, a program that helps feed 2.4 million seniors in the United States, is also $3 million, but the proposed "budget wipes out" the money for this program.



Programs for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup also would be eliminated if the budget were approved.



This cleanup is the largest effort to restore a body of water in U.S. history.



"The Chesapeake Bay is essential to our livelihood, our economy  the idea that this can be stopped is hard to believe," said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker in a press call.



When Baker and fellow CBF members heard of the initial budget cut from $73 million to $5 million last week, Baker said it "was very hard to ascertain how accurate that really was."



However, the release of Trump's budget shows that the cut will actually be total.



Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Baker and Van Hollen each stressed that this spending cut could cause fish, oyster and crab populations in the bay to diminish quickly, as well as increased amounts of dirty water that could result in beaches closing and tourism dollars plummeting.



"Universally, Congress must quickly reject the president's budget before the absurdity of his proposed cutscauses ripples of uncertainty and fear across the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed economy," Cardin said in a statement. "At a time when we have seen nitrogen levels dropping and dead zones shrinking, President Trump is intent on turning the clock back decades."



Baker noted that the president's desire to zero out funding for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup is "an insult to all who have worked to try and save the Chesapeake Bay."



Maryland's only Republican Congressman, Rep. Andy Harris, of Cockeysville, and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that the Chesapeake Bay is a "treasure," and that he will continue working with the Trump administration to "prioritize" Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts within the Environmental Protection Agency.



Another major area that would take a hit if the proposed federal budget were approved is the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Md. NIH would lose $5.8 billion, a 20 percent reduction in its overall budget of $30 billion.



Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Kensington, took to Twitter Thursday morning to fight back: "A message for Donald Trump: keep your petty little hands off the large indispensable mission of @NIH. #TrumpCuts." Raskin further tweeted that the "#TrumpCuts to @NIH are outrageous," saying that NIH is the leader of biomedical research in the world and supports 400,000 jobs.



Additionally, it "includes a major reorganization" of NIH'S 27 institutes and centers, although what the administration is planning for the reorganization remains unclear.



"President Trump's hypocrisy on infrastructure is astounding," said Rep. John Delaney, D-Potomac, in a statement. "Less than a month ago the president talked about building gleaming new infrastructure, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, we see cuts, not anything signaling new investment."



Among the 19 independent agencies that Trump wants to defund is the Appalachian Regional Commission. The ARC is a federal-state partnership focused on economic development in western parts of Maryland and areas of several other states. The call to defund the ARC is noteworthy because the commission serves a region that not only largely supported Trump's campaign but is also an area that Trump promised to rejuvenate economically.



The ARC provides grants to nonprofit organizations (schools and organizations that build low-cost housing), state and local agencies and governmental entities.



"President Trump said he would help America's forgotten men and women, but his budget does just the opposite," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Baltimore, said in a statement.



"His budget would devastate working families across this nation while at the same time lavishing extravagant favors on his rich friends."



Delaney wrote in his statement that he felt Trump's "economically illiterate budget" was an attack on Maryland and said that all elected officials in Maryland should "be marching to the White House to object this budget."



He also called on Governor Larry Hogan to "forcefully reject this budget."



The Trump administration's proposed budget hopes to raise defense spending in 2018 by $52 billion to $639 billion, a 9 percent increase from last year's budget.



"This budget will be a public safety and national security budget," Trump said during a Feb. 27 White House press conference. Trump has touted his defense budget as one of the largest single-year increases in defense spending in history as he aims to strengthen the American military.



According to The Washington Post, the proposed budget will increase the sizes of the Army, the Marine Corps as well as the Navy's fleet.



The budget proposal also aims to increase spending for the Department of Homeland Security by 7 percent, or $2.8 billion, with immigration reform as the lead motivator.



"As the worldwide terrorist threat and other international dangers grow," Harris said, "President Trump's proposed increases in defense and homeland security spending are vital for continuing to keep Americans safe, and I support his proposed increases."



Increases in homeland security spending could generate the hiring of hundreds of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as provide funding for Trump's Mexico border wall.



"I thought President Trump said that Mexico was going to pay for this wall," Van Hollen said. "Look, I think all of us recognize we need more security.but the thing about the wall is that all the experts tell you that it is just a waste of money, that it will not achieve its goal."
ANNAPOLIS (March 17, 2017)Thirteen people were arrested in Annapolis Thursday, according to Capitol Police, after a group of faith leaders and Maryland residents gathered in front of the State House, purposely blocking the entrance to protest fracking in the state.



"The activists appealed to the Senate leadership, including Senate President Mike Miller, to lead the way in passing a bill for a statewide fracking ban," according to a statement Thursday from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Food and Water Watch.



There are two Senate bills on fracking that are awaiting votes in the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs committee.



One of those Senate bills would prohibit a person from engaging in the hydraulic fracturingor frackingof a well for the exploration or production of oil or natural gas in the state, according to a Department of Legislative Services fiscal analysis.



That bill has matching legislation cross-filed in the House of Delegates. It was passed in that chamber Friday, with a 97-40 vote.



A second Senate bill, which has bipartisan support, calls for a two-year moratorium on fracking to allow local jurisdictions to decide whether to authorize hydraulic fracturing there, according to its state fiscal analysis.



The group gathered on Lawyers' Mall in front of the State House Thursday morning held signs that showed their dissent for fracking and listened to leaders speak on behalf of the group.



Gary Gillespi, a Baltimore resident who was arrested Thursday, told the Capital News Service that was his plan. "I'm here to get arrested," Gillespi said before the protest began. "I believe it can't be business as usual.  There needs to be an emphasis of long-term jobs, not short-term jobs that are destructive."



Gillespi made a point to say this would be his first big protest to kick off his retirement.



As Miller arrived, before the start of the Senate session, the group began chanting, "ban fracking now."



Miller, who co-sponsored this year's moratorium-and-referenda legislation, said he doesn't respond well to people jumping up and down, shouting and holding up signs.



"I react just the opposite way," Miller said. Miller said he would support whatever the committee comes up with, but he would prefer a lengthy moratorium. "Let the citizens vote on the issue," Miller said Thursday after session. "That's what democracy is all about."



Senators Paul Pinksy, D-Prince George's, and Cheryl Kagan, D-Montgomery, interrupted the gathering to commend them for protesting.



Pinsky directly addressed the crowd, saying activism and taking a stand is crucial, and sometimes that means getting arrested. Pinksy said he regretted not being able to join them, but wished them well. "Dare to struggle, dare to live," Pinsky said before entering the State House.



"I'm here today as a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher," Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, told the group before being arrested.



Tidwell said he teaches his middle school students every week to "love God with all your might and all your heart and to love thy neighbor as yourself." He said to allow fracking in the state is contrary to that sermon.



Protesters cited environmental effects and health concerns in their opposition.



The current state moratorium on fracking is set to expire this October.



Proponents argue the industry would be a financial boon to the state, particularly Western Maryland, where fracking would likely occur.



Jill Clark-Gollub, a resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, said she was there to support faith leaders and call for the Senate to prohibit fracking in the state over a two-year moratorium. "It's ridiculous," Clark-Gollub said. "We need to have a complete ban.  The House just passed the bill and there is clearly support."



The group migrated to the steps of the State House singing lyrics from the song "We Shall Not Be Moved." Just before 10 a.m., 13 people from the group moved to the side entrance of the building to block the senators entering.



A police officer approached the group after many senators were forced to walk around the protesters, and warned those blocking the walkway they would be arrested in two minutes for trespassing. They were subsequently arrested.
COLUMBIA, Md.

(March 17, 2017)The paid sick leave bills making their way through the legislature "are dead on arrival" if they reach his desk, Gov. Larry Hogan declared Wednesday. He promised reporters "I will veto them immediately" because they have the potential to kill thousands of jobs and "are disastrous for our economy."He called the legislation that has passed the House and a Senate version likely to pass this week partisan attempts "to put points on the board and use them against me in the campaign" for his reelection next year.Hogan favors his own plan that mandates paid leave for employers having more than 50 employees, and offers tax incentives for smaller employers who offer at least 40 hours of leave per year."Our proposal actually has the potential to cover far more people," Hogan said. "Nobody in this room has ever talked about that," referring to more than a dozen reporters at the press conference.The House and Senate versions of the bills, HB1 and SB230 , differ in how many hours and days are covered, but both bills mandate paid sick leave for businesses with more than 15 employees. Businesses with fewer than 15 employees must offer unpaid leave for covered employees. Any business that offers at least some kind of paid leavevacation, personal, sick or disabilityfor five or six days is already in compliance with the new mandate.Instead of a mandate, Hogan's billSB305 offers tax incentives to some businesses with less than 50 employees who provide paid leave. But it does not cover all employers, only those which are "pass-through entities" such as sole proprietors, partnerships, Chapter S corporations and limited liability companies.The Hogan bill does not offer incentives to small nonprofit corporations, small stock corporations or businesses that are losing money. And it does not offer tax breaks for business owners that make too much money$200,000 for an individual or $250,000 for a couple.Hogan's tax incentives have been loosely called "tax credits," as Chief Legislative Officer Christopher Shank did at a Senate hearing on Hogan's measure, but they are actually "subtraction modifications." They exempt the first $20,000 in income from Maryland taxes, potentially about $1,700 in tax breaks, according to a Hogan aide. This break would go even for small businesses that have long been offering paid sick leave to employees.These tax breaks for pass-through entities in exactly those amounts proposed by Hogan were the top recommendation of the legislature's Augustine Commission last year, Hogan's aides have emphasized. But the commission's recommendation was an attempt to reduce Maryland's high personal tax rates that make the state less competitive for business owners, and were unrelated to sick leave or employee benefits.The tax incentives in Hogan's bill are estimated to cost the state $60 million a year in lost revenues, according to legislative analysts, who said, "This bill establishes a new entitlement."The mandates in the House and Senate bill cost the state little but put an additional burden on employers who are not currently offering paid sick leave. This leads Hogan to charge they could kill thousands of jobs.The Hogan bill, which is half the length of the legislature's proposals, also provides less regulation, less protections for employees who file a complaint and lower penalties than the House and Senate bills, and totally exempts all collective bargaining agreements. The legislature only exempts construction industry labor contracts and agriculture, also exempted in the Hogan bill.Labor Secretary Kelly Schulz told the Senate committee last month that the Hogan bill "addresses the needs of every employee in the state."The Hogan bill could encourage very small employers to offer paid sick who might only provide unpaid leave in the legislative mandate. But it also clearly does not offer incentives to other employers who don't pay taxes or already pay high taxes.
Photo via MarylandReporter.com.

Many communities in Maryland are openly flouting federal laws regarding immigration by establishing themselves as "sanctuary cities," and, by doing so; they are creating a troublesome precedent.These "sanctuary cities" often prohibit their police from notifying federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they have detained an illegal immigrant. They encourage local police not to turn over illegal immigrants in their custody to federal officials because they might start deportation proceedings against them.The stated purpose of these policies is to make illegal immigrants feel safe and welcome. That they thwart the enforcement of duly enacted federal immigration lawsand that immigration policy is the exclusive bailiwick of the federal governmentdoesn't enter into the mix.Nor, it seems, do broader public safety concerns. The news frequently includes stories about illegal immigrants who were protected by these policies going on to commit crimesoften with tragic consequences.San Francisco recently doubled-down on its policies by pulling its police out of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in the Bay Area. The reason for doing so: the city's political leaders don't want to run the risk of possibly contributing to federal immigration authorities' ability to capture illegal immigrants, even though the task force is meant to stop terrorist attacks, not search for illegal immigrants.Given the political climate in many jurisdictions in Maryland, it's hardly surprising that our state has its share of sanctuary communities. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Prince George's County Department of Corrections will not honor an ICE detainer without a warrant signed by a judge that demonstrates probable cause, and Montgomery County will not honor one without adequate probable cause.The Baltimore City Detention Center, which is run by the state of Maryland, was even more nettlesome under the administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley. Under O'Malley, the city jail refused to notify federal authorities when an illegal immigrant targeted for deportation was going to be released. Gov. Larry Hogan reversed that posture.Places like Baltimore and Annapolis recently have tried to move sanctuary cities legislation under the guise of calling themselves "welcoming" or "non-discriminatory."The sanctuary movement hasn't won every fight, however. The Howard County Council voted to make the county a sanctuary community, but lacked the votes to override County Executive Allan Kittleman's veto. Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh has applied for the 278 (g) program that would train officers at the Ordnance Road Detention Center to be trained in federal immigration law and is negotiating with the federal government to allow them to useand pay forunused cells to detain criminal illegal aliens.There now is a movement afoot to turn Maryland into a "sanctuary state." The "Trust Act," SB835 and HB1362, would prohibit police and sheriff's departments from honoring federal government requests to hold illegal immigrants longer than required by the local criminal justice system.The Washington Post recently reported that, at a workshop conducted by Casa de Maryland, an immigrant-support group, Comptroller Peter Franchot asserted that he would never, ever; turn over illegal immigrants' tax information to immigration authorities. "If I have to get my law enforcement division to stand outside the door in Annapolis," he said, "I will."One of the oddest things about those who think that their communities should flout federal law is that they think such acts should be free of any consequences. Thus, they bristle at President Trump's proposal that jurisdictions that thumb their noses at federal immigration laws should be denied federal funds until they change their ways.Imagine Peter Franchot's reaction, however, if Carroll County's government concluded that state taxes on tobacco and alcohol were unreasonably high and so turned a blind to the smuggling and sale of untaxed cigarettes and alcohol in the county. What if it then prohibited county government officials from cooperating with state agencies in the enforcement of state tax laws and declared itself "welcoming" to anyone selling tax-free booze and smokes in Carroll County? And, boy, think what some people would say if the commissioners capped their defiance by saying, "If we have to get our deputies to stand outside the door in Westminster, we will."How would the Left react if several Western counties or states declared that they wouldn't cooperate with federal agencies charged with enforcing federal gun laws? What if New York passed a law prohibiting state financial regulators from sharing information related to institutions and individuals involved in financial services with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the IRS?Politicians and others have embraced the sanctuary movement for a number of reasonse.g., the opportunity for ceaseless moral preening. With Donald Trump now in the White House, they can get an additional thrill from being in the "resistance".This virtue signaling, however, sends a troublesome message: if you cloak certain actions in even the thinnest of moral veneers, it is acceptable to flout the rule of law, undermine American federalism, and weaken the Constitution, which all elected officials take an oath to support.
SFGNs Speak OUT is a weekly feature giving a regular voice to South Florida LGBT leaders.

What stories are not getting enough attention?

The last 8 years have been extremely good for LGBT rights, but many of these rights are currently at risk of being overturned. With just the strike of a pen, the Trump administration ended Transgender protections in Public Schools. Other Obama era legislation at risk includes, Federal LGBT employment protections for Government Contractors. The repeal the Affordable Care Act could remove protections for transgender people in accessing health care and leave millions of LGBT adults without insurance. Plus, because we still have no Federal protections in housing, employment or public accommodations, it is unlikely that the new Attorney General will fight for our rights the way the Obama Administration did.

 Lee Rubin, Blogger and Community Organizer

I think its really important that people are focused on the connection between the LGBT and the Womens movements. The protections that we strive for are very similar in both movements and we would be nowhere without these allies in both groups.

 Meredith L Ockman, community activist and a director of NOW

Theres so much going on, its hard to know where to look. One area that has been contentious for a long time is the pseudoscience of so-called conversion therapy (pray away the gay). It's heating up as the religious-right bigots double-down on their anti-LGBT zealotry. The practice is opposed as harmful - especially for youth - by dozens of professional organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, National Association of Social Workers, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and so many more. Kudos to Palm Beach County Human Rights Council for working with local city governments (most recently Riviera Beach) to ban therapists from using conversion therapy.

 Toni Armstrong, Founder/Director of BLAST Women of WPB

Yesterday Equality Florida held it's Miami Gala honoring Lisa La Monica, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho spoke at length about his support for LGBT student, especially transgender students in light of the Trump administration's withdrawal of the Federal Guidance on Transgender Students. There were many niceties and self-congratulatory statements...

My question is why was no one asking about Comprehensive Sex Education in Miami-Dade Schools? No one at Equality Florida or Safe Schools South Florida was talking about this. In the county with the the highest HIV incident and prevalence in the US, it is unconscionable that our youth are not getting the information they need to make good decisions and protect themselves. While the number of new HIV infections have dropped for most ethnic and age groups in Maimi-Dade, Young Latino and African-American MSM (men who have sex with men) ages 20-29 have see significant increases in the number of new HIV infections year after year for the last 5 years. This fact is not unrelated to the fact that our youth are not receiving adequate sexual health education in high school.

Last September Superintendent Carvalho was appointed to the Getting 2 Zero Task Force by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a high-level multi-sector group tasked with addressing Miami's HIV epidemic. From the beginning Comprehensive Sexual Health Education in High School was identified as a critical issue. Yet Superintendent Carvalho did not attend a single Task Force meeting, Miami-Dade Schools was absent from more that half of the Task Force meetings and represented by Ms Martha Harris or low-level employees for the remainder. If Mr. Carvalho cares so much about LGBT students, how come the fact that one out of every two young gay men in Miami-Dade County Schools will be in infected with HIV by age 50 isn't even on his radar screen?

 Luigi Ferrer, bisexual activist and director of health services at Pridelines

For four years, we will watch the dismantling of our Federal government. The state in which we have residency will determine the extent of our rights. The rainbow lights that illuminated the White House will be off until a true ally is elected President. Resist or disappear.

 Brian McNaught, noted columnist, author and LGBT activist

I'm not sure if this is gay related but his constant traveling to West Palm is using tax dollars and damaging local business.

 Robert Hadley, community activist



Visit SFGN.com/SpeakOut to see all of this weeks responses. Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you know of a LGBT community leader that you believe should be a part of this list.
When We Rise is a miniseries about LGBT rights, created by Dustin Lance Black based on a autobiography by long time gay rights activist Cleve Jones. The series stars Guy Pearce, Rachel Griffiths, Mary-Louise Parker, Michael Kennet Williams, Austin P. McKenzie, Emily Skeggs, Jonathan Majors, Fiona Dourif, and Sam Jaeger. It premiered Feb. 27, and ran four nightst hat week. It chronicles the gays rights movement in San Francisco over the course of four decades following the lives of several LGBT individuals.

Here are some of the real heroes portrayed in the ABC docudrama:

Cleve Jones (1954) is an AIDS and LGBT rights activist. Hes the founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art. In 1983, at the onset of the AIDS pandemic Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation which has grown into one of the largest and most influential AIDS advocacy organizations in the U.S. Jones is HIV positive. When he first learned he was infected he became seriously ill. Today though his present health is good.

Roma Guy is an American LGBT and women's rights activist. Before moving to San Francisco she worked in Africa for nine years. She is openly lesbian. Guy and her partner moved to San Francisco in the 1970s. They were two of The Womens Buildings cofounders, and Guy was a cofounder of La Casa de las Madres, Women Against Rape, and The Womens Foundation of California. Guy also advocated for women's access to health care in San Francisco. She served for twelve years on the Health Commission City and County of San Francisco. In 2014 the San Francisco Health Commission adopted a resolution recognizing the Life & Legacy of Roma Guy.

Ken Jones, an openly gay black man, joined the gay-rights movement after the Vietnam War, only to discover and confront racism within the gay community. His activism turned intersectional as he fought to diversify the gay rights movement, while also fighting the AIDS epidemic and organizing services for homeless youth. He advocated for a clean needle exchange that he brought to the Black Caucus. In many ways he is the one who initiated a lot of the change that happened in the Castro district of San Francisco.

Diane Jones is the partner of Roma Guy. Jones' first job out of nursing school was working on one of San Francisco General Hospital's medical-surgery units, which ended up being ground zero in the early AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. Several of those early patients said, 'Oh, there are these two nurses on the night shift, and theyre not afraid of us, and theyre gay. You should get them,' Jones said an interview. She was one of them. From there, she became an activist on the front lines of HIV/AIDS healthcare, and pushed for expansion of access to federal resources, research, medication, preventative care, and education. Jones recently retired but continues to be an activist. She and Guy live together in San Francisco's Mission District.

 The Actors: Guy Pearce as Cleve Jones/Austin McKenzie as young Cleve Jones - Mary Louise Parker as Roma Guy/Emily Skeggs as young Roma Guy  Rachel Griffiths as Diane, Romas wife/Fiona Dourif as young Diane - Michael Williams as Ken Jones, African-American community organizer/ Jonathan Majors as young Ken Jones.
The 2017 Florida AIDS Walk & Music Festival returns to Fort Lauderdale Beach Sunday March 19.

This years event is presented by AHF Pharmacy and Wells Fargo and features a performance by the funk-pop-dance band DNCE.

Registration opens at 8 a.m. at South Beach Park, located just north of the B Ocean Resort. The walk begins at 10 a.m. and the live concert starts at 11 a.m.

Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers provides vocals for DNCE, who smashed the charts with Cake by the Ocean in late 2015. Joining Jonas in the band are drummer Jack Lawless and guitarists JinJoo Lee and Cole Whittle.

The 3.1 mile walk departs South Beach Park and heads north along scenic A1A, hanging a left on Sebastian Street and then a right on North Birch Road. After another right on Vistamar Street, the walk flows into A1A again, taking a right and returning to South Beach Park.

Eight HIV/AIDS agencies benefit from the annual event. Those organizations are: AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Broward House, SAVE, Sunshine Social Services, Inc., Poverello Center, Pride Center at Equality Park, Latinos Salud, World AIDS Museum and Educational Center and Pridelines.

The event appears well on its way of reaching its fundraising goal of $1.2 million. As of March 10, $1,027,346.86 was raised. Stephen Fallon, co-founder of Latinos Salud, leads individual fundraisers with just over $23,000 and SunServe leads the team category with more than $78,000.

Registration fee is $25. To register or for more information, visit www.floridaaidswalk.org
Inside the World AIDS Museum and Educational Center in Wilton Manors is a space devoted to legendary advocacy group ACT UP.

In the old days we protested with placards and signs, said Ed Sparan, operations manager at the museums Wilton Station location. Now they do it on Facebook and Twitter.

In the space designated for ACT UP are bits and pieces of memorabilia from the groups heydays of the 1980s and 1990s. Formed in 1987, ACT UP was the brainchild of HIV/AIDS activist Larry Kramer.

Sparan attended an event with Kramer last week at Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale. The event, an interview style format, recognized the significant achievement of ACT UP and Kramers life work.

Theres still a fire in his belly, Sparan said of Kramer, who is now in his 80s. The crowd was glued to their chairs. They didnt move a muscle.

Sparan is hoping the ACT UP exhibit sparks a new generation of activism -- even among neighbors. He remarked there are residents of the building who have yet to darken the museums doors.

Thirty-nine thousand people have died from AIDS in the three years we have been here, Sparan said. Were the only museum about AIDS in the world.

In the ACT UP space are historical documents such as a bail fund policy, a 1990 Miami Herald article about a die-in, and a 2008 condoms campaign launched by the New York chapter. The campaigns LGBT Pride message was called Fuck Safe and featured advertisements of shirtless men with the words condoms are all you need to wear.

30 Years With ACT UP -- Disease, Art, Human Resilience is on display through April. For hours of operation or more information, visit www.worldaidsmuseum.org or call (954) 390-0550.
Shirley and Joan are women on a mission. In Tallahassee this week they met with state lawmakers representing Palm Beach County on a number of issues and concerns.

There is no most important, Joan told South Florida Gay News on Monday afternoon when asked her most pressing concern.

She went on to describe her advocacy efforts.

When we visit our legislators we visit in a group, Joan said. We look at their records and each of us that does lobbying speaks to the issue that we know best and to their (legislators) voting record or record of bills introduced.

H. Joan Waitkevicz is the President of the Democratic Womens Club of Palm Beach County. A native of New Jersey, Waitkevicz moved to Florida with her partner of 44 years, Shirley Y. Herman, in 2001. The women worked professionally for many years in Manhattan, N.Y.

Shirley, a short, white-haired senior stands in the hallway of the Four Points by Sheraton Tallahassee Downtown. She speaks to SFGN while waiting for her boxed lunch provided by the Democratic Womens Club of Florida.

Basically theres an attack on the whole reasonable infrastructure for poor people, said Herman. The public schools, the health care and then guns! Guns everywhere!! The answer is okay, guns in the airport. Were searched and asked to take off our shoes but you can bring guns to the airport. Now things like open carry, now things like Stand Your Ground where in fact you dont even have to prove that you were threatened. The prosecutors have to prove that you werent threatened. Everything seems to be turned on its head.

Herman said she wrote a poem titled I Want My Country Back. She described her writing as an affirmation.

Theres an attack on everything decent and everything reasonable and the reason for it is to save money for the very rich who are now obscenely rich. Its insane.

In her affirmation poem, Herman writes how she wants clean water and clean air and no more environmental degradation.

These same very, very rich people have to breathe the same air and drink the same water and live on the same earth so whats to gain if we destroy it all? she said.

On Tuesday midday, Herman and Waitkevicz joined other women in the rotunda of Floridas capitol building. It was a rally for equal pay asking for $15 an hour minimum wage.

If we can all earn well and secure our retirement and a little bit of peace of mind in our working life we can all grow and we can all benefit, Waitkevicz said.

After the rally, the couple joined a group of six to lobby Representatives Matt Willhite, Joseph Abruzzo and Senator Bobby Powell.

I am a lesbian, physician and abortion provider, Waitkevicz said. I am very concerned with Floridians having cutbacks to their healthcare. It would be a great achievement if by 2018 Floridians didnt lose anything we now have. Its going to be a terrible fight to retain what we now have.

The Democratic Womens Club of Florida held its annual Tally Days at the downtown circular-style hotel. The conference brought together women from all parts of the Sunshine State and addressed many topics.

Were not experts in all of them so we have to speak in areas of our expertise, said Waitkevicz. If all of the Democratic Women do that well have an effective lobbying day.
Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme  La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza.



Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres.




ABC/Randy HolmesThe 2017 Tibet House U.S. Benefit Concert took place Wednesday night at New York City's Carnegie Hall, and featured performances from Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and Alabama Shakes, as well as a few memorable collaborations.

At the show's end, Smith led a group performance of her song "People Have the Power." Also during the night, Pop jammed with New Order, and Alabama Shakes was joined by renowned composer Philip Glass, who curated the concert's lineup.

The annual concert raises money Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization founded in 1987 at the request of the Dalai Lama to preserve Tibetan culture.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
BioServe's Space Automated Bioproduct Lab NASA

Bacteria may mutate more rapidly in space and scientists theorize patterns of those mutations could help predict how pathogens become resistant to antibiotics.

Such predictions could, in turn, be used to develop new drugs to use against those pathogens. Antibiotic resistant pathogens or bacteria is a growing world-wide health concern. The long-term use of many common antibiotics has led to some diseases becoming resistant to drug therapy, which can lead to longer and more complicated illnesses.

A proof-of-concept investigation, Nanobiosym Genes, is sending two strains of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria to the International Space Station. Investigators will compare patterns of their mutations to the same organisms grown on Earth in order to refine computational algorithms that predict mutations leading to antibiotic resistance.

BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado, Boulder integrated this investigation, which is hosted in four BioCells Habitats and BioServes Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL).

More than 25 years ago, I had the hypothesis that environment has an effect on how genes mutate and evolve, or express themselves, principal investigator Anita Goel, chairman and scientific director at Nanobiosym Inc in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said. Goel holds a doctorate of philosophy in physics and a doctor of medicine degree. This investigation allows me to study whether we can make mutations happen by changing the environment. The first step is to understand, everything else being the same, how does microgravity affect the rate and the pattern of mutations? Some data suggest that microgravity speeds up mutations, but we dont know the mechanism of how the environment might play a role.

Data from the investigation can define the mutational spectrum. Combining that with algorithms can improve the ability to predict mutations, including those that lead to drug resistance.

We can model which way drug resistance will go and use that to develop better, smarter drugs, Goel said. A bug can mutate in the presence of a drug and become resistant. Were trying to get ahead of that, predict those mutations, and be ready with a drug when they show up.

While this work is starting with infectious diseases, it can potentially be used with anything that has a DNA marker, including cancer.

There are two key steps: first, a tool that analyzes DNA or RNA, and second, algorithms to determine the right therapy for the particular disease. Goels company, Nanobiosym, has developed a device called Gene-RADAR that conducts the first step.

In principle, we can provide real-time diagnosis of any disease with an RNA or DNA signature or genetic fingerprint, she said. Ultimately, we can build tools to decentralize health care delivery on Earth, to diagnose diseases in real time in a village in Africa or your own home, just with a drop of blood or saliva. Right now those tests can take weeks to months. The device fits in your hand, so we also can put it on the space station to do analysis and research.

That real-time analysis has important applications in space. Currently, experiments aboard the space station are brought back to Earth for gene analysis. The device could conduct some analyses in space and send only the data back to Earth. Astronauts could immediately test for DNA life forms in samples collected on Mars, for example, or diagnosis their own infections.

Mutant pathogens in space hardly stand a chance.
Mon, 07.11.22 - 09:17

There will be sun this Monday and Tuesday in Murcia but then the rain will come and wont clear up until Sunday ...
A retired racehorse with ties to Ontario has perished in an early morning barn fire in Newfoundland.

According to reports, 13-year-old pacer Machthemoment was stabled in a barn in Halls Town, NL that was engulfed and levelled along with the attached garage. Firefighters were able to save the house but CBC is reporting that the vinyl siding on one side of the house was completely melted. The fire team remains on site this morning.



A jog cart and racebike remain after a fire levelled a barn in Newfoundland on Friday (March 17), claiming the life of Standardbred racehorse Machthemoment A jog cart and racebike remain after a fire levelled a barn in Newfoundland on Friday (March 17), claiming the life of Standardbred racehorse Machthemoment

Machthemoment (Mach Three - Memorable Moment) was an Ontario Sires Stakes graduate and raced in Ontario as a four-year-old before being purchased by Newfoundland's Jeanette & Justin Newell as a five-year-old. Machthemoment was a force on the racetrack, winning 14 races in 2009 and another 12 in 2010. He retired in 2014 with 42 wins and earnings just exceeding $70,000.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the connections of Machthemoment.
After grabbing a share of the Spring and Fall Meet driving titles at Rosecroft last year, Russell Foster has gotten off to a fast start during the 2017 Spring Meet by driving 10 winners on the first three programs.

The 27-year-old native of Easton, MD is enjoying the success he had never envisioned for himself a few years ago, when a concentration on training pacers and trotters seemed to be a more practical career path.

I never contemplated getting out of the business, but I didnt really think I was going to have much success driving, Foster said. I thought I would be more on the training end of the business.

Foster credits his unexpected ascension to the top of the Maryland harness industry to veteran pacer Hi Sir, whose affinity for the Rosecroft oval triggered his owner/trainer/drivers breakthrough into driving prominence.

I started going good with him down at Ocean (Downs). I figured Id try him at Rosecroft in the fall, and he had a good year. The following spring I took him back over there and my dad took a couple other horses over. He saw how good I was doing and he brought a couple, Foster said. I started doing good with them and a few other people gave me a chance, and things kind of took off.

The still active Hi Sir, who finished third in the Open Pace on Sunday, has won 20 races while being honoured with multiple Horse of the Meet titles during his four years with Foster.

Hes really just a good horse. He doesnt require a lot of vet work. He stays sound and hes really easy to handle, Foster said. When I first took him to Rosecroft, he liked to close. All the races there, they were going fast early and not come home really fast, and hed pick up all the pieces. Races set up perfect for him.

Foster has become a popular catch-driver at Rosecroft while maintaining his two-horse stable of Hi Sir and Rock On Precious and assisting his grandfather, Arty Foster, who has eight horses in training.

Foster started helping out his grandfather when he turned 14 and obtained his qualifying drivers license at 18.

It didnt take long after that to get my full license, but I really didnt drive full time, he said. I worked for my grandfather. At that time he had probably 20-25 horses and it kept me really busy. The last two or three years he really cut back on horses, and that gave me more time to focus on driving a little bit.

Foster, whose father Arty Jr. also maintains a stable at Rosecroft, has enjoyed several multi-win programs the past two years, including a five-win day last week.

The day that sticks out to me was in the fall (Sept. 20) when I won seven, two of them were Sire Stakes races, he said.

Foster isnt letting his success go to his head, well aware of the depth of a talented Rosecroft driving colony.

Its tough. It all depends on who has the best horses that night, he said. The first few nights I got lucky and I had the right horses to drive. It can turn around in a hurry.

However, he admits to deriving satisfaction in achieving success in his own backyard.

I was born and raised in Maryland and have been going to Rosecroft since I was a kid. I used to love going over there on weekends, he said. Its really a lot of fun to be driving there and having such success there now.

(with files from Rosecroft)
The Meadows Standardbred Owners Association is pleased to announce that Hanover Shoe Farms and Winning Key Farms have donated breedings that are now being auctioned to benefit the MSOAs Collegiate Scholarship fund.

Hanover Shoe Farms has donated a breeding to Artspeak, and Winning Key Farms has donated a breeding to Winning Mister.

Both Hanover and Bob Key have been regular supporters of our collegiate scholarship program, said MSOA President Rich Gillock. We are very happy that both have made donations once again this season. We hope that breeders will support everyones efforts by bidding.

Artspeak banked over $1.6 million in his racing career and was the Two-Year-Old Pacer of the Year in 2014. This is his first season at stud. He stands at Hanover Shoe Farms for a fee of $5,000.

World record holder Winning Mister earned $1.1 million in his career, and his oldest foals were two-year-olds in 2016. He stands at Lindwood Farm in Greensburg, Pennsylvania for a fee of $6,000.

The breedings are listed on the auction site Ongait.com. Bidding is currently open and will end on Friday, March 24 at 2:00 p.m.

(with files from MSOA)
After extensive industry consultations, Ontario Racing is pleased to release the Final Long-Term Funding Consultation Report. This report reflects the perspectives heard from industry stakeholders regarding a proposed long-term funding framework for a sustainable future for horseracing in Ontario. This report also includes Ontario Racings recommendations for how the proposed funding framework can be modified and augmented, based on feedback from industry participants. The report can be viewed here or as an embedded PDF below.

Ontario Racing conducted consultations over a period of five months, and provided opportunities for interested parties to offer their thoughts through a variety of channels and at several different points throughout the process. A draft version of this report was also released, to ensure that industry participants had ample opportunity to participate in the consultation process.

Recommendations made by Ontario Racing reflect and evolved from key issues raised by consultation participants. These recommendations will be used to inform negotiations for a final long-term funding agreement.

Ontario Racing thanks those who have participated in these consultations, and appreciates the support of the provincial government and OLG as we work to deliver a sustainable path forward for the industry.

Key facts:

Over 800 horse racing industry participants engaged in Ontario Racings consultations including all major horse person organizations and racetracks.

Ontario Racing offered opportunities to engage in seven in-person sessions, conducted across the province, facilitated two webinars, two leadership sessions and provided on-going opportunities for written and online feedback.

A long-term funding agreement will provide the horse racing industry in Ontario with the certainty they need to invest in their businesses.

Common Questions About Ontario Racings Long-Term Funding Consultations

How did you compile the feedback in this report?

OR believes that the information compiled in the consultation report is an accurate reflection of the feedback that we received from the industry. It is important to recall that the in-person sessions were only one way that we obtained information. We also received letters, written submissions via the web portal and we collected comment cards from the in-person sessions. The report reflects the totality of that input.

Who will ratify the final long-term funding agreement, and what is the process?

The final Funding Agreement will be signed by OLG and the new Racetrack Alliance, which will have as its members all of the live horse racing venues in Ontario. Ontario Racing will provide support for the formation of the new Alliance, but this process has not yet been determined. As part of the overall funding strategy, the board nomination process will then be reviewed by OLG. The new board composition will include representation from all levels of racetracks and each horse racing breed.

Before execution and implementation, the final Funding Agreement must be approved by the Ontario government and a regulation must be added to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation Act to allow OLG to provide the funding.

Industry participants do not currently have access to data that relates to pari-mutuel growth. When will this information be released?

Just recently, OR worked with government partners to release a ten-year historical view of Ontario-related wagering. OLGs plan is to include the gross handle on the Ontario product as one of the key performance indicators to be communicated to the industry on a regular basis.

The Letter of Intent talks about the Racetrack Alliance having an agreement with only one horseperson group per breed -- what does this mean?

Similar to the current Standardbred Alliance, as all wagering will be conducted through a central body (the new Racetrack Alliance), an agreement with one horse persons group on behalf of the racetracks in the Alliance is a licensing requirement from CPMA. It will be the responsibility of the new Racetrack Alliance Board to make decisions regarding these agreements. Outside of the licensing requirement, the operation of multiple horse peoples groups will be up to the discretion of industry participants.

What does this mean for the Enhanced Horse Improvement Program?

We know that this program is important to the industry, and that breeders need certainty about what their future will look like. Ontario Racing is continuing to work with the provincial government, with a focus on OMAFRA -- which currently funds this program -- to determine what this program will look like as we move forward. Ontario Racing has shared the importance of a timely decision on the continued availability of this funding with our government partners.

There were a variety of opinions expressed about WEG in the consultations. How will it be ensured that their role benefits the industry as a whole?

WEG is a critical player in the industry, representing over 85 percent of the wagering in Ontario horse racing. To think that a sustainable industry could be possible without WEG's active participation would be impractical. Moreover, it can be fairly said that WEG's management of the Standardbred Alliance has been a very positive experience for that group of tracks.

Additionally, there are a number of measures that were built in to the LOI to ensure that no one party dominates the industry. For example, WEG will not be in the majority on the board of the Racing Alliance. Further, there are approval processes in place at OR, OLG and the AGCO that will ensure that there is a fair balance in decision making.

(with files from Ontario Racing)
Longtime harness racing industry participant Dwane Graham passed away on Friday, March 17 at the age of 62 following a massive heart attack, and Trot Insider has now received information regarding an upcoming celebration of life.

Dwane, who lived in Caledonia, worked in the Standardbred industry for most of his life. In addition to being a trainer himself, he had worked for a number of other horsemen including Donnie Graham, Bill Robinson, Brett Robinson and Harold Stead.

Over the years he looked after horses like Holborn Hanover and Rare Jewel. At the time of passing he owned and trained Burn Em Up Burr, a horse currently racing in Ontario.

Graham is survived by his wife, Bea; his brothers Robbie and Donnie; and sister, Joanne. Dwane has been cremated and a celebration of life will take place on Sunday, April 30 in the dining room at Flamboro Downs from noon to 3 p.m.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Dwane Graham.
Driver Mike Whelan will be headed stateside to defend his heritage and his title in the 2017 St. Paddy Pace at Freehold Raceway, and he'll have both the luck of the Irish and momentum on his side.

On Thursday night at Woodbine Racetrack, Whelan guided Koultons Rocket to a lifetime best 1:54.1 win for trainer/owner/father Jim Whelan of Troy, Ont.

Whelan will make the trek to New Jersey seeking a second straight St. Paddy Pace title on Saturday (March 18). He's listed to drive Dragon N Kickin, recently shifted to the Nick Surick stable. The five-year-old Dragon Again gelding gets some post relief, drawing Post Three for Whelan with the duo assessed 6-1 morning line odds.

Here's the field for the St, Paddy Pace, featuring drivers of Irish descent, slated as Race Four during Freehold's Saturday afternoon card.

1. Moveoutofmyway (Kyle Husted) 5-2

2. Sonic Ivy (Robert Bresnahan Jr.) 7-2

3. Dragon N Kickin (Mike Whelan) 6-1

4. Mommas Artist (Kyle Caulfield) 9-2

5. Danger Hi Joltage (Jim Marshall III) 8-1

6. Mr Bigglesworth (George Brennan) 8-1

7. Opening Night Gem (John Mc Dermott) 30-1

8. Union League (Jim Marohn Jr.) 6-1

Whelan will then return north of the border with hopes that the luck of the Irish is still strong as Koultons Rocket is back in-to-go for his connections at Flamboro Downs on Sunday.
Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit



SANDPOINT, Idaho, March 17, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- School administrators were caught colluding with community activists to recruit students of the Forrest M. Bird Charter School to join a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), while intentionally hiding this information from their parents. Principal Mary Jensen admitted the secrecy under which school staff and others had operated. Some of the same adults had even facilitated kids meeting off-campus at a local library under the supervision of "supportive" third parties. Jensen stated that they wanted to be "a progressive school on that sort of thing, but we did not want to be 'in-your-face'," so parents could not prevent their children from attending. She states "we're keeping it kind of on the down low," because "this is North Idaho," and "kids who wanted to participate in the club did not necessarily want their parents to know."

Principal Jensen also stated that starting this club was one of her goals, saying, "The adultswe spent months trying to do this thing." Incredibly, Ms. Jensen also claims that "we don't want the kids to be 'excluded' from developing the [club's] mission statement, because it's their club." She also states "One of the members of the adult crew wanted us to be the activists, doing the parades, you know, be in-their-face kind of stuff." "We decided not to do activism at first, because that's a big step." She stated, "I didn't want to do thatbecause this is North Idaho."

Liberty Counsel originally contacted the school asking for assurances that it would respect parental rights. The school falsely claimed no violations had taken place and its legal counsel replied, "[M]y clients deny that they have ever violated any parental right to control their minor children..." The school also refused to require parental permission slips for clubs, despite parent permission being required for almost anything else, including field trips, medicine, and even dress code expectations.

"It is outrageous that this school would intentionally undermine parental rights in this manner. Parents have the fundamental right to know about and direct the activities and associations of their minor children," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "It is simply not credible that this GSA is a 'student-led club.' Parents must stand up for their rights and remove their children, and expose activities like this to public scrutiny, as our clients have done here," Staver concluded.

Idaho law allows for recordings with authorization from one party.

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.
E-mail Discoveries Prompt New Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood in East Bay Area

Contact: Brad Dacus, Pacific Justice Institute, 949-422-0395



FAIRFIELD, Calif., March 17, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Pacific Justice Institute filed suit this week against a Northern California affiliate of Planned Parenthood that blocked a pro-life ministry from renting office space.



In late 2014, Alpha Pregnancy Clinics of Northern California signed a lease to rent space in Vacaville just across the hall from Planned Parenthood. But before Alpha could move into the space, the property owner broke the lease. PJI filed suit on Alpha's behalf, and while prosecuting the case, it was discovered that Planned Parenthood was working behind the scene to pressure the building owner into preventing Alpha's move.



The new lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of Solano County, alleges interference by Planned Parenthood with Alpha's business and contractual relations, as well as civil rights violations.



Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, "No ministry should be denied the ability to rent space based on their deeply-held beliefs. The evidence we have uncovered shows that Planned Parenthood will stop at nothing to protect its abortuaries and suppress the voices of the pro-life community. In this case, they broke the law and must be held accountable."



Alpha's first lawsuit, against the property owner, is scheduled to go to trial this summer in the Superior Court of Solano County.
The essential component of totalitarian propaganda is artifice (het toepassen van kunstgrepen. svh) . The ruling elites, like celebritie...
Concerns that not all of the unions will agree to ratify their labor agreements have caused rail shippers and other transportation industry stakeholders to push President Joe Biden to act.
Legislation directing Washington State University involvement in monitoring and assessing elk hoof disease in Southwest Washington got solid support Wednesday before the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

In Olympia, the committee had a public hearing on 2SSB 5474, which directs the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine to establish an elk monitoring system in Southwest Washington and to assess causes and potential solutions for elk hoof disease.

The college must work collaboratively with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the state veterinarian and tribes, according to the bill. WSU must provide updates to the Legislature and state Fish and Wildlife Commission at least annually.

The measure has passed the state Senate with a 49-0 vote.

We feel this is a very positive approach to get a more analytical-type review of the hoof rot issue and take more aggressive action, Mark Smith, owner of Eco Park along the upper North Fork of the Toutle River, told the committee.

Observations of elk with deformed, broken, or missing hooves have increased dramatically in Southwest Washington in the the past decade.

The Cowlitz River valley is the epicenter of observations of ailing elk, but sightings also have been reported by the public in the Willapa Hills, Mount St. Helens, south Olympic Peninsula and in the Skagit River valley, plus northern Oregon.

Tests conducted by scientists in the United States and abroad show these abnormalities are strongly associated with treponeme bacteria, known to cause digital dermatitis in cattle, sheep and goats.

Smith said the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has limited money and resources to combat elk hoof disease.

The only thing weve really been able to do in the past eight years is watch it spread, Smith said.

Bruce Barnes of Vancouver, founder of Mount St. Helens Rescue, said WSU is equipped better with the expertise to address hoof disease.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife has an Elk Hoof Disease Public Working Group that has not met in almost two years, Barnes said.

In my opinion, theyve failed miserably, he said. Weve lost two-thirds of our elk herd.

Tom Davis of the Washington Farm Bureau also supported the legislation.

Davis said he recently got an email from a Skagit County resident who observed four to five elk limpers.

Anis Aoude of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said his agency supports the measure and additional financing to WSU to help wildlife mangers deal with the issue.

The committee will vote on the measure later.

Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, is the prime sponsor.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska  Mitch Seavey won his third Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday, becoming the fastest and oldest champion at age 57 and helping cement his familys position as mushing royalty.

The Seward, Alaska, musher brought his dogs off the frozen Bering Sea and onto Front Street in the Gold Rush town of Nome after crossing nearly 1,000 miles of Alaska wilderness.

He outran his son, defending champion Dallas Seavey, and lapped the oldest musher record that he set at age 53 in 2013. He previously won the race in 2013 and 2004.

Seavey also set a time record of 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds, the Iditarod said. That shaved several hours off the record his son set last year: 8 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds.

Sweet was the first thing Mitch Seavey said after getting off the sled at the finish line under the famed burled arch. It was broadcast live statewide.

His wife, Janine, greeted him with a hug. Oh, my gosh, look at what youve just done, she told him. Youve changed the sport.

After talking to his wife, Seavey greeted each of his dogs and thanked them with a frozen snack. He later posed with his two lead dogs, Pilot and Crisp.

They get frustrated when they go too slow, so I just let them roll, which was scary because Ive never gone that fast, that far ever, but thats what they wanted to do, he said.

Seavey said the dogs know only one thing  9 to 10 mph.

They hit their peak, they hit their speed, and thats what they do, Seavey said at the finish line. They trusted me to stop them when they needed to stop and feed them, and I did that, and they gave me all they could.

Seavey picked up $75,000 and the keys to a new pickup truck for winning the worlds most famous sled dog race.

The Seaveys have now won the last six races. Dallas Seavey won four, and his father finished second the last two years. The two are close but competitive.

He and I have such a great relationship, Mitch Seavey said. Theres no malice, we just love running sled dogs. No question.

Dallas Seavey finished in second place, five minutes ahead of France native Nicolas Petit.

The familys ties to the race go back to the first Iditarod, held in 1973, when Mitch Seaveys dad, Dan, mushed in the event. The younger Seavey, who is 30, had wins in 2012 and from 2014 to 2016.

The race started March 6 in Fairbanks, with 71 teams. Five mushers scratched.

Fans lined the finish, clapping and cheering on Seavey. As his team finished the last few blocks of the race, Seavey yelled, Good boys! Hep!

Just before reaching the chute, he got off his sled and ran with the dogs a bit.

Four dogs associated with the race have died this year, including a 4-year-old male named Flash who collapsed on the trail early Tuesday when his musher, Katherine Keith, was about 10 miles outside the checkpoint in Koyuk.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  This is one cosmically cool sax  and saxophone player.

France's musical astronaut Thomas Pesquet is enjoying a special birthday present delivered to him up at the International Space Station. The saxophone arrived in a SpaceX cargo ship on Feb. 23, and his crewmates kept it hidden until his 39th birthday on Feb. 27.

He revealed the birthday surprise this week via Twitter.

"Totally pumped to hear @Thom_astro rock his sax on orbit! Happy belated birthday buddy!" future space station crewmate Jack Fischer tweeted Monday. The NASA astronaut is scheduled to blast off next month from Kazakhstan.

"You might reconsider when you hear the cacophony. Now ace those final exams and get up here!" Pesquet replied Tuesday.

Pesquet has been in orbit since November and has three months remaining in his mission. He's a former pilot for Air France.

This isn't the first time a sax has flown in space. Shuttle astronaut Ronald McNair took one up in 1984, two years before he died aboard the Challenger.

Other out-of-this-world musical instruments: piano keyboard, flute, guitar, bagpipes and even an Australian didgeridoo.
The Longview Public Library building, originally opened in 1926, is on local and national historic registers. Remodels in the past few decades have repaired the roof, made it safe for earthquakes and changed the interior design  but now the library needs to become more tech-friendly.

On a 5-1 vote last week, the Longview City Council approved developing a $60,000 contract with Hacker Architects Inc. for a modernization study. Library Director Chris Skaugset said the library not only needs basic technical improvements  such as more electrical outlets  but also a more efficient use of space for meetings and programming.

Near the front of the library on the second floor, one room is currently being used as storage. It holds old periodicals, Christmas decorations and other out-of-date items. is The only outlet available for the entire room is behind a broken microfilm reader, limiting the staffs options on what they could do with the room.

You cant do much with that in terms of setting up technology or even setting up staff, Skaugset said.

The city has remodeled the library several times in the past few decades. In the 1950s it got a new interior. The building expanded to its 33,000 square feet in 1968, was retrofitted for earthquakes in 2001 and had a refurbished elevator installed in 2007.

The Historic Preservation Committee would have to approve any aesthetic changes to the library. Skaugset said the plan could include some repainting and carpeting, but he wont know the extent of the changes until after the study. He estimated the contract will be ready in the next month and hopes for a design within the next six months.

I think the question were all waiting for will be, Whats the cost? Skaugset said. That will be a big piece of it.

The library has about 20 staff members and a $2 million budget in the citys general fund, Skaugset said. The citys Capital Projects Fund will pay for $50,000 of the modernization study, and the Longview Library Foundation will fund the remaining $10,000.

Councilman Ken Botero voted against the contract because he said he had concerns with hiring an outside consultant. He said he wants citizens to be more engaged with the process to help come up with better ideas for the library.

The idea of changing (the library) is fine. We need to bring it up to date, Botero said. I dont like the idea of hiring consultants to tell us what we need.

Skaugset said his staff doesnt have the expertise for the kind of architectural work needed to plan the changes, and he wants a new perspective on the space.

A fresh pair of eyes would be a great thing, Skaugset said. When someone has been around as long as he has, you tend to see things a certain way because thats the way its been, day in and day out.

The library was the first of city founders R. A. Longs gifts to the City of Longview. He and his wife gave $150,000 to the city to build the library. It was dedicated April 26, 1926, in a ceremony that included speeches by Long and Dr. Henry Suzzalo, president of the University of Washington.

The original building was designed by architect Arch Torbitt in the Georgian style to match the design for the Civic Center.
Gov. Jay Inslees office last week put out a call for applicants for Cowlitz Countys new fifth Superior Court judge position, and some attorneys have already expressed their interest.

Two attorneys with Longview-based private practices have confirmed they are gunning to be the next Superior Court judge. Attorneys Jamie Imboden and David Nelson have both notified the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum County Bar Association of their interest in the position, said Meredith Long, the associations president.

Gov. Jay Inslee will appoint the new judge in September, and the appointee will hold the position until the general election of November 2018.

Superior Court Judge Michael Evans said Friday he has heard of a handful of others who have expressed interest through the grapevine, though none of them have confirmed it.

The county commissioners approved the position in December in hopes of helping deal with a backlog of cases, civil cases especially. The judges annual salary will be $166,000, half of which will be paid for by the state and half by the county.

Imboden, 44, co-owns Crandall, ONeill, Imboden & Styve, P.S. He lives in his hometown of Kalama and has been practicing law in Longview since 1998. He said the timing is right for his family, at a time when his son is older and transitioning into high school.

Being a judge has been a goal of mine since the beginning of my career, Imboden said. It was just a question of whether or not the opportunity would arise.

Nelson, 61, has lived in Longview since 1990. He began running the Nelson Law Firm in 2000 and has been a part-time court commissioner at the Superior Court for six years. More recently, he became a judge pro tem in the District Court. He said he never intended to be a judge until he became court commissioner and enjoyed the process. He began seriously considering a judgeship at least a year ago, he said.

I like the process. I like dealing with the public that way, Nelson said. Im looking forward to the process. I think its going to be interesting ... however it turns out.

Judge Evans said the fifth judge will be a big asset to the public, whose wait times to get into court will significantly decrease. He said Cowlitz Superior Court is one of the busiest courts in the state, and the number of criminal filings are on par with Clark Countys  which has a population about four times as large.

The Superior Court has five courtrooms available, so all five judges can simultaneously attend trials and hearings, Evans pointed out. The Legislature approved the position in 2006, but the commissioners didnt fund the position until this year.

A new judge, its a big deal because theres not many of them, Evans said. And the people have given tremendous authority and power to the judges. To be granted that opportunity and responsibility to wield that power is a significant undertaking.

Inslee is seeking more applicants for the position and is encouraging them to schedule interviews with statewide minority bar associations.

All applications must be submitted to the Governors Office by May 31.
State School Superintendent Chris Reykdal is all for testing standards in schools, but he says they shouldnt determine whether students graduate from high school and receive their diploma.

Those assessments are there for us to tell us how were performing as systems  as a state, as a district, as schools, Reykdal said as he paced the stage of the Kelso High School auditorium Wednesday.

Reykdal addressed a group of about 50 Kelso and Longview educators and administrators for about an hour and a half Wednesday afternoon. Among other topics, he called for boosting the states committment to school funding and predicted what educators can expect from the Trump Administration.

Reykdal affirmed that he supported decoupling final high school exams with graduation, as well as creating more opportunities for students who dont want to follow the four-year university pathway.

Right now, Washington students must pass a high school exit exam in language arts and math to earn a high school diploma.

(The exams) were never designed as a labor market filter to say you dont get a diploma or you do, Reykdal said. Imagine you were a real estate agent and you were selling homes all year, and they say you dont get a single commission unless the last home you sell in December is your biggest sale ever.

If a student fails to earn a high school diploma, Reykdal warned, it means an average $370,000 less in lifetime earnings for that student: the difference between renting and owning a house. It also means an additional average $300,000 in healthcare costs, criminal justice costs or social safety net expenses for taxpayers.

The Legislature is considering a bill that would address Reykdals concerns: House Bill 1046 would retain the exams but eliminate the need to pass for graduation. The bill passed the House on March 6 and is now in committee in the Senate, where it is up for a hearing on March 20 by the Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education.

Reykdal also expressed his support for alternatives to the four-year university track for students.

Our one-size-fits- all system is actually leaving behind the ones who we most want to engage with at times, Reykdal said.

But creating alternative pathways for students requires funding. Right now, Reykdal said, the state spends about 2.9 percent of its gross domestic product on education, while the average rate is about 3.6 percent in the U.S. Bringing Washington up to average would cost an additional $3 billion annually, he said.

Youre talking about a significant infusion of resources above what we have today.

While Reykdal said its very likely that some sort of property tax reform will end up in the final plan to comply with the Supreme Courts McCleary decision, which mandates the state fully fund basic education. However, that wont take care of everything needed to make Washingtons schools exceptional, Reykdal said.

You will see some attempt to lower property taxes in rural Washington and raise them in urban Washington, Reykdal said. But then what? How do we get special education funded? And market-rate compensation (for teachers) and career and tech-education programs?

Reykdal indicated that his vision includes more individualized pathways for students, and its going to take the courage to make a bit more investment.

This is our moment to say Why do we do things the way we do them? Reykdal asked. Is it such that every single program should lead students to a four-year pathway?

Reykdal said he doesnt expect to address all of that this year, or even within the next four years of his term as state superintendent. It might even take a decade or longer.

But I think this is the kind of year where were asking the most challenging questions we ever have in public education, Reykdal said. So... we cannot just redefine the system based on its financial structure, but on what it intends to do for all kids.
Chipset maker Nvidia today announced a new partnership with auto component maker Bosch. The new partnership will see Bosch that is more than familiar with the automotive space, selling Nvidia's Drive PX 2 self-driving platform to automakers.

In short, Bosch will join hands with transportation supplier ZF that recently launched its ZF ProAI self-driving system, which is based on the Nvidia Drive PX 2 self-driving car computer.

The system was built keeping in mind not just cars, but trucks and other industrial applications like forklifts and even agriculture and mining.

Nvidia's deep learning technology, unlike most other systems learns like a human brain does. What this means is that it does not need to be programmed when it comes to facing different driving scenarios. All of this is possible using Nvidia's upcoming AI car superchip called Xavier. The chipmaker claims that Xavier is the world's first single-chip processor designed to tackle level-4 autonomous driving.

Level 4 refers to a fully autonomous vehicle one that is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor road conditions as well. It is the one many are manufacturers are gunning for at the moment. Level 4 however is to do with a multitude of driving scenarios but not all of them. Level 5 covers literally every driving scenario you can throw at vehicle, or in short something that only a human driver is capable of.

What Nvidia is offering through Bosch is a ready-made self-driving system (with hardware modules) that any manufacturer can purchase and use in their cars.

"Self-driving cars is a challenge that can finally be solved with recent breakthroughs in deep learning and artificial intelligence," said Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and CEO, Nvidia. "Using Drive PX AI car computer, Bosch will build automotive-grade systems for the mass production of autonomous cars. Together we will realise a future where autonomous vehicles make mobility safe and accessible to all."
Nimish Sawant

Google is upping the ante on ensuring that its search results are not offensive, and is letting review teams flag content on Google Search results that may be deemed offensive.

Google is introducing a new 'upsetting-offensive' category, which will let you tag offensive content such as racial slurs, content promoting hate and violence against any specific group of people based on gender, race as well as other sensitive criteria.

To flag this data, Google will be using human 'quality raters' and not algorithms. In fact, the idea is to train the algorithms using human intelligence, as to which search results could be deemed offensive or upsetting. For instance, if you search for 'Holocaust History' on Google and you get a link to an article which says '10 reasons why the Holocaust didn't happen' in the search results, then that web page will be flagged under 'upsetting-offensive' category, which will downrank that link. The content will be visible in search results, but you will really have to go through multiple pages to come across it.

The whole idea behind flagging content thus, is to allow relevant search results to be shown front and centre, and keep offensive or inaccurate sites at bay. According to Paul Haahr, a senior Google engineer working on search quality, Google is explicitly avoiding the term 'fake news' for this as the company thinks that's too vague a term.

Who is flagging the content?

If Google opened the option of flagging search results to everyone, there are high chances that there could be misuse. For instance, say if me or my group of friends does not like a certain site which has opposing views as mine, we could go on a flagging spree. There definitely has to be a responsible, objective entity which does the flagging of search results.

To that effect, Google has appointed around 10,000 'Quality Raters' who are human contractors that Google uses globally to evaluate its search results. These raters have to conduct actual searches and observe the results. They then rate the results on the first page on the quality of answers they seem to provide.

How does it work?

Don't worry, this is not Google censoring search results. Every time a quality rater flags a search result as 'upsetting-offensive' it will not result in immediate fall in the page's ranking. Raters cannot alter Google search results if that is what you are worried about. The data that is collected from all these quality raters, is used by Google to improve its quality of search results as well as the search algorithms.

Also, the quality raters have to follow a set of guidelines when it comes to rating the pages. This is the complete 200-page PDF of Search quality evaluator guidelines.

On the upsetting-offensive clause, this is all it includes:

Content that promotes hate or violence against a group of people based on criteria including (but not limited to) race or ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality or citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

Content with racial slurs or extremely offensive terminology.

Graphic violence, including animal cruelty or child abuse.

Explicit how to information about harmful activities (eg, how to's on human trafficking or violent assault).

Other types of content which users in your locale would find extremely upsetting or offensive.

According to Google, the quality raters are expected to mark links as offensive or upsetting if they are really so, based on the actual content as well as location they are in. In fact, Google says that such content should only show up in results if users are explicitly searching for it.

What happens to the flagged content?

Like we mentioned above, once a content is flagged as 'upsetting-offensive', it does not mean that the webpage having this content will be banned by Google or face an immediate demotion in the search results. Quality raters' flagging of content will be used as training material for Google's machine learning systems as well as its human engineers who work on the Google search algorithm to fine tune the search results. The main takeaway for Google is to be able to identify such offensive content on its own, before it becomes a huge issue and is brought to its notice by offended users. Google uses this data so that its search algorithms themselves are able to locate pages which may have a likelihood of having offensive content.

Also do not be under the impression, that such content would not appear on Google in search results. If someone is specifically looking for something on Google, then results which pertain to inform a user based on that search term, will still be visible. For instance, if say you are explicitly seeking for offensive or upsetting content such as say 'white supremacist sites', you will still get the relevant search results. Or if you want to search for 'Holocaust denial', you will get results which talk about the same.

It is a tricky pathway, in the sense that if Google starts blocking searches even for someone who, for whatever reason, is searching for an offensive terms, then Google will be no different from the many censored regimes we are all familiar with.

Let's say for instance, you are doing a research on one of these controversial topics, Holocaust denial for instance. Now you may not ask such questions face to face or on a more public platform, but if you Google them to understand why people deny Holocaust you will have to end up visiting some of these seemingly offensive sites, to get an idea of the other side. Hence Google isn't outright blocking these sites if you are specifically looking for such content.

"People may also want to understand why certain racially offensive statements are made. Giving users access to resources that help them understand racism, hatred, and other sensitive topics is beneficial to society. When the user's query seems to either ask for or tolerate potentially upsetting, offensive, or sensitive content, we will call

the query a "UpsettingOffensive tolerant query". For the purpose of Needs Met rating, please assume that users have a dominant educational/informational intent for UpsettingOffensive tolerant queries. All results should be rated on the Needs Met rating scale assuming a genuine educational/informational intent," says Google in its document.

Here are some examples to clarify the point discussed above:

Is this going to help curb the toxicity that is flying around?

Speaking to Search Engine Land, Haahr said that this is still a learning process and Google is monitoring how this will play out.

"Weve been very pleased with what raters give us in general. Weve only been able to improve ranking as much as we have over the years because we have this really strong rater program that gives us real feedback on what were doing," said Haahr.

It is too early to say for sure how this will help in the long run, specially after what we have been seeing offlate with how fake news and inaccurate information is being floating around and becoming a narrative. It definitely seems like a well thought out step from Google, which not only helps it in improving its algorithms and making it more sensitive, but also ensures that Google isn't censoring search results just because some people may find it offensive.

It is a balancing act which Google will have to play. But it is heartening to know that the quality raters appointed by Google are not machines, but humans whose results will also be used in part by humans working on the search algorithm.
tech2 News Staff

Micromax has teased a new phone on its Twitter stream. The tweet with a teaser GIF was taken down after it was initially put up, and now it has returned again. There is not much that can be made out from the tweet, apart from the number 8. The wording suggests that this is just the start of a new approach for Micromax, and users might see a series of new phones, or at least the company heading in a new direction. We are so ready, Micromax.

https://twitter.com/Micromax_Mobile/status/842691715211444226

Micromax was at one time the top smartphone seller in the country, a position it has lost. Over the course of the past few days, Micromax has been teasing another a new device in the offing, in the form of puzzles. Users are expected to find words in a grid of letters, that indicate the features and applications that will be included in the new model. It is unclear if the series of teasers are regarding the same device, or multiple devices.

https://twitter.com/Micromax_Mobile/status/840114629774782464

The puzzle has the hidden phrases 4G VoLTE, Google Duo, Video Calling and 12 Languages. These seem to be the features and software included in the new phone. The way the two circles of the number 8 alternatively flash, seem to indicate that at least one of the devices will sport a dual lens camera. The same puzzle was tweeted again, with the comment "get ready to feel the spark." Make what you will out of that.

According to an exclusive report in India Today Tech, Micromax is going to launch a premium category product by the end of March, to take on the flagships in the market. This would certainly be a new direction for the smartphone maker.

However, according to a report in Economic Times, Micromax is on the verge of launching a low cost 4G VoLTE device, somewhere in the range of Rs 2,500.

If both reports turn out to be true, purchasers of devices across segments are going to be pleased, and we may be getting multiple devices from Micromax afterall.

There are three pieces of evidence that point to a low budget smartphone. One is the report that Micromax is going to release a low cost device, the second is that Micromax itself has teased 4G VoLTE as a feature in the phone. The third piece of evidence is that in January, the Government held a meeting of Indian smartphone manufacturers Karbonn, Intex, Micromax and Lava. The companies were asked to come up with 4G VoLTE devices that cost less than Rs 2,000.
Rehan Hooda

Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune, has developed 'Chintu', a robot assistant for the elderly which will help them in the daily tasks. The 2 ft tall robot will engage in casual conversations along with reminding them to take medicines on time as reported earlier.

The robot can also dance on Gangnam Style along with dancing like Shahrukh Khan. The final year students of Computer Engineering from MIT Pune developed the robot after they received Rs 10 lakh grant as part of IBM's global Shared University Research grant programme.

The robot uses API's from IBM's cognitive platform Watson along with the Bluemix Cloud platform to create the intelligence behind the robot. The actual robot came from SoftBank Robotics, formerly known as Aldeberan from France.

The robot 'Chintu' can read text from a paper along with being able to sense the mood of the person around using Tone Analyser API. It uses the same API to analyse and respond accordingly to the user, apart from the regular reminders and alarms. One important thing to note is that the team behind it will work on adding new functionalities and optimising code rather than aim for a new product launch.

However, this is not the first 'companion' robot out there as other companies have already commercially launched many companion robots in the market for general users over the years. This is not to rule out 'Chintu's commercial launch, but right now the robot is in the prototype phase and it needs further refinements along with a lower hardware manufacturing cost to come to the market.

Companion robots are a rapidly growing industry in South East Asia. The industry is not limited to elderly and companies are also working on robots focused at young children. These robots help children learn and aid in education along with taking care of them and keeping an eye on them when parents are not around.

However, considering 'Chintu' is aimed to take care of the elderly, we have made a list of top 7 companion robots that are programmed to help the elderly.

Sony AIBO

Sony's AIBO was one of the first companion robots that started in 1993 as a research project. The original model was ready in May 1999 with about 3,000 ERS-110 models selling out in 20 minutes in Japan. Interestingly, the robots were never intended to be mass produced but citing overwhelming demand, the company launched the second version ERS-210 in October 2000 with new features like name recording and voice recognition.

The company announced third model AIBO ERS-220 in November 2001. The company launched the third and final model ERS-7 was launched in November 2003. ERS-7 was part of the third generation from the company and Sony launched three versions in next two years before stopping production in 2006. This robot was highlighted in a research done by researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri pointing out that robotic dogs are as good as real dogs at easing loneliness as reported by Reuters.

Nadine

Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has developed a robot 'receptionist' in humanoid form. The university detailed that Nadine has her own personality, mood and emotions and she will remember your name and the conversation you had with her last time. According to the detailed post on the university website, the robot is the latest social robot developed by scientists at the university while being powered by intelligent software like the one powering Siri or Cortana.

The post further details that it can be a personal assistant or caretaker in offices or homes in the future. The humanoid form will help users around converse with Nadine in a more natural way than other robots out there. Even though the robot is not commercially available but it sure has the potential to play a crucial role at home of the elderly.

Buddy

Blue Frog Robotics announced a new mechanical companion robot, Buddy, giving out details on its IndieGoGo Campaign page. The companion robot is about two feet tall and moves on a wheeled tripod as a 32GB Android tablet serves as the face and primary input device. The important thing to note here is that the robot comes with the ability to emote a number of feelings based on the sensors. The robot, just like 'Chintu' is connected to IBM Watson's cloud services that allow a more natural interaction.

Developers can use the open-source Unity software and IFTTT compatibility to improve, boost or add new capabilities. Interestingly, Buddy is actually an Android tablet so it can also function as your personal assistant and a telepresence robot. It comes with an integrated Pico projector as an arm attachment that can help tutor kids or function on security patrol. To top it all, according to preliminary tests by Institute for Children with Autism, children easily accepted Buddy as the companion. It comes with 'Elder Care' pack from production allowing it to serve and transport food, beverages and medicines.

RIBA-II

RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries (TRI) announced the launch of the second generation of advanced caregiving companion robot. The interesting thing about this robot is that it can lift patients up to 80 kg in weight off floor-level bedding into a wheelchair. This was made in Japan where the country is in urgent need of assist care-giving personnel. The company had initially launched RIBA as part of a joint project established in 2007. The robot comes with precision sensors along with tactile guidance, allowing the robot to quickly detect the weight of a person from touch along.

PARO

AIST, leading industrial automation company from Japan launched PARO, a therapeutic robot that helps reduce stress by stimulating interaction between patients and their caregivers. It is the 8th generation of a design used in Japan and Europe since 2003 and comes along with five sensors that can perceive people and the companion robot's environment.

Robot dog and cat by Hasbro

Hasbro has announced robotic companion cat and puppy to help elderly people, especially the ones that can't take care of a real pet but would desire affection. The robots are part of the 'Joy for all' brand by the company and have a realistic coat to emulate real cat or puppy.

The companion puppy comes with a 'Barkback' technology which responds to the users voice while the companion cat can purr happily. Both the robots will sleep after few minutes of inactivity.

ElliQ

A startup from Israel developed 'ElliQ', a social companion that 'can positively impact the lives of millions of older adults'. According to the company, ElliQ is an AI-driven robot that does not really resemble a robot but a table. The robotic 'table' uses body language, sound, light and voice to express itself. It also uses machine learning to adapt to the needs of its owner. It connects people with social media, online games, and video chat with other users in addition to recommending music, podcasts, audiobooks and a reminder to take a walk after prolonged period of watching TV.

This list is not the end of the line for the work being done in the field of companion robots. Other companies like SoftBank with Pepper and Avatar Mind with iPal are working to break new ground every day. Technologies like Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Microsoft Cortana are unhooking the assistant part from the robots, bringing it to smartphones and laptops near you. Despite the advancements in different fields of automation and AI, the field of robotic companions is just starting off with impending advancement in coming future.
tech2 News Staff

Samsung maybe planning something revolutionary with the upcoming flagships Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. According to a new report by Android Headlines, the company may add a rear camera with embedded DRAM that can allow slow-mo recording up to 1000 frames per second.

This is not the first time that a smartphone is equipped with embedded DRAM in the rear camera, as Sony has been using this in their cameras and other products. Sony launched its flagship Sony Xperia XZ Premium with the same embedded DRAM technology giving it the ability to shoot slow motion video up to 960 frames per second.

According to the report, Samsung manufactures mobile DRAM for other OEMs and this will help the company in setting the benchmark for slow motion video capture.

Other addition that the company is planning to pack Galaxy S8 is with is a 3.7MP iris sensor. This is a bump from normal iris scanners, backing up the claims that it can perform its iris scanning and facial recognition capabilities in the upcoming flagship devices. Rumours indicate that Samsung will go with the tried and tested 12MP camera sensor for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus.

This comes just days after the previous leak which pointed out that Galaxy S8 would arrive in two models. The standard Galaxy S8 would feature a 5.8-inch screen while the larger smartphone tagged as the Galaxy S8 Plus would come with a 6.2-inch display. Both displays would feature a WQHD+ resolution of 2,960 x 2,400 pixels and would also come with dual-edge curved displays.
tech2 News Staff

Samsung has announced a partnership with Karnataka Government where the company will provide infrastructure tools like Samsung Tab IRIS to improve the health care facilities of the state. This is a part of the Memorandum of Understanding that the company singed with the Karnataka government for the joint venture to provide advanced technological support to improve the management of medical subsidies and operations and operation at Primary Health Care facilities.

Samsung Research and Development Institute in Banglore (SRI-B) will provide Department of Health in Government of Karnataka with 1,000 Samsung Tab IRIS.

This will allow the government to build a digital database of all the operations, subsidies and other information like details about patient treatment, diagnosis, drug availability, and deliveries along with GPS information to cross-reference the location. The tab will come with a SIM and allow health care officials to conduct IRIS scanning for Aadhaar authentication.

However, this move highlights the need for National eHealth Authority (NeHA) as announced by Government of India in December 2016. The authority will enforce regulations to maintain security and privacy of the electronically collected health data of users. It will also regulate the exchange and storage of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) of the patients. Government announced an expansive plan where an Online Registration System (ORS) will be provided to patients to provide them with online appointment system. Government also highlighted an online medical report system for patients registered on the ORS platform.

This digitisation ties in with the plan to launch virtual clinics where Doctors and specialists can connect to patients using these tablets and give prescriptions on the fly. This will also give doctors access to the records to analyse the records to suggest any preventive measures about any issue.

This will further allow Primary Health Care officials to access information about the latest welfare schemes as reported by Medianama. This allows easier access to the latest information and benefits to patients under government schemes like Janani Suraksha Yojana.
tech2 News Staff

Tableau has updated its business intelligence and data analytics software to version 10.2. The software now has advanced mapping capabilities, that allows users to directly use geospatial data from within Tableau, instead of depending on specialised third party mapping software. The capability is provided through the new Spatial File Connector, with support for ESRI Shapefiles, KML, GeoJSON and MapInfo file types.

Andrew Beers, Chief Development Officer at Tableau Software, says, "The need to see and understand data has never been greater. Enhancements in Tableau 10.2 make advanced analytics easier, faster and more scalable. Weve added new ways to leverage spatial data, prep data and manage Tableau deployments in the enterprise. Visualisations are easier for people with disabilities to perceive and explore, making data accessible to everyone to increase business value and insights."

It is now easier to combine and clean up data files, which allows customers to leverage database structure and schema more effectively. Tableau can automatically recognise and standardise dates, instantly processing over 250 different ways in which dates can be represented. Tableau represents all the dates uniformly with just a single click.

Visualisations generated by Tableau now confirm with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines drafted by the Web Accessibility Initiative referred to as WCAG 2.0 AA. This allows people with disabilities easier access to data visualisations, and ensures that the visualisations by customers reaches a wider audience.

Tableau now has support for 60 additional instant data connectors including Anaplan, Eloqua, Apache Drill, Salesforce, Presto and Microsoft Share Point lists. A new autosave feature allows users to continue working where they left off, even if the desktop computer experiences a crash. There are improvements and enhancements in various APIs. The complete list of new features is available on the Tableau website.
tech2 News Staff

Tech Mahindra and Huawei Enterprise Business Group have signed a global partnership agreement, according to which Tech Mahindra will promote the enterprise services and products by Huawei in 44 countries, including India.

The companies will also be launching a joint go-to-market as part of the partnership, which will allow both entities to leverage each other's core strengths in the global marketplace.

Manoj Chugh, President of Enterprise Business at Tech Mahindra said, "Huawei and Tech Mahindra share a vision for providing world-class solutions to customers around the world. This partnership enables us to implement our unique solutions along with Huaweis innovations and latest ICT infrastructure to bring faster ROI for our customers. I am confident that this partnership will tremendously benefit our customers in implementing the latest adaptive infrastructure in the fastest possible time."

Derek Hao, President, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei India said, "Huawei and Tech Mahindra complement each other well, and, more importantly, we work towards the same goals. That is, to help our global enterprise customers be better positioned in their journey towards digital transformation. As specialists in our respective domain, we now work together to present competitive solutions for the global enterprise market that will empower our customers to achieve bigger success with their businesses."

Tech Mahindra will be able to access new markets in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and South East Asia because of the agreement. The portfolio of products and services in the agreements include solutions for healthcare, connected cars, smart cities, smart grids, smart metering, fleet management and connected factories.
The Election Commission has observed that after declaration of result of the recently held General Elections to the State Legislative Assemblies of Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, some political parties have raised voice against the credibility of the ECI-EVMs, alleging tampering of EVMs during the said elections. One representation was received from National General Secretary, BSP without any specific allegation on 11.03.2017. ECI on 11.03.2017 itself has given detailed response to BSP rejecting the representation. ECIs reply is available at www.eci.nic.in. Such concerns, about alleged tamperability of ECI-EVM have been raised earlier also since their introduction including before HC/SC. These allegations have been dismissed. ECI unequivocally reiterate that given effective technical and administrative safeguards, EVMs are not temperable and integrity of electoral process is preserved. It will be useful to once again recapture some facts on the subject for information of citizens and all concerned. Background of EVM

With a view to overcome certain problems associated with use of ballot papers and taking advantage of development of technology so that voters cast their votes correctly without any resultant ambiguity and removing the possibilities of invalid votes totally, the Commission in December, 1977 mooted the idea of EVM. The law was amended by the Parliament in December, 1988 and a new section 61A was inserted in the Representation of the People Act, 1951 empowering the Commission to use voting machines. The amended provision came into force w.e.f. 15th March, 1989.

Central Government appointed the Electoral Reforms Committee in January, 1990 consisting of representative of several recognized National and State Parties. The Electoral Reforms Committee further constituted a technical Expert Committee for the evaluation of the electronic voting machines. The Committee came to conclusion that the electronic voting machine is a secure system. The expert committee, therefore, unanimously recommended in April, 1990 the use of the electronic voting machines without further loss of time.

Since 2000, EVMs have been used in 107 General Elections to State Legislative Assemblies and 3 General Elections to Lok Sabha held in 2004, 2009 & 2014. Judicial Pronouncements on use of EVMs

The issue of possible tampering of EVM has been raised before various High Courts since 2001 as mentioned below:-

Madras High Court-2001

Delhi High Court-2004

Karnataka High Court- 2004

Kerala High Court-2002

Bombay High Court (Nagpur Bench)-2004

All the above High Courts after going into all aspects of the technological soundness and the administrative measures involved in the use of EVMs at elections in India, have held that the EVMs in India are credible, reliable and totally tamperproof. In some of these cases, even Supreme Court has dismissed appeals filed by some petitioners against High Court orders.

The Honble Karnataka High Court held that This invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and computer technology and a national pride. Both the Karnataka High Court and the Madras High Court observed that use of EVMs in election has several advantages over the system of ballot paper/ballot box election. The Honble Madras High Court also categorically ruled out any question of tampering of the EVMs. The following observations made by the Madras High Court may be taken note of.

There is also no question of introducing any virus or bugs for the reason that the EVMs cannot be compared to personal computers. The programming in computers, as suggested, has no bearing with the EVMs. The computer would have inherent limitations having connections through Internet and by their very design, they may allow the alteration of the programme but the EVMs are independent units and the programme in EVM is entirely a different system.

In one of the cases, the Honble High Court of Kerala in its order dated 6.2.2002 had recorded its appreciation on the efficiency of the mechanism. The judgment of the Kerala High Court in the said Election Petition was upheld by the Honble Supreme Court in Civil Appeal (AIR 2003 SC 2271).

It is admitted before various courts that the data or technique brought in use in EVM in India were not subject to piracy as nobody knows anything about the contents of any type or has any unauthorized or free access to EVM.

Thereafter, the controversy was raised by political parties again after 2009 General Elections to House of People stating that EVMs were not fool proof and provide scope for manipulation. However, no specific allegation was raised nor could they prove before any court of law.

Some activists approached Supreme Court in 2009 which advised them to go to ECI. It was then these activists opened dialogue and ECI threw open challenge to anyone to demonstrate how machine owned by ECI can be tempered. However, in spite of opportunities given by ECI, machines opened and internal components shown, no one could demonstrate any tempering with the machine in ECI HQ. There proceedings were videographed.

In an extraordinary measure, the Commission invited those who had expressed reservations about the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) to come and demonstrate the points made in their allegations from 3rd to 8th August 2009. Those invited included political parties, petitioners before various courts and some individuals who had been writing to the Commission on this issue. One hundred EVMs brought from ten states namely, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, were kept at the Commissions office in readiness for scrutiny and for any application to establish its alleged fallibility. The EVMs were offered for such demonstration in the presence of a technical experts group as well as engineers representing the EVM manufacturers, BEL and ECIL. The outcome of this exercise is that none of the persons, who were given the opportunity, could actually demonstrate any tamper ability of the ECI-EVMs. They either failed or chose not to demonstrate.

Some activists then showed on TV channel a machine which they claimed can be manipulated. ECI countered allegation that the machine was stolen from EVM warehouse in Mumbai, subjected to changes by activists and thus it was no longer the machine used by ECI.

In 2010, all political parties except a few from Assam and Tamil Nadu in a meeting convened by ECI expressed satisfaction about the functioning of EVMs. At this stage, idea of VVPAT was moved for further exploration.

In 2009, in a case before Delhi High Court, all earlier allegations about EVM temperabilities were raised. However, Delhi High Court satisfied with detailed reply of ECI why EVM cannot be rigged and about ECI efforts on developing VVPAT decided and disposed of the case in 2012 that VVPAT may be developed early in consultation with political parties.

Technical Security of EVMs used by ECI

The machine is electronically protected to prevent any tampering/manipulation. The programme (software) used in these machines is burnt into a One Time Programmable (OTP)/Masked chip so that it cannot be altered or tampered with. Further these machines are not networked either by wire or by wireless to any other machine or system. Therefore, there is no possibility of its data corruption.

The software of EVMs is developed in-house by a selected group of Engineers in BEL (Defense Ministry PSU) and ECIL (Atomic Energy Ministrys PSU) independently from each other. A select software development group of 2-3 engineers designs the source code and this work is not sub-contracted.

After completion of software design, testing and evaluation of the software is carried out by an independent testing group as per the software requirements specifications (SRS). This ensures that the software has really been written as per the requirements laid down for its intended use only.

After successful completion of such evaluation, machine code of the source programme code is given to the micro controller manufacturer for writing in the micro controllers. From this machine code, the source code cannot be read. Source code is never handed over to anyone outside the software group of PSUs.

Micro controller manufacturer initially provides engineering samples to PSUs for evaluation. These samples are assembled into the EVM, evaluated and verified for functionality at great length. Bulk production clearance by PSU is given to micro controller manufacturer only after successful completion of this verification.

The source code for the EVM is stored under controlled conditions at all times. Checks and balances are in place to ensure that it is accessible to authorized personnel only.

During production in the factory, functional testing is done by production group as per the laid down Quality plan and performance test procedures.

The software is so designed that it allows a voter to cast the vote only once. The vote can be recorded by an elector from the ballot unit only after the Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. The machine does not receive any signal from outside at any time. The next vote can be recorded only after the Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. In between, the machine becomes dead to any signal from outside (except from the Control Unit).

Samples of EVMs from production batches are regularly checked for functionality by Quality Assurance Group, which is an independent unit within the PSUs.

Certain additional features were introduced in 2006 in ECI-EVMs such as dynamic coding between Ballot Unit (BU) and Control Unit (CU) , installation of real time clock, installation of full display system and date and time stamping of every key-pressing in EVM.

, installation of real time clock, installation of full display system and date and time stamping of every key-pressing in EVM. Technical Evaluation Committee in 2006 has concluded that any tempering of CU by coded signals by wireless or outside or Bluetooth or WiFi is ruled out as CU does not have high frequency receiver and data decoder. CU accepts only specially encrypted and dynamically coded data from BU. Data from any outside source cannot be accepted by CU.

Uniqueness of ECI-EVMs

Some political parties have stated that some foreign countries have stopped using EVMs. The Commission has come across comparisons between ECI-EVM and EVMs used by foreign countries. Such comparisons are both misplaced and misguided. ECI EVMs are Stand alone Machine. Therefore ECI-EVMs cannot be compared with machines of other countries.

Most of the systems used in other countries are Computer based with internet connectivity. Hence, these could be vulnerable to hacking.

As stated above, the software in the ECI-EVM chip is one time programmable (OTP) and burnt into the chip at the time of manufacture. Nothing can be written on the chip after manufacture. Thus the ECI-EVMs are fundamentally different from the voting machines and processes adopted in various foreign countries.

Any surmise based on foreign studies or operating system based EVMs used elsewhere would be completely erroneous. The ECI-EVMs cannot be compared with those EVMs.

Procedural and Administrative Securities

The Commission has put in place an elaborate administrative system of security measures and procedural checks-and-balances aimed at prevention of any possible misuse or procedural lapses. These safeguards are implemented by ECI transparently with the active and documented involvement of political parties, candidates and their representatives at every stage to build their confidence on efficacy and reliability of EVMs. These safeguards are:

Before every election, a first level checking (FLC) is done for every EVM to be used in the election by the engineers of the manufacturers in the presence of political parties representatives . Any malfunctioning EVM is kept separately and is not used in the election.

. Any malfunctioning EVM is kept separately and is not used in the election. Manufacturers certify at the time of FLC that all components in the EVM are original. After this, the plastic cabinet of Control Unit of the EVM is sealed using a Pink Paper Seal, which is signed by representatives of political parties and stored in strong rooms. After this stage, the plastic cabinet of control unit of the EVMs cannot be opened. There is no access to any component of inside of EVMs.

and stored in strong rooms. After this stage, the plastic cabinet of control unit of the EVMs cannot be opened. There is no access to any component of inside of EVMs. Additionally, at the time of FLC, at least 1000 votes are cast by the representatives of political parties on 5%of EVMs randomly selected by them . A printout of the results of this mock poll as well as a sequential print out of every vote polled during the mock poll at the time of First Level Checking of EVMs are taken out for at least 5% of EVMs and shown to the representatives of political parties. Representatives of political parties are allowed to pick machines randomly for this purpose. In rest of the machines, numbers of votes polled during the mock poll are to the satisfaction of the representatives of political parties. Representatives of political parties are allowed to do mock poll themselves . It is all documented by DEOs/ROs.

. A printout of the results of this mock poll as well as a sequential print out of every vote polled during the mock poll at the time of First Level Checking of EVMs are taken out for at least 5% of EVMs and shown to the representatives of political parties. Representatives of political parties are allowed to pick machines randomly for this purpose. In rest of the machines, numbers of votes polled during the mock poll are to the satisfaction of the representatives of political parties. . It is all documented by DEOs/ROs. Subsequently, stored EVMs are randomized by computer software twice once for allocation of machines to assembly constituencies and second to polling stations in the presence of candidates or their representatives before they are distributed for use in individual polling stations. Such lists of EVM containing serial number of EVM allocated to particular polling station are provided to the political parties/candidates.

Such lists of EVM containing serial number of EVM allocated to particular polling station are provided to the political parties/candidates. Candidates and their representatives are allowed to conduct mock polls on EVMs at the time of candidate setting and also before the actual poll on the poll day to satisfy themselves about the satisfactory functioning of EVMs being used.

Once the candidate setting is done, the Ballot Unit of the EVM is also sealed with thread/Pink Paper seals so that nobody has access to the inside of the Ballot Unit too. These Pink seals also bear signatures of representatives of political parties/candidate.

A printout of the results of mock poll as well as a sequential print out of every vote polled during the mock poll at the time of Preparation of EVMs and candidate setting are also taken out for at least 5% of EVMs and shown to the representatives of political parties. Representatives of political parties are allowed to pick machines randomly for this purpose.

On the poll day, a mock poll by casting at least 50 votes is conducted at every polling station in the presence of the representatives of the candidates/polling agents with their signature and a mock-poll certificate to that effect is obtained from every Presiding Officer.

After the mock poll is over, another thread seal and green paper seals are put on the EVM to block access to all buttons on the EVM, except those, which are used for the conduct of poll. These paper seals and thread seals are allowed to be signed by the polling agents. After the poll is over, the Presiding officer presses the Close button on the EVM in the presence of polling agents. Thereafter, no votes can be polled in the EVM.

After the poll is over, the Presiding officer presses the Close button on the EVM in the presence of polling agents. Thereafter, no votes can be polled in the EVM. After this, the entire EVM is sealed. Candidates and their agents are allowed to put their signatures on the seals , which they can check for the intactness of the seal before counting. Candidates/representatives travel behind vehicles carrying EVMs from polling stations to counting storage rooms.

, which they can check for the intactness of the seal before counting. Candidates/representatives travel behind vehicles carrying EVMs from polling stations to counting storage rooms. In addition to this, the strong rooms where EVMs are stored, for counting are also sealed and watched round the clock. The candidates and their representatives are allowed to put their own seals on the strong rooms. They are also allowed to keep a watch round the clock on the strong room. Security forces are deployed in multiple layers around storage rooms.

Security forces are deployed in multiple layers around storage rooms. The representatives of candidates of all political parties are given opportunity to participate in FLC, Preparation of EVMs before poll, mock poll, etc.

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)

ECI based on consultation with political parties in 2010 considered to explore use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with a view to enhance transparency. Introduction of VVPAT implied that a paper slip is generated bearing name and symbol of the candidate along with recording of vote in Control Unit, so that in case of any dispute, paper slip could be counted to verify the result being shown on the EVM. Under VVPAT, a printer is attached to the balloting Unit and kept in the voting compartment. The paper slip remains visible on VVPAT for 07 seconds through a transparent window. Design of VVPAT made by BEL/ECIL was approved by ECI in 2013 and shown to persons who were pursuing matters in the Supreme Court. Rules were amended. ECI used VVPAT in Nagaland bye election in 2013 which proved great success. SC ordered introduction of VVPAT in phases and asked Government to sanction funds for procurement.

In this regard in June 2014, the Commission proposed to implement VVPAT at every polling station in the next General Election to Lok Sabha due in 2019 and asked for fund of Rs. 3174 cr from the Government. Honble Supreme Court also permitted the ECI to implement VVPATs in phase manner.

In an ongoing case in the Supreme Court, Commission in the month of March 2017, has intimated the apex court that ECI will get requisite number of VVPATs manufactured in 30 months time from the time of release of fund by the Government.

ECI procured 20,000 VVPATs in 2013 and has since used VVPATs in 143 Assembly Constituencies. Further, 33500 VVPATs were manufactured by BEL in 2016 for further use of VVPATs. So far, VVPATs have been used in 255 Assembly Constituencies and 09 Parliamentary Constituencies. In Goa elections in 2017, VVPAT was employed in all 40 LACs. ECI employed about 52,000 VVPATs in five States where elections were held recently. Since 2014, ECI has been relentlessly pursuing with the Govt. for sanction and release of funds of Rs. 3174 cr requisite number of VVPATs so that they could be used in all PCs in GE to Lok Sabha in 2019.

As explained above, the Commission has put in place an elaborate technical and administrative system of safeguards to ensure error-free functioning of EVMs in elections. The Commission is thus fully satisfied with the tamper proof functioning of the ECI-EVMs. It may be stated that such allegations and suspicions have not been raised for the first time. Even on earlier occasions, the Commission has offered opportunities more than once to those alleging the tamperability of EVM, no one has been able to demonstrate to the Commission that the EVM with ECI and used in the countrys election process, can be manipulated or tampered with. The Commission does not find any merit in such allegations and reject all such allegations and suspicions raised by some political parties.

ECI assures all citizens that EVM of ECI are temper proof and fully satisfied with the integrity of electoral process using EVM. ECI will further enhance confidence of citizens in ECIs electoral process by deploying VVPAT in phase manner.

Further, ECI did not receive specific complaints or concrete material from political parties/candidates about alleged tempering of EVMs during recently held election process. At this stage, baseless, speculative and wild allegations are being made which deserves to be rejected.

However, if any specific allegation with material facts is presented to ECI, the same will be looked into with all seriousness on administrative sides.

The Election Commission would like to underline that it always had a firm conviction and complete satisfaction that EVMs could not be tampered with. Its faith on the machine has never wavered through the conduct of elections in the last many years including the nationwide general elections in 2004, 2009 and 2014. To date, no one has been able to actually demonstrate that EVMs used by the Election Commission can be tampered with or manipulated. What has been demonstrated or claimed to have been demonstrated is on a privately assembled look-alike of ECI-EVMs and not the actual ECI-EVM. However, the extraordinary measure of requiring demonstration in ECI HQ in 2009 was undertaken by the Election Commission in fulfilment of its responsibility not to allow even a small shade of doubt about any aspect of its operation and in order to set at rest any misgiving anywhere.

Today, the Commission once again completely reaffirms its faith in the infallibility of the EVMs. These are fully tamper-proof, as ever.

@Technuter.com News Service
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Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

Cathy Areus Long Road to Becoming a Freelance Journalist and What to Know About Her Kids An American freelance journalist, news analyst, and author, Cathy Areu has built a lasting reputation for herself on cable television. Popular for her skillful and sassy presentation of professional views on varying topics including cultural and feminist issues, Cathy is an inspiration to many women across the globe. In addition to being a journalist, she ...

Tucker Carlsons Love Story With Wife Susan Andrews, their Children and Net Worth Today On the TV screens, Tucker Carlson is that fiery fellow who passionately dishes out his conservative and often controversial views on issues of national importance. Such brazenness has fetched him many enemies, especially on the left-wing, but it has also helped him cement a reputation as one of the foremost broadcast journalists in America. His ...

Paige Wyatts Net Worth, Boyfriend and Where She Is Now Paige Wyatt became popular after the Wyatt family began running the reality television show, American Guns. The Wyatt family comprises Rich Wyatt (father), Renee Wyatt (mother), Paige and Kurt Wyatt (children). Rich Wyatt originally ran a gun shop, the Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado which is outside of Denver. The business which he ran together ...

The Progression of Howard Sterns Career As A Media Personality And Why He Divorced His First Wife Howard Stern is a legendary American radio host, who has also done some notable work as an actor, producer, author, as well as photographer. The radio personality achieved worldwide fame as a result of his self-titled radio program, The Howard Stern Show. As a professional radio personality, he has worked in different radio stations. Since 2006, ...

Lisa Joyners Biography  Ethnicity, Net Worth and Other Key Facts Lisa Joyner is an American Journalist, TV talk show host, and actress. Some of her well-known works are her correspondences for the Los Angeles based TV KCBS, inFANity show, Find My Family Show including her film and television appearances in Brimstone, American Sweetheart, The Bold and The Beautiful among others. Lisas passion for reconnecting people with their biological families ...

Amanda Balionis Rise Through the Ranks of Sportscasting and the Identity of Her Boyfriend Amanda Balionis is an American sportscaster currently working as a golf broadcaster for CBS Sports. Among so many of her works in the field of sports reporting, Amandas PGA Tour coverage seems to be the most popular so far. She covered the Super Bowl working with CBS Sports social media team in Atlanta, where she ...

Dissecting Charles Paynes Sexual Allegations, Its After Effects and More About His Wife Charles Payne had a respectable career as an analyst on Wall Street before he made the transition to television and became a contributor and later a host on Fox. In that time, his expertise has come under scrutiny, and he has been at the center of at least one major controversy. The major controversy in question ...

Erik Asla And Tryra Banks Split: Everything You Need To Know Tyra Banks and Erik Asla have called it quits! The couple, who began dating in 2013 and have a son named York Banks Asla, has decided to end what everybody taught was the perfect relationship. Neither person has come out to give a reason for the breakup, but what is obvious right now is that ...

What to Note About Dr Terry Dubrows Qualifications, TV Works and Marriage to Heather Kent In the realm of people that we expect to see regularly on our screens, medical doctors are closer to the bottom of the list. Aside from the fact that their work has little correlation with TV, they are presumably too busy to pursue life as TV personalities. Yet, a few of them have usurped this ...

Jessica Goch  Bio: 5 Things You Didnt Know About Ninjas Wife Jessica Goch is the Schofield-born American Social Media Influencer who has worked as a model but is now better known as a host and interviewer of prominent Electronic sports celebrities at popular gaming events/tournaments. The screen queen also serves as the manager of her famous husband Ninja aka Tyler Blevins whose exploits on Twitch and Fortnite has ...

CNNs Chris Cuomo Biography  Wife, Family & Net worth Chris Cuomo needs no elaborate introduction as he has starred graced many prominent Television cable networks and his voice has been heard through acknowledged radio shows. He is a television journalist and Lawyer who has previously worked for ABC News as Chief law and justice correspondent as well as a co-anchor on 20/20. If you still ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson  Family, Religion & Net Worth Neil deGrasse Tyson is a distinguished American astrophysicist and author who has been able to achieve so much after falling in love with astronomy at the age of 9. He has since attended and become an alumnus of prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and also recorded numerous achievements in his field of ...

Is Simon Cowell Gay? Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend and Why is He Famous? Simon Cowell is a well-known talent show judge, TV producer, entrepreneur and one of the most popular TV personalities that Britain has ever produced. In conjunction with his company, Syco, Cowell is the brain behind hugely successful talent hunt shows such as The X-Factor UK, The X-Factor US, Britains Got Talent, Americas Got Talent and ...

Everything To Know About Joanna Gaines Life With Chip Gaines, Their Business Pursuits and Kids Joanna Gaines and her husband Chip Gaines became celebrities after their television show Fixer Upper began airing back in 2013. The show which was about home renovation and decoration ran for about 6 seasons with a total of 79 episodes before the couple bade farewell to it in April 2018. Apart from their appearances on ...

Who Is Larry The Cable Guy? What To Know About His Wife And Net Worth Larry the Cable Guy is a self-professed country kid renowned for his trademark Southern accent and sensational catchphrase Git-R-Done! The famous comedian who talks about anything under the sun has gone on to become one of the most memorable characters in comedy history. Join us in unearthing lesser-known facts about the former on-air-personality, standup comedy superstar, movie ...

Who Is Patrick Starr, What Is His Net Worth and Gender? The make-up industry over the years has grown to become a billion dollar industry not just because there are probably more women wearing make-up but because a whole lot of men, especially the young ones, have become bold enough to wear it unlike before. A few of these men, like Patrick Starr, have even gone ...

How Did Chris Jansing Become a Senior Correspondent at MSNBC and Who Is Her Husband? An award-winning American television news reporter and journalist, Chris Jansing has succeeded in carving a spectacular niche for herself in the field of TV journalism. Outstanding for not just her excellence in journalism, Chris is also cherished for her incredibly gorgeous looks post 60! For close to four decades, Jansing has continued to soar in her ...

Jaclyn Glenn Biography  Age, Height & Ex-Boyfriend American Youtuber, Jaclyn Glenn, rose to prominence through her self-titled YouTube channel Jaclyn Glenn. She has remained an acclaimed atheist and continues to air her views on hot issues from politics, religion, animal rights, to atheism. During the heated 2016 US Presidential elections, Glenn featured in Hump Trump: Official Donald Trump Song. Her parallel acting career ...

Is Pat Sajak Married to a Wife or is He Gay With a Partner? Pat Sajak is one of the most popular TV game show hosts in America. He commenced his career as a radio disk jockey as well as a TV weatherman before being tapped to host Wheel of Fortune, the longest-running syndicated game show in the United States. Sajak has hosted the popular game show from 1983 ...

Nayyera Haqs Bio  What To Know About Her Husband, Parents And Family Nayyera Haq can take anyone on political debates as well as discussions on social issues affecting many. Her ability to masterfully deliver her stance on every issue or political debate has made her a regular face in morning and evening news media platforms. This is not a common feat especially for someone from her kind ...

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 ...

Meet Phil Mudd of CNN  The Former CIA and FBI Exec, Is He Married, Who Is The Wife? When it comes to discussing issues surrounding terrorism, American Counterterrorism and National Security Expert, Phil Mudd, occupies a globally significant position. He has voiced his interest in the fight against terrorism and insecurity on many popular media platforms, both print and broadcast, such as CNN, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, al-Jazeera, ABC, NBC, Fox, The New York Times, ...

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 ...

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Bangabandhu's birth day observed

The 98th birthday of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day observed in the port city as elsewhere in the district in a befitting manner with enthusiastic brisk preparations.

District Administration of Chittagong , different political parties and socio-cultural organizations, NGOs chalked out various programmes to mark the day . Separate programs in all school and colleges of the city and public & private university also observed the day in a festive manner . The programmes include children rally, placing of wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu, cultural function, discussion meeting, drawing competition and poetry recitation.

On the occasion, Chittagong District Administration organized day-long programmes at local circuit house, District Shilpakola Academy and Shisu Academy. Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shamsul Arefin and leaders of different cultural organisations placed wreaths at portrait of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Shilpakola Academy.

A children and adolescent rally brought out from circuit house premises led by the Deputy commissioner.

Chittagong city unit of Awami League (AL) also organized a children and adolescent rally in front of Darul Fazal Market Awami League office yesterday morning.

Chittagong city AL pay tributes to the architect of the nation by placing wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at city's Darul Fazal Market party office.

Chittagong north and south district units of AL also arrange dseparate children rallies and discussion meetings on the occasion.Apart from it, separate discussion meetings was held at all educational institutions in the city and district under the auspices of respective authorities.

District Shishu Academy organized drawing competition, poetry recitation and cultural functions for children throughout the day.

Bangladesh Chhatra League units in all educational institutions in the city including Chittagong University, Chittagong Medical College, Chittagong University of Engineering Technology (CUET), University of Science and Technology in Chittagong and Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University also hold discussion meetings on the life and works of Bangabandhu to mark the day. Bangladesh Betar, Chittagong centre and BTV Chittagong centre broadcasting special programs to mark the day . Private TV channel also drawn special programs on Bangabandhu through out the day.


Miscreants set 2,000 plants of two nurseries on fire in Jhenaidah

Jhenaidah Correspondent :

Some miscreants on Thursday night set 2,000 plants of two nurseries at Chandipur village in Sailkupa upazila of Jhenaidah fire . The affected farmers have filed allegation with Sailkupa Police Station in this connection.

One of the affected farmers Golam Sarwar said, he along with his brother Sarifiul were developing nursery in the village for past couple of years. At least 2,000 saplings were transplanted at the plots which were growing faster.

Following the village enmity some miscreants set the nurseries of fire in the night of Thursday led all the plants burnt. The figure of loss might be at least taka 10 lakh he said.

When contacted, Sailkupa police station officer in charge Tarikul Islam said, they received a copy of allegation. The police with go for action after an investigation, OC said.
Bangabandhu's birthday celebrated amid festivity

National Desk :

The 98th anniversary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day-2017 were celebrated in different districts yesterday amid festivities . Different organisations took various programmes to observe the Day. Our Correspondents and agencies report:

Jhenaidah Correspondent reports: The 98th birth anniversary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and national children's was observed in Jhenaidah with due respect on Friday.

A colourful rally was brought out in the town arranged by Jhenaidah district Awami League. The rally paraded the main town chanting slogans.

The leaders of the party led by AL district unit president, also lawmaker of Jhenaidah-1 constituency Abdul Hyee offered floral wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu at Chuadanga bus stoppage i the morning.

Jhenaidah municipality Mayor, also AL district unit secretary Saidul Karim Mintu remain present. The party leaders spoke there.

Another rally was brought out from Jhenaidah old DC Court premises by the district administration. Presided over by deputy commissioner Mahbub Alam Talukder, AL lawmaker Abdul Hyee spoke as the chief guest in the discussion meeting.

JU Correspondent adds: Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) students' wing of ruling Awami League of Jahangirnagar University (JU) Unit celebrated the 98th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman befitting manner on the campus yesterday.

Marking the day about 11:30am more than 200 activists led by JU BCL President Jewel Rana and Secretary Abu Sufiyan Chanchal brought out a colorful procession paraded different street of the campus and ending by placed floral wreath at the sculpture of Bangabandhu in front of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hall.

Later a short rally organized, Speaking at the rally Jewel Rana said, If Bangabandhu not born, our country may not founded and we may under Pakistan.



BSS from Rajshahi adds: The 98th birthday of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day-2017 were celebrated in the city and its adjacent areas yesterday amid much festivity.

Marking the day, the district administration brought out a colourful rally from the Laboratory School premises that ended at Shilpakala Academy ground after parading some of the thoroughfares.

A large number of people, including schoolboys and girls in colourful dresses, joined the rally.

Afterwards, a discussion and prize-giving ceremony was held at the Shilpakala Academy hall room.

Commissioner of Rajshahi division Noor-Ur-Rahman addressed the discussion as chief guest wile Deputy Commissioner of Rajshahi Kazi Ashraf Uddin was in the chair.

The district administration and Bangladesh Shishu Academy also arranged a daylong programme, including painting competitions, handwriting, essay and extempore speech for children paying rich tributes to the Father of the Nation.

The competitions were held at different educational institutions in the metropolis and the district.

Marking the birth the day, local socio-cultural and political organisations arranged separate programmes in the city and upazila headquarters.

The programmes included discussions, cultural shows, screenings of documentaries and competitions.

Local units of Bangladesh Awami League and its front organisations also celebrated the day through a daylong programme, including hoisting of national and party flags, garlanding portraits of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and four national leaders and holding discussions.

Rajshahi University, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, Rajshahi Education Board and other educational institutions also celebrated the day, paying rich tributes to Bangabandhu.

BSS from Faridpur adds: The 98th birthday of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day-2017 are being observed here today in a befitting manner as elsewhere across the country.

The district administration, Zila Parishad, Police administration, Awami League (AL) and its associate bodies, Muktijoddha Sangshad, Faridpur Press Club, Shishu Academy, Shilpakala Academy, Educational Institutions and other organizations celebrated the day in different programmes in a befitting manner.

The programmes included placing wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu, children's gatherings and rallies, processions of unprivileged children, drawing, hand-writing, essay and ready speech competitions, screening of documentary films on Bangabandhu, discussions and blood donation and cultural functions.

The observance began through the placing wreaths at the Mural of Bangabandhu at historical Ambika Memorial Hall premises in the town in this morning around 8.30am.

Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (LGRD) Engineer Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Deputy Commissioner (DC) Umme Salma Tanzia, Zila Parishad Chairman Lokman Hossain Mridha, Superintendent of Police (SP) Suvash Chandra Saha, Zila Awami League President advocate Subol Saha, District Muktijoddha Commander Abul Fayez Shahnewaz, Govt. Rajendra College Principal Mossharaf Ali, Faridpur Press Club president Imtiaz Hasan Rubel, Town Awami League President Nazmul Islam Khondoker Levi and Secchasebok League convener Sawkot Ali Zahid placed floral wreaths at portrait of Bangabandhu.

BSS from Gaibandha adds: The 98th birthday of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children Day-2017 were celebrated in the district yesterday with due respect and festivity.

Marking the day, the district administration, Bangladesh Shishu Academy, Islamic Foundation, Social Services Department, Jatiya Mohila Sangstha, Bangladesh Awami League, educational institutions and socio-cultural organizations had chalked out elaborate programmes.

The programmes included hoisting of national and party flags at the party offices of AL in the morning, placing wreaths at the mural of Bangabandhu at the Poura Park, bringing out a colorful rally, holding an art and good hand writing competition and prize distribution ceremony.
Land not shown in schedule cannot be sold in auction



High Court Division

(Civil Revisional Jurisdiction)

Md Abdul Hafiz J

SM Mozibur

Rahman J

Aminul Islam (Md).........

Judgment-Debtor-Petitioner

vs

Bangladesh House Building Finance Corporation, Dhaka.......Decree-Holder-Opposite Party

Judgment

May 12th, 2015

Code of Civil Procedure (V of 1908)

Section 115(1)

The executing Court cannot pass any order for auction sale of any land not shown in the schedule of the execution case.

We have perused the order in question dated 3-6-2013 and found that the learned Judge of the executing Court erroneously accepted the commission report which is not consistent with the mortgaged land shown, to the 'Kha' schedule of the plaint. The land shown in the commission report and the mortgaged land figured in the schedule of the plaint is quite different. We have seen the photocopy of auction sale notice of the mortgaged land published in the local daily news paper, which is very much consistent with the mortgaged land shown in the schedule of the plaint. So, it is crystal clear that the land of commissioner's report submitted after local investigation has no conformity with the mortgaged land shown in the schedule of the plaint and the execution case. Mortgaged land shown in the auction sale notice published in the local newspaper is also seen to be consistent with the mortgaged land embodied in the 2nd schedule land of the plaint and the same mortgaged land has also been figured in the schedule of the instant execution case. .........(10)

Md Shafiqul Islam. Advocate-For the Judgment Debtor-Opposite Party.

Md Abdul Haque, Advocate - For the Judgment-Debtor-Petitioner.

Md Imam Hossain with Khurshed Jahan. Advocates -For the Decree-Holder Opposite Party.

Judgment

SM Mozibur Rahman J : This Rule was issued, at the instance of judgment-debtor petitioner calling upon the decree-holder opposite party No.1 and judgment-debtors opposite parties No. 2-9 to show cause as to why the impugned order No. 116 dated 3-6-2013 passed by the learned Judge, Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh in Execution Case No. 26 of 1995 accepting the commissioner's report should not be set-aside.

2. Short facts, necessary for disposal of the Rule, is that the opposite party No. 1 as plaintiff filed Money Suit No. 14 of 1993 (Artha Rin) for realization of Taka 13,22,160.98 against Begum Sufia Khatun and Md Shahidul Islam (the heirs of late Monsur AIi); that the suit was decreed ex-parte in preliminary form on 15-2-1995 on the basis of which the decree-holder filed Execution Case No. 26 of 1995 in the Court of Subordinate Judge (now Joint District Judge) Artha Rin Adalat Mymensingh for execution of the decree; that in the above execution case the name of petitioner was added as judgment-debtor though in fact he was not borrower nor the occupier of the suit land; that the judgment-debtor Md Shafiqul Islam on 19-4-2010 submitted an application for local investigation by appointing an Advocate Commissioner in respect of multi-storied building standing on the suit land. After hearing both sides, the application for local investigation was rejected vide order No. 167 dated 19-4-2010; the judgment-debtor Md Shafiqul Islam on 26-4-2010 again submitted an application for local investigation through survey knowing commissioner. That after hearing the parties, this second application was also rejected vide order No. 168 dated 26-4-2010; that after rejection of 2 (two) applications for local investigation the judgment debtor Md Shafiqul Islam filed another application for local investigation on 2-8-2012 for demarcating the mortgaged land; the application for local investigation dated 2-8-20 10 was allowed vide order No. 174 dated 8-8-2010 in strength of which the Civil Court Commissioner submitted his report on 30-9-2010 after concluding local investigation as prayed for by the petitioner Md Shafiqul Islam.

3. The petitioner submitted written objection on 26-10-2010 against the commissioner's report dated 30-9-2010 stating inter alia that the petitioner is the owner of 3-1/4 decimal land in CS Plot No. 3216, he is possessing the land by constructing a half building there and the petitioner is residing in his half building with his family since 1993.

The land of the petitioner have been recorded under BRS Khatian No. 1482, BRS Plot No. 10339 as homestead nature land in the name of the petitioner; the learned Judge Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh by his order dated 30-92010 accepted the commission report; that the learned Judge Artha Rin Adalat Mymensingh upon misconception of law without applying judicial mind erroneously accepted the commissioner's report and thereby committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice; that the court below in accepting the commissioner's report failed to understand that the commissioner's report dated 30-9-2010 is inconsistent with the decree in respect of location of the mortgaged land, as such, by accepting the commissioner's report the court below committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice; the loan was given by the House Building Finance Corporation by installments on the basis of progress of construction of the multi-storied building.

The construction work of the multi-storied building was duly supervised by the Engineers of House Building Finance Corporation and upon extent of construction of the building the loan was disbursed.

After completion of the construction of the multi-storied building the borrower was residing in the building at one Flat and he leased out other Flats to different persons.

As such the commissioner's report showing one old half building upon the suit land is absolutely impractical and the report has been filed with malafide intention to grab the properly of the petitioner and to safe the mortgaged property from auction sale which is occupied by the judgment-debtor Md Shafiqul Islam; that in the commissioner report the location of the mortgaged properly have been shifted upon the property of the petitioner though the property of the petitioner was never mortgaged in favour of the House Building Finance Corporation and no Multi-storied building is existing, upon the land of the petitioner. While proper step was taken in the execution case to sale the mortgaged property, auction notice dated 23-7-2003 was published in the daily news paper Dainik Jahan fixing the date of auction on 18-8-2003, wherein the property was mentioned as multi-storied building; that the decree-holder as well as the judgment-debtor Md Shafiqul Islam collusively proceeding with the execution case to grab the property of the petitioner which is beyond mortgage and to save the mortgaged property along with the multi-storied building from auction sale.

The court below without knowing the suit land wrongly accepted the commissioner's report and thereby committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice.

4. After hearing both the parties, the learned Judge of Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh passed the impugned order dated 3-6-2013, in Execution Case No. 26 of 1995 accepting the local investigation report submitted for the purpose of ascertaining the location of the suit land.

5. Being aggrieved by and dissatisfied with the impugned order dated 3-6-2013 passed by the learned Judge of Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh petitioner moved the instant Civil Revision and obtained the Rule.

6. Mr Md Abdul Hoque, the learned Advocate appearing on behalf of the petitioner, submits that the learned Judge of Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh upon misconception of law without applying judicial mind erroneously accepted the commissioner's report and thereby committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice. He further submits that the court below in accepting the commissioner's report failed to understand that the commissioner's report dated 3-6-2013 is inconsistent with the decree in respect of location of the mortgaged land as has been mentioned in the schedule of the execution case. He further submits that the loan was given by the House Building Finance Corporation by installments on the basis of progress of construction of the Multi-storied building.

The construction work of the multi-storied building was duly supervised by the Engineers of House Building Finance Corporation and upon extent of construction of the building the loan was disbursed.

Alter completion of the construction of the multi-storied building, the borrower was residing in the building at one flat and he leased out other flats to different persons. As such, the commissioner's report showing one old half building upon the suit land is absolutely impractical and the report has been filed with malafide intention to grab the property of the petitioner and to save the mortgaged property from auction sale which is occupied by the judgment-debtor Md Shafiqul Islam. He further submits that in the commissioner's report the location of the mortgaged property has been shifted upon the property of the petitioner, though the property of the petitioner was never mortgaged in favour of the House Building Finance Corporation and no multi-storied building is existing upon the land of the petitioner. As such, by accepting the commissioner's report the Court below committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice. Accordingly, he submits that the present Rule is liable to be made absolute for ends of justice.

7. Mr Md Imam Hossain, the learned Advocate appearing on behalf of the opposite parties submits that the loanee was the owner of the mortgaged property and there is a contractual relationship between the loanee and BHBFC. After death of the loanee his 4 sons and two daughters as his legal heirs became judgment debtors of the Execution Case. Now Md Aminul Islam and Md Shafiqul Islam heirs of the loanee have tried to place themselves in a different capacity to avoid the loan liability. Since loanee was the owner of the mortgage property therefore it is immaterial who possess which part of the property under the deed of mortgage. He further submits that CS Dag is mentioned in the deed produced in the Court by the petitioner in the application of the revision but SA Dag is not mentioned there which is conflicting. Since the loanee was owner of entire land which is mortgaged to BHBFC so the heirs of the loanee will be substituted not only as heir but also they will have to bear the liability of loan sanctioned in favour of their predecessor.

8. In view of the above arguments agitated by the learned lawyers for both sides we have perused the impugned judgment and order dated 3-6-2013 passed by the learned judge of the Artha Rin Adalat Mymensingh and other materials on record.

9. It appears that Bangladesh House Building Finance Corporation as decree-holder initiated this Execution Case being No. 26 of 95 for the purpose of realising their decreed money of Taka ,14,24,871.30 against the petitioner judgment-debtor and opposite party Nos. 2-6 art 10-10-95. Petitioner and the judgment-debtor opposite party Nos. 2-6 art heirs of deceased Monsur Ali, who during his lifetime took loan from the House Building Finance Corporation, Mymensingh for constructing multi-storied residential building. After the death of the said Monsur Ali, petitioner and opposite parties No. 2-6 were substituted as the judgment; debtor being legal heirs of the late Monsur Ali. At the time of sanctioning loan from the House Building Finance Corporation, Mymensingh the borrower late father of the petitioner judgment-debtor mortgaged .06 decimal land in CS Plot No. 3216 under CS Khatian No. 10 of JL No. 79 wherein a multi-storied building is situated with specific boundary as has been shown in the 2nd schedule of the plaint. But after initiation of this Execution Case the judgment-debtor opposite party No. 2 Shafiqul Islam on 19-4-2010 submitted a petition before the executing Court praying for local investigation of the mortgaged land which was rejected by the leaned judge of the executing Court. Only seven days after the rejection of the petition mentioned above, the petitioner's brother judgment-debtor opposite party No. 2 again submitted another petition on 26-4-2010 for local investigation and this second petition was also rejected by the executing Court.

Thereafter, the judgment-debtor Shafiqul Islam brother of this petitioner filed third petition for local investigation on 2-8-2012 for demarcating the mortgaged land and this petition was allowed by the learned Judge of the executing Court by his order dated 8-8-20. So, it is seen that after rejecting the same nature petition consecutively for two times earlier, the learned Judge of the executing Court allowed the third petition of local investigation for demarcating the land mortgaged to the House Building Finance Corporation, Mymensingh in compliance of which local investigation was held and the report in this respect was by the impugned order dated 3-6-2013.

10. We have perused the order in question dated 3-6-2013 and found that the learned Judge of the executing Court erroneously accepted the commission report which is not consistent with the mortgaged land shown to the "Kha" schedule of the plaint. The land shown in the commission report and the mortgaged land figured in the schedule of the plaint is quite different.

We have seen the photocopy of auction salt notice of the mortgaged lane published in the local daily news paper, which is very much consistent with the mortgaged land shown in the schedule of the plaint So. it is crystal clear that the land of commissioner's report submitted after local investigation has no conformity with the mortgaged land shown in the schedule of the plaint and the execution case.

Mortgaged land shown in the auction sale notice published in the local news paper is also seen to be consistent with the mortgaged land embodied in the 2nd schedule land of the plaint and the same mortgaged land has also been figured in the schedule of the instant execution case. So the executing Court cannot pass any order for auction sale of any land not shown in the schedule of the Execution Case. Considering all these aspects we are of the view that the impugned order dated 3-6-2013 suffers from gross irregularity and has occasioned failure of justice, as such, not tenable in law.

11. In the result, the Rule is made absolute.

12. The impugned order No. 116 dated 3-6-2013 passed by the learned Judge, Artha Rin Adalat, Mymensingh in Execution Case No. 26 of 1995 is hereby set-aside.

Let a copy of this judgment be sent to the learned Judge of the concerned Court for information and necessary steps.
The United States urged Turkey to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

March 17, 2017, 11:14 US State Department urges Turkey to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 17, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: During a daily press briefing at the State Department, the reporter said currently there are over 150 journalists in jail in Turkey, pressures are exerted on the opposition, and Turkey is going to a referendum under such circumstances. Asked how the US reacts on such human rights issues in Turkey, acting spokesperson Mark Toner said: We urge Turkey to respect and ensure freedom of expression, fair trial guarantees, judicial independence, and other essential freedoms.

As for the constitutional referendum, Mark Toner said it is a matter for the Turkish people to debate and decide.
Military action against North Korea an `option`: Tillerson

Rex Tillerson visited the demilitarised zone that separates the two Koreas.

AFP, Seoul :

Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said Friday.

The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.

Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties. Even so, Tillerson said the United States' "strategic patience" had ended-the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under that policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that option's on the table."

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.

"I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries," he said.

"We know that other nations can take actions." Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South.




ULAB celebrates birth anniversary of Bangabandhu

Campus Report :



University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) celebrated the birth anniversary of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and National Children's Day on Wednesday at its Dhanmondi campus in the capital.

The program started with the welcome speech by ULAB Emeritus Prof Rafiqul Islam. The chief guest of the event was Dr Syed Anwar Husain, Prof, Department of History, University of Dhaka.

In his speech, Dr Husain said, " If we divide the whole the world in parallel, two things that can perceive, one is progress and another one is change and these are the elements that create history. Right and positive changes are desired to all and everyone. In the context of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the hero of this desired change. He has worked as a catalyst for bringing a change in the history of Bangladesh and for its people. He is memorable and acceptable to the people of home and in abroad. His popularity has always been doubled to the people of abroad rather than people from our own land. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the most successful leaders who knew how to create bridge between a leader and a nation's people. Nelson Mandela rightly said, Bangabandhu was the main record of freedom."

Paying tribute to the memory of the greatest Bengali of all time Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Prof Rafiqul Islam requested everyone to take part in this event with much affection and seriousness.

A documentary named "Bijoyer Mohanayak" directed by Moinul Hossain Mukul, was also screened in the program.

The discussion ended with a vote of thanks by ULAB Acting Vice Chancellor Professor Imran Rahman.

Earlier in the day, a book and photo exhibition on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was inaugurated in the Lobby of ULAB's Main Campus. Prof Mohit ul Alam, Vice Chancellor of Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University inaugurated the exhibition. ULAB Pro-Vice Chancellor Dr HM Jahirul Haque, ULAB Emeritus Prof Rafiqul Islam, and ULAB Registrar Prof Akhtar Ahmed, students, faculty members and admin members were present in the ceremony.
PKB to boost commercial activities soon

Kamruzzaman Bablu :

Probashi Kallyan Bank (PKB) is going to be a specialised scheduled bank to boost its banking activities.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave her consent to convert the PKB into a scheduled bank under the Bank Companies Act

An inter-ministerial meeting at the Ministry of Finance auditorium on Wednesday decided to make PKB a specialised scheduled bank. Finance Minister AMA Muhith presided over the meeting.

The meeting sources said the paid up capital of PKB will be increased to Tk400 crore from existing Tk100 crore.

The paid up capital of the PKB came down to Tk35 crore at the end of 2016 as a huge amount of funds was disbursed to potential expatriates by the PKB, officials who attended the meeting said.

According to the meeting decision, Finance Division will provide Tk250 crore fund to the PKB while the rest of the fund will come from the Wage Earners' Welfare Board.

On July 30, 2015, the Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam Bsc sent an official letter to Finance Minister AMA Muhith to take necessary steps for converting the bank into a specialised one.

In reply, finance minister made the comment that the Banking Division can place "prudent remark" in this connection.

He said the PKB cannot become an agency under any ministry. It must be a commercial bank.

The finance ministry applied to the Bangladesh Bank to open a clearing house to facilitate remittance home in late 2013.

The PKB also sent a letter to get membership of the clearing house.

Prime Minister and Bangladesh Bank Governor had discussed about the progress at a cabinet meeting on February 2, 2015.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave her consent to convert the PKB into a scheduled bank under the Bank Companies Act, said Bangladesh Bank sources.

According to clause 4 (6) of the Probashi Kallyan Bank Act 2010, the bank will be able to carry out commercial and banking activities.

Besides, clause 4 (7) of the Probashi Kallyan Bank Act 2010 has mentioned that the PKB can be converted into a scheduled bank with approval of the Bangladesh Bank.

Till date, the state-run PKB disbursed Tk75 crore collateral-free loans to 7,500 people going abroad for employment.

The spcialised bank was established by the government in 2010 to provide collateral-free loans to workers going abroad for employment, also to returnees from abroad to help them out for employment within the country and facilitate sending remittances by the wage-earners to invest in the country.

Meanwhile, several state-run banks including Ansar-VDP Bank also wants to be a scheduled bank.
Mushfiqur Rahim lays into a cut shot on the 3rd day of 2nd Test between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka at P Sara Oval in Colombo on Friday.
Recognition of Kosovo by Bangladesh and its implications

S.M Rashed Ahmed :

We have a shared history with Kosovo. Both the countries have fought for their independence. Like us, they are also victims of genocide and have long history of denial of rights and autonomy that eventually gave birth to an independent Kosovo after long political struggle and bloody war of Independence. Like us they also started their struggle for independence peacefully under the leadership of Ibrahim Rugova who is called the Gandhi of the Balkans. He wanted a non-violent resolution of the Kosovo crisis with Serbian dictator Milosovice and his military responded with bullets. They have freedom fighters like Hashim Thaci, former prime minister who is now the President of Kosovo, Adam Jeshari one of the the bravest freedom fighters of Kosovo, who was the founder of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and other freedom fighters. Adam Jeshari single handedly fought against the Serbian Security forces and was killed along with his entire family. The birth of KLA was due to disproportionate us of force by Serbian dictator Milosovic. Instead of a negotiated settlement of the Kosovo crisis with the Albanians leadership, he decided to opt for a military solution to the conflict by policy of ethnic and religious cleansing of Kosovo Albanians. This led to bloody arm struggle including forcible expulsion of million of Albanian men, women and children who fled as refugees into neighboring countries.

All diplomatic efforts by the West failed to persuade Milosovic to cease the policy of brutal repression and Force to resolve the crisis peacefully though a negotiated settlement of the crisis acceptable to all parties. NATO decided on humanitarian intervention on 24th Mach 1999 by air strikes against strategic targets inside Yugoslovia.

Milosovic countered through a coordinated operation of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians on an unprecedented scale forcing nearly six hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians mostly women, children and elderly to leave Kosovo as refugees while killing, maiming and detaining the Albanians young men. In the ensuing battle between the Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) backed by the NATO the

Serbian security forces suffered heavy causalities in the hills and village of Kosovo. When NATO threatened to take military action on the ground, Milosovice decided to accept the UN Security Council resolution 1244 for a cease-fire. Consequently NATO also decided to suspend further military action against Serbian military targets in Kosovo.

UN resolution 1244, inter-alia, placed Kosovo under a UN interim Administration (UNMIK) to oversee administration of Kosovo, holding of local elections, ensuring return of the refugees and displaced persons, withdrawal of Serbian armed forces from Kosovo and disarming of the KLA.

The recognition of Kosovo by Bangladesh is a welcome development. It has added a new dimension to our diplomacy. The implications for the international community are important. Bangladesh has joined other countries, which have recognized Kosovo in reaffirming the principle that there would be no reward for ethnic or religious cleansing wherever it takes place. Bangladesh also upholds the principle of humanitarian intervention when a massive violation of human rights takes place in any country forcing its citizens to flee to other countries for safety and security and become refugees.

At this point the plea of the country involved in such massive violation of human rights that the issue is an internal matter for that country is unacceptable under humanitarian international law. In this context the humanitarian intervention by NATO forces in Kosovo, at the initiative of president Clinton in 1999 involving air strikes on the Serbian security forces following decision of Milosovic to embark on massive ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians sets a welcome precedent in international humanitarian law. This paved the way for the return of millions of Kosovo Albanians refugees and displaced person to their homes and setting up of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Under Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1244. The UN resolution 1244, also eventually led to a negotiated settlement of the Kosovo crisis.

In my capacity as the UN Regional Administrator of Kosovo, the first diplomat from a developing country to hold the post, I was fortunate to be able to make my modest contribution to the process of peaceful resolution of the Kosovo crisis. As the Regional Administrator of Mitrovica I sustained the process of direct negotiations initiated by my predecessor David Mitchels involving the elected presidents of three Albanian municipalities in the south of Mitrovica region and three presidents of the Serbian municipalities in the north of Mitrovica. Mitrovica was characterized a de facto partition between the Kosovo Albanians in the South and the Kosovo Sarbians in the North separated by river Ibar and connected by a bridge on the river. The bloody Kosovo conflict started from this region. Even after the conflict was over there were frequent interethnic clashes on the bridge between the two ethnic groups. The agonizing negotiations and dialogue took place in the UN Regional head quarters in Mitrovica and lasted for months.

I was ably assisted by the French KFOR General, the Irish police commander and the UNMIK Municipal Administrators of the region, among others. The Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) in Kosovo also gave his personal support by visiting Mitrovica region, and participating in the discussions between the Albanian and Serbian municipal elective presidents whenever possible. The fact that the two antagonistic parties involving local elected Albanian and Serbian leaders had begun to talk among themselves with the UN Regional Administrator acting as an honest broker was by it self a diplomatic success considering that there were no direct communication between them after the bloody conflict. There were frequent outburst of violence between the two ethnic communities separated by the bridge dividing the Albanian majority in the South and the Serbian majority in the north.

This painstaking process of dialogue and negotiations between Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian leadership in Mitrovica region significantly contributed to the eventual resolution of the complex issue of the status of Kosovo. Though there was continued opposition from Belgrade backed by Russia, Kosovo declared its independence through a vote of the parliament on February 17, 2008.

I wish to place on record that during my tenure with UNMIK I received invaluable support and guidance from the Deputy Secretary General (DSRG) Mr. Tom Koenig. He is to my mind, one of the finest and dedicated breed of eminent German personalities I had the privilege of interacting and working with him among other distinguish personalities.

The historic process of building a democratic, multi-religious and multi-cultural Kosovo is ongoing. Its success is crucial to building democratic multi cultural, multi religious societies in other states of former Yugoslavia particularly in Serbia dominated by the rise of the radicals and haunted by the ghost of Melosovic. The international community support to the process of Ensuring peace and stability in the Balkans is essential for achieving global peace and for success in the fight against the menace of terrorism, militancy and extremism afflicting the world at large.

The recognition of Kosovo by Bangladesh would be mutually benefited. Politically, the vision of two countries is more or less identical. Both Bangladesh and Kosovo are Muslim majority countries with secular orientations. About 90 percent of the Kosovo people are Muslims but they are secular and tolerant like Bangladeshis. They are more proud of their Albanian culture than their religion,which they consider as a personal matter. They are culturally rich nation music, dance, art, literature, painting etc. are part of their life like Bangladeshis. Kosovo is an excellent example of multi cultural, religious, tolerant, and democratic society in the heart of Europe. This is significant. Bangladesh is also multi cultural, religious, tolerant, democratic, and secular state. Hence two muslim majority tolerant democratic and secular states would have favorable impact on other emerging nations with muslim majority populations.

The aspiration of Kosovo to join European Union is much significant. They have scarce resources but with dynamic young population they want to create a modern, forward looking nation. Currently their emphasis is on revamping their education sector to lay the basis of an enlightened society, among other priorities. When I asked a gathering of young people as to what kind of university they want to have. They said that, they want first class English medium Universities along with Albanian ones so that they can integrate with modern world and become competitive. A war ravaged economy needs everything to rebuild their economy for development. Kosovo is seeking economic cooperation involving joint venture projects, investments, banking and need help in agriculture sector etc. Kosovans see Bangladesh as model of war ravaged country, which has achieved remarkable development since its Independence. Kosovo can, therefore, be a promising destination for our businessmen and Private sector investments in particular as the price of goods in Europe are increasingly becoming costlier. Bangladesh would need to tap the opportunity in Kosovo given its needs.

Of the lessons learnt from UN experience in Kosovo is that there is no durable military solution to essentially political, religious, sectarian ethnic and such conflicts. It is time for the world to opt for patient negotiations and diplomacy. The outcome achieved through such peaceful means are generally more lasting as violence, conflicts and wars create perpetual hatred in the hearts and minds of the people.

It is said 'If war begins in the hearts and minds of the people, it is in their hearts that defenses of peace should be built'. In the ultimate analysis nations and peoples cutting across geographical boundaries and all forms of divides and differences. We will have to work collectively to find non-violent resolutions to all problems, disputes afflicting the globe for peace and development, to banish the scourge of poverty, illiteracy and to overcome man made and natural disasters.

I would like to thank Prime Minister of Bangladesh and her Government for giving Republic of Kosovo official recognition. This would pave the way for a strong bond of friendship between the two countries, the governments and the peoples. I also wish to express my sincere appreciation and thanks to Prof Dr Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah Secretary General Bangladesh Kosovo Forum (BKF) along with other colleagues for their tiring effort and support for the recognition of Kosovo by Bangladesh.

[The writer is a career diplomat and a former UN Regional Administrator in Kosovo]
42 killed in air strike on mosque near Aleppo

Reuters :

Warplanes struck a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jina, in northwest Syria, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Thursday.

The jets struck the village, southwest of Atarib near Aleppo, as the mosque was full of worshippers at evening prayer, said the Observatory, which monitors the Syrian war via a network of contacts across the country.

The U.S. military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday against al Qaeda militants, killing several, at a meeting location in Idlib province, but it was unclear if it was referring to the attack on Al-Jina.

The statement from U.S. Central Command made no mention of civilian casualties.

Syrian and Russian military have also carried out many air strikes in Idlib and Aleppo provinces during the war.

Al-Jina is located in one of the main rebel-held parts of Syria, the northwest that includes Idlib province and the western parts of Aleppo province, and its population has been swollen by refugees, U.N. agencies have said.

Rebels in northwest Syria fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad also include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.
Youth shot dead in Narsingdi

UNB, Narsingdi :

A young man was shot dead allegedly by a 'drug trader' over playing gambling at Kajirkandi village in Sadar upazila on Friday.

Delwar Hossain Dipu, Alukbali union parishad chairman said Rubel Mia, 30, son of Ohid Mia of the village, had an altercation with Momen, 45, an alleged drug peddler of the area, over gambling around 11:30 pm on Thursday night. At one stage, Momen shot Rubel in his neck, leaving him critically injured.

Later, he was taken to Sadar Hospital from where he was shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Rubel succumbed to his injuries around 9:00 am on Friday.

Contacted, Golam Mostafa, officer-in-charge of Sadar Police Station, said none was arrested in this connection.
PDB plans to hike power price from April

Anisul Islam Noor :

Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has plan to hike electricity price from April 1, sources said, despite the fact that a rise will affect the life of the poor people.

An official of BPDB told the New Nation in cell phone that they had submitted the proposals received from the electricity distribution entities last week to Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission for hiking power at the retail level.

At pesent one unit electricity cost is Tk 6.73 the BPDB submitted a proposal to make it 7.71, including service and demand charge.

The BERC's evaluation committee said that the utility companies should not hanker-after the increase of price since they used to earn profit.

After the BPDB submitted it, proposal to hike power price at bulk level, other utility companies also applied for price hike.

Energy Adviser of the Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Prof Shamsul Alam said, the country is generating 7,500MW of electricity by burning gas, oil and coal.

The price of fuel has not increased, rather oil price has come down below 50 per cent. Yet the government decided to hike electricity price unnecessarily, he said.Moreover, all the distribution companies have been making profit during the last few years, he observed. The government does not think that the power price hike will push up the prices of daily essential commodities to make the lives of poor people difficult, said Prof MM Akash of the University of Dhaka. Last year, the PDB proposed a 22 per cent power hike at retail level and the Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) proposed a 17.85 per cent hike at retail level, but the evaluation committee approved only 3.75percent hiking.

In FY 2014-15 the DPDC made a big profit and that is why the company does not need price hike at present, the technical evaluation committee told the BERC.

The West Zone Power Development Company is distributing electricity to the south-west zone of the country in 21 districts. The company proposed a 21.31 per cent power hike.
Bangabandhu`s birthday observed

Staff Reporter :

The 98th birthday of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the architect of independent and sovereign Bangladesh, was observed on Friday with due respect and honour across the country.

The nation observed the day also as the National Children's Day as Bangabandhu liked to spend time with children.

The programmes of the day included placing of wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu, holding of Doa Mahfils, offering of fateha, discussions, cultural functions, book fair, voluntary blood donation camps, free medical treatments, painting competitions, screening of documentary films and playing the audio record of Bangabandhu's historic March 7 Speech.

The day's programmes started at 6:30 am with hoisting of the national and party flags by the ruling party Awami League.

At 7:00am in the morning, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, placed a wreath at the portrait of Bangabandhu on the premises of Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi, Road-32 in the city.

Later, she as the President of the ruling Awami League along with party's senior leaders placed another wreath there paying glowing tributes to Bangabandhu. Members of AL Advisory Council, Cabinet members and Parliamentarians were also present at that time.

After departure of the Prime Minister from Bangabandhu Bhaban, people from all walks of life, particularly leaders, workers of different political parties and socio-cultural-professional bodies, paid glowing tributes to Bangabandhu placing wreaths there.

Besides, leaders of Dhaka City AL, Mahila AL, Jatiya Sramik League, Krishak League, Awami Juba League, Awami Swechchhasebak League, Juba Mahila League, Chhatra League and other organizations also placed wreaths at Bangabandhu Memorial.

At about 10:00 am, President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina paid homage to Bangabandhu by placing wreaths at his mazar on the premises of Bangabandhu Mausoleum Complex at Tungipara in Gopalganj district.

After placing wreaths, the President and the Prime Minister stood there in solemn silence for sometime as a mark of respect to the great leader.

A smartly turned out contingent drawn from Bangladesh Army, Navy and Air Force presented guard of honour on the occasion when last post was played on bugle.

Later, the President and the Prime Minister offered fateha at Bangabandhu's mazar and took part in the special munajat session organised there seeking eternal peace for the souls of Bangabandhu and those martyrs of the August 15 carnage.

Later, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attended a children's rally, book fair and cultural event organised on the premises of Bangabandhu Mausoleum. The premier also visited a photography exhibition on Bangabandhu's life titled "Khoka Theke Bangabandhu" which was arranged on the mausoleum premises marking the day.

Meanwhile, the Dhaka City AL observed Bangabandhu's birthday in its Bangabandhu Avenue office.

Besides, Cultural Affairs Ministry, Information Ministry, National Library, Department of Films and Publications and Directorate of Mass Communication screened few documentary films and staged exhibition on Bangabandhu and Liberation War at District and Upazila levels.

Bangladeshi Missions in different countries will also celebrate the day with due respect.

The day was a public holiday. The national dailies published special supplements while Bangladesh Betar, Bangladesh Television and private TV channels and radio stations aired special programmes highlighting the significance of the day.


Multi million dollar siphoned off BD to Malaysia

Badrul Ahsan :

At least US$278 million was siphoned off from Bangladesh to Malaysia till November 2016 under the 'Malaysia My Second Home' (MM2H) project through money laundering, sources said.

According to official data of Malaysia Financial Intelligence Unit (MFIU), at the end of November 2016, the total number of Bangladeshis, who made investments to avail 'second Home' benefit since 2003, stood at 3,399. Bangladesh ranks 3rd in investment in Malaysia second home project.

In a rough estimation, every applicant has to transfer at least $ 82,000 or about Tk 6.4 million to avail of the second home benefit. Thus, at least $ 278 million has illicitly been transferred to Malaysia under the programme. But according to Global Financial Integrity (GFI) estimate, illicit financial flow (IFF) or outflow from Bangladesh stood at $ 9.66 billion (Tk 740 billion) in 2013 which was $ 7.22 billion (Tk 553.13 billion) in 2012. No update for 2014 or later years is available. "We are investigating cases of some major money laundering, later, we will include other medium and small violators under our scanner also," a high official at the ACC told The New Nation on Thursday preferring anonymity.

"Although bringing back siphoned off money is a very tough job, we are hopeful about our success with the help of international money laundering laws and mutual discussion with the counterparts," he added.

However, although no activity of previous government was seen before bringing back the money home, the present management of Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has taken a move to take legal steps against the unlawful activity.

As part of the initiative, the Anti-Corruption watchdog wrote a letter to the MFIU for Mutual Legal Assistance and to provide detail information of some 50 big investments.

In response to the request, MFIU has sent the Cash Transaction Report (CTR) on 14 Bangladeshis out of total 50 who have invested largely in 'Malaysia My Second Home' project through money laundering.

MFIU has recently sent the report to the finance ministry of Bangladesh and suggested Mutual Legal Assistance procedure to collect the deeds and documents on investment in My Second Home project and other purchase related documents including flat/land/car.

MFIU has also informed the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) about it, claiming that they don't have any information about 36 other Bangladeshis.

Meanwhile as many as 32 cases related to flat/car or money laundering through any other way in Singapore, the UK, the USA, Hong Kong, and Canada are under investigation by the ACC. Besides, National Board of Revenue (NBR) has engaged a lawyer in Los Angeles in the USA to bring back the money to the tune of US$ 0.639 million siphoned off by a taxpayer of Tax Zone-2 of Chittagong in 2012.

The Revenue Board has also sent a letter to Justice Department of the USA through the office of the attorney general, seeking Mutual Legal Assistance, 2012. The NBR will primarily get US$ 0.150 million through settlement as Justice Department delivered verdict to freeze the amount.
Supposed witches have been tortured and burnt by groups of men often supported by village elders. The torture is somewhat common in most parts of the country.

Most people in PNG believe in Sanguma, the local term for witchcraft or black magic, and anyone you ask has a story to tell. The belief is widespread among the highly educated and the illiterate  a connection shared with some African nations.

Our forefathers believed in magic, practiced it and passed it down through the generations until they were challenged by the arrival of missionaries in the 1800s.

PAPUA New Guinea has some history of being associated with the supernatural.

However some women who died were later found to be innocent and others carry the scars as evidence of this brutality.

Non-government-organisations claim that the killings are baseless suggesting that, when a negative situation befalls someone, the victim looks for vulnerable people to blame and as a result women fallen victim.

But most eyewitness accounts to these acts of violence suggest otherwise.

Eyewitnesses say black magic is real, that it has been part of our culture for a long time and it will remain long after were gone, whether you believe in it or not.

An eyewitness recently recounted a case where a woman was accused of murdering her nephew through the use of Sanguma.

When questioned by relatives, she said she had removed the heart of her nephew and ate it because her brother  the nephews father - did not support her children with school fees leading them to drop out of school.

The nephew had just graduated from a national high school and had been selected to attend university. The accused confessed and as a result was brutally tortured for three days - but her body remained unharmed, according to the source.

The source recounted that the woman was tied with chains and dragged by a vehicle for long distances but there were no traces of blood or any marks on her skin. This baffled the relatives of her nephew  who were also related to the accused.

According to the eyewitness, the relatives then built a pyre from old tires and told the alleged witch to sit in the middle. She humbly complied with their request.

The relatives poured kerosene over her and the tyres and set them alight. They surrounded the fire with bush knives and waited for her to scream in pain but no sound was heard.

After the fire had died and was in ashes, they checked for her remains but could not find anything that suggested she had been there  no remains of bones or charred body parts.

Sadly, the cursed nephew passed away several days after  just as the alleged witch had predicted.

The eyewitness said that the alleged witch is alive and well in her village but the question remains about how she escaped the fire and the bush knife wielding men surrounding it? No one could have escaped that, remarked the eyewitness.

How can you explain a disappearing act like such? Can humans fly? Or could she actually be a witch? Well, there is a possibility as witches are said to exist there is supposed to be a lot of evidence in an assortment of literature around the world.

Black magic is believed by many people in PNG and around the world. It has a history that dates back thousands of years. So why do many people in our modern age refuse to acknowledge its existence? Is it not real? Are they still blind when the practice surrounds them and continues to thrive?

Why do they say that only primitive people believe in it? As humans, do we not believe what we see and feel?

Here is a question to ponder - what is the fastest growing religion in America? If you guessed Christianity, youre wrong. If you said Islam, youre right to some extent. But the correct answer is witchcraft known simply as Wicca which continues to grow at an astounding rate.*

According to writer and publisher of the Economy blog, Michael Snyder, Wicca emerged as a faith in the middle of the 20th century, but the origins of many Wiccan practices are centuries old, and some researchers believe that certain aspects of Wicca can actually be traced all the way to ancient Babylon.

Wikipedia defines Wicca as a modern pagan witchcraft religion and there are more than 200,000 registered witches with approximately 8 million unregistered practitioners of the dark arts in the USA  this is according to Michael Snyder, compiled from various reliable sources.

Black magic, sometimes referred to as dark magic, is the use of supernatural powers for evil and selfish purposes and is often said to be the wicked version of white magic.

Christianity suggests there is no such thing as white or black magic  only magic; and mankind is prohibited from practising it as it has connections to the devil or Satan. Islam also identifies the devil, whom they refer to as Shaitan, with all those who oppose Allah.

Other non-Abrahamic religions contain figures that have similarities to the devil, such as the Buddhist demon Mara and the Zoroastrian spirit Angra Mainyu. Supposedly all religious sects associate their devil character with negative connotations except one  The Church of Satan founded by Anton Szandor Lavey, also known as the Black Pope.

Lavey founded his religion to glorify human carnal desires and pleasure. According to his introduction to his satanic bible, he saw Christianity as a sect that thrives on hypocrisy and was filled with people still eager to experience their fleshly pleasures.

Black magic only works according to your beliefs. For example, we cannot cast a spell on a white person and expect the same effect as upon a Papua New Guinean. Still, white people will be prone to their own kind of black magic which includes witches, sorcerers, hexes, spells and so forth..

All types of magic are the same and based on secret knowledge which includes the use of herbs, alteration of forces of nature and secret or real names of objects in your surroundings - but there is more, to delve deeper into the dark arts one has to know the unpronounceable name of a chief demon.

Your beliefs play a major role in allowing you to be vulnerable to the impact and effects of black magic - what is implied is not for one to believe in magic but to acknowledge its existence, practice and impacts in societies all over the world and in PNG as well.

* Mormonism not Wicca is in fact the fastest growing faith group in America (US News & World Report). Hinduism is the fastest growing religion in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Islam is the fastest growing global religion (Pew Resarch Centre) - KJ
Suicide blast kills bomber at Ashkona RAB camp

Security beefed up at airports, prisons

A suicide bomber was killed in blast after attempting to enter a makeshift camp of the Rapid Action Battalion in Dhaka\'s Ashkona area on Friday. Two RAB members also injured in the incident.

Staff Reporter :

A suspected bomber died in what is believed to be a suicide blast at a barrack of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Dhaka's Ashkona area during Jumma prayers on Friday.



The bomber died on the spot wounding two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka Cantonment, Mufti Mahmud Khan, Director of the Force's Legal and Media Wing, told journalists.



Khan said the attack appeared to be an act of any militant outfit but it was not clear immediately which of the Islamist outfits staged it.



"Right now we are, however, concentrating our attention to ascertain if the complex and the neighbourhood are secured," he said as police's counter terrorism unit with bomb disposal team reached the scene while thoroughfares around the complex were blocked for vehicular movements.



The spokesman confirmed witnesses accounts that the suicide bomber, aged about 25-30, sneaked into the complex crossing the wall and exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place there ahead of Jumma prayers.



Seeking anonymity, several RAB and police officials, who witnessed the body, endorsed the devastation caused by the blast force. The youth had his torso blown off.



Another official of RAB told The New Nation that the suicide bomber was challenged by the RAB men inside the bathing place as he entered there on the plea of performing ablution, an act of washing oneself ahead of prayers.



The Ashkona RAB barrack is a proposed site for the headquarters of the elite force. Currently, it is mostly an empty space fenced by brick walls. Inside, a large barrack is situated.



A witness Mamunur Rahman, who was going to Haji Camp to offer Jumma prayers, said he heard a loud bang. "When I peeked through, I saw a man lying about and his flesh scattered everywhere."



A witness Mamunur Rahman, who was going to Haji Camp to offer Jumma prayers, said he heard a loud bang. "When I peeked through, I saw a man lying about and his flesh scattered everywhere."



However, RAB men had cordoned off the blast site and were not allowing journalists to enter. Intelligence officials and bomb disposal units had entered the site and were examining the site till filing this report.



The incident takes place a day after police busted a suspected militant den in Chittagong's Sitakunda. The operation - code named Assault 16 - ended in deaths of four militants.



Meanwhile, immediately after the 'suicide blast', authorities have beefed up security at all airports and prisons in Bangladesh as proposed by the Headquarters of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in Dhaka.



"Additional precautions have been taken at every airport across the country following the incident," said AKM Rezaul Karim, Public Relations Officer of Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB).



Number of security personnel has also been increased at all entrances of the airports, he added.



Meanwhile, Col Iqbal Hasan, Additional Inspector General (Jail), told The New Nation that they have stepped up security measures at all the prisons across the country.



Under new security measures, jail guards have been advised to wear vests on duty and rigorously screen inmates before taking them into prisons.



There will be strict surveillance surrounding jail areas and the forces have been instructed to take appropriate measures if they encounter any suspicious activities, he said.
Move ahead with ideals of Bangabandhu

President Md Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina placed floral wreaths at the Mazar of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Tungipara marking the 98th birthday of Bangabandhu and National Children\'s Day on Friday.

UNB, Tungipara :

Voicing her resolve to complete Bangabandhu's unfinished tasks, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday urged children to move ahead imbued with the ideals of the Father of the Nation to become the country's future leaders.

"Now the Father of the Nation is not amongst us, but we'll definitely have to complete the unfinished tasks of Bangabandhu. We'll have to turn Bangladesh into a prosperous and developed country," she said.

The Prime Minister was addressing the Children's Rally and Cultural Function held on Bangabandhu Mausoleum premises marking his 98th birthday of Bangabandhu and the National Children's Day. The Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and the district administration jointly organized the function.

Urging the children and growing students to move ahead with the ideals of Bangabandhu, Hasina said, "The Father of the Nation was born in this soil and he is in his eternal sleep as well here. So, those who're the children of this soil will have to move ahead upholding his ideals. I'll ask you to love the country and its people, groom yourselves in such a way so that you could become the future leaders of the country or even become the Prime Minister, you'll have to have such self-confidence." State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Meher Afroze Chumki spoke at the programme as a special guest, held with a class V student Upama Biswas in the chair. Another class V student Faiyaz Mohammad Abdullah delivered the address of welcome.


Fish price on rise

Staff Reporter :

The price of vegetables, meat and other commodities remained stable at the weekend on Friday, but the fish price rose slightly due to short supply.

Of the vegetables, brinjal was selling at Tk 40 to 50 per kg, bean at Tk 35 to 45, ladies finger at Tk 60, tomato at Tk 30 to 35, Sajina at Tk 120 to 140 per kg, potato at Tk 13 to 18, carrot at Tk 25 to 30, bitter gourd at Tk 50 to 60, cucumber at Tk 30, khira at Tk 20 to 25, spone gourd at Tk 60 to 70, turnip at Tk 20 to 25, green pea at Tk 50 to 60, beat at Tk 70, papaya at Tk 25 to 30, french at Tk 60 to 70, snake gourd at Tk 60 to 70, okra at Tk 70, radish at Tk 20, pumpkin (medium size) at Tk 30 to 50 per piece, bottle gourd at Tk 30 to 45, ash gourd at Tk 20 to 35 per piece, cabbage at Tk 15 to 25, cauliflower at 25 to 30 per piece, coriander leaves at Tk 120 per kg, green chilli at 60 to 80 kg, capsicum (red) at Tk 300 per kg and capsicum (green) at Tk 250 to 260 per kg and spinach Tk five per bundle. Lemon (four pieces) were selling at Tk 32 to 45.

Local garlic was sold at Tk 80 to 110 per kg, but the Chinese variety at much higher rate. Local onion was selling at Tk 25 to 26 per kg.

Rupchanda, a brand of Bangladesh Edible Oil Ltd (BOEL) was selling at Tk 107 (1 litre), Tk 212 (2 litres) and Tk 530 (five litres) respectively. On the other hand, Teer and Fresh brand oil were selling at Tk 105 a litre.

The indigenous fishes, such as sheat (boal) was selling at Tk 550 to 700 per kg, cat fish (shingh) at Tk 550 to

700, cultivated cat fish at Tk 350- 550 per kg, barbell at Tk 400 to 600, butter fish at Tk 250 to 300, lobster at Tk 480 to 600 kg, shrimp, river, at Tk 380 -520, puti at Tk 250 per kg, cultivated koi at Tk 140 to 180 per kg, rupchanda at Tk 750 to 800 per kg, walking fish (shoal) at Tk 500 per kg, lata fish (taki) at Tk 200 to 250 and Eel at Tk 600 per kg, batashi at Tk 450 to 550 per kg, koi (river) at Tk 450, Aire fish at Tk 500 to 600 per kg, pabda at Tk 600, Ek-thota (Kaitta fish) at Tk 350 to Tk 400, Baila at Tk 450 to 600 per kg, coral fish at Tk 550 kg, river pangas at Tk 350 per kg, cultivated pangas at Tk 130 per kg, Rajputi at Tk 300 per kg, tilapia at Tk 140 to Tk 200 per kg, ruhit at Tk 250 to Tk 380 per kg, medium size carp (katol) at Tk 230 -360 per kg and two pieces of of Hilsha (600-700gm) at Tk 1000.

Broiler was sold at Tk 150-Tk 160 per kg, and layer variety at Tk 175-Tk 185 in different city kitchen markets last week. Local cock (medium size) was selling at Tk 400 to 500 per piece and hen at Tk 350 to 400 pieces. Beef and red meat remained static maintaining the higher trend and were sold at Tk 500 to Tk 550 and Tk 750-Tk 800 per kg respectively.


Fresh spike of militancy worrying the nation

The death of a suspected bomber in an apparent attempt to attack a barrack of Rapid Action battalion (RAB) near Ashkona Haj camp near Dhaka Airport yesterday noon came just one day after police busted a suspected militant den at Sitakunda in Chittagong killing four militants including a woman at the midnight raid.



Police also claimed to have recovered several suicide vests from the hideout unveiling the danger that militancy is on spread in the country again including growing involvement of women this time. The Ashkona blast inside RAB barrack killed the bomber by his hand-triggered bomb; RAB personnel said happened as he had trespassed the wall and came under attack of the force on the spot.



The growing presence of militant activities and bizarre police action is frightening the people again with new uncertainty as they are trying to forget the shock and fall out from attack on the Hole Artisan Restaurant that killed 29 people at Gulshan last year. People are also facing extra-terrorism this way by police action in full fighting gear.



We have also seen last year police raid at a militant den in Kallyanpur in the city. Moreover police and RAB also claimed to have killed several masterminds behind the rising militancy in the country including the leaders of the Gulshan attack.



But why the danger is not subsiding and rather on the rise again is the big question.



The government has issued red alert at all airports and jails alongwith sensitive public installations. Such steps are also adding to terrorizing the nation.



Unidentified people, presumed to be militant seriously injured a guard of a Catholic Church in Pabna only last week. What is a big worry is the involvement of woman in militancy. Apart from one being killed in the Sitakunda raid on Wednesday, another woman militant was killed in a police raid in a flat at Azimpur only few months back. She died with a baby while the male member of the group were able to flee. Swoops on militants den are very often reported in the media with big success and yet how it is growing and spreading instead of coming to an end is the big question.



We saw a bizarre debate in the wake of the rise in militancy in the country whether or not we have presence of IS operatives here. A recent SITE Intelligence Group video post showed a Bangladeshi IS militant, who is highly educated and came from Chittagong, has died in Iraq while carrying out a suicide attack. It invariably confirm involvement of some people from Bangladesh in IS fights as they have been radicalized in the name of Islam. We are not sure whether they have contact with local militants in Bangladesh while the government is claiming that IS presence is not verified here.



Without going to this debate what we want to make the point here is that as the IS outfits are losing battles this time in Iraq and Syria and fleeing and there is a growing risk of the spread of their danger all over including Bangladesh.



It is quite clear that police are failing to contain militants in Bangladesh despite all out efforts and there is a growing fear is that the situation may slowly become desperate as the fresh militant activities are showing up. Desperate anger of people in many fronts may also add to make the situation more desperate.



We must say police power is not enough to successfully fight terrorism; they have failed to make clear that alternative strategy must be at work to eliminate the danger. In that case we have always opposed the killing of the militants in questionable circumstances, and suggested that they be held alive and allowed the opportunity to speak out why they are engaging in destructive activities.



Police and the government need people's cooperation to fight militancy, it can't be won with police power only. Some militants may be killed but new ones will come up to replace their place. In our view it is a political issue that needs to be sorted by all party leadership politically. Many believe that the government may be using militancy to achieve political gains and therefore it is not making the fight transparent. Police are also killing the militants to keep their stories unheard.


BEN ROBINSON DRAWBRIDGE

| Dateline Pacific, RNZI

WITH only three women currently in parliament out of 111 MPs, an intending candidate for Central Province, Rufina Peter, says she believes more women in the House will reduce political corruption.

"I think having more women in politics and in parliament will be a start towards minimising or reducing the levels of corruption in government, Rufina Peter said.

Female politicians will be more concerned about being transparent and to hold leaders to account for certain decisions that they make while holding public office."
Courtesy of AXS TVJohn Mellencamp will be featured on a new episode the AXS TV reality series Rock & Roll Road Trip with Sammy Hagar that premieres this Sunday, March 19, at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. On the show, host Sammy Hagar travels to Mellencamp's home in Bloomington, Indiana, to chat with the heartland rocker about his long and successful music career and his passion for painting.

In a clip from the program, Mellencamp reveals that his love of painting pre-dated his interest in writing songs.

"I went to New York when I was fresh out of college to go to the New York Art Student League, and on the way there I accidentally got a record deal," Mellencamp tells Hagar. "When I got my first record deal I didn't even own a guitar."

He goes on to explain that while he was in New York, he decided to drop off a demo tape with a few labels, and by the time he got back to Indiana, the MainMan management company -- which handled the careers David Bowie and Lou Reed -- was calling him to offer him a deal before he'd even heard back from the New York Art Student League.

A trailer for the program can be viewed at the AXS TV Promos YouTube channel. You also can check out a deleted scene from the episode at AXS TV's official YouTube channel, in which Mellencamp discusses his resolve to maintain his integrity as a music artist and his lack of interest in following trends or seeking the limelight.

"I got some real good advice from a really smart guy when I was real young," Mellencamp tells Hagar. "He said, 'John, go where they're not. Do what they're not doing. Keep it small, but keep it going.'"

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
U.S. Rep. John Katko revealed Friday that he opposes the current version of a bill being pushed by House Republican leaders  and President Donald Trump  to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

In a statement, Katko reiterated his position that in order to repeal the health care law, which is also known as Obamacare, there must be a viable replacement ready. In his first term, he voted against bills that would simply repeal, not replace, the Affordable Care Act.

For Katko, R-Camillus, the plan rolled out by the House GOP doesn't cut it.

"Despite some promising reforms, I do not support the proposal before the House in its current form," Katko said. "This bill represents only the first step of a long process of health care reform and it is not at all clear what the final form will look like. Substantial future administrative legislative action would be needed."

Katko lauded the Trump administration and congressional leaders for launching the process to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But he has concerns with the current version of the legislation. He doesn't believe there's a sufficient market-based option for insurance access and he thinks it doesn't address "out-of-control" health care costs.

He's also worried about the impact it would have on hospitals in his district, which covers all of Cayuga, Onondaga and Wayne counties, plus the western part of Oswego County.

"Hurting New York state to benefit other regions does not sit well with me," he said.

Katko's comments come as congressional leadership announced that the House will vote on the health care legislation next week. Trump also met with some House conservatives in an attempt to secure more support for the proposal.

At a press conference Friday, Trump was confident that the bill would pass the House.

"Obamacare will fail. It will fold," he said. "It will close up very, very soon if something isn't done."

When House Republicans first rolled out the proposal, Katko expressed concerns about the bill, but said he was awaiting a review by the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO released its score this week and while it found that the GOP plan would lower health insurance premiums, the agency estimated that 24 million more people would be uninsured, mainly because of the proposed repeal of the Medicaid expansion  a key Affordable Care Act provision.

New York state officials have railed against the Republicans' repeal and replace plan. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul has made two trips to Washington in recent weeks for meetings with the state's congressional delegation.

According to photos published on Hochul's Twitter account, Katko attended at least one of the meetings.

Here is Katko's full statement:

Obamacare has failed to keep its promises. Large insurers are pulling out of exchanges; co-ops are failing, premiums are skyrocketing; and deductibles are high. Left untouched, Obamacare will collapse and American healthcare consumers will be the victims.

My position on Obamacare has been clear since I first ran for office in 2014: we need to repeal or radically restructure the law, and have a replacement ready at the time we do so. Despite some promising reforms, I do not support the proposal before the House in its current form. This bill represents only the first step of a long process of healthcare reform and it is not at all clear what the final form will look like. Substantial future administrative and legislative action would be needed.

Fundamentally, I don't believe this proposal provides an adequate market-based option for insurance access, nor does it address out-of-control costs. Further, I am confident the proposal would harm hospitals across my district. Hurting New York State, to benefit other regions does not sit well with me.

The Administration and Leaders in Congress deserve credit for starting this process. But we should take the time to ensure a viable market-based alternative to Obamacare is ready simultaneous with the repeal. I believe we can get there.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
Photo by Robin May

Former U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany has joined a Washington lobbying firm after losing his bid for a promotion to the U.S. Senate.

The Advocate reports that Capitol Counsel says Boustany, a Lafayette Republican and retired surgeon, will focus on health care, tax and trade issues.

Boustany was a member of the House for 12 years. He gave up his House seat to run for the Senate, a race he lost last year. The former congressman can't lobby his former colleagues for two years, but the ban doesn't extend to executive branch agencies.

Boustany joins other Louisiana lawmakers who recently left Congress, including former U.S. Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu, in making the move to lobbying. Jim McCrery, a one-time Louisiana congressman, is a partner at Capital Counsel.
Even as the private-prison industry rubs its greedy, amoral hands together amid President Donald Trumps tough-on-crime platitudes and GOP fondness for outsourcing  CNN Money reported in late February that stocks of the two biggest private prison operators, CoreCivic (formerly know as Corrections Corp. of America) and Geo Group, have doubled since election day  Louisiana is looking to undo one of its most ignominious distinctions: incarceration capital of the world.

The Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Task force, a bipartisan consulting group comprising district attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials, state lawmakers and others, has released its comprehensive plan for reducing Louisianas incarceration rate, tops not only in the nation but on the planet. The groups findings come after a year-long examination of sentencing and corrections trends and research, according to a press release issued Thursday by Gov. John Bel Edwards office.

The remedies in the task forces report would, according to the release, reduce the states prison population by 13 percent over the next decade, reduce the number of offenders supervised by the community by 16 percent and save taxpayers $305 million.

Among the starting points in the task forces examination of the state prison system: Louisiana spending on prisons dwarfs its investments in effective alternatives to incarceration and programs that reduce recidivism.

Other findings in the report:

 One in three people return to prison within three years of release.  Louisiana sends people to prison for drug, property and other nonviolent offenses at twice the rate of South Carolina and three times the rate of Florida, even with nearly identical crime rates.  Among those sentenced directly to prison rather than probation, the top 10 crimes were all nonviolent, the most common by far being drug possession.  Over half of the people sent to prison in 2015 had failed on probation or parole by violating supervision conditions or engaging in new criminal activity.

Louisiana is not only the incarceration capital of the country, we are the incarceration capital of the world, Edwards says in the release. For too long this has been a stain on our reputation and a drain on our communities. Its not a reflection of who we are and what we stand for. We now have a roadmap that will allow us to keep our streets safe while shrinking our bloated prisons. It is now time for us to act.

Louisiana is tough on crime, and were going to keep it that way, adds Senate President John Alario. But part of being tough is realizing that we cant just throw money at problems. We have an obligation to taxpayers to spend their money in a way that makes them safe.

Although specific measures were not released Thursday, the task force recommendations, according to the release, are designed to:
Susan Theall Photo by Robin May

Susan Thealls Third Circuit Court of Appeal campaign has been hit with legal and ethical questions relating to the financing of her successful 2011 campaign for a judgeship in 15th Judicial District Court.

Chris Welty of Lafayette NBC affiliate KLAF reported Tuesday night that Thealls campaign had benefited from personal loans made to her by Lafayette businessman Burton Zaunbrecher. Welty reported that there were two loans totaling $70,000. (Read Did Susan Theall Break the Law? here.)

In interviews with The IND in her Downtown Lafayette office this week, Theall confirms the total amount of the loans was actually more than $100,000. She says it was all done after her CPA consulted with the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

Thealls campaign finance report from 2011 lists $108,254 in loans supposedly made by her to her campaign. The reality was that the money was from Zaunbrecher who, Theall says, wanted me to become a judge.

The 2011 Theall campaign finance report listed four loans from her to the campaign. The first was on Sept. 12, 2011, in the amount of $13,254. On Sept. 30, she loaned her campaign $40,000. On Oct. 28, she made another loan to the campaign, this one for $30,000. On Dec. 9, the final loan was for $25,000.

All of that was money Zaunbrecher loaned to Theall, which she then transferred into her campaign account.

In addition to the potential trouble this could spell for Theall with the Ethics Board, arranging the loans for her campaign through Zaunbrecher could be a breach of the Code of Judicial Conducts Canon 7, which judicial candidates pledge to observe.

Canon 7, Section A, Part 6 states:

A. A Judge or Judicial Candidate Shall Not, Except to the Extent Permitted By These Canons:

(6) personally solicit or personally accept campaign contributions;

Theall claims the loans from Zaunbrecher were just that, loans, not contributions.

However, an Ethics Board case that produced a ruling from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal calls that assertion into question.

R. Gray Sexton, who for 40 years ran Louisianas campaign finance and ethics compliance program as administrator of the Ethics Board, tells The IND that the facts in the Theall campaign closely parallel the facts in a 2002 case involving Corbett L. Ourso Jr., then a candidate for district attorney in the 21st Judicial District Court.

Oursos father loaned the candidate a substantial sum of money in that campaign, and the money went from the father to Ourso Jr.s personal account then quickly into his campaign account.

Sexton, who brought the case before the Ethics Board and then successfully defended it at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal in 2004, says it was a fact-specific case, and it was those facts which swayed the court.

The first fact was the aspiration of the father  he wanted to help his son get elected, Sexton says. The second fact was the proximity of the transfer of the money from the father to the son, then to the sons campaign account. The third fact was that the amounts deposited matched exactly the sums that the father had given to the son.

In the Ourso ruling, Sexton says the court ruled that young Ourso had to refund the money his father loaned him. That Ethics Board ruling, which Ourso challenged in the courts, took at least two years to enforce. Ourso was also fined $4,000 for filing incorrect campaign finance reports.

Theall admits in the interview in her office that the intent of the loans was to help her campaign. She says that the money went into her account and she transferred the amount borrowed from her personal account into her campaign account. She says the amounts transferred match the amount borrowed. Those steps appear to match the Ourso case facts and thus make Zaunbrecher's loans to Theall contributions, not loans.

Sexton also says that loans by supporters to campaigns are capped by the same limits as contributions to the office. The campaign contribution limit in the 15th JDC race was $2,500.

Theall maintains that her CPA, Mark Shirley, contacted the Ethics Board in 2011 to ensure that the loans could be made and to learn how to do so in a way that complied with state ethics rules. The IND reached out to Shirley at his Baton Rouge office, but he has not yet responded to our request for comment.

Theall says she was advised that promissory notes would have to accompany the loans and adds that those notes were drawn up and signed. She says she has reported the loan balances on her personal financial statements of candidacy.

The Ethics Board staff sent us a model promissory note to use, and thats what we used to draw up the loan papers, Theall says.

At some point in that 2011 campaign, Theall recalls, Zaunbrecher and others said they needed more signs. I told them I didnt have any money, Theall tells The IND. So, he made another loan to the campaign so we could buy signs.

In the KLAF interview, Theall told reporter Welty that she had paid back some of the loan to Zaunbrecher, but she would not specify that amount.

The financial summary page from Theall's updated 2011 campaign finance report, filed on Dec. 22, 2014, shows Theall contributing $122,573 (Line 1), which she says was an accounting maneuver to convert loans to a contribution. The report then shows a $122,669 loan repayment (Line 11) to Theall for the money she had ostensibly loaned the campaign, money she now admits was actually a loan from a local businessman. Click image to enlarge and view additional campaign finance filings.

In a set of transactions on Dec. 22, 2014, involving her 2011 and 2014 campaigns (she was defeated in her re-election bid), Theall says she assumed personal responsibility for the loans that the campaigns technically owed her.

"It was after I lost the 2014 election," Theall says. "I decided I was through with politics. I wanted to close out both [campaign accounts]. So, we used accounting notes to transfer the debts from the two campaigns to me."

On that day, Thealls 2011 campaign filed a new report showing that she had contributed $122,573 to her campaign. The report lists the money under Candidates personal funds and indicates that those funds (plus another $95.50 on hand in the campaign account) were used to repay Theall for money she had ostensibly loaned her campaign. Those loans, however, were actually the money she had borrowed from Zaunbrecher.

Theall explains that what she did was convert the campaign loans to contributions, thus eliminating the debt from the campaign committee. She says she gave no money to the 2011 committee or her 2014 campaign committee, to which she had loaned $53,649. Theall says the 2014 loans all involved her own money.

"I had rented my office while I served as judge," Theall explains. "I loaned the campaign $15,000 from that account. I loaned the campaign $10,000 of my personal funds, then took an interest free $34,000 cash advance on a credit card and put that in the campaign." Theall made three other small loans to that campaign, which she says were instances where she covered campaign expenses out of her own pocket.

The 2014 reports were merely accounting moves done solely to enable Theall to close those campaign accounts. As a result, she says she assumed $176,222 in debt, at least $108,000 of which she was already personally obligated to pay Zaunbrecher through the promissory notes.

Theall says she will pay back the loans to Zaunbrecher, but she would not tell The IND how much she has thus far paid on those loans.

Theall's campaign issued the following statement to The IND early Friday afternoon:

The 2011 loans in question were not illegal and not improper based on advice received from the CPA who prepared the reports in accordance with his staffs conversations with the Board of Ethics. When a recent question arose about the 2011 reports, the CPA who prepared the reports was immediately contacted and an ethics attorney was retained. The CPA for the Susan Theall for Judge Campaign Committee is having the 2011 reports reviewed by an independent firm of certified public accountants and has been in contact with the Louisiana State Board of Ethics. The Campaign Committee is assembling and reviewing all documents, communications and filings required by the Louisiana Board of Ethics. According to the CPA for the Campaign Committee, he has informed the Board of Ethics that the facts of the Ourso case are dissimilar to facts surrounding the loans made to Susan Theall in 2011.

Current Ethics Board Administrator Kathleen Allen did not immediately respond to The IND's voice message seeking comment on the Theall matter.

Finance reports in Thealls current Third Circuit Court of Appeal run show the candidate has again loaned her campaign money. Thealls total loans to her campaign in the current election cycle come to $26,846. Theall says all of that money came through cash advances on credit cards.

The revelations about Thealls possible ethical and legal woes relating to her 2011 campaign come at a particularly awkward time for her. She trails her opponents, Candyce Gagnard Perret and Vanessa Anseman, in fundraising but has sought to claim the moral and ethical high ground in contrasting her own record against the now well-publicized legal and ethical dilemmas facing her opponents.

Candyce Gagnard Perrets campaign operates under the cloud of an ongoing federal investigation that initially focused on Louisiana Specialty Institute, a company owned by her husband, Hunter Perret. However, since The IND broke the story on the federal investigation, in which seven local attorneys confirmed anonymously that they had been questioned by the feds, the probe appears to have broadened beyond LSI, according to sources who asked not to be identified. Candyce Perret is partners with Hunter Perret in the Perret Group, a company the couple uses to invest in other businesses.

In an unrelated controversy, candidate Perret was arrested for indecent exposure in Florida in 2004 and, according to the arrest report, claimed to be an assistant district attorney, a position she has never held.

Vanessa Anseman is currently engaged in a legal fight to remain on the ballot in the Third Circuit race after The IND reported that Louisiana State Bar Association records raised questions about her eligibility to run for the seat. The Louisiana Constitution states that candidates for appellate courts must have been admitted to the practice of law for at least 10 years. Anseman walked away from the practice in 2012. In 2013, the LSBA certified her as ineligible to practice law, privileges that she only regained on the final day of qualifying for the seat, Jan. 13.

On Monday, Judge Alonzo Harris of the 27th JDC ruled Anseman did not meet the qualifications to be a candidate, deeming her ineligible. Anseman and the Louisiana Secretary of State have appealed the decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeal. The Secretary of State says the election code provides only a seven-day window for challenging candidates and that window closed before questions of Ansemans eligibility arose. Anseman is joining with the state in that portion of the appeal.

Anseman is also appealing the part of Harris ruling declaring her an ineligible candidate because she does not meet the 10 years of practice standard.

Briefs in Ansemans appeal are being filed today. Oral arguments are expected to begin Monday with a decision sometime later in the week. Ansemans name will remain on the ballot regardless of the outcome of the legal fight. If she prevails, votes cast for her will be counted. If the appellate court upholds Harris ruling, her name will remain on the ballot but votes cast for her will not be counted. It remains to be seen if the Louisiana Supreme Court will have time to be petitioned on the matter after the Third Circuit weighs in. (Read more here.)

Politically, revelations of legally and ethically questionable campaign finance practices in 2011 could take the wind out of Thealls sails, as she could become subject to investigations and potentially face fines and penalties, all of which would come well after the election is decided.
The village of Florien, La., nestled in the piney woods of western Louisiana not far from Toledo Bend, voted by the slimmest of margins last December to go dry  that is, to prohibit the sale of alcohol. This is still a thing in the Bible Belt.

But the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, in a decision released Thursday, voided that village-wide vote on a number of technicalities after two residents of Florien (rhymes with chlorine), population about 600, filed suit against the village to block the teetotaling measure.

There were actually five propositions before Florien voters on the Dec. 10, 2016 ballot, all having to do with the sale of alcohol  ranging from alcohol-by-volume to sales in stores. The margin in each was razor thin: 182 people voted on each of the propositions (except No. 3, which one of those 182 skipped) and the no vote  the propositions were phrased as shall the sale of alcohol be permitted?  prevailed by two to five votes on each.

The three-judge appellate panel agreed with the plaintiffs in the suit that Florien and its board of aldermen failed to follow a number of provisions in Louisiana law for calling a local-option election, backing a district court judges earlier ruling against the village: The trial court found that the election itself and the pre-election and post-election procedures resulted in at least five statutory violations, the appeals courts decision reads in part.

Further, the opinion concludes, finding that the petition itself did not substantially comply with the governing statutes, we amend the trial courts judgment to state that the election was illegally called, ineffective, and therefore null and void.

One of the plaintiffs in the suit against Florien, Patrick Sandel, is co-owner of a convenience store that sells spirits.

The 3rd Circuits ruling does not prevent Florien from trying again to ban alcohol within village limits, but for the time being residents wont have to make the 10-mile trek north to Many for a 12-pack.
Parker, Basie and Black History in Red Bank at the Wesleyan

The Wesleyan Executive Director Gertrude Kehleay, in traditional Liberian clothing, and Rev. Darlene Wilson, pastor of the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank, greeted an intergenerational, multicultural group of about 100 people gathered last week at United Methodist Communities at The Wesleyan for their annual Black History Celebration.



RED BANK  (March 10, 2017) - Wesleyan Arms Executive Director Gertrude Kehleay, dressed in the tradition of her native Liberia, greeted an intergenerational, multicultural group of about 100 people gathered at United Methodist Communities at The Wesleyan for their annual Black History Celebration. All American citizens, they came together on the last day of February to celebrate the history and contributions of African Americans, as well as their ancestry representing nearly every continent around the globe.

Keynote speaker, Rev. Darlene Wilson, pastor of the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank, recounted, Although we dig down deep in February to discover Black History, it is every month  Black History is history.

Evidence of Black History abounds in Red Bank. Wilson recalled three notable local African-American figures, physicians Dr. James Parker, Sr. and his son, Dr. James Parker Jr., as well as Count Basie. A street honors the two doctors as well as the Parker Family Health Center and a theater bears the name of Count Basie.

Quoting from Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, Rev. Wilson affirmed, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou all knew they could stop, but did not because Christ strengthened them. Remember somebodys shoulders we are standing upon; the shoulders the next person may be standing upon could be yours.

In the context of a once-segregated Red Bank, she said, We can now sit next to one another in the Count Basie Theater and play ball together in Count Basie Park.

Guests dined on fried chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans, salad and fruit dessert, and in keeping with the theme, sang America the Beautiful, Lord, Youre The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me and The Lord Is Blessing Me Right Now.

Mary Patichio, social service coordinator at The Wesleyan, has been involved with social justice issues and shared an article, Black Lives Matter, published by Ben & Jerrys. It urged people to understand and admit the problem, recognize the perspectives of others and come together to give all citizens dignity and equal justice.

With the message resonating, people shared personal stories at their tables. Maylene Rosheuvel, a Red Bank resident, proudly shared that her daughter, a director of racial justice for a faith-based organization, conducts racial justice workshops, promotes immigrant rights and organizes political action.

Despite the gains, Rev. Wilson, urged, Weve come a long way and we still have a long way to go, not just as blacks  we have to go this journey together, as this is the only way to change.




Deputies Investigate Fraud

Deputies with the Jasper County Sheriffs Office (JCSO) investigated several reports of theft and fraud in the last week.



Most recently, a resident said she had stopped receiving mail. Upon investigation, she learned someone had submitted a change of address for her to an address in Illinois. She later received a message on social media from the person receiving the mail saying she had no idea why she was receiving it, and that she would send it to the rightful owner. Meanwhile, someone took $1,500 from the victims retirement account. That case is still under investigation.



There were two other reports of inappropriate financial transaction card use. In one, a victim on Hwy. 142 reported unauthorized use of her Sears credit card. The other did not provide details, but more than $1,000 was obtained through fraudulent use of a card.



In addition, a resident on Brookwood Drive reported the theft of a 9mm handgun, and two power drills. Also, resident on Turtle Cove Trailway reported the theft of coins.



Persons booked into the Jasper County Detention Center in the last week, and their charges, include:



Michael Shane Anglin, 36, Mansfieldaggravated child molestation, incest, child molestation, rape and simple battery.



Lucious Marcus Odom, 30, Monticellodrug related object and possession of marijuana less than an ounce.



Bridgette Nicole Greene, 35, Maconprobation violation.



Darnell Sanchez Norwood, 20, Shady Daleprobation violation.



Mathew John Duchaine, 29, Monticellopossession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, purchase/possession/manufacture/distribution or sale of marijuana, possession of methamphetamine and possession of marijuana less than an ounce.



Amber Deanne Strickland, 26, Monticellopurchase/possession/manufacture/distribution or sale of marijuana, possession of marijuana less than an ounce, and contributing to the deprivation of a minor.



Damon Chad Green, 18, Monticellosimple assault.



Whitney Monique Ross, 25, Shady Dalecriminal damage to property 2nd degree.



Jason Blaine Reece, 38, Hillsboroterroristic threats and acts and public drunkenness.



Willie Nelson Benjamin, 54, Monticellopedestrian under the influence of alcohol or drugs.



Joseph Jarma Tishun Standifer, 25, Monticelloprobation violation.



Karyn Elizabeth Eckerle, 56, Monticellodriving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and failure to maintain lane.



Alicia Kenyatta Person, 33, Eastpointconspiracy to commit a felony, financial identity fraud, printing/executing/negotiating checks, drafts, etc. and forgery.



Christopher Melvin Rhey, 42, Maconprobation violation.


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BENTON  Franklin County Circuit Clerk Jim Muir has had an eventful first 100 days.

On his second day in office, back in December, he got an alarming phone call.

I got a call from the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts, (they) told me, Were you aware there has not been an audit done in your office since 2012? Muir said. My answer back was, I dont know where the light switches are around here, so no I dont know about it.

Muir said since then, the office has completed those missing three years of audits, but in them, Muir said he found something strange. Between October of 2011 and May of 2014, there were 500 entries of Not available, for small claims court files.

I said, Why werent they available, Muir remembered. He said he was told that the auditor, an investigator and even a previous circuit clerk had gone into storage to look for the files in the past and had all came up short. He needed to see for himself, so in January he went to look. And they were there.

I checked 200 of the 500 that were missing, Muir said. Muir said there are only two keys to the building where files are stored. He currently holds both, but said he is not sure who had them in the previous office. He said he has hunches about what happened but declined to be specific.

I got a lot of speculations that I dont want to speculate on, he said.

A former employee of the Franklin County Circuit Clerk's Office, Kindra Eickelman, pleaded guilty to official misconduct in 2016 for stealing more than $10,000 but less than $100,000 from the office between 2012 and 2014. She was ordered to pay $37,403 in restitution to cover the $23,121 she took from the circuit clerks office and the cost of the audit that followed the incident. She also paid $5,000 in fines. Eickelman was sentenced to four years of probation.

Currently, Kim Meyer of Hudgens and Meyer LLC in Marion is working to create an exit audit including the newly found files. Muir said he believes the audit will reveal further damages to the county than were initially reported during the investigation.

Obviously someone didnt want anybody going through those files, he said.

Muir did not know if additional charges will be leveled against Eickelman. Franklin County States Attorney Evan Owens said he is waiting for the finished exit audit to be completed before he could comment on whether there would be further charges filed against Eickelman or others in the office.

Regardless, Muir said he is trying to move on.

Thats over with. As far as Im concerned Im looking forward, Muir said.

This was not the only setback Muir found when he took office, though.

We had missing reports, missing bank statements, missing documents. We had financial records apparently destroyed or taken off the property, he said. Muir said little had gotten to him until he found out that the codes used to charge regular customers for copies had been tampered with.

The first day I come in they tell me all the codes have been deleted out the copy machines, Muir said. He said this struck him as mean-spirited.

We had to start from scratch, Muir said of the slow process of rebuilding the copy code database for customers.

Looking forward, Muir said he has several plans in progress. Muir plans to replace the paper dockets in the hallway outside of court with large, digital docket displays. To help improve accountability in his office, Muir has two plans  there will be a series of security cameras installed  that began Thursday  and he is taking measures to reduce the amount of cash handled by the Circuit Clerks office.

Despite the rocky start to his four-year term, Muir said he has not been discouraged.

I love the job. I look forward to coming to work every morning, Muir said. He added he hasnt uttered an ill word about the work.

I dont know that Ive said the first curse word yet, he said. If they think they were going to rattle me or they were going to run me off, Ive got a little stronger constitution than that, Muir said.

Muir has a special reminder for when things get tough in the next four years. Sitting on a shelf to the left of his desk is a metal lunch bucket. It belonged to Muir's father who worked for decades in a coal mine.

"I know a guy who packed that lunch bucket for 40 years. There are tougher jobs than this one," Muir said.
U.S. Rep. John Katko has scheduled the first public forum of his second term  a session that will focus on how opioids and synthetic drugs have impacted central New York.

The forum will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 23 at Oswego City Hall's Common Council Chambers, 13 W. Oneida St. The event is free and open to the public.

Katko, R-Camillus, will be joined by several panelists, including John and Tina Socci of Owasco. The Soccis lost their son, Christopher, to a heroin overdose in 2013. The couple appeared in a campaign commercial for Katko last year.

Oswego County District Attorney Greg Oakes will serve as the forum's moderator. Representatives from law enforcement agencies, public health agencies and community organizations will be part of the panel.

"There is no question that the heroin and synthetic drug epidemic has hit our region hard," Katko said in a statement. "I've heard from countless members of our community seeking treatment and addiction resources.

"These forums provide an excellent opportunity for individuals who are struggling with addiction and their families to gain information and support from members of our community who work on the front lines every day to combat this epidemic."

According to Katko's office, it will be the seventh public forum he's held since taking office in 2015. Many of the forums he's led have focused on the heroin and opioid epidemic.

He held a listening session on the heroin epidemic in March 2016 at Cayuga Community College in Auburn. In February 2015, he hosted a forum in Auburn focused on agriculture.

Katko has been criticized by Democratic Party-affiliated groups in the 24th Congressional District for not holding a town hall meeting. While he's held several public forums focused on the heroin epidemic and other subjects, he hasn't held a general forum since taking office two years ago.

In an interview with The Citizen last month, Katko pledged to hold public forums "as soon as possible." One challenge, he noted, was the session schedule for the House of Representatives. Members of Congress were due to spend six consecutive weeks in Washington before his next district work period.

Katko is due to be in Washington March 23, but will return that evening for the forum.
PINCKNEYVILLE  City of Pinckneyville officials are starting a fundraising drive in a bid to raise $85,000 for repairs to the city's swimming pool.

The effort is being led by the City of Pinckneyville and The Foundation for Pinckneyville.

The money raised will benefit the Jake Bender Municipal Pool, replacing plumbing, purchasing new diving boards and a slide, and replacing ceiling tiles and shower fixtures, according to a release from the City Clerk's office.

Money may be donated to the nonprofit Foundation for Pinckneyville; the donations are tax-deductible.

In a statement, the city's finance commissioner appealed to the community.

The pool is in disrepair and the city doesnt have the funds to pay for the amount of work that needs to be done, City Finance Commissioner Bill Stotlar said in the statement. "We are appealing to everyone whose children or themselves have enjoyed the pool, or who is simply civic-minded, to help us in this cause. The Foundation has generously jumped started this fundraising effort, but we estimate that it will take another $60,000 to achieve our goal.

The goal is to have the repairs made on the 49-year-old facility by the start of the 2017 season.

For more information or updates, visit the pool's page on Facebook  the Jake Bender MunicipalPinckneyville Pool  at facebook.com/PinckneyvillePool.

Those wishing to donate may do so by visiting the www.YouCaring.com website or by sending checks to the Foundation for Pinckneyville, P.O. Box 213, Pinckneyville, IL 62274. Write "Pool" in the memo line and all donations will go entirely to the pool.
HERRIN  At 4:38 a.m. March 16, 2017, Herrin Police Department officers responded to Caseys General Store at 1700 N. Park Ave. in reference to an armed robbery.

Police said in a news release that one black male and one white male entered the store, loitering until the clerk paused her outside duties to wait on the two males. Once the clerk was inside, the black male demanded she give him the money in the register, advising her he would shoot her if she failed to do so. A firearm was not displayed.

The clerk complied, turning over an undetermined amount of money. The suspects fled southbound in a black or dark blue older model Lincoln passenger car.

Suspect one is described as a black make with a heavy build, around five feet nine inches to six feet tall. He was wearing a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt, dark colored sweatpants, and white shoes.

Suspect two is described as a white male with a medium build, also five feet nine inches to six feet tall. He was wearing a black cap, dark-colored T-shirt, dark-colored jacket with a light-colored lining, dark pants and brown boots or shoes.

Anyone who knows the identity of either suspect is asked to contact Herrin Police Department. The department can be contacted through email at www.herrinpolice.com or by phone at 618-942-4132.
CARBONDALE  U.S. Rep Mike Bost has created an online forum to gather feedback regarding the Affordable Care Act.

The Republican congressman from Murphysboro announced the online initiative in a news release on Friday titled, "Bost wants 'Your story' on Health Care Reform."

Bost said he welcomes all feedback on how the Affordable Care Act has affected constituents  positive, negative and everything in between.

From day one, I have worked to ensure that the voices of all Southern Illinoisans are heard, especially on controversial issues like replacing Obamacare, Bost said, in a statement. Thats why I created this one-stop shop for constituents to share their real life health care stories with me.

In recent weeks, Bost has faced increased pressure from a contingent of constituents who claim he has not made himself accessible in the way they want to voice their concerns.

Bost has said he has not held an in-person town hall meeting because Democratic Party operatives have sought to intentionally disrupt such meetings held by Republican congressmen elsewhere. He has held several tele-town hall forums.

In those calls and in protests outside his office, the Republican Partys plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which Bost has expressed support for doing, has been a top-cited concern. Party leaders say their plan, called the American Health Care Act, it is intended to drive down costs by increasing competition and addressing other shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act.

One of the chief complaints of the Affordable Care Act is that, for some, insurance purchased on the marketplace is excessively expensive, with high deductibles and co-pays, because not enough young, healthy people have entered the market, choosing to pay a tax penalty instead.

But the GOP plan also has been criticized, including by some Republicans, as a plan that could cost millions of vulnerable Americans their coverage. Gov. Bruce Rauner was quoted in a March 7 article in the Chicago Tribune saying that after his initial read of the Republicans plan, hes concerned that Illinois wont do very well under the changes theyre recommending.

Some of the major health care leaders in Southern Illinois have expressed support for the Affordable Care Act and concerns about how changes could affect the local economy and their ability to provide care in this region that is rural and serves large percentages of people living in poverty.

For instance, in February, Shawnee Health Services hosted a forum on the Affordable Care Act alongside U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. At the forum, Shawnee Health Services CEO Patsy Jensen, Franklin Hospital CEO James Johnson, Jackson County Health Department Administrator Miriam Link-Mullison and others spoke favorably about the Affordable Care Act and its impact on health care delivery in Southern Illinois.

At the online forum created by Bost's office, participants are asked to participate in a short survey asking, Do you support the repeal of Obamacare? The options for participants are, I support the full repeal and replacement of Obamacare; I support Obamacare and want to keep it as it currently exists; and I support Obamacare, but think some changes are needed.

On the landing page that is linked from Bosts congressional website, he states that he is committed to replacing the law with patient-centered reforms that reduce costs, improve access to care and allow individuals and doctors to make health care decisions, instead of bureaucrats in Washington. After the survey, there is an option for people to write a personal message containing their story of how the Affordable Care Act has affected them.

Their perspectives, pro or con, will help shape how we deal with these issues in Washington, Bosts statement continued in his news release on the topic.  It's important that we get health care reform right, and I want to hear from Southern Illinoisans from across the district and across the political spectrum.

The online forum can be accessed at: bost.house.gov/yourstory
ELBRIDGE  When Leo Aguirre and his two cousins were seeking the location for their next Mexican restaurant, they looked at Elbridge and did some research since there were not many Mexican restaurants in the area.

"At first, we thought they didn't like Mexican food because there aren't many around," Aguirre said. "There's a lot of pizza places, so we figured most people like Italian or pizza."

But, they figured they would give their Mexican restaurant a try, and if people didn't like it, the cousins would move on somewhere else, which is what Aguirre said they normally do after two months of trying out a new area.

That restaurant is Tres Primos, and people apparently like it: The eatery, located at 1099 Route 5 in Elbridge, celebrated its first anniversary in September and has now been open about a year and a half.

Primos means "cousins" in Spanish, so the restaurant's name refers to the three cousins who run it  in this case, Aguirre takes orders and brings out dishes, while one cousin works in the kitchen and the other works in the front.

Aguirre said the trio came to central New York from California, where they also opened a restaurant. Along the way, they also opened restaurants in Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee, "kind of all over the place," he said.

"This is what I went to school for, and this is what I do," Aguirre said of the appeal of opening restaurants, noting he studied hotel and restaurant management in California at Orange Coast College and University of California Irvine.

Though he got his formal education at those two institutions, Aguirre said his passion for the industry began when he was 16 years old and started working at a restaurant.

"It was what I wanted to do," he said. "I worked my entire life in the restaurant business."

In terms of a Mexican restaurant in particular, Aguirre noted the food pays tribute to his and his cousins' heritage, so because of that, he figures it is what they know the best and can prepare the best.

He said they prepare their own food, and dishes are made when customers place their orders so everything is fresh.

But, Aguirre said it is hard for him to pinpoint specialties or pick favorites when customers ask him when they place their orders because it is all "my food," he said.

"It's what we cook back home, and we do most of the things the way we do them back home," he said.

He also said the restaurant changes up the menu frequently to keep things fresh and allow customers to try new things. In fact, customers wanting to try everything on the menu might find themselves having to start over.

"We just take out what people don't like, and we just keep what they like most," Aguirre said.

After a year and a half in business, "it's been going better than expected," he said.

"I guess people love our food," he said. "They keep coming back, and we get more feedback."

Aguirre said the restaurant's slow nights are Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but even then it gets pretty full and people might find themselves waiting for a table.

"But not as much as Friday and Saturday when sometimes they wait an hour," he said. "Most of them don't mind (waiting). 'Oh, it was worth it.'"

With his education and background in the restaurant industry, Aguirre said he typically helps his family get a restaurant started and then goes somewhere else to open another one. If they want him to stay, he will stay, but most of the time he moves on.

In the case of Tres Primos, he said the restaurant is for his nephew, which is why he came to Elbridge and why he will stay there to keep it going and help with the transition when his nephew is ready.

Usually, Aguirre said, he will go to the colder northern states in the summertime but then head back home to California around October. This time around, it was quite the experience, as he had never been in snow before and does not like the cold weather.

"I'll stay here as long as he needs me," Aguirre said.
Renovations to Holland Stadium at Auburn Junior High School are expected to begin in April, and that means the high school graduation ceremony will be held in a different location.

Jeff Pirozzolo, superintendent of Auburn Enlarged City School District, said he has already booked Deauville Island at Emerson Park for the June 23 graduation ceremony, but he's hoping to get a rental fee waiver from the Cayuga County Legislature. The $750 security deposit and $750 rental fee were not part of the school's budget, and while graduation will be held there either way, Pirozzolo said he figured it was worth asking to have it waived.

Skaneateles High School gets permission from the village board each year to hold graduation at Clift Park. The village said it does not charge the school a fee, but the town's parks department said it does split minimal costs for the lifeguards in the swimming area for when the graduates jump into the lake.

Pirozzolo sent a letter to Keith Batman, chairman of the Cayuga County Legislature, requesting the waiver, explaining that the island was "one of the only venues in the area that can accommodate such a large ceremony." He added that the school would not consider holding graduation in the gymnasium unless there was inclement weather.

"We're looking at a $4.5 million deficit for next school year, so anywhere we can find savings and cooperate with the community is the reason why we sent the letter," Priozzolo said Friday.

Batman forwarded Pirozzolo's letter to Gary Duckett, superintendent of parks and trails and buildings and grounds. Batman asked that the Parks Commission provide a recommendation on the fee waiver to the Legislature, adding that "we obviously set a precedent with this."

Duckett said commissioners will discuss the waiver and make a recommendation to the Legislature. His personal opinion, he said, is if the county makes an exception for one group, others may want an exception, too. But, he said, the final decision will remain with legislators.
J.C. Penney is closing stores and distribution centers across the country, but it's retaining its lone Cayuga County location.

The company released the list of stores that will close in 2017, including three in New York. Stores in Dunkirk, Massapequa and West Nyack will shut down. The Fingerlakes Mall location in Aurelius will remain open.

J.C. Penney first announced its intent to close up to 140 stores  about 14 percent of the company's locations  in February. The company said at the time it would release a list of affected stores in mid-March.

Nationwide, J.C. Penney will close 138 stores and a facility in Lakeland, Florida. Another distribution facility will be relocated in Buena Park, California.

J.C. Penney estimates that it will save roughly $200 million as a result of the store closures.

According to a news release, approximately 5,000 jobs will be affected by the closures. The liquidation process will begin April 17 and many of the stores will close in June.

J.C. Penney will provide relocation opportunities for some employees. Support services will be offered to those leaving the company.

"We believe the relevance of our brick and mortar portfolio will be driven by the implementation of these initiatives consistently to a larger percent of our stores," said Marvin Ellison, chairman and CEO of J.C. Penney. "Therefore, our decision to close stores will allow us to raise the overall brand standard of the company and allocate capital more efficiently."

Ellison said a voluntary early retirement program will be available for approximately 6,000 eligible employees. He believes this would result in a net hiring increase because the number of those taking advantage of the retirement benefit would be greater than the number of positions affected by the store closures.

One reason for the decision to close stores is the rise of online retailers, which Ellison referred to as a "growing threat" to J.C. Penney's business. He touted the benefits of the physical stores as effective ways of promoting the company's products.

"It is essential to retain those locations that present the best expression of the J.C. Penney brand and function as a seamless extension of the omnichannel experience through online order fulfillment, same-day pick up, exchanges and returns," Ellison said.
NEW YORK  Appeals court judges in New York seemed receptive Thursday to arguments that a recent Supreme Court ruling casts doubt on ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's public corruption conviction.

But the three-judge 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Manhattan did not say how it will rule after hearing over an hour of oral arguments.

Silver, a 73-year-old Democrat, was sentenced last year to 12 years in prison after he was convicted of collecting $4 million in kickbacks from a cancer researcher and real estate developers in return for using his powerful post to help them.

He has not had to report to prison after the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Virginia Republican ex-Gov. Robert McDonnell, providing Silver a substantial issue on appeal. In reversing McDonnell's conviction on charges he illegally accepted more than $175,000 in loans and gifts from a businessman, the Supreme Court raised the standards federal prosecutors must use when they accuse public officials of wrongdoing.

Silver's lawyer, Steven Molo, told the appeals panel that the reasoning in the Supreme Court case shows the Silver jury was improperly instructed on the law and the judges should order an acquittal or at least a new trial.

Some of the toughest questions Thursday were directed to the government, including some from Judge William Sessions of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont. He was sitting on the appeals court temporarily.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Goldstein said the judge presiding over Silver's trial did not use the exact language the Supreme Court called for in its McDonnell ruling when she instructed the jury on the law, but the judge did require the jury to find something similar enough that the conviction should pass the appeals court's scrutiny.

Circuit Judge Richard Wesley asked Goldstein if "any powerful person who asks somebody to do something is committing a federal crime because people are afraid of powerful people and they want to curry their favor?"

"Not in every case your honor," Goldstein responded.

"Is every invitation to a fundraiser a threat?" Wesley continued.

"Absolutely not your honor," Goldstein said.

"But we have to draw some lines here. I don't understand. The simple fact he's a powerful person doesn't mean that every time he asks somebody to do something that he's committing a crime, does it?" Wesley asked.

"Absolutely not your honor. But there are additional factors," the prosecutor responded, saying the way to decide if there is a crime is to see whether Silver was influenced in his official actions. Goldstein said Silver crossed the line.
Local lawmakers have come up with a compromise plan to replace members of Denmark Technical Colleges Area Commission instead of dissolving it completely.

Denmark Tech, if led the right way, could truly impact the lives of students that go there, said Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg.

Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, previously introduced a plan to dissolve Denmark Techs Area Commission and hand control to the State Board of Technical and Comprehensive Education.

Under the new plan, new commissioners would be appointed to lead the school. Bamberg, Barnwell and Allendale county legislative delegation members, including Hutto, submitted a list of replacement commissioners to Gov. Henry McMaster.

Bamberg said the list of new commissioners was developed with the help of local residents.

What we were looking for is a board that is number one diverse, Bamberg said. Lawmakers wanted to see members with racial diversity, diversity in backgrounds and diversity in experience.

Area Commission Chairman Thomas Williams said hes pleased with the compromise. Commission members worried that if the State Tech Board took over the college, it would be shut down completely.

We still feel strongly that our local people are the best people to determine the needs of the community and the needs of the school, Williams said.

Williams noted that through talks with lawmakers, we realized we all want the same thing.

State Tech Board representatives have said they have no intentions of closing the school.

State Tech Public Information Officer Kelly Steinhilper said the board agrees with the lawmakers plan.

Were in favor of anything that will take Denmark Tech to the next level, Steinhilper said.

The State Tech Board hopes to bring Denmark up to the caliber that we know it should be, she said.

Denmark Tech has seen enrollment rates drop in recent years and struggled to use outdated equipment and software in various departments.

President Dr. Leonard McIntyre was removed in January.

Bamberg said the current commissions inability to get along played a role in impeding the progress of the school.

Im not saying that its their fault, this is not about pointing fingers, he said. This is just about change and progress.

Williams agreed that the board has had its issues and was not functioning as it should have been.

Wed gotten to a point where our board did not work well together, he said.

Williams said the new board will focus on hiring a new president, creating a plan to improve economic development partnerships and implementing a solid recruitment plan.

Bamberg added several more changes will need to be made in the future, including improvements to the schools educational programs.

The cost of offering them exceeds the revenue coming off the programs, Bamberg said. Theres no one thing in and of itself that can fix the issues. There needs to be a larger overhaul.

Bamberg is confident the list of appointees will be approved by McMaster but does not know when the approval is to be expected.

The appointees submitted to the governor are: Clevetta Jackson of Allendale, Arthur Jones of Martin, Josephine Caldwell of Denmark, Josephine Caldwell of Denmark, Al Matheny of Denmark, Thomas Williams of Barnwell, Jim Kearse of Barnwell, Kevin Whitt of Beech island and Jay Grissom of Barnwell.
NORTH -- Exchanges between the mayor, two council members and some residents were terse at times during North Town Council's regular meeting on March 13.

It was the first meeting of council since Mayor Patty Carson was presented a petition signed by 111 North citizens calling for a referendum to allow voters to decide whether or not to change the town's form of government from strong mayor-weak council to strong council-weak mayor, which would limit the mayor's powers.

During public comments, Sandy Sigmon, CEO of The Challenge Center in North, addressed the petition, saying it had been presented to the mayor who, according to state law, must then count, verify and initial the signatures and turn the petition over to the Orangeburg County Voter Registration and Election Commission.

Sigmon asked if the petition had been taken to the county, and Carson told her it had been mailed. When Sigmon asked how and when it was mailed, Carson said she was not going to engage in specifics. Sigmon persisted, saying she wanted to know if the petition had been sent by registered, certified or regular mail. Carson again said she was not going to discuss it.

After an outburst from audience members, Carson warned that anyone disrupting the meeting would be escorted from town hall.

Carson then said the petition had been mailed as a regular letter.

The 111 signatures on the petition meet the state requirement of 15 percent of the town's 536 registered voters needed for a referendum to be held. Among those signing the petition were four council members.

Once verified by the county, the petition must be returned to the town council, which will arrange a special election or referendum on whether or not to change the local form of government. The referendum must be held within 30 to 90 days following the receipt of the petition by the town council. If a majority of those voting accept the proposal, the new form of local government would take effect at the next council meeting.

At what was billed as an "informational meeting" at The Challenge Center on March 7, Sigmon said the strong council form of government would allow council to delegate specific administrative duties to the mayor, who would have no powers or responsibilities beyond those of other council members.
I have asked people who now sheepishly admit that they voted for Trump why they did so. The response I keep getting is "Well ... at least he isn't Hillary!" So true.

Hillary would have never appointed members to head the very agencies they have openly opposed, seek to have neutered, or are woefully unqualified to preside over. Hillary would never sign executive orders that would foul our waters, add pollution to our air and eviscerate worker health and safety standards. Hillary would never sign a bill that eliminated health insurance for an estimated 10 million-plus people while undermining Medicare in order to give wealthy people a huge tax cut. Hillary would have never taken the side of WikiLeaks (i.e. Russia) over our CIA. Hillary would not have accused, without a shred of proof, a former president of committing a crime and, if she had such proof, never via a hit and run method such as Twitter.

When I point out the fact that Trump has apparently lied about his predecessor committing a crime they simply say "Hillary lied about Benghazi and Obama lied about Obamacare!" Hillary having lied about a videotape leading to the attack on our embassy in Libya has always been in dispute and investigation after investigation has determined that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing in regards to Benghazi. As far as Obama saying that people, under Obamacare, could keep their own doctor, an estimated 2 percent of our insured people did have to change doctors while 22 million additional people gained insurance coverage and all insured people received better coverage.

Be that as it may Trump supporters ignore the fact that if lying were an Olympic event Trump would win the gold medal. He lies about important things and things as trivial the crowd size at his inauguration. Incredibly, Trump said it was not raining during his inauguration ceremony all the while his audience was getting drenched by rainfall. Perhaps therein lies the key to Trump's false assertions. It is quite possible he actually believes the many untruths he brazenly spouts. If he really believes these things he is delusional and not lying. By the way, someone should inform our media that the phrases "intentionally lied" and "knowingly lied" are each redundant in that all lies, by definition, are deliberate. So ... we now have a president who is either a pathological liar or delusional. Sleep well.

Thomas Hanley

Fulton
The local Police Force has had to refute malicious rumours in the last two or so months.

A release dated March 11, 2017 and issued by the Public Relations and Complaints Department of the Royal St Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force, stated that a bulletin being circulated on social media purporting that a group of wanted men had escaped to this country is without merit.





According to the bulletin, the men are wanted by the authorities in Trinidad and Tobago.





Notwithstanding the declaration of the posting not having merit, the release issued by the RSVGPF stated that an investigation has been launched.





"Our preliminary investigation shows that the bulletin being circulated over the past 24 hours was not issued by any department or unit of the Royal St Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force, the release stated.





It did go on to state that the local police heard about it and was working with its regional partners to ascertain if the report was true.





This is the second time in months that the PR and Complaints Department of the RSVGPF has had to refute claims about illegal activities taking place in the country.





Back in January, police responded to the rumour that an individual using a motor vehicle was engaging in human trafficking. The claim turned out to be false, with the licence plate number referenced not listed in the local database.





An appeal has been made by the local authorities for persons to stop spreading such inaccurate information which may cause alarm. (DD)




Some 156 years ago, in 1861, the first of eight (8) ships arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, bringing the first of a total of 2474 citizens of India.





These Indians were brought here to provide labor for the plantations following the abolition of slavery. They bore the title of indentured servants.





Life for these indentured servants was very difficult, and of those that came, 1141 exercised their right to return to their homeland. Those that remained continued their life of servitude for over fifty (50) years.





On March 20, 2017, the Centennial (100 yrs) Anniversary of the abolition of Indian Indentureship will be commemorated. A series of activities to highlight this special event began in August 2016 and will culminate in a Global Convention to be held March 18-20, 2017 in Trinidad and Tobago. (For more info call 784 430 4186).





Here in SVG, activities to mark this occasion are spearheaded by the SVG Indian Heritage Foundation, and will include church services at the Roman Catholic Church in Argyle, Sunday March 19th, 2017, 10:00 a.m, and immediately following the service, everyone is invited to join in the motorcade which will assemble at the Cargo Terminal entrance Argyle International Airport, from Argyle to Kingstown. (Contributed)




M.V Marina sailed into Havana Harbor on Thursday, March 9, 2017 and made history. (Credit On Cuba) Left: Frank Del Rio, the Cuban-born founder of Oceania Cruises and CEO of parent company Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Ltd, left Cuba on August 22, 1961 and returned for the first time in 2015.

Cuba made another step towards advancing its cruise tourism market when it welcomed, on Thursday 9th March, 2017, the first liner of a major North American brand.





On that day, the M.V. Marina, owned and operated by the world renowned Oceania Cruises, pulled into Sierra Maestra cruise terminal in Havana, Cuba carrying 1,250 guests.





On board for this historic event was Frank Del Rio, Cuban-born founder of Oceania Cruises and CEO of parent company Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, and Bob Binder, co-founder and CEO of Oceania Cruises.

Fittingly, Cuba ensured that there was a special welcome for the liner and also hosted an international media event, which was addressed by Del Rio.





According to del Rio, Oceania cruises has two more sailings to Cuba scheduled this March and six scheduled for this autumn.





The M.V. Marina called on Cuba as the first stop in a 14-day cruise that will also see it visiting Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and the Cayman Islands.





Tourism is increasingly impacting other branches of the Cuban economy. Reports are that in 2015 the tourism industry  the so-called leisure industry - generated over 2.8 billion dollars in direct revenue for the country, making it (tourism) the islands second most important economic sector.





According to information provided by officials from Cubas Ministry of Tourism (Mintur), more than 4.1 million tourists are expected to visit the island in 2017. (Source: Granma)
Grenadian by Rex Resorts is said to be a good value property, popular among families. Inset: Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell of Grenada has made no bones about the delinquency of the developers of the resort. (Credit: Share Newspaper)

The move by the Dr. Keith Mitchell-led government in St. Georges to seize a foreign-owned resort - Grenadian by Rex Resorts- is creating concern among international investors in the country Citizenship By Investment (CBI) programme.





A news agency  www.rpbmediacast.com NEWS - reported a regional lawyer and CBI agent who did not wish to be named, as having said, "It (the seizure) would be disastrous if this happened.





The agent added, "Expropriations by governments really do affect investment decisions of developers, while the perception will affect the decisions of CBI agents and, in turn, CBI applicants. It would leave a bad smell for 20 years. Why bother with Grenada when you can have a safe ride in one of our sister islands?





The move by the government to seize the resort is predicated on what government said was the failure by the owners to fully comply with the lease agreement, and that the resort has become run- down.

The government also made clear its intention to collect on taxes owed by the resort.





In a pointing statement made early in the year, the government had declared that the resort was not being operated in the peoples best interest.





However, the governments claims were rejected by the UK developers, Rex Resorts, who said the hotel was running at nearly 90 percent capacity, and that it has invested more than $4 million in the last five years to renovate the property.





The developers also stated that they were up to date on all lease payments, taxes and fees owed to the government.





"Whatever the rights or wrongs of this individual case, the government is acting like a strongman, an investor is reported to have said, according to www.rpbmediacast.com NEWS.





"People will be holding off making investments in the country until they see how this dispute turns out.

Rex Resorts signed the lease agreement with the then ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of late Prime Minister Sir Nicholas Brathwaite in 1991 and has operated the Grenadian for 25 years.





A Justice of Appeal has temporarily blocked the governments plan to forcibly end a 99-year lease and expropriate the Grenadian by Rex Resorts, a 172-room hotel located on the islands southern tip. (Source: www.rpbmediacast.com)
Plans are afoot to have the Seville Great House (pictured) inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Below: The Good Hope Great House is a favourite with visitors.

Jamaica is looking to cash in on the benefits from heritage tourism.





Efforts are already in train to made improvement and/or restore a number of Great Houses and other heritage/historical sites across the country.





The managers of two historical sites are trying to cash in on the benefits that can accrue from heritage tourism initiatives.





In fact, improvements are already taking place at the Seville Great House and Heritage Park in St Ann, and the Good Hope Great House in Trelawny, as these sites continue to attract increased visitor numbers.





The Seville Great House is getting a facelift with funds allocated under the National Protective Areas Project received from the National Environment and Planning Agency.





Operations Manager of the Seville Great House and Heritage Park, Jamaica National Heritage Trust, Claudette Anderson said the aim is to encourage more visitors to the site and to capitalize on its rich history.





Situated on a 301-acre property, it is regarded as one of Jamaicas most significant heritage sites. It includes the archaeological remains of the indigenous Amerindian (Taino) village of Maima, the 16th century Spanish settlement of Sevilla la Nueva, the post-1655 British sugar plantation known as New Seville, and the landscape and flora that existed during that time.





She added that there are plans to have the Great House and Heritage Park inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO) World Heritage List.





"We are about to embark on a project to get it listed on the UNESCOs World Heritage List. So, in a matter of three years at most, we should have the process up and running to get it on the World Heritage Site, she said, noting that the site has received international recognition, having been placed on UNESCOs Tentative List.





Between 80,000 and 90,000 persons visit the Good Hope Great House every year to experience the Jamaican culture. (Source: www.jamaica.com; Caribbean 360)
Students and teachers donned the attire of the various ethnic groups that make up the Vincentian society.

The Kingstown Government School (KGS), Stoney Ground, last week held a number of activities to commemorate Literacy Week.





Literacy Week is part of the Ministry of Education thrust towards improving reading levelsin primary schools. The KGSs week was held under the theme , Celebrating our Heroes and Heritage.





Robby Hackshaw,Chairperson of the Schools Literacy Committee, reviewed the weeks programme of activities which he said began on Monday, March 6, with an hour-long Readathon, during which students read from books based on the History St. Vincent and the Grenadines History.





Tuesday, he said, featured a Spelling B Competition that was won by Grade 4, and a quiz which tested the students knowledge about their country.





On Wednesday, students visited various institutions around the community to read to senior citizens.

Thursday was open to persons of the different ethnic groups who were invited to share their (peoples) history and their relation to SVG.





Friday was given over to staging an exhibition displaying the culture of the ethnic groups, including their cuisine, and a cultural display, during which students as well as a number of teachers donned the native/cultural attire of the various ethnic groups who settled in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the past, as well as those current groups that call SVG their home.





According to Hackshaw, "People think that reading is all about reading words, but it goes beyond that. It is to comprehend what you have read. Its to understand your fellowmen and to interact with them.





Principal of the school - Thedica CommissiongJones said the activity, the third such exercise, "is important because we recognized that many of the children are experiencing difficulty with reading, and so we try to provide them with different avenues, different experiences to encourage them to read.





The Principal recognized and thanked the parents who have been supporting their children, adding that the parents went out of their way to provide the different outfits.





Some of the students also expressed their feelings about the literacy week.





Dress in Indian wear, Keefia George of Grade 4 said the Indians are very fond of pepper. She was happy about Literacy Week, "because it is a time to express your culture and other peoples (culture) in the world.

Jadea Alexander, dressed as a martial arts fighter, said he was happy with Literacy Week and enjoyed the activities.





Eijonnaie Carter, dressed as Chinese girls, said she enjoyed literacy week because she was able to learn many things. (KH)
The adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure may be applicable to ones health, but those who have been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, have been advised that this does not mean an automatic death sentence.





Kidney disease is a very serious condition, and once an individual is diagnosed, it is irreversible.

However, it is preventable as well, and that was what the St Vincent and the Grenadines Kidney Society, in collaboration with the Mustique Charitable Trust, was involved in advocating last Thursday  referred to as World Kidney Day.





Members of the general public were afforded the opportunity of having their blood sugar and pressure levels checked, and with various medical professionals available, were advised on the causes, preventative measures and treatment of the disease, during an Awareness Building exercise held on March 9, in Kingstown.





Pauline Garabedian-DeFreitas (RN), Managing Director of Health Solutions Inc, who assists the Society with information when required, explained that they had been seeing persons coming in asking about kidney disease and what treatments are available.





"So we have been able to answer all those questions from people that have been coming by, she said.

The numbers have been increasing, Garabedian-DeFreitas said, but this ought not to be attributed to a situation that was out of control, but could be as a result of increased curiosity now that kidney disease advocacy groups are in existence, and treatment is being offered locally.





But preventing chronic kidney disease is not as difficult as people might perceive, she said.





"If you are diagnosed with either one Diabetes or Hypertension, then you should be screening your kidneys every year  if you manage it poorly, then you should be screened more than once, Garabedian-De Freitas explained, adding that persons need to begin changing their lifestyles  cutting back on processed foods, starches, salt and fruit consumption.





Administrator of the SVG Kidney Society, Francine De Young said that the Society was a non-profit organization, and that all the funds raised go directly to assisting persons already diagnosed and battling chronic kidney disease.





Cost of treatment is certainly one factor, but there is assistance available through the SVG Kidney Society.

De Young outlined how the process works  with patients first submitting a letter which is followed by some due diligence before the board meets and comes to a decision.





The Society has been registered since 2013, and its mandate is to assist kidney patients.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has one privately owned health facility  Health Solutions Inc. - that offers outpatient haemodialysis treatment to persons with advanced kidney ailments.





The facility is outfitted with six (6) dialysis machines and can treat up to eighteen (18) patients per day.

In addition to three fully qualified Renal Nurses and the Managing Director who is also a Registered Nurse with a range of experience that spans some fourteen (14) years, two trained technicians are on call to attend to ongoing servicing of all equipment; a stipulated practice that Health Solutions Inc. demands, so that it ensures maximum efficiency of its equipment, and safe and professional treatment. (DD)
Hundreds brave the inclement weather to be part of the National Heroes Day celebration in New York. Right: Fya Empress, SVGs 2012 Calypso Monarch, was the billed performer at the celebration.

Hundreds braved the bitterly cold weather last Saturday evening  March 11  to attend the 2nd Annual National Heroes Day celebration, at the Friends of Crown Heights Educational Center in Brooklyn.





The evenings programme featured singing, dancing, drumming, poetry recitals, an indulgence in local delicacies (including dukuna, farine, bam bam and tri tri cakes) and a handicraft display.





According to Marsena Ballanyne, Sandy Bay-born president of GIPSVG Inc. and a Counsellor at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Mission to the United Nations, "The event sought not only to remember Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer, National Hero of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but to inspire national pride, promote Vincentian heritage and provide patrons and visitors with a typical Vincentian National Heroes Day celebration.





The highlights of the show included a Quadrille dance by the GIPSVG, Inc.; folklore performance by the United Vincie Cultural Group of Brooklyn; Punta dance by the Budari Dance Company of Honduras; and surprise calypso rendition by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Consul General to the United States, Howie Prince.





Other artistes bringing the show to a climax were Chanique Rogers, James Lovell, Daria Primus, and Vincentian Calypso artiste, Maxwell Tajoe Francis, who also co-hosted the show and entertained in song and poetry.





But it was popular Vincentian soca artiste, Fya Empress (Lornette Nedd) who brought the house down with dynamic renditions of True Vincy, Rum, Please and Ah Ketch it, among others.





"The show was epic, Ballantyne said. "The support that we continue to receive from the Consul General and other Vincentian associations here in New York was evident, and its something we very much appreciate.





"The event was a celebration of a Vincentian heritage that I think many here in the Diaspora are still learning about and embracing, she added, stating that it is the intention of GIPSVG, Inc. to continue promoting it.

Meantime, the Bronx, New York-based Garifuna Coalition, USA, Inc., said it was "proud to celebrate St. Vincent and the Grenadines National Heroes Day as part of Garifuna-Ameican Heritage Month.
Rudolph Baynes (2nd from left front) takes his seat with other memebers of the early 1960s Legislative Council of St. Vincent. Others pictured: (Front from left) George Charles, Basil Dias: Crown Attorney, A.F. Giles: Administrator, Peter Ells: Colonial Treasurer, Herman Young and E.A.C. Hughes; (Back from left) Alban Dos Santos, A.C. Cyrus, Julian Baynes, Sam Slater, Clive Tannis, Levi Latham, George Leigertwood.

Editors Note: This is a condensed version, provided by the writer, of a more detailed submission. We are pleased to share it with our readers in this month of March - National Heroes and Heritage Month.





Introduction





When Rudolph Elliot Baynes  familiarly referred to as Sir Rudy - died on March 3, 1980 at the age of 71, his body lay in state at the Court House in Kingstown. After being on display for a single day, a military band escorted the funeral procession with the body to its final resting place at the Kingstown Cemetery for interment. Such ceremony is usually deemed by the State only for those considered worthy of such a send-off. This was a fitting end to a man who dedicated over thirty years of his life to public service, while operating a business which he built from scratch.





Business and Public Life





A quote in an article titled Politicians and their Finances and carried in a local newspaper in St. Vincent in the nineteen-eightys, summarized the thinking of one writer regarding Sir Rudy:





"At least three Vincentians built up significant wealth before turning to politics. The doyen of them all was the late Rudolph Elliot Baynes, Sir Rudy to all and sundry. Sir Rudy would leave his merchandising business, become a minister of Government and the business would go down. Defeated in politics and now out of the ministry, Sir Rudy would again quickly build up the business. But Sir Rudy is a hard act to follow. He was an extremely shrewd businessman. Many people know of his contribution to the Banana Industry and Marketing Board. Few know that it was he who got Maple Leaf, a Canadian Company, to rescue Philip Veira when he was floundering with his flour mill project. Some day we shall write more about Sir Rudy.





Banking





In 1947, before entering politics, Sir Rudy and six local businessmen registered a company under the Companies Act of St. Vincent. The objective of the company was to provide loans to small businesses and persons of limited means, since loans at that time in those categories were scarce to nonexistent.

Known at that time as the Penny Bank, known today as The St. Vincent Cooperative Bank Ltd., the bank began life with an initial capital of $10,000.00 (EC). Its founding directors were: O D Brisbane (Chairman), Ormond C Forde (Secretary, Herbert Davis, Rudolph E Baynes, Randolph Russell, Fred J De Nobriga and Alfred Hazell.

Sir Rudy was also a co-founder of the St. Vincent Building & Loan Association. Unlike a conventional bank, the Association makes loans to members who are its shareholders.

Banana Industry

In 1952, Sir Rudy, along with a number of local businessmen, having seen a banana industry thriving in the neighboring islands of St. Lucia and Dominica, conceived of the idea of doing a similar project in St. Vincent. The group formed a company with the following persons named to sit on its board: R.E. Baynes (Chairman), S.O. Jack (Secretary), A.G. Nanton, A.G. Hazell, Noel O. Baynes, and Hilary Da Silva.





The Company was registered in 1952 under the name of The St. Vincent Banana Growers Association (SVBGA), as a non-profit co-operative. The objective of the SVBGA was to produce and market bananas in the United Kingdom, through a company by the name of Geest Industries Limited, owned and operated by John Van Geest, who was born in the Netherlands but migrated to England in the 1930s, and who provided a deposit of $8,000.00 (US) as an initial investment.





Flour Mill

Sir Rudy proposed a partnership between Maple Leaf Mills of Canada, for which he was agent, the government of St. Vincent and Mr. Philip Veira, owner of P. H. Veira & Sons Ltd., leading to the setting up of the East Caribbean Flour Mill, now expanded to the East Caribbean Group of Companies.





Since its inception, the company has realized steady growth and expansion in capacity and product lines. It continues to produce some of the finest bakers flour under the brand names: Cream of the Islands and Nelson and long standing packaged flour brands, Easy Bake and Purity. Since then, the parent company Maple Leaf Mills of Canada has been acquired by Maple Leaf Foods of Canada.





Baynes Bros

Initially registered in April 1936, Baynes Bros. (Bros is the short for "Brothers) was a partnership in name with no formal agreement.





The company first began as a Commission agency, then expanded into both casualty and life insurance, with Sir Rudy managing its progress.





St. Vincent Marketing Corp In the 1960s, the Government of St. Vincent (now called "St. Vincent and the Grenadines), under the Prime Minister Milton Cato, decided to move in a new direction. The government, following its new mandate, decided to set up a public company to make the country more export-driven.





Because of Sir Rudys experience in business, he was asked to Chair the new venture, while still running his business. The organization was to be known as The St. Vincent Marketing Corporation, and was registered as a quasi-Government company, the purpose of which was to encourage the production of agricultural crops, such as sweet potato, plantain, eddoes, and chayote squash, mostly for export to neighboring islands, chiefly Trinidad. That Caribbean country was at the time experiencing an economic boom because of the increasing price of oil and natural gas, which the country had lots of. Incentive was provided to farmers by way of government loans.

WINERA

In 1972, Sir Rudy was invited by the new administration of Premier James Mitchell to head up another company call WINERA. The company was a joint venture between St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Dominica and the Government of the Republic of Venezuela, the purpose of which was to produce container boxes specifically for the banana industry.





Political Life

In April 1951, Sir Rudy ran for a seat in parliament against one of St. Vincent and the West Indies stalwarts, George A Mc Intosh, a known champion of the working class, also, a founder of the St. Vincent Working Mens Association.





Being the most experienced in business, and since also, he was already the Chairman of the St. Vincent Banana Association, an organization reported on before, Sir Rudy was made Minister of Trade and Production.

He was at the time a member of the Eight Army, among whose membership was Ebenezer Joshua who had spent his early years in Trinidad. After an unsuccessful attempt at a parliamentary seat in Trinidad, as a member of renowned trade unionist Uriah Buzz Butlers party, Joshua returned to St. Vincent, ran for office and was elected to parliament as a candidate of the Eight Army.





However, not long afterwards, the Eight Army began to fall apart. In 1952, Joshua broke away and formed a separate political party, the People Progressive Party (PPP), as an alternative to the Eight Army. Some members of the Eight Army defected with him, but Sir Rudy passed on this one. He never had any interest in the PPP. In the election that took place in May 1956, Sir Rudy was defeated, running as an independent candidate.

Award & Title





In 1975, Sir Rudy was honored by Queen Elizabeth 11 with the Commander of the British Empire (C.B.E) Award/Medal. In January1976, he was made Deputy Governor of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a ceremonial title.




Jammy Harry  charged with stealing money from at least three Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).

St. Lucia national Jammy Harry was this week slapped with nine charges of theft as police continued investigations into recent reports of fraudulent activities at Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).





The 22-year-old seaman of View Fort, St. Lucia, has been charged on four counts of stealing monies amounting to EC$5,500, the property of Michelle Williams of Owia.





These offences were reportedly committed at Calliaqua, Bequia and Kingstown, on March 10, 11 and 12.

Harry is also charged on three counts of stealing monies amounting to EC$6,000, the property of Willis Pope of Villa, on March 10, 11 and 12 at Calliaqua, Bequia and Kingstown.





He is further charged with that on March 10 and 11 at Kingstown, stole monies amounting to EC$4,000, the property of Curvis Lewis of Sion Hill.





Harry was not required to plead to the indictable charges when he was taken before Senior Magistrate Bertie Pompey at the Kingstown Magistrates Court on Wednesday.





The St. Lucian was remanded following strong objections to bail from Prosecutor Constable Shamrock Pierre. Pierre stressed the seriousness of the charges, and also informed the Court that the police were continuing investigations into other reports of a similar nature.





In addition, Pierre highlighted the fact that Harry is a national of St Lucia and posed a flight risk.

The matter was adjourned to April 20 and transferred to the Serious Offences Court.





Harry was without verbal legal representation during his Court appearance, but THE VINCENTIAN understands that Duane Daniel is his lawyer.

In a press statement issued March 13, 2017, the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines disclosed that it is aware of recent reports regarding fraudulent activities at ATMs which may have affected some of its customers, and has reaffirmed its commitment to their financial safety and security.





Meanwhile, two other St. Lucians were taken before the Kingstown Magistrates Court Wednesday, on two immigration charges.





Mario Chitolie and Aaron Kadoo are charged with, that on March 10, 2017 at Barrouallie, they entered the state by boat and disembarked without the consent of an immigration officer.





Kadoo is also charged separately with, that on the same date, he entered the state as a prohibited immigrant without a passport.





The St Lucians pleaded not guilty to the charges when they appeared before Senior Magistrate Bertie Pompey at the Kingstown Magistrates Court on Wednesday.





They were remanded pending bail review on March 22. The matters were transferred to the Serious Offences Court and adjourned to May 9.
Park Rangers at Homolovi State Park near Winslow will educate visitors about the sacred Hopi land the park resides on at guided walks, hikes and lectures in March and April. The special events include:

 Star Party - March 18 and April 22: Start time is 25 minutes before sunset. The sky promises spectacular views of ghostly nebulae, star clusters, the moon's cratered landscapes and Venus' crescent phases. Bring a chair, red illumination flashlight, refreshments and bug repellent. Picnic facilities and grills are available at the visitor center.

 Happy 31st Anniversary, Homolovi - March 23, 10 a.m.: Join Rangers on a two-mile hike to Dine Point, Little Colorado River Valley and scenic vistas of the Little Painted Desert. Hike includes a half-mile Tsuvo Loop Trail and petroglyphs.

 Brigham City Fort Tour - March 24, 10 a.m.: Marking 141 years since colonization of the Little Colorado River Valley by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tour starts at the Homolovi State Park Visitor Center at 10 a.m. and ends at Brigham City Fort, National Register of Historic Places. The Brigham City Fort Tour begins at 12:30 p.m. and includes exterior views of the Historic Mormon Fort and Historic Birthplace "McCormick" Cabin at the City of Winslow City Farm.

 Homolovi II Ancestral Hopi Pueblo Tour - March 25, 10 a.m.: Join a park ranger and explore a late 14th century Hopi Pueblo. For this tour, dress in layers, and bring water, snacks and appropriate hiking gear. Weather permitting. A portion of the tour is accessible via wheelchair. Call ahead to make reservations and to be informed about winter driving conditions. Tour is limited to 20 people. Call for reservations.

 Tsu'vo Loop Trail and Petroglyphs - April 1, 9 a.m.: A hike along ancient trails with a park ranger. The tour will be approximately two miles on sandy trails to Dine Point and back. Wear sturdy walking shoes, a hat and bring water. Along the trail participants will be able to see petroglyphs from Homolovi's earliest pit-house period.

 Petrified Forest Walk - April 8 and April 22, 9 a.m.: Join a park ranger on a walk to Homolovi's mini-petrified forest. This tour will explore the park's paleontological history. The tour will require about one mile of walking (estimated time one hour), round-trip, across natural landscape, to view an approximately one-acre area of exposed petrified trees.

 Hopi Pottery Talks - April 15, 10 a.m.: Join park ranger and Hopi Potter, Gwen Setalla for a discussion and demonstration of traditional Hopi pottery. She will explain how traditional pottery is made and talk about how to recognize authentic made pottery. This will be held at the park's visitor center and will last approximately 1.5 hours.

 Petroglyph Tour - April 22, 9 a.m.: This will require participants to have their own vehicle. Please be prepared for weather and bring plenty of water as the tour will last approximately three hours. There will be approximately 1.5 miles of walking on uneven terrain. Call for reservations.

The cost for each event is the $7 per vehicle fee for up to four adults. For more information about Homolovi State Park visit AZStateParks.com/homolovi or call (928) 289-4106. Homolovi State Park is located five miles northeast of the city of Winslow in northeastern Arizona.

Child Abuse Prevention Conference set for March 30

The Coconino Coalition for Children & Youth will host its annual Child Abuse Prevention Conference and Luncheon on March 30, from 8 a.m.-5 p.m., at Little America. Claire Louge, of Prevent Abuse Arizona, will be this years keynote speaker presenting, Resilience in Rupture, Strength in Stress.

We have all experienced rupture. Rupture is a time in which our lives are disrupted by something painful, disappointing or devastating, and whether were ready or not, our lives change, Louge said. Rupture can be big or small. Perhaps you have experienced rupture in the form of a breakup with a romantic partner. Perhaps you get an unexpected bill. Perhaps you experienced childhood abuse. Perhaps you flunked a test. How is it that you survived the ruptures you have experienced in your life? How is it that you got to where you are today?

Louge will discuss how human beings are able to navigate rupture and thrive.

Multiple breakout session choices in the afternoon will cover topics in education, drug abuse prevention, treatment for foster children and childhood sexual abuse prevention.

The luncheon will feature the presentation of awards to five outstanding Coconino County community members who have given exceptional support and care to children and youth. Virginia Watahomigie, executive director for the Coconino Coalition for Children & Youth, will give the lunch presentation with a focus on community building and the effects of traumatic environments for children.

Individual registration for the conference is $95 and includes the luncheon. Individual registration for the luncheon is $35, with tables of eight available for $280. Discounts for CCC&Y members are provided.

The deadline to register is March 20. For more information or to register, visit coconinokids.org/cap-registration/.
Left: Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has called, not for the first time, for a comprehensive documentation of SVGs history. Right:Leader of the Opposition Dr. Godwin Friday supported the Prime Ministers call.

The time has come for comprehensive documentation of the nations history, and for it to target students.

This call has come from Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves. He made the appeal as he addressed the gathering at Tuesdays wreath- laying ceremony at Dorsetshire Hill, in honour of the countrys first and only national hero, Carib Chief Joseph Chatoyer.





According to Gonsalves, he and some of the nations historians have written extensively on sections of the history of St Vincent and the Grenadines.





He singled out the likes of Dr Adrian Fraser, Dr Edgar Adams, Cecil Blazer Williams, as some who would have written on topics ranging from socio-economic changes that occurred during the emancipation period right up to the 1935 riots  in which Gonsalves acknowledged that he too had some input in this topic.





Scholars have also researched portions of the history while working on theses, Gonsalves said.





Leader of the Opposition Dr. Godwin Friday, who attended the ceremony in that capacity for the first time, reiterated that call, saying that he remained optimistic that it will happen.





He said that he was given the opportunity to be a research assistant to someone who was doing a historical document on The Bahamas, and he recalled his feeling of envy when he looked at the amount of time and investment that went into researching the material, thinking that something similar could have been done for his own country.





Friday held out hope for a similar piece of work, and posited that that it doesnt necessarily have to come from scholars.





What he saw as definite was that government needed to support such a project by ensuring that funding was available. (DD)
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PHOENIX  Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and husband Mark Kelly have a message for Arizona lawmakers: Enact reasonable gun restrictions or we'll help elect people who will.

And if necessary, Kelly, co-founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions with Giffords, said the group will take its case directly to voters.

At a press conference Thursday to launch the Arizona Coalition for Common Sense, Kelly acknowledged the political hurdles here.

Arizona is different, he said, with a long history of  and relationship with  firearms. Arizona could be a tricky state when you consider this.

Kelly said the first line of attack is to try to change policy. He said that involves convincing lawmakers that a majority of Arizonans want to close what some call the gun show loophole that exempts people who buy weapons from another individual from having to go through the same background check as they would if purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer.

That could prove next to impossible. In fact a bill making its way through the process this session goes in the exact opposite direction, specifically precluding local governments from imposing their own background check laws.

But Kelly, a former astronaut, said Americans for Responsible Solutions does more than just lobby. He said it has an annual budget approaching $15 million.

And we spend a lot of that money around election time of November of even years, Kelly said.

When we can't get a legislature to pass a bill that not only do we feel makes sense but that the citizens of that state overwhelmingly support, we will work really hard to elect people to the legislature that will support the bill, he continued. And we've done that over and over again.

The group also has something beyond money: Giffords herself who survived a 2011 assassination attempt at a Tucson event with constituents, an incident that killed six others.

And if lobbying and working to oust certain legislators doesn't work, Kelly said the possibility remains to craft their own measures and seek to have them approved at the ballot box. He said the group was involved in successful ballot measures for universal background checks in Washington, California and Nevada.

Still, Kelly said he would prefer not to travel that route in Arizona.

The best approach would be for us to initially meet with the folks in the legislature and do our own lobbying for these bills that, as I said, 82 percent of Arizonans support, he said. Ultimately, if that doesn't work, use our other options.

Kelly said he and Giffords also want to meet with Gov. Doug Ducey. But he sidestepped a question of whether he believes the governor would be receptive to his group's message,

Not on this issue, but just generically, I have found the governor to be a thoughtful person who people can work with, Kelly responded.

I'm looking forward at some point to meet with him on this issue and explain these things to him, he continued. You know, we may have some things in common on the issue.

The only gun-related measure Ducey ever vetoed was a proposal to tie Arizona's gun laws to what other states adopt. But even in that case the governor reasserted he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, saying he wants Arizona to continue to chart its own course on gun laws.

Kelly acknowledged Ducey's record.

So we will discuss that if I get the opportunity to speak to him about that.

During the press conference, Kelly rattled off figures he said prove the need for regulations.

From 2001 through 2010, 3,303 people were murdered by guns in Arizona alone, he said. And Kelly argued that number could be brought down with new gun laws, including mandatory background checks.

In the states and the District of Columbia that already require background checks for all gun sales, specifically for hand gun sales, 46 percent fewer women are shot to death by their partners, he said. There are 48 percent fewer firearm suicides and 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers are shot to death by hand guns.

But Dave Kopp who lobbies for the Arizona Citizens Defense League which is behind most of the measures liberalizing gun laws, said equating gun violence with the lack of background checks is a false equivalent.

Kopp said the federal government does millions of such checks every year and rejects just 2 percent. And most of those, he said, are mistakes and the gun sale eventually goes through.

And Kopp rejected the contention that those who know they can't pass a federal background check will seek out weapons in private sales, including at gun shows.

People who are looking to buy guns illegally are buying them illegally, he said, saying all background checks do is impose additional hurdles on law-abiding citizens. A criminal is going to buy a gun whether he goes through a law-abiding citizen or not.

Other than blocking local background checks, measures going through the process this session include providing additional protections from civil suit for businesses that let patrons bring their weapons in their establishments, immunizing people from prosecution for what they claim are accidental discharges of firearms, and permitting people to use a certain type of small caliber ammunition in city limits.
By Trend





The 5th Global Baku Forum is a very favorable platform for bringing together people with excellent views from different countries by ensuring exchange of experience and opinions, German political analyst Thilo Steinbach told Trend on the sidelines of the forum.

The forum, titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests, kicked off in Azerbaijans capital on March 16.

Steinbach said that great success has been achieved at the forum since the beginning of its activity and up till now.

"People from many countries, representing various spheres, including former and incumbent presidents, politicians and experts, are taking part in the forum, he added.

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Albanian President Bujar Nishani, Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, Saudi Arabian Prince, Chairman of the Board of Directors of King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies Turki Al-Faisal are also attending the forum.
By Azertac

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an Order pardoning a group of prisoners on March 16.

The Order says the decision to pardon the convicts was taken after considering appeals of several convicts, their family members, the Commissioner for Human Rights, human rights organizations to the head of state, as well as the personality of convicts, their health state, family conditions, and their behavior during the conviction, Azertac reported.

Under the Order, 412 convicts are released from the unserved part of their prison sentence. Moreover, four people were freed from the remainder of the conditional sentence, one person was freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and three people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine.

Under the presidential order, two persons, who were jailed for life, have had their prison terms reduced to 25 and 15 years.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade met with President of the Republic of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis on March 16, who attended the 5th Global Baku Forum.

The sides discussed prospects for Azerbaijan-Latvia cooperation in political, economic and other areas, Azertac reported.

Rasizade hailed political ties between the two countries and stressed that cooperation between Azerbaijan and Latvia is developing successfully.

The Prime Minister said there are good opportunities for expanding the bilateral bonds.

Speaking about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rasizade stressed that the conflict must be resolved in accordance with the norms of international law and on the basis of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and inviolability of borders.

Azerbaijan-Latvia relations are developing yearly and reciprocal visits play a huge role in taking bilateral relations forward. . Both countries are full members of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Azerbaijan recognized the independence of Latvia on 30 August 1991. Latvia recognized the independence of Azerbaijan on 8 January 1992.

The main goods exported from Latvia to Azerbaijan consist of animals, metal, food, and chemical products. Mineral and food products are mainly imported from Azerbaijan.
By Azernews





By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijans Justice Ministry has already started implementation of the presidential order on pardoning a group of prisoners.

President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 16 pardoning 423 convicts.

Under the order, 412 convicts are released from the unserved part of their prison sentence. Moreover, four people were freed from the remainder of the conditional sentence, one person was freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and three people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine.

Under the presidential order, two persons, who were jailed for life, have had their prison terms reduced to 25 and 15 years.

Forty foreign citizens are among the pardoned, including 13 citizens of Iran, six citizens of Pakistan, four citizens of Georgia, four citizens of Russia, four citizens of Nigeria, three citizens of China, three citizens of Turkey, two citizens of Uzbekistan and one citizen of Ukraine.

The Justice Ministry and the State Migration Service have been tasked to ensure the deportation of foreign citizens freed from serving the remainder of their prison terms, in accordance with the rules set by the Migration Code.

Ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova said that the pardon order brought a double joy to families of the pardoned people on the eve of the Novruz holiday.

She noted that for the first time the act of pardon applies to people deprived of their liberty for life.

President Aliyev pardoned me for the sake of my grandchildren, 80-year-old Samad Gasimov, who was pardoned by the order, told Trend.

My joy is boundless. For five years I have not seen my grandchildren, he added.

A Chinese citizen, who was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment for kidnapping his compatriot in Baku also applauded the decree.

I am very grateful to the President of Azerbaijan for being free again, he said. In Baku, I have no one. For seven years I met with my family a couple of times, who came from distant China to visit me. After liberation, I will return to China, to my family.
Credit: Danny ClinchFounding Band multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson will be taking part in most of the shows on the upcoming leg of The Last Waltz 40 Tour, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of The Band's historic 1976 farewell concert.

Hudson will perform at seven of the trek's 10 dates, including the tour's March 30 kickoff in Grand Prairie, Texas, and its April 15 finale in San Francisco.

As previously reported, the lineup of musicians featured on the new leg of The Last Waltz 40 Tour includes New Orleans legend Dr. John, ex-Allman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes, acclaimed producer/bassist Don Was, country artist Jamey Johnson and Dirty Dozen Brass Band drummer Terence Higgins, among others. Dr. John was one of the many stars who performed with The Band at the original Last Waltz concert, which was held November 25, 1976, at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom.

Hudson also played at two concerts last month during the previous leg of The Last Waltz 40 Tour. To buy tickets for all dates on the trek and check out the full lineup of musicians, visit LastWaltz40Tour.com.

Here are all of the forthcoming shows on the Last Waltz 40 Tour:

3/30 -- Grand Prairie, TX, Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie*

3/31 -- Houston, TX, Revention Music Center*

4/1 -- Austin, TX, Bass Concert Hall*

4/2 -- San Antonio, TX, The Tobin Center for the Performing Arts*

4/7 -- Detroit, MI, Fox Theatre

4/8 -- Louisville, KY, The Louisville Palace

4/9 -- Chicago, IL, Chicago Theater

4/13 -- Los Angeles, CA, Orpheum Theatre*

4/14 -- Valley Center, CA, Harrah's Resort Southern California*

4/15 -- San Francisco, CA, The Masonic*

* = Garth Hudson will perform at this concert.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Shortly before the Paris climate conference of December 2015, a leading U.S. government scientist published a paper purporting to show that the Earth had not experienced an 18-year pause in rising temperatures.

The claim was contrary to every temperature dataset in existence at the time, but Tom Karl, then director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Centers for Environmental Information, argued that previous findings were wrong and temperatures actually were rising at an alarming rate.

Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof. But world leaders, including President Barack Obama, chose to immediately get behind Karls startling discovery, seeing it as the iron-clad evidence they needed to produce a strong climate agreement requiring sharp reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions.

Last month, however, in a much-discussed article on a prominent climate change blog, John Bates, an award-winning scientist responsible for establishing and maintaining the NOAAs data-testing and archiving process, disclosed Karl and his team violated the agencys rules for ensuring the quality of their research.

Prior to the publication of Karls paper, the NOAA had adopted a process for reviewing climate datasets to ensure they would be archived for sharing, replication and testing  key components of the scientific process.

Defying agency rules, Karl did not run his teams dataset through the agencys software and did not archive key datasets, Bates wrote. Because Karl failed to archive and store his datasets properly, some of the original datasets were lost when the computer used to process the data failed.

How convenient for climate alarmists.

The data purportedly showing an alarming and continuous global temperature rise gets lost, but Karl and his team say, in effect, The computer ate our homework, but trust us anyway. Were right and everyone else is wrong.

Bates, in his article, castigated Karls research for consistently exaggerating measured warming in an effort to produce the results his team wanted.

So, in every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets leading into (Karls paper), we find Tom Karl  pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation, Bates wrote.

Gradually, in the months after (Karls paper) came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his thumb on the scale  in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets  in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Prior to the publication of Bates article, much of the climate-science community had already become suspicious of Karls claims when it was discovered, as David Rose wrote in a report for the Daily Mail, Karl took seawater-level readings from buoys but then adjusted them upwards. Karl used readings from seawater intakes on ships that act as weather stations even though readings from the ships have long been known to be too hot, Rose explained.

As a result, the ocean temperature dataset used by Karl exaggerated the warming.

Even if the science motivating the Paris climate agreement werent suspicious, the treaty itself is a costly farce.

While the United States is expected to restrict its peoples fossil-fuel use, China, India and other major carbon-dioxide emitters get to keep growing their coal, natural gas and oil use.

Their economies get to thrive while ours is expected to stagnate  all without any hope of a real climate benefit.

United Nations officials have admitted that even if all the parties to the agreement were to cut emissions as promised, temperature rise would still exceed the upper limit  by a substantial margin  in 2100.

If disaster is in the offing, the Paris climate agreement wont stop it. The U.S. should withdraw.
By Trend





Kazakh government appointed Alik Aydarbayev as the first vice-minister for investments and development.

Aydarbayev will be responsible for industry, the Investments and Development Ministry said in a message March 16.

In 2013-2017, Aydarbayev headed oil-rich Mangistau region in Kazakhstans southwest.

Previously he served on high positions in Kazakh oil companies, and, in particular, at KazMunaiGas Exploration Production Company.
Everton vs Hull City

Friday, 17 March, 2017



Match Preview

Everton play the second of two successive home games before testing trips to Anfield and Old Trafford as improving Hull City come to Merseyside.

The Blues have made Goodison Park something of a fortress in 2017; they're unbeaten since the turn of the year and can boast clean sheets in four of their last five in home turf.

Having comfortably dealt with West Bromwich Albion last Saturday, Ronald Koeman's men face a Hull side still battling against the danger of relegation but which has been much improved since the clubs last met at the end of last year.

Since then, Marco Silvia has them looking far less like the soft touch they had become under his predecessor, Mike Phelan, although it's fair to say they were surprisingly potent against the Blues. They have won four of their last eight games, although the match winner on two of those occasions was Oumar Niasse, the striker on loan from Everton who is ineligible to play this weekend.

Article continues below video content

They will also be without one of the goalscorers in the reverse fixture, Michael Dawson, as well as Dieumerci Mbokani and Ryan Mason, while the other scorer, Roberto Snodgrass is no longer with the club. It's also worth noting that those recent wins all came at the KCOM Stadium and that their last away match was a 3-1 defeat at fellow strugglers, Leicester City.

It points to what should be another routine home win if Everton perform the way they have in front of their own fans in the League for the past 10 weeks.

Of course, there is the potential shadow over proceedings cast by Romelu Lukaku's contract situation to consider. The Belgian's decision not to extend his contract with Everton has rocked the club this week but it's unlikely to have much bearing on the contest with the Tigers.

Lukaku's focus has always been on doing his best for the team and advancing his own career and with emotion having played seemingly little part in his Blues career thus far, it doesn't seem likely that any fallout from his contract issues will affect his game.

And given the positive reaction that his interview with the media this past week has generated from many Evertonians, he probably won't receive an uncomfortable reception from the Goodison faithful either.

All being well, the 23-year-old will add his name to the scoresheet once more, become the first player to hit 20 league goals for Everton since Gary Lineker 31 years ago, and the Blues will leapfrog Manchester United into 6th place, for 24 hours at least.

Koeman will have Leighton Baines in contention again after he recovered from the back issue that forced him off halfway through the win over the Baggies.

James McCarthy is still ruled out, though, leaving the Dutchman the same central midfield options as last week. Gareth Barry started last time out and could retain his place after putting in a good performance if the manager views Hull's midfield in a similar vein as West Brom's.

Phil Jagielka, meanwhile, almost certainly did enough to warrant keeping his place in central defense alongside Ramiro Funes Mori and it's conceivable the Koeman will name an unchanged starting XI.

Kick off: 3pm, Saturday 18 March, 2017

Referee: Paul Tierney

Last Time: Everton 1 - 1 Hull City

Predicted line-up: Robles, Coleman, Jagielka, Williams, Baines, Barry, Schneiderlin, Davies, Barkley, Mirallas, Lukaku

Quotes sourced from ToffeeWeb match page

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The upcoming Comex 2017, the 27th edition of Omans prominent event for IT and telecom, and the first Oman Smart City Summit will focus on fostering a digital community and creation of a smart nation.

The events will take place from March 28 to April 1 at the Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre in Muscat.

Comex is held with Smart City Summit in strategic partnership with the Smart Cities Council and the Information Technology Authority (ITA) as well as Oman Broadband and Omran.

The theme of Comex this year will centre on to digital life that impact the future of both business and personal spheres.

ICT is breaking new grounds in terms of economic and social transformation, creating new networks and connections within both the public and private sectors. Access to services, enhancing connectivity and creating business opportunities, ICT plays a pivotal role in bringing individuals and organisations together. This year, Comex focuses on Omans digital society, uniting stakeholders from all walks of life involved in creating and developing the new digital economy, said Tarek Ali, general manager, OITE Trade Fairs.

The Future Tech Zone at Comex will be launched for the first time by ITA this year. Through this zone, companies across ICT and related sectors will show demos of various products and solutions that promote the concept of smart cities, smart homes, smart living and smart work processes.

The new Incubation Centre will promote ITAs Sas Programme designed for small and medium ICT businesses, entrepreneurs, graduates and students interested in starting new innovative ventures.

Comex Smart Talks will also provide a forum for both local and regional companies to share their ideas and solutions with industry colleagues and customers through interactive sessions.

Featuring participants from Oman and beyond, Comex aims to offer leading-edge technology solutions, designed to unite and inspire business to business and business to consumer participants through three key zones - Comex Business, e.oman and Comex Shoppers.

The e.oman pavilion will host a number of government entities promoting Omans digital transformation showcasing eGovernment initiatives including specialised zones focused on innovation, future technologies, eTransformation, eLearning and security. Visitors can take advantage of the latest ICT solutions offered by trade exhibitors at Comex Business and enjoy the latest products on offer and the best possible deals on laptops, tablets and mobiles at Comex Shoppers.

With the growth in urbanisation over the past decade, the public sector is compelled to adopt advanced processes that support smart city development and foster safe and efficient delivery of services focused on sustainability and improved quality of life. Held under the theme Empowering a Smart Nation, the Oman Smart City Summit will focus on the value created both economically and socially for its citizens through the adoption of smart city projects in the country.

Key sessions will include the concept development of a smart city, challenges faced in building smart cities, the role of smart cities in national and socio-economic growth, the importance of public-private partnerships, the role of telecom operators, the Internet of Things, the customer experience, global best practices and sustainability.

Running in parallel, an exhibition with extensive meeting and networking opportunities will also be held to showcase best practices, new technologies and discuss business options with local and international decision makers.  TradeArabia News Service
LG Electronics, a global leader and technology innovator, was recently honoured with 30 iF Design Awards for excellence, a record number of awards won by the company.



The company won the most prestigious iF Gold Award for the companys CordZero canister vacuum cleaner, said a statement from the company.



In addition to the iF Gold Award, other distinctions were awarded to products such as LG Signature OLED TV W, LG Gram, LG V20 and LG Tone Bluetooth headsets, it added.



For more than 60 years, the iF Design Awards has been one of the premiere design competitions in the world, it said.



Organised by iF International Forum Design GmbH of Germany, the guiding principles behind the awards has been to identify, support and promote good design and to raise awareness of design among the public and the role it plays in consumers lives.



This years competition saw a total of 5,500 products submitted from 59 countries.



In awarding the Gold Award to LG CordZero, the judges commended the cordless vacuum cleaner for its comfort, usability and convenience.



Additionally, the LG Signature Gallery was recognized in both the Communications and Interior Architecture categories. Unveiled at IFA 2016 in Berlin, the 140 square meter exhibit was designed specifically to highlight the Art of Essence design philosophy behind the collection of premium appliances and TV.



Noh Chang-ho, vice president and head of corporate design at LG Electronics, said: Our companys product designs draw inspiration from our understanding of the essential needs of our customers.



These awards demonstrate how our commitment to aesthetics is transforming the user experience. We will continue to offer products that challenge the boundaries of beauty and function, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) will double its electric vehicles (EV) charging stations to 200 across Dubai to complete the second phase of the Green Charger initiative.



Through this initiative, Dewa aims to encourage people to use sustainable transportation of hybrid and electric vehicles, to help reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector, which is the second highest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in Dubai, said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dewa.



This initiative will contribute effectively to the achievement of the UAE Vision 2021 and Dubai Plan 2021, to make Dubai a smart, integrated and connected city that is fully sustainable with its resources, and where environmental components are clean, healthy and sustainable.



The Green Charger initiative also contributes to the objectives of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, to transform Dubai into an international hub for clean energy and green economy and to enhance Dubais position as the city with the lowest carbon footprint worldwide. And it also supports the Dubai Carbon Abatement Strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 16 per cent by 2021.



The Supreme Council launched the Dubai Green Mobility initiative, to encourage the use of sustainable transport and electric vehicles among its member companies. The Supreme Council issued directive number 1 of 2016 for all government organisations that at least 2 per cent of their vehicle purchases must be hybrid or electric vehicles from 2016 to 2020. This will then increase to 10 per cent from 2021 to 2030, added Al Tayer.



Dubai Government identified the rate per kilowatt hour (kW/h) for public charging of an electric vehicle as 29 fils per kW/h. This figure constitutes significant savings for electric car owners, compared with those that use fuel. For example, a Renault electric car can be charged for a full hour for a cost of only Dh7 ($1.9), where you can drive it for 130 km and can reach the same speeds as conventional cars. The larger the size of the battery the more time is needed to charge the battery, lengthening the distance that can be driven by a car during one charging cycle, added Al Tayer.



These achievements have helped to strengthen the hybrid and electric vehicle market, encouraged electric vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, and stimulated the use of these environmentally-friendly vehicles for all Dubai residents. The electric vehicles are attracting a big number of people, due to their financial savings in addition to the use of zero-emission vehicles that keep the environment clean and sustainable, concluded Al Tayer.



Dewa is setting up different types of charging stations, including fast-charging stations installed at petrol stations that take 20-40 minutes. These stations have 3 different plugs, one with a capacity of 48 kilowatts (kW) for Alternating Current (AC), CHAdeMO plugs, and Combo plugs with a capacity of 50kW of Direct Current (DC).



Medium-charging stations installed at shopping malls, parks, and Dubai Government customer service centres take 2-4 hours. The stations feature two plugs, each with a capacity of 22kW. And finally, wall-charging stations with a capacity of 22kW for AC will take 2-4 hours to charge.



Dewa launched the Green Charger initiative in April 2014 to install and manage the required infrastructure to charge electric vehicles. The move complements Dewas efforts to reduce air pollution and protect the environment from the impact of the transport sector in the Emirate.  TradeArabia News Service
The management team of Park Rotana, Abu Dhabi has welcomed Rabih Melhem as its new general manager.



A seasoned hotelier with more than 27 years of hospitality management experience from leading hotel brands in the US and in the Middle East, Melhem is no stranger to Rotana. He has been a key member of the company since 2000 and has immensely contributed to the success of other Rotana properties that include Beach Rotana Abu Dhabi, Al Ain Rotana, Al Murooj Rotana and Jumeira Rotana. Prior to his move, he was the general manager of Media Rotana Dubai, the companys largest single five-star property. Over the years, he has received numerous accolades as one of the best hotel general managers in the region.



Commenting on his appointment, Melhem said: I am pleased to be back in Abu Dhabi and excited to lead one of our key five star properties in the city. It is definitely an excellent venture with the scale of operations the complex requires, considering we have Park Rotana, Park Arjaan by Rotana, Park Residences by Rotana, award-winning restaurants, five star facilities and leased out offices all in one place. I certainly look forward to working with the team and to leading Park Rotana towards the achievement of our goals and to succeeding further in this highly competitive market." - TradeArabia News Service
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Local law enforcement, social services and health providers in Flagstaff are working to show the public a united front for providing services to people suffering from mental illness.

Representatives from the Flagstaff Police Department, the Guidance Center, Flagstaff Medical Center, the Department of Economic Security, and Terros Health hosted a forum Thursday night about mental health crises in northern Arizona, and how professionals are collaborating on services to address some alarming statistics.

In a meeting before the forum, Andrea Smiley, the chief marketing and business development officer for Terros Health, said while Coconino County is ranked eighth out of Arizonas 15 counties in positive health aspects, calls for service regarding suicide have increased in Coconino County since 2008.

According to Terros Health, suicidal subjects were the most common complaints in crisis situations in the Flagstaff area, making up more than 47 percent. Substance abuse was the second most common at 17 percent.

Diane Van Cornewal, an addiction and substance abuse counselor at Flagstaff Medical Center, said social media can serve as both a positive and a negative force when it comes to dealing with patients considering suicide. In the past students or young people who have seen troubling postings from friends have contacted parents or the authorities to de-escalate the situation, she said. However, young people might also see damaging or degrading messages about themselves on social media that might push them to consider suicide.

According to Terros, the Coconino County Sheriffs Department sees an average of one suicide-related call per day.

However, services in Flagstaff are looking to provide citizens with a plan of action, and it is hoped keep people who are experiencing a crisis or struggling with mental illness out of jail, which can be expensive and ineffective for mental health patients.

By criminalizing these people they go to jail, and thats the most expensive because it doesnt work, said Sgt. Cory Runge, the spokesman for the Flagstaff Police Department. If we wait until they need to go to the emergency room, thats the most expensive treatment for them.

Runge said the goal of the community outreach is to give citizens some options when dealing with mental health crises, whether they themselves are experiencing an issue or they know someone who might.

Educating people about the different types of brain disorders and mental illnesses can help erase a negative stigma people have about those issues, while criminalizing mental illness, and having people get arrested for what is actually a health issue, can solidify a negative stigma, Runge said.

Runge said the group did not want to discourage people from calling the police, but if public safety is not at risk, there are other ways that can be more beneficial for the person in crisis.

Often, with having the police respond, it can increase danger, Runge said. Youve now brought a gun into the situation when there wasnt a gun before.

Runge said many officers in the Flagstaff Police Department are trained in crisis response, and can be an avenue to get help for those in crisis. But he said incarceration has not been an effective way to respond to a mentally ill person or a person in crisis.

Terros Health, which has been in Flagstaff for about a year, operates a mobile crisis response. Providers can travel to a persons home, school or other location to help identify and de-escalate a crisis, said Rachel Holland, the director of northern Arizona crisis services for Terros Health.

Holland said when a person calls Terros, all services provided are free of charge. Providers will help stabilize a person in crisis and will connect a person with ongoing support. Terros does not define what it means to be in a crisis, Holland said, so whatever a client considers to be a crisis will be responded to accordingly, Holland said.

Barbara Ball, the Department of Economic Security community engagement liaison for the area, said the collaborative efforts for crisis response are unique to Flagstaff. Ball said all of the key players in Flagstaff are involved, including the Guidance Center, where people in crisis can go for short- or longer-term crisis intervention.

By hosting the forum, the group said they hoped to create awareness about collaborative efforts in northern Arizona, as well as show what services are available for those suffering from mental illness or in need of crisis intervention.
A federal judge was poised to approve Peabody Energys reorganization strategy Friday, making the coal company the last big Powder River Basin firm to approach an end to its bankruptcy.

The St. Louis-based firm operates the largest national coal mine, North Antelope Rochelle in Campbell County. It plans to emerge next month, shedding $5 billion in debt.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barry Schermer gave a preliminary nod of approval to the companys exit strategy pending consultation on language discrepancies with the Department of Justice.

Opponents of the plan in recent weeks included the Internal Revenue Service, environmental advocates and nonconsenting creditors.

The company will finance its reorganization with a $1.5 billion stock sale. It will also offer stock plan bonuses to employees and corporate executives, including $15 million to CEO Glenn Kellow and between $3 million and $5 million to five other leaders.

Peabody filed for Chapter 11 protection in April of 2016, the third large coal producer operating in Wyoming to file after coal prices and production plunged in the face in natural gas competition. The company had also accrued significant debt in its metallurgical coal operations outside of Wyoming when met coal was on a meteoric rise that crashed suddenly on falling Asian demand.
The Casper Police Department is reviewing its policy regarding sexual assault cases after multiple women criticized how the agency handled their cases, the police chief said Thursday.

Casper Police Chief Jim Wetzel said that the department is reviewing how officers are supposed to handle cases involving sexual assault in response to the womens statements, which came at City Council meetings. He said the department is pushing for better enforcement of existing policy and looking for areas where new policy could be developed.

Were in the process of further developing those policies, he said.

For example, Wetzel said, there has been better enforcement of an existing policy that requires detectives to review a case and decide what the first step is in their investigation within seven days of being assigned the case. The chief said that policy wasnt followed in at least one case that the women told city leadership about.

It took upwards of three weeks, he said.

Wetzel said the department has studied the changes the police department in Missoula, Montana, made to its policy after the U.S. Department of Justice reviewed how it handled sexual assault cases. The Casper Police Department is in the process of deciding which of those policies fit its needs.

You cant be flying by the seat of your pants, making ad hoc changes, Wetzel said. Effective and responsible change takes time and review, he said; otherwise the policy becomes contradictory and has less meaning.

Meeting with reporters Thursday morning, Wetzel originally answered yes to a question asking whether the department had changed its policy regarding sexual assault. However, the department later clarified that no changes have been made but that the department is reviewing its existing policy.

Wetzel said that officers dont mean to overlook or ignore victims but that officers are often overloaded with other cases. However, Wetzel added that a busy schedule is not an excuse for not following department policy or caring for victims needs.

Were really trying to put a better focus on the victims, he said.

Councilwoman Amanda Huckabay, who has also criticized how the department treated victims of sexual assault, said the city council hadnt heard anything about the departments review of its policies and said Wetzels statements were lip service.

I feel like if this were a genuine concern for (Wetzel), he wouldve been more proactive and transparent with council and the community rather than being on the defense, Huckabay said.

She said women have continuously emailed her to express frustration about how the police department handled their sexual assault and domestic violence cases. Many of the women feel like they are not being heard or are afraid to come forward, she said.

More transparency from the police department about any changes to policy would help repair victims damaged trust, Huckabay said.
Extra police officers will patrol Caspers streets Friday evening looking for impaired drivers, the department said Thursday.

Three extra officers will work on St. Patricks Day to look for people driving while drunk, Det. John Hatcher said. The extra officers will focus exclusively on impaired driving, allowing the patrol officers to better pursue their regular duties.

The extra patrol is funded by a grant by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. The money is made available to local law enforcement, which apply for the funding.

The city will also put up signs reminding residents to not drink and drive.

Go out and enjoy St. Patricks Day, but be responsible, Hatcher said.

The Cheyenne Police Department will also focus on deterring and stopping impaired drivers.

Before drinking, designate a sober driver and leave your car keys at home, the department said in a news release. If you see a driver you think is under the influence, call local law enforcement immediately.

In Wyoming, a first offense of driving under the influence can result in up to a $750 fine, six months in jail and the suspension of the drivers license for a maximum of three months.
Casper police arrested a Converse County sheriffs deputy Thursday evening on suspicion of attempting to sell Oxycodone.

Casper police officers arrested Michael Martinez, 37, just after 7 p.m. Thursday after a confidential source told them Martinez was attempting to sell the painkillers. Martinez is a deputy with the Converse County Sheriffs Office and works in the county detention center, the office confirmed Friday morning.

On a tip from the source, Casper police waited for Martinez to arrive at an address on Wilkins Circle where he had agreed to sell the source Oxycodone, according to an arrest affidavit. When Martinez arrived at the location, Casper officers approached and searched Martinezs clothes. The officers found a prescription pill bottle containing 10 Oxycodone pills.

The Converse County Sheriffs Office placed Martinez on paid administrative leave after learning of his arrest, a spokesman said Friday.

Martinez was formally charged with attempting to deliver a controlled substance at his initial appearance Friday in Natrona County Circuit Court, where he appeared in a yellow jail jumpsuit and handcuffs. Circuit Court Judge Brian Christensen set his bond at $2,500.

During the hearing, assistant district attorney Michael Schafer noted that Martinez had previously been charged with driving while intoxicated in 2003 and failure to comply in 2004.

Martinez is the fourth Wyoming law enforcement officer to be arrested in the past month. Two Casper police officers were arrested in connection to the alleged neglect and abuse of two adopted children, and a Cheyenne-based Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper was arrested earlier this week and charged with felony stalking, felony property destruction and misdemeanor violation of a protection order.
The Wyoming Department of Corrections has selected Rick Catron to serve as the new warden of the Wyoming Womens Center in Lusk. He takes over March 27.

Catron succeeds Virginia Pullen, who retired late last year. The Womens Center is the only adult female prison in the state, with a 277-inmate normal operating capacity.

Catron brings 40 years of corrections experience to the role, corrections director Bob Lampert said in a statement.

The new warden began his career in 1977 as a correctional officer in the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Lompoc, California. He finished his federal prisons career as associate warden for industries, education, recreation and vocational training in Florence, Colorado. He retired from the federal prisons system in 2005.

In 2010, Catron was promoted to director of the Casper Re-Entry Center in Casper, overseeing the substance abuse treatment program, the Native American Treatment program and the Adult Community Corrections Center.

Catron holds an associate of arts degree in criminal justice.

I look forward to joining the WDOC family, Catron said in a statement. I have tremendous respect for the job that the Department of Corrections staff do day in and day out for the citizens of Wyoming.
The Arizona Friends of Tibet and the University of Arizona Center for Compassion Studies will host a fundraiser symposium on compassion meditation 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, March 26.

Speakers include Lobsang Rapgay, the director of University of California, Los Angeles' behavioral medicine clinic, Dr. Charles Raison, a founding director of the UA's Center for Compassion Studies and Chris Impey, associate dean of the UA's College of Science, according to press materials. The symposium will take place in the Tucson Room in the UA's Student Union Memorial Center, 1303 E. University Blvd.
Freethought Arizona will host the conversation "An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar" 10 a.m. Sunday, March 19 at the DuVal Auditorium in Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, 1501 N. Campbell Ave.

Christian Randal Rauser and atheist Justin Schieber continue the conversation they started in their book with the same name as the talk, according to press materials.
PHOENIX  Arguing the process is considered by some to be rife with fraud, Republican lawmakers advanced legislation imposing a new hurdle in the ability of citizen groups to propose their own laws.

HB 2404, approved Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, would make it illegal to pay initiative petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather. Rep. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, who is carrying the bill for business interests, told committee members that Arizonans have lost confidence in the process.

I'm wondering where you got that belief from and if you have some sort of way to back that up, responded Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale. Leach said he got it from a political newsletter.

What Leach has advanced under his name is the top priority of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It has made reform of the initiative process its top legislative priority in the wake of voter approval of increasing the minimum wage.

The organization even brought out attorney Brett Johnson to argue to lawmakers why the measure makes sense.

But Johnson, under questioning from Quezada, conceded he had no actual evidence of fraud in any Arizona initiative. Instead he cited some studies from other states.

Anyway, Johnson argued, this really isn't about fraud despite the comments by Leach. Instead, he said, it's about process.

That is the state's public policy and purpose to ensure the orderly processing of signatures, he said.

Interests which have had relative success getting what they want from the Republican-controlled legislature have lined up behind the legislation. That includes all major utilities, the Center for Arizona Policy, the hospital association and a group that lobbies on behalf of building owners and managers.

Supporters of the new restriction also include groups that have been the target of successful initiative efforts, ranging from the Arizona Cattlemen's Association which opposed the 1994 voter-approved ban on leghold traps, to the Arizona Restaurant Association which led the unsuccessful fight to quash the just-approved increase in the state minimum wage.

The measure drew opposition from Teresa Ulmer. She lobbies for Living United for Change in Arizona, the group that got the Proposition 206 wage hike on the ballot, which is probably why we're hearing this bill today.

Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr, whose organization has been involved in several successful initiatives, said it's already difficult to get a measure on the ballot.

Making it more difficult and more expensive is the opposite direction we should be moving relative to this important constitutional right, she told lawmakers.

Bahr did not dispute figures cited by Leach that show close to 36 percent of the signatures checked on petitions this past year turned out to be invalid. But she said it would be wrong to equate that with fraud, saying even technical flaws with someone's signature can invalidate it.

Nothing in HB 2404, which already has cleared the House, would bar paying people to collect signatures. But their pay would have to be based on an hourly rate or some other arrangement unconnected with how many signatures they gather.

Sen. Bob Worsley, R-Mesa, said he sees a benefit to such a change, unrelated to the question of whether petition circulators might be tempted to forge signatures to increase their pay. He said it might result in people being better educated about what they are being asked to sign.

The best comparison, he said, is going to buy a car.

We know the salesman is paid a commission based on (the customer) being sold that car, Worsley said. What did they tell us and not tell us to get us to buy the car?

In a bid to buttress his argument, Leach pointed out that in 2009 when Democrat Janet Napolitano was governor she recommended getting rid of paying people on a per-signature basis. But Quezada said Leach was telling only half the story, neglecting that Napolitano also suggested lowering the number of signatures required to put a measure on the ballot.

Leach conceded the point. But he said lowering the number of signatures required could mean that petition circulators would not bother to seek out signatures in rural parts of the state.

And Leach rejected arguments that if paid-by-the-signature campaigns are so subject to fraud then the same ban should apply to political candidates.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some March 17 papers in history. With a subscription to newspapers.com you can search the Arizona Daily Star and many other newspapers using keywords or dates, and download articles or pages.
We could have had a new state law that forces the Legislature to review the transactions exempted from the state sales tax every 10 years.

You would think that reviewing $12 billion worth of exemptions and exclusions from taxation would make sense in a state constantly scraping for pennies.

Instead, youre more likely to get more tax exemptions.

For example, thanks to a bill that is undoubtedly crucial to all Arizonans, shares of a co-owned airplane may soon be exempted from the state sales tax. You were worried about the unfairness of state sales tax being collected on the purchase of airplane shares, right?

Back in January, I reported that Republican legislative leaders are treating Democratic members more fairly than in recent years, entertaining bills such as Sen. Steve Farleys latest effort to curtail exemptions from the state sales tax.

Farley has been banging this drum for years  especially the annoying exemption for charging sales tax on the purchase of 4-inch pipe. This was an exemption intended to benefit Southwest Gas, which uses a lot of 4-inch pipe.

His bill this year, to simply require a review of the exemptions and exclusions, was an easy step. It didnt even require repealing any. That was reflected in the Senates 28-2 vote in favor of the bill, SB 1144.

But then it hit the state House. In the Ways and Means Committee, the Arizona Tax Research Associations president, Kevin McCarthy, raised questions about the utility of the bill, which would require a lot of staff time spent reviewing individual exemptions and exclusions. Its a strange position for a group that says its goal is efficient statewide government and the effective use of tax dollars through sound fiscal policies.

But McCarthy said the $12 billion that Farley often points to is an exaggerated figure. It includes uncollected tax on items like food for home consumption ($356 million worth of tax uncollected), prescription drugs and oxygen ($604 million) and wholesale trade ($4 billion). Most of that uncollected tax is easily justifiable as a matter of public policy.

Not all of it, though. Each exemption has an interest group with a lobbyist attached to it, and those interest groups and lobbyists make campaign donations or can cause trouble for candidates.

So, suddenly, in the House this week, a bill that was sailing smoothly ran aground. Thats too bad, because eliminating exemptions is perhaps the easiest way to raise state revenue.

My basic idea is if we can find $2 billion out of $12 billion of loopholes and get rid of them, that would allow us to decrease the sales tax rate by one percentage point, Farley told me Thursday. We would still be able to increase our revenues by $1 billion.

To her credit, the Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, voted for the measure, which went down 5-4. And Farley told me shes willing to bring it back up if he can convince one of the people who voted against it to change their vote.

But our sacred sales-tax exemptions and exclusions seem safe for now. The only question is if we can siphon more money from the state treasury in order to facilitate important transactions like the purchase of shares of private aircraft.

State of the city

Last year I lambasted Mayor Jonathan Rothschilds state of the city speech, which was long on listing minor achievements and short on dealing with the big issues of the moment.

This year, not so bad. Rather than going through the years minutiae in his speech Thursday at the JW Marriott Starr Pass, he gave a more direct defense of the citys performance and argument for its approach to the local economy and community.

On the many incentives Tucson has been offering developers lately, for example, Rothschild said:

By offering incentives, the city is being a good partner, a fair partner, to businesses and taxpayers alike. With all our incentives, businesses benefit, but taxpayers benefit more  through job creation, job training, public infrastructure improvements, and tax revenue from private investment.

He even offered an emotional ending that reflected on the best sides of the citys nature.

In Tucson, he said, Wherever we come from, however long weve been here  we help each other. Whatever we look like, whoever we love  we help each other. Its why this community invests in itself: because we see value in working together for the common good. Its what people love about Tucson. Its what I love about Tucson.

No, he did not mention being carjacked.

New county staff

The newest Pima County supervisor, Republican Steve Christy of District 4, has completed his hiring and now has a staff of four running the office. They are:

Beth Borozan, chief of staff and liaison to the Tanque Verde Valley;

Lori Oien, office manager and liaison to Tucsons east side;

Sergio Arellano, liaison to the Green Valley area;

Lucretia Free, liaison to the Vail area.
A jury has found a former Tucson Fire Department captain guilty of killing his ex-wife, her mother and her mother's friend.

The Pima County Superior Court jury reached its verdict Friday afternoon, one day after beginning deliberations on Thursday morning in the second murder trial of David Watson, 47.

Watson was found guilty in the 2000 death of his ex-wife Linda Watson, 35. He was also found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2003 shootings of Linda Watsons mother, Marilyn Cox, 63, and Coxs friend, Renee Farnsworth, 53.

Watson was tried on the same charges last fall in Pima County Superior Court, but the seven-week trial ended with a hung jury in November.

Sentencing is scheduled for 10 a.m. April 17.

The case spanned 17 years and involved more than 60 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits.

Linda Watson disappeared in 2000 from her house in the 2600 block of West Curtis Road. Investigators found blood on the floor, on a plastic trash bag, and the cord of a vacuum cleaner.

Three years later, her skull was found near the Silverbell Mine northwest of Tucson. However, it wasnt until 2011 that the skull was identified as hers due to a mistaken assumption the skull belonged to someone who died after crossing the border illegally.

Cox led a public campaign to identify her daughters killer and fought David and Rosemary Watson in court for visitation rights to Coxs granddaughter, who was 4 years old when her mother disappeared.

In 2003, Cox and Farnsworth were fatally shot in Coxs driveway by a lone gunman after Coxs first unsupervised visit with the Watsons daughter.

Prosecutor Jonathan Mosher said David Watson killed the three women as a result of the custody battle he had with his ex-wife Linda and then with Cox.

Defense attorney Natasha Wrae said the facts of the case were tragic, but the investigators view of the case was myopic and unduly focused on Watson.
The governing board of Tucson's largest school district was scheduled to vote on an interim superintendent Friday afternoon, but the meeting was canceled after the top candidate withdrew.

This is the second time a vote on an interim superintendent was canceled. The board was scheduled to decide at the March 7 meeting, but the item was taken off the agenda because too many people were suggested for the job, according to Board President Michael Hicks.

A special meeting was scheduled for 4 p.m. at the Duffy Community Center, 5145 E. Fifth St., to confirm Maggie Shafer, a former assistant superintendent in charge of Tucson Unified School District's elementary schools. She resigned from the district in 2013 to take a job with the University of Arizona.

However, the meeting is no longer happening.

I did not know we didnt have a meeting today until I heard it on the news today, said Mary Alice Wallace, director of staff services to the board who is in charge of communicating the updates with the boards schedule and agenda. She said she did not check her email overnight, when apparently Michael Hicks, the board president, was communicating with district counsel Todd Jaeger about cancelling the meeting.

Wallace confirmed that Shafer, who was offered a prorated salary of $239,200 for the 2016-2017 fiscal year, had withdrawn. Under the proposed contract, she would have also received a $3,750 bonus.

Shafer was not publicly announced as the top candidate for interim superintendent until after Tucson Sentinel reported Thursday morning that she would be named for the job, and Teri Melendez, a former TUSD administrator, would be her interim deputy.

Melendez, if approved, would be paid a prorated salary of $144,040. However, TUSD already has a deputy superintendent, Karen Kopec.

Adelita Grijalva, a TUSD board member and former board president, said she did not know if that meant there would be a reorganization of the administration. "We've never had two deputies."

She said she did not know why Shafer had pulled out but also that she had spoken to her about the superintendency and the challenges of working with a divided board.

"It's really unnerving how unorganized everything is," Grijalva said.

The board was also scheduled to vote on an interim deputy superintendent, despite the fact that the matter had never been discussed publicly by the board.

Stefanie Boe, the districts spokeswoman, said she wasnt given any information beyond the fact that the meeting has been canceled. Hicks and Mark Stegeman, the board members who Grijalva said pushed for Shafer's appointment, could not be reached for comment immediately.

H.T. Sanchez, who served as TUSD superintendent since 2013, resigned the post on Feb. 28 after a weekslong effort by some governing board members to remove him.

Sanchez walked away with $200,000 in severance pay. He was paid a base salary of $270,000, according to his most recent contract for the 2016-2017 school year. That figure does not include benefits and bonuses.
PHOENIX  Republican lawmakers advanced legislation imposing a new hurdle on the ability of citizen groups to propose their own laws to voters.

HB 2404 would make it illegal to pay initiative petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather. Already passed by the House, the measure cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday and goes next to the full Senate.

Rep. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, who is carrying the bill for business interests, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the process is considered by some to be rife with fraud and Arizonans have lost confidence in it.

Im wondering where you got that belief from and if you have some sort of way to back that up, responded Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale. Leach said he got it from a political newsletter.

What Leach has advanced under his name is the top priority of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The chamber made reform of the initiative process its top legislative priority in the wake of voter approval of increasing the minimum wage.

The organization brought out attorney Brett Johnson to argue in favor of the measure. But Johnson, under questioning from Quezada, conceded he had no actual evidence of fraud in any Arizona initiative. Instead, he cited some studies from other states.

Interests that have had relative success getting what they want from the Republican-controlled legislature have lined up behind the legislation. Those includes all major utilities, the Center for Arizona Policy, the hospital association and a group that lobbies on behalf of building owners and managers.

Supporters of the new restriction also include groups that have been the target of successful initiative efforts, ranging from the Arizona Cattlemens Association, which opposed the 1994 voter-approved ban on leghold traps, to the Arizona Restaurant Association, which led the unsuccessful fight to quash the just-approved increase in the state minimum wage.

The measure drew opposition from Teresa Ulmer, who lobbies for Living United for Change in Arizona, which got the minimum-wage hike on the ballot.

Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr, who has been involved in several successful initiatives, said its already difficult to get a measure on the ballot. Making it more difficult and more expensive is the opposite direction we should be moving relative to this important constitutional right, she told lawmakers.

Bahr did not dispute figures cited by Leach that show close to 36 percent of the signatures checked on petitions this past year turned out to be invalid. But she said it would be wrong to equate that with fraud, saying even technical flaws with someones signature can invalidate it.
Mayor Jonathan Rothschild gave his annual state of the city speech on Thursday afternoon, highlighting Tucsons economic successes.

The two-term Democrat also detailed improvements in city services and partnerships that have led to positive changes in the city.

He closed his remarks by highlighting why the city needs a new half-cent sales-tax increase to raise $250 million for roads, public-safety equipment and facilities over the next five years, saying if it passes it would cost the average person about $3  or the cost of a cup of coffee  more per month in taxes.

We all know our streets need work  everyone knows a rough road when they see it  and weve all seen the difference the 2012 streets bond has made. But when you see a city of Tucson emergency-response vehicle, you may not know that, in some cases, youre looking at a vehicle thats 20 or 25 years old. And, unlike you and me, they dont get better with age, Rothschild said.

However, Rothschild didnt shy away from standing behind specific policies that have come under fire from either the Legislature or President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Here are four takeaways from Rothschilds speech:

Tax incentives for downtown projects

Rothschild gave full support to economic incentives to spur development in the city, including the Government Property Lease Excise Tax program, which provides property tax incentives for projects.

The city plans on issuing or already has signed off on several property tax agreements in downtown Tucson, including ones for transforming the La Placita property, renovating the Riverpark Inn Hotel, and developing the five-story City Park building.

Other incentives have drawn large companies to the city, like Caterpillar and Comcast, and have spurred other economically beneficial projects, like new hotels, he said.

By offering incentives, the city is being a good partner to businesses and taxpayers alike. With all our incentives, businesses benefit, but taxpayers benefit more  through job creation, job training, public infrastructure improvements and tax revenue from private investment, Rothschild said.

Supports Affordable Care Act

While the Republican Congress works on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Rothschild continues to sing its praises.

Since the ACA passed and the health insurance marketplace opened, weve reduced Pima Countys uninsured rate from 17 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2016. The Affordable Care Act has been a godsend for thousands of Tucsonans, Rothschild told the 1,000-person crowd at the JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort.

Mexico critical

to local economy

The mayor continued to promote the regions ties with Mexico, saying he wants to continue to build bridges with the country, which has become a Trump administration target.

He noted new nonstop flights to Hermosillo out of Tucson and a planned transportation conference to improve logistics between the two countries on trade issues. He said he would continue with friendly, respectful overtures to Mexican officials.

As anyone who has run a successful business knows, good partners dont alienate their suppliers  or their customers, Rothschild said.

Wont let the Legislature define Tucson

In a veiled comment about the citys dispute with the state over the citys program to destroy confiscated and forfeited firearms, Rothschild vowed to continue the legal fight. The city is awaiting a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court and could see millions of dollars of state aid cut depending on how the court rules.

Good partners dont threaten to pull their funding if they dont get their way on everything, he said. Local government exists to make decisions on local issues. If we lose that ability  if Tucson has to be just like Mesa, or Bisbee has to be just like Kingman  we lose the benefit of experimentation. We lose the diversity that sparks innovation. And for what?
The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner has joined the short list of 75 facilities in the nation with full national accreditation, officials said.

Accreditation by the National Association of Medical Examiners is the highest achievement the association offers, and Pima County's is the only fully accredited office in the state, according to a news release.

We view accreditation as a way to measure our policies, procedures, operations and personnel against national norms, and we are pleased to continue to provide the highest quality death investigation in Arizona to Pima County, said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Greg Hess.

The accreditors' report noted that Pima County's OME is highly efficient, despite one of the country's lowest per-capita funding, at only $1.30 per person, the release said.

The office also serves as the medical examiner for Cochise and Santa Cruz counties, and conducts exams as needed for Apache, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Navajo, Pinal and Yuma counties.

In 2015, Pima County's OME conducted investigations into 2,437 deaths. Forensic pathologists and anthropologists also performed:

1,456 autopsies

348 external exams

290 death certifications

145 anthropologic exams
PHOENIX  The expansion of the states health-care program to 400,000 Arizonans and the levy to fund it are legal, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the judges rejected arguments by foes that the assessment on hospitals was a new tax which, according to the Arizona Constitution, needs a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate to approve. The levy did not get that margin.

But appellate Judge Paul McMurdie, writing for the court, said he and his colleagues do not see it that way. Put simply, he said the levy is not a tax.

Thursdays ruling is unlikely to be the last word.

Christina Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute, representing many current and former Republican lawmakers who voted against the 2013 expansion, vowed to seek Arizona Supreme Court review. She said the ruling creates a huge loophole in the 1992 constitutional provision she said was approved by voters to set a higher bar before taxes could be raised.

And Sandefur called the ruling an absurd result.

But Jan Brewer, who as governor crafted the plan, said she was grateful the judges interpreted the law this way.

Brewer, however, told Capitol Media Services the victory could be short-lived.

A health-care plan being considered by Congress immediately freezes new money for the states expansion plan and eventually repeals the funding entirely in favor of block grants to the state.

At the heart of the battle is who is covered by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the states Medicaid program.

Before 2013, it provided free care for most people below the federal poverty level, with the federal government picking up about two-thirds of the cost.

The federal Affordable Care Act, however, offered an incentive to states to expand eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, about $27,800 for a family of three. In essence, Washington would virtually pick up all of the expansions cost.

Then-Gov. Brewer sought to sign up Arizona.

But to qualify for the federal dollars, the state had to once again provide coverage for single adults who were below the poverty level. Enrollment in that program had previously been frozen in a budget-saving move.

To pay for that, Brewer crafted a plan to have the cost paid through an assessment on hospitals.

Hospitals did not object because AHCCCS director Tom Betlach set up the levy so that every hospital chain would actually make money from the deal: More patients with government-provided insurance coverage means fewer bills written off as bad debt because of a persons inability to pay. He even structured it so some hospitals that would not benefit from Medicaid expansion would owe nothing.

The levy is raising about $265 million a year.

When the expansion plan passed with a simple majority, the lawmakers who voted against expansion sued.

Sandefur said the 1992 amendment to the Arizona Constitution requiring a two-thirds vote was designed as a check on new taxes.

Specifically, she said it empowers a minority of lawmakers to block new taxes. And in this case, Sandefur said, more than a third of lawmakers were opposed to the levy.

McMurdie, however, said there is a flaw in her argument: The levy is not a new tax.

Its true, the judge wrote, that Betlachs authorization to impose a levy was approved by just a simple majority. But he said the levy itself was not imposed by the Legislature.

Instead, the levies are imposed by an entity with discretion to set and administer them, the judge continued. And he said the constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds vote has a clear exception for fees set by a state agency.

The court also rejected Sandefurs contention that the levy is a tax, because the funds collected are being expended for general public purposes.

But while the entire expansions purpose was to provide health care to more of Arizonas indigent population, the purpose of the assessment, as evidence by the language of HB 2010, was to be used for the benefit of hospitals for the purpose of providing health care for persons eligible for coverage funded by the hospital assessment. McMurdie wrote.
A pilot and his wife were not injured in a crash landing in a Willcox pecan orchard Thursday afternoon.

The two, who were in an RV/8 single prop plane, left Albuquerque, New Mexico in the morning and were flying to the Willcox airport, said Carol Capas, a Cochise County Sheriff's spokeswoman.

Shortly after noon, deputies received information from Albuquerque air traffic controllers of a possible downed aircraft near Willcox. Deputies and state troopers responded to the area in search of the plane, Capas said.

Meanwhile, the pilot sent a text message to his son telling him that he was not injured and that he crash landed in a pecan orchard.

The pilot remained in contact with Albuquerque traffic controllers until he was close to the ground and then lost radar and radio contact, said Capas.

Capas said the engine failed and the pilot actually landed on Last Outpost Road next to the orchard.
Rep. Chris Collins joined CNN's Van Jones on Thursday for a town hall-style event on live TV, and one of his constituents made it there to ask why he wouldn't do the same back home.

Renee Sutton, a resident of New York's 27th District, told Collins, her Republican member of Congress, she was one of the people trying to reach him about hosting a town hall event.

"The actual people you represent are asking to meet with you and you're refusing to do it?" Sutton asked, on "The Messy Truth," Jones' CNN show.

Collins said that while he didn't hold town halls in his district, he did meet with people he represented.

"I have never seen the value of the time commitment for a town hall," Collins said. "I can spend my time with a group of dairy farmers, with a group of health care professionals for a half an hour or an hour, have a real give and take."

He said those meetings had always been sufficient and the current call for town hall meetings was largely being drowned out by protests taking place across the nation.

"For eight years, no one ever raised the issue with me," Collins said.

Sutton said that was fine, but that she still did "want a setting where you will listen to me."
PHOENIX  Calling the technology a method of gun control, a Senate panel voted Wednesday to preclude any mandate that Arizonans have to purchase smart guns.

HB 2216 says the state many not require any individual to use electronic firearm tracking technology. It also bars disclosure of any disclosure of information gathered from such technology that would identify the gun owner or the person's firearm.

Rep. Paul Boyer, R-Phoenix, said he heard a presentation at a conference that suggested the best way to regulate who can own and fire a gun is block chain technology.

In essence, the technology can sense and log when a smart weapon has been fired, even sending notices to emergency personnel. It also can send out notifications if an unauthorized person tries to fire the weapon.

And that's what I'm concerned about, Boyer told colleagues.

The right to defend oneself existed before government, he continued. It'll exist long after government is gone. And so every citizen should have the right to defend themselves.

Beyond the tracking, Boyer said HB 2216 will ensure that Arizonans are not forced to purchase weapons that are designed to fire only by the authorized owner or user. He contends they are unreliable.

Various forms of the technology are being developed.

Some involve having trigger or grip programmed to recognize who is authorized to fire it. Others used radio-frequency chips that the authorized owner would wear to allow the gun to fire, similar to devices that allow cars to start  or not start as the case may be  depending on the presence of the owner and the proper chip-enabled fob.

No one's been able to tell us if you drop the gun (if it will work) with the technology, Boyer told members of the Senate Government Committee. And there are other issues, like what happens in extreme heat which we can imagine, it gets a little hot here in the summertime in Phoenix, extreme cold, switching hands for holding the gun or even wearing gloves.

There's a possibility that it could be hacked so it could be remotely disabled, Boyer continued. So the point is, when you need it the most that when you should be able to utilize it and not have to worry about whether or not your gun is going to work.

Boyer said there's a basis for fears of such a mandate.

A 2002 New Jersey law spells out that only smart guns can be sold in that state.

But it is worded to be effective three years after personalized handguns are available on the retail market. And while there are some such weapons offered for sale, New Jersey has yet to declare that the law has been triggered.

Boyer said that New Jersey law  if and when it ever takes effect  exempts police from having to use smart weapons. He said that makes sense and goes to the issue of reliability of the technology.

Law enforcement needs it at the moment they need it, Boyer said. There's no reason why a private citizen should have this imposed on them as well.

Dave Kopp of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a supporter of the measure, pointed out that nothing in the legislation precludes an Arizonan who wants such a weapon from getting one.

The version of the bill approved by the panel on a 4-3 vote does spell out that law enforcement officials can take advantage of a weapon's tracking technology if they have a search warrant. It also can be used by pawnbrokers to file reports required by law with the sheriff.

HB 2216, which cleared the House on a 34-25 vote, now goes to the full Senate.
Representative Bob Thorpe announced in a condescending press release plans for a tele townhall. This is disingenuous and undemocratic for several reasons.

First, it is ridiculous to interact with constituents over a commercial, conservative radio show and call it democratic public engagement.

Second, to date Thorpe has refused dialogue with those with whom he disagrees despite multiple formal invitations, and he never extended the courtesy of a reply to the invitations. Many constituents called requesting meetings. In each attempt we were told Thorpe does not meet with constituents.

Third, Thorpe hung up on constituents the last time he was on this conservative radio show. We heard him calling constituents crackpots over a hot mic. In interviews, hes referred to constituents as crazy and our organization as a far left flaming organization. This name-calling is unbecoming an elected official. His constituents are hardworking community members not deserving of this abuse. Why would we expect different behavior from him now?

Fourth, Thorpe refused to meet with high school students from Flagstaff when they went to the Capitol for Environmental Day. The Flagstaff kids were left sitting in a room while their representative (who was at the Capitol that day) refused a meeting; this is unconscionable.

Finally, Thorpe scheduled this "town hall" during Flagstaff's Spring Break, when many are out of town, showing he is either out of touch with the community or is purposefully scheduling for when many will be gone.

Bob Thorpe has shown time and again he does not truly want to represent all his constituents nor want to engage in meaningful dialogue. This piece of political theater is the latest in a long history of dismissive and undemocratic behavior from Bob Thorpe.

LORI POLONI-STAUDINGER, President

Together We Will, Northern Arizona
Help India!

By Shafeeq Hudawi, Twocircles.net

The beauty of Wayanad district in Kerala needs no introduction, and Muttil a hilly hamlet in this district is no different. But while the rest of the district, which is located in the Western Ghats and is engulfed by green meadows and perennial streams has tourists flocking year long, this hamlet is known more for a slightly different reason. Muttil sees visitors arrive more on a pilgrimage of sorts, and at their centre of attention is the Wayanad Muslim Orphanage. Surprised by why people visit an orphanage? It is because of MA Mohammed Jamal, a septuagenarian who has been at this orphanage since 1987 and has changed the lives of thousands of orphans.

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Jamal started his life as a member of the Indian Union Muslim League but took over the charge of the orphanage in 1987 after the demise of Abdul Rahman Bafaqui Thangal. Today, he oversees the daily care and progress of over 1,000 orphans enrolled in the centre.

Speaking with Twocircles.net, Jamal explains his lifes mission in extremely simple but nevertheless powerful words. I want to be here in service of these children. In fact, I am nothing without these children, he says. Jamal went on to quit a promising political career and decided to spend his life taking care of children who hadnt been as lucky as others. WMO was my choice because this was never meant to be an easy mission. It needs full dedication and honesty. Over the past 30 years, I have only tried to discharge my duty, nothing more, he says.

And under his watch, WMO has grown from being just a shelter-cum-orphanage to a full-fledged educational enterprise. Today, its institutes range from Arts colleges to entrepreneurial initiatives for women and tribals. WMO has more than 10 institutions are functioning across Wayanad, which includes three colleges, Islamic educational institutions, schools, vocational enterprises and dairy farm in order to help the agrarian community of Wayanad.

Jamals own family consists of four children and his wife, Punathil Nafeesa, but he says that all children have been brought up as his own. This also explains why his children call him every week even after they have left the WMO.

Students who lived in WMO and went on to forge successful careers say Jamal is no less than a father figure to them. When I was in Delhi, I used to get at least one call a week. Jamal Sahib would ask me what I needed. He wanted me to pursue my studies as a boy from a rich family. At no point in our lives were we made to feel inferior because we grew up in an orphanage, says Dr Najmudheen, who grew up in WMO and went to finish his PhD went to finish his PhD from the University of Calicut after completing MA from the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University. Currently, Dr Najmudheen is working as a lecturer with WMO Arts College after completing his PhD. Just like Najmudheen, WMO has got several professionals including doctors and engineers.

Besides, around 200 students are pursuing their higher studies across the country with the financial assistance of WMO after leaving the orphanage.

It is no surprise that students who went to make successful careers from WMO have come back to become its biggest patrons. Today, the entire expenses are run by the alumni network of more than 5,000 people.

But despite running such a vast network, Jamal does not feel he is doing enough. A few years ago, Jamal was shocked to see the pain of underprivileged patients during his visit to Mananthavady Government District Hospital. So, he and WMO decided to set up charity centres with three government hospitals in Wayanad. These centres provide patients and bystanders with food, water and ambulance service. Besides, a fair medical shop is also functioning under WMO at the Mananthavady Government District Hospital.

Although nearing the age of 80, Jamal says he is no mood of stopping or retiring. There are a lot of people who need care and support. My aim is to ensure a better life for the maximum number of people, he says. This is my way of serving and thanking Allah. We are all doing what he has asked us to do, he adds.
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Srinagar: For journalists in Kashmir, there seems no end to harassment and thrashings at the hands of security forces, despite the many promises made regarding their safety by the state government. Take the latest case of Thursday March 16.

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Valley-based journalists had gone to cover the attempted joint press conference of three separatist leaders, Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik at Hyderpora in uptown Srinagar. What followed shocked the journalist community.

I was present on the spot. A police driver tried to trample the scribes under his rakshak (police vehicle). As a result, the foot of Mubashir Khan of Greater Kashmir came under the vehicle and he was badly injured, said Farooq Javed Khan, the president of the Kashmir Press Photographers Association.

In the commotion that followed, AFP photographer Tawseef Mustafa was caught by a police officer, who went on to attempt to strangulate him and threatened the photographer of dire consequences.

The photos of the incident have gone viral wherein one can easily identify the police officer strangulating the journalist.

Soon after the incident, the journalist fraternity in Srinagar held a protest demonstration inside the press colony and vehemently condemned the brute use of force on journalist time and again.

Importantly, the three separatist faction had called for a meeting on Thursday. The moment they tried to address the press conference, the police swung into action and arrested them. This is when police used force on journalists who were performing their professional duties.

The photographers, who are part of the highly dedicated and disciplined press corps, were waiting outside the venue. When the three leaders came out, and police started arresting them, the photographers started documenting the process. This was the time when cops deployed on the spot objected to their action and started marshalling them.

Condemning the incident, Kashmir Editors Guild (KEG) said that there are clear photo and video evidences offering a clear detail of the police assault.

We have taken a strong exception to the misuse of power for muzzling the media. This has, unfortunately, been a routine than an exception. Last time, while photographers were covering an event in Bejebehara, cops actually fired a projectile on one of them outside the hospital gate. The person spent many days in the hospital because of a broken arm, KEG said.

Given the frequency with which the police is abusing its authority to restrict the role and responsibility of the media, KEG is seeking an intervention of the government at the highest level to ensure that states principal arm does not exhibit an abnormal growth, they added.

The role played by the coalition government of BJP and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir in curbing press coverage has been drawn into question since last year.

The state police forces had cracked down on local newspapers in 2016 by seizing newspaper print copies and detaining the staff of various printing outlets and later banning a newspaper Kashmir Reader for months altogether.
Help India!

By Murshid Kamal for Twocircles.net

Victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan. In the triumphant camp, Prime Minister Modi is being credited for BJPs splendid performance in Uttar Pradesh Assembly election and all his actions and statement are being glorified not only by his supporters but also by his harsh detractors, some of his very similar statements which failed him during Bihar election. On the other side, as expected, the blame game is in full swing.

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The readers may recall 2015 Bihar Assembly election where the BJP did all that it could do to polarise the voters on religious line by highlighting the cow slaughter and other sensitive issues. BJP leaders like Giriraj Kishore took up the job of spewing venom against Muslims. BJP President kept saying in all the election rallies that the crackers will be burst in Pakistan if they lose the election. Despite their entire outburst to unite Hindu voters, they failed miserably. So what went wrong in UP which went right in Bihar? The answer does not lie in rocket science or arithmetic.

The answer is very simple and anybodys guess. The arrogant and imprudent leadership of SP & BSP did not learn a lesson from 2014 and Bihar Assembly election. Its not that they could not read writings on the wall. RJD Supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav advised the key players of UP politics soon after the Bihar election and urged them to forge an alliance to challenge the growing popularity of the BJP. But the romanticism and the fascination of ruling the state as an absolute leader kept them at a distance from each other. The result was very much on an expected line. More than 60% of non-BJP votes got divided and BJP rode on less than 40% popular vote share to win a thumping majority in the state.

A close look at constituency-wise vote share indicates, had there been a Bihar-like grand alliance in the state, the result would have been reversed and BJP would have been rooted out in the state. The so-called champions of secularism did not even bother to seriously think about a Bihar-like alliance to stop the march of Fascism. Those who are blaming Muslim leadership- political or religious-do not have much substantial evidence of division of Muslim votes, instead it was the general secular vote which got divided between Samajwadi and BSP. Not more than 10 seats were lost to the BJP because of two Muslim candidates of major parties were contesting against each other. And yes, a couple of them was lost due to the presence of AIMIM on some of the seats. So what? BJP also lost some seats by a narrow margin to Muslim candidates due to the consumption of Hindu votes by rebel Hindu candidate. This happens in an electoral democracy.

As for the Muslim voters in general, they did their best to do tactical voting like 2012 assembly election, but the voters calculation and wisdom cannot always be accurate and their integrity cannot be questioned. Asaduddin Owaisi restricted himself to the limited number of seats where his party was contesting. Ulema Council & Peace Party had influence in small pockets and were far from making any state-wise political impacts to be blamed for the counter polarisation. So why to be swayed away by the media narrative of Muslim vote division & blame the Muslim leadership for the devastation?

Now, what next? Not to be disheartened, of course. Alls not lost. We can still put up a strong fight against the BJP and its allies in 2019 General election. Two completely differing example of UP & Bihar election result provides an opportunity for the non-BJP political parties to decide between sinking or swimming option. BJP will be banking on its 30% vote share which despite all the mobilisation, propaganda, media management and so-called wave will not cross 35- 40%. If non-BJP votes are consolidated especially in these two Indian states by forging a grand alliance, which seems very likely and pragmatic in the current circumstances, it will do the magic and the non-BJP government at the centre can easily be formed. But until then, stop blaming the Muslims for what happened in UP.
The new hosts of The Great British Bake Off have been announced. Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig will be joining new judge Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood in the famous tent when the hit baking show returns to screens later this year on its new home of Channel 4. The pair will replace Mel and Sue who chose, alongside judge Mary Berry, to not move channels with the show. Tokvig already presents Fifteen To One on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4s News Quiz while Noel Fielding has written and starred in the shows Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy and The Mighty Boosh.

Joining Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood

Although some fans of the show took to Twitter to complain about this announcement comedian Fielding seemed delighted. Fielding has also expressed his delight at working alongside Danish-born Sandi Toksvig. While discussing the new role as host he Noel claimed that 'GBBO' is one of his favourite shows as he especially loves brightly coloured cakes. Toksvig, who recently took over the role of QI presenter from Stephen Fry said she was honoured to be part of the show. She has described comedian Fielding as her wayward cousin.

Channel 4 defends decision

Channel 4s Chief Creative Officer Jay Hunt has defended their decision saying that their intention was to make The Great British Bake Off a unique Channel 4 feel.

They will join Paul Hollywood and new recruit Prue Leith, who founded cookery Leith in 1975 and received a CBE in 2010. She isnt new to TV judging having spent ten years on BBC2S Great British Menu

The show, which started in 2010, has run for seven series on the BBC before Love Productions sold the rights to rival broadcaster Channel 4.

It is thought that the broadcaster outbid the BBC by 10 million to gain the rights. The Great British Bake Off has been nominated a number of times in various categories for the BAFTA awards and won in 2012, 2013, and 2016. The baking competition format has been sold to nearly 200 different territories including junior and celebrity versions.

The show is set to make its Channel 4 debut in the autumn.
London mayors have been plagued in recent years with the monumental task of tackling Londons ever-growing pollution problem. It only took London only five days to hit the European Unions CO2 emission limit.

So whats the case for Improving Air Quality in London?

There are a number of reasons why Brits should care about the air their breathing, and in most cases they do. Over two-thirds of Londoners believe that there should be more government action was taken to deal with the significant environmental and public health issues that have arisen due to the pollution of nitrogen oxides, especially nitrogen dioxide (NO2), from the combustion of fossil fuels, and in most cases tend to disproportionately affect lower income areas.

There have been a number of studies that have linked high levels of NO2 to cases of long irritation, increase the likelihood of respiratory infections. And long term exposure in many cases leads to premature death. According to a 2010 study by researchers at Kings College London, nearly 9500 people die, and there are over 3400 hospital admissions each year in London in cases linked to long-term exposure to Air Pollution. In a study by the Policy Exchange, they calculated that the total economic cost associated with this estimate is around 3.7 billion. Nearly 3.8 million work in areas about the legal limits, which is about 44% of the workday population.

Got your attention?

Now the study also cited that these were cases of death were caused by two key pollutants: fine particles known as PM2.5s (which include fine particles like dust, soot, and other materials) and nitrogen dioxide.

Last year, the same university that found that Oxford Street was the worst street in the world for nitrogen dioxide emissions.The main contributors were diesel cars, lorries, and buses. Now London isnt alone, Birmingham and Leeds were also in breach of the safety limits set by the EU.

Whats being done?

And these studies arent in vain.

With the research to back them up, the Supreme Court charged the government with the monumental moral, legal, and viable necessity of cleaning up its act. And the current Mayor Sadiq Kahn campaigned on the promise to do something about it. Over the next few years, he will institute Ultra Low Emission Zones throughout London where all vehicles operating within the zone must meet emission standards set by the citys government.

Included in this overhaul is a government grant to help commuters purchase plug-in-cars.

The introduction of a clean bus corridor and an upgrade in the bus fleet are being tried out in some of Londons worst pollution areas. The most recent of which is taking place on Putney High Street. As of the 10th of March, one of Londons worst offenders has been set with the task of testing out the citys first Low Emission Bus Zone. All buses that operate on Putney High Street, must meet lower emissions standards. Nearly 150 buses have been retrofitted with anti-pollution systems. Brixton and Streatham are next to follow. There are plans to restructure the flow of traffic as well which should cut an estimated 84% of the nitrogen dioxide emissions.

And thanks to Wandsworth Council, the area has some of the best technology for monitoring PM2.5s and nitrogen dioxide so it will be easier to assess the effects of these solutions.

Now, Take a Deep Breath

There will be a tightening of emissions standards throughout London and an increase in investment for upgrading the bus fleet throughout Central London. Kahn has promised that from 2018, only to buy hybrid or zero-emission buses for Transport for London. In an article for the Evening Standard, he said, I am absolutely committed to speeding up our efforts and making sure I do everything possible to improve air quality in the capital. Its safe to say we have a long way to go, but the suggestions by this and other studies, its clear that Londoners have a reason to hope to breathe a little easier.
The crisis that is now engulfing the government is increasing, with no plan if EU negotiations fail and the UK must walk away with no deal and a significant policy U-turn. The Conservative leader and Prime Minister does not have a real mandate to lead her party, let alone the country. Referring to the Blair/Brown era, this is the same and just like then she is resisting calls for an early general election despite the likelihood of an increased majority in parliament.

The latest issue to strike the government is the Electoral Commissions investigation over their election spending.

The Tory election fraud has been a yearlong endeavour since Channel 4 first started their investigations.

The Conservative election scandal

The Conservatives were fined 70,000 for not declaring around 114,000 in expenses during the 2015 general election and other by-elections. The party itself have taken the line that this was just an error and it is common for parties to declare to the Electoral Commission any discrepancies after general elections have taken place. They have also said that they have been cooperative and worked with police.

However, the election fraud from the Conservatives raises some serious questions. If you break down what has happened since the story first broke, there was a clear agenda to stop authorities from investigating this further.

With the party blocking them at every corner. After the Electoral Commission repeatedly asked them for their records, the Conservatives continuously denied them access and it was not until the High Court ordered them, that they would hand over the documents.

The uncomfortable truth

Irrespective of the outcome of the investigation it underlines the issue that the Conservatives are simply untrustworthy with the UK economy and social welfare.

There are several perspectives to see this from. Firstly, there is a clear argument that if the party that wins power does so through illegal means, can you trust them to follow democratic processes whilst in power? Trust them to implement the best policies for the country and the wider world?

But if this is as they say, a simple bookkeeping error, does this inspire confidence in a more complex economic system?

If a party does not have the competence to keep their own expenses in line, how can they can balance the books of a complex social and economic model of government? The scandal raises significantly more questions than answers. The uncomfortable truth is that we have either a corrupt or incompetent government.
Courtesy of the families(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) -- As authorities in Colorado hunt for the killer of two teenagers who were found dead on the side of a road, their families are left grieving.



Derek Benjamin Greer, 15, and Natalie Partida, 16, were found dead Sunday morning, their bodies lying on the shoulder of a road 15 miles from their high school in Colorado Springs, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said.



Natalie's cousin, Hannah Ortega, told ABC News' Good Morning America that Natalie and Derek "went everywhere together."



"They loved each other," Ortega said. Derek was Natalie's "truest friend," she said.



"They had a whole life to live," she continued. "They don't get to have kids, they don't get to graduate high school, they don't get to work their dream jobs, they don't get to live anymore. Nobody deserves to get their life taken."



Natalie's grandmother, Margaret Partida, told GMA that "[Natalie] meant the world to us. Natalie was a girl full of just joy and happiness. She always had a smile on her face."



Partida, overcome with emotion, recalled the last words her granddaughter said to her.



"She had a couple of tears in her eyes, and she said, 'Grandma, I want to tell you how much I love you,'" Partida said. "I never dreamed that would be the last I would see of my granddaughter."



Partida said she has no idea who committed the crime.



"It ended so quickly," Partida said. "They were just beginning life."



Derek's mother, Heather Ferguson, told GMA she wanted to speak out because "he wasn't just somebody's garbage. He deserves to be remembered and deserves to have justice."



She described Derek as "so loving."



"He was my best friend and loved me so much," she said.



Derek's stepfather, Jeff Ferguson, said Derek was always talking and usually the center of attention.



"He made an impression on people," he said.



He added, "We just hope that at some point the person or persons who did this realize how many lives they destroyed."



"A part of you is gone, forever," Heather Ferguson said. "Our home will never be the same."



While the sheriff's office ruled the deaths as homicides, authorities have not released how the teens were killed, saying they are waiting until the toxicology reports come back.



As police look for the killer, Jacqueline Kirby, spokesperson for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, said authorities are "aggressively pursuing all leads."



The sheriff's office asks anyone who "sees anything out of the ordinary for their area" to call the sheriff's office at 719-390-5555.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The hijab is a religious symbol. Though nowhere is it mentioned in the Islamic scriptures, yet the hardliners continue to insist that the Hijab is a part of a mandatory dress for Muslim women. The French and the state of Belgium have banned the hijab. Muslim women in these countries have accepted this rule. Unfortunately many in Pakistan do not subscribe to such views and would like to make the hijab compulsory. Recently the Punjab minister for higher education Raza Gilani in an address to the divisional directors of the Lahore board announced that all college going girls in government colleges would be asked to wear the hijab.

He went on to add that those who wear the hijab will be granted 5% grace marks.

Hijab and girls students

Pakistan is dominated by the Mullah but many still do not want a return to the Sharia with all its manifestations. The Punjab government immediately contradicted the Education Minister and announced that there was no plan to enforce the dress code on Muslim girls attending college. Information secretary Raja Jahangir in a statement to the press announced: "No such summary has been received by the provincial cabinet from the Higher Education department". This has been reported by the Tribune. He went on add " that this was beyond his competence to make a policy decision without the government's approval".

Punjab is the cradle of Pakistan culture and the film industry is located in Lahore. The city has a long tradition of being a liberal center and Punjab university is among the top education centers in Asia. This intervention by the government was timely and set at rest the fears of many girl college students that they would be forced to wear the hijab.

Order withdrawn

The Punjab higher education minister has not reacted back, but he had issued a circular making the hijab compulsory along with a mention of 5% grace marks to girls who wear the head cover. This circular is now withdrawn. The chief minister of Punjab is the brother of the PM Nawaz Sharif and this action under his aegis is timely and nipped a possible ugly situation in the bud.
Today, March 12, is World Day Against Cyber-censorship and Amnesty International has determined that in 2016, 55 countries practicing cyber-censorship have arrested people for peaceful expression in online email and social media exchanges.

ProtonMail uses a Swiss-based email server.

To be really secure online as a journalist means protecting your sources - your reporter reserves the username Hildyjohnson for whistleblowers. While anyone can encrypt emails, most people dont bother and in any case, government investigators can learn a lot just from traffic analysis so the location of your email systems server is critical.

For example, if your email system uses servers based in Russia or China you can be pretty certain that someone from the government would be able to access everything on the server with little difficulty

In the US, the United Kingdom, or other democratic countries it is a little more difficult to access your emails but all it takes is a court order for police agencies to gain access to your emails on the companys server in that country. Reuters has already reported that in 2016 Yahoo scanned all @yahoo emails under a secret court order for US security services.

ProtonMail is not only encrypted, it is also physically located in Switzerland, a country which takes privacy very seriously, therefore the server is immune from almost any court order.

Beyond that, the emails on the server are encrypted using the system developed by scientists at CERN, and even Protonmail itself doesnt store have a record of your decryption key so it can't be compelled to decrypt your messages.

Today 2 million people in 150 countries use ProtonMail (which is free at the most basic service level) and many of them are journalists such as your reporter.

Cyber-censorship is on the rise.

As Amnesty International points out, even mass surveillance of communications is a form of censorship since people will avoid sending anything confidential over the Internet if they know it is being monitored.

Even countries not normally thought of as censoring the Internet as China does, are actively censoring access to thousands of websites.

Turkey, for example, blocks access to more than 50,000 IP addresses (web pages) while another United States ally, Saudi Arabia, blocks nearly a half-million Internet sites.

Chinas Great Firewall is well known and currently restricts access to emails, news, social media, and other Internet resources to the countrys 800 million citizens. For example, it is unlikely you could read even this innocuous news story if you were in China.
Uncovering the roots of St Patrick's Day requires a trip back to the period 385-461 AD. It is difficult to decipher the fact from the fiction, since he lived so long ago when record keeping many not have been at an optimum level. As a result, we have many strange tales surrounding this saint, some of which have been deemed false. This article will deal with some of the more commonly acceptable themes surrounding the origin of this holy day.

Patrick's captivity

Born to wealthy parents in Britain, Patrick was taken prisoner by Irish bandits who plundered his estate.

He was taken to Ireland where he spent 6 years in captivity while working as a shepherd. During this time, he was lonely and isolated and turned to his religion for comfort. He became a devout Christian. According to his writings, after six years as a prisoner, he escaped from his captors after God told him in a dream that it was time to leave.

Return to Ireland

Patrick escaped to Britain after walking 200 miles. But in another dream, he was told by an angel to return to Ireland to do missionary work. He studied for some 15 years, at the end of which he was ordained as a priest. As an ordained priest, he returned to Ireland to minister to Christians and convert the Irish pagans. Many believe that Saint Patrick was responsible for bringing Christianity to Ireland.

After his death, reportedly on March 17th, AD 493, he was canonized by the Catholic Church.

Significance of the Shamarock

It is believed that St Patrick's Day was observed for some 1000 years, honoring the patron saint of Ireland, without of course, the parade and festivities that characterize the celebrations today. It would be a day for attending church followed by family feasts.

A Roman scholar, Luke Waddington, in the early 17th century was credited with actually having this day declared a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church. The shamrock, a symbol of this day has also been linked to the saint. It is said that the Shamrock (the name given to the clover plant) was used by him to teach would-be converts about the Holy Trinity.

A religious observance

It was not until 1902 that St Patrick's Day was declared a national holiday by an Act of Parliament. Following that, another law was passed requiring pubs to be closed on March 17th; an Act that was only repealed in 1970, even though the first parade celebrating this feast was held in Dublin in 1931. And while the celebrations in Ireland have taken on a secular tone, it is still first and foremost a religious observance, which both the Church of Ireland and the Catholic Church hold sacred.

A worldwide celebration

Today the patron saint of Ireland is celebrated by both Irish and non- Irish, Catholics, Anglicans and protestants, and even non-Christians. You can find celebrations all over North America and as far as China and New Zealand.

Even Montserrat in the Caribbean celebrates this feast Day which is a national holiday there. For many who don't even know the origins of St Patrick's Day, it is merely a time for festivities, eating Irish food, drinking Irish Beer and wearing Green.
Reuters, by By Alastair Macdonald | BRUSSELS

Companies may ban staff from wearing Islamic headscarves and other visible religious symbols under certain conditions, the European Union's top court ruled on Tuesday, setting off a storm of complaint from rights groups and religious leaders.

In its first ruling on an issue that has become highly charged across Europe, the Court of Justice (ECJ) found a Belgian firm which had a rule that employees who dealt with customers should not wear visible religious or political symbols may not have discriminated against a Muslim receptionist it dismissed for wearing a headscarf.

The judgment on that and a French case came on the eve of a Dutch election in which Muslim immigration is a key issue and weeks before a similarly charged presidential vote in France, where headscarves are banned in public service jobs.

The judges in Luxembourg concluded the dismissals of the two women may, depending on the view of national courts, have breached EU laws against religious discrimination.

They determined that the case of the French engineer Asma Bougnaoui, fired by software company Micropole after a customer complaint, may well have been discriminatory.

Reactions, however, focused on the findings that services firm G4S in Belgium was entitled to dismiss receptionist Samira Achbita in 2006 if, in pursuit of legitimate business interests, it fairly applied a broad dress code for all customer-facing staff to project an image of political and religious neutrality.

"BACKDOOR TO PREJUDICE"

The Open Society Justice Initiative, a group backed by the philanthropist George Soros, said the ruling "weakens the guarantee of equality" offered by EU laws: "In places where national law is weak, this ruling will exclude many Muslim women from the workplace," policy office Maryam Hmadoun said.

Amnesty International welcomed the ruling on the French case that "employers are not at liberty to pander to the prejudices of their clients". But, it said, bans on religious symbols to show neutrality opened "a backdoor to precisely such prejudice".

The president of the Conference of European Rabbis, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, complained: "This decision sends a signal to all religious groups in Europe". National court cases across Europe have included questions on the wearing of Christian crosses, Sikh turbans and Jewish skullcaps.

In the Belgian case, the ECJ said: "An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination."

It was for Belgian judges to determine whether Achbita may have been a victim of indirect discrimination if the rule put people of a particular faith at a disadvantage.

But the rule could still be justified if it was "genuinely pursued in a consistent and systematic manner" to project an "image of neutrality".
In recent days, the biggest story to dominate the news cycle has been Michael Flynn stepping down as National Security Adviser after being accused of illegal communication with Russian officials. The aftermath of the resignation has caused chaos for President Donald Trump, which has also spilled over into the conservative media.

Fox News on Flynn

After Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States last November, he quickly chose retired Gen. Michael Flynn to fill the role as National Security Adviser.

Instantly, critics were quick to lash out at the selection of Flynn, with many accusing the general of "Islamaphobia" for his past comments on Islam and Muslims. Since then, enough reports were able to confirm that Flynn spoke about lifting sanctions on the Kremlin with a Russian offical, which ultimately led to his resignation. These issues, and more, were discussed during the February 15 edition of "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News.

Joining host Bill O'Reilly were fellow Fox News hosts Eric Bolling and Geraldo Rivera. While Bolling was mostly in agreement with O'Reilly, it was what Rivera said that caused the segment to implode. After playing a clip where Donald Trump accused the media of treating Michael Flynn unfairly, O'Reilly asked the panel why the president would ask him to resign.

"If you didn't complain about hacks and leaks when they were damaging to Hillary Clinton, you have no moral right to complain about the hacks and leaks that took down Gen. Flynn," Rivera said. Not stopping there, Rivera then went on to cite recent reports that link Trump campaign officials to the Russian government.

You're Doing Something Un-American: OReilly and Geraldo Rivera Battle Over Russia and Flynn https://t.co/p6vkKhohOf (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/aEiIrYUUjv  Mediaite (@Mediaite) February 16, 2017

"Youre doing something un-American," Bill O'Reilly said to Geraldo Rivera, before adding, "You're convicting!" "I resent that!" Rivera fired back.

The two continued to go back and forth, until Bolling cut into the debate in an attempt to calm the situation.

Moving forward

With Michael Flynn now gone from the administration, the former host of "The Apprentice" appears more concerned with the information leading to his resignation being leaked to the press, than he does his former adviser being involved in illegal activity. As time goes on, Trump's war with the media will continued, as the administration struggles to get past its first month in power.
trumps #unsubstantiated accusation that Mr Obama wiretapped his phones and communications last year has given many Republicans pause to think. Whilst Trump is not still the new President he was a few months ago, his style of leadership is something that many are not growing any more used to as the weeks pass.

One prominent Republican, #Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, said last week that Trump should apologize to Obama since he had no way to prove his claims.

Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty #compelling truth, I think President Obama is owed an apology, Cole spoke to reporters.

If he didnt do it, we shouldnt be reckless in accusations that he did.

Unease with Trump

Others in the Republican party are uneasy with some of Trump's policies, which is not good for the party  and not good for Trump.

Many are writing about a changing Republican party in a time of great discord. As the party seems to be co-opted by those on the far right, like the main advisor to Trump #Steve Bannon, others say it is a merely time of change that will make the party stronger.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was forced to end his recent to South Korea due to "fatigue." Moments after the news broke, social media users were quick to hit back.

Twitter on Tillerson

During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump made sure to hit back at all of his opponents, while gloating about himself in the process. In the Republican primary, one of Trump's first targets was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who the president labeled "low energy" during the debates. The nickname helped sink Bush's chances at the White House and he was forced to drop out before the summer.

By the time the general election had arrived, the former host of "The Apprentice" would routinely mock former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for allegedly not having enough stamina to handle the job of president. These insults have now come back to haunt Trump as Twitter users ripped into Rex Tillerson for allegedly not having the energy to finish his trip to South Korea, as reported by The Hill March 17.

Report: Tillerson cuts short South Korean visit, citing "fatigue" https://t.co/aZpqsB3hGX pic.twitter.com/BFJqAGglXJ  The Hill (@thehill) March 17, 2017

Citing the Korea Herald, The Hill reports that the current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was unable to finish his visit to South Korea due to "fatigue." In response, social media blew up in their mockery of the former head of Exxon Mobil.

"Appointed by the man who said Hillary Clinton had no 'stamina' & even mocked her as 'being weak' when she had pneumonia. Shameful." one Twitter user wrote.

@thehill Appointed by the man who said Hillary Clinton had no "stamina" & even mocked her as "being weak" when she had pneumonia. Shameful.  Ruby S. Jones (@Rjones7771) March 17, 2017

@thehill sheesh! Already? Isn't that his first trip? He may not built for this.   SakiSham (@saki_sham) March 17, 2017

"Such low energy.

Hard to travel on those private USAF jets. Maybe filling swamp with old, fat white men not a good plan?" another tweet read. "Poor Tillerson can't keep up the pace. I recall that Hillary was tireless during her term in office," another Twitter user pointed out. Other tweets were quick and to the point in their trolling of Rex Tillerson and the Donald Trump administration.

"Low energy!! SAD!" a tweet read, with another noting, "No stamina."

@thehill isn't lack of stamina something Trump criticised Hillary for? He's hardly begun the job. It must seem exceptionally rude to S.Korea  Sally (@The_Ouroborus) March 17, 2017

Moving forward

Despite the social media reaction to Rex Tillerson calling his visit short, the bigger news coming out of the trip to South Korea was the confirmation by the White House that military action against North Korea was still "on the table." The news didn't sit well with other nations in the region, which prompted Donald Trump to fire back on Twitter, accusing China of not helping enough in dealing with the situation.
The result of the #Dutch elections was surprising to some, reassuring to others. But the most remarkable element of the election was the turnout.

The #number of people who voted was astounding to both critics and observers worldwide: about 82 percent, which was the highest in many years. This was in stark contrast to the 33 percent of voters who voted in a referendum last year that spurned a connection between Ukraine and the European Union.

The #Dutch elections were seen as a barometer of the political climate in Europe, a measure of populist sentiment in the country and the region.

The election was also carefully watched since it took place in the lead up to critical elections in both France and Germany, where far-right candidates have been taking advantage of anti-immigrant sentiments and building on an escalating anger and resentment against both democratic liberalism and the status quo.

More votes to the center party

According to the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation, which ran an unofficial rally, Mr Ruttes #Peoples Party For Freedom and Democracy won 33 of the 150 seats in the Dutch Parliament. The anti-immigration and populist right wing Geert Wilderss Party for Freedom was placed second with 20 seats.

#Geert Wilders tried to be optimistic about his losing results, writing: We were the third largest party of the Netherlands. Now, we are the 2nd largest party. Next time we will be nr. 1!
Mr trump lashed out at Hawaiian Judge Watson Wednesday at a campaign-style rally in Nashville where he pledged to get his travel ban through the courts.

Shouting hoarsely, Donald Trump accused #Judge Watson of taking a cynical political stance on the travel ban. He also took time to criticize the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had supported the earlier court ruling against his travel ban.

This ruling makes us look weak, which by the way we no longer are, believe me, the President said, as the crowd cheered on in a loyal manner.

Trump claimed that he was interested in reissuing the original version of the travel ban, instead of the one that was blocked on Wednesday, since the latter was already watered down.

Judge Watson also roundly rejected the governments case that a court would have to examine Mr. Trumps veiled psyche to find any religious animus that proves it is discriminatory.

There is nothing veiled about this press release, Judge Watson wrote, quoting a document from the Trump campaign that is titled Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
Clean-label ingredients specialist Ulrick & Short has launched Avante, a sugar replacement aimed at the bakery industry.

Avante enables manufacturers to reduce sugar by up to 25% in frostings and as much as 50% in some sweet fillings, claimed the company.

Yorkshire-based Ulrick & Short said sugar content could be reduced by up to 50% with no adverse effect on texture, taste or mouthfeel.

The tapioca-based product recently made its grocery debut after a household name retailer used it to reduce the sugar content in cupcake frosting in a Christmas line, with further products targeting children to follow this year, added the company.

It said in a statement: The primary challenge in sugar replacement is less to replicate the sweetness and more about retaining functionality and form; in the case of frostings, the key is to maintain structure and volume.

John Ellis, field support technologist at Ulrick & Short, said: Reducing fat affects structure and volume and increasing fat adds calories  so that is precisely where Avante comes in, either on its own or in conjunction with one of our other innovative ingredients.

Coupled with other ingredients, such as fat replacers, proteins and fibres, food manufacturers have everything they need to provide consumers with healthier alternatives to their favourite foods, including sugar-loaded bakery.
Britain is seething after the White House suggested that President Obama deployed a #British spy agency in London to spy on trump whilst he was running in the US presidential campaign last year.

The secret surveillance claim was received with anger and yet the White House didn't apologize or try and rectify the situation publicly. This comes as critics are asserting that Trump's foreign policy and international diplomacy skills are lacking, and that the new President is throwing offside, and even alienating, many countries that were once seen as #key US allies.

Britain responds

A spokesman for the #British Prime Minister Theresa May said the White House had backtracked on the allegation on Friday, even though much was being made in the British press. Weve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored, the spokesman said under anonymity as British protocol dictates. Weve received assurances these allegations wont be repeated.

The reassurances were received after British insiders had grumbled to White House officials on Thursday. The British Ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, talked with White House press secretary #Sean Spicer at a Saint Patricks Day event in DC on Thursday. This was only a few hours after Spicer made the British spy claim at his everyday briefing.Theresa May's national security adviser, Mark Lyall Grant, also spoke one-to-one with his American counterpart, Lt General McMaster.

Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster, a White House official said in an anonymous capacity of the #private conversations that had taken place. Mr. Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.

Alternate facts and fake news

This debacle echoes the tendency the current administration has of, according to its critics, holding onto misleading or #unverified facts, something that in an era of 'fake news' claims has baffled many in Washington.

#Sean Spicer didn't apologize for his statements, according to White House officials. The same officials couldn't verify whether General McMaster had apologized either.

The debacle with Britain emerged when Spicer was defending Trump's original accusation, about Obama spying on him, and referenced some comments from Fox news that alleged a #British spy agency was involved.

That Fox commentator, Andrew Napolitano, stated on live television that Obama had deployed the services of #Britains Government Communications Headquarters, an agency known as the GCHQ, to observe and spy on Trump.

The GCHQ denied the #allegations made on Thursday in an atypical statement made by the agency that called the allegations nonsense and "utterly ridiculous."

A transatlantic train wreck

On Friday morning, the whole affair had blown up into a #transatlantic political liability that many critics claimed highlighted Trump administration's inability to handle international diplomacy. The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated, Susan Rice, ex-national security adviser to Obama, wrote on Twitter.

And from the PODIUM.

Meanwhile, politicians and officials in Britain also #expressed outrage and sought apologies and renunciations from the Oval Office. And yet Trump doggedly continues to stick by his claim about Obama, even as overwhelming evidence, or lack of, points to his potentially grave error.
The news story that survived well past its expiration is the one about President Trump accusing former President Obama of wiretapping his phones at the Trump Tower hotel, without proof. The reason as to why the story wouldn't die was because certain Congressional committee powers decided to pursue evidence through the Department of Justice and the FBI which many critics said either entertains Trump's conspiracy theory or draws it out into the open to call his bluff.

News that hasn't taken hold, however, is the other claim Trump made against President Obama that he is also the source of leaks coming out of the White House.

Since the beginning of Donald Trump's presidency, he's increased his attacks on the press which have reported stories that reflect on him negatively. All conflicts between his administration and the press came to a head when his national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn resigned over "leaks" that said he had been in contact with the Russian government during the time that Obama imposed more sanctions on Russia and during an investigation against the transition team.

Before Wikileaks broke news on CIA

RELEASE: Vault 7 Part 1 "Year Zero": Inside the CIA's global hacking force https://t.co/h5wzfrReyy pic.twitter.com/N2lxyHH9jp  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

Soon after Flynn had resigned, both Donald Trump and his Press Secretary attacked the press suggesting that Flynn had resigned not because he was in communication with Russian officials but rather that he had deceived Pence and that the leaks revealing the calls were at fault.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer would then enforced a temporary ban on some media outlets on behalf of Trump to get even with them. It was also reported that Spicer attempted to crack down on leaks from the White House by holding a surprise meeting with staffers, checking their phones for software he says are a violation of White House privacy rules.

More recently, however, Wikileaks released damning information about the capability of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hacking tools on electronic devices which forced Spicer to not only address the issue but do so in the context of the leaking of all or any information. During a press briefing the following Wednesday after Wikileaks published the documents, he stated how there was a double-standard over the response of leaks under the Obama administration as opposed to the Trump administration.

He also expressed some frustration on behalf of the White House that the focus on the controversy over Russian interference wasn't about the leaks but rather, what the leaks revealed.

Trump blames Obama

.@wikileaks has become the preferred intelligence service for a conspiracy-addled White House, writes @MaxBoot https://t.co/OmOG5zGJOo  Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 9, 2017

The President's praise of the Wikileaks organization when they released DNC emails that were allegedly stolen by Russian hackers during the campaign was brought up by Sean Spicer, suggesting there was a double-standard for the press be fine with those leaks and not the recent ones from the CIA. President Trump has already both attacked and praised the intelligence community in much the same way as he has with any organization that has been against him.

One report by CNN quoted the Press Secretary's response: "There is a big difference between disclosing Podesta -- John Podesta's Gmail accounts about a back-and-forth and his undermining of Hillary Clinton and his thoughts on her on a personal nature, and the leaking of classified information."

What hasn't changed is the approach the Trump administration (at least via Vice President Mike Pence) has adopted from Obama against Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, who is under the protection of the Ecuadorian government; where Pence said that the White House would use the full force of the law to go after WikiLeaks. But this is where one becomes confused between what the Trump White House says and what it actually does as President Trump has had little to nothing to say about Wikileaks news since it leaked CIA documents to reveal his views.

When President Trump was on Fox News Wednesday night, he repeated what Spicer said during the March 8 press briefing that the CIA had been hacked under Obama, saying the leaks were the former President's fault.
Rex Tillerson is on a mission to broker peace between Pyongyang and Seoul with the help of their neighbors in Beijing and Tokyo. He is the US Secretary of State and wants to chalk out a new path because efforts of the past two decades have failed to produce any tangible result. Therefore, he has gone to Tokyo from where he will proceed to hold meetings in Beijing and Seoul to get an inkling of their ideas to reduce tension in the korean peninsula.

Tillersons approach to the problem

CNN reports that there was a news conference in Tokyo, with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

In the conference, Tillerson said that, in spite of efforts of nearly two decades, it has not been possible to dissuade North Korea from its nuclear weapon plans and, a new policy needs to be drawn up. Both Tillerson and Kishida agreed to stand together against provocations of North Korea.

As far as China is concerned, it has its own plans to defuse tension in the Korean peninsula. It suggests that North Korea suspends its ballistic missile tests and nuclear activities. Simultaneously, the United States and South Korea should suspend their annual joint military exercises that antagonize Pyongyang. Such a proposal was put up by China a week back but, was rejected by the US State Department.

Pyongyang also rejected the Chinese proposal.

It said that the United States can carry on with their annual military drills along with its followers and leave DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) to strengthen its capabilities of defense and preemptive strike.

The future scenario

As per available reports, America has spent nearly $1.35 billion dollars between 1995 and 2008 to help out North Korea.

The money was towards food aid and energy assistance, but Pyongyang diverted the funds to develop nuclear capabilities and launch more missiles. Efforts have been made by the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to arrive at a solution with Pyongyang during Six-Party Talks which began in 2003. However, no solution has emerged as yet.

Sanctions against Pyongyang also appears to have had no result because it continues to go ahead with its nuclear and missile programs.

The Trump administration wants China to take a leading role. It has a major weapon at its command in the form of economic leverage over North Korea and should deploy that to compel the Kim Jong Un regime to put an end to its weapons development program. China argues that it is for the U.S. and the DPRK to have dialogues and evolve a suitable plan of action. With such a scenario, it remains to be seen what Rex Tillerson can achieve and, whether he can find the all-elusive solution in the Korean peninsula.
It has now become common knowledge that media and politicians alike often focus on the threat of attack from foreign powers to push their own agenda, whether it be a new bill, policy, executive order or ratings. The problem is, while many realize such agendas exist, we still allow them to divide us based on an us vs. them approach. The fact of the matter is, even the most simple problems facing Americans today are not black and white, and our failure to realize the complexity of the issues only leads to more problems.

Military might

First of all, you might think that a such a statement as a mindset creating a bigger threat to Americans' freedom than a potentially hostile nation with nuclear capability seems unreasonable.

However, if you look at the numbers, you will see that threat may not be as great as you have been led to believe. While tensions may at times be high, the U.S. spent $596 billion in 2015 on defense in 2015. This is not only more than China and Russia combined, but more than the next 7 countries combined (China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan, respectively). Our massive budget and worldwide presence make any hostile action an extremely risky proposition for aggressors - even when alliances are formed.

That doesn't mean attacks on American citizens couldn't happen, but the fact is we remain the largest military power in the world - by a wide margin. Not only that, the United States and our allies hold a massive economic influence throughout the world.

An attack on American citizens by a single nation or a small alliance, even such as Russia and China, would have massive consequences for the attacking country. Any such attack, would likely only happen as a result of provocation.

Moral dualism

William Perry's model of Intellectual and Ethical Development was developed in the 1960's and 1970's.

It has since been noted that, while the model may have some flaws in regard to variations in individuals and the methods used to obtain evidence, it is also a useful tool in reference to the learning habits of students. The model states that students move through four stages development as they mature. The first stage is dualism: During dualism information is received and accepted from sources which are viewed as having authority, but the information is not questioned.

Problems are seen as having a correct and incorrect answer, or black and white. The next stage is multiplicity, in which students realize differing opinions matter in the course of finding solutions and there may be multiple solutions to a problem. The third stage is relativism: Knowledge is based on context and fact. Evidence and sources, even experts, are evaluated with a skeptical approach. The final stage is commitment with relativism meaning that while a relative and skeptical approach remains, students have committed to personal values and beliefs. They realize that beliefs can, and should, change with new knowledge.

Perry's model illustrates what is happening on a political-social scale in America.

We seem to have either reverted from commitment with relativity to dualism, or not matured past dualism at all. We blindly accept the evidence provided by anyone we perceive as an authority, be it a politician, news company, celebrity or our peers. We do not question evidence we believe will solve our problem(s), but we disregard evidence which contradicts our beliefs. We fail to adjust our beliefs to new knowledge, or simply reject the knowledge. While we, as a country, fail to recognize the complexity of the issues we face, we allow ourselves to be divided into two sides: left or right; conservative or liberal; republican or democrat; black or white; LGBT or heterosexual. The fact is these issues can not be solved by two opposing views alone. They do not have a right or a wrong answer. They have good solutions, and bad solutions - the only way is to analyze the evidence and adjust our views to come to an effective solution.
No two people will ever agree on everything and this analogy begins with religion and politics. Political parties too are divided within themselves according to issues and leaders, but in recent years the Republican Party has shown that it no longer has a core identity and belief system and the result is a White House that few would consider truly Republican.

Tea Party

In 2009 the emergence of the group known as the Tea Party shook the right of mainstream American politics. This group took a view that approached laissez faire capitalism in that the private sector should not have to suffer government interference and, as the name suggests, that taxes should be lowered.

The confusion it caused within Republican ranks and with The Partys supporters meant that the White House would remain in Democrat hands until 2017.

The Tea Partys effects are still felt now as Donald Trump campaign agenda and now the budget presented this week shows clear signs of some of the changes wanted by the splinter group.

But the Tea Party was a symptom of the problems within the GOP and not of the sickness proper and that would come to a head in 2015 with the Primaries for the 2016 presidential election.

Candidate

When businessman #Donald Trump announced his run for office the news was greeted wryly by many. Trump had no experience of the military, diplomacy or even in politics that are the normal prerequisites for the highest Office in the land.

He simply had a plan to make changes and then would go on to invent a personal political agenda as the campaign progressed and he understood what made people react more.

The Party hierarchy and the other candidates at first scoffed at the political rookie and then began to worry as one by one he defeated the other candidates to become the Hillary Clintons opponent in the presidential race and then to go on to the White House.

The public squabbles during the various levels of the campaign, beginning in the Primaries, exposed the divisions within the GOP. These arguments between Republicans continued after the Inauguration and they never stopped.

Leaders

The progress of the erstwhile politician was a clear sign of two qualities of the modern day Republican Party.

The first was the lack of a clear party identity and policy agenda as it followed the new President in all his orders and changes.

The second quality was the lack of strong leadership at the highest levels of the Party. This may not have stopped Donald Trumps progress along the political road, but it would have identified the policy issues that are now causing the divisions within the Party.

The repeal of the AFA was definitely one of these as the phrase meant nothing and everything to politicians and the public. Now as the Ryan proposal is under the hammer many Republicans have now realized that it has become a viper that may well bite them back at the midterms next year.

The same can be said in regards to the allegations of Russian interference in the election.

A strong leadership would have tackled the problem immediately and not let the matter lie. On this it must be remembered that the famous report that instigated the current investigations was given to the FBI by Republican John McCain and not by Democrat politicians as is a sign of the concern of some within the Party about the new President.

Next phase

As the President continues on his road to make changes in the system the very identity of GOP is also being redefined. The comments of prominent Republicans regarding their Presidents accusation of wiretapping of Trump Tower by the previous Administration may be a sign that some are reaching a boiling point in regards to the Oval Office.

The debate on the proposed #budget will cause further division between President Trump and his Party but no solution will come to this situation until all involved ask themselves What does the Republican Party represent?

The answer to that question will decide the fate of the Party and the Presidency.
Not long after Donald Trump announced his campaign for president, "Saturday Night Live" made it a point to target the billionaire real estate mogul. While Trump has been silent about the show in public, he's reportedly been livid in private.

Trump on 'SNL'

Over the course of the entire 2016 presidential election, "Saturday Night Live" mocked and trolled Donald Trump. The show tapped actor Alec Baldwin to the play the part of the former host of "The Apprentice." While Baldwin's impression received rave reviews from critics, Trump made a habit of lashing out over "SNL," often venting on social media and making late-night Twitter rants a weekly routine.

In recent weeks, Trump has been quiet, prompting many to wonder why the he hasn't offered his thoughts on the show that has only increased its time targeting the president. According to The Washington Post, and later The Hill, on February 14, Trump is not happy with how his administration has been portrayed.

Over the last two weeks, "Saturday Night Live" has gone beyond poking fun at Donald Trump, and have instead also gone after top members of his administration. Melissa McCarthy has taken on the role of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, which earlier reports indicate bothered Trump due to his male adviser being played by a woman. Kate McKinnon has also played a variety of roles on "SNL," but it's her portrayal of Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway that has been one of the highlights of the show.

Upheaval is now standard operating procedure inside Trump's White House https://t.co/Dwb26Ldzcd  Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 14, 2017

In the recent report by The Washington Post, Donald Trump is reportedly the most upset by the skits that have portrayed Chief Strategist Steven Bannon as the real commander in chief.

"Aides said Trump was especially upset by a sketch that cast White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon as the Grim Reaper manipulating the president," the report said.

Next up

While Donald Trump continues to stay mum on "SNL," the latest episode, hosted by Alec Baldwin, received its highest ratings in six years. While it's unknown if the president will remain silent on the issue, "Saturday Night Live" is expected to keep their focus on the administration.
Josh Murray and Amanda Stanton got engaged on "Bachelor in Paradise" and moved really fast. He moved in with her and her daughters, but things didn't work out for them. Now Us Magazine shared that Josh is talking about the split and how he misses her girls now that he is gone. This is the hardest part for Josh about moving on with his life after this big split.

What did Josh Murray reveal?

They got the chance to talk to Josh while at Love Bites event at STK Miami on Tuesday. Josh admits that it has been "rough" getting back to normal life without Amanda and her daughters in his life.

He was used to spending all of his time with them and this is a big change. Josh did move back to Atlanta right after the split.

Josh Murray shared that this has been a hard adjustment because he got really attached to Amanda's two daughters. He said that this is the hardest part about being single now for him because he does miss the girls. If you follow Josh on social networks, he was constantly posting about the girls and sharing pictures with them while he was with Amanda. Josh was close to the girls that is for sure.

One thing that Josh shared is that he talks to her daughter Charlie and when he is in the are again he hopes to see her. Josh admits that he doesn't really like to just end a relationship and not still be friends with the person.

This has been hard on him, but Josh will find a way to move on. Josh is hopeful he will get to see her again.

Josh Murray isn't sure if he would ever go back on reality television again or not. He wants to find love and a wife, but he isn't so sure that reality TV is the way to find it. He has been on several shows so far. Josh is hopeful he will find his person, but you never know how it is going to end up happening.

Are you shocked that Josh Murray and Amanda Stanton split? Do you think that these two could end up back together? Sound off in the comments section below on your thoughts, and don't miss watching Nick Viall on "The Bachelor" 2017 on Monday nights on ABC.
Andy Summers, the former lead guitarist of the 80s-rock band "The Police," has a new album scheduled for release on March 24. It will be titled 'Triboluminescence and released under Flickering Shadow Productions. The title is a scientific word that refers to creating light from dark. The album will be released on all digital platforms in the U.S. and on Amazon and Cargo Records in the U.K.

Summers' successful solo career

A special vinyl edition will also be released with nine extra bonus tracks on it about a month after the original CD is released.

The new album is an exotic mix of soft rock and world music with Summers signature guitar sound. He experiments with various instruments and broadens his creativity building on his 2015 album, "Metal Dog." One of the tracks, Pukul Buny Bunye," is an Indonesian phrase that means, hammering striking keys.

We spoke to Andy Summers regarding the new album, his photography work and an upcoming solo tour in Brazil.

Im trying to bring in fresh, alternative-type sounds into what I do, its not like this old-star jazz, or rock its putting into more interesting areas, Andy Summers said in a phone interview. That's what this new album reflects, it's all me on the record, there are no guest artists. "Its very much a solo creative process filled with pain, I put all these things together, I created many tracks before I put together the album for what it actually is.

Summers said that he's released many albums and doesn't have to be safe or commercial.

"I can do what I like. He added, Metal Dog went out well it got me back into making records again after I took a sabbatical." "This is where I got back into my own thing, and I really enjoy it. I like being in the studio alone with the engineer and creating all this music on my own."

Life after 'The Police'

Andy is also a professional photographer and has been throughout his successful career as a guitarist for the 80s band The Police. He wrote a memoir in 2006 titled One Train Later." It was followed by a documentary film, Cant Stand Losing You, named after the iconic famous Police hit, and was released in 2015.

Summers' photographs were also featured in that film.

Andy had recent exhibits across the globe at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Germany. This year, Steidl will publish The Bones of Chuang Tzu," which features Andys photography from several journeys to China.

Not right at this moment, Ive had many exhibits in the last two or three years; there will be more this year, Im just about to go to Brazil." "I had an exhibit in L.A.

last year. Ive had many and this year I think Ill do another exhibit in Shanghai in October. He also has a signature camera coming out, by Leica Camera. Im very involved with photography.

"The Police" last had an official reunion in 2007-08. The disappointing news for the fans is that there will be no reunion this year. Summers would rather concentrate on his solo work. Summers said hes only in touch with his former Police band mates occasionally and doesnt seek them out.

I havent got time," Summers said. These events are fantastically large set-up, political, financial, business set-up and then a few months later youre on tour, its a much bigger deal than that. I will be playing a lot of Police material in Brazil with an amazing Brazilian superband! "I prefer to produce albums in the studio. Im doing a solo performance at the Grammy Museum next week in L.A.

Summers said the music has changed since his early days in "The Police."

Old bands still exist but they sound a bit old-fashioned now," Summers said.

"You have to look for the diamonds in the rough. I have eclectic tastes in music and I think as a musician you have to keep your headspace creative and not after everyone elses stuff.

No U.S. tour at the moment, his schedule is currently booked up. The solo tour in Brazil begins in April with more dates to follow.
It's no secret that Donald Trump is not in the good graces of many Hollywood celebrities. For "Star Trek" actor George Takei, he didn't hold back his thoughts of the president during a multiple-tweet rant that lasted 24 hours.

Takei on Twitter

When Donald Trump first announced his plan to run for president, he quickly came under fire for referring to illegal immigrants from Mexico as "rapists" and "murderers." Since that time, the more liberal Hollywood has pushed back at the former host of "The Apprentice," with many using their popularity on social media to voice their opposition to the president.

While there are many who speak out against Trump on a daily basis, George Takei is at the top of the list. As seen on his Twitter account on March 16, Takei engaged on a series of blistering tweets against the president.

At rally in TN, Trump takes dig at Hillary while supporters chant "Lock her up!" In other news, it's no longer 2016, and Trump is an idiot.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

The "President" handles fake crises like microwave "wire tapping" poorly. It's laughable now, but what happens when there's a real crisis?  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

Starting during Donald Trump's rally on Wednesday night, George Takei lashed out on Twitter. "At rally in TN, Trump takes dig at Hillary while supporters chant "Lock her up!,'" Takei wrote, while adding, "In other news, it's no longer 2016, and Trump is an idiot." Takei then shifted his focus onto the White House's proposed budget and potential ties to Russia.

"Someone should just claim they have Trump's 2015 taxes to see if the White House comes out in advance and explains all that Russian money," he noted.

Trump's budget cuts 3200 EPA workers but adds 1500 ICE agents. America will be getting dirtier and nastier in many ways. Blue States: RESIST  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

Someone should just claim they have Trump's 2015 taxes to see if the White House comes out in advance and explains all that Russian money.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

Takei on "Muslim ban"

When the news came out that a federal judge in Hawaii had blocked Trump's revised travel ban, George Takei also chimed in.

"It's somewhat poetic that a judge from the state which issued Obama's birth certificate slammed the door on Trump's Muslim Ban," he wrote. In a follow-up tweet, Takei then added, "Trump's Muslim Ban just lost again, with a MD fed judge this a.m. joining the judge in HI last night to block enforcement of key portions."

It's somewhat poetic that a judge from the state which issued Obama's birth certificate slammed the door on Trump's Muslim Ban.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

The rulings halting Muslin Ban 2.0 illustrate that discriminatory intent can hide behind facially neutral words. They're on to you, Donald.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

"Justin Trudeau took Ivanka to 'Come From Away'--a play about town welcoming foreigners--hours after Muslim ban struck," George Takei pointed out, concluding, "Troll level: MASTER." After many supporters of the president called to boycott Hawaii, Takei made sure to give his take.

"I'm sure #BoycottHawaii will go as well as #BoycottHamilton, #BoycottStarbucks and #BoycottStarWars went," he wrote.

Muslim Ban 1 -> struck down

Muslim Ban 2 -> struck down#TrumpCare -> DOA



So much winning, Donald. So much.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

Justin Trudeau took Ivanka to "Come From Away"--a play about town welcoming foreigners--hours after Muslim ban struck. Troll level: MASTER  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 16, 2017

Not stopping there, George Takei continued his thoughts on the block of the travel block. "The rulings halting Muslin Ban 2.0 illustrate that discriminatory intent can hide behind facially neutral words," he wrote, stating, "They're on to you, Donald."

Trump could just ditch the GOP plans altogether and go with health coverage for all--which is what he campaigned on. https://t.co/Jyix1uHr8L  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) March 17, 2017

Takei's closes

In his final tweet as of press time, George Takei decided to speak out against the White House's plan on health care.

Takei linked to an article from Vox that said a close friend of Donald Trump is pushing the commander in chief to ditch the GOP health care plan, and go with a universal single-payer system, with the actor also adding his own comment. "Trump could just ditch the GOP plans altogether and go with health coverage for all--which is what he campaigned on," he wrote. Takei sent that tweet out shortly before 9 p.m., which was nearly 24 hours after his social media post from the previous night.
A child stands in front of an Oishi snack food poster in Nanchang, Jiangxi province. [Photo/China Daily]

Oishi, the snack-food giant from the Philippines, has come to value China as a center of new technology to spur further growth in its business, as the market has become an ever more sophisticated and international one.

However, Larry Chan, head of China operations for Liwayway Group, the company behind Oishi snacks, said he still sees a sense of hesitance and caution among Filipino entrepreneurs when it comes to investing in China, despite the potential in the market.

Larry Chan, head of China operations of Liwayway Group. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"I think people are very interested. They know China is their opportunity, but they are also very careful," Chan told China Daily on Wednesday.

"It's still a very different environment and culture compared with the Philippines. People tend to be on the conservative side, maybe hesitant to make that leap.

"In terms of resources, China has been a major source of agricultural materials, and now, new technology. With our presence in China, it also expands our capability to develop new products," Chan said.

Liwayway has made Oishi a household name in China since it set up its China headquarters in Shanghai in 1993.

However, the dynamics in the Chinese market have changed in recent years with the emergence of e-commerce and rising labor costs, which has presented the company with new challenges.

As operational costs "increased significantly" in the past few years, Liwayway turned to investing in new products and technology, in a bid to keep its edge in the market.

The company has more than 150 products under the Oishi brand in China, bigger than the product line in its home country.

Still positive about the China market, Liwayway continues to invest across China.

Chan said China had become "a very international market", where "you can access different resources from around the globe".

"I think that's a big advantage," he added.

Liwayway currently runs 16 factories in China, with new plants in Shandong, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shanghai. The company also acquired Spanish beverage company Cola Cao's business in Tianjin for $13 million in May 2016.

By the end of 2015, Philippine investment in China exceeded $3.2 billion. And Chinese firms are expected to invest more than $10.4 billion in the Philippines, mainly in infrastructure and industrial park projects.

These projects are expected to create 11,500 jobs for the Filipinos, Philippine Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez is reported as saying.

The amount of this deal surpassed the total amount of direct investment by the end of 2015 from China in the Philippines, which was only $783 million.

In terms of trade, China has become the biggest trading partner of the Philippines for three consecutive months since November 2016 with steady growth in trade volume.
Gourmet pie business Square Pie has launched a Pick n Mix pie bar kiosk as part of a renovated retail offering at Vue cinemas in Cribbs Causeway, Bristol.

The Pick n Mix pie bar, which the company claims will be the first of its kind in the country, will allow consumers to personalise meals with a choice of six mini pies, wedges and a selection of dipping sauces.

As part of the launch, Square Pie will debut a new mini pie  Beef Bolognese  that will feature alongside its range, which includes steak & ale, BBQ bourbon beef, chicken & mushroom and cheese & onion.

Martin Dewey, founder of Square Pie, said the company was thrilled to be working with Vue to bring something new to its customers in Bristol.

Pick and mix proper little pies whilst watching a great film, what could be better? Also, at less than 200kcal for the savoury ones, theyre practically guilt-free, said Dewey.

Paschalis Loucaides, head of retail for Vue, said the company was excited to bring a brand new retail experience to Vue cinemas in Cribbs Causeway.

Square Pie operates five restaurants in the UK, with locations including Westfield London, The O2 and, most recently, Birmingham Grand Central.
China welcomes Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's remarks to allow Chinese research vessels into waters close to the Philippines where Chinese survey ships were spotted last year, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday ahead of a senior official's trip to Manila.

China fully respects the Philippines' continental shelf rights over Benham Rise, and such rights have never been challenged by China, spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news conference.

She added that according to the basic norms of international laws, continental shelves and exclusive economic zones do not belong to territory. A coastal states rights over the continental shelf should not affect other countries' rights of navigation freedom as supported by international laws, Hua said.

"As President Duterte mentioned, China and the Philippines have already communicated over the relevant issues, exchanged views in a friendly manner, cleared the facts and handled the issue properly," she said.

Duterte told reporters on Monday that he had agreed to allow Chinese research ships sailing in Benham Rise waters. "Let us not fight about ownership or sovereignty at this time because things are going great for my country," Duterte said.

"Some people are just blowing it up. We previously agreed. It was a research ship. We were advised of it way ahead," he said.

The Philippine president's remarks are a rectification to the hawkish comments of the country's defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, who said last week that he had "ordered the Navy that if they see this service ship this year, to start to accost them and drive them away."

On March 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that in 2012, the UN Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf (CLCS) approved the Philippines' application for a 200-sea-mile outer continental shelf limit in Benham Rise.

Accordingly, the Philippines may exploit natural resources there, but the Philippines cannot regard it as its territory, Geng said.

Vice-Premier Wang Yang will visit Philippines from Thursday to Sunday, during which he will meet with Duterte, attend the open ceremony of China-ASEAN tourism year, and deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of China-Philippine economic and trade forum, said Hua.
Premier Li Keqiang is to pay official visits to Australia and New Zealand next week, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The visit will be the first such trip by Chinese premier to the two countries since 2006.

At the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English, the premier will visit the two countries from March 22 to March 29, the ministrys spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference.

In Australia, the premier will also attend the fifth annual meeting between Chinese and Australian prime ministers, Hua added.

China has maintained frequent high-level exchanges with these two most important Oceanic trading partners, both of whom enjoyed trade surplus against China last year.

In April last year, Turnbull made his first visit to China since taking office, just one week before former New Zealand prime minister John Keys trip to Beijing.

In September, Premier Li met with Turnbull when both leaders attended the East Asia Summit in Laos.
A contemporary art exhibition featuring vintage items and traditional handicrafts by artists from the China Academy of Fine Arts was held at the New Shanghai Theatre on March 10, marking the historical building's return as a performance venue.

First built in the early 1940s, the New Shanghai Theatre was initially home to the Yihua Company, which presented Chinese plays such as The Wilderness by Cao Yu.

The building was later turned into a cinema before becoming a State-owned establishment managed under the cultural administration of Xuhui district in 1958.

The building went on to serve several other functions - it was even used as a supermarket for some time - before being shut down in 2011 because of concerns with structural safety.

Tong Xin, the theater director of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center (SDAC), said that the theater was brought back to cater to people's growing appetite for culture and live performances. The New Shanghai Theatre will be managed by SDAC.

Neri&Hu, the firm that designed the interiors of Pollen Street Social by British chef Jason Atherton as well as those at several high-end dining establishments along the Bund, was later hired to breathe new life into the New Shanghai Theatre.

Impressed with the fast pace of life in downtown Shanghai where the theater is located, Neri&Hu co-founder Lyndon Neri said that he wanted the refurbished premises to "slow people down" and bring a "solemn experience before you experience culture".

To achieve this, the design firm introduced three roof windows in the lobby area to bathe the area in natural light. Neri said that the entrance of the building has also been retracted several meters in order to leave an open space in front of the building.

Located at the corner of Shaanxi South Road and Fuxing Middle Road, in the heart of the former French Concession, the refurbished theater will have 300 seats, an "ideal size" for theater performances, said Tong.

However, the theater will not be limited to just performances. Rather, the SDAC is aiming to turn it into a vibrant creative space.

"It is not just a theater where we put on shows at night. We will open up the space as much as we can, and host a wide range of activities here. There will be creative markets, a rooftop cafe, and lectures in the main theater too," said Tong.

The theater's opening season will start on March 31 with a new rendition of The Wilderness produced by SDAC. Tong said the program will feature a variety of genres, from traditional Chinese operas to contemporary interpretations of classical plays.

zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn
Beijing urged parties involved in the Korean Peninsula issue to think outside the box, be pragmatic and seriously consider China's "dual suspension" proposal.

At a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Pyongyang to suspend nuclear and missile programs, and Washington and Seoul to suspend large-scale joint military exercises.

The dual suspension proposal is "objective, fair, reasonable and feasible", Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday.

The suggestions, however, were rejected by the US and the ROK.

Mark Toner, acting spokesman of the US State Department, said the US doesn't see the dual suspensions as "a viable deal".

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, said the US is "considering every option that's on the table", The Associated Press reported. Cho Tae-yul, the ROK ambassador to the UN, also rejected the idea of dual suspensions.

In return, Geng urged the US and the ROK to break their stereotypical thinking and assume a pragmatic and reasonable attitude.

Geng said the Korean Peninsula issue, which is "highly complicated" at a time when mutual trust is "greatly lacking" among parties involved, can only be solved in a lasting, thorough and effective manner through tackling the concerns of all.

He said China's proposal reflects the Korean Peninsula's reality, takes into account the most urgent concerns of all parties, and is in line with the efforts of related UN Security Council resolutions.

"We hope all parties ... will study carefully and respond constructively to China's proposal and approach," Geng said.

"China also welcomes better suggestions by parties involved on how to solve the peninsula's current predicament," he added.

US State Secretary Rex Tillerson will visit Japan, the ROK and China from Wednesday, and will discuss issues including the Korean Peninsula issue.
Uruguayan Tomahawk steaks are among the recent imported items on offer by GroupMall.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Gianmarco Meli grew up in Sicily, he says, "but I did a student exchange in Sweden and I loved the experience of living abroad."

So he didn't think twice when he was offered an internship with a food-importing business in China three years ago.

That experience had two results: It connected him with importers and suppliers, and he also heard from many friends who struggled to find consistent quality in imported foods they liked at a good price.

So he found a partner with a background in IT, and pitched their idea for a food-buying platform in a competition run by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The idea was to make group buys on specialty items: There would be a quota for shares to be purchased, then GroupMall would buy in bulk, divide the goods, and ship everything from steaks to organic brown rice to the shareholders.

The plan captured the judges' interest, and GroupMall was born. Successfully launched in co-working space in Shanghai, the company is weaning itself off its start-up capital, preparing its own office spaceand this month, branching out to Beijing.

Besides group buying, GroupMall offers about a half-dozen "hot deals" to its followers each week. Recent items included Uruguayan Tomahawk steaks, coconut water and chips, blueshell mussels, gluten-free snacks, grain-fed beef prime rib and grass-fed beef cuberoll.

While imported items are most in demand, Meli also looks for quality, hard-to-find foods from within China. He's connected with Tibetan growers of black truffles as well as Dutchman Marc de Ruiter, whose Shanxi-based Yellow Valley Cheese company produces organic, fair-trade Gouda in several flavors.
The Beaujolais Nouveau is released every year on the third Thursday of November, and the occasion is marked by numerous festivities all over France as revelers uncork bottles to savor this light and fruity red wine.

For the first time in the wine's history, a Chinese ambassador named Yan Zhuyin became a part of the famed celebrations last year. Yan, a Shenzhen native and a visual design major who had just graduated from university, earned her spot after winning the Miss Beaujolais China beauty pageant which was aimed at promoting the wine in the world's most populous country.

In a long lace dress and a sparkling tiara, the 22-year-old joined the winner of Miss Beaujolais France for the biggest party that was held in Les Sarmentelles to uncork the wine precisely at the stroke of midnight, following a series of fireworks, lighting shows and elaborate Moulin-Rouge-style dance performances.

"I guess I won the competition because I am the youngest among the three contestants and have a thriving thirst for the wine," said Yan, who admitted that she had been dreaming about becoming part of the famed festival ever since learning about it when she was an exchange student in Taipei four years ago.

"Miss Beaujolais should be a young and modern lady who is well-fitted to the Beaujolais image," said Aurlie Vabre, export promotion officer of the Beaujolais wine region, about one of the reasons why Yan was chosen to represent the wine.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a vins primeurs, a category of wines that are sold in the same year they are harvested. It is a red wine that is meant to be consumed young and is made from Gamay grapes handpicked from the Beaujolais region which borders the more recognized Burgundy region in southeastern France.

Its taste has been compared to a young ballerina's first attempt to stand on her toes; and its spirit has been championed by French poet Robert Sabatier who once wrote "be young as a Beaujolais and age as a Burgundy".

While opinions about the quality of the fast wine have been divisive, the uncorking of the first bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau has been a widely celebrated affair since the 1950s after World War II.

It was not until the 1960s and 70s that some winery owners decided to market the wine by turning the race to export newly bottled wine into an event itself. The initial date of release was Nov 15 but this was changed in 1985 to the third Thursday of November as wineries wanted people to celebrate into the weekend.

Yan's appointment as an ambassador indicates the amount of potential Beaujolais Nouveau makers see in the Chinese market. Japan and the United States are two of the largest overseas markets for the wine but they don't have a Miss Beaujolais of their own.

According to the wine's promotion office, China started to officially import Beaujolais wines around 2005 at the volume of close to 80,000 bottles. Beaujolais Nouveau, like the entire imported wine market in China, had enjoyed robust growth - it hit three digits at its peak - until it was affected by the central government's anti-corruption campaign in 2013.

The import of Beaujolais Nouveau has gradually picked up over the past two years. In 2015, about 530,000 bottles of the wine made by some 70 estates and wineries were brought into China. While this amount is small compared to the 8 million bottles that enter Japan every year, wine makers are confident that China will emerge as their biggest importers within the decade.

"Beaujolais is well-suited for young people who are not used to drinking wines. The lightness and fruitiness is good for the Chinese palate," said Vabre.

Several industry experts in China believe that the growth of young wines like Beaujolais Nouveau will hinge on consumers who are born in the 1990s. Unlike their parents, considered the first generation of wine consumers in China, these young consumers don't believe that drinking wine should be limited to expensive bottles from famous brands or regions.

Yan, who grew up in a family that is involved in the wine trading business, echoed this sentiment.

"I've had enough about all these talks about tanning, terrior or other jargons. Drinking wine is first and foremost about having fun and enjoyment, isn't it?" said Yan.

xujunqian@chinadaily.com.cn
Harry Theochari says the Belt and Road Initiative is possibly the largest transport infrastructure program in modern times. Provided to China Daily

The world's transport industry hopes China's immense international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, will provide much-needed impetus for sustainable economic growth and increased free trade, says Harry Theochari, global head of transport at the London-based law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is possibly the largest and most exciting transport and infrastructure program in modern times. The movement of raw materials and the scale of the engineering that will have to be undertaken, will be greater than anything previously witnessed," he says.

Theochari spoke from his office overlooking the gently flowing waters of the Thames, the river that once connected London to its trading partners.

Ships no longer travel into London, instead stopping at modern ports in Essex and elsewhere, but London remains the heart of the maritime services industry, which hopes that British ports can also play a crucial role in the Belt and Road Initiative, improving Britain's connections with China and Asia as it leaves the European Union.

Theochari is now working toward this vision, in his capacity as vice-chairman of Maritime London, which looks after the city's maritime services players such as law firms, insurance companies and ship-brokerages.

"Engaging with China is crucial for the UK to protect its centuries-old maritime sector and continue to play a global role," he says, adding that great synergy can be achieved between China's development as a leading shipowner and shipbuilder and the UK's maritime financial services.

London's maritime service industry, which was once the heart of the British Empire, still contributes $5.35 billion to the UK economy and directly supports the employment of about 10,000 to 11,000 people, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which was launched by President Xi Jinping three years ago to boost trade and infrastructure through investment, is now gaining momentum after receiving support from more than 100 countries and international organizations. So far, Chinese companies have invested more than $50 billion in projects in those countries.

In May, China will host the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing to discuss international collaboration potential. British Prime Minister Theresa May is invited to attend.

In Theochari's view, the Belt and Road Initiative's power is its coordination of efforts to build transport infrastructure and the creation of a logistics chain of roads, railways and ports, which will significantly reduce trade costs and increase efficiency.

"This initiative is made possible because of China's political will, economic power and willingness to take a leadership role in this fundamentally important area of world trade. In the past, the tendency would be to focus on moving goods or raw materials within sovereign borders or political groupings to an export or import point. The planning was very local in nature," Theochari says.

"The initiative looks to create a global logistics chain with trade routes being planned across continents and oceans. These logistic chains, from point of origin to point of delivery, will play a key role in reducing the costs and increasing the efficiency and sustainability of global trade."

In addition to boosting trade growth, the Belt and Road Initiative will also be instrumental in championing free trade, a message highlighted in President Xi's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

"It is clear from President Xi's speech at Davos that China has every intention of continuing to increase its trade with the rest of the world. Enhanced trade links will help fast-growing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, with young, ambitious and growing populations, to develop even faster," Theochari says.

Some projects in Belt and Road countries are already built and in operation. In 2016, China Railway Tunnel Group completed the Qamchiq Tunnel in Uzbekistan, the longest tunnel in Central Asia. It is part of the 169 kilometer Angren-Pap railway line, which improves Uzbekistan's infrastructure and enhances China's links with Central Asia.

Meanwhile, the China-Belarus industrial park is in development, and work on the Hungary-Serbia railroad is to begin soon. Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries has been further expanded.

China's leadership in realizing global free trade is backed by concrete action. For instance, in November last year President Xi called for the building of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific at the APEC CEO Summit in Peru.

Meanwhile, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is gaining momentum in leading a new method for multinational development bank operations. Established just over a year ago with 57 founding shareholders  in spite of opposition from the US  the AIIB has already approved a lending program of $1.73 billion, and invested in nine projects across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In addition to the AIIB's financing capacity and global support, Theochari says the bank's corporate governance structure is unique: "Its international advisory panel consists of notable figures, a number of whom have held political power and who not only understand trade but how the international political landscape works in practice."

The AIIB's international advisory panel includes Anders Borg, former finance minister of Sweden, and Lord Nicholas Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics and former chief economist at the World Bank.

Theochari also praises the long-term sustainability focus of the AIIB, which is coherent with its motto of "lean, clean and green". For him, one demonstration of this sustainability mindset is the bank's ability to help developing countries along the trade route to truly grow.

"Its commitment to investing in projects such as rural infrastructure, sanitation and environmental protection, could contribute significantly toward generating wealth through well-planned infrastructure," he says.

The AIIB has already launched projects to improve sanitation in Indonesia, upgrade Bangladesh's electricity grid and build highways in Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Theochari, who was born into a poor Greek Cypriot family that emigrated to the UK in the early 1960s, started a career in shipping law as "a natural choice". Greece had a major shipping fleet and he spoke the language of the Greek shipowners. In 1985, he joined Norton Rose Fulbright, and in 1987 he visited Pudong district in Shanghai.

"It was my first time in China and all I could see were fields and a few pigs. I pinch myself now when I go to Shanghai and see this magnificent new city, with world-class architecture and built in almost no time," he says.

Over the three decades of Theochari's career in shipping law, he not only has witnessed China's dramatic transformation but also the tremendous international strength accumulated by Chinese transport companies overseas, especially in the years following the financial crisis.

In 2014, three out of 15 of the world's largest shipping lenders were Chinese banks, together providing $45.3 billion of global shipping market finance  just under 20 percent of the $258 billion total shipping finance debt of the top 15 lenders' combined. Before 2008, no Chinese banks were among the global top 15 shipping lenders.

Theochari says all such developments further enhance the organization of China's infrastructure leadership capacity, and the strength of the Belt and Road Initiative.

"Having witnessed China's change over the past 30 years, it is exciting to see the way China is now championing the Belt and Road Initiative, the success of which I believe will match China's significant achievements over the past few decades," he says.
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Video: Senator Don Meredith says he is "deeply sorry," for sexual relationship with teen  but won't resign https://t.co/9mBjy5uoAx pic.twitter.com/JPhUNGkB0y  CityNews Toronto (@CityNews) March 16, 2017

The sad lament of Senator Don Meredith yesterday seems like an attempt to pull every stunt known to man for a little sympathy as he hangs on to a position which he has no right to hold. The pentecostal ministers shenanigans with a teenage girl has totally disqualified him from sitting as a Senator. He should be expelled at the earliest opportunity by the other members.

MR KARIM

Mr Karim will appear by video link in a Hamilton court Friday in connection with attempts by the US government to extradite the 22-year-old. Karim Baratov was indicted for computer hacking, economic espionage and other criminal offences in the 2014 Yahoo hack which saw millions of accounts compromised. .

MAN IDENTIFIED

And police have identified the dead man found in a parking lot in northeast Scarborough Thursday as Dylan Greenaway, 21.
(Photo by Andy Katz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio marches in the 2016 Saint Patrick's Day Parade.(NEW YORK) -- New York City will hold its 256th Saint Patrick's Day Parade on Friday morning and the city is working hard to prepare.



Following this week's snowstorm, sanitation crews spent Thursday moving huge piles of snow and ice into a melting machine, hoping to clear intersections and swaths of Fifth Avenue.



The city expects 150,000 marchers on Friday, and as many as two million spectators.



Security is expected to be on alert Friday, in similar fashion to the levels it was for the Thanksgiving Day Parade and for New Year's Eve in Times Square. Sand trucks and other vehicles will be placed at intersections to prevent rogue vehicles from entering the parade route.



Mayor Bill de Blasio will march in the parade, which he had boycotted until last year, when gay and lesbian groups were allowed to participate. The honorary grand marshal will be Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health.



In a first, the parade will march past the home of the sitting president -- Trump Tower. Spectators will not be allowed to watch from the sidewalk across from the building, and 57th Street will be closed until the parade passes.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Six people have submitted applications in hope of being the areas newest District Court Judge.

The selected applicant will preside over the District Courts First Judicial District, which includes Clay, Fillmore, Gage, Jefferson, Johnson, Nemaha, Nuckolls, Pawnee, Richardson, Saline and Thayer counties.

Applicants for the position are Nathan B. Cox, Plattsmouth; Erin Ebeler Rolf, Eagle; Louie M. Ligouri, Auburn; David J. Partsch, Nebraska City; Paul A. Payne, Dodge; and Julie D. Smith, Cook.

The deadline to apply was Tuesday.

The primary place of office for the judicial vacancy is in Auburn, or another site within the district to be determined by the appointed judge.

The vacancy is due to the retirement of Judge Daniel E. Bryan, Jr., who typically presided in Gage County around twice a month.

Bryan, who served 27 years on the bench, announced last year that he was retiring at the end of 2016, but has continued to hear cases while the search progresses.

Bryan presided as a District Court judge in the district since 1999.

Prior to his District Court career, he spent 10 years as a County Court Judge in the 10th Judicial District, which is the south central area of Nebraska.

The next step in the appointment process is a public hearing of the Judicial Nominating Commission, which will be held in the district courtroom at the Gage County Courthouse at 2 p.m. on April 4, 2017.

The commission will review all applicants for the office at that time. The public is welcome to attend the hearing and present information concerning candidates for the judicial opening.
The spring construction season is about to get underway, and that means road closures are coming soon to Beatrice.

Several streets will be closed to traffic in the coming months, Beatrice city engineer James Burroughs said, which will mean detours for the big trucks headed into the Gage County Industrial Park.

Work on Sixth Street and Industrial Way is planned to start on April 17, Burroughs said, with the construction being performed by R.L. Tiemann Construction.

The city will be sending out a letter to all businesses in the industrial park to notify them of the project, Burroughs said, as well as letting delivery drivers know that theres a detour in place.

The detour will take truck drivers from Southwest 45th Road to Hickory Road and lead back to Highway 77.

Its a bit farther than taking Southwest 32nd Road to Hickory, but that route will be closed to big trucks, as its not rated to carry a heavy load of semi truck traffic.

We'll stick a message board up north of Hickory stating that truck traffic has to follow the detour, said street superintendent Jason Moore. Well make sure that it's noted that traffic cannot take 32nd Road because there is a wooden bridge there that cannot handle the large truck traffic.

Detour signs and barrels will be posted along Highway 77, for which the city has already received approval for from the state.

For truckers who do miss the signs, finding a way back from farther south into Beatrice could be difficult.

If somebody misses it, and they get all the way into town, turning around isn't going to be pleasant, said Dave Eskra, the Beatrice Board of Public Works chairman.

That's going to happen regardless, Burroughs said. You're going to have people that won't pay attention to signs.

Local car traffic will have a few more options than large trucks, said city administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer. Though Industrial Way and Sixth Street will be closed, he said, theyll be able to funnel back to 77 and into the industrial park in different ways.

Some will go through Arapahoe Trail and come up through there, he said. Some are going to come down and hit the mall parking lot, and disperse themselves through the mall parking lot. Some are going to go back down Second Street and come up Grant and come up that way. The rest who know their way around will find shortcuts.

Starting April 6, the city will begin accepting bids for work to be done along Second Street as well. There are several projects in the works, Burroughs said, all requiring the closure of Second Street.

The plans include fixing the road in front of the museum on Second Street, as well as the stretch of Second Street between Ella and Grant. Then there are repairs needed on the Water Pollution Control Departments lift stationwhich moves water uphill from downhill locationsat Second Street and Herbert.

If it works out, the Second Street museum project is done at the same time as our Second Street Grant to Ella project, Burroughs said. At the same time that we're doing improvements to Lift Station number five, all that roadway stretch will be closed and all three of those constructions can happen at the same time. That's our plan, that's our goal.

Work on the Second Street museum project is expected to begin in June or July, which, Burroughs said, means the Industrial Row project has to be completed in a timely fashion.

Our goal is for Industrial Row to be done prior to the Second Street Road closure, Burroughs said. That way we are not closing two access points into the industrial park area, which I know would not be good.

Recently, Burroughs said, pink paint markings have been popping up on road corners along Highways 136 and 77 through Beatrice. The Nebraska Department of Roads is responsible for that, he said, as theyre planning to send crews to replace several curb ramps sometime this year. The ramp repair is being paid for by the state and not the city, Burroughs said.
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As people around the country celebrate Wildlife Week, Nebraska Wildlife Federation reminds teachers and students that March 22 is the deadline for entries in the Wildlife Week Nebraska state-wide poster contest.

This year, Wildlife Week Nebraska celebrates Nebraska Rivers, and the fish and wildlife that depend upon our rivers. Students in grades 4, 5 and 6 are encouraged to submit posters celebrating 2017 Wildlife Week Nebraska.

Nebraska Wildlife Federations web site includes information on Wildlife Week, the poster contest, and Nebraska rivers. Visit nebraskawildlife.org/home/education for more information, or call the Federation office at (402) 477-1008.
HA NOI  Honda Vietnam is recalling 1,355 cars to repair and replace air bag inflators of models Honda Civic, Honda CR-V and Honda Accord, according to the Vietnam Competition Authority.

The recall campaign is applicable for cars manufactured in 2012. The automaker will check, repair and provide free replacement for the affected vehicles through its agents nationwide.

Honda Civic and Honda CR-V were produced in Viet Nam while Honda Accord was imported from Thailand.

Last year, the firm recalled 4,922 Honda Civic cars with faulty airbags, according to the Register Vietnam.  VNS
HA NOI  The Vietnamese Government has accused Australia of "causing serious damage" to its prawn farmers and exporters and has asked the Federal Government to reconsider the ban on uncooked prawn imports.

Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce announced a six-month suspension on the import of raw prawns in January, following an outbreak of white spot disease in Queensland.

Viet Nams deputy minister of Industry and Trade, Tran Quoc Khanh, said the ban had damaged his countrys aquaculture industry, which exports about US$55 million worth of uncooked prawns to Australia.

"In our view, [the ban] is not in line with common practices and the spirit of nurturing and enhancing the existing good trade relationship between Viet Nam and Australia," Khanh said.

"The temporary ban on uncooked prawns was issued by the Australian Government without giving sufficient time, by advance warning, for Vietnamese prawn exporters to take needed actions to avoid such large economic losses.

"The prawn import suspension imposed by the Australian Government has been causing serious damage to the prawn farmers and exporters in Viet Nam.

"A number of Vietnamese exporters specialising in the Australian market are facing the risk of going bankrupt due to the suspension."

Australian authorities are still investigating how white spot disease spread to Australia, while prawn farmers have blamed Asian imports.

Khanh said Viet Nam should be allowed to keep exporting raw prawns to Australia until there is proof that imported prawns were the source of the outbreak.

"If Australia continues to maintain the ban, Viet Nam requests that it provide adequate scientific evidence as soon as possible showing a causal relationship between prawn imports from Viet Nam and the outbreak of white spot disease in Australia," he added.

Viet Nams Government said the ban may be in breach of a World Trade Organisation agreement on how governments should apply food safety measures to traded products.

"Some Vietnamese businesses view the suspension as going beyond the necessary extent provided for in the WTO agreement, but we are still studying this point of view of Vietnamese companies," he said.

Biosecurity failures

The Seafood Importers Association of Australia has previously said the ban had damaged Australias international trade reputation, but the Department of Agriculture defended the move, saying it was necessary to protect the nations aquaculture industry.

The deputy minister said he respected Australias sovereignty and biosecurity decisions, but nonetheless asked the Federal Government to reconsider the need for a ban.

"We are supportive of the actions taken by the Australian Government in applying necessary measures to control the outbreak," he said.

"This does not imply that we push aside the safety of the Australian prawn farming industry.

"We call for the close cooperation by the two sides in taking alternative measures that have less negative impacts on our bilateral trade, while ensuring the safety of the Australian prawn farming industry and the environment in Australia."

He said Vietnamese uncooked prawn products had been exported to many countries around the world without facing any import suspension.

"We are willing to support the Australian Governments decision on prawn import suspension but only when other measures which have less negative impacts on trade have proved to be ineffective or useless," he said.

Viet Nam and Australia have disagreed over bilateral agricultural trade before.

In 2015, Viet Nam temporarily banned the importation of fruits from Australia following a disagreement over Mediterranean fruit fly.

Suspension decision not taken lightly

An increase in exotic pets and diseases has prompted Australian farmers and environmentalists to demand more focus on biosecurity.

An Australian Agriculture Department spokesperson said the government and the department had "the utmost respect for domestic farming industries in Viet Nam and across the globe".

"Our work to support technical market access in countries that Australia exports to, as well as those that we import from, is firmly based on the safety and biosecurity of local industries both in Australia and overseas, as well as the mutual economic benefits of trade," the spokesperson said.

"The department recognises that this suspension will have flow-on effects to Australian consumers and international exporters, including Viet Nam. The decision is not one that has been taken lightly."

The spokesperson said the suspension complied with the provisions of WTO agreements that allow a member to temporarily suspend imports in certain circumstances.

The decision to suspend prawn imports will not be in place longer than is necessary to ensure the protection of the domestic prawn industry, which remains the first priority, the spokesperson said.  VNS
HA NOI  The Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam has sent a proposal to the Ministry of Transport to raise several aviation service charges in order to reduce peak-hour overloads and raise money for infrastructure development.

Under the proposal, take-off and landing service charges at major airports, including Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat, would be raised by 15 per cent during rush hours and reduced by 15 per cent during off-peak hours.

If passed, this would be the first rate differentiation imposed in Viet Nam on peak and off-peak flights, which aims to make carriers adjust their schedules, especially of domestic flights, to prevent congestion during peak hours.

According to the proposal, rush hour overload at major airports was due to the rapid increases in the number of domestic flights.

Statistics show that the number of take-offs and landings of domestic flights in 2016 increased by 25 per cent over the previous year and were 2.4 times higher than those of international flights.

The aviation authority pointed out that the service charges of domestic flights had been kept stable since 2011 and were only equivalent to 46-67 per cent of the ASEAN average, adding that increases were necessary to make up for growing maintenance and repair costs and to have funds for new investments.

The increases are necessary and reasonable in order to have funds for reinvestment in infrastructure development, Lai Xuan Thanh, Director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam, was quoted as saying by local newspaper. However, the authority would require carriers to maintain their ceiling flight ticket prices.

To ease the impact on the operation of carriers, the take-off and landing service charges would be raised in two stages - 5 per cent from July 1, 2017 and another 10 per cent from January 1, 2018.

Le Manh Hung, general director of the Airports Corporation of Viet Nam (ACV) which operates 22 airports across the country, was quoted by the online newspaper vnexpress.net as saying that the service charges for domestic flights must be increased by 225 per cent to reach the break-even point and 258 per cent to have a profit of 10 per cent.

According to Nguyen Thien Tong, former head of the HCM City University of Technologys Department of Aviation, said raising rush hour charges would be efficient to draw passengers to off-peak flights due to lower fares.

The Civil Aviation Authority is also proposing a hike in security charges of US$0.5 per passenger for international flights, and VN18,181 (0.9 cents) per passenger for domestic flights - double the current charge.

The aviation authority said that the security charges in Viet Nam were still lower than in other countries, such as $6 in Singapore, $6.5 in Myanmar and $3 in Cambodia.

A hike of VN40,000 in passenger service charges is also being proposed, raising them to VN90,909 for arrivals and departures at type A airports, and VN72,727 at type B airports. The increase is explained by the upgrading of many airports and passenger service quality.
Representatives of Japanese enterprises met this week with Vietnamese officials to complain about difficulties in food imports.  Photo baohaiquan.vn

HCM CITY  Representatives of Japanese enterprises met this week with Vietnamese officials to complain about difficulties in food imports.

At Wednesdays meeting in HCM City, organised by the Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro), business representatives said a Vietnamese Government decree on food safety stipulated that food samples imported into Viet Nam for development research purposes were exempted from safety inspections.

However, some transport services in Viet Nam require Japanese companies to check the food safety of food samples weighing over five kilograms, said Nakagawa Motohisa, speaking for the Japanese firms.

This wasted cost and time of Japanese businesses, while impeding Viet Nams research and development activities, he added.

Le Van Giang, deputy director of the Department of Food Hygiene and Safety under Ministry of Health, agreed that food samples for testing and research are exempted from food safety testing.

Viet Nam currently does not have any specific regulations on the volume of food samples exempted from inspection.

A representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that in order to import food samples, enterprises must commit to use them for the stated purpose and take responsibility under Vietnamese law for any misuse. Businesses that experience wrong regulations should report to Vietnamese authorities for guidance and solutions, he added.

The Japanese side also expressed hope that Viet Nam would exempt processed food originating from Japanese plants from quarantine.

According to Japanese businesses, their quality of raw materials for food production is strictly controlled. In addition, pre-packaged processing and heat treatment technology ensure that food products made from plants is not a source of infestation or harmful pest spread.

In response to the problem, Le Son Ha from the Department of Plant Protection under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that for high-tech and packaged foodstuffs, Viet Nam has eliminated quarantine requirements.

But for processed foods that are not packaged, the potential for insects and termites to grow during storage was possible, therefore, Viet Nam still applied checks, said Ha.

Takimoto Koji, Jetro chief representative in HCM City, praised the co-operation and support of ministries and related agencies in Viet Nam towards the difficulties encountered by Japanese enterprises.

The exchange of information with Vietnamese regulators will help Japanese firms better understand preferential mechanisms and policies for foreign businesses in general, and Japanese enterprises in particular, he said.  VNS
HOI AN  The people of Vietnam in general and Hoi An residents in particular will never forget the priceless contributions made by Polish archaeologist and architect Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, known as Kazik, to restoring the ancient town, My Son Sanctuary and Complex of Hue Monuments.

Addressing a meeting held in Hoi An yesterday to mark Kaziks 20th death anniversary, local sculptor Pham Hong also said that the Polish architects work was crucial to the cultural sites and the city being recognised by UNESCO has World Heritage sites.

Hong, built the 2.5m tall statue of Kazik that stands at 138 Tran Phu Street.

Polish ambassadress Barbara Szymanowska said, We are also proud that Kazik, a Polish citizen, was involved in restoring Hoi An as a World Heritage recognised by UNESCO.

On the occasion, Polish writer Jacek Zygmunt Matuszak introduced a book, Kazimierz Kwiatkowski (1944-1997)  Memory of a special man.

He said Kazik was even more well-known in Viet Nam rather than in Poland. It was very hard to find an article about the works and life of Kazik, so the Polish embassy took the initiative to publish the book, he said.

I hope that the book will help us remember him (Kazik), and his contribution to restoration of world heritages as well as the friendship between Viet Nam and Poland, he said, adding that the 187-page book is being published in Vietnamese, Polish and English.

The Polish architect lived in Viet Nam for 16 years.

The Polish ambassadress will visit the Kazik Park in Hoi An today and a memorial ceremony will be held in Hue tomorrow, March 19..  VNS
The eighth session of 14th National Assembly Standing Committee on Thursday turned its agenda toward discussing amendments to the Technology Transfer Law.  VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  The eighth session of 14th National Assembly Standing Committee on Thursday turned its agenda toward discussing amendments to the Technology Transfer Law.

Phan Xuan Dung, chairman of the National Assembly Committee for Science, Technology and Environment, proposed major draft law amendments to the committee. The amendments pertain to State policies on transfer technology, technology assessment in investment projects and solutions to encourage technology transfer and develop technology markets.

According to Dung, Article 34 of the draft law gives priority to those using machines and equipment that Viet Nam manufactured through public purchase.

NA deputies argue that the article conflicts with World Trade Organisation regulations, banning protection of domestic products and those of Investment Law.

The regulation is also said to discourage research, innovation and development of domestically-manufactured technology.

NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan demanded a reconsideration of Article 34, wanting to assure that it is in accordance with Viet Nams integration context and Competition Law.

State assets given to scientific technology researchers must be presented to management agencies after research is finished. These agencies must responsibly managing them as State assets, Ngan said.

Dung also called it necessary to assess and control imported technology to put an end to obsolete technology that causes pollution and affects human health. The move also aims to prevent impacts on Viet Nams investment and business climate.

Ngan said State agencies technology assessment responsibilities must be clarified in the law.

If technology that causes pollution is approved, which agencies must hold responsible?, she asked.

The committee agreed that technology assessment is a complicated process, especially the assessment of technology transferred from overseas. The assessment time of imported technology must be in accordance with the Investment Law and requires longer time. However, it must reduce unnecessary administrative procedures that cause obstacles for enterprises.

The draft law also proposes the establishment of National Technology Innovation Fund which supports small and medium-sized enterprises to transfer technology and boost technology transfer serving agriculture, forestry and aquatic products in disadvantaged areas.

NA Chairwoman Ngan rejected the fund, saying that it only expands the National Technology Renovation Fund, which is stated in hi-technology law.

The Committee reached final conclusion that the draft law on technology transfer must be reviewed in accordance with Public Asset Management Law and avoid overlaps with laws on State budget, tax, investment, science-technology to ensure its feasibility.

The law terminologies must also be reviewed to ensure the synchronisation with those stated in Law on Science and Technology.  VNS
HA NOI  Laos Minister of Public Security was awarded an honorary doctorate on Thursday in Ha Noi by the Viet Nam Peoples Police Academy for his contributions to training the two countries public security forces.

At a reception for Minister Somkeo Silavong, who is also Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee, President Tran ai Quang congratulated his guest.

The President expressed his hope for the two public security forces to continue their close and practical co-ordination to firmly safeguard national security and social safety and order in each country.

As Viet Nam and Laos celebrate the 55th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties (September 5) and the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation (July 18), the two forces need to work closely to ensure the absolute safety of events and celebrations, contributing to deepening bilateral friendship and special solidarity, he said.

Speaking highly of the outcome of talks between the two ministries, the host suggested facilitating top-level visits by national and public security officers in order to share experience and promptly deal with contingencies involving security and order in each nation.

The leader urged both sides to fight cross-border drug trafficking and economic crimes and to hunt for fugitives hiding in each others country.

Silavong, for his part, thanked the Vietnamese State and Government for helping Laos successfully organise important political events in 2016, when Laos assumed the ASEAN chairmanship.

Silavong said that during talks with the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, both sides agreed to increase visits in order to share experience in maintaining social safety and order, ensuring national security, and preventing crimes and non-traditional security threats.

In case of contingencies, both sides will partner to promptly deal with them, prevent hostile forces from distorting, sabotaging the special solidarity and traditional friendship.

The two sides will continue mutual consultancy and support at regional and global forums in the fight against crimes and other non-traditional security threats, he said.  VNS
Archived Results for Friday, March 17th, 2017

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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) receives Lao Minister of Public Security Somkeo Silavong in Ha Noi on Thursday.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked for closer coordination with Laos in preventing cross-border crimes, such as drug trafficking, and ensuring security along the shared border.

During a meeting in Ha Noi on Thursday with Lao Minister of Public Security Somkeo Silavong, who is also Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committee, the PM expressed his hope that the public security ministries of the two countries will continue supporting each other in protecting security and social order.

The two ministries should maintain meetings between top officials and local police to exchange information and experience.

They should also strengthen co-operation on personnel training, he added.

The two sides should also work together to foil sabotage aimed at inciting ethnic minorities, while preventing crime and hunting criminals, ensuring a shared border of peace, stability and development.

PM Phuc pledged support for Laos in its national construction and development.

For his part, Somkeo Silavong briefed the host on the outcome of his talks with the leader of the Ministry of Public Security.

The two ministries agreed to implement their co-operation in accordance with agreements reached between leaders of the two Parties, States and Governments, especially amidst the changing world situation, he said.

He also underscored the importance of security affiliation between the two countries, noting that the two sides should continue fighting all schemes of hostile forces to destroy bilateral relations.

Minister of Public Security, Senior Lieutenant To Lam, lauded the fruitful co-operation between the two ministries in exchanging international and regional information related to national security and social order in each country, he noted.

The two sides should also collaborate in raiding cross-border drug trafficking rings and hunting criminals, ensure utmost security and safety during visits and meetings of Party and State leaders, and create favourable conditions for citizens of each country to live and work legally in the other.

The two ministers also signed 2017 co-operation minutes.  VNS
QUANG BINH  Pham Thi Cuc, who lives in Hai Ninh Commune in the central province of Quang Binhs Quang Ninh District, had hoped that her life could change if her husband worked as a guest worker overseas.

So she decided to take the opportunity when a broker named Thong from Quang Tho Ward in Ba on Town came to the area and told local residents that they could get good salaries while working abroad.

Cuc did everything, from selling valuable assets to mortgaging her house for VN200 million (US$8,760), the amount of money that the brokers demanded. Then she discovered that the brokers had disappeared a day before her husband was due to depart.

Five other families from Hai Ninh Commune were also cheated by the same trick, she said.

The total amount of money that these scammers took from them is estimated at over VN1 billion ($43,800).

They [the brokers] cheated us. They told local residents like me that they could help them find jobs in countries such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia or Taiwan, with average wages of over VN30 million, Cuc said in tears.

The scammers asked workers to hand over VN30 million ($1,300) and took them to Ha Noi to learn Korean over a month. They were then asked to transfer VN145 million ($6,300) to Nguyen Huu Son, one of Thongs accomplice.

After receiving the money from the workers, these scammers would contact them again to hand out forged visas and flight schedules.

Only when my husband and I came to Ha Noi and were unable to contact Son by phone, did we know that we had been cheated, Cuc said.

We had come to the place where Son organised foreign language classes for would-be guest workers but nobody knew him, she added.

Nguyen Van Thoai, who lives in the same commune, is another victim.

He used to engage in breeding shrimp but after running up losses of VN500 million from the trade, he wanted to go to the Republic of Korea with the hope of earning more money.

Now with the money lost and his dream shattered, life was a nightmare. Back home, Thoai didnt know what to do to repay the debt.

Dozens of people are reported to have been defrauded by these scammers, according to Cuc and Thoai. These people are mainly from Bo Trach and Quang Trach districts.

The environmental pollution caused by Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel is believed to be the reason for the rising demand for labour exports in the central region.

It has reduced the quantity of seafood, affecting domestic consumption as well as 362,000 labourers whose lives depend on the sea directly or indirectly. Many people choose go to foreign countries for jobs as a good chance for them to overcome difficulties.

Le Manh Son, director of Vocational School Number 9, which provides training for oversea workers said scammers often take labourers money and give them incorrect information or flee with the money they have been handed.

Le Van Kho, Hai Ninh Communes Party Secretary said, as soon as they were informed of the incident, the authorities have taken steps to help local residents understand the Governments labour export policy as well as warning them about possible tricks.

He said the commune would act as a bridge connecting authorised agencies and local residents relating to overseas labour.  VNS
The PM required Bac Ninh Province Peoples Committee to continue suspending the project to dredge the Cau River.  VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  The Prime Minister on Thursday asked the Ministry of Public Security to urgently investigate the information that organised criminals were threatening officials of the northern Bac Ninh provinces Peoples Committee and other local offices.

The PM required Bac Ninh Province Peoples Committee to continue suspending the project to dredge the Cau River.

On Wednesday, Nguyen Tu Quynh, chairman of Bac Ninh Province Peoples Committee, confirmed that he was threatened by a hidden man recently. He sent letter to the Prime Minister asking for help.

Some days before, Bac Ninh Province officials received "terrorised" messages, phone calls demanding the project on the Cau River continue to be implemented.

The project, organised by Ha Luu Joint Stock Company, was approved by Viet Nam Inland Water Administration. However, Bac Ninh Province Peoples Committee resolutely proposed to stop its implementation.

This decision was highly appreciated by local residents and helped ensure social order, according to the provinces report sent to the PM.

Bac Ninh Peoples Committee fears the project will lead to the erosion of the river bank, affecting peoples lives and causing tens of billions of ong in damages.

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh has asked relevant offices to launch a crackdown on illegal sand mining crimes, combating the increase of cases in many provinces nationwide.

The Deputy PM also required provincial peoples committees to halt the export of salted sand, and asked the Ministry of Natural Resource and Environment to implement strict solutions to restore order and discipline toward the management, exploitation and use of this mineral.

The illegal exploitation of sand and gravel in many localities across the country has caused serious environmental pollution, river bank erosion and adverse impacts on security and life of residents, according to the Deputy PM.

Lai Hong Thanh, deputy chairman of Viet Nam General Department of Geology and Minerals, said the increase of illegal sand mining is due to the fact that sand and gravel in river bed was often located in the boundary between two or more localities at a province, district and commune.

Therefore, when illegal sand mining was discovered, the inspection and handling was difficult without co-ordination and synchronism among concerned localities, he said.

Investigation reveals that the exploiters are local men living along the river who understand the terrain deeply.

The process of sand mining occurs quickly, with a network of sophisticated local guards. Therefore, it is difficult to catch and handle illegal mine exploiters.

The investment required is small, mining activities can occur at any time, sand and gravel can be sold immediately to traders on the river, and more people are therefore attempting the activity.

Early this week, five boats were seized while exploiting illegal sand on ong Nai River in the south.  VNS
HA NOI  An estimated 12.5 million people will be eligible for agriculture land tax exemption, leaving merely 77,000 people still subject to this tax.

The tax waiver, provided in a decree signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the end of last month, came in for mixed reviews. While many farmers hailed it, others said there were more pressing problems for their sector.

Accordingly, owners  households or individuals  will no longer have to pay tax for the certified agriculture lands in their possession.

According to a report by the Ministry of Finance, total agriculture land in the country reached 26.8 million hectares in 2014, 38 per cent of which  10.2 million hectares  were subjected to tax under the Agriculture Land Taxation Law. However, tax is now waived for 6.9 million hectares, or 68 per cent of the total taxable agriculture land.

Le Van Banh, director of the Department of Agro-Fisheries Processing and Salt Production, said 70-80 per cent of farmers in Viet Nam own fields that are less than one hectare wide, so the total amount of collected tax is not considerable. Lifting the tax, on the other hand, will be beneficial to farmers as well as other entities who want to combine fields for large-scale production, he added.

Last year, Vo Trong Viet, chairman of the National Defence and Security Committee under the National Assembly, said that the actual tax to be waived under the proposed decree would be about VN 34.4 billion a year (US$1.5 million) so it wouldnt mean much of a loss to the State budget.

To put this into perspective, he added, the loss incurred by mismanagement by Trinh Xuan Thanh when he was at the helm of the State-owned PetroVietnam Construction JSC was tantamount to 30 years of farmland tax.

However, Viet said in conclusion, the tax waive would be meaningful to farmers, encouraging production.

Nguyen Kim Chuyen, deputy head of the Quyet Thang Co-operative in the southern coastal city of Ba RiaVung Tau, praised the recent introduction of many facilitating policies for farmers, including subsidy for irrigation, tax waiver, and low rate loans.

Tran Van Hoang, a farmer in am Doi District of the southernmost province of Ca Mau, was elated. The expansion of subjects eligible to land tax exemption is welcome. It shows that the Government cares about farmers and creating favourable conditions for them to have a stable livelihood and be more motivated to invest in agriculture, Hoang said.

However, regarding unused agricultural land granted to businesses, he urged the Government to either reclaim those land plots or impose a high tax rate on them.

Another farmer, Vo Quan Huy, from the southern province of Long An, however, was not impressed. While tax exemption is always good, I dont think it will have a notable impact. In reality, the communes government has never been too eager to collect agriculture land tax anyway, since it doesnt amount to much, Huy said.

Nevertheless, the decree still matters to someone who owns many swathes of land like me. I estimate each year, I can save up some dozens of millions of ong via this tax cut, he added. He owns some 1,000 hectares of agriculture land, scattered over the southern provinces of Long An, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, among others, but many of the plots are registered under another persons name due to land ownership limits, and he wished the Government would focus more on lifting thoser limitations.

Businesses will be more inclined to invest in agriculture

Ho Xuan Hung, former deputy minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), head of Viet Nams General Council of Agriculture and Rural Development, is also positive about the new provision, calling it good news for both farmers and those investing or intending to invest in the agriculture sector.

He assessed that, production costs will be cut back a bit, and the money saved can be used towards production expansion, developing industrial large-scale agriculture production, reducing risks.

Nguyen o Anh Tuan, director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD), said that currently, Viet Nams agriculture sector is facing a range of pressing problems, such as small-scale and scattered production or unpredictable weather and extreme climate events, even issues with legal documents and policy.

"Thats the reason why investment in agriculture is always a risky venture," he said. A change in policies would prove impactful to production and investment.

According to an IPSARD survey, 63 per cent of agriculture businesses said they have difficulties gaining access to land; 70 per cent said its hard for them to obtain access to credit; and 82.5 per cent said they havent been covered by agriculture insurance yet.

Business as a major player leading the agriculture value chain is being increasingly recognised, Tuan argued. If we can create an open business environment, developing substantial support policies like ensuring property rights, contractual rights, cutting back on red tape, etc., then businesses will be more interested in the agriculture sector, he said.

In a country like Viet Nam where agriculture remains a dominant economic factor, more businesses and more investment in the sector will create jobs which benefit the population. For this reason, Tuan urged the Government formulate more robust policies in the vein of this new tax exemption to incentivise agricultural business.  VNS
HCM CITY  It was an endearing sight  a little boy accompanying his mother as she walked the streets, picking up trash.

When photographer Nghia Pham spotted them near the city post office, he decided to follow them at a distance and take a few pictures.

He was curious to see the boys reaction as they passed a group of children of his age being taken out by their kindergarten teachers to play outdoors.

All the children were wearing nice, clean uniforms and shoes. The garbage-pickers son, tanned by walking the streets in the sun, was wearing oversized flip-flops, a baggy, rumpled shirt and an old cap on his head.

As the teachers laid out a plastic sheet to arrange a picnic, all the children took off their shoes and sandals and got on to it. The garbage-pickers son looked at the group from a distance.

Nghia did not expect to see what happened next.

The poor boy got closer to where the other children were, and slowly started arranging all the shoes in a neat row around the edge of the blanket.

After he was done, the little boy stopped for a while, standing in front of the neatly-arranged row of shoes with a smile on his face, and then returned to his mother who was standing nearby. Hand in hand, the mother and son continued their walk.

They were not aware that they were being watched.

When Nghia posted the pictures he took on his Facebook page, they had an immediate impact.

Moved by the simple, spontaneous act of an innocent boy, readers shared the photographs and comments, and the images travelled far and wide.

Media outlets quickly got into the act and contacted the photographer.

It was such a nice thing to do, and even though its a small act, it gives us a lot of thought, he told a local radio channel.

The boy might be poor and cant go to school, but he acts in such a civilised manner. Thats what makes us think; and admire him, he added

Nghia later learned that the boys name was Nguyen Danh Thanh at. Nguyen Phuong Linh, ats mother, used to work in a factory, but just lost the job recently.

When I still had the job, at also went to a kindergarten. The teachers must have taught him about being tidy and neat, because he remembers it all, she said.

We dont have many clothes, but he would always arrange his clothes neatly  which are for bed time and which are for going out to collect trash with me. And he even washes his own dishes, she said.

When Linh lost her job, at had to quit the kindergarten. He was very sad.

He cried a lot when I told him we dont have enough money for him to go to school, Linh said.

Linh herself was an orphan and was brought up by an old, kind-hearted couple in Quang Ngai Province. She got divorced five years ago, when at was just a month old.

At that time, life was so hard, and I was so desperate I even wanted to send at to an orphanage, she said.

But when they got there, she just couldnt do it. She said she couldnt make him another orphan, just like her.

I had to be with him no matter what happened, Linh said.

Striking chords

When pictures of the mother and child went viral, many people wanted to support them financially. But money was not what Linh wanted.

A friend of mine went to interview her and offered her some money, Linh decently refused and she said she could work and earn money herself, Nghia said.

Then the miracle happened: the countrys biggest dairy firm decided to give Linh a job, and two local primary schools contacted Nghia and offered at free admission.

And when Nghia took at and Linh to the Children Hospital in Binh Chanh District for health check-ups before at returned to school, doctors there recognised them and provided their services for free.

The doctors found at suffering from severe malnutrition, needing food supplements every day, and his mothers employers said they would also supply the milk he needs for free.

A pure act of kindness can reap a windfall of goodness.  VNS
HA NOI  Tablet-based forest monitoring does not only improve the quality of collected data, but also makes the process of data collection and reporting easier for users compared with the current paper-based methods.

Nguyen Quoc Tri, deputy head of the Viet Nam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST), said this at a workshop held in Ha Noi on Thursday, aimed at sharing experiences in applying the innovative forest monitoring method and exploring ways for its replication nationwide.

The workshop was organised by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Viet Nam Administration of Forestry.

Tablet-based forest monitoring was innovative, and provides a cost-effective, time-saving and easy-to-navigate method of forest resource monitoring through the use of tablet PCs and an associated Android-based application, Tri said.

As ien Bien Province is one of the localities participating in the project, Pham Van Khien, deputy head of the provinces ranger sub-department, said this method proved to be efficient, accurate and cost-effective.

"When there is any impact on the forests such as deforestation, forest fires or encroachment of forest land, forest owners and relevant agencies can calculate the damage through digital data transfer," he said.

Khien said that tablet-based forest monitoring attracted the attention of many forest rangers and forest owners in the province.

Suzuki Kei, the consultant for the Sustainable Natural Resource Management (SNRM) project, said the use of tablet PCs will improve accuracy in calculating changes in forest coverage through GPS, reducing mistakes by reporting through digital forms, and removing inefficiencies in data management through digital data transfer and a centrally-controlled server.

Improved forest monitoring is among important prerequisites for better forest management. It could also promote the engagement of local communities through activities like village-based forest patrolling, he said.

The robust and transparent forest monitoring system was among the requirements for Viet Nam to receive the REDD+ result-based payments (RBPs) under an international climate change agreement, he said.

REDD+ involves countries efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

The Sustainable Natural Resource Management project is a bilateral technical co-operation project funded by the Japanese International Co-operation Agency which lasts from August 2015 to August 2020.

The total budget of the project amounts to US$12.1 million. Of this, $10.3 million came from the Japanese Government and the rest from a Vietnamese counterpart.

The project has four major components; namely forest policy, sustainable forest management, biodiversity conservation, and knowledge sharing.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked authorities of ak Lak, Quang Tri and Quang Binh provinces to investigate and determine illegal deforestation activities in their areas, as reported by media.

Earlier this month, the Nhan Dan (People) and VOV online newspapers ran articles reporting the destruction of forests in parts of the Central Highlands province of ak Lak and the central provinces of Quang Binh and Quang Tri.

Deforestation is becoming hot in ak Lak as the province enters the peak of its dry season, reports said. In Ea Sup District alone, local authorities discovered that illegal loggers had cut down hundreds of cubic metres of wood since the start of the year. More than 190 hectares of forest has been cut down, cleared and encroached upon since early 2016, the provincial forest management department said.

In Quang Binh Province, many people were flocking to the forests, particularly in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, to get their hands on huong (Pterocarpus macrocarpus), a highly valued timber, VOV reported. In the past few months, the parks forest rangers have detected and handled 15 cases of illegal deforestation and seized around one tonne of huong wood.

In Quang Tri Province, several hectares of protected forests in Huong Hoa and ak Rong districts have been exploited illegally since the end of 2016, the Nhan Dan newspaper said.

Many old trees, with trunk diameters ranging from 40cm to 70cm, have been reportedly cut down. The logs were then sawed vertically, into short pieces and moved out of the forest by motorbike. Deforestation was going on despite the efforts of local authorities, the report said.

The PM has instructed the peoples committees of these localities to inspect the reported cases and take strict actions against offenders.  VNS
BANGKOK  Two Vietnamese fishermen were brought back to the country by air on Friday morning after they fell into the sea and went adrift on the Gulf of Thailand.

The incident took place on March 9, when Danh Tien, 28, from the southern Kien Giang Provinces Thach Yen Commune, and Huynh Van Thanh, 35, from the southernmost Ca Mau Provinces Phu Tan Commune, were fishing offshore, Vietnam News Agency correspondent in Bangkok has reported.

The duo fell into the sea but because of strong, noisy waves and darkness, other fishermen did not hear their shouts for help.

At 5pm the next day, a Philippine vessel found the two fishermen adrift on the waters of Thailand holding on to plastic fish tank lids for life. Both were physically exhausted and weak. They were rescued, given first aid and food. On March 12, the vessel arrived at Laem Sabang Port and handed over the two fishermen to the police in Chonburi Province.

Nguyen Hai Ngoc, first secretary of Viet Nam Embassy in Thailand, coordinated with Laem Sabang Port immigration police to verify the two mens citizenship and handled procedures to bring them back to Viet Nam.  VNS
The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and the Australian Associated Press (AAP) have signed an agreement to enhance co-operation and the exchange of information.  VNA/VNS Photo Son Ha

SYDNEY  The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and the Australian Associated Press (AAP) have signed an agreement to enhance co-operation and the exchange of information.

The agreement was inked by VNA General Director Nguyen uc Loi and APP CEO Bruce Davidson at AAP headquarters in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday.

The agreement aims to help further foster links between the two news agencies and strengthen the partnership and effective co-operation between media firms in Viet Nam and Australia.

Under the agreement, the two sides will exchange English-language news stories and high-quality photos, thus meeting the increasing information demand of both countries people.

At their talks before the signing ceremony, VNA General Director and APP CEO Bruce Davidson discussed future bilateral co-operation, which will focus on providing support for each others correspondents and co-organising training programmes for reporters and technicians.

As members of the executive board of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), the two sides stressed the importance of practical and effective professional co-operation.

They also compared notes on challenges facing news agencies and media firms worldwide.

During his stay in Australia, Loi also had a working session with representatives from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

VNA has signed co-operation agreements with 40 news agencies over the world.  VNS
BEIRUT  At least 42 people were killed and dozens more wounded on Thursday in air strikes on a village mosque in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"The raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians," said the head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman.

"More than 100 people were wounded," he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, said that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time where there is usually religious lessons for men in it".

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldnt even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

An AFP reporter at the scene said rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris.

Footage published by Halab Today, an online media group focused on news in Aleppo, showed piles of rubble where the mosque allegedly stood.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began six years ago with anti-government protests.

A cessation of hostilities was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued across much of the country.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

But the skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out air strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition, meanwhile, has been bombing jihadist groups in Syria since 2014.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.
In 2015, Time magazine reported that there had been 23 shootings on college and university campuses that year, including an attack at a community college in Oregon that claimed 10 lives.Prompted by such headlines, lawmakers have started taking a closer look at policies regulating weapons on campus. But states' reactions have varied according to local attitudes towards guns and lawmakers' party affiliations. And it's unclear whether laws regulating firearms on campus will have any real effect on campus crime.In some states, shooting incidents or fear of shooting incidents have caused lawmakers to seek to expand existing gun regulations. In 2013, for example, five states introduced legislation to prohibit concealed carry weapons on campus. (None of the bills passed.)In the same year-moving in the opposite direction-19 states introduced legislation to allow concealed carry on public college campuses. Two of the bills passed. In 2014, legislators in another 14 states introduced similar legislation. (No bills passed.) In 2015, Texas became the eighth state to allow concealed carry weapons on college campuses. And this year, North Carolina's legislature has introduced a bill to allow for the same on public university and community college campuses.Opponents of concealed carry on campus claim that it will lead to an escalation of violent crime and suicides by students. They also fear that guns on campus will detract from the learning environment and possibly stifle campus discussion and unpopular ideas. Others point out that legal gun owners on campus will be difficult to distinguish from active shooters, and that campus defense should be left to the police.They also credit existing "gun-free" policies for making colleges and universities relatively safe. From 2012 through 2014, for example, just 24 cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter occurred on public university campuses nationwide.Time's 2015 list of campus shootings provides further evidence of the safety of college campuses. The list is provided by Everytown for Gun Safety, which has tracked all school shootings since 2012. The group defines a school shooting as any incident in which a firearm is discharged inside a school building or on campus grounds and not in self-defense. The 23 shootings on the list resulted in only 21 deaths and 23 injuries-across all public and private colleges and universities in the country. The list even includes one incident in which a man "accidentally shot himself."Proponents of concealed carry concede that college campuses are safe places. But they believe that some gun owners likely carry on campus despite laws prohibiting the practice (suggesting that concealed weapons may be having a positive effect). They also point out that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes. Moreover, the eleven U.S. colleges and universities that currently allow concealed carry on campus have not seen any resulting incidents of gun violence, gun accidents, or gun thefts.In Colorado, for example, concealed carry has been legal since 2012 when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the University of Colorado's longstanding policy banning guns from campus violated the state's concealed carry law. In the three years following that decision for which data are available (2012-2014), there were no murders on public university campuses in the state.As mentioned above, North Carolina is taking steps toward relaxing its campus gun policies. In 2013, the state legislature passed a bill allowing a person with a valid concealed carry handgun permit to possess a handgun on educational property, provided that the weapon is in a locked container attached to a vehicle, such as a glovebox.Chiefs of police at all 17 UNC system schools opposed the provision, saying they feared car break-ins and increased gun violence on campus.Student Government Associations at 11 of the 17 schools opposed the law as well. In a proclamation signed by student body presidents, students predicted thatSo far, however, there has been no reported increase in incidents of violence on UNC campuses.Nevertheless, the latest bill, which would allow concealed carry across all public campuses, not just within vehicles, is likely to receive strong pushback from some campus leaders and student communities.Recent research by the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, established in 2008 and joined by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, was intended to debunk the claims of concealed carry proponents that guns on campus could deter crime.The author concludes:However, the report shows-like other evidence-that there is no relationship between campus carry laws and rates of violent crime on campus.Without evidence that campus gun laws have any effect on the crime rate, lawmakers should defer to the Second Amendment. Students' and faculty members' rights to gun ownership should not be abridged by arbitrary and baseless campus regulations.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump braced Thursday for a long legal battle over his ban on travel from six mainly-Muslim countries after two federal judges ruled against the measure, saying the Republicans own comments suggested religious bias.

It was a humiliating setback for Trump, who saw his first attempt at limiting travel from the Muslim world halted by the federal courts last month after it had caused chaos at airports both in the US and abroad.

The White House said the Republican administration would "vigorously defend" its travel ban, after Trump vowed to challenge the "terrible" decision to suspend it, before the Supreme Court if necessary.

"We intend to appeal the flawed rulings," said the presidents spokesman Sean Spicer.

The revamped executive order had been due to take effect at midnight local time, but a federal judge in Hawaii froze Trumps efforts to close US borders to nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

Trump argues that his immigration order is needed to ensure national security and described the rulings against it as "unprecedented judicial overreach."

The Hawaii ruling also halted a 120-day suspension of the US refugee admissions programme.

A second federal judge in Maryland issued a separate, more narrow nationwide block on just the core provision concerning travel from the Muslim world, ruling it would cause "irreparable harm" were it to go into effect.

Trump, who used anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail in his successful run for the White House, will now have to account for those statements in court, with both judges saying the order raised the specter of religious bias.

Muslim ban?

Trumps revised ban signed on March 6 had a reduced scope, exempting Iraqis, permanent US residents and valid visa holders -- an effort by the administration to ensure the order passed legal muster.

The White House said the other six countries were targeted because their screening and information capabilities could not meet US security requirements.

In Hawaii, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, defending the governments position, said: "This order doesnt draw any religious distinction at all."

Questioned about Trumps tweets and statements during the campaign in which he promised to enact a "Muslim ban," Wall said: "There is a difference between a president and a candidate."

But District Judge Derrick Watson rejected the idea that the order was not a Muslim ban, ruling it was plausible "to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam," given their Muslim populations all topped 90 per cent.

The judge said "a reasonable, objective observer... would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavour a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously-neutral purpose."

He referred to several examples of Trump explicitly framing proposed action on immigration in religious tones, including a March 2016 interview during which the then president-elect said: "I think Islam hates us."

Watson indicated that the court would not stay its decision in the event of an appeal.

In Maryland, US District Judge Theodore Chuang echoed Watsons argument, as he issued a partial injunction on a separate complaint filed by advocacy groups claiming that the amended order discriminates against Muslims.

Three strikes and youre out?

Trump, addressing supporters late Wednesday in Nashville, assailed the Hawaii judge.

"The law in the Constitution gave the president the power to suspend immigration when he deems it to be in the national interest of our country," he said.

"We are going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court. We are going to win."

The Justice Department called the Hawaii ruling "flawed both in reasoning and in scope."

The Hawaii and Maryland rulings came after a trio of hearings Wednesday on the ban.

In Seattle, Washington states attorney general filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order that would last up to 14 days in order to halt the travel restrictions, also citing "irreparable injuries."

Rights groups and states contesting the ban welcomed the rulings.

"The Constitution has once again put the brakes on President Trumps disgraceful and discriminatory ban," said Omar Jadwat, director of the immigrant rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has joined the case in Washington state, said: "Todays order by the federal District Court of Hawaii marks yet another victory for the Constitution and the rule of law."

Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr warned Trump against a protracted battle.
PARIS  Investigators suspect a Greek anarchist group was behind a letter bomb that injured an IMF secretary in Paris on Thursday, the day after an explosive device was found in Berlin, sources close to the probe said.

Fragments of Greek stamps were found at the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where the letter bomb exploded, leaving the secretary with injuries to her face and hands.

A far-left Greek group called Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei is "likely behind" the Paris attack, a Greek police source said in Athens.

French investigators have told their Greek counterparts that the package was sent from Athens, the official said.

Separately, a source close to the French probe said it was focusing on "an anarchist group".

The Conspiracy of Fire group had earlier claimed responsibility for an explosive device, also sent from Greece, that was discovered by police at the offices of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

The package was discovered on Wednesday, a day before Schaeuble was due to host his new US counterpart, Steven Mnuchin.

Many Greeks blame Germany and the IMF for imposing years of public sector cuts and reforms in exchange for bailout packages needed to prop up the debt-ridden country.

The incidents occurred more than six years after Conspiracy of Fire waged a similar campaign targeting European officials.

The group, which is blacklisted as a terror organisation by Washington, sent letter bombs to foreign embassies in Greece and to European leaders in 2010.

In Paris on Thursday, employees were evacuated from the building where the Washington-based IMF has offices near the Arc de Triomphe in the heart of the French capital after the late morning explosion.

The secretary, who works for an unnamed senior manager, suffered facial injuries caused by "shards, as well as a blast to the eardrums" but is out of danger, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

"It appears to have been a firework or a big firecracker," he said, describing the device as "relatively rudimentary and nothing like a bomb".

Cowardly act

IMF chief Christine Lagarde condemned the incident as a "cowardly act of violence" and insisted the fund would continue its work "in line with our mandate," a statement from her office said.

"We are working closely with the French authorities to investigate this incident and ensure the safety of our staff."

French President Francois Hollande called it an "attack", saying it showed the country was "still targeted".

The Paris letter bomb coincided with a school shooting in the southern town of Grasse that left around 10 people injured and rattled nerves in a country that has suffered a string of terror attacks since early 2015.

"All this leads me to justify the state of emergency" that has been in effect in France since the November 2015 jihadist attacks in Paris, Hollande said.  AFP
WATERLOO  UnityPoint Health-Waterloo will purchase the assets of Central Iowa Healthcare in Marshalltown under a plan initially approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

According to a news release from UnityPoint, the Des Moines-based court identified UnityPoint Health-Waterloo as the successful bidder in the bankruptcy auction process. The bid process was open to any qualified bidder.

The Marshalltown hospital filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code on Dec. 20 last year. As part of that process, the health care system asked the court to approve the plan to sell its assets to UnityPoint Health-Waterloo.

We are excited about the future of health care in our community and all UnityPoint Health-Waterloo has to offer to the Marshalltown region, Dawnett Willis, acting chief executive officer of Central Iowa Healthcare, said in a statement Friday. Today was a huge victory for our staff and patients to be able to align CIH with like-minded health system, UnityPoint Health-Waterloo, which will enhance and develop high-quality health care services in our community.

UnityPoints bid included a commitment that all of CIHs health care operations would continue without interruption during the bankruptcy proceedings and after the sales transaction is complete, which is expected to be this spring, according to the news release. The ruling occurred during a court hearing Thursday.

The nonprofit health care systems assets include a 49-bed, acute-care hospital; emergency department; four primary care clinics; and an outpatient center. Its clinics are located in Marshalltown, Conrad, State Center and Tama-Toledo. It is the only full-service medical center in its area and serves more than 60,000 residents.

We welcome this opportunity to stabilize Central Iowa Healthcare, Pam Delagardelle, president and CEO of UnityPoint Health-Waterloo, said in a statement. Sustainable, local health care is vital to Marshalltown and its neighbors. Central Iowa Healthcare patients will continue to receive high-quality care from caregivers they know and trust.

She continued, This new arrangement will strengthen Marshalltowns regional role as an employer, economic engine and center for health care.

The purchase is a first time the Waterloo-based provider has purchased another system that has declared bankruptcy.
DECORAH  The JCPenney store in Decorah is one of four in Iowa and 138 companywide that will be closing this year as part of a continuing effort to advance sustainable growth and long-term profitability, company officials said in a store closing list released Friday.

The retailer announced plans to close stores Feb. 24 but released the store closing list this week

In Iowa, stores in Decorah, Fort Dodge, Oskaloosa and Ottumwa, will close. Most affected stores will begin the liquidation process April 17, company officials said in releasing the list.

The Decorah store is marking its 95th anniversary in the city this year.

The company closed its Waterloo store in 2015. The company had operated a store in Waterloo since 1926, first downtown and then at Crossroads Center beginning in 1970.

According to a company website, JCPenney still has stores in Ames, Marshalltown, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, West Des Moines and two in the Quad Cities.

Missouri native James Cash Penney opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyo., on April 14, 1902.

Decorah JCPenney Manager Valeria Kishkunas declined to answer specific questions about her stores eventual closing, deferring to news releases on the companys website.

We are appreciative of the support of our wonderful community, Chamber of Commerce and surrounding businesses. Thank you, she said.
St. Patricks Day is a religious holiday, and its more.

March 17 marks the Feast Day of St. Patrick, famed for driving snakes out of Ireland. The 4th-century bishop went to Ireland as a missionary. He is remembered for using the shamrock to explain the concept of a triune God, with a leaf to represent the father, son and holy spirit.

St. Patricks Day is a secular holiday celebrated by many without religious ties. In Ireland and Northern Ireland, St. Patricks Day is a national holiday. That makes sense; Patrick is a patron saint of Ireland and a pivotal figure in Irish history.

Only two other nations recognize St. Patricks Day as an official holiday  Newfoundland and Montserrat. Both have histories of providing refuge to persecuted Irish Catholics.

U.S. history also is linked to significant Irish immigration; why isnt St. Patricks Day a public holiday here too? There have been attempts to make St. Patricks Day a U.S. federal holiday.

Irish immigration to the United States was heavy during the mid-1800s, hitting a peak in the 1840s. At that time, Ireland had the highest population density of any European nation, according to the Library of Congress. Poverty and food shortages drove Irish Catholics to the United States.

Our modern understanding of what it means to be Irish is, arguably, influenced by those of Irish heritage living in the United States. Ireland, too, was forever changed by what became a transatlantic exchange. Likewise, Ireland is integral to American culture. That is, we are influenced by what we gained from the influx of Irelands young people.

The Irish stood out in America, and seldom because they wanted to. Although white in appearance, they were viewed as different. They were segregated into slums and sometimes referred to as a race. They were greeted with signs reading Help Wanted: Irish Need Not Apply and relegated to demeaning, dangerous jobs.

They persevered. They maintained national Irish pride, keeping traditions they merged into U.S. culture.

A result may be the modern version of St. Patricks Day is an American export, historian Michael Cronin told Time magazine. Celebrations became popular here because Irish immigrants asserted their cultural and political presence in American society, he explained.

St. Patricks Day parades, for example, have been popular in American cities since the 1800s. In Dublin, where Cronin lives, such events didnt start until the 1990s.

Today, St. Patricks Day takes on its own look and feel in each community that celebrates it, seldom reserved for Catholics or ethnically Irish people. St. Patricks Day is an Irish holiday celebrated by people of many cultures and ethnic backgrounds. (Patrick was probably Scottish and definitely a Roman citizen.) Time calls it the most global national holiday.

In the United States, making St. Patricks Day a federal or public holiday would probably result in things like closing government offices and no mail delivery. It also could mean a break for some businesses, schools and financial markets.

Im not a proponent of another shortened work/school week. A desire to be a stronger, more successful nation doesnt mesh with the casual pastime of chasing days off.

However, Irish contributions to U.S. culture deserve their due. Perhaps a federal holiday would provide more opportunities to teach about the United States considerable links to Irish history and culture.
Most doctors enter the medical field because they want to help others. For Dr. Joseph Hart, the reason is more personal. When Joe Hart, his uncle and a physician himself, died of cancer of the tongue, it had a profound impact on him.

Thats what motivated my brother and I to specialize in ENT (ear, nose and throat), says Dr. Hart. We deal with anything from the clavicle up, in newborns to the very elderly.

Dr. Hart is one of Cedar Valley Medical Specialists two otolaryngologists. He is located at United Medical Park on West Ridgeway Avenue in Waterloo. Dr. Hart is a general otolaryngologist and his Cedar Valley Ear, Nose & Throat and Hearing Care offices perform sinus surgery; treat pediatric ear, nose and throat patients; and treat hearing loss, nasal obstructions, chronic sinusitis, tonsils and adenoids, snoring and sleep apnea  in addition to treating such simple ailments as ear infections, sore throats and ears that need cleaning, and assisting patients with hearing aid fittings.

We deal with a lot of chronic problems, Dr. Hart explains. We also deal with acute conditions, which means they appear all of a sudden. We see patients who might have a problem for a very long period of time or lifelong concerns. A significant condition we see a lot of in Iowa is hearing loss.

Dr. Hart is very active at the national level through the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). My main effort was more patient advocacy when the state of Iowa presented a challenge for some insurers and physicians, he explains. Thats when I got involved, because those challenges can make physicians not want to practice in Iowa. So I got involved, first at the local level with both hospitals. Im also a former state society president for ENT and a former board member of the Iowa Medical Society.

Hes currently a consultant to the AAO-HNSs Board of Governors Governance & Society Engagement Committee. Hes appeared on Capitol Hill in the last 15 years advocating for patients and easier access to the health -care system.

Ive had electronic medical record-keeping since Ive been here (beginning 20 years ago), Dr. Hart says. That experience has made us somewhat more savvy, which is an advantage in our practice because its now such a huge part of our day-to-day environment. Technology is always changing. Instrumentation is constantly being updated in order to perform procedures more effectively. Some can even be less invasive than they were previously.

With a shortage of ENTs practicing in the state, the Cedar Valley is fortunate. You should be able to access us and be able to have the vast majority of your needs met locally, he says. We are well-trained, have a lot of experience and we love our community.

Cedar Valley Hearing Care

Hearing affects how we relate to our family and friends, how we perform our jobs, how we are able to lead productive lives and how we maintain our health through social connections.

Audiologists are trained to diagnose, manage and treat hearing and balance problems for persons of all ages. Stacy Wolf, AuD, can be found in the Cedar Valley Ear, Nose & Throat and Hearing Care offices of Dr. Joseph Hart. Wolf performs comprehensive diagnostic hearing and middle ear evaluations, and also performs specialized otoacoustic emissions testing on newborns.

In addition to helping adults with hearing loss, she also sees a lot of children with middle ear fluid or infections. Some types of hearing loss can be treated medically or surgically by Dr. Hart, so it is important that these types of hearing losses be ruled out before hearing aids are considered.

Hearing aids have changed dramatically even from when I began practicing 19 years ago, Wolf says. Now they are more discreet in appearance, they are very comfortable and are very sensitive in adjusting to the patients listening needs. The biggest component of recent technological advances is that hearing aids can have wireless/Bluetooth connectivity."

Newer hearing aids can be streamed to televisions, tablets, and computers. Patients can be more satisfied in more challenging listening environments. They can have options for making adjustments to their hearing aids using their cell phones. Phones can be turned into remote controls and adjusted for volume, used to change programs or even locate a misplaced hearing aid. Phones can also be turned into mini-microphones and placed in the middle of the table during a meeting; they pick up the voice and route it directly to the hearing aids.

Hearing aids arent perfect, they dont restore normal hearing, but with these assistive devices you can really improve the quality of conversation, Wolf says.

According to several research studies by Johns Hopkins University, older adults with hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia and Alzheimers disease compared to their normal-hearing peers. Hearing enriches relationships and connects you to the world. Your ears and brain work together as a system. Hearing plays a vital role in brain health, Wolf says. A key in treating hearing loss is the patients motivation to do something about it. If he or she waits too long, its more difficult for the brain to adapt to a hearing device.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Despite people shouting you lie, waving signs telling her to not castrate health care and accusing her of declaring war on average Americans, U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst welcomed input from a highly partisan, overflow crowd Friday at a town-hall meeting.

If nothing else, the Iowa Republican said, the gathering demonstrated that Iowans understand how politics works and how to engage elected officials.

For me, its actually a little bit gratifying to hear what they are thinking, she said after an hourlong session with more than 1,000 people at Coe Colleges Sinclair Auditorium. Its important that they do that.

And the crowd let her know that it doesnt think much of the proposed replacement to the Affordable Care Act, the presidents skinny budget or much of anything they see coming out of the Trump administration and Congress.

Many questioned the House Republican health care plan, which Mary Vermillion of Iowa City said would redistribute wealth upward.

Ernst said she has questions, too, but said that the act  popularly known as Obamacare  is not sustainable and must be replaced.

Later, asked about the opposition to the House GOP health care plan, Ernst said its a personal, emotional issue because of all the topics we deal with, it impacts us probably the most.

She promised a cautious, deliberate approach to making the so-called American Health Care Act better if it comes to the Senate.

I cant say today whether I support it or dont support it, Ernst said.

Before she can decide, Ernst has to know how it would affect Iowans, she said, especially working Iowans who cant afford Obamacare premiums.

She related a story of a single mother who chose to go without health insurance in order to have money to send her sons to college, and another about a woman paying $400 a month for a policy with a $9,000 deductible.

In all likelihood, shell never meet that deductible, so shes paying everything out of pocket, Ernst said.

Ernst said she also has questions about tax credits in the GOP plan. She said she wants to ensure working families can find affordable coverage.

Its really important to me (because) in Iowa we have a lot of folks who fall into that category  they would like to have the coverage but they just cant afford it, Ernst told reporters.

What we have to do is make sure that we can offer the broadest plans that people can pick and choose from, that would be competitive, that works for their families, she said. We dont have that option now.

In a report Monday, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 24 million fewer people would have coverage a decade from now than if Obamacare remained intact, nearly doubling the share of Americans who are uninsured from 10 to 19 percent. But the GOP legislation would lower the deficit by $337 billion during that time.

The report predicted premiums would be 15 to 20 percent higher in the first year compared with those under Obamacare, but 10 percent lower on average after 2026. Older Americans would pay substantially more and younger Americans less.

Ernst responded to several other issues, including President Donald Trumps assertions that then-President Barack Obama wiretapped him, and Trumps refusal to release his tax returns.

If the White House is going to push out an accusation like that, they need to back it up, Ernst said of the wiretap claim. Weve seen no evidence presented. Lesson learned, they need to back it up.

She encouraged Trump to follow the example of recent presidents and make his tax returns available.

It promotes transparency, she said, but rejected the idea that candidates be prohibited from running for the presidency until they release their returns.

What was lacking from the town hall, however, was a commitment to go back to Washington and put pressure on Republican colleagues to urge Trump to release his returns, according to Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Derek Eadon.

The meeting showed that Ernst has clearly turned her back on Iowans and fell into line with the Washington political machine, he said.

Ernst spent most of her time at todays town hall evading questions and delivering Republican talking points. Words are not enough and Iowans deserve action from Sen. Ernst, he said.

Ernst said the hostility of her audience wont deter her from continuing her third 99-county tour of Iowa in as many years. The change in administration seems to be driving people out to her events, she said.

I believe in elected officials being accessible, she said. That included accepting an invitation to hold a town hall in Iowa City.

Accessibility to her Cedar Rapids town hall was limited by space. The fire marshal requested the doors be closed at noon  when the meeting started  because Sinclair Auditorium, which seats 1,027, was filled beyond capacity, according to Rod Pritchard, secretary of the college.

It was the first time in his 14 years there that people have been turned away from an event at Sinclair.

About 40 people who were turned away were given chairs so they could sit outside and watch a live stream of the town hall on their mobile devices.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.
LWV to hold

Medicaid forum

CEDAR FALLS -- The League of Women Voters will present a program on "How are the Iowa Medicaid changes affecting mental health services?" from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Waterloo Public Library, Meeting Room A.

Panel members are Tom Eachus, executive director of UnityPoint Health-Black Hawk Grundy Mental Health Center; Bob Lincoln of County Social Services; Tony Thompson, Black Hawk County sheriff; and a Waterloo Police staff person.

The event is free and open to the public.

Foundation grant

applications due

CEDAR FALLS  Grant applications are now being accepted at the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa for its Black Hawk County 2017 spring grant cycle. The deadline is April 1.

Grants are awarded to projects in the following areas: art and culture, community betterment, education, environment, health, historic preservation and human service.

The online grant application may be found at www.cfneia.org. Grant recipients will be announced in June.

First-time grant applicants should contact Tom Wickersham, program director, at 243-1356 prior to submitting an application. Grant applicants must be a 501(c)(3) designated organization (or government entity) serving Black Hawk County in order to be considered for funding.

Area journalist

to speak on news

CEDAR FALLS -- "Fake News and the Role of the Journalist" is the topic for discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. March 25 at University Book and Supply in Cedar Falls.

The speaker is Anelia Dimitrova, associate professor of journalism at the University of Northern Iowa and regional editor for Waverly newspapers.

The event is free, open to the public and sponsored by the bookstore and UNI's American Democracy Project.

Teen Trust board

applications due

CEDAR FALLS -- Teen Trust is seeking applications for membership on the 2017-18 Board of Trustees. Teen Trust is a program under the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa which seeks to promote philanthropy among Black Hawk County teens.

Trustees are responsible for learning about and participating in the grant-making cycle. Trustees also learn about community needs, creating and distributing a grant application, and working together to decide which nonprofit organizations should receive a portion of the annual $10,000 available from the Youth Interest Fund, a fund of CFNEIA.

Students entering their sophomore, junior or senior year in the fall of 2017 at a school in Black Hawk County are encouraged to apply. Applications are available online at www.cfneia.org/AboutUs/TeenTrust or at the Community Foundation office, located at 3117 Greenhill Circle in Cedar Falls. Deadline for applications is April 14 (applications must be postmarked or received in the Community Foundation office by 5 p.m.).

For more information, contact Tom Wickersham, program director for CFNEIA, at 243-1356 or twickersham@cfneia, or Karlene Izer, Teen Trust student director, at teentrust@cfneia.org.

Metro Funders

OKs new effort

CEDAR FALLS -- Metro Funders, the local network of grant-making organizations, has approved the following agencys public solicitation in Black Hawk County: Hawkeye Community College Foundation for their Building LIFE campaign for the Hawkeye Community College Adult Learning Center.

Metro Funders serves as the community fundraising review board and screens public fundraising campaigns conducted within Black Hawk County.

Next legislative

forum March 24

CEDAR FALLS -- The next Legislative Public Forum for 2017 will be held March 24, beginning at 4:30 p.m. (coffee at 4 p.m.) at the Area Education Agency 267 Conference Center, 3712 Cedar Heights Drive.

The topic will be the budget and taxes. The public is invited.
UNI-Dome Antique and Vintage Market

Time: 4 to 9 p.m. today; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Location: UNI-Dome, Cedar Falls.

Details: Vintage show.

Admission: $8.

Mulligans Stew

Time: 5 to 7 p.m. today.

Location: Cedar Falls Womens Club, 304 Clay St.

Details: Annual St. Patricks Day dinner.

Anything Goes

Time: 7 p.m. today and Saturday.

Location: Union High School, La Porte City.

Details: Union High School presents the classical musical with a cast, crew and pit of 45.

Tickets: $5.

Little Mermaid

Time: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday.

Location: Jr./Sr. High School Auditorium, Independence.

Details: Independence High School Music Department production.

Tickets: $10.

Kids Dream Spring Film Series

Time: 10 a.m. today, Saturday and Sunday.

Location: Marcus Theatres, Waterloo.

Details: Family favorite films to be shown on Fridays, Saturday and Sundays at 10 a.m. The movie this week is The Wild Life.

Admission: $3.

Pancake fundraiser

Time: 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday.

Location: St. Pauls Lutheran Church, 301 First St., N.W., Waverly.

Details: Wartburg Colleges Water to Thrive chapter will host the dinner. Donations will be accepted. Proceeds will fund building clean water wells in rural African countries.

Waterloo Black Hawks vs. Chicago

Time: 7 p.m. Saturday.

Location: Young Arena, 125 Commercial St., Waterloo.

Tickets: Call 291-7680 or go to www.waterlooblackhawks.com.

Concert

Time: 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Location: St. Mary Catholic Church, Waverly.

Details: The Wartburg College Symphonic Band and the Wapsie Valley High School jazz and concert bands will host a joint concert. Nonperishable food items and donations will be accepted and donated to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo.

Hearst Film Series

Time: 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Location: Hearst Center for the Arts, 304 W. Seerley Blvd., Cedar Falls.

Details: Film in March are films by Martin Scoresese. The film this Tuesday is Gangs of New York (2002).

Admission: Free.

FIRST Regional Robotics Competition

Time: Thursday and March 24-25.

Location: UNI-Dome/McLeod Center, Cedar Falls.

Details: Watch the robotic wonders created by teams from throughout the region as they come to the Cedar Valley to compete in this unique event. Events held at the UNI-Dome and the McLeod Center.
In their Atlantic article, "The Coddling of the American Mind," Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukainoff identified a troubling development on American campuses. They wrote, "A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense."Instead of confronting statements, beliefs, and arguments that they dislike or don't agree with, more and more students insist on avoiding them or, worse, trying to silence those who speak them. Students, along with accomplices on the faculty and in administration, have been successful in keeping outsiders from giving lectures because they don't want to give a platform to anyone who holds views that clash with theirs.The justification usually given is that presentation of "controversial" ideas would be too upsetting and must be suppressed. The latest example is the ugly, violent reaction at Middlebury College on March 2 when a mob prevented Charles Murray from giving a talk and later injured Professor Allison Stanger as she and Murray were trying to leave campus in a car.At least, such incidents make news.What seldom makes news, however, is another aspect of the suppression of speech-bias response teams (BRTs). Quite a number of colleges and universities have established them, at least 232 according to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and that number is believed to be rapidly growing.When a college or university sets up a BRT, it establishes a formal process for soliciting reports from students, faculty, or staff about allegedly offensive speech or conduct. The team responds to complaints. That's where the trouble begins, because the complaints usually involve speech that is protected under the First Amendment.Colleges have always had procedures for students to report acts of violence or intimidation, as they should. Schools have a responsibility to shield their students against physical abuse and harassment, but bias response teams seldom do that; more often, they are turned into swords used against students or faculty members who have said something that happens to offend a student.What makes that possible, the FIRE report shows, is the broad, sometimes almost unlimited definition of what constitutes a "bias incident." Many schools have "catch-all categories" that are so vague that they cover speech that might offend anyone for any reason. "The net effect," the report declares, is that these systems "invite scrutiny of student activists, organizations, and faculty engaged in political advocacy, debate, or academic inquiry."One of the serious defects in these systems is that they are for the most part entirely in the hands of students. In less than a third of BRTs are any faculty members involved. If there were, they might lend an adult voice for the importance of wide-open discussion of ideas. Most BRTs, however, are run by students who want to have a role in identifying and punishing what they perceive as "bias." That makes this bad idea worse.Furthermore, FIRE reports, in at least some instances schools have set up BRTs as a way of evading the legal decisions invalidating speech codes. Colleges that want to control free speech but don't want to do so overtly are trying to get away with that by the covert means of calling it "bias."That same furtive behavior is in evidence with the way some schools try to keep their BRT activity hidden.For example, the University of Oregon first stated that its records would not be made available because releasing them "would not be in the public interest." Eventually, the university was compelled by severe public criticism to make its records available to FIRE, but the most damaging incidents had somehow disappeared. Some other schools put their BRT records behind password protection after they had come under scrutiny.The meatiest part of the report is its examples of BRTs in action at schools across the country.At Appalachian State University, the 2016 election kept the BRT busy with complaints from both students who opposed Trump and students who favored him. Anti-Trump students complained about that pro-Trump students were guilty of "hate speech" for chalking their messages around campus, while pro-Trump students complained that their candidate was being slandered by "TRUMP IS A RACIST" messages in chalk.At Texas Tech-and demonstrating again that it isn't only leftist students who file complaints with the BRT-students filed complaints about tweets from the Black Student Union: "All lives don't matter... White lives don't matter... Blue lives don't matter."At the University of Northern Colorado, bias complaints were filed against two professors for having encouraged students to engage in debate in class over the issue of gay and transgender rights. The professors wanted students to confront opposing arguments they found "uncomfortable," but at least two students preferred to whine to the BRT rather than debate.At the University of Oregon, the BRT sprang into action after a complaint that the student newspaper was guilty because it gave insufficient coverage to students of color and transgendered students.At the University of Texas's flagship campus in Austin, a conservative student group was turned in for BRT investigation for having offending some students with its "affirmative action bake sale."In recent years, Halloween costumes have created a great deal of trouble on college campuses and they led to a bias complaint at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville. Students who had dressed up as the "Three Blind Mice" were hit with the allegation that their costumes could be offensive to people with disabilities.Arguably the silliest of all bias complaints came at Colby College, where a professor was reported for having used the phrase "on the other hand." That common locution might, you see, offend students with just one hand and was therefore "ableist."Not all bias complaints lead to action, but enough of them do to create a chilling effect on free speech. When students and faculty members know that they could face an investigation if they offend someone, the result is apt to be cautious speech or none at all. People may censor themselves once they know that an anonymous report against them will bring trouble. The report quotes former FIRE president David French who has written that BRTs create a "process is punishment" mechanism that can deter students or faculty members from speaking their minds.At least there is some good news in the study. More than one college has either dropped or decided against starting a BRT. The University of Iowa, for example, turned thumbs down on a proposed BRT after looking at how ones at other schools were "punitive in nature" and turned into "scolding panels."The strongest argument against BRTs is that they reinforce one of the worst tendencies among American students-to complain about opposing views rather than to argue against them.Young people should learn in their schooling (up to and including college) that when others express beliefs they disagree with, the right thing to do is to formulate an opposing argument. But when a college establishes a BRT, the message it sends is that the right thing to do when you encounter an opposing belief is to turn in the offender for re-education and/or punishment. That is educational malpractice.
The U.S. Census Bureau has been experimenting with alternate versions of the race and ethnicity section of its National Content Test Research Study. The bureau hopes by the next census in 2020, it can more accurately tally Hispanics and other newly prominent minority groups.

Basically, the bureau found in its recently released 2015 study if the format of the identity prompt combines race and ethnicity into a single question, it results in more accurate reporting and dramatically lower nonresponses compared to the 2010 style. In the 2010 iteration, respondents were first asked to answer whether they were of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin and then asked to specify their race.

The proposal for a new, combined question is quite long, asking: What is Person 1s race or ethnicity? Mark all boxes that apply AND print ethnicities in the spaces below. You may report more than one group.

A respondent can then choose from white, Hispanic, Latino or Spanish, black or African-American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska native, Middle Eastern or North African, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander or some other race or ethnicity. Then, within each of those categories, one can get more specific.

For instance, my husband would choose the white category and then, if he really wanted to go way back up the family tree, check off the English and Irish ethnicity boxes.

I would choose the Hispanic, Latino or Spanish category and then check off Mexican or Mexican-American and also write in Ecuadorean.

My teenage sons, assuming they were interested in detailing every bit of their ancestry to the Census Bureau, would do all of the above, choosing two categories and checking off four separate ethnicities.

The proposed combination of the race and ethnicity question has been controversial to those who track such esoterica because it effectively implies the Hispanic/Latino designation is a race. To be clear: It is not.

Hispanics can be of any race  in my own family we have black Hispanics, Asian Hispanics and white Hispanics.

But even as some stick to the technicality of the Hispanic designation not being a race, others note this distinction already is meaningless to a large swath of our society.

According to Nicholas Vargas, a professor and expert on Latino studies at the University of Florida, if the Hispanic designation became conflated with a race as the result of media attention to the new format of the question  or subsequent reporting on the results of the next Census  then it would be a small price to pay for better data on how people identify themselves.

It would really be a better reflection of how race and ethnicity are organized in the U.S. rather than a major change, Vargas told me. For a large proportion of people, this reflects how they self-identify or how they already experience race. ... I dont see the question producing any new political or cultural categories.

Ironically, as the desire by racial and ethnic groups to get more prominence has gained traction, the election of Donald Trump has made the project to better identify who is in our country even trickier.

Groups that for years wanted visibility in Census data, like those with Middle Eastern ethnicity, are wondering if the spotlight would be detrimental in a time when the president stokes fears about non-white terrorists.

Latino advocacy organizations also are worried about what the impact of stepped-up immigration enforcement actions and deportations will have on Latinos willingness to come to the door to answer personal questions from government representatives.

Only time will tell how presidential politics could affect participation in the 2020 Census. For now, identity politics may yet influence the final question wording, which must be submitted to Congress by April 2018.
If U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, doesnt schedule public meetings, commonly known as town halls, and doesnt tell everyone about them in public fashion so citizens know where he will be and when, should they wish to attend, he fails constituents and an important responsibility of his office.

The Journal knows of no traditional town hall scheduled by King within Siouxland so far this year.

In a recent interview with The Journals Bret Hayworth, King shared his concern paid protesters are disrupting public meetings held by Republican members of Congress.

People come in and, you know, they are angry and shouting and on-the-borderline violent, King told Hayworth. That just discourages the kind of dialogue that can make our country better.

Although we know of no evidence proving protesters at recent GOP town halls are paid, we do not dismiss Kings concern about them altogether. We have, in fact, used this space to criticize those who seek only to produce disruption at meetings like these.

In our view, those who attend public events hosted by GOP officeholders should practice decorum and follow established protocol, allowing questions and answers to proceed in a civil way.

Despite what happened at some events in the past, however, holding public office demands members of Congress, including King, at least make the effort to meet with Americans (including those who disagree with them) face to face, listen to what they have to say and answer their questions.

Thats essential to accountability.

To dismiss all protesters as paid and thereby hide from town halls is, in our view, nothing but a convenient excuse to avoid facing the music from angry, frustrated constituents at a time of division in our country.

One final note about King, who stirred national controversy this week with a repugnant, racially-charged comment on Twitter  a comment praised by former Ku Klax Klan leader David Duke, by the way  in which he said, We cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies.

If King wants to take advantage of the platform privilege he enjoys, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to draw attention to his views on the national stage, he should have to answer to whatever fallout ensues and explain himself to constituents back home.

Might we suggest a town hall?
Waterloo streets

RON SPEARS

WATERLOO  Jerald Smiths letter on March 13 deplores the condition of Waterloo streets. He admits this is his first winter living here. He does not say where he came from. That is important for his assessment. There was a time when the mayor of Waterloo said residents could come to the Street Department and pick up a load of crushed rock and fix their own street. There was a time when the holes were so bad they would cause tires to burst. Then the people voted in a 1-cent tax for streets and they have been greatly improved.

I drive around the city a lot for services and have never seen a hole large enough to swallow an 18-wheeler. Granted, streets could be better maintained. Whoever is in charge of streets needs to ride a bike around town on the streets and then they would know where they need fixing. Yes, it could be better, but once it was worse.

Gun bill

RENATA SACK

WATERLOO  I envision disastrous effects from HF 517 that is now moving to the Senate. Our senators have been elected to safeguard Iowans well being, Iowas economic success, a healthy environment for Iowa, quality education for its children and youth, justice for all citizens, they have been elected to shape Iowas future as a sustainable and desirable state.

This proposed gun bill is absurd and unwarranted. Iowans already can own guns. With a law as defined by this bill, we would create a state of scared and gun-toting people. A volatile combination. The clause justifiable use of reasonable and deadly force is a frightening detail in this bill. It foreshadows the killing of innocent Iowans. No punishment can undo this. Death is irreversible. Fury can flare in an instant, momentary opinion can mistake anyone for a dangerous person.

Many folks cannot make wise decisions in normal circumstances. How could they judge the situation properly when scared or provoked? Let us support life, Iowa, not death. Our Constitution says they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Roundabouts

CLEO CROSS

CEDAR FALLS  I think the City Council has its priorities mixed up. Instead of spending millions of dollars on river water sports, we think you should spend the money on infrastructure. Our city streets are pleading for help. In regards to University Avenue, we have tried to get your attention to no avail. We all have decided now our only alternative is to cast our votes in November for a new City Council and mayor who will at least listen to the general public and go with the majority.

Susan deBuhr is the only council member with common sense who will listen to us. Our votes then will provide to you how many thousands of people do not like runabouts in our streets. What a mess you have created.

Its a shame all of that money spent has been wasted and the damage is done. You really pulled off a trick on us that cant be fixed. We hope you are proud of your actions.
Contact: LifQuest Inc.

LifQuest Inc. LifeQuestinc@yahoo.com

WASHINGTON, NC Members of Lifequest, Inc. visited Beaufort County Community College's cosmetology salon to get pampered on March 8 and 15. The psychosocial rehabilitation program has been focusing on self-care, hygiene and personal grooming. The manicures and the spa treatments also give cosmetology students a chance to practice their skills as they work toward achieving certification.said Jennifer Schmitt, support staff for LifeQuest.The rehab center serves about 60 members through its day program. They strive to create the self-empowerment needed to achieve a successful life for people with severe and persistent mental illness. These illnesses range from severe depression to a traumatic brain injury. Over the course of the two days, LifeQuest brought 20 members to the college.said Schmitt.The female participants could pick any service, including eyebrow shaping, spa facials, manicures, and hair cutting, styling and shampooing. Cosmetology student Sarah Allendar said the clients from LifeQuest have been great to work with because of how much they have enjoyed the services.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 14, 2017 | BARDWELL, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 14, 2017 | 09:45 AM | BARDWELL, KY

An investigation is underway at the Carlisle County School District by Kentucky State Police, regarding a possible incident between a school staff member and a student.



West Kentucky Star has learned exclusively that an apparent male staff member was escorted from the school campus on Monday, by troopers. Details on what prompted the start of the investigation are not yet clear.



Trooper Jody Cash confirmed to West Kentucky Star that an investigation began on Monday, but would not confirm details, or the person at the heart of the investigation, citing policies of not being able to comment about an ongoing case where charges have not been filed.



West Kentucky Star has learned through reliable sources the investigation apparently stems from an alleged inappropriate relationship which may have happened between a male school staff member and a student.



West Kentucky Star has also exclusively learned the name and other identifying factors of the school staff member being questioned through multiple reliable sources, but is withholding that and information regarding their position within the school in order to not potentially identify the individual, pending the ongoing investigation by State Police.



Trooper Cash told West Kentucky Star he does not anticipate the investigation will take a prolonged period of time, saying he believes they will be able to provide additional information in the coming days on whether any crime may or may not have been committed.



West Kentucky Star reached out to the Carlisle County School District's Superintendent's office. The person who answered the phone indicated the superintendent was at a school building for the morning and unable to issue a comment at the time of our call. This story will be updated to reflect the school's comments when or if, our call is returned.




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The first person to use it in the form we know today ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder") was an author called Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. She included the phrase in her book "Molly Bawn. (1878) Molly Bawn the story of a frivolous, petulant Irish girl, a flirt, who arouses her lover's jealousy and naively ignores social conventions. .



Bass High School Art Teacher Atlanta, Georgia

In a way, the jokes on the Republican Party: After decades of masquerading as the stupid party, thats what it has become. But if an unapologetic ignoramus wins the presidency, the consequences will be no laughing matter. New York Times -July 31, 2016

DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP

FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP

DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP

FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP

DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP

FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP, FORREST GUMP

BOBBY TONY, BOBBY TONY

BONY MARONIE, BONY MARONIE

BOBBY TONY, BOBBY TONY

BONY MARONIE, BONY MARONIE



I have for a long time known that. I know this because every time I tried to draw something in art class, Miss. May Klutzz (no kidding, that was her real name) would remind me of that. Then she would explain in ever so much detail:I had no idea at the time that she was just trying to be gentle in her criticism of my work of art. I had no interest in Art, I took the course, as well as typing because that is where the girls were. I did not have enough guts to take Home Economics. No respectable greaser would survive that ribbing from his classmates.Anyway, that was where I learned that you could be vision impaired and still have 20/20 vision. It meant that you saw things through a different set of eyes depending on your personal biases. For the record, Miss Klutzz was a certified avant-guarde eccentric. She had been teaching at Bass High since at least 1947 according to the memories comments on our Facebook page. To say she had flair would be an understatement. I think I can safely say she was a Liberal as much as you could be in 1958. At the very least she was a feminist to the core. That is why it was strange that she did not appreciate my abstract approach to art.Next up is the hearing impairment. As a person who suffers from that malady, I can attest that you do not always hear what was said clearly. You learn to adapt by looking carefully at the person speaking and then either nodding you head up and down or side to side. I think I could be considered an expert on the subject because I made 100% on the Ten-signs-of-hearing test and I am too cheap (not vain) to buy hearing aids.But that is a medical problem. I am talking about the version of hearing only what you want to hear. This is all based on your interpretation of what you think they said.So you might want to trust my judgement on this Seeing and Hearing problems with Liberals. When you have already made up you mind that someone is dumb or an ignoramus, it should be no surprise that when you hear his name you automatically revert to the "Stupid is as Stupid Does" mantra. Never mind that Donald Trump has made billions of dollars dealing with some of the smartest people in the world. It is even remotely possible that he has just been "DUMB GUMP LUCKY" like Forrest was?For example, I want you to quickly read the following lines quickly several times:That's all I have to say about that. To carry the example a bit further,here is another little test. Read this quickly and you may see how it is easy to get confused.I doubt any Liberals got this far in the article and if they did I think I can almost guarantee that they are not laughing. You see most Liberals don't have a sense of Humor or Funny Bone. It was organically removed when they had that first Caffe Latte Grande at Starbucks.
Many western websites block many countries from access to their website and data presented. Example is YouTube

Nova Proxy Switcher is the answer to such issues. If I find a video is blocked by a news source in the western world? I use and basically run full time under a proxy service. This is the only way to get all the information necessary to understand the full issues at hand. Many MSMs block access to their sites against countries such as Russia and China. Many western sites block out of spite and fear of China and Russia

What ever you wanna do! Fools. I just start the service when I fire up the computer and let it run all day as I use the WWW. It works and is simple, leave it on auto and it finds the best proxies to use automatically. Example is that I am being blocked right now by European servers and while you may be able to see my site, I can not, unless I happen to get lucky and get an unblocked route. Since my hosting is in Iceland, it is easy for games to be played against Windows to Russia. Therefore, I have to use a proxy just to work on my own site many times

Just like China has been doing for a longtime, the western world is working on setting up software to control the internet

Just go around it and enjoy the fruits of the labors anyway

Nova Proxy Switcher

For when you are tired of being censored all the time

WtR
BOISE, ID, March 17, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Heidi Jarvis-Grimes is the Vice President of the Idaho Technology Council. She has more than 20 years of successful experience in business development, strategic initiatives and industry relations.



Prior to joining the ITC, Heidi served as Director of Advancement for Strategic University Initiatives, and the College of Arts and Letters at Idaho State University (ISU). In this role, her leadership increased visibility for ISU, grew the donor prospect pipeline, and created strong relationships with industry. Under her leadership, ISU launched many sustainable relationships that support university research and program initiatives.



"Heidi brings a wealth of experience to the Idaho Technology Council," said Jay Larsen, President and Founder of the ITC. "Her expertise in business development and her existing relationships with industry will allow her to nurture Idaho's innovation economy."



After graduating from the University of Dayton, Heidi started her career as Executive Director for the Washington/Idaho Symphony. She then served as Director of External Relations in Advancement for Research in addition to Corporate and Foundation Relations. Heidi also served on the Executive Board of the Center for Environmental, Research, Education and Outreach Committee at Washington State University before transitioning to Idaho State University. Heidi has two professional passions, advancement in the arts and interdisciplinary university initiatives. Heidi completed her 20th season as Conductor of the Pullman Community Civic Symphonic Ensemble and rwas ecently honored as Guest Conductor of the Royal Hawaiian Ensemble in Honolulu, Hawai'i. She is a professional conductor, clinician and adjudicator at local, state and national levels, and is published with the Leblanc Bell Quarterly Educator's Viewpoint and Conn Selmer's Keynotes -- character, education, inspiration and performance. She was the recipient of the Pullman, Washington Chamber of Commerce Civic Improvement Award, presented for outstanding contribution to the improvement of community and citizen relations.



She is passionate about leading initiatives that impact Idaho's technology community. "With the second fastest growing tech sector in the nation, Idaho has proven itself to be a leader," noted Heidi Jarvis-Grimes. "The Idaho Technology Council's role in fostering this expansive growth made it an easy choice for me to be part of the leadership team. It is an honor and my pleasure to work with our members and partners."



About the Idaho Technology Council: The mission of the Idaho Technology Council is to help technology companies in Idaho start, grow, and thrive. The ITC includes major corporations, mid/start companies, and universities. The ITC is a member-driven organization committed to the success of Idaho's technology ecosystem. Through the leadership of the private sector, the ITC brings together industry, education, research, investment and government throughout the state to champion the growth of Idaho's technology ecosystem. The ITC includes such global members and sponsors as Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com); Keynetics (www.keynetics.com); Micron Technology (www.micron.com); the Idaho National Laboratory (inlportal.inl.gov); Monsanto (www.monsanto.com), and Deloitte (www.deloitte.com).



About Worldwide Who's Who

With over 500,000 members representing every major industry, Worldwide Who's Who is a powerful networking resource that enables professionals to outshine their competition, in part through effective branding and marketing. Worldwide Who's Who employs similar public relations techniques to those utilized by Fortune 500 companies, making them cost-effective for members who seek to take advantage of its career enhancement and business advancement services.



Worldwide Who's Who membership provides individuals with a valuable third-party endorsement of their accomplishments, and gives them the tools needed to brand themselves and their businesses effectively. In addition to publishing biographies in print and electronic form, it offers an online networking platform where members can establish new professional relationships.



For more information, please visit http://www.worldwidewhoswho.com.



Contact:

Ellen Campbell

Director, Media Relations

[email protected]



# # #
Lindsey Jacobson, ABC News.(DELPHI, Ind.) -- Authorities investigating the murder of two Indiana teen girls served a search warrant today at the home of the man who owns the property where the girls' bodies were found, state and local officials told ABC News.



As of yet, no arrests have been made in the double murder case that shook the rural small town of Delphi, Indiana. State police told ABC News today that property owner Ron Logan is not a suspect "at this time."



Logans attorney, Andrew Achey, said in a statement, Mr. Logan had no involvement in this heinous crime.



"I would like to caution the public to avoid jumping to conclusions before law enforcement has completed the ongoing investigation," Achey added. "Not only does Mr. Logan maintain his innocence but he also encourages anyone with information to call the tip line."



It was Feb. 13 when eighth-graders Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14, disappeared while on a hiking trail near their hometown of Delphi. Their bodies were found on Logan's property the next day.



The only clues that have been released to the public are this photo of a man who police say is the prime suspect in the investigation and a chilling recording found on Libby's phone with just three audible words: "down the hill."



Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby told ABC News today the search warrant is "part of the continuing investigative process" and he said he cannot go into any specifics about what authorities are looking for. This is not the first search warrant served in this case.



Meanwhile, as Logan's property is searched, Logan himself today is in the local jail on an unrelated charge, Leazenby said. Logan was arrested March 11, picked up on an arrest warrant for a probation violation, Leazenby said. A probation office spokesperson told ABC News the office cannot comment on pending cases.



Leazenby stressed, "Speculation and assumptions can quickly develop from something like this."



"Just because a search warrant is issued" on someones property, Leazenby said, does not mean an arrest follows.



State police said today authorities are still combing through the thousands of tips they've received in the double murder case.



The residents of Delphi, a tight-knit community of nearly 3,000 people dubbed by the local sheriff as "small-town USA," were shaken by the crime.



Greg Briles, the superintendent of schools at the Delphi Community School Corporation, told ABC News earlier this week, "We're still very concerned about the individual or individuals who have not been caught ... they're still out there."



Leazenby told ABC News earlier this week there is not necessarily increased security in town, but he said community members appear to be more vigilant.



"People look at people different ways now, I think," Leazenby said. "I think complacency has been at least eliminated at this stage, and it's more of a mindful, watchful, vigilant attitude. I don't want paranoia, and I don't think we've had that, but people literally looking over their shoulder is not necessarily a bad thing in today's society."



At Delphi Community Middle School, where Abby and Libby were eighth-graders looking forward to high school, grieving friends are now painting a "tree of life" on the cafeteria wall with different messages, Briles said.



Briles said teachers and students are "still coping with the situation of losing two students. I don't think it's something that is gonna go away in a month's period of time. I think it's something that's going to have a lasting effect."



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Governor visits Princeville Elementary School, business that recently reopened

Contact: Ford Porter

Ford Porter govpress@nc.gov

Tarboro: Governor Roy Cooper today met with Edgecombe County leaders to push the process of helping families and communities recover from Hurricane Matthew and toured locations impacted by the storm.Cooper met for a roundtable discussion with local leaders along with Department of Public Safety Secretary Erik A. Hooks, Director of Hurricane Recovery Dempsey Benton and N.C. Emergency Management (NCEM) Director Mike Sprayberry. The discussion focused on the progress made so far and continuing needs for hard-hit areas.Gov. Cooper said.Efforts to recover are yielding progress, Cooper said. Of the more than 600 roads closed across North Carolina following Matthew, all but 22 are now reopened. Hundreds of families have been able to return home or find other places to live.But housing remains an immediate need for many families, Cooper said. More than 500 families remain in hotels five months after the storm dumped record rainfall in many communities, down from a total of more than 3,100 families. More families are expected to move out of hotels in coming days as they return home, relocate to rental housing or find other housing.Disaster recovery has made clear a lack of affordable, available housing in eastern North Carolina that has hindered relocation efforts. In his State of the State address this week, Governor Cooper asked legislators to work with him to change legislation passed in 2013 to restore allowing the use of federal money for housing so eastern North Carolina can start to build its way out of this affordable housing shortage.Half of the state has been approved for federal funding assistance to help individuals and small business owners recover and rebuild. Nearly 82,000 households have registered with FEMA requesting financial help. So far, FEMA has awarded $95.3 million in grants and the U.S. Small Business Administration has approved another $96.3 million in low-interest loans to help people rebuild their homes and businesses, get back to work and move on with their lives.Two separate grants totaling more than $200 million recently announced will aid recovery efforts. A $4.5 million FEMA grant will pair case managers with some of the hardest-hit survivors to help them navigate the long and often complicated recovery process. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the state $198 million dollars - with $159 million of that specifically earmarked for Cumberland, Robeson, Edgecombe and Wayne counties - to help with housing, economic development, infrastructure and mitigation efforts that prevent future storm damage. Cooper also said that he is currently working on another Disaster Relief package to take to Congress.Today Cooper toured local sites impacted by the storm, including Princeville Elementary School at the Bridger's Building, which is accommodating children from the heavily damaged Princeville Elementary School, which remains out of service, and Southern States, a local business that was able to reopen just last week.Cooper said.
Mar 17, 2017 | By David

Were always excited to see companies develop new solutions for 3D printing projects, particularly ones that make use of automated, 'smart' processes. The latest release from Coobx, does just that, with a unique method for UV curing 3D printed materials. Their Exigo 3D printer boasts a whole host of other impressive features.

Based in Liechtenstein, Coobx has over 20 years experience in the manufacturing industry, producing a wide range of machine tools and parts. Its expertise is now being applied to creating state-of-the-art 3D printing solution, and the Exigo 3D printer is its most impressive achievement to date. Far from being just a standard 3D printer, the Exigo allows the whole production process, from the design phase to the final touches, to be planned and programmed into the machine.

Pre-processing can be taken care of due to the Exigos powerful onboard CPU. All a user needs to do is upload their 3D design files into the system. The model can then be internally sliced and prepared for 3D printing with the help of unique support structure generation software that is optimized for use with the Exigo 3D printer. The user also has a large amount of control over the settings for the 3D printing, which can be changed during the job. After printing is complete, manufacturers can take advantage of the specially designed clean-and-cure kit that Coobx provides with the Exigo. This features all sorts of useful tools, Isopropyl, and more.

The major factor that will set the Exgio 3D printer apart from other products on the market is its LIFT technology. LIFT stands for Light Initiated Fabrication Technology, and it suggests a whole realm of new possibilities for stereolithography, as well as an unprecedented standard of production. "Generally it's a top-down machine like the early SLA resin machines, but we've implemented the build box, which has a specific atmospheric pressure inside," Marco Schmid, Coobx CEO and head of R&D explains to us. "It's a fully enclosed build chamber, and thanks to this,

materials with high viscosities (like thick honey) can be processed with ease. This also makes it easier to change materials, and much cleaner."

The technology allows the Exigo to calculate important elements like curing time, intensity and layer height in real time, based on measurements of the layer currently being printed. This full automation of the process allows for a perfect surface finish and high tolerances. The Life box feature also allows for the effects of oxygen inhibition to be integrated into the 3D printing process as standard.

The modularity of the Exigos workflow means that it will be easy to scale and to integrate into existing manufacturing processes. Schmid is excited about the potential for the Exigo to be implemented in new areas. Easy to handle, highly accurate and groundbreaking new material possibilites concerning viscosity and infill grade are possible, he declared.

Not only is the Exigo impressively accurate, it is also one of the fastest machines on the market. Build speed has been optimized by Coobx to the extent that the Exigo passes the 300mm/hour mark with ease. A key part of this speed is using the appropriate resins for the task. Coobx collaborated with German materials specialist Dreve in order to develop the best possible materials, specially adapted for use with the Exigo system. Different products are available depending on what kind of project the Exigo will be used for. Eight different resins are available for manufacturing in the healthcare industry, while there are 5 unique materials available for industrial applications. Two different versions of the machine are also available for healthcare or industrial manufacturers, with the same basic functionality but different sizes. The build height is 110mm for medical purposes, and 340mm for the industrial machine.

Build envelope: 154 x 86 x 110mm (Medical) / 154 x 86 x 340mm (Industrial)

Print speed: up to > 300mm/h

XY Resolution +/- 10 microns to +/- 40 microns

Auto focused, high-power LED Light Engine

Autonomous CPU core unit to process all data internally

The Coobx Exigo 3D printer is available to purchase now, and it looks to be an important step forward for the 3D printing industry, offering one of the most advanced stereolithography processes yet.

Posted in 3D Printer

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Amy Butcher at Harper's Magazine:

Fun, in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, is a calendar event. Out here, on the largest and most remote oil field in the United States, thousands of workers rise each morning in endless summer, eternal darkness, mosquitos, and snow, to begin twelve-hour shifts, which on the drilling rigs requires a discipline that is taken seriously: a mistake, however small, could cause this entire place to explode, as it did in West Texas two years ago, or in Texas City twelve years ago. For a change of landscape one can board a bus with elderly tourists to the edge of the Arctic Ocean, point out the artificial palm tree, suggest a dip, and laughthe water is 28 degreesbut even that route grows dull: the single gravel lane that traces tundra abuts miles of pipeline. For the oil workers, there is little to look forward to before the end of a two-week shift except for scheduled socialization. Each summer, such fun goes by the name Deadhorse Dash, a 5K race traced across nearby Holly Lake.

Last year, someone dressed up as a dancing polar bear, Casey Pfeifer, a cafeteria attendant, tells me when I arrive at the Prudhoe Bay Hotel for lunch on the afternoon of the race. Casey is wearing purple eyeliner and a sweatshirt that reads MICHIGAN in looping gold-glitter cursive. Every two months Casey travels between Idaho and Prudhoe Bayfor her, life in Alaska is synonymous with adventureto work in the service industry at places like the Hotel, which is not actually a hotel at all but a work-camp lodge, with hundreds of tiny rooms housing twin-size cots and lockers.

more here.
Saturday (April 29) is Independent Bookstore Day. To celebrate, here's a selections of new books by talented local authors that you should not order on Amazon.

(Courtesy of paulmadonna.com)

On to the Next Dream by Paul Madonna

Genre: Flash fiction, art, creative nonfiction

Release Date: April 1, 2017

The local genius behind the popular All Over Coffee comic strip that ran in the SF Chronicle for more than 12 years, has now doodled his way into a seriously San Franciscan book. On to the Next Dream is a series of drawings and stories from Madonna's own experience being evicted from his home in the Mission, and depicts the madness of the gentrifying megalopolis with the absurdity of magical realism. Of course, there's nothing magical about an overinflated housing bubble, but at least Madonna will have you laughing until the very last page.





(Courtesy of Siel Ju via sielju.com)

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson

Genre: Young adult, contemporary

Release Date: Jan.10, 2017

Remember what it was like to be in high school before the social-media boom? These kids don't. Set in a fictional Marin County high school, Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel crafts the beautiful and unsettling world of 21st-century adolescence with such intricate detail, it's sure to make you squirm. There's a classic Breakfast Club-style cast, an idealistic young new teacher, for example, and parents that range from overbearing to just-not-caringall mixed up in one of those communities where all the high schoolers drive Lexus sedans and swipe Mommy's credit card without a thought.





The Dressmaker's Dowry by Meredith Jaeger

Genre: Mystery, romance, historical fiction

Release Date: Feb. 7, 2017

For those obsessed with SF's cryptic, colorful, complex (and sometimes crazy) past, Meredith Jaeger's debut novel captures all of that with an entrancing mystery that flip-flops between dorky, modern-day protagonist Saraha former journalist who quits her job to work on her novel after marrying a start-up founderand the lives of two young seamstresses in 1876 San Francisco. After digging up an old newspaper headline that says, "Missing Dressmakers Believed to be Murdered," Sarah finds herself entwined with their lives.

Every Wild Heart by Meg Donahue

Genre: Mystery, romance, contemporary, women's literature

Release Date: Mar. 14, 2017

Open USA Today bestselling author Meg Donahue's new book and find yourself face to face with the fiery mother-daughter protagonist duo of the year. Gail Gideon is a champion for all successful working mothers and fierce single women in San Franciscoand her daughter, Nic, is a spirited, frustrated, 14-year-old you'll find yourself simultaneously cheering for and probably wanting to yell at. Sure, some aspects of their lives you won't be able to relate tocreepy stalker fans and horseback-riding accidents, anyone?but the rest of their ordinary craziness might make you fall in love with both these badass ladies.

Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area by Sylvia Linsteadt

Genre: Coffee table book, history, art and photography

Release Date: Mar. 1, 2017

From the acres of apricot blossoms in the Silicon Valley to the bohemian, Gold-Rush-era Barbary Coast, the hidden worlds of the Bay Area present and past can be found in this coffee-table book. Each is described in Linsteadt's lyrical prose, accompanied by vintage photographs, maps, and neo-Victorian designs.





Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow by Peg Alford Pursell

Genre: Lyrical prose, flash fiction, short story collection

Release Date: Jan. 20, 2017

Our list isn't complete without a short story collectionand Peg Alford Pursell's is piercing. With vivid characters and striking situations of loss and longing, this collection of lyrical prose is bound to sucker-punch you right in the soul. Yes, it hurtsbut it's also dazzling, beautiful, and will give you those shimmery post-read chills.





(Monica Lo)

Genre: Yoga and meditation, practical guide, cannabis

Release Date: Apr. 18, 2017
The drug was designed for people already taking the maximum dose of cholesterol-lowering statins but who had been unable to lower their cholesterol level sufficiently to ward off heart disease, in some cases because of an inherited genetic condition. Study participants were ages 40 to 85 and already taking statins; most already had suffered a heart attack or stroke.

The results of the trial were highly anticipated. Repatha is part of class of cholesterol drugs targeting the PCSK9 protein to control cholesterol and heart-disease risk. Inhibiting the protein can cause the level of LDL, or bad cholesterol, to tumble dramatically to unheard-of levels  from 92 milligrams per deciliter to 30 milligrams.

In the study, 5.9 percent of patients who took both Repatha and a statin suffered a heart attack or stroke or died, compared with 7.4 percent of patients who took a statin and a placebo  a 20 percent reduction.

But while an accompanying editorial in the journal called it a landmark study, others expected a greater reduction in risk for its cost.

Its a small reduction for a super-expensive drug, cardiologist John Mandrola with Baptist Health in Louisville, Ky., told USA Today.

Yale University cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, writing about the study for NPR, said the trial represents good, tangible evidence that the drug can reduce risk, but added that the size of the benefit is about the same as is achieved with statins. No new records on risk reduction were set.

However, for people at high-risk for heart attack or stroke who are unable to lower their cholesterol with traditional statins alone or who cannot tolerate statins, the drug offers physicians a new tool to help them.

In a prepared statement about the studys results, drugmaker Amgen called it a game-changer for high-risk patients for whom nothing else has worked. The company estimates there are about 11 million Americans who fall into this category. Amgen also noted that despite worries about the side effects of dropping LDL levels so low, there were no apparent safety concerns during the course of the study.

To help insurers who might be balking at covering the drugs $14,000 price, Amgen also added this sweetener: It will refund the cost to the insurer if the patient has a heart attack or stroke while taking the drug.
WASHINGTON, DC Today at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) testified on behalf of Eastern North Carolina shrimpers in strong support of continuing anti-dumping duty orders against imported warmwater shrimp from Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ITC first enacted these orders more than 10 years ago to offset cheating by foreign producers, and to help level the playing field for American shrimpers.said Congressman Jones.Background: In the early 2000s, the U.S. shrimp market nearly collapsed. Unfairly traded imports from Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam flooded the U.S. market at prices below the cost of production overseas. As a result, the American shrimp industry was forced to slash production and lay off workers. Many shrimpers abandoned the profession, sometimes after generations. The duty orders on dumped shrimp, first imposed in 2005, have helped bring stability to the market. Under international trade law, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is required to review existing anti-dumping orders every five years to determine if revocation would be likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of dumping, and as a result, material injury to American shrimpers. If the ITC does not come to that conclusion, the orders would be revoked. Today, the ITC held a public hearing on that review. The commission is expected to vote on the matter on May 2, 2017.
I did not see the sun rise this morning. Most days, I do. It felt odd to wake to "a bright and shining moment" on the rabbit patch. The window by the morning table, was lit up like a chapel window and gently and joyfully, beckoned me to "rise and shine."We will celebrate My youngest son, Christians' birthday today. His birthday was yesterday. My "baby" is twenty-four years old now. When, Christian was born, an ice storm promptly arrived. The day before, had been warm. Kyle and I took a long walk that day and then had milkshakes at an ice cream parlor. I don't know why I remember that, but the memory is as clear, as any I have.Yesterday would have been the best day to celebrate, as it was Christians' actual birthday-and that was the plan- but yesterday the wind blew without mercy. Christian called me just before school was over. There was no water at the rabbit patch and the lights were dimming and then brightening in an odd fashion. I have only seen such conditions in horror movies and so I left for home, sure that a fire was smoldering in the walls - or that ghosts were real, after all. I came in the old house in a state of panic and rushed to check the breakers. I could not identify what was happening and called my neighbors, who were doing just fine and had constant lights and running water. This only alarmed me more and so I did what I have done all my life-I called my parents. They came and daddy declared it had to be an electrical issue. I called the power company, who promptly sent a truck. Within an hour, full power and water was restored. The wind had partially severed a line, it turned out. Mama and daddy would not leave til all was restored at the rabbit patch. Mama said they were there for "support."-and they were. Just their presence made a difference.That is how todays' celebration came about. My fancy meal takes a few hours to prepare, and so today we will eat well. We will also wait for a cold storm predicted to have some form of moisture, to arrive. There go the daffodils! There goes the spirea and the peach and pear blossoms-and the jasmine that has bloomed just this week. Woe to the irises and the lovely running periwinkle-if all goes as predicted. This is the way of March, so I blame February for sashaying about as if it were April.No matter, the weather conditions, as long as "another state of emergency" does not arise, today we will give thanks for the birth of my last child. Christian, being good natured, does not mind the delay in celebration. He has not asked for presents in many , many years. We all know he needs guitar strings, any way. Christian is an artist in every sense. He values art, whether it is drawn, written or listened to. He lives like a poet, noticing the beauty of all circumstances. You will not catch Christian being wasteful. He cares for the environment and for all living things too much, to cause any harm.Christian, is the only person I know that is sure that he does not need money. He works and then is far more likely to give his money away than spend it. If a worthy cause, does not show up, he saves his money till it does. Frequently he comes to me with money and says "just take this, I have too much!!" I have laughed out loud at this, I have been concerned -and I still don't know what to do with it. It amuses me, I find it admirable and yet, it concerns me. (I know as Will and Tres read this, their faces will pale.) Christian thinks long and hard before committing to obligations as he values the content of his life, intensely. Like me, a clock does not impress him, nor hold him hostage. He is way too independent to be trendy - and he thinks too deeply to be shallow about anything. His presence has made a beautiful difference in the last twenty four years of our family and not one of us would trade it , not for anything, this world affords.Happy Birthday Christian! and - "to thine ownself, be true."
From Milan, Italy, An Amazing e-commerce Platform that Sells Outfits Ready to Wear Designed by Famous Italian Fashion Bloggers

Clothes Point has announced their all new and revolutionary e-commerce site that will sell ready to wear outfits for everyone. The outfits will be designed by some of the most famous Italian fashion bloggers and the platform is going to be much more than just another e-commerce website. The Milan based platform has already partnered up with some of the highest quality brands from Italy and is ready to style the world. Giuseppe, an Italian consultant is the heart and soul behind this amazing project. The startup has announced that it will be seeking public support on Indiegogo and Kickstarter to crowdfund this inspiring Italian fashion dream and they are welcoming generous support and contributions.

The revolutionary clothing will be provided for both men and women and the goal of this project is to raise 15,000 within two months on Indiegogo crowdfunding forum. The website will also suggest the right outfits for the customers and will be much more than an ordinary e-commerce solution. At present, the company wants to add more established brands and do marketing of itself. Therefore, to overcome these two major challenges along with several others, they are welcoming generous contributions on Indiegogo.

In addition to make a name and recognition for the Cloth Point, the company also hopes to bring an interactive smartphone application for its customers to get the best deals and updates. Italian fashion has always reshaped global fashion trends and this inspiring project is welcoming generous contributions in the spirit of the Italian sartorial excellence.

Generous contributors can back this remarkable project on Indiegogo using the following link:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/clothes-point-outfit-ready-to-wear-fashion

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1789619134/clothes-point-outfitt-ready-to-wear

About This Project:

Cloth Point is an Italian based project from Milan Italy that will redefine the fashion industry by bringing online some of the finest Italian ready to wear fashion by some of the leading fashion bloggers. The project is now seeking public support and raising funds on Indiegogo to crowdfund this project.

Media Contact

Company Name: Clothes Point

Contact Person: Giuseppe Stero

Email: giuseppe.stero@hotmail.com

Phone: 0039 3273233496

Address:Via parmigianino 10

City: Milan

Country: Italy

Website: www.indiegogo.com/projects/clothes-point-outfit-ready-to-wear-fashion
Reno, NV  Don Weirs Reno Dodge, a Reno-based Dodge dealership specializing in providing clients both new and used vehicles in pristine condition, continues to set itself apart from the competition by offering an incomparably comprehensive line of new and used cars, from Avenger, Challenger, and Journey, to Nitro and Ram Trucks.

Borne from a passion for providing residents with the car of their dreams that also fits their budget, Don Weirs Reno Dodge also includes trusted car repair, original Mopar parts, and financing to help customers land the car theyve been looking for.

We make sure every single person who strolls into our dealership is met with one-on-one customer support and extensive information regarding every automotive question they could have, said Don, Manager of Don Weirs Reno Dodge. From engine tuning inquiries, to long-term financing, there isnt a Dodge question were not prepared to handle.

Don Weirs Reno Dodges new line of cars come from Caliber, Charger, Durango, Avenger, Challenger, Dakota, Grand Caravan, Journey, Nitro, and the ever-popular Ram Trucks. In addition to the new inventory, the dealership has a pre-owned inventory that includes the likes of Chevrolet, Dodge Chargers, Durango Limiteds, FIAT Sport Hatchbacks, and the list goes on.

For consumers interested in acquiring more information about a prospective car at the dealership, Don Weirs Reno Dodge includes a Video Gallery that covers all car questions and demonstrates them in live-action.

Making the decision to purchase a car is a huge monetary investment, said Don. We understand that, which is why we provide as much information and insight as possible  so consumers know theyre making the right choice. Spread the word on the availability of our Dodge inventory today, and head on over to our website to take advantage of our Live Support feature now.

For more information, visit: http://www.renododge.com/

Media Contact

Company Name: Don Weirs Reno Dodge

Contact Person: Don Larson

Email: dlarson@renododge.com

Phone: (775) 786-1211

Address:700 Kietzke Ln

City: Reno

State: NV

Country: United States

Website: www.renododge.com
Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), the states sole distributor for distilled spirits, set their sights on obtaining previously inaccessible shipment values in 2016. With the help of Hytrol and the integration partner, OLCC has a system capable of expanding its capacity while maintaining current demands. These efforts were recently highlighted in a case study video released by Hytrol. To view the case study video, go to http://bit.ly/HytrolOLCC

Barbara Feathers, manager of distribution operations for OLCC said in the video, We were looking for a system that would give us the ability to palletize orders if needed. We were looking for a system that would create more efficiency, more accuracy and speed.

As illustrated in the video, Hytrols warehouse control system, Pivot helped OLCC go from a manual operation to a fully automated solution. Now OLCC has full visibility of their daily order status and wave management analytics, as well performance metrics for specific components of their solution. With this information, OLCC can keep product flowing and respond to real-world opportunities.

To read more, go to http://bit.ly/2lLHlXM

About Hytrol

Hytrol (www.hytrol.com) designs and manufactures advanced conveyor systems, controls and solutions for customers with processing, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution needs. Established in 1947, Hytrol has demonstrated an unwavering dedication to understanding the unique material handling needs of businesses.

From traditional roller and gravity conveyors to the most advanced conveying system technologies such as 24-volt conveying solutions and logic-driven zero-pressure accumulation, we seek to create the most value possible for our customers.

We believe that these solutions are only as good as the people behind them. Hytrol works with a network of integration partners to implement solutions for customers across the globe. Our emphasis on the Hytrol Family mindset continues to make Hytrol a great place to work as well as a mainstay of the companys respected position within the material handling industry.

With 2017 marking the companys 70th year in business, we look forward to accomplishing many more milestones in this monumental year of our companys history. Hytrol is a proud member of MHI, CEMA (Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association), RILA (Retail Industry Leaders Association) and IABSC (International Association of Baggage System). Follow Hytrol on Twitter @Hytrol.

Media Contact

Company Name: Hytrol Conveyor Co. Inc.

Contact Person: Whitney Blackburn, Brand Manager

Email: PR@hytrol.com

Phone: 870-935-3700

Address:2020 Hytrol Street

City: Jonesboro

State: Arkansas

Country: United States

Website: www.hytrol.com
Thomas R. Cutler announced the Manufacturing Media Consortium will meet on June 21 to examination the impact of Brexit and U.S. manufacturing relationship. The meeting with several hundred members of the United Kingdom members of the Manufacturing Media Consortium will address Brexit impact on U.S manufacturing. The professional organization includes journalists, editors, economists, and other industrial leaders worldwide. Members write about trends, data, case studies, and profiles, in the manufacturing, industrial, and distribution sectors. Cutler works with thousands of media outlets to expand manufacturing media coverage.

Cutler said, There has been a dramatic uptick in European members of the Manufacturing Media Consortium in the past year. With heightened interest in the impacts of Brexit and the new U.S. administration, Europeans are working to define, explain, and create their role in the global industrial conversation.

Cutler is ranked as the leading manufacturing journalist worldwide and a contributing editor for hundreds of publications annually. Thomas R. Cutler has been writing extensively about manufacturing and industry for more than twenty years. According to Cutler, The dynamic stories of global manufacturers and best-practices create a never-ending stream of feature articles and important, newsworthy content. There are challenges to be sure along with opportunities for growth and worthy of media attention which is the purpose of the global Manufacturing Media Consortium.

About TR Cutler, Inc. and Thomas R. Cutler

TR Cutler, Inc. (www.trcutlerinc.com) was founded by Thomas R. Cutler seventeen years ago. Maintaining extraordinary relationships with clients, journalists, editors, trendsetters, and key business leaders worldwide, TR Cutler, Inc. has become a key resource for those writing about the manufacturing sector. Cutler founded Manufacturing Media Consortium in the 1999. Cutler is the author of several books and has become the go to resource among those who write about manufacturing and distribution. Cutler is the author of more than five hundred feature articles annually regarding the manufacturing, distribution, industrial, and material handling sectors. Follow on Twitter @ThomasRCutler.

Media Contact

Company Name: TR Cutler Inc.

Contact Person: Thomas R. Cutler

Email: trcutler@trcutlerinc.com

Phone: 954-682-6200

Address:3032 S. Oakland Forest Dr. S-2803

City: Fort Lauderdale

State: FLORIDA

Country: United States

Website: http://www.trcutlerinc.com
Explor Resources Inc. (CVE:EXS) (OTCMKTS:EXSFF) (FRA:E1H1) is a Canadian-based natural resources company with mineral holdings in Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Explor is currently focused on exploration in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. The belt is found in both provinces of Ontario and Quebec with approximately 33% in Ontario and 67% in Quebec. The Belt has produced in excess of 180,000,000 ounces of gold and 450,000,000 tonnes of cu-zn ore over the last 100 years. The Corporation was continued under the laws of Alberta in 1986 and has had its main office in Quebec since 2006.


Further Spodumene Mineralisation Identified at Mallina

Brisbane, Mar 17, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Sayona Mining Limited ( ASX:SYA ) ( DMNXF:OTCMKTS ) ("Sayona" or the "Company") is pleased to report that resumption of exploration at its Mallina project has provided further encouragement for drill testing the target areas. The Mallina project, located in the world-class Pilgangoora lithium district of Western Australia is considered prospective for albite - spodumene pegmatite mineralisation with five pegmatites within a 1km2 zone already identified.



Highlights



- Resumption of exploration after recent rains has identified coarse spodumene pegmatite where a recent rock assay of 3.47% Li2O was sampled



- Spodumene has now been identified in three main pegmatite swarms within a 1km x 1km area



- Geochemistry to be carried out as prelude to drill testing



- Statutory approvals to allow drilling lodged



Recent work has:



- Identified extensions to the Southern pegmatites which returned 3.47% Li2O, with coarse spodumene crystals to 25 centimetres observed;



- Further mapping at the Discovery pegmatite area has also identified additional spodumene mineralisation in the north;



- The pegmatites identified to date comprise part of a larger pegmatite swarm, and have elevated cesium-rubidium-tantalum, typical of fractionated LCT rare metal pegmatites;



- Pegmatites are typically poorly exposed with substantial potential for mineralisation to be present under shallow cover; and



- Further geochemical sampling has been carried out with samples submitted to the assay laboratory, results pending.



The 140 km2 tenement forms part of the recently completed Option agreement with Great Sandy Pty Ltd, comprising a group of tenure covering 871 km2 giving Sayona a total 1918 km2 lithium exploration portfolio in the Pilbara region.



Corey Nolan, Chief Executive Officer, commented "The Company is very encouraged by the continuing identification of prospective spodumene pegmatites. It is anticipated the planned geochemistry and geophysics will be quickly followed up by drill testing".



Mallina Project Exploration Update



Recent mapping continues to provide encouragement within the Mallina tenement where spodumene bearing pegmatites have returned up to 3.47% Li2O. The initial area where lithium was identified, named the Discovery prospect, has now returned an average 1.35% Li2O from the 21 rock samples collected along a 500 metres strike extent.



The Company's current work has followed up mineralisation at the Discovery prospect with mapping identifying further spodumene in its northern portion, which has been previously lightly prospected. The pegmatite is weathered, in part silicified and has poor outcrop, typically visible over widths of 3 to 5 metres and up to 8 metres, but without the contacts to adjacent greenstone rocks being observed. The true width of the structure is not yet known.



In the Southern pegmatite area, where a 3.47% Li2O rock assay was recently returned (see ASX announcement 17 February 2017), mapping and sampling has commenced. Very coarse spodumene mineralisation has been observed, margined by finer grained zones, very similar in style to the Discovery prospect, located some 900 metres to the north. The similar mineralogy of the pegmatites provides encouragement the pegmatites are related to the same mineralizing event and are part of a larger swarm, part of which may be obscured by cover.



Geochemical samples have been collected and have been submitted for laboratory analysis. Results are pending.



Typical outcrop in the southern area is shown in the photograph (see the link below).



Review of the Company's other Pilbara tenure is continuing. This large holding, totaling 1,918km2 (including the Great Sandy's Option project) secures lithium prospective pegmatites, including lithium occurrences as well as tantalum and mineralisation indicative of LCT pegmatite style mineralisation. Little or no previous lithium exploration has been carried out over the portfolio and exploration is being planned to commence shortly. Tenure is displayed in the figure (see the link below).



Next Steps



Submissions for the statutory approval to allow drilling have been lodged and preliminary drill programs designed. Further geochemical sampling, to help identify mineralisation under the shallow cover which affects much of the project area will also be carried as soon as ground conditions allow.



To view tables and figures, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/Z8JA8KY1





About Sayona Mining Limited





Sayona Mining Limited (ASX:SYA) (OTCMKTS:SYAXF) is an Australian, ASX-listed (SYA) company focused on sourcing and developing the raw materials required to construct lithium-ion batteries for use in the rapidly growing new and green technology sectors. The Company has lithium projects in Quebec, Canada and in Western Australia.

Please visit us as at www.sayonamining.com.au
U.S. continues CBP operations in Indo-Asia-Pacific region

A B-1B Lancer, assigned to the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron and deployed from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, takes off March 10, 2017, at Andersen AFB, Guam. The B-1B's are deployed to Andersen AFB as part of U.S. Pacific Command's continuous bomber presence operations. This forward deployed presence demonstrates continuing U.S. commitment to stability and security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Most importantly, the bomber rotations provide Pacific Air Forces and PACOM commanders an extended deterrence capability. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Jacob Skovo)
Time has come for the government to seriously think about providing security to doctors says Mumbaikars.

On one hand the state government has offered security to director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and his cast and crew after the set of his film Padmavati was vandalised by miscreants on the other side nobody intervened when Dr. Rohan Mhamunkar was assaulted by the relatives of a patient who had suffered head injury. Mumbaikars are unhappy with the state governments double standards when it comes to offering security to doctors. At a time, when there has been a rise in the number of incidents pertaining to attack on doctors the medical fraternity has been urging the government to pass legislation to make assault on medical practitioners a non-bailable offence. Mumbaikars also questioned why preferential treatment has been given to Bhansali. According to them, the state government must not discriminate and offer protection to doctors who are discharging their duties amicably. Many doctors are worried that they might be the next victim of assault.

Sunil Bhatkande a marketing executive employed with a FMCG firm in Andheri said, The governments decision to provide security to Sanjay Leela Bhansali is laudable but they should not have discriminated against Dr. Rohan Mhamunkar who had to bear the brunt of assault.

Ramesh Doshi a businessman from Kandivali said, When Sanjay Leela Bhansalis set was ransacked by unidentified persons in Kolhapur NCP had strongly condemned the act. On the other hand, resident doctor was brutally attacked in Dhule and lost his vision but opposition leaders didnt utter a single word.

Rupali Deshmukh, a TYBSc student from Borivali said, Time has come for the government to seriously think about providing security to doctors. The attacks cant go on against them in this manner. Even people need to understand that doctors are human beings and can commit mistakes.

Rishabh Singh an accountant working with a broking firm in Malad said, Attack on Sanjay Leela Bhansalis set grabbed headlines and even netizens have condemned the incident. However, nobody has spoken about the plight of doctors who become victims of assault. Doctors are professionals and let them do their work without any fear.

Meanwhile doctors from across the state condemned the attack on Dr. Rohan Mhamunkar and have demanded strict security for doctors. The video showing miscreants kicking and slapping Dr. Rohan Mhamunkar and hitting him with a cot has gone viral, evoking strong reactions from doctors across Maharashtra.

They have urged the state government to take various measures to enhance security of doctors. Across the state from January 2015-December 2016, 47 such cases of attack on resident doctors have been reported,said Dr Sagar Mundada.

Jan Arogya Abhiyan (JAA) and doctors with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) have strongly condemned the recent brutal attack on Dr. Rohan Mhamunkar in Dhule Civil Hospital. Such instances bring to the breaking point the already strained relationship between doctors and patients, said Dr Anant Phadke and Dr Abhijit More, city-based doctors with JAA.

A nationwide study conducted by IMA earlier showed doctors face maximum violence while providing emergency services, with as many as 48.8% of such incidents reported from intensive care units (ICUs) or after a patient had undergone surgery

The Maharashtra Police has arrested nine persons accused of beating Dr Mhamunkar. Three FIRs have also been lodged.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the BJP to spectacular victories in the recently concluded five-state assembly polls, while winning Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand with overwhelming majorities. The BJP also managed to form the governments in Manipur and Goa despite ending up as the second-largest party. The only black spot was the defeat in Punjab where its alliance government with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) was ousted by the Congress. Modi is challenging BJP leaders to spread the partys ideology to the farthest corners of the country. And he is doing it with a directive cloaked as a caution  na baithunga, na baithne dunga (Neither will I rest nor will let you). Earlier, he made his famous remark Na Khaunga, Na Khane Dunga; he was referring to corruption and bribes. Nevertheless, that did not work much, as BJP may not have caught in any major scams but one cannot deny the corruption and misconduct prevailing in the party. Modi had said, warning people that neither he will accept bribes, nor allow anyone to do so. But ever since BJP have came to power, the bribes have not stopped in any government departments, his own leaders accept huge bribe. Now, this new slogan is to ensure the partys victory in the 2019 parliamentary polls.

Meanwhile, Manoj Sinha and Trivendra Singh Rawat seem to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shahs choice to be Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, respectively. Sinhas pending elevation to the top post in the politically critical and biggest Hindi heartland state is yet another indicator that Modi and Shah place a higher premium on merit than on any other consideration. A tall well-built Sinha, an alumnus of IIT-BHU in civil engineering, is a three-time MP. As Union Minister of Communication (Independent charge) and MoS of Railways, he maintains a conscious low profile but is seen as a sincere quiet doer, whose work speaks more than his words.

Long ago, he was the BHU Students Union president. He is soft-spoken, suave and articulate, but wears a dhoti and a long kurta, which gives him that rugged son-of-the-soil look and feel. His biggest strength is being at equal ease when dealing with the biggest corporate honchos in the communication ministry as with earthly labour unions in the railways. Sinha became a caste-neutral chief ministerial contender just like Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Vijay Rupani in Gujarat, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Manoharlal Khattar in Haryana. Even though, Shivraj Singh Chouhan belongs to the OBC category, his caste and its numerical strength is not known to the wider world. Modi is breaking conventional stereotypes that a chief ministerial nominee has to be considered only from a caste that has numerical majority. Modis own caste had a miniscule presence in Gujarat, yet he became the most cherished leader in the state as its chief minister and later across the nation as polls after polls have indicated. Just by securing a clear majority on its own in 2014, Modi broke that old politicians and political pundits myth that the coalition era was here to stay and no party could secure a majority of its own for the coming decades. And by selecting Sinha to lead Uttar Pradesh for the next five years, Modi has broken another political myth that no upper caste person could become chief minister of a north Indian state. Unfortunately for Maurya who was face of BJP in UP elections, he had too many interviews as most probable chief ministerial nominee. In contrast, Sinha didnt even give a bite or a brief statement to the media. He kept away from the sunshine for last four days when everyone else in his peer group was basking in glory.

In Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, a leader with RSS background, has emerged as the front-runner in the race for the coveted chief ministers post. The swearing-in ceremony will take place in Dehradun in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah. Rawat, 56, who represents Doiwala assembly constituency, is known to be close to Amit Shah. He is currently in-charge of the partys Jharkhand unit. He was with the RSS from 1983 to 2002, and held the key post of organising secretary of the Uttarakhand region at first, and later the state. He first won the Doiwala assembly seat in 2002. Elected to the assembly for the third time, he was state agriculture minister in 2007-2012. Earlier, the names of Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant were also doing the rounds for the chief ministers post, but they remained less popular within the party. Both of them shifted loyalities from Congress to BJP. Rawat faced stiff competition from former minister Prakash Pant and former MP Satpal Maharaj.

A Thakur, Rawat was one of the three deputies attached to him in Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. As an RSS leader sent to the BJP, Rawat held the post of Sangathan Mantri (organisational secretary) of the Uttarakhand BJP between 1997 and 2002. Both Manoj Sinha and Rawat are the best choices among all other contenders for CMs post in respective states; they are BJP and RSS loyalists. They gave their best for the party in each election and favoured by top brass of BJP. However, Sinha denies that he is in the race. Lets see how they will make differences in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

We wish them all the best for their future endeavour.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
The Trump administration proposed Thursday that as part of its new budget it would eliminate federal subsidies for flights from Billings to five rural communities in Eastern Montana.

The cuts would target the 39-year-old Essential Air Service, which subsidizes Cape Air flights from Billings to Glasgow, Glendive, Havre, Wolf Point and Sidney.

Without the program, Cape Air would unlikely be able to afford to continue operating the service, which peaked during the Bakken boom earlier this decade. The program has bipartisan support from Montanas two senators.

In 2016, at least 37,106 passengers boarded subsidized Cape Air flights in Montana, down 15 percent from the previous year, according to the Montana Department of Transportation. Demand for the service fell with the price of oil because of lighter drilling activity in the Bakken shale fields.

The flights cost about $100 roundtrip and would likely be more than $500 without the subsidy. Cape Air took over the Essential Air program in Montana in 2013.

Essential Air has been targeted for cuts several times before, most recently in 2015. Its popular with rural lawmakers, whose constituents are often cut off from regular air service.

U.S. Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., both fought against cuts to the program two years ago, as did former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.

"In my conversations with (Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao), I have consistently prioritized the importance of Essential Air Service to rural Montana. We need to make government more efficient and effective without diminishing key capacities and programs and disconnecting rural communities," Daines said Thursday in a prepared statement.

Added Tester, in a statement, The elimination of the Essential Air Service will have serious economic consequences on eastern Montana. These flights have been crucial in transporting folks to and from rural communities and providing access for small businesses, commerce, and health care.

The Republican Trump administration has targeted cuts at several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior and Forest Service, to pay for a $54 billion increase in military spending.

At $175 million, Essential Air Service represents a tiny fraction of federal spending.

The administrations budget also includes $2 billion for a down payment on a southern border wall, a key campaign promise from Trump aimed at curbing illegal immigration.

Congress has the ultimate authority to pass a budget, and lawmakers in both parties have raised concerns about the cuts contained in Trumps proposal.
I think Merck has failed terribly  to warn about the very serious side effects and the failure of the vaccine to do what they claim it does, attorney Marc Bern told FiercePharma.

Plaintiffs have sued in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania alleging that Mercks Zostavaxused to prevent shingles, the painful complication of varicella infectioncaused serious side effects, including death.

Merck & Co. could have a growing Zostavax problem on its hands. After several plaintiffs filed lawsuits claiming the drugmakers shingles vaccine caused serious injury and death, attorneys say more cases are on the way.

NOTE: Merck, accustomed to causing injury to babies via MMR, then teens via Gardasil, has set its sights on the elderly population! By Anne Dachel March 14, 2017, Zostavax patients sue Merck, claiming shingles shot caused injuries and death

Bern, founding partner at Marc J. Bern & Partners, said his firm has thousands of complaints yet to be filed in Philadelphia, with the injuries running the gamut from contracting shingles as a result of the vaccine all the way to serious personal injuries such as blindness in one eye, individuals who have serious paralysis in their extremities, brain damage, all the way to death.

In a statement, Merck said it stands behind the demonstrated safety and efficacy of the shot, which is licensed in 50 countries.

Nothing is more important to Merck than the safety of our medicines and vaccines, a spokesperson told FiercePharma. She said the company has distributed more than 36 million doses of the shot since its 2006 approval. Before winning a FDA nod, Zostavaxs safety and effectiveness were studied in more than 30,000 patients, and a CDC committee continues to recommend its use, she pointed out.

The company has continuously provided appropriate and timely information about Zostavax to consumers and to the medical, scientific and regulatory communities, according to Mercks statement.

Bern said he believes the cases should be grouped for mass tort status. Speaking with the New Jersey Law Journal, Lopez McHugh attorney Michael Katz, who filed several Zostavax injury cases in federal court, said he believes hundreds more are yet to come. Katz also believes the cases should be grouped together.

Zostavax pulled in $749 million in sales last year for Merck.

Meanwhile, Mercks vaccines rival GlaxoSmithKline has filed for FDA approval for its challenger to Zostavax, Shingrix, which is expected to significantly shake up the market upon launch.
Recently, Brien and Gayle Weber signed the remaining papers that put their 467 acres of land at the end of Hamilton Heights Road southeast of Corvallis into a conservation easement that will forever preserve the family farm as open space.

The Webers' century-long connection to this piece of land, just west of the Calf Creek Wildlife Management Area, includes winter range for elk and deer in an area of the Bitterroot Valley that has become fragmented as other family farms were sold and subdivided.

The elk come through here on a regular basis, Gayle Weber said. They spent some time this winter out on top of the manure pile just up behind the house. Theyve been around quite a bit over the last month.

Thats something that will never have to change.

The idea of protecting the land adjacent to the wildlife management area had been broached back in the 1980s when Webers father, Milt, was still alive.

Weber remembers his father thought the idea was crazy.

Back then no one knew a whole lot about conservation easements, and for many land-rich, cash-poor family farmers, the idea of giving up development rights wasnt prudent.

Over the past decade, the Webers watched many of their friends and fellow family farmers take that step to protect their heritage that had been handed down through generations.

We saw that it had worked for them, Brien Weber said. We started thinking about preserving this land that had been in our family for so long.

The couple had been talking about the idea for the last couple of years with the Bitter Root Land Trust, but the process went into overdrive last fall when they received notice that a project slated for U.S. Farm Bill funding in eastern Montana had fallen through.

With that funding suddenly available, the Webers decided the time was right.

An appraisal of the conservation easement value of their land adjacent to the popular wildlife management area was $1.04 million.

That value is what the Webers would give up by agreeing never to subdivide the property.

The Ravalli County Commission agreed to contribute $200,000 from the countys open lands bond program. The Farm Bill's Agriculture Land Easement program contributed $525,000.

In return, the Webers donated $315,000 of the easement value.

Bitter Root Land Trust executive directer Gavin Ricklefs said the Weber easement is a perfect example of how the communitys investment in open land works to protect wildlife habitat and the valleys farming and ranching heritage.

The countys Open Lands Bond funding provided the catalyst for securing the Farm Bill funds, which helps stretch that local funding even further.

This is one of the most highly leveraged Open Lands Bond projects, Ricklefs said. The Open Lands Program paid less than 20 percent of the total appraised easement value, while the Farm Bill conservation program paid over 50 percent.

Beyond that, Ricklefs said the Webers generously donated nearly one-third of the appraised value of the conservation easement.

Ricklefs said the land trust also received generous support from the Ravalli County Fish and Wildlife Association to help make conservation possible on critical winter range properties like the Weber Ranch.

RCFWA recognizes how much of our elk and winter range is located on private land here in the valley, and the Land Trust is extremely appreciative of their investment in projects like this that help private landowners keep that winter range intact for healthy wildlife populations.

The Weber Ranch has been and will continue to be part of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' Block Management Program, which provides public hunting access to local hunters.

The Webers both agree that going through the process can be an emotional roller coaster.

On the day that we closed, we knew that was right for us, Brien Weber said. Sometimes I think people think that you do this for the money, but thats really the last reason that anyone takes this step.

I think that people who say that probably dont own land thats been in their family for generations, he said. You could sell this land for far more, but once its gone, its gone forever.

All my memories are here, Brien Weber said. Its nice to know that this place will stay the same forever.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Areas of patchy fog early. A mix of clouds and sun. High 79F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Slight chance of a shower throughout the evening. Low 62F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
President Donald Trump's proposal to slash 14 percent of the Education Department's budget has left Montana in a "wait and see" phase as officials question the details of his plan.

Trump's budget proposal for discretionary spending in 2018 was released Thursday, and revealed $9.2 billion in cuts to education in two pages of the 62-page document  as well as significant investments in school choice, charter schools and vouchers.

"It's more than one page in the document, but not much more than one page," said Dennis Parman, executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association. "The devil will be in the details."

The announcement leaves Montana public school supporters in limbo, while some school choice advocates are eyeing the proposed boost with hesitant optimism.

The cuts, Montana School Boards Association executive director Lance Melton said in an email, "seek to substitute the judgment of the federal government for local control of decisions currently made by elected school boards and will undoubtedly harm public schools throughout Montana if implemented by Congress."

While in a different vein  school choice  Americans For Prosperity-Montana state director David Herbst feels the same way about local control. Herbst is in a holding pattern, calling Trump's plan a "sketch." He's waiting to see the full picture.

Trump is following through on campaign promises to boost school choice efforts with a $1.4 billion proposal to expand charter schools, vouchers and Title I portability  which "places power in the hands of parents and families to choose schools that are best for their children," according to the budget document. It includes:

a $168 million increase for charter schools;

a $250 million increase for a "new private school choice program"; and

a $1 billion increase to Title I funding.

Currently, Title I funding is centered on schools based on poverty levels in the geographic area. Trump's proposed increase to Title I funding includes his encouragement that school districts make the funding follow a student to a public school of his or her choice in an open enrollment environment.

"We've pushed strongest at the state level for school choice," Herbst said. "As much as this is compatible with that, we're trying to see how it develops.

"We generally oppose federal control over education. The thing about federal dollars is they come with strings. I think it's a mainstream Montana thought; we've always been skeptical when bureaucrats are making decisions that parents ought to be making."

Critics see school choice efforts as diverting public dollars under public accountability to private schools that are not subject to the same oversight.

"The proposal will force cuts in services to students at risk of falling behind, using those resources to support divisive and untested privatization schemes that have been shown to fail in improving education outcomes for students," Melton said.

Parman said there are too many unanswered questions in Trump's education proposal.

"There's some pretty sweeping proposals there, but there is a tremendous lack of detail," he said.

21st Century cuts

Trump proposes eliminating the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds before- and after-school programs and summer programs. That would amount to a $1.2 billion cut.

Montana is estimated to receive $4.9 million under this program in FY 17, according to the Education Department.

In 2015, 21st Century grants were awarded to Heart Butte, Seeley Lake and Whitehall. Past grants have been awarded to after-school programs such as Boys and Girls Clubs as well as some programs organized by school districts.

"To eliminate that, it would be felt pretty dramatically in those communities," Parman said.

In his proposed budget, Trump said there isn't enough evidence showing that the 21st CCLC program is "meeting its objectives."

Trump is also looking for a $66 million cut to impact aid, federal grants awarded to school districts who are on or near federal land  in Montana, meaning schools on reservations or near military bases.

In Montana, 71 school districts received $55 million in impact aid in fiscal year 2016.

Of those, 53 of are on or near reservations.

Impact aid (Title VIII) is broken into sections, with one providing most of Montana's funding, Section 8003.

In Trump's proposal, the impact aid cut would come through Support Payments for Federal Property, which appears aligned with Section 8002.

"If that is the case, the impact would be minimal on Montana since most of our Impact Aid funding comes from 8003," Dylan Klapmeier, media assistant for the Office of Public Instruction, said in an email. "Since it is just the blueprint, though, a lot can happen."

Great Falls Public Schools also receives impact aid  about $620,000, according to OPI  as it sits near Malmstrom Air Force Base.

"That'll be devastating for everyone," Parman said. "They (Great Falls) will have to look at what they'll be able to replace levying local taxpayers. But there's virtually no tax base for reservation schools."
Iraqi Minorities Move Forward With Autonomy Plan

BAGHDAD -- On March 5, three bodies representing Iraqi minorities issued a joint statement calling for a semi-autonomous region in the country's north. The idea was proposed by the Yazidi Independent Supreme Council, the Turkmen Rescue Foundation and Al Rafidain Organization, representing Iraq's Assyrian Christians. The canton would comprise three contiguous regions: Sinjar, Tal Afar and the Ninevah plain. The proposal is the most complete vision the minorities have yet put forward as an alliance, with the aim of extracting themselves from the Arab-Kurdish struggle for their areas and to prevent a repetition of the catastrophic killing and displacement they suffered when the Islamic State (IS) invaded Ninevah province and raided the areas where they live. Read the full story here.
Global logistics services provider Kuehne + Nagel (K+N) has said that it continues to prioritise its pharma and healthcare offerings across all business units and all regions worldwide.

To that end, it has confirmed that it is to acquire two specialised pharma logistics companies.

In Turkey, K+N has entered into an agreement to acquire Zet Farma, which it describes as the national market leader in pharma logistics.

Established in 1992 and now employing 400 staff, Zet Farma operates 56,000 sq m of space at four pharma grade warehouses in Istanbul.

The deal will mark K+Ns entry into the rapidly growing Turkish pharma logistics market.

Meanwhile, in Italy, K+N has acquired Ferlito Pharma Logistics, a major player in pharma logistics offering GxP-compliant warehousing and forwarding services, including local distribution (GxP relates to the regulations and guidelines applicable to life sciences companies manufacturing medical products such as drugs, medical devices and medical software applications).

Gianfranco Sgro, the member of the Management Board of Kuehne + Nagel International AG who is responsible for contract logistics, explained: The pharma logistics market is expected to significantly grow due to global demographic changes and increased consumer spending.

It is one of the markets (in which) Kuehne + Nagel differentiates itself by operational excellence, global footprint and dedicated logistics infrastructure.

The Zet Farma acquisition is subject to approval by relevant Turkish regulatory authorities, and both transactions are subject to customary closing conditions.

Earlier this week, K+N revealed that it has invested in 50 temperature-controlled trailers to grow its dedicated road-haul pharma network in Belgium and Luxembourg.

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Data rescues are underway, according to the Associated Press. Some researchers, journalists, historians and other public information proponents have started spending their weekends downloading public information from federal websites to preserve it for the public.

Their concern about maintaining data and scientific information from federal databases is justified by recent developments in Washington, D.C. For example, several federal websites have been altered to eliminate or soften evidence that human activities have accelerated climate change, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

With restrictions on public information increasing, advocates for openness and government accountability are sorely needed. Montana is fortunate that our Sen. Jon Tester has distinguished himself as a champion of public information.

When first elected, Tester made U.S. Senate history by posting his daily work schedule online. Since then he has sponsored public information legislation and continues to advocate for:

Requiring the federal government to put public documents online in a searchable database.

Requiring that all Senate candidates file their campaign finance reports online  instead of on paper forms that have to be keyed into a database by other public employees.

Requiring tax-exempt groups that spend on public election campaigns to disclose the names of donors who give more than $5,000. These third-party spenders have become the major money force in many campaigns in the past several years.

The reporters shield law that would help protect responsible journalists from intimidation as they work to inform the public.

Earlier this week, Tester wrote to President Donald Trump asking him to fill a Federal Election Commission vacancy with a leader who will fight for a more transparent campaign finance system.

On Wednesday, the American Library Association, honored Tester for his commitment to public information with the 2017 James Madison Award.

Librarians in Montana and around the country believe that public access to information is an essential element of our democracy, and Senator Testers track record demonstrates that he shares this core value, said Montana State Librarian Jennie Stapp.

Accepting the award, Tester pledged to keep fighting for more sunshine so we can ensure taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly, and hold elected leaders accountable to make sure they are working for the people of Montana and all Americans. Thanks, Sen. Tester. Thats what we want and expect from all our elected leaders: commitment to transparency and public accountability.

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open records law

During the week that American journalists celebrate openness in government, the Montana House passed a bill that includes spending $100,000 of our tax money to fight disclosure of public documents in court.

That would be a tremendous waste and misuse of public money. The documents at issue were requested from state Sen. Jennifer Fielder and Legislative Services more than a year ago, and have yet to be released.

The obvious solution is to release the lawfully requested public documents. Then theres no need of public cash to defend against the request.

This onerous appropriation was inserted in the supplemental appropriation bill in Senate Finance and Claims Committee on March 8, despite no votes from Sens. Mary Caferro, Mary McNally, Lea Whitford and Cynthia Wolken, approved by the Senate on March 11 and by the House on Thursday.

The amendment adjusted the Legislative Services supplemental appropriation for the year ending June 30, to allocate $100,000 for a contract with the attorney generals office to defend a lawsuit that was filed recently because public information requested a year ago has not been disclosed. A legislative attorney told the Senate committee that the organization requesting the email is being charged for the Legislative Services Divisions costs of providing them.

Because the lawsuit appropriation isnt a distinct line item, its unclear whether Gov. Steve Bullock can veto it. If he can, he should.

Meanwhile, Legislative Services can avoid public expense by complying with the lawful public records request that should already have been resolved.
March 17, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  A group of young Palestinians calling themselves Athar ("Impact") organized a book fair of secondhand books in the Gaza Strip under the same name on March 3. The fair was organized with the support from Cordoba restaurant and lasted a week.

The restaurant in Gaza City offers fast food meals and has a reading corner with novels and literary books for patrons.

The book fair featured novels, comic books, and books on politics, religion and historical sites in Palestine. One section was dedicated to a collection of book separators and bookmarks, and another to stone carvings and henna. Visitors could sit and read the books in a corner of the restaurant.

The book fair aimed at promoting Palestinian youth cultural initiatives, motivating young people to read and supporting an educated generation in light of the popularity of social networking sites. The book fair also sought to shed light on Palestinian authors such as Mahmoud Darwish and Muin Bseiso.

The Athar group collected secondhand books from bookstores.

In light of technological developments, young Palestinians have become more interested in e-books than in paper books. Athar hopes that this initiative encourages young people to go back to conventional paper-based books.

Bilal Abdul Dayem, the head of the Athar book fair, told Al-Monitor, Those who were in charge of the fair are a group of 40 young people [Athar] who decided to collaborate and organize the book fair  the first of its kind in the Gaza Strip.

He added, Through this initiative, we sought to encourage young people to own secondhand books in light of their reluctance to read or choosing e-books instead. We faced a lot of financial hardships and we could not find the right venue to organize the fair, but our efforts finally paid off with the help of Cordoba restaurant.

Dayem said that the number of visitors reached 500 a day throughout the entire week; some people read the books on-site and others bought the books and novels that were in very good condition and sold at low prices. The proceeds will be used for organizing other book fairs and cultural events in the future.

Iyad Ashour, a member of Athar, told Al-Monitor, The Athar fair for secondhand books is the first youth initiative in Gaza that aims to encourage reading in the Palestinian community. The fair was divided into two sections: one for used books and the other for participating libraries and publishing houses.

He said, The fair included 10,000 different books. The average price of a book was about $5."

Ashour said, We did not expect this large turnout, especially on the part of university students who bought books and visited the different sections of the fair.

He said there have been many obstacles facing this initiative, such as the lack of an official sponsor for the event. The group approached many institutions for support, but only found the Cordoba restaurant interested in collaborating.

Samar al-Husni, a volunteer at the book fair, told Al-Monitor that during the event she welcomed visitors and helped them find the books they were looking for, in addition to arranging books on the shelves. She said that the event aimed at promoting culture and encouraging reading in the Palestinian community.

University student Yasmin al-Daya told Al-Monitor, It was held near Al-Aqsa University where I study. I visited the book fair and I was impressed with the books displayed. I bought three for $10.

The owner of Cordoba restaurant, Naeem al-Ramlawi, told Al-Monitor, The young people of Athar told me about their initiative and I welcomed it and decided to endorse it so that it could be organized.

He said the book fair sought to promote and further instill Palestinian culture in the Palestinian community as it featured several books on Palestines history.

Ramlawi said that the Athar group is trying to motivate and encourage young people toward creative and pioneering ideas, noting that they did not expect the high turnout. He said the book fair was a success because of the hard work of the volunteers and members of Athar.
March 17, 2017

Egypt's Al-Azhar has recently resumed interfaith dialogue sessions in Cairo after being halted for nearly seven years, signaling a major shift in its ties with the Vatican that reached their lowest point in 2011. Under the theme of The Role of Al-Azhar and the Vatican in Facing the Phenomena of Fanaticism, Extremism and Violence in the Name of Religion, the seminar focused on further bolstering cooperation between the two prestigious entities in a bid to combat terrorism and religious extremism. It was attended by many scholars of Al-Azhar along with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who led the Vatican's high-level delegation.

The Al-Azhar Commission for Interreligious Dialogue with the Vatican was formed in 1998 with the main aim of enhancing understanding between the two faiths as well as fostering dialogue between the highest seat of Sunni Islam learning and the Holy See. Such a commission usually holds biannual meetings to discuss the root causes of extremism, highlighting the means of combining efforts to counter terrorism and correct the wrong notions. The commission, nevertheless, suspended its work in 2011, adhering to Al-Azhar's decision to cut off ties with the Vatican during the papacy of then-Pope Benedict XVI. The recent two-day seminar is considered the first after the seven-year standoff, marking a significant thaw in ties.

Speaking at the seminar, Abbas Shouman, the undersecretary of Al-Azhar, announced the resumption of talks and stated that the Arab region is grappling with "unprecedented religious extremism," calling for putting an end to such terrorist attacks to ensure that peace would prevail in the region. Shouman, meanwhile, expressed regret that the extremists misinterpret religious texts to justify their brutal acts that are being exploited by "some media outlets."

Tauran remarked that Islam is considered "the closest religion" to Christianity as an Abrahamic religion despite the great differences between the two faiths. Tauran's speech also underlined the paramount importance of the religious institutions' role in spreading the culture of accepting the other and combating extremism, as fanatics commit their heinous acts in the name of religion. Tauran, in a related context, lauded Al-Azhar's efforts to face fanatical thoughts in the Arab region.

Though this step is considered a milestone in the Azhar-Vatican ties, many questions surround the mechanisms and the efficacy of the interfaith dialogue. Kamal Zakher, a secular Coptic thinker and former politician, told Al-Monitor, "It is just a formal meeting  no more, no less. Such protocol meetings lack a clear agenda and, therefore, I doubt they will have tangible results. Al-Azhar should at first drastically renew its religious discourse before holding talks with others."

Al-Azhar and the Vatican, Zakher said, are completely different religious schools and that is why there should be specific mechanisms to reach the desired targets regardless of merely issuing useless recommendations. "However, such a step can be positively seen as an attempt by Al-Azhar to adopt a new approach in dealing with other religious entities, he added.

On the other hand, Amna Nosseir, a top professor at Al-Azhar University, greatly hailed restoring ties with the Vatican, stressing that such dialogue sessions should not be underestimated. "As a professor of philosophy, I am fully aware that dialogue is the best way to reach a common ground between different cultures and religions. It is the language of all religions.  It is a mechanism in itself. These dialogue sessions pave the way for more cooperation in the future," Nosseir told Al-Monitor.

Actually, tensions between Al-Azhar and the Vatican had severely escalated during the reign of Benedict (2005-2013). In 2006, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mohamed Sayed Tantawi decided to freeze talks with the Vatican over the popes remarks in Germany that reportedly linked Islam to violence. Since then, the Azhar-Vatican ties remarkably soured. In 2008, Al-Azhar was poised to resume talks with the Vatican. In 2011, Al-Azhar decided to indefinitely halt talks since the former pope called for further protecting Christians in the Middle East in the aftermath of the terror attack on the Two Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve in 2010. Al-Azhar considered the pope's remarks an "unacceptable interference" in the country's internal affairs.

The strained ties started to improve when Pope Francis took office in 2013, particularly following President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's visit to the Vatican in 2014. It was a part of his first tour to Europe as Egypt's president. The tension was further eased in the wake of the historic visit by the grand imam of Al-Azhar to the Vatican, where he met Francis in May 2016. Following this visit, Al-Azhar has decided to renew its ties with the Vatican. February's interfaith dialogue seminar is considered the culmination of the smooth ties between the two sides.

In a recent interview with German daily Die Zeit, Francis stated that he considers a trip to Egypt in 2017. The anticipated visit would be a response to the invitation he received from Sisi in 2014. The first and only visit to Egypt by the Vatican's pope took place in 2000 by Pope John Paul II.

"Dialogue is essential, but it is not enough on its own. We do not want meetings between priests and Islamic scholars. Such meetings should address citizens in streets to uproot extremism. We may have different religions and, hence, we need dialogue. But, meanwhile, we all share humanity and this requires practical steps, not fake meetings," Gamal Asaad, a Coptic thinker and writer, told Al-Monitor.

Asaad said that Al-Azhar has already formed some committees and institutes to boost dialogue not only with the Vatican but also with Egypt's churches, referring to Al-Azhar's Beit el Aila (House of the Family), an entity that includes Muslim and Christian religious leaders and aims to promote cooperation between Al-Azhar and Egypt's churches. "Unfortunately, the effect of such entities could barely be noticed. I just want to know what the practical steps that Al-Azhar and the Vatican have decided to take are. We need real dialogue not superficial ones. Here I am addressing both Al-Azhar and the Egyptian churches."
March 16, 2017

President Donald Trump's budget blueprint is running into a buzzsaw of opposition from lawmakers who fear it would hamstring US diplomatic tools, particularly in the Middle East.

House and Senate members of both parties have vowed to prevent the president's proposed 28% cut to the State Department and foreign aid. But they also object to a specific provision to convert some military assistance from grants to loans.

Such a change would have a disproportionate impact on the Middle East, where key counterterrorism allies such as Jordan and Egypt receive hundreds of millions of dollars every year to buy US weapons. US assistance to Israel, which is guaranteed by a 10-year memorandum of understanding, would remain unchanged.

Fiscal year 2017 Foreign Military Financing grants requested for the Middle East (source: US State Department)

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Al-Monitor that his priority was restoring funding for diplomacy and foreign aid writ large given the vast scope of the president's proposed cuts. But he said the military aid policy change in and of itself would generate opposition on Capitol Hill.

"I'm always a big believer in using foreign aid and using these kinds of funds to let people know we appreciate them working with us," Engel said. "And I want to let countries know that there's an upside for them for being a staunch ally of the United States. Now obviously we feel we're right and they should join us because we're right, but in reality they have needs as well. So I prefer the grants over the loans."

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed.

"That's not really aid at that point. It's just another financing mechanism," he said. "The whole process of cutting aid is going to be controversial."

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., issued a statement raising concerns with Trump's plans for military assistance.

"This blueprint prioritizes funding for several key programs, including embassy security and military assistance to Israel, as it should," Royce said. "But it is unclear how the administration would apply cuts elsewhere. Does this mean vital programs to counter drug and human trafficking will face even steeper cuts? What about military assistance to other important allies, including Jordan?"

Top senators have also weighed in against the proposal.

"Sometimes we have to subsidize the allies' purchases, but they buy American equipment and they do pay," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the subcommittee on foreign aid at the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Defense News earlier this week. "You have to show me where a loan is better for our national security."

Trump's budget frames the policy change as a win-win for both taxpayers and US arms makers.

The proposal "shifts some foreign military assistance from grants to loans in order to reduce costs for the US taxpayer, while potentially allowing recipients to purchase more American-made weaponry with US assistance, but on a repayable basis," the blueprint states.

Some experts are skeptical. They point out that military loans have a long  and troubled  history.

A 1985 Government Accountability Office report titled "Military loans: Repayment problems mount as debt increases" found that the US government had spent almost $1.7 billion over the previous decade because of defaults on military loans. A decade later, under President Bill Clinton, a $15 billion loan guarantee program "crashed and burned when few countries were willing to meet its relatively strict credit terms," according to William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

"They're kind of returning to an idea that failed under Reagan," Hartung told Al-Monitor.
March 17, 2017

CAIRO  Egypt is working to restore a cooperative flow of water-sharing solutions with members of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI).

On March 13, the NBI Ministerial Committee held talks in Khartoum, Sudan, among the water ministers of Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda, in addition to representatives from Kenya and Ethiopia. An Egyptian participant in the meeting told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the talks focused on the possibility of Egypt reactivating its NBI membership. Egypt had frozen its NBI membership in 2010 in protest of the Entebbe Agreement, which rearranged Nile water allotments.

"We emphasized our desire to put aside our differences and resume work side by side with the basin countries," the Egyptian source said. "We also insisted on initiating dialogue regarding the [Entebbe] Agreement's controversial clauses."

Egypt wants to amend three clauses in the agreement. The first amendment calls for upstream countries to notify Egypt before starting any project along the Nile. The second proposal amendment defines the concept of water security, which includes recognizing Egypt's quota of the Nile's water, and the third calls for all decisions to be made in consensus with all basin countries.

The Khartoum meeting followed talks that began in February in Tanzania, where Egypt and the Nile Basin countries also discussed resolving their differences. During a Feb. 22 ceremony in Tanzania to celebrate the regional annual Nile Day, Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohammed Abdel Ati called on the upstream Nile countries to overcome past disputes and focus on protecting each other.

In December, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met in Cairo with some NBI water ministers including those from Uganda, Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan and Tanzania. He said Cairo is willing to expedite implementation of a series of projects, including one that aims to make up for water losses and to harvest rainwater, as some of the Nile's water is wasted, mostly in swamps and through evaporation.

The six member states that signed the Entebbe Agreement in 2010 are Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi. However, the parliaments of these countries still haven't ratified or enacted the agreement.

Al-Monitor met with Abdel Ati at his office in Cairo, where he said, "We will inevitably reach an agreement that achieves cooperation between the Nile countries. It would not serve anyone if we fail to do so."

He added, "An agreement also needs to be reached on the Renaissance Dam negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, and we must find common ground when embarking on any new projects on the Nile."

In light of these calls to overcome past disputes and promote cooperation among Nile countries, Egypt is currently seeking to activate the Egyptian initiative for development of Nile Basin countries, launched in 2012. During the past few months, Sisi held several meetings with officials from upstream countries  including Uganda, South Sudan and Kenya.

This initiative includes a series of projects, such as establishing model farms, irrigation centers and aquaculture projects; developing specialized programs for the biological control of water hyacinth; digging wells; rehabilitating hydrological stations along the Nile; dispatching Egyptian experts in the field of management and development of water resources; and establishing Nile River marinas, in addition to the Nile waterway project.

Commenting on his February speech in Tanzania, Abdel Ati said, "We urged [Nile countries] to work as a single entity for the development of the Nile Basin by implementing major development projects. We will begin with the waterway project from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean to revive trade and tourism in the African continent." He added, "The Nile's waterway will be connected with a route network down to Cape Town, in the south of the continent."

Al-Monitor met with Norwegian researcher and geography expert Terje Tvedt in Cairo March 8. Tvedt, who has written several books and documentaries about the Nile, said cooperation among the Nile Basin countries is the only way to achieve true development. "I believe the Nile water will be enough for all the Nile people once cooperation is achieved," he added.

However, the sensitive subject of the Entebbe Agreement still must be resolved before such cooperation is achieved. Mahmoud Abu Zeid, a former Egyptian minister of water resources and irrigation and president of the Arab Water Council, told Al-Monitor that the Entebbe Agreement clearly violates the norms of international law governing the rivers, since it was concluded in the absence of two basin countries: Egypt and Sudan.

"The agreement also violates the most important principles upon which the NBI was established: a unanimous vote from all Basin countries when making decisions," he noted.

Haitham Awad, a professor of irrigation and hydraulics at Alexandria University, told Al-Monitor he believes the Entebbe Agreement shows aggression against Egyptians' right to life, since Egypt is the only downstream country among the basin countries excluding Sudan, which was also absent at the conclusion of the Entebbe Agreement. The others all can rely on other sources for water, such as rainfall and other rivers.

Yet, the upstream countries' willingness to discuss Egypt's concerns seems to constitute a breakthrough in the long stalemate. Egyptian authorities said another meeting will be held at the end of the month in Uganda to continue the discussions.
March 16, 2017

With Hamas expected to hold elections in the coming weeks to select new leaders, media attention has turned to the movement releasing a new policy document in the near future that will reflect its current stance toward political events and lay out a road map for its foreign relations. Al-Monitor shed light on the document's development last October, but it remains unclear to observers  and is thought to be a topic of debate within Hamas  whether it is simply a policy statement or an amendment of Hamas founding principles laid out in its 1988 charter.

Sami Khater, a member of Hamas' political bureau, told Al-Monitor, The policy document reflects Hamas' orientation 30 years after its inception, in 1987. It does not constitute a review of its positions on the liberation of Palestinian territories, although it shows flexibility in terms of the conflict with the Israeli occupation. It stresses that [Hamas] is a national Palestinian movement that has its own institutions and makes decisions that are not dictated by any foreign party. The document affirms that Islam is its ideological reference and is an expression of Hamas political and intellectual maturity.

Hamas may be trying to redefine itself via the document. A Hamas Shura Council member based abroad and speaking on the condition of anonymity told Al-Monitor, The document employs toned-down language designed to break [the movement] out of its international isolation. It is still unclear how the document is going to define ties between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The regional circumstances may not be favorable for Hamas to remain within the Brotherhood's sphere, which has hindered its ties with Arab parties who have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group, such as Egypt. The document may avoid addressing organizational ties between Hamas and the Brotherhood, which were explicitly stated in the Hamas charter.

Osama Amer, a Palestinian political writer based in Egypt who is familiar with the document through leaks, told Al-Monitor, The Hamas document reflects a shift in dealing with dossiers that have changed since the charter was issued in the 1980s. Hamas must find new means to deal with the new reality, such as agreeing on the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, affirming that the conflict with Israel is a conflict with an occupying power, not with the Jews as adherents of a religion. Although the charter confirms that Hamas is a branch of the Brotherhood, limiting the movements activity to Palestine will assuage countries facing tense relations with Hamas, since [the movement] is closely linked to the Brotherhood at the ideological level only.

Whereas Hamas 1988 covenant recognizes a paramount battle between Palestinians and the Jews, the new document distinguishes among Jews by making it clear that Hamas' disagreement is with the Israeli occupation only, and Jews outside Palestine are not a target or perceived as hostile. Hamas sources who requested anonymity told Al-Monitor that the term Jews will be replaced with the term occupation, so Israel cannot accuse it of anti-Semitism. A Hamas scholar who declined to be identified expressed his reservations on this change, however, arguing that the Jews, not Israelis or Zionists, are referenced in the Quran.

Raed Enairat, a professor of political science at An-Najah National University in Nablus and head of the Contemporary Center for Studies and Policy Analysis, told Al-Monitor that based on what he had gather from leaks, The Hamas document is not a ticket for Hamas to join the international community, but it is perhaps a step on the path toward breaking out of its isolation. Before allowing Hamas access to its ranks, the international community will have basic demands, such as Hamas recognizing Israel. This would mean that it is still too early for Hamas to replace the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people in regional and international forums and that the document will not speed up this process.

Also based on leaks about the document, Haaretz correspondent Jack Khoury wrote March 8 that it will stress that peaceful popular struggle against Israel is a legitimate approach, along with armed struggle, a move that could facilitate the movements contacts with the international community.

In a March 15 article for the Arabi 21 website, Jordanian political writer Majed Abu Dyak wrote that he had obtained a copy of the document that includes Hamas agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as an interim solution to the conflict with Israel, but without acknowledging the legitimacy of Israeli sovereignty over the land of historic Palestine (that is, recognizing Israel) or waiving refugees right to return. If accurate, it would appear that Hamas' end goal remains Palestinian rule over all of pre-1948 Palestine.

A senior Hamas leader who requested anonymity revealed some procedural details to Al-Monitor, stating, Hamas began work on the document two years ago. The document has been submitted to the movements governing bodies, the political bureau and Shura Council. Legal and political parties inside Hamas are currently editing the document and translating it from Arabic into French and English. Hamas current head, Khaled Meshaal, will be presenting the document in late March or early April.

Hamas seems to be issuing the policy statement more in response to questions raised abroad than to those by Palestinians. This is perhaps because statements by its leaders have failed to provide sufficient and credible answers to questions or because some of its regional allies, such as Turkey and Qatar, are unable to adequately defend it or its positions as the movement would like. Thus, it became necessary for Hamas itself to clarify the movements political position and outlook.

Ahmed Yousef, political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, deputy chairman of Hamas' political bureau, and head of the House of Wisdom Institute for Conflict Resolution and Governance in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, The document will constitute a reference for Hamas political rhetoric, a basis for representing the strategy behind its actions and a road map confirming its positions in the conflict with the occupation. It also spells out Hamas' relations with the international community. A part of the document is strategic and realistic [in accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders]. This would advance the Palestinian national consensus, be in line with international law and counter international bodies complaints about the charter, which Israel has taken advantage of to incite against the movement and claim that it is hostile to the Jews.

The release of the policy document after various capitals, among them Cairo and Amman, slammed the door in the movements face is perhaps not coincidental. It would also not be unreasonable to suggest that 30 years after the movement's inception, Hamas simply recognizes that new positions and policies are required to address political and economic developments and current regional tensions and ties.
March 17, 2017

Irans auto industry is only second to its energy sector, accounting for some 10% of the gross domestic product and 4% of employment. Showcasing the Islamic Republics efforts to become an industrial economy, it is protected by high tariffs on car imports. However, it is time to ask who benefits most from these tariffs. Indeed, while the trade barriers are ostensibly introduced to protect Iranian automakers, it appears that the primary benefactors are French carmakers who have clearly found their niche in the largest auto market in the Middle East. In this equation, Iranian consumers are ultimately paying for the governments protectionist policies.

Iran imposes a complicated system of tariffs and taxes on car imports, varying from 40-55% depending on the vehicle type. The government adds a 9% value added tax (VAT) and levies an additional 4% overall sales tax. As such, an Iranian consumer may pay customs and taxes amounting to as much as 80% of the value of an imported vehicle to be able to drive it on Irans hazardous roads and Tehrans traffic-jammed streets.

The governments rationale  supported by domestic automakers  is simple: Irans car industry is still in its infancy and must be protected from technologically superior foreign competition. Irans car manufacturing industry is the largest in the Middle East and North Africa and the 13th largest in the world, and the country counts 13 active automakers. Yet, the relatively large number of automakers does not mean that the market is competitive.

Indeed, only two firms account for 94% of total output: Iran Khodro Corporation (IKCO) and SAIPA. IKCO has joint venture and license production agreements with French automakers Groupe PSA and Renault. The deals involve local production and assembly of Peugeot and Renault cars, which are exempt from import tariffs. As such, through its agreements with local automakers, PSA and Renault are in effect bypassing Irans stringent trade barriers.

IKCOs production and sales of French vehicles is significant  and growing. Figures show that IKCO output increased by 30.8% in 2016. Of the close to 400,000 cars it produced last year, 94,474 were a version of the Peugeot 206; 97,959 units were different types of the Peugeot 405; and 78,703 were a version of the 405, known as Peugeot Pars. In total, cars produced in partnership with PSA constitute a whopping 70% of IKCOs production.

Separately, Pars Khodro produces the Renault L90  called Tondar  and Megane. Pars Khodro has also seen an astonishing increase in its sales and production, which increased 190% last year. Compared to IKCO and SAIPA, Pars Khodro is much smaller, producing less than 5% of total output.

Based on figures circulated in Iranian media, PSA and Renaults market share in Iran is as high as 33%. The Iranian market is at present estimated at one-third the market size of Germany. Therefore, it is little wonder that Iran is globally significant for the business strategies of PSA and Renault. The fact that both of these firms face fierce competition elsewhere in the world only adds to Irans significance.

Protected by high import tariffs and pressed to satisfy domestic demand, IKCO has actively sought cooperation with French carmakers, with the French eager to oblige for their own reasons. IKCO CEO Hashem Yekkeh Zare quietly traveled to France in the spring of 2015 to negotiate deals with PSA executives. The French executives continued negotiations in Tehran the following summer. As such, PSA and Renault were largely prepared when the nuclear deal was implemented in January 2016. Their joint venture agreements with Iranian automakers provide them with the access to a market where tariffs bar the competition.

Gauging Irans market, French automakers have reasons to feel secure: Their cars are cheaper than imported cars and are of higher quality than the local products. Irans high import tariffs encourage luxury car imports and not innovation in car manufacturing. From March 2016 to February 2017, Iran imported 61,245 vehicles valued at 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion)  or an average of roughly 25,000 euros ($27,000) per car. Adding import tariffs, VAT and overall sales tax, it is clear the price tag is unaffordable for the working and middle classes. Indeed, based on Ministry of Labor directives, a common laborer earns $230 per month.

SAIPA, the other major car manufacturer in Iran, produces versions of Kia Pride in massive numbers, priced at around 5,200 euros ($5,600). However, its poor safety performance means many Iranian consumers prefer a sturdier option. Given that Peugeot and Renault cars have the upper hand in quality compared to SAIPA Prides, IKCO and Pars Khodro can charge a mark-up; a Peugeot 206 or 405 is priced at around 8,000 euros ($8,600), and with added options, can cost up to 12,000 euros ($12,900). A Megane can go for as high as 25,000 euros. Although more expensive than Iranian domestic designs, these cars are still less pricey than imported vehicles. The price gap is protected by high tariffs, turning this market segment into a monopoly for French automakers. In short: Some foreign carmakers are benefiting from their market position in Iran to boost their global standing.

The Iranian market is significant for French carmakers such as PSA. Incorporating sales from its joint ventures and license agreements in Iran, it last year recorded a 5.8% increase in sales and deliveries globally. Without the Iranian market, its sales would have been down by 2% compared to 2015. As such, PSAs increased sales in Iran propelled its overall growth, securing its market position. Moreover, PSA recently acquired General Motors OPEL, a car popular in Iran during the 1990s, to become Europes second-largest automaker. As such, the Iranian market boosts PSAs position as a major car exporter.

In this vein, other European car manufacturers are following the French model in bypassing import barriers in Iran. Germanys Volkswagen has discussed plans to launch an assembly line Iran, in a joint venture with private carmaker Mammut Kodro. However, the road from talks to an actual presence in the Iranian market is long. For now, Iran remains the domain of French automakers, with tariffs to protect their Iranian partners ending up securing a monopoly for foreign partners.
A Lame Deer man who was shuffled to more than 24 foster homes and abused as a youth will spend two years in federal prison for hitting his father in the head with an ax during a drunken fight.

During a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Billings, David Andrew Walksalong Jr., 19, said he took full responsibility for his actions and should not go unpunished.

I love him, just as much as any son would love his father, Walksalong said, referring to the victim.

Walksalong said his goals were to further his education and to obey the laws. He said he needed support from family and friends to succeed in that.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters sentenced Walksalong to a term initially recommended by the defense. Walksalong faced a guideline sentence of 33 months to 41 months.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Sullivan recommended a mid-range sentence of three years.

Walksalong pleaded guilty without a plea agreement to assault resulting in serious injury and assault with a dangerous weapon for the Dec. 29, 2015, attack near a Lame Deer residence.

Walksalong and his father, identified as D.W., had been drinking all day and were outside by a fire pit when they got into a fight over something D.W. said about Walksalongs mother, prosecutors said.

Walksalong began hitting his father in the head with an ax. D.W. lost consciousness and fell into the fire, where he suffered first and second degree burns on his leg. D.W. was taken to St. Vincent Healthcare where he was treated for a brain trauma, other injuries and burns to his leg.

Watters said while the victim suffered serious injuries and spent about four months in the hospital and long-term care, she also had to consider Walksalongs background.

Your upbringing was shocking in many ways, Watters said.

Noting the defenses sentencing memo, Watters said Walksalong was placed into foster care when he was 2 years old. He was moved around to at least 24 different foster homes in which Walksalong was kept in a closet for up to a week at time, she said. Walksalong had no access to a bathroom, was not fed properly and not shown any love by anyone, she said.

How that could happen and how people could let that happen, I dont understand, Watters said.

Although he had no criminal record, Walksalongs history of substance abuse and violence were probably the result of his upbringing, the judge said.

Watters also said Walksalong was willing to work and was about to graduate from high school when he got arrested on the federal charges.

The sentence, she said, would punish Walksalong but also give him a chance for treatment and mental health counseling.
March 16, 2017

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon agreed March 13 to devise a joint plan for cutting taxes. Earlier that same day, Intel announced its purchase of Mobileye, the Israeli leader in self-driving technology. Kahlon insisted a day later that the tax cutting has nothing to do with the Mobileye mega-deal and the expected tax windfall from it of at least 4 billion shekels ($1.09 billion) that will land in the state's coffers.

Indeed, the goverment's policy of pursuing tax cuts is hardly new. The proposed 2011-12 budget said the government would continue to implement its multiyear tax plan, extended in 2009 until 2016. In September 2015, the government also decided to reduce the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 18% to 17% and corporate taxes from 26.5% to 25%.

The tax cut policy is explained by the desire to stimulate economic growth. In accordance with neoliberal economic theory, in which Netanyahu avidly believes, easing the tax burden encourages foreigners to invest in Israel. It is also designed to prevent Israeli firms, such as Mobileye, from fleeing to tax havens and countries with lower tax rates. Mobileyes success, however, as well as that of other high-tech Israeli firms that have paid billions in taxes and will continue to do so, proves that the tax burden in Israel is not so onerous.

Not only was Mobileye founded and developed in the Holy City of Jerusalem, but Intel decided that the company would continue to operate there and would even recruit additional local staff. As Kahlon said, the Mobileye deal and Intel's decision to keep the company in Israel surely have nothing to do with the governments expected tax cut decision.

Israel does not have an economic growth problem. In fact, the economy is forecast to grow 3.25% this year, more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. Israels tax burden is also not excessive. It is ranked among the lowest third of the 34 OECD member states in terms of its tax-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. Thus, any additional tax reduction is not expected to generate a significant change in the growth rate. On the other hand, it will lead to a significant revenue loss for the state. For example, a 1% cut in VAT would cost the state 6.5 billion shekels a year. Not only that, about one-half of adult Israelis do not pay income tax at all because their income is lower than the tax threshold.

Netanyahus pet neoliberal ideology would have it that all Israelis enjoy the fruit of accelerated growth, but the annual report issued in January by the Adva Center for Information on Equality and Social Justice finds that its touted trickle-down effect does not work in Israels case. If anything, the fruits of economic growth have continually trickled up more than down. The top 1%, or primarily the top 10th of the percentile, are the main beneficiaries of Israels periods of economic prosperity. During the 2003-07 economic upturn, the share of Israels national wealth belonging to the top percentile more than doubled, and that of the top 10th almost tripled. At the same time, the national wealth of 90% of the population shrank.

The top 1% of Israeli households own 5.2% of the national wealth, a share equal to that held by 70% of the population. The annual report on poverty and social gaps issued by the National Insurance Institute indicates that in 2015, almost every fifth family lived below the poverty line. Among the Arab population, that figure stood at 53.3%. Israels poverty rate is almost double the OECD average. The income of one of five Israelis aged 66 and above is below the poverty line. Almost one-third of the remaining 200,000 Holocaust survivors, some 65,000 elderly Israelis, receive government assistance, according to data from the Welfare Ministry and the Finance Ministrys Holocaust Survivors Administration.

The economic model developed by the world-renowned American economist Robert Solow in his 1956 book A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth shows that in the long term, tax policy has no impact on growth rates. (The model was cited in a Knesset Research and Information Department study on the influence of tax levels on economic growth.) On the other hand, any rational person knows that in the long run, the highest-yielding public investment is in education. This would especially be true for a country ranked among the lowest third of OECD countries in terms of state expenditure per student. The grim outcome of Israel's low investment in education is reflected in its being ranked 40th by the Program for International Student Assessment based on student test scores in sciences and being ranked 39th in math.

The Adva Center argues that successive Israeli governments have not developed long-term plans to increase the number of students receiving high school diplomas, to increase the number of university students or to foster an all-inclusive start-up nation. Official expenditures by government and local authorities on services for citizens totaled 41.2% of GDP in 2014, similar to the rate in the countries of Eastern Europe and countries with a tradition of low government expenditure.

The state of the countrys public health care system is especially egregious. The number of hospital beds per capita  three to every 1,000 residents  positions Israel at the bottom of the OECD rankings. This is what led opposition leader and Zionist Camp Chairman Isaac Herzog to call on the government to invest surplus tax revenues in rehabilitating public health and welfare services.

The desire of Netanyahu and his colleagues on the economic right for tax reductions to leverage trickle-down growth is neither new nor surprising. This was their calling card in the 2015 election campaign as well. Kahlon, who is the leader of the social-welfare championing Kulanu Party and is considered a socially minded finance minister, is also the person who signed off on the following: The theory of trickle-down growth, according to which growth will trickle down to the weak strata of society, has collapsed. This is stated in Kulanu's economic platform. It also urges a change in this approach, so that shrinking the gaps and inequality will bring about increased growth.

There were some, this author included, who believed Kahlon and his friends in Kulanu (which in Hebrew means all of us) would provide a counterweight to the political, clerical and nationalist right. Sadly, they have turned out to be a featherweight not only in that respect, but also against the social-economic right as well. Still, the row that began March 15 between Netanyahu and Kahlon over when to launch the new public broadcasting corporation might reshape the balance of power between the two men. Netanyahu has hurt Kahlons ego and his image of heading a promising, socially oriented party. This disgrace could actually provoke Kahlon into re-adopting his own social-welfare policies.
March 17, 2017

The March 15 request by the United States for Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the Palestinian woman involved in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria suicide bombing, surprised everyone  Hamas, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and to a large extend Israel as well. Tamimi, a one-time student at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was convicted in Israel for driving Hamas member Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri from the village of Aqaba, near the West Bank town of Jenin, to Jerusalem, where he perpetrated the attack.

The Sbarro bombing is one of the deadliest terror attacks of the second intifada (2000-2005), killing 15 people, including two Americans. Among the dead were seven children. Another 140 people were injured, among them Americans. Israeli troops captured Tamimi about a month after the attack, and a military court sentenced her to 16 life terms. She was freed in the 2011 prisoner deal between Israel and Hamas involving more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners being exchanged for an Israeli soldier held by Hamas. She never expressed remorse for her deed and even proclaimed that she would do it again.

Tamimi has been living in Jordan since her release. She was the most famous of all the female inmates freed in the swap, and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal lauded her. When Meshaal greeted the freed women in Cairo, an event broadcast on regional TV channels, he turned to Tamimi with great excitement and addressed her as our heroine sister. She leaned toward him and pledged to work for the freedom of other Palestinians jailed in Israel. Tamimi has since embarked on a career as a presenter on a show dealing with the issue of Palestinians in Israeli jails on the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV station.

The extradition request is a source of great embarrassment to Jordan, mired as it is in economic difficulties that threaten King Abdullah II's continued rule and facing a US administration determined to prove itself tough on terrorism everywhere in the world. In fact, one could say that the US Justice Department has put Abdullah in a bind.

Tamimi had been added to the FBIs Most Wanted list for her role in the murder of American citizens. A case against her was filed under seal in 2013, but the extradition and arrest orders were only now completed and sent to Amman. Mary McCord, acting assistant attorney general for National Security, said the United States never forgets those who target its citizens.

Hamas has urged Jordan to reject the extradition request for the freed heroine. Movement spokeswoman Huda Naim claimed that the entire Palestinian nation stands behind the woman who has become a symbol of its struggle for liberation.

This makes no sense, a Hamas source told Al-Monitor, speaking on condition of anonymity about the US request. He argued that Tamimi was freed by Israel in a prisoner exchange deal, and any request for her to be extradited so she can stand trial for something that she has already been tried for violates international law.

The release of prisoners in the 2011 deal is the only achievement that Hamas can boast of, so it is intent on preserving it. The episode is praised at every event and rally in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls. The only one raining on the parade is Israel, which re-arrested 54 of the freed inmates from the West Bank after the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens studying in the Etzion settlement bloc.

Yahya Sinwar, elected to lead the Hamas movement in Gaza earlier this year, has made the prisoner issue the movements top priority, so for Hamas, Tamimis extradition is a red line. Making the situation surrounding her even more relevant is that the Jordanian monarch expelled Hamas from the kingdom in 1996.

The Hamas source did not rule out the possibility that a Jordanian move to comply with the extradition request and arrest Tamimi, even for a day, would set off a wave of reprisals against Abdullah, not only by Hamas, but by all the Palestinian factions, who see her as a symbol and role model.

As mentioned, Jordan is in dire economic straits. Any shock to its stability could threaten the future of the monarchy. On March 8, Haaretz reported that Israels ambassador to Jordan, Einat Schlein, had briefed Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot on the deteriorating situation in Jordan and expressed concern about the stability of the monarchy.

Abdullah is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he knows full well that any indication of a willingness to give in to the Americans would be a colossal problem for him. On the other hand, when he met with President Donald Trump on Feb. 2 at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, he was hoping to establish an open line of communication with the US leader. The last thing he wants now is to fall out with the new administration.

Unless the State Department grasps that no one in the Trump administration had thought through all the consequences, and that the repercussions of the extradition are too dangerous to chance, the Jordanian king will ultimately be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.
March 16, 2017

Even before the arrival March 12 to Jerusalem and Ramallah of Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trumps representative for international negotiations, the Palestinians were concerned. They were already aware of the voices in Washington calling for a halt of American aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until payments to families of shahids (martyrs) are halted.

Those in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas bureau tried to circumvent the problem. As reported by Al-Monitor last week, Abbas instructed the Finance Ministry in Ramallah to probe a possible discontinuation of salary payments to PA workers in the Gaza Strip who left Fatah and joined other groups that are categorized as terror movements by donor organizations. Indeed, the issue of salaries to Gaza employees is a separate issue, but Abbas entourage hoped that such steps would prove to the Americans that Abbas is acting with determination against Gaza employees suspected of joining other (terror) groups, and that he is taking each and every matter seriously. Obviously, this did not convince the Americans.

When Greenblatt arrived at the meeting in the Palestinian headquarters at the Muqata on March 14, he immediately placed the issue on the table. A Palestinian source told Al-Quds newspaper that Trumps emissary delivered an unequivocal ultimatum to Abbas: The United States will not hesitate to discontinue its financial aid to the PA if it continues to pay compensation monies to families of shahids. According to the report, Greenblatt named the senators and congressmen who are taking action to stop the aid. Some of them are Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, and dozens of other bipartisan members of Congress. They are all resolved to halt American aid money.

Those in the environs of Abbas turn an accusing finger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they feel is responsible for the incitement campaign against the Palestinian president. They claim that the Israeli prime minister encourages congressmen and senators to impose sanctions on the PA, even though these Americans do not have a full picture of the situation in the PA. Also, they do not understand that a shahid in Palestinian society is anyone who was harmed by the occupation forces, whether or not he or she carried out a terror attack.

The number of families who receive a monthly stipend from the PA is classified information. However, the estimate is that the list includes thousands of Palestinian families who have had sons or daughters killed by Israel in armed conflicts, including the second intifada (2000-2005) and in the recent terror wave.

A Fatah source told Al-Monitor that the custom of paying reparations to families of shahids began during the first intifada (1987-1993). That was when payments flowed to the Gaza Strip and West Bank from then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who wanted to encourage the insurrection against Israel. After Saddams downfall and after PLO leader Yasser Arafat arrived in the West Bank and Gaza, the PA took upon itself what was called welfare activities for the opponents of the occupation over the generations and started paying reparations to families of shahids. The source estimates that the PA spends tens of millions of dollars a year on this from its budget, irrespective of American aid.

Mahmoud Abbas will not be able to halt the reparations payments to the families, Qadura Fares  one of the senior members of the Fatah movement in the West Bank and head of the Palestinian Prisoner's Club  told Al-Monitor. He explains that Palestinian society holds a completely different attitude toward those whom Israel calls terrorists. These militants are, instead, regarded as people who sacrificed themselves for the liberation of the Palestinian people from the Israeli occupation. Fares noted that most of the slain Palestinians did not necessarily carry out armed activities against Israel. Many of them were civilians killed by Israel Defense Forces' fire in the course of clashes in the West Bank and Gaza.

If the [PA] stops the payments, Mahmoud Abbas will face protest demonstrations he wont be able to handle, Fares said. Additional senior Fatah men also claim, in a conversation with Al-Monitor, that the results of such a move could critically harm the position of Abbas and of the PA in general. Abbas stature in Palestinian public opinion is already very shaky. Polls that were conducted last in 2016 showed that not only do most Palestinians not support Abbas, but that they even think he should resign.

There are many reasons for the prevailing Palestinian dissatisfaction with Abbas functioning. His conciliatory policy vis-a-vis Israel and the failure of his promise to liberate Palestine through diplomatic negotiations and nonviolent methods have worked against him. Also, his insistence on continuing security coordination with Israel at all costs does not go down well with Palestinians. Instead, they feel that he is more concerned about Israels interests than the interests of his own people.

It is on this background that high-level Fatah officials say that should Abbas dare give in to the US demands and halt the payments to families of the shahids, this will be a political deathblow spelling his political demise. They argue that under such circumstances there is no chance that a single Palestinian will agree to support a future peace agreement with Israel if and when the diplomatic process will be renewed under American mediation.

On the other hand, Fatah understands that the American ultimatum cannot be undone. They must adopt some goodwill tactic to prevent the financial aid from being cut back or cut off. A Fatah member told Al-Monitor that the senior members of the movement are considering a reorganization of the payment method to families of shahids. According to the proposal on the table now, the PA would continue to pay the salaries of the veteran shahid families from its budget. But for new families, a different arrangement will be made external to the PA's budget. The proposal is to establish an independent fund under the responsibility of the Fatah movement, which will then assume responsibility for those who sacrificed themselves for the Palestinian people.

The Fatah people believe that if this proposal is implemented, the pressures on Abbas will be removed; he could no longer be accused of encouraging terrorists. He would even be viewed as trying to fight against those planning armed operations.
March 17, 2017

Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, believes that a two-state solution is still the best way to address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In an Al-Monitor interview during Tibis short visit to Amman March 15, he acknowledged the declining fortunes of the two-state solution, but added that despite a slow erosion of support among Palestinian citizens of Israel and despite not having a good chance of it ever being accomplished, I am still in support of the two-state solution.

Shortly after the Feb. 7 press conference between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, Tibi succeeded in grabbing the headlines. Commenting on Trump's assertion that he was equally open to a two-state solution or a one-state solution, whichever the two conflicting parties preferred, Tibi told CNN Feb. 16 that in the case of a single state, I will be running for the post of prime minister, and I can assure you that I will win [over] Bibi Netanyahu.

Tibi spoke to Al-Monitor in the Jordanian capital after a public gathering at the Orthodox Club, where he delivered a speech as the guest of the Asriyya Forum, founded and led by Asaad Abdel Rahman, a member of the PLO's Executive Committee. Tibi said that the one-state solution is far-fetched. Until today, polls show that the majority of Palestinians still favor a two-state solution, he said. A December 2016 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research confirm his assertion.

According to Tibi, there are only three possible solutions to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: two independent and sovereign states; a one-state solution with an apartheid-like structure and political discrimination against Palestinians; or a one-state solution where all citizens have equal rights. Tibi added, however, Israelis will not agree to a single state for all, and are unlikely to tolerate a blatant apartheid regime, so the only viable and practical option is the two-state solution.

That said, he also observed that every Israeli leader who has been asked to choose between a two-state solution and a one-state solution has chosen a third option, namely, maintaining the status quo.

Tibi, who is close to the Palestinian leadership, told Al-Monitor that President Mahmoud Abbas clearly and unambiguously supports a two-state solution. Tibi noted, He insists that the Palestinian component of the Palestinian state be sovereign.

On the other hand, Tibi said, although Netanyahu pays lip service to the two-state solution, he never says that it will be independent. He wants the Palestinian state with security in Israeli hands, and Israel controlling the Jordan Valley and other strategic locations, Tibi said. Netanyahu has never used the words independent or sovereign when talking about the Palestinian state.

Tibi explained that Israel has three legal structures, stating, One is truly democratic and applies to Israeli Jews, one is discriminatory toward Palestinian citizens of Israel and a third is a military legal structure for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Describing the current Israeli government in his speech, Tibi noted that it is the most right-wing government in the history of Israel, saying, When Netanyahu is the most moderate member of the Cabinet, you can gauge how extreme it is. Tibi added that not a single member of Netanyahu's government supports a two-state solution.

As for getting past the present stalemate, Tibi explained that Israel has to be made to pay a price for its policies. At present, not only is the occupation without cost, but in fact it is making a profit, he told Al-Monitor. Israel is making millions from farming settlements in the Jordan Valley alone, he said.

Tibi also expressed his views on the need to end the internal Palestinian split, and called on Arab leaders, scheduled to meet in Jordan March 29 for the annual Arab League summit, to show clear and strong solidarity with the Palestinian people. The split is exacerbating Israeli arrogance and lack of interest in a solution, Tibi claimed. It must end.

In concluding his discussion with Al-Monitor, Tibi said he is a strong proponent of nonviolent resistance as a means of bringing about change. Nonviolent actions, like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, are effective and efficient means of changing the current balance of forces, he said, adding that he does not think that Palestinians have effectively implemented nonviolent methods in the occupied territories.

It is highly unlikely that when Trump expressed his indifference toward the two-state solution that he had any idea what that actually meant. When Abbas meets the US president in Washington in April, he is likely to ask Trump what he envisions in regard to a one-state solution. If Trumps idea is similar to that of right-wing Israelis, then the result would be a more formal version of apartheid.

As the majority of Palestinians and Israelis continue to believe in the two-state solution, it appears to be imperative to look past the current distraction and insist on the need for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
March 16, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Families of Palestinians killed in Israel's 2014 war against the Gaza Strip held a sit-in March 7 outside the offices of a PLO-run foundation, the Families of Martyrs and Wounded Support Foundation, in Gaza City. The organizers of the sit-in  the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the National Committee for Families of Martyrs (NCFM)  demanded that victims' families receive their promised allowances, which they say have not been paid for political reasons.

In July 2016, protesters set up an open-ended protest camp outside the PLO foundation's office. The NCFM warned of even further escalated measures should the leaders continue to ignore them. On Feb. 28, women tried to set themselves on fire during a protest in front of the building.

Al-Monitor attended the March 7 protest, where PFLP leader Osama al-Hage Ahmed said that victims families have the right to receive allowances under the 2003 Basic Law, which states that "maintaining the welfare of families of martyrs, prisoners of war, the injured and the disabled is a duty that shall be regulated by law. The National Authority shall guarantee these persons education, health and social insurance.

Ahmed said that the nonpayment of allowances would negatively impact the social and economic situations of these families, especially given the hard circumstances of life in Gaza. He said that the issue of detainees and martyrs should not be impacted by political disputes, and that senior leaders need to be pressured to expedite the payment of allowances.

Speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, a war widow and mother of six said, Our house was totally destroyed by the shelling. My husband was killed in the 2014 war, and I have no one to provide for my family. We are living off the leftovers of people.

She said she lives in a caravan that neither blocks heat from the sun nor the winter cold. She is still owed a compensation grant to help her rebuild the house. She said her situation will not be resolved through peaceful protests, and that escalated measures, such as kidnapping leaders and trespassing onto their private property, are required.

Another war widow told Al-Monitor, I have five children. After my husband was killed in the 2014 war, I was forced to [rent] two of the houses rooms for $70 a month to make ends meet.

The 62-year-old widow added, We will neither get tired of protesting nor of closing the foundation until we get all of our rights, nor will we accept half-solutions.

Maher al-Badawi, the secretary-general of the NCFM, told Al-Monitor that nearly 2,000 families of victims of the 2014 war have not received allowances. Families are supposed to receive such allowances a month after a death. The PLO foundation is only paying the 32 families that lost both father and mother.

Immediately after the end of the war, Badawi said, protesters gathered weekly to demand allowances. When officials didn't respond to their calls, the protesters set up camp, complete with tents, outside the foundation.

Badawi said that the director of the Families of Martyrs and Wounded Support Foundation, Intissar al-Wazir, has repeatedly promised to pay the allowances, but she has yet to fulfill her promise. Badawi met with Wazir on March 5, but he said the meeting was not reassuring and did not reflect any intention to resolve the issue.

Alaa al-Birawi, the spokesman for the NCFM, told Al-Monitor, The outcomes of the meeting with Fatahs Central Committee Feb. 28 have prompted women to set themselves on fire, after the Central Committee suggested paying allowances by installments and over three phases. This, however, was rejected and perceived as a neglect of the Palestinian bloodshed.

Birawi said the issue of allowances needed to be distanced from the political differences between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But he said that the PLO's lack of a presence in Gaza means that it does not represent all Palestinians. Birawi demanded that this leadership, which is misleading the public opinion by using the Palestinian Authoritys (PA) financial crisis as a pretext, be replaced.

Birawi said that while the 2014 war families remain unpaid, other families whose members were killed during periods of truce with Israel are being paid. The stance of the leaders is unjustified, he said, since they say that the 2014 war was not their call.

If the issue is not rapidly resolved, Birawi said that actions might escalate, as the families have nothing left to lose. He said that steps could be taken against anyone who tries to prevent the families from receiving an allowance.

Mohammed al-Nahal, the director of the Gaza office of the Families of Martyrs and Wounded Support Foundation, told Al-Monitor that the foundation is seeking to make the allowances available, but, due to the Palestinian governmental split, no significant developments have been made.

Nahal said that the foundation has secured allowances for families that lost both father and mother, and that the other families have not been paid for political reasons. The presence of a shadow government in Gaza is a major reason behind the problem, he said. Should the unity government that was formed in 2014 run the Gaza Strip, the crisis would not have emerged.

The PLO foundation pays a monthly allowance of nearly $450 to the families of individuals killed due to the Israeli occupation. Families also receive an additional $120 for the wife and $50 for each child. As for those wounded in war, they are paid $300 per month, depending on the disability. In case of total disability, the wounded is paid $450 per month.

Despite the multiple laws issued by the PA to guarantee families rights and exempt them from taxes, no law exists to regulate the work of the foundation, according to a 2010 report by the nonprofit AMAN.
March 16, 2017

BAGHDAD  On March 5, three bodies representing Iraqi minorities issued a joint statement calling for a semi-autonomous region in the countrys north. The idea was proposed by the Yazidi Independent Supreme Council, the Turkmen Rescue Foundation and Al-Rafidain Organization, representing Iraqs Assyrian Christians. The canton would comprise three contiguous regions: Sinjar, Tal Afar and the Ninevah plain.

The proposal is the most complete vision the minorities have yet put forward as an alliance, with the aim of extracting themselves from the Arab-Kurdish struggle for their areas and to prevent a repetition of the catastrophic killing and displacement they suffered when the Islamic State (IS) invaded Ninevah province and raided the areas where they live.

The minorities have previously put forward plans focused specifically on setting up a province for the minorities on the Ninevah plain. That province would stretch across areas disputed between Arabs and Kurds but that are considered the homeland of several Iraqi minorities: the Ninevah plain (home to several minorities, particularly Christians and Shabak), Tal Afar (majority Turkmens) and Sinjar (the main home of the Yazidis).

The organizations proposing the idea avoided any hint of separatism. The project was proposed in line with Iraqs 2005 Constitution, which gives minorities the right to autonomy or self-administration in sub-units of territory (Chapter 1; Sections 5, 112, 115 and 116).

The proposal of a region for the minorities is in line with the Iraqi Constitution and doesnt contradict the general move to share powers and or let minorities manage their own affairs, said Ali Akram Al-Bayati of the Turkmen Rescue Foundation.

The idea of dividing up Iraq into [self-governing] regions is an appropriate, constitutional and legal solution, he told Al-Monitor, pointing to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as an example. The reason for the KRGs power and success in self-government is that it successfully used this constitutional right."

He added, Therefore the idea of setting up an autonomous region for minorities in Ninevah could help strengthen the residents of that region, in coalition with each other, security-wise, politically, socially and economically.

Prince Naif Dawoud, the president of the Yazidi Independent Supreme Council, said forming the coalition is a step toward finding a solution to provide international protection for Iraqs minorities and raise public awareness and support for their just and legitimate demand.

The proposal offers a clear idea of Iraqi minorities demands of the international community and reflects a shared vision among these minorities, all of whom face a shared catastrophe.

The project also reflects a loss of trust in the capacity of Iraqs central government to provide a solution and Baghdads indifference toward the cause of the oppressed minorities, Dawoud told Al-Monitor.

Dawoud linked his defense of the proposal with the need to restore the trust of minorities, especially the Yazidis, after IS invaded their area, committed war crimes against them, destroyed their religious heritage and forcibly displaced them.

It could also offer reasonable guarantees for the period after IS that the group and its ilk will not return to these areas to commit massacres against the Yazidis and other minorities, he said.

The proposals authors say they do not rule out the idea of international protection of minorities in the areas it covers.

We must insist on the need for international protection for a certain time, as was previously offered to the KRG, along with empowerment and training of our local forces to prepare them to defend the borders of the new autonomous region, said Bayati.

Dawoud agreed, saying the project would need the support of major world powers and the United Nations, especially in its early stages.

Even if the UN adopts the Al Rafidain region proposal, it will need security support, aid and international protection for at least 10 years until security finally prevails and the region can survive, he said.

Although the announcement by Yazidi, Turkmen and Assyrian groups did not mention other minorities such as the Shabak and the Kakai or Yarsani communities, the proposal is open for other minorities to join it.

Of course no community in the new autonomous regions geographical area will be excluded, said Bayati. The project has matured for over two years of work, at home and abroad, with all parties concerned and in communication with other communities.

It is their right to wait until they can see the seriousness and importance of the project. The project is now a three-party one, but the door is open to all, he said.

The Shabak is one community that has so far been reluctant to come onboard. Qusay Abbas, a Shabak independent politician and former member of Ninevahs provincial government, said the first step had been premature.

A province must be set up specifically for the minorities of the Ninevah plain, to determine their destiny according to legal and constitutional mechanisms via a referendum of the areas residents, under stable conditions and UN oversight, he said.

Once provinces have been established for minorities, the way will be open to setting up an autonomous region for them, and when that happens of course we will be part of it.

Representatives of other minorities have not joined the project. However, it could bring some hope to the minorities as major powers battle around them.

The proposed autonomous region, if there are guarantees, could be an independent region for the minorities along the lines of the KRG, said Rajab Asi of the Mithra Foundation, a Kakai development and culture group. We welcome that and we want to join it, but the final decision must go to the Kakais living in the region.
March 16, 2017

Despite a recently issued 2,700-page omnibus indictment, many questions remain unanswered about the July 15 military uprising in Turkey. The parts of the indictment supported by telephone records and camera recordings, and the documents that reached the news media, answer many questions but also leave some critical ones untouched.

About 221 suspects stand accused of participating in the incidents at the chief of staff headquarters. Lawyers who have seen a copy of the indictment told Al-Monitor it will be the basis of other indictments that will follow. The first part of the document broadly summarizes the background of the military uprising and coup attempt, and systematic efforts of the Gulen movement to infiltrate the military since the 1980s. In the rest of the document, preparations for the uprising are summarized with corroborative evidence, testimonies of the suspects and victims, telephone records, and military and civilian documents. It also identifies 38 members, all at the rank of lieutenant colonel and higher, as being in the Peace at Home Council, the alleged brain trust of the coup.

Reports say a separate indictment is being prepared regarding Akinci air base near Ankara, which emerged as the central base of the coup where most of the council members operated. With this indictment, the relationship between the Peace at Home Council and the Gulen movement is to be fully exposed.

The omnibus indictment names Kemal Batmaz, Harun Binis Hakan Cicek and Adil Oksuz (who is still on the lam) as the civilian pillars of coup operations at Akinci and claims they were even issuing instructions to generals that night.

What is revealed in this massive indictment? First of all, we learn the timeline of the coup attempt. It says the military and civilian coup plotters began meeting in Ankaras Umitkoy area  in a villa rented by a consultancy company linked to Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen  just eight days after the general elections of Nov. 1, 2015. Therefore, the results of the Nov. 1 elections, won by the Justice and Development Party by a landslide, were probably the first motivator of the coup attempt.

The indictment says academic Adil Oksuz, who was allegedly the main liaison to the US-based Gulen, was actually apprehended at the Akinci air base the morning of July 16, but was somehow released for unknown reasons. Oksuz, according to the document, visited the air base and met with officers a dozen times between Dec. 27 and July 15. It also says that between December 2013 and July 2016, Oksuz traveled abroad 12 times, the latest being when he returned from the United States three days before the coup attempt.

Also from the indictments, we learn that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) gave the chief of general staff the names of 300 high-ranking officers who were using Bylock, a smartphone messaging app Gulenists used for their secret communications. It is not hard to guess that Gulen-linked officers who were working as aides-de-camp, consultants and in critical human resources and intelligence posts at the headquarters were seriously disturbed by the MIT lists.

The indictments said 63% of colonels who were promoted to brigadier/rear admiral ranks in 2014 and 2015 were discharged after the July 15 coup attempt and 13% resigned. It's clear that in 2014 and 2015 there had been a concerted effort to promote colonels and generals linked to the Gulen movement to the most critical posts of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

The indictments note that the plotters got wind of the Supreme Military Council's preparations for a major purge in August of officers linked to Gulen. It was fear of this mass purge that compelled the Gulenists to move up the date of the coup attempt without fully preparing for it. The indictment includes a handwritten note from Gen. Mehmet Partigoc, a key name associated with the coup, to his wife and daughters in which he wrote: My dear wife, I love you more than anything. But if I had not taken part in this uprising, they would have imprisoned me for the rest of my life. Forgive me."

The small percentage of weapons and military equipment used in the coup attempt also indicates the decision to proceed was made suddenly.

The indictment says 8,651 military personnel, including 1,676 privates and 1,214 cadets, took part in the coup attempt. "That corresponds to 1.5% of the total personnel strength of the TSK, further indicating that the vast majority of the TSK had strongly opposed this treacherous coup attempt," it said. The indictment also stated that 7% of TSK planes (35, including 24 combat planes) and 8% of its helicopters (37, including eight attack helicopters) joined the coup. In tanks and armored vehicles, the overall participation was 2.7%, of which 246 were armored vehicles and 74 were tanks. In the navy, only 1% (three vessels) participated.

The state was alerted to the coup attempt when a helicopter pilot major  who was supposed to help capture the head of the national intelligence, Hakan Fidan  came to MIT headquarters around 2:45 p.m. on July 15 and reported the coup was coming.

It is clear from the indictment that neither Fidan nor Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar were expecting such an organized uprising. Around 6:30 p.m., Akar banned all flights in Turkish air space to keep commando brigades from moving to Ankara. This is when the focus of the coup shifted from the army to the air force.

In the indictment, Akar testifies that negotiations with coup leaders at chief of staff headquarters and Akinci air base continued until 12:30 p.m. the next day. What we are not told is what was discussed in those negotiations and whether any of the coup planners' demands were accepted.

Those questions are among many the 2,700-page indictment has not answered:

For example, when the major tipped off MIT headquarters at 2:45 p.m. about the coming attack, why wasn't any action taken during the 6 hours it took for the coup force to block the Bosporus Bridge?

Why did MIT chief Fidan, after leaving the chief of staff headquarters at 8:20 p.m., go on with his routine as if nothing unusual was happening?

Around 6:30 p.m., Fidan spoke with the personal security chief of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Why didnt Akar and Fidan inform Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim? Yildirim said he couldnt reach Fidan until 11 p.m.

Why did the president give four different times of when he was informed of the coup attempt?

Why did Akar and air force commander Abidin Unal praise Gen. Akin Ozturk for trying to stop the coup, instead of reacting to early reports that Ozturk was the top leader of the Peace at Home Council junta?

It looks like we will have to wait a bit longer to find the answers to these and more questions.

Editor's note: This article has been updated since its initial publication.
March 16, 2017

In 2012, Turkey and the Netherlands marked the 400th anniversary of their diplomatic ties. In April that year, Turkeys then-President Abdullah Gul paid a high-profile visit to the Netherlands, where Queen Beatrix hosted a dinner to honor him in the royal palace. Speaking at the dinner, Gul praised the level of bilateral ties, stressing their multifaceted dimensions in the political, economic and cultural fields.

After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Netherlands was among the three NATO allies to deploy Patriot air defense batteries at the Syrian border in response to Ankaras request for support against possible attacks.

On April 1, Turkish-Dutch diplomatic relations will turn 405, but this time the anniversary is mired in an acrimonious crisis that erupted March 11 and escalated sharply to bring relations to the brink of a breaking point in just 48 hours.

On March 13, the Turkish Foreign Ministry issued two separate diplomatic notes to the Netherlands, while the Cabinet suspended all official contacts, banned diplomatic flights from the Netherlands, banned the Dutch ambassador  who was on leave  from returning to Ankara and urged parliament to dissolve the Turkish-Dutch parliamentary friendship group.

So, how did it suddenly come to threats, insults and sanctions after centuries of close ties and friendship, symbolized by the tulips that traveled from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands to become a Dutch hallmark?

Turkeys April 16 referendum, which will decide the fate of constitutional changes designed to hand sweeping executive powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is one of the core factors in the crisis. For Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a yes outcome is of vital importance, and so are the votes of 2.2 million Turkish voters based abroad, mostly as immigrants with dual citizenship. The bulk of those voters  1.4 million  are in Germany, while the Netherlands comes in third with 245,000 people. To lure the overseas vote, AKP ministers have sought to hold rallies and other campaign activities in European countries, setting the stage for tensions with reluctant hosts who have their own political woes and are already irked by Ankaras policies.

The climate in the Netherlands was particularly sensitive as the country was heading to general elections on March 15, in which the rise of far-right leader Geert Wilders  a vocal advocate of anti-immigration and anti-Islam policies  was Prime Minister Mark Ruttes primary concern.

It was in this charged atmosphere that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu decided to go to the Netherlands for referendum campaigning, to which the Dutch government objected.

Similar tensions were already running high with Germany after local authorities shut down venues booked for rallies and speeches by Turkish ministers, including Cavusoglu, who was forced to address a small crowd in the residence of the Turkish Consulate in Hamburg. Much like their Dutch counterparts, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government have been averse to AKP campaigning in Germany, where ultranationalist, xenophobic and anti-immigration forces are on the rise as well ahead of federal elections in September. The tensions shot up as Ankara accused Germany of Nazi practices, leading a top Merkel aide to raise the prospect of an outright ban on the entry of Turkish politicians as a last resort.

Irked by Ankaras high-pitch rhetoric, the Dutch government canceled Cavusoglus flight permit hours before he planned to fly to Rotterdam on March 11. Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, who was in Germany and planning to cross to the Netherlands, was denied permission as well. Still, Kaya reached Rotterdam by car, insisting on addressing expatriates at the Turkish Consulate in the city. The Dutch police blocked her route to the building, and after a tense standoff she was declared persona non grata and escorted back to Germany.

Back home the following day, Kaya decried the Dutch attitude as an affront to the freedoms of assembly and expression, and charged that the Dutch police had treated her inhumanely as a woman.

Erdogan, for his part, called the Dutch Nazi remnants and fascists and vowed they would pay a price, further fueling the row. He leveled similar accusations at Merkel, who had lent support to the Dutch government, and urged Turkish expatriates not to vote for Merkel and Rutte.

Remarkably, Turkey has abstained from any economic sanctions against the Netherlands, which speaks of underlying concerns that such steps could further hurt the ailing Turkish economy. Much of Turkeys foreign trade is with European Union countries. The Netherlands is the 10th biggest buyer of Turkish exports, while Dutch direct investments in Turkey are some of the largest, totaling $22 billion. Over 2,500 Dutch companies are active in Turkey, including global giants such as Shell, Philips, Unilever and ING Bank. Days before the crisis, Dutch energy giant Vitol concluded a deal to buy Turkeys largest fuel distributor, Petrol Ofisi, for 1.368 billion euros ($1.47 billion).

About 79% of the over 300,000 Turks living in the Netherlands are dual citizens. Some 23,000 Turkish entrepreneurs with a total sales of $9 billion are active in the country.

Besides its major economic presence in Turkey, the Netherlands sends about 1 million tourists to Turkey every year. The tourism sector is likely to be the first to feel the fallout of the crisis, which comes at a time when travel agencies already report a 30% overall drop in bookings. Fears are rife that the latest rows will further deter European tourists.

Turkish opposition parties, meanwhile, have joined the government in denouncing the treatment of Turkish ministers, yet they allege that the AKP is knowingly orchestrating the crises. In their view, Erdogan and the AKP are seeking to create artificial tensions and enemies, both at home and abroad, in a bid to fan nationalist and Islamist sentiments ahead of the referendum, hoping that this will boost the yes vote.

A critical element here is the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), whose leadership has allied with the AKP but failed to rally its base behind the constitutional changes amid a bitter in-house schism. So by escalating nationalist and religious rhetoric, Erdogan and the government appear to aim at the MHP base, the majority of which is inclined to vote no at the referendum, according to opinion polls.

It is interesting, though, that Ankara has been harsher on the Netherlands than on Germany. Moreover, no Turkish minister has tried to challenge Austria, which has completely shut its doors. This seems to suggest a policy of calculated tensions, aimed at maximum political gains with minimum damage, in which the Netherlands is chosen as the essential target. And the substance of the sanctions against the Netherlands, which Rutte himself described as not too bad, suggest they have been outlined in a way to allow for a speedy normalization after April 16.
A national commercial real estate company has opened its 35th location in Birmingham in an effort to beef up its midsouth presence.

ARA, A Newmark Company, will employ five people at its Birmingham office on Southbridge Parkway. Birmingham joins Nashville and Memphis as the third office in the five mid-south states, which are Alabama, Tennesee, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. The company says sales volume in these states has risen 21.4 percent year over year to $5.2 billion.

Bo Flurry, formerly of Marcus & Millichap and Birmingham's Rock Apartment Advisors, and Justin Uffinger, who has been with ARA for seven years, will be the office's managing partners.

"Given the Mid-South's growth trend and increasing interest from out-of-area and international buyers, opening the Birmingham office was an ideal opportunity to be part of the company's capital markets integration, proven platform and global resources," Flurry said in a press release.

ARA, headquartered in Atlanta, is an investment advisory firm exclusively focused on brokerage, financing and capital sourcing of multifamily properties.
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Madison Hospital is expanding again. (MadisonHospital.org)

Hartselle resident Tara Gillespie is a believer in Madison Hospital following her mother's successful knee surgery there a few years ago.

After the procedure, Gillespie said her mom went to another facility to have surgery on her other knee. It was a completely different experience - one that she wouldn't want to go through again.

"Being someone who spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals, I of course compare services," she said. "My mind was completely blown away by (Madison Hospital's) nursing staff, physical therapists, the food service, the cleanliness, everything really."

Madison Hospital, which celebrated its fifth birthday in February, hopes to reach more patients like Gillespie's mother by adding 30 beds to the U.S. 72 facility. The more than $5 million project will break ground this summer and bring the total number of beds at Madison to 90.

'Tremendous' growth

Mary Lynne Wright, president at Madison Hospital, said the healthcare provider will be able to reach more patients and reduce wait times when construction is complete next spring.

"The growth this hospital is experiencing is pretty uncommon right now," she said. "It's been tremendous to watch it and I'll be honest, we exceeded our growth pattern."

Madison Hospital opened with 60 licensed beds and 12 units in the emergency room, which now sees more than 50,000 patients a year. Wright said they built the facility with additional shell space knowing the hospital would eventually expand.

The 25-acre campus is designed to host a 200-bed hospital, a reality Wright said will happen sooner than later as the U.S. 72 corridor and surrounding community continue to grow.

"There's a good possibility that's going to happen in the future," she said. "There is no indication that growth in this community will slow down at all."

More jobs

Wright said they will add a second MRI and another nuclear medicine camera to provide more services to patients. The emergency room will also get larger with two additional units.

To accommodate the higher volume of patients, Wright said they will hire about 20 more employees, including nurses, food service workers, environmental staff and more. The hiring process should begin this fall.

Madison Hospital recently earned the Baby-Friendly USA certification, joining only three other Alabama hospitals with the designation. The Baby-Friendly program recognizes hospitals and birth centers that are committed to supporting breastfeeding and early mother/baby bonding.

Wright said the process of becoming "Baby-Friendly" took about two years to achieve.

"We're very proud of that certification," she said, adding Madison Hospital is on track to deliver about 1,000 babies annually, an increase from 500-600 previously.
WASHINGTON  Three federal judges on Thursday asked Congress not to break up the vast, San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a longtime target of Republicans and a recent foil to President Donald Trump.

The 9th Circuit in February refused to immediately reinstate Trump's ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, prompting the administration to release a new, narrower ban. On Wednesday, Trump renewed his criticism of the court, saying at a Nashville, Tennessee, event that "people are screaming" to break up the 9th, which encompasses nine Western states.

"Take a look at how many times they have been overturned with their terrible decisions," Trump said. "Take a look. And this is what we have to live with."

Republicans have floated efforts to split the circuit for decades, arguing that the court has a liberal slant, a high caseload and distances that are too far for judges to travel. The circuit is the largest of the federal appellate courts, representing 20 percent of the U.S. population. It includes California, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

All of the proposals to split it, including the last in 2005, have failed in Congress. Those battles have often pitted lawmakers from California against members of the smaller, more conservative states.

"Circuit division would have a devastating effect on the administration of justice in the western United States," said Sidney Thomas, the chief circuit judge for the court. "A circuit split would increase delay, reduce access to justice, and waste taxpayer dollars."

Thomas, who is based in Billings, Montana, was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. The other two judges who testified against the split were Pasadena, California-based Judge Alex Kozinski, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, and San Francisco-based Judge Carlos Bea, appointed by former President George W. Bush. None were involved in the hearing on Trump's travel ban.

"I think you should take into consideration the views of people on the ground  the litigants, practitioners and judges in the circuit," Bea said. "The overwhelming majority of the people directly involved is against a split of the Circuit."

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Californian and a conservative, led the Judiciary subcommittee hearing to examine ideas for restructuring the court.

"We are all trying to figure out whether to split the court for reasons that should not be ideological," he said.

But some of his Republican colleagues were more partisan, confronting the judges about their court's decision on Trump's ban and other immigration decisions.

"There are a lot of us who are outraged," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

The circuit has 29 judges, many more than the 5th, which is the next largest circuit with 17 judges. It was created in 1891 when the American West was much less populated.

The hearing did not focus on specific bill, but there are at least four bills that would create a split. Lawmakers have been hoping for some momentum since the court's high-profile decision on Trump's ban.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, has introduced one of the bills. His would carve out Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and Montana and create a new so-called mountain circuit.

"I have no doubt that the 9th Circuit works well for its judges," Flake said in a statement submitted for the hearing. "My concern is whether or not it works well for the people of Arizona. It does not."

Democrats have opposed the split. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was a leading opponent in the 2005 push, which she said was politically motivated. She has suggested adding judges to the court instead.

At the hearing, New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler said he believes Republican attempts to break up the circuit are dangerous.

"Like clockwork, we see proposals to split up the 9th Circuit whenever it delivers a controversial decision with which conservatives disagree," the Democrat said.
launchpad2.jpg

LUXE Brand, a luxury shoelace company, was one of five companies that competed in the Feb. 21 finale of Shoals Alabama Launchpad, an example of a regional partnership that EDPA hopes will help identify and support entrepreneurs across the state.

(EDPA)

The Regional Alabama Launchpad program is off to a good start, organizers say, and they want to take it to other parts of Alabama.

The program, from the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, is a way to identify and encourage entrepreneurs throughout the state. That includes mentoring and funding, and is a formula that has worked for a decade in EDPA's Alabama Launchpad competitions.

Last month, five start-ups in the Shoals received $95,000 in the finale of the first Regional Launchpad in Tuscumbia.

Among the winners were a physician contracting firm, an infant nightwear company, a skin-sensitive jewelry line and a luxury leather shoelace company.

Caitlin Holland, vice president of investor relations with the Shoals Chamber of Commerce, said the competition "couldn't have gone better."

"We're not the largest or most metropolitan area of the state, so we were concerned about whether we'd have enough applicants," she said. "But there were nine very good applicants, and five were chosen from them. I think it showed there's a lot of energy here that hasn't yet been tapped into."

Now, Regional Launchpad is looking at other regions and inviting applications through April 3 for the program. EDPA will admit two regions per year over the next five years. Organizers say communities that submit proposals that meet criteria will be admitted as received.

A city may apply, but it must be willing to extend programs to a county or larger regional area.

Angela Wier, vice president of EDPA, said some regions are already showing interest but say they may be a year off from applying. She said other areas may, like the Shoals, wonder if there is enough entrepreneurial activity out there.

"You unearth things below the radar," she said. "One thing we've learned through 11 years with Launchpad is that in some areas, there is not enough out there to support entrepreneurs. What the process needs is a carrot. But in the end, the people involved learn a lot from the experience."

Wier said when Launchpad began in 2006, there were a few business incubators in Alabama but traditional economic development avenues were not really focused on equipping entrepreneurs.

Today, that's a different story. And Regional Launchpad hopes to help those burgeoning businesses bubble to the surface.

"You don't have to be in a big metro area with a major university to be successful," she said.

Regions interested in applying can visit the site here.
Join us for another stop on our journey through Whitman, Alabama. The goal of the documentary series? Bridge the gap between people. Filmmaker Jennifer Crandall traveled hundreds of miles to capture the essence of America as people across Alabama bring "Song of Myself" by poet Walt Whitman to life. Crandall below tells us more about the Reeder family.

Whitman, Alabama site | On Facebook

I was introduced to Brandon and Laura Reeder through Bob Miller, one of our photographers on "Whitman, Alabama." Bob told me that Brandon was a farrier--he trims horses' hooves and fits and places shoes on them.

I had never met a farrier before nor had a clue of what that type of work entailed, so I was fascinated. I wanted to see what it all looked like up close and personal.

According to Laura, it's a full-time job. Brandon learned the craft from his dad, and he got his first client when he was 14 years old. Horses need to be reshod every five to six weeks, so Brandon travels all over the place, within a hundred-mile radius of Cullman, fitting horses with shoes.

We filmed Brandon on a job he was doing in Sterrett. To see him shoe a horse, it's pretty amazing, all the specific and different and swift movements involved. While we were filming, out of the blue, the horse lay down on his back, cooling himself off, rolling around like a dog in dirt. Brandon said something like, "Oh that's cool that he's doing that for you." I guess that doesn't happen all the time.

We decided that we also wanted to film Laura and the rest of the family--Haddon (now 8), Henry (6), and Adelaide (4)--at their newly purchased plot of land.

It was 23.5 acres outside of Cullman, where Laura grew up and her parents still live.

Now they call the property Revival Hill Farm. They do field trips for schools in the area. They sell eggs and dairy and make their own biodiesel. They raise pigs, chickens, rabbits, goats, and they have a cow that Laura milks every day.

The day we went to film, Laura and Brandon were building a chicken coop for 63 chickens that had been displaced because of a tornado in Ashville.

While Laura was reading the verse, the kids kept walking up to her and handing her various things they found: apples, leaves, a yellow flower. "They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession," Whitman wrote. Making this project, we encounter really neat moments of text-meeting-life in unexpected ways, all the time.

Looking back, Laura says what you see in the video pretty much embodies their life at the time. Kids running around. Blanket on the ground. Bag of pretzels. Working weekends, trying to clear the land and get it ready for living and more working.

The day we went out to film Brandon and Laura was the same day they found out they were having their fourth child. He is now 2. His name is Walt.

By filmmakers Jennifer Crandall and Bob Miller, as told to writer Liz Hildreth




Almost one year after a successful double lung transplant, Gordo native Libby Hankins has died.

Hankins was being treated at Duke University Hospital Durham, North Carolina, after being admitted in February for problems with her body rejecting the new lungs. She died Friday afternoon.

"I am completely broken and don't have the words to say even how I feel," close family friend Laurel Campbell, who often made the trip to Duke to see Hankins since her hospitalization, said.

At age 2, Hankins was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis-- a life-threatening disease that affects the lungs and digestive system. Throughout her life, she was treated at Children's Hospital and UAB Hospital for several bronchoscopies, more than 20 surgeries, and other procedures.

After graduating high school, she persuaded her parents to let her move to Livingston and attend the University of West Alabama. There she joined a sorority, became an ambassador and a college cheerleader -- earning the spot of cheer captain in 2015. She was also the school's Homecoming queen.

"She's one of the strongest people I've ever met," sorority sister Leigh Hubbard said.

Campbell said in 2015 Hankins was diagnosed with a bacterial infection, which was the "worst bacteria someone with CF can contract." Her body grew resistant to antibiotics, and she was put on the waiting list for a double lung transplant.

After three attempts, Hankins had a successful bilateral lung transplant on April 17, 2016, at Duke Hospital.

After recovering at Duke for several months, Hankins moved back to Alabama where she began student teaching. She planned to graduate from UWA on May 6, with a degree in special education.

In late February, Hankins' body began rejecting her new lungs. She was quickly taken back to Duke, where doctors discovered a virus in her lungs.

A Facebook Group, titled Lungs for Libby, was started before Hankins received her new lungs to keep her many friends and family updated on her condition. After Hankins returned to Duke, people turned to the page for updates on her deteriorating health. Campbell provided daily updates, sometimes even twice a day, to thousands of followers who were praying for Hankins.

The group currently has over 46,000 members, many of who never met Hankins. Hundreds of those members post daily prayers or words of inspiration for the young woman and her family.

"Please keep us all in your prayers," Campbell said. "If you're around her for two minutes, she changes your life."
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is to arrive in Beijing on Saturday, the last stop on his trip to Asia that has included meetings in Tokyo and Seoul, South Korea.



The secretary of state's visits with Chinese officials, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, may have any number of issues on the table, including economic cooperation and countering North Korean provocations. China has vocally criticized the U.S. deployment of the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea earlier this month.



But another topic that will be hard to avoid is heightened tensions in the South China Sea.



The disputed territory most recently drew attention when a Chinese ship seized a U.S. Navy underwater-research drone in the sea in December. The drone was completing a preprogrammed military oceanographic survey route when it was taken. At the time, the State Department said the drone was absolutely operating inside international waters and it was absolutely performing necessary scientific research, certainly within the bounds of international law.



China ultimately returned the drone, but the State Department made it very clear that its seizure was "not doing anything to de-escalate tensions" between China and the U.S.



This week, two U.S. senators, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., proposed legislation that would "sanction Chinese individuals and entities that participate in Beijings illegitimate activities in the South China Sea and East China Sea," according to a press release.



Chinas illegitimate actions in the South China Sea threaten the regions security and American commerce, Rubio said in the release. These ongoing, flagrant violations of international norms cannot be allowed to go unchecked, and the sanctions called for in this legislation would put Beijing on notice that the United States means business and intends to hold violators accountable.



The South China Sea has become a focal point for China, the U.S. and other countries in the region.



Here's what you need to know:



Whats going on in the South China Sea?



In recent years, China has been building ports, runways and radar facilities on several manmade islands in the South China Sea.



Some of the latest satellite images of the islands, released in a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), show that China now appears to have installed large anti-aircraft guns and weapons systems as well.



The seven new islands were constructed by dredging sand onto reefs -- an effort by China to boost its claim to all of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan all claim to occupy portions of the island chain.



Chinas development in the region is seen as threatening to other nations that occupy territory in the chain of islands to the east of Vietnam and west of the Philippines and Malaysia. This area of the ocean is valuable because it contains fisheries and possible oil and gas reserves.



China had previously committed to not militarizing the controversial manmade islands, but satellite images appear to show evidence to the contrary, according to the CSIS report, raising concerns that China is developing military outposts in the event of conflict.



Why does this matter to the U.S.?



The U.S. sees Chinas acts as raising tensions in the region and threatening U.S. allies, but senior officials have also said that the U.S. is not taking sides in the territorial disputes between China and other countries in the region.



Former U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter repeatedly said that the U.S. does not want to see any country with a claim to the islands militarize the region and that the U.S. will continue to ensure its right of passage through international waters and airspace.



We will fly, we will sail, we will operate everywhere international law permits in the South China Sea," Carter has said, which is why the U.S. Navy has conducted freedom of navigation patrols that sail within the 12-nautical mile territorial limits of some of the disputed islands.



Additionally, an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes through the region each year.



Carter visited a U.S. aircraft carrier in the South China Sea last April on a trip to India, the Philippines and the Middle East.



At the time, China had recently announced that one of its top military officers had toured the islands in the South China Sea. China said the official was overseeing construction on the islands, including in the Spratly region.



How have other countries in the area reacted to China's construction?



The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, who is trying to mend his countrys relationship with China, has avoided inflammatory rhetoric on a particular issue that once divided the two nations: China's taking of the disputed South China Sea's Scarborough shoal in 2012.



The dispute caused the Philippines' previous administration to initiate court proceedings, backed by the U.S., against China before an international arbitration tribunal.



Late last year, Duterte said he would set aside the July decision by the tribunal that China could not legally claim most of the South China Sea. The ruling included a rebuke of Chinas construction of the artificial islands.



I will not impose anything on China, Duterte said.



The Philippines' secretary of foreign affairs, Perfecto Yasay Jr., said the Philippines would also not take action against China in response to the new satellite images, not wanting to heighten tensions between the two countries.



"There is nothing that we can do about that now, whether or not it is being done for purposes of further militarizing these facilities that they have put up, Yasay said in December of the images.



But the Philippines national defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, showed more concern.



"If true, it is a big concern for us and the international community who uses the South China Sea lanes for trade," Lorenza said. "It would mean that the Chinese are militarizing the area, which is not good."

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
CASPER  Casper police arrested a Converse County sheriff's deputy Thursday night on suspicion of attempting to sell Oxycodone.

Casper police officers arrested Michael Martinez just after 10 p.m. Thursday after a confidential source told them Martinez was attempting to sell the painkillers. Martinez is a deputy with the Converse County Sheriff's Office, Casper police Lt. Chris Hadlock said Friday morning.

On a tip from the source, Casper police waited for Martinez to arrive at an address on Wilkins Circle where he had agreed to sell the source Oxycodone, according to an arrest affidavit. When Martinez arrived at the location, Casper officers approached and searched Martinez's clothes. The officers found a prescription pill bottle containing 10 Oxycodone pills.

Martinez was booked into the Natrona County Detention Center on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a felony.

The Converse County Sheriff's Office did not immediately respond to calls for comment Friday morning.

Martinez is the fourth Wyoming law enforcement officer to be arrested in the past month. Two Casper police officers were arrested in connection to the alleged neglect and abuse of two adopted children and a Cheyenne-based Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper was arrested earlier this week and charged with felony stalking, felony property destruction and misdemeanor violation of a protection order.

Check back with the Star-Tribune for updates on this developing story.
LARAMIE, Wyo.  The Wyoming Supreme Court has heard arguments in the case of a man convicted of first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing a man to death in Laramie.

Attorneys for 31-year-old John Michael Schnitker argued Thursday he had the right to claim self-defense in the death of 59-year-old Clinton Garman in 2015.

The Laramie Boomerang reports (http://bit.ly/2mRdnUc ) the high court took the arguments under advisement and will rule later.

Prosecutors say the confrontation happened after Schnitker began rummaging through Garman's truck on Garman's property. Garman confronted Schnitker with an axe and Schnitker allegedly stabbed Garman with a knife from the truck.

Garman died later at a hospital.

A jury last year convicted Schnitker of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. Jurors also convicted him of battery for attacking another man earlier that day.

___

Information from: Laramie Boomerang, http://www.laramieboomerang.com
Berlin, Germany  In September 1964, Dr Martin Luther King travelled to Germany to deliver a sermon to Berliners who, three years before, had seen their city divided by a wall.

During his relatively undocumented trip, he spoke in front of a few thousand people in West Berlin about reconciliation, before making a surprise visit to the eastern side to make a similar speech. Drawing parallels between the civil rights struggle and what Berliners were facing, he said: We have journeyed and suffered through the wilderness of segregation. For the first time, we stand on the mountain looking into the promised land of creative, integrated living. But there are giants in that land.

The giants in the land King once spoke of could today refer to Donald Trumps proposed wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. Trump wants to extend the existing wall to 1,000 miles of the 2,000 mile-long border. Trump has said it will be an impenetrable and beautiful structure that will curtail illegal immigration from Mexico into the US. Critics, however, have called it a racist monument that is divisive and offensive.

READ MORE: Building Trumps border wall

Germany was split for nearly 50 years, with Berlin and its wall coming to symbolise the division between Eastern and Western Europe. As the new US administration begins to make its plan a reality, some Berliners say that the legacy of their wall, and the suffering it caused, should serve as a powerful reminder as to why walls shouldnt be built. Such physical structures, many argue, are detrimental to societys progress, and go against the right to freedom of movement. The separation of families is one of the harshest consequences of them.

Marcus Schinkel is one of the children of the divided era. Schinkel, the oldest of four, lived with his priest father and his mother 50 metres from the wall in the eastern district of Mitte. He was 10 years old when the wall was taken down, and remembers a childhood of divisions and dreamlands.

Now 37, the actor and musician told Al Jazeera: Three minutes walk from the home was this big wall. The other side always looked so colourful. But we knew this wall was not made to protect us, it was against us.

Schinkels maternal grandmother escaped when his mother was still in school. The police gave her a choice: to either declare her mother officially dead or leave school. So she left school, making it difficult for her to get a decent job.

I knew that this wall meant that I would never see my grandma, Schinkel says. The GDR [German Democratic Republic, or East Germany] allowed short-term family visits and my mother would try and get through to see her mum. The officers would talk to her for hours, and she would come back crying. Two weeks later, it would be the same situation. She had four children at home who could never be sure if she was going to come back. No grandma, a stressed mother and the wall. This was our reality.

READ MORE: Voices from the border  Opposing Trumps wall

Originally from the south of Berlin, Angelika Hecker and her pregnant mother were evacuated from the city during the second world war to a town near Dresden, which later fell behind the Iron Curtain, the Western European term for travel restrictions placed on Eastern Europeans during the Cold War. In 1957, 19-year-old Hecker and her younger brother escaped, joined by her mother and sister on the same day. Even though she fled four years before the wall was erected, a border was already in place, and Hecker says she felt the effect of living under strict rules that restricted where she could go.

Initially living as a refugee in the West, Hecker embraced being in the so-called free world and forged a successful career in medicine, becoming a neurologist and paediatrician. Walls split society, she says. Some people are kept outside, others are kept on the inside. And the reality is, walls wont stop people from trying to get through. People are saying Trumps wall is a terrible idea from an economic point of view. But I think this is a mistake from a moral perspective.

Walls have played a big part in Nataly Jung-Hwa Hans life. Her parents moved to Seoul before Korea split and she was born nine years after the separation, in 1962. As far back as she can remember, she knew that a division existed in her country and that close family members  her aunts, uncles and grandparents, who she still knows very little about  were living on the other side. In 1978, her mother was accepted into a programme for nurses in Germany, so they moved to the divided nation.

Han, the editor of Korea Forum magazine and a programme manager at an organisation for Korean-German cooperation, says: The first time I entered Berlin was by car via the East. My heart was pumping so much. Its the kind of feeling I imagined having if I was entering North Korea.

Han, now 55 years old, moved to West Berlin two years before the wall came down and witnessed its fall. It made her think a lot about the possibility of unification in her home country, and the effect walls have on how people view each other.

Walls create an economic imbalance between people, which can lead to racism and discrimination, she says. South Koreans think North Koreans are poor and hungry, and are always fearing that they will come and take away what they have built. Any division can create prejudices.

These prejudices can remain even once a wall is dismantled, making it harder for society to move forward.

Simona Cannetti, 46, was one of the many people from outside the country drawn to Berlin after reunification. Moving from Italy to study German, she quickly immersed herself in a city that was embracing its newfound freedom. But as an outsider looking in, she was able to notice the scars left by the wall. I could see discrimination coming from both sides, she says. People from the West thought that East Berliners were badly dressed and were not open-minded. People from the East, meanwhile, thought that Westerners were arrogant capitalistas.

Trump says this wall will protect people, but walls bring fear no matter what side you are on. Fear of the other is one of the lasting impacts of a separation wall, she adds.

Although there are profound differences between the two cases, there are also parallels to be drawn between the Berlin Wall and the one on the US-Mexico border. Schinkel says it would be wise to heed historys lessons.

The GDR built the wall to make a jail. But Trump wants to keep people out, says Schinkel. I believe any separation of Im better than you is a mistake. Any sort of division creates misunderstandings and a cruel situation. Freedom is the most important thing.
Tokyo, Japan  Adjacent to Tokyos historic Ueno Station is a three-storey square building constructed of reinforced concrete. This grey and somewhat hulking structure might not initially command too much attention among the citys other sights but for the exposed columns on its first floor, propping up the rest of the building.

The sign at the gate announces that this is the National Museum of Western Art  and since last July it is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site to be found in the greater Tokyo area, a region hosting a population of more than 35 million people.

The crucial significance of this building is that it was built under the auspices of the renowned Swiss-born French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known by his professional name Le Corbusier.

The museums initial construction took almost a year and was completed in February 1959, about six years before Le Corbusiers death. It was his only work in Japan, and indeed his only building to be found east of his much more ambitious and groundbreaking designs in Chandigarh, India.

Tokyos National Museum of Western Art was one of 17 Le Corbusier-related sites to receive the World Heritage designation last summer, with the committee justifying the awards by explaining that they reflect the solutions that the Modern Movement sought to apply during the 20th century to the challenges of inventing new architectural techniques to respond to the needs of society. These masterpieces of creative genius also attest to the internationalisation of architectural practice across the planet.

Challenging the Modern

Indeed, what most defined Le Corbusiers long and varied career as an architect and urban planner were his attempts to grapple with modern, industrial society.

He consistently sought to make a sharp break with the past and to create designs and structures in accordance with the new demands of modernity  or at least his own vision of what a future industrial world should look like.

Le Corbusier was a painter as much as he was an architect, and he was often searching for simple, functional designs that could be effectively mass-produced and thus be made available to serve the material and environmental needs of ordinary families.

On the other hand, few would argue that he always got it right. While his underlying aim may have been to improve the material lives of the many, he has also been criticised as having unwittingly helped legitimise the brutal, boxy architecture of the high-rise apartment buildings that grow like weeds across the urban landscape.

By the time the National Museum of Western Art commission came to him in the mid-1950s, Le Corbusier was in the twilight of his career and among the most renowned living architects in France. However, even then he could still be controversial and full of surprises.

The Japanese government was seeking the return from France of the important European art collection of the industrialist Kojiro Matsukata (a son of former Meiji-era Prime Minister Masayoshi Matsukata), which had been trapped there during World War II.

France finally agreed to relinquish the Matsukata art collection, but stipulated that a French architect must be selected for the new museum.

The best man for the job

Le Corbusier was a natural choice, not only because of his top-level prestige at that time, but also owing to the fact that he had several talented Japanese disciples  Junzo Sakakura, Kunio Maekawa, and Takamasa Yoshizaka  who could translate his broad ideas into a concrete reality with a better knowledge of the local circumstances and building conditions of Tokyo.

The basic plan was an elaboration of a concept by Le Corbusier which he called the Museum of Unlimited Growth. He had first conceived this notion decades earlier, but now he finally had the opportunity to realise a structure that articulated one possible adaption.

Shoichiro Sendai, of the Graduate School of Engineering at Hiroshima University, notes: Le Corbusier only made the basic plans. The execution was the work of the Japanese architects who had experience in Atelier Le Corbusier. In this sense, the National Museum of Western Art was actually a collaboration.

Of course, the original idea itself was by Le Corbusier, but the building contains particular functions designed for the Japanese context, he said.

Professor David Stewart of the Department of Architecture and Building Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology additionally notes that Le Corbusier was not even on site for most of the construction period: He only actually visited Japan when the building was nearly finished.

An imperfect representation

Beyond this, the building which exists today is an imperfect representation of what Le Corbusier himself had in mind for the completed development. The entire project was never built. It included a whole area of buildings of which only the painting gallery exists, explains Stewart.

Originally the complex was meant to include such elements as an outdoor theatre and a public plaza. The broad vision was that this area would become a miracle box at which the public could be treated to a series of wondrous and surprising experiences.

Stewart believes that Le Corbusier himself would probably have been somewhat disappointed that the area surrounding the National Museum of Western Art wasnt developed according to his original and considerably more sweeping plans.

Moreover, there has also been extensive rebuilding at the museum since it first opened its doors in 1959. The underground floors and the expanded use of artificial lighting may be perfectly well justified by practical considerations, but would not necessarily have met with the original architects personal approval.

Still, the great significance of this commission is that it provided Le Corbusier with the opportunity to work in collaboration with his main Japanese students, benefiting both him and them.

With his death in August 1965, the National Museum of Western Art became Le Corbusiers only direct work in Japan, although he did continue to exercise a wider, indirect influence through his Japanese students and admirers.

Not least among these was Kenzo Tange, architect of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and later the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, both of which, in their own ways, exhibit a clear reliance on the French architects inspiration.
Since the start of the war in 2011, the country has suffered the largest reversal of education progress ever recorded.

On a blazing hot day last August, Mohammad Mustafa and his wife dropped their children off at a neighbours house in Aleppo and headed to work.

Mohammad, who worked as a teacher in the western part of the city, received a phone call later that day, informing him that an air strike had hit his neighbours home in the rebel-held east.

By the time he arrived back home, it was too late. His 11-month-old boy, Hasan, had been blown across the room towards his three-year-old sister, Sham, and their 17-year-old neighbour, Marwa, who had been watching the children.

Marwa had embraced Sham in an effort to shield her from the blast. Sham survived, but Marwa and Hasan did not.

The very next day, Mohammad returned to work to continue teaching other Syrian children.

I felt that I had to take revenge on those criminals, and my revenge was to continue on with my message, because they were trying to kill the life inside us, Mohammad told Al Jazeera. As a civilian, I had no other means to fight back.

The education of Syrias children has long since passed the crisis point.

Since the start of the war in 2011, the country has suffered the largest reversal of education progress ever recorded, as enrolment numbers have dropped dramatically. At least 1.7 million school-age Syrian children are not in school, with another 1.35 million at risk of dropping out. Before the crisis, Syria boasted a 98 percent enrolment rate in basic education.

According to UNICEF, there have been more than 4,000 attacks on schools since the war began. One in three schools has been damaged, destroyed or repurposed by both sides of the war, while at least 150,000 teachers have been killed or fled the country.

Initially, efforts to keep Aleppos children in school were scattered, but Mohammad and other teachers in opposition-held areas later began to organise. It was not easy without a budget; teachers had to work on a largely voluntary basis, leaving them without an income to provide for their families.

Our revolution is not a revolution that can be won by ignorant people, so we had to depend on teaching the young generation. by Mohammad Mustafa, Syrian educator

Members of the community in opposition-held east Aleppo formed a new education directorate responsible for overseeing all schools and teachers, appointing Mohammad as its head.

Then, in late 2015, the United Kingdom stepped in with a $15m programme aimed at providing education for Syrias children despite the ongoing conflict.

Sickening attacks on schools cannot be tolerated or ignored. Schools should be safe places where children can learn and grow, not targets for bombs and shells, Priti Patel, the UKs international development secretary, told Al Jazeera.

The UK and other donors are now helping to fund the salaries of more than 7,000 teachers across 1,200 schools, which serve 350,000 pupils in opposition-held areas of Aleppo and Idlib provinces. The funding has also helped to provide infrastructural supports, such as heating and basic teaching aids, including whiteboards.

For Mohammad and his colleagues, the aid has been a game-changer.

Under the shadow of the war, offering any level of education is extremely difficult because of our inability to properly function, and with no budget there was almost nothing we could do, he said.

INTERACTIVE: Whats left of Syria?

After Russia became embroiled in the Syrian conflict in the autumn of 2015, there was an increase in air strikes on schools. In 2015, there were a total of 69 verified attacks on schools; by October 2016, that number had jumped to 308.

In response, teachers began moving pupils into small, informal schools in living rooms, basements and mosques. In Aleppo city, the education directorate tried to set up a school on almost every city block, to minimise the amount of time children had to spend on the streets.

But even then, the Russians followed us with missiles that were bunker busters that could reach the basements, three or four metres underground, and then even the shelters in the basements were not safe any more, Mohammad said.

Basic survival instincts began to outweigh parents desires to keep their children in school, and families were forced to send their children looking for work or food. Mohammad and his colleagues tried shortening school hours and teaching skills that could help pupils to earn money, but they were losing the battle. By late December, those who remained, including Mohammad and his family, were evacuated as regime forces took control of east Aleppo.

Today, Mohammad is continuing his work from the Aleppo countryside. Some of his pupils are from areas once held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS), including Manbij and Azaz.

The ideas that Daesh [ISIL] put in the students minds are more dangerous than having no education at all, Mohammad said. According to UNICEF, more than 600,000 children in Syria are currently or have lived under the control of ISIL.

Whenever the war in Syria ends, it will be the youth who will shoulder the biggest part of the burden in rebuilding their country for the future, Mohammad noted.

Our revolution is not a revolution that can be won by ignorant people, so we had to depend on teaching the young generation, he said. They will have to rise up and know the meaning of liberation and freedom, and know how to use that freedom once we get it.
In December 2016, the Syrian government agreed to evacuate rebel fighters and civilians living in besieged east Aleppo. Tens of thousands of people were put on buses and sent elsewhere in the country. Journalist Zouhir Al Shimale, who has written frequently for Al Jazeera English, was one of the evacuees. He recalls the harrowing experience below.

I left my home and office in east Aleppo and said goodbye to everything, then left with my friends to the evacuation point. I saw thousands of people waiting to be transferred to the western countryside of Aleppo.

I stood and waited in the street with dozens of kids and families surrounding me. It was quite cold and raining on and off. After five hours of just sitting, all of a sudden we heard one Free Syrian Army fighter say the regime was attempting an offensive against east Aleppo.

It turned out that it was just a rumour to make people freak out. Many got scared; kids cried, and women as well. But they calmed down after they learned that it wasnt a real threat.

To me, it was quite odd. The regimes fighters, if they wanted to attack the remaining areas in east Aleppo and commit a massacre, there was no one to stop them. They have been killing us over the course of six years and no one has stopped them yet  so why would they stop now? They could attack us at any time.

Every hour was like a year, and questions circled in my brain about what might happen next. After the false alarm, we waited until we heard that many cars had made it out of the city.

When we left, there was shouting, and thousands of people were running. But they were running away from the evacuation point: It turned out that some people had been killed and others taken as hostages by regime forces. There was no hope for us to leave then, and we returned home miserable and exhausted after a horrible day.

We spent the next two days in our houses, assuming death was the only future for us. I cannot recall how we spent those days. We were suffering because of the weather and lack of medicine and food. There were people in the streets of Amria and Sukari, lying on the ground and waiting for the evacuation process to resume. They burned wood, clothes and plastic bottles to stay warm.

After long talks involving the Russians and rebel forces, it was agreed that the evacuation would start again. They said that it was serious this time and everyone would be evacuated. People started to gather again near the evacuation point the next morning and, after two hours, the buses started to come in around 11am, with the Syrian Red Crescent and Syrian Red Cross, as well.

It was complete chaos. People were running, rushing towards the buses. The Red Crescent and Red Cross were trying desperately to organise the crowds, but there was no way they would be stopped. Thousands of people were rushing to secure a seat for themselves and their families, since they did not know if they would have another chance to get out. I wanted to get on a bus too, but I waited until most of the people had got on and left.

We waited for the buses for 12 hours, until we finally boarded at around 8pm. We thought they would move right away, but it was the opposite  we waited for another 14 hours in the buses, throughout the night, in freezing weather. There were no blankets or any source of heat at all, just the clothes we were wearing. There was no food or water except what people had with them. If you left the bus, you would lose your seat, so you were forced to just be patient.

Normal buses can hold about 60 people, but there were around 85 on board. Babies were crying. Their mothers could not do anything but wait.

My head was full of thoughts: Would they ask us to get off the bus again? Would they take us to another area at night and kill all of us? I will never be able to forget that night.

Many were not lucky enough to get on the buses, and spent the night in the street, instead. They were burning wood to stay warm, but it wasnt enough. It snowed lightly during the night, and in morning, the street was coated in ice. No one could do anything but wait.

Around 8am the next morning, the buses took off very slowly, heading towards the western Aleppo countryside. As we passed Ramosseh, where some of the heaviest fighting had taken place, we saw devastated buildings and wrecked cars all around.

At a checkpoint, a soldier with a Lebanese accent told us that if any of us would like to return to the government-controlled areas, they would be welcomed and taken care of. However, after he left, many of the evacuees mocked him and his claim that they would be safe. Many of the people in the bus had been in the incident that took place days ago, when the people supposed to be evacuated were fired on instead. They said the government forces would kill us if we went to their side. One of them said that their promise of safety just means providing us a safe path to the nearest jail.

After the soldier left, everyone became comfortable. The next two checkpoints were operated by the regime and Russian soldiers. We saw a female soldier standing at the checkpoint, observing the evacuation process.

After arriving in the western countryside of Aleppo, thousands of people got off the buses and got food and water. Many people were crying and hugging each other, because they were now out of hell. Several of my friends were waiting for me. We gave each other many big hugs, and then we moved to rebel-controlled Idlib city.

It is quite strange, in a way, that I know almost no one here. Even though I am with some friends now, the people and the surroundings arent what I am used to. In a way, it feels worse, realising that I will stay in this strange place with no way back to Aleppo. Its still difficult to believe, but I will adapt to it gradually.

READ MORE: Displaced Syrians stuck in limbo at Idlibs Taiba camp

Thousands of other people are spread out in camps all over the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib, with no water, electricity or heating. But they are surviving so far, despite the cold, the snow and the rain.

It seems that the government wants to displace the residents of rebel-held areas, settling people far from their homes and changing the demographics of these areas.

Although the situation in east Aleppo is calmer now, there have been bombs and clashes in other areas, and we will see harsh days in the future if there is no serious solution to end all of this. The fighting will grind on for a long time, and more and more civilians will die or be displaced  yet we cannot do anything but wait.
What has changed since Scotland chose to reject sovereignty in 2014 and how much of a factor is Brexit?

Glasgow, Scotland  If the UK government was in any doubt about the determination of Scotlands first minister to make good on a promise to go for a second independence referendum in the advent of a so-called hard Brexit, then it was disabused earlier this week.

When Nicola Sturgeon on March 13 announced her intention to seek permission from the regional parliament to hold the referendum between 2018 and 2019, it had followed months of intractable negotiations between the UK government and the regional government on the terms of Scotlands Brexit deal.

While the UK voted by a narrow majority to leave the European Union in last years plebiscite, Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain  and Sturgeons call for a separate Scottish deal ran headlong into British Prime Minister Theresa Mays UK-wide approach to quitting all vestiges of the EU project.

Relations between Sturgeons Scottish government, which has repeatedly appealed to London to help retain the semi-autonomous regions place within the EU single market after the UKs exit from the EU, and Mays British government, which has always asserted Britains Brexit vote as being politically non-divisible, reached a new low following Sturgeons announcement.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon plans new independence vote

Indeed, after the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader made known her wish to offer Scotland a choice between a hard Brexit and becoming an independent country with the ability to establish our own relationship with Europe, May accused her of playing politics with the future of the [UK]. The British premier then followed up, on March 16, by rebuffing Sturgeons demands stating, now is not the time for another poll.

I thought that Sturgeon took the stage of British politics in an audacious move  that struck at the heart of the British establishment, said Scottish writer Gerry Hassan, the author of a new political book, Scotland the Bold.

It then begged many questions of the nature of the independence offer and the processes and the politics that follow from that.

A second independence referendum

For most observers, Scotland is now a very different place to the one that voted on its constitutional future in 2014, choosing to reject sovereignty by 55 percent to 45 percent.

The UK and therefore Scotland's economy is not in its healthiest state as it was in 2014 by James Mitchell, Professor

While Brexit has put Scotland on a path towards the EU exit door  against the wishes of its electorate  the steep collapse in the global oil price and slump in oil revenues from the North Sea has made Scotlands economic prospects far from certain.

The UK and therefore Scotlands economy is not in its healthiest state as it was in 2014, said James Mitchell, a professor at the University of Edinburghs Academy of Government.

And Scotlands relative position with the UK has worsened  But another major factor is Brexit  its a process that were just at the beginning of and exactly where [the UK] will be in two or three years time is unclear, other than its not going to be a happy place economically.

But how much has Brexit really been responsible for putting Scotland on the brink of a second independence referendum?

With opinion polls commonly putting support for Scottish sovereignty at somewhere around the 40 to 50 percent mark, independence campaigners have lamented what they see as a hard Brexit-driven lurch to the right in British politics that has ushered in a wave of xenophobic and anti-immigration sentiments.

READ MORE: Sturgeon raises the stakes for Theresa May in Scotland

For Sturgeon, the now-remote prospect of Scotland retaining its single market status  and her contention that losing it would adversely affect Scottish jobs  has made her call for another plebiscite unavoidable.

For pro-unionists, however, Sturgeons Scottish independence obsession has simply found a convenient outlet in Britains Brexit debate that will, they say, only add to further constitutional wrangling and uncertainty.

The type of Brexit being imagined by the British government does make it easier for Nicola Sturgeon [to call another referendum], said The Spectator magazines Scotland editor, Alex Massie.

But if it wasnt this, then it might be something else  when it comes to finding reasons for [another poll], shes in a good position to do so.

Massie told Al Jazeera that while politically, the pro-independence camp have an argument that is stronger, in some ways, than in 2014, about Scotland being in control of its own destiny, of it being a different kind of place and political culture to the rest of the UK, it is negated by economic and practical arguments, which are harder to make now than was the case over two years ago.

That said, with Sturgeons apparent wish to see an independent Scotland assume its place in the EU, Scotlands SNP government has said it has found a warmer reception from EU politicians compared with 2014 when few  if any  wanted to get involved in its independence debate.

A n independent Scotland

Earlier this week, for instance, Elmar Brok, chairman of the European Parliaments foreign affairs committee, told the BBC news that while an independent Scotland would have to apply for EU membership, negotiations would be easy because it fulfils all the legal needs of membership.

Yet, while any attempt by an independent Scotland to join the EU remains open to speculation  Spain, with its own independence movement in Catalonia, is widely believed to be wary of the proposition  Mitchell from the University of Edinburgh told Al Jazeera that its status as a potential EU member state is greater now than ever before.

Scotland will be outside the EU without any shadow of a doubt within the UK, said the academic. He also stated that 2014 pro-union assertions, which contended that the only way to guarantee Scotlands place within the EU was to vote no to independence, had now been turned on its head.

There is a new warmth coming from Europe to the notion of an independent Scotland in the EU, and that is a factor that has played into the debate.

The mechanisms for triggering another referendum will begin at the Scottish Parliament next week when Scotlands five parties will be asked to endorse the wishes of the nationalist first minister.

READ MORE: If Scotland leaves, England will lose the Brexit game

While the chambers three pro-unionist parties, Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Liberal Democrats, will almost certainly vote to block the plans, the combined pro-independence majority of the SNP and the Scottish Greens will be likely to see the motion passed. It will then be up to the British government to grant the Scottish government the legal right to hold another independence poll  which, in light of Mays opposition, looks fraught with uncertainty  as the UK seeks to negotiate its way out of the EU.

So, two-and-half years on from Scotlands last constitutional decision, what will likely frame the coming debate if and when a new referendum date is agreed?

Hassan said that it will most probably pitch the very challenging economic case for independence against the bankruptcy of the British offer.

It will be head and heart  a hope for the future versus the risk-averse one that involves all such debates, he added.

Follow Alasdair Soussi on Twitter: @AlasdairSoussi
Trumps populism needs to be defeated, but pinning all hopes on false saviours like Merkel is not the way to do it.

Rachel Shabi is a journalist and author of Not the Enemy: Israel's Jews from Arab Lands.

Another week, another world leader flies to the United States to tackle President Donald Trump. This time its the turn of Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel who has tried to set the tone for the meeting by saying its slogan will be one-on-one conversations are always much better than talking about each other.

Truth be told, the two leaders have had some things to say about each other. Trump laid into Merkels migration policy during his election campaign, predicting riots and declaring that the German people would end up overthrowing this woman.

Merkel, showing more spine that other world leaders, tied German cooperation with Trump to shared values. Following his race-baiting, misogynistic, hate-fuelled campaign, Merkel pointedly listed those shared values as: democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political position.

She also lambasted Trumps ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries  unlike, say, Britains Theresa May, the first foreign leader to visit Trump.

Responding to the ban in January, Merkel said the fight against terror does not in any way justify putting groups of certain people under general suspicion.

Merkel, who is standing for a fourth term in Germanys September elections, takes a list of issues to the White House: Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Nato as well as trade  the US is Germanys third largest trading partner, after China and France.

Trump, with his protectionist claims of America first, his tirades against Nato and praise for Putin, also seems to want the European Union to crumble. The brash billionaire is, in other words, an affront to the values that Merkel holds dear.

Elevated expectations





Commentators who have followed her political career portray an experienced pragmatist who knows how to handle Trump types.

The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel notes that she didnt exactly hold former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi  the billionaire media tycoon of bunga bunga sex party fame  in high regard either, yet nonetheless got what she wanted from him politically .

But the problem is that Merkels White House visit carries a weight of expectation far beyond her remit. Thats because ever since Barack Obama stepped down, many have cast Merkel as the new leader of the free world.

Leaving aside the anachronistic silliness of this job description, it seems part snub to Trump as not fit for the job, and partly the need for a superhero leader to stand up, on a global stage, for the progressive values that Team Trump is so gleefully battering.

Obamas final presidential visit to Europe, to see his closest ally Merkel, was read as a passing-of-the-liberal-baton situation. Even then, the German chancellor dismissed such claims as grotesque and downright absurd.

Victory will come from the bottom up

So it is worth pointing out  and it seems the German leader would not object  that Merkel is not the great progressive messiah of our time.

Its not just that she heads the Christian Democratic Union Party, defined as centre-right. Try telling Greece, Spain or Italy that Merkels inflexible, austerity-as-law response to the eurozone crisis was in fact prompted by progressive values.

In 2015, with Greece buckling under the crushing austerity cuts demanded by Merkel, leading economists warned that such medicine, imposed from Germany and Brussels, had bled the patient, not cured the disease.

The fleeting, feelgood factor of seeing global leaders such as Merkel stand up to Trump is a diversion unless any hope it generates is ploughed into something more substantial. by

Meanwhile, those who praised the chancellors decision to accept a million Syrian refugees were far less enthusiastic at her ill-fated deal with Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop migrants from reaching Europe  and returning any that had reached Greece back to Turkey.

You could argue that this absence of progressivism, the inflexibility and a lack of collectivism on both the economic and the refugee crises gave the far-right a convenient target on which to focus their attacks against the European project.

In the face of a far-right surge, we crave a progressive figurehead, an inspiring, charismatic type with rhetorical flair, someone who will fight with fine words  if not in fine deeds  the wave of xenophobia, nativism and illiberalism apparently sweeping the West.

In our desperation, it seems anyone will do. This, presumably, explains why George W Bush  yes, the man responsible for the Iraq invasion, torture and Guantanamo Bay  was cast as some sort of liberal saviour when he said of Trump: I dont like the racism.

OPINION: The end of German populist exceptionalism

But espousing left values while at the same time promoting austerity is progressive in rhetoric alone: it doesnt bring solutions to real economic problems and, worse, fuels alienation and resentment by failing to doing so.

Our focus would be better placed in politics at a community level, building the kind of solidarity and practical networks that might allow genuinely progressive leaders to rise and promoting necessary popular support for such figures once in power.

In this context, the fleeting, feelgood factor of seeing global leaders such as Merkel stand up to Trump is a diversion unless any hope it generates is ploughed into something more substantial.

A pushback against the far-right is a longer, slower fight  and it is more likely to be won at community level, from the bottom up.

Rachel Shabi is a journalist and author of Not the Enemy: Israels Jews from Arab Lands.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Australias Anglican Church says it is ashamed after a new report reveals the scale of child sex abuse.

The head of Australias Anglican Church said he was deeply ashamed after a government report found nearly 1,100 people had filed child sexual assault claims against the church over a 35-year period.

The interim report, published on Friday by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said 1,082 people lodged complaints between 1980 and 2015 that identified 569 Anglican clergy, teachers and volunteers as alleged abusers. There were an additional 133 alleged cases of abuse reported by people whose roles within the church were unknown.

The report also found that most children were approximately 11 years old at the time of the first alleged incident of child abuse, and on average it took 29 years for each incident to be reported.

Deeply ashamed

Archbishop Philip Freier, the churchs primate, said Anglicans have been shocked and dismayed at the findings of the report.

We are deeply ashamed of the many ways in which we have let down survivors, both in the way we have acted and the way we have failed to act, Freier said in a statement.

I wish to express my personal sense of shame and sorrow at the way survivors voices were often silenced and the apparent interests of the Church put first, he added.

Anne Hywood, the general secretary of the Anglican Church of Australia, told the royal commission on Friday that the church acknowledged it allowed harm to continue.

She also reiterated a 2004 apology to abuse victims, saying the church apologises unreservedly and is committed to taking action.

Anglican bishop resigns

On Thursday, Greg Thompson, the Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, announced his resignation months after he testified he was not safe in his community due to his work to address child sexual abuse.

Thompson, who was sexually molested as a teenager by a bishop, said he was quitting to focus on his health.

In November, he told the royal commission that people of power provided protection during decades of abuse by clergy and lay people in the diocese. He also said he felt there were consequences if he did not follow what some within the diocese wanted him to do.

The royal commission is also investigating abuse allegations against other religious institutions.

Last month, it was told the Australian Catholic Church paid $212 million in compensation to thousands of victims since 1980.

READ MORE: Shocking scale of Catholic Church sex crimes revealed

The inquiry also heard that about seven percent of Catholic priests in Australia were accused of sexually abusing children between 1950 and 2010.

Church sexual abuse was put into the spotlight in 2002 when it was revealed that US Catholic bishops in the Boston area helped protect alleged abusers by moving them from parish to parish.

Similar scandals have since been revealed worldwide.
Pakistanis turn to social media network for help in investigating blasphemous content on the platform.

Islamabad, Pakistan  Pakistani authorities have contacted social media website Facebook for help in investigating the posting of blasphemous content on the platform by Pakistanis, according to a statement.

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan. Insulting the Prophet Muhammad carries a judicial death sentence and, increasingly commonly, the threat of extrajudicial murder by right-wing vigilantes.

At least 68 people have been killed in connection with blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to a tally maintained by Al Jazeera.

There have been positive developments in the matter of the Pakistani governments contact with Facebooks management regarding the blocking of blasphemous content, an interior ministry spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday.

READ MORE: In Pakistan, a shrine to murder for blasphemy

Facebook would be sending a representative to visit Pakistan with regard to the matter, the statement said, and the government has appointed an official to liaise directly with the social networking website regarding the censoring of certain content.

In a statement quoted by the AP news agency, Facebook said it viewed government requests with care keeping in mind the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users.

The move comes after Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime minister, ordered a ban on all online content deemed to be blasphemous on Tuesday.

Ridiculing a religion in the name of freedom of expression should not be allowed, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistans interior minister, said on Thursday.

Khan is spearheading the governments efforts to have the material blocked.

READ MORE: TV host Aamir Liaquat banned over hate speech

Eleven people have been identified as having posted blasphemous comments or material on Facebook and will be acted against, the minister said. The identities of the 11 people in question were not immediately clear.

The authorities move comes after a senior judge at the Islamabad High Court called upon the government to block all blasphemous content online, even at the cost of blocking entire social media.

The petition at the High Court accuses five rights activists who were abducted in early January of running Facebook pages that had posted content deemed to be blasphemous.

No evidence has been shared directly linking the five activists to the Facebook pages in question, but during their three-week disappearance the men were the subject of a vast social media campaign accusing them of blasphemy.

READ MORE: Pakistans violent cyberspace  No place for dissent

Pakistans telecommunications regulator currently blocks hundreds of websites, including those run by ethnic Baloch dissidents, as well as sites containing pornography or material deemed to be blasphemous.

It is empowered under a 2016 law to block any content if it considers it necessary in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defence of Pakistan or any part thereof, public order, decency or morality.

In January 2016, Pakistan ended a three-year ban on video-sharing website YouTube, also over blasphemous content, after the content provider agreed to launch a localised version that would streamline the process for content to be censored for viewers in Pakistan.

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeeras Web Correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.
Pakistani Taliban faction says it carried out attack on border post as suicide attack is foiled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Islamabad, Pakistan  Eight people, including two soldiers, have been killed in a raid on a Pakistani military border post in the Khyber tribal area, according to the Pakistan military.

The raid was launched from Afghan territory on Friday and resulted in the killing of six attackers and two Pakistani soldiers.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistans Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued via email to media, claiming it had attacked three border posts, capturing one.

One of the Pakistani forces posts was defeated by the mujahideen and set on fire, said Asad Mansoor, spokesman for the group.

READ MORE: Afghan refugees return home amid Pakistan crackdown

Pakistan shares a largely unpatrolled 2,500km-long mountainous border with Afghanistan, which the latter disputes.

Afghanistan rejects the colonial-era Durand Line border drawn up in 1893 and does not want a solid recognition of the boundary.

In a second incident in the Khyber tribal area on Friday, a military operation in Rajgal Valley killed several fighters, according to the Pakistani military media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).

An ISPR statement said troops acted on a tip-off on the presence of the leader of banned armed group, Lashkar-e-Islam, in the area.

Also on Friday, Pakistans military said it had foiled an attempted suicide attack on a paramilitary training centre in Shabqadar, in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Two suicide bombers and a soldier were killed in the attempted attack, while another soldier was wounded, the military said.

Since a wave of violence in February claimed more than 130 lives across Pakistan, authorities there have sealed the main border crossings with Afghanistan, blaming that country for giving sanctuary to Pakistani Taliban fighters.

Afghanistan denies the charge, and has long accused Pakistan of providing sanctuary to Afghan armed groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.

READ MORE: Pakistans new COAS  General Qamar Javed Bajwa

On Thursday, Sartaj Aziz, foreign policy adviser to the Pakistani prime minister, and Haneef Atmar, the Afghan national security adviser, met for talks in London aimed at ending the latest impasse.

Discussions were substantive, constructive, forward-looking and resultful, said Omar Zakhilwal, Afghanistans ambassador to Pakistan, in a statement following the meeting.

The success of this important meeting certainly will be judged by the common people of our two respective countries as to how this, in practical terms, responds to their aspiration for good neighbourly relations, peace and their wellbeing.
A benefit breakfast will be held for Deputy Police Chief Paul Leingang from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 26 at the Mandan Eagles Club.

Leingang, who was recently diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, has been employed by the Mandan Police Department for over 36 years. The department is accepting donations that will be deposited into a benefit account that has been established for Leingang.
After reports of civilian deaths in village, Centcom says air strike on al-Qaeda meeting killed several terrorists.

The US military says it carried out a deadly air strike on an al-Qaeda meeting in northern Syria and will investigate reports that more than 40 civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in a raid in the same area.

Jets struck the village of Al Jina, in Aleppo province, on Thursday at the time of evening prayer when the mosque was full of worshippers, with local activists saying up to 300 people were inside at the time of the attack.

Al Jina lies in one of the main rebel-held parts of Syria, encompassing the western parts of Aleppo province and neighbouring Idlib.

The areas population has been swollen by refugees, according to United Nations agencies.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, a documentary filmmaker, visited the mosque and said that the toll of the attack was likely much higher than 42, as was reported by activists, as many of the victims had yet to be recovered.

US claims that it's airstrike that killed 56 in Jeena didn't hit the mosque are false. See for yourself pic.twitter.com/tInKTlMTME  Bilal Abdul Kareem (@BilalKareem) March 17, 2017

US strike, 56 dead, last night in Jeena didn't hit HTS. Locals: 'It hit Tabligh gathering that happens evry Thursday for past 4 yrs pic.twitter.com/EufqRaTgV6  Bilal Abdul Kareem (@BilalKareem) March 17, 2017

Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border, said Centcom admitted it carried out an air strike in Idlib but that the precise location of the attack was still in question.

Right now, Syria Civil Defence personnel are struggling to get people from under the rubble of a mosque in the village of Al Jinah in the western countryside of Aleppo province, she said.

They say that dozens of people were killed in the strike there and that several people are believed to be still alive under the rubble. They are trying to get them out and, according to Syria Civil Defence, more bodies are to be recovered.

The US military is saying that they conducted an air strike in Idlib province and that this air strike was not targeting a mosque but a meeting of al-Qaeda members. They are saying that the confusion might be because the meeting was held about 15 metres away from a mosque but the US military is saying that the mosque is still standing.

A reporter asked Centcom if they inadvertently targeted a mosque in Aleppo province instead of Idlib and they responded that they would be looking into the reports of civilian casualties.

Several terrorists killed

According to a Centcom statement: US forces conducted an air strike on an al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists.

Colonel John Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command, said: We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target  which was where the meeting took place  is about 15 metres from a mosque that is still standing.

We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike, Thomas said when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people died.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory, which monitors the war via a network of contacts across Syria, said that most of those killed were civilians.

Many people are still trapped under rubble and we believe the number of casualties will increase, he told the DPA news agency.

The Idlib Press Centre, which is run by activists, said at least 50 people were killed in the attack.

Activists posted pictures of bodies scattered on the floor near the mosque.

READ MORE: Talking love and revolution in war-torn Syria

Teams with the White Helmets, or Syria Civil Defence, a volunteer rescue group that operates in rebel-held parts of Syria, shared images of people being pushed into ambulances and panic-stricken residents searching among the rubble for survivors.

The war, which on Wednesday entered its seventh year, started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assads rule in March 2011.

It has since escalated into a full-scale conflict that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and more than half of the countrys prewar population displaced inside and outside of Syria.
President calls heavy rains, which have displaced thousands since the start of the year, a serious climatic problem.

The death toll from heavy rains in Peru has risen to 67 people, with thousands more forced from their homes since the beginning of the year.





Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Friday that the rains, which followed a period of severe drought, were a serious climatic problem.

There hasnt been an incident of this strength along the coast of Peru since 1988, Kuczynski said.

The latest round of unusual rains came after a series of storms that struck the countrys northern coast especially hard, causing flood waters that inundated hospitals and left some small villages completely isolated.

Even in Perus capital, Lima, where a desert climate rarely leads to rain, downpours flooded roads in outlying neighbourhoods, prompting police to help residents using a rope.

Earlier this week, the military used helicopters to rescue at least 35 people who were stranded in the northern village of Lambayeque.

The government has declared states of emergencies in hundreds of districts across the country, and on Friday it announced plans to increase the states budget by $1.35bn to help with recovery efforts.

Officials have said the rains are caused by the El Nino-triggered warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean and are expected to continue for another two weeks.

In 1998, an El Nino event brought heavy rainfall to the nations coast, causing landslides, destroying homes and killing hundreds of people.
Two leaders discuss the fight against ISIL, NATO and Ukraine among other topics.

US President Donald Trump has welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House for the first face-to-face meeting between two leaders known for holding opposing views on a host of issues.

Items on the agenda for Fridays meeting included the fight against ISIL, strengthening the NATO alliance and resolving Ukraines conflict with Russia.

At the start of her remarks in a joint press conference, Merkel said it was much better to talk to one another and not about one another.

READ MORE: Berliners react to Trumps US-Mexico wall

Trump had repeatedly bashed Merkel during his presidential campaign last year, accusing her of ruining Germany for allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.





At the news conference, Merkel hinted at differences, saying: This is obviously something we had an exchange of views about.

For his part, Trump, whose executive order temporarily suspending the US refugee programme and barring people from several Muslim-majority countries was recently struck down again by a federal court, said both countries must protect themselves from the threat of what he called radical Islamic terrorism.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first, without question, Trump said at the news conference.

OPINION: Angela Merkel is not the great progressive messiah

Al Jazeeras James Bays, reporting from Washington, DC, said the meeting represented a chance to make things up between the two leaders, but it has been an awkward day.

The relationship between these two leaders has been difficult in the past, mainly because of comments made by President Trump when he was a candidate, Bays said.

What most people are going to take away from this are the optics. It did not look like these two leaders go on well at all.

Caption this please. pic.twitter.com/U69UYAT33r

The visit began cordially, with the pair shaking hands at the entrance of the White House.

But later, sitting side-by-side in the Oval Office, Merkels suggestion of another handshake went unheard or ignored by Trump  an awkward moment in what are usually highly scripted occasions.

NATO, wiretapping

Trump reaffirmed Washingtons strong support for NATO but also reiterated his stance that member countries in the alliance need to pay their fair share for the cost of defence.

Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe, said Trump, who has long complained that the US shoulders too much of the burden of the cost of the alliance.

In response, Merkel said she was encouraged that Trump backed NATO, stressed its vital role and pledged that Germany will increase its own payments.

The two leaders also discussed the situation in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

INFOGRAPHIC: Germany and USA  Face to face

Trump said he very seldom regrets anything he tweets, brushing off questions about his claims without evidence that his predecessor, Barack Obama, wiretapped him during last years presidential campaign.

At least we have something in common, Trump said, apparently referring to reports during Obamas presidency that the US had bugged Merkels phone. Congressional leaders from both political parties say they do not believe Trump was wiretapped.

On the issue of the economy, Trump said he expected the US to do fantastically well in trade with Germany, while Merkel said she hoped the US and the European Union could resume discussions on a trade agreement.

Trump said he did not believe in isolationism but that trade policy should be fairer.

We held a conversation where we were trying to address also those areas where we disagree, but we tried to bring people together  (and) tried to find a compromise that is good for both sides, Merkel said.

The two leaders will continue their discussions over lunch on Friday with a focus on fair trade.
President Donald Trump stands by his accusation that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign, the White House has said, despite three senior legislators rejecting Trumps claim.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a statement on Thursday they saw no indications of surveillance at Trump Tower in New York as the president claimed in Twitter posts on March 4.

Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016, Republican Chairman Richard Burr and Senator Mark Warner, the committees Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement.

The top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, on Thursday added his voice to those saying there was no sign of phone tapping.

But White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended Trumps assertion during a briefing, citing media reports that have discussed intelligence collection on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia in the campaign.

There is no question that there were surveillance techniques used throughout this, Spicer said.

READ MORE: Is there a deep state trying to undermine Trump?

When pressed for further evidence, Spicer chastised the media for focusing so much attention on comments disparaging Trumps claim about surveillance.

He said reporters have not focused enough on comments from officials denying evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The Russian government has rejected an accusation by US intelligence agencies that it worked to influence the election in Trumps favour by hacking computer systems, among other methods.

Ryan said: The point is, the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom  at least so far  with respect to our intelligence community that  that no such wiretap existed.

Trump accused Barack Obama of tapping his phone during the late stages of the campaign, but provided no evidence.





Obama said through a spokesman that it was simply false.

How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!, Trump wrote.

Trump appeared to back away from his accusation of literal wire-tapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday night.

But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks, Trump said.

In the briefing on Thursday, his press secretary cited unproved media reports that President Obama asked Britains signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, to monitor Trump in order to make sure there were no American fingerprints.

Spicer quoted at length from a Fox News report, that alleged Obama had used GCHQ to dodge US legal restrictions on monitoring US citizens.

In the Fox report  which came almost two weeks later  Andrew Napolitano claimed that three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command to order the tap.

He didnt use the NSA, he didnt use the CIA, he didnt use the FBI, and he didnt use the Department of Justice, Napolitano said, adding that Obama used GCHQ.
At least 22 members of pro-government forces have been killed in a rebel attack on a mosque inside a military base in Yemen, according to medical sources.

Two missiles fired by Houthi rebels on Friday hit worshippers in Sirwa, western Marib province.

The first missile hit the mosque inside the Kofal military camp during prayers, while the second struck during rescue efforts, local sources said.

Dozens of people were also wounded in the attack, which was claimed by a rebel news agency.

READ MORE: Yemens other refugee crisis

Most of Marib is under control of forces loyal to the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

In 2014, Houthi fighters overran Yemens capital Sanaa and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Hadi to flee into exile.

An Arab coalition was assembled by Saudi Arabia in 2015 to fight the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who have fired missiles into neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Fearing extinction, tribes in Indonesia call on the government to protect their land rights.

Thousands of tribal Indonesians gathered on Sumatra, urging President Joko Widodo to protect their land rights.





On Friday, more than 5,000 people from 2,000 tribal communities convened in Tanjung Gusta village outside North Sumatras provincial capital Medan.

The gathering is organised by the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago and held every five years.

Well fight for our rights to the last drop of our blood, said Abdon Nababan, the secretary-general of the alliance at the conference.

Indonesias environment and forestry minister reiterated on Friday the governments commitment to tribal rights.

It was only a start and not the end of this struggle, Siti Nurbaya Bakar told the gathering, referring to the December announcement to return customary lands.

Indonesia is home to an estimated 50-70 million tribal people, but many do not have formal title to the land their families have lived on for generations.

The alliance says more than 8.2 million hectares of forest belongs to the nations myriad tribal groups, but Jokos government has so far only granted a total of 13,122 hectares to nine communities.

For decades they have been locked in bitter battles with logging, palm oil and mining companies that have been expanding into their homelands in the resource-rich Southeast Asian nation.

READ MORE: Four Indonesians richer than poorest 100 million

Widodo has pledged to improve their lives, but activists say his ambitious plans to boost infrastructure and energy production, including building dams, means that more tribes are at risk of being displaced.

Even though the government has nice policies on paper, we continue to face land grabs  and forced evictions throughout Indonesia, said Rukka Sombolinggi, deputy head of the alliance.

We are willing to share, but development has to be done with our consent, she said.

Indonesias Constitutional Court ruled in 2013 that the tribes have the right to manage forests where they live, in a verdict hailed as a victory for tribal land rights.

The government last December announced that it would return 13,000 hectares of customary lands to nine tribal communities, and committed to giving back a total of 12.7 million hectares  roughly the size of Greece  to local and tribal groups.

More than 230 tribal leaders and activists are currently on trial for battling to save their homelands, while at least six tribes face the threat of extinction as a result of land conflicts, said campaigner Sombolinggi, of the Sulawesi islands Toraja tribe,

Our livelihood and our existence are being affected. When we are evicted from our land, what else do we have? she asked.

Studies to be presented at the World Banks 18th Annual Land and Poverty Conference in Washington, DC, next week confirm tribal leaders claims that local communities are best-equipped to protect forests around the globe, the indigenous congress organisers said.

One study suggests that carbon-rich peat lands that have been ravaged by annual forest fires in Indonesia could be saved if the government gives greater forest rights to local communities

The findings suggest that granting communal land rights to indigenous inhabitants of tropical forests is among the most underused and effective solutions to combating violence, poverty and the illegal deforestation that fuels climate change, they said in a statement.
Irans pilgrims did not attend the Hajj in 2016 after the two countries failed to agree on security and logistics.

Iranian pilgrims will participate in this years annual Hajj, Saudi Arabia has said, after an absence last year during tensions between the regional rivals.





The ministry of hajj and the Iranian organisation have completed all the necessary measures to ensure Iranian pilgrims perform Hajj 1438 according to the procedures followed by all Muslim countries, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Friday, referring to this year in the Islamic calendar.

For the first time in nearly three decades, Irans pilgrims  which would have numbered about 60,000  did not attend the Hajj in 2016 after the two countries failed to agree on security and logistics.

Riyadh and Tehran have no diplomatic relations, and tensions remain as Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia repeatedly accuses Iran of fuelling regional conflicts by supporting armed Shia movements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

But the Saudi Hajj ministry said on Friday that the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, welcomes all pilgrims from all the different nationalities and backgrounds.

READ MORE: Saudi-Iran standoff: War or a grand bargain?

Custodian of Islams holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia organises the annual Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once in a lifetime.

Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years between 1988 and 1990 after clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi police in 1987 left around 400 people dead.

Diplomatic ties were restored in 1991, but relations have deteriorated once again in recent years, particularly over the countries support for opposing sides in the Syria and Yemen wars.

In January last year, relations were severed again after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabias embassy and a consulate following Saudi Arabias execution of a Shia figure along with 47 terrorists.
The Israeli army says its aircraft have carried out several strikes inside Syria, prompting Syrian forces to retaliate with ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted.

Thursday nights attack was one of the most serious incidents between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes targeted advanced weapons bound for Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is now fighting alongside the Syrian government.

In response to the strikes, the Syrian government deployed air defence systems and fired a number of missiles towards Israeli jets, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

None of the missiles struck the jets, the army said, though one of the projectiles was intercepted by Israels Arrow missile defence system north of Jerusalem, according to Haaretz.

Overnight  aircraft targeted several targets in Syria, an Israeli army statement said on Friday.

Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and [army] aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles.

Rocket sirens sounded in Israeli settlements in the Jordan valley, the military said and two witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later, Reuters news agency reported.

Unidentified object

Syrias army high command confirmed in a statement on Friday that Israeli jets breached Syrian airspace early in the morning and attacked a military target near Palmyra.

The high command described the attack as an act of aggression that aided the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, which is fighting against the Syrian government.

It said its air defences shot down one of four Israeli jets over what it called occupied ground and damaged another.

There were no reports by the Israeli army of any aircraft lost in the operation.

Jordanian news reports said an unidentified object fell from the skies on Thursday night in the northern area of Irbid, after which security forces surrounded the area of impact.

Pictures shared on social media showed what appeared to be part of a missile that had landed in a yard.

It was not clear whether the object was part of of missile intercepted by Israel, part of an Israeli missile, or another object.

Both Israeli and other news media have reported Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeting arms convoys of Lebanese group Hezbollah, which fought a 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Syrian government.

But normally Israel makes no official comment.
Deal to prevent human flow make it very hard to seek refuge in EU and mental issues on rise among refugees, NGOs say.

A Turkey-European deal to stop the flow of refugees into Europe has made seeking refuge in the continent mission impossible as vulnerable people stuck in camps in Greece suffer serious mental illnesses, according to a number of charities.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Oxfam said on Thursday that the deal exposed refugees to risk and abuse, and accused Europe of setting a dangerous precedent.

The EU-Turkey deal is playing roulette with the futures of some of the worlds most vulnerable. It has become mission impossible for those who need it most to seek refuge in Europe, Panos Navrozidis, the IRCs country director in Greece, said.





In a separate statement on the same day, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said refugees stuck in Greek camps, including children as young as nine, are cutting themselves, attempting suicide and using drugs to cope with the endless misery.

The NGOs said anxiety, depression and aggression were on the rise in these camps, stressing that mental health was rapidly deteriorating due to the conditions created as a result of this deal.

The EU-Turkey deal came into force on March 20, 2016, after more than a million refugees and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond reached Europe in 2015, crossing over to Greek islands from Turkey.

Under the deal, anyone who crosses into Greece without documents can be deported to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum in Greece. But long asylum procedures and a huge backlog have stranded 14,000 asylum seekers on five Greek islands, double the capacity.

The European Union has hailed the deal as a success for stemming the tide of refugees to Europe through Greece.

An estimated 1.2 million people sought asylum in the EU in 2016, slightly fewer than in the previous year, the blocs statistics office said on Thursday.
Winner of 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature dies at his house in Caribbean island of St Lucia after long illness.

Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott has died at his home in the eastern Caribbean island of St Lucia at the age of 87.

A prolific and versatile poet, Walcott was widely respected as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia, read a statement his family released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

Jeff Seroy, a spokesman for publisher Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, said the cause of death was not immediately known, but added that Walcott had been ill for some time and had recently returned home from a hospital stay.

His longtime companion, Sigrid Nama, was with him at the time of his death, Seroy said

With passions ranging from watercolour painting to teaching to theatre, Walcotts work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, as well as its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess.

Walcott received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting him, the Swedish academy cited the great luminosity of his writings, including the 1990 Omeros, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as majestic.

In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet, said the academy in awarding the $1.2m prize to Walcott.

Love after Love, by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the others welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

A distinctly Caribbean poet

Walcott proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer, he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review.

The English language is nobodys special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets.

Walcott said his writing reflected the very rich and complicated experience of life in the Caribbean. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Walcott was born in St Lucias capital of Castries on January 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when the poet and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies.

His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting the work of William Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

READ MORE: John Berger, author of Ways of Seeing, dies aged 90

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called 1944, in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play Henri Christophe was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaicas University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theatre in Trinidads Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcotts treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, The Star-Apple Kingdom, he wrote of the groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid  the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream.

For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including Dream on Monkey Mountain and The Last Carnival, and founding theatres such as the Boston Playwrights Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries.

Walcotts reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St Lucia.
A controversial bill to identify the fiscal impact of refugee resettlement in North Dakota had a Senate committee hearing on Friday.

The legislation, House Bill 1427, saw continued opposition from former refugees and immigrants from across North Dakota, who say the bill is unwelcoming and isolating.

"Am I not good enough to deserve this second chance, second life, as a human being, who has gone through resettlement? I would also like to know about how much impact or burden I've added to the system," said Abdiwali Sharif, a former refugee from Somalia residing in Fargo.

"This bill is a message that clearly states North Dakota prioritizes a few more dollars than the value of a human life," he said.

HB1427 was introduced in the House last month, and, after several hours of testimony, mostly from those against it, it was turned into a comprehensive study on the impact of refugee resettlement on state and local services, including child care, housing and public education  data which is not currently readily accessible.

The bill passed the House last month by a 86-5 vote. The Senate committee did not take action on the proposed legislation Friday.

Rep. Chris Olson, R-West Fargo, the bill's primary sponsor, said he supported the move to turn it into an interim study.

"It's a complex issue," Olson said Friday, prior to the hearing. "I think it's important to make an effort to address these concerns."

Olson on Friday outlined for the Senate Political Subdivisions Committee the gaps in data the state has on refugee resettlement.

Two Fargo Democrats testified in support of the study if it were to be amended to include the benefits refugees bring to the state.

"I believe I understand the bill before us as trying to understand what the costs are in terms of refugee resettlement," said Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo. "And I'm asking you to adopt this amendment to this bill, and it essentially suggests that we look at the full picture."

Mathern's proposed amendment would insert: "The study must include an examination of the contributions refugees have made to communities," including areas of workforce shortages.

"The study must include an assessment of the number and types of businesses and programs developed by refugees in the state and the contributions refugees have made to further enrich community culture, arts, language and education," the amendment reads.

Olson said, after the hearing, that Mathern's amendment may make the bill "subjective," for instance, what would someone consider as enriching to a community's culture?

Rep. Kathy Hogan, D-Fargo, also offered an amendment to the committee similar to Mathern's with a line addressing human rights concerns experienced by refugees.

"I think it would be good if we did do the study to look at all aspects," said Hogan, adding that human rights issues is "a variable we haven't really talked about."

Olson said after the hearing that, though he had concerns with the two amendments, he would still support the bill if the committee chose to adopt them.

A representative from the state's only refugee resettlement agency, Lutheran Social Services, testified at the hearing in support of a study, but said the agency was limited in the data it could provide.

"I want to assure this committee that, where we have data and can provide it, we are more than willing to do so. However, there are assumptions about tracking people that are impractical and often impossible," said Shirley Dykshoorn, vice president of senior and humanitarian services of LSSND.

"Refugees who come to the United States do not have chips implanted that would give someone the ability to trace their ventures. They have the ability to move freely from state to state," she said.

Several former refugees and immigrants in North Dakota said the bill unfairly targets refugees and doesn't include the contributions they bring to the state.

"I do not have to go far to present you with an example of how refugees are contributing," said Hukun Abdullahi, who told the committee about his older brother who is serving in the military. Abdullahi came to Fargo-Moorhead area three years ago as a Somalian refugee.

Abdullahi said his brother served three tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, during which he was injured after two separate explosions that severed his Achilles' tendon and caused severe burns all over his body. His brother has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"It hurts me when refugees are being despised and disrespected due to their status, and just because (you) think they are a burden," Abdullahi said. "On the contrary, it's quite the opposite."

One refugee said the bill worsens the current climate in the state for refugees.

Another woman stood up and told the committee recently she had been targeted in Fargo because of her immigrant status, and was told to "go back to where" she came from.

"This bill makes us feel like we're not part of this community," said Fowzia Adde, a Somalian refugee who lives in West Fargo.
ESCWA leader Rima Khalaf says she resigns after UN leaders forced her to withdraw a report accusing Israel of apartheid.

The head of the United Nations West Asia commission, Rima Khalaf, has resigned over what she described as the pressure to withdraw a report that was critical of Israel.

The report accused Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Palestinians. Lebanon-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a UN body had clearly made the charge.

READ MORE: UN report  Israel has established an apartheid regime

It was expected that Israel and its allies will exercise pressure on the UN secretary-general to distance himself from the report and that they will ask him to withdraw it, Khalaf said at a press conference in Beirut on Friday.

Who is Rima Khalaf? Rima Khalaf, a national of Jordan, was appointed as undersecretary-general of the UN and Executive Secretary of the ESCWA by the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010. Before her UN role Khalaf held several high-ranking ministerial positions in Jordan, including minister of industry and Trade, minister of planning and deputy prime minister. Khalaf also held the position of assistant secretary-general and director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2000 to 2006. She was the founder of the award-winning Arab Human Development Report Khalaf holds a BA in Economics from the American University of Beirut and a Masters in Economics and a PhD in System Science from Portland State University in the US.

The secretary-general issued his orders to me yesterday morning to withdraw the report. I asked him to review his position, but he insisted, she said. Therefore, I submitted to him my resignation from the UN.

Al Jazeeras Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beirut, said that Khalaf clearly stated that she was still standing by the report, which in very explicit terms accused Israel of pursuing apartheid policies in the Palestinian territories.

The Israeli government was very critical of the report even describing it as Nazi Propaganda and one would imagine that they made it very clear to the UN leadership that that is how they saw it, the Al Jazeera correspondent said.

So, one would also imagine that is perhaps why the UN secretary-general is demanding this report to be withdrawn from ESCWA website.

At the time of the publication, the report titled Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid was not on the website of the UN agency, with the link for the report now directing to a web page that consists ESCWAs prior publications.

A UN spokesman on Friday claimed the issue with Khalaf was not the content of the report but as a result of her failure to follow the necessary procedure before the publication.

This is not about content, this is about process, said UN chief Antonio Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

OPINION: Israel is an apartheid state (no poll required)

The secretary-general cannot accept that an undersecretary-general or any other senior UN official that reports to him would authorise the publication under the UN name, under the UN logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself, he told reporters.





Al Jazeeras Tyab said it was highly unlikely that the UN leadership was unaware of the reports existence or the language inside it before its publication.

The curious thing here is that Al Jazeera and many other news organisations had been aware of this report for several days now, he said.

In fact, most news organisations were invited to the press conference that was held around 24 hours ago where this report was released and members of the media were also given an embargoed advance look at this report.

So it is very curious that the UN is now saying that the official procedures hadnt been followed, that they were not aware of the language inside the report, when even many in the media were aware of its publication and its contents.

This feels like yet another chapter in the very strained and complicated relationship the UN has with Israel.
Vessel and eight sailors freed apparently without ransom payment, ending first hijacking of commercial ship since 2012.

Somali pirates have released a hijacked oil tanker and its eight Sri Lankan crew, according to Somali security official and the pirates, bringing the first hijacking since 2012 to a conclusion, apparently without the payment of a ransom.

Thursdays release followed a gun battle earlier in the day between the pirates and the marine force, and then intensive negotiations between the marine force, clan elders and the pirates.

The hijacking was the first time Somali pirates have taken over a commercial ship since 2012 and followed an outpouring of anger by locals over foreign fishermen flooding into their waters.

The Somalis are also angry with their government for licensing some of the ships.

READ MORE: Somalia pirates  Anger fuels return of ship attacks

There has been discussion going on after the gunfight of this afternoon  We pulled our forces back and so the pirates went away, said Abdirahman Mohamud Hassan, director-general of the maritime police force for Somalias semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

In previous hijackings, many crews remained in captivity for years before a ransom was paid. Eight Iranians are still being held.

But the pirates said they agreed to forgo a ransom after learning that Somali businessmen had hired the ship, which was taking oil from Djibouti to the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Pirates have traditionally been wary of getting into disputes with Somalias powerful businessmen.

READ MORE: The other side of Somalias pirates

But locals say the attacks will continue and blame their government in Puntland for granting foreigners permits to fish in Somali waters.

Piracy in East Africa, especially Somalia, has been economically viable for hijackers who have netted $7bn since 2007, Abdinur Ali, a senior maritime security official in Puntland, told Anadolu Agency.

He said 1,000 hostages have been taken in that time.

Somalia has the longest coastal line in Africa and has witnessed a large number sea vessels targeted by Somali pirates.
Attack on boat near Bab al-Mandeb Strait leaves dozens of people, reportedly carrying official UNHCR documents, dead.

Dozens of Somali refugees have been killed off the coast of Hodeidah in Yemen after a helicopter attacked the boat they were travelling in, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Joel Millman, spokesman for the Geneva-based agency, told the AFP news agency that 42 bodies had been recovered, after earlier reports on Friday had put the fatalities at more than 30.

Mohamed al-Alay, a local coastguard officer in the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah area, told the Reuters news agency that the refugees were on their way from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked late on Thursday by an Apache helicopter near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

The refugees were reportedly carrying official UN refugee agency (UNHCR) documents.

A sailor who had been operating the boat, Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, said 80 refugees were rescued after the incident.

It was not immediately clear who had carried out the attack.

William Spindler, a spokesman for UNHCR, said many of those killed and wounded were registered refugees who had escaped conflict in Somalia.

We are appalled by this attack on innocent civilians. These are people who have already suffered so much and risked their lives to flee Somalia, he said.

They are people who  tried to find security in Yemen but found the situation there becoming increasingly dangerous, with the conflict and the humanitarian crisis coming close to a famine. And now, trying to go somewhere else to look for safety and finding this tragic end.

Hodeidah, on the Red Sea, is controlled by Iran-allied Houthi fighters who in 2014 overran Yemens capital Sanaa and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile.

An Arab coalition was assembled by Saudi Arabia in 2015 to fight the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who have fired missiles into neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The Bab al-Mandeb is a strategic waterway at the foot of the Red Sea through which nearly four million barrels of oil are shipped daily to Europe, the US and Asia.
US secretary of state says military action an option on the table as 20 years of diplomacy have come to nothing.

The US secretary of state has arrived in South Korea with the aim of finding a new approach for relations with North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to denuclearise the reclusive state.

Rex Tillerson on Friday visited the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), which divides the two Koreas in line with an armistice agreement signed in 1953, to gaze on the North for himself.

He said US military action against North Korea is an option on the table, and warned the country to end its missile and nuclear programmes.

The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said during his joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se.

Strategic patience

Tillerson, a former oil executive, began his first Asian visit as secretary of state in Japan on Wednesday. He will travel to China from South Korea on Saturday.

He landed at Osan airbase in South Korea from Japan and transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter for his trip to the DMZ, where he met the commander of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the South to defend the country.

Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict, he said in Seoul, but if they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then that option is on the table.

READ MORE: China urges US, N Korea to avoid head-on collision

Strategic patience is the term given to the US policy under Barack Obama when the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses would bring about change.

Previously, Tillerson had said in Tokyo that 20 years of diplomatic and other efforts, including a period when the US provided North Korea with $1.35bn in assistance to take a different pathway, had come to nothing.

In the face of this ever-escalating threat, it is clear that a different approach is required. Part of the purpose of my visit to the region is to exchange views on a new approach, he told a news conference, his first as secretary of state.





Al Jazeeras Rob McBride, reporting from Seoul, said that Tillerson stressed the need to forge closer cooperation between Asian allies of the US against North Korea.

Tillerson said that US, Japan and South Korea should strengthen their trilateral partnership in the face of what they see as increasing aggression from North Korea, he said.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

The country has continued to defy the international community for years, even after two rounds of UN-backed sanctions. It has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year.

Last week, North Korea launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the US.

The US has been pressing China to do more to rein in North Koreas nuclear and missile programmes, including imposing tougher sanctions on North Korea.

However, China has been infuriated by the deployment of a US missile defence system to the South. China says the systems radar is a threat to its security.
Spokesman says reduction of US contribution to UN could undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts.

US President Donald Trump is seeking to reduce his countrys contribution to United Nations programmes, as part of cuts to funding of US diplomacy and foreign aid in his administrations budget proposal.

The spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres reacted fiercely to the plans on Thursday, saying abrupt funding cuts can force the adoption of ad hoc measures that will undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts.

In its budget the Trump administration stated its intention to reduce or end funding for international organisations whose missions do not substantially advance US foreign policy interests.

This includes slashing funding for the State Department and USAID, its foreign aid agency, and shifting money towards the military with a $54bn increase in defence spending

The secretary-general fully subscribes to the necessity to effectively combat terrorism but believes that it requires more than military spending, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.





There is also a need to address the underlying drivers of terrorism through continuing investments in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, countering violent extremism, peacekeeping, peace-building, sustainable and inclusive development, the enhancement and respect of human rights, and timely responses to humanitarian crises.

The United States spends about $10bn a year on the UN. That is about 22 percent of the world bodys total budget. It contributes 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget.

The US government has not released a figure, but is reportedly looking at cutting up to half of its funding.

Trumps budget proposal has been criticised by Democrats and even some Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham who called it dead on arrival and predicted that it will not get approved by Congress.

The UN said recently that the world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II, with 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria facing starvation and famine

READ MORE: Military wins, environment, aid lose big in Trumps budget

At a briefing at the White House, Al Jazeeras James Bays asked Trumps budget director whether the administration was worried that some of the most vulnerable people on Earth would suffer as a result of proposed cuts to foreign aid.

Were absolutely reducing funding to the UN and to the various foreign aid programmes, including those run by the UN and other agencies. That should come as a surprise to no one who watched the [presidential] campaign, Mick Mulvaney responded.

The president said specifically hundreds of times  Im going to spend less money on people overseas and more money on people back home. And thats exactly what were doing with this budget.

Slash and burn

Trumps UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, has said that she does not believe in a slash and burn approach to US funding of the UN, but she agrees with the president that the US contribution is disproportionate.

The UN spends more money than it should, and in many ways it places a much larger financial burden on the United States than on other countries, Haley said on Thursday.

The US contributes more funding to the UN budget than any other nation. However, if the US contribution would follow the normal formula for member states shares  based on the size of a countrys economy and its per capita income  the US would be paying even more.

Member states make both mandatory and voluntary contributions.

Diplomats at the UN headquarters in New York expressed worry over the proposed cuts and the impact the move would have.

Diplomats are telling us that theres no single other country or even group of countries that could make up for the shortfall in everything from emergency food and medical aid, housing aid, environmental programmes, political development programmes, in the whole span of work that the United Nations does, Al Jazeeras UN correspondent, Rosiland Jordan, said.

Matthew Rycroft, the British ambassador to the UN, said the US already has a good deal when it comes to the UN.

The US is the only country whose contribution [has been] reduced in order for it not to pay too much, Rycroft told Al Jazeera.

He noted that the new secretary-general has already made reforming the UN one of his priorities. This process includes reviewing issues ranging from staffing to the scope of programmes and whether some of them should be scaled back.
We investigate the clandestine world of art and antiquities trafficking.

Editors note: This video will be online until November 7, 2019.

Filmmaker: Tania Rakhmanova

Antiquities trafficking is one of the most profitable illegal trades in the world. Estimated to be worth several billion dollars a year, it comes in after illegal arms and drug trades.

These precious cultural objects have been the spoils of war  plundered and sold on. The pillaged nations have demanded their return, but for a long time these demands were largely ignored.

When the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group deliberately destroyed cultural heritage sites in Syria and Iraq, it sparked an international outcry and interest in the issue grew.

From Paris to Beijing, this film uncovers the players involved in the antiquities trade  the states, the traffickers, the auction houses, the collectors  as well as those trying to stop it.

At a state level, we discover that a number of priceless artefacts, looted by Western countries during colonial times, have recently been returned to their home countries in a bid to improve diplomatic and economic ties.

Returning pillaged artefacts

One of the stories we investigate centres around a political dispute that erupted between France and China in 2009, after two 18th-century bronze sculptures  one of a rats head and the other of a rabbits head  were auctioned off at the Christies auction house in Paris.

They had been part of the private collections of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and French industrialist Pierre Berge. But both had been looted from China in 1860, when French and British soldiers ransacked Chinas imperial summer palace during the Opium Wars.

China considers the bronze heads to be priceless examples of their cultural heritage.

At auction, the looted bronzes sold for a combined $29m to an anonymous telephone bidder, despite protests from Beijing.

But five days later, the mysterious buyer identified himself as a Chinese businessman and refused to pay for the looted bronzes.

The bid was cancelled and the sculptures were returned to Berge.

China continued to demand their return, and in 2013, Christies owner Francois Pinault convinced Berge to sell him the artefacts. He then gifted them to China.

We need to stigmatise this crime ... Before, there were 'blood diamonds' - now there are 'blood antiquities'. by France Desmarais, director, International Council of Museums (ICOM)

Officially, Pinault returned the heads to Beijing out of friendship for the people of China. But a few weeks later, the Chinese gave Christies permission to operate in the country.

This case was far from unique.

The museums

More and more pillaged countries are demanding the return of their cultural assets, which are often now the trophies of renowned Western museums.

Citing the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which demands that all nations return illegally obtained objects, pillaged countries have a legal tool to negotiate the return of their stolen treasures.

The pressure is intensifying on the museums and private collectors.

The Pergamon Museum, the most visited in Berlin, is obliged to know the origins of its collections.

Its art director Markus Hilgert explains: As a director, I cannot say I dont know when somebody asks me How did your collection actually come into being? So my responsibility as director of this museum is to know everything about the objects.

On a daily basis, his team meticulously reviews the files for the 500,000 objects in the museum to ensure that they were legally obtained.

The museum stopped acquiring artefacts in the 1930s, 40 years before the signing of the UNESCO Convention, which would seemingly protect it from demands for restitution. But that is not the opinion of Turkey, particularly residents of the city of Gaziantep.

From Gaziantep alone, 20 or so objects were plundered and we know the museums where they are now, says Gaziantep mayor Fatma Sahin.

READ MORE  Syrias Civil War: Aleppos heritage sites in danger

This list includes objects that are on show in the British Museum in London, but also in the Pergamon in Berlin.

Although they were all acquired before 1970, Turkey wants them back.

Like China and Italy, Turkey has made the restitution of its treasures a political priority. Forty or so lawsuits have already been won by Turkey, resulting in the return of more than 4,000 objects.

Private collectors

While pillaged nations such as Turkey have a legal framework to demand restitution from other countries, this doesnt necessarily apply to the private sector, where only the market seems to rule.

In 1995, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects was introduced in an effort to address this. It obliges sellers to prove the legal origin of an artefact as well as obliging buyers to demand proof.

But although the original UNESCO Convention is recognised by 130 nations, only 37 party states have committed to the UNIDROIT Convention.

The lack of regulation has been exacerbated by the existence of tax-free economic zones. Art dealers are able to use free-port warehouses in these tax-free zones to discreetly store artefacts, sometimes for years.

Its estimated that there are more than a million works deposited in Genevas free port, more than twice the number contained in the Louvre.

These facilities explain why the Phoenix Ancient Art gallery keeps most of its merchandise in free ports. The gallery belongs to Ali Aboutaam, one of the biggest antiquities dealers in the world.

In 2010, customs authorities discovered a second-century Roman sarcophagus in Ali Aboutaams warehouse in Geneva.

Since then, it has been at the centre of a complex legal battle.

Aboutaams family had owned the sarcophagus for decades, but was unable to provide proof of origin at the time of its sale to the Gandur Foundation. Faced with doubts over the objects ownership history, the sale was cancelled. Swiss authorities alerted Ankara, which decided to pursue a legal course of action.

These procedures were launched to try to find out who had exported the object and where the illegal excavation had taken place. It was clearly the product of an illegal dig, says Marc-Andre Renold, the lawyer representing Turkey.

In September 2015, a Swiss justice finally ordered the repatriation of the sarcophagus to Turkey. But Aboutaam continues to claim ownership based on a certificate delivered by the Art Loss Register, an organisation that keeps a database of stolen artworks.

For a fee, any buyer or seller can ask the London-based Art Loss Register to sift through more than 400,000 objects in its database to verify that a piece is not listed.

However, it has its limitations because objects discovered in war zones during illegal digs will never be listed.

The Art Loss certificate only really covers classically looted objects. But in this case, the rightful owner, a state, doesnt know that its the victim of a theft. It doesnt know how or when the item was discovered or taken, explains Renold.

The ISIL dimension

With the absence of common legislation and with sky-rocketing prices, trafficking has taken on industrial proportions.

Today, the internet gives looters anonymity and direct access to buyers without the burden of proof of origin or legal documents.

Antiquities trafficking was rarely in the public eye until the world witnessed ISILs deliberate destruction of ancient heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.

In 2015, ISIL fighters destroyed the Mosul museum in Iraq and the ancient temples of Baalshamin and Bel in the Syrian city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

But why is ISIL targeting these historical sites? And to what extent is it also profiting from them?

READ MORE  The blood antiquities funding ISIL

While ISIL has been suspected of partly financing its activities through antiquities trafficking, proving it has been a challenge.

If we can prove that terrorists are self-financing through antiquities trafficking, it will become a matter of security and not just of culture. And that is what matters, explains France Desmarais, of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Each year, ICOM publishes a list of rare objects from various countries which threaten to turn up on the international art market. This time, it listed antiquities from Iraq and Syria, suspected of financing ISIL operations.

The Strasbourg-based Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA) has been recording cases of plundering in Syria since the outbreak of the war.

Its head, Syrian archaeologist Cheikhmous Ali, says ISIL isnt the only armed group plundering sites in Syria: All military groups active on Syrian soil are involved, but people talk only of Daesh [ISIL] because they display their savage acts in Hollywood-style productions.

Based on his research, Ali says he believes that an armed group wont sell an ancient coin to finance its arms purchases. Its not easy to sell objects, you need to find the right channels and the right collector. You have to meet the collector to prove authenticity. Then, you have to smuggle them safely into neighbouring countries. The profits arent huge. Especially when theres oil, which they can sell immediately and take the money and run.

Other famous stolen artefacts

Among the thousands of artefacts from around the world that have been stolen or traded in dubious ways, there are a few that are particularly well known.

It has been 200 years since the Greek Parthenon marbles were taken from Athens by a Scottish lord and sold to the British government. They now sit in the British Museum. But the Greeks say they were removed illegally and should be returned.

Then there is Egypts Rosetta Stone, discovered by a Frenchman and later acquired by the British, as well as its bust of Queen Nefertiti, discovered by a German archaeologist, which now sits in a Berlin museum.

The Egyptian government wants both pieces returned.

Other disputed artefacts include the Indian Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the largest in the world. It was taken by Britains East India Company and presented to Queen Victoria.
Demonstrators held bright-yellow flags against a blue sky Thursday as about 70 people protested Wendys refusal to join the Fair Food Program.

The group walked from UFs Norman Field to the Reitz Union in the Boot the Braids march, which urged consumers to boycott Wendys and prodded UF to remove the fast-food chain from campus.

Lucero Ruballos, the UF Chispas secretary who helped organize the march, said Wendys has ignored farmworkers rights and failed to join the coalition between farmers and companies.

As activists gathered on Norman Field at about 12:30 p.m., they held tomato-shaped protest signs reading phrases like Respect, Dignity and Libertad. Ruballos said the group is concerned with the farms Wendys gets their tomatoes from.

Members of UF Chispas, a student organization advocating for the local migrant community, and the non-profit Coalition of Immokalee Workers marched in protest, one of many anti-Wendys demonstrations that have occurred at UF in recent years.

The Fair Food Program, of which Wendys is not a part, is an agreement between farmers, workers and restaurants to ensure fair, humane wages and working conditions, Ruballos said.

We want to get Wendys off of UFs contract, the 20-year-old UF criminology and law sophomore said. And we want to show Wendys that students are getting involved nationwide.

The Gainesville event began the national Return to Human Rights Tour, which will include protests in 14 cities  their second-to-last stop being Wendys Ohio headquarters March 24, Ruballos said.

As protestors reached Turlington Plaza, some bystanders cheered in support, while others lifted their fast-food to-go bags in the air, seemingly to make fun of the group.

Unfazed, the group chanted, The people, united, will never be defeated, continuing down Stadium Road before arriving at the Reitz Union.

Cecilia Luna, a UF public relations senior who stood with the protestors, said she wanted to hold the fast-food franchise and UF accountable.

UF strives to be a top 10 university but continues to profit from Wendys, the 21-year-old said. You dont have to be a farmworker to care about these issues.

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Even though she has a full Bright Futures scholarship, Anna Hall works three days a week to pay for college.

The UF sustainability and the built environment junior received the scholarship in Spring 2015 but now has to work to pay for part of her schooling due to rising tuition costs, she said.

But on March 9, the Florida Senate voted 35-1 to pass a bill that could ease Halls financial burdens. Senate Bill 2 seeks to improve financial aid for students and help them graduate on time, according to The Miami Herald.

Hall said her scholarship covered a fixed rate for college costs, but tuition prices increased as the scholarship amount remained the same. She started working at CCC Transportation, a Newberry trucking company to cover the $420 difference for this semester.

Its kind of a bummer to have worked so hard in high school to make a cut, see that I got 100 percent and then see that it only pays for about 60 percent of my actual tuition, the 20-year-old said.

The proposed bill, introduced by Republican Sen. Bill Galvano, who represents District 21, includes restoring complete funding for Bright Futures scholars, expanding the scholarship to include summer terms and establishing a block-tuition rate for in-state and out-of-state full-time students.

The bill is the cornerstone of Senate President Joe Negrons higher education priorities, the Herald reported.

It will also change universities performance metrics, which the Florida Legislature uses to award funding, to include shortening the expected graduation rate for students seeking bachelors degrees from six years to four years.

Senators are debating changing criteria for Bright Futures money, according to the Herald.

Democrats want to change qualifications from merit-based to need-based, while Republicans support the current system, the Herald reported.

The Senate has about two months left in session, so the bill could change, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes wrote in an email.

Hall said because the scholarship is merit-based, it allowed her to apply.

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Students like me who dont fit in a lot of categories, like minorities, can get it, said Hall, who is white. Its nice that theres a scholarship based on academic success and not on family background.

If the bill passes, it could impact about 45,000 Florida students for the 2017 to 2018 school year, which would cost about $151 million, according to the Herald.

Some senators are concerned universities could lose millions if the bill passes, the Herald reported.

Sikes said in the 2015 to 2016 school year, 65 percent of UF undergraduates received Bright Futures funding.

Both measures (Bright Futures and block tuition) are expected to save students on out-of-pocket expenses for tuition, she said.

Contact Jimena Tavel at jtavel@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @taveljimena
UF President Kent Fuchs will hold a town hall meeting today at 6 p.m. in Emerson Hall to gauge students opinions about racially charged incidents on campus.

At a Board of Trustees meeting Friday, Fuchs spoke of the challenges of defending free speech while denouncing acts of hate on campus. He spent about 10 minutes discussing recent racially charged incidents on campus, such as a noose found in a Weimer Hall classroom and a man with a swastika on his sleeve on Turlington Plaza.

Most recently, anti-Muslim graffiti was found in McCarty Hall B on Thursday, he said.

The graffiti, which a graduate student found in a bathroom stall, said things like, Muslims kill gays, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said. It was removed, and University Police Chief Linda Stump-Kurnick was notified of the incident.

Fuchs told the board and other top administrators that determining how to respond to these incidents was difficult. He pointed to emails he sent to students after these events and columns hes written for the Alligator.

Were wrestling with that, about what we should do, he said. We dont want cameras everywhere on campus, we dont want patrol officers on every corner. These are truly rare incidents. Collectively, we feel them.

Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor at UFs Levin College of Law and a First Amendment expert, said as a Jewish woman she understands the hurt felt when racially charged incidents happen, but the First Amendment limits response. She said Fuchs has to endure undue criticism of his actions by people who do not understand the guarantees of the amendment.

We, as government actors  and as a public university we are government actors  cannot ban speech simply because we find it hateful or offensive, she said. So long as it is peaceful and in a public space, we must allow that speech.

Zina Evans, the vice president for UFs Division of Enrollment Management, said its hard to have conversations about what steps to take when people are still hurting. She said you have to address the hurt first, and then you can move forward.

When youre hurting, when you have personally been slapped in the face, civility and deep conversation are kind of 10 layers below that emotion, Evans said.

Alejandro Arteaga, a 22-year- old UF business administration senior, said he understands the limits the First Amendment imposes on response but thinks more could be done.

He said when the man wearing the swastika was on campus, it could have spiraled out of control and the police should have intervened.

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I believe that there has to be a limit, he said. That can end in violence, that could have ended in a different way, and there has to be a limit.

Contact Romy Ellenbogen at rellenbogen@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @romyellenbogen

Anti-Muslim graffiti was found in a bathroom stall in McCarty Hall B on Thursday. Among the writings were statements like, 'Muslims kill gays.' The graffiti has since been taken down.
Alex Rolle-Polk was running out of time.

Her hair was pulled back. Sweat dripped down her face. Her heart pounded against her ribs.

She had 10 minutes and 20 seconds.

It was the 28-year-olds third attempt at the Candidate Physical Ability Test  the last test keeping her from becoming the first African-American female firefighter for the Alachua County Fire Rescue.

A 50-pound vest hugged her waist as she pushed through obstacles for the third time. At 5 foot 1, she lugged a 200-foot hose and crawled through a maze. As she dragged a 165-pound mannequin, she lost her right shoe, but she didnt stop pushing until she crossed the finish line.

With 60 seconds to spare, she made it.

She slipped her missing shoe back on and smiled.

I persevered, she said. I got through it, and Im so glad I did.

***

Rolle-Polk never thought she wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up.

As a child, she rarely saw woman in fire rescue gear  and never a woman of color.

If you dont see it or dont hear about it, you dont think about it, she said.

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But on Feb. 6, Rolle-Polk became Alachua County Fire Rescues first African-American female firefighter. She is just one of about 15 females out of more than 230 entry-level employees, firefighters and paramedics, said Karem Scott-Kotb, 30, the rescue's diversity recruitment officer.

Now, Rolle-Polk said she hopes to be that inspiration to girls of color.

I just want to inspire girls to think outside of the box, to be something no one expects them to be, she said.

***

People often underestimate Rolle-Polk.

At 5 years old, she wanted to join an advanced swimming class, but the instructor thought she was too tiny to succeed in the class.

She cant do this class, the instructor said to Rolle-Polks mom, Angela. You got to be able to swim from one side of the pool to the other.

Without a second thought, Rolle-Polk jumped into the water and swam a perfect 50-meter freestyle stroke, her mom said.

The instructor never underestimated Rolle-Polk again.

Its mostly because of her size (that) nobody thinks she can do what she can do, Angela said. Shes just a tough little thing.

Angela said she knew her oldest child wouldnt be happy with a desk job.

But after she graduated from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University with a bachelors degree in physical therapy in 2011, Rolle-Polk ended up in a chair behind a computer screen, she said.

She started college wanting to be a trauma surgeon. Once she graduated, Rolle-Polk said she didnt want to put herself through six more years of school. Even though she performed well, she wasnt happy trapped in classrooms with only a professor and books.

After college, she stayed in Tallahassee and worked as a lifeguard for four years at Florida State University.

When she turned 26, she couldnt stay on her parents insurance, so she needed a full-time job with health benefits.

Rolle-Polk wanted to join the Marines. She liked the strong teamwork that was associated with the Marines in the search for a greater purpose. But her mom cried and begged her not to go because she couldnt imagine her daughter being on the first line of defense with bullets flying toward her.

It didnt make me feel comfortable, her mom said.

Still in need of job, she saw a position open at the Florida Retirement System, which sets up retirement plans and survivor benefits for seniors. She worked the 8-to-5 job doing paperwork and managing files. She hated it.

After three years of a desk job, she wanted to be part of something memorable. Rolle-Polk said she remembered the firefighters she saw every day. They were a sense of hope for people, and Rolle-Polk wanted to be that hope for someone.

When she told her mom, she accepted her career choice and was happy her daughter would stay in the country.

After her moms approval, Rolle-Polk applied for Tallahassee Community Colleges Fire Academy in May 2016 and was accepted.

In July, she started attending the fire schools night classes 25 hours a week while still working full time.

At the school, Rolle-Polk went into simulated burning buildings, learned how to use air packs and how to deal with car fires.

The class started with 25 students and only one other woman, Rolle-Polk said. But the other woman dropped out early due to an injury, and Rolle-Polk found herself surrounded by men.

She said the men, even some of the instructors, assumed she was weaker and slower than them, but when she performed consistently during workouts, always in the middle of the pack, they were surprised she kept up.

Theyre were like, Woah, she can actually do what I can and do it almost as fast as I can, and I think that changed a lot of their minds of what females can actually do, she said.

By the time she graduated fire school in December, only 21 students remained, six were African American and Alex was the only female one of the top-performing students.

That was very empowering, she said.

***

After six months of rigorous physical and mental training, Rolle-Polk stood among 18 male firefighters in uniform.

Alex Rolle-Polk stands with her pin and her bosses during the pinning ceremony on Thursday afternoon. Rolle-Polk is the first African-American female firefighter in Alachua County.

Dressed in an all black, only the Alachua County Fire Rescue symbol patch bared any color of red, navy and white, as Rolle-Polk stood proud as her father pinned on her new badge.

On Thursday, Rolle-Polk and the new firefighter hires had their pinning ceremony. She held her right hand up and said her oath of service, ready for work.

ACFR Deputy Chief Harold Theus said he knew he wanted Rolle-Polk to come to the fire rescue just two minutes into his interview with her.

She seemed like an individual who not only had passion but had poise, he said.

Theus said he hopes Rolle-Polk will motivate more women to apply.

Shell be an example for the future, he said. Im hoping that we continue down this path.

With her first steps completed, on March 22, shell start at Station 25 in Hawthorne, Florida, and shell begin her emergency medical training on May 8.

She said the ceremony symbolized the start of her journey toward her dream of becoming the head rescue chief in Alachua County and to inspire other women to join the department.

But for now shell help people and fearlessly run into burning buildings.

Ill work till my body is not able to do it, she said.

Contact Paige Fry at pfry@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @paigexfry

The new recruits of the Alachua County Fire Rescue swear their oath of service during the pinning ceremony on Thursday afternoon. The ceremony also celebrated the first African-American female firefighter in the county, Alex Rolle-Polk.
Its St. Patricks Day, that time of year when hordes of revelers drink green beer and celebrate their (oftentimes nonexistent) Irish heritage.

Here are some businesses across Gainesville that are celebrating with Irish music and endless pitchers.

Mothers Pub and Grill

Today, Mothers Pub and Grill, located at 1017 W. University Ave. will have St. Patricks Day drink specials like $3 green beer, $6 Irish car bombs and $8 Jameson car bombs.

This will be my fourth St. Patricks Day spent at Mothers, said Wagner Braga, a 22-year-old UF industrial and systems engineering senior. I dont know whats better, the green beer or the teriyaki wings.

The Swamp Restaurant

The Swamp Restaurant, located at 1642 W. University Ave., is hosting a two-day event to celebrate St. Patricks Day.

On Thursday, customers could purchase the $10 Swampatricks Day package, which included all-you-can-drink beer from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., a Swampatricks Day T-shirt, which is good for skipping the line and free cover Friday night, as well as a coin for buy-one-get-one-free green beer at the main event.

The main event celebration will begin at 11 a.m. today. Happy hour specials are from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Additionally, Free Beer Friday will be in full effect from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

FIX Nightclub by The Dynasty Group

The Dynasty Group, located at 109 S. Main St., invites guests to celebrate the biggest party night of the year, according to their website, at the FIX Nightclub from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. tonight. Everyone drinks free from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. with $2 green shots and green beer all night.

DJs Big T and Klarc Shepard will be playing contemporary music, as well as traditional Irish music, for the duration of the celebration.

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Tickets for the event can be purchased online. General admission is free before 10:30 p.m. and $10 for all-night general admission.
Oftentimes, where I work is just as important as what I am working on. I could be writing a paper on an interest of mine, but if I am in the backseat of a car racing down Interstate 95, then it doesnt matter how much I enjoy the subject, I wont be writing my best material. We are creatures easily influenced by our environment, more so than we like to think.

For instance, seasonal affective disorder (with the appropriate acronym SAD) is most common in the cold months of winter, largely due to the lack of natural sunlight and overall stress of the temperature. There are other possible explanations of being down in the December dumps, but the main idea is that the physical environment can (and does) play a significant role in our mood. Weather might have the most obvious connection, but it is not the only environmental factor influencing our psyche.

Originally from dreary England, Alex Turner, musician and songwriter, moved to Brooklyn, New York, several years ago, and in an interview with The New York Times, discussed the surprising effects it had on his writing.

Someone put it to me that New York is a good place to write, because of the grid, Turner said. Its pretty organized, you kind of know where you are on the map, more so than some other places. Thats an interesting idea, I thought  you know where you are, and that centers you.

Looking at a transit map of New York City is an oddly satisfying experience. The land masses might be oddly shaped, but the roads align perfectly, laying over the land like a symmetrical blanket. Its as if someone gently laid a huge piece of graph paper over the city, and the roads and neighborhoods were carefully planned to strictly adhere to the lines, creating only perfect right angles at every intersection.

The result of living in such a place is that there is no confusion in figuring out where you are. Your physical location is mostly numbers, just a dot on a massive grid. But what does this have to do with writing?

When writing in such a location, you do not have to spend time thinking or worrying about location; the city keeps you in place and locks you into your little block. You are certainly not trapped. Your mind kind of just accepts it, and you soon realize just how small and insignificant you are.

Writers are often preoccupied with the concept of personal identity, knowing their true self and expressing that. Knowing where they are checks off one of the boxes and allows them to delve deeper into the other facets of identity. A city like New York is incessantly beaming with energy, packed with millions of determined doers. The city is both worldly and an isolated bubble of its own, and I believe it thrives as a city of creativity because artists can go there and settle into the grid, among the masses, and truly focus on themselves.

There is a book by Eric Weiner called The Geography of Genius, which discusses the relationship between creativity and the physical environment. One major point discussed was how nearly all the greatest minds and centers of creativity in history have been found in bustling cities  not even the prettiest ones at that. Nothing against places like Bora Bora and Honolulu, but the book argues that living in a large, not-exactly comfortable city such as New York is the prime environment for working creatively. The city life presents challenges, fosters creativity, rewards innovation and writers reap the benefits of intense competition in every aspect of life.

Some of the books ideas might seem like reaches, but I think the idea is both fascinating and has some truth to it. It is often said that humans are creatures of habit, but as it turns out, habitat can significantly affect our work as well.

Andrew Hall is a UF management junior. His column appears on Fridays.

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Ah, St. Patricks Day. The day when most Americans will proudly thump their chests, claim distant Irish heritage (yes, we get it Karen, your great-great-great-great grand-mother was Irish) and raise a pint to the air, singing what they think sounds like an Irish folk song. There may be shamrocks and green glitter involved. If youre trapped in lecture and counting down the hours to your own St. Pattys Day celebration, take a moment to prepare your toasts for tonight and go over this weeks...

Darts & Laurels

Roughly a year ago, the Natural Environment Research Council in Britain held an online poll to name their brand-new $287 million dollar polar research ship. And of course, as the internet community is prone to doing, serious names were ignored, and the name Boaty McBoatface surged to popularity. The British government decided to go ahead and just name the boat after a respectable scientist (David Attenborough) instead. But the people cried out in protest and thus the remotely operated submarine that the boat would carry was dubbed Boaty McBoatface. Boaty McBoatface is set to depart today from Chile to the Southern Ocean, where it will explore the icy waters of the Antarctic. Though its not a boat and it doesnt have a face, were bestowing a laurel upon Boaty McBoatface, for reminding us about the excitement of oceanic research, scientific innovation, and giving us a little chuckle as we round up the week.

Now about something that doesnt appreciate scientific research and innovation  or enrichment in the arts and humanities. Thats right, President Donald Trumps proposed budget. Now there is a lot going on in a budget. Were not going to sit back and analyze each component of the proposed budget right now (ask us again next week probably). But we will say this is the first budget proposal in recent history that contains a total, 100-percent cut to public funding for arts programs. Since arts programs only take up .02 percent (not 2 percent, not even 0.2 percent  literally two hundredths of a single percent) of federal funding, eliminating them is not going to fix the national debt. There are 19 other government agencies that could potentially face big cuts, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior and NASA. The fact that a lot of those are programs centered around learning, knowledge, innovation, the environment and future generations is concerning to us. Were throwing a dart through those particular cuts in the budget  for now. Keep in mind, the budget still needs to be approved and its already inciting outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike. So were throwing the members of Congress, who are fighting for the interests of their constituents and not their party, a laurel.

Were not going to finagle our way into a fourth dart. Instead we just want to remind everyone that whatever your St. Patricks Day plans are, please be responsible. While its okay to have a little fun and blow off that mid-semester steam (just remember where you are and how you got there), you should not put your life or the lives of others in danger. Recruit a sober friend to drive. Take the bus. Call an Uber. Remember that and take this laurel to your weekend plans  be they celebrating your distant Irish heritage or hunkering down in the library for the post-break midterms.
Looking for means to continue spreading havoc across the Middle East and maintain a grip on its dwindling influence across the region, new alarming reports indicate Iran is now digging dangerously deep to establish a long-term strategic foothold in Lebanon.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) general has recently informed a Kuwaiti newspaper of the launching of rocket and missile factories for the Lebanese Hizballah. To further raise eyebrows, these factories are reported to be over 50 meters underground, protected by layers of armored concrete in the face any possible Israeli airstrike.

The al-Jarida daily ran a report on Monday quoting an IRGC deputy explaining how Iran in recent months has placed the final touches on manufacturing sites making Hizballah capable of manufacturing missiles, rockets, and firearms. Mohammad Ali Jafari is the chief commander of the IRGC and yet the al-Jarida report did not specify which of his deputies exactly made the comments.

Just recently, Iranian Defense Ministher Hossein Dehghan, himself a former IRGC brigadier general, boasted of Hizballah currently establishing itself as an entity capable of producing missiles and rockets with a variety of ranges, including over 500 kilometers, and able to target any and all parts of Israel. Dehghans comments did not go as far as to provide any specific details on Hizballahs new capabilities.

Reports indicate these new missiles include surface-to-surface, land-based anti-ship missiles that maybe replicas of Chinas C-802s, and torpedoes fired from light high-speed craft.

However, there are speculations about how the Lebanese Hizballah is actually obtaining necessary materials, and going forward with the production of components described as sophisticated, and yet very necessary for the output of advanced weaponry. The truth is Iran itself is facing difficulties in ballistic and anti-ship missiles.

The factories have reportedly been active for the past three months, with IRGC advisers and Lebanese experts trained in Tehrans Imam Hossein University stationed amongst its staff. The Imam Hossein University is used as a key training institution to prepare IRGC personnel for its most sensitive missions, including Irans nuclear program, ballistic missile drive, and exporting terrorism abroad. Reports indicate hundreds of IRGC personnel and foreign elements have received training at the facility, especially on how to master techniques of rocket and missile manufacturing.

These clandestine sites are said to be constructed deep underground, as Hizballah continues to fear potential airstrikes. The multiple layers of defensive measures also reveal the distance Iran will go and the budget it is willing to allocate in its disastrous support for terrorism. No single facility in this network spread across Lebanon produces complete rockets or missiles. In fact, each site is designed for separate aspects of the ordinance needed which are then sent to a specific assembling facility to finalize the effort.

This new initiative to establish indigenous rocket/missile factories came after Israeli attacks against a weapons factory based in Sudan and various supply routes from Syria used by Iranian elements to transfer Iran-made rockets to Hizballah.

According to Long War Journal, the Revolutionary Guard began building the factories in Lebanon after Israel destroyed an Iranian weapons factory in Sudan years ago which provided arms to Hezbollah  likely referring to an Oct. 2012 air strike attributed to the Israelis on the Yarmouk weapons factory in Khartoum  and targeted weapons shipments to Hezbollah from Syria.

The new underground facilities signal a significant advance in the capability enjoyed by Hizballah to obtain more sophisticated rockets/missiles and increase its dangerous stockpile like never before. The report indicate Hizballah has been test-firing these rockets/missiles and using such weapons in large numbers in its Syria campaign. The production of armor-piercing rounds and anti-tank missiles are amongst the most sensitive concerns.

This trend has been an ongoing process for over a decade. Hizballahs deputy chief Naim Qasem in late 2014 claimed the group had already acquired the capability to produce some of the components of rockets used in the 2006 war. Months later, Irans export of missile production technology was confirmed by IRGC Air Force chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Hizballah, Irans proxy in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, were the recipients of this technology. The latest developments add to the signs of Irans widespread effort of making its proxies capable of practicing autonomous and domestic fighting tactics.

This new development underscores the dangerous nature and depth of Irans involvement in Syria, Lebanon and across the region. This further proves the correctness of CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votels recent remarks at a Senate hearing describing how Iran poses the great long-term threat to stability for this part of the world.

Considering the fact that Iran also uses Syria as a ground link to provide arms and other logistics for Hizballah, there is a need to fully implement measures stated by Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., on bring an end to Syria being a safe haven for terrorists and the necessity we get Iran and their proxies out.

Alarming is also the fact how the nuclear deal sealed between six world powers and Iran has provided a windfall of billions of dollars for Tehran, money that should be used to benefit the Iranian peoples interests.

These latest reports of Iran launching underground rocket/missile factories for Hizballah in Lebanon highlight how Iran has taken advantage of a weak international position to this day to spread its support for terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, and how urgent measures are needed to bring an end to such lethal meddling across the Middle East. The first necessary step in this path is to designate Irans IRGC according to its true identity: a foreign terrorist organization.

Heshmat Alavi is a political and rights activist. His writing focuses on Iran, ranging from human rights violations, social crackdown, the regimes support for terrorism and meddling in foreign countries, and the controversial nuclear program.

He tweets at @HeshmatAlavi & blogs at IranCommentary
As frustration mounts over North Korea's expanding nuclear arsenal, the despotic regime's latest series of provocations may have placed its demented leader Kim-Jong-un squarely in the crosshairs of Allied retaliation.

Concerns over the North Korean dictator began to percolate in February, when, in a scene lifted out of a James Bond movie, he had his half-brother Kim Jong-nam assassinated in public view at Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur Airport by two women who rubbed his unsuspecting face with a highly toxic VX nerve agent.

While it's still unclear what transgression his cross-bred relation committed to spark the ordered hit, the bar for indiscriminate killing has been set pretty low ever since Kim Jong-un assumed hereditary control of the Hermit Kingdom in 2011.

To that end, North Korea's supreme leader has ordered the termination of scores of government officials for committing such damaging state crimes as dining illegally, insufficient funeral grieving, and detrimental "alternative dreaming." While on the surface those types of misdeeds might be considered by any sentient being as nonsensical, the punishments exacted are quite serious  a litany of gruesome executions carried out by anti-aircraft guns, mortars, and flamethrowers.

Still, before international outrage could fully play out on the Malaysian gangland slaying, the North Korean despot quickly diverted attention by launching four intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward Japan, three of which landed several hundred miles from the Japanese shoreline.

The rocket salvo served as the latest indicator of North Korea's growing missile delivery capability, moving the pariah nation one step closer to achieving its articulated goal of fielding long-range nuclear missiles capable of striking the American mainland.

Kim's provoking actions evinced a clear level of frustration from American officials, irritation best encapsulated by U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who exclaimed, in an understatement for the ages, "This is not a rational person."

To be fair, given the obsessively secretive nature of North Korea, assigning an accurate psychological assessment of its supreme leader's mental stability is like gleaning clues of rational soundness from the entrails of a butchered animal. Nevertheless, it stands to reason that if even a slim percentage of the crazy rumors circulating about the brutally oafish Kim are true, his is an apple not far removed from the genocidal Kim family tree, which has been rooted firmly in North Korean soil since 1948.

At that time, Kim Il-sung's ascension to power came with his establishment of Juche, North Korea's official religion, a denomination that required all North Koreans to worship him as a god. Deity status was handed down to his son, Kim Jong-il, and eventually his now homicidal grandson, Kim Jong-un.

Maintaining the Kim family's cult of personality has required a pliant, brainwashed citizenry, indoctrination that begins with impressionable school-age minds taught the godlike features of the ruling Kim, lessons centered on his supernatural abilities, such as an ability to control the weather or his not needing ever to urinate or defecate. From there, the propaganda machine continues through adulthood via a tightly controlled government media narrative that ensures that televisions and radios receive only government programing, coupled with forbidden access to the internet or other international information sources.

Despite a mind-controlling system that would make any American public school official drool with delight, a stick is still needed to keep in line any free-thinking person who chafes at swallowing the whole propaganda pie. As such, the Kim family has created a network of slave-labor camps, home to more than 200,000 North Koreans, one third of whom are believed to be children, in which their inhabitants are subjected to starvation, torture, and rape. Moreover, no prisoners are ever released from the death camp system, which often hold up to three generations of North Koreans, many of whom have been born into permanent captivity.

While the overall effect has been to turn North Korea into a Hobbesian nightmare, the totalitarian regime isn't content to enjoy its gulags and genocidal abuses. Rather, it exports that misery to the rest of the world through nuclear force.

Like the Little Engine that Could chugging up the hill with dogged determination, North Korea has been on the trek to nuclear statehood for over thirty years. Admittedly, its initial efforts produced a lot of guffaws, its weapons tests reminiscent of the early American space program. Failures included rockets drifting far off course and others never making it off the launch pad.

Unfortunately, those halcyon days are now a distant memory, as the communist state has produced some threatening results. Since 2006, it has conducted six atomic tests, the last of which in 2016 had an explosive force two times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Its nuclear arsenal is now believed to contain 20 similar nuclear bombs, along with enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to make dozens more.

Adding fuel to the nuclear fire, North Korea is believed to have produced a small compact nuclear bomb capable of fitting into the nose cones of its ballistic missiles, which is particularly worrisome, given that the rogue state can reportedly already target South Korea and Japan with its medium-range ballistic missiles.

With its short game in shape, the North Koreans have now taken out the driver and are focused on shoring up a long-range nuclear arsenal, with reports that the nation is within a year of conducting intercontinental ballistic missile tests and a few years removed from achieving full long-range missile capability.

Not surprisingly, all of this has prompted restrained panic among the United States and its Japanese and South Korean allies over how to slow down North Korea's expanding armory and keep it from being used by the mentally unhinged Kim Jong-un.

An immediate first step has been to speed up the deployment to South Korea of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) in an attempt to stave off nuclear immolation for the ROK and the thirty thousand American troops stationed there. Yet the defensive missile system is not scheduled to be fully operational until the end of 2017, making it uncertain to have an effect if the unpredictable Kim employs nukes before THAAD's installation is complete. Until that point, some suggest plying the well worn route of imposed trade sanctions and restrictions, joined with very sternly worded diplomatic statements of condemnation, as the most reasonable path, despite decades of similar such actions having failed to whet the insatiable North Korean hunger for nuclear weapons.

A third avenue of recourse may be an appeal to North Korea's longtime ally China to rein in the unbalanced Kim, but time has proven China unsuited to the task, whether through simple disinterest or the realization that, like an indulgent parent, it can no longer control its unruly child.

Surrounded by these unlikely solutions, the Trump administration, which has announced that all options remain on the table, may be considering a more dramatic choice, which is to just simply get rid of Kim Jong-un permanently.

Speculation on this front arose during the recent joint military exercises held between the U.S. and South Korea. According to South Korean news reports, participants in the air, land, and sea drills included Navy SEAL Team 6, these a first-time addition whose inclusion was reported to "simulate a 'decapitation attack' on North Korea's leadership."

Whether this was a metaphorical or literal description, the Pentagon wasted little time in tamping down speculation that it would lop off Kim's head by stressing that "the U.S. military 'does not train for decapitation missions' of any kind."

Aside from American military prohibitions, Kim's sudden removal from the scene by beheading or even a spoiled serving of kimchi may produce only unintended consequences, as was the case with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, whose death created a broken state filled with warring militant Islamist factions awash in high-grade weaponry, including chemical weapons.

While such an outcome in North Korea would certainly raise troubling issues, it's equally certain that a final viable solution to the nuclear-induced madness of Kim Jong-un needs to be addressed before the ticking Doomsday Clock strikes zero.

Frank Crimi is the author of Divine Roosters & Angry Clowns. He can be reached at frankcrimi@politicallyunbalanced.com.
Are moral issues still relevant for education?

Our teenagers (and younger) are being pounded with a life ethic totally at odds with Judeo-Christian morality. The Ten Commandments are being eroded. In fact, they cannot even be displayed in schools without disclaimers about the secular or educational purpose of the display, whereas lengthy passages from the Qu'ran, the Bhagvad Gita, Hammurabis Code, and the Zend Avesta can be posted with impunity on school bulletin boards. The traditional family is increasingly perceived as merely an obstacle to the self-determinism of the LGBTQ community. Private enterprise and free markets are increasingly portrayed as neither private nor free, but as networks of exploitation based on sexism and racism as white, heterosexual, chauvinistic males seek to justify their power over the exploited majority that is outside their powerful cabal. Cultural Marxism is no longer a hypothetical advanced in college classrooms, but a reality fighting for control over our minds and institutions. These developments define the context in which sex is taught in too many of our educational institutions.

In a high school where this writer taught, many classes ran the gamut from unruly to almost riotous. Hundreds of at risk students wanted to do almost anything except learn. Curses often filled the air. Desks would be overturned in impulsive expressions of rage. And, yes, blood would be spilled during classes as verbal quarrels broke into physical conflict. Yet, sometimes one would pass a classroom that was totally quiet and attentive. This would be the case during films discussing the Sacred Subject -- human sexuality and reproduction.

Are you surprised? Amused? Although modern society has been told ad nauseum that teens are sexually active, teenage vulnerability in this area and longing for understanding and direction has not been given sufficient attention. What has sex education done for society? STDs are at a ten-year high, and young people age 16-24 are disproportionally affected. Teenage birth rates have shown a recent decline, but 50 years ago, only 15% of teenage moms were unmarried, whereas now the percentage is 89%. Teenage pregnancies (ages 15-19) have been on the decline, but abortions, while down since the 1980s, were still around 30% of all pregnancies in 2010. Pornography sites on the Internet have millions of hits, and the destructive impact of this obsession is catalogued beautifully in Ben Shapiros book, Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future.

In one textbook used in high school sex education classes, the student-reader is exhorted to be tolerant of those other students (presumably an outdated minority) who still believe that one should wait until marriage to have sex. We have to be tolerant of other, minority points of view. Further, all students were told to expunge the idea that the size of the male sex organ was important for sexual satisfaction. This certainly is a fact that every adolescent needs to be informed about!

Kids will be kids and glands will be glands is the prevailing philosophy.

Debunking of traditional Judeo-Christian morality and family values is politically correct. Those values have been replaced by post-Freudian views of freedom from guilt and repression. The youth, along with everyone else, must be freed, and not restrained. Self-control is no longer a desideratum as a trait of good character, although it is still valued regarding our food choices. Instead of self-control, the bogey man of repression is to be avoided. Otherwise, it is [falsely] believed, neurosis and depression will overtake the individual, male or female. If someone is horny can mental disease be far behind? This is the pro-Freudian assumption that motivates todays secular humanist educators.

Sex has been reduced to protection from disease, the structure of the reproductive/pleasure-giving organs, and in short, how to get the most pleasure with the least pain (to oneself and others). Many high schools have offices for the distribution of condoms, and offer referrals to clinics by in-house personnel for everything from birth control pills to abortions.

Reflecting wider social trends, sexuality has become increasingly divorced from family life, and the commitment that uniquely belongs to marriage and fidelity. Love, sex, and marriage are no longer mainstream for so many of our societys secondary school institutions. Too often, any attempt to restore the connection between family, love, commitment, and sex is deemed to be an attempt to induce neurotic guilt into the hot bodies and minds of our youth.

Purity and innocence, even among the young, is deemed laughable by many. One former colleague of mine who has a Ph.D. in microbiology came into my office to complain about the use of the word sinful (as in sick and sinful society) that I had used in an article. Nothing is sinful, he affirmed. What about the rape and murder of a four-year-old? I asked. Well, its a crime, he said, but its not sinful. What about sexual relations with animals? I in turn asked. He looked at me with a glance of condescending merriment and said, Well, different strokes for different folks.

Do the views of my colleague represent the views of a majority of Americans or even citizens of New York City? Whether they do or not, it seems clear that an educational institution should be upholding a higher moral standard than society. There is a unique, almost categorical, imperative that the youth be encouraged to succeed even in areas where others, we adults, may have failed. Are todays secular-minded educators even aware that Holy Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, is filled with warnings about lascivious and immoral behavior. Are they aware of the many teachings in the Book of Proverbs warning young men of the moral as well as physical dangers of seductions? Do they not know that in the New Testament Paul told those experiencing their passions and lusts that it is better to marry than burn?

One sex education teacher was explaining to us proudly in the cafeteria her sense of purpose and fulfillment from teaching students how to put on a condom using a demonstration, in class, of unrolling the condom onto a banana or cucumber. To her, this was the sine qua non of bringing todays teens a realistic and health-oriented education. Her values were expressive of the new post-moral morality. Traditional morality for her was antiquated, out of date. It was not true morality, but only a mindset to be rejected in favor of updated, scientific, and people sensitive values.

However, there are some steps that can be taken to restore right thinking and right behavior.

1. Schools should gather information about the negative effects of Internet pornography, and distribute that information to the students on a regular basis.

2. Schools should regularly celebrate Mothers Day and Fathers Day in May and June of each year, with speakers and assemblies glorifying the value and virtues of family life.

3. Schools should gather information about abstinence-based curricula which emphasize love, commitment, and family as the context for fulfilling sexuality.

What parent would say to his or her child if it feels good, do it [as long as you protect yourself from possible disease]? A principle that emphasizes feeling rather than reason is automatically defective  just consider the history of philosophy to understand this. Further, how does such a principle build and sustain virtue, essential for the sociability of the human race and of our relationship with the Almighty? Therefore, educators can do no less than advocate the upholding of God-given moral law.
I read with increasing alarm what appears to be a coordinated smear campaign by former members of the Obama administration and their ivory tower proxies, taking aim in the now-partisan press (including the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR) to undermine the reputation of strategic theorist Dr. Sebastian Gorka. Gorka has risen to prominence over this very same period after his appointment to serve as deputy assistant to President Donald Trump.

Without a drop of evidence, these critics have unfairly ridiculed Gorkas fine scholarship and academic background, ignoring his many contributions to the literature of warfare over many years. In so doing, these liberal policymakers and ivory-tower academics in international relations and strategic studies show they remain unfamiliar with  and consequently unappreciative of  the great work their counterparts at Americas military academies. In fact, they appear all too-quick to dismiss Americas military scholars whose dedication and service to Americas warfighters should instead be respected and appreciated.

This is very much the case in the recent assault upon the reputation of Dr. Gorka. Gorkas work deserves to be read, not attacked without merit. The attacks we see seem to be the work of a small group of Obama partisans indifferent to the carnage caused on their own watch, based on their failed leadership and strategy. They are likely still in shock at now being exiled from the swamp, but their own records speak to their responsibility for the rise of ISIS, and the spread of jihadist violence across the Middle East, North Africa and into the heart of Europe. Now, they have launched a coordinated hit job against Gorka within weeks of his joining the administration.

Consider perhaps the most egregious example, by Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin in the Feb. 24 edition of the New York Times. Their hit-piece was shamefully mistitled, The Islamophobic Huckster in the White House. Simon, a former NSC-staffer now at Amherst College, and Benjamin, the State Departments former counterterrorism coordinator now at Dartmouth, were both Obama administration officials and thus complicit in the orgy of violence unleashed by Obamas counterterrorism policies.

Nearly as offensive was Daniel W. Drezners Washington Post hit-piece, Survival Tips for Sebastian Gorka, PhD, which came to press three days later, which stooped so low as to malign Dr. Gorkas doctoral thesis, which I myself have found to be a fascinating, thoughtful, and original work. I know originality of thought, especially conservative thought, is seldom welcome within the liberal-biased academy, so one must fear for any students of Drezner who dare to think outside the box, or more aptly, outside the bubble. But dont take my word for it, you can read Dr. Gorkas fascinating dissertation here.

Fortunately, the conservative press has fought back valiantly, with rapid-fire defenses of Gorkas intellect and integrity following up swiftly after the attacks. Bill Gertz counter-attacked with Sebastian Gorka, Trumps counterterrorism adviser, glad to take media flak in the Washington Times on Feb. 27 (also appearing under the equally engaging title, For White House Counterterror Adviser, Media Attacks Are Latest Theater of Battle in the Washington Free Beacon). On the same day, Jordan Schachtel presented Meet the medias latest target for political destruction in Trumps White House: Dr. Sebastian Gorka in Conservative Review, as Colin Dueck brought forth The Washington Post Smeared Sebastian Gorka in National Review. On the next day, Michael Rubin mopped up with The Bizarre Campaign against Trump Aide Seb Gorka in the Washington Examiner.

The swift responses have gone far to reduce the damage hoped for by Gorkas character assassins. As Dueck put it: Gorkas critics, including those at the Post, appear to have developed selective amnesia about the counterterror record of the recently departed Obama administration They were equally amnesic about Gorkas writings, including his 2016 book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, in which he explained: We are not at war with Islam. The people most imminently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

While Gorka has been dishonestly lambasted as an ill-informed Islamophobe, his book has earned high praise on Goodreads, with a laudable 4.36 average rating from an impressive total of 339 readers and 42 reviews. If only my books found their way to this many readers!

While I have never personally met Dr. Gorka, I first came across his work in 2010 after publishing an article in volume 58 of Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), Clan, the State, and War (pp 20-21), which sought to update the classic three images in neo-realist IR theory by adding a fourth tribal image for our new, complex, granular world of asymmetrical warfare. Twelve pages past my piece, I found an even more interesting article that sought to update Clausewitzs Trinity of War for this very same asymmetric world  and this was Gorkas The Age of Irregular Warfare  So What?

So impressed was I by Gorkas effort to modernize Clausewitz for our asymmetric world, that I would include a lengthy discussion of his ideas in my 2012 Continuum volume, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World (thoughtfully reviewed here on LSEs blog), dedicating a full ten pages in my fourth chapter to Gorkas innovative and thoughtful update of Clausewitzs Trinity of War for our age of terror which he presented in JFQ as well as his jointly-authored Getting the Next War Right: Beyond Population-centric Warfare, which he co-wrote with Thomas A. Marks and Robert Sharp in Volume 1, Issue 3 of PRISM.

As Gorka describes in his enduring JFQ article:

Todays irregular enemy should be understood in a more egalitarian fashion  the trinity of the irregular enemy affords and invites an interchangeability of roles and functions. Leaders can be fighters, followers can become leaders, and both can interpret and feed into the enemys understanding of why force is necessary and what ultimate purpose it serves. In other words, the components of the Clausewitzian Trinity have become utterly fluid and interchangeable.

But in todays irregular context, Gorka argues, we can replace the rationale of the trinity with the transcendental end that the true believers see themselves as serving. Even when confronted by such an opponent, Gorka finds that:

Clausewitz is still valuable  If we have the audacity to update the Prussian masters trinity, we should perhaps renew our faith in his famous dictum, even while recognizing how much we have misinterpreted it as of late. War may in fact serve politics as its extension in the Westphalian way of doing business, but we should also understand that war is politics, and politics is war. For too many years, it is the violencethe kinetic effectthat has been our focus. Today, we face a foe who knows that war starts with ideas and depends on them, far more than it depends on weapons.

The Trinity of War Expanded. Source: Sebastian L.v. Gorka, The Age of Irregular Warfare  So What? JFQ 58 (July 2010), 36.

Barry Scott Zellen writes about war, strategy, and state-tribe relations on the periphery of the Westphalian world. More about his writings can be found at www.barryzellen.com.
Recently, I was sent this piece about Robert David Steele who was a former Marine Corps infantry officer and then a spy for the CIA. At his own site, he claims to be "the Chief Enabling Officer CeO [sic] of Earth Intelligence Network, devoted to teaching holistic analytics, true cost economics and open source everything engineering." Thus, "his ideas would enable the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals -- first within the USA and then globally [.]"

This is code for doing away with capitalism. After all, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. She stated that "[t]his is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution."

Here is a sampling of the Declaration of the Sustainable Development mandate

We envisage a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination; of respect for race, ethnicity and cultural diversity; and of equal opportunity permitting the full realization of human potential and contributing to shared prosperity.

Isn't this already the foundation of American ideas and ideals?

To do this, Steele "proposed to Donald Trump that he close all 1,000 US military bases overseas and stop subsidizing military arms purchases by dictators and Israel."

And this is when my antennae start to stir.

Notice the connection between dictators and Israel -- Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, but Steele deliberately chooses to single it out. This is what the United Nations does on a regular basis and should be the first clue to Steele's anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic bent.

The Sustainable Agenda continues with the following:

We reaffirm the outcomes of all major UN conferences and summits which have laid a solid foundation for sustainable development and have helped to shape the new Agenda. These include the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; the World Summit on Sustainable Development [etc.]

Climate change is always part of this scenario; thus, "[c]limate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development."

Furthermore, Principle 9 of the Rio Declaration on Environment asserts that:

States should cooperate to strengthen endogenous capacity-building for

sustainable development by improving scientific understanding through exchanges of scientific and technological knowledge, and by enhancing the development, adaptation, diffusion and transfer of technologies, including new and innovative technologies.

But, of course, the astonishing and innovative Israeli inventions and their ongoing exchange of scientific and technological knowledge to Africa and Asia countries is simply overlooked.

But the truly worrisome part is Principle 12 which asserts that

States shall enact effective environmental legislation. Environmental standards, management objectives and priorities should reflect the environmental and developmental context to which they apply. Standards applied by some countries may be inappropriate and of unwarranted economic and social cost to other

countries, in particular developing countries.



Thus, the unelected members of the United Nations will now decide which countries -- read United States and Israel -- will surrender to the whims of developing countries. I call this theft by alleged compassion. It is, as Steele notes "the verge of new era." He wants to "stir the pot" so prosperity for the many [can triumph] over concentrated wealth for the few."

Folks, this is communism. This is redistribution of wealth. This is counter to the ideas of capitalism which affords anyone the opportunity to become wealthy instead of waiting for some faceless government bureaucracy to designate who will prosper.

Steele does not hide his animus for the West when he concurs with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergey Lavrov who claims that "a post-Western world order is emergent." And this is, because he asserts that

The Western way has emphasized war and waste as profit centers for the banks over peace and prosperity for all. The essence of my ideas is to restore intelligence and integrity so as to create a prosperous world at peace. There are three distinct domains that are convergent in part because of the Internet and in part because the 1% elite have over-played their hand and are now exposed -- the 99% are coming together against the Deep State that runs from the Rothschilds and the Vatican and Zion through the corrupt political parties in each country down to the secret intelligence services.

Furthermore, Steele maintains that the United States is "being blackmailed by NSA as well as CIA while also being bribed by the Zionists and the Saudis and of course every bank and corporation that wants to pay the standard 5% kickback for an earmarked contract funded by the US taxpayer."

Again the stench of anti-Semitism rears its ugly head.

Mixed in with the above troubling sentiments is the following which might ostensibly warm the heart of a conservative. Steele expresses his concern that there is a

. . . four-part campaign to destroy Donald Trump and drive him from office by 2018 at the latest. They include the 'conspiracy to censor pro-Trump websites' when 'both the mainstream media and the social media collaborate as agents of the Deep State to control the narrative.' Part II is centered on George Soros and the $50 million to $100 million that has been spent funding activist organizations that are now preparing to execute over 10,000 demonstrations across the USA beginning as soon as the weather is warm [.] The Governors, Mayors, university presidents, and chiefs of law enforcement are all complicit  they are part of the Deep State, part of the 'Establishment,' they want the violent 'American Spring' to drive Trump from office. Part III is centered on the Republican and Democratic Party leaders and wealthy activists who are doing everything possible to not only file lawsuits against Trump, but to establish grounds for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Part IV is the combination of the coming debt ceiling (in March) and the deliberate collapse of the American economy by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. We are living in a bubble economy propped up by various subterfuges. They will remove all the props and blame Donald Trump for 'mis-managing' the economy. This is intended to drive more people into the streets.

Lastly, Steele maintains that Trump should "surge his counterintelligence endeavor against those who are in an active state of treason and sedition including George Soros, Eric Schmidt, Loretta Lynch and  more discreetly but never-the-less actionably criminal  Barack Obama."

As Norwegian interviewer Jan H. Kalvik writes "While I do not endorse everything [Steele] says, I believe these hard words are a useful starting point for questioning many of our assumptions about our own national security policies."

When I was in college, it was always terribly disheartening that so many well-known authors harbored strong anti-Semitic and genuine racist attitudes. That these people could be such wordsmiths and not see the horror of their beliefs was shocking. Thus, it is very difficult to separate the conflicting ideas of Steele. I maintain a very strong and prudent suspicion of the man no matter that I might find nuggets of truth in some of his statements.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
There is growing pushback on Capitol Hill and even from the bench against the ruling by the 9th Circuit Court that prevented the president's travel ban executive orders from being implemented.

Some judges believe that the legal reasoning in the decision is weak and that the appeals court appeared to allow their personal feelings to affect their ruling.

Washington Times:

"As tempting as it is to use the judicial power to balance those competing interests as we see fit, we cannot let our personal inclinations get ahead of important, overarching principles about who gets to make decisions in our democracy," Judge Jay Bybee, of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in a dissent Wednesday. He said his colleagues erred in not agreeing to rehear Mr. Trump's defense of his original executive order. ... Late Wednesday, a federal judge in Hawaii said it wasn't good enough and that Mr. Trump's harsh rhetoric about Muslims during the presidential campaign has poisoned his efforts. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a nationwide temporary restraining order. "This is judicial activism at its worst," said Rep. Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Republican. Democrats countered that they were happy to see courts brave Mr. Trump and step in to stop him. "I'm grateful for the judiciary system," said Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan, California Democrat. "It's a checks-and-balance system that we have in this country that is meant to provide the oversight when you have a president who is doing whatever he wants to regardless of the law." Mr. Trump railed against the decision, calling it "unprecedented judicial overreach" and wondering whether it was made for political reasons. Conservative legal scholars said whatever the political motivations, the judges who have ruled against Mr. Trump botched the law. That assessment included a decision handed down early Thursday by a federal judge in Maryland, even though it only enjoined enforcement of the portion of the order restricting travel of foreign nationals from six countries. "In none of those decisions did the judges actually discuss the legality or constitutionality of the federal immigration statute at issue," said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. "This is an indication that the judges were looking at this as a policy question: Did they like or not like the policy?"

Both the president and Republicans in Congress are looking into splitting the 9th circuit  the nation's largest. It encompasses nine states and one fifth of the U.S. population. It is also, according to legal scholars, the most liberal circuit in the nation.

But that won't solve the president's immediate problem. Conservatives can fume all they want, but it seems clear now that only the Supreme Court can change the outcome.

That is, a Supreme Court that includes Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch.

The Gorsuch nomination is being held up by other, more pressing congressional business like Obamacare repeal and the budget. But perhaps the nomination should be fast-tracked by the president and the Senate. Gorsuch is a shoe-in for the court, with several Democrats saying they are likely to vote for him. Of course, senators on the Judiciary Committee are going to want their TV time during confirmation hearings. But once the committee recommends him, Majority Leader McConnell should immediately bring the nomination to the floor.

This process will take months, not weeks. Therein lies Trump's dilemma. Does he take a chance that he can peel off at least one justice to win the case? A 4-4 tie does him no good; it would simply allow the lower court ruling against him to stand. So unless the president has a reasonable expectation of support from at least one judge from the other side, he is likely to bide his time and continue the fight in the appeals courts.

The 9th Circuit judges refused to rule on the constitutionality of the travel ban and instead offered up a political opinion on a policy matter.

There is nothing more destructive of judicial review than judges playing politics with the law.
Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is making a strong case to become the poster child for Trump Derangement Syndrome. Long an exploiter of loony left memes, such as the contention that the CIA deliberately spread a crack epidemic in America's inner cities, Waters loves the attention and praise she garners from voicing the radical thoughts other crazy lefties shy away from.

She owes her national profile to her readiness to glorify the 1992 Rodney King rioters in Los Angeles as participating in a "rebellion," not a "riot," justifying the looting of many Korean-owned stores as "mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes[.] ... They are not crooks."

For Waters, President Trump represents an opportunity to capitalize on the anger and resentment the sore losers on the left are embracing. Her tweet yesterday may set some sort of record for incoherence:

Who knew that the Kremlin was involved in the KKK? Since when has the Klan embraced foreigners?

And what on Earth does Jared Kushner have to do with either the Kremlin or the Klan? I am under the impression that the Klan is not particularly happy to embrace orthodox Jews. For that matter, neither is the Kremlin.

But coherence has never been Mad Max's forte.

The mainstream media turn a blind eye to her excesses. Consider the virtually complete lack of criticism she is receiving for calling the Trump team "scumbags."

"It's clear to me, and I just think the American people had better understand what's going on," Waters said. "This is a bunch of scumbags. That's what they are."

When Indiana congressman Dan Burton used that term to describe Bill Clinton in a session with the editorial board of the Indianapolis Star, the media eagerly hounded him, pointing out the street meaning of the term as a used condom full of...seed...and digging into his personal life for scandal that eventually drove him from office.
MINOT  When a drug addict lands in the Ward County Jail, its not uncommon for loved ones to plead with corrections officers to keep them there.

Thats because jail may be the only place where the addict is going to detox, said Maj. Bob Barnard of the Ward County Sheriffs Office.

We have a lot of desperate people who are looking for somebody to help somebody that they care about and were just not adequately addressing it, Barnard said.

Law enforcement, health professionals and families of people in recovery discussed the rise of opioid abuse Thursday during a discussion hosted by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in Minot.

This is literally killing people in our communities, its killing people across the country. It is a public health crisis and a national epidemic, said Heitkamp, D-N.D.

Statewide, opioid-induced fatalities increased by 125 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The Minot region saw heroin and methamphetamine use increase 400 and 438 percent, respectively, in 2015, according to the Ward County Narcotics Task Force, and heroin seizures spiked more than 440 percent from 2014 to 2015.

Rob Brown of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who leads the task force, said many of those drug users started with addictions to pills such as oxycodone. The task force has opioid seizures of 300 to 1,000 pills at a time at least monthly and sometimes weekly, he said.

People know theres money to be made out here and theyre going to bring their product here to market, Brown said.

The emergency room at Minots Trinity Health has seen trauma cases skyrocket in recent years, which Dr. Jeffrey Sather attributes to the increase in drug abuse.

We see gunshots and stabbings almost on a weekly basis now here in Minot, said Sather, medical director of Trinitys Emergency Trauma Center. And usually, theyre drug deals gone bad or  theyre drug-related in some way.

Three local parents shared stories about challenges they faced getting help for their childrens addiction issues. Kim Hendrickson said her sons addiction began with a painkiller prescription after he was in a car crash his junior year of high school.

Her son, now 21, is now in recovery, but Hendrickson said she worries for people who dont have a family support system or financial means to pay for treatment.

My frustration is with the lack of resources, Hendrickson said.

Heitkamp said she is supporting the Budgeting for Opioid Addiction Treatment Act, known as the LifeBOAT Act, which would provide funding for substance abuse treatment. It would be funded by charging a 1 cent fee on every milligram of opioid ingredient in a prescription pain pill, estimated to generate more than $1 billion a year, Heitkamp said.

Participants in the discussion emphasized the need for community members and agencies to collaborate in the fight against opioid abuse.

If people feel like they have no hope, they will not be successful, Heitkamp said. But if they know the communitys behind them, they can be.
Forget about open borders and the gangs that flood in and engage in open warfare. Forget about the hateful rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and the White House visit that honored those cries of hatred. And pay no attention to the ACLU and Justice Department's halting of most stop-and-frisk action by the Chicago Police Department.

Nope, the reason Chicago is so violent issocial media!

Dave Workman reports for Conservative Firing Line:

When Zachary Fardon resigned as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, he apparently did not do it as "abruptly" as reported by the Chicago Tribune, because he took time to write a five-page analysis of the city's violence problem and he blames social media for driving it. "Today's gun violence is driven by social media," Fardon wrote in an open letter that was published by the Tribune online. "And a corollary of that is that gun violence has become like a virus. One taunt through Instagram leads to a shooting, which leads to bragging on snapchat or Facebook, which leads to a retaliation shooting, and then the cycle repeats. The virus spreads."

Is Chicago more exposed to social media than more peaceful cities (which would be pretty much every other city)? Even Fardon concedes:

 he intimated that legal problems for Chicago police had made them timid, and as a result, armed thugs are emboldened. "So by January 2016," Fardon wrote, "the city was on fire. We had no police superintendent. Cops were under scrutiny[.] ... So cops stopped making stops. And kids started shooting more  because they could, and because the rule of law, law enforcement, had been delegitimized. And that created an atmosphere of chaos."

And who was it that delegitimized law enforcement? Nobody in particular, I guess, especially not the ACLU and the last two A.G.s. No, the solution that Fardon offered would chill any First Amendment lover:

"The virus of gun play moves through social media," Fardon stated. "We can stop or stem that. Don't send in the National Guard, send in the tech geeks. If a gang member makes CPD's Strategic Subject List, find a way to curb or real-time monitor that gang member's social media accounts. If kids have convictions or overt gang affiliations, find a way to curb their social media. I recognize that First Amendment issues come into play, but let's test those limits. Lives are at stake."

When the real causes of Chicago's violence are taboo to mention  fatherlessness, the ideology of racial victimization, the failure of schools, the glamorization of violence and lawlessness in the culture, and all the other products of progressives' dominance of culture, bureaucracy, and the courts  the left looks to curb constitutional rights as a solution.

Hat tip: Cheryl Jacobs Lewin
U.S. relations with North Korea are about to enter a new phase, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a news conference in Seoul that the policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea is ending and that the U.S. is exploring "a new range of security and diplomatic measures" where "nothing [is] off the table"  including military force.

Tillerson made the remarks at the start of his first trip to Asia, which will include stops in South Korea, Japan, and China.

Reuters:

He said any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with "an appropriate response". "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson said when asked about military action. Tillerson also called on China to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea. China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security. "We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling," Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system. "We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat for everyone. So we hope China will alter its position on punishing South Korea." "We hope they will work with us to eliminate the reason THAAD is required." North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year. Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told the joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country.

The idea of "strategic patience" is shorthand for "do nothing and hope for the best." The sanctions leveled against North Korea have had zero effect on the nation's progress toward building a reliable nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles that are nuclear-capable. The question now becomes what other actions the U.S. can take to address the clear and present danger of the North Korean nuclear threat against South Korea and Japan.

Experts don't think the North has mastered the art of being able to marry a nuclear warhead with a ballistic missile. But how long will it be before they do? While China has proved reluctant in the past to punish its neighbor for their illegal activities, the Chinese government recently banned purchases of coal from North Korea for the rest of the year. This will have an impact on the already teetering North Korean economy. Despite that, the North has shown no softening of its position that it has the absolute right to build nuclear weapons. And to make matters worse, the nation has ratcheted up its bloodthirsty threats against the U.S. and the South, promising a nuclear war if it thinks it becomes necessary.

No doubt, North Korea will be the number-one topic of conversation between Tillerson and his counterparts in the Far East.

The latest bout of tension with North Korea comes at a time of political turmoil in South Korea. President Park Geun-hye was ousted last week after being impeached in a corruption scandal and an election for a new president will be on May 9. A liberal opposition politician, Moon Jae-in, who has raised questions about the THAAD deployment, is leading in the opinion polls. Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, said he expected a new government would "continue to be supportive" of the deployment, adding it was also intended to protect U.S. troops in South Korea. China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people. China has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula. "As a close neighbor of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing. Hua also said the THAAD would "upset the regional strategic balance". Its radar, with a range of more than 2,000 km (1,250 miles), meant it could cover a large part of China, far outside the scope of the threat South Korea faces, Hua said.

Tillerson is hopeful that a new South Korean government will continue the THAAD deployment, but in the face of Chinese pressure, the new South Korean government  to be elected in about two months  might easily give in. The deployment, as noted above, is a source of friction between the U.S. and China, and President Xi may be seeking some additional assurances from Tillerson when they meet next week.

How likely is war between the U.S. and North Korea? I think the end of the strategic patience policy is a signal to Kim Jong-un that the North's developing nuclear threat against U.S. allies in the region will not be allowed to materialize. The U.S. and Japan will not tolerate an operational North Korean nuclear ballistic missile system  not when any test of a North Korean missile might be misconstrued in Seoul and Tokyo as the real thing.

China also recognizes the destabilizing nature of the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile program. But can Secretary Tillerson convince the Chinese to exert their considerable influence on the North to prevent a war?
There is quite a lot to like about President Trump's first budget. Let me give a few examples:

1) Cutting $200 million from women, infants, and children (WIC) nutrition programs. I would cut the WIC program to zero until men, the unborn, and the grownups (MUGs) get identical financing. Last time I checked, they need to eat, too.

2) Cuts $200 million from the "International Food for Education" program. Good! You can't teach kids anything with a banana and a pomegranate.

3) Cuts $3.7 billion for teacher training. Aren't teachers supposed to be trained somewhere else, like in a school for teachers?

4) Cuts $900 million from the Office of Science. I would cut it all until they hand over a list of their latest inventions, and they had better include some nifty consumer electronics.

5) Cuts funding for the National Institutes of Health. I would cut it all unless and until the NIH produce a list of all the life-saving drugs they have created. (None.)

6) Eliminates funding for 49 "historic sites." I would go farther and legislate a process of de-historizing these sites and returning them to the private sector, so instead of having a past, they have a future.

7) Eliminating funding for resources to help seniors and youths find jobs. If old people and teenagers can't figure out how to write a resume and type in "jobs" in Google, they probably don't have employable skills.

8) Eliminate global warming programs. Good. But keep some money in reserve for global cooling, just in case.

9) Reduce spending on U.N. peacekeeping. I think every time we pay the U.N. $100, an African lady gets raped. We should eliminate all funding to U.N. peacekeeping forces unless U.N. peacekeepers are accompanied by an equal number of U.N. chastitykeepers.

10) Eliminate long-distance Amtrak subsidies. Those who want to take a train from Boston to Seattle can switch to horse caravans or sailing ships.

11) Big cuts to the EPA. Their phone lines should also be cut, and on a weekend, all the entrances to their offices should be welded shut. If they complain, tell them it is because an endangered cockroach is inhabiting their offices and can't be disturbed.

12) Eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, public radio. They already have tons of commercials in the form of "sponsors" and can survive on their own. I would actually redirect their subsidy money to create radio jamming to operate on their frequencies. They've had it so easy for so long that I think they need an added challenge.

Trump's budget is unprecedented. George W. Bush did not propose cutting a single agency. George H.W. Bush did not, either. You have to go all the way back to Ronald Reagan to find someone who proposed eliminating government agencies.

So for these bold moves, Trump should be praised.

But even if Congress approved all these cuts, they would have virtually no effect on the deficit. These cuts would cut about 76 billion dollars in spending. With Trump's planned increase of 54 billion dollars for the military, and a trillion dollars for "infrastructure," these cuts would be more than canceled out.

The big problem is that 60% of the budget, which is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, is left untouched. You cannot reduce the deficit, much less the debt, without reducing these programs. But President Trump has explicitly said he does not want to touch them.

The federal deficit for 2016 was 587 billion dollars.

The national debt is nearly 20 trillion dollars.

Unfunded obligations, future promises to pay things like Social Security and Medicare, are over 200 trillion dollars.

Trump has absolutely no plan to deal with this. If he keeps his promise not to touch Social Security or Medicare, there is no way he can deal with this. The country cannot grow its way out of a 200-trillion-dollar debt. Eventually, people will stop buying United States debt, and when that happens, the economy will collapse.

Until then, in the words of Mark Levin, all the government is doing is "reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic."

For proposing to eliminate these programs, President Trump should be lauded. But for failing to have a plan to deal with the deficit, he should be chided. If he were going to do something about this, the time would be now, when he has the most political capital, with his first budget. It will only get harder and harder to deal with over time, which suggests he probably won't address the deficit at all. Indeed, on the campaign trail, his themes were border security, repealing Obamacare, and protectionism. He never talked about the debt at all.

How sad for us.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.
Chelsea Clinton has written (or at least someone has written) a new book called She Persisted about great people in history who didn't give up  as long as they weren't men. You have to wonder what the inspiration for this book was (besides money).

Some thoughts:

1) Do you think Chelsea was moved by the story of Paula Jones? Ms. Jones accused Chelsea's dad, Bill Clinton, of sexually assaulting her. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton assaulted Jones's character, but she sued and settled for $850,000 from the Clintons. She persisted!

2) If Chelsea had written a biographical account of her father's sexual conquests, do you think instead of "She Persisted" it would have been entitled "She Resisted"? If she did write the book about President Clinton, do you think it would have been most appropriately done as a pop-up book for kids?

3) If Chelsea had written the book about her mother, do you think it might have been entitled "She Persisted (but not in Michigan, Ohio, or Wisconsin)"?

4) Do you think Chelsea will have read the book's contents before it is published?

5) Below is what is allegedly a photo of Chelsea as well as a photo of a young Princess Leia from Rogue One. Can you guess which photo is computer-generated (CGI)?

6) If you put the photo of Chelsea in front of a brick wall and come back two hours later, will the brick wall have two holes bored through it?

7) Can we ever expect Chelsea to write a book that will have men in it?

8) How many of the female "she persisted" stories do you think will feature Muslim women?

9) I noticed that Hillary Clinton is not featured in the book, which is about "13 women who changed the world." Do you think Mrs. Clinton could have been in the book if it had been about "13 women who almost changed the world"?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.
JAMESTOWN  Part of President Donald Trumps proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year released Thursday would eliminate the Essential Air Service program, which provides commercial passenger service to airports in Jamestown, Devils Lake and Dickinson.

Under Trumps proposed budget, eliminating the U.S. Department of Transportations Essential Air Service program would save $175 million. Essential Air Service provides federal subsidies to airlines that provide commercial passenger service to rural and small-community airports.

Currently Jamestown Regional Airport, Devils Lake Regional Airport and Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport all operate under Essential Air Service. According to information provided by Sen. Heidi Heitkamps office, the U.S. Department of Transportation through Essential Air Service invests $2.8 million annually in Jamestown Regional Airport, $4 million in the Devils Lake Regional Airport and $4.6 million in the Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport.

Sam Seafeldt, Jamestown Regional Airport director, said Thursday that he and Jim Boyd, Jamestown Regional Airport Authority chairman, were sending information to North Dakotas congressional delegation about how important Essential Air Service is to Jamestown and the state.

Before we discuss any short- or long-range impacts of this (eliminating Essential Air Service), he said, we want to see how much footing it (the idea) has, or how much hold it gets in the legislative session.

Seafeldt said it is fair to assume that if the Essential Air Service program is eliminated, commercial air service to Jamestown would be impacted.

It would be up to an airline to decide if it could make it work providing (commercial air) service to Jamestown, he said.

SkyWest Airlines receives $2.8 million annually from the Essential Air Service program to provide commercial passenger air service to Jamestown Regional Airport.

Heitkamp said in a prepared statement Thursday that she supports the Essential Air Service program and it helps keep rural economies vibrant and connected. She said Essential Air Service guarantees air travel in rural communities and helped Devils Lake Regional Airport set a new record for paid passenger boardings, 6,290, in 2016.

Jamestown Regional Airport also had a record-breaking number of paid passengers boardings in 2016 with 11,123.

In a prepared statement Thursday, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., supported keeping funding for the Essential Air Service program in the 2018 budget.

Essential Air Service is very important for rural areas, particularly for Jamestown, Devils Lake, and Dickinson, Hoeven said. We maintain funding for the program in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget. While the President has proposed eliminating EAS in Fiscal Year 2018, I believe well be able to sustain funding. Were looking to find savings and reductions, but Essential Air Service is a vital program for rural America.

Hoeven, Heitkamp and Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., have supported the Essential Air Service program and its use at state airports in the past. The state congressional delegation supported Jamestown and Devils Lake regional airports efforts in 2014 to have SkyWest Airlines provide commercial air service to both airports from Denver International Airport under the Essential Air Service program. The delegation supported the same request when the contract with the U.S. Department of Transportation was up for renewal in 2016.
Elected officials from Red River Valley cities and across North Dakota made their pitch for water project funding during a state legislative budget hearing Thursday.

Amid the waterfall of testimony was a presentation from Fargo City Commissioner Tony Grindberg, who advocated for continued state support of the massive flood diversion project in Fargo-Moorhead. The estimated $2.2 billion project is expected to receive about a fourth of its funding  $570 million  from the state of North Dakota.

Thursdays Senate Appropriations Committee hearing was on the State Water Commission budget, which includes almost $300 million for new projects in the coming two-year funding cycle. Fargo officials are seeking $66.5 million from the state in the 2017-19 biennium, and Grindberg said he was confident funding would come through.

Construction on the Fargo flood project has started, although it has attracted a lawsuit from a group representing upstream property owners. Last month, a federal judge agreed to bring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers back into the suit.

The Corps is committed to this project, Col. Sam Calkins of the corps told legislators Thursday. Were confident we can continue construction and that well eventually or ultimately prevail in that litigation.

Grand Forks water treatment

Like Grindberg, Grand Forks City Council member Ken Vein was optimistic Thursday that the remaining state funds for the citys new water treatment plant will be in place. That project has already started construction.

The state has provided $35 million in the last two funding cycles for the project, and last session lawmakers passed a bill stating their intent to provide the final $30 million in the 2017-19 biennium.

I feel very confident either way well get it, Vein said.

Vein, who is also chairman of the Garrison Diversion Conservancy District, presented lawmakers with plans for a pipeline from the Missouri River to supplement water supplies in central and eastern North Dakota, a project known as the Red River Water Supply Project. He asked for $30 million to keep it on track.

Conceptual design was completed last year, and preliminary design is now in progress, Vein said.

With continued growth and industrial development, the Red River Valley Water Supply Project will mitigate against drought conditions that could be devastating, foster economic development by meeting municipal, rural and industrial water demands and promote environmental sustainability, Vein said in prepared remarks.

The Senate Appropriations Committee didnt take any immediate action on the budget bill Thursday.
President Donald Trump reiterated his strong support for NATO on Friday and pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet NATO's military spending target, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.





The meeting between the leader of Europe's largest economy and the U.S. president was billed as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship.





"I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense," Trump said at a joint news conference with Merkel.





Merkel said she told Trump Germany needs to meet NATO spending goals. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan.





Earlier, the new U.S. president greeted the long-serving stateswoman at the White House with a handshake before they began talks in the Oval Office. Both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good. - More




A controversial resolution that would ask voters whether to allow state-owned casinos in North Dakota is headed for a vote in the state House with an unfavorable recommendation from a legislative committee.

The House Judiciary Committee gave House Concurrent Resolution 3033 a do not pass recommendation in a 13-2 vote Wednesday. The resolution, introduced by House Majority Leader Al Carlson, R-Fargo, would ask voters in next years primary election whether to amend the state Constitution with a provision allowing the Legislature to authorize up to six casinos in the state.

Casinos are currently allowed on tribal land in the state through federal law, and the resolution faced opposition from a tribal chairman and charity officials who rely on gaming revenue during a hearing Monday.

Carlson submitted amendments Wednesday that would have allowed for up to six privately owned casinos  the original proposal called for state-owned casinos  that couldnt be built within 40 miles of a Native American reservation. But that amendment failed, along with another one seeking to simplify the question put to voters.

The resolution that came out of the committee Wednesday says the casinos couldnt be built within 5 miles of a city with a population exceeding 5,000 or within 20 miles of a reservation.

Carlson said he expected the House to vote on the resolution Friday.

Rep. Andrew Maragos, R-Minot, warned the casino question would be put on the ballot through an initiated measure, preventing lawmakers from having a say on the rules. He said the Legislature should be proactive.

If they say yes, theres going to be a lot of decisions to be made, and they are best made by this body, Maragos said.

Others on the committee, however, said they havent heard a public clamoring for casinos.

Rep. Shannon Roers Jones, R-Fargo, worried about the timing of the proposal, given that some have suggested that it was introduced in retaliation for the disruptions caused by the Dakota Access Pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Carlson has denied its a retaliatory measure, and said it could boost rural areas.

Committee Chairman Rep. Kim Koppelman, R-West Fargo, said North Dakotans have taken a measured approach to gaming. The state Constitution currently allows charitable gaming and for North Dakota to enter a multi-state lottery.

I havent liked the expansion of gambling simply because I dont think its good for our society, Koppelman said before voting against the casino resolution.
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As a journalist Im often told that a trained monkey could do my job. While theres probably some truth to that claim, Im not all that concerned about a Planet of the Apes style takeover of my occupation. Trained monkeys dont worry me; trained robots do.

Or at least they did. For years Ive heard my vocation is on the list of jobs where robots are already replacing humans (along with shepherds, telemarketers, and bartenders). But is that really true? A working paper by James Bessen of Boston University School of Law argues that occupations that use computers grow faster, not slower and that computer automation is not a source of significant overall job losses.

Many occupations have been eliminated because demand for the occupational services declined (e.g., boardinghouse keepers) or because demand declined because of technological obsolescence (e.g., telegraph operators). But Bessen found that since 1950 there is only one occupation whose decline and disappearance can be largely attributed to automation: elevator operators.

Most automation of jobs is only partial, not complete. Bessen explains why that is a key difference:

This distinction between partial and complete automation might seem irrelevant when many or most of the tasks of an occupation have been automated. However, the economic difference between being mostly automated and being completely automated can be critical. Complete automation implies a net loss of jobs; partial automation does not. During the 19th century, 98% of the labor required to weave a yard of cloth was automated, however, the number of weaving jobs actually increased. Automation drove the price of cloth down, increasing the highly elastic demand, resulting in net job growth despite the labor saving technology. Similar demand responses are seen with computer automation. Consider, for example, the effect of the automated teller machine (ATM) on bank tellers. The ATM is sometimes taken as a paradigmatic case of technology substituting for workers; the ATM took over cash handling tasks. Yet the number of fulltime equivalent bank tellers has grown since ATMs were widely deployed during the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Figure 1). Indeed, since 2000, the number of fulltime equivalent bank tellers has increased 2.0% per annum, substantially faster than the entire labor force. Why didnt employment fall? Because the ATM allowed banks to operate branch offices at lower cost; this prompted them to open many more branches (their demand was elastic), offsetting the erstwhile loss in teller jobs.

Even partial automation can lead to jobs losses, of course. But as a whole, automation tends to merely shift the need for human labor from routine, low-skill tasks to more creative, high-skilled functions. Automation lead to fewer elevator operators but more elevator designers, engineers, and repairmen.

This shift ought to be lauded by Christians. While we should rightly be concerned about the employment prospects of low-skilled workers, we should not become nostalgic for the mind-numbing, back-breaking work that automation has made obsolete. Too often we treat jobs as if they were an inherent good (at least if they pay a living wage.) But not all jobs are created equal. Some jobs that may benefit our neighbors bank account may also be crushing their soul.

The rapid adoption of computerized automation has the potential to increase job satisfaction for entire occupations that have previously been dangerous, dirty, and demoralizing. In looking at the future of work, we therefore must look not only at the wages that a job will pay but also the price such work requires of our neighbors. We can let the robots take over the parts that a machine can do so that we may use our God-given human abilities for more ennobling tasks.
Trump apologists apologise for saying British spied on him for Obama

The good thing about post-truth is that you can never be right or wrong. You just get to accept dodgy dossier pushing Tony Blairs invitation to join the debate. The truth is out there. But getting to the truth, reaching that actual kernel of fact, involves hitting a moving target, like being a Michael Jackson impersonator or getting through to Apple customer support. And so having heard Donald Trump tell the world that Barack Obama wire-tapped his Trump Tower pad and White House spokesman Sean Spicer say the British spooks did it, we now get the other truth: it never happened. Maybe.

The BBC reports that Spicer will not repeat claims GCHQ spied on Trump. CNN adds that the White House apologized to the British government over its latest fiasco.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with Q, telling him / her/ it that Spicers comment was unintentional. He did not say it. It just was said.

Such are the facts.

Paul Sorene

Posted: 17th, March 2017 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Naples, March 13 - The Kurd-supporting mayor of the southern Italian town of Santomenna said Friday that he had been expelled from Turkey and had his council telephone taken from him.

"I was arrested last night at Istanbul airport and then expelled for surreal security reasons," Massimiliano Voza, one of a group of Italian mayors who have supported initiatives for the Kurdish people and given honorary citizenship to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. "I was interrogated and held all night without reason along with 15 other people from a variety of backgrounds.

"I was even denied the right to call the Italian consulate, which moved into action on its own thanks to a foreign ministry initiative.

"They searched me and confiscated my mayor sash and my council telephone". Voza is a heart surgeon by profession and he had worked as a volunteer in the Syrian city of Kobane after it was liberated from ISIS. The Comitato Napoli per Kobane association said that Voza had been arrested simply because he had a ticket for the Kurdish-majority southwestern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.


Syria: Israel uses anti-missile system Arrow-3 in first Military radio reports

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 17 - In clashes last night - considered the most serious since the start of the civil war in Syria - Israel used for the first time the Arrow-3 anti-missile defense system against a rocket launched by the Syrian anti-aircraft missiles after an Israeli air raid, military radio reports. The radio spoke about a ''dramatic night''. The system has been conceived and built to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles.



Citing anonymous Arab sources, the website Ynet reported that Israeli jets hit ''sophisticated fighting systems'' in Syria aimed at Lebanese Hezbollah militants. It added that it was allegedly a ''provision of a strategic nature''.



When the Israeli aircraft were returning to their base - continued the website - SA-5 were allegedly fired in their direction. The distance between those missiles and the jets was big enough for the airplanes not to be in danger, according to the report. But it was decided to use the Arrow-3 system anyway, Ynet reported, speaking about a ''dramatic night'' - to prevent one of the Syrian missiles from exploding on Israeli territory.



Fragments of the Israeli Arrow missile fell on Jordan territory.



Alarm sirens went off in the high Jordan valley. Echoes of strong explosions were also heard twice in Jerusalem, in spite of the great distance from the site of the incident. (ANSAmed).




ROME - One year since the EU-Turkey accord on migrants was forged, the agreement has transformed Greece into a ''laboratory'' of the failing policies of EU closure towards tens of thousands of migrants, Oxfam denounced today, together with the International Rescue Committee and Norwegian Refugee Council, in the report on ''The reality of the EU-Turkey accord''. The report cited 29,000 arrivals registered by the UNHCR since March 20, 2016, mostly of people coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. It stressed that the policies trampled on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, forcing them to survive in inhuman conditions, often in overcrowded centers in the Greek islands, like Chios, Lesvos and Samos. Many spent the winter in tents, exposed to cold temperatures and diseases, without medical assistance or psychological support.



Procedures to apply for asylum are moreover not very clear, made impossible by infinite obstacles, de facto denying the right to receive protection, the report denounced.



The organizations denounced how human rights and the right to seek international protection are thus at risk if EU countries will continue to fail to provide adequate responses.
Syria: Damascus, 'Israeli jet downed' At the border with Lebanon. Another was hit

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, MARCH 17 - The Syrian army chief of staff said they downed an Israeli military jet today and hit another one over the Bureij region near the border with Lebanon.



According to a statement of the army chief of staff in Damascus, at 2:40 am last night (1:40 Italian time) four Israeli military jets entered Syrian airspace from Lebanon. The jets, according to the statement, ''hit Syrian military positions east of Homs, towards Palmyra''.



Syrian anti-aircraft artillery reportedly opened fire, downing one of the jets, which ''fell on occupied territories'' of Israel, allegedly on the Golan Heights controlled by Israeli forces. A second place was ''hit'', according to the statement, which did not provide further details, while the other two reportedly left Syrian airspace unharmed.



Previously, Israeli military radio had reported a clash - considered the most serious since the start of the civil war in Syria - in which Israel had used for the first time the Arrow-3 anti-missile defense system against an anti-aircraft rocket launched by Syria following an Israeli air raid. The Israeli radio spoke about a ''dramatic night''. (ANSAmed).




NAPLES - Cruises worldwide are booming and 74 large cruise ships are being built globally and will be inaugurated over the next decade, with investments worth 50 billion dollars (46.5 billion euros) by the cruise companies.



But the geo-political situation worldwide remains difficult and concerns companies and operators in the sector, according to data released at the Seatrade Global event in Miami, the most important dedicated to the cruise sector worldwide, where Mediterranean destinations ranked first along the Caribbeans as the top choice for international tourists.



''There has never been in history such a massive construction order for ships by the cruise industry. This is a long-term investment effort for companies that stems from the brilliant future that we have ahead'', stressed Pierfrancesco Vago, the executive president of Msc crociere in statements to US media outlets. Investments are being made because the market is constantly expanding: in 2017, 25.3 million people went on a cruise, 800,000 more than in 2016, as reported by the Cruise Lines International Association. But growth will not stop, given that cruises are a niche market making up only 4% of the market of potential tourists worldwide. In the Mediterranean, the instability of destinations such as Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia that cruise companies abandoned over the terror risk continues to have an impact with companies still unable to know whether they will be able to return.



''Every morning I wake up and I don't find reassuring headlines on newspapers'', explained Frank Del Rio, a CEO at Norwegian.



And so at the Seatrade the promotion of Mediterranean destinations has been very strong. Italy was at the forefront with the ports of Naples and Salerno which presented themselves for the first time united after the reform of port authorities and want to recuperate passengers after a strong drop that will be registered this year. Investments in the Spanish port system have also been strong with the aim of reaching 9.5 million cruisers by 2020 and invest on classic destinations like Barcelona and Ibiza as well as new destinations like Bilbao and La Coruna. Yet Spain is also ready to connect with other countries, as explained by Raimond Jaume, from the Balearics port: ''We are launching an alliance project for cruises with Minorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Malta to ''build together an itinerary that is very well-liked by tourists''.



Among the problems examined, on the other side of the Atlantic, is the so-called 'Trump effect' that could stifle growth of some new destinations, like Cuba, which could suffer from restrictions on the trips of Americans. An effect that for the moment however brings benefits, as stressed by Del Rio, who noted that the stock market in the US touched record highs and there will be fiscal and structural reforms in the sector that will bring benefits.
(By Paul Virgo)

ROME - Trade unions representing Alitalia workers said Friday that they will stage a one-day strike on April 5 after a meeting with management on a plan to turn the struggling airline around. The plan features over 2,000 job losses among ground staff.



"We confirm the strike, it will be on April 5," said Claudio Tarlazzi of the UIL Trasporti union.



The plan also entails the hiring of up to 500 flight personnel - cabin crew and pilots - from 2019.



It also will see the former flag carrier buy eight new aircraft between 2017 and 2021, on top of one that went into use last month, for around 10 new long-haul routes. The aim is to boost revenues and reduce costs in order to achieve profitability by 2019.



"Headcount reductions are a painful but necessary action that, alongside other cost reductions, will stabilise our financial situation and create long-term sustainability," said Alitalia CEO Cramer Ball after presenting the plan approved by the board on Wednesday.



"These changes are essential if we are to compete effectively in the extremely tough European aviation market. "Together with trade unions, and with the support of the Italian government, we will work respectfully and fairly at ways in which to minimise the impact of the business plan on our people".



The airline currently employs 12,500 people around the world.



Earlier this week Industry Minister Carlo Calenda and Transport Minister Graziano Delrio said that the plan "contains numerous elements to be examined and requires very swift implementation".



Alitalia also said Friday that 40% of its national and international flights scheduled for Monday will be cancelled due to industrial action by some unions representing air-traffic controllers. Several unions are set to take action between 13:00 and 17:00 while that CUB Trasporti union is set to strike all day.



The airline said it has taken special measures to minimise inconvenience to its customers, by rebooking passengers affected by cancellations on the first available flights, if possible on the same day.


Migrants: Amnesty, EU-Turkey accord 'shameful mark' 'Accord a year ago caused suffering of thousands of refugees'

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 17 - On the eve of the first anniversary of the agreement between the European Union and Turkey, which was signed on March 18, 2016 and came into effect two days later, Amnesty International spoke about a ''shameful mark on the collective conscience of Europe'', which has caused the suffering of thousands of migrants and refugees.



The agreement, aimed at sending back to Turkey asylum seekers and based on the premise that Turkey is a safe country for them, did not reach the objectives it had set and left thousands of people in squalid and unhealthy conditions on the islands of Greece.



''Today we remember a black day in the history of the protection of refugees: a day in which European leaders tried not to fulfill their international obligations, ignoring the cost that it would have in terms of human misery'', said John Dalhuisen, director of Amnesty for Europe.



''A year ago, the Greek islands were transformed in temporary camps and European coasts turned from a haven to a dangerous place. A year later, thousands of people remain blocked in a risky, desperate and apparently endless limbo'', he added.



Although European leaders continue to pretend that Turkey is a safe country, up until now Greek tribunals have blocked the return of Syrian asylum seekers to Turkey. Amnesty has however reported that some asylum seekers from Syria were forcibly returned to Turkey in a violation of international legislation, without being granted access to asylum procedures and without being able to appeal against the decision. Others returned to Turkey ''voluntarily'' due to the hideous conditions they found on Greek islands. Instead of trying to send back to Turkey asylum seekers and refugees, the EU should cooperate with Greek authorities to urgently transfer asylum seekers inland and examine their cases.



European governments should make places available for them, or legal and safe ways to reach other European countries, for example through humanitarian visas or visas to join their families, concluded Amnesty. (ANSAmed).




Syria: Israeli army denies claim Syria shot down warplane Announced by Damascus

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 17 - Israel has denied Syria's claim that it shot down one of its warplanes during clashes last night and that another was hit near the border with Lebanon.



"We repeat, at no point was the safety of Israeli civilians or the IAF aircraft compromised", an Israeli army spokesperson was quoted as saying by local media. (ANSAmed)
ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 17 - The following are some of the main events scheduled for today in the Euro-Mediterranean area: BRUSSELS - 7th Annual International Symposium on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling, organized by Public Policy Exchange at the Thon Hotel Brussels City Centre. TUNIS - Congress on 'Archaeology and the preservation of Carthage's heritage: the state of the art and Tunisian-Italian cooperation perspectives' with top experts of archaeology from both countries.



ROME - EU, visit of European Commissioner Julian King who will meet Marco Minniti, interior minister; police chief Franco Gabrielli and Alessandro Pansa, the director general of the information system for security of the department of Republic (Dis).



CAGLIARI - 3rd Italian and Arab Enterprise Bourse kicks off at the Hotel Regina Margherita (until March 18). (ANSAmed).




(by Luciana Borsatti)

ROME - Migrants coming to Europe "must be able to come legally" in order to use the money that they've saved" to finance their stay here, rather than giving it to human traffickers", Salvo Lupo said. He is the Sicilian fisherman who revealed in 2001 the "ghost" shipwreck of December 26, 1996, in Portopalo, in which over 300 migrants died. Lupo spoke with simple words that have the same ethical strength as the simple action he took in 2001, when he reported the shipwreck that had been kept secret for years, so that those responsible for the 300 deaths at sea could be brought to justice.

The tragedy has recently resurfaced, following the publication of articles and a book by journalist Giovanni Maria Bellu (published in 2004 and 2017 by Mondadori) and a television movie starring Giuseppe Fiorello that aired on RAI 1 at the end of February. The film dredged up old hostilities among those in Portopalo who would prefer to forget the shipwreck and not speak about it, as was initially done when it happened, for fear that an investigation would shut down the local fishing industry.



The logic at the time for the decision, which was even supported by the local parish priest, was that nothing could change the outcome for those who had died at sea.



Lupo, the target of the hostile feelings, spoke to ANSAmed together with his wife Maria and said he doesn't wish to provoke them.



He called his action a "normal, simple gesture, that became heroic only because of others' rage".



Lupo had initially remained silent like the others when bodies emerged at a point between Sicily and Malta, where 283 Pakistanis, Indians, and Tamils lost their lives. He was also advised to keep quiet when, four years later, he found in his fishing net the ID card of one of the nameless victims.



It was only when he realised that since there was no proof of the shipwreck those responsible would go free that he decided to speak up.



The shipowner and captain were later sentenced to 30 years in prison. "Even Italians are a people made up of migrants," Lupo said. "What would we have done if we had died in a shipwreck?" Lupo was forced out of the local fishing industry due to the tensions over his speaking up, and he began working on tugboats, where he has also seen his fair share of migrants heading to Europe.



He said that in his work on the tugs he has saved many of the migrants but in other cases has also had to give them up to Libyan authorities.



"Those were the times of the agreement between Berlusconi and Gaddafi," he said, referring to the Italy-Libya friendship treaty ratified in 2008.



"I saw migrants forced into a container and loaded onto a truck, still closed inside," he said.



Lupo called the current agreement between the Italian government and Libya's government of national accord "shameful".



"Libyans are strong racists by nature," he said.



Lupo said it's not just traffickers who exploit the migrants' desperation to escape, but also some businesses that manage the trade in Italy, where he said the risk is that migrants "become tools for criminal activity".



However, he did praise some examples of "true integration" in Italy, such as the Calabrian town of Riace in Italy's south, where Mayor Mimmo Lucano has welcomed migrants into homes that had been abandoned by Italians who emigrated elsewhere.



(ANSAmed).
Migrants: a year since EU-Turkey accord, 'oppressed rights' Oxfam, inhuman conditions, difficult asylum requests in Greece

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 17 - One year since the EU-Turkey accord on migrants was forged, the agreement has transformed Greece into a ''laboratory'' of the failing policies of EU closure towards tens of thousands of migrants, Oxfam denounced today, together with the International Rescue Committee and Norwegian Refugee Council, in the report on ''The reality of the EU-Turkey accord''. The report cited 29,000 arrivals registered by the UNHCR since March 20, 2016, mostly of people coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. It stressed that the policies trampled on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, forcing them to survive in inhuman conditions, often in overcrowded centers in the Greek islands, like Chios, Lesvos and Samos. Many spent the winter in tents, exposed to cold temperatures and diseases, without medical assistance or psychological support.



Procedures to apply for asylum are moreover not very clear, made impossible by infinite obstacles, de facto denying the right to receive protection, the report denounced.



The organizations denounced how human rights and the right to seek international protection are thus at risk if EU countries will continue to fail to provide adequate responses. (ANSAmed)
Jesse Jones - Gautier 001.jpg

Gautier firefighter Jesse Jones died unexpectedly in his hometown of Natchez earlier this week. He was 28 years old.

(City of Gautier)

GAUTIER, Mississippi -- Gautier is mourning the loss of one of its first responders after the sudden and unexpected death of firefighter Jesse Jones.

Jones, a native of Natchez, had traveled there to visit his mother when he was stricken by an undisclosed ailment and died Tuesday at the age of 28. He had been a Gautier firefighter for about two years, Gautier Mayor Gordon Gollott said.

"It's a sad day anytime you lose a first responder," Gollott said. "He was a very good firefighter and well-liked by all of our departments and city workers. What can you really say? It's a tragedy -- particularly to lose someone so young. We're surely going to miss him and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family."

Gautier Fire Chief Robert Jones was not immediately available for comment Friday, but a post to the department's Facebook page said it has been a "tough week" for the department.

"He was a man who never spoke an ill word and could always be counted on for a genuine smile," the post read. "There is no doubt he would have gone on to accomplish many great things throughout his career due to the fact of the huge void that we now feel with his unexpected absence. He will not only be greatly missed, but more so greatly remembered."

During his two years with the Gautier FD, Jones had graduated from the Mississippi State Fire Academy and earned several other certifications through additional training.

"He never hesitated to volunteer and help in any situation," wrote Gautier city councilman Casey Vaughan in a post to his Facebook page. "I witnessed Jesse being very passionate to victims he came in contact with on various occasions. He will be greatly missed by his fellow brothers and the City of Gautier, but never forgotten."

Funeral services for Jones will be held at Laird Funeral Home in Natchez on Monday. Visitation is from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., with a service immediately following. Members of the Gautier fire department and city staff are expected to attend.
If youre considering a subscription to the Disney Plus streaming service, you may be wondering how much it costs. The service is available on both
MOSS POINT, Miss. - The Moss Point Municipal Court, in conjunction with the Moss Point Police Department, is offering an amnesty period for those who owe outstanding fines to the city.

The period, spanning from March 27 through May 1 provides individuals who owe past due fines to the city an opportunity to pay a certain amount on their fines and or establish a payment plan without fear of being arrested.

Those who come in voluntarily will have their bench warrants waived - saving them a total of $250.

Individuals who owe money to the utility department through illegal hookups are not eligible for this amnesty period.

Police and city officials are urging residents not to linger and allow this opportunity to pass by because the amnesty period will not last long.

Those wishing to take advantage of this period are asked to visit the police department between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. to speak with the city court to discuss options. Officials say individuals must be prepared to pay at least half of their outstanding balance.

Following this period, the police department will actively pursue those who have warrants. Individuals who may have questions concerning this program, can contact the Court Clerk's office at 228-474-3644 or 228-474-3641.

Anyone with information concerning the amnesty period or any other crime, can call the Moss Point Police at 228-475-1711.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan visited PharmaTech Company, which is engaged in the production and import of medicines at RAO Mars section of Alliance free economic zone.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Armenian Government, the Prime Minister toured the site inspecting the premises and laboratories, and getting acquainted with the working conditions, output capacities and development programs. The Premier highlighted PharmaTechs expansion and the planned increase in the production volumes.

Karen Karapetyan next called at Arabkir Medical Center to inspect the process of pediatric services. A consultation was held on the spot with the representatives of the Association of Healthcare Institutions NGO, during which the Premier introduced the planned healthcare reform, dwelling on the philosophy and objectives behind the reform.



The meeting focused on the fight against corruption, the quality of services, the State order distribution system, drug policy, State control mechanisms and regional health systems.

The Prime Minister urged the representatives of Association of Healthcare Institutions NGO to engage in close cooperation with the Ministry of Healthcare in order to develop and submit a package of specific proposals on the issues discussed.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. On March 19 the Armenian Red Cross Society will celebrate the 97th anniversary of its establishment.

The organization carries out its mission through 11 provincial, 1 regional and 52 branches. The organization assists people in difficult situations.

Anna Yeghiazaryan  Secretary General of the Armenian Red Cross Society, gave an interview to Armenpress on the organizations ongoing and upcoming programs.

-It is almost a century the Armenian Red Cross Society carries out its mission in Armenia. March 19 is the establishment day of the organization. What programs are planned on that day?

-The Armenian Red Cross Society is already 97 years old which carries out its humanitarian mission in the entire territory of Armenia. The most active period of the organizations activity was in 1988 when immediately after the earthquake the ARCS assisted the disaster victims. The first aircrafts that showed assistance to the affected people belonged to the International Red Cross Family. Then, the organizations activity gradually turned from social assistance to development programs. Today we work on the following strategic paths: disaster management, first aid, population movement, Search service, activities for youth affairs, social-healthcare, spreading humanitarian values.

Our activity is based on volunteering, and we are guided by 7 movement principles. The Armenian Red Cross Society as a volunteering organization utilizes the entire volunteering potential, and our volunteers are among the most powerful forces of Armenia.

-What are the challenges faced by the Armenian Red Cross Society?

-There are so many challenges faced by the entire world, so many problems emerge in the world that the international resources for their solutions slowly decrease. Therefore, today the mobilization of local resources within the country is very important. We are the structure which must contribute to reducing the vulnerability among the people. Our resources are limited, and we, of course, define concrete criteria so that we can assist more vulnerable groups.

-What assistance has been provided to the communities, the evacuated residents affected by the April war? As a full member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, what measures are you taking with the conflicting side aimed at eliminating the violations of humanitarian law?

-After the April events we have tried to further define our role and capacity. We have done needs and situation assessment with the partnership with the UNHCR by using our structure based on which the UNHCR provided monetary assistance to the displaced families. As well as a psychological assistance was provided to the families of soldiers in hospitals. We with our activity contribute to strengthening the resistance of communities so that people will be ready to respond this or that challenge.

The full interview is available in Armenian.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Golden Globe winner Oscar Issac, Academy Award winning actor Christian Bale and famous rock musician, soloist of System of a Down group Serj Tankian, as well as actress Angela Sarafyan, screenwriter Terry George will attend the premiere of Armenian Genocide themed The Promise film, reports Armenpress.

Serj Tankian called on everyone to join them on the red carpet.

The film was sponsored by late American-Armenian businessman, billionaire Kirk Kirkorian.

Michael, a humble Armenian apothecary, leaves his village to study medicine in cosmopolitan Constantinople. Chris, an American photojournalist who has come to the country to partly cover the geopolitics, is in a relationship with the talented Ana, a Paris-educated, Armenian artist. When Michael meets Ana, their shared heritage sparks an attraction that explodes into a romantic rivalry between the two men. After the Turks join the war on the German side, the Ottoman Empire turns violently against its own ethnic minorities. Despite their conflicts, everyone must find a way to survive  even as monumental events envelope their lives.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Public Relations Association (APRA) in partnership with the World Communication Forum Association (WCFA) of Davos will hold the World Communication Forum (WCFDavos/Yerevan) in Yerevan on March 21-22 which is the first regional forum, reports Armenpress.

The topic of the regional forum is entitled From Crisis to Development: Powered by Communication.

Armenian, as well as foreign leading experts will take part in the Forum.

Founder, CEO and chief brand strategist of Brands of Desire brand consultancy Saurabh Uboweja will attend the Forum who said one of the priority topics is the countrys brand as a national dignity. In Yerevan I will try to use WCF platform to discuss completely new design options for countrys branding development, he said.

Solly Moeng  Executive Director at DonValley Brand, Marketing & Communications, said this years WCF in Geneva is simply perfect, and he is looking forward to visit Yerevan where he will have a chance to meet with leading communication specialists. We are going to talk about a number of interesting topics in Yerevan. My topic, in particular, covers the reputation management, how to manage the brands reputation, concerning any types of brand. I am looking forward to discuss all these in Yerevan and see your country for the first time, Mr. Moeng said.

Sean Gardner  co-founder of Huffington Post Twitter Powerhouses Series stated: In Yerevan I am going to speak about social media. For me the role of social media is to connect and cooperate people. We are coming to Yerevan.

The World Communication Forum is already being held for the 8th time on March 13-17, 2016. This year the Forum is being held in Geneva.

The Forum aims to discuss issues related to the innovative ways and issues of communication, as well as to outline the major trends of communication development.

During the past years the Forum participants have formed WCF Family, and the Armenian Public Relations Association is a member of it.
My earliest memories of the late Kathleen Folsom McIlwain date back to my elementary school years when I discovered the Pascagoula Public Library on Krebs Avenue was on my walk home from Our Lady of Victories School. Then in the summers I would bicycle there from my home on North Pascagoula Street to fill my bike basket with books.

Mrs. McIlwain was one of my earliest role models --- a quiet, lovely pleasant woman who always had a smile for those coming to use the library.

If the name is familiar to you it is because the Gautier Public Library is named in her honor. She took Pascagoula from bookmobiles and temporary library buildings during her tenure of more than two decades to what we know today as the Jackson-George Regional Library System.

In 1962, Mrs. McIlwain, after serving four years as assistant librarian, was appointed head librarian at a joint meeting of the Jackson County and Pascagoula library boards. A native of Florala, Ala., she had earned her BA degree from Alabama College (now the University of Montevallo). In 1938 she wed Julian McIlwain, a Pascagoula native, and they lived on Columbus Drive in Pascagoula with their family of three children, Tommy (now deceased), Barry and Martha.

At the time of Mrs. McIlwain's promotion, the library had 25,000 volumes and its bookmobile made 400 stops a month. (Today's system has 260,000 items available from its eight libraries and global access to the digital world.)

A major step for the library system occurred in 1963 when it was announced the old U.S. Post Office building in Pascagoula located at the eastern foot of Delmas Avenue would be transferred to the city for use as a public library at no cost. That is when plans were made to move the library from 216 Krebs Avenue to the new location. The public anticipated accommodations for special reading and study areas, book stacks, a music room and other amenities.

The building was demolished and replaced in 1986 with today's modern structure at the same location that also houses the headquarters for the JGRLS. Mrs. McIlwain was present for the dedication to celebrate the growth of the system she had taken, as its first director, from very humble beginnings.

Jackson County historian Else Martin of Hurley often talks about the educated "doer's" who came to our county throughout the years contributing to our growth. Mrs. McIlwain would be one of those. Her descendants have also became productive citizens. Mrs. McIlwain passed away in 2003 at age 87.

Next week's column will take a look at how Kathleen McIlwain was an unsung hero of the Civil Rights movement who quietly, but firmly, stood up to the despotic investigators of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

Columnist Joanne Anderson may be reached at joandy42@yahoo.com.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. On March 17, His Holiness Garegin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians received Arman Tatoyan, Human Rights Defender of of Armenia, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin told Armenpress.

During the meeting, His Holiness stressed the importance of the Ombudsman's mission, noting his appreciation for the work that is undertaken for finding fair resolutions to problems that occur in different areas of civil society. His Holiness reflected on the service of Armenian clergy in various sectors of civil society, particularly in the Armenian Armed Forces, hospitals, and penitentiary institutions for the benefit of the protection of human rights in those institutions.

Mr. Tatoyan, speaking on the preservation of national values and traditions, as well as the Armenian Apostolic Church's mission in the protection of human rights, highlighted the cooperation between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Human Rights Defender staff.

During the meeting, they also spoke about issues related to the protection of human rights in Armenia and the work that has been carried out towards overcoming them.

At the conclusion of the meeting, His Holiness wished the Ombudsman God's support in his difficult mission.

His Eminence Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan, Director of the External Relations and Protocol Department of the Mother See, was present at the meeting.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on March 17 formally opened a limited referendum observation mission (LROM) for the 16 April constitutional referendum in Turkey. The missions deployment follows an invitation from the Turkish authorities, the OSCE Office told Armenpress.

The mission is led by Tana de Zulueta and consists of a core team of 11 experts based in Ankara and 24 long-term observers to be deployed across the country.

The mission will observe this referendum for its compliance with OSCE commitments, other international obligations and standards for democratic elections and referenda, as well as with national legislation. Observers will follow campaign activities, the work of the referendum/election administration and relevant state bodies, implementation of the legislative framework, and the resolution of referendum-related disputes. As part of its observation, the LROM will conduct comprehensive monitoring of the media.

In the course of its observation, the mission will meet with representatives from state authorities and political parties, and with representatives from civil society, the media and the international community. While the mission will visit a limited number of polling stations on the day of the referendum, systematic observation of voting, counting or tabulation of results on referendum day is not envisaged.

The day after the referendum, the mission will join with an observer delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to issue a statement of preliminary findings and conclusions at a press conference.

ODIHR will issue its final report on the observation of the entire referendum process approximately eight weeks after the end of the observation mission.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. The State Tourism Committee of the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments and Tourism Development Fund signed a memorandum of cooperation on March 17, press service of the Ministry told Armenpress.

The memorandum of cooperation was signed by President of the State Tourism Committee Zarmine Zeytuntsyan and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Tourism Development Fund Tigran Karapetyan.

The sides will cooperate aimed at contributing to the increase of incoming and local tourism visits, increasing the revenues received from tourism.

Under the memorandum of cooperation, the sides will carry out works on properly presenting Armenia and the Armenian tourism result in international exhibitions, contributing to tourism development in communities, including in Tsaghkadzor resort town, as well as to conduct diversification of the Armenian tourism result through organization of Armenian Brandy Festival.
YEREVAN, MARCH 17, ARMENPRESS. Blogger Alexander Lapshin extradited by Belarus to Azerbaijan and jailed in Baku has health problems, Armenpress reports his wife, Yekatirina, who held a phone conversation with Lapshin informs.

Today I talked to Sasha [Lapshin]. Detention conditions, thank God, have not changed; he has no neighbors, has the opportunity to breathe fresh air and tolerable nutrition is available. But being deprived of freedom for a long time, as well as lack of clarity in his case have a negative impact on him. He has problems with sleeping and often suffers headache. There are also some problems with nutrition, he is unable to nourish regularly. In a word, in our world one should consider that travelling can become a dangerous job, Lapshins wife said.

Alexander Lapshin, the Russian-Israeli blogger who was extradited from Belarus to Azerbaijan on February 7, has been placed in the isolation cell in Azerbaijans state security service.

Lapshin was flown to Baku from Minsk on a special flight, escorted by state security agents. A group of reporters were waiting for Lapshin in Bakus airport, but Lapshin didnt give any comment to them.

The Belarus Supreme Court denied Lapshins appeal on the extradition verdict issued by the General Prosecutor of Belarus.

Lapshin faces up to 5 years imprisonment in Azerbaijan, under charges of public calls against the state, and unauthorized crossing of borders.
More than 40 UK theatres, including the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sheffield Theatres and the Royal Exchange, have signed a letter to The Guardian calling on it to reinstate Lyn Gardners theatre blogs. Gardner is currently contracted to write 150 blogs a year for The Guardian, however these will cease next month to cut costs.
VINA DEL MAR, ChileThe remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are seeking a way forward for the trade pact, they said on Wednesday, as some emphasized the need for deals to address concerns about the environment and other issues.

The TPP, which originally covered some 40 percent of global gross domestic product, was effectively torpedoed in its current form when US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in January.

The 12 members met for the first time since then on Wednesday, convened by Chile alongside China, South Korea, and Colombia, to try to thrash out a way forward on Asia-Pacific trade.

With the retreat of the United States, China appears to be the natural successor to lead those discussions, but an emphasis on getting a progressive deal that wins support from skeptical citizens could see nations in the Americas forging a different path.

"We are talking about free trade of a very high quality, with protection for investors, the environment, and labor rights," Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told reporters after the meeting.

"That is the primary criteria with which any negotiation that takes place will comply."

Consensus was growing that trade deals need to consider issues like the environment and labor rights, Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said on the sidelines.

"Around the table, the word 'progressive' appears more and more ... it is becoming part of what people would consider as a base in order to progress," he said.

China reiterated its wish to promote regional economic integration on Wednesday, saying the country is taking an open attitude toward regional free trade arrangements that concern it and where conditions are in place.

But Premier Li Keqiang told the media that China has no intention of exceeding its duties and stepping into arrangements in which its due role is not in place.

The premier made the remarks when asked whether China is to fill the United States' place to lead the TPP.

Previously, critics of the TPP have said it does not do enough to protect jobs, and US presidential candidates across the political spectrum promised to scrap it if elected.

Another way forward may be via Latin America's Pacific Alliance trade bloc. Its four nations said on Tuesday they would seek to expand by allowing associate membership as a precursor to trade talks.

New Zealand said in a statement on Wednesday that it expected to be one of the first to begin negotiations.

Trade officials from ex-TPP countries are now set to come up with a menu of options for ministers before they meet in May at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathering in Vietnam.

Ministers wanted to continue with the "substance of the accord," Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz said.

REUTERS-XINHUA
In todays Wall Street Journal I review the Roundabout Theatre Companys Broadway revival of Arthur Millers The Price. Heres an excerpt.

* * *

The Price, the least frequently revived of Arthur Millers major plays, has returned to Broadway after a 17-year absence, this time in a Roundabout Theatre Company production starring a Broadway debutant by the name of Danny DeVito. Thats news right there. Moreover, The Price is Millers best playthe only one, in my opinion, that is totally successful as a work of theatrical artand Jessica Hecht, Mark Ruffalo and Tony Shalhoub, Mr. DeVitos co-stars, are actors of high repute. But big-name productions arent always all that they ought to be, especially when they feature movie stars with limited stage experience. While Mr. DeVito got his start off Broadway, its been upward of 40 years since he was last seen on a New York stage, and the only play in which hes acted in recent memory was a 2012 West End revival of Neil Simons The Sunshine Boys. On top of that, Mr. DeVito, a New Jersey-born Italian-American, has been cast as Gregory Solomon, an 89-year-old used-furniture dealer with a Minsk-Kapinsk Russian-Yiddish accent. Hes 72, so it isnt that much of a stretch for him to play someone whos a decade and a half older, but otherwise, as Solomon himself might say, typecast hes not.

So hows he doing? Well get to that. For now, lets talk about the play. First performed in 1968, The Price is the story of Victor and Walter Franz (Mr. Ruffalo and Mr. Shalhoub), two brothers who havent spoken to one another for 16 years. Victor is an angry, frustrated beat cop, Walter a surgeon in a camels-hair coat, and Esther (Ms. Hecht), Victors status-conscious wife, hates the fact that he isnt as successful as Walter (though she loves him anyway). The setting is the attic of the Franz family home, which is crammed tight with ancient furniture that Victor and Walter want to sell off.

For reasons of his own, Mr. Miller claimed in 1999 that The Price was all about Vietnam. Maybe so, but its alsoand mainlya resounding parable of the power of pride to gnaw away at the ties that ought to bind a family.

The highly charged naturalism of Mr. Ruffalos acting is terrifically impressivehes going to be one of the great Willy Lomans once he gets a little more age on himand Mr. Shalhoub, whose post-Monk stage performances have all been noteworthy, leaves nothing to be desired.

On the debit side, Mr. DeVito is effective enough in an obvious way, but hes using Solomon as a star turn, wearing him like an ill-fitting suit instead of creating him from the inside out.

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The cast and director of the Roundabout Theatre Companys revival of The Price talk about the play:
While many may have visited Japan over the years, I am sure that all kinds of transportation were used for your travels. This article will highlight one of the best ways to explore Tokyo with the Tokyo Metro Subway system.





For me, having visited and worked Tokyo in 1990 to 1992, I was a frequent user of this main subway system and over the last 25 years, the Tokyo Metro has expanded and improved so much.





The Best Way To Explore Tokyo





Connectivity is one of the most important things when you travel to any city, and in a metropolis like Tokyo, it is highly recommended to use this.





First of all, for Malaysians or Southeast Asians, visiting Tokyo is not cheap, and if you plan to visit many popular places around the city, the easiest and hassle-free way to do so is by using the Tokyo Metro.





A one-way general ticket will cost you around 200 per person, which is around RM7.70 or US1.70. Therefore, four stops will easily cost you quite a lot of money.





And if you are travelling as a couple of groups, the cost gets higher. However, there is a special tourist pass available which can save you loads of money which is the Tokyo Metro subway day pass ticket.



Shibuya at night, vibrant and lively My Tokyo Metro Exploration





When I visited Tokyo in February 2017, I was part of the Tokyo Metro's special Pop Culture Tour and I had travelled to several popular places around here and by using my Tokyo Metro day pass ticket.





My day started in Harajuku, which is probably one of the must-visit areas of Tokyo. Filled with speciality stores and quirky Japanese fashion, this is the place to be if you want to see what's trending in the Japanese Kawaii fashion scene.



In general, you would need at least four to five hours just to see the main parts of Harajuku, therefore, if you visit the Moshi Moshi Box, this would be the ideal place to get all the information you need about Harajuku and other districts of Tokyo.



Moshi Moshi Box in Harajuku Some of the tourist information in various languages at Moshi Moshi Box Japanese souvenirs inside Moshi Moshi Box The Moshi Moshi Box would also be the best place for first-timers to Japan as it serves as a tourist information centre and also as a Japanese souvenir shop. The Moshi Moshi Box would also be the best place for first-timers to Japan as it serves as a tourist information centre and also as a Japanese souvenir shop.





The staff here speak English and are ready to assist anyone who needs information on Harajuku or Tokyo.









Inside Moshi Moshi Box, there is free Wi-Fi available, some Japanese pop culture items and even local popular Japanese sweets and snacks. You can also find information about Tokyo Metro apart from the general tourist places in here.



Moshi Moshi Box Harajuku Address:

3, 3 Chome-23-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku,

Tokyo-to 150-0001, Japan

Map of Moshi Moshi Box They also have brochures and maps in many languages including English, which are all the main tourist areas of Tokyo.Inside Moshi Moshi Box, there is free Wi-Fi available, some Japanese pop culture items and even local popular Japanese sweets and snacks. You can also find information about Tokyo Metro apart from the general tourist places in here.3, 3 Chome-23-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku,Tokyo-to 150-0001, Japan





Another popular place that most people would want to visit in Asakusa as a lot of the popular tourist attractions is found here, like the Asakusa Temple or Senso-Ji Temple, Tokyo Skytree Tower and the interesting shopping streets packed with great Japanese food restaurants and cafes.



Tokyo Skytree seen from Asakusa Famous Suzukien Green Tea Ice Cream Shop in Asakusa. They offer 7 different tones of Green Tea Ice Cream! For Muslims travelling to Asakusa, you should be happy to know that the famous For Muslims travelling to Asakusa, you should be happy to know that the famous Naritaya Halal Ramen Restaurant is located here, just near the Asakusa Temple.





And for those who want to try the famous Suzukien Green Tea Ice Cream Shop in Asakusa, it is also a 3-minute walk from the Senso-Ji Temple or a 10-minute walk from the Asakusa Station.





Of course, no trip to Tokyo would be complete without a visit to Shibuya, the busiest area of Tokyo. From Asakusa, I took the Tokyo Metro for a 38-minute ride to Shibuya and spent the rest of the evening here.





Exploring on foot, I walked west from the main Shibuya station to look for some Japanese pop culture stores.





I have to say, those lanes and alleys with smaller boutique shops are quite interesting, compared to the commercial shopping malls.



Japan's most famous dog - Hachiko, a statue erected in Shibuya, in honour of this faithful dog The famous Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo For the Japanese Pop Culture lovers, one place to check out is Beams Japan, a seven-story store that has a very unique and quirky pop culture on every floor. For the Japanese Pop Culture lovers, one place to check out is Beams Japan, a seven-story store that has a very unique and quirky pop culture on every floor.





The popular Beams Japan store is located in Shinjuku while another is found in Harajuku called Beams Boy Harajuku. Honestly, the items sold here are really unique and very interesting, especially if you are into pop culture.



As I stayed in the Shiodome area of Tokyo, the subway ride back was quicker than expected with the station just five minutes walk to the hotel. The Royal Park Hotel Shiodome offers an amazing view of the Tokyo Tower and also Mount Fuji far in the back.



When you check-in, just ask them for the Tokyo Tower view. At the end of the day, moving around Tokyo would not have been easy if I had not got my Tokyo Metro Subway Day Pass Tickets. It is highly recommended for anyone visiting Tokyo.



Beams Japan, one of the very popular Japanese Pop Culture Stores in Shinjuku Tokyo Metro Day Pass Tickets





Tokyo Metro offers these day-pass tickets and you can buy them from the Tokyo Metro Information Counter in the subway stations.





Just ask the friendly staff and they would most likely point you in the right directions. Some of the staff actually speak English too.





The day-pass tickets are in the form the 24, 48 and 72-hour tickets which means you can use them multiple times, per person.

Tokyo Metro 1 Day Pass - 800 (RM31.00 or US6.95)

Tokyo Metro 2 Day Pass - 1200 (RM46.00 or US10.40)

Tokyo Metro 3 Day Pass - 1500 (RM58.00 or US13.00)

*Children are half-priced

The day pass subway tickets can be used on all Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway lines in the city.



Tokyo Metro Day Pass and Guide

Where to buy Tokyo Metro Subway Day Pass Tickets?





You can buy the day passes from the Tokyo Metro Tourist Information counters which are located at the following subway stations in Tokyo;

Ginza Station Tourist Information

Shinjuku Station Tourist Information

Omote-sando Station Tourist Information

Ueno Station Tourist Information

Tokyo Metro Tourist Information Counter at Shibuya Station

Tourist Information Counters are open from 9:15 AM to 17:15 PM, and you need to provide your passport to purchase these tickets.





The reason for this is so that they can track how many nationals are buying the ticket, plus they will know that you are in fact a visitor or traveller.





For the full list of other places that sell the day pass tickets, you can see the Tokyo Metro Day Pass Ticket Outlets .





For more information on this, visit the Tokyo Metro Discount Tickets page as they offer a wide range of other types of tickets like the airport to Tokyo, shared subway tickets and others.



View of Tokyo, part of it, seen from the Sunshine 60 Observatory Entrance to Tokyo Metro Harajuku Station Meet Tokyo Metro at the Matta Fair March 2017



For Malaysians planning to visit Tokyo for the Sakura season or any other time, you can meet the Tokyo Metro people at the For Malaysians planning to visit Tokyo for the Sakura season or any other time, you can meet the Tokyo Metro people at the Matta Fair 2017 in Kuala Lumpur.





They will be having a Special Tokyo Metro booth in the Japan National Tourism Organization booth area in Hall 1 at the travel fair.





You can get all the information you need on travelling around Tokyo and not to worry as they speak English and have local Malaysian staff at the booth.





Conclusion





With this, I conclude that the Tokyo Metro is the best way to explore Tokyo city and it is hassle-free, economical and also the fastest way to move around.





Especially with the day passes, it is so convenient, for singles, couples or family travellers. Have a great trip to Japan.
Basque, the only non-Indo European language in Western Europe, is an isolate, a language unrelated to any other living or dead. Nonetheless attempts have been made to demonstrate a relationship with a variety of languages including ancient Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, and Berber. The most consistently proposed kinship has been with the Kartvelian family of Caucasian languages, in particular with Georgian.



The origin of Basque has been bound up with theories about the origin of the Basque people themselves. Greek and Roman historians referred to the region corresponding to modern Georgia as eastern Iberia, as distinct from western Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal. The Greek geographer Strabo referred both to the Iberians of the Caucasus and to the western Iberians (Geographica, bk. XI, ch. II, 19). Appian of Alexandria later wrote some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter (Historia Romana, bk. XII, ch. XV, 101). However, he continued still others think that they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar. The Georgian language was also known, confusingly, as Iberian.



In the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque historians adopted the prevalent Spanish legend according to which after the Flood, Tubal, a son of Japheth, was the first settler in the Peninsula, but they added that he settled first in Cantabria, i.e. the Basque region. Esteban de Garibay (born 1525) found evidence for this claim in similarities between place names in northern Spain and in Armenia, e.g. Mount Ararat (in modern Turkey) = Aralar, the mountain range in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. He also links the Basque Mount Gorbeia to an Armenian peak Gordeya. He considered Basque the first language of the whole Peninsula and, presumably, the language of Tubal. Other writers followed Garibay, notably Andres de Poza and Baltasar de Echave. Garibays identification of similarities between toponyms, however fantastical, can be seen as a forerunner of the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis.

Esteban de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial de todos los reynos de Espana (Antwerp, 1571) British Library C.75.e.4.



In the early 20th century philologists developed more scientific arguments for a link between Basque and Caucasian languages. Typological similarities certainly exist between Basque and Georgian. For example both are ergative languages. Put at its simplest, this means that the subject of a transitive verb appears in the ergative case (or agentive), while the object is in the absolutive case and is unmarked. Thus, in Basque we have gure aitak etxe berria erosi du (our father has bought a new house) contrasted with gure aita Donostian bizi da (our father lives in Donostia). In Georgian, father in the first sentence would be rendered by mamam and by mama in the second. However, the ergative construction would not be employed in subject-direct object-verb constructions in all tenses and aspects. In Basque the ergative is more regularly employed.



Another notable similarlity is that the verb morphology of both languages is pluripersonal, i.e. the form of the verb may encode not just the subject of the sentence, but any direct or indirect objects present. In Basque this is illustrated in the examples:

Nere semeak kotxe berri bat erosi du = My son has bought a new car

Nere semeak bi kotxe erosi ditu = My son has bought two cars.

The infix it in the auxiliary verb in the second example agrees with the plural object bi kotxe. However, the verb morphology of Georgian is extremely complex and functions very differently from Basque.



Typological parallels are all very well, but ergativity and pluripersonal agglutinative verbal morphology are not exclusive to Basque and Georgian, and doubt concerning possible kinship between them arises when lexical coincidences are cited. According to Basque philologists today, the majority of those seeking similarities have cast their nets very wide, claiming cognate fish when most should have been thrown back. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several Caucasian languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven. Furthermore, in many cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms; many coincidences are thus anachronistic. The philologist R.L. Trask also stressed that the Basque, in its hypothetical early form, had a vastly impoverished consonantal system in contrast to the wealth of consonants of the Northern Caucasian groups in particular. Today, Georgian has 28 consonants, Basque 21.

The 36 letters of the Georgian alphabet according to Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum (Rome, 1629); 621.c.33.(1.)

The case for a relationship between Basque and other languages intensified in the early 20th century with the philologists Hugo Schuchardt, C.C. Uhlenbeck and Alfredo Trombetti. Much of the debate was conducted in scientific periodicals, particularly the Revue Internationale des Etudes Basques (P.P.4331.aeb.). We might add here the Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr who developed the so-called Japhetic theory linking Kartvelian with Semitic languages and subsequently the theory that all languages had a common origin. He also found parallels between Kartvelian languages and Basque.

Marr (third from right) with a group of Basques, reproduced in Nikolai Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli (Tbilisi , 1987) YA.1991.a.23022



The case for possible Basque-Caucasian cognates continued to be advanced in the second half of the last century by linguists such as Rene Lafon and Antonio Tovar. However, later scholars, notably Luis (Koldo) Michelena and Trask, firmly rejected the Caucasian link. This has not stemmed the tide of speculation, which in fact has widened to include Basque in a macro-language family (Dene-Caucasian) and even beyond in the hypothetical single language of the so-called proto-world. This notion seems to bring us back to Nikolai Marr. These last speculations find approval also among those still hoping to prove a common ethnic origin for the Basques and the Iberians of the Caucasus. Given that the Basque language remains alone in a class of one, it is wisest to conclude that the case for a link remains unproven.

Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic studies and Anna Chelidze, SEE Cataloguer Russian/Georgian

References



Itzia Laka, A Brief Grammar of Euskara ([Vitoria-Gasteiz], 1996); available at http://www.ehu.eus/es/web/eins/basque-grammar



Juan Madariaga Orbea, Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language (Reno, 2006). YC.2007.a.857.



R.L. Trask, The History of Basque (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547



Jose Ramon Zubiaur Bilbao, Las ideas linguisticas vascas en el s. XVI. Zaldibia, Garibay, Poza (Donostia, 1989). YA. 1993.a.5626.



La Prensa Iberica interview with Davit Turashvili: http://www.laprensaiberica.org/?p=414




Anglo's shares gained nearly 300 per cent making it best performer on London FTSE.

London: Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal said he wants to buy a 2 billion ($2.45 billion) stake in Anglo American (AAL.L), a major vote of confidence in the global miner's recovery.

Last year, Anglo American's shares gained nearly 300 percent, making it the best performer on the London FTSE as the mining industry recovered from a slump in commodity prices in 2015 and early 2016.

Agarwal, who has majority control of Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZNC.NS) through Vedanta Ltd (VDAN.NS) (VED.L), will make the investment via his family trust Volcan Holdings rather than Vedanta, Volcan said in a statement on Wednesday.

Anglo, which has a market value of around 16.6 billion, refused to comment. It has also declined to comment on reports it has rebuffed previous approaches for a tie-up with Agarwal's Hindustan Zinc.

Anglo's shares rose nearly 9 percent, outperforming the broader sector .FTNMX1770, which rose 4 percent. Vedanta's (VED.L) shares in London also outperformed, rising around 8 percent.

The announcement of Agarwal's plans said neither Volcan nor Vedanta intended to make an offer for Anglo American.

An executive briefed on the matter said the purchase would be a passive investment and Agarwal would not be seeking a board seat at Anglo American.

Christopher LaFemina, analyst at Jefferies, said the mining sector, which spent last year putting its balance sheets in order, might be making an early return to M&A activity. Many had not expected that until next year.

"Our expectation has been that the mining sector recovery would comprise three separate phases," LaFemina said, referring to balance sheet recovery, then improved cash flow and finally M&A. "It is possible that Phase 3 is beginning now."

Dealmaker

Agarwal, who has four decades of experience as an entrepreneur, founded the Vedanta Group in 1979. It has copper operations in Zambia and a zinc mine in South Africa, Anglo American's heartland.

One industry source who has worked with Agarwal in the past, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had been looking at Anglo American for at least five years.

"His dream is to have Vedanta as one of the big diversified miners at some point," the source said.

South Africa's state-owned Public Investment Corp (PIC), which is Anglo American's largest shareholder with roughly 15 percent, said it had no comment.

Another source connected to the transaction said Agarwal was limiting any risk by using a convertible bond rather than cash to finance the deal. The mandatory exchangeable bond for 2 billion pounds is due in 2020 and is led by J.P. Morgan. (JPM.N)

Volcan will issue the bond to fund the share purchase and it will be secured by the purchased shares.

The structure of the bond limits any downside, the sources said, adding the advantage of buying into Anglo American, whose portfolio includes diamonds and platinum, was to diversify Agarwal's holdings.

"This is an attractive investment for our family trust ... I am delighted to become a shareholder in Anglo American plc," Agarwal said in Wednesday's statement.

Anglo American dwarfs Vedanta, which has a market capital of around 2 billion pounds.

Some analysts see Agarwal's move as a new attempt to fulfil his ambition to have a major footing in South Africa as well as in his native India, a goal he has aired in the Indian press.

"From a strategic point of view, some kind of deal could potentially hand Anglo a solution to their problem of perceived 'overweighting' towards South Africa," said Paul Gait, an analyst at Bernstein.
The actress is keen to break away from the image created of hers from the content-driven films she has done.

Taapsee was seen in 'The Ghazi Attack' and 'Running Shaadi' earlier this year.

Mumbai: Actress Taapsee Pannu wants to explore the commercial film space with 'Judwaa 2' and says she wants to look her glamorous best in the sequel.

Known for her hard-hitting performances in films like 'Baby' and 'Pink', Taapsee set off on her Bollywood journey with David Dhawan's 'Chashme Baddoor' in 2013.

Four years later, she is now set to collaborate with him again for 'Judwaa 2'.

"I will work on my part by making sure I look my glamorous best in the film. The change of look is the most that I am expecting out of the film. I have experimented a lot with my acting bit, so I want to get into the commercial heroine space," she says.

"It (commercial films) may be cliched for everyone, but not for me as I haven't done that. 'Judwaa 2' is a new zone for me and this is also a challenge for me," Taapsee told PTI.

In the movie, Varun Dhawan would be stepping into the shoes of Salman Khan. Varun met the superstar a couple of times to understand the nitty gritties of both the characters - Prem and Raja - from the 1997 hit comedy film. Taapsee says she has never met Salman in person and would like to meet him and other stars of 'Judwa'.

"I have been a huge fan of Karisma, she is a live wire on screen. I would love to meet her, Rambha and Salman. I haven't met Salman before. I am not that social, I don't go for outings and so I have not met many actors," she says.

'Judwaa 2' will be her first attempt at comedy and the actress says it is not easy to make people laugh.

"Comedy is a difficult genre, it is not easy to make people laugh. I am keeping myself prepared to have fun. But as it's a new genre for me to explore I am not going to be over smart in saying that I will be only relaxing," she says.

"Comedy as a genre is difficult and people do not realise its potential. It is the most underrated genre. We get critical acclaim for films like 'Pink', 'Naam Shabana'. But critical acclaim does not give you money," she says.

The actress is open to doing slapstick comedies. "I don't enjoy watching sex comedies be it in Bollywood or Hollywood, so no point in doing it if I don't enjoy it. I don't mind doing slapstick comedies," she says.

Taapsee is now looking forward to the release of 'Naam Shabana' a spin-off from the 2015 hit film 'Baby'.

Produced by Neeraj Pandey and directed by Shivam Nair, the action spy thriller is set to release on March 31.
The fearless artiste feels that its time for Indians to go beyond just nitpicking.

Kamal Haasan is never afraid to speak his mind. His recent statement on the Mahabharat on a Tamil news channel, where he stated that a scripture that speaks of a woman (Draupadi) being gambled away is honoured by India, has incurred the wrath of a Hindu outfit.

But Kamal knows what he was talking about. I said were stuck in the chapter of Mahabharat describing the gambling. We venerate the worst part in even the best books. In a similar vein, I have said many good things in my interview about both Hindus and Muslims. To a question Do you dislike Brahmins? I said I cant possibly as my mother and father and most of my family are Brahmins. It is like asking do you dislike humans? No, I cant live without them, even my religious friends. I take all criticism about my rationalism from them with humour. I would suggest they do too. If I were to believe in the stories of the of the gods, then the gods do not need mortals to defend them, do they?

Tongue-in-cheek the veteran actor adds, For Gods sake, lets stop fighting . There are so many imminent things to fight about. I love reading all the mythological stories. I was brought up on them. Lets not lose our sense of humour and compassion. There is a point of exasperation with tolerance. With acceptance, begins dialogue and sometimes banter too.

The fearless artiste feels that its time for Indians to go beyond just nitpicking. He adds, Wake up, India. Jai Ramji ki, Jai Jesus ki, Jai Darwin ki, Jai Musalmaan ki, Jai human ki and oh, Jai Hanuman ki too! Come on, guys. We got to go one step further than even Make In India. Lets make India itself  India 2.0 , the updated version. If its not too late already.
Walcott died early on Friday at his home in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, according to his son, Peter.

Castries, St. Lucia: Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean and became the regions most internationally famous writer, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott died early on Friday at his home in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, according to his son, Peter.

Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia, read a statement the family released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity of his writings including the 1990 Omeros, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as majestic.

In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet, said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the very rich and complicated experience of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. With passions ranging from painting to teaching, Walc-otts work was praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess.
On Friday, Karnan demanded a 'compensation' of Rs 14 crore from the apex court for 'insulting' him in public and causing him mental stress.

Kolkata: West Bengal Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purakayastha today served a bailable warrant to Justice C S Karnan of Calcutta High Court which was issued by the Supreme Court in a contempt case on March 10.

The DGP visited the residence of Justice Karnan in New Town area here along with Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar and DIG (CID) Rajesh Kumar and handed him over the warrant.

A large police team was posted outside Karnan's residence when the three senior police officials visited the place. According to a report in NDTV, around 100 policemen led by the DGP reached Karnans house to serve the warrant. "The DGP handed over the bailable warrant to Justice Karnan at his New Town residence this morning," a senior official of the state police force said.

In an unprecedented order, the Supreme Court had issued the arrest warrant against Justice Karnan to ensure his presence before it on March 31 in a contempt case.

Hitting back at the apex court, Justice Karnan had stated that they have "no locus standi" to issue a bailable warrant against a sitting judge and alleged that he was being targeted for being a dalit.

Justice Karnan also issued an 'order' of registration of a case under Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 against Chief Justice of India Justice J S Khehar and six other judges, directing CBI to investigate these cases.

On Friday, Karnan demanded a 'compensation' of Rs 14 crore from the apex court for 'insulting' him in public and causing him mental stress.
The duo had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

Islamabad/New Delhi: Two Indian clerics, including the head priest of New Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah, have gone missing in Pakistan, prompting India to take up the matter with the Pakistani government.

According to official sources in New Delhi, Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight from there to Karachi on Wednesday.

"As per their families, while Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, Nazim was stopped at the Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete travel papers.

"While Nazim went missing from Lahore airport, Asif went missing after arriving at the Karachi airport," a source said.

The matter has been taken up with the Pakistan government both in New Delhi as well as through the Indian mission in Islamabad, the source said.

The duo had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said both Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at Karachi airport and Pakistan government has been requested for an update on both the Indian nationals.

"We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," tweeted Swaraj.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi is already abroad for a health check-up.

New Delhi: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday left for abroad to be with his ailing mother Sonia Gandhi who is undergoing medical treatment.

Rahul left soon after his return from Chandigarh where he attended the swearing-in ceremony of Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh.

"Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi shall travel there today to be with her and accompany Congress President on the return journey," party's chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

He added that Congress President Sonia Gandhi is already abroad for a health check-up.

Rahul left for an undisclosed location abroad amid a growing clamour for structural changes within after the party's debacle in the Uttar Pradesh polls.

Sonia, who did not campaign in the assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh, went abroad for treatment earlier this month and gave a miss to the counting of votes in five states.

Party sources say she has gone for a "routine medical check-up" but there is no set date for her return.

Though they did not let in on where she has gone for the check-up, there was speculation that she is in the US where she had earlier undergone treatment for an undisclosed ailment. Sonia has not been keeping well for quite some time.
Sinha had invited Manohar Parrikar to form the government in Goa despite BJP winning less seats than the Congress.

Panaji: Congress on Friday urged President Pranab Mukherjee to dismiss Goa Governor Mridula Sinha for committing "constitutional impropriety and dereliction of duty".

Sinha had invited Manohar Parrikar, former Defence Minister, to form the government in Goa despite BJP winning less seats than the Congress in the recently concluded Assembly polls. BJP had stitched together an alliance comprising of Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Goa Forward Party (GFP), and Independents, to secure a majority of 22 seats in the 40-member Assembly.

On Thursday, Manohar Parrikar, sent back to Goa after demands from the MGP, won a trust vote in the Assembly, with all 22 MLAs voting for him. The motion was opposed by only 16 MLAs, as Congress MLA Vishwajit Rane walked out of the Assembly during the confidence vote.

Congress has called BJPs action of staking claim to form the government in Goa and Manipur as murder of democracy. The grand old party had even approached the Supreme Court prior to the Goa trust vote, challenging Parrikars appointment as CM.

However, the apex court merely told Parrikar to prove his majority within 2 days, and said his Tuesday swearing in would go ahead. On Thursday, the BJP came back to power in the state despite winning only 13 seats.
CBI directed to collect all papers, evidence in 24 hrs, hold a preliminary inquiry in 72 hours.

Kolkata: In a severe blow to West Bengals ruling Trinamul Congress, the Calcutta high court on Friday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the Narada sting operation in which several top MPs, ministers and MLAs of chief minister Mamata Banerjees party were seen accepting cash before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Stung by the high court order, Ms Banerjee said her party would move the Supreme Court to challenge it. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty of the high court passed the order after finding the Narada footage to be authentic Referring to a report earlier submitted by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, where the footage was verified, it held the tapes were not tampered with.

Six Trinamul MPs  Sougata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Sultan Ahmed, Shubhendu Adhikari (now an MLA and transport minister), Prasun Banerjee and Mukul Roy; four Trinamul MLAs, including three ministers  So-van Chatterjee, also Kolk-ata mayor; Subrata Mukh-erjee and Firhad Hakim; Iqbal Ahmed and former minister Madan Mitra were among those shown in the Narada tapes.

According to the division bench, the expose was very important as those who are accused are well-established politically and were caught taking money in exchange for offering favours.

It noted that a free and fair probe by an independent agency was needed to restore faith in the public. The division bench also expressed its lack of faith in the state police.

In a rare move, the bench also ordered a departmental inquiry against IPS officer Syed Mohammed Hussain Meerza, who was also seen taking money in one of the Narada tapes. It observed that Mr Meerza, now posted as commanding officer of the special strike force at Barr-ackpore, in North 24-Pargan-as, could also be suspended if required.

The division bench asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to collect within 24 hours all the documents and evidence, including the sting video footage that were submitted to the high court earlier, and conduct a preliminary inquiry within the next 72 hours. CBI lawyer Ashrf Ali said: We are happy that the high court considered the CBI suitable to investigate the case so that the truth comes out.

In a dramatic twist, the chief minister visited Lalbazar, the city police headquarters, on Friday evening in the presence of police commissioner Rajiv Kumar. Narada CEO Mathew Samuel said: It is welcome... and a very fair decision by the Calcutta high court. What wrong did I do? I have suffered a lot of late.

Welcoming the high court order, the Opposition parties sought the removal of the tainted Trinamul ministers from Ms Banerjees government.

BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha said: We welcome the high courts ruling. The Trinamul and its government tried to cover up the case by misusing the police administration. We demand the tainted ministers be immediately removed from the Cabinet and the Trinamul MPs caught taking money in the footage must step down.

Leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan said: I wonder whether the chief minister would help the CBI in conducting its investigation or would again hit the streets on the issue.

The Trinamul earlier claimed itself to be a symbol of honesty. But it has now turned into a symbol of corruption. CPI(M) state secretary Surjyakanta Mishra tweeted: We welcome the high court verdict to conduct CBI inquiry on the #NaradaString. The TMC-BJP nexus must not be an impediment to conduct proper enquiry.
Pakistan had on Wednesday said it was planning to declare the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region as its fifth province.

Srinagar: An alliance of key Kashmiri separatist leaders on Friday asked Islamabad to give up its reported plan to make the Gilgit-Baltistan region of undivided Jammu and Kashmir Pakistans fifth province.

There are serious concerns about the proposals to declare Giglit-Baltistan the fifth province of Pakistan, the Kashmir Resistance Leadership, which has Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik in it, said in a statement.

It (the plan) will have a damaging impact over the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir. Unless and until the people of the state are provided an opportunity to decide the future course through a referendum, no division, alteration or changes are acceptable. Both India and Pakistan have no authority or right to alter the geographical status of the state, they said.

The separatist leaders said while they greatly appreciate Pakistans role in highlighting the Kashmir issue internationally, any deviation in its stance on Kashmir and tampering with its geographical entity would only prove detrimental to the just Kashmir cause. This comes a day after India hit out at Pakistan over plans to make Gilgit-Baltistan its fifth province. The entire state of J&K is an integral part of India. No unilateral step is acceptable, MEA spokesman Gopal Baglay said in New Delhi on Thursday. Pakistan had on Wednesday said it was planning to declare the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region as its fifth province. Pakistans minister for inter-provincial coordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada told Geo TV that a committee headed by foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz had proposed giving Gilgit-Baltistan the status of a province. The $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor passes through the area.

In January 2016, Kashmiri leaders on both sides of the Line of Control had in statements and letters to Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif voiced serious concerns over Islamabads proposal to make Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistans Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front leader Yasin Malik wrote to Mr Sharif warning him against such a move, saying it would only weaken the Kashmiri peoples national cause as it would have implications on the Kashmir dispute.

If Pakistan imposes its sovereign writ over Gilgit-Baltistan, India will then have a political and moral right to integrate Kashmir with it. With one stroke, Pakistan will be helping India to consolidate its writ on Kashmir, the letter said, urging Mr Sharif to stay away from such a course of action.
Long taken for granted as a solid literacy approach, the practice of having all students in a class read the same book has come under scrutiny in recent years.

Last month, school librarian and blogger Leigh Collazo , put the argument in the virtual spotlight once again. She wrote:

I am so tired of seeing secondary school teachers still clinging to the whole-class novel. Ive even seen a disturbing trend toward whole-school novels. Groan. Im sure forcing students to read a book that someone else picked for them makes all the reluctant and non-readers out there just fall head-over-heels in love with reading. Who doesnt love being force-fed something they dont want? That doesnt fit? That they dont care two licks about? And we wonder why so many teens say they hate reading.

Students maturity levels, reading levels, and interests vary greatly in secondary school, she wrote, making reading entire books together problematic. Classes can have deep, meaningful discussions by reading short stories, essays, and poems as a groupthe interminable whole-class novel units arent necessary.

Literacy expert Pam Allyn made a similar argument in a 2011 Education Week Commentary.

She told the story of a 12-year-old emerging reader whose class was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Allyn wrote:

He faked his way through it. Ashamed, he did whatever he could to distract the teacher and his fellow students from recognizing his struggle, from fooling around while everyone was reading to acting goofy when the teacher asked a question. In no way was this book a refuge for him, or an inspiration. It did not help him learn to read, nor did it help him to become a lifelong lover of text. And he was alienated and isolated from his peers.

The use of the whole-class novel is not good for anyone, she wrote. And in a world where students curate their own interests all the time (through apps and social media), teachers should encourage them to do the same with their reading.

Over the last few years, teacher-writers Donalyn Miller (who used to blog for Education Week Teacher) and Nancie Atwell have been strong advocates for allowing students to choose what they read, albeit with some guidance.

Reviving the Literary Canon?

Still, many teachers continue to see value in reading books as a class.

Teacher-writer Ariel Sacks, who blogs for Education Week Teacher , wrote yesterday that, there is powerful learningacademic, social, and personalthat can happen when a community of students experiences the world of a novel together and studies it. She published a book in 2013 titled Whole Novels For the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach , promoting a method for having middle school classes study novels in their entirety.

In a book on teaching literacy published last year , Doug Lemov, the chief executive officer of the Uncommon Schools charter network and the author of Teach Like a Champion, argued for a return to the literary canon. When a student makes a reference to a similarity between a scene her class has just read and a scene in another book, the power of that moment is magnified a hundredfold if everyone has also read that other book, he and his co-authors state in a more recent book, Reading Reconsidered.

Cheryl Mizerny, a veteran English teacher and blogger, acknowledged her affinity for the whole-class novel in a 2014 post , though somewhat apologetically.

I like teaching whole-class novels. There, Ive said it. I know it is not a popular point of view in the current English teaching world, but whole-class novels have been good to me. Over the years, I have found the whole-class novel to be an incredible community-building and learning process for my students and I have come up with some ways to make it a worthwhile experience.

And while its possible to go full-throttle using all whole-class novels or all self-selected reading, many teachers opt for a bit of both.

Mizerny emphasizes that choice reading and read alouds, in addition to whole-class novels, are part of her balanced literacy classroom.

Kelly Gallagher, the author or Readicide, has pushed for a mix of whole-class books and independent selections (though he tends to be an advocate for literary choice).

As Sacks put it, There is a way (probably more than one way) to develop and support independent readers who choose books to read for themselves, and also read and discuss novels as a class. There is great value in doing both ... .

So while the philosophical debate is likely to continue, many teachers simply wont feel a need to dig in their heels either way.

As always, feel free to contribute your own thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
Four rock art sites have been found in Bhopal division of Vindhyachal region.

Locals, majority of whom are tribals, believe that the sites are haunted by vampires, who leave blood marks on the stones by sinking their teeth on the rocks.

Bhopal: Haunted by myths and overshadowed by the famed Bhimbetka rock art site, known all over the world for its Paleolithic paintings, a few prehistoric cave drawings found in the Bhopal division have been suffering in obscurity.

Four rock art sites, found in the Bhopal division of the Vindhyachal region, inspire awe among archaeologists and historians. The paintings, believed to be from the prehistoric period, vividly depict the social life of cavemen.

Locals, majority of whom are tribals, believe that the sites are haunted by vampires, who leave blood marks on the stones by sinking their teeth on the rocks. The rock-shelters are known in the region as Chudail ki Dant or vampires teeth.

The sites found in the villages of Jhiri, Jaora, Daulatpur and Khatoria, located within a distance of around 40 km from Bhimbetka in Bhopal division, are rich in rock art heritage illustrating continuous cultural sequence from prehistoric period to 15th century. These sites, however, reel in anonymity and are crying for attention from government preservation agencies such as the Archaeological Survey of India. The rock art sites, spread over a 40-km-stretch, were discovered by the late eminent archaeologist Prof. Shankar Tiwari.

The oldest painting in the rock-shelters is at least 10,000 years old, retired superintendent of ASI, Bhopal, Dr Narayan Vyas, told this newspaper here on Tuesday.

The art, found both in still and in motion, are a symphony on stones created by the cavemen, he added. A team of archaeologists from Spain, led by Pere Ferrar, president of the museum of Constanta, visited the rock-shelters a couple of few weeks ago to document the cave art. Dr Vyas accompanied the team.

Kathotia, considered the richest among the four rock art sites, is home to around 65 rock-shelters from the Mesolithic or middle stone age (9,000 BCE  5,500 BCE).

The prehistoric paintings found in the rock-shelters include animal and human figurines, haunting scenes and group dances. Similarly, late period drawings seen in these caves include war scenes, archery and so on.

Floral designs and various worship symbols, such as the Sun, and circles found in them are believed to belong to the 14th or 15th century.

The subjects of the paintings spotted in the rock-shelters are common, but the styles are different, which meant that they were drawn in different periods, he added.

Red and green coloured drawings are of the prehistoric era. Cavemen of the period used hematite and weathered stones to paint in red and green colours respectively. Comparative analysis of materials used in these rock arts shows they are 10,000 years old, he added. The cave paintings have thrown light on the social lives of local inhabitants in continuous cultural sequence since the Mesolithic age (9,000 BCE). Some animal species, particularly two-horned rhinos, shown in the rock paintings indicate that the region was once home to these animals, which have since disappeared from the area.

Besides, the rock arts have thrown light on environmental and demographic situations of the contemporary periods in the stretch.

A scientific exploration and excavation will unfold the history buried in these caves, Dr Vyas said.

The four rock-shelters should be declared an extension of Bhimbetka world heritage site to ensure their protection, preservation and scientific documentation, ASI Bhopal superintendent Zulfiqar Ali told this newspaper.
Mr Rawat promised to work towards PM Narendra Modis goal of eliminating corruption and poverty.

BJP legislature party leader Trivendra Singh Rawat meeting Uttarakhand Governor KK Paul to stake claim for forming the government in the State. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Senior BJP leader and former RSS pracharak Trivendra Singh Rawat will be the next chief minister of Uttarakhand where the saffron party won 57 of the total 70 seats in the recently-concluded Assembly elections.

The BJPs state legislature party unanimously elected Mr Rawat as its leader on Friday, and the swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and other top BJP leaders are expected to attend the oath.

Narendra Singh Tomar, the BJPs central observer for the legislature partys meeting, said in Dehradun that Mr Rawats name was proposed by senior leaders and MLAs  Prakash Pant and Satpal Maharaj  and was seconded by a host of other legislators.

Satpal Mahraj, also a former Union minister, was among the contenders for the top job. He is likely to be appointed as the Assembly Speaker.

After the legislature party meeting, the MLAs left for the Raj Bhavan where they submitted the resolution on Mr Rawats unanimous election to governor K.K. Paul.

A graduate in journalism from the Garhwal University, Mr Rawat will be sworn in as the eighth chief minister of the hill state at the Parade Ground. He was appointed as the partys Jharkahnd in-charge in 2014, and had assisted Mr Shah in UP during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He has considerable administrative experience as he was minister in the BJP governments led by B.C. Khanduri and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.

He had joined the RSS aged 19, and six years later he was appointed pracharak for Dehradun city. He contested his first election in 2002 from Doiwala.

BJP state in-charge Shyam Jaju described Mr Rawat as the most suitable choice for the new responsibility since he was a leader who had both organisational and ministerial experience.

He is perfectly equipped to give the state the kind of leadership it needs, Mr Jaju said.

Mr Rawat promised to work towards PM Narendra Modis goal of eliminating corruption and poverty.

Providing people of the state with a corruption-free government and bringing about a major change in the lives of the poorest of the poor as targeted by the PM will be our priority, he said.
BJP National General Secretary (Organisation) Ram Lal exhorted party cadre to work towards winning the polls.

BJP President Amit Shah during a press conference at the party headquarters in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The BJP will hold a convention of its polling booth in-charges at Ramlila Maidan here, which the party's chief Amit Shah is likely to address as part of the preparation for the forthcoming municipal elections.

Five BJP workers -- 'Panch Parmeshwar' -- from each of the 13,372 polling stations in the national capital will assemble for the event to prepare groundwork for the April 22 civic polls.

BJP National General Secretary (Organisation) Ram Lal, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari, senior leader Shyam Jaju, Union minister Harsh Vardhan and other party leaders attended the monthly meet of the state unit to discuss the strategy for the MCD polls.

Ram Lal exhorted party cadre to work towards winning the polls.

He alleged that the Delhi government was "corrupt and inefficient" so the BJP's win will put pressure on it to "either work or tender resignation".

The BJP has dubbed the group of five booth in-charges for every polling station as 'Panch Parmeshwar' with Tiwari, saying these "workers will work like 'panchs' towards getting administrative justice for people".
Both the accused were arrested and produced today before a Special Judge at a local court.

New Delhi: Two Delhi Development Authority officials have been arrested by the CBI for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 4,000.



DDA Assistant Director, D R Mahto and Lower Division Clerk Suraj Mahto were arrested by the agency for allegedly demanding and accepting the bribe for issuing "no dues certificate" against a property located at Azad Market in the city.



A case was registered against the accused and searches were conducted at the premises of both the accused which led to recovery of certain documents, a CBI spokesperson said.



Both the accused were arrested and produced today before a Special Judge at a local court here.
The safai karmacharis raised slogans near 6 Flagstaff House in Civil Lines area, partially obstructing the flow of traffic in the street.

New Delhi: Scores of municipal sanitation workers on Friday staged a protest outside Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence in New Delhi, demanding payment of their salaries and arrears.

The safai karmacharis from the corporations raised slogans near the 6 Flagstaff House in Civil Lines area, partially obstructing the flow of traffic in the street.

"We have been telling time and again that our salary and arrear issues be resolved comprehensively but we are stuck between the AAP government and the BJP-led corporations.

"We have assembled here today to demand from Kejriwal that a meeting of the three municipal commissioners be called by him and the issue be resolved once and for all," Mazdoor Vikas Samyukta Morcha president Sanjay Gehlot said.

He said the workers have also threatening to go on an "indefinite" strike if their demands were not met.

"We have not got our due salaries and arrears and we will continue to protest till we don't," he said.

Gehlot claimed employees from all three civic bodies took part in the protest outside Kejriwal's residence. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had in late February approved a loan of Rs 200 crore to the cash-strapped North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) for payment of its employees' salaries.

In January, he had announced a fresh fund of Rs 119 crore to the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

The erstwhile unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was trifurcated in 2012 into NDMC, SDMC and EDMC. AAP government has said that adequate fund has been given by it to the three corporations, which have "not been properly utilised" by the MCD.

Gehlot alleged that despite announcement of release of funds, "workers have not received it."

The government in Lok Sabha recently had said that salaries of sanitation workers in NDMC have been paid till January.

"The South Delhi Municipal Corporation has informed that there is no pendency of disbursement of salary to its employees.

"The salary of EDMC employees other than sanitation staff are reportedly pending for January and February 2017," the Centre had said in the Lower House.
Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik held a meeting with senior officials on planning of a strategy to handle the agitation.

Haryana farmers on their way to a Jat agitation rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Ahead of the proposed Jat agitation on March 20, Delhi Police today said it will not allow tractors, trolleys and private buses ferrying protesters to enter the national capital.

Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik held a meeting with senior officials on planning of a strategy to handle the agitation.

The entire Delhi Police will be on its toes to monitor the situation and leaves of all officers have been cancelled, a senior police officer said.

Protesters in tractor, trolleys or private buses would not be allowed to enter Delhi and such vehicles will be impounded at the borders, as per the guidelines of the Supreme Court, the officer said.

Those with batons or some weapons will also not given entry to Delhi. Force with anti-riot equipment will be deployed at border areas of Delhi to keep a watch.

"They haven't sought permission from us for the agitation. In case they do apply for permission, it will be examined," the officer said.

Apart from Delhi Police, Rapid Police Force and other central paramilitary forces will be also be deployed as part of the arrangement, he added.
Shakuntala has alleged that she has approached the jurisdictional police many times but to no avail.

New Delhi: In a bizarre case, a temple situated in Ghazipur in Delhi sent shockwaves among devotees when they came to offer prayers on Friday. Atop the main entrance of the temple, it was written Yeh Mandir Bikau Hai (This temple is for sale). It is alleged that the woman priest who has turned her home into a temple is getting threats from the local goons.

The temple, which belongs to a 62-year-old woman named Shakuntala, has alleged that the local goons have been giving her a harrowing time. The senior citizen, who has been living in Ghazipur since the past 25 years, is unmarried and had transformed her house into a temple after the locals persuaded her to do so. Shakuntala has alleged that she has approached the jurisdictional police many times but to no avail. According to her, since she has turned her house into a temple, a few anti-social elements in the area have been troubling her and threaten her to not run the temple. She also said that the miscreants have asked her to leave the area and run away. The 62-year-old lady even brought the matter in the notices of policemen but nothing changed. Unable to take the torture, the lone woman finally decided to sell out the temple.

Shakuntala to avoid any untoward incident put out a notice on the temples entrance, which read, Yeh Mandir Bikau Hai. The news spread like a wildfire when the devotees who flock the temple were in a fix when they read the notice. The locals now are a harried lot, as they believe that Shakuntala shouldnt sell the temple as many have emotions attached with it. If the temple will be moved away from here or will get close where will we go to offer prayers? The temple has been here for years, said a local.

When contacted police, the officials said that they are unaware about the matter and have not received any compliant about the same. However, they will look into the matter.

Meanwhile, according to village head, Veer Singh Mulla, the temple is the private property of Shakuntala and she has put it out on sale for personal reasons.
Proof of parking space must to get taxi permits.

Baijal had directed authorities to identify roads and commercial streets in the city as No Tolerance Zone to deal with the situation.

New Delhi: In a bid to deal with the parking problem in the national capital, the Delhi governments transport department is planning to introduce a rule to first seek proof of parking space from cab owners before issuing permits to them in the city.

This comes two days after a draft parking policy was presented before lieutenant-governor Anil Baijal, who had issued a number of directions to concerned authorities to tackle parking woes.

A senior government official said there was a need of regulating parking space for cabs whose numbers in the national capital have reached around 1.44 lakh. The government is considering to introduce a new rule under which cab drivers will be asked to produce a proof to park their vehicles before issuing permits to them, the official said.

Another official said as there was no such condition at present, cab drivers park their vehicles in residential areas, encroaching on road space. As per official records, there are 1,12,511 motor cabs registered in the national capital till December last year. Besides, 29,948 maxi cabs and 2,396 luxury taxis are registered with transport department.

Earlier this week, Mr Baijal had directed authorities to identify roads and commercial streets in the city as No Tolerance Zone to deal with the situation.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was also asked to work out parking slots for para-transit vehicles and underground parking for public convenience and last mile connectivity.
The state DGP delivered the warrant to the judge surrounded by the other IPS officers and spoke to him for a while.

Kolkata: Virtually going on a war path with the Supreme Court, Calcutta high court judge Justice C.S. Karnan on Friday refused to accept the bailable warrant issued by the apex court against him in a contempt case. In the morning, West Bengal director-general of police (DGP) Surajit Kar Purkayastha, leading a 100-member police team, visited Justice Karnans residence in New Town to serve the warrant to him as directed by the SC.

The top cop was accompanied by Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar, additional director-general of police (criminal investigation department) Rajesh Kumar and Bidhannagar police commissioner Gyanwant Singh. Mr Purkayastha and the three other senior police officers entered the judges residence while the police team stood guard outside. The state DGP delivered the warrant to the judge surrounded by the other IPS officers and spoke to him for a while. After finishing his task, Mr Purkayastha left with his police team.

In a letter to the seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar that has recently initiated a suo moto contempt proceeding and issued a bailable warrant against the high court judge, Justice Karnan, however, said that he has rejected the warrant. He wrote, My Lords, your bailable order dated March 10, 2017 in the suo moto contempt proceedings, today top police officers from the Calcutta high court circle came to my residence in order to execute the bailable warrant earmarked for 10.30 am on March 31, 2017. I rejected the same after assigning valid reasons.

Later, the 61-year-old judge said, The whole world is laughing at our Supreme Court for the way it has been behaving with me.

According to him, when the law takes its own course, he would also take legal steps to fight for himself. In an unprecedented order, the SC had issued the warrant against Justice Karnan directing him to appear before it on March 31 in a contempt case.

Countering the order of the apex court, Justice Karnan argued that there was no locus standi to issue the bailable warrant against a sitting judge of a high court. He claimed that he was being targeted for being a member of the dalit community. Justice Karnan also issued an order of registration of a case under Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 against Chief Justice of India Justice J.S. Khehar and six other judges.
The directive comes after the police busted a foeticide racket in Maharashtra's Sangli district.

The Sangli police had earlier this month arrested a homoeopathic doctor from Mhaisal village in Sangli in connection with the death of a pregnant woman during an abortion at his hospital. (Photo: AFP/Representational)

Thane: Thane Collector Dr Mahendra Kalyankar has ordered inspection of all clinics and hospitals in the district to find out if they adhere to the guidelines of the PCPNDT Act.

The directive comes after the police busted a foeticide racket in Maharashtra's Sangli district. The Sangli police had earlier this month arrested a homoeopathic doctor from Mhaisal village in Sangli in connection with the death of a pregnant woman during an abortion at his hospital.

The arrest was made a day after 19 aborted foetuses wrapped in polythene bags were found near a stream in the village. The Sangli police suspect that all the 19 were female foetuses.

All the hospitals and clinics in Thane have been directed to strictly implement the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act guidelines, said a release issued yesterday by the district administration.

Kalyankar held a meeting with the concerned officials in this connection on Wednesday when it was decided that all the hospitals and clinics in Thane would be inspected.

According to the release, the sex ratio in Maharashtra is 899 girls per 1,000 boys.

The ratio in Thane district was 914 girls per 1,000 boys in 2013-14, 914:1,000 in 2014-15, 907:1,000 in 2015-16, and 897:1,000 till last month for 2016-17, the release said.

The PCPNDT Act aims to stop female foeticide and arrest the declining sex ratio in India. Prenatal sex determination is banned under the Act. The district authorities have also announced an award for those who inform about the PCPNDT Act violations.

There are 968 registered sonography centres in the district of which 571 are operational at present, the release said.
Which blended-learning software programs improve student achievement?

Its a perennial question for educators and school district officials, who are under constant pressure to improve learning and boost scores, but must navigate an often-overwhelming marketplace of vendors making all manner of claims about their products.

To help, the Regional Education Laboratory Central (a contractor for the Institute of Education Sciences, which is the research agency for the federal education department) released late last month a summary of 17 of the highest-quality research studies of online and blended-learning software programs . The focus was on programs that a) require a teacher to be involved, either via face-to-face or online interactions, and b) can be used to customize content, difficulty, pacing and other factors in order to adjust to individual students needs.

First, the REL researchers looked at the quality of the studies, as determined by whether they met the evidence standards established by the What Works Clearinghouse.

Then, the lab looked at whether the various programs were found to have statistically significant impacts on student achievement.

All told, the paper outlines what the research says about 14 online and blended learning programs. Here are some of the highlights.

Mostly positive:

Cognitive Tutor Algebra I: Studies from 2002, 2007 and 2014 all met the What Works Clearinghouse standards without reservation. All found significant positive effects on key student achievement measures: end-course-assessments and grades in the 2002 study; course grades in the 2007 study; and high-school math proficiency in the 2014 study. The 2014 study found no significant effects on students confidence and attitudes about math, or on middle-school students math achievement. The 2007 study found no significant effects on end-of-course exam scores. Cognitive Tutor Algebra I was also included in group studies in 2007 and 2009 (see below) and found to have no significant effects on student achievement.

Studies from 2002, 2007 and 2014 all met the What Works Clearinghouse standards without reservation. All found significant positive effects on key student achievement measures: end-course-assessments and grades in the 2002 study; course grades in the 2007 study; and high-school math proficiency in the 2014 study. The 2014 study found no significant effects on students confidence and attitudes about math, or on middle-school students math achievement. The 2007 study found no significant effects on end-of-course exam scores. Cognitive Tutor Algebra I was also included in group studies in 2007 and 2009 (see below) and found to have no significant effects on student achievement. READ 180: A 2011 study found that use of this software program had significant positive effects on students reading comprehension and vocabulary, but no significant effects on students reading fluency and spelling. The study met WWC standards without reservation. READ 180 was also included in the 2007 and 2009 group studies described below. It was found to have no significant effects on student achievement.

A 2011 study found that use of this software program had significant positive effects on students reading comprehension and vocabulary, but no significant effects on students reading fluency and spelling. The study met WWC standards without reservation. READ 180 was also included in the 2007 and 2009 group studies described below. It was found to have no significant effects on student achievement. LeapTrack: A 2007 study looked at multiple blended-learning software interventions, and a 2009 study followed-up with an examination of the same programs. Both met WWC standards without reservation. Of all the programs included in the 2007 group study, LeapTrack that was determined to have a positive effect on student Stanford Achievement Test scores. The 2009 follow-up study found no effect for any of the programs, including LeapTrack.

A 2007 study looked at multiple blended-learning software interventions, and a 2009 study followed-up with an examination of the same programs. Both met WWC standards without reservation. Of all the programs included in the 2007 group study, LeapTrack that was determined to have a positive effect on student Stanford Achievement Test scores. The 2009 follow-up study found no effect for any of the programs, including LeapTrack. Time to Know: A 2012 study found this program had a significant positive effect on 5th grade students reading scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. That part of the study was determined to meet WWC standards, with some reservations. The study also found that Time to Know had positive effects on students math scores, attendance, discipline, and motivation to learn, but the REL researchers determined those parts of the original study did not meet WWC design standards.

No evidence of impact:



Destination Reading, PLATO Focus, Waterford Early Reading: In both the 2007 and 2009 group studies, these three programs were not found to have any significant effect on student achievement.

The negative:



Cognitive Tutor Geometry: A 2010 study found significant negative effects of this blended-learning software program on students end-of-course assessment grades, and no effects on students math confidence and attitudes. The study met WWC standards without reservation.

A number of other studies found evidence of positive impacts for other programs, but were determined by the REL researchers not to meet WWC design standards.

The REL researchers also looked at two correlational studies examining the impact of student-teacher interaction on student achievement in full-time online schools.

One of those studies, published in 2013, found a significant positive correlation between the frequency and quality of contact between teachers and students on students grades and course completion rates. The study said the keys to effective teacher-student contact were academic feedback, information on courses, and interpersonal support.

The other study, however, was less clear. Published in 2012, it found a significant positive relationship between the number of comments a teacher provided to Algebra I students and those students scores on an end-of-course assessment. The opposite was true for Algebra 2.

Educators may use the findings to consider individual online or blended learning programs for which there is evidence of influencing student achievement, the REL researchers concluded. The findings might also inform educators decision-making about online and blended learning programs.

See also:


Following this, the judge granted CBI time till March 30 to file its reply, and adjourned hearing.

Mumbai:Trial in the sensational Sheena Bora murder case will not start till March 30. Reason being Bombay high court on Thursday granted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) time to file its reply on the application filed by Peter Mukerjea and his wife Indrani, seeking to quash the special CBI court order allowing a witness  a police officer, to tell the court what driver Shyamwar Rai told him about the case when he was in police custody in an illegal arms case.

The Mukerjeas application argued that the police officer could not testify what Rai had told him about the case when in police custody because at a later stage, Rai had himself given a confessional statement and the prosecution must rely on that statement and not what Rai told the police earlier. On Thursday when the matter came up for hearing before Justice Ravindra Ghuge, CBI counsel sought two weeks time to file a reply on the application filed by the Mukerjeas.

While Indranis lawyer Gunjan Mangala said, We had suggested that CBI continue the trail by calling some other witness but CBI counsel wanted the matter to be deferred completely and stated before the court that the agency would not go ahead with the trial till the petition was decided.

Following this, the judge granted CBI time till March 30 to file its reply, and adjourned hearing.

On February 23, police sub-inspector Ganesh Dalvi who was posted at Khar police station when Rai was first arrested in an illegal arms case, was called as the first witness in the case. However, as soon as Dalvi started saying what Rai had told him, defence took objection saying that Rai was no longer an accused and hence, his statement given before the police was not admissible in a court of law.
Mr Mukherjee further added that students must be integrated with good educational qualities and there should no space for narrow mindsets.

Mumbai: There should be no room for intolerance and hatred in educational institutes, and it should accommodate multiple thoughts, said President Pranab Mukherjee at the special convocation ceremony at the Mumbai University campus. Mr Mukherjee further added that students must be integrated with good educational qualities and there should no space for narrow mindsets.

A good education system is one that can help develop social responsiveness in students. Ways should be devised to integrate students engagement with society in the academic framework, he said.

The president conferred honorary D. Litt. to Indias eminent agricultural scientist Dr M.S. Swaminathan. I have known Dr Swaminathan as well as closely interacted with him on issues of national importance, on many occasions during the past five decades. His work brought about a sea change in the life of our nation. It is due to his pioneering efforts that our country transformed from its status of ship-to-mouth existence to one of the leading producers and exporters of food grains in the world, Mr Mukherjee further added. He also said, Growth of the economy depends on higher education. The quality of training provided to students employed by the economy determines the level of its competence. The induction of quality manpower is the first point of contact that the economy has with the higher education system. The graduates have to meet the skill-set requirements of the domestic economy. The course work in our campuses must be aligned to the needs of the industry.
Haqqani who did meet with the commission has always publicly criticised the attack.

Karachi: Whatever we may think or say about Husain Haqqani, he was not primarily responsible for the US assault in Abbottabad on the night of May 1 and 2, 2011. He denies he had anything to do with the planning and execution of the assault, and despite widely held reservations about his conduct as ambassador in Washington, nothing has surfaced that contradicts his denials.

However, his recent statements do raise questions. In an article in the Washington Post, Haqqani states: The relationships I forged with members of Obamas campaign team ... eventually enabled the US to discover and eliminate Bin Laden without depending on Pakistans intelligence service or military which were suspected of sympathy toward Islamic militants.

He goes on to say: Friends I made from the Obama campaign were able to ask, three years later, as National Security Council officials, for help in stationing US Special Operations and intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistans civilian leaders, who approved and these Americans proved invaluable when Obama decided to carry out the operation without notifying Pakistan. Once again, there is an even stronger suggestion of an active role and a sense of pride in achieving a shared objective.

So? Pakistan was under an international obligation to cooperate in the apprehension of OBL. An elected government apparently decided to act upon this obligation. The leaders of this government instructed their ambassador in Washington accordingly. They also sent specific instructions to enable the ambassador to facilitate the rapid issue of necessary visas to US special operations and intelligence personnel  who obviously disguised their real identities in their visa applications  and who proved invaluable when the time for action came. What is wrong or illegal about this? And if there was anything, who should be held responsible: the subordinate ambassador or the elected leaders?

But, then, why not stand up and say so  publicly as well as in testimony to the Abbottabad Inquiry Commission? In fact, the President, the PM and the COAS declined to meet with the commission. Haqqani who did meet with the commission has always publicly criticised the attack. Despite some possible misstatements to the commission regarding the issue of visas there has been no proof of his involvement until his suggestions in the article. Why is he simultaneously denying any involvement with the US assault and suggesting the contrary in his article?

Whatever conclusions one may draw about the consistency and purpose of his statements and the credibility of his behaviour, they do not add up to treachery. He was, at most, a willing instrument of his political superiors. However, Haqqani has effectively pointed a finger towards his civilian leaders at the time. No wonder, they are calling for another commission of inquiry!

Our political leaders, however, are concentrating on Haqqani rather than the real tragedy of Abbottabad. This is a measure of their immaturity and irresponsibility. In 2013, Pildat (Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency) noted a leaked interim draft of the Abbottabad Commission concluded that the Abbottabad assault was the result of inadequate threat assessments, narrow scenario planning and insufficient consideration of available policy options. If the institutions and whole system of governance were dysfunctional they were so because of irresponsible governance over a sustained period...

Pildat further noted: Governments response before, during and after May 2 appears in large part to be a story of complacency, ignorance, negligence, incompetence, irresponsibility, and possibly worse at various levels inside and outside government... Because of a lack of consensus in the Abbottabad Comission the final report submitted to the then Prime Minister comprised a main report and a dissenting report. The government has not presented it to Parliament or made it public despite a unanimous resolution of the Senate and National Assembly.

The new Commission of Inquiry Act of 1956 will require the government to make such reports public within 30 days of submission. The Prime Minister, accordingly, should now release the reports. This matter, and not hounding Haqqani, should be our urgent priority.

By arrangement with Dawn
Google added "upsetting-offensive" in its latest guidelines for quality raters.

Google is trying to improve the quality of its search results by directing review teams to flag content that might come across as upsetting or offensive.

New York: Google is trying to improve the quality of its search results by directing review teams to flag content that might come across as upsetting or offensive.

With the change, content with racial slurs could now get flagged under a new category called "upsetting-offensive." So could content that promotes hate or violence against a specific group of people based on gender, race or other criteria.

While flagging something doesn't directly affect the search results themselves, it's used to tweak the company's software so that better content ranks higher. This approach might, for instance, push down content that is inaccurate or has other questionable attributes, thereby giving prominence to trustworthy sources.

The review teams - comprised of contractors known as "quality raters" - already comb through websites and other content to flag questionable items such as pornography. Google added "upsetting-offensive" in its latest guidelines for quality raters. Google declined to comment on the changes, which were reported in the blog Search Engine Land and elsewhere.

The guidelines, which run 160 pages, are an interesting look into how Google ranks the quality of its search results. For instance, it gives examples of "high-quality" pages, such as the home page of a newspaper that has "won seven Pulitzer Prize awards," and "low-quality" pages, such as an article that includes "many grammar and punctuation errors."

The guidelines cite an example of "Holocaust history" as a search query. A resulting website listing "Top 10 reasons why the holocaust didn't happen" would get flagged.

The new "upsetting-offensive" flag instructs quality raters to "flag to all web results that contain upsetting or offensive content from the perspective of users in your locale, even if the result satisfies the user intent." So even if the results are what the person searched for, such as white supremacist websites, they could still get flagged. But it doesn't mean the results won't show up at all when someone searches for them.
Authorities said the child's 37-year-old mother was found dead in a bedroom of the East Hartford home on Monday.

East Hartford: A 3-year-old girl lived alone with her dead mother for several days in their apartment with nothing to eat but cereal that had spilt on a floor, police officials said.

Authorities said the child's 37-year-old mother was found dead in a bedroom of the East Hartford home on Monday when a social worker went to check on the girl because she hadn't been in day-care for several days. Police identified the mother on Thursday as Twanna Toler.

Lt. Joshua Litwin said investigators do not know exactly how long the girl had been living alone but said it was "definitely more than a couple of days." The girl was dehydrated but is expected to be OK, Litwin said. She was taken to Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.

Police said they found no evidence of a crime or break-in. Investigators are awaiting results of an autopsy by the medical examiner's office.

A neighbour, Susan Tash, said the television in Toler's apartment was very loud over the past week, and she heard the girl scream and cry. She said she just thought the child was being fussy. She said she had no idea anything was wrong.

"I was mortified," Tash said after Toler's body was found. "It hit me hard because the noise upstairs and I felt kind of responsible."

The social worker who went to the apartment Monday knocked on the door and got the child to unlock it, Litwin said. The girl believed her mother was sleeping, the officer said.

It wasn't immediately clear who has custody of the child. The state Department of Children and Families was called in.

Court records show Toler had a criminal record that included narcotics possession, assault, larceny and failure to appear in court. Records show she also was arrested on a misdemeanour larceny charge in October and was supposed to appear in court for the case Thursday. She had pleaded not guilty.
"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said.

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday accused China of not doing enough to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, after his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against Pyongyang was an option.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said on Twitter. Earlier in Seoul, Tillerson said military action would be a possibility if the threat posed by North Korea were to escalate.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."

Tillerson announced the end of Washington's "strategic patience" -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama. The secretary of state is currently touring northeast Asia, after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

Tillerson is expected in China on Saturday. Beijing is North Korea's main diplomatic ally and trade partner.China shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.
US president Donald Trump's spying claims are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, the spokesperson said.

London: In an unusual move, Britain's intelligence and security organisation on Friday dismissed as "utterly ridiculous" Donald Trump's allegations that it helped Barack Obama wire-tap him during the US presidential elections.

The US President had claimed that his Trump Tower residence in New York was under surveillance authorised by former President Obama and allegations of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) involvement were initially

made by former judge Andrew Napolitano.

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA (National Security Agency), he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had quoted Napolitano as saying.

The GCHQ took the rare step of making a public statement about the allegations as a US Senate Committee concluded yesterday that there were "no indications" of Trump Tower being under surveillance by the US government before or after the election.

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then President-elect are nonsense, a GCHQ spokesperson said.

"They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," the spokesperson said. Senior officials from GCHQ are also expected to make representations to its American counterpart, the NSA, about their concern over such allegations being made, British media reported.
The attorneys have entered the lame-duck periods in which experts say they can be just as effective but may not have as much latitude.

US Attorney Deirdre Daly learned that she would be staying. (Photo: AP)

Hartford: Ousted in a purge of President Barack Obama appointees, US Attorney Deirdre Daly spent the weekend clearing out her office, receiving calls from well-wishers and making tearful farewells. Then, on Sunday night, she learned she would be staying.

Daly, the top federal law enforcement official for the district of Connecticut, is among a small number of career prosecutors who were given more time to reach service anniversaries that are important for retirement benefits.

They now enter lame-duck periods in which experts say they can be just as effective but may not have as much latitude.

"It feels a bit like I've risen from the dead," Daly said in an interview. "I don't at all feel diminished by this. If anything, I feel I've received a lot of support for which I am tremendously grateful."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Republican, on Friday requested the resignations of 46 remaining US attorneys who had been nominated by Obama. It's fairly customary for the 93 US attorneys to leave their posts once a new president is in office, and many had already left or were making plans for their departures.

Daly, a registered Democrat who never has been active politically, submitted her resignation but was given a reprieve until the end of October, when she completes 20 years with the Justice Department.

The US attorney for the Northern District of New York, Richard Hartunian, was allowed to stay through June, when he reaches the 20-year mark.

Fifteen-year Justice Department veteran John Huber, the US attorney for Utah, will stay on an interim basis for another four months.
The hotel owner, Mandy Miles, 50, heard the woman, Cerys Yemm, screaming and called the police to help the woman.

London: In a case of gruesome cannibal attack and murder, a 34-year-old man harmed a 22-year-old woman with a screwdriver before proceeding to eat her face, in November 2014. The incident took place at the Sirhowy Arms Hotel at Argoed, near Caerphilly in South Wales.

The hotel owner, Mandy Miles, 50, heard the woman, Cerys Yemm, screaming and called the police to help the woman. Miles was frantic when she saw the man, Matthew Williams eating Yemm.

"He's actually eating her. It's awful. His name is Matthew Williams and he's in Room 7. There was screaming and screaming. Oh my God. It's awful. I went into the room and he's killed her. Oh my God. Is this real? , she cried to the 999 operator.

According to The Independent, Williams and Yemm had met only sometime before the murder. Miles told Gwent Coroners Court that the incident occurred at around 1 am and she unlocked the hotel room after hearing the screaming. She found Yemm, a waitress lying on her back and Williams on top of her.

She was shocked and told the court that the scene looked like a horror film. She had also called out to Williams, who did not seem to have heard her at all.

Williams died after the police tasered him on their arrival. The court was told that Williams, a paranoid schizophrenic, had been released from the hospital, two weeks earlier. But unfortunately, he was not given any medication despite his complaints of hearing voices. He was also not supervised, even though he had previous records of mental health issues.

His mother, Sally Ann Williams claimed that the family had tried to fix appointments with doctors but they couldnt. She also said that her son told her he was feeling paranoid and hearing voices, few days before the murder took place.

Williams would often steal money for drugs and became paranoid as a result of drug-induced paranoid schizophrenia, but his mother did not want him to go to prison. He finally did go to prison, but his mental health deteriorated after his release.

His best friend said that his mother was trying her best to get him medical help. Williams too wanted to be helped.
Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, dozens of residents were still unaccounted for.

Rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris. (Photo: Representational/AP)

Beirut: The US military says it carried out an airstrike in northern Syria against an al-Qaeda target, but denies deliberately targeting a mosque where at least 42 people were killed according to an independent monitor.

The US-led coalition has been bombing jihadist groups in war-torn Syria for several years, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

"We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target -- which was where the meeting took place -- is about 50 feet (15 metres) from a mosque that is still standing," said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: "US forces conducted an airstrike on an al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists."

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

"We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike," he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people had died in the attack on the village mosque, most of them civilians.

The head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said, "the raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians".

"More than 100 people were wounded," he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from the rubble and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, said that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time when there is usually religious lessons for men in it".

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

An AFP reporter at the scene said rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris.

Footage published by Halab Today, an online media group focused on news in Aleppo, showed piles of rubble where the mosque allegedly stood.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began six years ago with anti-government protests.

A cessation of hostilities was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued across much of the country.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

But the skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out air strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition, meanwhile, has been bombing jihadist groups in Syria since 2014.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014. Critics say the real number is much higher.
UPDATED

The Council of the Great City Schoolswhich represents 70 of the nations largest urban public school systemshas panned President Donald Trumps proposed budget , arguing that the spending plan lacks the clarity and funding schools need to implement the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

Trumps proposed budget seeks to cut the Education Departments roughly $68 billion budget by $9 billion, a 13 percent drop.

Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, panned the budget, arguing that it will hamstring preparation for the coming school year because there is no clarity about funding to help schools carry out the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the latest iteration of the K-12 education law.

The bipartisan enthusiasm over the enactment of ESSA 15 months ago was not built on an expectation that federal education funding would be reduced, Casserly said in a prepared statement. Urban school districts across the country are working hard to make the new law a success and are willing to be held accountable for its results. But the new administration and Congress need to do their parts ... to ensure that the promise of ESSA is made real.

The proposal would set spending levels for federal fiscal 2018, which generally would affect the 2018-19 school year. The spending plan must still face congressional scrutinyand it could take months for House and Senate lawmakers to decide what parts of the plan to accept or reject.

A strong and productive nation requires a significant investment in its public schools and public school students, and this new funding proposal falls far short of that goal, Casserly said.

As reported by my colleagues at Education Weeks Politics K-12 blog , Trumps proposal would strip funding for two programs that are near and dear to the hearts of school leaders in many urban districts: the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, or Title II, which helps states and districts train and hire teachers, and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which finances after-school and extended-learning programs.

An outline of Trumps budget proposal from the federal Office of Management and Budget said there was little evidence that the programs were effective.

Taxpayers deserve to know their dollars are being spent efficiently and effectively, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a prepared statement. This budget is the first step in investing in education programs that work, and maintaining our Departments focus on supporting states and school districts in providing an equal opportunity for a quality education to all students.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals were also among the other groups criticizing the proposal, noting the effort to scrap the $2 billion-plus in Title II funds as the most eminent threat to schools.

As states are ramping up their school improvement plans under ESSA, the president is ramping down support for the very professionals committed to educating our nations students, 80 percent of whom are in public schools, the associations executive director, JoAnn Bartoletti, said in a prepared statement.

The presidents strategy is clear: Starve our public schools, blame educators for not delivering, and fund alternatives under the disguise of choice. Students and communities will suffer as a result.

[UPDATE: New Leaders, the New York City-based organization that trains school leaders to work in high-poverty schools, said the proposed cuts would jeopardize vital programs that benefit students across the country.

The group said it was concerned about the elimination of Title II, Part A, which gives states the opportunity to boost efforts to improve school leader and teacher effectiveness.

Slashing funding for Title II, Part A would be a missed opportunity for school leaders and the teachers and students they serve, the organization said in a statement. Losing vital financial resources for professional development and support risks increasing teacher turnover, exacerbating talent shortages and achievement gaps, and severely constraining educators ability to learn and enact 21st-century instructional strategies. Ultimately, these dramatic cuts will make it more difficult for teachers and schools to prepare all young people for success in college, career, or whatever their next step in life may be.

New Leaders also said it was concerned about the fate of programs that were not named in the budget, including the School Leader Recruitment and Support Program (SLRSP), which was previously called the School Leadership Program and helps fund initiatives to recruit, mentor, and train principals and assistant principals. The organization urged congress to maintain or increase funding for those programs.]

The Politics K-12 team has wrapped up other reactions to President Trumps budget proposal. You can read more here .

Heres a look at Casserlys statement .
The top official in Sansha City that administers China's island claims said such stations were being built on six islands and reefs.

Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie said that preparatory work on the stations was among the government's priorities for 2017, but gave no other details. (Photo: Representational/AP)

Beijing: China plans to build an environmental monitoring station on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, potentially raising new concerns over Beijing's actions to assert its claims in the strategically crucial water body.

The top official in Sansha City that administers China's island claims was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying such stations were being built on six islands and reefs, including Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.

Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie told the paper that preparatory work on the stations was among the government's priorities for 2017, but gave no other details.

Beijing seized Scarborough in 2012 after a prolonged standoff with Philippine vessels. Taiwan also includes the island in its South China Sea claims.

The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group that China has controlled since seizing parts away from Vietnam in 1974.

Also this week, the commander in chief of China's navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing.

China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnam's central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam.

The two navies and their countries should "together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea," Shen was quoted as saying by China's defense ministry.

South China Sea tensions have eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines, invalidating China's sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal.

China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunal's ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated USD 5 trillion in global trade passes each year.

China's creation of seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, complete with airstrips and military installations, has drawn criticism from the US and others and focused attention on Beijing's long-term plans for Scarborough.

US diplomats have said privately that reclamation work on the shoal would be seen as crossing a red line because of its proximity to the main Philippine islands.

During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson compared China's island-building and deployment of military assets to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and suggesting China's access to the island should not be allowed.

The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when Tillerson visits Beijing for talks with top officials on Saturday and Sunday. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have long contested ownership of the South China Sea, which straddles one of the world's busiest sea lanes and is believed to sit atop vast deposits of oil and gas.
For the first time, Taiwanese Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan said the island can strike in China targets, up to 1,500 km. Both sides start a military buildup. Trump is set to deliver new sophisticated weapons to Taiwan.

Taipei (AsiaNews)  The cross-straight war of words and sabre-rattling is getting louder. As voices calling for a military solution to bring it the rebel island by force are getting louder in mainland China, Taiwan openly admitted that it has missiles capable of striking Chinese cities.

In a report to parliament on Thursday, Taiwan's Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan was asked whether Taiwan was capable of launching missiles at mainland China. "Yes," he replied, noting that they can travel over 1,500 kilometres.

Until now, it was known that China had hundreds of missiles pointed at the island and that Taiwan could produce its own cruise missiles, but for the first time the Defence Ministry decided to provide details.

After China announced on 5 March a 7 per cent defence budget increase, Taiwan responded by announcing plans to boost its own defence spending.

Defence Minister Feng said that military expenditures next year would rise to 3 per cent of Taiwan's GDP, up from 2 per cent this year. The Ministry also announced plans to procure stealth fighter jets.

Fengs report comes a few months after Tsai Ing-wen was elected president with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which backed independence in the past.

Because Tsai did not explicitly endorse the mainlands One China policy in her inaugural speech, , Beijing began to boycott cross-straight relations, communication and Taiwanese goods.

In 1992 Beijing and Taipei had agreed on a One-China policy with reunification as the ultimate goal but with each side free to envisage how it cold be achieved.

This agreement to disagree had fostered cross-straight trade relations, tourism, mail and maritime contacts. However, since Tsais victory, voices calling for reunification by force have grown in China.

All those pro-independence moves will stimulate the mainland to take coercive steps to respond, Li Yihu, dean of Peking Universitys Taiwan Studies Institute, told the South China Morning Post, adding that The voices have become louder.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said in his policy report at the opening of the National Peoples Congress that Beijing would absolutely not accept anyone separating Taiwan from China in any way, shape or form.

In all probability, Li was referring to both Tsai Ing-wen and US president Donald Trump. Upon taking office, the US leader said that he would re-examine US attitudes towards the One-China policy, but later backed away.

Meanwhile, anonymous Taiwanese government officials said the Trump administration is ready to sell the island-nation sophisticated weapon systems to boost its defence, including tactical missiles designed to destroy electronic transmissions coming from surface-to-air radar systems.
The building was full of worshipers for the evening prayer. It is not clear who is responsible for the attack. The American coalition claims to have targeted jihadists, but not a mosque.

Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At least 42 people, mostly civilians were killed in an air raid that destroyed a mosque yesterday evening in the village of al-Jineh, 30 kilometers west of Aleppo, in an area controlled by rebels . It is not yet clear who is responsible for the attack



According to the London based NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the al-Jineh mosque was full of worshipers for the evening prayer. The village is located in what is the main area under rebel control.

It is reported that there were jihadist factions inside the mosque. "The raid was conducted by unidentified airplanes, and killed 42 people, mostly civilians - said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory - more than a hundred are wounded." At the time of the declaration there were still many dispersed and trapped under the rubble of the mosque.

Syrian and Russian forces are operative in the area, while the US carries out airstrikes against the rebels jihadists in the region. The United States claim to have conducted an operation in the area against militants of al-Qaeda, but denies having hit a mosque. The Central Command, after stating that the American attack had taken place in the neighboring district of Idlib, recanted saying that the exact location is not known.

United States led coalition, operating in the territory against the jihadists in 2014, admitted that it had unintentionally caused 220 civilian casualties. Critics say the numbers are much higher.

Russia launched a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has often dismissed allegations of killing civilians during raids.

Yesterday's attack comes just one day after the suicide attack in Damascus, where at least 31 people were killed, a bloody commemoration of the sixth anniversary of the Syrian civil war. Since the conflict more than 320 thousand people have been killed, and 11 million have been forced to flee.
by Wang Zhicheng

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Xi Jinping yesterday signed 14 contracts for a value of 65 billion US dollars. The monarch, with a retinue of a thousand persons, is on an official visit to China March 15 to 18. The agreements were signed for energy, space science and finance. Several of these agreements are related to cooperation for some chemical and oil projects in both countries.



According to experts, the visit has economic implications, but also strategic. Saudi Arabia was China's first oil supplier for many years, from 2000 until 2015, when it was surpassed by Russia. But from January 2017 Riyadh has once again become the main supplier and China is in turn Saudi Arabias first trading partner.



Beijing for its part wants secure oil supplies for its growing economy. At the same time it would like to involve Riyadh in the project "One belt one road" launched by Xi for a network of infrastructure and trade involving Asia and Europe.



At present there are 130 Chinese companies investing in Saudi Arabia in energy, construction of houses, ports, roads and telecommunications. Saudi, in turn, wants to diversify its investments in an attempt to emerge from the oil price crisis that has hit it.



The relations are also determined by the Iranian and Syrian issue. In 2011 the relations between Riyadh and Beijing were undermined by differences over the Syrian crisis. In 2016, a visit by Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia improved things. A closer relationship between the two countries aims to balance Chinese support for Iran and Syria.
About a million Afghans are registered as refugees in the country. Tehran has been praised for providing access to education with 15,000 more classrooms.

Tehran (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Whilst the refugee issue is at the centre of heated political debates in Europe and the United States, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has praised Irans approach, calling it "exemplary".

Iran has been sheltering a million registered Afghans for almost four decades. As of June 2016, that was the fourth-largest refugee population in the world, the UNHCR said, after Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon.

Overall, Iran is host to about 950,000 Afghans and 28,000 Iraqis. However, according to some NGOs, another two million are living under the radar.

"The leadership demonstrated by the Iranian government has been exemplary in hosting refugees and keeping borders open," said Sivanka Dhanapala, who heads the UN High Commissioner for Refugees team in Tehran. "It's a story that's not told often enough."

Contacted by AsiaNews, Father Giuseppe Moretti said he is not surprised by this given the presence of ethnic Afghan Hazara.

"There is a religious bond between the Hazara and Iran, because both are Shias. The Hazara are one of Afghanistans largest and poorest ethnic groups. They are drawn to Iran, which has the reputation of being a rich country."

According to UNHCR, the Hazara and Tajiks represent 70 per cent of all Afghan refugees in Iran.

As an example of good policy, Dhanapala highlighted the 2015 decree by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordering schools to take in all Afghan children, documented or not -- a move that left authorities scrambling to build the equivalent of 15,000 new classrooms to accommodate some 350,000 Afghan children.

Nonetheless, in view of persistent economic woes due to years of sanctions and mismanagement, many Iranians are not happy about the presence of so many needy refugees.

Speaking about the relationship between Iranians and Afghans, Fr Moretti, who is from Italy, quipped that "There is a bit of the same sympathy that exists between northern and southern Italians."

"At the basis of accepting [the Afghans] lies the concept of the Ummah, [and] of the Muslim family, the clergyman explained. At the same time, hospitality is very important in the Orient. Yet, those who come will always be considered outsiders."

In fact, many Afghans complain of discrimination. Iranian authorities discourage them from settling, rounding up the undocumented to send home.

"Even someone like me, who was born in Iran and has lived here 36 years is not yet an Iranian citizen and the discrimination I face in my education and work is suffocating," said one Afghan who asked to remain anonymous.

Although he is grateful for his residency permit, he has to renew it every six to 12 months, and this makes life difficult.

"I've been sent back a few times, said another who was 14 when he fled the Soviet war in the 1980s. Either you wait for a new visa or come illegally with traffickers. I don't use the traffickers  it's horrible."

Another thorny issue is the accusation by some foreign governments that Iran recruits young Afghans to fight in Syria. Although Tehran has denied the allegation, it has acknowledged granting special privileges to the families of dead fighters, claiming that they are just volunteers.

Despite the criticism, the UNHCR and many NGOs agree that Iran deserves more credit than it is given. At the same time, the UN hopes Iran will ease restrictions on which jobs Afghans can do, and would like to see Tehran implement a formal registration process for the undocumented.

For Dhanapala, "in a world where you have multiple bad stories about hosting refugees, I think Iran is really a good news story".
by Mathias Hariyadi

The Church remembers him for his commitment to defend and protect the principle of the nation's unity in diversity. The Muslim cleric has promoted dialogue and tolerance between different confessions in an Indonesia marked by hatred of radical Muslims.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - Hasyim Muzadi, member of the Presidential Council of Indonesia, died yesterday at the age of 72 in Malang (East Java), his hometown. A former chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim organization in the country, Muzadi was iconic for the promotion of pluralism in Indonesian society.

During his NU presidency, from 1999 to 2009, he promoted dialogue and tolerance between different confessions with dedication, in a time when Indonesia was troubled by the violence of radical Muslim groups against religious minorities.



The news of his death has shocked the country. Together with the world of politics and the moderate Indonesian Muslim organizations, the Catholic Church expresses its condolences for the death of Hasyim Muzadi. Catholics mourn and remember the Muslim religious with affection and respect for his serious commitment to defending and protecting the principle of the nation's unity in diversity.



As a gesture of tolerance and compassion, Msgr. Henricus Pidyarto Gunawan, bishop of Malang, took part in the funeral rites that were held in the private residence of Muzadi, within the Mahasiswa Pesantren Al-Hikam Islamic boarding school.

Fr. Eko Putranto, a Carmelite Malang, recalls in a statement to AsiaNews how Muzadi was "an important person, in the service of the nations pluralism." Fr. Michael Agung Christiputro, of the parish of the Good Shepherd Batu (East Java), tells of a prayer vigil organized last night by the faithful in memory of the deceased.



Over the years at the head of NU, Hasyim Muzadi has maintained a deep friendship with several figures in the Catholic Church, especially with the Card. Julius Darmaatmadja, former chairman of the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI) and former archbishop of Jakarta. At this time, thousands of Catholics express their respect for Muzadi through on social media, as well as their condolences to the family of the deceased, a real promoter and hero of interfaith tolerance in Indonesia.
For Rep Gary Alejano, Duterte is unfit to hold the highest office of the land. The congressman accuses the president of almost 10,000 extrajudicial killings as president and as mayor of Davao. He also accuses him of hiring 11,000 ghost employees and embezzling some US$ 44 million.

Manila (AsiaNews)  After just nine months in office, Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte already faces a first attempt at impeachment.

Magdalo Rep Gary Alejano, a former Marine captain, filed a complaint against Duterte at the Office of the Secretary General accusing the president of violating the constitution, graft, breach of public trust, and other serious crimes.

At a press conference, Gary Alejano filed the 16-page application in support of his allegations and explained the reasons for his action.

We are of the firm belief that President Duterte is unfit to hold the highest office of the land and that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy to this situation, Alejano told reporters.

Gary Alejano is a former Marine captain who took part, along with other young officers, in two failed coup attempts in 2003 and 2007 led by Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes IV, now a senator, against then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Sources told AsiaNews that the soldiers tried to overthrow the Arroyo, after she managed to avoid the three impeachment attempts, because of their opposition to the widespread corruption and social inequalities at a time of strong economic growth.

There is nothing extra-legal here. We are not staging a coup detat or any other means to oust Duterte, Alejano said, bristling at suggestions that his move might be seen as an attempt to destabilise the Duterte administration.

The complaint slams the President for his state policy of inducing policemen, other law enforcement authorities, and vigilante groups to kill more than 8,000 people who were merely suspected of being drug offenders.

Alejano argues that Mr Duterte is the mastermind behind the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) when he was mayor there. The group has been blamed for the death of 1,400 drug users based on testimonies before the Senate of confessed assassins Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascanas.

Alejano also accuses Mr Duterte of graft and corruption in the hiring of 11,000 ghost employees when he was mayor as well as of amassing P2.2 billion (US$ 44 million) in deposits and credits that flowed into his numerous bank accounts, based on copies of transactions that were attached to the complaint. Trillanes first raised the issue during the presidential campaign.

A vote of at least one-third of the 292-member House of Representatives is needed to impeach the President. However, with more than 260 of the lawmakers belonging to a pro-Duterte bloc, Alejano acknowledged that he was facing an uphill climb.
The Government asks for experts to track user comments. The social media giant, however, wants to protect the rights and privacy of its users. The unstated goal is to control the activities of dissidents, including the five intellectuals and bloggers kidnapped last month.

Islamabad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The government in Islamabad has asked Facebook to collaborate in the fight against the blasphemous comments on its pages.

Yesterday, the Interior Ministry spokesman said that the social media giant has agreed to send a team of experts to investigate offensive remarks about Muhammad. But while the Pakistani authorities expect collaboration, the Facebook management is more cautious and has not confirmed the dispatch of experts.

Indeed, France Press reports that Facebook has only said it will consider Islamabads requests, always keeping in mind "the goal of protecting the privacy and the rights of our users."



The issue came to the fore this week when the High Court launched an investigation into the content published on social networks that might be offensive to religious feelings of Muslim believers. Specifically under review are the online activities of the five intellectuals and bloggers kidnapped in January and who reappeared after a month of imprisonment and torture.



Ever since the story of dissident intellectuals came to light, most likely made to disappear in order to silence their criticism of the extremist circles in the government and armed forces, critics complain about abuse of control by the authorities. Not only that, they often consider the accusation of blasphemy, which in Pakistan is punishable by the death penalty, is being used to suppress minorities.



The premier Nawaz Sharif has come out in support of the judges investigation, stating that anyone who insults Mohammed "commits an unforgivable offense." Previously, however, he said that soon Pakistan will be "friend of minorities", enhancing dialogue and inter-religious harmony between the communities.
The North East Christian University is an initiative of the Council of Baptist Churches of North East India. American donors will bear most of the costs with courses set to start in 2018. About 90 per cent of the states population is Christian.

Kohima (AsiaNews/Agencies)  The State of Nagaland will soon have a Christian university open to everyone. Students will be able to choose high level and high-tech programmes in "an atmosphere of Christian ethics".

The university, to be named North East Christian University (NECU), will be built on an area of 247 acres (almost a million square metres) in Medziphema, a village some 30 km from Dimapur, the states largest city.

The initiative is the brainchild of the Council of Baptist Churches of North East India (CBCNEI), which will also finance the construction. The initial funding includes 1.8 billion rupees (US$ 27.5 million), most of it from American donors.

Alemtemshi Jamir, retired secretary of Nagaland and member of the NECU governing body, said that "1.2 billion rupees will come from American friends, while the cost for the [Indian Churches] will only be 600 million rupees."

According to NECU Vice Rector Rev A K Lama, a "university with a Christian ethos has always been the dream of the Council of Baptist Churches of North East India".

To fulfill this wish, CBCNEI President K C Momin on 10 March laid the first brick of the new campus in the presence of Deo Nukhu, parliamentary secretary for Higher and Technical Education, and the representatives of many Churches.

Mr Nukhu said that the State Government would provide logistical support, in particular with regard to water and electricity supply.

Courses "will start in all likelihood in 2018, but our goal is to complete the project in five years from now, said Alemtemshi Jamir.

The construction of the Christian university highlights the importance of Churches in the Indian state. According to the 2011 census, Nagaland had a population of 1,988,000, 90.02 per cent Christian.

Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram are the only three Indian states with a Christian majority (up to 90 per cent), a rare situation in a country where Christians are 2.3 per cent out of a population of 1.2 billion.
Data Measures The Effectiveness of U.S. Travel Warnings

Trending News: Here's Why Travel Warnings Are BS And You Should Go Anyways*

Long Story Short

Government travel advisories can be good measures of how likely it is you'll get killed traveling in that country  but in many cases, they're completely misleading.

Long Story

As someone who has traveled quite a bit, I can unequivocally tell you that travel is worth it (and in many cases, life-changing). But if every time you thought about traveling and you did what you're supposed to  look at the State Department's Travel Warnings before booking a flight  you'd probably just curl up in a ball and stay home. Heck, why even bother getting a passport if that's how dangerous the world is?

The goal of the government's travel advisory is to tell you where it's unsafe to travel based on current conflicts and events  but how effective are the warnings really?

According to State Department data along with the number of Bureau of Transportation Statistics for the number of Americans killed abroad, the warnings aren't great.

Data compiled by Priceonomics and data.world found that, in general, travel advisories correlate with the number of U.S. deaths. However, the government gets it wrong so often that the warnings are really hard to take seriously.







Let's take a look shall we:

The top 5 countries that receive travel warnings are Mexico, Mali, Israel, Pakistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, the top 5 countries where the most Americans were killed in the last eight years are Mexico (598), Afghanistan (84), Philippines (74), Haiti (65) and Honduras (46).

data.world

Huh? Something's not right there. The only country that's at the top of the killed Americans list and the warnings list is Mexico, which just so happens to be the #1 place Americans travel.

That's not to say the warnings in the top 5 aren't worth heeding to. Pakistan ranks first as the most Americans killed per capita (8 out of 226,000 U.S. travelers) and you'd have to be out of your goddamn mind to travel to Iraq right now.

But if you look at Israel, Turkey or Colombia for instance, travel warnings vastly outweigh the risk of getting killed. And look at Belize, Guana and Guatamela  people get killed there without any warnings.

data.world

So if the travel warnings aren't really that effective, what are they? Some might say over-precautious, others might say fear-mongering, but either way, it doesn't really matter because Americans don't really listen to the warnings. According to the data, travel warnings aren't just ignored, they can actually correlate with an increase in American tourists. Places like Nigeria, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia all saw a 10% increase in tourism after travel warnings were issued.

At the end of the day, the most dangerous place to travel is, well, not traveling at all. "Between 2009 and 2013, 1,151 Americans - out of a population of 316 million - were killed abroad. For comparison, 15,809 homicides occurred in the U.S. in 2014 alone," explains Priceonomics.

So next time someone tells you not to travel based on travel warnings, tell them not to stay at home  things are far more scary here.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Is fear of traveling abroad actually worse in the U.S. or is it on par with the rest of the world?

Drop This Fact

Just 36% of Americans hold a valid passport, according to State Department numbers from 2013.
CORRECTED

The skinny budget blueprint released by the Trump administration Thursday would maintain current spending levels for special education about $13 billion, most of which is money sent directly to states.

The budget blueprint is just the beginning of a long process. While this document shows the administrations priorities, it is Congress that ultimately passes spending legislation. And lawmakers have their own ideas about what programs should be cut, and which should be kept.

But, if these funding amounts were to stay in place, the federal contribution for special education and related services would be about 16 percent of the excess costs of educating a student with a disability, compared to a general education student.

In 1975, when the federal government passed the law that was to become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Congress authorized paying states up to 40 percent of the excess costs of educating a student with disabilities, based on national per-pupil expenditures. But in the 40-plus years of the laws existence, the federal government has never gotten close to meeting that goal. The Trump administration is not different from other administrations in that regard.

The budget blueprint shows that the Education Department, at least right now, is not planning to cut special education in order to fund its other goals, which include a $1.4 billion increase in school choice, which would include $250 million for a new private school choice program, and $168 million increase for a program aimed at supporting charter school expansion.

The Trump administration does propose reducing impact aid, which gives money to school districts that have a large federal presence. Federal property is exempt from local taxes, so impact aid is meant to help make up for tax revenue that cannot be collected by state and local taxing authorities. In fiscal 2016, about $48 million of the $1.3 billion allotted for impact aid was designated specifically for educating students with disabilities.

Education Programs to Watch For

There are several education programs for students with special needs that the budget blueprint does not mention. They include:

The Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program : This program, which awarded $12 million in fiscal 2016, has always been on the edge; for several fiscal years it went unfunded. It supports research into identifying gifted students from underserved groups, including students with disabilities, minority students and English-language learners. A program to identify underrepresented minorities in Seminole County, Fla., was funded in the most recent set of Javits grants; I wrote about the program, Project ELEVATE , earlier this year.

M. Rene Islas, the executive director for the National Association for Gifted Children, said in a statement that polls show the public supports increased funding for gifted education. It is our hope that the administrations final detailed budget maintains funding for the Javits program and reflects the will of the voters, he said.

Supported Employment State Grants : This grant program supplements the money that states already receive through the mandatory vocational rehabilitation state grants to support people with significant disabilities. About $27 million was distributed through this grant program in fiscal 2016, and states are required to spend at least half of this money on programs aimed at youth, defined as people ages 14-24.

Model Comprehensive Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Disabilities : This program, funded at about $12 million for fiscal 2016, gives money to colleges to create college and transition options for students with intellectual disabilities.

The National Center for Special Education Research : The center was funded at $54 million for fiscal 2016.

As the budget development process goes on, well learn more about their fate.

CORRECTION: This blog post has been corrected to make clear the budget proposal is to reduce the amount of impact aid to districts, not eliminate it.
Paul Ryan's Bad Guinness Pint Sours U.S.-Ireland Relations On Twitter

Trending News: Will Someone Please Pour A Proper Pint For Poor Paul Ryan?

Quick Take

There arent many ways of screwing up St. Patricks Day, but if you do, you know youve screwed up bad. Calling it St. Pattys, for instance, is ridiculous. Its PaDDy, ffs. Lobbing around cliched Irish stereotypes is another. And mangling a pint of Guinness may be worst of all.

Guess which one Paul Ryan did, to the horror of Irish journalist Naomi OLeary.

First Mike Pence says 'top of the morning', then Paul Ryan holds up this appalling pint, grave missteps by the US pic.twitter.com/U4ktqf0Aag  Naomi O'Leary (@NaomiOhReally) March 16, 2017

It is by all accounts an abysmal pour, though in fairness to Mr. Speaker it's unlikely he poured it himself. But Ryan is also so clearly unfamiliar with holding a pint that his Irish ancestry deserves its own Truther theory.

Because, you see, the Irish take their drinking seriously. You may have heard. And Guinness is pretty much their national drink. Like Bud Light, only good and not tasting like cold, watered-down clydesdale piss. So when you hold up a pint thats clearly been poured by a rank amateur (the foam should be just above the rim, duh), offence will be taken.

And so it didnt take long before Twitter got its nasty little digital hands on the photo. Predictable results ensued.

tfw you see Paul Ryan's pint of Guinness pic.twitter.com/iEpsmg2Dqs  The Memeon King (@FanSince09) March 16, 2017

This isn't a pint of Guinness. It's a sample of Paul Ryan's blood. pic.twitter.com/9Vg67Gub4w  Mallow News (@MallowNews) March 16, 2017

This is definitely a man whos never had to hold a Guinness while watching his Premier League team break his own heart in a pub at 6am. https://t.co/ZwITP4rbvD  Damien Sorresso (@EBADTWEET) March 16, 2017

He's holding it like it is a women's health issue. https://t.co/of6wFcDZKo  Elizabeth Everson (@Happyfirefly) March 16, 2017

In three of four provinces, that's a pour only served to British informers & American tourists who request Neil Diamond from pub musicians. https://t.co/RTNxpIFwSk  David Simon (@AoDespair) March 16, 2017

Even the BBC had its say. And, as OLeary points out, this has become important national news.

The @washingtonpost has given the pint from hell its own dramatic closeup pic.twitter.com/oKKUhVvARl  Naomi O'Leary (@NaomiOhReally) March 17, 2017

Comparisons were inevitable and unflattering.

@NaomiOhReally @PoliticalLine pic.twitter.com/kD0C9A9I51  Tony Renner (@TonyRenner) March 16, 2017

@NaomiOhReally Here's Obama's pint for comparison. One of the many areas he excelled in. pic.twitter.com/gO7h9hG1r9  Michael Dinerstein (@loudin) March 16, 2017

Paul Ryan isnt the only American politician to have grossly offended the Irish people. As O'Leary mentioned, vice president Mike Pence opened his address to a White House St. Patricks Day breakfast with a Top o the morning. Groans were heard across the Atlantic.

"Top of the morning" says @VP Mike Pence as he hosts a #StPatricksDay breakfast for An Taoiseach. @rtenews pic.twitter.com/ULqOMRrvt1  Caitriona Perry (@CaitrionaPerry) March 16, 2017

When Mike Pence says "Top of the morning," how do all the Irish people not just go, "nope," and leave the room?  TrishyB (@TrishByrne) March 16, 2017

So @mike_pence opens his address to Irish & American officials in Washington today with 'Top of the morning'...says it all really ?  Gavan Ring (@GavanRing) March 16, 2017

Drop This Fact

Approximately 13 million pints of Guinness will be consumed today. Hopefully they're poured correctly.
$210 million pledged to fast-track food sector growth in digital economy





Last week the Federal Government announced $50 million in funding for the Food Agility Co-operative Research Centre (CRC). With existing commitments from private business and universities it will see $210 million invested over 10 years, and 54 partners from across the agri-food value chain working together to stimulate industry growth through digital transformation.

Antonio Palanca, CEO of the HiveXchange, Australias first digital marketplace for wholesale produce and Food Agility partner said There are four imperatives of the Food Agility CRC. To produce the right thing, to leverage brand Australia, to provide access to finance and to build a future workforce. Underpinning the success of all of these is trade  a kind of trade that offers real-time pricing, is low-cost, accessible, efficient and responsive to changing market needs.

We are already using digital trading to deliver sustainable growth for producers and industry  from price and demand forecasting, to shorter, more efficient supply chains, through to better market targeting and selling. We have the capacity to achieve this and more, over the next decade the Food Agility initiative will fast-track digital transformation and make the food-industry in Australia the envy of the world said Palanca.

Find out more about the Food Agility CRC and HiveXchange partnership here
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Hall & Wilcox has scored a team of employment law experts from Squire Patton Boggs . Joining the firms Perth office are employment partner Kylie Groves and team.The firm said that appointing the new employment and workplace relations team is part of its national growth strategy and signals its intent to expand the service offering offerings to other commercial areas in Perth, where it opened in December 2015 with an initial focus on insurance.Joining with Groves are special counsel Felicity Clarke, senior associate Jillian Howard, and lawyer Emily Tan.With extensive experience in employment, workplace relations, occupational health and safety, and discrimination law, Groves areas of expertise include advising on the management of ill and injured employees, enterprise bargaining and agreement-making, and workplace laws compliance. She also has considerable experience assisting clients with the employment aspects of corporate transactions and restructures, and with employment-related litigation.Groves started her career at the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission then moving on to the Australian Industrial registry. She became special counsel at MinterEllison in 1998, spending more than 13 years at the firm. She was one of the 80 lawyers who transferred from MinterEllison to legacy Squire Sanders in 2011.Clarke, who has more than 12 years' experience in labour and employment law, regularly advises clients on defence of prosecutions under occupational health and safety laws. She also has considerable experience in assisting clients with complex workplace investigations and in advising public sector employers. She also came to Squire Patton Boggs from MinterEllison.Howard, who advises businesses and public sector clients on labour and employment matters, has a particular interest in discrimination issues. She is experienced in providing strategic advice in relation to organisation change and the conduct of large-scale restructuring. She is also a registered migration agent. She started her career at UK firm Eversheds, before moving on to community-based disability support and services organisation Interchange WA as a non-executive director.Tony Macvean, Hall & Wilcox managing partner, said that the addition of the new team is part of the firms long-term plan, which includes building Perth into a full-service outpost across a number of practice areas including employment, litigation, insolvency, and commercial.Kylie Groves
Hi! We just arrived here in Australia and I am currently undergoing training in Brisbane. After training, I am given a choice between working in Bundaberg, QLD or Mackay, QLD. We are a family of 4. I am not sure which city to choose. My primary considerations would be the cost of living and schooling for the children. My initial salary is around 68K a year. My wife plans to work also once the kids are settled.



Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Hey all!I've been looking over this for a while whilst getting my file ready to submit for my Partner 801/820 Application.Appreciate your Input on the evidence we have so far and areas you think may be improved. We have been together for 10 months and Plan to lodge in June when we are relationship is just under a year. I've applied for the relationship certificate in NSW as understand the restrictions for applications.I'm going to lodge through the website but have a hard copy too as I like to know where I'm at with it.1)Forms-Application Document Check-47SP-Applicant-40SP- Partner2) Stat Decs-4 will be filled out by family/friends-Stat dec from me of the History of the relationship-Stat dec from my partner of the History of the relationship3)Personal Documents for Both-Passport, Birth Certificate, Passport Photographs and divorce certificate for my partner (I will also need to still get a police certificate for the UK and Australia) Not sure if to include wage slips and employment details for my partner as he is supporting me during the last few months as I'm on WHV and working restrictions are a nightmare.4)Financial Aspects-Grocery Receipts-Joint Bank Account Opening letter from last year-Joint Travel (4 so far with supporting bank statements)-Joint Bills-Gas, Electric-Bank statements showing rent and mobile phone transfers to him as I'm not named on his lease-Joint Purchase of a Vacuum- Receipt with both names5)Nature of the Household-Stat Dec from me explaining paying rent to him due to no joint lease as it was already and existing property-Joint Coles loyalty Card-Household Velocity Cards-Amazon Account with both names-Proof of address joint and individual letters-Stat dec on the dynamics of the household (cooking, cleaning etc)6)Social Context-Photos together (about 30 in total, 6 to a page detailing where and when-Photos with friends and his family- He hasn't met mine yet as they are the UK-Would this cause problems?-Mutual Friends on Facebook-Birthday Cards-Flower receipts-Cinema Tickets-Photos of some gifts7)Nature of commitment-Relationship Certificate-Copy of each others Super-Named on his Medibank-Car Insurance Certificate-Letter from previous employer to say he was my next of Kin-Letter from him exmployer showing me as his partner-When I went back to the UK at Christmas (Phone messages, Call log)-Facebook Screenshots- Relationship status, check in's etc-Document about how we support each other emotionallyThanks in AdvanceRichard
thanks for the responses.



Even I have checked the mailbox in the account as well. The letter from the department is there. However, nothing else such as CHECKLIST is provided. The letter is in pdf format.



I can see another link there too but that is html. It is not loading anything.



Regards,

Henry
What Is Sexual Intercourse? The Florida Supreme Court Now Has an Answer

A recent Florida Supreme Court case went a bit beyond the regular euphemisms about the birds and the bees into a straight up, in your face, hardcore examination of sexual intercourse.

The definition of sexual intercourse, that is. Examining a Florida law criminalizing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the court was forced to determine just what counted as "sexual intercourse." Was it limited to old-fashioned, Church-approved, when-a-man-loves-a-woman-very-much stuff, or could it be read to include some man-on-man action?

Sexual Intercourse and Section 384.24(2)

Alright, grade school tee-hee'ing aside, the case, Debaun v. State, actually called for some serious statutory interpretation. Florida Statutes Section 384.24(2) makes it unlawful for anyone HIV-positive, who is aware of their status and the risk of transmission to others, "to have sexual intercourse with any other person, unless such other person has been informed of the presence of the sexually transmissible disease and has consented to the sexual intercourse." Passed in 1986, the law was one of several similar legislative attempts to respond to the growing "AIDS hysteria" by creating HIV-specific criminal laws.

Gary D. Debaun was charged with violating that law in 2011, after he was accused of misrepresenting his HIV status to another man. Debaun allegedly not only failed to disclose his status before having sex with the man, but provided him with a forged lab report stating that he was HIV-negative. Not cool, Gary.

However, there was some difficulty with the prosecution.



Section 384.24(2), of course, does not define sexual intercourse. But Florida's Second District has held that "sexual intercourse" as used in the statute applies only to "the penetration of the female sex organ by the male sex organ." Under that reading of the law, Debaun and his partner's coupling would not count.

Let the Dictionaries Decide

The Florida Supreme Court rejected that narrow reading of "sexual intercourse," holding that the phrase in the statute covers more than just penile-vaginal hanky panky. And they only had to read three dictionaries to get there.

The definition of the term should be controlled by its plain and ordinary meaning, the court explained. To find that plain and ordinary meaning, it turned to "Webster's," "the American Heritage Dictionary," and "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary." All three defined sexual intercourse more expansively than simple heterosexual penetration. "Thus," the court wrote, "the plain meaning of 'sexual intercourse' clearly encompass[es] acts beyond penile-vaginal intercourse."

A more expansive reading of sexual intercourse would further the intent of the law, the court continued, which was to reduce the spread of STDs. HIV, of course, can be spread through more than just vaginal intercourse.

Finally, the court rejected the argument that the treatment of "sexual intercourse" in other statutes and caselaw should control. The Second District's narrow reading of sexual intercourse had been influenced by the definition of the term in the state's incest law, as well as three cases considering the term "as applied to the obsolete crime of carnal intercourse with an unmarried female of previous chase character under the age of eighteen years." Those readings of the term were not applicable here, the Florida Supreme Court ruled.

Now, with sexual intercourse finally defined, Debaun's case will return to the trial court.

Related Resources:
My son is 18 now have his Australian PR. living with his mom. I'm living here from 2003 unfortunately i did not have residency here and divorced. I applied for protection visa and was refused the matter is in AAT now. Can any one give any advice if it goes to ministerial intervention is their any chance to get parent visa143 .
Photo of Hyundai Sonata courtesy of Hyundai.

Hyundai Motor America is recalling 977,778 2011- to 2014-model year Sonata and 2011- to 2015-MY Sonata Hybrid vehicles to address a seat belt problem, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In these cars, the seat belt linkages for both front seat belts may detach from the seat belt anchor pretensioners.

In the event of a crash, if the seat belts detach from the anchor pretensioners, it can increase the risk of injury, NHTSA warned on its website.

Hyundai dealers will inspect the connection between the seat belt linkages and the seat belt anchor pretensioners, repairing them as needed. There will be no charge for this service.

The recall is expected to begin April 7. Vehicle owners can reach Hyundai customer service at (855) 371-9460. Hyundais number for the recall is 160.
Afourth Mitsubishi MRJ90 test aircraft, JA23MJ, scheduled to fly from Honolulu International to the continental United States and join its siblings undergoing certification testing at Moses Lake, Washington, had to return to the airport shortly after departure on Thursday morning. The reason for the diversion is inaudible in publicly available ATC recordings, but the pilots requested to stop climb at 9,000 and return to the field. The first MRJ90 to come to the U.S. for testing in the summer of 2016 had to turn back on its first attempt after having issues with an air conditioning system. Its possible that problem is also present in JA23MJ.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has reportedly contracted with AeroTec, an aircraft certification specialist with offices in Seattle and Moses Lake, to coordinate the certification flight test program. AeroTec is the go-to provider of flight test coordination for Boeing, having worked on five variants of the 737 and three variants of the 777, among others. Two of the four MRJ90 aircraft have been flying regularly in the Moses Lake area. The newest aircraft, JA24MJ, had been based outside Chicago, flying in the Midwest, the Great Lakes and central Canada, in search of icing conditions for much of February. Mitsubishi says that aircraft has since been sent to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida for extreme temperature testing. Mitsubishi currently hopes to deliver the first customer aircraft in mid-2020.

Image Credit: FlightRadar 24 AB

Photo Credit: Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation
Armenian law-enforcement authorities indicated on Friday that they might prosecute doctors in connection with the death of a man who was arrested last year after delivering food to opposition gunmen occupying a police station in Yerevan.

The 49-year-old Artur Sargsian died at a Yerevan hospital on Thursday hours after undergoing urgent bowel surgery there. He was set free on bail on March 6 following a 25-day hunger strike.

Some of Armenias leading opposition groups have blamed the authorities for the death of the man who came to be known as the Food Bringer. They say he suffered from serious chronic illnesses and should not have been kept in detention in the first place.

Armenias Investigative Committee said it has opened a criminal case under an article of the Criminal Code dealing with negligent homicides resulting from inadequate medical aid. It gave no indications that law-enforcement officers or judges who sanctioned Sargsians arrest will also be placed under investigation.

Arsen Grigorian, the chief surgeon of the Armenia Medical Center where Sargsian passed away, insisted on Friday that hospital medics did everything to save his life. He stood by their conclusion that his death was caused by lung and heart failure aggravated by a serious intestinal condition.

Grigorian said they detected bowel problems and strongly recommended an operation when Sargsian was transported from a prison hospital to the Armenia Medical Center on March 6. He said the radical opposition backer not only refused to be operated on but also left the private hospital against their advice four days later.

Had he not refused surgery during the first hospitalization he would not have developed the [intestinal] rupture ten days later, Grigorian told RFE/RLs Armenian service (Azatutyun.am).

Sargsian drove his car through a police cordon to deliver food to armed members of the Founding Parliament radical opposition group during their two-week standoff with security forces, which left three police officers dead. He surrendered to them on July 31 along with the remaining gunmen holed up in a police compound.

Sargsian was released from custody in late December but was again arrested on February 9. A law-enforcement body investigating the standoff said he ignored a summons sent by then. Sargsian began a hunger strike immediately after his second arrest.

Edmon Marukian, a leader of the opposition Yelk alliance, charged that Sargsians death was the result of his long and inhuman treatment by the authorities. Another opposition bloc led by Levon Ter-Petrosian likewise condemned his arrest as a grave human rights violation.

Another opposition group led by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian suspended its campaign for the April 2 parliamentary elections in a show of respect for Sargsian. In a statement, it said his self-sacrifice must not and cannot remain without consequences.

Also cancelling its campaign meetings on Friday was an electoral alliance led by businessman Gagik Tsarukian. It described Sargsians death as a great tragedy.

The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), meanwhile, rejected the opposition criticism of the authorities and accused its political opponents of exploiting the case for political purposes. Had we not been in a pre-election process, no such accusations would have been voiced, a leading HHK member, Vahram Baghdasarian, told reporters.

Baghdasarian said the authorities will conduct the most objective inquiry to establish all causes of Sargsians death.
17 March 2017 13:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Unequal conditions, corruption, dishonest competition, high unemployment among youth and other issues complicate implementation of any program to develop the Armenian economy, reads a report by the Expert Center for Eurasian Development.

The ECED report titled Map of investment attractiveness of the countries of Central Asia and South Caucasus reveal that Armenia faced with serious economic problems in 2016.

The authors remind that Armenias GDP declined by 2.6 percent for the year. The unemployment rate in Armenia hit 18.1 percent last year, which was the highest figure among the countries of Central Asia and South Caucasus.

The state debt also remained among the highest in the CIS and accounted for 42.23 percent of GDP, the report says. A year earlier, this figure was lower and made 37.5 percent.

Armenia's GDP per capita in 2016 remained low  it was $3,800. Armenias trade balance following the results of last year was negative, the document reads.

The document reads that it is planned to create only 50,000-60,000 jobs in the regions of Armenia until 2025 , which is clearly not enough.

The authors of the document also note that Armenia has a very difficult transport situation and the country is actually isolated.

Because of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia has no economic relations and transport links with Azerbaijan and Turkey. There are also difficulties in relations with Georgia that separates the republic from its main economic partner  Russia, which complicates the use of existing transport infrastructure, the report reads.

The authors say that only 40 kilometers of border with Iran allows providing transport accessibility for Armenia, but because of geographic conditions and mountainous terrain the capacity of this direction is limited.

The ECED report also notes that the tension and unpredictability in the domestic political situation of Armenia are high.

The economy of the country remains critical, demonstrating unbelievably low indices each year. Descending economy, high poverty and increasing outflow of people are the pure realities in Armenia, which lack any governmental scenario or program to change the situation.

Besides, the conflicts with neighbors, including the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, territorial claims, and nonsense about the so-called Armenian genocide do not allow the country to join any regional project and gain any benefits.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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17 March 2017 17:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Almost every election in Armenia since the country gained independence back in 1991 has witnessed violations.

The widespread corruption, systemic abuse and violence against voters become more visible during the election campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2, 2017.

The European Union has voiced concerns about incidents of violence during the election campaign in Jarat village of Armenia.

Head of the EU Delegation in Yerevan Piotr Switalski stated that the EU is concerned over the issue and expects an adequate response from law enforcement authorities.

Of course, we are very concerned, because, as we have seen in other countries, violence can have a snowball effect. When you do not properly react to first cases of violence then you may have a very bad situation which is very difficult to control, Switalski said on March 16.

Three Jrarat residents sympathetic to the ORO opposition alliance were hospitalized with serious injuries on Tuesday after being attacked by a large group of other men allegedly linked to the village mayor affiliated with the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). One of the victims was shot and wounded while another was stabbed. So far only one man has been arrested in connection with Tuesdays incident.

Switalski added that the EU expects the Armenian authorities to hold free and fair elections, having provided them with over $7 million in financial assistance for that purpose.

The diplomat also urged Armenians not to sell their votes in elections.

You may be approached by people who will be offering you money or services. I hope that Armenians will reject such offers. No amount of money is worth your votes. Do not sell your votes, Switalski said.

Thus, the representative of the EU openly showed that Europe is well aware of all the outrages committed by the Armenian authorities during the pre-election campaign, know about the fair mistrust of the Armenian population to law enforcement authorities and expect election fraud in this country.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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17 March 2017 10:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Noelle Lenoir

US President Donald Trump has shaken a transatlantic alliance that had long seemed unshakable. In a January interview, he labeled NATO obsolete and the European Union a vehicle for Germany. The EU will soon collapse, he predicted, with a succession of countries following the United Kingdom out. The United States, his position suggests, would be more than fine with that.

With Trump, the world is becoming accustomed to shocking declarations and shameless reversals. But his stance on Europe is worrisome. From his enthusiastic support of Brexit to his expressions of mistrust regarding German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of Europes main ally seems intent on weakening the EU at a critical moment in its history.

Trump is not alone in his administration in cheering for the EUs demise: his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, embraces ethnic nationalist parties  like Marine Le Pens far-right National Front in France  that seek to bring it about. Trumps reported pick to be EU ambassador, Ted Malloch, told Greek television that he believes Greece should have left the eurozone four years ago.

But even more worrisome than the US administrations doubts is the wavering confidence of many EU leaders. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, for example, openly frets about the deep divisions among EU member states over Brexit and questions whether the Hungarians and the Poles want exactly the same things as the Germans and the French.

At the national level, lack of political will has resulted in the craven use of referenda, such as the French and Dutch plebiscites on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in 2005, the Netherlands vote on the EU-Ukraine association agreement last April, and the Brexit referendum nearly three months later. In every case, voters said, no  outcomes that can be blamed, particularly in the UK, on national leaders habit of blaming the EU for domestic problems.

Indeed, European leaders parochialism is a major reason why the EU is failing to retain broad-based public support. The lack of historical vision among the current generation of political leadership undermines the shared sense of purpose needed to make EU citizens feel that they are part of the same community, regardless of their different national identities. When national identity is all there is, right-wing populists can win support by defending it against foreign Europe.

To be sure, many claim that popular disaffection with the EU and, in turn, the rise of right-wing populism is a reaction to the lack of structural reforms in the eurozone. But there has been progress on addressing the eurozones weaknesses. The creation of a banking union and the establishment of the European Semester, aimed at strengthening budgetary coordination across the union, are both steps in the right direction. But, because the EU is not a nation-state, such solutions must be negotiated  no easy feat, when citizens are being turned against the union.

In any case, it seems unlikely that the rise of right-wing populism in Europe truly stemmed from the eurozones weaknesses, given that it aligns so closely with the rise of Trump in the US. What the US and EU countries have in common, politically, is the use of false claims and scare tactics to compel citizens to retreat inward.

In France in 2005, anti-EU forces claimed that the ratification of the constitutional treaty would lead to the abolition of abortion rights and French military intervention in Iraq. In 2014, Juncker had to tell then-British Prime Minister David Cameron, who later initiated the Brexit referendum, to stop portraying Eastern Europeans as criminals. During the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson argued that Brexit would bring an additional 350 million ($430 million) per week to the National Health Service.

In short, the main factor undermining the EU is not economic, but political. After all, though the single market is one of Europes crowning achievements, the EU has always been an essentially political project. This is why Europes future lies in a restructuring of the eurozone as a political entity, underpinned by more comprehensive cooperation. As French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman declared in 1950, it is de facto solidarity that must underpin the making of Europe.

To some extent, Trumps hostility toward Europe could actually help the EU, by showing its members just how badly they need one another, particularly to ensure their defense and security. Even before Trump began denigrating NATO, the European Commission released a global strategy emphasizing that NATO can no longer be solely responsible for ensuring European security. A more credible European defense is needed.

To this end, the European Commission has proposed the European Defense Fund, which would foster common defense research and allow participating member states to reduce costs through collective purchases of military assets. The effort by France and Germany to establish a joint and permanent EU military headquarters tasked with the overseas deployment of EU troops is also a step in the right direction.

A common security policy will be vital to help the EU address another major challenge: the migration crisis. European countries must work together to dismantle human-smuggling operations and impose severe criminal sanctions on their organizers. Efforts to control migration must be undertaken alongside the fight against Islamist terrorism, because the public  rightly or wrongly  has come to believe that the two issues are linked. The anti-EU and anti-immigrant Le Pen must not be the only French presidential candidate addressing these concerns.

Whatever Trump says, it is not inevitable that Brexit will break up Europe. On the contrary, for many European citizens  from Ireland to Greece, and even in Hungary and Poland  the vote was a wake-up call, showing that the EU really could fall apart without adequate support. European voters resolve to preserve the EU will be tested this year in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Their choice is between the insecure, war-prone Europe of yesterday and the confident, united Europe of tomorrow.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: The United Europe of Tomorrow?

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17 March 2017 15:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Baku hosted a panel discussion on The role of science and research in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Azerbaijan on March 16.

Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Chairman and Executive Secretary of New Azerbaijan Party Ali Ahmadov, addressing the event, said that Azerbaijan's economy has changed drastically in recent years.

Hailing the economic achievements of the past years, he noted that these economic changes have affected the living conditions of citizens.

"One of the tasks that we are facing is to further develop our economy, as well as to contribute to the development of the international community by joining to its efforts," the deputy prime minister said.

He added that hunger is one of the most important issues that concern the world today.

"In some countries, people struggle for food and rely on humanitarian assistance - the supply of food from other states, he said adding that the number of people living on $1-1.5 per day in the world is more than enough.

In many countries of the world, the average life expectancy is 50 years, while in developed countries the average life expectancy has exceeded 80 years and all these are issues of concern to humanity, he stressed.

Ahmadov voiced regret over the fact half of the world's wealth is in the hands of one percent of the population.

UN Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan Ghulam Isakzai, in turn, said that the contribution of science to the development of society is highly valued.

"Using science, we must achieve global goals," Isakzai said stressing that science is very important from the point of view of poverty elimination.

He noted that in the modern world, science is the foundation of any development and progress. It plays an important role in ensuring sustainable development in Azerbaijan, according to Isakzai.

Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by UN member on September 25-27, 2015. In total, 17 goals and 169 targets have been determined to be implemented in the period from 2016 to 2030.

To achieve the goals of sustainable development the National Coordination Council was established by a presidential decree on October 2016. Azerbaijan is the only country that created the National Coordinating Council for Sustainable Development, and this was highly assessed by the organization.

The councils goal is to bring state programs and strategies covering the socio-economic sphere into line with the objectives of sustainable development.

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17 March 2017 14:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are the most attractive countries in the Central Asian and South Caucasus region for investments, reads a report by the Expert Center for Eurasian Development.

The ECED report titled Map of investment attractiveness of the countries of Central Asia and South Caucasus covered eight countries including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

The investment attractiveness of the countries was assessed on a number of factors, such as transport accessibility, political stability, implementation of programs for economic development and reform, and others.

The authors note that Azerbaijan has a well-developed transport system that will become diversified as much as possible in the medium term with the introduction of two Azerbaijan-Iran and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway projects.

"The republic has a developed road network that connects it with Russia, Iran and Georgia. Although a port facility on the Caspian Sea is in the development process, its infrastructure allows carrying out transit functions for the Central Asian countries. The republic also has a developed, diversified pipeline system for pumping oil and gas," the report says.

The ECED experts also highlighted the economic reforms taken in Azerbaijan, noting that, in the face of the global economic crisis provoked by the decline in energy prices, the country's leadership undertook a set of measures to improve the investment climate, demonopolize the economy and weaken the regulation.

Azerbaijan has an economic policy aimed attracting foreign investors, as well as a set of measures to reform the economy, diversify it and increase attractiveness for investors, the document says.

As for the main task of the Azerbaijani government, the authors pointed to maintaining the stability of the financial system and reducing of dependence on transfers from the State Oil Fund.

Development of the agricultural sector will become one of the priorities in the economy. It is planned to create an agricultural insurance fund and create special agro-incubators in each of the economic regions [total of 10], the report further reads.



Another direction will be support of heavy industry and engineering.



"One of the tasks is to reduce the import of components for agricultural machinery, drilling equipment, ferrous metallurgy. The largest amount of investment is envisaged in the creation of a metallurgical complex in Sumgayit by 2019, consisting of five plants [1200 jobs]. The project is estimated at 1.225 billion euros," the report said.

Tourism is intended to become the third point of growth for the Azerbaijani economy, the experts say. "In this regard, the development of tourist infrastructure is expected," the report says.

Stable economic and political situation in Azerbaijan is one of the main prerequisites for attractiveness of the economy. The Azerbaijani government has developed a very substantial reform package aimed at diversifying the economy, which received very strong support from international financial institutions. The country invested largely in industry and agriculture and is also looking for the markets for export of its non-oil products.

The Davos World Economic Forum ranks Azerbaijans economy number 37 with respect to competitiveness. The country has a very low foreign debt, which is 20 percent of the GDP. Moreover, all the investments of foreign companies and local companies are duly protected, thus creating additional incentives and interest in investing in Azerbaijan.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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South Dakota Passes Controversial Adoption Law Affecting LGBT and Interfaith Parents

A new law passed in South Dakota last week has been drawing quite a bit of controversy among civil rights groups. Under the guise of protecting civil rights, the law actually protects private, religious adoption agencies from liability for discrimination if they refuse to adopt to LGBT individuals and couples, or potentially even parents that don't share the agency's, or even each other's, beliefs.

The subject of whether or not private religious organizations should be permitted to discriminate based upon genuinely held beliefs is a hot button topic as the religious organizations assert that denying them the right to discriminate is in itself discrimination. While this conundrum can tease even the most analytical brains, there's more to the controversy over this new South Dakota law.

Taxpayer-Funded Religious Adoption Services

One of the biggest points of controversy revolves around the issue of taxpayer funding. Essentially, even though the religious adoption services are private organizations, they generally receive quite a bit of taxpayer funding. By allowing taxpayer-funded adoption services to discriminate against LGBT individuals, and individuals of varying faiths that want to adopt, the state is essentially funding organizations that plan on committing discriminatory acts while providing state-funded services.

Alternatively, the religious adoption services that supported the law assert that by holding them liable for discrimination, the services are essentially being forced to adopt children into homes that violate their religious beliefs, which proponents believe is discrimination against their religion. However, the children do not decide which placement service they get placed into, and the law essentially permits the service to force their religious beliefs upon vulnerable, impressionable children in state-funded care.

Religious Interest Over Best Interests

Another controversial issue involves the potential for abuse on the part of the religious adoption services when it comes to imposition of beliefs, health care, and education. By allowing a religious organization to make faith-based decisions, a child's welfare could be endangered. For instance, a teen in need of an abortion might not be able to get one, or an LGBT youth could be forced into conversion therapy, or a child with differing or no religious views could very well be denied their own religious freedom, including the right to be free from religion.

The new South Dakota law seems to eschew the doctrine of separation of church and state by allowing organizations, and actually even just individuals at any adoption service, to impose their religious views on children in the state's care. Challenges to this law are likely, and other federal courts have struck similarly discriminatory laws in the past. Currently, South Dakota is one of four states that have such a law on the books.

Related Resources:
17 March 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

We love the spring season, when Novruz decorations, colorfully wrapped presents and flavor of sweets overtake downtowns around the country. Its the time for a Novruz getaway, or maybe visiting relatives, preparing for baking sweets, and, of course, joining local festivities.

Traditionally Novruz is marked in Azerbaijan with an annual festival set up near the Gosha Gala Gates in Icherisheher for several days. Here, Baku residents and guests enjoy many interesting events, including the performance of wrestlers - Pehlevans , rope-walkers and magicians, as well as artists of the children's theater.

This years festival entitled Spring Fortress will run from March 19 till March 26 and be a festival of friendship and traditions.

The festival will feature friendship among the peoples during Novruz: Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Russia, India, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia and Tajikistan will show how they are celebrating Novruz in their homeland.

Guests will enjoy quizzes, performances of stars, animation program for children and much more.

A series of events, including workshop on baking tandir (bread), cutbow tasting, unique tours with retro cars and much more will be held in Gala Reserve.

You can reach the reserve for free on March 20-21. The bus will depart from Gosha Gala each hour.

Novruz is celebrated each year on March 21, when the sun enters the sign of Aries on the astrological calendar. In the northern hemisphere, this date frequently coincides with the spring equinox, the day on which the number of daylight hours equals the number of nighttime hours. On our modern Gregorian calendar, the spring equinox varies from March 19 to March 21.

Before the actual holiday, people mark four pre-holiday Tuesdays, each of which is dedicated to the awakening of one of the natural elements called Su Chershenbesi (Water Tuesday), Od Chershenbesi (Fire Tuesday) Hava Chershenbesi (Wind Tuesday) and Torpaq Chershenbesi (Earth or Last Tuesday).

People do house cleaning, plant trees, paint eggs, make national pastries such as shekerbura, pakhlava, shorgoghal and a great variety of national cuisine. Children jump over bonfires and run through the streets and knock on doors to ask for treats.

The holiday was given the status of an official holiday in Azerbaijan by a presidential decree dated 13 March 1990. In 2009, Novruz was included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and since then, March 21 was declared the International Day of Novruz.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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17 March 2017 15:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The Days of Hungary kicked off in Baku on March 16 featuring a series of events to present Hungarian history, culture and art in Azerbaijan.

The Days organizer is the Hungarian embassy in Azerbaijan, Trend Life reported.

As part of the Days, the Boulevard Hotel Baku hosted a fashion show and presentation of Hungarian cuisine on March 16.

The event was attended by Aniko Levai, spouse of Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as prominent public, science and art figures, representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Azerbaijan.

Before the events official opening ceremony, Hungarys Ambassador to Azerbaijan Imre Laszloczki told reporters that as part of the Days of Hungary, Library of Azerbaijans National Academy of Sciences already hosted the presentation of Imre Madachs The Tragedy of Man book, published in Azerbaijani language.

Besides, the Nizami Cinema Center demonstrated a movie based on this book and the International Mugham Center hosted a concert program, during which Hungarian folk music was sounded.

The diplomat stressed that relations between Hungary and Azerbaijan are at a high level. There are quite strong relations at the level of the two countries ministries, added Laszloczki.

During the fashion show, titled FolkTREND, the Hungarian brands manufacturing clothing and adornments - Zema, Anni Pastor, Meyke, Romani, Igezo, Innoe  were presented.

Alongside with the Hungarian designers, famous Azerbaijani designer, winner of the European Fashion Award-2016 Fakhriya Khalafova also showcased her collection during the fashion show.

The Azerbaijani designer noted that the events main aim is the demonstration of folk costumes in a modern interpretation.

After the fashion show, guests were invited to another hall, where they could taste delicious Hungarian cuisine, distinguished by a wide variety of meat dishes with seasonal vegetables, fruits, fresh bread, dairy products and cheese.

The most delicious and exquisite dishes of Hungarian cuisine were presented during the event.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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17 March 2017 11:58 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The UN Security Council resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be fulfilled, said Faisal al-Fayez, Chairman of the Jordanian Senate, on the sidelines of the 5th Global Baku Forum.

Noting the importance of the forum, he said the conflicts threat and concern the whole world.

In todays world, including in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, there are many problems, and ways out of these crises should be found, the world must be better. From this point of view, the Global Baku forum is important," Faisal al-Fayez said.

"Today we have heard presidents of different countries here. They expressed their opinions about the ways of solving existing conflicts. These issues concern the whole world, he added.

Faisal al-Fayez noted that part of the territory of Azerbaijan was occupied by Armenia and the UN Security Council resolutions in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be fulfilled.

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.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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17 March 2017 13:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

UN couldnt take necessary steps to implement its resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Ali Ahmadov, Vice-Premier of Azerbaijan in Baku on March 16.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a question under the mandate of the United Nations. Despite the UN Security Councils relevant resolutions, this high organization doesnt control implementation of these documents. Why are UNSC resolutions on Nagorno- Karabakh not implemented? It is impossible to reach any agreement without implementation of these resolutions, he said.

Ahmadov reminded that the UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Over 20 years have elapsed since these resolutions were adopted. The United Nations couldnt take necessary steps to implement these documents. It is for over 20 years they are engaged in this question which is prolonged from year to year. Then, it was mandated to the OSCE as if to to look and see, Ali Ahmadov emphasized.

The OSCE Minsk Group, the activities of which have become known as the Minsk Process, works to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for over two decades, but in vain.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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17 March 2017 16:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

A problem of unresolved conflict remains in Azerbaijan for many years, said Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former Latvian President and co-chair of Nizami Ganjavi International Center.

Vike-Freiberga, talking to reporters on the sidelines of the 5th Global Baku Forum on March 17, noted that the situation in China, Europe and the Caucasus can always affect the rest of the world.

The world today is very global and problems in one part of the world can influence processes in its another part, the ex-president said.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga added that the participants of the Baku Forum discuss all issues of concern to humanity.

We are looking for solutions to world problems in Baku, bearing in mind that a problem of unresolved conflict remains in Azerbaijan itself for many years, the ex-President said.

Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski also touched upon the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in his interview to reporters on the sidelines of the Baku forum.

The international community must do everything in its power to ensure that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is resolved and make efforts to ensure that the four UN resolutions on the conflict are fulfilled, since this is the first step to resolve the conflict, he said.

Former Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Apas Jumagulov, who also participates in the forum, noted that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be resolved through peaceful negotiations and added that everything possible should be done to resolve this conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia still controls fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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17 March 2017 17:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Greek Ambassador to Baku Dimitrios Tsoungas was summoned to Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry in connection with the visit of Karen Mirzoyan to Greece.

Karen Mirzoyan introduced himself as the representative of the illegal regime created in Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is under Armenias occupation, Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend on March 17.

The Azerbaijani side voiced its dissatisfaction and concern over this visit, which contradicts the memorandum, signed in 2014 between the two countries foreign ministries on cooperation in the issues of the European Union that reaffirms the commitment to sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders, said Hajiyev.

The envoy was proposed to inform Greek citizens about the illegality of visiting Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia that will lead to legal liability.

Tsoungas, for his part, reiterated that Greece supports territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan and promised to inform the officials of his country about the dissatisfaction and concern of the Azerbaijani side.

Besides, the Greek Foreign Ministry told the Azerbaijani embassy that Mirzoyans visit was of private nature and there were no meetings with Greek officials.

Hajiyev further voiced regret over the fact that the EUs ban on visits of representatives of separatist regimes is applied selectively by some EU member states with regard to the regime, illegally established in the Armenia-occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Mirzoyan and other representatives of this regime pay visits to foreign countries with diplomatic passports of Armenia, the spokesman noted.

Such provocative visits are aimed at encouraging the so-called regime and damage the peace process and lead to an escalation of the situation in the region, added Hajiyev.

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.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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17 March 2017 10:28 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The UNs unequal treatment of its resolutions strikes a blow to the organizations image, said Ali Hasanov, Azerbaijani presidents aide for public and political affairs.

He was addressing a panel at the 5th Global Baku Forum March 16.

Hasanov noted that currently international organizations have an important task to form international relations and regulate geopolitical processes.

New approaches to the role and position of the leading organizations are appearing on the world political arena. The UNs attitude towards resolution of conflicts from the position of double standards is regrettable, he said.

There is an ambiguity in how the world community perceives the lack of UNs single position on conflict resolution, according to Hasanov.

The organization does not show the same attitude to fulfillment of its resolutions, which strikes a big blow to its image. The credibility of the UN is gradually weakening.

Hasanov noted that the UN doesnt state a concrete position on implementation of resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

For example, despite the fact that resolutions on Libya were immediately implemented, the resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remain unfulfilled for 25 years. So, a serious need emerges to make radical changes for the organizations fair operation.

He added that Azerbaijan supports the idea of carrying out reforms in the UN to prevent conflicts and restore peace in all regions of the world.

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17 March 2017 11:28 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with former Foreign Minister of the Republic of Italy Franco Frattini, who is attending the 5th Global Baku Forum,on March 16.

The sides recalled that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Italy, and noted that high-level partnership on various fields of cooperation has been forged throughout these years, Azertac reported.

The sides, particularly pointed out cooperation in the field of economy, and in this regard emphasized the regional importance of TAP project.

The two exchanged views on the current state and prospects of Azerbaijan-European Union relations. At the meeting they also discussed regional and global issues of mutual interest.

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17 March 2017 11:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade met with President of the Republic of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis on March 16, who attended the 5th Global Baku Forum.

The sides discussed prospects for Azerbaijan-Latvia cooperation in political, economic and other areas, Azertac reported.

Rasizade hailed political ties between the two countries and stressed that cooperation between Azerbaijan and Latvia is developing successfully.

The Prime Minister said there are good opportunities for expanding the bilateral bonds.

Speaking about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rasizade stressed that the conflict must be resolved in accordance with the norms of international law and on the basis of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and inviolability of borders.

Azerbaijan-Latvia relations are developing yearly and reciprocal visits play a huge role in taking bilateral relations forward. . Both countries are full members of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Azerbaijan recognized the independence of Latvia on 30 August 1991. Latvia recognized the independence of Azerbaijan on 8 January 1992.

The main goods exported from Latvia to Azerbaijan consist of animals, metal, food, and chemical products. Mineral and food products are mainly imported from Azerbaijan.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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17 March 2017 11:03 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

A meeting of senior officials of the "Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process" format member states kicked off in Baku on March 17.

This year Azerbaijan and Afghanistan are co-chairmen of the format, and this is the first event that is being held under the co-chairmanship of the Azerbaijani side. Todays meeting will discuss the works carried out and future activity directions within the framework of the Istanbul Process.

Azerbaijan, as one of the key countries in Heart of Asia  Istanbul process, and as Afghanistans close partner, supported this process and continues to play an important role in working in different areas, Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Hekmat Khalil Karzai said while addressing a meeting.

Karzai voiced hope that the meeting of foreign ministers of the Istanbul Process member countries, which is planned to be held in Baku soon, will yield positive results in the promotion of this process and significant results will be achieved in restoring Afghanistans infrastructure, as well as peace and stability in the country.

"We remain committed to establishing peace in Afghanistan, he said.

He reminded that today, the process of restoration of infrastructure is underway in Afghanistan.

The reforms, which are being implemented, indicate that Afghanistan follows the path of development and restoration in all fields, according to him.

The deputy foreign minister added that an important aspect of the regional economy is security in Afghanistan and they would like Afghanistan to be integrated into the regional economy.

Karzai also noted the importance of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project and other regional projects for Afghanistan.

The Heart of Asia is an intergovernmental organization founded in November 2011 by Istanbul, Turkey. The aim is to provide a platform to discuss regional issues, particularly encouraging security, political, and economic cooperation among Afghanistan and its neighbors.

Azerbaijan was invited to this format in 2012. Azerbaijan assumed the co-chairmanship of the Heart of Asia  Istanbul process for 2017 in early December 2016.

This region-led dialogue was launched to expand practical coordination between Afghanistan and its neighbors and regional partners in facing common threats, including counterterrorism, counternarcotics, poverty, and extremism.

Azerbaijan, as a reliable partner of NATO and friend of brotherly Afghanistan, is committed to continue its significant contribution to the Resolute Support Mission beyond 2016 by providing troops, multimodal transit, training and financial assistance.

The country has several times made substantial donations to the Afghan National Army (ANA) Trust Fund. Moreover, Azerbaijan supports Afghanistan on its path of reforms towards integrating into regional and global economy.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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Speaking to Shan Herald under condition of anonymity, the SSPP/SSA official said that representatives of his group had gone on Monday to a meeting with Maj-Gen Than Hlaing at the Eastern Central Command headquarters in Kholam Township, southern Shan State. He said that the Burmese military commander had bluntly alleged that due to the actions of the SSPP/SSA and RCSS/SSA, the townships of Mong Nong and Kehsi were still underdeveloped.

The way he [Maj-Gen Than Hlaing] spoke was disrespectful, the Shan army official said. He accused us of failing to follow the 2012 ceasefire accord, and he insinuated that we are trying to expand our territory. He also called us narrow-minded.

On the contrary, the SSPP/SSA official said, it is in fact the Burmese military which has launched offensives against ethnic people and expanded their positions into areas recognized as zones under the control of ethnic armed groups.

Fighting has broken out regularly in recent times between units of the Burmese armed forces and the SSPP/SSA and RCSS/SSA. This year alone, clashes have occurred between Burmese troops and SSPP/SSA forces in Mong Nong Township, while they have also engaged with the RCSS/SSA in Hsipaw Township.



The RCSS/SSA soldiers march on the Shan National Day

The SSPP/SSA official said that the Shan armies were also accused of not following the Burmese militarys so-called Six-point Principles* The Burmese commander reportedly emphasized that the 2008 constitution was applicable to all parties, and reasserted that the military will protect it.

The RCSS/SSA was not immediately available for comment. The RCSS/SSA is one of eight ethnic armed groups which signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with President Thein Sein in October 2015.

The SSPP/SSA opted not to ink the NCA in 2015. However, it has signed state-level and union-level ceasefire accords with the government.

*The Burmese militarys Six-point Principles are: to maintain a keen desire to reach eternal peace; to keep promises agreed to in peace deals; to avoid capitalizing on the peace agreement; to avoid placing a heavy burden on local people; to strictly abide by existing laws; and to march towards a democratic country in accordance with the 2008 Constitution.

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
17 March 2017 17:15 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received Minister of Communications and Information Technology of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mahmoud Vaezi in Baku on March 17, Azertac reported.

Vaezi congratulated President Aliyev and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Novruz holiday.

The head of state also congratulated the Iranian minister and the people of Iran on the upcoming holiday.

They hailed Azerbaijan-Iran bilateral relations as excellent. The importance of President Aliyev's successful official visit to Iran was emphasized at the meeting.

They exchanged views on the state of implementation of the North-South transport corridor, prospects for cooperation in the banking sector, and a number of other issues.

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17 March 2017 17:18 (UTC+04:00)

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has today received Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mladen Ivanic in Baku on March 17, Azertac reported.

They praised the level of Azerbaijan-Bosnia and Herzegovina bilateral relations, hailing the expansion of cooperation between the two countries.

The sides discussed the issues relating to cooperation opportunities between Azerbaijan and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a number of fields, including tourism, healthcare, mutual trade.

They also exchanged views on negotiations on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

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17 March 2017 13:45 (UTC+04:00)

The 5th Global Baku Forum, which kicked off in Baku on March 16, featured the session named What alliances will be built in the forging of modern international relations?.

The session moderated by former Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia Eka Tkeshelashvili discussed global and regional socio-political processes, Azertac reported.

Speakers at the session included former President of Bulgaria Petar Stoyanov, former Ecuadorian President Rosalia Arteaga, former Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, former French Minister of Finance Edmond Alphandery, former Romanian Prime Minister Petre Roman, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Concordia Nicholas Logothetis and the Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov.

Ali Hasanov noted that international organizations carry the main burden of determining key priorities of development of international relations, addressing complex and controversial global geopolitical processes and ensuring peace and stability in the world. On the other hand, there is now a global trend for military and political grouping, with the new perception of the role of the world`s leading international organizations, particularly the United Nations, in the international relations system emerging.

According to observations, the UN`s attitude to global geopolitical processes, its controversial handling of conflicts that jeopardize international and regional security sparks ambiguous reaction of the world community. Regretfully, most of the UN`s resolutions and decisions lack the mandatory nature, and the organization took a double standard approach to the issue of punishment of aggressor countries, which trigger conflicts in different regions across the world.

He said it is a well-known fact that influenced by some European states, the UN treats differently how its resolutions and decisions are implemented, which seriously harms the organization`s image.

Azerbaijan, which does not interfere with internal affairs of other countries and which is strictly guided by the norms and principles of international law, stands for the UN`s resolutions addressing conflicts in different parts of the world and for their soonest possible implementation. But the United Nations has not taken a principled approach to immediate fulfillment of its resolutions on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, unlike in the case with Iraq whose punishment the UN once encouraged. The UN Security Council`s resolution on Libya was immediately executed, but the organization`s four Armenia-related resolutions have not been fulfilled for more than 20 years even though these resolutions reiterated inviolability of Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity, urged cessation of military operations and Armenia`s withdrawal from the occupied territories," he said.

All these factors have necessitated a major reform and restructuring of the United Nations and its strategy. Many countries now see the fact that the veto power is used exclusively by five permanent members of the UN Security Council as being unjust, and are also convinced that, in general, criteria for permanent membership of the organization are unfair. On the other hand, any serious decision of the United Nations is adopted by consensus of the nine out of the 15 members of the Security Council, including five permanent members, which critically impedes flexibility and dynamism of the organization. The fact that not all the Security Council members have the veto power encourages the adoption of unfair decisions on some occasions. Azerbaijan, for its part, supports the idea of reforming the UN with the aim of solving conflicts, ensuring sustainable peace and stability in all regions of the world.

Ali Hasanov added: What happened in the past 25 years shows that unipolarity and new world order concepts are taken differently by states. Guided by their own interests, some want restoration of multipolarity and establishment of military and political blocks. A group of states believe that the current geopolitical processes will bring about the emergence of military and political alliances, marking a turning point in ensuring international peace and stability. The fact that military and political blocks in the multipolar world are controlling each other will allow to effectively maintain international balance.

The countries that stand for multipolarity prefer the UN to NATO as a major regulator of international relations. They believe that in a multipolar world, international relations will require a more active UN role and adjustment of provisions of the UN Charter to present realities. Challenges of the new time create a different international environment, which requires the improvement of UN mechanisms. This approach certainly does not satisfy the interests of the countries that support unipolarity as they are convinced that multipolarity may impede the establishment of global peace and encourage instability by causing conflicts on different grounds.

The Non-Aligned Movement, which Azerbaijan joined in 2011, is interested in building the new architecture of the world order based on equal partnership where no state or international organization can have any exclusive rights in building peace and stability. The Non-Aligned Movement, which backs a multipolar word concept, believes that states must not be divided into the good and the bad, that each of them must have national sovereignty and independence and pursue independent internal and foreign policies. Any state`s or military block`s maintaining long-term absolute leadership is impossible because different military and political powers have growing opportunities to influence geopolitical processes and the current unipolar system causes global problems, regional conflicts and disagreements, which may be tackled in a multipolar system of international relations.

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17 March 2017 15:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijans Justice Ministry has already started implementation of the presidential order on pardoning a group of prisoners.

President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on March 16 pardoning 423 convicts.

Under the order, 412 convicts are released from the unserved part of their prison sentence. Moreover, four people were freed from the remainder of the conditional sentence, one person was freed from the remainder of the correctional labor and three people were freed from the penalty in the form of a fine.

Under the presidential order, two persons, who were jailed for life, have had their prison terms reduced to 25 and 15 years.

Forty foreign citizens are among the pardoned, including 13 citizens of Iran, six citizens of Pakistan, four citizens of Georgia, four citizens of Russia, four citizens of Nigeria, three citizens of China, three citizens of Turkey, two citizens of Uzbekistan and one citizen of Ukraine.

The Justice Ministry and the State Migration Service have been tasked to ensure the deportation of foreign citizens freed from serving the remainder of their prison terms, in accordance with the rules set by the Migration Code.

Ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova said that the pardon order brought a double joy to families of the pardoned people on the eve of the Novruz holiday.

She noted that for the first time the act of pardon applies to people deprived of their liberty for life.

President Aliyev pardoned me for the sake of my grandchildren, 80-year-old Samad Gasimov, who was pardoned by the order, told Trend.

My joy is boundless. For five years I have not seen my grandchildren, he added.

A Chinese citizen, who was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment for kidnapping his compatriot in Baku also applauded the decree.

I am very grateful to the President of Azerbaijan for being free again, he said. In Baku, I have no one. For seven years I met with my family a couple of times, who came from distant China to visit me. After liberation, I will return to China, to my family.

Turkish national Cengiz Ciftci also expressed his gratitude to President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.

Ciftci was accused of drug trafficking and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, seven of which he has already served.

Nobody visited me during the period of serving the sentence. I havent seen my family for seven years, he told Trend. I was pardoned because this is my first conviction. I will never do this again.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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17 March 2017 12:08 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Albania and Azerbaijan are linked by traditional and historical ties, and economic cooperation between the two countries has increased several times in recent years, Albanian President Bujar Nishani told Trend on the sidelines of the 5th Global Baku Forum.

Currently, our attention is focused on such important economic issues as the implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project, the Albanian president said.

Nishani said the Southern Gas Corridor is a central project not only for the states through the territory of which this pipeline passes, but also for other European countries, being an excellent way to diversify supplies of energy resources.

Therefore, the Southern Gas Corridor project is extremely important for the energy security of Europe, the Albanian president said.

Nishani also welcomed coming of new Azerbaijani companies to Albania.

We invite Azerbaijani companies to Albania, so that they can get acquainted with the situation not only in the energy sector, but also in other sectors of economy, he said.

The 5th Global Baku Forum The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests kicked off Mar. 16.

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Albanian President Bujar Nishani, Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, Saudi Arabian Prince, Chairman of the Board of Directors of King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies Turki Al-Faisal are among those attending the forum.

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17 March 2017 12:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport voiced readiness to resume full-scale military-technical cooperation with Turkey as the delegation of Rosoboronexport will take part in the international exhibition of the defense industry "AIDEF-2017" in Istanbul, RIA Novosti reported.

The first practical step towards strengthening the bilateral military-technical relations will be the participation of the Rosoboronexport delegation in "AIDEF-2017", which is to be held in Istanbul on May 9 -12, the company said.

"Turkey is one of the most important partners for Rosoboronexport, and we hold joint consultations on a number of the most promising mutually beneficial projects in the field of military-technical cooperation," Director General of JSC Rosoboronexport Alexander Mikheev said.

In particular, Ankara showed great interest in Russian air defense systems of various ranges, active and passive protection systems for tanks, as well as small arms and ammunition, special technical equipment for the needs of the Ministries of National Defense and Internal Affairs, according to Mikheev.

Earlier, the General Director of Rostec State Corporation Sergei Chemezov said that Turkey is ready to purchase S-400 long-range surface-to-air missile system from Russia in credit.

In Moscow on March 10, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed Turkey's acquisition of Russian surface-to-air missiles systems (SAMs) S-400 Triumph.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
17 March 2017 13:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The Turkmen-Qatar high-level talks were held in Doha on March 15, as Turkmen leader had a meeting with Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, during which a number of issues of mutual interest were discussed.

Berdimuhamedov stated that he considers this visit to be an event that will give a powerful impetus to the development of friendly relations between two states.

The coincidence of positions on issues of interaction within the framework of international structures, such as the United Nations, the Islamic Cooperation Organization and others has also been highlighted.

Berdimuhamedov also called on increasing trade turnover and services volumes between Turkmenistan and Qatar.

Opportunities of regular trade exhibitions and business forums, specialized fairs of goods made in Turkmenistan and Qatar, opening of Trade Chambers in the capitals of both states were reviewed during the negotiations. It was stressed that the first Turkmen  Qatar business forum, which was held on March 14 resulted in important agreements.

The Turkmen side expressed its willingness to consider investment proposals of Qatar for realization of largest projects of Turkmenistan, which have regional importance, as well as proposals on investments to innovation projects of Qatar.

Qatar companies were invited to participate in construction of gas processing, gas and petrochemical plants, in the projects in Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea as well as in supply of equipment for oil and gas complex.

During the talks, the importance of the initiative on the creation of international transport and transit corridors was noted as it would contribute to the further development of economic relations between the countries of Central Asia and the Middle East, the Internet newspaper "Turkmenistan: the Golden Age" reported.

Now the implementation of the largest project - the construction of the Turkmenbashi International Sea Port - is being completed on the Caspian Sea. In this regard, the Turkmen side invites large transport and logistics companies of Qatar with a great experience in this field to work together.

Following the results of the visit, a number of documents were signed.

Also, Berdimuhamedov held a meeting with Head of Qatars Education, Science and Social Development Fund (Qatar Foundation) Sheikha Hind Bint Hamad Al-Thani on March 16.

The sides exchanged views on opportunities of the partnership with Qatar Foundation that has number of large projects related with the investments to human potential and formation of innovative model of education.

Berdimuhamedov highlighted that Turkmenistan pays great attention to this direction and is willing to discuss joint programs and projects for the development of national education system, in particular for studying Arabic language. Turkmenistan is interested in Qatars experience in foundation of branches of famous international universities in the country.

Large potential and prospects for fruitful scientific work, conducting of joint scientific studies in different areas, establishment of the contacts between the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan and National Scientific Fund of Qatar as well as between technology Centre of the Academy of Sciences and Qatar Technology Park, between the Institute of Manuscripts of the Academy and the Arabic Islamic Heritage Library were noted during the meeting.

Berdimuhamedov spoke for expansion of the relations between Turkmen medical centers and Qatar Institute of Biomedical Studies and Sidra Medical Research Centre.

At the end of the meeting, Turkmen leader invited Qatar Foundation delegation to visit Turkmenistan for detailed discussion of perspective directions and specific projects of joint activity.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
17 March 2017 17:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Chairperson of the Executive Board of UNESCO Michael Worbs has officially announced the names of the nine candidates received for the post of Director-General of UNESCO.

The nominees are Polad Bulbuloglu (Azerbaijan), Pham Suan Shon (Vietnam), Moushira Khattab (Egypt), Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari (Qatar), Qian Tang (China), Juan Alfonso Fuentes Soria (Guatemala), Saleh Al-Hasnawi (Iraq), Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilh (Lebanon) and Audrey Azoulay (France) are among the official candidates.

Polad Bulbuloglu is Peoples Artist of Azerbaijan and the countrys Ambassador to Russia. He enjoys a long and distinguished record in the spheres of cultural management and international diplomacy, and a particular interest in resolving humanitarian issues. He is also a renowned musician on the world stage, who has performed in more than 70 countries spanning a career over five decades.

As Culture Minister of Azerbaijan (1988-2006) he successfully oversaw the creation and development of the countrys independent cultural policy, and worked with such institutions as the Council of Europes Department of Cultural Policy, the European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, and UNESCO.

Appointed Ambassador of Azerbaijan to the Russian Federation in 2006, he work extensively in the humanitarian sphere, encouraging international cooperation and dialogue between nations, and promoting multiculturalism, education and the arts as powerful tools for peace.

Ambassador Pham Sanh Chau is a Vietnamese diplomat and educator with diverse international experience in multilateral affairs, cultural diplomacy, education, and documentary and world heritage.

Ambassador Moushira Mahmoud Khattab is an Egyptian human rights activist, former politician and diplomat and the recipient of various international awards and orders in recognition of her work in both international diplomacy and social and human development.

Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kawari is a Qatari diplomat, statesman, and intellectual. He is Adviser at the Amiri Diwan, and has been the Minister for Culture, Arts and Heritage of Qatar from July 2008 to January 2016. He was previously the Ambassador of Qatar for France, the United States, the UNESCO and the UN.

Qian Tang is leading UNESCO's Education Sector, in facilitating its 195 Member States in the implementation of Goal 4 (education) at global, regional and country levels.

Juan Alfonso Fuentes Soria is a Guatemalan politician, who was the Acting Vice President of Guatemala.

Salih Mahdi Motlab al-Hasnawi is an Iraqi doctor and politician, who has been the Minister of Health since October 2007.

Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilh is currently an advisor to the Lebanese Ministry of Culture and member of the Independent Team of Advisors (ITA) set up by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Audrey Azoulay is a French politician who is the current Minister of Culture.

These nine candidates will be interviewed during the 201st Board session April 26-27 2017. The person to be nominated by the Executive Board shall be chosen by secret ballot, during a vote that will take place during the Board's 202nd session in October 2017. Subsequently, the Chairperson of the Board shall inform the General Conference, during its 39th session in November 2017, of the candidate nominated by the Board. The General Conference shall consider this nomination and then elect, by secret ballot, the person proposed by the Executive Board.

Currently, Irina Bokova leads the organization. She became the first representing the Eastern-European group in this position. UNESCO rules do not allow the election of a senior official for more than two terms.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
17 March 2017 17:58 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Duties imposed on Russian wheat and corn by Turkey will not affect the normalization process of bilateral relations, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by TASS on March 17.

"No, it cannot [influence]," Kremlins spokesperson said responding to a question whether introduction of duties on Russian wheat and corn by Turkey can affect the process of normalizing relations between Moscow and Ankara.

Peskov did not answer the question whether Russia may lift the ban on tomatoes import from Turkey in the nearest future. "The Agriculture Ministry should be asked," he said.

Turkey has deprived Russia of the right to free supplies of wheat, corn and sunflower meal. The Turkish government had not given an explanation for the change in policy.

A fee of 130 percent on these products may be imposed, which in fact means the actual shutdown of supplies.

Turkey from March 15 suspended the issuance of licenses for duty-free supplies of wheat, corn and sunflower meal from a number of countries, but primarily, this relates to a key supplier of Russia, General Director of the Institute for agricultural market studies Dmitry Rylko said.

Turkey is the second buyer of Russian wheat after Egypt. Between July 2016 and February 2017, Turkey imported about two million tons of wheat from Russia.

Russia imposed damaging trade restrictions on Turkish goods after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border in November 2015, but the two countries are currently passing through normalization process. A great progress has been seen recently due to the visit of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Moscow last week.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Models display CRRC trains at an industry expo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [Photo/Xinhua]

Total value of orders from overseas customers surged to $8.1b in 2016

Train and rail equipment manufacturer China Railway Rolling Stock Corp made a major breakthrough in export volumes, quality, sales models, business cooperation and integration in overseas markets in 2016, according to one of its top executives.

The company said the total value of orders from abroad surged by 40 percent year-on-year to $8.1 billion in 2016. It added that exports reached 102 countries and regions and about 83 percent of countries with railroads are using CRRC products.

"In terms of sales, our orders received in 2016 were the equivalent of the total sales of Siemens AG or Bombardier Inc's railway businesses in 2015," said Yu Weiping, CRRC's vice-president.

Yu said his company would further develop "smart trains" which use advanced digitalization and automation technologies that enable automatic speed controls and fault detection.

CRRC's main businesses cover research and development, design, manufacture, repairs, sale, leasing and technical services for rolling stock.

It is also involved with urban rail transit vehicles, engineering machinery, all types of electrical equipment, electronic equipment and parts, electric products and environmental protection equipment and consulting services.

CRRC last year also pressed ahead with its goals to gain in quality and market share in such premium markets as the United States and Europe.

It shipped bullet train units to Macedonia and received an order of 846 rail cars from the Chicago Transit Authority in 2016.

Beijing-based CRRC signed a 14 billion yuan ($2.03 billion) maintenance contract with South Africathe biggest one it ever signedfurther advancing its strategy to export its services to global markets.

The company also expanded moves into businesses in Australia, the US, South Africa, India, Turkey and Europe through building research centers, factories and joint ventures.

"Chinese trainmakers could also find growth in many developing countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiativefor improved railway infrastructure, passenger services and regional connectivity, as well as their desire to create jobs and new commercial areas," said Qi Shaobin, a researcher at the Institute of Transportation Research under the National Development and Reform Commission.

Eager to further compete with its Japanese and German rivals, CRRC has already started research and development of a magnetic levitation or maglev train that can reach 600 km per hour.

The group will build a maglev rail line up to 5 kilometers long to test the train.

The project will be led by CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co Ltd in Shandong province, one of the country's three bullet train makers.
Officials with the British government complained to the White House today after Donald Trump's spokesliar Sean Spicer cited a bogus Fox News report claiming that former President Barack Obama got help from U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ to spy on Donald Trump.

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then President Elect are nonsense," a GCHQ spokesperson said in an unusual public statement Thursday. "They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

No word from the White House on whether the British government asked for Spicer to retract the comment, but who are we kidding, because nothing matters anymore and everything is terrible.

From Bloomberg:

Spicer's comments Thursday came after the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said they had not seen any evidence to back up the president's allegations that Obama had spied on him. "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," the panel's chairman, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and vice chairman, Mark Warner of Virginia, said in a joint statement Thursday. The White House has said that Trump's initial claims, posted in a flurry of tweets earlier this month, should not be taken literally. Officials have said Trump did not necessarily mean Obama personally ordered the surveillance, that wiretapping could refer to a broad range of surveillance efforts, and that the effort may not have specifically targeted Trump Tower in New York.

Here's what Spicer said during the press briefing today. For context, he'd just read off a long list of crap from the internet about Trump and Russia, and then:

"Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement," Spicer said during the daily White House briefing. "'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ, what is that? It's the initials for the British Intelligence Spying Agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, "The President needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump's conversations involving President-elect Trump," he was able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this.'" "Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot," Spicer said, by way of trying to offer proof for Trump's claim, but at the same time lending credence to the unfounded claim.

British officials aren't idiots, so they publicly acknowledged that Napolitano's reporting was bullshit. Spicer referencing it from the White House podium is not a good thing, where the historically critical U.S.-U.K. diplomatic relationship is concerned.

But remember, some people just want to destroy the state.

And from TIME:
Last fall, I wrote about the strange case of Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, a left-wing billionaire heir to the Target fortune who came to power and reversed his Republican predecessors' Reagonomic idiocy, instead raising taxes on rich people, increasing public spending, and creating shared prosperity for the people of Minnesota.



The results of the experiment continue to surprise and delight: unemployment is down to 3.7%, private sector earnings are up 1.5% to $891/week, 47,000 new jobs were added to the economy in the past year, and the state just declared a $1.8B budget surplus, even as Forbes ranked it 9th in its table of best states for business.

But this is all the more remarkable when compared the fate of the Republican-run, austerity-fuelled neighboring states, where a succession of GOP governors and state houses have slashed taxes on business and the wealthy, eliminated social spending, and attacked trade unionism. They are running deficits, the people there are earning less than their Minnesotan cousins, they're adding fewer (and worse) jobs, and posting less growth.

Economics is bedeviled by confounding factors: comparing the outcome of the same intervention in two states will always be complicated by the other differences in between them. But as controlled experiments go, you could hardly ask for a better one than the outcomes in Kansas and Winsconsin  the homes of the "American carnage" that Trump weaponized in 2016  and the ones in Minnesota over the same period. If that's not enough, we can just compare Minnesota under Dayton to the former Republican governor Tim Pawlenty, who slashed services, cut taxes, and drove the Minnesota economy off a cliff, from whose depths Dayton has now comprehensively rescued it.



Average weekly private-sector earnings: Kansas, $784 (+2.3 percent over the past year); Wisconsin, $795 (+0.1 percent); Minnesota, $891 (+1.5 percent); Illinois, $893 (+1.6 percent); national average growth, 2.3 percent. Annual GDP growth: Kansas, 1.9 percent; Wisconsin, 1.7 percent; Minnesota, 2.8 percent; Illinois, 0.9 percent; national average, 1.8 percent. In the past year, Minnesota has added 47,000 private-sector jobs, leading Kansas, Wisconsin and Illinois in per capita growth in that metric. Further, in the most recent Forbes ranking of the best states for business Minnesota was ninth, Kanas 25th, Wisconsin 32nd and Illinois 40th. And Dayton, 68, whose party lost its majority in the state House even as he was cruising to re-election in 2014, is claiming a surplus of $1.8 billion for the next two-year budget. Campaigns amid the ashes of unrest

Campaigns amid the ashes of unrest

In contrast, PolitiFact reports that Wisconsin is facing a $2.2 billion shortfall in its upcoming two-year budget. The Kansas City Star reports that Kansas appears to be $800 million short for fiscal year 2016. And, of course, Illinois lawmakers are trying to close a projected budget gap of some $6 billion for the year beginning July 1.

'Most liberal governor' rights ship in Minnesota [Eric Zorn/Chicago Tribune]

(via Naked Capitalism)
Another day, another Trumpwreck.

The BBC:

The US has agreed not to repeat claims the UK's communications intelligence agency wiretapped Donald Trump during the presidential election campaign. GCHQ rejected allegations made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, that it spied on Mr Trump, as "nonsense". No 10 has now been assured by Mr Spicer he would not repeat the accusation.

CNN on the apology:

The White House has apologized to the British government after alleging that a UK intelligence agency spied on President Donald Trump at the behest of former President Barack Obama. National security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with his British counterpart on Thursday about press secretary Sean Spicer's comment from the White House podium about a Fox News report that said British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a White House official said Friday. The official described the conversation as "cordial" where McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional."

I have to admit, I didn't expect it to be Theresa May to be the first international leader to publicly humiliate the dumb orange bastard like this, but it's not like she had to do any work. He gave it to her on a silver platteror rather a gold-painted plastic one that plays the James Bond tune with a little beeper.

UPDATE: According to Buzzfeed, Trump admin insiders insist they did not apologize, but won't go on the record.
The wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka has real mobilized the Eastern region forming the NASA coalition with strong force. The wiper leader is expected to formalise and welcome the NARC leader charity Ngilu in the NASA coalition. All the Ukambani leaders are in the opposition except the Maendeleo Chap Chap party leader and Machakos Kingpin Governor Dr. Alfred Mutua. The Wiper leader also vowed to talk with him to join hands in the coming elections.The NARC leader Mrs Charity Ngilu is anticipated to formalize the party in the opposition following Jubilee detach. The wiper leader also welcomed the Former Kathiani MP Wavinya Ndeti to the party yesterday. The wiper party is expected to have tight races in the Eastern region as the majority of aspirants are in the same party.Yesterday, the wiper party leader submitted his Nomination papers at Wiper headquarters and is expected also to welcome the ODM leader at the JKIA this weekend. Hon Kalonzo Musyoka is also expected to welcome the frustrated Nairobi senator Mike Sonko according to the latest sources.The NASA coalition is suspected of adding more parties and more Jubilee fallouts. Ford Kenya is also in talks with the water and irrigation cabinet secretary Eugene Wamalwa who is in Jubilee to Join hands in the opposition from Western Region. According to the political dynamism, the parties will end up shaping according to tribal bases.
Despite Trump's denial of climate change the the ghastly attacks on climate science and mitigation in the new proposed budget, the Carbon Bubble  which overprices hydrocarbons and the industries that rely on them, as though we'll be burning all of them with impunity  is about to pop.

Alex Steffen lists the costs and benefits, the forces marshalled for a post-carbon economy .The reason carbon is underpriced is that the external costs of burning climate change  like rescuing people from catastrophic weather events and drowning cities  are borne by all of us, while the profits from hydrocarbons are held in a few hands.





This is a classic corruption problem: diffused costs borne by many and concentrated benefits accruing to a few allow the few to lobby for rules to allow their corruption to continue, while the rest of us are stuck in the trap of trying to figure out how to work together to thwart them by pooling our resources, which are already depleted by the costs of cleaning up the mess the few have made for the rest of us.





But Steffen says there's a change in the increasingly chaotic winds. The post-carbon industries  from solar to electric cars  are a way for rich investors to go long on climate action, and short hydrocarbons, and they become a force against the carbon barons' efforts to continue burning fossil fuels unchecked. Meanwhile, some of the big powers have gotten climate religion, evidenced by the fact that America's trading partners, from China on down, have announced that they'll stay in the Paris Accord whether or not Trump pulls America out of it. There's more at work here than mere belief in climate change, of course: China perceives an opportunity to weaken American geopolitical influence by presenting itself as a responsible steward of global stability, a niche the US once claimed for itself to enormous trade, military and economic advantage.

Combine that with the increasingly undeniable problems of anthropogenic, carbon-fuelled climate change; and rapid urbanization (which offers new efficiencies in carbon-neutral living, from public transit to shared infrastructure) and you've got a recipe for "a snap forward in climate action."





It's a hopeful vision of how geopolitics and markets as they are  not as they might be in the future  could be sufficient to carry us into the kinds of urgent action that's long overdue.



When we hear of potential catastrophes in 2080 low-lying cities being swamped by rising waters, the loss of most of the Amazon rainforest, droughts that last decades, hundreds of millions of climate refugees being displaced  they sound far away from our lives. But little kids alive today will still be in the workforce in 2080. People now alive will see the year 2100. When scientists worry about cataclysmic weather chaos, they're worrying not about distant unknowable generations. They're worrying about the kids all around us: the ones on their way to school, playing in the park, asking for a bedtime story. Serious, responsible people take the duty of protecting those kids extremely seriously. Many are extremely motivated now to push through changes, at whatever cost.

Americans' support for climate action is growing. We're no longer talking about a handful of idealists, either. Those fiercely pursuing climate action include religious leaders (like the Pope, for instance), military generals and admirals, intelligence agencies, billionaire philanthropists, universities, scientists and (outside of the U.S.) political parties, labor unions and heads of state. Public opinion is shifting towards climate action, even in the U.S.. Generational politics loom large here. Simply put, younger people have a stronger stake in our society taking bold climate action, and polls show that the younger Americans are, the more they want change. This alone is changing climate politics, since with every year, more older people opposed to change pass from the political scene, and more young people join it.

The Smokestacks Come Tumbling Down

[Alex Steffen/The Nearly Now]
Florida may soon implement a new tool to stop the growing problem of opioid abuse.

New bill to crack down on opioid abuse in Florida

Drug dealers to be charged with murder in opioid overdoses

Manatee County hopes to use new bill in fight against opioids

RELATED: Drug Free Manatee opens training sessions to residents

A bill written by one of the Bay Areas representatives is aiming to charge opioid dealers with murder.

Gerrie Stanhope is one of the many of mothers in Manatee County who has lost a child to a fentanyl overdose.

I lost a son in 2014, a grandson in 2015. I lost my other sons girlfriend in 2015, and I lost my daughter-in-laws niece in 2015, so its real close to my heart, Stanhope said.

More than a year ago, Stanhope helped start a group called No Longer Silent, putting a face on the growing problem.

In the past three months the Manatee County Sheriffs Office has seen 28 deaths from opioid overdoes.

Captain Todd Shear said, We lead the state in deaths per capita in the state of Florida. A lot of people refer to us as the epicenters.

Fentanyl and carfentanil are synthetic versions of the drug. A smaller amount of fentanyl is just as lethal as a dose of heroin.

If you have 4 ounces or 4 grams of heroin, its considered a trafficking amount. If you have 4 ounces of carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than heroin, there is not a trafficking charge, Shear said.

House Bill 477 passed in committee this week.

Under the bill, drug dealers who sell fentanyl, carfentanil, or any mixture like that will receive harsher sentences.

If the bill passes, those synthetic drugs would be on the same playing field as other illicit drugs, including charging drug dealers with manslaughter if someone overdoes.

Stanhope said she has mixed feelings about the new bill.

I do think the dealers should be punished, then they are taken off the streets. But the problem with that is there are two more right behind them.

The sheriffs office said while the bill is on the right track, its going to take the entire community to stop opioids in Manatee County.

The bill will go up for debate next month.
When people think of Orlando theme parks, Disney World and Universal Orlando are automatic.

And despite my love for Disney, when I think of thrill rides (and coasters) it's Universal all the way.

I decided to put together a list of my favorite attractions at Universal. I like many of the attractions at the theme park, but these are the top four.

Revenge of the Mummy (Universal Studios)



The Mummy is my favorite ride at Universal. Its a fast, special-effects heavy, indoor roller coaster, and it doesnt get enough love.

As you travel through the dark, you encounter mummies, fire and other creatures as you try to escape Imhotep. Oh, and the theming for this ride is top-notch. You feel like youre in a dark, winding tomb.

Its not as intense as the coasters youll find at Islands of Adventure, but that doesnt make it any less fun.

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts (Universal Studios)

I know people who swear that Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is the best Harry Potter ride. Everyones entitled to their opinion, but for me, its Escape from Gringotts.

The queue takes you through the lobby of Gringotts bank, which is filled with animatronic goblins.

The ride itself is an amazing, immersive experience that takes you through the vaults of the bank. Along the way you encounter trolls, Ron, Harry and Hermione and Voldemort. The multiple special effects combined with the 3D elements make it one of the more complex attractions at the park.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter-Diagon Alley (Universal Studios)



This Universal expansion is a must-see for Harry Potter fans. You are transported to the streets of Londoncomplete with Knight Bus and red telephone boxesbefore entering Diagon Alley where youll find wands, robes and other wizarding trinkets. Grab a butter beer, buy a chocolate frog or eat at the Leaky Cauldron. You can even visit Gringotts bank, which has one of my favorite rides, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.

The cobblestone streets, the Harry Potter-theme costumes, the music from the films and the architecture adds to the immersive experience.

For even more Harry Potter, hop aboard the Hogwarts Express and visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Islands of Adventure.

Dragon Challenge (Islands of Adventure)

I must admit, I miss Dueling Dragons. The intertwining coasters traveling at 60 mph, coupled with a few near-misses was a thrilling experience.

Re-themed to Harry Potter and renamed Dragon Challenge, the ride is still fun. Coasters no longer duel, but they are still fast, with plenty of twists of loops. Which one is better, the Chinese Fireball or the Hungarian? Its hard to say since both are completely different rides. But, definitely ride both.
MATT SLOCUM/STF

JC Penney stores in Southeast Texas have been spared from the 138 stores closing nationwide and impacting approximately 5,000 employees, the company recently announced.



In an effort to "return to profitability," JC Penny Company, Inc. announced in a February new release, the retailer would close or relocate up to 140 stores across the country as well as two distribution centers. The move would result in approximately $200M in cost-savings, the report said.

Texas stores listed among those impacted are in Union City, Athens, Borger, Early, El Paso, Marshall, Nacogdoches, Seguin, and Stephenville.



JC Penny reported a total revenue of $3.96B in the final quarter of 2016  a 0.9 percent decrease, according to the Associated Press.



The department store said it will provide outplacement support services for eligible employees that will be leaving the company. Liquidation on the 138 locations will begin in mid-April.



Macy's announced in January that it would be closing several stores, including the location in Parkdale Mall. In the written announcement, Macy's chairman said the impacted stores would be those that were "unproductive or are no longer robust shopping destinations due to changes in the local retail shopping landscape."



The last day for Macy's, which opened locally in 2001, is March 31.

PDF: See the complete list of JC Penny stores that will soon close
New York City Health + Hospitals ended the first six months of fiscal year 2017 with an operating loss, but the system says its turnaround plan is still on track.

In the first half of FY 2017, NYC Health + Hospitals' revenues increased to $4.2 billion, up slightly from revenues of $4.1 million in the same period of the year prior. Unaudited financial statements show the system saw an increase in net patient service revenue and premium revenue from its insurance division MetroPlus.

However, expenses outpaced revenue growth in the first half of FY 2017. NYC Health + Hospitals' expenses rose to $4.9 billion in the first six months of FY 2017 from $4.5 billion in the same period a year earlier.

The system's operating loss grew to $775.6 million in the first half of FY 2017, compared to an operating loss of $420.4 million in the same period of the year prior.

A NYC Health + Hospitals spokesman told Becker's roughly $200 million of the system's operating loss in the first half of FY 2017 is attributable to the city's prepayment of its FY 2017 subsidy at the end of FY 2016. He said another roughly $270 million was attributable to depreciation and other "non-cash costs that do not impact system operations."

Despite its financial performance in the first half of the fiscal year, the system spokesman told Becker's NYC Health + Hospitals is still on track to shrink its budget gap by $779 million in FY 2017. He said the system's finances are expected to improve in the second half of the year due to supplemental funding and realized savings from its workforce reduction through attrition.

More details about the system's financial performance will be presented to the New York City Council during its FY 2018 preliminary budget hearing on Monday.

More articles on healthcare finance:

Mayo Clinic to give preference to privately insured over Medicaid, Medicare patients

Dana-Farber's Medicare funding at risk due to overreliance on Brigham and Women's

OIG tags Florida hospital for incorrect billing
Bostwick Laboratories, an anatomic pathology laboratory based in Glen Allen, Va., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In its bankruptcy petition, the lab listed its assets as between $1 million and $10 million and its liabilities as between $50 million and $100 million, according to the report.

The lab filed for bankruptcy two days after telling employees the company was being sold to Poplar Healthcare, a lab services company based in Memphis, Tenn.

Bostwick Laboratories said in its bankruptcy petition that it has between 200 and 999 creditors. The company's largest unsecured creditor is the Department of Justice, which has a $2.7 million claim, according to the report.

The DOJ's claim in the bankruptcy case dates back to August 2014, when Bostwick Laboratories agreed to pay the federal government more than $6.5 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute by billing Medicare and Medicaid for medically unnecessary cancer detection tests and offering physicians incentives to obtain government payer business, according to the Department of Justice.

More articles on healthcare finance:

Mayo Clinic to give preference to privately insured over Medicaid, Medicare patients

Average reimbursement rate for large hospitals, by region

Dana-Farber's Medicare funding at risk due to overreliance on Brigham and Women's
The following health IT vendor contracts and go-lives were reported within the past week.

1. HealthTap, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtual care network, launched new services in Spanish.

2. On March 11, University Hospital Kerry in Ireland went live on its Maternity EHR, making it the second hospital in the country to go live with the Maternal & Newborn Clinical Management System.

3. Purchase, N.Y.-based Teladoc, a telehealth provider, partnered with Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based Accolade, an on-demand healthcare concierge service.

4. University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust sealed a deal with Verona, Wis.-based Epic and will deploy Epic's EHR system in 2019.

5. Google has developed a deep learning algorithm that detects breast cancer in pathology slides.

6. Omega Healthcare Management Services acquired WhiteSpace Health, a healthcare analytics company.

7. Wichita, Kan.-based Vigilias Telehealth is implementing Atlanta-based Azalea Health's cloud-based practice management, EHR and revenue cycle management services.

8. Epic officially launched its "App Orchard," an app store it first announced two years ago.

9. Munich Leukemia Laboratory, a leukemia and lymphoma diagnostic and research lab in Germany, joined forces with IBM and Illumina.

10. Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Adventist Health System is expanding its partnership with Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier to incorporate pharmacy clinical surveillance and analytics.

11. Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago tapped MD Interconnect's secure messaging service, called RapidConnect, to streamline clinician communication.
Here are 10 recent news updates on health IT companies.

Epic Systems launched its "App Orchard," an app store it first announced two years ago.

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the morning of March 9, Cerner opened its 290-acre Innovations Campus in Kansas City, Mo.

Eight EHR vendors agreed to a new set of industry principles set forth by the Electronic Health Record Association, including Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, GE Healthcare Digital, McKesson, Medhost and NextGen Healthcare.

IBM's speech recognition system now boasts a 5.5 percent error rate.

Munich Leukemia Laboratory, a leukemia and lymphoma diagnostic and research lab in Germany, joined forces with IBM and Illumina.

A research team at New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai completed an asthma study with an iPhone app developed on the Apple ResearchKit framework.

Teladoc appointed Peter Nieves to a newly created role: executive vice president and chief revenue officer.

Google developed a deep learning algorithm that detects breast cancer in pathology slides.

DeepMind, Google's artificial intelligence arm, is building a data auditing project for DeepMind Health.

Royal Philips and LabPON, a Hengelo, Netherlands-based clinical laboratory that uses digital diagnosis, are joining forces to create an electronic database of annotated pathology images.
University of Mississippi Medical Center, a five-hospital academic medical center based in Jackson, has cut 195 jobs and eliminated an additional 85 open positions, according to the Sun Herald.

The cuts are part of a financial turnaround plan aimed at addressing a $32.7 million revenue shortfall. UMMC expects to achieve $24 million in savings by June 30, the end of the fiscal year, through its financial action plan, according to the report.

"Unfortunately, it is not possible to reach savings of this magnitude without reductions in staffing," LouAnn Woodward, MD, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, told the Sun Herald.

She told WCBI the job cuts affect employees across all facets of the organization.

The $24 million in savings will help UMMC address its fiscal troubles, but the hospital will continue to implement changes to overcome its financial challenges.

"We expect these pressures on our revenues to continue, so our emphasis on efficiency, growing revenues and finding new ways to provide the same or better services at reduced cost will continue through fiscal year 2018," Dr. Woodward told WCBI.



More articles on healthcare layoffs:

Affinity Medical Center laying off employees

Baptist Health to cut 288 employees

Stanford Health Care revises number of layoffs to 123
U.S. News & World Report has released a short list which outlines the most selective medical schools in the nation for the 2016-2017 school year.

Approximately 118 ranked medical schools, which had already been ranked by the news source, submitted student acceptance information to U.S. News & World Report. Unranked schools, which did not meet U.S. News & World Report's criteria to be ranked, were not included. Out of all 118 schools, the average acceptance rate for the 2016-2017 school year was 5.8 percent. However, at the following 10 schools, the average acceptance rate was much lower  only 2.6 percent.

Here are the 10 medical schools with the lowest acceptance rates for the 2016-2017 school year.

1. Mayo Clinic School of Medicine (Rochester, Minn.)  1.8 percent

2. Georgetown University School of Medicine (Washington, D.C.)  2.5 percent

2. Stanford (Calif.) University School of Medicine  2.5 percent

4. Florida State University College of Medicine (Tallahassee)  2.6 percent

4. George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences (Washington, D.C.)  2.6 percent

4. Wake Forest School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, N.C.)  2.6 percent

7. Brown University  Alpert Medical School (Providence, R.I.)  2.7 percent

7. UC Davis School of Medicine (Sacramento)  2.7 percent

7. David Geffen School of Medicine at UC Los Angeles  2.7 percent

10. UC San Diego School of Medicine  3 percent

All of the above medical schools were also on U.S. News & World Report's list of medical schools with the lowest acceptance for the 2015-2016 school year.
U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso cited price concerns as his primary reason for rejecting the proposed merger between Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care and Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem in his opinion released Thursday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Judge Alonso granted the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Illinois' request for a preliminary injunction to halt the health systems' proposed merger last week. His opinion, filed under seal to allow both parties to redact sensitive information, was released Thursday.

Here are six takeaways from Judge Alonso's opinion.

1. In his opinion, Judge Alonso wrote the FTC's economist was able to "persuasively [demonstrate] that the merger [would] likelycause a significant price increase resulting in a loss to consumers," according to the report.

2. He noted neither health system could effectively prove the potential benefits of their merger would outweigh the harm to competition the FTC and the state of Illinois proposed it would cause.

3. Judge Alonso reportedly granted the injunction because "the FTC and the state of Illinois showed that they would likely win the overall case," according to the Chicago Tribune.

4. Judge Alonso previously sided with the health systems the first time the issue was brought to his attention. In an order issued June 14, 2016, Judge Alonso denied the FTC's request to block the proposed merger. The FTC successfully appealed that decision with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the case was sent back to Judge Alonso to reconsider.

5. In his opinion filed Thursday, Judge Alonso sided with the appellate court's rationale, stating the FTC correctly defined the hospitals' geographic markets and that the agency's argument that a potential merger would lead to an 8 percent, or $45 million, price increase for consumers was sound, according to the report.

6. In a statement to the Chicago Tribune, Advocate Health Care officials said: "We move forward committed to the same core values that drove our decision to pursue the merger  improve quality, advance care delivery and lower costs."
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office expressed concern over the proposed affiliation agreement between Harrisburg, Pa.-based PinnacleHealth and Pittsburgh-based UPMC Thursday, according to Penn Live.

In a statement to Penn Live, the attorney general's office said it is "aware of the pending affiliation by UPMC of PinnacleHealth. Attorney General [Josh] Shapiro is concerned about the effect on consumers in the region and ensuring access to affordable and quality healthcare. We will scrutinize this transaction closely with that in mind."

Joe Grace, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office, also told the publication Attorney General Shapiro is similarly concerned about PinnacleHealth's proposed acquisition of four Pennsylvania hospitals from Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems. PinnacleHealth officials revealed plans Tuesday to purchase the hospitals from CHS, then pursue an affiliation with UPMC.

State officials expect both transactions to trigger a response from the Federal Trade Commission and the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, according to the report.

The FTC has taken an aggressive stance on potential hospital or health system mergers or acquisitions that may result in antitrust concerns or raise prices for consumers. Last week, a federal judge granted the FTC an injunction to temporarily halt the proposed merger between Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care and Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem.

More legal and regulatory issues:

Acting FTC chairman identifies 3 ways antitrust policies may change under Trump

Calif. legislation requires AG's approval of nonprofit hospital closures

The ACA replacement: How the views of Trump, Ryan, and Price tell us what to expect
Pittsburgh-based UPMC has sued an attorney in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court for allegedly using unethical means to recruit patients for possible legal action against UPMC, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The suit, which UPMC filed Tuesday, alleges attorney Michael O'Day violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct that govern lawyers in the state by using "high-pressure" tactics to create fear among patients about the state of their health to get them to join a possible legal action against UPMC. Each of the patients Mr. O'Day allegedly solicited to join the legal action against UPMC suffer from Chiari malformation, an uncommon condition that causes brain tissue to extend into the spinal canal.

Mr. O'Day told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he is preparing a legal complaint against UPMC and has been in touch with the system's attorneys about a possible settlement. However, he said the suit UPMC filed against him is "baseless" and "frivolous."

"This is an attempt to intimidate me and my clients," Mr. O'Day told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He said the lawsuit he is preparing focuses on whether operations performed by Ghassan K. Bejjani, MD, a neurosurgeon at UPMC, on patients with Chiari malformation were necessary and whether the patients were properly notified that a plate would be inserted in their skulls as part of the surgery, according to the report.

In the lawsuit, UPMC seeks an injunction to stop Mr. O'Day from soliciting UPMC patients as clients and from damaging relationships between UPMC and its patients.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

Kindred claims WellCare delays reimbursement to boost bottom line

18 recently unsealed healthcare false claims cases: 4 takeaways

Home health company owner charged for role in $15M false billing scheme
Here are 17 contract resolutions and dissolutions that occurred between payers and providers since Jan. 1, beginning with the most recent.

1. Grady Memorial Hospital, BCBS of Oklahoma reach in-network agreement

Chickasha, Okla.-based Grady Memorial Hospital reached a preferred provider organization agreement with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma.

2. Northwest Healthcare, UnitedHealthcare negotiations stall as contract termination looms

Tucson, Ariz.-based Northwest Healthcare and UnitedHealthcare in Minnetonka, Minn., reached a contract impasse that could affect thousands of patients' in-network access to Northwest's services by May 1.

3. Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, BCBS of Idaho reach agreement

Idaho Falls-based Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center and Blue Cross of Idaho in Meridian signed a contract in March to provide in-network coverage to certain BCBSI policyholders seeking emergency and referred services at the medical center.

4. Tenet, BCBS of Texas sign multi-year agreement

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare inked a multi-year contract with Richardson-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas ahead of the agreement's April 15 termination date.

5. Children's Minnesota dumps contract with BCBS

Minneapolis-based Children's Minnesota terminated its contract with Eagan-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, a decision that may result in more than 70,000 patients losing in-network access to the hospital's services.

6. Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, Humana reach network agreement

Memphis, Tenn.-based Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare and Louisville, Ky.-based Humana inked an agreement to allow the insurer's Medicare Advantage members to access the health system at in-network rates.

7. Prime Healthcare Services rescinds plans to terminate Anthem contract

Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare Services will remain in-network with Anthem Blue Cross after backtracking on plans to end its contract with the Indianapolis-based insurer hours after the decision was publicized.

8. Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, UnitedHealthcare resolve contract impasse

Greenville, S.C.-based Bon Secours St. Francis Health System and Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare extended their previously terminated contract through June 30 to avoid a lapse in in-network coverage for approximately 10,000 patients.

9. Integrity Health clinics resolve BCBS of Minnesota contract dispute

Eagan, Minn.-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota reached a separate contract with each of Integrity Health Network's 20 affiliated clinics, avoiding the clinics' scheduled Feb. 1 exit from the insurer's provider network.

10. Priority Health, McLaren partner to expand healthcare access in Michigan

Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Priority Health and Flint, Mich.-based McLaren Health Care agreed to add McLaren hospitals and physicians to the Priority Health network.

11. Grady, Aetna reach new contract after 6 months of talks

Atlanta-based Grady Health System and Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna agreed to a new contract to keep all Grady hospitals and physicians in Aetna's network.

12. University of Maryland physician group, Aetna ink 3-year partnership

Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna and a physicians group at the University of Maryland in College Park agreed to coordinate patient care to enhance patient outcomes while reducing healthcare expenses.

13. BCBS of Western New York, Roswell Park Cancer Institute ink agreement

Buffalo-based BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York and Roswell Park Caner Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., reached a three-year agreement to continue in-network access to the institute and its affiliated physicians for the insurer's policyholders.

14. CVS says it was not its 'desire or decision' to leave BCBS of Alabama pharmacy network

CVS Pharmacy said it was not its "desire or decision" to leave the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama pharmacy network, which provides coverage for 390,000 policyholders.

15. BCBS of South Carolina discontinues out-of-state coverage for Blue Essential policyholders

The majority of BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Blue Essentials policyholders will no longer have access to out-of-state healthcare services at in-network rates, effective Jan. 1.

16. Humana, Boca Raton Regional Hospital renew contract

Boca Raton (Fla.) Regional Hospital and Louisville, Ky.-based Humana renewed their contract, allowing Humana policyholders to access the hospital's services at discounted rates.

17. BCBS of Florida, Retreat Premier Addiction Treatment network for services

Jacksonville, Fla.-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida networked with Retreat Premier Addiction Treatment Centers in Palm Springs, Fla., to provide policyholders access to addiction treatment services.
Four former Food and Drug Administration commissioners are warning lawmakers about the dangers associated with importing cheaper medications from other countries.

Robert Califf, MD, Margaret Hamburg, MD, Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, and Andrew Von Eschenbach, MD, sent a letter to members of Congress highlighting their concerns with drug importation.

"The American public and members of Congress have expressed serious concerns about access to and cost of prescription drugsWe share these concerns and believe we need better systems that enable affordable access to life-saving medicines," they wrote in the letter. "However, routine importation from foreign countries is not the right approach."

The former FDA leaders cited the following concerns with dug importation.

1. Drugs purchased from other countries may be substandard, unsafe, adulterated or fake.

2. The system opens up patients and consumers to serious risks.

3. The FDA lacks resources necessary to oversee a large drug importation program.

4. The global drug supply system will limit improvements in access, meaning a limited supply of drugs would be available for importation.

5. Importation would likely achieve minimal cost savings and only a slight improvement to access.

"We urge Congress and the many others concerned about the cost of drugs to deal directly with the issues driving the cost of medicines and not to place false hope in measures that will place patients who need treatment at risk and jeopardize public health," the former FDA leaders wrote.

They advocated for more direct tactics to lower drug costs, such as value-based drug pricing and streamlined approvals for generics and biosimilars.

More articles on supply chain:

Are direct-to-consumer ads fueling high drug spending? 4 thoughts

6 latest FDA approvals

Medtronic earns FDA approval for insertable cardiac monitor
Here are 12 spine surgeons who made the news this week:

Karsten Ritter-Lang, MD, and Jan Spiller's, MD, book, To Fuse or Not to Fuse: How Artificial Disc Replacement, Hybrid Fusion, and Fusion Alternatives are Changing the World of Spinal Fusion, became an Amazon #1 bestseller.

Todd Albert, MD, surgeon-in-chief and medical director for New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery, discussed the future of orthopedics with Medscape ahead of his presentation at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting.

Vladimir Sinkov, MD, of New Hampshire Orthopaedic Center (Nashua), Brian R. Gantwerker, MD, of Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles, Kern Singh, MD, of Chicago-based Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush and Richard Kube, MD, of Peoria-based Prairie Spine & Pain Institute shared the key practice investments they've made throughout their respective careers.

Solomon Kamson, MD, PhD, of Bothell, Wash.-based Spine Institute Northwest, presented findings from a five-year review of full-endoscopic assisted minimally invasive lumbar decompression in an outpatient setting.

Orthopedic surgeons Brock Wentz, MD, Erik Kubiak, MD, Sukanta Maitra, MD, and Michael Daubs, MD, formed University Orthopedics and Spine in the Las Vegas area.

More articles on spine:

5 spine surgeons on key practice investments



Swedish-Cherry Hill neurosurgery hit with US Attorney's Office investigation



8 things for spine surgeons to know for Thursday  March 16, 2017




The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons appointed Jacob M. Buchowski, MD, of St. Louis-based Washington University School of Medicine, to its board of directors.

The appointment occurred during the AAOS annual meeting in San Diego on March 17, 2017.

Here are five highlights:

1. Dr. Buchowski directs the Washington University School of Medicine's spine fellowship as well as the Spinal Tumors Center.

2. He also serves as an orthopedic and neurological surgery professor at the medical school.

3. Dr. Buchowski specializes in treating primary and metastatic spinal tumors; adult spine deformity; and complex reconstructive surgery of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine.

4. He researches the clinical outcomes after surgical and nonsurgical treatment of primary spinal tumors and metastatic spine disease. His research interests also include adult spinal deformity and complex reconstructive surgery clinical outcomes.

5. Dr. Buchowski completed his spine surgery fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine.
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The news came days after Wood Group agreed a 2.2 billion deal for Amec Foster Wheeler

Amec Foster Wheeler has secured a slice of a 950 million US dollar contract (767 million) with the American Air Force, just days after Wood Group made a 2.2 billion swoop for the firm.

The FTSE 250 company said it would maintain Air Force and US Department of Defense (DoD) sites across the globe as part of a five-year deal with the US Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC).

The energy-to-infrastructure company will compete for contracts to remove unexploded bombs and hazardous waste, alongside design and build orders for construction, renovation, site work and demolition.

Ann Massey, Amec's president of environment and infrastructure business, said the deal would put it in a "prime position" for installations work with the US Air Force.

"We are honoured to receive this contract, which is a testament to our proud history of successfully delivering on AFCEC projects for more than 25 years and builds upon our strategy to increase our work with the DoD," she added.

The contract boost comes after r ival oil services firm Wood Group reached an agreement on Monday to snap up Amec Foster Wheeler in a move that could lead to 110 million worth of savings a year.

The cost savings are likely to affect administrative jobs across the combined group.

Wood Group employs 29,000 people while Amec has 35,000 workers and the new entity would be valued at around 5 billion.

Debt-laden Amec had planned to launch a 500 million rights issue to bolster its balance sheet, but those plans have been suspended following the offer from John Wood.

Shares in Amec Foster Wheeler were down just under 1% on the London Stock Exchange on Friday.
Photos show them sitting down to tea at Lambeth Palace.

Angelina Jolie has met the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss the refugee crisis and the prevention of sexual violence in conflict.

The Hollywood star, a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), recently made her first appearance as a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics.

The Most Rev Justin Welby shared three photographs from the meeting on Twitter, showing the pair sitting down to tea and in conversation by a mantelpiece at Lambeth Palace.

He added the caption: Privilege to welcome UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie. Discussed refugee crisis, South Sudan and prevention of sexual violence in conflict.

Angelina recently spoke to postgraduate students at LSE taking the course Women, Peace and Security.

Before she gave her inaugural lecture she told the Evening Standard: Im a little nervous, feeling butterflies.

I hope I do well. This is very important to me.

The meeting between Angie and the archbishop came as the actress marked the fifth anniversary of the founding of her Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI).

In February 2015, he hailed her work as a special envoy at a London conference bringing faiths together to work towards ending sexual violence.

He said: The role of the UN secretary generals special envoy on refugees, Angelina Jolie Pitt, is one that has been extraordinary.

What she said just now sums up so beautifully the issues we are facing, and puts it so precisely in terms of the challenge that there is.

Its wonderful that she has committed her time, her energy, and has taken great personal risks in order to be able to speak authentically as to what shes done.
The actor has aired his views on the Arsenal manager.

Idris Elba has described Arsene Wenger as a class act, but said it may be time for the Arsenal manager to move on.

The long-standing Arsenal fan said Wenger had taken the team as far as he could since taking the job in 1996.

Adding his voice to growing discontent with the managers performance, he told the Press Association: Arsene is a class act but there is this vibe at the moment that maybe hes not as clear about how to get a team to continue their success.

He comes from a group where, if hes got a young team, he can pull them up from the ranks really well. But he doesnt have the wickedest track record with teams that need to sustain.

Criticism has been mounting against the 67-year-old Frenchman, who has failed to secure a league title for the team in years.

Humiliating losses to Bayern Munich this year have led to a social media campaign calling for Arsenals longest-serving boss to be replaced.

People are wondering if its time for him to move on, Idris added.

The Luther stars comments came as he spoke of his latest project, which will see him take over BBC Three to showcase young talent in UK music, sport and film.

The Idris Takeover will be available on BBC Three from March 27.
Annemarie with her husband Michael Meade and their children, from left, Conor, Patrick and Rory. This was taken during a holiday in Ireland when the boys were younger

On St Patricks Day, we talk to three expats - now living in London, Australia and South Africa - to find out how they ended up so far from home and what the day means to them.

Everything here is centred on the colour green and having good time

Author Annemarie Neary is originally from Newry and has lived near Clapham Common in London for more than 20 years. Annemarie, whose first thriller, Siren, was published last year, is married to Michael Meade, a financial adviser, and has three boys, Patrick (24), Conor (21) and Rory (19). She says:

I grew up in Newry as the eldest of three children. I studied law, as did my younger brother and sister. My late father, Kevin Neade, was a lawyer with his own practice and my mother, Rhonda, is a retired primary school teacher who still lives in Newry.

"I left Newry when I was 18-years-old to study at Trinity College Dublin, where I met Michael who was brought up in London by Irish parents.

"I studied literature and after graduating, worked as a civil servant in Dublin while studying part-time for the next four years to qualify as a barrister.

"Michael returned to London to work and, as soon as I finished the bar exams, I joined him and have been here ever since.

"In London, St Patrick's Day is a big cultural opportunity and they do quite a lot; there is always some kind of event sponsored by the Lord Mayor.

"We also have that global greenery with the London Eye turning green as do Selfridges and Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. I always think that, as a country, what Ireland has achieved in branding with the colour green is amazing.

"The shops here would devote a section to St Patrick's Day selling themed goods - even the cake shops - and tonight you will see a lot of people, mostly in their 20s, in the bars wearing Guinness hats and drinking green beer.

"But all of that is not really my thing. When the kids were young, mum would have sent them some shamrock which was quite special as it was impossible to get any in London. The closest shops here got to it was to sell clumps of clover. The kids would have worn their shamrock to school and all the other kids would have wanted to know what it was, which was quite fun for them.

"We never do much on St Patrick's Day - I'm not one for parades. However, the events here are not political, but cultural, and everything is centred on having a good time and the colour green. This year though, I'm having friends over for dinner on St Patrick's night and I will cook something Irish as a nod to the day.

"As a child my biggest memory of St Patrick's Day is getting a day off school.

"We did go to the parade in Dublin a few times and as a young child it was amazing to see the floats, they were all so colourful. I also remember as a kid we would always try and wear something green on St Patrick's Day - not a leprechaun suit - but an item of clothing. Here, on the Tube, you do tend to see a lot of people wearing green on St Patrick's Day and I'm not sure if that is a coincidence.

"It was never really a religious thing for us. However, I do remember singing some hymns in school for St Patrick.

"As a child, I'm sure I can remember some talk about moving St Patrick's Day to July so there would be better weather, but obviously while the idea was mooted nothing ever came of that."

'I must admit that I feel lucky to have been born on the 17th'

Lynne Hanna, who turns 55 today, is originally from Dromara and moved to South Africa five years ago to take up the post of CEO for cosmetic giant Clarins. She lives with her husband Noel (50), a renowned endurance athlete. The couple enjoy the distinction of being the first husband and wife in the world to climb to the top of Everest together from both sides of the mountain. She says:

I was working for Clarins as manager in Northern Ireland when they offered me the job in South Africa. This meant a major move for Noel and I. It was a total change for us, but because I was still working with Clarins, it made the move easier and we really love the country and the South African people.

"Moving here was a big challenge and change from Northern Ireland, but the basics are the same. There are department stores and beauty counters here, just as there are in Belfast.

"Mind you, we also have clear blue skies and very little rain, so from that point of view, the move was not that difficult to make.

"I wasn't changing jobs as such because my role is very similar. However, it takes in Sub-Saharan Africa, from the Democratic Republic of Congo and right down the continent, so it is a huge area. It is exciting, new and we love it. We still have our house in Dromara and we get home as often as we can to see our family and friends.

"As St Patrick's Day is also my birthday, growing up I always got special St Patrick's birthday cards with shamrocks on them and a birthday cake from the Ormeau bakery delivered by the bread man. Of course, all the schools were closed for the day, and I must admit, I felt very lucky to be born on the 17th.

"Last year, my South African team really got behind St Patrick's Day and planned a surprise party for me.

"They dressed up in green and we had green cupcakes and, of course, only Irish music, although all they could find was U2.

"They love the idea of a country where there is a lot of rain. We have just come through one of the worst droughts in recent times here with virtually no rain for almost seven months, which makes you realise that we do really take our 40 shades of green for granted.

"This year we will be attending a party at the Irish embassy in Pretoria where no doubt there will be plenty of green Guinness.

"If we were at home, rain, hail or shine we would have been going up Slieve Donard for my birthday with a full Irish breakfast beforehand. However, in Johannesburg it's work as usual today.

"We are family members of The Irish South African Association.

"It exists to facilitate social contact between people of Irish descent and anyone who has an interest in all things Irish.

"They are organising the flagship party at the Irish embass y and it will be our first time attending a St Patrick's Day celebration here in South Africa.

"Noel has been home in Ireland for the past few weeks and came back yesterday with special treats for my birthday - Tayto cheese and onion crisps, a wheaten loaf and Sun-Pat peanut butter. It's funny how you miss the strangest of things when you are far away.

"From South Africa, whatever you do, I hope you have a wonderful St Patrick's Day."

'Australians really do pull out all the stops for St Patrick's Day'

Zoe Smith (40), a journalist with News Corp Australia, is originally from Lurgan in Co Armagh and now lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her five-month-old son Lewis. She says:

Mine is a classic immigrant story - I grew up in Australia after emigrating here when I was five. My parents Margaret and David moved from Lurgan where I still have a large extended family. As I got older I was torn between the two countries and felt the urge to return to Northern Ireland. So I applied to study at Queen's University in Belfast and made the trip back, only to realise my true home was the land of Oz.

"I came back to Melbourne in 2000 and I've been here ever since, though I often get back to Northern Ireland for holidays and I love it. We also have plenty of family visiting from home.

"The Australians really do pull out all the stops for St Patrick's Day. For proof that St Patrick's Day is a truly global event, you only need to pull up a pew and grab a pint of green beer at one of the many Irish-themed bars in Melbourne.

"Geographically speaking, you can't get much further away from the Emerald Isle - it's roughly 10,600 miles from Royal Avenue to Melbourne's Bourke Street.

"But March 17 is the day Australia turns 40 shades of green. We're a country built on migrants and the Irish blood runs thick.

"St Paddy's Day is all about having fun, not to mention lashings of the black stuff. There are street parades, fancy dress and parties - lots of them.

"The Guinness is flowing and everyone imbibes a wee bit more than they should, which incidentally, can be a dodgy thing in 30 degree heat.

"In Sydney the huge St Patrick's Day parade - known as The Green Gathering - is a family event that attracts thousands, featuring marching bands, Irish dancers and a children's parade.

"My St Patrick's Day this year will be a bit more low-key - I'll be giving the Irish bar near my workplace a miss and will be celebrating a much bigger event, my son's five-month birthday.

"Growing up, St Patrick's Day wasn't really a big deal for me and it wasn't huge for my family. One year I did go to Dublin where there was an amazing vibe, with thousands of people and the biggest parade I've ever seen.

"For many migrants, it becomes so much bigger when you leave Ireland's shores. It's not just a day of partying - it's a way of reconnecting with home. It got much bigger when I left Northern Ireland for Australia."
Happy family: Katie with her second husband, Mark Cross, and two of her children, India and Poppy

As Katie Hopkins refuses to read the interview with Jack Monroe, the food blogger who has just won 24,000 (plus an interim 107,000 in costs) from her in a court case over defamatory tweets, I give her a precis.

She bears no ill-will and wants to invite you for dinner, I say. Hopkins snorts. Will she go? "No." Why not? "Mainly because I'm too busy," she says. "But notice how individuals who pursue litigation in courts end up delivering some noble gesture that makes them sound like they took the higher ground."

It's true the Mahmood family, who won a 150,000 defamation claim against Hopkins' employers, Mail Online, when she falsely labelled them extremists, invited her for tea. But I'm not convinced this "always" happens.

Perhaps the Mahmoods and Monroe share a general curiosity about who Hopkins (42), really is. Does she really hold her more extreme "rent a gob" views? If so, why? How has a middle-class girl from a Devon market town grown up to be a national hate figure of such notoriety that GCSE English students analyse her articles?

In one outburst, Hopkins, a mother of three (aged, 12, 11 and eight), columnist and presenter on rasio station LBC, called refugees "cockroaches" and suggested drilling holes in the bottoms of their boats to help them sink.

"I don't care," she said after a Syrian child was pictured drowned on a Turkish beach. "Show me bodies floating in water (and) skinny people looking sad. I still don't care."

Elsewhere, she's invited suicidal prisoners to kill themselves, said fat people are lazy and ginger babies harder to love (surely a joke?).

Her opinions are an out-of-control tank, and on Twitter she lobs grenades to cause maximum impact.

In 2015 she meant to tweet Laurie Penny, the New Statesman columnist who'd written she didn't "have a problem" with vandalism as a form of protest. "Scrawled on any memorials recently?" she wrote to Monroe by mistake. "Vandalised the memory of those who fought for your freedom? Grandma got any more medals?"

Monroe, whose family members are in the military, demanded a "public apology + 5k to migrant rescue and I won't sue".

Hopkins deleted the initial tweet, but asked if Twitter could differentiate between "the irritant" Penny and "social anthrax" Monroe. Monroe consulted lawyers.

Nearly two years later, here we are.

I suppose I was expecting an attack dog when I sat down to wait for Hopkins at a London restaurant. What I get is a puppy. Smallish, energetic and with a pink rinse over cropped blonde hair ("midlife crisis"), she comes balling in, liberally spraying "darlings" at me, the waiter, the photographer.

She's "chitty chatty" and smiley, but everything she says is extreme.

For instance, beetroot is "the devil's vegetable". Accountants are "petty, sad bastards - that's one thing I'd never do, marry an accountant" (later, it turns out her brother-in-law is one).

When the photographer tells her I've had good news - interviewer of the year at the Press Awards - she says: "I feel like your mother just died and I didn't say sorry - but the opposite, if you see what I mean."

On the subject of the case, she hardens up, explaining that she hopes to appeal on grounds that she's not sure Monroe can assert she "felt" or "believed" she had been damaged with so little proof, and the costs "have to be proportionate".

"It's around 25,000 if you lose a big toe in an industrial accident," she tells me. "So a tweet that was up for two hours or a big toe? Go on, choose: big toe or tweet?"

She has the money to pay the costs without re-mortgaging - "The business is set up so that I can manage costs," she says, obliquely. "People have been very kind in support."

It's a dangerous precedent because Twitter is "the place where big debates are held and there's a bit of rough and tumble that goes with it," she adds. "I can see some people might want to silence Katie Hopkins, but it's never good if we start trimming the edges of that freedom. Because where do you stop?"

Perhaps. But equally, where does Katie Hopkins stop? Why not just say sorry?

"There's never been an opportunity to say sorry - which I don't think is necessary if you've deleted and formally retracted - that wasn't linked to something else," she says. "There was always sorry plus a donation to migrants."

I'm not persuaded. She agrees it's not a hard word: "In the street I'd say sorry. If I got run over I'd probably say sorry."

But now that the word is soaked in the politics of left and right, she is unyielding. She won't even utter Monroe's name. "I'm sorry there was a mistake," she offers. She's convinced the world sees her - on the right - as "the baddie" and that Monroe - on the left - as "the goodie" and that the whole event was "gladiatorial". "The reason this is noisy is that it's two perfect characters, the villain and the hero, fighting it out. Good versus evil. The underdog verses the big bitch. Leave and Remain.

"I saw someone on Twitter saying, 'Why is that gobby cow on Radio 4, surely it should be the victim speaking out, not the oppressor?' And I thought 'Well, at least I'm not being described as the victim'. Because that's the territory I never want to be in."

For all her energy, the last two years have been distressing, not just because of the court case. She is physically vulnerable after having a brain operation last year that involved having a chunk of her skull cut out in a 12-and-a-half-hour procedure.

"Are you squeamish?" she asks, before taking my hand and placing it on her head. "That soft bit there is my actual brain. They opened me like an egg. I was a massive epileptic and my fits have now stopped. I can sleep again."

After the surgery, she contracted meningitis. "It was dodgy for a bit," she says. "I lost three stone. I looked like Julian Clary." Was she scared? "Of course. Even the week before, I didn't think I was going to have the operation. I kept bottling it. I was too scared to tell my children, so I didn't.

"I was too scared to say goodbye to my mum, so I didn't. We just passed on the driveway without speaking. So British."

Her children didn't see her for six weeks. Half her head was shaved and she had 52 staples banged in a line around her skull. "I'm so lucky," she says.

The two events have led her to think about what "harm" is. "Maybe I connect with harm differently," she says. "Maybe it has to be significant real pain."

Hopkins has a daughter with autistic spectrum disorder ("She would describe me in facts: 'My mum has a big nose, doesn't wear pants, walks around the house naked'") and Hopkins thinks she too may have traits of the condition.

In some ways the person she trolls hardest is herself. She calls herself a "t**t" repeatedly and confides that she can carry two pencils under her bottom.

She tells me that her first husband, Damian, left her for his secretary the day after she'd given birth to their second daughter, Poppy, and that she has never seen or heard from him again. "I quite admire him, though. He knew what he wanted and went for it."

Does he have more children? "He had children before me, and he's had others since, I think." So her children have brothers and sisters they've not met? "Yes." She seems remarkably calm about this. "It's not my choice, it's just how things are."

After a year of being a single mother with two children under two, she says, "I had to find a replacement dad because being a single mum was a bit s***. I was a really bad single mum. I used to go to the supermarket just for somewhere to go."

She met Mark, who was married, while working at the Met Office. She also signed up for The Apprentice, boasting on the application form that she was so ruthless she had "stolen someone else's husband".

But she insists she isn't a "rent-a-gob shock-jock" (although she concedes she'd know how to annoy if necessary) because "nobody would want to do that over 10 or 15 years. It would be boring and very wearing").

Sometimes, she is just being funny. For instance, she tells me: "I'm quite willing to have an affair - on the record - with Jeremy Corbyn. He seems like a nice guy. If you took him away from the vests and all that.

"He sticks to his word. Means what he says. Doesn't try to please people. I like that."

Later, she tells me that she always wanted to be a comedian. "If I was some fat bloke and had a strong regional accent, I'd be a stand-up because I think I'm funny."

She believes there is a fuss around her because "people aren't used to a woman being quite so opinionated - it's not considered kind".

Does she consider herself unkind? She tells me how she helped a blind person into the lift at the BBC where she was being interviewed while an employee looked on.

"Those who are most pious and noble tend to be the least tolerant," she says. "Those that preach tolerance have become absolutely prescriptive in what's allowed to be thought."

I wonder if she hates before she likes as a defence mechanism. She'll identify a weak spot and pounce. She calls me "a leftie" as an insult and teases I'm obsessed with "migrant babies".

When I spot what I think is an unusual spelling of the name 'George' on her phone, she eviscerates me because she thinks I'm mocking her.

This hair-trigger response to perceived insult must be exhausting, but she says she's at her armour-plated toughest when she's being abused. Her parents were strict ("My friends were scared of my dad"). She was thrown out of Sandhurst because she didn't declare her epilepsy and only went "to prove that I could be in the Army".

Nevertheless, she cries when people are nice to her (or "cute", as she puts it). Someone sent her 10 to help with her court costs and she was a "sobbing wreck on the carpet". "I have a thing that I don't cry and obviously I don't when I am being 'tough me', but with my family I do - I cry when I'm sorry," she says.

How has the court case changed her? She says while "reinvigorated to keep going" she also recognises that she needs to concentrate on "things that really matter: personal stories".

"People email me all the time with stories they need to be heard," she adds.

"I want to articulate for the many that don't have a voice. I don't want to be just having a go at some random punter. It's not worth it."

No more will we see her sitting next to "a 24-stone woman" verbally prodding them to lose weight. "That was the old life, that feels like aeons ago," she says.

"Do I still have stuff within my life that is relatively shocking of its own story telling? Yes. I over-share. That's how I cope."
Talks to save power-sharing at Stormont are set to intensify next week, with senior political sources insisting that a deal remains within reach

Talks to save power-sharing at Stormont are set to intensify next week, with senior political sources insisting that a deal remains within reach.

Party insiders said they could see an agreement taking shape on an Irish Language Act, reforming the petition of concern mechanism, and even the thorny issue of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles.

On the question of Arlene Foster stepping aside as First Minister, sources said that despite the apparently conflicting positions of the DUP and Sinn Fein, a compromise was still possible.

DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson yesterday branded Sinn Fein's demand that Mrs Foster step aside as "unreasonable".

He told the BBC that, if republicans stuck to their position, it would be impossible to form an Executive, and he predicted that Sinn Fein would "relent".

Talks insiders last night suggested a choreography could be arranged to side-step the issue with Sinn Fein technically not supporting Mrs Foster's nomination as First Minister in the chamber - but still nominating Michelle O'Neill as Deputy First Minister.

Another political source suggested that the DUP leader may be open to standing aside as First Minister for a "token period" of a few months but not for a year - which is how long the RHI public inquiry will likely take to conclude.

Stormont sources foresaw a deal involving an Irish Language Act with capped costs, and the petition of concern being used in future only to prevent discrimination against one community, and not as a veto on issues like same-sex marriage.

They believe that agreement on the past would involve British Government funding for legacy inquests. The DUP would secure a possible pension for victims and there would be an introduction of the Military Covenant to Northern Ireland, allowing Armed Forces veterans to secure priority medical treatment.

The negotiations, which are effectively suspended for St Patrick's weekend, will resume on Monday.

The parties have a week to reach a deal or they run the risk of Secretary of State James Brokenshire calling another snap Assembly election, or reintroducing direct rule.

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said: "A deal is entirely doable within a week.

"There is nothing on the table that can't be cracked by Monday, March 27, if people put their minds to it.

"The hothouse talks that produced both the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements made substantial progress in an even shorter period of time."

However, Mr Farry expressed concerns about the "bona fides" of the DUP and Sinn Fein.

"Alliance questions whether the two main parties are serious about a speedy resolution of working devolution or whether, for different reasons, they both may see a tactical advantage in playing a longer game.

"We strongly urge them to put the interests of Northern Ireland before their narrow party interests," he added.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood urged all the parties to intensify their efforts to reach a deal.

"We are making progress but we need to get an agreement over the line in the time allowed," he said.

"There is a window of opportunity which we need to seize. The public elected us to form a government and we have a duty to do all we can to save devolution and avoid returning to direct rule."

Ulster Unionist chief negotiator Tom Elliott was pessimistic about the chances of an imminent deal.

"Talks so far have focused on legacy and Irish language matters. The UUP has raised the issue of parades and the definition of a victim," he said.

"I don't see any major breakthrough in the talks in the short-term.

"I've no idea whether Sinn Fein are determined that Arlene Foster step aside or if they will climb down from that position if offered other things in return."

TUV leader Jim Allister predicted that any deal would be a "sticking plaster solution".

He said: "Any new agreement will have the same fate as the last one.

"We would be far better facing the reality that this system of government doesn't work and accepting the inevitability of direct rule.

"Mandatory coalition means continuing failure."
Arlene Foster has accused the Irish Government of replacing "a soft border for terrorists" during the Troubles with a hard border when it comes to disclosing information about the past.

The DUP leader was echoing comments from a lawyer for families of those killed in the 1976 Kingsmill massacre.

Ten Protestant workmen were shot dead by the IRA in south Armagh.

Alan Black survived despite being hit by 18 bullets.

The relatives have requested access to information the Irish Government holds about weapons used, intelligence and the getaway van employed by the gunmen.

They accused the Garda and the Irish Government of only paying "lip service" to their concerns.

Alan Kane QC for the Kingsmill victims told a Belfast preliminary hearing the requests for information "have fallen on deaf ears".

Mrs Foster said she shared the "dismay and frustration" of the families who witnessed "limited progress on full disclosure from the Irish Government to the ongoing inquest process into the murders".

She added she had raised the issue directly with Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan.

"I have emphasised the importance of full disclosure from the Irish Government and all relevant bodies to both the Historical Investigations Unit and the inquest process, but I have also raised the particular issues involved in the Kingsmill case," she said.

"Clearly there was a soft border for terrorists during their brutal border campaign, but yet a hard border when it comes to documents, witnesses and information to the inquest process.

"This cannot continue and all that's possible must be done to ensure full disclosure in all relevant cases - and urgently for the Kingsmill inquest.

"The families involved must be afforded every opportunity to learn the truth of what happened and see action to bring the perpetrators of this atrocious sectarian attack to justice."

Mr Flanagan has since said that Dublin was in "direct contact" with the coroner conducting the inquest into the killings.

In addition, lawyers for the coroner are scheduled to meet representatives of the Republic's State solicitor's office soon.

A preliminary hearing is due to take place next month after prosecutors decided a man would not face prosecution over a palm print found on the getaway van used by the gunmen. Around 1,000 pages of new material were created by the most recent criminal investigation, lawyer for the coroner Sean Doran QC said.

Mr Kane said most of the information disclosed so far by the Republic was newspaper cuttings.

"A librarian could do it," he said.

Another lawyer characterised it as "pulling teeth", and said the official response had been "disingenuous".

Relatives were sceptical members of the Irish Government or Garda were taking meaningful steps, Mr Kane added.

He said: "They feel that this is but a window-dressing exercise that is being carried out by the authorities in the Irish Republic at the very last moment, knowing full well that this inquest is scheduled to take place in two months' time."

He added that a porous Irish border had allowed heinous massacres like Kingsmill to take place.

"That soft border which allowed that has been replaced by a hard border of failing to provide meaningful co-operation and disclosure to the inquest.

"The entire intelligence framework, the information concerning the suspect, information relating to weapons, issues relating to the palm print, those are just a few matters that we would certainly be wanting more information."

The Coroner's Court inquiry will resume in full in May.
Convicted drug smuggler Michaella McCollum on television after her release from a Peruvian jail

Northern Ireland drugs mule Michaella McCollum is set to land a job presenting a new prime-time show on prisoners.

McCollum was caught trying to smuggle 24lb (11kg) of cocaine worth 1.5 million out of Peru with accomplice Melissa Reid in 2013.

The pair, nicknamed the Peru Two, were jailed for six years and eight months after admitting the crime, but were freed in 2016 after striking a deal with Peruvian authorities.

Read more:

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McCollum, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, returned to Northern Ireland in August.

It's been reported that McCollum has arrived in England for talks on her potential role within the programme.

The Irish Daily Mail reports that McCollum flew into Liverpool's John Lennon Airport on Thursday to meet TV bosses.

The new show will reportedly delve into unsolved or unusual crime cases around the world and will include interviews with prisoners on death row.

The pair were also recently linked to reports that they could take part in Big Brother.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum Connolly with Brad Houston from England Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum cradling her newborn twins Michaella McCollum Connolly pictured during an interview with RTE in 2016 after being released on parole from a Peruvian prison Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing, in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) AP Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum, both handcuffed, arrive for a court hearing in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing, in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum, left, and Melissa Reid listen to a translator during a hearing at court in Callao, Peru (AP) AP Police escort Melissa Reid, front, and Michaella McCollum to a hearing in Lima, Peru (AP) Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid from the National Police anti-drug headquarters in Peru (AP) Michaella McCollum Connolly (left) and friend Melissa Reid in the airport after they were arrested Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event Santa Monica female prison in Peru AP SECRET STASH: The drugs found in food packs in the girls luggage CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru Michaella McCollum, centre, and Melissa Reid leave the court after being sentenced in Peru. Lawyer Peter Madden, who represents Michaella McCollum, has claimed his client has suffered from a lack of food. Belfast solicitor Peter Madden said Michaella McCollum and co-accused Melissa Reid have been well treated by the authorities PA Michaella McCollum, right, and Melissa Reid, left, were jailed in Peru last year after they admitted trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million pounds from Peru to Spain (AP) Michaella McCollum's mother Norah McCollum and sister Samantha McCollum vist the Peru prison Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club / Facebook

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Whatsapp Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

In February writing on Facebook McCollum thanked followers for those who "cared and had my back" during the past few years.

She said: "It has been a long ride to get where I am today but it just shows that when we fight hard enough for something we can achieve."
Report finds many e-commerce sites selling potentially unsafe products

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged the Japanese government to take more effective measures to handle the environmental aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and disclose information to ensure marine environmental safety and the safety of people in other countries.

Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the comment on Thursday following exposure by China's State television station that food products from areas affected by the nuclear disaster in Japan are being sold in China.

China's top food regulator promised on Thursday to punish such irregularities involving food safety exposed in China Central Television's annual World Consumer Rights Day program on Wednesday.

"We have demanded local food and drug supervision authorities investigate the irregularities and transfer criminal suspects to public security authorities," the China Food and Drug Administration said.

Food and drug authorities must strengthen supervision over food safety and severely punish culprits, it said.

Food from areas affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster have been sold on many e-commerce platforms in China and in some brick-and-mortar shops, including dairy, cereal, rice and wine, CCTV reported.

Although some of the products had labeling in Japanese that specified manufacturing locations such as Tokyo and Tochigi, they were covered by Chinese labels that only stated the manufacturing location as Japan, the report said.

China has banned the importation of food and animal feed from Tokyo and 11 prefectures, including Fukushima, Niigata-ken and Tochigi, since April 2011 to guard against risks, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Major supermarkets and e-commerce platforms in Beijing started to inspect imported food products following the CCTV report and found no product from any of the 12 areas, Ji Ye, an official at Beijing Food and Drug Administration, said.

The administration is also conducting inspections of food enterprises in Beijing, including MUJI and 7-Eleven, and will recall any product that is imported from the affected areas, he said.

More than 13,000 online shops in China were suspected of selling food from these banned areas, according to the Shenzhen Market and Quality Supervision Commission, CCTV reported.

Law enforcement officers from the commission found nearly 20,000 packages of "Calbee" brand oatmeal, which is from Tochigi, at a company in Shenzhen, the report said.

Some supermarkets, including Japanese brand MUJI, are also suspected of violations, CCTV said.

MUJI said on Thursday that the two kinds of products, a cereal beverage and a muffin, are made in Fukui-ken and Osaka, which are not on the list of imports banned by China's quality supervision authorities.

wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/17/2017 page4)
A businessman who runs a chicken farm and tanning salon from the same address has emerged as the largest recipient in the controversial Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme

A businessman who runs a chicken farm and tanning salon from the same address has emerged as the largest recipient in the controversial Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme.

Paul Hobson's poultry farm in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, has a record 13 RHI-funded wood pellet boilers. The details are included in the list of RHI grant recipients published by the Department for the Economy yesterday.

Read more: Revealed - Full list of firms claiming from RHI scheme

It follows months of legal wrangling between the department and an organisation representing RHI recipients, which unsuccessfully fought to have the company names remain private.

The Department for the Economy figures show that Mr Hobson has received 659,540 from his 13 boilers up to February 28, 2017, making him the largest recipient of RHI grants and the one with the largest number of boilers.

His farm is on target to receive a combined total of over 2.5m in grants throughout the duration of the green energy scheme.

Mr Hobson's boilers were installed in 2013 and 2014, before the big rush to sign up in 2015.

The Department of Agriculture used his farm as a successful example to other farmers interested in RHI.

One official included a photograph of Mr Hobson's boilers in an article he wrote encouraging farmers to attend a department workshop about RHI benefits.

The Belfast Telegraph previously revealed that Michelle O'Neill, Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader, was Agriculture Minister from the scheme's inception in 2011 to its abrupt closure in 2016, and that her department organised 58 such workshops in which RHI was promoted.

Mr Hobson's boilers were installed with separate heating pipes to maximise profits from RHI, according to the company that installed them.

Alternative Heat, a major Northern Ireland wood pellet installer, uses Mr Hobson's 10,500sq ft indoor chicken farm as a case study on its website.

It said that it connected two boilers into "two individual heat meters and heating lines, allowing the client to apply for the Renewable Heat Incentive for the two separate heating systems".

Under RHI rules, grants can be maximised by running separate heating lines for each boiler.

The company also avoided having to install heat meter reports, which some RHI applicants have had to furnish to scheme supervisors.

"The installations have been RHI accredited and deemed as simple installations, therefore independent heat meter reports were not required," Alternative Heat states on its website.

It said that it installed three Herz 99kW Firematic and six 60kW Pelletstar biomass boilers. Four more boilers were later installed.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Alternative Heat or Mr Hobson, who were operating within the permitted rules of RHI.

Mr Hobson also runs Easy Tan Ltd, a tanning company, from the same address at Mullybrannon Road.

However, that company is not listed in the Department for the Economy's list.

The department said that some businesses have been temporarily omitted from yesterday's list because it wants to ensure that it does not identify individual homes of recipients.

Mr Hobson and Alternative Heat have not yet replied to a request for comment.

The Times previously revealed that the 145 top burning boilers in the RHI scheme will generate grants of more than 1m throughout the 20-year lifetime of the programme.

The 'cash for ash' scheme based payments on the volume of pellets burned, which incentivised users to keep their boilers going for as long as possible.

Most of the applicants, all of whom have signed 20-year contracts, are set to receive 1.60 from Stormont for every 1 worth of wood pellets they burn.

It is likely to cost the taxpayer almost 500m.

The boilers scandal contributed significantly to the collapse of Stormont.

Schemes top 10 recipients

1. PAUL HOBSON LTD 659,540.81

2. EGLINTON (TIMBER PRODUCTS) LTD 538,885.63

3. McILROY FARMS LIMITED 513,312.78

4. ECOBIOMASS NI LTD 476,383.18

5. MOUNTTAIN VIEW FARM LTD 471,971.94

6. BALLINDARRAGH POULTRY FARM LTD 432,282.88

7. JOHN HOGG & CO LTD 417,322.29

8. McCAFFREY AGGREGATES LTD 396,647.94

9. L.W. SURPHLIS & SON LTD. 358,236.27

10. HEGAN FARMS LTD 351,969.11
A 27-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder following a serious assault at a bar in Doagh.

It happened on Wednesday March 15 in the Main Street area.

Detectives have charged a man with attempted murder and possession of an offensive weapon with intent to commit an indictable offence.

He is expected to appear before Belfast Magistrates Court on Friday March 17.

Five other men, arrested as part of the investigation, have been released on police bail pending further enquiries.

Another man, aged 34, was arrested on Thursday night as part of the investigation and remains in police custody at this time.

A PSNI spokesman said: "The investigation is ongoing and police continue to appeal to anyone who witnessed the assault or the group of males in the area of the bar or anyone with any information which could assist police to contact detectives in Antrim on 101 quoting reference number 982 15/03/17. Information can also be given anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."
Plans to close the Portadown PSNI enquiry office will lead to the town having no public access to the police, the DUP has claimed.

David Simpson MP and Jonathan Buckley MLA hit out at the closure of the facility, which is based inside the town's Edward Street police station.

They said the move will mean the complete closure of the station - leaving Portadown as the only major town in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area without a PSNI base.

It would mean that the nearest police stations to Portadown would be in Lurgan and Armagh.

Upper Bann MLA Mr Buckley told the Belfast Telegraph last night that the proposed closure was very worrying.

He said: "This will have an adverse effect on Portadown as the last remaining service in the Edward Street station will now finish - meaning the closure of the station.

"To have a presence in a town the size of Portadown is very important, especially when it comes to reporting crimes.

"Protection and providing a police service for the community is vitally important.

"It is very disappointing that this action has been taken."

Mr Simpson said the town would be left without an operational police station.

"Now the nearest stations will be either seven miles away in Lurgan or 11 miles away in Armagh," the MP said.

"Continuing to strip away services like this will have a devastating impact on our towns and villages."

The PSNI said that the way the public interacted with police had changed and advances in technology had made it possible for police to deliver new ways of contact and engagement.

"While the closure of the enquiry office at Edward Street may cause some inconvenience, the public can still contact police 24/7 by phoning 101, and 999 in an emergency," it said.

"The public can also visit enquiry offices in Lurgan, Banbridge or Armagh.

"They can avail of information and online crime reporting on the PSNI website.

"And they can find out about local policing and engage with local officers on PSNI social media sites."
Money to burn: A massive dog breeding outfit is one of the companies benefiting from the disastrous RHI scheme.

The Department of Economy has published the list of those businesses which claimed from the botched RHI scheme.

This list includes the names of all limited companies and limited liability partnerships that have received support payments under the scheme above a threshold of 5,000, for the period from the opening of the scheme in 2012 to 28 February 2017.

The application of a threshold and the publication of this list is being carried out in line with the judgement issued in the High Court on 1 March 2017.

The department is progressing on a separate list which will contain the names of the individuals who are in receipt of payments of 5,000 or more under the non-domestic scheme.

"It is the department's intention to publish that list in the next few weeks once it has considered the individual cases in line with the content of the High Court judgement," the department said in a statement.

<< Have you a story? Email newseditor@belfastelegraph.co.uk >>

The Renewable Heat Association of Northern Ireland battled to prevent the list's disclosure.

In a statement, it said: "The Renewable Heat Association hopes that this will not lead to an assumption by the public or the media that the participants are acting improperly in any way, as the simple publication of names is, in no way, evidence of wrongdoing.

"Participants of the Renewable Heat Incentive entered a scheme legitimately which was designed and promoted by the Government in Northern Ireland.

"The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme was launched in Northern Ireland following the success of the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme in Great Britain, which is still in operation and open to entrants."

The association is also engaged in legal action to maintain the payments from the scheme for the next 20 years, as had been originally envisaged in the original flawed scheme.

A public inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Patrick Coghlin has been tasked with investigating the scheme and how it was allowed to get so out of hand.

Read More

The Renewable Heating Incentive has been described as the biggest financial scandal in the history of devolved government.

Unlike a similar scheme in England, there was no cap on the payments meaning many businesses profited from the scheme.

Flaws in the scheme were identified in June 2015, however, caps were not introduced until the following November, during which period there was a spike in applications.

Eventually the scheme was completely closed to new application in February 2016, however, 86,000 a day is paid out to those on the scheme.

Government officials as well as serving and former Executive ministers have faced mounting questions to explain how the scheme was allowed to be implemented in the manner it was.

The scheme ultimately brought about the collapse of the devolved institutions and Sinn Fein has repeatedly said it will not go into government with Arlene Foster as long as the RHI inquiry continues.

Mrs Foster - who was Enterprise Minister when the scheme was set up - has denied wrongdoing and pledge to cut the projected 490m overspend to zero.
Judge said confidence in criminal justice system must be maintained

A Romanian man arrested in Belfast for defying a deportation order has been jailed for four months.

Iulian Amalitei, 53, claimed he returned to Northern Ireland desperately seeking work to support his family.

Sentencing him, a judge said public confidence in the criminal justice system must be maintained.

Amalitei appeared before Belfast Magistrates' Court on Friday charged with illegal entry to the UK.

He was detained after being recognised by police on patrol at High Street in the city on Thursday.

Amalitei, who had been deported for the same offence last year, admitted the new charge.

His lawyer stressed that the defendant, with an address at Victoria Street in Belfast, was only trying to help his family.

"He came here out of desperation to try to find some employment," the solicitor said.

"He wanted to send some money home for his daughter as his wife is not working."

Acknowledging Amalitei's plight, District Judge George Conner said: "I have no doubt that behind every case of this type there's a sad and desperate story."

But jailing him for four months, Mr Conner pointed out that he was in breach of a suspended sentence for the same offence.

He added: "This is a serious matter (where) the confidence of the public has to be maintained by the courts dealing with it in what, at times, appears to be a severe manner."
Intu Trafford Centre in Manchester is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Intu Trafford Centre in Manchester is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Gateshead Millennium Bridge in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

This aerial view shows the Chicago River dyed green Saturday morning, March 11, 2017, in honor of St. Patrick's Day. (Lee Hogan/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

A Racegoer during St Patrick's Thursday of the 2017 Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse. PA

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 12: Saint Patrick, played by Marty Burns sails past Down Cathedral as the re-enactment of the first landing of Saint Patrick on Irish shores takes place at Inch Abbey on March 12, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. The Irish annals for the fifth century date Patrick's arrival in Ireland at 432 and the patron saint of Ireland's remains are believed to buried at Down Cathedral. Saint Patrick's Day itself is celebrated around the world on March 17. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images,)

The top of City Hall on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Irish dancers in Tottenham Court Road underground station, London, as Tourism Ireland celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Jennifer Wrynne, 27 from Leitrim in Ireland, arriving at Ladies Day of the 2017 Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse. PA

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 12: Saint Patrick, played by Marty Burns sets foot ashore as the re-enactment of the first landing of Saint Patrick in Ireland takes place at Inch Abbey on March 12, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. The Irish annals for the fifth century date Patrick's arrival in Ireland at 432 and the patron saint of Ireland's remains are believed to buried at Down Cathedral. Saint Patrick's Day itself is celebrated around the world on March 17. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images,)

The Coca-Cola London Eye, on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Gateshead Millennium Bridge in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

The Coca-Cola London Eye, on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Irish dancers in Tottenham Court Road underground station, London, as Tourism Ireland celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

President Donald Trump themed St Patrick's Day T-shirts in Philadelphia, before Taoiseach Enda Kenny arrives for the annual St Patrick's parade as part of his US visit. PA

A 16ft tall puppet of St Patrick in Trafalgar Square, London, as Tourism Ireland celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Fountain on the South side of the White House is dyed green for St. Patrick's Day in Washington D.C.,on March 16, 2017 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 12: Saint Patrick, played by Marty Burns, sails past Down Cathedral as the re-enactment of the first landing of Saint Patrick on Irish shores takes place at Inch Abbey on March 12, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. The Irish annals for the fifth century date Patrick's arrival in Ireland at 432 and the patron saint of Ireland's remains are believed to buried at Down Cathedral. Saint Patrick's Day itself is celebrated around the world on March 17. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images,) *** BESTPIX ***

Racegoers enjoy a drink during St Patrick's Thursday of the 2017 Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse. PA

The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

Archbishop Richard Clarke (left), Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, and Archbishop Eamon Martin, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, at vigil last night

The Coca-Cola London Eye, on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

St. Patrick's Day festivities began Saturday, March 11, 2017, with the traditional river dyeing green where thousands watched from Michigan Avenue to Wacker Drive in Chicago. (Maria Cardona /Chicago Tribune via AP)

Irish dancers in Tottenham Court Road underground station, London, as Tourism Ireland celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

The Chicago River is dyed a bright green color kicking off St. Patrick's Day weekend festivities, Saturday, March 11, 2017 in Chicago. On Sunday, thousands of people are expected to attend the South Side Irish Parade (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune via AP)

The crowd watch the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets of Dublin. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 17, 2017. See PA story IRISH StPatrick. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Participants take part in the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets of Dublin. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 17, 2017. See PA story IRISH StPatrick. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 17: Saint Patrick, played by actor Marty Burns takes a selfie along with members of the Magnus Vikings Association before they part in the cross community Saint Patrick's Day parade on March 17, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Tradition holds that Saint Patrick and his companions landed at the mouth of the Slaney river, a few miles from Down Cathedral, in 432 AD. From here Patrick travelled extensively spreading the teachings of Christianity before his death on 17th March 461 AD. He is buried at nearby Down Cathedral. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 17: Saint Patrick, played by actor Marty Burns (C) and members of the Magnus Vikings Association take shelter under a tree before they take part in the cross community Saint Patrick's Day parade on March 17, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Tradition holds that Saint Patrick and his companions landed at the mouth of the Slaney river, a few miles from Down Cathedral, in 432 AD. From here Patrick travelled extensively spreading the teachings of Christianity before his death on 17th March 461 AD. He is buried at nearby Down Cathedral. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

DOWNPATRICK, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 17: Clodagh Burns pictured before joining her father, Marty Burns who plays the role of Saint Patrick in the cross community Saint Patrick's Day parade on March 17, 2017 in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Tradition holds that Saint Patrick and his companions landed at the mouth of the Slaney river, a few miles from Down Cathedral, in 432 AD. From here Patrick traveled extensively spreading the teachings of christianity before his death on 17th March 461 AD. He is buried at nearby Down Cathedral. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 17: 256th Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade on March 17, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

Robbie Power celebrates victory in the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup on the final day of the 2017 Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 16, 2017. See PA story RACING Cheltenham. Photo credit should read: Mike Egerton/PA Wire. RESTRICTIONS: Editorial Use only, commercial use is subject to prior permission from The Jockey Club/Cheltenham Racecourse.

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny (fourth left) takes part in the St Patrick's Day parade in New York, USA. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 17, 2017. See PA story IRISH Kenny. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny (left) takes part in the St Patrick's Day parade in New York, USA. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 17, 2017. See PA story IRISH Kenny. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge sips a pint of Guinness as she talks with off-duty soldiers from the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, after watching their annual St Patrick's Day parade at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, west London on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (L) and his wife Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge react as they each hold a pint of Guinness whilst talking with off-duty soldiers from the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, after watching their annual St Patrick's Day parade at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, west London on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

Tourists stand outside a pub in Temple Bar during the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, Ireland on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / ADRIAN DENNISADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 16: (L to R) Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny speak with each other during the annual St. Patrick's Day parade on 5th Avenue, March 17, 2017 in New York City. The New York City St. Patrick's Day parade, dating back to 1762, is the world's largest St. Patrick's Day celebration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 16: (L to R) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny march in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade on 5th Avenue, March 17, 2017 in New York City. The New York City St. Patrick's Day parade, dating back to 1762, is the world's largest St. Patrick's Day celebration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (L) and his wife Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge react as they each hold a pint of Guinness whilst talking with off-duty soldiers from the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, after watching their annual St Patrick's Day parade at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, west London on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / RICHARD POHLERICHARD POHLE/AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 16: Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny (C) marches in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade on 5th Avenue, March 17, 2017 in New York City. The New York City St. Patrick's Day parade, dating back to 1762, is the world's largest St. Patrick's Day celebration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A young girl joins her mother in a band marching on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 17: (L to R) New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio march in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade on 5th Avenue, March 17, 2017 in New York City. The New York City St. Patrick's Day parade, dating back to 1762, is the world's largest St. Patrick's Day celebration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Participants march on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A New York Police Dempartment (NYPD) officer stands guard as participants march on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A woman carries her baby on her back as she plays bagpipes marching on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Participants march on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A man smiles as he watches participants marching on Fifith Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A couple pose as they watch St. Patrick's Day parade activities in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Spectators cheer as participants march on Fifith Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Spectators cheer as participants march on Fifith Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A man balances his hat on his nose as he waits to watch the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Girls cheer as participants march on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

A man smiles as he watches participants marching on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Spectators watch participants marching on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

People cheer as participants march on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Participants play flutes as they march on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

People cheer as participants march on Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Participants play bagpipes as they march on Fifth Avenue during St. Patrick's Day parade in New York on March 17, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMADJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Friday 17th March. PA

A group of men dressed in green suits on St Patrick's Day at Newcastle railway station. PA

Christ the Redeemer statue is illuminated in green in honor of St. Patrick's Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Renata Brito)

The world turns green today as St Patrick's Day celebrations get under way.

From Boston to Belfast and Dublin to Dubai, revellers will be clipping on ginger beards, donning leprechaun suits and toasting Ireland's patron saint with the beverage of their choice.

In New York, they will even be drinking green milk made by an Irish-American dairy company.

Byrne Dairy is bottling up its popular milk (below), with an added twist of mint and some green dye. The firm has done this since 1976 and, to ensure the shelves are fully stocked with the emerald drink ahead of the festivities, they begin churning out the emerald milk in February.

Across the world, more than 250 landmarks and sites will be illuminated green as part of Tourism Ireland's 2017 Global Greening initiative to celebrate Ireland and St Patrick.

Stadiums, statues, castles and towers will get the green light to celebrate, with some exciting additions this year.

They include the One World Trade Center in New York, which is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center and is the tallest building in the western hemisphere.

In London, a massive St Patrick's parade will take place culminating in Trafalgar Square, while in Dubai, the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel also went green.

On the US/Canadian border, Niagara Falls gets the green theme, while south of the equator in Rio de Janeiro, the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer which dominates the city's skyline, was bathed in green light in honour of the fifth-century saint who brought Christianity to Ireland.

In Belfast, the city will mark the saint's day with a colourful parade and free concert.

The parade leaves City Hall at noon and will arrive at Custom House Square at approximately 12.45pm. In Londonderry, thousands are expected to take to the streets for celebrations which have a multi-cultural and culinary theme this year.

The St Patrick's Day festivities will run alongside the LegenDerry Food Festival in the city.

Revellers will be celebrating all types of food and three multi-cultural events - the Ubuntu Global Festival, Urban Villages, and the Communities United Spring Festival.
Two men have been charged over the murder of Geordie Gilmore.

Former UDA 'commander' Gilmore died after being shot in broad daylight as part of a loyalist feud in Carrickfergus.

The 44-year-old who died in hospital on Tuesday, was in his car when he was hit in the neck, torso and leg after several shots were fired.

Police launched a murder investigation following the attack that happened around 2.15pm on Monday in Pinewood Avenue in the Co Antrim town's Woodburn estate.

The two men age 28 and 35 have been charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and possession of a firearm or ammunition with intent to endanger life or property.

A PSNI spokesman said: "Both men are due to appear at Belfast MC on Saturday 18th March. As is normal procedure the charges are reviewed by the PPS."
The funeral of Bishop Eamon Casey at the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas in Galway

The funeral of Bishop Eamon Casey at the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas in Galway

Former Bishop Eamon Casey, who secretly fathered a son during a love affair with an American woman, profoundly upset the Catholic Church and "people in general", his funeral heard.

Bishop of Achonry Brendan Kelly told mourners in Galway's Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and Saint Nicholas that Bishop Casey "did much good" during his life.

Highlighting his work for Irish emigrants in the UK and for Trocaire, he said Bishop Casey was "a defender of the rights" of the poor and oppressed.

Bishop Kelly recalled Bishop Casey's courage in attending to dozens of stricken people when soldiers opened fire at the funeral of his friend Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador in 1980, during which 50 mourners died.

"There are those of us who remember, with gratitude, his kindness and encouragement when personally we most needed it," he said.

The bishop added: "Then, 25 years ago, the emergence into the light of other hidden realities in his life, beginning with the fact that he had a son, Peter, were profoundly upsetting for the Church and for people in general.

"This is neither the time nor the place to go over the details, which in any case are very well known, not only in Ireland, but all over the world. Yes, we are all sinners, but irresponsibility, infidelity and sin are particularly shocking in the lives of those who preach the Gospel."

Bishop Casey's son Peter Murphy (42), who earlier this week joined other relatives in a glowing tribute to his late father, was not present at the funeral.

Church officials said his sister Ita Furlong could not attend because of illness, while his priest brother Father Micheal, who lives in Perth, Australia, did not make the trip.

Archbishop Eamon Martin, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam in Galway were unable to attend because of previous commitments to ministering Confirmation.

Bishop Casey died aged 89 in a nursing home on Monday following a long illness.

He gained worldwide notoriety in 1992 after it was revealed that he had a child with American divorcee Annie Murphy and had paid thousands to her for Peter's upkeep in the US.

Referring to the scandal, Bishop Kelly said his former fellow bishop had "expressed his sorrow many times, apologised and asked for forgiveness".

"But people had been hurt and wounded... wounds that do not always heal easily or quickly," he told the funeral service.
Cooper, an assistance dog belonging to Corporal Phil Eaglesham (left), yawns as Prince Harry talks at the conference yesterday

Cooper, an assistance dog belonging to Corporal Phil Eaglesham (left), yawns as Prince Harry talks at the conference yesterday

A canine assistant to a former Royal Marine from Northern Ireland managed to upstage Prince Harry yesterday.

Harry was taking part in a veterans' mental health conference in London, where he told the audience that mental health issues are "not a life sentence".

Perhaps the only individual in the room who paid no attention to what Harry was saying was a 19-month-old dog called Cooper.

The golden Labrador, an assistant to former Royal Marine Phil Eaglesham, yawned on stage and stood up to lick his owner in his wheelchair as the prince was speaking.

Corporal Eaglesham, who is originally from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, contracted the debilitating Q fever (Helmand fever) in 2010 during his third tour in Afghanistan.

Cpl Eaglesham said: "Cooper sees when I am anxious and him coming up on my lap was his way of trying to comfort me. He is great and takes away some of the stigma that people have about coming up and speaking to me because I am in a wheelchair."
Tim Farron said pressure from business represents the best chance of softening Theresa May's approach to Brexit

Business pressure on the Government represents the best chance of softening Theresa May's approach to Brexit, Tim Farron said.

The Liberal Democrat leader launched an appeal to corporate Britain, urging business leaders to drop the Tories and switch support to his party in an effort to protect single market membership.

Accusing the Prime Minister of "twisting" the will of the British people by backing a hard Brexit, Mr Farron told business donors: "If you are giving the Tories so much as a penny you are funding your own funeral."

The Lib Dems received more in donations than Labour in the final three months of 2016, and Mr Farron is now aiming at the Tories, arguing that supporters should switch now, before Brexit talks get under way.

He told the Press Association: "Everybody in business knows that leaving the single market will be massively damaging to our economy, to individual firms, to families and to the Chancellor's own revenues.

"So what can we do to prevent a hard Brexit, to keep us in the single market?

"You need to persuade Theresa May and Philip Hammond they need to listen to business voices rather than to those extreme pro-hard Brexit voices that are currently within the Tory party.

"How would you do that? If you are in business, you should drop the Tory party today like a hot brick.

"If you are giving the Tories so much as a penny you are funding your own funeral.

"Don't spend a week or two thinking about it, you need to do it right now.

"It is literally the only language they understand."

Switching that funding to the Lib Dems instead "would have double the impact", he suggested.

In an echo of New Labour's "prawn cocktail offensive" to win support from the corporate world, Mr Farron said: "We are talking to businesses, we have an entrepreneurs forum which is growing hugely, a business advisory group with some very strong people on it.

"Our outreach into the business community is significant."

Mrs May had taken business support for granted, he said, which was "offensive and wrong".

She was not "enacting the will of the British people but - if one is being generous to her - she is interpreting it or even twisting it".

Mr Farron added: "It was not on the ballot paper and not inevitable that we leave the single market.

"So it is perfectly democratic and perfectly right for all of us to use what power and influence we might have to make sure that she doesn't make that choice."

The Lib Dems gather in York for their spring conference on Friday and senior figures believe the Brexit referendum has pressed the "reset button" for the party with the electorate, with coalition-era troubles and tuition fees no longer raised on the doorstep.

Mr Farron said the Lib Dem membership had doubled since the general election, reaching 82,500.

"It feels like the wind is in our sails," he said, but with his own party having just nine MPs and Labour struggling under Jeremy Corbyn, the Tories could be in power for a generation.

"At the moment, the Labour Party are not only a poor opposition to them, they are in no way capable of forming an alternative government either," he said.

"So it's either us or you are left with the Tories for as long as you can see into the future.

"I think that is utterly unacceptable so our recovery for the sake of the country needs to be big and it needs to be quick."
Despite Theresa May's opposition to Nicola Sturgeon's plan for a second independence referendum, options remain open to the Scottish Government.

While increased political pressure for the Prime Minister to agree or compromise on the timing of another vote seems most likely, Charles Livingstone, constitutional expert and partner at Brodies law firm, details the legal positions:

What is a section 30 order?

"Section 30 orders are made by the Queen, on the advice of the UK Government, having first been approved in draft by the Scottish Parliament, House of Commons and House of Lords.

"A section 30 order can therefore only be made if the UK Government, UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament are all agreed. The only other way the reserved matters in the Scotland Act can be amended would be through an Act of the UK Parliament.

"The Scottish Parliament has no power to amend or qualify reserved matters."

Could a Scottish referendum be held without UK Government consent?

"The Scottish Government may decide to argue that the Scottish Parliament can legislate for a referendum even without a Section 30 order.

"This was its position at the outset of the previous independence referendum debate, the argument being that holding a referendum would not relate to the reserved matter of the Union because it would merely be a non-binding test of public opinion.

"The legal position was not resolved at that time because a Section 30 order (known as the Edinburgh Agreement) was made, which introduced an exception to Schedule 5 allowing a one-question referendum to take place before the end of 2014.

While the Scottish Government has never expressly changed its view on the legal question, it had recently been proceeding as if a Section 30 order would be necessary.

"However, that may now change in light of the UK Government's position. The Scottish Government may therefore be considering whether to just introduce its draft Scottish Independence Referendum Bill to the Scottish Parliament in the absence of an order."

Could it end up in a court battle between the Scottish and UK governments?

"The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament would have to make a statement on whether the Bill would be within the Scottish Parliament's legislative competence, but even if he were to decide it was not, that would not bar the Bill from proceeding.

"If the Bill was then passed there would be a four-week 'standstill' period prior to Royal Assent, in which any of the Law Officers - the Lord Advocate in the Scottish Government, and the Advocate General and Attorney General in the UK Government - could ask the Supreme Court to decide whether the Bill was within competence.

"Alternatively, the legislation could be challenged in court by a third party after it received Royal Assent. In either case the courts would decide whether the legislation was lawful, and so whether the referendum could proceed.

"The issue would be decided well in advance of any referendum actually taking place, so there would be no question of a result being overturned."
Tourists lay flowers at the scene where Danielles body was found

Danielle McLaughlin who was killed in Goa

The man suspected of killing a Co Donegal woman at a tourist resort in Goa will face murder and rape charges, police in the Indian state have said.

Umesh Gaonkar, a superintendent with Goa Police, said a post-mortem examination showed that Danielle McLaughlin suffered cerebral damage and constriction of the neck, causing her death.

The 28-year-old victim from Buncrana was found dead in a secluded spot in Canacona, a popular area for holidaymakers, on Tuesday morning.

Local media reported that the former Liverpool John Moores University student was discovered unclothed and had marks on her head and face.

Mr Gaonkar said a suspect, a local criminal arrested a day after a farmer discovered Ms McLaughlin's body, would face rape and murder charges.

She had travelled to Goa with an Australian female friend and the pair were staying in a beach hut.

They had been celebrating Holi - a Hindu spring festival - on Monday night at a nearby village.

She left the village late at night and her body was found the next day, Mr Gaonkar said.

CCTV footage has emerged of Ms McLaughlin's final movements in which she is seen apparently walking along a street with the suspect behind her.

Deputy superintendent Sammy Tavares told local reporters that a man named Vikas Bhagat (24) had been arrested.

Bhagat had confessed to raping the victim and killing her, he said.

A two-wheeled vehicle and some clothes, reported to have bloodstains on them, have also been seized as part of the investigation.

Christy Duffy, a close friend of Ms McLaughlin's from Buncrana, said her body has been released from the post-mortem and would likely begin a journey home to Ireland on Friday. It is expected her remains will travel to Mumbai, Dubai and then Dublin.

The journey is expect to take up to six days, prolonging an agonising wait for her heartbroken mother Andrea Brannigan. Ms McLaughlin was the eldest of her five daughters.

Mr Duffy has raised more than 26,000 to help with the costs of bringing the body home and to "give her the send-off she deserves".
While most of us have heard miraculous redemption stories about people straying away from God and then finding Him again, you havent heard a story quite like Jacob McKelvys. What makes his story so incredibly unique? McKelvy is the first confirmable satanic leader to be reborn into Christianity.

His testimony is powerful. When he was just a young boy, he lost his sister from a snake bite. After she died, he lost all faith and hope in God.

I was born and raised Mormon, so I understood [who] Jesus Christ was and what God was and if they took my sister away I was going to go to the dark side, McKelvy said. There was a lot of hopelessness and feeling of powerlessness that drew me to this.

He channeled his anger and rage which sent him on a really destructive path that eventually lead him to become a Luciferian archon, or world leader. He would later become the founder of the Greater Church of Lucifer in Texas.

When McKelvy first opened his church doors to the public, Christians both from and outside of the community protested against his church. While there were many people gathered outside the doors to protest the churchs practices and beliefs, Robert Hogan, pastor of Spring First Church, encouraged his congregation to not protest.

God hasnt called us to hate these people. Hes called us to love those people, Hogan said to his congregation.

Hogan also believed that if he had faith, something good could come out of the situation.

I just believe that God could break a revival out at that church, Hogan said.

As McKelvey drove by Hogans church, he felt an urgency to go in. McKelvey eventually walked through the doors of Spring First Church and asked to talk with Hogan. After a four-hour meeting with the pastor, McKelvy and his wife surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ and were born again. They also renounced their ties to the church.

We were once covered in darkness and bound to each other in Luciferian covenant, McKelvy said during a service at Spring First Church in Houston.We were mired in the shadows of the adversarial influence and knew no love outside of each other. Today I rebuke, denounce and break the satanic covenant by the blood of Jesus.

McKelvy and his wife were both baptized at the end of the service.

The Greater Church of Lucifer in Old Town Spring Texas has since been shut down. At the time of McKelvys exit, there were 41 branches worldwide.

Today, McKelvy shares his testimony in churches nationwide, speaking openly about his journey to prove the power of prayer and the love of God. He hopes that his story will help to inspire others to follow in his footsteps.

I created a church to destroy dogmatic religion and He still loved me. So if He could still love me for me to be here today talking to you then there are no excuses anymore.
An Indian police officer is seen choking AFP photographer Tauseef Mustafa in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir state, March 16, 2017.

A press association in Indian Kashmir on Friday demanded an end to alleged excesses committed by regional police, a day after officers allegedly assaulted at least one-half dozen photographers covering a separatist conference in Srinagar.

According to the association, at least six press photographers were injured when police roughed them up as journalists prepared to cover a joint press conference called by three separatist leaders. The conference was called off when the police stopped the separatists from addressing the media.

The Kashmir Press Photographers Association will send a strong-worded letter to the powerful Press Council of India (PCI) on Saturday seeking its intervention in Thursdays unprovoked police action against photo journalists performing their professional duties, Farooq Khan, the associations president, told BenarNews.

We have decided to boycott police events and press conferences if action is not taken against the policemen who assaulted journalists. We have credible evidence  video footage and photographs  to identify the guilty policemen, said Khan, who also claimed to be one of those roughed up.

A probe has been ordered into the incident, which has attracted widespread condemnation, police said.

A senior police officer has been asked to lead the enquiry. Action will be taken against the guilty policemen after all facts have been established, Syed Javid Mujtaba Gilani, the inspector general of police for Jammu and Kashmir state, told BenarNews.

Incidents of rights abuses and police brutality are not uncommon in militancy-ravaged Kashmir.

Claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, the Himalayan region has been grappling with a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 70,000 lives  a majority of them civilians allegedly gunned down by security forces  since the late 1980s.

I could barely breathe

As soon as I started to click photographs of the three separatist leaders, one policeman pushed me to the side and held me by the throat. I could barely breathe, Tauseef Mustafa, a photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP), told BenarNews.

The policeman abused and punched me in full view of other reporters present there while his colleagues provided him cover. He also threatened to kill me, Mustafa said.

Mubashir Khan, a photographer for local English daily Greater Kashmir, said a policeman tried to run him over with a police jeep.

While we were trying to help Mustafa, who was being assaulted by a cop, another policeman drove toward us in a police vehicle and drove it on my right foot. My foot remained under the tire of that heavy vehicle for nearly 30 seconds while I continued to scream in pain, Khan told BenarNews.

Separatists call it state terrorism

Senior journalists in the disputed region described the police action as misuse of power to muzzle the press.

This has unfortunately been a routine in Kashmir rather than an exception, Kashmir Editors Guild, an association of local newspaper editors, said in a statement, adding it was seeking a government intervention at the highest level to ensure that [the] states principal arm does not exhibit an abnormal growth.

Political leaders, too, targeted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling coalition in Indian Kashmir, over the assault on journalists.

When the ruling ally was in opposition, it used to claim that it stood for freedom of expression. Now that it is in power, it is trying to suppress the voice of the media. If this is how the government treats journalists, you can imagine how they must treat the common people of Kashmir, Hakim Yasin, leader of the opposing Peoples Democratic Front (PDF), told BenarNews.

Media is the fourth pillar of democracy and they have a significant role in holding the system accountable and ensuring injustice and weaknesses are highlighted. This spirit of respect for our journalists should be upheld at all costs, Omar Abdullah, Kashmirs former chief minister, said.

Senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani described the police action as sheer state terrorism.

Police [are] trampling over all ethics and have turned the state into a police garrison. They have imposed restrictions on right to expression. The journalists were only performing their duties and there was no legal or moral justification to beat them, Geelani said in a statement issued Thursday.
Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion members guard the gate to a camp in the Ashkona neighborhood of Dhaka after an attempted suicide bombing, March 17, 2017.

A suspected militant blew himself up Friday when officers approached him after he had infiltrated a Dhaka-area camp of Bangladeshs elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) security force, officials said.

They said two RAB officers were injured in the blast that occurred around the time of Friday afternoon prayers, after the suspect had entered the compound by climbing a wall of the camp in Dhakas Ashkona neighborhood.

The incident occurred amid some recent acts of violent militant activity and a day after five militants and a toddler, including at least one suicide bomber, were killed during police raids in Chittagong and Brahmanbaria districts.

The local militants are not totally eliminated, but these are stray incidents. They are carrying out attacks as they are on the verge of destruction, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews on Friday.

The extremist group Islamic State claimed through its Amaq news agency that an IS fighter carried out Fridays suicide bombing, according to the Dhaka Tribune.

Around 1 p.m. at the time of Friday prayers, an unknown person entered the compound scaling the right-side wall, which is made of an iron grill and concrete wall. He tried to escape as RAB members challenged him and the explosion took place immediately, RAB spokesman Mufit Mahmud Khan told reporters.

He died as the bomb he was carrying exploded, and two RAB members were injured, the spokesman said, adding the attacker had no other weapons.

The RAB members were treated at a military hospital in Dhaka for non-life threatening injuries.

We have taken the fingerprint of the attacker. It will be matched with the national database to find out his identity and the outfit he belonged to, Kamal told BenarNews.

Alerts to airports, prisons

The attack in the Ashkona neighborhood adjacent to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport prompted the aviation and prison authorities to issue alerts at all airports and jails.

Civil Aviation Minister Rashed Khan Menon told BenarNews the alert was issued to thwart any potential militant attacks.

Our security regime in and around the airport is quite tight. But we have issued the alert as extra care so militants can in no way cause sabotage, he said.

The home minister alerted prisons about the threat of militant activity as the government prepares for the possible execution of Harkatul Jihad al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI) founder Mufti Abdul Hannan.

In 2001, HuJI carried out an attack in Dhaka. A year earlier, Hannan allegedly planned to kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by planting a bomb at the helipad where her helicopter was to land.

In 2004, HuJI members carried out a grenade attack in Sylhet on the British High Commissioner, Anwar Choudhury. The envoy survived the attack that killed two bystanders.

Hannan has been sentenced to death and, earlier this month, suspected militants attempted to help the HuJI leader escape from jail by hurling Molotov cocktails on a prison van transporting him and other inmates on the outskirts of Dhaka.

Fridays suicide attack followed a bloody denouement a day earlier to a police operation that began on Wednesday and targeted a suspected den of the Neo-JMB  a group that police have blamed for a terrorist attack that left 20 hostages dead at a Dhaka cafe last year, and which was claimed by IS.

On Thursday, special weapons and tactical (SWAT) officers killed four suspected members of Neo-JMB, including a woman, during a raid in Sitakunda municipality. A small boy, believed to be the child of the female militant, died during the raid and at least one militant blew himself up.

A fifth militant, identified as Tajul Islam Mahmud (alias Mama Hujur), one of seven regional HuJI leaders, was killed Thursday in a gunfight with police in Brahmanbaria district while other suspected militants escaped.
Myanmar's Rakhine state advisory commission informs reporters about the findings in its interim report at a pres conference in Yangon, March 16, 2017.

The European Union on Thursday submitted a draft resolution to the U.N. Human Rights Council calling for an immediate international probe of human rights violations by the military against Muslim Rohingya in Myanmars Rakhine state.

The document calls on the Myanmar government under de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to cooperate fully with a fact-finding mission and make available findings of domestic investigations of abuses of Rohingya Muslims by security forces during a crackdown that began last October in the wake of deadly attacks on border guard stations, later blamed on Rohingya militants.

Members of the Human Rights Council will vote on the resolution next week, according to the Myanmar Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews.

The draft resolution was issued the same day as an interim report by a Myanmar government-appointed advisory commission on Rakhine state.

Led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, the commission said the country should immediately start to allow displaced Rohingya to return to their homes in Rakhine and eventually shut down the camps where more than 120,000 have resided following communal violence with Buddhist nationalists in 2012.

The Myanmar government on Thursday issued a statement saying that it agreed with the findings of the commission and would implement the majority of its recommendations.

The report has 30 recommendations, including allowing humanitarian groups and media to visit conflict areas in Rakhine, providing equal access to health care and education, training police, recognizing Rohingya as Myanmar citizens and giving them citizens rights, and shutting down refugee camps and resettling the Rohingya.

The government of Myanmar will be happy to cooperate with the advisory commission in its endeavors to assist us in finding viable and sustainable solutions to the complex situation in Rakhine state, the statement said.

Rights groups sound off

Rights groups on Friday echoed the calls of the European Union and put pressure on Myanmar and the United States government to support the establishment of an independent investigative body.

London-based Amnesty International put pressure on Myanmar to implement the Rakhine Advisory Commissions recommendations.

The authorities must immediately act on the Rakhine Commissions recommendations to grant humanitarian access, end the media blackout in northern Rakhine state, and ensure the perpetrators of human rights violations are held accountable, said Champa Patel, Amnesty Internationals director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, in a statement.

The rights organization also took the commissions recommendations to task by not including language ensuring full respect for the rights of the Rohingya who are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denied Myanmar citizenship and other basic rights in the country.

The commissions mandate does not include investigating recent human rights violations by security forces.

Unfortunately, the commissions recommendations do not go far enough to address the increasingly dire situation on the ground, Patel said. There is much more the authorities can and should do, including lifting restrictions on freedom of movement for the Rohingya and other Muslims.

Southeast Asia-based Fortify Rights urged the U.S. Congress and the administration of President Donald Trump to support the establishment of an international inquiry into possible crimes against humanity in Rakhine state.

The group told U.S. lawmakers at a hearing on Friday on Capitol Hill in Washington that state security forces have committed human rights violations in a consistent manner in disparate locations in northern Rakhine state during the crackdown which ended in February.

Some of the more than 75,000 Rohingya who fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape accused security forces of burning homes, killing people indiscriminately, torturing residents, and raping women and girls.

The U.S. is a highly influential actor in Myanmar, said Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights, who testified at the hearing. We believe a strong international inquiry will bolster Aung San Suu Kyis administration, stem refugee outflows, and help end military impunity for serious human rights abuses.

In a February report, the U.N. said attacks by the military and police against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine state were widespread and systematic and could amount to crimes against humanity.

Yanghee Lee, the U.N.s special envoy on human rights in Myanmar, told the Human Rights Council on Monday that the government may be trying to expel the Rohingya from the country by dismantling their homes and conducting a household survey where those absent may be eliminated from a list that could be the only legal proof of their status in Myanmar.

Though the Myanmar government has denied most of the allegations of abuse of the Rohingya by security forces in northern Rakhine, it set up an up an investigation commission in December to look into the violence.

Members of the commission are now traveling to Bangladesh and Rakhines Kyikanpyin village, where border guard stations were attacked last Oct. 9, to check with locals to see if Rakhine authorities have done what the commission asked them to do during a previous meeting, said commission member Saw Thalay Saw on Friday.

We have heard that there are some people who fled from Myanmar  thats why we are going to Bangladesh to investigate what happened to these people to check both sides in order to get complete information, she said.

Rights groups have criticized the investigation commission and two others set up by the Myanmar army and police to look into reports of atrocities against the Rohingya during the security operations.

In an interim report in January, the investigation commission said it had found no evidence of genocide or religious persecution of Rohingya Muslims living in the region, and insufficient evidence of rape. It also said it was still probing accusations of arson, torture, and illegal arrests.

In February, the commission completed another fact-finding mission in the affected areas to investigate the U.N.s allegations of human rights violations.
Residents of Khoksator village in southern Thailands Narathiwat province watch as police investigate the scene of a roadside shooting by suspected insurgents in which an 8-year-old boy, his parents and aunt were killed.

A future ceasefire in southern Thailand could be annulled if more than three violent incidents occur in a district selected for the experimental truce, according to a Thai negotiator, but a rebel spokesman said insurgents had not approved this condition.

After exploratory peace talks in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 28, negotiators from the Thai side and a panel representing Deep South rebel groups announced a framework for a so-called safety zone, or limited ceasefire, which would take hold in a one of the districts of Thailands war-stricken southern border region.

The safety zone will take at least three months to set up and implement, and will serve as a test to see if the concept can work there and in other areas of the Deep South, officials from both sides have said. Neither side has named any of the five districts in three provinces from which one district will be picked for a ceasefire.

Yet during a press briefing in Bangkok on Thursday, a military officer who serves as secretary of the Thai negotiation team claimed both sides had agreed to placing a condition on the truce related to violence in the Deep South.

The delineation of a safety zone is one measure of testing mutual trust between the government and the dissidents, which, at present, is not quite there yet, Maj. Gen. Sitthi Trakulwong told reporters at the Bangkok headquarters of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, referring to separatist insurgents in the predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking Deep South.

However, it is understood that there are other factors to the violence other than the insurgent groups namely, opportunistic threats such as drugs, oil-smuggling and local politicians. Therefore there is an initial agreement that, in a safety zone, there can be no more than three violent incidents taking place, he said.

Should acts of violence interrupt the ceasefire in the chosen district, both the Thai and rebels side would need to conduct joint investigations, he said.

But if we cannot identify the culprits, the safety zone is cancelled, Sitthi warned.

The rebel view

Abu Hafiz Al-Hakim, a spokesman for the MARA Patani panel that represents southern rebels in the peace efforts, was asked Friday whether they had agreed to the condition to do with violence as spelled out a day earlier by the secretary of the Thai negotiating team.

That is the view of the Thai side. We so far only agreed on the General Framework for SZ [Safety Zones]. There has been no detailed discussion or consensus on the rules or SOP [Standard Operating Procedures]; all these will be refined later, Abu Hafiz told BenarNews.

He and Sitthi indicated that the two sides would work together over three months to select one of five districts where the truce would take effect and make preparations for a ceasefire. Once they agreed to this, the chosen district would serve for another three months as a test site for the concept of safety zones, they said.

However, the prospect of a limited ceasefire being implemented and holding has been shaken lately by violence in the region, which some have blamed on hardcore armed separatists who refuse to negotiate with Thailands military government and are not on board with MARA Patani.

Nearly 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the insurgency since 2004. Since Feb. 28, when the two sides agreed to a framework for a limited ceasefire, 12 people have been killed and 10 injured in suspected rebel attacks in the Deep South. The dead included an 8-year-old boy, his parents and aunt, as well as other civilians.

Meanwhile, as the Thai military was briefing reporters about its plan to pursue a limited ceasefire, its regional command in the Deep South announced that it was extending an emergency-powers decree for another three months in certain parts of the region because of the cycle of violence.

Such powers allow security forces in the region to arrest suspects without a warrant and to hold suspects in isolation indefinitely, according to the Bangkok Post.

The extension of emergency powers will begin on March 20, Col. Yuthanam Petchmuang, deputy spokesman for the regional office of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), told reporters Thursday.

[T]here have still been ongoing serious incidents. It is therefore expedient to extend the emergency decree for serious situations, he said.

BenarNews staff in Pattani, Thailand, contributed to this report
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News / Local

by Staff Reporter

President Robert Mugabe is set to fly out to Swaziland this morning to Swaziland to attend an Extra-Ordinary Summit of Sadc Heads of State and Government.He will join other Heads of State for the special indaba on Industrialisation and Regional Integration.Mugabe (93) does not miss and international engagement.According to the state media, Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services George Charamba the special summit was a follow up to Mugabe's initiation of conversation around industrialisation and regional integration."It was during President Mugabe's tenure as chair of Sadc that the issue of industrialisation and making sure that Sadc economies value add in order to develop and create jobs was brought to the table."Because of that contribution, a special summit was convened in Harare at that time to address that specific issue."Because it was so successful, Sadc took a decision to make it an annual event in between summits devoted to industrialisation, beneficiation and integration of regional economies".
Ohios Spring Severe Weather Awareness Week  March 19-25  provides the opportunity for Ohioans to prepare their homes, schools and businesses for potential severe weather. Bowling Green State Universitys Emergency Management office recommends taking time now to review emergency plans, get reacquainted with weather warnings and watches and update safety kits and supplies.

Preparing for potential severe weather and the conditions associated with it, including lightning, flooding, flash flooding, tornadoes and extreme heat, helps to protect lives and reduce injuries and property damage.

It is important that we stay vigilant, know what to do and how to stay safe during severe weather events such as tornadoes, floods, windstorms, thunderstorms, lightning, extreme cold and severe heat, to name a few, said Matthew Keefe, BGSU emergency management coordinator. The BGSU Department of Public Safety is taking severe weather preparedness to the next level by working on becoming a National Weather Service StormReady University, which will allow us to better prepare our students, faculty, staff and guests for the increasing vulnerabilities of extreme weather through planning, education, training and awareness.

As part of this effort, Emergency Management has placed at least one emergency alert weather radio in every occupied building on campus.

The Universitys Department of Public Safety is following the state of Ohios guidelines in getting the message out about preparing for severe weather. On Wednesday (March 22) at 9:50 a.m., Bowling Green will take part in the Statewide Tornado Drill. The purpose of the drill is to sound and test outdoor warning sirens. Buildings on campus that have internal weather receivers/notification systems will also be activated for the same duration. Schools, businesses and households are encouraged to practice their tornado drills and emergency plans. This is a good time to review emergency procedures.

As part of the Universitys emergency plan, students, faculty and staff are automatically enrolled in AlertBG, a way to communicate emergency information. Text messages and emails are sent to the campus community in the event of emergency or severe weather closures. Users may add one additional cell phone number and/or email address by visiting the MyBGSU site. Click on the AlertBG tab at the top of the Welcome page.
Von: from NIKOLAUS BLOME, TANIT KOCH AND DANIEL BISKUP

Emmanuel Macron is small, slim, and full of energy. According to polls, chances are high that he will be elected as the next French President in early May.

In Berlin, he is on a tour to introduce himself to Chancellor Merkel, Foreign Minister Gabriel, and soon-to-be President Steinmeier  and to BILD:

BILD: Mr. Macron, the French Presidential Election will determine the future of Europe. Will you be able to beat Marine Le Pen, the head of the anti-European, xenophobic party Front National?

Emmanuel Macron: The point of my candidacy is to win  and not to stop someone like Marine Le Pen. I am competing FOR something. It is about finally letting France arrive in the 21st century. But its true: if Ms. Le Pen were to win, this would be the end of the Euro and the EU.

Doesnt that scare the French?

Macron: Le Pen lives off the weakness of the government and French politics in general. She lives off peoples fears and the EUs flaws and terrible inertia. This is why both France and the EU have to radically change. I will deal with this in France by making the job market more flexible, by improving education and upbringing, and by stabilizing the states finances.

Lesen Sie auch

Over the past few decades, the once so revolutionarily-inclined French kept blocking necessary reforms. Why should that be any different now?

Macron: Youre right  the French dont like reforms. If people have the choice, they will avoid reforms 

Auch interessant

 which means?

Macron: The French understand that its no longer just about reforms, but that we need a total restructuring, a revolution. Do you remember the year 1958? France was meandering along like today and was suffering from a reform deadlock. Then came the Algerian crisis  and, bam, suddenly everything was different. The Fifth Republic was born  a gigantic change.

Are the French really sufficiently fed up that they will accept such a change?

Macron: I wouldnt get such high approval ratings in the polls if the French werent ready. After all, I am telling people what I want to do  so they know what they are tasking me with by voting for me: to carry out sweeping change. This was different with my predecessors. They did not explain enough prior to the elections. This is why they later failed with many  although not all  of their reforms.

Youve sometimes said that you are left-wing. Sometimes youve said you are not. So what are you, in the end?

Macron: Firstly, I come from the left. Secondly, I think that the left/right approach is inadequate for tackling todays challenges. People both on the left and the right have not updated their software. There are progressive people on both sides who have invested too much energy in party politics. There is a kind of political Maginot Line that I want to destroy. About a year ago, I therefore created a cross-party progressive movement  that is En Marche.

A recent poll showed that the French are the most pessimistic people on the planet. How do you want to deal with this?

Macron: Its true  this presidential election is all about worries and security. However, closer cooperation in Europe is always the best answer, whether with respect to migration, a competitive economy, or combatting terrorism. We have to say this out loud. If you are too cowardly to do so, you are already dead. I am entirely pro-European; my competitors are not.

By the way, you and your two most important competitors, Marine Le Pen and the conservative Francois Fillon, are all under investigation. This sounds like the Comedie-Francaise.

Macron: Wait a minute  Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Fillon are personally under investigation  Im not. This concerns a subordinate office of my back-then-ministry. I am fine with all of that. I am not scolding the judiciary, like the other two are.

Many people  not only in France  think that the EU is not sufficiently protecting them from globalisation, which, allegedly, takes their jobs away. What will these people think of your talk of more Europe?

Macron: You can criticize the EU for many things, but the EU is not the same as globalisation. Europe is more than just an ultra-free market of the kind that the British want. The EU can protect people and their jobs, for instance against dumping prices from China. We just have to explain this to the people. We have to defend reason.

In Berlin, one of the people you visited was the German Chancellor. Her financial and migration policies are controversial in France, too. Does that meeting harm your campaign?

Macron: The conversation was important. We need a German-French reboot for Europe. For this purpose, Ms. Merkel needs to know what I am intending to do as French President. When I will be in government, I will make it clear from the beginning that I will not govern without Germany. I will not govern without Europe.

The British have decided differently. How would you negotiate with the UK about it leaving the EU?

Macron: One thing first: the secret dream of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and probably also the British is a weak Europe. However, this would be a nightmare. I will do anything I can to prevent this.

This sounds as if you want to punish the British for their exit. Can the EU really only be strong if the British are weak?

Macron: No, of course not. But the negotiations will be very strict. If you want access to the EU domestic market, you have to participate in the costs and comply with the EUs legal order. If the British do not want that, its perfectly fine. I respect that. But then there can also be no exceptions and loopholes that weaken the solidarity within the EU. As French President, I will only work for France and the EU.

This translation is based on the German, authorized version of the interview.

PS: Sind Sie bei Facebook? Werden Sie Fan von BILD.de-Politik
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

Pastor Evan Mawarire, #ThisFlag Movement frontman on Thursday was back in court taking the State to task after it failed to honour its promise to provide him a trial date and demanded the scrapping of all bail conditions or removal from the remand.According to a NewsDay report, Mawarire's demands came after the State asked the court to postpone the matter, in which he is facing charges of subversion, to April 21, saying the docket has been sent to the Prosecutor-General's Office for perusal.His lawyer Harrison Nkomo demanded the court to variate the bail conditions to allow his client to carry out his day-to-day business.Nkomo told the court that the State was prejudicing and frustrating his client before the trial, arguing he should be given the chance to live a normal life before trial. Due to the delays, Nkomo said the pastor who intends to run for the presidency was incurring costs of hiring lawyers in this harsh economic environment.Nkomo also urged the court to remove Mawarire from remand, saying the State indicated during his initial remand that investigations would be completed by February 28. He argued that up to now, the State had not revealed its witnesses.Prosecutor Sebastian Mutizirwa, opposed the application saying Mawarire should approach the High Court for variation of his bail condition as the magistrate's court has no jurisdiction over his bail.Mawarire cannot complain over the State's delay in providing the trial date as he had been on remand for only a month, he added.Magistrate Barbara Chimboza was expected to rule on the application late yesterday.On September 15 last year, Mawarire allegedly through social media further called on Zimbabweans in the United States of America and all over the world to converge in New York to confront President Robert Mugabe, who was attending the United Nations General Assembly.The State alleges Mawarire's actions were meant to embarrass Mugabe on the world front.It is the State's case that Mawarire should have foreseen that there was a real risk or possibility that his actions might lead to the violent demonstrations that took place in Zimbabwe as a result.
For Immediate Release, March 17, 2017 Contact: Nathan Donley, (971) 717-6406, ndonley@biologicaldiversity.org Scientific Panel Criticizes EPA Assessment of Glyphosate Criticism of Pesticide Program Comes on Heels of Breaking Scandal Over Its Cozy Relationship With Monsanto PORTLAND, Ore. In a sharp rebuke, a new report by a key scientific advisory panel concluded that the pesticides office at the Environmental Protection Agency failed to follow its own guidelines when it found last year that glyphosate  the active ingredient in Monsanto's flagship pesticide Roundup  is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. The panel  an independent group of scientists commissioned by the EPA to review the agency's work  remained split on whether the pesticide program's non-carcinogenic conclusion was justified, with some panel members believing there was suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential. Glyphosate is the most heavily used herbicide in the United States, with about 220 million pounds used in 2015 alone. Last year, in a widely criticized move, the pesticides program at the EPA postponed the advisory panel meeting because CropLife America  an industry trade group representing Monsanto and other pesticide companies  objected to one of the members on the panel. Dr. Peter Infante, a respected researcher with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, was subsequently removed from the panel after CropLife accused the highly credentialed scientist of bias. Even with Monsanto's undue influence on the makeup of this panel, there was still considerable concern about the safety of this pesticide, said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. When the pesticide office doesn't even follow its own guidelines in determining the safety of glyphosate, how can we trust its conclusions? Documents released by court order earlier this week revealed that: The chair of the EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee on glyphosate was in regular contact with Monsanto, providing insider information that guided Monsanto's messaging; The chair warned Monsanto that the World Health Organization's cancer research arm had found glyphosate to be a probable carcinogen months before the 2015 determination became public, allowing the pesticide-maker to mount a public relations attack on the finding; The chair promised to thwart the Department of Health and Human Services' review of glyphosate's safety, saying that if he was successful he deserved a medal. The Department never did review glyphosate's safety; A Monsanto executive emailed other company officials that they could hire academics to put their names on glyphosate research papers written by Monsanto, citing a previous instance where this was actually done. The referenced paper was in fact used in the pesticide program's own cancer analysis. The Center's scientists and attorneys are closely reviewing the new documents as they are released. Monsanto's troubling influence and coordination with the pesticide office, combined with its utter disregard for established guidelines, completely discredits the pesticide office's conclusion that glyphosate does not cause cancer, said Donley. The 2015 finding of the World Health Organization's cancer arm that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen remains the most credible and scientifically supported finding on the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. This latest science panel report really just confirms that the pesticide approval process in this country needs to be fundamentally changed to protect public health. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.2 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
One of South Africa's most established digital agencies, WWC, has appointed Louis Janse van Rensburg as its Managing Director for Johannesburg and Africa. Janse van Rensburg will share the groupwide leadership role with WWC co-founder and Cape Town MD Mike Perk. Janse van Rensburg replaces outgoing CEO Fred Roed who now heads up Heavy Chef (Pty) Ltd  an initiative born from within WWC. Roed remains a shareholder within WWC and continues to play an advisory role to the agency's leadership team.

Louis Janse van Rensburg, WWC MD: Johannesburg & Africa

Founded by Perk and Roed in 2003, WWC started as a web marketing firm in Cape Town that over the years grew into a leading full-service digital agency in South Africa recognised for its strengths in large custom platform developments, search engine marketing and its strategy and training programmes for internal marketing teams.

In 2016, WWC started the process of evolving its company vision to that of an Innovation Agency. This points to a clear intention to offer ideas and services that solve business problems, and not only marketing challenges.

This was such an organic shift says Roed, ever since Mike and I started the company and, later, Louis joining to grow our Johannesburg operations, weve had an entrepreneurial approach to our client partnerships. Louis and Mikes natural ability to unlock new growth for businesses make them the ideal duo to lead this new chapter of WWCs story.

World Wide Creative (WWC) | Innovation Agency

Janse van Rensburg adds: Weve always approached this transition as a game of chess. The first move was to focus Freds energy full-time on our influential platform, Heavy Chef, while still retaining the continuity in leadership at WWC. The second set of moves relate to WWC finding its voice beyond just the marketing and advertising sector in South Africa, to a broader innovation sector across the continent where weve found the opportunities to diversify and grow our revenue streams as a far more appealing model than the traditional agency game.

Janse van Rensburg highlights that their appetite to find scale through digital product partnerships and proactively investing in its own broader agency ecosystem including investment into a new innovative office space, is driving a lot of WWCs long-term ambitions.

Our offering to the market is simple, says Perk. We unlock new growth through digital. We do this by particularly focusing on increasing your digital intensity through digital transformation programmes and product innovation.

With established partnerships with brands such as The City of Cape Town, Independent Media, The Foschini Group, global telecommunications operator The Afrimax Group and most recent client acquisition JSE-listed Octodec Investments, WWC is set to build on its 14-year track record of success as a company.




LONDON, England - Major chocolate makers, including Ferrero, Nestle, and Mars, agreed Thursday a landmark initiative to tackle deforestation in top cocoa producers Ivory Coast and Ghana - a move hailed by Prince Charles.

Jean Van Jean via Wikimedia Commons

Twelve cocoa and chocolate companies agreed to "a statement of collective intent" committing them to work to end deforestation and forest degradation in the global cocoa supply chain, with an initial focus on the two west African nations, the industry announced following a London meeting hosted by the British heir to the throne.

"The agreement... commits the participating companies to develop and present a joint public-private framework of action to address deforestation," at UN climate talks in November, said a joint statement.

Deforestation a threat to resilience of cocoa sector and smallholders who depend on it

The prince told a conference that "the most powerful direct reason for action is that deforestation threatens to undermine the very resilience of the cocoa sector itself, and with it the livelihoods of the millions of smallholders who depend on it."

"I am heartened that companies are undertaking to work up, in full collaboration with host governments and civil society, a joint framework of action to make good on the commitments announced today, in time for" the UN climate change conference in November.

The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), which held the meeting with the Sustainable Trade Initiative and Charles' International Sustainability Unit, described the agreement as "the first collective industry commitment to specifically end deforestation and forest degradation covering the global cocoa supply chain".

The dozen companies involved in the initiative comprise also Barry Callebaut, Blommer Chocolate Company, Cargill, CEMOI, ECOM, Hershey, Mondelez, Olam, and Touton.

"We look forward to more companies joining the effort and are grateful for the leadership provided by The Prince of Wales in convening today's landmark event," said WCF chairman Barry Parkin.

Source: AFP
ZAGREB, Croatia - Troubled Agrokor, the Balkans' main food maker and retailer, made it to the top of Croatia's political agenda Thursday when Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic tried to calm fears over its crushing debt.

Konzum, the largest Croatian food retailer, is a part of Agrokor Group.

The Agrokor concern directly employs some 60,000 people in the region - of which two-thirds in Croatia and others in neighbouring Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia - where unemployment runs high. A network of suppliers means dozens of thousands more people are linked to the company indirectly. Its owner is Croatian businessman Ivica Todoric.

Agrokor's has annual revenue of some 50 billion kunas (6.7 billion euros, $7.2 billion), the equivalent of over 15% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). According to figures released in September its debt amounted to some six billion euros. Among the firm's major creditors figure Russia's state-owned banks Sberbank and VTB.

"We hope for a positive solution of the situation" regarding Agrokor, Plenkovic told a government session, and called not to "dramatise".

"We should all calm down ... using a common sense approach a dialogue with the company and its major creditors from whom we expect that they very soon jointly start a plan for resolving the existing problems in (Agrokor's) business operations."

He stressed that the "government's role is to take care of overall stability and sustainability of the country's economic and financial system".

Agrokor said in a statement Wednesday it was analysing with its partners "all possible options to stabilise the company's business activities".

Earlier this year international rating agencies lowered Agrokor's credit rating citing namely its high indebtedness and rising refinancing risks. A big part of its debt matures in 2018. Analysts say Agrokor's financial problems could be solved by restructuring, changes in ownership or the sale of some of the 61 companies it owns. They say the government should not interfere in the firm's consolidation but rather create a framework that would enable its recovery.

"When Agrokor wobbles the whole of Croatia wobbles," opposition leader Social Democrat (SDP) Davor Bernardic warned.

The Croatian Chamber of Commerce said that the next moves over the firm would "certainly affect the economic and social situation in the whole country".

Unemployment in the EU member country was 15% in January.

Source: AFP
Without nature, humans could be neither healthy nor happy. And yet the natural world can be completely ransacked without causing even a tiny blip on our usual measures of economic progress or poverty.

A major UN environmental meeting recently looked at launching an assessment of the different values that people attribute to nature, and what nature contributes to human societies. However, these high level discussions will be futile unless our measures of societal progress expand to explicitly include what nature does for human well-being and prosperity, especially for poor people.

Nature matters to peoples well-being in many different ways. It obviously provides us with basic needs such as food, clean air and water, as well as protection from environmental hazards. There is also a clear relationship with both physical and mental well-being, especially for those who are fortunate enough to have access to green spaces.

Beyond these instrumental roles, there is also evidence from around the world that nature is a more fundamental contributor to peoples sense of self. It is an integral part of what constitutes well-being, captured for some in the awe-inspiring moments when standing on top of a mountain, the breath-taking view of a beautiful river, or in the feeling of freedom associated with traversing a wide open landscape.

The problem with economic indicators

Despite the value we get from nature, our measures of progress and well-being remain much narrower, focused on what is visible and measurable. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the most prominent approach since the end of World War II, with GDP seen as a useful snapshot of the state of the economy and peoples well-being. What these figures often hide are those things, like the role of nature, that are not measured in the monetary economy, but are an important part of daily life and can be crucial for sustaining future prosperity.

There are alternatives. One that has gained some momentum is the Inclusive Wealth Index, which takes into account broader measures of human and natural well-being  its most recent assessment suggested that conventional GDP figures had greatly exaggerated growth over the period 1992-2010. In international development, the UNs Human Development Index and the multidimensional poverty index both recognise a larger set of issues, combining material standards with measures of health and education. But they still do not adequately incorporate the role of nature.

Ignoring nature creates some perverse paradoxes. Measured GDP might actually increase as a consequence of a major environmental disaster, because of the economic activity created by the clean up and repair. Meanwhile, the environmental losses themselves dont show up in economic measures. A country could get rich by cutting down all its primary forests (and many have), but the associated loss of habitat and wild species would not feature in national accounts.

Governments continue to make decisions based on a key set of headline figures. These include GDP and per capita income, which reflect economic prosperity, and, in poorer countries, the extent and incidence of poverty. But we can do better: our ongoing research focuses on developing environmentally-adjusted measures of multidimensional poverty, based on the insight that people are typically poorer when they do not have access to nature.

Our research suggests that failing to consider these missing environmental aspects can result in an incomplete assessment of the multiple dimensions and underlying drivers of poverty. Consequently, the identification of the poor, as well as an understanding of what makes them poor, risks being partial, thereby posing a challenge to addressing poverty adequately.

The current status quo fails people, especially the poor, and also threatens future prosperity by undervaluing nature. Those who benefit from the current approaches are typically global elites who profit from environmental destruction (which goes unrecognised).

The losers are those most dependent on nature for their livelihoods and those especially vulnerable to environmental change. Even if nature is valued, it is typically converted into money equivalents, which favours those who are able and willing to parcel out nature into small commoditised bundles, which can then be sold to the highest bidder. This fails to take into account the views of those who believe that nature matters in other ways or in its own right, who care about the beauty of nature and the sheer joy that it provides to many.

The consequences of neglecting peoples varied views and aspirations have become apparent from recent political events in Europe and the US. Nature matters to our well-being, and people see their relationship with nature in many different ways. Recognising this is a crucial step towards building a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable society.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says the government is doing all it can to avoid job losses in the poultry industry amid concerns of poultry products dumping and unfair trade practices. The President said this when he answered questions in the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday. "Government will do everything in its powers to ensure that there is no factory closures or job losses in the poultry industry.

"Within the provisions of the World Trade Organisation's rules and South Africa's trade agreements, South Africa will vigorously deploy trade measures to protect our poultry industry from dumping and unfair trade practices," he said.

The Deputy President was responding to a question that was posed by Member of Parliament from KwaZulu-Natal, IFP's Mntomuhle Khawula, who had asked if there were any plans to rescue the South African poultry industry from closure. The Deputy President said, working closely with the private sector, government will deploy incentives and other support measures to protect the industry to maintain production capabilities, save jobs as well as to ensure food security. "In short, South Africa will vigorously defend this industry against dumping and unfair trade practices.

Task teams to deal with poultry industry situation

"Government has established two task teams to urgently address the situation within the South African poultry industry - the first is a government task team and the second is a much broader task team that includes representatives from government, business, and labour.

"The partners are working in close collaboration on this matter particularly on the programme to address the complex and multiple challenges that are facing the domestic poultry industry," he said.

With the agricultural sector being one of the main job drivers in the economy, the Deputy President said it was critical that the country preserves its production capacity across the entire poultry value chain. "This is in our view important because poultry products are a critical source of protein for the majority of our people and the industry is also a very, very important employer in our economy."

He said the task teams were developing an economic analysis of the existing situation across the entire value chain from upstream with regard to stock feed production to poultry production with the value addition through the retail and the logistic sectors.

A range of supply and demand side initiatives and measures

The task teams are, the Deputy President said, developing a plan of action to support the industry, encompassing a range of supply and demand side initiatives and measures. "Areas that are under consideration include a range of trade measures to support the industry within the rules of the WTO and our own trade agreements in this regard.

"Industrial financing and incentive measures to support the industry with a range of reciprocal conditions, including transformation, labour retention as well as investments.

"The other area is to look at the measures that would lower the cost of input and raise competitiveness because as we all know, the poultry industry is a global industry and it is hugely competitive and other countries are well endowed with processes such as lower input costs, or production costs, and in our case these tend to go up a little bit.

"We are also looking at measures to raise aggregate demand through localisation of public procurement and a stronger collaborative export process," he said.

The Deputy President also said that the task team was also engaging with a wider range of stakeholders to ensure that the views and interests would be addressed.

"Significant progress has been made by the task team and government will make further announcements in this regard."
There was nothing wrong with axed Prasa boss Collins Letsoalo's 350% salary hike, awarded because he could not be paid less than those who reported to him, Transport Minister Dipuo Peters says.

The minister came out firmly in defence of Letsoalo in her affidavit filed in the Pretoria High Court yesterday, 16 March 2017, saying some employees reporting to him were earning more than R4-million a year.

But Peters's support for the pay hike appears to contradict his secondment letter, which she signed.

The letter, dated 7 July last year, says Letsoalo's "rank, salary and seniority date remains unchanged" while he is at the Passenger Rail Agency.

Letsoalo, who is chief financial officer of the Transport Department, was seconded to Prasa following the departure of former CEO Lucky Montana. As acting CEO he was tasked with turning around the ailing agency.

In her affidavit, Peters contends that the R5.9-million a year Letsoalo would have earned was applicable to the position at the time of his appointment.

The package is the same as that given to Montana.

Peters also dismissed the argument that Letsoalo was entitled only to his basic salary at the department and an additional 12% acting allowance, in line with the agency's remuneration policy.

The minister said the policy provided that "acting-in-high-grade allowance will be applicable to all employees at 12% of total guaranteed package (total cost to company)".

Peters said this clause did not apply to Letsoalo because he was not the agency's permanent employee. The clause was applicable to permanent Prasa employees and those whose contracts were for more than six months. She emphasised the part of the clause that states "it is not applicable to temporary personnel from thirdparty employers".

The minister said Letsoalo was categorised as temporary personnel from third-party employers and therefore the 12% referred to was not applicable to him.

"Indeed, it would have been anomalous for Mr Letsoalo to continue earning an amount of R1.3-million [a year] when his immediate subordinates at Prasa were earning upwards of R4-million," Peters said in her affidavit.

Peters was replying to arguments by former board members who have taken her department to court over their unceremonious removal last week. They are demanding immediate reinstatement.
Like the humble spreadsheet before it, the internet is one of the most transformative technologies in history. However, like any piece of technology, the internet can be used for bad as well as good, with some of the online dangers being hackers, online predators, and internet bullies.

In fact, South Africa is one of the worst countries when it comes to the level of civility across various online interactions. Microsoft recently conducted research among adults and teenagers in 14 countries and South Africa ranked in 14th place in the Digital Civility Index, making it the country with the highest online risk exposure and lowest degree of Digital Civility out of all the nations surveyed including Australia, Germany, India, France, the UK and US.

Microsoft is challenging people around the world to embrace digital civility through the Digital Civility pledge, which formed part of the recent Safer Internet Day (7 February). Through this pledge, the company hopes to inspire and encourage people to treat each other with respect and dignity online. Amongst other avenues being used in support of this pledge are educational approaches that focus on social and emotional learning and help develop empathy, as well as prepare youth for success in the 21st century.

Teaching civility along with calculus

Furthermore, because we live in a digital culture, citizenship skills that encompass a childs full life must be a priority. This will be achieved through lessons about life online that are integrated into traditional scholastic curricula including social studies, health and language arts classes.

In addition, the effectiveness of this program can be boosted by way of investment in after-school programmes, so all family members can learn and model safe, healthy skills and competencies and become responsible, respectful and informed citizens of the world.

In South Africa, the non-profit organisation Bridge2Africa, is one of the companies aiming to do this locally. The organisation runs intervention programs that address issues like cyberbullying by tapping into the power of the latest technologies, in order to reach out to diverse demographics within vulnerable communities.

Building a bridge to better civility

Bridge2Africa runs a mobile communication and intervention toolkit called the Cyber Project, which is an ICT-based model to promote the safe learning space. As part of this initiative, Bridge2Africa manages a high profile coalition of academia, corporate and basic education members within Tshwane South and North, Gauteng North as well as Johannesburg East Districts. The intervention curriculum addresses cyber safety, security, ethics, digital citizenship and cyber bullying.

The three dimensional programme also focuses on learners (Grade 1 to 12), educators and parents or guardians through cyber workshops for educators, learners in schools as well as Bridge2Africa Cyber Camps and Cyber Leadership Conferences.

Additionally, there is also a programme called the Smart Kids Initiative which is aimed at gap year students and Bridge2Africas intervention model also caters for University students with much emphasis on Cyber safety and Security and tackles the cyber challenges faced by millennials.

Currently, Bridge2Africa has reached more than 300 schools and the company is moving into the direction of the digitalisation of its intervention model. This move will assist the company by enabling it to live stream its presentations, facilitate video conferencing and online programmes, which will provide Bridge2Africa with more leverage to reach about 26,000 schools in an hour.

Through partnerships such as these, civil society and the business community will be able to educate the next generation and enable them to become more civil while online or offline, and ultimately help make the larger South African society a more civil one.
Advocacy organisation Equal Education (EE) made an impassioned plea for the provision of free, quality higher education at the fees commission on Wednesday, saying SA had an abundance of resources that were mismanaged.

President Jacob Zuma set up the commission in October 2015, after the first wave of #FeesMustFall protests, to make recommendations on the feasibility of free higher education and training.

EE general secretary Tshepo Motsepe said refusing to provide free higher education would affect poor black youth.

"We are not a poor country, we are a mismanaged country," Motsepe said during the organisation's submission.

EE has proposed that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme be converted into a full grant scheme funded by big corporates, including state-owned entities, and the state, which were the biggest beneficiaries of university graduates.

Motsepe said entities had money set aside for bursaries and redirecting those funds into a grant system administered by all stakeholders would be a good starting point to fund free, quality higher education.

Pupils being educated at poor schools would automatically qualify for a grant under such a system if they met academic requirements, he said.

ANC Youth League general secretary Njabulo Nzuza failed to turn up at the commission for the second time but was at ORTambo International Airport to welcome former AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as she arrived back from Ethiopia.

Musa Ndwandwe, a fees commission spokesman, said Nzuza had not given a particular reason for being unable to attend a scheduled session at the commission other than that an emergency had arisen.

Ndwandwe said youth organisations' submissions to the commission often lacked preparation and were inadequate, while groups with money to protect came prepared.

"There is a misconception that ... all you need to do [is] ... state what you believe, but the commission needs evidence to interrogate," said Ndwandwe.
DHL Express recently launched its Growing Beyond Borders' entrepreneurial training programme in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)  a program specifically designed to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) understand the economic potential of international trade and the subsequent benefits to their businesses.

Since its launch, the programme has been rolled out in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Nigeria. The first official session in South Africa will be held in Johannesburg this week. Several other markets in SSA will be launching the programme before the end of March, including Uganda, Mauritius, Kenya and Ghana.

Engines for growth

John Lucas, managing director for DHL Express South Africa, says SMEs are considered the engines of growth in the country, and the SSA region. If we can empower SMEs to seize international opportunities, this will further stimulate much-needed economic growth. SMEs can have an advantage over larger, more established companies, as they are more agile and flexible to adapt to changing circumstances. Sustainable SME growth and performance also aid job creation, which is critical for the country.

Usually, SMEs start developing their businesses with the domestic market in mind, and often, they miss the opportunities that international trade represents. Its actually easier than one thinks to trade internationally and our Growing Beyond Borders' programme is aimed at dispelling the myths about international trade. Ultimately, we want to enable, encourage and empower SMEs to grow.

Importing and exporting in new markets

The free-of-charge workshop explores areas around importing and exporting in new markets, provides guidance on how to find key geographical opportunities for specific products and services, as well as how to identify different marketing avenues and ways to build successful long-term relationships with their target customers.

Lucas explains that the programme is unique in that it was borne out of the same vein as the DHL Express Certified International Specialist (CIS) program  an internal cultural change programme which has seen nearly 4,000 DHL employees in 51 countries in SSA and 90,000 employees globally, receive comprehensive training on the fundamentals of international shipping.
News / Local

by ZimRights

Geneva  On Thursday, March 16, 2017, the Zimbabwe delegation led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa appeared before the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council's 34th Session to present its report on the recommendations on the human rights situation in the country made by the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in November 2016.





Below is the presentation made by the International Federation of Human Rights (FiDH) and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights), represented by its Director Okay Machisa, at the Session in Geneva, Switzerland:

FULL STATEMENT

Mr. President, FIDH and Zimbabwe Human Rights Association value the commitment by Zimbabwe to among others: 'take concrete steps to create and maintain a safe and enabling environment for HRDs' 'ensure that violence directed against human rights defenders will not be tolerated and that perpetrators will be held accountable..' and 'to investigate the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Itai Dzamara and ensure that those responsible are brought to book.'

However, we are concerned that Human Rights Defenders continue to face harassment, arbitrary arrests and torture for exercising their freedoms to assemble and of expression.





State institutions such as the police, military and the intelligence continue to be at the forefront of perpetrators of human rights violations with impunity.

Mr President, the 9th of March 2017 marked the second anniversary of the disappearance of Itai Dzamara.





We are deeply concerned that there has not been any genuine efforts by the Government in investigating the circumstances surrounding his disappearance, despite government reporting that it was working closely with the Dzamara family and his lawyers.

We urge the Government of Zimbabwe to fully investigate these and other human rights abuses highlighted during the Universal Periodic Review process, in particular to put serious efforts into the investigation of Itai Dzamara's disappearance.

Mr President, it is further saddening to note that after celebrating the inauguration of a progressive Constitution that creates mechanisms for an independent judiciary, the Government immediately after the review introduced the Constitution Amendment Bill No. 1 which seeks to take away the same safeguards for an independent judiciary.





A strong and independent judiciary is critical to the building of a strong human rights culture in any country. We are deeply concerned that the GoZ did not only fail to comply with its undertaking but also acted contrary to its entrenched position to align the laws of the country to the new Constitution and safeguarding the sanctity of the Constitution.

Thank you.

We therefore urge the government of Zimbabwe to reaffirm and respect its commitments under the UPR to protect and respect all the rights of its citizens.

ZimRights Hotlines

0773789874, 0733606797, 0718928611
This year, the need for radical transformation has been highlighted by government, in order to address the country's vision for an inclusive economy and non-racial, non-sexist society.

Transformation and empowerment are part of South Africa's reality and are necessary if we are truly to address the legacy left by apartheid. The new B-BBEE Codes are part of government's latest attempts to make sure that transformation of our economy happens in a meaningful yet expedited manner - but, to transform effectively, businesses need clarity of action.

Here are three pointers for practical and beneficial transformation

1. Integrated strategy development and implementation

The first step is identifying the approach you want to take to accelerate transformation in your organisation. Transformation' means different things to different companies - as the leader of a company, you need to decide what it means for yours: organisational restructuring, new products or services, a breadth of diversity (race, age, gender and backgrounds), etc. - and how these aims can best be realised. Vivian Reddy, Founder & Chairman of the Edison Power Group, a catalyst in addressing some of South Africa's biggest socio-economic problems, created a transformation strategy that has proven a success for more than 2000 employees. Reddy will deliver a presentation at the 2017 Top Empowerment Conference on the strategic roadmap to transformation success.

2. Innovation and technology

A company's ability to adapt to new technologies is a powerful modus operandi for organisational success and employee growth. In this digital age, emerging technology not only provides value to these organisations but to their customers and stakeholders by extension. Information Technology continues to transform all aspects of both our private and business lives. Investing and training your employees in advanced technology will equip them with the skills and ability to compete on a national or global scale. Multichoice, a 2017 Top Empowerment Award finalist, is of one of many South African companies at the forefront of skills development in innovation and technology, having employed over 40 information IT graduates and awarded employees access to 300 customised online courses.

3. Open communication channels

Your transformation strategies and plans need to be communicated and relatable to all employees and key stakeholders who will be affected by changes. This will allow access to a two-way dialogue whereby issues will be raised and suggestions can be put forward, making your transformation journey fully inclusive. Research shows that higher levels of employee and stakeholder involvement in key decision making generate greater levels of employee motivation and satisfaction. In larger companies, a holistic change management programme can be beneficial to ensure a smooth and productive transformation journey. Nceba Ndzwayiba, Transformation Manager at Netcare - a company that trail-blazed transformation will present a case study detailing the aftermath of successfully transforming an organisation.

About the Top Empowerment Conference

The Top Empowerment Conference, taking place in Johannesburg from 29  30 March 2017, enables past Oliver Top Empowerment Award winners, respected transformation experts and business/government leaders to share their insights on the challenges and opportunities tied into transformation. Stakeholders will engage in various topics and case studies such as; how achieving gender equality boosts business success, steps to integrating transformation with sustainable business performance the state of transformation, empowering the youth through technology, exploring the new financial sector codes, attaining optimum productivity through economic diversification and more. Download programme here.

Book your seat here and engage with workable empowerment action plans, new partnerships and a bold vision for transformation in your sector.

The Conference will be followed by the annual Oliver Top Empowerment Awards, where a showcase of outstanding leaders  organisations and individuals  who exemplify vision, innovation, leadership, and, most of all, action in the name of transformation will take place. The 2017 Oliver Top Empowerment Awards will mark 100 years since the birth of the revered Oliver Reginald Tambo. This in mind, the theme for the evening is "The Spirit of Sophiatown". We have invited guests to join us in celebrating that golden era, when the names of the Legends of Empowerment - Tambo, Sisulu and others - gained global renown.




The inaugural Business Day TV SME Summit, held in partnership with Credit Guarantee and the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) in Sandton last week, exposed the myriad challenges facing South Africa's SMEs.

NDP unpacked

The National Development Plan predicts that 90% of new jobs will be created by SMEs by 2030. Small and medium-sized businesses, however, believe much will have to be done before this prediction can become a reality.

Lindie Engelbrecht.

Lindie Engelbrecht, executive director of Members and Global Alliances at SAICA outlined 10 findings from SAICAs latest SME Insight Report relating to the aims of the NDP. This includes the fact that government and big business need to recognise the role larger, more established SMEs play in achieving the growth and employment objectives of the NDP. According to the report, one of the most significant reasons why SMEs fail is because of cash flow related problems. Government incentives are therefore a necessity for SME growth.

Digital vs traditional marketing

Vika Mpisane, CEO of ZADNA said an online presence is important because it allows potential clients to be able to find you. In the same way, it is important to register a domain name online, which becomes your unique online presence, as well as renew it annually to avoid theft.

According to panel discussion on integrating digital and traditional marketing, small businesses need to understand their consumers and where to reach them and then invest in the channels they use. The panel, consisting of Velly Bosega, md of Adclick Africa; Dr Carla Enslin, head of strategy and new business development at Vega School; Matthys Esterhuysen, executive creative director of HelloComputer; and Riaan Wolmarans, head of digital audience development at Times Media, agreed that content is key and should be relevant to all stakeholders, both internal and external. Although effective digital strategies can be implemented with relatively small budgets, they said that in order to achieve the greatest impact and ROI, content and brand must be relevant to the channel and add value to the consumer.

Online is the new way to sell, said PayFasts Roslyn Lavery. Already, 1% of retail spend occurs online in South Africa. This is considered the tipping point at which a country is expected to experience exponential growth in the online space.

Entrepreneur experiences

Steven Cohen, former head of Sage One International, is not a typical entrepreneur. Discussing his career journey with Business Day TV anchor, he said that once he was pointed in the right direction he was confident in his skills, but he always knew his limitations. Networking and meeting people is critical when building a business, he said, adding, You make your own luck. He emphasised the importance of doing the simple things well  if you do this, he insisted, success will follow. Equally important is to remain focused on your customers at all times.

When running a small business, cash is king and one of the greatest risks is the inability to manage cash flow effectively. CEO of Credit Guarantee Insurance Corporation, Charles Nortje stressed that it does not matter how much profit you are turning, you need to find a way to turn that into cash or your business is not stable. He cautioned against an overdependence on one or two very large clients and the dangers of not having a succession plan in place. SMEs, he said, should outsource credit referencing to check the payment history and references of creditors and emphasised the importance of taking insurance against bad debt.

Nicola Tyler, founder and CEO of Business Results Group explained how the brain processes information into routine patterns, which essentially allow us to function effectively. However, these patterns are not conducive to the creation of new ideas, a fundamental aspect of entrepreneurship. Using the principle of Provocation (first introduced by Edward de Bono), Tyler explained how it is necessary to break the normal patterns of thinking and create new neural paths that will lead to new ideas which may initially seem to make no sense.

Transformation opportunities

Yusuf Randera-Rees, CEO and founder of the Awethu Project, said SMEs could use transformation as an opportunity to grow their business and at the same time, do good for the country. He insisted that in order to see the opportunities brought about by transformation, people need to witness how it adds value to a business  after all nobody wants to give away 51% of their business simply to keep a client you already have.

One of the greatest challenges for both SMEs and entrepreneurs is gaining access to markets in spite of preferential procurement requirements, which means many large corporates, are actually looking to buy from small businesses. The biggest problem, according to panel of speakers including Allon Raiz, founder of Raizcorp, Martin Feinstein, md of SME-LAB, Zaid Mohidin, CEO of New Generation Mindset and Bernard Swanepoel, president of AHI, is that the procurement model is wrong. Firstly, too many larger corporates place undue funding pressure on smaller SMEs with pricing based on the wrong construct. We often blow up small businesses unintentionally, admitted Reitz. Government adds to the problem by withholding payments for too long to small businesses.

Secondly, it is difficult and very costly for smaller businesses to comply with onerous procurement requirements with the cost of compliance to a small business much higher relative to turnover than it is to a larger company. The panel agreed that without economic growth it was hard for small businesses to create new opportunities. However, for their part, SMEs need to ensure they are market ready and offer a low risk product or service.

Entrepreneurial start-ups frequently crash and burn as soon as they attempt to scale their business, said Jason Goldberg, founder of 10XE, even though initially they had all the right elements in place. Many changes are required, as an entrepreneurial start-up grows, including the company culture and skills. Goldberg provided a 12-point plan to effectively scale a business saying business owners need to prioritise what matters and do whats right for the business.

No panacea

Entrepreneurship is too often invoked as a panacea to rising unemployment and, while it certainly promises a lot, it rarely delivers on these promises, pointed out Professor Boris Urban, Chair in Entrepreneurship at Wits Business School. It is useful to learn from the mistakes of others, he said, adding that entrepreneurship is not an armchair sport but requires individuals who are highly proactive with a sense of urgency and are able to spot opportunities.

Successful local entrepreneurs Katlego Maphai, CEO of Yoco, Faraimose Kutadzaushe, founding director of Supreme Brand and Mark Forrester, co-founder of WooThemes, said their advice to SMEs and other entrepreneurs was to:
Local digirati shone at the recent IAB Bookmark Awards 2017. Here's some feedback from Liquorice founder and CEO Miles Murphy.

Team Liquorice at the IAB Bookmarks 2017.

Liquorice was awarded microsite gold and for good platforms silver shared with FCB for Distell Amarulas #NAMEThemSAVEThem, digital strategy bronze for Unilever uGive (with the campaign line, 'Would you give a...click?') and chat, messaging and dark social bronze for Unilever Knorrs 'Whatsfordinner?' with Dinner on Demand.

Asked to put their Bookmarks success into digital format, they said, Of course its the unicorn emoji! Murphy comments: The Bookmark Awards undoubtedly showcased the impact that digital is making for brands and companies in South Africa. Agencies are not only being challenged to be more innovative, but also challenged to show how that innovation is enhancing consumers lives and driving results.

Making a digital impact

Murphy adds: For Liquorice, Amarula #NAMEThemSAVEThem, which showed how an immersive 3D experience can really drive a cause; Unilever uGive, showing that 'clicktivism' and social currency can drive a brands purpose and give back, and Knorr Dinner on Demand, which perfectly combined the use of first-of-its-kind innovative media with the first recipe Facebook Messenger chatbot in SA for a seamless customer experience, are all examples that digital work can go beyond just a Facebook like, beyond sharing content and beyond a simple message in Messenger.

He feels the calibre of digital work overall was extraordinary, and to win when up against some of the best in the country pushes the team to continue producing digital work that makes an impact.

See Liquorices winning work embedded below:

Amarula #NAMEThemSAVEThem:

Unilever uGive:

Knorr Dinner on Demand:

Click here for the full list of 2017 IAB Bookmarks Award winners and visit our special section for the latest updates!
Twenty third-year industrial design students from the the University of Johannesburg's Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture (FADA) were recently recognised at an exhibit at the Homemakers Expo Industrial Design Challenge.

L-R: Greg De Villiers, Vermont Tool Sales; Nadja Korbel, Festool territory sales manager and specialist demonstrator; Edmar Maree, UJ honours student (second place); Kari De Villiers, UJ honours student (first place); Marcha Naude, UJ honours student (third place); Martin Bolton, senior lecturer, Department of Industrial Design and Johandie Slabbert, PR executive, Homemakers.

The students were required to undertake user and technical research in order to design a rechargeable Festool impact screwdriver/drill for household DIY and light-scale fabrication/workshop use.

The design approach had to carefully consider how people use handheld power tools for drilling, screwing, piloting, assembling and DIYing. Their rechargeable drill designs were required to push the boundaries of batteries, ergonomics and usability. In order to do this the students had to each work with a panel of user participants who assisted in providing feedback during the design process.

All students involved in the project had their models on display. They were developed to suit the Festool brand whilst incorporating innovative technologies that are currently only available in the high-end Festool products, said UJs Martin Bolton, senior lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design.

Major project

This was a major project for the students as the design outcomes reflected empathy with the human interface of the product and showcased the students abilities to design complex forms aligned to the brand and the correct level of visual appeal to entice customers to purchase the products, explained Bolton.

The overall winner of the project was Kari De Villiers. Her prize included a cash prize as well as a Festool cordless drill from Vermont Sales, South Africas Festool agent. Edmar Maree was runner-up and Marcha Naude received third place. They both also received cash prizes as well as Festool cordless drills.

Mr Bolton put much effort into engaging industry for the final industrial design third year project in 2016. This is a perfect example for us how our students are able to meet the requirements of industry through their three years of undergraduate education, highlighted Angus Campbell, head of the Department of Industrial Design.

I salute each and every award recipient for doing UJ proud and inspiring greatness, concluded Bolton.
Enterprise Linux and open source solutions provider, SUSE South Africa, has joined forces with Limpopo Connexion to launch the Offline Content Project which provides schools with access to educational information even when they have no connectivity.

The project will be highlighted on 17 March 2017 in Polokwane to coincide with the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Day and will see members of government in attendance in addition to the partners and the Limpopo Government IT Officers Council.

SUSE provided the operating system for the laptops and tablets used at the schools, across the province and have been assisting with free technical support for the year.

This is a great partnership between the public and private sector and reflects the commitment there is to getting learners access to quality tools and information for the digital age. One of the many benefits of using open source and SUSE as the foundation in this project is that it is incredibly cost-effective as no licensing is required.

Furthermore, there is no vendor lock-in so the 25 schools in the project have carte blanche when it comes to the open source platform, says Matthew Lee, regional manager for Africa at SUSE.

Developing ICT skills

The Offline Content Project seeks to develop ICT skills in the province and wants to empower community members to be active participants in the knowledge economy.

With partners like SUSE, the Limpopo province can lead the charge in showing how free and open source software can be used to help deliver on the national development goals and strategies. We want to transform Limpopo into a world-class knowledge society and this is the platform that will enable us to do so, says Limpopo Connexion acting CEO, Baldwin Ramasobane.

Lee agrees: This is a perfect example of how open source is creating opportunities for education as well as how the government can work with the private sector to create practical value for the citizens of the country. By creating an information-rich society built through knowledge received from an open source environment, the role of education truly becomes transformational, he says.

He feels that this finally gives impetus to making learners employable for organisations looking for digital-savvy people that are comfortable with using information in practical ways.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - A pastor working in the mines of eastern Sierra Leone has unearthed a 706-carat diamond, the government said, as experts said the stone could rank as the 10th largest ever found.

The huge diamond was discovered by Emmanuel Momoh, one of thousands of Sierra Leoneans who seek their fortunes in the informal mining sector that dominates the diamond-rich Kono region, a government statement said.

"A 706-carat diamond was presented to President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma yesterday evening," the president's office said Thursday.

"Receiving the diamond, President Koroma thanked the chief and his people for not smuggling the diamond out of the country," it added, referring to the Tankoro chiefdom where Momoh uncovered the gem.

It will be sold in Sierra Leone with a "transparent" bidding process to the benefit of the community and country, the statement said.

The government of Sierra Leone has attempted to crack down on cross-border diamond trafficking to persuade foreign investors that "blood diamonds" that fuelled its civil war are a thing of the past.

Diamond expert Paul Zimnisky told AFP that once the gem's quality was assessed it could rank "between the 10th and 15th largest gem-diamonds ever recovered."

The US-based analyst said such a find by a so-called artisanal miner, the term for workers who use basic tools or their bare hands to sift the earth, was highly unusual.

"Most recent exceptional diamond discoveries have been made by large commercial miners that mine very large volumes of kimberlite ore and process it with advanced equipment," Zimnisky said.

"Artisanal mining tends to produce smaller, lower quality diamonds because the diamonds suffer breakage and erosion," he added.

Zimnisky said the stone would likely be sold outside Sierra Leone, despite the government's assertion, for better access to buyers. Without a professional assessment of the diamond's potential flaws and colouring it is impossible to value the stone.

However, a polished stone cut from the Jonker, which is the 10th largest gem-diamond ever recovered until now at 726 carats, will go on sale in Hong Kong in May. A single 25-carat portion is likely to sell for $2.2m-3.6m, or $88,000 to $144,000 for a single carat, Zimnisky said.

A 1,111-carat diamond was discovered at a mine in Botswana in 2015, the biggest find for more than a century.

That gem is second in size only to the Cullinan diamond which was unearthed in South Africa in 1905, at 3,106 carats uncut, according to the Cape Town Diamond Museum. The Cullinan was cut into several gems, including two set into the sceptre and crown of the British Crown Jewels.

Sierra Leone's role in the diamond industry has long been controversial.

The sale of "blood diamonds" helped finance civil wars across Africa in the 1990s and often funded military dictatorships on a continent that the London Diamond Bourse estimates provides 65% of the world's diamonds.

Sierra Leonean rebels allowed traders to exploit diamond mines and ship the gems abroad via Liberia. In one of the most notorious cases, former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor was found guilty of supporting the rebels in exchange for diamonds mined by slave labour.

The district where the 706-carat diamond was discovered is where US-Belgian businessman Michel Desaedeleer, accused of enslavement and diamond trafficking during Sierra Leone's civil war, is alleged to have committed his crimes.

He died in jail in September before he could stand trial.

The death toll from Sierra Leone's civil war is estimated at 120,000 in a country that now has roughly six million people, making it one of Africa's deadliest conflicts in recent history.
Loeries CEO Andrew Human chats about the Loeries' recent Regional Roadshow that covered Lagos and Nairobi while also sharing tips to boost your personal creativity.

On the objectives of the Loeries 2017 Regional Roadshow, Human said the focus is on Africa and the Middle East in particular, with the main aim to grow regional awareness of the Loeries in the markets outside South Africa.

Loeries Lagos creative get together kicks off #loeries2017 #lagos A post shared by Loeries Durban (@loerieawards) on Feb 24, 2017 at 12:39am PST

Human explains, We initially went to Lagos and Nairobi, with the outcome of both very successful with good meetings at agencies and information sharing get-togethers, with good turnout in both cities.

Raising regional awareness

As a result of this, Human expects to see an increase in entries from those areas, but well only know for sure once the entries are in. Information shared included excerpts from the seminar and on what to expect at Loeries Creative Week Durban, as well as the background of the award categories, how they can enter, what they can enter and showing them examples of previous winning work from the region as inspiration.

Team Loeries kept all of us social media addicts back home informed through many posts, showing examples of the culture and sights they saw along the way. Human explains that they visited more agencies in Lagos than in Nairobi, as it had such terrible traffic that the way you drive around in Cape Town you just cant do in Nairobi, so visiting four agencies in a day is just impossible.

The agencies in Lagos, on the other hand, are located in one district, so its similar to Johannesburg in that sense, and easier to get around.

Human says that it was great going to the agencies and very inspiring, especially if you know little about the country before you get there, as the creatives they met at the agencies were inspired and stimulated. Thats why interaction with the creative teams in the agencies was one of Humans personal highlights.

The creative balancing act

We also spoke of the current trend towards boosting creativity continent-wide, without getting bogged down in daily routines, to enhance that creativity. This is something Human mentions in his talk and links to what was said by one of the speakers at the Loeries DStv Seminar of Creativity in 2011.

That years communication design jury president Garrick Hamm, presented a slide with a picture of a lake, a green field and the ocean, and then his Mac on his admittedly very cool-looking desk. Hamm said the only place he doesnt get ideas is at his desk. Its very important that you go lie in a field and look at a lake. But, you still have to go and sit at your desk. The conundrum here is that if you only sit at your desk, you wont be able to create work, and if you only sit in a park the whole day, you wont do any great work. Human reiterates that its a tricky balancing act. To really come up with creative ideas, you must ensure you dont get consumed by your desk.

The groove at La Mango #lamangolagos A post shared by Loeries Durban (@loerieawards) on Feb 25, 2017 at 1:50am PST

On this years Loeries campaign theme of we wont judge you, well only judge your work, as devised by DDB Johannesburg, Human says, Its a great theme for us that fits in very much with the overall philosophy of the Loeries, where the whole aim is to reward the work. Even their judging process is designed this way, as the work is anonymous. So judges dont judge who submitted the work, they only get to see the work, not the information on who entered it. That also applies to the Grands Prix, which are awarded to the work before theyre linked back to the agency. Human concludes there are many ways to take that message out, but the core is that its all about the work.

Thats a fitting end as its time to submit your best creative work, with entries for Loeries 2017 open until 15 May. You can also browse this gallery of the Loeries African Roadshow highlights, click here to go further #BehindTheSelfie with Human and visit both the Loeries website and our Loeries Creative Week special section to keep your finger on that creative pulse if you cant wait for Loeries Creative Week Durban, taking place from 14 to 20 August 2017.
Opinion / Columnist

A desperate Zimbabwean Asylum Seeker committed suicide at a park in London after the British Government put dry sticks on its ears about his desperate plea. Britain merchandises itself on planet Earth as a leader of civilisation in the World. It is extremely disheartening to view the evil craftsmanship of the British Colonial era which led Zimbabwe and indeed Zimbabweans into the dire desperation they are today. If, in the beginning, Britain had not Colonised Zimbabwe in 1896, Zimbabweans would be valued Citizens of this World today.Zimbabweans who live in Britain today have become bargaining Political tools used to ascend people like Teressa May into power. Teressa May, in particular, uses cruelty towards non-European immigrants living in Britain, as a special tool to explicitly demonstrate to the British public that she is the toughest Politician this land has ever seen. In the eyes of the British public, this quality is really special and this is what is needed to get rid of growing immigrant numbers in Britain. This reality is honest, only if one chooses to ignore reasons of why at all immigrants like Zimbabweans would choose to come to this cold, polluted, and distressing country, instead of living in their country of birth.Because of British Colonialism of Zimbabwe in 1896, Zimbabwe is now uninhabitable. The British love to attribute the demise of Zimbabwe only to Robert Mugabe's proven incompetence. The truth is that Britain brought every evil haunting Zimbabwe including Mugabe himself. If Britain had not Colonised Zimbabwe in 1896, Mugabe would not have learnt communist brutality to rule by the rod and die in power. Mugabe is a result of human patience pushed beyond ordinary boundaries by Colonial cruelty of the fifties. After enduring Colonial prison and Colonial genocide of Chimoio, Mugabe was escorted into power by the British after accepting to let them continue to Colonise Zimbabwe at the Lancaster House in 1979 against Joshua Nkomo's honest plan. War traumatised Mugabe unleashed Gukurahundi on citizens of Matebeleland and Midlands. Zimbabwean citizens in that region have never seen Independence. For most of them, Colonialism was even better that what has become. This is the region from where Moyo, a London Asylum seeker who recently committed suicide, comes from.Bhekitshe Moyo is said to have written the British Home Office a suicide warning before killing himself out of dire desperation.Everything changed when he was refused leave to remain when he applied for settlement after a qualifying period. Friends said he was threatened with deportation and was kept at Brook House detention centre. Moyo used all his savings as he fought for the right to stay in the UK through the courts. He dropped out of his LLB course due to lack of funds and was reduced to sofa surfing after he became homeless.On the 15th February 2017, Moyo wrote to the Home Office and told his case worker that: 'If I have any freedom left, that freedom is the control over my own life and body and I shall exercise it by removing myself from the hurt the Home Office has put me under and end my own life.' In the same letter, he told the Home Office of a previous suicide attempt in November 2016, while he was detained at Brook House adding that unless his case was resolved, his road was nearing its end.In a Civilised Country such as Britain where Biopsychosocial Sciences are perfected, no one deserves to die this way. British Library books are full of human endeavour to perfect the quality of Mental Health for everyone. It is written on every book of psychology that it is cruel as well as criminal to put a human being into so much mental stress which is also an inducement of suicide. Having left one's country has mental health implications already, let alone get ridiculed as an unwanted immigrant on every National Newspaper, everyday, by opportunistic Politicians seeking relevance like Teressa May and her amnesic Conservative Government.It was the Conservative Prime minister, Lord Salisbury in 1888, under whose leadership Cecil John Rhodes Colonised Zimbabwe. By 1896, Zimbabwe fell Colony of Britain. Zimbabwe was a self-satisfied rich country awash with all sorts of precious minerals, wildlife and agricultural land. There were local Doctors in Zimbabwe who knew the Science of Biomedicine, Midwifery, Physicians, Biopsychosocial Scientists who had sustained African life for millions of years under harsh conditions. No Zimbabwean had any appetite to leave the boarders of that life sustaining country to seek to be driven into suicide by foreign cultures in London.The British killed Zimbabwean rulers and banned all medical practice which had sustained life since eternity. They hounded Citizens into reliance on White man by offering free labour. Zimbabwe was then led by undocumented foreigners from Britain with a very heavy hand against people of African creed. After Independence in 1980, the British still wanted to hold land even after emptying all precious minerals to enrich Britain for a century.Zimbabwean precious minerals were used to build the wealth that Britain sits on today, and yet a Zimbabwean has to end up committing suicide in response to dire desperation on British soil. Teressa May went to a school that was partly built with Zimbabwean money in the sixties. Their Newspapers do not want to write or hear anything about how Zimbabwe was looted by Britain in a period between 1894 and 1999. They do not even want to hear how the legacy of Colonialism created Mugabe, farm grabbing's, and sanctions. Instead, after destroying the life sustaining system of pre-1896 systems in Zimbabwe and looting mineral wealth, Britain is the leader in calling for sanctions in Zimbabwe. The Gukurahundi victims in Gwanda have no hospitals, no medicine, no jobs and no Gold to sell and sustain themselves. The British and Mugabe have destroyed any means of sustaining life where Bhekitshe Moyo comes from. Hense suicide.While Bhekitshe's soul was leaving it's body, Teressa May, daughter of a Vicar, was giggling upon her successes of working her way up into the office of the Primeminister by use of ridiculing and deporting desperate Zimbabweans back to Zimbabwe.In 2013, this writer wrote an article prophesising that Teressa May was being cruel to immigrants because of her ambition to dispose David Cameron. That prophesy did not take long to be realised. The daughter of a Vicar has no ability to imagine that inside the body of a Zimbabwean, there is a complete network of human cells and neurons. She only recognises White skin pigmentation as real human completeness. Zimbabwean asylum seekers were refused the right to bring their children even after getting the hard fought status. Families were separated all as a result of Colonialism which enriched Britain. Children were left to fend for themselves in Zimbabwe while British settled parents are now suffering from induced dementia and schizophrenia as a result of desperation. see 2013 prediction of Teressa May ambitious craft into ascendance to Primeministers office, ( pay attention to last paragraph ).
ADDIS ABABA - In the beginning was .com, followed by a host of other .somethings, but on Friday, 32 years after the world's first domain name was registered, the African Union has launched .africa for the continent.

 maksym yemelyanov via 123RF

Africans who want to register a website will be able to apply for a .africa domain name in the coming months, which outgoing AU commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said would allow the continent's people and businesses to better reach the world.

"With .africa, I would say Africa has finally got its digital identity," said Dlamini-Zuma, who will next week hand power to Chadian foreign minister Moussa Faki Mahamat after four years at the helm of the continental body.

Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the lowest rates of internet penetration in the world, according to the World Bank, with only around 22% of people online compared to the global average of 44%.

The AU has vowed to increase broadband internet penetration by 10% by next year as part of its 'Agenda 2063' development proposal.

As the continent's largest economy, South Africa dominates African presence online, holding 1.1 million of the two million website registrations on the continent, said Lucky Masilela, CEO of ZA Central Registry, the South Africa-based company that will administer .africa.

High fees are an obstacle to many people who want to register a website, Masilela said. In some African countries, it can cost as much as $250 (235 euro), but Masilela said .africa addresses will be available at a cut-price rate of just $18 to anyone on the continent.

".africa is going to be a market disruptor and will assist in lowering the cost of domain names," Masilela said.

The AU is hoping proceeds from the domain registrations will help cover some of its administrative costs and fund the AU commission. The domain is due to be available to the public in July but it remains unclear how strong demand will be.

Source: AFP.
LAGOS, Nigeria - Mastercard has been unveiled as the headline sponsor of the 6th Edition of the CashlessAfrica Conference and Expo. The event is organised by Mobile Money Africa and is scheduled for 22 to 23 March, at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki in Lagos, Nigeria.

 venimo via 123RF

The CashlessAfrica Conference and Expo is a platform for technology companies, FinTechs and other financial institutions to come together and share best practices in order to build a strong economy in Nigeria. The event looks at the importance of rethinking current models and gaining valuable market insight to introduce relevant digital payment solutions to the benefit of all people.

With over 85% of retail transactions still made in cash and cheques, the potential for digital payments to make a tangible difference is immense. This year Omokehinde Adebanjo, vice president and area business head of West Africa at Mastercard, will participate as a keynote speaker to discuss matters impacting Nigeria and the broader continent and how partnerships will be critical to shifting economies beyond cash.

Partnerships across multiple sectors and stakeholders is a fundamental component to ensuring cash is driven out of the system and that smart innovative, and financially inclusive, solutions are introduced, said Adebanjo.

Principal associate of Mobile Money Africa, Emmanuel Okoegwale said, Our partnership with Mastercard is a demonstration of the technology companys commitment to seeking better ways of promoting a cashless culture across here in Nigeria and globally.

Okoegwale further stated that conference discussions will focus on carefully selected topics such as:

The digital bank and its evolution in a competitive market.

The future of banking, money and payments in Africa.

Disruptive technologies and their impact on financial services in Africa.

Balancing regulation against innovation.

Remittances in the digital age.

Fintechs and Banks: Collaboration or Competition?

Protecting the customer in a digitised economy.

While the conference serves as a platform to provide a deeper understanding if the evolving financial services ecosystem, Mastercard views it as an opportunity to build strong and mutually beneficial relationships with various stakeholders dedicated to developing a World Beyond Cash.
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Opinion / Columnist



Registered Voters in 2013

Are you angry that you don't have a job and access to services? Are you angry that poverty and suffering have become the order of the day? Are you angry that you seek your government's audience and none is coming?This communique my fellow youth recommends the serious interrogation and critical rethinking of structures, processes and mechanics of engagement regardless of our gender, religion, political persuasions in the Zimbabwean policy formulation and implementation landscape. Zimbabwe is ONE and we are ONE so admittedly, 2018 election is a watershed election for Zimbabwe. Whatever the outcome, a major question that needs serious interrogation is what is there in the election for the young people of Zimbabwe? There is a bigger picture that needs looking at. What does victory or defeat for the contesting political parties imply for the development or underdevelopment of Zimbabwe? Our serious interrogation that is not closeted by partisan politics, narrow-mindedness, bankruptcy, acidity, aridity and rigidity is sought in addressing these pertinent questions. Whether we like it or not, politics is an integral part of our lives. Politics is an essential feature of human organisation and permeates through all levels of society. We might not see the maths politics creates in our everyday life for our future.Why the Youth?We are the future of this country and are worthy in terms of our strength in numbers.WHO IS A YOUTH?I wish to say that the concept of "Youth" is a well-known concept but its definition still remains very ambiguous given to our political, intellectual and social attachments. It is often perceived according to generations, cultures, interests and geopolitical locations. According to ZIMSTAT figures for 2013, Zimbabwe has a young age structure, with 76.5% of the country's citizens less than 34 years of age and 35% of the population falling between ages 15-34. The demographics of our nation show that the age group 18-35 years far surpasses the other age groups in Zimbabwe but young people are so bad at voting, yet it is our future at stake. The cohort though live under constant fear in a highly polarised environment compounded by shackles of patronage from a repressive system that shows no remorse or concern for the suffering masses at the lowest level of the strata. However, the Zimbabwean youth represents a demographic challenge instead of a demographic dividend. The bulge is a serious issue with negative socio-economic consequences.The table below illustrates the low participation of Zimbabwean youth in the 2013 general election.A deliberate decision by the Zimbabwean youth to shape the political landscape in Zimbabwe is the answer to all our prevailing political and socio-economic problems. By the mere fact of our numbers and deliberate peer group influence, a conscious and deliberate effort by the youth of today to say no to anarchy and theft by those in power will sort out the inherent mischief in all politicians to play fair and uphold their constitutional mandate and obligation. It is very evident that investing in the young generation of today is a way to harvest tomorrow's peace, democracy, stability, security and sustainable development. We are a potential tool for change,the pillars and drivers of sustainable development. But the question is do we know what we are worth? Do we know our rights and responsibilities? As a youth reading this, do you know what is expected of you as a citizen?My heart crashes when I see potential put to waste and faith being misplaced. The most disgusting feeling I get is when I encounter young people who are under the impression that things are bad and we just have to get by, there is nothing we can do to alleviate our plight/situation. We cannot afford to look disenfranchised, dejected, disinterested about our future, unbeknown to some if not most of us, a lot lies at stake. Whether we blame it on the broken system - we do not seem to understand we are also a part of that very system. The youth have been overrepresented as a nuisance, outgoing, violent, pleasure seekers, energetic and agents of change. Many narratives of the youth have painted them as a category that has no direction and in some literature they are depicted as harbingers of social disruption and anarchy. For long, youth voices have been silenced through state sanctioned political vigilantism and state sponsored terror raids. The youth are analyzed in relation to HIV/AIDS and political violence and all forms of negativity.I hereby present four sad realities to help unpack wherein lie the curse of the Zimbabwean youth to provoke and elicit a reaction among young people to register as voters, especially targeting first-time voters.1) Lost Decades of Despotism (1980  2018)Unprecedented economic performance decline for the past 37 years, Mugabe and his ZANUPF thieving crooks have ransomed this country for their personal gain plunging the country's economy into comatose. A disempowering greedy regime, the slovenly type that lives off public property and is rather preoccupied by political survival and the maximisation of gains from political office while embarking on a genocidal proclivity to silence the dissenting voices. The water is full of typhoid and cholera, roads have more holes than Swiss cheese, graduates are selling airtime, and all the industries are gone. Heck, we don't even have any currency of our own. They have sacrificed democratic principles for personal interests and show no concern for the suffering masses at the lowest level of the strata. Zimbabwe youth remain trapped in a cycle of political violence and economic crisis that is polarising communities and rupturing relationships. To that effect, it is ever more imperative to identify the vulnerabilities upon which our plight as the youth lies and act to rectify that.2) Dangerous Drug ProblemZimbabwe is under siege from a drug culture that is spiralling out of control destroying countless lives in its wake. By and large the effects of poverty and unemployment caused by this ghastly pandemic threatens to give rise to a generation of violent, disinterested, languid, perpetually high and unsavoury young people concurrently unemployed and unemployable. The delinquent practice of youths drugging themselves numb to ever deteriorating circumstances has become more of an aid to survival as if using drugs is a legitimate response to their hopeless prospects in a situation that just doesn't care. Asked about it most young users will reply "saka manga muchida kuti tiswere tichiitei?" meaning "What do you expect us to spend the whole day doing?" Drug addiction is the worst pitfall one can succumb to, especially in Zimbabwe where there are none existent rehabilitation centres where people can get help. Luckily for the out of touch shefs, they can afford to keep their children out of this destructive exigencies by shipping them abroad meanwhile oblivious that thousands of the poor are silently being ravaged by the drug abuse pandemic.3) Patronage and Corruption.As the Mozambican president Jacinto Nyusi once pointed out, "African Heads of State have, by and large, institutionalized states with at least two classes of citizens, the first class being those citizens who also happen to be members of the ruling party and the rest who chose other associations different from the ruling party having a defacto status of second-class citizens" Zimbabwe is a classic example where decisions concerning young people are derivative of the attitudes and wishes of the older generation. Patronage and corruption is at the highest point now becoming the norm rather than the exception. They have become the albatross slung around our necks while our government officials are busy enriching themselves, forming parasitical networks of economic cartels and proteges corruptly feeding off the nation's resources. For how long can we afford ourselves the sad luxury of relegating ourselves to second class citizens who survive on the crumbs thrown at us by a greedy, unscrupulous, deceitful, ruthless political leadership? Our plight is not helped either by the rampant nepotism manifesting in every sector of the country. Zimbabwe has become a harbinger of escalating human insecurity due to its indulgence in gross impunity and marginalization of its own citizens. Herein lies the critical nexus between human development and human security that has mostly affected the youth population both from rural peripheries and urban metropolis who are the window of hope for the continent. The sad reality is that the youth have no control over that, we are powerless, have been dis-empowered by the aggregation of national politics that have relegated us to the murky waters of isolation and disillusionment as the system continues its roller-coaster endeavours and machinations to defend its otherwise questioned legitimacy and authority. This is just about the right time that we wake up and smell the coffee and figure out how to reject unorthodox means of participation that supports the elite and negate a significant constituency to the dustbin.4) 95% unemployment coupled with 75% Youth Dependency ratioThousands of tertiary graduates are currently glorified educated loafers and beggars while the government is busy shutting out any meaningful and gainful employment opportunities. When we compromise and start vending, restrictive policies are put in place. It is a clear sign this government has a deliberate agenda to impoverish and pauperize us. While our learning institutions are good and produce a learned' society, they don't produce a balanced educated community to project their future in a world of diverse cultures. Normally a sound education is a passport to a better life. The current system is out of touch with the needs of young people, as evidenced by an unemployment rate that has plummeted to above 95%, placing youth, especially women at a major disadvantage at all levels of society. Should we sit down and let them turn us into poor, naked, hungry, sick mongrels in our own country? Millions of young Zimbabweans have no hope for the future and nothing specific to do today and tomorrow when they wake up. Faced with the paradoxical situation of educated but jobless youth population, we need to look ourselves in the mirror and seriously interrogate the non-availability or hence the disappearance of the promised 2.2 million jobs. The mantra of hunger and unemployment is posing one of the most turbulent distractions to mainstream global issues. This is a common yet under reported occurrence mostly because it only involves poor young people whose voices are easy to ignore and whose lives are at risk anyway to the incessant exigencies of being poor. There are various reasons - our upbringing. Since kindergarten we are taught to focus on our schooling right, pass our exams, find a job, get married, have children, and work until we drop dead with fatigue. Our brains are trained to follow this path and thus we are conditioned into process driven creatures.5) HIV PrevalenceAs if unemployment is not enough, the demographic dividend realisation is further hampered by a rise in numerous sexual and reproductive health challenges that young people are facing. It is understandable that a healthy transition to adulthood lays the groundwork for a healthy adult population, a factor that is so critical to realising the demographic dividend. Healthy people are more productive, bringing greater resources and income to families and higher levels of economic growth for nations. Although Zimbabwe has really succeeded in making sure that young people and everyone else who is HIV positive lives positively and indeed many are now leading productive lives, the prevalence of HIV among young people is still worrisome. Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicentre of HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world 24million. In 2016, roughly 31 million people were living with HIV, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the global total. In the same year, the region recorded an estimated 1.6 million new HIV infections and 1.2 million AIDS-related deaths. Zimbabwe currently accounts for 1,4 million people living with HIV and 744 000 are on Antiretroviral treatment. Young people are the worst affected.Is there hope for this country?With the above mentioned scenarios, its suffice for the Zimbabwean youth to put the foregone into a more localised and personalised context and evaluate your personal situations as we approach the 2018 elections. Since the unpacked scenarios show a youth population under siege, it is hightime we do some serious soul-searching and ask ourselves "What we can do as young people to rise above this and establish our own values, values that are in line with a future we want to see? Given the foregone, Yes if the youth are involved in the democratic processes for the country. The above scenarios can only change for the better if the youth can define a template for leaders to come. Leaders who respect the electorate such that when elected they become servants of the people who elected them into office. Leaders who endeavour to deliver the political, social and economic goods for the present and future generations. It is true that some of the damage done is irrevocable but still the system is fixable. Yes, together we can weather the storm as powerful and diabolic as the current system that has left a trail of death and destruction. The crisis in Zimbabwe has virtually affected all the sectors in the country that is the economic, social and political sectors. We the youth of today are perfectly capable of doing so, but lack enthusiasm. History is going to judge us harshly if we continue to turn a blind eye to this very precarious situation. All that is necessary for evil to prevail is that we stand aside and do nothing about it. We always cry not for what we would have done but more for what we would not have done. Oftentimes, we might feel frustrated and hopeless but this is not the time. Nobody liberates themselves by their own efforts alone, and neither are they liberated by others. If we want to challenge the current unequal power structures, we need to be conscious about our own role as youth and doubly as citizens, we need to be able to analyse political realities and articulate our collective vision for the future we want.It is our patriotic and democratic duty to take measures that limit democratic erosion/breakdown and whimsical arbitrary manipulation of power from tyrannical and coercive domination that promotes individual interests at the expense of broader societal economic and socio-political goods. What we need is a unity of purpose be it students, preachers, vendors, vendors, touts/mahwindi whether Ndebele, Shona, Tonga, Venda, black or white we are in this together. I hereby vehemently make a call to bridge gaps between all forms of classes and discrimination existing among young Zimbabweans across the breath and length of the country so that no one is left out of the democratic revolution to reclaim our nation.The power to positively promote, express or influence the course of the election as individuals and as a collective engagement of people lies within our grasp. There are some things that are not for sale, because they are priceless; one of them is exercising your democratic right. YES, we are in this together to make Zimbabwe a better place for you and me. A Zimbabwe founded on the principles of the supremacy of the Constitution, fundamental human rights and freedoms, and recognition of the inherent dignity and worthy of each human being. Let us rescue our dreams and Zimbabwe from total collapse come 2018 watershed election. Rigging is only possible where people stay away from polling stations. In other words, to decide not to vote constitutes RIGGING. The power of change is in our hands, THE TIME IS NOW: YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE: GO AND REGISTER TO VOTE.The time for the Zimbabwean youth has come to stand tall and be counted for mother Zimbabwe expects us to rescue her. Who am I and who are you to abscond when democratic duty calls? That twinkle in your eye or that passion you once had about your potential and your future must come back as we reclaim and exercise our democratic space as the Zimbabwean youth in our country. You and I are responsible for that. I reiterate that it is impossible for Zimbabwe to create a modern democracy side by side with a thriving economy without your participation as a Zimbabwean. I have the faith because far beyond my imagination lie my dreams. There is so much to be done and I truly believe that the good young men and women amongst us with honourable intentions will prevail and that our beautiful Zimbabwe will recover. We have come a long way and our prospects are in disarray but we must remember that in any country, youth represent the future. The youth of Zimbabwe, united in the name of developing our country and the safeguarding of a brighter tomorrow can revolutionise Zimbabwe. It does not matter who you are or which political opinion you hold in as long as you are Zimbabwean, we are in this together, to make this country a better place for us to be, together we can do it.This might seem an insurmountable task of rather unconquerable Goliath proportions but my message is simple: Take responsibility: Register to Vote, Go out to Vote on Ballot day and DEFEND YOUR VOTE after Voting. There is a proverb that says you can't clap with one hand. To clap, you have to bring both of your hands together. In essence, what it therefore means is that together we can be the change we want to see in Zimbabwe. One cannot ask others to sacrifice if he/she is not ready to do so themselves. Let us use our past and present challenges as an inspiration, rather than a handicap. We are all foot soldiers, one struggle-many fronts, Let us save our country, save ourselves and build our future starting today. The onus is on me, the onus is on you, the onus is on us. What can unite us as Zimbabweans more than anything is our love for this country and non-violent direct confrontation. We are all foot soldiers: one struggle many fronts.I call on Zimbabwe's young people who are so bright, sharp with magnificent analytical minds to show that despite the limitations and shrinkage of democratic space, it is high time that we, as young people, captured the moment to be much more responsible and accountable. The social media is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding. We need to start reconnecting in different spheres and platforms both online and offline to share information around us and seriously begin organising ourselves towards our commonalities as a cohort. We cannot rely on the benevolence of those in power; we need to take power through the constitutional and legal framework. And it is about time! The Zimbabwean youth is angry and hurting. Their socio-political, economic and moral standing is weak because of injustices and exclusion done to us. My voice is in, for far beyond imagination lie my dreams. Be your brother's/sister's keeper and spread the message to Register to Vote, Go out to Vote on Ballot day and DEFEND YOUR VOTE after Voting. The democratic process is a cause which we must all commit to because the cost of indifference is just too much. I am Proudly Zimbabwean. I am angry and hurting too, I am young and I want to live! Zimbabwe deserves better.Lastly, if you are not enraged then you haven't been paying attention!!!Alfred Towo writing in my personal capacity as a freelance journalist and Zimbabwean youth. Can be contacted at the following email address aliphytowo@gmail.com or 0775265509
KAMPALA, Uganda - Sponsored insurance and insurance related products have been launched in Uganda with the SureBuddy android application.

SureBuddy is simple and easy to use - the app renders advertisements, the consumer watches the ads, and then receives free cover as a reward. Ad images are non-intrusive, use very little data, and disappear with a click.

SureBuddys cover is sponsored for the user as all costs are paid by the advertiser. SureBuddy then uses the advertising revenue to reward the user directly with cover, and in this instance, the consumer benefits from watching advertisements.

Strive Masiywa once said something that became part of my belief system. says Johan Basson, SureBuddy spokesperson, He said that if you identify a human need and reach out to meet it, you have the most sure-fire way to succeed in business.

Insurance penetration in Africa is amongst the lowest in the world, even though there is a crucial need for it. SureBuddy has taken insurance offerings to the people via technology  a platform to make these products less-intimidating, understandable and affordable.

The distrust in insurance products forced us to start with non-insurance products. Starting with screen cover means that clients will feel immediate gratification - when their phone screens break, they can have them repaired immediately. The only thing that the user will ever pay for is an administration fee to the repairer of maximum 10% of the repair value. This will start building trust in the concept of insurance and the initial purchase decision is easy because it free. Over time, they can change to insurance products such as life cover, as their understanding and trust increases from this experience, says Basson.

To gain consumer trust towards free credible insurance plans, SureBuddy will implement the first phase of its service by providing screen cover in conjunction with Phone Doctor, and have partnered with Africell, one of the fastest-growing mobile telecommunications groups in Africa

Its an honour for us to be associated with such a great innovation. For us at Africell, its about giving our customers the best services at the cheapest costs on the market. We understand that mobile phone technology has shifted from physical keypads to touch screens so user experience is largely dependent on a functional smartphone screen. SureBuddy is pledging to help us ensure our customers phone screens stay in tact, and are fixed whenever they break. This is a milestone for us, added Milad Khairallah, Africell commercial director.

Uganda, a country with a high smartphone penetration, is the first-to-market for SureBuddy. Uganda is a rapidly developing country, and we believe that we can have an immediate impact in increasing the quality of life of Ugandans, says Basson.

SureBuddy plans to roll out into 11 Sub-Saharan Africa countries, as well as India, Turkey, Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan with South American countries to follow. SureBuddy will work closely with Swiss Re, one of the biggest Reinsurance companies in the world, to ensure that they find the right insurance partners in every country.
China's latest proposal to solve the Korean Peninsula crisis aims at "getting rid of the peninsula's existing security dilemma" and eyes long-lasting stability, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Thursday.

Hua made the comment ahead of the upcoming China visit of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Saturday and Sunday. Tillerson, who has been visiting Japan, will travel to Seoul before landing in Beijing.

The Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is expected to be high on the agenda during Tillerson's talks in Beijing, observers said.

"China has consistently maintained close contact on the current peninsula situation with parties including the US," Hua said at a daily news conference in Beijing.

Hua referred to Foreign Minister Wang Yi's proposal on March 8 to suspend Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests and to suspend large-scale joint military drills by Seoul and Washington.

The parties could then follow the dual-track approach of denuclearizing the peninsula while also establishing a path to ensure peace, Wang said.

Washington, however, has given China's proposal the cold shoulder.

In Tokyo on Thursday, Tillerson said "a different approach is required" to tackle the situation.

Hua said, "It is to be hoped that all parties will seriously consider (the proposal) and provide constructive responses." She added that Beijing is open to any other proposal that is better or idea that is helpful.

Also on Thursday, Xiao Qian, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Asian Affairs, told CNN that Pyongyang hopes to see the US take the first step to demonstrate sincerity, and Washington is expecting the same of Pyongyang.

"So China's proposal is: Why not do these at the same time? No sequence, no 'first' and 'second'. There is a parallel. We do these at the same time," Xiao said.

Wang Junsheng, a researcher in Asia-Pacific studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Beijing expects that the other parties involved, particularly Washington and Pyongyang, will "face the issues and get them resolved".
Opinion / Columnist

Kingdom Jambawo is a member of Zimbabwe Citizen Initiative a globally-diverse platform of Zimbabweans with a deep passion for the conditions in our country whose mission is promote participatory democracy by providing technical and financial support to social movements in Zimbabwe and providing a platform for all citizens to openly hold government official accountable

National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) is a grouping of Zimbabwe's opposition parties fighting for electoral reforms. This coalition of 13 political parties has been instrumental in organising peaceful demonstrations to push for the implementation of the electoral reforms in time for 2018 elections.The required electoral reforms are aimed at improving and levelling the playing field in Zimbabwe ahead of the crucial harmonised 2018 elections. Only a United Nations Development Program UNDP) facilitated Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) procurement can achieve this.The cash strapped government has suddenly decided to hijack the BVR procurement process effectively elbowing UNDP out. This is suspicious because the government pledged only 17 million of the 59 million required for process while the UNDP pledged the balance.The prescribed process is that observers should be invited to monitor the procurement, tenders presenting their bids through UNDP facilitated process, and other important BRV process. It now looks like the government wants to appoint and award the contract to acompany that they can manipulate.In response to this development, NERA adopted a two pronged strategy to enforce it's stance on electoral reforms. The first was calling for a press conference on which they announced their intention of calling for mass demonstrations, whilst the second was through direct engagement with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) as it should be totally independent.The countrywide demonstrations were the brainchild of social movements such as Tajamuka #thisflower and # thisflag and the National Vendors Association (NAVUZ) which single handedly also organized the mass protests that followed. The success of these demonstrations showed the power of social media in terms of educating the electorate. NERA hopes to capitalise on these gains.Through negotiations NERA, extracted a number of concessions from ZEC. These included the construction of a new fresh voters roll through the BVR system, invitation of observers to monitor the tenders, procurement and deployment, a transparent, an inclusive voter education program and regular meetings between ZEC and the political parties through the ZEC-Political Parties Platform among other things.One important agreement was that the procurement of the BVR kits would be handled by ZEC through the UNDP. Consequently, a joint advertisement was placed by the UNDP and ZEC calling upon all potential suppliers of these kits to place their bids. These bids were digitally managed at the UNDP offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and this was witnessed by both ZEC and the NERA political parties. It was further agreed that once the winner of the tender was declared, political parties would second their technical experts to inspect these kits.The sudden controversial announcement by the ZANU PF government derails the internationally recognised principles of inclusivity and accuracy. This means that the Political parties and other stakeholders such as academics and civil society will therefore not be able to monitor the process as previously indicated.NERA is totally rejecting this move because it is designed to enable the government to manipulate the procurement process. Thus the ZANU PF government will also be in a good place to manipulate the 2018 election process. In other words this move marks the beginning of the rigging of the 2018 elections.All the Zimbabwe activists and citizens are therefore called upon, to rise up and resist this manipulation. We should stand in solidarity with NERA as they organise a nationwide demonstration planned for the 22 of March 2017 to show the people's outrage at the prospect of this political abomination.Together we can make the necessary noise that will trigger attention from regional and international observers to get these reforms. This riggingThe 22nd of March is indeed a very important day for Zimbabwe. It is the day that Zimbabweans are called upon to rise up against the government's move to take over the BVR kits procurement process. This move by the ZANU PF government is designed to manipulate the voter registration process thereby influencing the outcome of the 2018 general elections whilst the opposition are busy mauling each other.Zimbabweans should never allow a situation where the election results are always contested. This should not happen again considering it has happened on at least 5 elections. The only solution to Zimbabwe's problems is a credible election. It is our time to take action over the running of our country and provide an environment in which our people are governed better. It is time get rid of whispering so that we make our Zimbabwe great again.NERA should appeal to all Activists, members of the oppositions regardless of party affiliation and to ordinary Zimbabweans to be part of this great demonstration. We must not be afraid of the pain that comes with demonstrations otherwise we will never be able to liberate our people if we fear pain. We now know that although ZANU PF is brutal and cruel, the dictator is shaken and is now afraid of the Zimbabwean people.The hungry and ill paid security services will not be able to arrest thousands, however they may use their usual heavy handed tactics. We call upon every activist to mobilise the people for this big day. We must continue to demand a clean and fair election and we shall get one. Together we will be heard. If we want a better Zimbabwe, victory has to be certainVoter education, especially in the rural areas, is required as is activist education to counter corruption and vote buying. We need to learn to embrace our diversity but for 37 years since independence ZANU PF has taught nothing but intolerance. Let us refuse this.
Just-A-Baby App Promises To Be Tinder For Sperm Donors

Trending News: This New App Is Being Called The 'Tinder For Sperm Donors'

Long Story Short

Two Australian men created an app called Just-A-Baby, which promises to match interested parties with sperm donors, egg donors and even surrogates, Tinder-style.

Long Story

One miracle of living in the year 2017 is that it's no longer good enough to just be a useful app  you have to be the "something" of "something." The Google of stamp collecting. The Uber of Chicago-style hotdogs. The iTunes for blowjobs. It's maybe no surprise, then, that the latest DISRUPTOR to hit the scene is an app called Just-a-Baby  billed as "Tinder for sperm donors."

I was in my 30s and was looking at my situation and at those around me, it was just evident that there were increasing pressures against the traditional models of raising a child and on traditional families, co-creator Paul Ryan (no, not that one) told the Daily Telegraph.

Theres a lot more acceptance now around same-sex relationships, empowerment of women, people putting off having kids until later.

But its not widely spoken about and there still is this incredible amount of pressure and lack of options for people in their 30s to 40s to start families.

Essentially, the app exists to connect someone who wishes to have a child with someone willing to assist them. And that could mean virtually anyone  same-sex couples might need sperm or a surrogate, infertile ones might need an egg donor (or sperm), and of course single folks might need any combination thereof. Relevant parties can find each other by swiping, Tinder-style.

But as Lawyer Jennifer Hetherington explained, finding genetic material via an app comes with a whole host of risks. At the very least, you're going to want legal counsel involved from the start.

The co-parenting option also raises a red flag. That implies youre raising the child together.

If youre meeting via an app with the express interests of having a child together without knowing the persons background, all sorts of things can go wrong.

Risky though it may be, an app like this seems like a fun and relatively stress-free way to find someone who needs your assistance in creating another human. After all, the app just introduces you  after that, things would proceed through the normal medical and legal channels (presumably, anyway).

If you choose to download it, just make sure you pay attention to which app you have open  you may swipe right and find yourself on the receiving end of a sperm sample instead of a date.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Isn't Tinder already pretty well-suited to helping people make babies?

Drop This Fact

Because they invest about $2,000 per donor for recruitment and screening, most sperm banks ask for an agreement that you will donate at least once a week for six months to a year  a lot of sessions in a small room with a modest supply of pornography.
Don't Do This When You Have Periods; It Can Be Dangerous For Your Health Wellness oi-Sravia

There are certain things that you must swear by and not do during your periods. It is that time of the month when you must give a break to most of the things that you have been doing, as it can adversely affect your health.

When you're in pain, there can be a lot of adverse effects that might happen to your body. You are very familiar what happens when your periods hit, aren't you?

Stomach cramps occur, your cravings will go for a toss and eating healthy will appear to be mainstream. Did you know that half the problems that we face during our periods can be solved by eating right?

Further, some things that we do during our periods can turn out to be very dangerous. So, if you have been doing any of the things that are listed in this article, it is advised to immediately stop doing it.

In this article, we have given a list of the things to avoid during your periods. So, continue reading this article to know more about the things to avoid during menstruation.

1. Do Not Have Unprotected Sex: The chances are high during this time to get pregnant. Further, to avoid infections, it is best to avoid intercourse when you're on your periods. 2. Never Skip Your Meals: You must never skip your meals during periods. Since you're losing a lot of menses during this time, the food you eat will help boost your energy. 3. Don't Opt For Intense Physical Workout During This Time: Doing your normal workout is fine. But if you have stomach or back pain, it is better not to do any intense physical workout, as it can only worsen your pain. 4. Say No To Eating Fast Food: Eating fast food at any time is not a good idea, especially during menstruation. This might affect your overall health and it is advised to stick to healthy foods during this time. 5. Do Not Stay Up All Night: Staying up all night during this time is known to make you feel tired the next day. Hitting the bed early will help erase your tiredness, which will make you feel a lot better the next morning. 6. Not Going To Work: You can go about your daily chores just like your normal day. Not going to office/school/college during this time is not required, as you might be tempted to do this every month and it is in no way beneficial. 7. Avoid Eating Cucumber: Cucumbers can be bad for you during this time, as the components in cucumbers can be the cause for some liquid to stay in the uterus wall. 8. Avoid Iced Water/Soda Water: You must avoid drinking these, as it may lead to menstrual blood remaining in the uterine wall. After 5-10 years, it can even lead to cyst or cancer cell formation.

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Story first published: Friday, March 17, 2017, 12:20 [IST]
My Story: North Korea Ordeals Revealed By This Girl Life oi-Syeda Farah

North Korea is known to be the darkest place on earth. It is a place of horror, as it has the world's most regressive regimes.

Yeonmi Park is a young brave woman who shared the baffling details of reality that linger in the shadows of torture that the residents of this country go through.

Also Read: Here's All That You Need To Know About The Naked Cafe In Spain

Check out the heart-breaking video as she shares some of the most darkest and deepest details of the country she was born in.

She was in a global platform, One Young World Summit, and wanted to make the world aware of the torture that is being done on her people by the government of North Korea.

She Is Yeonmi Park She escaped the clutches of death to reveal her harrowing story to the world in a global platform, One Young World Summit. She Is One Of The Activists She is one of the activists who is helping her people and trying to free them from this dictatorship that they have been seeing since the time they were born. She Narrated As To How She Saw Executions She stated how she saw her friend's mum being executed for a mere reason; and the reason was that she watched a Hollywood movie! She saw this terror when she was just 9 years old! She Thought The Dictators Could Read Her Mind As her mum had warned her not to whisper anything, she felt that the North Korean dictator could actually read her mind. Also Read:Haunting Images Of The Ghost Town Of Fukushima She Has Successfully Fled From Hell She has successfully fled from hell, and is currently an activist who is fighting for her people's freedom.

Check out her heart-wrenching video.
Reciba en su email: noticias de ultima hora, analisis tecnicos o el cierre de mercado

Email no valido Nombre requerido Recibira las informaciones mas relevantes del dia en tiempo real Que informacion desea recibir? Noticias de Ultima hora Boletin Cierre de Mercado Boletin analisis tecnico Boletin Fundsnews Debe seleccionar un tipo de boletin Acepto la Politica de privacidad Debe aceptar la politica de privacidad Responsable EMPRESAS DEL GRUPO WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Finalidad La remision de informacion, novedades y promociones Establecimiento o mantenimiento de Relaciones Comerciales. Legitimacion Consentimiento del interesado. Interes legitimo en el desarrollo de la relacion comercial Destinatario Empresas del Grupo WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Derechos Acceso, rectificacion, supresion, limitacion, oposicion y portabilidad Informacion adicional Politica de Privacidad de nuestra pagina Web + INFORMACION
Here's how you can have stress-free exam time

ANI, New Delhi| Published : 16th March, 2017

For many students, exam-time is that dreaded reality which has the ability to send them into complete and utter panic.

Excessive anxiety can trigger or arise from a sense of insecurity. In a competitive environment, exam results can take on a scary image for students, where everything might seem to be pinned onto those grades - their future career path, self-worth and identity.

So it is important not to brush off or trivialise young people's reactions and instead, encourage them to find ways of dealing with the anxiety.

Here are some tips by Dr Sameer Malhotra, Head, Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, to improve your mental well-being for a stress-free and happy examination time:

- Recognize that anxiety is an emotional response to stress/perceived stress.

- Get adequate sleep: Studying throughout the day and night without proper sleep can take a toll on your body, resulting in dizziness, dullness and irritability. A restful sleep helps the brain to function well and increase your focus. Sleep for at least 6 to 7 hours every day to stay energized and boost your immune system. You can listen to light music so that your thoughts are calm as you drift into sleep.

- Start your day with a healthy breakfast: Breakfast will give you the extra energy to be more productive while working.

- Give yourself room to focus: Take a minute to sit, breathe and mentally prepare yourself for the work you are going to do. A bit of planning can help you tackle a lot.

- Take a break: Instead of studying till you're tired, taking small breaks throughout the day, will help you keep a clear and calm head. Going outside for a walk can be refreshing, enabling you to study for longer.

- Maintain distance from your phone and social media: Understand that they are a distraction. Instead of having your phone propped up next to your notes, try turning it off, or at least putting it on airplane mode.

- While studying, be honest with yourself: Set realistic targets when you are preparing for your exams. Plan a realistic revision timetable and map it against your most productive hours for best results. Don't psyche yourself into the amount of revision you ought to be doing, but focus on taking small steps to concentrate and complete the task at hand.

- Body and mind are intertwined. Stress symptoms should be timely recognized and appropriately managed. Recognize the symptoms of anxiety:

cognitive symptoms viz. worrying, apprehensions, pessimistic thoughts, impatience, feeling as if losing control over self or the situation;

somatic /bodily symptoms like palpitations, feeling breathless, tremors, butterfly sensation in the stomach, sweaty palms, emotional symptoms like feeling nervous.

When it comes to mental health, a culture of stigma often prevents sufferers from voicing their distress and seeking the necessary support. As adults, we must learn to lean on the benefit of hindsight when dealing with young students. Parents and teachers should be aware that students express themselves in different ways. They should avoid being critical or condescending and instead have an encouraging and open stance when interacting with them.

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Manipal University's Pharmacy College in World Ranking

PRNewswire, Bangalore | Published : 16th March, 2017

Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MCOPS) ranked No. 1 in India by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Union Human Resource Ministry in 2016, finds a place in QS World University Rankings of 2017. "It is a remarkable achievement. We've always been proud of our pharmacy college," said Dr. H. Vinod Bhat, Vice Chancellor, Manipal University.

"We are extremely happy that the pharmacy and pharmacology stream of Manipal University has featured in the QS World University Ranking by Subject 2017. This is the first time that Manipal University's subject stream is getting into world rankings, and it is a very high entry at 251-300 range. I am sure we'll see more subjects offered by this University like dentistry, medicine and engineering, and will also feature in the world rankings in months to come," the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Bhat said.

The rankings are based on academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact. "Coming after the No. 1 rank in India by NIRF, the QS Ranking is a shot in the arm for MCOPS to do better. As a premier institution under Manipal University, MCOPS has been in the forefront of education and research," said Dr. Mallikarjuna Rao, Principal of the Pharmacy College.

The University support for infrastructural development and the several grants for research from government and non-government funding agencies have helped in the growth of MCOPS. The students and staff of the college are excited about the new status of the college. Dr. Rao added, "We will work assiduously to move up the ranking."

About Manipal University:

Manipal University is synonymous with excellence in higher education. Over 28,000 students from 57 different nations live learn and play in the sprawling University town, nestled on a plateau in Karnataka's Udupi district. It also has nearly 2500 faculty members and almost 10000 other support and service staff, who cater to the various professional institutions in health sciences, engineering, management, communication and humanities which dot the Wi-Fi-enabled campus.

The University has off-campuses in Mangalore and Bangalore, and off-shore campuses in Dubai (UAE) and Melaka (Malaysia). The Mangalore campus offers medical, dental, and nursing programs. The Bangalore campus offers programs in Regenerative Medicine. The Dubai campus offers programs in engineering, management and architecture, and the Melaka campus offers programs in medicine and dentistry.

Every institute has world-class facilities and pedagogy, which are constantly reviewed and upgraded to reflect the latest trends and developments in higher education.

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The Apache multi-role attack helicopter

MESA, ARIZONA (BNS): American aviation major Boeing has announced that it has received a contract worth $3.4 billion from the US Government to deliver a total of 268 AH-64E Apache multi-role attack helicopters to the US Army and to an undisclosed international customer.



The five-year contract is the first multi-year agreement for the latest Apache "E" variant of the attack helicopter.



While the US Army will receive 244 remanufactured Apaches, 24 new ones will go to the international customer, the company said.



Boeing builds the Apache helos in Mesa, Arizona.



Deliveries of the "E" model began in October 2011. Seven customers outside the US, including India, have ordered this variant.



Including this latest version, the US and 15 other countries have relied on the Apache during the past three decades, Boeing said.




A file photo of Japanese satellite launch.

TOKYO (AFP): Japan launched a new spy satellite on Friday, the country's space agency said, as the region grows increasingly uneasy over North Korea's quickening missile programme.



The Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan's mainstay H-2A rocket from a launch site in the country's southwest.



It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is coming to the end of its mission.



Japan started putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003 after North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile over the Japanese mainland and into the western Pacific in 1998.



The threat has steadily accelerated and just last week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with three landing provocatively close to Japan.



Tokyo currently maintains three optical satellites for daytime surveillance and three radar satellites for nighttime monitoring. Two of those are backups.



The new satellite will succeed one of the three radar satellites that was launched in 2011.



The satellites are officially for "information-gathering" -- a euphemism for spying -- but are also used to monitor damage in the wake of natural disasters.




A Chinese MoD photo.

BEIJING (PTI): China's top leadership has assured Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa that they completely understood the geo-political, economic and security situation in the region and its implications for the two "all- weather" friends, the Pakistan Army said Thursday.



The assurance was given to Gen. Bajwa as he met senior Chinese leaders and the military leadership on his maiden visit to Beijing where he discussed a range of issues, including defence cooperation, regional security situation and the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Pakistan military spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said.



"COAS arrived in China on a 3-day official visit. Meets Chinese senior political & military leadership. Pak-China friendship is unique with no parallel," Ghafoor tweeted.



Bajwa called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Gen Fan Changlong, Chief of Joint Services Department, Gen Fang Fenghui and Commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Gen Li Zhuocheng, and discussed topics like regional security, economy, defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.



"The Chinese leadership expressed complete understanding of the geo-political and economic-cum-security environment of the region and its implications for both the countries," a statement issued by the Pakistani military said.



"They acknowledged the positive role being played by Pakistan towards peace and stability in the region with special mention of Pakistan's role in eliminating terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from Pakistan," it said.



The ETIM is an Islamic extremist separatist organisation founded by Uyghur jihadists in western China. It has training camps in Pakistan and Beijing has been pressing Islamabad to destroy the units operating in the country, posing a threat to the stability of China's restive region of Xinjiang.



During the meetings, the Chinese leadership also expressed their concern on the security situation in Afghanistan and the growing potential threat of Islamic State and ETIM in that country, the statement said.



"The Chinese leadership expressed their confidence in security arrangements for the USD 46 billion CPEC and satisfaction on progress made on the project," it said.



During the meeting between Vice Premier Zhang and Gen Bajwa, the two sides agreed to advance the CPEC project, China's state run Xinhua news agency reported.



Zhang lauded the rapid development of China-Pakistan ties, saying bilateral cooperation not only benefits the two peoples, but also contributes to regional peace and stability.



He called on the two sides to maintain close high-level contact and strengthen coordination on international and regional affairs, to lift bilateral ties to new heights.



Zhang also suggested that the two countries should enhance defence and security cooperation and push forward the building of the CPEC in an orderly manner, the report said.




File photo of a Pakistani missile test firing.

ISLAMABAD (PTI): Pakistan Navy on Thursday said it conducted a successful test of a new land-based anti-ship missile, bolstering its operational reach to launch long-range, anti-ship missiles from land.



The trial of the missile was conducted from the coastal region and the missile secured a hit on a target placed at sea, a press release from the Navy said.



The missile is equipped with advanced technology and avionics, which enable engagement of targets at sea with a high degree of accuracy.



However, the Navy did not give more details, including the name of the new missile.



The test-launch was witnessed by Vice Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Khan Hasham Bin Saddique and senior officers of Pakistan Navy.



Admiral Saddique commended the accomplishment of the objectives of the trial, the release said.



Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah in his message said that the weapon system has added a new dimension to the operational reach of Pakistan Navy, allowing it to bolster seaward defences by giving the Navy the capability to launch long-range, anti-ship missiles from land.



On January 24, Pakistan had test-fired 2,200-km range indigenously-developed surface to surface nuclear-capable missile Ababeel. The missile is capable of delivering multiple warheads, using Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.



The Ababeel test flight was aimed at validating various design and technical parameters of the weapon system.



During the same month, submarine-launched cruise missile Babur-III was test-fired. Babur weapons system incorporates advanced aerodynamics and avionics that can strike targets both at land and sea with high accuracy at a range of 700-kms.



Babur-III is a low flying, terrain hugging missile, which carries certain stealth features and is capable of carrying various types of warheads.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Guinness will flow at local drinking establishments tonight in celebration of Irish culture, but for Westmans Irish community the cultural celebration is about much more than just partying.

Irish Society of Western Manitoba president Drew Mills grew up about five miles away from Slemish Mountain in Northern Ireland, where St. Patrick is said to have shepherded sheep as a boy.

The whole mountain is really a shrine, Mills said, adding that throngs of people are likely to climb the mountain today to mark St. Patricks Day.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Manager Erin Wells and her staff at The Dock on Princess in Brandon will be serving up green beer today for St. Patricks Day along with live music tonight.

While few of those in Westman arent likely to make the journey in honour of Irelands patron saint, they can rely on the local Irish Societys St. Patricks Day Banquet, which is taking place on Saturday.

Featuring Irish dancers from Winnipeg and live music, including some traditional Irish performances, itll be a true cultural celebration, Mills said, adding that for many in Westman it feels like an annual Irish reunion.

Admission to the event is $45, with tickets available through Mills at 204-728-8164 or through Dick McIntyre at 204-727-0268. Its taking place at Clarion Hotel and Suites Brandon (until recently called Royal Oak Inn and Suites) at 3130 Victoria Ave., with cocktails at 6 p.m. and supper at 7 p.m.

While this annual event takes place the day after St. Patricks Day, there are other events going on tonight to get people in jovial spirits.

Most local drinking establishments are marking the occasion in various ways, with The Dock on Princess sticking out for having built up to the event during the past four weeks.

During this time, theyve been gathering donations for the local school breakfast program Food For Thought, and plan on announcing their fundraising total in the midst of tonights festivities.

Celtic-inspired musical group Tom Foolery will perform during a happy hour set that starts at 4:30 p.m. and similarly-inspired musical group Seamus Ojibway will take to the stage at 9 p.m.

Green beer will be served during what general manager Erin Wells describes as a very fun party atmosphere.

Their busiest night of the year, she said that theyre usually at capacity by 5 p.m.

Tom Foolery will shift to Prairie Firehouse for a 7:30 p.m. performance, where green beer, Irish food and whiskey will be featured.

The Double Decker Tavern and Restaurant has a similar agenda for the evening, with Hamiota fiddle player Alyshia Klippenstein performing a dinnertime set from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., after which local rock group Daisy Chain will play.

On Saturday, Club 77 Singles is hosting a dance at the Shriners Hall, at 1110 McTavish, where One Man Band Len Gadica will perform at 8 p.m.

Considered more a social club than a singles club, the dance caters to a group whose average age is about 60.

Admission is $12 for members and associates and $15 for non-members, and can be purchased by calling 204-729-8982 or 204-729-9301.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A farmer whose unsecured guns were stolen from his unlocked home during a major local crime spree has been granted a conditional discharge.

Eight of the nine guns stolen from the home are still missing, and Judge John Combs described the case as an example of the need for the scrapped long-gun registry.

People always questioned why we would need a long-gun registry in this country, Combs remarked in Brandon provincial court on Thursday.

This is an example where a long-gun registry would be of tremendous assistance to police in tracking down these guns.

The Liberal government created the registry in 1995. It was controversial  hunters opposed it and police supported it, and it brought soaring costs. The Conservative government introduced legislation to scrap it, and it ended in 2012.

Murray James Richardson, 60, pleaded guilty on Thursday to a single count of unsafe storage of a .22-calibre rifle, but in total nine of his guns were stolen.

One has since been found by police, but the remaining eight remain missing.

Crown attorney Brett Rach said Richardson was away from his RM of Cornwallis home when police were called there for a break-in on Dec. 25, 2016.

Richardson was in Moose Jaw, Sask., visiting family at the time, but his brother informed police they would likely find numerous guns on the property.

Police figured the intruders entered the house through an unlocked back door.

In the furnace room, they found an empty cabinet where Richardson told police hed kept eight firearms. He admitted the cabinet was left unlocked and the guns didnt have trigger locks and werent stored properly.

A shotgun that was improperly stored in a workshop, which Richardson used to shoot vermin on his farm, was also gone.

The break-in was part of a larger rural Westman theft ring that also included separate break-ins to three pickup trucks that also contained guns.

Four men have been charged in relation to the ring, and police recovered five guns.

Richardson was able to provide police with some serial numbers, and it was confirmed that one of his guns was among those recovered.

Rach said that some of Richardsons guns didnt have serial numbers or were too old to have them.

Rach acknowledged that Richardson had tried to do the right thing by admitting the guns werent properly secured and by cooperating with police, but it was a little late.

The message has to be sent that you have to do the right thing first, Rach said.

Defence lawyer Patrick Sullivan asked that Richardson receive a conditional discharge that would allow his client to maintain a clean record.

Sullivan said that his client was in similar circumstances to a few other gun owners along the same road whose homes were also broken into.

The court needs to be careful about the message it sends to gun owners, Sullivan argued. If they fear being charged, they wont make a report when their firearms are stolen.

Rach cautioned that failing to report stolen guns is an offence in itself.

Richardsons guns are forfeit if they turn up. The Crown, however, declined to ask that the farmer be banned from having guns.

 ihitchen@brandonsun.com
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Roger Mantie, the 35th annual Brandon Jazz Festival feels like a homecoming in more ways than one.

Mantie grew up in Brandon, attended Brandon University and ran the festival in the mid-1990s.

Its fun to be back, it feels very familiar, it feels very comfortable, he said. Its still I think one of the best festivals anywhere.

Colin Corneau/The Brandon Sun The Shuffle Demons play during a workshop for music students at Brandon University during the 35th annual Brandon Jazz Festival on Thursday. The veteran Canadian band joins 48 vocal jazz groups and 78 jazz bands registered for the annual festival, which runs through Saturday.

Its the first time hes been back to the event in quite a few years. He went on to earn his PhD at the University of Toronto before working at another BU  Boston University  as an assistant professor.

Currently he is an associate professor in the music education department at Arizona State University.

Mantie is one of 17 adjudicators brought in for the festival to work with students. On Thursday, he conducted a workshop called improvisation games, where vocalists explored their creative side together. One activity had them standing in a circle, expressing different emotions such as joy and profound sadness through vocal exercises as a group.

If you can just think about basic creativity, or  basic human ability to make things up, and then what does that mean when youre in a group situation and you start to interact, and bounce off one another, Mantie said. Its just a way to sort of celebrate that and just remind people of that.

Manties history with the festival dates back to 1983, when it first began. At that time, Mantie was a student at Vincent Massey High School, and was a member of the schools band. He went on to volunteer at the festival as a high school student, and continued volunteering when he attended BU.

He ran the festival for five years in the 1990s, before moving to Winnipeg. He would come back to the festival as a band director, and all these years later hes now an adjudicator and university professor.

To have passed through and been in all these different stages is really fantastic, he said.

Walking through the halls at the School of Music, Mantie is greeted by many familiar faces  former students, former colleagues, former bandmates.

This still feels like home, he said. I show up here and it just feels like this is where Im from.

While his career has taken him far away from Manitoba, he never forgets his roots.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Roger Mantie (back right), an associate professor in the music education department at Arizona State University, leads a workshop titled improvisation games with students taking part in the 35th annual Brandon Jazz Festival at the Brandon University School of Music on Thursday.

I feel very fortunate to have had the background that I received here, because I think its served me really well in a way that people might not necessarily imagine, he said. Its easy to imagine the grass being greener somewhere else when in fact this place is a real gem.

Mantie is proud of the fact the festival is still thriving after 35 years, and the positive impact it has had on the Westman region and the province in general.

So many students at BU had their initial contact with the School of Music because of the jazz festival , which I think is really exciting, he said. Kudos to the School of Music and to BU for supporting the festival all these years.

The festival continues today and Saturday at the BU campus.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @jillianaustin
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March 16, 2017

Six years into the crisis in Syria, Iran sees the outcome of the conflict as shaping the new Middle East. It was Irans first overt foreign intervention in decades, one that some Iranian ideologues have called a war for existence. Iranian officials say it spared the Islamic Republic from having to fight a similar war within its own borders. Yet it has been costly, draining and merciless in terms of material losses, and even worse when it comes to Irans image in the Muslim world. It has limited Irans options and has caused alliances  notwithstanding the common ground Iran shares with its partners  to seem very shaky and fragile.

Iran learned a lot from these years, an Iranian military source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. The source said the conflict in Syria has not been a traditional war where things can easily be anticipated: The mandate was changing from one day to another. When Iran decided to take part in the war via our military advisers, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of falling. More than 70% of the country was under [the control of] terrorist groups who were enjoying widespread international, regional states and popular support. Today, President Assad has the upper hand, and the world knows well that hes the only choice for those who seriously want to defeat terrorism. Yet this is not the final phase.

In Tehran, political and military elites believe enemies of the resistance axis created the crisis in Syria to take revenge for what Iranian elites see as the latters achievements and widespread popularity in the region. Its obvious that after the 33-day war in Lebanon and Hezbollahs victory over Israel [in 2006], the Americans and their local agents started thinking of how to defeat us, an Iranian official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. The official said, Since they cant wage a war on Iran and their attempt to destroy Hezbollah failed, there was only one option at that time left  hitting the heart: Syria. Therefore, according to the Iranian official, the Islamic Republic had no choice but to defend itself, and therefore, Irans struggle in Syria is different from others: Its an existential war with no choice for us but to win. All the other parties fighting in Syria can afford to win or lose, save Iran. Not winning this war will have dire consequences not only for Iran but for the Shiites of the world. Therefore, it was the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who took the decision to help Syria. It was both a religious and a political decision.

The story of the Iranian decision to intervene in Syria has been a question for many, mainly with regard to how the decision was taken and whether a plan was in place from day one. Filling out the picture is the account of former Iranian member of parliament Esmail Kowsari  a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)  who told the semi-official Fars News Agency in November 2013 how Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had gone to Ayatollah Khamenei with fears that Assad would be toppled. Kowsari said that Nasrallah, nine months after the Syrian war started, had concluded that the situation was bad and was almost over. Nasrallah was quoted as saying, "Along with some officials, we went to the [supreme] leader and told him our thoughts. After we finished speaking, he said: No, that is not the case. We must just do our duty. If we do our duty, Assad and Syria will be stable.'

The Iranian military source confirmed this account to Al-Monitor, adding, When Nasrallah returned to Beirut, he met the [Hezbollah] Shura Council and told it about the [supreme] leaders point of view; he asked them to prepare their plans. At the same time, Ayatollah Khamenei started meeting the leadership of the IRGC and asked it to put together their views and road map for how this conflict could end. The Iranian source elaborated that Khamenei had two main concerns: preserving the weapons pipeline to Lebanon and keeping the holy shrines in Syria safe. The source said the two main leaders chosen to ensure that these objectives were met were Nasrallah and IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

A third man with a key role to play was IRGC Gen. Hossein Hamedani, who was killed in Syria in October 2015. Hamedanis role was essential in leading the forces on the ground. He left behind a full account of what happened on the way to Syria. The book, titled Letters of the Fish, focuses on Hamedani's life. He recalls surprise at his being asked to go to Syria and how he met with many figures and visited several areas. He said 75% of the country "was under the control of the terrorist groups. He added, After some time, I sent a detailed report to the supreme leader, asking him to allow me to return to Iran, given that the Syrians werent making use of our presence. The leader told Hajj Qasem [Soleimani]: You shouldnt leave and return! Syria is sick, but doesnt know it is sick; this disease should be explained to Syrian politicians and statesmen.'

Hamedani also sent a report to the leadership of the IRGC. That report was later read by Ayatollah Khamenei, who asked Hamedani to consult with Nasrallah, who  according to the book  was in charge of all the policies of the resistance axis in Syria. Hamedani had more than 100 proposals for steps to be implemented, along with five main suggestions on the political, economic, cultural, military and security fronts. Since Nasrallah was the man in charge of Syria, Hamedani and his aides went to meet him in Beirut, with the discussions lasting from the evening prayer until the morning prayer. The book says the Hezbollah chief saw no need for political, cultural and economic steps at that time, saying, Bashar Assad and the Baath Party are drowning to their necks in a quagmire. Nothing is left until they completely drown. Hamedani then quotes Nasrallah as saying, On the cultural side, do you want to teach them how to pray? Set up classes and teach them? Discuss spirituality with them? The time isnt right; they are drowning! On the economic side, you want to sew clothes for them? You want to give them food? Those people need no food; they are vanishing. On the political front, you want to discuss the correct structure for the regime and reform it? They are losing everything! Nasrallah concluded, First we have to get Bashar and the Syrian government outside the quagmire; then, well clean them, give them clothes, feed them, ask them to study and do their prayers. Now is the time to get them out [of the quagmire], and this is the strategic move.

Hamedanis account along with other ones by various Iranian commanders tell a lot about the Syrian war and about how and why Iran is keen to fight to the last man standing. Today, just as when Iran decided to enter Syria, the Islamic Republic continues to believe that compromising Damascus is akin to giving up Tehran  and that whatever the price of the war, it will never exceed the cost of losing it.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its St. Patricks Day! The day that has become known as the day when everyone is a little bit Irish. The usual tradition I see at pubs is bland lagers tainted with green food colouring, lots of Guinness and lots of Jameson whisky. I despise the idea of green beer so Ill be ordering my beer sans-dye this year (like every year). Im also not a fan of Guinness aside from Guinness Foreign Extra Stout brewed in Jamaica  after 10 years of drinking craft stouts and porters, Guinness just doesnt taste right to me.

I was at the 10th and Victoria Liquor Mart the other day thinking of alternatives to Guinness and Kilkenny for the special day. I was walking aisle by aisle and just couldnt think of anything to try for St. Patricks Day. As I was deciding on other beer to pick up, Liquor Mart consultant Sandi came up to me and asked me if Ive ever tried Beaus Strong Patrick Irish-style Red Ale before, saying that she absolutely loved it. In fact, I had some the other day and I was also gifted a bottle from a friend in Ottawa back in 2014 as my friend was a huge Beaus fan and travels over an hour (one day) to Vankleek Hill whenever the brewery has an event, thats pretty dedicated in my opinion!

Beaus Strong Patrick is your typical red Irish-style ale. The beer is described as luscious and malty, with toasty caramel and toffee notes complemented by whisky flavours and alcohol warmth. Part of each batch has been aged in Irish whisky barrels. The Irish Red Ale is well rounded and balanced, with a pleasant overall character.

Submitted First Draught columnist Cody Lobreau says Beaus Strong Patrick is a strong choice for anyone thinking of becoming a little bit Irish on St. Patrick's Day and who enjoys a nice malt-forward red ale or darker beers.

Strong Patrick pours a bright yet opaque ruby red body with a hint of micro-carbonation and a light amount of beige head at top. The aroma is pretty welcoming, especially on a day like today. The first thing that comes to my mind is the smell of wood, as if I was in a centuries old distillery basement surrounded by oak barrels aging whiskies. Theres also notes of caramel, a hint of vanilla, a light amount of booze bite, a light amount of earthy peat and a light hint of burnt toffee  yum!

The woodiness pops out right at the beginning in my very first sip with a good amount of earthy peat complimenting it. The beer is quite sweet thanks to the compliments of caramel and toffee. I notice a faint amount of whisky in there but not enough to get me tipsy, thankfully! The aftertaste is an earthy taste thats coming off from the barrel wood, an aftertaste similar to the higher-end whiskies I like to sample.

If youre thinking of becoming a little bit Irish today, this certified organic Irish red ale would please anyone who likes a nice malt-forward red ale or darker beers. Comparing the notes from back in 2014 when I first tried this beer, this beer has improved considerably and this may be the first Irish red ale Ive enjoyed since the mid-late 2000s. It has a great bitter bite to it from the aged wood and also a great caramel/toffee medley thats sweet but not so sweet that you will be feeling a heart burn after a few sips.

You can find this at Liquor Marts in Brandon and Dauphin for $7.40 per 600 ml bottle. Beaus is one of the confirmed breweries that will be pouring at the Brandon Beer Festival next month. In fact, the festival will be the first time one of Beaus upcoming releases has ever been sampled in Manitoba. 6.7 per cent ABV.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Timing, as they say, is everything, and while Ive struggled for 10 years to come up with appropriate subject matter for St. Paddys Day, Ireland is not exactly known for its wine. One could add a tiny drop of green food colouring to a glass or bottle of white wine to play along, I suppose, but thats not really terribly authentic.

But back to timing. A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Victoria where I enjoyed fabulous visits with many family members and friends who live on the island. And despite cooler than usual weather  locals were apologizing at every turn because the grass and most of the trees were still brown and the daffodils and tulips werent up yet and the famed cherry blossoms hadnt even budded, let alone bloomed  I managed to truly enjoy myself in one of my two favourite cities in the country (the other is Halifax, if anybody cares). I love being near the ocean, and I dont care if its Pacific or Atlantic or Caribbean (although the latter certainly is my No. 1 choice). By the sea is where I want to be!

Anyway, on what turned out to be a particularly cold and windy day, Id planned a get-together with my great friend Carman, whod retired and moved to Nanaimo from Calgary a couple of years ago, and whod driven down from his new home to have a long overdue visit with me. We had much reminiscing to do, since the last time wed been together was 2013. So about 1:30 p.m., we plunked ourselves down at the historic and gorgeous Irish Times pub in the heart of the downtown area, and proceeded to get reacquainted.

Since wed arranged to spend the entire day together and were going to my favourite restaurant in Victoria for dinner (I obviously havent tried them all, but Il Terrazzo has been extraordinary each and every time Ive been there over the last eight years), I didnt want to ruin my appetite for what I knew was in store for me just a few hours later. So I had a bowl of the Irish Times West Coast Chowder, which is 90 per cent fish and made for a more than hearty late lunch. With clams, smoked salmon, scallops, calamari, and more, this was absolutely the best chowder Id ever had. And for $8 a bowl, I thought it was a great bargain, too. But most food items at the Irish Times are very reasonably priced, and I cant wait to go back there again. I paired the soup, which was more like a seafood stew, with a glass of the Mission Hill Reserve Chardonnay, which is $21.99 a bottle at Manitoba Liquor Marts, and which I very much enjoyed. Boasting tropical fruit flavours along with floral notes and citrus scents and tastes, this slightly oaky Chard was the perfect balance for my gutsy chowder. It was so good, I even had a second glass.

Once ensconced at the Irish Times, and with the conversation flowing easily as it does between old friends, it seemed foolish to move on, given the cosiness, the atmosphere, and the fact that all we wanted to do was chat. But more wine didnt seem like a good idea (I cant believe I just wrote that!). So given our surroundings, and the multitudinous choices available on the menu, we decided to share a flight of Irish Whiskey. The options were plenty, but when I spied Jameson on the list, the decision was made.

We were served a tray of four glasses, each containing a half-ounce of, in this order, Jameson Caskmates ($39.99), Jameson Select ($49.99), Jameson Black Barrel (also $49.99), and Jameson Gold Reserve ($92.08). Prices quoted are for 750-ml bottles at Manitoba Liquor Marts. We, of course, didnt know the prices at the time, and while we both knew that in these sorts of tastings, one starts with the lesser of the grouping and moves up to whats considered the premium beverage, we had a great time sipping the shots in order and then giving each other blind tests to make sure we were tasting what we thought we were, unbiased by a particular glasss position on the board.

At the end of it all, we were both in total agreement  a major accomplishment for us! We couldnt stand Jameson Caskmates, and that was before we even tried the others. Our favourite of the bunch was unquestionably Jameson Black Barrel. Our second choice was the Jameson Select. We preferred the expensive Jameson Gold Reserve to the Caskmates, but not by a lot. So it was atypical for me, but nice for a change, not to be enamoured by the priciest offering, but instead be most impressed by the mid-priced whiskey.

So if youre planning to do up your St. Patricks Day in fine style, might I suggest a bottle of Jameson Black Barrel Irish Whiskey? In my books, its more than worth the extra money  its only about a third more than the basic Jameson, which sells here for $33.99 a bottle and didnt even make the flight I sampled. Rich and full with exotic fruits on the nose, and tasting of oaky vanilla with hints of maple, cedar and juniper, the Black Barrel is a perfect way to celebrate the annual occasion when everyone is considered Irish for a day.

Slainte.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 17/03/2017 (2061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Again Manitobans, under the leadership of Premier Brian Pallister, are standing alone with respect to having a new health-care funding deal between the federal and provincial/territorial governments.

In December, the provincial/territorial and federal governments met but failed to reach a national agreement which would replace the current Health Accord related to federal transfers of funds to the provinces and territories for their respective health-care programs. The offer made by the federal government was to increase annual health-care funding by 3.5 per cent every year over the period of a new agreement, plus, $11 billion over 10 years to address mental health and home care issues.

The offer was refused by the provincial/territorial governments.

The provincial/territorial governments held a press conference immediately after the breakup of the meeting declaring their apparent solidarity on presenting a united front to get the federal government back to the negotiating table and getting an agreement more to the liking of the provincial/territorial governments.

It was at this press conference that Manitoba broke ranks with the other provincial/territorial governments. Instead of affirming solidarity, Manitoba essentially declared that it could, might, would support the federal governments offer in exchange for some arrangement with respect to its climate-change strategy. A stance which signalled to everyone the lack of solidarity among the provinces and territories. A stance which implicitly suggested that Manitoba was OK with the federal governments proposed agreement.

Manitobas declaration, in short order and as could have been anticipated, was followed by several Maritime provinces negotiating separate agreements with the federal government. Followed by all the provinces and territories negotiating separate agreements except for Manitoba.

Each of the provinces and territories negotiated individually framed agreements which addressed health-care issues particular to the province or territory. For example, Saskatchewan negotiated an agreement which allowed it to continue with its experimentation of delivering MRI services through private contractors.

Since December, Pallister and Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen have tried to convince Manitobans (and, maybe, their provincial/territorial counterparts) of their principled stance. This stance became somewhat shaky when Premier Pallister, trying to emulate the other provinces/territories by identifying factors and issues particular to Manitoba, moved away from climate change as a bargaining chip, to diabetes and kidney dialysis, to health care for aboriginals, to reduced/eliminated funding to health-care services.

The end result has been the premiers defiant stand based on no apparent principle to which he is committed other than getting more funding.

Had the premier been more attentive to the federal governments position he might have foreseen the probability of failure with his position.

Over the past two to three decades, the federal government has questioned whether the funds it transfers to provinces and territories are actually used for health-care programs and services, and whether there is any measurable improvement in the delivery and outcome of these programs and services in spite of national strategies.

Further, all the governments have been aware of the impact of the lack of mental health care and home care on mainstream health-care services and programs. The federal governments offer to the provinces/territories was and is to provide additional funding so that the provincial/territorial governments could mount enhanced mental health care and home care services, thereby, relieving mainstream health-care programs. But, there is a condition. The federal government made it clear that the federal monies ($11 billion over 10 years) would have to be specifically spent on mental health care and home care programs and services.

A condition that might have been anathema to a free-wheeling government wanting unencumbered funding.

Here we stand  alone again or still.

Manitoba was the first out of a possible national strategy which might have unified the provinces and territories in negotiating with the federal government. Manitoba is the last in with respect to having a health-care funding agreement with the federal government.

Because of our position, Manitoba will need to accept some of the responsibility for the absence of a national strategy. The losers being Canadians who, from the perspective of health care and in the absence of a national health-care format, will be bound by health-care agreements specific to the province/territory in which they reside.

ROSEMARIE and

CHESTER LETKEMAN

Brandon
Boynton Lions Club members Norman Lansford and Randall Franks were honored for 10 years of continuous service as Lions.



Mr. Lansford actually returned to the club 10 years ago after being a member earlier. Mr. Lansford, a past president, chairs the Dailey Hill Cemetery Committee which oversees the clubs long-term care and maintenance of the cemetery. His late father Farris "Doc" Lansford was a club founding member. The group is now receiving donations from friends and relatives of those interred there to assist with the costs of mowing and upkeep.



Mr. Franks, a past president, serves as club treasurer and represents the club with Boynton Elementary School administration. The club provides scholarships and special projects benefitting the students.



The Lions Club works on a statewide level with Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation, Georgia Lions Camp for the Blind, and the Emory Child Care Center, and locally by providing glasses to needy Catoosans. Donations may be sent to Boynton Lions Club c/o BUMC, 4246 Boynton Dr., Ringgold, Ga. 30736.



Boynton Lions Club meets the second Tuesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at Boynton United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall.
Coast Guard, Gardai and members of the local community have held a candle-lit vigil for the crew of Rescue 116 at the Sundial in Blackrock, Co Louth, this evening.

The wife and children of Coast Guard Rescue 116 helicopter crew member Mark Duffy also made a brief appearance at the vigil tonight.

Eight-year-old James, Jesssica (aged 9) and Faith Scanlon (aged 6) at the candle-lit vigil which was held tonight in Blackrock, Co Louth, for the crew of Rescue 116. Pic: Ciara Wilkinson

The families of the three missing Rescue 116 crew remain at Blacksod bay in County Mayo tonight while Captain Dara Fitzpatrick's funeral will take place tomorrow.

Gardai are advising motorists that traffic restrictions will be in place from 10am to 1pm tomorrow in the Glencullen area.

They have said that through traffic from Johnny Foxs pub to the Enniskerry Road at Kilternan will be diverted at Foxs.

Traffic will be prevented from travelling from Foxs to the Enniskerry Road.

Access will be maintained in the opposite direction and local access will also be maintained.

The everyday heroism displayed by the tragic crew of Coast Guard Rescue 116 was remembered today by the Bishop of Limerick at a St Patrick's Day mass for past and present members of the Defence Forces.

It comes as rescue crews searching for the Coast Guard helicopter missing off the Mayo Coast say they have spotted a weather window on Sunday in which they may be able to dive at the suspected crash site.

Air and shoreline searches are continuing today, while the specialist ship - The Granuaile - is being stocked with extra equipment at Galway before heading to Blacksod Bay for Sunday's search.

The funeral of Irish Coast Guard Captain, Dara Fitzpatrick, will take place this weekend.

Dara is currently reposing at the family home until 10pm tonight.

Requiem mass is at St Patrick's Church, Glencullen, at 11am tomorrow, followed by cremation at Mount Jerome, Harolds Cross, in Dublin 6.

The family has requested no flowers, but donations, if desired, can be made to the R.N.L.I., Dublin & Wicklow Mountain Rescue and The Donkey Sanctuary.

Searching continues on the beaches of Belmullet, Co. Mayo, for the missing Coast Guard Helicopter crew. Pic: Keith Heneghan

The crew's "strong sense of giving" was recalled by Bishop Brendan Leahy in his homily at Sarsfields Barracks, Limerick.

The sense of heroism and mission displayed by St Patrick is still very much evident in the acts of Irish Coast Guard pilot Dara Fitzpatrick and many others who sacrifice much, Bishop Leahy stated.

In the now traditional St Patricks Day Mass for members past and present of the Defence Forces and their families in the city, Bishop Leahy said we cannot but think today of someone like Dara Fitzpatrick who dedicated her life to others so fearlessly.

Linking the selfless kindness of St Patrick to that of Ms Fitzpatrick, her colleagues, the defence forces and many others, Bishop Leahy said that the heroic pilot was an inspiring example for all of us.

I was struck by her comments in the Rescue 117 documentary she featured in, which was played back on Wednesdays news on RTE. She said theres no way in the world we would do anything else in life."

"Dara had a strong sense of giving to others. A pilgrim on lifes journey, like all of us, she seemed to be a person who got up each day thinking of helping others."

Captain Dara Fitzpatrick

I even noted over recent days a video on the online Catholic channel iCatholic about the importance of finding the balance with alcohol. She participated in that video to promote responsible use of alcohol," Bishop Leahy said.

"She spoke of how she had far too great a responsibility to her job to ever allow a drink on any night get in the way of work the following day."

"Saving lives was her priority and she lived that out to the end. Certainly, an inspiring example for us all on this St. Patricks Day.

Bishop Leahy said that on the national feast day, it was important to be grateful for the reminder of the Christian story at the heart of our culture: Lets be grateful for all those, like Dara, whose generous spirit reminds us of the measure of love: to love without measure."

Lets acknowledge the sacrificial love witnessed also in the Defence Forces who, at times, spend a long time away from their loved ones, often in war zones in the Middle East and Africa."

Commenting on the humanitarian aid the soldiers provided to people during recent flooding, he added: "Here in Limerick you have been deployed to help with flood relief in the past. You share in that sense of giving and the rest of us are truly grateful."

Searching continues on the beaches of Belmullet, Co. Mayo, for the missing Coast Guard Helicopter crew. Pic: Keith Heneghan

"Perhaps you dont always explicitly think of it but there is always a risk involved in your mission, and that risk has a name. Its called being ready to lay down our lives. Theres a heroism in that."

Surely, St. Patrick would recognise in you and in people like Dara Fitzpatrick the measureless measure of love being lived out so quietly but effectively day by day across this island."

He added: "Yes, its good to celebrate St Patricks Day together here this morning. Remembering the great foundation story of St Patrick and the great continuing stories of modern day heroes brings so much inspiration to us all.
Gardai investigating the serious assault of a 10-week-old baby girl in Co Louth have arrested a man this evening.

He was arrested in Dublin at around 6pm and is being held in a Co Louth Garda Station under the provisions of Section 4 - Criminal Justice Act 1984.
Hamilton County students are seeing big dividends due to Hamilton County Department of Educations focus on preparing students for careers or college, officials said. 76 percent of all HCDE graduates enrolled in a two- or four-year college, or other post-secondary career option after graduation. That is a five per cent increase from 2015.

HCDE Interim Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly is thrilled to share the news. He said, Not only are we seeing an increase in students attending college, but we are seeing an across the board increase in the number of students attending traditional four-year colleges.

More than 1,000 students who graduated in 2016 enrolled in a four-year college this past fall semester. During 2015, that number was 885.

This is further proof that HCDEs strategic focus area of creating pathways and opportunities for students as they prepare for post-secondary education and careers is working in a tangible way, said HCDE Chief Academic Officer Jill Levine.

A deeper dive into the data also shows HCDE students are attending several different institutions of higher learning. Chattanoogas Public Education Foundation worked with Hamilton County career counselors to track students after graduation, and they determined the Class of 2016 enrolled in colleges or training programs across the United States.

The students who graduated from our public schools in May enrolled this fall in 186 postsecondary institutions in 38 states and the United Kingdom at 143 different four year institutions, 39 different two year institutions, and 4 different career training programs, said PEF President Dan Challener. This is strong evidence that our students and their families and Hamilton Countys counselors, college advisors, and teachers are working hard to find the college that is the right fit for each student.

HCDE administrators will visit each high school to delve into the numbers during the first week of April.
A 23-year-old man arrested during a planned raid in Co. Meath has been charged.

Gardai seized controlled drugs including heroin and crack cocaine with an estimated street value 60,000 and around 50,000 in cash during the course of a search in Pelletstown, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath on Tuesday.

A sub machine gun was also recovered.

The man was charged at the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin 8 yesterday evening, while a 35-year-old man also arrested was released yesterday.

A file will now be prepared for the information of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Gardai made a further seizure of controlled drugs and cash at at Pettetstown, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath on Wednesday.

They found drugs with an estimated street value of 285k along with around 100k in cash.
The search for the crew of the missing Coast Guard helicopter is resuming off the coast of Mayo this morning.

Efforts to locate Rescue 116 were hampered by adverse weather conditions yesterday, however another large piece of debris was discovered near Blackrock lighthouse late in the evening.
The Taoiseach is today in New York to take part in the St Patrick's Day parade, one of the oldest in the world.

It's after Enda Kenny last night presented a bowl of shamrock to Donald Trump in the White House.

Mr Kenny has been criticised for honouring the President and inviting him home to Ireland, but last night he launched another bid to influence President Trump on the status of illegal immigrants.

There had been no reaction when reporters tried to ask Trump if he has in any way upset at the "racist and dangerous" comment Kenny made last year, and Kenny himself quickly changed subject when he was asked later.

But last night he did continue his charm offensive on behalf of the Irish, telling a White House audience they were marking the feast day of someone who wasn't actually Irish.

And although sticking to script, Trump himself did openly acknowledge the role the Irish played in building modern America.

Far from being the frosty affair some might have imagined, the welcome Kenny got yesterday was just as friendly - if not more so - than he got in many of the latter Obama years.

It will put a pep in his step as he finishes his US tour in New York and prepares to fly back home where the exit speculation will mount once more.
President Donald Trump has welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House.

Ms Merkel arrived this morning for a series of meetings with Mr Trump.

The itinerary includes discussions on strengthening Nato, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraine's conflict.

President Trump spent much of 2016 bashing the chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.

Ms Merkel was originally supposed to visit the White House on Tuesday. That meeting was delayed due to snow.
An airstrike on a mosque in a rebel-held area of northern Syria today killed at least 35 people, emergency officials and activists said.

The Syrian Civil Defence, volunteer paramedics known as the White Helmets, said first responders were racing to the scene after the airstrike in the Jeeneh area, near the rebel-held province of Idlib.
SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson is to accuse the UK Government of running scared of a second independence referendum.

The party's leader in Westminster will also accuse the Conservatives of having a "desperate desire" to prevent anyone rejecting "hard Brexit".

It comes as Prime Minister Theresa May said it would it be "fundamentally unfair" to hold a second Scottish independence referendum in the next two years, as she prepares to outline plans for a more united UK.

Mr Robertson is expected to tell the SNP spring conference in Aberdeen that it is for the people of Scotland to decide the country's future.

He will say: "It is clear from the PM's panicked response to the Scottish Government's decision to, rightly, give people in Scotland a choice over Scotland's future, that the Tories are simply scared of the people's choice.

"The Tories' argument is not about process, it is about their desperate desire to prevent anyone having the chance to reject the hard right Brexit that they are so wedded to.

"The truth is it should not be for either Theresa May or the Scottish Government to decide Scotland's future - that choice belongs to the parliament and the people of Scotland, and it is one this party will never shy away from."

Deputy First Minister John Swinney has also issued a stark warning to Westminster that Scots must not be denied the "right to choose" the country's future in a second independence referendum.

The Scottish Government minister insisted that the "kind of country we want to be" was at stake as the SNP administration in Edinburgh and the Conservative Government in Westminster appeared to be on a collision course over the constitution.

While First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has outlined plans to stage a fresh vote on independence between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, Mrs May intervened on Thursday to say "now is not the time" for such a ballot.

On Friday, the Prime Minister will pledge to forge a "more united" nation as she begins the Brexit process.

Mrs May will stress that the break from Brussels will require "one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome".

She will say: "The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom.

"Every person, every family, every business, every community the length and breadth of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland."

It was "essential that we get the right deal" and that requires working together, she will say, adding: "That is what we have always done when faced with challenges.

"We have pulled together as one and succeeded together.

"We are four nations, but at heart we are one people.

"And I will always ensure the voices and interests of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented as we negotiate to leave the EU.

"And I will always fight to strengthen and sustain this precious, precious union."

Writing in The Times, the Prime Minister said it was important for the United Kingdom to "pull together", stating that the SNP were trying to "force" her Government into agreeing to hold a vote before the country leaves the EU.

Mrs May said: "I do not agree with the SNP that now is the time to be talking about a second independence referendum.

"To do so now, while all our energies should be directed towards the negotiations with Europe, would make it more difficult to get the right deal for Scotland and the right deal for the UK as a whole.

"It is not something to which any responsible government could reasonably agree."

PA
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson has said it might be necessary to make pre-emptive military moves against North Korea if the threat from its weapons programme reaches a level "we believe requires action".

Mr Tillerson was speaking at a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, after visiting the heavily militarised border with North Korea.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against the North, he said: "All of the options are on the table."

He said Washington does not want a military conflict, but if Pyongyang takes actions that threaten South Korean or US forces it would be met with an "appropriate response".

Past US administrations have considered military force because of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, but the option has rarely been expressed so explicitly.

Mr Tillerson had earlier touched down in a helicopter at Camp Bonifas, a US base close to the Demilitarised Zone, created after the Korean War effectively ended in 1953.

He is the latest in a series of senior US officials to have their photos taken at the border, but it is the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat as he makes a tour of Japan, South Korea and China.

Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Tillerson had vowed a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat, but he offered no details about what would comprise the "different approach".

He pointedly noted that 20 years of "diplomatic and other efforts" had failed to dissuade the isolated communist government from developing its nuclear programme, which he called an "ever-escalating threat".

AP
Church of the Brethren Newsline

March 17, 2017

By Dale Minnich

For the past 18 months, the Church of the Brethren has been addressing the need for pure drinking water in our related communities in Haiti through the work of the Haiti Medical Project in cooperation with lEglise des Freres Haitiens (Church of the Brethren in Haiti). The mobile medical clinics offered since late 2011 treat many children and adults suffering from dysentery and other serious infectious diseases that often result from untreated water.

There are very few examples of improved water in the 20 communities in which we currently work. Providing better water is an urgent priority often identified by community leaders in these locations.

In 2015 the Haiti Medical Project leaders expanded the projects community health initiatives by launching a community development team working with community leaders on a range of community issuesespecially food sustainability, maternal care, and pure water. Those working directly with water projects include Vildor Archange, Jean Bily Telfort, and Adias Docteur. Global Food Initiative (GFI) manager Jeff Boshart offers helpful technical expertise.

Where pure water is a goal to be addressed, a basic way of working is to call out a water committee of community leaders. This group works closely with our staff to assess the need, provide local resources, and lead out in selecting a method to address the need. Strong local leadership and ownership is crucial to a successful project.

The focus of all our early water projects is to provide an excellent source of water for an important sector of the community rather than developing individual household systems. Our goal is to provide pure, life-giving water to as many people as possible.

In many cases the most inexpensive way of providing pure water is to harvest rain water from nearby roof tops, move it via guttering and spouting to a cement cistern, clean and purify the water through a sand bio-filter system, and add moderate chlorination as indicated by water testing. We are benefitting greatly from technical assistance in building and maintaining the sand bio-filter systems from faculty and graduate students from the University of Maryland and the University of the District of Colombia. These systems utilize locally available sand of various grades, are simple for community leaders to learn to maintain, and are well received by the community. Since Haiti has dry seasons and rainy seasons, it is important to have a cistern large enough to store enough water to serve throughout the dry season.

In some cases we contract to have a well drilled. A well can be used in conjunction with a cistern or other storage tank to cover the frequent times when electric power is not available to run a pump. It also can use sand bio-filters for purification in many cases. However, in a number of the areas near the coast, well water tends to have a salty taste that makes it much less desirable for human use. In cases where we work with an existing well that has this problem, the best solution is a reverse osmosis purification systemmuch more expensive than a sand bio-filterto eliminate the salinity.

We recently discovered a resource near the Haitian churchs ministry center in Croix des Bouquets: a water school run by a service agency from the Netherlands. The projects entire community development staff has been enrolled in a water purification course that includes learning to use reverse osmosis. We also have discovered a Brethren technician in Mexico who has extensive experience to advise us where reverse osmosis is needed. Learning and teaching the appropriate technology is highly important.

In 2015 and 2016 the Haiti Medical Project partnered with local communities to design and install successful pure water projects in St. Louis du Nord, Acajou, La Tortue, Raymonsaint, Morne Boulage, and at the Croix des Bouquets guest house. All of these use the sand bio-filter system. The Haiti Medical Project invested a total of $45,218 in these six projects in addition to the cost of materials, labor, and some financial investment contributed by the communities served.

New projects are in view for 2017-18, as funds become available. We hope to more than double the pure water systems during the next two years. While community leadership development and discernment will be cultivated before any project is approved, the following list of our present assessment of the needs is a focus for water development planned for 2017 and 2018:

 Cap Haitian and Gonaives: Improvement of existing wells through reverse osmosis

 Raymonsaint: Bio-filter system for a community where a new cistern was constructed in 2016

 Gran Bwa: Capture spring water, provide cistern, sand bio filter, and distribution system

 La Tortue: Purify water in an existing pond

 Cap Haitian, Catienne, Croix des Bouquets, Jerusalem, La Ferriere, Perisse, Savanette: Capture rain water from rooftops, construct cisterns and provide sand bio-filter systems

The preliminary estimate for the projected community pure water systems for 2017-18 is $148,000. How much can be done will be determined by the amount of special gifts for this purpose.

There are many ways congregations and individuals can get involved in supporting pure water in Haiti. For example, West Goshen (Ind.) Church of the Brethren sponsored the full cost of a well project. The children of Chiques Church of the Brethren near Manheim, Pa., contributed their regular Sunday school offerings to support water projects, amounting to $3,200 to date.

Congregations and individuals can support the full or partial cost of a current project as they choose. Contact Jeff Boshart at Jboshart@brethren.org or Dale Minnich at dale@minnichnet.org to discuss how to be a part of this important enterprise. Find out more about the Haiti Medical Project at www.brethren.org/haiti-medical-project .

 Dale Minnich is a volunteer consultant for interpretation for the Haiti Medical Project, and recently concluded a term of service as interim general secretary of the Church of the Brethren.

Go to www.brethren.org/Newsline to subscribe to the Church of the Brethren Newsline free e-mail news service and receive church news every week.
Get ready to put aside the cold Winter and welcome in the rebirth of Spring. Reflection Riding Arboretum & Nature Center announces its third annual Spring Homeschool Day.

Officials said, "During the Spring Fling, we will be providing opportunities for families to enjoy and learn about the natural phenomena that occur every Spring. The trees begin to bud. Flowers begin to appear. Animals become more active and migratory birds begin to appear. Enjoy Naturalist lead hikes, reduced rates on canoe rentals, games, and a greenhouse tour.

activities including a scavenger hunt for the property. Make your plans now to attend and enjoy nature in a new and exciting way."

Date: March 20

Time: 10 a.m.3 p.m.

Cost: General Public ($10 for Adults and $4.50 for Homeschool Children)

Reflection Riding Arboretum & Nature Center Members are free

We will also have some self-guided
The head of Catholic education in Canberra has admitted his office was not told a risk assessment had been conducted by Catholic officials about a disgraced priest who was moved next to two primary schools.

Archbishop Christopher Prowse, education officials and head of the Institute for Professional Standards and Safeguarding Matt Casey faced the wrath of parents at a forum on Thursday night, three weeks after it was revealed the archbishop had placed a priest with substantiated complaints of improper conduct towards children next to Sts Peter and Paul Primary School.

The findings of an independent review into the placement of the priest next to two Canberra schools will be handed down in June. Credit:iStock

However the Catholic Education Office has revealed they were never told the priest had been placed in such close proximity to the school or that a risk assessment about the placement had been done.

Although current principal Margaret Pollard was given a copy of the risk assessment in May last year, the document contained no details of the allegations against former Tumut parish priest Brian Hassett.
Retail assets in Victoria have continued to strengthen with an IGA supermarket in Stawell changing hands for $5.11 million.

The supermarket in the country town's main thoroughfare was anchored with a 15-year lease to a Ritchies SUPA IGA and sold on an initial yield of 5.82 per cent.

A Woolworths-leased supermarket in Highton is on the market.

Stawell, about 237 kilometres west of Melbourne, is famous for its annual running race, the Stawell Gift.

CBRE's Joseph du Rieu, who brokered the sale with Kevin Tong and Justin Dowers, said the result highlighted ongoing momentum in the retail investment market.
Building company Grocon has demanded ACTU secretary Sally McManus correct her "manifestly untrue" statement that it was fined $300,000 for killing five workers.

The company issued the statement on Friday saying it did not deny tragic deaths had occurred on its sites, but insisting it had not caused them.

"Findings on the public record are that Grocon has not caused the death of any individual," a company statement said.

"It is beholden on Ms McManus to publicly correct her statement and Grocon will be writing to her seeking this correction."
On the western fringes of Belconnen, a new development project, Ginninderry, is taking shape. The development will see more than 5000 houses built within the ACT and (ultimately) a similar number across the border in NSW.

While the developers have consulted extensively with residents of the adjoining Belconnen suburbs, few Canberrans will be familiar with Ginninderry. This is unfortunate, because the project is huge  30,000 people (roughly the population of present-day Weston Creek) will one day be living in this far-flung part of the city.

View from the lower falls where the Ginninderra Creek meets the Murrumbidgee River. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

Ginninderry is also problematic. Indeed, it seems to fly in the face of much that (you would think) a Labor-Greens government stands for: the creation of a more compact city, one whose design exhibits a strong environmental consciousness. For not only will Ginninderry take Canberra's sprawl to the ACT's borders and beyond, it also impinges on natural landscapes of great beauty and significance.

The ACT government has committed itself to the development through its participation, via the Land Development Agency, in a joint venture with Riverview, a private developer representing the interests of landholders in the area. Although the developers have committed to conserving the outstanding natural features of the area, which include Ginninderra Falls, there should be no doubt that the houses of Ginninderry will compromise any chance of reserving a truly unique part of Australia for future generations.
The ACT gets the raw end of the prawn a fair bit.

Roundly sneered at for its round-a-bouts and public service, it seems the rest of the nation could well look to their smallest counterpart on one issue: stamp duty.

The territory's Labor government is heading down a 20-year road to rid taxpayers of stamp duty, moving towards the ultimate goal of land tax and rates.

It is a model, it appears, that has some merit - the Grattan Institute has repeatedly backed the virtues of the idea, and now, the federal Parliamentary Budget Office has put some hard numbers to a Green's proposal similar to the institute's model.
One day in the early 1980s, a lady called North Sydney Council to complain. She'd been parked in in her driveway. The council said to call the police; the police said to call the NRMA and the NRMA said to call the council. Finally, she called the mayor's office. "I'll be there in 10 minutes," said mayor Ted Mack. "Luckily," he reflects now, "I kept a rolling jack in the boot of my car."

Ted Mack, one of Australia's most revered and beloved politicians, is dying. That by itself is sad  although, he drily notes, death does reduce your money worries. But there are bigger things at stake here too. As the world races headlong down the chute of "strong leadership", we should all hope that his life's work is not in vain, and that the slender thread of practical principle in Australian politics doesn't die with him.

Ted Mack in 1993. As mayor, he was renowned for helping people fix plumbing, replace washers, put out the garbage and answering every letter with a personal visit.

Strong leadership, in the Trump-Putin-Erdogan-Howard-Abbott sense, is a furphy. I understand why people are drawn to apparent strength in times of trouble. That's natural. But brutality is not strength. Indeed, it is almost the opposite. Brutality betrays weakness. Strength is the capacity to resist brutality for the greater good.

Ted Mack did that consistently. His distinction, as the only Australian politician elected to three levels of government, is the more remarkable because he was a genuine independent: never a party stooge in neutral garb, never provisionally "independent"  until one side or other made him an unrefusable offer.
The NSW fraud squad will examine fresh allegations that stood-aside RSL NSW president John Haines inappropriately directed league funds to a community project in his local area.

Fairfax Media understands that state Veterans Affairs Minister David Elliott has referred the claim made from within the RSL to the NSW police. It comes on top of an investigation the fraud squad is conducting into former RSL NSW president Don Rowe's credit card use.

John Haines says he is not in a position to comment. Credit:Gene Ramirez

RSL NSW announced on Thursday that former High Court justice Ian Callinan will head an independent inquiry into the financial impropriety claims plaguing the league.

The entire NSW council has stood aside pending that probe.
At Paris Fashion Week in September, the world was gifted with Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri's "We Should All Be Feminists" T-shirt.

Then in January, New York Fashion Week, in a newly-minted Trumpian America, was littered with political messaging.

What most people don't know is that a model from Victoria was putting her heart  and words  on T-shirts years before Dior came to the party.

Ollie Henderson, the self-proclaimed "boss bitch" at social enterprise The House of Riot, said her shirts express the "mass frustration" people feel over issues ranging from climate change to the treatment of refugees.
Just around the corner from 11-year-old Ryan Teasdale's house, Riley Park was a kids' adventure playground in the rain.

Surrounded by houses, the park has long attracted children from the nearby streets, who have delighted in sliding down the hill on boogie boards and making the most of the slippery grass.

But now this innocent fun will be forever marred by tragedy, after the young boy went missing late on Thursday afternoon as torrential rain lashed the area.

Ryan and his 13-year-old brother were boogie-boarding down the slippery slopes of Unanderra's Riley Park on Thursday afternoon when tragedy struck.
The SES says it is prepared for a busy weekend with more heavy rain forecast for the NSW mid north coast, parts of the Hunter and the Northern Tablelands.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Friday afternoon predicted more than 100mm of rain and potential flash flooding over the ensuing 24 hours, with Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Taree, Newcastle, Sawtell and Dorrigo possibly affected.

It comes after more than a day of heavy rain along the NSW coast, with the SES involved in almost 60 rescues of people and animals by Friday afternoon, many in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions.

SES spokesman Brent Hunter said many rescues involved people driving in floodwaters.

"It's probably the most dangerous thing you can do during these sort of events," he said.
Though builders in Chattanooga and surrounding areas might generally use similar tools and materials when building homes, not all are alike when it comes to things like technique, training and customer service. Finding the right builder whose business approach aligns well with your personal preferences is essential to a pleasant home-building experience.

The builder will be asking you plenty of questions during your initial meeting to discuss the home you envision. But the questions you ask the builder are equally important to determine if its going to be a positive partnership. Consider asking the builder about the following:



Work Experience  You will want to find a builder with extensive experience building homes similar to the one you want. Ask to see examples of floor plans and designs theyve done before to ensure their company can deliver what you need. You should also ask if they have or are working toward any professional designations, which show that the builder has advanced training in a particular area. A few examples of such designations include a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS), a Graduate Master Builder (CMB), and a Certified Green Professional (CGP).



References  Any high-quality builder should be ready to provide you with several names and phone numbers of satisfied customers. If they cant, consider that a red flag and walk away. When reaching out to those former clients, ask about how well the builder followed through on the initial plans, and if the builder met their expectations regarding budget and timing. Dont forget the most telling question of them all: If they could do it all over, would they hire that builder again?



Communication Style  Many builders will do their best to accommodate your communication preferences. But its always best to establish expectations as early as possible. The frequency (weekly, monthly, as-needed, etc.) and method (phone, text, email) of how you communicate early on with each other is something that will set the tone throughout the whole building process.



For more information about how to find the right builder to create your dream home, visit the Home Builders Association of Greater Chattanooga at www.HBAGC.net.


Each was followed by massive political dislocation with political fault lines shifting and major parties crashing to oblivion, rising out of the ashes or embracing platforms espoused by new minor parties. Cory Bernardi and other climate sceptic politicians are being outpaced by economics when it comes to the growth of renewables. Credit:Andrew Meares Two former Kevin Rudd staffers believe Australia is at a political tipping point Lachlan Harris, co-founder of One Big Switch, and Andrew Charlton, co-founder of AlphaBeta, said the deep disruption to the Australian system played out in three stages: firstly, factions within major parties come under extreme pressure; secondly major parties form alliances with minor parties and, thirdly, major parties reform or collapse. Illustration: Ron Tandberg

"We are in stage 1 now with the [Cory] Bernardi split, Labor's sudden shift towards labour protectionism and the threats to Turnbull's leadership," they said. "The second stage took off in Western Australia with the preference deal between the Liberals and One Nation. "Exactly where this instability takes us is impossible to divine, and the process will ebb and flow, as individual minor parties explode in popularity, and implode under the weight of expectations. But the data clearly suggests a one in 100-year structural unbundling of our politics may well be under way." The binary reality of the two-party system has been the experience of most voters but Australians had their first taste of minority government from the get-go when neither the protectionists nor the free traders won majority support in 1901. But those early advocates of closed borders formed minority government thanks to the support of the Labour Party (15.8 per cent) but when the working class nearly doubled to 31 per cent in 1903 a seismic shift hit Australian politics: the divide shifted from protectionist versus free trade to labor versus conservative.

Fast forward to the Depression when 1931 and 1934 elections saw Jack Lang's Australian Labor Party (NSW) destroy a Labor government and deeply damage the ALP as one in four voters fled voters fled to minor parties. By 1941, the United Australia Party had been in Coalition government for 10 years when leader Robert Menzies was forced out as leader leaving the conservatives to limp along under National leader Arthur Fadden. Two years later, Australians voted them out. Although Labor's John Curtin became prime minister, a quarter of voters supported minor parties of a conservative persuasion. Menzies, heeding the clarion cliche that disunity is death, built the Liberal Party out of the ashes and from 1949 gifted the Coalition a record 23 years in government. Monash University political scientist Zareh Ghazarian did not believe that the last hurrah for the two-party system was looming. "Minor parties have certainly come out of nowhere in recent years but that does mean the two-party system is in trouble," Dr Ghazarian said. "You won't see minor parties in government. The major parties will still dominate results in the lower house but it is the Senate that the smaller ones will continue to make headway."

However Dr Ghazarian, whose latest book is The Making of a Party System: Minor Parties in the Australian Senate, said the one major party most likely to suffer big time will be the Nationals. "You can see it in last weekend's West Australian result," he said. "One Nation is treading on their territory and Barnaby Joyce has the job ahead to convince his heartland that the Nationals are still hard-headed but soft-hearted. "For that matter, Labor too is shifting. No longer are social issues at the forefront. For Bill Shorten it's back to old-school issues, wages and conditions ... Sunday rates." Research fellow with the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild, said minor parties emerged to fill the void created by voter concern about about free speech, national sovereignty, and crime.
A serial rapist who preyed on women in Sydney's northern suburbs will be subject to close supervision, including electronic monitoring, after a court found he continues to be a serious risk of further violent sexual offences.

Graham James Kay sexually assaulted eight women, aged from 16 to 39, between December 1995 and December 1996 after grabbing them from behind and holding a knife to their necks in "premeditated and planned" attacks.

Kay was only stopped after a 1997 police operation dubbed Strike Force Allier caught him driving around looking for women and following them in Macquarie Park, Glebe and Epping.

The former Rural Fire Service volunteer was released on parole in February 2015 after serving about 18 years of a 20-year maximum jail sentence.

On Friday, the Supreme Court was told Kay had been sacked from his job after the application by the state for an extended supervision order two weeks ago came to the attention of his employer.
Authorities plan to test prawn farms all the way up the Queensland coastline in their fight against the highly contagious white spot disease, the state's chief biosecurity officer says.

The state government placed an immediate ban on the removal of uncooked prawns and other crustaceans from parts of the state's southeast on Thursday.

White spot disease has been found in Moreton Bay. Credit:Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries

It followed the detection of 31 prawns infected with the virus in Moreton Bay near the Redcliffe Peninsula and Deception Bay, north of Brisbane.

Samples have already been drawn from 3000 prawns and there are plans to test along the state's coastline to see if the disease has taken root anywhere else, Dr Jim Thompson told ABC Radio on Friday.
It must be every dad's calling to embarrass his daughter  even if she is the premier of Queensland.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's dad Henry has been posting adorable childhood photos of her on his Facebook page, which is open to the public, while she is overseas.

Henry Palaszczuk has shared childhood photos of his daughter, Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Premier of Queensland, on Facebook while she is overseas. Credit:Felicity Caldwell

Ms Palaszczuk has been in India meeting with Gautam Adani, in London marking the start of the Queen's baton relay, and also visiting Singapore as part of a trade mission this week.

Her father, a Labor MP from 1984 until 2006, took the opportunity to share snaps of a young Annastacia online, with the excuse that she was overseas, so would not see them.
Queensland Rail could have saved millions over five months if it did not have to systematically rely on overtime.

Figures reveal the overtime cost for QR drivers and guards was $10.2 million from the beginning of October until February 19.

Queensland Rail has paid $10 million in overtime between October and February. Credit:Michelle Smith

That was $4.1 million in overtime costs for guards and $6.1 million for drivers.

In her answer to an LNP question on notice, Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Jackie Trad said it was estimated that if timetabled services were operated during the time period, without the need to pay overtime, the cost of base salary wages for train drivers and guards would total more than $5.68 million.
Microsoft executive Todd Holmdahl  the man who brought the Xbox to the world  will lead the company's quantum computing project. Credit:Red Box Pictures Reilly leads the Sydney group of Station Q, one of eight sites that Microsoft has established in pursuit of a workable quantum computer. His team focuses on the interface between quantum and classical technology. "David brings to the project an appreciation of the relationship between existing advanced electronics and future electronics," says Professor Charles Marcus from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Marcus is another of Microsoft's big hires for the project. Professors Leo Kouwenhoven (left) and Charles Marcus have been employed by Microsoft to lead the development of topological qubits for a quantum computer. Credit:Microsoft Reilly, who will stay in Sydney to work on the project, said Sydney Uni's $150 million investment to build the Sydney Nanoscience Hub has meant it is possible to do the sort of quantum research needed in Australia. The federal government provided $40 million for the building, opened in March 2016.

"Things are getting exciting," Reilly says. "We are at the stage of building here in Australia. We are ramping up and hiring." He says his team based at Sydney Uni is expecting to hire 20 quantum engineers in the next six months. Stephanie Wehner, a quantum physicist at TU Delft in the Netherlands. Credit:TU Delft The Sydney basin is emerging as a world centre in quantum technology. Alongside the Nanoscience Hub, Sydney University is also part of the Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, UNSW has its impressive quantum computing team and the University of Technology Sydney recently launched its Centre for Quantum Software and Information. Macquarie University also has a research centre for quantum science. Microsoft's move means it has now joined Google and IBM in what UNSW quantum physicist Michelle Simmons has called the "space race of the computing era". Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Professor Michelle Simmons open the extension to UNSW's quantum computing centre in 2016. Credit:Anthony Johnson

Her team is attempting to build a silicon-based quantum computer. It, too, has gained the favour of the Turnbull government, attracting $26 million in federal funding last year. There are three main technological approaches to building a quantum computer: trapped ions, superconductors and semiconductors. No one is sure which will work first, or best. Microsoft is betting on a fourth approach, and it's the strangest yet  the braiding or topological knotting of quasiparticles called majorana fermions. But more of that later. Professor Michael Biercuk at the University of Sydney. Credit:Nick Moir To develop its quantum architecture, Microsoft has appointed its project guru Todd Holmdahl, who brought the Xbox to the world. "This signals they are serious about moving from science and engineering to developing a product," Professor Reilly says. What is a quantum computer?

Quantum computers will use the very strange properties of matter at the atomic and subatomic scale to power new machines capable of computations way beyond the scope of even the fastest classical supercomputers. UNSW quantum physicist Andrew Dzurak. Credit:UNSW But they are very tricky to build. Professor Chris Monroe from the University of Maryland is one of the world's leading experimental quantum physicists. He told Fairfax Media: "Going from a PC to a quantum computer is much more radical than going from an abacus to a PC." Most scientists disagreed with The Economist's premise that quantum computing is now only an engineering problem.

What an abacus and a PC have in common is they are used to perform one calculation after the other. Using billions of transistors on a chip, modern computers can perform these linear calculations with astonishing speed but they share an essential similarity with the abacus. A quantum computer will be a different beast. Quantum bits  or qubits  aren't limited to being on or off like digital bits. Utilising the quantum principle of superposition, qubits can exist in more than one state simultaneously. Building an entangled network of such qubits will allow multiple calculations to be performed simultaneously. This will produce a completely different form of computing power, and such power will create a whole new technology that we can barely imagine. The real trick will be in getting something useful at the end of the computation, which is a problem for quantum software and the development of suitable algorithms. Jerry Chow, head of IBM's quantum computing program in New York, tells Fairfax Media: "There are many breakthroughs to come in science that will define what quantum systems look like. With quantum computing, we are at the 1940s level for regular computing."

"Think about how much additional science was necessary to get from the 1940s to the point where we are today with smartphones and laptops," he says. Professor Michael Biercuk at the University of Sydney agrees. "Quantum computers today are as large as early mainframes. It's quite sensible to start out with a concept of expert maintenance of centralised hardware coupled to user access over the cloud." IBM is taking such an approach. Last week it launched a new application interface for its cloud quantum computing service that utilises its five-qubit superconducting system. "Through the IBM Quantum Experience we have developed a community of quantum computing users. More than 40,000 users have signed up," says Chow.

Although very cool, these are little beyond the realm of demonstrations of possibility than a full-blown computational infrastructure. How long will it take to build a quantum computer? A workable quantum computer has been "about 10 years away" for the past two decades. But many think this year (or the next) could see breakthroughs towards "quantum supremacy"  where quantum machines move beyond the realm of demonstration and overtake the fastest supercomputers for trivial problem solving. Last week, The Economist went so far to say that quantum computing's "challenges are no longer scientific but have become matters of engineering". Fairfax Media spoke to more than a dozen leading quantum scientists worldwide about this and while many think the time scale for a workable computer has come down considerably, all said there was still a lot of science to be done.

Professor Raymond Laflamme from Canada's Perimeter Institute and Waterloo University's Institute for Quantum Computing says: "We are entering the era of quantum engineering but we still need the input from quantum science." Speaking last year, Microsoft's Holmdahl said: "I think we're at an inflection point in which we are ready to go from research to engineering." Stephanie Wehner from TU Delft in the Netherlands says: "I wish it was just an engineering problem. Evidently, engineering is extremely important, but there are many fundamental theoretical questions unknown." James Clarke, Intel's director of quantum hardware, says: "The next step is to use engineering to standardise quantum devices, to make thousands of them exactly the same. This will allow a more systematic scientific study of quantum physics." Google is also in on the chase, teaming with the John Martinis group at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Professor Martinis told Fairfax Media: "We certainly are spending a lot of engineering effort with our project, but to say there is still no scientific work needed is incorrect."

Although most scientists disagreed with The Economist's premise that quantum computing is now only an engineering problem, all agreed with the shared optimism in the field. "We are entering the age of actually building quantum devices that are more than just tricks and demonstrations," Monroe says. "I think right now is by far the most exciting time I have seen in the field." The search for the perfect qubit A digital bit on a classical transistor is a switch. It can be either on or off, a zero or one, up or down. Qubits are able to exist in a superposition of both potential states. There are varied materials that can be manipulated to produce qubits. Superconducting qubits allow for a current of electrons to flow in more than one direction in superposition. In solid-state semiconductors, such as phosphorus in silicon, the superposition occurs by utilising the "quantum spin" state of the qubit. In trapped-ion qubits, the quantum states of isolated individual ions are manipulated using lasers and electromagnetic fields. Microsoft is betting on something even stranger. Qubits are very susceptible to interference from radio waves and electromagnetic fields in the world around them. This causes their quantum states to "decohere".

But you can't completely isolate them because you need to control them and get an answer from your quantum computer at some stage. The approach adopted by Microsoft is driven by Marcus in Copenhagen and his close collaborator Professor Leo Kouwenhoven from TU Delft in the Netherlands. They have opted to create qubits by tying knots in particles first hypothesised in 1937. Evidence demonstrating they might exist has only recently emerged. Majorana fermions, as they are known, do not exist naturally; they must be induced at the ends of superconducting nanowires by being coupled with a semiconductor. The quantum information in these qubits is then manipulated by braiding or knotting them in two dimensions. Because these computing operations are dependent on structure, or topology, rather than charge or quantum spin, it is predicted these qubits will be very resilient to decoherence. That's the theory. The problem is that the new Microsoft team around Marcus and Kouwenhoven are yet to build such a qubit.
A tram passenger ignored a young tourist's pleas for help before she was repeatedly raped in Fitzroy by a man who had been released on bail the previous day, a court has heard.

The woman, 22, was allegedly raped repeatedly outside the St Vincent's Hospital after the stranger followed her off the tram on Thursday morning.

Jamie Macarthur, 49, had been on bail for less than 24 hours when he allegedly began talking to the woman as she waited for a tram in Melbourne's CBD in the early hours of Thursday morning, the court heard on Friday.

Police had arrested the Kensington man on Wednesday after he failed to face court on March 6 for other alleged crimes, but then released him on bail.
The political headache over the Heyfield mill is a symptom of a more profound issue facing the state: Victoria is running out of wood for logging.

The state is also running short on jobs in regional areas, especially in the Latrobe Valley.

The Premier did not know how much taxpayers were going to have to pay to subsidise the mill. Credit:Joe Armao

In attempting to juggle these competing imperatives, the Andrews government has landed in the muck in a painfully contorted position with its plan for the mill looking worse for wear.

The furious owners now say the mill will close permanently in 18 months, with the company looking at moving its high-value manufacturing operations to Tasmania, where the state government looks set to open up more forests for logging.
"We now believe that the Andrews Government has been disingenuous in saying they would do whatever they could to save the jobs at Heyfield," Mr Tilley said. The timber mill at Heyfield. Credit:Mal Fairclough "We are disgusted with the Victorian government and their failure to recognise the additional $20m the owners have put into this mill since purchasing it five years ago." "The owners will also now explore options of relocating the manufacturing plant to Tasmania." When asked about Mr Tilley's statement on Friday afternoon the Premier's office remained undettered, maintaining that the government would do everything in its power to keep the plant open and in Victoria.

Earlier, on 3AW morning radio, Mr Andrews conceded the government had not had discussions with the mill about taxpayers purchasing the mill. "There has been discussions though about other parties that are interested, and there are other commercial parties that are interested in purchasing the mill," Mr Andrews said. For months Labor has been caught between protecting jobs in its working class base and the demands of inner city voters keen to protect the environment. Earlier this year VicForests said it could only offer 80,000 cubic metres of timber this year and 60,000 each for the two following years because of dwindling supply. Industry argued that more timber is available because too much was tied up to protect the endangered Leadbeater's possum.

Some in Labor are thrilled that the Premier is willing to take an interventionist approach, because it tells voters that Labor sees protecting jobs as a critical role for government. The fact Heyfield is just 60 kilometres from the soon-to-be-closed Hazelwood plant has been another important consideration. Labor does not want sentiment to foster in the community that the government is doing nothing for workers especially at a time when One Nation's primary vote in Victoria is rising in traditional ALP seats. Mr Andrews also wants to ensure that there is enough supply for the Japanese-owned Australian Paper, which employs more than 1000 people. Under legislation introduced by the Kennett government, the state must provide the paper plant with hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of timber every year, up until 2030.

The industry seized on the decision to close as fresh proof that more needed to be done to free up Victorian forests for logging. Tim Johnston, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, said the Premier's proposal did not change the issue of a constricted timber supply, due to ongoing transfer of production forest to parks and reserves. "We are lucky enough in this state to have a world class natural resource," Mr Johnston said. "However, of the 8 million hectares of public native forest in Victoria, more than 90 per cent is unavailable through reserve protection, or unsuitable for timber harvesting." Before announcing the Heyfield bailout plan, Mr Andrews said bureaucrats had assessed Hermal's finances and found that the company was viable.

The public admission infuriated the Hermal group who said: "This may be a warning to other companies that are asked to trust the government and the bureaucracy in such a manner in future." The company also took a swipe at the previous Napthine government, in particular former Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh for not honouring a 20-year supply agreement. "We wouldn't be in this position today if Peter Walsh had completed the job he promised as minister." The Hermal group bought the business from Gunns in 2012 and say it was promised a 20 year supply agreement. But the Napthine government, and then the Andrews government, refused to sign the 20 year supply plan.

Local Nationals MP Tim Bull questioned why the state did not move to help save Hazelwood jobs as well. He also said the real reason timber was not available was due to swaths of forest being tied up to protect the Leadbeater's possum. "I wouldn't trust them to run a bath, let alone a timber mill," Mr Bull said. Loading Greens leader Greg Barber said the mill was not closing because of possum protection rather because of over logging and woodchipping.
A high school student's discovery of the bloodied body of a man in a Melbourne front yard Monday morning sparked a possible homicide investigation.

But after a post-mortem the death is no longer being treated as suspicious, police said late on Friday night.

The scene of the man's death in Mitcham on Friday. Credit:Twitter/@7NewsMelbourne

The 17-year-old student was walking to school when he found the man in the front yard of the Milne Street home in Mitcham about 7.30am.

"I saw a body lying on the ground. There was a lot of blood on his head," he told Fairfax Media.
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Two years ago, Wells Fargo donated a historic and condemnable St. Elmo home at 5316 St Elmo Ave. to local nonprofit, Widows Harvest.

For the past 24 months, Widows Harvest has worked with a team of contractors and interior designers to restore, remodel, and resuscitate this historic 2800-square foot home named Home Harvest. This gem is now ready to be placed on the market and prior to listing it, Widows Harvest will host a ribbon cutting and open house to celebrate its completion.

Proceeds from the sale of Home Harvest will be used to support and provide home repair assistance to local older, low-income widows living in Chattanoogas urban and inner city neighborhoods.

Widows Harvest staff and more than 35 partners who helped over the past two years to restore Home Harvest will be at the ribbon cutting on Saturday, March 25, from 1111:30 a.m.
Minutes after fatally striking a woman and then fleeing the scene, a drink-driver posted on Facebook that he was going to jail  and sent photos of his injuries to his friends.

On Friday the driver, Nicholas Davison, was sentenced to 11 years' in prison for killing Sydney woman Tanami Nayler, 24, in the hit-run crash in West Melbourne on July 30 last year.

Davison, 23, was driving about 152km/h in a stolen car when he ran a red light and struck Ms Nayler as she walked across a pedestrian crossing on King Street.

She was killed instantly, her body striking a traffic pole and being flung a further 10 metres before coming to a halt in the middle of another intersection.
"A concerned family approached the Post as their local newspaper about posting this advertisement, once they had undertaken research into Safe Schools in the Eastern states," an AKMA spokesperson said. "There are no further plans for publicity." Perth residents who have received the flyers have since lashed out at the organisation through social media, and called for the distribution of the flyers to stop. "I wish I'd seen who posted it! I'd have chased after them to give them a piece of my mind!" one posted. "Oh wow, free cat-litter delivered straight to my letterbox. What a public service!" another said.

Despite the backlash, AKMA have continued to stand firm on the content of the pamphlets. "Information published on the All Kids Matter leaflet can either be found within or linked to the resources of the Safe Schools Coalition and is therefore already presently accessible to students," they said. "Additional information on the leaflet relayed the lived experiences of those who have felt bullied as a result of a school-based anti-bullying program. "As parents, we hope that an anti-bullying program might bring about a decrease in bullying and a building up of respect for every child whoever they are. "When the reverse happens, and it is happening as a result of this program, then we question whether aspects of the program need to be addressed and rewritten, or merely removed."

However, in a blog post posted to the AKMA website, the organisation admitted reactions to the flyer had been mixed. "Out of all the responses we have received to our simple yellow flyer, two-fifths have been positive," they said. "One-fifth has been regular enquiries from people who had never heard of Safe Schools. "Another fifth has been negative and containing some nasty and unprintable name-calling, and the final fifth has been a barrage of sign-ups to gay porn websites, fetish clubs - all done on our behalf and without our permission." Perth advocacy groups have also raised serious concerns about the content of the flyers, calling them 'fundamentally untrue', 'misinformed' and 'fear-mongering'.

Save Safe Schools spokesman James Massey said the pamphlets contained a number of errors that needed to be corrected. "All the stuff they're claiming is a part of Safe Schools; there's one claim in there that they said Safe Schools teaches that it's possible to lose two virginities. There's nowhere in the program where that's said," Mr Massey said. "The main problem we've got with these pamphlets is that they are full of lies and misinformation... we want to help spread actual facts about the [Safe Schools] program but we're not sure we have the resources to do these sorts of large-scale letterbox drops. "There is a lot of information out there, and the Labor Government has committed to fund the program. We're just concerned if there's enough backlash from people, they might choose to scale back funding or even stop funding it." A number of claims in the pamphlets appear to be more closely related to the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program in Victoria, rather than Safe Schools. The RRRR program has previously attracted criticism due to its teachings of gender and sexuality among primary school students.

"If this kind of information continues to circulate], I'd like to see more direct engagement with Safe Schools themselves. I'd like them [AKMA] to actually read the resources on offer, why they're on offer and what their aim is," Mr Massey said. It has also been reported a number of the letter drops have been to homes near local schools, and Bayswater student Taylor* said he was shocked when he came across the pamphlet and its contents. "I honestly don't know how I would've reacted if I had have seen this flyer when I was going through the process of accepting myself," he said. "There are so many things that I could point out in this flyer that I believe are wrong... if this flyer continues to be handed out, the hate will increase, therefore leading to so many more problems for LGBTI youth than they already have to face." According the National LGBTI Health Alliance figures, Australian LGBTI young people aged 16 to 27 are five times more likely to attempt suicide in their lifetime, while transgender people are nearly 11 times more likely.

Also according to beyondblue figures, LGBTI youth living in Australia were twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders in comparison with the broader population, and are three times as likely to experience depression and related disorders. "I find it extremely ironic that the organisation spreading this flyer is named 'All Kids Matter' yet they are [promoting] not accepting such a large group of loving kids," Taylor said. "If they claim that all kids matter, then it's time they try and show it by spreading love and acceptance for once." Since the program's launch in September, 31 WA education institutions have signed up to the Safe Schools Coalition. Georgiana Molloy Anglican School, Perth Waldorf School, Presbyterian Ladies College and Sowilo Community High School are the only private institutions signed up with the program in WA.

Former Education Minister Peter Collier has previously expressed his concerns with the Safe Schools program. "There are aspects of the Safe Schools program that do show empathy and I'm not going to condemn the program itself, but there are other aspects of the program that are very, very edgy," he said. "It's once again the federal government implementing a policy without any consultation with the states whatsoever. "It is always going to end in tears. Education must be under the jurisdiction of the state governments." Loading
Guildford residents are bracing to take the fight up to McDonald's after the fast-food giant released plans to build a restaurant behind the historic Guildford Hotel, where high-rise apartments were once mooted.

Residents fought property developer Luke Martino - who has leased the pub to the Publican Group  for years over his plans to build seven-storey units behind the circa 1886 boozer, claiming the apartments would be out-of-character in the heritage precinct.

The restored Guildford Hotel.

Residents lost the battle after the-then Planning Minister John Day in late 2015, overruled the City of Swan's recommendation to put a two-storey cap on units, allowing up to five-storey apartments to be built.

Mr Martino told WAtoday the apartments were no longer viable in the current market and he was pursuing all "economic options" including assisting McDonald's with its development application to the City of Swan for the restaurant behind the pub.
Beirut: The US has denied its military bombed a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jina, in northwest Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Thursday. that warplanes had struck a mosque killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens.

However, a spokesman for the US Central Command said the US aircraft had struck a nearby building, but did not hit the mosque.

The US military said that it had carried out an airstrike against a meeting of al-Qaeda militants in Syria and that a number of the extremists had been killed.

"We did not target any mosques," said Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for the US Central Command, which has responsibility for US military missions in the Middle East. "What we did target was destroyed. There is a mosque within 50 feet of that building that is still standing."
Eskisehir: Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on his country's citizens in Europe to step up their rates of procreation and have five children each, saying a booming Turkish population would be the best answer to the European Union's "vulgarism, antagonism and injustice".

Nearly a week after a diplomatic row between erupted between the Netherlands and Turkey, Mr Erdogan continued what has become a daily ritual of mounting fresh attacks on Europe in front of cheering crowds of his conservative supporters.

Speaking in the central city of Eskisehir, Turkey's president urged "his brothers and sisters in Europe" to begin a baby boom in their new countries. "Have not just three but five children," he told his audience.

"The place in which you are living and working is now your homeland and new motherland. Stake a claim to it. Open more businesses, enrol your children in better schools, make your family live in better neighbourhoods, drive the best cars, live in the most beautiful houses."
Beijing: A senior Chinese policeman has been jailed for 17 years for embezzling money to buy two Australian homes for his two daughters.

The Australian real estate purchases were among a huge property portfolio, with no obvious legitimate source of funding, Chinese prosecutors said.

Jailed: Wang Jun Ren police chief of Guta District of Jinzhou City.

One of the homes is a four bedroom, two bathroom house in Revesby Heights in NSW, Australian property records show.

Wang Jun Ren, 59, was the police chief of Guta District of Jinzhou City in Liaoning province, when he began asking a local property developer for millions of Chinese yuan to pay for the Australian real estate purchases for his family.
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Bristol is facing a Spice epidemic after it was claimed up to 80 per cent of the citys homeless are hooked on the drug.

The synthetic drug was originally developed as a 'legal high' and intended to have a similar effect to cannabis.

It was outlawed as a Class B substance last year and possession carries a maximum jail term of five years.

But that has not been enough to prevent Spice from becoming the drug of choice in Bristol, where it is available to buy within minutes for as little as 10.

Jasper Thompson, founder of volunteer group Help Bristols Homeless, hands out food and clothes every Sunday in St James Park and said he had noticed an increase in Spice usage.

Its an epidemic caused by people who dont know how to help the homeless, he said.

People will see someone begging in the street and will give them money. Theyll think oh, you poor thing and chuck them a pound and feel good about it.

But begging is the problem. Half of the homeless people who beg in the street are liars. They dont need your money to buy food  they need it to fund their addictions.

The 58-year-old warned members of the public to avoid handing homeless people money and instead buy them a cup of tea or snack.

His comments come just days after Bristol was named as one of the cities worst affected by spice use, behind the Spice capital of the UK, Blackpool.

Last year one man died and three others had to be taken to hospital after taking Spice in St James Park in the city centre.

The three other men, who fell ill at two separate locations, were taken to hospital and have since been discharged following treatment.

A week later another man died after taking the drug.

Spice was also responsible for a spike in call-outs of ambulances to Bristol Prison after inmates suffered seizures and chest pains after taking it.

Chris Marshall, who became addicted to the drug while at Bristol Prison, said it was so rife in the city, he could buy it within 40 seconds.

The 41-year-old rough sleeper told the Daily Mirror that up to 80 per cent of the citys homeless use the drug, which can cause seizures, blackouts and  in some cases  death.

Pull out a tenner and I will get you a bag in 40 seconds, he claimed.

Once youre on it, it is so hard to get off. It is as strong as heroin and the withdrawals are terrible. You sweat, shake and your anxiety goes through the roof.

When you cant get it youre like a zombie. They go out begging or busking or crime happens.

Ive seen people pull out great big knives saying, I want my f***ing Spice, whos got it? Theyre like zombies foaming at the mouth. Its an evil drug.

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A disabled woman and her husband say they have been banned from every Waitrose in the country 'unfairly'.

David and Jeannette Barnes say they went into the upmarket store in Weston-super-Mare to retrieve their pickup and collect items.

At the desk they encountered a shop assistant who refused to accept their blue badge as formal identification.

Following a lengthy discussion it is claimed she finally handed over their goods.

Mrs Barnes, who suffers from mental and physical health issues, then complained to a security guard and manager about her treatment.

(Image: Nigel Talby)

The couple allege neither took their complaint seriously. Later that day Mrs Barnes went home and called the police who said they would investigate.

The Avon and Somerset officer was then told by staff that the couple were banned from all stores because of threatening behaviour.

Mr Barnes said he could not believe the decision because no swear words or raised voices were used throughout the debate.

And to make matters worse, since being banned the couple have been bombarded with leaflets and mail about promotions at the store.

Mr Barnes said: We have been to the store hundreds of times before and never had a problem picking up our items.

We were irritated but no swear words were used.

"My wife went over to the manager and security guard and started telling them all about her life history. She suffers from a few different mental health problems and tends to do that with new people."

The 52-year-old added: It was all a misunderstanding really and it was very unfair they decided to ban us.

"But we were prepared to go along with the ban, but they kept sending us letters and leaflets promoting their store which was really unacceptable given they wouldnt let us into any of their shops across the country.

A Waitrose spokesman said Mrs Barnes mental health issues were not unknown to the company when she was banned.

He said: We want our customers to feel welcome, but after a series of incidents of threatening language and behaviour towards our staff, we felt we took the only steps we could to prevent this from continuing. This is not something we took lightly.

"If Mr Barnes would feel comfortable doing so we would welcome the opportunity to meet with him to better understand how we can help Mrs Barnes should she wish to visit the shop again in the future."
The Catoosa County Republican Party will hold its 2017 Precinct Mass Meeting and County Convention Saturday at the Lakeview Voting Precinct, 452 Hudson St. in Rossville."The Lakeview Precinct is located behind Lakeview Middle School. Make sure to enter the address listed above into your GPS. Do not Google Lakeview precinct without checking the address, as it may actually direct you to the Westside precinct on Lakeview Drive," officials said.Doors open at 8 a.m., and the precinct mass meeting begins promptly at 9 a.m.Anyone wishing to take part in the meeting and the County Convention must arrive by 9 a.m. There are absolutely no exceptions, officials said. The County Convention will follow the mass precinct meeting at 10 a.m. Only those who are present at the precinct mass meeting are eligible to be delegates to the County Convention.Participants must be at least 18 years of age, a resident of Catoosa County, and registered to vote in Georgia. There is a registration fee of $5 at the door. Bring a Georgia state-issued photo ID."We will conduct the business of electing executive officers, as well as electing delegates and alternates to the district and state conventions. We will also vote on party rules, platform, and resolutions," officials said.
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A father-of-two from Bristol convicted of attempting to have sexual relationships with two children and their parents has been jailed for four years.

Laurence Knight was found guilty of attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence between February and March last year.

The 50-year-old, who worked at Public Health England, talked about having sex with a Kent couple and their two daughters.

But Baz and Michelle and their daughters Tia and Aimee, from Dartford, were in fact undercover police, Bristol Crown Court heard.

The Recorder of Bristol His Honour Judge Peter Blair QC told him: "There was an arrangement being made by you to meet up with that couple and groom the two children with a view to sexual activity which ultimately would have been penetrative.

"The court needs to impose a sentence which deters others from engaging in this sort of activity and make people realise that very serious punishment will follow if they start to facilitate the commission of child sex offences."

Knight was made the subject of a 10 year sexual harm prevention order excluding him from living with under 16 year olds without the authority of parents.

He was also prohibited from contacting youngsters online.

He was told to register as a sex offender indefinitely and was barred from working with young people.

Kate Brunner QC defending, said her client was working to address his problems and was remorseful for the harm done.

She said that while in custody he had been subjected to extreme violence which included the near severing of his earlobe which had to be stitched back on.

Robert Davies, prosecuting, told the jury: "Mr Knight, at the time, was living an outwardly respectable life in Bristol and had a very good job with Public Health England.

"However, he had a secret sexual interest in teenage and pre-teenage girls and incest and he followed up a contact he saw on a photo sharing website.

"He arranged to meet with them in Dartford with a view to their girls aged eight and 10 being seriously sexually abused by the three of them."

Knight, of Muller Road, was arrested five days before the proposed meeting because police were concerned he was planning to babysit another girl alone that evening.

He had talked about touching her and being sexually aroused by her

The jury was given a transcript of Knight's email contact with Baz about his girls, in which Knight asked him: "Have you licked them while they sleep?

"I had a gorgeous girl sleep over recently. Had some Dutch courage so let my hands wander as she slept. Carefully but lovely."

Knight had always insisted the emails were 'pure fantasy' and he never intended to meet the family.

But the prosecution presented evidence he had researched train times to their home, as well as searching the family by name online.

An NSPCC spokesperson for South West England said: This was a shocking case in which Knight deliberately set out to find vulnerable young victims online, and then began to make arrangements to meet them and carry out his depraved fantasies.

The hard work of the police helped to expose him as a dangerous predator and now that he has been brought to justice, other children have potentially been protected from his incomprehensible behaviour.

For tips on keeping children safe online, visit www.net-aware.org.uk or www.internetmatters.org.

Anyone with concerns for the welfare of a child can call the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 800 5000.
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As food challenges grow in popularity, they also grow in size. How else are restaurants supposed to keep up with so-called professional eaters when they come knocking?

In Bristol, we have our fair share of mammoth food challenges. From monster burgers, to 72oz steaks, those looking to enjoy some serious eating dont have to look too far.

One of Bristols food challenges has been attracting quite a lot of attention, so much so, that a professional eater is flying over from Romania to take it on.

Above Fowlers Motorcycles on Bath Road is Harrys Cafe. A traditional place for people who love a good fry up.

Back in 2013, they launched their breakfast challenge, and they really didnt hold back.

To complete Harrys Cafes breakfast challenge, you will need to demolish 6 sausages, 6 bacon rashers, 6 eggs, 6 black puddings, 6 hash browns, 4 bread and butter, 4 toast and butter, 4 fried bread, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, chips oh -and a cup of tea.

You have just an hour to do so.

Unsurprisingly, not many Bristolians have managed it. But now the professionals are coming.

Radim Dvoracek aka 'Steel-Rod', from the Czech Republic, is a professional eater who eats his way around the globe, filming it all as he goes for his Youtube channel.

He will be coming to Bristol on Sunday to take on the challenge at Harrys Cafe. Spectators will gather from 2pm to watch the expert at work.
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Labour and Green Party voters should back Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams for the West of England Mayor in order to have a shot at beating the Tories, says Tim Farron.

The Lib Dem leader, speaking to the Bristol Post in Parliament, said only his party could challenge the Conservatives to become West of England Mayor, claiming Labour to be "beyond fixable" under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Stephen Williams, the former MP for Bristol West and also an ex-city councillor, is the Lib Dem nominee for the Metro Mayor election, which takes place on Thursday May 4.

Mr Farron believes that his former parliamentary colleague's experience, both locally and nationally over the last 24 years, along with the party's anti-Brexit stance , could see them cause an upset to mirror their shock by-election win in Richmond last year.

While some of the more rural areas in the West of England combined authority, such as parts of North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire, voted to leave the European Union, the cities of Bristol and Bath voted by more than 60 per cent to remain.

Mr Farron believes those remain voters could be persuaded to take a punt on the Lib Dems - but he said liberal and left-leaning voters must back his man if a "progressive" party is to stand any chance of defeating the Tories.

The mayoral election will be conducted using the same system as at the Bristol city mayoral election, with voters able to choose a first and second preference. The two candidates with the highest first preference votes will enter into a run-off.

"My sense is that it will actually be a battle between Stephen and the Conservatives because of the areas outside of Bristol," said Mr Farron.

"We're in a position where, if Stephen is in the top two because of the preferential voting system, then he has got a great chance of winning. But we need Green and Labour people to decide to back Stephen."

Asked whether that meant he was asking Labour and Green voters to put Mr Williams down as their second choice, Mr Farron replied: "Well actually, I'd say put us as your first choice to make sure there's no question about us being in the final analysis here.

"I think it is unlikely that anybody else will have a chance of beating the Conservative candidate."

The Lib Dems' biggest selling point during the Richmond by-election - a seat which voted with a clear majority to remain in the EU - was its anti-Brexit stance.

In a pro-remain city like Bristol, that position has proved attractive already, with the Lib Dem membership in the city doubling to a 1,000 members since the European referendum.

If they win the West of England contest in May, Mr Farron said his party would be looking for the region to keep as close ties with the EU as possible.

"This is a great opportunity," said the Westmorland and Lonsdale MP, speaking on the eve of the party's spring conference.

"Whoever is the mayor of these important city regions is going to fight their corner, not just in Westminster and Whitehall but in Brussels as well.

"If the Government takes us down the hard Brexit route, you need to create separate relationships - as Sadiq Khan has done in London.



"The Liberal Democrats are clearly the party who believe Britain should be in Europe and that Bristol and the greater western region should be in Europe. Having us as the mayor in that region gives us, not just the likelihood that we could do it, but the desire to do it."

When Mr Williams' selection was confirmed last month, bookies Ladbrokes made him odds-on favourite to win the contest, ahead of Tory candidate Tim Bowles .

But one Government minister who knows the region well, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Tories in fact felt their chances were boosted by the ex-MP's candidacy due to the "baggage" of his past connections with the Coalition Government.

Mr Williams was Communities Minister after 2013 and, although he abstained on the tuition fees vote, he was punished for his part in the five years of Tory-Liberal rule by being ousted by Bristol West voters during the 2015 general election.

He ended up coming third, behind both Labour and the Greens, despite defending a majority of more than 11,000.

Mr Farron said he felt voters looked differently on the Lib Dems' time in government since that national vote.

"The fact that Stephen has the experience of being in Government clearly makes him suitable to be mayor," said the party leader, who took the helm in July 2015.



"I think the last two years of the Conservatives in power have kind of made even our harshest critics think, 'Oh yeah, I do see what you did now'.



"It is terrible that it took the defeat in 2015 for people to then understand what we were doing, but then that's life I guess.

"Now it is very obvious what Stephen was doing - he was stopping the benefits cuts, he was stopping the changes in Universal Credit, he was stopping the calamitous mess we have got ourselves into now with Brexit, and he was making sure we were - and all independent observers acknowledge this now - the greenest ever government for those five years.



"Stephen was a key element in doing all those good things and stopping all those bad things."

Most of the major parties are contesting the metro mayor election, with parish councillor and Southmead hospital worker Lesley Mansell standing for Labour, Mr Bowles, a South Gloucestershire councillor, is representing the Tories and Darren Hall , who beat Mr Williams' into second in Bristol West almost two years ago, fighting for the Greens.

Independent candidate Dr John Savage , a businessman and hospital leader, has also announced he will be standing.
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Egg-cept the challenge!

Ensure yourself a year that goes over easy by setting an egg on its end at the Spring Equinox Egg Balancing Celebration at Grand Army Plaza on March 20. The 42nd annual event, organized by urban shaman Donna Henes, also known as Mama Donna, is part of a ritual to welcome warmer weather and longer days.

Were welcoming in spring, we always start with an invocation and a blessing of the earth, said Henes, who lives in Prospect Heights. And its an old Chinese custom that if you stand an egg on the first day of spring youll have good luck on the rest of the year,

On the first day of spring, also known as the spring equinox, the day and night are of exactly equal length, and so a sense of balance descends on the planet, said Henes, which may help the round chicken incubators to stand.

It is a day of balance, and so I think maybe that has something to do with it, she said.

And so each spring equinox, New Yorks Unofficial Commissioner of Public Spirit celebrates the way the world turns by hosting an eggstravagant egg-standing ceremony for families and kids. Henes brings 360 raw eggs from her local Food Town, and no one is allowed to leave before their egg stands up on its own, she said.

We always make it our business to stand all 360 eggs up, she said.

The moment when the egg settles upright is magical, said Henes.

Its quite amazing because when you are trying to balance the eggs  raw regular eggs on the pavement  youre holding and tipping it this way and that way, and theres this moment of balance almost like you can feel it click, and when you remove your hand the egg stands up by itself, she said.

Because the spring equinox only happens once each year, Henes has to put all her eggs in one basket, and the event happens regardless of the weather. Past crowds have turned out in rain, snow, and gloom of night, said Henes.

Two years ago it was an absolute blizzard and people came, stood up their eggs in the snow, she said. It was fantastic.

When the event is over, the 30-dozen eggs do not go to waste  Henes donates them to a nearby soup kitchen, where they get cooked up into omelettes and served, she said.

Henes has hosted the event for decades, but this years political turmoil has people yearning for signs of hope, and makes the upcoming celebration a little more meaningful, she said.

These times are really trying for a lot of people, the whole political atmosphere, its been a hard time for a lot of people and so something as uplifting as this certainly underscores that hope, she said. The sun is still working, and we are still on this planet and things are okay. Its a very optimistic kind of holiday.

42nd Annual Spring Equinox Egg Balancing Celebration at the Bailey Fountain at Grand Army Plaza [Flatbush Avenue at Eastern Parkway in Prospect Heights]. March 20 at 6 am. Free.
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They hope its the birth of something great.

The Birthing Center of New York celebrated its grand opening on Third Avenue with a ribbon cutting ceremony on March 10. The childbirth facility is intended for low-risk pregnancies and aims to provide a calm, homey environment without sacrificing the quality of care, said the centers founder.

Were trying to be one step away from a living room and three steps away from a hospital, said Bay Rigite Dr. Lisa Eng, an obstetrician-gynecologist. I felt the need to provide women a choice outside of the hospital. But were still, of course, going to practice good-faith, evidence-based medicine.

Wedged between Senator and 67th streets, the Department of Health-approved facility has four delivery rooms, each tricked out with a sofa, a television, and a shower. Instead of a sterile white, each room is a soothing pastel color, with paintings of Disney characters and Chinese art.

Expecting mothers must meet with a financial officer, tour the facility, and have prenatal care before giving birth at the center, according to Eng. Staff members speak Spanish and Chinese, and the Eng hopes to include Arabic-speaking doctors in the near future.

Doctors and nurses will help deliver the newborns, but if there are complications, the center has an arrangement with the Midwood Ambulance Service to transport patients to Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park.

The Bay Ridge facility is one of only two independent birthing centers in the borough  the Brooklyn Birthing Center in Midwood is the other. And with a spate of recent hospital closures, the center serves a vital need, said Eng.

The choices in the area are dwindling  Long Island College and Victory Memorial hospitals recently closed  and so there is an over-burdening at other hospitals like Maimonides. Our center is another option and offers a safe, comfortable environment for women to have their babies.
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Forget rooftop pools and heated dog runs  Brooklyns hottest new luxury building feature is a famous neighbor!

Developer Two Trees is paying a celebrity resident of its ritzy new Fort Greene high-rise to tweet about how great living there is  and is marketing her presence in the building as an amenity for other residents.

Fashion blogger and actress Tavi Gevinson is raking in an undisclosed sum to write glowing posts about the builders new tower at Flatbush and Lafayette avenues  now called 300 Ashland, but formerly and better known as BAM South.

Tonight I spent a long time admiring/trying to understand this 3D CLOUD-SLASH-MIRROR in my new lobby #adamfrankinc #300AshlandPartner, wrote Gevinson  the former wunderkind behind teen web-zine Rookie and now Broadway star  on March 13, joining photos documenting her move-in to the building, and her delight at living next door to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The ad-tweets were first reported by New York Magazine.

Now, the developer plans on moving in additional famous residents  and the stars will be hosting special experiences in the property for their less-well-known neighbors.

We think its an exciting addition to our marketing efforts and a terrific amenity for tenants, the company said in a statement. Stay tuned for more great names and content.

Gevinson pays rent to Two Trees, company spokesman Joshua Berkman claims  and units in the building currently run from $2,416 a month for a studio to $5,479 for a two-bedroom  but the firm also pays her for the sponsored posts, and it isnt clear on which dollar figure is higher.

He also refused to say how she ended up living and tweeting in the building  if she was invited to move in, or if the company is just taking advantage of a famous tenant.

People who are paid to shill on social media are supposed to make it clear and conspicuous when their posts are ads, according to the Federal Trade Commission  which advises starting a missive with sponsored, promotion, or ad  and consumer advocacy group Truth in Advertising told the blog Jezebel that #300AshlandPartner may not be sufficient warning.

Two Trees believes theyre clearly ads, according to Berkman, although he says Gevinson is the one penning the posts.

Celebrities are hardly the buildings only selling point  the tower will also house a new Brooklyn Academy of Music cinema, an Apple store, a Whole Foods, a public library branch, and a new home for Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.

But competition is fierce in the neighborhood, and Two Trees is vying to win moneyed tenants against several other new luxury high-rises nearby, including the Ashland next door, which has its own fancy food court, and The Hub across the road, which will have a huge indoor pool.

Gevinson could not be reached  by phone, e-mail or tweet  for comment.

Reach deputy editor Ruth Brown at rbrow n@cng local.com or by calling (718) 2608309. Follow her at twitt er.com/ rbbro wn.
The Kiplinger Letter, a weekly publication for executives and investors, has listed Cleveland among 11 United States cities they forecast to power ahead, outpacing the US average for job creation as employers look for places with skilled workers and lower living costs.



Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland said the Washington, DC publication placed the city among the fastest growing cities in the US this year ,placing it number three in a list of eleven cities.



It cited Cleveland as home to a wide range of manufacturing operations. Mayor Rowland said once again, Im not surprised with this good news. We get so many reports that indicate our business climate and economy is good. It confirms even more that Cleveland is not only a great place to live, but a tremendous place to do business and to invest.

The Kiplinger Letter focuses its reports weekly on economy, finance, real estate, health and budget issues, giving an overview from a national prospective.



Cleveland was cited for its industrial diversity. Mayor Rowland said as the sixth largest in manufacturing employment in the state, we are home to 14 Fortune 500 companies and four Fortune 1000 companies. Not only do we have new industries looking at our area for investment, we can be proud of the fact that since 2009, existing and new industry has invested over $3.3 billion in our city and county. I have found that potential businesses and visitors are often amazed when I relay the many national brand items manufactured right here in this community.



He noted that in 2015 Cleveland/Bradley County added more jobs than any other city in the United States.



The Mayor had praise for the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce that focuses daily on promoting our area for business and industry investors, but also works hand in hand with our existing industries to assure our city and county meet their needs for growth and expansions. We have a great Chamber team on board and thats one of the reasons we are being recognized by organizations and publications across the country.



Mayor Rowland pointed to the Chambers new initiative for workforce development called Your Skills, Your Future, as a great example of how the organization helps us prepare for the future. "Through this new program, the entire region will be assured to have an educated, qualified, skilled workforce in place to meet the current and future industry demands, he said.



Other cities spotlighted in The Kiplinger Letter and the reasons for selection included the following: St. George, Ut., citing its tourism and climate; Redmond, Or., noting its attraction for retirees and tourism; Prescott, Az., cooler climate compared to Phoenix; Savannah, Ga., fourth busiest ocean port in the U.S.; Reno and Sparks, Nv., tourism; Athens, Ga., with University of Georgia and its business development hub; College Station and Bryan Tx., with rising enrollment at Texas A&M University; Salem, Or., its industrial base; Boise, Id., citing its low real estate costs, healthcare, construction, and manufacturing surge; and Spokane, Wa., with its rise in hiring in transportation and healthcare industries.



The Mayor said in the Kiplinger list he noticed that tourism was a major factor in some of the cities recognition. He noted Cleveland and Bradley County have a booming tourism industry as well, and its economic impact and generation of dollars into our economy also contributes to our growth and notoriety.



He said the state recorded that guests spent a total of $137.23 million in Bradley County in one year (2015). This was an increase of 3.4 percent over 2014. "The year recorded a total of 900 workers employed in tourism-related fields in our community. Our general area in Cleveland, Charleston, and Bradley County, alongside our neighbors in the Ocoee Region, offers a variety of outdoor activities, special public events, and historic sites. This, coupled with our diverse industrial base, makes us a well-rounded city and makes me proud to see recognition come to us from publications such as this most recent report, he said.
Was there a murder 100 years ago at Yardley's Continental Tavern?

Frank Lyons began excavating the basement of the Continental Tavern in Yardley. He found a gun, bloody corset and part of a woman's purse.
Permanent Record and the Shaking Ray Levi Society will present Permanent Record Drum Night on Thursday, March 30, at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free but there is a $10 suggested donation. The event will be held at Wayne-O-Rama at 1800 Rossville Ave., #108.

This will be a multi-media spotlight on percussionist Joshua C. Greens yearlong daily drum sample project, Permanent Record.

Special guests will be Carl Cadwell (DJ) from Summer Dregs, Matt Skudlarek (drums) and Weave: A Conceptual Dance Company.

Review for Joshua C. Green:

With 25 years of percussion experience, Joshua C. Green has become one of Chattanooga's most celebrated and versatile drummers and can be heard with artists including Infradig, The Distribution, Josh Garrels and Summer Dregs. His latest project Permanent Record is his personal sonic evolution: utilizing many, many different drumsets, percussion items, and found objects, a new drum loop and accompanying fills will be released every day for one year. Each will be free for download for three days, then archived for sale at the Permanent Record website.

This night of drumming chicanery will feature: a short film about Permanent Record made by Kelly Lacy of Make Beautiful; monstrous drum jam featuring Green, Carl Cadwell (DJ) and Matt Skudlarek (drums) with visual projection; live sample pack recording session and explanation of process; improvisational drumming piece with dancers from WEAVE: A Conceptual Dance Company with visual projection and a Q/A session.

For more information visit the Facebook event page.
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...
Americas Next Top Model fans are about to get a little bit of the old show in the VH1 reboot. VH1 has announced that the revival of the series will continue for another season. There is a special bit of exciting news for the upcoming cycle 24 though. Tyra Banks will be back as host replacing current host Rita Ora.

Tyra, who was recently announced as Nick Cannons replacement on Americas Got Talent, will take back hosting duties on the modeling show and continue to serve as executive producer. Tyras fellow executive producer, Ken Mok, said in the press release, Tyra has always been the heart and soul of the franchise and her absence was deeply felt by our fiercely loyal fans who missed their Queen of the Smize. Wed like to thank Rita Ora for being a great partner and total pro. She infused this new iteration of ANTM with passion and creativity and we wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors.

With Tyras full-time return Rita Ora is not only out as host but a panelist. It is unclear if Americas Next Top Model cycle 24 will wipe the slate completely clean when comes to the panel of judges or if Tyra is the only significant replacement. The full panel is set to be revealed at a later date.





Did India Deserve to Win Americas Next Top Model Cycle 23?>>>

In her own statement, Tyra said it was the fans support that made her decide to return. Im overwhelmed and humbled by the intensity of the ANTM fan base whose deep affection for the show led me to have a change of heart, she said. After giving it a lot of thought, I realized that remaining behind the camera wasnt enough because ANTM is woven into my DNA.

Production for ANTM cycle 24 will begin this summer with a premiere date to follow later but it will probably be around the same winter and fall time frame that cycle 23 launched on VH1.

What do you think of Tyra replacing Rita? Is this the right call? Should the entire panel for the original series be brought back? Did Rita and her panel bring some exciting to the show or did you miss Tyra?

Want more news? Like our Facebook page!





(Image courtesy of The CW)
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Morning Pointe of Chattanooga at Shallowford residents brought cheer to local women and children one bead and stitch at at time. The seniors at the assisted living community crafted 30 beautiful bracelets and more than a dozen handmade blankets for the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults -- a Chattanooga-based nonprofit that provides crisis intervention, professional counseling and prevention services to local families in need.



"Our residents wanted to do something special to offer comfort and express their love and support," says Holly Holcomb, life enrichment director at Morning Pointe. "They always look forward to using their talents in thoughtful ways to brightening others' day."



Morning Pointe Senior Livings communities across the Chattanooga area also raised $3,000 for Partnership's elder food pantry that serves seniors living with food insecurity.

But this act of kindness is nothing new for the assisted living community, as the residents inspired a yearlong community service campaign called "Make Your Mark." The seniors, associates, volunteers and family members, along with partners and nonprofits, come together to help parent company Morning Pointe Senior Living reach its goal of 20,000 hours of volunteerism in 2017.
Election Day in New Jersey: Who's running for the House, how to vote

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Do you "like"? Do you "tweet"? Do you tube? Does your business do any or all of these things and, if so, does it really ...
Tekelia C. Kelly, a STEAM Teaching Artist with the Tennessee Arts Commission, has been selected to attend the 2017 Tennessee Arts Academy in July. The Tennessee Arts Academy is the nation's premier professional development institute for arts education. A program of the Tennessee Department of Education, the Academy has been held annually since 1987 on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Arts Academy trains over 300 K12 teachers and administrators every summer, who in turn impact over 150,000 Tennessee students each year in their individual school districts and classrooms all across the state.

Anticipating this years Academy, Tekelia Kelly--a teacher of STEM and Arts-integrated programming says, I am happy to be accepted into the Academy! As a STEAM Teaching Artist it brings the opportunity to learn and discover creative new ways to integrate singing and storytelling into my teaching, and enrich the education of students.





This year the Academys expert faculty will teach a diverse range of classes in music, theater and visual art as well as special classes in arts leadership, administration and

assessment. Highlights of the week include live performances, a daily keynote address

presented by well-known artists and educators, and multiple art exhibitions. Many of the

events are free and open to the public. The Academy begins on July 9 and concludes on July 14. Call 615- 460-5451 or visit tennesseeartsacademy.org for more information.
Buoyed by orders from entities in this country, European aircraft maker is opening a pilot training centre here. Work on this was inaugurated on Friday at a site which is part of the international airport; it will be operational by the end of 2018.
Not every promoter chief is a strong brand ambassador for the company. But 43-year-old Siddhartha Lal is an unconventional CEO and synonymous with the product that has made the company what it is. Siddhartha is Eichers biggest asset, says R L Ravichandran, former CEO of .
InterGlobe Aviation, the company that operates IndiGo, Indias most profitable airline, has redefined aviation in the country. The airline, which started operations in 2006, has become the largest in the country and has proved that it is possible to consistently make profits in the highly competitive domestic aviation industry.
European consumer protection authorities will ask social media Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc to amend their terms of service within one month or possibly face fines, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The proposed some ways to resolve the issues and discussed them with the authorities on Thursday, the person said, adding that the meeting was constructive. The source was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

U.S. technology have faced tight scrutiny in Europe for the way they do business, from privacy to how quickly they remove illegal or hateful content.

The authorities sent letters to the companies in December saying that some of service terms broke European Union consumer protection law and that they needed to do more to tackle fraud and scams on their websites.

According to the letters seen by Reuters, some of those terms include requiring users to seek redress in court in California, where the companies are based, instead of their country of residence.

Other issues include not identifying sponsored content clearly, requiring consumers to waive mandatory rights such as the right to cancel a contract, and an excessive power for the companies to determine the suitability of content generated by users, according to the letters.

In the case of Alphabet's Google unit, the concerns were about its social network Google+.

Google and Facebook were not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment.

The authorities are being supported by the European Commission and could impose fines if they are not satisfied.

The authorities also proposed setting up a standard communication channel to notify the companies of content deemed illegal and the action requested, according to the letters.
Hannah Davis, owner of Body. By Hannah personal training studio in downtown Cleveland, will be hosting a free girls night out movie premier event on March 27 at 7:30 p.m. The location will be at the Lee University Communications Building, Room CAB114.

A talkback and small reception will follow. To reserve free tickets, please visit BodyByHannah.com or call 252.258-7778.

Body image activist Taryn Brumfitt released her first feature film Embrace, which she wrote, produced and directed after an unconventional before and after photo she posted in 2013 was seen over 100 million times and sparked an international media frenzy.

Embrace is told from the point of view of Ms. Brumfitt as she traverses the globe talking to experts, women in the street and well-known personalities about the body image issues that are seen in people of all body types. She interviews Ricki Lake, Mia Freedman, Amanda de Cadenet, Nora Tschirner, Jeffrey Madoff and more.

Ms. Brumfitt said, I felt really compelled to make the film because so many people had reached out to me. When I read those 7,000 emails it wasnt just females from 35 to 45 years of age that wrote to me it was people from all walks of life sharing their stories of body image issues. This isnt a fluffy, body image piece that gets tacked on to the end of a news segment, this is an issue thats affecting millions of people every single day.
Japanese automaker Honda on Thursday entered the fast growing compact SUV segment with the launch of the WR-V at Rs 7.75 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for petrol variant. The sub-four-metre WR-V will compete with Ford EcoSport, Maruti Suzuki Brezza and Hyundai Creta, among others.
has renewed its interest in Indian information technology talent. The country, struggling with a shortage of labour for emerging areas, is now looking to India for hiring software engineers on mobile, cloud and machine learning technologies.
Name change for ITC has been a part of its metamorphosis. Till 1948, it was Imperial Tobacco Company. In 1969, the company got its first Indian chairman, Ajit Narain Haksar, and the Imperial in the companys name became India and in 1974, it became plain ITC. But for the companys longest-serving chairman, Yogesh Chander Deveshwar, ITC means Indias Trademarks Corporation.
Atif Azim is an accidental entrepreneur. After his undergraduate at Imperial College, London, he was accepted for a masters in computer science at Stanford, which he gleefully accepted.
Sandeep Aggarwal was quick to delete the Facebook posts in which he accused his wife, Radhika, of various things, of which the relevant one is that she blocked him out of ShopClues, the e-commerce marketplace they built together. The rest should never really have been a part of public discussion.

It was one of those weak moments when I ended up using a public platform to vent out, says Sandeep. He may not have heard the modern aphorism: dance like no one is watching, email like one day it may be read aloud in a deposition.

Imagine, then, how far a Facebook post can travel. And Aggarwal made two, whose screenshots would be ensconced on the hard drives of journalists covering startups. It was out of character for a person whose default response to a problem, honed during a decade of being a Wall Street analyst, is to open a spreadsheet and look at data.

Of all the tremors to rock the startup world of late  Snapdeals layoffs, Stayzillas shutting down, Flipkarts frequent devaluations  nothing will match the rumble at for poignancy. For this is a story where the personal stakes are as high as the business interests and involves children: Radhika and Sandeeps two sons, aged 13 and seven.

Sure, is valued at more than a billion dollars, mostly because it has tried to carve a special place for itself among the e-commerce marketplaces. Its unofficial self-description is digital Karol Bagh, after the middle-class shopping haven in West Delhi. That involved getting a huge number of small traders on its network, and may have insulated the company from the fate that has befallen those that mirror Amazon.

No wonder, then, the board moved swiftly to protect it from the battle that Sandeep, who claims to be the only genuine founder of the company, is waging against Radhika, who has chosen to keep a dignified silence. And those who have known the couple are dazed at the turn of events.

Radhika was 19 when she met Sandeep, a couple of years her senior, at a college in Indore. Until recently, he used to joke that he has known Radhika longer than her parents have. Radhika is tall and has the crisp, refined manner of an army child who has gone to a bunch of convent schools. Sandeep, of medium height and build, is a wizard with numbers, which pepper his rapid-fire speech.

Growing up, Radhika was sure she will not marry someone from the armed forces; she had moved enough cities already. She wanted to settle down in one place and live there.

She got half of her wish. She did not marry an army man, but the one she did marry moved countries within a year of their wedding. And they kept moving cities every two years, until they came back to India in 2011 to set up ShopClues and live in Gurugram. This was to be the settled life Radhika yearned for.

They raised $4 million in Series A funding in March 2012, when Nexus Venture came in as an early investor. They raised another round, Series B, of $5 million in early 2013, when Helion came in and Nexus made a pro rata investment to preserve its equity percentage.

Then Sandeep got arrested by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in San Jose, California, on charges of insider trading. He was later released on bail and came back to set up Droom, an online marketplace for cars and two-wheelers.

Meanwhile, Radhika and Sanjay Sethi, who became the CEO after Sandeep stepped down, took ShopClues from strength to strength. Everyone thought Sandeep and Radhika would be the unique couple to have two highly valued startups in the family. Few had an inkling they had been drifting apart for a while.

They will no doubt be able to tide over this crisis. All the three protagonists here are over 40 and seasoned pros. The business may also be able to get over it. The board, led by its main investors  Nexus, Helion, and Tiger Global  has put its faith in Radhika and Sanjay. Noting that ShopClues has grown 30 times, the board said: It is very disappointing to see an ex-founder, who disassociated from the company for his criminal wrongdoings, is now engaged in a personal vendetta on a public forum.



Now someone needs to speak up for protecting the children.
Nokia's head of mobile networks, the division which accounted for more than half of Finnish telecom network equipment maker's sales last year, is leaving the company.

said on Friday it would break out services as a distinct business group from mobile networks following the departure of Samih Elhage, who joined the company in 2012 and helped to turn around its network business at a time when it was a troubled joint venture with Siemens.

Services were growing in importance because of the weak global outlook, said. The global networks market is expected to fall this year as telecom operators' demand for faster 4G mobile broadband equipment has peaked, and upgrades to next-generation 5G equipment are still years away.

"He has been a close friend and advisor... I fully support his desire for a change," chief executive Rajeev Suri said in a statement detailing Elhage's departure and the changes.

These involve Marc Rouanne, currently Chief Innovation and Operating Officer, becoming head of the mobile networks products business while another Nokia veteran Igor Leprince will take over the new service organisation.
Becoming one of the few Indian start-ups to make a global entry, online mobile wallet major said on Thursday that it had launched a bill payments service in Canada.
Its official now that South Korean steel major has scrapped the plan to set up a 12-million tonne (mt) steel mill in Paradip, Odisha. It has written to the state government that it wants to surrender the land allotted for the project.
After an Australian delegation visited the Adani Group headquarters here in Ahmedabad on Thursday, urging the Group to drop their the Carmichael coal mine project near the Great Barrier Reef, the Premier of Queensland today reaffirmed the government's commitment to the $16.5 billion project.

Adani said in a statement that the group hosted a high level delegation led by Annastacia Palaszczuk, Premier of Queensland, Australia at Mundra Port on Friday who reaffirmed Queensland government's commitment to the $16.5 billion Carmichael mine project.
The power sector is undergoing major changes, with state-owned distribution companies undergoing restructuring, the demand for power falling to historic lows, fuel supply touching new highs and industrial growth at a standstill. Amidst this gloom, the public sector has held its own with robust returns and consistent performance.
Baylor senior Fanjun Frank Bu is first author of A Student View of Experimental Physics, an article published in the March issue of The Physics Teacher, a journal of the American Association of Physics Teachers. The paper was co-authored by Robert Lloyd Marlowe and Kristin Whitson of UTC.

Bu approached Dr. Marlowe, a UTC physics professor, during his sophomore year at Baylor about gaining hands-on experience in the UTC lab, and working together on a project involving dynamic light scattering, also known as photon correlation spectroscopy. Although the professor had some doubts about allowing a 15-year-old to work around an expensive 150-mW focused laser beam, he eventually agreed.

The article, written two years later, relates Bus experiences during that year as he increased his knowledge in an area of physics that greatly interests him as well as Professor Marlowes observations of the advantages that working in a college physics lab affords a high school student.

This is my story so far, but this is not the end, writes Bu. I have experienced many things and have learned many skills that normal high school students wouldnt know about. I think the experience will benefit me in the rest of my life.

Tomorrow is my 17th birthday, he concludes. And now, I am sitting in the professors office and summoning up all these valuable memories. Just as the professor says, Reading about this is not equivalent to doing it. I think I have used this year wisely. And these memories are the best birthday gifts ever.
In 2009, Girish Mathrubootham, who was instrumental in developing four helpdesks for Zoho Corporation, returned to India after a stint in the US. While his luggage was in transit, his television set got damaged and he did not get insurance reimbursement despite running from pillar to post.
Nearly 5,000 nurses at the went on mass casual leave on Friday, alleging the hospital administration of discrimination in the roll out of the Seventh Central Pay Commission.

The nurses, who held meetings with the outgoing Deputy Director, Administration, V. Srinivas, have demanded that they be given revision in their pay scales and a hike in allowances.

The emergency services at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences would be affected. However, the out patient departments and other medical services will continue as usual.

"We have clearly told the administration that if our entire pay grade is not enhanced from Rs 4,600 to Rs 5,400 then we will go on indefinite strike from March 27 onwards," said a senior nurse at the hospital.

They have also sought enhancement in their nursing allowances by Rs 7,800.

According to the authorities, the proposal of the nurses has been sent to the Health Ministry for consideration.
The Calcutta High Court today ordered a preliminary inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the Narada sting operation, in which several ministers and lawmakers of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress were seen allegedly accepting cash for extending favours to a fictitious company.

A Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborti directed the CBI to take possession of all material and devises related to the string operation within 24 hours and to conclude the preliminary inquiry within another 72 hours. The court has also directed the CBI to register an FIR if required after completion of the preliminary inquiry and initiate formal investigation thereafter.
The GMR Group-led Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) has proposed an air train connecting all the terminals of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here, the Lok sabha was informed on Thursday.

"The Master Plan - 2016 contains a provision for Automated People Mover (APM) for connecting all the terminals of the airport. Total length of the proposed APM alignment is 5.5 km, out of which 1.5 km is underground, while 4.0 km portion is elevated," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha told the House.

"The master plan recommends this facility to be available by year 2020," he said.

Sinha said that the DIAL has already taken steps for exploring all technical possibilities for providing the proposed APM facility in consultation with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

"The design, project cost and other details etc. are finalised during the finalisation of the major development plan in compliance with the OMDA (Operation, Management and Development Agreement)," Sinha said in a written reply.
London Olympics bronze medallist has decided to donate Rs six lakhs -- Rs 50,000 each -- to the families of the 12 Central Reserve Police Force jawans killed in an encounter in Chhattisgarh last week.

Saina, who turned 27 on Friday said she is pained by what happened last week and this is a small contribution to the families who have suffered irreparable loss.

"My heart goes out to our soldiers who put their lives at risk to keep us safe. I can't bring those soldiers back who lost their lives in Chhattisgarh but in my small way I want to donate this six lakhs for those families," Saina said from Bengaluru.

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar also donated Rs 1.08 crore to the families of the 12 CRPF soldiers killed in Sukma encounter on Thursday.

The 219 battalion's CRPF soldiers were ambushed by Naxalites in Bhejji when the troops were guarding a road being built between the village and Injeram on Highway-30.

The militants had used locally-made mortars, tiffin bombs and arrows with explosives attached to their heads. The Chhattisgarh Police had said the Naxalite attack was planned and executed with "deadly accuracy".
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah at the party headquarters to celebrate victory in UP and Uttrakhand Assembly elections. Photo: PTI

Prime Minister on Thursday asked BJP parliamentarians to work towards turning the youth into "ambassadors" of government's people-oriented schemes and said the perception of party-led ruling coalition had changed from a "working" government to a "performing" government.

Modi, who addressed a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party here after party's strong performance in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assembly polls, urged its MPs to keep working hard as no one would be allowed to sit idle.

Modi was given a rousing reception by party leaders at the meeting. Besides its sweeping victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the BJP has also formed coalition governments in Goa and Manipur. Modi was party's chief campaigner in the assembly polls in five states.

BJP President Amit Shah, who was present at the meeting, sought to set the tempo for party's preparations for the next Lok Sabha elections.

"Be ready, target is 2019," he said.

Laddoos, made at Tirupati, were specially flown in a cargo flight for distribution at the parliamentary party meeting to celebrate the party's success.

A BJP leader, who attended the meeting, said Modi urged members to keep working hard to fulfill promises made to the people.

"Modiji said he will keep working and asked us to do the same. He said he will not sit idle and will not let anyone sit idle," said the leader, who did not want to be named.

Modi, he said, urged party leaders to be "vistarak" (one who spreads a message) and work with dedication among the poor to make them aware of government's schemes.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar told media persons that the Prime Minister urged BJP members to make the youth "ambassadors" of the government's public welfare schemes.

According to Kumar, Modi said the youth depended on mobile phones more than on newspapers and TV channels to get information and stressed on the need to use this medium of communication to reach out to them.

Party leaders said the BJP has planned various programmes across the country from April 6 -- party's foundation day -- to April 14 -- the birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar, regarded as the architect of India's Constitution.

Kumar said Modi asked party leaders to work during the week to popularise BHIM app -- a biometric payment system app to facilitate e-payments directly through bank -- by educating people about its benefits and helping them install it on their mobile phones.

He said Modi termed BHIM app as "new currency" and that there was need to popularise it among poorer sections including street vendors and hawkers.

Modi also urged the party leaders to publicise Ambedkar's works and contributions.

A party leader said Modi made caustic remarks about leaders who have created controversies in the past with their remarks.

"Muhfat logo ko mera sadar pranaam (My respects to leaders who speak without thinking)," the leader quoted Modi saying.

Another leader said Modi told the meeting that perception about the government had grown more positive over the past year.

"When we celebrated second anniversary of the government last year, there was a perception about the government that it was working but this perception has changed now. People have started feeling that this government is performing," a leader quoted Modi as saying.

Modi also asked the party leaders to suggest innovative ideas for celebrating the BJP-led goverment's third anniversary in May this year.

In his remarks, Shah said the party's win in the state assembly polls was an outcome of people's vote against "casteism, family rule and appeasement".

"India has suffered a lot due to these three stints. India's polity has raised itself above these all," Shah said.

"The development journey, which began from Gujarat, has now been accepted by the whole country," he added.
Globally acclaimed economist on Friday said demonetisation will promote growth while Amartya Sen and other experts who denounced it stand "humiliated and exposed".

"On the effects of demonetisation on growth, I should say that I was the one economist who had argued (with my co-authors), from first principles, that demonetisation would increase, not diminish, growth," he said.

"And that is exactly what appears to have happened," he said further.

"The Prime Minister's success in Uttar Pradesh has meant that Amartya Sen and his friends who argued that demonetisation would hurt growth, have been humiliated and exposed as much as the Congress," Bhagwati told PTI in an email interview.

He is a professor of Economics, Law, and International Relations at the Columbia University.

"After BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh, indeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now in an even stronger position than when he was first elected resoundingly," Bhagwati said.

He also said that three things ought to be noted that made (Prime Minister Narendra Modi's) current position 'unassailable'.

"First, he has finally decimated the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, so the Congress is not merely on the ropes; they also lack currently anyone of stature who can rescue it from oblivion," he said.

Second, the Muslim vote no longer is a monolithic anti-BJP vote, Bhagwati said, adding, "I suppose that while BJP did not field Muslim candidates in the Uttar Pradesh election, surely Muslims were aware that the propaganda that Prime Minister Modi was anti-Muslim was an outrageous lie.

Noting that Modi has appointed a brilliant Muslim, ambassador Syed Akbaruddin to the United Nations as our representative, India's best journalist M J Akbar is in his team also, and the new ambassador to the United States is a Sikh of great distinction, Bhagwati said, "India's diversity is thus manifest in Prime Minister Modi's approach to governance."



Referring to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's assertion that demonetisation was a 'despotic act', the eminent economist said, "Not knowing finance, he (Amartya Sen) made the mistake of taking strange position that the demonetisation action was 'despotic'".

"But Sen seemed eager to rush quickly into the fray: here perhaps was his chance to 'get' at the Prime Minister, whom he had long denounced but without success," he said.

"Like Sen, I was also not an expert on finance but I had taken my time and educated myself and I paired myself with finance experts so I would not make a fool of myself."



"Unfortunately, with Sen and me on opposite sides on the demonetisation issue, many in the press seemed to seize on this coincidence and try a repeat of the old controversy, they had conjured up between Sen and me over the issue of the efficacy of growth in reducing poverty," Bhagwati said.

"He (Sen) had lost that time around, flipping from a 'growth does not matter' to 'I always argued for growth' position," the eminent economist said, adding, "Here was his chance to get both me and the Prime Minister, a double dividend.
Defence Minister on Friday asserted that the armed forces were fully prepared to meet any challenge and cautioned the opposition parties against giving the impression that they were unprepared due to lack of procurement.

Making an intervention in the Lok Sabha during a debate on the demands for grants of the Defence Ministry, he rejected the opposition charge that the government had ignored the needs of defence forces and not allocated adequate budget, saying it had signed 147 procurement contracts worth over Rs 2.96 lakh crore in three years.

He cited contracts to procure weapons and equipment for all three wings of the forces  including 155 mm ultra light howitzer guns and Brahmos missiles for the army, deep sea rescue missions for the navy and Apache attack helicopters for the air force  to make his point.

"This impression should not go that procurement is not happening... Our army is not prepared. Our defence forces are fully prepared to meet any challenge," he said, adding that the matter of preparedness of defence forces should be bipartisan and not politicised.

He also rejected the charge that the ambitious 'Make in India' scheme had "failed" in the defence sector, saying 134 proposals worth over Rs 4.45 lakh crore were signed and 100 of them were aimed at Buy and Make in India.

"In self-critical analysis, we should not exaggerate... The government has worked to speed up the procurement process and make it more transparent," he said.

He said there were twin challenges of resources and process facing the sector.

Jaitley, whose main portfolio is Finance and has been given charge of the Defence Ministry after Manohar Parrikar resigned to become the Goa Chief Minister, however, also pointed to resource constraints.

It is easy to say that more resources should be allocated to the defence sector, which of course should be done, he said while noting that major parts of the central budget are given to states, diverted for subsidised welfare schemes for the poor and to pay interests on debts.
Bombay High Court last week ruled that once an arbitrator is appointed at the request of a disputing party and he recuses from the post, the ...
The Childrens Advocacy Center of Hamilton County announced its annual One with Courage Awards finalists. The One with Courage Awards celebrates Chattanoogas Champions for Children who advocate for children in the categories of help, hope, and healing. Alison Lebovitz will host the event.

Finalists were nominated in three categories and overall organizations were also recognized:

Help: Those who have taken action to help children in need or in crisis.

o Katelyn Black | Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy

o Felicia Cotton | A Better Tomorrow

o Donna McConnico | Signal Centers

? Hope: Those who have inspired or educated children by offering hope for their future.

o Lt. Danny Jones | Chattanooga Police Department

o Nicole Lewis | Glass House Collective

o Mary Beth Sutton | Caribbean Student Environmental Alliance

? Healing: Those who have supported children by offering healing to their mind, body, or spirit.

o Genise Fletcher and John Cunningham | Freshman Academy at Brainerd High School

o LaTonya Russell | Individual

o Ivette Youngberg | Hamilton County High School

Organizational Finalists

Baby University

Northside Neighborhood House

Hope Cannon Media (http://hopecannon.com/) is creating video vignettes of each of the finalists that will be shown at the event and a winner in each category will be announced. Co-chairs of the event are Katie Warren and Katie LaRue. Tickets are $65 per person or $500 for a table. The One with Courage Awards is an event hosted by CACHC during April, which serves as National Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Month.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday initiated discussions on scheme with the agriculture ministry and some states in line with the BJP's promise at the time of UP elections.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Tamil Nadu Finance Minister D Jayakumar were among those who met Jaitley to discuss various issues concerning farmers including the loan waiver scheme.

"We...Explained the problems being faced by farmers of Maharashtra. There are 1.8 crore farmers who had taken 1.05 lakh crore loans. Of this, loans of 31,000 farmers are overdue amounting to Rs 30,500 crore," Fadnavis said after the meeting.

In case the debt is not serviced, then these farmers will be out of institutional credit, he said, adding that the NDA government has been trying to increase capital expenditure in the agriculture sector including drought relief.

"We have requested the government of India to design a scheme so the debt of 31,000 farmers can be waived...The government of Maharashtra would participate in the scheme as per the fiscal space of the state," he said.

The Finance Minister has assured that the Centre is solidly behind the farmers in the country, he added.

He also assured that the central government would consider their demands positively and come up with some scheme to help farmers in distress.

Fadnavis said that if the state government provided relief from its coffers, it would not in a position to make capital investments in the agriculture sector even as the fiscal deficit would increase.

Tamil Nadu is reeling under severe drought due to rainfall deficit of nearly 62 per cent owing to monsoon failure. The state has been demanding relief from the central government.

Singh had yesterday said the newly-elected BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will waive loans of farmers in the state and the financial burden would be borne by the Centre.

Bankers have already expressed concern over farm debt waiver scheme saying this kind of schemes disrupt credit discipline among borrowers.

Expressing reservations over schemes, State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya had said such sops may disrupt credit discipline among borrowers.

"We feel that in case of a (farm) loan waiver there is always a fall in credit discipline because the people who get the waiver have expectations of future waivers as well. As such future loans given often remain unpaid," Bhattacharya had said earlier this week.

(Reopens DEL 66)



The delegation led by Fadnavis which met Jaitley and Radha Mohan Singh comprised Union Minister Subhash Bhamre and state Ministers Pandurang Fundkar, Subhash Desai, Divakar Raote, Subhash Deshmukh, Eknath Shinde, Babanrao Lonikar, Ramdas Kadam and MLAs Sanjay Kute, Prashant Bamb and Vijay Auty.

Shiv Sena, BJP's alliance partner, has supported opposition's demand of loan waiver for farmers in Maharashtra.

The opposition Congress and NCP have said they will not allow the state legislature to function during the ongoing session if loan waiver is not announced.

Meanwhile, Congress leader and member of the Legislative Council Sanjay Dutt said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn't meet the state delegation, which was "insensitive".

Jaitley too gave no concrete assurance, Dutt said in a tweet, adding that the Prime Minister had promised loan waiver for Uttar Pradesh farmers but ignored a just demand of farmers from Maharashtra, which was a discrimination.
All the 2,200 households in Essar Steel's Nand Niketan Township in Hazira have turned cashless, be it for their daily milk, newspaper, groceries, medicines all utility bill payments. In fact, the company claimed that it is the first such private sector township which has turned completely cashless with Mumbai-based financial technology company The Mobile Wallet (TMW).
Government's intention is to increase the revenue base but raising the level could at times be a "retrograde" method, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.

Jaitley, who also holds the additional charge of Defence Ministry, told the Lok Sabha that the intention of the government was to expand the revenue base.

"The revenue mobilisation of the states must increase, that is the primary resource that the government gets, and this is not necessarily to be done by raising the level of . That could at times be a retrograde method of trying to raise the revenue," he said.

Jaitley made the remarks while making an intervention during a debate on the demands for grants for the Defence Ministry.

"Therefore, whenever we take political positions on those issues, at the end of the day, we must realise that the size of the entire revenue cake has to increase. It is only then that the slice, which will be available for national security, will also increase," the minister said.

Responding to All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader M Thambidurai's remarks that the government was reducing the revenue base of the states through the Goods and Services Tax, Jaitley said the objective is to have a more efficient indirect system.

"I know your party's (AIADMK) and state government's positions have been slightly different from everybody else. But one of the objects was to have a more efficient indirect taxation system which brings an end to evasion and, therefore, the revenue of the states and the Centre also increases. That is why we were able to develop a bipartisan consensus on it," Jaitley said.
India on Friday asked Russia to adopt a liberal approach in sharing technology for components of major defence platforms saying it was critical to keep them in operational readiness as most of its weapons systems are of Russian-origin.

Calling for deeper bilateral engagement in defence production, Defence Minister said Russia should at least facilitate manufacturing of parts and sub-systems which are needed in large numbers and where the requirement is recurring in nature.

"Since most of our defence platforms and weapons systems are of Russian origin, their maintenance and life-cycle support is extremely important for us for our defence preparedness," Jaitley said addressing a conference on India-Russia Military and Industrial cooperation.

It was his first public engagement on matters relating to defence after assuming charge of the the key Ministry earlier this week for a second stint.

Two agreements were signed at the conference between India's Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and Russia's United Aircraft Corporation and United Engine Corporation for long term supply of spares and technical assistance for Sukhoi 30MKI aircraft for five years.

Jaitley said manufacturing of key components for Russian origin military systems in India was important to ensure that the armed forces do not lose critical time in repairing and maintaining these equipment.

It has been a long-standing grievance of armed forces that supply of critical spares and equipment from Russia takes a long time affecting maintenance of military systems procured from that country.

Jaitley said India's FDI policy for defence is one of the most liberal in the world and weapons manufacturers from both the countries should join hands, eying the global supply chain besides the domestic market.

"Russian companies can be natural partners for Indian companies as most of our defence equipment and inventory are of Russian origin," he said.

On export of military systems, he said though India is presently not a member of Wassenaar export control regime, it was hopeful of membership soon.

"Our export control processes and technology security mechanism are robust and as strict as required in the interest of national security. I think there is a tremendous scope for collaboration (between defence firms of the two countries) so that they are part of a global supply chain," he said.

Russia's Minister for Industry and Trade Denis Manturovsaid his country is ready for sharing technology with India, including for production of military aircraft, warships and weapons systems.

He said Russia is ready to set up centres of competence across India for maintenance of Russian-origin platforms.

The conference is aimed at addressing issues relating to life-cycle support and maintenance of Su-30MKI aircraft, Mi-17 helicopters, Mig-29K jets, T-90 tanks and aircraft carrier Vikramaditya.

Asking Russian companies to either ensure technology transfer or form joint ventures with Indian firms, Jaitley said though India is the largest importer of defence equipment globally it is not a label the country is happy with.

The Defence Minister referred to joint production of Su-30 jets and Brahmos missile system as success stories in high-end technical collaboration between the two close partner countries.

Jaitley said 'Make in India' for defence production is not only aimed at requirements of India's armed forces but also for encouraging Indian companies to be part of the global weapons supply chain.

He said the government had significantly liberalised foreign investment in defence sector and more steps are underway to promote indigenous development of military platforms.

"Many of the defence platforms, particularly Russian platforms made in India under license production, have very high import content because these components are sub-systems and are still imported.

"We need to review this trend and increase indigenous content of our defence capital procurement," Jaitley said.

He said Russian companies may identify some of the military systems for global export from India for which they can set up joint ventures with Indian companies.

"I think there is a tremendous potential for collaboration between Indian and Russian companies for export," he said.

It is the first such conference having participation of large number of Indian and Russian companies along with government representatives from both sides.

About 150 representatives from Russia are participating at the two-day conference.
As the government is in the process of linking cards with an array of schemes and programmes amid criticism, the system has been lauded by World Bank chief economist Paul Romer. He feels that other nations should also adopt this system.
The government has approved the second tranche of capital infusion in public sector to enhance their capital base.

In a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges, Dena Bank said it "has received a communication from Government of India vide its letter... Dated March 16, 2017 informing inter alia capital allocation of Rs 600 crore as part of turnaround linked infusion plan."



Kolkata-based United Bank of India too said it has received a communication from the central government regarding capital allocation of Rs 418 crore as part of turnaround linked capital infusion plan.

The proposal for allotment of equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each at premium to the President of India acting on behalf of the central government by way of preferential allotment will be taken up at the board meeting at March 27, the bank said.

Dena Bank said "the board approval for raising of capital of the bank through issue of equity shares to Government of India, LIC of India and GIC of India on preferential basis, is being obtained."



The second round of funding entailing about Rs 8,000 crore is based on strict parameters.

The government has already announced fund infusion of Rs 22,915 crore, out of the Rs 25,000 crore earmarked for 13 PSBs for the current financial year. Of this, 75 per cent has already been released to them.

The first tranche was announced in July with the objective of enhancing their lending operations and enabling them to raise more money from the market.

Under Indradhanush roadmap announced last year, the government will infuse Rs 70,000 crore in state over four years while they will have to raise further Rs 1.1 lakh crore from the markets to meet their capital requirements in line with global risk norms Basel-III.

PSBs are to get Rs 25,000 crore in each fiscal, 2015-16 and 2016-17. Besides, Rs 10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19.

In the Budget 2017-18 speech on February 1, Minister Arun Jaitley announced capital infusion of Rs 10,000 crore for the next fiscal beginning April 1.
Indian had of Rs 9.64 lakh crore ($147.33 billion) as of end-December, Santosh Gangwar, minister of state for finance, told lawmakers on Friday.

As of end-September, the banks' total were Rs 8.97 lakh crore, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India.

include bad loans and restructured or rolled over loans.
State Bank of India (SBI) might revive an old salary structure proposal that the bank always wanted to implement but could not because of union pressure.
The president of Portland State University, Wim Wiewel, met last week with 10 prospective students in Hyderabad, India. But what started as a get-acquainted visit quickly turned into more of a counseling session, as the students expressed fears about coming to the United States this fall.
The number of Chinese netizens accessing the internet with mobile phones has increased significantly. In 2016, 92.5 per cent accessed the internet on their mobile phones.


China plans to step up military cooperation with "all weather" friend Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and a multi-role combat aircraft, official media here reported as Pakistan's new army chief held talks with top Chinese officials.

On his first visit to China after he took over as Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday held talks with General Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission.

Bajwa also called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Fan Changlong and Commander of the People's Liberation Army General Li Zhuocheng and discussed regional security, economy defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.

The "all-weather" strategic partnership has withstood changes in the community, Fang said.

The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force), told state-run Global Times.

Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong which in Pakistan called JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting, Song said.

China's authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said.

The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song said.

The military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, the report said.

The two sides also vowed yesterday to ensure the safety of the Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important part of China's One Belt and One Road initiative.

Military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, experts noted.

Masood Khalid, Pakistan's Ambassador to China, said at a news conference on Tuesday that Pakistan has deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC and the country's navy has raised a special contingent for the protection of Gwadar Port.
European Union (EU) officials are ruling out any discussions with UK Prime Minister Theresa May over a post- trade deal until she agrees to settle Britains financial commitments to the bloc.
France has reportedly issued a terror attack warning on Thursday after a shooting incident at a school in the southern town of Grasse.

Local media reports said a suspect in possession of several weapons opened fire on the headmaster at the Alexis de Tocqueville school.

The guardian quoted a Police as saying that one suspect had been arrested and a second person was possibly on the run.

The headmaster had been injured but his injuries were not life-threatening.

The suspect who was arrested was a 17-year-old pupil at the high-school.

He was arrested at the school armed with several weapons and grenades.

Residents in Grasse were advised to stay inside and the French government launched its mobile telephone application warning of a "terrorist" attack.

The French Interior Ministry tweeted that the security situation was ongoing and urged people to stay away from the area.
Employers across Europe have been given the green light to ban staff from wearing religious and political symbols after a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). The ruling opens up a Pandoras box and could disproportionately affect Muslim women facing requests to remove headscarves in some places of work across Europe. But it is also likely to affect other people that display their religious affiliations through their dress, such as Sikh men, Orthodox Jewish women, nuns working in hospitals or schools, or those who overtly display their political affiliations or sympathies.

The ECJ ruling related to two cases brought by national courts in France and Belgium, regarding Muslim women who had sued their employers. The women argued that they had been discriminated against at work for being asked to remove their veils  one by the employer and the other by a customer and subsequently by her employer  and were sacked when they refused to do so.
President Trump has wasted no time in cracking down on immigration. He pledged to build a wall, hire 15,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents and speedily deport millions of undocumented immigrants. He justified these actions by claiming that immigrants regularly flout the rule of law and pose a threat. In his first speech to Congress, he directed the Department of Homeland Security to create a new office  Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or Voice  dedicated to helping victims of crimes perpetrated by removable aliens.
German prosecutors have searched the offices of the law firm hired by to investigate its diesel emissions test cheating, as they step up their efforts to identify those involved in the scandal.

Europe's biggest carmaker condemned the search, carried out on Wednesday but reported on Thursday, as "unacceptable in every way" and said it would use every legal step to defend itself.

The law firm, Jones Day, declined to comment. The Munich prosecutor's office was not immediately available for comment.

Jones Day was searched on the same day as Volkswagen's (VW) premium brand Audi's headquarters were searched, in a sign prosecutors are stepping up efforts to find who was responsible for - and who may have known about - the biggest business crisis in the 80-year-old group's history.

"In our opinion the search of a law firm mandated by a company contravenes the principles of the code of criminal procedure," VW spokesman Eric Felber said in a statement.

While client attorney privilege is sacrosanct when there is a formal mandate, there is a grey area when a lawfirm is not formally tasked with representing a particular individual, according to law professor Werner Beulke said.

Jones Day was mandated by VW's supervisory board to lead an open-ended investigation into an emissions test cheating scandal.

While in northern German Federal states, prosecutors are barred from searching lawfirms, there is no nationwide ruling on the matter from Germany's Federal Court of Justice, leaving an opening for southern Bavarian prosecutors to search VW's lawfirm, Beulke said.

VW has never published the full Jones Day report, although a summary of its findings was compiled in the form of a "Statement of facts" for the US Department of Justice.

Jones Day found wrongdoing by certain high-level VW employees but exonerated members of the management board and used the findings to negotiate a $4.3 billion settlement with US authorities.

VW has maintained that its executive board did not learn of the illegal emissions cheating devices installed in VW cars until late August 2015 and formally reported the cheating to US authorities in early September that year.

In January, German prosecutors in Braunschweig widened their probe of VW, searched 28 premises, and raised the number of people under investigation to 37 from 21, including former Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn.

In February, a media report said former chairman Ferdinand Piech had informed top directors about potential cheating of diesel emission tests six months before the scandal became public. VW strongly denied this.
Germany could file a suit against the United States at the World Trade Organization over President Donald Trump's proposed border tax, the minister said on Friday ahead of a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Trump later in the day.

Trump has warned that the United States will impose a border tax of 35 percent on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the U.S. market.

Asked how Germany would react to the proposed tax, Minister Brigitte Zypries told Deutschlandfunk radio it was very difficult because of the complexities of such a tax system.

"The other option is that we file a suit against him at the WTO - there are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that you're not allowed to take more than 2.5 percent taxes on imports of cars," Zypries said.

Later on Friday Trump and Merkel are due to hold their first meeting since the new U.S. president took office in January. Merkel is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union and a commitment to fight climate change while he is expected to seek her support for his demand that NATO nations pay more for their defense needs.

Germany's 50 billion euro trade surplus with the United States has been a source of tension between Washington and Berlin.

"We know ourselves that that's a problem and we're working on it," Zypries said.

"Thankfully we just heard today that wage rises have been agreed again so that means domestic demand can increase again and we want to address tax incentives for research ... so we're on a good path," she added.

Around 72,000 steel workers in northwestern Germany will get 2.3 percent more pay from April and then a further wage increase of 1.7 percent from May 1, 2018 employers' group Arbeitgeberverband Stahl said on Friday.

"The Americans need our machines and our plants ... and the other point is that we only have an export surplus in the machines and plants sector; in the service sector it's the other way round," due to big internet companies in the United States, Zypries said.
on Friday launched a new spy satellite as there is growing worry over North Korea's quickening missile and nuclear programs, said the country's space agency.

According to a report in the Times, the Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan's mainstay H-IIA rocket from a launch site in the country's southwest. It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is approaching the end of its mission.

began putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003 after North Korea fired a midrange ballistic missile over the Japanese mainland and into the Western Pacific in 1998.

The threat has steadily accelerated and just last week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with three landing in waters provocatively close to Japan.

Tokyo currently maintains three optical satellites for daytime surveillance and three radar satellites for nighttime monitoring. The new satellite will succeed one of the three radar satellites launched in 2011, said the report.

The satellites are officially for "information gathering" and are also used to monitor damage in the wake of natural disasters.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that the US intelligence community and the Defense Department are increasingly anticipating that North Korea will soon undertake a new round of testing of its missile and nuclear program, according to some US officials.
were largely steady on Friday, finishing the week with modest gains, but speculators sharply cut long positions during last week's rout, on concerns that the production cut by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) was failing to reduce a global supply overhang.

Crude traded in a narrow band this week, with Brent and West Texas Intermediate bouncing in a $2.50 range as investors weighed the impact of the first oil cut from the Opec in eight years against rising US shale oil output and high inventories.

Brent crude settled up 2 cents to $51.76 a barrel while US light crude ended up 3 cents to $48.78 a barrel. Both benchmarks gained 0.8 per cent for the week.

However, oil has not been able to reclaim the range that prevailed through most of 2017 before last week's rout. Instead of rebounding to $53 a barrel, US crude has remained stuck around $49. Analysts anticipate that regaining the old levels may be difficult without significant drawdown in inventories.

"I think that most are just reassessing the current state of direction. Everyone who was bulled up the past few months has turned," said Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlooks and Opinions in Houston.

Futures positioning showed that last week's rout pushed many speculators to bail out of long positions. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Friday that net long positions in the crude futures market fell by more than 86,000 contracts, the biggest one-week reduction on record. The data is current through Tuesday, and captures the entirety of last week's selloff.

The potential for increased US production continues to build, as Baker Hughes weekly rig count data showed an increase of 14 drilling rigs in the United States.

The market failed to rebound after Saudi Arabia Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday the cuts by the Opec and non-Opec producers could be extended beyond June if oil stockpiles stayed above long-term averages.

Saudi Arabia has cut output by more than its share under the November 2016 deal.

Six of 10 analysts polled by Reuters said they believed the Opec would prolong its output reductions past the deal's six-month duration.

Timothy Evans, analyst at Citi Futures in New York, in a note Friday, said market sentiment may further weaken in the absence of a strong rebound to the previous range.

Opec and non-Opec members agreed last year to cut output by a combined 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of 2017. But Opec's monthly report showed global oil stocks rose in January to 278 million barrels above the five-year average.
The world's financial leaders will renounce competitive devaluations and warn against exchange rate volatility, a document showed on Friday, but are likely to struggle to find common ground on trade and financing against climate change.

The difficulty stems from a major shift in the views of the United States, where the new Trump administration is considering protectionist trade measures to curb imports and considers efforts to try to halt global warming a "waste of money".

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the world's top 20 economies are meeting in the spa town of Baden-Baden in Germany to discuss world economic issues and will publish a joint communique on Saturday.

A draft of the statement showed that, for now, the issue of trade and protectionism is not mentioned at all. This breaks with a decade-old tradition of the G20 endorsing free trade and rejecting protectionism.

"It's about the right wording, it's about the openness of the world trade systems in the final communique," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said before talks began.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday in Berlin that the Trump administration had no desire to get into trade wars, but certain trade relationships need to be re-examined to make them fairer for US workers.

G20 officials said the United States was ready to accept a phrase backing "free and fair" trade, given that the meaning of "fair" was open to interpretation. Europe was keen on adding that trade should be "rules-based", meaning subject to rules of the World Trade Organisation.

European delegations have also explicitly rejected protectionism.

Facing a stand-off, Schaeuble, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year, has floated the idea that the issue of trade might be left out of the communique altogether to avoid a clash.

Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde seemed to back him when she said on Thursday, in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump, that new government leaders with a protectionist agenda needed time to get to know how bodies work and better prepare their position.

Some G20 officials had doubts if trade ought to take such a prominent spot in discussions of finance ministers and central bank governors and signalled there was no urgency to reaching a deal now, as it could be left to a leaders' summit in July.

But other G20 countries argue that goods trade makes up almost half of global GDP output and therefore is very much an issue for finance ministers trying to accelerate global growth. They argue a reference to trade in the statement is needed.

Climate change financing removed

The G20 might also drop their explicit endorsement to finance the fight against global warming, the draft showed.

At their last meeting in July 2016, the G20 ministers said they encouraged all signatories of the Paris Agreement on climate change to bring the deal into force as soon as possible and honour their financial pledges it a timely way.

But US President Donald Trump, who took office in November, has called global warming a "hoax" concocted by China to hurt US industry and vowed to scrap the Paris climate accord aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump's administration on Thursday proposed a 31 per cent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget as the White House seeks to eliminate climate change programmes and trim initiatives to protect air and water quality.

Asked about climate change funding, Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director, said on Thursday, "We consider that to be a waste of money."

Agreement on forex

The G20 do agree, however, to show continuity in their foreign exchange policies.

The draft communique, which may still change and is to be published only on Saturday, reinstated the phrases used in past years in communiques on foreign exchange markets that were absent from the earliest version.

"We reiterate that excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability," the draft said.

"We will consult closely on exchange markets. We reaffirm our previous exchange rate commitments including that we will refrain from competitive devaluations and we will not target exchange rates for competitive purposes," it said.

US President Donald Trump has accused Japan of exploiting a weak yen to give exports an unfair trade advantage, leaving Japanese policy-makers worried that Washington may upend a G20 agreement that gives Tokyo room to intervene in the currency market to stem any unwelcome yen spike.

But Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said he agreed with his US counterpart Steven Mnuchin on the need to abide by the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy, including a warning that excess currency volatility is undesirable.

"We agreed that it was important to maintain the G7 and G20 agreements on currency policy," Aso told reporters after meeting with Mnuchin on Friday on the sidelines of a Group of 20 finance leaders' weekend gathering.

G20 officials also played down European concerns that the US administration would roll back the tougher "Dodd-Frank" US financial reforms enacted after the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

"This concern is not big," Schaeuble said.
Massive Wacker Dr. Tower With Riverwalk Takes Key Step Forward

By Stephen Gossett in News on Mar 16, 2017 9:02PM



One of the most high-profileand high-risingskyscraper proposals in the city received a key green light from the Chicago Plan Commission. The 51-story office tower was approved by the agency at a very busy Thursday meeting.

The plan, which was brought to light in January, would see mean the demolition of the old "modernist throwback" General Growth Properties building, at 110 N. Wacker Dr., between Randolph and Washington, along the eastern bank of the Chicago River. In its place would rise a massive, glass-and-steel structure, much more in keeping with the aesthetic makeup of the present-day riverfront architecture: 800 feet tall, with 1,350,000 square feet of office space. A new public riverwalk and park space around the tower would also be included.

According to the Department of Planning and Development, the developer will pay nearly $20 million to the Neighborhood Opportunity Bonus, which is intended to spur commercial development in "investment zones" on the South and West Sides. That huge sum would be the largest ever paid to the fund, the Tribune notes.

Also according to the Trib, a representative of one of the tower's co-developers, the Chicago-based Riverside Investment and Development, said that the group is in talks with possible tenants to occupy some of all that gargantuan office space.

Assuming it gets through the City Council, the tower is expected to take three years to complete.
A total of 2,957,454 Syrians are currently registered in Turkey, media reports said.

Local daily Hurriyet, citing a tweet from the interior ministry's directorate general of migration management on Thursday, reported that he official figures included protection applications, irregular migrants and foreigners given residence permits.

There were more Syrian men (1,580,866) than women (1,367,588) registered. The majority of males was aged 19 and 24 and the biggest group of females was aged between five and nine, the directorate said.

Around 10 per cent of Syrian were in refugee camps, according to official data cited last month by state news agency Anadolu. Most are living in urban areas and have the right to work.

Turkey was spending $25 billion on aid for Syrian refugees, Anadolu quoted interior minister Suleyman Soylu as saying on February 15.

After Lebanon, Turkey is the country hosting the most Syrian .

Lebanon is sheltering over a million Syrians, Jordan 657,000, Iraq more than 230,000 and Egypt over 117,000 according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
US President reiterated on Friday that he was not accusing Britain of spying on him, after his spokesman seemed to support allegations against one of London's spy services on his behalf.

He also joked with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a joint press conference that they had "something in common" in terms of wiretapping -- hinting that the administration of his predecessor Barack Obama was to blame.

Trump has accused Obama of ordering wiretaps at his Trump Tower in New York.

In 2013, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that Merkel's mobile phone was under US surveillance.
A traveller has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled threatening slurs and even kicking a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the John F. Kennedy Airport.

Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison.

Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, "Are you [expletive deleted] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?", said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employee's chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, "You did nothing but I am going to kick your (expletive deleted) a**," the complaint said.

Rhodes then kicked the employee in the leg, after which she tried to get away, but Rhodes persisted, kicking the door and stepping into her office and blocking her from escaping.

Another person, also not identified, tried to calm Rhodes and moved him away from the door, while the employee ran out of the office to the lounge's front desk.

Rhodes allegedly followed the employee, at one point getting down on his knees, bowing down in imitation of a Muslim praying.

He shouted, "(Expletive) Islam, (expletive) ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens."

According to the charges, the victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg and was placed in fear of physical injury, annoyance and alarm.

In the wake of the attack, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the Transportation Worker Protection Act, which would make any assault against an airport worker a felony, punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison.
The has flatly denied all reports suggesting that the United States tendered an apology to the British government over a report alleging that a UK intelligence agency spied on President Donald Trump, at the behest of his predecessor Barack Obama.

Earlier in the day, however, a senior administration official told CNN that press secretary Sean Spicer and national security adviser H.R. McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government for Spicer's comments on Thursday, when he cited a report stating that the said British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

When asked if there was an apology by the administration to the British government over the matter, Spicer replied, "No, we were just passing on news reports."

Earlier, a spokesman for UK Prime Minister Theresa May said senior UK officials had protested to the Trump administration after the claims were repeated by Spicer.

"We've made clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated," May's spokesman said.

Spicer had read out allegations that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ had spied on Trump.

"Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer told journalists.

However, GCHQ said the claim was "nonsense" and should be ignored.
gained by up to eight per cent on Friday, in anticipation of a further increase in price in the coming months, following a forecast of lower production and the governments reluctance on import.
In an attempt to do something special for kids on her birthday, Bollywood's 'Student Of The Year' actress Alia Bhatt relived her childhood by hosting a special screening of Hollywood movie 'Beauty and the Beast,' for children from an NGO.

While speaking to the media, the 24-year-old actor said, "We (Authorities of Angel express and Alia) decided with the Disney that we will show 'Beauty and beast' for children and as a kid, I use to watch 'Beauty and Beast' a lot. It is one beautiful story and also features Emma Watson."

"I wanted to do something for the kids as a Birthday present from me to them. I really love this story as there is one beauty and the other one is beast and there is beauty in every beast," the 'Badrinath Ki Dulhania' star said.

The screening took place at Mumbai's suburban theatre and was attended by Alia's friends and family.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Friday said that he has urged Chief Minister Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka Government to take strong action in Arunachal Pradesh student's case where the lad from the north-eastern state was allegedly assaulted by his landlord and later forced to lick his shoes for using excessive water.

Rijiju told ANI that the Bengaluru Police is taking steps to reach out the people from north-east and added that the Home Ministry has been issuing advisories to the state governments for ensuring safety of the north-eastern people.

"Bengaluru Police is taking steps to reach out to North-East people. I've urged the Karnataka Government for strong action in Arunachal student's case," said Rijiju.

"The Home Ministry has been issuing advisories to the state governments for safety and stringent actions if there's any attack on North-East people," he added.

Higio Gungtey, 22, was allegedly assaulted by his landlord Hemanth Kumar on March 6 after an argument over the usage of water.

According to reports, the other tenants in Kumar's building complained of water shortage due to excessive use of water by the victim.

Reportedly, the owner was drunk when the incident occurred.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chhattisgarh Police on Friday arrested a Naxal carrying reward of Rs eight lakh on his head from Rengawahi area of Kanker district.

The Naxal platoon commander Raju Korcha was nabbed after the police received a tip off of his whereabouts.

Korcha was a known Naxal and was wanted by police from quite a long time.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his meeting with Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday appreciated Islamabad's efforts for realization of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor Project (CPEC).

"The minister expressed complete understanding of challenges faced by Pakistan, its geo-political relevance and contributions towards regional peace and stability. He said that China appreciates Pakistan's efforts to maintain good relationships with its neighbors including India and Afghanistan despite challenges," said a statement issued by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The statement added that Wang thanked Pakistan for time tested support to China on core issues as well as appreciated its efforts for realization of the CPEC as part of One Belt One Road (OBOR). He also reiterated the Chinese full spectrum support to Pakistan.

The Army Chief, who is presently in Beijing on a three-day official visit, on his part thanked the minister and China on their acknowledgements and support.

"He said that Pakistan greatly values its strong friendship with China and looks forward to carry on with same zeal. COAS thanked the minister for Chinese diplomatic support to Pakistan on core issues," the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Asking people to cast aside the perception that Jammu and Kashmir has become a 'forbidden land' in the wake of growing terrorist attacks, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday said that visiting the state more often can help defeat the militancy.

"It's not a forbidden land, we need to change our mindset vis-a-vis- Kashmir. If every Indian thinks he wants to fight militancy and pay tribute to all our martyrs then they should visit Jammu and Kashmir and make it a point," Mufti said.

When asked about the recent reports that the separatists in Kashmir are asking people to boycott voting, Mufit said, "It's not new. It has been happening from past 20 years. there is nothing new about it."

With regard to India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, Mehbooba said that their party's policy would be on the lines of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

"We follow the lines of Vajpayee. that is we can change our friends, but can't change our neighbours," she said.

Mufti informed that Bollywood actor Salman Khan has been appointed as the Brand Ambassador for Jammu and Kashmir.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Empirical Proof That The Shedd's Sea Otters In The Snow Are The Cutest Things On Earth

By Stephen Gossett in News on Mar 16, 2017 7:20PM

Settling the age-old debate once and for all, the Shedd Aquarium on Thursday shared incontrovertible video and photographic evidence that, yes, sea otters in the snow are indeed the cutest freaking sight one can ever hope to behold in his or her time on Earth.

The Shedd Aquarium's five sea ottersYaku, Kiana, Mari, Luna and Elliefrolicked impossibly adorable after their caregivers brought them some fresh snow from Monday and Tuesday's massive late-winter dump. Traffic snarls and flight cancellations be damned, we got at least one glorious side effect from the snowfall.

The Californian and Alaskan sea ottersfour of which are rescues, according to Sheddroll around, slide on their backs, munch some snow and seem to even do a bit of camera mugging. Check out the photos above and video below and let the otter-cuteness argument be forever resolved.

QED.
IIBM Institute of Management, India's leading Institute of Management, wins the prestigious 7th Annual Indian Education Awards 2017, from Indian Education Congress. IIBM was recognized for exhibiting exceptionally good efforts, modernization, determination and evolution in providing quality online education to students and also contributes hugely to education industry in India.

IIBM Institute offers numerous certification courses to the students, working professionals to achieve career growth in Leadership and Management cadre.

"We are honored to receive this award, as recognition of IIBM institute's deep commitment for facilitating continuous educational opportunities, equipping working professionals with the latest management certifications and aiding them to grow along with the organizations they work for," says Vikas Maheshwari, CEO & Co-Founder, IIBM Institute of Management.

"Providing the best education by utilizing supreme quality technology is the core value of our IIBM Institute. We are really proud to be recognized by the Indian Education Congress this Year 2017, specifically for the value we practice as the foundation of our organizational culture," states Rajesh Maheshwari, CTO and Co-founder, IIBM Institute of Business Management.

IIBM Institute received the award at the Gala Awards Night, on 7th Feb 2017, in presence of industry leaders, esteemed invitees and special guests. The high-spirited accomplishments were showcased as a significant milestone in the journey of IIBM Institute of Business Management.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Highlighting the importance of being self-sufficient in the defence production sector, Minister of Defence, Finance and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley said that the defence sector needs to be a key area of focus with regards to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative.

"India is one of the largest importers of defence equipment in the world, and this definitely is not a label we are happy with," he said, addressing the inaugural session at the ongoing India-Russia Military Industrial Conference here today.

Jaitley stressed on the relations with Russia being at the crux of India's foreign policy. The Minister further said that since the signing of the India-Russia Strategic Partnership in 2000, ties between the two sides have acquired new heights with enhanced level of cooperation in almost all areas including defence.

"India-Russia Military Technical Cooperation has graduated from a simple buyer-seller relation to one involving joint research, development and production of advanced defence systems. The Brahmos Missile System and production of SU-30 in India are examples of such flagship cooperation. There is tremendous potential for collaboration between Indian and Russian companies for export, so as to become part of the global supply chain," Jaitley said in his address.

The conference was also attended by foreign dignitaries such as the Minister for Industry and Trade of Russian Federation, Denis Manturov and others. About 150 representatives from Russia participated in the conference. From India, over 100 private companies including several SMEs were present.

Organised by the Department of Defence Production in the Ministry of Defence, the conference aims at addressing issues related to life-cycle support and maintenance of major Russian-origin equipments/ platforms such as SU-30 MKI aircraft, Mi-17 Helicopters, MiG-29K aircraft, INS Vikramaditya and T-90 tanks.

The conference will provide an opportunity to the Indian industry to explore possibilities of manufacturing of parts/ components of Russian equipment in India through partnerships with Russian companies.

The conference was flagged off with two agreements being signed between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and United Aircraft Corporation and United Engine Corporation of Russia, for general terms and conditions governing long term supply of spares and rendering technical assistance over five years for the Su -30 MKI aircraft.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The swearing-in ceremony of the new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister will be held at Lucknow's Smriti Upwan on March 19.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will attend the ceremony.

The party insiders said the next Chief Minister's name will be announced on Saturday after the Legislative Party meeting in Lucknow.

The BJP-plus, which won 325 seats in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, will meet at 5 pm on Saturday to pick the next Chief Minister.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid speculations that he may be given the charge of Uttar Pradesh, Minister of state for Railways Manoj Sinha on Friday said neither he is in the race to become the Chief Minister nor does he know of any such race.

"Neither I am in the race (for UP CM) nor do I know of any such race," Sinha told the media.

Following the BJP's stupendous success in the just-concluded assembly polls, Sinha has emerged as one of the possible candidates for the chief minister's post in Uttar Pradesh.

While a section of the party is confident that Sinha's name will be announced after the meeting of the newly-elected party MLAs, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, however, has not spelt out its choice.

The swearing-in ceremony of the new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister will be held at Lucknow's Smriti Upwan on March 19.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will attend the ceremony.

The party insiders said the next Chief Minister's name will be announced on Saturday after the Legislative Party meeting in Lucknow.

The BJP-plus, which won 325 seats in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, will meet at 5 pm on Saturday to pick the next Chief Minister.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Expressing his views on the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) general secretary Ram Madhav on Friday said under Prime Minster Narendra Modi-led Government, New Delhi has brought a major shift with regards to Islamabad, adding that its priority has been of de-hyphenating with its Asian neighbour.

"Pakistan is a neighbour, we have to have a transactional relationship with them. If they behave well, we will do that too. We have already brought in a major shift in our Pakistan policy, which is of de-hyphenating with Pakistan," he added.

Talking about the admission of grandson of separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani into Indian state-funded institution, he said, "Tragedy with us is we are not attacking Geelani for provoking all youths in valley, whereas his own grandson is happy in government job. Instead of questioning Geelani, we are questioning government of Jammu and Kashmir that is the tragedy with Indian media, political commentary."

Geelani had welcomed his grandson Anees-ul-Islam's appointment in a State-funded institution as

researcher.

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Some land owners have filed a complaint before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif against the forced acquisition of the land they inherited for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project by the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) administration.

The land in question, which is surrounded by the Himalayas and the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, has been selected for the Special Economic Zone of CPEC.

According to the Dawn, the complaint filed by Shah Jehan Mushapa and other residents of the Maqpon Das Village in the Denyuore tehsil in Gilgit says that the GB bureaucracy had in order to please their rival tribe forcibly acquired their land, which had been under their possession for generations.

According to the complaint, the locals were given rights of the land in 1893. It says the GB administration had recently selected Maqpon Das for the CPEC and acquired the land free of cost.

The complainants say they are not against the CPEC project but the way the GB administration has acquired their land is unlawful and unacceptable.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It has emerged that Pakistan intelligence agencies are behind the disappearance of two Indian Sufi clerics missing since Thursday, say sources.

Two clerics, Asif Nizami and Nazim Nizami, had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives after which they headed to Lahore to visit the shrines of Sufi saints.

Syed Asif Ali Nizami is the head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.

Meanwhile, a Dargah Committee meeting is underway in Delhi's Nizamuddin regarding the disappearances.

Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that she has taken up the matter with Islamabad.

Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria also acknowledged that an Indian request seeking assistance for the recovery of two clerics had been received.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gurgaon [India], Mar. 17 (ANI): Who says rock is dead? 'The Dire Straits Experience' members feel that's just a label!

When Gurgaon is all set to experience a once in a lifetime concert, ANI took some time to have a candid chat with the British rock band 'The Dire Straits Experience,' who are all set take the Indian crowd on a joy ride for the first time, in person.

While speaking on the recent trend of EDM and Pop music, which, according to some, have murdered rock music, Terence Reis, lead vocalist, said that it's just a label, which probably looks good as something new.

"I just don't think label means a thing, may be, I think, it probably looks good that something's there, something's new. It doesn't really matter what you call it. I remember being a student in 80s saying that guitars are finished and no one is going to play guitars anymore. All the music would done on computers. It doesn't really interest me if something is called rock or pop. If you see the song book of Dire Straits is a mixture of rock, pop, blues and folk," he told ANI here yesterday.

In a continuation to it, Chris White, on percussion, said, "Rock grew out in adversity. It was something that other people were not doing. That will always be the way, people will always find an act to what they want to say, whatever you label it, doesn't matter."

'Dire Straits,' formed in 1977, drew its music from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, and blues, and came closest to beat music within the context of rock and roll.

When asked, whether they saw any change in music over the period of time, Terence promptly replied, it's the world that has changed, not music.

"I think it's the other way around, the whole world has changed. People are always going to play, if they have a stick and a tin. They will do something with it," he said.

But Chris feels, "it's a lot more difficult business now," however, "Thankfully people still want music, need music and are ready to go and see it."

'The Dire Straits Experience' is in India to extend their support to Seagram's 100 Pipers' 'Play for a Cause,' an initiative to provide sustainable drinking water to villagers in Rajasthan.

Speaking on the same Chris said, "We were really delighted to fit in and be able to support it as well.it feels fantastic to be able to help people. Rather, our band started for a charity project in London. "

Finally, sharing their experience in India, Terence said, "The experience has been great and we have been treated extremely well, so that is an over-riding thing. It always surprises us."

On a related note, 100 Pipers 'Play for a Cause' has become one of the largest movements by any brand in the world.

Since 2014, more than 200 leading artists like Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Dadlani, Ehsaan Noorani, and legendary bands like Parikrama, Indian Ocean, MLTR, DJ Hardwell have performed in India for 'Play for a Cause,' in more than 25 cities, supporting people affected by natural calamities like 'Kashmir floods, Earthquakes in Nepal and India etc.'

'The Dire Straits Experience' is scheduled to perform for the Indian audience on March 17 and 19 in Gurgaon and Bengaluru respectively.

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday discussed economic relations with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev, who is presently on a four-day visit to India beginning March 15.

"The two leaders discussed wide-ranging issues regarding India-Russia economic relations. They agreed that the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia is based on long standing and time tested ties, is very deep and extends to all spheres of mutual interest," said a statement.

Swaraj on her part specifically stressed the growing mutual beneficial ties between India and Russia in energy sector, particularly in the Russian Far East, the statement said, adding she expressed hope that the mutual complementary strength of the two partners in the diamond sector will be exploited fully.

The External Affairs Minister also emphasised on cooperation in maritime and agricultural sector, and on institutional linkages between the countries in these areas.

She thanked the Russian dignitary for inviting the Indian participation in the third Eastern Economic Forum to be held in Vladivostok in September this year.

They agreed that the forthcoming interaction between the leaders of the two countries and various ministerial interactions will provide further thrust to the development of economic cooperation between India and Russia, the statement added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United States President Donald Trump has lashed out at North Korea and China saying that the former is 'behaving very badly' and the latter has not done enough to help.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said in a tweet.

This comes after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is presently in Seoul, said that Washington would consider military action against North Korea if it was provoked.

Speaking in Seoul at a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said Washington's policy of "strategic patience" had ended.

"Certainly, we do not want things to get to a military conflict... but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that would be met with an appropriate response," CNN quoted Tillerson as saying.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe that requires action, that option is on the table," he added.

The Secretary of State is on a three-country tour to the region amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula following recent North Korea missile launches, and fears it's preparing for another nuclear test.

Earlier in Tokyo on Thursday, Tillerson said that efforts over the past 20 years to prevent a nuclear North Korea had failed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Stunning Photo Shows This Week's Lake-Effect Snow From Above

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 16, 2017 8:55PM

When Reddit brought our attention to this beautiful photo of the city's recent lake-effect snowfall from above, we had to know more. The photographer, Nick Ulivieri, filled us in on how he got the shot, from the John Hancock Center's 360 observation deck.

"Right place, right time, right light. That mantra overrides a lot of my work," Ulivieri told us via email. "I love capturing mother nature interacting with the man-made urban environment of Chicago, and more often than not, to get the most dramatic images, you just have to be be there to catch it when it happens."

Ulivieri frequently takes panoramic city photos via helicopter, but he says this recent photo was taken "from the safety and warmth" of the Hancock Center's observatory. He said he went up there specifically looking for a good shot of the wintry scenenoting that snow has been hard to come by in Chicago this year.

"I'd love to catch a storm from a helicopter someday, but that's tough to planand high winds can make safe flight difficult, if not impossible," he said.

"I've always been a fan of extreme weather because it usually results in unique lighting and sky conditions, which can result in dramatic photos," he added. "'Fair' weather is boring to me, photographically speaking, so I get excited when my weather photos get other people excited for 'bad' weather."


US. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is presently in Seoul, said on Friday that Washington would consider military action against North Korea if it was provoked.

Speaking in Seoul at a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said Washington's policy of "strategic patience" had ended, reports the CNN.

"Certainly, we do not want things to get to a military conflict... but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that would be met with an appropriate response," he said.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe that requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson added.

The Secretary of State is on a three-country tour to the region amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula following recent North Korea missile launches, and fears it's preparing for another nuclear test.

Earlier in Tokyo on Thursday, Tillerson said that efforts over the past 20 years to prevent a nuclear North Korea had failed.

A senior Chinese official told CNN this week that Beijing plans to present its own plan to Tillerson during his visit.

In South Korea, Tillerson called on China to give up its opposition to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system or act to "address the threat that makes THAAD necessary." The missile defense system is in the process of being deployed in the country's south.

He also urged Beijing to end any retaliatory action against South Korea, amid allegations businesses and the tourism industry is being punished for Seoul's stance on deployment of THAAD.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The British intelligence and security agency GCHQ has denied allegation that it helped former U.S. president Barack Obama "wiretap" Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

"Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," The Guardian quoted a GCHQ spokesperson as saying in a statement.

Earlier this week, Fox News judicial analyst Napolitano claimed during an interview that three intelligence sources confirmed to him that the Obama administration used GCHQ to spy on Trump so that there would be "no American fingerprints on this".

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, quoted Napolitano's allegation in an effort to validate Trump's unfounded claim that Obama wiretapped his phones last year.

The British and American intelligence agencies cooperate closely along with their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They are members of the Five Eyes, which work together on intelligence.

According to documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British officials allowed their US counterparts to store and analyse British citizens' internet and e-mail records. Snowden also revealed that the NSA paid 100m to GCHQ in secret, reports the Guardian.

Earlier in a series of tweets, President Trump accused Obama of wiretapping his phones.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" Trump tweeted on March 4.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Delhi Court will continue the hearing on American tourist gang-rape case on March 21.

The Delhi Police have claimed that ample incriminating evidences have been found against the accused and a 5000 page chargesheet has been prepared containing the names of 50 witnesses.

The Delhi Police have chargesheeted four persons for allegedly gang-raping and committing unnatural sex with an American tourist at a five-star hotel in Connaught Place last year.

The chargesheet against the four accused -- Anirudh Singh, a tour guide, Vivek, a hotel employee, Om Prakash, a driver of a tourist bus, and Maqsood Khan, the cleaner of the bus -- has been filed in the Patiala House Court. The police had identified the accused with the help of call records available with the hotel.

The complainant had contacted the erstwhile Police Commissioner of Delhi, Alok Verma, on December 3 last year to get the complaint registered. She has claimed that she was brutalised on March 8 and 9 March last year when she had visited India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, March 17 (IANS/AKI) Italy's tax police impounded assets worth 2.6 billion euros from the country's main crime syndicates as well over 280 companies last year, the force said.

The assets included 5,242 items including real estate and 281 companies as well as shares and bank accounts, the tax police said on Thursday.

A total of 9,882 mafia suspects and 2,060 companies with suspected mafia links were probed in 2016, according to the tax police.

A total of 74 people were arrested for alleged mafia association, 142 for suspected money laundering and 87 for alleged usury following tax police probes.

Police said they seized over 19.7 million euros of assets from suspected mafia usurers.

--IANS/AKI

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The Karnataka Anti Terror Squad (ATS) on Friday arrested a suspect here having links with the 2005 terror attack at Bengaluru's Indian Institute of Science (IIS), police said.

"The Karnataka ATS personnel, with the help of Tripura Police, arrested terror suspect Habib Mia, 37, from Jogendranagar on the outskirts of Agartala," a senior Tripura Police official told IANS on condition of anonimity.

He said: "He was wanted in connection with the militant attack on IIS at Bengaluru in 2005. He would be presented in a local court here on Saturday to avail transit remand to take Mia to Bengaluru for further action."

A retired Mathematics professor, Munish Chandra Puri, was killed and four others, including a woman, were seriously injured in the IIS attack.

Eyewitness accounts earlier maintained that it was carried out by a lone gunman in Army fatigues, who used an AK-47 rifle and hand grenades. All important cities in southern states were put on high alert in the aftermath of the terror attack.

The attack took place in the evening of December 28, 2005 as delegates were attending the 38th annual convention of Operational Research Society of India (ORSI).

--IANS

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At least 26 Somali refugees were killed, including women and children, as their boat was hit by an airstrike near Yemen's Mandeb Strait, security officials said on Friday.

The officials said it is not known who launched the projectile and that dozens of those who were hurt have been transferred to the Al Hudaydah port in the Red Sea, Efe news reported.

The influx of immigrants to Yemen, enroute to other countries, continues despite the war, which has left some 17 million Yemenis - two-thirds of the country's population - in need of urgent aid to avoid risk of death from hunger in the coming months.

Yemen is currently facing the deadliest starvation crisis in the world, according to a United Nations assessment on food security and nutrition.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As many as 29 lakh debit cards, which were connected to Hitachi's switch, came under malware attack last year, Parliament was informed on Friday.

"As reported by commercial banks, 29 lakh cards used at ATMs that were connected to switch of Hitachi were subjected to malware attack," Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

However, the successful attempts of misuse of compromised cards reported to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by banks was only 3,291, he said.

The RBI informed that the Hitachi Payment Services (HPS) appointed SISA Information Security for Professional Certified Investigator forensic investigation.

The final report suggested that the ATM infrastructure of the HPS was breached and the data between May 21 and July 11 last year was compromised, but not the point of sale infrastructure, Gangwar said.

The National Payment Corporation of India had informed that no independent investigation was carried out by them, he added.

The RBI has issued a comprehensive circular on Cyber Security Framework in Banks on June 2, 2016 covering best practices pertaining to various aspects of cyber security.

--IANS

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At least 31 Somali refugees, including 12 women, were killed and dozens others were wounded when an Apache helicopter from the Arab coalition fired on their boat near Yemen's Mandeb Strait.

Fishermen and medical sources at the Al Hudaydah port in the Red Sea told EFE that the incident occurred on Thursday afternoon.

Most of the immigrants were coming back from Yemen and heading towards Sudan, Somalia and other African countries, a security source said. He added that scores of others managed to escape and were rescued after the attack.

The influx of immigrants to Yemen, enroute to other countries, continues despite the war, which has left some 17 million Yemenis -- two-thirds of the country's population -- in need of urgent aid to avoid risk of death from hunger in the coming months.

Yemen is currently facing the deadliest starvation crisis in the world, according to a United Nations assessment on food security and nutrition.

--IANS

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Canada, Italy, South Africa and South Korea have been elected to join the leadership of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a global movement that has led the charge for citizen-centred democracy around the world.

OGP CEO Sanjay Pradhan, a former World Bank vice president who is of Indian origin, hailed the move.

"Our job is to build a positive global movement for openness and deeper democracy, and act as a countervailing force against the rise of closed government and its manifestations, including restrictions on civic space, corruption and distrust in government," Pradhan said.

"The OGP can be a platform for citizens to engage their governments in new ways, and to tackle the toughest political problems in the world today."

The OGP Articles of Governance require all participating governments to vote to elect new representatives to the Steering Committee each year.

Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Paraguay, Philippines and Sri Lanka had also applied to the OGP Steering Committee.

The new members begin their three-year term on October 1.

The OGP was formally launched on September 20, 2011, on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly meeting, when eight heads of state, along with nine civil society leaders, endorsed the Open Government Declaration.

Now, it is composed of 75 national governments, 15 sub-national governments, seven multilateral organisations, and thousands of civil society organisations.

India is not a member of OGP.

--IANS

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Two police personnal and six suspected militants from across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were killed after an assault on a checkpost in Khyber Agency on Friday.

Pakistani troops "effectively responded", resulting in the death of the militants, Dawn news quoted the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) as saying.

Earlier this month, five Pakistan Army personnel were killed also in a cross-border "terrorist attack" on three border posts along the Afghanistan border area.

--IANS

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The Palace Museum in Beijing, also known as the Forbidden City, has opened a joint exhibition with the National Museum of Afghanistan.

An item from the "Afghanistan: Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul" at the Palace Museum in Beijing. [Photo/Official Weibo account of The Palace Museum]

Titled "Afghanistan: Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul," the exhibit showcases more than 200 precious items that demonstrate the development of the central Asian country between the third century BC and the first century.

The period has been known as one of Renaissance in the Afghan history, as it also coincides with the beginning of the ancient Silk Road.

The exhibition is part of an effort by the Palace Museum to showcase ancient civilizations of the world.

Exchanges between China and Afghanistan can be dated as far as more than 2,000 years ago, when envoy Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220) travelled there during his first mission. Afghanistan was also a major stop on the ancient Silk Road.

The current exhibition at the Palace Museum will run until June 17th.
A painting by pop art founder Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao is to be auctioned in Hong Kong, a media report said on Friday.

The portraits immortalised the founder of China's Communist Party as a pop art commodity in the vein of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe and Campbell soup, the BBC said.

Based on a photo in Mao's Little Red Book, the auction of this work is expected to fetch as much as $15 million.

This Mao portrait was sold in 2014 in London for $9.4 million and the current owner has now put it up for sale with Sotheby's in Hong Kong, with the auction expected on April 2.

Warhol began his series of silk-screen portraits of Mao in 1972 when ties China and US began to thaw after a historic trip to Beijing by American President Richard Nixon.

--IANS

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Participants at a panel discussion here on Friday generally agreed that setting up of big economic zones, ease of doing business and labour reforms are the major factors that would enable the manufacturing sector to grow and create more jobs.

India should have at least two big special economic zones on the coastal region from where exports would be easy so as to create jobs, said Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra Group.

Participating in a panel discussion on 'The New Fault Lines - Global Economy, Local Flux' at the India Today conclave here, Mahindra said manufacturing is about job-creation.

According to him, India should develop at least two big special economic zones (SEZ) similar to Zhengzhou Economic Zone in China on the coast where manufacturing and exports could happen.

Responding to that, Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, said the government has identified two states -- Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat -- for locating such SEZs.

Kant said no country has grown without exports forming a major portion of its economy.

He also said the BJP government at the Centre has scraped around 1,200 laws and is focussed on ease of doing business in the country.

The central government is taking risks with various programmes like Start Up India, demonetisation and others. Only then will there be progress forward, Kant remarked.

Kant said that if there are around 10 states that log an economic growth of 10 per cent per annum then other states will also be compelled to look at growth.

According to Mahindra, investors look at infrastructure, ease of doing business, availability of manpower and the commitment of the political leadership while making an investment decision.

On the issue of labour law reforms, Mahindra said Gujarat has passed a law whereby the labour laws would not apply to new economic zones.

Kant said large scale manufacturing is not possible without labour reforms and states should drive the labour law reforms.

He added that by 2018, two dedicated freight corridors would come into play in the country which would drastically cut down the goods transport time from 14 days to around 14 hours.

--IANS

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Britain's intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has denied the White House claims that it helped former President Barack Obama "wiretap" Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

GCHQ said in a statement that the claims repeated by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday were "utterly ridiculous" and ought to be ignored.

The claims of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former US judge Andrew Napolitano earlier this week and were later repeated by Spicer at a press briefing on Thursday, reported the Guardian on Friday.

"Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer had said.

A GCHQ spokesperson said: "Recent allegations about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then President-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

The denial came as the Senate Intelligence Committee announced it had found no evidence that Trump Tower had been under surveillance in 2016, contrary to Trump's previous claims that his predecessor Barack Obama had ordered wiretapping, reported BBC.

"Based on the information available to use, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," committee chair Richard Burr said in a statement on Thursday.

Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats Party, said Trump was "compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment".

--IANS

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The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe into the Narada sting operation in which prominent leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress were purportedly seen taking wads of currency notes.

A Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T. Chakraborty asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its preliminary inquiry in 72 hours.

The court also asked the CBI to lodge a FIR in the case if it felt it was necessary.

The bench told the CBI to take possession within 24 hours of all devices now in the possession of the court which were used in the sting operation.

The court gave the order after hearing three Public Interest Litigations seeking an independent probe into the controversy that came to light in March 2016.

The web portal Narada News had then uploaded a series of video footage purportedly showing a number of high-profile Trinamool leaders, including former and present ministers, MPs and MLAs receiving money in exchange for doling out favours to a fictitious company.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Following a Kerala High Court direction, a Catholic priest and two nuns surrendered before the police early on Friday morning here in connection with the rape of a minor.

On Tuesday, the high court, while hearing their anticipatory bail plea, directed them to surrender before the police within five days.

Only one person -- Thankamma -- who was also asked to surrender before the police, remains at large.

All the four accused were on the run after the police found they were involved in helping the 49-year-old Catholic parish vicar near Kannur and prime accused Robin Vadakkanchery, who allegedly raped the minor.

Vadakkanchery has been arrested for the alleged rape of the 17-year-old school girl, who gave birth to a baby boy in February.

The first to arrive was Catholic priest Thomas Therakom who headed the state-run welfare committee of Wayanad district, followed by the two nuns, a medical professional Betty Jose and Sister Ophelia.

All of them presented themselves before Peravoor Circle Inspector of police N. Sunil Kumar.

The high court while directing all the four to surrender also directed the police to see that after questioning, they should be presented before the local magistrate the same day and should be let off on bail.

Vadakkanchery was picked up in February when he was on his way to Cochin International Airport to catch a flight to Canada.

After Vadakkanchery's arrest, it was revealed that the incident was kept secret by Therakom and the three women.

--IANS

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Actor Amit Sadh, who is gearing up for the release of his upcoming film "Sarkar 3", says getting criticised over his acting skills will affect him rather than a comment on his fashion sense.

Does being a celebrity pressurise him to look good all the time?

"Firstly, I am not a celebrity. I don't know what a celebrity is. Kim Kardashian is a celebrity, not me. I am an actor," Amit told IANS.

Talking about dressing up, the actor said: "Yes, I have had good upbringing and I have been taught that when you go to a ballroom, you have to dress accordingly... But at the end of the day, I am a human being, I am a country boy. I will wear whatever I am comfortable in."

As an actor, he goes through other pressures.

"I do have pressures, yes... The day I am criticised for my acting, where somebody watches a film and says 'Amit, you wasted my Rs 300 ticket', that would affect me. If somebody says, 'I didn't like your t-shirt' I would be say 'Look somewhere else'. It doesn't matter," added the actor, whose last big screen outing was "Running Shaadi".

In his next film "Sarkar 3", Amit will be seen playing the role of Shivaji Nagre. The film is is the third instalment in the "Sarkar" franchise, and is directed by Ram Gopal Varma.

The political crime thriller also features megastar Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Manoh Bajpayee and Yami Gautam.

--IANS

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Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday inaugurated a three-day international Buddhist conference in Bihar's Nalanda district.

The Dalai Lama lit a traditional lamp to mark the start of the meeting at Rajgir, a Tourism Department official said.

Union Minister of Culture Mahesh Sharma was present at the event.

President Pranab Mukherjee will attend the concluding ceremony. According to officials, some 1,000 delegates from 35 countries are attending the conference.

--IANS

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Disruptions in Parliament are totally unacceptable as nobody has the moral authority to postpone the business of the House, President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Friday.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave here, Mukherjee said: "The disease of disruption has crept in. Disruption is totally unacceptable to me. Session after session pass without transacting any business. Who will make law? Money and finance needs to be discussed."

Mukherjee said that when he entered Parliament used to meet more frequently - around 24-26 weeks in a year - but that was no longer the case.

He said that Parliament must examine the rationality of expenditure as it is the taxpayers' money which was being spent.

--IANS

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Jammu and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday urged people from rest of India to visit the state and "enjoy the spring" and its natural beauty to better connect with the border state.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave here on the issue of federalism and whether states are being maltreated by the centre, Mufti said that her state's condition is peculiar from the rest of the country for it lies on the border.

"In a democracy you need to respect the mandate of the people... we are lagging behind because of the difficulties of being a border state," she said.

On being asked by the moderator, senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, if she wanted to invite people to come and invest in her state and if the Article 370 was a hindrance in doing that, Mufti replied people should come to state anyway for tourism and not just for investment.

"It's not about Article 370, not many of you would know that even Maharashtra too has this article. I want you to come with your family to enjoy the spring here... and move about anywhere, you would feel like (as you would in) your home," she said.

She said that India was not just a country but a "universe to us" for its diversity.

"We need to make our place in it... (but) regional aspirations should also be given a chance to be realised," Mufti said, adding that she hasn't had any problems securing funds for the state from centre so far.

-- IANS

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The third edition of the 'Gout de France' international culinary event is all set to celebrate French gastronomy in the capital.

The festival aims to highlight the art of French living and French regional produce.

Indeed, gastronomy is one of the cornerstones of French heritage, and the unique nature of the country's products and wines reflect the diversity of its landscape and typical regional products.

The expertise of French chefs continues to attract greater number of tourists and travellers from all over the world.

In the upcoming festival that will be held on March 21, there will be a participation of 14 restaurants from Delhi and Gurgaon, among other Indian cities, as also across the world.

Over five continents, 2,000 restaurants, 71 culinary schools, and 150 embassies of France will become a part of the festival. All kinds of eateries are involved, from haute cuisine restaurants to quality bistros.

On the occasion, the French Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler, will host a special dinner at his residence in Delhi, which will be dished up by famous Michelin-starred French Chef Akrame Benallal.

In the spirit of Indo-French cultural cooperation, Benallal, who is known for his flair for blending the unexpected with the traditional, will also conduct a gastronomy workshop for French business school Vatel's hospitality programme at Ansal University.

"Gout de France celebrates the vitality of French cuisine. Through this festive moment, it creates a dialogue between cultures by offering the common language of a shared French meal," Ziegler said in a statement released on Friday.

"We are proud that India ranks third internationally in terms of participating restaurants, reflecting the Indian public's growing interest in discovering new flavours, especially the subtle and innovative palette of French gastronomy," he added.

"Gout de France will highlight the French "art de vivre" and thus contribute, I hope, to attract a greater number of Indian visitors to France," Ziegler explained.

--IANS

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Antony K Leung, a former financial secretary of Hong Kong, delivers a speech in Beijing on Thursday, March 16, 2017. [Photo by Zhang Lulu/China.org.cn]

Antony K Leung, a former financial secretary of Hong Kong, said on Thursday in Beijing that the next chief executive of the Special Administrative Region (SAR), who is going to be elected in 10 days, needs to focus on economic growth and improving peoples well-being rather than underscoring politics.

Leung made the remarks during a seminar held by Beijing-based think tank, Center for China and Globalization, which he sits as the vice-chairman.

I hope the next SAR government can focus on economic development and the improvement of peoples well-being, because the past five years have all been talks about politics and universal suffrage, while the economy and citizens well-being have failed to be addressed, Leung said.

Hong Kong was plunged into chaos in 2014 when whats called the Occupy Central movement took place there.

Leung, who was Hong Kongs financial secretary from 2001 to 2003, said the citys next chief executive needs to have better communication with Hong Kong citizens, convincing them that the Chinese central government means good for them.

He said he believes that the central government wants to continue with the One Country, Two Systems policy in Hong Kong, favoring Hong Kong without imposing the mainlands political system on the city. Under the policy, Hong Kong, a former British colony, maintains its capitalist system and enjoys much autonomy.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kongs return to China. In the joint statement issued by China and Britain in 1984, China pledged that Hong Kongs previous capitalist system and life-style remain unchanged for 50 years after its return. Leung said that the following decade is critical as it will decide where the city is heading for the next 30 years to come.

He said Hong Kong, especially its young people, has been faced with three problems, namely, unaffordable housing, fewer opportunities for social mobility and inadequate involvement in policy-making.

He suggested the next SAR government increase public housing, continue building on its existing advantages while working more closely with the Chinese mainland in addition to involving more young people into the citys policy-making.
People who examine an issue virtually as a debate or dialogue between two sides are more likely to have deeper, more sophisticated reasoning skills, according to new research.

The research findings showed that envisioning opposing views leads to a more comprehensive examination of the issue.

Moreover, constructing opposing views leads people to regard knowledge less as fact and more as information that can be scrutinised in a framework of alternatives and evidence.

"Constructing a dialogue would lead to deeper, more comprehensive processing of the two positions and hence a richer representation of each and the differences between them... thus helping to expand and sharpen students' thinking," said Deanna Kuhn of Columbia University in New York.

"Everything possible should be done to encourage and support genuine discourse on critical issues, but our findings suggest that the virtual form of interaction may be a productive substitute, at a time when positions on an issue far too often lack the deep analysis to support them," Kuhn added.

For the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, the team asked 60 undergraduates to participate in a one-hour writing activity. Some participants were randomly assigned to construct a dialogue between TV commentators discussing two mayoral candidates.

They received a list of notable problems that the city was facing and a list of actions proposed by each candidate to solve these problems.

Other participants received the same information about the city and the candidates but were asked to write a persuasive essay highlighting the merits of each candidate instead.

Then, participants in both groups were asked to write a script for a two-minute TV spot, promoting their preferred candidate.

The results showed that participants who had constructed a dialogue included more discrete ideas in their writing.

--IANS

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev on Friday discussed a wide range of issues pertaining to bilateral economic relations, official sources here said.

Trutnev, accompanied by leaders from Russia's far east and a business delegation, is on a visit to India from March 15-18.

The two leaders "agreed that the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia, based on longstanding and time-tested ties, is very deep and extends to all spheres of mutual interest".

"Sushma Swaraj specifically stressed the growing mutual beneficial ties between India and Russia in energy sector, particularly in the Russian far east," said an official statement.

"The Minister emphasised on cooperation in maritime and agricultural sector, and on institutional linkages between the countries in these areas," it added.

Sushma Swaraj also thanked Trutnev for inviting the Indian participation in the Third Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September.

The two leaders agreed that interaction between various ministries of India and Russia will further boost economic cooperation.

Russia is India's foremost defence and strategic partner and largest exporter of defence equipment and nuclear technology.

Recently, Russian oil major Rosneft agreed to invest $10.9 billion in Indian hydrocarbon sector and Indian oil companies like Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India and Oil and Natural Gas Commission had acquired stakes in Russian Vankor and Tass-Yuryakh oil fields.

--IANS

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Indian steel exports have risen by 78 per cent in the eleven months (April-February) of the current fiscal and the country is on course to becoming the second largest steel producer in the world, Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said on Friday.

Noting that "the past 3 years have been quite challenging for the steel industry", the Minister said the "government of India intervened strategically to provide policy and regulatory support from time to time, which has given desired results like improvement in capacity utilisation to over 78 per cent, reduction in imports by 39 per cent and significant increase in exports by 78 per cent in the 11 months of current financial year."

He was addressing a curtain-raiser media conference on India Steel 2017 international conference to be held in Mumbai on the coming April 19-21.

"At present, the steel industry in India is on a path of growth and will soon become the second largest steel producer in the world," Singh said.

"The Steel Ministry is ready with a National Steel Policy 2017, which is in the final stages," he said, adding that inter-ministerial consultation is going on for maximising use of domestic steel in key projects.

To a query on whether the Ministry has had talks with the Reserve Bank over restructuring of loans for the steel sector, he said: "We already had a talk on this. A lot of restructuring has already happened."

--IANS

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The US state of Kansas has declared March 16 as "Indian American Appreciation Day" to honour Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla who was killed in an apparent hate crime.

Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed and his friend Alok Madasani was injured when Adam W. Purinton, a white man who earlier served in the US Navy, shot them at the Austins Bar & Grill in Olathe on February 22.

Purinton reportedly got into a row with the victims and hurled racial slurs. He yelled "Get out of my country" and "terrorist" before shooting them. An American, Ian Grillot, was injured in the attack.

"Kansas will remain committed to standing with the Indian community," Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said at an event on Thursday to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla.

Brownback issued a proclamation at the event to recognise March 16 as the "Indian American Appreciation Day", reported The Kansas City Star.

"We will always reject acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said in Topeka, the state capital.

"This is a deplorable act that happened," Brownback said. "We will not let it define us as a people."

Both Madasani and Grillot attended the event to honour Kuchibhotla. During a brief speech, Madasani thanked people for their support.

"It means a lot to all of us and we really appreciate it," he said.

Kuchibhotla of Hyderabad and his colleague Madasani from Warangal district in Telangana were working as aviation programme managers at Garmin, an MNC here.

Purinton has been charged with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. The FBI is investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ESAF Small Finance Bank, Kerala's first private sector bank, was launched here on Friday by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

The bank, promoted by ESAF Microfinance and Investments (P) Ltd, has announced that in its first year it will open 85 branches.

As per RBI guidelines, the bank is required to open 25 per cent of its branches in unbanked rural centres besides in cities like Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad in the first year.

"ESAF Microfinance, which presently has a network of 285 branches in 93 districts spread over 11 states, will currently convert all its existing branches into customer service centres or ultra-small branches or satellite offices," said K. Paul Thomas, Managing Director and CEO, ESAF Small Finance Bank.

ESAF Microfinance, which owes its success to the doorstep delivery of services, will replicate the same model for the bank.

"We are planning to appoint 10,000 agents for providing the banking services at doorsteps. The agents will provide services such as account opening, banking transactions and small value loans," added Thomas.

The bank is targeting a business of Rs 20,000 crore by 2020.

--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 named senior Calcutta High Court justice Asim Kumar Roy as chairman of the high-powered regulatory commission set up by the government to monitor activities of private hospitals.

Banerjee announced that Consumer Affairs Department Secretary Anil Verma would be the vice chairman of the 13-member West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission that has the status of a civil court.

"Justice Roy will be retiring in five months' time. If he says he will join after retiring, then we have no problem, Verma will be in-charge till then," said the Chief Minister.

Aprt from Chairman and Vice-Chairman, the 11 members of the commission include renowned doctors, a representative of nurses, the director of medical education, a nominee from the state health department, and two police officers.

Banerjee observed that all stakeholders have been represented in the commission. "No politician has been taken," she said.

To a query whether private hospitals were likely to shut shop and leave the state because of the stringent law, Banerjee said: "There are 2,000 private health facilities. But there are complaints against only seven or eight of them. Should we succumb to such blackmailing tactics?"

Banerjee also said that some misconceptions were being created that doctors would now face difficulty. "Only a small section of people give priority to business over service. Most of our doctors follow all professional ethics."

The Act, passed by the assembly on March 3, aims to bring transparency, end harassment of patients and check medical negligence in private hospitals and nursing homes. It draws under its ambit all other private medical set ups - irrespective of whether they are registered or not.

The commission is empowered to issue summons in case of a dispute.

The penal measures range between compensation and scrapping the licence of the physician/hospital. The commission may also put the offender behind bars up to three years. It can also order trying the offender under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) provisions including the sections pertaining to culpable homicide in case a patient dies due to severe negligence.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Filmmaker Mani Ratnam's forthcoming Tamil romantic drama "Kaatru Veliyidai" has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with U certificate, and without cuts, the makers announced on Friday.

In a statement, the makers confirmed that the film has been cleared with U certificate, making it fit for unrestricted public exhibition.

Starring Karthi as a fighter pilot and Aditi Rao Hydari as a doctor, the film will hit the screens worldwide on April 7.

Shot in places such as Ooty and Kashmir, it's nearly after two decades that Ratnam has travelled out of country to shoot in Belgrade, Europe.

Produced by Madras Talkies, the film also stars Shraddha Srinath, Rukmini Vijayakumar, RJ Balaji, Delhi Ganesh and veteran Malayalam actress Lalitha.

Double Oscar-winning A.R. Rahman has composed music while Ravi Varman has cranked the camera.

According to a source from the film's unit, its audio will be released on March 20.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP President Amit Shah on Friday said a massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh and Uttrakhand for the party is a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies and his popularity among the masses.

Participating in 'India Today Conclave 2017' here through video-conferencing, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said elections could not be won due to one or two reasons and multiple reasons helped the party win.

"For us, Modi-ji and his policies made it possible to win assembly elections with such a huge mandate," Shah said.

"There was a wave in BJP's favour in Uttar Pradesh and results proved that caste-based and dynastic has no place in India.

"The BJP's motto is inclusive growth of the country without any appeasement policy."

As for the BJP forming governments in Goa and Manipur despite not having the mandate, Shah said: "There were hung assemblies in the two states. Any party with majority can form a government in cases like these."

Commenting on Modi government's demonetisation, the BJP President said it was a "multi-dimensional step" and was not aimed at polls.

"It was just one step in a massive effort to curb black money and corruption," he added.

He said: "Reform is a small word; "it aims at transformation."

"We took some hard steps with regard to funding for political parties. Change will come gradually; we have started the process," Shah said.

Asked about BJP's alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Shah said: "Our alliance with the Shiv Sena is intact and will remain so."

"There's no issue with the Shiv Sena; there was a friendly match in Maharashtra civic polls with the Shiv Sena," he said.

He ridiculed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati for their charge that electronic voting machines were tampered with in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

"They should know the EVMs can't be tampered with. No one listens to Kejriwal in the country," he said.

Shah said he hoped the BJP will again form the government at the Centre in 2019, saying that every election is important for the BJP.

--IANS

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President Donald Trump on Friday accused North Korea of "behaving very badly" and "playing" the US for years, shortly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted that military options were on the table.

"China has done little to help!" Trump also said in a tweet from his personal account.

Tillerson, on a visit to South Korea, is due to visit Beijing on Saturday and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Friday, Tillerson told reporters that the US "policy of strategic patience has ended".

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table," he said during a joint news conference in Seoul.

While the US does not want military conflict, if North Korea elevates the threat of its weapons program to a level Washington believes requires action, "that option's on the table," Tillerson added.

North Korea has tested four ballistic missiles last week, and vowed "merciless ultra-precision strikes from ground, air, sea and underwater" if the US and South Korea violate its "sovereignty and dignity even a bit".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Narada News CEO Mathew Samuel on Friday welcomed a Calcutta High Court order to hand over the Narada sting footage case to the CBI for a preliminary inquiry to be completed within 72 hours.

"It is welcoming and very fair decision by the Calcutta High Court," said Samuel.

His company's portal uploaded a string of video footage last year showing a number of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool leaders -- including ministers, MPs and MLAs -- allegedly accepting wads of currency notes in return for favours to a fictitious company.

The footage became a big issue during the 2016 West Bengal assembly polls, but the Trinamool Congress managed to retain power despite a vigorous anti-corruption campaign by the opposition.

Soon after, in June, Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee ordered a probe headed by the city Police Commissioner to find out the "conspiracy" angle to the sting.

Police booked Samuel, who had conducted the sting, on several charges and issued him summons for personal appearance.

However, in August, the Calcutta High Court ordered an interim stay on the police probe while hearing petitions seeking an inquiry by an independent agency.

Last month, police searched Samuel's Delhi residence and office in connection with a ransom call received by a Bihar MP. The police said they had found a laptop, containing video footage of a man who purportedly resembled Samuel.

On Friday, the Narada New CEO alleged that state machinery was "misued" to try to nail him. "What wrong did I do? I have suffered, of late," he said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The coming meeting between Merkel (left) and Trump (right) will be a significant step to solve misinterpretations of the previous months.

During the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency, relations between Germany and the U.S. were marked by a spirit of solidarity. The decision of former U.S. president to visit Berlin and meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in his last trip to Europe was indicative of their personal harmonious cooperation and the excellent status of the bilateral relationship of their countries.

This does not mean that problems were not existing. The spying scandal of the National Security Agency (NSA) on German intelligence as well as the German-American disagreement on how to deal with the financial and debt crisis constitute some examples. Nevertheless, they were not sufficient to alter or significantly influence the mutual collaboration will.

All this is not taken for granted these days though. New U.S. President Donald Trump does not hesitate to blame other countries in his attempt to "Make America Great Again." Germany could not be an exception. A few days before his inauguration he had linked German automobile manufacturing companies with unfair trade practices because they do not operate factories in the U.S. but only export their products to it. He subsequently threatened them with high tariffs, mentioning a 35 percent border tax.

At the policy level, Trump criticizes Germany's leading role in the European Union and the eurozone. He believes Berlin used the euro to boost its export industry. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Head of National Trade Council (NTC) Peter Navarro was not diplomatic, and reiterated the president's argumentation. He said that the euro was like an "implicit Deutsche Mark" whose low valuation gave Germany an advantage over its main trading partners.

Berlin's response has been straightforward. It clarifies it has no power or the ability to manipulate the common currency. It also explains that its opposition to the Quantitative Easing (QE) plan decided by the European Central Bank (ECB) contains a contradictory economic logic from what Washington suggests. To be specific, if the ECB stops QE, the euro will be pushed upwards and not downwards.

Under these difficult circumstances for the bilateral relationship, Angela Merkel will visit Washington on March 17 to meet Donald Trump. The visit takes place three days after the originally planned one due to difficult weather conditions. Merkel is charismatic in finding common ground with politicians she does not agree with on several fronts. In the first six months of 2015, for instance, she managed to keep Greece in the eurozone by using personal diplomatic capital to persuade the inexperienced and rhetorically leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the risk to go alone. Of course, Trump is not Tsipras as he is much more powerful and unpredictable. But Merkel's conciliatory tone, patience and talent to find solutions remain the same and will certainly be apparent in Washington.

The agenda of Merkel-Trump meeting will be revolved around economics and politics. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2016 bilateral trade volume was $163.589 billion. But the U.S. had a trade deficit of $64.865 billion - which was approximately $10 billion lower in comparison to 2015 and 2014 - but still remarkably high.

The Trump administration advocates for protectionist measures to drastically change this imbalance. Its rhetoric is rather similar to the one it employs against China.

Merkel and Trump are expected to discuss their different positions in order to achieve a common understanding. The issue is not expected to be resolved in Washington but will be a theme of future deliberations. As it is also the case with China, Germany can retaliate against the U.S. if a trade war breaks out. There are several U.S. products which might be also hit including computers, TVs, telephones, pharmaceuticals, airplanes, cars and electrical equipment.

One day before Merkel's U.S. visit, the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held their first meeting in Berlin before a G20 Baden-Baden gathering. Schaeuble and Mnuchin continued discussions on trade with the latter saying he wants no trade war in order to keep tensions low. There are also additional signs that the initial ice between them has been broken. During an exchange of views with journalists Schaeuble was optimistic that Mnuchin will abandon his insistence on deregulating financial markets.

As far as politics is concerned, the Merkel-Trump talks will focus on international cooperation, principally on relations between the EU and the U.S. and the role of NATO in the world. After their telephone conversation in the end of January, the two leaders issued a joint press statement stressing the "fundamental importance" of the alliance to transatlantic ties and they will publicly stick on this commitment. Nevertheless, Trump's request for NATO members to spend a 2 percent of their GDP on defense cannot be soon satisfied by Berlin causing frustration to Washington. Also, Merkel's preference to preserve the sanctions against Russia will be perhaps challenged because the U.S. president is exploring ways of promoting a rapprochement with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The chancellor is also facing domestic pressure on this issue as leader of the Christian Social Union (CDU), Horst Seehofer, calls for an end of sanctions.

All in all, the meeting between Merkel and Trump will not constitute a breakthrough for a return of the German-American partnership to the normalcy of the Obama years but will be a significant step to solve misinterpretations of the previous months. The forthcoming German election will possibly postpone the making of critical decisions for a later stage. However, it will not prevent the finding of a common denominator to keep the bilateral relationship on track. As Merkel tends to say: "When there is a will, there is a way."

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
The Punjab provincial government was placed in an awkward position on Friday as the authorities wrongly put up banners carrying pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin while welcoming the President of Tatarstan who was to visit Pakistan.

The banners carried pictures of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif along with Russian President Putin instead of President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov who began his three-day visit to Pakistan on Friday, Geo News reported.

The pictures of the Russian strongman were removed after the local administration was mocked by social media users.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz has emphasised the need to take a criteria-based approach if any new member wants to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Radio Pakistan reported.

Aziz made this assertion during a meeting on Thursday with British National Security Adviser Mark Lyall Grant in London.

Aziz is currently visiting Britain to attend the 50th meeting of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group. He also discussed issues related to development, trade and investment, security and counter terrorism.

During the meeting, Aziz alleged there were human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and urged the international community to play a more active role on this issue.

The British National Security Adviser appreciated the efforts Pakistan has been taking for regional peace and security.

The NSG is dedicated to curbing nuclear arms proliferation by controlling the export and re-transfer of materials that could foster nuclear weapons development.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Marking the occasion of World Sleep Day 2017, Philips Healthcare India on Friday announced plans to extend sleep camps and launch a Centre of Excellence for training doctors on diagnosing sleep disorders in major cities in the country.

The Centre of Excellence will provide certified training to doctors on diagnosis and treatment of sleep associated disorders.

The sleep camps will raise awareness on sleep disorders and the necessity of visiting sleep labs and seeking medical attention for healthy and sound sleep.

"Awareness on sleep disorders is rising -- people are increasingly looking at lack of sleep as a potential health issue. But a lot needs to be done, especially in tier-II cities," said Harish R, Head of Sleep and Respiratory Care at Philips, India.

"Sleep disorders and their relation with potentially life threatening conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cardiac arrests cannot be ignored," he added.

Symptoms of sleep apnea include unwarranted daytime sleepiness and trouble in concentrating which can have a serious impact on health and increase cardiac conditions, strokes, neurological disorders, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and irregular heartbeats.

--IANS

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President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate on Saturday a three-day international conference on "Universities of the Future: Knowledge, Innovation and Responsibility" in Haryana.

The President's office on Friday said the conference -- at the O.P Jindal Glbal University in Sonipat -- will examine the future of Indian universities in the 21st century and will have sessions on 13 themes.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former state Bharatiya Janata Party chief will be sworn in as the new chief minister of Uttarakhand on Saturday, after he was formally elected the BJP's legislature party leader by party MLAs on Friday.

Rawat, an organisational man of the BJP in Uttarakhand and party in-charge in Jharkhand, won his traditional Doiwala seat by defeating Congress' Hira Singh Bisht by over 24,000 votes.

Rawat, a swayamsewak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), is considered close to BJP President Amit Shah.

Rawat was in close touch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the latter was a General Secretary of the BJP and in-charge of Uttarakhand.

During the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Rawat was attached with Amit Shah in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP swept all but seven seats. He is also credited with the BJP's win in Jharkhand.

The newly elected BJP legislators in Uttarakhand would meet on Friday evening in Dehradun to elect their leader in the presence of central observers Saroj Pandey and Narendra Tomar.

Uttarakhand BJP chief Ajay Bhatt has said the oath taking event has been fixed for 3 pm on Saturday.

All the 57 newly elected legislators of the BJP have been asked to come to the state capital.

The BJP has swept back to power in the hill state after five years, that too with a landslide majority.

Modi and Shah along with select central ministers and senior BJP leaders are likely to be present at the oath taking.

Security arrangements are being made at the Parade Grounds, keeping in mind the VVIPs who will attend, an official said.

Besides Rawat, Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant were in the race for the Chief Minister's post.
The order imposed on South Delhi restaurants to open their restrooms to the general public has not gone down well with the owners, who welcome the move only with a few qualifications.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) on Wednesday passed an order which directed all the restaurants (with restroom facilities) in its jurisdiction to be opened to the general public at a maximum charge of Rs 5.

The order came following deliberations between corporation and Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, where both decided to go ahead with the move, prominently to cater to women who generally find it difficult to relieve themselves when in need, owing to the crunch of public toilets.

Overall, restaurants have welcomed the move but insisted on their freedom to refuse service when they liked.

"We do not have any issue with the move. Even the shopkeepers come here and use our washrooms. But we have to maintain a brand image and we cannot allow everyone inside indiscriminately," Ravi, manager of a Costa Coffee outlet in Green Park market, told IANS.

"And that five rupees charge is a joke. We are not here for five rupees," he added.

Similar sentiments were echoed by other personnel in charge of the upkeep of their entities, who insisted on reserving the right to admission and a responsibility to maintain their brand image.

"We usually allow all alike, customer or no customer. But I believe the decision is a 'wrong number' in that the majority of the population which they (SDMC) want us to cater to, belong to higher end of society, who we allow anyway. But what about such people in not-so-posh areas- like Najafgarh, where they are very unlikely to find either the public washroom or restaurants," Labh Singh, Manager, Dunkin Donuts, told IANS.

"This is a complete misfire. The authorities are asking us to do their job, which is to make more public washrooms, which they should be doing," he added.

A manager recounted an incident as a way to forebode, what may lie in future of the business if the move is implemented forcefully.

"Once we allowed a 'beggar' woman to use our washroom, who created a complete mess inside and outside the lavatory. She was using the hose to wash her legs and in doing that she let the water flood entire floor... if such things happen then we may have to use our discretion," a stall manager at coffee joint in Hauz Khas said.

Two others in-charge of restaurants in the same locality -- one of the posher ones -- said that they need to assess the 'profile' of the customers using their restrooms and said that they would not want to cause their customers any unease who in their turn may object to outsiders.

Another concern voiced by the restaurateurs uniformly was one of hygiene.

"This is not a public toilet. How can the authorities ask us to follow this rule! Not everyone has the same hygiene standards, we cannot throw open the doors of our toilets, which we so fondly maintain, for all alike," a supervisor at a resto-bar named Maquina told IANS.

The order -- going to be implemented from April 1 -- has thus drawn congruent responses from the outlets who insisted on maintaining, contradictorily, their right to admission with a refrain that they will not have an issue with the order if only a certain kind come to use their washrooms.

The question to ponder then is - to whose benefit has the order been issued?

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Loans totalling over Rs 8,000 crore were given to absconding industrialist Vijay Mallya during the tenure of the previous UPA government at the Centre, Parliament was informed on Friday.

In response to a supplementary on the matter, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Gangwar, without naming Mallya, told the Lok Sabha during Question Hour that the loan of Rs 8,040 crore to the industrialist was declared a non-performing asset (NPA) in 2009 and was restructured in 2010.

The loan, granted in September 2004, was reviewed in February 2008, the Minister said.

"Our government has taken action against him (Mallya). He is currently living in the UK. Various agencies have issued summons to him. Following our requests, the Ministry of External Affairs has revoked his passport and we are taking action so that he faces justice," he said.

He also said that of the 9,150 wilful defaulters of state-run banks till December 31, 2016, suits have been filed against 8,364 defaulters who had taken loans amounting to Rs 85,258 crore.

Police FIRs have been lodged against 2,024 wilful defaulters who took loans worth Rs 29,557 crore.

Action against 6,207 wilful defaulters have been taken under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, Gangwar added.

Meanwhile, in a series of tweets last week, Mallya offered to negotiate with banks for one-time settlement of dues and sought the Supreme Court's intervention.

"Public sector banks have policies for one-time settlements. Hundreds of borrowers have settled. Why should this be denied to us? Our substantial offer before the Supreme Court was rejected by banks without consideration," Mallya tweeted.

Mallya's renewed offer came a day after the consortium of 17 banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) told the apex court that "he had taken it for a ride" and urged the apex court to initiate contempt proceedings against the business tycoon for "wilfully" flouting its orders.

Banks had previously turned down Mallya's offer of Rs 6,868 crore in April 2016, to settle the dues that are in excess of Rs 9,000 crore, including interest.

The loans were advanced to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines between 2006-2012.

The SBI-led consortium's attempt to auction properties of the industrialist in order to recover loans made to his Kingfisher Airlines, failed again last week as these had no takers despite around a 10 per cent cut in their reserve price.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the Lok Sabha last week that relevant agencies were trying to get Mallya back in India through the extradition or deportation route.

"In the last two-and-a-half years, the government has taken a series of steps. Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, attachment orders against Mallya have been issued by the Enforcement Directorate. Assets worth Rs 8,040 crore were attached," Jaitley had said.

The Karnataka High Court last week ordered a bailable warrant against Mallya through the diplomatic process, with the bail amount set at Rs 50 lakh for him to appear before the court.

The liquor baron left the country in March 2016 and is currently said to be living in Britain.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Rajya Sabha was on Friday disrupted by Congress members during Zero Hour over the role of Goa Governor Mridula Sinha in the formation of the new BJP government in the state.

The Chair briefly adjourned the House after Congress members trooped near the Chairman's podium and started shouting slogans.

Soon after the House met, Congress member Digvijay Singh demanded a discussion on the Governor's role under Rule 267, which entails suspending the listed business of the day and starting a discussion.

But Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien turned down the notice saying the role of the Governor can be discussed only under a Substantive motion.

Digvijay Singh referred to to an interview given to Mumabi Mirror by the Governor where she said that she reached the decision to invite Manohar Parrikar to form the government after consulting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Singh quoted Sinha's words: "I didn't speak with the Centre, no one approached me, no one called me. Then Parrikar informed me around 6.30 p.m. on Sundaya. I felt I should speak with Arun Jaitley, and I called him around 9.30 in the evening, discussing the situation. So that settled it."

Despite the Congress being the single largest party in Goa, the Governor invited the Bharatiya Janata Party led by former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to form the government.

Parrikar on Thursday won the trust vote in the Goa assembly.

The Congress members objected to Sinha consulting a Union Minister before making a decision.

Deputy Leader of Opposition Anand Sharma said that it was violation of Article 164 (1) of the Constitution.

However, Kurien said that he could not allow a discussion on the matter merely going by newspaper reports.

Soon after, the Congress members trooped near the Chairman's podium and shouted slogans "Loktantra ki hatya band karo" (Stop murdering democracy) and "Narendra Modi teri tanashahi, nahi chalegi (Narendra Modi, autocracy won't be tolerated)

As the din continued, Kurien adjourned the house till 12 noon.

--IANS

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The Defence Ministry on Thursday said it has issued guidelines for security of defence installations after taking into consideration a report of a committee that was constituted post-Pathankot attack.

After the Pathankot attack, the Defence Ministry had constituted a committee under former Vice Chief of Army Lt. Gen. Philip Campose (retired).

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said the recommendations of the committee included installation of technology-based security infrastructure; positioning of well-trained, armed and equipped 'Quick Reaction Teams' (QRTs) at high-threat and high-priority military bases; and conduct of periodic security audits, among other suggestions.

"Based on the recommendations of the committee and after consultation with the Services Headquarters, Guidelines for Security of Defence Installations have been issued to the Services Headquarters," Bhamre said.

The response comes a week after a parliamentary panel on Defence Ministry rapped government for not taking any "concrete measures" following terror attacks like Uri and Pathakot.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, headed by Maj. Gen. B.C. Khanduri (retired), in an earlier report had said that hightened security measures needed to be taken post-Pathankot terror attack.

The government, in an action-taken report sent to the panel, said the report by a committee under Campose, which was submitted on May 20, 2016, was being examined "in consultation with all stakeholders".

The panel had said it was "disturbed" to note the "apparent lack of sincerity" on the part of the Defence Ministry and desired that the situation should improve.

Terrorists attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force on January 2, 2016. Seven security personnel and one civilian were killed and 37 security personnel and one civilian were injured. All the four terrorists, who were from Pakistan, were gunned down.

On September 18, 2016, four heavily armed terrorists attacked an Army camp near the Uri town in Jammu and Kashmir. A total of 19 Army personnel were killed in the incident.

--IANS

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President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said there should be no room for "intolerance, prejudice and hatred within our educational institutions" that are meant for free exchange of views.

He said ancient India, with its centres of learning like Nalanda and Takshshila, was known for a high level of philosophical debate and discussion.

The country was not a mere geographical expression, but reflected an idea and a culture, Mukherjee said in his speech at a special convocation of the University of Mumbai here, held to confer an honorary D.Litt. on renowned agro-scientist M.S. Swaminathan.

"Conversation and dialogue are part of our ethos and life. They cannot be done away with. We should embrace free conversation and even argument, leaving behind narrow mindsets and thoughts," the President said.

The lesson for a modern Indian university is to ensure that this great tradition finds new life and vigour within its precincts, and they must act as "flag-bearers for the coexistence of multiple views, thoughts, and philosophies," he said.

He said the higher education ecosystem has a crucial role to play in national developmental efforts and influences various growth centres in the economy.

"Economy's growth depends on higher education in important ways. The quality of training provided to students employed by the economy determines its competence. Induction of quality manpower is the first point of contact that the economy has with the higher education system," the President said.

The graduates must meet the skill-set requirements of the domestic economy and the curricula must be attuned to industry needs, he advised.

For this, the President said, it will be beneficial to have corporate experts advising academic managers on industrial requirements in the course curricula.

President Mukherjee said the 21st century is expected to be an 'Asian Century' with the Asian countries regaining pre-eminence in the world through all-round development.

President Mukherjee said it was a rare opportunity to honour Swaminathan at the University of Mumbai, whose alumni include Mahatma Gandhi. Others conferred honorary D.Litts in the past were prominent personalities like Sir R.G. Bhandarkar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Sir C.V. Raman and Sir M. Visveswaraya.

Lauding Swaminathan, the President said his work has brought about a sea change in the nation's life.

It was due to his pioneering efforts that Indian was transformed from a ship-to-mouth existence to one of the leading producers and exporters of food grains in the world now, Mukherjee said.

In the past 65 years, Swaminathan, 91, collaborated with scientists and policy-makers on varied problems in basic and applied plant genetics and agriculture research and development.

Maharashtra Governor C.V. Rao, Vice-Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh, state Education Minister Vinod Tawde and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Syrian security forces inspect the scene of a reported suicide bombing at the old palace of justice building in Damascus on March 15, 2017. (AFP photo)

The twin bombings that rocked the capital Damascus on Wednesday have killed 43 people and wounded 129 others, a well-informed security source told Xinhua.

The first explosion happened when a suicide bomber detonated his bomb vest inside the Justice Palace, or the Courthouse, in central Damascus Wednesday afternoon, leaving 43 people killed and 105 others wounded, the source told Xinhua, on condition of anonymity.

The bomber was among the people who were waiting for checking to enter the building at noontime on Wednesday.

He was in camouflaged uniform, holding a rifle and a hand grenade. Once he handed over his weapons to the checkpoint police, he was asked for further inspection. He thronged the checkpoint and entered the main hall of the Justice Palace, detonating a bomb vest he was wearing.

The bombing happened at the time of rush hour in the courthouse, causing the largest possible deaths.

An hour later, crackles of gunshots were heard in the resort area of Rabweh, west of Damascus, in what later appeared to be the Syrian police haunting down a bomber with an explosive belt. The bomber entered a restaurant in that area, detonating it, and wounding 24 people.

At the restaurant, people were about to celebrate the birthday of one of their friends, but the party was turned upside down, due to the bombing.

The blasts are the latest in a series of bombings that have sparked recently, following a long time of lull.

On Saturday, the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front carried out a suicide bombing in Damascus, killing 74 people, including Iraqi Shiite visitors, who were in Damascus on a pilgrim visit.
A man, suspected to be a suicide bomber, was killed in a blast outside a police camp in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an anti-crime, anti- unit of the Bangladesh Police, camp is located in the city's Ashkona area, bdnews24 reported.

"This might have been a suicide attack," a police official said.

Two RAB personnel were injured.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police on Friday patrolled the Yamuna river bank here and mounted extra vigil after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love.

An official said the information was passed on to the police and the intelligence agencies on Thursday after which several teams combed the area and stepped up vigil.

Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials, however, tried to play down the threat, saying the security arrangements were routine.

Local newspapers have published a photo from the website showing a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon.

The world heritage monument is visited by over six million tourists annually.

Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh said police teams were on alert and a close watch was being kept on crowds.

The internal security in the Taj Mahal is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force. The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts.

SWOT commandos have been put in charge at vantage points. Mock drills are being conducted every few hours to test the state of preparedness.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams are keeping a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking towards the eastern gate, the sources said.

Superintendent of Police Sushil Dhule and a team of the bomb disposal and dog squads on Thursday evening visited the entire area around the Taj Mahal.

The number of visitors to the Taj Mahal is on the rise. The annual Taj Mahotsava is set to begin on Saturday.

--IANS

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here Friday morning to talk with his South Korean counterpart over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, a media report said.

The airplane carrying the top US diplomat arrived in the Osan Air Base, some 60 km from here around 10 a.m. for the second stop of his East Asian tour, TV footage showed.

Tillerson visited Japan on Thursday, meeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to leave for Beijing on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Tillerson is scheduled to meet South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as the acting President after former President Park Geun-hye was ousted.

After the meeting, he will hold a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se here.

Key agenda on the table for Friday's talks between Yun and Tillerson would be the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

Tillerson said in Tokyo on Thursday that diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to realise the denuclearisation of the peninsula have failed, stressing the need for a new approach to the issue. --IANS

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson began his two-day trip to South Korea on Friday, which is expected to focus on discussing ways to strengthen the bilateral alliance and fend off the growing threats from North Korea, the media reported.

Tillerson arrived at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 km south of Seoul at about 10.10 a.m., Yonhap News Agency reported.

He arrived in South Korea after visiting Japan where he held talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other top officials in Tokyo on Thursday.

Right after landing, Tillerson headed to the Demilitarised Zone on the inter-Korean border, the first major schedule of his visit.

Later in the day, he will meet Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who took over in December after then-President Park Geun-hye was impeached by parliament.

He also plans to hold a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se to discuss pending regional and global issues.

The two will hold a joint press conference before going into the talks.

Tillerson's visit to South Korea is part of his three-country Asian tour that will also take him to China this weekend. This marked his first trip of this kind since taking office as top diplomat under President Donald Trump's administration.

According to political analysts, the Secretary of State's visit came amid mounting anxiety over additional provocations by North Korea and deepening friction between South Korea and China over the deployment of an American missile defence system called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad).

During a press conference held after meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo before leaving for South Korea, Tillerson told reporters that US efforts over the past 20 years to denuclearise the North have failed, calling for a "new approach" in dealing with Pyongyang.

However, the secretary did not provide details on what the new approach would be but noted that he exchanged views on it with Japan and will do so with his counterparts in South Korea and China.

He is scheduled to fly to China on Saturday.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, March 17 (IANS/AKI) Police said they had arrested two suspected Pakistani people smugglers in the northwest Italian port city of Genoa who were driving two cars with 13 migrants hidden inside.

Interviewed by police, the migrants told police they wanted to reach northern Europe and had arrived in Sicily two weeks ago aboard a boat from Libya.

The two Pakistanis face charges of abetting illegal immigration.

--IANS/AKI

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The US military has said it carried out an airstrike on a meeting of Al Qaeda militants in Syria, killing several suspected terrorists and is investigating reports that dozens of civilians were killed in a nearby mosque during the strike.

The US military disputed Syria activists claims that its airstrike on Thursday killed dozens of civilians attending prayers at a Syrian village mosque and said that the strike instead targeted and killed Al Qaeda militants, CNN reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at least 42 people were killed in the airstrike on a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jinnah in Idlib province.

A senior military official told NBC News that while there was a mosque about 50 feet from its target, the US has photographic evidence that the mosque was not hit and was still standing.

"We did not target any mosques," said Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, which has responsibility for American military missions in the Middle East.

"US forces conducted an airstrike on an Al Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria," Colonel Thomas said. "Idlib has been a significant safe haven for Al Qaeda in recent years."

He said that it was a "precision strike", which resulted in two large craters.

The US Central Command will look into any allegations of civilian casualties in the area, the spokesman said.

Idlib has been a significant safe haven for Al Qaeda in recent years, the spokesman added.

The SOHR said search and rescue efforts were ongoing at the site and the toll is likely to rise since dozens of people are still buried under the rubble.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The White House has apologised to the British government after claiming that a British intelligence agency spied on US President Donald Trump at the behest of his predecessor Barack Obama.

US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster spoke to his British counterpart on Thursday about Press Secretary Sean Spicer's claims that British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a White House official said on Friday.

The official described the conversation as "cordial" where McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional."

McMaster also told his counterpart that "their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House."

The official said there was "at least two calls" from British officials on Thursday and that the British ambassador to the US called Spicer to discuss the comment.

"Sean was pointing to the breadth of reporting, not endorsing any specific story," the official said.

A senior administration official told CNN that Spicer and McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government.

Earlier Friday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said senior UK officials had protested to the Trump administration after the claims were repeated by Spicer on Thursday.

The claims of GCHQ spy agency involvement were initially made by former US judge Andrew Napolitano earlier this week.

"Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer had said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said that it has been made "clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated."

The spy agency said the claim was "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous".

Then, at a regular press briefing, Downing Street said it had sought and received reassurances that the allegations would not be repeated.

"This shows the administration doesn't give the allegations any credence," the Downing Street spokesman said. "We have a close special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise, as was true in this case," 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.)
Chinese President Xi Jinpingheld a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the topic of strengthening bilateral relations, media reports said.

During the conversation on Thursday morning, Xi noted that 2017 marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Germany and that relations between the two countries have witnessed a comprehensive and in-depth development over recent years, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We're willing to work together with Germany to push the China-Germany comprehensive strategic partnership further forward. As both being two of the world's most important economies and firm advocates of globalization, China and Germany are obliged to push all parties to jointly build an open global economy, maintaining the effectiveness of multilateral trade rules and systems," Xi said.

The Chinese president noted that economic and trade cooperation are the key driving force of China-Germany relations and called on both countries to ensure that economic ties are mutually beneficial.

Xi also voiced China's support for Germany to host this year's Group of 20 leaders summit in Hamburg, saying China is willing to work with Germany to ensure the Hamburg summit, on the basis of Hangzhou summit held in China last year, sends out a clear and positive signal for stronger global economic cooperation and governance.

For her part, Merkel expressed satisfaction with the development of Germany-China relations. She said Germany speaks highly of the important speech Xi delivered at the World Economic Forum held in January in Davos, Switzerland, supports the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, and appreciates China's support for the upcoming Hamburg G20 summit.

She said Germany is willing to increase high-level exchanges with China, boost economic and trade cooperation, and deepen people-to-people exchanges in a bid to lift their comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.

--IANS

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A senior Trinamool Congress MP today demanded a "proper probe" by the Election Commission into the allegations of in the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

The allegations have been levelled by the AAP, the BSP and some other political parties.

TMC MP Sultan Ahmed said the EC should conduct an investigation into the allegations levelled by several political parties.

"Various parties have expressed doubts on the results and levelled allegations of . To bring out the truth, a proper investigation should be conducted by the Election Commission. When several parties have raised doubts, the matter needs to be probed," he told PTI.

BSP chief Mayawati and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal questioned the reliability of the electronic voting machines which, they alleged, were tampered with in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly elections and demanded reverting to paper ballots.

However, the EC today dismissed the allegations and emphatically said that the EVMs were "fully tamper-proof, as ever".

In a strongly-worded statement, the commission said "baseless, speculative and wild allegations are being made, which deserve to be rejected".
A group of youngsters who protested the ban on the bull-taming sport of Jallikattu, as part of a massive upsurge in January, has formed a political party En Desam En Urimai Katchi (My Nation My Right Party) and is set to contest the upcoming bypoll in Dr Radhakrishnan Nagar. The seat fell vacant after the death of sitting MLA and chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) holds a welcome ceremony for Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud before their talks in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2017.(Xinhua/Li Xueren)

Chinese President Xi Jinping and visiting Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud have agreed the two countries will step up cooperation in all areas and push forward their all-round strategic partnership.

In their talks Thursday in Beijing, Xi recalled his visit to Saudi Arabia last year, during which he reached consensus with King Salman in advancing bilateral ties and cementing cooperation in international and regional affairs.

Xi said he was happy to see that consensus had been implemented by both sides.

China supports Saudi Arabia as it advances on a development path suitable to its national conditions, maintains national sovereignty, security and development interests, and plays greater role in regional and global affairs, Xi said.

China supports Saudi Arabia in its "Saudi Vision 2030" plan, and welcomes the country to be a partner in the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said.

China is a reliable and stable market for Saudi Arabia's oil, Xi said, calling for closer cooperation in such areas as energy, communication, aviation, finance and investment, culture, education, public health, technology, tourism, media and security.

Xi said China and Muslim countries respect each other and set an example of harmonious coexistence between civilizations.

In Middle East affairs, China advocates respecting national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs, Xi said.

China advocates solving disputes through dialogue, easing tensions on hot issues, giving full play to the United Nations' key role and paying more heed to the voice of regional organizations and countries, he added.

The solution to many issues in the Middle East lies in development, Xi said.

China hopes to boost the Belt and Road Initiative with countries along the route including Middle Eastern countries, he added.

King Salman voiced adherence to the one-China policy, and vowed to cement cooperation with China in the areas of trade, investment, finance and energy, in order to upgrade their all-round strategic partnership.

Saudi Arabia highly values China's stance of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, and solving disputes through dialogue and peaceful means, he said.

King Salman also appreciated China's role in maintaining international peace and security, expressing his hope for China's greater role in Middle Eastern affairs.

After their talks, the two heads of states witnessed the signing of cooperative agreements on trade, economy, energy, capacity, culture, education and technology.

They also attended the closing ceremony of an exhibition of archeological relics from Saudi Arabia.

King Salman is on a state visit to China from March 15-18 at Xi's invitation. It is his first China visit since becoming king of Saudi Arabia in 2015.
Amid the allegations of tampering of EVMs in the recent UP assembly polls, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said the Election Commission of India should convene an all-party meet to discuss the issue.

"Whether one would accept or not is absolutely their choice. But the Election Commission may call for an all-party meeting. Let it be discussed," said Banerjee.

Asked whether she would favour a probe into the charges of tampering of Electronic Voting Machines, she said," I have seen the Election Commissioner's version that there is nothing.. But I have also gone through a video tape of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy saying these EVMs can be tampered."



Banerjee showed reporters the Swamy's video clippings his views on feasibility of tampering EVMs.

In the video clippings, Swamy is seen saying that the EVMs were made in Japan but ballot papers were used even there during elections because the machines can be tampered.

Even countries like the US and Germany are using ballot papers instead of EVMs, the BJP leader was heard saying in the in the video footage.

Describing Swamy as "very strong legally," Banerjee said, "What he (Swamy) has said is not wrong... He has not said anything bad.. I have not said anything but I think there can be an investigation in this."



Incidentally, Mayawati has accused the BJP of murdering the democracy, saying that the tampering of EVMs was responsible for her party's poor show in Uttar Pradesh.
At least 33 Somali refugees including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat on the Red Sea, officials in Yemen's rebel-held Hodeida said today.

The bodies of 33 refugees were taken to hospitals in the western port city, a health official there said, adding that 35 wounded had also been admitted.

A port official in Hodeida, held by Shiite Huthi rebels, confirmed the toll of 33 dead.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rajasthan has recorded increase of 17.93 per cent and 2.60 per cent in the inflow of domestic and foreign tourists, respectively in two years.

Rural Development minister Rajendra Rathore informed the House that 3.66 crore tourists visited the state in 2015, while the number of tourists was four crore last year.

He said in the year 2015 and 2016, the inflow of tourists has increased.

Replying to a question during the Question Hour, Rathore said Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has increased the budget of the tourism department by 22.37 per cent in the state budget 2017-18.

"As per the report of the government of India in 2015, Rajasthan ranks 6th in the country for the number of tourists. Barring Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan is ahead from other neighbouring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab in terms of the arrival of tourists," he said.

Rathore informed the House that the state government was working on improving intra-state air connectivity to boost tourism and the tourists spots are well connected by road and rail.

Replying to a question on upgradation of schools, the School Education Minister Vasudev Devnani said no school has been closed in the state.

He said the government merged those schools where the number of students was low.

During the Question Hour, BJP MLA Hira Lal insisted the health minister Kalicharan Saraf to upgrade a primary health center to community health center in Jhilai area in his constituency Niwai.

He said he has repeatedly requested Saraf to make the announcement to upgrade the PHC to CHC but the minister said that any decision will only be taken on the basis of merit and the availability of financial and other resources.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Steel exports have surged by 78 per cent in the April-February period of 2016-17 financial year, Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said today.

The minister also said that there has been 39 per cent decline in imports of the alloy and there was a case for lifting of anti-dumping duty on steel products.

The past three years have been quite challenging for the steel industry, Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said and added that the government intervened strategically to provide policy and regulatory support from time to time which has given desired results.

There has been "improvement in capacity utilisation to over 78 per cent, reduction in imports by 39 per cent and significant increase in exports by 78 per cent in the 11 months of current financial year," he said.

At present, the steel industry in India is at a crucial juncture in its journey of growth, he said, adding that inter-ministerial consultation is going on for maximising use of Indian-made steel in key projects.

When asked whether the steel ministry had any talks with the RBI over restructuring of loans for the sector, he said, "We already had a talk on this. A lot of restructuring has already happened."



He also said that there was a case for lifting of anti-dumping duty on steel products now.

The government last month extended anti-dumping duties imposed on import of certain steel products till 2021 to save the domestic industry from cheap shipments of the alloy.

The country in May 2016 had imposed provisional anti-dumping duty on import of select steel products.

Japan has challenged the decision at global trade body WTO and had sought dispute consultations with India in the dispute 'India-Certain Measures on Imports of Iron and Steel Products'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The number of foreign tourists arriving in India increased 13 per cent to 9.56 lakh in February as compared to 8.47 lakh in the same month last year, the government today said.

During January-February, foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) were at 19.40 lakh, recording a growth of 14.7 per cent as compared to 16.91 lakh in the same period last year, the Tourism Ministry said in a release.

Bangladesh topped the list of countries with highest share of 17.46 per cent in total FTAs during February, followed by the UK (12.20 per cent), the US (11.83 per cent), Russia (4.29 per cent), Canada (4.26 per cent) and France (3.25 per cent).

The share of Germany was 3.11 per cent, while that of China was 2.96 per cent, Sri Lanka 2.91 per cent, Australia 2.62 per cent, Malaysia 2.55 per cent, Japan 2.26 per cent, Thailand 1.83 per cent, Afghanistan 1.73 per cent, and Nepal 1.50 per cent.

During February this year, as many as 1.70 lakh tourists arrived on e-tourist visa as compared to 1.17 lakh during the month of February, 2016, registering a growth of 45.2 per cent.

During January-February 2017, a total of 32.18 lakh tourists arrived on e-tourist visa as compared to 20.54 lakh during January-February 2016, recording a growth of 56.7 per cent.

UK topped the list of countries availing e-tourist visa facility with a share of 26.1 per cent, followed by the US (11 per cent), France (7.3 per cent), Russia (7.3 per cent), China (5.1 per cent) and Germany (4.8 per cent).

The share of Canada was 3.9 per cent, while that of Australia was 3.4 per cent, Korea 2.2 per cent, the Netherlands 1.9 per cent, Ukraine 1.5 per cent, South Africa 1.5 per cent, Spain 1.3 per cent, Singapore 1.2 per cent and Sweden 1.2 per cent.

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About 99 per cent polling was today reported in elections to the three Legislative Council seats from the Local Authorities Constituencies in Andhra Pradesh.

The elections were held in the Local Authorities Constituencies of Kadapa, Kurnool and SPS Nellore districts to fill three vacancies from this segment in the Upper House.

Members of panchayat raj institutions and urban local bodies formed the electorate.

In Kadapa, 838 out of the total 841 votes were polled, while in Kurnool 1,076 of the 1,083 voters exercised their franchise.

In SPS Nellore, 849 out of the 852 voters cast their votes, information reaching here said.

Polling was conducted in a peaceful manner with no untoward incident reported from any of the 11 polling stations in these districts.

The ruling Telugu Desam Party and the opposition YSR Congress are locked in a straight fight in these three seats.

Counting of votes will take place on March 20.

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The influential All Assam Students' Union and 28 ethnic and minority community students organisations today demanded banning of the Nikhil Bharat Bengali Utbasta Sammonnay Samity for its alleged involvement in the Silapathar incident.

"The Silpathar incident of March 6 is an attack on the swabhiman (self-respect of the indigenous people of Assam. Till now the main culprit of the incident Subodh Biswas has not been arrested", claimed AASU chief advisor Samujjal Bhattacharya here.

"Subodh Biswas has to be arrested where ever he is and strong punitive measures taken against him. We 29 organisations warn the government that we will not rest till he is booked", Dr Bhattacharya told reporters here following a joint meet of the 29 students bodies here.

The Silpathar violence took place during the procession taken out by NiBBUSS leading to the destruction of an office of the local unit of AASU, Swahidbedi (memorial to Assam Agitation martyrs) and also causing damage to public and private properties and disruption of law and order situation in the area.

AASU president Dipanka Kumar Nath alleged, "Subodh Biswas could escape due to the the failure of the Assam government to nab him. We condemn it. We ask the Chief Minister who is in charge of the Home department why Biswas could not be arrested".

To continue with their agitation against the incident, the 29 organisation will on April one next organise a public protest rally at Latasil field here and will meet central leaders for fulfilment of their demands, Nath said.

Bhattacharya also said the meeting decided to continue with their peaceful joint movement against the Silapathar incident along with their other demands, including scrapping of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, and consideration of the Expert Committee's report on construction of big dams in Assam.

"We are not anti Muslim, anti Bengali or anti-Hindus. We are only against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh", stated AASU leader.

"To destroy the identity of the indigenous people of Assam the government of India wants to impose illegal migrants from Bangladeshis on Assam. We will strictly go by the Assam Accord whereby illegal migrants from Bangladesh who come upto March 31, 1971 would only be accepted", Bhattachrya asserted.

"We also demand that the government take steps for only the indigenous people here to have land rights in Assam and the National Register of Citizens not to include the names of the illegal migrants", he added.

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A man, accused of raping a 25-year -old US tourist in a 5-star hotel here along with three others, today claimed before a court that he should be discharged from the case as there was no evidence against him.

Aniruddha Singh also cited a delay of eight months in lodging of the FIR to support his plea.

He filed the discharge application before Additional Sessions Judge D K Sharma, who presides over the special fast track court set up to exclusively deal with cases of sexual offences against women, saying it is unbelievable that a citizen of such an advanced country was so reluctant to lodge a complaint.

His plea, however, was opposed by the police and the counsel for the complainant woman saying that the CCTV footage of the hotel where the alleged incident took place and a mobile phone have been sent to the forensic laboratory in Hyderabad and the report is awaited.

The court after hearing arguments listed the matter for further hearing on March 21.

The woman's advocate submitted that she was drugged and raped by the accused. Several date rape drugs are available in the market and the victims are unable to remember anything after being administered the medication, the counsel said.

He also said there was no reason why a foreigner will falsely implicate the accused and that her travel expenses were borne by legal aid authority as she did not have the means to travel to India.

However, the counsel for the accused said the charge sheet was only based on the woman's statement given to a magistrate under section 164 CrPC and there was no other evidence against them. He further said there was a delay of eight months in lodging of the FIR.

The defence lawyer claimed that the woman filed the case to get a compensation from the US authorites under the American law.

During the hearing, the court asked the woman's counsel to inform it on the next date of hearing as to when she can come to India for giving evidence.

The case was marked to the sessions judge today by the district judge after a magisterial court earlier took cognisance of the charge sheet.

In the charge sheet, Delhi Police has alleged that the accused -- Aniruddha Singh, a Rajasthan-based tourist guide, Vivek Srivastava, who was working in the hotel when the crime was allegedly committed, Omprakash and Maqsood -- raped the woman in April last year and threatened her.

It has alleged the accused had also committed unnatural sex with her and that they also made videos of the act.

All the four men have been chargesheeted for alleged



offences of gangrape, unnatural sex, causing hurt by means of poison and voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation and common intention under the IPC.

The police had on December 26 last year arrested all the four in connection with the alleged rape of the woman.

The US national had arrived here last December to join the probe and recorded her statement before a magistrate saying she was raped by five men in the hotel.

The four accused were arrested after the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) issued a notice to the police asking them why the Rape Crisis Cell of the panel was not informed when the her statement was recorded.

Earlier, the complainant had said she was "not satisfied" with the probe and was ready to come to India to identify the accused.

The woman had alleged that she was raped by the men for two days and also threatened with dire consequences if she reported the matter to anybody.

She had also stated that the men had made videos of the act and threatened to make those public if she reported the matter. She had also told the police that the accused had claimed to have sexually assaulted a couple of other owmen tourists as well.

A team of psychologists and psychiatrists had assisted the woman in recalling the details of the incident.
The Indian telecom sector manpower is set to more than double in the next five years, creating additional requirement of 4.78 million skilled workers by 2021-22, Parliament was informed today.

"As per the telecom Sector Skill Plan of the Department (DoT), the telecom sector manpower of four million in 2016-2017 would grow to 8.78 million by 2021-22 creating additional requirement of 4.78 million telecom skilled manpower," Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

Further, as per analysis of Telecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC), 20-25 per cent of people in a telecom set up are high-skill workers that is engineers, MBAs, CAs, HR experts who require no specific skill training and are given 2-4 weeks orientation course on the job by the employer.

The balance 75-80 per cent manpower would require telecom skills training, the minister said, adding "keeping the optimistic figure of 80 per cent, the target telecom skilling required till 2021-22 will be to the tune of 3.86 million."



The training centres of Telecom Department PSUs like Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam and ITI are being acceredited to Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to impart large scale skill development training to youths in the telecom sector, he pointed out.

Since skill gap analysis has been done well in advance, and adequate telecom skilling plan has been drawn, no supply gap is anticipated in the telecom sector, he added.

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China plans to scale up its defence cooperation with its "all-weather" ally Pakistan to co-produce ballistic missiles, in an apparent retaliation to India developing the nuclear-capable Agni V missile that has a range of over 5,000 km covering whole of China.

Declining to react to Chinese official media reports that Beijing plans to co-produce ballistic and cruise missiles with Pakistan, besides mass production of military aircraft, Chinese Foreign Ministry however said Beijing stands for "strategic balance" in South Asia.

"On Pakistan army chief's visit to China, the Pakistan military has released information about the meetings between the him and the Chinese counterpart," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told media briefing here.

"From the release, we did not see anything about the agreement about ballistic missiles," she said while answering a question about a report in the state-run Global Times that China plans to step up its defence cooperation with Pakistan, including ballistic, cruise missiles besides joint mass production a multi-role combat aircraft.

On his first visit to China, Pakistan's army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa held talks with Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission of China yesterday.

Bajwa also called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Gen Fan Changlong and Commander of the People's Liberation Army Gen Li Zhuocheng and discussed regional security, economy, defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.

This is the first time the official media mentioned about the likely cooperation between the two all-weather allies on the co-production of ballistic and cruise missiles.

Pakistan is heavily reliant on its defence needs from China.

"What I can tell you is that China and Pakistan maintain normal defence exchanges and relevant cooperation," Hua said.

Asked whether China is open to the idea of working closely with Pakistan on developing missiles specially in the light of the 1998 UN Security Council resolution 1172 which called on India and Pakistan to stop testing ballistic missiles, Hua said all the UN members have the obligations and responsibility to observe the UN resolutions.

The non-binding UNSC resolution passed in the backdrop of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 called on both the countries to cease testing of ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

"Our position on the strategic balance on the South Asia is consistent," she said without elaborating.

Last December reacting to India's successful test firing ofAgni-V missile, Hua referred to the particular UNSC resolution.

"On whether India can develop this ballistic



missile that can carry nuclear weapons, I think relevant resolutions of the UNSC have clear rules," she had said.

"We have always believed that safeguarding strategic balance and stability in South Asia is conducive for the peace and prosperity of countries in the region," she said.

The reference to the strategic balance in South Asia apparently meant the military balance between India and Pakistan.

Agni-V, the 5000 km range intercontinental ballistic missile was widely regarded as a strategic missile meant for China as it can reach almost all parts of Chinese mainland.

It is not clear whether the Global Times report about China's plans to co-produce missiles with Pakistan was a retaliatory move by Beijing in response to Agni-V test.

Bajwa's talks with his counterpart will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, said Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force.

Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong which in Pakistan called JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting, Song said.

China's authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said.

The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song said.

The military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weaponry and anti-terrorism sectors, the report said.

The two sides also vowed yesterday to ensure the safety of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important part of China's Belt and Road initiative.

Pakistani Ambassador to China Masood Khalid said that Pakistan has deployed over 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC, and the country's navy has raised a special contingent for the protection of the Gwadar Port.

Recent report here said China itself is increasing the strength of its Marine corps from 20,000 to one lakh, some of whom would be deployed in Gwadar and Djibouti, where China is building a logistics military base.

As Pakistan faces frequent threats from terrorist forces such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, military support is necessary to ensure a safe environment for the regions where there is a huge investment from China, Song said.

The two countries agreed to enhance anti-terrorism cooperation at the meeting, vowing to resolutely strike against terrorist forces, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement active in Xinjiang which is the connecting point of the CPEC.

China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement for the violent attacks during the past few years.
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Four people were wounded after a heavily-armed teenage student, fascinated by mass shooting videos, stormed a high school in Grasse, south France, on Thursday, French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said.

Visiting the shooting site, the minister described the attack as "a crazy act by a fragile young man fascinated by firearms."

"We avoided the worst," she added.

Four people including the headmaster suffered slight injuries while ten other students were wounded during a stampede following the shooting, according to the minister.

The 17-year-old student of the Tocqueville high school, who was carrying a rifle, two handguns and two grenades, was arrested.

Grasse prosecutor Fabienne Atzori said the shooting appeared not to be linked with terrorism.

"The shooter's motivations appear to be related to the bad relations that he would have with other students of this high school. It seems that he has some difficulties to integrate," she told reporters.

The teenager, not known to police services, was placed in custody on charges of attempted assassination, she added.

During a visit to Correze, southwest France, French President Francois Hollande called for vigilance to ensure safety as the terror alert level remains high.

"The investigation is ongoing. Even if there is no direct link with a terrorist organization, we remain extremely vigilant," he said.

Hollande imposed a state of emergency in the wake of the Paris attacks in November 2015, added the emergency would be prolonged until mid-July.

In a separate incident in Paris earlier on Thursday, a female worker at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) office had been wounded in her hands and face after she opened an envelop bomb sent by mail.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in Paris have opened an investigation into the incident.
was categorised as "poor or very poor" on nearly 90 per cent of the total days in the four-month winter season this year, a study on Friday said and asserted that air pollution poses a serious threat to living standards in the national capital.

"Not a single day in the four-month-long winter season was noted under the 'Good' category, while a whopping 89 per cent of the total days were either under the 'Poor' or 'Very Poor' category," said a bulletin on 'Ambient Air Quality for Delhi' released by Centre for Environment and (CEED).

"Six per cent of days are also observed with 'Severe' air quality. This poses serious threat to the living standards and public well-being of our national capital," the bulletin said.

The bulletin said 981 kg/m3 is the maximum average concentration of particulate matter (PM2.5) observed at the monitoring station of Technological University (DTU) located near Bawana industrial area on November 5 last year during high pollution smog-days in .

"This is 16 times higher than the prescribed limits of National Air Quality Standard of 60 ug/m3 for 24-hour average concentration of particulate matter (PM2.5)," it said.

The findings are based on data from 10 real-time air quality monitoring stations in Delhi, set up by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), during the last winter season between the months of November, 2016 and February, 2017.

"The report is not just an assessment of the existing levels of air pollution in Delhi, but is also a reflection of the levels of human exposure to air pollution," it said.

The study also revealed that the monthly mean values demonstrated a general downward trend from November to February.

The average concentration of particulate matter in the month of November was calculated to be 282.7 ug/m3 (the highest), while the monthly mean concentration during the rest of the winter season (December, January and February) was 224.57 ug/m3, 172.7 ug/m3 and 140.74 ug/m3 respectively.

The highest daily average concentration of PM2.5 in the month of November was 558 ug/m3 on November 7 last year, while in December, it was 300 ug/m3 recorded on 24th of the month.

In January and February, the highest daily average concentration of PM2.5 was recorded on January 1 (225 ug/m3) and February 28 (215 ug/m3) respectively, the bulletin said.

"The air quality of the city is unbreathable and is choking its residents, especially the vulnerable, causing a massive public health disaster. It is a crisis looming in our faces and we cannot turn a blind eye to it.

"This emergency situation demands emergency action. While keeping the urgency of the situation in mind, the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) approved by Supreme Court should immediately be ratified by the Government of NCT of Delhi, so that its implementation can start on ground," said Dimpy Suneja, Programme Officer of CEED.

The fact that the air quality in has plunged to dangerous levels, poses a major threat to public health and safety, he said while noting that every year millions of people face untimely death due to the increasingly polluted quality of air they breathe.
State-owned Allahabad Bank has raised Rs 300 crore by issuing Basel-III compliant additional tier I bonds.

"The bank has raised additional tier I capital through private placement of additional tier I bonds aggregating up to Rs 300 crore (including green shoe option of Rs 100 crore)," the bank said in an exchange filing.

The bonds bear coupon rate of 11.15 per cent per annum.

The Kolkata-headquartered bank in August 2016 said it plans to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore through private placement of bonds.

Stock of Allahabad Bank closed 1.81 per cent down at Rs 70.65 on BSE.

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The Anti Corruption Bureau today arrested the Additional District Magistrate (ADM) of Jalore for his alleged involvement in irregularities in Jodhpur Development Authority in 2013.

"The arrested officer P S Naga had the charge of Secretary of the JDA then and was currently posted as ADM in Jalore district," S P (ACB) Ajay Pal Lamba said.

This is the first arrest in the case involving an administrative officer of the state government. Prior to this, the ACB had arrested 3 engineers and one civil contractor, who allegedly extended advantage in violation of the contract terms.

"Naga had illegally extended the financial sanction of many civil works from originally Rs 396.84 crore to Rs 647.08 crore by tampering with the board meeting minutes and thus caused a loss to the JDA to the tune of Rs 250.24 crore," Lamba said.

He said Naga was arrested after his role in the irregularities was confirmed during the investigation of the matter of work and financial sanctions of some civil works by the JDA in wrong manner.

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There were 15 terror attacks on the army last year as the force lost 68 soldiers, the Lok Sabha was today informed.

2016 also recorded 449 instances of ceasefire violation by Pakistan along the Jammu and Kashmir border.

In a written response to a question in Lok Sabha, Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State for Defence, said 10 cases of terror attacks were recorded in 2014, followed by 11 in 2015, 15 in 2016 and three until March 15 this year.

2015 and 2016 also saw a spike in the number of deaths of army personnel, recording 67 and 68 casualties respectively in terror attacks and along the border. In 2014, 38 army personnel died in terror acts while 13 have lost their lives this year.

Bhamre said, in 2016 the area along the Line of Control, which is under operational control of the army, saw 228 instances of ceasefire violations while the area along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, under the control of the Border Security Force (BSF), recorded 221 instances of ceasefire violations.

This accounts for more than one instance of ceasefire violation everyday.

In 2017, 30 instances of ceasefire violations were recorded along the LoC while six such instances along the international border were recorded until February 6 by the BSF.

(REOPENS DES 16)



In response to another question, Bhamre said, the army has conducted joint exercises with 18 countries over the last three years.

The Air Force has conducted exercises with eight countries and the navy conducted joint exercises with 14 countries. India also signed defence agreements with 21 countries, Bhamre said.

Responding to another question related to vacant posts in Armed Forces Tribunal, Bhamre said 15 posts of members (judicial and administrative) are lying vacant in the AFT while 217 posts of Group A, B and C are also vacant.

"The ministry has taken action for filling up of existing vacancies and also the anticipated vacancies upto June 30, 2017," the minister said.

In response to another question related to shortage of assault rifles in the army, Bhamre said, a fresh proposal has been initiated to procure new assault rifles which would meet desired operational parameters.

(REOPENS DES21)



In response to another question, Bhamre said the ministry of defence has issued guidelines for penalties in business dealings with blacklisted entities, which have come into effect from November 21, 2016.

To a query, Bhamre said there are 141 defence manufacturing units in the country in public and private sectors and approximately 65.62 per cent of procurement needs of army, air force and navy for 2015-16 have been met through indigenous sources.

He said, so far 36 FDI proposals/joint ventures have been approved in the defence sector for manufacture of various defence equipment.

Rs 3,164 crores allocated for modernisation of armed forces remained underutilised, he said.

To another question on defence projects under 'Make in India' scheme, Bhamre said a committee of experts headed by Dhirendra Singh had made recommendations to the government on 'Strategic Partnership Model' for creating capacity in private sector on a long term basis.

"Besides this, the V K Atre Task Force was also constituted to lay down criteria for selection of Strategic Partners for various platforms from the private sector.

"Meanwhile, capital acquisitions are being undertaken as per the extant defence procurement procedures, which are aligned to the 'Make In India' initiative of government.

"In the last two financial years and the current year, 134 capital procurement proposals have been accorded Acceptance of Necessity (AoNs), of which 96 cases will involve contracts with Indian vendors," he said.

Responding to another question, the minister said, approximately 10,220 acres of defence land is presently under encroachment by various agencies of central and state governments and other private persons.
Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit today urged British Deputy High Commissioner, Kolkata, Bruce Bucknell to take steps to ensure return of Assam's treasure, 16th century's Vrindavani Vastra to the state.

The Governor drew Bucknell's attention to Assam's treasure, Vrindavani Vastra, a drape woven by Assamese weavers during the 16th century under guidance of the Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankardev and sought his help in the getting the drape back here.

It is now in Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The British diplomat, who was in Assam, met the Governor at Raj Bhavan here and the duo discussed a number of issues of mutual interest, an official release said here.

The Governor pointed out that the state is rich in Eri and Muga silk, handloom and bamboo craft, and both Assam and Britain could work together in these sectors for further promotion so that both could reap rich dividends.

The Governor also requested Britain's help to organize an exhibition of Assam's handicraft in that country.

Besies, he also called for facilitating cultural exchanges between Assam and Britain.

He also appreciated the British Deputy High Commissioner's gesture of visiting Assam and hoped that both would keep working to strengthen bilateral relations.

The British Deputy High Commissioner also hailed Assam's tourism potential which can be extensively used to facilitate people to people contact between India and Britain.

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A boat packed with Somali migrants came under attack overnight off Yemen's coast close to a strategic Red Sea strait that killed 31 people, a UN agency and a Yemeni medical official said today.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, the victims carried UNHCR papers. Laurent De Boeck, the IOM chief in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, said the agency believes all the people on board the stricken vessel were refugees but it was not immediately clear where they came from in Somalia.

The SABA agency in Yemen, run by the country's Shiite rebels, said the attack was an airstrike that took place off the coast of Hodeida province, close to the Bab al-Mandab strait. It did not say who was behind the airstrike.

De Boeck added that 77 survivors who were pulled out of the water were taken to a detention center in Hodieda. He said the IOM is in contact with the hospital, clinics, and the detention center to provide the necessary medical care the victims.

In Geneva, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told reporters that he was unable to confirm reports indicating that an Apache helicopter gunship was responsible for the attack. "Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths and many dozens of survivors brought to hospitals," he told The Associated Press.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is fighting alongside Yemen's internationally recognized government, has accused the Shiite Houthi rebels of using Hodeida as a smuggling route for weapons. There was no immediate comment from the coalition.

The coastal province has been under heavy airstrikes over the past two years since the coalition joined the conflict in support of the government. African migrants continue to head to Yemen, a transit point to Saudi Arabia where they seek jobs and a better life.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said bodies of the dead were being retrieved from the sea and taken to the morgue of a hospital in al-Thawra. Only 14 bodies had arrived at the morgue so far, the Yemeni official said, adding that women were among the dead.

There were also 25 wounded, including those who lost arms and legs, who were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

On its Twitter account, the UNHCR said it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen.

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The International community should play a "more active role" in Kashmir, Pakistan's top diplomat Sartaj Aziz has said during a meeting with the British National Security Advisor in London.

Aziz, the Pakistan Prime Minister's Foreign Affairs advisor who is in the UK to attend the 50th meeting of Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, raised the issue of alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir during a meeting with British National Security Advisor Mark Lyall Grant, Radio Pakistan reported.

Aziz underscored the need for the international community to play a "more active role" in Kashmir, it said.

He also emphasised the need for a criteria-based approach for any new member in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the report said.

Aziz discussed issues related to peace, development, trade and investment, security and counter-terrorism with Grant.

They also discussed needs to further strengthen the existing relations through the available mechanism of Pakistan-UK Enhanced Strategic Dialogue.

The US on Wednesday said it was working with India and NSG members to push for New Delhi's membership in the elite grouping, indicating that there was no change in America's policy on the issue under the Trump administration.

Besides India, Pakistan has also applied for the membership of the NSG, a bloc that governs civilian nuclear trade worldwide.

India's membership in the NSG has been blocked by China, Pakistan's close ally.

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A Bangladeshi national illegally residing at Anand Vihar here has been arrested, police said today.

"The Bangladeshi Cell of the Shahdara police district received a tip-off yesterday that a Bangladeshi national was hiding in the Sai Mandir area of Anand Vihar for the last two months," said Nupur Prasad, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara).

"He was arrested for intruding into the country through the Benapole border and for not possessing any valid visa or travel document," she added.

The accused has been identified as Jahangir (26), a native of Bagerhat district in Bangladesh.

He has confessed that he came to India illegally through the Benapole border about two months back, said Prasad.

"He has told us that he was working as a ragpicker here. He has been handed over to the authorities concerned for deportation," she added.

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A team of five dacoits today



looted Rs 20 lakh from United Bank of India's Sujapur branch here, the police said.

The incident happened within the jurisdiction of Kaliachak police station after 1 pm, when five dacoits entered the bank, looted the money and fled, the police said.

Superintendent of police of Malda, Arnab Ghosh visited the spot.

Around Rs 20 lakh was looted from the bank and the officials are calculating the exact amount of money that was looted, the SP said.

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 Flash

Turkish president accused a European Court of Justice ruling, which allows employers to ban employees from wearing the Islamic headscarf, of starting a struggle between Christian "cross" and "crescent" of Islamic world, local media reported.

"Where is the liberty of religion? They have started a struggle between the cross and crescent," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday at a rally in Sakarya province ahead of April 16 referendum campaign for constitutional amendment.

He suggested that Europe is moving toward the days just before World War II, private NTV reported.

The controversial decision drew criticism from Turkish politicians. Turkey's EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Omer Celik stated during an interview with the A Haber news channel Wednesday that "the decision was influenced by the trend of Islamophobia (in Europe)."

Bekir Bozdag, Turkish Justice Minister, described the decision as the "apocalypse of justice."

"It is a violation of human rights," he said on Wednesday, adding that "forcing people to choose between practicing their religion and their jobs does not comply with human rights, EU values or with law and justice."

"The European Court of Justice, which is responsible for protecting the joint justice in Europe, has bombarded justice," the minister said.
BJP today protested in the Bihar legislature against the state government for serving show cause notices to several IAS officers who had formed a human chain here against arrest of their colleague Sudhir Kumar in the BSSC examination paper leak case.

Lawmakers of BJP and its NDA allies in the Assembly and Council trooped to the Well at both Houses and shouted slogans against the government for show-causing IAS officers.

"The situation in Bihar at present is akin to that prevailed in the country during Emergency period under Congress rule," Leader of Opposition in the Council Sushil Kumar Modi told reporters.

The notice was meant to insult IAS officers and browbeat them to fall in line particularly after they decided not to entertain unwritten orders from ministers," he said.

"The IAS officers also have right to protest," the senior BJP leader said.

He suggested Chief Minister Nitish Kumar not to adopt confrontationist approach towards IAS officers.

As per reports, the state government yesterday sought explanations from all field officers, particularly DMs, posted outside Patna for coming here on February 27 to form a human chain in front of Raj Bhawan as part of a protest programme of the state chapter of IAS Association.

According to media reports, around 28 DMs had participated in the human chain to protest arrest of Bihar Staff Selection Commission chairman Sudhir Kumar in connection with paper leak in recruitment test of clerical grade staff.

They have been asked to reply if they had taken permission before leaving the district headquarters.

Meanwhile, Treasurer of the state IAS Association Deepak Kumar Singh told PTI that he has come to know about the notices from media reports only.

"We would study the show cause and decide the future course of action," he said.

Central IAS Association has also supported the state unit's protest on arrest of 1987 batch IAS officer Sudhir Kumar.

The Bihar chapter of IAS Association had met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over Sudhir Kumar's arrest and also petitioned Governor Ramnath Kovind and Assembly Speaker Vijay Kumar Chaudhary.

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China on Friday skirted a direct response to Pakistan's plan to declare the Gilgit-Baltistan region as its fifth province and said the Kashmir issue should be resolved between India and Pakistan through dialogue.

When asked about Pakistan's plan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying reiterated China's position on the Kashmir issue.

"The essence of your question is about the issue of Kashmir. China's position on the issue is consistent and clear," she told reporters.

"We believe that it is an issue left over from the history between India and Pakistan and it should be resolved between the two sides through dialogue and consultation through proper manner," she said.

About the $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which goes through Gilgit-Baltistan region over which India has protested to Beijing, Hua said, "the will not affect China's position on the relevant (Kashmir) issue".

Reports from Pakistan say that the decision to incorporate Gilgit-Baltistan as a new province was taken following pressure from China over the legal status of the two areas which formed part of the .

India on Friday termed as "entirely unacceptable" any possible attempt by Pakistan to declare the Gilgit-Baltistan region, bordering the disputed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as the fifth province.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said in New Delhi that any such step would not be able to hide the illegality of Pakistan's occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir which it must vacate, forthwith.


The first ever Brahnmaputra



river festival, 'Namami Brahmaputra', to be held in Assam later this month, will have delegates from China, Vietnam and Singapore among others.

The first-ever river celebration between March 31 and April 4 will be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee in presence of Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.

"China has confirmed to be part of the five-day Namami Brahmaputra festival. A team is scheduled to participate in a trade seminar," Assam Inland Water Transport director B B Dev Choudhury told PTI here.

Among other countries who have also confirmed participation are Vietnam and Singapore, he said.

The Brahmaputra with 1625 km lying in China, 918 km in India, and 337 km in Bangladesh is an international river.

"We are also trying for Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he added.

Assam government's offering of tribute to sacred Brahmaputra will attract global and national attention in showcasing trade, tourism and transport investment opportunity in the north eastern state, the minister said.

A total of eight roadshows in cities and at least two international roadshows were organised to promote the event, a brain child of the new Assam government.

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The Board of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Ltd, a Murugappa Group company, has given its approval to elevate N Srinivasan, Group Director, Finance, as Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director.

The appointment of Srinivasan will be effective August 19, 2017 for a period of two years in place of Vellayan Subbiah, a company statement said here.

Srinivasan was inducted in the Murugappa Group Corporate Board as Director-Finance in January 2007. He was later involved in the financial service business of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Ltd and Chola MS General Insurance Company as 'Lead Director'.

During his tenure, both the companies CIFCL and Chola MS "grew significantly" and have become the large businesses of the Group, it said.

Meanwhile, the Board of Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company also appointed Arun Alagappan as Executive Director with effect from August 19, 2017 for a period of five years, subject to necessary approvals, it added.

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The Committee of Administrators (COA) today decided in unison that any state unit trying to sabotage Indian Premier League matches will face harsh punishment and the matter will be taken up at appropriate legal forum.

The COA, which met here today, feels that the state units are trying to feed misinformation as they have never ever been required to spend any money from their coffers for arranging IPL matches.

In fact, a top BCCI source abreast with COA meeting said that it was found out that the state units are blatantly lying as it is the BCCI and franchises which share the cost of hosting association on a 50-50 basis and not the state units. Some of the state units are trying to portray a different picture.

"For the last nine editions, a unit that hosts seven matches (that's the maximum at league stage) requires Rs 60 lakh. Out of that Rs 30 lakh is paid by the local IPL franchise upfront. The BCCI pays the outstanding Rs 30 lakh after the matches are successfully completed. So where does the state units come into the picture," a top source told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

"For example, Kanpur is hosting two matches so they will get an amount according to their number of matches. That's how it has been all these years. Delhi Daredevils will pay DDCA Rs 30 lakh before the IPL starts and BCCI the remainder after completion of the event," he explained.

Vikram Limaye, like the last time, will be representing BCCI at the ICC Board Meeting while CEO Rahul Johri will be present at the Chief Executives Meeting.

The issue of Shashank Manohar's resignation from ICC chairmanship was also discussed at the meeting and the COA decided that it will carry discussions with the other member boards on proposed revenue model and constitutional reforms.

"The BCCI will carry on its discussions with other member boards. As far as ICC chairmanship is concerned, it's the call of the ICC Board," the source said.

The Supreme Court hearing on March 20 also came up for discussion. As of now, most of the state units have not complied with Lodha Committee reforms. The COA has already submitted a first status report to the Supreme Court.

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The differences and parallels between the historical contexts of India and China and their effects on contemporary realities and issues between the two nations were the focus of a conclave of scholars that convened here today.

Titled "The Present Juncture of Historical Change: Decolonizing Asian Futures", the two-day symposium which began today is jointly presented by the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 and Inter-Asia School and sponsored by Hong Kong-based Moonchu Foundation.

The conference brought leading thinkers from India and China in direct dialogue and discussion with each other. - unmediated by Western academia.

Prof Sun Ge, a political and cultural theorist from the Inter-Asia School, said "the term decolonsing did not mean rejecting, resisting or demolishing traits inherited from the West but rather confronting or engaging with problems already with us".

Prof Aditya Nigam, from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies observed that Asia was at a second moment of ecolonisation - the first being primarily the political movements and liberation struggles from the imperial regimes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"Intellectual decolonisation involves transcending mindsets to arrive at a newer sense of our futures, our future imaginaries, our categories of thought, for example", he said.

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The Congress today demanded that President Pranab Mukherjee dismiss Goa Governor Mridula Sinha for committing "constitutional impropriety" and "dereliction of duty".

The opposition party latched on to Sinha's admission in an interview that she consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley before inviting the BJP for government formation in the state.

"We urge the President of India to exercise his powers under Article 156 (1) and immediately dismiss the Governor of Goa for abdicating her Constitutional responsibilities and oath of secrecy," Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa said.

He said the President of India has already dismissed the Arunachal Pradesh Governor for similar acts of impropriety, saying this will act as a deterrent to other governors to work within constitutional limits.

Bajwa said the Supreme Court has reiterated that it is the duty of the Governor to "act judiciously" while exercising their powers under Article 164 at the time of appointing the Chief Minister.

"However, the atrocious admission of Governor Sinha conclusively proves that her actions were politically motivated under the clear instructions of the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley," he told reporters.

Putting forth the Congress' demands, the party's Rajya Sabha MP said these revelations demonstrate that the act of the governor to consult the finance minister and not the President of India "is a serious matter of constitutional impropriety and an unpardonable dereliction of duty".

He asked that since the finance minister could not have advised the governor in government formation, "why should the Prime Minister not take action against the Finance Minister?."



"Or are we to assume that he was authorised by the dirty tricks department of the BJP?" he asked.

The Congress leader cited an interview of Sinha where she made the "startling and audacious revelation", and "shockingly accepted that she consulted Union Minister Arun Jaitley" to invite the BJP for government formation in the state.

"This proves that BJP manufactured the Goa majority while the Governor acted in cahoots with the central leadership in Delhi," he said.

On Sinha's claim that she heard that Congress could not elect their Legislature party leader nor get enough support, Bajwa asked "where did she hear it from? Did she hear it from anybody in the Congress party or was it 'Akashwani'?"



"How can she take such a decision without consulting the Honourable President of India or without studying its legal ramifications?" he asked.

He said under the established convention in such a scenario, the Governor should have approached the President and submitted a report to him seeking guidance for the way forward.

"Rather than consulting the President of India or the Attorney General of India, she consulted the Union Finance Minister who is a party in this case, hence indulging in massive Constitutional impropriety," he alleged.

The Congress party also alleged that the Constitution is left "bruised and battered, as yet again the BJP subverts the Governor for their own petty gains".

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A sarpanch (village head) allegedly shot at and seriously injured a Congress worker at Agwan village here, police said today.

The head of Agwan village, Kulwinder Singh, his son Nirmal Singh and their supporters allegedly attacked Kanwaljit Singh (25) and shot at him, they said, adding it seems to be a case of post-election rivalry,



He was rushed to the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in Amritsar where his condition was stated as critical, police said.

A case has been lodged against Kulwinder, Nirmal and four others at the Dera Baba Nanak Police Station, they said.

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Creambell Ice Cream, brand of Devyani Food Industries, part of the USD 1.4 billion RJ Corp. has planned to invest Rs 150 crore as part of its foray in to Tamil Nadu market, a top official said today.

The company, which holds 15 per cent market share in the Rs 4,500 crore ice cream industry, would build strong presence in Tamil Nadu over next few years Creambell, CEO, Nitin Arora said.

"We are happy to announce our entry in Tamil Nadu and we will be focusing over the next few years to build a strong presence here", he said.

In the first phase, he said, the company would focus on establishing its brand in Chennai market through retail and vending push carts.

"Creambell expects to invest upwards of Rs 150 crore over the coming years to enhance presence and popularise the brand in the State", he said in a statement.

On expansion plans in overseas market, he said the company was in the process of introducing the ice cream brand in Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Creambell currently has 15,000 pushcarts and 70,000 retail stores across the country. It has state-of-the-art production facilities in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, Kosi and Goa.

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 Flash

Vice-Premier Wang Yang arrived in Manila on Thursday to start a four-day official visit intended to improve pragmatic cooperation between China and the Philippines.

Wang will meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and also with the Philippine Cabinet's economic management team for talks, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Wang attended the opening ceremony of the China-ASEAN Year of Tourism, reading a congratulatory message from Premier Li Keqiang, and he is expected to speak at the opening ceremony of the China-Philippines Economic and Trade Forum.

Wang's visit came a day after Chinese companies signed agreements with their Philippine counterparts to purchase $1.7 billion worth of fruit and other products.

As many as 73 trade deals were signed in Manila on Wednesday, including for such Philippine goods as bananas, pineapples, coconut oil, fiber, lumber, copper cathode and nickel ore, China News Service reported.

Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua said the agreements are "an effort to balance the trade" between the countries. They are the "advanced result" of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's state visit to China in October.

The agreements are expected to be the first of many as China seeks to import more nonfood goods such as chemicals and related products.

China increased its imports of fruit such as mangoes and pineapples from the Philippines after Duterte's visit to Beijing. In the past five months, bilateral trade has reached $100 million.

Duterte's visit to China last year, which included the signing of a number of cooperation deals, led to the thawing of both diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries, which had once been soured by the South China Sea arbitration case.

Duterte, who has been taking a positive approach toward China since taking office in June, has said he plans to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in May.

Zhou Fangyin, a professor of China's foreign policy at the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, said the proper management of the South China Sea issue has helped lay a solid foundation for the two countries to develop bilateral trade.

Bilateral ties "encompass far more than the South China Sea issue", and trade cooperation between the two countries will in turn help solve that issue, Zhou said.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama today described himself as a "son of India" and hailed the secularism prevailing in the country.

"I am living in India for the past 58 years and hence, I am a 'son of India'," the noble laureate said in his speech after inaugurating an international seminar on Buddhism here in Nalanda district.

"In the field of secularism there is no other country like India," the Dalai Lama said.

"When I was in Tibet my thoughts were narrow. But when I moved out of my homeland and came to India, I developed a broader thought about Tibet as well as about the entire world," he said.

The religious leader said the Nalanda school of thought was an important aspect of Buddhism. "Whatever I am today is due to the Nalanda thoughts", he said.

President Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to attend the seminar on March 19.

The Dalai Lama stressed that good education would help develop tolerance among mankind and inculcate the habit of forgiveness.

"Today's system of education is making us a consumer. The traditional mode of education was good," he said at Rajgir that is known globally for the Nalanda University, a historic seat of learning.

The new Nalanda University, which has come up near the historic site, is also drawing international attention.

On the occasion, Union Culture and Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma, said Buddhism was a symbol of unity and peace.

"There is a lot of expectations from Buddhism across the world," the Minister said.

"From India, Buddhism spread across the world and contributed a lot in establishing peace," Sharma said.

Buddhist monks and scholars from various countries are participating in the seminar 'Buddhism in 21st Century' being held at International Convention Centre here, about 100 km from the capital Patna.

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Mounting attack on AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, who is under fire for the "blunder" which blew the Congress' chances to form government in Goa, former party legislator Vishwajit Rane on Friday said it's time the veteran politician called it quits.

"Digvijaya should now take retirement from . The kind of blunder he along with other Congress leaders did, cost the party its government (in Goa) despite having a majority," Rane told PTI, a day after he quit the party.

"I don't know whether Digvijaya really wanted to form the Congress government in Goa. Looking at his actions, it did not seem like (he did)," he said.

The 45-year-old Rane had defied the party whip during the crucial floor test in the Goa Assembly yesterday, jolting the Congress, which came one down from the 17 votes it had against the government, when he absented himself.

Rane, son of former Chief Minister Pratapsinh Rane, alleged that the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting which was held in the party office after winning 17 seats in the Goa assembly polls was a mere "joke".

"The meetings continued for long and nothing was being decided. Entire day, media was outside the hotel and meetings continued. On the other hand, BJP held a video-conferencing with their leaders in Delhi and within no time, they cobbled up an alliance," he said.

When BJP and alliance partners gave the letter of support to Governor Mridula Sinha, the Congress woke up from its slumber and got into action, Rane added.

According to Rane, the Goa Forward Party had showed their intention to forge an alliance with Congress and form the government, if Digambar Kamat was elected as the CLP leader.

"But the party took time to discuss on the proposal of GFP and lost out on the opportunity to form the government," he claimed.

The three-time MLA also said he would be re-contesting from Valpoi constituency and reiterated that he was "open to all options" and even fighting on a BJP ticket.

"Once I am elected, I will tender my support to the Manohar Parrikar-led government. We can't sit in Opposition and let the constituency suffer. People have high expectations during the next five years," he said.

Rane also rubbished the rumours that his father would be quitting the Congress.

"My father is not going anywhere. He is a loyal Congressman and he will be with them," he stressed.

The Manohar Parrikar government yesterday proved its majority on the floor of Goa Assembly by winning the trust vote with the support of 22 legislators in the 40-member House.

Later, the Congress in Goa today expressed anguish over Vishwajit Rane's move to resign as a Member of Legislative Assembly.

"The step taken by Vishwajit Rane is unfair and disgusting. He has not only sullied his own image but also that of his father," Goa Congress spokesperson Ramakant Khalap told reporters in Panaji.

"The manner in which he defied the whip and the manner in which he walked out of the House and later submitted his resignation, explains the menace level of Rane. Party condemns his behaviour. We are very angry with him," he said.

"He has insulted the electorate and that is why the people from his constituency are convening us their anger and displeasure towards the entire act," the spokesperson added.
DMK today condemned the hurling of a slipper at Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan and sought steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Seeking action against the man who hurled the slipper, DMK working president M K Stalin said the incident was an attempt to lower the reputation of Tamil Nadu and unacceptable in a civilised society.

Stalin, who is also the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, said the incident went against the culture of Tamils.

Citing the presence of a posse of police personnel, he wondered how the incident occurred and urged stern action against the man.

He said the DGP had the duty and responsibility to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

A man hurled a slipper at Radhakrishnan when he arrived at Salem yesterday to pay his last respects to dalit JNU scholar Muthukrishnan when the body was brought from Delhi.

However, the slipper missed the target.

The man was taken into custody.

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Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan has a word of caution for aspiring musicians, "Don't learn classical music if you want a career."



"If you want to make a career then don't learn classical music... Become an engineer, scientist or a bank manager. Classical music is a lifelong service, commitment and dedication to understand music," Khan told PTI.

The musician was here to perform at a charity concert held by Indian Cancer Society.

Khan said only a few who can "entirely dedicate their lives to music and their masters" manage to find the light in the "dark tunnel that is music".

"For music, you have to entirely dedicate yourself to the Gods and your teacher. Classical music is like entering a dark tunnel with this hope that some light will reach you someday.

"A few of us find that light, while thousands of others are still stumbling around in the darkness," Khan said.

Pointing at the increasingly commercialised prospects of music, he said that people were learning music only "to make an album or to be on television".

"These days you see people who learn music to make an album, to appear on reality shows or to perform on stage. You don't find many people who are learning music to actually understand music," the Padma Vibhushan awardee said.

While Khan disapproves of the commercialisation of music, he also feels that the "future of classical music is secure" in the hands of "talented" young aspiring musicians like his sons Amman and Ayaan and their contemporaries.

"There are some very young talented musicians in this generation. Amaan, Ayaan and their contemporary musicians are very talented and they are quite established. So, I feel the future of classical music is secure," he said.

The Sarod player also noted that while legacy played its part in a musician's life, it was largely his or her dedication and hard work that pays off.

"It is not necessary that only a newcomer with a legacy can find his or her place in this field. Legacy helps, but not always.

"I have taught Amaan and Ayaan classical music and Sarod, because music is my wealth, it is my property, bank balance, treasure and everything that I have. Now it's up to their own hard work, commitment, dedication and discipline," he said.

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Nagaland Congress president K Therie today alleged that the elected representatives of the ruling Naga People's Front (NPF) government have "no dreams and vision" for the people of the state.

"We have programmed robots in the government, who are functioning without any vision and dream for the welfare and uplift of the Naga people in the State," Therie said.

He was speaking during the introductory programme of the newly appointed 17 office bearers of Nagaland Pradesh Youth Congress at Congress Bhavan here.

Nagas of Nagaland are suffering by electing "robots to suppress and dictate" for the last 15 years, Therie said while alleging that the NPF has become a 'comfort party' of the BJP and are facilitating and supporting BJP ideologies and principles in a Christian state like Nagaland.

He alleged that if the NPF is allowed to continue to run the government, the special rights of the Naga people guaranteed under Article 371(A) of the Constitution of India "will be taken away as the BJP government in the Centre".

Nagaland and North East cannot allow our identity to be submerged with the ideologies of BJP, which is trying to rule the country by dividing the people on religious lines, he alleged.

He claimed the Congress is the only national political party in the state, which is regional in content and national in outlook while its principles and ideologies is to protect the democratic and social rights of the people, and also promoting secularism.

"Unless we change the government, Naga people will continue to suffer," he said.

On the recent results of Assembly polls in five states, the state Congress president expressed apprehensions that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were "tempered".

"EVMs can be tempered and manipulated and the voter will never know where the vote is cast even if he/she presses at the right button, but ballot papers will carry the right stamp chosen by the voter," he said..

The NPCC president said the state Congress will approach the Election Commission to conduct the 2018 State assembly election through ballot papers and not EVMs.

On the vexed unresolved Naga people issue, Therie alleged that the BJP government is not "sincere" to resolve the issue because of which even the contents of framework agreement signed between the Centre and NSCN(IM) is yet to made public.

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ESAF Small Finance Bank, state's first private sector in micro financing, was launched by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan here today.

The bank, promoted by ESAF Microfinance and Investments (P) Ltd plans to open 85 branches in the first year, of which RBI approval has been obtained for opening 15 branches on the inaugural day, a bank release said.

Bank alao launched ATM cum Debit cards, website and digital banking channels.

It is also planning to open branches in the metropolitan cities like Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad in the first year.

"ESAF Microfinance, which presently has a network of 285 branches in 93 districts spread over 11 states, will currently convert all its existing branches into customer service centers or ultra-small branches or satellite offices," said K Paul Thomas, Managing Director and CEO, ESAF Small Finance Bank.

ESAF, which has own fund of over Rs 300 crore, recently raised another Rs 330 crore through the issue of commercial papers. The bank is targeting a business of Rs 20,000 crores by 2020, R Prabha, Chairman of ESAF Small Finance Bank said.

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The Bombay Hugh Court on Friday granted bail to Yogesh Agarwal, former Chairman-cum-Managing Director of IDBI Bank, and another former employee in the Kingfisher Airlines loan default case.

Justice S S Jadhav granted the bail to Agarwal and former executive of the bank B K Batra on sureties of Rs one lakh each.

The CBI, which arrested them along with seven others on January 23, failed to explain why it needed the two accused to stay in prison after it had filed the charge sheet in the case, the judge said.

Agarwal and Batra are accused of having shown "undue favours" to the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owned by Vijay Mallya.

They sanctioned loans worth over Rs 1,000 crore to the airline despite its "weak financial record", CBI said.

The court noted that the further probe which the CBI wanted to conduct was primarily about Mallya, who is believed to be in the UK.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today refuted suggestions that he could be appointed as Union Minister, saying he is going to be around in the state.

Fadnavis was speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai.

Asked about speculations of his promotion as Defence Minister at the Centre, he said, "If your organisation can hold a national event in Mumbai, first time outside New Delhi, I do not need to go to Delhi. I am going to be around."



Earlier, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also denied reports of Fadnavis being shifted to the Union ministry.

"Media speculates and gets the joy of writing various things. However, no decision has been taken in Delhi on this," Gadkari said yesterday.

Fadnavis said that the BJP-led government at the Centre was in control of things and handling the bureaucracy well to increase the efficiency of the state machinery.

"For instance, the Navi Mumbai airport clearance was pending for over 10 years. In just one video conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered us clearances of eight various departments," he said.

"There is a lot of positivity in the bureaucracy right now," he said.

Brushing aside ally Shiv Sena's threat to the state government and the critical editorials in its mouthpiece 'Saamana', Fadnavis said he does not read it.

On Shiv Sena acting like an 'opposition party', he said, "I take inspiration from our former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. If he can run a successful government of 22 regional parties at the Centre, I can easily manage one ally in Maharashtra."



Asked if he thought that the BJP's growth will lead to decline of other parties, Fadnavis said, "BJP is not of the mindset to finish any party. It is done by people, who select or reject a party."



"In case of BJP, Prime Minister Modi is setting up new standards and those who could comply with it...Will sustain," he said.

On the Goods and Services Tax, he said, "Every state will gain from GST. We will gain something but at the same thing we will lose too. I am confident that the GST will roll-out by July.

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Fake Indian currency notes with a face value of Rs 4.4 lakh were recovered by BSF personnel from a village along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Dhubri district of Assam, BSF said in a statement today.

Altogether 220 notes, all in the denomination of Rs 2,000, were seized from Khusnimara village in an operation yesterday.

The consignment was coming from Bangladesh and was meant for someone in Dhubri, the statement said adding that the courier managed to escape leaving behind the fake notes.

The seized currencies have been handed over to police.

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An FIR was today registered against Congress leader Girish Chodankar for allegedly defaming the BJP by accusing it of corrupt practices to form the present government in Goa on a complaint by the ruling party leaders.

"The FIR under section 500 (punishment for defamation) and 501 (printing and engraving defamatory matter) of IPC was filed today by Panaji Police against Chodankar following complaint by BJP Goa unit president Vinay Tendulkar," Police Inspector Siddhanth Shirodkar told PTI.

Tendulkar in his complaint has accused Chodankar, who is the All India Congress Committee secretary, of making a statement between March 15-16 at Congress House, claiming that "more than Rs 1,000 crore has changed hands in a bid to win over alliance partners."



"Chodankar has also accused the BJP of stealing people's mandate by paying cash to lure and buy MLAs for government formation," the complaint, copy of which is with PTI, stated.

The Congress leader addressing mediapersons on March 15 had accused BJP of paying around Rs 1,000 crore as a part of horse-trading to win the mandate.

BJP led by Manohar Parrikar has formed alliance government comprising of Goa Forward Party, MGP and Independents though Congress had emerged as the single largest party after recently held Assembly election.

When contacted Chodankar said, "I will make a statement in this regard tomorrow during a press conference.

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 Flash

Major General Asif Ghafoor (L), also the head of Pakistans military media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), and Pakistans Ambassador to China Masood Khalid speak at a press briefing held in Beijing on March 14, 2017.



More than 15,000 specially-trained military personnel have been deployed for the safety of Chinese and locals working on CPEC projects (China Pakistan Economic Corridor).

In addition, the Pakistan Navy has raised the Naval Task Force-88 to protect the CPEC and Gwadar Port, said Major General Asif Ghafoor, also the head of Pakistans military media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), at a press briefing held in Beijing on March 14, 2017.

Pakistans provinces are also raising their own forces to protect the CPEC.

The CPEC is a mega network of roads, rail links, power plants and other infrastructure projects connecting western China's Xinjiang to Pakistan's southern port of Gwadar.

Every Pakistani is a defender of CPEC, said the major general, as the long term game-changer project will create large numbers of jobs and boost Pakistans economy.

According to Pakistans Ambassador to China Masood Khalid, there are approximately 19,000 Chinese working on different projects in Pakistan and the Pakistani government has provided them with protection and security.

Both the major general and the ambassador agreed that economic prosperity is the most effective weapon against terrorism. Therefore, all necessary measures are being taken and will be taken to ensure the security of CPEC.

When asked about Pakistans security after two violent incidents claimed more than 100 lives and injured hundreds of others in Pakistan, the major general told China.org.cn that Pakistan, a primary victim of terrorism and an important contributor to world peace, will continue its efforts to control terrorism.

Back to 2007 or 2008, there used to be a terrorist attack every day in Pakistan, said the major general. Yet after an arduous journey of hard work and sacrifice, the country has eliminated and dislodged the terrorists capability to blend, coordinate and execute large-scale terrorist activities in the country.

In the last ten years of anti-terrorist activities, Pakistan lost 72,000 people, among which 16,000 were from the armed forces.

The country has endeavored to disconnect the financial support or link between terrorists and possible sympathizers in Pakistan, said Ghafoor.

Pakistan deploys about 200,000 troops along its western border with Afghanistan and has put in place a comprehensive border security mechanism to control movement to and fro while still continuing to make all possible efforts for the stability of Afghanistan, which, Ambassador Masood Khalid said, is in the interest of not only Afghanistan, but also Pakistan and China.
Four Border Security Force (BSF) personnel were today injured during mortar firing practice near this town in Rajasthan along the Indo-Pak border.

The incident took place when the 51mm mortar fell short of its target at the forces' firing range in Kishangarh. The four personnel -- an inspector, a head constable and two constables -- suffered injuries due to the blast of the ammunition.

They were participating in a firing exercise.

Officials said the four men have been air evacuated to a hospital in Jodhpur, adding two of them have suffered critical injuries.

The BSF is deployed in Rajasthan as part of its task to guard the India-Pakistan International Border (IB).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Finance ministers from the world's biggest economies sat down for tense talks in Germany today, formally engaging in a battle of wills over the future of the global free-trade system which ranges a newly forthright US against historic allies.

President Donald Trump has already torn up a trans-Pacific free trade pact, threatened punitive tariffs against multinationals with factories outside the United States and attacked "currency manipulation" by export giant China.

And his stated aim of keeping jobs at home by making it costly for American companies to outsource is dominating talks at the gathering of finance ministers and central bankers in the western German spa town of Baden-Baden.

Trump's emissary, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, is being scrutinised by Washington's key trading partners for clues on whether the world's biggest fully intends to abandon its long-standing support of open markets and free trade.

"We want a positive declaration in favour of free trade," the European Union's commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting, "to note that that's the framework the globe's economic life must be organised within."



The US was at odds with other delegations over whether to include such language in the text of a final communique signed by all participants, a source close to the talks told AFP today.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at the White House for her first visit with Trump around the same time the ministers were sitting down in Germany, amid expectations she will make a strong push for open markets.
The Electronics and IT Ministry has approved setting up of an electronics manufacturing cluster in Aurangabad at a cost of around Rs 48 crore, an industry association said today.

The ministry has given the final approval for setting up the first brownfield electronics manufacturing cluster (EMC) in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, under the Electronic Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) scheme, India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA) President MN Vidyashankar told PTI.

"IESA was leading the proposal for this EMC. The aggregate cost of the project is estimated at Rs 48.34 crore," Vidyashankar said.

The project has been divided into two phases.

"The first phase has got the final approval to go ahead and is estimated to be completed within the next 12 months. Investment for the second phase is projected at Rs 28.57 crore, which includes investment in plant & machinery and park infrastructure," Vidyashankar said.

He said that IESA will have to approach the ministry again for seeking approval to the second phase.

Under the National Policy on Electronics, the government



has set a target to set up 200 EMCs. The government provides financial support of up to Rs 50 crore under the policy.

IESA today launched its Pune chapter which will focus on research and development.

"IESA members will discuss about formation of special purpose vehicle to manage and operate Aurangabad EMC," Vidyashankar said.

IESA has also submitted the detailed project report (DPR) for setting up an EMC in Pune, in association with Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) entailing total project cost of around Rs 66 crore.

"The preliminary application and DPR of the project was already approved by the ministry and the final DPR with the total project cost of Rs 66.15 crores is under appraisal by Meity for final approval," Vidyashankar said.

The industry body has also conceptualised an electronics incubation centre in Pune with a project cost of Rs 56.94 crore.

"Maharashtra government has already approved the project with their contribution of Rs 22.11 crore and the project is under final approval from Meity. The key focus areas for the incubator are automotive electronics, agricultural- electronics, strategic electronics, medical electronics and energy and clean technology electronics," Vidyashankar said.
Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said the Haryana Granth Academy will honour 10 litterateurs with Rs 1 lakh and awards every year.

These awards will be named after Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, Swami Vivekanand and former deputy chief minister Mangal Sen, he said.

Khattar also announced that cash award being given by the Haryana Sahitya Academy for first and second places will be increased from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh respectively.

The Chief Minister, who is chairman of all the seven sahitya academies in the state, made the announcements after inaugurating the three-day Haryana Sahitya Sangam at the Indradhanush Auditorium in Panchkula.

The programme is being organised by the Information, Public Relations and Languages Department, Haryana Swarna Jayanti Celebrations Authority and sahitya academies.

He said all the publications of the Haryana Granth Academy would be digitalised under the Digital India programme.

Khattar honoured 92 writers with awards of Rs 84 lakh. These include 61 Hindi, 20 Punjabi and 11 Urdu litterateurs.

The Chief Minister emphasised on the need of physical, mental and intellectual development.

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a role model for initiating a new style of governance by placing the nation before personal interests, he said if we are able to imbibe honesty and humanity everything would fall in place, and the country will progress by leaps and bounds.

Khattar also exhorted the writers to play a vital role in building a strong society through their writings.

He claimed Haryana is the land of Sanskrit study as scholars have been doing a lot of research on this language since long on the banks of river Saraswati which flowed through the state.

"It is the same land where the Rig Veda was scripted. Urdu originated in Haryana and the first literature in Punjabi was written in Hansi," Khattar claimed.

Describing the Haryana Sahitya Sangam programme as one of the best under the state's Swaran Jayanti Celebrations, he said it has helped in bringing about 2,000 litterateurs, thinkers and writers on a common platform.

Haryana has a glorious past and efforts are being made to ensure a bright future to the state's 2.5 crore population by improving their living standard, Khattar said.

Earlier, the Chief Minister also unveiled the Mascot 'Laddo' of the Haryana Sahitya Sangam and released two books authored by Dr Markande Ahuja.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Observing that conduct of public figures must be beyond reproach, the Calcutta High Court today ordered the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe into the Narada sting operation in which some TMC leaders were seen allegedly taking money.

The court also directed the CBI to register an FIR, if required, after completion of the preliminary enquiry and initiate formal investigations thereafter.

Reacting to the order, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the Trinamool Congress and her government will challenge it before the Supreme Court. "The TMC will fight the order both politically and legally."



She termed the court order to stop the Kolkata Police investigation into the matter as "unfortunate".

The Opposition parties in West Bengal seized upon the judgement and demanded immediate removal of "tainted" ministers from the state Cabinet.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborti directed the CBI to take possession of all material and devices related to the sting operation within 24 hours and to conclude the preliminary enquiry within another 72 hours.

It said that given the persons against whom allegations have been made are ministers, MPs and other senior leaders from the state, it would be just to direct the CBI, and not a state agency, to conduct a preliminary enquiry.

The court also observed that CBI was the most suitable agency for conducting an independent probe into the matter.

The Narada sting tapes, which were released to different organisations before the 2016 Assembly elections in West Bengal, showed some leaders allegedly taking money.

The division bench noted that a report by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh, had said that the tapes were untampered.

Mathew Samuel, editor of Narada News, had told the court that the recordings were done using an iPhone, which were transferred to a laptop and were then stored in a pendrive.

All these devices were taken possession of by a committee set up by the high court.

Three petitions had been filed before the high court seeking independent probe into the sting tapes after examining the genuineness of the recordings.

The division bench also directed the state government to initiate disciplinary action against IPS officer S M H Mirza, who was allegedly seen in one of the tapes.

Concurring with the judgement, Justice Chakraborti observed that corruption is a reprehensible crime and that it shakes the confidence of the people.

Adding to the judgement read by acting Chief Justice Mhatre, the brother judge observed that society at large has a stake in the investigation.

Samuel had told the high court that the tapes made in 2014 were released in March 2016.

Banerjee, who stood by her ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Firad Hakim, alleged that the sting operation was staged and the video released at the BJP office.

"Of course our party and government will go to the Supreme Court for justice. If we think we have not got justice, we have the right to go to the higher court," she told reporters.

Opposition parties welcomed the verdict.

"We welcome the verdict of the honourable court. The state government and Trinamool Congrss had tried to hush up the matter by misusing the police administration.

We demand that the tainted ministers should be immediately removed from the cabinet and the TMC MPs purportedly seen taking money in the video should resign," BJP secretary Rahul Sinha said.

Leader of opposition Abdul Mannan said, "I would like to ask the Chief Minister whether she would help in conducting the CBI investigation or again hit the streets on this issue. The TMC which claims to be a symbol of honesty has turned into a symbol of corruption," Mannan allged.

CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra too welcomed the court's order but hoped that the "political match fixing" between TMC and BJP would not halt the progress of the investigation.

"We welcome the High Court verdict to conduct CBI inquiry on the #NaradaString. The TMC-BJP nexus must not be an impediment to conduct proper enquiry," Mishra tweeted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi High Court today reserved its verdict on pleas seeking quashing of the notification laying down the manner of allocation of wards for reserved categories and women in the upcoming MCD polls.

"Arguments heard. Judgement reserved," a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Chander Shekhar said.

Terming the petitions as "absurd", the Delhi state election commission has told the court that there was "no unreasonableness" in the process of the allocation of the seats.

It argued that none of the political parties, who are the major stake holders in the present poll, has challenged their formula.

"It was so, because they were part of the consultation process, after which only we have taken the decision," the commission, represented by advocate Sumeet Pushkarna, said.

It was responding to the pleas by NGOs and several social activists, who have sought quashing of the notification laying down the manner of allocation of wards for reserved categories and women in the upcoming MCD polls.

They have also challenged the commission's February 6 notification, announcing the election for 272 wards of the three municipal corporations here.

The elections are scheduled to be held on April 22.

In its pleas, the NGOs have said that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) in 2011 was divided into three zone -- North Delhi Municipal Corporation, East Delhi Municipal Corporation and South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

They said while the number of wards in each of the three corporations - 104 each in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and 64 in East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) has remained the same, the number of wards in a few assembly segments has changed, ranging from three to seven.

Claiming that the present notification was contrary to the Constitution as well as Section 3 of the DMC Act, one of the pleas demanded that it should be quashed and a fresh circular issued in accordance with the law.

It has sought direction to identify and determine the municipal wards for the purpose of reservation for scheduled caste, women and general category in terms of Article 243 of the Constitution.

The Article provides for reservation of seats for the scheduled castes in the municipal area by rotation to different constituency in the municipality.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hillary Clinton's gradual return to the public spotlight following her presidential election loss continues with a St. Patrick's Day speech in her late father's Pennsylvania hometown.

The former Democratic presidential candidate will be the keynote speaker Friday night at the Society of Irish Women's annual dinner in Scranton.

Clinton's father grew up in Scranton, and she spent summers at the family's cottage on nearby Lake Winola.

The speech is one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to Republican Donald Trump.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev today held discussions with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on ways to boost economic cooperation including in the energy and diamond processing sectors.

"The two leaders discussed wide-ranging issues regarding India-Russia economic relations. They agreed that the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia is based on long-standing and time-tested ties, is very deep and extends to all spheres of mutual interest," an External Affairs Ministry release said.

They also discussed issues related to further strengthening of trade and investment cooperation between India and the regions of the resource-rich Russian Far East, it said.

Swaraj specifically stressed the growing mutual beneficial ties between India and Russia in the energy sector, particularly in the Russian Far East, it said.

She also emphasised on cooperation in maritime and agricultural sector, and on institutional linkages between the countries in these areas, and hoped that the mutual complementary strength of India and Russia in the diamond sector will be exploited fully.

The leaders agreed that the forthcoming interaction between the leaders of the two countries and various ministerial interactions will provide further thrust to the development of economic cooperation between India and Russia.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to travel to Russia on June one to attend St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). He will also be holding a bilateral Summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Swaraj also thanked Trutnev for inviting India for participation in the Third Eastern Economic Forum to be held in Vladivostok in September this year.

Trutnev also addressed a business event which concluded with the signing of an MoU between Invest India and the Far East Investment and Export Agency.

The visit of the Russian deputy prime minister, which started from Mumbai, was primarily aimed at spreading awareness among the Indian business community regarding the opportunities for investment available in the Far-Eastern Region of Russia.

"Given the considerable economic potential and our willingness for greater interaction with this region, the visit has enabled further consolidation of bilateral cooperation in the areas of mining, diamond processing, infrastructure (ports etc), agriculture and agro-processing," the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India and Russia on Friday signed two key agreements for long-term maintenance and technical support for Russian-made Su-30MKI fighter jets of the Indian Air Force.

Currently, the IAF operates around 230 Su-30MKI fighter jets and according to the agreements, Russian defence majors United Aircraft Corporation and the United Engine Corporation will render technical support and provide maintenance services and spares for the fleet for a period of five years.

The pacts were signed between India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and the two Russian companies in presence of Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and Russia's Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov.

Speaking on the occasion, Manturov said Russia will provide critical support for maintenance of Russian-origin aircraft and military platforms.

"Along with the work on the programs of licensed production, repair and upgrade of Su and MiG planes, the United Aircraft-Building Corporation is carrying out work jointly with HAL on jointly developing the FGFA (Fifth- Generation Fighting Aircraft)," he said.

United Aircraft-Building Corporation President Yuri Slyusar said his company will ensure proper maintenance of the frontline fighter fleet of the IAF.

"We believe the pact will allow the United Aircraft- Building Corporation to considerably increase the efficiency of providing after-sale services for the jets," he said.

The agreements were signed at a conference on India-Russia Military and Industrial Cooperation.

The conference is aimed at addressing issues relating to life-cycle support and maintenace of Su-30MKI aircraft, Mi-17 helicopters, Mig-29K jets, T-90 tanks and aircraft carrier Vikramaditya.
An Indian-origin woman author will represent South Africa in Fiji at an event to commemorate the centenary of the abolition of Indian indentureship.

Fourth-generation South African-Indian Elaine Pillay- Stevens said she was honoured to have been chosen to speak at the International Conference on the Indian Indentureship System in Lautoka, Fiji next week.

Pillay-Stevens, an author of children's book and former teacher, will carry a message of how descendants of Indian indentured labourers can become valuable citizens of their adopted lands during a conference designed to commemorate the centenary of the end of the indentured labour system.

The system saw more than a million Indians being taken to British colonial territories in Africa; the Indian Ocean and Caribbean islands; and South America, largely to work on sugarcane plantations.

"Besides speaking about the impact that the indenture system had on me personally, I will also explain how South African-Indians today are involved in the larger South African society at all levels," Pillay-Stevens said.

She said there was a shared history between South Africa and Fiji because of the indenture system that established a bond between Indian-origin citizens of both the countries.

Her paper will focus on how descendants of the indentured migrants can contribute to the social and economic development of the countries where they find themselves as citizens now.

Over two-thirds of South Africa's Indian origin population of 1.4 million are descended from the thousands of indentured labourers who suffered huge hardships under the system created to source labour after slavery was abolished in 1833.

Lured by promises of a better life, the first migrants suffered exploitation at the hands of their British colonial masters, but persevered to establish schools, temples and mosques with their meagre earnings to the extent that there is a 100 per cent literacy level among the newest generation of South African-Indians.

"The system of indenture ended on March 12, 1917. The last indenture contract lapsed on January 1, 1920," the organisers of the conference said in its call for papers.

March 12, 2017 marks the centennial of the official abolition of Indian indentureship.

The primary objective of the conference is to facilitate discourse on all aspects related to the indenture system, also known more commonly as the 'Girmit' system.

The Convention Organising Committee, chaired by Jagannath Sami of the Fiji Girmit Council, has the support of leading Indian-origin academics from universities in more than 10 countries including India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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The Embassy of Pakistan in China hosted a road show for "Twin Tower" project, which is a real estate venture about investment opportunity in the heart of Lahore, Pakistan.

The Embassy of Pakistan in China hosts a road show for "Twin Tower" project. [Photo / China.org.cn]

A delegation from Pakistan along with representatives of 123 Chinese companies and various Pakistani banks, participated in the event.

Pakistani Ambassador Masood Khalid welcomed all and gave a brief introduction of the project. He termed the project as manifestation of Chief Minister Punjab's aim to set overall high standards in multiple fields like health, education, infrastructure and industries.

He enlightened the audience about the unprecedented incentives being offered to local and foreign investors, enabling them to tap the unexplored economic potential of Pakistan.

Zahid Akhtar Zaman from DG Lahore Development Authority informed the audience about the objectives and technical aspects of the project. He termed the project to be a joint venture, wherein the parties shall be sharing requisite expertise.

A question answer and networking session between the Chinese companies and project representatives concluded the show.
Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA) has launched a medical insurance scheme with an insurance coverage of Rs one lakh with a payment of Re one per day to the labours.

The scheme Mediplus 365, having a premium of Rs 365 per person per annum, will be executed by Edelweiss Insurance Brokers Ltd, Mumbai, through New India Insurance Company, A TEA release said here.

The Association, through its Consortium Purchase Sub Committee, empanelled four insurance brokers Edelweiss Brokers Ltd, Zeal Insurance, Om Maruthi Insurance and Indian Insurance Broking to analyze the existing general insurance policies such as fire accident, flood, marine, stock and machinery breakdown taken by the TEA members and based on the advice given by the concerned insurance brokers, the members of TEA can restructure their premium amount and coverage, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny caused a stir at the White House on the eve of Saint Patrick's day today, pointedly telling President Donald Trump that the festival is in honor of an immigrant.

Before a sea of green-clad revelers in the East Room of the White House last night, Kenny made a pointed reference to controversies over Trump's immigration policies, as the president looked on.

"It's fitting that we gather here each year to celebrate St Patrick and his legacy. He, too, of course, was an immigrant," Kenny said.

The saint is believed to have been born somewhere in Britain.

"And though he is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe, he is also a symbol of, indeed, the patron of immigrants," Kenny said.

Around 35 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, ensuring that successive presidents have put on a green tie and greeted the Irish prime minister -- or Taoiseach -- to the White House on or around Saint Patrick's day.

Trump praised Ireland as "a truly great country" and the Irish as "tough." "I know a lot about the Irish -- they fight. They're tough," he joked.

This year Saint Patrick's falls on the day that Trump's ban on refugees and migrants from six majority Muslim countries was due to have gone into effect.

The ban was halted by a federal judge, but Trump has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Kenny, amid controversy in Ireland over whether he should have met Trump at all, pressed his point further.

"The Irish have contributed to the economic, social, political and cultural life of this great country over the last 200 years," Kenny said.

The Irish "came to America because, deprived of liberty, deprived of opportunity, of safety, of even food itself, the Irish believed, four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the 'wretched refuse on the teeming shore','" Kenny said.

"We believed in the shelter of America, and the compassion of America, and the opportunity of America. We came, and we became Americans.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Against the backdrop of recent Jallikattu row, a private member's bill seeking to exempt bull from the protected list of animals was today taken up in the Rajya Sabha but it was withdrawn after the government promised to look into the matter.

Moving the Private Members' resolution, DMK member Tiruchi Siva said amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty Act 1960 would avoid repeat of agitations which were witnessed in Tamil Nadu when Jallikattu was banned.

He added that the bull is used for agricultural purposes and other activities in rural parts of the country and is intrinsic part of the nations's culture and traditions.

"Bull should be exempted from the Prevention of Cruelty Act 1960. We don't want to witness agitations every year in Tamil Nadu. When there is Parliament to enact laws, it (Act) should be amended to exempt bulls from ths list," said Siva, a member from the state.

Some weeks back, Tamil Nadu saw widespread agitations against the ban on Jallikattu, a traditional annual ritual of the state in which people attempt to tame the bulls.

The Supreme Court had ordered the ban on it after animal rights activists approached it, citing cruelty to the bull in the sport. The event could finally take place after the state assembly passed a bill to circumvent the court order.

Siva added that foreign organisations like PETA, which are opposed to Jallikattu, intend to harm the country's traditions and culture.

While acknowleding the "valid points" raised by the DMK member, Minister of State for Parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi urged him to withdraw the resolution.

He said Siva and other members who participated in the debate gave very good suggestions and the government will consider those whenever the matter is taken up in future.

"There were so many good suggestions which came out during the discussion. These will be helpful in future legislations. Whenever we take up this matter, we will include all your suggestions," Naqvi assured the members.

Earlier replying to a debate on the private member's bill, Minister of State for Agriculture Sudarshan Bhagat said the government has initiated various schemes to encourage use of indigenous animals in the country.

He said the government has released funds to various states under 'Gokul Grams' scheme for breeding indigenous breeds.

TKS Elangovan (DMK), also from Tamil Nadu, said Jallikattu is a celebration with the bull and it is not meant to harm the animal.

He added that there is no place in the country where bulls are more pampered or protected than in Tamil Nadu.

(Reopen PAR28)



Earlier, while moving the Private Member's resolution, Siva urged the government to include amended Prevention of Cruelty to Anmals Act 1960 in the Ninth Schedule in the Constitution of India.

He also asked the government to take steps to encourage and incentivise the use of indigenous cattle for agricultral purposes and improve their health and stock.

Seeking protection of indigenous breeds of cattle, the DMK member said cattle play important role in farming and preserving environment.

By increasing reliance on cattle in agriculture, one can reduce cost of food products and avoid negative efforts on environment and health.

Referring to Jallikatu, he said it is a sport practised during the Indus Valley civilisation and can be seen in the National Museum in the national capital.

Jallikatu is celebrated all over Tamil Nadu and it encourages to have indigenous bulls.

However, he said, native breeds of cattle are gradually being phased out due to the onslaught of modern farm equipments and also because of artificial insemination of cows.

Supporting the resolution, Congress MP Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu said there should not be any use of medicines in the bulls game and it needs human approach.

Jairam Ramesh (Congress) raised doubts over the motive



of the resolution to exempt bulls from Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960.

"I rise to oppose this resolution because its objective is not organic farming or animal welfare or improvement in agriculture practice. The real objective is to protect Jallikatta," the former Union Minister said.

He said there is no connection between all of the 16 listed objectives to be achieved through this resolution and the Act.

Elaborating, he said he was of the view that the Act does not prohibit training of a bull for various purposes and therefore he failed to understand the connection between the proposal and the law.

"Tomorrow you will remove animal after animals from the (purview) of this Act. I disagree with the conclusion of this resolution and request not to persist with the resolution," he said.

He told the House that Rukmini Devi Arundale, a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, had brought a private member bill to prevent cruelty towards animal following which then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had promised to pass a legislation in this regard.

Thus, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 Act was passed in the Parliament and enforced.

Ramesh quoted Rukmini Devi Arundale and said, "Test of the civilised society is how it treats its animals."



Ramesh said the states are empowered to pass their own laws to deal with cattle or animal and there is Tamil Nadu Animal Preservation Act 1958.

"Why does not the state government amend the Tamil Nadu Animal Preservation Act 1958 to achieve this purpose," he asked.

BJP members Basawaraj Patil, L A Ganesan and Meghraj Jain supported the resolution.

Congress member B K Hariprasad, D Raja (CPI) and Vijila Sathyananth (AIADMK) also supported it and talked about utility of cattle in the rural economy and importance of local traditions like Jallikattu.
The All-India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) has intensified efforts for the proposed gherao of Parliament, slated for March 20, gathering support from community members in western Uttar Pradesh.

"The representatives of different districts, specially Firozabad, Agra, Hathras, Aligarh, Bharatpur and Dhaulpur have been asked to reach Parliament house in Delhi with at least 50 tractors," AIJASS national general secretary Chaudhary Veer Pal Singh said.

"Owing to easy approach of Mathura to Delhi, the Samiti's incharge there has been asked to reach Delhi with at least 100 tractors," Singh said.

He said the proposed gherao would be peaceful and depend on the instructions of AIJASS national president Yashpal Mullick, who is spear heading the campaign demanding reservation in jobs and education for Jats.

Theagitation may be intensified in the form blockade of of rail tracks, roads, gas pipeline, or gherao of refinery, Singh said.

He attributed the proposed agitation to the non-fulfilment of promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2015.

"Prime Minister Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah in the meeting held on March 26, 2015 had assured the delegation of finding a legal solution including enacting a law for the reservation of Jats. However, nothing has been done so far," he claimed.

On the Samiti's major demands, Singh listed inclusion of Jats under OBC by enacting a law in Haryana, withdrawal of cases against Jat and others who participated in the earlier agitation, reinstating the idols of revered leaders of Jat community in Rohtak and booking officers responsible for the murder of Shaheeds of Jat youths during agitation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The ruling JD(U) won the two seats it had contested, while the BJP and its ally RLSP won one each in the polls to the four seats of the Bihar Legislative Council.

The RJD and the Congress, which had contested against each other, as also the NDA candidates from the two seats of Gaya graduate and Gaya teachers, drew a blank.

The winners, including current Chairperson of Legislative Council Awdesh Narayan Singh of the BJP, met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today at his 1, Anne Marg residence here.

Singh retained his Gaya graduate seat defeating RJD's Puneet Singh and Congress' Ajay Singh.

Sanjeev Shyam Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), an ally of the BJP in the NDA, won the Gaya teachers seat defeating RJD and Congress candidates.

The JD(U), which had contested two seats and fielded Virendra Narayan Yadav from Saran graduate and Sanjeev Kumar Singh from Kosi teachers, emerged victorious at both places.

According to media reports, the victory of BJP's Singh has triggered a fresh round of sparring between Grand Alliance partners JD(U) and RJD as the former favoured Singh's continuance as the chairperson of the Upper House, but Lalu Prasad's RJD was pushing for a party nominee for the post.

Singh's current term as the Chairperson of the Legislative Council ends on May 7.

Singh who visited the council today thanked Nitish Kumar particularly for his victory.

Media reports suggest that the chief minister is in favour of Singh continuing as the chairperson of the council, but the RJD wants one of its candidates for the post.

Rabri Devi, the former chief minister and wife of Lalu Prasad, told reporters that somebody from the RJD should be chosen the chairperson.

She, however, did not mention any name.

Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav told reporters that senior Grand Alliance leaders would sort out the issue.

Leader of Opposition in the council and senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, while talking to reporters, thanked Kumar for not fielding any JD(U) candidate from the Gaya graduate seat which, he said, "helped" the saffron party win it.

In reply to a question that the RJD was seeking the post of chairperson for Rabri Devi, he said there has been a healthy tradition of electing the chairperson on the basis of a consensus.

"It is for Nitish Kumar to sort out the issue in the Grand Alliance to maintain the tradition of the Upper House. Even during the NDA's time, the JD(U) and the BJP had retained Congress' Arun Kumar as the chairperson for a year before he lost the election," Modi said.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Trivendra Singh Rawat as chief minister of Uttarakhand tomorrow, an official release said here.

Das accepted the invitation extended to him by Singh to attend the ceremony, it added.

Congratulating Singh, Das hoped that Uttarakhand would develop under his leadership.

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The US state of has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling "get out of my country". Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divided or define" the state, Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made a better place. We are very very thankful to them."

"These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla.

Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

"I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'.

"We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said.

"This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said.

"Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

"Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests.

In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter.

The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love.

"We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said.

"And with the resolve to fight hate," he added.
Former captain Sunil Gavaskar today advised an injured Virat Kohli not to take risk by coming out to bat in the ongoing third Test against Australia unless it is absolutely necessary.

Gavaskar said since the Ranchi pitch was still good for batting, the Indians should be able to get close to the Australian first innings total of 451 without Kohli's contribution.

"Look the injury (of Kohli) may not be very serious. But he is a man who loves to be on the field, and the fact that he was not on the field means that the injury was a little more than what is given out (to be). So, he can rest completely... he can be fit for the next Test," Gavaskar said.

"Kohli should come into bat only if it is needed, only if it's a dire situation where India suddenly collapses, don't have too many runs and need to ensure that the Australians do not take a big lead in the first innings. Then and then only Virat Kohli should come out to bat," he told NDTV.

Kohli could not field after landing awkwardly on his right shoulder while trying to save a boundary in the post-lunch session on day one of the match yesterday.

Such was the impact that he had difficulty in standing up and was grimacing in pain. He had to be rushed out of the field immediately.

But, the host nation had heaved a sigh of relief last night when medical reports confirmed that there were no "serious concerns" with regards to Kohli's shoulder injury.

Gavaskar said the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara (batting on 10), Murali Vijay (batting on 42) and Ajinkya Rahane can build a big innings for India as the pitch was still good to bat on.

"That (Kohli not batting) depends on the other Indian batsman. It is a good pitch still, there is not much turn, the ball is not seaming or bouncing awkwardly, India will need to bat the whole day tomorrow and that will give Kohli a full day to rest," said Gavaskar.

"That is what the Indian batsmen should look for tomorrow. Rahane at number 4, Karun Nair at 5, Ashwin and Saha following at 6 and 7. If they bat responsibly, they can bat the whole day tomorrow and that will take India close to the Australian total. At this stage you want to be in a situation where you want to make sure that the Australians don't take a big first innings lead.

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Uttar Pradesh BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya today said the state legislature party will decide on the chief minister tomorrow.

"Legislature party will decide who will be the chief minister. The oath taking ceremony will be on March 19 and all national leaders of the party will attend the ceremony," he told reporters outside Parliament.

Maurya, who was admitted to hospital yesterday after he complained of uneasiness, said he was "fully well" now.

"There were slight problems and I was taken to hospital yesterday. I was discharged from hospital yesterday only. I am now fully well," he said



Repeatedly asked about the possible candidates for the chief minister's post, he said, "There will be a legislature party meeting tomorrow at 4 PM. You will get to know tomorrow as to who will head the government."



Maurya was also asked about BJP president Amit Shah's remark yesterday that he had given Maurya the responsibility to select the CM.

"It was said in a lighter vein. Whatever is my responsibility as party's state president I will fulfill that," he said.

Though the BJP has formed governments in Manipur and Goa, it is yet to declare its chief minister in UP where it has got two-third majority.

The selection of Chief Minister in UP is crucial for BJP as the person would be expected to steer the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the crucial state.

There were conjectures within the party after Shah's remark as to whether Maurya, who is BJP's OBC face in UP, is out of the reckoning.

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Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar today said the Opposition was not concerned about the plight of farmers and their demand for a loan waiver is a "political gimmick".

"Their demands are only political gimmicks. They are not at all concerned with sufferings of farmers. They think that by stalling the business of the legislature, people will forgive them for their 15 years of misrule," Mungantiwar told reporters here.

The BJP leader said the Opposition had failed to do anything for farmers when they were in power at Centre and in Maharashtra.

"They (opposition Congress and NCP) are aware of their inaction when they were in power. In recent civic elections in some parts of the state they have lost miserably. Let the Congress do it (waive off loans) for farmers in Karnataka first," he said.

The minister said the state government was very much in favor of permanently waiving off the debt burden of farmers, but at the same time the government wants to ensure that farmers do not fall into a debt trap again.

He also dismissed the contention that state government can directly deposit farmers' money in banks.

"Most of the district central cooperative banks and agricultural credit cooperatives are controlled by Congress and NCP. Their real motive behind the demand is these banks want their dues cleared," Mungantiwar said.

What is the guarantee that these banks will transfer the loan waiver funds to the farmers, he asked.

The government will need Rs 30,500 crore to waive off the debt of 31 lakh farmers in the state. There are about 1.36 crore farmers' bank accounts in the state.

The proceedings of the Maharashtra legislature remain disrupted during the ongoing budget session on the loan waiver demand being raised aggressively by Congress and NCP.

Mungantiwar said the agricultural production, which has been in the negative for the last several years, has turned positive this year.

He said the government was studying options to reduce burden on agriculture by focusing on skill development and paying more attention on sectors that add value to the agri sector.

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will pay an official visit to Australia and New Zealand from March 22-29, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced on Friday.

During his stay in Australia, Li will attend the fifth annual meeting between Chinese and Australian prime ministers, according to Hua.

Li is making the visit at the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English.
Maharashtra today demanded waiver of farm loans worth Rs 30,500 crore in the state, stating that the move will help in retaining farmers in the institutional credit system.

A delegation led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and senior ministers, including collegues from ally Shiv Sena, met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and emphasised that it does not want the Centre to take the entire burden of the debt.S



The demand to waive off farm loans from the state comes a day after the Agriculture Minister told the Lok Sabha that the Centre will bear the cost of the promised farm loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh.

Back in the state, Fadnavis has been facing a vehement demand from the Shiv Sena and the Opposition to waive off farm loans.

Fadnavis said his government is "determined" to free the farmers in the state from all their debts. Listing out figures, the Chief Minister said there are 1.18 crore farmers in the state with a debt of Rs 1.05 lakh crore. Of these, around 31 lakh farmers could not pay back the loan amounting Rs 30,500 crore.

"If the farmers are drawn out of this chain, they might suffer huge losses and in order to avoid this, the Centre should formulate a scheme to bring the farmers back in the credit limits," he said.

He said this will put them under the risk of borrowing from money lenders.

The delegation comprised of Union Minister Subhash Bhamre, Maharashtra Ministers Pandurang Fundkar, Subhash Desai, Divakar Raote, Subhash Deshmukh, Eknath Shinde, Babanrao Lonikar and Ramdas Kadam.

MLA Sanjay Kute, Prashant Bamb, Vijay Auty too were present with the CM during this meeting in New Delhi.

Apart from requesting the Union Government to frame a scheme to bring back farmers into institutional credit system in such a way that investment in agriculture doesn't get affected, Fadnavis said investment in the agriculture sector is the need of the hour.

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The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections saw a total of over Rs 5,500 crore spent on campaign by various parties, including about Rs 1,000 crore towards 'note for vote', with nearly one-third voters admitting to cash or liquor offer, a survey claimed on Friday.

According to the CMS pre-post poll study, upwards of Rs 5,500 crore were spent by major political parties in the just-concluded assembly election in Uttar Pradesh alone.

The Election Commission of India allows Rs 25 lakh per candidate for campaign expenditure, but it is best known secret that most candidates spend much more than what is officially allowed and what candidates declare after the poll.

Campaign activities include a range of conventional and non-conventional activities. Print and electronic material, including wide screen projections, video vans and the like put together itself in this election was put at Rs 600-900 crore.

"Every vote cast in UP involved a cost of about Rs 750, which is highest in the country," the survey noted.

In this Assembly elections, nearly Rs 200 crore in UP and over Rs 100 crore in Punjab were confiscated, the report said, adding that what gets to electoral campaign pipeline is four-five times more than what gets confiscated by authorities.

"Going by that trend, in 2017, Rs 1,000 crore were estimated to be distributed among voters," it said.

The survey further noted that around 55 per cent voters sampled in Uttar Pradesh knew personally someone or the other in the neighbourhood who had actually taken money for vote in this or earlier Assembly polls.

Surprisingly, the study noted that demonetisation has significantly hiked poll expenditure. "In some constituencies where the fight was tight, the cash involved ranged between Rs 500-2,000 depending on the number of voters and influencing the role of a voter," it said.

Two-third of voters found that candidates spent a lot more than ever before.

Some of the campaign methods adopted in the UP Assembly elections include door-to-door, rallies, yatras, social media, advertising through television, newspapers and multi-screen projections, motor cycle rallies, langar and celebrity shows.
The police today arrested a 32-year-old techie, who allegedly duped a Sambalpur based jeweller of gold and diamond jewellery worth about Rs 27 lakh.

Police said, the accused posed himself as Project Manager of a private company and developed relationship with owner of Sambalpur based, Sonika Jewellery, Ashok Soni around four months ago.

The accused also told Ashok that he owned 4 acres of land at Boldabazar in Bileigarh of Chhattisgatrh. They both had also visited Bileigarh. The accused also showed a fake cheque of Rs 6.5 crore, which was issued in his favour, to Ashok.

Police said that the accused succeeded in winning confidence of Ashok Soni by showing the false cheque. The accused said he required jewellery for his sister's marriage and assured that he would pay the money after the encashment of the cheque.

"He took gold and diamond jewellery of Rs 27 lakh in three phases and suddenly vanished from Sambalpur," Ashok alleged.

Ashok lodged a complaint in the Ainthapali police station in this regard on March 6 after he failed to get the accused person.

Subsequently, police launched investigation and arrested the accused from Wardha in Maharashtra.

"Police have recovered gold and diamond jewellery worth Rs 25 lakh from the possession of the accused. We are verifying whether the name, he revealed to police, is correct. We are also verifying whether he has criminal antecedent," said Additional Superintendent of Police, D R Ray.

Inspector-in-charge of Ainthaplai police station, S. Barik said, during investigation, the accused said that he had completed engineering from an institute in Berhampur.

Police said identity proofs in different names have been found from his possession.

However, from preliminary investigation, the name of the accused has been found to be Himansu Patra of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, police said.

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The Manipur government will hold talks with the United Naga Council (UNC) on Sunday for lifting of the four-month-long economic blockade imposed on the national highways in the state by the outfit.

Briefing the media after the first cabinet meeting of the N Biren Singh-led government, state minister Th Bishwajit said talks with the UNC would be held on March 19 for a solution to the economic blockade imposed on the national highways.

He hoped that "positive results" would come out of the talks.

Bishwajit did not divulge the venue of the talks, but said the issue was "on the table" even before the new government was formed.

The economic blockade imposed by the UNC on the two national highways in Manipur has led to a shortage of essential commodities in the state.

The blockade was imposed in November, 2016 against the then O Ibobi Singh-led Congress government's decision to create seven new districts in the state.

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Consumer products maker has bought a strategic 45 per cent stake in Ahmadabad-based Zed Lifestyle for an undisclosed sum.

said with this the company taps into the fast growing online male grooming segment.

The equity stake shall be acquired over two years through primary infusion and secondary buy outs, said in a statement.

Zed Lifestyle owns Beardo, a male grooming brand founded in June 2016.

"The Rs 3,200-crore male grooming market, growing at a double digit CAGR, is strategic category for Marico," it said.

"Marico views this investment in Zed Lifestyle as a stepping stone towards its ambition of strengthening its presence and widening its portfolio in this segment."



Beardo have product lines such as growth oil, wax and shampoo for beard, wax and serum for hair, lotion, soap and facewash for skin.

It has a strong presence in online trade and earns almost 75 per cent of revenue from this channel, the statement said.

"This partnership will help us access the emerging niches at the premium end and will turbocharge our digital marketing and social media engagement capability. This is also in line with our emerging focus of venture investments into start-ups to incubate new engines of growth," Saugata Gupta, MD&CEO, Marico said.

Marico is present in India through its Set Wet brand in the mass segment and has plans to expand into categories beyond deodorants and gel.

Ashuthosh Valani, CEO Zed Lifestyle said Marico is a strategic partner to help the company broaden its market segment and significantly grow brand.
Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said today.

The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.

Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.

Even so, Tillerson said the United States' "strategic patience" had ended -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under that policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that option's on the table."



North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.

"I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries," he said.

"We know that other nations can take actions."



Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

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The boat packed with dozens of Somali refugees was more than 30 miles off war-torn Yemen's coast when a military vessel and a helicopter gunship swooped in, opening fire today, killing at least 42 people.

The attack, which Yemen's Shiite rebels blamed on a Saudi-led coalition, highlighted the perils of a heavily used migration route running from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf, right through Yemen's civil war.

The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni port of Hodeida, where it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from Yemen, which has been racked by conflict for more than two years.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told The Associated Press the boat left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel open fire, followed by the helicopter gunship.

He described a scene of panic in which the terrified refugees waved flashlights, apparently to show they were not combatants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

Video of the aftermath showed dozens of slain migrants, along with others who suffered gunshot wounds, lost limbs, or had broken arms and legs.

The UN refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen."



A top official with the UN's migration agency said 42 bodies were recovered from the attack, which took place around 3 AM today. Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, called the assault "totally unacceptable" and said those responsible should have checked who was aboard the boat before firing on it. He said about 75 men and 15 women who survived the attack were taken to detention centers, and some bodies were laid in a fish market in Hodeida because of a lack of space in mortuaries.

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One miscreant was killed in a daring loot attempt at the house of a retired government officer in the busy Govind Nagar colony here, police said today.

The incident occurred last night around 9 o'clock when B D Gupta and his wife Beena returned home from the market. While they were still outside their house, four men, who had come on a car, engaged them in talk.

Before the couple could realise the intentions of the strange men they forced themselves into their house and demanded keys of almirahs and lockers, police said.

When Gupta, a retired government official, and his wife resisted the loot attempt, one of the miscreants opened fire. The bullet missed Gupta and instead hit another miscreant, who died on the spot, Superintendent of Police (City) Ashok Kumar said.

The miscreants soon fled after taking six gold bangles from Beena and her daughter-in-law Priyanka at gun point. They abandoned the body of their accomplice, his mobile along with pistol, Kumar said.

"The record of the outlaw killed has been sent to Delhi for verification," he said.

The SP added that the police have got some clue about the daring loot, however, the right line of action would start after the verification report has been received.

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More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said today.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida but the boat managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," the spokesman said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was headed for Sudan.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

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A day after winning the trust vote in Assembly, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday asserted that his government will complete its tenure.

"Questions are being asked how the government will survive for next five years. I can assure you that this government will complete its tenure.

"Importance will be given to a common agenda that would be worked out between the alliance partners," he told reporters.

The 61-year-old IITian on Thursday has proved his majority with 12 legislators from the BJP, three from the Forward Party, three from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, three Independents and one from the NCP supporting the trust motion.

The strength of Congress was reduced to 16 MLAs in the 40-member House after one of its legislators, Viswajit Rane remained absent during the voting.

Rane later resigned as member of the Assembly.

This is for the fourth time that Parrikar has become the Chief Minister of Goa, though he could not complete full term in any of his earlier stints. He had recently resigned as Defence Minister to return to his native state.

Parrikar chaired the first meeting of his Cabinet today at the state Secretariat.

"The Governor (Mridula Sinha) will present her speech on the floor of the House on March 23 which will make the direction of this government clear," he said.

The BJP leader said after winning the trust vote, he had held a series of meetings on Thursday to discuss the issues of importance.

The state government has decided to work out a strategy to resolve the Mahadeyi water diversion dispute with neighbouring Karnataka, he said.

"You will come to know about our strategy on Mahadeyi issue on Monday," Parrikar asserted, adding that "some of the strategies need to be kept confidential to protect the interest of the state.
All we seek is help to get the basic broadband services that you all take for granted, Justin Fortney from Clifton Township in Pierce County wrote to me. It has been frustrating for us families to watch the digital revolution pass us by. ... We often ... pack the family into the car and drive to a relatives house or commercial business to use their Internet.

According to the federal governments most recent information, Wisconsin ranks last in the Midwest in both rural and urban broadband access with only 44 percent of rural folks accessing download speeds of 25 Mbps.

Both federal and state governments responded with grant programs to expand broadband, but there are problems with assuring that residents actually receive the promised services.

With much fanfare, Governor Walker recently announced his plan to add money for broadband to schools and rural areas. Later, Senator Marklein released a different bill. The senators bill was voted out of his rural affairs committee and is headed for final passage soon.

Sen. Markleins bill is false advertising. The bill is neither rural nor broadband. As now written, nearly every Wisconsin county would be eligible for expansion grants. Broadband for awardees is defined at the turtle-slow speed of 5 Mbps download and .6 Mbps upload. In addition, such a paltry amount of money is used for grants that would not cover my small rural county with broadband even if we used all the statewide funds.

More problems exist with the federal grant programs.

Mr. Fortney described the problem in his email. He refers to one federal program known as CAF-II.

Our area is CAF-II Subsidized Area, but still no Internet. These limited funds are being used by thecompany to further increase the speed of areas that already have broadband. Mr. Fortney described how both large companies near him said they have no plans to provide services to him. Yet both companies received large grants to expand broadband.

The two large companies mentioned by Mr. Fortney sent representatives to a community meeting I attended last year. Neither company would commit to expanding service in Pierce County. In the words of one company representative, I dont want to promise you fiber where fiber is not going to come. ... Its not a great business investment to put in copper or fiber, and Were not going to go trenching through a bluff... [we are looking for] where can we grab the low-hanging fruit.

What can Wisconsin do if these large companies do not intend to use federal dollars to bring the 21st century to rural Wisconsin?

First, we should agree on what is broadband. The federal definition  25 Mbps download speed and 3 Mbps upload is a good place to start. Unfortunately, Senate Bill 49  the bill speeding for hasty passage  will award grants to those providing much less.

Second, money for Rural broadband should go to rural areas. Senate Bill 49  and the current state grant program  makes nearly the entire state eligible for awards. The Public Service Commission has broad latitude to send the money to just about any county in the state. This should change.

Third, Wisconsin must invest enough money to actually make a difference in the problem. To date, the state awarded 42 grants totaling approximately $3.9 million. This money is not enough to provide broadband for just my small home county. In comparison, Minnesota appropriated $65.5 million and Governor Dayton is proposing spending another $100 million.

Finally, Wisconsin should independently verify that companies keep their promises to the state (in their grant applications) and to consumers. I frequently hear of companies promising one speed and delivering another, of broadband maps that show an area as served and it is not, and of companies using poor service in an area to apply for a grant and then not delivering services to the neighbors.

Broadband is the 21st century equivalent of electricity. Someday most of us may plan a visit to a rural area or are going to need to contact someone in a rural area. All of us are going to eat something grown in a rural area and these days you need broadband for farming. We need to make sure the promised Rural Broadband bill is the Real Deal for rural Wisconsin.
is to launch a 30-billion-dollar (28-billion-euro) lawsuit against Germany over genocide committed during colonial rule, when tens of thousands of people were killed, according to documents seen by AFP.

The Namibian government has previously avoided demanding financial compensation, but it changed its stance as two indigenous groups filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany.

Legal documents provided to AFP and The Namibian newspaper show that the government has engaged lawyers in London to pursue a case of violation of human rights and a "consequent apology and reparations process."



Over 65,000 people are believed to have been killed when colonial Germany massacred Namibian tribes such as the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908.

Namibian Vice President Nickey Iyambo issued a statement yesterday saying it had sent a report to Germany last year on the genocide, an official apology and reparations.

"We trust the government of the federal republic of Germany is giving serious attention to the position," Iyambo said, giving no details on the level of reparations sought.

could approach the Court of Justice in The Hague to advance its case, the documents show.

While some German officials have acknowledged a genocide occurred, the government has refused to pay reparations, saying aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

Germany seized the territory of modern-day in the late 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, as part of the so-called Scramble for Africa by European colonisers.

It was called German South West Africa during Germany's 1884-1915 rule, and then passed under South Africa rule for 75 years, finally gaining independence in 1990.

The separate US class-action suit was filed by the Herero and Nama people in New York on Thursday, seeking compensation for "incalculable damages".

They are also demanding to be included in negotiations between the two countries.

Tensions boiled over in 1904 when the Herero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

In the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, around 80,000 Herero fled including women and children.

German troops went after them across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 Herero survived.

The Namibian government case alleges Germany was guilty of slave labour, mass murder, sexual abuse, human trafficking and theft of land.

The two governments have been in talks about a joint declaration on the massacres for two years.

Iyambo said Namibia wanted an "amicable closure to this sad history".
The Left Front took out a massive rally here today demanding West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee be also "brought under the purview of the investigation" and immediate arrests of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders "involved" in the Narada scam.

Led by Left Front chairman Biman Bose, CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra and other Left leaders, the rally was taken out from Esplanade to the Moulali crossing.

The participants carried placards demanding the immediate arrest of all those involved in the scam.

"We demand that the CBI should be pro-active. It should immediately arrest the TMC leaders involved in the Narada scam. The chief minister should also be brought under the purview of the investigation as it is her party leaders and cabinet ministers who are involved in the scam," Mishra said while addressing the rally.

"The Lok Sabha Ethics Committee should stop shielding the TMC MPs and take up an active role. The CBI should be allowed to work freely and the political match-fixing between the BJP and the TMC should not affect the investigation," he added.

Mishra claimed that the TMC "helping" the BJP to form government in Manipur was a glaring example of a "covert pact" between the two parties.

The Calcutta High Court today ordered a preliminary inquiry by the CBI into the Narada sting operation in which, several TMC leaders, including state ministers, were purportedly caught on camera taking bribes.

The sting tapes were released to various media organisations ahead of the 2016 West Bengal Assembly polls.

A division bench of the High Court noted that a report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh had said the tapes were not tampered with.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump asserted today that the allies must pay their fair share for the cost of defence, even as he reaffirmed his "strong support" for the military alliance.

"I reiterated to (German) Chancellor (Angela) Merkel my strong support for Nato, as well as the need for our allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defence," Trump told a White House news conference along with the German leader.

"Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe," he said soon after the two leaders met at the Oval Office of the White House.

Trump said he thanked Merkel for the German government's commitment to increase defence spending and work toward contributing at least two per cent of GDP.

He also thanked the Chancellor for her leadership in supporting and its efforts in Afghanistan.

"This has come at a significant cost, including the lives of over 50 German soldiers whose sacrifice we greatly honour. I also appreciate Chancellor Merkel's leadership, along with the French president, to resolve the conflict in Ukraine where we ideally seek a peaceful solution," he said.

United States and Germany, Trump said, must continue to work together to protect people from radical Islamic terrorism and to defeat ISIS.

"I applaud Chancellor Merkel for Germany's contributions, both civilian and military, as a counter-ISIS coalition member. We also recognise that immigration security is national security," he said.

"We must protect our citizens from those who seek to spread terrorism, extremism and violence inside our borders. Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first without question," Trump said.

Appreciating Trump's views on Nato, Merkel said its member countries including Germany need to expand their expenditure.

"We committed to this two per cent goal until 2024 -- last year we increased our defence spending by eight per cent, and we're going to work again and again on this. And we said that, obviously, defence and security has a lot of different assets and facets to it," she said.

She said Germany is going to continue its role in Afghanistan and against ISIS in the Middle East.

"Together, we fight against Islamist terrorism," she said.

"Germany is going to step up its work and is going to continue its work in Afghanistan. Also in Syria, we're going to monitor the situation there very closely. We're going to work on political solutions in Syria but also in Libya -- what we talked about," Merkel said.
NCP leader Praful Patel today said his party is not "very keen" on any pre-poll tie-up with the Congress for the Gujarat assembly polls and is rather trying to emerge as the third option.

"We may or may not enter into such pact with the Congress. Our focus now is to emerge as the third option in Gujarat. We are planning for not just 2017 polls, but beyond that too," said Nationalist Congress Party leader Patel on the prospect of his party's alliance with the Congress.

To strengthen the party ahead of the assembly polls, expected to be held in November this year, NCP chief Sharad Pawar would visit the state on March 19, said Patel, a Rajya Sabha MP and former Union minister.

NCP which entered into a pre-poll alliance with the Congress in 2012, is presently having two MLAs in the state assembly - Kandhal Jadeja and Jayant Patel.

Patel, who is the party in-charge for Gujarat, also hinted that some Congress leaders are are keen to join the NCP in Gujarat.

"The decision about alliance this time will be taken around two months ahead of polls. The picture will be clear only during July or August. Though we are in touch with some other parties, such as JD(U), for alliance, we will never have an agreement with AAP here," said Patel.

"Pawar will be in Ahmedabad on March 19 to inaugurate NCP's new state office. He will also attend a gathering of all the key leaders and members of the Gujarat NCP that day. Our focus for this poll is to contest maximum number of seats," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Green Tribunal will hold a two-day world conference on environment in the national capital from March 25, its Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar today said.

The conference will be held under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme in collaboration with Ministry of Environment and Forests and Ministry of Water Resources.

It will be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee and presided by Chief Justice of India J S Khehar and attended by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave among others.

Foreign delegates from over 80 countries, chief justices from high courts, judges, environmentalists, lawyers, academicians and others will be participating in the event to be held at Vigyan Bhavan here.

The NGT chief said there will be 10 technical sessions to be presided by foreign judges, judges from the Supreme Court, high courts and experts from different fields.

"People on international level are very interested to know about the role of NGT. The objective of this conference is to bring on one platform the various legal systems of the world to find resolution to the issues of environment.

"Environment is not geographically limited. What will happen in Atlantic is going to affect other parts as well. We want all jurisdictions to come together and deliberate on serious environmental issues," Justice Kumar said, adding the conference intends to create awareness among all the stakeholders in relation to various emerging issues of environment.

The former apex court judge said the green panel has achieved global recognition for its progressive approach on environmental issues rather than merely as a tribunal adjudicating disputes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today ruled out possibility of early Assembly polls.

His assertion came in the backdrop of opposition Congress' claim that Assembly elections are likely to be advanced in Telangana.

"Elections will happen as per schedule," he said in the Legislative Assembly, referring to the comments of state Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy.

The term of current Assembly ends in 2019.

Rao's comments came during a debate on the annual budget for 2017-18 while talking about the measures announced by the TRS government for the welfare of backward classes.

The decisions announced by the state government were not aimed at any political gains, but to strengthen rural economy, he said.

The government is going to spend about Rs 10,000 crore -Rs 20,000 crore on giving a boost to rural economy, he said.

The government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for the Most Backward Classes Corporation and proposed an amount of Rs 5,070.36 crore for welfare of backward classes in the budget.

Responding to queries raised by Opposition Leader K Jana Reddy, Rao said the issue of identifying the most backward classes, to receive the benefits from the government, has been referred to the Backward Classes Commission.

Talking about the TRS government's move to promote traditional occupations like sheep rearing and fisheries in a big way, Jana Reddy wondered whether the targeted beneficiaries have been identified.

On the criticism of opposition parties that there is not much progress in implementing the promise of two-bed room houses for the poor, Rao said two lakh houses will be built by the end of this year.

On the comments of Jana Reddy and BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy about mounting public debt, the chief minister said taking loans and repaying them is a "continuous process".

The government would pay back Rs 20,000 crore this year, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The opposition today accused the government of reducing the allocation for the defence ministry to the lowest level since the 1962 war with China and claimed that the 'achhe din' (good days) have not come for soldiers.

Leading the opposition charge in the Lok Sabha during a debate on the Demand for Grants of the Defence Ministry, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said security challenges from China and Pakistan had increased and the lack of modernisation of the defence forces is a "ticking time bomb".

He said the defence allocation had been increased to 2.5 per cent of GDP during the UPA government but it has now been reduced to 1.5 per cent, which is the "lowest" since 1962.

The allocation for capital expenditure was only Rs 86000 crore and 90 per cent of it will go to service the existing contractual liability, Scindia said.

"Our army is not getting new weapons. The budget for them is not adequate and still all of it is not being spent. Rs 7000 crore of the capital expenditure has been returned and Rs 13000 crore was returned in the preceding year...," he said.

While Pakistan had been "caged" by the UPA government, it is now launching counter attacks on us, he said.

He added that China had sided with Pakistan during the BRICS Summit held in India last year.

This government has neither a proper defence policy nor has it right intentions, the Congress leader said.

Describing the 'Make-in-India' programme as "big cheating", he said not much has happened under it.

He hit out at the government over terror strikes in Pathankot, Uri and Nagrota while recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's attack on the previous UPA government during the Lok Sabha polls, when he was the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.

Scindia said the UPA government had signed a deal to procure 126 Rafale aircraft which would have increased the air force's squadron of fighter aircraft to 40 from 33. However, the NDA government has reduced the procurement size to only 2 squardons, he added.

Claiming inadequacy of weapons and equipment for all three wings of defence forces, he said against the need of 3.5 lakh bullet proof jackets, only 50000 has been procured.

"If you do not modernize, it is a ticking time bomb," he said.

Taking a dig at former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, he said he was often away from Delhi.

He also found fault with the execution of OROP policy.

Countering the opposition charge, BJP member Meenakshi



Lekhi took a dig at the Congress, saying in the earlier governments there was "scam and ban" and then "a lot of noise" as far as defence contracts were concerned.

The present government has stopped such things and it would be better not to remind the Congress about AgustaWestland issues, she added, in an apparent reference to the scam in the purchase of VVIP helicopters.

She favoured audit of the land owned by the defence forces to ensure there is no exploitation and defence economic zones.

Tarun Gogoi (Congress) said dignity should be ensured for the defence forces and there should also be parity in pay.

About the preparedness of the forces, he said there is shortage of aircraft and the vacancies in the defence forces are staggering.

He said the government should look at opening more Sainik schools and wondered why ordnance factories are vulnerable.

Taking a swipe at the government over a recent incident where a jawan complained about quality of the food served, Gogoi said, "we need to be sensitive... Let us not question his mental state... What the army needs is dignity and respect."



AIADMK member K Gopal also said there was only a meager hike in defence budget and that there was shortage of equipment in the armed forces.

He wanted focus on security in the southern coast and said the killing of fishermen from Tamil Nadu by the Sri Lankan forces should be considered as an "unfriendly aggression".

Trinamool Congress member Pratima Mondal said the cross-LoC surgical strike last September had sent out a credible and strong message but there is a threat to internal security.

N K Premchandran (RSP) said the government was trying to take political advantage from the surgical strikes even though such actions had been conducted three times during the UPA rule but never made it public.

He also said that the share of defence budget in proportion to GDP has come down from 1.65 per cent in 2016-17 to 1.56 per cent in the current fiscal.

Expelled RJD member Rajesh Ranjan said bribery was still taking place in defence contracts because India has failed to become self-reliant in the sector.

Jaiprakash Narayan Yadav (RJD), Neelam Sonkar (BJP) and Kaushalendra Kumar (JD-U) also spoke.
The Opposition in the Lok Sabha today attacked the government for slashing funds for major programmes like internal security and police modernisation, saying this would weaken the fight against terrorism and extremism.

"Everywhere there is reduction (of funds). Is there a problem of coordination between you (Home Affairs Ministry) and Finance (ministry)," Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge asked, adding that the government has allocated less funds to a "very important" ministry like Home Affairs.

Initiating the discussion on the Demands for Grants for Home Ministry for 2017-18, Kharge said in all the important heads of the ministry including internal security, "allocations are quite low in 2017-18 as compared to the previous year".

The government can give figures, but in percentage terms, the allocations have been reduced, he said.

The low allocation "reflects the failure of the government to utilise the funds properly," he said, claiming that the Home department was getting less help from their Finance counterparts.

He also claimed that the government has failed in curbing extremism and naxalism in the country, saying "time and again, we hear new incidents".

"If the government fails to take appropriate action, extremism and terrorism will increase," Kharge said, adding that there has been an increase in instances of infiltration and killing of security forces which reflects worsening of the situation. "Are these acche din (good days)," he asked.

Giving certain figures, Kharge said there was an increase in the number of people killed in 2016 as compared to 2015. He said in 2016, 213 civilians and 65 security forces were killed as compared to 213 and 59 in 2015 respectively.

Similarly, the number of encounters with police also rose to 328 last year from 247 in 2015, he said, adding that "these are your figures".

Kharge said the government should improve and modernise the infrastructure for security forces because they are equally important like the armed forces.

For security forces related infrastructure, the revised estimate was Rs 1,309 crore in 2015-16 but it was reduced to Rs 1,222 crore for 2017-18. "Why have you reduced this. Has naxalism and terrorism reduced," Kharge asked.

"Similarly, funds are also coming down for modernisation of police forces. You have also made the state police weak. They do not only tackle law and order but also (deal with) issues like terrorist attack, railway accidents etc," he said, adding that the budget allocation for modernisation was reduced to Rs 800 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 845 crore a year ago.

Further the government also failed to utilise the funds



allocated for modernisation of arms and ammunitions, the Congress leader said, asking "what was the reason behind this. Who is responsible for this?"



Law and order maintenance was more important and the government should "allocate more funds for this" and the Home Ministry must be given more priority than defence, he said.

Kharge said Rs 120 crore was earmarked in 2016-17 for securing Indo-Pakistan border but the government spent only Rs 50 crore. "What is the reason for this? Government should take action" against those responsible for not utilising the money.

He regretted that the government has reduced the allocation to Rs 100 crore only for the next fiscal.

The Congress leader also observed that the government had failed to spend the money for coastal security. "If you will work like this, then how the situation will improve," he said.

He wanted to know what action the government took on the recommendations of the committee which probed the terrorist attack at Pathankot.

Talking about women's safety, he regretted that the government failed to properly utilise the Nirbhaya Fund.

"How will you stop crimes against women. If you will reduce the funds, how will you provide protection to them? ...Government has failed on all fronts," he said. "What the government is doing to stop atrocities against SCs and STs," Kharge asked.

Participating in the discussion, Harish Meena (BJP) said terrorism and corruption was more rampant during the Congress regime and this government is doing everything to reduce them.

Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar (TMC) said government should fill all the vacancies in the para-military forces and demanded that they should be given modern weapons to deal with left-wing extremism.

Tathagata Satpathy (BJD) said there was a need to change the mind set of police officers who should serve the people and not create fear among the public.

Pandula Ravindra Babu (TDP) demanded that the MPLAD fund should be increased so that the members could spend money on development of security infrastructure.

Vinod Kumar Boianapalli (TRS) said more police force should be deployed in areas which are affected by left-wing extremists.
Oscar-winning Iranian film "The Salesman" will be screened at the first edition of Habitat International Film Festival (HIFF) here that seeks to screen the best of world cinema more accessible.

Directed by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, the film that won the Oscar this year in the 'Best Foreign-Language Film' category, will open the festival that will feature an impressive line up of documentary films like "Driving With Selvi", "White Sun", "A Heavy Heart" and "White Blessing" among others.

Set to begin from March 24 at Indian Habitat centre here, the 10-day event host free screenings of over 50 critically acclaimed films from across the globe.

Having collaborated with several Embassies and film directors, the initiative also seeks to promote a global dialogue through the medium of films.

"With the launch of this festival, we seek to fill the vacuum felt by film enthusiasts in the Capital and provide them with tasteful movie choices.

"Through this free-for-all platform, we aim to promote the thought of global dialogue via the channel of movies. We are happy to have several Embassies entrusting us with our unique initiative," says Rakesh Kacker, Director of India Habitat Centre.

"76 Minutes and 15 seconds with Abbas Kiarostami", a documentary tribute to the influential Iranian filmmaker will be also featured at the festival.

The festival, that will come to an end on April 2, will also showcase movies from countries like Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Hungary.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today said Indian infotech companies are not stealing American jobs but are in fact creating employment avenues in the world's largest economy.

Prasad's assertion came in the backdrop of proposed changes in the US policies around outsourcing and movement of skilled workers under the new administration.

"The domestic IT companies are present in 200 cities in 80 countries, including the US. In the US, our IT companies have given USD 20 billion in taxes last year. They have given jobs to 4,00,000 people there and have made value addition.

"Our IT companies are an asset for the US. The American administration should know that our companies don't steal their jobs but they are creating jobs. We have conveyed our concern to the highest US authorities," Prasad told the India Today Conclave here.

President Donald Trump's 'Buy American-hire American' rallying cry has put the USD 150-billion Indian IT industry, which draws more than 65 per cent of their revenues from that US alone, on the edge.

The IT industry has raised concerns over the proposed overhaul of the popular H-1B visa regime by Trump, as any curtailment in visas would result in higher operational costs and shortage of skilled workers.

The industry is also worried as Trump wants BPOs in America to more than double the salaries to USD 1.35 lakh per annum which would bump up operational cost for them.

Noting that the government objective is to make India the electronic hub of the world, Prasad said Rs 1.27 trillion worth of investments have come into electronic manufacturing in the country, much more than the Rs 11,000 crore during the UPA regime.

Responding to a query on cyber security, Prasad said the government is concerned about it and is doing its bit to deal with the threat.

"We are keeping an eye on this. We are very much on the job. But, if an accident takes place on a highway, you cannot stop travelling through that. Same is the case with cyber technology and digitisation," he said, adding digital industry is soon going to be worth USD 1 trillion.

On cyber pornography, he said this is a "ticklish" issue and the government is firm on banning it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Jammu and Kashmir BJP today said under pressure from China, Pakistan had decided to declare Gilgit-Baltistan region, bordering PoK, as the fifth province.

The party also said that Pakistan's move was to address the China's security concern on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

"The move to declare Gilgit and Baltistan as a province of Pakistan has been made under the pressure from China which is highly concerned about the security of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," state BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta told reporters here today.

It is believed that China's concerns about the unsettled status of Gilgit-Baltistan prompted Pakistan to explore change in its status.

Warning Pakistan, he said the way it was succumbing to China's pressure it would be dangerous for its identity and integrity.

Gupta said if Pakistan continues to pursue its policy towards China, it may, one day reduce itself as a colony of China.

This policy in no way can harm India but it would prove as self defeating exercise on his part".

The BJP also charged Pakistan for violating the UN resolution in which it was asked to surrender the area of Jammu & Kashmir.

"Pakistan's attempt to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as its fifth province, violates the 1948 UN resolution which accepted Pakistan as an aggressor," he said.

The BJP spokesperson said UN resolution also asked it (Pak) to surrender the area of Jammu and Kashmir that it had forcibly occupied, to India for the final settlement of the issue.

He further added that the entire J&K was an integral part of India and any unilateral decision that acceded to India by the Instrument of Accession is also against the spirit of the Shimla Agreement.

Gupta also warned Pakistan against instigating Pan-Islamic movement and supporting terrorism in the Valley and in India, and said that it may boomerang on it.

It may itself become victim of ISIS aggression that may enhance the class war in its society and lead to its complete destruction.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At the police officer's gesture, the bulldozer smashes its shovel into a blue Hyundai -- the latest of thousands of cars destroyed by Palestinian police every year.

The car's owner and her children protest, but receive little sympathy.

"This car has not been legally registered since 2007, despite its Israeli licence plates," the officer, who declines to give his name, tells AFP.

"I asked her to produce documents and she couldn't present any."



The operation is part of efforts to combat a large underground car market that sees vehicles stolen in Israel or deemed unfit for the roads there transported into the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian authorities are concerned in part because crimes are often carried out using such unregistered cars still carrying their old Israeli plates.

Throughout the West Bank, vacant lots covered with stacks of hundreds of cars crushed by bulldozers bearing Israeli plates are an indication of the police crackdown.

Two vehicles of armed police and two bulldozers were involved in the recent roadside demolition at Al-Ram, a Palestinian area on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

The officer heading the operation said he had seized 100 vehicles lacking documents in a day.

Many are crushed on the spot without a longer trial, before being taken away to landfills.

In 2016, 16,000 vehicles met the same fate, Palestinian police said, with 5,000 in January and February in the small territory occupied for 50 years by Israel.

Some of the cars were stolen from Israel and illegally brought into the West Bank for resale to Palestinians.

Others were declared unfit to run on Israeli roads, where annual tests check the condition of the vehicles in circulation.

They are removed from Israeli registers, and their owners are supposed to scrap them.

But instead they are often transported to the West Bank, where they pass into Palestinian hands at unbeatable prices, sometimes just a few hundred dollars.

Israelis and Palestinians are still struggling with an inextricable conflict over the land, and Israel has built an imposing security barrier that runs through the West Bank.

Heavily guarded checkpoints closely monitor what goes into Israel, including cars, but controls are far looser going in the opposite direction.

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Japanese consumer electronics firm Panasonic is working to offer solutions to business enterprises in India to expand its presence in the country beyond offering consumer products.

The company has identified offering solutions in mobility, energy storage and security and surveillance as key areas for its next phase of growth.

"We still are small in terms of B2B revenue in India and my intention is that in the next five years time, a revenue of 50 per cent would come out from B2B solutions," Panasonic India and South Asia President and CEO Manish Sharma told PTI.

Panasonic India had a turnover of Rs 8,700 crore last year. For FY2016-17 it is targeting sales of Rs 10,800 crore, in which consumer durables are expected to contribute around Rs 4,800 crore and mobile phones around Rs 2,500 crore, while the B2B vertical is expected to contribute Rs 1,000 crore.

Elaborating on the company's B2B strategy, he said: "There are three pillars on which we will focus -- mobility solutions, energy storage solutions, and security and surveillance solutions."



Going forward, he said the company would shift from product selling approach to a solution selling approach.

"So far the strategy was to concentrate on few areas and therefore we concentrated our resources into building consumer business platform which now is ready," he said.

The company is looking opportunities in seven categories - high definition video conferencing, PBX, rugged notebook & notepads - Toughbooks & Toughpad, security & surveillance, display panels, projectors and document solutions.

Under mobility segment, Panasonic is focusing on toughpad and smartphones, while lithium ion batteries under energy segment. In security and surveillance solutions, the company has presence with range of security cameras and accessories.

Panasonic, which is going to celebrate 100 years of its foundation next year, is looking for a major role expansion in 2017



"2017 is playing a major role for us because this run up for our 100 years. We are making two approaches towards 2018. One is how we are becoming more as a solutions company by collaborating with the ecosystem itself and how to become more sustainable for future," said Sharma who is also Executive Officer, Panasonic Corporation.

According to him, in that process "not only the consumer division would continue to drive growth but we would also create diversity of the portfolio in the coming time for making this company sustainable in India."



Panasonic entered India in 1971 with its dry cell battery factory.

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Encouraging the 'Be Indian, Buy Indian' slogan, HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh today said there is a need for the government to be 'protectionist' to safeguard the interests of the domestic companies.

"We also have to be protectionist...If large countries like the US and Britain are turning protectionists, why not we become protectionist?" Parekh said at the India Today Conclave here.

"We are a large country, we have a large market. We also have to protect our industry," he said.

Recently, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya had also called for some protections to the domestic industry.

Parekh gave the example of the steel industry which was reeling under immense pressure due to cheap Chinese imports, but is now working on higher capacity after the government introduced minimum import price.

"Our steel industry was bleeding because we were getting all steel products from China at ridiculously low prices till the government intervened and put a minimum import prices," he said.

"Now steel companies are working at 80 per cent capacity against 50 per cent before the government's intervention. They are able to service their loans now. I am sure the capacity will go up to 85-90 per cent in next few months," Parekh said.

He, however, said unfortunately the government cannot put anti-dumping duties on every product and so there is a need to be protectionist to promote domestic companies.

Agreeing with the fact that competition will help companies thrive better, Parekh said there is a need to look at the quality of the products which competition brings in.

"The quality of products that China is dumping are far poorer than our locally made products," he said.

Parekh said the consumers in the country are smart and do not want to buy Chinese products.

"I know that when the common man buys a car, he would not like to buy Chinese tyre or any other Chinese accessories," he said.

"Be Indian and buy Indian," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The steps taken by the government to digitise public distribution system (PDS) was discussed at a meeting of a Parliamentary Consultative Committee, headed by Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan.

The minister briefed the members of Parliamentary Consultative Committee about the achievements and activities of the Department of Food & Public Distribution in a meeting held yesterday.

"The members of the committee discussed issues related to improvement in TPDS-cashless arrangement," an official statement said.

Paswan informed the members about steps being taken for making PDS more effective so that benefits reach the intended beneficiaries.

He apprised about the key action plan drawn by the department including digitisation of beneficiary database, online allocation of foodgrains, computerisation of supply chain management, transparency portals and grievance redress mechanisms, Aadhar seeding, installation of ePos (electronic Point of sale) devices at all ration shops.

In line with ongoing initiative to introduce digital payments, the minister said the department has prescribed five modes of cashless payments i.E. Aadhar enabled Payment System, Micro ATM, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Bharat interface for money (BHIM) and e-wallet.

As many as 7 States/UTs have successfully enable digital, cashless payments using one or more of the 5 payments mode.

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The German CEO of Pakistan's cash-strapped national carrier has been put on the exit control list and barred from travelling abroad following the initiation of a probe into corruption charges against him.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said at a press briefing here that the name of Bernd Hildenbrand has been put on the exit control list (ECL).

The decision to put Hildenbrand on ECL came after the National Assembly was told that Pakistan Airlines (PIA) had suffered losses of about Rs 180 crores on a premium service on the domestic route and also in connection with the airlines acquiring a plane from Sri Lankan Airlines at an exorbitant price than the prevailing market rate.

Apparently the airlines acquired a plane from Sri Lankan Airlines at $ 8,000 per hour, while another airline had acquired the same type of plane at $ 4,000 per hour.

has already invited applications for a new CEO and chief operating commercial officer or director marketing through a tender.

Hildenbrand was also barred from leaving the country in December 2016 after a controversy erupted when the national airlines sold a flight-worthy aircraft (A-310) to a German museum at throwaway price.

Interestingly, although Hildenbrand has been working in the high-profile post since 2015 he has yet to be given security clearance by the country's security agencies. Hildenbrand is presently in Karachi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today assured support to Nepal in all its endeavours for socio-economic development of that country.

The assurance was given by Modi to Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Bimalendra Nidhi who called on him here.

Nidhi briefed the Prime Minister about recent developments in Nepal, the PMO said.

"The Prime Minister said that India is fully committed to strengthening the age-old ties of friendship and kinship between the people of both countries, and to support the Government of Nepal in all its endeavours for socio-economic development of Nepal," the PMO added.

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A Saudi Islamic leader with more than two million Twitter followers has been banned from writing by a court that convicted him of jeopardising public order.

Awad al-Qarni, previously accused of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, was also fined 100,000 riyals (USD 27,000), Okaz newspaper reported on its website late Thursday.

It did not name the "famous preacher" but Qarni himself confirmed the verdict on his @awadalqarni Twitter account late Thursday.

"I am prevented from writing" on the account, he wrote, before issuing a Twitter message early Friday thanking his followers.

Qarni was "one of the key clerics of the Sahwa movement," British scholar Toby Matthieson has written.

The Sahwa emerged in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 70s as "a modern form of Islamic activism" which had wide impact and whose founders were exiled Muslim Brothers, according to another expert, Stephane Lacroix.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have all declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a "terrorist group".

Okaz said Riyadh's Specialised Criminal Court, which handles "terrorism" cases, convicted the preacher on Thursday of spreading content on Twitter which "could jeopardise public order and provoke public opinion."



It said the content "could affect the relationship of the people with the leadership, and the relationship of Saudi Arabia with other countries."



There were no further details but Okaz said Qarni was tried without having been arrested.

"We have appealed the case," Qarni said on Twitter.

Lacroix, of Sciences Po university in Paris, told AFP in December that changes late last year to the kingdom's highest religious authority confirmed an "anti-Sahwa, anti-Muslim Brotherhood" trend.

In 2010, Qarni was charged in absentia by an Egyptian court with funding the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today expressed unhappiness over the handling of probe into the assault on a student from Arunachal Pradesh in Bengaluru saying investigation was "not satisfactory".

"Action at the investigating officer level is not satisfactory. I have communicated this to the DGP of Karnataka and Commissioner of Bengaluru Police," he told PTI here.

The Union Minister of State for Home has been closely following the incident of attack on Higio Guntey, who hails from Arunachal Pradesh and is a fourth-semester student of Christ University.

Guntey was allegedly beaten and forced to lick his house owner's shoes for using excessive water in Bengaluru on March 6.

Rijiju said he was assured of all follow up actions by senior officials of the Karnataka government in the case.

The Minister appealed to police forces of all states to be more prompt in taking action if there is any incident of attack on people from Northeast in any part of the country.

There have been protests by students from the Northeast in different parts of the country against the attack on the student from Arunachal Pradesh.

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Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria today assured the arrest of the culprits in the Churu murder case within two months.

When BSP MLA Manoj Kumar raised the issue during the Zero Hour, Kataria said the victim, identified as Man Singh, was murdered on March 11 in Rajgarh area of Churu.

The accused Mahesh who had taken Man Singh along with him on a motorcycle is absconding and will be arrested soon.

Kumar said the minor daughter of Singh was allegedly gangraped in 2015 and one of the main accused, Vikas Jat, had got his name removed from the FIR.

Jat was pressurising the girl's father to withdraw the case and when he refused, he got him murdered, Kataria said.

The minister said he was seized of the facts and will get the matter investigated impartially. All the accused in both the cases of gangrape and murder will be arrested in next two months, he added.

During the Zero Hour, Independent MLA Hanuman Beniwal referring to a decision by a committee headed by chief secretary to transfer pasture lands for mining purpose demanded from the government to withdraw the decision.

Stating that lack of fodder leads to death of cattle he claimed the government was not serious for this and was instead planning to hand over the pasture lands for mining purpose.

He also raised the issue of deaths of cows in Hingaunia gaushala (last year) and demanded from the government to not go ahead with the decision.

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The Bombay High Court today asked the CBI and the Maharashtra CID to make "sincere and joint efforts" to trace the alleged absconding killers of Narendra Dabholkar and veteran Communist leader Govind Pansare.

While CBI is probing the Dabholkar case, the Pansare murder is being investigated by a Special Investigation Team of CID.

Both the agencies today gave their status reports on the probe to a division bench of Justice S C Dharmadhikari, which is hearing plea from the family members of slain rationalist Dabholkar and Pansare for monitoring the probe by the court.

After perusing the reports, the bench acknowledged the efforts being made to catch the culprits but said both the agencies should work in tandem because the accused persons in both the cases are similar and belong to the same right wing group.

"We are of the opinion that further co-ordination is expected from both the agencies (the CBI and the CID). The joint efforts have to be made to trace the absconding accused who are said to be the main perpetrators of the crime. Bearing in mind the seriousness of the crime committed, we expect and hope both the agencies would take sincere efforts in the case," the court said.

"We expect the agencies mot to leave any loose ends in the probe. We expect something concrete to emerge in the future in the probe," the court said while posting the matter for further hearing on April 20.

The court cautioned the agencies to be careful while probing the case and to ensure that nothing is done to assist the absconding accused.

While Dabholkar was murdered in Pune on August 20, 2013, Pansare was shot at on February 16, 2015 in Kolhapur. He died on February 20. Another rationalist and Karnataka scholar Prof M M Kalburgi was killed on August 30 last year.

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A senior Naval officer today called on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami.

Vice Admiral HCS Bisht, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command, met Palaniswami at the Secretariat here, an official release said.

The meeting was described as a 'courtesy call.'



Bisht was accompanied by Rear Admiral Alok Bhatnagar, Flag Officer, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Naval area, it said.

Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan was present during the meeting.

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Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has invited all the insurgent outfits of the state for peace talks and said his government wants to rid the state of the militancy, the illegal foreigners and the corruption.

Sonowal gave the invitation in form of an appeal that he made while taking part in an All India Radio talk show last night and said all the insurgent outfits in the state should come forward for the peace talks as his government is trying to create a conducive atmosphere for peace in Assam.

Responding to a question if talks would succeed without ULFA (Independent) leader Paresh Asom (earlier Baruah) participating in the peace process, the CM said, "All those who want to return to the mainstream are welcome to the talk table. The people of Assam want peace."



"All are welcome but under no circumstance, the government will allow militancy in Assam. It will continue with all the measures to firmly deal with terrorism," Sonowal said.

The chief minister also said the sealing of the Indo-Bangladesh border will be completed before soon with the concerned agencies working on it and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi being firm on sealing the border.

On making Assam free of illegal immigrants, Sonowal said, "As per the order of the Supreme Court and the Gauhati High Court, the updating of the National Register of Citizens has been undertaken in Assam. Extreme caution is being exercised to ensure that the names of no genuine Indian citizen is excluded from the NRC and the names of no illegal foreigners are included in it".

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A border guards commander has issued a show cause notice to his juniors threatening them with transfers and downgrading of service records for letting a regimental event held at the SSB camp in Gorakhpur turn into a "children's park".

The memorandum issued by the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of the Recruit Training Centre of the SSB, P S Chundawat, has not gone down well with the junior officers and staff as they questioned the very logic of the notice.

The event, on which the DIG took umbrage, was held on March 9 at the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) RTC in the Indo-Nepal border town of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh.

The show cause issued by the DIG, also the head of the institution, showcauses the juniors asking: "Why your Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) for the year 2016-17 should not be downgraded?" and "Why you should not be transferred to other units?"



"...There was no control over the children by their parents due to which the whole auditorium (where the event was held) was converted into a children's park. This act shows lack of command and control of parents on their children whereas all were advised in verbal and written at the time of other regimental functions to avoid such type of indiscipline acts in future," the show cause notice, accessed by PTI, said.

It added that "neither the staff has taken the directions seriously nor followed duties of a citizen which is a clear cut example of casual attitude towards the decorum of force."



When contacted by PTI, Chundawat said "he issued the show cause to threaten his juniors and mend their children and if they do not heed to discipline, he will go ahead and take the action next time as threatened in the notice."



"Have I taken the action? I issued it so that next time such a thing does not take place. You will not tell me how to run the force...I know the procedure...What could anyone do when 12 CRPF men were killed recently. There is nothing wrong in what I have done...I will reply to my seniors," he said.

A senior SSB officer, on the condition of anonymity, questioned the show cause notice saying such "such minor issues are not dealt by issuing memorandums which threaten a strong action like downgrading of appraisal reports or transfers which are very harsh punishments usually handed down for gross indiscipline like incidents."



"Some of the officers are planning to write to the force headquarters in Delhi seeking a remedy. Such irrational actions lead to the harassment of junior officers and jawans," the officer said.

The SSB is tasked to secure the 1,751-km India-Nepal border and the 500-acre RTC in Gorakhpur is the largest of this 80,000 personnel-strong force in terms of capacity.

The RTC trains new recruits who join SSB in the constable ranks and acts as refresher course centre for other junior ranks.

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The Centre has issued an advisory to states asking them to reserve 33 per cent of posts in police forces for women, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said today.

He also said that under the Nirbhaya Fund created after the gruesome Delhi gangrape of 2011, nearly 40,500 police personnel are being trained especially for protection of women and cyber security.

Singh said two projects have been sanctioned under the Nirbhaya Funds and 60 counsellors would be hired in the next two years.

"I have written to Chief Ministers of all the states with regard to 33 per cent reservation in women and police. State governments have taken cognizance of it and are working in that direction," he said while replying to a debate in the Lok Sabha on Demand for Grants of Home Ministry.

During the debate, the Opposition accused the government of slashing funds for major programmes like internal security and police modernisation, saying this would weaken the fight against terrorism and extremism.

The Home Minister, while rejecting the opposition contention, said the government will roll out in a few months a student-police cadet scheme for which an action plan has been prepared.

The Student Police Cadet Project is a school-based youth development initiative that trains high school students with an aim of helping them evolve as future leaders by inculcating within them respect for the law, discipline, civic sense and resistance to social evils.

Talking about Kashmir which witnessed unrest last year, he said a plethora of measures were being taken to improve the law and order situation there.

Referring to the Pathankot terror attack that took place in Janury last year, the Home Minister said the Centre took it up as a challenge and the investigation were at an advanced stage.

On the terrorism front, he said the killing of militants have increased. While 99 terrorists had been killed in 2011, the number rose to 222 in 2016, he said.

Also, 1442 terrorists surrendered last year, against 394 in 2011, Singh said.

With regard to casualties suffered by the security forces in terror and naxal violence, he said while the government is providing assistance to their kin, corporates are also being contacted for help in this regard.

In this context, he showered praise on Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar who has declared that he would give Rs 9 lakh each to the families of 12 CRPF personnel killed in naxal attack in Sukma in Chhattisgarh recently.

Elaborating on the measures taken to contain Left Wing Extremism (LWE), Singh said the areas affected by naxalism are reducing.

He said the number of districts affected by naxalism has reduced from 106 to 68, with 35 being the most affected, across seven states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Maharashtra.

"Their number is decreasing and will decrease further," the Home Minister said while noting that the Centre shares forces and intelligence with the states besides the financial assistance in dealing with the problem.

The Centre as well as states have also undertaken a



number of developmental works in naxal affected areas, the Home Minister said.

Elaborating, he said in 35 districts, 358 new bank branches, 752 ATMs and 1789 post offices have been opened over the last two years.

The number of police personnel who have died in violent attacks has gone down from 611 in 2011 to 278 in 2016, Singh said.

He said number of extremists who have surrendered before the law enforcing agencies have gone up from 1442 in 2016 to 384 in 2011.

Emphasising that insurgency was a big challenge in the northeast, Singh noted that there was a significant decline in insurgency.

"There was a 75 decline in insurgency cases in Northeast over the last two decades," Singh said.

Singh said that in the year 2016, the least incidents of



insurgency took place in the country.

The Home Minister rejected the opposition charge that the allocation for internal security has been reduced and said the assistance under Security Related Expenditure (SRE) has, in fact, been hiked for the financial year 2017-18.

With regard to the issue of "intolerance", the Home Minister said the number of cases has come down significantly from 823 in 2013 to 703 in 2016.

At the same time, he said the issue concerns state governments as law and order is a State subject.

On the facilities for the paramilitary forces, the Home Minister said the goverment has taken steps to deal with the housing problem for the personnel.

He said the personnel of the paramilitary forces who suffer injury would be deemed to be on duty while they recuperate in hospital.

The Centere has also approached the Sarojini Damodaran Foundation seeking education of the children of the martyrs, Singh said.

On grievance redressal in the paramilitary forces, he said there are mechanisms available in this regard.

The Centre is also providing financial assistance to the India Reserve Battalion.

He acknowledged that cyber crime was increasing in the country and said 66 cyber forensic centres would be opened in states and union terrotories.

On the fencing of Indo-Bangladesh border as demanded by Trinamool Congress members during the debate, the Home Minister said the work in some areas is delayed because of problems in acquiring land for the purpose.

He appealed to the West Bengal government, through the members of Trinamool Congress which rules the state, to expedite land acquisition so that the work can move at fast pace.

"We had made request to the West Bengal government but it has not been been met yet. Please tell your Chief Minister to speed up the land acquisition so that we can speed up the fencing work," he told Trinamool members.

Other reasons that are preventing cent per cent fencing of the border with Bangladesh are riverine, mountains and objections by neighbours.

The Centre, Singh said, is taking up pilot project based of space-based technology to secure the borders.

Rubbishing criticism that the budgetary allocation had not been utilised, Singh said, "We have already spent 91 per cent of the fund and the rest the will spent before the end of the current fiscal."



He also rejected allegations that the Centre is not providing enough assistance to West Bengal government for the Enclaves which have been transfered from Bangladesh to India.

"It is not proper to say the government is not paying attention to those who have come from Bangladesh and become nationals here," he said.

He said Rs 140 crore were allocated in the year 2015-16 and this was hiked to Rs 340 crore in 2016-17 but only Rs 140 crore could be released as the state government could not provide the utilisation certificate.

"We will release all the money once utilisation certificates come," he added.

On PoK refugees, he said assistance will start this financial year itself. He said 20,000 families have taken forms, out of which 3,000 families have submitted documents.

About the national capital, he said Delhi Police, which comes under the Home Ministry, was taking effective steps to check crimes.

CCTV cameras are being installed and training is being given to the people, he added.
Former Tamil Nadu chief minister O Panneerselvam escaped without any injuries when unidentified miscreants pelted stones at a car in which he was travelling in this district today.

The front part of the car was slightly damaged in the stone attack, but none was injured, police said.

Panneerselvam, who has revolted against the leadership of ruling AIADMK, was proceeding to nearby Andipatti in the district, his native, when the incident occurred, they said.

Panneerselvam was here to participate in various functions organised by his supporters.

Police said they were searching for the miscreants who pelted stones.

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An Islamist suicide bomber today blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladesh's elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion here, injuring two security personnel, a day after five militants were killed in police raids.

"It was an incident of suicide bombing. The suicide attacker targeted our camp," RAB spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said.

The area where the incident took place was earmarked for constructing the headquarters of the force.

The blast wounded two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka Cantonment.

The officer said the attack appeared to be an act of any militant outfit, but it was not clear immediately which of the Islamist outfits staged it.

"Right now we are concentrating our attention to ascertain if the complex and the neighbourhood are secured," Mahmud said as police's counter terrorism unit with bomb disposal team reached the scene while thoroughfares around the complex were blocked for vehicular movements.

Witnesses said the youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp, killing himself instantly and seriously wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber, aged around 25 years, apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall.

The attack comes a day after police's Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagong's Sitakunda where two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest. Two days ago, the ISIS terror group had called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has witnessed a nationwide anti-Islamist crackdown since last week while police said they arrested over 80 militants.

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Syria's army said today it shot down an Israeli plane that had been carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra, the famed desert city it recently recaptured from jihadists.

"Four Israeli planes penetrated our air space at 2:40 am (0040 GMT) via Lebanese territory and hit a military target on the way to Palmyra," the army said in a statement carried by state agency SANA.

"Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one and forced the rest to flee," it added.

The incident is the most serious between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.

The Israeli air force had earlier said it carried out several strikes on Syria overnight and that Syria had fired surface-to-air missiles in response.

But it said none of those missiles had hit their targets.

"This flagrant attack is part of the Zionist enemy's persistent efforts to support the terrorist gangs of Daesh," the Syrian army said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group.

"It will be responded to directly with all possible means," it added.

The Syrian army recaptured Palmyra from IS on March 2, three months after losing it to the jihadists for a second time. Syrian troops backed by Russian forces had first retaken it in March last year.

In January, the army accused Israel of carrying out missile strikes on the Mazzeh air base near Damascus.

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Security has been enhanced at the Taj Mahal in the wake of a media report of a threat to the 17th century monument from terror outfit ISIS.

"A link has been circulated in which it is claimed that Taj Mahal is on the target of ISIS. We are probing it. However, security has been enhanced in and around the monument," Additional Director General, Law and Order, Daljeet Singh Chowdhury told PTI here.

The security was jacked up after a website showed graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looked like a weapon.

According to reports, a pro-ISIS media group published a graphic depicting Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world, as a possible target of the terror outfit.

The graphic was released almost a week after security agencies carried out combing operation in Uttar Pradesh in which one accused - Saifullah - was killed and six others were arrested.

It was reported that Saifullah was brainwashed by ISIS through the online medium and had carried out an attack on a train in Bhopal.

The graphic features an ISIS fighter wearing combat fatigues and black headgear armed with an assault rifle standing near the Taj Mahal.

It also features three inset pictures - an image of Taj Mahal within crosshairs with the words "New Target" below it, a van with the Arabic text "Agra istishhadi" (Agra martyrdom-seeker) written in English, implying the threat of a suicide bombing, and an image of a "bomb".

The internal security of Taj Mahal, the biggest draw for foreign and domestic tourists, is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force, a central para-military force entrusted with the task of protecting industrial units, airports, metro rail and various other sensitive places.

The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) man the outer periphery.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams keep a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking slot towards the eastern gate.

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An 18-year-old girl was found dead and her friend was hospitalised in critical condition after they allegedly attempted suicide by consuming poisonous substance today in Rajasthan's Jalore district, police said.

The duo was found lying unconscious at a farm in Paoli village under Jaswantpura police station area, police said.

Both were taken to hospital in Bhinmal town where doctors declared Aarti dead while Shrawan Bheel (18) was referred to Gujarat owing to his critical condition, SHO Jaswantpura, Poonam Singh told PTI.

The body of the girl was handed over to the family members after post mortem.

Police have registered the case considering the death occurred under circumstances raising a reasonable suspicion.

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Washington's top diplomat arrived in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself today, a day after he declared 20 years of efforts to denuclearise it had failed.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, and was to hold talks with South Korea's acting president Hwang Kyo-Ahn later, after China challenged him to come up with a new way to confront the North Korean nuclear stand-off.

Tillerson landed at Osan air base in South Korea from Japan and transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter for his trip to the DMZ, where he met the commander of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the South to defend the country.

He vowed in Tokyo yesterday to press Beijing to rein in its neighbour but, speaking after meeting Japanese officials, offered no new details of his plan to defuse the threat posed by Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests.

He warned that past policies and punishments have had virtually no effect on Pyongyang's ambitions and that a new course was needed.

"I think it's important to recognise that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed," he said.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to China to press the North's key diplomatic protector and trade partner to back tougher sanctions -- but Beijing has been infuriated by the deployment of a US missile defence system to the South.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

It has continued to defy the international community, even after two rounds of UN-backed sanctions, and last week test fired a salvo of missiles that fell in waters off Japan.

"In the face of the ever-escalating threat it is clear that a new approach is required," Tillerson said.

And he reiterated Washington's vow to back key regional allies Japan and South Korea in the event of attack.

"The US commitment to the defence of Japan and its other treaty allies through the full range of our military capabilities is unwavering," he promised.

US President Donald Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said the TMC and her government will challenge the Calcutta High Court order for a preliminary enquiry by the CBI into the Narada sting operation purportedly showing some party leaders accepting money.

"Of course our party and government will go to the Supreme Court for justice. If we think we have not got justice, we have the right to go to the higher court," Banerjee told reporters.

She said her party would fight it both "politically and legally", terming the High Court's order to stop the Kolkata Police investigation in the matter as "unfortunate".

Banejee, who stood by her ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Firad Hakim, claimed the sting operation was staged and the video released at the BJP office.

Referring to a statement by state BJP president Dilip Ghosh that after the UP elections the CBI will start probe into the Narada tapes, Banerjee wondered how could he make such statement in advance.

"Before a judgment is given, how can BJP state president make a press announcement that after the UP elections the CBI will investigate the Narada tapes. Before a judgment is given a political party is giving all directions.. I am a lawyer and I am really shocked," she said.

Referring to the High Court's criticism of the state government, she said, "They (court) can criticise the role of a government but cannot say about an elected government that the people have lost faith in it.

"This was made an issue in the 2016 elections and all the three ministers shown in the Narada tapes had won the elections," she said.

"Rs one or two lakh is not a factor... The public wants to know how many crores of funds were spent in the UP elections?" Banerjee asked.

Maintaining that her party had obtained Income Tax clearance regarding all donations received by it, she said there should be an investigation against her if she had done anything wrong.

On the Calcutta High Court calling the state police a "puppet" of the state government, Banerjee said, "They cannot say this.. They are taking all security from police officials. They (police)are disciplined soldiers of the government. Kolkata Police force is the best in the world, I can assure you, and we know how they are working."



Earlier in the day, the court had ordered a preliminary enquiry into the sting, observing that the conduct of public figures must be beyond reproach.

It said that given the persons against whom allegations have been made are ministers, MPs and other senior leaders from the state, it would be just to direct the CBI, and not a state agency, to conduct a preliminary enquiry.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborti directed the CBI to take possession of all material and devices related to the sting operation within 24 hours and conclude the enquiry within another 72 hours.

The court directed the CBI to register FIR, if required, after completion of the preliminary enquiry and initiate formal investigation thereafter.

The Narada sting tapes, which were released to different organisations before the 2016 Assembly elections in West Bengal, showed some leaders allegedly taking money.

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Tamil Nadu minister D Jayakumar today sought External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's intervention to ensure the safety of Indian fishermen in the Palk Bay, besides seeking the release of the fishing boats seized by Sri Lanka.

The state Finance and Fisheries Minister also raised the issue of the death of a fisherman, Bridgo, during his meeting with Swaraj.

"We have requested the minister to make fishing a peaceful affair in the Palk Bay, besides providing immunity to the fishermen from arrests and killings," Jayakumar told reporters after meeting the Union minister here.

He said Swaraj has assured him that such untoward incidents would not occur in the future.

"The minister has promised to release Rs 250 crore for the Tuna fishing project in Tamil Nadu. The state government will also contribute an equal amount," he said.

Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan also addressed the media on the issue and alleged that the "killing" of Bridgo was "in violation of the talks held on November 5".

On November 2, 2016, the fishermen's associations of Tamil Nadu and northern Sri Lanka had met at the Ministry of External Affairs, followed by a high-level meeting of officials of both the countries on November 5.

Bridgo was allegedly killed by the Sri Lankan Navy on March 7.

Jayakumar also met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and sought financial relief for the drought situation in Tamil Nadu, besides seeking the Rs 5,816 crore "dues" to the state.

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A top commander serving in one of Mali's powerful pro-government militias was murdered in the country's northeast, sources told AFP today, with two suspects in custody.

Almadi Ag Lengach -- the military chief of the Imghad and Allies Tuareg Self-Defence Group known by the French acronym GATIA -- was slain at home in Menaka, one of its fighters told AFP.

"(Ag Lengach) was killed at home by armed men who then ran off," said GATIA member Mohamed Ag Ouleg.

A Malian security source said the assassins scaled the walls of Ag Lengach's house to evade his security detail before killing him.

Two security sources reached by AFP confirmed that two suspects were in custody.

The GATIA, which supports the central government in Bamako, signed a 2015 peace deal with state authorities and members of the country's former rebel alliance that is aimed at quelling uprisings in the north.

A 2012 rebellion by the Tuareg-led rebels was hijacked by jihadists who then seized control of key northern cities, triggering an international military intervention the following year.

Since the peace deal aimed at ending the conflict, the GATIA has been accused of multiple ceasefire violations, and in September last year US ambassador to Mali Paul Folmsbee told the government it should "sever all ties" with the group.

Militias like the GATIA operate in areas where Mali's army is absent or has a very limited presence, and patrols areas within its control. Menaka residents told AFP Ag Lengach was an important figure in the city's security apparatus.

Ag Lengach's murder comes as the country struggles to implement key elements of the peace deal including temporary regional bodies charged with organising elections when security can be assured for voters.

The interim authorities, as they are known, were put into place on March 2 in Menaka but remain absent in the restive city of Timbuktu, where armed groups have also clashed repeatedly.

Jihadists continue to roam the country's north and east, mounting attacks on civilians and the army, as well as French and UN forces still stationed in the country.

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on Friday said its shareholders have approved a proposal to raise up to Rs 1,500 crore through issuance of secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs).

"The special resolution to approve issuance of Secured, Redeemable, Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) not exceeding Rs 1,500 crore at par, on a private placement basis within the overall borrowing limits of the company has been approved by the majority vote," said in a BSE filing on Friday.

Govt should suitably dispose of hazardous medical waste. The government should come up with ways and means to suitably dispose of the hazardous medical and bio-wastes generated in all hospitals, industry chamber PHDCCI said on Friday.

The move would ensure that health workers and communities around them are not infected, it said in a statement.

The issue was deliberated upon during the India Hospital Summit-2017 which is organised under the aegis of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

It said the existing rules and regulations to regulate bio-medical wastes need to be complied with by all hospitals and nursing homes in and around Delhi and "non-compliance should be dealt with heavy penalties".
US President Donald Trump today accused China of not doing enough to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, after his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against Pyongyang was an option.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said on Twitter.

Earlier in Seoul, Tillerson said military action would be a possibility if the threat posed by North Korea were to escalate.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"Certainly we do not want for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."



Tillerson announced the end of Washington's "strategic patience" -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

The secretary of state is currently touring northeast Asia, after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

Tillerson is expected in China tomorrow. Beijing is North Korea's main diplomatic ally and trade partner.

China shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump today welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House for talks expected to focus on their differences over NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues.

The two leaders shook hands and smiled for the cameras before entering the West Wing.

The Oval Office meeting had been scheduled for Tuesday, before a major snowstorm in the eastern United States forced a postponement.

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Jordanian UN official Rima Khalaf announced her resignation today, saying the secretary general had asked her to withdraw a report in which she accused Israel of being an "apartheid state".

Khalaf, under-secretary general and executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told a conference: "The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN."



"We expected of course that Israel and its allies would put huge pressure on the secretary general of the UN so that he would disavow the report, and that they would ask him to withdraw it," she added.

On Wednesday, the United States demanded that Secretary General Antonio Guterres withdraw an ESCWA report accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on the Palestinians.

Guterres had distanced himself from the report entitled "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid".

The report concluded that "available evidence established beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid".

Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon welcomed Khalaf's resignation.

"Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN. It is time to put an end to practice in which UN officials use their position to advance their anti-Israel agenda," Danon said.

"Over the years Khalaf has worked to harm Israel and advocate for the BDS movement. Her removal from the UN is long overdue," he added.

BDS -- Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- is a Palestinian-led movement that lobbies for the boycott of Israel over its occupation of Palestinian land.

It says on its website that BDS was "inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement".

Based in Beirut, ESCWA is comprised of 18 Arab countries, according to its website, which lists the state of Palestine as a full member, and works to strengthen cooperation and promote development.

"The United States is outraged by the report," Washington's UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said in a statement on Wednesday.

"That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognise Israel is unsurprising," she said.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday "the report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary general" and was done without consultations with the UN secretariat.

One of the authors is Richard Falk, a former special UN rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

Haley in Wednesday's statement described Falk as "a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories".

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Bank unions today said they will strongly oppose any voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) that is likely to be announced soon for the employees of five associate banks of State Bank of India, which will be merged on April 1.

The five associate banks of SBI are State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Hyderabad.

"They may announce a VRS any time now. As a matter of principle, we unions totally oppose the VRS. Earlier, the SBI chairperson had said there would be about 26,000 employees retiring in the next two years.

"So, there is no need for VRS. But now the bank has deviated from its word," State Sector Bank Employees Association general secretary KS Krishna told PTI here today.

"Why is that the VRS is applicable only to the employees of associate banks? It should be applicable to all," the union leader said.

Krishna said about 50 per cent of the total 73,000 workforce of the all five associate banks will meet the eligibility criteria for the proposed VRS -- which is those on the rolls and having put in 20 years or above 55 years.

Eligible employees will be paid an ex-gratia amounting to 50 per cent of the salary for the residual period of service, subject to a maximum of 30 months salary, he said.

"We will be educating our people. Our jobs should be protected. The VRS decision is unilateral. If they consult us, we will oppose it," he said, adding the merger process will not be smooth if the SBI management fails to take unions into confidence.

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The US said it carried out an air strike in Syria against an Al-Qaeda meeting but denied hitting a mosque where a monitor said today 46 people were killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in last evening's raid on the village of Al-Jineh in the northern province of Aleppo were civilians.

In Washington, the Pentagon insisted a mosque was not hit but rather a nearby building with "dozens" of Al-Qaeda members inside, "several" of whom were killed.

"The mosque is still standing and relatively unscathed," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said. "The building we targeted was adjacent" and the strike "clearly hit the intended target".

He showed a black-and-white image of what appeared to be an old mosque with a flattened building a short distance away.

Davis did not say what that destroyed building's purpose had been or whether it could have been somehow connected to the old mosque in Al-Jineh.

The US has been bombing jihadists in war-torn Syria as part of an international coalition since 2014, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

The US Central Command said today it would "look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike", which was carried out unilaterally by the United States.

At the scene, an AFP correspondent saw rescue workers in white helmets working under spotlights with picks and shovels late yesterday to dig people out of the rubble.

Much of the building, identified by a black placard outside as a mosque, had been flattened.

The empty prayer hall was covered in debris, and rescue workers stepped through it carefully, discussing how to break down a wall to search for more survivors.

Fearing additional air strikes, weekly Friday Muslim prayers were cancelled in towns and villages across northern Syria, AFP's correspondent said.

Rescuers had earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning come from the rubble.

"More than 100 people were wounded," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said yesterday, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres west of Aleppo.

The village is held by Islamist groups, but the Observatory said no jihadist factions are present.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after prayers at a time when there are usually religious lessons for men in it.

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

The strike was condemned by Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, which said targeting mosques was a war crime under international law.

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Liberty Counsel Condemns the Inhuman Treatment of Unborn Children

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit



ATLANTA, Ga., March 16, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief in the case of West Alabama Women's Center v. Miller defending the Alabama law that prohibits dismemberment abortions of live unborn babies, known as Dilation and Extraction (D&E), based on the medical evidence of their ability to feel intense pain.

Liberty Counsel's brief lists ample evidence that unborn babies feel pain. "[I]t is entirely uncontested that a fetus experiences pain in some capacity, from as early as 8 weeks of development." testified Dr. Maureen Condic before U.S. legislators. Early on in fetal development pain transmitters in the spinal cord are abundant, but pain inhibitors are sparse until later, according to Dr. Colleen Malloy. This medical information shows that premature infants have greater pain sensitivity than do full-term infants. Another demonstration of this is how premature babies actually require greater concentrations of medication to maintain effective anesthesia during surgery than full-term babies, as explained in the book Neonatal Pain.

If the vilest criminal has human dignity that protects him from an inhuman, painful punishment, then how much more should our laws protect an innocent unborn child that science proves is inherently human and experiences significant pain? Dr. Condic states "[I]gnoring the pain experienced by another human individual for any reason is barbaric."

Doctors performing the D&E abortions are acutely affected by the child's humanity and experience deep emotions and even nightmares. One deeply pro-choice abortionist was brought to tears when her own unborn child kicked at the exact same time that she severed another's foot in a D&E abortion. "Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes" said Dr. Lisa Harris. "It was an overwhelming feeling  a brutally visceral response  heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics."

"We give our pets greater legal protections than we provide to the future citizens of America who have proven their humanity and their sensitivity to pain," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "Alabama's law is a common sense solution to a barbaric and gruesome procedure," said Staver.

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 United States has reiterated its condemnation of Russia's annexation of Crimea, vowing to maintain related sanctions until Moscow returns the strategic Black Sea peninsula to Ukraine.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. The United States again condemns the Russian occupation of Crimea and calls for its immediate end," said acting US State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a statement yesterday marking the three-year anniversary of Moscow's takeover of Crimea.

"Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."



Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula following a military intervention and a hastily organised referendum, which was rejected by the international community.

"The United States does not recognise Russia's 'referendum' of March 16, 2014, nor its attempted annexation of Crimea and continued violation of international law," said Toner.

"We once again reaffirm our commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."



In the statement the US also called on Russia to "cease its attempts to suppress freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and religion" among Crimean Tatars, ethnic Ukrainians, pro-Ukrainian activists and journalists.

Russia's move to annex Crimea shattered ties between the two ex-Soviet neighbours and sent relations between Moscow and the West plummeting to their lowest point since the Cold War.

The US and the European Union reacted to the annexation of Crimea by imposing economic sanctions on Russia and Putin's inner circle.

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An American man has been charged with hate crime for assaulting an Indian-origin man and hurling racial slurs, mistaking him for a Muslim.

Jeffrey Allen Burgess, 54, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, has been accused of intentionally harming a man named Ankur Mehta on November 22 because of his "perceived race, colour and national origin".

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted Burgess of a hate crime charge in connection with the alleged assault at a Red Robin restaurant in South Hills Village, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and acting US Attorney Soo C Song for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced the indictment.

At the time of the incident, police said, Burgess was sitting next to Mehta inside the Red Robin restaurant when he began insulting him and then repeatedly elbowed him in the head.

"I don't want you sitting next to me...You people," Burgess was quoted as saying by witnesses in addition to his anti-Muslim racial slurs, according to a criminal complaint filed by Bethel Park police.

Witnesses told police Burgess struck Mehta four or five times and called him a "(expletive) Muslim," according to the complaint.

Mehta was treated at St. Clair Hospital for a laceration to the upper lip and a loose tooth. Mehta is of Indian descent, police said.

In addition to the slurs, Burgess told Mehta "things are different now," police said, which authorities believe was a reference to the election of Donald Trump.

If convicted Burgess faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years of prison, a fine of USD 250,000 or both.

Burgess also faces state charges of ethnic intimidation, public drunkenness and simple assault stemming from the same incident.

The indictment of Burgess comes amid a series of suspected hate crime cases targeting Indian-Americans.

On February 22, Indian nationals Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani were shot at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, by a man shouting "get out of my country". Kuchibhotla, 32, later died at a hospital.

On March 3, a Sikh American was shot and injured in Kent, Washington, by a gunman who reportedly told him to "go back to your own country.

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The United States' "strategic patience" with nuclear-armed North Korea is over, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Seoul today after visiting the Demilitarised Zone.

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson said at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table.

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The US has topped the list of foreign countries with which India has signed contracts for procurement of weapons and military platforms in the last two years, followed by Israel and Britain.

In reflection of rapid transformation in India's arms procurement, Russia was in the fourth place in terms of number of contracts signed during the period.

Replying to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said a maximum of nine contracts were signed with American companies while seven pacts were signed with Israeli firms, five with Britain and four with Russian defence majors.

The number of contracts signed with Germany and Sweden were three each followed by France with two.

The minister said 94 contracts involving Rs 82,979 crore have been signed with Indian vendors for capital procurement of defence equipment in the last three financial years.

He said the Defence Production Policy promulgated by the government aimed at achieving substantive self-reliance in the design, development and production of weapon systems and platforms.

Bhamre said in order to promote indigenous design and development of defence equipment, a new category of procurement 'Buy (Indian-Indigenously designed, developed and manufactured)' has been introduced in DPP and the same has been accorded top most priority for procurement of capital equipment.

"The 'Make' Procedure has been simplified with provisions for funding of 90 per cent of development cost by the government to Indian industry for design, develop and manufacture of defence equipment," he said.

He said industrial licensing regime for Indian manufacturers has been liberalised and most of the components, parts and sub-systems have been taken out from the list of defence products requiring industrial licence.

"This has reduced entry barriers for new entrants in this sector, particularly SMEs. The initial validity of Industrial Licence has been increased from 3 years to 15 years with a provision to further extend it by 3 years on a case to case basis," he said.

Issues related to level-playing field between Indian and foreign manufacturers, and between public sector and private sector have also been addressed.

"These include Exchange Rate Variation (ERV) protection for all Indian vendors, removing anomalies in customs/ excise duty etc," Bhamre said.

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Elena Vesnina denied Venus Williams another great escape, beating the seven-time Grand Slam champion 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 to reach the semi-finals at Indian Wells.

As Williams shook off a lethargic start and began to apply some pressure, Vesnina kept her poise, finishing off the contest on her fourth match point after fending off six break points in the final game.

She'll play Kristina Mladenovic for a place in the final after the French player's 3-6, 7-6 (7/4), 6-2 victory over former world number one Caroline Wozniacki.

"When I was up three-love in the first set she was missing some easy shots," Vesnina said of Williams. "She looked tired and slow on the court. Then, all of a sudden, she started moving around, hitting great shots, winners from all over the place.

"I kind of lost my rhythm, because I didn't know what to expect."



When Williams leveled the match at a set apiece, Vesnina couldn't help recalling that the American had saved three match points in her second-round victory over Jelena Jankovic.

"I was like, 'Uh-Oh, it's coming back again. I'm going to be another victim of Venus," she said.

Williams, who ended a 15-year boycott of the event last year but lost her opening match, was in pursuit of a first Indian Wells title.

The 36-year-old star did indeed save three match points against her own serve in the eighth game of the third set -- a game that went to deuce six times before Williams held with a blistering forehand winner.

She appeared poised to pull back a service break when she raced to a 0-40 lead on Vesnina's serve in the next game, but Vesnina dug in. A lucky net cord bounce and two backhand errors from Williams got it to deuce, but she would have three more break chances before an ecstatic Vesnina sealed it with a forehand winner.

"I was actually very proud of myself, how I held my nerve," Vesnina said. "I was 0-40 down, but I didn't even think about that it's 0-40. It was point by point, trying to create a good rally, trying to move her around.

"I stuck to this game -- I was really fighting like it's the last game of my life."



Vesnina, a Wimbledon semi-finalist last year, reached the semi-finals of an elite Premier Mandatory level tournament for the first time, as did the in-form Mladenovic -- whose season so far has included a first career title in St. Petersburg and a runner-up finish in Acapulco this month.

- Mladenovic mixes it up -



==========================



It took Mladenovic some time to find her way into the match against 2011 Indian Wells champion Wozniacki.

She was unable to convert nine break points in the opening set as Wozniacki powered to a 5-1 lead, finally breaking the Dane for 5-2.

Although Wozniacki duly pocketed the first set, Mladenovic had found her range and it was a see-saw battle featuring six breaks of serve as they played to the second-set tiebreaker.

"I went for my game," Mladenovic said. "I went for some variation. I think I played differently at some points, trying to use more the court to make her run, as well, because she was doing that pretty well to me.

"Something new I put today was the serve and volley on such important points. I impressed myself with that!



"It paid off, and it gave me a chance to fight a third set. I think the third set was the best of today from me.

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West Bengal's top cop today delivered the bailable warrant issued by the Supreme Court to a sitting Calcutta High Court judge Justice C S Karnan in a contempt case to ensure his appearance before it on March 31.

The warrant, which was served by Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purakayastha at the residence of Justice Karnan, was, however, "rejected" by the judge.

The warrant was issued by the apex court on March 10 in in an order unprecedented in the annals of India's judiciary,



The DGP visited the residence of Justice Karnan in New Town area here along with Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar and DIG (CID) Rajesh Kumar and handed over the warrant to him.

"The DGP handed over the bailable warrant to Justice Karnan at his New Town residence this morning," a senior official of the state police force said.

A large police team was posted outside Karnan's residence when the three senior police officials visited the place.

In a letter to the seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar that initiated a suo motu contempt proceeding and issued a bailable warrant against him, Justice Karnan said he rejected the warrant.

"My Lords, your bailable Order dated March 10, 2017 in the suo motu contempt proceedings, today top police officers from the Calcutta High Court Circle came to my residence in order to execute the bailable warrant earmarked for 10.30 am on March 31, 2017".

"I rejected the same after assigning valid reasons," Justice Karnan said in the letter.

Justice Karnan, meanwhile, sought a compensation of Rs 14 crore from the seven judges of Supreme Court for having stopped his judicial and administrative work.

In a letter addressed to the seven judges, who constitute the seven-judge Constitution bench that initiated the suo motu contempt proceedings against him, Justice Karnan requested them to cancel the bench, claiming that it was "unconstitutional".

"I request you to cancel the unconstitutional bench and restore my normal work," Justice Karnan wrote.

"The Hon'ble seven Judges have prevented me in carrying out my judicial and administrative work from March 8, 2017 until now," Karnan said in yesterday's letter to the judges.

"Therefore I am calling up on all seven Judges to pay compensation, a sum of Rs 14 crores as compensation since you have disturbed my mind and my normal life, besides you have insulted me in the general public consisting of a population of 120 crores in India...," Justice Karnan said in the letter.

"Now all seven Judges shall pay a part of the compensation within a period of seven days from the date of receipt of this order," he said.

On the day when the apex court issued the bailable warrant, Justice Karnan hit back, saying they have "no locus standi" to issue a bailable warrant against a sitting judge and alleged that he was being targeted for being a dalit.

Justice Karnan also issued an 'order' of registration of a case under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 against the judges constituting the seven-judge bench.

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The Bombay High Court today asked the Maharashtra government if it had built legally the temporary cabins at the Mumbai Badhwar park to use them as office for the proposed Shivaji Memorial statue in the Arabian Sea.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice G S Kulkarni asked this from the government while hearing a plea by an NGO, the 'Friends of Society,' accusing the government of having built the cabins illegally in an area within Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ).

The petition, filed last year, said around 1,000 square meter area where the cabins have been set up, was used by the local fishermen to park their boats during monsoon.

The court asked the government to file an affidavit within two weeks explaining if the permission from the concerned authority, the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) was required for building those cabin and if yes, was it taken.

"If the permission is required but not taken, you (government) will have to demolish the structures," the court said.

According to the petition, the cabins are being used by officials for the state government's ambitious project to construct a 192-meter high statue of Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the Arabian Sea.

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After the Nagpur University postponed a seminar where the CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was to be the chief guest, the communist leader will now deliver a lecture at the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar College here tomorrow.

The Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University had on March 15 indefinitely postponed the seminar on 'Erosion of Indian Democracy: Challenges and Solutions' on March 18 and 19 that was organised by the 'Post-graduate Department of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Thought' of the varsity.

A delegation of social activists led by former Congress minister Nitin Raut had met with vice chancellor (VC) on this issue.

However, according to Raut, the VC refused permission to hold the programme on the scheduled date.

Meanwhile, today the department of Economics, Political Science and History ofDr Ambedkar College, Deekshabhoomi issued a release stating that Yechury will be delivering a lecture in their college on Saturday.

HoD of the Economics department Gautam Kamble told PTI "We have received consent of Sitaram Yechury for the programme. His lecture will contribute in enlightening the students of our department," Kamble said.

Raut said "After the refusal by the VC to hold the seminar at Department of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Thought, Nagpur University we were trying to somehow get his lecture conducted.

"Yechury is a very learned speaker. He is not an anti-national that his speech should be cancelled. There was no question of any protest from any right wing group or any other group."



The former minister said, "However, when our delegation met the VC yesterday, he seemed to be under immense pressure.

"It is not the culture of Nagpur tostop anyone and restrict anybody's freedom of speech.

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Former Volkswagen Chairman Ferdinand Piech is looking to sell shares worth around 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) in Porsche SE, which controls Europe's largest carmaker, German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Friday.

The Porsche and Piech families, which control a majority of VW common stock through family-owned holding company Porsche SE and which have a right of first refusal for Piech's 14.7 percent stake, are interested in keeping the shares in the family, the magazine said, without saying where it got the information.

Porsche SE was not immediately available for comment.

($1 = 0.9301 euros)

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer)

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, remembers the hushed tones that accompanied her first period.

In a recent interview in New York, she leaned in to mimic her mothers voice. What are you doing with your menstrual pads? she whispers. My mother taught me to go burn them in the backyard when nobodys looking.

Adichie never fully understood the shame that was supposed to usher in womanhood, which made her hide her pads and made her friends apologise to boyfriends for having periods at all. Im not going to have my daughter have that kind of shame, she said.

Adichies latest book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, is a 63-page blueprint for achieving that reality. Written as a letter to a friend, the book offers a set of guidelines for how to raise a feminist daughter. Teach her to love books; never speak of marriage as an achievement; because you are a girl is never a reason for anything. The premise of feminism, Adichie writes, is simply: I matter. I matter equally. The Washington Post wrote that much of the book would be familiar to readers of Adichies previous work but that it was more personal, more urgent.

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Publisher: Knopf Pages: 80 Price: $15

In person, Adichie, 39, is warm and thoughtful, and also distinctly glamorous. She has spoken often about the pleasure she takes in fashion, and she is the face of Boots No7, a makeup brand. Adichie has cultivated these two strands of her identity: the serious literary author and the fashion icon. In turn, she has been celebrated both by mainstream pop culture and the literati. She won a MacArthur fellowship in 2008, and her novel Americanah won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Her 2012 TEDx talk, We Should All Be Feminists, was sampled by Beyonce in her music, and excerpts appeared on T-shirts at Diors Paris Fashion Week show last year. The pop and the literary threads are not opposites to her, and their merger is central to the way she presents her public self and her work.

I think its very important that brilliant women step up and be hot babes, Adichie joked in a conversation with the author Zadie Smith in 2014.

So in the past few years, she has become something of a star, flourishing at the unlikely juncture of fiction writing and celebrity.

Her position was on full display during her visit to New York, where she started her book tour last week. She took the stage in front of a sold-out crowd at Cooper Union, and there was this kind of unanimous scream, said Robin Desser, a Knopf editor who has worked with Adichie for 12 years.

I really have never seen anything like this, Desser said. And Ive published people who are really popular.

The main proposition of Dear Ijeawele is that is a project that necessarily binds mothers and daughters, and that raising a daughter feminist has as much to do with what you tell yourself as what you tell her. Adichies first of 15 suggestions places a mothers freedom and growth at the centre of a daughters feminist education. Be a full person, Adichie writes. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood.

The book grew partly out of the desire of Adichies friend, called Ijeawele in the text, to teach her daughter to take less of the nonsense that past generations faced. Adichie wrote her friend a letter in 2015 and published it on Facebook last year.

She said she still wasnt thinking of it as a book but simply wanted to start a conversation. The responses she received made her even more sure that it was an important piece to write.

Even friends of mine  people I love  wrote, why yes, we kind of agree, but why call it feminist? Its just common sense. And Im like no, its feminist, Adichie said. Or, oh its just humanism. Or someone said, these are just democratic ideals. And I thought, what? Its everything but to acknowledge the fact that gender is a problem.

Adichie wrote the letter before she was a parent, but now she has a 17-month-old daughter whom she is trying to raise as a feminist. She and her husband split their time between Nigeria, where she grew up, and the United States.

Adichie often comments on how race and gender play out in the United States, but her book does not tackle some of the meatier questions that have occupied the American feminist movement in recent years, most notably the role of transgender people.

On this book tour, after we spoke, Adichie made controversial comments suggesting that transgender women experience male privilege before they transition. For activists who have been grappling with these questions for years, the comments came across as ill-informed. Asked about them, Adichie suggested through a spokesman that people go to her Facebook page, where she has posted several responses, acknowledging that her comments upset many people, and I consider their concerns to be valid.

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With a population of 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil but with an economy the size of Qatarswhich has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnorethe new government of Indias most-populous state faces a myriad of problems.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is comparable to Kenyas, and its infant mortality rate rivals Mauritania, a poverty-ridden, west-African nation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented victory in UP in the 2017 assembly election, winning 312 out of 403 seats77.4% of all assembly seatsbut with some of Indias worst development indicators, there is much to do.

We analysed six major challenges and the corresponding promises made by the BJP to fix them in its election manifesto, called the Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra-2017 . analysed TO READ THE FULL STORY, SUBSCRIBE NOW NOW AT JUST RS 249 A MONTH.

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Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has been elevated to the post of Senior Vice President, Amazon.

The company confirmed the development in an emailed statement.

"This indicates how excited Amazon is about the progress the company is making in India and the opportunity Amazon sees ahead," it added.

The promotion comes within a year of Agarwal's inclusion in a senior leadership team that reports directly to Amazon CEO and President Jeff Bezos.

Agarwal will continue to head the India operations.

Amazon, which has committed investments to the tune of USD 5 billion, remains one of the fastest growing for the US-based e-tailer.

The company faces intense competition in India from local player, Flipkart. The competition is further heating up as Chinese e-tailer Alibaba gears up for a stronger play in India through Paytm.
The digital video start-up The Viral Fever (TVF) has said in a statement that it has not been able to find any record of the person who wrote the blog blaming founder Arunabh Kumar of sexual harassment. "It is a fact that we have found no records of any such person on our pay roll in that given time period, as described in the blog," the company says.

Last week, a blog had surfaced on Medium.com -- titled 'The Indian Uber - That is TVF' -- wherein a person claiming to be a former employee, with user name Indian Fowler, had blamed Kumar of sexual harassment. After the blog, many other women came out on social media and reported sexual harassment by Kumar. In an earlier statement, TVF had refuted the claim and said that all the allegations made against TVF and its team in the article are categorically false, baseless and unverified. The statement was widely criticised on Internet.

The latest statement by the start-up says that its initial response was a knee-jerk reaction. "Yes, there have been allegations of misbehaviour against our founder, from several women. When the first blog appeared on March 12, it shocked all of us including our extended set of associates. The allegations were severe. We were confused and taken aback. The blog alleged that he/she was an employee with the organization and even indicated specific content production they were a part of. We immediately began checking the facts internally. We did send out an instant response, which may have been a bit too quick and emotional. We recognise that we should have handled that response better. However, it is a fact that we have found no records of any such person on our pay roll, in that given time period, as described in the blog."

TVF also said that it is investigating other allegations and has informed that it has in place an Internal Complaints Committee in each location to look into sexual harassment complaints by employees.TVF has about 240 employees and has offices in Delhi and Mumbai. "Even as we were dealing with the first episode, several other allegations surfaced soon thereafter. Please know that we are sincerely looking into each one of them. We are committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations," the statement said.

Last evening, TVF had informed that it has re-scheduled the release of its next series Bisht, Please! and also cancelled the ground event, which was to be held on Friday in New Delhi, to showcase the first few episodes of the series to media. TVF is known for introducing mini-series such as Pitchers, Rowdies and Permanent Roommates on YouTube.

Meanwhile, a Mumbai-based lawyer Rizwan Siddiqui has filed a third party FIR against Arunabh Kumar as the women who have alleged harassment have not made any formal complaints. "In these kind of cases not a lot of women want to come forward and take any kind of action because they are so scared and worried about their name and reputation... So I also came forward," says Siddiqui.




After the results of polls held in five states came out, some parties alleged that the electronic voting machines had been tampered and demanded to reintroduce the paper ballot system.

After BSP leader Mayawati alleged BJP of manipulating EVMs, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also claimed that AAP's vote share in Punjab had been transferred to rival parties through tampered EVMs.

"20-25 per cent of AAP's vote was transferred to SAD, which is why Congress won the election. Akali's victory would've made it too obvious. They wanted AAP to lose in any which way," the Delhi chief minister alleged.

However, now the former Election Commission chiefs have come together to defend the EVM system. Stressing that EVMs have proved their worth for the last 19 years, they urged the losing parties not to pass their "unhappiness of the loss" on to the machines.

Former Chief Election Commissioners M S Gill, V S Sampath and H S Brahma told PTI that the machines are "reliable and tamper-proof" and political parties should not question their reliability if they lose elections.

The Election Commission had yesterday, in a strongly worded statement, rejected as "baseless and wild" the charge the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with.

Gill, who had pushed for the use of electronic voting machines in November, 1998, said "People have faith in EVMs. Unfortunately, some political parties are destroying this faith... losing parties should not pass the unhappiness of the loss on to the EVMs."

He said these machines have lived up to the expectations of the country's democratic system for the last 19 years.

Election Commission of India is a constitutional body which has been applauded by the United Nations in election management, particularly for supporting elections and democratic process in other countries.

Election Commission of India has trained personnel and lent its expertise in improve electoral systems of several countries. It has helped conduct free and fair elections in countries such as Nepal, Kenya, Jordan, etc.

In 2011, on a request made by the Pakistani Election Commission, Election Commission of India had agreed to send a technical team to Pakistan to demonstrate the Indian Electronic Voting machine

In 2014, the Namibian government purchased 3,400 India-made electronic voting machines (EVMs) which have already been used by other countries in Asia to conduct smooth and fair polls.

In 2011, on the request of the Nepalese Commission, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had gifted about 700 EVM to Nepal for use in some constituencies.

Kejriwal's unfounded claims that EVMs were tampered seem bogus as the voting machines are checked by party representatives while sealing and unsealing, before and after polling, before and after counting.

In an interview to The Hindu, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi said, " all political parties have raised doubts over the EVMs at one time or another but kept quiet when they won instead of eating their words. It's the voter who needs to be conveyed the facts," he said.
Several food and drink multinationals and trade groups met in recent weeks to discuss how to lobby more effectively against Indian proposals for higher taxes and stricter labelling rules on fatty or sugary foods, sources familiar with the talks said.

According to officials, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration has begun to look closely at policy proposals under discussion since at least 2015, raising concerns over the possible impact on the $57 billion sector.

Alarmed by rising rates of obesity and diabetes, India plans to frame draft rules within a month requiring manufacturers to display the fat, sugar and salt content of products on packaging.

It is also considering a nationwide "fat tax" for so-called "junk foods", a senior government official said, although that is unlikely to be rolled out in the near term.

Last month, executives from companies including PepsiCo, Nestle and Indian consumer firm ITC met trade groups in New Delhi to coordinate efforts and urge the government to resist pressure from health advocates, according to an industry source aware of the meeting.

The attendees, who felt their efforts to push back had been too piecemeal, talked about forming a core group to unify their message when engaging the government, the source said.

PepsiCo and Nestle in India did not comment directly on the meeting or its outcome. ITC did not respond to requests for comment.

Trade group All India Food Processors' Association (AIFPA), whose members range from street vendors to global conglomerates, said two industry-wide meetings were held in February.

Its members, who also discussed ways to offer more nutritious products, plan to send a joint representation to the government and approach health and food officials to express concerns about stringent regulations.



PROMISING GROWTH

The stakes are high for companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestle and McDonald's, which have collectively committed billions of dollars to expand in the world's fastest growing major economy.

India's carbonated drinks sector is estimated to grow an average 3.7 percent annually between 2017 and 2021, while the packaged food sector will grow by 8 percent a year during the same period, Euromonitor International estimates.

Government pressure comes in various forms.

Modi recently told PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi that her company needed to focus more on public health, an aide to the prime minister said.

Separately, the prime minister's office asked PepsiCo to outline how it would reduce sugar in beverages sold in India, the aide added.

PepsiCo did not comment on those remarks by Modi and his office. It referred Reuters to its October 2016 global commitment "to transform its portfolio and offer healthier options". Modi's office did not respond to an email seeking comment.

A Coca-Cola India representative referred questions on proposed regulatory changes to the Indian Beverage Association, which said their impact was "under evaluation".

Nestle corporate affairs executive Sanjay Khajuria said the company was "working to improve the nutrient profile" of their products.

"These are complex public health issues which require (a) holistic multi-stakeholder approach and we are committed to work with authorities," Khajuria said in an email.

The CEO of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Pawan Kumar Agarwal, welcomed industry concerns about tougher rules.

"It is a good thing if it helps in providing healthier options," he told Reuters in an interview.

PLANNED REGULATIONS

The number of obese men and women in India rose to about 30 million by 2014 from 1.2 million in 1975, according to a study by British medical journal The Lancet, although the comparative figure for China was around 90 million.

Concerns about the health effects of fast food and soda drinks have been growing globally in recent years.

Mexico imposed higher taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, for example, while South Korea placed television advertising restrictions on specific food items.

But India has been slow to finalise rules on products high in fat, sugar and salt, whose consumption health advocates say urgently needs to be checked to safeguard public health.

Agarwal denied industry pressure was affecting the implementation of tighter regulations, adding that India was nudging companies to make healthier products while working on new rules.

The FSSAI is considering advertising norms to check on health claims made by companies and is working on educating consumers about the health effects of foods containing high levels of sugar or fat.

One government official said the regulator was deliberating whether disclosures about the nutritional value of food should be placed on the front of packages.

Another labelling proposal under review was a "traffic light" system, where red, yellow and green colours depict nutritional value, similar to one used in the United Kingdom. "Traffic light is making (reading labels) simple," Agarwal said. "Red people associate with danger, green is okay".

But trade body AIFPA said such labelling was of no use.

"Most Indian foods will be red. So what purpose does it serve?" said the group's president, Subodh Jindal.

Potentially more significant for major brands would be a nationwide "fat tax", which authorities are discussing and was last year announced by the southern state of Kerala.

There, branded restaurants like McDonald's and Domino's Pizza face a 14.5 percent tax, higher than that applied to smaller, indigenous outlets serving the same fare or Indian cuisine often high in sugar and fat.

"It makes the larger players nervous," said an industry executive, calling the discourse on "junk food" in India discriminatory and unscientific.

McDonald's India did not comment on the government's discussions on a nationwide "fat tax". Domino's India said its spokesman was not available.
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The US will start accepting applications for H-1B work visas for the fiscal 2018 from April 3 amid the uncertainties surrounding the visa programme, the most sought after by Indian IT firms and professionals.

Unlike previous years, the official announcement by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) did not say till when it would continue accepting the H-1B petitions.

The department normally has been accepting the application for the first five business days.
BJP President Amit Shah on Friday said that the next BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will close all slaughter houses in the state. While speaking to India Today, Shah said that he had promised to shut down all the slaughter houses running in the state ahead of the Assembly elections.



"The next government will shut down all the slaughter houses in UP," Amit Shah assured.

"Uttar Pradesh will soon be on the map of developed states of the country. We will wipe the BIMARU tag from the state," Shah added.

On asked whether he thinks that the demonetisation will curb all forms of corruption and bribes, Shah said that note ban was a multi-dimensional step. "It was just one step in a massive effort to curb black money, corruption," the BJP President said.



Speaking on big reforms undertaken by the Modi government, the BJP President said that the government has reduced the political donation limit from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 in cash.



"We are moving towards 100 per cent digital donation to the political parties. There won't be any cash donation in few years from now," Shah said.

He further said, "Reform is a small word, we aim at transformation. We took some hard steps with regard to donations to political parties. Change will come gradually, we have started the process."

Amit Shah also talked about the electoral reforms, he said: "We want electoral reforms. We want all elections panchayat, Assembly, Lok Sabha to be held on the same day to save people's money."



"There has not been a single case of corruption reported against our government. Surgical strikes improved India's international image. Reforms for poor, farmers have been taken up on war scale. This government wants overall development be it in agriculture or infrastructure," he further said.



Describing the party's politics as development-based politics, BJP President said,"People have rejected dynasty politics, caste-based politics. They have given their mandate for development-based politics."



Speaking on Rahul Gandhi, he said: "I will never take up a job to advise Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi."










Union Minister For Law, Justice And IT Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that Indian companies don't steal jobs, they create jobs in the US. Prasad was speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai.

Answering a question on the restrictions being imposed by Trump administration which is likely to impact the Indian IT sector, the minister said that the Indian IT initiative is an asset for the American economy. He further said that the Indian IT companies have given nearly 20 billion dollars as tax in US in the last 5 years and have created as many as 400,000 jobs for the people there.

Prasad reminded the audience that Indian IT companies were present in over 200 cities of over 80 countries including the USA. Prasad also noted that the sector has given value addition to nearly 75 per cent of the 500 fortune companies.

The IT Minister's statements come in the backdrop of the US government's push for limiting the H1-B visa professionals in the country. Last year in November, then Republican presidential nominee (now US president) Donald Trump had claimed that the Americans were living through the "greatest jobs theft" in the history of the world, saying US companies were moving out jobs to countries like India, China, Mexico and Singapore.

The minister also spoke on India's digital master plan, saying that digital India is going to become a 1 trillion dollar economy in the future.

"We missed the industrial revolution, we missed the entrepreneurial revolution. We do not want to miss the digital revolution. We want to become leaders in that," said the minister.

Here the highlights of the Ravi Shankar Prasad's speech:

The Digital India campaign started back in 2014 when the Prime Minister said "IT+IT=IT" which is "India Talent+ Information Technology=India Tomorrow"

We have added mobile phones in India equal to the population in France and Italy. We are creating a digital ecosystem.

1 lakh 79 kilometres of optical fibres have been laid in India in the past two and a half years.
Speaking at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai on Friday, the chairman and managing director of Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra praised the central government for 'taking risks'.

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk and this government is taking risk whether it is demonetisation, Skill India, Make in India or other projects," Mahindra said.

India has possibly now become the best manufacturing hub and this is the proof that 'Make in India' is a success, Anand Mahindra said.

"Why would we not want Make In India. The objective is laudable. Is it working? Yes, it is beginning to work," he added.

Commenting on the current state of jobs in the economy, Mahindra said that if the private investment is lagging, the public investment has to step up.

Batting for a 'Shenzen model', Mahindra said our country needs SEZs on both sides if it wants manufacturers to invest in the country.

Answering a question on whether he would invest in states like Bihar, Mahindra said, there is no rocket science in understanding why investors go where they go, "At the end we want a leadership who delivers, then I am very comfortable in investing in a state like Bihar as well."
Judge Jefrey R. Burbank gives the Oath of Office to Kirk Morgan in front of the other judges of the 1st District Court.

BRIGHAM CITY  Kirk Morgan expressed gratitude to his family and friends as he was officially sworn in as the newest juvenile judge for the 1st District Court, Thursday afternoon.

Morgan, who was appointed in February by Governor Gary Herbert, was given the Oath of Office by Judge Jeffrey R. Burbank, who retired this month. During his remarks afterwards, Morgan said he couldnt think of a greater honor than being sworn in by the judge he was being asked to replace.

I have always looked up to Judge Burbank, expressed Morgan. I have admired his career and his presence on the bench. I will not try to fill his great shoes, but I will try to glean from his wisdom, his professionalism and his knowledge. He has truly been a great example to follow and I thank him.

Morgan had been working as a city attorney for Brigham City. He also served in the Box Elder County Attorneys Office as chief deputy county attorney and juvenile court prosecutor.

During Thursdays ceremony, Morgan tearfully concluded that he understands the weight of being a judge and the affects his decisions will have.

I have seen the changes in youth, who have finally figured things out in their life and corrected their behavior. I watched as a mother overcame her addictions and the joy that was on her face, when the children came back to live with her.

I know that is why we are all working in this profession. That is our one unified goal, and I pledge to you that I will work to the best of my abilities to serve, preserve and protect the most precious things in our lives, our children and our families.

Morgan will primarily serve in Box Elder County but will also assist Judge Angela Fonnesbeck in covering the other counties of the 1st District, Cache and Rich.

Presiding Judge Thomas Willmore conducted Thursdays ceremony and told Judge Morgan, he will have a great influence in the community but it wont be easy.

This is a lonely job and its a hard job, said Judge Willmore. We are seeing people at their worst and those hard decisions are being made, but Kirk you dont need to bare it alone.

When I think about our fine judges and our commissioner here, there is over 100-years of experience here. It shows in some of our hair more than others, but well over a hundred-years of experience.

Morgan graduated from Utah State University before receiving his J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. Previously he served as a special assistant to the United States attorney in the District of Hawaii and as a judge advocate general in the United States Air Force.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
FILE PHOTO

This is the year for municipal elections in Logan City as well as other communities throughout Northern Utah. Logan Mayor Craig Petersens first four-year term will be ending on January 7, 2018.

On <a href=http://610kvnu.com/assets/podcaster/324/2017_03_16_324_55504_2867.mp3 target=_blank>KVNUs For the People program Wednesday</a>, Petersen was asked if he plans to run for a second term. Petersen said he has greatly enjoyed the job but is not ready yet to make an announcement.

In addition to the mayor, the four-year terms of two city council members  Holly Daines and Gene Needham  also end this year. To help encourage people to run for office a special event is coming up.

One of the things that were going to do, at the initiation of Holly Daines, our council chairman, is on the 18th of April were going to hold an open house before council meeting, Petersen explained. We will have our staff there and it will be an information session for anybody who is considering running for office and would like to know how you go about running, what you do in a particular position, and so forth. The public is invited to come to that open house.

He said the filing period is from June 1-7 in the office of the Logan City Recorder Teresa Harris. One person, Kyle Barney, has already publicly stated that <a href=http://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/local/article_8dfe5e2e-0053-11e7-b45b-27da06ed2c5f.html target=_blank>he intends to run for Mayor of Logan</a>.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that $2.5 million in Clean Air Act Targeted Airshed grant funds will be awarded to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to help improve air quality in southeastern Idahos Cache Valley.

The funds will be used to reduce air pollution caused by wood stoves, road dust and motor vehicles in the valley.

Idahos strong partnership working with the community and local businesses to reduce air pollution and improve public health are commendable, said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in a press release on Monday. Were pleased that Targeted Airshed grant funds will be available to help support the communitys ability to take action on air quality issues and develop meaningful local solutions.

The Idaho side of the Cache Valley has been working diligently to reduce our particulate matter contribution to the airshed, said Melissa Gibbs, DEQ Air Quality Manager. We are excited to have received this grant funding to further our progress, protect public health, and benefit the citizens of both Idaho and Utah.

Cache County, including Logan City, has also been recommended by the EPA to receive similar funds to help improve air quality.

The Cache Valley airshed includes Preston, parts of Franklin County, Idaho, as well as Logan and parts of Cache County. In 2009, the EPA designated Cache Valley as nonattainment for particulate matter levels that were above the National Ambient Air Quality Standard. Cache Valley is affected by fine particle air pollution, especially during wintertime inversions that trap pollution in the valley.

According to the EPA, the grant funds will support projects to reduce fine particle air pollution, including: changing out older, less efficient woodstoves to reduce smoke emissions; providing free home weatherization and energy audits; increasing community outreach and education with a new smart phone air quality app; improving winter road salt and sanding operations to reduce road dust; retrofitting gas station storage tanks with air pollution controls; and, sustaining commuter bus service between Preston and Logan.

Using cleaner sources of home heating, especially during winter weather inversions, can greatly reduce fine particle emissions. For those who must burn wood, using dry wood in professionally installed EPA-certified woodstoves, and using proper techniques to burn wood hotter, both reduces fine particle pollution and the amount of wood burned. Woodstove change-out programs can help cut fine particle emissions by reducing the numbers of high polluting solid fuel-fired heating devices in an area.
Ayah Paul W. MUSA

Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine, Advocate General at the Supreme Court and National President of People Action Party, PAP has told President at Mfoundi High Court that he was illegally arrested and detained in violation of the law of Cameroon.

He made the statements Thursday March 16, 2017 in Yaounde in front of Joseph Marie Nkeh President at the Mfoundi High Court while in a closed door court session in what was his first appearance before a Judge since his arrest last January.

Ayah Paul Abine began with the first illegality by quoting Section 119 (4) of the Penal Code which forbids the arrest of persons on the weekend. AYAH, it should be noted, was bundled out of his Tam-Tam residence by heavily armed men on Saturday January 21, 2017.

Secondly, the Lord Justice cited Section 629 of the Criminal Procedure Code that clearly spells out the judicial procedures for a judge of his caliber to be arrested; prominent amongst which is the fact that three judges equal to or superior in rank to Justice AYAH were competent enough to form a panel to ONLY interrogate and not effect an arrest.

More so, for such a panel to be constituted, the order had to come through the Head of his department, in this case, the Attorney General of the Supreme Court. All of these procedures were flouted.

The President of the PAP appeared in close session earlier at 11:00 AM before the Mfoundi High Court in the absence of the Commissioner who had to represent the state of Cameroon.

Regular Judicial proceedings warrant that AYAH's lawyers should have been served with all documents pertaining to the case but that was not the case. It was at the court that the lawyers were told that Ayah Paul Abine was arrested and charged with terrorism, propagation of false information, rebellion to the embarrassment of his Lawyers who said they are only getting the charges at the moment.

Reports have it that Chief Justice AYAH's judicial 'homily' got the President of the Mfoundi High Court nodding in the affirmative all through.

It is also alleged that Justice Ayah Paul used the occasion to tell those present that he had strong feelings that Laurent Esso (Minister of Justice), Rene Emmanuel SADI (Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization), Jacque Fame NDONGO (Minister of Higher Education), Issa TCHIROMA BAKARY (Minister of Communication) in complicity with top notch Anglophones were behind the embarrassment of the state and massive arrests ongoing in the English speaking regions of the country.

Barrister Ndong Christopher has hinted that an appeal against the charges will be dropped in the office of the President of Mfoundi High Court following the irregularities in his arrest, they want his freedom soonest.

However the case has been adjourned to March 21, 2017.

By Wilson MUSA
Dr Arrey W. MUSA

The Anglophone crisis that has been playing out for four months in Cameroon will surely not be petering out anytime soon. What started like a lawyers demonstration has unfortunately spiraled out of control with the government scrambling for solutions, most of which are inefficient and do not seem to reflect what English-speaking Cameroonians have been asking for.

The countrys ruling party has always prided itself on its democratic credentials, though many analysts and the countrys opposition hold that such a claim is questionable. The

Anglophone crisis has clearly put those credentials to the test and the government appears to be struggling in that regard. Its violent reaction to Anglophone demonstrations and strikes speaks to its inability to use modern conflict prevention and management concepts to stabilize a country that is sliding down a dangerous slope.

Critics of the government argue that the government has the nasty habit of skirting around the issues and its creation of a bilingualism commission is more of a distraction than a solution.

The bilingualism commission is one of the measures the government had floated as a means to address some of the issues raised by Anglophones. Its creation did not generate any excitement among Cameroonians.

Members of the commission were appointed yesterday, March 15, 2017 by the countrys president and while it is too early to judge the commissions work, it is clear from the appointments that the government is not ready to walk away from its old ways.

The commission will be chaired by Peter Mafany Musonge, a former prime minister, who drew a lot of flak last month for his hate speech delivered in Buea, the south west regional capital, against North westerners. Mr. Musonge, himself an Anglophone, has strong faith in the system that his follow Anglophones are decrying.

The system is being criticized for being generous to a few to the detriment of the vast majority. Mr. Musonge could be an experienced politician, but critics hold that his knowledge of bilingualism and multiculturalism leaves much to be desired.

They claim he has benefited from the cronyism that is the governments hallmark. They point to the three key positions he holds in the country - senator, grand chancellor of national orders and chairperson of the newly minted bilingualism commission. With his busy schedule and age - 75 years - many critics argue that he may not be able to deliver on his mandate as the commission chairperson.

Many Cameroonians question the rationale behind giving one person three demanding jobs when there are thousands of effective and efficient Cameroonians begging to serve their country selflessly.

Though the commission will also have objective minds like David Abouem A Tchoyi, a seasoned administrator with exceptional mastery of English and French, many Anglophones hold that his presence on that commission is basically cosmetic as he is the only appointee who does not truly belong to the ruling party.

Many, especially among the Anglophone Diaspora, argue that such an important commission should have been the subject of wide consultations with opposition parties and the Diaspora that has become a formidable political and economic force in Cameroon.

They contend that the government is still ignoring Anglophones and their problems though there are four West Cameroonians on the twelve-member commission.

The Anglophone Diaspora that has been the force behind the current revolution clearly believes that it has a political and an economic role to play in that country. Its members contend that the government has to change its ways, if Cameroon has to make giant strides towards economic development and political stability.

Most Anglophones are for a federal system which they believe can foster stability and unity. But the government is still not buying into their rhetoric. It has been accusing them of fostering disunity and fomenting trouble.

The two camps are frozen in their positions and this has created a messy stalemate that is hurting the country and there is no end in sight.

The Anglophone problem is a true nightmare to this once-upon-a-time oasis of peace. It is a millstone around the neck of the government which is gradually collapsing under its weight. The ordinary Francophone is worried and many are scared that Anglophones might walk away from the union that was stitched together in 1961 between West and East Cameroon. Anglophones hold that the union has been predicated upon lies right from the beginning and that a review of the system is long overdue.

They argue that without an extensive review, the English-speaking minority will only be left with the option of quitting their French-speaking brothers. Walking away from that political marriage implies taking with them about 60% of the countrys wealth.

The Anglophone region is blessed with many resources, including oil, gas, diamond and timber. Its rich sub-soil has brought lots of economic benefits to the country. For almost 50 years, the Rio Del Rey estuary has been the source of more than 90% and at times 100% of all the countrys hydrocarbons, specifically oil.

In 2014, Cameroon exported US$5.88 billion worth of products, of which US$2.65 billion, about CFAF 1,650 billion, was from crude oil. This is a significant amount of money and no government can afford to stay on the sidelines and watch manna vanish into thin air.

The Cameroon governments indifference to the Anglophone crisis is giving secessionists a field day. Many of them are working hard to win hearts and minds among Anglophones moderates who, right from the beginning, stood for a federal system that will give the regions greater autonomy and authority over their lives.

But the delay to talk to Anglophone leaders, many of whom are in jail or exile, is compounding instead of helping matters. The radicals have taken their gospel of secession to the international community and there is a significant crowd that is listening to their gospel with rapt attention.

If secession were to happen, it would be a very costly mistake on the part of the government that is being accused around the world of being indifferent to the countrys declining political and economic climate.

Every nations economic progress and development depends on its political stability. Instability spells doom for a countrys prosperity and prolong periods of instability could be a death sentence on many investments and investors do not like uncertainty.

Allowing the Anglophone problem to fester is tantamount to committing economic and political suicide.

The stalemate is hanging over peoples heads like the Sword of Damocles. Every blessed day, Cameroonians believe that a silver lining might appear on this cloud that has been hanging over the nation for four good months. Anglophones have clear demands.

They have been victims of marginalization for over five decades. They want this to stop and if it has to stop, then the government cannot continue to deal with issues in a cavalierly manner.

They want a federal system that will guarantee their rights and protect their culture. While many of them could be bilingual, they still see French as the oppressors language and would like to reduce contact with a language that reminds them of their economic and political sorrows. Unfortunately, the government is not listening and the president has stated clearly that the structure of the state is not up for any discussion. All those who have openly called for that have felt the governments wrath. Anglophone leaders are currently languishing in jail just for dreaming of federalism.

Barrister Agbor Balla, Judge Paul Ayah and Dr. Fontem Neba are paying the price for calling for a more effective system of government. A system that has been tested and proven to be effective and reliable in countries such as Canada and the United States. The Canadian High Commissioner in Cameroon, Rene Cremonese, recently underscored the effectiveness of federalism, advising that the Cameroon government could borrow from the Canadian experience to end the ongoing Anglophone crisis in the country.

Speaking recently during a media exchange organized by Le Club des Journalistes Politiques du Cameroun in Yaounde, the Canadian diplomat said through frank political dialogue and debates, his country was able to address grievances raised by minority French-speaking Canadians many years ago.

He added that I think like I said, the most important thing is to be able to share the experiences we had in Canada and to see whether or not these experiences can be used by Cameroon to address the current situation.

The Anglophone problem has made its way to the international community. Many people around the world believe and strongly that federalism holds out a lot of hope for a country that is struggling to hold together a bunch of people that are culturally different. This problem needs to be addressed and the government holds the key. If Cameroonians have to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the government must engage Anglophone leaders in frank and sincere negotiations. Anglophones feel marginalized. They want to be Cameroonians, but they want their country to be federal so that they can run most of their own affairs.

The old political dispensation has fallen short of their glory. It has brought them untold hardship and pain. They are calling on the government to listen instead of dictating to them. After all, a true government is that which listens and provides the people with what they need.

True leaders dont impose, they dialogue and seek solutions. Cameroonian leaders therefore have to listen, if they dont, then the current situation will persist and the countrys future will surely be murky.

The conflict is already taking its toll on the countrys economy and unity. The way forward is simple. The government has to come down its ivory tower to dialogue so as to put an end to this messy situation.

By Joachim Arrey

About the Author: The author of this piece is a keen observer of Cameroons political and economic landscape. He has published extensively on the countrys political and economic development, especially in the early 90s when the wind of change was blowing across the African continent. He has served as a translator, technical writer, journalist and editor for several international organizations and corporations across the globe. He studied communication at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and technical writing in George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. He is also a trained translator and holds a Ph.D.

By Wilson MUSA
Arrest warrant W. Musa

The Parliamentary group Leader of the Social Democratic Front party, Hon. Joseph Banadzem has revealed that the Delegate General to National Security had signed an arrest warrant for Hon. Joseph Wirba, SDF MP for Jakiri.

Equinoxe Television reports that the MP who is widely known for his courage in addressing issues on Anglophone problem is on the run as a result of this arrest warrant.



Hon Joseph Banadzem brandishing the arrest warrant told reporters that Hon Joseph Wirba who sent him a copy of the arrest warrant is afraid he will be caught hence has called on his party and the President of National Assembly to protect him without which he will not return to the Glass House again.



To Hon. Banadzem said it is incumbent on the House Speaker to protect one of them if not democracy and respect of rule of law would have been trampled upon.



He Member of Parliament for Bui said it is sad that someone with Parliamentary immunity could still be arrested in Cameroon.



By Wilson MUSA
| BY Ricki Green |

With the highly anticipated return of the World Surf League kicking off this week at the Quiksilver & Roxy Pro on the Gold Coast, Corona and its long time Australian creative agency MC Creative have built Casa Corona  the ultimate location for spectators to kick back, enjoy ice-cold Coronas and watch the worlds best surfers at one of Australias best waves.

A Mexican-style beach bar right on the sand at Snapper Rocks, Casa Corona is open to the public from 9am each day during the competition waiting period, serving refreshments, Mexican food and icy beers from 11AM.

Corona is the official beer of the WSL, through a global partnership which commenced in 2016. The Quiksilver and Roxy Pro is the first event on the WSL calendar and the Casa Corona activation will set the benchmark for Coronas on site presence at WSL events around the world this year.

Says Andrew Vance, arketing manager, Corona Australia: Casa Corona has raised the bar in terms of brand activation for Corona. It will no doubt become an iconic part of this event moving forward, and for the next ten days surfing fans will have the opportunity to experience a live interpretation of our From Where Youd Rather Be brand promise.

For those who are more inclined to participate than spectate, Casa Corona Board Hire is also available on site. Corona has called upon four of its favourite shapers  Neal Purchase Jnr, Dead Kooks, Morning of the Earth Surfboards, and Ben McTavish  to mow through some foam and deliver twelve hand-shaped custom surfboards, available for anyone at the event to borrow and surf.

Casa Corona is open 9AM  6PM daily during the competition period.
| BY Kim Shaw |

AdFest has confirmed that Ted Royer (left), chief creative officer at Droga5 in New York and AdFest 2017 grand jury president, and Bruce Duckworth (right), joint chief creative officer and chief executive officer of globally renowned design studio Turner Duckworth and D&AD President, will join the program at AdFest 2017, which runs from 22nd to 25th March in Thailand.

Royers session is tantalisingly titled: The Party You Cant Go To and the Universe in Your Head. Hell explore two fascinating yet completely unrelated angles: firstly, hell suggest a stance that brands can have in the world, before telling the story of an unsung creative who never stopped trying.

D&AD president Bruce Duckworth is also joining the program, and his session is titled, Design At the Centre.

Says Duckworth: Its hard to think of a successful, modern brand whos not putting design excellence at the centre of their world.

His session will explain why this is so, while sharing insights into the success of Turner Duckworth  the studio he founded in 1992 with David Turner, which now has offices in London, San Francisco, and New York. The company is a creative force to be reckoned with, employing around 90 people, of which 75 are designers.

Turner Duckworth works with some of the most culturally significant brands in the world from Amazon, Coca Cola, Google, entrepreneurial brands such as Elemis, and the band Metallica. Duckworth has won over 300 design awards including D&AD Yellow pencils, the inaugural Cannes Design Lions Grand Prix, a Grammy award, amongst others.

Likewise, Royer is one of the advertising industrys most inspirational creators, helping Droga5 grow to an agency of around 600 employees. Along the way, Droga5 has been named Agency of the Year nine times, is the only agency to appear on the Advertising Age A-List over six consecutive years, and was named one of Fast Companys Worlds Most Innovative Companies in 2013. Most recently, Droga5 was named Agency of the Year by both Advertising Age and Creativity.

Tickets to ADFEST 2017 are now selling via www.ADFEST.com.
| BY Lynchy |

According to recent statistics by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), the prevalence of diabetes among adults in Sri Lanka is 8.5 per cent. At present, one in 12 adults in the country suffers from diabetes, which totals to around 1.16 million.

TNL Radio partnered with TBWA\Sri Lanka to help tackle the problem by raising awareness around one of the key contributing factors  sugar.

With a different take on conventional public awareness radio ads, which go largely ignored due to their inability to engage listeners, TBWA and TNL created the worlds first #SugarFreeRadio.

The native advertising campaign used mainstream songs that carried sugary-words such as Sweet, Honey, and Chocolate and disrupted them with a special diabetes warning buzzer.

TNL radio hosts also warned listeners against the rising rate of diabetes, fueled by Sri Lankas

insatiable love of sugar, and provided important facts around preventative measures. The station also sacrificed revenue by refusing to air endorsements of sugar-related clients for the day, such as Haagen-Dazs and Lindt Chocolate.

With its engaging nature, #SugarFreeRadio picked up significant social media impressions, and many TNL listeners called in to praise the campaign.

Credits 

Chief Creative Officer  Subhash Pinnapola

Copy Writer  Sohan Ratnaike
"We will continue to do our best to offer library sessions to the children during 2017 ... I will hold a community meeting later in Term 1 to keep you informed of our progress towards a solution to this problem."
"It is all good fun," he said. "At the time you don't think you are making history. We thought at the end of the Apollo program things would carry on. Bases on the moon etcetera. But of course it didn't happen that way. So it did turn out to be a historic event because as you know we have never been back."
"As long as Mr Rogers continues his amphetamine use, I see no reason to believe his pattern of offending will change, except possibly by escalating into more serious offences," the judge said.
"As I have explained, the data results do not include all complaints of child sexual abuse relating to all institutions associated with the Anglican Church in Australia and do not indicate the total number of incidents of child sexual abuse in Anglican Church institutions in Australia," she said.
Some feedback from an overseas visitor. I must say what a great capital city Canberra is (and I'm from Wellington so felt right at home) but was a bit disappointed to see that some of the buildings that beautiful revolving artwork was being projected on to, didn't get into the festival quite as they should have by keeping internal and exterior lighting on.
The deployment by the West Coast provider will support growing business ecosystems in multiple areas of California, including the cities of Calabasas, Culver City, and Venice.

"Our strategic network expansion throughout LA and the surrounding regions is in response to the increased demand from businesses in areas where they have limited options for high speed infrastructure," said Will Frederickson, SVP of sales and marketing for Wilcon. "Because Wilcon operates the most dense fibre and interconnection infrastructure in Los Angeles, we are uniquely positioned to provide custom dark fibre and lit networks to support the growing ecosystem of companies that need high capacity connectivity."

Pamela, Kissel, CEO and president for the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, added: "We are pleased to work with innovative companies such as Wilcon who bring expanded technology options to the area.

The proliferation of small cell nodes, particularly in urban or metro environments, and network deployments are going to be critical for 5G.

Jon DeLuca, president and CEO of Wilcon told Capacity last month about the recent deployment of turnkey small cells and hundreds of nodes in downtown LA and San Diego. "In addition to our extensive fibre deployment, were providing a turnkey small cell solution in these central business districts. Wilcon is a big believer in dark fibre: "You dont have to twist our arm to get us to sell dark fibre; its a major part of what we do," said DeLuca. "Leveraging what we already have strengthens our market position."

"Wireless carriers are more focused on fibre today and dark fibre is becoming much more prominent in the enterprise space. Enterprises are looking to deploy their own equipment and manage their own networks," added DeLuca.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
XLRI Xavier School of Management recently hosted entrepreneurship conference the 1st-ever 'Startup Conclave East 2017'. The conference was organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell (E-cell) of XLRI in collaboration with Entrepreneur Cafe on 4th and 5th March, 2017.

Aim of XLRI Conference

The conference aimed to provide an opportunity for local start-ups to interact with industry experts and gain insights over how to better their business and also to provide insights about current start-up policies.

Dignitaries present

The inaugural session was graced by eminent industry leaders and dignitaries including T. V. Narendran (Chairman, Board of Governors at XLRI & MD - Tata Steel India and South East Asia), A.B. Lall (Chairman, CII Jharkhand State Council and Plant Head, Tata Motors), Sunil K Barnwal (IAS, Secretary to the CM of Jharkhand and Industries, Mines, Geology and IT, Government of Jharkhand) among others.

Speech addressed

In their addresses, A B Lall, stressed on inclusive growth oriented business models while TV Narendran talked about how apt the time is for entrepreneurship, backed by political pace and will. In his speech, Sunil Kumar Burnwal, focused on creating startup ecosystem where anyone with an idea should feel encouraged to start his own venture and become job creator instead of job seeker.

He said, "It is our responsibility to change mindset of people coming from rural background and inculcate startup culture in their mindset from childhood." He also discussed about the Jharkhand Innovation Lab initiative of setting incubation centers in cities like Jamshedpur and Dhanbad.

Chief Guest

The Chief Guest of the conference was Shri Saryu Rai, Minister, Parliamentary Affairs, Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs, Government of Jharkhand. In his speech, he stressed upon the focus to solve problems related to Production and manufacturing by creating and maintaining startup hubs through Startup conclaves like these.

Others' Speeches

Addressing the next session held at XLRI campus, Fr. Oswald Mascarenhas, S.J. (JRD Tata Chair Professor of Business Ethics at XLRI) stressed upon the importance of Startups, and how India will be home to over 12000 startups by 2020. He also discussed about the need for large corporations to reinvent the wheel, lest they face an existential crisis.

Manish Harodia, alumnus of IIM-K and founder of Dream Wallets, spoke on his unique take on investing and raising money for start-up ventures. He stressed on the need to invest in one's own idea and had wise words for the budding entrepreneurs.

The Day 2 events commenced with keynote speech by Umesh Shah (Director, IT Department, Government of Jharkhand). In the address, he threw light on the world of opportunities and support extended by the government of Jharkhand for entrepreneurial ventures, and reiterated how Jharkhand is going to evolve exponentially with the onset of 'Momentum Jharkhand'. Aditya Sharma (Representative of Startup India Hub) familiarized the audience with various policies that are offered by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, including helpline number 1800115565 which, along with email and social media channels has resolved over 34,889 queries since April 1, 2016.

Interactive Events

The second day of the conference held various interactive events such as shark tank pitches that were participated by local Jamshedpur startups like Pitstop Service, and online bike solutions service, Technobright, a technical education providing interface and Blue Elixir water harvesting systems among many others.

Design Thinking

Interactive session on Design Thinking was coordinated by Prof. PK Dan (Chairman E-cell IIT Kharagpur). Nav Kishley (Trainer, Smile Foundation) brought various legal aspects to the fore and introduced many frameworks for the use of budding entrepreneurs. Baldev Singh Rawat held session on Bootstrapping as the best strategy, while sessions on Analytics by expert Dr. R. Simbasivam (Head analytics, Tata Steel) and Innovation and IOT by Dr. Arvind Choubey (Professor, NIT Jamshedpur) were also held.

The conference concluded with the session by Sarajit Jha of Tata group, who talked about trending technologies and gave important insights on 'when to stop investing' to startup enthusiasts.

About ECell, XLRI

The Entrepreneurship Cell (ECell), of XLRI is a student run body formed with a view to promoting entrepreneurship among the students. An effort to foster and improve entrepreneurship and related activities, the Entrepreneurship Cell at XLRI, holds myriads of events, workshops and summits throughout the year.

About XLRI

XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur is a premier, private management institute in India founded in 1949 by Fr Quinn Enright, S.J. in the 'steel city' of Jamshedpur (www.xlri.ac.in). Over the last six decades, the institute has grown into a top-ranking business management school of international repute with a wide portfolio of management programs and research publications.

Its alumni are spread around the globe and have demonstrated responsible business leadership in their organizations. XLRI continually strives to contribute its mite to the professional growth and management of numerous organizations and institutions across industry sectors. XLRI has been awarded two prestigious International Accreditations, viz., AACSB - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and AMBA - Association of MBAs. XLRI has also earned the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) accreditation.

International Conference on Responsible Marketing Hosted by XLRI
After launching the new LC in North America and Europe, its time for Lexus to bring their hottest coupe to their home market of Japan.



Based on the LF-LC Concept and underpinned by the GA-L platform, the luxury coupe comes in two flavors  L Package and S Package, and can be had from 13,000,000 yen, which equals to $113,465 at the current exchange rates.

Toyotas luxury brand has yet to detail what each trim level brings, but in the States, standard features include LED headlights, Lexus Safety System+ bundle of active safety equipment, premium audio system, 10.3-inch multi-info display, next-gen Remote Touch Interface with touchpad, and others.

For the money, customers will get the LC 500 that uses a 5.0-liter naturally aspirated V8 lump that pushes 471 horses and 398 pound-feet (540 Nm) of torque to the rear wheels, through a 10-speed automatic transmission.

However, those looking into a greener version of the car can go for the LC 500h. It uses a 3.5-liter V6 petrol engine, rated at 295 HP, and a 60 HP electric motor that work together to produce a total system output of 354 HP. The zero to 62 mph (100 km/h) sprint takes less than 5 seconds, making it 0.5sec slower than its non-hybrid sibling.

PHOTO GALLERY
Since when does a crappy 1997 GMC Suburban cost $1.5 million? Well, according to the seller, since its the actual car that the famous rapper Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in Los Angeles, on March 9, 1997.



Bought by a couple in October of the same year at a public auction, it has been used as a family car ever since, having purportedly clocked 114,000 miles (183,465 km).

Its owner had no clue that the SUV has a morbid past, until she was approached by an LA detective, 8 years after the initial sale, who informed her of the condition, and the fact that the passenger door, which was riddled with bullet holes, was taken by the officers as evidence in the murder investigation.

However, the only evidence that still reminds of the tragic incident is a bullet hole in one of the seatbelts, but in the event of a sale, the police are willing to return the original door.

Its not a coincidence that the GMC Suburban is offered for sale by MomentsInTime, which is the same company that is responsible for finding a new home for the BMW 750iL that Tupac Shakur was killed in, as they were approached by the owner after finding out that they have some experience in this.

PHOTO GALLERY
After acquiring Opel/Vauxhall from GM earlier this month in a deal worth $2.3 billion, PSA will run it as a separate company, with its own management.



That means the brands CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann will keep his job, and Opels current plans of pushing ahead with new electric vehicles, before moving under a different roof, remain on the table.

It is important for me to stand before employees and show leadership. I have done this in the past and will continue to do so, Neuman told AutoMotorUndSport, according to AutoNews, adding that he will continue to work with the PSA chief, Carlos Tavares. I think we have great respect for each other. This is why I see a good foundation for continued cooperation.

Neumann declined to comment on a previous report that talked about Opel becoming a pure electric car brand, before moving to PSA, but confirmed that more EVs are seen in the companys future, joining the likes of the GM-sourced Ampera-e.

Moreover, Opel will go ahead with the development of a new SUV that will sit at the top of the range alongside the redesigned Insignia, as part of a product offensive that includes 7 new models.

According to Neumann, launching the German brand in China isnt seen as a viable solution, as his priority is making Opel more profitable in Europe with help from PSA. The Chinese market is no longer the cure-all to help solve the problems on all the other markets, he said. But even in the event that Neumann wanted Opel to enter China, it has been reported that GM demanded from PSA to bar the brand from competing against its own Chevy lineup in China and other overseas markets.

PHOTO GALLERY
When we first previewed the project in 2015, it was still early in development. At Cartoon Movie it was announced that several high-profile production companies have boarded the feature: Londons Lupus Films, which most recently produced Ethel & Ernest, and Luxembourgs Melusine Productions, whose credits Ethel & Ernest, Song of the Sea, and Ernest and Celestine.

The producing team behind Kensukes Kingdom is now comprised of Camilla Deakin and Ruth Fielding of Lupus Films, Sarah Radclyffe (co-founder of Working Title Films and producer of over 30 live-action films), Barnaby Spurrier (Deadtime Stories for Big Folk, Somers Town), and Stephan Roelants of Melusine Productions.

Kensukes Kingdom has strong themes of ecological conservation and respect for the environment, including a climactic showdown with poachers who are trying to overtake the island, and directors Boyle and Hendry have spent time investigating the best approach for visualizing the natural world onscreen. Theyve come up with a solution that balances organic elements with digital compositing, and which is both unique and visually striking.

The natural world is an essential character in this story and one thing we were keen to achieve was an organic feel to the environment, said Boyle, whose animation credits include The Thief and the Cobbler and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. We wanted to use reality, rather than model builds. We wanted it to look damp. With our test sequence, we filled it with many objects we found on the forest floor or rocks we pulled out of the Thames. They all had their own wonderful slime, cobwebs or dead bugs that you could never production design. We were curious to see what we could just find in nature and use.

Added Hendry: Something that we have been focusing on in the last few years is the creative blend of mixed media. We like to see how the things we love can inhabit the same space  the charm of 2D hand drawn characters, the depth of photoreal worlds, the character of miniature environments, matte paintings and the random nature of filmed effects footage.

The filmmakers aim to book-end the animated portions of the film with live-action. They are still developing the final look of the film, but the goal is to do as much of the film as possible as partial miniature sets with found objects, then extended with matte paintings Hendry explained to Cartoon Brew. We just like the look. Its random, organic and connects with the theme of the piece. Its different  and its more fun to work this way.

While the producers continue to build a team of production partners, Boyle and Hendry are moving forward with the development of the animatic and further production design for characters and environment.

Boyle notes that the process is more organic on this film than many projects hes worked on in the past. On many productions you sign off on a written script and then pass the project over to artists to visualize in storyboard form, almost like theyre two separate processes, he said. For Kensukes Kingdom, were planning to continue working really closely with [screenwriter] Frank Cottrell Boyce, brewing up the most exciting and visual way we can tell this story, batting back and forth dialogue and imagery until weve found the best way to translate Michael Morpurgos classic book into cinematic form. Its a tremendously exciting process.
Photo: Contributed

Four Lower Mainland companies are being rewarded for agricultural technology.

The British Columbia companies each won $20,000 for developing technology to deter birds from B.C. berry farms, provide up-to-the-minute health checks on crops, turn B.C. wood waste into fully compostable yarn for farm uses and improve nutrient recovery from farm waste.

The winners are:

Fraser Valley-based gUAVas developed software that turns drones into berry and fruit guards by patrolling the farm. In addition to motion, the drones use noise and light to scare birds away.

For greenhouse growers of high-value crops, Ecoation Innovation Solutions (EIS) of North Vancouver provides the earliest possible detection of pests, diseases and deficiencies that affect crop value. EIS collects data directly on plant state and uses proprietary software to predict crop health.

Vancouvers Boost Environmental Systems developed an easy-to-set-up and easy-to-integrate anaerobic digestion pre-treatment technology that results in increased production of biogas which is used for energy, and the recovery of a high-quality fertilizer product the farm can use on the land or sell.

Gordon Shank Consulting of Burnaby designed an industrial-strength, fully-compostable yarn made from cellulose that can be used for plants in greenhouses. The companys BioMid yarn is made from B.C. forest product waste and replaces the synthetic, polypropylene yarns currently used.

The winners were selected by a panel of experts.

The Agritech Innovation Challenge is a partnership between the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and the BC Innovation Council with $80,000 in funding provided through Growing Forward 2, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative that provides a $3-billion investment over five years in innovation, competitiveness and market development.
Photo: Contributed

Voters in the Boundary-Similkameen riding will have no shortage of opportunities to meet the candidates in the run-up to the provincial election.

Seniors have the first chance, with a pair of forums being held Friday at the Oliver Community Centre at 10 a.m. and later the same day at the Osoyoos Seniors Centre at 3 p.m.

The Wine Country Retired Teachers Association and other groups are hosting incumbent MLA Linda Larson and NDP challenger Colleen Ross.

The retired teachers organization bills itself as non-political, but focuses on issues such as seniors housing and healthcare for seniors.

Three more general candidates forums will be held next week.
Photo: CTV

B.C.'s police watchdog is investigating after a man jumped off a parkade in the Lower Mainland.

Surrey RCMP and a K-9 unit were doing surveillance on a vehicle near the Central City Shopping Centre just after midnight Thursday.

Police confronted the driver after he parked.

Officers say the man then ran to the edge of what appears to be the third level of the parkade and leapt off.

He suffered serious injuries.

Investigators from the Independent Investigations Office collected evidence, reviewed surveillance video and interviewed police.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Contributed

More than a year after landing in Canada, many Syrian refugees are still having trouble integrating, according to government data and researchers who have studied the issue.

In comparison to government-sponsored refugees, privately sponsored newcomers tend to fare much better in the short term in language acquisition and job integration, Dawn Edlund of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said Thursday.

She said that while more than half of the privately sponsored Syrian refugees who arrived before March 2016 have found work, only 10 per cent of government-sponsored refugees have done so.

"The integration journey that people are on has various aspects to it, and Syrian refugees, whether privately sponsored or government-sponsored, are on that exact same pathway," she told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"I don't know if I identify that as a gap. It's a similar pathway that we've seen resettled refugees travel before."

Edlund was among the first presenters at a multi-day conference in Montreal that is bringing together speakers from academia, government and social-services organizations to discuss how best to integrate newcomers over the long term.

Part of the reason for the discrepancy is the fact government-sponsored refugees tend to arrive with a lower level of education and have a lower self-reported level of knowledge of English or French, Edlund said.

In addition, many privately sponsored refugees benefit from the support of friends and family already in Canada, she said.

"They come into a support network around them that is already strong, already has people who are living in Canada who have employment contacts," she said, adding history shows that gaps in employment outcome between the two groups generally disappear after eight or nine years.
Photo: wikimedia commons Professional grade Jointer-planer

A Penticton man is suing the Okanagan-Skaha School District for an accident he suffered in shop class more than five years ago in Grade 9.

Brodwyn Hormes, 19, filed a notice of civil claim in Penticton court on Wednesday seeking damages for an accident the claim states took place on Dec. 2, 2011.

The lawsuit states Hormes was in a Technical Education 9 class, operating a jointer-planer when an accident resulted in him losing parts of two fingers and the tip of a third.

The claim alleges the accident was caused by SD 67 negligence in failing to instruct Hormes how to properly use the jointer or take adequate safety precautions and properly maintain the saw-type tool.

Damages for a loss of earning capacity and opportunity to earn an income are claimed alongside general and special damages and health care costs in the lawsuit.

The school district declined to comment, stating the matter is before the courts. They have not filed a response yet.

None of the above allegations have been proven in court.
Photo: Okanagan Community Bat Prog.

They are creatures of the night but also great for eating pesky insects, and efforts are being made to ensure local bat populations are healthy.

Residents in the Okanagan and Similkameen regions are being asked to keep an eye out for bats which are expected to soon end their hibernation and return to their summering grounds.

The Okanagan Community Bat Program, in collaboration with the province, is on the lookout for signs of White-Nose Syndrome (WNS).

It is a fungal disease harmless to humans but responsible for the deaths of millions of insect-eating bats in eastern North America.

Unfortunately, it has spread and was detected in Washington state last March.

To date, the syndrome has not been found in B.C.

But monitoring continues.

Community Bat Program co-ordinators have been collecting reports of unusual winter bat activity across the Southern Interior, ensuring dead bats are sent to the Canadian Wildlife Health Centre lab for disease testing.

Spring conditions mean increased bat activity  and an increased chance of detecting the disease.

We are asking the public to report dead bats or any sightings of daytime bat activity to their local Community Bat Project (CBP) as soon as possible, said Mandy Kellner, bat program co-ordinator.

People can call 1-855-922-2287 ext.13 or email [email protected].

There are 14 species of bats in the Okanagan.

They all eat insects, including those that impact the agricultural and forest industry and those that are disease-spreading pests such as mosquitoes, said Paula Rodriguez de la Vega, also with the bat program. Currently there are no treatments for White Nose Syndrome. However, mitigating other threats to bat populations and preserving and restoring bat habitat may provide bat populations with the resilience to rebound.

The public is advised to never touch a bat with bare hands as bats can carry rabies.

Also, if a family pet has had contact with a bat, immediately contact your physician and/or local public health authority or consult with a veterinarian.
Photo: Facebook David Hall

Hundreds of people have come to the support of the wife and newborn child of a Terrace man who was killed in a tragic car accident with a moose last week.

David Hall was driving with his pregnant wife on Highway 16, east of Terrace on March 10, when a semi-truck hit a moose.

The moose was sent tumbling into the Hall's lane, colliding with their Dodge pickup truck and flipping them upside-down into the ditch.

The 32-year-old father-to-be was pronounced dead at the scene.

David's wife Kimberley was seriously injured in the crash, and airlifted to Royal Columbian Hospital where she underwent an emergency C-section, saving the premature, four-pound boy.

David's brother, Alex, started a GoFundMe campaign to help support Kimberley and the newborn child.

David never got to meet his son, who looks so much like him, but his large and loving family and his community of friends will make sure he grows up knowing the wonderful man his father was, writes Alex on the page. As a group we will never be able to fill David's big shoes, but with this fund we can help give his son the best start at life.

As of Thursday afternoon, 325 people had sent the family more than $39,000, surpassing the stated goal of $25,000.

David recently graduated from Heli-College Canada last April and had been working at Terrace's Lakelse Air since the spring.

Bear Creek Aviation Group - Lakelse Air contributed $1,000 to Kimberley and their newborn son.

"By just being himself, David set an example of class, love, laughter, friendship and a zest for adventure," wrote the Osachoff family on the crowdfunding site.

"He is a product of an amazing family and his qualities will now live on through Kim and the blessing of the baby. We love and miss you David."

- With files from CTV Vancouver
Another episode on a dark chapter of Canadian history has been released online.

Season 2 - Episode #11 of The Camps webseries is now available for those interested in the history of internment camps in Canada.

The webseries looks at the numerous camps across the nation.

One of the first episodes looked at the interment camp in Vernon, and producer Ryan Boyko of Armistice Films was in the North Okangan in November 2015 to document the First World War concentration camp that housed hundreds of mostly Ukrainian men, women and children.

There were 24 such camps across the country including in Yoho National Park and near Cherryville.

The latest episode focusses on a registration centre in Quebec.

More than 100 years ago, 13 registration centres, including one at the Montreal Immigration building were established for the registration of so called enemy aliens.

The episode talks to internee descendants Pierre and Kim Pawliw as they visit St. Michaels Cathedral in Montreal where an entire congregation was rounded up during Sunday mass, and sent to Spirit Lake Internment Camp in Northern Quebec.

More than 8,500 people were imprisoned from 1914-20.

The Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund (CFWWIRF) has set up a digital map that contains more than 5,000 digitized news articles dating from 1914-20, describing opinion of the time and showing the hardship endured by new immigrants who were invited to Canada and then had their civil and human rights taken away by the War Measures Act.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The U.S. Army soldiers finished wading across a stream in a rainforest in Hawaii, and they were soaked. Their boots and socks were water-logged and their clothes, hair and ears were caked with mud.

The soldiers were going through training at the first jungle school the Army has established in decades. The course is part of a program to train soldiers for exercises and potential combat on terrain that looks more like islands and nations in the Pacific than arid Afghanistan and the deserts of the Middle East.

Brig. Gen. Stephen Michael, deputy commander of the 25th Infantry Division, said the Army set up the school as its footprint was shrinking in Iraq and Afghanistan after more than a decade of war in those countries.

"The jungle school gives us that focus, it reinforces that we're in the Pacific," Michael said. "If you're in the 25th, you understand you got to fight in the tough environment of the Pacific."

Ever since the turn of the 20th century, the Army has fought in tropical rainforests. It spent years, for example, battling Filipino insurgents after the 1898 Spanish-American War. The Vietnam War was fought in the jungle.

The Army gave up its jungle training school in Panama in 1999 when the U.S. returned land there to the Panamanian government. Then jungle training lost priority in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks as the Army focused on preparing soldiers to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, surviving and fighting in tropical rainforests has captured the Army's interest again. In 2013, it set up a jungle school at Schofield Barracks, a sprawling Army post some 30 miles west of the soft sands of Waikiki. Its dense woods have a stream soldiers can practice crossing and cliffs for rappelling.

First it needed instructors. The Army sent soldiers to military jungle schools in Brazil, Brunei and other tropical spots to reacquire long-lost skills. Instructors-in-training poured over old Army jungle manuals.

"We had to relearn everything," said Staff Sgt. Ascencion Lopez, who was one of the first instructors at the school, which is part of the 25th Infantry Division's Lightning Academy.

The soldiers quickly discovered their existing uniforms stood out among the trees and the fabric took too long to dry. The Army is currently developing a new uniform and boots specifically for the jungle. Instructors in Hawaii are testing out some early models.

The soldiers have also had to adjust how they carry their ammunition, canteens and other gear. In the desert, soldiers frequently strap gear on their chests so it's accessible while riding vehicles. But instructors recommend soldiers carry gear on their sides in the jungle so it won't get caught on roots and vines while they're manoeuvring on the forest ground.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The White House on Thursday stood by President Donald Trump's unproven accusations that his predecessor wiretapped his New York skyscraper, despite growing bipartisan agreement that there's no evidence to back up the claim and mounting pressure to retract the statement.

Angrily defending the president's statement, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Trump "stands by" the four tweets that sparked a firestorm that has threatened Trump's credibility with lawmakers. Spicer denounced reporters for taking the president's words too literally and suggested lawmakers were basing their assessments on incomplete information.

Spicer's comments were a rebuttal to the top two members of the Senate intelligence committee, who released a statement earlier Thursday declaring there is no indication that Trump Tower was "the subject of surveillance" by the U.S. government before or after the 2016 election. Spicer suggested the statement from Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mark Warner, D-Va., was made without a full review of the evidence or, incorrectly, a briefing from the Justice Department.

"They are not findings," he said.

The standoff between the White House and lawmakers came four days before FBI Director James Comey is slated to testify before Congress, when he will inevitably be asked whether the president's accusations are accurate. The White House's refusal to back down raised the stakes for Comey's appearance before the intelligence committee on Monday.

Trump tweeted earlier this month that President Barack Obama "was tapping my phones in October" and compared the incident to "Nixon/Watergate" and "McCarthyism."

Trump, in an interview Wednesday with Fox News, said he'd learned about the alleged wiretapping from news reports referencing intercepted communications, despite the fact that he and his advisers have publicly denounced stories about government agencies reviewing contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

Trump said there would be "some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks."

In the two weeks since the tweets, the White House has tried to soften the statement, but not disavowed it.

Spicer on Thursday asserted that Trump meant to broadly refer to "surveillance," rather than a phone wiretap.
Photo: CTV

An inquiry judge makes no recommendations in a report that says Alberta Children's Services cannot be blamed in the deaths of two young boys.

Judge Raymond Bodnarek says Jason Cardinal was solely responsible for the murder of his sons Caleb and Gabriel in December 2010.

Caleb, who was six, and three-year-old Gabriel were drugged and strangled during a court-authorized visit with their father in Edmonton.

Cardinal pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence with no parole for 25 years.

Bodnarek notes that Cardinal admitted he plotted the murders even before there was a court hearing to determine who should get custody of the boys.

The hearing wasn't finished and had been adjourned for several months, so the boys remained living with their mother, Andrea Badger.

After carefully considering all of the evidence, I find that their deaths were not caused by flaws in the system, Bodnarek said in the public inquiry report released Thursday.

I find that (Childrens Services) made reasonable professional judgment calls throughout their involvement with Caleb and Gabriel. These judgment calls were made with ... information including opinions from mental-health professionals."

The judge's report focuses on a one-year legal battle that started in January 2010 between Cardinal and Badger. The mother had become concerned that the two boys and her older daughter from a previous relationship were in danger due to Cardinals mental health.

Children's Services had first became involved with Caleb and Gabriel in May 2009. The children were placed in Badgers care the following March and Cardinal was granted access with supervision.

By the end of that summer, Cardinal was allowed to spend time with his sons on unsupervised weekend visits subject to random checks by a family reunification worker.

Bodnarek said Cardinals behaviour began to worsen in the fall. He was caught obtaining prescription drugs fraudulently, was banned from a doctors office for seeking drugs and charged with shoplifting.
Lawyers on behalf of motorists left stranded in their cars on a highway after Tuesday's snowstorm applied on Thursday for a class action lawsuit against the Quebec government and City of Montreal.

Plaintiffs are seeking $2,000 for each of the 500 people they estimate were caught in a traffic bottleneck after a truck crashed on the city's Highway 13 Tuesday evening.

Many motorists had to spend the night in their vehicles as the city was blanketed with about 40 centimetres of snow.

Plaintiffs say the provincial and city governments "failed in their obligations" to manage the road block.

"The members of the group were imprisoned in their vehicles for 10 hours, in the cold, with limited  or even non-existent  information on rescue efforts," the suit alleges.

The plaintiffs are asking a Superior Court Justice to approve their class action application.

The allegations contained in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.
Photo: The Canadian Press

UPDATE: 1:50 p.m.

A woman found dead in a St. Louis-area lake was identified Friday as the mother of an infant rescued hours earlier by a paramedic, who performed CPR on the roof of the submerged SUV in which the child was found shortly after a fatal fire erupted at their home.

The coroner in nearby Madison County, Illinois, released the information as investigators tried to untangle the events that preceded the death of the woman, 32-year-old Cristy Lynn Campbell.

Six of her children escaped the fire Thursday morning at her house in Glen Carbon, Illinois, but a man in the house was killed. An autopsy will be conducted Friday to identify the man.

Campbell's ex-husband, 37-year-old Justin Campbell, lived at the home and remains unaccounted for. Court records show they had a volatile relationship, with several reports of domestic violence.

About 15 minutes after the fire was reported, a passing motorist spotted an SUV driving down a hill and into Silver Lake in Highland, Illinois, about 16 miles from the fire scene.

ORIGINAL: 6:30 a.m.

A fast-acting paramedic dove into the frigid water of an Illinois lake where a SUV was submerged and found an infant floating inside, then administered CPR on the hood and swam the child to shore, authorities said. The baby is expected to make a full recovery.

The infant was one of seven siblings who survived a tragic chain of events that left one person dead in a house fire and second body recovered from the lake where the baby was found.

It all began at 5:15 a.m. Thursday in Glen Carbon, Illinois, when fire broke out at a home owned by Cristy Lynn Campbell. An adult died in the fire but six children, siblings ranging up to age 14, escaped. Glen Carbon is about 30 miles east of St. Louis.

Sheriff John Lakin said the person killed has not been identified, but Campbell's estranged husband and the father of the children, Justin Campbell, has not been accounted for.

Some of the children ran to a nearby Wal-Mart, others to a home in the neighbourhood. The kids at the Wal-Mart asked an arriving worker to call 911, Lakin said.

Cristy Campbell was not in the home when firefighters arrived, nor was the couple's seventh child, a 3-month-old boy.

At 5:31 a.m., a motorist passing near Silver Lake in Highland, Illinois, about 16 miles from the home, saw a car heading down a hill toward the water and called 911, Lakin said.

Highland paramedic Todd Zobrist arrived quickly, jumped into the 46-degree water and swam 50 to 75 feet to the SUV, where he found a baby floating inside the car. He pulled the baby by the arm to the hood of the SUV, where he began CPR, then swam with the child to shore.

The child, initially unresponsive, is expected to recover and could be released Friday from a hospital in St. Charles, Missouri, Lakin said.

Highland Emergency Medical Services chief Brian Wilson said Zobrist's actions were heroic.

"He definitely saved the child's life," Wilson said.

After finding the baby, authorities began searching the water. A body was pulled from the lake around 11:15 a.m. While the body has not been identified, Lakin said police are no longer searching for Cristy Campbell.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Andrew Leander Wilson, a broad smile on his face and no bitterness in his heart, clasped hands with his family on his first day of freedom after spending 32 years in prison for a murder he denied committing.

Wilson, 62, was released from the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail downtown into a sea of cameras and cheers and applause from university law students who worked to free him.

"This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable," Wilson said Thursday.

Wilson maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1984 for the stabbing death of Christopher Hanson, 21, in Los Angeles.

A day earlier, Superior Court Judge Laura Priver ordered Wilson released after prosecutors conceded he did not get a fair trial.

Wilson said his 96-year-old mother, Margie Davis, who lives in St. Louis, was his fiercest advocate.

"My mother was the backbone," Wilson said. "She was a 96-year-old pit bull."

He plans to go to St. Louis to visit her as soon as he can, and his mother says she can't believe she's going to see him after three decades.

"I prayed for what I thought was the impossible," Davis told KABC-TV by phone. "I prayed for his release. And evidently it wasn't impossible. It's been granted me."

Loyola Law School's Project for the Innocent, which fought for Wilson's release, pointed to numerous due-process violations.

"It's been a nightmare but I survived and got to the end of the road," Wilson said.

Wilson said he holds no bitterness because that would be "a waste of time."
Photo: The Canadian Press

A passenger plane landed safely Friday after one of its two propellers fell off in a near disaster as the plane approached Sydney Airport.

The Regional Express Airlines crew reported the right engine propeller assembly separated from the Saab 340 airliner 20 kilometres southwest of the airport, Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said.

"Our propeller has just sheared off, but normal controls. Still able to fly," one of the two pilots said in a radio call broadcast by media.

Flight 768 was carrying 16 passengers and three crew from Albury, 500 km southwest of Sydney.

"Not just the propeller, but the shaft that connects it into the engine have all come off and the assembly has fallen away to the ground," Gibson said.

Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association president Paul Cousin said he had been told the pilot felt vibration then looked out to see the propeller break off.

The rapidly spinning parts could have sliced into the fuselage and tail plane as they fell behind, he said.

"They were within a whisker of a catastrophic event," Cousin said. "When that propeller let go, they were lucky in the extreme that it sent itself over the top of the wing without doing much damage," he added.

The Sydney-based airline said in a statement that the crew had followed standard operating procedures and the plane had landed "normally and on time."
Photo: The Canadian Press

New Zealand police shot and killed a security dog at the Auckland Airport on Friday after it escaped its handler and ran loose for more than three hours on the tarmac, disrupting at least 16 flights.

Many people in New Zealand were upset that the dog was killed and some questioned why it couldn't have been tranquilized instead.

Named Grizz, the dog was being trained to detect explosives by New Zealand's Aviation Security Service and was about six months from graduating.

Police Inspector Tracy Phillips said in a statement that the security service and airport staff had made considerable efforts over several hours to recapture the dog and had called in police as a last resort.

"This is not an outcome which anyone wanted," Phillips said.

Radio New Zealand said the 10-month-old bearded collie and German short-haired pointer cross had run from its handler when it was being loaded into a van and slipped through a security gate when it was opened to let a truck through.

Airport staff unsuccessfully used toys, other dogs, food and a range of handlers to try to coax the dog away from the tarmac, the radio station reported.
Photo: Twitter

A man who strapped 120 helium balloons to a lawn chair and soared above the Calgary Stampede grounds is to be sentenced today.

Daniel Boria, who is 27, pleaded guilty in December to dangerous operation of an aircraft in July 2015. Floating into Calgary airspace was part of a publicity stunt for his cleaning company and earned him the nickname "balloonatic."

Boria tied industrial-sized balloons to the lawn chair as part of a plan to parachute over the Stampede chuckwagon races, but high winds forced him to bail early.

Judge Bruce Fraser agreed to accept a joint recommendation that Boria be fined $5,000 and make a $20,000 donation to the charity of his choice.

At his last appearance a month ago, Boria had only raised half the money he agreed to donate to Calgary's veterans food bank. The balance is due before he can be sentenced.

Boria was arrested by police who had been monitoring him since he was spotted soaring above the grounds.

The Crown told court in December that Boria risked the lives of passengers on incoming and departing airline flights by taking his homemade aircraft up to 2,100 metres.
Photo: The Canadian Press

UPDATED: 9:15 a.m.

Conservative leadership hopeful Maxime Bernier is calling rival Kevin O'Leary a "loser" and "a bad candidate" as the party looks into claims of fraud and vote-rigging.

O'Leary issued a statement Thursday accusing an unidentified campaign of trying to buy its way to the top by using untraceable prepaid credit cards to sign up party members, which he said runs afoul of party rules.

The party says it is investigating the allegations.

Two sources not connected to O'Leary have told The Canadian Press it appeared Bernier's campaign is the one under scrutiny.

But Bernier is firing back in a statement that says O'Leary is throwing mud in an effort to salvage his campaign.

Bernier says he has raised more money, enrolled more members and attracted more support and volunteers than O'Leary.

ORIGINAL: 6:55 a.m.

The Conservative party is investigating allegations from leadership hopeful Kevin O'Leary that one of his rivals is engaging in fraud and vote-rigging.

The celebrity businessman issued a statement Thursday accusing an unnamed campaign of trying to buy its way to the top by using untraceable prepaid credit cards to sign up fake members, which he said runs afoul of party rules and potentially the law.

"Beyond the legalities of this, it is completely immoral, and extremely unfair to the tens of thousands of real party members that will have the impact of their votes weakened," O'Leary said in a statement.

Two sources not connected to O'Leary told The Canadian Press it appeared the campaign of his main rival in the race, Maxime Bernier, is the one under scrutiny.

The alleged scheme involves people on the Ontario PC party membership list being signed up as members of the federal Conservative party, possibly without their knowledge.

Several people who are part of Bernier's campaign team were also involved in Patrick Brown's winning campaign for the Ontario PC leadership in 2015.

A source inside Bernier's campaign shot back at the rumours they were involved in the alleged fraud.

"If Kevin spent more time in Canada campaigning he would be winning instead of whining," the source said, speaking anonymously because they had not been authorized to provide an official response.

O'Leary is currently on a cross-Canada tour. He also told MPs he is signing up 700 new members a day.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Alberta's Progressive Conservatives gather in Calgary on Saturday to pick a new leader, capping a potentially watershed campaign defined by the existential question of whether the party should even exist.

Leadership candidate Richard Starke said the exchange of ideas was eclipsed in the race by debates over the plan put forward by rival candidate Jason Kenney to wind up the party and seek a new coalition with the fellow right-centre Wildrose to defeat the NDP in the next election.

"There has been very little talk about policy, and that's frustrating to me," said Starke in an interview.

"It's politicians that think about the next election and that's where their focus ends. People who are nation builders think not just about the next election, they think about the next generation."

Candidate Byron Nelson said he was surprised at the extent to which Kenney's plan dominated the campaign.

"The unity issue was the single largest ballot box question (when it came to picking voting delegates)," said Nelson.

Kenney, through his campaign team, declined an interview.

The 48-year-old ex-MP and Conservative cabinet minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper has been the centre of attention since he launched his campaign last summer, months before the race officially opened.

His team says he has enough delegates to win a majority and capture the leadership.

A victory for Kenney will accomplish the first step on a timeline he released last July to unify conservatives.

The next step would be to negotiate a framework agreement with the Wildrose to create a new party. Alberta election rules forbid two parties from merging. Instead they must fold up and surrender their assets.

After that, goes the plan, members in both parties would approve the new entity later this year and then candidates and constituencies would be put in place in 2018 to fight the next election, scheduled for the spring of 2019.

Wildrose leader Brian Jean has said he is open to a merger, but on Wildrose terms.

"The Wildrose is in favour of unification as long as it's done so under the Wildrose legal framework and we maintain our principles and legal structure," said Jean.
Photo: Wikipedia

Japanese ruling and opposition parties have given Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a proposal urging his government to write a special one-time law that would allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate.

Friday's proposal will now go to a panel of experts commissioned by Abe to compile a final report on the abdication within the next few weeks. The government is expected to submit the legislation to parliament around May so it can be enacted during its current session, which ends in mid-June.

Akihito, 83, expressed last August his apparent wish to abdicate, citing concerns his age and health may start limiting his ability to fulfil his duties.

He would be the first emperor to abdicate in 200 years. Crown Prince Naruhito, Akihito's oldest son, is first in line to the Chrysanthemum throne.
Photo: David Wylie

A pickup truck smashed into a into a 7-11 convenience store in Kamloops Friday morning.

Kamloops RCMP say the 35-year-old driver accidentally pushed the gas instead of the brake at about 5:30 a.m. and drove right into the store on Tranquille Road.

"An employee inside of the store was injured either by the truck or the debris striking her," said Kamloops RCMP. "She was transported to Royal Inland Hospital with unknown injuries."

Neither drugs nor alcohol are suspected.

The driver was issued a ticket.
SCHUYLER  Schuyler Housing Authority Executive Director Patty Reick stopped by the police department Thursday to drop off a donation check for the narcotics detection dog and happened to walk in on a meet-and-greet with the forces newest recruit.

Shes so pretty, Reick said of the 11-month-old black lab.

Police Chief K.C. Bang had a similar reaction when he first met Cleo in Omaha. He walked past a row of larger, more aggressive-looking dogs before seeing the 40-pound lab wagging her tail.

We liked her the first two minutes we saw her, said Bang.

Cleo  whose name is an acronym for canine law enforcement officer  was born in Indiana and one of five dogs under consideration for the local department. Although shes young for a drug dog, her trainers told Bang she excelled at her training and was ready for the next step.

Cleo lives with her handler, Officer Joseph Hatzenbuehler, who has two children, a 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

He likes her, Hatzenbuehler said of his son. The 1-year-old, shes not a fan.

In the police department's small front office, Cleo went from hand to hand, seeking attention from whoever was willing to give it to her.

Shes a lover. We love that part, said Bang. Thats what we wanted was a non-scary dog.

Cleo is only in town for a few weeks so she can bond with her family and the department before she and Hatzenbuehler are trained as a team and the dog is certified.

Once shes ready, Bang said Cleo will be sworn in like any other officer at a city council meeting. At a special meeting Tuesday, the council authorized a $4,600 payment for the dog and training using donations the department received.

The community has contributed more than $9,000 for the drug dog, not including the years supply of food donated by QC Supply. The remaining money will go toward any other equipment and supplies the dog needs.

Bang said the department isn't taking Cleo around town because they don't want to overwhelm her. But once shes sworn in and settled, shell be visiting the schools and businesses that helped bring her to Schuyler.
Photo: Nathalie Lussier

UPDATE: 1:55 p.m.

Two small planes collided over a bustling Quebec shopping mall on Friday, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

The injured pilot was transported to hospital as were two witnesses who were treated for shock at Promenades Saint-Bruno, south of Montreal.

Longueuil police tweeted Friday afternoon that the other pilot's injuries were not life-threatening.

"One of the planes crashed on the roof of one of the stores and the other one on the asphalt of the parking lot," said Nancy Colagiacomo, a spokeswoman for the police force that serves Montreal's south shore.

Each plane had one male pilot, police said.

A witness said he saw pieces of plane rain down onto the parking lot of the mall.

"I saw the shadow of the plane on the parking lot, and I heard the motor so low to the ground and then a loud boom," said Nheil Martinez, a construction worker who was renovating a part of the mall.

He was outside smoking a cigarette when he saw the plane crash.

"Then we saw pieces of plane fall out of the sky everywhere."

Martinez said he ran to the plane and saw a man inside, whose body was crushed.

Jonathan Vanasse was eating inside a mall restaurant next to the crash site.

He said he and several others ran outside and saw the plane, which he said was leaking fuel.

"There was just shredded metal," he said, referring to what was left of the aircraft.

On Friday afternoon, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada announced it was deploying a team of investigators to the site.

The TSB said in a statement both planes were Cessna 152 aircraft operated by Cargair.

Cargair is a pilot-training academy based in nearby Longueuil.

The company did not want to comment when reached by The Canadian Press.

ORIGINAL: 11:25 a.m.

Two small planes have collided over a major shopping mall south of Montreal.

Police say one of the planes has landed on the roof of the Promenades Saint-Bruno, while the other is in the parking lot.

It is not known how many people were aboard.

A security perimeter has been set up and the shopping centre has been evacuated.

Witnesses described hearing a loud bang.

The name Cargair could be seen on parts of the plane in the parking lot.

Cargair is a pilot-training academy based in nearby Longueuil.

The company did not want to comment when reached by The Canadian Press.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A White House proposal to eliminate all funding for a program protecting the Great Lakes from environmental harm is drawing outrage and calls of resistance from politicians in Canada and the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump's inaugural budget calls for slashing all federal funds for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program that helped finance efforts to combat invasive species, control algae blooms and clean up pollution hot spots in one of the world's largest fresh-water resources.

During former president Barack Obama's administration, the program generally got about $300 million a year. Trump's offer is zero. His spending plan urges state and local governments to shoulder responsibility for the Great Lakes instead.

A coalition of Canadian and U.S. mayors representing communities located along the Great Lakes have been quick to denounce the budget proposal and vow to fight to get the money reinstated.

Canadian mayors say the program, which focuses solely on issues originating south of the border, benefited both countries equally as it pumped nearly $2 billion into preservation efforts over the past seven years.

They say the initiative has earned bipartisan support over the years and say they hope the U.S. congress will be able to overturn the White House decision.

Members of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a coalition of 128 municipalities on both sides of the border, were particularly vocal in condemning the move to scrap American funding.

"It's like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick," executive director David Ullrich said in an interview. "Very vindictive and mean-spirited is what it is ... And morally, it's reprehensible because this is something we need to leave to future generations in good shape."

Ullrich said the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has done considerable work since its inception in 2010, consistently coughing up $250 to $300 million a year to support local governments in their preservation work.

He said the fund has helped clean up toxic hot spots throughout the Great Lakes and worked to limit nutrient run-off that can create harmful algal blooms.

But Ullrich said no priority is as pressing as the effort to prevent the predatory Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes system, adding that eliminating funding for that ongoing project is a "devastating" blow.

The decision to scrap all funding for the initiative is part of a broader White House goal to slash nearly a third of the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. body that has overseen the restoration initiative.
Photo: Twitter

Parks Canada says the bodies of two American snowshoers who were caught in an avalanche in Banff National Park have been recovered.

The agency says rescuers were finally able to get to the snowslide on the slopes of Mount Hector north of Lake Louise this morning.

The two people from Boston were presumed dead after they failed to check out of their hotel Tuesday in Field, B.C.

Their vehicle was found at a trail head on Highway 93  known as the Icefields Parkway  and their tracks were spotted near the avalanche debris.

But conditions had been too dangerous most of the week to send searchers into the area.

Avalanche control work on Thursday allowed the recovery operation to go ahead.

Officials believe the snowshoers died sometime last weekend.

RCMP had already notified the families of the snowshoers, whose identities are not being released.

Parks Canada says Highway 93 North remains closed until at least Sunday.
Photo: The Canadian Press Karim Baratov

A Canadian man of Kazakh origins arrested in a massive hack of Yahoo emails appeared briefly via video in a Hamilton court Friday, where a date was set for his bail hearing.

Twenty-two-year-old Karim Baratov is set to return to court for the hearing on April 5.

Baratov did not say anything during his court appearance, looking straight ahead with his hands in front of him.

He was arrested under the extradition act on Tuesday in the Ontario community of Ancaster.

U.S. authorities said on Wednesday that Baratov and three others  including two men alleged to be officers of the Russian Federal Security Service  were indicted for computer hacking, economic espionage and other crimes.

One of Baratov's lawyers said outside court that the allegations against his client are unfounded.

Amedeo Dicarlo, who spoke to reporters before Baratov's hearing, said he will fight a push to have his client extradited to the U.S.

Dicarlo said his client is "healthy" and "confident" but declined to answer questions about Baratov's personal life or profession, describing him only as an "entrepreneur."

"I cannot describe what Karim does nor who he is until the time is right," he said. Baratov's family is also asking for privacy, he said.

Yahoo, which is based in California, sent an email in September alerting users that their account information  including email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords and security questions  had been stolen in a cyberattack two years earlier.

The company said at least 500 million user accounts were affected.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Liberal government will commit in Wednesday's federal budget to offer disabled veterans the option of a lifetime pension by the end of the year, The Canadian Press has learned.

While the actual details of the pension will be worked out in the coming months, the commitment to a specific timeline will mark an important benchmark for the Liberals' signature election promise to veterans.

Canada previously offer lifelong pensions to those hurt in the line of duty, but they were abolished in 2006 and replaced by a new system centred on a lump-sum payment for injuries and career training.

But the new system has become a lightning rod for veterans' anger, with many complaining that it provides less financial support over their lifetimes and demanding that the pensions be restored.

The Liberals were the only party to promise in the 2015 election to bring back life pensions for injured veterans, with the pledge serving as the centrepiece of their effort to court veteran voters.

In last year's budget, the government fulfilled its promise to increase the lump-sum payment and other financial benefits for vets injured while in uniform.

It also re-opened nine Veterans Affairs Canada offices across the country that had been closed by the Conservatives.

But many questioned whether the government would make good on its pledge to bring back the disability pensions, which both the Conservatives and NDP said would be prohibitively expensive.

Representatives from a number of veterans' groups interviewed earlier this week expressed frustration about the government's silence and perceived lack of progress on a number of fronts.
COLUMBUS  A 42-year-old Columbus man convicted of selling methamphetamine to an undercover informant last spring and meth possession in 2014 was sentenced to prison Thursday during a Platte County District Court hearing.

Judge Robert Steinke sentenced David Kohles to 12 to 30 months in prison for a series of drug transactions over the course of several days last April.

In a separate matter, Steinke revoked Kohles probation for a 2014 meth possession conviction and resentenced the defendant to 12 to 30 months in prison. The judge ordered the sentences to run concurrently.

Kohles pleaded guilty in February to one count of drug delivery, a Class II felony with a maximum sentence of 50 years behind bars, after reaching a plea deal with the Platte County Attorneys Office. In exchange, the county attorneys office dismissed two other drug delivery charges.

The judge granted Kohles credit for 89 days served in the meth distribution case and 78 days previously served in his meth possession case.

The case stems from a Columbus Police investigation of the suspected drug dealer involving transactions with an informant equipped with an audio recording device while officers maintained surveillance.

Police watched while the informant arrived at Kohles residence in the 3800 block of 14th Street, went inside and can be heard on the audio recordings buying meth during separate transactions on April 6 and 12.

Police said the substances bought by the informant later tested positive as meth.
COLUMBUS  An Omaha man pleaded guilty to a reduced theft charge for passing fraudulent checks at three separate branches of a Columbus bank and was released from jail Thursday for time served in the financial scheme.

Platte County Court Judge Frank Skorupa sentenced Sid Madlock Jr. to 90 days in jail for his conviction of theft by deception-$500-$1,500 stemming from the passing of bogus checks on Nov. 22 at three Cornerstone Bank locations.

The judge gave the 65-year-old Madlock credit for 62 days already served since his arrest in Omaha and ordered the defendant to pay Cornerstone Bank $2,764 in restitution. Madlock was released from jail Thursday afternoon.

The Class I misdemeanor carried a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Initially, the theft charge was a felony with a penalty of up to years in prison.

Madlock also initially faced a charge of second-degree forgery $1,500-$5,000, a felony that carried a maximum sentence of two years behind bars.

Madlock was one of two Omahans charged in the case.

Leonard Stearns Jr., 61, has been bound over on charges of second-degree forgery-$5,000 or more and theft by deception-over $5,000. The charges are both Class 2A felonies, each punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment.

The four checks were passed within a one-hour blitz just before noon at Cornerstone Bank locations at 1727 23rd St., 3304 16th St. and 818 E. 23rd St. The checks were written on the accounts of two of the banks clients, Barton Development Inc. and K-2 Real Estate Development, both of Lincoln.

Stearns and Madlock, who were arrested in Omaha within days of each other in mid-January, were accused of cashing the checks totaling $14,263.68 at the three bank locations, with each transaction recorded by bank surveillance video.

Columbus Police Officer Jorge Magdaleno wrote in his statement supporting Madlocks arrest that three of the checks were made out to Stearns, while a fourth was made out to Madlock.
COLUMBUS  Sidumpr Trailer Co. came to Columbus more than three years ago in search of room to expand.

The company has added two new products since moving from its smaller Plainview site in September 2013.

One of the newest tenants along the city's east industrial tract, Sidumpr is owned by Niewohner Brothers Inc., a livestock company operated by Steve, Jerry, Mark and Matt Niewohner, who purchased the trailer manufacturer in 2010. Located in the former Appleton EGS building, a 370,000-square-foot facility at 2500 E. 23rd St., the company makes side-dump trailers used for agriculture and construction companies.

The main one is for construction, but its used in ag also, Steve Niewohner said. You can haul anything you want to in it.

Lisa Meers, an employee at the local plant, said the standard triple-axle trailer is the most popular.

It depends on the state youre in, Meers said. Every state has a different model that it uses. Thats why I think the standard triple is the most popular because it configures to most states bridge laws.

Some of the features include a one-piece tub that comes in 36-, 38- or 40-foot lengths (holding 23, 24 and 25 cubic yards, respectively) and can dump to either side in a 17-second cycle. It has no center divider and can carry a variety of materials.

While the triple-axle may be most popular, Sidumpr also creates tandem- and quad-axle trailers.

We usually have three axles on our standard triple. We just took out the center one and now its a tandem axle. (Its the) same length as the triple, but (it has) only two axles, Meers said. Well customize to our customers needs.

The needs of the customers led the company to create an ag trailer in 2015. Smaller than the standard triple  the tubs come in 24- and 28-foot lengths  the ag trailer was designed for feedlots.

It can hook up to your tractor, your basic John Deere, and then be used at feedlots to haul manure, Meers said.

The ag trailer has a grease bank, making maintenance easy for its owner, and can haul a multitude of materials, including dirt, sand, concrete, tree limbs, rebar and other materials.

Most recently, Sidumpr began producing cattle shades. Measuring 43 1/2 by 46 feet, each shade is supported by an 8 1/2-foot square base weighing more than 10,000 pounds and four poles to hold up the truss-designed structure.

The company has received good response to its newest product.

Theyre almost sold out for this year for what were going to be able to get made, Niewohner said.

Jack Meers, the shop manager, said right now Sidumpr is making about three a week.

We could do more than three a week, he said. But with the way last year went, three was just about right.

Consisting of eight 11 1/2-by-22-foot tarp sections, the shade stands 15 feet high, allowing for air flow and making it easy to clean.

The shades are made by sister company Feeding Systems LLC, which also makes the batch boxes Sidumpr sells.

Batch boxes were created to streamline the feeding process in feedlots. Each batch box is a hydraulically raised and lowered side-dump box powered by an electric motor and controlled by remote control.

You can load them with a front-end loader and then dump them into a feed truck, said Niewohner, who invented the batch box.

The batch box is a time-saving device. The ingredients for a batch feed can be placed in the box while the feed truck is away with another load. By the time the feed truck returns to refill, the box will have everything needed for the next batch of feed.

Batch boxes come in 16- and 19-foot lengths, with both sizes being 10 feet wide and 11 1/2 feet tall.

Niewohner said the company also sells grain carts. You can use (those) for harvesting crops, to get crops out of the field, he said.

There are no plans to expand the product line further as of now, Niewohner said.

Sure therell be different models of each variety coming up and (ways of) doing things differently, he said. If something comes up, were always looking, I guess. But what weve got will pretty much keep us busy, we feel.

The production shop runs on four 10-hour days, but the office is open five days a week for customer convenience.

The number of products isnt the only area where Sidumpr has experienced growth. Lisa Meers said the number of dealers has increased, as well.

Weve got new dealers down in Texas, she said. Weve got another dealer up in Canada. So weve expanded. Washington, too, theres another set out there. And we still have Titan (Machinery) and Jim Hawk (Truck Trailers). Theyre our main ones for the Midwest.

She said the company has about 30 employees, but as of late February they were hiring.

We had gone up some, she said. We probably got up to about 40, and then last year we got down to 30.
HOLDREGE  Sen. Deb Fischer took a swing through central Nebraska on Thursday, drawing pointed questions and some polite applause in a pair of town hall meetings.

About 400 people in total attended the two events, one a cordial morning gathering at an American Legion post in Kearney, the other a lively afternoon stop 30 miles away at the Holdrege City Auditorium.

Neither crowd was anything like the rowdy bunch of 1,000-plus who greeted Rep. Jeff Fortenberry on Monday at Lincoln Southwest High School.

But concerned Nebraskans, including many who drove from Lincoln and Omaha, challenged Fischer on several fronts, particularly during the Holdrege meeting.

Youre not listening! one woman shouted at the start of the question-and-answer period, accusing the Republican senator of turning a deaf ear to the many people who urged her to vote against the confirmation of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Fischer drew groans and boos from the crowd for her support of DeVos, her opposition to continued federal funding for Planned Parenthood and her response to a question about the surge in hate crimes since President Donald Trumps election in November.

Hate comes from both sides," Fischer said while condemning racism and other forms of discrimination as offensive to all of us.

DeVos experience in business demonstrates she is a proven manager capable of running the Department of Education, which acts primarily as a pass-through entity for federal education funding, Fischer said. Betsy DeVos does not introduce legislation.

In their conversations, Fischer said, She assured me that she is not going to be mandating vouchers, charter schools, anything school-choice through the Department of Education.

Both audiences took great umbrage at Fischers insistence that any federal funding given to Planned Parenthood could potentially help offset the cost of abortions. While acknowledging none of that money is used directly for terminating pregnancies, she said budgets are like sponges, and help in one place allows other resources to be shifted.

On health care, Fischer says she supports parts of the Affordable Care Act replacement plan being considered by the House of Representatives that protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, allow children to remain on their parents health plans until they reach age 26 and prohibit lifetime or annual caps on coverage.

Other issues still need working out, she said, such as how to ensure enough young people enlist in health insurance to reduce the overall cost.

Im not committing on this bill one way or another right now, Fischer said.

At times, the Kearney meeting was downright sleepy.

You have one of the nicest, most-polite audiences that I have ever seen, one woman noted before challenging Fischer for giving moderate answers to questions while being notorious for voting the party line.

Democrats didnt part with Barack Obama on his cabinet nominees, Fischer replied, adding that with Trump, I agree with his nominees.

While mostly defending Trump, telling the Kearney crowd his White House staff has been good to work with in our experience, she said during the afternoon session that Trump should release his tax returns for public inspection.

Fischer said there are some areas of concern with the federal budget proposal Trump submitted Thursday to Congress. That includes putting additional money into school-choice programs that can be spent better elsewhere, she said, such as on school lunch programs or early childhood education.

She also took issue with the overall methodology for cuts: A better policy would be to look at programs rather than have a number out there that youre going to cut certain departments.

The two events drew a mixed crowd of locals and people from out of town, such as John and Nancy Votta of Lincoln.

She wont go there, so we had to come here, Nancy Votta said.

Fischer said she plans to host more sessions in eastern Nebraska in August. On Thursday, fellow Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse announced he will host a pair of town hall meetings in Elkhorn and Aurora.

Jerry Horstman of Tecumseh made the 200-mile drive to Fischers meeting in Holdrege with a sign reading, All U.S. Citizens need health care, not just Congress  and LIAR painted on the other side.

Hopefully we wont have to turn that side around too much, he joked.

Fischers supporters didnt stand out as much, but they were there.

We wanted to get the room as full as possible with supporters rather than detractors, said Wayne Karschner, a retired salesman and video producer in Kearney. Rather than have her shouted down.
The battle over Whiteclay beer sales is heating up in the final weeks before a planned showdown in front of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission.

The state attorney generals office recently accused Whiteclays four beer stores of committing 22 violations of state liquor laws, including selling to bootleggers, keeping inadequate records and selling alcohol after hours.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the beer stores are trying to prevent the liquor commission from potentially denying reissuance of the stores licenses.

The activity comes as beer store owners prepare to face off next month with critics who want them shut down. A hearing is scheduled April 6-7 at the Capitol on whether law enforcement in Whiteclay is adequate to let beer sales continue.

The liquor commission scheduled the hearing and ordered the beer stores to reapply for their liquor licenses last year, citing concerns about law enforcement in the unincorporated village in northwest Nebraska.

Whiteclay is home to about a dozen permanent residents and sits just 200 yards from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where alcohol is banned. Yet the four beer stores sell millions of cans of beer and malt liquor each year, much of which is consumed by people on the reservation.

Hobie Rupe, the Liquor Control Commissions executive director, said an audit of the stores that began in fall 2015 uncovered significant irregularities that ultimately resulted in the citations from the attorney generals office, which were filed Feb. 27.

We consider these serious violations and are prepared to provide evidence in support of the allegations, Attorney General Doug Peterson said in a statement.

Rupe said the liquor commission wont consider those citations until at least May or June, after it has weighed in on renewal of the liquor licenses.

On Wednesday, attorneys for the beer stores asked a judge in Lincoln to block any action by the liquor commission other than to quickly reissue the licenses, arguing renewal is their clients constitutionally protected right.

The request was made in a filing in Lancaster County District Court. The beer stores made a similar motion with the liquor commission Tuesday, which Rupe will discuss with the parties involved in a phone conference next week.

Andrew Snyder of Scottsbluff, an attorney representing the beer stores, did not return a message left at his office late Thursday.

Rupe said he assumed the hearing will still take place as planned next month, but declined to comment further.

Activists who have fought for years to have the stores shut down celebrated the attorney generals decision to pursue legal action against the stores.

The other shoe may have finally dropped in Whiteclay, said John Maisch, a lawyer and former liquor regulator in Oklahoma who produced a documentary film about the impacts of Whiteclay alcohol sales.
Aroon Purie, Chairman The India Today Group

The biggest obstacle to India's growth is its slothful, unresponsive, wasteful bureaucracy. It is the delivering arm of any government. However great government plans are and, however noble its intention, it is likely to get lost or at best diluted in our bureaucratic maze... We don't need to cut the red tape--we need to throw away the tape most of the time.
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Your region is ready to win the European Entrepreneurial Region (EER) award for an ambitious and outstanding SMEs and entrepreneurs strategy? Better be quick, application ends on 7 April 2017.

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) yearly identifies and rewards three EU regions which show an outstanding and innovative entrepreneurial policy strategy, irrespective of their size, wealth and competences. The three most forward-thinking and promising visions with a credible implementation plan are granted the label European Entrepreneurial Region (EER) for the specific year.

Who can apply?

All EU territories below the level of the Member State that are endowed with competences at a political level and able to implement an overall entrepreneurial strategy are welcome to participate. Within the EER scheme, "regions" are defined in the broadest sense, including communities, autonomous communities, departments, Lander, provinces, counties, metropolitan areas, large cities, as well as cross-border territories with legal personality such as EGTCs and Euroregions.

How to apply?

Submit an application consisting of the following items:

an application form , including a fact sheet on the applicant territory, an outline of its political vision, a description of foreseen governance mechanism to ensure efficient implementation of the EER actions, as well as an action plan and a communication plan;

declaration of political commitment demonstrating that the territory's EER strategy is endorsed by its political leadership (e.g. the regional assembly, the regional government or other authorised political bodies). The application form can be downloaded from the demonstrating that the territory's EER strategy is endorsed by its political leadership (e.g. the regional assembly, the regional government or other authorised political bodies). The application form can be downloaded from the EER web page

Assessment criteria:

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Political vision and commitment

Multi-level governance, partnership and cooperation

Delivery

Communication

What happens next?

The winners of the EER award 2018 will be announced during the award ceremony in July 2017. The implementation of the prize-winning regional strategies will be monitored throughout the award year by the EER jury, which is composed of CoR members, representatives of EU institutions and social partners. At the end of the year, the jury visits the awarded territories in order to verify the progress made and provide them with an objective outside view on their policies. The main results and achievements of the EER 2018 winners will also be shared and discussed among regional and local authorities through the EER network.
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Some people love dogs. Others love cats. (And either pet can improve your health.) People usually think of cats as aloof and independent. Dog people often prefer canines extroverted playfulness to cats quiet affection. And people often think their pet choice says something about their personality. But pets and people dont always live up to the stereotypes. In fact, some kinds of cats act more like a happy-go-lucky dog. Some will play fetch with you. Others love to go swimming. And still others will come when you call their names.

Check out these 15 cat breeds that act just like dogs.

1. Abyssinian

PawCulture reports that one of the best cat breeds for people who are more accustomed to dogs is the Abyssinian. This breed loves water (unlike your average household cat). These cats also like to play fetch with their favorite toys. Plus, they follow their owners around the house. Theyre also receptive to leash training. The only drawback? Because the Abyssinian needs more attention than other cat breeds, they arent the best choice if you need to leave your pet alone often.

Next: The Ragdoll cat



2. Ragdoll

The Ragdoll cat gets its name from one of the breeds most peculiar behaviors. These cats go limp when you pick them up, just like a rag doll. The mannerism exemplifies the breeds laid-back personality. Ragdolls get along easily with children and adults. They also adapt easily to households with other cats and dogs. Ragdolls are playful but not so energetic that theyll overwhelm pet owners with busy lifestyles.

Next: The American Bobtail cat

3. American Bobtail

Martha Stewarts site lists the American Bobtail as one of the best cat breeds for dog people. Bobtails are loving and intelligent cats  qualities many dog owners prize in their pets. The Bobtail has earned a reputation as a doglike cat. And the breed might be a good choice for families with children because these cats adapt to loud and chaotic environments much more smoothly than the average feline.

Next: The Bombay cat

4. Bombay

Another cat that makes the list of cat breeds that act just like dogs? The Bombay. Martha Stewart reports Bombays can be leash-trained, just like a puppy. Many of them enjoy playing catch. And all are fond of inventing new ways to entertain themselves and the folks who live with them. That might make them the perfect cat for pet owners who are more used to the way dogs behave.

Next: The Maine Coon cat

5. Maine Coon

The Maine Coon is one of the most famously doglike cats. PawCulture explains the Maine Coon is also one of the largest breeds of domestic cats. (Male Maine Coons weigh between 12 and 18 pounds. Females weigh between 10 and 14 pounds.) In addition to matching the size of many toy dog breeds, Maine Coons are devoted to and playful around their owners. They can, however, be reserved toward visitors with whom they arent familiar. And they require a little more brushing than many other breeds of cats because they have thick coats that mat easily.

Next: The Birman cat

6. Birman

PawCulture reports the Birman makes an excellent companion. Thats because these cats are active and playful when youre energetic and engaged with them. And they can be quiet when youre otherwise occupied. The breed does well with children. Birmans also easy to handle and care for, which means they might be a good choice if your kids want a pet, but you dont want anything high-maintenance.

Next: The Manx cat

7. Manx

The Manx might be one of the first cats youll hear about if you start asking around about cats that behave like dogs. These cats engage in many doglike behaviors. Theyll retrieve toys. (Sometimes, theyll even bury their toys.) If youre considering a Manx, ensure that youre ready for the commitment. Martha Stewart warns that once a Manx adjusts to you and your family, it might be difficult for the cat to be happy in a different home. PawCulture explains the Manx can be trained to understand the command no. And these cats also come when you call their names.

Next: The Ocicat

8. Ocicat

Martha Stewart reports the Ocicat is another breed thats intelligent and easy to train. Many cats of this breed can learn to fetch. They can also walk on a leash. Many will respond to voice commands. And if you were worried about a defiant cat, youll be happy to learn Ocicats readily adapt to household rules. Plus, they grow extremely devoted to their people, in the same way that dogs do.

Next: The Ragamuffin cat

9. Ragamuffin

Already love the name? Then, youll love a Ragamuffin cat. According to the Martha Stewart site, these cats are extremely sweet and act a lot like lap dogs. They also love attention from you and from the other members of your family. That means many of these cats follow their owners from room to room, greet them at the door, and otherwise act as loyal companions.

Next: The Siberian cat

10. Siberian

Martha Stewart reports Siberians are particularly well-suited to households in which one spouse professes to be a dog person rather than a cat person.' Thats because Siberians grow incredibly loyal to their people. They also exhibit the same problem-solving skills many people love in their dogs. That might make them a great fit for a prospective pet owner who wants a cat but has more experience with canines than felines.

Next: The American Curl cat

11. American Curl

The American Curl is another doglike cat breed. (Its name refers to the breeds unique curled ears.) Martha Stewart explains these affectionate cats adjust easily to households with children and other pets. They also handle new situations very well. The breed is known for its doglike attentiveness. And many American Curl owners report their cats follow them around the house. PawCulture explains the American Curl exhibits a natural affinity to children. And the American Curl has the curiosity of your average household cat, without the indifference to people.

Next: The Chartreux cat

12. Chartreux

Martha Stewarts site reports Chartreux cats quickly grow attached to their owners. This is another cat breed that will follow you from room to room. They learn to respond to their names. And if you choose, you can teach one of these cats to fetch. If youre a dog person who shares a home with a cat person, you might not be able to resist a Chartreuxs face. Thats because these cats appear to smile, often thanks to the shape of their heads and muzzles.

Next: The Burmese cat

13. Burmese

A Burmese also makes a great choice for reluctant cat owners who are really more comfortable with dogs. Martha Stewart reports these cats have a doglike tendency to shadow their owners. Burmese owners say their cats like to give and receive affection. And they can keep themselves  and you  entertained by learning to retrieve, just like a dog. PawCulture reports the Burmese is both intelligent and amusing. These cats will sit and wait for their food, just like dogs. And theyre dependent on their people, which means its a good idea to find someone to spend time with your cat while youre away.

Next: The Turkish Angora cat

14. Turkish Angora

Devoted dog people, hear us out. An Angora sounds like a high-maintenance cat. But theyre actually incredibly doglike. These cats love to greet visitors when they arrive at your house. In fact, Martha Stewarts site reports that it is not unusual for a Turk to act as the host at a party or other gathering, interacting with and inspecting every guest. PawCulture notes these cats love being involved in whatever youre doing. And the breed is also known for its swimming skills.

Next: The Sphynx cat

15. Sphynx

Lets get this out of the way. The Sphynx, also known as the hairless cat, isnt quite as hairless as it appears. These cats are actually covered in a fine down that feels soft to the touch. (Because they dont have hair like other cats, they need to be bathed frequently to prevent skin problems.) PawCulture characterizes the Sphynx as lively, loyal, and devoted. Just like dogs, they follow their humans around, wag their tails, and show affection to their owners.
Immigration is in the news, and thats not likely to change anytime soon. Weve all heard America is a nation of immigrants (as are many others), and that is largely true. Yet, that hasnt stopped many native-born Americans from having concerns about people leaving their home countries and moving to the United States. The truth is immigration is vital to our economy and future. There are reasons for concern, to be fair, but if we were to go into isolation, it would be disastrous.

Fortunately, most communities in the U.S. dont have much to worry about. The majority of immigrants moving to America are headed to a handful of large cities in search of jobs and opportunity. Research from job search site Indeed has revealed which specific cities those are.

This research sheds light on the U.S. metro areas and jobs that are most appealing to job seekers from Indeeds international markets, Indeed economist Daniel Culbertson said in Indeeds report. While job seekers are most attracted to metro areas that afford them the greatest amount of opportunity, cultural and geographic factors carry influence in job seekers preferences as well. Those metro areas that continue to capitalize on these inflows, and their employers, will benefit from greatly diverse and growing pool of workers.

From Indeeds data, here are the 10 major cities (in no particular order) attracting immigrant workers.

1. New York

Seeing New York City on this list shouldnt be a surprise. New York has long been a destination not only for people moving to the U.S. from other countries, but for Americans who are looking for better opportunities. Its the nations largest city and one rife with chances for those willing to make the jump. People from Israel and France top the list in terms of search queries for jobs in New York, per Indeeds data.

2. Los Angeles

Los Angeles is, in some ways, New York Citys antithesis. Its laid back and warm, for example. But its also very similar in that its a giant metropolis located on the coast. And its attractive for job seekers around the world. Indeeds data show the top job searches for L.A. include the terms studio, film, and actor. And the biggest share of those searching are from Taiwan and Korea.

3. Washington, D.C.

There are many immigrants looking for job opportunities in the nations capital of Washington, D.C. The search queries are more or less what you would expect: world bank, think tank, and embassy are among the most popular. As for where job seekers are coming from, Indeeds data says Austria and Korea top the list.

4. Chicago

The countrys third-largest city, Chicago, is another popular destination for incoming migrants. The search terms are a bit different from the other cities on this list, They include occupational therapist, senior accountant, and summer intern. The countries with the most queries regarding jobs in the Chicago area are China, Poland, and Chile.

5. Miami

Will Smith once had a song about how great Miami is. Clearly, people around the world bought in. Lots of would-be immigrants are looking for jobs in Miami, as evidenced by Indeeds data. Just look at the most popular search terms: yacht, aviation, airlines, and foreign language are all on top. Most searchers are from Latin America, too. Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Peru make up the top five.

6. San Diego

Who wouldnt want to live in San Diego? Its warm, sunny, and near Los Angeles. For those reasons and others, San Diego is high on anyones wish list when looking for places to live. According to Indeed, the top search terms are a bit scattered. They include LVN, shipyard, janitorial, and school district, so take from that what you will. Would-be migrants are doing the most searches from Mexico, Chile, Ireland, and Japan.

7. Seattle

Seattle is not in sunny California, but its a city with plenty of opportunities. Located in the cold, wet Pacific Northwest, Seattles tech sector has been growing fast in recent years, and for that reason, many people are looking for jobs there. Top search terms for Seattle include software development, along with Amazon-related terms, distribution and inventory. Most search traffic is coming from Asian countries.

8. San Francisco

Like Seattle, San Francisco has undergone a big tech revolution  bigger than anywhere, in fact. Silicon Valley is nearby, and the Bay Area as a whole has become a major business hub. Popular search terms include product manager, ui ux designer, and software intern. Searches are coming in from Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong, along with European countries France and Ireland.

9. Boston

Dont forget about Boston. The New England city is yet another that is experiencing a lot of business and economic growth. Its home to many highly ranked colleges, too, meaning many students from other countries are in and around the area. Popular search terms for Boston include, oddly enough, dog walker, CFO, and neuroscience. Searchers are mostly from Europe, and those from Brazil and Taiwan are high up the list, too.

10. Houston

Houston is the final city Indeeds data singled out. Its a huge city  within the top five largest in the country. Because of that, there are a lot of opportunities to find work. Engineering is big in Houston, as you can see in the popular search terms: structural engineer, piping engineer, instrumentation engineer, and reservoir engineer, for example. Searches are mostly coming from Latin America, with the exception of one: Saudi Arabia.

More from Culture Cheat Sheet:
Molecules are identified by activating dark electronic states in the sensor material, resulting in a new visible peak. The altered optical fingerprint of the material proves the presence of molecules.

More efficient sensors are needed to be able to detect environmental pollution. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have proposed a new, sophisticated method of detecting molecules with sensors based on ultra-thin nanomaterials. The novel method could improve environmental sensing in the future.

"This could open up new possibilities for the detection of environmental gases. Our method is more robust than conventional sensors, which rely on small changes in optical properties", says Maja Feierabend, PhD student at the Department of Physics and the main author of the article from Chalmers University of Technology and Technische Universitat Berlin.

Together with her supervisor, Associate Professor Ermin Malic, and Gunnar Berghauser, postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers, she has proposed a new type of chemical nanosensor that consists of atomically thin nanomaterials that are extremely sensitive to changes in their surroundings.

If you shine light on the sensor, you will see the optical fingerprint of the material itself. Molecules are identified by activating dark electronic states in the sensor material. If there are molecules on its surface, they will interact with these dark states and switch them on, making them visible. The result is an altered optical fingerprint, containing new features that prove the presence of the molecules.

"Our method has promising potential, paving the way for ultra-thin, fast, efficient and accurate sensors. In the future, this could hopefully lead to highly sensitive and selective sensors that can be used in environmental research", says Ermin Malic.

The researchers have filed a patent application for the novel sensor method. The next step is to work with experimental physicists and chemists to demonstrate the proof-of-principle for this new class of chemical sensors.
Materials manufacturer Covestro has resolved to continue manufacturing the rigid foam precursor MDI in Tarragona (Spain). The plant closure that had originally been planned for the end of 2017 has been suspended for the time being. The main reason for this decision was the significant increase in demand for MDI. Furthermore, Covestro has managed to get access to important raw materials  in particular chlorine  for the Tarragona site for the next years beyond the end of 2017. According to current plans, the impact on the employees will be minimized.

This is good news for the Tarragona site and our employees. Through our continued operations in Tarragona, we want to reliably meet our customers growth further on, said Andrea Firenze, Managing Director of Covestro S.L. in Spain.

The continuous optimization of the production worldwide remains an important element of Covestros strategy. The aim is to operate the most efficient facilities when compared with competitors.

The decision is a clear statement that we remain committed to the MDI market. We will investigate various options for additional MDI to cover the growing demand, added Markus Steilemann, Head of the Business Unit Polyurethanes and Board Member for Innovation. In this context, Covestro is committed to its plans to increase MDI production at its German site in Brunsbuttel.

Covestro has two locations in Spain that currently employ around 330 people. The Covestro site in Barcelona (Zona Franca) is dedicated to the manufacturing of resins and the production of coatings, textile and fabric treatments, acrylic dispersions and polyurethanes. At the end of 2016, the company announced the incorporation of a new production line of polyurethane dispersion for coating textiles.

At the Tarragona location, Covestro operates an MDI facility, a polyurethane system house and infrastructure facilities that are also available to other companies in the chemical park. In addition, a logistics center for hydrochloric acid will be built here, with an investment of around three million euros.
The specialty chemicals Group ALTANA concluded the 2016 fiscal year with an increase in sales and a leap in earnings. Sales rose by 1 percent to 2,075 million. Adjusted for acquisition and exchange rate effects, sales grew by 2 percent compared to the previous year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose by 16 percent to 453 million, thus significantly surpassing the previous years result (391 million). At 21.8 percent, the EBITDA margin was also higher than the previous years figure (19.0 percent).

2016 was a very good year for ALTANA. In a challenging market environment, we were able to increase our sales and earnings, said Martin Babilas, CEO of ALTANA AG. We are well on track for further profitable growth.

BYK and ECKART as growth drivers

In 2016, the BYK Additives & Instruments and ECKART Effect Pigments divisions were the drivers of sales growth in the ALTANA Group. BYK boosted sales by 4 percent to 909 million. The rise in sales due to the acquisition of Addcomp Holland B. V. in mid-2016 compensated for minor negative exchange rate effects. Adjusted for these effects, the divisions operating sales growth was also 4 percent.

Sales in the ECKART division amounted to 362 million, with both nominal sales and sales adjusted for minor exchange rate effects up by 3 percent.

At 452 million, sales in the ELANTAS Electrical Insulation division were 2 percent lower than in the previous year. Adjusted for exchange rate effects, sales were on a par with the previous years level.

Sales in the ACTEGA Coatings & Sealants division decreased by 6 percent to 352 million on account of the sale of the ACTEGA Colorchemie group in the spring of 2016. Adjusted for this acquisition and minor currency effects, sales reached the previous years level.

Outlook: Further profitable growth

For the 2017 fiscal year, ALTANA expects the global economy to exhibit slightly stronger growth than in the previous year and overall increasing sales volumes. In this environment, ALTANA anticipates to achieve operating sales growth of 2 to 5 percent with slightly lower earnings profitability. While acquisitions are expected to contribute to sales, the companys nominal sales growth may be influenced by exchange rate changes that are difficult to predict.
Anyone who's signed a contract for a mortgage or even a club membership knows they can be a pain, especially if you miss a clause about overages, fees or extra costs.

Michael Asare, founder and CEO of FineprintF Technologies in Chicago says he has your back. He created FeeBelly, a mobile app he calls "a fine-print detective" for consumers.

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The app can read documents to show hidden fees and other costly details buried in terms of use, financial agreements and contracts. Asare built the app for a variety of documents, from car loans to warranties.

Users take a picture of the document with their phone and select the type of contract for the app to read. FeeBelly searches line-by-line for language and keywords that it has stored in the cloud related to hidden fees. It also can read PDFs uploaded into the app.

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The app then highlights the keywords in red; tapping on the word takes users to the paragraph so they can re-examine it.

"If you don't feel comfortable, you can ask if they will waive or renegotiate the terms or you can check out what the competition has before you buy," said Asare, adding that people could also check out the terms with a lawyer.

But the reality is that people don't always read contracts. Asare learned that the hard way. When he was ready to pay off a loan, he found out it had a prepayment clause that he didn't catch.

"I ended up paying more than I should have on the loan," he said. "That was like a 'wow' moment for me."

He incorporated the company in August 2015 with $150,000 in savings as well as money from friends and family investors. Since FeeBelly's launch Jan. 9, Asare said, it has drawn $24,000 in revenue from paid subscribers.

It has 596 active users, mainly in the U.S., he said. About 200 of those users paid for a premium version that has more keywords and can scan, store and email larger documents. The paid version costs $99 per year, or $8.99 per month. Asare hopes to break even in the second quarter of 2018.

To grow revenue and customers, Asare hopes to add advertising on the free version, plus ratings and scorecards for businesses that would include hidden fee and cost summaries. He is working on a computer browser plug-in to read larger documents for use by business customers at a different price.

Consumer class action attorney Keith Keogh agrees that shedding light on terms and conditions can only be helpful for consumers, though he cautioned against relying too heavily on the app.

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"The danger is that someone will rely upon that and miss something that might be important or terms the app might not pick up," Keogh said. "It should be a tool to highlight the issue, but not to replace reading the document."

Kate MacArthur is a freelance journalist.

Twitter @KateMacArthur
News anchor Ron Magers applauds for his co-workers as they applaud for him after he delivered his final newscast for ABC 7 Chicago at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 25, 2016. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

The hair may still be perfect, but Chicago television news anchors have been growing older, however imperceptibly, before our eyes.

A spate of prominent retirements and medical leaves in the last year has changed the face of local TV news, and an aging talent pool presages more to come.

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Chicago TV stations are filled with veteran on-air news talent, and loyal viewers treat them as "kind of a big deal," in the words of fictional anchorman Ron Burgundy. When longtime anchors retire, stations often go to their benches for experienced successors in an effort to minimize the disruption and maintain credibility with viewers.

"You want that gravitas; you want that journalism experience," said David Doebler, president and general manager of NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5. "There's no substitute for experience."

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Retired WLS-Ch. 7 anchor Linda Yu, left, shares a meal with her family March 15, 2017, at her children's Los Angeles home. Yu and her husband, Stuart Ellison, second from left, purchased multiple apartments in one LA building where their children now live. From left: Yu; Ellison; granddaughter Cora Ellison; son Adam; daughter-in-law Dana Season, back to camera; and Yu's daughter Francesca Ling Baer. Her son Rick Baer is partially seen at far right. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The American workforce is aging broadly, with the number of people still working at age 65 or older nearly doubling in the new millennium, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center analysis of data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most aging employees, however, don't have to do it live on camera in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Those viewers, meanwhile, also are growing older  and fewer  increasing the pressure on TV stations as they seek to replace familiar faces.

Recent retirees at top-rated ABC -owned WLS-Ch. 7 include longtime anchors Ron Magers and Linda Yu. In addition, veteran political reporter Charles Thomas retired this month, and Frank Mathie is calling it quits next month after 50 years as a reporter at the station.

I'm still hearing from people with, "I miss you so much." It's a wonderful thing because that's how you got them to watch regularly.  Linda Yu, former ABC-7 anchor

"We have a long tradition and legacy of experienced talent at the television station," said John Idler , president and general manager of ABC 7. "The challenge for us is that our viewers get very comfortable, and if somebody chooses to retire and end their career, change is hard for our viewers sometimes."

Connecting on-air talent with the audience translates into ratings, revenue and an intimate relationship that can last decades. Keeping it going means navigating everything from medical and personal issues to the ultimate decision to leave in a very public manner.

Earlier this month, Rob Stafford, 58, who co-anchors the 10 p.m. newscast for NBC 5, told viewers he was going to the Mayo Clinic to undergo a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy to fight a rare blood disorder. He expects to be off the air for four to six months, with veteran anchor Dick Johnson tapped to replace him.

Stafford, a former Chicago-based "Dateline NBC" correspondent who joined NBC 5 in 2007, has been updating viewers on his treatment through his Facebook page, just as he did in 2015 when he was sidelined by a broken ankle.

ABC 7 anchor Hosea Sanders revealed last month that he will be off the air for prostate cancer surgery. The station issued a news release Feb. 28 announcing Sanders' surgery.

"We do have to consider our audience and what the message is to them," Channel 7's Idler said. "But what's paramount is how the individual wants to handle it, because it's their health issue."

Average viewership for late-night local TV news has declined 22 percent since 2007, according to a Pew report published last year. Pew found that 61 percent of millennials rely on Facebook for political news, while 37 percent look to local TV news. For baby boomers, it's nearly the reverse, with 60 percent turning to local TV and 39 percent using Facebook.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 11 ABC 7 news anchor and disability reporter Hosea Sanders addresses the audience. (Karie Angell Luc / Chicago Tribune)

"The numbers are down and the demographics are terrible," said Michael Rosenblum, who founded New York Times TV and Current TV and now heads up consulting company RosenblumTV. "I don't think anybody under the age of 30 even watches television news. Probably the median age is somewhere around 60 to dead."

However, local news remains the primary revenue source for TV stations, said Steve Ridge, chief operating officer for Frank N. Magid Associates, a television consulting firm.

"It's still the big moneymaker," Ridge said. "That will make or break a station."

Ridge said that as the audience gets "progressively older," stations need to gradually refresh their talent pool in a bid to attract younger viewers without shocking the core loyalists. But old habits are hard to break for most viewers.

WLS-Ch. 7 news anchor Judy Hsu, center, and meteorologist Cheryl Scott, right, pose for a photograph before the start of the 4 p.m. newscast March 16, 2017. Hsu has replaced Linda Yu, who retired in November. Scott's visibility is growing as longtime meteorologist Jerry Taft's role decreases. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

"People do like getting their news from specific people," Ridge said. "They have a certain comfort level."

As long as veteran anchors still are resonating with their core audiences and delivering ratings, retirements and medical leaves are the likely agents of change. Preparing for that shift, however, is crucial for keeping a station on top, Idler said.

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In May, when Magers, then 71, retired after more than three decades in Chicago TV news, he was succeeded at 10 p.m. by early evening anchor Alan Krashesky, a 35-year veteran at ABC 7.

"The challenge happens well before that person gets to the age of retirement," Idler said. "The challenge is building that big bench. As terrific as Ron was and is, it was fantastic to be able to tap into our resources and put Alan Krashesky in that place."

The station made a similar transition last fall when Yu, a pioneering Asian-American broadcast journalist who logged more than 30 years at ABC 7, retired.

Yu's final broadcast was Nov. 23  a week before her 70th birthday.

"The blessing that I've had in life is that I don't seem to show my age," Yu said. "The comment that I got from so many people was, 'Why are you retiring? You're only in your 40s.'"

Judy Hsu, a 16-year veteran of the station, shifted from mornings to succeed Yu as co-anchor of the 4 p.m. newscast.

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"We knew our viewers knew her; they just weren't used to seeing her in that time period," Idler said. "So in advance of Linda Yu leaving, we put her in that time period so those viewers got used to seeing her."

Hsu, 46, who immigrated to Chicago from Taiwan as an 11-year-old, grew up watching Yu and was inspired to follow in her footsteps with a career in TV news. She never expected to actually replace Yu.

"I am trying to live up to that very high bar that Linda has set," Hsu said after finishing her afternoon newscast Thursday.

Viewers have responded to the change with mixed emotions via hundreds of social media messages, Hsu said.

"Most of them start out by saying, 'I'm so going to miss Linda,' but end with, 'I'm really glad you're going to be there in the afternoon,'" Hsu said.

Yu, who still lives in Chicago, is spending her first winter off the air visiting her adult children and other family in Los Angeles, where she was raised. For the first few months after retirement, she did a lot of nothing, decompressing after decades of deadlines.

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More recently, she has "gotten off the couch" to lunch with friends, and she is beginning to feel the need to get busy again, exploring a new project with the Chinese publisher behind her 2015 book, "Living and Working in America."

Three years ago, when Yu broke her leg in a motorcycle accident, she connected with concerned viewers through Facebook to assure them she would be back on the air as soon as possible. Now she is using the social media platform to update them on her post-retirement life.

"I'm still hearing from people with, 'I miss you so much,'" Yu said. "It's a wonderful thing because that's how you got them to watch regularly."

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
The hottest large beer company in the U.S. has faced an odd dilemma since Donald Trump was elected president.

Beer sales for Constellation Brands  best known for Mexican imports like Corona and Modelo  continue to soar, but the company's stock has suffered from Wall Street anxiety over border tax proposals floated by the White House and House Republicans. The company, which acquired the U.S. rights to its Mexican beers in 2013, and had $6.5 billion in sales last year, presumably would be affected by a tax on imports.

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Paul Hetterich, president of Constellation Brands' beer division, calls that "background noise."

"We're sticking to our strategy. We're building a lot of incremental capacity in Mexico to support our continued growth. We continue to invest more in the marketing of our brands year over year, but we've been doing that. And we're going to continue to do that," said Hetterich, 54, in the 1 S. Dearborn St. office where Constellation's beer business is headquartered.

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The strategy seems to be working: Corona is the top-selling import beer in the U.S. Modelo is the fastest-growing full-calorie beer in the U.S. and the second-largest beer in Chicago, behind only Miller Lite, according to data from Chicago-based market research firm IRI. And in 2015, Constellation Brands made a big splash into the craft beer category when it bought San Diego-based Ballast Point Brewing Co., one of the fastest-growing craft beer brands, for $1 billion.

Victor, N.Y.-based Constellation Brands also sells wine and spirits, but beer is driving its growth. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Import beers used to mean beers like Heineken and St. Pauli Girl. Now Corona and Modelo and other Mexican beers are completely dominating the category. To what do you attribute that success?

A: This is like one of those 30-year overnight successes. It's traditional brand-building. And more recently, I think the acceleration we've seen is a few things. Part of it is becoming independent and not just an importer.

But I think it's also the Hispanic consumers. Everyone's been talking about the Hispanic consumers for 20 years, right? It's going to become X percent of the population and drive X amount of the consumption. It all of a sudden really landed in a big way, in terms of (legal-drinking age) Hispanic population that likes to consume brands. And they like to consume brands that they know.

Q: Ballast Point is one of the most expensive six-packs on the shelves. (The Sculpin and Grapefruit Sculpin IPAs often sell for about $13 a six-pack.) Is that sustainable? Would Constellation consider lowering the price?

A: No, it's very sustainable. Someone asked me the other day, 'When does premiumization and trading up ever stop?' And I thought about it for a second and said, 'I don't think it ever stops.' Why? Because eventually what we call premium or high-end might become 100 percent of the volume. People would have said a few years ago, you can't build a million-case brand of $20 wine. Now there's like 20 of them.

So that's what going to happen in beer. Why can't you sell a $20 six-pack?

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Q: Does Ballast Point satisfy the craft beer need for Constellation Brands?

A: Not entirely. We need to play across that spectrum over the course of time. That might come from organic development. It could come through (mergers and acquisitions). It could come through our ventures arm, where we've been investing in early stage brands.

Q: Will there be more craft deals in the year ahead or is the company still digesting the Ballast Point deal?

A: It's not that we're digesting Ballast Point, as much as we're focused on driving that. So we don't necessarily want to dilute our efforts in driving that brand to its full potential. So we're going to be patient. There's no reason to say we have to do anything this instant.

Q: Are you seeing any slowing of sales growth in flagship beers like Modelo or Corona?

A: No and it's all about this premiumization trend. If you look at beer for the Chicago metropolitan area, it's basically a flat category in terms of volume. But there's a big mix shift going on. High-end beer is growing, low-end beer is shrinking, which is actually not a bad thing from a business perspective. It just depends on where your business is positioned. We're just super fortunate in that regard. You might say we were really smart strategically years ago.

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Q: How is the company preparing for the possibility of a border adjustment tax?

A: It's really impossible at this stage to predict what might get proposed and then what might pass. You might have some sort of tax that has to do with imports, but then you have a corporate rate that goes lower. And the two might offset one another. It's hard to speculate where things will end up.

And clearly, that bit of a cloud is what's put a damper on the stock in the short term. But we're in this for the long haul. Always have been. And our growth continues.

Q: And CEO Rob Sands has said that if some sort of border tax were to come to pass, you could move some supply chain costs north of the border.

A: You could, but it's all just speculation at the moment. But at the core of it, one of the reasons people love our brands is because it's Mexican beer. It can't be Mexican beer if it's not made in Mexico.

Q: What's the biggest challenge to Constellation Brands' beer portfolio?

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A: The biggest challenge is the industry is going through one of the biggest transformations. The last time you would have seen a transformation of this magnitude was back when regionals became nationals. When Miller, Coors and Anheuser-Busch put their brands on TV back in the 1970s and the whole business went from all these regional brands to these national brands. That's what the business has been for 50 years.

And now it's transitioning to this more fragmented high-end space, in terms of what's commanding the business. But what has not come along with that is how distributors think about their business, where it is and where it's going. And how retailers think, where it is and where it's going. Our biggest challenge with that is how do you impact the shelf space, so hot brands like Corona and Modelo aren't out of stock.

gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib
Heidi Tucker and over 150 other Rush Medical College students share excitement as they open envelopes on Match Day, March 17, 2017, to learn where they will be spending the next three to seven years. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Anisha Malhotra opened her envelope amid screams of joy from her classmates.

Tears streamed down the medical student's face when she saw the letter inside, saying she'd been matched to a residency program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center  her top choice.

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"I'm excited I get to go somewhere new," Malhotra, who grew up mostly near Philadelphia, said between hugs from her Rush Medical College classmates. "And the training is so good."

Still, she knows that this Match Day, in particular, not everyone was as lucky. This year's Match Day  the day medical school students and some graduates find out where they'll do their post-medical school training, known as residencies  came amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump's temporary travel bans and just on the heels of changes to the visa processing system.

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Those issues added a layer of complexity to the match process, causing worry among foreign doctors hoping to do their residencies here and concern among the hospitals that depend on foreign residents to care for patients.

Hospital residency programs across the country chose more than 3,800 foreign applicants for first-year residency spots this year  nearly 14 percent of all those matched with first-year spots through the main match, according to the National Resident Matching Program. That's slightly more foreign matches than last year even though the number of foreign applicants dropped a bit.

Anisha Malhotra, facing camera, reacts after opening her letter on March 17, 2017, and finding out she will be going toUniversity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for her medical residency. Rush Medical College's 155 graduating medical students opened envelopes at the Union League Club in Chicago to learn where they will be spending the next three to seven years. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

"It's going to affect care," Malhotra said of the impact of the travel ban and visa changes on this year's match. She noted that she worked alongside many foreign doctors at Cook County Health and Hospitals System, where she spent time as part of her Rush medical education. "They're the smartest people I've ever met. They're such good physicians."

An estimated 100 to 400 doctors could have trouble getting visas to start their residencies this summer if Trump's travel ban is reinstated, according to the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates. A federal court put the 90-day ban on immigration for residents of six predominantly Muslim countries on hold this week, but its ultimate fate is uncertain.

"When we're talking about physicians coming to this country, the executive order couldn't have come out at a worse time," said Dr. William Pinsky, commission president and CEO.

Many other residents also could be affected by recent changes to visa processing. Earlier this month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would temporarily suspend expedited visa processing for all petitions for H-1B visas  visas that allow highly skilled people from other countries to work in the U.S. Without expedited processing, some foreign doctors selected for U.S. residencies might not get visas fast enough to start their residencies July 1.

Hospitals that rely heavily on foreign residents, such as Chicago's Stroger Hospital, have worried throughout the match process about what it all could mean for them.

Stroger tried to avoid selecting applicants if there was a serious concern they wouldn't be able to get into the country because of Trump's travel ban, said Dr. John O'Brien, chair of the Department of Professional Education at Stroger. The safety net hospital can't afford for large numbers of residents not to show up.

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The hospital is also still on edge about how the visa processing changes will affect it. In Stroger's internal medicine program, for example, 27 of 40 residents will need visas to do their residencies. H-1B visas aren't the only types of visas residents can get, but most of Stroger's internal medicine residents want H-1Bs more than other types, said Dr. Christine Acob, interim program director of internal medicine.

If those 27 doctors can't start their residencies on time "it would be a tremendous hardship on our hospitals," O'Brien said. "Because we're a safety net hospital, it's critical we have residents here to help take care of the patients."

Pinsky, with the commission, said the travel ban and visa changes have made this year's matching process especially stressful for hospitals and applicants.

"Everything's been kicked up a notch or two or three or four because of this," Pinsky said.

Medical school graduate Ahmed Alsayed, of Sudan, talks about the uncertainty of working in the United States because of President Donald Trump's travel ban. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune) (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Overall, the Rush medical students who celebrated Match Day on Friday in a ballroom downtown were exuberant. They eagerly ripped open their envelopes, often with family beside them, to see where they'd spend the next several years of their lives. They had studied for four years in anticipation of the moment.

But for some of them, the travel ban and visa changes remained at the back of their minds, even though most in the crowd were unaffected individually.

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Rush medical student Sammy McGowan was thrilled to learn he'd been matched with Rush University Medical Center. But as he went through the match process this year, the travel ban weighed on him. He and other Rush students were among those who rushed to O'Hare International Airport to protest the ban in recent months.

"When I was on the interview trail, I interviewed side-by-side with students from Sudan, Yemen, people that were living in limbo," McGowan said of interviewing for residencies.

McGowan said he admired Rush's stand on the travel ban. Rush decided it wouldn't do anything differently this year when it came to selecting residents for the match despite the travel ban. Rush doesn't typically rely on international medical graduates as heavily as some other hospitals.

"For me, that really showed what kind of institution Rush was," McGowan said, "and that was a big part of the reason I wanted to stay."

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lschencker
Forklift drivers move products along at the sprawling Wirtz Beverage Group warehouse facility in Cicero, Monday, Oct.19, 2015. The company is now known as Breakthru Beverage. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

A smuggling lawsuit filed in September against two top executives at Breakthru Beverage Group, an alcohol wholesale company co-led by Blackhawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz, has been dismissed by a federal judge.

Empire Merchants, a New York wine and spirits distributor, alleged in U.S. District Court in New York that Breakthru Co-Chairman Charles Merinoff, Chief Executive Gregory Baird and others were involved in a scheme in which Maryland wholesalers sold alcohol that eventually was smuggled into New York and sold illegally to avoid paying that state's higher taxes, costing Empire and the state of New York tens of millions of dollars.

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"We were confident from day one that we would prevail and are gratified that the court ruled in our favor," Rocky Wirtz, Breakthru co-chairman, and Danny Wirtz, vice chairman, said Thursday in an email to workers. "We are thankful for the many who stood by our side, including our suppliers and many others in our industry."

Breakthru Beverage is the merged business of Wirtz Beverage Group and the Merinoff family's Charmer Sunbelt. Reliable Churchill, one of the Maryland wholesalers that allegedly participated in the scheme, was owned by Charmer Sunbelt and is part of Breakthru Beverage.

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According to the suit, Reliable Churchill helped sell excessive amounts of alcohol to retailers in Cecil County, Md., from at least 2008 through 2014. The retailers, in turn, sold the alcohol to New York retailers, which drove vans or trucks to Maryland to pick up the product. The wholesalers had "actual or constructive knowledge of these smuggled sales," the suit alleged.

The lawsuit accused the executives, both formerly of Charmer Sunbelt, of unfair competition, deceptive trade practices and mail fraud, among other allegations.

But in a 37-page opinion and order issued Thursday, Judge Allyne Ross dismissed the claims.

For example, "Empire alleges that defendants committed mail fraud," the judge wrote. "However, plaintiff's amended complaint fails to identify any specific use of the mails by defendants."

The judge also found that the defendants' conduct "was not deceptive" for a variety of reasons.

"The Maryland wholesalers and retailers, who were sellers of the liquor, were not deceived  they knowingly participated in the scheme," Ross wrote. "The New York retailers, who purchased the liquor, were also knowing participants."

Randy Mastro, an attorney for Empire, said in an emailed statement that the company is "disappointed that the court decided to dismiss the federal lawsuit based on technical legal grounds."

"At its core, Empire Merchants' lawsuit is about a massive bootlegging scheme in which Reliable Churchill was a central participant," Mastro said. "Since the lawsuit's filing, six of Reliable Churchill's co-conspirators have come forward to corroborate under oath its role in this bootlegging scheme."

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Empire is weighing its options for appeal at the federal level and also will continue pursuing the matter in state court, he said.

byerak@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
We have lived in Glencoe since 1962 and raised our three children here. Two of our children still live in Glencoe and raised their children here. I served one term on the Glencoe Caucus some years ago. I write in support of the current Village Administration and the Caucus system. Both have served our Village well. I urge Glencoe residents to re-elect Village President Larry Levin, who has done a fine job keeping our Village a place in which we can take great pride.

Joel J. Sprayregen

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Glencoe
CH Distillery co-founder Tremaine Atkinson in August 2015 with several examples of his spirits. The distillery specializes in vodka, along with specialty spirits such as the chile-infused Amargo de Chile amaro. (Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)

Depending on whom you talk to, craft distilling is either in the midst of a bubble or a renaissance. The industry's growth is making it easier than ever for drinkers to find a unique gin, whiskey or rum, but on the flip side, it's making it difficult for craft distillers to get their products in stores and bars. The new distillers are either bringing new creativity to the market or releasing poor quality spirits that give a black mark to the industry as a whole.

VOTE AND VOTE AGAIN: Check in daily in our Readers' Choice Dining Awards

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And, as is often the case, the reality is somewhere in the middle.

While there were 60 or so craft distilleries nationwide when North Shore Distillery opened its doors as Illinois' first craft distillery in 2004, there are now more than 1,300 dotted across the country, including at least 17 in Chicagoland alone. And that's changing everything.

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While craft distilling was an "unknown industry" in 2004, it's now a competitive field where distillers large and small are battling for shelf space, says Sonja Kassebaum, co-founder of North Shore, which expanded last year. (See the story here.) "Things are very tough."

And, at least for the moment, it doesn't appear that things are going to change.

"When we started, we were the third distillery in the state. Now it seems like there are three that open every day," says Paul Hletko, FEW Spirits' owner and head distiller. "It's become a very different business in many ways that are good and in other ways that present challenges."

One of those challenges is that it's getting harder for everyone to stand out.

"There's so much noise out there," says Letherbee Distillers' Brent Engel. "As the movement becomes a ubiquitous thing in pop culture, the idea of craft has become commoditized."

The scene echoed a similar trend in craft beer. But just as new breweries are able to catch drinkers' attention by producing distinctive spirits, so too can distilleries.

"New distilleries need to become more specialized," Engel says. "You can't follow the same business model that everyone else is using. They need to specialize in a few things and do them really well."

Well-crafted, creative products always win out, says Jason Ebel, co-founder of Two Brothers Artisan Brewing, which is about to open its own distillery.

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"You have to excite people," he says, noting he expects Two Brothers to regularly roll out seasonal and one-off releases.

As the craft distilling revolution in metro Chicago launched by North Shore enters its 14th year, here's a look at the 17 distilleries in the area, with two more in the works:

CHICAGO

CH Distillery

Open since: 2013

Output: 8,000 standard cases in 2016; a new production facility will boost that output to 15,000 to 20,000 standards cases this year

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Specialty: Vodka, along with specialty spirits such as the chile-infused Amargo de Chile amaro

The differentiator: "By not worrying about making a hand-crafted whiskey, it's freed up our time to do other things. That's allowed us to be more ambitious in our portfolio than a lot of smaller guys as we've made spirits like Amargo di Chile, Fernet-Dogma and Amaro," says Tremaine Atkinson, the distillery's co-founder, distiller and managing director of operations. Open: Tuesday to Thursday 4-10 p.m.; Friday 4-11 p.m.; Saturday 5-11 p.m. Tours: Tuesday and Saturday 5:30 p.m., $15. 564 W. Randolph St., 312-707-8780. www.chdistillery.com

Chicago Distilling Co.

Open since: 2013

Output: 2,000 cases

Specialty: Single malt whiskeys based on European mash bills

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The differentiator: Founded by a couple of homebrewers, Chicago Distilling takes inspiration from craft beers. For instance, its American single malt Stouted uses a mash bill based on an imperial stout. "It definitely tastes like whiskey at the end, but it has some familiar notes that should help craft beer drinkers cross over," says Noelle DiPrizio, co-founder and vice president. Tours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 6:30 p.m.; $10. Tasting room: Thursday 5-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5 p.m. to midnight. 2359 N. Milwaukee Ave., 872-206-2774, www.chicagodistilling.com

Koval Distillery

Open since: 2008

Output: 45,000 gallons

Specialty: Whiskey (bourbon, four-grain, millet and oat) and liqueurs

The differentiator: "Producing the highest quality whiskeys, spirits and liqueurs made from local, fresh, and organic ingredients," says Caitlin Bixby, the distillery's communications coordinator. "From milling the grains on-site to ensuring that each white American oak barrel is filled purely with the heart cut  the cleanest, brightest cut  of the distillate, every step of Koval's process is intentional and strived to create a signature style that represents the purest essence of the grains distilled." Tours: Wednesday 7 p.m.; Thursday 12:30 p.m.; Saturday 1, 3 and 5 p.m.; and Sunday 2, 4 p.m. Retail hours: Monday to Friday 2-7 p.m.; Saturday 1-6:30 p.m.; Sunday 2-5 p.m. 5121 N. Ravenswood Ave., 312-878-7988, www.koval-distillery.com

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Letherbee Distillers

Open since: 2012

Output: 4,500 cases

Specialty: Gins and other botanical spirits

The differentiator: "Two times a year, every spring and fall, we produce seasonal gins. We came from farm-to-table restaurants or bars that stressed seasonal ingredients, and we thought it would be a cool idea that would help us stay creative to create something new and stay fresh," says Letherbee's Brent Engel. No tasting room or tours. 1815 W. Berteau Ave., www.letherbee.com

Maplewood Brewery & Distillery

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Open since: 2014

Output: NA (spirits have not yet been released)

Specialty: Single malt whiskeys inspired by the brewery's beers.

The differentiator: The only Chicago-area distillery that's also a brewery, Maplewood is using its beers as inspiration for its single-malt whiskeys, as well as brewing all its spirits like a brewery. "We'll have more grain-forward flavors," says Ari Megalis, distiller. No taproom or tours, for now. 2717 N. Maplewood Ave., 773-270-1061, www.maplewoodbrew.com

Rhine Hall

Open since: 2013

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Output: 8,000-10,000 liters.

Specialty: Eau de vie, in particular apple brandy and oaked apple brandy.

The differentiator: "We don't make the same things that everyone else makes. We stick to our specialty, fruit brandy or eau de vie. We don't make whiskey, gin or vodka. That's enabled us to stay true to who we are. Not try to be jack-of-all-trades. We do a specific thing very well," says Jenny Solberg Katzman, owner. Tours: Thursday and Friday 5:45; Saturday 3, 4:45 p.m.; $10. Tasting room: Thursday and Friday 5-9 p.m.; Saturday 2-7 p.m. 2010 W. Fulton St., 312-243-4313, www.rhinehall.com

NORTHERN SUBURBS

Copper Fiddle Distillery

Open since: 2013

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Output: 5,000 proof gallons

Specialty: Bourbon whiskey, made from three Midwest-sourced grains

The differentiator: Copper Fiddle sells Fyren gin, a spicy Genever-style gin thanks to the addition of a serrano pepper. "We're the first distillery in the U.S. to make a spicy gin," says Jose Hernandez, the distillery's master distiller. "You can go savory or sweet with it, or both. It offers tremendous flexibility." Tours: Saturday 2, 4 p.m.; $10. Tasting room: Wednesday and Thursday 4-9 p.m.; Friday 4-11 p.m.; Saturday noon to 11 p.m.; Sunday noon to 5 p.m. 532 W. Illinois Route 22, Suite 110, Lake Zurich, 847-847-7609, www.copperfiddledistillery.com

Paul Hletko, founder of FEW Spirits in Evanston, says, "Our whiskeys strike at the DNA of who we are. We combine the old with the new. They personify who we are. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

FEW Spirits

Open since: 2011

Output: "Small but growing."

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Specialty: Bourbon and rye whiskey

The differentiator: The third craft distillery in Illinois, FEW opened its doors with a clear objective: Bring bourbon and rye to the Chicagoland area. "Our whiskeys strike at the DNA of who we are," says Paul Hletko, FEW's founder and head distiller. "We combine the old with the new. They personify who we are." Tours: Wednesday and Thursday 6 p.m.; Friday 2 p.m.; Saturday 2, 3:30, 5 p.m.; $10. 918 Chicago Ave., Evanston, 847-920-8628, www.fewspirits.com

North Shore Distillery

Open since: 2004

Output: Declined to comment

Specialty: Gins (Distiller's Gin No. 6, Distiller's Gin No. 11 and Mighty Gin), absinthe (Sirene Absinthe Verte) and aquavit (Aquavit-Private reserve), each of which features a North Shore spin on the traditional spirit.

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The differentiator: The first craft distillery in Illinois, North Shore regularly plays with new ingredients. "We try to make distinctive products that are great in cocktails and on their own. But our recipes and flavor profiles are unique. We like to have complexity and some nuance. We don't just do something because that's the way it has always been done," said Sonja Kassebaum. For example, just about every year, the distillery rolls out a limited-edition spirit such as Fireside Orange, an orange liqueur made from a blend of three orange varietals, linden flowers and a range of spices, and SommerWeizen, a wheat whiskey inspired by hefeweizen beer. Tours: Wednesday 6:30 p.m.; Saturday 4 p.m., except the first Saturday of the month, which is a "Geek Out" tour led by master distiller Derek Kassebaum that takes place at 3 p.m.; $10, or the Geek Out tour, $25. Tasting room: Wednesday and Thursday 4-9 p.m.; Friday 4-10 p.m.; Saturday 1-10 p.m.; Sunday 1-7 p.m. Retail hours: Wednesday and Thursday 1-9 p.m.; Friday 1-10 p.m.; Saturday 1-7 p.m.; Sunday 1-7 p.m. 13990 Rockland Road, Green Oaks, 847-574-2499, www.northshoredistillery.com

Oppidan Spirits

Open since: 2015

Output: 700 cases last year, with plans to ramp up to 12,000 this year

Specialty: Solera Bourbon, a whiskey made from a five-grain mash bill of corn, malted rye, chocolate malted rye, special B and two-row barley. The bourbon is aged in American oak, French oak and oloroso sherry casks.

The differentiator: Founder and distiller Jeff Walsh aims for his spirits to be compelling. "We play around with every spirit we make to find the right balance." No tasting room or tour. 140 Shepard Ave., Wheeling, 312-788-7503, www.oppidanspirits.com

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Wondertucky Distillery & Bottling

Open since: 2013

Output: NA

Specialty: Corn whiskey and bourbon

The differentiator: Owner and founder Dave Cunningham claims that he was 12 when he first distilled corn into ethanol as a science fair project. "I've been distilling off and on ever since," he says. Tours: Saturday, time varies each week, although typically 3 and 4 p.m.; Sunday, on occasion; $10. Tasting room: Friday to Sunday 1-10 p.m. 315 E. South St., Woodstock, 815-308-5271, www.wondertuckydistillery.com

WESTERN SUBURBS

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Fox River Distilling Co.

Open since: 2014

Output: Declined to comment

Specialty: Herrington Geneva's Gin, which has a light, citrus finish, and the traditional Bennett Mill Bourbon

The differentiator: "We're a real business, not a mom-and-pop operation," says co-owner Amy Orlando. Tours: Friday, 4, 5 p.m.; Saturday, 2, 4 p.m.; free. Tasting room: Friday noon to 6 p.m., Saturday noon to 5 p.m. 204 Dearborn Court, Unit #110, Geneva, 630-402-0027, www.foxriverdistilling.com

Two Brothers Artisan Brewing

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Open since: Brewing beer since 1997; distillery slated for 2017

Output: N/A

Specialty: This year Two Brothers expects to release vodka, gin, cordials and bitters while laying down gin, rum and whiskey to age. In time, the distillery plans to take a craft-beer-like experimental approach, for example, distilling its base beers into whiskey.

The differentiator: Two Brothers has been brewing beer since 1997. And Jim and Jason Ebel  the brothers behind the brewery  plan to bring a similar mindset to distilling, says Jason Ebel. "The reason we're getting into this space is because we love experimentation and blending flavors," he says. "We try to innovate on the beer side all the time. As we look around, there are craft spirits guys trying to do that, but the market is still in its infancy, so we figured it would make sense to take that approach in spirits." Two Brothers Roundhouse operates a brewery and restaurant, but the distillery isn't set to open until next month. 205 N. Broadway, Aurora, 630-393-4800, www.twobrothersbrewing.com

Quincy Street Distillery

Open since: 2012

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Output: Fewer than 2,000 cases last year

Specialty: Every spirit's flavor profile is historical or inspired by a historical recipe.

The differentiator: "While other craft distillers are using modern methods to produce modern styles, we take a different approach," says Derrick Mancini, owner and distiller. For example, the distillery uses double-distillation in a pot still, the method of distilling typically used to produce spirits such as cognac, Irish and Scotch malt whiskeys and single pot still whiskey. "We want a more grain-intense flavor profile that's closer to what you would have found in the early 19th century," he says. Tours: Friday 5:30 p.m.; Saturday 1, 3:30, 5:30 p.m.; Sunday 11:30 a.m. Retail and speak-easy hours: Wednesday 5-9 p.m.; Friday 4-9 p.m.; Saturday 2-9 p.m.; and Sunday noon to 6 p.m., 39 E. Quincy St., Riverside, 708-357-7414, www.quincystreetdistillery.com

SOUTH SUBURBS

Black Dog Distillery

Open since: 2015

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Output: 400 cases last year

Specialty: Vodka and rum

The differentiator: "Everything we do, we do from scratch," says Keith Moore, the distillery's owner. "Everything is based off sugar cane. Not wheat, rye or anything else. That gives our spirits a silky mouthfeel. We experiment with unique flavors, such as our lavender vodka and Madagascar vanilla." Tours: Friday and Saturday, as people show up. Tasting room: Friday noon to 7 p.m.; Saturday 1-5 p.m. 10038 Clow Creek Road, Plainfield, 630-675-5069, www.blackdogdistillery.com

Frankfort Spirits

Open since: 2014

Output: 300-500 cases last year

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Specialty: Brown spirits, such as Emil Stimple Straight Bourbon and Emil Stimple Aged Whiskey

The differentiator: "We are truly small batch," says Phil Casey, distiller and co-founder. "We sign and number every bottle. We've thrown out a considerable amount of spirits when they didn't match standards. I tell our partners that we might not make lot of money, but we'll never have to buy whiskey again." Tours: Sunday (noon, 1:30, 3 p.m.), $10. Retail hours: Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 23320 S. Lagrange Road, Frankfort, 815-200-1192, www.frankfortspirits.com

Tailwinds Distilling Co.

Open since: 2012

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Output: 1,000 cases

Specialty: Rum and agave spirits

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The differentiator: Toby Beall, distiller and owner, entered distilling because of rum. As a pilot who frequently traveled to South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean, Beall was intrigued by the wide variety of flavors that could come from one raw ingredient, sugar. "Rum inspired me to look into whether I could make this into a business," says Beall, who is also a homebrewer. Tours: Saturday 3, 5 p.m. Tasting room hours: Friday 3-10 p.m.; Saturday noon to 10 p.m.; Sunday noon to 5 p.m. 14912 S. Eastern Ave., Unit 103, Plainfield, 815-290-0786, www.tailwindsdistilling.com.

Coming soon:

Blind Pig Distilling Chicago entrepreneur Marc Bushala plans to open a craft distillery and brewery in a former rental truck facility in the West Loop.

Three Floyds Brewing Co. The legendary craft brewer is in the midst of planning a distillery at its Munster, Ind., facility.

Zak Stambor is a freelance writer.






The carnitas sandwich at the Growling Rabbit brims over with slow-roasted pork, chipotle espresso sauce, cheese, pico de gallo, guacamole and a fried egg. (Kristan Lieb / Chicago Tribune )

It seems to have been a tough winter as far as restaurants are concerned. Despite the balmy weather in February, seats are empty, labor is difficult to find and people are doing the starling act. They swoosh into the latest hyped place and swoosh to the next one that appears in a listicle that might have the headline "Hottest restaurants opening this week!"

All the more reason to support a place where you can treat yourself to a breakfast out and where nourishing, well-prepared food allows you to take a deep breath or maybe have a quiet, productive meeting before beginning your day.

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These restaurants are always busy on the weekend, which makes them the perfect places to go during the week.

THE GROWLING RABBIT: Second helping

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Nothing makes me happier than to see a restaurant grow with the neighborhood and have a chef/owner who grows with the demand.

My first visit to the Growling Rabbit, named for a family pet who, you guessed it, growled, was in August 2015. The restaurant had outgrown its space on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park and needed more room, a bigger kitchen and handicapped access. It took a while to do that, but here it is in Edgewater, new and improved.

Chef Laura Soncrant always looks happy, and the food is testimony to that. I ordered the same dishes I had before, as a test and because I loved them the first time around. They did not disappoint.

The carnitas sandwich was brimming over with slow roasted pork, chipotle espresso sauce, cheese, pico de gallo, guacamole and a fried egg.

The breakfast tacos on corn tortillas had eggs, beans, cheddar cheese, guacamole and pico de gallo.

My companion had the biscuits and gravy and pronounced the dish divine.

A latte and coffee cake sealed the deal.

Note: Getting used to a bigger space is challenging after years of being squished in the old kitchen, so have patience if things are a little slow. The food is right on, and the service will be too.

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Of note: Full service. Coffee and baked goods to go. BYOB. Cocktails and mocktails soon. Street parking.

Find it: 5938 N. Broadway, 773-654-1444, www.thegrowlingrabbit.com

Hours: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday.

CAFE TOLA LONCHERIA Y TACOS

I have always wondered what that tiny, brightly colored place was on Southport near Addison. I've passed it for years and noticed outdoor seating in the summer. When I researched it, I learned it was a takeout empanada stand. I'm not an eat-in-the car girl, so I kept driving by.

When I read that Cafe Tola had opened a second spot, taking over the Hot Doug's space, I headed right over.

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As soon as I walked through the door I felt as if I were in a room where a party might break out any minute: wildly colorful walls and seat coverings, painted tables, a case on the wall with dozens of toys you'll remember from your childhood, and heavenly scents from the kitchen and espresso machine.

In the case on the counter were the day's selection of empanadas. I ordered the spicy pork, chorizo and egg, ropa vieja (shredded braised beef), and spinach ricotta.

One of my dislikes about dough that is wrapped around filling is that the edges that get pinched to hold it in are sometimes too thick and the balance of filling to dough ratio is lost. Not here. The dough is flaky and the fillings well-balanced and seasoned perfectly. Each one was distinctive and delicious.

Also on the menu are breakfast tacos, burritos and tortas. You can bet I'll go back for those and the charming and helpful staff.

I couldn't leave without taking some black bean soup home for dinner. You would have too.

Of note: Fast casual. Street parking. Baked goods coming soon.

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Find it: 3324 N. California Ave., 773-293-6346, www.cafetola.com

Hours: 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

BLUE SKY BAKERY

I'm going to admit right upfront that I adore places like this. For nine years, chef/owner Lisa Thompson has been showing up to do the right thing while serving delicious food.

With a motto like "Social change, powered by your appetite," count me in. What that means is that the bakery provides transitional employment to at-risk and homeless youth.

Pastry chef Diane Mejia keeps the kitchen humming and teaches skills as well. Both women work hard, and we get to enjoy this peaceful space filled with nostalgic housewares.

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I invited Scott Warner, a food writer and driving force behind the Culinary Historians of Chicago, to join me. I like eating with him because he has a big appetite and a great palate.

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He said the Guittard hot chocolate with fresh whipped cream was thick and satisfying. We were off to a good start.

We shared the wheat toast with avocado and pepitas, the broccoli, cheddar and Swiss quiche, the breakfast sandwich with egg, bacon and cheese on homemade bread and finished with a mixed berry scone. (I told you he had a good appetite!)

Is there anything better than eating well while doing good? I think not.

Of note: Fast casual. Bakery goods available for catering  plain and fancy. Pop-up dinners to benefit the program. Street parking.

Find it: 3720 N. Lincoln Ave, 773-880-9910, www.blue-sky-bakery.org

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Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.

Ina Pinkney, the former owner of breakfast spot Ina's, writes the monthly "Breakfast With Ina" column for the Tribune. She is the author of "Ina's Kitchen: Memories and Recipes from the Breakfast Queen" (Agate Midway, $19.95)
You might not recognize the Chongqing chicken at WonFun Chinese, the West Loop's 4-month-old Sichuan-inspired restaurant.

If you ordered the dish expecting traditional laziji, translated literally as "chile chicken," as it's called (among other names), you may have rightly anticipated fried chicken bits hidden among the shrapnel of red pepper shells. Instead, you'll get a fried chicken tower  big, fat, crunchy chile-flaked pieces of chicken, topped with a wing tip rising defiantly.

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When your first bite shatters the spice-coated armor, yielding exceptionally juicy and tender flesh, you'll find all the familiar seasonings: garlic, ginger and doubanjiang, the savory fermented bean paste umami bomb. They give way to the curiously numb and hot sensation known as mala, revealing the lacing of Sichuan peppercorns.

"We do a Western-style cut on the chicken, so you get a Southern fried chicken with the flavors of Chongqing," said Austin Baker, chef and founder of Joy Hospitality, which opened WonFun and 2Fun cocktail lounge in late November. The small company also owns Bar Marta in Humboldt Park, where Ben Ruiz was executive chef, now taking the same role at the new two-floor restaurant and bar.

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The dual-floor "fun" houses appear as if they've always been hidden within the old J.P. Graziano warehouse they now call home. Dark and minimalist, the cozy downstairs dining room is dimly lit overhead with hundreds of red paper lanterns; the cavernous upstairs bar is ruled by a giant wide-eyed red paper dragon.

Baker, a veteran of Au Cheval, and Le Bernandin in New York, also cooked at luxury Aman lodge in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Though he spent time traveling around Asia  which perhaps influenced the high level of service in his restaurants  Baker credits Ruiz as the catalyst for WonFun and 2Fun.

"Ben went to China for two months just backpacking on his own, then came back and said, 'We've got to open a Sichuan restaurant,'" he says. "We picked Sichuan because we really needed a region to focus on, because it's too much," referring to the extreme breadth of culinary traditions that often is reduced to simply "Chinese food." "It's overwhelming."

Before opening their doors, Baker, Ruiz and general manager Emily Fink traveled to China for a research trip, which included a class at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in the province's capital city of Chengdu. One of the most famous graduates is Hu Xiaojun, known to Chicagoans as Tony Hu, the Lao Sze Chuan chef and owner who popularized the dry chile chicken dish and made it his own.

So it's no wonder the bird has become the star at WonFun too.

"We turned it into a sandwich for lunch ($11.99)," said Baker, noting the midday service began in January. "It's a double-fried chicken breast with crispy chile sauce, spicy but not crazy spicy." The sandwich is dressed with a cabbage slaw and chile aioli, stuffed in griddled bing, or Chinese flatbread. Previously it was served on the same soft-yet-sturdy bun as the now-iconic cheeseburger at his previous restaurant, Au Cheval.

WonFun offers other Sichuan classics, in a far more traditional but still beautifully balanced style. The mapo tofu, boasting a red oil slick over silky bean curd, and dandan mian, featuring satisfyingly chewy house-made noodles, are both made with caramelized minced beef. What the chefs simply call Sichuan pork wontons is their suanla chaoshou, translated literally as "sour and hot folded hands," aromatic and spicy sauced slippery dumplings filled with meat, scallions and aromatics in a soy- and vinegar-spiked pool.

The seemingly simple but also classic garlic chile cucumbers should be required eating. Cool and crunchy, they are a slightly tart foil to the rich and spicier dishes.

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WonFun and 2Fun also go beyond the province, from a full blown three-course, Beijing-style duck dinner ($79.99); to a Hong Kong-style sweet and sour pork with heritage Duroc pig ($16.99); and an all-American slightly sweet, tart and spicy General Tso's chicken wings ($12.99).

Back in Sichuan, old-school-cuisine defenders campaign against cooks accused of dumbing down signature bold yet nuanced flavors to nothing more than face-melting chile-eating contests. Those old-schoolers might find comfort at this new-school outpost.

A few dishes do fall short. The sesame cabbage salad seems shockingly overpriced for nothing more than raw Napa cabbage leaves in sushi house, freebie-grade sesame dressing ($9.99). The wonton soup ($8.99) was bland, both the pork dumplings and what's described as bone broth, that cringe-inducing, trend-past-its-time descriptor for just broth. And the sole dessert, a promising and mountainous serving of rippling sweet taro-flavored Taiwanese baobing, shaved ice, was topped with jellies and gummies  but also inexcusable, ineffectual out-of-season sour raspberries.

Whatever you do, don't do a sesame shot. One sip of the sesame-infused gin coated my mouth with the taste of toasted sesame oil, a flavor I love when it's judiciously used, but here it overwhelmed my taste buds unbearably.

Bar manager Remy Walle, formerly of Gilt Bar, uses the sesame gin as an ingredient in the cocktail Open Says Me ($12) with coconut, ginger and lime, where it's better employed. An Oolong Island Iced Tea ($14) with popping boba is limited to two per person, because of its strength.

If drinking, try the house beer ($5), one of two dozen or so on draft. "Tribes brewed it for us," said Baker of Tribes Beer Co., based in Mokena. "Ben designed it with them. It's a simple lager which goes best with spicy food. With low hops, there's a little bit of floral Sichuan peppercorn and orange peel. It's just clean, swiggable and delicious."

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A swig or more may be what you need for karaoke, available late Tuesday nights upstairs. Why a weeknight? "We wanted to get the more hardcore karaoke people, and it's a much better quality overall," said Baker.

Lucky for you at this double house of fun.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @louisachu

WonFun Chinese and 2Fun Chinese

905 W. Randolph St.

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312-877-5967

www.funfunchinese.com

Tribune rating: Two stars

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Open: WonFun lunch and dinner, 2Fun evenings only, Tuesday to Saturday

Prices: Main courses $14.99 to $24.99

Credit cards: A, DC, DS, M, V

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Reservations: Recommended; walk-ins accepted

Noise: Conversation-challenged

Other: Wheelchair accessible; valet parking dinner only

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. The reviewer makes every effort to remain anonymous. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.






The recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature Derek Walcott of St. Lucia attends a press conference in Mexico City, Tuesday April 1, 2014. (Berenice Bautista / AP)

CASTRIES, St. Lucia  Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott's death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early Friday by his son, Peter.

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"Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia," read a family statement released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honor for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity" of his writings including the 1990 "Omeros," a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as "majestic."

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"In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet," said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the "very rich and complicated experience" of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theater, Walcott's work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Walcott to regional status because of "an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man."

Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

"I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer," he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. "The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets."

Walcott was born in St. Lucia's capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

In his autobiographical essay, "What the Twilight Says," he wrote: "Both the patois of the street and the language of the classroom hid the elation of discovery. If there was nothing, there was everything to be made. With this prodigious ambition one began."

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Walcott once described straddling "two worlds" during his childhood in St. Lucia, then a sleepy outpost of the British empire.

"Colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles; that being poor, we already had the theater of our lives. In that simple schizophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives: the interior life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect," he wrote.

Early on, he struggled with questions of race and his passion for British poetry, describing it as a "wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body, as if the flesh were coal from which the spirit like tormented smoke writhed to escape." But he overcame that inner struggle, writing: "Once we have lost our wish to be white, we develop a longing to become black."

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called "1944," in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play "Henri Christophe" was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St. Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaica's University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theater in Trinidad's Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcott's treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, "The Star-Apple Kingdom," he wrote of the "groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream."

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For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including "Dream on Monkey Mountain" and "The Last Carnival," and founding theaters such as the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled "English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries."

Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write "The Capeman" story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics.

His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St. Lucia.

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Saxophonist Donny McCaslin performs with the Columbia College Jazz Ensemble on March 16, 2017, at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. (Ting Shen / Chicago Tribune)

There's nothing more inspiring in jazz than seeing emerging young musicians collaborating with a master.

In the best of circumstances, each generation brings out the best in the other, and that was the case Thursday night at the Jazz Showcase, where tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin shared the stage with two ensembles from Columbia College Chicago.

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McCaslin had been in residence at the school for the past few days, preparing for this engagement. The opportunity caused him to gain some perspective on how time marches on.

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"I remember the first time I played this iconic club," McCaslin told the audience.

"It was when it was at the Blackstone Hotel, I was in (vibraphonist) Gary Burton's band, and I was 20.

"Now," he added with a laugh, "I'm the old man in the band."

Actually, being 50 in jazz isn't really old, and a youthful exuberance characterized practically everything that McCaslin and his student colleagues played.

The evening's main event was McCaslin's partnership with the Columbia College Jazz Ensemble, a big band that pushes beyond certain conventions (under the tutelage of Scott Hall, the school's director of jazz studies).

Rather than revisit well-worn jazz standards, the students performed their own compositions and arrangements, as well as those by McCaslin. By definition, then, everything sounded fresh.

The band opened sans McCaslin, playing a new arrangement of Herbie Hancock's "Driftin'," an apt choice considering that the tune appeared on "Takin' Off," the album that launched Hancock's career in 1962. This time, music that announced Hancock's arrival on the jazz scene so long ago trumpeted the work of student Jason Deran, who arranged "Driftin'" and played an ebullient solo on it. Deran's version conveyed an easy swing sensibility amid a robust orchestral sound.

The high point came when Deran played a trumpet solo of considerable emotional charge, the young musician clearly feeding off the energy of the band (and vice versa).

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Student vibraphonist Jalen Baker turned in some of the most exciting work of the night, particularly in his "Twill Be," a clever piece of writing steeped in rhythmic surprise. Accents shifted, tempos changed, music stopped and started and stopped again in this showpiece of ensemble syncopation. Baker's vibraphone solo proved as eloquent as it was technically adept, soulfully expressed phrases alternating with flourishes of virtuosity.

All of which set the stage for the appearance of McCaslin, who may be best known these days for his work on David Bowie's last album, "Blackstar." McCaslin began with his "Fast Brazil," the sheer rhythmic drive and full-throated character of his sound lifting the band to a higher level of performance. Of course, any ensemble would have to focus to keep up with McCaslin's fast-flying figurations, whirring high-note passagework and fortissimo cries.

In his "Second Line Sally," an ode to New Orleans street beats, McCaslin gave plenty of room to trumpeter Deran and guitarist Jackson Shepard to make significant statements, and they seized the opportunity. McCaslin went full tilt in the finale to his "Stadium Jazz," his avalanche of notes buttressed by a student orchestra that seemed to egg him on.

The evening opened with the Columbia College Fusion Ensemble, under the direction of faculty member William Boris, saxophonist McCaslin and friends getting into a hazy palette of colors and funk-tinged solos.

With both bands, though, McCaslin's collaboration with the students showed palpable joy, a most pleasant experience for anyone listening.

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

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hreich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @howardreich

When: 8 and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 and 8 p.m. Sunday

Where: Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Court

Tickets: $20-$35; 312-360-0234 or www.jazzshowcase.com

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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)
Via Eurosurveillance: Yellow fever in a traveller returning from Suriname to the Netherland, March 2017. The abstract:

A Dutch traveller returning from Suriname in early March 2017, presented with fever and severe acute liver injury. Yellow fever was diagnosed by (q)RT-PCR and sequencing. During hospital stay, the patients condition deteriorated and she developed hepatic encephalopathy requiring transfer to the intensive care. Although yellow fever has not been reported in the last four decades in Suriname, vaccination is recommended by the World Health Organization for visitors to this country.
NEW YORK  Anyone who has cleaned out a deceased parent's stuff will tell you that the worst part of the process is listening to a dealer denigrate the prized possessions of one that you have so deeply loved. And any dealer in old furniture and bric-a-brac will tell you that the worst part of the job is dealing with people who are emotionally connected to stuff that actually is worth only a fraction of what a traumatized heir typically believes.

Especially now. Millennials generally prefer phones and tablets to harps and bureaus.

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As the 89-year-old Gregory Solomon, the most entertaining character in Arthur Miller's 1968 play "The Price," especially when played by Danny DeVito, succinctly puts it: "Anything Spanish Jacobean you'll sell quicker a case of tuberculosis."

DeVito is offering a spectacularly funny performance in director (and Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder) Terry Kinney's resonant if not wholly satisfying Broadway revival of, to my mind, one of Miller's bleakest and most personal plays. Consider the trajectory of the most sympathetic character, a police officer named Victor Franz, as played in this Roundabout Theatre production by Mark Ruffalo, an actor who specializes in low-status characters with natural affinities for sadness and for whom snapping out of something is pretty much an impossibility.

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In "The Price," which opened here Thursday night, Victor starts out trying to sell Solomon his late father's detritus, alternately scolded and jollied by Victor's wife, Esther (Jessica Hecht). By Act 2, poor Victor now has had to deal with only the stark realism of his truth-telling used-furniture dealer, who actually is the least of his worries. (Most of us-who-have-been-bereaved come to see that another thousand bucks for the lot, more or less, will change nothing.) Far more significant for Victor is his fight with his more successful, more condescending brother, Walter (Tony Shalhoub), who is on a quest to convince his brother, who has sacrificed his own dreams for his dad, that both boys grew up in a house with no love.

Shudder. The family Franz is not far removed from the family Loman of "Death of a Salesman"  or from the family Keller of "All My Sons," both more famous Miller plays that offer a juicier and less talky theatrical experience and thus have eclipsed the popularity of "The Price" over the years. Economic trauma undercuts all three of the fathers in these plays, even through the patriarch with all the furniture has already met his maker and, perchance, paid his price. It is not hard to extend Miller's family metaphor to America itself  the difficult birth, the volatile trajectory across the generations, the power of the emotional ties it long has wrought. Most of Miller's works are really about the paradox of living vulnerably under capitalism, a system that requires you to better your sibling, even though you so badly want to be loved by your fellow human.

Even your furniture dealer. DeVito, who is truly on fire here, takes a role that often is played with far more dour severity and turns it into a savagely comic bit of truth telling, laden with self-interest, as all truth telling to others tends to be.

Kinney's production features a haunting set by Derek McLane (richly lit by David Weiner), wherein stuff hangs pointlessly in the air, just as your stuff probably hangs over the heads of your kids. I think Kinney's direction fundamentally understands the currency of this play. Hecht, for example, clearly gets the quiet trauma of what is being bought and sold, and both Ruffalo and Shalhoub have individual vulnerability, even if you don't always believe they are in this, for better or worse, as brothers. It's in the long, late-in-the-play argument that things are rougher: Shalhoub, in particular, feels prepackaged and overly slick in his admonitions and truisms, which is a reasonable approach to this character, but a choice that impacts the spontaneity of what we are watching.

In Act 2, you don't get enough of a sense of a building crisis, of things being said that are exploding these relationships in real time, extracting their price, changing things forever.

It is, as Solomon observes, never good to get emotional about used furniture, and that includes the contents of your own life.

"The Price" plays at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St.; 212-719-1300 or roundabouttheatre.org

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

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Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib
Cavalia's "Odysseo" herd of 65 horses was flown in Monday to Chicago OHare International airport aboard a 747 jet and then transported to a farm in Bristol, Wisc. (Travis Schoening photo)

The horses have arrived. The tents for the upcoming "Odysseo" by equestrian performance company Cavalia are now under construction at the Soldier Field South Lot in anticipation of the show's first preview performance April 1  and the four-legged stars themselves are now in town. Or rather on a farm in Bristol, Wisc. No suites at the Palmer House for these performers.

The "Odysseo" herd of 65 horses was flown in Monday to Chicago O'Hare International airport aboard a charted 747 jet and then transported to the farm, where they will stay until show time. Breeds include Appaloosa, Arabian, Quarter Horse, Holsteiner, Lusitano, Paint Horse, Percheron Hanoverian Cross, Selle Francais and Spanish Purebred.

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The Montreal-based Cavalia is coming here from a run in Vancouver; its first show, titled "Cavalia," was in Chicago in 2009. The show is a high-tech performance themed around the relationship between horse and rider  and will also include 48 human riders, acrobats, aerialists, dancers and musicians. The company was founded by former Cirque du Soleil co-founder Normand Latourelle.

Cavalia photographed the horses' arrival at O'Hare and at their new Wisconsin digs.

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"Odysseo" officially opens April 4 and plays though April 23; tickets $34.50 to $269.50 at 866-999-8111 and www.cavalia.com







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)
Warning: Spoilers ahead

In a surprising twist, South Loop student Evan Robinson was almost sent home from "MasterChef Junior" on Thursday's episode for not including enough fruit in his apple crisp.

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The episode began with former First Lady Michelle Obama presenting the mystery box challenge, which was to incorporate fruits and vegetables into half the meal.

Georgia contestant Justise Mayberry won the challenge with her pan-seared shrimp and quinoa. The dishes made by Evan and River North resident Avani Shah were not shown.

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"Modern Family" star Julie Bowen was the guest judge for the main dish challenge to make a meal inspired by the contestants' mothers.

Evan made an apple crisp with caramelized pears to honor his mother Veronica.

"She loves to bake and this is something that she makes a lot," Evan said.

Judge Christina Tosi praised the crumble as delicious and crunchy, but noted the lack of fruit in the dish.

"I think overall we're just missing the actual star of the crumble, which is those big, beautiful, cooked-down apples," Tosi said.

Avani's dish and critique were not shown.

Evan, who has fared well in past challenges, landed in the bottom three with Californian Mashu Nishi, who presented a complicated lamb dish, and New Yorker Donovan Millstein, who served a messy marshmallow pie.

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Judge Gordon Ramsay told Evan that the crisp was not his strongest dish, but "there were enough good elements in that dish to keep you in this competition."

Donovan and Mashu were sent home. Twelve cooks remain on Season 5 of "MasterChef Junior," which airs 7 p.m. Thursdays on Fox.

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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)
Jessica Fromm and her mother-in-law used to have a great relationship.

It ended as soon as her mother-in-law moved into their small brick house in Chicago four years ago.

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"Rules don't apply to her," Fromm said of her mother-in-law. "We don't want her living with us anymore."

It's the little things. When Fromm throws her clothing into the washing machine, she'll return to find it tossed on the floor. And when she has friends over, Fromm notices that her mother-in-law is eavesdropping on her conversations.

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The mother-in-law, Susan Fromm, said that while they have had their issues, she appreciates all the time she has been able to spend with her family  and especially with her grandchildren.

"Any grandmother would be fortunate enough to be with their grandchildren on a full-time basis," Susan Fromm said. "It's just a gift."

"If we had more space, maybe it would work," said Jessica Fromm, who also shares the space with her husband and three children ages 3 and under.

Hers is far from the only family dealing with in-law issues.

According to the Pew Research Center, there were 57 million Americans  or 18 percent of the population  living in multigenerational households in 2012, which is double what the number was in 1980.

Some are doing it for financial reasons, and others are doing it because they could use help raising children while both parents work. Regardless of the reasons, it's very common for personality clashes and other issues to occur, but there are ways to make the transition smoother.

"Changing the basic family structure always has an impact on everyone's relationships, no matter how simple or easy it may look before it happens; and no matter what the reason, when a couple moves in with one partner's parents, or when a parent moves in with a couple, it is a change in family structure," said Diane Barth, New York-based psychotherapist.

Barth said that, often, one of the adults will begin acting childlike.

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"He has always been warm and loving and extremely patient with the two children; suddenly, he is grumpy with her and has a short fuse with the kids," Barth said. "Without anyone realizing it, he has fallen back into patterns he once had as a teenager when he was trying to assert his independence from his parents."

In other cases, one normally happy adult will suddenly get her feelings hurt by silly things, finding herself crying for no reason. In these scenarios, she may feel left out by her husband and his parents, who have inside jokes  and she becomes the third wheel in her own home, Barth says.

Some couples may even feel a distorted version of sibling rivalry with each other for their in-laws' attention, with the in-laws for a spouse's attention or with the grandparents for the children's love.

"Even if there is no sibling rivalry or jealousy involved, putting more people into a family inevitably shifts the equilibrium of the family," Barth said.

To make the transition go well, it's best to make the expectations on both sides clear before the move, said Meredith Hansen, a marriage psychologist in California.

If there are rules and guidelines that you don't agree with, have a direct conversation about them ahead of time, and try to find a compromise. Once the guidelines have been agreed upon, share them with your children in a way they can understand.

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"For example, 'We're moving into grandma's house, and she has some different rules than we have at our house. We want to make sure we show respect to grandma, so that she feels comfortable, and she wants us to feel comfortable, so we all need to follow these rules,'" Hansen said.

Susan Fromm, from left, with 3-year-old Gunnar, Jessica Fromm with Gemma, 10 weeks, and Matthew Fromm with 1-year-old Guinevere. Susan is Matthew's mother, and she lives with Matthew and Jessica and their children. (Kristan Lieb / Chicago Tribune)

That's exactly what Stefanie Cohen did before she and her husband moved in with her in-laws for five months while they did a massive renovation.

"His parents gave us a set of expectations as far as what they wanted from us," Cohen said. The rules: The couple were free to come and go as they pleased, but they were expected to tell the older set if they were going to be home for dinner.

It worked.

"I got much closer with my mother-in-law when I was living with her," Cohen said. "You start to understand their quirks instead of hating them."

While the rules were easy to follow in the Cohen household, some rules are more like criticism  and criticism doesn't have to be followed, Hansen said.

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When living with parents and in-laws, you're inadvertently giving them a new level of access and visibility to all aspects of your spouse, children and parenting techniques.

"If they become overly opinionated, set a boundary right away," Hansen said. "Let them know that you know they are coming from a loving place but that their feedback is not helpful."

This type of opinion and criticism can cause problems in a marriage and should be minimized.

Cohen said she wasn't criticized but definitely felt a lack of privacy when she and her husband were trying to conceive a child while living with their in-laws. Their bedroom happened to be above the family room.

"We would hear his parents talking about 'The Blacklist,' and it would put us out of the mood," she said.

It didn't work there, but they managed to conceive a baby on vacation, and Cohen's mother-in-law made onesies in every size with "Made in Oregon" on them.

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Janet Cohen  the mother-in-law  said she enjoyed living with her son and daughter-in-law so much that she thinks everyone should do it.

"We got to be really close," Cohen said. "It gave me a whole new perspective on Stefanie," said Cohen, who described her as her daughter, not her daughter-in-law as she had before they lived together.

Still, it's important to remember that there are other relationships to consider before bringing everyone together under one roof.

Getting along with the in-laws is important, but maintaining your relationship with your spouse while you're living with the in-laws is also crucial, said Terri Orbuch, therapist and author of "5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage From Good to Great."

Orbuch followed 373 couples for 30 years and found that living with in-laws greatly affects marital relationships.

It takes time away from the spousal relationship, in general, but it usually causes greater stress for women, who typically try to please their mothers-in-law more than men try to please their fathers-in-law, Orbuch said.

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It's important not to discuss your marital issues with your in-laws, she said.

When you're all living together, you also need to have some alone time as a couple  including making time for your physical relationship, Hansen said.

"Some couples may use this as a way to re-spark the passion in their love life  think high school strategies for finding places to be alone," Hansen said.

And you probably never thought you'd have to resort to that again.

Danielle Braff is a freelancer.

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Here's a riddle wrapped in an enigma: What does wife-beating have to with wage theft?

If you answered "absolutely nothing," you might be as confused as Don Chartier  an advocate for tougher laws against wage theft  was when state Sen. Jim Oberweis started grilling him at a recent committee hearing in Springfield.

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Chicago Inc. reviewed an audio of the hearing.

"Donald, do you ever beat your wife?" Oberweis asked Chartier.

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When a befuddled Chartier replied that he was not married, Oberweis did not back down.

"Have you ever beaten a woman?" the Sugar Grove Republican and dairy business owner asked at a March 8 meeting of the Illinois Senate Labor Committee.

"No," Chartier replied.

Well then, Oberweis pressed on, "Have you ever had a disagreement with a woman?"

That was enough for the committee's acting chairwoman, state Sen. Linda Holmes, who interjected what many in the room were surely wondering.

"Um ... relevance here?" she asked Oberweis.

"My relevance is, the way I asked the first question is very prejudicial, and when you start talking about 'wage theft' that is automatically prejudicial," Oberweis said.

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"It seems to me is what we're really talking about is you have a difference of opinion between a company and an employee."

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On Friday, Chartier told Chicago Inc. it was his "first time testifying in Springfield and I wasn't sure what to expect  so when he started talking about wife-beating I was like, 'What is this?!' "

Oberweis "didn't do himself any favors" with the odd analogy, Chartier said.

For his part, Oberweis told Inc. he "probably should have chosen different words" to make his point that "wage theft" is a loaded term that it is hard for employers who have been accused of it to shake off, even if they are not guilty.

Still, he said, "people took the comment in the wrong way ... the media has made this something that it is not."

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
Mayor Emanuel talks at Kent College in the West Loop about how kids should be in classrooms and Chicago Teachers Union should focus its frustration on Springfield. March 15, 2017 (John Byrne / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Chicago Public Schools has restarted a legal effort to block teachers from staging a one-day walkout after state officials rejected a district request to enforce a ruling that a similar strike last April likely violated state law.

With a filing to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, the district launched a process that could reach a judge before a May 1 strike the Chicago Teachers Union is considering to bring attention to CPS' dismal finances.

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A school district attorney on Monday pressed Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office to act on a 2016 labor board opinion that concluded a one-day CTU walkout last year likely violated state laws that govern when Chicago teachers can strike.

"Given the urgency of this matter, and the obvious harm to the nearly 400,000 students of the Chicago Public Schools, your prompt response would be very much appreciated," labor lawyer James Franczek wrote in a letter to Madigan's office.

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The response came from the labor board, which told the district this week that its previous complaint had been erased when a teachers' contract was settled in October, meaning a new protest had to be filed.

The district did so Wednesday, requesting an order that bars the CTU from striking unless it stays within the bounds of state law.

After getting the go-ahead from its House of Delegates earlier this month, the union has said members will vote April 5 on a May 1 date. "Even if the strike itself would be unlawful, consideration of whether to strike is protected," CTU attorney Robert Bloch said Thursday. "There's nothing unlawful about the union engaging in those activities."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that while he understands teachers' frustrations about education funding, students should be in school.

"Our kids used to be cheated on time," said Emanuel, who campaigned in his first term to extend the year for CPS students. "They need more time in class."

But the mayor's schools chief, Forrest Claypool, has said the school year could end three weeks early without a favorable ruling in the district's education funding lawsuit against the state, or if the state fails to provide $215 million to help cover the district's massive teacher pension bill.

The shortened school year prompted the union's consideration of a strike, CTU officials have said.

Union and school board negotiators were in heated contract negotiations that threatened to spark the second teachers strike of Emanuel's tenure when the CTU staged a one-day walkout last April 1.

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The union's move led to a legal challenge from the district, and in May the state labor board concluded that the April demonstration was likely illegal.

The labor board granted a CPS request to have a circuit court judge bar the union from staging a similar walkout, at least until the panel moved through a lengthy process to reach a final decision on the legality of the one-day strike.

The labor board "can't enforce that ruling ourselves," said John Brosnan, an attorney and staff member with the labor board. "So what we do is we send that to the attorney general's office."

The attorney general could ask a judge to issue an injunction that echoes the board's decision. But that never happened.

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"This is where it gets kind of opaque," Brosnan said. "When the board issues that order, does the attorney general have to go into court, or do they have any discretion to say, 'This is silly, we're not doing this' or, 'We disagree with this.' Are they compelled to do it?

"It's not like placing an order at the deli, where you get what you ask for. They get some prioritization of it, I guess, is the way to look at it."

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Madigan's office has not said why it did not pursue a court order. The union and school district agreed to withdraw pending unfair labor practice charges relating to contract negotiations after reaching a contract last fall.

By December, CPS had withdrawn its case against the one-day strike. The labor board then dismissed the case.

Chicago Tribune's John Byrne contributed.

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PerezJr
A 60-year-old woman was hit by a car that had taken off on officers who attempted to pull it over, police siad.

Officers had tried to curb the black sedan in the 1300 block of South Kedzie Avenue shortly before 10:35 p.m. The driver did not pull over, instead heading north on Kedzie.

The woman was in the street in the 800 block of South Kedzie when the sedan hit her, police said. The driver did not stop, and kept going north on Kedzie.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, center, meets with police chiefs from major cities at the Justice Department on Thursday, March 16, 2017. Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is second from right. (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson went to Washington on Thursday seeking increased federal financial help at a time of runaway violence, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions was noncommittal, saying he didn't want to make promises he couldn't keep at a time of proposed cuts to the Justice Department budget, according to one participant.

Johnson was among several chiefs from mostly big-city departments who talked to the nation's top law enforcement official about how the federal government can help them fight gun violence on their streets.

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Johnson was unavailable for comment Thursday, but one participant in the meeting, J. Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said the chiefs' meeting with Sessions lasted close to an hour and was "substantive."

Sessions, though, did not offer specific federal help, saying his budget for the next fiscal year had been cut and that he didn't want to promise anything he couldn't deliver, according to Manger, the police chief of Montgomery County, Md.

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After briefing Sessions on Chicago's violence woes, Johnson called for the addition of more federal prosecutors to help prosecute cases of felons in possession of illegal handguns.

"The superintendent said for a city that's leading headlines with challenges of gun violence, we have one of the lowest federal prosecution rates in the country and that shouldn't be," said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, who also attended the meeting. "The meat and potatoes of what was discussed was bad guys with guns are wreaking havoc in American cities, and the federal government certainly needs to help local entities set an example in a culture of accountability for those repeat offenders."

Guglielmi said that Johnson is scheduled to meet on Friday one-on-one with Rod Rosenstein, the nominee for deputy attorney general, to talk more about how the federal government can help Chicago fight violence.

President Donald Trump on Thursday released his 2018 budget blueprint that calls for Justice Department funding to drop to $27.7 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, down 3.8 percent, or $1.1 billion, from the current fiscal year.

But the blueprint also calls for federal dollars to "target the worst of the worst criminal organizations and drug traffickers in order to address violent crime, gun related deaths, and the opioid epidemic." In addition, the FBI, part of the Justice Department, would see its budget grow by 3 percent, giving the agency an extra $249 million, and together the department's law enforcement components would see an increase of $175 million to take aim at crime groups and drug traffickers. The actual appropriations will be set by Congress.

Johnson asked Sessions about bringing more federal agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to Chicago to help local police trace guns and determine more efficiently their link to shootings, Guglielmi said. Johnson also requested that Chicago be part of a federal program called "Project Exile" that aims to shift more gun prosecutions to federal judges so stricter penalties for illegal gun carriers could be sought.

Manger said that while the discussion focused largely on gun violence and repeat offenders, the chiefs also talked with Sessions about the work of the Justice Department's civil rights division, which recently issued a scathing report about Chicago police practices that found, among other things, that officers were poorly trained and quick to use excessive and even deadly force without facing consequences.

Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama who was confirmed last month as Trump's attorney general, has vowed to "pull back" on federal civil rights probes of local police departments like the one in Chicago.

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But on Thursday, Manger said he had the sense that Sessions was fully supportive of the civil rights division's work.

"He talked about DOJ's role in ensuring that police departments are investing in the best training they can," Manger said. "He talked about the importance of the progressive training that so many police departments have put in place."

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Johnson told Sessions that he was committed to reforming the Chicago Police Department, said Guglielmi.

Manger said civil rights division staffers said they had "not missed a beat" in terms of holding police departments and individual officers accountable in cases carried over from the Obama administration.

"I don't think he'd have invited them to the meeting if he didn't support what they were doing," Manger said. "Sessions said that we have a responsibility to the public to hold police accountable" and that part of the division's duties were to "protect the public."

kskiba@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @KatherineSkiba

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Mario "Pop-Up" Lambert, 33, wanted by the FBI in an armed robbery at a cellular store in Knoxville, Tenn. (FBI photo)

The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a man wanted for armed-robbery at a cellular store in Tennessee.

Mario L. Lambert, 32, also known as "Pop-Up," is wanted by the FBI for his involvement in armed robbery in Knoxville, Tenn. on Nov. 22, 2016, officials said.

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Lambert and four accomplices enter a store located at 4501 Chapman Highway brandishing weapons, and took three employees and one customer hostage, the FBI said.

The armed robbers forced them to a back room and on the ground, where their hands were zip-tied behind their backs, the FBI said. The four others who participated in the robbery have since been arrested, according to the FBI.

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Lambert was last seen driving a tan 2002 Chevy Tahoe with Illinois license plate ZZ37991. He was most recently seen in Rockford on March 2, but is known to frequent Chicago, Beloit, Wis., Milwaukee, Atlanta and Houston, the FBI said.

He is described as black with black hair and brown eyes. He is 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs about 220 pounds and has "Lambert" tattooed on his back and Chinese letters on his chest, the FBI said.

Lambert was named Feb. 22 in a federal arrest warrant for robbery and using, carrying and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts should contact the Knoxville FBI office at 865-544-0751, the Chicago FBI office at 312-421-6700 or the nearest law enforcement agency.
On Saturday, March 25, 2017, the Sheboygan Astronomical Society is hosting its tenth annual Swap N Sell. This years event, like the previous ones, will take place at the Aviation Heritage Center of the Sheboygan Airport in Wisconsin from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. For those of you who own a GPS or like to use Google Maps or MapQuest, the address is N6191 Resource Drive, Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin 53085.

Maybe you have some astronomy stuff like telescopes, eyepieces, accessories, cameras, or books you no longer use. If so, this event offers a great opportunity for you to sell or swap your items with other amateur astronomers.

Most visitors, however, stop by to see what kind of deals they can find on new or used equipment. Ill say that for a relatively small event, the pickings usually are pretty good. If you do drop in, be sure to stay awhile to chat with me and other like-minded individuals. The terms are cash, check, swap, and charge card, and dont be afraid to haggle a little.

In addition to the Swap N Sell, youll also have the opportunity to sit in on talks by guest speakers. Talks start at 10 a.m. Topics this year will be astronomy trivia, Spaceport Sheboygan, and more. And for the first time, I will not be presenting a talk. Yet another reason to come!

Also this year, Spaceport Sheboygan will be there. It's is a non-profit, science education facility. With hands-on exhibits and actual NASA artifacts it offers a unique blend of educational and entertaining opportunities for students of all ages. Live science shows discuss what it's like to be in space and has demonstrations that will entertain. Sounds like fun.

Finally, because this is Wisconsin, theres alway a brat fry and (nonalcoholic) drinks for sale during the event.

See you there!
BALI, Indonesia  An Oak Park woman convicted in her mother's "suitcase murder" in Indonesia gave custody of her young daughter on Friday to an Australian woman until her release from prison.



Heather Mack is serving a 10-year sentence for assisting her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder, in which the body was stuffed in a suitcase. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison.



The baby girl, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan prison until she turned 2 years old on Friday.



Prison chief Tony Nainggolan said the girl's development will be supervised by government social workers.



"We will allow the girl to meet her mother any time," Nainggolan said.



Mack, 21, broke down in tears as she gave Stella to Oshar Putu Melody Suartama, an Australian woman married to a Balinese man, said Mack's Indonesian lawyer, Yulius Benyamin Seran.



He said Suartama, who has two sons and lives in Bali, befriended Mack when the couple was first detained for murder. She helped Mack as an interpreter and supported her during the trial.



"She is the right person to raise Stella, she loves her," Seran said.



Von Wiese-Mack's badly battered body was found stuffed in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St. Regis Bali resort. She reportedly did not approve of her daughter's relationship with Schaefer.
The former owner of a suburban construction business convicted of acting as an illegal front so another company could secure a lucrative city airport contract was sentenced Thursday to 12 months in federal prison.

Lawyers for Elizabeth Perino had sought probation and home confinement, but U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said he opted for prison to send a message to "an industry that needs to clean up its act."

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Perino's conviction is the latest turn in an eight-year saga sparked in 2008 when Perino's former project manager filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging misconduct in massive projects run by industry giant McHugh Construction, a century-old company that reported more than a half-billion dollars in revenue in 2015.

That sparked a joint investigation by federal prosecutors and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan resulting in the criminal charges.

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Perino's company posed as a legitimate woman-owned business, allowing Chicago-based Diamond Coring Co. to meet its requirements for hiring disadvantaged businesses in order to win a multimillion-dollar runway repair contract at O'Hare International Airport. Perino did no work for the bills submitted by her company.

In 2011, Perino submitted fake documents to the city purporting to show her company, Perdel Contracting of Lockport, had rented to Diamond Coring $140,000 of equipment, including an air compressor, a dump truck, a trailer and a boom truck, the indictment alleged. She also had a "gentleman's agreement" with the owner of Diamond Coring, Anthony Cappello, to hide the fact that asphalt sweeper equipment supposedly owned by Perdel actually belonged to Diamond Coring.

"Perino said that the 'gentleman's agreement' had to be handwritten and not in a computer so as to avoid detection during an audit," the indictment alleged.

Cappello, who cooperated with authorities and testified at Perino's trial, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to two years of probation in 2012, records show. A federal jury convicted Perino in June on all four counts of mail and wire fraud following a weeklong trial.

In 2014, McHugh agreed to pay $12 million to settle the whistleblower lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing. The company agreed to implement a compliance program and have an independent monitor oversee its subcontracting process for three years. McHugh also agreed to donate $2 million to the city to support government programs for disadvantaged businesses.

The probe involved about $150 million in McHugh contracts on some of the biggest recent public works projects in the Chicago area, including the reconstruction of Kennedy Expressway ramps in 2005, the reconstruction of the North Avenue Bridge in 2006 and the 2010 Wacker Drive viaduct reconstruction.

Under laws designed to give companies with less clout a foot in the door, McHugh was supposed to subcontract out about $40 million of the work on those projects to businesses owned by women or minorities.

Most of the subcontracts were given to Perdel and Accurate Steel Installers, another firm owned by Perino, according to the charges.

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On Thursday, Perino's lawyer, Jacqueline Jacobson, asked the judge to take into account Perino's age and a recent "catastrophic illness" in crafting his sentence.

Perino, 62, of Willowbrook, walked with the aid of a cane as she stepped to the lectern to address the judge.

"When I went into septic shock, I almost died," she said before bursting into tears. "I'm very sorry for what I did," Perino said.

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For Perino, who was well-known in the construction industry, the criminal conviction marked a stunning fall.

Perino had followed in the footsteps of her father, who worked in construction and died when she was just 18. She "often went with him to job sites, "developing a passion for the construction industry," her attorneys said.

Perino also cared for her disabled brother, Bruno, until his death in 2012.

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The judge acknowledged her good deeds and letters of support from family, friends and colleagues, but he said a prison sentence was appropriate due to rampant fraud in the construction industry.

"She knew it was wrong," Feinerman said. "She did it anyway."

gpratt@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @royalpratt
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday derided President Donald Trump's budget plan, saying it has set the wrong priorities and that its spending cuts would undermine programs in Chicago that give people a healthier environment and better educations.

While the city is counting on more than $1 billion in federal funding this year, Emanuel said he couldn't predict how much Chicago would lose under Trump's spending package. He pointed out the budget was just released, and he suggested it will face a stiff fight as members of Congress strongly oppose one or another of the deep cuts proposed to various domestic programs.

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Still, the mayor challenged the ideals in the budget Trump unveiled Thursday.

"At every level, it's not only wrong on where the money is, it's wrong on where the values are," he said. "And it would have an impact on the city of Chicago and the things we're trying to do.

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"We're going to use a lot of energy to fight to get back to a place  it's just the wrong priorities and the wrong values on everything we're trying to do to improve our environment, our health for our most vulnerable people, for making sure that we have early childhood, that we have alternatives in after-school and summer jobs. At every level, this is wrong," Emanuel added.

Emanuel has taken particular umbrage at Trump's plan to take away nearly all of the $300 million now dedicated to the Great Lakes Restoration fund, and he again Friday said that reduction will harm water quality.

The upcoming budget fight in Congress means the plan could change significantly, Emanuel said. At City Hall, budget officials are looking at the potential ramifications of Trump's budget proposal, but they aren't doing a deep dive because of the likelihood of changes.

But he said it's counterproductive for Congress to be spending energy and political capital trying to roll back cuts to programs like the Environmental Protection Agency that Trump proposed.

"We have two senators and a congressional delegation that will fight it, but we shouldn't be having this type of fight," he said after introducing Juan Salgado as the new chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago. "I want to know where the infrastructure investment is. It's not in the budget, and (Trump) made a priority out of it."

In the current budget year, the city is counting on about $1.3 billion in federal funding. The city already has received nearly $300 million of that money, partly because of differences in the federal and city budget calendars.

More than half of the city's federal funding goes to infrastructure programs  primarily road and airport work  and public safety, including money for the Chicago Police Department and Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Infrastructure grants include more than $200 million for work at O'Hare and Midway airports and $160 million for highways, bridges and tunnels. OEMC is expecting $45 million for counterterrorism-related programs, while the Police Department is counting on more than $7 million for public transit security and hiring of police officers.

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Other significant portions of the federal funding go to early childhood education and public health programs.

The city also is relying on about $81 million in Community Development Block Grants for a range of programs that include treatment for the mentally ill, services for homeless people, job training, senior services, domestic violence victim assistance and housing preservation efforts.

Gov. Bruce Rauner's press office didn't respond to multiple inquiries about the Trump budget and its potential effects on state government.

Chicago Tribune's Kim Geiger contributed.

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hdardick@chicagotribune.com

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A California woman who was drugged along with her boyfriend and then dragged from their home described the "hell that we have survived" in emotional testimony Thursday before her abductor was sentenced to 40 years in prison in a crime so elaborate and bizarre that police initially dismissed it as a hoax.

"You treated me like an object, a toy, an animal," Denise Huskins told her kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney who pleaded guilty in September.

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Huskins described the two days of physical and psychological torture she endured after Muller snatched her from her and her boyfriend's San Francisco Bay Area home two years ago.

"I still have nightmares every night," she said, fighting back tears. "Sleep is not rest for me. It is a trigger."

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Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who was bound and drugged during the kidnapping, said he "cannot and will not ever be the same."

U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley called the abduction a "heinous, atrocious, horrible crime" as he sentenced Muller, 39. He had faced up to life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

In court, Muller said he was "sick with shame" for the "pain and horror" he caused. Shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, he looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced.

"He doesn't have empathy. I don't think he's capable of it," Quinn's mother, Marianne Quinn, said after the sentencing.

She said a life sentence would have been better "because they never would have to worry about him ever again, but again, he's going to be in jail for a long, long, long time."

This is a June 2015 booking photo released by the Dublin, Calif., police department, showing Matthew Muller after he was arrested on robbery and assault charges. (The Associated Press)

Defense attorney Thomas Johnson argued for a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment.

"They want him to be a monster to get to 40 years. Fine. Marginalize mental illness," Johnson told the judge sardonically.

He declined comment after the hearing.

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Muller used a remote-controlled drone to spy on Huskins and Quinn before he broke into their Vallejo home with a fake gun, tied up the couple and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said. They were blindfolded while Muller played a pre-recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.

He put Huskins in the trunk of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days before eventually releasing her in her hometown of Huntington Beach.

Investigators said they found videos of Muller arranging cameras in a bedroom and then recording himself twice sexually assaulting his blindfolded victim.

"The only way I got through it was to picture that it was Aaron that I was with," Huskins said, sobbing uncontrollably until Quinn joined her and kissed her gently on the forehead.

The Associated Press does not normally name victims of sexual assault. But Huskins spoke in an open courtroom with many media present and has frequently spoken publicly about the case in the past. Prosecutors cited the rapes as one of several aggravating factors justifying a 40-year sentence.

Muller was not charged with a sex crime because there is no appropriate federal law, said Lauren Horwood, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, though she said he could still face state charges.

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El Dorado County Assistant District Attorney James Clinchard said his office now plans to contact the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to see if his office should file charges.

During and after the kidnapping, Muller used an anonymous email address to send messages to a San Francisco reporter claiming that Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals who were practicing their tactics.

After her release, Vallejo police called the kidnapping a hoax and erroneously likened it to the book and movie "Gone Girl," in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested in an attempted robbery at another Bay Area home. Authorities said they found a cellphone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Quinn, linking the disbarred attorney to the abduction.

Vallejo police have since apologized. Huskins is suing the city and two police officers, accusing them of defamation and inflicting emotional distress.

Quinn described Thursday how the home he once loved "turned into a prison" and how his young nieces still check under their beds each night.

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"They're not checking for a bogeyman," he told Muller directly. "They're checking for you."

Muller, a former Marine, was admitted to practice law in California in 2011, and his state bar profile says he attended Harvard Law School. He lost his law license in 2015 in an unrelated incident.

"Muller had advantages in life that most people only dream of," U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement, "yet he used his considerable intelligence to plan and execute the physical assault and psychological torture of two innocent strangers."
A view of Trump Tower, March 7, 2017 in New York City. A laptop belonging to a U.S. Secret Service agent has been stolen, according to law enforcement officials. The computer is said to contain floor plans of Trump Tower in New York among other information. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

A laptop with sensitive security information on it was stolen from a Secret Service agent in New York City, law enforcement officials said Friday, prompting a multiagency investigation to try to retrieve it.

The Secret Service said in a statement that "an employee was the victim of a criminal act in which our agency-issued laptop computer was stolen.''

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The investigation into the laptop theft occurred as a House committee separately launched an investigation into an intrusion earlier this month on White House grounds.

The agency tried to dispel concerns about the security risks posed by the theft, saying their agents' laptops "contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information.''

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The agency did not say what sensitive information might be on the laptop, but one law enforcement official said it contained building and security plans for Trump Tower, home of President Donald Trump and his family.

The official said the laptop was stolen from a vehicle in the driveway of the agent's home in Brooklyn on Thursday morning. The computer was in a bag that was later recovered, but the laptop was no longer in it, the official said. A personal laptop was also in the bag and taken by the thief, but officials are less concerned about the data on that device, the official said.

Authorities have recovered video of a man walking away with the bag, and are chasing a number of leads to try to find him, the official said.

The report of an intensive search for the device came as a House oversight committee ordered the Secret Service to preserve documents and deliver a full briefing Monday about a March 10 episode at the executive mansion.

In a letter Friday to Acting U.S. Secret Service Director William Callahan, House Committee on Oversight on Government Reform chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said his panel had received potentially troubling allegations about security protocols in which a California man was arrested near the South Portico entrance.

"I worry this is the worst one yet," Chaffetz said. "The time on the White House grounds really concerns me. With the President in the White House the intruder was evidently able to hide behind a pillar and get to a door undetected. The problem has persisted for years and is totally unacceptable. It scares me."

CNN reported that the suspect, Jonathan Tran, 26, of Milpitas, California, walked the grounds of the White House for 15 minutes or more before being arrested at about 11:38 p.m. that Friday night.

"The response to the alarm was lacking," according to CNN which quoted an agency source it did not name. The suspect allegedly jumped multiple fences and set off several alarms while evading others, the cable network said.

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The U.S. Secret Service did not immediately respond Friday to questions about the CNN report.

The day's events threatened to renew scrutiny of the agency, which underwent a management overhaul after a string of revelation and lapses after a 2014 incident in which intruder Omar Gonzalez made his way deep into the executive mansion before being tackled by an off-duty agent in the East Room.

Chaffetz directed the agency to preserve and hand over all video of White House grounds from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. that Friday night, all joint operations center activity logs, all documents and communications related to alarms, the incident and the agency response, and all subsequent reviews.

"The individual may have triggered alarms the USSS ignored, may have moved around on the White House grounds undetected for a considerable amount of time, and may have attempted entry into the building," Chaffetz wrote.

"Time is of the essence," Chaffetz wrote, directing the agency to preserve all records. "The Committee has long-standing concerns regarding repeated security incidents at USSS protected facilities. "

Tran, who was carrying a backpack and two cans of mace, was charged with entering or remaining on restricted grounds while carrying a dangerous weapon and faces a statutory maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted. A U.S. magistrate released him to his family's home in Northern California on personal recognizance subject to court and electronic monitoring, mental evaluation and treatment if necessary.

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Tran was arrested carrying a book on Trump, a U.S. passport and a laptop containing a letter addressed to the president about Russian hackers saying Tran had found "information of relevance," according to a criminal complaint filed March 11.

Tran stated he had jumped the fence and added, "I am a friend of the president," Secret Service officer Wayne Azevedo wrote in an affidavit.

Trump last weekend praised the service for doing "a fantastic job last night" responding to a "troubled person."

The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig contributed to this report.
This Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016 photo shows an Israeli Air Force F-15 plane in flight during a graduation ceremony for new pilots in the Hatzerim air force base near the city of Beersheba, Israel. Anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory early on Friday, following a series of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria, the Israeli military said. (Ariel Schalit / AP)

JERUSALEM  Syria fired missiles at Israeli warplanes on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah prompting it to deploy its missile defense system, Israeli officials said Friday, in a rare military exchange between the two hostile neighbors.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

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Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said, without elaborating. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but said the safety of Israeli civilians and Israeli aircraft was "not compromised."

Israel is widely believed to have carried out several airstrikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria  including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles  as well as Hezbollah positions. It rarely comments on such operations and the military statement detailing the raid and comments confirming the operation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were highly unusual.

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"Our policy is very consistent. When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to the Hezbollah, and we have the intelligence and the operational capability, we act to prevent that. That is what was and that is what will be," Netanyahu said.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside President Bashar Assad in the brutal Syrian civil war. The Iran-backed group is sworn to Israel's destruction and fought a month-long war with the Jewish state in 2006.

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is rare, though Israeli military officials reported a shoulder-fired missile attack a few months ago.

Israeli Channel 10 TV reported that Israel deployed its Arrow defense system for the first time against a real threat and hit an incoming missile, intercepting it before it exploded in Israel.

However, Arrow is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles high in the stratosphere, so it remained unclear why the system would have been used in this particular incident.

The Israeli military would not comment on the type of system used.

Israel's powerful transportation and intelligence minister Yisrael Katz told the station "our message is clear, we will not be complacent with a Syrian policy that arms Hezbollah." Katz said "the fact that the incident developed into a situation where Israel claimed responsibility and the Syrians responded is significant."

A Syrian military statement said four Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace  flying into Syria through Lebanese territory  and targeted a military position in central Syria.

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Damascus said Syrian anti-aircraft systems confronted the planes and claimed one of the jets was shot down in Israeli- controlled territory and that another was hit. The Israeli military denied the claim, saying none of the jets had been hit.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

The pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, which has good sources within the militant group, dismissed reports by other Arab media outlets that a Hezbollah commander, Badee Hamiyeh, was killed in one of the airstrikes. It said Hamiyeh was killed Thursday in the southern Syrian region of Quneitra, near the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

Jordan, which borders both Israel and Syria, said parts of the missiles fell in its rural northern areas, including the Irbid district. The Jordanian military said the debris came from the Israeli interception of missiles fired from Syria.

Radwan Otoum, the Irbid governor, told the state news agency Petra that the missile parts caused only minor damage.

A chunk of missile crashed into the courtyard of a home in the community of Inbeh in northern Jordan, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

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Umm Bilal al-Khatib, a local resident, said she heard a blast at around 3 a.m. and initially thought a gas cylinder had exploded. When she went outside she found a small crater and a 3-meter-long (10-foot) cylinder.

Israeli media said the interception by the Arrow system took place north of Jerusalem.

Arrow is part of what Israel calls its "multilayer missile defense," comprised of different systems meant to protect against short and long range threats, including the thousands of missiles possessed by Hezbollah in Lebanon and rockets used by Hamas and other Islamic militant groups in Gaza.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering mostly sporadic incidents of spillover fire that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. Israel has responded to the errant fire with limited reprisals on Syrian positions.

The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011 as a popular uprising against Assad, eventually descended into a full-blown civil war, with Syrian government forces fighting an array of rebel groups. The chaos has allowed al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria and the Islamic State group to expand their reach.

The skies over Syria are now crowded, with Russian and Syrian aircraft backing Assad's forces and a U.S.-led coalition striking Islamic State and al-Qaida targets.

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Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right, stands with deputy Commander of the Combined Force Command General Leem Ho-young and his chief of staff Margaret Peterlin as two North Korean soldiers behind them look on at the border village of Panmunjom. (Lee Jin-Man / AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL, South Korea  The United States signaled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table."

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Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend. China has been advocating diplomacy to avoid a conflict on the divided peninsula.

Also Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

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Past U.S. administrations have considered military options against North Korea and have publicly said that an attack on the U.S. or its allies would prompt a devastating response.

Tillerson's comments were unusual, however, as he appeared to be implying, in public, that the U.S. would consider military force as a way of preventing an attack by Pyongyang, and not just as a means of retaliation. It also comes amid a greater sense of urgency about the threat because of North Korea's rapid progress toward developing the means to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile. Risks of military action are high as North Korea could unleash a massive artillery barrage on Seoul in retaliation.

The Trump administration says it is conducting a review of North Korea policy. At a news conference in Seoul, alongside his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said U.S was exploring the new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures and emphasized that Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience" that saw tightening of sanctions to try and get North Korea back to negotiations aimed at denuclearization  had ended.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against North Korea, he said, "all of the options are on the table."

Tillerson said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, "but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table."

Former members of the Clinton administration have said that the U.S. considered a strike on a North Korean nuclear facility in 1994 when it appeared on the brink of producing weapons-grade fissile material and refused U.N. inspections. A diplomatic deal was struck to avert conflict.

Since then, North Korea has violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and has been undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Last week, after the U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills that the North views as rehearsal for invasion, it test-fired four missiles into seas off Japan.

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains North Korea's most powerful ally and dominant trading partner. China recently announced it was suspending coal imports that are an important source of revenue for North Korea for the rest of the year in adherence with U.N. sanctions.

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Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement the sanctions. He criticized China's opposition to a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in South Korea and accused it of waging "inappropriate and troubling" economic retaliation against the South. China sees the system as a threat to its own security although the U.S. says it is only targeted against North Korea. Tillerson said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary.

Tillerson also rejected Beijing's proposal of halting the U.S.-South Korean military drills in exchange for a nuclear freeze by North Korea. He said the allies had no intention to stand down the exercises that are defensive in nature and conducted transparently, unlike North Korean missile launches. He further sounded skeptical about the idea of negotiating a freeze that would leave the North with "significant capabilities" that could threaten the region and U.S. forces.

The U.S. retains nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, and nearly 50,000 in neighboring Japan.

More broadly, Tillerson poured cold water on the idea of resuming negotiations with Pyongyang, saying, "20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today."

"It's important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks," he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something it has shown little interest in doing.

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Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed. He is flying this week without the usual contingent of journalists who normally cover the secretary of state.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it was the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

Associated Press photographer Lee Jin-man at Camp Bonifas, South Korea, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to sidestep their differences in a meeting at the White House Friday, but their first public appearance was punctuated by some awkward moments.

During a photo op in the Oval Office, the two did not shake hands before reporters. Trump pushed back against the notion in Europe that his "America First" agenda means he's an isolationist, calling such a suggestion "another example of, as you say, fake news." And he referred to the United States as "a very powerful company," before quickly correcting that to "country."

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When a German reporter asked Trump if he regrets any of his commentary on Twitter, Trump said, "Very seldom."

Merkel maintained her composure even when Trump repeated his contention that former President Barack Obama may have tapped his phones in Trump Tower. He sought to turn the explosive charge into a light joke when asked about concerns raised by the British government that the White House is now citing a debunked claim that U.K. spies snooped on Trump.

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"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said casually, referring to 2013 reports that the U.S. was monitoring Merkel's cellphone conversations. As for the most recent report, Trump said he shouldn't be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who had accused British intelligence of helping Obama spy on him.

When the subject turned to economic issues, Merkel attempted to project a conciliatory approach. She said the "success of Germans has always been one where the German success is one side of the coin and the other side of the coin has been European unity and European integration. That's something of which I'm deeply convinced."

Those comments appeared aimed at making a case to Trump on the benefits of the European Union. Trump backed Britain's departure from the EU and has expressed skepticism of multilateral trade agreements.

The two leaders tried to express their common bonds but showed minimal rapport in their first encounter, a departure from Merkel's warm relations with Obama during his eight years as president. At the start of the news conference, Merkel sought to break the ice, saying that it was "much better to talk to one another than about one another."

Merkel said delicately that while she represents German interests, Trump "stands up for, as is right, American interests. That is our task respectively." She said they were "trying to address also those areas where we disagree but tried to bring people together."

"We need to be fair with each other," Merkel said, saying both countries were expecting "that something good comes out of it for their own people."

The meetings at the White House included discussions on strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group, the conflict in Afghanistan and resolving Ukraine's conflict, all matters that require close cooperation between the U.S. and Germany.

The talks, postponed from Tuesday because of a snowstorm, aimed to represent a restart of a relationship complicated by Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Trump frequently accused the chancellor of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees and other migrants from Syria and accused his campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, of wanting to be "America's Angela Merkel."

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During the news conference, Trump predicted that a new health care law would be passed by a substantial margin and "pretty quickly," expressing optimism for his top legislative priority.

The new president reaffirmed the United States' "strong support" for NATO but reiterated his stance that NATO allies need to "pay their fair share" for the cost of defense. Trump said many countries owe "vast sums of money" but he declined to identify Germany as one of the nations.

Prior to his inauguration, Trump declared NATO "obsolete" but has since modified his stance, telling European leaders the alliance remains of strategic importance. Only the U.S. and four other members currently reach the benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. Germany currently spends 1.23 percent of its GDP on defense, but it is being increased.

Both leaders pointed to their work on the conflict in Afghanistan and efforts to combat terrorism.

When the topic moved to trade, Trump said the U.S. would do "fantastically well" in its trade relations with Germany. The president has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements but suggested he was only trying to revise trade deals to better serve U.S. interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany was $64.9 billion last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

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"The negotiators for Germany have done a far better job than the negotiators for the United States, but hopefully we can even it out. We don't want victory, we want fairness," Trump said.

Merkel emphasized the need for trade deals that fairly benefit both countries. "That is the spirit I think in which we ought to be guided in negotiating any agreement between the United States of America and the EU," she said.
Statehouse Democrats want Indiana's congressional delegation to defend former Gov. Mike Pence's expansion of the state's Medicaid program from proposed GOP cuts backed by President Donald Trump.

A proposal in Congress to overhaul former President Barack Obama's signature health care law would lead to Medicaid cuts estimated at $880 billion through 2026, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Indiana House Democrats warn that could have "dire" results in Indiana.

The current vice president's Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 expanded Medicaid in 2015 with increased funding made available under the Affordable Care Act.

The program relies on the federal government for at least 90 percent of its funding and covers more than 400,000 poor people in Indiana.

In a letter sent to the delegation, House Democrats voice concern for those who receive health insurance through Pence's Indiana program, roughly six percent of state residents.

"We have met few Hoosiers who want to lose their health care coverage, see Medicare slashed, endure health care job losses or see family members suffer needlessly," they wrote.

Indiana was one of 31 states to take advantage of the available funding and expand state Medicaid programs. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and other Republicans are asking Congress to spare Medicaid funding as they overhaul the health care law.

"I want to make sure that we're compassionate and cover the Hoosiers that we are right now," Holcomb said earlier this week. "I completely believe we need to fix the Affordable Care Act and (House Republican's) repeal was the right first step. But the devil is always in the details."

According to the congressional nonpartisan analysis, 14 million Americans would lose coverage next year under the proposal. Even before the analysis was released, GOP legislative leaders warned of potential coverage losses in Indiana.

The state needs to be prepared to mitigate damages and reduce the pain caused if the bill passes, House Democratic leader Scott Pelath said.

His caucus' letter calls for "serious answers" on how HIP coverage and overall health care policy could be affected, urging the delegation to consult a bipartisan group of Indiana lawmakers.

"We would hope that Vice President Pence, not long removed from our state, would be the first person in Washington D.C. to understand the serious implications that could threaten this landmark of our state's health care policy," they wrote. "Regardless, we know that every official from our state has an ability to do the right thing by our citizens."
It's not even noon, and I've already answered dozens of phone calls from angry constituents. A single mother demanded answers as to where her family could turn for health care services when Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act. An older gentleman had to take a breath as he used some choice words to describe House Speaker Paul Ryan's proposals that could cut Medicare benefits. The resentment and anger are palpable. Seconds after I hang up, the phone rings again. And again. And again.

As a communications director for Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., answering constituent calls is not usually in my job description; in most offices on Capitol Hill, staff assistants and interns pick up. But with phones ringing off the hook since Donald Trump became the 45th U.S. president, the policy experts and I have been pitching in  and all of us have been on the receiving end of a nonstop barrage of indignation and frustration from constituents, many of whom who have never been in touch before.

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So I have something to say to the hordes of furious callers who continue to bombard our office on a daily basis: Thank you.

Democratic and Republican congressional offices have been inundated with calls, letters, tweets, posts and visits from impassioned people upset and outraged by the president's actions, Cabinet nominations and executive orders. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer's office reported an average of 1.5 million daily calls to the Senate in the first week of February alone. Phone lines are so gridlocked that lawmakers are nervously taking to social media to apologize that constituents can't get through and reassure them that we hear them on Capitol Hill.

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Before Trump's inauguration, our Washington office received anywhere from 120 to 200 calls in a given week. Those numbers have more than doubled this year. With some callers, ire drips from their every word, especially in relation to Republican efforts to dismantle Obamacare. With others, it's easy to recognize the regret and disappointment in their voices, as if they're angry with themselves for somehow allowing such a man to assume the most powerful office in the world. We rarely receive phone calls backing Trump; our district has been a Democratic stronghold for generations.

Despite claims by administration officials that opposition efforts are being led by paid operatives, these calls do not sound scripted or prompted by professional activists. We hear from people who live in our district, and from residents of elsewhere in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest, some who are contacting us for the first time. (We don't put calls from people outside the district into our constituent database, but otherwise, we handle all the calls the same way.) Their authenticity is impossible to mistake. Their sentiments come from a genuine place of sincerity and alarm. And at the end of each week, when we convey their fears and frustrations to our boss, we discuss what we can do as public servants to address their concerns and change the atmosphere of uncertainty that has been cultivated by this administration and its policies.

Urgent and emotionally charged calls come with the territory when you work in Congress, but some conversations follow me home from the Rayburn House Office Building. One woman broke down describing how she's afraid to call the police in an emergency out of fear she'll be deported. A college student asked how the Environmental Protection Agency's administrator could question the link between human activity and climate change.

As a Jew, I was particularly touched by a call from a father whose young daughter was one of those evacuated from the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center in Whitefish Bay, Wis., several times after recent bomb threats. For me, it evoked powerful childhood memories: My mother worked in the preschool of the Mittleman Jewish Community Center in Portland, Ore. (which also received a bomb threat recently), and our local synagogue, the place where I had my bar mitzvah, was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. I was 13 or 14 at the time. I remember asking her why it happened and feeling frustrated by her answer, and I hoped that this father on the line  who wanted to know why someone like Steve Bannon has a seat on a committee of the National Security Council  didn't feel that same dissatisfaction with my response.

Just before the start of the 115th Congress, House Republicans tried weakening the power of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate corruption and misconduct, only to reverse course 24 hours later after being pummeled by a tidal wave of phone calls from infuriated constituents. Last month, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, announced that he'd withdrawn a controversial bill that would have privatized 3.3 million acres of federally owned land after conservationists, environmentalists, hunters and fishermen lashed out against him. Betsy DeVos was just barely confirmed as secretary of education after Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, opposed her nomination. Days before the vote, Murkowski took to the Senate floor and said, "I have heard from thousands  truly thousands  of Alaskans who shared their concerns about Mrs. DeVos as secretary of education."

The response by lawmakers to this spontaneous grass-roots uprising  women and men calling our offices, attending town halls and adding their voices on social media  demonstrates that civic participation works. And those concerned citizens appreciate that consistent engagement with their elected officials gets results. They understand that their representatives must hear and see their opposition to the path on which this country finds itself. While others saw Election Day as the last phase of their civic duty, those who continue to pepper congressional offices with their messages of opposition recognize that Nov. 8, 2016, was just the beginning.

For a Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill in the age of Trump, the struggle for justice can feel disheartening, if not demoralizing. But with every phone call from a concerned constituent, every tweet in support of our shared resistance, every protest sign held by someone who demands dignity for all, I feel a renewed confidence in the resilience of our democracy. Their activism gives me hope. Their resolve gives me strength. And hopefully, hearing a live voice on the other end of the phone rather than a voicemail message does a little of the same for them.

Washington Post

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Eric Harris is the communications director for Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis.
A new CNN poll out Friday tests one of the fundamental tenets of the Trump and Bannon worldview in a very illuminating way. It finds that large majorities reject the basic idea that undocumented immigrants who have been in this country for a long time  and have not committed serious crimes  should nonetheless be subject to removal.

It's the latest sign of a larger trend that goes like this: Little by little, the narrative that President Donald Trump and his top adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, have been telling about what is happening in this country is getting translated into concrete policy specifics. And Americans are recoiling from the results.

The CNN poll tries to pin down public sentiment about Trump's expanded deportation efforts. It finds that 58 percent of Americans worry that those efforts "will go too far and result in deportation of people who haven't committed serious crimes," while only 40 percent worry that those efforts "won't go far enough and dangerous criminals will remain."

The poll also finds that a whopping 90 percent favor allowing those who have been working here "for a number of years," know English, and are willing to pay back taxes to stay and eventually apply for citizenship. Only nine percent want them deported. And 60 percent say the government should prioritize legalizing those working here illegally over deporting them.

Trump has vastly expanded the pool of undocumented immigrants who are now targets for deportation, enshrining in policy the idea that even longtime residents and low-level offenders are nothing more than lawbreakers who should be subject to enforcement. In the Trump/Bannon narrative, these people remain threats  cultural, demographic, economic, and physical. But these CNN findings suggest broad public rejection of this general notion, and see assimilation as a more appropriate outcome.

This mirrors a recent Quinnipiac poll finding that support for allowing undocumented immigrants to remain is at a new high of 63 percent, even as a plurality thinks Trump's deportation policies are "too aggressive." Meanwhile, sizable majorities disapprove of Trump's planned border wall and ban on refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Bannon flatly rejects the very existence of such public sentiments. In the wake of the initial outcry over Trump's travel ban, Bannon insisted that the "overwhelming majority of Americans" support his "populist nation-state policies," meaning that a large majority is rooting for Trumpism to succeed. But this is just false, as much of the polling on his immigration policies confirms.

Now this notion will be subjected to another test. The American electorate and political world are now digesting Trump's budget  which is the most ambitious blueprint yet for realizing the Trump/Bannon "America First" vision, as well as Bannon's vow to destroy "the administrative state." That phrase would appear to be shorthand for national regulations and international commitments created by allegedly unaccountable bureaucrats who are supposedly disenfranchising U.S. workers and weakening American sovereignty.

Thus, the Trump budget would boost spending to fund Trump's border wall and increased deportations. It would deeply cut into the State Department budget in ways that weaken America's constructive international engagement, to pay for a massive military buildup. It would slash away at the Environmental Protection Agency budget, weakening environmental protections and scrapping funding for international climate change programs and for Obama policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are essential to meeting our commitments as part of the Paris climate accord. It would cut deeply into funding for scientific and medical research with a recklessness that has alarmed scientists.

And so, we are now seeing what the Trump/Bannon "America First" vision, backed up by the dismantling of the "administrative state," might really look like in concrete terms. The public reaction to this will be illuminating, too.

Washington Post
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks with Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson during the graduation ceremony of new police officers March 15, 2017, in Chicago (Joshua Lott / AFP/Getty Images)

On his last day as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Zachary Fardon presented Chicago with a list of five tactics to combat its relentless gun violence.

Number 1, get that Consent Decree.

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Fardon's farewell letter offers some intriguing strategies, such as disrupting street warfare by interrupting gangbangers' Twitter feeds, or launching a pilot program in which three federal law enforcement agencies would be combined to target Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods. But police reforms are the first priority, Fardon wrote. The Chicago Police Department "has systemic problems that prevent it from supporting good officers or checking bad officers."

"It's past time we give our police officers what they need to succeed," he wrote. "A consent decree with an independent federal monitor is the only way that will happen."

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The only way. We hope Fardon is wrong about that. Because at this point, betting on a consent decree is like picking Northwestern to go all the way in the NCAA tournament.

Not long ago, federal oversight of CPD looked inevitable. After Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the U.S. Department of Justice came to town to figure out why Chicago cops were killing so many civilians.

The mere presence of the DOJ jump-started long-overdue reforms in the Police Department and its oversight system. The harder and faster the city worked to correct its failings, the less interference it could expect from the feds once their investigation was complete. A police accountability task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel laid out a road map, and the city has made significant, if sometimes grudging, progress. But there is still a long way to go.

The election of President Donald Trump threw it all into question. In his campaign, Trump didn't hesitate to share his drive-by observation that Chicago police aren't tough enough on crime. His pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said the feds should not be "micromanaging" local police departments.

The DOJ hustled to wrap up its investigation before the new administration took over. Emanuel and police Superintendent Eddie Johnson stood before the microphones with Fardon and lame duck Attorney General Loretta Lynch and announced they had agreed "in principle" to continue working toward a consent decree. The unspoken question: Who's going to make them?

Not Sessions. In his first speech on the job, he vowed to "pull back" on civil rights probes of police departments, and he dismissed the DOJ's findings in Chicago as "anecdotal."

Not Fardon. He was among the 46 federal prosecutors from the Obama administration who were asked to resign. We doubt that his successor's marching orders will include finishing the job in Chicago.

So it's on us. All of us. It's up to the mayor and the 50 aldermen to follow through with those reforms, consent decree or no, and it's up to the rest of us to insist on it.

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"This city's history is replete with examples of saying the right thing, in some cases starting the right thing, but then losing focus, particularly as the media and public attention pivot toward whatever is the latest crisis," Fardon's letter warns. He's right.

The coming months will test our collective commitment to shaping a professional, accountable Police Department.

Here's what we've seen so far:

On Tuesday, Johnson handed out a report titled "Chicago Police Department: Next steps for reform." It's long on plans and promises and short on details and deadlines  almost a year after the mayor's task force finished its work. Close your eyes and imagine a court-appointed monitor delivering that progress report to a smiling federal judge. No, we can't picture it either.

A week earlier, Johnson released a second draft of the department's proposed policy on use of force, a watered-down version of the guidelines sketched out while the DOJ was still holding a hammer.

That's not an encouraging sign as the city and its police unions sit down to negotiate new labor contracts. Both Emanuel's task force and the DOJ identified provisions in current contracts that protect bad cops. They make it harder for citizens to file complaints  by requiring a signed affidavit, for example. And they make it easier for cops to lie: An officer involved in a shooting has 24 hours to coordinate stories with others at the scene before giving a statement and can amend that statement after watching video of the incident.

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If the mayor is serious about correcting the problems that brought the feds to town, he'll insist on cleaning up those contracts. The City Council's black caucus says it won't support a contract unless those provisions are stripped out. But the unions are pushing back. The pressure from the feds is off. Will Emanuel and the aldermen roll over?

Will Chicago let them?

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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OK, some of you losers out there are having trouble keeping up with the way the Trump administration communicates, so let me bring you up to speed.

And please pay attention. I don't have time to do this twice.

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Let's take the story about President Donald Trump's tweets alleging that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the November election. The fake news media is all upset and whiny because Trump hasn't provided evidence to prove his obviously true criminal accusation.

They're even more upset and whiny because the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee released a statement Thursday saying: "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."

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In the Trump administration, that kind of statement can mean only one thing: nothing.

And that's why Press Secretary Sean Spicer came out Thursday and told the stupid and untrustworthy media that Trump "stands by" his series of tweets.

And why does the president believe a bipartisan group of senators with access to intelligence information are wrong and his four early morning tweets are right? Simple, Spicer said: "There are a ton of media reports out there that indicate that something was going on during the 2016 election."

Don't you guys get it? The lying, terrible media is so dumb and ignorant they can't see that all the evidence is right out in the open  produced by the lying, terrible, dumb, ignorant media.

Spicer went on to spend about 10 minutes reading from a series of news reports, including some from the New York Times, the same paper Trump described in a late-January tweet like this: "They got me wrong right from the beginning and still have not changed course, and never will. DISHONEST."

None of the stories Spicer cited gave any confirmation that Trump Tower was wiretapped or surveilled, but that's beside the point. The stories kind of/sort of mentioned surveillance and stuff like that, and by hammering away at them for so long, Spicer made his case that there's ample evidence for Trump to accuse his predecessor of scandalous illegal activity.

Still, the media persisted, forcing Spicer to again note that Trump's very specific accusation was actually extremely general because the president used quotation marks around the words "wires tapped."

Trump's original tweet read: "Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

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Everybody knows that if you put quote marks around something, that something can mean virtually anything. Trump could've been suggesting that Obama was surveilling Trump Tower, or surveilling members of Trump's campaign, or flying spy drones around Manhattan, or wiretapping a convenience store in New Jersey or whatever.

In an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Trump said: "And don't forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes.That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things.And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that's a very important thing."

Very important. In fact, even the things Trump says out loud that are later put between quote marks in print can mean "many other things." (Even those three words I just quoted, because they're inside quotation marks, can mean many other things. They might mean things that we don't even know exist yet. It's very important.)

Hopefully the innovative communication system that has been implemented by this administration is now clear:

1) The president of the United States, the most powerful leader in the free world, says or tweets something.

2) He requires no evidence to support whatever is said or tweeted, because evidence is for weak leaders and this country is sick of weak leaders.

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3) If either the tweet or the words he spoke  or any part of the tweet or the words he spoke  are inside quotations marks, then they are vague and can mean virtually anything.

4) Any reporting on the tweet or the spoken words  particularly if that tweet or those words are in quotation marks  is DISHONEST, a vile concoction by the lying media.

5) If the swine media refuse to shut up about the boldly evidence-free statement, several media stories about things tangentially related to that statement will be read out loud in a mean and accusatory tone.

6) At the end of the day, nothing the president says means anything unless you agree with him, in which case it makes perfect sense and is an excellent point.

There you go. I can't imagine anything more straightforward and easy to understand.

Please try to keep up, people. The president has an America to make "great" again.

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Listen to Rex Huppke and WGN radio host Amy Guth discuss presidential politics each week on the "Guth and Huppke on Politics" podcast at chicagotribune.com/guthhuppkepodcast.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

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I was a young child when the nation lost its innocence in government trust during Richard Nixon's presidency and the Watergate scandal. So I grew up with an innate expectation of disappointment in government and our elected officials. But it's always been a disappointment that seemed somewhat at arms length. I still naively believed that if I had a concern, frustration or need that I could count on my local representative to hear me out. But that naivete has hit me fully in the face these past few months with my U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren.

When President Donald Trump assumed office, his rapid fire onslaught of executive orders was concerning, frightening and frustrating. Many of the people that Hultgren was elected to represent looked to him for clarification, reasoning and simple lending of ear to calm their concerns. Instead those people were met by someone who dodged them, dismissed them, and subtly likened them to crazed, threatening townsfolk with pitchforks and burning torches. So instead of Hultgren calming the waters and meeting with his concerned citizens, he chose to avoid them.

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Now I understand how intimidating it can be to address and meet with people who are frustrated and fearful. Emotions can run high. I was a teacher and a businessperson, and in each of these positions I dealt with people who had high-stakes concerns of outcome. As a teacher I met with upset, distraught, concerned parents who had worries over the impact of education of their children. As a businessperson, I dealt with people who had worries over the impact of my industry's decisions on their livelihood. Sometimes these conversations were uncomfortable, contentious even. But the end results of these uncomfortable conversations were far more positive than if had I dodged them. People were heard, their concerns were validated, communication through dialogue helped create a mutual understanding, even if it may not have ended in agreement.

Hultgren needs to understand that the concerns of the people that he represents are high-stakes. He needs to meet with us. And, yes, it may be an uncomfortable meeting for him. But we are not unreasonable or unruly people. And it is offensive to be characterized as such. Meeting with the people of DeKalb, DuPage, Kendall, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties is his job. Mr. Hultgren has a responsibility and obligation to meet with the people who elected him. His obligation is to us, the people of the 14th District in Illinois. I hope and pray that Mr. Hultgren finds the courage to carry out his job.

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 Julie Kratochvil, Geneva
Whew! That was close.

I wasn't expecting to be waiting on the edge of my seat for the outcome of this year's Dutch parliamentary elections. But I wasn't expecting Donald Trump to be America's president either.

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After Brexit, Britain's vote last year to leave the European Union, and Trump's upset election victory, the whole world has been watching to see whether a wave of anti-immigrant populist upsets would seal a trifecta in the Netherlands and keep rolling through upcoming elections in France, Germany and other European nations.

In the Netherlands, in Wednesday's parliamentary elections, that movement's champion was anti-Muslim firebrand Geert Wilders, a Trump fan with similarly interesting hair (you might even say it glows!) and xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants and refugees.

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To give you an idea of where he stands politically by American standards, one of our own prominent xenophobes, Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, gave Wilders a shoutout March 12 on Twitter as one who "understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

The backlash against King's remarks was bipartisan. Among King's Republican critics, for example, Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, a child of Cuban immigrants, immediately tweeted back, "Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?'"

But King also won praise  from David Duke. The former Ku Klux Klan leader and former Republican Louisiana gubernatorial nominee praised King's tweet as proof that "sanity reigns supreme" in King's northwest Iowa congressional district.

And King doesn't sound far removed from Wilders, who is known for such comments as, "I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam," and, "Islam is not a religion, it's an ideology, the ideology of a retarded culture."

And Wilders sounds mightily close to the sentiments of long-experienced French anti-immigrant leader Marine Le Pen. She has been showing higher approval numbers than ever in the run-up to presidential elections in April and May, in which she is campaigning for a French exit from the EU.

And Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, faces tough challenges in September elections from the right over her generous policies toward refugees.

Against that backdrop, the Netherlands' record-high turnout that left Wilders in second place offered a hopeful sign that the momentum of Le Pen and others might be stalled and even pushed back. Significantly, a number of experts are saying the chaos and confusion that followed Brexit and the rise of Trump's unorthodox regime may have alarmed Dutch voters enough to raise a countermovement against radical populist change, at least for now.

Can we all get along? Until Trump's upset victory, we Americans usually provided a better model of how a vastly diverse society can work, despite our periodic clashes over race and ethnicity. Unlike Europe, our identity as Americans is not tied to our ancestral identity  regardless of what kind of outlandish ideas Rep. King may have about who is a "real American."

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Yet as much as we call ourselves a "nation of immigrants," we are also a nation of immigration debates.

The rise of Brexit, Trump and Wilders is not only about racism. Fears, suspicions and resentments about the ethnic future of Western civilization add fuel to the current fervor. This is particularly true in Europe, shaken in recent years by a flood of refugees from the Middle East, and in the U.S., where Trump made immigration and his proposed Mexican border wall his signature campaign issues.

But another similarity between Europe and the U.S. is the polarization of politics between left and right, made worse by a near-complete collapse of the center-left. Centrists such as Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair helped keep the center-left alive in Europe  as Bill Clinton did in the United States  as the end of the Cold War and the decline of trade unions weakened left-wing parties on both continents.

In the power vacuum, Europe's disillusioned left-wing voters have drifted toward racial populists in much the same way that some former Barack Obama voters switched to vote for Trump. When things look bad enough, any sort of change looks better than the status quo.

Has the West reached peak Trump? Populists in the Netherlands have given a wake-up call to the sensible political center. But traditional European and American political establishments need to offer better alternatives to those who feel displaced and left behind by industrial and geopolitical change. They can't afford to hit the snooze button.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

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cpage@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @cptime

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We've all been there. As you lay your head on your pillow at 3 a.m., thanking your lucky stars you managed to make it home alive, you know, in the back of your drunk mind, that in a matter of hours, you will wake in supreme misery.

But those in Chicago whose careers center around the devil's liquid know a thing or two about staving off a hangover. Take this "hair of the dog" guide to heart this weekend and live your best life.

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Dylan Winckler

Bar manager at Jerry's Sandwiches

"My girlfriend and I have this thing called 'the spread.' It's a cup of coffee, a glass of OJ, a bourbon bloody mary and a small side beer. We usually hit a place with a solid brunch and a good bourbon list. The coffee wakes us up, the OJ rehydrates us and the bloody mary and the beer brings us back a little bit."

Elyse Fuller

Beverage director at Nacional 27

"A couple years ago, I created a cocktail with a blueberry mint julep. I made a mojito out of it. That's my go-to because it has the antioxidants and everything you need in there. I start with a blueberry honey syrup (blueberry, honey, brown sugar, cinnamon and thyme) and then I muddle some mint with lemon. Then, I add ... rye and coconut waterfrom the coconut, but Vida Coconut Water is fine. The ginger, the blueberry, the coconutall of it together is going to bring you back to life."

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*Ask for it at Tallboy Taco.

Caitlin Laman

Beverage director at Mezcaleria Las Flores

"A pretty standard go-to is a michelada, which usually works for me, but when it's really rough I go with a gin fizz. You'll want to look for something with salt and acid, and something low-alcohollike vermouthto slowly ease you into feeling like a human again."

Bruce Ogle

General manager at Remedy Bar

"I don't have a specific cocktail, but my favorite thing for a hangover is a can of Modus Hoperandi by Ska Brewing. It's an IPA and has 6.8 percent alcohol, so it's got a little kick to it. So have that and then half a glass of chocolate milk and you're good to go on any hungover day."

Ginger beer

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Sarah Crossley

General manager at The Owl

"I would say first off, anything with ginger beer is good. The carbonation is soothing and ginger has a history of being a natural digestive aide. Right now I'm kind of obsessed with this drink at Scofflaw called the Two Charlies, a gin-based drink with gin, carrot juice, lemon and ginger liqueur."

Bob Begandy

Beverage director at Dusek's, Punch House and Thalia Hall

"I stick with one of my classics: I call it a brass monkey, but I guess classically it'd be a beermosa. Typically, I'll get a nice Pilsner or lager and some orange juice. You have your alcohol and your vitamin C, and just those two together wake me up. We have a couple different types of beer-mosas on our menu, with different types of beer that people can use as a 'hair of the dog' drink."

Ramos Gin Fizz (Suzie Hunter, smhunter@courant.com)

Freddie Sarkis

Mixologist at Brando's Speakeasy

"The Ramos gin fizz is a class 1988 New Orleans morning drink. They're meant to be breakfast in a glass. It's a good dose of protein, some fat to help deal with any lingering stomach acids, as well as alcohol to give you that 'hair of the dog' trick. It contains gin, lemon and lime juice, sugar, orange flower water, heavy cream and egg whites. The trick to that is it has to be very vigorously shaken traditionally for six minutes, so you're getting your morning exercise as well. And then finished off with soda water. Or you can just go with a shot of Malort and an Old Style. That's more of a Chicago solution. More brute force."

Scott Bufis

Beverage director at Kanela Breakfast Club

"The 'Irish Espresso.' It's a take on the Irish coffee but it's a double-shot of espresso instead of your normal drip coffee. It's really rich, very caffeinated and much smaller, so it's easy to put back. You take an ounce-and-a-half of Jameson and an ounce of Bailey's, so it's 4.5 ounces with a little bit of whipped cream if your stomach can handle it. You can just throw back if you want to launch into it and get [the hangover] over with, or you can sip on it because the flavors work really well."

Leche de Tigre at Tanta

Ashlee Niec

General manager at Estelle's

"Sometimes I'll do a shot of Malort with pickle juice and then eat a pickle. The brininess really helps, and it comes from a really weird old Polish tradition. And then I just hydrate with Pedialyte. The vinegar base and all of the spices mix together and give you that nice acid that drips down and settles your stomach."

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Tomy Lokvicic

General manager at Tanta

"I always turn to the Leche de Tigre, like a liquid ceviche. It's made with shellfish, fresh citrus, herbs, onion, garlic and cilantro and then you can add some pisco and Peruvian lemonade or add it to a bloody mary. You have some onion, garlic and cilantro in there, as well as some lime juice. The spices will wake you up, and the shellfish has nutrients in it. You can have it by itself or with a Peruvian beer."

@shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeychicago.com
Escape to Ronero for excellent cocktails and top service.

Review: Ronero

738 W. Randolph St. 312-600-6105

Rating: 1 1/2 stars (out of four)

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Ronero, a new Latin American/Cuban restaurant in the West Loop, is the kind of place where I'd imagine dictators or Scarface spending a night away from the rigors of managing a cartel. You could easily picture Fidel Castro hunkered down in one of the rattan peacock chairs, smoking a Cohiba and regarding the glass chandeliers while stroking the straggly tendrils of his prodigious beard.

The ceiling is a beautiful crosshatch of chocolate-colored timbers. The wavy banquettes are marked with an island palm frond print, and the restaurant's soundtrack is rich with rhumba. On the night I visited, strains of "Guantanamera" crooned and mingled with the wafting perfume of garlic-soaked fried tostones.

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The bar cart at Ronero in West Loo (Ben Macri)

The backlit bar features a trove of rum and glinting glass bottles filled with amber- and tobacco-colored liqueurs. With a list of 25 cocktails and many more highballs and drams, Ronero is a sexy place to get your drink on. Were this New York City, you could imagine Marnie dragging Shosh and Hannah here for a post-work tipple (if, of course, any of the "Girls" characters had real jobs). They might order the Cipitio ($13), which packs the aromatic wallop of an orange grove, the puckering tang of a granny smith apple, and a bitter bite of watercress with the soft sweet finish of pineapple and mango.

Noted Cuban exile Ernest Hemingway might order his namesake Hemingway daiquiri ($13), which is a bit of a misnomer. I doubt Papa would tolerate the smoked sea salt rim. I imagine he would, however, love the bracing splash of grapefruit juice, the almond and cherry tones of Lazzaroni maraschino and the hint of nutmeg in the dry rum.

Service at the bar and in the dining room made an evening at Ronero feel as easy as an afternoon on a sandy Colombian beach. While I dined, I noticed owner Nils Westlind, who grew up in Colombia, checking tables in the front. When he found one whose wobble troubled him, he quickly asked the staff to remove the table from service and rearranged the other tables to fill the gap.

The food menu has more than 20 choices and is ripe with Latin classics such as ropa vieja, albondigas (meatballs), ceviche and empanadas. As much as I would have liked to eat it all, I couldn't, so my server endured a lengthy interrogation. She was knowledgeable and decisive in parsing my queries.

Cordero (lamb chops) at Ronero (Ben Macri)

Chef Cory Morris (Mercat a la Planxa, Rural Society) helms the kitchen. His pedigree suggests that the food at Ronero should be exemplary. Sometimes it is. The cordero ($42), which features a wealth of crispy char-crusted lamb chop lollipops with medium-rare flesh, is the pinnacle of exquisite carnivorism. The rich lamb is cut by a bright huacatay saucea velvety puree of mint, olive oil and dijon mustardand nested in a salty soulful hash of Peruvian potato and pancetta.

The ceviche mixta ($16) boasts plump limey hunks of mahi mahi bathed in coconut milk and spiked with fiery Fresno chili slivers. I loved the crunch of fat oven-toasted corn nuts sprinkled on top. I didn't love that the shrimp in the mix was a touch soggy. Ropa vieja ($15), which translates to "old clothes," is often an apt descriptor, as the braised meat left behind in the preparation is sometimes dry and shredded like cast-off vintage laundry. Morris', the product of a 14-hour braise, is the silkiest I've ever had. It's topped with goat cheese, which adds a touch of seasoning. Still, I yearned for more salt here. The empanada ($11) pastry shined with a golden egg wash, but the chicken inside was gritty and under-salted. A dollop of chimichurri featuring a blast of red pepper and grassy herbs saved the day.

Pescado frito at Ronero (Ben Macri)

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The menu has a section called "el gran show," which highlights huge family-style platters. I went for the pescado frito ($80), or whole fried red snapper swimming in a bed of a coconut-cola rice flanked by grilled oranges and fried smashed plantains. Morris brought it out, filleted it off the bone tableside and proudly explained that all the pin bones had been removed before it was cooked. Unfortunately, there was a bone in my very first bite. Still, that was the only bone I encountered. The fish had been seasoned with toasted coriander, ginger and chilies, but I only got a hint of these flavorsnot the pungent punch I craved. The biggest disappointment, however, was that the corn starch and flour crust on the fish was heavy and gloppy.

But the coconut-cola rice was a revelation. It's cooked in a combination of water, stock and Coca-Cola and tossed with roasted coconut, shallots and garlic. I was full and my belly distended like a Goodyear blimp, but I couldn't stop eating that rice. Parts of the mix were crusty like the goodies you find on the bottom of paella or a sizzling bibimbap platter. The interplay of sweet coconut, crunchy shallot and soft rice was such a satisfying textural melange. The only problem: The plate goes for $80, which is a lot, even for transcendent rice. My favorite deep-fried whole snapper is served at El Barco in West Town, where the cross-hatched fried flesh breaks off in delectable nuggets, all for the wallet-friendly price of $23.

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Ronero (Lenny Gilmore/RedEye)

Morris also oversees the desserts and is clearly a rice master. The rice pudding ($12), made with bomba or Spanish paella rice, is killer. The cool sweet porridge bursts with star anise and vanilla. Dehydrated pinwheels of pineapple add a crisp counterpoint to the whole thing.

The bottom line

Ronero is made for serious cocktailing and the service is great. The food, especially stuff made with rice, has some great moments, but there are also some seasoning and execution issues that need to be addressed before Ronero can hang with Chicago's great restaurants.

Reporters visit restaurants unannounced, and meals are paid for by RedEye.

Michael Nagrant is a freelance writer.
An Aurora man accused of shooting his former roommate and leading police on a high-speed chase will ask a judge next week to reduce the $500,000 bail he faces in the case.

John W. Speery, 55, is charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm, aggravated fleeing to elude police and other counts in connection to the March 4 incident in which a 56-year-old man was struck in the neck by a gun shot.

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Speery's attorney filed a bond-reduction motion - which offered no specific details of Speery's background - on March 10, but Judge John Barsanti was unavailable to hear it on Thursday because he is presiding over a murder trial. The motion was reset for March 24 before Barsanti.

According to police and charging documents, Speery went to the man's house on Jackson Street just before 5 p.m. and, when the man approached after being called over, Speery used a revolver to fire a single shot from his Cadillac. Speery drove away from the scene and was spotted by Aurora officers near Ohio and Grove streets, but failed to pull over. He then led police on a 14-minute pursuit around the city's east and northeast sides with speeds reaching up to 70 miles per hour at times, police said.

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Speery lost control of the Cadillac and crashed into a light pole at Claim Street and Lincoln Avenue, where he was taken into custody. Speery suffered minor injuries.

Aurora police did not specify what led to the shooting, but suggested it was the result of a personal dispute between the one-time roommates. Police reported Speery with a Grant Street address, but court records show him as being homeless.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for the Beacon-News.
Anibal Ramos was expected to be released on parole in about a month, but now he has been indicted on charges of attempted murder stemming from a 2015 shooting.

The Kane County grand jury indictment issued earlier this month charges Ramos, 20, of Aurora, in connection to a March 1, 2015, shooting near LaSalle and Bluff streets in Aurora. Prosecutors allege Ramos used a 9mm handgun to open fire on a vehicle driving through the area. A judge set bail at $500,000 in the new case, but Ramos remains in prison, serving a 3 1/2-year sentence for illegally possessing a gun during a traffic stop that occurred five days after the shooting, according to court records.

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No court date has been set in Kane County in the shooting case, and the Illinois Department of Corrections has not made any changes to Ramos' projected April parole date.

The traffic stop which landed Ramos in prison  police found two guns, one with his fingerprints on it, and ammunition hidden under a seat  added to a history of criminal trouble that dates back to when the self-admitted gang member was in his early teens, records show.

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A court filing by prosecutors last year refers to four juvenile convictions for Ramos since 2010 when he was sent to a state youth facility for aggravated discharge of a firearm involving a vehicle. In 2011, he was deemed delinquent by a judge on a charge of unlawful contact with a street gang member. He went back into IDOC custody after an arrest for possession of a handgun while under the age of 18 in 2013. Later that same year, Ramos was again found to be delinquent on a battery charge, the filing states.

Last year, prosecutors charged Ramos with possession and delivery of a firearm  charges tied to a July 2015 transaction involving the transfer of a .25-caliber handgun to another person. That case has an April court date scheduled, court records show.

If convicted of attempted murder, Ramos faces a minimum of 26 years in prison.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
Aurora's mayoral candidates debated endorsements this week as part of the final forum in which Richard Irvin and Rick Guzman will face each other before the April 4 election.

In many ways, the Wednesday night forum was a continuation of the forum held Tuesday night at the Paramount Theatre, which was the first time the two candidates faced each other since they finished first and second in the Feb. 28 primary.

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This time, instead of standing at podiums in front of the set for Sweeney Todd, the Paramount's current Broadway Series show, they were in big chairs on the stage at the Crimi Auditorium on the Aurora University campus. Moderator Steve McFarland, vice president for university communications at Aurora University, was seated between them.

Irvin joked that when he heard they would be in chairs on the stage, he wanted to know if it would be more like "The Oprah Winfrey Show," or "The Jerry Springer Show," "so I would know how to dress."

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"It's 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' that's good," he said.

Guzman picked up the debate from where it had ended the night before, saying in his introduction that he needed to clear up what he called "misleading" information and "inaccuracies" from Tuesday night.

He said he never said he favored privatization of any city services or work, although Irvin said he did.

He also said while his first assignment at City Hall was to work out what to do about Jericho Circle, an Aurora Housing Authority housing complex, he has done a number of assignments in the more than five years he has worked for Aurora. Irvin classified Guzman's work as bringing in low-income housing.

Guzman also said he was not a "Johnny-come-lately," as he was characterized Tuesday night, to Aurora. While Guzman worked at City Hall for five years, he said he and his wife moved to Aurora as far back as 2002.

Irvin was born and raised in Aurora and moved back after stints in the U.S. Army and attending college.

Both candidates throughout the campaign have touted numerous endorsements they have from a bevy of community members, politicians and other public and private officials.

But Guzman singled out his endorsement by former Mayor Tom Weisner, who said Guzman reminded him of the statement that the work of the mayor is "10 percent inspiration, and 90 percent perspiration."

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"I've been focused on the perspiration part," Guzman said.

Irvin referred to a different quote Guzman made at a forum back before the primary, in which Guzman said some endorsements were based on a relationship, and some on accomplishment.

Irvin said the endorsement of Guzman by Weisner was "based on a relationship" between the two, formed because Guzman worked with the mayor for five years. Irvin again said, "Everything Rick has brought in has been low-income housing," and made a parallel between his own life, where he grew up in public housing and got out.

"Rick represents yesterday, and I have to say, yesterday was good," Irvin said. "But I represent tomorrow."

Guzman cited another endorsement he received, from former long-time Fox Valley Park Board chairman Linda Cole. She wrote that if the mayoral race were a job search, Guzman "would win hands-down."

"I've been working every day to help run the city, to help put budgets together, and to develop policy based on those things," he said. "I have operational experience."

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The Wednesday night forum was sponsored by West Aurora High School, and students alternated asking questions with McFarland, who asked questions submitted by the audience of about 150 people.

The questions showed the candidates agreed a lot on budget priorities, on reducing the city's carbon footprint, on diversity being one of the city's biggest strengths and even on the city's role in enforcing immigration policy.

Both candidates said as mayor, they would continue city policy of not using the Aurora Police to find undocumented people. They said undocumented people need to feel safe in their own town, and be able to come to police to report crimes as witnesses and victims.

"No one from the Police Department is going to come and ask for papers," Irvin said.

"You can trust our police are not going to do the federal government's job," Guzman said.

While the two candidates are not scheduled for another forum or debate, they are scheduled to meet in a casual setting with voters between 6:30 and 8 p.m. March 27 in the Dunham Atrium of the Santori Aurora Public Library downtown.

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Dean Norris, 61, has been sentenced to 40 years for the murder of Vanessa Cross. (Handout)

After meting out violence to women over three decades, a man who strangled his girlfriend in 2014 decided Friday he could not face the victims of his abuse.

Dean Norris, 61, opted not to attend his DuPage County sentencing hearing for the murder of Vanessa Cross, and he wasn't in the courtroom when Judge Liam Brennan handed down the 40-year sentence that will likely keep Norris imprisoned for the rest of his life.

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Before the witnesses were called, Norris was temporarily brought into court, at Brennan's insistence, and said that the hearing would be too traumatic for him. He did say he accepted responsibility for Cross' death, and said "I'm sorry" to Cross' daughter and other family members who had come to court.

At the end of a long sentencing hearing, the judge said he believed Norris was remorseful, but said Norris was responsible for creating an "absolutely miserable existence" for Cross, 45.

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Norris pleaded guilty to murder in January for choking Cross to death on Dec. 17, 2014, at the apartment they shared near Hinsdale.

Cross' daughter, Gabrielle Taylor, 22, said Norris abused her mother throughout their dozen-year relationship. Taylor left in 2013 after graduating from high school.

"I moved out because I could no longer take the verbal and physical abuse he was doing to her," she testified.

Police officers testified that Norris' ex-wife had alleged abuse at his hand, and a former girlfriend testified that Norris had choked her and struck her.

Another woman, now 59, said Norris attacked her in 1982 at her Chicago apartment. He lived in her building, and knocked on the door one night, saying he had been locked out of his unit and asking to use the phone. Once inside, he forced her at knifepoint to perform a sex act, the woman said. Norris was sentenced to eight years on that conviction.

"I'm here to make sure he never gets out of jail again," the woman said.

Two police officers testified to two dozen domestic calls at apartments where Cross and Norris lived. Both said Cross was quiet and timid. Norris, they said, was often belligerent, especially if he had been drinking.

Prosecutors asked the judge to impose a 45-year term, and Assistant State's Attorney Enza LaMonica chided Norris for being a no-show and not giving his victims a chance to confront him.

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The judge said he would bring Norris back to court Tuesday afternoon to explain the sentence and his options for appeal.

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
Police recently paid tribute to the first Oak Forest officer to be killed in the line of duty.

James Morrissy, who was 62 at the time of his death March 17, 2014, was responding to a call for assistance by another officer when his squad car was struck by another automobile near Cicero Avenue and 160th Street.

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Police Chief Timothy Kristin said at a city council meeting Tuesday that Oak Forest police officers continue to mourn Morrissy, who had been with the department for 34 years.

While police Chaplain Tom Ruzevich said Morrissy is mourned by his family and by fellow officers who worked with him, he said his memory also remains alive within Oak Forest.

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"Jim is still serving this city," Ruzevich said. "He dedicated his life to service."

Morrissy's widow, Janice, was present at the city council session Tuesday.

In 2015, the police department retired Morrissy's badge number 172, and created an award in his namesake for excellence within the police department.

On Tuesday, a new police officer also was sworn in to duty.

Jennette Ryan took her oath from City Clerk David Neumann. Kristin praised her qualifications to serve, citing her education with a master's degree and past experience with two other suburban police departments.

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"We're lucky to get someone of her qualifications to work in Oak Forest," Kristin said.

In other business within the Police Department, Kristin said he worked Neumann to organize an auction of five automobiles and up to 66 bicycles.

Kristin said the bicycles mostly were found abandoned, and he admitted some of them are in poor condition. As for the automobiles, two of them were confiscated by police during felony arrests, while three more were seized during drug-related arrests.

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Kristin said the city could legally keep the vehicles and use them for municipal purposes, but he said that would cost the city too much money to maintain.

"There's some nice cars here, but we don't drive them enough to make it worth our keeping them," he said.

The vehicles that eventually will be auctioned are a 2003 silver Ford Ranger, a 2005 black Nissan Altima, a 2000 gold Chrysler Town and Country, a 2002 white Chevrolet Suburban and a 2002 silver Chrysler Sebring.

Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Erik Bixler, 29, of Oak Lawn, was charged with unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated fleeing or eluding police, possession with intent to deliver more than 2000 grams of marijuana and possession of more than 2000 grams of marijuana, according to court record (Oak Lawn Police Department)

Bond was set at $250,000 Wednesday for an Oak Lawn man accused of possessing more than two kilograms of marijuana and hundreds of rounds of rifle ammunition, authorities said.

Erik Bixler, 29, appeared in Bridgeview court charged with unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated fleeing or eluding police, possession with intent to deliver more than 2000 grams of marijuana and possession of more than 2000 grams of marijuana, according to court records. He also was cited for several alleged traffic violations.

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Prosecutors on Wednesday said Bixler allegedly had paraphernalia used in the manufacture, packaging and sale of marijuana stored in a garage and storage unit at a residence in the 9000 block of South 50th Avenue.

Bixler allegedly was found to have an warrant for a previous DUI offense, Oak Lawn police said.

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On Monday, Oak Lawn police undercover officers allegedly saw a vehicle commit a traffic violation at about 6:30 p.m. in an area near 91st and Meade streets, Oak Lawn police said.

The driver allegedly fled and committed numerous more traffic violations when officers tried to stop the vehicle, police said.

Officers determined the address of the registered owner of the vehicle was the 9000 block of South 50th Avenue and waited for the driver to return home as other officers pursued the vehicle, police said.

Bixler, who allegedly arrived at the address in the vehicle, was taken into custody, police said.

Officers allegedly found marijuana, a loaded handgun and a box of ammunition in Bixler's possession, police said. A search warrant for the garage and storage unit allegedly led officers to find the marijuana paraphernalia and additional ammunition.

Bixler returns to court April 5.

Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Acoyote leaps through an empty field on Chad Drive in Eugene, Ore. (Paul Carter, AP)

Orland Park is reminding residents to call police to report coyote sightings.

The village said the reminder is sent out each year and wasn't prompted by any specific sightings or coyote-related incident. The village, in a news release, noted that coyotes' breeding time is normally in February and March, with their pups being born in April and May.

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Residents who feed birds and see coyotes around are advised to stop feeding the birds for at least a month, according to Steve Stronk, village animal control officer.

"Most coyotes feed on rabbits and mice but they'll never pass up a free meal. They do eat bird seed and all other animals and birds that feed on the seed," Stronk said in the news release.

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It is illegal in Orland Park to ground feed any animals or birds, and Stronk said village police are aware of residents who, despite repeated warnings, feed coyotes.

"We cannot stress enough that people should not feed any wildlife in Orland Park," he said in the release. "They must let Mother Nature take its course and let animals forage for their own food."

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Illinois Department of Natural Resources records show no documented coyote attacks on humans; however, they will attack family pets, the village said.

Residents who encounter a coyote are cautioned to never run from it or take their eyes off of it.

"If you run, you could engage a predatory instinct and the coyote could give chase," Stronk explained.

Residents who encounter coyotes should yell, scream and wave their arms, making themselves look larger than they actually are, the village said in the release.

"If that doesn't work, throw whatever is handy at the coyote or carry an air horn like boaters use," Stronk said.

Residents are encouraged to always carry a cellphone when out walking or walking their dogs.

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Residents who have questions about wildlife in the village can contact Stronk by calling the police department's non-emergency number, (708) 349-4111.
Eric Suszynski, 27, of South Holland, trims stray thread from a quilt he's working on at the textile design shop where he works in Highland, Indiana. (Angela Denk / Daily Southtown)

In a room full of quilters, Eric Suszynski stands out, and that's before you see his quilts.

Being male in a traditionally female folk art sets him apart. Then there's his age  Suszynski is 27. And he's about 6-foot-4.

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But Suszynski also stands out because of his work. While some of his quilts conform to traditional patterns and methods  triangles and squares attached to a backing  many are multilayered works of art that represent the social and political unrest Suszynski sees around him.

One shown at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., is composed of 49 equal signs  one for each victim of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. Another addresses the contested Dakota Access Pipeline.

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"That one goes from all these shades of blue and trickles into a fabric called 'Poison' that has yellows and greens and browns. I mixed some of my blood with acrylic medium to use on it," Suszynski said. "I don't think of myself as an artist because there's quite a bit of math involved in this. For me, figuring out the mathematical part of a pattern is simple. Trying to figure out colors is more difficult."

A native of South Holland, he studied mathematics in college when he was working toward becoming an actuary. Suszynski said a "major depressive episode" caused him to drop out during his junior year.

Detail is shownn from Eric Suszynski's Best in Show quilt at last year's Lake County Fair. "It's about life as an impoverished child, about how overwhelming all of that can be from a child's perspective," he said. (Angela Denk / Daily Southtown)

"I suffer from severe depression, and I've found that keeping myself busy is very, very helpful. After college, I met this woman named Cecile at Home Depot (where they both worked), and she taught me how to sew. I had offered to shovel her snow for her, and in return she wanted to teach me," he said. "At first I was like, 'No thanks,' but she kept offering. So I finally agreed, and a week later I had my first king-size quilt."

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Cecile, a woman in her sixties, now holds the roles of both best friend and de facto grandmother in the young quilter's life.

Suszynski won fifteen ribbons, including Best in Show, at the 2016 Lake County Fair in Indiana. The winning piece was a quilt that he said explores childhood poverty. Using eight separate layers of fabric and acrylic paint, he created a forest that looms above the dark silhouette of a young boy at the bottom. The entire thing is criss-crossed and covered in thousands of stitches of thread.

"I have a slight thread addiction," Suszynski joked.

Suszynski said he splits time between his home in South Holland, where he helps take care of his father, and an apartment in Cedar Lake. He works at Corporate Thread in Highland, where he digitizes textile designs and oversees knitting production. Suszynski also runs an Etsy shop where he sells his quilts and other textile art.

"I honestly don't know where this is going. I love quilting, and I never really imagined I would be knitting and taking quilt patterns in my head and turning them into scarves," Suszynski said. "I'm a video game nerd who just also happens to be a mentally unstable mathematician who quilts. I just kind of do my thing."

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Suszynski and his work can be found online at ericthequilter.com.

Angela Denk is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Continuing with its timeline for building projects, the Will County board voted Thursday to negotiate a contract for architectural and engineering services for a new health department facility.

The county recently invited firms to submit their qualifications for the project, and county officials listed Kluber Architects and Engineering, of Batavia, as its first choice.

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Kluber also has designed the Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center, the Visiting Nurses Association Health Center in Fox Valley, the Health and Life Sciences building at Elgin Community College, the Lockport Public Works facility and numerous other municipal buildings and schools, according to its website.

The county's second and third choices were, respectively, Legat Architects of Oak Brook, and Nagle Hartray Architecture of Chicago.

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The health department building will be the third construction project for Will County, which issued $275 million in bonds to finance these projects.

The county is currently building a new public safety complex at U.S. 52 and Laraway Road, which will house the Will County Sheriff's Department, the Laraway Communications Center  a newly consolidated 911 dispatch center  and the offices of the Emergency Telephone System Board, which oversees the county's 911 system.

When that project is completed by the end of this year, work will begin on a new courthouse/judicial complex on the site of the former First Midwest Bank building on the southwest corner of Ottawa and Jefferson Streets  across the street from the existing courthouse  in downtown Joliet.

The bank building will be demolished and plans for the new courthouse are now being finalized by Wight and Company, the architect and Gilbane Building Company, the construction manager.

Also during Thursday's board meeting, county officials purchased property at 62 W. Washington Street, immediately south of the new courthouse site, for $250,000.

The building  known as the Beach Building  is owned by Trinity Services, which will continue to occupy it until the county closes on the deal, possibly in September, said David Tkac, deputy chief of staff for County Executive Larry Walsh.

Ragan Freitag, the county board's chief of staff, said there are no specific plans for the use of that property, but officials are exploring several options.

Ultimately, it could become additional parking for the new courthouse, she said, but the building will not be torn down immediately.

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The Beach Building could temporarily house the drug court and veterans court, which will have to be relocated when the First Midwest Bank building is demolished, or it could be used by the courthouse construction crew, Freitag said.

In other matters during Thursday's board meeting:

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A board vacancy was declared in District 6, the seat formerly held by Freitag, a Wilmington Republican who took over as chief of staff March 1, following the retirement of Bruce Friefeld. The seat will be filled within 60 days, by another Republican who will serve until the next general election, November 2018. District 6 includes Jackson, Channahon, Wilmington, Florence, Wilton, Wesley, Reed and Custer Townships, and parts of Troy Township.

Freitag was also cited for her four years of serving on the county board. "We are not losing a county board member, we are gaining a chief of staff," said board member Mike Fricilone, R-Homer Glen.

A special use permit was approved to allow Journey Church to share space with The Hub, at 1303 Schoolhouse Road in New Lenox Township, which is in an industrial zoning. The church will use the space on a limited basis during the week, and expects about 60 people to attend its Sunday services. Its parking and access plans must be approved by the New Lenox Fire Protection District. The county previously granted a special use permit to allow The Hub to conduct events for youth, and it continues to hold weekly programs on Thursdays and monthly events on Saturdays.

The county accepted two donations of $750 each from the Joliet Elks Lodge 296, for the veteran's court, and its Veterans Assistance Commission.

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P.T. Ferro Construction, of New Lenox, was awarded a $1.5 million contract to widen and signalize the intersection of Spencer and Laraway Road in New Lenox Township. Work will begin later this year.

slafferty@tribpub.com

Twitter @SusanLaffs
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the Republican Conference, center, joined by, from left, Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017, as House Republicans push for unity in advancing the GOP's "Obamacare" replacement bill. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)

The way I see it, Republicans are in a real bind on health care.

The House is scheduled to vote Thursday on the American Health Care Act, the GOP's repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

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Also known as Obamacare, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 when Democrats held the presidency and majorities in the House and Senate. In the Senate, the measure passed 60-39 with all Democrats and two independents voting for it and all Republicans voting against it.

In the House, 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voted against it but the bill passed 219-212 and President Barack Obama signed it into law.

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I think passing health care reform along strictly partisan lines was the biggest mistake Obama made during his presidency. In hindsight, once it became apparent Republicans would fight the measure, Obama should have walked away and let the status quo on health care insurance remain in place.

I believe Obamacare caused Democrats to lose their majorities in the House and Senate and the presidency. It was a costly mistake  a political disaster.

Now, it seems Republicans are intent on repeating the same mistake.

No Democrats in Congress support the American Health Care Act being pushed by President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Numerous Republicans in the House and Senate have publicly opposed the measure, and it's unclear whether the legislation has enough votes to pass.

The situation creates numerous political problems for the GOP. In recent years, the House voted more than 60 times to repeal Obamacare. Republicans outraged by the Democrats' audacity to pass legislation without their support have repeatedly harped on the law's negatives without acknowledging any of its positive effects.

Now, Republicans who have campaigned on pledges to make health care more affordable, provide consumers with greater choice and give Americans more power in health care decision-making are in a position to do just that.

Instead, the "Ryancare" or "Trumpcare" bill proposes to reduce health care costs for wealthy people and increase them for poor and elderly Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimated 24 million people would lose health care coverage if Obamacare is repealed and replaced with the current proposal.

I accept criticisms of Obamacare. The rollout was botched. Medical costs continue to increase. The individual mandate is unpopular. Due to requirements that insurers comply with standards, some Americans actually lost health care coverage and many pay higher premiums.

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The GOP plan would make things worse, especially for many of the "forgotten" Americans who voted for Trump. The CBO projected annual health care costs for the average enrollee would increase by $1,542. Older Americans would pay $5,269 more per year on average, the CBO said.

I think this creates a Catch 22 for Republicans. If the bill passes and causes millions of Americans to lose insurance or pay a lot more for coverage, that's bound to hurt the GOP the next time voters head to the polls.

If, on the other hand, the GOP fails to repeal and replace the Obamacare "disaster," they seem to break their biggest campaign promise.

For the moment, it's plausible to blame all of Obamacare's faults on Democrats since they passed it without any Republican support.

But as of this week, Republicans must now accept their share of responsibility for the high costs of health insurance. Either they "own" the issue by passing their plan, or they own the problem by failing to offer something better despite holding the presidency and majorities in Congress.

That's a pickle of a political predicament.

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Maybe I'm wrong. It's possible the GOP will make enough tweaks to the bill to get all its members in the House and Senate on board. Maybe implementation of some of the more onerous aspects of the plan will be delayed, and people won't realize the full extent of the changes until after the next presidential or midterm elections.

During debate about Obamacare, Democrats held hundreds of meetings and accepted dozens of Republican amendments. Still, the GOP blamed Democrats for "ramming through" the legislation.

Compare that to the American Health Care Act, which passed out of Republican committees in the dead of night and was marked up before the CBO released its analysis. It's now headed for a vote by the full House this week.

It seems like Republicans are dead set on doing everything they criticized Democrats about regarding health insurance legislation and policy.

The pressure is on Republicans and Trump to move on the issue, though, because the rest of their agenda hinges on repealing and replacing Obamacare. GOP leaders decided this must be first, that this issue outweighed tax reform, infrastructure and other domestic priorities.

I agree with Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said on "Meet the Press" last Sunday that the better strategy would be for Republicans and Democrats to work together on health care reform legislation that would achieve bipartisan support.

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"If you don't get both parties together, nothing is sustainable," Kasich told host Chuck Todd. "I mean, if they pass this just by themselves, we'll be back at this again."

At this point, bipartisan cooperation on any issue seems unlikely. If I knew how to get Republicans and Democrats to work together, I could probably make a lot of money as a political strategist and not have to write newspaper columns for a living.

Despite its many flaws, polls show a majority of Americans support the Affordable Care Act. People like how the law requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, and offers subsidies that help poor people afford coverage. Millions more people have insurance. The law isn't perfect, but I think it's wrong to depict it as a "complete disaster."

But that's how Republicans have described the legislation for years, and continue to today. It would be politically awkward, if not impossible, for GOP legislators to now say, "Democrats did some things right."

As it stands, I don't have a horse in the race in the political battle between Democrats and Republicans over health care reform. I can only speak from personal experience.

My wife and I have two adult children. Back in the 1990s, when they were born, we had bare-bones health insurance that didn't include maternity coverage. Both our kids were born without complications, but back then we paid tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to bring our kids home from the hospital.

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The hospital, doctors and other creditors relentlessly demanded payment. We didn't have the money, but I borrowed from family to pay off the medical debt.

I wouldn't do anything different today. I'm glad we started our family when we did, even though our health insurance didn't cover the cost. We went without a lot of luxuries for years, but we eventually paid off what it cost for our kids to be born.

I'm glad I had health insurance when I had a heart attack. My share of costs for that incident ran into the thousands of dollars. But after meeting the deductible, the bulk of the costs were covered. Trust me  you could buy a nice home for what it costs to have a heart attack these days.

More recently, I had a health savings account through a previous employer. You hear politicians talk about health savings accounts or HSAs as one of the solutions to help consumers deal with high costs of health care. I, however, had a bad HSA experience.

The concept is you put money into a health savings account, then you are not taxed on those funds when you withdraw them to pay medical bills. The problem is, I rarely had any surplus money after paying bills each month. I wasn't able to put much money into the HSA, but I was still paying medical bills that were due.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Our family of four pays a lot each year in out-of-pocket costs for premiums, deductibles, prescriptions and medical costs not covered by insurance  especially for services like dental and vision care. Our share is significant, but the costs to the employer providing our insurance have been much greater.

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The first time I filed income taxes after having an HSA, I didn't know you were required to file an IRS form proving your disbursements were used for medical expenses. I was audited and the IRS demanded a penalty, which I paid.

The following year, I figured I was done doing my own taxes. It had become too complicated. I took our forms to an accountant. He not only got us a refund that year after we were used to owing the government more money  he got us back the penalty we paid because of the missing HSA form.

I bet our experience is fairly typical. I'm resigned to the fact that American health care is expensive, and that the cost of having insurance will always be high.

I don't blame Democrats or Republicans, Trump or Obama. I'm grateful we have good insurance. I just wish our family didn't have to spend so much of our income to have it.

tslowik@tribpub.com

Twitter @tedslowik
Antonio Guevara Jr. holds his Youth of the Year award flanked by Mike Berger, Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Townships vice president of operations, Amalia Woolf, vice president of programs, and Curt McReynolds, president and CEO. (Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township / Handout)

An exemplary young man. A gentleman. An inspiration.

These are the words used to describe the 2017 recipient of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township's annual Youth of the Year award -- Antonio "Tony" Guevara Jr., a Dundee-Crown High School senior.

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He was honored last week at the Elgin Holiday Inn. .His fellow candidates included Dundee-Crown High School sophomore Cinthia Macias, freshman Rebeca Lopez, sophomore Tamiah Irving, and junior Kajira Blunt.

For the competition, the teens have to submit letters of recommendations, write essays and present a speech. They also are chosen based on academic accomplishments, leadership skills, perseverance, moral character, and service to their Boys & Girls Club and community.

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Tony, of Carpentersville, who now has an opportunity to compete at the state, regional and national level of the Youth of the Year program, received a $10,000 scholarship from Sage Products. He has been a member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township for four years, after being introduced to the club's Teen Center his freshman year.

From a young age, Tony has faced bullying, physical assault from his peers and depression that led to several suicide attempts, according to his bio. But through the club, he was able to make a new group of friends who would become a positive influence in his life, and to form bonds with club staff who helped to guide and support him.

"I am so proud to share that today Tony is an exemplary young man, and quite a gentleman, who is of inspiration to all who have the privilege to meet him," said Amalia Woolf, vice president of program services.

Eventually, Tony would like to return to the organization as a staff member or director in hopes of making a difference in other teens' lives.

"Tony truly is our mission, he is the embodiment of what our organization was created for, which is to enable and inspire all youth to reach their full potential," said Curt McReynolds, president and CEO. "We are so proud of Tony for overcoming the obstacles he has confronted and grateful that the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township played a positive role in his life."

Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter.
Residents of Carpentersville will have smart meter technology installed by ComEd over the summer.

Installation of the devices for houses and businesses throughout the village will begin in June and should be concluded by September, said Mike McMahan, ComEd's vice president of advanced metering information implementation, at a recent village trustees meeting.

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The digital meters, which send usage information to the utility several times a day through a wireless connection, also allow customers to access that data to better manage their electric bills.

Besides fewer and shorter outages through the devices that can automatically reroute power when problems occur, the meters will help eliminate the cost of meter readers, McMahan said. And customers can choose to enroll in peak-savings programs, which allow them to reduce energy consumption on the hottest days of the year to earn a credit on their bill.

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"Lots of benefits associated with these (meters)," McMahan said.

In 2011, the Illinois General Assembly enacted the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act, authorizing ComEd to invest $2.6 billion over 10 years to modernize the state's electrical grid. Of its 4 million northern Illinois customers, more than 3 million have the new digital technology.

"So that's about 75 percent complete. We started in the Cook County area, and then we're kind of moving west as we get our installations done," McMahan said.

The number of meters that will be installed in Carpentersville is 12,927.

Residents can refuse the devices until the year 2021 but will have to pay a monthly charge of $21.53, approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission, to cover some of the costs associated with employing a meter reader.

Residents will receive several notifications before the installations begin, McMahan said.

"A bill insert will come 90 days in advance. Then you'll get a postcard 60 days in advance saying you're going to get a meter," he said. "Then 30 days in advance, you'll get a letter saying we're going to be in your neighborhood to install smart meters and please leave your gates open and your dogs in. And 10 days in advance, you'll receive a robocall."

If no one is home and the installer has access to the meter, installation will proceed and take about 10 minutes. Customers may experience a brief interruption in their electric service.

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Personnel will be driving a marked vehicle and have the appropriate identification from either ComEd or a ComEd-authorized contractor, McMahan said.

"If they cannot produce (it), close the door and call the police. It is not us," he said, adding that they will not ask for money and only enter the home if the meter is inside.

More information about the smart meters can be found on the village's website www.cville.org/home.aspx.

Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
"I will bring my sketch pad," a 13-year-old refugee said as she showed off one of her favorite drawings, of a horse and rider. "I want to be a doctor, and an artist."
Windy Acres Farm will put up tents with its barn as a backdrop once it starts holding weddings and events. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

Kane County added a liquor license classification to its ordinance for Windy Acres Farm Wedding and Events in Geneva Township, marking a new direction for the family-owned farm.

Wayne and Daryl Srail own Windy Acres Farm and run it with their four children, Amanda Srail-Thomas and Kristin, Jaime and Scott Srail. The farm, 27W446 Fabyan Parkway, just west of Randall Road in Geneva Township, has been in the family for 32 years.

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Kristin and Scott Srail recently approached the Liquor Commission with a request to amend the county code to add a Class AR liquor license for Windy Acres Farm so the family can offer weddings and events on the grounds. The Liquor Commission recommended the amendment, and the County Board this week unanimously passed a resolution creating the license.

"We are very pleased and excited," Scott Srail said. "There is so much to do. It is a whole new horizon, but we are used to doing big events."

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Kane County approved a new liquor license for Windy Acres Farms Weddings and Events. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

Scott Srail said he hopes to start having weddings and events by the summer. Kristin Srail, the venue coordinator and event supervisor, will help brides and grooms plan their wedding. The family plans on erecting tents and creating lounging areas on its lawn with one of its red barns in the backdrop, he said. Weddings will be held from May to September.

The Srails hope to host events in which chefs would be invited to the farm to create dishes using produce from the farm, Scott Srail said. It will also host corporate events and other parties, he said.

Windy Acres Farm's concept falls in line with the farm-to-table trend, where consumers look for local food, Scott Srail said. The family began considering the idea three years ago when Amanda Srail had her wedding on the farm and hired a chef to make dinner using the farm's produce, he said. Customers kept asking if the farm had started doing weddings, he said.

The farm has gone through Kane County's zoning to get permission to hold the events. Windy Acres Farm will continue to have its on-site farmers market and be involved in area farmers markets, Kristin Srail told liquor commissioners.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Russian interference: I wish someone could tell me how the Russians influenced the presidential election. I voted for President Trump. I didn't get any telephone calls from Russia. Nobody contacted me and told me to vote for Trump. I think the Democrats are just trying to make noise.

Brown backs Oprah: I want to comment about Oprah for president. She might be a very good candidate. Who knows? Mark Brown never said anything good about President Trump. He said Trump has no background in politics. Now he wants to back Oprah, who also has no experience in government. I think Brown ought to rethink his comments.

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Terrorist act: I notice that nobody has called the guy in Kansas a terrorist for the terrorist acts he did. He said "get out of my country" just before he shot these people. I guess that since he is not a person of color, he is not a terrorist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he committed a terrorist act. It seems racist not to call him a terrorist.

Balking at Riverwalk: The intentions of the downtown Aurora Riverwalk are noble, but all day and night a certain element of society traverses these walkways. They have nothing else to do. They make this place unsafe. It wouldn't hurt to have a bigger park police presence.

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Gang wars: Latino street gangs in Chicago reportedly are using high-powered automatic rifles in their territorial gang wars. They are themselves targets for deportation. They are not the Dreamers. They are cold-blooded killers. The National Guard should be brought in to round them up.

Tense about Sessions: I would go after Jeff Sessions just like President Trump and the Republicans went after former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. The Democrats should not let up until Sessions is out.

Stop the freebies: I suggest for all of Illinois and any other states that allow illegal immigrants to get free food stamps and Medicaid that the welfare office should ask recipients if they are legal residents. Voters should also be checked. As far as giving these illegal immigrants free food, free coats and free lunches, come on. They are driving better cars than I am.

Bummed about busing: Congratulations to the east side of Aurora. Now they are going to bus these lazy kids who cannot walk like we did in the 1950s or took the city bus. I don't understand. With all these cars that are parked forever on the streets and across driveways, the drivers can't get their kids to school? I sure hope this new system doesn't increase my property taxes because the people who rent don't pay property taxes. People say they can't afford the Pace bus because it costs money. What about all the money their parents spend on their birthday parties? Give me a break.

Identification situation: I have a tenant who sends me their rent money through Wal-Mart. I went to pick up the money from Wal-Mart as usual and presented my identification. I am a black man, and I have been a United States citizen for 63 years. This is the first time I have picked up money like that and was asked if I am a United States citizen. What is up with that?

Angry about assault weapons: I am for most people in this country being able to own a gun. However, I do not want people to own assault weapons. You do not hunt with assault weapons. They are made for killing people. If you need assault weapons in your home, something is very wrong in your neighborhood. You need to talk to the police. In addition, I am against what President Trump did by allowing mentally ill people to have guns again. That is a very bad idea. I don't care if you agree or disagree. Look at the mentally ill people who have been killed by police without having guns. Imagine what will happen if mentally ill people have guns. We need a better way of thinking, folks.

Editor's note

Speak Out is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, call us at 312-222-2460 or email couriernews@tribpub.com. Please include "speak out" in the subject line.
Luci Martino performs in a white bathrobe in the spotlight. Elmwood Park High School students put on a lip sync battle as part of a business class project on March 15. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)

A merchandising and sales class project expanded from Karen Bear's classroom to Elmwood Park High School's auditorium.

A crowd of 130 students and community members watched or performed in a lip sync competition on March 15. A $5-$6 admission supported a trip to the Virtual Enterprise International youth business summit and competition in New York City.

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VEI members will compete nationally after placing first in state at in the business plan competition. Students also honed social enterprise skills through a "miracle minute" donation, raising an estimated $150 for the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago, according to Bear. The event raised $1,000 for the trip to the VEI competition.

Diamond Lopez lip syncs while handling a basketball. Elmwood Park High School students put on a lip sync battle as part of a business class project on March 15. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)

For Bear, business is a transformative field. Her merchandising and sales class creates startups, building a profitable service or product for $75.

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"The projects build collaborative, organization and communication skills," Bear said. "It is rewarding to watch the hands-on learning and leadership development as the project unfolds."

Student Jamie Altobelli made sure that each song played properly for the lip-sync event. Altobelli is considering a career in business, and "knowing how to handle situations with people, marketing and accounting" will be important after she graduates in May. "It's a great feeling learning something and giving back to a foundation" Altobelli said.

Armanee Palmer sported the brightest colors of the evening. Elmwood Park High School students put on a Lip Sync Battle as part of a business class project on March 15. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)

Altobelli's classmate Diamond Lopez found inspiration for the lip sync competition through her leadership in the Distributive Education Clubs of America, or DECA. According to DECA.org, the organization was founded in 1946, supporting youth with an interest in fields such as marketing and business.

Bear is the school's DECA adviser. Lopez recently won an emerging leader honor award from DECA. She was one of three Elmwood Park High School students, along with Frank Stocco and Jakub Zwierzynski, to be honored for academic and club-related achievements. Lopez will compete in DECA's International Career Development Conference in California between April 26 and 29.

With her senior prom and DECA's competition taking place the same weekend, "I chose my competition," said Lopez, adding that DECA's philanthropic efforts contributed to Lopez's challenging decision of which milestone event to attend.

"DECA's partnership with the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago has helped me make a change in the world. All of our members in our chapter get involved," Lopez said.

Bella Onrubia performs in a white fur coat and ski goggles. Elmwood Park High School students put on a lip sync battle as part of a business class project on March 15. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)

Students Vukasin Bulatovic, Dom Cappelluti, Sam Garcia, Habib Kouria, Diamond Lopez, Luci Martino, Bella Onrubia, Armanee Palmer and Aris Pomales proved that lip-syncing was a crowd-pleaser. Audiences sang, clapped and cheered during a competition that was often comedic (with costumes and choreography adding to the fun) and always close.

While most in the audience were peers of the performers, family and community members also enjoyed the nearly two-hour celebration.

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Mark Kouria, an Elm Middle School seventh-grader, attended with his mother and younger sister.

"I think my brother [Habib Kouria] is talented.  I feel proud of him," Kouria said.

Sharon Papaloukas came to support her friends' son, Dom Cappelluti.

"Their kids are talented. We have to support our youth," Papaloukas said.

Vukasin Bulatovic lip syncs a song during a performance. at Elmwood Park High School. (Jon Langham / Pioneer Press)

At one point, Lopez said "let's give a round of applause to the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago," introducing a "miracle minute," where the audience had one minute to make donations.

"Third-party event fundraising efforts are essential to the funding of  programs and services, all of which are offered at no cost to the 130,000 people living with epilepsy in the Greater Chicagoland area," the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago said in an emailed statement.

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This event was one of three created by Bear's students (others included a cupcake business and class competition). All participants developed business and social skills. And, for Lopez, the joy of a senior prom came early.

Rachel K. Hindery is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
The River Grove Lions Club had the luck of the Irish on their side on March 11. The club held their eighth annual St. Patrick's Day fundraiser at Underpass Restaurant & Lounge in Franklin Park.

Lions Club president Ron Schammert of Franklin Park said that more than 300 people attended the festivities, which raised about $5,000.

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"St. Patrick's Day, for me, has always been a fun environment," Schammert said. "It's a very good reason to bring the community together. The turnout was amazing, and even more than we expected."

The fundraiser included a traditional corned beef and cabbage meal. A balloon artist and a face painter performed their entertaining feats, and the band WingIts played. Bagpipe player Willie Newcomb of Cicero added his atmospheric sounds to the mix.

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"This is a family friendly event," Schammert noted.

To accommodate the large crowd, a heated tent was set up outside Underpass so all the revelers could enjoy the party..

With the money raised, the Lions Club hopes to start a scholarship program for River Grove residents. Schammert said that the club hopes, in the future, to present scholarship money to a student from Rhodes Elementary School, River Grove Elementary School and two students from East Leyden High School who are in need of financial aid.

"This is a fundraiser, but it's also a huge party," Schammert said. "As Chicagoans, we take our St. Patrick's Day celebration very, very seriously."
Richard Harris once went to a cemetery in Mexico where "people were dancing and singing and celebrating," he said.

That is how the Mexican culture deals with mortality  by remembering and rejoicing in departed loved ones. And it's that feeling Harris hopes visitors will get, among others, when they view his exhibition, "The Human Condition," opening at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Urban Edge Gallery in Waukegan. The exhibit will open as part of the monthly ArtWauk held on the third Saturday of each month in Waukegan.

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At "The Human Condition," visitors will see art work in myriad forms all focused on the theme of death and mortality  something Harris, a Riverwoods resident, thinks needs to be brought out in the open more in North American culture. He's also shown his collection in London and at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2012.

The Waukegan exhibition, open Thursday, Friday and Saturdays through June, will include bronze sculptures of skulls, colorful sequin designs of a Haitian funeral, works that cost Harris $5, and others that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.

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The featured works were crafted by modern-day artists with no formal training as well as some of the greatest artists of all time, including Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt.

The exhibition "is a gateway to a conversation about death that needs to be addressed more often," Harris said, adding that death is "going to happen to all of us."

"Even though this deals with subjects of mortality and death, it's not morbid," said David Motley, who partners at Urban Edge with curator Vickie Marasco.

Urban Edge has been a pop-up gallery for about five years, showing art work once a month during the downtown ArtWauks.

Marasco and Motley closed the gallery for several months and are now re-opening it with a new purpose.

"We want to keep our doors open more regularly," said Motley. "This is a chance to reach out to tourists who are visiting our area, an opportunity to expand the fact that Waukegan is an arts destination."

Richard Harris, a private art collector from Riverwoods, stands with art curator Vickie Marasco in front of one of his sculptures that will be on display in an exhibition, The Human Condition, beginning Saturday at The Urban Edge Gallery in Waukegan. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)

"We upped the ante," Marasco said. "We've done some incredible things (at Urban Edge), but this is beyond anything we've done. The quality of Richard's collection is unmatched."

Serendipitously, Harris met Motley right at the time when Urban Edge was seeking to expand. Motley did not know Harris, so he tested him with an art question: Did he know Otto Dix, a German painter and printmaker who documented life in the trenches during World War I?

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Not only did Harris know of him, but he also owned Dix's entire collection. "His works are among the masterpieces of the 20th century," Harris said.

That sealed the partnership, and soon Marasco was looking through 3,000 of Harris' unique pieces dealing with death and mortality to choose 50 to show at Urban Edge for its grand re-opening.

Harris was looking for a place on the North Shore to show his collection, and he discovered Waukegan, he said.

"There's really no other public space like this for artists on the North Shore. It's extraordinary. It's a gem here," he said of the Clayton Street gallery.

One of the pieces in Richard Harriss collection to be featured starting March 18 at the Urban Edge Gallery in Waukegan is a colorful sequined art form from Haiti. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)

Marasco  a textile designer and professional curator who worked at the now shuttered Deerpath Art League in Lake Forest  said the only other space on the North Shore that might be comparable is in Highland Park.

Harris studied economics and art in college in New York and ran a business selling fine art books of botanical drawings and other natural history themes. He also purchased original prints of Rembrandt, Picasso and Matisse, whose work he loves because of what he called the "strong images" they painted, for his private collection.

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After running his business for decades, he decided he wanted to collect art to create exhibitions. He sold his private art collection to pursue his dream.

"I wanted it to be a themed exhibit," he said. He chose mortality because "the universality of death is an interesting subject."

He added that the pieces are not meant to be trophies but collections that people of all ages can view and discuss.

"I wanted it to be general and appreciated by all," Harris said. "I'm not a scholar or academician. I've just got a passion for the subject and the objects."

When he selected the art work for this theme, "it needed to touch me in a unique way," he said.

Said Marasco, "I love the variety of what's represented in this exhibition  there are so many different periods and media here."

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Harris said Americans and Europeans tend not to want to talk about their mortality, but other cultures are more open about it. The exhibition seeks to show how cultures think of and depict mortality.

His collection was shown at the Chicago Cultural Center from January to July in 2012 and at London's Wellcome Collection from November 2012 to February 2013.

Each exhibit brought in close to 140,000 visitors, he said, which included 9-year-olds as well as art lovers.

One London art critic wrote: "It is an approachable exhibition full of inventiveness and occasional fun."

This skeleton-like mask is among the pieces featured by collector Richard Harris in "The Human Condition," opening March 18 at the Urban Edge Gallery in Waukegan. (Sheryl DeVore / Lake County News-Sun)

Among the art works on exhibit in Waukegan is a bronze sculpture of a skull head, imbued with flowers to symbolize life and a snuffed-out candle to symbolize death; and a two-dimensional almost whimsical skeleton with words including "peace of mind" etched into it.

That piece was created by what's known as an outside artist, Harris said, meaning someone who is not formally trained. "I like outdoor art for its primitiveness and naturalness," he said.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum is an original print of Albrecht Durer's, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," created in 1498 as part of a series. Durer was a celebrated Renaissance era painter who became famous in part because of his Apocalypse series.

Harris said he is happy to be showing his collection at Urban Edge, which contains 5,000 square feet.

"This gallery could be in New York or LA or London," he said. "It's a perfect setting for an art show."

The Urban Edge Gallery is located at 220 W. Clayton St. in Waukegan. "The Human Condition" is scheduled to open on Saturday, March 18, at 5 p.m. For more information and a complete list of ArtWauk activities, visit artwauk.com.

Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
Boys on the street put out their cigarettes at his very approach.

Neighborhood drunks went back on the water wagon when he came into view.

Women bowed their heads in reverence to that solemn, saintly looking man dressed in a Salvation Army uniform.

Kathleen Riley pictured her classmate 16 years after their graduation doing charity work in the Bowery of New York City.

Sam McClellan gave that impression as the chaplain of the Carlisle High School Class of 1909. But this kind and gentle soul had a personality quirk easily recognizable to Riley.

He blushed when a lady tried to engage him directly in conversation.

Riley was using her imagination as a guest writer in a diary kept by Margaret Eppley, now stored in the archives of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Its clear that Eppley had invited her classmates to jot down their impressions, turning the diary into something of a time capsule featuring a diverse cast of characters.

Though parts of it are fiction and pure speculation, reading the diary offers insight into what the hopes and dreams were of teenagers living in Carlisle during the first decade of the 20th century.

Visions of the future

Riley saw herself returning in fall 1925 after a summer spent in travel. She hops off the train and ventures downtown where she noticed a sign reading Moving Pictures ... Prominent People of the World.. ... Todays Specialty.

The sign brought back fond memories of her senior year so she walked inside the theater.

The first scene thrown on the canvas was that of a great battleship coming into port. The first person to land was a tall soldierly looking man wearing the uniform of a high naval officer. The crowds on the shore seemed to be waving and shouting as if applauding him for some great deed. He was followed closely by a Red Cross nurse.

The hero Riley recognized as Edward Atherton Jones, while the nurse was Louise Beetem. Apparently they were a couple in high school. The film moved to a different scene  this time a missionary school in Japan. Seated at a desk, surrounded by children, was a woman nicknamed Brick top for her reddish brown hair.

I recalled what a good, pious little girl Bess (Stevens) was in school and of the fondness for foreigners she had developed after the Prep reception, Riley wrote. I thought that truly she had not missed her calling.

The movie in her mind advanced past the charitable work of Sam McClellan to the scene of a county fair where a crowd had gathered around to watch Paul Stecher demonstrate his brilliant inventions:

There seemed to be a little bit of everything there: flying machines that would actually fly, everything and anything that had not been thought of before but best of all was an appliance to be fitted over the head which, by turning a crank, knowledge was made to enter the brain without any mental effort whatever ...

Carlisle High School 101

Not everything about the diary was so dreamy. One writer  probably Eppley  got down to the nuts and bolts. The Class Flower was the daisy. The Class Colors were blue and gold. The Class Motto was Non scholae, set vitae  Latin for Not for school, but for life.

The Senior Class officers for 1909 were President W. Marvin Mouer, Vice-President Edward Whistler, Secretary Ruth Phillipy and Treasurer B. Harold Hosler. Back then, Carlisle High School had only eight teachers including the principal, Professor Brooks, who taught geometry, arithmetic, morals and manners; and the assistant principal, a Mrs. Keat, who taught English, literature, the Greek language and rhetoric.

The entire Class of 1909 numbered 50 students when Eppley began high school as a freshman. By the time she had graduated, it was down to just 25  15 girls and 10 boys. Louise Beetem wrote a Class History for the diary. Below are some excerpts:

The sophomores expected to have some fun when we came to school on Monday, but they were disappointed for we were not so green as they expected. On the first day of school were the regular rushes, our class winning. On Thanksgiving Day, the sophomores challenged us to a game of softball. I suppose, 26-0, they were sorry ever afterwards.

About the first of November, our class succeeded in doing what no other class has ever done, placing our pennant on the Franklin building (a school for black students in Carlisle). Six of the boys entered the building at midnight and the next morning the blue and gold was waving triumphantly over it.

Mr. Beitzel usually called the school to order by gently rapping one of the boys in our class on the head, and at the end of each session to hear Freshmen, keep your seats was no uncommon occurrence.

At the beginning of the senior year we had twenty-eight members. As soon as we had gotten down to study we met our Jonah in the shape of Commercial Arithmetic. Our knowledge of that subject has been a wonder to faculty and school.

The high school had more students this year than any other year since the public schools were founded. More room being necessary the Commercial Department was taken downstairs.

Almost four years of our high school life has passed! Soon we will graduate and another class will take our place in school, but the Class of 1909 will never forget what the Carlisle High School has done for each and everyone in it. We leave the school with nothing but thankfulness to the teachers who have so faithfully fulfilled their duties, and we hope they will forgive and forget the many times we have failed to do ours.

Snippets of personality

In reading the diary, it was pretty obvious the Class of 1909 was a close-knit group. Under Class Roll, Ruth Phillipy wrote the following about her fellow seniors:

Louise Beetem: I love my ceaseless prattle/Of words with noisy flow/I love to wind my mouth up/I love to hear it go.

Miriam Dum: Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. Organically, I am incapable of a tune.

Alfred Emerick: A gentleman who likes to hear himself talk.

Margaret Eppley: Her voice was soft, low and gentle  an excellent thing in a woman.

Julia Givler: Ponderous bodies move slowly.

George Heckman: High above us all he stands, eminent like a tower.

Kathleen Riley: An empty cart maketh a devilish racket.

Bess Stevens: When she knew not what to sayShe swore

John Vance: His thoughts were his own companions.

Marshall Wagner: There is pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.

Claire Wheeler: Give me Bill or give me death.

Edward Whistler: God bless the man who first invented sleep.
Handy was fatally shot by police in St. Paul, Minn., after they responded to a domestic violence report early Wednesday morning. (Chicago Tribune)

Cordale Quinn Handy moved to St. Paul, Minn., last year to get away from his troubled history in Lake County and start a new life, his mother said Thursday.

But Handy, 29, was shot and killed by St. Paul police early Wednesday morning when they responded to a domestic violence call, authorities said. Handy died of multiple gunshot wounds, the Ramsey County medical examiner told the Associated Press.

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"He didn't deserve to die," his mother Kim Handy Jones said. "I don't think no child deserves to die in that manner. I just don't believe that in my heart. There's other places that you could shoot people and not kill them; not that shooting is right."

Three officers responded to an apartment building in St. Paul's Dayton's Bluff neighborhood about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday because of a domestic situation that involved physical violence, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said. Officers encountered Handy in the street and, at some point, two officers fired their guns, striking Handy, who died at the scene. No officers were hurt.

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Handy moved to St. Paul about eight months ago, Jones said. Handy was working at the Salvation Army, she said.

"My son was  the type of man who, if he saw someone out in the street who didn't have a shirt, he'd take it off his back and he'd give it to him," Jones said. "He was a fun-loving person. He loved to joke. He loved to laugh. He loved his family. He was just an all-around guy. People that knew him, loved him."

Cordale Quinn Handy, pictured here, was fatally shot by police in St. Paul, Minn., early Wednesday morning. (Handout)

When asked about her son having been on Lake County's "10 Most Wanted" list in 2008, Jones said, "He paid his dues to society. Now, he's paying with his life? For what? For what?"

"I'm tired of every time a child gets murdered, you got to hear about what they did in 1999," she added later. "Who cares? That does not justify (it)."

Lake County court records show that Handy was convicted of resisting or obstructing a police officer in 2006 and 2007, as well as theft of less than $300 and possession of a controlled substance in 2005. Several other criminal charges against him, some as recent as 2012, had been dismissed, court records show.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that Handy had two pending court cases from last fall, one for gun possession and the other for driving while intoxicated.

Jones acknowledged that her son had run into trouble with the law in the past, but that did not make him a bad person, she said.

"I haven't seen anyone's kid who's perfect," she said.

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His history did not include any domestic violence charges, longtime family friend Valerie Overton said.

Handy attended Waukegan High School from 2002 to 2004, Waukegan School District 60 spokesman Nick Alajakis said. The district did not have a record of him graduating.

De'Andre Gatewood, who heard the incident, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that at one point, a woman screamed, "He's trying to kill me."

While officers were there, Gatewood said, the woman shouted that the gun wasn't loaded and she told the man to put it down, the Star Tribune reported.

The BCA recovered a firearm outside of the apartment building and spent shell casings in the apartment, the Associated Press reported.

Jones said she did not know whose gun police found.

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Three St. Paul police officers are on standard administrative leave, said the BCA, which is investigating the shooting. Their names and other details were not released.

Cordale Quinn Handy, pictured here when he was 7 or 8 with his younger sister, Whitney Jones, was fatally shot by police in St. Paul, Minn., early Wednesday morning. (Handout)

Jones said that based on legal advice she would not release how she found out about the shooting, but that it was not from an official channel.

She had called the hospitals and the jail before finding out her son had died, she said.

"I'm hurt," Jones said. "My child is gone when I should be able to hear his voice and talk to him. I just feel empty. I'm empty. That's how I feel. And my child should be here. I should be like every mother in the world today with living sons and daughters."

Jones along with Black Lives Matter Lake County Chair Clyde McLemore and Lake County activist Ralph Peterson plan to travel to St. Paul this weekend to demand answers, Peterson said.

They are still evaluating what other steps they might take, McLemore said.

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"Whatever happened in his past does not justify killing him," McLemore said. "I don't care what his record is. He could have been a Bonnie and Clyde, a bandit in disguise. It does not give the police the chance to be a judge and a jury and kill him."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman
Protective netting hopes to halt further damage caused by a beaver on a tree at the Independence Grove Dog Park in Libertyville. (Dan Moran / Lake County News-Sun)

Walk around a Lake County Forest Preserve  or really anywhere in this county of lakes  and you'll see a sight that is sometimes alarming but also fascinating and beautiful in its own way: A tree with its trunk all but gnawed through by a beaver.

Last weekend at the Independence Grove Dog Park off Milwaukee Avenue, while trying to keep my growing puppy under something resembling control, it was impossible to miss a simply massive oak just off the main trail that looked like an avant garde work of art.

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Thick enough to form the beam of a whaling ship, the tree had half of its trunk gouged out, the exposed wood looking like lumpy, frozen foam. Wrapped around the tree from its base to a point about three feet off the ground was wire netting that was obviously meant to discourage further chewing. Nearby was the stump of another tree that hadn't been spared the executioner's teeth.

Fans of towering oaks might find all of this concerning. Fans of wildlife, especially a species that was nearly wiped out on the American continent, might find it reassuring, knowing the importance of beaver dams and lodges in managing wetland habitats.

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Both sets of fans aren't necessarily working at cross-purposes when it comes to preserving our natural heritage, so that's where someone like Andrew Rutter comes in to make sure one end of the environmental roster doesn't overwhelm another.

Rutter is the coordinator of the Lake County Forest Preserves' beaver-damage management program, which seeks out trees just like the one at Independence Grove and tries to protect them before it's too late  while also respecting that beavers need to chew on trees for more reasons than one.

"We recognize that we want the beavers around (as) a keystone species in the ecosystem," Rutter said this week, adding that, at the same time, his crew will try to save trees "when they're in a really noticeable area" of the county's public land.

As noted by Rutter, beavers need to gnaw on trees not only for food and not only to build shelter, but also to keep their impressive incisors from growing too long. Those four front buck-teeth "grow continuously," Rutter said, so grinding down a tree  not just oaks but maples, willows and really anything with bark  is a true matter of survival.

Within the lifetime of our parents and/or grandparents, survival of beavers in the United States was on a razor's edge. According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, beavers were hunted so exhaustively for their pelts in the 1700s and early 1800s that "they were no longer considered an important part of the fur trade by 1850." By the early 20th century, the IDNR notes, it's entirely possible that beavers had been completely wiped out in Illinois.

But the U.S. Forest Service began a nationwide re-stocking program in the 1930s, with the Illinois effort starting in deep-downstate Pope County. Rutter said the success is now evident in the aforementioned trees.

"They're all over Illinois at this point. They really came back from the brink of extinction," Rutter said. "You'll see them in pretty much every body of water."

Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

That would include man-made bodies of water like a retention pond in my neighborhood, which as of this writing has a young willow tree that looks to be about one or two good chomps from toppling into the drink.

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So how do we balance the needs of beavers with the needs of a forest, not to mention our desire to walk amid a canopy of old-growth trees? Rutter said the netting witnessed at the dog park can be placed on a tree that is damaged but not doomed, though he added that "once a tree gets girdled, it's not going to survive."

If you're out and about in a forest preserve and see an impressive tree that has captured the attention of a beaver and looks worth saving, Rutter said you can call and report it (the Lake County Forest Preserves' general number is 847-367-6640).

"We're out in the preserves a lot," he said. "If (people) see a really nice oak that's in a prominent location by a trail, they can give us a call, but chances are, we've probably already seen it."

Venture out in Lake County long enough, and you really can't miss it.

danmoran@tribpub.com

Twitter@NewsSunDanMoran
After years of running his investment firm, Robert Lansing is returning to Lake Forest government, this time poised to become mayor.

Lansing, who is the only registered candidate for mayor, was active with municipal government for many years. He volunteered on the Lake Forest Beach Commission from 1985 to 1987 and chaired the Grove School Cultural Campus Commission from 1997 to 1998. He also served on two central business district task forces, from 1999 to 2000, and again in 2012. He served as alderman of the first ward from 1999 to 2003, and on the Zoning Board of Appeals from 1994 to 1999.

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Then he took a break.

"In the mid-2000s, our business grew quite a bit," Lansing said. "It was time to focus on that for about a decade."

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Lansing started the business, now named Westminster Capital, in late 1988, according to the company website. The company invests private money  mostly from families  and puts it into commercial real estate, he said.

"That work is a pretty good background for being an alderman and mayor of a community," Lansing said. "You see a lot of very good examples and a number of bad examples about how to manage things and lead communities. It's kind of second nature. You just drive through a town and you can tell how it's doing."

Lansing is now chairman of Westminster Capital, a position that allows him to take a "step back" from the day to day running of the firm. With his business under control, Lansing was open to serving again in city government.

"This was the time to do it," Lansing said. "I've always been very community-minded. My experience as a business enterprise leader and being 69, I feel I've accumulated some background and feel comfortable to what I can do to lead this community."

Asked what he would like to accomplish as mayor, Lansing stated his "four permanent priorities." Those are focusing on public safety, sustaining the city's financial strength, having city services well executed with "a culture of constant improvement," and listening and educating citizens about the city.

Asked about challenges facing the city, Lansing started with the state government.

"Springfield needs a long-term solution for pension funding, particularly for police and fire," Lansing said. "It's hard for a well-run community like Lake Forest to have to deal with one unproductive dictate from Springfield after another."

Current Mayor Don Schoenheider agreed.

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"I don't think there is any doubt that police and fire pensions are the number one issue," Schoenheider said. "The cost of public sector pensions is incredibly impactful to our overall budget. I think number two is the uncertainty of what's happening in the state of Illinois and Springfield. You are always trying to plan for things that may or may not happen."

Lansing said responding to the increased cost of fire and police pensions requires teaming up with other municipalities and pressuring the state government.

Lansing is also concerned about a proposed rail project on the west side of the city.

"These major rail corridors, the ownership, regulations and practices all exist outside Lake Forest," Lansing said. "We have very little control over how it's used."

Lansing grew up in Southport, Conn. He earned a degree in government at Wesleyan University and then joined the Navy, where he served in naval intelligence from 1970 to 1973, he said.

"It was a busy time for naval intelligence," Lansing said. "The Soviets were outbuilding us 3 to 1 on ships."

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In 1972, he married a woman from Lake Forest whose family had lived there for generations.

Lansing said he was offered a commission to remain in the Navy, but he wanted to get into the real estate field. He attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania from 1973 to 1975 where he earned an MBA, according to a Wharton School spokesman.

He moved to Chicago, where he worked in business planning at FMR Corporation, he said, then moved to Philadelphia to work for a regional real estate development firm. In 1981, he moved to Lake Forest.

mlawton@pioneerlocal.com

@reporterdude
Emily Schneider, owner of Move Studio Pilates & Fitness in Lincolnshire, leads a Pilates lesson at her newly opened studio in the village. (Ronnie Wachter / Pioneer Press)

Shifting from client to client inside her studio in Lincolnshire with a bounce in her step, Emily Schneider almost looks like she is jogging around the room as she adjusts clients' forms.

Schneider, who previously worked as a Luvabull dancer for the Chicago Bulls during the team's second, three-peat from 1995 to 1998, finds herself constantly moving around to assist customers interested in being a part of her new business, Move Studio Pilates & Fitness.

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For customers, they may not feel as zesty as Schneider after about 30 minutes into the first round of her instruction.

"Your triceps will hate me tomorrow," Schneider said recently to a mother and daughter working out at the studio. "Be sure to wash your hair tonight. You won't be able to tomorrow."

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Schneider, 43, said she leads many classes after recently opening the 3,000-square-foot Move Studio Pilates & Fitness, located in the Lincolnshire Commons shopping area, 970 Milwaukee Ave.

Schneider also offers small-group classes, private sessions for couples or friends, and complimentary one-on-one sessions for newcomers.

Developed by German trainer Joseph Pilates in the early 20th century, the exercise system uses different pieces of equipment to focus on strengthening and increasing flexibility in the abdomen, glutes and lower back, she said.

Inside her studio, Schneider has various pieces of equipment, including six sliding "reformer" devices that are key to Pilates, pulley straps and large mats for stretching routines. On the front desk by the door to the studio, a nameplate that reads, "Good vibes only," sits prominently.

She said she wanted to open the Pilates studio in Lincolnshire to help residents regain their quickness and improve their balance.

Many of her clients, she said, have healthy front-side muscles, built up by using computers and steering cars, but not the complete package.

"You just feel like you have more space in your body," Schneider said. "Your organs have more space. You can live a healthier life."

Schneider explained how some approaches to fitness consider power and flexibility to be opposing forces, but Pilates shows users how muscles can be lengthened and strengthened at the same time.

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She said she first learned of Pilates at the gym where she taught dance and cardio classes while living in McHenry.

After moving to Long Grove, she became a student of Luann Brusa, who has instructed former Chicago Bears tight end Martellus Bennett and others at her Kildeer studio, Schneider said.

"It speaks to me because I think it is a way of being mindful about movement," she said. "You're either going to love it and want to do it for the rest of your life, or it's not going to speak to you."

rwachter@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer
Over the course of 45 years, Congregation Beth Shalom has grown from just a handful of families meeting in homes to a group of 280 members with its own synagogue at 772 W 5th Ave. in Naperville. (Congregation Beth Shalom / HANDOUT)

Founding members of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville say their synagogue's 45th anniversary is a time to reflect on the past and think about the future.

The congregation has called Naperville home since its inception in 1972, staying grounded in its roots while promoting interfaith unity, hosting ecumenical groups and engaging with the community.

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It began with a small group of couples and was known informally as the Naperville Jewish Community Organization, said Raye Isenberg, of Naperville, one of the founding members.

"In the beginning, (our congregation) didn't have a name," her husband, Sheldon Isenberg, said. "It was a group gathering to celebrate the holy days."

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The reasons people joined the temple varied, they said. For some, it might have been proximity. For others, it might have been the style of worship. For Russ and Yonah Klem, of Naperville, it was about the needs of their family.

"We wanted to make sure our children had a Jewish education. We took matters into our own hands. We were not alone," Yonah Klem said.

While they visited other synagogues in the Chicago area over the years, the Klems said Beth Shalom just felt like the best fit early on.

Over time, the Naperville congregation outgrew the homes and other temporary quarters it was using.

"As soon as word got out, we started attracting people," Raye Isenberg said. "The city (of Naperville) was growing rapidly."

That's when the congregation decided to branch out.

"One of the first decisions we made was having a school for kids," Sheldon Isenberg recalled. "It was at La Francesca."

By April 1985, the congregation purchased a building to host its own sanctuary. When members realized a short time later they were outgrowing that space as well, plans to build the city's first synagogue were made. Construction began in August 1997, and the congregation moved in 12 months later.

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Congregation Beth Shalom member Bernie Newman speaks with Roger Chawla during an interfaith event that has become one of the congregation's missions over the course of its 45-year history. (Congregation Beth Shalom / HANDOUT)

Today, Congregation Beth Shalom has about 280 members.

"In some sense, we've outgrown the space," Raye Isenberg said, noting they can't hold some meetings because there's no space at times. "It's a good thing and a bad thing."

Yonah Klem, noting there were times when the school was more crowded, said now it's less so.

"What's remained the same is we are a geographical center because we're the only (synagogue) in town," Klem said. "In Naperville, we have a wide variety of people who come. I think we've done a stellar job of coming together."

But Isenberg said it wasn't always easy raising Jewish children in Naperville.

"There were incidents of anti-Semitism, bullying, name calling," she recalled. "Principals handled it within school and a did a good job. If we felt it should be handled outside of school, we were able to work that out."

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Klem said another challenge came from the public school districts, which did not always consider the Jewish holidays when creating class schedules.

"It got to be dicey because as the kids went to school, (they) were conflicted," she said.

That's no longer the case, Klem said.

"Our kids were in high school a long time ago," Yonah said. "I don't hear from families that it's bad now."

Her husband, Russ, agreed.

"I think (that was true) when it was a small Jewish community," he said. "(It) is not really applicable now."

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Congregation Beth Shalom's new synagogue in Naperville opened in 1998 after the group outgrew the last building in which it was located. (Congregation Beth Shalom / HANDOUT)

Sheldon Isenberg said while their children are now adults with children of their own, they've returned so their children can go to Congregation Beth Shalom.

"I'd say, there are roughly 20 people who were children and returned to raise their family," he said.

Recent increased tension stemming from the election and hate crimes occurring around the country have prompted the congregation to increase collaboration with the Islamic Center of Naperville.

Bernie Newman, a synagogue member since 1984, said the congregation's dedication to interfaith unity has a long history.

"We have actually worked with the Islamic Center of Naperville for many years," Newman said. "This has been really helpful when challenges arise in one of our communities."

Congregation Beth Shalom regularly hosts interfaith programs open to the community, including interfaith dinners since 2011.

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Raye Isenberg said she used to lead some of the congregation's interfaith work by lecturing at various churches on Jewish teachings, rituals and practices.

Newman said there are frequent requests from groups wanting to learn more about Judaism.

"Many of the stories (from the Book of Genesis) are common to many religious groups," he said. "It reinforces that idea that we come from the same. Everyone's from the same family."

The goal, Newman said, is that efforts to promote interfaith unity will resonate with people.

"What we hope to achieve is to increase peace and learning to reduce bigotry," Newman said. "The point is once people have an understanding of a religion, they tend to have more of an understanding (of the bigger picture)."

Megann Horstead is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
Firefighters in Northbrook and Glenview are running for seats on their respective village boards, something that their opponents are arguing against due to potential conflicts of interest. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

In recent years, Harris, Gallup, and other pollsters frequently have ranked firefighters first among professionals deserving of respect and trust. But in Northbrook and Glenview, two firefighters are being viewed warily by some politicians as they vie for seats on the boards of the villages where they work.

In Illinois, firefighters can run for seats on the town bodies that govern their professions  where members make the decisions about pay, union negotiations, approval of new equipment, and in some cases, even professional discipline. But some politicians say the exception for firefighters in rules prohibiting municipal employees from seeking office in their towns is a bad one.

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"When a village employee runs for village board, he's essentially running to be his own boss," said Glenview board member John Hinkamp.

One of Hinkamp's opponents in the April 4 election is Glenview firefighter Vince Spalo. In Northbrook, firefighter Scott Bush is running for trustee against three opponents slated by the Northbrook Caucus.

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"I think there are so many conflicts this guy Bush should be disqualified," said Northbrook Caucus leader Barry Nekritz, himself a former trustee.

Northbrook firefighter/paramedic Scott Bush is running for trustee in the same town where he works. (Courtesy Scott Bush / HANDOUT)

Thanks to a 2005 law, firefighters are allowed to seek town board seats, a privilege denied to other municipal employees. Shortly after that law's passage, the then-chief counsel of the Illinois Municipal League wrote that a conflict of interest occurs "because the firefighter would have an interest in his or her employment contract with the corporate authorities." Roger Huebner concluded that it "has the inexplicable reality of only creating problems where problems do not need to exist."

Opposition to the law remains among some of the Illinois agencies that protect the rights of local governments. Every year, the Metro West Council of Government votes to keep it on the list of laws it wants to kill, said Mary Randle, executive director.

Randle said the suburban communities in the group continue to oppose the firefighters-as-trustees law, "because they don't think it appropriate for someone to affect decisions that affect their own job."

They take that stance, she said, even though Elgin, one of the member communities, has a councilman who was an Elgin fire lieutenant when he first ran eight years ago, and, she said, no ethical problem ever was raised with her group.

Richard Dunne, now running for a third term, retired from the fire department after three years in office. Elgin Mayor David Kaptain said that when Dunne was an active firefighter, he recused himself from firefighter contract talks and other discussions and votes that might cause conflicts.

"All I can say is I think he's done a good job," said Kaptain, who's served on the City Council for 12 years. But he added that Dunne's service doesn't mean the law allowing him to serve is necessarily right  or wrong.

"Is there somebody else who isn't a firefighter who could do the job? Of course there is," he said. "Does that necessarily mean we should never have (another) firefighter? I've got to think about that."

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The 2005 law was sponsored by former State Rep. Tim Schmitz, R-49th, a paid-on-call firefighter who had legally served years ago as a Batavia alderman due to an exemption for part-time and volunteer firefighters. When a full-time Batavia firefighter tried to run and couldn't, Schmitz sponsored the new law.

That firefighter didn't wind up running, but it opened up the possibilities for a few others, like Dunne, to do so.

Illinois police officers later tried to get similar rights, but failed. In 2005, Schmitz said, "I was probably dealing with the situation at hand. I didn't have any police officers, snowplow drivers, saying, 'Put me in, too.'"

From the beginning, the Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois union has supported finding a way for firefighters to seek local governmental positions.

"Firefighters have a right to run for office. They pay taxes, too," said Eddy Crews, AFFI lobbyist.

AFFI President Pat Devaney, a Champaign fire lieutenant, said the kind of person who would become a firefighter might also be interested in being another kind of public servant.

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"Our members tend to have a heightened sense of community service," Devaney said.

And the firefighters running for office say they bring something to the table.

Firefighter Vince Spalo, candidate for Glenview Village Trustee, sits in his Glenview home. (Eric P. Davis / Pioneer Press)

Spalo said that as a firefighter, he's seen up close how Glenview Public Works and other departments operate, and he believes that knowledge would benefit the board and the village.

But incumbent Glenview Trustee Deborah Karton, also a 2017 candidate, said the board already relies on knowledge and recommendations from village employees, so the body doesn't require a member who has first-hand experience working for the village.

Karton said Spalo would have conflicts of interest because the board votes on many issues that directly impact or relate to the fire department. Staying out of all of those discussions, she said, would not be fair to residents.

"All taxpayers deserve representatives who are going to represent them all the time," she said.

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Spalo, who has served as union vice president for two years, said he would "most likely step down" from union leadership if elected, and he said he would recuse himself from any contractual discussions. Bush also said he would recuse himself from contract talks.

"All he's got to do is abstain on the wage ordinance," Schmitz said.

"If there were any questions where there's even a hint of, 'Is this something that I should or should not be involved in,' I would lean on the village attorney and turn to his guidance for his interpretations of those issues," Spalo said.

That's the approach Elgin took, too, officials there said.

"We relied on our corporation counsel to tell whether this is a spot where he should, or shouldn't, vote on it," former Elgin Village President Ed Schock said.

Dunne said that while still a firefighter, a fire contract came up in executive session, so he excused himself from that closed-session discussion.

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"I personally asked the mayor and the manager to put the labor agreement as the last item on the agenda, so people could discuss it freely and openly among themselves," he said.

But Glenview Village President Jim Patterson said it would be a conflict of interest for Spalo, as a member of the fire union, to participate in labor discussions concerning even the non-fire department unions, because "when you're talking with one union, it could have bearing with another union."

In Northbrook, Trustee Kathryn Ciesla, one of Bush's opponents, said she also sees areas of concern, even with tax votes.

"I think voting on the budget may be a conflict, certainly voting on labor contracts, voting on the tax levy," Ciesla said. "Over the last several years I've been on the board, our tax levy has been used to fund police and fire pensions."

She added that it may also be a conflict, in her opinion, to work on the board's Ad Hoc Labor Committee and its Public Safety Committee.

"I don't think it would be appropriate for him to sit on certain committees," said another Northbrook candidate, Plan Commission Member Muriel Collison. She said she was concerned whether Bush would, if elected, recuse himself from firefighter labor talks and some other department-related issues.

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Bush said he would stay out of fire labor talks but not much else that involved his job.

"Who better to know what's good to use in the fire department than somebody in the fire department?" he asked.

The caucus' Nekritz said having a firefighter on the board would inhibit discussion of discipline of firefighters in closed executive sessions.

"When the board talks about discipline, all the firefighters shouldn't know about it," he said.

But three-term Northbrook Trustee Todd Heller said that most firefighter and police officer discipline is managed by the chiefs, and in his 12 years, such issues have only reached the village board three times.

Jason Han, a third candidate for Northbrook trustee, said that a Bush-generated conflict, real or perceived, creates liability for the village: if a costly decision is made that appears to have been decided by Bush, that could trigger litigation.

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"I can envision some wealthy resident, who has an ax to grind, funding a lawsuit," he said.

Bush and Spalo both say they purposely avoided the local political establishment; Bush shunned the Caucus slating process, and Spalo said he didn't try for backing of the Unite Glenview party.

"I believe as an independent, I don't have to answer to any specific village and employee groups," Spalo said. "I'm really beholden to the people."

ileavitt@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @Irv Leavitt

akukulka@chicagotribune.com

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Oak Park is expected to unveil a pilot parking sign study this year, with the goal of simplifying its current signage displayed throughout the village. (Village of Oak Park / Handout)

A new pilot project in the village of Oak Park aims to consolidate the numerous clusters of parking signs along its streets and simplify its information.

The matter was discussed at the March 13 committee of the whole meeting, and a pilot project proposal and approval to purchase new signage is expected to come at a future village board meeting.

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The project is a village effort to consolidate parking signage and improve the understanding of various Oak Park parking restrictions. Instead of numerous signs attached to poles along the parkway, village staff is proposing to replace them with one large sign containing the same information.

According to Parking and Mobility Services Director Jill Velan, similar signage is being piloted in cities across the United States, Canada and Australia.

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"It's really about, 'Can I park here?' and 'For how long?' " Velan said. "We used that design [that's in place in other cities]. One of the things people like is it covers 24 hours of a day and seven days of the week. It's a grid fashion and helps people understand when they can or cannot park there."

Velan said the signs will also contain information about parking during snowstorms and guide guests to the Passport parking mobile app should they need to purchase overnight parking.

"This has been getting a lot of positive feedback in the different places it's being tried, and we want to pick a few areas in town and start testing it out," Velan said.

The village's transportation commission recommended areas in the Y2, Y3 and Y4 overnight parking areas, an area with high parking citation rates or somewhere near mass transit, such as South Boulevard, as locations to test the proposal.

In studying how effective the pilot signage is, officials said there are ways to provide measurable data to the village board.

"We would want to look at compliance rates," Village Manager Cara Pavlicek said. "If we see a significant increase in ticket rates or [learn information] through the appeal process, we'd know if it's not working properly."

Pavlicek said the village received 30 comments on the proposed signage when it was posted on the village website, which were mostly positive, but noted people would prefer to see the signs in person.

"I think this is a fabulous improvement," Trustee Colette Lueck said. "I think the shift to the color blocks versus the words is very effective. It's clear, and it's visual. If you don't speak English, you understand what that means."

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According to a village memo, Oak Park has more than 10,000 parking restriction signs posted throughout the village. The village still intends to reduce its overall parking restrictions through an overall plan, which would be reflected in the new signage, Velan said.

In April, the village board is expected to discuss on-street parking on Austin Boulevard and Harlem Avenue, including adjacent areas, as it continues its comprehensive review of the public parking system.

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
Dear Mr. Bradshaw,

I am an early admit to the University of Chicago, and I want to make sure that I sign up for classes as a freshmen and sophomore that will provide a good background for me, no matter what my course of study is.

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Since I have not chosen a major, what classes would you suggest that I take that will provide me with the most benefits?

Signed,

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Undecided Major

Dear Undecided Major,

You are wise to start thinking about your academic direction before signing up for classes in the fall. Course selection is serious business, and a decision should not be left until you arrive on campus.

Unlike high school, college offers a bewildering array of classes from which to choose, and the course catalog reads like an encyclopedia of world knowledge. Each class sounds exciting and interesting, and it is always tempting to dip into the cookie jar without thinking.

Although college is not all about preparing for a career, you cannot ignore the fact that at the end of four years, you will need to have learned something of substance and certain basic skills that will enhance your marketability, regardless of the field in which you work. I have compiled a list of four classes that I believe are must-haves on your college transcript.

The first is an introduction to economics. Wall Street, government, international relations, immigration and poverty in developing nations all affect us as never before. We live in an ever-increasing state of global interconnectivity, and a basic understanding of this relationship can be found in the study of economics.

The second is a course in basic statistics. At Harvard, Introduction to Basic Statistics is one of the most popular courses on campus alongside economics and computer science. This is, in part, because statistics is a basic tool used in studying economics. When asked about the popularity of the class, the professor said the increasing use of statistics in the private sector drives the enrollment. A statistics course will stand out on your transcripts and give you a marked advantage when interviewing with a potential employer. Both of you will speak the same language. Many job interviews require a candidate to use a white board to show competency in statistics when solving a case study.

My third suggestion is an introductory course in computer science. We can no longer pretend to be educated people without a basic understanding of computers. Computers will continue playing important roles in every aspect of intellectual life, regardless of one's vocation.

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Finally, I recommend a course in sociology. In a sense, sociology ties everything else together  much like economics, but with a flair for the historical and slightly less rigorous analytics. Academicians still debate whether Karl Marx was a sociologist or an economist. And, although Marx might be less relevant today after the fall of the Soviet Union, one cannot deny his analysis of the French Revolution, which still stands as an important contribution to political and economic history. And, lest we forget, China reveres Marx second only to Mao in its political pantheon. These classes may prove challenging and are not meant to be taken for an easy A.

If there is such a thing as power in knowledge, I can think of no more important courses to take than the four mentioned here.

Gerald Bradshaw is an international college admission consultant with Bradshaw College Consulting in Crown Point.

gerald_bradshaw@post.harvard.edu
School City of East Chicago bus driver Robert Willis drives one of the six new Blue Bird Vision propane-fueled buses recently purchased by the school city. Willis said the new bus is like driving a Cadillac. (Carrie Napoleon / Post-Tribune)

Buses used by the School City of East Chicago will run cleaner soon as administrators work to convert its bus fleet to propane.

The school corporation announced Monday the purchase of six Blue Bird Vision Propane school buses. It is the first school system in the area to purchase buses fueled by propane, made possible in part by a BP Whiting Refinery Cleaner Air through Diesel Emissions Reductions grant.

"These buses hit the streets earlier this month," Carl Lisek, executive director of South Shore Clean Cities, said in a news conference at the School City of East Chicago's Administration Building.

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ROUSH CleanTech designed, engineered and manufactured the buses, which will emit 80 percent fewer smog-producing emissions and virtually eliminate particulate matter when compared to diesel-powered buses, according to Lisek. SSCC administered the grants.

"Children are more sensitive to diesel exhaust because they breathe faster," Lisek said.

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Because of the situation with lead crisis (in East Chicago), we thought it was a prudent decision.  Superintendent Paige McNulty

Superintendent Paige McNulty said the school corporation was looking at buying buses this year. The last time buses were purchased was about 15 years ago. Making the switch to propane on the new purchases made sense, she said.

"Because of the situation with lead crisis (in East Chicago), we thought it was a prudent decision," McNulty said.

The CADER grant program was created as part of a 2012 settlement agreement between BP Whiting Refinery and several environmental groups that provided $450,000 through a competitive grant process in 2013 and 2014 aimed at reducing diesel emissions in Lake County municipalities, schools, not-for-profit hospitals and county government, according to information provided by SSCC.

In the first round of grants, the school city received $46,388 for the installation of Telematics vehicle-tracking systems for 31 school buses. The tracking system was designed to monitor and reduce idling. Another $20,948 was awarded to the school city in the second round to convert two buses to propane, but the school was unable to provide its match.

Robert Garcia, the school system's transportation manager, said it was a long road looking into the alternative fuel buses and ultimately making the purchase. He said the propane school buses will help the school system keeps its students safe while ultimately reducing transportation costs for the system.

"We finally got it done for the health and safety of the kids," Garcia said.

Propane-fueled Blue Bird school buses create up to 20 percent less nitrogen oxide, up to 60 percent less carbon monoxide and up to 24 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than diesel-fueled buses, according to ROUSH CleanTech.

The buses will save the school corporation on both fuel and maintenance costs, Garcia said. They also are expected to last longer than the 12-year state minimum for years of use for a school bus before replacement, since the propane creates less wear and tear on the engine. According to ROUSH CleanTech, schools using the buses can expect to save an average of $2,000 to $2,500 per bus per year on maintenance costs and spend 40 percent to 50 percent less on fuel. Ferrellgas will be providing the fuel. A propane filling station has been added at the bus yard so drivers can fill up on-site.

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"It's a lot cleaner to run. All around it is a lot better," Garcia said.

The school system operates 37 total buses, six of which are propane. Garcia said that as future purchases are made, the district plans on continuing with propane. A new school bus, whether propane or diesel, costs around $90,000.

The Blue Bird Propane buses are top of the line, with five cameras for student and driver safety, seat belts for students and room for up to five wheelchairs if needed. Garcia said he is working on another grant that he hopes will be approved in the fall so more buses may be purchased.

Tom Keilman, director of government and public affairs for BP Whiting Refinery, said it is truly innovative to look at emerging fuel technologies and use them in applications such as this. While diesel produced by the fuel maker has become much cleaner over the years, going from 600 parts per million of sulfur to just 12 parts per million, propane is another fuel option made by BP that is even cleaner.

"We do produce a lot of diesel fuel at Whiting that is cleaner, but we also produce propane," Keilman said.

Lisek said 14 or 15 communities or schools are looking at propane-fueled vehicles. A number of other communities, including Hobart and Whiting and some local hospitals, already have taken steps to convert vehicles to alternative fuel.

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"We see this as a model," Lisek said, adding that more announcements pertaining to alternative fuel use in Northwest Indiana will be coming out during the 2017 fiscal year.

Robert Willis, of East Chicago, has been driving buses for eight years. The past four have been with East Chicago schools. His wheelchair-accessible diesel bus was one of those replaced with the propane alternative, and Willis said he could not be happier.

"I would say it is top of the line," Willis said, adding that students were excited when they saw the new bus for the first time, as well. The propane bus idles much quieter, and the lack of exhaust fumes is noticeable both inside and outside of the bus, he said.

"The more I drive it, the more I like it," Willis said. "It's like going from a truck to a Cadillac."

Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Nearly six years after the state made cursive writing instruction optional, fifth-grade teacher Randy Roberts continues to be a holdout -- requiring his pupils to use it each time he gives a spelling test.

At Washington Township Elementary School, it is still taught beginning in third grade. Despite the change in state requirements, Roberts still sees it as a valuable skill that requires time and patience.

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"I don't know how it happened with me, but somewhere along the line, it became important to me," he said. "So, even when it was de-emphasized, we still continued with it."

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when cursive writing began to fall out of favor. But cursive instruction was in decline long before 2010, when most states adopted the Common Core curriculum standards, which say nothing about handwriting.

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Some script skeptics question the advantage of cursive writing over printing and wonder whether teaching it takes away from other valuable instruction.

Since the state pulled the cursive requirement in 2011, Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, has continued a quest to return the requirement to schools.

"There are kids that no longer have a signature," she said Thursday.

Her bill passed the Senate 35-14 in January, but faces an uncertain future again this year in the House.

Pupils, Roberts said, are quick learners.

Even it they never learned cursive writing, it is usually a skill past students have picked up in about two to three months, Roberts said.

"The kids really buy into it," he said. "We have a tendency to rush through every job that we do. This is kind of a way to counteract that."

It was a skill that students could be taught to appreciate, he said.

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"I love it," said Washington Township pupil Avary Robinson, 10. "I just like how the letters are formed and it's pretty how you write it."

Penmanship proponents say writing words in an unbroken line of swooshing l's and three-humped m's is just a faster, easier way of taking notes. Others say students should be able to understand documents written in cursive, such as, say, a letter from grandma. And still more say it's just a good life skill to have, especially when it comes to signing your name.

According to the Associated Press, 14 states require cursive, including Alabama and Louisiana that passed laws last year.

"I'm hardly alone at this point," Leising said.

mcolias@post-trib.com

Twitter: @meredithcolias
The post of deputy mayor in Gary has been vacant in recent years, and the common council is taking steps to reconcile ordinances with that reality.

Now, ordinances say Gary "shall" have a deputy mayor chosen by the mayor, but that would be changed to "may" under revisions the council's ways and means committee is reviewing. A final vote could come as soon as Tuesday, March 21.

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Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said while she prefers to have a professional chief of staff, future mayors should have the choice to hire a deputy mayor or even both positions.

"I know I won't be mayor for life," she said. "I think they're duplicative, but circumstances may change in the future."

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Common Council attorney Rinzer Williams III said Gary was the only second class-sized city in Indiana to have a deputy mayor, and that state law does not specify the need for the post.

Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade, D-6th, was pleased with the proposed revisions, saying, "I'm glad we're passing corrective legislation."

Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The murder trial of a Gary man, scheduled to begin in three weeks, has been postponed until June 5 in light of new evidence involving a handgun that may have been used in the crime.

Defense attorney Mark Gruenhagen said Wednesday, March 15, that he learned last week that a firearm, which the state has had since September, has been linked to the case and to two murder cases in another Lake County courtroom.

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Kevin Riley, 38, was charged with murder in the shooting of his ex-girlfriend, April Bailey, 39, at about 4:40 p.m. Jan. 13, 2016, outside her residence in the 4700 block of Delaware Street in Gary.

Gruenhagen asked Lake Superior Court Judge Salvador Vasquez to delay the trial and charge the time for the postponement to the state because of the late notice regarding the handgun. Under criminal rules of court procedure, Gruenhagen said his client must be brought to trial before June 15.

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Deputy prosecutor Nadia Chivers said, two other Lake County prosecutors involved in the other murder cases took a statement last summer from a witness regarding the weapon, which was found months later in Chicago. At the time, Chivers said she was trying to sort out whether the gun had any connection to Riley's case.

Firearms analysis by Lake County police Lt. Henry Hatch on Feb. 22 found the gun is connected to Riley's case, and Chivers turned over that information to Gruenhagen. Before the firearms analysis, any link to Riley's case was speculative, she said.

"The issue is if the state acted with diligence in tendering information in discovery," Vasquez said. "Nothing that I've heard would indicate the state acted in bad faith."

In 2014, Riley was paroled after serving a 31-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and criminal deviate conduct involving a 10-month-old child in 1995.

Ruth Ann Krause is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Attorney Scott Bergthold, left, an expert in laws related to sex-oriented businesses, is advising Gary city attorney Greg Thomas on ordinance updates. (Gregory Tejeda / Post-Tribune)

Some members of the Gary Common Council would like to bar sexually-oriented businesses from the city, but the attorney helping craft an updated ordinance on such establishments said they could be regulated, not banned.

The issue heated up when the owner of strip clubs in Illinois indicated an interest in locating in the city. That request was denied Tuesday, March 14, by the Zoning Board of Appeals, and a common council committee then heard the next day on how it might amend an ordinance in place since 2000 on the operations of these businesses.

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Action could come next week on a proposed ordinance from Scott Bergthold, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based attorney who specializes in laws related to adult businesses. He helped craft the original ordinance.

"We can't bar SOBs," said Councilwoman Rebecca Wyatt, D-1st. "You figure out how long it took me to figure that [acronym] out."

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Wyatt chairs the council's Ways & Means committee and said a second ordinance concerning the city's zoning laws for such businesses could be introduced.

"That one will be more complicated and will take more time for us to pass," Wyatt said.

Bergthold said the existing ordinance needs updating and that council members have to consider the constitutionality of measures they may want to take.

"Gary needs to make sure everything remains in compliance; we have better procedures now than we did 17 years ago," he said.

He was particularly critical of a suggestion by Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade, D-6th, who said she wanted to impose higher-than-typical city business fees on sex-oriented businesses.

"Can't we increase the business license fee for them to put it out of their reach," she asked.

Bergthold said the courts would strike down such fees on the grounds that fees are meant to be revenue-neutral and merely help the city cover the cost of regulation, rather than be punitive or profitable.

H also rejected a suggestion by Wyatt that city officials refuse to permit a strip club to serve alcohol, saying that Indiana specifically puts alcohol-related issues in the hands of the state, rather than municipalities.

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Bergthold said sex-oriented businesses carry certain legal protections related to freedom of expression that prevent municipal officials from trying to ban their existence.. But he also said that courts have acknowledged issues such as crime, lewdness, public indecency, illicit drug use and trafficking and other negative impacts on surrounding properties, giving municipal officials authority to strictly regulate such businesses.

Gary city attorney Greg Thomas said a new ordinance has been in the works for several months, with Bergthold providing assistance.

Among the revisions is a proposal to regulate the size of the room in which erotic dancing takes place and to impose restrictions on how close customers could come to the dancers. He said the intent is to eliminate the "VIP lounges" that some strip clubs offer where physical contact becomes possible.

"We're looking to eliminate some of the potential for shenanigans that sometimes occur," he said.

Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The Hobart City Council this week approved an out-of-court settlement in a civil rights case filed against the Hobart Police Department and one of its police officers in 2015.

Ronald Mehok II had alleged police brutality resulting in injuries and sought compensatory and punitive damages

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The settlement for an undisclosed amount was made a month before the case was set to go to a jury trial on April 3 before Magistrate Judge John E. Martin in U.S. District Court Northern District of Indiana in Hammond. The settlement admits no fault by the Hobart Police Department.

"It made more sense to settle the case than to go to court," said Councilman Dave Vinzant, D-4th, who made the motion to approve the settlement.

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The lawsuit was filed against the police department and Officer Ryan Walsh.

Mehok claimed in his lawsuit that Walsh assaulted and battered him during his booking. Mehok claimed that he was physically and emotionally injured, incurred medical expenses and lost wages as a result, according to the lawsuit.

In other matters, the council unanimously approved two new preschools, both of which will be operated in churches.

One of the preschools, to operate out of the Barrington Ridge Baptist Church at 97 Bracken Parkway, received a split vote from the city's Board of Zoning Appeals after a number of residents in the Barrington Ridge subdivision objected to the school on various grounds.

Residents said it would increase traffic and could possibly put their homeowners association at risk if one of the children should fall into their retention pond, located behind the church.

No complaints were lodged against the second preschool request, to be located at New Hope Baptist Church, 3528 St. Joseph Place. This petition was unanimously approved by the BZA.

Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The Farmington Regional Chamber of Commerce held the Business and Community luncheon on Thursday featuring the two mayoral candidates for the city.

This years race has two current members of the Farmington City Council  Larry Forsythe from Ward I and Dennis Smith from Ward III  running for the seat.

Chamber President/CEO Dick Womack said the city has been blessed with good leadership.

Something that doesnt happen too frequently is about to happen on the fourth of next month, Womack said, alluding to the election of a new mayor.

Forsythe is a lifelong resident of Farmington. He works for Billy Beard Electric after retiring from Laclede Gas in July of 2016.

Forsythe was first elected to the city council in 1993 at the age of 31. He currently serves as the chairman of the Public Works committee and served a short term as mayor following the recall vote of former Mayor Charlie Rorex.

I love it. Its something I really, really, really enjoy doing, he said. Working for the city  you can tell after 23 years how far weve come.

Forsythe said he always believed in the importance of service.

If you cant serve in the military or something like that, do something for your town or for the people around you, he said. I could not serve in the military so I served the city of Farmington.

Next, Smith introduced himself.

Smith was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He spent 23 years in the United States Army and served three embassy tours oversees. Smith and his wife, Pattie, moved to Farmington in January 1999 when he was hired as the first director for the St. Francois County Community Partnership.

He said his introduction to Farmington came when he attended the chambers yearly banquet with his mother-in-law only four hours after arriving to the community.

It was quite a whirl-wind evening, he said. I met a lot of people and made a lot of friends.

Smith began his service to the city when he was appointed to the Planning and Zoning commission. He would be elected to serve on the council in 2001, only missing one two-year period on the council since that time.

I think weve done a lot of good things, he said of the council. Weve been very good stewards of the citys money. Weve done a lot of things to help build the infrastructure here in the area. Id like to continue to do that. Weve added personnel to the fire department and police department. Weve seen some fantastic buildings going up  I think the continued expansion of our airport is very important.

Prior to the start of the luncheon, the candidates were given a list of four questions. Each had the opportunity to choose one question for the event and was given three minutes to answer.

Smith was the first to select a question, choosing the question on traffic congestion and the growing traffic problems in the city.

We need to look at the east and west corridors we do not have here in the city in the north and south part, he said. Its kind of hard to get from one side of the city to the other in the north and south part. Its something weve been looking at. I think its something well need to consider  extending some roads and making some new roads to help with traffic in that area.

As far as traffic congestion downtown and in surrounding areas, a pet project of Larrys has always been the stoplight at KREI (Boulevard). I think that is something that will eventually come down the road. I know were looking at extending a road  near Auffenberg to help alleviate some of the traffic in Maple Valley. A local developer is looking at doing that and helping with the city.

I think weve done pretty good. Weve gotten some stoplights up and got the timing going. If we bring stuff forward to the public works committee and, if needed, to the public safety committee, if we find areas that are problems with traffic that we bring that up and try to see if there is a solution.

Weve done that with several locations by adding turn lanes here in the city and adding stop signs and a few other things. Were a growing city and thats one of the problems with a growing city  you have traffic. I learned real quick there are certain areas of the city you dont want to be in at certain times of the day and there are places that need to have improvement. If you have a major artery to get to one place you may be sitting for a while and that can be frustrating some times. As we do some things and weve got a good working relationship with MoDOT, I see that continue to make the improvements we need since we have Karsch running through town and a few other things.

Forsythe began his address concerning traffic by saying it was his pet peeve.

As you come out to KREI and Karsch, it is a very congested area about 8 (a.m.). It really is, he said. It goes all the way back up to Kansas Street which is the street behind Miller Feed. The stoplight I brought up because if you look at Washington Street and Highway 32, KREI (Boulevard) is about midway between those two points.

How do you slow traffic down? Put a stoplight at KREI and Karsch. How can you control the traffic? Put a stoplight at KREI and Karsch. But, what the state wants and what we have in our pockets are two different things. The state wants us to make an access lane like at Washington Street and Karsch  they want it to make exactly like that. They want us to take land from Miller Feed, which weve already taken land from Miller Feed to start with when we widened KREI.

What do you do then? Well, you take the Pine Street extension which was brought up a couple years ago but was very quickly killed because of the residents behind there on Oak Street wanted to watch the deer. You all are in the chamber of commerce. If you cant get to your business, what kind of commerce do you have? You have none.

Ive heard it many times I dont go over that way because its too hard to get through there at a certain time. This is why it is my pet peeve. If you would do the Pine Street extension to Industrial Drive, come out to 32 Highway you have that area  the east way. West way  on D Highway, cut across Wallace Road through the Dunning property and tie Wallace Road into D Highway and then you have the west property solved.

The Harrington propertys for sale on both sides of the road  in my lifetime I never thought that, but yes. On both sides of the road it is for sale and it will be sold. And when it is sold you will have more traffic. Its just food for thought. Weve got to have roads. The question was brought to me do the developers pay for these streets or does the city? If the city pays for them, then youre helping the developers. If the developers pay for them, were waiting on the developers to develop that piece of ground  thats a question we have to ask.

See how the candidates answered the question of expanding the city's corporate boundary lines in tomorrow's Daily Journal.
A chance conversation set Jim Wieser on his path to becoming chairman of the Lake County Democratic Committee.

On Nov. 18, Wieser worked on the provisional ballots cast during the November election as news broke that the U.S. attorney filed charges against Sheriff John Buncich, then the party's chairman.

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One official mentioned to Wieser that the next committee chair shouldn't be an elected official.

"I chimed in and said I felt that for years," Wieser said.

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By the end of the year, Wieser had thought about campaigning for party chair and talked with local officials, precinct committee members and his family. Having previously served on the Highland Town Council and County Council, worked on a number of political campaigns and served as the attorney for the Lake County Board of Elections and Voter Registration, Wieser decided to continue his dedication to public service.

"I thought maybe this is a chance for me to really do something for the party," Wieser said.

Two weeks ago, Wieser, 69, won the Democratic committee's chairmanship after Buncich cast the tie-breaking vote. As he settles into his new role, Wieser is depending on his prior experience to help rebuild the party.

Wieser is no stranger to Lake County politics as an elected official but mostly as someone who works behind the scenes. Wieser said he thought once that he was on a path to be a longtime elected official but instead stepped aside to focus on his family.

Wieser said that as an elected official, he didn't know the mechanics behind a campaign, but taking a different political path gave him that insight.

"I think that's a skill I bring to the table," Wieser said.

Michelle Fajman, the Democratic committee's vice chair and director of the Lake County Board of Elections and Voter Registration, said Wieser is knowledgeable about how to run campaigns.

"Everything that I wanted in a chairman, I seemed to see in him," Fajman said.

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Wieser, of Schererville, said the party needs to attract younger people, improve its relationship with officials downstate and repair its image locally.

"I think maybe I could try to change culture," Wieser said.

People are interested in the party and willing to participate, Wieser said, and the key is figuring out how to harness that energy.

Shortly after his election, Wieser's work as a private attorney for GEO Group drew the ire of members of Black Lives Matter. GEO Group aimed to construct an immigrant detention facility in Gary.

Wieser said his personal political views and beliefs aren't reflected in the work he does professionally. He said his job as an attorney is to provide the best representation for his client and not inject his personal beliefs into that relationship.

"Over time, as people see me function, they're going to understand that," Wieser said.

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Wieser said his role as chair is to work behind the scenes and direct ground work. That means fundraising for candidates, Wieser said, and getting candidates elected.

"The basic infrastructure is there. It just has to be improved on," Wieser said.

Locally, the party needs to focus on its infrastructure, Wieser said, and attract new members and get them involved.

Fajman said Wieser's work as an attorney will lend itself to negotiating with people within the party and finding common ground on issues. She said people still might not agree, but he'll be able to have those conversations.

The Lake County Democrats should demonstrate to the party downstate that they're still active, honest, fair and ethical, Wieser said, and still a source of Democratic strength for Indiana.

"We need to have a stronger voice," Wieser said.

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During Wieser's first days as chairman, he reached out to County Commissioner Mike Repay, who also ran for the chairman seat, to become the state Democratic Party's 1st District representative.

"I owe him thanks for that," Repay said. "He did that almost immediately."

Repay said he thinks Wieser reaching out to him could repair any ill will that may exist within the party after the close chairman election.

Repay said Wieser will do what he can to work in the party's best interest. He said that means having a bigger open-door policy to members, training political candidates, attracting new candidates and getting a bigger voice in Indianapolis.

Leading up to the next elections, Wieser said the party must find a way to appeal to the middle-class voters who fell away from Democratic candidates during the last election.

"I'm excited about the future," Fajman said.

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The party has some rebuilding to do, Fajman said, but Wieser is up to the task.

"I think he's the person to do it," Fajman said.

clyons@post-trib.com

Twitter @craigalyons
In an undated photo provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, an adult emerald ash borer is shown. The highly destructive insects which kill ash trees are metallic green and about 1/2-inch long. (AP Photo/Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

The City of Hobart and a resident are working together to bring back trees to the Merrillville Heights subdivision, which was hit hard by the emerald ash borer infestation two years ago.

The Board of Public Works and Safety on Wednesday, March 15, denied a request by Barbara Koteles, of the 6100 block of California, to plant trees in the easements in the area, but said city staff would work with her and her neighbors to bring trees to the neighborhood, preferably in residents' yards.

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The city had to cut down about 100 ash trees in the Merrillville Heights and Glenwood subdivisions on the west side after they were decimated by the ravenous emerald ash borer.

"One day I looked down my street and saw not one tree left on my parkway. I'm one of the few residents left with any trees in my yard," said Koteles, who said she bought her house because of all the trees. "I want to see trees back in my neighborhood."

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Board member Thomas Ehrhardt agreed that trees are important, but said homeowners need to be educated first on the fact that while easements are city property, their maintenance is the responsibility of homeowners.

City landscaper Kelly Goodpaster said she is in favor of planting more trees in the neighborhood, but recommended they be moved into the residents' yards.

City engineer Phil Gralik said residents can' obtain free trees.

"There are DNR (Indiana Department of Natural Resources) grants that provide free trees. We can't give them to a private property owner, but if they could form a homeowners association that would maintain them, it is a possibility for the future," Gralik said.

A homeowners' association could be for just one block, not necessarily the whole subdivision.

Gralik said the city is receiving its first shipment of trees in the fall, but they're going to Veterans Park and the police department's gun range.

Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Munster Police are investigating a Friday morning mishap involving a 17-year-old boy and a School Town of Munster bus.

Officers responded to a report of a pedestrian incident with a school bus at about 7:12 a.m. at 35th Street and Columbia Avenue, according to Munster Police spokesman Lt. Ed Strbjak. When police, emergency responders and school town employees arrived, they found a 17-year-old boy under the bus.

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It has yet to be determined how the boy, whose name hasn't been released, ended up getting hit, Strbjak said.

The boy was taken by ambulance to Methodist Northlake Hospital in Gary for treatment, Strbjak said. He was awake at the scene. Friday afternoon, police said he was in stable condition.

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"He was talking to first responders," Strbjak said, adding that the severity of his injuries is currently unknown.

Strbjak didn't release the identity of the bus driver, other than to say he's a 76-year-old Schererville man. No charges have been filed in the incident.

School Superintendent Jeff Hendrix was unavailable for comment Friday morning; an employee referred to a press release on the School Town's website. Strbjak said the high school would be bringing in counselors for students.

An investigation by the Munster Police and the Lake County Sheriff's Department is continuing, Strbjak said.

Michelle Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
In an undated photo provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, an adult emerald ash borer is shown. The highly destructive insects which kill ash trees are metallic green and about 1/2-inch long. (AP Photo/Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

Northwest Indiana's cities and towns have a new chance to replace some of the trees killed in recent years by a voracious insect, the emerald ash borer.

Thanks to an $87,500 federal grant, the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission will make about 700 young trees, native to this region, available for planting.

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Kathy Luther, NIRPC's director of environmental programs, announced the tree-planting program, called CommuniTree, at Thursday's meeting of NIRPC's executive board.

Communities can apply for the trees by March 31, or this fall.

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A March 30 program at the Lake County Soil and Water Conservation District office in Crown Point will explain the program's requirements, which include caring for the new trees.

More information on the CommuniTree program, including an application form, is available at NIRPC's website under the Environment tab.

The grant for the trees came from the U.S. Forest Service under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative  a program that, Luther noted, could be eliminated by the federal budget proposed Thursday by the Trump administration.

Also Thursday:

The executive board approved several changes to the current Transportation Improvement Program. The largest was construction of a traffic roundabout at LaPorte Avenue and Silhavy Road in Valparaiso. That project, originally planned for 2022, was moved up to 2018, and a project to reconstruct Silhavy Road from LaPorte Avenue to Evans Avenue was moved back to 2022.

Visitors had a chance to examine and mark comments on proposals, displayed in the NIRPC building lobby, for creating pathways  possibly including tunnels or bridges -- for pedestrians and cyclists along U.S. 30 on each side of Interstate 65. A design firm with a NIRPC contract is drafting plans to be presented at a future meeting. A similar workshop was conducted Feb. 25 at Southlake Mall. More information is available at www.ratiodesign.com/US30SafetyStudy.

"You feel like a vagrant if you're walking there now," Gary resident Jim Nowacki said, noting the lack of sidewalks in that area. He urged planners to develop "human-scale" improvements.

Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The Indiana dunes have a lot going for them but the biggest challenge may be getting the people who live closest to them to take advantage of what they have to offer.

Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore are the biggest tourism drivers in the county, Lorelei Weimer, executive director of Indiana Dunes Tourism, said during a tourism forecast presentation Thursday at Riley's Railhouse in Chesterton.

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Tourism brings in $413 million a year; provides 5,075 jobs in the county with $98.7 million in wages; and draws 5.7 million visitors annually, she added.

But 80 percent of the visitors to the dunes are from outside of this area, she said, and a consultant said while most communities would die to have the dunes at their doorstep, they couldn't understand why people here don't visit them.

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"It's a golden opportunity for our community," she said.

Paul Labovitz, superintendent of the national lakeshore, said he and Weimer often discuss how to bring more local people to the park.

"I think we're moving in the right direction," he said after Weimer's presentation.

Part of that effort includes greater access to the park. While Mount Baldy remains closed for safety reasons, park officials hope to reopen the beach in front of the dune this summer. Erosion problems by Central Avenue Beach also are being corrected so that can open again, too.

Officials also are talking about extending park hours past dusk. "We think that's crazy" that the park closes before dark, Labovitz said, adding officials also want to change the perception about the lakeshore.

"It's not just the beach. It's a year-round destination," he said.

Also raising the profile of the lakeshore is a pending switch at the federal level, supported by Indiana's legislative delegation, to rename the lakeshore as Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which Labovitz hopes passes this session.

"If they're successful with the name change, it puts us on the same list as Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, and we'd agree we're just as unique as those places," he said.

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Weimer said the visitor center saw a record year in 2016 with 101,729 visitors; the tourism bureau's social media efforts continued to pay off; and the 3 Dune Challenge at the state park continues to be successful.

Every dollar invested in tourism in Porter County generates a $34 return, she said.

Ongoing projects for this year include bringing in "influencers" to experience the dunes and share that through blogs and videos online; updating the "Dunes 101" and Porter County videos on the tourism website; a rebranding of the tourism consortium that represents Porter and seven other northern Indiana counties; a Native American-themed walking path around the visitors center; and seeking outfitters to offer kayaks, bikes and other recreation equipment and guided tours.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Char and Darrel Sills, of Hobart, hold plaques they received for their volunteer service to area soldiers and veterans as active members of the Indiana Patriot Guard. (Karen Caffarini / Post-Tribune)

When it comes to active military and veterans, Darrel and Char Sills don't know how to say no.

As members of the Indiana Patriot Guard, the Hobart septuagenarians have stood in the rain and snow for hours at funerals.

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They've welcomed back soldiers and seen them off on another tour of duty.

They've driven to airports to escort home the bodies of fallen soldiers.

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They've assembled care packages for soldiers overseas and purchased groceries for those at home and in need.

"The Sills go to 80 percent of what goes on here in Northwest Indiana (regarding the Patriot Guard). It doesn't matter what," said Dale "Doc" Ready, senior ride captain for the local guard chapter.

He honored them for that work at a recent Hobart City Council meeting. Mayor Brian Snedecor and the city council also recognized the couple.

"When they became involved with the military, it was an amazing undertaking. They'll stand outside in the cold and rain for hours if the service is for a veteran," Snedecor said.

"It's an honor to do it," said Darrel Sills, 76.

Hearts beat red, white and blue

The Sills' home breathes patriotism. An American flag waves in the front yard and a tree adorned with small flags sits on a table on the front porch.

The couple are wearing T-shirts that say "Freedom is not Free." Char Sills has made an American flag of delicate hand-crafted red, white and blue flowers. Her husband, who served in the Army from 1959 to 1961, between the Korean and Vietnam wars, has an Army tattoo on his arm.

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Char Sills, 71, cited the backlash soldiers faced when returning home from Vietnam as a driving force behind their passion today.

"The way those servicemen were treated was awful. We said it would never happen again," she said.

About 13 years ago, the couple witnessed an Indiana Patriot Guard escort and followed it to see what was going on.

"I asked one of the guys if they cared if I held a flag. He said OK," Darrel Sills said.

His wife said they were told the Patriot Guard would be attending a welcome home for a soldier the following week. The Sills went and discovered the welcome home was for their neighbor.

They've been actively involved with the group of mostly motorcycle riders since, although they drive their red truck to all events.

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"Doc (Ready) calls us all the time. We've missed one or two events, but we don't miss many. It makes us feel good," Darrel Sills said.

He said they go to as many as 85 funerals a year for veterans.

"Sometimes we do three in one day," Char Sills said.

Ready said the guard presents a plaque to the deceased veteran's spouse or other close family member, and provides full military honors at the cemetery, no matter what branch of service is involved.

"The Sills stand in the rain and snow. I couldn't be more proud of those two people. Their hearts just beat red, white and blue," Ready said.

Char Sills said the welcome home events are her favorite.

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"I told one young man, 'thank you for your service and it's an honor to meet you.' He said. 'I've done nothing,'" she said. "They do so much for us. Some of them look like babies. They don't know what their future holds."

Offering other aid

While most of their work with the military is through the Indiana Patriot Guard, the Sills also have helped other organizations and individuals.

Ready said on one occasion, they helped pack food for soldiers and dog food for canines overseas.

"If someone calls for help, we'll help," Char Sills said, mentioning a food drive in Valparaiso where 36 boxes, each containing between 50 and 65 pounds of food, were collected and sent abroad.

Snedecor said residents call his office at times seeking assistance, and Darrel Sills has offered to help, whether it be providing transportation or something else.

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Char Sills also sits on the Hobart Park Board.

The Sills' compassion for those who served extends to those who've returned home and are facing hard times. Char Sills remembered receiving a call one Christmas concerning a family in Portage. The soldier had a back injury and was behind on his mortgage and car payments.

With four small children, the man didn't know what to do, she said.

"We were able to collect enough money to make his house and car payment. Toys for Tots took the kids' names and got them all presents. We took a Christmas tree and lights to them. All that mattered to me was that the kids had a good Christmas," she said.

"It's not about us. It's about our heroes," Darrel Sills said.

Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The South Shore Line's two major expansion projects would be doomed if the federal budget proposed Thursday by President Trump passed unchanged through Congress.

But Michael Noland, the South Shore's president and general manager, remained positive as he hoped for support in Congress.

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"We're continuing to work full speed," he said. "No one said it would be easy."

Funding for new grants to expand or improve public transportation would be eliminated if the Trump budget proposal passed Congress. The proposal says funding should come instead from "the localities that use and benefit from those localized projects."

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The South Shore is asking for two Federal Transit Administration grants. One would pay half the estimated $600 million cost for extending the South Shore service from Hammond to the Munster/Dyer border on the West Lake corridor; the other would pay half the estimated $290 million cost for building a second set of tracks between Gary and Michigan City, to improve the service's speed and reliability. The rest of the funding would come from state and local sources.

The budget proposal released Thursday  the so-called "skinny budget"  is preliminary to a fuller budget proposal coming later, Noland noted, and Congress typically revises the president's proposal significantly.

Also, Trump promised during last year's campaign to invest heavily in the nation's infrastructure  roads, bridges, airports and, presumably, railroads.

"We'll have to wait to see what he's talking about," Noland said.

He noted also that Congress already has passed a five-year transportation bill with funding for new public transportation starts.

"At the end of the day," Noland said, "we have a lot of partners around the country."

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville, who has strongly supported both South Shore projects, also wasn't panicked.

"Today's Budget Blueprint is a 62-page press release," Visclosky said in an emailed statement, "whereas the Fiscal Year 2017 full budget document with funding justifications and annotated annexes is a detailed 1,968-page proposal, and we are months away from seeing the full Fiscal Year 2018 request."

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He said he would continue to work with "like-minded colleagues of both parties" to invest in new and existing transit.

Visclosky testified March 9 before the House Appropriations Committee about the importance of the South Shore projects, which he said "would allow us to better access the good-paying jobs in Chicago and diversity our economy through transit-oriented development."

"Reducing funding for this critical program," Visclosky told the committee, "would be counterproductive to our goal as federal representatives to support jobs and economic development."

The Trump budget proposal also came up for discussion at Thursday's Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission meeting.

Ty Warner, NIRPC's executive director, said the proposed budget also calls for cutting U.S. Department of Transportation spending by 13 percent, eliminating most Amtrak funding, and cutting the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 31 percent.

The final budget, he added, likely will be different after it has worked its way through Congress.

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If the budget passes as proposed, Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson told the mayors and town officials on the NIRPC executive board, "we all stand to lose quite a lot."

LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo, chair of NIRPC's legislative committee, said that group will "take a deeper dive" into the federal budget and its impact at a future meeting.

Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
River Forest residents reported their 9-year-old dog, named Daisy, was killed in their yard March 10. Elmwood-Grove Animal Hospital doctors believe it was likely a coyote attack. (Elmwood-Grove Animal Hospital / Handout)

Officials in River Forest are asking pet owners to be extra vigilant when their pets are outside after an apparent coyote attack reportedly killed a resident's dog.

During the March 13 village board meeting, Village President Cathy Adduci said a resident reported their dog was attacked and killed in the resident's backyard on March 10.

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According to Dr. Kathleen Heneghen of the Elmwood-Grove Animal Hospital in River Grove, the dog, named Daisy, was a patient of theirs, and she said the owner notified the animal hospital of the incident shortly after it occurred.

"They called up at about 5:45 p.m. after they found her remains in the backyard," Heneghen said. "The owners were very distraught. We were very alarmed to hear about it. These attacks can happen within seconds, even with the owner just a few feet away."

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Daisy was a 9-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel and weighed nearly 18 pounds at her most recent hospital visit, Heneghen said. Heneghen said the owners told her they heard nothing unusual after letting Daisy into the backyard that night, and found her remains several minutes later. Based on what she was told, Heneghen said it was likely a coyote attack, but she added nobody witnessed the incident.

"It was clearly the work of a predator," Heneghen said. "When they described the swiftness of the attack, I told them it had to be the work of one or more coyotes. I offered my condolences, but they are inconsolable. What can you say to someone who's lost a pet so tragically?"

According to River Forest officials, February and March is coyote mating season, which can lead to an increase in animal activity in residential areas. The coyotes likely come from Thatcher Woods and live along the Des Plaines River corridor, officials said.

"It's a sad issue," Adduci said. "Unfortunately, they come from our forest preserves and they look for food. They're out, and they're out in packs. We urge our residents to make sure you have your dogs on a leash and you're aware."

Trustee Carmela Corsini said she regularly sees a coyote on her block, and said she wanted to be sure residents know of the dangers coyotes can bring.

"I see him every morning," Corsini said. "We have a large one walking up and down our block. We want to let people know to not keep their pets outside alone and accompany them so we don't have this unfortunate event happen again."

Officials ask residents to never feed coyotes, to keep garbage cans sealed or covered and to never leave their small pets unattended, even in a fenced-in yard.

"The severity and frequency of these sightings makes us want to say you should go out into the yard with your pet," Heneghen said. "People may want to feed stray and wild animals, but it may attract undesired animals who feed on scraps."

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If you encounter a coyote, The Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control asks residents to yell, clap their hands or blow a whistle and try to make yourself look larger if a coyote approaches.

More information about coyote safety has been posted to the village of River Forest homepage at www.vrf.us.

Heneghen said coyote sightings have also been reported by her clients in Riverside, Elmwood Park and Park Ridge. Not only has the incident affected the family involved, but also those at the animal hospital who have gotten to know Daisy over the years.

"Daisy was a patient in our hospital from puppyhood," Heneghen said. "She was their only pet, and we've known Daisy her whole life. We're in shock. She was such a sweet dog."

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
The village of River Forest announced it will seek a new round of proposals for the redevelopment of the southeast intersection of Lake Street and Park Avenue. (Steve Schering / Pioneer Press)

With its hope of redeveloping a village-owned parcel on Lake Street slowed to a crawl, the River Forest Village Board approved a consulting contract to begin the process all over again.

Trustees unanimously approved an agreement with Ehlers and Associates to seek proposals for the site. Trustees Thomas Cargie and Roma Colwell-Steinke were absent.

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"In order to move this forward, I really thought it was important to have a consultant more engaged in that process than we did [in the past]," Village Administrator Eric Palm said. "At this point, considering we've had so many false starts at that location, it's [best] to have another consultant with kind of a fresh perspective to come in and take a look at this."

According to Palm, Ehlers will create a request for proposals, solicit bids, engage the development community and provide technical assistance to the village.

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In 2015, the village had entered into negotiations with Keystone Ventures to redevelop the parcel, which is on the southeast corner of Lake Street and Park Avenue. According to Palm, the two sides were not able to reach an agreement.

In October 2015, Keystone had proposed a mixed-use development for the site, which would have included up to 16,000 square feet of retail space and 35 residential units.

According to a village memo, officials sought proposals from three different consultants to assist with marketing the property before ultimately selecting Ehlers. As part of the agreement, Ehlers will complete its scope of services at an hourly fee not to exceed $25,000 for review of up to three RFP developer responses. Should the village receive more than three proposals, Ehlers will charge a flat fee of up to $2,000 per each additional proposal.

The hourly rates will be in effect through Dec. 31. Should the contract extend into 2018, the rates will be subject to increase.

"I know you said you'd do three RFPs, but we're hoping to get a lot more than three," Village President Cathy Adduci said. "We had three last time, and we're hoping to get more. I think it's a good proposal, and you hit a lot of the important parts for us to do."

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
From the first campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1866 to Hillary Clinton's historic run for president, here's a look at women's first in American politics.
2022 election guide: Here are Pueblo County's top races, ballot issues

Here's what you need to know about the local candidates and ballot questions in the 2022 election, as well as how to vote in Pueblo, Colorado.
The Terre Du Lac Womens Club and Thrivent Financial joined together to provide hundreds of shoes for area victims of abuse.

Womens Club and Thrivent member Barb Weinhold said the womens club recently presented hundreds of new and used shoes, towels, diapers and toiletries to Southeast Missouri Family Violence Council Executive Director Stephanie Bennett.

At a recent TDL Womens Club meeting Volunteer Coordinator/Victim Advocate for SEMO Family Violence Council Velma Baldwin explained how the shelter works and about some of the needs of the residents, said Weinhold. Since the women and their children arriving at the shelter (A Friends Place) have hardly anything, these items are very much needed.

Weinhold said seed money for the project was provided by Thrivent Financial, an organization that helps Christians be wise with money and live generously.

Joseph and Hailey Bauwens from Thrivent Financial local office also spoke to the group, said Weinhold. They explained how the women could apply for their own Thrivent Action Seed Money for fundraisers, service activities, or educational events to better our community.

Each member of Thrivent is allowed two grants per year. The action team members can apply for a $250 grant every six months per member. By doing this they can potentially bring $30,000 into the community each year through these action teams. They have been able to help a lot of organizations and it really gives back to the community.

For further information on Thrivent or the Thrivent Action Seed Money call 573-747-0020 or email joseph.bauwens@thrivent.com or visit Thrivent.com/why.
Our weekly round up of other news affecting foreign investors throughout Asia:

An Economic & Social Background to the Philippines 2017

The Philippines has, over the past few years, been playing a catch up strategy, and is now among the leading economies within ASEAN. Despite its many problems, the economy and commercial sector remain on the rise and present significant opportunities for investment for those who know where to look.

India Is Hot! New IPOs Are Massively Oversubscribed

A sign of the desire to get into the new Indian dynamic has manifested itself in the over-subscription of Indian IPOs. This is a time for entrepreneurs to get stuck in, and ride what promises to be an exciting ten years in making India both an Asian consumer tiger and the workshop of the world.

Selecting the Optimal Location for Indonesian Manufacturing

Indonesia possesses approximately 13,664 islands and over 100 active volcanoes. As such, identifying a suitable site for manufacturing in Indonesia is not easy for those who do not understand the archipelagos diverse geography.

Registering a Foreign Owned Trademark in Russia

Russia acknowledges main international intellectual property conventions, but has many unique domestic procedures for registering a foreign owned trademark. Learn how to register your foreign owned trademark in this article

Annual Tax Finalization and Remittance in Vietnam

Prior to transferring profits back to their home markets, foreign companies in Vietnam must fulfill annual compliance requirements. Read more for a detailed look at the compliance process, deadlines for filing, and penalties levied for non-compliance and tax evasion.



About Us Our Briefing updates are written by and provided by the various regional offices of Dezan Shira & Associates throughout Asia. To obtain a complimentary subscription to Asia Briefing please click here. To contact Dezan Shira & Associates concerning foreign investment and assistance in Asia, please email us at asia@dezshira.com

Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure

Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide.

An Introduction to Doing Business in ASEAN 2017

Doing Business in ASEAN introduces the fundamentals of investing in the 10-nation ASEAN bloc, concentrating on economics, trade, corporate establishment and taxation. We also include the latest development news in our Important Updates section for each country, with the intent to provide an executive assessment of the varying component parts of ASEAN, assessing each member state and providing the most up-to-date economic and demographic data on each.

An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2017

Doing Business in China 2017 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the professionals at Dezan Shira & Associates in January 2017, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Chinese market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.

An Introduction to Doing Business in Hong Kong 2017

Doing Business in China 2017 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the professionals at Dezan Shira & Associates in January 2017, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Chinese market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.

An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in India. As such, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Indian market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to stay up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.

An Introduction to Doing Business in Singapore 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in Singapore 2017 provides readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Singapore and outlines the citys role as a trading hub within ASEAN. The guide explains the basics of company establishment, annual compliance, taxation, human resources, and social insurance in the city-state.

An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2017 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam. Compiled by Dezan Shira & Associates, a specialist foreign direct investment practice, this guide explains the basics of company establishment, annual compliance, taxation, human resources, payroll, and social insurance in this dynamic country.
One little shoebox makes all the difference in the world  in particular, boxes with Operation Christmas Child can change a life.

There will be an Operation Christmas Child informational meeting from 10 a.m. to noon on March 25 at the First Baptist Church in Farmington, located at 210 North A Street.

Gia Moser, regional manager for the Lower Midwest Region of Operation Christmas Child, will be the speaker. Moser will share information about organization's work in Paraguay.

A total of 16,364 shoebox gifts were collected from Southeast Missouri in 2016 and sent to needy children in more than 100 countries.

The Southeast Missouri region goal for 2017 is 18,000 shoebox gifts.

The program is a project of Samaritans Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham. Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has delivered gift-filled shoeboxes to more than 124 million children in more than 150 countries and territories.
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Shanghai government officials yesterday denounced a CCTV "3.15" program on Wednesday claiming Muji had sold food that could be contaminated with radiation.

Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau said it did not find Muji Shanghai  one of the companies named in the program  had imported any foods from radiation areas in Japan.

The bureau said it had carried out an inspection of the company yesterday.

Muji Shanghai said the program had misunderstood the registration process of its imported foods.

CCTV reported Muji stores in China were selling food items imported from areas around Fukushima in Japan in contravention of a ban by China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. The ban was imposed after radiation concerns after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster in 2011.

The two imported food products, cereal beverage and muffin, shown in the program were manufactured in Fukui-ken and Osaka prefectures, Muji said.

CCTV has not responded to yesterday's developments.

Meanwhile, Xinzhiyuan, a Shanghai e-commerce company, also exposed on Wednesday's CCTV program, had already been fined last year for the misdeeds reported on Wednesday's program, officials said yesterday.

Xinzhiyuan was fined 10,000 yuan (US$1,470) and 5,000 yuan respectively by the market supervision authorities in the Pudong New Area and Jing'an District for false advertisement, the officials said.

CCTV's program on Wednesday said Xinzhiyuan had published fake information online to trick people into buying a food item advertised as a health product able to cure cancer within days.

The company paid for an entry on baike.com, China's version of Wikipedia, and advertised many nonexistent effects of the product, according to CCTV.

The product, "Jizao 5S," was described in the entry as a kind of algae containing five rare and precious elements that could effectively curb the growth of tumors. The cancerous cells of a liver cancer patient would disappear after using the product for seven days, the entry claimed.

Nearly 10,000 boxes were sold within a month, the company's deputy general manager told the TV quality investigation program.
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Models display CRRC trains at an industry expo in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [Photo/Xinhua]

Train and rail equipment manufacturer China Railway Rolling Stock Corp made a major breakthrough in export volumes, quality, sales models, business cooperation and integration in overseas markets in 2016, according to one of its top executives.

The company said the total value of orders from abroad surged by 40 percent year-on-year to $8.1 billion in 2016. It added that exports reached 102 countries and regions and about 83 percent of countries with railroads are using CRRC products.

"In terms of sales, our orders received in 2016 were the equivalent of the total sales of Siemens AG or Bombardier Inc's railway businesses in 2015," said Yu Weiping, CRRC's vice-president.

Yu said his company would further develop "smart trains" which use advanced digitalization and automation technologies that enable automatic speed controls and fault detection.

CRRC's main businesses cover research and development, design, manufacture, repairs, sale, leasing and technical services for rolling stock.

It is also involved with urban rail transit vehicles, engineering machinery, all types of electrical equipment, electronic equipment and parts, electric products and environmental protection equipment and consulting services.

CRRC last year also pressed ahead with its goals to gain in quality and market share in such premium markets as the United States and Europe.

It shipped bullet train units to Macedonia and received an order of 846 rail cars from the Chicago Transit Authority in 2016.

Beijing-based CRRC signed a 14 billion yuan ($2.03 billion) maintenance contract with South Africathe biggest one it ever signedfurther advancing its strategy to export its services to global markets.

The company also expanded moves into businesses in Australia, the US, South Africa, India, Turkey and Europe through building research centers, factories and joint ventures.

"Chinese trainmakers could also find growth in many developing countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiativefor improved railway infrastructure, passenger services and regional connectivity, as well as their desire to create jobs and new commercial areas," said Qi Shaobin, a researcher at the Institute of Transportation Research under the National Development and Reform Commission.

Eager to further compete with its Japanese and German rivals, CRRC has already started research and development of a magnetic levitation or maglev train that can reach 600 km per hour.

The group will build a maglev rail line up to 5 kilometers long to test the train.

The project will be led by CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co Ltd in Shandong province, one of the country's three bullet train makers.
On March 12, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte Vice Chancellor Robert G. Wilhelm, pharmaceutical researcher Yong Zhang and a delegation made a friendly visit to the Hebei College of Science and Technology (HCST) at the invitation of Zhou Huzhen, a dedicated educator and chairman of HCST.

Dr. Wilhelm was welcomed by HCST representatives, including Chairman Prof. Zhou Huzhen, College Party Secretary Liu Gengqian, Executive President Huo Xianyu and Vice President Tian Wo. After a tour of the HCST campus and the students residence hall, both sides held talks on topics ranging from educational cooperation, exchange programs, resource sharing and curriculum design at the conference room in the HCST teaching hall.

Chairman Prof. Zhou Huzhen made a brief introduction of the HSCTs history programs and majors, and delivered his sincere appreciation of Dr. Wilhelms visit after a busy schedule. Dr. Wilhelm was impressed by the cleanliness and orderliness of the residence hall and the exuberance of the student body.

Robert G. Wilhelm is Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, Executive Director at the Charlotte Research Institute and a professor of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science.

The University of North Carolina Charlotte is North Carolina's public urban research university. It leverages its location in the state's largest city to offer internationally competitive programs of research and creative activities, exemplary undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and a focused set of community engagement initiatives. UNC Charlotte maintains a particular commitment to addressing the cultural, economic, educational, environmental, health and social needs of the greater Charlotte region.

Baoding and Charlotte entered a sister-city relationship on Sept. 29, 1987. Being part of the Charlotte Mayor delegation, Dr. Wilhelm and the delegation have been invited to Baoding to celebrate the sister-citys 30th anniversary.
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Dai Haibo, ex-deputy secretary-general of the city government, at the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate Peoples Court yesterday. He admitted taking bribes worth more than 9.9 million yuan.

The Shanghai governments former deputy secretary-general admitted taking bribes and concealing cash deposits when he appeared at the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Peoples Court yesterday.

Dai Haibo, 54, received bribes of more than 9.9 million yuan (US$1.4 million) between 1998 and 2015 when he was general manager of the state-owned Zhangjiang Group, deputy director of the Pudong New Area and director of the Shanghai Economic and Information Commission, among other roles.

He also concealed cash, funds and stocks worth nearly 1.58 million yuan in a bank account in Hong Kong.

Prosecutors said Dai hadnt told authorities that he opened a personal account with Citibank Hong Kong in April 2001. It was found to contain cash deposits worth HK$380,900 (US$49,000), and stocks and funds worth HK$1.58 million.

Dai was placed under investigation for serious disciplinary violations in March 2015 and sacked the following month.

In August of that year, prosecutors launched a corruption investigation.

Dai told the court, which hasnt yet issued a verdict in the case, that he regretted his actions.

Under Chinese law, he faces up to two years in jail for concealing his Hong Kong deposits and at least 10 years for taking bribes.

Bribery deemed to have caused the country great losses can merit life in jail or even the death penalty.

Earlier this month, Chinas top anti-graft body announced it was investigating Chen Xu, chief prosecutor of the Shanghai Peoples Procuratorate, but no further details have been revealed.

In February, Ai Baojun, a former Shanghai vice mayor, stood trial on graft charges.

The court has not yet announced a verdict.

Prosecutors alleged he accepted bribes worth more than 43.2 million yuan, either personally or through his family, and took advantage of his positions to embezzle public assets worth more than 7.5 million yuan.
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Photo taken on March 14, 2017 shows the "Big Ben" and the UK flag in central London, Britain. The British upper house of the Parliament passed the Brexit Bill Monday night, clearing the last hurdle for the government to trigger Brexit. [Photo/Xinhua]

Queen Elizabeth has signed the Brexit bill, clearing the way for Prime Minister Theresa May to start talks to leave the European Union, it was learnt on Thursday.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced Thursday that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill has received Royal Assent from the queen, which was passed by the parliament on Monday.

A formal royal assent the queen is all that stands in the way of May informing Brussels of Britain's intention of leaving the European Union after 43 years.

The bill gives May the legal authority to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the laid down procedure within the EU for a member state wishing to leave. Once article 50 is triggered, it kick-starts a two year process for negotiating a new relationship between both sides.

May has not said precisely when she will trigger article 50, apart from saying for the past six months that it will be by the end of this month. She described the passing of the Brexit Bill by politicians as a defining moment for Britain.

The Brexit bill cleared its final hurdles in parliament this week after being fast tracked through both the House of Commons and House of Lords. Although attempts were made by remain supporters to amend the bill, it survived its parliamentary passage without change, signaling a clear victory for May's government.

Politicians were told formally in brief announcements to both houses of parliament of the Brexit bill receiving royal assent from the palace.

Under the British constitution all new legislation has to be signed by Queen Elizabeth before it can become law.

Once article 50 is triggered it will start a two-year period of negotiations between Britain and the EU to strike a new trade deal.

One of the failed amendments during the debates in parliament referred to the status of the more than 3 million EU citizens currently living in Britain, and their fate under Brexit.

May has insisted the status of EU citizens in Britain and the 1 million British people in EU countries will be priority during the negotiations with Brussels.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan made a fresh appeal Thursday to May to give an immediate cast-iron guarantee to EU nationals that they can stay in Britain after Brexit.

Sadiq wants the unilateral pledge, protecting the 3.3million EU citizens who currently live in Britain, to be given as soon as May triggers Article 50, formally starting the Brexit process.

In a message to the 1 million EU citizens in London, Khan said: "My message to them is clear: you are Londoners, you are welcome here and you deserve a commitment from the government that you can stay."

Khan said it is crucial that the government protects the EU citizens living in the UK and that there is broad support for guaranteeing their long term status.

He argued it is unacceptable that people who have made their lives in Britain and contributed to London and the country are now worried about their long-term future.

He has called for the interior department, the Home Office, to set up a separate simple and comprehensive process for all EU nationals legally in the UK to apply for permanent residence.

New research published by Khan reveals a quarter of London's construction workforce is from the European Union, pointing to a crippling effect that a Hard Brexit could have on homebuilding in the British capital.
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A war of words over Scottish independence erupted Thursday after Britain's prime minister ruled out an early referendum.

Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) said in a statement in Edinburgh that it would be a democratic outrage if Theresa May tried to block the people of Scotland from having a choice over their future destiny.

Earlier this week, Sturgeon announced she plans to ask the Scottish Parliament next week to back her call for a new referendum to decide if Scotland should remain as part of Britain. The people of Scotland in 2014 voted to remain in the EU by a large margin.

Sturgeon wants a new referendum next year or early 2019, saying Britain's decision to leave the EU changes the situation for Scotland which voted remain last June.

May said she was opposed to a second independence referendum while Brexit talks with Brussels were continuing.

Though May did not comment on or rule out a second referendum in Scotland at some future date, she said now is not the time for a referendum and instead Scotland should work with the government to seek the best deal with the EU for Scotland and the rest of Britain.

May's statement drew am angry response from Sturgeon. In a statement she said: "We are not proposing a referendum now. We are proposing to give the people of Scotland a choice once Brexit is clear but before it is too late. We will put our proposition to the Scottish Parliament next week and then we will put our formal proposals to the UK government."

"It is for the Scottish Parliament -- not Downing Street -- to determine the timing of a referendum, and the decision of the Scottish Parliament must be respected. It would be outrageous for the Scottish Parliament to be frozen out of the process," she added.

Former SNP leader Alex Salmond, now a Westminster MP, described May's action as a miscalculation, stating: "This finger-wagging at Scotland, this Theresa May laying down the law, it's not going to work."

The Labour Party in Scotland said it would vote against a second independence referendum.

Earlier on Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II gave royal assent to May's Brexit bill giving the prime minister official authority to trigger the Article 50 process to signal the start of Britain's exit from the EU.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said: "By the end of the month, we will invoke Article 50, allowing us to start our negotiations to build a positive new partnership with our friends and neighbors in the European Union, as well as taking a step out into the world as a truly global Britain."
China Aviation Daily | Mar. 17, 2017

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Finnair Plc was held today in Helsinki, Finland. The meeting approved the company's annual accounts and consolidated annual accounts for the fiscal year 2016 and discharged the members of the Board of Directors and CEO of the company from liability.

Use of the profits shown on the balance sheet and payment of dividend

In line with the proposal of the Board of Directors, the AGM decided that a dividend of EUR0.10 per share is paid based on the balance sheet adopted for the year ended December 31, 2016. The dividend will be paid to shareholders recorded on March 20, 2017 on the shareholders' list of the company maintained by Euroclear Finland Ltd. The Board of Directors proposes that the dividend is paid on April 4, 2017.

Composition of the Board of Directors

The AGM approved the proposal of the Shareholders' Nomination Committee that the Board of Directors be composed of seven (7) members. Ms Maija-Liisa Friman, Mr Jussi Itavuori, Mr Jouko Karvinen and Ms Jaana Tuominen were re-elected to the Board of Directors, and Mr. Colm Barrington, Ms Mengmeng Du and Jonas Martenson were elected as new members to the Board of Directors. The term of office of the Board of Directors expires at the end of the next AGM in 2017. Mr. Jouko Karvinen was elected Chairman of the Board.

Compensation of the Board of Directors

The following annual remuneration shall be paid to the members of the board of directors:

Chairperson EUR61,200;

Vice Chairperson EUR32,400;

Chairpersons of the Audit Committee and Compensation and Nomination Committee EUR32,400, where these individuals are neither the Chairperson nor the Vice Chairperson of the Board; and

other members EUR30,000.

The AGM further decided that each member's fee for a meeting of the Board of Directors or its Committee will be EUR600 when the meeting takes place in the member's country of residence and EUR2,400 for other meetings. For telephone meetings, the fee will be EUR600.

The Board members are entitled to reimbursement of reasonable travel and representation expenses in accordance with the company's general expenses policy. In addition, the Board members and their spouses are entitled to discounted travel on the company's flights in accordance with the company's discount ticket policy regarding the Board of Directors.

Election of the auditors and their remuneration

The AGM decided that PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy continues as the Company's auditor. PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd has notified that Authorised Public Accountant Mikko Nieminen will act as the principal auditor. The remuneration for the auditor is paid according to the auditor's reasonable invoice.

Authorising the Board of Directors to decide on the repurchase and/or on the acceptance as pledge of the Company's own shares

The AGM authorised the Board of Directors to decide on the repurchase of the Company's own shares and/or on the acceptance as pledge of the Company's own shares as follows:

The amount of own shares to be repurchased and/or accepted as pledge shall not exceed 5,000,000 shares, which corresponds to approximately 3.9 per cent of the total number of the company shares. Only the unrestricted equity of the company can be used to repurchase own shares on the basis of the authorisation.

Own shares can be repurchased at a price formed in public trading on the date of the repurchase or otherwise at a price formed on the market.

The Board of Directors decides how own shares will be repurchased and/or accepted as pledge. Own shares can be repurchased using, inter alia, derivatives. Own shares need not be repurchased in proportion to the shareholdings of the shareholders (directed repurchase).

Own shares may be repurchased and/or accepted as pledge in order to, inter alia, develop the capital structure of Finnair, to finance or carry out acquisitions, investments or other business transactions, or in order to use the shares as part of Finnair's incentive and remuneration schemes.

The authorisation is effective for a period of 18 months from the resolution of the General Meeting and it cancels the authorisation given by the General Meeting on March 16, 2016 to decide on the repurchase and/or acceptance as pledge of own shares.

Authorising the Board of Directors to decide on the disposal of the company's own shares

The AGM authorised the Board of Directors to decide on the disposal of own shares held by the company.

The amount of shares to be disposed based on the authorisation shall not exceed 5,000,000 shares, which corresponds to approximately 3.9 per cent of all the shares in the company. The Board of Directors decides on all the conditions of the disposals, including to whom, at what price and in which manner the company's shares are disposed. The disposals may also be made in deviation from the shareholders' pre-emptive rights for a weighty financial reason, such as using the shares to develop the company's capital structure, to finance or carry out acquisitions, investments or other business transactions, or in order to use the shares as part of Finnair's incentive and remuneration schemes.

The authorisation is effective for a period of 18 months from the resolution of the General Meeting and cancels the authorisation given by the General Meeting on March 16, 2016 to decide on the disposal of the company's own shares.

Minutes of the Meeting

The minutes of the AGM will be available on the Company's website www.finnairgroup.com as of March 31, 2017.

Contributed by Finnair
BEIJING  Chinese authorities Thursday started a targeted inspection on the use and management of poverty relief funds in 28 provinces and regions.

The check, headed by the Ministry of Finance and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, aims to uncover any irregularities in this high-government invested initiative.

For the past four years, China has allocated 196.1 billion yuan (about $28.5 billion), representing annualized growth of 19.22 percent, according to Mo Jiancheng, an inspector under the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

The inspection, mainly targeting money allocated in 2015 and 2016, will last until the end of June.

China brought 12.4 million people in rural areas above the poverty line in 2016, and there were still 43.35 million people living in poverty at the end of last year.

According to a government work report delivered at the annual parliamentary session earlier this month, China aims to reduce the number of rural residents living in poverty by over 10 million in 2017, including 3.4 million to be relocated from inhospitable areas.

To this end, central government funding for poverty alleviation will be increased by over 30 percent, according to the report.
BEIJING - Net foreign exchange sales by Chinese banks continued to drop in February signaling a let-up of capital outflow, official data showed Thursday.

Banks bought $108.8 billion worth of foreign currency and sold 118.9 billion dollars, resulting in net sales of $10.1 billion last month, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

The deficit was down from January's $19.2 billion and $46.3 billion in December.

The SAFE said forex demand and supply were basically balanced in February, noting that cross-border fund flow had improved.

China maintained a net inflow of funds in merchandize trade last month, while companies and individuals were more rational in forex purchase, it said.

There had been rising concerns about capital flight in the second half of 2016, when the economy was facing looming downward pressures and the Chinese yuan was in the middle of a losing streak against the greenback.

The yuan gradually recovered from its weakness in recent months, as the Chinese economy started 2017 on a firmer footing, indicated by a string of economic data including factory activity, foreign trade and fixed-asset investment.

The yuan's central parity rate strengthened 253 basis points to 6.8862 against the US dollar on Thursday.

China's stronger economic fundamentals have enhanced market confidence, the SAFE said.

It predicted cross-border capital flow to become more balanced as the country advances reforms to support higher-quality growth and opens up its financial markets.
PARK HILLS -- Jeff Willis, 36, of Park Hills, was born in Farmington, Missouri, on Dec. 5, 1980, to James and Mary Boland. He departed this life on March 10, 2017.

Survived by Parents, James and Mary Boland; Children, Olivia and Kirra Willis; Brother, Nick (Alicia) Boland; Sisters, Misty (John) Rice and Jamie (William) Sanfilippo; Other relatives and many friends.

Memorial Services, Saturday, March 18, 2017, from 1-5 p.m. in the Assembly of God Church, Irondale, Missouri, with Coplin Funeral Home serving the family.
The China Development Forum 2017 will be held in Beijing from Saturday to Monday. This will be the first major high-profile conference held after the conclusion of the two sessions, namely the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Senior government officials, leaders from global corporations and institutions and renowned scholars will gather to discuss major issues under the theme of "China and the World: Economic Transformation through Structural Reforms".

Let's take a look at some of the business leaders expected to attend the forum.

Tim Cook, CEO, Apple Inc
Russia's central bank opened its first overseas office in Beijing on Thursday to strengthen financial cooperation between the two countries.

Bank of Russia is the main regulator of the Russian banking industry, responsible for banking licenses, rules on banking operations and accounting standards.

"The office in China is the first for the Russian Federation's currency authority," said Dmitry Skobelkin, deputy governor of the Bank of Russia.

"The establishment of the new office, along with our cooperation with the People's Bank of China, demonstrates the development of our comprehensive strategic partnership."

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, signed an agreement with his Russian counterpart Elvira Nabiullina in June, allowing Bank of Russia to open its office in China.

Yi Gang, deputy governor of the PBOC, said economic cooperation has been strengthened more than ever, and bilateral trade reached $59.5 billion in 2016.

"Various financial agreements have been signed by the two governments in the past year, including cooperation between currency authorities and banks from both sides," he said.

Yi said that bilateral financial cooperation witnessed fast development last year, when the PBOC authorized the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to be the clearing bank for the renminbi and the rouble in September.

Andrei Denisov, the Russian ambassador to China, said: "The new office will help Russian banks to solve their problems about capital settlement and currency clearing in China, and increase the attraction of the Russian financial market to Chinese investors."
Guangdong Wonderful Ceramics Co, a leading ceramic tiles producer in China, has become the first Chinese company in this sector to invest abroad, with a $172 million project under way in Tennessee in the United States.

The first of the four production lines is scheduled to go into operation in April, with the building of the rest subject to the sales from the first line, according to He Jiye, a top executive of the company based in Dongguan, Guangdong province.

The investment is made to better tap the US ceramic tiles marketthe world's second-largest after Chinawith the Chinese market standing at 400 billion yuan ($58.08 billion) a year. About 70 percent of the US demand is met by imports, he said.

Local production helps address the lengthy and costly transport from US sea ports, where China-made tiles are unloaded, to various destinations.

The operation cost advantages in Lebanon, Tennessee, also make the investment worthy, he said.

The price for buying land in the US state is lower than in the Pearl River Delta area in Guangdong province.

Natural gas and power costs, which account for a large part of the production cost, are 3.3 times and 1.8 times cheaper in Tennessee.

Cheaper truck fuel and the absence of road tolls reduce the cost of transporting raw materials by road.

The savings in these aspects help offset the more expensive construction cost in Tennessee, which comes at three times that in Dongguan and include certifications, environmental compliance and labor.

Labor in Tennessee, which is in short supply, is 6 times more costly than in Dongguan.

However, with highly automated equipment imported from Italy and higher efficiency, a production line in Tennessee requires 20 supervisory and workers, compared with 40 workers in China at best. A line is capable of producing 9,000 square meters of tiles a day.

He Jiye said: "The US facility can serve as a bridgehead for integrating advanced technologies from the US and Europe and upgrading the domestic facility to promote technological progress."

In its 10 new lines on the newly acquired land in Xiegang town, Dongguan, the company is installing the most advanced equipment in China to produce large tiles, including those of 1.8 meters in length.

Guangdong Wonderful also runs facilities in Qingyuan in Guangdong province, Chongqing municipality and Jiangxi province.

The US is competitive in costs of raw materials, water, electricity and rental, with highly efficient logistics, said Cao Xiaping, a finance professor with Lingnan College, Sun Yatsen University in Guangzhou.

Zhang Yingshu contributed to this story.
BADEN-BADEN - Trade and exchange rate issues might become the focal points for the Group Twenty (G20) gathering in the German spa town of Baden-Baden, where are seeing arrivals of finance ministers and central bankers on Thursday.

Among the treasurers, many worry about a rise of protectionism, as the new US administration of President Donald Trump might practice harsh policies waging a trade war and pressure other countries on their monetary policies.

Some German local media disclosed the draft communique of the summit has been revised several times.

Articles like "rejecting protectionism" and "refraining from competitive currency devaluations" that were included in the past were at one time deleted in the draft. The US is reportedly behind the amendment, according to the German newspaper Handelsblatt.

Fears are high that the final version of the communique may change these crucial words.

Currency topics seem inevitable as Trump's trade policy adviser Peter Navarro once accused Europe, China and Japan of deliberately devaluing their currencies to take advantage over their US competitors.

The controversial allegation was denied by all the mentioned countries, and is expected to generate heated discussion.

On the eve of the summit, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble hosted the visiting US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Berlin, where Schaeuble said they had laid basis to speak "openly" and "find solutions together."

Mnuchin said that the US believes in free trade, and more importantly "fair trade", adding the US had no intention to start trade wars with other economic powers.

But he disclosed that Germany and the US did not reach agreement on all points.
A CRH train that runs on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway leaves Tianjin South Railway Station in North China's Tianjin, June 30, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

Twelve railway projects involving a total investment of 226.2 billion yuan ($32.79 billion) will be launched this year in the Yangtze River Delta region, according to China Securities Journal website.

Among the planned projects is a 41.8-billion-yuan high-speed rail from Shanghai to Huzhou in Zhejiang province via Suzhou in Jiangsu province.

The train travelling at 350 km/h is expected to cover the 164 km route from Huzhou to Shanghai in less than one hour.

The second phase of Shanghai to Nantong railway project, namely an extended section from Taicang in Jiangsu to Shanghai, will also be launched with an investment of 35.34 billion yuan. It will be 112 km long and trains will run at 200 km/h.

China plans to invest 800 billion yuan in railway projects in 2017, according to the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang on March 5.
BEIJING  The Belt and Road Initiative has become the most popular public goods and platform for international cooperation with the brightest prospects in the world amid rising protectionism and unilateralism, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sideline of the recently concluded China's two sessions.

Proposed in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the initiative has witnessed continuous expansion of its "friend circle", and yield tangible benefits for countries along its routes.

It will provide unprecedented opportunities for the economic and social development of countries involved, as "it is the way leading to the community of shared future for mankind," said Gerrishon K. Ikiara, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

Ideal of openness, inclusiveness

With its guiding principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, the initiative has become a chorus instead of a solo.

Inspired by the ancient major trading route that linked China with Asia, Europe and Africa for a long time, the initiative aims to modernize the ancient trade route while aspiring to create common prosperity within those areas.

While the trends of protectionism and unilateralism are rising, the Belt and Road Initiative has become the common cause of the world which will help rebalance the economic globalization by making it more universally-beneficial and inclusive, said Wang Yi.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is against narrow-minded protectionism and isolationism," said Sergei Luzyanin, director of the Far Eastern Studies Institute under the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We only had the Western European-American option of integration and economic development in the 1990s, now there is a new option from China."

Global growth stimulator

The construction of the Belt and Road Initiative benefits not only China itself, but also countries along the routes. Against the backdrop of insufficient global demand, the blueprint will make contribution to the world economic growth.

A report issued by China's Renmin University said China has already begun the coordination of its signature initiative with the development strategies of many countries along the route, such as Kazakhstan's Bright Road program as well as the Sustainable Development Strategy of Kyrgyzstan.

So far, Chinese enterprises have established 56 economic and trade cooperative areas in more than 20 countries along the routes, invested accumulatively more than $18 billion, and created $1 billion revenue and 160,000 jobs.

Last year, China's direct investment in 53 countries along the routes reached $14.53 billion and the total value of contracts China signed with 61 related countries reached over $126 billion.

This year, the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative will continue to be a growth point of the global economy, and the further expanding of trade exchange, infrastructure connectivity and financial intermediation will drive the development of production capacity cooperation, cross border e-commerce and other fields.

New engine for globalization

Globalization currently is facing various problems and challenges, and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will become the engine for the future of globalization, said Pascal Lamy, former chief of the World Trade Organization, while addressing a public session recently in Jakarta.

Globalization in the past was basically driven by the West and now the new globalization will be motivated more by the East than the West, Amitav Acharya, writer of the popular book "The End of American World Order," told Xinhua in a recent interview.

When the West moves backward by erecting "walls", the East is building its gateway to the outside world, embracing globalization via China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, Malaysia's New Straits Times said in an article published on its website.

Proposed in 2013, the initiative has so far gained the support of over 100 countries and international organizations, and more than 40 of them have signed cooperation agreements with China.

"China's initiative to jointly build the Belt and Road, embracing the trend towards a multipolar world, economic globalization, cultural diversity and greater IT application, aims at being highly efficient in terms of the allocation of resources, and at achieving a deep integration of markets among the countries concerned," said Keith Bennett, vice chair of the London-based 48 Club Group.

"It will thereby jointly create an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture that benefits all," the British business leader told Xinhua.
China's telecommunication giant Huawei has entered into an agreement with Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) to deepen cooperation on the digital transformation of the education sector. Both sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Thursday. Provided to China Daily

China's telecommunication giant Huawei has entered into agreement with the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) to deepen cooperation on the digital transformation of the education sector.

Both sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday in the presence of the RSM advisory board and officials of Chinese embassy at the Amsterdam ArenA, a technology partner of Huawei. The MoU will continue until September 2019.

The project, headed by Zhang Ying, associate dean of China Business and Relations at RSM, represents a collaboration between the industry and the education sectors in China and Europe, helping industries, education institutes and research bodies move into the era of digital transformation.

Both parties aim to facilitate knowledge sharing between technology, innovation, business development and education in order to add value to the local social-economic community and academic-practice by means of joint research, China-EU relevant business relationships, and applied projects.

Wonder Wang, CEO of Huawei Technologies Netherlands, said Huawei is committed to investing in Europe, and the MOU is part of the company's mission to aid in talent development across Europe.

"The goal is to achieve local employment to contribute to the European economy and serve European industries for generations to come," said Wang.

Steef van de Velde, dean of RSM, said the objective of the collaboration between RSM and Huawei is to add value to the local social-economic community and academic-practice collaboration.

"We will do this by means of joint research, EU-China economic relationships, applied projects (such as a technology-business program) , as well as for the fourth generation of industrial revolution derived from data technology transformation," said van de Velde.

Van de Velde said for business education institutions like his school, this collaboration is strategically important as it takes three levels of collaboration to explore: on smart education, innovation research and culture exchange.
TIANJIN - German carmaker Volkswagen posted rising auto sales in China in 2016 compared with a year earlier, and demand for its luxury cars remained strong, according to a report released by the company.

Total auto sales, including vehicles made by Volkswagen's two joint ventures with SAIC Motor and China FAW Group and those imported to China, stood at 3.98 million units in 2016, year on year growth of 12.2 percent.

The operating profit of VW's two joint ventures in China hit 5 billion euros ($5.36 billion) in 2016, the report said.

Sales of Volkswagen models rose 14 percent in China to 3 million units in 2016. Audi sales edged up 3.6 percent to 591,600 units and Skoda sales increased by 12.6 percent to 317,100 units.

Meanwhile, luxury cars continued to post strong growth. Porsche sales went up 12.5 percent to 65,200 units during the same period.

"China's auto sales growth in 2016 has exceeded our expectation and long-term plan," said Jochem Heizmann, CEO of Volkswagen China.

VW aims to sell 400,000 units of new energy vehicles in China in 2020 and offer 1.5 million such cars to Chinese consumers in 2025.

The auto sales of VW vehicles hit a record high of 10.3 million units in the global markets in 2016. The group had 120 factories and more than 610,000 employees worldwide by 2016.
Helmuth Hennig, managing director of Jebsen Group. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Conglomerate with over a century's presence in China sees a new round of opportunities thanks to the country's initiatives

Jebsen Groupa conglomerate with a rich business portfolio ranging from beer to car componentsbelieves the Chinese government's initiatives in boosting the consumption-led and services-led economy, as well as the urbanization and growth of the middle class, are giving it real growth opportunities.

A private marketing and distribution company established in 1895 with more than 120 years of continuous presence in China, these days Jebsen represents more than 200 leading brands across various industries. The group employs more than 2,300 people and is headquartered in Hong Kong, with nine additional offices in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Macao.

In 2015, the conglomerate reorganized and optimized its business structure. Under the unified master brand of Jebsen, the group has four strategic business units including Jebsen Consumer, Jebsen Beverage, Jebsen Industrial and Jebsen Motors.

The strategy shift appears to have paid off, with the group last year posting revenues of HK$13.3 billion ($1.71 billion) and net taxed profit up 5 percent from a year ago. The group's revenue has already tripled over the last 10 years.

Group Managing Director Helmuth Hennig shared his perspectives on how Jebsen Group could drive further business growth amid the slowing down of the Chinese economy. The following are edited excerpts of an interview with Hennig:

How can China's economic changes, from being investment and infrastructure-led to being consumption and services-oriented, create business opportunities?

Although Chinese economic growth is slowing, it is still at a reasonably high level and China's GDP growth in 2016 reached 6.7 percent. If you look at the upper segment of the middle class in China, this segment of the population is actually growing and has higher disposable incomes. They still have the desire to spend money.

How will the business units of Jebsen Group respond to the new business environment?

We strive to offer quality brands that can add to the lifestyle of the middle class. We offer upper premium products targeting the middle class, and these products are not mass produced or mainstream consumer products. Even though the market itself may not grow quickly at the end of the day, if you look at specific market segments that we are in, we still have significant growth.

Urbanization, aging population and the rise of middle class: how do these phenomena positively contribute to the group's business?

All these allow us to be confident that our consumer business will grow quite significantly over the next few years. Retail sales in China are slowing, but in major Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, people want to buy quality products rather than products in large quantity.

Chinese consumers have much more understanding of brands because of the information flow from the internet. They are very willing to look through the internet to search for products. We have built our own platforms in both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. In the mainland we also partner with other platforms, such as Tmall, to offer high quality electronic and lifestyle products.

More Chinese nationals are traveling overseas and they look at brands from a Chinese as well as a global perspective. This all opens up opportunities for brands that we work with. They are brands imported into China, which we try to establish in the market place.

How can Jebsen Beverage cater to the needs of the Chinese middle class?

In the wine business, we've built up our portfolio of business by focusing on a balance of agency brands and self-owned brands. Wines sell very well in the Chinese market and we work with the brands to sell their products in the country.

We've also developed Jebsen Wine Estates, to produce our own product ranges, after acquiring wineries in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America. We've created more direct interaction with customers and inform them through our wine product catalogue.

On the beer product side, we have our self-owned brands such as Blue Girl Beer and Sonderberg Beer. We are looking to expand Blue Girl premium beer in the southern Chinese market and have maintained sustainable growth there over the past three years, whereas Blue Girl Beer has entered its tenth year as the number one beer brand in Hong Kong by volume and value. While we take a regional perspective for our beer business, we've adopted a national approach to promote our wine business.

How can Jebsen Consumer leverage its multibrand network?

Our focus in the consumer business is on high-priced, small domestic electrical appliances. For example, we built up around 200 points of sale for Dyson in the country's first- and secondtier cities by the end of 2016.

Our objective is to utilize the uniqueness of the Dyson brand by giving consumers retail experiences that they've never seen before.

Though having a portfolio with an array of consumer products, the key is not about cross-selling, but utilizing the uniqueness of the products and enriching peoples' lives.

What is the strategic plan for Jebsen Motors over the next five years?

We entered a dealership agreement with premium car brand Porsche for the Chinese market in 2001 and we sold 9,593 Porsches in 2016. We have built our Porsche service center clusters in the eastern and southern regions, to expand the car dealer business in defined areas of Chinarather than throughout the entire country.

How has Jebsen Industrial positioned itself on "intelligent manufacturing", which is trending in China?

The future of the industrial sector in China is to take the labor-intensive work out of the equation, to improve production reliability and quality. Moving forward, it is about replacing people with automation. Software and robotics are the direction.

China has made some major investments in robotics companies, but acquiring these companies does not solve everything. We are looking at opportunities to get into this market place as well.

We have set up three to four joint venture companies and factories in Dalian to produce car components that will be resold to car brands or first-tier component suppliers.

In this way, we are adopting the production model and not the sales model to capture enormous market opportunities in this sector.

What is your business philosophy?

We are a private company, so we can take a longer view to develop businesses because we don't need to report to analysts or shareholders every three months. It's been the recipe for our success over the years.

Though taking a long-term view, we also narrow the focus of our business. To be too broadly-based is just not viable, given the size of the Chinese market.

We take decisions to decide whether we keep those industries or not. We must be top of the class in each of the industries where we are operating.

What are the challenges in China?

To develop in the Chinese market involves a much higher level of complexity, because different markets exist within China with different spending patterns.

The regulatory environment in the country is also very different and we need to understand what we can do and what we cannot do.

What suggestions would you give to ambitious young people?

Young people should be looking beyond the borders of China, although of course there are many opportunities in China. If they have language skills, such as speaking foreign languages, there will be huge opportunities for them because many companies are expanding overseas from China and international companies also want to develop businesses in China.

What is your recipe for business success?

Professionalism, understanding your market, and focusing on the areas we want to develop the most.

Believe in yourself and try to find a passion. It is much easier when you find something that you believe in and a role that really interests you. If you can do that, you will have a better chance of success in life.

CV

Age:

Career:

2000 onwards: Jebsen: Group Managing Director

1997: Jebsen: Group Deputy Managing Director

1994: Jebsen: Board Director

1990: Jebsen: General Manager-Corporate Development

1983: Jebsen: Shipping Division's Assistant Division Manager

Education:

1987: University of Illinois, United States

1977: Formal education, Denmark

Family: married with three children
Riders scan ofo bikes in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. The bike-hire startup is experimenting with a deposit waiver system for users in Shanghai and may extend the service to other cities in the country. [Photo/China Daily]

Chinese bike-hire startup ofo Inc is testing deposit waivers for qualified riders in Shanghai, a move observers said would further intensify the already heated competition in the sector.

By teaming up with Sesame Credit, a social credit rating unit under Ant Financial Services Group, ofo allows customers with a Sesame Credit of 650 points or higher in Shanghai to enjoy the bike-hire service without paying the 99 yuan ($14.4) deposit, ofo co-founder Zhang Siding said on Thursday.

Users scan the QR code on the bikes using Alipay, the e-wallet run by Ant Financial, and choose to "skip the deposit" should they pass the credibility threshold, said Hu Tao, general manager of Sesame Credit.

Zhang said the service may be extended to other cities, and the credit benchmark may be adjusted.

"Deposits are inevitable during the nascent phase of the bike-hire sector. But we hope, as the sector matures, to unlock a new model to leverage users' credibility," Zhang said.

Zhang said the deposit gap would hardly affect its businesses.

Ofo has deployed 1.5 million bikes and has more than 25 million registered users. It has provided an accumulated 400 million rides since its debut in 2015, according to company figures.

With 450 million users, Ant Financial evaluates customers' purchasing and spending habits in order to derive a figure that shows how creditworthy someone is.

Ofo is not the first company to announce a deposit waiver service. Last month, bike-sharing company Youon Bike allowed users who have more than 600 Sesame Credit points to rent bikes deposit-free.

Zhang Xu, an analyst at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys, said the deposit waiver will intensify the competition in the bike-sharing sector to some extent.

"Users would be more inclined to take a ride without paying the deposit. For bike-hire startups, the key still lies in offering a good service."

Regulators are taking a closer look at the red-hot industry to tackle issues such as illegal parking.

According to China News Service, the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission has asked leading bike-sharing companies including ofo and rival Mobike to stop adding new bikes to the streets given the saturated market capacity.

Zhang from ofo denied the report, but said his company has been working closely with related government agencies and industry associations in drafting industry guidelines, such as the inclusion of GPS functions on all rental bikes.
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Wu Xufeng (right) treats a patient in the intensive care unit at the Hefei Binhu Hospital, Anhui province.[Photo by GAO BO/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Traditional views and prejudice are discouraging men from entering the nursing profession. Zhu Lixin reports from Hefei.

Suo Xiaolong, a sophomore majoring in nursing at Hefei Vocational and Technical College, is busy preparing for a provincial nursing skills contest later this month.

The college, based in the capital of Anhui province in East China, first allowed male students to enroll in 2002, but this is the first time a male student has been chosen to represent it at the competition.

Fewer than 100 of the 3,000 students on Suo's three-year course are male, but even so, he is an exception among his peers because he had set his heart on a career in nursing before entering college.

"Most of the other boys didn't choose the major; they were adjusted to it," said Sun Meilan, vice-president of the college's school of medicine.

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, by the end of 2002, there were 1.25 million nurses in China, but just 1.7 percent of them were men. By the end of 2014, the numbers had climbed to 3 million and 1.9 percent, respectively.

During a seminar last year, Cheng Gen, director of the Male Nurse Committee, founded in 2014 by the Chinese Nursing Association, estimated that the percentage of male nurses in 2015 would be no different from the previous year.

Suo is confident about his future career prospects because his tutors have emphasized that the employment rate for male nursing graduates is high. However, no matter how high his level of skill, the 23-year-old will still have to contend with traditional notions that nursing is not a suitable profession for men.
First, Shanghai math teachers arrived in Britain, and now Chinese math textbooks will be published for use in UK classrooms.

An agreement to publish English translations of texts used by Shanghai's primary school math program was signed Tuesday at the London Book Fair between Collins Learning and Shanghai Century Publishing Group. Collins is part of giant Harper Collins Publishing. Collins plans to release Real Shanghai Mathematics, a series of 36 textbooks, starting in September.

Colin Hughes, Collins Learning's managing director, called the signing "a historic moment".

"To my knowledge this has never happened in history beforethat textbooks created for students in China will be translated exactly as they have been developed, and sold for use in British schools," Hughes said.

"This development arises from increasingly successful collaboration between Shanghai and the British government, aimed at raising standards of mathematics education in UK schools by adopting the excellent approach that places Shanghai as a world leader in mathematics teaching."

Since 2014, over 400 teachers, leaders and researchers from China and Britain have been on academic exchange visits. Educators in both countries said their schools benefitted from the exchange.

Students from Shanghai have consistently scored well in the Program for International Student Assessment, a triennial exam of 15-year-old students that helps evaluate education systems worldwide.

The textbooks already have been used by the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics to train British teachers.

The UK education department announced a four-year, 41 million pound ($50.3 million) Teaching for Mastery Program last year to develop techniques used in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong for use in 8,000 UK primary schools. Collins hopes to gain the program's endorsement for its new textbook series.

Collins Learning described Real Shanghai Mathematics as a rigorous program that "emphasizes complete mastery of basic numeracy knowledge and skills to allow vastly accelerated progression to advanced numeracy".
Legislators have called on the government to provide more legal services for the growing number of enterprises expanding overseas as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Authorities nationwide have also been urged to hire talent with knowledge of international commercial law to avoid misconduct that could threaten deals, such as mergers and acquisitions.

The plea was made by deputies during the annual session of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, which ended on Wednesday.

Chinese companies that are going global face fierce competition in terms of intellectual property, said Cun Min, the newly promoted deputy head of the Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture government in Yunnan province.

Formerly a provincial commerce official, Cun said the legitimate rights and interests of many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are often infringed on due to their disadvantages in creating, utilizing, protecting and managing intellectual property as well as their limited access to related services.

The main problems Chinese companies face include "malicious trademark registration", intellectual property litigation from rivals and other intellectual property-related disputes relating to contracts, investment cooperation, technology acquisition and employment, she added.

More than 15 percent of well-known Chinese trade-marks have been "maliciously registered" overseas, Cun said, citing estimates by unnamed experts.

"The main reason firms fall victim to such problems is the insufficient support system to help protect intellectual property rights of Chinese companies overseas," she said. "While guidance and support from the government needs to be strengthened, there are also not enough relevant social services."

Cun suggested utilizing the experience of developed countries and setting up a fund, supported by government and social finances, to offer companies services to protect intellectual property rights and other interests.

Yuan Zhongxue, president of Mesnac, a rubber and tire machinery supplier in Qingdao, Shandong province, and an NPC deputy, said that while conducting market research in Thailand, his employees saw that authorities in developed countries offer legal services to their companies when in commercial disputes overseas.

"As Chinese companies go abroad with the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese judicial officers should too," Yuan said, adding that legal support that companies receive from embassies is limited.

He said it would be better if companies could get suggestions from the government on the legal environment in their investment destinations that they can use as a reference to make decisions, as many companies don't have such expertise.

However, Wang Youde, an NPC deputy and president of Shandong Hengyuan Petrochemical Co, said the government should also be well-prepared to offer services based on international law.

Hengyuan acquired a majority stake in Shell's Malaysian oil refinery business for $66.3 million last year. During negotiations, the companies signed a confidentiality agreement, yet Wang said that before the talks were finalized, the Shandong provincial government made a public announcement about the deal. This, he said, resulted in difficulties that could have been avoided.

"Government departments should hire professionals with expertise in international law and improve their services," Wang added.

Ding Yuhua, an NPC deputy and president of Triangle Group, a major tire producer in China, agreed and said a lot of talent is needed as Chinese companies go global, adding that it will take time for China to foster such talent, so employing foreign talent is necessary.

Foreign talent will be more motivated if they are included into China's social security system, Ding added.
Officers from the Beijing Food and Drug Administration check imported food at a supermarket on Thursday. [Photo by LIU HANG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Report finds many e-commerce sites selling potentially unsafe products

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged the Japanese government to take more effective measures to handle the environmental aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and disclose information to ensure marine environmental safety and the safety of people in other countries.

Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the comment on Thursday following exposure by China's State television station that food products from areas affected by the nuclear disaster in Japan are being sold in China.

China's top food regulator promised on Thursday to punish such irregularities involving food safety exposed in China Central Television's annual World Consumer Rights Day program on Wednesday.

"We have demanded local food and drug supervision authorities investigate the irregularities and transfer criminal suspects to public security authorities," the China Food and Drug Administration said.

Food and drug authorities must strengthen supervision over food safety and severely punish culprits, it said.

Food from areas affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster have been sold on many e-commerce platforms in China and in some brick-and-mortar shops, including dairy, cereal, rice and wine, CCTV reported.

Although some of the products had labeling in Japanese that specified manufacturing locations such as Tokyo and Tochigi, they were covered by Chinese labels that only stated the manufacturing location as Japan, the report said.

China has banned the importation of food and animal feed from Tokyo and 11 prefectures, including Fukushima, Niigata-ken and Tochigi, since April 2011 to guard against risks, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Major supermarkets and e-commerce platforms in Beijing started to inspect imported food products following the CCTV report and found no product from any of the 12 areas, Ji Ye, an official at Beijing Food and Drug Administration, said.

The administration is also conducting inspections of food enterprises in Beijing, including MUJI and 7-Eleven, and will recall any product that is imported from the affected areas, he said.

More than 13,000 online shops in China were suspected of selling food from these banned areas, according to the Shenzhen Market and Quality Supervision Commission, CCTV reported.

Law enforcement officers from the commission found nearly 20,000 packages of "Calbee" brand oatmeal, which is from Tochigi, at a company in Shenzhen, the report said.

Some supermarkets, including Japanese brand MUJI, are also suspected of violations, CCTV said.

MUJI said on Thursday that the two kinds of products, a cereal beverage and a muffin, are made in Fukui-ken and Osaka, which are not on the list of imports banned by China's quality supervision authorities.
A woman rides a shared bike through a parking zone in Beijing on Wednesday. The zone is filled with yellow Ofo bikes and Mobike's silver-and-orange ones.Wu Changqing / For China Daily

Within seconds of scanning the QR code on a bicycle, it was unlocked and Ouyang Huiyu, a student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, cycled off across campus.

The university covers a vast 28 hectares, which makes biking a crucial part of daily campus life.

"Bicycles are the easiest way to get about," said Ouyang.

Bicycle-sharing services lighten the burden on China's public transportation system and have the added benefits of making the first or final kilometers of a commute a more pleasant and healthier experience.

"We now have 15 million users in 40 cities, with more than 200 million completed rides," said Dai Wei, founder and CEO of Ofo, one of the biggest bike-sharing service providers. "We expect to have 20 million bicycles on the streets this year in at least 200 cities."

Back to the future

Last weekend, Zhao Li biked from Beijing's CBD to the Forbidden City with her friend.

"It's environmentally friendly and biking used to be an important part of life in Beijing. Shared bicycles are bringing it back into fashion," Zhao said.

According to BigData-Research, a Beijing-based research institute, 19 million people used shared bikes last year and that number is expected to rise to 50 million this year.

Ofo is the biggest service provider with 800,000 distinctive yellow bicycles throughout China; in second place, Mobike's silver and orange bikes number 600,000. Most users are around the age of 30.

The market is still growing. U-Bicycle, founded in July, occupies three cities in Guangdong province. U-Bicycle is working closely with Alibaba's Sesame Credit to reward proper usage. Good sharers increase their credit score and if their score reaches a certain level, they can use the service without paying a deposit.

Global business cycle

China's bicycle-sharing is heading overseas. Bluegogo became the first in January, according to Sun Ye, its chief operating officer. "We are operating in San Francisco, where our customer base is steadily growing," he said.

Founded in November last year, Bluegogo now covers six Chinese cities with 5 million registered users.

Ofo is heading to Singapore and London, as well as Silicon Valley in California.

"We hope to introduce dockless bicycle-sharing overseas. There is no reason why it should not be as popular in other countries, too," said Tang Ke, deputy public relations director at Ofo.

At home, Ofo is working with more than 200 colleges in China to provide bicycles for students.

Two wheels or four

A popular car-sharing provider, EZZY, has a fleet of about 500 electric cars, including the BMWi3.

Rapid urbanization, ballooning internet use and huge numbers of comparatively new driving permit holders are a perfect storm for car-sharing, said Fu Qiang, founder of EZZY.

While most shared cars have to be picked up and returned to designated stations, EZZY users can leave the cars in any parking lot in urban Beijing. EZZY staff conduct maintenance overnight, charge the vehicle and clean it, Fu said.

EVCARD, an electric-car-sharing program launched by SAIC Motor Co in 2013, has close to 400,000 registered users and 9,000 cars across China.

EVCARD now has 2,600 parking spaces in Shanghai. "We plan to share our spaces and charging posts with other cars," said Chen Jing, marketing manager of EVCARD. "This is what sharing is all about."
As China aims to reduce coal consumption to curb pollution, those in the nuclear industry have called for construction of low-temperature mini reactors to provide cleaner heating for residential use in North China.

Citing safety, flexibility and efficiency, executives in China's nuclear power sector have pitched the use of small-scale reactors as an alternative heat source in winter to reduce dependence on plants powered by fossil fuel, which create air pollution.

Qian Tianlin, general manager of China Nuclear New Energy Investment, said that the technology of small-scale nuclear reactors, which feature low and controllable core temperatures, is mature enough for trial use.

"Generating heating for a residential district is just one function of the mini nuclear reactors that has bright prospects," Qian said.

"Compared to traditional thermal sources, nuclear reactors could generate heat without carbon emissions and thus should be seriously considered as a replacement for coal-burning heat," said Qian.

Mini reactors have less electricity output than conventional reactors, but are made of modules that can be installed on site.

Wang Shoujun, chairman of China National Nuclear Corp, said that China's first small reactor developed by CNNC for practical use, the ACP100, is expected to be built in Changjiang Li autonomous county, Hainan province, at the end of 2017 with a unit capacity of 125,000 kilowatts, about one-tenth of a conventional nuclear plant.

The operation of such mini reactors is secure because of the much lower core temperature and internal pressure than a typical reactor, said Wan Gang, head of the China Institute of Atomic Energy.

"Technically, it is safe for civilian use in urban areas at the moment," Wan said.

"It could be installed in a pool to be maintained within a safe temperature in water. The potential radiation in the coolant could be blocked with a device installed between the reactor loop and the thermal pipeline, which only allows heat exchange," he added.

However, before the technology is implemented on a large scale, mounting public concern over nuclear safety following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan must be addressed, Wan said.

sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn
By Feng Zhiwei in Changde, Hunan and Liang Shuang in Beijing | China Daily | Updated: 2017-03-17 08:14

Chen Hongxi displays a painting by one of his students at the Anxiang Special Education School in Henan province. [Photo by WEN XINZHENG/CHINA DAILY]

Chen Hongxi has been teaching art since 2011. But at the Anxiang Special Education School in Anxiang county, Hunan province, the typical becomes atypical.

Chen, 36, who uses a hearing aid, teaches students who may have similar difficulties or other physical or mental disabilities.

The school, founded in 1996, teaches about 110 students - 60 percent of them have mental issues, 30 percent are unable to hear or speak and the rest have other disabilities.

Chen and 17 colleagues teach at the school, which exempts students from all tuition and living expenses.

As he rides his bicycle onto the school grounds, he's often greeted by students running to him shouting "Daddy Chen".

"This is when I feel the most satisfied," Chen said.

A native of Anxiang, Chen lost most of his hearing due to illness.

After graduation, he was assigned to teach at a primary school, where he was mocked by students and struggled in his work.

To brighten his dour days, Chen developed an interest in newspaper and magazine cartoons.

He had no background in drawing, but he was determined.

After long days and nights perfecting his skills, Chen's artwork began to hit the magazines. Through the years, thousands of his works have been published.

He also saw a new opportunity after reading a recruitment ad by the Anxiang Special Education School. He applied and was accepted.

"I need a hearing aid myself, so I know the difficulties disabled people face," he said.

"Many disabled people I know are moody because they have little interaction with others. Children can be guided to be better. But it's harder for adults, so I became a teacher because I understand."

Chen said he believes that while society needs more tolerance regarding people with disabilities, such individuals need to accept their circumstances.

"As the saying goes, when God closes a door for you, he will open a window. Everyone is unique," he said.

But sometimes that window isn't open far enough, and for Chen some problems remain because he teaches students with hearing disabilities, intellectual challenges and autism.

"Regular children are difficult to deal with, let alone special-education students," he said.

Chen once was beaten up by three hearing-impaired students over a misunderstanding.

"I felt stupid and vexed for a long time, but eventually I got over it," he said.

Chen's original science fiction drawings have inspired his students and several have become artists themselves.

Deng Xingzhou is among them. Deng, 15, was born deaf, but thanks to Chen's instruction and inspiration he won a provincial first-class award for innovation.

Chen also is looking to the future for his students and others with disabilities.

"Hopefully I can launch some projects for the disabled, such as a teahouse or cafe, where the deaf and mute can work," he said.
A new direct flight between southwest China's Chengdu and Los Angeles is launched in Chengdu on March 15, 2017. The roundtrip flights by Hainan Airlines are carried out by a Boeing 787 twice a week. The Los Angeles-bound flights will leave from Chengdu at 9:15 pm Beijing time every Wednesday and Sunday, before arriving in Los Angeles at 8 pm local time. The return flights will take off from Los Angeles at 00:45 am every Monday and Thursday, before landing in Chengdu at 6:40 am the following day. This is the second non-stop service between Chengdu and the United States. The first began linking the Chinese city with San Francisco in 2014. [Photo/Chinanews.com]
A candidate is busy preparing for gaokao, May 23, 2016. [Photo/IC]

High school students have defeated an artificial intelligence device designed to pass the national college entrance exam, in Chengdu City, Southwest China's Sichuan province.

Forty-three students from liberal arts classes in their last year at Chengdu Shishitianfu High School joined the two-hour contest to finish a math test in the standard national entrance exam, or gaokao, against the robot, the brainchild of four years of research by Zhun Xing Yun Xue Technology Co, Ltd.

Students scored 106 points on average, outperforming the computer program that had 93 points. But this was the first match in four years for the AI test taker to compete. Its score was also higher than the average among liberal arts students who took the gaokao in Sichuan last year.

She Yujia, a student in the contest, said she felt like fighting the program on behalf of humans, especially after Google's AlphaGo beat professional Go player Lee Sedol of South Korea last year.

Researchers who developed the AI test taker, which is also part of a project by the Ministry of Science and Technology, said the failure was due to a poor understanding of concepts in application-centered math problems such as the meaning of investment and financing.

Lin Hui, CEO of the developing company, said the program can understand more than 7,000 concepts ranging from those in elementary to high school education. With a huge knowledge database, the program can now finishes about 10 math tests a day.

Lin said more efforts will be made to fix bugs and improve performance of the program, with a focus on math application.

The company plans to let the AI attend the real gaokao math test along with millions of Chinese students. Like its human peers, it will be asked to complete a 150-point math test in two hours in a room without Internet access.

Chinese students are usually separated into science and liberal arts classes at high school, a practice that allows them to stay competitive in the college entrance exam by choosing preferred subjects. Math tests for liberal arts students are usually easier than those given to science students.
A crane hoists a sperm whale that died after being stranded in the waters off Daya Bay in South China's Guangdong province, March 15, 2017. [Photo/chinanews.com]

An autopsy on a sperm whale that became stranded in Daya Bay, in South China's Guangdong province, has revealed the whale was pregnant, chinanews.com reported on Thursday.

The developing 110 kilogram male fetus, about two meters in length, was removed but could not be saved.

"It is the first time that an unborn baby has been found inside a stranded sperm whale in the world," said Tong Shenhan, head of the land and marine life research institute of Xiamen city, who participated in the autopsy.

He believed that the finding would be of significance to the protection and rescue of sperm whale.

On Thursday, a group of about 20 experts from the School of Marine Sciences of Sun Yat-Sen University, Hong Kong Ocean Park and other institutes, conducted the autopsy in Huizhou Fishery Research and Extension Center, in Guangdong, taking samples of skin, fat, muscle and blood from the adult sperm whale.

They unexpectedly found milk in the whale's breasts and then a placenta 2.6 meters in length.

The fetus will also undergo an autopsy, which is expected to take about one month due to its difficulty.

On Sunday morning, fishery authorities in Shenzhen city received a report of an adult whale trapped in fishing nets in waters off Daya Bay.

After the whale was freed from the nets, authorities and zoologists tried to guide it back into deep sea. However, it continued to swim in shallow waters off Shenzhen and Huizhou cities. It was confirmed to have been stranded near a wharf Tuesday afternoon and died Wednesday.

Tong said that the whale, estimated to be about 5 years old, was healthy and had no visible injuries.

He does not think it was tangled to death by fishing nets but the cause of death will be verified in at least a month.

The animal, weighing 14 tons and stretching 10 meters long, was lifted by a crane from the water in Huizhou port on Wednesday and was transported to Huizhou Fishery Research and Extension Center.

Huizhou has invited experts to conduct research on the whale examining its physiological structure, molecular biology, zoology and pathology, to provide more scientific data and theory for the protection of the endangered sperm whale.

The autopsy on the adult whale will continue over the next two days.

The city also plans to preserve four specimens of the animal's skin, bone, viscera and placenta.
President Xi Jinping and Rwandan President Paul Kagame inspect the People's Liberation Army's Honor Guard outside the east gate of the Great Hall of the People in Tian'anmen Square on Friday.FENG YONGBIN / CHINA DAILY

Infrastructure, special economic zones highlighted

The Chinese government encourages more companies to invest in Rwanda's major infrastructure construction projects in such areas as transportation and energy, President Xi Jinping said on Friday.

China and Rwanda should enhance cooperation in infrastructure construction, industrialization and agricultural modernization, Xi said while meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who is visiting China on Friday and Saturday. Xi added that China would like to support Rwanda's construction of special economic zones.

China also supports Rwanda to play a bigger role in United Nations peacekeeping activities, Xi said.

He added that China's policies toward Africa will not change and the steps to push forward China-Africa cooperation will not slow down.

Noting that China and Rwanda have had diplomatic ties for 46 years, Xi said the two countries have understood each other and cooperated sincerely to push forward the steady development of bilateral ties.

Xi spoke highly of efforts by the Rwandan president to boost political mutual trust and enhance economic cooperation.

The development of bilateral ties is facing historic opportunities, Xi said, adding that the two sides should innovate on ways to cooperate and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation.

Kagame welcomed Chinese companies' investment in Rwanda in such areas as agriculture, minerals, tourism and infrastructure.

The Rwandan president said that his country cherishes the friendship with China. "Rwanda appreciates the very good bilateral relations and cooperation we have with China," Kagame said.

"In particular, China's contribution in various sectors in Rwanda, especially in infrastructure and development projects, has been very useful," he added.

"I was unable to attend the Africa-China summit at Johannesburg, but the prime minister who participated was able to convey to us the good atmosphere and substantive exchanges that characterized the summit," Kagame said.

In December 2015, at the Johannesburg Summit in South Africa, Xi announced 10 major China-Africa cooperation plans for the following three years, backed by $60 billion, including interest-free loans and lending with preferential terms.

Last week, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during the top legislature's annual session in Beijing that China has implemented or arranged nearly half of the $60 billion package. China wants to fast-track implementation of projects it funds, especially in industrialization, trade and culture, he said.

Earlier this year, a 36-km road expansion project in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, which featured loans from China and was built by China Road and Bridge Corp, was honored as a high-quality project by Kigali's city government, according to a news release from China's embassy in Rwanda.

China has pumped $60 million into Rwanda in the agriculture sector and rural development programs, with an additional $20 million channeled to solar projects to bring electricity to schools and health centers, according to a report in The New Times, a leading daily newspaper in Rwanda.

According to the report, China is helping upgrade the hospital in Kibungo district to increase its capacity from 242 beds to more than 1,200. The ongoing rehabilitation and expansion of the Masaka district hospital, also funded by China, will raise the number of beds from 140 to 1,356.
Premier Li Keqiang will make official visits to Australia and New Zealand starting next week as a major effort to boost economic ties with the two Oceanian countries.

The visits will be the first such trips to the two countries by a Chinese premier since 2006.

At the invitation of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English, the premier will visit the two countries from Wednesday to March 29, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference on Friday.

In Australia, the premier will also attend the fifth annual meeting of the Chinese and Australian prime ministers, Hua added.

China has maintained frequent high-level exchanges with these two important trading partners in Oceania, both of which enjoyed trade surpluses with China last year.

In April last year, Turnbull made his first visit to China since taking office, just one week before former New Zealand prime minister John Key's sixth trip to Beijing. In September, Premier Li met with Turnbull when both leaders attended the East Asia Summit in Laos.

In 2008, New Zealand was the first developed economy to sign a free-trade agreement with China, while the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement took effect in December 2015.

In a previous interview, New Zealand Ambassador to China and Mongolia John McKinnon said he expected the two countries to upgrade their existing free trade agreement to boost bilateral trade.

Chen Fengying, a global economy researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said Australia and New Zealand carry out the free trade agreements as China's key trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

The two Oceanian countries can complement the Chinese economy, since they export dairy and woolen goods to meet China's need for high-quality agricultural and animal husbandry products, Chen said.

"The trade and economic ties between China and Australia have become increasingly closer in recent years, which has positively contributed to a relationship featuring mutual benefits and win-win cooperation," said Su Hao, a professor of Asia-Pacific studies at China Foreign Affairs University.

Han Feng, a researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China and Australia have great potential for aligning their industries and strategies.

"China could help to renovate Australia's outdated infrastructure facilities with its leading expertise, while learning from the Oceanian country's advanced technologies in transportation, telemedicine and distance education," Han said.

Contact the writer at hu-yongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
The original volume of Shun Feng Xiang Song, and an entry about the Diaoyu Islands. KEVIN WANG/CHINA DAILY

A facsimile edition of two manuscripts that are believed to be the earliest-known historical references to China's Diaoyu Islands was unveiled at the University of Oxford on Thursday as part of this year's London Book Fair.

China Publishing Group presented the copy of the manuscripts to a group of European Sinologists at Oxford's Bodleian Library.

The Diaoyu Islands are an uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea.

The two ancient books, Shun Feng Xiang Song (Voyage With a Tail Wind), and Zhi Nan Zheng Fa (Compass Directions), are believed to be the world's last existing copies that offer concrete proof of China's sovereignty over the islands. Both original books are kept at Bodleian Library.

David Helliwell, curator of the Chinese Collection at the Bodleian, said: "These two manuscripts are important because they are the only two surviving manuscripts of the books of this kind. ... This is the first time that Diaoyu is mentioned in any Chinese texts, according to what we know."

The manuscripts are known as rutters, which are charts of compass bearings of sea routes and directions.

"These books must be common, because we know that Chinese merchants were going to all parts of the world in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)," said Helliwell.

Both books record facts about the Diaoyu Islands, written among a list of place names and a list of routes in the charts.

"Diaoyu, these little islands, represent a turning point in that voyage, and they are used as markers from which to take compass bearings," Helliwell said.

The publication of the facsimile edition is the result of a chance visit last year to the Bodleian Library by Wang Jun, department head of Zhonghua Book Co, which is owned by China Publishing Group. Wang got to know and respect Helliwell.

"Helliwell talked to us and, after a testlike little chat, invited us into the Bodleian's internal library," Wang said.

"He may look like a British gentleman, but I know he is Chinese inside and was Chinese in his previous life," Wang said, praising Helliwell's passion and knowledge of ancient Chinese books.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Jiang Jun, vice-president of China Publishing Group, said: "The production of these two books means a lot for preserving and sorting out ancient books and sets an example for international cultural exchange and cooperation."

The two ancient books were first identified and transcribed by Chinese historian Xiang Da when he was sent by Peking Library on an exchange program to work at the Bodleian from 1935 to 1936.

Shun Feng Xiang Song had been given to the library in 1639 by Archbishop William Laud, who was chancellor of the University from 1620 to 1641. Xiang Da strongly suspected it had been produced in the 16th century.

Zhi Nan Zheng Fa is part of the Backhouse Collection, which was donated to the library in stages between 1913 and 1922. It is believed to have been written in the late Ming and early Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

Mei Jia contributed to this story.


Chinese companies encouraged to use window onto Southeast Asia

Yuchai Machinery chairman Yan Ping. [Photo by Wu Yan/chinadaily.com.cn]

The head of Chinese engine manufacturer Yuchai Machinery Group says Beibu Gulf in South China is the best entry point for companies wanting to reach other Asian and South East Asian markets.

"Chinese companies should make good use of the platform to enter into the ASEAN markets," Yuchai Machinery chairman Yan Ping, who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress, said during the two sessions.

Yuchai has been selling into Southeast Asian countries since the beginning of the 21st century, starting off with sales in the several hundreds, to now selling about 30,000 engines every year. In Vietnam alone, 8,000 to 10,000 vehicle engines are sold every year, pushing the number of vehicles using Yuchai engines to 200,000.

"We saw double-digital growth in ASEAN countries in these years. There is big room for growth for Yuchai in ASEAN markets," Yan said.

He added that the energy revolution underway in those countries stimulates a huge demand for engines.

Sales of boat engines have also skyrocketed.

"Fishermen used to catch 300 tons of fish a year. After using boats with Yuchai's engines, they can catch 500 tons of fish," Yan said.

Yan encouraged more Chinese companies to enter ASEAN markets, but warned they have to know Southeast Asian nations' cultures and cater to their needs.

"Their peoples do not know Chinese products, so we have to promote our products," he said.

He believed border trading at Guangxi is a good way of advertising.

"Vietnamese can just drive cars to the border trading experimental zone to buy and sell goods," Yan said. "They know our products in this way. If a product is good, they will advertise the product through word-of-mouth."

Guangxi has been focused on opening up to ASEAN countries and is seen as a portal in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Its role is set to be further advanced after the State Council in January approved a development plan for the city cluster around Beibu Gulf in Guangdong and Hainan provinces and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, designating Guangxi's capital Nanning as the core of the city cluster.

"The number of flights increases, people exchanges increase, and the contacts between residents on the border of China and Vietnam become easier and easier," Yan said.

"The platform of Beibu Gulf will become the promotion window of Chinese products and culture going abroad," he said.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the two-way trade volume between China and ASEAN countries totaled $452.2 billion and mutual investment $178 billion in 2016.

In the first two months of 2017, the two-way trade reached $68.8 billion, an increase of 16.7 percent compared to the same period last year.
An Irish city erupts into a boisterous jamboree as people celebrate St. Patrick's Day on the streets. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Empty streets flip into a fun fair.

A quiet city erupts into a boisterous jamboree.

And everything is green.

So recalls Bao Huiyi of March 17 (St. Patrick's Day)a magical day in Ireland.

Bao is the author of The Annals of the Emerald Isle, a collection of essays written during her stay in Ireland, when she was studying Old and Middle English at University College Dublin from 2011 to 2015.

"I went to the (St. Patrick's Day) parade every year and missed it only once, because you seldom see so many people in Ireland at other times," says Bao.

At first, she went to the event seeking noveltyeveryone was dressed in green, wearing green hats and green makeup.
Laurent Hilaire, artistic director of Moscow's Stanislavsky Music Theater ballet troupe, speaks with a ballerina from Giselle. [Photo/Agencies]

French dance star Laurent Hilaire, the new artistic director of Moscow's renowned Stanislavsky Music Theater ballet troupe, has vowed to expand its repertoire while preserving its rich traditions.

"This is an opera and ballet house with a certain history, culture and tradition," says Hilaire, who took on the position in January.

"The goal is not to make revolution, to change everything. The goal is to open up the company's repertoire."

The 54-year-old Frenchman's appointment represents a rare case of a foreigner picked to head a Russian ballet troupe.

Spanish dance legend Nacho Duato's tenure as the director of the Mikhailovsky Theater ballet in St. Petersburg from 2011 to 2014 left many Russian ballet critics and amateurs with lukewarm impressions.

Hilaire, a former principal dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet, is now trying to avoid that fate, walking a tightrope between tradition and reform in a country that prides itself on its legendary ballet troupes.

He says his diversification plan for the repertoire of the Stanislavsky Theater, Moscow's second most prominent ballet and opera house after the Bolshoi, will not reject the ballets choreographed by Vladimir Burmeister in the 1960s.

Hilaire's ties to Russian ballet predate his appointment to the Stanislavsky.

In 1985, the 22-year-old Hilaire was named principal danceror etoileby legendary Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev after a performance of Swan Lake choreographed by Burmeister.

The former ballet master of the Paris Opera is now set to stage Serge Lifar's Suite en Blanc, William Forsythe's The Second Detail and Jiri Kylian's Petite mort in July, his first program at the Stanislavsky.

Hilaire, who has a five-year contract with the troupe of 120 dancers, says he is pleased to work with artists who "wish to grow" and dance in a very "physical, committed and unselfish" way.

Hilaire is the first Frenchman to lead a Russian ballet theater since famed choreographer Marius Petipa, who was invited by the imperial ballet to work in St. Petersburg in the 19th century.

Despite arriving in Moscow in the dead of winter, Hilaire says he enjoys living in the Russian capital.

At the time of his appointment, observers say Hilaire's work could be hindered by a language barrier, an issue the French star is trying to avoid.

He speaks to dancers through an interpreter but hopes to be able to speak to them in Russian in the near future.

"I spent many years at the Paris Opera Ballet. I come from there, but I have also worked a lot abroad, in the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia," he says.

"Of course I want to pass on the experience I have gained."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Relics are on display during the exhibition "Afghanistan: Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul" at the Palace Museum in Beijing. [Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

The Palace Museum in Beijing, also known as the Forbidden City, has opened a joint exhibition with the National Museum of Afghanistan.

Titled "Afghanistan: Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul," the exhibit showcases more than 200 precious items that demonstrate the development of the central Asian country between the third century BC and the first century.

The period has been known as one of Renaissance in the Afghan history, as it also coincides with the beginning of the ancient Silk Road.

The exhibition is part of an effort by the Palace Museum to showcase ancient civilizations of the world.

Exchanges between China and Afghanistan can be dated as far as more than 2,000 years ago, when envoy Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220) travelled there during his first mission. Afghanistan was also a major stop on the ancient Silk Road.

The current exhibition at the Palace Museum will run until June 17th.
The small town of Haizhou in Shanxi province is home to China's largest temple in honor of Guan Yu, a legend warrior symbolizing fidelity and uprightness.

But how to use the historical celebrity to boost local economy? Such questions probably get the answer from the research of a newly established center.

The digital publisher Chineseall.com and Central University of Finance and Economics jointly launched the college's Culture Public Private Partnerships Research Center, the first of its kind in the country, on March 15 in Beijing.

Public Private Partnerships Research refers to a widely-applied mechanism that sees government agencies collaborate with private-sector companies to finance, build and operate projects.

The center aims to use the college's academic resources and the company's business experience to help local governments to promote local culture.

Guan's cultural heritage in Haizhou is among a series of programs to be developed by the center. Highlighted projects also include the one about porcelain culture in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province.

Related:

Beijing's Palace Museum launches exhibit on ancient Afghan civilization

Photos portray a century of change
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Dong Shucheng gives a finishing touch to his sugar painting in Yongji, Shanxi province, March 14, 2017.[Photo/VCG]

Dong Shucheng, 49, from Anyang of Henan province, is a city-level inheritor of sugar painting making technique. He learned the art during childhood from his elders. But he did not practice it until three years ago. First, he worked in a company but the enterprise went bankrupt. Then he launched his own firm with his friends but that too failed to take off. So he went back to his roots and started visiting temple fairs and scenic areas in North China to make sugar paintings for a living.

Large temple fairs are usually held around the Spring Festival and many people visit them, so the sugar paintings sell quite well during the holiday. He once earned more than 3,000 yuan ($435) in one day in Qingdao city. On normal days, he is able to make 5,000-6,000 yuan in one month.

Sugar painting is usually made with melted brown or white sugar. Craftsman often paint animals and flowers on a stone board with the syrup, and when the sugar cools down, a piece of sugar art is finished.

According to Dong, sugar painting has no manuscript, and craftsmen have to create the whole design mentally and finish it at one stretch. Dong takes only a shovel, a spoon, an electric cooker and an aluminum plate with him when he goes out in search for work. He said the sugar making business costs little and mainly relies on skill.

Dong not only makes money by creating sugar painting, he also has a dozen apprentices and said he wants to pass forward the handicraft.
Tourists and downtown workers are pictured in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, July 8, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Speaking in Michigan on Wednesday afternoon, US President Donald Trump continued to blame the North American Free Trade Agreement for the loss of nearly a third of US manufacturing jobs and China for the loss of 60,000 factories since China's accession to the World Trade Organization.

During the confirmation hearing of US Trade Representative nominee Robert Lighthizer on Tuesday, Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan asked why Trump didn't keep his campaign promise to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office.

Peter Navarro, director of Trump's new National Trade Council, railed against China's currency policy and blamed China, Germany and others for US trade deficits in his speech at the National Association of Business Economics last week.

It seems that pretty soon, they will blame China for the winter storm that hit Northeast US on Tuesday, paralyzing major cities such as New York and Boston, grounding more than 6,000 flights and killing more than a dozen people.

In sharp contrast, I cannot recall any senior Chinese officials or delegates to the just concluded sessions in Beijing of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body, blaming the US for such things as the US' disastrous meddling in the Middle East or how the US should be held responsible, at least partly, for the serious pollution in China.

There is ample evidence to support the argument that the manufacturing of export goods to the US and the rest of the world is a big contributor to China's carbon emissions.

While many in the US criticize China for its carbon emissions, they clearly have not thought that US per capita emissions are more than two times the per capita emissions in China and the US is responsible for the historical accumulation of carbon emissions.

Chinese leaders, however, have not used finger-pointing to distract public attention. Instead they have chosen to tackle the challenge by strengthening regulations, investing in clean and renewable energy and switching the economy onto a more environment friendly path.

They clearly know that blaming others for your own problems may deflect public criticism but it does not solve the problems.

For example, China is not manipulating its currency to help its exports, something Premier Li Keqiang made clear at a news conference on Wednesday and most US economists agree. If Trump had named China a currency manipulator on Day One as Senator Stabenow wished, it would only have made the US president a laughing stock.

For the same reason, the US has the largest trade deficit with China but it also ran trade deficit with another 100 countries in 2015. Economists such as Stephen Roach and Robert Reich believe the true problem is not China, but the low saving rate in the US and too many people living beyond their means.

The calculation of the trade deficit has long been misleading because it includes added value from other places such as Japan and South Korea, which have moved their assembly lines into China in the past decades.

In fact, when Trump was speaking outside Detroit, Michigan, he should have acknowledged that China now generates a third of General Motors' global sales. Also, Michigan has attracted $3 billion in investment from China since 2000. Some 300 Chinese companies have made a home in Michigan, creating jobs for Americans.

I have interviewed Michigan governor Rick Snyder and know how passionate he is about the trade and investment relations with China.

Working with China, and looking into its own problem, instead of blaming others, would clearly help the US better solve its economic problems.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, second left, arrives during his first trip to Asia as Secretary, at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

With US Secretary of State Rex Tiller son's first visit to China drawing near, hopes are high that the high-level dialogue between the world's two largest economies will produce positive results and send a reassuring signal to the outside world that China and the United States will try their best to avoid conflicts and build more common ground.

Among all the important bilateral and international issues to be discussed in Beijing, Tillerson is expected to help to prepare for the first summit meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump.

It is widely anticipated that the summit could take place soon, which shows the two leaders are eager to deepen their mutual understanding and build a close working relationship so they can jointly steer bilateral ties onto a more stable terrain.

Other issues on top of Tillerson's list will likely include the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula. The decision of Washington and Seoul to accelerate the deployment of a US missile defense shield on the peninsula has strained ties in the region and triggered a series of moves from Pyongyang.

China hopes the US will play a constructive role in resolving the peninsula issue and support China's stance on involving all stakeholders, including the beleaguered parties on the peninsula, in dialogue and consultation so as to ratchet down tensions and pave the way for peaceful resolution to the issue.

The US' increasing involvement in the South China Sea also stands out as an issue between them. By sending US warships to patrol the disputed waters, Washington is doing a disservice to peace and stability, and the move has drawn the ire of Beijing.

In fact, the maritime disputes have seen noticeable signs of abating recently. China and Southeast Asian countries have been engaging in intense consultations on a code of conduct in the waters, with a framework expected to be worked out by midyear.

About the same time as Tillerson's visit to Beijing, China's Vice-Premier Wang Yang is due to meet Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila. This is a clear signal that Beijing and Manila are continuing their efforts to keep their maritime disputes at bay.

Against such a backdrop, the US should seek to play a constructive rather than divisive role in the South China Sea.

People everywhere are anxious to see China and the US transcend their differences and jointly contribute to peace and development. Frequent communication and high-level in-depth consultations are instrumental to realizing such a desirable scenario.
Passengers head home at a railway station in Xi'an on a smoggy day, Jan 17, 2017. [Photo/IC]

When asked about how the government will deal with ever-worsening smog at a news conference on Wednesday at the conclusion of the annual session of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, Premier Li Keqiang faced up to the severe environmental challenge China faces, saying the country should transform its development mode so that blue sky will not be a luxury.

Given that the frequent smog is a top concern of the public, how to offer a good ecological environment has become an urgent issue for the government to tackle. Long-time exposure to poisonous air not only endangers people's health, but also weakens the sense of happiness people should have as a result of economic and social development.

Li's words reflect the authorities' people-first approach concerning the environment issue.

At a news briefing in early January, Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining said that he felt guilty as the head of the environment watchdog when seeing slow or no progress in the treatment of air pollution.

Cai Qi, mayor of Beijing, also said in January that the first thing he does every day after getting up is to consult the air quality index.

"I completely understand the humorous and satirical comments made by netizens about the government's efforts to curb the smog", he said.

The growing calls from the public for a healthier environment have prompted the authorities to show greater urgency and resolve in the fight against air pollution. The government is directly responding to the appeals of the public for clean air by promoting better governance to protect the environment.

Bringing back the blue skies is by no means a task that can be finished overnight. But that does not mean the public should feel helpless when surrounded by poisonous air. It is hoped the premier's down-to-earth approach signals the government's greater determination to clean up the air.
Artificial intelligence was mentioned in this year's Government Work Report for the first time, which has drawn wide public attention.

The report regards artificial intelligence as one of the most significant emerging industries, whose technological research and transformation will be accelerated.

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that includes the theory, method, technology and application of simulating, extending and expanding human intelligence. Artificial intelligence research includes intelligent robots, language recognition, image identification and natural language processing, among other things.

In July 2015, artificial intelligence was mentioned in the guidance issued by the State Council, China's Cabinet, to promote the government's Internet Plus plan, and artificial intelligence was included in the country's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) released in March 2016. It shows that artificial intelligence has become a significant strategic deployment in the next stage, and the industry will grow rapidly in the future.

At a news conference on March 11, Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang said that China had made new progress in creating artificial intelligence since last year, and a series of significant artificial intelligence projects are being conducted.

According to Wan, experts, enterprises and entrepreneurs are jointly working on accelerating the development of artificial intelligence.
US President Donald Trump holds up his executive order on withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership after signing it in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday.[Photo/Agencies]

Speculations over China possibly joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which the United States withdrew from in January, have finally been laid to rest. On China's role in free trade following the US' exit from the TPP, Premier Li Keqiang said at a news conference on Wednesday that China is committed to promoting free trade through regional economic frameworks.

The explanation follows the Foreign Ministry statement making it clear China will not change its stance on the TPP.

A delegation led by China's Special Representative on Latin American Affairs Yin Hengmin attended a two-day economic dialogue in Chile. Confirming Yin's participation in the talks, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that the meeting, which ended on Wednesday, was not only about the TPP, as wrongly reported by some media outlets, but also about "extensively comparing notes on future cooperation across the Asia-Pacific region". She also said China's stance on the TPP, which is to "work with all parties concerned to push for Asia-Pacific economic integration", has not changed.

Representatives from the TPP signatories and members of the Pacific Allianceas well as China and the Republic of Korea, were invited to the talks in Chile. Since the remaining TPP members are struggling to save the agreement following Washington's withdrawal, speculations were rife whether it is time for Beijing to "fill the void".

China has every reason to adhere to its "open but cautious" approach to the TPP, because TPP members are divided on the possible involvement of China in the transnational deal. While Australia and Latin American states like Chile have hinted China is welcome to join the TPP, Japan is not as keen.

Canberra's enthusiasm reflects its desire to expand its overseas markets and restart the TPP engines without Washington. And although some Latin American countries are keen on forging closer economic ties with China, they could still put some pressure on US President Donald Trump to consider reassuming the TPP leadership.

China is right in weighing any invitation to join the TPP with utmost caution also because the motivation is not compelling and potential gains not clear. There are only three TPP signatories that are yet to sign a free trade agreement with ChinaJapan, Mexico and Canadaand China is making efforts to ink such a deal with them.

Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul wrapped up the 11th round of talks on a trilateral free trade agreement in January, while China and Canada are negotiating a bilateral FTA. Given the many FTAs China has signed, or is negotiating, with other countries, the TPP membership appears less appealing to it.

China is now offering public goods to the international community and further opening up its domestic market to foreign investment. The Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road) is a case in point and the emergence of pilot free trade zones in China is another.

Besides, the TPP clauses and regulations are not ideal for China's participation; they are not likely to be rewritten in China's favor either. And Beijing is more interested in expediting the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific, which will be beneficial to all, through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that concluded its 17th round of negotiations in Kobe, Japan, earlier this month, and the Bilateral Investment Treaty negotiations with the US.

China should now make extra efforts to ensure the World Trade Organization functions properly and its rules are obeyed by all member states. The WTO is arguably the best available platform for Beijing and Washington to address their economic issues, and to keep unilateralism and trade protectionism at bay. As the world's second-largest economy, China should do more to seek wider cooperation in trade and services, and better protect intellectual property rights and the environment with the help of other WTO members.

The author is a senior research fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The article is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily's Cui Shoufeng.
File photo shows Seoungju residents chant slogans during a protest against the government's decision on deploying a US THAAD anti-missile defense unit in Seongju, in Seoul, South Korea, July 21, 2016. The banner reads "Desperately oppose deploying THAAD". [Photo/Agencies]

Addressing a news conference on Wednesday at the conclusion of the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, Premier Li Keqiang reiterated China's resolve to help settle the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through talks. Li also warned that spiraling tensions in Northeast Asia have the potential to spark a conflict, which would be detrimental to all parties involved.

The premier's remarks come at a time when there is no sign of reconciliation among the United States, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That Washington and Seoul have given up efforts to hold talks with Pyongyang is another indication that the Korean Peninsula may be heading toward an uncertain future.

Believing that efforts to invite the DPRK for talks might send the wrong message that the relevant parties condone its nuclear ambitions, the US is inclined to shut the door on diplomatic maneuvers. The US does not want to break the nuclear dilemma either if it means paying a high cost.

Washington is wary of the denuclearization efforts made by China and Russia, which it sees as a threat to its regional alliance. Unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who put extra pressure on Pyongyang without provoking a military clash, US President Donald Trump could abandon the "strategic patience" and consider harsher measures.

Moreover, since Lee Myung-bak's election as ROK president in 2008, Seoul has become increasingly assertive in its pursuit of reunification with the DPRK. His successor Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office after impeachment last week, ordered the "temporary" closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the only collaborative economic project between Seoul and Pyongyang, in February 2016, and resumed blaring propaganda messages from loudspeakers across the border and calling for a halt to inter-Korean communications.

Pyongyang, on the other hand, intensified its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in the hope that the international community will be compelled to accept it as a nuclear power.

But none of the three countries are likely to get their end of the "bargain".

Washington's pressure-driven tactics couldn't move Pyongyang from its nuclear course, draining the patience of Japan and the ROK. Although the ROK lays emphasis on reunification, its hard-line approach has failed to weaken the DPRK's nuclear ambitions, making its mission even more uncertain. And the DPRK can never match the US' nuclear capability. In other words, Pyongyang's nuclear-minded strategy can neither keep Washington out of the peninsula affairs nor make the region safer. Isolation from the international community is no guarantee of security either.

The most effective approach, as China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last week, can only be negotiation. China wants the DPRK to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. Correspondingly, it wants the US and the ROK to halt their large-scale military exercises. Also needed is a dual-track approach to restore peace on the Korean Peninsula and replace the 1953 armistice agreement with a permanent peace pact.

We must keep in mind the complexity of the DPRK nuclear issue, which is related to the reunification of the DPRK and the ROK, a Washington-Pyongyang rapprochement, and geopolitical balance among China, Russia, and the US in Northeast Asia. So the resolution of the peninsula issue will take time and encounter speed bumps even if all the concerned parties return to the negotiation table.

Besides, leadership changes in the US and the ROK could mean changes and even about-turns in the two countries' DPRK policy. Therefore, all parties should tread carefully and stay on the right track even though they hit unexpected speed bumps, if they really want to resolve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

The author is an associate researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
Badaling Great Wall is decorated with green lights to celebrate St Patrick's Day in Beijing on Thursday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Every year on and around St Patrick's Day, a wide variety of celebrations take place across the globe. China is no exception.

On March 16, the annual grand event to turn Great Wall green took place at the Badaling Great Wall Scenic Spot, attracting hundreds of people from all walks of life to witness the magic.

Ambassador of Ireland to China Paul Kavanagh said: "St Patrick's Day is a time of celebration in Ireland and for all those of Irish descent and affinity around the world. In a significant gesture of friendship and solidarity by the Chinese authorities towards the Irish people, the city administration of Beijing and the Yanqing district authorities, once again honor us with permission to green one of the greatest icons in the world, the Badaling Great Wall of China."

"I am delighted that this year we will be joined at the Great Wall Greening event by Government of Ireland Minister Sean Canney T.D. who is also visiting Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nanjing and Huzhou over the week-long festival period," he added.

At last night's event, Irish Minister of State for the Office of Public Works and Flood Sean Canney also joined in the celebration.

The minister said: "It is a great honor for the government and people of Ireland to have a number of Chinese national icons and famous buildings join the global greening once again in 2017, including the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, Disney Castle Shanghai, the Jinxiu Tianfu Tower in Chengdu and a number of other prominent buildings in China."

"We appreciate very much Beijing's support and cooperation in having the Great Wall of China join the global greening this March. This year, 12 landmark buildings in Ireland went red in honor of China's Spring Festival as well as our friendship with the Chinese people and the friendly relationship between our two capital cities, Beijing and Dublin."

In addition to the participation of the Embassy of Ireland and Tourism Ireland, the event was also supported by Ireland's Wyeth Nutrition, manufacturer of Illuma infant formula, as well as the leading Irish building supplies company CRH, which has operations globally, including in China.

As many cities across the world get ready to celebrate St Patrick's Day, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu prepare for the biggest celebration of Irish culture in China to date.
The signature of Declaration of Independence signer John Hancock on an envelope.

I was thinking about how difficult it has become to maintain good penmanship in the internet era.

When I was in grammar school, just about all our writing was cursive as opposed to block letters, and students would take pride in their signatures. There were required penmanship classes.

Now about the only time I write my name, with wildly fluctuating results, is when I'm signing a credit card receipt or check, and I write far fewer of those because of electronic payments.

I understand they face the same issue in China, where it's probably more dramatic because of the many strokes it can take to create a Chinese word.

At China Daily USA, we have the software that converts pinyin into Chinese characters, but users still do not have to make the strokes themselves; the keyboard does.

Four years ago, The Washington Post published this headline: "Cursive handwriting is disappearing from public schools."

Now, the United States is witnessing a movement to bring back penmanship, long the purview of persnickety teachers.

Alabama and Louisiana passed laws in 2016 mandating cursive proficiency in public schools, the latest of 14 states to require the connected, looping letters. And more are breaking out the figurative quill pen.

In Ohio, a bill would require school districts to teach cursive handwriting to students in kindergarten through fifth grade. The state's Legislative Service Commission said the bill aims "to ensure that students develop the ability to print letters and words legibly by third grade and to create readable documents using legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade".

In Illinois, state Representative Chris Welch is sponsoring a measure that would ensure students receive at least one class in penmanship.

"I think we're losing a whole generation," Welch said. "You're having folks that are 18 and above that don't even know how to write in cursive."

In Delaware, state Representative Andria Bennett's bill would require cursive writing in public schools.

"You need to know cursive to sign checks and important documents," she said.

Last fall, the New York City public schools system, the US' largest, encouraged cursive's teaching.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina distributed a teacher handbook on the practice in September, The Associated Press reported. It cites research suggesting that fluent cursive helps students master spelling and sentence construction because they don't have to think as much about forming letters.

While some 78 percent of advanced placement and National Writing Project teachers surveyed in 2013 by the Pew Research Center in the US said digital tools such as the internet, social media and smartphones "encourage student creativity and personal expression", 68 percent said the devices make students more likely to take shortcuts and not put effort into their writing.

California is one of the 14 states that require cursive.

"Print writing yes, they need to learn their ABCs, but whether it's in block letters or cursive letters, I don't think it's absolutely necessary," Nisha Shah told ABC-TV's San Francisco affiliate.

The ABC Facebook page on the topic received more than 7,000 likes and 600 pro and con comments.

"It's (curvise) great for taking notes," Andria Shafer said.

"It's nice, but ultimately useless. Keyboard familiarity should be a requirement," De-Ante Glover said.

Teachers are divided too, with supporters saying it would be disappointing if a student could not read the original US Declaration of Independence in cursive.

Speaking of that 1776 document, the signature of one of its signers, John Hancock, was so spectacular that it became a part of the American vernacular: "I just need your John Hancock on the dotted line."

Still, we will continue to read all our text on digital devices and in print, in block letters. So the return of cursive could be somewhat sentimental.

It's the artistic beauty of cursive writing or calligraphy that inspires. And then of course there's old time's sake, with some parents wanting their children to learn it because they themselves had to, hence connecting the generations.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com.
Xiafen "Sherry" Chen still wants her job back, and rightly so. The 61-year-old Ohio scientist was arrested by federal agents two years ago, wrongly accused of spying for China and fired from her job at the National Weather Service.

Authorities said she used a stolen password to download information about dams in the US and met with a high-ranking Chinese official, lying about it to federal investigators.

One week before the case was scheduled to go to trial, the feds dropped all charges without explanation.

But she still hasn't gotten her job back.

Her wrongful-termination case was to be reviewed in a federal court in Cincinnati on Tuesday and Wednesday. Supporters flocked to her side from as far away as California.

"It is wrong," one supporter told a local TV news reporter. "Sherry Chen is a loyal American citizen for 20 years. She was educated in the US and she is an American citizen just like us. We are all immigrants."

"Today it can happen to Sherry Chen, tomorrow it can happen to me," said another.

Chen told reporters: "I am really, really grateful. My life is turned upside down twice. I really lost everything."

As her legal bills continue to mount, advocacy groups have taken up her cause.

The Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus issued a statement Tuesday: "After being painted as a national security threat and having her life turned upside down, all the charges against her were suddenly dropped. She received no explanation or apology. Instead, the government fired her from her job."

Chen, who worked for the weather service as a hydrologist and won an award for her work in 2011, was arrested after a visit to China to see family and friends, according to Michele Young, a onetime political candidate who organized the rally for Chen on Tuesday.

Young said that Chen did share some data with a Chinese associate, but it was public information, and she had her supervisor's permission.

"She was not treated as one of us," said George Weigang, an engineer who was also at the rally. "She was treated as a different citizen. She lost everything because of nothing."

Weigang also said that the demonstration, with so many turning out, was something of a rarity for the Asian-American community, and it was a good feeling to see everyone coming together.

The Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus has been monitoring other similar cases, where three other Chinese people were arrested, only to have the charges later dropped without explanation.

"The continued lack of transparency or accountability from the federal government for criminalizing, surveilling and infringing on the rights of these individuals is unacceptable," the caucus said.

The cases fit into a "concerning historical trend of the US government unfairly targeting Chinese Americans as threats, from FBI targeting of Chinese Americans during the McCarthy era to the prosecution and solitary confinement of Wen Ho Lee."

The caucus has published a Know Your Rights guide to educate Asian Americans and started a Scientists Not Spies advocacy campaign to call for government accountability.

Xiaojie Shau Zavon, treasurer of the National Council of Chinese Americans and co-organizer of the rally, said, "We support Sherry Chen because we don't want such a pattern of wrongly investigating and prosecuting innocent Americans based on their race, ethnicity and national origin."

The Committee of 100 also supports Chen's appeal of wrongful termination of employment by the US Department of Commerce and is urging people to take a stand "in the time-honored American tradition of speaking out against injustice and discrimination".

"Chen is fighting for her equal rights to be treated fairly and justly. She hopes only to be restored to her job, which she loves. The people of Ohio and America ought not be deprived of the services and contributions of an intelligent, hardworking and loyal American," the committee said in a statement.

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com
Kerrville, TX (78028)

Today

Light rain...with scattered thunderstorms for the afternoon. High 78F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 63F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May attends a news conference during the EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 9, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDON/EDINBURGH - British Prime Minister Theresa May told the Scottish government on Thursday "now is not the time" for a second independence referendum, saying it would be unfair to ask people to vote without knowing the result of Brexit talks.

While May fell short of saying her government would block a second independence referendum, her Scottish minister David Mundell was more forthright. He ruled out any discussion on the procedure to launch a vote now and immediately raised hackles north of the English border.

Scottish nationalists have called for a new referendum and accuse May of all but ignoring their demands in her preparations for divorce talks with the European Union.

Scotland voted to remain in the EU last June and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said after May spoke that blocking an independence referendum would be undemocratic.

The remarks upped the ante in a war of words over Scottish independence as Britain prepares for intense EU exit talks.

"Right now we should be working together, not pulling apart," May told British television.

"We should be working together to get that right deal for Scotland, that right deal for the UK. That's my job as prime minister and so for that reason I say to the SNP (Scottish National Party) now is not the time."

Mundell said there would be no negotiations on Section 30, a procedure that allows the Scottish parliament to legislate for an independence referendum.

"We will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a Section 30 agreement, and any request at this time will be declined," Mundell told a news conference.

He declined to clarify if or when a vote could take place.

Sturgeon hit back, accusing May's government of being frightened of listening to the Scots.

"Any bid by the UK Government to block the people of Scotland from making a choice will be untenable, undemocratic and totally unsustainable  and clearly shows that the UK Government recognises it is out of step with the Scottish people," she said in a statement.

"It would be outrageous for the Scottish Parliament to be frozen out of the process."
French firefighters evacuate a woman near the Tocqueville high school after a shooting incident injuring at least eight people, in Grasse, southern France, March 16, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

GRASSE - A teenager opened fire at his high school in southeastern France on Thursday, wounding up to four people, in an attack apparently inspired by videos of US mass shootings such as Columbine, officials said.

The incident in Grasse, which does not appear to be linked to militancy, comes with France on high alert after more than 230 people were killed in the past two years by attackers allied to Islamic State.

"It was total panic," Achraf, a student in the school, said on BFM TV. "The gunshots were at 4 to 5 metres from where we were. We thought the gunman was coming towards us. We heard him shouting."

France's Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem visited the scene in Grasse, a town known for its perfume industry, and said the attack appeared to be "a crazy act by a fragile young man fascinated by firearms".

"His motivations seem to be linked to bad relations he had with other students in school," Grasse prosecutor Fabienne Atzori told reporters.

With a presidential election less than six weeks away, the attack by a 16-year-old armed with a shotgun loaded with lead pellets looked likely to further stoke France's debate on security.

Separately in Paris, an employee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was injured in the face and arms when a letter bomb posted to the world lender's local office blew up as she opened it, police said.

Atzori said 10 people had been hurt in the school attack, either physically or emotionally. One person was shot in the stomach and the headmaster was injured in the shoulder after trying to stop the gunman.

The youth, who was also carrying munitions, handguns, a grenade and what seemed to be a homemade explosive device, put up no resistance when he was arrested at the school, she said.

The youth was not known to police and checks were being made to establish whether there were any accomplices and how he had acquired his weapons.

"The first investigations suggest he had consulted videos of mass killings in America," an interior ministry spokesman said.
Civil defense team members try to rescue people who were trapped under the debris of a Mosque after an aerial attack on a mosque during prayer in the Cina village of Etarib district of Aleppo, Syria on March 16, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

DAMASCUS -- A total of 42 people were killed when airstrikes targeted a mosque in a town in the countryside of Aleppo province in northern Syria on Thursday, a monitor group reported.

Most of the slain people were civilians, when the airstrikes targeted the mosque in the town of Jineh in the western countryside of Aleppo province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The death toll is likely to rise as tens of people were wounded, some in critical conditions.

The UK-based watchdog group, however, stopped short of identifying the warplanes which carried out the strikes.

It said that the airstrikes have intensified in general on Thursday against the rebel positions in the western countryside of Aleppo.
Singapore's Changi Airport has been named "world's best airport" for the fifth year in a row at the annual Skytrax World Airport Awards at Passenger Terminal EXPO in Amsterdam on March 14, 2017.

The awards are based on the survey of 13.82 million travelers from 105 countries between July 2016 and February 2017. The passengers were asked at 550 airports across the world to rate everything from check-in, arrivals, transfers, shopping, security and immigration, and departure.

That Changi Airport has again won the honor comes as little surprise to global travelers. The awards also name the cleanest airports, the best airport staff service and the best airports for dining and shopping.

Here are the world's top 10 airports selected by millions of international passengers.

1. Singapore Changi Airport


The book Shun Feng Xiang Song is believed to be written in the 16th century.

The facsimile edition of what is believed to be the earliest-known historical reference to China's Diaoyu Islands was unveiled at the University of Oxford on Thursday as part of this year's London Book Fair.

China Publishing Group presented the copy of the manuscripts to a group of European sinologists at the Bodleian Library.

The Diaoyu Islands are an uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea.

Two ancient books, Shun Feng Xiang Song (Voyage with a Tail Wind), and Zhi Nan Zheng Fa (Compass Directions), are believed to be the world's last existing copies that offer concrete proof of China's sovereignty over the islands. Both original books are kept at Oxford's Bodleian Library.

David Helliwell, curator of the Chinese Collection at the Bodleian, said: "These two manuscripts are important because they are the only two surviving manuscripts of the books of this kind.  This is the first time that Diaoyu is mentioned in any Chinese texts, according to what we know."

The manuscripts are known as rutters, which are charts of compass bearings of sea routes and directions.

Helliwell said: "These books must be common because we know that Chinese merchants were going to all parts of the world in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)."

Both books record facts about the Diaoyu Islands, written among a list of place names and a list of routes in the charts. Helliwell said: "Diaoyu, these little islands, represent a turning point in that voyage and they are used as markers from which to take compass bearings."



A reader examines the original volume of Shun Feng Xiang Song, and points to an entry mentioning China's Diaoyu Islands.



The idea of publishing facsimile versions of the two manuscripts was brought about during last year's London Book Fair when a delegation from CPG visited Oxford University and was shown the original copies of the ancient Chinese works and advised that it could publish facsimiles.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Jiang Jun, vicepresident of CPG, said: "We always have been committed to promoting Chinese culture overseas. The production of these two books means a lot for preserving and sorting out ancient books and sets an example for international cultural exchange and cooperation."

Joshua Seufert, HD Chung Chinese Studies Librarian at the Bodleian, said: "The significance of publishing the facsimile versions of the two manuscripts is that the scholars will have the exact copy of the texts as they were produced in the late Ming Dynasty, without any changes, just as it was for the first time."

The two ancient books were first identified and transcribed by Chinese historian Xiang Da when he was sent by Peking Library on an exchange program to work at the Bodleian between 1935 and 1936.

Shun Feng Xiang Song had been given to the library in 1639 by Archbishop William Laud, who was Chancellor of the University from 1620 to 1641. Although the ultimate Chinese provenance of the book is unknown, Xiang Da strongly suspected that it had been produced in the 16th century.

Zhi Nan Zheng Fa is part of the Backhouse Collection, which was donated to the library in stages between 1913 and 1922. It is believed to have been written in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The Qing Dynasty extended from 1644 to 1911.

Twenty-five years after Xiang Da's stay at the Bodleian, he wrote an account of the texts and made a complete, annotated transcription of them. They were published by Zhonghua Book Company in 1961 and 1982 respectively.
Events and stories coming up in the next few days

UK textile students showing work at China Design Centre

Reimagining Xiabu, an exhibition of work by students and graduates from the BA course in textile design at the Chelsea College of Arts, opens on Friday and will continue until April 7. The exhibition is held in collaboration with the China Design Centre and can be seen at the design center's space on Store Street in London.

Report to look at booming organic food industry

China's appetite for organic food is surging as people's purchasing power and awareness about healthy living rise. For the past few years, the industry has been growing at an annual rate of 30 percent. Recently, China and New Zealand signed an agreement on mutual recognition of each other's organic standards. In the coming days, China Daily will publish an in-depth report about the industry.

Traditional instruments shared at Yorkshire concert

Sheffield hosts its second Classical Weekend Festival between Friday and Sunday. It will feature international artists and musicians in a wide range of venues. Among them, performers from Shanghai will play on Friday in Upper Chapel on Norfolk Street. Xia Jing, a famed zither soloist, will also perform.

Teens invited to learn secrets of painting cherry blossom

The Museum of East Asian Art on Bennett Street in Bath is hosting Cherry Blossom Ink Painting on Saturday. The event is aimed at teens and offers them the chance to learn Chinese painting techniques and use them to make a Mother's Day gift. Artist Aili Purdy will teach the class.
LONDON  Former British Treasury chief George Osborne has been appointed editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, touching off a torrent of criticism about whether a sitting lawmaker should be able to run a London-based daily.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, speaks at The Times CEO summit in London, Britain June 28, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The newspaper's owner, Evgeny Lebedev, said Friday that Osborne put himself forward for the job and "was the obvious choice."Osborne indicated he would keep his job as a member of Parliament, together with a smattering of other advisory roles in private industry that are supplementing his income. But he said his role at the Standard would be to fight for the interest of Londoners, come what may."So much is now at stake about the future of our country and its capital city," he said. "I will remain in Parliament, where that future is debated. I was elected by my constituents in Tatton to serve them and I intend to fulfil that promise." Tatton is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from London.But campaigners for transparency in government cried foul. Robert Barrington, executive director of Transparency International U.K., described Osborne's appointment as a clear conflict of interest, since the media is meant to hold government to account."It smacks of greed and the accumulation of power," he said in a statement."A key role of the media is to hold politicians to account; to have a recent minister or an MP running the editorial line of a newspaper certainly calls into question whether this principle can be upheld."Osborne has been busy since being fired by Theresa May when she became prime minister following Britain's vote last year to leave the European Union. Osborne was a leader of the campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.He already has supplemented his parliamentary income by being an adviser on the global economy to the Blackrock Investment Institute, earning about 650,000 pounds ($800,000) a year. As a member of Parliament, his annual pay is 75,000 pounds.

AP
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(Photo : JMSDF) JS Izumo.

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The Philippines' communist-leaning president Rodrigo Duterte has declined an invitation to visit the helicopter carrier JS Izumo (DDH-183) of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) when this warship visits his country some time in the next three months.



In a blatant challenge to China, Japan has deployed the Izumo, its largest warship, and a warship escort to show-the-flag in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The deployment of the Izumo and its naval squadron will be Japan's biggest show of naval force in Asia since World War II.



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Sources told Japanese media the aim of the deployment is to test the capability of the Izumo, which was launched in March 2015, by sending it out on an extended mission. The Izumo will train with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea.



Japan has invited the pro-China Duterte to visit the Izumo when she visits Subic Bay, some 100 km northwest of Manila, according to sources cited by Philippine media.



Asked if he planned to visit the Izumo, Duterte replied, "If I have time," a reply that can be equated to a diplomatic "No" considering Duterte has no intention of angering his patron, China.



As to his views about the Izumo's forthcoming trip, Duterte said, "I have invited all of them," but without explaining what this reply meant.



"It is international passage, the South China Sea is not our territory, but it is part of our entitlement," said Duterte of his decision to embrace China and not pursue his country's rightful claim that China violated its sovereignty by seizing islands within its exclusive economic zone.



On the other hand, China threatened a firm response if Japan causes trouble in the South China Sea.



"If Japan persists in taking wrong actions, and even considers military interventions that threaten China's sovereignty and security... then China will inevitably take firm responsive measures," said China's Foreign Ministry.



China said it was still waiting for an official explanation as to why Japan plans to send the Izumo and her escorts on a show of force through the South China Sea.



The Izumo is officially classified by Japan as a "helicopter destroyer" whose main mission is anti-submarine warfare. For this purpose, she carries up to nine helicopters but can be outfitted to launch and recover the Lockheed Martin F-35B stealth fighter, the short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) version of the fighteroperated by the U.S. Marines.



The second and only other ship in the Izumo-class is the JS Kaga (DDH-184), which was launched in August 2015.



Both warships can deploy up to 28 aircraft, or 14 larger aircraft (probably F-35s and Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys). Currently, however, the Izumo carries only seven anti-submarine warfare helicopters and two sea air rescue helicopters. Both warships are also equipped to carry 400 troops and their equipment.



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TagsPhilippines, Rodrigo Duterte, JS Izumo, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, JMSDF, helicopter destroyer, helicopter carrier
(Photo : PLA) Female and male PLA soldiers at attention.

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The leadership of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the Communist Party of China (CPC), vows to boost the PLA's fighting power while "safeguarding Xi Jinping's core status."



Apart from being China's president, Xi is also general secretary of the CPC and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) that controls the PLA. The PLA's primary mission is to defend the CPC and its close to 90 million members. Protection of the Chinese homeland and Chinese citizens are the secondary roles of the PLA.



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The keys to victory on the battlefield will be implementing Xi's decisions and instructions in pushing forward military building, reform and combat preparedness, and embracing the 19th CPC National Congress with military achievements, said General Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the CMC.



"The troops must resolutely safeguard the core and follow the leadership of the CPC," said Gen. Fan.



Another vice chairman of the CMC, General Xu Qiliang of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), said the PLA's progress in building a world-class military is due to Xi's leadership.



Gen. Xu called for stronger communist indoctrination in the PLA "to ensure the high unity and purity of the military." He noted the PLA adding must make "good preparations to deal with various risks to fulfill their missions."



Both general officers urged PLA officers to eliminate the impact of Guo Boxiong (a retired general sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery) and Xu Caihou (a former CMC vice chairman who was charged with corruption but who died in 2015 while under investigation).



General Ma Xiaotian, commander-in-chief of the PLAAF, emphasized integrating aviation and space power as well as strike and defense capabilities, a target Xi has set for the PLAAF.



General Wei Fenghe, commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, said Xi's instructions are important guidelines for building a world-class strategic force to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.



The CMC pledged to unite closely around the CPC Central Committee with Xi as the core. Defense Minister Chang Wanquan said efforts will be made to enhance the education of national defense and encourage integrated military-civilian development.



Zhang Yang, head of the CMC Political Work Department, said the PLA must promote "confidence in the path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics," raised by Xi last year.



CMC directs and assumes unified command of the PLA. It controls the General Staff Department; the Political Work Department; the Logistical Support Department and the Equipment Development Department.



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TagsPeople's Liberation Army, PLA, Communist Party of China, CPC, Xi Jinping, Central Military Commission, General Fan Changlong
(Photo : YouTube) How the THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile System works.

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China has admitted defeat in preventing the deployment of the first of two batteries of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea but vowed to "restrict ROK's military and political fermentation," said an op-ed in the website of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).



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More ominously, the same piece argued that China's strategic nuclear missiles must target the THAAD system. It also said that in "future games, China can make ROK uncomfortable and will let the US know that it has made a wrong decision."



For China, however, the most important step it can take to counter THAAD is to increase its military power.



"The deployment of THAAD provides China with the reason to increase the number and quality of strategic nuclear weapons," contends the op-ed.



With its failure to prevent THAAD, China must now be determined to take resolute and effective measures, both economic and military, that minimize the system's threat to China.



China can also impose sanctions of both types against South Korea, and should maintain these sanctions "for a long time, so that the overall level of the exchange between China and ROK will go down." China can also take away the special concessions it granted to South Korea and only maintain the normal relationship between both countries.



There is no reason for China to "go quietly into the night regarding the THAAD deployment," said the op-ed, "because if China does not make ROK pay a heavy price this time, it will only become more fearless when dealing with China."



Neighboring countries might also try to emulate South Korea's success and by that time, "the strategic situation may be out of (China's) control."



Despite its defeat at the hands of South Korea, the story contends "there's absolutely no need for Chinese people to be depressed."



China, however, "will never allow itself to be trampled on."



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(Photo : Getty Images. ) Pinterest has been blocked in China for past seven days.

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Pinterest has become the latest social media site to end up on the wrong side of China's strict internet censorship after reports emerged that the popular scrapbooking website has been inaccessible in Mainland China for one week now.



According to the latest data by GreatFire, China's censorship monitor organization, Pinterest has been blocked in China for past seven days. Although the GreatFire system is known for glitches and temporarily blocking websites, the one week blockade period certainly suggests that Pinterest has been permanently blocked.



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Pinterest has become the latest entrant to China's list of banned social media websites which includes the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The news will most certainly come as a setback for Facebook and Google, the two American tech giants which are desperately trying to reenter China's lucrative internet market.



Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has been hobnobbing with China's leadership and has visited the Asian country several times. But his persistent efforts have not been able to break China's great firewall as Facebook continues to remain blocked in the world's most populous country. The hard ball being played by Chinese internet regulators means that Facebook, Google, and Twitter are losing on billions of annual revenue.



Meanwhile, Pinterest has so far not given any official statement on this development. The popular photo sharing website has faced partial censorship in China in the past, which led to many local clones some of which have become quite popular among Chinese internet consumers.



The issue of China's strict Internet censorship has over the year gained a lot of attention, with many experts arguing that this is against the essence of "freedom of expression," one of the fundamental rights. But Chinese leadership has remained adamant despite the global outcry, arguing that state control over the Internet in the country is critical for protecting its ideology and political viewpoints from western forces.



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Tagspinterest, china, China Internet Censorship, China Pinterest
(Photo : Photo by China Photos/Getty Images) A foreign affairs policeman helps a U.S. citizen to print his fingerprints, which will be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to verify if he has a criminal record, as part of the procedure to get long term residency visa in China.

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China's Ministry of Public Security made an announcement on Thursday that may be considered by foreigners working in the country as good news. The working permit-giving body revealed that any foreign national who has been working in China for a minimum of two uninterrupted years may now apply for a five-year working permit. This, for many, provides relief from the current system which requires yearly permit renewal even when one is tied to a multiple-year contract with a China company.



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According to Shanghaiist, the trial period for the newly proposed system will start later in 2017 in nine China provinces including Wuhan, Hebei, and Beijing. It will also materialize in 11 free port zones of China including the ones in Chongqing, Tianjin, and Henan.



Meanwhile, expats who have been residing in China for more than four years continuously may apply for permanent residence status so long as they meet the requirements such as income tax and salary standing. The details of this second announcement, however, have not yet been divulged to the public.



In January, China also announced that international student graduates with a Master's degree from renowned foreign schools and reputable Chinese universities are now qualified to apply for a Z visa status as soon as they finish their schooling, which ultimately waives the preceding condition for students to have two years of work experience first before they can apply for a Z status.



China has been promoting bold measures lately to attract more globally competitive people to work in the country. In 2016 alone, the permanent residency status of foreigners in China rose by 163 percent more than the previous year, accounting for approximately 1,576 expats gaining China residency.







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Tagschina visa extension, China visa, china work permit, china work permit extension, China Visa Deal, china work visa, china work visa extension
(Photo : Getty Images. ) Taiwan has announced that it would go for massive military and naval expansion in a bid to counter growing military threat from China.

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Taiwan has announced ambitious military and naval expansion plans to counter what the self-ruled island calls an 'increasing military' threat from Mainland China. The important announcement comes almost a week after China revealed that it would increase this year's military budget by mere 7 percent.



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Speaking to lawmakers in Taipei, Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan revealed that Taiwan plans to upgrade the existing F16 warplanes and also import new age stealth aircraft from the U.S. Besides, Feng mentioned that acquiring more surface-to-air missiles is also part of the island nation's military expansion plan.



All these ambitious expansion plans are a part of Taiwan's annual $11.4bn defence budget for the current year, an increase of 1 percent from the previous year. The military and naval expansion plans would most likely to be pursued in next year's budget as well, which would account for 3 percent of island's GDP.



Taiwan has specifically outlined about the growing military threat from China in its 2017 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the draft copy of which was accessed by the Reuters. "The recent activity of Chinese jets and ships around Taiwan shows the continued rise in [China's] military threat capabilities," the news agency quoted the draft as saying.



Taiwan's defence ministry states in the review report, which is published once in every four years, that the island nation is vulnerable to attack from both sea and water owing to Beijing's non-stop construction work at the artificial islands in South China Sea region.



It further claims that China's immediate plan includes using 'diverse military means' to block Taiwan's access to these artificial islands and also taking control of island groups located in the remote parts of South China Sea.



Beijing and Taipei's bilateral relationship has nosedived ever since the pro-independent leader Tsai Ing-wen assumed the power in self-ruled island nation last year. Tsai's secessionist views have resulted in repeated challenge to 'One China' policy, which has left the Chinese leadership completely miffed.



China continues to stake claim over Taiwan and states that the 'One China' policy is simply non-negotiable. It claims that the self-ruled island nation is a wayward province that is waiting for unification with Mainland China.



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(Photo : Getty Images. ) China and Pakistan have agreed to enhance enhance their military ties further in order to boost the regional stability and protect their strategic assets.

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China and Pakistan have vowed to step up their military cooperation for increasing regional stability and enhance the security of their strategic assets in the region. The decision was made during a meeting between Pakistan's newly appointed Army Chief 'General Qamar Javed Bajwa' and Chief of the Joint Staff Department 'General Fang Fenghui' in Beijing.



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According to state owned tabloid The Global Times, China and Pakistan have agreed on mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong, which is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft jointly developed by both countries. Besides, both countries discussed about jointly producing ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks.



Beijing and Islamabad relation have been historically very strong, with military relation forming the cornerstone of their bilateral relationship. Traditionally, Beijing has been an important military supplier to Islamabad that has helped in maintaining strategic balance in South Asia, a region where their mutual rival India is ruthlessly dominant.



Meanwhile, Bajwa and Fang also held discussions on the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship infrastructure project funded by the Chinese government. Earlier this week, it was reported that China will drastically increase the number of Marine Corps to protect its overseas strategic assets including the CPEC in Pakistan.



The two arm officials also agreed to enhance their anti-terrorism measures to quell down the growing threat of international terrorist organizations, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that is highly active in China's Muslim-dominated province of Xinjiang.



China squarely blames ETIM for the recent surge in violence in Xinjiang region, where Uyghur Muslims has been fighting low-intensity war for many years now.



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(Photo : Getty Images. ) To reclaim the lost market share, Apple on Friday announced that it will open two more R&D centres in China. These two new centres in China will come up in eastern cities of Shanghai and Suzhou.

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American tech behemoth Apple has announced that it will set two new research and development centres (R&D) in China as it grapples to revive its fortunes in the world's largest smart phone market, where its sales has taken a serious hit owing to ferocious competition from local rivals.



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The important announcement comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook is about to start his latest high profile visit to China later this week. The new R&D centres will be located in eastern cities of Shanghai and Suzhou, which will add up to Apple's two more R&D centres that are coming up in Beijing and Shenzhen cities.



The tech giant has pledged to invest more than 3.5 billion Yuan ($507.1 million) in these centres, according to a statement on company's official Chinese website. All the four centres are scheduled to open later this year.



Apple hopes that these R&D centres will help in attracting local talents from renowned Chinese universities, which it believes is immensely critical to cope with current cut-throat competition in the smartphone market.



Apple's China sales witnessed a great reversal in its fortune last year, when its annual Iphone shipments to China fell for the very first time. The slump in sales also affected its results, with Greater China revenues falling 12 percent in 2016 on a yearly basis.



The East Asian country holds key to American tech giant's ambition to maintain global domination in the smartphone market. However, if its sales continue to falter in the Chinese market, then investors will most certainly put more pressure on Apple's management to find innovative ways to lure back the Chinese consumers.



The loyalty of Chinese consumers over the years have steadily switched to host of home grown brands that offer high specifications at a bare minimum costs. The likes of Oppo, Vivo, Huawei and ZTE have made a huge splash in Chinese market in the last few years, making things difficult for Apple and Samsung.



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March 13 marked one month since the disappearance of Malaysian Pastor Raymond Koh, whom family and friends believe was kidnapped because of his interaction with Muslim Malays.



Police have arrested a suspect in the kidnapping but have not released any information about Kohs possible whereabouts.



On Sunday, March 5, hundreds of Christians around Malaysia held candlelight vigils in solidarity with Kohs family. Holding candles and signs reading, Where is Pastor Raymond? and, Let Raymond go, the people prayed for the pastors safe return.



We pray for his safe and quick release, said his wife, Susannah Lieu Sow Yoke, as she broke into tears. At this time we look to God and [hope that] hell be safe and well meet him again.



The morning of Feb. 13, while Koh was on his way to a friends house in Petaling Jaya near Kuala Lumpur, three black SUVs surrounded his car and forced it to stop. Nearby closed circuit TV cameras captured video of masked men getting out of their cars and walking toward Koh. A struggle appeared to take place in Kohs car before all of the vehicles left the area. The whole event took less than a minute, and Koh has not been seen since.



The family offered a $22,500 reward for information on the pastors whereabouts, but so far none has surfaced.



The news shocked Malaysians, with the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and Taoists releasing a public statement that read, News of [Kohs] abduction have fanned fears across all religious divides in Malaysian society, as it is unprecedented for a man of faith to be abducted in this way in our peaceful, multicultural country.



Koh, 62, led an Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) congregation in Malaysia for 20 years before starting the ministry Harapan Komuniti in 2004. The group helps single mothers, drug addicts, and people suffering from HIV/AIDS. It also holds an after-school program and English tutoring for students. Harapan Komuniti doesnt discriminate against whom it helps, and many of the recipients of its aid are Muslim Malays.



In 2011, the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) raided a thanksgiving and fundraising dinner hosted by Harapan Komuniti at a Methodist church. The religious police were concerned Koh was trying to proselytize 12 Muslim Malays who had attended the dinner, but they ended up dropping the case for lack of evidence.



A friend of Koh, (who wished to be anonymous for security reasons) said that after the 2011 raid, many Muslim Malays were angry with him. They sent a bullet to his home and stopped by his house to ask him to leave the country. They passed around his photo, calling on Muslims to kill him. In an interview with Malaysian newspaper The Star, Kohs son Jonathan said that since 2011 we have been evading them. We have been moving around. We also received a lot of death threats on the internet. We have people following us.



Police are investigating a link between the kidnapping and the threats against Koh. The arrest in the case reportedly followed a ransom demand.



Islam is the official religion in Malaysia, and Muslims are governed under state-administered Sharia law. The Malaysian Constitution protects the rights of non-Muslims (including Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus) to practice their religion as long as they do not evangelize the Muslim Malays. Yet Christians have begun facing other restrictions as well: In 2014, a court upheld a ban on Christians using the word Allah, the Malay word for God, in publications. With Islamic police eyeing any interactions between Malays and Christians, Malays are a largely unreached group.



The division intensified recently as thousands marched in Kuala Lumpur last month in support of a bill that would impose stricter forms of punishment in the Islamic court system, which rules on religious and family matters for Muslims. Non-Muslims are tried in secular civil and criminal courts. Critics fear the bill could lead to the full implementation of the hudud, which includes punishments of amputations and floggings.



In early March, Jonathan filed a second police report due to fears that his father had been murdered after no new information had been uncovered. Jonathan told The Star he believes his father was kidnapped because he speaks what he believes in and he shares his beliefs with people.  He practices without exception everything that is written in the Bible.

Courtesy: WORLD News Service

Publication date: March 17, 2017
A pastor has been murdered by unidentified gunmen in Africa while he was on his way to distribute food items to church members.

CBN News reports that Pastor Godwin Emmanuel, who founded Love Fire Ministry, based in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, was shot by a group of men who were pretending that their car had broken down and were pushing it.

"The man of God stopped for them to pass so that he can have his way. He never knew that they were the people who came to attack him. So they shot him in the chest and stomach," Festus Edema, a representative from the church, told journalists.

Pastor Emmanuel had reportedly started the ministry only 11 months earlier.

"When I heard about the news of his death, it was devastating and shocking. It is a painful one, very painful, but God will give us the strength to go through it," said Pastor Esquire, a member of the church.

The identities of the murderers are unknown, as is the motive for the killing. State police commissioner Mr. Haliru Gwandu said he is prepared to get to the bottom of this case.

"My command is ever ready to deal decisively with night marauders," Gwandu said.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: March 17, 2017
As 58-year-old Greg Gardiner surveyed the devastation from last weeks deadly fires, he described an eerie scene across the Gardiner Angus Ranch north of Ashland, Kan. Friends pitched in to help shoot the last of the fatally maimed cattle over the weekend, drones surveyed the breaks to confirm none were missed, and community volunteers began pulling up charred fence post and rolling up burnt wire.



The fire on this ranch claimed more than 500 head of cattle and burned 42,000 of the ranchs 48,000 acresa loss Gardiner described as a microcosm of much wider destruction across Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado.



The afternoon of March 6, Gardiner drove a trailer up to his brother Marks home, planning to rescue three horses and two dogs before fire engulfed the structures. But high winds propelled the fire to this corner of the ranch quicker than anticipated.



He could see his brother walking toward the barn and his sister-in-law making her way to the house to get the dogs as sudden darkness engulfed the pickup. It was like somebody put a hood over my head and it just went black, Gardiner said. Enveloped in dust and smoke, the heat from the fire penetrating the cab of his truck, his self-preservation instinct kicked in and he drove away (using his internal compass to guide him) as a nearby tree belt exploded in fire.



It was 30 minutes before a fire crew could confirm the couples escape to safety. The house is gone, the dogswho refused to movedidnt make it, and Gardiner tears up every time he thinks of how close he came to losing his family. He has struggled to make sense of his decision to flee the scene rather than run toward his brother and sister-in-law, comparing himself to the Biblical account of Peter denying Christ. A friend reminded him not to be too hard on himself: The trailer was blocking the only escape path for all three of them, so perhaps God prompted him to make a lifesaving move.



Gardiner, whose family homesteaded on the land in 1885, said his two brothers and their three sons would rebuild the ranch. He still has 1,500 head of cattle, and his operation uses an embryo transfer program that has produced high quality beef and garnered national acclaim.



The losses among neighbors could be more crippling: Three sisters who run a ranch with their husbands lost all of their homes. Many calves across the region were orphaned or never born, compounding financial losses. And repairing fences will be another financial challenge for the region: Gardiner said 461,000 acres burned in his home of Clark County, and close to 12,000 miles of fence need repairing at an estimated cost of around $10,000 per mile. His ranch is one of the largest with 300 miles of fence. Carcass disposal is an additional expense.



But he has also heard stories of healing and sacrifice. Two brothers who hadnt spoken in seven years mended ties after one brother saved the other from certain death when fire crews could not reach him in time. Trucks are rolling in with donated hay and feed from fellow ranchers across the region. A 4-H Club organized efforts to care for orphaned calves until ranchers have had time to recover from their losses. And Gardiner said he already sees sprouts of green through the charred land, noting the timing of the fire allows for spring rains to promote new growth before next winter.



What do the cattle losses mean for the consumer? Gardiner said beef has a longer turnover than pork and chicken. Every day when you eat a hamburger or steak, it took a rancher three years to get that on your plate, he explained, pointing to a potential hit in the 2019 production cycle. Those in the cities should have a vested interest. Their meal just burned up.



He said the lack of national news coverage has been a little disheartening and bemoaned the attention received by protesters against President Donald Trumps revised travel ban during a week of great trial for the central Plains: Yall dont have enough to do? Dont you have any fence to fix or cattle to work? he noted with a chuckle.



The regions drought from 2010 to 2014 gave way to two wet springs and extensive growth on the prairie, providing ample fuel for grass fires that began last week and burned over a million acres across four states. Heres a rundown of each states losses (excluding cattle, which are still being assessed) as of March 14:



Texas: Four deaths and more than 480,000 acres burned. Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in six counties in the Texas Panhandle.



Kansas: One death, 11 injuries, more than 40 homes destroyed and 650,000 acres burned. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a disaster declaration covering 20 counties.



Oklahoma: One death and more than 782,000 acres burned in the Northwest Oklahoma Fire Complex. Three additional fires in the state have burned more than 100,000 acres. Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for 22 counties.



Colorado: Five homes destroyed and more than 30,000 acres burned.

Courtesy: WORLD News Service

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: March 17, 2017
Hundreds of Muslim refugees have converted to Christianity across Europe in recent years, according to church leaders, but motives vary.



In Austria, the rolls of Catholic churches swelled with Muslim immigrants, leading to new guidelines for baptism to ensure sincere faith. Other churches in Lebanon, Germany, and England also report growing numbers of Muslim refugee converts from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Bangladesh, and Eritrea.



Bishop George Saliba of Beirut, Lebanon, told PRI he has baptized about 100 Syrian refugees since 2011. In another Beirut church, a pastor meets with Syrian refugees to teach them Christian doctrines from Scripture. He requested anonymity out of fear of Islamist reprisals but said dozens of Bible study groups for Syrian refugees now meet in Lebanon.



No national statistics exist, but many local churches across Europe attest to the influx of Muslim refugees seeking to become Christians. Still, they remain a small fraction of the millions of Muslims in Europe.



According to The Guardian, European mosques turned away many homeless and impoverished Muslim refugees seeking assistance. They found help and a warm welcome in churches.



Reasons for conversion vary, from heartfelt faith, to gratitude to the Christians assisting them, to hope that it could boost their chances for gaining asylum, The Guardian reported. One Muslim in Germany admitted to NPR he might convert in order to avoid deportation back to Afghanistan, where his life will be in danger.



But others appear sincere. A 25-year-old Iranian Kurd now called Silas told NPR studying Islam brought disillusionment. Reading the Bible for the first time in a camp on Germanys border with Poland prompted questions.



"When I started to read the Bible, it changed me," Silas said. "I had a lot of questions and Pastor Martens said I should come to class and ask my questions. At first, I didn't want to be a Christian, I just wanted to understand it. But the more answers I got, the more I wanted to stay, and I realized I was finding God."



Rev. Gottfried Martens leads the evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church near Berlin, where hundreds of primarily Persian refugees have converted. His church holds services in Farsi, which is illegal in Iran.



By getting baptized we have to say goodbye to our home country because we can never go back. But we accept this. The Muslim god in Iran was angry and strict, but Jesus accepts us as we are, an Iranian named Medhi told Germanys Der Spiegel.



Medhi belongs to the refugee community at Alpha and Omega Free Church, which baptized 200 people in just two months last year. The trend has federal implications for asylum claims, since converts in Iran are severely persecuted, Der Spiegel noted.



Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, England, holds a Persian service attracting 100-140 people, The Guardian reported. Rev. Sally Smith told the newspaper the conversion trend has spread to St. Marks Church in Stoke-on-Trent, where a mix of Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Bangladeshis, and Eritreans gather. Some convert to help their asylum chances, but according to Smith, those instances are rare.



Conversion in Europe is not without danger. Many who abandon Islam for Christianity face family and community estrangement. One former Muslim in Lebanon was stabbed in the street after attending church. Rev. Martens of Berlin told the Daily Mail that Muslim translators intentionally misquote Iranian and Afghani converts in order to sabotage their asylum requests.

Courtesy: WORLD News Service

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: March 17, 2017
Many American evangelicals welcomed President Donald Trumps draft executive order to strengthen religious exemptions in federal laws and programs, even though it would have fallen short of protecting Christian business owners like bakers, florists, and photographers.

Stoking their increasing concerns: high-profile lawsuits filed against those who refuse to provide their services for same-sex weddings; the Obamacare requirement of institutions to provide contraception coverage; and proposed legislation in California that all schools must obey anti-discrimination regulations or lose funding.

International Christian Concern even included the United States in its religious freedom Hall of Shame list for the first time in 2016, citing constant attacks in the media and believers being marginalized through the law.

Should the US be included on such lists? Heres how experts weighed in.

Answers are arranged on a spectrum from yes answers at the top to no answers at the bottom.

Persecution in the US isnt comparable to overseas. Yet there have been too many Christians fired or sued, and too many negative court cases and laws, to miss a clear trend. Most governments dont publicly declare their hostility toward religion; they use laws like zoning or employment to push it out of the public square. Religious freedom in the US is being pushed toward private expression.

~Jeff King, president, International Christian Concern

Every country, including the US, should be included in global assessments of religious liberty or persecution of Christians. The US has only 4.4 percent of the world population, but 10 percent of all Christians. Yet it is ...

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Sudan: Czech missionary gets life sentence for spying

A Czech aid worker has been sentenced by Sudan to life in prison for spying and waging war on the Muslim nation. Petr Jasek was arrested in December 2015, along with three Sudanese pastors, after attempting to help a Sudanese man get treatment for burns suffered during a student demonstration. Jasek was accused of tarnishing Sudans image by documenting persecution. Two of the accused pastors were sentenced to 12 years in prison for espionage and stoking sectarian strife; the third pastor was found innocent and released. Sudan ranks No. 5 on Open Doors list of countries where its hardest to be a Christian.

[Update (Feb. 27): Sudan frees Czech missionary imprisoned for life]

Brazil: Prosperity pastors prosperity investigated

Police in Brazil are investigating a prominent pastor accused of using church accounts to help launder stolen mining royalties. The biblically named Operation Timoteo included 16 searches and raids, 12 arrests, and the seizure of $21 million in assets. One raid was at the home of Silas Malafaia, a former Assemblies of God vice president who broke away to build a televangelism empire. Malafaia, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $150 million, said it was impossible to keep track of all his donations. Does it mean that if someone is a bad guy and gives me an offering without my knowing the origin, Im the bad guy? he asked his 1.3 million Twitter followers. He told reporters that if the Brazilian government can prove the money was illegal, he will return it.

Six months after Russia restricted evangelism as part of anti-terrorism efforts, more ...

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When I visit a church, I notice things. The number of blacks, Asians, and Latinos in relation to whites. Whether women are on the platform. How people are dressed. The quality of the cars in the parking lot. I notice whether the congregation is old or young, and assume that if its young, its vibrant. As an Anglican, I notice the order of worship and naturally look down my nose at all that is liturgically incorrect. I also notice how much paper is wasted in thick worship bulletins, how much empty air is being heated needlessly above the worshipers, and other signs of environmental friendliness.

I do this because Ive been catechized to notice all these big and little differences. Ive been catechized not by one group but by many different groups, each with its own identity and mission. Its a phenomenon we might call identity churchmanship.

This is a Christian version of identity politics, which has come under severe criticism as of late. But before we join the chorus of critics, we are wise to remember the value of identity politics. Groups that feel oppressed or simply misunderstood find comfort and strength in banding together around their common identity. Many scholars consider the black identity politics of the 1960s as the beginning of this wave, and it was key to the success of the civil rights movement. Black identity politics gave African Americans the courage to work together for their rights. Since that time, weve seen identity politics play out in terms of gender, sexual orientation, generations, disability, and many other identities.

My late brother, Steven, for example, was blind from birth. Sometime in the 90s he joined what was a blind identity politics group, with ...

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In the 1980s and 90s, Alexia Salvatierra was a young adult involved in the early Sanctuary Movement, which rallied churches to protect Central American immigrants fleeing civil war in their home countries. Roughly 20 years later, Salvatierra cofounded the New Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith effort that now includes 800 congregations in 30 cities committed to protecting and standing with undocumented immigrants. People who never thought much about the immigrant community before now really care, says Salvatierra, a pastor with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Its a beautiful, Christlike outpouring of love, and I am so moved by it.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Salvatierra grew up hearing immigrant stories from her grandparents, who came to the US from Mexico and Russia. I always had empathy for what courage it takes to be an immigrant, and I naturally gravitated towards other immigrants as I got older, she says. I felt injustice happening everywhere as if it was happening to meit was my fire in the belly. She became a Christian as a teenager during the Jesus Movement of the 70s and discovered hope as she read in the Bible of Gods passion for justice.

Salvatierra now serves as an advisor to the New Sanctuary Movement and also works with Matthew 25, a bipartisan Christian movement (which she co-founded) that seeks to protect and defend the vulnerable in the name of Jesus. From her home in California, Salvatierra spoke with CT about the need for immigration reform, how deportations impact kids, and how churches across the country are getting involved.

How does your faith inform your work?

I teach and train about faith-rooted ...

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E-mail Discoveries Prompt New Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood in East Bay Area Contact: Brad Dacus, Pacific Justice Institute, 949-422-0395



FAIRFIELD, Calif., March 17, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Pacific Justice Institute filed suit this week against a Northern California affiliate of Planned Parenthood that blocked a pro-life ministry from renting office space.



In late 2014, Alpha Pregnancy Clinics of Northern California signed a lease to rent space in Vacaville just across the hall from Planned Parenthood. But before Alpha could move into the space, the property owner broke the lease. PJI filed suit on Alpha's behalf, and while prosecuting the case, it was discovered that Planned Parenthood was working behind the scene to pressure the building owner into preventing Alpha's move.



The new lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of Solano County, alleges interference by Planned Parenthood with Alpha's business and contractual relations, as well as civil rights violations.



Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, "No ministry should be denied the ability to rent space based on their deeply-held beliefs. The evidence we have uncovered shows that Planned Parenthood will stop at nothing to protect its abortuaries and suppress the voices of the pro-life community. In this case, they broke the law and must be held accountable."



Alpha's first lawsuit, against the property owner, is scheduled to go to trial this summer in the Superior Court of Solano County.

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Gross Parental Rights Violations Exposed by Liberty Counsel in Northern Idaho

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit



SANDPOINT, Idaho, March 17, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- School administrators were caught colluding with community activists to recruit students of the Forrest M. Bird Charter School to join a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), while intentionally hiding this information from their parents. Principal Mary Jensen admitted the secrecy under which school staff and others had operated. Some of the same adults had even facilitated kids meeting off-campus at a local library under the supervision of "supportive" third parties. Jensen stated that they wanted to be "a progressive school on that sort of thing, but we did not want to be 'in-your-face'," so parents could not prevent their children from attending. She states "we're keeping it kind of on the down low," because "this is North Idaho," and "kids who wanted to participate in the club did not necessarily want their parents to know."

Principal Jensen also stated that starting this club was one of her goals, saying, "The adultswe spent months trying to do this thing." Incredibly, Ms. Jensen also claims that "we don't want the kids to be 'excluded' from developing the [club's] mission statement, because it's their club." She also states "One of the members of the adult crew wanted us to be the activists, doing the parades, you know, be in-their-face kind of stuff." "We decided not to do activism at first, because that's a big step." She stated, "I didn't want to do thatbecause this is North Idaho."

Liberty Counsel originally contacted the school asking for assurances that it would respect parental rights. The school falsely claimed no violations had taken place and its legal counsel replied, "[M]y clients deny that they have ever violated any parental right to control their minor children..." The school also refused to require parental permission slips for clubs, despite parent permission being required for almost anything else, including field trips, medicine, and even dress code expectations.

"It is outrageous that this school would intentionally undermine parental rights in this manner. Parents have the fundamental right to know about and direct the activities and associations of their minor children," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "It is simply not credible that this GSA is a 'student-led club.' Parents must stand up for their rights and remove their children, and expose activities like this to public scrutiny, as our clients have done here," Staver concluded.

Idaho law allows for recordings with authorization from one party.

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.
home World Brazilian President Michel Temer forced to move out of palace because of 'ghosts'

Brazilian President Michel Temer has revealed that he and his family were forced to leave their official residence at the Alvorada Palace because "ghosts" kept them from sleeping well at night.

"I felt something strange there. I wasn't able to sleep right from the first night. The energy wasn't good," Temer said in an interview with Portuguese-language magazine Veja, as reported by Breitbart.

The president said that his seven-year-old son Michelzinho was comfortable at the palace, but he and his wife, 33-year-old wife Marcela, could not cope with the sleepless nights.

Marcela, a former beauty queen, has reportedly called in a priest to drive out the evil spirits but without much success.

The Alvorada Palace, designed by Brazil's most famous architect Oscar Niemeyer, was built in 1958 on a peninsula jutting out into a lake.

Temer was not the first president to suggest that the palace was haunted. Former President Dilma Rousseff, who once lived in the palace, did not deny the rumors, although she rejected the idea that ghosts were to be feared.

"I am not afraid of ghosts, but a relative of mine will not go into the hallways because they are afraid of running into Figueiredo," she told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo in 2014, referring to the late military leader JoAo Baptista Figueiredo, who is said to roam the halls of the palace.

Temer and his family have since returned to the Jaburu Palace, which was the official vice-presidential residence, where the family once lived while he served as Rousseff's second-in-command.

The Jaburu Palace had remained empty because no one replaced Temer when he was elevated to the presidency after Rousseff was impeached last year for breaking budget accounting laws.

The 76-year-old Temer is also facing challenges to his presidency due to accusations that he benefited from illegal donations when he and Rousseff ran together in 2014. The 2014 election results could be nullified if he is found guilty by federal judges, according to Telegraph.

Rousseff, who belongs to the far-left Workers' Party, has accused Temer of organizing a plot against her, calling him and house speaker Eduardo Cunha "chief and vice chief of a coup."

The former president relied heavily on alliances with countries like Cuba and Venezuela for support in the region. Temer, on the other hand, had vowed to open up Brazil to more business-friendly policies.
home World Franklin Graham says he questioned God after aid workers got infected with Ebola

Evangelist Franklin Graham said that he questioned God when two aid workers working with Samaritan's Purse got infected with Ebola while serving in West Africa.

Dr. Kent Brantly and nurse Nancy Writebol caught international media attention after they got infected with Ebola while they were working to fight against the spread of the virus at the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia.

The documentary titled "Facing Darkness" chronicles their efforts to fight the outbreak and the race against time to bring them home and get treated.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Graham, the president of Samaritan's Purse, recounted how he struggled to seek help for Brantly and Writebol.

"To be honest when I first heard that Dr. Brantly had been infected, I didn't even know how to pray. At first, I just kept saying, 'God why? Why, [he's a] young doctor, such a great guy, why?'" Graham said.

The evangelist narrated that as he made several calls to help the aid workers, he saw how God provided him with a solution to a difficult problem.

"You could see God's hand at work through this entire film," he said. "It's a documentary of God's faithfulness and [shows that] God is a good God, He's a loving God [and] He cares for us," he added.

The Ebola virus began to spread in March 2014, and it became a raging epidemic by June. Over 28,000 people were infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The outbreak caught the attention of the international community with the help of the brave aid workers from Samaritan's Purse. However, the virus claimed over 11,000 lives before it came under control.

Liberia was eventually declared Ebola-free following a massive public health education program that helped to stop the spread of the virus.

Graham said that the Samaritan's Purse aid workers who bravely went to Africa were inspired by the Gospel. He said that the team believed that Jesus was the great physician, and they used their knowledge in medicine as a tool to show God's love to the Liberians.

Apart from the story of Brantly and Writebol, the documentary will also show what happens when people choose compassion over fear in service to others.

"Facing Darkness," which won the Best Feature Documentary Premiere Award at the 2016 Heartland Film Festival, will premiere in select U.S. theaters for one night through Fathom Events on March 30.
home World Two South Korean pastors detained in China for smuggling North Korean defectors

Two South Korean pastors have been arrested by Chinese authorities for helping to smuggle North Korean defectors out of China to avoid being deported back to their country.

One of the pastors was arrested with his wife last month while they were boarding a flight to South Korea in China's eastern city of Qingdao. The other was apprehended with his wife at a hotel in the northeastern city of Qinhuangdao. The two pastors are still detained, but their wives have been released.

Peter Jung, chief of the Seoul-based human rights group Justice for North Korea, said that the pastors admitted during the interrogation that they helped the defectors because they would face inhumane treatment from North Korea if they were deported.

An official at Seoul's foreign ministry said that the missionaries are being held at a detention center in Liaoning Province.

"Our consulate general in Shenyang has held meetings with our (detained) nationals and provided practical consular assistance, including information on hiring a lawyer and requesting humanitarian treatment from the Chinese public safety authorities. We will continue to provide consular help," said the official, as reported by Yonhap News.

The news of the arrests follows a series of detentions and expulsions of South Korean missionaries from Jilin, a northeastern province bordering North Korea. An estimated 30 to 70 pastors have been expelled from China in the past few months.

According to Christianity Today, there are about 500 officially registered South Korean missionaries in China, although some speculate that the actual number could be as high as 2,000. Many are drawn to the northeast due to the poverty in the region and its proximity to North Korea.

Some believe that the expulsions are due to the tightened restrictions on Christians, while others blame China's opposition to Seoul's plan to build an American missile shield.

South Korea and the U.S. maintain that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is intended at defending against a growing North Korean missile threat. But China expressed fears that it may be able to probe deep into its territory and undermine its security.

Due to the increasing tensions, some South Korean missions agencies have recalled their workers, and the country's foreign ministry has advised missions groups to use "extra caution."
Bar Mitzvah in Israel halted after boy found to be wearing 'Christian' prayer shawl

A bar mitzvah or 'coming of age' ceremony in Israel had to be halted after a rabbi spotted that the 13-year-old boy was wearing a prayer shawl with Christian inscriptions.

A local newspaper, Hashavua, described it as a 'great embarrassment' when the inscriptions were discovered on the prayer shawl or tallit during the service, at the Merom Israel Synagogue in Bat Yam.

A spokesman for the synagogue said the family was not particularly religious, so did not notice the Christian words in the inscription. The synagogue told Israel Today that had the bar mitzvah gone ahead with the boy wearing this prayer shawl, it would have been deemed illicit.

A replacement shawl was provided and the service continued.

The family wishes its identity kept secret. Many Israeli shops however sell 'messianic' prayer shawls.

Last September, there was controversy after photographs emerged of Donald Trump wearing a traditional Jewish prayer shawl inside a church. He was presented with the shawl during a visit to the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit, Michigan. He was given the shawl along with a Bible by Detroit pastor Bishop Wayne Jackson, who said: 'This is the Jewish Heritage Study Bible and we have it especially for you, and we have one for your wife. Because when things go down, you can study the word of God. When things seem like it's almost impossible, you read Mark 9:23, "If one canst believe, all things are possible."'
Exorcist fails to drive out 'evil spirits,' forcing Brazilian president to leave 'haunted' presidential palace

It seemed like a scene from the sci-fi movie "Ghostbusters." The only difference was that the "ghosts" that apparently showed up at the official residence of Brazilian President Michel Temer seemed scary enough to force the president and his family to leave the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia.

Speaking to Vega magazine, the 76-year-old Temer said he believes the palace is haunted. The former vice president and his family moved to the palace after he succeeded President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached last year.

"I felt something strange there. I wasn't able to sleep right from the first night. The energy wasn't good," Temer, who is a Catholic, said.

"Marcela felt the same thing," he said of his 33-year-old wife, who is a former beauty queen. "Only Michelzinho [his seven-year-old son], who went running from one end to the other, liked it," he added.

"We even started to wonder: could there be ghosts?" he said.

The president even asked a priest to perform exorcism rites on the palace to drive out the "evil spirits," but the unnamed exorcist apparently failed to do so.

Temer and his family have since moved back to their former home, the official residence of the vice-president, where they had been living since 2011.

Temer could have called for the intercession of a fellow Latin American in his attempt to rid the Brazilian presidential palace of "evil spirits."

In a previous report, 80-year-old Mexican priest Fr. Francisco Lopez Sedano said he had successfully performed over 6,000 exorcisms, adding that he can confidently say that the devil is afraid of him.

Sedano pointed out that the devil is afraid of him not because of his track record but because God is on his side.

The priest said the devil often speaks to him through possessed people. He always responds with this statement: "I am nobody, but I come from Christ, your Lord and God and you leave right now  I command you in His name that you go. Out!"

Sedano said in his 40 years as an exorcist, he has learned that the devil is a person and not a thing. So when talking with a demon, he said people should remember "one isn't talking with a thing, one is talking with a person."

The priest said being an exorcist is a divine mandate. "A fellow priest who was involved in it made me see that fighting the Evil One was an obligation. He said to me, 'You have to enter into this by the command of the Lord.' The three mandates are to carry the word of God, heal the sick and cast out demons," he said.
Former Queen's Chaplain Gavin Ashenden quits 'liberal' Church of England

A former Queen's chaplain has quit as a Church of England priest after a long-running objection to what he saw as the liberalising trend of the CofE.

Canon Gavin Ashenden made the unusual move of resigning his orders on Friday, Christian Today can reveal, leaving more than 35 years of ordained ministry.

An ardent conservative on both sexuality and women priests, Rev Ashenden confirmed to Christian Today he had signed the 'deed of relinquishment' under the Clerical Disabilities Act 1870. This starts a six-month interim period before he officially leaves the Church.

He declined to comment on the move until his six-month waiting time is up.

It comes after the long-standing critic of the Church left his post as Queen's chaplain in January following a row over a Quran reading in Glasgow Cathedral. The Shropshire-based priest criticised the decision by Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral, for inviting a reading from the Islamic holy book at the Epiphany service on January 6.

'After a conversation instigated by officials at Buckingham Palace, I decided the most honourable course of action was to resign,' he said at the time pointing to a 'a very important convention that the Queen should not be drawn into publics affairs where she is deemed to be taking a position'.

His decision to leave ministry in the Church could lead others to follow suit. A number of conservative Anglicans have voiced their concern about the Archbishop of Canterbury's call for a 'radical, new Christian inclusion' after a report maintaining a largely conservative stance on sexuality was rejected by the CofE's ruling general synod.

'There is no sign the Church of England is going to reconsider its policy of accommodation with the secular culture,' Ashenden said in a previous interview with Christian Today.

'It has abandoned certain key and apostolic norms,' he added, warning the CofE would collapse within decades because of its refusal to adhere to conservative Christianity.

He contrasted the year-on-year decline in England with the rapidly growing churches in Russia and China and said the difference was they had 'not made an accommodation with the culture'.

He said in the January interview: 'There are two kinds of Anglicanism. A secular Anglicanism and a traditional biblical Anglicanism.

'I see myself and others as very soon having to make a choice.'

He described himself as 'in limbo' between the CofE and other Anglican churches around the world.

'I certainly look at worldwide Anglicanism and I associate myself with some parts of the Anglican church that have kept the biblical faith. And I increasingly disassociate myself with parts like the Church of England.'
How to put the saint back in your St Patrick's Day

What started out as a feast day commemorating the patron saint of Ireland, St Patrick, is now seen as an excuse by many to get drunk. You may find it hard to believe but St Patrick's Day (March 17) was once a day when people abstained from drinking alcohol because pubs were closed to observe the religious holiday. Today it's believed that around $245 million is spent on beer and more than 13 million pints of Guinness are drunk. This year alone, Americans are expected to spend close to $4.4 billion on the celebration, according to the National Retail Federation. Ireland has the world's highest percentage of native-born people living abroad so this, and the fact that 30 countries organise St Patrick's Day parades, explains why millions around the world celebrate the festival every year.

For those of you who want to have a sober saint Patrick's Day or at the very least acknowledge the true meaning of today, these activities and ideas will help to inspire you.

Have a Traditional Irish Meal

Instead of sitting down to eat your usual dinner, why not opt for a feast with an Irish flavour? A slow cooked Irish stew will be the go-to dish for many hoping to infuse a little bit of Ireland into their meals tonight. If you're short on time you can opt for the Irish-inspired corned beef and cabbage or any number of popular Irish recipes.

Make Some Shamrock Shaped Goodies

It's believed that St Patrick used the three leaves of the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the Irish when he was spreading the news of Christianity to the country's pagan community. You can make shamrock shaped biscuits or cupcakes with shamrock decorations to mark the day. Both are a easy and fun to make and they're a great way to follow up a hearty Irish meal. Kids of any age will love making and eating these too.

Wear Something Green

Although blue was the colour that was originally associated with St Patrick, green is the one which has been connected to him and Ireland since the 17th Century. Inject a little green into your wardrobe today or go head-to-toe if you're feeling particularly confident.

Attend a St Patrick's Day Parade

London's parade was last weekend but there's still time to head on down to those taking place in Dublin, Belfast and New York if you're in any of those cities. The parades in Dublin and Belfast both kick off at 12pm and New York's starts at 11am. Parades are great fun for the whole family to enjoy and will give you the chance to celebrate some traditional Irish culture.

Organise a Sober St Patrick's Day Event

In response to the extreme drunkenness of this feast day, William Spencer Reilly, a theatre and television producer, created the Sober St Patrick's Day organisation in a bid to reclaim the "true spirit of the day" and honour Irish heritage. This year's New York event is sold out but there are others taking place in different cities. Can't attend? You can get some friends and family members together and have your own sober St Patrick's celebration instead.

Say a St Patrick Inspired Prayer

The leader of the Catholic church in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, has used today to ask for prayers for displaced families and refugees. You could respond to his request by saying a special prayer for migrants, and this prayer about Ireland's patron saint is another way to make sure you put the saint back in your St Patrick's Day.

God our Father,

you sent Saint Patrick to preach your glory to the people of Ireland.

By the help of his prayers,

may all Christians proclaim your love to all men.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.
Leading gay cleric Jeffrey John left off shortlist to be bishop

Gay cleric Jeffrey John is not on the new shortlist to be next Bishop of Llandaff, a source has confirmed to Christian Today.

Very Rev Jeffrey John narrowly missed out on being appointed bishop first time round despite winning support from more than half of the selection body, Christian Today revealed.

The current Dean of St Albans has strong support in the area but failed to win the two-thirds of votes needed in the electoral college.

Now the leading figure, who has previously been turned down for senior roles over his sexuality, has been left off a new shortlist drawn up by bishops.

The Church in Wales has announced a panel of bishops would make the decision 'as soon as all necessary formalities are finalised'.

It comes after the electoral college of 47 people, made up representatives from each diocese and all the senior bishops, failed to agree on any candidate.

Neither the Church in Wales nor the Church of England are opposed to clergy being in civil partnerships. The Church of England requests that clergy in civil partnerships vow to remain sexually chaste, but the Church in Wales has no such restriction.

Despite this Christian Today understands Dr John's long-term civil partnership with Grant Holmes, another Anglican priest, was a factor in his rejection by traditionalists.

Dr John was nominated to be Bishop of Reading in 2003 but was forced to withdraw under intense pressure from conservatives.

Later he was in the running for Bishop of Bangor in 2008 and then again for Bishop of Southwark in 2010 but was both times turned down with opponents threatening a split in the Church.

His latest rejection to be Bishop of Llandaff is particularly notable because of support he received from local clergy and parishioners in the largely liberal diocese.

The Bench of Bishops will now meet with all shortlisted candidates before reaching a verdict.

The Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, John Davies, said: 'We received a wide variety of responses to the consultation and heard from a particularly large number of people suggesting possible candidates.

'We have now considered those responses and, after a lengthy but productive meeting, we are ready to move to the next stage in the appointment process.'

A Church in Wales spokeswoman declined to comment on any names on the shortlist.
More than 100 Christian leader oppose Trump's cuts to foreign aid

More than 100 Christian leaders are pleading with Congress to reject Donald Trump's cuts to foreign aid after a draft budget showed a 28 per cent spending reduction.

Dozens of faith leaders including two who prayed at Trump's inauguration ceremony have written to House speaker Paul Ryan, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.

'Today, there are 65 million displaced people, the most since World War II, and 795 million people still go to bed hungry every night,' they write urging Congress to block the proposals.

'Matthew 25 tells us when we serve the least of these, we are serving the Lord. As people of faith, we cannot turn our back on those in desperate need.'

Trump justified his cuts to overseas aid by saying it was time for 'America first'. In a statement accompanying the draft budget he said the reduction was because the government needs to 'prioritise the security and well-being of Americans, and to ask the rest of the world to step up and pay its fair share'.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at a White House briefing: '[The cuts] should come as a surprise to no one who watched the campaign. The president said, specifically, hundreds of times, you covered him, "I'm going to spend less money on people overseas and more money on people back home," and that's exactly what we're doing with this budget.'

But Christian leaders are deeply unhappy with the proposals with evangelical leaders joining Catholics and others to oppose the change.

The signatories, who include Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Dr Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, both of whom prayed at Trump's inauguration, write: 'America is blessed with fertile land, abundant natural resources, a strong economy, and faithful citizens who value religious freedom.

'But beyond our borders, many countries experience unparalleled suffering and loss of life due to extreme poverty, disease, natural disasters, and conflict.'

The 106 signatories also include Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Dr Ronnie Floyd, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Rev Johnnie Moore, humanitarian and author of the book Defying ISIS and Rich Stearns, president of World Vision USA.

They warn America's national security could be affected by the cuts.

'We are grateful for America's global development and diplomacy programs that have been instrumental in saving lives, safeguarding religious liberties, and keeping America safe and secure,' they write.

'At a time when we're especially security conscious, the International Affairs Budget is crucial to demonstrating our values to the world, building friendships with other nations, and lowering security risks around the world.'

Amounting to just one per cent of the total US budget, the faith leaders say International Development funding has 'helped alleviate the suffering of millions' as well as 'freedom and human rights, protecting religious freedom for millions around the world'.

They conclude: 'As followers of Christ, it is our moral responsibility to urge you to support and protect the International Affairs Budget, and avoid disproportionate cuts to these vital programs that ensure that our country continues to be the "shining city upon a hill."'

A White House spokesman defended the budget, saying it 'seeks to reduce or end direct funding for international organisations whose missions do not substantially advance US foreign policy interests, are duplicative, or are not well-managed.

'Additional steps will be taken to make the [State] Department and USAID leaner, more efficient, and more effective. These steps to reduce foreign assistance free up funding for critical priorities here at home and put America first.'

The draft budget also vowed to cut US contributions to the UN with a spokesman for UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres warning 'abrupt funding cuts can force the adoption of ad-hoc measures that will undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts'.

He said: 'The international community is facing enormous global challenges that can only be addressed by a strong and effective multilateral system, of which the United Nations remains the fundamental pillar.'
New threat to Christians? Pakistan asks Facebook to help crack down on 'blasphemy' online

Pakistan has asked Facebook to help investigate 'blasphemous content' posted online.

The social network has agreed to send a team to Pakistan to address the government's reservations, the interior ministry claimed, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promising a crackdown.

Blasphemy laws are highly contentious in Pakistan with breaches often leading to mob riots and extra-judicial killings.

Christians and other minority groups are targeted under the controversial laws, human rights groups claim.

But Pakistan's interior minister Chaudhry Nisar vowed he would take 'any steps necessary' to ban blasphemous content online and wants Facebook to help identify those posting it.

'Facebook and other service providers should share all information about the people behind this blasphemous content with us,' he is quoted as saying in local media.

Previous convictions for blasphemy have included criticism of the Quran and drawings of the Islamic prophet Muhammed.

Aneeqa Anthony, chief executive of Christian persecution charity The Voice Society, said if enforced the blasphemy ban must apply to all religious groups.

"If Government is taking this initiative than it should be for all religions because everyone is having the same religious feelings for their respective religions,' she told Christian Today. 'Law and rules shall be for everyone, without the discrimination of majority and minority [groups].'

Facebook has not commented on the claims it is sending a team to Pakistan. But a statement quoted by AP said the social media site viewed government requests with care keeping in mind 'the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users'.

Facebook said: 'We disclose information about accounts solely in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law. A Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or other formal request may be required for international requests, and we include these in our Government Requests Report.'
Parents say prayer brought son back to life after nearly drowning

"He was dead. He was blue and dead."

This was what Matthew Cunningham told local station KBOI in Boise, Idaho, referring to his 22-month-old son, Matty.

Hours later, however, Matty "woke up" at the hospital where he was takenas if nothing happened, stunning everyone.

Family members earlier found the toddler's body floating in a neighbour's pond after he had wandered away from his family home in Baker City. They immediately began performing CPR on the boy but without no success.

Family members began to pray and "begged God for a miracle," Elsa, the boy's mom, told KBOU.

"We just prayed and prayed and prayed," Matthew said.

The first doctors to check Matty at the hospital also "painted the story of a dead child," according to Elsa.

The family decided to bring Matty to a hospital in downtown Boise, Idaho, where doctors performed an MRI on his brain.

The Cunninghams kept on praying but were already steeling themselves for the worst.

Then, just like that, the miracle happened.

Doctors told the family that Matty's MRI showed no brain damage at all.

Within hours, Matty slowly came back to life. Moments later, the boy was already running inside the ICU.

Matty is now back home with his parents, who can't thank God enough for giving their son a second chance at life.

"We just fell to our knees and thanked God," Matthew told KBOI. "Praising God ... My son is dead and now he's alive. It defies any logic. This is just a miracle."

Last month, Christian Today also reported about a 14-year-old girl who had been declared dead and was already covered in white cloth on her hospital bed.

Then suddenly, the girl named Lydia moved, coming out of her coma after six days. Lydia sat up, then stood beside her bed, exclaiming, "Mummy, our Lord Jesus, our Lord and God Jesus Christ!"

The hospital staff and even her family members at first backed away in terror, thinking that they were seeing a ghost.

But then Lydia reassured them, saying, "Mummy, I'm Lydia ... not a ghost."

"I'm alive! Jesus gave me my life back, and healed me!" she told them.
Should Christians be worried about three-parent babies?

The UK could have its first 'three-parent baby' as soon as 2018.

Fertility regulators have given the first British licence to create embryos from two women and one man to doctors in Newcastle.

So is this as dodgy as it sounds?

Well, the intention of the procedure is good. The aim is to overcome hereditary mitochondrial diseases passed down through genes which leave people without enough energy to keep their own heart beating.

The team in Newcastle expects to be able to help around 25 couples every year who might otherwise have lost their children.

How does that actually work?

The disease is caused by faulty mitochondria, tiny parts of each cell that convert food to energy. The defect is passed down through the mother's DNA .

So the procedure works by taking the unhealthy fertilised embryo from the two parents and removing the nucleus. This contains all the key information that defines our physical traits. That nucleus is then inserted into a donor embryo which does not have the unhealthy mitochondria.

It sounds great. What is the problem?

Well a number of ethicists, including some Christians, say the procedure is problematic because it involves mixing the DNA of three different people.

Opponents also say the long-term consequences of mixing DNA are unknown and could cause harmful effects in two or three generations time which we don't know about yet.

Mark Bhagwandin, from Life charity, said: 'There is nothing cautious about the approval of a licence which will result in the uncertain and potentially dangerous genetic modification of human beings.

'It is at the very least reckless and irresponsible given that we have absolutely no idea what the long term consequences are to us interfering with the human genome.'

Are there any other concerns?

Others have said the procedure is 'playing at God' and opens the door to designer babies.

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it is 'the opening of a door, the beginning of an experiment that cannot possibly stop here'.

Although he admits the primary aim is to cure a disease, he raises the idea of it being a slippery slope and says it is one step that will be used to justify the next.

'It opens the door inevitably to designer babies', 'redefining what it means to be human,' he says in a podcast.

'It appears to be a very small issue, but it opens a very big door.'

Are all Christians opposed to it?

No not at all. The Church of England is sitting on the fence and says it doesn't outright disagree with the procedure but wants more research on the impacts as well as further debate on the ethics of the issue.

But Professor John Bryant, a Christian biosciences expert at the University of Exeter, is much more forthright in his approval. He told Christian Today when the legislation was first approved: 'The idea that this puts us on a slippery slope to designer babies is nonsense.

'The technology for doing that involves altering nuclear genes  ie. the main set of genes  and that technology has been available for over 25 years.

'Nobody has suggested that it should be legal to use it with human embryos even though it is very widely used with other mammals, especially mice for use in medical research.'
St Patrick was an 'undocumented migrant' says Irish archbishop

St Patrick was an 'undocumented migrant', the Archbishop of Armagh has said in a message for the saint's feast day, observed today around the world.

The Primate of All Ireland, Eamon Martin, used his traditional annual message to drive home the plight of migrants and to urge Christians to care for them. He said: 'This Saint Patrick's Day, prompted by the situation of thousands of displaced people around the world, let us think about Patrick the "unlearned refugee" (as he once described himself), the slave in exile, Patrick the undocumented migrant.'

He continued: 'As Irish people, we cannot think of Patrick without acknowledging the enormous humanitarian and pastoral challenges facing growing numbers of people who find themselves displaced and without status in our world. This is so shockingly exemplified by the refugee crisis here in Europe. I invite you to pray for refugees and for all displaced families at this time and, wherever you are, to encourage the hospitality and welcome for which we, Irish, are famous the world over.'

Martin said: 'Saint Patrick's experience of isolation and captivity as a teenager transformed and shaped his whole life and his relationship with God. His lonely time as a slave on the hills of Ireland became a transforming experience, where he felt embraced by the fatherly love of God. The more he prayed, day and night, the more he came to realise that God was calling him to conversion and close friendship with him.

'Having once been "like a stone lying in the mud" he now felt as if God had picked him up and placed him at the very top of the wall!'

It was no wonder, he said, that Patrick was 'able to feel great empathy with the struggles of his people, especially those of his new converts in Ireland who were themselves captured and sold into slavery by the human traffickers of his day'.

He concluded: 'Centuries later Saint Patrick continues to inspire Irish people everywhere to speak and work for an end to similar exploitation where it is happening today.'
#StPatricksDay: was the Irish saint an accidental heretic?

Today is St Patrick's Day, an occasion to celebrate an Irish icon, a patron saint and legend of Christian history.

As with many saints, determining precise histories can be difficult, with famous figures often mythologised and lost in legend.

St Patrick is associated with the shamrock, the three-leaf clover that has become a classic emblem of Irish culture. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock as an illustration of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity  the idea the God is one God, in the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately, the well-intentioned Patrick may have, in so doing, confessed an ancient Church heresy.

It's easy to imagine that using a human example might illuminate the complexity of the Trinity  for example, thinking about water, ice and vapour, or indeed the three leaves of a shamrock. Unfortunately, these examples end up being more confusing unhelpful  as this comedic video from 'Lutheran Satire' shows.

St Patrick's Bad Analogies presents the saint attempting to explain the Trinity to a pair of Irish peasants  but he is soon schooled by them for stumbling into ancient heresies. Watch it below.

With the water/vapour/ice analogy, poor Patrick ends up confessing 'modalism, where God is simply one person revealing himself in three different forms. With the shamrock, Patrick is condemned for confessing 'partialism', where each member of the godhead only represents one third of the wholeness of God, rather than each being fully divine.

The peasants tell Patrick that God is also not like the sun (consisting of a star, and the heat and light that emanate from the star), nor is God like a father who is also a husband and an employer. The Trinity is also not like the three layers of an apple. A flustered Patrick ends up simply confessing the lengthy, jargon-laden Christian creeds on the matter.

The St Patrick sent up in the video is not hard to relate to. God is, perhaps not surprisingly, hard to explain. But perhaps one should be encouraged that the transcendent, triune relationship of love that spun the Universe into being is somehow beyond our human analogies.

It isn't nonsense, it's just mysterious. Through the Trinity, we see that God desired to become known by us, but also did so in a way that we couldn't put in a simple box.

Among everything else that Patrick will be remembered for on this day, if he pointed to the ineffability of the divine, and the limits of human expression speaking about God  then that's no bad legacy at all.

You can follow @JosephHartropp on Twitter
Turkey in furious 'holy war' threat after EU headscarf ruling: 'This is a clash between cross and crescent'

Turkish President Erdogan has accused Europe of fuelling a 'clash' between Islam and Christianity after an EU court ruling allowed employers to ban headscarves and other religious symbols in the workplace.

'Shame on the EU. Down with your European principles, values and justice,' Erdogan told supporters in Sakarya. 'They started a clash between the cross and the crescent, there is no other explanation.'

In a toxic war of words that alluded to the Crusades, Erdogan spoke amid an ongoing row after Turkish ministers were barred from holding rallies designed to whip up support for a constitutional referendum.

Erdogan referred to a ruling by the European Court of Justice that said employees can be prevented from the 'visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign' including Islamic headscarves.

His speech comes after the his foreign minister warned 'holy wars will soon begin' in an aggressive tit-for-tat exchange after Dutch and German authorities banned Turkish political campaigning.

'When you look at the many parties you see there is no difference between the social democrats and fascist [Geert] Wilders. All have the same mentality,' said Mevlut Cavusoglu. 'Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe? You have begun to collapse Europe. You are dragging Europe into the abyss. Holy wars will soon begin in Europe.'

The Turkish foreign minister was due to hold a rally in Rotterdam on Saturday but Dutch officials withdrew his permission to land.

Erdogan and other government figures have called the Dutch ministers 'fascists' and 'Nazis' in response with EU leaders retaliating saying the allegations were 'detached from reality'.

The dispute has sparked protests in Turkey and around Europe ahead of a referendum on April 16.

Ministers are targeting Turkish voters in Europe who could swing the decision and see Turkey's parliamentary system replaced with an executive presidency. The possibility has caused alarm among human rights groups concerned with the sweeping powers it would hand Erdogan.
Was St Patrick married? This folklore researcher thinks so

New research suggests that Ireland's beloved patron saint St Patrick actually had a wife.

Today is St Patrick's Day, a day when many across the world celebrate the Christian figure and icon of Irish culture. Shane Lehane, a folklorist of University College Cork, Ireland has now suggested a 'feminist angle' on the tradition with the possibility that Patrick had a wife.

In the old Irish calendar the day following today is known as 'Sheelah's Day'. Lehane said that Sheelah was Patrick's 'other half', who was celebrated on March 18 as an extension of Patrick's celebrations. The pair 'came to represent the ubiquitous Irish couple'.

He said: 'I came across numerous references that Sheelah was thought to be Patrick's wife. She was his other half. The folk tradition has no problem with such detail. The fact that we have Patrick and Sheelah together should be no surprise. Because that duality, that union of the male and female together, is one of the strongest images that we have in our mythology.'

One historical mention of Sheelah comes from John Carr's 1806 The Stranger in Ireland: 'From a spirit of gallantry, these merry devotees continue drunk the greater part of the next day, viz., the 18th of March, all in honour of Sheelagh, St Patrick's wife.'

Lehane adds that the possibility of the saint having a wife  and that wife being given her own day  was radical for its time, though easily accepted in Irish culture.

'What I think is very interesting is that people in Ireland in the past had no problem whatsoever accepting that Patrick had a wife. The Church was very strong and during the period of Lent from Ash Wednesday right through to Easter Sunday you had major prohibitions. However, folk tradition was such that Patrick afforded a special dispensation and Irish people were allowed to celebrate Patrick's day which always fell in the middle of Lent.

'It seems to have been extended to March 18 and was a continuation of celebrations. They continued to drink on Sheelah's day and there is a sense that the women were more involved in the celebrations on the 18th. So there is a feminist angle in there.'

Lehane suggested that is time to restore the place of Sheelah, who 'represented the female', in Irish society.

'She is an important folk deity. The figure of Sheelah was perhaps much bigger than suggested by the scant mentions we find in the old newspaper accounts. She would have been massively important. She represents a folk personification, allied to what can be termed the female cosmic agency, and being such, would have played a major role in people's everyday lives. It is a pity that the day has died out. But maybe we will revive it. I am sure Failte Ireland [Ireland's tourist board] would be delighted with it. I think it would be a great idea.'
10 things to know about Mahmoud Said

Valerie Didier Hess of Christies, co-author of Saids newly published catalogue raisonne, offers an expert guide to the great pioneer of modern Arab art

1

He was the son of a prime minister and the uncle of Queen Farida of Egypt Mahmoud Said was born in Alexandria on 8 April 1897, the son of Mohamed Pacha Said, who was Prime Minister at a critical time in Egypts history (1910-1914 and again briefly in 1919)  one that witnessed the rise of nationalism which ultimately paved the road for the countrys independence. Said was brought up in a privileged aristocratic milieu, and was educated by foreign private tutors. He was also the uncle of the future queen of Egypt, Safinaz Zulficar, better known as Queen Farida.

2

He spoke fluent French and English as well as Arabic, and travelled across Europe in the early 1920s Said went on to attend some of the most prestigious schools in Alexandria and Cairo. In the early 1920s he embarked on a cultural trip across Europe, which included three weeks in Paris in July 1921, whereupon he attended drawing classes in the free section of the prestigious Academie Julian. He also took classes at Antoine Bourdelles school, LAcademie de la Grande Chaumiere. During his stay in Europe, Said also visited Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, discovering masterpieces of Western art in museums and churches. The work of Flemish Primitives such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling, and the vibrant colours of the Early Italian Renaissance painters, including the Bellini brothers and Vittorio Carpaccio, had a particular impact on the young artist.

3

Art was his hobby and passion  his full-time job was as a judge Following his fathers wishes, Said pursued a career in law, graduating from the French Law School of Cairo in 1919. He was appointed assistant judge at the Mixed Courts of Egypt in 1922, first judge in Mansourah in 1927 and in Alexandria in 1937. He only resigned from his legal career in 1947, aged 50. Up until that point he had painted in his spare time, being torn between his passion for art and his professional obligations.

4

He was a pioneer of modern Arab art Although somewhat figurative in style and sometimes classical in subject matter, Said broke away from academic art and the traditions of the West, using them as stepping stones to forge his own signature style. In doing so he became a pioneer of modern Arab painting, producing art that was truly groundbreaking. Even the rebellious young artists of the Art et Liberte group  the so-called Egyptian Surrealists, who were highly critical of all the other Egyptian pioneers of the First Generation  invited Said to participate as a guest of honour in their first and second controversial exhibitions held in Cairo, in 1940 and 1942.

5

He painted around 40 female nudes Around one in ten of Saids 400-plus paintings depict female nudes. He portrayed various models in different positions, often characterised by gold-bronze skin and sensuous bodies, and complemented by simple attributes such as headscarves, jewellery, bracelets, anklets, curtains, cushions or sofas. Although Said had his own painting studio (originally on the top floor of the family villa in Ginaclis, Alexandria, where the current Mahmoud Said Museum stands), it was in the Alexandria studio of his friend, the Greek artist Aristomenis Angelopoulos (1900-1990), that he gained access to female models. These models represent the plebeian women of Egypt  figures that Said regarded as embodying pure and intrinsic Egyptian beauty.

6

He exhibited four times at the Venice Bienniale and once at the International Exhibition in Paris One of Saids most monumental paintings is La Ville, which now hangs in the main hall of the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo. It was most probably a commission from the government and displayed at the Egyptian Pavilion of the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, after which he was awarded a medal of honour. Saids international exposure extended to America, where he exhibited works in New York in 1936 and 1937, and to Italy, where several of his paintings featured in the Egyptian Pavilion of the Venice Bienniale held in 1938, 1948, 1950 and 1952.

Open a larger version of this image Mahmoud Said (Egyptian, 1897-1964), Introspection, 1930. Charcoal on paper laid down on card, 10 x 8in (27 x 20.3cm). Sold for $125,000 on 18 March 2017 at Christies in Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel

7

He had two major retrospective exhibitions during his lifetime  and a third one shortly after his death Saids first solo show was organised by the Atelier dAlexandrie in 1942, and his first major retrospective exhibition was held at the Gezira Centre for Modern Art in 1951. On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the 1952 revolution, another retrospective exhibition of Saids works took place at the Museum of Fine Arts of Alexandria, comprising 120 paintings. A third comprehensive exhibition would be organised in the same premises a few months after the artists death, in 1964.

8

He created replicas of his own works

On at least two occasions, Mahmoud Said is known to have produced a replica of his own work. In 1932, he reproduced La fille aux yeux verts (1931), a painting that now hangs in the residence of the Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations in New York. In 1948, Said also painted a replica of Belles de Bahari (1935), the masterpiece owned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt. The artist carefully inscribed on the reverse of both that these were authentic replicas by his hand of original works he had painted earlier.

9

He died on his birthday and has his own museum in Alexandria Mahmoud Said passed away at the family home in Gianaclis in Alexandria on 8 April 1964, having suffered a fatal asthma attack on his 67th birthday. The next day, a grand funeral was held, with a procession headed by the students and professors of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Alexandria. The sculptor Dr. Gaber Hegazy was asked to produce plaster casts of the artists face and hands, which are now on view at the Mahmoud Said Museum in Alexandria. In 1969, the museum was sold to the Ministry of Culture, which also acquired a large part of Saids art collection. The Gianaclis villa was later altered to become what is todays museum complex. Opened in 1999, it comprises the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, the Mahmoud Said Museum and the Seif and Adham Wanly Museum.
Whether you have 1,000 to spend or are ready to go to 50,000-plus, theres a Hermes bag for you in our Handbags & Accessories sales
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Gerardo Morales-Martinez, 52, was on his way to a doctor's appointment early Thursday afternoon when he was pulled over for a broken taillight by a Galveston Police Department officer.

At some time during the traffic stop, the officer decided to charged and arrest Martinez for driving with an invalid license. Now U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have detained Martinez and he's awaiting deportation back to Mexico  despite him having no criminal history, relatives said.

Relatives are fighting his deportation. Martinez's family and his attorney said during a Friday press conference that the arrest was racially motivated.

The Galveston Police Department hasn't commented on the arrest only providing a basic police report.

Under the new memorandums by President Donald Trump's administration, immigration agents are instructed to deport anyone convicted of a criminal offense, including those driving without a license, a growing obstacle for more than half a million immigrants in the region who can't get a license because of their illegal immigration status.

Since the detention and subsequent deportation of Jose Escobar to El Salvador, similar stories are emerging. Escobar, a father of two American children, was deported this month after a routine check in with authorities.

People living in the U.S. illegally and with no criminal records are being detained and deported said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL Houston.

Since Escobar's deportation, Espinosa said his advocacy group has taken on five additional cases.

"Trump said he would deport criminals, but instead he is ripping families apart and deporting the people that deserve to be here," he said.

Martinez, the family's breadwinner, now leaves behind four daughters and a wife. According to the family, Martinez has lived in the U.S. for more than 25 years.

This story is developing.
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Cats and kittens that might have been clutching their catnip toys over an impending eviction from Kitten House Rescue of Houston can relax.

The nonprofit organization, two months behind on its rent and facing a Friday deadline from its storefront shelter at Huntwick Village Shopping Center, made an 11th-hour appeal for support through GoFundMe, and generous Houstonians came through.

By 2 p.m. Friday, the account, Rescue the Kitten House Rescue, had raised $3,725, surpassing the initial goal of $3,415. It allowed managing director Debrah Rogers to wire the overdue rent of nearly $3,215 to NRE Realty, the shelter's landlord.

"I genuinely am thrilled at the outpouring of support we've been getting from our community, from the neighbors, who know how important our mission is," Rogers said. "These kitties really need a place where they can feel safe until they find their forever home."

AGAINST THE WALL: Kitten rescue that started in better economic times needs cash infusion

Besides the donations, the shelter also had two adoptions Thursday, leaving 125 cats seeking placement.

"We're very pleased and humbled that it turned out this way," said Rogers, who has a full-time job in the oil and gas industry and started the rescue five years ago.

Rogers said she was keeping the GoFundMe account open a while longer, to help make the next rent payment of $1,607, due April 1.

"We're hoping for more corporate sponsors that will step up and help us out," she said.
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The Kitten House Rescue of Houston, a 5-year-old nonprofit group housed in a northwest side shopping center, is two months behind in its rent and facing closure.

Debrah Rogers, the founder and managing director, said if the group doesn't pay $3,215 in back rent by Friday, the shelter will be forced to move from its storefront at Huntwick Village Shopping Center, 5050 FM 1960 West.

Last year, it rescued 537 kittens and cats from high-kill shelters and was able to adopt out 383 of them. With 127 cats and kittens still housed at the shelter, Rogers said she was running out of options.

"I cannot even begin to know what we are going to do," she said in a post on Nextdoor.com.

GIRL'S RODEO ANGST: Win, and her pet would be slaughtered. Lose, and he'd go home

Michael Nassif Sr., with NRE Realty, said he also faces constraints as a landlord.

"It's a business," he said. "We have to make sure all the tenants pay. If we don't pay taxes on the property, the county won't accept that. ... We love animals, but we can't accept a tenant being that late."

Rogers, who works full time in the oil and gas industry, said when she started the rescue, it received financial support through industry-related sponsorship.

"Now, with the industry down and people being laid off, all of our funding is gone," she said. "We're relying heavily on donations and things like that to keep us afloat. It has become such an issue that we can't pay rent."

DOUBLE TRIANGLE: Police accuse veterinarian, boyfriend of trying to hire hitmen to kill exes

Rogers said Thursday she had set up a GoFundMe account, Rescue the Kitten House Rescue, which had raised more than $1,500 by late afternoon. Donations can also be made through the Kitten House Rescue website.

If the back rent isn't paid by Friday, Nassif said he didn't know when the group would have to vacate.

"I can't say right now, to tell you the truth," he said Thursday.
To anyone who has admired the grace and humility of Houston native Simone Biles as she became the most decorated American gymnast ever, it comes as no surprise that she's an animal lover.

On Friday, Biles posted touching tributes on Instagram and Twitter about the death of her dog, Maggie.
Higher education advocates recently had three opportunities to rally behind local organizations that provide financial and life-skills support to high-performing, under-served students. Breakthrough Houston, DiscoverU, and EMERGE each hosted fundraising luncheons in and around River Oaks during a two-week period spanning late February and early March.

Breakthrough Houston has been around the longest. The non-profit's ninth annual "Choose Your Own Adventure" fete chaired by Allison Leibman, Liz Stephanian and Courtney Toomey raised a record-breaking $250,000 on Feb. 27 in Flores Hall at St. John's School. Funds will benefit tuition-free academic enrichment programming for promising middle and high school students. A-list attendees including Melinda Spaulding Chevalier, Amy Pierce, Henry Richardson, Melissa Mithoff, Carolyn Dorros, Monica Blaisdell, and Laura Arnold listened intently as Dr. Renu Khator, President of the University of Houston, delivered an unexpectedly personal keynote address. Khator - who, at the time, was one of the few women offered a full scholarship to the university of her choice in her native India - was pulled from college by her parents after she accepted an arranged marriage proposal. Khator's husband, Dr. Suresh Khator, proposed after a single 29-minute encounter. He later became her biggest champion and encouraged his wife to learn English, finish her studies, and eventually obtain a master's degree. Attendees savored the program's doubly-sweet finish; Tiny Boxwood's chocolate chip cookies have become something of a Breakthrough event signature.
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Ballston Spa

On April 20, 2016, two teenagers walked into the State Police barracks in Wilton and reported a decade of sexual abuse and torture at the hands of Michael and Jeanne Mosher.

It led to a police investigation, the arrests of the Moshers for abusing at least four children and ultimately the couple's guilty pleas last month to the most serious sex crime charges on the books in New York state.

On Wednesday, the victims finally had their day  and say  in court as a Saratoga County judge sentenced the Moshers each to the maximum 40 years to life in prison.

"How can you consider yourselves even remotely human?" one of the victims asked the Wilton couple as they awaited sentencing from Judge James A. Murphy III. "I don't believe that you deserve to live because of the things you've done."

Police found text messages, photographs and videos of horrific abuse that was "premeditated, calculated and planned by these two defendants," said Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Buckley, who prosecuted the case.

Text messages showed the couple "discussing which victim they were going to rape that day," the judge said. He said Jeanne Mosher sometimes drugged the victims with over-the-counter medications before they were attacked. And she gave teenage victims the morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy.

"If that is not co-conspiratorial, premeditated and evil at its most defined term, I don't know what is," Murphy said.

A State Police senior investigator called it the worst case of sexual abuse he had seen in 31 years in law enforcement, Murphy noted.

The Moshers faced more than 50 counts of sex crime charges when they pleaded guilty in January. Both admitted to two counts of predatory sexual assault of a child. They abused the children over a 10-year period in Hadley and Wilton, ending last year.

The Moshers both looked down for the length of the proceedings. Jeanne Mosher shook her leg nervously.

The first victim who spoke Wednesday referred to the couple as "monsters in this horror story." She said she has risen above the unspeakable violence she suffered.

"As of this moment, right now, I'm finally utterly and completely free," she said.

The Moshers will enjoy no such freedom behind bars, she predicted.

"Do you know what they do to people that have done the things that you two have done to kids in prison?" the victim said. "I've heard stories. And if any of them are even remotely true, you are really not going to last very long. Now you will know what it's like to go to sleep at night afraid."

A second, younger victim called Michael Mosher an "idiot" and a "disgusting pig."

He started abusing her at the age of 3, she said.

"I was three years old. Do you think a three-year-old is responsible for saying 'no?'" she asked.

She said she too will move on with her life.

"I'm at this point never going to be normal. I don't think like the kids my age. I don't act like the kids my age. But I'm proud of whom I've become," the girl said. "I have a wall of people that love and care for me."

Turning to Jeanne Mosher, the victim said: "I'm finally able to see what people are like and I'll never go back to being afraid of what's out there. I'm better than you. You're at fault as much, if not more, than (Michael Mosher) is ... you made me scared of what's out there. But I love the world. There are amazing people out there and you know nothing about that, do you?"

When offered chances to speak, both defendants declined. Michael Mosher's lawyer, Saratoga County Public Defender Oscar L. Schreiber, asked the judge to impose the agreed-upon sentence under the guilty pleas. Jeanne Mosher's attorney, Conflict Defender Kyran Nigro, declined to speak.

The judge told both victims who spoke they were incredibly brave. He told them the only people in the courtroom who lacked the courage to look them in the eye were Michael and Jeanne Mosher.

"They know exactly what they did," Murphy said. "And it's pathetic. It's criminal. It's reprehensible. And there are really words that have not been defined yet to describe the horrific behavior that they themselves engaged in, that they participated in and they forced upon you."

The victims came forward last April even after Michael Mosher threatened one of them that if she went to police, he would harm other victims. The teenagers came forward anyway. And they told State Police about a decade of sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse inflicted upon them and the other victims, Buckley said.

The couple expressed no remorse or emotion, the prosecutor said. She said Michael Mosher told a probation officer conducting a pre-sentencing report he was "very upset that he let himself be that stupid." The probation officer wrote that the report cannot fully demonstrate "what a vile evil man Mosher is, nor does it capture in its entirety the horrific sexual abuse that the children suffered for nearly a decade."

The officer recommended Michael Mosher be jailed "until his last breath." The officer said Jeanne Mosher "did not shed a tear" over two days of being interviewed, expressed no remorse and should also be jailed for life.

The second victim who spoke told the Moshers she might become a public speaker when she is older.

"People need to know what about you've done," she said. "I can't imagine the amount of kids in the situation you left me in at this moment, waiting for somebody to save them. Those kids need to know that you need to stand up for yourself. Those kids need to speak up until someone listens because the only one that can save them is themselves.

She told her abusers: "You were an idiot to think you could get away with this."

rgavin@timesunion.com  518-434-2403  @RobertGavinTU
MILWAUKEE  Restaurant workers are accused of attacking a mentally disabled man with dirty mop water at a McDonald's on Milwaukee's east side.

Police said officers were driving past the McDonald's near North Avenue and Oakland last Thursday night, when the store manager flagged them down. A customer had locked himself in the men's room.

RELATED GALLERY: Crimes of food passion

When officers got inside, they said they found the man soaked in dirty mop water and McDonald's employees had poured it on him. Officers took the man to the hospital because he was in a mental health crisis.

WISN 12 News' Colleen Henry went to McDonald's.

"What can you tell us about the incident in the men's room?" she asked.

"All I know is one of the girls got let go, that's all I know," said the shift supervisor.

HIJACKED: McDonald's sends nasty message to President Trump

She referred questions to management. By email, owner Jeff Steren told WISN 12 News, "We share a deep commitment to the respectful treatment of everyone who comes in our restaurant, and we will not tolerate mistreatment of any kind. We are aware of the incident involving some of our employees and we are working with law enforcement on this matter."

Steren said he doesn't comment on employee matters, so it's unclear how many employees were fired or disciplined.

WISN 12 News also tried to contact the victim in this case but were unable to reach him.

--

Story originally published on WISN.com
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SUNDAY

Rice Design Alliance wine reception:Sarah Whiting, dean of Rice University's school of architecture, will present her selection of the best architecture books, 5 p.m., Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet; 713-523-0701 or brazosbookstore.com.

MONDAY

Meg Howrey: Author will discuss and sign "The Wanderers," 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book, 2342 Bissonnet; 713-524-8597, or toll free 888-424-2842 or murderbooks.com.

Kathy Hepinstall: Author will discuss and sign "The Book of Polly," 7 p.m., Blue Willow Bookshop, 14532 Memorial; 281-497-8675 or bluewillowbookshop.com.

Stan Crawford and Varsha Saraiya-Shah: Crawford will discuss and sign "Resisting Gravity" and Saraiya-Shah will discuss and sign "Voices," 7 p.m., Brazos Bookstore.

TUESDAY

Lyndsay Faye: Author will discuss and sign "The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes," 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book.

Colson Whitehead: Author will discuss his books, including "The Underground Railroad," at a Rice Seminar Lecture, 6:30-8:30 p.m., St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 5501 Main. Sold out.

Cassandra Rose Clarke: Author will discuss and sign "Star's End," 7 p.m., Brazos Bookstore.

Will Schwalbe: Author will discuss and sign "Books for Living," 7 p.m., Blue Willow Bookshop.

WEDNESDAY

Kathy Hepinstall: Author will discuss and sign "The Book of Polly," 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book.

THURSDAY

Amanda Hendrix: Author will sign "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets," 5-7 p.m., River Oaks Bookstore, 3270 Westheimer; 713 520-0061 or riveroaksbookstore.com.

Harry Hunsicker: Author will discuss and sign "The Devil's Country," 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book.

Daniel Pena: Author (and University of Houston-Downtown professor) will discuss his Pushcart Prize-winning story "Safe Home" and other stories, 7 p.m., Building G-102, Lone Star College-Montgomery, 3200 College Park Drive, Conroe; 936-524-6537 or lonestar.edu/montgomery.

Richard Russo: Author will discuss and sign "Everybody's Fool," 7 p.m., Brazos Bookstore.

FRIDAY

Randy Wayne White: Author will discuss and sign "Mangrove Lightning," 6:30 p.m., Murder By The Book.

SATURDAY

Space City Poetry Slam:Youth poets will compete in the semifinal round of this competition organized by Writers in the Schools, 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., MECA Houston, 1900 Kane; witshouston.org

N.B. Grant:Author will sign "A Journey to Freedom Through Prayer," noon-3 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 7626 Westheimer; 713-783-6016.

Rosalie King: Author will sign "Deadly Transformation" at a book launch party, 5-7 p.m., Becker's Books, 7405 Westview; 713-957-8088 or beckersbooks.com.

William Geroux: Author will discuss and sign "The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers in the War Against Hitler's U-Boats," 2 p.m., Houston Maritime Museum, 2204 Dorrington. Admission $5; free for members, active-duty military, veterans and children 11 and younger; 281-497-8675 or bluewillowbookshop.com.

Jennifer Hamburg: Author will discuss and sign "Hazy Bloom and the Tomorrow Power," 3 p.m., Blue Willow Bookshop.

C.J. Box: Author will discuss and sign "Vicious Circle," 4:30 p.m., Murder By The Book.

Monette Chilson: Author will read and sign "My Name Is Lilith" at a Women's History Month reception, 6-7:30 p.m., Body Mind and Soul, 7951 Interstate 10 W.; 713-993-0550 or bmshouston.com.

Alyson Ward
Television director Michael Grossman, who has worked on shows such as "Grey's Anatomy," "Charmed," and "Zoey 101," will drop by the University of Houston next week to discuss the directing process and the television industry.

UH will host a screening of the television show "Firefly," followed by a discussion with Grossman about the episode, "Safe," at 3 p.m. March 22 in the Student Theater at UH's student center.
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Arkansas state park Crater of Diamonds lived up to its name recently, when a young teen found a unique brown 7.44-carat diamond.

Kalel Langford, 14, found the stone after just 30 minutes of searching. The park has seen more than 75,000 diamond discoveries, CNN reports.

This is the largest brown diamond to be found in 40 years, the seventh largest found in the area. The first diamonds unearthed at this park were in 1906. Guests are charged $10 to search for stones.

ANOTHER BIG FIND: Scientists announce discovery of seven, Earth-size exoplanets 40 light years away

"Conditions were ideal for Kalel to find his diamond. About an inch of rain fell on the plowed search area during the week," said Park interpreter Waymon Cox. "A heavy rain can uncover larger diamonds near the surface. Diamonds have a metallic-looking shine and are often easier to spot on top of the ground. It was Kalel's dream to visit the Crater of Diamonds State Park, and now he will always be part of this park's remarkable history."

Although Langford didn't immediately know his rare find was so valuable, his father recognized its potential worth.

"(We) knew we needed to have it looked at," Kalel's father, Craig Langford, said.

Visitors are allowed to keep their found rocks, so Langford was able to take home the dark stone, which he's dubbed the Superman Diamond.

See the video above for a look at how flooding in Texas is actually healthy for the ecosystem.
A sergeant in the Army National Guard has been arrested in Rosenberg and is accused of trying to sexually assault an underage girl.

Leigh Fox, 29, of Richmond, allegedly met a person he thought was a 14-year-old girl online and left his place of employment on Thursday, March 16, to meet the teenager in a park, police said in a report.
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A Hays County grand jury issued a capital murder indictment Wednesday for a 25-year-old mother who allegedly mutilated her 5-year-old daughter during an altercation with a family member, according to the Hays County District Attorneys Office.

The grand jury also indicted Krystle Concepcion Villanueva on a second-degree felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for an incident that occurred Jan. 5 in Kyle, a news release said Wednesday.

RELATED: Sheriff: Central Texas woman mutilated 5-year-old daughter during altercation with relative

The district attorney, Wes Mau, is not releasing further comment on the case, but said a decision has not been made as to whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty at this time.

Villanueva allegedly stabbed and killed her daughter, Giovanna Larae Hernandez, multiple times during or before an altercation with her father-in-law, Eustorgio Arellano-Uresti. Hays County Sheriff Gary Cutler described the girl as mutilated, according to previous reports.

Its probably the most horrific case in Hays County history, Cutler said. Our hearts are heavy here today with the loss of a beautiful 5-year-old girl.

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.

RELATED: Documents show Texas mother accused in 5-year-old's killing has history of drug use, mental illness

SWAT entered the home, found Hernandez dead and took Villanueva into custody, according to the release.

Villanueva was admitted in late 2015 to a facility in Buda for substance abuse, including marijuana, crack and meth.

During that time in treatment, Villanueva was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to an arrest affidavit obtained from Hays County.

RELATED: BCSO jail employee allegedly tipped off capital murder suspect about arrest warrant

If convicted, Villanueva faces life in prison or the death penalty, according to the Texas Penal Code.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
A Liberty County man was hospitalized after he was shot at his home, authorities said.

About 7:30 a.m. Thursday, sheriff's deputies were sent to investigate reports of gunfire at a home along County Road 2005 in the northern part of Liberty County.
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One person is dead after gunfire broke out in north Houston Thursday evening.

The chaos started sometime before 7:30 p.m., when police were called to the scene in the 100 block of West Riverwood, near the Northline area.

Responding officers found a man shot in the back. Authorities did not immediately specify whether a shooter was in custody.

It's unclear what sparked the gunfire, but the victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
The University of Houston spent more than $500,000 on legal fees challenging a crosstown rival law school's new name over the past 10 months in a federal trademark dispute finally resolved through mediation, a university spokesman said Friday.

But the costs may continue to mount as UH faces potential trademark challenges from the Houston Astros and Houston Community College over its attempt to claim the word "Houston" for educational purposes.
Ted Nellum was jolted awake about midnight.

"The place is on fire!" Nellum heard someone shouting as smoke alarms sounded. He grabbed his wallet and ran into the hallway of the rooming house he shared with more than a dozen others.

The ceiling was on fire. The overhead lights were out and his neighbors were running toward the back door of the building. He groped his way along using the light spilling out from the other bedrooms.

"The only thing that saved me was the light," Nellum said.

Other residents weren't so lucky. Two people died and another was injured in the overnight blaze at Briscoe's Place, an unregulated rooming house with 20 or so windowless bedrooms rented out to people who needed a cheap place to live.

The victims had not been identified by late Thursday, and investigators have yet to determine the fire's cause.

The building's owner, Moses Briscoe, said he housed people who couldn't afford to rent anywhere else and otherwise might have lived in their cars. Residents said he regularly visited the property.

The 7,000-square-foot building, however, had received a city permit to operate as a banquet hall but not as a residential site. The building's front window displayed a Houston Fire Department document from 2014 acknowledging an application for a Fire Prevention Permit for a boarding home, but city officials said the permit was denied after a property inspection.

Briscoe could not be reached Thursday for comment about permitting and fire safety.

Firefighters arrived a few minutes after midnight at the burning building in the 4500 block of Griggs near Cullen, forced open the locked front door and found two residents lying lifeless just inside.

In their search of the maze-like interior, firefighters found another man burned on about 20 percent of his body and suffering from smoke inhalation, Deputy Fire Chief Fernando Herrera said. Paramedics took the man to Memorial Hermann Hospital; he is expected to survive.

Fellow residents credited Cherika Argus with helping get them out safely. She returned from the bathroom to find her bedroom door on fire, and immediately began knocking on doors to rouse the sleeping occupants.

"She saved our life by running to come help us," resident Evelyn Richmond said.

Some residents made it to the back patio but escaped only after kicking through a locked wooden gate.

By midmorning Thursday, about 10 of the residents still milled around outside, using grocery carts to gather their belongings from their smoky, waterlogged bedrooms.

Argus searched desperately before finding her purse, which held her ID and mail to prove her residency.

One resident said he rented a room for about $500 a month - all he could afford on his annual income of $12,000 in government support. Several residents said they received Social Security income or disability payments. Many had lived there for two or three years.

Briscoe and his family have a history in the neighborhood.

In 2014, at an abandoned warehouse just blocks from the rooming house, his stepdaughter was found brutally murdered. Briscoe was among the family members who publicly appealed for help finding the killer. A man was arrested last April and is in jail awaiting trial on murder charges.

The 67-year-old building was listed in 2009 as home to Briscoe's Reception Hall, according to Harris County business records. Then in August of last year, the proprietor filed new paperwork listing the site as Briscoe Place, the same name that appeared on a hand-painted sign that still hung over the boarded-up front door.

Briscoe's upholstery and furniture repair shop occupies one section of the large building.

Briscoe's elderly mother, who did not give her name, said her son had operated the facility for nearly a decade, helping the needy put a roof over their heads. She said she was glad she named him Moses because  like the biblical figure - he had helped lead his people.

Help arrived Thursday, when the American Red Cross stopped by with breakfast, coffee, and an offer to put up displaced residents in a motel for three nights.

But where they would go after that remained a concern.

Eddie Blakely stood next to one of his neighbors, nearly 10 hours after the fire was extinguished. A mattress, a side table, and a shattered mirror piled up in front of the building. The smell of charred wood still hung in the air.

"I've got to find somewhere to stay," the neighbor said.

"Yeah, that's the hard part," Blakely replied.

St. John Barned-Smith contributed to this report.
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Houston police department homicide investigators are swarming the site where a body was found in a burning dumpster Friday morning.

The Houston Fire Department initially responded to a call of burning trash shortly before 6 a.m. in the 4600 block of Market Street.

They found a man dead in his mid 30s to early 40s underneath a pile of trash in the dumpster.

Investigators have not determined what caused the man's death - the fire or the injuries sustained before he was thrown in the dumpster. It is likely he was killed before buried and burned in the dumpster, said Detective Christopher Elder with the HPD Homicide Division.

The man had a welt over his right eye and large bump on his forehead. His hands may have been bound. His entire body had been covered in a blanket.

"It is fair to assume that somebody did target him," Elder said.

The patrol division had reported that the man also had been shot in the chest, but Elder said homicide has not yet confirmed that.

Investigators did not have a suspect in custody Friday morning. The man had also not been identified yet.

It is unclear whether any fire accelerant was used to bolster the dumpster blaze.

Check back later for more updates to this developing story.
A Louisiana State University student who was reported abducted is now safe, according to The Times-Picayune.

On Wednesday evening, an emergency text message sent from the university stated the student was "now safe," and that police were on the hunt for an armed man with dreadlocks and a black shirt and pants. The message also said the man was driving a stolen vehicle.
One Texas fisherman has been killed and two others injured in shootings on the Rio Grande River in an area known for suspected drug cartel violence.

The three men were in a boat on the Texas side of the river near the rural community of Fronton and were shot from the Mexican side about 4:25 p.m. Wednesday, the Starr County Sheriff's Office said. Fronton is about 100 miles south of Laredo.
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A Texas town got a perhaps surprising message from a Satanic Temple this week over a controversial practice allowed in schools across the state.

"Never be hit again in school. Exercise your religious freedoms," reads the billboard, taking aim at corporal punishment, which is allowed in Texas. The billboard has the Satanic Temple logo and lists the website ProtectChildrenProject.com, which is aimed at dismantling corporal punishment.

SATAN V.S. TEXAS: Satanic Temple strikes out against new Texas abortion rules

As news station WFAA reports, putting the billboard in Springtown (about 25 miles from Fort Worth) is a strategic move since spanking students was a point of controversy for Springtown ISD a few years ago.

In 2012, the school district changed its policy when a male assistant principal at Springtown High School spanked two female students, reports the Star-Telegram. Corporal punishment from a member of the opposite sex is allowed at Springtown ISD, but only with the written consent of parents. The district's student handbook notes spanking students is allowed but parents have the option of opting out of the practice.

SATAN IN OKLAHOMA: Satanic Temple's statue of Satanic figure under way for Oklahoma

According to its website, the Satanic Temple is using the First Amendment to prevent corporal punishment at school.

"We are putting the worst school districts on notice by posting billboards near their schools announcing that students no longer have to be subjected to their sadistic practices," the Protect Children Project website reads. "The Satanic Temple religiously believes in bodily autonomy, this kind of abuse is a violation of your civil rights."

The Satanic Temple's website states the group does not worship Satan. Instead, the group views Satan as being "symbolic of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds."
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AUSTIN  Gov. Greg Abbott, who challenged lawmakers earlier this year to "do it right or don't do it at all" in funding his signature pre-K program, is finding they are choosing the latter.

In revising their budgets, both the Senate and House eliminated proposed funding for Abbott's initiative  the Senate doing so on Wednesday night as it worked to finalize its version of the state's two-year budget.

That prompted an irritated Abbott to make an impromptu face-to-face plea with the Senate's chief budget writer, Jane Nelson, leading to an abrupt shift by her committee the following morning to restore less than half the funding.

The state is currently spending $118 million for the governor's high-quality pre-K program in the 2016-17 school year, an amount that Abbott wants doubled for the two-year budget that starts Sept. 1. After initially including $150 million in the proposed biennial budget, senators cut funding for the program Wednesday night. After the chairwoman's visit from the governor, the committee reversed course and budgeted $65 million for the program, leaving no money for additional forms of pre-K spending.

Several senators confirmed the meeting and said Abbott was incensed that the Senate had cut funding for his pet pre-K program, the state's business-development Enterprise Fund, a university research initiative and the film incentives fund.

In all, senators said they were directed to restore about $190 million in funding for those programs at the urging of Abbott.

While it is not uncommon for governors to visit with lawmakers during a legislative session, those meetings most often take place in the governor's office on the second floor of the Capitol  and not after hours in a lawmaker's office. In addition, the Wednesday-night visit was the talk of the Texas Capitol on Thursday because of its surprise nature  and because Abbott so far in the session has been noted more for his absence on legislative issues than for his involvement.

He has withheld taking sides on several major issues, the most noticeable being the controversial "bathroom bill" that has made national headlines and pitted Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has tagged the measure a top priority, against House Speaker Joe Straus, who has played down its importance.

Abbott aides have explained his lack of involvement by saying he prefers to let lawmakers work through issues, and that he will decide where he stands after he gets a final version of the bill that he can either veto or sign into law. In a December meeting with reporters, the governor questioned whether existing laws already address any bathroom issues.

While senators on Friday confirmed the restoration of funding to several Abbott initiatives after his meeting with Nelson, Abbott press secretary John Wittman would not discuss details of the meeting.

But he said, "It's incomprehensible that the Senate is jeopardizing the future of Texas students by depriving them of high quality pre-K, instead forcing them into an unaccountable program."

A champion of what he calls "high quality pre-K," Abbott wanted lawmakers to pump $236 million into a grant program he devised in the 2015 legislative session. That year, lawmakers cut funding in half, leaving the program with $118 million for the 2016-17 school year alone.

Abbott's program requires school districts and charter schools to apply for additional pre-K money, which this school year totaled $734 for each of about 190,000 children, or 86 percent of the state's preschoolers.

In return, districts accepting the money agreed to elevate pre-K standards, such as higher teacher qualifications, reporting student progress back to the state, a family engagement plan and other conditions.

Abbott still wants it fully funded, but neither the House nor the Senate is following suit.

The House originally budgeted $118 million for the 2017-18 school year, but later decided to cut funding altogether and move the money to a supplemental fund that would allow the Texas Education Agency to spread the money throughout the state without strings attached.

As for the Senate, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said there's an appetite to shift away from a dedicated high-quality pre-K program and instead require all such programs to adhere to high-quality standards.

"I think we're to the point where we can basically go forward with taking the standards from what was the high quality and basically putting that into the entire pre-K system in the state. People should be able to meet those standards, otherwise, why do it?" asked Bettencourt.

Abbott made it clear at his State of the State address in January that lawmakers' approach to pre-K should be, "do it right or don't do it at all."

"I'm just dumbfounded and proud that pre-K has become part of the grand bargain. We have arrived," said Jason Sabo, a longtime education and social issues lobbyist who pointed out that early education had been a touchy subject for years until Abbott made it a priority.

Advocates for the governor's pre-K initiative contend the program is the best way to divvy up money to ensure the funds are spent on high-quality programs, but say the spending is only worth it if the state can spend more money per student.

"After making a commitment to improving pre-K quality during the last legislative sessions, we're concerned that legislators are now turning their backs on that commitment," said Stephanie Rubin, CEO of Texans Care for Children, a proponent for early education. "There is still time for legislators to make changes, although the clock is definitely ticking. Children who need an effective pre-K program to help them start kindergarten on grade level are counting on legislators to get this right."

With the legislative session roughly halfway over, the two chambers and the governor's office appear to have differing priorities on several issues that appear to be generating friction.

In January, Abbott identified four "emergency" issues on which he requested swift legislative action: A ban on sanctuary cities, ethics reform, an overhaul of Child Protective Services programs and Texas' support for a Convention of States to consider revisions to the U.S. Constitution.

By the end of the first 60 days, the Senate had approved all four. The House has only approved the CPS reforms, with the other three now languishing in House committees awaiting major revisions.

Next week, a Senate committee is expected to debate a bill giving public-school students tuition to attend private schools. Last week, senators passed and sent to the House the "bathroom bill" that bans transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds to their chosen gender.

In the House, the focus appears to be on debating school-finance reform  but not school choice  in a committee next week. Abbott has said he supports school choice, putting him at odds with the House.
Gary Coronado/Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN --The future of Gov. Greg Abbott's signature pre-K program is in flux after lawmakers yanked its funding, setting off jockeying over early education funds and the governor's priorities.

"The Senate Finance Committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to cut funding for the program, which the chamber originally budgeted at $75 million a year for the next biennium. The total was already well below the $236 million Abbott wanted to fully fun his initiative."
AUSTIN --Attorney General Ken Paxton's office, which attacked a school district for pulling down a religious Christmas decoration last year, took aim at a Dallas-area high school on Friday for operating a prayer room -- for Muslims.

At issue is not Frisco's Liberty High School availing a space for students to pray, the attorney general's office wrote in a letter to the Frisco Independent School District superintendent.

The real issue, according to the letter, is whether students who practice a religion other than Islam are allowed to use it.

"It is a meditation room, prayer room," said Chris Moore, a spokesman for the Frisco ISD. "Anyone can go there. Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Islam, Muslim, any of those religions can utilize that room."

School officials said it is a regular classroom that can be used for other activities at certain times during the day.

The Republican attorney general's office sent the letter and a press release about the prayer room Friday, suggesting the school may be violating the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty.

The letter, sent by Deputy Attorney General Andrew Leonie, instructs the superintendent to ensure the prayer room is open to all students. Paxton aides said an inquiry into the prayer room left them with more questions than answers, and that prompted the letter.

Moore said the district is trying to make contact with the attorney general's office to clarify the room is open to all.
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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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.
Fundatia de Binefacere Caritas Moldova solicita oferte de pret de la companii cu privire la productia de materiale de vizibilitate
President Donald Trump unveiled a budget proposal yesterday that would make substantial cuts to the federal government, slashing funding for many domestic programs including agencies that provide funding to the arts and public media.

Although bigger media organizations, including the flagship NPR and PBS, and larger affiliate station operators have diversified revenue streams that could provide a cushion, local news operations are in particular danger. The ongoing battle to defund public media has literally lasted decadesas a pet issue for Republican politicians who argue the programming has a liberal slant.

Public media operationsand loyal listenersare expected to put up a fierce fight against potential funding cuts. But hanging on to the hope that federal funding will always be around could potentially be a fatal mistake for local stations, former NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller tells CJR. All public media players, she says, ought to double down on efforts to court listener support and philanthropic giving as a hedge against the continued, and perhaps complete, reduction of government support.

Under Trumps proposal, all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS, NPR, and public television and radio around the US, would be removed. Although private donors and charitable foundations also help to support these entities, it would still be a major blow to the public-broadcasting ecosystem.

NPR and PBS would see the least impact from the cuts. NPR receives less than 1 percent of its total funding from the CPB, while PBS receives less than 7 percent. Larger television and radio stations will also fare okay because they enjoy support from foundations and donors. For example, New York Public Radio, which supports six stations throughout the state, received just 6 percent of funding from government sources in 2015. That same year, 78 percent of its revenue came from contributors and 13 percent from project grants.

Smaller local television and radio stations would be affected more by the cuts. About $445 million of CPB funds goes to public television and radio annually. More than 70 percent supports local stations. However, one reason Republican critics of public media give when arguing for defunding is that local stations route some of that money back to NPR and PBS in the form of membership fees to air national programming. According to NPRs 2015 financial reports, station dues and fees accounted for about 40 percent of its $203 million revenue.

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Depending on the station, federal funds can account for a large part of the overall budget. Federal funding supports stations far beyond programming alone. Funds also often help cover basic necessities such as radio tower maintenance and building upkeep.

Schiller notes stations should move aggressively to pursue non-governmental revenue streams.

It would be irresponsible not to have those contingency plans in place, and even without the threat of federal dollars being pulled, it would be irresponsible to not begin to act on ways to replace that money through other sources, says Schiller.

States also offer funding to support public media, but there is no guarantee politicians wont try to pilfer those funds, too. Generating more listener support, applying for grants, and funding from philanthropy are just a few of her suggestions. She also notes it is possible for public media organizations to earn income from other sourcessuch as selling products or renting out unused building space.

The presidents budget proposal almost certainly will not go into effect as proposed. However, the proposal is still bad news because the White House, Congress, and Senate are all controlled by the same party, giving Republicans a greater ability to pass a final bill that looks like Trumps proposal. This means public radio and television broadcasters are still in hot water.

Public media doesnt plan to give up its funding without a fight, and one of the weapons in its lobbying arsenal is strong public support: 70 percent of Trump voters want Congress to cut funding elsewhere, according to a survey for PBS conducted this year by Hart Research-American Viewpoint.

Separately, The Washington Post also notes that, according to 2014 data, $186.1 million went to stations in states that supported Trump in the 2016 election.

Millions of Americans depend on their local public radio station for the fact-based, objective, public service journalism they need to stay informed about the world and about the news in their own communities, NPR Chief Operating Officer Loren Mayor says in a statement. Public media serves the public interest with essential educational, news, and cultural programming not found anywhere else, as well as vital information during local and regional emergencies. Federal funding is an essential ingredient to making this possible.

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Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Justin Ray and Carlett Spike coauthored this story. Justin Ray is CJR's digital media editor. Carlett Spike is a CJR Delacorte fellow.
This week, on a special edition of The Kicker, CJR and the BBC World Service have teamed up to produce an audio documentary. CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope narrates an exploration of two issues vital to journalism in America: How should the media respond to an administration that labels it the enemy of the people and, perhaps more importantly, how can the media build trust with a public that sees it as hopelessly biased?

To answer those questions, Pope travels to York, Pennsylvania, where he interviews voters in a county that went twice for Barack Obama before flipping to Donald Trump in 2016. The documentary features commentary from New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller, NPR Senior Vice President of News and Editorial Director Michael Oreskes, WNYC talk radio host Charlie Sykes, and Observer Editor in Chief Ken Kurson.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.
At Dr. Fathalla Mashalis pain management clinics, the waiting rooms were often so packed with patients that people sat on the floor, leaned against walls and spilled into the hallways.

Thats because, federal prosecutors say, Mashali was prescribing oxycodone and other powerful opioid painkillers at alarming rates to people making risky use of drugs. At one point, they say, Mashali wrote out more oxycodone prescriptions in one month  over 1,100  than some of the largest hospitals in Massachusetts.

Mashali pleaded guilty Wednesday to 44 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering, offering a brief apology during his change-of-plea hearing in U.S. District Court.

Im very sorry. I hurt my family. I hurt my patients, Mashali said.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 21. Prosecutors said in a court filing that federal sentencing guidelines call for 121/2 to 151/2 years in prison.

Prosecutors nationwide have cracked down on so-called pill mills like the pain management clinics run by Mashali, places where prescriptions are often handed out without physical exams or tests to determine whether a legitimate condition requires pain medication.

Prosecutors in Boston said Mashali would often see more than 100 patients in one day. A medical assistant who worked at one of Mashalis offices told investigators that only about 5 percent of his patients had legitimate medical conditions.

Mashali, 62, was born in Egypt and received a medical degree from Cairo University. He moved to the United States more than 30 years ago, became a permanent resident, got married, had four children and served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve.

In the early 2000s, Mashali began operating a pain management clinic, eventually opening three offices in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island. As his practice grew, so did his personal spending. In 2008, Mashali filed for bankruptcy, listing $12 million in debts.

Prosecutors say he used the proceeds from his thriving practice to pay for a lavish lifestyle. In 2011, after emerging from bankruptcy, he and his wife bought a $2.2 million home in Dover, one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, and made approximately $2 million in improvements.

The evidence will show that Mashalis lust for exuberant wealth and luxury severely compromised the care and safety of his vulnerable patients, prosecutors wrote in a trial brief last month.

Mashalis practice began to fall apart in 2012, when his former employees alleged he was prescribing high doses of drugs to patients with addictions and fraudulently billing for tests he never did.

In 2013, the Rhode Island Board of Medicine revoked his medical license, finding that he had provided substandard care to six of seven patients who died. After that, Mashali voluntarily surrendered his Massachusetts license.

He was arrested Feb. 7, 2014, while attempting to board a plane to Egypt on a one-way ticket.

In court filings, Mashalis lawyers have said he has severe bipolar disorder and neurosarcoidosis, a central nervous system disease that can be characterized by confusion or dementia. During Wednesdays hearing, Mashali said he is taking more than 20 medications for those illnesses, as well as anxiety and depression.

As the sentencing hearing will show, he is a deeply troubled individual whose underlying psychopathology in large part contributed to the offense conduct, Mashalis attorney, Jeffrey Denner, said after the hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Maxim Grinberg asked for Mashali to be taken into custody while awaiting sentencing.

But Judge Rya Zobel said he could remain free so he can continue to receive daily treatment at a psychiatric hospital. She ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Amusement park regulations in Kansas could be tightened after a lawmakers son was killed last year on a water slide that a passed private inspection.

House Federal and State Affairs Committee Chairman John Barker says he will hold hearings March 23-24 on a bill to strengthen inspection requirements of amusement parks.

The bill would require the parks insurance companies to hire engineers with some experience to inspect rides that can now be inspected privately.

The current law came under scrutiny after Olathe Republican Rep. Scott Schwabs son, Caleb Schwab, was killed last year on the Verruckt water slide at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City. The 10-year-old boy was in a raft with two women who were not related to him when he was decapitated. The 168-foot tall waterslide was certified by Guinness World Records as the tallest in the world. The women were treated for facial injuries.

Verruckt riders sit in multi-person rafts that begin with a steep drop, followed by a surge up a second hill before a 50-foot descent to a finishing pool. Each Verruckt rider must be at least 54 inches tall, and the combined body weight of the riders on each raft is limited to 400 to 550 pounds.

Riders are harnessed in with two nylon seatbelt-like straps  one that crosses the riders lap, the other stretching diagonally like a car shoulder seatbelt. Each strap is held in place by long Velcro-style straps, not by buckles. Riders also hang on to ropes inside the raft.

The slide had passed inspection by a private inspector.

Kansas statutes governing amusement rides dont specifically mention waterslides. State law leaves it to the Kansas Department of Labor to adopt rules and regulations relating to certification and inspection of rides, adding that a permanent amusement ride must be scrutinized at least once a year by a qualified inspector.

Regulations require only that owners of permanent amusement rides retain records for a year and rides are randomly selected quarterly for a records audit.

Documents released last year by the state department showed that in June 2012, a records audit found that the park was not maintaining records of testing for current and previous years. The report said that instead of such testing, visual inspections are conducted annually and daily. There was no record of a state response, and the audit was marked pass.

There were no indications of further records audits, and department officials did not immediately answer questions about why that was so.

The ride has been closed and will be torn down when an investigation is completed.

(Associated Press writers Jim Suhr, Bill Draper and Margaret Stafford in Kansas City and John Hanna in Topeka contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Texas Mutual Launches Free e-Learning Tool

Texas Mutual Insurance Company, the states leading provider of workers compensation insurance, recently launched a free workplace safety training tool for policyholders called e-Learning.

e-Learning gives business owners access to a library of more than 200 modern, video-based training courses on a variety of workplace safety topics, such as ladder safety, hazard communication, fall prevention and more. Employers can easily assign courses, which workers complete through the learner portal. Not only do these courses provide valuable training that could prevent workplace accidents, but the tool is offered free to all Texas Mutual policyholders. This is a departure from the typical business model of providers selling similar tools to employers.

While Texas Mutual has long offered a variety of safety training resources, the e-Learning video course model fills a need for modern, engaging and easily understood material.

e-Learning also allows employers to access reports and maintain safety training records for OSHA-related purposes and their own recordkeeping needs.

For more information about e-Learning, visit texasmutual.com/training/e-training/e-workers.shtm.

In a separate announcement, Texas Mutual announced that it broke ground recently on its new four-story, 270,000 square-foot headquarters building in the Mueller communitys Aldrich Street District.

Catellus Development will manage construction of the building, which will be owned by Texas Mutual. The building will be fully occupied by Texas Mutual, with the exception of approximately 20,000 square feet of first-floor retail space. Move in is anticipated for mid-2018, weather permitting.

The contemporary-designed building from Studio8 Architects will feature built-in space for employees who telework, as well as abundant natural light and ample shading elements, including a planned covered deck on the top floor with unobstructed views of downtown Austin.

TTA Appraisal Co, Inc. Announces Opening of New Home Office in Plano, Texas

Jon Gironda, CEO of TTA Appraisal Company, announced the opening of its new home office in Plano, Texas on Monday, March 20, 2017.

Founded in 1998 as a regional independent appraisal company and then expanded to a national scale in 2010, TTA Appraisal Company handles heavy equipment, auto, RV, motorcycle, marine and property appraisals.

The office is located at 2600 Avenue K, Suite 140, Plano, TX 75074. For questions, call TTA Appraisal at 951-795-4000 or e-mail jgironda@tta-appraisal.com.

EagleView Releases New Product to Conduct Virtual Inspections

EagleView Technology Corporation, a technology provider of aerial imagery, data analytics and GIS solutions, announced a new comprehensive virtual inspection solution for the property/casualty insurance market that enables remote claim adjusting.

EagleView OnSite is a fully integrated and comprehensive solution including imagery, data, analytics and software components that may be mixed and matched by insurance carriers to fit their desired workflow. This new solution delivers high-resolution imagery, from multiple camera sources, directly to the adjusters desk following a weather event anywhere in the country.

WCRI Announces New Logo, Website Redesign

The Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) launched a new logo and redesigned website.

The new site can be viewed at http://www.wcrinet.org.
gavel-promo-328x246.jpg

To help Akron-area immigrants arrange for caregivers so their children can stay in the U.S. if the parents are deported, a group of Summit County volunteer attorneys has worked with the courts to develop Save Immigrant Families USA.

(cleveland.com file photo)

AKRON, Ohio - To prepare immigrant and refugee families, in case parents are deported under President Donald Trump's executive orders, Akron attorneys are working with Summit County courts on instructions to take care of their children.

The result is Save Immigrant Families USA, an information packet in several languages that helps parents arrange for caregivers so their U.S.-born children can stay in the United States.

Save Immigrant Families USA will be live with downloadable packets sometime on Friday.

Five million children live in the U.S. with an undocumented parent, and 4 million of those are U.S. citizens because they were born here, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

"They belong to us, they are our citizens, so how can we make that process, should it happen as painless on the children as possible?" said Summit County Probate Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer. "That's our goal."

According to the group, anyone who is not a natural-born U.S. citizen is at risk of deportation.

"Just because you have a current legal status doesn't keep them from coming after you," said Alexandra Hull, Akron attorney whose primary practice is juvenile law. "There's nothing keeping them from revoking your [refugee] status."

Why you should be prepared

If immigrants or refugees are detained or deported, officials say Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are not required to allow them to make a phone call.

That means children would immediately be placed in the care of Summit County Children Services, an agency already stressed with a high number of intakes because of the county's opiate epidemic.

In addition, without an accessible parent, establishing a specific caregiver for those children would require paperwork that might be unavailable or could take weeks, Hull said.

How Save Immigrant Families USA can help

The packet is designed to help non-native English speaking families navigate the court system.

Summit County Probate, Domestic Relations and Juvenile courts all address child custody, but each has different rules as to who can file for care and how to file.

In a nutshell, guardianship through probate court enables the adult to become the child's legal guardian, essentially stepping into the shoes of the parent.

Custody through the domestic relations or juvenile court extends some parental decision-making rights to a custodian, though the natural parents would retain some rights.

The situation becomes more complicated if property or paternity questions are involved.

"Every person is going to have to decide for themselves which process is best for their particular situation," Stormer said.

In both cases, having the paperwork prepared and in the hands of the selected adult means the children can be placed directly with them and avoid foster care, said Summit County Magistrate Paula Haas.

What's in the packet?

The Save Immigrant Families USA information packet outlines exactly what important information parents need, including birth certificates, addresses for the past several years and proof of paternity if the father isn't present. It also offers completed sample forms to follow.

The packet includes five sections:

An introduction, instructions and a timeline

Powers of attorney for child care, vehicles, real estate and other personal property

Forms to file in Juvenile Court for custody

Forms to file in Probate Court for guardianship

Forms to file in Domestic Relations Court for custody

The information packet is only good for Ohio residents, because the attorneys who developed them are licensed here.

"It would be our hope volunteers in other states would create similar packets for their residents and if they do we will host them on the Save Immigrant families USA website," Hull said.

For help with the packet contact the International Institute of Akron at 330-376-5106 or contact the Summit County Juvenile Court, Domestic Relations Court or Probate Court. Visit the local branch of the Akron-Summit Country Public Library for help downloading the material.

Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.


Aggravated menacing-inducing panic, Wyleswood Drive: An 18-year-old North Olmsted man - a pupil at Ombudsman Educational Services, a private school at 535 Wyleswood - was arrested at about 12:30 p.m. March 10 after he threatened to harm another pupil and take a gun to school.

According to witnesses, the man was angry with the other pupil, saying she owned him money. He entered the pupil's classroom and confronted her, but was asked to leave.

The man tried unsuccessfully to re-enter the classroom. He told school staff, who blocked the door, that he was going to beat the other pupil. He said he would return with a gun and "shoot up" the school. Staff called police.

Attempted burglary, Barrett Road: An aborted burglary attempt at Tower in the Park Apartments, 55 Barrett, was reported at about 5:30 p.m. March 11.

A tenant said he was napping on his couch when he awoke to the sound of his door rapidly opening and slamming into the wall. The resident heard a male utter a profanity, then heard two distinct pairs of footsteps running in the hallway.

The resident closed the door. Shortly afterward, when he tried to open the door, the door would not open. A Tower in the Park maintenance worker repaired the door, and told the man it appeared that someone had kicked his door in.

Operating a vehicle under the influence, Front Street: A Berea man, 31, was arrested at about 3:30 a.m. March 12 after his Chevrolet Impala pulled out of a Speedway gas station and traveled south in the northbound lanes on Front.

An auxiliary police officer notified dispatchers about the incident. Police, responding to the area, saw the Impala weaving on southbound Front. The car then rolled through a stop sign at West Center Street.

The man denied driving on the wrong side of the road. He said he was only following GPS directions. The man's speech was slurred, his eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of alcohol. Later, at the police station, the man's mood swung from calmness to anger to tearful sadness.

Breaking & entering, North Rocky River Drive: Someone broke into The Armory, an office-warehouse at 72 North Rocky River, late March 8 or early March 9. A basement window frame was removed to get inside. Beer cans and candy wrappers were found on the floor and items in the basement had been moved. Nothing was reported missing.

Theft, West Bagley Road: A Schwinn Beach Cruiser bicycle was stolen between 5:30-6:05 p.m. March 13 from outside Marc's Deeper Discount Store, 371 West Bagley Road. The victim had left the bike unlocked while shopping inside the store. The bike had metal saddle racks on the rear.

Operating a vehicle under the influence, Lindberg Boulevard: An Olmsted Falls woman, 46, was arrested at about 1:45 a.m. March 12 after police saw her Honda Civic turn left from West Bagley Road onto Lindberg without signaling. Also, the car drifted outside the left-turn lane while turning.

The woman smelled of alcohol. She told police she might have consumed one drink earlier, but she failed field sobriety tests.

To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
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Bruce Van Saun, center, CEO of Citizens Bank, helped unveil new signage and new name in Lakewood in April 2015. It was formerly Charter One.

(File photo courtesy of Scott Shaw)

An unknown number of Citizens Bank customers Friday were dealing with missing paychecks and other direct deposits that didn't get processed as expected in the morning.

The Rhode Island-based bank, which is the third-largest in Greater Cleveland with 12 percent of area deposits, blamed the problem on "a vendor processing issue."

The problem appears to go beyond direct deposits; online bill payment transactions also may not have been processed as scheduled. It also involved point-of-sale, ATM and credit transactions, said spokeswoman Laura DiGeronimo. She declined to identify the vendor responsible for the massive glitch.

Around midday, Citizens said the problems were mostly resolved. Mobile banking and online bill payment services were still affected.

Citizens Bank said the problem hit many banks Friday. But queries to the corporate offices and customers of several other large area banks, including Key, PNC, Huntington, Chase and U.S. Bank, turned up no reports of problems in receiving direct deposits Friday.

"Customers are seeing a delay in transactions posting to their accounts, due to a vendor processing issue," Citizens said in a statement the company posted on Twitter.

"This issue is affecting multiple financial institutions. We appreciate the patience of our customers as we work to resolve this issue."

In a society where half the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck, it can be disastrous if someone doesn't receive an expected paycheck that could be hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Citizens is among the 15 largest banks in the United States with more than 5 million customers, including individuals and businesses. DiGeronimo said customers were affected company-wide; Citizens has 1,200 branches in 11 states.

The number of customers caught up in the glitch wasn't available, DiGeronimo said.

The problem isn't limited to direct deposits, said Laura Howard, a Citizens customer from Parma. Her husband Randy learned early Friday morning that many employees he manages didn't receive their paychecks through their Citizens accounts. The Howards have accounts with multiple banks, and one of them is Citizens.

The big issue for Laura Howard: The couple had two credit card payments that were scheduled to be paid Friday through Citizens' online bill payment service. When she looked at her account, those payments didn't show up.

"If those bills didn't go out today, we could face late fees," Howard said.

About noon Friday, Citizens said the problem had been resolved and all customer accounts should be current. "We appreciate the patience of our customers as we worked through this issue, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused," DiGeronimo said.

In another Twitter statement, Citizens said at 12:10 p.m. that "due to heavy volumes, we are expecting a slowdown in online and mobile banking . . . We appreciate your patience as we work through this."

Branch employees were telling customers Friday afternoon that accounts were not showing current information yet if people logged in to through their mobile app.

By the time that Jaime Gonzalez got to his local Citizens branch Friday morning to get money for the cash register of the store he runs, his account, at least, was fine. He wonders if any St. Patrick's Day revelers were unable to withdraw cash or use their debit cards.

"I wasn't worried because I don't live week to week," said Gonzalez, who operates Pugsley's Room, a Cleveland shop that sells eclectic items, antiques and art. "We have a bit of money. I just worry about those who don't."

Citizens vowed to work with customers affected. "Customers will not incur fees or overdraft charges due to to this issue," DiGeronimo said. Any customer with an issue should call 1-800-922-9999 or call or visit a local branch, she said.
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The Trump administration has begun distancing itself from the failing House plan to replace Obamacare.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Trump administration is both defending and distancing itself from the House Obamacare replacement plan.

At his daily press briefing, Sean Spicer stated once again that President Trump doesn't want the health care plan introduced by Speaker Paul Ryan, called "Trumpcare."

The same day Spicer said Trump doesn't want the failing plan's naming rights, BreitBart News released audio of Ryan speaking harshly about Trump during an October conference call with House members.

"I'm not going to defend Donald Trump--not now, not in the future," Ryan told the House members, just days after the release of the "Access Hollywood" Trump tape.

Ryan's comments had been reported at the time, but this is the first time the audio of the call has been released. The timing is suspect and intriguing.

Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon is Breitbart's former CEO, and he thinks the House health care plan should be called Ryancare. It's not known how much influence or contact Bannon has with Breitbart now, but the news site was never a fan of Ryan's when Bannon was in charge of it.

There may be a hint of why Breitbart released the audio now in the following paragraph from Breitbart's story on Ryan's call and the House health plan.

"This is the first major initiative that Trump has worked on with Ryan -- and the fact it is going so poorly calls into question whether Speaker Ryan, the GOP's failed 2012 vice presidential nominee who barely supported Trump at all in 2016, really understands how Trump won and how to win in general."

The key line is whether Ryan really understands how Trump won. The reason Bannon and other pro-populism, Trump associates want the plan called Ryancare, is because it goes against the populist message Trump campaigned and won on.

It's a fair and accurate argument. Ryan and the Freedom Caucus have either forgotten or never understood that Trump won running as a populist, not as a Conservative or hard-right candidate.

Ryan and Trump's views and agenda for an Obamacare replacement plan are near polar opposites. Years ago, Trump advocated for a single payer plan like Canada's. Even now, both as a candidate and as President, Trump has said he wants everyone to be covered. If it was up to Ryan, the government wouldn't help getting anyone coverage. Trump campaigned on protecting entitlements. If it was up to Ryan, they would all be slashed or ended.

The House plan especially hurts those who put Trump in the White House --older and working-class voters.

Bannon (I can't believe I'm writing this) is actually right in saying the plan should be called Ryancare. It was Ryan who concocted the bulk of the plan, literally behind closed doors, with select House members, not Trump.

In recent years, Trump's main business has become branding, putting his name on everything from steaks to skyscrapers. But he doesn't want to put his name on the House Obamacare replacement plan, can you blame him?

Did Trump leak his own 2005 tax return?

Tuesday, Rachel Maddow unveiled two pages of Trump's 2005 tax returns that had been mailed anonymously to a Trump biographer and investigator reporter.

The returns showed Trump had made over $250 million, wrote more than $100 million off, and paid his fair share of taxes.

Despite the White House statement slamming the leak and Maddow's show, it's been speculated that Trump may have leaked the returns or someone close to him did at his behest. The idea make sense in some ways. During the campaign it was revealed that years ago Trump had posed as his own publicist, using fake names, to leak information about his business and social life. So he's an old pro at leaking information about himself.

The 2005 tax forms show Trump in a positive light. They show he was earning a ton of money. Which would help put to rest talk that he exaggerates his wealth. He's shown paying a ton in taxes as April 15th approaches and he gets set to push a tax reform plan.

Perhaps the biggest reason for Trump to leak his tax forms, is the hope and expectation it takes media attention away from the failing health care plan and the upcoming hearings Monday on Russian meddling. It's a ploy that has worked many times before.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Indeed, everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day - and a whole lot of people will be singing an Irish classic composed by a Clevelander.

Raise a pint to "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" by Ernest Roland Ball.

Ball's yearning melody combined with the song's sentimental lyrics - penned by Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr. - have made the tribute to Ireland a staple of St. Patrick's Day celebrations for decades.

"When Irish Eyes are Smiling" was one of a number of Irish-tinged ditties penned by Ball, who was considered one of the most prolific and popular songwriter of his time. It also made Ball a notable Irish-American -- even if he wasn't Irish.

Born in 1878 on East 30th Street between Payne and Superior avenues, Ball graduated from the Cleveland Conservatory of Music before heading out to Manhattan to work for a music-publishing house. His career took off after collaborating with future New York City mayor Jimmy Walked on a hit song, "Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?"

"When Irish Eyes are Smiling" was penned in 1912 and quickly became an American standard, recorded more than 200 times -- including Bing Crosby's iconic 1939 version.

Ball, who was also a charter member of ASCAP and grandfather of guitar-string pioneer Ernie Ball, never got to hear that version, however.

In 1929, he performed at a concert to benefit Mississippi flood victims in California. Ball received a wild response from the audience and came out for eight curtain calls. There was no ninth: He went back to his dressing, slumped on a table and died of a heart attack.

He returned home one last time, to be buried in Lake View Cemetery. Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan served as pallbearers - underscoring the great career of the Clevelander who penned 400 songs and the ditty sung by all on St. Patrick's Day.

Note: For info on the 150th annual St. Patrick's Day Parade, bar parties and events, go

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NIH-funded medical research would be cut under the budget proposed by President Donald Trump. It's one of many health and human services cuts that local public health and healthcare experts say would disrupt services, endanger community health and eliminate jobs.

(Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- President Donald Trump's proposed budget includes cuts in public health and medical research funding that would both eliminate jobs and essential services in Northeast Ohio, according to local health and policy experts.

Combined with the proposed public health funding cuts in the Republican Obamacare replacement plan, the impact on Ohio state and local health department infrastructure and ability to deliver basic preventive health services would be enormous, said Cuyahoga County Health Commissioner Terry Allan.

"It's not only unfair from an equity standpoint, it's also incredibly expensive," Allan said.

Cutting prevention programs may save money in the short term, but research shows that the costs show up when more people are hospitalized, develop chronic diseases such as diabetes, or need medications they might have avoided.

What the budget cuts

Trump's plan would cut the discretionary health and human services budget to $65.1 billion, down from $84.6 billion in 2016, an 18 percent drop. The plan, while vague in many areas, clearly takes aim at several agencies:

The National Institutes of Health

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Office of Community Services

While many of these cuts won't likely stand up to congressional review, they send a clear message to public health officials and those who provide services for the poor.

"It's pretty clear to me that if this budget goes through as is, it would undo the progress we've made in Cleveland and other urban communities in Ohio," said John Corlett, executive director of the Center for Community Solutions, a Cleveland-based nonpartisan think tank.

"The thought that you would eliminate programs that help the elderly and poor keep their heat on in the winter is just astonishing to me," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen something like that proposed before."

Trump's budget calls LIHEAP "lower impact" and "unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes."

"I suppose we could turn off the heat and see who freezes to death, and then we'd have evidence of its value," Corlett said. "It's kind of an essential part of the safety net in terms of keeping the heat on for people in the winter."

Public health

Public health funding is already in jeopardy under the Republican American Health Care Act, which would replace Obamacare. Starting in October of 2018, the GOP plan would eliminate the Affordable Care Act's Prevention and Public Health Fund [PPHF]. That fund provides almost $1 billion annually to CDC for prevention of bioterrorism, disease outbreaks, and lead poisoning, as well as money to provide immunizations and heart-disease screenings.

"If the ACA is gone and repealed, right away that's 12 percent of CDC's budget," Allan said.

That's particularly worrisome in a state like Ohio, which has among the lowest public health spending per capita in the country, according to a 2015 report from Trust for America's Health, a non-profit health policy organization. Ohio's $14.59 per capita public health budget, less than half of the national median, ranks the state 42nd in this measure.

The Trump budget proposal is unclear on a lot of public health specifics, like exactly how much money each state would receive in block grants through the CDC.

Any cuts such an underfunded system would be felt immediately though, Allan said.

"I think this can have nothing but very negative effects on the whole prevention infrastructure," he said.

Shorting public health programs, like Cuyahoga County's PPHF-funded Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health [REACH] grant, will only cost the community more in the long run, he said. REACH has been working to curb chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease in the community and control health care spending.

Diabetes, for example, is expected to affect roughly one-third of the U.S. population by 2050 if current trends continue, according to the CDC. The disease costs the country an estimated $174 billion annually, including $116 billion in direct medical costs.

"If we're not on the front line preventing disease at a fraction of the cost of treating disease, we're going to see a huge increase in cost to the healthcare system," Allan said. "In the grand scheme of things, you pay a little bit now or you're going to pay a lot more later."

Medical research

Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Alicia Reale said it's still unclear what the direct impact of NIH funding cuts would be on the health system's medical research but "these potential cuts would be devastating to research progress."

The Trump budget would also eliminate the NIH's Fogarty International Center, which funds about 400 global health research and training projects.

Case Western Reserve University researchers have three active Fogarty grants totaling $749,864, according to a university spokeswoman. Case is listed as the principal institution on eight Fogarty grants, primarily for its work on infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV in Uganda, Papua New Guinea and Kenya.

In a statement, the university said that its research drives innovation. "More, the work involved in supporting those innovations creates hundreds of new jobs, and the innovations themselves can create entire new industries. Federal support is an investment that provides enormous returns -- to individuals, families, and society at large."

Pulling funding for international medical research may seem like a cost saver, Allan said, but it puts Americans at risk because infectious diseases like Zika and Ebola don't respect borders.

"Overall, it's a big move away from science," he said. "I'm just flabbergasted."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Each year, thousands of people enjoy the tunes played by the bagpipers marching through downtown Cleveland for St. Patrick's Day.

The history of the bagpipe can be traced back to Ancient Egypt and Rome, but most likely you'll have seen them at Irish and Scottish cultural events, or funerals.

There are different types of bagpipes, such as the Great Highland bagpipes, which are Scottish, and the Uilleann pipes, which are Irish. If you're seeing a piper blow air into the bagpipes, and three pipes at the top, then you're likely seeing a Great Highland bagpipe.

That's what John Murphy, a retired firefighter who lives in Hudson, will be playing with the Cleveland Firefighters Memorial Pipes and Drums band at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Cleveland. The band is defending its title as the best pipe band in the parade, he said.

Here's how bagpipes work: The piper blows air into the bag through a mouthpiece. He or she squeezes the bag to force out air through the drones, the three larger pipes sticking out of the top. That's what creates the long, continuous notes characteristic of bagpipe music.

The melody is played on the chanter, which is on the front of the bag. You can only play nine notes on the Great Highland bagpipes. Uilleann pipes have a wider range, but are quieter.

The Great Highland bagpipes are double-reeded, which can be finicky depending on moisture and temperature. At a certain point, the reed can freeze and the bagpipes will stop playing.

Murphy thinks the reeds will be fine for the 2017 parade. He said he's played in colder temperatures with the band.

See Murphy explain how to play the Great Highland bagpipes in the video above.

The Cleveland Firefighters Memorial Pipes and Drums will play during the 2017 St. Patrick's Day parade, which is set to start at 1:04 p.m. Friday.

Murphy urges anyone who might want to get involved with the Cleveland Firefighters Memorial Pipes and Drums to find more information about joining through its website.
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Donald Trump's proposed cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development budget could cost Cleveland as much as $30 million a year just in community development money, city officials say.

(cleveland.com file)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - President Donald Trump's proposed funding cuts for community development and housing would hit Cleveland hard, hindering programs that help the poor, the elderly and neighborhood revitalization, city officials said this week.

Cuts to programs, particularly those in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, would hurt urban centers like Cleveland. While the specific impact won't be known until the budget is sorted out, what is clear is that what is proposed would be bad for some of the poorest populations, said Mayor Frank Jackson.

"It's the vulnerable," Jackson said. "If you're children, particularly the children of the poor. The poor in general. And the elderly. It's the vulnerable."

What remains to be seen, Jackson said, is how members of Congress react, given that they will have to defend the final budget and any cuts to their constituents.

"The only thing that prevents it from going full scale is that Democrat or Republican in D.C., their constituents are going to be affected by this," Jackson said.

Here's some things to know.

What's in the budget?

The president's budget calls for increased spending on defense, law enforcement and counterterrorism. To help pay for that, Trump proposes steep cuts to social safety net programs, foreign aid and efforts to combat climate change.

HUD's budget would be slashed by $6 billion a year -- $3 billion of which is part of the Community Development Block Grant program that has been helping communities for 42 years in areas such as neighborhood rehabilitation projects and affordable housing developments.

What would get hit?

The cuts to community development block grant programs by themselves could cost Cleveland as much as $30 million a year, said Councilman Anthony Brancatelli, the chair of council's Development, Planning and Sustainability Committee.

In addition to the block grant program, the cuts would also hit several programs that help urban centers and support affordable housing.

That could include programs that help to get homeless people off the streets and into some subsidized housing, programs that help make repairs to homes to keep them livable or services like home-delivered meals, said Councilman Matt Zone.

Community development corporations, which often handle these type of programs at the street level, could lose operating money. That could force some to close or others to merge, Zone said.

And programs that help public housing providers like Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority get people into affordable housing as well as build and maintain that housing also would be targeted.

"Trump has unveiled a budget that would slash or abolish programs that have provided low-income Americans with help on virtually all fronts," the Washington Post wrote Thursday.

What would be the impact in Cleveland?

For Cleveland, the budget cuts would eliminate millions of dollars of federal money that are used on projects and programs locally, Brancatelli said.

Neighborhoods such as Tremont, Detroit Shoreway and University Circle have seen improvements in great part because of federal development money. Community development corporations at the neighborhood levels played a large role in developing those strategic agendas, he said.

Neighborhoods such as Clark-Fulton, Mount Pleasant and Slavic Village won't be able to take advantage of those projects as they try to recover.

"We're truly at a tipping point," Brancatelli said. "These resources are incredibly valuable for recapturing these neighborhoods."

The reduction in support for public housing programs could result in private landlords being less willing to participate in programs where low-income tenants are given vouchers toward their rents.

That in turn would put more stress on publicly owned housing, which is increasingly in demand from a growing low-income elderly population, Brancatelli said.

Money for new construction also would be reduced.

What happens next?

Trump's budget plan will first be taken up in the House. Lobbying efforts with members of Congress already are underway, Zone said.

Zone is president of the National League of Cities, which just concluded its national convention in Washington. Between Saturday and Wednesday, more than 600 league members lobbied members of Congress, including the leadership of both parties, Zone said.

Those meetings emphasized the role Congress plays in setting the final version of the budget, Zone said. "It is their authority to review and scrutinize the president's budget," he said, and make it one for all Americans.

Brancatelli's hope is that some of the proposed cuts are bargaining positions.

"I'm praying that this is strictly a negotiating tool and it's not hard and fast and what we're going to do," he said.

Otherwise, cities will be hurt, he said. And that will have an impact in the suburbs and on out.

"That is a basic tenet in the United States," he said. "You don't find strong suburbs surrounding a city that is empty. "
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A man accused of causing a fatal six-car crash in Elyria in being sued.

(File photo)

ELYRIA, Ohio -- An Elyria couple is suing the man who police accused of causing a six-car crash that claimed the life of a 6-year-old girl.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Lorain County Common Pleas Court says Donald Buchs, 24, of Elyria, was negligent in a Jan. 22 crash on Ohio 57 at Cleveland Street in Elyria. The crash killed Alia Bailey and injured her mother, police said.

Buchs was initially charged with drunken driving in that crash, but prosecutors dropped the charge days later. The crash is still being investigated and criminal charges could be filed again in the future, Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will previously told cleveland.com.

Orie Wayne Rollyson and Kimberly Sue Rollyson, of Elyria, filed the civil lawsuit against Buchs and his employer, All American Demolition. The couple is seeking $125,000 in damages, the lawsuit says.

The Rollysons own K&W Roadside Service and their tow truck, a 1994 International 460, was totaled in the crash. The truck was their only source of income, the couple's attorney, Stephen Meckler, said Friday.

"The insurance company is not responding to our request to have the truck replaced," Meckler. "We decided to file suit to settle this. The more weeks that go by the more money they lose."

Neither Buchs nor All American Demolition returned calls seeking comment.

The lawsuit also says the Rollysons suffered mental anguish and physical injuries, which were not disclosed, and have medical expenses related to ongoing treatment.

"There are multiple cars involved in this case and of course the real tragedy is that a little girl was killed," Meckler said. "Although there is plenty of insurance on the person who is at fault the insurance company won't be able to resolve all the claims at one time."

Buchs was driving a Ford F-150 when he struck a 2015 Ford Explorer and the Rollyson's tow truck from behind, police said. The Explorer and tow truck were stopped a red light on Ohio 57.

The impact pushed the Explorer into a 2003 Dodge Durango and a 2007 Chevrolet Malibu. It also pushed the tow truck into a 2016 Nissan Rogue. The F-150 went through the intersection and hit a chain-link fence.

The F-150's speed was likely a factor in the crash, and Buchs failed field sobriety tests at the crash scene, police said.

Alia Bailey and her mother were treated for injuries at MetroHealth. The 6-year-old girl later died, prosecutors said.

Two other women were also injured and received treatment at University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center. One woman suffered a fractured leg and the other had minor injuries, police said.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
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A man was beat and robbed by seven unidentified men Thursday night.

(File photo)

ELYRIA, Ohio -- Seven men beat and robbed a 19-year-old man late Thursday outside an Elyria bar, police said.

No arrests have been made in connection with the robbery that happened about 11 p.m. outside Bailey's Bar on Taft Avenue near Furnace Street, according to a police report.

The man left the bar and was walking down Taft Avenue when the robbers jumped him and threw him to the ground. The robbers punched and kicked him, and may have broken his nose, the report says.

The man was in severe pain and couldn't see who attacked him. The robbers took $300 from his wallet, threw the wallet back at him and left him lying on the ground, the report says.

None of the robbers spoke during the attack, and the man did not see a weapon. The man could not remember if the robbers were at the bar, and he could not provide descriptions of them, the report says.

The man suffered nose, mouth, forehead and knee injuries and received treatment at University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
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Notre Dame College has received a $1.5 million gift to support STEM programs.

(Notre Dame College )

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio - Notre Dame College has received the largest academic donation in its 95-year history -- $1.5 million to support programs.

The families and friends of the late Marie Goetz Geier, represented by her husband Richard and sons Robert and Thomas, provided the gift to establish the Marie Goetz Geier Endowment for STEM Education and Professors in STEM Education.

The endowment is dedicated to supporting and growing the private college's science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs and to establish up to three distinguished professorships.

Marie Geier graduated from Notre Dame in 1960. She served as director of development at the college and was a member of the board of advisors of the Sisters of Notre Dame. She was named Notre Dame College Woman of the Year in 1993.

"We are extremely grateful for the relationship we enjoy with the Geier family and cannot thank them enough for their generosity,' President Thomas Kruczek said in a statement. "Their $1.5 million dollar gift surpasses any the college has ever received in support of its academic programs and in a very special way, it recognizes our dedicated faculty. We are honored by the confidence the Geier family has placed in us by recognizing and rewarding the exceptional work we do here every day at Notre Dame College."

The endowment will provide funding and support for students, professors and staff in STEM education programs.

"Notre Dame College has always played a special part in the life of this community, and in our lives as a family," Robert Geier said in a statement. "My mom acquired an outstanding Catholic education, a love of learning and lifelong friendships during her time here.

"The College continues to be blessed by a creative and dedicated faculty who believe deeply in the mission of providing exceptional student-centered education in the STEM fields - education which can inspire and change lives. Our family is proud to support the work of these professors by providing resources to support their commitment and vision. We invite others to follow our lead in supporting the continued mission of the College."

This story has been changed to reflect that the gift was the largest academic donation in the college's history.
South Korean media reported on Friday that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson skipped out on gathering with his Korean counterparts due to fatigue. But the only American news outlet aboard Tillersons first diplomatic mission did not report on the development, further ramping up scrutiny of the State Departments decision to leave the U.S. media virtually in the dark.



Erin McPike, a journalist from the conservative-leaning website Independent Journal Review, was the only reporter invited on Tillersons trip to Asia  an exceedingly unusual development. According to IJR founder Alex Skatell, McPike received the highly coveted spot because of her tenacious, detailed brand of reporting. McPike, however, is not functioning as a pool reporter during the trip and will not provide daily insights into Tillersons trip. Instead, shes reportedly accompanying the secretary of state for an upcoming profile of Tillerson.



There is an elevated concern in the Japanese media about that level of control that Trump is trying to exert on the U.S. news media, Tamaki Tsukada, spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Washington, told The Washington Post this week.



IJR did find it necessary to cover former President Barack Obamas trip to Hawaii this week, however, publishing a story titled Ex-President Obama Made Surprise Visit to Hawaii, Just Days Before Judge Issued Travel Ban Ruling. The publication suggested Obamas visit to Hawaii was related to a judges decision to halt Trumps executive order barring individuals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The story also noted that the judge was Obamas classmate at Harvard University and that the former president ate a restaurant near the judges federal courthouse.
Students at Linn-Benton Community College will pay 5 percent more for tuition starting this summer term, the college's Board of Education has decided.

Board members voted 5-1 on Wednesday, with Ron Mason absent and Keith Frome dissenting, for the tuition increase. The vote passed without discussion.

Students who are Oregon residents currently pay $99.43 per credit. The 5 percent increase brings that price to $104.40.

Out-of-state students will pay $242.67 and international students will pay $296.12.

Wednesday's vote falls in line with a January budget presentation at which President Greg Hamann, Vice President of Finance and Operations Dave Henderson, and Director of Accounting and Budget Jess Jacobs encouraged the board to consider the tuition hike as part of the overall budget framework.

LBCC officials are recommending the college keep to annual schedule of small-scale tuition increases rather than go without for a year or two and then consider larger raises.

In other business Wednesday, board members awarded a contract to Umpqua Roofing Co., Inc. of Eugene for $1,577,561 for a roofing project at the main campus. Construction is to begin in April and be mostly finished by Sept. 15 or sooner.

They also heard updates on capital construction projects. The Healthcare Occupations Center, which is under budget and on schedule, is undergoing interior work, such as plumbing, electrical, drywall and heating and ventilation. Design work also is ongoing at the Benton Center in Corvallis and on a 2017 remodel of building A for the mechatronics program on the Albany campus.
Tackling the thorny issue of North Korean nuclear aggression is a key theme for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as he tours Asia this week, but he will have to tread carefully as he leaves Japan for South Korea on Friday, followed by China on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida at a joint news conference in Tokyo on March 16, 2017, where Tillerson called for a new approach to efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program. Toru Yamanaka/Pool/Bloomberg/Getty Images

President Donald Trump, known to elude conventional foreign policy, is expected to seek out new solutions to reign in a belligerent Pyongyang, instead of continuing former President Barack Obama's strategy of economic sanctions. Speaking in Tokyo on Thursday, Tillerson highlighted the need for a fresh approach, acknowledging that two decades of American efforts to denuclearize North Korea have failed. But while Tokyo may be open to a more forceful stance, the same isn't true for Beijing and Seoul. South Korea's new president and Chinese sovereignty concerns could emerge as key obstacles to Washington's goal of a unified, confrontational stance against North Korea.

China and secondary sanctions

While Trump has yet to publicize his North Korea strategy, many believe he could focus on secondary sanctions, i.e. focusing on companies who do business with Pyongyang. This particular type of punishment is fundamentally defensive in nature, according to Stephan Haggard, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. It's an effort to protect the U.S. and its allies against North Korean capabilities, rather than bringing Pyongyang back to the bargaining table, he explained in a recent note. Secondary sanctions would likely feature in Tillerson's talks this week, a senior U.S. State Department official said at a March 10 press briefing.

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But that may be problematic for Sino-U.S. ties, which are already strained from Trump's trade and currency rhetoric. Beijing is a traditional ally of Pyongyang and several Chinese firms regularly buy goods from North Korea  a matter that's long been a concern for Washington. In December, Obama's administration sanctioned Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development for using front companies to avoid sanctions. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang has previously stated that while Beijing is willing to cooperate, it opposes any country extending the jurisdiction of its domestic laws internationally. Earlier this month, Chinese telco ZTE admitted to violating American export controls and got slapped with $1.19 billion in penalties  the biggest criminal fine in a U.S. sanctions case. The case is notable in that ZTE acknowledged culpability and Beijing's response was muted, said Haggard. If Chinese government officials were involved, it would be a good sign for the future of secondary sanctions, he continued. Tillerson may also start a conversation around the idea of Beijing enforcing more sanctions against North Korean imports, but that will require a lot of cooperation from Chinese officials, noted David Adelman, former U.S. ambassador to Singapore and partner at law firm Reed Smith. The mainland recently suspended North Korean coal imports, but it's traditionally been reluctant to pursue stringent punishments that could send millions of North Koreans fleeing to China's border. "Washington's view is that China is North Korea's chief enabler," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. Right before China banned North Korean coal imports, they ramped up coal purchases worth $180-190 million and then imposed the ban, he noted. "So, it doesn't seem like China is on board with sanctions."

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New South Korean policy
Anil Agarwal, billionaire and owner of Vedanta Resources, pauses during a presentation in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017. Halden Krog | Bloomberg | Getty Images

During a dramatic ascent from small-town metals merchant to Indian mining tycoon, Anil Agarwal has always had an eye for a deal. But perhaps none as audacious as his attempt to buy 2bn of shares in Anglo American , which will give the self-made billionaire a major say in the future of one of the world's top miners. The chairman of Vedanta Resources described Wednesday's share swoop on Anglo by his family trust Volcan as just an investment in a "great company with excellent assets", stating that he had no immediate plans to launch a takeover. More from the Financial Times:

Indian billionaire launches 2bn raid on Anglo American

Gains for miners drive UK stocks to record high

Volcan/Anglo American: horsing about

But the complex structure of the transaction, which is being funded by a mandatory exchangeable bond issue, suggest a broader strategic intent, according to analysts and bankers. Pradip Shah, co-founder of the Indian rating agency CRISIL, who has known Mr Agarwal for more than two decades, says the move on Anglo is entirely in keeping with the billionaire's personality and he should not be underestimated. "He comes from the boondocks of Patna, and now he wants to be the biggest and the best. It's not even money driving him now." With Anglo already considering a potential sale of operations in South Africa, if Mr Agarwal is successful in acquiring a 12 per cent stake in the group, this could be used to push for a deal to help long-term ambitions to create a rival to BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto through Vedanta, the resources group controlled by Mr Agarwal.

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Shares in Anglo rose 8 per cent to almost 13 on Thursday  the biggest one-day gain in the stock for eight months. The share acquisition has not yet been completed, but people working on the transaction say it is expected to be finished by early next month. "We doubt that the firepower exists for a fully blown takeover of Anglo American," says Paul Gait, analyst at Bernstein Research. Anglo is seven times larger than Vedanta. "We see a more likely motivation as Mr Agarwal striking for a place on the Anglo American board, and therefore . . . to influence corporate activity, including Anglo's attempts to exit a significant chunk of its South African exposure." Mr Agarwal, whose net worth was recently estimated at $3.2bn by the Hurun Rich List, has amassed a fortune buying bombed out mining assets from the Indian government and transforming their operations. But people familiar with the billionaire's ambitions say that his dream is to build an Indian version of the world's biggest diversified miners such as BHP Billiton. It is through that lens that his investment in Anglo needs to be seen, say analysts. Rather than using cash to finance his share acquisition, his bankers at JPMorgan are raising 2bn through the sale of mandatory exchangeable bonds. These bonds will be exchanged either for cash or Anglo shares in 2020. "Basically Agarwal gets his hands on 12 per cent of Anglo for the next three years, in which time he can try and influence the company," says one debt investor. "On top of that he has the option in three years to keep the stock or hand it over to bondholders." While a 12 per cent stake does not guarantee Mr Agarwal a seat on the Anglo board, it would put him in a powerful position should Anglo decide to sell South African assets. Anglo declined to comment on Mr Agarwal's investment. "It does appear that Volcan is positioning itself to be in a front-line seat if any break-up of Anglo American were to happen," says Citi analyst Heath Jansen. After returning to profitability in 2016, Anglo, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding in South Africa this year, has pulled back from a radical shrink-to-survive strategy. Anglo's chief executive Mark Cutifani says the company no longer needs to make disposals to cut debts and can hang on to assets previously deemed non-core such as its large iron ore and coal mines in South Africa. But he has been careful not to rule out a deal that would see Anglo sell these assets or spin them off into a new vehicle listed in Johannesburg. Such a move would please many shareholders, who want the company to reduce its exposure to the South Africa because of political and regulatory uncertainty and strict capital controls that prevent cash from leaving the country. "If someone has a view on how they would like to see something consolidated in South Africa, we are open to the conversation, but I would have to be able to demonstrate to all of our shareholders that it created value," he said after Anglo announced annual results in February.

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Feb. 2, 1929  March 8, 2017

David Oscar Zopf, 88, of The Dalles, formerly of Corvallis, died March 8.

He was born Feb. 2 in Evansville, Indiana, to Oscar Peter Nicholas Zopf and Ione Mary Daum.

Dave's family lived throughout the United States during the Great Depression. He graduated from Stanford University with a masters in electrical engineering in 1952.

Dave married Nancy Ward, in 1952. They met in the Stanford choir.

Dave worked for Boeing, and was co-owner of E. Bollay Associates, which was sold to EG&G Corp. in 1969. He joined the OSU oceanography department and oversaw the development of the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

In retirement, he and Nancy were involved with their grandchildren and enjoyed traveling, particularly to Scotland. In 1996, they settled in The Dalles where Nancy had grown-up. Dave eagerly dove into the community as a volunteer with the Lions, Red Cross, Mid-Columbia Senior Center, Mid-Columbia Medical Center and various churches. He felt very strongly that contributing to his community was the rent we pay to be here.

Dave was a man of character, discipline, intellect, strong work ethic, humor, generosity and compassion. He was a kind and loving father, grandfather, uncle and friend.

His presence is sorely missed by those family members left behind  wife Nancy; daughter Lisa (Tim); son, David (Julie); son-in-law Ghazanfar Zardinejad; grandchildren Jordon (Jennifer Mains plus one), Eleanor, Jessica, Caroline (Mike), Kelley, Kathryn and Edward; brother-in-law Lynn; and many nieces and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his daughter Heidi Zardinejad and sister Lucy Sarles.

No public services will be held.
The Japanese government is not considering steps to support embattled conglomerate Toshiba , Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Friday.

Toshiba this week missed submitting audited third-quarter earnings for a second time and said it would consider selling a majority stake in the Westinghouse nuclear unit at the center of its financial troubles.

Sources have told Reuters that a fund backed by the government may invest as a minority stakeholder in Toshiba's memory chip business, which the company is looking to sell to raise cash.

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Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih on Thursday said relations between his country and the United States have never been better, and the two nations are fully aligned in confronting Iranian aggression. The minister made his remarks during a visit to Washington with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the young and highly influential royal at the helm of Saudi Arabia's economic diversification and military. Falih said the visit solidified the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which he called one of the most central to global stability. "It has brought it to yet a higher level than it has ever been, and there is alignment on all of the major issues between the two governments, and it's been, I think, further helped by the personal bond that was created between his royal highness, the deputy crown prince, and President Trump," said Falih, who also serves as chairman of state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

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Falih's comments mark a turning of the page after a rocky relationship between the kingdom and the Obama administration, which negotiated a historic multilateral deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia's chief geopolitical rival in the Middle East. President Donald Trump wasted little time ratcheting up pressure on Iran. His administration put Iran "on notice" shortly after he entered the White House and imposed additional sanctions on entities involved in Tehran's ballistic missile program. While Obama kept economic pressure on Iran, his administration ultimately worked out a deal with five other nations that lifted international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for Iranian leaders accepting limits on their nuclear program. That allowed Iran to sell its vast oil supplies more freely and solicit investment in its energy industry, increasing competition with top oil exporter Saudi Arabia. Obama and the Saudis also butted heads over Riyadh's military campaign in neighboring Yemen. The United States limited military support for the Saudi-led coalition due to Washington's concerns about high civilian casualties and humanitarian crises touched off by the conflict, Reuters reported.

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Falih admitted the relationship had recently experienced "challenges." "Well, I think the relationship had its challenges the last few years  Middle East issues in general, but specifically Iran was an issue where we differed with the Obama administration," he said. "That has been removed because, as I mentioned, the leadership of the two sides see eye to eye in terms of addressing Iranian aggression and intervention in regional affairs, and that's one where there is 100 percent alignment."

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said he and Salman had discussed fighting the Islamic State and "confronting Iran's destabilizing regional activities" during a meeting Thursday, according to Reuters. Riyadh and the administration are on the same page in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and "going beyond ISIS to the sources of terror around the world," Falih said.

Saudi investment in United States

The U.S.-Saudi relationship also came under pressure from a bill that would allow families of American citizens killed in domestic terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia. Most of the Sept. 11 attackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia and there are lingering suspicions that some Saudi officials had a hand in the plot. Saudi Arabia threatened massive divestment from the United States if the effort succeeded. Congress passed the bill last year, overriding Obama's veto, but this week's meetings included talk of new Saudi financial commitments.

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In response to the fear that the administration of President Donald Trump will defund Planned Parenthood, 75 tech leaders sent a strong message to Washington D.C. in support of the health services provider, stressing that it is good both for women and business.



"There is no doubt that current congressional efforts to cut off access to this essential health care provider would hurt women, their families, and the businesses they lead, work for, and support," says the letter, which is dated March 16.

The CEOs of Tumblr, Slack, Squarespace, Foursquare and Reddit are among the signatories, and recipients are four Congressional leaders: Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi.

"We have had an incredible relationship with the tech community for many many years. So many of the patients that we see at Planned Parenthood reach us through technology," Cecile Richards, the President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told CNBC in Austin, Texas, at the SXSW Conferences and Festivals.
Asia's cocktail scene has undergone a total "evolution," according to the head of one of the largest bar chains in Singapore.

Nasen Xavier Thiagarajan, CEO of Harry's International, told CNBC last week that a new generation of smaller bars, offering unique concepts and artisanal drinks has energized the space in the last five to 10 years.

Harry's International, which has been around since 1992, owns 19 bars nationwide, and also has a presence in India and Myanmar.

Last year, the alcoholic beverage industry in Asia Pacific was valued at $234 billion, up from $200 billion from the year before, according Euromonitor International. And more bars in Asia-Pacific are making their name globally: 2016 saw nine Asia-Pacific bars on Drinks International's list of World's 50 Best Bars.

Along with this growth, consumers are increasingly looking for bars that offer more than just a cold drink  they're searching for immersive experiences that tingle all five senses.

Two individuals saw an opportunity in that and conceptualized the idea of a "Singapore Cocktail Festival" that could offer bar-goers spirit masterclasses, themed cocktail rooms and bar tours that would provide a platform for consumers to "taste, learn and play."
The Long March-2F rocket carrying Shenzhou 11 manned spacecraft blasts off from launch pad on October 17, 2016 in Jiuquan, China. Li Jin | VCG | Getty Images

China is developing a system to recover parts of rockets used in space launches to bring down costs and make its space program more commercially competitive, according to researchers involved in the project. The system would bring the rocket engine and booster safely back to the ground so they can be reused in future launches. Besides saving operational costs, the recovery would also reduce the threat of debris falling to the ground, the researchers said. The recovery system is under development at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing. More from the South China Morning Post:

China to develop space rockets to launch from planes

China's winter pollution a product of climate change, researchers say

China 'could prevent 3 million deaths a year if air quality standards tightened' It involves using a set of multiple parachutes, which are stored in the first stage of the rocket, which is released from the rest of the craft before it burns its way through the Earth's atmosphere. An air bag inflates under the discarded part of the rocket, which cushions impact when it finally hits the ground.

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The technology differs from the system used by the commercial company SpaceX on its Falcon 9 rockets. As the first stage of Falcon 9 falls back to earth, its engines reignite when it reaches a speed of 3km per second, slowing it down to reduce impact as it lands vertically on the ground. Deng Xinyu, a researcher on the Chinese rocket recovery program, said in an article on the academy's website that vertical landing involved many challenges and was extremely difficult to achieve. SpaceX has performed a series of successful vertical landings which demonstrate the technology's feasibility, but Chinese researchers have rejected the approach, the article said. Deng wrote that the vertical landing system needed carrying extra fuel for landing, which meant rockets could only carry smaller payloads into space. The Falcon rocket also uses nine small rocket engines to generate thrust, which reduces the launch vehicle's overall reliability and efficiency. "The mainstream trend of modern rocket development is to increase the thrust and reduce the number of rocket engine. That is also why China, as well as Airbus , Boeing and Lockheed Martin did not use the technology," Deng said. China's government has funded research into both approaches before concentrating efforts on the parachute system. A large scale test experiment using the technology was carried out two years ago. Bao Weimin, professor of aerospace technology at Peking University and a science adviser to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told the state-run news agency Xinhua this week that the reuse of rockets was essential to cut costs. "Compared to mainstream rockets overseas, Long March rockets in China have lower costs, but with the increase of Chinese space exploration, the costs must be trimmed further," he was quoted as saying.

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For now, he's busy mastering the home-sharing business. But Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky said he expects to see a total "revolution" in the way people travel next.

"It feels like there's a pretty big revolution coming" to the airline industry, Chesky said in an interview on Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist.

"We have looked at where to stay  we now have [Airbnb] experiences, which is what you do. Probably down the road we will be looking at how you get there  aviation," Chesky said.

The airline industry hasn't changed in decades, the Airbnb co-founder emphasized. "I went on a plane in the 80's, I go on it today, it's very similar."



Chesky told Geist he doesn't know what role Airbnb will play in this so-called "revolution," but added: "In my lifetime, for sure, there's going to be a completely different way to travel."
has announced plans to set up two new research and development centers in China amid continued challenges to the iPhone maker in the world's second-largest economy.

The U.S. technology titan said Friday that the hubs would be in Shanghai and Suzhou. This follows to open R&D centers in Beijing and Shenzhen.

Apple has committed to invest more than 3.5 billion yuan ($507.1 million) in research in China, the company said.
A new study from NASA has shown that the jet engines using biofuels have fewer particle emissions in their exhaust trails.



In a news release earlier this week, NASA said the reduction could be "as much as 50 to 70 percent" and that the study bode well for both the environment and airline economics.

Data was gathered from test flights in 2013 and 2014, looking at the impact of alternative fuels on the performance of engines, emissions, and "aircraft-generated contrails" seen at altitudes that commercial airliners fly at. The tests were part of the Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions Study (ACCESS).



NASA described the contrails as being produced by the mixture of hot aircraft exhaust with cold air seen at cruising altitudes.



Persistent contrails were of interest, according to the agency, because they created "long-lasting, and sometimes extensive," clouds that would otherwise not form in the atmosphere. They were believed to be one factor impacting the environment.

The study involved flying three research aircraft, in turns, behind another plane that was using a 50-50 blend of aviation fuel and an alternative fuel produced from camelina plant oil.

"Soot emissions also are a major driver of contrail properties and their formation," Bruce Anderson, ACCESS project scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, said.



"As a result, the observed particle reductions we've measured during ACCESS should directly translate into reduced ice crystal concentrations in contrails, which in turn should help minimize their impact on Earth's environment," Anderson added.



The findings were published in the journal Nature and were, NASA said, the result of an international research program led by NASA and involving bodies from Germany and Canada.

Rich Moore was lead author of the report in Nature. "This was the first time we have quantified the amount of soot particles emitted by jet engines while burning a 50-50 blend of biofuel in flight," he said.
The U.S. has told the British government that it would not repeat accusations that it had helped former U.S. President Barack Obama to spy on President Donald Trump when he was running for the White House.



"We've made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and we've received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated," a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said Friday, Reuters reported.

The accusations emerged earlier this week when Fox News judicial analyst Napolitano said that three intelligence sources told him that Obama had used the British GCHQ to wiretap Trump. The allegations were then repeated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer Thursday.

Earlier on Friday A GCHQ spokesperson described the allegations as "nonsense", "ridiculous" and should therefore be "ignored."

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire-tapping' against the then President-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," the spokesperson told CNBC.

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President Donald Trump released a budget plan this week that would take funding from most federal agencies to bolster the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

The slim document highlights Trump's plans for discretionary spending, but does not address the administration's entitlement or tax plans, which will be shared later.

"Our Budget Blueprint insists on $54 billion in reductions to non-Defense programs," wrote Trump in his budget message. "These cuts are sensible and rational."

It's not unusual for an incoming president to make sweeping changes to the distribution of funds across federal departments in his first budget proposal, but Trump's budget cuts much deeper than those proposed by either of his two most recent predecessors.

In his proposal for fiscal 2002, George W. Bush trimmed $8 billion across many departments including Transportation, Justice and Agriculture and increased spending for departments like Defense, Health and Human Services, and Education by $34 billion. Barack Obama cut $3 billion while increasing funding by $75 billion for fiscal 2010.

As in the past, it's likely that some of the changes proposed by the Trump budget will be tossed out by Congress.
The financial offices of banks in the financial district of Canary Wharf, are pictured from Greenwich Park in London on January 17, 2017.

President Donald Trump's plans to to ease banking regulation is raising eyebrows in Europe.

Trump has asked the U.S. Treasury Department to submit a report on possible changes to Dodd-Frank  the set of rules established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to clamp down on banks risk-taking. Other banking rules, including the Basel III international framework seem to be on hold since the new administration came in.

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said Friday that G-20 countries should not fall into "reform fatigue".

Carney, who is also Chair of the global financial industry watchdog the Financial Stability Board, wrote in a letter sent by the FSB to the G-20 finance ministers that "a decade after the start of the crisis, an element of reform fatigue is understandable.

"But giving into it would mean that essential standards are neither completed nor fully implemented."

A European official working in banking regulation, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive state of legislation, told CNBC that the world was close to finishing the Basel III regulation last January, until the new administration arrived in the U.S. and delayed the expected conclusion of the process.

The U.S. needs to appoint a new Federal Reserve official for banking supervision, which is expected to happen only next month. Until then, the Basel III committee is not aware of the official position from the U.S.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 ended 0.16 percent higher with most sectors and major bourses in positive territory. Telecoms led the gains as both BT and Telecom Italia moved higher.



Utilities ended slightly higher too. Enel, the Italian utility firm, said Friday that large-size mergers could have a destructive economic impact. Its full-year results were in line with expectations.



The U.K.'s house builder Berkeley Group was at the top of the benchmark. It jumped 6.1 percent after indicating that its profits will hit the top end of analysts expectations, despite a slowing housing market in the capital.



By contrast, the multinational oil firm Tullow Oil was at the bottom of the European benchmark, down by 14.7 percent. This was after news that it is launching 607 million ($749 million) rights issue at a 45 percent discount to its current share price as it tries to reduce its debt burden.

The Nordic lender Nordea fell over 6.3 percent on Friday. This comes after a dispute with the Swedish government. Nordea's chairman said Thursday that he will likely propose moving the Swedish headquarters if the government raises fees for the country's banking rescue fund.



Elsewhere, former chief executive of Barclays Bob Diamond and the Qatari royal family said Friday they are buying the British stockbroker Panmure Gordon.



Meanwhile, the Dow Jones industrial average and broader S&P 500 continued to hover around the flatline as gains made in the technology sector were offset by losses in healthcare.
While the French presidential election is seen as one of the biggest political risks of 2017, the country's finance minister is confident that it won't be won by the leader of the far-right National Front.

"I don't know who will be the president of the Republic in France  this is maybe the first time I don't know, but I know this won't be Mrs. (Marine) Le Pen and I know this will be someone European and favorable to European construction," Michel Sapin, finance and economy minister for France, told CNBC Friday according to the translation.

Speaking on the sidelines of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, the French minister said that France and its election was one of the three political risks currently in Europe. The other two risks concerned the Netherlands  which Sapin admitted was now over  and Germany.

"(When it comes to the Netherlands) the risk is behind us: we saw that when it is about fighting, not populism, but fighting extreme right-wing movements, then there are large majorities in our countries to say 'No' and put aside those movements. I'm convinced that this is what will happen in France."

Next month, French citizens will head to the polls to vote in the first round of the election.

According to recent polls, Le Pen is seen as being a strong contender for the first stage, however in the second round  due in May  polls suggest that the centrist politician Emmanuel Macron will likely go on to beat the anti-EU National Front leader.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has backed statements from key lawmakers that there's no evidence supporting Trump's wiretapping claim. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended the president. (CNBC)



Calling them "nonsense" and ridiculous," British intelligence agency GCHQ denied allegations from the White House that the group had helped former President Barack Obama spy candidate-Trump. (CNBC)



Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, whose confirmation hearing begins Monday, has expressed sentiments in cases that contrast with Trump administration's illegal immigration crackdown. (WSJ)



White House economic advisor Gary Cohn, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is selling a significant holding of a Chinese banking giant as he clears potential conflicts of interest to serve in his new role. (NY Times)



Goldman Sachs (GS) has become a big buyer of soured mortgages, trying to make money even as the firm looks to fulfill terms of a government settlement to help struggling homeowners. (WSJ)



Boeing (BA) signed a $3.4 billion U.S. government contract for its Apache attack helicopters. Major defense companies stand to benefit under President Trump's new budget blueprint. (Reuters)



Caterpillar (CAT) hired former U.S. Attorney General William Barr as outside counsel to help in connection with an Internal Revenue Service investigation of its import and export practices. (Reuters)



Amazon (AMZN) has started rolling out its digital voice assistant Alexa on Apple's iPhone via the e-commerce giant's main shopping app. Amazon has been pushing to get Alexa on more devices. (CNBC)



Apple (AAPL) has announced plans to set up another two research and development centers in China. Apple said it's committed to invest more than $507 million in research in China. (CNBC)



Nintendo plans to manufacture 16 million or more of its Switch consoles in the year starting April 1, up from an initial plan for 8 million, owing to strong demand since its March launch. (WSJ)



As criticism of Uber has mounted over the past month, one of its most prominent partners, Spotify, has discussed whether to continue its relationship with the ride-hailing company. (The Verge)



Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said he's "not too worried" about what would happen if new FCC chairman guts net neutrality rules "because consumers know they're entitled to getting all of the web services." (The Verge)



Actress Jessica Alba's The Honest Company replaced CEO Brian Lee with Clorox veteran Nick Vlahos. Lee plans to remain on the firm's board and serve in an advisory role to the company. (CNBC)



Canada Goose (GOOS) shares were higher in premarket trading after surging 25 percent on their trading debut on Thursday, marking it the second-biggest IPO of the year. (CNBC)



Tiffany (TIF) this morning reported quarterly earnings, revenue, and same-store sales that beat expectations. The luxury goods retailer also gave an upbeat outlook for 2017. (CNBC)
Fund managers, bankers and foreign diplomats are hurrying to meet France's far-right National Front to learn more about its programme, in a sign of how seriously the party is being taken six weeks before the presidential election.

Analysts at banks and funds including UBS, BlackRock and Barclays have met FN officials to discuss its economic plans, according to people close to the party. Representatives from dozens of governments including the US, Argentina, Sweden and Denmark have also met FN officials or attended party events, many for the first time.

"We have had people queueing up to talk to us about our programme," said Mikael Sala, an economic adviser to Marine Le Pen, party leader and presidential candidate.

More from Financial Times:

White House reassures UK it will not repeat Trump spying claim

Sharp drop in US emissions keeps global levels flat

Pakistan bars airline CEO from leaving country amid probe



The interest underlines how markets and governments are considering the possibility that Ms Le Pen might win power, potentially putting her in a position to take the eurozone's second-largest economy out of the single currency and hold a "Frexit" referendum on leaving the EU.

While polls still suggest the FN leader will lose the second round in May, investors have been pricing in the increased likelihood of a victory as a rival on the centre-right, Francois Fillon, is weakened by a scandal about jobs for his wife and children.

The US, Argentine, Swedish and Danish embassies in Paris confirmed that either their ambassadors or domestic political specialists had held meetings with senior FN officials in recent months.

The embassies said the meetings were part of their role to speak to all big parties in France. The Argentine embassy said its ambassador's meeting with the FN was a chance to discuss its "vision" for Europe.

Their approach is in sharp contrast to the line taken by the UK and Germany, neither of which talk to the far-right party. "We have a policy of not engaging. There is a longstanding policy," Ed Llewellyn, the UK ambassador to Paris, told a UK parliamentary committee in January.

A spokesperson for BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, said: "As part of election fact-finding research conducted earlier this year, a team of investment strategists from the BlackRock Investment Institute met the economic teams of the main French presidential candidates to better understand their economic policy proposals."

Barclays and UBS declined to comment.

Florian Philippot, the FN's chief strategist and one of Ms Le Pen's main advisers, has met diplomats from five European countries and three from Asia in recent weeks, according to Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochere, a member of the FN's strategic committee.

"People want to talk about our programme to leave the euro as well as our immigration policy," said Mr de La Rochere. "They see that victory is now likely."

Three weeks ago Ms Le Pen also laid out her international vision in a speech attended by representatives of 42 countries, according to the FN.

While Ms Le Pen is almost certain to get through to the second round, most pollsters assume she will then be beaten by any opponent  just as her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was defeated by an anti-FN coalition when he reached the second round of the election in 2002.

However, Ms Le Pen is seen as likely to do much better than Mr Le Pen because she is more moderate, while French politics has become more unpredictable. Voters in the largest centre-left and centre-right parties chose surprise candidates during the primary elections.

Thomas Guenole, a lecturer at Sciences-Po university, said diplomatic and investor meetings with the FN showed the growing fear of a victory by Ms Le Pen. He said he had also been contacted by several "major US investors" to ask about the chance of a Le Pen victory. "The meetings do not show that the FN's ideas have more credibility . . . but that everyone is scared of Ms Le Pen winning," he said.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price speaks at a press conference with House Republicans to discuss healthcare reform, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 17, 2017.

As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Tom Price spent the last seven years trying to muscle through a repeal of Obamacare. Now, as Health and Human Services Secretary, that health-reform law, the Affordable Care Act, may give Price a lot of the leeway he needs to roll back its regulations.

"There are 1,442 citations in #ACA where it says "The Secretary shall" or "The Secretary may" @HHSGov, we'll look at every single one," Price noted in a tweet Friday.



What the secretary could do

Health policy analysts say the ACA gives the secretary the most discretion when it comes to enforcing reporting regulations for insurers, hospitals and physicians, in particular.

"Some of the paperwork requirements and data collection that have been layered on people over the last seven years, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that got eased up," said James Capretta, a resident fellow and Milton Friedman Chair of the American Enterprise Institute. "It could make it easier for providers to change, adapt and cut their costs."

Tweet

Price could also provide businesses with regulatory relief when it comes to Obamacare fees and taxes. The Obama administration initially delayed the health insurer tax on premiums that's built into the law to fund subsidies. The implementation of the employer mandate was also delayed, while the so-called Cadillac excise tax on high-cost plans was pushed back more than once.

"The employer mandate was delayed quite a bit by the Obama administration, and made much (weaker) than people anticipated. They could do that even more from the perspective of the Trump administration," said Capretta.

Already, Price has proposed stricter enrollment rules to prevent people from abusing Obamacare plan protections, by incurring high medical costs and then failing to pay their premiums.

The move was in direct response to what health insurers have been asking for to help stabilize the individual market.

What the secretary can't do

However, when it comes to giving insurers more flexibility over the types of plans that they can offer in order to bring down premium costs, the Trump administration's hands are tied without a repeal of the legislation.

One of the key things critics point to in the ACA is the requirement that every plan include 10 essential health benefits, among them free preventive care, mental health and pregnancy coverage.

"It says that the essential health benefits have to be very similar to a typical employer plan," said Craig Garthwaite, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "Most employer plans don't differ that much on health benefits. To the extent that they do, it's really on the margins."

Insurers have also argued that if they can charge older enrollees up to five times more than younger people, they can make premiums more attractive to young adults. But the ACA limits so-called age band rating so they can only charge older enrollees three times more.

"I don't see a way to purely through the regulatory process really do a lot to bring down premiums," Garthwaite said.

What the secretary must do

Price has already used his regulatory discretion to extend the deadline for health insurers to submit rate plans for 2018 until June. But insurers say the administration needs to do more to secure the individual market next year.

An Anthem executive said CEO Joseph Swedish told President Donald Trump and Secretary Price in a private meeting this week that he welcomed the rollback on taxes and fees the administration is proposing, but also pushed to maintain some Obamacare measures.

"We'd like to see cost-sharing subsides continue, that the Medicaid is appropriately funded," said John Gallina, Anthem chief financial officer at the Barclays Capital health conference this week. "And we feel very good, very encouraged by the fact that the president and his team are listening and actually making change based on feedback that the industry is providing."

During the Obama administration, Republicans in Congress sued to block Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies that help low-income exchange enrollees pay for out-of-pocket costs. Their federal lawsuit has been put on hold, but is still pending.

Insurers say removing those cost-sharing subsidies before a transition to a new system will immediately destabilize the market, because enrollees will likely drop their plans.

"What really needs to happen is providing a stable environment for insurance carriers and consumers," said Sarah Collins, vice president for health-care coverage and access at the Commonwealth Fund. "Part of that is to resolve the suit over the cost-sharing reduction payments."

Collins also said that financial stabilization mechanisms are also key for maintaining the individual market.

The ACA provided three programs that were intended to help offset insurers' losses on high-cost enrollees in the first three years of Obamacare, but Republicans also fought funding for those programs.

"The premium stabilizers turned out not to be what the insurers thought," she explained, because they were paid only a fraction of what was expected. "That had a major effect on small insurers in particular."

Some insurers have sued the government in order to recover the funds they say were promised under the law's so-called risk adjustment program. If the Trump administration chooses to settle the claims, some policy analysts think it could buy some good will with insurers to keep them in the market next year.

"It would depend a lot on whether they could get the risk adjustment to work," said health policy Professor Laurence Baker, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. "They might be able to do that, but that would be a new frontier for everybody to figure out how to do that... and are plans prepared to buy into it?"

But politically, that's not likely to happen any time soon, while the GOP repeal plan vote hangs in the balance.

"It's possible the administration could say, you know what, 'you're right. You should have been paid for this'," American Enterprise's Capretta said. "That would run counter to some of the rhetoric of the last seven years, so hard to do that."

"We should pay them," in order to insure the future of the individual market, said the Kellogg School's Garthwaite.

"If I'm worried about one thing broadly, it's whether the insurers are going to be willing to trust the regulatory process, going forward," he said "Any replacement we try to come up with demands that private insurers be there to try to provide health insurance. At a certain point, they're not going to come back."

And there's no law requiring insurers to provide coverage in the individual market.
House Republicans plan to vote on their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act next week, a House GOP source told NBC News on Friday.

But lawmakers aim to do so on Thursday only if they have the votes to pass it, NBC said. That date marks the seventh anniversary of when President Barack Obama signed the ACA, also known as Obamacare, into law.

House GOP leadership and President Donald Trump have pushed to rally support for the plan, which has faced opposition and calls for changes from some conservatives and moderates in the party. Republicans need 216 votes to pass the bill in the House.

The bill likely faces tough resistance in the Senate, where only three Republican defections can doom its passage. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday she could not support the bill "in its current form."

Two Republican lawmakers, Budget Committee Chair Rep. Diane Black and Rep. Tom Cole, said Friday that the plan would likely be changed to adjust its tax credits to help older Americans buy coverage. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the plan estimated older, poorer consumers would suffer the most under it.

Trump boasted Friday about flipping some conservative lawmakers from "no" votes to "yes" votes after meeting with a group of them at the White House. The president has previously said he was willing to negotiate changes to make the bill more likely to pass in Congress.

Still, the House members in that meeting were not among those lawmakers who were firmly opposed to the plan, according to NBC News reporting.

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, tweeted Friday that it "still opposes the GOP replacement bill in its current form."

Politico first reported Friday that Republicans planned to vote next week.

 NBC News' Kasie Hunt, CNBC's Dan Mangan and Reuters contributed to this report
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Weight loss? Fewer wrinkles? Body soothing? Within a fraction of the time it takes to boil an egg? Sounds miraculous, sign me up! And that is how I ended up spending three minutes (mostly) naked in a minus 130 degree Fahrenheit chamber within London's luxury shopping mecca, Harvey Nichols. Slightly larger than an old-fashioned red British telephone box, this is the U.K.'s first electric whole body cryotherapy (WBC) chamber and the clinic has hosted around 2,500 appointments since opening last August. Its more established forebears - cryotherapy chambers which use liquid nitrogen to achieve the same freezing temperatures  have been around since launching in Japan in the late 1970s. Body shocks Both methods tout a similar litany of benefits. In addition to those listed above, cryotherapy's proponents claim the treatment can help with improving sleep and focus, restoring exercise-beaten bodies and bringing pain relief for certain conditions. "The extreme cold in a way shocks the body into a response and we want to trigger this response which is a response of fighting back. So all systems are on. The heart starts beating faster, the blood flow increases and the brain wants to contain this stimuli that it's getting from outside," explained Dr. Yannis Alexandrides, founder of 111CRYO, the clinic that developed this chamber. The key difference between electric and liquid nitrogen chambers is that in order to avoid gulping down toxic fumes, the gas-fuelled version requires the client's head to remain outside the box. This is both commercially impractical and triggers less of a physiological response given the body is subjected to a variety of temperatures, claims Dr. Alexandrides whose electric version allows the client's entire head and body to be treated at once. Given that hot liquid nitrogen rises, the feet are submitted to the lowest temperatures, with the vapors warming marginally as they rise up to the neck and head, which are exposed to room temperature.

Courtesy of 111CRYO London

Pouring cold water on the idea Yet some critics say that there is insufficient evidence that either version is capable of delivering on its inspiring claims. Indeed neither the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) nor the U.K.'s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has yet approved WBC. "Based on purported health benefits seen in many promotions for cryotherapy spas, consumers may incorrectly believe that the FDA has cleared or approved WBC devices as safe and effective to treat medical conditions. That is not the case," Aron Yustein, M.D., a medical officer in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, is quoted as saying on the regulatory agency's website. In terms of physical risks, once the client has signed the regular list of medical disclaimers, the same blog on the FDA website warns frostbite, burns or eye injury could result from the extreme temperatures. It is worth noting that the glass door to my chamber opened very easily and with a clinician watching me intently throughout I feel confident I could have ended the experiment rapidly if necessary. Inside the chamber At risk of stating the blindingly obvious, the chamber was extremely cold. I was slightly surprised as I had thought that the shock to my body from the instant temperature drop would have caused a less intense reaction. As it was, it felt like standing in the snow with no clothes on or throwing open a window to icy winds after a hot shower. The impression was compounded by the tiny, fluttering snowflakes (due to condensation) around me. I was very focused on the large, neon countdown clock and relieved when it expired. That said, there was certainly no pain or discomfort beyond the generic feeling of coldness. For the rest of the day, I did feel a persistent and pleasant light tingling sensation all over my body  similar to the warm feeling of invigoration provided by the recovery period shortly after diving into cold water. My body felt a little firmer and I also felt spritely and buoyant  both physically and psychologically. I must qualify this with the fact I took the treatment on a Friday with the weekend only hours away...but nonetheless, I can understand how clients become hooked on the lingering sensation and keep returning. I subsequently had the facial version which involves the blowing of the freezing air onto your face for around half an hour and is a very pleasant feeling. While I could see the results instantaneously  smaller pores, perkier composition, shallower creases  about half of those I polled couldn't tell which side of my face had been treated in a control test. Three days later and I can still both see and feel marginal improvements.

Cryotherapy facial demonstration. Photograph courtesy of 110CRYO London.
SWEET HOME  The Sweet Home Economic Development Group and its Oregon Jamboree music festival were born of economic necessity, three of the organizations early board members said Wednesday evening during the groups annual meeting.

The popular country music festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary in August.

Former group president Jann Horner, vice-president Debbie Paul and festival director Mary Mansfield said Sweet Homes economic base was shaken in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when environmental issues and lawsuits led to reductions in timber sales on the Sweet Home Ranger District and across the Willamette National Forest.

Timber sales that had been as much as 80 million board feet per year dropped to virtually zero and gradually increased to about 10 million board feet per year.

Paul moved to Sweet Home in 1985 and the community experienced several years of economic problems starting with drought that closed forest lands in 1986, a labor strike at local mills in 1987 and the process of listing the northern spotted owl as a threatened or endangered species in 1989 and 1990.

We were scared, terrified and facing huge change because we were a timber-dependent community, Paul said. But that fear gave us the incentive to bond together and become quite familiar with each other in seeking solutions.

Paul said groups like the Yellow Ribbon coalition, headed by John Kunzman and Coreen Melcher, sprang up to support timber families.

The Chamber of Commerce and Sweet Home Business Association  Corky Lowen, LaDonna Chafin, Verlin Weaver and Marie Bradley  worked together to host a successful visit by Cycle Oregon.

That was our first real indicator that we as a community could do something big, Paul said.

In 1991, the Sweet Home Economic Development Group was founded due in part to the leadership of former Mayor Dave Holley. The community needed an income generator to help diversify economically, Paul said.

We knew we needed to shift toward tourism, but we also realized that tourism jobs generally do not pay as well as timber jobs, Paul said.

It was during that time the Lebanon Community Hospital developed Wiley Creek Community, the city of Sweet Home built a flexible incubator building to lure small manufacturing start-ups, the beautification committee began in full swing, the Weddle Covered Bridge was constructed in Sankey Park and the community studied the possibility of a Wilderness Village to tell about the history of the area and attract tourists.

Mansfield has lived in the area since 1989 and said that after the Economic Development Group was founded in 1991, volunteers Scott Proctor, Marge Geil and Leslie Ancke came up with the idea to host a music festival to raise funds for economic development.

Geil and Ancke tracked down Wynonna Judd, then on tour, and the Oregon Jamboree was born in 1992 as a two-day event held in September, Mansfield said.

For the first three years, the then-two-day event was held in September and was managed by Pro Tours, which managed Judd.

In 1995, Mansfield, who had been a volunteer, was named festival director, but the event was canceled due to the inability to secure acts in a timely manner.

Board members loaned the event $4,000 each and the Linn County Board of Commissioners provided a $50,000 loan to keep the Jamboree alive.

In 1996, the Jamboree featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and was a huge success, Mansfield said, starting the event on a fast-climbing trajectory that would be financially viable for several years. The board members loans were repaid with interest and the county was repaid over five years.

In 1999, we decided it was prudent to develop a rainy day fund, Mansfield said.

That fund has come in handy in recent years, as the Jamboree has broken even or lost money.

Mansfield said the members of the SHEDG board realized that to make the Jamboree successful, they needed to partner with as many other entities as possible.

So, even though everyone was busy with their own jobs and families, they began to serve on other boards of directors and identify as many opportunities as possiblem," Mansfield said. "We reached into every corner of the county and state for information.

Horner outlined the development of the Sweet Home Community Foundation, funded by proceeds from the Jamboree.

She said the foundations goal was to provide seed money to local groups and develop an economic base to promote social welfare primarily for the common good and general welfare of the people of Sweet Home.

Projects funded by the Foundation included community murals, Highway 20 median strip beautification, storefront improvements and enhancement of Sweet Home entryways.

Horner said its also important to remember that numerous community groups benefit directly from the Jamboree. School groups earn tens of thousands of dollars by running ice or working the soda booths and shower areas.

The Rotary and Kiwanis clubs host food booths that raise money for scholarships and other programs for kids.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are earned by community businesses contributing to economic development over the past 25 years and nearly $200,000 was transferred to the Foundation for local grants for community projects, Horner said.

Current Jamboree director Robert Shamek said he spent 80 percent of his time last year looking for ways to cut expenses.

Shamek said that over the last 25 years some 300 people have served on the SHEDG board of directors and more than 350 artists have performed at the Jamboree.

Volunteers have set up more than 40,000 reserved seats and there have been more than 12,500 volunteers, Shamek said. They have contributed more than 300,000 hours to the community.

Shamek said the event has attracted more than 200,000 music patrons to the community.

This is a grassroots festival that holds true to the communitys values, Shamek said. It was started with nothing and has grown into what it is today.

Economic Development Group President Rachel Kittson-MaQatish presented administrator Carli Erickson and board member Heather Search with awards for outstanding work over the past year.

Re-elected to the board were incumbents Wendi Melcher and Ron Moore.

Scott Swanson provided an update on the Sweet Home Active Revitilization Effort (SHARE), which was founded in 2008 to improve the looks of the community.

A prime rib dinner was catered and donated by Michael Hall of The Point Restaurant and music was provided by local musician Trevor Tagle.
As the Greek government and its creditors continue to be at odds over the need for further austerity measures, sources have told CNBC recent developments suggest the International Monetary Fund is moving closer to joining the bailout program.

Greece entered a third bailout program, worth 86 billion euros ($92 billion), in 2015 but the IMF has not been willing to sign up to the pact. There are still differences to be resolved, sources said.

The institution has argued that the Greek debt is unsustainable and until the measures agreed under the program show that they will lead to a more sustainable debt, the Fund is not stepping in.

A year and a half later the IMF has not committed itself to the program - a problem for countries like Germany, Finland and the Netherlands where the IMF's participation is interpreted as a key "credibility" factor. The institution led by Christine Lagarde has dealt with many bailout rescues across the world and apart from its financial contribution, it brings the technical expertise needed to manage these programs.

"The IMF is back at the negotiating table," a European official that follows closely the Greek bailout talks told CNBC on the condition of anonymity.

A second European official added that the chances of the IMF participating in the bailout have increased from 20 percent a few weeks ago to 40 percent, though there were still significant outstanding issues to resolve.

All sides have become closer on the basis of a "contingency plan". A key difference between the European creditors and the IMF has been on the right level of primary surplus that Greece needs. The IMF has always maintained that Athens should aim for a primary surplus of 1.5 percent of GDP, whereas Europe wants 3.5 percent.

The IMF seems now willing to accept the 3.5 percent target, at least for the next few years and as long as it delivers real policy reform.

The contingency plan would mean that Greece would have to legislate new measures worth about 2 percent of GDP to be applied in 2019 and 2020  after the bailout expires in 2018, EU sources told CNBC. The aim is to ensure that the Greek debt becomes sustainable, just like the IMF requests.

Such measures would have to include changes to the pension system and the country's tax base. An EU official said that more than half of the Greek people do not pay income tax because the threshold is very high. Thus, one of the creditors' aim is to make the tax base broader but with lower tax thresholds, so contributions rise.



And to tackle the high pension deficit in Greece, creditors want a more modern system, whereby pensioners  who currently support their families -- do not receive as much money and the unemployed, families and younger people receive more benefits so that they are not dependent on the pensions of family members.



In case, Greece overshoots, the plan allows the government to use that space in the budget for growth-friendly measures, such as investments.

Eurozone finance ministers will gather on Monday in Brussels to discuss the developments in the Greek bailout. However, they are unlikely to strike a deal by then.

The IMF, Eurozone creditors and Greece need to have an agreement before July to ensure Athens receives new disbursements before new repayments to creditors are due.



The IMF directed CNBC to comments made by their spokesman Gerry Rice last week: "There has been progress in some important areas... However, differences remain in important areas It's still too early to speculate on when an agreement might be reached and there is still much work to be done.".





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Colonial-era train tracks in India will finally undergo a much-needed makeover, and big global players are betting big on the sector. A landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh last weekend gave Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the political capital he needs push through several big-ticket reforms to stimulate the economy.

A commuter waits for a train at a train station in Mumbai. Kunal Patil | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

The win in UP is seen as an endorsement of the current regime's efforts to improve government, especially after the fourth-quarter gross domestic figures proved that the controversial "demonetization" did not hurt the economy as much as expected. The 312 out of 403 seats they collected in the state assembly, as reported by the Election Commision of India, translate into artillery for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP can now pass even bolder legislation in parliament with a large majority in both upper and lower houses. Those initiatives include streamlining the national sales tax, improving labor reforms, solving land acquisition issues, and fostering better governance and transparency.

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Richard Iley from BNP Paribas wrote in a note that in short-term, BJP's gains "should help ease the passage of the good and services tax (GST) bill through parliament in the current session, ensuring that the landmark reform is introduced by July 1st as widely hoped." He added that "longer-range, a further legislative assault on illegal wealth, changes to restrictive labor and land acquisition laws and further FDI liberalisation are all likely further next steps and reforms that the administration is likely to press on in the next 12-24 months."

Railways poised to benefit

Research firm BMI projected that India's transport infrastructure sector will grow by 6.1 percent in real terms in 2017 and average 5.9 percent annually through 2021, making it the fastest-expanding component of the country's infrastructure sector. In mid-February, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented his 2017 Union Budget to the Parliament where he outlined his plan for infrastructure and railways. The funds allow state-owned Indian Railways to modernize its infrastructure and service operations, which includes laying 3,500 kilometers of new tracks in the coming year (2017-18) and feeding 7,000 stations with solar power in the medium term. Jaitley also announced a new Metro Rail Act to streamline existing laws, and allow greater private participation in construction and operation.

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Several foreign companies have won contracts to improve the state-owned monopoly. These include companies like Alstom , Bombardier and General Electric . CNBC spoke with French engineering group Alstom's Asia-Pacific vice president, Jean-Francois Beaudoin, to find out what's next for India. Alstom has been in India since 1990, but Beaudoin says that investments have only massively accelerated in the past few years. Two-thirds of its backlog orders come from India, and the company has multiple plans in the pipeline. In 2015, Alstom won two rail contracts worth up to $3.98 billion to make and maintain electric locomotives over 17 years. The company had also signed a contract worth over $215 million, to provide electrification, signaling and telecommunications system for the 343-kilometer-long eastern portion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor. Both these projects are expected to reduce congestion for passenger service and freight trains. They allow for faster, safer and heavier trains to move across the country. Beaudoin notes that Jaitley's speech showed that the Indian government is really committed to speeding up the modernization of its infrastructure, which presents opportunities for companies like Alstom.

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"Since the new government came to power three years ago, the willingness for transparency, simplification and promotion of foreign investment in India, with the 'Make in India' policy, for instance, has helped a lot for industries like us developing business in India."



Out of its 4,000 employees in Asia-Pacific, Alstom has 2,700 in India, which they say is 10 times what they had five years ago. Eleven percent of the company's 2016 revenue came from Asia-Pacific, with Australia, China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore being the biggest drivers.



The big picture
Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny has called on President Donald Trump to help Irish immigrants in the U.S. as he unveiled a new referendum that will extend voting rights to citizens outside of Ireland.

Speaking at a St Patrick's Day luncheon at the U.S. Capitol Thursday, Kenny called on the new President to consider granting new working rights to the estimated 50,000 Irish citizens believed to be living illegally in the U.S., adding new urgency to an issue that has hung heavy over diplomatic relations between the two nations.

"I'd just like to say in finality, this is what I said to your predecessor on a number of occasions: We would like this to be sorted," Kenny said in an address to the President and a selection of delegates.

"It would remove a burden of so many people that they can stand out in the light and say, now I am free to contribute to America as I know I can."

The Taoiseach also called for further work visas for young people hoping to work in the U.S.

"There are millions out there who want to play their part for America  if you like, who want to make America great," he said, in a nod to the President's campaign slogan.

Kenny's comments came at the end of his first  and last  state visit under the new U.S. Presidency. Kenny, who has been Prime Minister since 2011, announced in February that he will not lead the Fine Gael party into the next election due next year.

President Trump said the occasion marked a celebration of "America's commitment to Ireland and the tremendous contributions."

"I know it well," he said. "The Irish immigrants and their descendants have made right here in the United States and throughout the world."

New rights for Irish overseas

Kenny's plea came as Ireland seeks to extend the rights of its global diaspora by holding a referendum which could enable Irish citizens worldwide to vote in Irish presidential elections.

If the decision is passed when it goes to a vote in Ireland, it will bring the country in line with more than 120 countries that have systems in place to allow citizens living abroad to partake in national elections.

This could extend the voting population of the Republic of Ireland from 4.4 million to up to 70 million people who claim Irish heritage. The vote would apply only to Presidential elections, and not Prime Ministerial elections.

"Today's announcement is a profound recognition of the importance that Ireland attaches to all of our citizens, wherever they may be," Kenny said speaking at an Irish Memorial in Philadelphia earlier this week.

It is an opportunity for us to make our country stronger by allowing all of our citizens resident outside the State, including our emigrants, to vote in future presidential elections.

Brexit 'bad for Britain'

The Taoiseach also used his first meeting as an opportunity to slam Britain's Brexit negotiations in a bid to secure future ties between the U.S. and Ireland.

He claimed that now, more than before, Ireland will be an important trading partner for the U.S., as it is set to become the only English-speaking country in the EU and a key point of access to trade.

"While we respect the UK's decision to leave the EU, I continue to believe it is bad for Britain, for Ireland and for Europe," Kenny said.

"Ireland is an important bridge between the US and the EU. Post Brexit, Ireland will be the only English-speaking country in the EU, at the heart of the Single Market with unfettered access for companies, and in the Eurozone."

He also reiterated plans to stake a claim for companies planning to relocate from the U.K. to retain access to the EU.

"We want to be known as the best small country in the world for business. We will compete for mobile business from the U.K. that sees the value of and need for locating in the EU."



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President Donald Trump's press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel following the pair's meeting was largely positive, but there was one thing Trump didn't address that could be a problem, according to Nick Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

"If you were listening for U.S. support for the EU, you didn't hear it from President Trump. Europeans are worried about that," Burns said in an interview with "Power Lunch" on Friday.

"He's the first American president since Truman to be so negative about the project of building European unity. That's a problem."

During the meeting between the two world leaders on Friday, Trump pressed Merkel hard on North Atlantic Treaty commitments, a senior administration official told NBC News.

"I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel our strong support for NATO, as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense," Trump said at a joint White House press conference following the meeting.

Merkel said she was "gratified to know" how "important" Trump feels NATO is.
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The government is appealing a ruling from a federal judge in Maryland that blocked President Donald Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect. The government filed a brief notice Friday saying that it would appeal the Maryland ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Following the news, the American Civil Liberties Union said it looks forward to defending the recent rulings blocking Trump's immigration order. "President Trump's Muslim ban has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason  it violates fundamental provisions of our Constitution. We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court," Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Projects, said in a statement. The ruling in Maryland and another in Hawaii earlier this week were victories for civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees. They argued that a temporary ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration argued the ban was intended to protect the United States from terrorism. Federal law gives the president broad authority over immigration. Jimmy Carter used it to deny some Iranians entry to the U.S. during the hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan to bar Cubans who didn't already have relatives here and President Barack Obama to keep out North Korean officials.

When federal courts blocked Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect, the judges spelled out their major concern: the unusual record of statements by the president and his advisers suggesting the executive order's real purpose was to discriminate against Muslims, in violation of the Constitution's ban on officially favoring or disfavoring any religion.

The rulings

Neither U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland nor Judge Derrick Watson bought the administration's reasoning that the travel ban is about national security. "The history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the second executive order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban," Chuang wrote. Watson criticized what he called the "illogic" of the government's arguments and cited "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" behind the travel ban. He also noted that while courts should not examine the "veiled psyche" and "secret motives" of government decision-makers, "the remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry." "For instance, there is nothing 'veiled' about this press release: 'Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,'" he wrote, referring to a statement Trump issued as a candidate.

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But the scope of the rulings differed. In a challenge brought by Hawaii, Watson blocked the federal government from enforcing its ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries and its suspension of the nation's refugee program. Chuang only blocked the six-nation travel ban, saying it wasn't clear that the suspension of the refugee program was similarly motivated by religious bias. A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday ruled that his order blocking Trump's original travel ban does not apply to the revised executive order because there are enough differences between the two. Judge James Robart noted that Washington and several other states have also asked him to block the revised ban. He said he would rule on that request at a later date.



Appeals coming

Speaking Wednesday evening at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump called the ruling in Hawaii an example of "unprecedented judicial overreach" and said his administration would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which he said he wished he could implement. "We're going to win. We're going to keep our citizens safe," the president said. "The danger is clear. The law is clear. The need for my executive order is clear."

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On Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the government planned to seek clarification of the Hawaii order before appealing to the 9th Circuit. That circuit is where a three-judge panel unanimously declined to reinstate Trump's original travel ban when it was put on hold by a Seattle Judge last month. Despite the legal victories for critics of the ban, it's far from clear that they will continue to win. A different panel of judges in the 9th Circuit will probably hear the appeal of Hawaii's case. And on Wednesday, five judges signed a dissent criticizing the court's decision not to reconsider and throw out the panel's ruling on the original travel ban. "Whatever we, as individuals, may feel about the president or the executive order, the president's decision was well within the powers of the presidency," Judge Jay Bybee wrote for the five.

The president's authority
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's meeting with President Donald Trump could cause a backlash for her if things go south, global policy expert Joerg Forbrig told CNBC on Friday.



"I think she's taken this visit and the preparation, especially to this visit, extremely seriously," Forbrig, a senior transatlantic fellow for Central and Eastern Europe, and director of the Fund for Belarus Democracy, said in an interview with "Squawk Box."

"We know, for instance, she's read articles on Donald Trump from a 1990 edition of Playboy magazine. That's how deeply she's delved in order to avoid exactly the sort of things going wrong that we have seen going wrong with a couple of leaders that have already come to Washington to see Donald Trump," he said, speaking from Germany.

On Friday, Merkel, whose country has Europe's largest economy, will meet with Trump at the White House to reportedly discuss funding for NATO and relations with Russia in their first meeting since Trump took office.

Forbrig, of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., said the two leaders' long-distance relationship hasn't been easy. They have had a tense history and clashed publicly. Trump for instance has criticized Merkel for her handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.

Forbrig said some of the differences between Merkel and Trump will need to be smoothed over as the chancellor heads into a re-election campaign.

"President Trump is probably the least popular U.S. president in a very long time. If this meeting somehow doesn't succeed ... this would certainly be a liability politically for Angela Merkel here in Germany."

"I think she will have to get along with him," he said. "There's a whole set of issues of cooperation and a normal working relationship across the Atlantic. It is simply indispensable."

 Reuters contributed to this report.
Palantir Technologies, one of the most valuable startups in Silicon Valley, has deprived investors of basic information about its business and repeatedly hindered efforts by investors to sell their shares, according to a blistering lawsuit filed by a longtime investor.



In addition to keeping at least some shareholders in the dark about its financial performance, Palantir has "engaged in a pattern and practice" of attempting to thwart their attempts to sell stock, according to the lawsuit, filed by investment firm KT4 Partners. Instead of letting these investors sell shares, Palantir has steered their sale opportunities to itself or its executives, while showering a favored brokerage firm with commissions even when the firm does no work at all, the lawsuit claims.

KT4 Partners first bought Palantir shares over a decade ago and is seeking to compel Palantir to hand over financial records, which it says are needed to understand the value of its investment. Further, KT4 claims it needs this information to investigate whether Palantir or its executives have engaged in "improper and illegal conduct" to harm minority shareholders. The lawsuit was filed under seal last week in the Delaware Court of Chancery; a partially redacted version was released on Monday and is reported here for the first time.

Palantir, in an emailed statement, referred to an earlier lawsuit that it filed against Marc Abramowitz, the managing member of KT4, claiming he stole Palantir's intellectual property (a claim KT4 says is "meritless").

"This lawsuit is nothing more than a blatant attempt to distract from Mr. Abramowitz's unlawful and egregious theft of our intellectual property," Lisa Gordon, a Palantir spokesperson, said in the statement. "His allegations are without merit and needless to say, Palantir will continue to aggressively pursue its existing legal action against him."

Co-founded in 2004 by the billionaire Peter Thiel, who is now advising President Donald Trump, Palantir analyzes data for government agencies and major corporations. It has a $20 billion valuation, making it the third most highly valued startup in Silicon Valley, behind only Uber and Airbnb. Yet Palantir  whose stock changes hands only through private trades  goes to great lengths to keep any detailed information about its business private. A report by BuzzFeed News last year gave an unprecedented, though limited, account of its commercial operations.

The lawsuit, a highly unusual step for a startup investor, follows efforts by KT4 to obtain business information through other means. KT4 made a written demand last August to inspect Palantir's books and records, the lawsuit says. But then, according to the lawsuit, Palantir retroactively amended its investors' rights agreement "for the sole and express purpose" of avoiding disclosure obligations.

In September, Palantir filed its lawsuit against Abramowitz  which, according to KT4, has the "true purpose" of preventing disclosure of information and intimidating the investor. Palantir, in the lawsuit, described Abramowitz as a onetime confidant to Palantir executives who betrayed their trust.

Read more from BuzzFeed News:

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Palantir is under increasing pressure from its shareholders, a number of whom have held its stock for a decade or more and are anxiously awaiting a payday. Former employees, who received a major part of their pay in stock options, have struggled to cash out, despite limited share purchase offers arranged by the company. Last fall, in a reversal of his longtime refusal to pursue an IPO, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said at a tech conference, "We're now positioning the company so we could go public."

This statement by Karp has a previously undisclosed backstory, according to the lawsuit: KT4 says it came after a formal request by the investor for information on whether Palantir had considered an IPO.

KT4 says its stake in Palantir is worth over $60 million  a significant sum by many measures, but small in the context of Palantir, which has raised more than $2 billion from investors. When KT4 tried to sell portions of its stake, Palantir repeatedly interfered, the lawsuit claims. Palantir, following a common practice in Silicon Valley, requires that any sellers of its stock seek the company's approval for the transaction; companies do this to limit and manage ownership of their shares.

But remarkably, KT4 claims that when Palantir receives information from an investor about a planned sale, it uses that information to contact the buyer and persuade them instead to buy shares directly from the company or from certain Palantir insiders. One particular broker, Disruptive Technology Advisers, or DTA, repeatedly gets commissions from these sales, even when it "performed no legitimate work," KT4 claims.

KT4 says it experienced interference by Palantir when it tried to sell shares to Highbridge Capital Management, a hedge fund that was owned by JPMorgan Chase, in May 2015. After KT4 notified Palantir of the planned sale, Palantir turned around and instructed DTA to "take the opportunity, on Palantir's behalf," and arrange a sale from Palantir to Highbridge instead, according to the lawsuit.

But when Alex Fishman, a founder of DTA, met with a senior managing director at Highbridge, the hedge fund executive said he would not break his deal with KT4, telling Fishman to leave his office, according to the lawsuit. The situation escalated when Karp, the Palantir CEO, learned of Highbridge's affiliation with JPMorgan  a very important customer of Palantir's  and that the bank's CEO, Jamie Dimon, "would be asked to contact Karp directly to express displeasure" at these tactics, the lawsuit says. Karp then allegedly let the sale by KT4 go through.

Later, in December 2015, Palantir and DTA had more success in impeding a sale of shares by KT4 and other investors to a Chinese investment company, whose name is redacted in the document, the lawsuit says. DTA, representing Palantir, contacted the buyer and led it to believe that it was required to buy the shares directly from Palantir, ultimately leading the buyer to call off the deal with KT4 and the others.

Until KT4 made its recent demand for financial information, Palantir refused to provide financial information to buyers of its shares except through DTA  forcing buyers and sellers to do business with that firm or with Fishman, the lawsuit says.

Even when DTA was not involved in a deal, it still could get paid, according to KT4. Last summer, when UBS Securities was brokering a sale of Palantir shares, Karp demanded that UBS pay 25 cents a share to Fishman and DTA, even though DTA "had performed no work on the transaction"  and UBS agreed to make the payment, the lawsuit says. (KT4 says it learned this from a UBS managing director.)

Fishman and Alex Davis, the other DTA founder, recently "enjoyed a very close relationship" with Karp, according to the lawsuit. (According to Fishman's LinkedIn profile, he sold his half of DTA to Davis last week and no longer works there.)

Emails sent to Fishman and Davis were not immediately returned. Spokespeople for JPMorgan and UBS also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even as it blocks sales by smaller investors, Palantir has allowed Karp and Thiel to sell shares, according to the lawsuit. KT4 claims that these sales fly in the face of rights it has as an investor to participate in such transactions.

In addition to business data, KT4 says it is seeking information about the compensation and equity grants given to Palantir brass, to determine whether the company is spending on "lavish expenses" that serve no corporate purpose. KT4 says it has learned that Karp, the CEO, has "an unreasonably large number of executive assistants," known inside Palantir as "Team Karp."

In addition, KT4 claims it has learned that Palantir pays for someone or something  this part is, tantalizingly, redacted  to accompany Karp in the United States.

"There is no reason such [redacted] would be necessary or serve a valid corporate purpose," the lawsuit says.
Shares of L Brands , which owns retail chains Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, rose Friday after a firm upgraded the stock on the idea that millennials will buy more "traditional bras" in 2017.

FBR Capital Markets' research group, FBR & Co., upgraded L Brands to outperform from market perform, citing the fact that the company's intimate apparel segment remains a "top pick" among core consumers.

The stock closed the day up nearly 3 percent, trading around $51 per share.

"Our survey results ... show that consumers did not significantly switch out of [Victoria's Secret/PINK] intimate apparel in 2016," analyst Susan Anderson wrote in a Friday note to clients.

The firm upped its price target for L Brands to $60 from $54. FBR also increased its 2017 earnings estimates to $3.31 from $3.16 per share, while raising its 2018 EPS estimate to $3.63 from $3.36 per share.

FBR's Anderson added in the note that she expects L Brands' same-store sales to normalize once its segments aren't under as much pressure from an unnecessary product mix. "We now have increased confidence in L Brands' ability to stabilize [same-store sales] and margins in [the second half of 2017] and start to grow again," she said.

While companies such as Hanesbrands and online retailer Amazon pose threats to Victoria's Secret's share of the intimate apparel market, overall consumers are not "significantly" discontinuing shopping there, Anderson said. And a percentage of consumers are actually buying more bras and underwear from Victoria's Secret's PINK line, which caters to younger females, she added.

Even with Friday's slight gains, the stock is down more than 20 percent for the year and down more than 40 percent over the past 12 months.

Back in February, shares of L Brands fell on the issuance of weak first-quarter and 2017 guidance.

The Victoria's Secret brand, in particular, has been seen as trying to adjust its business model of late, by discontinuing swimwear and most of its apparel merchandise, and by eliminating print catalogs.
Marc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive officer of Salesforce.com Inc., center, arrives to a news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump and Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, not pictured, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, March 17, 2017.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he used a meeting at the White House on Friday to discuss the importance of bringing women into the workforce and paying them equally.

"We also had the chance to talk about gender equality, and the ability to bring all the women into the workforce, and pay women the same as men," Benioff said in front of the White House on Friday.

Benioff has been a consistent advocate for equal pay for women, and Salesforce adjusted salaries of about 1,000 employees in 2015 to equalize them.

Friday's meeting brought together business leaders from German and U.S. companies, as President Donald Trump met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. One big topic of the meeting was workplace training.

"I want to thank all the business leaders that have joined us to discuss a subject that's very important to me: Training our workforce for the 21st century, especially in respect to manufacturing jobs," Trump said. "Here in the United States, companies have created revolutionary high tech and online courses."

The meeting also included one of tech's most powerful women, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.
The Irish Prime Minister has handed over a bunch of shamrocks to President Donald Trump at the White House and the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival is drawing to a close. It must be March 17, otherwise known as St. Patrick's Day. In honor of Ireland's patron saint, CNBC has called on Kensho to run the sliderule over some the country's companies to see which companies should be included in your St. Patrick's Day portfolio. Shares in the following companies historically perform well over the holiday period and should keep Irish investors' eyes smiling.

Our study bought the securities at the two closest trading days before St. Patrick's Day and sold them again at the nearest two trading days after. The overall Irish index (ISEQ) actually tends to fall over the period, dropping on average 1.2 percent. Here are the top five individual performers.

Irish Continental Group (ICG)

Irish Continental Group (ICG)

ICG is a shipping and transport group probably best known as the operator of the Irish Ferries brand. It owns and operates the largest car ferry on the Irish Sea, called "Ulysses" after the famous James Joyce novel. The ship is the world's largest car ferry by capacity, capable of carrying over 1,300 cars and nearly 1,900 passengers.



CRH

CRH

CRH is the largest company on the Irish stock exchange by market capitalisation. It is the only Irish constituent of the Fortune 500 and it is also listed on the FTSE 100 in London. CRH specializes in building materials and dominates the North American market: it suppled the materials for the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Texas. Last year, revenues came in at over 27 billion euros. Shares in CRH have also benefited from speculation about who'll be the supplier for President Trump's proposed border wall.

Hibernia REIT

Hibernia REIT

Hibernia is a Dublin-based real estate investment firm with a billion-plus euro property portfolio. The company owns over 760 square foot office space in the capital with key tenants such as Twitter, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of Ireland and HubSpot.

Kingspan

Oliver McVeigh | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Kingspan is an energy conservation company specializing in insulation and environmental construction. Mainland Europe accounts for 41 percent of its business with North America accounting for 20 percent. Its materials have been used in projects such as the Olympic Stadium in London and its wind division has installed turbines at a polar research station in Antartica.

Ryanair

Michael O'Leary, chief executive officer of Ryanair Holdings Plc Matthew Lloyd | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Outspoken Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has placed the airline at the forefront of European aviation.

Ryanair traffic continues to grow at double-digit percentages year on year with a load factor consistently above 90 percent.

While the stock tends to rise over the St. Patrick's period, prolific horse owner O'Leary tends to be found at the Cheltenham racing festival.

What about Guinness?

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
"To be blunt, China uses North Korea like a thug nation to do some of its dirtier jobs and act as a buffer against nations it sees as potentially hostile like South Korea and Japan."

Sadly, the "carrot and stick" approach doesn't work on both ends when it comes to rogue regimes like North Korea. The relaxation of sanctions against North Korea pushed by President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s led to that nation getting billions of dollars in aid in return for halting its nuclear weapons program. But North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong Il cheated, and they went ahead with their nuclear project anyway.

Tillerson's threats of war are likely a calculated stab at getting more countries, especially Russia and the European Union nations, to get tougher for real. But one country is clearly the primary focus for Tillerson and the Trump administration: China.

It's China that will surely stand in the way of more sanctions and it's China that's going to have to ask itself just how far it's willing to go to keep protecting its communist neighbor and ally.

To be blunt, China uses North Korea like a thug nation to do some of its dirtier jobs and act as a buffer against nations it sees as potentially hostile like South Korea and Japan.

It also wants North Korea's regime to remain in place to avoid a massive refugee influx over its own borders. Maintaining that regime to serve those two goals is the reason China always opposes the toughest sanctions on Pyongyang and remains North Korea's only meaningful trading partner.

And therein lies the second major goal of Tillerson's tougher talk. The Trump team can't possibly hope that China will support new sanctions. But if Beijing becomes more worried about military action on its own border or has to manage even more of North Korea's economic needs after tougher sanctions are imposed, then China is that much less able to promote more adventurism of its own in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

China's continued demand for more military and economic respect is undermined almost daily by Kim Jong Un's missile tests and provocative statements and the White House wants to make Beijing pay the price fully.

If there was any doubt that this was the point of Tillerson's message, President Trump removed it Friday morning with the following tweet:

So make no mistake about Tillerson's comments. They are publicly directed at North Korea, but the primary target audience is China and the secondary audience is any other country that may want to stand in the way of sanctions. The U.S. is just as reluctant as always to actually fire a shot. The only question now is: Are any of the nations that Tillerson is targeting with his rhetoric willing to call that bluff?

Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.



For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
With President Trump's deregulatory agenda kicking off, analysts expect more consolidation with the telecom industry, and deals between telecom and media companies.

As soon as the wireless spectrum auction is over at the end of March, the ban on merger talks lifts, which could spark some consolidation. There's reason for telecom companies to look for scale, and reasons to believe deals will get approved: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai took a stand in his decision not to review the proposed AT&T acquisition of Time Warner .

Wireless carriers are looking for scale to offset limited growth potential, price wars pressuring margins, and rising costs as they invest in the next generation of technology. And the wireless carriers' TV distribution services  AT&T's DirecTV and Verizon 's FiOS  are facing growing competition from new over-the-top streaming services delivered over the internet. Adding unique media assets can offer valuable differentiation to their services.

Pai has made it clear that he sees sufficient competition, which should eliminate concern about anti-trust issues.

"The marketplace right now is extremely competitive, it's delivering unparalleled value to American consumers," Pai said in an interview last month. "And if you just look at the last couple weeks, some of the national carriers are vigorously competing against each other to give new or expanded unlimited data plans. That's something that's good for customers."

With AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner expected to go through, what could be next?

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said at the UBS Media & Communications conference in December that he's looking at a range of deals: "We'll look for opportunities and put the money into an area where we think we can scale, because in our business your cost structure is absolutely critical to long term success."

McAdam has talked about potential benefits from a merger with Charter, though Liberty Media's Greg Maffei said Charter doesn't necessarily need a Verizon deal. We could also see T-Mobile re-examine a potential deal with Dish. Even the long-discussed T-Mobile-Sprint merger could emerge as an option again.

Telco analyst Craig Moffett says when it comes to these deals, the FCC won't stop them. "At a time of rapid technology change, the FCC will not pretend to "know more" than the market, and they will take a much more hands-off role as a result," says Moffett.
"On wiretapping by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said to Merkel.

Trump accused Obama of ordering his phones tapped before the election, but bipartisan top officials on the Senate and House intelligence committees said this week they had seen no evidence yet to back the claim. Asked about his accusation again while standing next to Merkel on Friday, Trump appeared reluctant to back away from it.

Trump held a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after a meeting between the two leaders at the White House. The National Security Agency allegedly monitored phone calls involving Merkel and her aides, straining relations with Trump's predecessor, President Barack Obama.

Even after a string of rebuttals, President Donald Trump on Friday seemed to stick by his claim that the Obama administration wiretapped him ahead of the 2016 election.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) gives U.S. President Donald Trump a look in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 17, 2017.

As Trump made that comment, the Department of Justice said it turned over information the intelligence committees sought on possible surveillance during the election. It is not clear yet what that information shows.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump "stands by" his explosive claim even after the statements from congressional leaders. Key senators said Thursday they did not have evidence to support Trump's accusation.

"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," the statement by Republican Chairman Sen. Richard Burr and Sen. Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday they did not have evidence to support the wiretapping accusation. GOP Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes said he did not "think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower." However, he said, that only applies if Trump literally meant he was wiretapped.

The White House and its allies in recent days have attempted to change the interpretation of Trump's explosive tweets from earlier this month. In four separate statements on Twitter, Trump said he was the target of a wiretap.

In two of those, Trump put quotes around the term, which Spicer said means he may not have meant it literally. Still, in one of those tweets, Trump called it a "fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October."

Spicer argued Thursday that Trump referred to "broad surveillance," not a physical wiretap. He contended that reporters have focused too much on the president's accusation, which he made without citing evidence, and not statements denying that Trump campaign officials had ties with Russian officials.

FBI Director James Comey may give a more definitive answer about Trump's accusations when he testifies at a public House Intelligence Committee hearing Monday. The hearing is related to the committee's ongoing investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In defending Trump on Thursday, Spicer also caused some trouble with a key American ally. He quoted Fox News analyst and former judge Andrew Napolitano, who alleged that Obama "went outside the chain of command" and used British spy agency GCHQ to eavesdrop on Trump.

The agency denied the charge, calling it "ridiculous." The British government said the White House promised not to repeat the claim.

Trump deflected blame Friday for citing the claim about Britain, saying "all we did was quote" Napolitano and "you should be talking to Fox."

Fox anchor Shepard Smith responded shortly after, saying "Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way."

Watch: Trump says he & Merkel have something in common
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's globalist ideology will likely not mesh well with President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda, CNBC's Jim Cramer said on Friday.



"I think that ... the liberal media will be talking about how Merkel is a sworn opponent of Russia, and Obama and Merkel worked together," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." "And this is the beginning of, I think, the problems with the special relationship between our country and Germany that Obama had created."

On Friday, the two leaders will meet at the White House to discuss funding for NATO and relations with Russia in their first meeting since Trump took office.

Merkel and Trump have had a tense relationship and have clashed publicly. Trump, for example, has criticized Merkel for her handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.

In comparison, former President Barack Obama and Merkel reportedly had a much more cordial relationship. Obama once described Merkel as "courageous" in her response to Europe's refugee crisis.
Obamacare is "dead," "dead," "dead," President Donald Trump said repeatedly Friday morning as he promised "to take care of people at all levels" with a controversial Republican plan to replace the health-care law.

Trump also bragged about flipping a number of conservative Republican lawmakers from "no" votes on that plan to "yes" votes after meeting with a group of them at the White House.

And he said that the "fantastic" GOP plan pending in the House of Representatives will lead to "bidding by insurance companies like you've never seen before," and new designs for health plans that "nobody's even thought of ... to take care of people."

Despite Trump's claims, the embattled Republican bill, the American Health Care Act, is by no means certain to end up on his desk for signing into law, because of opposition among some GOP lawmakers, whose party holds majorities in both chambers of Congress.

NBC News reported that the hardest-core GOP opponents of that bill were not among the 13 lawmakers from the Republican Study Committee who attended the White House meeting, and that the members of Congress who were there had not been considered firm opponents.

The Washington Post's running tally of more than 60 potential GOP "no" votes includes just two lawmakers at the meeting with Trump, both of whom has expressed serious concerns about the bill as opposed to being firm "no" votes."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who was not at the session, said Thursday that she could not support the bill "in its current form."

And another group of conservative Republican in the House tweeted out their opposition to the bill shortly after Trump spoke.

Tweet

But Trump on Friday said that the current state of Obamacare necessitates that bill passing Congress.

"Only because everyone knows it's on its last, dying feet, the fake news is trying to say good things about it, the fake media. There is no good news about Obamacare. Obamacare's dead," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after his meeting with lawmakers.
Donald Trump wasted little time Friday warning German Chancellor Angela Merkel that trade relations with one of America's biggest export markets may be up for review.

"Germany has done very well in its trade deals with the U.S., and I give them credit for it," Trump told a White House press conference. "Virtually any country we do business with  it's not exactly good for our workers."

"The U.S. has been treated unfairly and that's going to stop," he told reporters.

In fact, the U.S. has no direct, bilateral trade deals with Germany. As Merkel quickly pointed out, Germany's trade with the U.S. is governed by rules negotiated by the European Union on behalf of member states.

If it were a single trade partner, Germany would be the fifth largest in total trade flows with the U.S. But it runs the third largest trade surplus, after China and Japan.

Last year, the U.S. shipped nearly $50 billion worth of goods to Germany and bought more than $114 billion in return, creating a trade deficit of nearly $65 billion.

That compares with a trade deficit of $69 billion with Japan and nearly $350 billion with China.
There will not be a big turnaround for Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific this year, despite its best efforts to cut costs, analysts told CNBC.



On Wednesday, Cathay Pacific reported its first annual loss since 2008 of HK$575 million ($74 million) in 2016, compared to a profit of HK$6 billion the previous year, marking only the third full-year loss in seven decades.



The Hong Kong flag carrier cited factors such as the strong Hong Kong dollar , overcapacity and stiffer competition from mainland Chinese carriers. The carrier was ranked 2016's safest airline in the world, according to the Germany's JACDEC Institute.



"There's no way to sugar-coat it, Cathay Pacific's latest earnings were horrible and I expect it will be more of the same in 2017 as its revenues are under pressure from low yields," Mohshin Aziz, regional aviation analyst and associate director at Maybank Kim Eng Securities.



Aziz added that a significant problem for Cathay Pacific is its fuel hedge.



"Most of (Cathay Pacific's) competitors don't have a fuel hedge, which allows them to flexibility to lower their ticket prices in the midst of oil price volatility, but Cathay doesn't have that liberty," he said.



Cathay made a decision in 2015 to protect itself against high oil prices with a four-year hedge on jet fuel, which cost them a loss of HK$8.46 billion ($1.09 billion) in 2016.



An internal memo sent by Chief Executive Ivan Chu on Thursday said the firm needed to simplify its headquarters office structure and will cut the cost of middle to senior management roles by 30 percent.


The lack of preparation from the British government in case it doesn't reach a Brexit deal with the European Union has sent alarm bells ringing across international organizations.

David Davis, the U.K.'s lead negotiator in the upcoming exit negotiations with the EU, has said that the government has not studied the economic impact of leaving the Union without a deal. However, the U.K.'s cabinet has repeatedly saying that "no deal is better than a bad deal."

An international official, who didn't want to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that such lack of preparation in spite of the referendum taking place in June 2016 is "frightening."

"I find that frightening. I find that really frightening. We are at eight months from the vote and you still haven't done that calculation," he told CNBC.

The same official added that he is "shocked" by how U.K. ministers are handling this process.

Both London and Brussels have said they will be working hard to reach a deal that will be good for both sides within the two-year timeframe determined under EU law. However, the negotiations will be complex and, with the heavy political calendar in Europe, unlikely to concluded before 2019.

Having no idea of what it would mean economically to exit the EU without any agreements and to be forced to trade with the bloc under World Trade Organization rules "could cut either way," Daniel Gros, director of the Brussels-based CEPS think tank, said.

"Brexiters will think the cost of no deal is low, industry and remainders will think the opposite. Depending on who is stronger this could lead to a more cautious approach," he added.



Prime Minister Theresa May is set to announce the U.K. is ready to negotiate with the EU before the end of March.


A U.S. policy of strategic patience with North Korea has ended, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday, adding that military action would be "on the table" if North Korea elevated the threat level.



Tillerson began his first Asian visit as secretary of state in Japan on Wednesday and will travel to China on Saturday with a main focus on finding a "new approach" on North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to denuclearize the insular nation.

"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told a news conference in Seoul.

He said any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with "an appropriate response".

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson said when asked about military action.

Tillerson also called on China to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea.

China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security.

"We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling," Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system.

"We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat for everyone. So we hope China will alter its position on punishing South Korea."

"We hope they will work with us to eliminate the reason THAAD is required."

North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year.

Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told the joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country.
It's official.

Wal-Mart on Friday confirmed that it has acquired ModCloth, a specialty online apparel retailer that caters to curvy women.

The announcement comes two days after a report by fashion blog Jezebel said a deal between the two was imminent. It also marks Wal-Mart's fourth digital acquisition since September, when it closed its $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com.

The company did not disclose the price it paid for ModCloth. However, a spokesman said it was "along the same lines" of the previous two companies Wal-Mart snatched up. Wal-Mart purchased Shoebuy for $70 million in December. And last month, it bought outdoor apparel retailer Moosejaw for $51 million.

"Assortment is driving a lot of these acquisitions," CEO Doug McMillon said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Consumer & Retail Technology Conference Tuesday, before any mention of ModCloth had been made.

"We can pick up some of these companies that are great in terms of the assortment and the service they provide, but they don't have enough money to lose, to go market their brand and scale it."

ModCloth will continue to operate its own website as a standalone and complementary brand, Wal-Mart said. The company noted that apparel and accessories are the No. 1 category for online shopping, and the ModCloth acquisition positions it to "gain the experience of a well-recognized specialty apparel e-commerce brand that's trusted by millions of millennial women."

However, not all of those shoppers were thrilled. Some women took to Twitter to voice their disappointment with the deal, which they said takes away the independent vibe ModCloth has built its name on.

Tweet

Tweet

Founded in 2002, Modcloth is headquartered in San Francisco and employs roughly 300 workers.








Last week, on March 7, a curious item appeared in the Federal Register. The Department of Commerce issued a request for information from manufacturers: "The Department of Commerce is seeking information on the impact of Federal permitting requirements on the construction and expansion of domestic manufacturing facilities and on regulations that adversely impact domestic manufacturers."

The request asked manufacturers to list the top four regulations they believe are most burdensome for their business, and asked for comments by March 31.

It's the opening salvo in a major battle to reduce regulations, one of the three main "pillars" of the Trump agenda, along with tax reduction and infrastructure spending.

Much has been made about the potential impact of a tax cut on S&P 500 earnings, but traders are no less enthusiastic about the potential impact of a reduction in regulations.

While several studies have indicated that a reduction in taxes could boost earnings 8% or more, (see my Trader Talk from yesterday), a reduction in regulations can also have a significant boost on earnings.

The issue, of course, is that very few regulations have been changed, so it's not yet possible to run models about how fewer regulations will impact earnings.

But just taking President Trump's promises at face value would imply a boost to the bottom line. He signed an executive order in January to scale back regulations on businesses, promising to cut regulation by 75% by eliminating two regulations for every new regulation enacted.

Just think through what would happen to earnings and margins if even a small part of that promise came through.

For big industrials like Caterpillar , fewer regulations will help drive down the cost of production. That will improve the bottom line.

For other industries that employ large numbers of people, even a modest change in regulations could make a big difference. The trucking industry, for example, has long complained about Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rule that limits drivers' drive time per day and over a seven-day period. The American Trucking Association has been lobbying to ease those rules.

For financials, fewer regulations will enable them to reverse the massive increase in corporate compliance staff and may lead to an increase in trading activity.

This could lead to a very significant improvement in the bottom line for banks. A recent Vanity Fair article noted that the six largest U.S. banks by assets spent $70.2 billion in 2013 on regulatory compliance, nearly double what they collectively spent in 2007. At JP Morgan, 43,000 of its 236,000 employees  18.2% of its workforce  are now involved in compliance, twice the number in 2011. Author William D. Cohan concluded: "[T}he job of nearly one out of every five people working on Wall Street these days is to watch what four other people do all day long."

Again, the lack of details make modeling difficult, but you get the drift: it would be a positive for earnings and its close cousin, margins.

Margin, simply put, is the ratio between a company's revenues and expenses. It can be sliced many ways (gross margin, operating margin, net profit margin) but is roughly a measure of profitability.

It's probably the single most important metric for those looking at profitability trends.

According to Thomson Reuters, the S&P 500 hit historic highs on margins of just over 10% in 2015, and it's been drifting around that range since then, currently at 10.1% for the first quarter of 2017.

There are several reasons margins have struggled to improve, but everyone agrees that one of the primary problems is that sales growth has been stagnant while the cost of doing business  the cost of goods sold (COGS), which is the cost of materials and the direct labor costs used to produce the goods  have been rising. More time, more bodies spent in compliance is a key factor in driving up those costs.

That's where the Commerce Department request comes in  it's a follow-up to the president's executive order and is just the start of an attempt to quantify some of the accumulative damage from excessive regulations.

One director of a local government economic development organization involved in building industrial development parks wrote in to describe the quagmire around getting wetland approval for his projects: "Dependent [sic] upon the type and 'value' of the wetland being impacted, the costs can be thousands of dollars per acre."

One small business owner bitterly complained about electrical licenses he has to have he never used to need, and crane certifications he is required to have that don't apply to his business: "I have a small 10-employee business, and between insurance and other requirements, we can not stay afloat."

You'll hear a lot more of these types of comments from Wilbur Ross' Commerce Department in the coming months.

But you can already see why Wall Street is enthusiastic that a reduction in regulations is a second crucial aspect of the Trump agenda.

By CNBC's Bob Pisani
A doughboy cutting through German barbed wire while a second doughboy aims a rifle in a shattered landscape are depicted on the CFAs recommended obverse for the U.S. Army silver medal.

The CFA-recommended obverse for the World War I silver medal recognizing the U.S. Navy depicts the USS Wadsworth.

The CFA advises that the obverse design they recommend for the Coast Guard silver medal be modified: a compass would replace the Coast Guard emblem; the Coast Guard emblem would comprise the reverse design.

A design submitted as a reverse for the Air Service silver medal was recommended by the CFA for the obverse after eight proposed obverse designs were rejected by the panel.

The Commission of Fine Arts recommended the above designs March 16 for a 2018 World War I Armed Forces silver medal recognizing the U.S. Marines.

The 2018 World War I silver medals will comprise five issues, one recognizing each American military force.

This article comes from our April 2017 monthly issue of Coin World. Want to get all of our content, including special magazine exclusives? Subscribe today!

Faced March 16 with 62 proposed designs for the obverses and reverses of five silver World War I medals, the Commission of Fine Arts quickly settled on 10 recommendations.

Thanks to some prodding from Chairman Earl A. Powell III, the panel agreed that the reverses each should feature the seal or a symbol of the military branch separately honored on each of the five 2018 WWI 100th anniversary medals.

With that decision, the panel focused its attention on the medal obverses.

U.S. Mint officials made no mention in their presentation to the CFA regarding the designs for the silver dollar that will honor veterans of World War I on its anniversary. Winning designs determined from a juried design competition for that coin are yet to be announced. Members of the CFA served on the jury that selected those coin designs.

Design recommendations

The CFA recommendations, by service branch, for the five 2018 silver medals are:

??Army: The recommended obverse design for the U.S. Army silver medal shows a doughboy cutting through German barbed wire while a second doughboy aims a rifle in a shattered landscape of broken trees and cratered earth. In the distance, a shell explodes. The reverse design would feature the current U.S. Army eagle crest, a design that was in use in WWI.

??Navy: The obverse shows the destroyer USS Wadsworth escorting a convoy and having discharged a depth charge. The recommended reverse is a U.S. Navy emblem also featuring an eagle.

??Air Service: The commission rejected all eight proposed obverse designs and recommends instead a proposed reverse that shows a Spad XIII air fighter from the top and side. For the reverse it recommends a design showing the wings of a military aviator, urging that some additional lettering be added to the image.

??Marine Corps: For the obverse the commission endorsed an image that portrays the beginning of the Battle of Belleau Woods. The design shows two members of the 4th Brigade moving through an open wheat field attacking German positions in what would be the corps signature victory. For the reverse, the recommended design would be the Marines Eagle, Globe and Anchor symbol.

??Coast Guard: For the obverse the CFA urged a design showing two members of the Coast Guard  an officer and enlisted member  keeping watch at sea with the cutter Tampa silhouetted in the background. The services emblem would be replaced with a compass, while the emblem would be used for the reverse under the CFA recommendations.

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The CFA also endorsed mock-up renditions of the legislated designs for a palladium American Eagle bullion coin, as reported in a separate article.

At a meeting March 21, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee will be considering those same designs. The CCACs previously scheduled meeting was delayed a week because of a snowstorm that hit the East Coast.

The recommendations from the CCAC and the CFA will go to the new Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who by law has the final say on coin and medal designs.
Two central figures in the Seven Years War were Prussias Frederick the II, left, and Russias Elizabeth I, right.

An imitation or counterfeit 1759 silver 18 groscher of Berlin was struck of debased silver in an attempt to defraud the Russians then ruling East Prussia.

This article comes from our April 2017 monthly issue of Coin World. Want to get all of our content, including special magazine exclusives? Subscribe today!

During the Seven Years War in the 1750s and 1760s, Frederick II (the Great) found himself battling Russias queen Elizabeth I.

The Seven Years War (1756 to 1763) might be understood as the first global war in history: all major European powers were involved and the conflict was fought on five continents. One of the major theaters of this war was East Prussia, where the goals of Russias Elizabeth I clashed with those of Prussias leader, King Frederick II (the Great).

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Tempelhofer Munzenhaus-Berlin on April 6 is auctioning a comprehensive collection of coins related to Frederick the Great. One of those coins is a rare imitation made on behalf of Frederick in an attempt to sabotage his opponents.

England and Portugal were joined with Prussia against Russia, France, Sweden and the House of Habsburg in Austria, among other alliances. Geographically speaking, East Prussia was an exclave in the Polish kingdom, but was under local control because the Polish ruler had waived his sovereign rights in 1657.

Elizabeth I sought and gained control of East Prussia, hoping to use the territory in a swap with Poland to expand the Russian Empire further west.

Russias success in claiming East Prussia, ever tenuous, included the manufacture of local coinage at the Konigsberg Mint between 1759 and 1762 (the Moscow Mint would later be called upon to meet demand for Prussian coinage).

Though traditional denominations remained, the designs were changed to incorporate Elizabeth I and, on larger denominations, Latin legends. The reverse, on the other hand, remained Prussian: It features the crowned eagle with scepter and imperial orb. Furthermore, every denomination clearly states its value, and the groscher even features a legend that explicitly declares it a coin of the Kingdom of Prussia.

Unlike the practice of some contemporaries when issuing new coins for territory claimed in war, Elizabeth I maintained the same level of silver in the coins as was in previous Prussian issues, and lesser value silver coinage was removed from circulation.

Public counterfeiters, however, acting on behalf of King Frederick II, soon produced imitations of the of 18-groscher coin, but with a considerably reduced silver content, in an effort to defraud the Russians, a foray into economic warfare.

These imitations, produced in Berlin, are recognizable by their obverse legend. Instead of RUSS, they state RUSSIA or RUSSIAE.

The eventual death of Elizabeth I proved fortuitous for Frederick II, who found himself nearing defeat time and again before achieving a narrow victory.

When the Russian ruler died, she was followed on the throne by Peter III, an ardent admirer of the Prussian king. Now possessing the power, Peter III immediately began peace negotiations, and an agreement was signed July 8, 1762. Although the next day, Peter III was dead thanks to a coup by his wife, East Prussia remained a component of Prussia.

The April 6 auction offers a 1759 imitation 18-groscher coin struck in Berlin to mimic the Russian coins struck for Prussia.

The coin, graded Extremely Fine, has an estimate of 1,200 ($1,288 U.S.).

Thats about 15 times the estimate for a similar, authentic coin of the same period also offered in the auction, meaning Frederick II and his imitation pieces get the last laugh.
Types of obituaries

The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries  family obituaries and life stories.

A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries

A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories.
The holidays are creeping up on us
Apple is to open two additional research and development centers in China. This follows a pattern the company has been engaged in for months, that of opening an international chain of R&D centers as it seeks to put together the knowledge base for its Next Big Thing (NBT). This growing network is so vast, its reasonable to assume that whatever the NBT is

Its international

Think about it. Apple China this morning confirmed the company plans to invest half a billion dollars in R&D in China, and that it will soon run not one, not two, but four R&D centers there, in Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, and Shenzen. All four are expected to open for business this year.

You could dismiss these new R&D hubs as business as usual, and with its highly-educated population and extensive network of well financed university research centers, it is easy to see why Apple wants to make sure it can work with the best minds there.

The fact is that Apple strives to work with the best minds everywhere, and its new Chinese R&D centers are just the latest in a long line of recently revealed research hubs, including:

A center in Grenoble, France

A center in Yokohoma, Japan

A center in Naples, Italy

Two centers in Java, Indonesia, set to open in the next two years

Several in India, including Bangalore and Hyderabad.

These recently announced R&D centers join an increasingly internationalized selection of such places, also including sites all across the U.S., Israel, Sweden, and the U.K.

Whats the plan?

Some of these sites (specifically Sweden and Hyderabad) are apparently focused on developing Apple Maps.

The opening of the Swedish office followed Apples acquisition of C3 Technologies, while in Hyderabad it is thought to be working in partnership with local mapping service, RMSI.

Its offices in the U.K. are thought to be hubs for Siri and A.I. research, while other locations are dedicated to component, processor, and process development.

The company needs these hubs because it has a growing focus on developing unique technologies to underpin its product designs: A-series processors, W-series wireless chips, unique production and materials expertise, voice recognition, machine intelligence and so much more..

These are complex technologies, and to get them right Apples decision to open multiple R&D centers is a tangible way to invite the worlds leading experts to work with the company where they are, rather than endure the growing indignity of U.S. immigration control.

How the company invents

Apple has a long-practised modus operandi for product development.

Software teams may not know much about the hardware, hardware teams may have little insight into the software, component developers may have no idea how their invention will be deployed. This is how the company has invented everything it makes.

The decision to create new hubs across the planet means the division between teams developing ideas can grow larger, reinforcing manifest secrecy and enabling the company to dribble what little insights it chooses to share.

This approach also means that the company could be developing a car and few within its teams would really know for sure. Despite claims the company recently rebooted its car project, it continues its close association with Didi Chuxing, for example.

Whatever it is exploring it is investing bigly. Apple in 2016 spent $10.39 billion on research and development in FY 2016, its highest investment ever.

In the first quarter of 2017 the company has already spent $2.8 billion, and the wave of recent announcements suggest Apple is increasing its R&D spending as it seeks to put international teams in place to create its next big thing.

Human innovation is, after all, international. Apple hopes to harness the worlds best thinkers for its next inventions.

Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple?

Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter. I'd like it if you chose to follow me there so I can let you know when fresh items are published here first on Computerworld.
The Windows 10 Creators Update is due to ship sometime next month, and Microsoft is in the final stages of preparing for the release by rolling out new builds to about twice per week as it enters the last stages of bug squashing mode.

Windows Insiders this week got Build 15058 on Monday and Build 15060 on late Thursday as Microsoft charges for the finish line. And now Insiders can register to get the Creators Update when it is released.

Microsoft has changed things a bit with Windows 10. In the olden days, a large update like the Creators Update was shipped as a Service Pack and usually pushed out on Patch Tuesday to everyone at once. The result was usually massive network congestion, timeouts, and failures.

Now, Microsoft staggers the rollout, so you might get the update the day of its release or you might get it a month later. There is no telling. However, there is a way to insure you get to the front of the line.

It starts by being a Windows Insider. Those brave souls have been using beta builds of the OS all along and helped Microsoft in the development of the operating system, but also likely endured all manner of bugs and ensuing headaches that went along with it.

You can sign up here if you are not a member. The next step is to download and install the latest Insider release, which is Build 15060 as of this writing.

Once that is set, go to Settings, and open "Update & Security." Under "Update History" youll see a message stating "Good news! The Windows 10 Creators Update is on its way. Want to be one of the first to get it?" Click the "Yes, show me how" link under this to opt in and youll see a confirmation message:

Thank you for your interest in being one of the first to experience the Windows 10 Creators Update! Were finalizing the update and will be ready to share it with you soon. When the update is ready for your device, youll receive a notification asking you to review your privacy settings before downloading the update.

At that point you are set. Just remember by signing up for Insider, you will get new builds pushed out to your PC at regular intervals, so don't use it on a critical, work, or production machine.

Build 15058 is viewed as fairly stable but has a bunch of known issues, including:

Some PCs may fail to update to Build 15002 and higher due to SYSTEM_PTE_MISUSE error.

Some apps and games may crash due to a misconfiguration of advertising ID that happened in a prior build. Specifically, this issue affects new user accounts that were created on Build 15031.

There is a bug where if you need to restart your PC due to a pending update, like with the latest Surface firmware updates, the restart reminder dialog doesnt pop up.

Certain hardware configurations may cause the broadcast live review window in the Game bar to flash Green while you are Broadcasting. This does not affect the quality of your broadcast and is only visible to the Broadcaster.

Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3 devices will fail to update to new builds if a SD memory card is inserted. So remove the SD memory card and re-insert it after the latest build is installed.

If none of that scares you off, happy updating!
New research is turning on its head the idea that legacy systems -- such as Cobol and Fortran -- are more secure because hackers are unfamiliar with the technology.

New research found that these outdated systems, which may not be encrypted or even documented, were more susceptible to threats.

By analyzing publicly available federal spending and security breach data, the researchers found that a 1% increase in the share of new IT development spending is associated with a 5% decrease in security breaches.

"In other words, federal agencies that spend more in maintenance of legacy systems experience more frequent security incidents, a result that contradicts a widespread notion that legacy systems are more secure," the paper found. The research paper was written by Min-Seok Pang, an assistant professor of management information systems at Temple University, and Huseyin Tanriverdi, an associate professor in the Information, Risk and Operations Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Maybe the conventional wisdom that legacy systems are secure could be right," said Pang, in an interview. But the integration of these systems "make the whole enterprise architecture too complex, too messy" and less secure, he said.

Federal agencies have seen a rapid increase in security incidents, the paper points out, citing federal data assembled by the Government Accountability Office. From 2006 through 2014, the number of reported security incidents increased by more than 1,100 percent, or from 5,503 to 67,168. An incident can cover a range of activities, such as a denial of service, successfully executed malicious code, and breaches that give intruders access.

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One of the largest federal system breaches occurred in 2015, when hackers gained access to some 18 million records at the Office of Personnel Management.

Tony Scott, the former federal CIO under President Barack Obama, told lawmakers at a hearing last year that nearly three quarters of IT budgets are spent maintaining legacy systems.

"These systems often pose significant security risks, such as the inability to utilize current security best practices, including data encryption and multi-factor authentication, which make them particularly vulnerable to malicious cyber activity," Scott said.

The U.S., overall, has more than 3,400 IT professionals employed to maintain legacy programming languages, a U.S. House committee was told after the OPM breach.

If the federal government doesn't modernize its systems, Pang said it may see more large breaches similar to the OPM hack.

In the absence of modernization, Pang said that effective IT governance "mitigates security risks of the legacy systems." It also recommended moving systems to the cloud.

Pang said the government needs to pass the Modernizing Government Technology Act. That legislation, which was approved by the House last year, would have boosted IT spending by about $9 billion from 2017 to 2021 had it reached the president's desk.

This story, "Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches" was originally published by Computerworld .
Another sizeable payment card data breach has been discovered at a U.S. restaurant chain.

In the latest example, several high-end eateries run by Select Restaurants in Cleveland were the victims of fraudulent cards used by customers at its restaurants, according to a report posted Thursday on KrebsOnSecurity, a reliable site written by reporter Brian Krebs. Krebs said he learned about the case from anti-fraud teams at multiple financial institutions investigating "a great deal of fraud on cards used at a handful of high-end restaurants around the country."

A month ago, hundreds of Arby's restaurants were affected by a breach in their payment systems, Krebs reported. In January, Popeyes restaurants acknowledged it was also hit last summer, in a similar breach. Wendy's reported being hit last summer as well.

Fraud from stolen credit and debit cards seems to be happening regularly at U.S. restaurants where older magnetic stripe cards are still sometimes in use instead of more secure chip cards. But even PIN and chip cards can't be defended against the kind of internal POS breaches that occurred at Select Restaurants, said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

"Chip and PIN won't do anything to stop breaches -- the data can just as easily be stolen," she said Friday. Chip and PIN will, however, thwart the reuse of card data when a thief tries to buy something at another physical location, she said.

Card breaches at retailers and restaurants continue happening in the U.S., Litan said. "The cases have only gotten drowned out in the news" because of election hacking and "other cyber espionage," she said. "It turns out that some of the same hackers who break into restaurants to steal credit cards are also conducting cyberespionage and other political activities on behalf of the Russian government. This was documented in the recent Yahoo breach arrests."

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The extent of the fraud, in dollars or total victims, at Select Restaurants was not disclosed. Select Restaurants did not respond to a request for comment. The company owns eateries including Boston's Top of the Hub, Parker's Lighthouse in Long Beach, Calif. and Rusty Scupper in Baltimore, among others.

Krebs traced the Select Restaurant fraud to an intrusion in its point-of-sale (POS) vendor, 24 x 7 Hospitality Technology, a West Chicago company handling card transactions at thousands of hotels and restaurants. 24 x 7 sent a letter on Feb. 14 to its customers warning them of a "sophisticated network intrusion through a remote access application." The letter implied that criminals had guessed or phished a password that was used for 24 x 7's remote access to POS systems at customer locations going back to October 2016.

Victims apparently had primarily used magnetic stripe credit and debit cards at payment terminals at the affected restaurants. Mag-stripe cards rely on an older and less secure payment technology than do the newer chip cards. U.S. banks and card networks like Visa, MasterCard and other card companies have been giving customers new cards embedded with smart chips in recent years, although the U.S. is one of the last countries to convert to chip card technology.

Banks regularly report progress to replace magstripe cards with chip cards since a liability deadline to make the conversion passed in October 2015. Many merchants, especially smaller retailers and restaurants, have complained about the cost and complexity of converting point of sales terminals to read chip cards, which has slowed the U.S. rollout.

Complicating matters, nearly all chip cards also have magnetic stripes containing card data, which are still vulnerable to hackers who can strip the data with special counterfeit readers. Even PIN and chip is vulnerable to internal breaches like those at Select Restaurants.

The best defense for restaurants is providing point-to-point encryption of data, Litan said. She also said retailers and restaurants shouldn't store sensitive data.

One security industry expert also called for bolstering payments security, including encryption. "To better secure the retail industry, the migration from swipe cards to PIN and chip and further to point to point encrypted (P2PE) solutions must be a priority," said John Christly, global chief information security officer at Netsurion, which provides managed security services for businesses.

Unfortunately, P2PE solutions are not widely available and can be costly if a small business has just paid to upgrade to chip payment terminals, Christly said.

A Visa spokeswoman said she could not comment on the recent restaurant breaches, but said instances of data breaches reinforce the need for business to protect the security and privacy of customer financial information. Visa also urges customers to regularly monitor their accounts for fraudulent charges and notify their bank of unusual activity.

Randy Vanderhoof, director of the U.S. Payments Forum, urged small retailers to enable chip card payments as "quickly as possible. The longer it takes the hospitality and restaurant industry [to support chip cards] the more vulnerable they remain."

"The fraudsters know where the weaknesses are and can move quickly," Vanderhoof added.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has taken the wraps off a new battery energy storage project that will store up to 2 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 1,000 homes for four hours.

The new vanadium redox flow (VRF) battery substation was installed by Osaka, Japan-based Sumitomo Electric and will store renewable energy harnessed from solar panels and release it when resources are in high demand during peak business hours.

"We are delighted to see our first flow battery system operating in the U.S. through the multiple-use operation of the battery system in SDG&E's distribution network; we would like to prove its economic value and potential use on the electric grids," Junji Itoh, managing director of Sumitomo Electric, said in a statement.

Sumitomo Electric An interior view of the new vanadium redox flow battery installed by SDG&E.

The SDG&E project is part of a trend involving utilities that deploy battery storage substations to supplement grid power supply during peak hours rather than drawing more electricity from generating sources such as coal-fired power plants.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ordered SCE, PG&E and San SDG&E to solicit more utility-scale energy storage. CPUC is requiring utilities to meet a target of 1,325MW (1.3GW) of additional power storage by 2020.

In January, for example, Southern California Edison (SCE) flipped the switch on what was the largest lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery storage facility in the world -- a substation with 80 megawatt hours (MWh) of capacity.

Flow battery systems have an expected life-span of more than 20 years, and could have less degradation over time from repeated charging cycles than other technologies, SDG&E said.

Unlike the fastest growing battery technology -- Li-ion -- vanadium redox flow batteries are a type of rechargeable battery that employ vanadium ions in different oxidation states to store chemical potential energy.

Sumitomo Electric

Flow batteries and Li-ion batteries work well with intermittent energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines because of their ability to be idle for long periods without losing a charge. Flow batteries, however, scale more easily because all that's needed to grow capacity is more liquid; the hardware remains the same, according to Dean Frankel, an associate at Lux Research.

That means flow batteries have the potential to be less expensive than Li-ion. They also last longer, according to Frankel. At full discharge, Li-ion batteries last only four hours. To double that charge time, another complete battery unit must be added, Frankel said.

SDG&E SDG&E's new battery substation.

Flow batteries get their name because they use liquid chemicals (electrolytes) that are separated by a membrane. The reaction between the two chemicals frees up electrons, creating electricity.

One problem with flow batteries for residential use is that they're enormous. In order to power a house, you'd need a flow battery about half the size of your garage, Frankel said.

Li-ion batteries, like Tesla's, can hang on a garage wall. But for utility or corporate use, a flow battery's size wouldn't matter, and they scale in capacity by just adding more tanks of electrolyte liquid. Li-ion batteries require an entirely separate unit to be daisy-chained in.

Flow batteries will almost always be more expensive than Li-ion systems on an installation basis, but on a per-kilowatt-hour basis (i.e., how long they can run, depending on how large the electrolyte fluid tanks are) they can be cheaper, according to Lux Research. The larger the tanks, the more power you can get.

Battery subsystems not a luxury, a necessity

Without the adoption of energy storage, and specifically utility-scale power systems, the U.S. power electric grid could eventually fail, according to a study by Navigant Research.

Research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts massive growth in the energy storage market, first by utilities and then by corporations seeking to reduce overhead costs.

The Global Energy Storage Forecast, 2016-2024 report shows that the annual investment in energy storage systems will increase six-fold to $8.2 billion in 2024.

The top five markets for energy storage are Japan, India, the United States, China, and Europe; they will represent 71% of the global total for storage installed in 2024, according to BNEF.

Li-ion batteries are best positioned to meet the demand for energy storage over the next five to 10 years. But in the long run, other battery storage technologies will be needed for long-term energy storage and larger-scale applications.

In fact, the inventor of Li-ion batteries recently unveiled what he called a better all-solid-state battery that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage.

The University of Texas at Austin John Goodenough, 94, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has invented a new technology that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting batteries.

John Goodenough, 94, and his research colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin demonstrated that their new battery cells have at least three times as much energy density as lithium-ion batteries.

"Today's lithium-ion batteries use liquid electrolytes to transport the lithium ions between the anode (the negative side of the battery) and the cathode (the positive side of the battery). If a battery cell is charged too quickly, it can cause dendrites or 'metal whiskers' to form and cross through the liquid electrolytes, causing a short circuit that can lead to explosions and fires," the researchers said in a statement.

Instead of liquid electrolytes, the researchers' new battery technology relies on glass electrolytes that enable the use of an alkali-metal anode without the formation of dendrites.

The use of Li-ion batteries continues to grow quickly because prices have dropped due to economies of scale. Tesla and its development partner Panasonic are leaders in lithium-ion battery production. By 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes his company's "Gigafactory" outside Reno, Nev. will produce 35 gigawatts (a gigawatt is one billion watts) of battery capacity, with the objective of driving down the per-kilowatt hour (kWh) cost of battery packs by more than 30%. Tesla offers residential and commercial Li-ion battery systems.

Over the next decade, Li-ion batteries are on track to become the mainstream energy-storage technology, with more than 80% of global energy storage installations using it by 2025, according to research firm IHS. Half of all energy storage installations will occur behind the meter, driven by self-consumption and back-up needs.
It is good to be here in Cardiff today for our Spring Forum and Welsh Conference.

Bringing these two events together under one banner reminds us once again that we are  and will always be  the Conservative and Unionist Party. The only Party today that represents and delivers for every part of this precious United Kingdom.

I would like to thank Alun Cairns for that introduction. Alun is a determined and passionate campaigner for Waless interests in Whitehall, always standing up for Welsh interests in government and speaking up for this great nation of the UK at the Cabinet table.

And I would also like to pay tribute to the work of the Conservative Group in the National Assembly  and particularly to its leader, Andrew RT Davies  the clearest, and without doubt the loudest, voice at Cardiff Bay doing the important work of holding the Labour Government to account.

Thank you to you also for all the work that you do for our Party here in Wales.

Thanks to you, some of our Partys best results at the last general election were achieved right here.

In the North, James Davies taking the Vale Of Clywd from Labour.

In Mid Wales, Chris Davies taking Brecon & Radnorshire back from the Liberal Democrats.

In this city, Craig Williams holding Cardiff North with a majority more than ten-times greater than we achieved in 2010.

And in the south-west, Byron Davies, becoming the first Conservative MP for Gower in its one hundred and thirty year history.

Not so long ago, people were quick to write us off here in Wales. I remember those days. People said we couldnt win here again. But you proved them wrong. And today we are winning in Wales once more.

People said the same elsewhere too. They said we couldnt win in the North of England.

But tell that to the voters of Copeland and their new, brilliant Member of Parliament Trudy Harrison  the first Conservative Member of Parliament for Copeland since before the second world war.

This is the modern Conservative Party  reaching out to all parts of the country and winning in all parts of the country.

A Party that works for everyone, not just the privileged few.

Our task as a Party

And right across Great Britain on the 4th of May, people will go to the polls to decide who they want to run their local services, care for their local environment and set the council tax they pay.

In Scotland and here in Wales, there will be all-out elections in every single local authority.

In England, as well as county council and unitary authority elections, some of our great cities and the areas around them will choose powerful new mayors.

As a Party, we go into these important elections confident about the job we can do to serve local people and local communities.

Because from Cardiff to the Cairngorms, and from Dover to Durham, people are looking for a party with a plan to secure a better future for their town or their city, their county and their country.

Our task as Conservatives is clear  we must work to be that Party.

In local elections across Great Britain, that means being the Party that sets out the credible and compelling case to keep council tax low, for more effective and efficient local services and for more responsive representation.

In the elections for new metro-mayors, our candidates:

Andy Street in the West Midlands,

James Palmer in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough,

Sean Anstee in Greater Manchester,

Tony Caldeira in Liverpool city region,

Ben Houchen in Tees Valley, and

Tim Bowles in the West of England

must be the candidates pointing the way to a better quality of life, greater social, cultural and economic opportunity, and a more prosperous future for local people  with a plan to deliver.

And as Her Majestys Government of the United Kingdom, responding to  and delivering on  the decision of the British people to leave the European Union and embark on a new global role, our task is clearer still.

It is to use this moment of opportunity to shape a brighter future for Britain.

It is to use this period of change to step back and ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be.

And it is to use the years ahead to deliver an ambitious programme of economic and social reform that prepares Britain for that brighter future and ensures we emerge stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before.

Plan for Britain

And that is why today, I want to talk to you about this Governments Plan for Britain.

A Plan for Britain that will guide our policies and actions.

A Plan for Britain that will deliver a stronger, fairer country.

For we stand on the threshold of one of the most significant moments Britain has known for many years.

During the next two weeks, we will trigger Article 50 and begin the negotiations to secure the United Kingdoms departure from the European Union.

And at such moments  great national moments that define the character of a nation  we have a choice.

We can look forward with optimism and hope. Or give in to the politics of fear and despair.

I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days lie ahead.

Because while the road before us may be uncertain at times, I believe  with the British people  that it leads towards a brighter future for our nations children and grandchildren.

That brighter future wont just happen. The stronger, fairer country we want wont just emerge. It will take effort and focus. Discipline and hard work.

And above all, it requires that we set out and deliver on a plan.

So, our Plan for Britain is a plan for a brighter future.

A plan to make the most of the opportunities ahead and to build a stronger, fairer Britain that is more united and more outward-looking.

A plan to get the right deal for Britain abroad yes, but also a better deal for ordinary, working people here at home.

And that is crucial.

For the referendum result was not just a vote to leave the European Union. It was an instruction to change the way our country works  and the people for whom it works  forever.

It was a call to change the balance of Britain  to make this great United Kingdom a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few.

We  the Conservative Party  understand that.

We  the Conservative Party  will respond.

We will get the right deal for Britain abroad  forging a new partnership with our friends and allies in Europe, but looking beyond Europe to build relationships with old friends and new allies around the world too.

And at the same time, we will pursue the ambitious economic and social reforms we need to make Britain work for working people.

That means building a stronger economy and investing in the things that will deliver for Britain in the long-term, tackling the problem of low productivity and helping to secure the high-paid, high-skilled jobs of the future.

It means creating a fairer society, as we break down the barriers of privilege and spread opportunity and prosperity around the country.

It means forging a more united nation, as we put the values of fairness, responsibility and citizenship at the heart of everything we do.

It means building a stronger, fairer Britain that our children and grandchildren will be proud to call home.

A Global Britain

From the start, the Britain we build as we leave the EU must be a truly Global Britain.

A Britain that is outward-looking and embraces the world.

Because the vote to leave the European Union was not a vote to turn our backs on our international role, or abandon our international outlook.

Britain at its best has always been a great, global, trading nation.

We have always been shaped by, and have helped to shape, global events.

We are one of the worlds largest economies, with strong and fruitful relationships with countries around the world.

Those co-operative and open-hearted relationships are vital to our future success.

As we leave the EU, we will embrace the world and build a global, outward-looking Britain that is a confident and responsible player on the world stage.

Of course, that means getting on with the job of delivering Brexit, striking the right deal for Britain  one that builds a new partnership with Europe.

And we have been clear about our negotiating objectives.

Certainty wherever possible. Control of our own laws. Strengthening the United Kingdom.

Maintaining the Common Travel Area with Ireland. Control of immigration. Rights for EU nationals in Britain, and British nationals in the EU.

Enhancing rights for workers. Free trade with European markets. New trade agreements with other countries.

A leading role in science and innovation. Co-operation on crime, terrorism and foreign affairs. And a phased approach, delivering a smooth and orderly Brexit.

Twelve objectives that amount to one big goal: a new, positive and constructive partnership between Britain and the European Union.

But a Global Britain also means making the Britain that emerges from the EU the leading advocate for global free trade, and promoting and defending the forces of economic liberalism which have such an overwhelmingly positive impact on our world.

It means building and strengthening our relationships with old friends and new allies, getting out and doing business right across the globe.

That is what the Department for International Trade has been doing since it was set up last summer  building up our capability and readiness for that new global role, and promoting British goods and services around the globe.

It means continuing to attract the brightest and the best to work or study in Britain, but ensuring that process is managed properly so that our immigration system serves the national interest

continuing to meet our commitments to the worlds poor and to support developing countries, protecting British interests and making the world a safer place for everyone.

And supporting our armed forces as they keep our country safe and secure.

Britain is one of the few nations anywhere in the world to meet both its UN aid target and its NATO defence target.

That is a global Britain of which we can all be proud.

A Stronger Economy

But our success as a Global Britain will be underpinned by the second objective of our Plan for Britain: a stronger economy where everyone plays by the same rules.

We have achieved a lot over the last six years to fix the economic mess left by Labour and restore our public finances.

The deficit has been reduced and our economy has grown.

In 2009-10 the UK borrowed 1 in every 5 that was spent. This year it is set to be 1 in every 15.

Working with businesses and business leaders across the country, we have delivered a record numbers of jobs, giving more people in our country economic security and peace of mind for their families.

We have taken the lowest-paid out of tax altogether, and brought in the National Living Wage, so that people who work hard every day in often arduous jobs can enjoy a better standard of living.

But there is still so much more to do.

So our Plan for Britain will continue to bring the deficit down, so that the country lives within its means.

In doing so, we will take a balanced approach

allowing us to invest where it is needed

like the 2 billion additional money for adult social care we announced last week

and where it will make the difference for Britain in the long-term, like the 500m a year we committed in the Budget to bring genuinely world-class technical education to Britain for the first time.

This funding will help to increase the amount of technical training for 16-19 year olds by 50%.

It includes a high-quality 3 month work placement for every student.

And it means that, when they qualify, they will be genuinely work-ready.

It means we will be taking technical education seriously  and giving it the parity of esteem it deserves  as we roll out our new modern industrial strategy to all parts of the country.

That strategy will encourage and support the key sectors of our economy; provide more opportunities for young people to find high-quality, high-skilled work; and spread opportunity and prosperity around the whole of the country.

This approach has already been welcomed by sectors across our economy, and I look forward to publishing our White Paper later in the year.

And to build a stronger economy that works for everyone, Government must also support competitive markets and an open economy.

That means recognising where markets are not working for customers, and being ready to step in on their behalf, so that consumers get a fair deal.

One market that is manifestly not working for all consumers is the energy market.

Energy is not a luxury, it is a necessity of life. But it is clear to me  and to anyone who looks at it  that the market is not working as it should.

Prices have risen by 158% over the last fifteen years, and ordinary working families are finding that they are spending more and more of their take-home pay on heating and lighting each month.

The vast majority of consumers, especially those with the lowest incomes, are on the most expensive tariffs.

Relying on switching alone to keep prices down is clearly not working.

Our Party did not end the unjust and inefficient monopolies of the old nationalised energy corporations only to replace them with a system that traps the poorest customers on the worst deals.

So we are looking very closely at how we can address this problem, and ensure a fairer deal for everyone.

We will set out our plans very soon.

This is a Government on the side of working people, acting to repair broken consumer markets, to improve the spending power of people who are just about managing with everyday costs and bills.

Because it is the job of Government to act in the national interest and to protect the people.

To crack down on individuals and businesses that abuse the system so that everyone  however big or small  plays by the same rules.

That is the fairer Britain we are building.

And our Conservative vision of a Britain that works for everyone is a Britain where workers rights are protected and enhanced.

Employment rights in Britain already exceed those guaranteed by EU regulation, and under this Government they will only be extended, and never diminished.

Ensuring that in a modern, flexible economy people are properly protected at work will also be a priority.

That is why we have commissioned Matthew Taylor to lead a review into the rights and protections people have in work in the new modern economy, so that we can be certain that employment regulation and practices are keeping pace with the changing world of work.

The Conservative Party  the party of workers, of consumers, of responsible businesses with a plan to build a stronger economy for all.

A fairer society

And the third objective of our Plan is to build a fairer society, where success is based on merit, not privilege.

We have already started to rebalance our society in favour of ordinary working people.

Our plans for housing will deliver one million more homes, so that more people can afford a home of their own, while ensuring the housing market is fair to those who own their home and those who dont.

That means action to help renters, as well as buyers.

We will continue to put record investment into the NHS to help people at every stage of their life and support a vital national institution.

We will help people who can work get back into employment, so that they can benefit from a happier, healthier and more productive life

and so our welfare system is fair to those who need it and fair to those who pay for it.

But we need to go further, and turn Britain into a Great Meritocracy, where success is defined by work and talent, not birth or circumstance.

So our Plan for Britain will provide a good school place for every child  one that gives them the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the future and reach their full potential in life.

We will support existing state schools to do even better, through sponsorship by universities and collaboration with the independent sector.

We will help faith schools to expand, while making sure they include pupils from different backgrounds.

And we will do something else, which no government has done for generations.

We will extend to the children of working class families the same opportunities enjoyed by the children of the well-off, by ending the ban on new academically selective schools in England.

These new schools will face rigorous requirements to ensure that as well as giving greater opportunities to their own students, they also support their neighbouring non-selective schools to do the best by theirs.

There will be no return to the binary models of the past, but rather a step into a more egalitarian future, where the opportunity to receive the education which suits a child best is within reach of everyone in our society, and not just a privileged few.

Because being a Government at the service of the people means taking action on the issues that concern them.

Not thinking we know best and turning a blind-eye to their concerns, but listening and responding to what people want.

So we will take control of immigration and make sure the immigration system works in the national interest.

We will welcome immigrants who make a valued and necessary contribution to our economy and society, but we will once again have control of the system, and manage it according to our needs.

And at the very same time that we take action to address peoples legitimate concerns about immigration, we will be unstinting in our determination to tackle the historic injustices, like racial and gender discrimination, that hold too many people in our society back.

The Britain we will build must be a country where everyone has an equal chance to succeed and where getting on in life is dependent on talent and hard work, not background or connections.

Our Party should aspire to be the servant and the voice of hard-working and patriotic British people of every social class and race, of any religion and none, of women and men equally, of gay and straight, young and old.

We are a union of people who are bound together by enduring common interests  and all are respected and welcome in our party and our country.

A united Nation

Because everything I have been talking about today adds up to the over-arching goal of our Plan for Britain: the creation of a more united nation, that our children and grandchildren are proud to call home.

Our Party believes heart and soul in our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The precious bond between four nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But that union is more than just a constitutional artefact.

It is a union between all of our citizens, whoever we are and wherever were from.

So our Plan for Britain will put strengthening and sustaining that Union at its heart.

It means taking the big decisions when theyre the right ones for Britain in the long-term.

Putting the national interest above any other consideration.

And it means ensuring that we act in the interests of the whole country  creating jobs and supporting cities, towns and communities right across our United Kingdom.

It is has always been the special mission of our Conservative Party to be the true national party in Britain.

To aspire to represent all of the country and all of the people.

And today our goal must be nothing less.

Because we are now the Party of the new centre-ground of British politics.

Rejecting the extremes of Labours socialist left, UKIPs libertarian right, and the divisive and obsessive nationalisms of Plaid Cymru and the SNP.

And we have seen that tunnel vision on display again this week. The SNP argue that we should break up the UK because we are leaving the EU

but three years ago they campaigned for a result that would have taken Scotland out of the EU altogether.

They are happy to see power rest in Brussels. But if those powers come back to London they want them given to Edinburgh so that they can try to give them back to Brussels.

And now they apparently say that an independent Scotland would no longer seek to become a member of the EU after a vote for separation.

It is muddle on muddle.

The fact that more Scottish voters backed Scotland staying in the UK in 2014, than supported the UK staying in the EU in 2016

and that almost half a million independence supporters actually backed Brexit last year

seems to count for nothing.

It is now clear that using Brexit as the pretext to engineer a second independence referendum has been the SNPs sole objective ever since last June.

But it would be bad for Scotland, bad for the United Kingdom, and bad for us all.

The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom.

Every person, every family, every business, every community the length and breadth of the United Kingdom  England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It is essential that we get the right deal, and that all of our efforts and energies as a country are focused on that outcome.

We can only get that deal if we are united, as one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome.

That is what we have always done when faced with challenges.

We have pulled together as one and succeeded together.

We are four nations, but at heart we are one people.

As the Prime Minister of this United Kingdom, I will always ensure the voices and interests of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented as we negotiate to leave the EU.

And I will always fight to strengthen and sustain this precious, precious Union.

Conclusion

A great leader of our Party once said that the Tory Party, unless it is a national party, is nothing.

Our Party, he went on to say, is a party formed from all the numerous classes in the realm  classes alike and equal before the law, but whose different conditions and different aims give vigour and variety to our national life.

At its best, it has always been the mission of our Party to serve all of the people.

To be the truly national party.

To act always in the national interest, and never in a sectional interest.

To encourage the strong, and to protect the vulnerable.

To enable success, and to use the fruits of our collective success to advance the common good.

In the years ahead, these are the values that should light our path.

With our vision of a better future for our country

a plan for a stronger, fairer Britain

and the determination to see it through

we will achieve that mission and be worthy of that better future.
It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine, declared PG Wodehouse.

By making the unreasonable demand for a referendum on Scottish independence before the Brexit process had been completed, Nicola Sturgeon relied upon the UK Government refusing it and allowing the scope for a grievance to nurture. Despite this risk, the demand has indeed been given an emphatic rejection.

Yesterday Theresa May declared:

Nothing is more important to me than seeing this United Kingdom thrive. Our precious union of nations is the most successful this world has ever seen.

Weve been together  weve been joined together as one country  for over 300 years. Weve worked together, weve prospered together, weve fought wars together. And we have a bright future, theres a bright future for us all.

Thats why as we embark on the process of negotiating a new relationship, a future relationship with the European Union, Im going to be fighting for every person, every family, every business across the whole of the United Kingdom. Thats my focus. And I think it should be the focus of us all.

So, when the SNP say its the time to start talking about a second independence referendum, I say that, just at this point, all our energies should be focused on negations with the European Union about our future relationship. To be talking about an independence referendum would, I think, make it more difficult to get the right deal for Scotland and the right deal for the UK.

I think it wouldnt be fair to the people of Scotland because theyd be asked to make a crucial decision without the necessary information  without knowing the future partnership or what the alternative of an independent Scotland would look like.

I think right now we should be focusing all our energy in getting the right deal for the UK and Scotland . Thats my job as Prime Minister.

Right now we should working together, not pulling apart. We should be working together to get that right deal for Scotland, that right deal for the UK  thats my job as Prime Minister so, for that reason, I say to the SNP: now is not the time.

Im responding to the proposal thats been put forward by the First Minister. I say now is not the time and I say that because all our energies should be going into negotiations with the European Union.

To make sure we get the right deal; the right deal across the United Kingdom and for Scotland. To look at this proposal at this time wouldnt be fair.

This rejection is both politically astute and right in principle. It terms of Scottish opinion, May is closer to Sturgeon when it comes to the scheduling of another referendum. The latest poll I can see on the matter (taken by BMG for the Herald earlier this week) asked if there should be another referendum held prior to the Brexit negotiations being concluded 39 per cent said Yes while 49 per cent said No.

The pretext for rushing the vote is that if Scotland voted for independence before Brexit was completed then Scotland would be able to remain a member of the European Union. This is nonsense. The EU has made clear that Scotland would have to apply for membership after it had left the UK  that it would have no automatic right and that it would have to join the Euro.

By waiting for the conclusion of Brexit it will be possible to understand, as the Prime Minister put it, what the choice of staying in the United Kingdom, will look like.

Some would prefer May to be more emphatic and rule out another referendum altogether. After all, in 2013 Nicola Sturgeon said:

Weve made very clear our belief that constitutional referenda are once-in-a-generation events.

But a complete refusal would be unrealistic. We do face an odd situation where despite losing the referendum in 2014 the SNP has become the dominant political party in Scotland: winning 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats in the House of Commons was extraordinary. That can not be ignored. Nor can the significant change in circumstances of the UKs forthcoming departure from the EU. Now is not the time, is an eminently reasonable approach. When would be? The Daily Telegraph reports that having one in six years could be the plan. That would be dependent on the SNP winning a clear victory in the next Scottish elections in 2021. Unionists certainly have some work to do  the polling indications that breaking with the UK is more popular among younger Scots than pensioners is worrying. On the other hand those of us confident that by 2023 Brexit will already be a success  and be seen to be a success  can also have some confidence that staying in the UK will be accepted as the right choice in any ballot that takes place.
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.

Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com
There is no reason whatsoever why George Osborne should not both be MP for Tatton and Editor of the Evening Standard. Being an MP is not, repeat not, a job  any more or less than being a local councillor is a job. If his constituents in Cheshire are unhappy with the arrangement, then they have a means to hand of letting him know in due course. Ditto his Association.

So much for theory. But what about practice? As it happens, an event lies in between Osbornes rather, ahem, counter-intuitive appointment and the next election  namely, the boundary review. If the proposed reduction in seats passes the Commons, the former Chancellors constituency will be abolished on the current proposals. And if he then, as he has said he intends to, applies for a new Cheshire seat, the Association in question may enquire how  in his own words today  despite being a Conservative MP his only interest will be to give a voice to all Londoners. This is a conflict not so much of interest but of loyalties, and even a man as dexterous as Osborne may find difficulty in squaring it. And that is before one gets into how he will reconcile his passion for London with his dedication to his Northern Powerhouse. His statement has a stab at reconciling the two, but not altogether successfully.

It will be said that the Chancellor is unsuited to edit the paper, since his journalistic CV is restricted to a few sessions on the Daily Telegraph diary. This is bosh. The mere fact of his appointment triumphantly demonstrates that he possesses an essential journalistic qualification in spades: a sense of mischief. The news of his appointment will send a frisson of horror through the Government. But Theresa May can hardly say directly that he shouldnt take up the post. Meanwhile, the chomping noise you hear in the background is Number Ten chewing its nails over what the new editor will have to say about Brexit, and City Hall doing the same over what he will have to say about the Mayoralty. Osborne will be able to tell a tale or two about life at the top of government  and about his exit from it  if he decides to do so. This could be fun. At any rate, he will relish his new power.

Tim Montgomerie had no experience in journalism when he set up ConservativeHome. But he made a success of it, and moved afterwards into the mainstream  at the Times. In this age of new and social media, you dont need years of toil on the newsroom floor to become a successful editor. Perhaps it was ever thus. But although Downing Street can hardly force Osborne out of Parliament, and though too he may well get selected or reselected, I think he has made a choice. Having assumed an editors chair today, he is not going to leap out of it tomorrow  or in the near future. If he has to choose, then journalism rather than politics it looks like beingunless there is a convulsion that sweeps May and her Brexiteers out of office and himself and the Cameroons back in. The Standards new editor may not be above using it to that end.

What is it about Osborne and well-heeled Russians? He famously got aboard Oleg Depraskas yacht. Now he has taken charge at the helm of Evgeny Lebedevs newspaper (while apparently not relinquishing his money-making at BlackRock). In the short-term, he has unleashed a clowder of cats in the Conservative Partys dovecot. In the longer, this move looks like a step nearer Westminsters exit door.
CORNWALL, Ontario  The Cornwall Community Police Service will be closely monitoring traffic along Brookdale Avenue and the Seaway International Bridge as a result of an increase in reported incidents of dangerous and aggressive driving coming from and going to The Seaway International Bridge.

The Seaway International Bridge is the main crossing for those who wish to enter Akwesasne or the United States from Canada and efforts are being made to ensure the safety of everyone.

There is always a zero tolerance approach when it comes to the safety of the public and anyone found driving aggressively and / or driving dangerously will be charged accordingly regardless of where it might be in our city," stated Staff Sgt. Fraser. "CCPS is asking the public to please respect the 50 Km / 35 Mph speed limit while driving along this corridor and report any incidents that might put the publics safety at risk. The public is encouraged to contact 613-933-5000 ext. 2404 to leave anonymous information if they know of someone who drives in such a manner or ext. 2418 to reach CCPS dispatch. Together we can make Cornwall a safer place for all to enjoy."
SOUTH GLENGARRY, Ontario  On March 15, 2017 at approximately 2:30 p.m., Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry (SD&G) and Highway Safety Division (HSD) Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers intercepted a vehicle on Highway 401, South Glengarry Township.

The stop resulted in the seizure of several fraudulent cards, equipment and a quantity of suspected marihuana. Three (3) male occupants were arrested. One passenger provided false identification on two occasions to police.

Farouk LOURIACHI (24) of Montreal, Quebec is charged with;

 Possess  Credit Card Data (6 counts)

 Possession of Instrument Used in Copying Credit Cards

 Obstruct Peace Officer (2 counts)

 Personation With Intent to Avoid Arrest (2 counts)

 Possession of a Controlled Substance

 Fail to Comply with Recognizance (3 counts)

 Fail to Comply with Probation Order (2 counts)

He was held in custody pending an appearance (bail) at the Ontario Court of Justice in Cornwall.

The driver, Junior DORMEVIL (25) of Saint-Leonard, Quebec and passenger Staycy DATUS-BAZILE (22) of Montreal, Quebec are each charged with;

 Possess  Credit Card Data (6 counts)

 Possession of Instrument Used in Copying Credit Cards

 Possession of a Controlled Substance

Both were released and scheduled to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice in Alexandria on April 5, 2017.
2 of the banksters most profitable investments in Congress-- Emanuel and Himes

If you think Trump has gone overboard in draining the swamp and what DC needs isbanksters in public office, good news : banksters and lobbyists are launching an effort to train banksters who want to run for state or federal office. I'll get into it in a moment but first let's take a quick look at the fount of congressional corruption-- the House Financial Services Committee, the single most corrupt committee in Congress, the one the banksters count on to do their bidding... and spend millions of dollars on to make sure they get what they want. Six of the most corrupt members of the House Financial Services Committee, among the most bribed members of Congress, are ex-banksters already serving on the committee-- and a 7th, David Trott, was an attorney for banks who specialized in foreclosures. We'll call him an "honorary bankster." So here's the human equivalent of what you would get if you escalated and dredged a century-old cesspool (+ the amount each has taken in bribes from other banksters since being elected to Congress)-- in order of most corrupt to slightly less corrupt:

This is just one committee. There are former banksters taking bribes on lots of committees. But this is one of the ones that deals directly with the day-to-day of bank regulating. So... as CNN reported last night, a slimeball lobbying outfit, "the American Bankers Association started taking applications on Tuesday for its first-ever 'candidate school.' The pilot program is open to any banker who wants to run for state or federal office. The biggest bank lobbying group described it as a 'comprehensive two-day program' that will take place, naturally, in Washington, D.C."

The ABA promised the candidate school will help bankers-turned-politicians learn how to "get out the vote," conduct research, fill out paperwork and, of course, raise money.





But not just anybody can apply. This political training camp is only open to bankers and bank directors who have "concrete plans" to run for state or federal office in the next two election cycles. Candidates for school boards and town council need not apply.





So why is the ABA trying to recruit politicians from within its own ranks? To help shape banking legislation of course.





The ABA described it as part of its efforts to "promote a pro-growth policy environment."





"When it's time to set banking and economic policy, we strongly believe nothing beats real-world banking experience," ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols said in a statement.





In other words, bankers elected to Congress could help efforts to dial back regulation that the industry finds burdensome, such as parts of Dodd-Frank and others.





The ABA, which represents small, regional and large banks, is already the most prolific campaign contributor in the financial industry. The lobbying group gave $9.8 million to political causes last year, according to OpenSecrets. That was twice as much as the next closest bank lobby group and well ahead of big banks like Citigroup and Wells Fargo.





The ABA noted that only 18 of the 535 members of Congress have a banking background.





It may also help that the current occupant of the White House went directly from the business world to the highest office in the land.





"It surely is a follow-on to Mr. Trump's electoral success," said NYU Stern School of Business professor Lawrence White.





Putin owns Wilbur

President Trump also hasn't been shy about surrounding himself with bankers, especially ones from Goldman Sachs. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was a longtime Goldman banker, while top economic aide Gary Cohn was most recently the Number Two exec of the big Wall Street firm. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also had to step down as vice chairman of the Bank of Cyprus once he took office.





Democrats also named bankers to their administrations. For instance, former President Obama tapped ex-JPMorgan exec William Daley as his chief of staff, while former President Clinton selected longtime Goldman Sachs senior exec Robert Rubin as his treasury secretary.





Asked about concerns of a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, Rubin acknowledged to CNNMoney that there's been a "tremendous loss of confidence in institutions in America."





"I may be wrong, but I don't think that's because bankers went into government. I think it's because the system hasn't worked for most Americans," Rubin said.





But does that mean voters are ready to elect more bankers to Congress? It wasn't long ago that many Americans seemed to blame Wall Street and the financial industry in general for the 2008 financial meltdown. And there have been several more recent black eyes for the industry, including the fake account scandal at Wells Fargo and improper hiring tactics at JPMorgan Chase.





But White, the NYU professor, said he doesn't think "being a banker is a barrier to being elected-- even given the trauma of 2008."





He said a bigger problem will be whether bankers are willing to "expose themselves to the level of public scrutiny" that comes with running for office.





"Mr. Trump was able to withstand it. But he seems exceptional in this regard. Can others?" White asks.
best part of American foreign relations this week. Less susceptible to a smiley face was what happened with Trump trying to worm his way out from under his Adderall-fueled tweet about Obama tapping his wires... by blaming the British. That wasn't appreciated in London and, although the After bashing her personally and gratuitously all during the campaign last year-- benefactor Comrade Putin hates her-- Senor Trumpanzee welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House today. And that was thepart of American foreign relations this week. Less susceptible to a smiley face was what happened with Trump trying to worm his way out from under his Adderall-fueled tweet about Obama tapping his wires... by blaming the British. That wasn't appreciated in London and, although the report from The Telegraph about "a formal apology" was, let's say, not completely accurate, the Regime promised not to make the patently false claims again . Has anyone told Trumpanzee?





that. After the British spy honchos issued a statement slapping down Spicey Spice by saying that "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president elect are nonsense; they are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," there were claims that McMaster (the largely ignored National Security Advisor) and Spicey personally apologized. McMaster apologized to Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Theresa May's National Security adviser and Spicey contacted Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's ambassador in DC. Did they now? And Trumpanzee? He's still pissed off his state visit was cancelled in such a humiliating fashion and that he's not allowed to meet the Queen or address Parliament. And the cardboard Secretary of State, T-Rex? He was busy stirring up a war with North Korea . Oh, yeah...





sans the traditional U.S. reporters in tow-- declared that the existing "strategic patience" approach is over, saying all options including military action are on the table. He needs a nappy? Today he's off to Beijing. So, according to bemused Korean officials, T-Rex had to cut his visit to South Korea short because of "fatigue." But not before plenty of crazy saber-rattling . At a joint news conference in Seoul with Korea's s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se Friday Tillerson--the traditional U.S. reporters in tow-- declared that the existing "strategic patience" approach is over, saying all options including military action are on the table. He needs a nappy? Today he's off to Beijing.

Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table.



His remarks represent the Donald Trump administrations strongest signal yet that it would take a much tougher stance than its predecessors including Barack Obamas strategic patience policy.



Certainly we do not want for things to get to a military conflict, were quite clear on that in our communications, but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that would be met with an appropriate response, he said.



If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table.



Tillerson has said his maiden Asia tour, which also took him to Tokyo and includes a stop in Beijing from Saturday, is aimed at exchanging views on a new approach toward Pyongyang.

David Sanger's NY Times report was even more ominous, Tillerson rejecting talks with North Korea altogether! "Tillerson," he wrote, "ruled out on Friday opening any negotiation with North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and said for the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action 'if they elevate the threat of their weapons program' to an unacceptable level." Chimp-in-chief tweeted this earlier today:









I guess the idea that the U.S. only attacks non-nuclear powers-- like Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan-- while leaving nuclear-armed states-- like Russian and Iran-- alone, is being tested here.

Mr. Tillersons comments in Seoul, a day before he travels to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, explicitly rejected any return to the bargaining table in an effort to buy time by halting North Koreas accelerating testing program. The countrys leader, Kim Jong-un, said on New Years Day that North Korea was in the final stage of preparation for the first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States.



The secretary of states comments were the Trump administrations first public hint at the options being considered, and they made clear that none involved a negotiated settlement or waiting for the North Korean government to collapse.



The policy of strategic patience has ended, Mr. Tillerson said, a reference to the term used by the Obama administration to describe a policy of waiting out the North Koreans, while gradually ratcheting up sanctions and covert action.



Negotiations can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, he said-- a step to which the North committed in 1992, and again in subsequent accords, but has always violated. Only then will we be prepared to engage them in talks.



His warning on Friday about new ways to pressure the North was far more specific and martial sounding than during the first stop of his three-country tour, in Tokyo on Thursday. His inconsistency of tone may have been intended to signal a tougher line to the Chinese before he lands in Beijing on Saturday. It could also reflect an effort by Mr. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to issue the right diplomatic signals in a region where American commitment is in doubt.



...On Friday afternoon, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone and peering into North Korean territory in what has become a ritual for American officials making a first visit to the South, Mr. Tillerson explicitly rejected a Chinese proposal to get the North Koreans to freeze their testing in return for the United States and South Korea suspending all annual joint military exercises, which are now underway.



Mr. Tillerson argued that a freeze would essentially enshrine a comprehensive set of capabilities North Korea possesses that already pose too great a threat to the United States and its allies, and he said there would be no negotiation until the North agreed to dismantle its programs.



Mr. Tillerson ignored a question about whether the Trump administration would double down on the use of cyberweapons against the Norths missile development, a covert program that Mr. Obama accelerated early in 2014 and that so far has yielded mixed results.



Instead, Mr. Tillerson referred vaguely to a number of steps the United States could take-- a phrase that seemed to embrace much more vigorous enforcement of sanctions, ramping up missile defenses, cutting off North Koreas oil, intensifying the cyberwar program and striking the Norths known missile sites. At a meeting of the principals committee of the National Security Council on Monday, any discussion of military action was kicked down the road.



...[C]lassified assessments of the North that the Obama administration left for its successors included a grim assessment by the intelligence community: that North Koreas leader, Mr. Kim, believes his nuclear weapons program is the only way to guarantee the survival of his regime and will never trade it away for economic or other benefits.



The assessment said that the example of what happened to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime leader of Libya, had played a critical role in North Korean thinking. Colonel Qaddafi gave up the components of Libyas nuclear program in late 2003-- most of them were still in crates from Pakistan-- in hopes of economic integration with the West. Eight years later, when the Arab Spring broke out, the United States and its European allies joined forces to depose Colonel Qaddafi, who was eventually found hiding in a ditch and executed by Libyan rebels.



On Friday, after his visit to the Demilitarized Zone, Mr. Tillerson returned to Seoul for meetings about a problem that has quickly reached crisis proportions because of a series of recent, and successful, nuclear and missile tests.



Among many experts, the idea of a freeze has been favored as the least terrible of a series of bad options. Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who worked on Mr. Obamas National Security Council, and Toby Dalton wrote recently in Politico, A temporary freeze on missile and nuclear developments sounds better than an unconstrained and growing threat. It is also, possibly, the most logical and necessary first step toward an overall agreement between the U.S. and North Korea. But the risk that North Korea will cheat or hide facilities during a negotiated freeze is great.



William J. Perry, who was secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, said in Beijing on Friday that the Trump administration would have to offer North Korea security assurances if it wanted to escape an increasingly dangerous spiral of confrontation. Previous administrations had mistakenly based their policies on the assumption that North Korea would collapse on their watch, Mr. Perry told a small group of reporters.



I see very little prospect of a collapse, he said. For eight years in the Obama administration and eight years in the Bush administration, they were expecting that to happen. As a consequence, their policies were not very effective. I would think that the United States and other countries as well should stop expecting a collapse in North Korea.



Mr. Perry said that American policy makers needed to grasp that North Koreas leaders regarded their own survival in power, and especially the continuation of the Kim dynasty, as more important than improving the economy. He said that as long as the goal of the United States remained completely eliminating North Koreas nuclear weapons, I think we will continue to be unsuccessful.



It will take initiative, primarily by the United States, to be willing to talk with North Korea, he said.



In Asia, on his first major trip overseas as secretary of state, Mr. Tillerson has been heavily scripted in his few public comments, and he has gone out of his way to make sure he is not subject to questions beyond highly controlled news conferences, at which his staff chooses the questioners. In a breach of past practice, he traveled without the usual State Department press corps, which has flown on the secretarys plane for roughly half a century.

Heavily scripted. I guess that means Bannon wants to see how far they can push North Korea (and China). Disturbed by this kind of "diplomacy?" So was Ted Lieu: "As a Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a veteran, I call on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop making provocative comments about pre-emptive attacks on North Korea. North Korea is a danger to regional peace and security and their leader is crazy. But fighting crazy with crazy is a recipe for disaster. We need to de-escalate regional tensions on the Korean peninsula, not ratchet them up. Any attack by the U.S. on North Korea would likely result in retaliation against South Korea or Japan or other nations. What is President Trump and Secretary Tillersons plan for protecting the U.S. troops and civilians in South Korea and Japan from being slaughtered? Any plan to fully take out North Koreas nuclear program would also likely require a ground invasion. President Trump needs to articulate a clear strategy with regards to peace and security in the region before our Secretary of State potentially starts a war in North Korea." And Trump's been president for how many days so far?

UPDATE: That Was Some Crappy Joint Press Conference!





It didn't look like Merkel has to worry about Trump grabbing her pussy-- or anything else. Those two looked like they wanted to kill each other. And when photographers asked for a handshake, he just stared ahead dumbly. Even when she asked to do a handshake, for the cameras, he just stared straight ahead, like a real asshole. Look:













But the best moment was when the German reporter stepped right out of Hans Christian Andersen's Emperor's New Clothes and asked the world's most notorious liar, "Why do keep saying things you know are not true?" U.S. reporters are too pathetic to ever conceive of any such obvious question and looked absolutely shocked.
Each crew member faces up to one year imprisonment or a hefty fine.

A Vietnamese fishing boat has been seized and 10 crew detained after the boat was allegedly found encroaching on Brunei's territorial waters.

Based on a statement released by the Royal Brunei Police Force, a Brunei navy ship intercepted the fishing boat on Thursday.

The 10 Vietnamese crew, aged between 18 and 50, were transferred to Bruneis Marine Police for further investigation, said the statement.

According to local laws, if convicted, the captain of the Vietnamese boat will face up to five years' imprisonment with a maximum fine of 100,000 Brunei dollars ($71,271), while each crew member will face up to one year's imprisonment with a maximum fine of 2,500 Brunei dollars ($1,781).

Last September, Brunei authorities seized two Vietnamese fishing boats and charged 38 Vietnamese men for illegally fishing in Brunei's waters.

The captains of the two boats were each given the option of a 10,000 Brunei dollar ($7,000) fine or 10 months in prison. Their crew of 36 men also had to pay 1,000 Brunei dollars each or spend two months in prison.

Hundreds of other Vietnamese fishermen have been arrested in recent years in the waters of neighboring countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, for similar allegations.

Related news:

> Indonesia frees 27 Vietnamese fishermen in first batch this year

> Malaysia detains more Vietnamese fishermen on illegal fishing charges

> Malaysia detains Vietnamese fishermen for straying into exclusive waters, again
The 34-year-old suspect had been summoned by police in January for questioning, but was not arrested.

Police have detained a 34-year-old man in Hanoi on accusations of molesting his 8-year-old neighbor on several occasions, a case that has stirred public anger and caught the attention of top government leaders.

Cao Manh Hung was taken into custody on Thursday more than two months after the girl's mother made an official complaint against him, saying her daughter came home after playing near the house complaining of genital pain on January 8.

The Hanoi Police-run Capital Security newspaper said Hung used to work as a debt collector for a bank in the city.

The girl's mother said Hung had been playing hide-and-seek with her daughter and several other children, and had taken the girl into a hidden corner and molested her. Two of her friends tried to hit Hung when they saw him holding her.

Van said her daughter told her Hung had checked her body many times. Medical tests found injuries to the girls vagina, and her hymen was torn. Police summoned Hung for questioning on January 11, but did not arrest him.

Van said she had sent written complaints to several law enforcement forces in Hanoi and government agencies.

Last Friday, local district police said they did not have enough evidence to open a criminal investigation, and would need two months to look into the matter.

Hung's detention comes just days after the story spread widely on social media and prompted a deputy premier to order strong and swift action.

Under Vietnams penal code, having sex with a child under 13 years of age is ruled as child rape, which can result in the death penalty, while other acts of child sex abuse are punishable by up to 12 years in jail.

In a separate development, an appeals court in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak upheld a six-month jail term handed by a lower court to a 73-year-old shop owner, who was found guilty of molesting a 6-year-old girl in May 2016.

Related news:

> Vietnamese lawyer calls for chemical castration to punish pedophiles

> Hanoi urged to speed up probes into suspected child sexual abuse
Channel programs News

Idaho Is Seeking To Buy HP's Boise Campus For $110 Million

Steven Burke

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The Idaho Department of Administration has signed a letter of intent to enter into talks to acquire HP Inc.'s Boise, Idaho, campus for $110 million.

As part of the proposed purchase and sale agreement, HP would lease back over half the office space in the 200-acre complex with eight buildings for an initial seven-year term.

A top executive for one of HP Inc.'s top partners, who did not want to be identified, applauded HP for moving to take the real estate off its books and using the cash to invest in its core business.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: HP CEO Dion Weisler On Taking Share From Competitors, Why HP Is 'Innovating Like Crazy' And What He Thinks Of President Trump's New Immigration Order]

"This would provide HP with $110 million that is now liquid," said the executive. "There's a reason companies decide not to own real estate. It's because it is not a good use of resources. It is often cheaper and better to lease than to buy. HP has been buying and selling real estate for as long as I can remember."

The state of Idaho would assume third-party leases with all of the businesses located on the campus. The state said it initially will use 152,000 square feet of office space, increasing to 366,000 square feet in 2020 as those other third-party leases expire.

This opportunity for an agreement with a valued business leader will benefit both parties and addresses a pressing need for the state of Idaho, said Gov. Butch Otter in a prepared statement. Weve been looking hard for the right place at the right price for our agencies, and the HP campus really fits the bill. A great employer is reinforcing its commitment to Idaho and the state is saving money, so its a win-win.

HP aims to eliminate 1,500 to 2,500 positions in the current fiscal year. That is part of an overall $1 billion in productivity savings that the company is targeting for the current fiscal year.
Man whos just visited all 197 countries: Make sure Hanoi is on your route plans

It has taken 10 years for Johnny Ward to complete his tour around the world.

Irishman Johnny Ward can now officially claim that hes among very few people in the world who have seen it all.

The 33-year-old man has just completed his 10-year global trip to all 197 countries, after reaching his final destination, Norway and the Arctic Circle, The Independent reported.

Whats great about Wards journey is that he did not try to tick off each destination by a few hours at the airport.

He reportedly spent an average two to three weeks in every place he visited. And more importantly, Ward has proved that a global trip like his could be affordable as well: he worked and blogged regularly along the way.

Another secret: he explored Southeast Asia on a budget of only $5 a day.

Ward, who blogs at Onestep4ward, also dedicated an entry to Hanoi, suggesting the city as a must-visit destination.

South East Asia is a great start point for any newbie traveler. Its fun, established, there are loads of other backpackers to befriend and cheap holidays to be found. Make sure Hanoi is on your route plans, he said.

Ward named the Hoan Kiem Lake and the Temple of Literature among his favorite attractions. And dont forget the cheap bia hoi, he said. Now that he has completed the impressive globetrotting feat, Ward said hes celebrating.

Im so grateful to be in this position, he told The Independent. I think only about 100 people have done this [visited all the world's countries] in history.

Related news:

>A French filmmaker shows the best part of Vietnam: its people

>Hanoi goes global: CNN broadcasts the best of Vietnam's capital
Storage News

Partners Cheer Lenovo's DataCore Deal, Ponder Its Long-Term Storage Strategy

Joseph F. Kovar

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Lenovo, stung by the loss of two data center storage technology partners thanks to acquisitions by rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), is reinforcing its software-defined storage strategy as a way to advance its data center business.

However, Lenovo channel partners, while remaining big fans of Lenovo's extensive server business, are not sure the vendor has a viable data center storage strategy.

Lenovo, with one of its headquarters locations in Research Park, N.C., this week unveiled a new OEM agreement with Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based DataCore Software to integrate DataCore's SANsymphony software-defined storage with Lenovo servers.

[Related: Lenovo's Storage Strategy: Plotting A Path To Data Center Relevance]

The new product comes after two of Lenovo's close storage technology partners were acquired by HPE.

The first was hyper-converged infrastructure technology developer SimpliVity, which HPE acquired in February. Lenovo and SimpliVity in 2015 started joint development and marketing of hyper-converged infrastructure solutions based on Lenovo servers and SimpliVity software and had already been shipping them to channel partners.

The second was all-flash and hybrid-flash storage vendor Nimble Storage, which HPE said last week it plans to acquire. Lenovo and Nimble Storage in October unveiled plans for Lenovo to build converged infrastructure solutions based on Lenovo servers and Nimble Storage's all-flash arrays, and eventually incorporate Nimble Storage arrays in the Lenovo product line.

Lenovo channel partners praised Lenovo for its servers, and for partnering with DataCore, but feel the company still has work to do to be ready for the data center, especially after losing the SimpliVity and Nimble Storage relationships.

Lenovo needs to pay attention to the storage business before HPE buys everyone, said Chris Pyle, president of Champion Solutions Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based solution provider and channel partner to both Lenovo and DataCore.

The DataCore SANsymphony software is a good offering for Lenovo, Pyle told CRN. "They need it to beat the drum about business heterogeneous storage," he said. "But it's hard to see what Lenovo will do long-term for the data center. The company needs storage."

Pyle said Champion sells a lot of Lenovo servers into data centers and multi-site retail customers. "There are still a lot of SANs in place out there, and a lot of iSCSI," he said. Many customers do not need a new storage solution to buy new servers. But in the long term, as we see customers pull the trigger on things like hyper-converged infrastructure, Lenovo will need storage to grow."

Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based solution provider and Lenovo channel partner, said it is tough for a company to grow its data center business.

"Some clients want a pure HPE end-to-end solution or a Dell end-to-end solutions," Goldstein told CRN. "So there's not a lot of options there. But some clients swear by NetApp or pre-Dell EMC storage on Lenovo servers."

The DataCore relationship will help open Lenovo's doors to customers without a large SAN budget, Goldstein said.

"But I'm not sure what the long-term strategy is," he said. "Maybe the best strategy for Lenovo could be a midmarket strategy. Competition in the high-end is fierce. Maybe Lenovo has more of an SMB strategy and is not necessarily peeking in the high-end tier. It fits with Lenovo's current storage strategy. Software-defined storage gives them diversity."

Another Lenovo channel partner, who requested anonymity, told CRN that Lenovo has another issue when it comes to storage.

"Lenovo doesn't believe in account registration," the partner told CRN. "Companies like HPE provide protection. Storage sales require a lot of sales calls, and there's a lot of competition. Do you want to leverage yourself with a partner that doesn't offer deal registration?"

That is especially important given Lenovo's software-defined storage strategy, the partner said. "Storage on a commodity server platform without owning the technology, how can you protect partner sales," the partner said.

Lenovo was unable to respond to a CRN query about its deal registration program.

Having a software-defined storage strategy is a good first step for Lenovo, and the DataCore technology is a good fit, Pyle said.

"Lenovo needs a software-defined storage strategy," he said. "But it also needs a strong storage strategy to compete. I'm not knocking Lenovo's strategy. I'm saying they need to pay attention to storage, but not put all their eggs in the DataCore basket."

Lenovo has a software-defined storage strategy that fits a wide range of customer requirements, said Radhika Krishnan, executive director and general manager of software-defined data center and networking in Lenovos Data Center Group.

"We believe that software-defined storage is a very real disruption happening in the marketplace," Krishnan told CRN. "It offers many benefits over traditional SANs. Storage vendors want to protect their 50- to 70-point margins. They want to protect their margins and maintenance contracts."

Lenovo's biggest strength is its x86-based server platform, Krishnan said. "Software-defined storage lets us do what we do really well: Run advanced software on our servers," she said.

Lenovo's new DX8200D storage appliance, which integrates Lenovos System x3650 M5 server with DataCore's SANsymphony software, offers many advantages over traditional SAN offerings, Krishnan said.

"DataCore, in particular, has a very interesting offering," she said. "It can virtualize third-party disk storage that sits behind it. It can replace existing SAN arrays while offering significantly better storage management than traditional storage."

That is a potentially huge benefit to customers who have heavily invested in existing storage infrastructures, Krishnan said.

"The typical customer opportunities are not greenfield opportunities," she said. "They have existing storage and SANs. DataCore can virtualize existing storage behind it to make data migration and automation much easier."

Lenovo believes the move towards software-defined storage is happening, as is the move to software-defined networking, Krishnan said.

That is also happening with large existing storage vendors as well, Krishnan admitted. However, those storage vendors are facing many issues, including multi-product storage lines with overlapping technologies as well as their incentive to keep selling traditional storage, she said.

"Given their investment in SANs, they have a lot of legacy baggage," she said. "It's hard for them to invest in software-defined storage without cannibalizing their existing business."

However, the DataCore SANsymphony relationship with Lenovo is not an exclusive one. George Teixeira, DataCore president and CEO, told CRN via email that, while Lenovo is the only major OEM offering a turnkey appliance which comes integrated with SANsymphony, it is possible that situation could change.

"Yes, Lenovo is the only major OEM currently offering a turnkey appliance fully integrating SANsymphony Software-Defined Storage. It takes a lot of effort and time to correctly test, train and integrate technologies and support, so while it is not an exclusive agreement, practical realities provide Lenovo with a significant time and go to market advantage," Teixeira wrote.
This past weekend at SXSW, two Congressmen suggested that the U.S. create a cybersecurity reserves system, similar to the National Guard, but the idea has received a mixed welcome from the cybersecurity community.

According to House Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas, a national cybersecurity reserve could help strengthen national security and bring in a diversity of experience. Hurd, who has a degree in computer science from Texas A&M, has served as an undercover CIA officer and has worked as a partner at cybersecurity firm FusionX.

He has been pitching the idea of a Cyber National Guard for a while, and has suggested that the government could forgive student loan debt for those who serve. It would also help ensure a cross-pollination of experience between government and industry.

"Neither the private sector nor public sector can protect our country from our cyber adversaries alone," he said in an opinion piece last summer.

Fellow Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona and a former Marine Corps veteran, said that a specialized Cyber National Guard could help attract much-needed technical talent to the reserves.

"We have to accept that, look, this person is not going to man a machine gun, why would we put them through bootcamp, we're never going to send them to the front line," Gallego told CNN. "But we could definitely use their knowledge in service to our country."

The need is critical

"This is a fantastic idea," said Hank Thomas, partner and COO at Strategic Cyber Ventures.

The government system for recruiting cybersecurity talent is broken, he said.

"And there are no signs it will be fixed anytime soon, mostly because of the war for cyber talent in the commercial space is too competitive," he said. "The war on talent is real and the only way we will win the current cyber war, or World War 3, will be to have a much larger and more capable cyber force."

Military recruiting just hasn't been able to keep up, said John Chirhart, federal technical director at Tenable Network Security.

"We have military reserves for all the traditional branches of the armed services, but nothing for the cyber realm, largely because of restrictive military hiring policies that discourage information security professionals from joining up," he said.

For example, typical reservists are trained to shoot a rifle, or pilot a helicopter, he said, but cyber professionals are already trained. Plus, there's the culture gap, he added. "Being forced to cut their hair, having to work out, being deployed away from their families."

"There are plenty of patriots in the ranks of the cybersecurity elite, but not many who are going to leave lucrative corporate and consulting gigs to join the military," said Jonathan Sander, vice president of product strategy at Lieberman Software. "However, offer them an option to keep their income but be on call to come to the national defense when its needed and you may have a winning formula."

Paul Calatayud, CTO at FireMon, has personal experience with exactly that situation.

"I was in the military for eight years supporting cybersecurity and one big conflict was balancing my growing civilian career with my desire to serve my country the best way I knew how," he said. "By establishing ideas such as a national guard-like structure, folks like me can get back in and help while not being conflicted.

Many experts were hopeful that a National Cyber Guard can help address some of the cybersecurity talent shortage at the government level.

"The government should be aggressive in growing and hiring security professionals and expanding cybersecurity programs," said Blue Lang, senior product manager at Veracity, a network security firm that is is working with the Department of Energy to reduce cyberattacks against industrial and utility networks. "It's as critical as any other part of our shared infrastructure -- maybe more so because of the current lack of visibility. We can see value in an ongoing program of keeping security professionals 'warm' and familiar with government systems, vulnerabilities, and pain points."

"Cybersecurity isn't going to be addressed with any single solution, but anything that suggests stable funding and organizational focus towards getting boots on the ground to keep America's data safe has my attention," said Dan Kaminsky, co-founder and chief scientist at White Ops. "It is specifically interesting that reservists create a lot of cross-pollination between the public and private sectors. Attackers don't pay much attention to organizational boundaries -- effective defense is going to require cooperation across those boundaries."

The U.S. could look abroad for successful examples.

Eran Barak, CEO at Hexadite, served for years in an elite intelligence unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. However, the country does have a big advantage.

"We have mandatory military service in all units including intelligence and cyber," he said. "If someone doesn't show up, they can be prosecuted. To implement the same kind of system in the U.S., you'd need to have an incentive that is big enough to attract cybersecurity talent while at the same time giving incentive to the private sector employers that employ these professionals."

We do not need a version of the FDA protecting the internet and connected devices.

Morey Haber, vice president of technology at BeyondTrust

Another country that can serve as a role model is Estonia, said Kenneth Geers, senior research scientist at Comodo Group, and a NATO ambassador.

"Today, Estonia is the leader in this area," he said.

Estonia's financial and government infrastructure was hit by a massive attack in 2007 that was widely attributed to Russia. Since then, the nation's Estonian Defense League has created a Cyber Unit with hundreds of civilian volunteers who can be called on in an emergency.

Not a job for the government

Other security experts, however, are concerned that a Cyber National Guard would be a step in the wrong direction.

"In my personal opinion, this is an awful idea," said Morey Haber, vice president of technology at BeyondTrust. "It represents all the things that are wrong with big government."

There's no need for an on-demand group of white hat hackers, he said.

"Vendors should be responsible for the cybersecurity they build into their products, organizations like Underwriters Laboratory and Consumer Reports are stepping up with cybersecurity testing and ratings, and basic legislation for cybersecurity is already in motion," he said. "We do not need a version of the FDA protecting the internet and connected devices. Lets commercialize and allow companies to profit from cybersecurity protection versus giving way to more big government and loss of personal privacy."

And the Cyber National Guard will not address the root causes of the staffing shortages, said Philip Lieberman, president at Lieberman Software.

"The suggested solution of a Cyber National Guard is disconnected from financial reality," he said, calling it "dead on arrival and a misguided idea grounded in fantasy economics."

Project would face skills, budget issues

If a National Cyber Guard were to be created, the project would be facing significant obstacles, experts say.

For example, there is the issue of coordinating responses to attacks against critical infrastructure both in the private sector and owned by local government jurisdictions. Would the Cyber National Guard step in? Who would be in charge?

All of that would need to be planned out, said Rich Barger, director of security research at Splunk.

And creating and testing this framework would take time and resources away from other government and civilian projects, he said.

Then there are the significant staffing issues.

"Our government, similar to corporate America, is struggling to find qualified cyber security experts," said Andrew Howard, CTO at Kudelski Security. "The concept of a national guard cyber security capability is a good idea, but only to help grow the number of qualified military experts, not to actively defend US interests."

And there are limits to how much a team of part-time reservists can accomplish.

"The government clearly has a problem finding and retaining talent, and the idea of leveraging private citizens in a part-time role to backfill some functions in response to major issues could work," said Brian Vecci, technical evangelist at security vendor Varonis Systems. "However, its unlikely that a reserve cyber guard would be able to help detect or prevent a major attack or breach."

"Major breaches like OPM cannot be prevented by Band-Aids or weekend warriors," he added.

In fact, a part-time corps could actually create more security problems than it solves.

"In the wake of the most significant leak of CIA documents in US history and investigations focused on contractors, the first issue to overcome is how to manage security clearance for a massive group of civilian professionals with access to government systems or technologies on a short-term basis," said David Vergara, head of global product marketing at VASCO Data Security.

He wasn't the only one worried about this.

"If these temp workers are to find and patch bugs and audit and upgrade the systems, they will need a lot of privileged access to these systems," said Igor Baikalov, chief scientist at Securonix. "And, as any insider threat specialist will tell you, temporary workers with privileged access can do a lot of damage, intentional or not. Edward Snowden's and Harold Martin's affairs will pale in comparison to the sheer volume of incidents this army of cybersecurity volunteers is bound to cause, even without any malicious intent.

"I dont see it working," said Michael Lipinski, CISO and chief security strategist at Securonix. "It takes far too long to get screened and get access to systems. Even Congress right now is complaining that its taking months to get access to government systems for investigators into the 'Russian influence' investigation."

And it's just not security clearances that slow down response times.

Mobilizing 'weekend warriors' during critical breaches stands to introduce ramp up delays and additional 'dwell time' for early detection and response...

Peter Tran, general manager and senior director at RSA Security

"In cyber, technologies rapidly changing threat conditions have massive attack surfaces crossing geopolitical borders and vary within seconds," said Peter Tran, general manager and senior director at RSA Security. "As a result, mobilizing 'weekend warriors' during critical breaches stands to introduce ramp up delays and additional 'dwell time' for early detection and response when reservist need to get up to speed on the tools, tactics and procedures."

A better approach could be to use private sector experts on continuous rotations to keep skills fresh and to help knowledge transfer.

"You certainly wouldn't want your fighter pilot in the seat only a few weeks out of the year, would you?" he said.

We already have a National Guard for cybersecurity

Finally, some experts pointed out that we already have cybersecurity projects underway in the National Guard. Last year, the National Guard said it plans to have 30 cyber units in at least 30 states by 2019.

"Massachusetts, my state, is already developing a Cyber ISR Group and other states have developed complementary centers," said Ernesto DiGiambattista, founder and CEO at Cybric. "Look at what some of the proactive states are doing for cybersecurity -- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington, Michigan."

There are also federal cybersecurity groups, said Robert Capps, vice president of business development at NuData Security.

That includes the Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team, and the National Cybersecurity Center.

"Assuming inter-agency cooperation could be obtained," he said, "one approach could be to promote and centralize an existing high-functioning cyber risk team and let it spread its wings with other high achievers from departments around government and military."

By drawing on existing state and federal efforts, a Cyber National Guard wouldn't have to start from scratch.

"But the ultimate long-term viability of such a unit will depend on the mandate it is given, and the authority and financial support required to fulfill its mandate," he said.

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HARTFORD  The politically polarized Transportation Committee narrowly approved legislation that would bring back tolls along Connecticut highways and lower the states gas tax by 2.5 cents per gallon over five years.

Democrats pushed through the bill, which next goes to the state House of Representative, after an hourlong debate that focused on Connecticuts deteriorating infrastructure, a steady decline in revenue for transit projects, and 21st-century electronic tolls that do not interfere with traffic flow.

This is a big-picture issue, said Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, co-chairman of the committee. Were subsidizing everyone whos coming into our state.

A recent study indicated that the states fund for transportation will go broke in 2020.

I submit were in crisis now, said Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, a committee member who voted for the bill. The state ended highway tolls in 1985.

This is just another tax, and its a tax on those who can least afford to pay it, said Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, committee co-chairman, who led GOP opposition. She said the 21/2-cent decrease in the gas tax would be minuscule.

Boucher said that her constituents might accept tolls if the overall tax burden were less.

Rep. Ben McGorty, R-Shelton, a city fire marshal, recalled being a Greenwich firefighter when a section of Interstate 95 collapsed into the Mianus River in 1983, and said he understands the importance of infrastructure work.

Were only going to take half a percent from the gas tax, and I dont find thats enough, McGorty said. I dont think we should pay a high tax and tolls at the same time.

This is a serious issue, said Rep. Antonio Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, who has been working over the last several years to get his committee to approve the bill. He said under the measure, state drivers would get discounts, the gas tax would be reduced and the toll stations would be scattered around the state.
(Xiaomi)Xiaomi Redmi Pro's dual-lens camera. Rumors suggest that Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 will be released at the end of this month and will carry the same dual-lens camera as its predecessor.

Initial rumors suggest that Xiaomi is preparing for the release of its newest flagship, the Xiaomi Mi 6, next month. However, recent leaks suggest that the Chinese company may be working on another device with an earlier release, believed to be Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2.

An unnamed source from China recently revealed that Xiaomi is working on an iteration of the Redmi Pro, loosely called Redmi Pro 2. There are speculations that the new device will come with a different camera, a 12-megapixel Sony IMX362 single sensor, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 660.

However, new information revealed otherwise. Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is said to be keeping the same dual-lens camera housed in Xiaomi Redmi Pro. Aside from this, the upcoming device's chipset will be MediaTek Helio P25.

The processor is complementary to the dual-lens camera since Helio P25 is customized to support this feature. The chipset, which comes with a 16-nanometer architecture, will enable Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 to produce high-quality image outputs. Aside from this, it comes with power-efficient technology and other high-end camera features.

As for its graphics processing unit (GPU), Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is expected to come with ARM Mali-T880MP4. Along with this, the upcoming device is speculated to come in two variants  one that has 4 GB of RAM with 64 GB of internal memory and the other that has 6 GB of RAM with 126 GB of internal storage. Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is said to have 4,500 mAH of battery life.

As for its external looks, Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is rumored to be coming in an all-metal design with 2.5D curved glass. For its price, the 4 GB variant is said to cost 1,599 yuan or about $231, while the 6 GB variant is said to be at 1,799 yuan or about $260.

Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 is rumored to be released at the end of this month.
BRIDGEPORT-Customers were walking out of Bridgeport B&B Deli with more than just sandwiches, soda and snacks, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Some were buying smack.

And that smack or heroin landed Wilfredo Gutierrez, whose family owned the Deli, back in prison.

This time U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden sent the longtime heroin dealer away for 15 years Thursday followed by five years of supervised release. The sentence was made concurrent to a nine-year state prison term, Gutierrez is currently serving.

The defendant is an incorrigible heroin dealer, charged Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Kaplan. His criminal conduct continued while he was on community release, while he was in custody and during those short intervals when he was at liberty.

But Richard Reeve said the cost of keeping his client behind bars is close to $32,000 a year and rising.

He is very aware...he has let his 5-year old son down, and that he cannot ever do that again and be sent away to prison, if he has any hope of being part of his sons life, Reeve wrote the judge.

Investigators said the deli served as a hub for drug dealing by Gutierrez and his brother, Bobby. During a May 26, 2016 search, police and federal agents seized two digital scales, two large ziplock bags of what is believed to be a cutting agent for the heroin and five cellular phones.

The Guitterez brothers and seven others were charged as a result of the investigation. All pleaded guilty. Bobby Gutierrez is detained while awaiting sentencing.

Kaplan said Wilfredo Gutierrezs criminal record stretches back to 1994 with narcotic and robbery convictions.

The federal prosecutor outlined Gutierrezs continued criminal activity in a sentencing memorandum filed with the count.

This includes four 1999 narcotic sale convictions for which he received a 12-year sentence suspended after six years with three years of probation. He was released Aug. 25, 2004 on supervised parole but October and December, 2004 he was again charged with drug sales.

As a result, Gutierrez received concurrent 10-year sentences, with six years to serve and three years probation. He remained in custody from December 17, 2004 to October 15, 2009, when he was placed on community release, Kaplan said.

Gutierrez was arrested again in March, 2011 for drug sales and criminal impersonation and that summer for violating Connecticuts Corrupt Organizations and Racketeering Activity act.

He was sentenced to concurrent nine year terms followed by 11 years of special parole. However he was released after four years to a halfway house.

There Kaplan said Gutierrez continued to broker heroin purchases from New York sources and arrange for distribution of about 22 pounds of heroin in the Bridgeport, Norwalk and Stamford areas.

Last May 25 he was arrested in the latest matter.

He pleaded guilty Nov. 22, 2016 to a charge of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute at least 2.2 pounds of heroin.

The DEAs Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force includes members from the Bridgeport, Milford, Norwalk, Stamford, Stratford , Trumbull and State Police used wiretaps, controlled purchases and surveillance in investigating Gutierrez.
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Area leaders say their towns are on track to complete community block grant-funded projects arising out of damage from Superstorm Sandy, contrary to a letter from the state Department of Housing warning them that they are behind schedule.

I commend Commissioner (Evonne M.) Klein for sending out his letter well in advance of the deadlines, Fairfield First Selectman Michael Tetreau said. Normally, these letters come too late.

Tetreau said the 10 projects Fairfield has taken on will be completed by June 30.

These include $2.3 million in improvements at the wastewater treatment plant and $2.5 million for a water pollution control micro-grid, $607,500 for upgrading the Pine Creek culvert and $300,000 for the Pine Creek Dike Expansion.

Other Fairfield projects include $200,000 for Riverside Drive coastal resiliency, $100,000 for Fairfield beach engineered design and $225,000 for improvements to the bulkhead at Penfield Beach.

We got the letter about a week or so ago, and it took me 30 seconds to send it off to the department heads, Tetreau said.

Completion deadlines

He said the Public Works, Conservation and Economic Development departments all told him the work would be completed by June 30.

The letter warns that Fairfield might jeopardize $5.3 million in grants. The deadline for completion of the earliest project is Jan. 25, 2018, for the design and Feb. 28 of that year for the culvert upgrade.

We may have experienced some delays, but everything is on track, Tetreau said. No Fairfield dollars will be at risk.

Milford Mayor Ben Blake and Westport First Selectman Jim Marpe echoed those assurances.

Milford had 10 funded projects, with three facing deadlines of Feb. 2, 2018. These are $638,250 for Calf Pen Meadow/Beachland Avenue resiliency, $1.7 million for Bayview Beach area flooding control and $501,537 for Milford Point Road flooding control.

Weve taken great efforts to ensure these critical coastal improvements are completed the right way and on time, Blake said. While we cannot control all project variables, such as state permitting, we are on track to deliver these much-needed infrastructure improvements.

He said the citys Flood and Erosion Control Board interviewed and hired a premier engineering firm to design and professionally manage the job.

In Westport, Marpe and Steve Edwards, the public works director, assured residents Friday that the downtown flood resiliency plan on master drainage and stream study would be completed by the March 30, 2018, deadline, and more likely by October. The town will receive $650,000 for this.

The study addresses the design of a new culvert around Dead Mans Brook and Myrtle Avenue. It does not address flooding involving the Saugatuck River, Edwards said.

Some face loss of funds

Marpe said he contacted Klein after receiving the letter and told the commissioner, We are on track to complete within the time frame.

Marpe added, I was concerned there was some condition we werent aware of it, he said. We did have a little bit of a delay in getting bids and awarding contracts, but were well ahead of schedule.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says all funding under the program must be expended within two years of executing a contract with the state.

Twelve municipalities received funding under the program to make critical upgrades to their local infrastructure after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, and eight of those municipalities are considered to be behind schedule.

These grants were awarded directly to the municipalities and are separate from the grants awarded to residents so they can rebuild their homes.

Superstorm Sandy will go down in Connecticut history as one of the worst storms to hit the region, Klein said. This storm not only damaged homes but also a significant portion of our states shoreline infrastructure..

Staff writer Jim Shay contributed to this report.
TRUMBULL - A shoplifter suspected of stealing razors from Stop & Shop had cocaine in his possession, police said.

Curtis Garnet, 45, of Smith Street in Trumbull, was observed by store security taking razor blades and concealing them in his clothes.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will host foreign ministers and senior leaders of the Global Coalition dedicated to defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, on March 22.

Acting State Department Spokesperson Mark Toner said Secretary Tillerson will express the United States' full support of the Coalitions mission. Defeating ISIS is the U.S.s top foreign policy priority.

We are at an important stage of the fight and will use this Ministerial to accelerate international efforts to defeat ISIS in the remaining areas it holds in Iraq and Syria and maximize pressure on its branches, affiliates, and networks.

ISIS has unleashed violence and havoc by committing mass murder and terrorizing people in Iraq and Syria. The ensuing chaos unleashed a wave of refugees, in addition to a humanitarian crisis. Defeating ISIS is the initial step in a process to create stability in Syria.

The March 22nd meeting will be the first gathering of the entire Coalition  all 68 members  since 2014. Defeating ISIS requires the support of all members of the Coalition, and Secretary Tillerson plans to stress the importance of their cooperation, as well as their contributions to the effort to eradicating it.

The Ministers will have detailed discussions of the Coalitions multiple lines of effort, including military, foreign terrorist fighters, counter terrorist financing, counter-messaging, and stabilization of liberated areas, to increase the momentum of the campaign.

Additionally, they will discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Iraq and Syria that are affecting the region.

While the military component plays a significant role in this effort, ISIS can only truly be defeated if there is a sustained global effort along all the lines of effort that have been established and that is what our Coalition is about.
Somerset County voters' main issue: Making sure their advanced voting will be counted

In Somerset County, there are 31,489 residents registered as Republicans and 12,435 as Democrat for a total of 48,846.
In 2016 the number of patients on mixed-sex wards soared by 70 percent STOCK PHOTO

Twenty-three years ago the Mail launched a major campaign to end the growing scandal of mixed-sex wards on the NHS.

Since then, Labour and the Tories have promised four times in their manifestos to end such degrading and demeaning mistreatment of patients.

Initially hospitals responded to the threat of fines, and the number of incidents fell from 19,000 a year to just 2,595 in 2014/15.

But, as we report today, breaches are up sharply, having trebled to almost 8,000 in the last two years.

In January, the worst month, hundreds of patients a week were put on a ward with the opposite sex  an experience which can be deeply troubling, particularly for the elderly and frail.

Yes, there are huge pressures on the NHS, but with billions more coming to pay for social care and free up beds there is no excuse for this indignity to continue.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt must ensure hospital managers reverse this trend, and soon.

A corrupt legacy?

ELECTION spending limits exist for very good reasons: to ensure fairness and to maintain public trust in our democracy.

It is therefore of the greatest concern that the elections watchdog has concluded the Conservative Party failed to properly declare payments totalling 275,813.

Issuing a fine of 70,000  a paltry sum given how blatantly the rules were broken  Electoral Commission chairman Sir John Holmes warns such penalties were seen in politics as the cost of doing business.

Hinting at a cover-up, he also accused the party of hampering the investigation with uncooperative conduct.

The scandal is unlikely to end there. While we make no assumptions about guilt or innocence, it is deeply worrying that the Metropolitan Police is investigating the partys former treasurer, and 12 forces are probing individual MPs.

When these allegations first emerged, David Cameron insisted the party had done nothing wrong and its chairman Lord Feldman was gripping this.

Both men have serious questions to answer. But yesterday the former Prime Minister shrugged off the controversy, while Lord Feldman said nothing at all.

Earlier this week we learned that the cost of Mr Camerons so-called great legacy project, the 1.5billion National Citizen Service, is spiralling out of control.

How bitterly ironic it would be if his true legacy is to have been the man at the helm when his party became mired in an electoral corruption scandal.

More Brexit cheer!

AS the Queen gave Royal Assent to the Article 50 Bill yesterday, a raft of good economic news provided further evidence for optimism about our future outside the EU.

Firstly, jobs. On Wednesday the unemployment rate hit its lowest level for more than 40 years, with 100,000 fewer people out of work than a year ago.

Secondly, investment. In a profoundly significant move for the future of this countrys car industry, Japanese manufacturer Toyota announced a 240million plan to modernise its Derby plant. Would they really be doing this if they were worried about Britains future outside the EU?

Then, with refreshing honesty, David Kershaw, the chief executive of advertising agency M&C Saatchi  which created adverts for the Remain campaign  says there is no justification for any business to blame Brexit for its poor results.

Anyone who is using Brexit as an excuse is like someone saying summer was warm or there were leaves on the line, he says. The Mail couldnt agree more.
Everyone wants their kids to enjoy the beach as much as possible, but sometimes it can be hard when they cut their little feet on rocks or shells.

So two Sydney mums came up with an idea that has helped kids make the most out of their sandy adventures.

Stacey Fisher, 35, a marketing consultant and Lorraine Cherry-Nguyen, also 35 and a fashion designer, were both working mums who decided to go into business together to 'fill a gap in the market', creating Minnow Designs.

'We were at the beach with our kids and bags and we thought, someone needs to invent wet-suits for feet!' the pair told Daily Mail Australia.

Stacey Fisher (left) and Lorraine Cherry-Nguyen (right), are the 35-year-old mums behind Minnow Designs

'The fabric is soft like socks, but doesn't have a hard sole like a shoe so kids can still climb over rocks and squish into the sand easily,' they said

'We were at the beach with our kids and bags and we thought, someone needs to invent wet-suits for feet!'

'We looked at each other and the idea was there. We spent our whole first year researching, designing and building a business model and we've just come out of our second summer season now.'

Minnow Designs is now a successful business selling neoprene 'beach booties' that protect children's feet against hot sand, rocks and shells while exploring the beach.

The mothers said the business is ready to go global, already having 60 stockists in Australia and New Zealand.

'We are preparing to get to Fiji and we've been invited to attend a children's fashion expo in Europe,' they said.

'Hopefully, by August we'll have 100 stockists ready for our new summer season.'

The name came for the business came from the tiny Minnow fish.

'We thought it was cute, little fishes at the beach,' the pair said.

The booties are made for children 10 months old to three-and-a-half years old.

'The fabric is soft like socks, but doesn't have a hard sole like a shoe so kids can still climb over rocks and squish into the sand easily,' they said.

Minnow Designs create 'beach booties' that protect children's feet against hot sand, rocks and shells while exploring the beach

The booties are made for children 10 months old to three-and-a-half years old

The mothers have known each other for years and have raised their kids together

The mothers have known each other for years and have raised their kids together, so they understand the challenges parents face and what is missing that could help make things easier.

Stacey and Lorraine each have two children, having their first children around the same time and again with their second.

Stacey has two boys, Leo, 5 and Max, 2, and Lorraine has Agnes, 5 and Gus, 2.

The pair are hoping to push the brand internationally next summer.
It pays to be beautiful if you want to work in one of London's most popular gay bars.

That's according to businessman Gary Henshaw, originally from Dublin, who made his millions from his empire owning some of the most successful clubs in London.

Ku Bar, in London's Soho, is one such venue, and it's hard to ignore how attractive his staff are.

'Were quite lucky, we get lots of good-looking people coming for work and we always win sexiest bar staff in London awards,' declares Mr Henshaw.

Not just a pretty face: Nightclub mogul Gary Henshaw is is the owner of three bars and two clubs and became successful after 'falling into' the bar industry

Katherine Ryan is only too happy to help out in Ku Bar, painting the topless male entertainers with glow in the dark body paint - but she has a few questions about their recruitment policy

The millionaire appears in Channel 4's How'd You Get So Rich, presented by comedian Katherine Ryan, who doesn't hold back as she delves into the lives of the rich and sometimes famous.

Asking Gary about his employees during a staff meeting, she probes: 'It's very important to be sexy around here, I can tell. Have you ever hired an ugly person? Is it important that the face of Ku Bar be that beautiful?'

Gary laughs as he responds: 'Yes. I'm kind of semi-retired now, I was once the beautiful face of Ku Bar.'

After coming out in the 1980s, Mr Henshaw left Ireland to go travelling and ended up in Denmark, where he landed a job collecting glasses in a bar.

Within a year he was a district manager, and he hasn't looked back since.

The award-winning Ku Bar, in Soho, ushers in some 5,000 customers every weekend and has a staggering annual turnover of 3.5million thanks, in part, to its aesthetically pleasing staff

Although he has semi-retired, so that he can enjoy more time off, Gary is still very much involved in his business with a team on hand to help

'I fell into it accidentally,' he explains.'I travelled when I was very young, 21, to Denmark, I found a bar there that I was going to socially, and they gave me a job collecting glasses.

'By the end of the year I was district manager. I had no intention of going into the bar industry but I just fell madly in love with it.'

With an annual turnover of 3.5million and 5,000 customers through Ku Bar's doors every weekend, former glass collector Gary isn't short of cash.

And, as Katherine notes, the entrepreneur is more than willing to spend it on enjoying himself.

Gary tells comedian Katherine Ryan, pictured, that all the staff at his bar are attractive because they've been 'lucky' that only good looking people applied for the job

The mogul has put his money to good use exploring the world, and is seen here after jetting off to Rome to see the sights. He appears in a new Channel 4 documentary on rich people

'In an ideal world I will spend winter in warmer climes and check in here for a week to see how everything is getting on,' Gary agrees.

'I dont understand being a billionaire, they may enjoy that big luxury boat but I think they're on the phone every day. They arent sunbathing and enjoying it.

Gary says the only way to achieve success is to have fun: 'Don't aim at money, dont aim at wealth, dont aim at hard work, aim at enjoying what you do.

'I love my life. I pinch myself most nights, and if you do that then youre living a great life.'

How'd You Get So Rich? airs Monday on Channel 4 at 10pm
A mother-of-two has told how she gave up drinking after struggling to control her 'difficult' relationship with alcohol.

Crystal Lowery, 36, who claims she is genetically susceptible to addiction to the substance, gave up drinking forever five months ago after discovering that she was an alcoholic.

The medical researcher and blogger from Texas - who has a family history of the illness - believes she possesses the 'alcoholism gene' and fears that her children, aged three and four, might have inherited it too.

Genetic: Mother-of-two Crystal Lowery, 36, claims she has the 'alcoholism gene'

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, genetics have an impact on a person's chances of becoming an alcoholic but other environmental factors account for around half the risk.

Lowery, whose father was an alcoholic until he gave up drinking when she was a baby, told Daily Mail Online: 'It was the occasional bender that scared me because I didn't have control over how much I drank.

'On those occasions, I lost track of how much I consumed, since I wasn't able to stop myself with will power... I decided that I never wanted to hit rock bottom.'

She added: 'I also realized that if I possess the alcoholic gene, chances are my children might as well, and I wanted to be an example of someone who recognized this "brain disorder" and chose to stop alcoholism before it ruined lives.'

Lowery initially tried limiting her drinking to particular days of the week or to particular drinks but she said restriction did not work because the problem was in her brain.

Preventative: The medical researcher and blogger from Texas, pictured with her children, said she gave up drinking five months ago after realizing she was on the road to addiction

She joined a 12-step religious program and read the Alcoholics Anonymous book to help her give up her drinking habit.

Other methods she uses to help stay sober are writing humor articles and doing stand-up comedy, but with alcohol a fixture at numerous social events she said it can be challenging to avoid drinking.

In an article for parenting website Scary Mommy she wrote: 'Hello, my name is Mommy, and Im an alcoholic.

'I dont look like the type. Im a middle-class, church-going, educated 36-year-old  a far cry from the hiccuping, red-nosed drunk pictured in old-timey Western films. Nevertheless, Ive come to realize that Ive inherited the alcoholism gene.'

She added: 'I never hit rock bottom, but I could see it in the distance, and by the grace of God, I decided to break up with alcohol before I arrived there.'
These two Australian models are no stranger to being in front of the camera.

But when size 6 model Georgia Gibbs and her size 16 friend Kate Wasley took a picture on Sydney Harbour and posted it online they were seriously shocked by the hate it attracted.

'We posted this picture, just as best friends going out on the weekend, it got reposted a lot and the controversy started,' Miss Gibbs wrote on Instagram.

'"You have Photoshopped yourself thinner or your friend bigger, what kind of friend are you?" was one of the comments. It broke my heart because Kate and I are best friends why would I do that?

This was the picture of Kate Wasley (left) and Georgia Gibbs (right) on Sydney Harbour Miss Gibbs was accused of Photoshopping

Miss Wasley, a size 16, and Miss Gibbs, a size 6, now run an Instagram account with pictures of the pair side-by-side posted daily

'The fact that a simple picture of two people together went so viral purely because of their body types shocked me.'

Miss Gibbs and Miss Wasley saw the photograph as the light bulb moment they were looking for.

'People aren't used to seeing girls of different sizes photographed together and being okay with it.

Miss Gibbs felt the picture went viral because people aren't used to seeing women of different sizes next to each other

All smiles here: 'We want girls and women to stop comparing themselves to others'

'It's not often that a healthy body is marketed to us in all different shapes and sizes.

'We want girls and women to stop comparing themselves to others because we are all so uniquely beautiful in our own way,' said Miss Wasley told Daily Mail Australia.

And their method of promoting positive body image is through a newly created joint Instagram account which already has 46,000 followers.

Photographer Chris Mohen took some incredible images of the girl beach-side to show the haters that size means nothing.

What Photoshop? The best friends took to Bondi to show off their svelte figures in a bid to promote body positivity

All about that base: 'We all have imperfections and things we are insecure about but we are all human and these things are normal and beautiful'

'Health is more important than size and healthy bodies come in many different shapes and sizes.

'We all have imperfections and things we are insecure about but we are all human and these things are normal and beautiful. They make us who we are,' said Miss Wasley.

Miss Wasley and Miss Gibbs are the best of friends away from Instagram.

They exercise and eat very similar things. They live in the same city. They earn money doing the same job. The only difference, they say, is their body shape.

They exercise and eat very similar things. They live in the same city. They earn money doing the same job. The only difference, they say, is their body shape

'A typical girl date for us would be driving to the beach blasting Beyonce and singing at the top of our lungs,' Miss Wasley said

'A typical girl date for us would be driving to the beach blasting Beyonce and singing at the top of our lungs, followed by a healthy lunch, something active maybe a coastal walk, gym or Pilates then chilling out together watching TV.

'We often spend the entire day together!' said Miss Wasley.

Their Instagram account shows the girls frolicking on Bondi Beach together in black bikinis.

Inspired by their original side-by-side photo, these ones have been shot in an effort to say women look different, so what?

Their Instagram account shows the girls frolicking on Bondi Beach together in black bikinis

'It's awful that people feel the need to comment negativity, but of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion,' Miss Wasley said

'It's awful that people feel the need to comment negativity, but of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

However the way you treat others is truly more of a reflection on them than it is us and it really shows that there are so many people out there who don't see that healthy comes in all shapes and sizes and that healthy people can have cellulite, stretch marks or bones showing,' said Miss Wasley.

As for the modelling industry and its condoning of various shapes, Miss Wasley said the girls are making it work for them.

'Personally I think because our bodies are our work it's hard to fight the pressures of being a certain size. But we have both embraced what we have,' she said.
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are joining forces to promote women and girls' political rights.

International organisation for women's rights, Women Deliver, is launching a new campaign to promote awareness surrounding the problems with gender inequality.

The Danish Royal and Canada's leading lady are already advocates for women and girls' rights and the joint initiative aims to empower women in areas such as education, sexual health, human rights and climate change.

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Crown Princess Mary (left) and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau (right) are teaming up to lead an international campaign for women's rights

The campaign, called Deliver For Good, was announced on Wednesday at the United Nations 61st Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

As well as having support from the Danish Royal, the campaign is also supported by nearly 200 organisations and 56 states, according to Royal Central.

The Australian-born Princess has always been an advocate for positive social change, establishing the Mary Foundation in 2007 which aims to combat social isolation.

The Royal has also worked with Women Deliver before, speaking at a conference in Copenhagen in 2016.

The Danish Royal has always been an advocate for positive social change, establishing the Mary Foundation in 2007

Sophie and her husband Justin Trudeau are parents of three children and are both feminists

The Princess also embarked on a UNICEF humanitarian mission to Ethiopia in 2015 to combat female genital mutilation

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau and her husband, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are also both outspoken advocates for women's rights

The 45-year-old and is the patron of the conference, which is held annually, and spoke of the need for social change so women can have a chance at leadership roles.

'The evidence is sound; when we invest in girls and women society as a whole benefits,' she said.

The Princess also embarked on a UNICEF humanitarian mission to Ethiopia in 2015 were she was visiting to speak against child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The Danish Royal was fittingly attending the world premier of a documentary on female genital mutilation, Jaha Dukureh, in Copenhagen the day of the Deliver Good campaign release.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark attends the world premiere of documentary Jaha Dukureh. at the Grand Theatre in Copenhagen, March 16. Pictured here with Jaha Duhureh herself (middle)

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark poses at the red carpet during the world premiere of the documentary 'Jaha's Promise' in the Grand Theatre during the opening of Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau and her husband, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are also both outspoken advocates for women's rights.

The 41-year-old mother-of-three has been an advocate for teenage self-esteem, eating disorders and mental health.

The Deliver For Good will feature four well-known women, including recognised UN politicians Dr Alaa Murabit and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and Jose Alberto 'Pepe' Mujica Cordano, Uruguays former president.
She became notorious in 2012 when she prank called the hospital that the Duchess of Cambridge was staying in before the birth of Prince George pretending to be the Queen.

And now Australian radio host, Mel Greig, has spoken out about the cyber-bullying she faced after the nurse she phoned at the Lindo Wing, Jacintha Saldana, took her own life two days later.

Ms Greig also recalled the day she confronted one online 'troll' after he called her a murderer.

She became notorious in 2012 when she prank called the hospital that the Duchess of Cambridge was staying in before the birth of Prince George pretending to be the Queen

And now Australian radio host, Mel Greig, has spoken out about the cyber-bullying she faced following the Royal prank (Mel Greig pictured)

'He looked me up on Facebook and wrote "MURDERER". Did he think that I would see it?,' Ms Greig wrote in a personal piece for Mamamia.

'No. He told me that he thought it was a fake account. It was real and I'm real.

'I told him I was emotionally destroyed and that his message and the hundred others really affected me and took a toll on my life  I nearly ended it. He was horrified,' she wrote.

Ms Greig also recalled the day she confronted one online 'troll' after he called her a murderer - she said when she confronted him, the troll had thought it was a fake account

'I told him I was emotionally destroyed and that his message and the hundred others really affected me and took a toll on my life  I nearly ended it. He was horrified,' she wrote

Since that day, the 34-year-old radio host has set up a day - 'Troll Free Day' - which is designed to help combat cyber-bullying.

It takes place on March 17.

Speaking on Thursday on The Project, Ms Greig publicly thanked the programme's Carrie Bickmore for cancelling her 2012 interview about the Royal prank incident because of her concern for the former 2Day FM star's mental health.

Since that day, the 34-year-old radio host has set up a day - 'Troll Free Day' - which is designed to help combat cyber-bullying

'I have to say Carrie, thank you to you,' Ms Greig said in an emotional speech.

'A couple of days after the prank call, The Project were offered an interview and you turned it down because you were worried about my mental health when not many people were.

'I was broken, I was absolutely broken and shouldn't have been doing interviews. I shouldn't have been out of bed.'

These days, Mel Greig has resumed her radio career in Wollongong, and is also an outspoken critic of online bullying.

You can find out more about Troll Free Day here.
Lisa McDonald, 44, made body chains from her kitchen bench just four years ago before launching her brand Grace Bijoux on Instagram.

She used social media sparingly at first, preferring to sell her wares at the Gold Coast village markets and meet other creatives and bloggers.

'I had two babies and my husband threatened to send me back to a corporate job. I didn't want that so I pursued jewellery design,' joked Ms McDonald to Daily Mail Australia.

'I would basically look at different body parts and wonder: "What can I put on there jewellery-wise?" That's where the metal bras were born.

Lisa McDonald's chain bras retail online from $120 all the way up to $180 and are well-liked because of their unique design

'I would basically look at different body parts and wonder "What can I put on there jewellery-wise?" That's where the metal bras were born'

Lisa McDonald (pictured middle) has seen the business grow more than 70 per cent each year since she started in 2013

'It was just a hobby I was luckily able to build into a business.'

After two years at the markets Ms McDonald was eager to amp up her contact with models and influencers on Instagram and began to put more focus into the platform.

The Grace Bijoux official Instagram account has more than 126,000 followers.

That's when the brand really started to take off.

'Rocky Barnes is a regular customer. Tash Oakley has worn them and I have a request from Candice Swanepoel to send some over for her.

Ms McDonald has posted images on the Grace Bijoux Instagram in the past that have been reported for showing 'too much nipple'

'We've sent some bras to Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner's stylists so we'll have to wait and see if we see them out and about in them'

'We've sent some bras to Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner's stylists so we'll have to wait and see if we see them out and about in them.

'The name itself came about because let's face it Lisa McDonald Jewellery was not going to cut it.

'My grandmother's name was Grace and I have always loved it. I thought the Bijoux gave it an international flare.

Ms McDonald isn't fazed about the barely-there jewellery: 'The fact they're booming as festival-wear tells me women aren't too fussed about the scantily-clad look off the internet'

'Some of my French agents have said to me "Oh these are so scandalous! How do you wear them?" because they usually prefer more conservative fashion over there

'Some of my French agents have said to me "Oh these are so scandalous! How do you wear them?" because they usually prefer more conservative fashion over there.

'We had a picture reported on Instagram once but now I get our photographer to blur the nipple to avoid being reported.

'But the fact they're booming as festival-wear tells me women aren't too fussed about the scantily-clad look off the internet,' she said.

The jagged metal may look like it would be uncomfortable against your chest but Ms McDonald has never had a complaint from customers.

'Ninety-five per cent of the girls just wear them with nothing else. But I do tell all my customers they could wear nipple covers to prevent rubbing if they're worried. Most aren't.'

Although the mother-of-two doesn't wear them as is herself.

The designer said some customers wear sheer tops with the bras to give a little more coverage

The cheeky Australian jewellery label has been worn by the likes of Tash Oakley, Rocky Barnes and mum-of-one and VS angel Candice Swanepoel

'Oh god no I've have two kids! I might wear a sheer top over them or a jacket. You can also wear a t-shirt underneath and place them on top.

'The options are endless,' the 44-year-old said.

Ms McDonald designs every piece on the Gold Coast, and while they were originally 100 per cent made in Australia since the company's growth they have a team that works overseas.

'We do have a full-time jewellery making assistant at our studio on the Gold Coast as we still make a handful here and we also have to check each and every piece and make sure it is perfect.

'I also have another full-time staff member who does everything from running the business to assistant in styling and production of shoots.

The intricate designs are all done on the Gold Coast but materials are now outsourced from overseas

'While I haven't had the business valued we have grown at a rate of about 70 per cent a year so far so its been amazing. Yet also a challenge to see a hobby turn into a business.

'I started playing with ideas making jewellery and now I run two staff, a retail and wholesale website, all the production for shoots and still dream up every design. Let alone the hubby and two kids!

'I'm 44 and started this only four years ago just after my 40th birthday. I wish I had the opportunity to start sooner,' she said.

The bras cost between $120-$180 and come in Gold, Rose Gold, Gunmetal, Bronze and Silver colourings. They are also not sized, preferring a one-size-fits-all approach, and can fit a whole range of shapes.
Konnie Huq (above), 41, pictured in the dining room of her west London home where she lives with husband Charlie Brooker and their two sons

1 LITTLE TED

My husband, the TV satirist Charlie Brooker, and I moved to this five-bedroom Victorian house with our two boys two years ago, and this dining-room-cum-lounge is my haven.

Its child-free  a bit of solace in a chaotic home. The only concession to children is my old teddy bear  the Space Invaders machine is Charlies  which was handed down to me when I was born.

I took him along to Antiques Roadshow once and was told he was worth 20  but hes worth so much more to me.

2 DAD'S DESIRE

My parents, Muhammad and Rowshan, moved to England in the 1960s from the remote Bangladeshi village of Pabna to give my two sisters and me a better education.

When presenters leave Blue Peter theyre given a framed still of the credits on their last programme, and this is mine

My dad, who died from cancer three years ago, had this carving of a map of Bangladesh on his desk at home when I was growing up. When I said I was from Bangladesh as a kid, no one had heard of it.

And when the BBC wanted me to do Who Do You Think You Are? we couldnt because nothing in Pabna has been documented.

3 BEST JOB EVER

When presenters leave Blue Peter theyre given a framed still of the credits on their last programme, and this is mine.

I was very proud to be Blue Peters longest-serving female presenter  I did ten years but I loved every minute which is why I stayed so long.

I dont think theres any job in TV that provides such a variety of opportunities.

Id only been to Bangladesh, the USA and France before Blue Peter but I visited every continent and met lots of amazing people through the programme.

This necklace is the first gift Charlie gave me

4 LUCKY ME

This necklace is the first gift Charlie gave me. It comprises two hearts, one gold and one silver.

I love mixing gold and silver so he really got it right first time. Not bad for a first gift from a bloke!

Charlie and I met at the Edinburgh Festival and we were friends for years before we got together.

We got married in Las Vegas in 2010 and our sons are Covey, four, and Huxley, two. Im not sure whether the boys will go into showbusiness, but Huxleys a bit of an exhibitionist.

5 SUPER SISTERS

This photo is me with my sisters in 1980. Nutun on the right is now 50 and an architect and kitchen designer, Rupas 44 and became the Labour MP for Ealing Central And Acton in 2015  so shes my local MP!

This photo is me with my sisters in 1980

We were all born and raised in Ealing and we all still live here, as does our mum.

When I jokingly asked Rupa if she could pull any strings for me she said, No, youre the last person any strings will be pulled for because it will jeopardise my job!

6 POTTER TALES

When I joined Blue Peter, JK Rowlings first Harry Potter book had just been published, and when I left her last Harry Potter book was published. I interviewed her each time she had a book out and she signed one for me  these are a couple of them.

We really clicked. Shes so genuine and self-deprecating  in no way is she big-headed. When she was signing the second book for me she wrote, Its a load of rubbish, but you can always give it to a Blue Peter jumble sale!

Konnie is an eco ambassador for the Mitsubishi PHEV. She is currently presenting the Penguin Podcast, available on iTunes.
Disney princesses  they make friends with animals, endure wicked deeds and are eventually saved by a handsome prince. Well, thats what they used to be like. More recently theyve become feisty and more than capable of fighting their own battles. Sometimes they even have to save the prince before theyre saved themselves.

But still, you can see why Emma Watson, the former Harry Potter star-turned ardent (if not afraid to show her boobs) feminist, at first wrinkled her nose at the idea of being a Disney heroine she loved in childhood. And when she said yes to playing Belle in a new live-action remake of Beauty And The Beast it was on her terms. While Belle was sparky and witty in the 1991 cartoon  she was modelled on a young Katharine Hepburn  Emma wanted her even more so.

She insisted that the first scene didnt show Belle walking out of her quiet town carrying a basket, as in the original. I said we need to rev things up a bit. In the animated movie Belle was an assistant to her inventor father, in this remake shes just created the worlds first modern washing machine. She doesnt ride horses in long dresses and silk slippers; instead she has bloomers and riding boots.

Dan Stevens as the prince with Emma Watson as Belle and (inset) the Beast

Bill and I had a deal, she reveals of her first conversations with the director Bill Condon. I wanted to make sure that, without the magic and ballgowns, thered still be a real story about real people. So I agreed to make him a demo of my singing voice to prove I could do Belle, and in return I wanted a new draft of the script. The original film was sacred to me and I wanted to honour it.

Emma, who turned down the lead role in La La Land (for which Emma Stone won an Oscar) to play Belle, says it was important that this was a feminist Disney heroine. I couldnt care less if I won an Oscar or not if the movie didnt say something I felt was important for people to hear, she told Vanity Fair in an interview which accompanied that controversial picture of her with her breasts partly bared.

Dan Stevens, 34, the former Downton Abbey actor who plays the Beast, appears to have been left trailing in his fierce 26-year-old co-stars wake. The challenge for him was finding a Beast whom Belle could credibly fall for. If Emma Watsons Belle is going to fall in love with him, he has to have intelligence and wit, says Dan. So I looked at the actors who Katharine Hepburn came toe-to-toe with in those screwball comedies. Then I got together with a very funny writer called Ed Wethered and we wrote some jokes for the Beast.

He says he and Emma have become firm friends, as they had to have extensive dance training together to perfect the movies famous waltz scene. We had three months of practising the waltz every day. Its a really good way to get to know your co-star.

Household names behind the household objects When the Beast was cursed they were cursed too, to become household objects An A-list cast provide voices for the CGI-animated objects, including Ian McKellen as Cogsworth the officious clock (left), Ewan McGregor as Lumiere the candlestick (second from right), Emma Thompson as Mrs Potts the teapot (second from left), Audra MacDonald as Madame Garderobe the wardrobe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette the flirtatious feather duster (far right) and Stanley Tucci as new character Maestro Cadenza the grand piano. In the film, when the Beast was cursed they were cursed too, to become household objects. It worked beautifully, says producer David Hoberman, because at the end, when the curse is lifted, we get to see all the actors come back to life. Advertisement

Beauty And The Beast has enchanted adults and children ever since it was written by French author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. The heroine is a brave young girl who enters a cursed castle to free her father, whos been imprisoned by the mysterious Beast. She falls in love with the Beast and finds that hes really a handsome prince waiting for true love to free him from the curse. The first movie was made in 1946 and the 1991 cartoon, the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, was a huge global hit. This version is set in France like the animated one, but at the specific time the story was written, and its divided critics. The Mails Brian Viner said the magic of the original is missing but Empire magazine said, Those who predicted this wouldnt hold a talking candle to the original will be pleasantly surprised. The tale may be as old as time, but its retold with freshness, brio and flair.

For Disney fans it has everything; a soaring romance, lavish musical numbers and stunning CGI sequences with the walking, talking household objects that live in the Beasts castle. Oscar-nominated set designer Sarah Greenwood, who worked on Pride & Prejudice, says creating these objects was a challenge. Because its set in the real world, we had to use objects that would have been in that environment, she says. In animation you can imagine your own artefacts, but with a real object you have to think about what its made of and how it moves. But then you have to add the character elements as well.

For Cogsworth the clock, for example, we looked at the short legs of the clocks of the time, and then we looked at the character Ian McKellen was playing, a pompous guy with a military bearing, and had the idea to give him a wobbling walk. Then we looked at our prop modellers French bulldog, whose little legs flap when he walks, and filmed him to get the walk we wanted.

The film features six songs from the animated film, written by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, and new material written by Alan with Tim Rice. A lot of the new songs provide back story, says Alan. The first one, How Does A Moment Last Forever, is sung by Belles father Maurice [Kevin Kline] while hes working on a music box that depicts Belles past. And all the new songs had to fit in with those we used from the original.

For Emma a particular high point was a Julie Andrews-style scene where she bursts into song in a meadow of wild flowers. Making this film has been very childlike, she says, because youre using your imagination in a way you usually dont access. But that scene in particular was surreal  really a feeling of a dream come true. n

Beauty And The Beast is out now.
Viewers have been left outraged by footage of a benefits claimant with a stash of designer handbags worth 20,000.

Londoner Tania Amisi provoked a furious backlash after appearing on the BBC's Britain on the Fiddle which examines the lives of wealthy benefits claimants.

The single mother rendered audiences flabbergasted with details of her extravagant lifestyle which included regular shopping trips to Harrods prompting one Twitter user to blast: 'Jesus Christ she lives better than me.'

Yet despite swindling the taxpayer out of an estimated 10,000 a month through false housing claims in different London boroughs, she was able to escape prosecution by fleeing the country, it was revealed.

Countless viewers called for her to be locked up, while one even likened her to a Bond villain, as details of her lifestyle emerged in Thursday night's installment of the three-part series.

Tania, who was believed to be working part-time in a betting shop, goes by at least four different identities, and has at least two passports.

Presenter Richard Bilton told how she brazenly posted pictures of her jet-set lifestyle online, which included trips to Paris and the Congo.

Jet-set lifestyle: Londoner Tania Amisi provoked a furious backlash after appearing on the BBC's Britain on the Fiddle which examines the lives of wealthy benefits claimants

'She had every designer bag you can think of,' revealed investigator Mo Stanislav of her vast handbag collection (pictured). 'She had Chanel, Louis Vitton, Hermes, YSL Givenchy'

An expensive Givenchy collection from Tania's collection, most of which which was 'thrown at the bottom of her wardrobe' according to nvestigator Mo Stanislav

A Vivienne Westwood purse found in Tania's luxury apartment. Viewers were left reeling by the news that she had managed to flee after she was released on bail following her arrest

Viewers were left outraged by the documentary exploring the lives of benefits claimants with people taking particular umbrage to Tania Hamisi's extravagent lifestyle on Twitter

'She had every designer bag you can think of,' revealed investigator Mo Stanislav. 'She had Chanel, Louis Vitton, Hermes, YSL Givenchy. They were just thrown at the bottom of her wardrobe.'

But viewers were left reeling by the news that Tania had managed to flee to Brussels after she was released on bail following her arrest.

An undercover operation concluded she had managed to file 37 housing claims from 22 councils.

Britain on the Fiddle is on BBC1 on Monday nights
A collegiate acapella group has won over the internet with its impressive Beauty And The Beast medley.

Brigham Young University's Vocal Point managed to recap the entire Disney classic in just five minutes by performing some of the 1991 animated movie's best-known songs, including Belle and Be Our Guest.

The ensemble, based out of the Mormon university in Provo, Utah, released the video earlier this week, and it has already been viewed more than 330,850 times.

Scroll down the video

No instruments allowed: BYU's acapella group Vocal Point has won over the internet with a five-minute Beauty And The Beast medley

Guest star: The group's nine members worked with 14-year-old Lexi Walker (center), a YouTube sensation who performed during one of the presidential inaugural balls

Vocal Point's nine male members collaborated with 14-year-old Lexi Walker, a YouTube sensation who performed during one of the presidential inaugural balls.

Lexi can be seen at the beginning of the video as princess-in-the-making Belle, walking in a snowy setting while singing the namesake song.

The camera also stops on Vocal Point members Jantzen Dalley, David Ross, Carl Prince, Kyle Lemperle, Logan Shelton, Matt Newman, Nathan Proffit, Spencer Myler, and David Steele.

It's hard to believe as the video begins that it was realized without any musical instruments, especially owing to Newman's vocal percussion effects.

Soon, the sun sets and Lexi pleads, 'Somebody help me!' as she is drawn into a dark castle.

Iconic moment: The video culminates with a rendition of Beauty And The Beast's ball scene, with Belle waltzing in wearing her yellow dress

Impressive: Vocal Point's video impressed viewers not only with the group's vocal prowess, but also with its cinematography. The ball scene (picture) calls to mind the 1991 classic

This is when a heavy French-accented voice launches into Be Our Guest, with the male ensemble returning in tailcoat jackets.

The video culminates with a rendition of Beauty And The Beast's ball scene, with Belle waltzing in wearing her yellow dress.

Several other dancers join in and twirl around as Lexi and Vocal Point sing the classic ballad.

Viewers have been raving about the medley, pleading the group to make it available on various platforms so as to be able to listen to it on repeat.

'The first 10 seconds were enough for me to like, add to favorites and replay FOREVER,' one of them wrote in a comment.

Vocal Point was founded in in 1991 by two BYU students and has since earned fame across the United States.

The group has released 12 albums and its nine members are currently touring in Utah.
As the ultimate authority on traditional British etiquette, it has issued guidance on topics from hosting dinner parties to planning a wedding.

Now Debretts has some advice for the modern age  on where it is acceptable to use an e-cigarette.

The tips come off the back of a survey that asked people where they find vaping most annoying. The top faux pas was puffing away in confined spaces such as lifts, while others included in restaurants, job interviews  and even in bed.

British etiquette experts Debrett's have issued a guide on when it is appropriate to use an e-cigarette. They wrote: 'If in doubt, don't vape' (file photo)

Responding to the survey, Debretts issued a detailed guide on using e-cigarettes, which can be flavoured, writing: If in doubt, dont vape.

While you may be enthusiastic about your latest cherry or mint e-liquid, others may be less keen: as with perfume, strong aromas are a matter of personal taste, and your preference may not be shared by everyone.

According to the survey, by e-cigarette brand Vype, in the past four years one Briton every four minutes has switched to e-cigarettes, which are often used to help wean users off tobacco, with 2.2million now using the devices.

Top ten vaping faux pas 1. Vaping in a confined space like a lift 2. In a restaurant 3. During a job interview 4. Blowing vapor in someone's face 5.In someone's car without permission 6. In a queue 7. In someone's home without permission 8. On public transport 9. While someone is making dinner 10. In bed Advertisement

But where is acceptable to use them baffled 57 per cent of users.

Debretts said common-sense etiquette applies.

Vaping in confined spaces should be approached with caution and users should ask management before vaping in a restaurant.

They should check with a driver before using an e-cigarette in a car, with their host when at someones home and, at work, they should ask their colleagues first even if their office allows vaping.

Katherine Lewis, from Debretts, said: Vaping is a relatively modern phenomenon, and etiquette is still being established.

Its not difficult to be a respectful vaper though  just be courteous and ask permission.

They discourage vaping in confined spaces like lifts, on public transport and in someone's car without permission. 2.2 million people in the UK smoke e-cigarettes (file photo)

It is not illegal to vape indoors but places can choose to ban it and many hospitals, schools, offices and restaurants have done so.

E-cigarettes remain controversial; some studies have linked them to health risks including cancer but there is no consensus among scientists.

Last year the EU banned high strength e-cigarette fluid and large tank e-cigarette devices.
Jenny Adnett, who suffers from Crohn's disease, now describes herself as 'disfigured and disgusting' as a result of the gash

A 31-year-old mother was left with a gaping hole in her stomach following a botched NHS operation.

Jenny Adnett, who suffers from Crohn's disease, now describes herself as 'disfigured and disgusting' as a result of the gash.

After undergoing surgery to ease her symptoms, surgeons allegedly burst an abscess - allowing for an infection to build up in her stomach.

But they never sewed up the gash, meaning her stomach is still unprotected, leaving her internal organs constantly at risk of being damaged.

The lack of after-care she was given also affected her mental health and she was prescribed anti-depressants, with her desperate for the situation to be over.

She is now seeking reconstruction surgery but has been told that she may not be eligible for funding as it is classed as a cosmetic procedure.

Going under the knife will cost in excess of 15,000, a bill that she is unable to foot herself. Instead, she has turned to crowdfunding to try and raise the funds.

Ms Adnett, of London, holds the surgical team who performed the op solely responsible for the state that her stomach has been left in.

When asked if she felt taken care of by the NHS the answer was a flat-out no. She said: 'I could probably write a book about all the things that werent done properly.

'The operation was meant to give me five good years Crohns free, but so far I'm in a worse position than ever before.'

'I was never warned that any of this would happen. The whole ordeal was horrific.

'Any time I needed help, I felt like I was a nuisance, even though I couldnt do anything for myself.'

She added: 'One time, when accompanied to my bathroom by the nurse, I was left for forty-five minutes.

'I had to call the main hospital switch board to get them to put me through to my ward for someone to come and help me out.

After undergoing surgery to ease her symptoms, surgeons allegedly burst an abscess - allowing for an infection to build up in her stomach (pictured with her boyfriend, Jason)

'There was always someone more important than me or they didnt have time or theyd get around to me eventually. It was like there was always another reason not to deal with me.'

Since being diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was 18, she had tried every drug possible to ease her symptoms.

I could probably write a book about all the things that werent done properly Jenny Adnett

However, none proved to be successful. Surgery in 2015 was her last and only option to help relieve some of her discomfort.

On August 11, she underwent the operation at Hillingdon Hospital in Uxbridge called a right hemicolectomy.

This operation was to remove the section of her bowel which was damaged beyond repair.

Less than 24 hours after having the surgery, she was rushed to intensive care complaining of intense pain.

She is now seeking reconstruction surgery but has been told that she may not be eligible for funding as it is classed as a cosmetic procedure

Ms Adnett said: 'Doctors had been round to tell me after the op that it was a success. I assumed everything was okay.

'I was in a slight bit of pain and discomfort but it was nothing in comparison to what I was about to experience.'

Doctors initially told her that she would have to wait because someone else was in a worse condition than them.

It wasn't until five hours later that she was prescribed morphine to help control her pain.

Ms Adnett said that she had to push a button to release the drug every 30 seconds 'because the pain was so unbearable'.

As her heart-rate dropped, doctors and nurses scrambled to do tests to determine what was wrong.

The lack of after-care she was given also affected her mental health and she was prescribed anti-depressants, with her desperate for the situation to be over

She added: 'I had an oxygen mask on and I was drifting in and out of consciousness.

'I remember asking if I was dying but they wouldnt answer me. They told me to stay calm. That was the last thing I remember before they rushed me to ICU.'

Her daughter Katie, who was seven at the time, was terrified that her mother was going to die.

Ms Adnett continued: 'She didnt want to go to school, she just wanted to be with me all the time because she thought she was going to lose me.

'When she came to see me it was a big shock and really traumatic for her.'

She claims that the team failed to drain an abscess out of her stomach after they burst it during the procedure.

Ms Adnett said: 'They felt like it wasnt needed when in actual fact, if they had put the drain it, it would have prevented me from going into septic shock and ending up in intensive care.'

In the intensive care unit doctors then noticed that her wound was infected. They removed two stitches from the bottom.

After the wound wasn't improving when it was being packed with dressings, they realised that all of the underneath was also infected.

Going under the knife will cost in excess of 15,000, a bill that she is unable to foot herself. Instead, she turned to crowdfunding to raise the funds (pictured with her daughter, Katie)

Following her operation, Ms Adnett had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon who told her that the results were normal and she was 'just fat' (pictured with her daughter, Katie)

They then had to cut the whole wound open again to try and drain the infection.

Medics refused to stitch Ms Adnett's stomach back up again because it kept pooling with puss.

In the end, she was left with a gaping open hole in her stomach and a suction machine she had to use daily for six-weeks, which she comically named Dave.

As Dave began to pull the skin closer together, nurses stopped packing the wound with dressings and instead used a sponge.

In total, she spent almost three-weeks in hospital post-op and then spent another couple of months undertaking regular check-ups.

Following her operation, Ms Adnett had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon who told her that the results were normal and she was 'just fat' - the 'insult of the universe'.

She made several complaints and even contacted the Patient Advice and Liaison Service but felt she was constantly fobbed off.

In October, she went on holiday to Tenerife for a long weekend with her friend Amy.

The break, which was supposed to cheer her up, made her even more insecure about her appearance.

Ms Adnett added: 'We spent most of our time in the hotel away from people as they would ask when I was expecting.

In October, she went on holiday to Tenerife for a long weekend with her friend Amy. The break, which was supposed to cheer her up, made her even more insecure about her appearance

'Id simply reply with a made-up date as I was so embarrassed with how I looked.'

The disfigured results of the surgery have not only crushed her confidence but are also incredibly dangerous for her health.

SYMPTOMS OF CROHN'S DISEASE The symptoms of Crohn's disease vary, depending on which part of the digestive system is inflamed. Common symptoms include: recurring diarrhoea

abdominal pain and cramping, which is usually worse after eating

extreme tiredness (fatigue)

unintended weight loss

blood and mucus in the faeces (stools) Less common symptoms include a high temperature, nausea and vomiting, joint pain and swelling, irritation of the eyes, areas of painful and swollen skin, and mouth ulcers. Some people experience severe symptoms, but others only have mild problems. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

She will need to undergo a joint operation with two surgeons as her bowel has now stuck to the inside of her scar because it has been left for so long, she claims.

Her mother, Susan, suggested crowdfunding as a method to raise money but currently she has only raised one per cent of her target.

Desperate and exhausted, she is at her wits end with no other option but to plead for help on a website where people can donate anonymously to various causes.

She added: 'You can imagine my upset, frustration and annoyance.

'I have tried getting compensation but again no-one wants to know because no-one will accept fault.

'My argument with them is that if theres nothing to put right then why am I now seeing a plastic surgeon to have it corrected? It speaks volumes.'

A spokesperson for the Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: 'We are sorry to hear that Ms Adnett was not happy with the care she received at Hillingdon.

'A full investigation was carried out when Ms Adnett filed a formal complaint with the Trust which found that the appropriate clinical protocols were followed in providing her care.'

You can donate to Ms Adnett's crowdfunding campaign here.
Following the publication of an article on 26 July 2016 headlined British Council launches disciplinary action against manager paid 80k to promote the UK abroad who slated f*****g d******d Prince George as an example of white privilege on Facebook, we have been asked to clarify that Angela Gibbins did not post any comments relating to the photograph of Prince George. Ms Gibbins commented underneath the photograph, which was posted on the Facebook page of the band Dub Pistols, and her comments were made as part of a sub-thread discussion about children and privilege. Ms Gibbins did not make the f*****g d******d comment in relation to Prince George. We are happy to clarify and apologise for any confusion caused.

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With thousands of street children becoming victims of the Capital's drug trade, the Delhi government is now planning to open dedicated juvenile drug rehabilitation centres in six major Delhi hospitals.

According to a government official, 30 beds have been earmarked for juvenile drug addicts at PT Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, GB pant hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Ambedkar Hospital, Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital and Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS).

The official also confirmed that attendants will be provided for each child.

Most of the street children reported peer pressure, curiosity to experience high, handling cold or hunger and attempts to forget about families and be part of groups among reasons for starting drug use, noted the survey (file pic)

As such there is no comprehensive programme launched by the government for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of drug addict children in Delhi.

'An intersectoral co-ordination committee for comprehensive response for drug abuse prevention and rehabilitation services in Delhi has been formed to look after the program for juvenile drug abuse.'

The Government has also planned to commission 30-bedded rehabilitation centre at the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) building in Tilak Vihar.

At present, there are three government hospitals such as RML, AIIMS and IHBAS with OPD for rehabilitation clinics for juveniles including one polyclinic at Tilak Vihar.

There are about seven government opioid substitution treatment centres (OST) in the Capital. Officials also pointed out the scarcity of psychiatrists and lack of trained clinical psychologist in the government hospitals.

The move comes after Mail Today reported the government survey on 70,000 street children being a victim of drug abuse.

A government survey has found after studying 70,000 street kids dwelling in the shadow-world of the desperate (file pic)

The survey reported that out of 70,000 children, about 20,000 children consume tobacco, 9,450 children are addicted to alcohol, 7,910 use inhalants while cannabis are used by 5,600 children.

Consumption of heroin was reported to be consumed by 840 and pharmaceutical opioids and sedatives consumed by 210 children each.

The government has made provisions for basic amenities for street children and safer environment for prevention of substance abuse with interventions to focus on enhanced contact with friends and safety networks, an official said.

Besides that, Delhi government has also recommended mohalla clinics to be set up in schools.
Over a million Muslims from across the country - mostly women - have signed a petition moved by RSS-affiliated Muslim body Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) against the practice of triple talaq.

The Muslim body - RSS pracharak Indresh Kumar is the liason from the Sangh's side who 'guides' the MRM - has also called for a nationwide discussion on the issue that involves all the stakeholders.

'This is a problem of the community and the stakeholders within the community as well as the representatives from the state and the government must come and sit together to start a debate on this so that Muslim women can claim a human status,' the organisation told Mail Today.

Over a million Muslims from across the country - mostly women - have signed a petition moved by RSS-affiliated Muslim body Muslim Rashtriya Manch against the practice of triple talaq

As the party itself puts it, one of the major contributing factors, as it claims, in its victory was a definite support from Muslim women who were moved by the party's stance on triple talaq as a repressive practice that needed to be done away with.

'Three factors, I suppose defined our victory in the UP polls: First was Ujjwala scheme that provided LPG cylinders to poor women; second was construction of toilets under the Swachh Bharat programme, which also appealed to women; and the last but not the least, our stand on triple talaq,' said Siddharth Nath Singh, party secretary and newly elected MLA from Allahabad West.

The Centre had previously argued that triple talaq is 'misplaced' in a secular country like India

While the signature campaign of MRM is still on, the outfit had warned the traditionally conservative clergy of the community to desist from making a religious issue out of a practice that was a social problem.

'The fact that the BJP was able to win Muslim votes in UP, the fact that they also won the Muslim-majority Deoband seat - that is long supposed to be the stronghold of orthodox Ulema - suggest that the party and the central government need to heed the voice of the Muslim women.

'Their support in polls is a tacit approval of the BJP's stand on the issue,' said MRM national coordinator Mohammad Afzal.

Children participate during a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organisational meeting in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh

'The fact that the BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate for the UP polls did not deter women of the community to at least in part vote for the party,' claimed another functionary of the MRM on conditions of anonymity.

Afzal also said the traditional clergy of the community needed to wake up.

Siddharth Nath Singh, BJP party secretary and newly elected MLA from Allahabad West

'The fact that a terrorist was killed and his father denounced him in the light of the latter's love for the nation and then a girl is issued a fatwa against for singing all these things point to the changing scenario in India.

'They should wake up now and stop trying to convert the social evil of triple talaq from a social problem into a religious problem.'

Even the great grandson of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a tall Muslim Congress leader of Indian history, extolled Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his 'positive attitude towards the Muslims'.

'The Ulemas are taking the Muslim community not in the medieval ages, but the dark ages and towards the stone age,' said Firoze Ahmad Bakht.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers out on a parade march
The Manohar Parrikar government has proved its majority on the floor of the Goa Assembly by winning the trust vote with the support of 22 legislators in the 40-member house.

The Congress, the single largest party with 17 MLAs, suffered a jolt as its legislator Viswajit Rane resigned the membership of the assembly, after refusing to vote against the trust motion defying the party whip.

Viswajit, son of Congress veteran and former chief minister Pratap Singh Rane, said he was also quitting the party.

India's former defence minister Manohar Parikar (C) attends a ceremony where he took the oath of office as the Chief Minister of Goa, next to BJP president Amit Shah

While Viswajit was elected from Valpoi, his father won from Poriem.

The Congress, which failed in the number game and accused the BJP of horse-trading and other unfair means to retain power in the state, could mobilise only 16 votes against the government.

After winning the vote, a jubilant Parrikar said the Congress never had the numbers on its side.

He said Congress created the hype over the BJP's bid to form the government, because there was a demand for Digvijay Singh to step down as the AICC general secretary in charge of the state.

'We have proved it to the people of India. We have the support of 23 on the floor of the House, debunking Digvijay's claim that we don't have the numbers,' Parrikar said.

The Manohar Parrikar government has proved its majority on the floor of the Goa Assembly by winning the trust vote with the support of 22 legislators in the 40-member house

He was flanked by Goa Forward Party (GFP) leader Vijai Sardesai and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) MLA Sudin Dhavalikar, whose support sealed the deal in favour of the BJP - whose tally came down to 13 from 21 this time.

The 61-year-old chief minister proved his majority with 12 legislators from the BJP, three from the GFP, three from the MGP, three independents and one from the NCP, supporting the trust motion.

The special assembly session was convened to conduct the floor test following an order by the Supreme Court.

The Congress was reduced to 16 MLAs, after Viswajit remained absent during the voting.

The test was passed through a clear division which was ordered by pro-tem speaker Siddharth Kuncolienkar.

Parrikar, who resigned as Defence Minister from the central cabinet earlier this week, was sworn-in as the chief minister along with nine other MLAs by Governor Mridula Sinha on March 14.

Parrikar has also rubbished allegations of horse trading levelled by the Congress against the BJP.

'I think there are wild allegations being made. Those with coloured glasses make these allegations. We saw everyone (legislators) voluntarily came and vote,' he said.

Meanwhile Viswajit, 45, said, 'I do not expect anything from the Congress.

'They have betrayed trust of Goa by not forming the government despite the people giving them clear mandate.'
Dai Bingguo id the former Special Representative for boundary talks with India

In characteristic Chinese subterfuge diplomacy, Dai Bingguo, the former Special Representative (SR) for boundary talks with India, in an interview with a Chinese magazine, holds India responsible for the existing impasse in negotiations.

'If the Indian side takes care of China's concerns in the eastern sector of their border, the Chinese side will address India's concerns elsewhere', he has said.

According to him, 'The disputed territory in the eastern sector of the China-India boundary, including Tawang, is inalienable from China's Tibet in terms of cultural background and administrative jurisdiction.'

Jurisdiction

He claims, 'Even British colonialists who drew the illegal McMahon Line respected China's jurisdiction over Tawang and admitted that Tawang was part of China's Tibet'.

He believes India is not acceding to China's 'reasonable requests' on border settlement.

By demanding that India cede Tawang, Dai Bingguo is repudiating Article VII of the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of India-China Boundary Question.

This cardinal provision states, 'In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.'

The imperative word 'shall' has been used and the reference is to 'their settled populations'.

A Chinese soldier gestures as he stands near an Indian soldier on the Chinese side of the ancient Nathu La border crossing between India and China

This clearly excludes Tawang from negotiations as India is neither claiming any territory beyond the McMahon Line nor seeking sovereignty over 'settled populations' on the Tibetan side.

The use of the word 'their' implicitly recognises that the settled populations on our side are Indian, not Chinese.

This is not the only article that Dai Bingguo ignores in his interview. Article IV states, 'The two sides will give due consideration to each other's strategic and reasonable interests, and the principle of mutual and equal security.'

By claiming Tawang, which is strategically of key importance for the defence of Arunachal Pradesh, China, under the guise of historical cultural and administrative links with Tibet, is actually brushing aside India's 'strategic and reasonable interests' in the context of the China's increasing militarisation of Tibet and the threat to Indian security.

An Indian soldier stand guard at the Chinese side of the ancient Nathu La border crossing between India and China

Because it is not offering to India anything in return by way of a critically located settled area on its side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the requirement of 'equal security' is not being met.

Dai Bingguo is in breach of Article V of the Agreement too which says: 'The two sides will take into account, among other things, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties and reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides, and the actual state of border areas.'

It is not clear why China's 'reasonable concerns' require it to claim Tawang, whereas India's 'reasonable concerns' about China occupying Tawang and outflanking Indian defences are clear.

Besides this, the 'practical difficulties' involved in Tawang changing hands apply only to India and not to China.

Once China accepted 'practical difficulties' as a consideration, its stand on Tawang is spurious to that extent.

Indian Army soldiers of the Gorkha Regiment carry weapons as they walk through snow, along the India-China border at the height of 16,000ft near Tawang

Concerns

Article VI of the Principles negotiated by Dai Bingguo himself has also been conveniently overlooked by him in his psychological warfare against India.

This says, 'The boundary should be along well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features to be mutually agreed upon between the two sides.'

Implicitly this means acceptance of the easily identifiable high watershed principle defining the natural geographic boundary in the east, a principle accepted by China in defining its boundaries with Nepal and Myanmar.

Tawang being well to the south of the Himalayan high watershed, Dai Bingguo's position on Tawang is once again counterfeit.

China is actually claiming the Tawang tract, which makes its claim fluid. In 2006, China's ambassador to India had said brashly: 'In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it.'

While Dai Bingguo has talked vaguely of 'addressing India's concerns elsewhere', China's claim in the eastern sector is being made more concretely.

Flexibility

China wants to retain full flexibility to decide what to offer in the western sector after India is trapped into agreeing in principle to a major territorial concession in the east.

In our view, China not only initially occupied Aksai Chin unilaterally, it is, post-1962, occupying areas that transcend its own 1959 claim line.

In 1962 it occupied Tawang but subsequently withdrew to the McMahon Line, accepting it implicitly as the de facto border.

Besides this, China was in the past willing to accept the McMahon Line in exchange of India ceding claim on Aksai Chin.

Chinese soldiers stand at a Chinese post on the Chinese side of the border at Nathu La

It has subsequently reversed its position by seeking major concessions in the east against some adjustments in the west. Its position on the border settlement is, therefore, based on power equations and not on any principle.

China has repeatedly demonstrated that either it does not respect the agreements it signs or interprets them as it wants.

In 1996 it agreed to 'clarifying the alignment of the LAC in those segments where they (the two sides) have different perceptions'.

In 2002 (when the writer was Foreign Secretary) China decided to repudiate this agreement unilaterally.

If Dai Bingguo claims that even the British admitted that Tawang was part of 'China's Tibet', he should explain why Tawang is 37 km south of the British drawn McMahon Line which also the Dalai Lama accepts.

Dai Bingguo stands reason on its head by portraying China's self-serving propositions on settling the border as 'reasonable'.
Mamata and Modi in West Bengal

For over a fortnight she had been anxious about the Uttar Pradesh results, even though her party was not contesting a single seat.

Not quite convinced with her personal assessment, she broke the question quite frequently in close circles of journalists, trying to gauge the prediction of political pundits.

On the day of the result on March 11, she was in front of the TV from early morning.

As the saffron surge faded all political colours, Mamata grew impatient between channel surfing.

She was gripped with a deep feeling of loss, a defeat no less personal than that of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Mamata, unlike Akhilesh and Rahul, was not sweating it out in the rough and tumble of politics in the Hindi heartland. She was into a different ball game, engaged in a fierce obsession of settling her personal scores with the person on the topmost chair, who had dared to raise questions about her honesty and integrity and had come across as the major impediment to her national aspirations.

Hence her arch enemy's huge victory, though against another contender, amounted to a huge personal defeat.

Around evening she tweeted: 'Congratulations to winners in different states. Congratulations to the voters for making their choice. To the losers don't lose heart. In a democracy we must respect each other because some will win, some will lose. Trust the people.'

BY sending a general congratulatory message to all the winners, including the saffron brigade in UP, Mamata made the first baby step towards rapprochement.

And the Trinamool Congress leaders heaved a sigh of relief, especially the ones accused in the Saradha and Rose Valley financial scams.

At least half a dozen cabinet ministers and MPs and MLAs were mentally prepared to be called by the CBI with the Mamata-Modi war of words over demonetisation and CBI's arrest of two Tri- namool Congress MPs reaching a crescendo.

Modi in the past had given a long rope to Mamata to win her favours in the passage of crucial bills in the Rajya Sabha

With the UP election, thrown in between, all eyes were on the results. A clean sweep of the BJP would mean more party MPs in the Rajya Sabha and less dependence on Mamata and other regional players to make up for the shortfall in the Upper House.

Modi in the past had given a long rope to Mamata to win her favours in the passage of crucial bills in the Rajya Sabha.

Now with the political compulsion having ceased to exist, he can let her hang mid-air. So was the apprehension.

'Mamata doesn't believe in half-measures. Whatever she does, she does it with full gusto and with all her might,' said a cabinet minister.

In her battle against Modi too, she had gone for a head-on collision without leaving any escape route. She had not only criticised Modi, called him names - Tughluq, Gabbar Singh, Daaku, she had whipped up an anti-Modi campaign all over the Hindi heartland by trying to unite all the regional players and parties in the Opposition.

Obviously she was aware of the pound of flesh she would have to pay, the casualties her party would suffer for starting a big fight with the now most politically powerful man in the country.

'But again, that is Mamata. She believes in a policy of no risk-no gain. She thought by opposing demonetisation she would gain political mileage among rural voters, but the huge mandate in favour of BJP in UP had proved otherwise,' said poll analyst Biswanath Chakrabarty.

It was indeed a mistake. 'Poor people were in praise of demonetisation because they felt Modi's move was aimed at harassing the rich and driving away black money, which only the rich possess,' Chakrabarty added.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has is an outspoken critic of PM Modi

Naturally Mamata was perturbed. 'She looked shattered as if she had lost the UP election.

She was trying to console herself by drawing a parallel with the 2004 Lok Sabha election, when she was reduced to a single MP, and her eventual bounce-back,' said a Trinamool Congress leader on conditions of anonymity.

However, political maturity could overpower her impulsiveness. The tweet apart, she had taken some confident strides by extending the hand of understanding by publicly saying - 'We want the Centre-state relationship to thrive on understanding.

'Political parties may come and go, but the spirit of cooperative federalism should not be affected.

'Democracy demands there should be respect for all.' She's looking to mend the bridges, talking of 'understanding' and 'respect.'

These are tall claims of commitment, one expects in a relationship not in politics. And, Mamata, knowing it fully well, is mouthing big words to warm up to Modi.

But, only till then, she finds her equation with the BJP too close for political and electoral comfort.
President Pranab Mukherjee has announced he will retire from politics at the end of his president tenure.

On Friday at the India Today Conclave, he heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 'his quick learning and mastering the skill of governance'.

He also expressed concerns over persistent disruptions in Parliament that he termed 'unacceptable'.

President Pranab Mukherjee giving his chief guest's address at the India Today Conclave 2017

His chief guest's address at the India Today Conclave 2017 often had the ring of a goodbye speech, even as he spoke about his long, illustrious political career and shared anecdotes from his interactions with leaders he worked alongside over four decades.

'I am part of this democracy. I am part of the mass and will melt into it without leaving a legacy,' said Mukherjee, whose term ends this year.

'Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had profound influence over my generation. It is not that he did not make mistakes but the fact remains that he took tremendous risk of introducing parliamentary politics in a country that is so vast and diverse, had zero economic development and low literacy levels at that time.

'Nehru was the architect of parliamentary system of government.'

The President lauded Modi's aptitude after the BJP's landslide wins this month in the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand elections, though he stressed on the need to guard against majoritarianism.

'Present PM Narendra Modi has his own ways of doing things. We must give credit. He is a quick learner.

'He has picked up quickly from being the head of a federal state to lead the nation by mastering foreign relations, external economy and internal factors,' Mukherjee said.

Shri Pranab Mukherjee meetings former American President Barack Obama on an official visit to India in 2015

He praised the PM for recently emphasising the importance of sarvmat (consensus) in ruling states even when bahumat (majority) has been attained in an election.

'I hope what he said is implemented in letter and spirit,' said the President while speaking on the subject 'Such a Long Innings: Politics, Power, Office'.

Mukherjee, however, reminded Modi that during the UPA rule, India's growth rate was more than 8 per cent.

Five prime ministers Nehru, Modi, Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh  have left a deep impression on him, Mukherjee revealed.

'Indira was the most effective prime minister, who exercised her power with authority,' he said.

'Politics is associated with power and power is associated with office. All the PMs have used power to achieve what they have been given the mandate for.'

Left, Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee on a visit to New Delhi in 2014, and right, German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Mukherjee when he was Indian Foreign Minister on her visit to India in 2007

He also extolled Vajpayee's 'personal touch' in interactions with opposition leaders and recalled when the then PM came over to him in Parliament and requested he go soft on ailing defence minister George Fernandes.

'I was startled and told him - Prime Minister, you could have sent a word to me. I would have come to you. Atalji responded - This is a small matter. We are all colleagues,' said Mukherjee.

Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation meets Mukherjee on his visit to New Delhi in 2014

The President expressed anguish over the unceasing commotion in Parliament.

'In my view, there is absolutely no justification for constant disruption of proceedings, low level of attendance, shrinking in number of days that the Parliament and state legislatures meet as well as the irresponsible manner in which important legislation, including the budget and financial proposals, get passed with hardly any discussion,' he said.

The session ended with old photos of Mukherjee flashed on the screen, including one where he's puffing on his pipe.

'I smoked from 1973 to 1993 for 20 years and then gave it up,' he said.

Indian PM Narendra Modi before victory in Uttar Pradesh

'True federal structure in Modi's India'

The Centre is encouraging the idea of cooperative federalism so that states play an important role in the development of the nation, the three chief ministers - Devendra Fadnavis of Maharashtra, Mehbooba Mufti of Jammu and Kashmir, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh - said in the opening session of the India Today Conclave at Grand Hyatt in Mumbai on Friday.

They agreed that 'Team India comprises the various states and the CMs,' as they debated on the importance of federalism in the country.

'Although people say Mr Modi is authoritarian, he is not. He is open to ideas and has tried to develop the country as a true federal structure,' Jammu and Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed said.

Chief Ministers: Left, Mehbooba Mufti of Jammu and Kashmir, Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh and Devendra Fadnavis of Maharashtra

Giving an example of this, Devendra Fadnavis said certain key Mumbai projects pending for several years have now been approved.

According to Fadnavis, the biggest disruption is the inclusion of environment aspects into the development projects of cities.

In Maharashtra, the government does not need to go to Delhi for clearances for construction of up to 1 lakh square metres.

'There is a huge sense of positivity,' he said.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan also said there was no discrimination among states.

'We have cooperative federalism. The Niti Aayog has CMs from different states irrespective of their parties.'

For the development of the nation, states have to compete with each other; not parties or leaders.

While Mufti agreed that J&K is lagging behind the others, she said it's not because of states competing with each other and appealed to the Centre and other states for 'hand-holding.'

'J&K is behind not because other states are competing with us; it is because we are a border state and have certain sensitivities,' she said, adding: 'Article 370 is not impediment to the development of Jammu and Kashmir.'

Even as the BJP is spreading to various states, regional parties cannot be ignored since they represent aspirations of the regional people, she said.

'While some regional parties are gone for now, they are not out,' said Mufti.
Uttar Pradesh anti-terrorism squad (ATS) has foiled the plans of a terror module planning to target Shia clerics and Islamic education bodies in the state.

According to investigators, the self-radicalised group intended to eliminate three Muslim clerics from Lucknow who had openly criticised ISIS ideology. Both Sufi and Shia clergy from the city have been vocal in protest against pro-ISIS beliefs.

The officials claim that the terrorists had gathered intel on the daily routines of all three Muslim leaders and were following their daily routines in preparation of an attack.

The Taj Mahal is a 17th century monument that attracts millions of tourists every year

A diary and documents seized from their rented house in Haji colony revealed their targets.

Saifullah, who was gunned down by cops in an encounter this month was staying in Lucknow with Atif, Danish Akhtar alias Jaffar and Syed Mir Hussain alias Humza.

Police had claimed that they were trying to set up an ISIS-inspired terror module of Khorasan, the branch of Islamic State based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

'They wanted to eliminate three Muslim clerics associated with a prestigious organisation, as they had raised their voices against ISIS ideology', said a senior police officer.

However, investigating agency is yet to establish if the group's motive was also to spread communal violence in the state by attacking their targets.

The officer said that documents recovered from the terrorists show that they were also prepared to fight with commandos in case of a hostage-like situation.

Their computers had training videos and literature related to past terror attacks. The case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) this week.

India has boosted security at the Taj Mahal after a pro-Islamic State group reportedly warned of attacks in the country and threatened the 17th century monument to love, police said Friday

A pro-Islamic channel called Al- Hindi on Telegram, an encrypted chat platform, had also praised Mohammad Saifullah, who was killed in a counter-terror operation.

They termed him as a 'soldier of Khilafah from India' and incited Muslims to follow his example and launch lone-wolf attacks.

Al-Hindi channel made a series of posts on Saifullah as an example to launch attacks in India, a jihadi monitoring intelligence body SITE reported.

Al-Hindi is not the only ISIS-backed channel. There are several other channels operated by jihadis, particularly by the ISIS and Al Qaeda for encrypted communication.

Just a week after the UP ATS crackdown, a pro-Islamic State media group warned of attacks in India and published a graphic depicting the Taj Mahal in Agra as a possible target.

Taj Mahal: An inset in the graphic features another image of the Taj Mahal within cross-hairs with the words 'new target' below it

The graphic by the Ahwaal Ummat Media Center was posted on a channel of Telegram on March 14.

The graphic features a fighter in combat fatigues and black headgear armed with an assault rifle and a rocket-propelled grenade facing the 17th century monument in Agra.

An inset in the graphic features another image of the Taj Mahal within cross-hairs with the words 'new target' below it.

There is another image of a van with the Arabic text Agra istishhadi (Agra martyrdom-seeker), implying a suicide attack.

Security around the historic building has been beefed up after the issue came to notice.

India beefs up security at Taj Mahal after IS threat

India has boosted security at the Taj Mahal after a pro-Islamic State group reportedly warned of attacks in the country and threatened the 17th century monument to love, police said on Friday.

Images published in local media showed a fighter in combat fatigues and black headgear at the Taj Mahal, India's biggest tourist attraction, and the words 'new target' as the backdrop.

The US-based Site Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadi activity, said the pro-IS Ahwaal Ummat Media Center had originally published the graphic on Telegram on Tuesday.

ISIS in India: The three accused in the Ujjain train blast injured 10 passengers on a train in Madhya Pradesh

'There have been no specific intelligence inputs or any official alerts, but going by media reports we have stepped up security at the Taj,' senior police superintendent Preetender Singh told AFP on Friday.

'Security drills are being carried out on a six-hourly basis instead of the usual daily drill.'

Members of the bomb disposal squad and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team have been deployed with additional personnel patrolling the Yamuna river which flows next to the Taj, he said.

India's leaders say the IS group does not have influence in the country of over 1.2 billion people, which has a large but traditionally moderate Muslim population.

There have been some reports of Indians going to fight for the group in Iraq and Syria, but the numbers are low relative to the size of the population.

Last week, police said an IS sympathiser accused in a train explosion that injured 10 people had been killed in a stand-off as they tried to arrest him.

Singh said the nature of any threat remained unclear but police did not want to leave anything to chance.

'Based on the inputs so far, we have beefed up the security and are fully prepared to handle any eventuality,' he said.

'The Taj is in safe hands.'




China's refusal to acknowledge Indian national security concerns is now leading to a gradual but significant change in India's Tibet policy.

The Modi government seems more open than its predecessors in re-evaluating the utility of the Tibet card in managing China.

Shrugging off Beijing's protests, the Dalai Lama will also be visiting Arunachal Pradesh which China claims as part of its own territory and where Indian government representatives will meet the religious leader.

China's refusal to acknowledge Indian national security concerns is now leading to a gradual but significant change in India's Tibet policy (pictured - 1962 Indo-China war)

Damage

The Chinese government has stressed that the Dalai Lama's visit will cause 'serious damage' to China-India ties, as 'China is strongly opposed to Dalai Lama visiting disputed areas.'

Beijing has suggested that 'the Dalai Clique has long been engaging in anti-China separatist activities and its record on the border question is not that good.'

Kiren Rijiju, Union minister of state for home affairs, is from Arunachal and is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's point man on Tibetan issues, will be meeting the Dalai Lama, who is visiting the Buddhist Tawang monastery after an eight-year interval.

In the beginning, the Modi government was willing to cede some ground to Chinese sensitivities on Tibet and hesitated to openly acknowledge official interactions with the Dalai Lama.

An Indian soldier and a Chinese soldier remove barbed wire on the border fence at Nathu La to allow commanders of both sides to meet for a flag meeting

But cornered by China's openly hostile behaviour in recent months, a more public role for the Dalai Lama is being seen as an essential part of Indian response.

President Pranab Mukherjee met the Dalai Lama at the inaugural session of the first 'Laureates and Leaders for Children' summit held at the official residence of the President in New Delhi in December.

It was the first meeting in decades between a serving Indian President and the Dalai Lama.

China reacted strongly to this meeting, underlining that New Delhi was disrespecting one of Beijing's core interests.

New Delhi retorted by arguing that the Dalai Lama was a revered spiritual leader and it was a non-political event.

China has also objected to the planned visit by the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh this year, saying it would damage bilateral ties with India and amount to New Delhi breaching political commitment on the boundary question.

Just recently, Dai Bingguo, the former Chinese special representative on boundary negotiations with India, has suggested that India holds the key to a final settlement of the border dispute.

If India were to concede Tawang on the eastern front, Dai believes, China will make some concessions in Aksai Chin on the western front.

From New Delhi's perspective this is a non-starter but it underscores how central the issue of Tibet is in Sino-Indian bilateral matrix.

The Modi government seems more open than its predecessors in re-evaluating the utility of the Tibet card in managing China

Inheritance

Despite being an unsettled inheritance from the British Raj, the Tibet question continues to bedevil Sino-Indian relations to the present day.

The origins of the Sino-Indian war of 1962 in which India was defeated can be traced to the asylum provided to the Dalai Lama after China's annexation of Tibet.

China's repressive policies in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have kept the Tibet question unresolved all these years.

China has called the Dalai Lama a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' and accused him of fomenting separatism in the TAR and by keeping the Dalai Lama an honoured guest, India has continued to earn China's wrath.

There is growing disenchantment with Chinese behaviour in New Delhi. Appeasing China by sacrificing the interests of the Tibetan people has not yielded any benefits to India and nor has there been tranquility in the Himalayas for the last several decades.

As China's aggressiveness has grown, Indian policymakers are no longer content to play the rules set by China.

There is more push than ever to support the legitimate rights of the Tibetan people so as to negotiate with China from a position of strength.

Sanctions

Sino-Indian ties are presently passing through a turbulent phase with China extending its 'technical hold' on India's move to get Pakistan-based Jaish-e- Mohammad chief Masood Azhar listed as a terrorist by the United Nations.

Since March 2016, China has been blocking India's move to put a ban on Azhar, under the sanctions committee of the UN Security Council, despite support from all other members of the 15-nation body.

And in response to India testing its long range ballistic missiles recently, China has indicated that it would be willing to help Pakistan increase the range of its nuclear missiles.

Indian officers occupying one of the forts in the Ladakh region of northern India during border clashes between India and China

The coming to office in Washington of the new Trump Administration with its distinct hard-line approach towards China is adding new pressures on Sino-Indian relations.

The recently concluded China-India Strategic Dialogue has not done much to bridge bilateral differences.

It is at this critical juncture that India wants to reintroduce the Tibet issue in the Sino-Indian strategic calculus.

Given the inherent complexities in pursuing this, it remains to be seen how far the Modi government will go in challenging China on one of its core interests.

But an important change is being ushered in by New Delhi and China will have to take it into account as it continues with its inherently anti-India positions on a range of issues.
Profits rise

The owner of former building society Kent Reliance has unveiled a 55 per cent rise in profits.

OneSavings Bank made 163.1m in 2016 after selling its Rochester mortgage business.

OneSavings Bank grows profits helped by sale of mortgage loans

Bosses hiked the dividend from 10.5p from 8.7p per share.

The stock fell 1.2 per cent ,or 4.9 per cent, to 414.4p.

Alitalia cuts

AIitalia, Italys flagship airline, is to launch a 800,000 cost-cutting drive in a bid to better compete with low-cost rivals.

It will introduce services common to budget carriers on flights of less than four hours, including charges for meals, priority boarding and preferred seating.

cancer fund British cancer drug developer Cell Medica has raised 60m from specialist investors to bring its ground breaking cancer treatment to market.

The firm, which is backed by Neil Woodfords Woodford Investment Management, Touchstone Innovations and Invesco, has raised enough money to get its immunotherapy drug to the second phase of development.

Lufthansa expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax to fall only slightly from 1.5bn

Drugs

Drugs firms Clinigen and Diurnal have teamed up to launch a new managed access programme in Europe to treat patients with adrenal insufficiency, a condition in which the adrenal glands do not produce adequate amounts of steroid hormones.

The programme will enable physicians in the European Union to access unlicensed medicines for patients who have no other treatment options.

Lufthansa soars

A rebound in demand in America and Asia and a breakthrough pay deal with pilots helped German airline Lufthansa beat its profit forecasts.

The carrier said it expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax to fall only slightly from 1.5bn in 2016, analysts had predicted a bigger slide to 1.2bn.

Revenues however declined to 27.6bn from 27.8bn in 2016.

The group, which includes Austrian Airlines, Swiss, Eurowings and Brussels Airlines, as well as the core German flag-carrier, said trading had been good in the first few months of 2017 thanks to a rebound in US and Asia demand and that its cost base would improve thanks to the deal with its pilots, even though it would only have a positive impact on underlying profit from next year.

Like its rivals, the carrier came under pressure in Europe and elsewhere from overcapacity and fierce competition from cheaper airlines.
A billionaire chemicals tycoon is planning to buy one of Britains most important oil pipelines  putting the future of hundreds of jobs in doubt.

Leading industrialist Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of petrochemicals giant Ineos, is in talks with oil supermajor BP over the purchase of the Forties Pipeline System.

The system  known as FPS and a crucial part of the oil infrastructure in the UK North Sea  is wholly owned by BP and can bring ashore 1m barrels of crude a day from more than 50 offshore fields.

It marks yet more uncertainty for the North Sea oil and gas industry following the loss of over 120,000 jobs

But declining output means it is running well below capacity and BP is looking for a buyer as it seeks to bolster its finances following the collapse of the oil price in the last three years.

BP and Ineos last night confirmed to the Mail that they are in discussions over a possible deal.

Ineos, set up by Ratcliffe in 1998, registered a new company called Ineos FPS only last week.

But the prospect of a sale will fuel fears over the future of 300 BP staff who currently operate and support the business.

It marks yet more uncertainty for the North Sea oil and gas industry following the loss of over 120,000 jobs since 2014 as the price of crude sank from around $115 a barrel to $50.

Leading industrialist Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of petrochemicals giant Ineos, is in talks with oil supermajor BP

The proposed deal could also spark a fresh row between Ratcliffe, 64, and the unions following his stand-off with workers in 2013 that almost saw him shut his Grangemouth power plant in Scotland.

The clash saw Ratcliffe dubbed Dr No by the Unite union because of his stubborn refusal to compromise over workers pensions.

Manchester-born Ratcliffe, a married father-of-three who recently announced plans to build a new 4x4 vehicle based on the now defunct Land Rover Defender, has also been nicknamed JR after the Dallas oil tycoon and is said to be worth 3.2bn.

The FPS was originally built in the 1970s to transport oil from the Forties field in the North Sea to the Grangemouth refinery near Edinburgh.

BP sold the Forties field to Apache in 2003 and the Grangemouth plant to Ineos in 2005 but it held on to control of the pipeline system.

The JS Ineos Insight, the first ship carrying shale gas in the Firth of Forth en route to Grangemouth Oil refinery

The FPS currently carries around 450,000 barrels of oil a day  or 40pc of UK production  from the North Sea to the onshore terminal at Cruden Bay, north of Aberdeen.

From there, the system transports the oil around 130 miles south via an onshore pipeline to the Kinneil terminal, adjacent to the Grangemouth refinery and chemical plant.

The oil is processed and stabilised at Kinneil and then either exported or sold to Grangemouth. The oil that flows through the system is critical in setting the price of the Brent crude international benchmark.

BP has been trying to sell the FPS for some time and previous talks with Ineos are understood to have collapsed amid disagreements over how to price the asset.

A BP spokesperson: BP can confirm it is in discussions with Ineos regarding a potential sale of the Forties Pipeline System. We remain committed to communicating openly with staff and our stakeholders as soon as we are able, and as commercial confidentialities allow, if any deal is confirmed or agreed.

A spokesman for Ineos, which employs 4,000 staff in the UK, said: We can confirms we are currently in discussions with BP regarding the potential purchase of the Forties Pipeline System. At the moment the conversations are confidential and the conversations are ongoing.

As well as its Grangemouth plant, Ineos has sites in Hampshire, County Durham, Cheshire, Hull and Middlesbrough.

Rags-to-riches Ratcliffe moved the firms headquarters back to the UK last year, six years after he fell out with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and relocated to Switzerland.
There can be no surprise that 21st Century Foxs 11.7bn bid for the 61 per cent of Sky it does not own faces big regulatory obstacles.

Communications regulator Ofcom must determine where the change of ownership will impact on the variety of news sources in Britain and whether James Murdoch, chairman of Sky, is a fit and proper person to have so much UK media power.

Murdoch must seriously regret his stewardship of News Corporation during the phone hacking scandal and the fact that five years later the embers never have been fully doused.

OFCOM must make sure James Murdoch, chairman of Sky, is a fit and proper person to have so much UK media power

The goal of 21st Century Fox and Sky will be to show that the Murdoch empire has been transformed.

21st Century Fox is a separate quoted entity from publicly quoted News Corporation and the latter has moved scrupulously to clean itself up not least by closing the News of the World and paying copious compensation.

Moreover, since the last time the Murdoch clan attempted to mop up Sky shares the communications landscape in the UK has been transformed.

Hegemony over British media has been weakened by online market entrants such as Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post and largely unmonitored news feeds provided by digital giants Facebook, Google, Twitter.

In the name of freedom of the web they are able to peddle bile and push hard on the frontiers of decency.

There is much truth in the Murdoch case. The Sun has seen a 46 per cent reduction in newsstand sales since the last bid for Sky was abandoned.

News Corporation has moved scrupulously to clean itself up not least by closing the News of the World

Nevertheless, we should not be gulled into thinking that because 21st Century Fox and News Corporation fly under different flags that they are not effectively one and the same.

It is Rupert Murdochs name that appears on the masthead of the Wall Street Journal as executive chairman of the publisher and he is also co-chairman of 21st Century Fox.

As much as Fox News is seen by some as a break with the East Coast liberal consensus it too has regulatory and legal shadows most notably the $40m payoff of to its driving genius Roger Ailes over allegations of sexual harassment.

Ofcoms astringent chief executive Sharon White has some really thorny issues to wrestle with.

If her hardball tactics with BT over broadband provision is any guide Sky will not get an easy ride. Indeed, because it is now the proud owner of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia the deal will also need to win the approval of the European Commission which has a robust attitude towards US corporations.

Even if all these barriers are overcome it has never been clear that Skys minority investors are getting a good deal.

Inter-company transactions in the Murdoch empire effectively mean that the cash that 21st Century Fox raised from selling the Europe operations to Britains Sky is now paradoxically being used to buy back the whole caboodle.

Rupert Murdochs name appears on the masthead of the Wall Street Journal as executive chairman of the publisher

Minority interests are being crushed in favour of those of the controlling dynasty.

A less compliant board at Sky would have told Fox to get lost. Instead, stand in chairman Martin Gilbert accepted the first offer with uncomfortable speed.

The deal should be stopped by regulators but the financial case against is just as strong.

Budget blues

American budgets are very different to our own. In Britain the Chancellor sets the tax and spending framework and with exceptions, such as the U-turn over national insurance payments for the self-employed, the government generally gets its way.

In the US the budget submitted by the President is no more than a wish list and only deals with spending. Tax proposals are made under separate cover by the President to Congress and passage requires cajoling and deal making by the White House.

The Trump direction of travel was on display yesterday when he sent his budget to Capitol Hill.

He proposes swingeing 30 per cent cuts in spending by the Environmental Protection Agency to help pay for a big increase in spending on the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

This is a hard power budget, argued Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management & Budget.

More often than not the Presidents budget is declared dead on arrival. Trump, however, has cards to play. Both House of Congress are in Republican hands and House Speaker Paul Ryan says the president has been assiduous in calling Congressional leaders and inviting them over to the White House.

A bit of schmoozing, even from a teetotal leader, goes a long way.

Patent sense

Fearful of losing valuable technologies such as NAND flash memory the Japanese government is fostering a domestic rescue for troubled electronics group Toshiba. It fears valuable patents could fall into overseas hands.

All a bit different to when Softbank bought ARM.
Struggling department store House of Fraser is to launch champagne bars, yoga studios and wellness studios in a bid to boost sales.

The chain will also cut back on the number of clothing brands it sells.

The department store chain wants to oust about 30 young fashion and older brands and instead boost labels such as Jigsaw, Barbour and All Saints.

Champagne bars, yoga studios and wellbeing centres join a host of new restaurants aimed to encourage women to spend more time in stores.

The shift will also see it scrap four of its house brands to focus on five others including Linea, Biba and Label Lab.

Those facing the chop include Episode, Therapy, Grey & Willow and Dickens & Jones. The review is being led by former Asos clothing executive Maria Hollins, who joined in May.

It is part of a drive to refocus its brands after bosses admitted it had failed to serve its core customers well.

Hollins said: We want fewer but better house brands and some of them were small in terms of size of range and turnover.

There was an element of duplication too.

David Walmsley, who joined from Marks & Spencer as chief customer officer six months ago, has aled a search to identify its core customer.

The chain ran records through an Experian database which found the core customers income was two or three times the national average, she has children and is degree educated.

Walmsley said: Jo, as we call her, is purpose-driven and cares about her children, partner, parents, job and community.

Enticing: Champagne bars, yoga studios and well-being centres join a host of new restaurants aimed to encourage women to spend more time in stores

Her children are perhaps older and she has a bit more time to herself and is open to new things.

Champagne bars, yoga studios and well-being centres join a host of new restaurants aimed to encourage women to spend more time in stores.

There will also be fewer sales and promotions in a bid to boost sales of full price clothes  and avoid introducing across-the-board price hikes to cope with rising costs from the fall in the pound since Brexit.

Over the past two years 12 stores have been refurbish as part of 90m of investment.

Rising costs: There will be fewer sales and promotions in a bid to boost sales of full price clothes

House of Fraser bosses unveiled their plans as they dismissed questions about the absence of a 75m cash injection from their Chinese owner Sanpower, which bought the chain in 2014.

Frank Slevin, executive chairman, said: Its very difficult to say theres been under investment in the business when we have tripled the level of investment over the last few years.

Theres nothing we have wanted for over the last two years. We have refurbished stores. But if theres a particular project we want to seek parental support for we will go and see it. But at this point of time we haven t found it necessary to do so.

While there was no investment from its Chinese owners, House of Fraser did refinance in August 2015 to take on 50m of debt.

When Sanpower, led by founder Yuan Yafei, bought the chain it came with promises of a wide-ranging expansion in China.

The first sign of this has come with the refurbishment of an existing store in Nanjing, which a further one on the way.

But rather than commit the 50 stores first touted when the deal was announced, Slevin said he wanted to open 20 over the next five years.

And there was also no sign of a replacement for chief executive Nigel Oddy, who is leaving in April after ten years.

House of Fraser will soon reveal full-year results, but in September it announced half-year sales remained steady at 573.5m.
A former girlfriend of the tattooed drifter, accused of raping a British backpacker in Australia, has revealed she miscarried his baby after he kicked her in the stomach three times.

Shop assistant Sharnii Zerafa told how Marcus Martin split open her head with a coffee mug and slashed her leg with a shard of broken china in the brutal attack.

The vulnerable teenager only found the courage to report him to police after she went to hospital to have stitches and discovered she had lost their baby.

Speaking for the first time about her terrifying ordeal, 18-year-old Sharnii told MailOnline: 'That was the last straw for me. I ran away six days later.

'I called my mum and asked her to pick me up with my uncles. I was so traumatised by what had happened to me that I haven't been able to talk to anyone about it since.

Ordeal: Sharnii Zerafa, 18, pictured centre, was in a relationship with Marcus Martin, pictured left, the tattooed drifter accused of raping a 22-year-old British backpacker repeatedly during a month-long ordeal in the Australian outback

Trauma: From her home in Melbourne, Australia, the naive teenager revealed how she met monster Martin, 22, four years her senior, on a fishing trawler when she was just 16 years old

Warning: A naive teenager, Sharnii, pictured, was unprepared for the smooth talker Martin she met in June 2015, in her hometown Port Macquarie, in New South Wales. She was a young shop assistant, who came from a sheltered background. He was a trawlerman who had spent six months in prison for bashing a pizza delivery man over the head with a plank while high on LSD

Vulnerable: Speaking to MailOnline, Sharnii, pictured, admitted that Martin, who is charged with four counts of rape against against the unnamed backpacker from Liverpool, was the perfect gentleman to begin with. 'He was my first boyfriend,' said Sharnii

Dark side: Of Martin, from Cairns, pictured, Sharnii said: 'He called himself a gypsy  he was travelling from town to town  and he seemed really fun and laid back. We began to go out for walks together, chatting and buying ice cream.'

'But I now feel that it is really important to tell other girls in my position  including the girl who has just been rescued in Queensland  that there is hope. There are people out there who will help you. You just have to confide in them.'

Martin allegedly raped, bashed and strangled the 22-year-old British holidaymaker during a two-month road trip in the outback.

And in a story bearing disturbing similarities to her, Sharnii faced five months of torment at the hands of the man dubbed the 'ultimate psycho boyfriend'.

A naive teenager, Sharnii was totally unprepared for the smooth talker she met in June 2015, in her hometown Port Macquarie, which lies on the mouth of the Hastings River in New South Wales.

She was a 16-year-old shop assistant, who came from a sheltered background. He was a trawlerman, four years her senior, who had spent six months in prison for bashing a pizza delivery man over the head with a plank while high on LSD. His mother Julia Humphreys had died of a drug overdose earlier that year.

Yet Sharnii fell for his charms. 'He was my first boyfriend,' she explained. 'I met him on a fishing trawler when I was visiting a few mates who worked there. He asked me to hang out with him and I thought he was really attractive.

'He called himself a gypsy  he was travelling from town to town  and he seemed really fun and laid back. We began to go out for walks together, chatting and buying ice cream.

'On reflection, I knew nothing about him. He would talk about his life but his stories kept changing. I could never get a straight answer out of him. I began to connect the dots but couldn't really pin him down. But I was really keen on him and didn't realise that alarm bells should have been ringing.'

In what appears to be a tried-and-tested manner, Martin, pictured on a night out with Sharnii, love-bombed his new teenage girlfriend, who did not have the experience to recognise the warning signs. Within a month, he moved in. 'It all happened so quickly,' she said. 'He was living on the fishing boat and had nowhere to go. He asked if he could stay at mine, I said: 'Yes.'

Happier times: Reliving the early flushes of their romance, Sharnii, pictured with Martin at the beach, Sharnii said: 'For the first few weeks, he was the perfect boyfriend. He didn't put a foot wrong. He was always complimenting me, telling me how pretty I was, that I had a nice smile, things like that. He wrapped me around his finger. Now I realise they were grooming weeks.'

Jekyll and Hyde: Although the couple are pictured fooling around, soon afterwards, they had their first row and Sharnii realised that she had fallen for a monster. 'We had an argument and he slapped me for no reason,' she recalled, her voice faltering. 'He left a red mark on my face'

Bad memories: Sharnii, pictured, recalled how her sweet-natured, 'perfect' boyfriend Martin, turned into a monster whom she had to tiptoe on eggshells around so that she didn't upset him

In what appears to be a tried-and-tested manner, Martin love-bombed Sharnii, who did not have enough experience to recognise the warning signs. Within a month, he had moved in.

'It all happened so quickly,' she added. 'He was living on the fishing boat and had nowhere to go. He didn't have any friends in New South Wales because he came from Queensland. He asked if he could come and stay at mine and I said: 'Yes.' He certainly didn't come across as dangerous at that stage.

'For the first few weeks, he was the perfect boyfriend. He didn't put a foot wrong. He was always complimenting me, telling me how pretty I was, that I had a nice smile, things like that. He wrapped me around his finger. Now I realise that they were the grooming weeks.'

However, two weeks later, the couple had their first argument and Sharnii realised that she had fallen for a monster. 'We had an argument and he slapped me for no reason,' she recalled, her voice faltering. 'He left a red mark on my face. But I was so keen on him I left him get away with it.

'He never apologised and always blamed me. If I tried to stick up for myself, he would twist my words. He even smashed up my phone. He would say to me: 'If you tell your Mum, I will run over to your house and kill her and your little sister.' I was terrified.'

By the end of October, Sharnii was pregnant with her lover's child. 'He bought a pregnancy test and we did it together,' she remembered. 'He was over the moon  not about the fact that I was pregnant but about having caught me. I felt totally trapped. I am sure he got me pregnant so I had to stay.'

Monster: Sharnii, pictured with Martin, said: 'He never apologised and always blamed me. If I tried to stick up for myself, he would twist my words. He even smashed up my phone. He would say to me: 'If you tell your Mum, I will run over to your house and kill her and your little sister.' I was terrified.'

Pregnancy: By the end of October, Sharnii was pregnant with her lover's child. 'He bought a pregnancy test and we did it together,' she remembered. 'He was over the moon  not about the fact that I was pregnant but about having caught me. I felt totally trapped. I am sure he got me pregnant so I had to stay.'

Baby joy turned to heartache: On December 19, the couple - by now living in a motel after becoming homeless - went for their 12-week scan. Two days later, high on the drug ICE, or methamphetamine, Martin attacked her. Tragically Sharnii, pictured, lost their unborn baby

Beaten: Recalling when Martin attacked her, Sharnii, pictured, said he was up all night taking drugs as she slept. 'I woke up and asked him if he wanted a coffee. I wasn't sure how many sachets of coffee to use so I asked him how many he would like. He just exploded,' she said

Evil: Shanii recoils at thoughts of her time with Martin, pictured. 'He walked over and threw a coffee mug at my head,' she said. 'It split open instantly and blood was gushing everywhere. I curled up in a ball on the on the bed, crying out: 'Please don't hurt me. Don't hurt your baby.'

Charges: Teenager Sharnii, pictured, reported the sickening attack to police. Martin was on bail at the time of the alleged attack on the British backpacker. He is charged with seven offences including assault occasioning actual bodily harm and intentionally choking someone

On December 19, the couple - by now living in a motel after becoming homeless - went for their 12-week scan. Two days later, high on ICE, or methamphetamine, Martin attacked her. Tragically Sharnii lost her baby.

'We were feeling uneasy and unsettled as things were not going so well,' she said tearfully. 'He stayed up all night doing drugs while I slept. I didn't like it but I had no choice. He was the kind of person who did what he wanted to do, no matter what I said.

'I woke up and asked him if he wanted a coffee. He said: 'Yes.' I wasn't sure how many sachets of coffee to use so I asked him how many he would like. He just exploded.

'He walked over to me and threw a coffee mug at my head. It split open instantly and blood was gushing everywhere. I curled up in a ball on the on the bed, crying out: 'Please don't hurt me. Don't hurt your baby.' But he just ignored me.

'He picked up a piece of broken china and sliced my leg downwards. He then pulled me onto the floor and kicked me three times in the stomach. I was bawling my eyes eye. I was so scared I didn't know what to do.

'I went to have a shower and when I came back there was blood everywhere. 'It's your mess,' he yelled. 'You clean it up.' After putting salt in my hair, he took me to the doctors to get stitches.

'We told him that I had been out bodyboarding and had fallen over a rock. I was all battered and bruised but the doctor was not suspicious at all. I couldn't believe it. I had 18 stitches that day. I had never had stitches before. But I was too terrified to tell anyone.'

By then Sharnii was totally under Martin's control. Terrified by her tattooed lover, who threatened to kill her mother Marika and seven-year-old sister Blaze if she betrayed him, the vulnerable teenager kept silent about her ordeal.

When he persuaded her to spend Christmas with some of his family in Harrington, two hours south of Port Macquarie, she agreed.

However, soon he was talking about moving there permanently. When her mother rang to wish her Merry Christmas, she begged her to pick her up. 'I ran away as soon as I could,' she said. 'He watched as I got in the car and we drove away.'

It is now 15 months since Sharnii set eyes on Martin but she is still battling to come to terms with her ordeal. Although she has a new boyfriend, she has been unable to face therapy or return to work.

Backpacker attack: After Sharnii found the courage to report Martin to police, the tattooed drifter moved from New South Wales north to Cairns where he met his alleged British victim

Alleged rape: Fifteen months on from Sharnii's ordeal, the name Marcus Martin returned to haunt her when a female British backpacker, pictured on CCTV, wandered into a petrol station with black marks under her eyes and scratches on her neck. She later told police that she had been repeatedly raped in the Australian Outback by Martin, who has been charged

Torture truck: After his alleged British victim left the petrol station without paying, the couple WAS stopped by police who found Martin hiding beneath a blanket in this vehicle. The 22-year-old has been remanded in custody and charged with four counts of rape. Sharnii's case against her violent drifter former boyfriend has been put on hold until this one is resolved

'I stayed with my Mum for about three months until I felt brave enough to move out,' she said. 'I am still totally traumatised by what happened I have not been able to return to work as I can't bear to be with other people.'

Now, the discovery that Martin has allegedly assaulted another woman  a British backpacker, whom he met at a Bush Doof, or barn dance, 1,367 miles north of Port Macquarie, in the coastal city of Cairns  has brought back horrific memories.

Not only does the case have extraordinary parallels with hers, but Martin was actually on bail when he allegedly beat and raped the backpacker during an 840-mile road trip into the Australian outback.

On one occasion, in a hotel room in Cairns, he gagged her with a towel and threatened her if she tried to leave. She was only released after a petrol station assistant in Mitchell tipped off police about her injuries.

Finally he is in custody awaiting trial on May 23 for four counts of rape, eight counts of assault, four counts of strangulation and two counts of deprivation of liberty, as well as drug charges.

In Sharnii's case he is charged with three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, two counts of intentionally choking a person with recklessness and two more counts of reckless wounding.

Sharnii's case has been postponed until afterwards but she is hopeful he will be locked away for a long time. 'I hope he spends his life behind bars,' she said.




Three Air Force service members who were killed Tuesday night in the crash of a reconnaissance and surveillance plane during a training flight in New Mexico have been identified.

Cannon Air Force Base officials say 33-year-old pilot Capt. Andrew Becker, 29-year-old combat systems officer Capt. Kenneth Dalga, and 26-year-old co-pilot 1st Lt. Frederick Dellecker were killed.

All three were assigned to the 318th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon.

Victims: (From left to right) Capt. Andrew Becker, Capt. Kenneth Dalga, and 1st Lt. Frederick Dellecker were killed Tuesday night in the crash of a reconnaissance and surveillance plane

Investigators are showing Wednesday gathering evidence near the wreckage of the surveillance aircraft that crashed outside of Clovis, New Mexico, on Tuesday

Officials said in a release that Becker, from Novi, Michigan, is survived by his spouse and parents.

Dalga, from Goldsboro, North Carolina, is survived by his spouse, his son and his mother.

Dellecker, from Daytona Beach, Florida, is survived by both of his parents.

Becker graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2007, the News-Journal reported.

The school said in a statement to the paper: 'It is especially difficult knowing that he came to Embry-Riddle as a committed member of our armed services and served his country with honor.

'Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends and those affected by this terrible accident.'

A Fundrazr account set up to help Becker's family says: 'Andrew was a loving husband and respectful son who proudly served his country for 10 years as an officer in the US Air Force..

'On top of that he was just an all around stand up guy. Andrew was a joyful person with an infectious laugh.

'If he was happy and within earshot, you couldn't help but be happy as well. He easily made friends with those around him and was always a supportive friend.'

Dellecker, from Daytona Beach, Florida, is survived by both of his parents. He graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2013

An Air Force personnel inspects the wreckage of the surveillance aircraft that crashed

Frederick 'Drew' Dellecker was a 2013 graduate of the Air Force Academy, the newspaper said.

His friend Zach Sutton told the outlet: 'Anyone that knew Drew, knew that his lifelong passion was to be in the Air Force.

'He spent countless hours studying in school just to get into the Air Force Academy (and) got a full ride into it from high school.

'While all this is so sad, it's not every day that a young man can serve and die honorably for his country.'

The cause of the single-engine U-28A's crash near the Clovis Municipal Airport is under investigation

The cause of the single-engine U-28A's crash near the Clovis Municipal Airport is under investigation.

Officials said Thursday: 'The crash occurred approximately one quarter-mile east of Clovis Municipal Airport at about 6:50 p.m. Tuesday evening.

'The remains were transported to Albuquerque for autopsy.'

On Tuesday, Cannon Air Force Base officials said that 'The incident caused a fire that was extinguished by local first responders at 7:39 p.m.'

Kyle Berkshire, the airport's director, told KOB the plane did 'touch and goes'.

It involves the plane touching the runway yet not fully stopping, the station said.

On its website, the Air Force says a U-28A crew generally involves two pilots, plus one combat systems officer and one tactical systems officer.

Capt. Andrew Becker is survived by his spouse and parents. He is seen with his wife Shelly Elizabeth in these Facebook photographs

On its website, the Air Force says a U-28A crew generally involves two pilots, plus one combat systems officer and one tactical systems officer. A U-28A plane is seen in a file photo

It explains: 'The U-28A provides a manned fixed wing, on-call/surge capability for improved tactical airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) in support of special operations forces.'

Col. Ben Maitre, commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing, says the unit's thoughts and prayers are with families and friends of those killed.

He said in a statement: 'Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families and friends of those involved in this tragic accident.

'In doing so, our focus is to also support our larger Air Commando community as we prioritize safe mission accomplishment in both our training and operational commitments.'
The US has denied reports that its warplanes bombed a mosque in Syria in which dozens of people - most of whom are said to be innocent civilians - were killed.

Warplanes struck a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jinnah, in northwest Syria, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Thursday.

The jets struck the village, southwest of Atarib near Aleppo, as the mosque was full of worshipers at evening prayer, said the Observatory, which monitors the Syrian war via a network of contacts across the country.

The Observatory does not know who carried out the airstrike.

Civil defense team members try to rescue people who were trapped under the debris of a mosque after an aerial attack in the village of Al-Jinnah

The United States government is denying reports that its warplanes bombed the mosque. People are seen above walking along the rubble in search of survivors

The US military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday against al Qaeda militants, killing several, at a meeting location in Idlib province, but it was unclear if it was referring to the attack on Al-Jinnah.

The statement from US Central Command made no mention of civilian casualties.

US government officials told NBC News that it was looking into the reports of a bombed mosque.

The US says that it has photographic evidence that proves its planes did not strike the mosque, which is located about 50 feet from its target.

A Syrian monitoring group said that warplanes struck the mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jinnah, in northwest Syria, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens

The US military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday against al Qaeda militants, killing several, at a meeting location in Idlib province, but it was unclear if it was referring to the attack on al-Jinnah (seen above on a map)

Syrian and Russian military have also carried out many air strikes in Idlib and Aleppo provinces during the war.

Al-Jinnah is located in one of the main rebel-held parts of Syria, the northwest that includes Idlib province and the western parts of Aleppo province, and its population has been swollen by refugees, UN agencies have said.

Rebels in northwest Syria fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad also include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.
Its a picture of parental devotion - a doting father taking his precious little girls out for an early dinner and then on to Target to buy a new dress.

But this day out on a cloudy day in Southern California was different.

The eight-year-old twins are Elvis Presleys granddaughters and their father is having to defend himself against sensational claims that he had a stash of child porn on his computer.

And while their parents throw bitter allegations at each other in court, the girls, Finley and Harper Lockwood, are living with their grandmother Priscilla Presley.

Michael Lockwood and his two twin daughters Harper (left) and Finley (right) stepped out in Santa Monica on Sunday for a daddy-daughters outing. Lockwood bought Finley a new striped dress, which she wore out of the store

In papers revealed exclusively by DailyMail.com last month, The Kings daughter claimed that she found hundreds of inappropriate pictures and disturbing video on Lockwoods computer

The trio ate an early meal at the Mexican restaurant Lula, before heading out for a quick shopping trip at Target

But no observer could have guessed at the discord when musician Michael Lockwood took the girls out on March 12. First he took them for a Mexican meal at Lula, a restaurant a block from the beach in Santa Monica before going shopping for a dress for Finley.

The girls mother - Elviss only child, Lisa Marie Presley - had picked the girls up from Priscillas home in Beverly Hills the previous day, as she got her time with the twins.

Presley, 49, and Lockwood, 55, her fourth husband, are locked in a bitter divorce battle following the collapse of their 10-year marriage.

In papers revealed exclusively by DailyMail.com last month, The Kings daughter claimed that she found hundreds of inappropriate pictures and disturbing video on Lockwoods computer.

But rather than give Presley custody of their daughters while it investigated her claims, Child Protection Services decided to take the girls from both parents and agreed that they could live with their 71-year-old grandmother.

The girls have not been in foster care and never will be, Priscilla said in a statement. The girls have been with me and will be until all this is sorted out.

Priscilla, who sources say is siding with her son-in-law rather than her daughter in the divorce battle, said both parents see the girls regularly.

In the court papers, Presley said: I was shocked and horrified and sick to my stomach, when she saw the images on Lockwoods computer.

But her husband shot back, blasting her for making the unproven allegations against him in publicly available papers.

Lockwood, on the other hand, blasted Lisa Marie for making the unproven allegations against him in publicly available papers

As I experienced during our more than 10-year marriage and as I believe this court will learn [she] has great difficulty being honest and she rarely, if ever, accepts personal responsibility for her own wrongdoing, he said, also asking for Lisa Marie to pay his legal fees for the matter

It is particularly distasteful that [Presley] has placed more value on trying to damage my reputation than on the fact that her false statements may be brought to our daughters attention, he said.

Michael Lockwood was missing his trademark hat on his outing with kids.

As I experienced during our more than 10-year marriage and as I believe this court will learn [she] has great difficulty being honest and she rarely, if ever, accepts personal responsibility for her own wrongdoing, he added.

Lockwood was asking for $100,000 from Presley to pay his legal fees and $40,000 a month in spousal support, but in court papers her lawyer, Mark Gross, argued that she should not have to pay, partly because of the pictures she said she found.

He also cited a post-nuptial agreement the couple had signed which Lockwood argues should be torn up.

Presley claims nearly all her money is gone and she is living with her daughter, actress Riley Keough, in her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.

Last week a judge ordered she should pay him $10,000 a month for legal fees and is still to decide on spousal support.

Presley and Lockwood, 55, a musician who has worked with Carly Simon, Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, among others, were married in a lavish $340,000 ceremony in Kyoto, Japan in 2006. Her first husband, Danny Keough, was the best man.

The girls looked happy to be with their father, despite sensational allegations against him from their mother Lisa Marie Presley, and Harper skipped down the street while holding Lockwood's hand

Happier times: Presley and Lockwood, 55, (pictured in 2011) a musician who has worked with Carly Simon, Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, among others, were married in a lavish $340,000 ceremony in Kyoto, Japan in 2006

After they split last June, their amicable relationship quickly went downhill. In his court papers, Lockwood also said Presley - who was also married to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage - is hiding a vast fortune by pretending to be broke. At one time she was said to be worth $300 million

They separated last June.

In his court papers, Lockwood said Presley - who was also married to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage - is hiding a vast fortune by pretending to be broke. At one time she was said to be worth $300 million.

He claimed she still receives $466,000 a month (or $5.6 million a year) from the trust Elvis set up for her before his death in 1977.

He said her tax returns showed that from 2013-2015 she also got more than $4.5 million a year in dividends and capital gains and she receives way more than the $100,000 a month that she claims.

He said in the same three-year period he earned an average of just $55,017, less than one percent of her income.

Now he said he cannot find work because Presley insisted he concentrate on her career throughout their marriage. The music industry changed during that time and I lost most or all of my professional connections, he said.

Further, I believe [Presleys] allegations in her declaration will ruin my reputation and it will be difficult or impossible for me to get a job.

Lockwood even slammed his wife over her claim that he had bought the twins an expensive, fully-stocked saltwater fish tank. He said there were just two goldfish in the small tank.

Presley arrives at Narita International Airport in Japan in 2014 with daughters Finley and Harper in tow

He said cell phones she claimed he had bought them cost $18 each from Target. They play with them, he said.

I continue to live a below poverty line existence and need financial assistance to pay my expenses, and my fees and costs, Lockwood added.

Presley had claimed she was broke and that forced her to move in with her daughter.

She said she hadnt been on a plane in 18 months and couldnt remember the last time she bought clothes and shoes of any value.

She said Lockwood and a business manager had defrauded her of millions of dollars and she now owes $7.3 million in back taxes and has another $655,000 of other debt, including $212,000 owed on credit cards.

Presley listed 11 bank accounts, mainly held in banks in Jacksonville, Florida. One has just $6.50 in it and another has $9.88. The amounts total nearly $105,000.

In her filing, Presley mentioned only Coes Hall, her home in Sussex, England, saying it was worth just $2 million, while she owes more than $5 million on it.

But Lockwood said she failed to disclose material information and attempted to mislead the Court.

He said she has been paying for five other homes: three in California, one in Franklin, Tennessee and one in Hawaii.
Ivanka Trump's return to the Big Apple on Wednesday was a brief one, with the first daughter spotted in Washington DC early Thursday morning leaving her plush rented home.

The 35-year-old mother of three sat in the backseat talking on her phone as she and two Secret Service agents drove to the Mayflower Hotel..

Once there Ivanka, attended a roundtable discussion with Latina small business owners organized by the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

In a photo from the event released by the USHCC, a beaming and animated Ivanka can be seen talking to the table of 13 Latinas.

She later rewteeted that photo on her own Twitter account, which read: 'USHCC was delighted to host @IvankaTrump for a roundtable discussion w/ Hispanic women biz owners today in Washington.'

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Power players: Ivanka Trump attended a roundtable event organized by the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Thursday morning in Washington DC (center talking with group)

Off they go: Earlier that morning Ivanka was photographed in her SUV with two Secret Service agents (above)

Small operation: A second SUV followed the one carrying Ivanka and her agents

Back to mommy duty: Ivanka on Thursday night posted a sweet snap of a mischievous-looking Joseph at the dinner table

One of the women in attendance, Lili Gil Valletta, excitedly shared details about the 'inspiring' meeting on Facebook later in the day, saying it was an 'honor' to be at the table.

'This is a historic first, making it her first meeting with Latinx entrepreneurs,' wrote Valletta, who is the co-founder of the marketing and strategy agency XL Alliance.

'We talked about our businesses, the challenges we face as women and left the door open to jointly collaborate to advance opportunities for all women.'

The fun did not end there either for Valletta, who immigrated to the US from Colombia as a teenager, who later shared a video of herself bowling in the White House with Jennifer Korn.

Korn was recently appointed a special assistant to President Trump and deputy director for the Office of Public Liason.

Also at the table and weighing in was Angelica Garcia Davila, the CEO and owner of AIM Family of Companies.

She was a bit short with her commentary however, saying: 'Blessed!!! Will share more later! Lots going on here.'

There was also one man at the table with Ivanka and the other women, Javier Palomarez, who can be seen sitting directly across from the First Daughter.

Palomarez is the president and CEO of the USHCC, and earlier this year accepted a position as an informal adviser to the Trump administration.

It was a shocking appointment given that Palomarez was one of President Trump's biggest adversaries throughout his campaign, referring to him as a 'buffoon' and declaring him 'unfit' to be in office.

Big night: The first daughter rushed home to DC overnight after attended the Broadway opening of 'Come From Away' with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (above)

Man in charge: The USHCC is headed by Javier Palomarez (above with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Wednesday), a former adversary of President Trump who in January became an informal adviser to the administration

He also played a big part in the USHCC decision to back Governor John Kasich of Ohio in the Republican primary and later Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Those wounds seemed to have healed between the two men, and after the roundtable Palomarez released a statement raving about the guest-of-honor that day.

'Throughout our ongoing conversations, Ivanka has made it apparent that she cares about empowering American women, particularly those in the entrepreneurial community,' said Palomarez.

'I was happy to convene a group of Hispanic women small-business owners and provide the opportunity for a substantive dialogue on a range of issues. We discussed the challenges and notable advances Latinas are making by growing their enterprises and driving job creation in diverse sectors and communities nationwide.'

He then closed out by stating: 'We were delighted by her strong command of the issues facing women in small business, and her willingness to engage first-hand with the most dynamic sector of our business community.'

The USHCC has been hosting their annual legislative summit all this week in the nation's capital, which featured appearances from White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Senator Ted Cruz to name just a few.

Canadian couple; Prime Minister Trudeau was also accompanied by his wife Sophie Gregoire (above)

Friendly faces: Ivanka brought along US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (left), who came with her husband Michael and son Nalin (right)

Trump team: Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner (above with Steve Bannon in DC late Wednesday) was in Nashville with President Trump on Wednesday

Her commitment to attend the early morning roundtable explains why Ivanka left New York City immediately after attending opening night of the new Broadway musical 'Come From Away' with her good friend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

With husband Jared Kushner on Donald duty down in Nashville, Ivanka was free to enjoy an evening with the global leader she was caught casting a dreamy look while the two attended a women in business discussion at the White House.

Prime Minister Trudeau was also accompanied by his wife Sophie Gregoire, while Ivanka brought along US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who came with her husband Michael and son Nalin.

The play tells the true story of the 6,579 airline passengers who in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks wound up in Gander, Newfoundland when the US closed off all airspace over the country, forcing 38 flights to land at the seldom used airfield.

Soon after, residents of the town opened their doors to those left stranded, giving them places to eat and sleep until they could return to the United States.

One of the central character's in the play is a Muslim, who at one point is strip searched and spends much of the action arousing unwarranted suspicion in some of the other characters before finding acceptance.

That Muslim character's story played out for the audience just a few hours after a judge in Hawaii blocked President Trump's revised travel ban, which would have gone into effect at midnight.
An airport security dog was shot dead after it ran onto the tarmac and delayed 16 flights at Auckland Airport on Friday morning.

The Aviation Security Services dog named Grizz became spooked and escaped his handler at about 4.30am.

Grizz evaded airport staff for more than three hours while they attempted to lure him in with toys and food, before calling police and fire services.

Flashlights and eight trucks were used in the pre-dawn search effort for the ten-month-old Border Collie and German Shorthaired Pointer cross, according to NZ Herald.

Grizz was ushered off the tarmac after he delayed more than a dozen flights and airport staff asked police to shoot him soon after.

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An airport security dog called Grizz was shot dead after it ran onto the tarmac and delayed 16 flights at Auckland Airport on Friday morning

The dog evaded airport staff for more than three hours before police were called to assist

Aviation security said all efforts to capture Grizz were exhausted before they asked police to shoot the dog

Questions remain over why airport staff asked Police officers to kill Grizz after they reported via Twitter that the dog had been caught

Grizz was still in training and escaped his handler while being loaded into the back of a wagon, Aviation Security Service spokesman Mike Richards said.

'He managed to get airside when a gate opened to let a truck through.

'He did not have a permanent handler so was less responsive than a dog with a permanent handler.'

Questions remain over why airport staff asked police officers to kill Grizz after they reported via Twitter that the dog had been caught.

'When he was located he would not let anyone near him and kept sprinting across the runways,' Mr Richards said.

'We tried everything; food, toys, other dogs, but nothing would work.'

Mr Richards said that they requested police to shoot the dog after all efforts to capture him 'were exhausted.'

'The handler and Avsec are naturally upset but do understand there were no other options in the very difficult circumstances,' he said.

Staff said that neither the nation's largest airport or police had a tranquiliser gun and a dog handler was unable to catch Grizz.

Aviation security dogs like Grizz are trained to detect explosives and act as a deterrent to 'wrongdoers'. Avsec said the escape may have implications in the future training of their security dogs

Flashlights and trucks were used in the pre-dawn search effort for the Border Collie and German Shorthaired Pointer cross. Planes remained stranded on the tarmac for hours while Grizz remained loose

Moses Roberts was flying to Christchurch and livestreamed from the stranded plane during a 35 minute delay.

'The pilot gave us three updates and staff handed out refreshments while we were delayed,' Mr Roberts told Daily Mail Australia.

'They didn't mention he had been shot.'

The decision to have the dog killed has affected travellers who feel that the decision was made to minimise the delay.

'I feel really sad for the dog. I had a lot to get back to but I would never kill a dog just because I was in a hurry.

'I feel as though Auckland Airport made that decision for me and now that dog's blood is on my hands by proxy.'

The shooting came only two days after a New Zealand memorial was unveiled for police dogs killed in the line of duty

The memorial wall has the names of 24 dogs who have been killed since 1972

1News TV host Hilary Barry (left) was outraged by the shooting and asked why the airport did not have a tranquilser gun.

Avsec dogs are trained to detect explosives and act as a 'deterrent for any wrongdoers,' Avsec said.

'These teams do a very important job protecting travellers, airline crew, airport workers and New Zealand at large by ensuring that no dangerous materials are present on aircraft or in our airports.'

Mr Richards said that the escape may have implications in the future training of Avsec dogs.

The shooting came only two days after a New Zealand memorial was unveiled for police dogs killed in the line of duty.

The memorial wall has the names of 24 dogs who have been killed since 1972.

Auckland Airport has received heavy backlash on social media from people saying they failed their duty of care by ordering Grizz to be shot

Some have drawn comparisons to Harambe - the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was shot dead in 2016 after a child fell into his enclosure

Another man said the airport failed their 'duty of care' if they didn't contact a vet, the Auckland Zoo or dog control units

1News TV host Hilary Barry was outraged by the shooting and asked why the airport did not have a tranquilser gun.

'They've got to have tranquiliser guns, surely?

'I don't care if your plane's delayed, they don't need to shoot the dog - I'm not happy.'

Auckland Airport has received heavy backlash on social media from people saying they failed their duty of care by ordering Grizz to be shot.

Some have drawn comparisons to Harambe - the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who was shot dead in 2016 after a child fell into his enclosure.

'NZ has it's Harambe - a dog called Grizz,' one man said.

Another man said the airport failed their 'duty of care' if they didn't contact a vet, the Auckland Zoo or dog control units.
George Osbornes plan to force small businesses to file a tax return four times a year should be delayed until at least 2020, peers have argued

George Osbornes plan to force small businesses to file a tax return four times a year should be delayed until at least 2020, peers argue today.

Before he was sacked, the former Chancellor ruled that small business owners, the self-employed and landlords must provide digital quarterly updates to the taxman.

Critics warned the changes would be ruinous for many of the four million people affected  prompting Philip Hammond to delay the changes for some firms by one year to April 2019.

But Lord Hollick, chairman of the influential House of Lords economic affairs committee, yesterday warned this does not go far enough.

And in a damning report published today, the committee calls for the scheme to be delayed until 2020 and made optional for many small businesses and the self-employed.

It warns that the roll-out of the making tax digital programme is being rushed and will impose unnecessary burdens on small businesses.

The report also argues that Mr Osbornes plans will particularly painful for those lacking digital skills and will yield little benefit to the government.

And the peers warn that the proposals coincide with a host of other changes to the taxation of small businesses and the self-employed such as increases in business rates and a tax raid on dividends.

Lord Hollick said many businesses are blissfully unaware of the looming changes that will see many small firms having to file quarterly tax updates from April next year.

Lord Hollick said many businesses are blissfully unaware of the looming changes that will see many small firms having to file quarterly tax updates from April next year

Firms with an annual turnover below the 83,000 VAT threshold will not have to do so until April 2019 while those with a turnover of less than 10,000 are exempt.

Many small businesses and landlords are simply unaware of or not ready to cope with the additional administrative and financial burdens that will be imposed by digital taxation, said Lord Hollick.

We welcome the Governments announcement in the Spring Budget that the scheme would not apply to businesses with a turnover below the VAT threshold until April 2019.

However, this does not go nearly far enough and it needs to further delay the schemes implementation, and take a more incremental and gradual approach based upon the evidence from the pilot.

This scheme coincides with changes to business rates and dividend taxation, all of which will impact some small businesses.

A full pilot will ensure the software works and provide hard evidence of the additional financial and administrative burdens on businesses. It will also provide evidence in place of the widely disbelieved assessment of costs and benefits of the introduction of Making Tax Digital.

We are sceptical of the benefits to small businesses of regular digital reporting. We recommend that the scheme remains optional for businesses with a turnover below the VAT threshold.

Critics have warned the tax return changes could be ruinous for many of the four million people running small businesses across the country (stock picture)

Mike Cherry, national chairman at the Federation of Small Businesses, also called for a reassessment of the impact of the scheme.

He said: A delay to 2020 would give hard-pressed businesses time to get their systems ready, and a higher exemption threshold would take out those that are going to be struggling the most with this change.

In addition we want to see a more comprehensive impact assessment as more details of the scheme become clear.
Florida Governor Rick Scott removed a state attorney from the case of an accused cop killer after announcing that she would never seek the death penalty.

Scott had asked Aramis Ayala to recuse herself from the case and when she refused he removed her.

'Earlier today, I called on State Attorney Ayala to immediately recuse herself from this case,' Scott said in a statement.

'She informed me this afternoon that she refuses to do that. She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice, and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case,' he said.

Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida

Florida Governor Rick Scott (above) removed Ayala from the Markeith Loyd case after she announced that she will not pursue the death penalty in any case under her administration

Scott gave the case to Lake County State Attorney Brad King, citing a Florida law that allows the governor to appoint a different prosecutor if they find a 'good and sufficient reason' to take it away from the original prosecutor.

Ayala, who took office in January, issued a statement Thursday, saying that she will cooperate with Scott's decision.

'Upon receipt of any lawful order, my office will follow that order and fully cooperate to ensure the successful prosecution of Markeith Loyd,' she said.

Ayala pointed to time, resources and cost to taxpayers as reasons why she will not pursue the death penalty for Loyd or any accused criminal, CBS News reports.

Loyd, 41, is accused of fatally shooting Orlando Lieutenant Debra Clayton on January 9 outside a Walmart as she tried to apprehend him over the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon, 24, on December 13.

Loyd, 41, (pictured) waves to family members as he arrives to a court hearing in March

He is accused of fatally shooting Orlando officer Debra Clayton, 42,on January 9 outside a Walmart as she tried to apprehend him over the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend

He is also accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon, 24, (pictured) in December

In Ayala's surprise announcement, she referenced a bill passed Tuesday that will require a unanimous jury recommendation before judges can impose the death penalty.

'By choosing to seek life sentences over death, we can assure that violent offenders will never be released,' said Ayala. 'They will never continue to drain resources from this state with decades of appeals.'

She highlighted the recent problems with the death penalty in Florida, which had been one of the nation's most active proponents of the practice.

The US Supreme Court struck down Florida's death-sentencing scheme last year that reduces the jury's role to an advisory one and gives judges too much power, the Washington Post reports.

The court's decision halted executions in Florida, which has not carried out a lethal injection since January 2016.

Orlando Police were sharply critical of Ayala's decision to not seek the death penalty

Attorney General Pam Bondi called Ayala's announcement "a blatant neglect of duty and a shameful failure to follow the law"

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said the crimes Loyd is accused of are the reason for having the death penalty

'Floridas death penalty has been the cause of considerable legal chaos, uncertainty and turmoil,' said Ayala, adding that the practice gives victims' families false hope.

State and local law enforcement officials were sharply critical of Ayala's decision.

'To put it bluntly, the law enforcement officers of Central Florida are outraged,' said Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings at a press conference Thursday afternoon.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina told WESH 2 News that the crimes Loyd is accused of are the reason for having the death penalty.

Attorney General Pam Bondi called the announcement "a blatant neglect of duty and a shameful failure to follow the law".

State attorneys, which ensure that laws are properly interpreted and enforced, have wide discretion on who they charge with a crime, what charge to file and what penalty to seek, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Florida law does not require state attorneys to seek the death penalty.
A former Power Rangers actor has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for the killing of his roommate.

Ricardo Medina Jr, who appeared in 2002's Power Rangers Wild Force and 2011/12's Power Rangers Samurai series, stabbed Josh Sutter, 36, on January 31, 2015.

The now-38-year-old actor, who had pleaded not guilty to Sutter's murder at his arraignment in October, filed a guilty plea in Lancaster, Los Angeles, on Thursday, KTLA5 reported.

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Guilty: Ricardo Medina Jr (left in 2016, right in 2002 as the Red Power Ranger) has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of Josh Sutter in 2015

Dead: Sutter (right, with sister Rachel Kennedy) died in hospital. He had been arguing with Medina about the actor's girlfriend's parking. Medina now faces up to six years in prison

Medina now faces a maximum of six years in prison when he is sentenced on March 30.

The two men had been arguing about Medina's girlfriend's parking outside their Green Valley before the fatal fight.

Medina and his girlfriend returned to his room after the spat, but when Sutter tried to follow them, the actor attacked him.

Ranger: Medina played a hero in 2002's Power Rangers Wild Force (pictured) and returned as a villain in 2011/12's Power Rangers Samurai series

Sutter was stabbed in the abdomen with a 'Conan the Barbarian-style' sword, TMZ reported last year.

Medina called 911 and told police that he had been acting in self-defense. Sutter died in hospital.

The actor was released after the District Attorney's office rejected the case, calling for the LA County Sheriff's Department to continue the investigation.

He was arrested again in January 2016, and arraigned in October of that year, where he pleaded not guilty to murder.

Medina had initially entered a no contest plea on his manslaughter charge before amending it to guilty, the DA's office said.

Medina played the leader of the heroic Power Rangers in the 2002 series Power Rangers Wild Force.

He later reappeared as the villain Deker in Power Rangers Samurai in 2011 and its follow-up Power Rangers Super Samurai in 2012.

Born and raised in LA, Medina was also pursuing a singing career and had stints on ER and CSI, according to his IMDb profile.

'He is a great friend and a great client. It's something I can't even conceive,' Gar Lester, Medina's former agent, who has known the actor for 12 years, told ABC7 in 2015.
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At 8.30 in the morning, rush hour is in full swing in the South Korean capital Seoul, home to some 25 million people.

Those commuters crammed into the underground system are the lucky ones  initially, at least. When the missile hits, they are protected from the blinding light of the 20-kiloton detonation.

But above ground, in the area centred on the Yeouido financial district, all is destruction. Buildings up to a mile from Ground Zero have been vaporised or reduced to rubble. Some 70,000 people are dead, killed by the heat and the blast wave. Many more will succumb to radiation burns and radioactive fall-out over coming days.

The nuclear nightmare that has long bedevilled South Korea  Americas key ally in the region and one of the worlds most dynamic economies  has become reality.

North Korea, most rogue of rogue nations, has struck. The nuclear explosion, similar in size to that which levelled Hiroshima, signalled the start of a blitzkrieg-style ground invasion intended to swiftly overwhelm its richer, more advanced neighbour.

Will Kim Jong-un, latest incarnation of the cult dynasty that has ruled the Communist northern half of Korea since 1948, exchange bluff for action and, one day, deploy his small but lethal nuclear arsenal?

A second atomic warhead, inbound on a crude Rodong rocket, has been successfully intercepted by Americas THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence) anti-ballistic missile system. But Seouls torment is only beginning as hundreds of North Korean heavy guns rain down shells on the capital, many containing Sarin nerve gas.

The city, bunched up against the North-South border, is hopelessly vulnerable to a mass sneak attack of the kind now taking place, as hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops, and thousands of tanks, pour out of innumerable underground bunkers built within miles of the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries.

The rest of the world watches as the horror is relayed via 24-hour rolling news and on social media. And waits for the next move ...

Could such a scenario ever come to pass? Will Kim Jong-un, latest incarnation of the cult dynasty that has ruled the Communist northern half of Korea since 1948, exchange bluff for action and, one day, deploy his small but lethal nuclear arsenal?

That terrifying possibility moved a step nearer this month when, without warning, Kim Jong-un ordered a salvo of missiles to be fired towards his other nervous neighbour, Japan.

The latest in a series of escalating acts of provocation by the North Korean dictator this year saw three (non-nuclear) missiles land in Japanese waters. North Korean media, which released photographs of the launch supervised by a delighted Kim Jong-un, said the missiles had been aimed at American bases in Japan.

International condemnation was swift and wide-ranging, with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, describing the launch as a new level of threat. The U.S. appears to be losing patience.

The U.S. appears to be losing patience. On Tuesday, it ratchetted-up the pressure further with the deployment to Korean waters of the super-carrier USS Carl Vinson

On Tuesday, it ratchetted-up the pressure further with the deployment to Korean waters of the super-carrier USS Carl Vinson. The 100,000-ton Nimitz-class carrier, with 40-plus F-18 fighters on board, and a powerful escort of cruisers and destroyers, is the ultimate big stick expression of American power  and a provocation to paranoid minds in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Sources in South Korea are claiming the heightened military presence  which includes moving in Grey Eagle attack drones  is part of a U.S. plan to decapitate North Korean leadership and demolish key military facilities.

Ostensibly, Vinson is there to take part in the annual U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises  codenamed Foal Eagle and Key Resolve  involving 300,000 South Korean personnel and 20,000 Americans.

This act of allied solidarity was met, as usual, with blood-curdling threats from Pyongyang. It warned of merciless ultra-precision strikes from ground, air, sea and underwater in retaliation.

As the Vinson berthed in the South Korean port of Busan, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a tour of the region, warned that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed.

The United States, said Tillerson, had provided $1.35 billion in assistance to Pyongyang to encourage it to abandon its nuclear programme, but to no effect. A new approach was required  but what that might be, he refused to say.

President Donald Trump has stated that every option was on the table when it comes to North Korean aggression. While the phrase was meant to reassure, many Japanese, and South Koreans worry that the Americans are contemplating pre-emptive strikes on North Korean military sites  which would indeed place them in the crosshairs of retaliatory attacks.

In unusually graphic language, China, North Koreas reluctant patron, has warned that the communist state and the U.S. are like two accelerating trains speeding towards a head-on crash. The rhetoric may not be misplaced.

If World War III is to break out anywhere, then it will probably be in this febrile region. North Korea is intent on developing nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit the States. Large areas of Japan and all of South Korea are already in range. Its nuclear arsenal numbers some 20 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.

What is not clear is if North Korea has the ability to marry these A-bombs to its missiles to create workable devices. But even the most cautious of analysts warns it is only a matter of time.

Kim Jong-un, irrational and unpredictable at the best of times, appears increasingly trigger-happy, revelling in his ability to make Western powers squirm. In February, North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, superior to anything that had gone before.

Just days later came the brazen murder, by a hit squad using powerful VX nerve toxin of Kim Jong-uns estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam. The manner of the killing, at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, was intended to strike terror into the hearts of exiled opponents of the Kim regime. (Yesterday, Interpol issued warrants for the arrest of four North Koreans in connection with the murder.)

It is, however, the test-firing of four ballistic missiles towards Japan on March 5 (a fifth is thought to have failed) that most concerns the West.

Kim Jong-un, irrational and unpredictable at the best of times, appears increasingly trigger-happy, revelling in his ability to make Western powers squirm

The missiles themselves are not the most worrying feature. Unlike the one launched on February 12, these were not propelled by solid-fuel motors which allow for quick launches. Nor did they have intercontinental range.

Judging by the distance (600 miles) and height (160 miles) reached by the missiles, they were probably what experts call extended-range Scuds, acquired in the Nineties after the fall of the Soviet Union.

What truly alarmed was the simultaneous, multiple-firing, which suggests advanced operational skill; the impact area of three of the missiles within 200 miles of Japan; and the threats that followed.

North Koreas UN ambassador claimed that the situation on the Korean Peninsula was inching to the brink of a nuclear war.

Chinas intervention, calling on the U.S. and South Korea to halt military exercises in exchange for North Korea suspending tests seems, not surprisingly, to have fallen on deaf ears, as evidenced by the arrival of the Carl Vinson this week.

For the time being, the U.S. military response is defensive, bringing forward the long-planned installation of its anti-ballistic missile system, known as THAAD, on South Korean soil. The system, while not perfect, is designed to knock out Scud-type missiles.

China has called the installation of THAAD a provocative military escalation, a claim echoed by Russia. Both nations fear that the systems radar would allow the Americans to peer deep into their territory and monitor their missile tests.

China views every U.S. military development in its hemisphere as an attempt to thwart its ambitions for regional dominance. But America needs Chinese help in reining in Pyongyang.

The best outcome for all in the region would be for China to use its leverage as North Koreas biggest trading partner and main source of arms, food and energy to persuade Kim Jong-un to halt his nuclear ambitions.

China has, in fact, recently put pressure on its troublesome semi-ally, announcing last month that it was stopping imports of North Korean coal, a third of the poverty-stricken nations exports. However, Beijing has always been cautious about actions that could cause the collapse of the North Korean system, and with it a flood of refugees.

Before leaving office, Barack Obama warned Donald Trump that North Korea was the gravest security risk he would face as president. Every day that has passed since the inauguration confirms this assessment.

Perhaps the best hope for those living in the shadow of North Koreas nuclear ambitions lies in 33-year-old Kim Jong-un himself. He loves the good things in life, yachts, cars, the best tobacco, even as his people go hungry.

War with South Korea means instant war with the United States, and whatever mayhem North Korea can cause during its brief nuclear rampage, it cannot hope to prevail against the worlds only superpower.

In signing the order to attack South Korea, Kim would be signing his own death warrant. We must hope Kim Jong-un is still sane enough to understand that.
The sister of a girl who was raped and smothered to death in her own bed has revealed the horror of being in the same room during the violent murder.

Debbie Keegan was only nine when 21-year-old Rodney Thomas Clark crept into the room she shared with her sister in Tregear, NSW and raped and killed her in 1987.

Her younger sister Sarah remained silent in her bed as Debbie was was raped three times and then suffocated to death.

Now she has spoken of the terror she experienced that night 30 years ago.

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Rodney Thomas Clark murdered Debbie Keegan (pictured) in 1987. He received a life sentence for the brutal killing

Clark was sentenced to life in prison in 1988 but now he could be released back into the public after only 29 years, Nine News reported.

Sarah, who is now 37, said even now she could 'still hear all the noises from that night' and is forced to re-live the horror now Clark is up for parole.

She said: 'I remember my sister saying "who are you, what are you doing?" and he told her to go back to sleep and walked out. He was gone for a while and then he came back.'

Debbie Keegan's sister (pictured) said: 'He needs to stay there (in jail). My family is the one that has been given the life sentence, not him'

Debbie (pictured) shared a room with her sister Sarah who was sleeping near her at the time of her murder

Seven-year-old Sarah was the sole witness to the murder, and with annual parole applications, she is made to re-live the ordeal every year.

She said of Clark's possible release: 'I can't even describe how angry I am.'

Leader of the Opposition Luke Foley said Clark should not be released into the public only 29 years into serving a life sentence.

He said: 'No-one thinks this bloke should get out, yet why are the victim's loved ones dragged through this year after year?'

Clark, who was 21 at the time, used a ladder to break into the bedroom (pictured) where the little girl was sleeping close to her sister

Clark (pictured) has only served 29 years of his life sentence and is now eligible to be released into the public

Since 2015 Clark has been eligible for parole but his recent applications have not been granted.

The victim's family was told by the Serious Offenders Review Council they planned to reduce his security classification- making him eligible for day release.

The recommendation is still being decided on by the corrective service commissioner, before it can regress to the parole board.

Sarah said: 'He needs to stay there (in jail). My family is the one that has been given the life sentence, not him.'
Damaging winds and heavy rainfall are set to lash the New South Wales coast on Friday, ripping down trees and power lines and causing flash flooding.

Those in Sydney, Newcastle, Taree and Coffs Harbour have been told to tie down loose furniture, move cars away from trees and avoid creeks and storm drains as forecasters predict gusts of 90km/h and 100mm of rain in the next 24 hours.

And while the worst of the storm will pass by Saturday morning, there is little respite ahead with a high chance of rain for the next week at least.

Eleven people had to be rescued from their cars yesterday as emergency services were called out 800 times over the course of three hours due to heavy rain

Homes, businesses and even a school were flooded in the Albion Park area yesterday as heavy rains continued across New South Wales

More than a month's worth of rain fell around Illawarra yesterday, with roads swamped, train tracks washed away and trees ripped down

Ten staff and four students had to be rescued from a school in Shellharbour yesterday after it was flooded while a school bus got stranded in Albion Park

Brett Dutschke, a meteorologist for Weatherzone, told Daily Mail Australia: 'There is a high likelihood of rain across the city continuing until late Sunday or early Monday.

'Things will then dry out a little bit but any reprieve will be short lived, with the rain returning until this time next week at the earliest.

'After that things will start drying out, but the risk of more showers still remains.'

Port Macquarie will cop the worst of the rainfall on Friday, with a month's worth expected to fall over the next two days on ground that has already been drenched.

The Bureau of Meteorology said people should never drive through floodwater, avoid creeks and storm drains, and seek higher ground if the area starts to flood.

An SES spokesman warned there could be similar conditions in the Port Macquarie area today as heavy rains are expected in the latter part of the day

Forecasters warn there is no end in sight for New South Wales with a high risk of rain across the state until this time next week at the earliest (pictured, Albion Park yesterday)

Sydney is also expected to be drenched on Friday evening, with 20 to 30mm of rain predicted to fall in the evening as people celebrate St Patrick's Day (pictured, Albion Park)

New South Wales SES is warning motorists not to drive into any floodwater as cars can easily become stranded, and to find another route (pictured, Albion Park)

The warning comes after ten staff and four children had to be rescued from a school in Shellharbour while a school bus got stranded in nearby Albion Park after more than a month's worth of rain fell in just a few hours.

New South Wales SES warn the Mid North Coast could see similar conditions to Illawarra yesterday, when roads were flooded, cars were submerged and train tracks were partially washed away by floodwater.

An SES spokesman told Daily Mail Australia they received more than four calls per minute over three hours starting at 3.30pm as the storms rolled in.

Most calls were related to people being stranded in their cars after driving into floodwater, with warnings in place to avoid all unnecessary journeys.

Drivers were advised against all unnecessary travel yesterday as roads were swamped and hundreds of drivers found themselves stranded

Drivers struggled to make their way over heavily flooded roads in Albion Park yesterday with more rain expected in the area today

A golf course is seen almost entirely underwater in Albion Park yesterday as flash flooding hit the area during heavy rains

Rescue workers were desperately searching for 11-year-old Ryan Teasedale on Friday after he was last seen boogie boarding in floodwater in Unanderra, and is feared to have been swept away.

The spokesman said: 'Sometimes floodwater can just happen around your vehicle, in which case we are ready to help.

'But our advice to motorists is to never drive into floodwater. Stop. Turn around. Find another route.

'We are also advising people to check their gutters and drains to prevent flooding, and to be aware of high winds that could cause trees to fall.'

Meanwhile those in Sydney looking to head out for St Patrick's Day can expect a drenching, with up to 30mm possible across the city, falling mostly in the evening.
The body of an 11-year-old boy who was sucked into a stormwater drain in a suburb south of Wollongong has been recovered in a nearby creek bed.

Ryan Teasdale was last seen riding a bodyboard with his brother and friends in Riley Park in Unanderra on Thursday afternoon as torrential rain swept through the area.

His body was found after 11am on Friday at a creek bed at the end of a stormwater drain about 500 metres from the park.

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Police have found the body of 11-year-old boy Ryan Teasdale (pictured), who was last seen riding a boogie board in Riley Park in Unanderra on Thursday afternoon

Police found Ryan's body after 11am on Friday at a creek bed at the end of a stormwater drain

Ryan's body was found about 500 metres from Riley Park in Unanderra

Police said the family of Ryan Teasdale have been informed of his death

'It's with great sadness that I tell you that we have located the body of a young boy in a creek bed at the end of a stormwater drain in Unanderra,' Superintendent Zoran Dzevlan, Lake Illawarra Local Area Commander, said.

'The family of the boy have been informed.'

Emergency services had spent Friday morning frantically searching stormwater drains for signs of the 11-year-old.

Stormwater drains around Riley Park, off Central Avenue, were searched.

SES volunteers had frantically searched a stormwater drain near Riley Park at Unanderra on Friday for 11-year-old Ryan Teasdale

Police had believed the 11-year-old may have fallen down one of the drains around Riley Park, Unanderra

Crews also searched countless areas on Friday where the drains run into creeks

A camera was sent down with a SES flood rescue specialist tasked with searching beneath the streets of Unanderra

The SES flood rescue specialist was called in to help find the body of Ryan Teasdale

The young boy was playing with his brother and up to 20 other children and adults when he went missing.

Ryan's older brother raised the alarm about 4.30pm when he couldn't find him.

Ryan was last seen wearing blue boardshorts without a shirt and holding his blue bodyboard.

A report will be prepared for the Coroner.

Council workers joined with SES volunteers on Friday in searching for Ryan Teasdale

Dozens of SES volunteers frantically scoured the Unanderra area on Friday for signs of the missing 11-year-old
A K-9 with a Texas police department has been removed from service after the dog bit two women during his initial two weeks on the job.

Rico, a Belgian Malinois, began working with police in Bay City on March 1 - and bit a Bay City employee on his first day.

Lt. Irene Kjergaard explained to the station: 'There was a worker walking by she noticed Rico and took off running.

'The dog saw her, jumped over the handler and he chased her and bit her in the arm.'

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Rico (left) began working with police in Bay City on March 1 - and bit a Bay City employee on his start date. He later badly bit Jocelyn Amtower (right) on Monday

Rico rushed out of a vehicle after he and his handler stopped at a gas station on Monday. He bit Amtower, who was getting coffee

After the incident, Rico spent a week in remedial training.

Kjergaard explained: 'The handler and Rico did a demonstration for the administration, police chief and sheriff - and Rico did a great job.

'He obeyed all commands he did as he was supposed to do.'

However, Rico and his handler were traveling on Monday to Louisiana for training that had already been scheduled and stopped at a gas station, Click 2 Houston said.

The dog rushed out of the vehicle while at the gas station in Bay City.

Though Rico had a shock collar on, Kjergaard said that 'the handler hit the collar and the dog still would not obey'. Pictured are injuries Amtower sustained

Amtower has already had two surgeries and requires skin grafts. She was still in a hospital on Thursday, according to local media

Police got Rico from a Louisiana company called US K-9 Unlimited, where he had received three weeks of training. The dog has been returned

Though Rico had a shock collar on, Kjergaard said that 'the handler hit the collar and the dog still would not obey'.

Jocelyn Amtower was getting coffee and was bitten by the K-9. She has already had two surgeries and requires skin grafts, Click 2 Houston said.

Police got Rico from a Louisiana business called US K-9 Unlimited, and has been returned.

US K-9 Unlimited owner Roger Abshire told the Houston Chronicle: 'All I can tell you is Rico is a great dog.

'He was trained properly and is a very social dog. We don't put out unsocial dogs.'

Police are putting off getting a new dog, Kjergaad told the newspaper.
A three-month-old baby was rescued from an SUV submerged in a lake in Illinois in a tragic chain of events involving his family.

A fast-thinking paramedic found the baby floating inside, pulled him onto the hood of the vehicle and administered CPR. The child was then taken to a hospital where he is expected to make a full recovery.

A body, identified as his mother, was later recovered from the lake.

The infant was found hours after a person thought to be his father was killed in a house fire where his six siblings all survived.

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A body is recovered near Silver Lake in Highland, Illinois, on Thursday after a car with an infant was pulled from the lake

Some of the children ran to a nearby Wal-Mart, others to a home in the neighborhood. The children at the Wal-Mart asked an arriving worker to call 911, Lakin said

The chain of events all began at 5:15 a.m. in Glen Carbon, Illinois, about 30 miles east of St Louis, when a fire broke out at a home owned by Cristy Lynn Campbell.

Sheriff John Lakin said the person killed has not been identified, but Campbell's estranged husband and the father of the children, Justin Campbell, has not been accounted for.

Six children, ranging up to age 14, all escaped.

Cristy Campbell's body was identified as having drowned in the same river where her infant son was found submerged in an SUV

Surveillance video obtained from a neighbor showed an SUV's headlights switching on in the driveway of the house around 4:50 a.m., and several minutes later it backed out of the driveway.

About three minutes later, a reflection from the flames of the burning house could be seen on the side of a nearby house, according to STL today.

Some of the children ran to a nearby Wal-Mart, others to a home in the neighborhood. The kids at the Wal-Mart asked an arriving worker to call 911, Lakin said.

Police could not enter the house until the fire was fully put out, and the body was removed mid afternoon on Thursday.

Cristy Campbell was not in the home when firefighters arrived nor was the couple's infant son.

At 5:31 a.m, a motorist passing near Silver Lake in Highland, Illinois, about 16 miles from the home, saw a car heading down a hill toward the water and called 911, Lakin said.

The infant was one of seven siblings who survived a tragic chain of events that left one person dead in a house fire and second body, identified as the mother, recovered from the lake where the baby was found

A neighbor, Sherry Ricker, said she believed that Justin Campbell was living in the house, and that the family was always busy with a variety of activities

Highland paramedic Todd Zobrist arrived quickly, jumped into the 46-degree water and swam 50 to 75 feet to the SUV, where he found the baby floating inside the car. He pulled the baby by the arm to the hood of the SUV, where he began CPR, then swam with the child to shore.

Highland paramedic Todd Zobrist (pictured) arrived quickly, jumped into the 46-degree water and swam 50 to 75 feet to the SUV, where he found a baby floating inside the car

The child, initially unresponsive, is expected to recover and could be released on Friday from a hospital in St. Charles, Missouri, Lakin said.

He added: 'Today was a tragic day all the way around because of both scenes. Fortunately, there is something good that can come of this.'

Highland Emergency Medical Services chief Brian Wilson said Zobrist's actions were heroic.

'He definitely saved the child's life,' Wilson said.

After finding the baby, authorities began searching the water. A body was pulled from the lake around 11:15 a.m.

While the body has not been identified, Lakin said police are no longer searching for Cristy Campbell. A gun was also found inside the SUV, a source told STL today.

A neighbor, Sherry Ricker, said she believed that Justin Campbell was living in the house, and that the family was always busy with a variety of activities.

She said she saw Cristy Campbell and held the baby three days ago, and that she seemed happy.

Firefighters and other emergency workers at the scene near Silver Lake where the submerged SUV was found

Cristy Campbell was not in the home when firefighters arrived nor was the couple's infant son

Police could not enter the house until the fire was fully put out, and the body was removed mid afternoon on Thursday

Court records showed that Cristy Campbell and Justin Campbell, 37, had a volatile relationship.

In 2005, before they were married, Justin Campbell was charged with domestic abuse for allegedly attacking Cristy Campbell, then known as Cristy Brueggemann, by slapping her in the head when she was pregnant. He was sentenced in March 2006 to probation and fined $500.

Despite the violence they married on Nov. 3, 2006. She filed for legal separation in September 2010, but the matter was dismissed two months later.

Court records showed that Cristy Campbell and Justin Campbell, 37, had a volatile relationship

The infant is being treated at a St. Louis hospital after the car the child was in rolled into the lake

Conservation police search Silver Lake in Highland, Ill., on Thursday, March 16, 2017, after a car with an infant was pulled from the lake earlier in the morning

In April 2012, Cristy Campbell obtained an emergency protection order against her husband and filed for divorce, alleging in court papers that he 'abuses me on a weekly basis,' including punching and choking her.

'He has told me that I'm a no good wife,' Campbell wrote in her application for the protection order.

The divorce was granted in February 2013.

Despite these reports, a manager at Bob Evans restaurant in Collinsville, where Justin Campbell was an employee, said the staff is distraught, and told STL today that Campbell was 'an outstanding guy who loved his kids'.

Lakin said Glen Carbon police have answered several calls to Campbell's home, including some 'domestic-related situations,' but he declined to elaborate.

'The Glen Carbon Police Department was aware of that house,' Lakin said.

Authorities said the children are with Illinois authorities and will be placed with relatives.
A man has lost both his legs and could lose up to six fingers after a bout of gastro turned out to be meningococcal disease.

Kurt Power, 24, was taken to Townsville Hospital on January 31 to have surgery for what was believed to be a serious case of gastro.

But doctors were shocked to discover the man had the rare bacterial disease, and put him in an induced coma for more than two weeks.

Kurt Power, 24, has lost both his legs, his spleen, and could lose up to six fingers after a bout of gastro turned out to be potentially deadly meningococcal disease

'The doctors don't know how he caught it as no-one [else] in Townsville had it,' Mr Power's girlfriend Victoria Howard, 19, told The Courier Mail.

'We haven't been outside of Townsville either.'

While in the coma, Mr Power's spleen was removed after it shut down from the infection.

He was woken three days later with Ms Howard, who is due to give birth on August 26, at his bedside.

Doctors said Mr Power's legs were too ravaged to recover so they were amputated just below the knee.

His left index finger was also amputated.

'It will take six months for the prosthetics and we are unsure how long rehab will take sadly,' said Ms Howard, who is fundraising for the couple on a GoFundMe page.

'He lost his left index finger and will probably lose most of the fingers on the right hand.'

Kurt had the first of two surgeries on his hands on Thursday, where his left index finger was amputated. Next week the surgery on his other hand will be completed

Mr Power (right) was woken from his coma three days after his spleen was removed with pregnant girlfriend Victoria Howard (left) at his bedside
Lacklustre exchanges between the Leader of the House and his Shadow were interrupted by the Speaker, John Bercow.

He had an announcement to savour.

The hour, by the Commons digital clock, was 10.46 and 16 seconds.

Order. Just before we proceed with the Business Question I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her royal assent to the following Acts.

The Speaker, John Bercow, pronounced notification with a Ted Heath-ish diphthong

Mr Bercows eyes were heavy with an ennui that felt affected.

He paused to dislodge some shard of wax from somewhere inside his nasal passages. His voice sounded a bit night-before.

The Remain-voting Speaker continued, with apparent boredom: Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2017; European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017.

He pronounced notification with a Ted Heath-ish diphthong  nee-eauh-tification.

There were cheers from the Conservative side of an ill-attended House.

Christopher Chope (Con, Christchurch) and Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) waved Order Papers. Mr Bercow offered no smile. He gazed sideways to some imagined object in the distance.

This royal green-lighting to the European Union (Nee-eauh-tification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 meant the Government could invoke (trigger in the hackneyed parlance) Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon. So if you hear a sharp retort from Downing Street, that  rather than Theresa May shooting Philip Hammond with a pearl-encrusted revolver  is what has happened.

Shortly before lunch yesterday, Brexit Secretary David Davis confirmed that the much-awaited deed would be done by the end of the month. It involves writing a letter to Brussels.

My suggested wording: Dear EU, were off now but thank you for having us. Love, the people of the United Kingdom.

Brexit Secretary David Davis gives evidence to the Brexit Select Committee in the House of Commons

Article 50 could re-energise the May Government after what has been a week of delay, incompetence and confusion. That was the verdict of Shadow Commons Leader Valerie Vaz, whose remark ignited ribaldry from Tory MPs who felt she might as easily be describing Labours latest week under Jeremy Corbyn.

One lesson from the week, perhaps, is that politicians should not hide behind small-print and jargon.

The Chancellor tried that with his now-dumped National Insurance tax rises. He resorted to accountant-speak, citing various wonkish niceties as he claimed the rises were not at odds with the Tory manifesto. No one believed him.

We have seen the same resorting to microscopic and legalistic detail in the way the high judges of our kingdom and the House of Lords claimed to be motivated by lofty principle as they sought to stop Article 50. No one believed them, either.

The political class has, with only a few exceptions, lost the art of communicating to electors in a forthright, comprehensible way.

Take some of the language used yesterday in the House during Culture Questions.

The following words and phrases were bandied about: diverse/diversity, ongoing, round-tables, on track, roll-out, digital economy, take-up in superfast broadband, specific work-stream looking at skills, the voluntary sector, cultural citizens programme, successful partnerships to deliver arts and culture, stakeholders, roll-out connectivity, streams of funding, long-term funding going forward, internet safety strategy, proactively.

This is not the language normal people use at home. And there is such dead exaggeration used.

Time and again yesterday, ministers  from the Department which is meant to look after Culture  wittered on about how this or that was really important or incredibly important.

Moments later, during Questions to the Law Officers, the so-far underwhelming new Tory MP for Sleaford, Caroline Johnson, moaned about hare-coursing.

The Solicitor-General, Robert Buckland, sucked the air out of his cheeks and called hare-coursing a serious scourge.

Oh come off it. Coursing may not be terribly kind to hares, but a serious scourge?

What poppycock. Only when our politicians stop abusing our language will they start to win back public trust.
Comrades of Sergeant Alexander Blackman (pictured) said yesterday he shot a wounded Taliban fighter to protect junior colleagues

Comrades of Sergeant Alexander Blackman said yesterday he shot a wounded Taliban fighter to protect junior colleagues.

They spoke out after the Appeal Court cleared him of murder and downgraded his conviction to manslaughter.

The former Marines said he 'took responsibility' for killing the insurgent whom 'everybody wanted dead' because saving him would have risked British lives.

One even claimed HQ implied to Sgt Blackman on his radio that he should kill the man, and a former commander admitted it was not the only time such action had been carried out in the war.

The commando, referred to as Marine A at his court martial, had his murder conviction downgraded to manslaughter because he had combat stress and could walk free within days.

The Appeal Court said yesterday a sentencing hearing would be heard next Friday.

This could lead to his immediate release because he has already served three and a half years.

Five judges ruled that he was not in his right mind when he shot the insurgent on September 15, 2011.

The court heard how he felt an immense responsibility to keep the 15 men under his command safe, even taking on exhausting extra patrols himself to do so.

The former Marines said he 'took responsibility' for killing the insurgent whom 'everybody wanted dead' because saving him would have risked British lives. He had his murder conviction downgraded to manslaughter this week. Pictured: Sgt Blackman's wife Claire

Sergeant Rob Driscoll (left), who was leading a patrol nearby, overheard the radio conversation between Sgt Blackman and HQ about what to do with the injured Taliban. Sam Deen (right), one of the Marines on the fateful patrol, said they had all wanted to shoot him

Following the verdict on Wednesday, Sgt Blackman's former colleagues told BBC Panorama they were glad he shot the fanatic.

Many feared the insurgent had been deliberately sacrificed by the Taliban as 'human bait' to lure the Britons into a trap.

Sam Deen, one of the Marines on the fateful patrol, said they had all wanted to shoot him.

He suggested Sgt Blackman decided to do it himself to protect junior comrades, adding: 'I said I'd put one in his head. [A] few of the other lads said that as well.

'I think [Blackman] took the responsibility for the younger lads. He didn't do it in cold blood  he did it so we could draw a line in the sand.'

Sergeant Rob Driscoll, who was leading a patrol nearby, overheard the radio conversation between Sgt Blackman and HQ about what to do with the injured Taliban.

Louis Nethercott (pictured left and right), a machine gunner with Sgt Blackman, said: 'It was bloody tough. There is a point at which he has had too much or seen too much or is too tired or too stressed'

Sam Deen (pictured) suggested Sgt Blackman decided to shoot the Taliban insurgent himself to protect junior comrades, adding: 'I said I'd put one in his head. [A] few of the other lads said that as well.'

He said no one wanted to risk sending a multi-million-pound air ambulance and crew, or vehicles along a road littered with bombs, to rescue the man.

He claimed he heard 'implied tasking'  an unspoken suggestion that the insurgent 'needed to pass away somehow'.

Sgt Driscoll added: 'Everyone wanted that guy to be dead.'

Speaking later to Radio 4's Today, he said: 'There was implied tasking. Everyone on that radio was sending out a signal to Al, 'Make it so it doesn't happen'.'

The commando, referred to as Marine A at his court martial, was not in his right mind when he shot the insurgent on September 15, 2011

Sgt Driscoll told Panorama: 'I'm glad Al did what he did, because all my guys went home. Maybe if he hadn't done that, I'd have been going to a few more funerals.'

Louis Nethercott, a machine gunner with Sgt Blackman, said: 'It was bloody tough. There is a point at which he has had too much or seen too much or is too tired or too stressed. None of us got hurt, so it was a successful day.'

Major Steve McCulley, commander of Sgt Blackman's J-Company, was asked by filmmaker Chris Terrill, who was with the unit: 'Would you think what happened was the only time that happened in the Afghan War?'

Major McCulley replied: 'No.'

Sgt Blackman's first legal team faces being sued for damages for not carrying out a psychiatric assessment that would have shown his mental disorder, preventing a murder conviction. Anthony Berry QC and junior barrister Peter Glenser were accused of incompetence. They did not comment last night.
A television host has broken down on live television revealing a very close friend had taken his own life.

The renowned comic, Jono Pryor, who is a co-host of popular New Zealand TV comedy show 'Jono and Ben' shed tears as he revealed a person important to him had died, today named as Tim Hutchens, 36.

Mr Hutchens had a long history battling with mental illness and is remembered as an incredibly charismatic, funny man and treasured father of 3-year-old Tilly.

The Auckland-based entertainers took a moment to touch on the serious issue of mental health at the end of last nights episode.

Ben Boyce began 'Before we go, we just wanted to take a quick moment.'

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Jono Pryor was visibly emotional as he paid tribute to a friend who took his own life

'We like to joke around on the show and our job is a bit of a laugh but sometimes serious stuff happens in our lives.'

'A few days ago, a very, very close friend of mine decided to take his own life,' Pryor continued.

'I just want to say one thing. What I've learnt this week is that if you are suffering a mental illness, no one thinks less of you for not talking, for sharing your thoughts, no one thinks less of you for taking your medicine, and no one thinks less of you for dealing with a mental illness, just talk about it.'

The hilarious prankster was reduced to tears sharing news he had lost a friend to suicide

As he addressed the live audience as well as viewers at home the raw and open emotion was just a snippet of the devastating impact suicide can bring for those left behind.

As the show wrapped the two embraced in a heart-warming hug as Boyce supported his mate through the tough moments.

Co-host Ben Boyce helped his colleague and friend through the emotional delivery

In 2016 the Social Report on Suicide found youth (1524 years) suicide rate was the highest among the 34 OECD countries from 2009 - 2012.

Statistics show that New Zealands mortality rate was 13th highest for males and 5th highest for females in the world.

Jono and Ben took the opportunity to use their platform to speak out about the serious issue taking the lives of hundreds of Kiwis.

Jono and Ben took the opportunity to use their platform to speak out about a serious issue taking the lives of hundreds of Kiwis

Education and awareness around mental health is one of great importance in today's society.

The open message from the TV star gathered support from colleagues, fellow entertainers and social media users.

Co-host Ben Boyce was among many who took to Twitter to applaud Jono for speaking out

Fellow comedian and Jono and Ben star Guy Williams offered his support

Comedy writer Joseph Moore was moved by Jono's strength

Twitter user Rachel Kemp reiterated Jono's call to talk about depression and mental health

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.
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The world's fastest super yacht - The Dragonfly - has been snapped sheltering from the intense low pressure system hammering Australia's east coast in Sydney Harbour.

The stunning 73-metre boat is worth $80 million and is believed to be owned by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

A picture of the luxurious yacht anchored at Blackwattle Bay sent the internet into a spin when it began circulating on Thursday.

'Anyone know whose boat is berthed below the Anzac Bridge? It looks very, very expensive,' a Reddit user asked.

'It's the Dragonfly,' one commented, while another added: '$80m worth.'

The stunning 73-metre luxury yacht dubbed 'The Dragonfly,' thought to be worth $80million docked in Sydney Harbour on Thursday

The vessel, built from aluminium, is touted as the most stylish and efficient super yacht on the water

Dave Woods, Director of Perth company Silveryachts, which built The Dragonfly in 2009, told Daily Mail Australia the vessel pictured in Sydney on Thursday was indeed the world-renowned super yacht

Dave Woods, Director of Perth company Silveryachts, which built The Dragonfly in 2009, told Daily Mail Australia the vessel was indeed the world-renowned super yacht.

Built from aluminium, The Dragonfly is touted as the most stylish and efficient super yacht on the water.

In 2011, it was up for sale for around $80million and was reportedly purchased by Mr Brin.

The world's fastest super yacht is rumoured to have been snapped up by a top Google executive for $80million

The boat could previously be chartered for a whopping $773,000 per week, though it is currently unavailable for hire

In 2011 the vessel was put on up for sale and was reportedly purchased by Google co-founder Sergey Brin

'Anyone know whose boat is berthed below the Anzac bridge? It looks very, very expensive,' a Reddit user asked on Thursday

It could previously be chartered for a whopping $773,000 per week, though it is currently unavailable for hire.

It boasts an open-air cinema and Jacuzzi on the sundeck, which also converts to a dance floor.

During a voyage from Perth to Dubai shortly after its construction, the boat set a record for speed and fuel efficiency.

The stunning 73-metre super yacht was build by Western Australian company Silveryachts in 2009

It boasts an open-air cinema and Jacuzzi on the sundeck and a sun-pad which converts to a dance floor

The Dragonfly is hailed as the fastest and most fuel-efficient super yacht in the world. Above, an interior shot of the world-renowned vessel

The boat can reach speeds of 27 knots and boasts a 110,000 litre fuel tank. It is the most fuel efficient super yacht in the world
An advertising firm is being sued by a zoo after renting one of their raccoons for an 'erotic' commercial featuring a naked woman.

The production company hired the mammal for the raunchy advert which features a topless model lying in bed.

In the saucy footage, a beauty blonde can be seen playing with the fluffy animal.

A zoo in Moscow are to sue an advertising firm after a raccoon they rented to the firm was used in a raunchy advert. At one point the topless model even uses the raccoon to cover herself up - the zoo say they were unaware of the theme before agreeing to rent out the small mammall

The advert has sparked outrage from the private zoo called Animals Are Not Toys, in the Russian capital of Moscow

At one point she uses the little black and white creature to cover up her exposed breasts.

The advert has sparked outrage from the private zoo called Animals Are Not Toys, in the Russian capital of Moscow.

They claim that the production company, called Art Msk, failed to tell them about the nature of the advert.

Head of the zoo, Victor Trubkin, said: 'We aim at facilitating even more love from people towards animals and have to suppress any act of animal humiliation.

'Since the raccoon that was filmed in the commercial can't defend himself, we are here to do that for him.'

The zoo - called Zveryushki ne Igrushki in Russian - was dismayed when they saw behind the scenes footage from the advert.

After seeing the sizzling clip online, they asked the company to pull the offending advert in October last year.

But they received no response, so they decided to press ahead with a court case against the firm.

The zoo - called Zveryushki ne Igrushki in Russian - was disgusted when they saw behind the scenes footage from the advert. In one clip the model is completely topless while the raccoon grabs at the woman's clothes

Head of the zoo, Victor Trubkin, said: 'We aim at facilitating even more love from people towards animals and have to suppress any act of animal humiliation. Since the raccoon that was filmed in the commercial can't defend himself, we are here to do that for him.'

The advertising company maintain they have yet to edit the advert - but say they would do an erotic film if they could.

Valeriy Bogatov from Art-Msk production said he finds all the accusations pointless.

He added: 'We would probably like to film erotic videos but the law on advertisement doesn't let us do that.'
An internal review conducted by the US military concluded that the deadly raid conducted in Yemen on January 29 that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL was 'not compromised'  meaning that the enemy did not know beforehand that US troops were on their way to kill them.

Among the findings reached in the internal review is that American special forces did not anticipate the combat readiness of their targets.

Military sources also said that women in one of the buildings in the village that was targeted had taken US forces by surprise by engaging them in gun battles, according to The Washington Times.

The SEAL team which took part in the raid had initially planned to obtain more digital intelligence data, but was prevented from doing so because it underestimated the ferocity of the resistance, the Times reported.

The US government insists the raid was a success, even though it resulted in the deaths of two Americans  SEAL Team 6 Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens (left) and Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki (center), the 8-year-old daughter of US-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki (right)

The US government has insisted that the raid was a success because of the intelligence that was recovered, even though it resulted in the deaths of two Americans  SEAL Team 6 member Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens and Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, the eight-year-old daughter of the New Mexico-born Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

The military's contention that the raid was 'not compromised' is also at odds with previous statements by military officials who say that word of the raid leaked out.

A US official told ABC News that SEAL Team Six members took a Marine MV-22 from a Gulf of Aden-based ship, the USS Makin Island, to get to the compound on a moonless night.

SEAL Team Six is the US Navy's special forces team that gained worldwide fame for killing Osama bin Laden.

The military's contention that the raid, which took place in the Yemeni province of Bayda (seen above on the map), was 'not compromised' is also at odds with previous statements by military officials who say that word of the raid leaked out

That source told ABC that with armed drones above, the SEALs got to the compound where they were instantly met with heavy fire - and it was obvious that al Qaeda compound fighters had been expecting the Americans.

Per ABC, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said Monday there'd been female fighters who 'ran to pre-established positions as though they had trained to be ready and trained to be combatants and engaged with us'.

Owens, a 36-year-old from Illinois, was killed in a firefight which left three other SEALs hurt, according to the news outlet.

Owens enlisted in August 1998 and made chief in December 2009.

His awards included three Bronze Stars - two with a 'V' distinguishing device signifying combat valor.

Owens' widow, Carryn Owens, was honored by President Donald Trump and the US Congress during a presidential address to a joint session on February 28.

Owens' widow, Carryn Owens (seen above), was honored by President Donald Trump and the US Congress during a presidential address to a joint session on February 28

Three different American servicemembers were hurt when a Marine MV-22 meant to medevac those who'd been injured suffered a 'hard landing', ABC News also reported.

Fourteen al Qaeda fighters were killed in the raid, it's been revealed.

Earlier this month, military officials told news outlets that 'almost everything went wrong' in the raid, according to NBC News.

That sentiment was echoed by Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona, who had deemed the mission 'a failure.'

The Times quotes a military source that disputes the earlier reports that the raid was botched, saying that so far no evidence has emerged indicating that al Qaeda fighters knew the SEALs were coming.

'Whether or not someone heard something from the air, there's no reason for us to believe anyone in the compound was aware or heard those kinds of things,' said the source.

'The team was on the ground for some amount of time before the firefight started.'

'It erupted very quickly at a time you might expect it to when some members of the team had been on the ground for some amount of time,' the source said.

'What we know is we have no indication of any prior knowledge or compromise in advance.'

Nonetheless, the source did tell the Times that the US forces did not expect the level of preparedness that they encountered from the enemy.

'At a certain point, this becomes more kinetic than we expected. But that doesn't mean there was a compromise.'

'Perhaps the folks in the compound were more trained, prepared for a fight, not this fight, but a fight. Maybe they were more ready to fight, and they had established firing positions perhaps more than we would have expected.'

'[While the mission was] not compromised, [the enemy was] at a state of preparedness to enter into a fight that was probably unanticipated. When you talk about lessons learned, that is one of them.'

'Maybe for any future such things that might occur in Yemen, we'll probably put that into our knowledge and assumptions of what you might expect.'
Justine Greening (pictured) has taken over reforms which were ordered by her predecessor Nicky Morgan

Ministers are poised to tear up controversial education funding changes in the face of a growing revolt from Tory MPs whose local schools will lose out.

Education Secretary Justine Greening has been taken aback by the level of hostility to the shake-up ordered by her predecessor Nicky Morgan.

Tory whips have warned ministers they could struggle to get the reforms through Parliament without major concessions.

The shake-up aimed to address the long-standing bias of funding towards inner city schools.

But many Tory MPs representing other areas have been angered to learn that their constituencies  already receiving the lowest allocations  were to have their funding slashed further.

Theresa May will be holding talks with concerned MPs after already meeting groups of backbenchers this week.

Last night a Government source insisted a new formula was needed but conceded the plans would have to be at least tweaked.

Downing Street yesterday stressed the proposals were a consultation, adding: We want to hear from as many people as possible. We want to make sure we get this right.

MPs are now demanding that Miss Greening protects core funding and prevents schools already on the lowest allocations from having to lay off teachers, shut courses or even make the school day shorter.

Yesterday former chancellor George Osborne revealed that he has joined the rebels.

He was one of around 20 MPs who met Miss Greening this week to raise their concerns.

I wanted the Government to know directly how concerned local teachers and parents in Cheshire are about the new schools formula, Mr Osborne said.

Everyone knows we need a new formula and that there isnt extra money lying around but the money needs to be fairly distributedMy hope and expectation is that the message is getting through.

Stephen Hammond, who chairs the group of London Conservative MPs, is organising another meeting with Miss Greening.

Stephen Hammond, the Tory MP for Wimbledon, says: 'I am very concerned at the impact on my colleagues'

Despite my constituency getting more money through this formula, I am very concerned at the impact on my colleagues, he said.

Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach said: It doesnt seem to have addressed the fundamental inequalities in the previous formula so I would say this fails in its job and it has to be looked at again.

Challenged on the subject in the Commons this week, Mrs May said: The funding formula is a complex issue that has needed addressing for some time and we will be looking at it carefully.

The Prime Ministers spokesman stressed that ministers were in listening mode ahead of the close of the consultation next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a study by the Education Policy Institute will raise further concerns today.

It warns that every school in England is likely to face real-term cuts in funding per pupil within three years  74,000 on average for each primary and 291,000 on average for each secondary.

The report also found the proposed changes would shift cash from the most disadvantaged pupils and schools towards the so-called just about managing group.

A Department for Education spokesman said school funding was 40billion this year, its highest level.

He added: We recognise schools face cost pressures, which is why we will continue to help them use their funding in cost-effective ways.

Our new School Buying Strategy is designed to help schools save over 1billion a year by 2019-20 on non-staff spend.
A vile Dutch paedophile who blackmailed British teenage girls online into stripping and performing explicit shows on webcam has been jailed for 10 years.

Aydin Coban, 38, targeted thousands of teens in Britain and around the world during his sick six-year campaign, with one girl taking her own life after he stalked her relentlessly online for two years.

The pervert is also wanted in Canada as a suspect in the case of Amanda Todd a teenager who sparked an international debate over cyber-bullying when she posted a YouTube video detailing her online harassment by an unknown tormentor.

Todd took her own life at the age of 15 but Coban denies wrongdoing in her case, which was not part of the Dutch court proceedings.

Coban would pose as an attractive teenage boy and groom his victims, persuading them to strip for him on webcam and telling one who stood up to him 'I can annihilate your life  I will drive you to kill yourself.'

Aydin Coban, 38, (pictured, an artist's impression) targeted thousands of girls during his sick six-year online campaign, with one girl taking her own life after he stalked her relentlessly online for two years [credit: 1V]

Amanda Todd, 15, took her own life after relentless cyber-bullying and Coban is wanted by Canadian police in relation to her tragic death

The unemployed computer fanatic then used pictures for blackmail, demanding his victims perform for him or he would forward the photos to their friends and family.

Coban would order his victims to perform a set number of shows, before he would 'free' them, reports the Sun.

The Amsterdam District Court convicted him for fraud and blackmail involving more 34 other girls and five gay men.

'These were not idle threats,' the court said in a summary of its ruling.

'If a girl didn't comply with his demands, then (Coban) did not hesitate to send sexual images to the family or friends of the victim.'

Todd, from Vancouver, Canada, was found dead n her home on October 10 2012, just weeks after she uploaded a video to YouTube detailing her horrific treatment at the hands of cyber bullies

When she was just 12, a man in an internet chat room convinced her to flash her breasts, and a year later, he plastered a picture of the incident across Facebook

Vile Coban was jailed for ten years and 243 days at Amsterdams Rechtbank court (pictured)

Coban, who dropped out of school, is thought to have started targeting children as young as eight in 2008 and went on to create 96 Facebook accounts, according to the Sun.

He is said to have ordered one British victim to show him her breasts online before threatening to 'send the picture to all your friends, get on Skype' and that 'this is just the beginning'.

He used fake names including Kelsey Rain and Tyler Boo as he lured girls in to chatting online.

But he was finally caught when National Crime Agency officers from Britain joined one of the online communities he was using and posed as a girl.

Dutch officers planted a device on his computer to record his internet activity and bugged his bungalow in southern Holland.

Police found Coban living in a holiday park (pictured) in southern Holland before making an arrest

Canada has sought Coban's extradition over the case of Amanda Todd (pictured), a process that is continuing

Eventually an arrest was made in 2014 and officers found a grim haul of 204,000 pictures, 4,000 videos and files with the names of 250 victims, the Sun reports.

In court Coban tried to blame the offences on a fictional friend.

But judges said Coban's sentence, the maximum possible, reflected the 'devastating' impact his actions had on his victims' lives.

He was jailed for ten years, 243 days at Amsterdams Rechtbank court.

Canada has sought Coban's extradition, a process that is continuing.

Todd, from Vancouver, Canada, was found dead n her home on October 10 2012, just weeks after she uploaded a video to YouTube detailing her horrific treatment at the hands of cyber bullies.

When she was just 12, a man in an internet chat room convinced her to flash her breasts, and a year later, he plastered a picture of the incident across Facebook.

Speaking after the sentencing, Todd's mother, Carol, said she was 'relieved' telling the Toronto Star: 'I felt a sense of relief that he was found guilty and that he got the maximum sentence that was possible.'

An NSPCC spokesman added: 'Coban preyed upon these youngsters and coaxed them to perform sexual acts and share sexual images of themselves before trapping them in a web of blackmail and threats.

'We know offenders can use live chat facilities to build relationships with young people before persuading them to send sexual images and videos.

'We applaud the polices dedication in tracking down this vile perpetrator and bringing him to justice.'

The organisation also called for a code of practice across the web so children to make reporting, blocking and privacy settings easily accessible.
Alicia Schiller, 27, has been sentenced to a minimum 16 years in prison for the murder of Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert.

A Victorian drug-addicted mother who killed another mother-of-three in a fight over $50 has been sentenced to at least 16 years in prison.

Alicia Schiller, 27, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of fatally stabbing ice-dealer Tyrelle Evertsen-Mostert in a drug-fuelled rage in the Geelong house they shared in 2014.

Justice Elizabeth Jane Hollingworth handed down a 20-year sentence with a 16-year minimum on Friday and said Schiller still hadn't accepted that she'd killed someone.

Alicia Schiller, 27, (pictured) was sentenced to at least 16 years in prison
A gaping sinkhole has wreaked havoc on Auckland streets after heavy floods opened up the footpath.

Torrential rain lashed the North Island which caused road to collapse into a sinkhole, pulling trees and debris into its crevice.

The flood damage has left families homeless and businesses destroyed as the water caused devastation in New Lynn, west of Auckland CBD.

The sinkhole sucked tress and debris into its large chasm, even leaving a car teetering precariously on the edge

The floodwater caused extensive damage to shop fronts on a main road in New Lynn, Auckland

Torrential rain on the North Island saw 65mm in less than an hour - resulting in street rivers

A car was left teetering close to the edge of the chasm as surrounding wreckage was sucked into the sinkhole.

Over 300 homes in Auckland were left flooded with waist-deep water after a huge rain storm.

Eighteen people have been placed into emergency accommodation following the flash flood, the NZ Herald reports.

The rain reached 65mm in only one hour in some areas, and residents said it took just 15 minutes for the water to flood their homes and turn streets into raging rivers.

Cars sat dangerously close to the watery sinkhole which destroyed several shopfronts

The sinkhole pulled trees and pipes into the gaping chasm as the floodwater eroded the footpath

Photos of the damage show businesses facing the street stripped down to their foundations as the road was washed away.

West Lynn council has executed a major cleanup to clear the streets of floodwater and mend the gaping road.

Fire services and even the NZ Army had been called in to rescue flood-affected residents and minimise the damage.

The severe storms in NZ appear to have eased and the weekend is expected to bring dry weather across the North Island.

Flooding across NSW in Australia has also caused extensive damage and a number of people have needed emergency rescue across the North Coast.

The heavy floods eroded the footpath and dirt around the New Lynn area
More Americans are ditching their jobs than at any point since 2001, according to new statistics from the Bureau of Labor Standards (BLS).

In January 2017, 3.2 million people in the US gave their bosses the boot - up from 2.9 million in January 2016, and the highest since February 2001.

That's the latest in a seven-year-long-climb from the grim lows of mid-2009, and a sign of a confident economy, Yahoo News reported.

Quit while you're ahead: More people are quitting jobs than at any point since 2001 - a sign of a positive outlook for the US economy. The level dipped massively between 2007 and 2008

Trump card: That suggests that US citizens are more confident about the economy in Trump's hands than at any point previously (pictured: Trump at a St Patrick's Day event, Wednesday)

After climbing from around 2.4 million in 2001, quit rate began to slow in the mid-2000s, capping at around 3.1 million.

But it fell off dramatically between 2007 and 2010 as the financial crisis caused by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the US saw millions laid off.

That meant those with jobs clung to their paychecks for dear life, and the quit rate hit its lowest point - around 1.7 million - in late 2009.

Since then the quit rate has slowly been climbing up, and now looks to be inching up towards 2001's high rate of more than 3.4 million.

Most of the increase through January was due to departures in the private sector, with government jobs remaining stable, the BLS said.

The areas that saw notable increases were finance and insurance, real estate and rental and leasing, and other services.

The number of quits increased in the Midwest and West regions, the BLS added.

The rate of layoffs and discharges was the same as December: 1.6 million.

There have been other signs in recent months that the US economy is remaining buoyant, Yahoo noted.

Work it: The rates of participation by workers aged 25-54 - 'prime age workers - are also trending up, hitting heights of 81.7 per cent, the most since 2011

On Tuesday the CEO Economic Outlook Index - which measures expected revenue, employment and capital spending made its biggest increase since the end of 2009.

It leaped 19.1 points to 93.3, according to the Business Roundtable's survey.

Levels above 50 indicate economic expansion, the group said, and the index had had an average of 79.8 for the past seven quarters.

Also on Tuesday the National Federation of Independent Business released its small business optimism index.

The index clocked in at 105.3 - that's 0.6 less than the last reading, but still sustains 'the remarkable surge in optimism that started November 9, 2016, the day after the election,' the group said.

And last month it was announced that the employment-to-population radio had reached 60 per cent - the highest since February 2009.

Of that cohort, participation by workers aged 25-54 - known as 'prime age workers' - rose to 81.7 per cent, the highest level since 2011.
Theresa May has accused Nicola Sturgeon of using Brexit as a 'pretext to engineer a second independence referendum'.

Speaking at the Tory Spring Forum, Mrs May said Britain had to pull together as one nation to make a success of leaving the European Union in a passionate rebuke to the SNP leader.

But the SNP leader shot straight back this afternoon with a claim the 'muddled' Prime Minister is at 'odds with democracy'.

At her own party conference, Ms Sturgeon slammed the PM's position as 'unsustainable'.

The latest angry exchanges come at the end of a week dominated by a furious fight over the future of Britain.

Theresa May has vowed to protect the 'precious, precious union' as she insisted Brexit Britain must work as one nation to get the best deal

The Prime Minister made an emotional plea to Tory activists to fight for the Union today after gambling on a blunt rejection of SNP demands for a new referendum

Addressing Tory activists in Cardiff today, Mrs May said the SNP were 'obsessed' with independence at any cost and mocked the party for demanding power be transferred to Edinburgh just so they could hand it to Brussels.

Mrs May has gambled on standing up to the Scottish First Minister and yesterday firmly rejected her demand for a new referendum as soon as next autumn.

The SNP responding by claiming Mrs May was 'running scared' of a new referendum.

Speaking in Aberdeen, Ms Sturgeon said: 'The Prime Minister's position just now - and it's a position I don't think is sustainable - is that she's not even prepared to have the discussion.

'And that is putting her at odds not just with me or the independence case.

'It's putting her at odds with the democratically expressed will of the Scottish Parliament - and that should not be a comfortable place for her to be. I pretty certain it's not a sustainable place for her to be.'

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon shot straight back this afternoon with a claim the 'muddled' Prime Minister is at 'odds with democracy'

The Prime Minister told party activists in Cardiff that Brexit was being used a 'pretext to engineer a second independence referendum' by the SNP

In her speech to the Tory Spring Forum Mrs May said: 'The fact that more Scottish voters backed Scotland staying in the UK in 2014, than supported the UK staying in the EU in 2016 and that almost half a million independence supporters actually backed Brexit last year seems to count for nothing.

LORD HESELTINE'S WARNING TO MAY ON INDEPENDENCE Lord Heseltine has warned Theresa May Brexit always risked a 'fracture' in the Union. The grandee - sacked by Mrs May earlier this month over a Brexit rebellion - backed the PM on not granting a referendum now. But he said this did raise the question of holding one in future. He told the World at One: 'That was the Scottish National position before the referendum and it remains so. 'But I have to say that when it comes down to it I think the Prime Minister is absolutely right in what she says. She said two things: now is not the right time and secondly that the Scottish people are not in possession of the facts. 'Well I agree with both of those, but of course it does lead to the second questions in both cases. 'If now is not the right time, when is the right time and in what form? And then, as the question about not being in possession of the facts, well of course that completely undermines the [EU] referendum itself, because we certainly weren't in possession of the facts.' Advertisement

'It is now clear that using Brexit as the pretext to engineer a second independence referendum has been the SNP's sole objective ever since last June.'

The Prime Minister said she was determined to get a Brexit deal that worked in the interests of the country as a whole.

She said the coming negotiations were 'vital for everyone in the United Kingdom'.

Mrs May declared: 'We can only get that deal if we are united, as one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome.

'That is what we have always done when faced with challenges.

'We have pulled together as one and succeeded together. We are four nations, but at heart we are one people.

'As the Prime Minister of this United Kingdom, I will always ensure the voices and interests of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented as we negotiate to leave the EU.

'And I will always fight to strengthen and sustain this precious, precious Union.'

Mrs May has made clear she plans to hold off Nicola Sturgeon's plans of a second independence referendum for as long as six years.

The Prime Minister has insisted the Scottish people have to know what Brexit will look like before another vote can even be contemplated.

Mrs May's rebuke comes after Ms Sturgeon, pictured today at the SNP conference in Aberdeen, dramatically hardened her threats about a referendum on Monday

Mrs May plans to call the First Minister's bluff by challenging her to prove she has a 'cast iron' mandate for a new referendum at the Scottish elections in 2021, reports the Telegraph.

Furious Nicola Sturgeon claimed the rebuke was 'undemocratic'. But the Prime Minister has said she would not begin talks on a referendum until the UK has had time to settle after Brexit, which would be around two years.

To complete the formalities needed to organise another referendum could take another 18 months, meaning another Scottish vote on independence could be pushed back as far as 2023.

Mrs May's rebuke comes after Ms Sturgeon dramatically hardened her threats about a referendum on Monday, insisting Scotland must be given a choice about its future.

She called for a ballot to be held between Autumn next year and the following spring. But that would be before the two year Brexit process is complete - a prospect that is completely unacceptable to Downing Street.

Ms Sturgeon has accused Mrs May of 'untenable' behaviour and 'running scared' during a bitter war of words between the two leaders.

The First Minster accused Mrs May of 'untenable' behaviour and 'running scared' during a bitter war of words between the two leaders .

Four polls this week have delivered serious blows to Nicola Sturgeon's ambition of Scotland becoming independent

The clash erupted when Mrs May took to the airwaves to warn Mrs Sturgeon that 'now is not the time' to push for a ballot on breaking up the UK.

The Westminster government has the power to prevent a binding poll being held.

But rather than blocking it outright - which ministers fear would just fuel nationalist sentiment - Mrs May is deploying more subtle tactics to kick it into the long grass.

As she prepares to embark on potentially fraught talks with Brussels, Mrs May told the First Minister that they should be 'working together, not pulling apart'.

'We should be working together, not pulling apart. Now is not the time,' she said.

Theresa May plans to hold off Nicola Sturgeon's plans of a second independence referendum for as long as six years

Ms Sturgeon hit back by warning any block on a referendum would be 'untenable, undemocratic and totally unsustainable'.

Speaking at First Minister's questions in Holyrood, she said: 'If on Wednesday next week this Parliament votes for an independence referendum to give the people of Scotland a choice over the future of their future - will the Conservatives block the will of this Parliament? Or are the Conservatives running scared?'

In an interview later with BBC Scotland, Ms Sturgeon said: 'This is like winding the clock back to the bad old days of Margaret Thatcher.

'It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish Government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament.

'History may look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the union was sealed.'

Ms Sturgeon responded to the PM on Twitter today saying it would be 'undemocratic' to block a referendum happening

The First Minister has already suffered a series of setbacks in her campaign to tear up the UK.

An array of surveys have shown there is still a solid majority in Scotland in favour of remaining in the union - and people do not want a ballot staged before Brexit happens.

Meanwhile, Spain has flatly dismissed the prospect of Scotland being allowed to keep EU membership if it breaks away.

A confident Prime Minister, boosted today by news that the historic Brexit Bill has gained Royal Assent and became law, swiped at Ms Sturgeon for manufacturing a row about Brexit to further her independence ambitions.

She said 'all our energies should be focused on our negotiations with the EU about our future relationship'.

Nicola Sturgeon, seen at the Scottish Parliament today, caused a storm this week by declaring her determination to hold a second referendum as early as Autumn next year

Ms Sturgeon is facing a coordinated attack from the government to fend off her demands for an early vote on independence

'To be talking about an independence referendum will make it more difficult for us to be able to get the right deal for Scotland, and the right deal for the UK,' she said.

'And more than that, I think it wouldn't be fair to the people of Scotland because they're being asked to make a crucial decision without all the necessary information - without knowing what the future partnership would be, or what the alternative of an independent Scotland would look like.'

STURGEON MUST ASK SCOTS PARLIAMENT BEFORE GOING TO UK GOVERNMENT There is a strict process that needs to be followed to hold a binding referendum: The First Minister must first get the consent of the Scottish Parliament. While she does not have an overall majority, this will be straightforward. In 2014, this was followed by a written agreement between London and Edinburgh known as the 'Edinburgh Agreement', setting the terms for the referendum taking place. Westminster must then give permission as constitutional reform is not devolved to Scotland. This means a 'section 30' order must be agreed in Parliament under the Scotland Act. If powers are passed to Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament will pass a law setting out the rules of the referendum - including the date, question and franchise. Advertisement

She added: 'This union we have is very precious. We've been joined together for over 300 years. We've had a great history together - I believe we have a great future together.

'Together, we should put our energies into making sure we get the right deal for Scotland and for the whole of the UK.'

In a coordinated attack on the SNP position, Scottish Secretary David Mundell and Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson held a news conference in Edinburgh later.

Mr Mundell delivered the bluntest rejection yet of Ms Sturgeon's demands, making clear that even if the Scottish Parliament approves a call for a referendum, the Westminster government will refuse to pass the Section 30 order needed to stage a binding vote.

'This argument isn't about mandates, it's about holding a referendum on established criteria which were set on in the Edinburgh Agreement,' he said.

'That established that a referendum must be legal, fair and decisive.

'The proposal brought forward is not fair, people will not be able to make an informed choice.

'Neither is there public or political support for such a referendum.

'Therefore we will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a section 30 agreement and any request at this time will be declined.'

Speaker John Bercow announced that the Brexit Bill had received Royal Assent - formally becoming an Act of Parliament - in the Commons this morning

Ms Sturgeon fired back with an official statement of her own.

She said: 'If the Prime Minister refuses to engage on the terms of a referendum before Brexit takes place then she is effectively trying to block the people of Scotland having a choice over their future. That would be a democratic outrage.

'It is for the Scottish Parliament  not Downing Street  to determine the timing of a referendum, and the decision of the Scottish Parliament must be respected.

'It would be outrageous for the Scottish Parliament to be frozen out of the process.'

Posting on Twitter, Ms Sturgeon insisted she only wanted a referendum when the terms of Brexit are clear and 'before it is too late to choose an alternative path'.

'If the Tories refuse to do so, they would effectively be blocking Scotland's right to choose when the Brexit terms (are) clear.

'This would be undemocratic given @scotgov (the Scottish Government's) clear mandate and also proof positive that the Tories fear the verdict of the Scottish people.'

The Queen, pictured visiting a museum in Chelsea today, has given Royal Assent to the Brexit Bill, paving the way for divorce from the EU

Research for the Scottish Daily Mail suggested 53 per cent want to stay in the union once you exclude those yet to decide. By a margin of 46 per cent to 41 per cent people oppose Ms Sturgeon's call for a referendum to be held before the divorce process from the EU is complete.

A YouGov poll for The Times put the majority against independence even higher at 57-43.

ComRes research for the Sun found just 25 per cent of Scots thought the country should be fully independent, against 58 per cent who thought it should not and 17 per cent who were not sure.

Meanwhile, the huge annual Scottish Social Attitudes Survey included evidence of a sharp rise in Euroscepticism.

Two thirds of the public north of the border would want Brussels to have reduced powers or for the UK to leave the EU completely, according to the research.

The last referendum in 2014 - which the SNP said would settle the issue for a 'generation' - delivered a 55 per cent majority for staying the UK, equivalent to two million votes.

SNP sources have been trying to play down reports that Ms Sturgeon will downscale her ambitions to Scotland joining the European Free Trade Association if it becomes independent.

Ms Sturgeon, pictured at Holyrood today, has been accused of manufacturing a row over Brexit in order to further her ambitions of breaking up the union

Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are all in that group, giving them access to the single market.

But they have to comply with rules imposed by Brussels and have no real input into legislation which is drawn up in the Belgian capital.

Earlier today, history was made after theQueen gave Royal Assent to the Brexit Bill - clearing the way for Mrs May to trigger the divorce from Brussels.

Speaker John Bercow told the Commons that the monarch has formally signed off the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.

But although the PM now has the powers to invoke the two-year Article 50 process for leaving the Brussels club, she has indicated she will wait until the end of the month to do so.
An intoxicated man was filmed launching a drunken attack on his neighbours car.

Bad neighbour, Michael Jackson, 26, from Sunderland, was caught on camera swilling a can of lager while trying to damage his neighbours property.

Walking past his foes Renault Megane, Jackson decided to beat it.

An un-smooth criminal feuding with his neighbour decided to take matters into his own hands when he drunkenly attacked his foes Renault Megane parked on a driveway - causing 839 damage

Throwing cans of lager at he car Jackson failed to inflict any significant damage with most bouncing off the wall.

The un-smooth criminal drunkenly battered his neighbours car - all while being filmed on the house CCTV.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal damage to property valued under 5000 and was handed a fine for the outburst.

Prosecuting solicitor, Ms Johnson, said that at 2.30am on January 15, neighbours were woken up by the sound of banging outside in the street.

Jackson pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal damage to property valued under 5000 and was handed a fine for the outburst

The man looked outside and saw Jackson 'attacking' the car.

During the hearing, Jackson's defence solicitor, Mr Robinson, explained that the pair had a long running feud dating back to 2009.

The defence also disputed the amount of damage inflicted and the 839 total to pay for the repairs.
The morning after a hard-fought, historic election win, one might have expected Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to permit himself a brief lie-in. It usually takes Holland about 90 days to form a coalition government and this time the maths is more complicated than usual.

But Mr Rutte did no such thing. The dour 50-year-old bachelor, who could pass for actor Benedict Cumberbatch's geeky older brother, spent yesterday morning, as he does every Thursday, teaching 'civic' lessons at a high school in the Hague.

Meanwhile, his main challenger, the elaborately coiffed, Islam-bashing xenophobe Geert Wilders, left his high-security safehouse in his rocket-proof car to travel to the Dutch parliament and proclaim a victory of sorts, too.

Dutch politics could hardly be more different from the British model. And that is why those commentators gleefully painting Mr Rutte's re-election as a victory for the liberal status quo are missing the point.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the VVD Liberal party appears before his supporters in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday

Yesterday morning, Mr Rutte's phone was jammed with fellow-EU leaders ringing to congratulate him on reversing the tide of Brexit, Trump and December's Italian referendum, which cost former prime minister Matteo Renzi his job. He himself saluted voters for 'saying 'whoa!' to the wrong kind of populism'.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, applauded the Netherlands for voting 'overwhelmingly for the values Europe stands for'. But if EU leaders take this as their cue to resume federalism as usual, they'll be making a grave mistake.

For, just as Ukip transformed the political landscape in Britain by forcing last year's referendum while failing dismally to make inroads at Westminster, so there were strong echoes of that in the Netherlands. But instead of membership of the EU, the campaign has been utterly dominated by questions of national identity in a country where 20 per cent of the population is immigrants or the children of immigrants.

That rises to almost 50 per cent in Rotterdam, where Mr Wilders's PVV party did particularly well, winning a high share of the vote.

That immigration was the focus of this election was entirely down to Mr Wilders  as was the presence of a huge contingent of the world's media to cover an election that would usually be of little interest. We had all come to see how Mr Wilders would fare in the first of this year's three landmark European elections.

Next stop: France, where Marine Le Pen's National Front is likely to be in the final round of April's presidential election; then Germany in September, where the hard-Right AFD will seek to make inroads at the expense of Chancellor Merkel's centre-Right CDU.

In both cases there is much alarmist hype about the challengers' chances of victory. In both cases, especially Germany, that is most unlikely. But, like Mr Wilders, they are a symptom of the depth of popular resentment towards mainstream modern politics.

Right-wing populist Geert Wilders (pictured) was less successful than expected and lost the election

Wilders's odious blend of populism, nationalism and downright racism  including a threat to 'ban' the Koran and his insistence that Islam is incompatible with liberty  failed to win in a country often seen as the most socially liberal in the world. But nor was it defeated.

Compared with Britain's verdict in last year's EU referendum, this election is indeed Double Dutch.

In the early hours of yesterday, most of the 28 parties chasing 150 parliamentary seats were holding some sort of victory rally. But the truth is, Mr Rutte has actually seen a fall in his share of parliamentary seats  from 41 to 33  while Mr Wilders and his far-Right PVV are expected to have 20, a modest rise of five (though final figures have yet to be confirmed).

It was the worst night in history for the Dutch Labour Party, all but obliterated (Jeremy Corbyn, take note), but a dazzling one for a young outfit called the Green Left, which suddenly has 14 seats.

'We have Rutte and sections of the media saying the Dutch have 'stopped populism', but this is problematic because Wilders did not lose,' says Matthijs Rooduijn, political analyst and lecturer at the University of Utrecht.

'He still leads the second party in the Netherlands and, most importantly, all the Right-wing parties have incorporated elements of his campaign. It has all been about the national identity.'

He points to the open letter that Mr Rutte wrote during the campaign, implicitly aimed at immigrants. In it, he warned those who criticise Dutch values to 'behave normally or go', and concluded: 'If you don't like it here, leave the country.'

Not to be outdone, Mr Rutte's centre-Right rivals, the Christian Alliance, included a manifesto pledge to make all Dutch children start the school day by standing and singing the national anthem. Even the centre-Left parties have been campaigning on a ticket of 'progressive patriotism'.

Mr Rutte (pictured) spoke during the election night in The Hague on Wednesday, March 15

If this stuff had been peddled by Mr Trump, there would have been howls of liberal anguish from the usual quarters. But it is now part of mainstream Dutch discourse.

By common consensus, Mr Rutte would have lost more seats had it not been for an issue that has enhanced his nationalist credentials in recent days. When two Turkish ministers arrived to rally expatriate Netherlands-based Turks to vote in a Turkish referendum that would extend President Erdogan's powers, Mr Rutte sent them packing.

Mr Erdogan responded by comparing the Dutch to the Nazis  a particularly toxic charge against a nation that suffered horribly under German occupation.

Previously, the donnish Mr Rutte might have been tempted to ignore the insults. Instead, the former personnel manager accused Mr Erdogan of being 'increasingly hysterical' and refused to yield an inch. The more Turkey stamped its feet, barring Dutch diplomats  along with a consignment of Dutch cows  and formally 'untwinning' Istanbul from Rotterdam, the more the Dutch public applauded their leader.

With violent scenes as Dutch police fought Turkish protesters on the streets of Rotterdam, the issue should have played well for Mr Wilders. Instead, it enhanced the standing of Mr Rutte.

So what next for Mr Wilders? According to Wouter de Winther, political editor of Dutch daily De Telegraaf, he is not going anywhere: 'He likes to be completely in charge of his party and he does all the talking. In a way, he is happier without lots of MPs to manage as it's all about him anyway.'

By common consent, Mr Wilders ran a lacklustre campaign, boycotting most of the debates and preferring to communicate, Donald Trump-style, via Twitter.

This was, in part, down to security fears. He leads a peculiar nomadic life thanks to the various fatwas and death threats on his unmissable peroxide head.

Forced to move between safehouses, he sees his wife only once a week. Most of his days are spent in his office in the securest corner of the Dutch parliament building.

Worried that this existence is having an effect on his waistline, he has apparently taken to sitting at his raised desk while riding an exercise bike beneath a portrait of his hero, Sir Winston Churchill.

Earlier this week, I watched him surface in public to cast his vote at a primary school in a new-build suburb of the Hague. A posse of four sharp-suited, crop-haired, armed police clung to him like limpets while teams of uniformed police politely corralled the Press and onlookers using their bicycles. All very Dutch.

PVV leader Geert Wilders spoke to the press on election night in The Hague, on March 15, 2017

A small crowd of school parents had gathered to watch him. One or two voiced concerns that the country's top terrorist target should be at their children's school.

What was most interesting, however, was the number of people happy to voice open support for Mr Wilders and his policy.

'I voted for him, more as a protest vote than anything else,' said crane operator Rob Vreman, 37. 'I don't agree with what he says about Muslims. But it's time politicians started keeping their word.'

A trip around the Hague neatly illustrates the polar divisions within Dutch society. A 20-minute walk from the city centre takes you to Schilderswijk, once a poor white area, now almost entirely Moroccan. Mohammed, 40, is happy to chat at Arkoubi's fish shop.

He deplores Mr Wilders' views on Islam but concurs on the subject of Europe. 'He is right about all the immigration coming from Eastern Europe and I would like to see us out of the euro,' he says.

His Dutch-born assistant, Karim, 25, agrees.

'Not all Dutch people are like Wilders,' he says. 'But I admire what Britain has done with Brexit. I'd like to see us do the same.'

Across town, the seaside district of Duindorp is very white and very pro-Wilders. 'I'm not sure I'd want him running the country but I voted for him to shake things up,' says pharmacy worker Fabiena, 26.

The place feels like Clacton, home to Ukip's solitary MP, Douglas Carswell. An elderly crowd is sitting outside a cafe. Who do they favour? 'Wilders!' they cry in unison. Why? 'Immigration.'

These issues are not going away following yesterday's outcome. Anyone who sees the Dutch result as a ringing endorsement of the same old EU is deluding themselves. Rather, the direction of travel is slowly shifting  and it is shifting away from the status quo.

Expect more of the same as the 2017 election triathlon continues.
A transgender teen was allegedly punched in the face multiple times at a Washington middle school.

Lindsey Smith, 13, has been the victim of ongoing bullying this year at McLoughlin Middle School in Vancouver, Washington, according to a Facebook post from her aunt, Leslie Goodnight, that has since gone viral.

On Wednesday, Goodnight said a boy punched her niece in the face several times, causing her nose to bleed.

Leslie Goodnight says her niece, 13-year-old Lindsey Smith, (above) has been the victim of bullying. Goodnight posted this photo that shows a bruise forming on Smith's cheek

The teenagers story of bullying went viral after Goodnight posted this message on Facebook

Goodnight (pictured) criticized McLoughlin Middle School's response to her niece's attack

'Today a male student walked down the halls of the school and was yelling my niece's name and saying "she is a boy" and "she has a D***" and "she has to go to the Dr's to tell them she's a girl" and the male student walked up to her and punched her in the face 2 to 3 times!' wrote Goodnight on her Facebook page.

Photos attached to Goodnight's post show a bruise forming on Smith's cheek.

McLoughlin Middle School officials did not contact the police "because the cameras could not clearly see what happened" and "three students claimed [Smith] pushed the male student first", Goodnight continued.

Amanda Richter, a spokesperson for Vancouver Public Schools, told The Columbian that the school did take "immediate appropriate disciplinary action against the aggressor".

However, the district could not detail the action taken because of student privacy laws.

McLoughlin Middle School (above) officials say they disciplined Smith's attacker

Smith, a seventh grader, (above) began her transition from male to female in fifth grade

School staff met Thursday to discuss its response, and a letter explaining the incident will be sent to parents.

'She has been harassed relentlessly almost daily since the beginning of last school year and nothing is getting better,' Goodnight told The Columbian.

Smith, a seventh grader, began her transition from male to female in fifth grade, Goodnight said.

Washington law requires public schools to protect transgender students from discrimination.

Goodnight said she plans to work with Smith's mother to apply for a boundary exemption that would allow her to switch middle schools.
Harrowing footage has captured the sickening moment a FDNY medic and mother-of-five was run over and killed by a man who stole her ambulance, leaving her distraught partner trying to attack the carjacker.

The chaotic scene unfolded in a matter of minutes on Thursday evening around 7:10pm in the Bronx after the two medics were flagged down by members of the public and told a man was riding on the back bumper of their rig.

The two women were responding to an emergency call for a pregnant woman at the time.

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Yadira Arroyo (left), a 44-year-old mother of five children, was killed Thursday night after Jose Gonzalez (right) carjacked her ambulance and ran her over

Arroyo's body is seen in the street after Gonzalez stole her ambulance and ran her over. The scene was captured by a bystander

Yadira Arroyo, 44, a 14-year veteran of New York's Bravest, pulled over and the man- identified as 25-year-old Jose Gonzalez - tried to grab someone's bag, according to witnesses.

Moments before the deadly incident, Pix 11 reports that Gonzalez had been going door to door in the neighborhood begging.

As Arroyo attempted to intervene, Gonzalez overpowered her following a brief struggle and jumped behind the wheel of the vehicle, where Arroyo's partner, Monique Williams, 31, was sitting in the passenger side.

Shocking cellphone video shows the ambulance reverse and plow straight into Arroyo, who tries to desperately hold onto the still open door, leaving her for dead in the middle of the road.

Arroyo and her partner were driving to a call when someone alerted them that a man was riding on their back bumper

Arroyo got out of the ambulance to confront the man when he jumped into the driver's seat and pulled away - running her over

Arroyo's partner Monique Williams (third from left) started kicking Gonzalez in the head after he was arrested

Without stopping, Gonzalez then mindlessly drives straight into a parked car before being arrested by a passing off-duty MTA K-9 Officer Danny McCabe and members of the public.

As dozens of police arrive on the scene, Williams rushes to help the stricken Arroyo and screams out loud 'My partner, my partner', before launching herself on Gonzalez, who is handcuffed on the ground.

Sympathetic police attempted to restrain her before doing their best to try and calm her down.

Arroyo was rushed to nearby Jacobi Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. Williams was treated for minor injuries sustained when the carjacker hit her during his brief attempt to flee.

'They were screaming. They were crying. Everyone was trying to help, said witness Virgilio German to the New York Post.

A solemn guard of honor was laid on later that evening for the fallen officer by members of the FDNY as her body was brought to the Medical Examiner's Officer in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez was arrested and now faces charges of murder, grand larceny and operating a motor vehicle while impaired by drugs.

Police say he is an emotionally-disturbed person with a criminal history of 31 prior arrests. Twenty one of those arrests are sealed, but the 10 that aren't include charges of robbery, assault, criminal mischief, criminal possession of marijuana, public lewdness, graffiti and sale of marijuana.

He reportedly lives in an affordable housing apartment opened in 2015 by Volunteers of America for chronically homeless people, according to the New York Daily News.

The New York Times spoke with two relatives of Gonzalez, who said he had been depressed since his mother died as a child.

He was escorted by police from the 43rd Precinct early Friday morning to be booked in jail.

According to ABC 7, Gonzalez muttered to himself as EMTs watched him being put in a police cruiser.

'I'm innocent. I didn't do nothing. I'm innocent,' Gonzalez said.

Some of the EMTs yelled at Gonzalez as he was led past them.

'Youre a piece of s***,' one EMT said, according to the Daily News.

'Theres a special place in hell for people like you,' another added.

Bystanders rushed to help the two EMTs after the incident

A bereft Monique Williams stands over her colleague's body following the carjacking - which unfolded in a matter of mere moments

Law enforcement officials and bystanders are seen on the right holding down the suspect. Williams (center) bends down over her partner, Arroyo

Screaming out loud, 'My partner, my partner' Willaims (third from left) launches herself on the suspect before police rush to stop her

An officer is seen on the far left restrains Williams after she tried to attack the suspect

Officers attempt to pull Williams away from the scene after the fatal encounter

Witness Anis Nagi, 40, said that he flagged down the ambulance when they saw Gonzalez on the back.

'The female EMT came out of the vehicle,' Nagi told the New York Daily News. 'She left the door open.'

According to Nagi, Gonzalez jumped from the back, tried to mug someone and as Arroyo attempted to stop him he got behind the wheel and plowed into her.

'He reversed so hard and she was dragged,' said Nagi. 'He ran over her and she went under the wheels.'

Gonzalez - who has a lengthy criminal record, managed to get 20 feet before crashing and being dragged from the ambulance and subdued by Officer McCabe and other Good Samaritans.

'He was incoherent and talking to himself,' a witness said.

Williams, who had exited the crashed rig, then runs to her fallen colleague's aid and as she realizes there is nothing to be done lets out a harrowing wail and runs to kick Gonzalez in the head.

'She was screaming, "my partner, my partner!" She was screaming hysterically. I can't forget her screaming,' said office manager Nancy Montavo to the Daily News.

Arroyo, a mother of five, was a 14-year veteran of the FDNY

Arroyo is pictured above in social media posts after her death

A makeshift memorial was set up for Arroyo after her tragic death Thursday night

A flag was being flown at half staff at an EMS station in New York City on Friday

'All the police came running and they put her in an ambulance.'

Sources at the FDNY said that they do not blame Williams for her reaction.

'Makes sense, the guy just ran over her partner,' an FDNY source told the Post. 'Wouldn't blame her for wanting to kick his a**.'

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the force was in mourning and praised both EMTs.

'They were acting very brave,' he said. 'They certainly wanted to continue on their way to that call. The person had no business being in this ambulance.'

Nigro added, 'No matter how many times we do this, it doesn't make it any easier.'

FDNY members salute the body of Arroyo as it arrived at the Medical Examiners Office in New York City Thursday night

Yadira Arroyo's body is lifted from the ambulance draped in the Stars and Stripes

Wearing their dress uniform, members of the FDNY salute Arroyo's body as it was taken inside

EMTs saluted as her body was taken out of an ambulance and into the Medical Examiner's Office

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where he saluted Arroyo as a hero.

De Blasio said that the mother was, 'lost in the line of duty, bravely doing her job, encountering the kind of danger our EMTs should not have to confront.'

'She started her shift today like every other today, and then a senseless act of violence takes her life,' de Blasio said of the victim.

The family is going through 'unspeakable grief,' added the mayor.

De Blasio offered a 'special deep thank you' to Officer McCabe.

'I want to thank those Good Samaritans who helped apprehend the perpetrator,' Mayor de Blasio said. 'A lot of heroism was on display amidst a great tragedy.'

Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted 'EMTs are heroes who help countless New Yorkers every day. Tonight's tragedy in the Bronx is horrible. My deepest sympathies to the family.'

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (second from right) is seen speaking with staff at Jacobi Medical Center, where Arroyo was pronounced dead

Police are seen just a few hours after the incident on Thursday night gathering evidence at the intersection between White Plains Road and Watson Avenue in the Bronx

The shocking video was uploaded to Twitter by a user who goes by the Twitter handle @therealswavyjay.

He was later identified by the Daily News as 20-year-old Justin Lopez.

Lopez was filming while his brother was behind the wheel of the car. They were driving toward the ambulance in the waning moments of the event and in the immediate aftermath.

'I was coming from the street, up to the red light and I just saw the ambulance, the sirens and lights, and I told my brother look something's happening, and then somebody just hopped in, and then he hit two cars and ran over the person,' he said.

'I realized he was hijacking the car.'

Arroyo is the eighth EMT to die in the line of duty - and the third woman to die - according to NBC New York.
The fish and chip shop favourite haddock is set to get more expensive after scientists discovered British stocks are lower than expected.

The permitted catch of the fish from the North Sea and waters off the west of Scotland has been cut by 47per cent as a result.

This means supplies of haddock will be in short supply, while restaurants and supermarkets will have to rely on more expensive imports from Iceland.

In short supply: The permitted catch of haddock from the North Sea has been cut by 47per cent after scientists discovered British stocks are lower than expected

The fish is a popular choice with consumers as it is one of the UKs big five seafood species along with cod, tuna, salmon and prawns.

But British haddock from three North Sea and West of Scotland fisheries has now been removed from the green list of sustainable fish to eat, which is compiled by the Marine Conservation Society. (MCS)

They have been downgraded because stock numbers in 2016 were below the recommended level and action was needed to increase the number of fish of breeding age, the MCS said.

Two of the fisheries are now rated amber - scoring just four in a scale of one to five, where one is the most sustainable - in the MCS Good Fish Guide.

The shortages could lead to a price increase in fish and chip shops and supermarkets

Bernadette Clarke, the MCS Good Fish Guide manager, said: It is probable that haddock prices will rise, it is a matter of supply and demand.

These ratings change has come about because scientific perception of the stock has changed.

Compared to 2015, the stock numbers in 2016 were below the recommended level and at the point where action is now needed to increase the number of fish of breeding age.

As a result, the haddock catch from these British waters has come down from 74,800 tonnes last year to 39,400 tonnes in 2017.

There is more positive news for some other fisheries, with scampi from Farn Deeps fishery being upgraded from the lowest rating of five - a fish to avoid - to a four thanks to better management, though it is still some way off being sustainable.

There are also improvements for scampi fisheries in the west of Scotland, Clyde and Jura catch areas in the latest list from the society.

People buying American lobster are advised to choose ones which come from fisheries with a MSC certification, which means they implement stronger management to protect stocks and habitat and prevent bycatch.

The MCS also has ratings for different types of tuna from around the world and different methods of catching them, including nets, long lines and pole and line fisheries.
A mayor from New Jersey and his terminally ill son were treated to an early Saint Patrick's Day meal Thursday night at the White House.

Republican Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O'Brien said the White House 'moved heaven and earth' to get his 42-year-old son to the dinner with President Donald Trump and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

Patrick Sean O'Brien suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a neurodegenerative disease.

He is a filmmaker whose documentary 'TransFatty Lives' is a first-person chronicle of his battle. He is known as 'TransFatty,' a DJ and Internet celebrity based in New York.

Patrick Sean O'Brien, left, suffers from ALS and made a documentary, 'TransFatty Lives,' about his experienced with the disease. He dined at the White House with his father, standing to his right, and Irish PM Enda Kenny, standing to the left of Trump

O'Brien, in a scene from his documentary which Variety called 'an unusually playful and emotionally involving first-person chronicle of serious illness,' sat naked in his wheelchair outside of the WH to raise ALS awareness. Pictured: O'Brien family at Tribeca Film Festival

In one scene of the film, O'Brien sits naked in his wheelchair outside of the White House to raise awareness of ALS.

His father said Trump shook his son's hand as did Kenny and Kenny's wife.

'It doesn't happen often in your lifetime that you get to meet the president. The whole White House staff was so accommodating,' said the elder O'Brien.

'It was a heck of a night for a father and son,' he said.

O'Brien's father, the Republican mayor of Sayreville, New Jersey, said he 'moved heaven and earth' to get him and his son to the White House

The WH dinner with Trump and the Irish PM functioned as an early celebration of Saint Patrick's Day. Note that the father and son are wearing green

O'Brien said his son was diagnosed in 2005 and was given no more than five years to live.

He's now paralyzed and on a ventilator. He was brought to the White House Thursday from the center for ALS patients in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he lives.

The Republican said Thursday's dinner at the White House had special meaning for them.

His son used to live on Manhattan's Lower East Side and the two would celebrate Saint Patrick's Day together in New York City.

O'Brien said making it to the dinner was a tribute to Saint Patrick and all the people who helped them get there.

The documentary Patrick made, 'TransFatty Lives,' details how he deals with his ALS diagnosis.

He is called 'TransFatty' after the doughnut, a foodstuff that can have a high transfat content, People reported.

The film's website says Patrick formerly 'spent his days as a beer-drinking creative force, making art films about perverts, vulnerable souls and Howard Johnson's restaurants.'

But the film 'captures the emotion, humor and absurdity of real life as he makes art, gets political, falls in love, fathers a son and fights extreme depression and paranoia.'

Variety wrote that the film 'is an unusually playful and emotionally involving first-person chronicle of serious illness.'
The former vice captain of a western Sydney school claims deradicalisation programs ostracises Muslim students and does Islamic State recruiters a 'favour'.

Jihad Rifi has criticised the government-funded program rolled out to 'high risk' schools in an interview with 60 Minutes.

Principal Chris Griffiths and his deputy, Jourmana Dennaoiu, were stood down from their positions at the Punchbowl school earlier this month after refusing to take part in the program.

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Former principal Chris Griffiths was fired from 'high risk' school Punchbowl Boys High in western Sydney earlier this month

Jihad Rifi, once the vice captain at embattled Punchbowl Boys High School, said a government-funded deradicalisation program alienates Muslim teenagers

But Mr Rifi says School Communities Working Together alienates Muslim teenagers and was 'doing recruiters a favour'.

'They detach us from the Australian society and they make us lose our sense of belonging,' he told Karl Stefanovic as part of the 60 Minutes investigation.

'If they've got no-one to turn to, then who are they going to turn to? I think we know the answer.'

Youth worker Sarkis Achmar, who specialises in youth at risk of radicalisation, said school yards had become a target.

But he said it was not solely an issue for Muslim youth, and extremism is growing.

Punchbowl Boys High School was earmarked as 'high risk' for radicalisation, but the school did not participate in a government-funded deradicalisation program

The Department of Education fired the principal (pictured) and deputy from their positions after investigating the complaints

'We've got to confront this thing head on, join together, as Australians,' Mr Achmar told Stefanovic.

'We're going to face atrocities that we thought would never be on Australian soil. I'm not fear-mongering, I'm not scaring, but I'm talking about this small percentage has a very large percentage impact.'

Mr Griffiths and his deputy were given the sack after the 'high-risk' school avoided participating in the government-funded deradicalisation program.

Women teachers had also allegedly been prevented from participating in official events such as the Year 12 graduation ceremony.

Students were also allegedly told to call police 'pigs'.

The Department of Education fired the principal and deputy from their positions after investigating the complaints.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Jihad Rafi.

60 Minutes airs 8.30pm this Sunday on Nine Network.
Prime ministers past and present and veteran comedian Barry Humphries gathered in Sydney to farewell legendary cartoonist Bill Leak, who died last week of a suspected heart attack.

Malcolm Turnbull praised the artist for standing up to Islamist terrorists and political correctness during a packed memorial service at Town Hall on Friday.

Senior Liberal figures including Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, former prime minister John Howard and independent senator Derryn Hinch also attended.

Mourners have gathered in Sydney to farewell cartoonist Bill Leak, who died last week of a suspected heart attack. Above, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull arrives at the memorial service at Sydney's Town Hall on Friday with wife Lucy

Television presenters Peta Credlin, (centre), and Paul Murray (right) arrive at the memorial service

ABC presenter Leigh Sales was among the mourners to farewell the cartoonist on Friday

Leak recently caused a storm of controversy for a cartoon of an Indigenous father holding a can of beer and asking a police officer the name of his own son.

A woman subsequently launched a race hate claim to the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Outside the service, one supporter held up a poster about the late cartoonist's interaction with Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

'Wanted: for the untimely death of Bill Leak and other crimes against western civilisation, Gillian Triggs, Tim Soutphomassine, 18C and their rotten commission,' it read.

Mr Turnbull, who was painted by his friend of 30 years for an Archibald Prize portrait in 1994, spoke at the event.

'When he defied and mocked the threats of Islamist extremism, he was threatened,' the prime minister said.

Leak, 61, died in Gosford Hospital last Friday of a suspected heart attack

Past prime ministers (John Howard pictured right) and present (Malcolm Turnbull, left) attended

Australian comedian and close friend Barry Humphries arrives at the memorial service

Humphries is seen speaking with reporters ahead of the service

Andrew Bolt is seen arriving at the event to farewell the 61-year-old father-of three on Friday

Leak caused a storm of controversy for a cartoon of an Indigenous father holding a can of beer and asking a police officer the name of his own son. Pictured, Independent Senator Derryn Hinch arrives at the service

'Advised to move to a safer location and then in very recent times, he was accused of racism because of a cartoon.

'A cartoon that united Australians, united them in defence of freedom, freedom to draw, freedom to agree with him, freedom to disagree with him.

'Political correctness did not silence Bill any more than terrorists did. Every cartoon he drew was an exercise of freedom.'

Last week he praised the cartoonist for being a 'good-humoured sceptic of anybody and anything in authority' throughout his 'far too short life'.

Leak (pictured) worked at The Australian newspaper for two decades, winning nine Walkley awards and 19 Stanley awards for his work

Outside the service, one supporter held up a poster about the late cartoonist's interaction with Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act

Senator Derryn Hinch also paid his respects to the legendary cartoonist on Friday

Leak was investigated for a possible breach of Section 18C over a cartoon about indigenous parental neglect. Pictured, another of his famous works

The prime minister is also reportedly set to fast-track efforts to change race-hate laws.

Leak was investigated for a possible breach of Section 18C over the cartoon about indigenous parental neglect, but the complaint was subsequently dropped.

Conservative figures, including federal coalition politicians, have used the case to argue the section must be changed.

Barry Humphries, the veteran satirist behind Sir Les Paterson and Dame Edna, told mourners he would rather be at the funeral of Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs, to loud laughter and applause.

'You see I really hate talking at memorial services,' he said.

'I suppose, the only one I would have enjoyed would have been the funeral of the Human Rights Commissioner.'

Humphries spoke at the Sydney launch of Leak's book of cartoons, Trigger Warning, only a few days before his death and was upset at the cartoonist being called before the commission over his cartoon of a drunk Aboriginal father.

Leak, 61, died at Gosford Hospital on the New South Wales Central Coast last Friday.

Conservative figures, including federal coalition politicians, have used the cartoon case to argue the section must be changed. Pictured, veteran journalist Errol Simper

Former Federal Labor Leader Mark Latham was among the mourners

Former prime minister Tony Abbott arrives. Leak was investigated for a possible breach of Section 18C over a cartoon about indigenous parental neglect, but the complaint was later dropped
A car has smashed through the barriers of the sixth floor of a hospital carpark and been left dangling precariously at the edge of the building.

The teal-coloured Ford Falcon was discovered teetering off the multi-storey parking garage of Mater Hospital in central Brisbane on Friday at 4pm.

The male driver is believed to have mistaken the accelerator for the brake and smashed through the barriers on the level six parking lot.

It appears the driver had accidentally accelerated and broken through the barriers of the multi-level parking garage

The car was noticed by onlookers who shared images on social media of it dangling off the edge

Nearly half of the car's body broke through the barricades and teetered over the surrounding area.

Emergency crews quickly responded to the incident to ensure no one was hurt.

A police spokesperson said that the car was unoccupied when authorities arrived on scene.

Mater Hospital stated the driver was found safe and well and the car has been towed back inside the multi-level parking garage.

The teal-coloured car had smashed through the barricades on the sixth level
A seven-year-old girl is fighting for her life after being diagnosed with tetanus and is reportedly not vaccinated against the deadly disease.

The New South Wales girl is critically ill in hospital with the potentially fatal bacterial infection.

The girl was initially treated at Lismore Base Hospital before being transferred on Wednesday to Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in a critical condition, health authorities say.

The seven-year-old New South Wales girl was reportedly not vaccinated (Stock Image)

The bacterial infection, which can be transmitted from soil through a cut or wound, causes painful muscle spasms particularly in the neck and jaw and can lead to breathing difficulties.

There is no cure and treatment focuses on managing the complications.

The ABC says the girl was not immunised against tetanus, which pro-vaccination advocates say is easily preventable.

Lady Cilento Children's Hospital on Friday said the girl's parents had asked for 'complete privacy'.

The north coast region has some of the lowest vaccination rates in Australia.

Controversial anti-vaccination advocate David Wolfe on Thursday held a sold-out seminar in the nearby town of Mullumbimby.

The north coast region of New South Wales has some of the lowest vaccination rates across the nation (Stock Image)

Alison Gaylard, from the Northern Rivers Vaccination Supporters, criticised Byron Shire Council for allowing the controversial US speaker to use the Mullumbimby Civic Hall.

'It just seems tragic that while he could have been talking about his stance on vaccinations, there was an unvaccinated child being hospitalised with such an easily preventable disease,' Ms Gaylard told AAP on Friday.

Anti-vaccinations views are particularly entrenched in the area and the community needs extra government support to deal with the issue, she said.

The child was critcally ill when she was transported from Lismore Base Hospital to Brisbane Lady Cilento Children's Hospital

'It's time the council takes a stance. We're not getting any help from them or from local MPs.

'I'd call on the federal and state health minister to come here, walk in our shoes, and see what is happening here and how the pro-vaccination message isn't getting through.

'I could cry because it feels like we're failing children.'
The father of Warriena Wright who died after falling off Gable Tostee's balcony in 2014 has spoken out for the first time since her death.

Warren Wright, 58, a semi-retired electrician from Levin, on New Zealand's North Island, blasted Mr Tostee who was found not guilty of Miss Wright's death last year.

Mr Wright branded the 30-year-old bodybuilding enthusiast an 'arrogant son-of-a-b****'.

Warren Wright, 58, the father of 26-year-old Warriena Wright who fell to her death from Gable Tostee's balcony in 2014, has spoken about the incident for the first time

Mr Wright branded Mr Tostee, who has turned into a public figure after being found not guilty of causing Miss Wright's death last year, 'an arrogant son-of-a-b****'

Mr Tostee was charged with murder and manslaughter but found not guilty on both counts in October after a jury deliberated for four days.

Following the verdict, questions were raised as to whether the charges were appropriate - given Mr Tostee did not directly cause Miss Wright's death.

Audio recordings taken by Mr Tostee showed he struggled with his 26-year-old Tinder date before locked the intoxicated woman on his balcony.

In an attempt to escape, she fell 14 storeys to her death.

Mr Wright told The Sydney Morning Herald: 'Charge him with the right thing  false imprisonment resulting in death.

'I don't know what the charge is in Australia, but that is what he is guilty of.

'That and being an arrogant son-of-a-b****, but I guess there's no crime against that.'

Mr Wright also criticised prosecutors, saying he believed Mr Tostee should never have been accused of murder (pictured, Mr Tostee and Miss Wright on the night she died)

Despite his anger over the handling of the case, Mr Wright says he does not want Mr Tostee put back on trial, adding: 'Nothing brings her back'

Despite his anger, Mr Wright has no desire to see Mr Tostee back in the dock, saying that a legal firm approached him with an offer, but he turned it down.

'The bottom line is nothing brings her back,' he added.

Mr Tostee has grabbed headlines several times since he walked free from court, most recently after sending out a Facebook message wishing a 'happy International Women's Day to all ma hoes!!!'

He also hosts social media sessions with his supporters and detractors, once suggesting Sunrise presenters who criticised him 'are just mad that no men would touch them with a 10 foot pole.'

Mr Tostee also accepted an offer to appear on 60 Minutes, for which he was reportedly paid $250,000, though this has never been confirmed.
Body-in-a-suitcase killer Heather Mack wept inconsolably in a Bali prison yesterday as she kissed her two-year-old daughter Stella goodbye and said: 'I know she has to go but it's tearing me apart.'

Hours before the tear-stained separation, women inmates held a birthday party for Stella who has lived all her young life with her mother in Kerobokan jail but will now be cared for by a local family.

As she prepared to say goodbye to Stella, tearful Heather, 21, said: 'It's very hard for me but I'm so grateful to the prison for letting her spend the past two years with me here.

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Handover: Body-in a suitcase killer Heather Mack, 21, was pictured today looking distraught as she was forced to hand over her two-year-old daughter, Stella, to her new foster mother

Heatache: Mack, above, was seen weeping inconsolably in Kerobokan jail in Bali as she kissed the girl goodbye. Stella had been allowed to stay with her in the prison until she turned two

Goodbye: Toddler Stella, who was born behind bars in 2015, is pictured at a birthday party thrown for her yesterday on her last day in Kerobokan, where she started life with her mother

Custody: Tearful Mack was upset as she gave up Stella to the Australian woman who will raise the girl in Bali. An emotional Mack told a fellow prisoner, who spoke exclusively to MailOnline: 'I know she has to go but it's tearing me apart.'

New life: Stella's new foster mother, an Australian woman living in Bali, is pictured putting Stella into a car outside the prison today before being whisked away to start her new life

'It's been a wonderful, caring place for Stella to spend her early childhood. She's been surrounded by love every day of her life.

'Everything outside prison will be very strange to her now but I want her to stay in Bali and be close so she can visit me as often as possible. She's a little girl and she needs her mother, whatever I've done.'

Stella was born in 2015 while Mack and her former boyfriend Tommy Schaefer were in jail charged with killing Mack's mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, and stuffing her body in a suitcase after a furious row over her pregnancy.

Mack, who stands to inherit US$1.63 million from her late mother, was later jailed for 10 years and Schaefer for 18 years. The two Americans are serving their sentences in Kerobokan.

Stella was allowed to live in prison with her mother until she turned two on March 17 and was due to leave the prison on Friday afternoon to live with a local family.

The trauma of being separated from her daughter was worsened for Mack by a failed legal bid in the US earlier this week by Schaefer's mother to win custody of Stella.

Farewell: Toddler Stella was pictured on her last full day in Kerobokan prison yesterday as she was held by the female inmates, pictured, who ate cake to celebrate her second birthday

Last day: Stella, pictured in Kerobokan yesterday at a birthday and farewell party before she left with her new foster mother. At the party her distraught mother Mack said: 'It's very hard for me but I'm so grateful to the prison for letting her spend the past two years with me here.'

Party: The inmates ate birthday cake for Stella's second birthday at the celebration thrown by the women prisoners in Kerobokan jail. It was a bitter sweet event for Mack, who knew it was her last day with her daughter

Stella, pictured on her last day at the prison, was born in 2015 while Mack and her former boyfriend Tommy Schaefer were in jail charged with killing Mack's mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, and stuffing her body in a suitcase after a furious row over her pregnancy

Birthday treats: Stella's favourite gift was a soft toy of Bella from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. 'As soon as she opened it, she kissed her on the nose and clutched her to her chest,' an inmate said

'I'm so relieved the case was thrown out,' Mack told a fellow prisoner who spoke exclusively to MailOnline.

Stella will be cared for by an Australian-Indonesian mother-of-two and her Indonesian husband who live in Bali and have known her from birth.

MailOnline knows their identity but is not revealing it to safeguard little Stella's privacy as she ventures out into a new world.

The toddler has melted the hearts of some of the toughest women inmates in Kerobokan over the past two years.

One of them, speaking through a translator said: 'She's a little girl with 148 mothers.

'Stella has been the heart and soul of the women's block since her birth and she's grown into a very self-confident and sociable girl.

'Stella chatters away to everyone and goes from room to room playing with different groups of women and eating two or three dinners a night sometimes. She's everyone's little friend.

'She can be a real little devil sometimes, tipping food up on the floor to see people's reaction and throwing glasses of water in the face of women when they're fast asleep.

'But we all love her dearly and will miss her so, so much. It's going to be a lot quieter and greyer without her toddling around causing mischief.'

Another inmate said: 'A lot of girls of her age just get plonked in front of a TV set by their mothers. There are no TVs in prison and that can only be good for Stella.'

On Thursday evening, women prisoners held an early birthday party for the toddler with a chocolate cake made at a local bakery and gifts.

'Stella was a bit overwhelmed at the attention and cried at first when everyone was singing 'Happy Birthday' to her,' said one inmate.

'But afterwards she was beaming and went around giving each of the women a hug and a kiss,' said one of the inmates.

Agony: Mack is distressed as she is forced to hand the girl over to her new foster mother. She will be brought back to the Bali jail to visit her once or twice a week over her ten year jail term.

Tears: Mack, 21, jailed for her mother's murder, said: 'It's been a wonderful, caring place for Stella to spend her early childhood. She's been surrounded by love every day of her life.'

Her favourite gift was a soft toy of Bella from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. 'As soon as she opened it, she kissed her on the nose and clutched her to her chest,' the inmate said.

'The little girl was in her element,' said a prison employee. 'Everyone wanted to touch her and hug her and tell her how much they were going to miss her.

'She's been the life and soul of the prison. You can ask anyone and they'll tell you that.'

Stella's father Tommy had a brief meeting with his daughter Friday morning in the prison office. 'He hadn't seen her for about two months and has been behaving very strangely lately,' one inmate said.

'He was put in solitary confinement for three weeks after attacking another prisoner with an iron bar recently and has been telling everyone he is a prophet from God.'

After being released from solitary confinement, Schaefer was moved to a block occupied mostly by Muslim prisoners, the inmate said.

Schaefer mother Kia Walker failed in an application to a Chicago court to be Stella's legal guardian and raise her granddaughter in the US.

And as the girl was taken through the prison to her new guardian, Schaefer made it clear he was furious at the outcome.

'This is wrong! Stella doesn't belong here in Bali - she should be with my mother in America,' he shouted. 'I'm American, Heather is American and Stella is American. Why is she being allowed to stay in Bali?'

The woman who will care for Stella has two sons aged nine and seven and works as a manager of holiday villas. Her Indonesian husband is a tattoo artist.

Killers: Mack and her former boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, pictured, murdered Mack's mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack and stuffed her body in a suitcase after a row over her pregnancy

Murder: Mack, who stands to inherit US$1.63 million from her late mother, will be released from jail when Stella turns ten. Schaefer, pictured, was sentenced to 18 years for his part in the killing. The two Americans have since separated. They were locked in a custody battle of Stella as Schaefer wanted his mother Kia Walker to raise her in the US

Father time: Schaefer, pictured in jail with his daughter, saw the girl earlier today before she was taken away. 'He hadn't seen her for about two months and has been behaving very strangely lately,' one inmate said.

Happier times: Mack, pictured with a baby Stella in the Bali jail, long before she had to contemplate handing her over to a foster mother. Prison authorities in Bali allowed Stella to stay with her mother until she turned two

Custody battle and murder: Schaefer mother Kia Walker, pictured left, fought to take Stella to the US and raise here there. Mack and Schaefer killed her Chicago socialite mother Sheila von Wiese-Mack, right, and stuffed her body in a suitcase

Stella is expected to sign up for a local nursery and visit her mother in prison at least twice a week.

'It's going to be very different for her outside prison and she's going to have to get used to having less people fussing over her,' said one inmate.

'Stella has only ever been out of the prison a couple of times in the care of prison guards  one time across the road to the Circle K shop and another time to the end of the road outside the jail and back.'

Mack has told fellow inmates her biggest fear is that Stella  who has no passport  will be deported to America and lost to her forever while she serves out her sentence.
Richard Bull, 32, from London was electrocuted in the bath

A coroner is to warn Apple that iPhone chargers can be potentially lethal after a man was electrocuted in the bath.

Richard Bull from Ealing in west London was pronounced dead by paramedics in his home on December 11.

The 32-year-old was found by his wife Tanya, who thought her husband had been attacked because his burns were so severe.

At an inquest into his death the coroner issued a warning about using the 'innocuous devices' which can be 'as dangerous as a hairdryer in a bathroom.'

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Dr Sean Cummings said: 'These seem like innocuous devices but can be as dangerous as a hairdryer in a bathroom.

'They should attach warnings. I intend to write a report later to the makers of the phone.'

Mr Bull was getting ready to go out meet family members to exchange Christmas presents when the tragedy happened.

His mother Carole said: 'I have worried that so many people and especially teenagers, that can't be separated from their phones, don't know how dangerous it is.'

PC Craig Pattison told the inquest at West London Coroner's Court how he found the extension lead running from the hallway outside into the bathroom.'

'We found an iPhone plugged into the extension cable and then the charger element in the bath,' he explained

An inquest into the 32-year-old's death heard he was found by his wife Tanya (pictured together) who 'thought he had been attacked' after he suffered severe burns

PC Pattison said he ruled out suicide when he arrived at the scene.

'We received a dispatch call from control saying they were contacted by his wife. She was upset, having returned home.

'She said her husband was dead inside a bath tub.

Mr Bull captained amateur side Old Actonians RFC as well as playing for Ealing Exiles

'There was some confusion about an electric cable in the bathroom. There was the possibility of it being suicide.

'When we arrived the ambulance service was there. They told me they had unplugged an extension cord, but that they could do nothing further as he had already passed away.

'The extension cord was coming from the hallway leading into the bathroom.

'Initial circumstances indicated suicide. The question was considered in the original call, but the cable wasn't near the bath, it had been run there to charge a mobile phone.

'The extension cable was on the floor and it appeared as though he had his phone charger on his chest and the part between the phone charger and the cable had made contact with the water.'

Mr Bull went to Lutterworth Grammar School and studied Business Management at Aston University. He was a keen rugby player and captained the Old Actonians RFC in London

Dr Cummings described the result of the electrocution saying: 'The post mortem revealed burn marks on the right arm and the chest occurring as a result of electrocution. There were also burns on the right hand.

'The opinion of the pathologist was that this seems to be an accident.'

Mr Bull went to Lutterworth Grammar School and studied Business Management at Aston University.

A keen rugby player, he captained amateur side Old Actonians RFC as well as playing for Ealing Exiles.

His father Anthony Watson told the inquest: 'We were meeting him that morning, to exchange presents and were going for a curry, which he loved. And the next day he was going to stay with his brother.'

His brother Andrew said he was amazed such a small device can be fatal.

He said: 'We can all be careless at times, when you're younger you're taught about electricity and the bath but you don't think about it.

'I live in the US and they say it can't happen, and that there is not enough electricity. But in the UK it is enough. You don't think there is enough electricity but there is.

'We think he may have been there for a long time, he was getting ready to meet his family. It was such a needless and tragic accident.'

Tragic: At the inquest at the West London Coroner's Court, the coroner issued a warning about using the 'innocuous devices' which can be 'as dangerous as a hairdryer in a bathroom'

A match was held in Mr Bull's memory in January by the club, while his teammate Nick Greenhalgh paid tribute to his friend.

He said: 'He was a pleasure to play both against and with. He would play in any position without giving it a second thought.

'He stepped back from nothing and left everything on the pitch for whichever side he was playing for.

'He will be greatly missed, deepest commiserations to those he has left behind.'

Some 1,095 has been raised in Mr Bull's memory by friends and family for The Salvation Army.
If the Korea expert whose children interrupted his BBC interview would have been a mother instead of a dad, would she have handled the situation differently?

New Zealand funny guys Jono and Ben attempted to answer that question in a segment that aired on their late-night show on Thursday.

A video of Professor Robert Kelly's becoming frustrated after his two children gatecrashed his interview with the BBC became a viral sensation last week.

But in Jono and Ben's version, Mr Kelly's female equivalent handles the situation with an unshakable cool.

Would a woman have handled the BBC Korea interview situation differently? New Zealand funny guys Jono and Ben attempted to answer that question

In Jono and Ben's version, Mr Kelly's female equivalent handles the situation with an unshakable cool

In the spoof, the female Korea expert calmly unpacks the political situation in South Korea after the country's president was impeached last week, while making a chicken dinner

In the spoof, the female Korea expert calmly unpacks the political situation in South Korea after the country's president was impeached last week, all while she feeds her daughter, makes a chicken dinner, and scrubs a toilet.

She even defuses a bomb after a swat team rushes in and hands her a pair of wire cutters.

Many of the show's fans took to Facebook to praise the spoof.

'It's so funny...my first thought when that father shoved his child away was that a lot of moms would have totally been able to handle the kiddos while keeping her stroll on! Lol!' one fan wrote.

But some viewers interpreted the sketch as sexist.

'Are you assuming the dad is some sort of non-cooking, non-cleaning stereotype just because he forgot to lock the door during a serious tv interview?' one viewer asked.

The original video was viewed by millions since it was uploaded by the BBC last Friday.

Mr Kelly, who is from Cleveland Ohio, focused entirely on the camera as he attempted to blindly hand off his daughter, who swaggered into the room during his interview, curious to see who he was talking to.

His mortification doubled as his baby son excitedly made his way into the room in a stroller

Both parties tried to keep their cool despite the hilarious interruption from his children

His mortification soon doubled as baby James excitedly made his way into the room under his own power in a walker.

The children's mother, Jung-a Kim, then came skidding through the door to scoop up the kids.

Eventually, she managed to get them both out, and the interview continued.

When the interview finished, BBC broadcaster James Menendez told Mr Kelly: 'There's a first time for everything. I think you've got some children who need you!'

Mr Kelly admitted on Wednesday he was mortified at the time but in hindsight he could see the funny side.

He said his feelings about the incident had gone from 'surprise and embarrassment' to 'amusement' and finally 'love and affection'.

'It was terribly cute. I saw the video like everybody else and it's really funny,' Mr Kelly told the Wall Street Journal.

He said the reaction on social media had been astonishing - and mostly positive - and he had been forced to switch off Twitter and Facebook alerts and put his phone on airplane mode.

'I'm not even going near YouTube or Reddit or whatever those other sites are,' said Mr Kelly.

Mr Kelly and his wife Jung-a have seen the funny side of it since the story went viral but at the time they were both horrified with embarrassment

His wife said: 'It happens all the time but not like this. This was the first time it happened during an interview.'

In the immediate aftermath of the video going viral many people on social media assumed she was his nanny or maid, rather than his wife.

Some people accused those who assumed she was the nanny of being racist, leading to some fairly aggressive Twitter fights.

In an interview with the BBC today Prof Kelly said: 'We were pretty uncomfortable with it.'

But Jung-a played it down and said: 'People should just enjoy it, not argue over these things. I hope they stop arguing.'
Essam al-Tamimi, 55, was criticised over his handling of his divorce in court

A prominent lawyer who gave his wife a number of multi-million pound luxury homes has been criticised for trying to 'take them back' when they divorced.

Essam al-Tamimi, 55, gifted his wife Rouzin al-Charmaa, 35, the 7.8million Mayfair property next to the Saudi Arabian embassy, a smaller neighbouring property, and a 2 million Marylebone flat.

The Royal Court in Jersey heard the lawyer - who runs the largest legal firm in the Middle East - gifted his wife the properties 'as a reward for being a faithful wife'.

However, after their acrimonious divorce, Mr al-Tamimi then tried to regain control of the homes, the court heard.

As reported in The Times, the lawyer gave Ms al-Charmaa the companies that owned the properties after he threw her out of the family home when she discovered his alleged affair - while she was pregnant.

She claimed her husband also locked some 1million worth of jewellery belonging to her in a safe in the United Arab Emirates.

The lawyer - who runs the largest legal firm in the Middle East - gifted his wife the properties - then allegedly tried to take them back

The Royal Court in Jersey heard Mr al-Tamimi had tried to regain control of the homes

According to The Times, Mr al-Tamimi instructed a chief executive of his company to 'be sure that the two company which own the two flats in London I am the only beneficiary.'

William Bailhache, the bailiff of Jersey, ruled in favour of Ms Charmaa, adding Mr al-Tamimi 'was prepared to hide assets from his first wife . . . and one could surmise that he was willing to hide them or take them back from his second wife [Ms al-Charmaa] as well'.

Born in Sharjah, a United Arab Emirates city on the Persian Gulf, Mr Al Tamimi founded his practice Al Tamimi & Co in 1989 after graduating from Harvard University with a law degree.

It has gone on the become the largest law firm in the Middle East with 350 lawyers across nine countries.

It covers various aspects of corporate law including arbitration, mergers and acquisitions, and financial crime.

In 2015, he won the prestigious Lifetime Achievement award from the International Financial Law Review.
This was the bizarre scene as dozens of reindeer were packed in to a Russian jet before an air hostess fed them cabin service food by hand.

Pictures show the animals being herded on to the back of the Polar Airlines plane before a flight to frozen Yakutsk in eastern Siberia.

A female member of the cabin crew can be seen tending to the reindeer and even feeding them from her hand mid flight.

This was the bizarre scene as dozens of reindeer were packed in to a Russian jet before an air hostess fed them cabin service food by hand

Pictures show the animals being herded on to the back of the Polar Airlines plane before a flight to frozen Yakutsk in eastern Siberia

The animals were being transported by air to attend the colourful 4th annual all-Russian reindeer herders' congress.

Over the weekend, they will compete in traditional reindeer races and games, expected to attract large crowds.

The reindeer were flown in from some of the world's most remote inhabited Arctic districts.

Alexander Zimin, a Polar Airlines crew member in charge of ensuring the reindeer comfort, said: 'We have a lot of experience in transporting large animals, so the reindeer flew in a calm spirit.

The animals were being transported by air to attend the colourful 4th annual all-Russian reindeer herders' congress

Over the weekend, they will compete in traditional reindeer races and games, expected to attract large crowds

The reindeer were flown in to Yakutsk from some of the world's most remote inhabited Arctic districts

'Each reindeer is tied up individually depending on the size of its antlers. Those with the biggest antlers are placed in the centre. Sometimes herders cut the antlers to ease the transportation.'

But at least two animals from Anabar district died after the flights, although the cause of death is not yet established, revealed The Siberian Times.

A state vet official said: 'Every move like this causes stress, so owners have to pay double attention to the animals during flights.

'Once the reindeer arrive they are checked by our vets. Two of the animals were diagnosed with a severe gastrointestinal tract problem.

'One reindeer died on March 16, the second had to be put down a day later. Another animal is being treated now but the rest are doing well.

'Veterinary specialists monitor their health.'
Mr and Mrs Gornall (pictured above) temporarily switched to Scottish Power in 2014 before deciding to remain with British Gas. But the couple were sent bills for 4,300 in a mix-up by the energy firm

A cancer victim and her husband have hit out at an energy company who sent bailiffs to their home to collect 4,300 in unpaid bills that weren't even meant for them.

Jane and Les Gornall, of Aberystwyth were sent a stream of letters from Scottish Power, despite telling the firm they were British Gas customers.

This came at an upsetting time for the family as Mrs Gornall had just been diagnosed with cancer and their grandson with leukemia.

Scottish Power has since apologised for the confusion and said it would compensate the couple for the stress caused.

The trouble began in 2014 when the pair thought about switching energy suppliers to see if they could find a cheaper deal.

They had been with British Gas for ten years but decided to switch to Scottish Power instead.

The transition was far from smooth however.

'Cruel': Mrs Gornall (pictured left with husband Les and far right) had just been diagnosed with cancer and their grandson with leukemia when the flurry of correspondence began

Mr and Mrs Gornall have prepayment meters in their home for gas and electricity which are paid for using top-up cards.

But as it took weeks for the new card to arrive from Scottish Power, they decided to cancel their account and remain with their previous suppliers.

They were sent a bill from Scottish Power and they contacted the company and told staff they were British Gas prepayment customers.

However they were continually sent bills despite telling the firm repeatedly they were not customers.

A year later in 2015, Mrs Gornall was diagnosed with cancer and they found out their grandson had leukemia.

At a time when they were under enormous personal strain, the bills from Scottish Power continued to arrive.

Mrs Gornall told the BBC: 'I just didn't know how they could be so cruel.'

Things finally escalated in 2016 when bailiffs were sent to their home in Wales.

Mrs Gornall said: 'That's when you think 'oh my god this is serious'... this really affected us. It just makes you feel so low.'

Scottish Power was contacted by BBC programme X-Ray and the firm admitted there had been a mix up.

It said the serial number for the meter had been recorded incorrectly and the bills were meant for another home.
An uninsured motorist who caused the death of his two passengers when he ploughed into a tipper truck during a police chase has been jailed for nine years.

Guy Tomlinson, 37, was told by a judge he was driving so dangerously he might as well have 'pulled the trigger' to kill his friends.

A court heard he smashed a silver Peugeot 206 GTI into the back of the Ford Transit while being pursued by an unmarked police car just before midnight on March 9 last year.

CCTV shows the horrific moment a driver fleeing police ploughed into a tipper truck in Leicester last year

David Anger, 24, and Christopher Needham, 37, who were passengers in the car, were pronounced dead at the scene on Fosse Road South in Leicester.

The trio were being followed by police when their vehicle careered into a white tipper truck as it sped across a junction.

Shocking CCTV footage captured the horrific collision and showed how the force of the impact rammed the Ford truck into the front of a corner shop.

Tomlinson, of Leicester, was yesterday jailed for nine years and banned from driving for 15 years after he is released from prison.

Drug-smoking driver Guy Tomlinson has been jailed for nine years for killing his passengers in a horrific crash

Sentencing him at Leicester Crown Court, Judge Nicholas Dean told him his driving was like 'playing Russian roulette'.

He said: 'You killed your two friends David Anger and Christopher Needham.

'You did not do that deliberately but the dangerousness of your driving was similar to pointing a loaded pistol to you friends' heads and playing Russian roulette.

'You drove at excessive speeds, engaged in dangerous manoeuvres, you drove through red traffic lights and ultimately you did play Russian roulette.

'You really pulled the trigger on your friends and killed them in that instant.'

Tomlinson, who had been smoking cannabis earlier on the day of the crash, admitted two counts of causing death by dangerous driving in November last year.

He also pleaded guilty two counts of causing death by driving while uninsured and two counts of causing death by driving while unlicensed.

He buried his head in his hands as horrific footage from the shops CCTV and traffic cameras were played in court.

A court heard the Peugeot caught the attention of a policeman coming off duty after it jumped red lights outside Leicestershire Polices headquarters in Enderby.

The scene of the crash where David Anger and Christopher Needham lost their lives

Tomlinson then drove through more red lights and performed dangerous overtakes as he travelled at 80mph.

Prosecutor Ian Way said the Peugeot was travelling at about 65mph in a 30mph limit when it collided with the truck.

The force of the smash forced the Ford truck into the front of Snutch Convenience store, causing 50,000 worth of damage.

Tomlinsons passengers, Mr Anger and Mr Needham, both from Leicester, were both pronounced dead at the scene.

The two men in the truck and Tomlinson, who was pulled from the burning Peugeot by the off-duty police officer, all survived the collision.
A dying seven-year-old schoolboy is asking the public to help him fulfil his final wish - to be buried with his mother so she can look after him in heaven.

Filip Kwasny, from Colchester, Essex, made the wish from his bed in London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital where chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant have failed to cure his leukaemia.

Now, as the cancer spreads to his intestines, Filip receives only palliative care to make him comfortable as his short life comes to an end.

Final moments: Filip Kwasny, from Colchester, Essex is in London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital

Battle: Chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant have failed to cure his leukaemia

Kind-hearted strangers have been donating to help him be buried in the same coffin as his mother, who he lost to cancer when he was two.

Barely able to speak, he yesterday sent a personal thank you from his bed on the hospital's Fox Ward, saying: 'Thanks for helping make my wish come true.'

Filip was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML) - an accumulation of abnormal blood cells in the bone marrow - in September last year.

It followed a diagnosis of neurofibromatosis type 1 when he was two, from which Filip, a pupil at Friar Grove Primary School in Colchester, initially recovered.

His father, Piotr Kwasny, 40, is desperate to raise 6,500 to raise his wife's coffin which has been underground for five years and re-bury her with their son.

'He says that I'm his angel that is looking after him here and that his mum will look after him when he is in heaven,' Piotr explained from his son's hospital bed.

'I don't know how well he remembers his mother as he was so young when she passed away, but he has visited her grave when he was well enough to speak to her.

'Filip wants to be buried with his mother so we will need to organise that locally and re-bury them together. He wants her to look after him. I will only be able to take Filip back to Poland myself.

Missing mummy: Filip beside his mother Agnieska's grave in Poland where he wants to be buried

Heartbreak: Filip's father Piotr and mother Agnieska who he lost to cancer when he was two

'His step-mother and siblings will have to stay in the UK, as I do not have the means to arrange for passports and transportation to Poland for them all.

'This is just a very stressful and distressing time for all of us. I did not imagine that I would have to bury my child... you shouldn't go before your child.'

As Piotr is himself ill with spina bifida (a gap in his spine), one kidney, diabetes and hypertension (high blood pressure), he cannot work and has not got the funds to pay for it himself.

And Filip is simply too ill to travel to Poland while he is still alive. 'The doctors do not know how long Filip has left,' Piotr said.

'There is a bell in the Fox Ward outside Filip's room. Ward patients ring the bell three times when their treatment is done and they are leaving. Filip, my son, will never get to ring that bell.'

Happy chap: Filip with his father Piotr before he underwent further treatment for juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia

Filip, who knows he is dying, has told his dad that he wants to be buried in the same coffin as his beloved mum, Agnieszka, who died aged 33 on November 12, 2011.

She is buried in her home village of Wadowice, southern Poland, the same location where she married Filip's father in 2009 and where her boy hopes eventually to join her.

Piotr, who has now remarried and has a two-year-old daughter and two step-children, told how his late wife died shortly after developing sarcoma, a cancer of the connecting tissue.

'My wife had a large growth on her neck, I believe her lymph nodes, but we didn't know what that was,' he explained.

CAN YOU HELP FILIP? You can donate here Advertisement

'She collapsed in the street one day and was taken to hospital where they did an emergency operation to remove it which lasted for six hours.

'She was diagnosed with sarcoma. The cancer spread throughout her body. She only weighed 3 stones when we lost her.'

It was a devastating blow for Piotr when just a year later his two-year-old son was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition causing tumours to grow on the nerves.

Remembering how his son's health deteriorated before the diagnosis, Piotr said: 'Filip had spots on his face and body in Poland before we came to the UK and the doctors gave him cream for the rash.

'When we came to the UK the rash did not improve, so I took him to the doctor's here.

'After many subsequent visits to the doctor they finally did lots of tests and discovered that he had neurofibromatosis type 1 in 2013.

'The doctors said that they needed to do more tests but that Filip was okay for now.'

Filip recovered well but his health took a downward turn in September last year.

Dying wish: Filip receives only palliative care to make him comfortable as his short life comes to an end

'He started having nose bleeds and his legs were hurting,' said his father.

'I took him to the doctor here and they said that there's nothing wrong with him and that perhaps he is tired. I insisted that they need to do some more tests, because he was already diagnosed with type 1 and I knew there was something wrong.

'I think all parents know when there's something wrong with their child. They ordered more blood tests and discovered that he was suffering from severe anaemia and juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML).'

Filip had chemotherapy in hospital in Cambridge in September and November last year but it did not work. In November he had stronger chemotherapy which also failed.

Then in January he received stem cell transplants which again proved unsuccessful.

Smiling: Filip on a day out before his chemotherapy in hospital in Cambridge last year

'Nothing has improved his condition,' Piotr explained. But the final blow came earlier this month.

'We lost all hope at the beginning of March this year when the doctors said that there was nothing that they can do apart from mange his pain,' said his devastated father. 'His liver had stopped working so he also receiving plasma every other day.

'His abdomen has collected a lot of fluid and is enlarge, which causes him lots of pain and pushes up on his lungs, so he has difficulty breathing. He cannot eat as he throws up. He is either drowsy or screaming in pain.

'It's heart-breaking for me to watch. He knows that he is dying and that there's nothing they can do for him. He knows that he doesn't have much time left, we both do.'

You can donate here.
Matthew Muller. The voice has a face, it has a name. Now we finally meet, face to face, eye to eye. I am Denise Huskins, the woman behind the blindfold. The woman you drugged, tortured, raped and attempted to manipulate; the woman you repeatedly apologized to, repeatedly complimented for the strength in dealing with this lifethreatening situation that you helped inflict upon.

'I am the woman behind the blindfold': Denise Huskins' wept as she read her statement to her abductor

Remember the times you acknowledged and said to me that you could see that Aaron and I were good people, and we didnt deserve this. Before you put me in the trunk of Aarons car, taking me captive, you told me that this wasnt meant for me, and you named Aarons ex by her first and last name.

You promised not to dehumanize me any more than you had to, yet, for the next two days you treated me like an object, a toy, an animal to fulfill you and your associates selfish, evil needs.

I had also struggled in my young adulthood. You know that. I shared that with you. I told you about being molested as a child, how that impacted me and that it had been hard to heal, but therapy helped. I shared that most personal information with you after you claimed to be suffering from PTSD and insomnia. I was trying to connect with this voice who was hardly human, in hopes it would spare me from more torture, spare my body, spare my life.

After sharing that, you still made the decision to rape me, and not just violating my body, but forcing me to perform, act, and have it recorded. I was heavily sedated for a 48hour period. You and your associates did an excellent job at making your threats clear. I saw flashes of lights and heard the electric shocks of tasers. I felt the sharp edge of a knife as it grazed my skin when you cut off the zipties. I was outnumbered, you were armed, you were trained, I was helpless, defenseless. If I fought or not, the rapes would still happen. So, I lessened the blow and complied. And of course, it didnt just happen once, but twice.

The second time you forced me to kiss you and say things to make it seem like we were a legitimate couple. You couldnt just take my physical body and let me be detached from it, like I was in the first rape as you flopped me around the bed like a rag doll. This second time, you made me perform, lets pretend like we are with other people, the people we love, to get us through it, as if this were happening to the both of us. I saw right through all of this, but knew I had to appease you. The only way I got through it was to picture that it was Aaron that I was with, and that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I know you did that on purpose, to leave your mark on me in the most special and intimate moments of my life.

Police initially called the kidnapping a hoax and likened Denise's (above) story to the movie 'Gone Girl', in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped

You expressed your belief in how I was handling all of this. Why was I not acting hysterically, begging and pleading for you to spare my life, spare my body? I didnt react that way because I knew thats what you wanted, what you were looking for, what thrilled you, motivated you. You wanted to have that type of power over another beings life. Thats why you had practiced and prepared, planned these types of scenarios for as far back as 2009, your conduct escalating until you finally succeeded in taking me.

If I were to die, if this was my last moment, hour, day on this Earth I would not live it screaming, panicking, crying in terror. I would go out proud and grateful for the life I lived, the family and friends I have, the grievances I have overcome, the amazing career that I loved, the patients and colleagues I had worked with, the loves I had experienced, especially in finding the love of my life, Aaron. I didnt know what was to come, but I did know that I had all those people there with me, their love and energy, to give me strength to survive. I wouldnt let myself see the terror, all I focused on was them. That is how I survived.

Within an hour of my release, the police questioning began and I very quickly learned that they did not believe me. I was a suspect accused of making this up and then publicly shamed after a press conference by an officer from the Vallejo Police Department who stated that I owed the public an apology. I had to retain a criminal defense attorney to fight for my innocence, I lost my job and I lost my health insurance at a time when I most needed care.

When speaking with law enforcement, there were two things the voice warned me that I could not discuss: That he was former military and that he had sex with me. If I were to disclose either of these pieces of information, he would come after my family, and I believed him.

When I was 12 years old, I was molested. It took over a decade for me to tell my mother. Years after that man molested me, he molested another little girl, and was caught. Had I told my mother at the time, the horror that little girl had gone through could have been prevented. I lived with shame and guilt because of that most of my life, and am still forgiving myself.

So, despite the threat to my family, I needed to tell the police about the rapes. A sexual assault exam is the most vulnerable thing a woman can do so soon after a being assaulted, but you go through it in hopes that the information they collect could help find the perpetrator and prevent other women from this horrific experience.

The nurses examined my body, noting and taking pictures of the bruising on the left side of my back where Muller had dropped me when trying to pull me out of the trunk. They surveyed my naked body with a black light, swabbed my bare chest, neck, stomach and groin where Muller put his lips and tongue on me. They examined me internally, noting and taking pictures of comparatively small lesions in my cervix. I wasnt sure if this information would only be used against me and confirm to the police and FBI that I was lying. And here I was, the victim of a kidnaping and rapes, completely exposed with no loved ones nearby, wishing that I had put up more of a fight, was beaten more, was torn into more so the police would be more likely to believe me.

Emotional support: Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, pictured in 2016, are still romantically involved after their horror ordeal and plan to marry and have children

Every day I am grateful to be alive. Despite the many hopeless moments Aaron and I have overcome thus far, I still manage to hold out some hope for the future. Because of the aftermath of the kidnapping, and because of the kidnapping itself, it has been a long hard struggle to pick up the pieces of our lives. We fortunately have an amazing support system from both of our friends and families. We have moved cities, started new jobs.

I still have nightmares every night. For over a year if I came home alone, I would grab a knife and looking behind every door, in every corner. I have a hammer by my bed that I reach for in the worst of my nightmares. Sleep is not rest for me, it is a trigger.

Theres not a moment in the day that I dont remember this. Its not that I want to focus on it, but the depth of the terror is so deep, I have had to learn how to live side by side with it. I am humbled in that reality, this new reality. I am at that point in my life where Aaron and I talk about marriage and a family. But I am so scared of bringing a child into this world after the horror Muller has put me through, put my family through.

Above all, I am so grateful for Aaron, standing by my side and giving me strength and support as I continue to struggle. We both still have difficulties, but he had returned to work quickly, selflessly to support us and allow us to move forward with our lives. He knows exactly how to calm me, care for me, how to hold me in the midst of my nightmares. The thought of returning to his arms during those 48 hours helped get me through it, and I never want him to let me go. He gives me peace, love, laughter and hope in humanity.

I still cant make sense of any of this, and I accept that I will never know. But what I do know, is that Matthew Muller willingly, thoughtfully, participated in this hell we have survived. He had every opportunity in that 48 hours to do something different, but chose not to. He said he was remorseful and would never do it again, yet two short months later, he still attacked another family.

I have no doubt that this man should not be free to walk amongst the rest of us. I dont say that because I believe in revenge, in eye for an eye, but because of my experiences with him I know, without doubt or hesitation, that as long as he walks free, there will be more victims.
Airline passenger Jagtar Sandhu (above, outside Manchester Magistrates Court), 54, faces jail today for pestering two sisters with unwanted sexual advances during a nine-hour night-flight across the Atlantic

An airline passenger who pestered two terrified sisters with unwanted sexual advances during a nine-hour night-flight across the Atlantic was facing jail today.

Taxi driver Jagtar Sandhu, 54, from Wolverhampton, targeted the young women after he poked his head in-between their seats and repeatedly asked if they could 'budge up' so he could watch an in-flight movie with them on the Air Transat plane.

Despite repeatedly being told by the victims to leave them alone, Sandhu, who was sitting in the row behind, would tap them on the shoulder to get their attention and even asked one of them if they were lesbians.

The sisters eventually took 'shifts' to sleep so one could keep an eye on the man lurking behind them.

But both eventually fell asleep - and woke up to find Sandhu leaning over them rubbing one on the thigh and stroking the other on her breast before saying: 'Wait until we get back to Manchester.'

The victims - both in their 20s - were said to be 'too scared to move' and waited until their Toronto flight landed at Manchester Airport where they told their mother about the attack at the arrivals lounge.

At Manchester magistrates court, Sandhu was found guilty of sexual assault following the flight from hell in August last year.

The sisters, who regularly make the trip from Manchester to Canada to visit their father, were three hours into their 3,400 mile flight when Sandhu started pestering them.

The younger sister told the hearing: 'Me and my sister were watching TV and this man peered round and asked my sister what we were watching. Then he asked if he could watch with us because there was a free seat next to us.

'He kept looking at us and asking us questions and he then got up and nudged my sister and said "come on, budge up". We said no and sat down but still had his head between the seats. I went to the toilet and came back and my sister was really red and slouched down in her seat and she told me he had asked if we were both lesbians.

Taxi driver Sandhu targeted the women after he poked his head in-between their seats and asked if they could 'budge up' so he could watch a movie with them. The sisters took 'shifts' to sleep so one could keep an eye on him. But both eventually fell asleep - and awoke to find Sandhu leaning over them rubbing one on the thigh and stroking the other on her breast

'We were alarmed so we took it in turns to sleep but I then fell asleep and woke up to him rubbing my thigh area. I immediately batted his hand away from me because I didn't realise what was going on.

'Then he got out his phone and started saying something in another language and said wait till we're back in Manchester which I took as a threat. I thought I was about to die.

'I was too scared to say anything so I just sat back down in my seat. Once we were off the plane and walking through customs, he kept joining the queue and then going to the back again like he was watching us.

'We then met my mother and told her what had happened and when we got home we phoned the police. I was just scared. I genuinely didn't think I was going to get off the plane. I just felt sick and just wanted to get home.'

The elder sister said: 'Three to four hours into the flight, we were watching a film and he asked me what we were watching and asked if he could watch the film with us and we said no.

'He kept trying to ask us questions that alluded to him wanting to sit in between us. My sister went to the toilet and he asked if I was lesbian. I thought it was weird but the last thing I wanted to do was make a scene.

'We both fell asleep and I woke up to his left hand on my chest. He was rubbing my chest and my breasts. I smacked his hand away and tried to reassure my sister that everything would be OK.

We both fell asleep and I woke up to his left hand on my chest... I smacked his hand away

'Then he got out an old phone and spoke in a different language and he said he would see me in Manchester. He was right in my face. We were both scared that we were going to die and that was why we didn't say anything.

'I told him to sit down and leave us alone. I was concerned that we were over water and there was no way we could have landed if we needed to.

'We were met by my mother and told her straight away and the matter was reported straight away. It was terrifying and disgusting. She is my little sister and I couldn't protect her. There were no cabin crew because it was a night flight and we were at the back of the plane so there was nobody to make eye contact with.'

Sandhu, who denied wrongdoing, claimed he had wanted to move seats as he had two children sat next to him and he accused the women of 'touching each other inappropriately'.

He added: 'I had tapped one of them on the shoulder and politely asked what film she was watching and if she could help me put it on. But she said the film had almost finished.

Sandhu, who denied wrongdoing, claimed he had wanted to move seats as he had two children sat next to him and he accused the women of 'touching each other inappropriately'. Above, a file image of an Air Transat plane, similar to the one the sisters were on

'They both kept looking back at me giving me a bad face and I thought they were starting trouble. I didn't ask to watch the film with them and I didn't keep poking my head in between the seats.

'When she asked me a few questions, I asked her if she was a lesbian because they had been touching each other inappropriately. I didn't touch either of them. If they want to set me up and ruin my life then they can - they made it all up.'

But District Judge Khalid Qureshi told Sandhu: 'The evidence that the two sisters were intimately touching each other is both tasteless and objectionable and I do not believe any of the evidence that you gave.

'The women's evidence is completely plausible and I watched the demeanor and they were visibly upset and shaken about what happened.

'The fact your hand was slapped away by the girls shows the touching was not in any way consented to or at any point was consent indicated to.'

Sandhu will be sentenced later following the preparation of reports. He was granted unconditional bail.
A man who killed a young father during a two-day drug fuelled rampage, has been sentenced to life in prison.

Darwin man Rodney Kenyon was in December found guilty of shooting 25-year-old Fabian Brock, while high on the drug ice, in the head with a shotgun in 2015.

Kenyon will serve a minimum of 25-years in jail after the NT Supreme Court sentenced him to life in jail with a 25-year-non parole period on Friday.

Rodney Kenyon (pictured) was sentenced to life in prison after he killed a young father while high on drug ice

Fabian Brock (pictured), 25, was murdered by Kenyon in the early hours of June 13, 2015

In the early hours of June 13, 2015, the Court heard Kenyon had used a single-barrel shotgun to threaten Jacob Noble-Webster and force him into his stolen ute.

Once in the car, Kenyon allegedly pointed his gun at Mr Noble-Webster and told him there was a $100,000 bounty on his head.

The Crown said Kenyon had asked him: 'How would you like to die? Strangled, shot, stabbed or bashed?'

The pair then proceeded to smoke methamphetamine together before hunting down a car driven by Mr Brock.

Mr Brock was speeding more than 100km/h in the chase before his car stalled and the accused's ute caught up.

The father-of-one allegedly yelled 'Cuz, cuz, it's me! It's Fabian' before the accused wound down his window and shot him at close range.

His car then crashed into a suburban yard where his body was found by the house's occupant.

The father-of-one allegedly yelled 'Cuz, cuz, it's me! It's Fabian' before the accused wound down his window and shot him at close range

In determining a motive for the killing of Mr Brock, the Crown said Kenyon repeatedly mentioned he wanted cash or drugs for a gold Rolex watch.

In separate incidents, Kenyon was also charged of endangering the lives of Shane Robert Mulhall and Raymond Petterson Cumins, but was acquitted of both.

The prosecution alleged that hours before the murder, the accused stole a different car and opened fire on Mr Mulhall before setting the vehicle alight, according to NT News.
A mother described how her 'blood froze' in horror as she saw a complete stranger lead her five-year-old son away from the school gates.

Kayden-Jayne Grimshaw said that she shouted and ran towards the woman who was leading the little boy away from Herne Bay infants school in Kent, where parents had gathered to collect their children.

The woman insisted she had become confused and gripped the arm of the wrong child - but walked she off before she could be questioned further.

Ms Grimshaw, 28, of Herne Bay, said: 'She didn't say sorry or anything. I was really confused and it happened so quickly I didn't process it at the time.

Terror at the school gates: Herne Bay infant school in Kent where a stranger attempted to leave with someone else's child. Kent Police have visited the school to reassure parents and pupils

'I left it overnight thinking maybe it was innocent, but when I spoke to the police the next morning it made me think.'

Kent Police spokesman Steve Knight said officers have visited the school to reassure parents and pupils.

Ms Grimshaw said her 'blood froze' and that she gasped in horror as the woman led her son away from the school gates.

'My two sons were walking together and I was just behind with my three-year-old in the buggy.

'It was so busy with all the kids coming out of school and the boys were just a couple of seconds in front of me.

'It's not always easy to get the buggy around people and I looked up and I lost sight of them for two seconds.'

Seconds later she saw the woman holding her five-year-old's hand, waiting to cross the road.

'She had a grip on his wrist - I was thinking 'why has she got hold of my son?'

'My mum was a second in front of me so she grabbed his other arm and said 'what are you doing?'

'The woman said she thought it was her son. My mum had his arm as well at this point and then the woman just walked off towards the junior school. She looked a bit startled and was looking at the floor.'

Ms Grimshaw said that the incident has affected her son.

'When I asked him about it he went all shy. I think it scared him because he is quite care-free usually. Now he's clingy and doesn't want me to leave him.'

The Herne Bay infant school in Kent where a mystery woman attempted to lead a five-year-old boy away from these gates - and away from his waiting mother

School bosses sent a message home to parents advising they be extra vigilant when dropping off or collecting their children.

Police spokesman Steve Knight said: 'We were called at 9.20am on Friday, March 10, to a report of a woman acting suspiciously in Kings Road, Herne Bay.

'Officers have carried out inquiries into the incident and attended the location.

'No criminal offences are alleged to have taken place. Anyone with any further concerns should call 101.'

The school, which has a nursery, has 412 pupils.
A gunman who allegedly tried to rob four people in restaurant parking lot accidentally shot himself in the head as he tried to get away, police said.

The suspected gunman was run down by one of his victims, causing him to unwittingly shoot himself in the head.

Surveillance footage captured the whole incident, which happened at around 3am on Wednesday in a parking lot outside a Denny's restaurant in Hawthorne, California.

A gunman who allegedly tried to rob four people in restaurant parking lot accidentally shot himself in the head

Surveillance footage captured the whole incident, which happened in a parking lot outside a Denny's restaurant in Hawthorne, California

The video shows four diners leaving the restaurant and getting into a car, before a man approaches the vehicle and attempts to rob them.

Security cameras from inside the restaurant captured the moment one of the female victims frantically ran back inside, pleading for help as staff dial 911.

Police said the alleged robber was attempting to run around the corner, where two accomplices who were waiting in a getaway car.

The footage shows the suspected robber trying to make his escape as the driver in the alleged victim's car quickly reverses and speeds towards the gunman knocking him down.

The footage shows the suspected robber trying to make his escape as the driver in the alleged victim's car quickly reverses and speeds towards the gunman

The car knocked him down and the suspect is in a critical but stable condition in hospital

Amir Obeid, manager of Denny's, decribed the incident as 'viglante justice'

'I'm not going to say any prayers for the suspect because he kind of got what's coming to him, you know,' Obeid told KABC.

'He decided to rob somebody, and that's what happens. You're taking a chance whenever you do something like that.'

Luitenant Ti Goetz from Hawthorne police said: 'He's running away from the scene with a gun in his hand when the victims chased him in the car.

'When they struck him it launched his body up in the air and somewhere in that process, the gun in his hand fired, resulting in him getting a bullet in the head.'

The suspect is in a critical but stable condition in hospital, where he is under arrest. Police are continuing to search for the two accomplices seen in the suspected getaway car.
Sydney's feared 'North Shore rapist' will be electronically monitored for three more years after a judge found he was likely to re-offend.

Graham Kay, 65, who sexually assaulted eight girls and women in the mid-1990s, lost his bid to be freed from court monitoring on Friday.

He also lost his right to privacy, after NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison rejected his application to continue suppressing his identity, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Graham Kay, 65, who sexually assaulted eight girls and women in the mid-1990s, lost a bid to be freed from court monitoring Friday. He also lost his right to having his identity suppressed

Kay would follow teenage and adult female victims and threaten them with a knife before raping them. The woman in the picture is not related to the story

Kay served 18 years of a 20-year jail sentence after he was arrested in 1997 for the string of assaults in Sydney's northern suburbs.

He would follow teenage and adult female victims and threaten them with a knife before raping them, the court heard.

Since his 2015 release on parole he has been working as a warehouse manager in Southern Cross Produce at Flemington Markets.

But he was recently sacked after female coworkers recognized him from poorly de-identified pictures published in news media, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Despite hearing Kay's description as a 'model parolee,' Jusice Harrison ruled he must be continually monitored.

'I am satisfied to a high degree of probability that Mr Kay poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious sex offence if he is not kept under supervision,' Justice Harrison said according to the Herald.
Google executives have been summoned to Whitehall to explain why Government ads are funding extremists

A French advertising group whose clients include O2 and Royal Mail is the first major global advertising company to announce that none of its budget will go to Google or YouTube.

This comes online giant Google announced a review of its advertising policies after the Government demanded answers on why taxpayer-funded adverts were supporting extremist videos.

The Government has already withdrawn its advertising from YouTube after the problems emerged and a string of public and private organisations have followed.

And now French company Havas - the sixth largest marketing services group in the world - has pulled all of its advertising spend from Google and YouTube.

Havas spends about 175m on digital advertising on behalf of clients in the UK annually.

The firm said it had taken the step after talks with Google had broken down because the tech company had been 'unable to provide specific reassurances, policy and guarantees that their video or display content is classified either quickly enough or with the correct filters'.

When Google executives were summoned to Whitehall to explain themselves, the internet giant's UK boss admitted 'we don't always get it right'.

UK Managing Director Ronan Harris said in a 'small percentage of cases' automatic systems to keep ads off extreme content failed.

In a blog post, he said: 'We've heard from our advertisers and agencies loud and clear that we can provide simpler, more robust ways to stop their ads from showing against controversial content.

'While we have a wide variety of tools to give advertisers and agencies control over where their ads appear, such as topic exclusions and site category exclusions, we can do a better job of addressing the small number of inappropriately monetized videos and content.

'We've begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network.'

Mr Harris defended YouTube's openess, insisting Google does 'believe strongly in the freedom of speech and expression on the web'.

And he said last year Google removed 'two billion bad ads', blocked 100,000 publishers from receiving advertising support, and stopped ads from from appearing on 300,000 videos.

Alongside the Government, Transport for London, Channel 4, L'Oreal, Sainsbury's and Argos are also set to withdraw advertising.

The Government said it was Google's responsibility to make sure adverts do not appear alongside 'inappropriate' content.

The appearance of adverts on YouTube is controlled by complex automatic processes rather than manual placement by staff.

Extremists who upload videos to YouTube can make about 6 for every 1,000 views on their content. Some videos have a million hits.

Google vice-president Peter Barron defended the company to MPs earlier this week against claims the firm was too slow to react to extremist content

An investigation by The Times found taxpayer-funded ads running against anti-Semitic, rape apologist and hate preacher videos.

A Government spokeswoman said: 'Google is responsible for ensuring that the high standards applied to government advertising are adhered to and that adverts do not appear alongside inappropriate content.

'Google has been summoned for discussions at the Cabinet Office to explain how it will deliver the high quality of service that government demands on behalf of the taxpayer.'

Chuka Umunna, a senior Labour MP and member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said it was 'staggering' Google allowed extremist content to be hosted on its platform and to earn revenue.

He said: 'They say they are taking action but proper action will require far more resources and their profits will have to take a hit that is the elephant in the room which they dare not acknowledge.

'Profit comes first for these people.'

Home Affairs committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper (left) has demanded Google do more to stop extremist content while senior Labour MP Chuka Umunna (right) said it was 'staggering' the company allowed extremist content on YouTube to make money

Google was among three companies lashed by MPs on the Home Affairs Committee in Parliament this week.

MPs demanded stronger action to remove hate content from their platform but were told pre-moderation is impossible.

After the more-than two hour interrogation, committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper said: 'YouTube say they don't even check proactively to stop banned or terrorist organisations like National Action from posting content, or check proactively for online child abuse.

'You Tube's enforcement of their own community standards is a joke. They rightly say ''it is not acceptable to post malicious, hateful comments about a group of people solely based on their race''.

'Yet they claim that anti-Semitic videos from white supremacists like David Duke don't breach their standards.'

Google executives will be summoned to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall to explain how they will stop Government ads appearing on extreme content

She added: 'These are incredibly powerful organisations. They are able to analyse algorithms and behaviour in a sophisticated way in order to target potential consumers with adverts.

'It's time they used more of that power, money and technology to deal with hate crime and to keep people safe.'

At Wednesday's committee, Google vice-president Peter Barron said a 14-minute by Duke called 'Jews admit organising white genocide' did not breach rules on hate speech.

He said this was despite it being 'anti-Semitic, deeply offensive and shocking'.

Mr Barron told MPs: 'We have 400 hours of video uploaded onto YouTube every minute which is an extraordinary amount of content.

'Clearly, we don't want illegal content on our platforms and when flagged to us we remove that as quickly as we possibly can.'

Google this afternoon announced a review of its advertising policies after complaints about ads appearing against extremist content

Dan Brooke, Channel 4's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer said: 'We are extremely concerned about Channel 4 advertising being placed alongside highly offensive material on YouTube.

'It is a direct contravention of assurances our media buying agency had received on our behalf from YouTube.

'As we are not satisfied that YouTube is currently a safe environment we have removed all Channel 4 advertising from the platform with immediate effect.'

A Google spokesman said: 'We have strict guidelines that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies work as intended, protecting users and advertisers from harmful or inappropriate content.

'We accept that we don't always get it right, and that sometimes, ads appear where they should not.

'We're committed to doing better, and will make changes to our policies and brand controls for advertisers.'
A house in a Maryland was leveled early Friday by a thunderous explosion that could be heard for miles.

The explosion occurred at 12:38am in the Washington DC suburb of Rockville, reducing the home to a pile of bricks on the same day it was scheduled to be auctioned off in a public sale.

The blast also managed to shatter the windows of some nearby homes while turning the entire block into a debris field, covered in pieces of wood and fiberglass insulation.

No injuries have been reported at this time, but the individual who lived at the single-occupant home has still not been accounted for and both of his cars remain in the driveway.

A K9 dog was sent in to search for possible remains on the property around 8am on Friday.

Public records show that a foreclosure notice had been served on the property just this past Tuesday, four days before the auction.

Those records also list the owner of the property as Steve M. Beck.

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Horror scene: A house in Rockville, Maryland exploded at 12:38am on Friday (street in front of the home above)

Gone: Immediately after the blast the home caught on fire, and the structure later had to be leveled by emergency crews trying to put out the blaze (firefighters arriving on the scene above)

Gone: Immediately after the blast the home caught on fire, and the structure later had to be leveled by emergency crews trying to put out the blaze (the yard of the home above)

Site: The home (above before the explosion) was set to go up for auction at 1:30pm on Friday, just 13 hours after the blast destroyed the property

Long task: The crews were still on the scene Friday morning looking for clues to dtermine the cause of the blast and cleaning the site (above)

Pete Piringer, chief spokesman for Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service, confirmed that the status of the home's occupant is unknown.

It was just this past Tuesday that the owner was served with a Notice of Foreclosure Sale on the home, which was purchased over 30 years ago in 1985 for $82,500 according to public records.

The owner had previously received a Lis Pendens back in November of 2015 for missed mortgage payments.

The current value of the 1,040-square-foot home, which has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, is $380,000 on Zillow.

The opening bid at the auction was set to start at $75,000 on Friday.

Piringer also said that investigators were exhaustively checking the rubble during the daylight hours to try and better determine the cause and gather clues.

Neighbor Paul Ricci posted a photo of the blaze on Facebook, writing: 'House blown up, just a flaming crater left behind. Neighbors say was deliberate, was going up for bank auction tomorrow.'

Lost lives: A K-9 was spotted on the scene shortly before 8am on Friday as the search continued for any possible remains

Gone: No injuries have been reported at this time, but one person who lives in the home that exploded has still not been accounted for as of 7am Friday (the front yard of the home above)

Hard at work: Crews worked through the night to clean the site (above), and 75 firefighters were needed to put out the blaze

Gathering clues: Investigators are now working to determine what may have caused the structure to explode

ABC 7 was able to obtain surveillance video from a nearby home that showed the blast in its entirety, with the footage revealing what appear to be multiple explosions that last for close to 10 seconds.

The first explosion looks to the most powerful, with a giant fire ball appearing out of nowhere and engulfing the home.

There is also a late explosion that occurs about 25 seconds into the video, at which point massive plumes of smoke can be seen coming from the home.

Piringer later said that it took 75 firefighters about 20 minutes to put out the blaze and control the rubble.

'It's just a pile of debris; it's just a pile of bricks. There's not anything left of the house,' said Piringer.

'I've heard there were calls from miles away, people calling.'

One individual contacted local authorities in Bethesda, having heard the explosions despite being 10 miles away from the scene,

Piringer described the home damage as 'catastrophic' and added at least a dozen other homes were damaged because of the 'large debris field' from the blast.

Timing: The home was set to go up for auction at 1:30pm on Friday, just 13 hours after the blast destroyed the property (debris in a neighboring yard above)

Debris: Pete Piringer, chief spokesman for Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service, took photos and video at the scene on Friday (above)

Crews are now searching the rubble for clues while some neighbors have been displaced due to the debris and damage to their own homes

Exclusive video: Neighbor's surveillance video showing the moment house exploded in Rockville this morning. We are live on @ABC7GMW pic.twitter.com/58o6JVjJJO  John Gonzalez (@ABC7John) March 17, 2017

Investigators were just beginning to probe the rubble, added Piringer, noting a cause of the blast had not yet been determined.

Piringer also took multiple photos and video of the scene to show the extent of the damage caused by the blast.

Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein was able to rule out one possibility, saying early Friday: 'There is no concern about a gas involvement in this explosion.'

As a safety precaution, fire and utility officials also went door to door asking neighbors to leave the area, displacing a number of local residents.

In a bizarre twist, another home exploded in the same neighborhood back in 2011, less than half-a-mile from the site of Friday's blast.

The 2011 incident was later determined to have been caused by gas.
Qatar has become one of London's biggest landlords over the past ten years and now owns 24million square feet of prime real estate, it was revealed today.

The Qataris own the 22million sq ft Canary Wharf Group estate, with Canadian investor Brookfield, along with another 1.8million sq ft elsewhere in the capital.

And a ranking of London ownership compiled by Datscha puts the Qataris ahead of the City of London, Transport for London, Network Rail and even the Queen.

Foreign owned buildings: A ranking of London ownership compiled by Datscha puts the Qataris ahead of the City of London, Transport for London, Network Rail and even the Queen

Other organisations in the top ten revealed yesterday by Property Week magazine are British Land Company, BNP Paribas, Legal and General, Aviva and Segro.

Much of the 80billion invested by the Qatari Investment Authority alongside its investment and real estate arms since 2005 has gone into the UK real estate sector.

Former prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani revealed last year that Qatari investment in the UK to date had now hit 30billion.

Foreign investors from countries such as Qatar tend to invest in the five main London areas of Kensington, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, the City and Canary Wharf.

Some of London's tallest and most iconic buildings are owned by investors from other nations

Just recently Qatar Holding bought four five-star luxury hotels - Claridge's, the Connaught, the Knightsbridge Berkeley and the Park Lane InterContinental.

LONDON OWNERSHIP RANKINGS Rank Owner Area (sq ft) 1 Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings 21,452,796 2 The Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London 17,447,701 3 Transport for London 14,889,025 4 Aviva 8,964,857 5 BNP Paribas 7,457,253 6 The Queens Most Excellent Majesty in Right of Her Crown 7,266,023 7 Legal & General Group 6,782,525 8 Segro 6,589,014 9 British Land Company 6,410,015 10 Network Rai l 4,903,713

Qatari Diar owns the former American Embassy in Grosvenor Square and the QIA has the Chelsea Barracks, The Shard and the Olympic Village.

Then two years ago Qatar Holding joined forces with Brookfield to buy Canary Wharf for 2.6billion, which was the UK property market's biggest investment deal in a decade.

Raed Hanna from Mutual Finance, which has advises Qatari investors deals, told Property Week that UK property still seen as a safe haven for overseas money.

He said: 'In Qatar they can get a 50 per cent or 60 per cent return against 5 per cent or 6 per cent here in the UK.

'Nevertheless, the UK is still considered much safer than their own country, where they are too politically exposed.'

The ranking of London's biggest 100 commercial landlords by square footage owned was taken from Land Registry, Valuation Office and Companies House data.
A pensioner, found guilty today of stalking two women, was allowed by a judge to take his cat into the court dock with him to help calm his nerves during his trial.

Aidan Wiltshire, 73, from Chelmsford, Essex, was given special permission yesterday afternoon by Judge David Turner QC to have his black cat, Taylor, on his lap after the judge was told it would 'comfort him' during his courtroom ordeal.

Wiltshire was living as a woman and calling himself Anne at the time of the stalking, between May 2014 and April 2015.

As he sat in the dock at Chelmsford Crown Court with the cat on his lap, a jury today ruled that he had stalked the two women - solicitor Alison Gowman, and Carol Irwin, a Methodist church minister.

Normally, an accused has to stand to hear the jurys verdict but Wiltshire had been given permission to remain sitting with his cat.

Pensioner Aidan Wiltshire (above outside court yesterday), 73, from Chelmsford, Essex, was today found guilty of stalking two women. He had been allowed by a judge to take his cat Taylor (on his shoulders) into the court dock with him to help calm his nerves during his trial

Wiltshire was living as a woman and calling himself Anne at the time of the stalking between May 2014 and April 2015

Ms Gowman and Ms Irwin, who were respectively a solicitor and a Methodist minister, were sent numerous letters and received phone calls from Wiltshire, the court was told.

He was said to have been in breach of a restraining order as far as one of them was concerned.

For the benefit of the court, the judge described Wiltshire as having been 'transgendered', as Ms Gowman and Ms Irwin referred to him as 'she' and 'Anne' during the court proceedings.

Today the jury of eight men and four women took 45 minutes to decide that Wiltshire, who in view of his health had not entered a plea, had 'done the acts as charged'.

Now Wiltshire must wait to hear his fate. The judge adjourned sentencing until April 12 for psychiatric reports and freed Wiltshire on bail.

Ms Gowman, a solicitor and partner in the firm DLA Piper and a member of the Hind Street Methodist Church, described in court the bombardment of calls and letters she received as leaving her 'overwhelmed'.

Alison Gowman (left) and Carol Irwin (right), respectively a solicitor and a Methodist minister, were sent numerous letters and received phone calls from Wiltshire, the court was told

She said: 'I felt besieged by her, she was (metaphorically) everywhere I went - on the end of the phone, in voicemails. I felt very vulnerable, she was unpredictable.'

Marc Brown, prosecuting, said: 'One complainant is a solicitor with a firm in Central London and also a member of the Hind Street Methodist Church, Marylebone.

'She came to know the defendant who identified herself as Anne Wiltshire and who used to take her cat to church.

'It seems the defendant formed an attachment to her into believing her to be his legal adviser.

'He began to communicate to her writing letters to her place of work and making calls there and to her home and they were persistent.'

During her evidence, church minister Ms Irwin told the jury that court was not the only place Wiltshire had taken the cat. She said he had also taken Taylor to church with him.

Letters and calls were also sent to Ms Irwin, which Mr Brown said 'became distressing'.

As he remanded Wiltshire on bail, the judge warned him that he must attend the April hearing but made no reference to whether he can bring the cat with him.
President Trump's plan to increase the Navy's size to 350 ships would cost nearly $700bn in government funding, take 30 years to complete and require the hiring of tens of thousands of skilled shipyard workers, experts told Reuters.

Trump says he wants to build dozens of new warships in one of the biggest peace-time expansions of the U.S. Navy.

Ship-builders, unions and a review of public and internal documents show major obstacles to Trump's plan, including the hiring of at least 10,000 workers, many of whom don't exist yet because they still need to be hired and trained.

Trump has vowed a huge build-up - including the expansion of the Navy to 350 warships, from 275 today - of the U.S. military to project American power in the face of an emboldened China and Russia.

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Donald Trump hopes to greatly increase size of the US Navy. His plans, experts say, would take 30 years and would involve the Navy purchasing 321 new ships from now until 2046. He hopes to combat the might of China and Russia. Pictured: A Russian and Chinese naval joint drill

Experts said Trump's plans could cost as much as $700bn in government funding and would require at least 10,000 skilled workers who would require training. Pictured: Trump signing an executive action to 'rebuild' the U.S. Military in January

Trump has provided no specifics, including how soon he wants the larger fleet.

The Navy has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis a report that explores how the country's industrial base could support higher ship production, Admiral Bill Moran, the vice chief of Naval Operations with oversight of the Navys shipbuilding outlook, told Reuters.

He declined to give further details. But those interviewed for this story say there are clearly two big issues - there are not enough skilled workers in the market, from electricians to welders, and after years of historically low production, shipyards and their suppliers, including nuclear fuel producers, will struggle to ramp up for years.

To be sure, the first, and biggest, hurdle for Trump to overcome is to persuade a cost-conscious Congress to fund the military buildup.

The White House declined to comment. A Navy spokeswoman said increases being considered beyond the current shipbuilding plan would require 'sufficient time' to allow companies to ramp up capacity.

The Navy has given a report to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, pictured right with Trump, on how the U.S.'s industrial base could support Trump's proposed naval expansion. Critics say there are neither enough skilled workers on the market nor enough building infrastructure

Trump has not provided specifics about his plan to increase the size of the U.S. Navy, though two shipbuilders - General Dynamics Corps and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc - plan to hire 6,000 workers total in 2017. Pictured: U.S. military equipment in Bremerhaven, Germany

The two largest U.S. shipbuilders, General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc, told Reuters they are planning to hire a total of 6,000 workers in 2017 just to meet current orders, such as the Columbia class ballistic missile submarine.

General Dynamics hopes to hire 2,000 workers at Electric Boat this year. Currently projected order levels would already require the shipyard to grow from less than 15,000 workers, to nearly 20,000 by the early 2030s, company documents reviewed by Reuters show.

Huntington Ingalls, the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, plans to hire 3,000 at its Newport News shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, and another 1,000 at the Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi this year to fulfill current orders, spokeswoman Beci Brenton said.

Companies say they are eager to work with Trump to build his bigger Navy. But expanding hiring, for now, is difficult to do until they receive new orders, officials say.

'Its hard to look beyond' current orders, Brenton said.

Smaller shipbuilders and suppliers are also cautious.

'You cant hire people to do nothing,' said Jill Mackie, spokeswoman for Portland, Oregon-based Vigor Industrial LLC, which makes combat craft for the Navys Special Warfare units. 'Until funding is there ... you cant bring on more workers.'

The Navy envisioned by Trump could create more than 50,000 jobs. During the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, the U.S. shipbuilding and repairing industry employed more than 176,000 people but as of 2016 it employed 100,000 people. Pictured: US sailors in Arabian Sea

Because companies won't hire excess workers in advance, they will have a huge challenge in expanding their workforces rapidly if a shipbuilding boom materializes, said Bryan Clark, who led strategic planning for the Navy as special assistant to the chief of Naval Operations until 2013.

Union and shipyard officials say finding skilled labor just for the work they already have is challenging.

Demand for pipeline welders is so strong that some can make as much as $300,000 per year, including overtime and benefits, said Danny Hendrix, the business manager at Pipeliners Local 798, a union representing 6,500 metal workers in 42 states.

Much of the work at the submarine yards also requires a security clearance that many cant get, said Jimmy Hart, president of the Metal Trades Department at the AFL-CIO union, which represents 100,000 boilermakers, machinists and pipefitters, among others.

To help grow a larger labor force from the ground up, General Dynamics' Electric Boat has partnered with seven high schools and trade schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island to develop a curriculum to train a next generation of welders and engineers.

'It has historically taken five years to get someone proficient in shipbuilding,' said Maura Dunn, vice president of human resources at Electric Boat.

It can take as many as seven years to train a welder skilled enough to make the most complex type of welds, radiographic structural welds needed on a nuclear-powered submarine, said Will Lennon, vice president of the shipyard's Columbia Class submarine program.

The Navy envisioned by Trump could create more than 50,000 jobs, the Shipbuilders Council of America, a trade group representing U.S. shipbuilders, repairers and suppliers, told Reuters.

The U.S. shipbuilding and repairing industry employed nearly 100,000 in 2016, Labor Department statistics show.

The industry had as many as 176,000 workers at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s as the United States built up a fleet of nearly 600 warships by the end of that decade.

Apart from the labor shortage, there are also serious capacity and supply chain issues that would be severely strained by any plan to expand the Navy, especially its submarine fleet.

Expanding the Navy to 350 ships is not as simple as just adding 75 ships.

Many ships in the current 275-vessel fleet need to be replaced, which means the Navy would have to buy 321 ships between now and 2046 to reach Trump's goal, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report in February.

The shipyards that make nuclear submarines - General Dynamics' Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington's Newport News - produced as many as seven submarines per year between them in the early 1980s. But for more than a decade now, the yards have not built more than two per year.

The nuclear-powered Virginia class and Columbia class submarines are among the largest and most complex vessels to build.

The first Columbia submarine, which is set to begin construction in 2021, will take seven years to build, and two to three additional years to test.

Retooling the long-dormant shipyard space will take several years and significant capital investments, but a bigger problem is expanding the supply chain, said Clark, the former strategist for the Navy and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Makers of submarine components such as reactor cores, big castings, and forgers of propellers and shafts would need five years to double production, said a congressional official with knowledge of the Navys long-term planning.

'We have been sizing the industrial base for two submarines a year. You cant then just throw one or two more on top of that and say, "Oh here, dial the switch and produce four reactor cores a year instead of two." You just can't,' the official said.

In his first budget proposal to Congress on Thursday, Trump proposed boosting defense spending by $54 billion for the fiscal 2018 year - a 10 percent increase from last year.

He is also seeking $30bn for the Defense Department in a supplemental budget for fiscal 2017, of which at least $433m is earmarked for military shipbuilding.

A 350-ship Navy would cost $690bn over the 30-year period, or $23bn per year - 60 percent more than the average funding the Navy has received for shipbuilding in the past three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who will have a major say in approving the defense budget, said in a statement to Reuters that he supported Trump's vision to increase the size of the Navy to deter adversaries.

'However, this is not a blank check,' he said.
President Donald Trump blasted the North Korean regime on Friday, supporting his secretary of state for drawing a new red line and hinting at a pre-emptive military strike against Pyongyang's nuclear threat.

'North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!' Trump wrote on Twitter.

The message came while his secretary of state Rex Tillerson was still in the Far East. Tillerson bluntly warned North Korea's dictator hours earlier that he faces pre-emptive military action if he continues developing nuclear missiles.

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President Donald Trump blasted North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear missiles on Friday, saying Pyongyang has been 'playing' the U.S. for years

Trump has shown no sign of continuing the Obama administration's patient diplomacy with respect to Kim Jong-un's threatened nuclear buildup

Trump's secretary of state, Rex Tillerson (shown being photographed by a North Korean soldier) said it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against Pyongyang if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level 'that we believe requires action'

'Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended,' Rex Tillerson told reporters as he drew a dramatic new line in the sand.

'The diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of de-nuclearization have failed. So we have 20 years of [a] failed approach,' Donald Trump's top diplomat said during a visit to Japan.

'And that includes a period in which the U.S. provided $1.35 billion in assistance to North Korea as an encouragement to take a different pathway.'

'If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level we believe requires action that option is on the table,' Tillerson added.

And he said the U.S. won't rule out arming other nations in the Far East with nukes to help keep Pyongyang in check.

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat after visiting the world's most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between rivals North and South Korea.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against the North, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, 'all of the options are on the table.'

Tillerson also told Fox News that the Trump administration hasn't ruled out giving nuclear weapons capabilities to U.S. allies in the Far East in order to keep Kim Jong-un in check

He said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, 'but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces, that would be met with [an] appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.'

But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the US is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.

In an interview with the Fox News Channel, Tillerson added that the U.S. could nuclearize America's East Asian allies to deter North Korean aggression.

'We're exchanging views,' he said. 'Nothing has been taken off the table.'

Tillerson cut short his official duties during a stop in Tokyo, opting not to have meals with Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Korea Herald cited Tillerson's 'fatigue' as the reason.

Past U.S. administrations have considered military force because North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile to deliver them, but rarely has that option been expressed so explicitly.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it's the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions.

The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the U.S. within a few years.

Tillerson is mid-way through a three-nation swing through Northeast Asia, which began in Japan and will end in China.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions

State Department officials have described it as a 'listening tour' as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy, well-coordinated with its Asian partners.

Earlier on Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953.

He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it's the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ.

Land mine explosions in 2015 that Seoul blamed on Pyongyang maimed two South Korean soldiers and led the rivals to threaten each other with attacks.

Hordes of tourists visit both sides, despite the lingering animosity. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options - including military ones - for halting the North's weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.

Earlier on Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains the North's most powerful ally.

While the U.S. and its allies in Seoul and Tokyo implore Beijing to press its economic leverage over North Korea, the Chinese have emphasized their desire to relaunch diplomatic talks - a non-starter for the U.S. under current conditions.

The U.S. and China also disagree over U.S. deployment of a missile defense system to South Korea. The U.S. says it's a system focused on North Korea. China sees it as a threat to its own security.

Last week, North Korea launched four missiles into seas off Japan, in an apparent reaction to major annual military drills the U.S. is currently conducting with South Korea. Pyongyang claims the drills are a rehearsal for invasion.

In Beijing, a North Korean diplomat said Thursday that Pyongyang must act in self-defense against the drills, which he said have brought the region to the brink of nuclear war. He said the drills are aimed at using atomic weapons for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Washington says the maneuvers are routine and defensive.

During last year's election campaign, presidential candidate Trump called into question U.S. security alliances and called for Tokyo and Seoul to contribute more for their defense. Tillerson, however, stressed that cooperation with Japan and South Korea was 'critical.'

Japan and South Korea both host tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Washington has been urging its two allies to step up security cooperation despite their historically strained relations.
Moped thieves who snatched 18 mobile phones from pedestrians before leading police on a 90mph chase and travelling the wrong way down a motorway are facing jail.

Zuriel Hutson, 21, and Sharuk Sheraji, 22, carried out the thefts on a stolen high-powered moped in June last year.

The pair ripped phones out of the hands of 18 victims in a string of thefts through Westminster, Camden, Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police service's Operation Attrition, which targets thefts while using vehicles, were deployed in plain clothes, with the back up of the National Police Air Support Air Service helicopter.

Sharuk Sheraji, left, and Zuriel Hutson, right, have pleaded guilty to various offences after they were caught with 18 mobile phones in snatch thefts

While Sheraji tried to evade police officers in plain clothes by foot, his accomplice Hutson jumped back onto the stolen moped and drove off

Hutson led police on a chase which saw him hit top speeds of 90mph, through the North Circular and on motorways in north London

A police helicopter was deployed to help officers from several boroughs in pursuit of the two suspects

Detectives have identified 17 of the 18 owners of the stolen mobile phones so far, who have provided statements and had their phones returned to them.

They were spotted after their crime spree because of their dangerous driving, and came to a halt in Haringey where Sheraji tried to flee on foot.

Officers caught up with him and he was found with all 18 mobile phones, so arrested for attempted robbery.

Hutson escaped on the moped and led police on a 90mph chase, weaving in and out of cars on the North Circular.

He was pursued by officers and a police helicopter was deployed to track him. Footage taken from the helicopter shows Hutson driving on the wrong side of the road, against the flow of traffic, on the dual carriageway.

Hutson had tried to squeeze between two cars in lanes two and three but crashed into them and came off his bike

He then attempted to flee bare foot, having hit the road with such impact his shoes came off, but police caught up with him and he was arrested

His driving caused members of the public to swerve out of his path to avoid head-on collisions. Some minor road traffic incidents occurred as a result of Hutson's riding.

Police were forced to close part of the M11 to prevent further danger to motorists.

Before reaching this point, Hutson tried to squeeze in between two cars in the gap between lanes two and three, but instead collided with them. The impact forced him to crash his moped, knocking his shoes off his feet as he skidded and rolled along the motorway. He also narrowly avoided being struck by the car behind.

Hutson got back up, restarted his moped and continued along the hard shoulder, again against oncoming traffic.

Police deployed a 'stinger' tyre deflation device ahead of Hutson, which safely slowed him down and eventually stopped him on the slip road of the M11 to the M25.

He then attempted to flee bare foot, but police caught up with him. He was arrested on suspicion of robbery, failing to stop, dangerous driving, to drive away and no assurance.

Hutson and Sheraji, both from Islington, face jail after they admitted various offences at Wood Green Crown Court at an earlier hearing.

Hutson admitted conspiracy to steal, dangerous driving and breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order.

Sheraji pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order.

They were due to be sentenced on March 17, but the sentencing date has been postponed by the court.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Heatley said: 'The convictions should send out a strong message that such incidents will be dealt with robustly by the Met police and the courts.

'Both defendants, Hutson in particular, could have caused serious injury to the victims, the public, other motorists, even themselves, in their callous execution of their crimes and attempts to evade justice. They had no regard for anyone but themselves.

'These offenders rely on the unwariness of the public to snatch their phones whilst they make calls. People hold their private and personal information on their phones. So I urge everyone: Don't make it easy for them. Be aware of your surroundings and keep your phones secure at all times.'
The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee has accused President Donald Trump of discussing classified information during a Fox News interview.

Representative Adam Schiff, of California, said Trump's recent comments about the CIA being hacked during the Obama administration could be considered a leak, if it is true and accurate.

Speaking on Fox, Trump said: 'I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked. That was during the Obama years. That was not during us.'

Adam Schiff (pictured) said President Donald Trump may have leaked classified information

Responding to that Schiff said in a statement: 'In his effort to once again blame Obama, the President appears to have discussed something that, if true and accurate, would otherwise be considered classified information.

'It would be one thing if the President's statement were the product of intelligence community discussion and a purposeful decision to disclose information to the public, but that is unlikely to be the case.'

He added: 'For anyone else to do what the President may have done would constitute what he deplores as "leaks.'''

Schiff said 'for anyone else to do what the President may have done, would constitute what he deplores as "leaks"'

Earlier this month, WikiLeaks published thousands of documents it said were leaked from the CIA.

It is unclear if CIA systems were hacked or if an insider obtained the information and the disclosure is currently under investigation.

The CIA has not confirmed the documents released by WikiLeaks were CIA documents, but experts have said that they appear to be authentic.

Schiff's comments come after he and Representative Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman, said they had yet to find any evidence of Trump's wiretapping claim.

On Thursday their counterparts on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a similar statement.

Republican Senator Richard Burr, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, said: 'Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day.'

Earlier on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan also said 'no such wiretap existed'.

Obama has flatly denied the wiretapping claims, as has James Comey, the FBI director and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence.

Trump accused his predecessor of wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential race

Earlier this month Trump had sensationally accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential race.

Writing on Twitter, he said: 'Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!'

'Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!' he wrote in a second tweet.

The tweets set off a fierce controversy, in part because it was unprecedented for a US president to accuse a predecessor of a felony crime.

The allegation was also remarkable because Trump - known for making bombastic and often unsubstantiated claims on Twitter - would have access to secret law enforcement and intelligence inquiries containing such information.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended Trump's assertion during a briefing

But in a tense news briefing with reporters yesterday White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended the president.

He refused to accept the Senate Intelligence Committee report, saying 'they're not findings'.

The press secretary quoted at length from an unproven Fox News report suggesting Obama had dodged US restrictions by asking Britain's GCHQ electronic surveillance agency to monitor Trump, an allegation already dismissed as 'nonsense and utterly ridiculous.'

British intelligence agencies only comment on the record in exceptional circumstances, but sources said it was considered important to react quickly and emphatically because the allegations had been broadcast around the world.

Today intelligence sources told the Telegraph both Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, had apologised over the claims.

The claims of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former judge Andrew Napolitano.

Elsewhere in the interview with Fox, Trump said 'wiretap covers a lot of different things'.

He also hinted that more details about the alleged surveillance could be revealed in the coming weeks.

He added: 'Wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.'
Theresa May was spotted 'illegally' parking her armoured Prime Ministerial car in a restricted loading bay while she stopped off to do a spot of shopping.

The PM was seen in Henley-on-Thames visiting her favourite shops as the dark green Jaguar XJ Sentinel, with a chauffeur at the wheel, pulled up in a loading-only bay reserved for delivery vehicles last Friday.

It was followed by a black Land Rover with tinted windows, believed to contain her bodyguards.

The PM was in Henley-on-Thames visiting her favourite shops as the dark green Jaguar XJ Sentinel, with a chauffeur at the wheel, pulled up in a loading-only bay

Both vehicles waited with their engines running while Mrs May reportedly visited a womenswear shop, where she is a regular customer.

The Jaguar was given to the Prime Minister by her predecessor David Cameron, and costs around 88,000 for the average buyer, although the custom-made version for the PM - with security extras - will cost more than 200,000.

The vehicle offers ballistic protection to grade B7, which includes grenade protection and blast protection for up to 15kg of TNT.

Passerby Sandy Doggart took a photograph and waited for the PM as he wanted to congratulate her on addressing an EU leaders' summit in Brussels the day before.

However, when she failed to materialise after a couple of minutes, the 76-year-old pensioner left the scene.

The bays should only be used by drivers loading or unloading at businesses, not shoppers, and are subject to a maximum stay of 10 minutes.

Local Conservative councillor David Nimmo Smith said: 'It's rather embarrassing - I have no idea how long they were parked but they clearly weren't loading or unloading.

'I very much doubt it was Mrs May's decision that they parked there - her team should have read the signage properly.'

Both vehicles waited with their engines running while Mrs May reportedly visited a womenswear shop, where she is a regular customer

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police, which handles Mrs May's security arrangements, added: 'We would not confirm the identity of police vehicles in such instances but the unauthorised use of a parking place by a police officer would need an operational reason.'

Mrs May often shops in Henley for her clothes and accessories.
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These shocking pictures show how so-called 'human zoos' around the world kept 'primitive natives' in enclosures so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them.

The horrifying images, some of which were taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian people were cruelly treated as exhibits that attracted millions of tourists.

Inhumane shows held across the Western world were designed to emphasise the cultural difference between Europeans and people who were deemed primitive.

Shocking pictures show how so-called 'human zoos' around the world kept 'primitive natives' in enclosures so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them. Filipinos are pictured in loin cloths sitting in a circle together at Coney Island in New York in the early 20th century while crowds of white Americans watch on from behind barriers

The horrifying industry was also active in Europe. An African girl is shown at the 1958 Expo in Brussels, Belgium that featured a 'Congo Village' with visitors watching her from behind wooden fences

German zoologist Professor Lutz Heck is pictured (left) with an elephant and a family he brought to the Berlin Zoo, in Germany in 1931

The human zoos could be found around the world. In this image, indigenous people are shown participating in archery in 1904 in St Louis, Missouri, at an event shockingly named the 'Savage Olympics Exhibition'

Igorot men from the Philippines wearing loincloths and carrying hand drums, dance at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, November 13, 1904. The horrifying images, from the early and mid 20th century, show how people deemed primitive were cruelly treated as exhibits that attracted millions of tourists

Some of the people in the exhibits, in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century, were treated like animals and many died. They included Ota Benga, a Congolese man exhibited in New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906, who was shockingly described as a 'missing link' of evolution.

More than 40,000 people came to see him every day and was often subject to mocking from the crowd.

The dreadful exhibit sparked protest and outrage and Ota was eventually released. But six years later he tragically took his own life after being unable to assimilate into American life.

The World's Fair in Brussels, Belgium in 1958 featured this mocked-up Senegalese village. Shows held across the Western world were designed to emphasise the cultural difference between Europeans and people who were deemed primitive

A young Filipino girl is pictured sitting on a wooden bench in an enclosure in Coney Island, New York in another horrifying 1906 'exhibit'

Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II is pictured meeting Ethiopians standing behind a wooden fence in Hamburg, Germany in 1909

Ota Benga, a Congolese man exhibited in the New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906, was shockingly described as a 'missing link' of evolution. Over 40,000 people came to see him every day and was often subject to mocking from the crowd

Haunting black and white images also show Chief Yellow Hair and his council standing in front of replicas of teepees at a human zoo at the 1904 World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri

A Javanese woman sits in a mocked-up wooden hut with textiles at another exhibit in the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in Illinois

This unidentified African man was cruelly displayed as an exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair in Missouri. The words 'the missing link' were scrawled on both of the photos

Europe also displayed indigenous people with similar human zoos in France, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Norway had a human zoo for five months in 1914, which included 80 people from Senegal living in a 'Congo Village.'

More than half the Norwegian population paid a visit to the exhibition in Oslo as the Africans wore traditional clothing and went about their daily routing of cooking, eating and making handicrafts.

And over 18 million people came to visit the World Fair in 1889, held in Paris. The main attraction included a display of 400 people.

The dreadful treatment of Ota Benga (second from left), a Congolese man 'exhibited' in New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906, sparked outrage and he was eventually released. But six years later he tragically took his own life after being unable to assimilate into American life

A photograph crudely named 'The extremes meet - civilized and savage watching life savers' exhibition' shows a scene from the World's Fair St. Louis, 1904, with white tourists watching people deemed 'primitive'

This Eskimo child, pictured with a dog, was born at World's Fair in Chicago and is pictured after being transferred to World's Fair, St. Louis in 1904

The shameful industry also affected indigenous Australians in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Indigenous Australians were kept alongside animals and paraded around the world in what was dubbed 'The Human Zoo'.

Australian Cinematographer Philip Rang, who is working on the film, said Aboriginal people were put on display as 'boomerang throwing savages' around North America and Europe.

'Indigenous humans from all parts of the colonised world were exhibited in World Exhibitions, Zoos, Freak Shows, circuses such as PJ Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth, and reconstructed ethnic villages in Europe,' he told Daily Mail Australia earlier this year.

Not far from Filipino exhibition at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the Apache hero Geronimo (pictured) would pose for tourists and signs autographs. Geronimo and several other Native American chiefs were also 'on display' at the event

An Egyptian dancing girl is pictured, left, at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, USA, circa 1893. Ota Benga, a Congolese man, is shown, right, in New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906

A head and shoulders photo shows a man in native headgear and dress at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in about 1893

Even children and babies were treated as displays in the human zoos. This youngster was among others at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in about 1891
A model and a wealthy broker who split after five months are mired in a bitter divorce squabble that has lasted six times the length of their marriage.

Marilyn Levesque has already spent more than 230,000 on lawyers trying to gain a share of a 20million fortune she claims her estranged husband is hiding.

Damien Hancoxs legal team claims she is not entitled to his money because she had previously lived in student-style accommodation and the marriage was so short.

After 30 months of wrangles, the pair have been urged to stop bickering over money by a High Court judge.

Commodities broker Mr Hancox has homes in Ibiza and Verbier, the Swiss ski resort where Prince William recently holidayed with friends.

He had millions in assets ten years ago, according to his ex-wife. The divorced couple, now both in their early 30s, enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle after meeting in 2010 and lived in a flat in South Kensington, west London.

They married in July 2013 after a lavish ceremony Miss Levesque claimed cost 200,000, before separating in December of the same year. She has been photographed for agencies Montage Models and Nevs Models.

Miss Levesque claims her ex-husband has not disclosed his true wealth and evidence shows he had assets of more than 20million in 2007  the year he declared himself bankrupt.

She said there were photographs of bundles of cash at the home they shared, money was spent freely during their marriage and her former husband operated Swiss bank accounts in company names.

Mr Hancox would regularly spend more than 4,000 in one trip to a nightclub and ran up a 200,000 credit card bill in a year, Miss Levesques lawyers told Mr Justice Baker.

But Christopher McCourt, representing Mr Hancox, questioned how much she should be allowed to walk away with following a marriage lasting less than half a year. Miss Levesque had always lived in student-style accommodation, he added.

The models barrister, Justin Warshaw QC, said the mess had been created because Mr Hancox had refused to disclose financial information.

Marilyn Levesque has already spent more than 230,000 on lawyers bills. But the Royal Courts of Justice (pictured) Judge told the pair: 'The more money you spend on legal proceedings, the less money there will be to share between you'

The judge told the squabbling pair: The more money you spend on legal proceedings, the less money there will be to share between you.

Mr Hancox has won the latest round of the fight after he appealed against orders made against him at a private family court hearing in late 2016.

He complained of unfairness as a result of being forced to take part in the hearing over the telephone from Ibiza because he had pneumonia.

Mr Justice Baker analysed the complaints on Thursday and concluded that rival claims should be reconsidered at a fresh hearing.

The most costly divorce settlement in history was a 1billion agreement between billionaire motoring boss Bernie Eccleston and ex-wife Slavica.
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Students and staff at the French school where the teenage son of a far-right French politician went on a shooting spree have returned to the site just one day after the tragic event.

Around 400 of the school's 950 pupils gathered in the schoolyard at around 9am French time where they were joined by teachers, parents, and police officers.

There were no classes at Alexis de Tocqueville lycee, in Grasse, this morning, although some students met with counsellors.

High school students and parents walk up the steps leading to the Alexis de Tocqueville school, the day after a student opened fire

Some 400 of the school's 950 pupils gathered in the schoolyard at around 9am on Friday morning

Two high school students hug each other. The shooting left the school's head teacher and three pupils injured

Some people were in tears as small groups gathered in the grounds.

On Thursday, Kylian Barbey, 17, armed with two revolvers, a hunting rifle and a backpack containing fake grenades, opened fire at the school.

He was arrested after the headteacher, Herve Pizzinat, and three pupils, two of whom were identified solely as Julie, 16, and Akram, 17.

Barbey is said to be obsessed by American high school shootings and had complained of bullying.

A student at the school this morning told French news webiste, Nice-Matin: 'We just came back to pick up some of the stuff we left yesterday.

'For the moment, I don't want to talk about it. There is no need, it doesn't help.

'But other students went to talk to counsellors. Some of them were crying.'

Kylian Barbey, 17, opened fire at the Alexis de Tocqueville lycee in Grasse, injuring the headmaster and two pupils. He is the son of far-right French politician Franck Barbey, who tweeted: 'Heartfelt support for the director, the teachers, the staff, the pupils, and the parents of pupils.' Pictured right, Kylian Barbey pictured in a clown mask

A frightening video on Barbey's Facebook page shows a man in a clown mask pointing a gun at the camera and pulling the trigger before holding it to his temple and doing the same.

The gun in the video was not loaded.

The last photo the suspected gunman posted on his Facebook page was of an eerie Gothic skeleton figure with long hair dressed in a black coat and walking with a pistol in one hand an an assault rifle in the other.

He made it his profile picture on Monday.

His cover photo on Facebook is a picture of the Joker - the Batman villain - with the caption 'give a man a mask and he'll become his true self'.

The suspected gunman changed his profile picture to this chilling photograph of a Gothic killer before going on a shooting spree

People embrace outside the school after a gunman, also suspected to be a student, opened fire at the headteacher

Firefighters carry a woman who appears to be grimacing in pain to the back of an emergency services vehicle in France

A member of special Police unit RAID outside the Tocqueville high school after a shooting incident injuring at least three people

Anti-terror police break into the school in Grasse, Southern France, shortly after the shooting

His Twitter feed only features four posts - all about the Nice terror attack in July last year when a 19-tonne cargo truck was Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem France's education minister, visited the school this evening and described a 'mad act by a young man who is fragile and fascinated by guns'.

The four victims were in hospital tonight with non-life threatening injuries, while ten others who were lightly hurt in the rush to escape were treated at the scene.

Mr Pizzinat was thought to have intervened in a dispute between Barbey and another student, with the three students hurt by ricocheting bullets.

The shooter's father Franck Barbey is an elected municipal councillor for the hard right Rally for France (RPF) party, which fights globalisation, European federalism, and immigration.

Its members, including Mr Barbey, have traditionaly allied themselves with Marine Le Pen's National Front.

However, during France's current presidential election campaign, Mr Barbey is supporting Francois Fillon, of the conservative Republicans party.

The two were pictured together last year.

Students react after a gunman went on a shooting spree in a high school in Grasse, southern France, Thursday, March 16, 2017

Special operations team officers heavily armed with rifles and riot gear after a 17-year-old pupil went on a killing spree

Students walk up a hill away from the site of the shooting directed by a man in a bulletproof vest as RAID officers stand by

Children are escorted away from their high school after an student started firing at a headteacher in Grasse, southern France

A policeman wearing a bulletproof vest stands near a firefighters vehicle on a road near the Tocqueville high school in the southern French town of Grasse

Anti-terror police broke into the building after the shooting spree which injured at least three people and all schools in the town around 25 miles west of Nice were locked down with officers patrolling the streets.

Five others were hurt in the rush to escape.

Mr Pizzinat was thought to be the main target, with the two students hurt by ricocheting bullets.

'It was total panic,' said a student identified as Achraf, who described his ordeal to the BFM TV channel.

'The gunshots were just four or five metres from where we were. We thought the gunman was coming towards us. We heard him shouting.

'I just know the gunman by sight. He was gentle and low-key, not a nasty guy.'

Schoolgirls wrapped in gold, foil blankets are escorted away from the school as a mob of journalists huddle behind them

Worried-looking students walk away from the school as police officers line the streets in the immediate aftermath of the shooting

A schoolgirl leaves her high school after an attack in a high school in Grasse, southern France, where three people were hurt

Anti-terror police make their way to the scene of the shooting in Grasse, Southern France

A French Policeman wearing a bulletproof controls traffic on a road near the Tocqueville high school

Paramedics see to students who were evacuated from the school in France where a gunmen opened fire

Police cordon off the area as people gather to view the nearby high school following the shooting

Armed French policemen wearing bulletproof jackets walk at the Tocqueville high school in the southern French town of Grasse

Police officers coordinate operations near the Tocqueville high school in Grasse, southwestern France

A picture from the scene where a gunman is said to have opened fire inside a French high school

The Alexis de Tocqueville high school in Grasse, France, where the gunman opened fire, injuring at least two people

A rose is carried near the site of the shooting Thursday afternoon as a woman smokes a cigarette among the crowd

Members of the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) patrol after an attack in a high school in Grasse, southern France

French police forces stand guard near the scene of a shooting at Lycee Alexis de Tocqueville school in Grasse

Fabienne Atzori, the Grasse prosecutor, said the assailant 'went into class to find a person. He could not find him to begin with but then opened fire. The head teacher bravely intervened and was among those wounded.'

Ms Atzori added that Barbey may have been motivated by' bad relations with other pupils, he had a lot of difficulties.'

Today's three victims, including the school headteacher Herve Pizzinat, were lightly injured.

The suspected gunman's father tweeted his support for Mr Pizzinat and the school in the immediate aftermath of the shooting spree.

He wrote: 'Wholeheartedly with the principal, teachers, staff, students and parent students at Tocqueville.'

Initially, there were fears the shooter might have an accomplice, and police were looking for him around the school grounds.

The first victim was also a student at the school, who alerted others to the presence of a shooter.

People stand outside a police security cordon as a French policeman walks near the Tocqueville high school

French Police officers control traffic near the Tocqueville high school in Grasse

An armed French Police officer controls traffic near the Tocqueville high school in Grasse, southwestern France

A student called Thomas told Nice Martin he saw the shooter gun down his headteacher and despite having shrapnel in his arm, he continued to try and calm the students down.

'He was incredibly cool,' Thomas said.

'I was too far away to hear what he was saying, but he remained calm even after being hit by a first shot.

'Despite the lead in the arm, he kept trying to bring him back to reason.'

Thomas said students were in floods of tears when they realised an attack was taking place and that he immediately recognised his schoolmate.

He told the French news outlet the gunman watched 'strange war videos'.

A second source said it appeared that two students had opened fire on the headmaster, who had been injured, adding that the suspects did not seem to be militants.

'One of the two was arrested and the second fled.

'There was panic and the students took refuge in the neighbouring supermarket,' said the source.

An eye-witness student in the school interviewed by France Inter radio said the students had heard a bang and taken cover under the tables.

'I went to close the windows and saw a guy who looked at me in the eyes.

'He seemed to be a student and not very big. He shot in the air and ran away,' the student said without giving his name.

Policemen stand near police vehicles in the southern French town of Grasse, on March 16, 2017

An armed French police officer controlling traffic after a gunman opened fire at a school

According to local journalist Soren Seelow, the gunman had researched The Columbine High School massacre - a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.

As well as shooting and killing 12 students and one teacher, perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planted a fire bomb to divert firefighters.

Propane tanks converted to bombs were also placed in the cafeteria and 99 explosive devices and carbombs were also involved.

As well as the 12 victims, 21 were injured.

The pair subsequently committed suicide.

The French government issued a warning of a terrorist attack in the wake of the incident after the man in possession of several weapons fired at the headteacher.

It is understood the shooting was a targeted attack upon the headteacher, who in a statement welcoming students to the school said last year: 'Do not be afraid here - 850 pupils swim like fish in the waters of this establishment.'

He also said on the school's website: 'Parents and teachers alike, school, social and health care personnel are guidelines that guide the student in the stormy ocean of adolescence and try to avoid the reefs of incivility, the song of the sirens of absenteeism or the abyss of violence.'

People sit near the Tocqueville high school in the southern French town of Grasse after police locked the are down amid fears of a terror attack

Anti-terror police swarmed the school and arrived to warn neighbours to say indoors.

Despite the terror alert from the French government, Grasse town hall attempted to play down the situation saying terrorism was not a factor.

A spokeswoman told Le Dauphine: 'Two students shot at the headmaster.'

Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cut short a trip to the northern Somme area because of the Grasse shooting, as well as a letter bomb blast at the offices of the International Monetary Fund in Paris on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has said she is on her way to the site.

The incident comes with France in a state of emergency after several militants attacks over the last year.

It is less than six weeks away from a presidential election in which security and fears of terrorism are among key issues.

Grasse, where a gunman is said to have opened fire on a headteacher inside the school

An envelope bomb exploded in the face of a worker at the International Monetary Fund's Paris office this morning.

A female IMF secretary suffered head and hand injuries in the blast, and damage to her eardrum.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde has branded the attack a 'cowardly act of violence'.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot revealed that IMF staff have received a number of threatening calls in recent days.

It comes after Greek radicals this week claimed responsibility for a parcel bomb that was sent to Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble.

French police are investigating a possible link between the Greek group and today's attack in Paris.
Australian Sara Connor could serve more jail time as prosecutors announce they will appeal her four-year jail sentence.

Connor, who will be spending her time in the notorious Kerobokan Prison, was shown no mercy by the prosecution who confirmed their intent to appeal the sentencing because they think it was too lenient.

The Australian mother was found guilty for her part in the death of an Indonesian police officer Wayan Sudarsa, who was beaten to death in Bali last year.

Her British boyfriend David Taylor was sentenced to six years jail for beating Mr Sudarsa to death, but prosecutors have announced, they are not planning to appeal his term.

Bali prosecutors have confirmed they will appeal Australian Sara Connor's (pictured) four-year sentence saying that it is too lenient

Prosecutor Anak Agung Jayalantara said that the sentence handed to the 46-year-old mother of two on Monday was 'unfair'

Prosecutors have no plans to appeal the six-year sentence handed to Connor's boyfriend, David Taylor (R)

In explaining their decision to appeal, prosecutor Anak Agung Jayalantara said on Friday that the sentence handed to the 46-year-old mother of two on Monday was 'unfair'.

The verdict was half of what prosecutors had called for, and two years less than what Mr Taylor had received.

'Sara should receive a sentence that is not too much different (from his) or at least more than a half of what we requested,' Mr Jayalantara said.

'Of course we are expecting the same sentence with our demand, eight years,' he said,' he told The Telegraph.

All parties have until Monday to formally lodge an appeal.

In response to the prosecution, Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar told AAP that he had informed the family of the decision but had not heard back.

He is expected to meet with her at Kerobokan prison on Monday to discuss what to do next.

Mr Siregar has said that his suggestion to Connor will be to challenge the verdict and sentence.

'Of course the decision is in Sara's hands. I will explain to her the consequences (of that).'

The mother-of-two was found guilty for killing a Bali police officer Wayne Sudarsa on Kuta Beach last year

Connor claimed to of tried to speearte Taylor and Mr Sudarsa but in sentencing Chief Judge Made Paesk said that she had pinned Mr Sudarsa down so that he could not fight back

Connor and Taylor were both charged with unpremeditated murder which does not carry the death penalty for their killing on Kuta Beach (pictured) on August 2016

Holidaying on Kuta Beach in August 2016, Taylor confronted and accused Mr Sudarsa of taking Connor's lost purse.

Taylor began fighting the officer, beating him with his walkie-talkie and binoculars before hitting him with a broken beer bottle.

Connor claimed to have tried to separate the pair but in sentencing Chief Judge Made Paesk said that she had pinned Mr Sudarsa down so that he could not fight back.

The pair destroyed Officer Sudarsa's identification documents and their own clothes before fleeing but were caught before they could leave the country.

Taylor admitted beating Mr Sundarsa, but denied intentionally trying to kill him, and was jailed for six years, though prosecutors asked eight for both he and Connor.

Sara Connor will spend four years inside the notorious Kerobokan Prison for killing Bali police officer Wayan Sudarsa

The Bali prison has been home to riots, fires and the nightmarish realities of high-profile Australian criminals, Schapelle Corby, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran

Indonesian laws maintains the death penalty for serious crimes, such as those of Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were killed by firing squad in 2015 for smuggling heroin.

However whilst the penalty exists for murder, it is only if the crime was premeditated, or carried out during another offence, such as extortion or robbery.

Connor and Taylor both were charged with unpremeditated murder which does not carry the death penalty and carries a far less serious sentence.
Shocking body camera footage shows a Queensland police officer laughing as a teenage boy lay unconscious from a suspected drug overdose.

Charlie Robertson, 19, died shortly afterwards - but he could have been saved had police called for paramedics instead of walking away, a coronial inquest has heard.

The footage was released as the inquest at the Coroners Court of Queensland drew to a close this week and was first reported by Nine News.

The seven police officers barged into a Gold Coast home in March, 2015 and found Mr Robertson unconscious on a bed.

Shocking body camera footage shows a Queensland police officer laughing as a teenage boy lay unconscious from a suspected drug overdose

The footage shows them attempting to ruse him without success. A police officer is heard laughing on the tape.

A doctor told the inquest Robertson would have had a very high likelihood of surviving had the officers called for medical help, the news station reported.

The inquest heard Mr Robertson overdosed from GHB and cocaine, according to Nine News.

While the coroner, Terry Ryan, isn't expected to present his findings for some weeks, the boy's parents, Rose and Graham Robertson, told Nine News they want justice.

'Rose and I will never walk away. We will see that justice is done and that the laws are changed so it doesn't happen to any other family,' Graham Robertson said.

'They left our boy to die.'

The footage shows them attempting to ruse him without success. A police officer is heard laughing on the tape
Looking for love: Russell Horne was on his way to a date when he was stopped by police

A love-struck teacher who travelled 200 miles for a blind date was arrested after police caught him drinking in his car for 'Dutch courage'.

Russell Horne, 44, struck up a relationship over the internet with the woman and arranged to meet in person for the first time.

He made the epic journey from his home in Morley, Leeds, to go on a romantic date with a woman in her hometown of Lanark.

But shortly before they were due to meet Horne decided to steady his nerves by necking beer and downing rum while sitting in his car.

However his dreams of romance were shattered when police saw him and stopped to investigate.

Officers detected a smell of alcohol and spotted an empty bottle of Hobgoblin beer in the footwell of the driver's seat and a bottle of rum in the back seat.

Horne failed a roadside breath test and was arrested.

He has appeared at Lanark Sheriff Court and admitted being four times the legal drink drive limit while in charge of his Citroen car in January last year.

He recorded a reading of 88 mcg of alcohol in 100 milliliters of breath. The legal limit is 22 mcg

He was fined 315 and had 10 points put on his driving licence by Sheriff Sukhwinder Gill but spared a driving ban after she said she would take his previous good character into account.

The court heard Morley was a first offender and worked as a supply teacher so only earned money when he is working in the classroom.

Dutch courage: Russell Horne (pictured above) told his solicitor he had pulled over for a cheeky drink of booze to calm his nerves before the first date

Good character: The judge spared Russell Horne, pictured left and right, jail after learning that he had never been in trouble before

Archie Hill, defending, said: 'He had travelled from Leeds to meet with a lady in Lanark.

'This was effectively a blind date, but they had been in contact with each other for a considerable period over the internet.

'He parked up and he consumed the bottle of beer and took a few sips of the rum for Dutch courage.

'If he had got into the house and it had not worked out, he would have had to go back to the car.'

Sheriff Gill asked if Horne had kept his blind date but when his lawyer said he had not met with the lady, she replied: 'I was going to ask how it went.'

Mr Hill said: 'It did not go well.'




Emma Sadler, who was accused of the manslaughter of her father in a fatal house fire in Cardiff, has been found not guilty by reason of insanity

A woman accused of the manslaughter of her father in a fatal house fire has been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Emma Sadler, 28, who 'grinned and laughed' after starting the blaze, denied the manslaughter of her father Robert by starting a fire in an understairs cupboard at their home in Llanrumney, Cardiff, on January 10 last year.

On New Year's Eve, she had been seen leaning out of an upstairs window shouting for someone to call the fire brigade.

She told one passer-by: 'Please don't be like all the rest of them wearing blinkers. There are demons in here.'

Sadler also told a paramedic that her name was '701'.

The day before the fire, Sadler had been taken home by the police, having been found in an agitated state in a nearby street.

An ambulance was called but paramedics did not attend her home until 1am the following day - just three hours before the blaze.

At 4.30am a passing motorist saw smoke coming from Sadler's home and dialled 999. He saw her in the street and she was carrying a candle inside a glass vase and had a lighter.

Ms Sadler, 28, who 'grinned and laughed' after starting the blaze, denied the manslaughter of her father Robert, 59, by starting the fire in an understairs cupboard at their home in Llanrumney on January 10 last year. It was concluded in court that she had schizophrenia

Sadler was arrested and taken to a police station where officers witnessed her deteriorating mental state and alerted doctors.

Mr Sadler, 59, was pulled out of the house by firefighters, but pronounced dead by paramedics, as a result of smoke inhalation.

At Cardiff Crown Court yesterday, it took the jury of eight men and four women less than 20 minutes to return the unanimous not guilty verdict.

Only one witness, consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Philip Joseph, was called to give live evidence. He concluded the defendant had schizophrenia.

Dr Joseph told the jury he was satisfied the insanity defence applied in this case.

He said: 'In this case, Emma did not know what she was doing was wrong.

Having seen a number of these cases over the years, I think this one is fairly clear-cut.'

The day before the fire, Sadler had been taken home by the police, having been found in an agitated state in a nearby street. An ambulance was called but paramedics did not attend her home until 1am the following day - just three hours before the blaze

Judge Sir John Griffith Williams said: 'This is a very tragic case.'

He thanked the jury for their work during the three-day trial.

He added: 'You may be wondering why you have been required to try this case when really there is no dispute. These matters are so important they must be put before a jury.'

The jury had two options - firstly to return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter, or secondly a verdict of not guilty of manslaughter by reason of insanity.

In this case, described by defence barrister Mark Power QC as 'most unusual', the facts were agreed between the prosecution and the defence.

The defence team accepted Sadler started the fire and was reckless as to whether the lives of others were put in danger.

Jurors had to consider the key issue of whether, at the time of the incident, Ms Sadler was experiencing 'a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind'.

The verdict meant the jury concluded Ms Sadler did not know at the time that what she was doing was wrong.

At 4.30am a passing motorist saw smoke coming from Sadler's home and dialled 999. He saw her in the street and she was carrying a candle inside a glass vase and had a lighter

A number of statements were read out during the trial from police, paramedics, fire crew and family members.

While waiting to be assessed by a doctor at hospital after the fire, Sadler had told one officer: 'I know what you are doing. You all want to rape me and kill me and take my body parts. Get my body sorted and get me out of here.'

She later stated that she started the fire with paper and a lighter and when asked why she replied: 'The land is cursed.'

The judge made orders under Section 37 and Section 41 of the Mental Health Act, meaning Ms Sadler will remain at The Dene psychiatric hospital in Brighton for treatment.

He said the main point he had to consider was whether the defendant presented a risk to the public.

Her treating psychiatrist said she had made good progress on her medication, but could still be verbally aggressive at times and needed to be closely monitored for signs of relapse.

The judge told Ms Sadler: 'I have no doubt that you loved your father and the two of you were very close. You will have to live with the responsibility for starting the fire and its consequences, but I am satisfied that your blameworthiness was very low.'

He added: 'I hope you will understand it is the intention of the court that by making these orders you will soon recover from the mental illness from which you have been suffering.'

Detective Inspector Stuart Wales, from South Wales Police's major crime investigation team, said: 'This was a tragic incident which brought shock and sadness to the community.'

He paid tribute to Mr Sadler's family for their 'strength and fortitude'.
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These are the last known photos of a British backpacker showing her holding hands with a local man just hours before she was brutally raped and murdered in Goa.

The photos show Danielle McLaughlin in a bikini top standing behind a group of tourists in a bar at the popular beach resort of Palolem.

An hour later she is believed to have left the party on a scooter with her alleged killer. Her stripped and beaten body was found the next morning in a field four miles away.

The two pictures, in which the faces of everyone apart from Danielle were pixelated before being released to MailOnline, show the backpacker linking hands with someone sitting in the background - believed to be a local man.

Today a friend who was with the 28-year-old revealed a group of men appeared to be 'glued' to Danielle on Monday night, when the pictures were taken. Another holiday-maker, named only as Susan, said she was left stunned when one of the men groped her breast.

Susan, from London, said: 'One of these guys smiled at me and then came up and groped my breast. I was stunned. I have been coming back to India for some time. It is a beautiful place and people are generally friendly. But I have no faith in the police.'

Officers have arrested a local man, Vikat Bhagat, who they say has confessed to the killing - but local investigators this morning came under fire amid claims they had made a series of blunders in the investigation.

Pictures have emerged showing British backpacker Danielle McLaughlin holding hands with an unidentified man and dancing just hours before she was brutally raped and murdered in Goa. There is no suggestion the man pictured is a suspect or behaved inappropriately towards anyone at the party

Friends of Danielle say they were put in the same room as the main suspect Vikat Bhagat, who had confessed to the crime, to identify him. He is pictured with a hood over his head being escorted by police in Goa today

Indian police are facing criticism over their investigation into British backpacker Danielle McLaughlin's rape and murder amid claims they made a series of blunders. They are pictured today taking suspect Vikat Bhagat into a police station after medical tests at Goa Medical College

Danielle McLaughlin, 28, is pictured playing guitar in Kasol town during her first visit to Himachal Pradesh, northern India in March, 2016

There is also surprise that Bhagat (pictured being led into a police station today) was free despite having a long criminal record

Friends of the 28-year-old, who lived in Liverpool, have told how they watched dozens of people trample over the crime scene after her body was found stripped and battered on Tuesday morning. Police are pictured investigating at the scene on Tuesday

The family have hired a well known Indian lawyer called Vikram Varma who has worked with British mother Fiona MacKeown on the investigation into her daughter Scarlett Keeling's murder.

Danielle was last seen dancing and laughing at a party with Bhagat to celebrate the Holi festival at the Green Park resort in Palolem Beach.

Other partygoers told how a group of Indian men were 'glued' to Danielle, who had painted her face, at the party for local ex-pats.

Another partygoer Angela, 33, said: 'I saw her here and she looked so happy. I noticed she was with three or four Indian men. They were glued to her. It was strange as it was a party for ex-pats but there were these men here.

'I wanted to ask her what they were doing with her as I could hear her Irish accent. She had two men on each side of her and one in front covering her. But she kept dancing on the floor looking like she didn't have a care in the world.

'At one point, one of the men wearing a hat came up to me and asked where I was from. I'm not sure if it was Bhagat as he was covered in paint.

'But I politely told him to get lost and moved away. It has made me scared for my safety here. I want the British government to act strongly to make sure justice is served here.'

Suspect Vikat Bhagat, 23, is pictured with his head covered on Thursday after being arrested over Danielle's murder. Her friends have told how she fell in love with India during her first trip to the country last year (left)

On Thursday, police confirmed Danielle's post mortem had been completed as they held Bhagat (pictured) in custody. Deputy Superintendent Sammy Tavares, from Canacona Police Station, said results confirm cause of death was by strangulation and injuries to the head

Danielle McLaughlin's body is now set to be returned to home with friends arriving tonight. A page from her passport is pictured above

Danielle had spent some of the night chatting to British couple David Woodruff.

David said: 'She had a strong Irish accent and straight away told me her life story. She was really funny, bubbly girl.

'She was off dancing and having a great time. She introduced me to an Indian guy who she knew from last year and said she was going to help find her a place to stay.

'He was one of the five guys with her but I got a weird vibe from this guy who I guess is Bhagat and not even in retrospect - right at that time. I didn't really talk to him and he just sat there glaring.

'At the end of the night I said we are going for a quick swim and would she join us to swim around. She said give me two minutes I need to speak with my friend.

Bhagat, 23, confessed to the killing, saying he sexually assaulted Ms McLaughlin before disfiguring her face with a beer bottle

'We went to the sea and we were there for 20 odd minutes but she did not join us. By the time we got back, it was 9.37pm exactly. She was gone.'

Indian police have been slammed over their investigation amid claims they have made a series of blunders.

Friends of the 28-year-old, who lived in Liverpool, have told how they watched dozens of people trample over the crime scene after her body was found stripped and battered on Tuesday morning.

One friend said she saw 30 or more men standing next to her body taking photos and watching.

It has also emerged that friends were put in the same room as the main suspect, Vikat Bhagat, who had confessed to the crime, to identify him. And there is also surprise that Bhagat was free despite having a long criminal record.

Families of British girls Scarlett Keeling and Sarah Groves, murdered in India, have previously hit out at authorities bungling the case and the length of time that has been taken to get justice in their cases.

Danielle's friends have now set up a Facebook page - Justice for Danielle McLaughlin - calling for the death penalty in the case.

Saskia Gall was one of her friends who had to identify the body but she was also asked to ID the suspect in his cell.

She also questioned police activity at the crime scene, adding: 'We went out to the field and there were about 30 or more men standing next to the body taking photos and watching.'

A friend added: 'The girls who brought her down to Palolem from Agonda. They had to go and identify the body and so on. They also had an opportunity to identify the suspect and the police put him in the same room with all the girls, like 24 hours after. It is an awful situation to be in.

'Also Bhagat seems to have a criminal record as long as my arm - how can he be free after all the things he is said to have done.'

There was also shock that pictures of Danielle's battered body were leaked to the media in the hours after her death with some put up online. They have not been used by MailOnline.

Police have denied mishandling the case.

Two pathologists on Thursday revealed that Danielle (right) had died as a result of a compression of the neck and their report has been passed to police. Suspect Vikat Bhagat is pictured (left)

Danielle is pictured during a walk in the mountains at Kasol town during her first visit to Himachal Pradesh, northern India in March, 2016

Sammy Tavares, Deputy Superintendent of Police said: 'There is no question of polluting the crime scene. We always sanitise the area of crime. We call the crime scene experts and forensics.

'But in this case it might have taken a couple of hours for the team to turn up. So I am not sure what happened in between.

'The police did not release those pictures of the victim. They must have been circulated by the media or something

'The accused was identified by some witnesses, but it was done with due diligence. I don't have reports that witnesses and accused were brought face to face with each other. '

Danielle's body is now set to be returned to home with friends arriving tonight.

He added: 'We have informed the embassy and her friends are expected to reach by this evening or tomorrow morning from the UK to get her body. Her mother is not coming. There were at least 15 cases of theft against and petty crime against Vikat.

'She was with him (Vikat) only all the time. They were last seen at Green Park Resort. They drank there and then hopped to some other pubs.

'They were not in any relationship and we cannot confirm if they were physically involved before. But the accused said he felt an urge to have sex with her and confessed to raping. But because she was struggling he attacked her head with a beer bottle and she died instantly.

'He was apparently helping her with a stay at Palolem where she had come a day before for Holi celebrations. We have spoken with all the resort owners where she was seen the day. There were some four other friends of the accused but they don't seem to have been involved.

Danielle McLaughlin, 28, (showing the victory sign) is pictured with her friend Rishabh Surana, 29, (playing the flute) at his office in Kolkata, India in March, 2016

CCTV video has emerged showing the final movements of British tourist Danielle McLaughlin (left in both pictures) before she was brutally raped and murdered in an Indian holiday resort

Danielle McLaughlin (left in both pictures) was seen carrying a bag and walking along a road in Goa with an unknown man behind her in the grainy footage

Ms McLaughlin (left), who is thought to have lived in Liverpool, had just arrived from the north of the state and had been seen out and about at a party on Monday night at nearby Palolem beach, popular with Western tourists. A local man named as Vikat Bhagat (right) has been arrested

'The victim and Vikat did not have a brawl as such. He tried to force himself onto her and he raped her. But as she struggled he hit her and she must also have fought back.

'We have the post-mortem report and the accused has confessed to the crime as well. We will continue collecting evidence and then file a charge sheet at the right time.'

Last night, pictures emerged of the suspect being escorted to a police station with a bag over his head, as authorities confirmed the 28-year-old backpacker was raped before her death.

It has since emerged that Danielle's family have hired well know Indian lawyer Vikram Varma who has worked with Brit mum Fiona MacKeown on the investigation into her daughter Scarlett Keeling's murder.

He said: 'The quality of the evidence collection system is far more inferior here than what they are in UK or elsewhere.

'But if the police are confident that they have the confession of the accused and they have sufficient evidence then they may not have not taken everything into consideration.

'I must add here that a confession of the accused is not enough because it is not admissible in the court.

'Saskia Gall helped the police identify the body and she followed due procedures as was asked. She had a few questions and concerns regarding how the police had gone on about managing the crime scene but we cannot comment on that for now. '

Last night, pictures emerged of the suspect being escorted to a police station with a bag over his head, as authorities confirmed the 28-year-old backpacker was raped before her death.

Danielle was found dead on Tuesday morning after she had attended Holi celebrations at Palolem beach. Her killer reportedly sexually assaulted her and 'disfigured' her face with a beer bottle.

A post mortem on Danielle has revealed that she was strangled to death later that night and it also confirmed she had been sexually assaulted. Two pathologists revealed that she had died as a result of a compression of the neck and their report has been passed to police.

Ms McLaughlin's badly beaten body was discovered by a farmer at Deobag Beach about four miles away on Tuesday morning. She had suffered extensive injuries to her face and head

At the vigil on Wednesday night, 200 local and foreign nationals gathered with flowers to pay tribute to Ms McLaughlin in Goa

A 28-year-old, named by police as Danielle McLaughlin (pictured), was found dead in a field on Tuesday morning after attending Holi celebrations in the Canacona area of southern Goa, India

Floral tributes are left on Deobag beach in Goa, India where Danielle McLaughlin was found dead. On Wednesday, hundreds gathered to pay tribute to the 28-year-old

Danielle McLaughlin, 28, was found dead on Tuesday morning after attending Holi celebrations in southern Goa. A picture of the backpacker is seen on Wednesday at the spot where she was found

The Ourem Shack in the Agonda festival village, Goa, India where Danielle McLaughlin was staying before she was murdered

Her family will then be able to take her body home which is currently being sorted by the British Consulate.

Tavares said yesterday: 'She died of compression of neck and suffered cranial cerebral damage. There was also wounds showing there was rape. She suffered grave injuries to her head and face and died.'

It comes as it emerged that Ms McLaughlin may have met her alleged killer a year ago and amid claims he told police he was not alone when the backpacker was killed. Officers are now understood to be quizzing three other suspects.

Backpacker Ms McLauilin, who arrived in Goa on February 23, had been at Agonda beach and Patnem beach with friends during her first fortnight in the state.

Yesterday it emerged that Bhagat has told police that he was friends with Danielle and the pair had first met on her previous visit a year ago.

Taveres added: 'We suspect Vikat tried to sexually assault her as he has injury marks on groin area and thighs. They do not look like nail marks but they are deep cuts.

'It seems the deceased struggled to get off his grip. But we cannot tell you anything until the post-mortem report is out. Only the report would confirm if she was raped or sexually assaulted.

'We are still interrogating Vikat. He has been maintaining that he killed her with a broken beer bottle but not speaking up further.

'He is not telling the reason for the murder. We also found the shards of the same near her body at the crime spot. But it is unclear if they were drinking together.

'Vikat has told us that they knew each other as Danielle had visited Goa last year and became friends with him. But she used to call him brother. They would hang out but had never gone out of the area (Canacona) together. It was more like a local knowing a foreigner.

'We are yet finding out where all she had gone before the incident and who all were with her. Vikat had tried to name a few men before but later said he was all alone with her before her last. We are investigating all angles and interrogating suspects. She was not with any foreigner the day before, this we know.'

In further police interviews, Bhagat has reportedly revealed that he was not alone when Danielle was killed. Police are now quizzing three other suspects.

Danielle arrived in Goa on February 23 and stayed at Arambol beach in Pernem, northern Goa, but she left for Cancona last Sunday with a British friend.

She checked into a hotel in Agonda and on Monday is understood to have left the friend at about 1pm to meet friends from a previous visit to Goa  believed to be Bhagat.

As they moved around the Palolem beach area, they went to a beach bar which was holding a party to celebrate the Holi festival where they began drinking.

It is claimed the pair even had a row with a bar owner at about 9.30pm as they bought bottles of beer. They were then seen leaving together on Bhagat's scooter.

A floral tribute in the shape of a heart is left at the murder scene earlier this week. Hundreds have come to the secluded spot to pay their respects

Officers from Canacona police station (pictured yesterday) are investigating the murder and rape of the British backpacker

Police revealed earlier this week that they had arrested a suspect named as Vikat Bhagat (pictured) who they said was a petty thief. He is said to have made a confession, saying he sexually assaulted Ms McLaughlin and disfigured her face with a beer bottle

After her body was found, police were told by other party goers that Bhagat had been spotted with her and when they found the footage of the pair, they arrested him. They then reportedly found her clothes packed in a bag dumped near Bhagat's home.

She had been at the La La Land restaurant in the Dreamcatcher resort at about 5.30pm on Monday afternoon and was reportedly seen sitting with two or three men and was not drinking.

A local said: 'We didn't pay her much attention as it is a common sight to see foreigners with Indian men. The area is very popular with tourists.'

But she is believed to have then left with Bhagat and drank at several bars before reportedly heading to the Leopard Valley nightclub.

On February 22 Ms McLaughlin revealed she was 'off on another adventure' to Goa.

She wrote: 'Thank you to all my friends and family for making home so special and always looking after me. I am very grateful and the luckiest person I know... Off on another adventure.'

The 28-year-old's body was discovered by a farmer about four miles away from Palolem beach on Tuesday morning

Deputy Superintendent of Police Sammy Tavares said that officers had arrested Vikat Bhagat (pictured) and that 'he has confessed to raping the victim and later killing her in order to hide his identity'

Ms McLaughlin's Facebook profile says she had studied at Liverpool John Moores University and was from Buncrana in Ireland. She is pictured, centre, with some children during one trip abroad

About 200 mourners attended a vigil on Wednesday night to mourn McLaughlin, as her mother, Andrea Brannigan, said she would be 'sadly missed'

Under the same post earlier this week, which included a sunset landscape picture, a friend wrote: 'Beautiful sunset for a beautiful soul'.

Her mother, Andrea Brannigan, said last night her daughter would be 'sadly missed' as 200 locals and foreign nationals gathered in Goa to pay tribute to Ms McLaughlin.

On Wednesday. 200 local and foreign nationals attended a vigil to pay tribute to the backpacker.

The same day, it emerged that Bhagat was arrested in March 2014 for targeting foreigners in a string of burglaries in the area.

One British holidaymaker revealed a thief had sneaked into their holiday villa through a balcony and taken a laptop, two mobile phones and a portable hard drive worth around 1,620.

Another told how he had taken a laptop, camera, mobile phone and CDs worth more than 1,100.

FARMER WHO FOUND DANIELLE'S BODY 'RESCUED A FOREIGNER FROM THROUGH SAME FIELD IN 2015' A farmer who found the body of a British backpacker in a field in Goa on Tuesday has told how he rescued a foreigner running through the same field two years ago. Prashant Kumar Pant, 50, was checking his land on Tuesday morning when he found Danielle McLaughlin's body. He said: 'I've felt very scared since. I haven't slept very well. I can no longer pass the area where the girl was found. I take a different route through my fields now.' Prashant said the area where the body was found was littered with empty crisp packets and empty bottles of Kingfisher beer. He also said there was evidence of urine and feaces nearby, which officers took away for testing. 'There were many things around her,' he said. 'The police searched the area and took it all away. There was also a gold locket near her too.' But Prashant, who owns a coconut and cashew nut plantation, remembered finding a crying young girl aged around 18-years-old running through his field two years ago. 'I was checking my fields for cattle again that time,' he said. 'When I saw this girl crying and running. I went to help her and she looked like she was on drugs. She was white but I don't know which country she was from. I called my relative as I didn't know what to do and she called the police. The police came and took her away. 'It saddens me that such things happen near my home. This is a lovely area but we have these tragic events that change our home town.' Advertisement

Following the reported crimes, police watched the flats and caught Bhagat who had been found guilty of seven previous offences.

A worker at the Dreamcatcher resort where Danielle had reportedly visited the day before her murder said he knew of the arrested man and that he was 'the biggest thief of the area.'

'He steals from foreigners only - break into their rooms and loot everything. He scares outsiders who have set up their business here. He is a powerful person, by powerful I mean he scares people using weapon. He is a nuisance for the society.'

Detectives had earlier said they had questioned up to 15 people over the killing of Ms McLaughlin, who was travelling under a British passport.

Heartbroken friends of the 28-year-old backpacker (above in a Facebook picture) say she 'added happiness' to the world

It is thought Ms McLaughlin (pictured) who had a tattoo saying 'Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery', lived in Liverpool, but may have been born in Ireland

THE LEAD UP TO VIKAT BHAGAT'S ARREST At 8.20am on Tuesday, police received information from Prashand Komarpant in Palolem, Canacona, about a body for a foreign female in an open field in Devabag, about 150m from a road leading from Canacona to Agonda. The woman had injuries on her face and head when her body was discovered. The body was identified as Danielle Mclaughlin by foreigners. She had arrived in Goa on February 23 and was staying in Arambol, but she had travelled to Festival Valley with a British friend on March 12 to stay with other foreigner friends over night. At about 1pm on March 13, Ms McLaughlin left Festival Valley and went to Palolem, where she was seen with 23-year-old Vikat Bhagat in Waddo Canacona. The pair were seen together on CCTV near a restaurant in Ourem. Miss McLaughlin was last seen with Bhagat at about 9.30pm on March 13, and was found dead the next day. Bhagat was arrested on March 14 at 3.10pm. His scooter allegedly had blood stains on it, as did his clothes. During a medical examination, officials found Bhagat had nail wounds. Bhagat has since confessed to killing Ms McLaughlin, saying he sexually assaulted her and disfigured her face with a beer bottle. Advertisement

Police are studying the CCTV footage of all the shacks the victim visited on Monday night, and are working with teams of sniffer dogs and forensic teams.

Ms McLaughlin, who had a tattoo saying 'Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery', was born in Glasgow but grew up in County Donegal.

Her Facebook profile says she had studied at Liverpool John Moores University. A spokesman said: 'The University is shocked and saddened to hear of the death of one of our former students, Danielle McLaughlin.

'We send our sincere condolences to her family and friends from all at LJMU.'

In early February Ms McLaughlin posted a thank you to her friends for wishing her a happy birthday.

Police said this morning that they had arrested a man called Vikat Bhagat and that he had made a confession. Ms McLaughlin is pictured left with a friend

The victim's badly beaten body was discovered by a farmer at Devbag Beach (pictured) about four miles away on Tuesday morning. She had suffered extensive injuries to her face.

In a heartbreaking post on Facebook written just days ago on February 22, Ms McLaughlin revealed how she was 'off on another adventure' to Goa

Ms McLaughlin had just arrived with a friend from the north of the state so they could celebrate Holi (file picture), a spring festival famous for crowds of people throwing paint - and held to celebrate the triumph of good over evil

'Thanks for all the birthday love. It was filled with dancing, dinners and family time. Very grateful for all the beautiful pals I have accumulated in life,' she wrote.

Christy Duffy, a close friend of Ms McLaughlin's from Buncrana, Donegal, has already raised several thousand euro on a fundraising website to help pay for the funeral and repatriation costs.

'There's not really much anyone can say at the moment as I know we are all completely devastated,' he said.

'There is nothing I need to say about Danielle as anyone who knew her, knew that she was a beautiful and kind-hearted, funny young lady who loved life and was a loyal and devoted friend, sister and daughter.

'They say the brightest stars burn the quickest and no other analogy could describe Danielle's life better.'

Mr Duffy said the Irish embassy, the British embassy, the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust and many close friends are working hard on the arrangements to bring Ms McLaughlin's body home.

'The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust have been brilliant and cover most arrangements and expenses, so basically this fundraiser is to help her family with the added costs of having someone with her when she returns and to give her the send-off she deserves,' he said.

Another Friend Candice Faulkner, who grew up with Danielle in the small town of Buncrana said on Facebook: 'We are in shock. Danielle was an amazing person with so much adventure in front of her. Our small town is devastated.'

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS HAVE BLIGHTED BEACH HAVEN British schoolgirl Scarlett Keeling was found dead in Anjuna in mysterious circumstances in 2008 It is one of India's top tourism destinations with millions drawn by the promise of palm tree-fringed beaches and hedonistic parties. But the murder of 28-year-old Danielle McLaughlin is the latest case to blight picturesque Goa and its reputation as a holiday haven. In 2008, the body of British schoolgirl Scarlett Keeling was found bruised and semi-naked in shallow water in Anjuna, 70 miles from the spot where Ms McLaughlin was killed. The 15-year-old drowned after allegedly being plied with drugs - though her mother Fiona MacKeown has long insisted she was murdered. Goan police initially said her death was the result of an accidental drowning before two men went on trial for assaulting and killing her. But in September, Samson D'Souza and Placido Carvalho were cleared in an Indian court. Mackeown said yesterday that she was not surprised by Danielle's murder. The mother from Bideford, North Devon said: 'This story reinforces my belief that Goa is a dangerous place to visit. 'Scarlett's murder was covered up and I hope this one isn't. People are already comparing the two cases. It should put more pressure on the government to clean up the area. 'If they don't do something, tourists will not feel safe to come to Goa. In my case, the court revealed they did not do a proper investigation. Two years after Scarlett's death, in 2010, another mysterious death took place. Edinburgh-born Denyse Sweeney was 34 when she collapsed outside a bar in Anjuna. She was declared dead at hospital less than an hour later. An Indian post mortem result put her cause of death down to a drugs overdose and said the evidence pointed to it being an accidental death. But in 2012, an inquest in Derby heard that there were no drugs in the mother of two's system. There were 20 unexplained marks on her body. The tests in the UK showed that she had in fact died from a head injury. The family campaigned for a new investigation in India. But detectives from India's Central Bureau of Investigation later dropped the probe, insisting there was no evidence of violence. Her sister Maureen said afterwards that she still believed Denyse had been murdered. Edinburgh-born Denyse Sweeney (pictured) was 34 when she collapsed outside a bar in Anjuna. She was declared dead at hospital less than an hour later According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, between 2010 and 2014, 58 British nationals died in Goa in what are described as 'unknown' circumstances. And seven foreigners, including four women, were murdered in Goa between 2013 and February 2016, according to a local paper. Half a million holidaymakers  including more than 100,000 Britons  visit Goa each year, enticed by the Indian state's cheap deals and winter sun. Its golden beaches, laid-back vibe and abundance of cheap drugs, make the former Portuguese colony a destination favoured by hippies and backpackers. But the murder of Danielle McLaughlin has again exposed a menacing undercurrent. The seedy side of Goa was depicted in a controversial 2011 Bollywood thriller which had a trailer with the line: 'Here in Goa, liquor is cheap but girls are even cheaper.' Tourist chiefs have desperately attempted to downplay the image  and tried to get the film banned  but Goa has developed a reputation for police corruption, extortion and sex attacks which allegedly involve a drug mafia with links to top politicians. Goa's reputation as a bohemian paradise was sealed in the Sixties when hippies went there in search of peace, love and hashish. But the rise of harder drugs  including heroin, ecstasy and cocaine  has had often devastating consequences (file picture) Foreign Office advice features a stark warning to British travellers heading to Goa. It states: 'There have been reports of drinks being spiked and travellers, including British nationals, subsequently being robbed, sexually assaulted or dying. 'There have also been reports of locals posing as police officers or government officials in order to extort money, so be alert if approached. Avoid beaches after dark.' It also warns of reports of bag snatchings on smaller roads in some of the main tourist areas, with thieves 'with headlights on full-beam to blind their victims'. It adds: 'The possession or consumption of drugs is illegal and conviction for either offence may lead to a very long prison sentence. A number of British nationals in Goa die each year due to drug or alcohol abuse.' Goa's reputation as a bohemian paradise was sealed in the Sixties when hippies went there in search of peace, love and hashish. But the rise of harder drugs  including heroin, ecstasy and cocaine  has had often devastating consequences. Stories abound of travellers being fleeced  and sometimes sexually assaulted  in coordinated scams between drug dealers and police in resorts where hotel rooms cost as little as 20 a night. It usually involves a proposed sale of cheap drugs to naive young tourists on the beach. But police arrive and threaten the buyer with jail unless they pay the officers a hefty bribe  some of which is given to the dealer  or provide sexual favours. Advertisement

And another friend of the family, Ruth Taylor said: 'My brain won't let it register!! Our poor Danielle, it's such a shock, I'm heartbroken!'

Danielle had been travelling the world, meeting up with friends as she went.

She had lived in Liverpool for many years, and had worked in the Pump House Bar on the Albert Dock before going travelling.

The firm said on Facebook: 'Very sad to hear we have lost one of our old team members Danielle McLaughlin in Goa this week. She was only 28. Goodbye Danielle. Deepest condolences to her family in Ireland.'

The Irish Independent quotes Rena Donaghey, a councillor in the Buncrana area as saying the death had left the whole community 'in deep shock'

'Everyone is very saddened by the news. She was a lovely young woman who has come to a very sad end. She was very popular and very liked in the community. She headed off on a backpacking holiday in February to do some travelling.

'On behalf of the community, I would like to offer sympathy and condolences. I hope God will give the family strength at this tragic time to help them through the weeks and months ahead.'

Police are also studying the CCTV footage of all the shacks the victim visited on Monday night, and are working with teams of sniffer dogs and forensic teams (file picture)

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin earlier confirmed it was talking to its embassy in India about the reports.

The Irish embassy said: 'Ireland's Embassy in New Delhi is in contact with Indian authorities in relation to reports of an incident involving an Irish citizen.

'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade stands ready to provide consular assistance.'

But the Department later said it was 'following up on the suspected murder of an Irish woman in Goa' who had been 'using a British passport'.

'It has been confirmed that the woman travelled to India using a British passport, so the local British consulate have the lead responsibility in terms of dealings with the Indian authorities,' the spokesman added.

'The Irish Embassy is liaising closely with the British authorities and an Irish consular official is travelling from New Delhi to Goa today.'

An FCO spokesperson said: 'We are supporting the family of a British-Irish woman following her death in Goa, India. Our thoughts are with them at this very difficult time. Indian police are conducting an investigation and we are in close contact with them.'

In 2008, British teenager Scarlett Keeling (left) was found dead on Goa's popular Anjuna beach. Her mother, Fiona Mackeown (right) said yesterday that she was not surprised by Danielle's murder

In 2008, British teenager Scarlett Keeling was found dead on Goa's popular Anjuna beach.

The 15-year-old drowned after allegedly being plied with drugs - though her mother Fiona MacKeown has long insisted she was murdered.

Two men, Samson D'Souza and Placido Carvalho, were cleared of raping and killing her by an Indian court last year.

Mackeown said yesterday she was not surprised by Danielle's murder.

The mother from Bideford, North Devon said: 'This story reinforces my belief that Goa is a dangerous place to visit.

'Scarlett's murder was covered up and I hope this one isn't. People are already comparing the two cases. It should put more pressure on the government to clean up the area.

'If they don't do something, tourists will not feel safe to come to Goa. In my case, the court revealed they did not do a proper investigation.

'I would think knowing what they know now they will not make same mistakes. The police seem to have acted quickly and picked up someone - they did the opposite with Scarlett.

'Goa will not be safe until there is stiffer punishment for rapists and a change in attitude from men.'
President Donald Trump's personal lawyers are considering whether to sue MSNBC and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who released two pages from his 2005 personal income tax return this week.

Fox Business Network reported that Trump's attorneys believe this week's broadcast may have broken federal privacy laws.

But legal experts say prevailing in court would be the longest of long shots because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of the press.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Scoop: Rachel Maddow was widely mocked for her long build-up to revealing the two pages of Trump's 2005 returns - and now his attorneys may sue her

Protected: David Cay Johnston, the journalist who obtained the documents, says he did not solicit them - the test set by the Pentagon Papers ruling

'Trump's lawyers could try and sue but they will get the c**p kicked out of them in court,' veteran white collar attorney Stanley Arkin told the network.

'It's the First Amendment. What are they going to sue them for? Stealing the returns? Nobody made any money out of it. Nobody was bribed.'

A Supreme Court precedent that dates back to the famous 1971 'Pentagon Papers' case established that Trump could only win a court case if he could show the journalists were complicit in stealing his tax returns, not only responsible for publishing them.

Threat: Trump, seen with Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the White House on Thursday faces an uphill struggle in court, one attorney predicted

Attorney: Michael Cohen is Trump's personal, as opposeD to White House, lawyer

David Cay Johnston, the journalist involved, and Maddow, have both denied this.

Johnston says that the papers came to his home address in an envelope sent from Westchester, the county to the north of New York City, and that there was no return address.

A White House spokeswoman wouldn't confirm the existence of legal discussions.

MSNBC said in a statement that '[t]here is no legal prohibition against journalists publishing these tax returns. It is protected by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.'

The 2005 tax documents aired by MSNBC and published by Johnston showed that Trump earned $153 million in income in 2005 and paid $38 million in taxes.

People with knowledge of the matter told Fox Business that Trump attorney Michael Cohen is at the center of the debate over whether to file a lawsuit.

Legal experts say one federal law at the center of possible legal action would be the Unauthorized Disclosure of Information Act, Opens a New Window.which makes it illegal to publish an unauthorized tax return or 'return information' without receiving authorization from the individual whose taxes are being reported on.

According to the federal statute, any violation of the law 'shall be punishable by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment of up to five years.'

Despite criticism and widespread mockery of how the show played out, Maddow scored her biggest audience ever on Tuesday after she hyped the tax documents.

Her show reached 4.13 million people, the Nielsen company said. It was second only to a 'Countdown' episode with Keith Olbermann just before the 2008 election as MSNBC's most-watched series episode ever.
A boy was punched and kicked 16 times by two teenagers in front of horrified train commuters as he desperately tried to shield his face.

In shocking footage of the attack on a Queensland Rail train to Ipswich, near Brisbane, on Thursday the seated boy is seen briefly arguing with a group of teens.

One of the boys, who appeared to be wearing non-padded gloves, then laid into him with a flurry of blows to the head and upper body with both fists.

Several other older boys repeatedly yelled 'hit him' and egged the teen on as he landed more than a dozen punches.

A boy was punched and kicked 16 times by two teenagers in front of horrified train commuters as he desperately tried to shield his face

In shocking footage of the attack on a Queensland Rail train to Ipswich, near Brisbane, on Thursday the seated boy is seen briefly arguing with a group of teens

The victim remained in his seat, curled into a ball and trying to cover his head with his hands and arms until he was kicked square in the face by his attacker.

Another boy then threw several punches before the others told him to 'leave it' and the attacked ended. The victim then got up and walked away.

At no point during the 30-second attack did any other train passengers attempt to step in and break it up, sparking outrage online.

Nadja Karlena said her 10 year-old-daughter and eight-year-old son were on the train on the way to school and were terrified as the attack to place in front of them.

One of the boys, who appeared to be wearing non-padded gloves, then laid into him with a flurry of blows to the head and upper body with both fists

Several other older boys repeatedly yelled 'hit him' and egged the teen on as he landed more than a dozen punches

She said the attackers were a group of boys who frequented trains from Ipswich to Goodna and often started fights in a group.

'The older boys not seen in this video but heard intimidate the boys by saying if you hit back we will get you, while they younger boys aged 12-14 hit into the other kids,' she said.

Ms Karlena got the video from a student riding on the train and posted it to Facebook after police 'said they were busy'.

Queensland Rail said it called the Railway Police after it was notified soon after the incident, who identified the attackers.

Another boy then threw several punches before the others told him to 'leave it' and the attacked ended. The victim then got up and walked away

They also spoke with the victim's family and a witness, and beefed up security in the area.

'Our officers livestreamed CCTV at the two stations where the group exited the train to monitor the situation, while emergency services responded,' it told 9 News.

'Safety is Queensland Rails number one priority and we do not condone violent or disrespectful behaviour on our network.'

Enraged locals tracked down the alleged attackers and accomplices on Facebook to admonish them and demand explanations.

One of the boys who allegedly egged on the attackers claimed the victim and a group of five others 'started on' him and one friend, so he got the rest of his group and retaliated next time they saw them.
Laurence Knight, 51, talked of having 'serious and horrible' sex with the children

A senior public health official who plotted to rape two young girls with the help of their parents was jailed for four years today.

Perverted Laurence Knight, 51, talked of having 'serious and horrible' sex with the children while his wife was away in the Middle East.

He swapped online messages with 'Baz' and 'Michelle', arranging to meet and rape their daughters 'Tia' and 'Aimee', aged 10 and 12.

Knight, himself a father-of-two, tried to set up the meeting on the secret 'cheat' phone he used to meet women on adult dating sites while his wife was away.

But Baz and Michelle were undercover police officers who had been tipped off about his paedophile tendencies.

They arrested Knight when he discussed his plans to babysit another girl and said he 'might not be able to control himself' once he was with them.

At the time of his arrest last March Knight was a regional deputy director of communications for Public Health England, a Department of Health agency.

Knight, from Bristol - who no longer works for PHE - claimed what he was doing was only 'fantasy' and he never had any intention of carrying it out.

But a jury at Bristol Crown Court found him guilty of attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence.

Balding Knight, wearing a dark grey suit, white shirt and a dark tie, sat with his head in his hands as he was sentenced yesterday.

The court heard that since his conviction in November he had been kept in prison where he had been attacked and nearly had his earlobe severed.

Recorder for Bristol, His Honour Judge Peter Blair QC, said he was making an example of him to deter others.

He told Knight his interest in child sex was a 'significant and serious shift' from his previous habits of browsing adult pornography and meeting women for sex.

He added: 'This offence by you is one that deserves greater weight to be given to that deterrent, to protect children from individuals with inclinations that you began to show.

'Police had reported observations you made about a real child that you were considering babysitting, and this is why police intervened earlier than they might have done.'

Bristol Crown Court where the disturbing trial of Laurence Knight took place. Knight was found guilty of attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sex offence

Prosecutor Robert Davies said: 'You are looking at top line offending, that is what was planned and in the context of two children and three adults.'

Mr Davies told an earlier hearing: 'Mr Knight, at the time, was living an outwardly respectable life in Bristol and had a very good job with Public Health England.

'However, he had a secret sexual interest in teenage and pre-teenage girls and incest and he followed up a contact he saw on a photo sharing website.

'He arranged to meet with them in Dartford with a view to their girls aged eight and 10 being seriously sexually abused by the three of them.'

The jury was given a transcript of Knight's email contact with Baz about his girls, in which Knight asked him: 'Have you licked them while they sleep?

'I had a gorgeous girl sleep over recently. Had some Dutch courage so let my hands wander as she slept. Carefully but lovely.'

He told the undercover officers he 'couldn't wait to play games' and 'feel them (the girls) crawling all over me'.

Defending, Kate Brunner said: 'There is no evidence that Mr Knight has acted with paedophilic intent.

'In particular, although there was talk about events relating to real children, the court will know there was no evidence that these events took place.

'Although there was a thorough search of computers, there was no evidence that the defendant had made or sought contact with children.'

She said Knight was considering paying for private therapy in prison and was no longer in denial about his crimes.

The court previously heard he also had a pornography obsession and regularly searched for 'bestiality', 'incest', and 'teens'.

Knight became south west regional communications manager for the Health Protection Agency in 2003.

He acted as its public spokesperson - reporting directly to the chief executive - and remained with them when the agency was absorbed by PHE in 2013.

Knight has been married since 2003 but the relationship had become strained.

He said the communication breakdown and their 'diminished' sex life led to his interest in deviant fantasies.

He told the court he was still with his wife. She was not present to see him jailed.

Knight was jailed for four years, with half likely to be served on licence, and also given a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

He will be on the sex offenders register indefinitely.
An escaped convict tricked his way into the beachside home of legendary sex symbol Brigitte Bardot to secretly film her

An escaped convict who made a fortune through X-rated sex videos tricked his way into the beachside home of legendary sex symbol Brigitte Bardot to secretly film her, it emerged today.

The shocking scam saw at least 15 videos and 45 photographs emerge from La Madrague, the retired French actress and models legendary Riviera retreat in St Tropez.

Ms Bardot, who is now 82, believed that the 50-year-old confidence trickster was a certified locksmith and had hired him to do some odd jobs last summer.

In fact the unnamed convicted criminal had escaped from prison in nearby Marseille, and wanted to make money out of the lucrative trade in celebrity images.

Before going to prison, he had made a fortune by posting X-rated amateur sex videos online, many of them shot in private homes.

Brigitte Bardot pictured on a boat at the Madrague in Saint Tropez, June 26, 1968

The actress had hired the convict to do some odd jobs at her Saint Tropez home last summer

The man was never seen with a smart phone, leading police to believe that he set up a sophisticated system of hidden cameras in Madrague, some of which would have caught Ms Bardot in her most intimate moments.

The man then contacted the editors of glossy celebrity magazines and web outlets around France last July, but they all refused to buy the images.

Lets thank them for this, a source close to the star told Le Parisien newspaper. Its to their credit, especially since, as you can imagine, these stolen images and videos were not necessarily to the advantage of Madame Bardot.

After failing to make money out of the scam, the convict then travelled around France pretending to be Ms Bardots son, while trying out other money-spinning ruses.

The actress and singer mid-photoshoot at her home on the Riviera, Saint Tropez

Sex symbol Brigitte Bardot pictured singing at her Madrague home in 1968

This image, taken in 1960, shows a bedroom of the home in the south of France where the actress has lived for decades

These included approaching the Jacquie and Michel sex boutique in Paris and saying he needed the equivalent of 3500 to buy a safe he wanted to re-sell to billionaire French businessman and politician Serge Dassault.

The owners of the shop  who had helped the man with his video business  agreed, and handed over the money.

But in December the convict was finally found by police after checking into numerous Airbnb temporary lets with his wife. He has since been returned to prison.

Ms Bardot bought La Madrague  which is named after a type of fixed fishing net  in 1958, two years after she shot to international fame in the film And God Created Woman.

Over the years it was regularly burgled, even though Ms Bardot regularly introduced security measures including higher walls to keep the paparazzi away. She filmed a video of herself singing a song called La Madrague on the property s small beach front in 1968, but now lives there as a virtual recluse with her dogs and other animals.

The criminal contacted the editors of glossy celebrity magazines and web outlets around France last July, but they all refused to buy the images of her home, pictured in 1960
A developing friendship between a kangaroo and a lizard has melted the hearts of West Australians.

Rosie, a joey, and Eliott, a lizard, have struck up a kinship after the orphaned baby kangaroo arrived at Greenough Wildlife and Bird Park.

Park owner Michelle Jones said the unlikely mates are defying the norm by chilling out together.

A developing friendship between a kangaroo and a lizard has melted the hearts of West Australians

Rosie, a joey, and Eliott, a lizard, have struck up a kinship after the orphaned baby kangaroo arrived at Greenough Wildlife and Bird Park

One-year-old central bearded dragon Eliott is a resident at the park and likes to ride on Rosie's back

Rosie is being fed by a park worker. She has struck up an unlikely friendship with a lizard

One-year-old central bearded dragon Eliott is a resident at the park and likes to ride on Rosie's back.

Rosie, a western gray kangaroo, is 'just passing through' the park, which is located 400 kilometres north of Perth on the west coast, Ms Jones said.

'That is so amazing. Nature is amazing. Nature is beautiful,' one woman commented on Greenough Wildlife and Bird Park's Facebook page.
An evil stepmother gouged out the eyes of her four-year-old stepson

An evil stepmother allegedly gouged out the eyes of her four-year-old stepson as a barbaric punishment after he wet the bed.

The youngster, who has not been named, is thought to have wet his bed the night before he was allegedly set upon by his dad's wife.

The horrific attack happened in the province of Masvingo, Central Zimbabwe.

It is claimed the woman has admitted the crime and was laughing about carrying out the evil deed when police arrived.

Local reports claim the woman was saying: 'He isn't my child' to officers who questioned her motives.

Horrifying pictures taken of the boy followig the alleged attack show him sitting on the ground in bloodstained clothes, with his eye sockets a ruined mess of tissue.

It was not clear whether the boy's father was present at the time of the attack.

Police in Zimbabwe have not released details of what charges the woman could face over the incident, and it was not clear whether she was under arrest.

The case is believed to be ongoing.

None of the people involved were named in reports.

Involuntary urination is common in children up to age four, and around one in 12 children regularly wet their bed at age four and a half, says the NHS.

Around one in 40 children still wet the bed at seven and a half and, surprisingly, the NHS says around one in 100 people continue bedwetting into adulthood.
President Donald Trump gave a final slap to former US attorney Preet Bharara today, a week after he and all the other Obama-appointed prosecutors were kicked off the government payroll.

Trump retweeted a six-day-old post from mega-supporters Diamond and Silk telling Bharara to 'Pack You Stuff and Go' early this morning.

Bharara, the attorney for the Manhattan area, became a lightning rod last Friday in a controversy involving Trump and his Justice Department.

He was ordered to resign along with the 45 other politically appointed US attorneys and refused, forcing the Justice Department to fire him on March 11.

President Donald Trump gave a final slap to former US attorney Preet Bharara today, a week after he and all the other Obama-appointed prosecutors were kicked off the government payroll, retweeting superfans Diamond and Silk's smack at the lawyer

SAYONARA: Preet Bharara was ordered to resign along with the 45 other politically appointed US attorneys and refused, forcing the Justice Department to fire him on March 11

The Southern District of New York prosecutor had expected to stay in his position.

Trump asked him to remain at the Justice Department during a pre-inauguration visit. Bharara told reporters waiting for him in the lobby of Trump Tower that he would oblige.

Last Saturday afternoon Bharara declared on Twitter: 'I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.'

Reacting, Diamond and Silk said in a note of their own, 'When the President says "You're Fired" That means: "Pack Yo Stuff and Go, Not Say "You Refuse to Go! #DrainTheSwamp Choo Choo Baby!'

The biological sisters from North Carolina whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson are Trump superfans.

On Twitter, their joint bio says they are the Republican president's 'Most Outspoken & Loyal Supporters.'

As the president took fire for the handling of the Bharara dismissal, the sisters put up videos and blog posts backing up Trump.

March 12 they said on their website: 'AMERICANS ARE TIRED OF SMELLING SWAMP JUICE...DRAIN THE DAMN SWAMP'.

In a March 14 tweet they said, 'I bet Preet Bharara now know the difference between resigning & being fired. #ChooChooBaby'

A video that accompanied the March 14 tweet blasted Bharara for being a 'crybaby.'

Trump called Bharara the day before he was let go, but the US attorney did not speak to him. The president tried to reach U.S. attorney Preet Bharara to 'thank him for his service,' the White House said Monday

Explaining the drama surrounding the firings, the women said in a video that one attorney 'didn't want to resign, so guess what, he had to be fired. See, he don't understand, when they tell you to resign, that means step down.

'But if you don't that means you got to go. When they say you go to go, that means bye bye, see you later, sayonara, adios amigo...That means you should have packed up your little boxes, and then you should have left.'

'But look who got played, cause now you all over the news as being a little crybaby,' the video said.

As the women were standing up for Trump on Twitter, the White House was trying to explain to press in the briefing room why the president decided to sack the crusading prosecutor, who built a reputation for taking town top Democrats and Republicans for corruption.

'We had most of them or a good chunk of them had already submitted their resignation letter. This is just the final swath of individuals who had not at this time,' White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the firing.

Trump called Bharara the day before he was let go, but the US attorney did not speak to him.

The president tried to reach U.S. attorney Preet Bharara to 'thank him for his service,' Spicer said Monday.

Trump met with Bharara in November, and Bharara says he was asked to stay on - but then he was fired last Friday

A U.S. law enforcement official said over the weekend Bharara didn't take the call because he didn't want to talk to the president without the approval of his superiors.

Spicer called the firings followed 'standard operating procedure,' and referenced a similar purge in previous administrations. President Obama let some U.S. attorneys stay on while their replacements got confirmed, although President Bill Clinton got rid of the previous GOP-appointed crop.

Bharara stoked theories that he got sacked for reasons having to do with his reputation for going after corrupt politicians when he tweeted: 'By the way, now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like.'

He was referencing the anti-corruption commission in Albany that Gov. Andrew Cuomo shut down.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said Bharara wasn't saying what he meant by his Moreland Commission reference.

'He's not providing context on his tweet or tweets,' said the spokesman.

Bharara was fired by telephone by acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente. Although the spokesman wasn't privy to the call, he said Bharara was told he was let go because he was one of the group of 46 U.S. attorney's appointed by President Obama.

President Trump is reportedly considering for the post the personal lawyer of ex-Fox news boss Roger Ailes,

Marc Mukasey, the son of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and a 'protege' of former New York Mayor New York Giuliani, emerged as a leading contender after Trump fired Bharara.

Bharara, a former chief counsel to Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, got sacked along with 45 other remaining Obama appointees  although Bharara had said following a meeting with Trump in Trump Tower in November that he had been asked to stay on.

As a personal attorney representing Ailes, Mukasey has helped the former Fox News chief battle a series of sexual harassment allegations. Numerous current and former Fox employees accused Ailes of inappropriate behavior.
Steven Campbell has been jailed for shocking campaign of stalking aimed at getting his girlfriend to become dependent on him

A British Transport Police officer created a fake ex as part of a campaign to destroying his girlfriend's self-confidence.

Steven Campbell sent a series of menacing emails and Facebook messages to his girlfriend from an invented woman in a bid to make her 'utterly dependent' on him.

His actions, described by a judge as 'the most malicious, nasty, manipulative form of controlling psychological abuse' drove his girlfriend to an emotional breakdown and depression.

Campbell, 28, of Harpenden, Hertfordshire, was jailed for 18 months this week after pleading guilty to aggravated stalking.

St Albans Crown Court heard the stalking began in 2014 with an invented request by the made-up woman to go for coffee with Campbell.

The messages then went on to the personal abuse of the victim, the sending of pornographic images to her and sinister photographs of her home.

In one message to the victim, the invented ex 'Nicola Cole' said Campbell was a 'great guy' and she was 'a lucky lady to have him.'

He showed his girlfriend messages he said he had received from his ex saying 'I am surprised you are not with someone prettier and slimmer' and 'I can't get you out of my head'.

The victim was then sent a message saying: I had forgotten what a good kisser he is.'

She was also sent cropped photographs of a naked woman and a man's penis.

He sent a menacing picture of their Christmas wreath to his girlfriend purporting to be from his ex. When police examined the picture they believed the figure in the reflection was male

Another, he said he had been sent, said: 'You missed your chance. I hope plain Jane can satisfy you.'

Around Christmas 2014, a message claimed the woman had worn Campbell out while love-making at their home.

She commented that she liked the wreath on the front door, but not the victim's Christmas tree.

Prosecutor Andrew Howarth said: 'The woman was petrified and felt physically sick when she was sent a photograph of the wreath on the front door from Nicola Cole.'

After the victim went to the police, officers became suspicious about the existence of Nicola Cole.

When he examined the image of the wreath on the front door, he noticed in the corner there was a reflection of a man in a hoodie.

Campbell was arrested in January 2015 and his computer was seized. After he was bailed, he got another computer, which police also seized and found pornographic images sent to the victim.

Campbell was jailed for 18 months this week after pleading guilty to aggravated stalking

There were 208 other Nicola Cole's on the electoral register who had to be traced. In all, over 200 hours of police time was wasted trying to find the fictitious Nicola Cole.

The police also found two other former girlfriends of Campbell in Scotland who had received messages from a woman called Megan who claimed to be his 'ex' and who 'stirred up trouble.'

The court was told he had resigned from the police and the victim is in a new relationship.

Defending, Nick De Freitas asked for credit for Campbell's guilty plea. He said: 'He was off sick during this period of offending.

'He was on anti-depressants and was in a very low place. It started because he wanted to make his girlfriend jealous. He wanted her to know how good he was. To say it spiralled out of control is an understatement.'

The judge made an indefinite restraining order banning Campbell from contacting the woman.

He commended the officer who had seen the reflected image of the man in the hoodie in the picture of the Christmas wreath for his thoroughness in the investigation.
A disabled 37-year-old who was brutally beaten after he offered to help pay for his attackers' meal cried watching the surveillance footage of the attack and called it 'disgusting'.

Joseph Molohon, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, offered to use the social security money he had just picked up on March 1 to help two men at the Texas Chicken & Burgers in Brooklyn, New York, when they were short of cash.

But an argument broke out, and Molohon was punched, kicked, and struck with his own cane by a group of four before another man rifled through his pockets while he was lying on the ground.

Kariem Roberts, 21, turned himself in on Thursday and was charged with robbery, gang assault and menacing. Police are still searching for the other suspects.

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Police arrested Kariem Roberts, who allegedly beat Joseph Molohon (pictured with the bloodied shirt he wore the night of the attack) on March 1 in Brooklyn, New York

Molohon, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was beaten by a group of four. He said: 'They fractured my nose going downward. They busted my head'

Molohon said he had $1,000 dollars in his pocket after picking up his social security money, theNew York Post reported.

He was ready to enjoy his dinner around 7.30pm when he overheard two men mentioning they didn't have enough money for the food they wanted.

Molohon offered to chip in, telling the Post: 'I help everybody. I help people with cigarettes. If they ask me for money, Ill give them a dollar or two. Im a really nice person. Im a country boy.'

But his act of good will was rebuffed and one of them men went 'ballistic', grabbing the 37-year-old's cane and hitting him in the head.

The two men started throwing punches and using the 37-year-old's cane to beat him before two others joined in on the attack.

The 37-year-old offered to spot two men (pictured) when they didn't have enough money to pay for their meal at Texas Chicken and Burgers on Ocean Avenue

The two men started throwing punches and hitting the victim with his own cane, before two other men entered the restaurant and joined in

After the four attackers fled the restaurant, a fifth man (pictured) entered the restaurant and emptied the victim's pockets while he was still lying on the ground

Surveillance footage showed the group of four kicking Molohon in the head and body while other customers at the restaurant looked on.

A fifth man entered the restaurant and rummaged through his pockets and stole his belongings, police said. But he was laying on his wallet, and the cash remained out of reach.

Molohon, who was treated for broken bones including a fractured cheek and nose, cuts and bruises, told Pix11: 'They fractured my nose going downward. They busted my head. It was really nasty what they did to me.'

He told CBS: 'Its just wrong, disgusting, and I dont know why they would do something [like that].'

Roberts turned himself in and was identified through a police line up. A search for the other men is ongoing.

Anyone with information regarding the incident should call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

Kariem Roberts, 21, turned himself in on Thursday and was charged with robbery, gang assault and menacing. Police are still searching for the other men pictured in the surveillance video

Anyone with information regarding the incident should call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477)
Congressional Republicans have begun the task of pushing back against President Trump's first budget proposals  slamming some of its steep domestic spending reductions as 'draconian.'

Among the most biting responses is one by the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky.

'While we have a responsibility to reduce our federal deficit, I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the president's skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive,' Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

'We will certainly review this budget proposal, but Congress ultimately has the power of the purse,' Rogers added  in code for rewriting spending priorities in a may that better first congressional priorities.

Former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers slammed the Trump budget's 'draconian' cuts

He told the Washington Post in an interview, 'We've not had our chance yet.'

That sentiment was echoed by Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who sits on the budget committee.

'I've never seen a president's budget proposal not revised substantially,' he said. 'As a member of the Budget Committee, I'll carefully scrutinize and assess priorities as the president has with his proposal.'

Republicans praised Trump's proposed $54 billion increase for Defense programs. But that doesn't mean they'll go along with the fine print  which includes a 29 per cent cut in State Department programs. Top military leaders have argued against utility of the cuts.

Other programs cuts hit programs favored by lawmakers from regions they boost, and many assist members of Trump's electoral constituency.

House Speaker Paul Ryan praised the budget even as he kept some distance.

'I've never seen a president's budget proposal not revised substantially,' said Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa (right)

'If Congress has another way to do that,' White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said

President Donald Trump's first proposes a 29 per cent cut in State Department programs

'We'll have a full hearing about how priorities will be met,' Ryan said. 'But, do I think we can cut spending and get waste out of government? Absolutely. Where and how and what numbers, that's something we'll be figuring out as time goes on,' he said.

The $146 million Appalachian Regional Commission spreads economic development funds from New York to Mississippi, the Wall Street Journal noted. Out of 420 counties it serves in 13 states, Trump won 399 of them, according to the paper.

Trump won a dominant 63 per cent of the vote in the region, besting Democrat Hillary Clinton by almost two-to-one.

The Trump administration laid down the budget as a marker, and is already acknowledging the role of Congress.

Said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney: 'The message we're sending to the Hill is, we want more money for the things the president talked about, defense being the top one, national security.'

He added: 'And we don't want to add to the budget deficit. If Congress has another way to do that, we're happy to talk to them about it.'

Meanwhile, Democrats have been blasting the budget's cuts in programs that assist the needy, such as $4 billion in housing program cuts.

NYPD chief Jim O'Neill blasted reductions in urban security funding that top terror target New York relies on.

'This funding is absolutely critical,' O'Neill said. 'It is the backbone of our entire counterterrorism apparatus. It is the cornerstone of preparedness and prevention against terrorist threats, and enables us to do what we can do to keep the city secure,' the New York Daily News reported.

'Let me be clear: New York City is in the cross hairs of the President's budget,' New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, blasting a $190 million reduction in city security funds.
Germany plans to test voice software that can automatically recognise a person's dialect to help determine whether asylum-seekers are really from the country they claim to be from.

Germany's Office for Migration and Refugees confirmed it was testing the software, follwoing a report on the pilot project in the Die Welt newspaper on Friday.

An agency spokeswoman says the software would complement existing methods used to verify a person's identity.

Andrea Brinkmann told The Associated Press that officials would still rely on a range of information, including documents presented by the asylum-seeker and an expert opinion, before reaching a final conclusion.

Germany plans to test voice software to help determine whether asylum-seekers are really from the country they claim to be from

Authorities have expressed concern that some asylum-seekers from Arab countries are claiming to be from Syria in hopes of increasing their chances of staying in Germany.

Last year officials commissioned 1,405 language analyses, up from 431 in 2015.

Germany has taken in one million refugees and migrants since 2015, under a generous policy which Merkel has defended despite fierce criticism.

In January, MailOnline exclusively revealed that the German government is unable to say where more than half of the one million asylum seekers allowed into the country have ended up.

Raids carried out at the time in Munsterland targeted two refugee centres, seizing 150 asylum seekers who were questioned in-depth.

They found that many claimed to be from Syria but were mostly from North Africa, a suspicion which had already been widely reported.

Authorities have expressed concern that some asylum-seekers from Arab countries are claiming to be from Syria

They also found that every second person had been registered at least twice on Germany's EASY system.

EASY stands for Erstverteilung von Asylbegehrenden, which translates as Initial Allocation System for Asylum Seekers.

The system, operated by the German Ministry For Migration And Refugees, aims to provide urgent first assistance to new arrivals by spreading them around the country based on a quota system.

Once the applicant's county of origin has been taken, officials assign the refugee a place where they are to be cared for, and where they can then make an application for asylum.
A woman who cares for her sister's three young children after their parents were brutally murdered has revealed how the terrifying incident still haunts the family.

Maria Aylward and her sister Kate have been looking after their two nephews, aged eight and six, and niece, aged five, for three years.

The childrens' mother, Korinne Aylward, 33, and father, Greg Tucker, 52, were brutally killed by a Muslim immigrant from Turkey who had previously done work on the family home in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne.

Korinne Aylward, 33, and Greg Tucker, 52, were killed in their own home by an ex-soldier from Turkey who had been granted permanent residency just months after being convicted of threatening to kill another woman

The couples' three children were in their room just metres from where they were murdered - and are now in the care of their maternal aunt

The murdered mother with her two sisters who now take car of the young children 'without any support from the state government'

Maria Aylward spoke to Daily Mail Australia about her constant nightmares  and the fears of the two young boys who still have vivid memories of the night their mother and father were killed by the 46-year-old former soldier, Mustafa Kunduraci.

'I don't think we will ever know what the boys saw or heard  but they said their 'mummy screamed a lot' and 'daddy had red chewing gum in his mouth when he died'.

'They also said "the bad man pushed mummy down the stairs" and there was a dent at the bottom.

'The hardest thing for me is when they fall over and still call out for their mum.

'Rinne was a great mum, she always wanted to be a mum and here she was with three beautiful children,' Maria said.

According to Ms Aylward, Kunduraci disliked 'answering to a woman' while he did some work as a plasterer for the family.

'He has asked if she could not be in the home when he was working and got angry when she told him what to do or yelled at him,' Ms Aylward said.

Kunduraci entered the family home, uninvited, at 10.30pm on December 8, 2013. The children had been put to bed, their mother was downstairs and their father was up stairs.

Mustafa Kunduraci, pictured, plead guilty to killing the couple and was sentenced to 35 years in jail. The immigrant was a convicted criminal when his permanent residency was approved

The family home where the murders happened in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne - the killer had done some work on the property for the slain couple

'He had cable ties in the shape of handcuffs, a knife, a fake gun and a spray bottle full of petrol.

'He had been involved in legal issues over the plastering work he had done for my sister and brother-in-law and had some back dated invoices with him.

'They were found near the back door  with stab wounds straight through their hearts.

'We are pretty sure the kids saw that  things come back for them in waves and we are going to have to help them through that,' she said.

Ms Aylward has slammed the state government since the murders because of their 'lack of support for victims' and because the couple's killer had been previously convicted of 'threatening to kill' but escaped jail time and was granted permanent residency moths later.

'My youngest sister has custody of the three kids  but I live around the corner and help out by having them stay at my house and taking them to their after school activities.

'We have been fighting since this happened for support from the government who have said we are not entitled to any financial help to bring up these kids because they weren't removed from the care of their parents.

The couple in happier times. The children still 'cry for mummy' when they fall over and have nightmares of the night they were killed

'And because we are family we were told the only way we could get support was to give the kids up to a foster family  do the fostering course ourselves then apply to have them back.

'But the risk was we might not be given them back  and they have to go somewhere else and be away from their family.'

The woman says she has had 'three years of road blocks' and cried over the stress this has put on her family.

'It is really hard  we are victims, we are dealing with all of this grief and trying to pick up the pieces and move on but it just gets to the point where you want to scream because no one will help,' Ms Aylward said.

'My mother died six months before my sister so we were given some inheritance which we spent fighting for custody of the children.

'We are still waiting on the proceeds of the estate because Greg had older children and an ex-wife  so it all has to be dealt with.'

Ms Aylward said she has nightmares about her sisters' murder and the phone call from Greg's mother revealing their death will 'stay with her forever'.

'The bad man pushed mummy down the stairs.' - a memory from one of the young orphans

Korinne Aylward, pictured, had 'always wanted to be a mother' and was proud of her three children

'I got the call at about three in the morning  when I saw who it was I knew something was wrong.

'Greg's mother was just howling and crying on the other end of the phone.

'She tried twice before his father got on and told me what happened  then I had to tell my family.

'I called my sister but had to get someone else to tell my dad  there's some things you just can't say to your dad.'

The two sisters are working hard to bring up the children and are currently in negotiations with the state government about support.

'We have been speaking with them for six months now  the first two years they didn't respond to emails or calls  they just ignored us,' she said.

The sisters want to highlight the difficulties faced by victims of violent crimes so the process will be easier for other families.

Kunduraci was sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing the couple inside their home. He is likely to be sent back to Turkey when he is released.
A senior SNP official today refused four times to rule out the party calling an unofficial independence referendum if Theresa May refuses to grant one.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney was repeatedly asked if the party would go ahead regardless in an effort to secure a positive vote.

The party's deputy leader Angus Robertson fuelled speculation further by insisting the referendum would definitely go ahead.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney, pictured left with Nicola Sturgeon yesterday, today refused four times to rule out the party calling an unofficial independence referendum if Theresa May refuses to grant one

Mr Swinney told the BBC the Westminster Government had no reason to stand in the way of a referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019 because the terms of Brexit would be clear.

But asked if the SNP would defy any refusal, he told the Today programme: 'What's clear is the Prime Minister has the capacity to change her mind.'

Asked again, he said: 'Theresa May has demonstrated big-style this week she is able to change her mind.'

A third time, Mr Swinney said: 'I think the Prime Minister would be ill-advised to stand in the way of the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland, as expressed democratically in the elected Parliament.'

Asked a fourth time by host John Humphreys, he said: 'If Theresa May takes that stance she will be standing in the face of Scottish democracy.'

An unofficial Scottish independence referendum would have no legal effect and could be boycotted by Unionists.

But doing so would run the risk of a landslide win for independence, potentially handing the SNP the political initiative.

The party's deputy leader Angus Robertson, pictured speaking at the party conference today, fuelled speculation further by insisting the referendum would definitely go ahead

The Scottish Parliament has no power to call referendums on issues of the constitution under devolution law - making it unlikely the SNP could make any argument their referendum was legal.

But Mr Robertson vowed to SNP activists today the poll would go ahead.

Speaking at the conference in Aberdeen, he said: 'If the Prime Minister refuses to engage on the terms of a referendum before Brexit takes place then she is effectively trying to block the people of Scotland having a choice over their future.

'That would be a democratic outrage. If Scotland can be ignored on an issue as important as our membership of the EU and the single market, then it is clear that our voice and our interests can be ignored at any time and on any issue.

'So when the terms of Brexit are known  and not before - we will give the people the choice over the direction Scotland should take  before it is too late to change course.'
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This is the lone British officer who was sent to fight the Japanese in World War Two at just 20 years old - but ended up commanding Japanese troops instead.

Lieutenant Colonel John Cross made use of his seven languages as he was put on the spot to lead the far eastern soldiers in a fight against communism in Vietnam.

His story has echoes of Marlon Brando's character Colonel Kurtz in classic 1979 war film Apocalypse Now - a soldier who ended up immersed far more deeply in South East Asia than he expeted and ended up leading local troops.

But unlike Col Kurtz, Lt Col Cross earned admiration everywhere he worked in a long and spectacular career.

Lieutenant Colonel John Cross (pictured) won the respect of local villagers as he led enemy soldiers against communists in the 1970s. Here he sits while on tour in Brigadier General Soutchai's helicopter, November 1974

Making plans: The colonel's private images of his time in Vietnam, both just after World War Two and in the 1970s, offer a private glimpse at army life

John Cross (here pictured inspecting an Honour Guard of the Royal Lao Army Guerilla unit) said he was the only outsider to be introduced to the secret troops of Laos

In the critically-acclaimed movie, Kurtz goes insane and decides to occupy enemy troops. He becomes a hero and is hailed as a demi-God by his new people.

Colonel Cross was just as celebrated by locals, but the similarities end there - as he was fighting very much on the Western side of the war.

Speaking about the special treatment he received, he said: 'I was the only foreigner allowed in the government offices after the communist take-over as I spoke good Lao and never offered advice or criticised, as the Soviets did.

'I was the only outsider introduced to their secret troops who went over the border in a subversive manner and about whom the Americans (who paid for everything from the Prime Minister's pencil sharpener to the B 52 and F 111 raids) did not know,' he said.

The colonel was first sent to Southern Vietnam because his battalion was ordered to disarm the occupying Imperial Japanese Army.

Here John Cross, as lieutenant is briefing privates in Done Hene, Military Region 3 alongside an Australian official and the British Head of Chancery

Making friends: Despite the climate of war, John Cross (pictured here at the border of the Lao territory) said he got the most out of his language skills by liaising with Vietnamese and Japanese nationals while on tour

Great Britain: John Cross is pictured left talking to a Lao solider ahead a royal visit. The colonel was first sent to Southern Vietnam because his battalion was ordered to disarm the occupying Imperial Japanese Army

Here John Cross is pictured meeting villagers in what was known as 'military region four'. He said: 'I was the 'eyes and ears' of the Lao Commander-in-Chief, apparently because they liked and trusted me to tell the truth'

Ambassador, Alan Davidson, pictured here with the Red Prince, Souvanouvong, in the Politburo cave at Sam Neua

Attention! Lt Col Cross's picture shows the King of Laos inspecting an honour guard. The officer was uniquely placed to record a tumultuous time in the history of South East Asia

Inside the camp: John Cross was originally sent to Southern Vietnam because his battalion were sent from Burma to disarm the occupying Imperial Japanese Army

He was acting lieutenant for the 1/1 Gurkha Rifles and was a part of the army from Burma.

These fascinating pictures document the officer's time there in the months after World War Two ended and again during the 1970s when he was stationed as an attache in the region.

The exploits of John Cross' time in South East Asia have been revealed in his new book, First In Last Out, which is published by Pen and Sword.

'Indo-China was never in the British sphere in South East Asia,' he said.

'To help disarm the Imperial Japanese Army and find myself, with 10 months' commissioned service, commanding a Japanese battalion against the Vietminh is unique.

'To see French colonialism compared with British was a stark and unnerving experience.

'Thirty years later, as the Defence Attache, using seven of my nine Asian languages, I got closer to both sides, royal and communist, that any other attache, even helping the queen get in contact with her daughter, Princess 'Golden Fairy' in London.

'I learnt enough Lao to lecture the Royal Lao Army in Lao.'

The exploits of John Cross' time in South East Asia have been revealed in his new book, First In Last Out

Close relations: John Cross served in Vietnam twice in his military career. He said: 'Thirty years later, as the Defence Attache, using seven of my nine Asian languages, I got closer to both sides, royal and communist, that any other attache, even helping the queen get in contact with her daughter Princess 'Golden Fairy' in London'

Royal connection: John Cross became friends on both sides of the war and took this photograph on the day of the wedding of Princess Marina Rangsi and His Highness Prince Sisouk na Champassak

Showing respect: John Cross captured this moment where Major General Kouprasith Abhay, deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Lao Army gave a salute to the King

Mr Cross' service in spanned decades - spending 37 years of his 39 year service in the continent

Documented: These stunning pictures document the officer's time in Vietnam in the months after World War Two ended and again during the 1970s when he was stationed as an attache in the region

Mr Cross' service in Asia is remarkable for its longevity as he spent 37 years and 324 days of his 39 years and 80 days' service in the continent.

His incredible language skills were just one of many things that earnt him respect among the local people and allowed him more access than any other outsider once the communists took over Vietnam.

'Thirty years later I was sent as the Attache to Laos,' he said.

'Britain was the Right-Wing Member of the 1962 Geneva Accords for Laos so my previous Far Eastern experience was considered of great advantage to have me in post.

'I was the only attache who spoke Lao, including the Thais and Soviets. I was allowed to go anywhere I liked in the Vientiane area after the communists took over - no one else was.

'The villagers, knowing me from my long walks with my dog, knew that I helped feed the hungry and pay for sick to go to hospital.

'I was the 'eyes and ears' of the Lao Commander-in-Chief, apparently 'because they like and trust you and will tell you the truth which they won't tell me.'
William Lee Sankey shot and killed his ex-wife over her new relationship in their home while their five-year-old daughter watched

A man who shot and killed his ex-wife in front of their five-year-old daughter was found guilty of murder and other felony charges yesterday.

William Lee Sankey killed his ex-wife, Rhonda Williams, at their Union City, Georgia home in April 2015, in an apparent fit of anger over her new relationship.

As Sankey, 55, fired his fourth and final shot into the back of Williams' head that night. Officials said he told his former brother-in-law  Williams' brother  that 'I had to do it,' according to The Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Williams' brother, who also resided at the house, heard the first three shots and found Sankey near his sister's body, according to Atlanta Patch.

The divorced couple's daughter witnessed the entire shooting, according to Fulton County District Attorneys Office spokesman Dontaye Carter.

The incident took place on April 28, 2015, when Williams returned home from work and Sankey confronted her about her new relationship.

Despite being divorced since 2014, Sankey and Williams still lived together due to a divorce decree that allowed him to stay in the same house with his ex and their young daughter, Carter said.

The scene of the fatal shooting: The house that Sankey and Williams shared for four years after their divorce, due to a divorce decree stating that Sankey could continue to live there

Investigators outside the Union City, Georgia, house where Sankey fatally shot his ex-wife

After reportedly shooting Williams with a pistol, Sankey called various friends and family members and confessed to what he'd done. Carter said that while he asked them to go to the house, he refused to let anybody call 911.

Officers didn't respond to the scene until about 12.45am on April 29  four hours after Sankey had run away from the house. When cops arrived, they found Williams dead, a police spokesperson said at the time, adding that both of Williams' children were home at the time of the shooting.

Sankey surrendered himself to police several hours after the shooting.

During the investigation, relatives also told police that Sankey was having difficulty accepting the divorce. Detectives also learned that Sankey and Williams had a turbulent relationship and argued about who would maintain ownership of the house once they separated.

Court documents reveal that they had a contested divorce and that Williams was the plaintiff.

During his trial, Sankey was found guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault, cruelty to children, false imprisonment and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

He is expected to be sentenced on March 24, according to court records.
Brooke L. Lajiness, 38, has been accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy

A married Michigan mother appeared in court on Thursday, to face charges for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Brooke L. Lajiness, 38, was arraigned earlier this month on 13 counts including criminal sexual conduct, accosting a minor for immoral purposes and furnishing obscenity to a child.

She has been free on bail since then, after posting $50,000 cash bond.

Her husband was with her on Thursday, when she was back in court for another hearing.

After yesterday's session, Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor John Vella said they are looking into whether they may be more victims.

'This case involves a defendant seeking out minors for sex,' Vella said, according to M Live.

Lajiness' attorney, David I. Goldstein, said prosecutors need to focus on the case at hand.

'He keeps talking about "minors," but there's one,' Goldstein said.

Lajiness' (left) husband (right) was with her on Thursday, when she was back in court for another hearing

Attorneys were arguing in court over whether Lajiness should be allowed to travel to Toledo to visit her family while she's free on bail. The judge ruled that she should be free to travel there, so long as she lets the court know in advance.

Lajiness is due back in court on March 30 for a probable cause hearing.

At her arraignment on march 3, Michigan State Police Trooper Donald Pasternak testified that he started investigating Lajiness a few weeks before, when the victim's mother walked into a police station and complained that Lajiness was having sex with her son.

They found that Lajiness started exchanging photos with the teen while he was still in middle school.

They started having sex last summer, when the boy was in middle school or high school.

Police say she admitted to having sex with the teen between eight and 15 times and sending nude photos to the boy. She's pictured above in Facebook photos

Laginess reportedly confessed to having sex with the teen between eight and 15 times and exchanging the nude pictures.

Pasternak testified that most of the sexual encounters happened in the back of Laginess' car in a Lima Township driveway.

As part of her bond conditions, Laginess is not allowed near school property or around minors except for her own children. She is also not allowed to use computers, social media websites or to drink alcohol or take drugs.
Multitasker: Joseph Hirsch, 59, is accused of practicing dentistry without a license out of a California office that doubled as a meth lab

A felon who allegedly practiced dentistry without a license and cooked methamphetamine inside his makeshift office has been arrested in California.

Joseph Hirsch, 59, was taken into custody at 7am on Tuesday after the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force served a search warrant at Thermo Dental on Old county road in San Carlos.

According to a news release from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, the search of that location yielded narcotics and equipment used to manufacture narcotics.

A warrant affidavit revealed that the illegal drug in question was methamphetamine, reported Mercury News.

Investigators also found a 'crude' dental office inside the building, which consisted of a dentist chair, an X-ray machine and other tools of the trade.

It is suspected that Hirsch was providing dental treatments to patients without a license.

Tuesday's raid on Hirsch's ersatz dental practice came more than a year after the narcotics task force received a tip about the suspect's activities, which prompted a three-month investigation in early 2016.

Practice: The San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force served a search warrant at Thermo Dental in San Carlos, seizing methamphetamine and equipment used to manufacture narcotics

It is unclear at this time how long Hirsch had been illegally practicing dentistry, or whether any of his patients were hurt as a result of his ministrations.

California Department of Consumer Affairs Detective Ryan Blonien told CBS SF it appears Hirsch was running a denture manufacturing venture and was also practicing dentistry on the side.

Blonien said Hirsch never had a dental license but was fitting patients for dentures.

The 59-year-old pseudo-dentist was booked into the San Mateo County Jail on $500,000 on suspicion of possession and manufacturing of controlled substances, possessing brass knuckles and ammunition while being a felon.

Hirsch could face an additional charge of working as an unlicensed dentist pending the outcome of a separate investigation that is being conducted by state Department of Dentistry.
President Donald Trump said Friday he extracted commitments from a dozen Republicans to back the GOP leadership health plan as the endangered health plan moves toward a critical floor vote next week.

Trump met with 13 members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, following days of conservative complaints about the GOP leadership health bill, and a floor vote expected next week.

Without providing any substantive details, Trump said he was able to achieve commitments of support, and declared Obamacare 'dead.'

'All of these 'nos' or 'potential nos' are all 'yeses,' Trump told reporters after the meeting.

'Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.' He said he got a dozen commitments, although a list of attendees put out by the White House was more of a 'baker's dozen.'

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President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting about his healthcare plan with members of Congress in the Oval Office. Trump said he was able to turn 12 'nos' or 'potential nos' to 'yes.' The House is expected to vote on health legislation next week

And at least one of the attendees, Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky, had defended the health bill already from charges of being 'Obamacare light.'

'It's a good first step. It's not perfect,' he told CNN.

'But to suggest that this is Obamacare light I think is wrong. This is a dramatic improvement over Obamacare,' he said.

Another attendee, Mia Love of Utah, had signaled her support for the bill just yesterday.

'The bottom line is, Obamacare was unsustainable,' she said during a telephone town hall, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

'This is about giving people access to health care that need it and want it,' Love continued. But she said she was open to changes, saying: 'I'm not going to rubber-stamp everything that my party does.'

Trump hinted at legislative compromises in his remarks.

President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney meet with U.S. Representative Mark Walker (R-NC) and members of the Republican Study Committee at the White House

MAYBE MORE OF A SOFT NO: Rep. Andy Barr has called the GOP health bill a 'dramatic improvement over Obamacare'  although President Trump says he switched a dozen Republicans from no to yes during a meeting

Rep. Mia Love of Utah, among those Trump aid he moved from no to yes, has already said 'Obamacare was unsustainable' and expressed support for the GOP health bill

'And we made certain changes,' Trump continued. 'And very frankly  although the block grant is very important. Because I want the states to get the money and to run the program if they want to run it. Because they can do it better than the federal government, they're better equipped than the federal government,' Trump said.

It wasn't precisely clear what he met, but soon afterward, word of changes to the plan began emerging. Conservatives have been pushing to block grant Medicaid funds to the states.

'The Speaker said this a minute ago, he didn't say the specifics of it, but he said that some tweaks will be made to the tax credits and probably that's the older  old geezers like me that are 55 and up,' Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said, The Hill reported.

Helping to lock down support from the study committee members, the administration agreed to give states the ability to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and the ability to block grant Medicaid rather than imposing a cap on the amount states can receive, GOP sources told the paper.

Describing the lawmakers he met with, Trump said: 'These folks - and they are tough. And they love their constituents and they love this county. These folks were noes. Mostly noes,' Trump said.

One of them, Rep. Andy Barr, sounded in a recent CNN appearance like he was more like a yes, taking issue with anyone who would characterize the bill as 'Obamacare light.'

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting about his healthcare plan with members of Congress in the Oval Office

Trump came back to what he described as successful arm-twisting tactics at another meeting on veterans issues. He indicated that talks had gone on for several days, but got finalized in a 15-minute meeting.

'So we have 12 'nos.' And we jiggered it and we've done some great things. But the 'nos' in every single case went to a 'yes.' So that was a great honor. And health care looks like its really happening,' he said.

'We just got 12 very, very great people that went from no or maybe but maybe leaning to no, right Mike?' Trump said, indicating to Vice President Mike Pence. 'And they all have given me a commitment they're voting for our health plan, our health care plan.'

Trump took full ownership of the plan as the House prepared to vote on the bill next Thursday, Politico reported.

Trump laced into Obamacare at the meeting. 'It's on its last dying feet. The fake news is trying to say good things about it,' he said.

'There is no good news about Obamcare,' Trump continued. 'Obamacare is dead. And unless we gave it massive subsidies in a year from now or six months from now, it's not even going to be here. So when they say, 'Oh more people are on the plan' - there's not gonna be any people on the plan,' he said.
Keanaendigo James, 22, is wanted on charges of theft and dealing in infant children

An exotic dancer who agreed to sell her newborn daughter for $1,700 was only found out when the woman she struck a deal with took her to small-claims court for backing out, authorities said.

Keanaendigo James, 22, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, is wanted on charges of theft and dealing in infant children.

James, who said she was acting in the best interests of her daughter, signed a notarized agreement to sell he daughter in April.

But she took the money and failed to hand over the baby, who was born in July.

The other woman filed a civil lawsuit to get her money back, and James appeared at the October 25 hearing, where she agreed to return the $1,700.

District Judge Allen P. Page III began questioning the two women only to realize James had agreed to sell her baby, Pennlive.com reported.

The judge called the district attorney's office, and charges were filed against James.

Weber says James worked as a dancer in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and in New Jersey.

The baby is now safe with her father.
A 20-year woman has been jailed for an alleged hit-and-run after a teenage boy was killed last week in San Diego.

Jessica Rene Medsker, from San Diego, was arrested in Ducos Place, about a mile from where 16-year-old Alex Funk died, according to police.

Since her arrest it emerged her sister, Leann, is also in prison after she caused a fatal accident three years earlier.

Jessica Rene Medsker, from San Diego, was arrested in the 5000 block of Ducos Place, about a mile from where 16-year-old Alex Funk died

Since her arrest it emerged her sister, Leann, (right) caused a fatal accident three years earlier

She was the driver in a rollover SUV crash in Mission Valley that killed a 25-year-old man and seriously injured two other passengers, including her own father, CBS News 8 reported.

She is currently serving prison time in Riverside County.

In the incident on Thursday, Funk was walking south in the 5700 block of Santo Road when he was struck by the car shortly before midnight.

His friend managed to jump out the way to avoid being hit. Following the collision, the driver failed to stop and sped off.

Medsker was booked into Las Colinas Women's Jail in Santee on suspicion of hit-and-run causing death.

She was being held on $50,000 bail pending arraignment, scheduled for Friday afternoon.

Ian Kelly, a close family friend of Funk, said: 'Alex was with a friend and the family is unsure why the boys were crossing the street at or when they were. The accident has left the family and friends in absolute devastating grief.

Medsker was booked into Las Colinas Women's Jail in Santee on suspicion of hit-and-run causing death

Alex Funk, 16, was killed in the hit-and-run in the 5700 block of Santo Road, in San Diego

'They appreciate all the love and outpouring of support from the community, but they are in need of some privacy. They understand the magnitude of this accident and the overall impact it is making on the community, but kindly request space and privacy as they process this awful event.

'The family will make an additional statement early next week once arrangements are made and more information becomes available. We are all praying that the authorities find who did this and held responsible for their actions.

'Alex was a great kid and no family should ever have to deal with a tragedy such as this.'
George Osborne's latest job as a newspaper editor has sparked a plethora of jokes with Ed Miliband even joining the fun.

The former chancellor has been appointed the editor of the London Evening Standard so the ex-Labour leader tweeted: 'I will shortly be announced as editor of Heat magazine'.

But with Mr Miliband previously admitting he was 'proud to be a geek', others suggested Doctor Who Magazine would suit him better than the celeb weekly.

Jeremy Corbyn called the news a 'joke' and Twitter users decided to suggest the sensibly dressed party leader should be the next editor of Vogue.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron had a similar sentiment to Mr Miliband, writing: 'I guess I should apply to edit Viz then?' - the magazine replied: 'You start on Monday'.

Gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was put forward to edit Rugby World because of the time he sent a Japanese schoolboy flying while playing the sport on a trip to Asia.

And with Mr Osborne's friend and former boss David Cameron largely out of work some suggested they could work together at the Standard.

These are the best of the virals about George Osborne's sixth job:

New job: New journalist George Osborne is the new editor of the Evening Standard - sparking a frenzy of online jokes

Touting for business: Ed Miliband was keen to put himself forward as a future editor of entertainment weekly Heat

More fitting? Others said the MP and 'proud geek' would be better suited to a Doctor Who monthly

Getting in on the act: Lib Dem leader Tim Farron asked if he could work for Viz and they have reportedly agreed to take him on

Boris Johnson appointed editor of Rugby World magazine. pic.twitter.com/ddgJ2ZHPnb  Ian Betteridge (@ianbetteridge) March 17, 2017

Fashionista: Jeremy Corbyn could be the next editor of Vogue, one internet wag said

Cutting: Other joked about the MP's workload especially because he will edit in the mornings and work at Parliament in the afternoons

Osborne coming into journalism like pic.twitter.com/5Qf61hCwIW  Mike Hills (@mikewhills) March 17, 2017

George Osborne sitting in his first Evening Standard editor's conference like... pic.twitter.com/5ObZjVNa44  Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) March 17, 2017

Contrast: As his friend landed a top editor's job others joked about David Cameron being largely a free man

Jokes: John Prescott made a play on his own reputation while in power to hammer George Osborne on his

Crazy week: Some were still reeling from the decision to employ Noel Fielding on the Bake Off when the Osborne news broke

Taking over: The Standard has previously lampooned the new boss while he was in No 11
A man wearing a Muslim tunic has been arrested on suspicion of slitting the throats of his father and brother in a Paris street this morning, it has emerged.

The alleged attacker shouted Allahu Akbar as he knifed the two men in Rue de Montreuil in the east of the French capital this morning, according to a police source.

Horrified witnesses saw one victim lying in a pool of blood outside a building.

A man wearing a Muslim tunic has been arrested on suspicion of slitting the throats of his father and brother in a Paris street this morning, it has emerged. Police are pictured at the scene in Rue de Montreuil, eastern Paris, this morning

The alleged attacker shouted Allah Akbar as he knifed the two men in Rue de Montreuil (pictured today) in the east of the French capital this morning, according to a police source

The circumstances of the attack were unclear but some witnesses said the suspect made remarks 'linked to radical Islam'.

Police urged caution, saying the killer's motives were unknown.

A resident of the high-rise building in the city's 11th district said he heard a man 'crying for help' at around 10am.

'I looked out the window and saw a man lying on the ground. There was a lot of blood.

'There was another man standing beside him, dressed in a white djellaba (loose-fitting tunic worn by some Muslims).

'He fell to his knees and prayed until the police came to take him away,' 21-year-old Thomas told AFP.

The circumstances of the attack were unclear but some witnesses said the suspect made remarks 'linked to radical Islam'

Investigation: Horrified witnesses saw one victim lying in a pool of blood outside a building

Another resident, 64-year-old Francois Petitjean, described a harrowing scene.

'When I arrived in the hall of the building I saw a body lying in a pool of blood, in front of the postboxes.

'It was carnage. I went out and then saw another person covered in blood,' he said, expressing shock.

Police had sealed off a section of the street around the building. No further details on the suspect or the victims were immediately available.

It comes as France remains on high alert after a wave of Islamist terror attacks over the last two years.

In 2015, ISIS fanatics went on the rampage in the French capital slaughtering 130 in a wave of machine gun and suicide bomb attacks.
An intimate glimpse into Princess Diana's thoughts after landmark moments - such as her wedding to Prince Charles, and Prince William's birth - are going up for auction.

Writing to personal secretary Jane Parsons, she revealed that that their honeymoon as a 'perfect opportunity to catch up on some sleep' and that 24,000 letters of thanks had to be sent out after William was born.

The collection is expected to cause a flurry of interest when it goes under the hammer at Stroud Auction Rooms next month.

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Charles and Diana pictured on the Royal Yacht Brittania, where they spent part of their honeymoon in 1981. The Princess said it was a 'perfect opportunity to catch up on some sleep'

The Princess of Wales holds Prince William while standing beside Prince Charles in 1983. William's birth sparked 24,000 letters of thanks

The 25 lots include a typed list of wedding gifts, dried flowers from the Princess's wedding bouquet, letters written during the couple's honeymoon on the Royal Yacht Britannia, and following the birth of Prince William.

There are also thank you letters, Christmas cards, photographs and invitations to numerous Royal events.

Thought to be particularly rare is the letter the Princess sent to Miss Parsons during her honeymoon.

Written on Royal Yacht Britannia-crested paper and dated August 15, 1981, she wrote: 'The honeymoon was a perfect opportunity to catch up on sleep....'

A typed tally of correspondence received after the birth of Prince William includes details of 4,500 baby presents and records that 24,000 thank you letters were sent out by ladies in waiting.

The couple exiting St Pauls Cathedral following their wedding on July 29, 1981

The couple, pictured here during A Royal Tour In Toronto, Canada. They also wrote letters to their staff promising their wouldn't be another 'Baby Wales' after William until she'd had a sufficient rest

Letters to 'everyone in the office' give thanks for her 21st birthday present and record her 'gratitude at having such a wonderful collection of people looking after us.'

The Princess also hopes the staff are not left ' exhausted, overworked and underpaid' after the birth of the new baby prince.

Thanking Miss Parsons and other staff for the gift of a silver photo frame, the Princess says: 'Recently I seem to have endless pictures of William, so it's lovely to think I'll be able to frame one of them for our bedroom.'

She confides: 'I have never been more confused than on my birthday as presents and telegrams were pouring in for W at KP as well as my own - so at the moment I just seem to be churning out letters!'

A letter on Kensington Palace paper dated July 5th, 1983, shows how pleased Princess Diana was to see her young son when she returned from the Royal tour of Australia.

The Diana (pictured with Charles at Balmoral in 1981) correspondence will be sold at Stroud Auction Rooms' on April 12 at 10am

She tells Miss Parsons: 'William recognised us instantly, which was a relief as sometimes children resent their parents leaving them! It's marvellous to be home again and hopefully we won't have to do any more travelling this year... Wishful thinking!'

There are also two letters to the office staff, written by Charles and Diana just a few days after Prince William's birth, both on crested paper, on consecutive days June 25 and June 26, 1982.

Diana states 'I know you are being buried under a avalanche of mail......don't despair, there won't be another baby Wales until I've had a decent rest..' In his letter Prince Charles is 'apologetic at all the extra work we are probably going to land on you!'.

The Diana correspondence will be sold at Stroud Auction Rooms' on April 12 at 10am with viewing on April 11 from 10am to 7pm. Items can also be viewed from 9am on the day of the sale.

For more information ring 01453 873 800, email info@stroudauctions.com or visit the website www.stroudauctions.co.uk
'Body in a suitcase' killer Heather Mack's daughter Stella has been moved out of the brutal Balinese prison she's called home throughout her short life and placed in the care of an Australian couple who befriended Mack during the trial.

On her second birthday, March 17, the innocent girl shifted from life inside notorious Kerobokan Prison, also known as Hotel K, into the arms of a couple she's barely ever met.

The arrangement had been made solely by Mack without the permission of former boyfriend and father Tommy Schaefer, who is also in the prison for his part in the killing of Mack's mother, millionaire Chicago socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in an upmarket Bali hotel in August 2014.

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The arrangement had been made solely by Mack without the permission of former boyfriend and father Tommy Schaefer, who is also in the prison for his part in the killing of Mack's mother, millionaire Chicago socialite Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in an upmarket Bali hotel in August 2014

'Everyone keeps saying that you'll understand when your older/And your mother when she's sober,' he writes in the emotional poem

'Body in a suitcase' killer Heather Mack's daughter Stella has been moved out of the brutal Balinese prison she's called home throughout her short life and placed in the care of an Australian pair who befriended Mack during the trial

On her second birthday, March 17, the innocent girl shifted from life inside notorious Kerobokan Prison, also known as Hotel K, into the arms of a couple she's barely ever met. She is pictured covered on cake on her first birthday last year

Supporters of Schaefer say it's probably the last time that he will ever see his daughter - and the 24-year-old has opened up his heart in a poem, which is published for the first time today.

Entitled 'For Not Being A Dad', Schaefer expresses his regret at not being there for his daughter, but also has a dig at his former girlfriend saying that she's turned into a junkie in prison.

In the lyrics, he says: 'I know you wonder what's going on/How your mom's always gone.

It's like we don't even know her/Plus everyone keeps saying that you'll understand when your older/And your mother when she's sober.'

Schaefer's had a torrid time in prison, after being beaten by eight western prisoners with blocks of wood two weeks ago, as punishment for Mack causing the prison bad publicity, which has resulted on the prison authorities cracking down on inmates.

He spent five days in solitary confinement while his wounds healed and, according to a family friend, he now has no cell of his own and has to sleep with 40 Indonesians.

The source added: 'He got beat with blocks of wood and people stomping on his head, it happened two weeks ago, and the guards did nothing, they wouldn't let him see a doctor.

In a poem entitled 'For Not Being A Dad', Schaefer expresses his regret at not being there for his daughter, but also has a dig at his former girlfriend saying that she's turned into a junkie in prison

In August 2014, the pair were imprisoned after murdering von Wiese-Mack and dumping her destroyed body in a suitcase. Since the murder, Mack gave birth to Stella and has been raising her in the prison

Schaefer(pictured with other inmates) got eighteen years imprisonment and Mack ten, even though it was her mother they killed

Last month, Mack admitted in a YouTube video that it was all her own dirty work, but framed boyfriend Schaefer, 23, after he refused to help her hire a hitman for 40,000. Pictured, Mack and Stella pose with other inmates

'He was badly injured and in solitary for five days. They just weren't sure what to do with him because they couldn't put him back where he was and they didn't want anybody to see his injuries.

'The westerners have to fend for themselves - if prisoners get into a fight, the guards don't intervene. This was done by westerners, who are higher up on the committee, and they run the show and work with the prison, they don't like the annoyance or disruption this case has caused.

'He's an easy target - he's the youngest in the block, American, black and has no lawyer.'



'For Not Being Dad ' For car rides to Grandmas and talks about grades But your already safe, so when I speak you blast the music And I start singing your favorite song that I knew better than you did I thought wed still be here on Pleasant and Euclid For not buying you dresses and toys and breakfast For every time you get embarrassed that we are your parents For boo boos and bandaids and not tucking you under the blanket Telling you bedtime stories about how the good guy made it And how it's not just your imagination And how the boys think youre a queen They just don't know how to say it For telling you to ask mom, Knowing she would send you back to me We'd probably argue later on, Cause she knows what I was doing I know you wonder what's going on, How your moms always gone, It's like we don't even know her Plus everyone keeps saying that you'll understand when your older And your mother when she's sober I should probably change the subject So I throw you on my shoulder And spin in circles till we're dizzy Then fall on our backs because I haven't been that busy You know star means Stella That one there is for you For the moments I'm not there When you don't know what to do You taught me to thank God for darkness For the darkness that I knew Lied a playground of light And the fountain of truth This is for not being there to help you with math And to laugh, for being the only black kid in our class For not being able to open the door to your cab I guess this is what I get For not being Dad Advertisement

In August 2014, the pair were imprisoned after murdering von Wiese-Mack and dumping her destroyed body in a suitcase. They plotted to kill her in a bid to take her inheritance.

They did this while Mack was pregnant and their daughter Stella has lived in the jail ever since.

Schaefer got eighteen years imprisonment and Mack ten, even though it was her mother they killed.

Last month, the 21-year-old admitted in a YouTube video that it was all her own dirty work, but framed boyfriend Schaefer, 23, after he refused to help her hire a hitman for 40,000.

She added: 'I made it up in my heart, in my mind, my soul, in my blood, in the oxygen running through my body that I wanted to kill my mother.'

For the last six months, Schaefer has been receiving psychiatric treatment as he suffers with mood swings and depression.

After his recent beating and spending time in solitary, Schaefer has been left with no cell phone; he has no money and $400 a month is needed for cell 'rent'. He's now living with 40 Indonesians in a space which has a ceiling of only 6ft 6in - and he's only three inches shorter than that height.

For the last six months, Schaefer has been receiving psychiatric treatment as he suffers with mood swings and depression. Pictured, the couple back when they were still together

With Stella leaving the prison, Mack is now vulnerable to attacks from other prisoners, as she's been so far 'untouchable' because she has a child

Intimate photos of Mack show the difference between the life she led before the murdered her mother, and her life after

The source adds: 'Heather has done a really good job of making it seem like she is in some hotel. She has Stella to protect her, no one hits a mother with a baby, but for Tommy this is about survival.

'It can be a dangerous place to be, with very little resources to survive, especially when you are not from the country and you don't know anyone there, you don't know their language and you have no support system.

'The Indonesians took him in their block, which has never happened with a foreigner, so he needs Mack to quit rocking the boat so he can get back on his feet.

'The prison has been under tremendous stress from all this drama they bring. His injuries have healed but he got a good beating. He got lucky because the Indonesians like him, but he lost everything except a bag of clothes and has to start over again.

'He survives off nothing and suffers every day and is always trying to think of ways he can repay the world for his contribution to this heinous crime. He wants young people to learn from his story - he is learning and growing from his experiences.

'Tommy will forever be tied to Heather, but they are not alike anyway. She's using money from her trust for Shabu [Balinese crystal meth], speed, alcohol and cannabis.'

This week is the lowest in the pair's time in Bali as Stella is being taken away from them and will be living with an Australian couple, who only knew Mack after they started visiting her during the trial.

According to Schaefer's camp, this is so that Mack can get her daughter back when she is supposed to leave prison in 2024. Stella is still entitled to most of her grandparents' multi-million fortune, despite Mack's murderous act.

The source adds: 'Now Stella is going to leave on her birthday, March 17, and she will go with the Australian couple who Heather befriended when she was pregnant.

'They live close by and will be coming to prison regularly for visits to Heather. Heather is doing everything in her power to cut everyone out that doesn't serve her, including Tommy.

'An outside agency has been involved to oversee everything for Stella and make sure her needs are met and will stay involved.

This week is the lowest in the pair's time in Bali as Stella is being taken away from them and will be living with an Australian couple, who only knew Mack after they started visiting her during the trial

According to Schaefer's camp, this is so that Mack can get her daughter back when she is supposed to leave prison in 2024. Stella is still entitled to most of her grandparents' multi-million fortune, despite Mack's murderous act

'Stella doesn't know what's going on, Tommy has been spending a lot of time with her. They go to the church and then they have a koi pond where they hang out and play games with the water lilies and rocks.

'But she is very attached to her mom as she has spent 24 hours a day for two years with her, so the separation is going to be the hardest.

'Stella has on been outside of the prison just a few times and has never experienced to what the real world is like. She has never even been in a home, it is going to be a big adjustment for her.

'Tommy's mom is still in the process of trying to get custody and recently filed something in Indonesia. The problem is that nobody knows how to handle the case because of jurisdiction, determining which country has the authority to make that decision, figuring out if Stella is considered to have Indonesian citizenship.

'It doesn't seem like America wants to deal with it, it's too complicated, so unless Indonesia agrees to give custody to Tommy's mom, she will most likely stay in Bali.

'Heather's plan is to leave Indonesia - all prisoners are deported - with Stella and take the inheritance and live in another foreign country.

'She doesn't ever want to go back to America. Fathers in Indonesia don't have the same rights as in America so Tommy has no say in what happens to her and hasn't any guaranteed visitation.

'The foster family has refused to cooperate with letting Tommy be part of Stella life, as per Heather's wishes. She wants to be the guardian when she gets out and collect Stella's inheritance.

'This girl is as evil as it gets.'

With Stella leaving the prison, Mack is now vulnerable to attacks from other prisoners, as she's been so far 'untouchable' because she has a child.

'Inmates will now see her as a potential target of abuse if she continues to disrupt prison life for them. When the baby leaves it will really f**k her up, as the baby has the money and she has no protection,' the source added.

The FBI is also investigating claims that Mack's lawyers bribed their way to a reduced sentence; ten years is a tiny amount for being part of such a brutal slaying.

The agency has been involved from the onset with Indonesian authorities and are probing if the money was used to illegally bribe officials.

The source adds: 'The FBI is determined that Heather will pay for this properly in the US. Heather is for sure going to be charged in America when she leaves the prison and they are looking into bribery with her appeal.

'If she would have just left the money alone, saw out her sentence, none of this would be happening. So Stella's future is well and truly unknown, especially if her mom has to go back to prison.'
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These devastating pictures show the aftermath of a suicide bulldozer packed with explosives that ripped apart an Iraqi forces advance in the fight for Mosul, leaving four dead.

The bulldozer smashed through vehicles and barricades near the Mosul museum before detonating a blast that destroyed vehicles including an Iraqi US-made Abrahams tank.

A spokesman for the rapid reaction forces said: 'A bulldozer packed with a large amount of explosives managed to reach our troops near the museum using the Old City side roads, we lost an Abrahams tank, three Humvees and four soldiers.'

An ISIS bulldozer exploded near the Old Bridge facing the Old City in Mosul, killing four Iraqi soldiers on Wednesday

An Islamic State suicide car bomb exploded near the Mosul museum on Wednesday, leaving four soldiers dead

Losing the city would be a huge blow to ISIS as it has served as the group's de facto capital since its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself head of a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria from the Grand Mosque in the summer of 2014

Iraqi forces battling ISIS in Mosul edged into the Old City and around the al Nuri mosque on Friday trying to seal off a main road to prevent militants sending in suicide bombers to attack their positions

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber in an armoured digger truck penetrated Iraqi forces lines, smashing through vehicles and barricades before detonating a blast that destroyed vehicles

Iraqi army and security forces have made significant gains in recent days in the battle that started in October, seizing a main bridge over the Tigris river and advancing towards the mosque

Iraqi forces battling ISIS in Mosul have advanced into the city's ancient central district as they try to seal off a main road to prevent militants sending in more suicide bombers.

Troops are facing fierce resistance as militants retreat into the Old City, where street fighting is expected in the narrow alleyways and around the al Nuri mosque where ISIS declared its caliphate nearly three years ago.

A helicopter fired rockets into the area and heavy gunfire and mortar blasts echoed as troops fought in districts near the mosque, where ISIS's black jihadist flag hangs from its leaning minaret.

'Federal police and rapid response forces completely control the al-Basha mosque, al-Adala street and Bab al-Saray market inside the Old City,' a federal police spokesman said. 'Forces are trying to isolate the Old City area from all sides and then start an offensive from all sides.'

An ISIS attack on Thursday was halted when a vehicle was hit by a rocket in the Bab Tob old market area before it could approach federal police and other units, the rapid reponse force official said.

Five months into the campaign to liberate Mosul, ISIS's last major stronghold in the country, Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes have retaken the eastern half of the city and about half of the west across the Tigris river.

The fall of Mosul, Iraq's second city, would be a major setback for ISIS following months of losses in Iraq and neighbouring Syria. The city also holds huge symbolic significance for the terror group.

Federal Police Major General Haider Dhirgham said: 'It's important for them, it's where they declared their state [in 2014].'

Since launching their assault on the western sector, Iraqi forces have taken several districts and key buildings including the headquarters of Nineveh province's regional government and a railway station.

Carts loaded with bodies of civilians killed in air strike, are seen during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, in Mosul, on Friday

A father reacts after his son was killed in an airstrike, during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants

Fleeing ISIS, Mosul's civilians cart out the dead from the city where fighting has been ongoing for five months

But the United Nations has warned that the exodus of tens of thousands of west Mosul residents could overwhelm aid groups trying to help them.

The last week has seen the highest level of displacement yet, with 32,000 displaced between March 12 and 15.

Many say food is running short and security is fragile even in liberated areas.

Lise Grande, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said. 'The number of people is higher than expected. If the pace accelerates further, it's going to stretch us to the breaking point.'

Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displacement said more than 150,000 people had so far fled their homes in Mosul's west, with two-thirds taking refuge in camps near the city where they receive food, blankets and foam mattresses.

Ms Grande said the UN was concerned for the 600,000 people still trapped inside the city, forced to choose between staying amid the fighting or risking being targeted by jihadists if they decided to flee.

US officials have estimated that around 2,000 fighters remain inside the city.

'We fear the civilians there might be trapped in an extremely difficult situation,' she said.

The Reach Initiative, a group that helps aid groups collect data on humanitarian crises, said the situation in west Mosul was 'severe to extremely severe'.

'In areas still under (IS control), there is no access to markets and people are surviving on depleting food and water stocks, without access to electricity, fuel and healthcare,' it said.

In neighbouring Syria, three separate forces are advancing on the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian city under ISIS control.
Tragic: Paul John, 47, died in hospital yesterday after leaping in front of a car to push his daughter to safety

A father was killed in a horror crash after pushing his nine-year-old daughter out the harm's way to save her life.

Paul John, 47, died in hospital yesterday, two days after being struck by a car.

The brave man also donated all of his organs, passing the gift of life on to others.

Witnesses reported seeing Mr John desperately push his daughter Angela out of the way of the oncoming vehicle when they were walking in Wythenshawe, Manchester.

He managed to shove his child to safety but not before the car crashed into him and moments later, struck a 27-year-old woman and her two-year-old son.

The 88-year-old male driver of the Kia remained at the scene and is helping police with their investigation.

Angela John suffered minor cuts and bruises while the woman was treated for a broken wrist. The toddler was uninjured.

Mr John was taken to hospital where two days later he tragically died.

Tributes are now being paid to the devout Catholic.

The leader of his church group said Mr John donated all of his organs to give the gift of life to others.

The dad-of-two moved to Manchester from Kerala in southern India in 2001, and worked for Sky Chefs at Manchester Airport.

Sajan Chacko, president of the Manchester Knanaya Catholic Association, said: 'Paul was very involved in church activities, and was a very active member - we are like a family at the church.

The scene: The above junction in Manchester is where Paul John bravely saved his daughter's life as an oncoming car hit him as well as a woman and her two-year-old son

Paying tribute, Mr Chacko said: 'He was a lovely man, he always had a nice smile on his face.

'He was never rude, and was always very friendly. He was very religious. He spent most of his time with the family, looking after the kids.

'That was his life. He would go to work, then go back and look after his family.'

A special church service will be held tonight at his local church in his memory.

Police confirmed their investigation is still ongoing and they are appealing for witnesses.

PC Ed Lister said: 'My thoughts are with the man and his family. I can't begin to imagine what they are going through.

'Our specialist officers are helping them through this incredibly difficult time.

'Our investigation is still ongoing and we are still appealing for witnesses.

'We would like to hear from anyone who witnessed the incident or who may have dash-cam footage showing the collision.'
Three teenagers were spotted trying to complete a drug deal - just yards from a law enforcement center and right next to two patrol cars, prosecutors claim.

So obvious was the deal in Ellsworth, western Wisconsin that it was called in twice by two different sets of officers, it is alleged.

Desmond T. Trok, 18, Matthew P. Jones, 18 and Trace Schofield, 17, have all been charged with delivering THC after being caught with a quarter-pound of marijuana.

Suspects: (From left) Trace Schofield, Desmond T. Trok and Matthew P. Jones have been charged

The trio were spotted by Pierce County sheriff's investigator Marty Shepler, who was pumping gas when they tried to complete the drug deal, Twin Cities reports.

The deal involved a brown vehicle and a white vehicle which pulled up together, it is alleged.

At the same time as Shepler watched on, a Department of Natural Resources warden's patrol truck was parked close to the brown vehicle.

The warden and a deputy called it in to dispatchers, and the two vehicles were searched.
Charles Manson dwelled on his tough upbringing and his early years in prison, in never-before-seen footage from his 1993 jailhouse interview with Diane Sawyer.

The previously unaired footage from the infamous interview is set to air Friday night, during ABC's special on the deadly cult leader - Truth and Lies: The Family Manson.

A few clips of the unseen footage were released Friday morning, on Good Morning America, and show Manson delving into his past.

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Never-before-seen footage of Charles Manson's 1993 interview with Diane Sawyer is set to be released during an ABC special Friday night

In the previously unseen interview clip, Manson talks about his childhood, his mother and why he thinks he became a cult leader

ABC released a few clips of the never-before-seen footage Friday morning, ahead of the Friday night premiere of Truth and Lies: The Family Manson

In the interview, Manson spoke about his mother Kathleen Maddox, who had him when she was just 16 years old.

Manson didn't spend much of his childhood with his mother, since she was sent to prison when he was just five years old for trying to rob a service station and he was placed in the care of an aunt and uncle.

She was released on parole in 1942, but soon after tried to get rid of her son by placing him in a foster home. When that failed, a court placed him in a school for boys in Indiana.

'The only thing that my mother taught me was that everything she said was a lie,' he said. 'And I learned never to believe anyone about anything.'

It was when he was placed in the state school that Manson started to seriously act out, committing a string of burglaries and robberies that eventually landed him in juvenile hall at the age of 13.

'1944, I went to juvenile hall, I didn't get out 'til 1954. I turned 21 years old in the L.A. County Jail, I wasn't out but a hot second. I've been in jail my whole life,' Manson recalled.

Manson said he quickly learned that the world was very different for those behind bars.

'See, I never realized that people outside are much different than the people inside. People inside, if you lie, you get punched,' he said.

He seems to imply that his prison upbringing is what led young people to become attracted to him as a leader.

Manson and his 'family' (including Susan Atkins, left; Patricia Krenwinkel, center; and Leslie Van Houten; right, in 1970) were sentenced to death in 1971 for the Tate-LaBianca murders. The sentences were later commuted to life in prison

Manson (pictured in December 1969) was convicted of murder even though he did not physically take part in the crimes. Prosecutors proved he incited his followers to commit the murders though

The body of actress Sharon Tate is removed from her Los Angeles home, after her murder by Charles Manson and his 'family' in August 1969

Actress Sharon Tate (left) and couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca (center and right) were three of the Manson family victims

'When I got out, all your children would come to me, because they never had anybody to tell them the truth,' he said.

The never-before-seen footage will air in full at 9pm Eastern time on ABC. In addition to the previously unaired portion of his 1993 interview, the program delves into Manson's roles in the Tate-LaBianca murders, as well as his connection to the Beach Boys, The Beatles and Hollywood.

Though Manson didn't physically take part in the two-day killing spree in 1969, he was convicted of murder for inciting his followers to carry out the bloodbath.

He and his co-hort were sentenced to die in 1971, but their sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

Manson remains locked up at the California State Prison at Corcoran. Earlier this year, it was reported that the cult leader, 82, was suffering health issues.
A 12-year-old boy Brazilian boy had to be rescued from a tree trunk after he emulated Alison in Wonderland and chased a rabbit into a hole.

The teen from Ponta Grossa, in south Brazil, got stuck in the tree, and was trapped inside for two hours before rescuers managed to free him.

Only his feet and flip flops could be seen sticking out from the hole as emergency workers attempted to help him out.

A 12-year-old boy Brazilian boy had to be rescued from a tree trunk after he chased a rabbit down a hole

The youngster told fire fighters he had been trying to save a rabbit he believed was stranded inside the tree.

The adolescent, whose name was withheld to protect his identity, said: 'I saw the rabbit run into the tree trunk and when it didn't come out I thought it had got stuck.

'I decided to try to find it and save it. But when I entered the hole I found I couldn't get back out.'

Fortunately, passers-by raised the alarm after several attempts to pull him out from the base of the tree failed.

The teen from Ponta Grossa, in south Brazil, got stuck in the tree, and was trapped inside for two hours

Only his feet and flip flops could be seen sticking out from the hole as rescuers attempted to free him

Passers-by tried to pull him out and after finding he was stuck, they raised the alarm, and a team of rescue workers was sent in to help

A team of eight emergency workers were forced to hack away parts of the trunk and dig down under the roots to release the boy from the burrow.

Lieutenant Matheus Justino Candido, in charge of the operation which took place in February this year, said: 'We usually rescue cats stuck up a tree but this is a first for us to save a boy trapped in the belly of a tree..'

He said releasing the lad was more complicated and took longer than anticipated.

The boy's upper body was wedged inside internal growths in the tree, so rescuers were unable to simply pull him out

The youngster was trapped inside the tree for two hours before the team was able to free him

The team said releasing the lad was more complicated and took longer than anticipated

He added: 'The boy's upper body was wedged inside internal growths in the tree in such a way that it was impossible to just tug him out.

'We had to be sure that we didn't destabilise the structure by digging away at roots that would undermine it and cutting parts of the tree that would end up collapsing on boy.

'We had to progress really slowly and check at each stage we were working in the right way and in the right areas so we could get him out safely.'

The team of eight emergency workers were forced to hack away parts of the trunk and dig down under the roots

Rescuers shone torches into the dim gap where the child was trapped

The grateful youngster was pulled free without suffering any injuries

Rescuers shone torches into the dim gap where the child was trapped. And the boy was given protective glasses to prevent debris falling into his eyes.

The grateful youngster was pulled free without suffering any injuries and declined to be taken to hospital for a check-up.

According to the rescuers the bunny made a quick getaway.

They said: 'As soon as the boy entered the tree the rabbit had the common sense to escape and was not seen again.'
A young British backpacker has described the horror moment a gun was held to her head when armed robbers hijacked the bus she was travelling in.

Yoga teacher Sofia Janicka, 27, was sleeping on the overnight service in Brazil when a car swerved into its path and four masked men jumped out.

They stormed the bus and drove it to an isolated field, where passengers were herded onto the top deck as the men barked instructions in Portuguese.

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Sofia Janicka was the victim of a gunpoint robbery in Brazil

In a video Ms Janicka recounts her horrifying ordeal to the BBC

Because Ms Janicka could not understand them she had the barrel of a gun pressed to her head until she handed over all the cash she had.

The robbery happened on Tuesday night during the 620-mile journey from Sorocaba, near Sao Paolo, to Foz do Iguacu on the Paraguayan border.

'Their guns started shooting up into the air and then from that point I knew what was happening,' she said.

'Then the bus just slowed down and stopped, the four gunmen got out of the car and came onto the bus... one of them drove the bus to a nearby field.

'From that point, they got everybody from the downstairs floor upstairs, closed off the curtains upstairs, and they were shouting in Portuguese.'

After they commandeered the bus the robbers confiscated mobile phones so passengers could not call for help.

The backpacker later discovered the men had threatened to kill passengers and strip them naked

Ms Janicka is in Brazil to search for medical treatment to alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis

They then rifled through their belongings, stripping them of cash, watches and jewellery before disappearing into the night.

Ms Janicka, of Swindon, Wilts., later discovered the men had threatened to kill passengers and strip them naked, leaving their bodies in a field, if they did not co-operate.

But she added: 'There was no screaming or crying, everyone just sat quietly..'

Despite the ordeal, she is continuing her stay in Brazil, where she is seeking medical treatment to alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
A man sliced his girlfriend to death with a machete as she told him she loved him before going on to kill her daughter and landlord, a court has heard.

Carlos Hernandez-Ventura, 25, is accused of killing Lourdes Flor De Leake, 34, her 14-year-old daughter and their 78-year-old landlord, Juan Jimenez Tejada in a horror machete attack last year, on October 29.

The knife-wielding attacker chopped off De Leake's hand before killing her and his other two victims - admitting later to police that De Leake begged him to stop and told him she loved him.

During Hernandez-Ventura's trial yesterday in Adel, Iowa, Iowa State Patrol Sgt. David Saldivar told the court that Hernandez-Ventura, admitted what had happened in an emergency room interview after the attack, reports the Des Moines Register.

Carlos Hernandez-Ventura was arrested and charged with first degree murder after using a machete to attack and kill his girlfriend, her daughter and their elderly landlord in Iowa

Saldivar was called in to translate between Spanish-speaking Hernandez-Ventura and an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent, who was interviewing Hernandez-Ventura at the hospital.

According to Saldivar, Hernandez-Ventura told the DCI agent that he attacked De Leake, 34, her 14-year-old daughter and their 78-year-old landlord, Juan Jimenez Tejada, from behind.

As he hacked at Leake's head and neck, Hernandez-Ventura told police that Leake  a mother of three  raised her hands up and exclaimed, 'I love you, why are you doing this?'

Lourdes Flor De Leake (right) and daughter Melany Barraza (left) were attacked and killed in their home by Leake's machete-wielding boyfriend Carlos Hernandez-Ventura last October

Lourdes Flor De Leake was a mother of three who worked in a Mexican restaurant in Perry, Iowa

Assistant Dallas County Attorney Sean Wieser, in his opening statement on Tuesday, noted that one of her hands was chopped off during the attack.

Saldivar also testified that Hernandez-Ventura claimed that Leake was his first target. After he killed her in her bedroom, he tracked down and attacked Tejada in the kitchen.

'He said that Juan [Tejada] hadn't noticed the attack in the bedroom,' Saldivar said. 'He used the same machete and attacked him from the rear as well.'

Cops and medics found Tejada alive and airlifted him to a hospital in Des Moines, according to 13WHOTV. He later died from his injuries.

After attacking Tejada, Hernandez-Ventura said he ran into Leake's daughter, Melany Barraza, in the hallway. He said that she had been in the shower during the first two attacks and that he struck her with the machete when she turned away from him.

During testimony on Tuesday, Perry police officer Lourdes Clay told jurors that it looked as though Barraza had been partially decapitated, while her arm appeared to have been severed at the elbow. She noted that cops found the machete on a chair inside the house, according to the Des Moines Register.

After the slayings, Hernandez-Ventura took Leake's Honda Pilot and drove it 13 miles across the border from Clinton, Iowa, until the car ran out of gas, according to Saldivar.

He was then taken into custody and sent to a hospital in Morrison, Illinois, where he was interviewed.

Leake (left) was a waitress and Barraza (right) was a high school freshman in Perry, Iowa

Juan Jimenez Tejada, 78, patronized Leake's restaurant and rented a room in his house to her

Tejada's house where Leake and Barraza rented a room and the machete attacks took place

Hernandez-Ventura's defense attorneys confirmed that he killed the three victims with a machete.

By way of defense, however, his attorneys claimed that Hernandez-Ventura was ordered to kill them by Leake's estranged husband, Daniel Leake, and that he should be be found not guilty because of that.

Although Daniel has not been charged in this case, defense attorney Michael Adams told jurors that Hernandez-Ventura has never wavered from his claims to law enforcement that Daniel threatened to kill Hernandez-Ventura and his family living in Virginia and El Salvador, if he did not execute the killings as instructed.

Saldivar testified that Hernandez-Ventura told the investigators that Daniel ordered him to kill Leake because she'd discovered that he was a narcotics dealer, according to the Des Moines Register.

'I recall him saying ... he had cried throughout the night just knowing that he had to do this,' Saldivar said.

However, DCI special agent Don Schnitker testified earlier in the week that investigators were unable to turn up any evidence that Daniel sold drugs or was involved in the machete slayings.

Assistant Dallas County Attorney Wieser told jurors that they may never get a 'good explanation' for why Hernandez-Ventura attacked Leake, her daughter and her landlord.

Hernandez-Ventura is charged with first degree murder.
Fascinating letters revealing how a cash-strapped Admiral Lord Nelson had an explosive row with his commanding officer over prize money have come to light.

The historical notes show the true extent of the financial pressures Nelson was facing as he struggled to support both his ex-wife and expensive mistress.

The documents from Nelson's banker relate to the much-needed reward the one-armed sailor felt he was due in the wake of one of the most lucrative naval engagements in history.

Nelson had been overlooked for a payout for the 1799 capture of two Spanish frigates, loaded with gold bullion which had a combined value of 650,000 - 65 million in today's money.

Love affair: Lord Nelson (right) was enchanted by Emma (left), a model and muse, whose real name was Amy Lyon but she caused him money woes with her expensive ways

Revealed: The letters from Nelson's angered banker relate to the bounty money the one-armed sailor felt he was owed after leading one of the most lucrative naval engagements in history. He had been overlooked for a pay out for the 1799 capture of two Spanish frigates loaded with gold bullion which had a combined value of 650,000 - 65m in today's money

Instead the 13,000 - 1.1 million today - went to Admiral John Jervis, 1st Earl St Vincent, who had been the Royal Navy's Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean.

Nelson, who by this stage had to pay a hefty mortgage on his grand home in Surrey, was in debt to ex-wife Fanny and had to keep mistress Emma Hamilton in the style she was accustomed to, was livid.

At the time of the capture of the Spanish ships, Nelson was the unofficial Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean after Jervis had left his post and returned to England due to ill health.

But Jervis had not officially resigned and so was technically still in the position. This meant he pocketed the C-in-C's share of the reward.

Desperate for cash to pay his bills, Nelson appealed the pay out and instructed his banker Alexander Davison to take up the case.

The series of 1801 documents that have emerged for sale are those exchanged between Davison, Royal Navy officials and Lord Jervis' secretary.

One 30 page document to the officials warns them his client has a very strong case and that if the matter is not resolved soon Nelson would make the ugly row public.

Part of the letter reads: 'I beg to acquaint you, that Lord Nelson has taken the opinion of several eminent counsel on the adverse claims of Lord St Vincent... all of which opinions are clearly and decidedly in favour of Lord Nelson.'

It concludes with a veiled threat that Nelson 'would not without extreme reluctance adopt any measures which might lead to a public and unpleasant discussion of the matter*'

Caught between two roses: Admiral Nelson bore the financial burden of having to support his expensive mistress Emma Hamilton (left) while he was still in debt to his ex-wife Fanny (right)

Within Davison's aggrieving 30 page appeal are prize money figures from other engagements, illustrating how Nelson had been continually shortchanged.

One such document is headed: 'To show how little prize money he received in proportion to other admirals.'

Figures beneath show that at the Battle of St Vincent in 1798 and the Battle of the Nile a year later Jervis' takings were five times that of Nelson.

The second letter was sent from Davison to Nelson, reassuring him that he will ultimately be successful in getting what he was due.

The case was finally resolved in 1803 with the King's Bench finding in Nelson's favour and awarding him just under 10,000 prize money in total.

Nelson only had two years to enjoy his money as he was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.

Nigel Kirk, of Nottingham auctioneers Mellors and Kirk, which is selling the letters on behalf of a private collector, said: 'These documents are of immense historical interest.

'Nelson clearly had a grievance and felt he was due some of the money Jervis had been granted.

'Davison's papers make the case his client had been hard done by.

Collection: The historical documents show a fascinating row between Lord Admiral and his commanding officer

Discovered: Andrew Baines (pictured), head of historic ships at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, said: 'In order to encourage Royal Navy officers and men, it was the practice to award prize money for captured ships, based on the value of the ship and its cargo'

He said: 'The fact Nelson had Davison pen these letters is a testament to the strength of their relationship, they had an immense amount of trust in one another.

'Davison was in total awe of his friend and regarded him as the country's greatest leader.

'There is of course always a huge amount of interest in items relating to Nelson, one of Britain's most iconic figures throughout history.'

The engagement in question occurred in October 1799 close to the Spanish naval port of Vigo.

Enemy treasure ships Thetis and Santa Brigida were spotted by British frigates as they travelled across the Atlantic from the colonies of New Spain.

Four British vessels blocked the opposition in and after a short engagement both were captured.

Dispute: At the time of the capture of the Spanish ships, Nelson was the unofficial Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean after Jervis (pictured) had left his post and returned to England due to ill health

After being transported to Plymouth the eventual value of their cargo was assessed as one of the largest hauls of prize money ever recorded.

Andrew Baines, head of historic ships at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, said: 'In order to encourage Royal Navy officers and men, it was the practice to award prize money for captured ships, based on the value of the ship and its cargo.

'This prize money was divided by eighths, and distributed to the officers and crew of the ship and the Commander-in-Chief of the station where the ship was based'

He said the 'sloppy way' the government handled command of the Mediterranean station in 1799 was at the root of the issue. He added: 'In many ways, Britain was lucky that the lack of clarity only gave rise to court cases, rather than defeats at sea.'

Nelson bought grand Merton Place in Surrey in 1801 and lived there with Emma, her cuckolded husband Sir William and Emma's mother.

Mr Baines said: 'By this stage Nelson is getting desperate for cash. His mortgage on Merton, for 2,000, was due to be repaid by September 1802.

'He had the costs of running the Merton estate and he was also making payments to his wife Fanny who he was separated. Emma also had notoriously expensive tastes.'

Davison's papers documenting the dispute will be sold on March 22 for an estimated 3,000.
Hillary Clinton is to give her first post election interview at a conference in New York about women who stand up to bullies.

The Democratic Presidential candidate, who lost to Donald Trump, will speak to New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof at the Women in the World Summit in Manhattan next month.

Clinton will impart her insights and wisdom at the event which also features the likes of Scarlett Johansson and Lena Dunham.

Event organizer Tina Brown, the former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor, said it was a showcase for women who resist bullies, break barriers, challenge the status quo, defend democratic values and share solutions.

Clinton will impart her insights and wisdom at the Women in the World Summit in Manhattan next month

Brown has been a strong supporter of Clinton and said that she suffered an unnecessary crucifixion over her shock loss to Trump last November.

In a statement Brown said: We are delighted Secretary Clinton will be back with us after her momentous run for the presidency.

With resurgent national energy around issues confronting women, her insights and wisdom will be of critical importance to hear.

According to Brown the 8th Women in the World Summit will bring to the stage voices of urgent change and inspiration.

Clinton is listed on the event as The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton and is speaking after Farida Khalaf, a 19-year-old Yazidi women who was abducted and enslaved by ISIS.

Earlier in the day Johannson will speak about Breaking Up the Boys Club, according to the schedule.

Johannson will speak about Breaking Up the Boys Club the same day at the conference, which will also feature Lena Dunham, right, and

Her interview is described as an intimate conversation with Scarlett Johansson about her work, her activism and motherhood.

Clinton has made few public appearances since her defeat to Trump and was seen near her Chappaqua, upstate New York, looking relaxed as she walked her dog.

In her post election speech she said that it was hard for her to be there was all I wanted to do was curl up with a good book and our dogs and never leave the house again.

Clinton told her supporters: America needs you, your energy, your ambition, your talent. That is how we get through this.

Among the others speaking at the Women in the World Summit is Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, designer Diane von Furstenberg and Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post.

Former Fox News Anchor Gretchen Carlson will talk about her battle with sexual harassment at the TV network.

The event runs from April 5-7 at Lincoln Center in New York.
Besotted 54 year old Pamela Wareing stole the money over a 46 day period from the client account of the solicitor's firm where she was regarded as a loyal and long standing employee

A woman became so infatuated with a man she met on an Internet dating site she stole over half a million pounds to send to him.

Besotted 54 year old Pamela Wareing stole the money over a 46 day period from the client account of the solicitor's firm where she was regarded as a loyal and long standing employee.

Using her post as contracts manager she made 529,473-40 in cash transactions to a bank in Dubai.

She thought she was sending the money to her new online love who said he was an American serviceman who had promised to set up home with her and marry her.

Wareing a mother of one from Brompton Road, Poulton le Fylde near Blackpool, Lancs admitted the theft when she appeared before magistrates in Blackpool today.

The money was taken from Eastham's solicitors of Church Street, Blackpool where she had worked for over 20 years.

The firm specialises in personal injury and conveyancy work.

Representatives of the firm were present at court to watch Wareing in the dock.

Magistrates decided the case involved too much money for them to sentence her and sent the case to Preston Crown Court.

Wareing met the what turned out to be an Internet con-man after she and her husband parted.

The money was taken from Eastham's solicitors of Church Street, Blackpool where she had worked for over 20 years

He claimed to have been a member of the USA forces and had served in Afghanistan.

The money was in the Dubai account for just seconds before it was move elsewhere in automated transactions.

Pam Smith, prosecuting, said that Wareing had betrayed a 'high position of trust at the office where she worked.'

'She faces up to six year imprisonment.'

Her lawyer Brett Chappell told the court: 'This is a tragedy for all concerned-my client and her employer.'

'She accepted her culpability during long interviews at the police station. She was preyed on by scam artist and was as much victim as Easthams.'
Ivanka Trump called in the big guns ahead of her meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Friday, with the First Daughter's glam squad spotted arriving at her $5.5million DC mansion early that morning.

This time around Ivanka decided to try something new, opting for minimal looking make-up and a half-up/half-down coif that was the perfect blend of volume up top and bouncy curls below.

Ivanka also went with a very conservative look for the meeting, choosing a dark blue dress that had long sleeves and a turtleneck.

She livened up the dress a bit by pinning a giant US flag over her heart, while also wearing a pair of starfish stud earrings from Tiffany & Co. - just days after the news broke that her company would be ending the production of her fine jewelry collection.

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Big hair for a big day: Ivanka Trump opted for big hair on Friday, with a half-up/half-down coif (above with Angela Merkel)

Crafting a look: Ivanka's two person glam squad was photographed arriving to her home early Friday (above) to give her a blowout and style the First Daughter's beauty look

Chatting away: Ivanka, 35, was getting ready for her meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with the two women engaging in a round table about worker productivity

Helping hand: It was later revealed that Chancellor Merkel had called Ivanka to set up the round table discussion at the White House between the two countries

Trump's hair was also curled and held with hidden pins for the occasion

While Ivanka was at the round table, a big delivery from Restoration Hardware of what appears to be patio furniture arrived at her home in Washington, DC

A Secret Service dog inspects the delivery as its assembled outside the First Daughter's home

The Kushners have already purchased items from the upscale furniture chain

Ivanka's look was ultimately about the hair on Friday, which was very much business up top and party down below.

That was just the right look for meeting Chancellor Merkel, who is similar to Ivanka in a number of ways.

The two are both driven women of Eastern European ancestry and unlikely power players in the world of politics while at the same time photos taken last month suggest that both ladies think Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is very, very dreamy.

It was Ivanka who was responsible for setting up the meeting between Chancellor Merkel and her father, it was revealed on Friday, with the German leader reaching out to the First Daughter in hopes that she could organize a discussion about how to better train workers.

The two women could be seen in conversation throughout the discussion and whispering and laughing together at times.

Ivanka is not fluent in German like her father but does have a basic grasp on the language and an elementary knowledge of Czech while being fluent in French.

On the move: Ivanka heads to the White House on Friday morning in her chauffeured SUV

Not on brand: Ivanka was wearing Tiffany & Co. earrings (above), four days after it was announced that her company was stopping production on her fine jewelry line

She sat next to husband Jared during her father's press conference - while he fixed his own hair

Partners in crime: Ivanka and Merkel were seen laughing together throughout the meeting on Friday

Round table: The event brought together American and German executives as well as White House staff

Ivanka and Jared sat between Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Vice President Mike Pence

People in the front row took photos of the glamorous first daughter as she entered

Ivanka also wore an American flag pin on her dress

She and the glam squad paired a lined eye and full brow with a nude shade of lipstick

This was the second time Ivanka has been on hand for one of these roundtables, a somewhat odd occurrence given that she has no official role in the White House.

Her first discussion was in February during Prime Minister Trudeau's visit, and focused on encouraging female small business owners.

It was a photograph from that meeting that captured Ivanka gazing at Trudeau in a dreamlike haze, something that Merkel did on multiple occasions just days later while hosting the Canadian leader in Germany.

Ivanka reunited with Prime Minister Trudeau on Wednesday when the two attended opening night of the new Broadway musical 'Come From Away.'

With husband Jared Kushner on Donald duty down in Nashville, Ivanka was free to enjoy an evening with the global leader.

Lengthy gaze: Ivanka was caught staring at Justin Trudeau on February 13 at a White House meeting (above)

Long embrace: Chancellor Merkel gave Trudeau a similar look four days later in Germany

Prime Minister Trudeau was also accompanied by his wife Sophie Gregoire, while Ivanka brought along US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who came with her husband Michael and son Nalin.

The play tells the true story of the 6,579 airline passengers, who in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks wound up in Gander, Newfoundland when the US closed off all airspace over the country, forcing 38 flights to land at the seldom used airfield.

Soon after, residents of the town opened their doors to those left stranded, giving them places to eat and sleep until they could return to the United States.

One of the central character's in the play is a Muslim, who at one point is strip-searched and spends much of the action arousing unwarranted suspicion in some of the other characters before finding acceptance.

That Muslim character's story played out for the audience just a few hours after a judge in Hawaii blocked President Trump's revised travel ban, which would have gone into effect at midnight.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Thursday issued an urgent update to its original Amber Alert regarding the disappearance of Elizabeth Thomas, saying they have reasons to believe her 50-year-old teacher may have lured the teenager to sexually abuse her.

The nationwide search for Thomas and former Maury County health teacher Tad Cummins entered its fifth day on Friday, and investigators admit that the trail has gone 'fairly cold.

It's absolutely important that everyone in this nation know about these individuals because frankly, they could be anywhere right now, TBI spokesman Josh DeVine said.

Frantic search: Officials in Tennessee said in an Amber Alert update Thursday that Tad Cummins (left), a former health teacher, may have been grooming his student Elizabeth Thomas (right), 15, for the purporse of sexual explotioation

Surveillance footage shows teacher Tad Cummins filling up his silver Nissan Rogue at a gas station near a Shoney's in Columbia, Tennessee, on the day he vanished with a student

He added, We've amped up our language because we really need the public to know that this young girl is in danger, reported Fox 17 Nashville.

According to TBI's updated Amber Alert, the investigation into the alleged abduction has revealed 'a troubling pattern' by Cummins, suggesting the married father and grandfather 'may have been abusing his role as a teacher to groom this vulnerable girl for some time in an effort to lure and potentially sexually exploit her.'

TIMELINE OF DISAPPEARANCE: MONDAY, MARCH 13: 7:30-7:45 AM CST: A friend of Elizabeth Thomas dropped Thomas off at the Shoneys in Columbia, Tennessee. 8:32 AM CST: Surveillance video appears to show Tad Cummins at the nearby Shell station, fueling his Nissan Rogue. 12:41 PM CST: The Maury County Sheriffs Department entered the child as missing in NCIC, the nations law enforcement internal communications database. 3:06 PM CST: Information places Thomas in the area of Decatur, Alabama. TUESDAY, MARCH 14: 3:49 PM CST: The Maury County Sheriffs Department officially requested an alert. 4:18 PM CST: TBI issued an Endangered Child Alert. 4:49 PM CST: The Maury County Sheriffs Department secures the warrant for Cummins, charging him with one count of Sexual Contact with a Minor. 5:53 PM CST: Due to the warrant being placed against Cummins, TBI upgraded its alert to an AMBER Alert. Advertisement

The FBI has now joined the search for the runaway teacher-student duo, and on Thursday evening a nationwide BOLO, or a be on the look out alert, was issued for both Cummins and Thomas.

Authorities in Tennessee have released surveillance video from a gas station showing the final sighting of the married teacher who filled up his SUV before disappearing with Thomas.

Footage from surveillance cameras at the Shell gas station near a Shoney's in Columbia shows Cummins pulling up in his silver Nissan Rogue at 8.35am on Monday morning.

The 50-year-old is seen getting out of his car and filling up, before driving off almost four minutes later.

Thomas was last seen being dropped off at the same Shoney's eatery by her friend at 8am. Her parents reported her missing later in the day.

Investigators said Cummins had also secured a $4,500 title loan for a personal vehicle just days before his disappearance.

Twins Amber Alerts were issued Tuesday across Tennessee and Alabama for the pair who left town after Cummins was caught kissing the young student and was suspended. He has since been fired.

'To that end, the TBI would like to hear from anyone who may have had an interaction with either individual prior to their disappearance,' the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a news release.

Police say the 50-year-old is wanted on a charge of sexual contact with a minor.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued an Amber Alert for Thomas on Tuesday, followed by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency

Cold trail: Tennessee law enforcement officials say five days into the search for Thomas (left and right), the trail has gone 'fairly cold'

A Maury County Public Schools spokesperson said Cummins was suspended last month from teaching and was terminated on Tuesday.

According to reporting by the Columbia Daily Herald, Cummins, who had been at Culleoka for a decade, was removed from the classroom in February after a student caught him and Elizabeth Thomas kissing.

Thomas, who is a freshman at Culleoka, allegedly met Cummins through the local chapter of HOSA, an international student organization that promotes career opportunities in the health care industry.

The TBI said in the press release Thursday that since issuing the initial Amber Alert at 6pm Central Time on Tuesday, the agency has received about 125 leads - a number the agency characterized as 'shockingly' low - but none has produced any credible information.

Thomas (pictured above with students) met Cummins through the local chapter of HOSA, a student organization that promotes careers in the health care industry

Urgent search: Authorities in Tennessee and Alabama are searching for missing 15-year-old Mary Catherine 'Elizabeth' Thomas (left) and her teacher, 50-year-old Tad Cummins (right)

Investigators can place Thomas in Decatur, Alabama, at 3.06pm. Since then, efforts to track down the pair have proven unsuccessful.

The teenager is described as being 5-foot-5, weighing 120lbs, with blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was last seen wearing a flannel shirt and black leggings.

Cummins is described as 6 feet tall, with brown hair, brown eyes, and weighing 200lbs. The former health science teacher at Culleoka Unit School, is carrying two handguns and is driving a silver Nissan Rogue with Tennessee plates 976ZPT.

On his Twitter account, Cummins describes himself, in part, as a 'Jesus freak,' husband, father and grandfather.

Anyone with information on the pair's whereabouts is being asked to call the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND, or the Maury County, Tennessee, sheriff at 931-375-8654.

Cummins is said to be armed with two handguns and driving a silver Nissan Rogue, similar to the one pictured above

Clue: Tad Cummins' vehicle has Tennessee plates 976ZPT
A model who persuaded her mother to pose as a 91-year-old millionaire to pull off an 'audacious' 1.2million property scam was jailed for five years today.

Laylah De Cruz, 31, urged Dianne Moorcroft, 63, to change her name by deed poll to convince estate agents and solicitors she was the owner of a vacant 3m house in Kensington, London.

Moorcroft obtained a British passport and a Dubai resident's permit in the name of the true owner, 91-year-old Margaret Gwenllian Richards, and arranged for the property sale.

Model Laylah De Cruz persuaded her mother to pose as a 91-year-old millionairess to pull off an 'audacious' 1.2million property scam. She was jailed for five years today

The crooked mother-of-two helped secure a 1.2m bridging loan against the three-bedroom property before a buyer was found, and the money was transferred to Dubai. It was later withdrawn in cash.

De Cruz, a Dubai-based stable owner and model, claimed she encouraged her mother to take part in the scam after being 'dazzled' by alleged fraudster Karl Cronin's money, fast cars, and jewellery. He did not stand trial and remains at large.

Today De Cruz and Moorcroft were jailed for five and three years respectively after both being convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

De Cruz, dressed all in black, dabbed away tears as her bespectacled mother sat stony-faced in the dock during the sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court.

Prosecutor Teresa Hay said: 'Both defendants were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation in respect of a property at five Eagle Place in Kensington.

'It was owned by a lady called Margaret Gwenllian Richards, and the fraud was perpetrated by Miss Moorcroft at the invitation of Miss De Cruz and others.'

The court heard Moorcroft travelled to London from her 80,000 home in Blackpool and convinced lawyer Tim Cope she owned the Eagle Place property.

Mr Cope acted as a solicitor in the sale of the house while Ms Richards was in Cambridge between July 1 and October 31, 2014.

The fraudsters sent him an email applying for a loan against the property before a buyer could be found and he negotiated a 1.2million offer through bridging loan company Fincorp.

The money was transferred to Moorcroft's solicitors on October 21, 2014.

Laylah De Cruz (left) urged her mother Dianne Moorcroft (right) to change her name by deed poll to convince estate agents and solicitors she was the owner of a vacant 3m house in Kensington

Miss Hay said by the time the scam was uncovered the 1.2million had already been forwarded, minus legal costs, to an account in 'the name of Margaret Gwenllian Richards in Dubai'.

Moorcroft travelled to Dubai three times to open bank accounts to receive the money so Cronin could withdraw it in cash.

Margaret Gwenllian Richards was 91 at the time of the offence and has since died.

'The crown submit it is no coincidence it was a 91-year-old who wasn't living in the property who was targeted,' said Miss Hay.

Text messages later revealed De Cruz had encouraged her mother to join Karl Cronin's scam.

De Cruz had a 'close emotional relationship' with the alleged conman, though they deny being romantically involved.

The trial heard Cronin had settled a 161,000 debt that could have landed De Cruz in a Dubai prison - Moorcroft said he later insisted she take part in the con as a favour.

Moorcroft's daughter, Dubai-based stable owner and model Laylah De Cruz, 31 (pictured)

John Jones QC, defending Moorcroft, said: 'Over many years he [Cronin] is said to have been involved in a succession of frauds and used others.

'Karl Cronin has left behind many people who have been arrested and some convicted and imprisoned while he hasn't.'

Jailing the pair, Judge Cheryl Jones said: 'You Miss De Cruz were in Dubai, you were working as a model and product demonstrator for high-end products.

'You met an older man called Karl Cronin with whom you clearly became very friendly.

'Mr Cronin, as you now know, is believed to have been involved in a number of large-scale frauds.

'This particular fraud for which you have been found guilty required an older lady to be recruited to pose as another person, someone who was prepared to change her name by deed poll that of somebody she didn't know, to fly to Dubai to open bank accounts in a name which wasn't hers and which she had no intention of using.'

She added: 'It seems absolutely clear Miss De Cruz that you were instrumental in bringing your mother into the project.'

Moorcroft claimed she was 'intimidated' by Cronin after he settled her daughter's debts and said she had no idea what she was doing was illegal.

'It seems to me that I must reject that account. There was not a single mention of any such thing in the extensive messages between you, but there is reference to large sums of money,' said Judge Jones.

'It is inconceivable that being released from a debt was a motive in becoming involved in this - one of you would have mentioned it.'

Judge Jones said De Cruz would have, 'likely to have been somewhat dazzled by Mr Cronin. It's how most conmen operate'.

'However, this doesn't excuse what happened or the conduct of either of you. Enamoured or not, whether you liked Mr Cronin or not, you are both intelligent women and you both have the ability to tell right from wrong,' he added.

De Cruz, who lived in Dubai, and Moorcroft, from Blackpool, were jailed for five and three years respectively for one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
A second man has been apprehended at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after trying to smuggle cocaine worth at least $83,000 into the United States.

And once again, the preferred method of doing so was to tape the cocaine packages to the legs.

The man was also flying from the Dominican Republic.

Hidden in plain sight: Dominican Republic citizen Mayobanex Ruiz Gomez was apprehended at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, where CBP officials found five pounds of cocaine worth at least $83,000 in his pants. He was flying from the DR

Earlier this March, US citizen Juan Carlos Galan Luperon, returning to the States from the Dominican Republic, was caught by US Customs officials with 10 pounds of cocaine strapped to his legs. Officials said he was 'bursting out of his pants' which 'appeared to be rather snug'

Mayobanex Ruiz Gomez, a citizen of the DR, appeared to be nervous when his bag was checked and was taken in for a search, NY1 reported.

When he was taken to a private search room, Customs and Border Protection officers found five pounds of cocaine fit around his legs held together with duct tape.

The cocaine was found to be worth at least $83,000.

This follows an incident two weeks ago in which a US citizen returned from the DR with 10 pounds of cocaine worth $164,000 strapped to his pants.

Juan Carlos Galan Luperon appeared to be nervous and was 'bursting out of his pants,' which 'appeared to be rather snug,' CBP officials said.

He was taken to a private search room where the packages taped to his body almost looked like leg casts.

Officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport, pictured, did not say that the two incidents are linked. Each individual will likely face narcotics smuggling charges

A test determined that the white powder within the packages was cocaine and the estimated street value of the 10-pound package was determined to be at least $164,000, reports NBC News.

Luperon could be charged on the federal level with smuggling charges and will be prosecuted by New York's US Attorney office.

Gomez will likely face similar narcotics smuggling charges.

Officials did not say that the incidents were linked.
Dallas reporter Kurt Eichenwald has been told that the FBI has arrested an unidentified Twitter user after he was sent a tweet designed to trigger an epileptic seizure

The FBI has arrested a man accused of sending Dallas reporter Kurt Eichenwald a tweet that triggered an epileptic seizure.

Although the name of the suspect has not yet been released, the FBI confirmed that a man was arrested on Friday morning.

Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a senior writer at Newsweek, explained in a tweet that the man who 'assaulted' him faces federal charges.

In December, a Twitter troll sent him a flashing video with the message, 'you deserve a seizure'.

The tweet contained a flashing message that triggered an epileptic fit.

It was sent after an interview on Fox News when Eichenwald was grilled over a tweet he posted last September claiming Donald Trump suffered a nervous breakdown in 1990 and was institutionalized.

More than three months after Eichenwald brought the case to the attention of law enforcement, a Twitter troll has been arrested and will likely face charges

Eichenwald deleted the tweet soon after but was criticised over its lack of supporting evidence.

He said he was at home checking his Twitter mentions on his computer when the incident occurred.

Eichenwald, who has openly spoken about his epilepsy previously, said the tweet caused him to have convulsions and was designed to trigger an epileptic seizure and his wife found him incoherent in his chair.

On Friday, Eichenwald revealed that more than 40 other people sent him strobes once they found out that they could trigger seizures.

Eichenwald, who is a Trump critic, previously tweeted links to court documents seeking subpoenas ordering Twitter to reveal the identity of the user @jew_goldstein

Eichenwald, who has openly spoken about his epilepsy previously, said the tweet sent in December caused him to have convulsions and was designed to trigger an epileptic seizure

CAN A GIF CAUSE AN EPILEPTIC SEIZURE? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1.8 percent of American adults (about 4.3 million) have epilepsy, a brain disorder that causes seizures. A much smaller percentage of that group has experienced seizures triggered by lights or patterns. Called photic or pattern-sensitive seizures, these occur when people with epilepsy see a series of images or video that fall into a certain range of color, pattern and frequency. Patients with epilepsy have reported having seizures from watching a wide range of things, the team found, from a spinning potters wheel to TV commercials that feature strobe-like lights. But they warned that photo-sensitivity and its relation to epilepsy is not very well understood. This is due in part to the fact that its not exactly ethical to gather patients with epilepsy and expose them to images that could trigger a seizureespecially since seizures can be deadly. But the mechanisms by which seizures occur in humans are not yet fully understood. Right now, scientists think that one of multiple areas of the cerebral cortex the part of the brain that transmits visual information to the rest of the brain can be stimulated by flashing or striped patterns, triggering abnormal, wave-like electrical activity inside the neurons of the cortex. Source: Smithsonion.com Advertisement

A tweet claiming to be from Eichenwald's wife soon appeared on his Twitter feed saying the GIF had caused him to have a seizure and that she had called the police.

'It worked. This is not going to happen again. My wife is terrified. I am...disgusted. All I will be tweeting for the next few days are copies of documents from the litigation, police reports etc,' Eichenwald tweeted after the incident.

'Once we have the lawsuit filed, we will be subpoenaing Twitter for the identity of the individual who engaged in this cross-state assault.

'At this point, the police are attempting to determine if this is a federal crime because it appears to be cross state. This kind of assault will never happen again without huge consequences.'

'This individual will be going to court, and he will be paying a price. And if any of you others ever try this again, I will make sure it happens to you.'

Shortly after the incident, he told ABC's 'Good Morning America' that he has since received numerous copycat strobe messages from 'people who identify themselves as Trump supporters'.

He said that he was reporting each of them to Twitter to ask that their accounts be suspended.

'It is amazing to me that simply because I am a political reporter, simply because I write about Donald Trump that we have become so sick and twisted in this country that people think they have the right and obligation to inflict potentially very serious injury,' he said.

Eichenwald said he was at home checking his Twitter mentions on his computer when the incident occurred. Eichenwald claimed his wife found him incoherent in his chair

The initial tweet, which was purported to have been posted by his wife, said that Eichenwald suffered a seizure and that it would be reported to the police
A 21-year-old woman's body was severed in half when she was thrown from a car driven by an off-duty NYPD traffic cop, who crashed on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Stefan Hoyte, 26, was reportedly drunk when he drove head-on into a barrier while he was traveling from Manhattan to Brooklyn at 3.15am on Thursday morning, police say.

It was revealed Friday that he was traveling 60mph, nearly double the speed limit, when he crashed on the bridge, killing one of his passengers, Amanda Miner, who was celebrating her 21st birthday, according to DNAinfo.

The speed limit on the bridge is 35mph and prosecutors said he lost control of his car when he sped up at 60mph before hitting a barrier and then a support column that split the car in half.

Amanda Miner, (pictured), 21, was severed in half when she was thrown from a car driven by an off-duty NYPD traffic cop, who crashed on the Williamsburg Bridge Thursday morning

Stefan Hoyte (pictured), 26, was drunk when he drove head-on into a barrier while he was traveling from Manhattan to Brooklyn at 3.15am, police say. It was revealed Friday that Hoyte was traveling 60mph, nearly double the speed limit, when he crashed on the bridge

The speed limit on the bridge is 35mph and prosecutors said Hoyte lost control of his car when he sped up at 60mph before hitting a barrier and then a support column that split the car in half (pictured)

Miner, who was studying to be a social worker, was sitting in the back seat of the 2013 Infiniti G37 when she was flung onto the road and severed in two, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Hoyte, and his passenger, fellow off-duty traffic cop Michael Camacho, 24, were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where they were listed in stable condition, reported ABC 7 News.

Police said Hoyte is facing a string of charges in connection with the deadly crash.

He has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, assault and drunk driving, according to the criminal complaint against him.

Miner (left and right), who was studying to be a social worker, was sitting in the back seat of the 2013 Infiniti G37 when she was flung onto the road and severed in two, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office

Police said Hoyte is facing a string of charges in connection with the deadly crash (pictured the mangled vehicle). He has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, assault and drunk driving, according to the criminal complaint against him

'Before' picture: This photo shows Stefan Hoyte's 2013 Infiniti before Thursday's collision

Hoyte was also suspended from from his job as a traffic agent in Queens after he was arrested.

He told NYPD Officer Matthew Mauro at the scene that he'd had two drinks at a bar before getting behind the wheel, according to his criminal complaint.

Hoyte reportedly had a blood alcohol level of .103 per cent, which is above the limit of .08 per cent, sources told the DNAinfo.

Video recorded by a passing motorist captured the aftermath of the deadly crash, as a large chunk of the mangled Infiniti rolled into a ball.

Police say Hoyte was off duty at the time of the crash.

It is unclear where exactly in Brooklyn the trio were heading at the time of the crash.

According to her Facebook page and reporting by multiple news outlets, Miner was a junior at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, majoring in social work.

Miner's heartbroken mother, Virginia Cabrera-Miner, told the New York Post Miner was the youngest of her three daughters and she was looking forward to seeing her graduate from college next year.

Prior to joining the NYPD as a traffic officer, Hoyte had worked as a mechanic for Honda and a clerk at a Pathmark supermarket, according to his social media account.

His mother, Jennifer Hoyte, described the 26-year-old to the Post as a 'good son' and a good father to his five-year-old daughter. She noted that Stefan was not a heavy drinker.

Hoyte's co-worker, Camacho is a graduate of Onondaga Community College in upstate New York.

Hoyte (left), and his passenger, another off-duty traffic cop Michael Camacho (right), 24, were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where they were listed in stable condition

It is unclear where exactly in Brooklyn the trio were heading at the time of the crash. First responders are shown working the scene
Two small planes collided over a bustling shopping mall south of Montreal, killing one person and injuring three others, Quebec's public security minister said Friday.

Martin Coiteux gave the update while attending an event in Montreal Friday afternoon.

Police in in the city of Longueuil, Quebec, said each plane only had a pilot on board and that both were injured.

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Wreckage from a plane crash sits in a parking lot in Saint-Bruno, Quebec

Two small planes have collided over a major shopping mall south of Montreal

One of the planes crashed on the roof of the Promenades Saint-Bruno, while the other slammed into the parking lot.

A security perimeter has been set up near the shopping center.

Witnesses at the scene described hearing a loud bang.

"And then a person screamed at the top of their lungs to go outside right away," Patricia Bon said to CBC. "I saw a plane that was completely crushed."

Neil Martinez, who works inside the mall, was outside smoking a cigarette when he says he saw the shadow of a plane and heard its motor.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has deployed a team of investigators to the site

I heard the motor so low to the ground and then a loud boom,' he said. 'Then we saw pieces of plane fall out of the sky everywhere.

Martinez said he ran to the plane and saw a man inside, whose body appeared to be crushed.

Jonathan Vanasse, who was eating inside a mall restaurant next to the crash site, said he and several others ran outside and saw a plane, which he said was leaking fuel.

He said all that was left of the aircraft was shredded metal.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada announced it was deploying a team of investigators to the site.

The regulatory board said in a statement that both planes were Cessna 152 aircraft operated by Cargair, a pilot-training academy based in nearby Longueuil.

The shopping centre is now being evacuated and is closed to the public.

Police said both planes have been doused with a fire retardant to prevent them from catching fire.

Canada's Transportation Safety Board confirmed that the two planes belong to Cargair.
President Donald Trump 'very seldom' regrets the tweets he sends out to his 27 million followers, the president revealed at a press conference Friday.

Approaching two months in office where he has repeatedly jolted convention and upended the news with his online missives  often flitted out in the early hours of the morning  the president got asked about his Twitter habits while standing beside the staid German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

'And by the way my second question, are there from time to time tweets that you regret in hindsight?' asked the reporter from Germany's Die Welt.

'Very seldom,' Trump responded.

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING? President Trump got asked at a press conference if he ever regretted tweets that he has sent out

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The reporter tried to follow up: 'Very seldom  so you never would have wished not to have ...'

'Very seldom,' Trump responded again. 'Probably wouldnt be here right now. But every seldom,' he said, restating his view that eschews apologies of any kind.

Then he explained his Twitter penchant as a form of strategy to counter the press, who he derided Friday as 'fake news.'

'We have a tremendous group of people that listen and I can get around the media when the media doesnt tell the truth, so I like that,' Trump explained.

Some of the gathered media might have been expecting Trump to express some sort of regret for his recent tweets about President Obama.

Trump earlier this month accused the president of tapping his phones at Trump Tower, making the unsubstantiated charge in a series of tweets.

WELL THERE WAS THAT ONE TIME ... Trump said he 'very seldom' regrets the tweets he sends out

AT LEAST IT'S NOT FAKE NEWS: Trump explained his Twitter strategy: 'We have a tremendous group of people that listen and I can get around the media when the media doesnt tell the truth, so I like that'

NOT THIS ONE? Trump tweeted this month that President Obama tapped his phones, starting an uproar that followed him to his Friday press conference

Trump suggested Obama's unsubstantiated actions may have been illegal

Trump's tweets about President Obama's birth didn't pan out

Trump tweeted about Ebola during the global crisis

Trump sided with wealthy Michael Huffington and insulted his former wife, who runs a website that went after him during the 2016 campaign

Trump ventured into persona matters in this 2012 tweet

Trump's tangles with Rosie O'Donnell came back during the presidential debates

Trump mocked then-Fox host Megyn Kelly as 'average'

TIMING IS EVERYTHING - Trump extended wishes to 'haters and losers' on Sept. 11th, 2013

Trump's tweets about the Duchess of Cambridge will give him something to discuss on an upcoming royal visit

Here's one Trump would definitely stand by

'How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!' Trump wrote.

'Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!' he wrote.

After getting pounded for putting out the charge, Trump demanded a congressional investigation. The Republican and Democratic heads of the House Intelligence Committee have since said there is no evidence that Trump or Trump Tower got tapped.

In another demonstration of how he is using Twitter to get around normal channels, Trump tweeted Friday: 'North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!'

Such messages normally would have been handled by the State Department or delivered in a highly scripted format to send a message to a rogue state about its missile program.
President Donald Trump brushed off reporters' questions on Friday about his allegations that Barack Obama wiretapped his phone, saying during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the two leaders at least have that in common.

The U.S. bugged Merkel's personal and official phones for more than a decade, beginning during a period of national security tightening in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Obama was told of the operation in 2010 and let it continue, according to multiple news reports, but his national security advisor Susan Rice later assured Germany that the White House knew nothing about it.

'As far as wiretapping, I guess  by this past administration  at least we have something in common, perhaps,' Trump said during Friday's presser.

President Donald Trump joked with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that if Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, 'at least we have something in common'

Trump has accused former president Barack Obama of approving 'wiretaps' on him during the 2016 presidential campaign, later clarifying that he meant secret surveillance in general

The comment hung in the air for a few moments before knowing laughter rolled through the East Room of the White House.

Friday's joint Q&A was known as a 'two-and-two' because two journalists from each nation were permitted to ask questions.

It drew nothing about the deepening wiretap scandal from the American reporters  one from Bloomberg TV and another who no longer has a daily reporting job but is making a political reality series for the Showtime Network.

Both German journalists asked about it point-blank.

Trump ignored the first, who pressed him in German about 'things that in the end cannot be proven, like the fact that you were wiretapped by Mr. Obama.'

Merkel's cell phones were the subjects of longstanding U.S. snooping during both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations

He snarked about the 'nice, friendly reporter' and addressing only her inquiry about his 'isolationist' trade policy.

'I am not an isolationist by any stretch of the imagination,' Trump said. 'That would be another example of fake news.'

But when the second German reporter quizzed him about the controversy's latest incident  White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeating a claim that British intelligence eavesdropped on him for the Obama administration  he engaged.

'We said nothing,' Trump insisted.

'All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn't make an opinion on it.'

The president was referring to Andrew Napolitano, a former judge who is a mainstay analyst on the Fox News Channel.

'That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldn't be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox,' Trump said.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith insisted Friday afternoon that 'Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitanos commentary.'

'Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now President of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way, full stop,' Smith said.

It's unclear if he was speaking for the network or for his own program, 'Shepard Smith Reporting.'

White House press secretary Sean Spicer changed tactics this week, defending Trump's claims by reading from a TV pundit's analysis of the situation

Merkel is in Washington to meet with Trump on trade, NATO and other issues

Britain's GCHQ has sternly denied the charge.

The German reporter, speaking in fractured English, had asked Trump if there were 'other suspects,' and if 'it was a mistake to blame British intelligence for this.'

After the jam-packed event, Spicer fielded a few questions in the East Room.

'We just reiterated the fact that we were just simply reading media accounts. That's it,' he said about the GCHQ flap.

'I don't think we regret anything. We literally listed a litany of media reports that are in the public domain.'
A California man who scaled the White House fence last week was on the property's south grounds for more than 16 minutes before he was captured, the US Secret Service said.

Jonathan Tuan-Anh Tran, 26, who had two cans of mace and said he had an appointment with his 'friend' President Donald Trump, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for entering the grounds without permission.

The individual managed to climb over an outer perimeter fence, scale a vehicle gate and hop another fence near the southeast corner of the White House's East Wing before he was captured after his 16 minute-plus jaunt, according to the Secret Service statement.

'The Secret Service can confirm that at no time did the individual gain entry into the White House,' the statement said.

Jonathan Tuan-Anh Tran, 26, of Milpitas, California, is accused of jumping a fence near the White House last Friday night before being stopped near the South Portico (pictured)

While Tran set off several alarms, he avoided other sensors, highlighting 'vulnerabilities in the system'. President Donald Trump was inside at the time of the breach

While Tran set off several alarms on last Friday night, he avoided other sensors, highlighting 'vulnerabilities in the system', an anonymous Secret Service source told CNN.

Tran was spotted 'looming around' Pennsylvania Avenue nearly six hours before his arrest, CNN reported.

Trump was inside the residence at the time of the security breach, and House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz is launching an investigation into the incident.

Chaffetz detailed new allegations in a letter to the acting director of the Secret Service, writing that the triggered alarms were ignored, CNN reported.

The suspect 'may have attempted entry into the building' and 'may have moved around on the White House grounds undetected for a considerable amount of time,' he added.

Chaffetz said: 'If true, these allegations raise questions about whether the agency's security protocols are adequate.'

Chaffetz dubbed the incident 'a total and complete embarrassment'.

'(Homeland Security chief John) Kelly told me that this person was there on the ground for 17 minutes, went undetected, was able to get up next to the White House, hide behind a pillar, look through a window, rattle the door handle,' the lawmaker told CNN.

Tran was seen jumping a fence near the Treasury Building, eventually approaching the South Portico entrance, according to the arrest affidavit

Tran was seen 'walking from the east side of the south grounds of the White House Complex,' then 'walking close to the exterior wall of the White House Mansion ... approaching the South Portico Entrance to the White House Mansion,' the arrest affidavit states according to ABC News.

Security footage shows Tran jumping a fence near the Treasury Building, which adjoins the White House, the complaint says.

He set off a sensor alarm in the Treasury Moat, according to the Secret Service source, but Tran had already gone by the time an officer appeared.

The source believes Tran made his way past a several Secret Service posts and jumped the White House gate, hiding behind a pillar of the East Wing entrance, CNN reported.

He eventually made his way to the South Portico Entrance, saw a Secret Service officer in uniform and went towards the South Lawn, the affidavit reads.

That is when the officer stopped him, after which Tran said: 'I am a friend of the President. I have an appointment,' the complaint states.

When asked how he managed to get here, Tran replied: 'I jumped the fence,' authorities said.

Tran was carrying two cans of mace, a US passport, an Apple laptop, a book written by Trump, and a letter to the president.

In the letter, 'Tran mentioned Russian hackers and said he had information of relevance. Tran alleged that he had been followed, and his "phone and email communications (had been) read by third parties," and that he had "been called schizophrenic," ' Secret Service officer Wayne Azevedo said in the complaint.

Tran's 19-year-old brother told CNN the suspect had been fired from his job at an electrical engineering company and was 'troubled'.

He was living in his car, the sibling added, before calling Tran a 'very good brother'.

House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz is launching an investigation into the incident

President Trump on Saturday commended the Secret Service for its 'fantastic job'.

'It was a troubled person,' he said about the intruder, whom authorities later identified as Tran. 'It was very sad.'

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters the agents did a 'phenomenal job' protecting the first family and said 'the president was very appreciative of their efforts.'

Agents previously said the president was not in danger, and the Secret Service initially reported that the backpack didn't contain anything dangerous.

'Nothing of concern to security operations was found,' the Secret Service said.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was briefed on the incident, according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

In 2015, a man named Joseph Caputo was arrested after jumping over a White House fence while the Obamas were celebrating Thanksgiving.

The White House also faced a security breach in 2014 when a man named Omar Gonzalez, 42, jumped a fence and ran through the North Portico doors with a folding knife.
A GP who had a 'sixth sense' for diagnosing illness has died suddenly after failing to spot his own life-threatening symptoms of sepsis.

Shiv Sekaran, 48, from Shefford, Bedfordshire, passed away after the immune system attacking infection led to kidney failure on Saturday.

His death comes just a week after the government issued new NHS guidelines on treating the condition within one hour of symptoms being spotted.

GP Shiv Sekaran, 48, who had a 'sixth sense' for diagnosing illness has died suddenly after failing to spot that he had sepsis. He passed away on Saturday after his kidneys failed

The weekend before his death Shiv had arrived home from a holiday to Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife Melissa, 49.

He complained of having a mild cough and feeling hot but by Monday afternoon he was completely delirious.

His temperature rocketed and he was shaking uncontrollably.

Melissa, who works at a children's centre, said: 'He was an extremely good clinician and picked up things other people missed.

Shiv complained of having a mild cough and feeling hot but by Monday afternoon he was completely delirious. Pictured with wife Melissa in Egypt in 2016

His temperature rocketed and he started shaking uncontrollably. Wife Melissa said: 'He had a sort of sixth sense for some things. He made his patients feel relaxed straight away'

'He had a sort of sixth sense for some things. He made his patients feel relaxed straight away.

'I think if he had known he had sepsis he would have told me.

'But maybe the impact of the illness on his thoughts meant he wasn't able to tell.

'Everybody (at the hospital) acted so quickly and even thought they did it was still too late.

'The staff did not stop fighting at all, right until the last minute.'

Following this tragedy Melissa and Shiv's step-daughters Lizzie, 25, and Emily, 22, say they want to help raise awareness of sepsis and have been fundraising for charity Sepsis Trust UK.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition which effectively turns the body's immune system in on itself. Pictured with his cat O'Malley

A JustGiving page set up in Shiv's memory called 'Remembering Shiv Sekaran' has raised over 11,000 already.

His late wife Melissa says that speaking about what happened is 'all they can do' to help prevent future families suffering as they have.

She said: 'It's the only way (spreading awareness of sepsis) we can get back at it. I never knew very much about sepsis.

'The signs of sepsis can be often mistaken.

'Shiv as an expert either didn't spot them or was too ill to recognise them.'

The family wrote on their JustGiving page: 'There's a very big Shiv shaped hole in our lives now but seeing the love for him and people's memories makes this a little easier to cope with so thank you.'

One of Shiv's colleagues, Dr William Hollington, said: 'I am devastated to hear of the tragic death of Dr Shiv Sekaran at the weekend.

'Shiv was well regarded and respected by patients and colleagues alike.'

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition which effectively turns the body's immune system in on itself.

A JustGiving page set up in Shiv's memory has raised over 11,000. One of Shiv's colleagues said he was well respected by his fellow doctors and patients

The body's responds to an infection violently and in turn injures healthy tissues and organs.

This is normally prompted by abnormal bacteria but can also be triggered by fungi, viruses or parasites.

It is generally treated with antibiotics but these are not always effective.

Shiv leaves behind Melissa and Melissa step-daughters Lizzie, 25, and Emily, 22. Early symptoms of sepsis include high or low body temperature, chills and shivery and a high heartbeat

Early symptoms of sepsis can include high or low body temperature, chills and shivering, an escalated heartbeat and fast breathing.

NHS staff have now been told they must begin treating patients suspected of having potentially lethal sepsis within one hour.

It is hoped this measure will prevent numerous avoidable deaths.

Last year a Scottish holidaymaker nearly died on a trip to Florida after contracting sepsis which led to him falling into a coma.

Mike Webster, 71, came down with sepsis last July and spent six weeks in hospital with wife Elizabeth, 69, at his bedside as his kidneys failed.

Mike, still recovering at home, continues to have breathing difficulties - highlighting the impact sepsis can have even on those who survive it.

To donate to Sepsis Trust UK, visit the family's Just Giving page.
MEMPHIS, Tenn.  Companies have until March 29 to apply for FedEx Corp.s fifth annual Small Business Grant Contest.

This year, the contest offers grants and services to ten small businesses, distributing a collective prize pool of $120,500the largest sum since the contests inception. For the first time this year, the winners will also receive an additional dollar amount in credit to use toward FedEx Office print and business services to help run their businesses. The awards will include:

 Grand prize: One winner of $25,000, plus $7,500 in FedEx Office print and business services

 Silver prize: One winner of $15,000, plus $5,000 in FedEx Office print and business services

 Bronze prize: Eight winners of $7,500, plus $1,000 in FedEx Office print and business services

Small businesses play a vital role in our economy and this is just one of the many ways FedEx helps passionate small business owners achieve their dreams of growth and success, said Bonnie Voldeng, director of Go-to-Market and Content Strategy at FedEx. Over the past five years, weve seen winners take their business to the next level with the help of a FedEx grant, and thats what this contest is all aboutbeing able to give small businesses the boost they need, while staying on as a trusted advisor through the life cycle of those businesses.

The 2016 contest attracted candidates from across the United States and garnered more than 400,000 votes. Grand Prize winner Ginjan Bros., a small business that develops and brings to market traditional African drinks, is run by two entrepreneurial brothers originally from West Africa. Through the $25,000 grant and support of FedEx shipping services, Ginjan Bros. was able to ramp up production, both to fill their current orders and produce enough inventory to support expanded distribution. They also put a portion of the cash prize toward securing organic and MO-free product certifications. The brothers also plan to expand their e-commerce business, now that they are aware of the resources FedEx offers to help small businesses with packaging and logistics.

Being recognized like this means the world, said Mohammed Diallo of Ginjan Bros. Something like this  winning a grant like this  could only happen in America. We are living the American dream right now.

Over the past four years, 13,000 businesses have entered the contest in the United States alone. The contest has now grown from one country to nine countries and the grant pool for the U.S. contest has grown from $50,000 to over $120,000 in total prizes.

The 2017 FedEx Small Business Grant Contest is open to U.S.-based for-profit small businesses with fewer than 99 employees and operating for six months or more. To enter, participants must visit www.fedex.com/grantcontest and enter their contact information, write a short profile about their business and upload four photos of their business or product, including their logo. While not required, participants also have the option of submitting a 90-second elevator speech video to supplement their entry.

Voting will take place through April 5. Following a judging period, winners will be announced on April 25 at www.fedex.com/grantcontest.
A biker claims he caught a driver casually scrolling through Facebook as she cruised down a busy motorway at 50mph.

Brett Mullineaux's helmet-cam footage appears to shows the female driver browsing the mobile app while driving on the M62 between Rochdale and Oldham in Manchester.

The driver can be clearly seen using her phone until she spots she is being filmed and hides the device in her lap.

Biker Brett Mullineaux was driving on the M62 between Rochdale and Oldham in Manchester when he went to overtake a black Toyota Yaris

When he looked to his left he claims he saw the female driver next to him casually scrolling through Facebook on her phone (circled)

Mr Mullineaux captured the video of the black Toyota Yaris driver during rush hour on his way home to Radcliffe, Manchester, last month.

The welder, 44, said: 'It's unbelievable. In the footage you can see she is on the phone - I could see the glare of the screen.

'It looks like it was Facebook she was on, you can see the blue of the profile.

'We would have been driving at about 50mph and there was a lot of traffic about. That part of the motorway has speed restrictions at the moment.

'She 100 per cent did not have a clue what was going on around her. I could see the shock on her face when she saw my camera. Some of the people you see try to hide when they notice you have a camera.'

Mr Mullineaux, who works in Oldham, takes daily trips on the M62 as part of his commute.

He claims he sees 'unbelievable' acts of careless driving every time he heads out on his motorbike.

The father-of-two said drivers using the mobiles is one of his biggest concerns for him and his family - but insisted he is not 'out to get people' with his helmet cam.

The driver can be clearly seen using her phone until she spots she is being filmed and hides the device in her lap

He added: 'I feel like I've seen people using their phones while driving even more in the last couple of months.

'The craziest thing I've probably seen is someone using their laptop while driving. I see people on the phone all the time, it's like the law hasn't put them off.

'You see so many people veering in the lane and moving back when they realise, because they've been on the phone.

'My wife goes out on her bike too and you do worry when you hear about accidents.

'I'm not trying to catch people out, I'm not out to get people into trouble.. I'm trying to raise awareness, it's a warning.

'They're making a choice to get in the car and go on the motorway.'

Mr Mullineaux did not report woman to police.
High schoolers charged: Henry Sanchez, 18 (pictured) and Jose Montano, 17, have been charged with raping a 14-year-old female classmate at a Maryland high school bathroom

Police in Maryland have arrested two male high school students who are suspected of raping a 14-year-old girl in a bathroom during school hours.

Montgomery County Police announced the arrests on Friday, saying that the assault happened the day before at Rockville High School.

According to investigators, the victim was walking in a school hallway at around 9am when she ran into Jose Montano, 17, and Henry Sanchez, 18.

Montano asked the freshman to walk with them and to have sex, but the girl turned them down, according to a press release from the Montgomery County Police Department.

The 17-year-old boy repeated his request, then forced her into a boys bathroom and into a stall, where he and Sanchez proceeded to rape her, police said.

The 14-year-old girl later reported the alleged attack to school officials, who immediately called the authorities.

Investigators with the Special Victims Division arrested Motano and Sanchez on campus that same day on charges of first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offense.

Montano is charged as an adult, but police have not released his booking photo.

Alleged attack took place inside a boys' bathroom at Rockville High School during school hours

On Friday, Rockville High School sent a letter to parents addressing the incident and the arrests, according to WUSA.

'Ensuring a safe, secure and welcoming learning environment for all of our students is our top priority. Our staff remains vigilant in the monitoring of our school each and every day,' the note said in part.

Gboyinde Onijala, a spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Public Schools, said that staff at Rockville High will increase monitoring of the hallways and bathrooms. The school has one school resource officer.

During a court hearing Friday, a judge ordered both Montano and Sanchez held without bond.
Joseph Toscano (pictured), 54, a 21-year veteran firefighter collapsed and died Friday morning after battling a house fire in Boston

A 21-year veteran firefighter collapsed and died Friday morning after battling a 2-alarm blaze in Massachusetts.

Joseph Toscano, 54, suffered a medical emergency after responding to a house fire in a Boston suburb.

The married father-of-five was rushed to Mount Auburn Hospital where he died.

Toscano, who had been a firefighter for the Watertown Fire Department since September 1996, was attempting to rescue an elderly man, the man's niece and their dog as flames shot out an upstairs window, authorities and witnesses said.

'I saw them carry that poor fireman out. They all went in with flames shooting out of the house,' Bob Petrillo, 81, told the Boston Herald. 'I don't know how they do it. He went right into the flames.'

The cause of death is still under investigation, but officials say it might have been a heart attack.

Town Councilor Angie Kounelis told the Herald that a person's body 'is subjected to elements a layperson's would not be, firefighters are putting themselves at risk no matter the size of the fire'

'If you're going in you're going into danger and that was obvious today, he died in the line of duty.'

The fire occurred at 29 Merrifield Avenue around 10.15am, according to the Watertown Police Department.

Petrillo said black smoke and 'flames were pouring out the bedroom window'.

'I saw them bring out the elderly man, his niece and their dog. The man walked with a cane and needed help,' he added.

The state fire marshal's office said it's still investigating the cause of the fire but that it doesn't appear suspicious. The fire was mostly confined to a second floor room.

The man and his niece along with a few pets were evacuated from the home, officials confirmed.

One of the residents suffered an injury, but officials didn't release that information.
A North Korean solider has been pictured covertly photographing U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson during a visit to the most heavily armed border in the world.

The secretary of state was posing for a photo inside a building at a United Nations base on the border of North and South Korea on Friday.

But as he stared into the camera, Tillerson was seemingly unaware of the North Korean solider peering through a window behind him as he snapped his own photos.

A press photographer managed to capture the moment the North Korean solider got within inches of Tillerson as the secretary of state posed beside U.S. General Vincent K. Brooks.

Scroll down for video

U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson was posing for a photo beside U.S. General Vincent K. Brooks when a North Korean solider appeared behind him taking his own pictures

A photographer managed to captured the moment during Tillerson's visit to a United Nations base on the border of North and South Korea on Friday

It took place inside a blue hut in the truce village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone where the Korean War armistice was signed.

The base is where solider from North and South Korea keep fierce watch over each other 24 hours a day.

The North Korean dictatorship is renowned for its extensive surveillance.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the heavily armed border.

But it's the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

The Demilitarized Zone, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops.

Tillerson had bluntly warned North Korea's dictator early on Friday that he faces pre-emptive military action if he continues developing nuclear missiles.

Tillerson visited the truce village of Panmunjom on Friday, which is inside the Demilitarized Zone between the two counties. The North Korean solider can be seen in the background of this picture documenting Tillerson's visit

The North Korean solider took several photos of the U.S. secretary of state's visit to the Demilitarized Zone on Friday

'Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended,' Rex Tillerson told reporters as he drew a dramatic new line in the sand.

'The diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of de-nuclearization have failed. So we have 20 years of [a] failed approach,' Donald Trump's top diplomat said during a visit to Japan.

'And that includes a period in which the U.S. provided $1.35 billion in assistance to North Korea as an encouragement to take a different pathway.'

'If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level we believe requires action that option is on the table,' Tillerson added.

And he said the U.S. won't rule out arming other nations in the Far East with nukes to help keep Pyongyang in check.

Earlier on Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat after visiting the world's most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between rivals North and South Korea.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against the North, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, 'all of the options are on the table.'

He said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, 'but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces, that would be met with [an] appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table.'

But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the U.S. is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.
Turkey's interior minister Suleyman Soylu has threatened to 'blow the mind' of Europe by sending 15,000 refugees a month to EU territory

Turkey's interior minister has threatened to 'blow the mind' of Europe by sending 15,000 refugees a month to EU territory.

Suleyman Soylu is threatening the landmark deal signed by Ankara and Brussels last March that has substantially lessened the flow of migrants from Turkey to Europe.

The minister told Europe not to 'play games' and 'ignore Turkey' in a speech he gave on Thursday.

The deal between Ankara and Brussels is hanging in the balance due to the diplomatic crisis over the blocking of Turkish ministers from holding rallies in Europe.

'If you want, we could open the way for 15,000 refugees that we don't send each month and blow the mind of Europe,' Soylu said.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has already indicated that Turkey could rip up the deal and said Turkey was no longer readmitting migrants who crossed into Greece.

The crisis was sparked when the Netherlands and Germany refused to allow Turkish ministers to campaign in a April 16 referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers, prompting the Turkish strongman to compare them with Nazi Germany.

Soylu, a hardliner considered close to Erdogan, accused The Hague and Berlin of involvement in June 2013 anti-Erdogan protests, October 2014 pro-Kurdish riots and the failed coup attempt last July.

'They are trying to complete the work that they did not finish. Who is doing this work? It's the Netherlands and Germany,' Soylu said.

He accused Europe of failing to help Turkey enter the bloc and of not helping with its fight against terror.

'Europe, do you have that kind of courage...? Let us remind you that you cannot play games in this region and ignore Turkey,' he added.

The European Union had said it expects Turkey to continue implementing the deal, which drastically cut the numbers making the dangerous passage across the Aegean Sea.

Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (left) has said that Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders' views (right) were shared by all rival parties and were pushing Europe towards 'wars of religion'

The mass influx of migrants to Europe in summer 2015 was seen as boosting the support of the far-right on the continent.

A key pillar of the deal were pledges by Turkey to boost border security and break people-smuggling networks, moves that analysts say slowed the migrant flow to a trickle.

Erdogan in November last year already threatened Europe with opening the frontiers of Turkey, which borders EU members Greece and Bulgaria.

It comes as Turkey's foreign minister has said that Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders' views were shared by all rival parties and were pushing Europe towards 'wars of religion'.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte fended off the challenge of Wilders to score an election victory hailed across Europe by governments facing a rising wave of nationalism.

But Turkish minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed Wilders and social democrats in the Netherlands share the same mindset - to 'take Europe to the cliff'.

Many parties have received a similar share of votes,' Cavusoglu said at a rally in the southern city of Antalya.

'17 per cent, 20 per cent, there are lots of parties like this, but they are all the same.

'There is no difference between the mindsets of Geert Wilders and social democrats in the Netherlands.

'They all have the same mindset. That mindset is taking Europe to the cliff. Soon wars of religion may and will start in Europe.'
Tribunal: Paul Newton, 43, says he was subjected to constant jibes including being told he looked 'like a lesbian minister,' and that he was a 'proper fairy,' an 'uppity little f****t' and a 'c**k jockey' while working for Balyasny Europe Asset Management

A gay hedge fund manager who claimed he was the focus of an 'unrelenting' and 'humiliating' homophobic campaign has withdrawn his 1million claim against his former employer.

Paul Newton, 43, said he was subjected to constant jibes including being told he looked 'like a lesbian minister' and was called a 'c**k jockey' while working for Balyasny Europe Asset Management.

However today on the second day of his hearing at the Central London Employment Tribunal he withdrew his claim while still on the witness stand.

In a statement, spokeswoman for the firm said: 'Balyasny is pleased that Mr Newton has abandoned his case.

'Balyasny has always maintained that it is an equal opportunities employer with an open, collegial and supportive culture.

'The allegations in this case were always spurious and deeply offensive, and the decision to bring this case to an Employment Tribunal thoroughly regrettable.

'Mr Newton has decided to withdraw his case before even completing his evidence and there will be no financial settlement.

'Balyasny feels fully vindicated in taking the stance it did and in defending the reputation and integrity of our firm, our culture and our employees.'

A member of staff at the tribunal said: 'I can confirm the claim was withdrawn by the claimant and the claim was not settled.'

Mr Newton was seeking an admission by the hedge fund that he was harassed and discriminated against, an acceptance that he was unlawfully dismissed, and damages for the effects of his alleged treatment.

He also claimed since his dismissal he has been diagnosed as suffering from anxiety and depression.

Claims: Mr Newton said colleagues at the multimillion pound hedge fund company (pictured) openly described him as a 'very camp gay man' and added they treated him 'like a curiosity'
A glamorous multi-millionaire who once dated Prince Andrew told of her devastation last night after a masked burglar stole jewellery worth 1million from her home.

Former model Amanda Staveley believes the raid on her 10million townhouse was an inside job.

The thief picked the lock on the front door and stole a jewellery box from the financiers bedroom while she was giving her two-year-old son a bath.

Former model Amanda Staveley believes the raid on her 10million townhouse was an inside job'

He slipped past staff and was seen on a neighbours CCTV leaving the house wearing a rucksack thought to contain the box.

Miss Staveley, 43, who is worth more than 100million, returned to her bedroom minutes later and saw the jewellery had gone.

Although the box contained very expensive pieces, she was most upset about less valuable heirlooms of sentimental value.

She said: I was heartbroken when I realised the jewellery box had been taken. I was destroyed, I was howling, I was sick.

Amanda Staveley's emerald ring which was stolen. This belonged to Amanda's mother.

The 3,500 Smythson box contained at least 20 pieces, including a Graff diamond necklace worth 400,000 and earrings also valued at 400,000. A black Rolex Daytona watch worth 25,000 was also stolen. One of only 50, other owners include former US president Bill Clinton.

But Miss Staveley, who dated Prince Andrew from 2001 until she refused his marriage proposal in 2003, is especially distraught about the theft of a bracelet and emerald ring owned by her mother Lynne, who died in 2015 at 65.

She is also devastated to have lost a diamond watch from her mother-in-law.

Miss Staveley and her family live on two floors of their London house on Park Lane, and lease other floors to neighbours. After it was burgled at 6.49pm on February 9, the locks were changed. However, masked men then broke in on consecutive days this month, but left empty handed.

Miss Staveley, who is offering a 50,000 reward for the jewellery, fears the first raid was an inside job because the thief appeared to know her homes CCTV and layout.

She said: It was the most brazen attack. He went straight upstairs into my bedroom and was in and out in three minutes. I was bathing my son and my husband was in the lounge with the door shut. He felt a shadow pass the door and thought it was the housekeeper.

Diamond earrings similar to those taken, right, and a Graff necklace like the stolen one, left

She said the thief kept away from CCTV in her home and picked the brief period between the daytime security guards shift and when the evening guard came on duty.

It was carried out by someone with a lot of knowledge who must have known my routine, she added. It was timed to perfection. The financier, who studied at Cambridge, does not suspect current staff, but fears a former worker may be involved. She said: I have my suspicions.

During the second burglary, Miss Staveleys husband, Iranian-born Mehrdad Ghodoussi, confronted an intruder on the stairs, forcing him to flee with his accomplice.

Stills and footage from CCTV at Amanda Staveley's house in Park Lane during burglaries which thieves stole 1m in jewellery and watches

Thieves tried to get into the house this month on a fourth occasion, but were scared away by the security guard.

Locksmiths then realised the thieves had used a device like to a credit card to flick the front door lock open. Miss Staveley said: We could see from the footage that he came in with a piece of card, rattled it and the door opened.

The former young entrepreneur of the year made her fortune from advising investment banks through her firm PCP Capital Partners, which earned 29.5million from the rescue of Barclays during the banking crisis in 2008.

Her mothers emerald ring, left, diamond earrings similar to those taken, right, and a Graff necklace like the stolen one, far right
Amateur beauticians with no medical training are offering to inject schoolgirls with dangerous lip fillers

Amateur beauticians with no medical training are offering to inject schoolgirls with dangerous lip fillers for as little as 59, the Daily Mail reveals today.

Insecure young women are being targeted on social media and encouraged to have their lips injected to enhance their looks.

But the cosmetic treatments  which may be carried out in back rooms of hair salons and in customers' living rooms  can cause irreversible damage.

Lip filler treatments, which involve people having their lips injected with acid, can lead to extreme swelling, infections and allergic reactions.

Undercover reporters from the Daily Mail accompanied 17-year-old college student Ellie Ducker while she visited amateur lip filler practitioners who advertise online.

One of them represents himself as a doctor but is not registered with the General Medical Council.

An official Government review four years ago warned the growth of unregulated filler treatments was 'a crisis waiting to happen'. It called for a change in the law to protect vulnerable young women  but this has not happened.

The Mail's investigation reveals:

Beauticians target young women on social media, offering to inject groups of them at lip filler 'parties';

All the clinics approached by the Mail were willing to inject the undercover teenager without asking for proof of age or whether she had parental permission;

One practitioner said that if she did not have her lips injected she would 'regret it';

Other beauticians the Mail found online offer special deals, including the chance to cut costs by sharing a syringe with a friend.

Golam Chowdhury (pictured), 41, refers to himself as a doctor. The GMC confirmed that Mr Chowdhury is not on the medical register

The growing cosmetic industry is worth an estimated 3.6billion.

Nine out of ten procedures are non-surgical, such as Botox and fillers, and these are not regulated. Anyone can set themselves up as a lip filler practitioner  even if they have had no training or previous experience.

As a result, young women are increasingly being targeted online by amateurs advertising lip filler treatments on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They offer deals for as little as 59.

Other beauticians offer special deals, including the chance to cut costs by sharing a syringe with a friend. One wrote on Facebook: 'For a full syringe of lip fillers 240 but can share with a friend and pay half the price each (with different needles obviously).'

Lip filler 'parties' are also advertised, where girls can be injected together in their own homes.

Daily Mail reporters visited three practitioners with a girl of 17. One beautician spoke about having had two days of training. None of them had any concerns about injecting the college student's lips.

They all tried to convince her to have the treatments after she said she was too scared.

Fillers can cause severe and prolonged swelling, bruising, lumps and necrosis, when the lip tissue dies and goes black.

Those who suffer often then have to pay about four times the original price to have botched fillers corrected by a doctor.

Laura Meachem, a 24-year-old beauty blogger, wanted a subtle, natural enhancement to her looks and thought the procedure carried no risk. But after arriving for the treatment, she was led to a room under a staircase. Afterwards, her lips were lumpy and uneven (pictured)

Last night, cosmetic surgeon James McDiarmid, who treats women left with problems after their lips were injected by unqualified beauticians, reviewed the Mail's undercover footage.

He said: 'We need regulation. There are people out there who are not doctors, who are not subject to any kind of sanction if things go wrong, who are administering these treatments with no medical background and you can't do anything to stop them. The market is grossly unethical.'

Campaign group Save Face raises awareness about the dangers of non-surgical cosmetic treatment and compiles a register of accredited practitioners, which is approved by the Government.

Its director Ashton Collins, said: There are some people out there who set up a social media page, get clients, something goes wrong, they shut down the page and they open up under a different name. It goes on and on.

We get lots of patients calling up saying theyve had problematic procedures. When something goes wrong, they probably havent got any insurance and so the patients got no real way of seeking any redress.

The British Association of Aesthetic Surgeons found 40 per cent of surgeons have seen problems with unregulated facial fillers.

The market is grossly unethical

The Department of Health said traders were required by law to carry out a service with reasonable care and skill.

Ministers were warned four years ago that the industry was 'a crisis waiting to happen'.

In an official review in 2013, NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh found the industry was 'almost entirely unregulated'.

Sir Bruce's investigation reported that patients have 'no more protection and redress than someone buying a ballpoint pen or a toothbrush'.

He called for new laws to make fillers only available on prescription to protect young women.

But the warnings were all but ignored by the Government and anyone can still perform lip filler injections with no qualifications or training.

CYNICAL CELEBRITY ADS THAT TARGET TEENS OF SOCIAL MEDIA Holly Spedding, who has more than 60,000 followers on Instagram, advertises by using pictures of Katie Price (pictured) Young women are being targeted on social media by beauticians who convince them to have lip filler treatments. They are given the impression that having fillers will make them look like their favourite celebrities. Holly Spedding, who has more than 60,000 followers on Instagram, advertises by using pictures of Katie Price and American reality TV star Kylie Jenner. Miss Spedding's company Flawless Cosmetic posted a picture on Instagram of Miss Jenner when she was 17 and announced she had her lips treated. The photo was posted alongside the quote Miss Jenner gave at the time: 'I have temporary lip fillers, it's just an insecurity of mine.' The Flawless Cosmetic account added: 'So many of my clients tell me how much more confident they feel after getting lip filler. It's amazing how much a bit of filler can give some people such a boost.' Miss Spedding offers free 1ml lip fillers or 100 gift vouchers to those who share her page with friends. For one deal, she wrote: 'Tag or send me your favourite #lipselfie. Best one wins 100 gift voucher.' The booking process is made as easy as possible for those who might be nervous about going ahead with the procedure. Once on Miss Spedding's social media page, they simply have to click call or text a number to arrange an appointment. They are then sent a text with a list of dates and locations to choose from. The text explains that the procedure takes just 20 minutes, adding: 'You could get it done in your lunch break.' The messages do not ask for any proof of age or identity. Last night, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook declined to comment. Miss Price declined to comment. Miss Spedding's spokesman said the suggestion that she actively seeks business from young girls 'is entirely without foundation'. He added: 'Our client states clearly that treatments are only for those over 18, and requires written confirmation of that when the client attends. Marketing is targeted at women in their 20s and 30s, who are active users of social media.' Advertisement

What we found when we sent a girl of 17 undercover to the backstreet salons peddling dreams



Ellie Ducker (pictured) is a 17-year-old college student. Ellie travelled the UK with undercover Mail reporters and signed up for treatments with three practitioners

As a healthy girl of 17, college student Ellie Ducker clearly does not need cosmetic enhancements.

But beauticians tried to convince her she needed lip fillers. Ellie travelled the UK with undercover Mail reporters and signed up for treatments with three practitioners.

She attended the appointments but backed out, saying she was too scared.

One of the appointments was with Golam Chowdhury, who runs a clinic in Birmingham and represents himself as a doctor but is not registered with the GMC.

When Ellie arrived, she was asked for ID, which shows she is 17. But no comment was made about her age. Mr Chowdhury was happy to inject her lips.

Beautician Emma Walshaw visited Ellie a few weeks later in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. She told Ellie she had done two days of training. Another beautician, Holly Spedding, tried to convince Ellie to have her lips injected after she said she was too scared to proceed. Youll kick yourself, youll regret it as soon as you get home, she said.

All three practitioners recommended at least 1ml of filler, even though doctors who spoke to the Mail said half this amount is enough for a natural look.

SHE SAID SHE WAS TOO SCARED - BUT TOLD: 'YOU WILL REGRET IT' WHERE: Weaves and Waves beauty salon, Wigan WHO: Holly Spedding COST: 250 Beautician Holly Spedding tried to convince Ellie to have lip fillers  even after the teenager said she was too scared. Ellie met Miss Spedding, 29, on a Friday in January at the Weaves and Waves salon in Wigan, Greater Manchester. She arranged the appointment by text message, contacting a phone number advertised on an Instagram page. Beautician Holly Spedding (left) tried to convince Ellie (right) to have lip fillers  even after the teenager said she was too scared The text message specified over 18s only!!! When Ellie arrived at the salon she was asked to write down her date of birth  which she adapted to suggest she was 18. But she was not asked for proof of age. Customers had numbing cream applied to their lips by a receptionist in a communal area where people were having beauty treatments, such as hair extensions. During the appointment, Miss Spedding briefly talked Ellie through the procedure and aftercare, advising her that she would need at least 1ml of filler. When Ellie said she did not want to go ahead, Miss Spedding repeatedly tried to convince her. She said: Most people who say theyre too scared on the day end up going home, regretting that you didnt get it done and then you work yourself up for it even more that it becomes a big thing. If you just get it done today, youll be literally  in five minutes  you can be out of here. Its so quick. She added: I know youll kick yourself, youll regret it as soon as you get home. A spokesman for Miss Spedding said she has never knowingly treated anyone under 18, with or without their parents permission. He added: It was made quite clear that the treatment was for over-18s only. She then warranted in writing that she was over 18 before her appointment. The spokesman said Miss Spedding has NVQ Qualifications in Beauty Therapy Levels 2 and 3 and has completed courses in dermal fillers. He said 1ml is the standard amount for most procedures, which produces a subtle look. Weaves and Waves did not respond to requests for comment. She pulled a syringe out of her handbag WHERE: Living room of a house in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire WHO: Emma Walshaw COST: 150 Emma Walshaw spoke about having two days of training in giving fillers  and held a syringe in her hands without gloves when she met Ellie. The 37-year-old beautician, who visits peoples homes to carry out her work, saw Ellie at 2pm on a Sunday in February at a house in Uttoxeter. The appointment was arranged through Facebook and Ellie was asked to transfer a 30 deposit into Miss Walshaws bank account beforehand. Emma Walshaw (right) spoke about having two days of training in giving fillers  and held a syringe in her hands without gloves when she met Ellie On arrival, Miss Walshaw sat next to Ellie on the sofa and produced a syringe from her handbag with her bare hands. She asked Ellie to sign a consent form, which required just a signature and date. At no point was Ellie asked about her age or to produce ID. When Ellie said she was not sure how much filler to have, Miss Walshaw told her that 1ml isnt a lot and would not make a massive difference. She said: When you first have it done it will properly swell. You will be like Oh my God! but it goes down. Miss Walshaw, who also tattoos eyebrows, told Ellie she had completed a two-day training course in Manchester. People say Are you a nurse? But you dont have to be a nurse. Im beauty-trained, she added. When Ellie said she was too scared to have the injections, Miss Walshaw laughed and repeatedly tried to persuade her to go ahead. She insisted that its not that bad and that it would be over in five minutes. Miss Walshaw then offered to insert the needle into Ellies lips without any filler, to see if she could deal with the pain. Ellie refused and said she could not go ahead. Last night, Miss Walshaw declined to comment. Fake medic: Your natural lips are uneven WHERE: Arcadia Care Clinic, Birmingham WHO: Golam Chowdhury and his wife, Rizwana COST: 59-199 Ellie arrived for an appointment at the Arcadia Care Clinic in Birmingham on a Wednesday night in January, and was asked to give ID to a receptionist. The clinic offers a 59 lip plump deal online. Ellie also filled in a form with her date of birth  showing she is 17  but staff gave no indication this was a problem. After Ellie said she had not had lip fillers before, Mrs Chowdhury (pictured) said: For both lips, you need at least 1m. Her husband told Ellie her lips were 'uneven' They took her into a back room for treatment with the clinics director, Golam Chowdhury, 41, who refers to himself as a doctor, and his wife Rizwana, 37. After Ellie said she had not had lip fillers before, Mrs Chowdhury said: For both lips, you need at least 1ml. Her husband added: Your top lip is uneven as well, Im sure you are aware. When Ellie said she did not want to go ahead with the treatment, Mrs Chowdhury laughed and said: Youll be all right. You wont feel it that much. The GMC confirmed that Mr Chowdhury is not on the medical register. It has now written to him to warn that he must make it clear that he is not seeing anyone in a medical capacity, otherwise he could be breaking the law. Mr and Mrs Chowdhury did not respond to requests for comment. Advertisement

I looked like I had been beaten up

Claire Hawkinss lips swelled terribly and went black after treatments by beauticians.

The 24-year-olds face looked so bad, her mother thought she had been beaten up.

She had corrective treatment by a cosmetic doctor. The whole process cost 1,500.

Miss Hawkins, an administrator from Yeovil, Somerset, decided she wanted fillers when she was 21 after feeling insecure about the way she looked.

Claire Hawkinss lips swelled terribly and went black after treatments by beauticians. She had to have corrective treatment by a cosmetic doctor

In the months that followed, she had doses injected by beauticians in her hometown.

During one appointment at a friends house in May 2015, she was injected with 1ml of filler. Her lips swelled, but they eventually appeared to settle down.

Miss Hawkins then arranged another appointment two months later at a beauticians home in north London. She was injected with 1.5ml of filler, costing 360.

But shockingly, Miss Hawkinss mouth quickly began to swell. I could taste blood, she said.

In the hours that followed, she began to suffer what appeared to be symptoms associated with necrosis. She also developed pea-sized lumps in her mouth.

During one appointment at a friends house in May 2015, she was injected with 1ml of filler. The 24-year-olds face looked so bad, her mother thought she had been beaten up

Miss Hawkins said she was horrified, adding: I looked like a creature from The Grinch.

The bruising went down but in the year that followed, she noticed her lips had become uneven and lumpy. So she visited cosmetic doctor Beatriz Molina, who told her the filler had been injected in the wrong place.

Dr Molina told the Mail: She was devastated... We had to dissolve all the product out. It was creating a deformity of the lip, which looked very unattractive.

She was injecting my lips everywhere

Laura Meachem (pictured) had lip filler treatment in the tiny back room of a salon in Birmingham

Laura Meachem had lip filler treatment in the tiny back room of a salon in Birmingham.

The 24-year-old beauty blogger wanted a subtle, natural enhancement to her looks and thought the procedure carried no risk.

But after arriving for the treatment, she was led to a room under a staircase. She was treated by beauty therapist Holly Spedding.

Miss Meachem told the Mail: I got taken into this back room. It was so tiny. That really put me off because I thought it didnt really look like a place youd be getting injections or cosmetic procedures. It didnt look clean. It was just horrible, really grotty.

Miss Meachem was handed a consent form before the injections. She said: She took the needle, told me to take a deep breath and just started injecting. I was panicking so much. She was injecting everywhere.

Miss Meachem believes the appointment took five minutes. She was then asked for 230.

Afterwards, her lips were lumpy and uneven and she was forced to seek corrective treatment with specialist Dr Tijon Esho, who runs a clinic in Newcastle. She said: Looking back I feel very naive.

Last night Dr Esho said: 'Unfortunately, Laura was actually waiting to see me for lip fillers.

Then it turned out there was a six to eight month waiting list, so she saw this person's work on Instagram and decided to ahead with it. I felt so bad when she told me her story.

When we did the dissolving process, she had an allergic reaction. I can deal with allergic reactions, I'm a trained doctor.

But imagine she'd been there with a beautician - she'd have had to be rushed to A&E. With me, fortunately she was fine and back to normal.

He added that the accessibility of dermal filers is disturbing and shocking.
The BBC and the Cabinet Office were last night among a host of organisations to pull their adverts from YouTube after it was accused of failing to remove virulent antisemitic content which broke the law and breached its own rules.

They suspended advertising after it emerged extremist groups were profiting from a controversial arrangement that meant adverts were being run alongside 'hate crime' videos.

New analysis showed that YouTube hosts more than 200 antisemitic videos.

Google, which owns YouTube, hands a slice of the revenue generated by adverts to those who post the videos they run alongside. It means terror groups, neo-Nazis and homophobes who upload material to the site are pocketing cash from Government agencies and other household names.

The Government, the BBC, Channel 4 and Transport for London have pulled their advertising from Google's YouTube platform yesterday after it was found many were being run alongside 'hate crime' videos

An advert for the BBC show the Last Kingdom was played before a video of neo Nazis National Rebirth of Poland. In theory, advertisers can blacklist extremist uploaders. But in practice this often does not happen

An investigation by the Times yesterday found that the Home Office, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force all had advertising promotions placed beside video rants from 'shock-jock' Michael Savage, who infamously told one gay caller he should 'get aids and die.'

TfL, which is part-funded by the Government, had adverts running alongside videos by holocaust denier and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Duke, who is a former imperial wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.

Metropolitan Police promotions appeared alongside Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic organisation calling for the establishment of a global caliphate under Sharia law, which is banned in many countries.

The investigation also found that adverts for the BBC and Channel 4 appeared with videos by Egyptian hate preacher Wagdi Ghoneim.

Ghoneim is banned from entering the UK after he reportedly praised Osama bin Laden as a 'martyr' and 'hero'.

WHO PULLED ADS?  Havas advertising agency  The Cabinet Office  BBC  McDonald's  Audi  L'Oreal  Sainsbury's  Transport for London  The Financial Conduct Authority  Channel 4  The Guardian Advertisement

None of the organisations knew the adverts would appear alongside extremist content, as they are placed by third party agencies that use complex computer software rather than human judgement to select where promotions appear.

In theory, advertisers can blacklist extremist uploaders. But in practice this often does not happen because of a flaw in the process that relies on the video creators accurately categorising their uploads  which in the case of extremist content is extremely rare.

Individuals or groups posting the videos take a cut of the advertising revenue worth up to 6.15 for every 1,000 views. Many of the hate videos generate millions of hits.

Google does not actively look for hate content on YouTube, instead waiting for users to flag it up. It said that with 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, it would be impossible to proactively police.

This has provoked fury from many firms, who find their brand promoted alongside terrorists. Last month luxury holiday operator Sandals Resorts said it was 'appalled' to discover it had been advertised next to a video promoting East African jihadist group Al Shabaab.

The fanatical Islamist network, which is affiliated to Al Qaeda, has plotted a string of atrocities against UK targets, both at home and abroad, and was responsible for the 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi that killed 67 people.

Yvette's coruscating letter Yvette Cooper has written a letter to Google condemning the news that YouTube plays government adverts alongside 'hate crime' videos Extracts from Yvette Cooper's letter to Google vice-president Peter Barron: 'We raised with you National Action, a proscribed organisation which the Government has said is linked with terrorism, and whose activities are now illegal. You agreed that the video we reported to you should be taken down. 'There are a whole series of hate-filled promotional videos by National Action still on You Tube... It is astonishing that Google and YouTube have not managed to put the words 'National Action' into one of your search engines to see what remains on your platform and to remove it. 'Secondly we raised with you the issue of adverts being put on hate videos so that extremist groups and Google end up profiting from hate. You assured us Google and YouTube 'do not allow hate speech or terrorist content to be monetised'. 'It appears from reports today that this is not the case, and that... Government advertisements and major brands advertising is still being placed on inappropriate and hate-filled sites. As a result Google and these organisations are still profiting from hatred. Google is the second richest company on the planet. The lack of effort and social responsibility it is showing towards hate crime is extremely troubling.' Advertisement

Downing Street yesterday pledged no more Government adverts would be placed on YouTube until it proved it had the 'technical expertise' to ensure they were not broadcast in the wrong place.

The BBC and TfL also suspended advertising  as did the Guardian after a promotion appeared with a video from US 'pick-up artist' Roosh V, who has been accused of promoting rape.

Channel 4 said it has removed all its advertising from YouTube as it is not satisfied it is a 'safe environment'. Spokesman Dan Brooke said: 'We are extremely concerned about ... advertising being placed alongside highly offensive material on YouTube.

'It is a direct contravention of assurances our media buying agency had received on our behalf from YouTube.'

Google's managing director Ronan Harris said the firm knows 'we can and must do more', adding it spends millions each year to 'prevent bad advertising practices'.

He said: 'We've begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network.'

Web giants and self-harm images Google, Facebook and Twitter have been branded 'morally bankrupt' for hosting thousands of images showing youngsters how to starve themselves Google, Facebook and Twitter have been branded 'morally bankrupt' for hosting thousands of images showing youngsters how to starve themselves and self harm. The posts include bloody images of users' wrists with hashtags such as 'suicide' and 'bleed'. The posts also glamorise eating disorders with pictures, left, of dangerously skeletal bodies and carry a series of practical tips on how to stave off hunger on the 'no food diet' Users discuss the best ways to reduce scarring when they cut themselves and the most effective ways to commit suicide. Labour MP Helen Goodman said: 'The tech companies don't seem to be able to distinguish between good natural bodies, such as breastfeeding mothers, and bad naked bodies, such as people starving themselves. I just think they're totally morally bankrupt.' Stephen Buckley, of the mental health charity Mind, said: 'It is vital to recognise the huge danger created by any site or social media trend that promotes or glamorises self-harm, suicide or eating disorders. These are incredibly serious problems.' Google and Facebook, which both said they worked to protect users, removed some of the content when alerted by the Mail. Twitter directed us to its lengthy user policy but declined to comment further. Advertisement

Furious MPs warn net giant they MUST take responsibility for your vile content: Google on rack over cash from hate videos

BY KATHERINE RUSHTON

Yvette Cooper wrote a letter to Google vice-president Peter Barron (pictured), accusing the company of profiting from hatred

Google was accused last night of profiting from hatred.

In a devastating attack, MPs said the technology firm had totally failed to control offensive online content.

Its bosses were charged with breaking promises  made just days ago  to ensure neither the firm, nor extremists, cashed in on vile propaganda.

The Commons home affairs committee said it was astonishing that the second richest company on the planet had failed to take even the simplest steps to root out abuse.

The 482billion American firm suffered a further blow yesterday when ministers suspended all government advertising on its YouTube video-sharing platform.

The Cabinet Office said the ban would be lifted only when Google could all but guarantee public money would not fund hate-fuelled content.

Officials learnt that adverts for public bodies such as UK Aid and the Metropolitan Police had been running alongside YouTube videos containing extremist material.

Google hands a slice of the revenue generated by the adverts to the individuals  or groups  that post the content it features on.

Google executives were summoned to the Cabinet Office for a dressing-down following the investigation by the Times.

'We want to hear what they are going to do to prevent this happening again,' said the Prime Minister's official spokesman.

'We need to make sure they have the technical expertise to prevent our adverts appearing in the wrong places.'

As the backlash intensified, Group M  a firm which buys up advertising space on behalf of major brands  said it would ask its clients whether they wanted to pull advertising from YouTube.

She wrote: 'Google is the second richest company on the planet. The lack of effort and social responsibility is extremely troubling'

It called for Google, which made 15.7billion in profits last year, to apologise. The Guardian, Channel 4 and the BBC have also halted their advertising with the firm.

On Tuesday Google executives assured the home affairs committee it would work harder to remove offensive material, and agreed with MPs that a video by neo-nazi group National Action should be removed.

But in a letter to Google executive Peter Barron last night, Yvette Cooper, chairman of the committee, said National Action videos were still available.

She added: 'Google is the second richest company on the planet. The lack of effort and social responsibility it is showing towards hate crime on YouTube is extremely troubling.'

During Tuesday's select committee hearing, Mr Barron admitted the company had no one watching for offensive content. Instead it relies on users to report extreme material.

The firm makes the vast majority of its money from adverts, which it places using complex computer technology.

Miss Cooper told Google: 'The committee expects to hear from you on how you are using some of YouTube's very significant revenue to put this problem right'

Those posting videos on YouTube take a cut of the advertising worth up to 6.15 for every 1,000 views, and many are watched millions of times.

According to marketing experts, extremists have made 250,000 from ads for household brands and government departments hosted on Google.

The search giant has earned around 120,000.

One of the biggest earning hate preachers is the Egyptian cleric Wagdi Ghoneim. Videos on his YouTube channel have netted him around 63,500. He is banned from visiting the UK.

Rob Norman of Group M said: 'We believe Google owes two apologies, one to advertisers for compromising their brand reputations and the other to consumers for the presence of the content.'

Google's UK boss Ronan Harris admitted in a blog published yesterday morning that the company 'can and must do more' to combat 'bad advertising', and said it had begun to review its systems.

He added: 'With millions of sites in our network and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recognise that we don't always get it right.

'In a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our monetisation policies. We promptly remove the ads in those instances, but we know we can and must do more.'

Google and other technology companies do have some measures in place to try and remove child pornography from their websites.

They fund the Internet Watch Foundation, which seeks out offensive material.

However, it relies entirely on users to flag up other kinds of offensive content, which are then reviewed by Google staff.

They look at 98 per cent of the videos within 24 hours, and removed 92million videos from YouTube in 2015.

Miss Cooper told Google: 'The committee expects to hear from you on how you are using some of YouTube's very significant revenue to put this problem right by devoting sufficient resources to ensure that vile and illegal material is removed proactively from your platforms, and that neither you nor those that create these videos profit from hatred.
NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick has joined in the fight to combat the famine in Somalia.

In collaboration with Ben Stiller's charitable foundation and a group of young humanitarians, the group appealed to Turkish Airlines to provide them with a plane that they could fill with food and fly to East Africa.

According to the GoFundMe, the airline has agreed to provide cargo planes filled with supplies for Somalia until the famine is over. Now, they have ten days to raise enough money to fill the plane with 60 tons of food.

NFL player and activist Colin Kaepernick has joined in the fight to combat the famine in Somalia

In his Twitter video appealing to the public for help, Kaepernick said: 'People are dying in Somalia right now that need our help.'

'There's an impending famine because of drought, politics, inaction of (non-government organizations) and lack of media attention.

'This famine will affect 6.1 million people, and 2.9 million people are in need of immediate assistance.

'We can't let this happen - we have to help these people.

'We can be the change - we can help save these lives.'

United Nations officials have announced the crisis and their concern that the famine is becoming as severe as the 2011 famine in the country in which an estimated 250,000 people died

Kaepernick said: 'There's an impending famine because of drought, politics, inaction of (non-government organizations) and lack of media attention'

The group hopes to raise enough money to purchase 60 tons of food - this photo posted for reference is 10 tons of rice

Turkish Airlines - which is the only airline which flies directly from the United States to Somalia - responded within a number of hours.

United Nations officials have announced the crisis and their concern that the famine is becoming as severe as the 2011 famine in the country in which an estimated 250,000 people died.

Using the hashtags #TurkishAirlineHelpSomalia the group was able to catch the attention of the airline who then made their monumental promise.

In collaboration with Ben Stiller's charitable foundation and a group of young humanitarians, the group appealed to Turkish Airlines to provide them with a plane that they could fill with food and fly to East Africa

Their first flight will now embark on March 27 - just a few days for them to raise enough money to fill the flight with 60 tons of food.

They are now rallying for the funds to fill those cargo planes on social media with the hashtag #LoveArmyForSomalia, which one of its leaders Jerome Jarre has described as a 'movement from the heart'.

The group plans to use all the funds they procure to supply water trucks and specialized foods such as nutritional biscuits, rice, flour, sugar, and porridge.
Former US Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for alleged stock trading violations at the time that he was removed from office by President Donald Trump last week, according to a ProPublica report on Friday.

During a Senate confirmation hearing in January, Democrats charged that Price, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia, may have broken the law by making a stock purchase just before he introduced legislation that would have benefited the firm.

CNN reported in January that that Price bought between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc, a medical device manufacturer.

Days later, he introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would have delayed a regulation that could have ultimately damaged the company, CNN said.

Former US Attorney Preet Bharara (left) was investigating Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price (right) for alleged stock trading violations at the time that he was removed from office by President Donald Trump last week

Bharara is seen above bidding farewell to staff members and well-wishers in front of the Manhattan office where he worked this past Monday

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, called on the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether Price had violated the 2012 Stock Act, a law designed to combat insider trading.

Schumer said Price's Zimmer Biomet purchase may have been in violation of that law.

'It may be that this trade was illegal,' Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon.

The Trump transition team said at the time that the stock purchase was directed not by Price but by a broker and that the congressman himself did not become aware of the stock buy until well after the legislation was introduced.

After the Department of Justice asked Bharara and 45 other US attorneys to tender their resignations, Bharara refused. He was then fired - and announced his dismissal on his Twitter account (above)

'By the way, now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like,' he said in a second tweet. The Moreland Commission was a committee of inquiry created by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2013. The governor disbanded the commission a year later

Bharara, who gained a reputation as an anti-corruption crusader during his tenure at the helm of the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, was also investigating Price's stock trades at the time that he was abruptly told by the Justice Department to tender his resignation.

He was one of 46 US attorneys  all of them holdovers from the Obama administration  who were told to go last week.

It is standard practice for newly installed administrations to dismiss Justice Department prosecutors that are inherited from the previous presidency.

But Bharara's dismissal was unexpected since then-President elect Trump personally asked him to stay on as US attorney shortly after his November 8 election victory.

Bharara met with Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan on November 30 (above). At the end of the meeting, he told reporters that he had agreed to the president-elect's invitation to remain in his post

Bharara met with Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan on November 30. At the end of the meeting, he told reporters that he had agreed to the president-elect's invitation to remain in his post.

When the Justice Department asked Bharara and 45 other US attorneys to resign, Bharara refused.

Shortly afterward, Bharara was fired. Bharara announced his dismissal on his Twitter account.

'I did not resign,' Bharara tweeted last weekend. 'Moments ago I was fired.'

'By the way, now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like,' he said in a second tweet.

The Moreland Commission was a committee of inquiry created by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2013.

Trump is expected to nominate a replacement for Bharara within the coming weeks. The president is seen in the above stock image at the Oval Office on January 28, 2017

The commission was tasked with investigating political figures and organizations in New York for alleged violations of state laws regarding campaign finance and fundraising.

In a controversial move, Cuomo disbanded the committee in March 2014, prompting Bharara to announce that he would investigate the commission's targets as well as Cuomo's office.

A number of top associates linked to Cuomo were indicted and convicted in federal court.

Bharara's position has been taken up on an interim basis by his former deputy, Joon Kim, though Trump is likely to nominate a replacement within weeks.

One possible candidate for the post is Marc Mukasey, a lawyer who represents former Fox News chief Roger Ailes.

This is potentially significant because Bharara's former office was also in the middle of investigating Fox News for allegedly failing to inform shareholders about settlements made with former employees who accused Ailes of sexual harassment.
More than 64,000 drivers are now intending to sue Volkswagen as the dieselgate affair escalates.

Lawyers are aiming to win back thousands of pounds in compensation for buyers of VW diesel cars made between 2009 and 2015.

VW, the world's biggest carmaker, was discovered to have fitted cheating software in 11million of its cars sold worldwide, which meant they produced far fewer toxic gases in official tests, but were much more polluting when driven regularly.

Lawyers are aiming to win back thousands of pounds in compensation for buyers of VW diesel cars made between 2009 and 2015

But the 64,000 who have registered their interest with law firms is still a small fraction of the 1.2million VW, Skoda, Audi, or Seat cars that were sold with the illegal software.

Including drivers who bought second hand VWs, as many as two million motorists could be entitled to compensation if the legal action is successful.

Law firm Harcus Sinclair is representing 35,000 drivers in the action against VW, together with another firm Slater and Gordon, and are aiming to secure around 4,000 for each driver who bought a diesel fitted with the illegal devices.

Two other firms involved in the action are Leigh Day, representing a further 12,000 VW drivers, and Yourlawyers Ltd, which said it had been contacted by 17,000 VW drivers.

VW has refused so far to offer any compensation to motorists in the UK  although financial compensation has been offered to drivers in the US, Belgium and Spain.

A federal judge in Detroit ordered that a Volkswagen AG executive charged in the automaker's diesel emissions scandal be detained until his trial set for next year, agreeing with prosecutors that the German national represented a flight risk.

VW, the world's biggest carmaker, was discovered to have fitted cheating software in 11million of its cars sold worldwide, which meant they produced far fewer toxic gases in official tests, but were much more polluting when driven regularly

Oliver Schmidt, who was chief of Volkswagen's environmental and engineering center in Michigan, has been held since January when he was arrested in Miami trying to return to Germany.

Schmidt is one of seven current and former executives charged in the U.S. emissions probe.

'The allegations of fraud and conspiracy in this case are very, very serious,' said Judge Sean Cox of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan. 'There is a serious risk that Mr. Schmidt will not appear in this case.'
Experts dissecting a dead sperm whale in China were saddened to find a deceased baby inside a placenta.

Rescuers had attempted to get the mother to return to deeper waters however she died on March 15 following three days of effort.

Scientists have added that the whale corpse is the first of its kind in the world and will be valuable for research, reports the People's Daily Online.

Sad discovery: Experts and staff members examine a dead whale fetus in Huizhou

A crane lifts the mother sperm whale which died after getting stranded onto a truck

Whale fetus: Experts were shocked to find that the mother sperm whale was pregnant

The mother of the baby was found stranded in the middle of the sea off the coast of Shenzhen, southern China.

Measuring 33 feet in length and 472 stone in weight, the whale was spotted on the morning of March 12 by scuba divers.

Following three days of attempted rescue, the whale died.

Experts took the carcass to Huizhou in Guangdong province to dissect it on March 16 and were saddened to find that it had been pregnant at the time.

A crane lifts a sperm whale onto a truck after it became stranded in waters off southern China

Sad case: People watch an attempt to save a stranded sperm whale on March 14

During the rescue attempt, divers and fishermen helped to remove a net from the sperm whale's mouth.

Following the death of the animal, researchers took it to dissect the animal and see its cause of death.

They were shocked to discover that the whale was pregnant.

Measuring the baby: Experts and staff members examine a dead whale fetus

Researchers took the animal to dissect it and investigate the cause of death

Tong Shenhan, curator of the Biological Museum of Xiamen University told reporters: 'The baby male sperm whale was six-and-a-half feet long, weighing 100.5 kilograms. The discovery is of great significance in the treatment and protection of sperm whales in the future.'

According to experts, this is the first placenta of a sperm whale ever found.

Tong told reporters that the dead fetus is helpful to researchers as they are able to study the habits of mother whales during pregnancy. This will help them understand how better to protect these animals.

He said the post mortem will take around 10 days to complete with results expected to be published to the public within a month.

It is speculated that the fishing net caused the mother to die.
When you think of property hotspots, glamourous London locations might spring to mind, but, it's the middle-England town of Northampton that has the fastest moving housing market in the country, figures show.

Property listing website Zoopla said that on average homes go under offer there just 27 days after being listed - 20 days quicker than the UK average.

Buyers searching for a home in Milton Keynes and Croydon also have to act fast, as homes in these areas typically go under offer an average of 29 and 30 days respectively after being listed, Zoopla's latest figures show.

Fast moving: The town of Northampton in the East Midlands has one of the fastest moving property markets in the country

Across the UK, the average time for a property to go under offer after being listed is 47 days, with homes in the the South East and East of England often receiving offers within 42 days. In Wales, a home doesn't usually go under offer for 66 days.

In Scotland, the city of Edinburgh has a fast-moving housing market, with sellers getting an offer around 32 days after first listing their property. In Glasgow, this rises to an average of 33 days.

Sutton, where the average home costs over 430,000, is ranked as the fastest moving London borough, with listings taking an average of 28 days to go under offer.

The London boroughs of Havering and Bexley are joint second quickest (averaging 29 days).

In the London borough of Braking and Dagenham, homes typically take slightly longer to go under offer, at around 35 days.

Regionally, homes in the South East and East of England have the 'hottest' property markets, with homes going under offer after around 42 days.

In Scotland, homes typically take around 46 days to go under offer, while in Wales, where the average home costs just shy of 180,000, the average is 66 days.

Rapid market: Homes in Milton Keynes usually go under offer after 29 days

In demand: Homes in Croydon typically go under offer 30 days after being listed

Lawrence Hall, a spokesman for Zoopla, said: 'Whether you're a first time or seasoned property seller, one thing that is impossible to predict is the timing of the first offer on your home.

'The national average period between listing a home for sale and achieving an offer is well under two months at 47 days, while sellers in Northampton can expect an offer in an average of just 27 days.

'Regardless of where you are selling, giving your home a bit of TLC and enlisting the help of a good estate agent with knowledge of the local market, is likely to help your sale.'

Fast moving: In Edinburgh, homes typically go under offer 32 days after being listed

Data from the Office for National Statistics published in February revealed that the average cost of a home in the UK stood at around 220,000 in December. This is 15,000 higher than in December 2015.

In England, house prices increased by 7.7 per cent in the year to December. London continues to be the region with the highest average house price at 484,000, followed by the South East and the East of England, which stand at 316,000 and 282,000 respectively. The lowest average price continues to be in the North East at 129,000.

Homeowners looking to sell their property quickly can take a number of steps to speed up the process, including anything from de-cluttering, making outside spaces presentable and putting large items into storage.
Forget whether or not there is water on Mars - if this photo is to be believed, there is fresh beer on the red planet's surface.

An eagle-eyed Mars 'anomaly hunter' has spotted a strange object that looks like a green bottle in Nasa rover imagery.

The bizarre bottle shape appears to have a red, green and white label and even a cork or cap at the end.

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A keen-eyed Mars 'anomaly hunter' has spotted a strange object that looks like a green bottle in Nasa imagery of Mars. The pictures were taken by Nasa's Spirit rover as it studied the surface of the red planet in November 2007

WHY WE SEE STRANGE THINGS ON MARS Pareidolia is the psychological response to seeing faces and other significant and everyday items in random stimulus. It is a form of apophenia, when people see patterns in random, unconnected data. There have been multiple occasions when people have claimed to see religious images and themes in unexpected places. On the red planet, one of the most famous is the 'face on Mars' spotted by one of the Viking orbiters in 1976. This was later proven to just be a chance alignment of shifting sand dunes. Advertisement

The pictures were taken by Nasa's Spirit rover during a mission on the surface of Mars in November 2007.

Vigilante Mars 'anomaly hunter' Thomas Miller, 64, spotted the strange shape while he was sifting through Curiosity's latest snaps of the red planet.

'This find is exceptionally clear; the design of the bottle is a bit different but recognisable,' Mr Miller, a Canadian musician, told MailOnline.

'Of course there's no way to know for sure it's a beer bottle, I'm going out on limb calling it that.

'If someday we visit their planet it would be nice to think we could sit down and have a beer with them.'

The anomaly hunter found the bottle while browsing through panoramas of Nasa images stitched together by other Mars enthusiasts.

'I think it is evidence of current habitation on Mars,' he told MailOnline.

'We find trash, tools, machine parts, bits of paper, as well as sculpture and carved stone tablets. I tend to see artifacts on the Martian surface as part art gallery and part garbage dump.'

But Nigel Watson, an alien expert and author of the UFO Investigations Manual, is sceptical of the bottle find.

'I think they are looking for anything out of the ordinary, and our minds like to see patterns in things. Given the thousands of images of Mars, you are bound to find something that looks a bit unusual,' he told MailOnline.

The bottle appears to have a red and white label and even a cork or cap at the end

'Usually clearer pictures or those taken from a different angle show that such anomalies are really rocks or tricks of the light.'

The strange bottle shape is not the first oddity to be spotted on Mars.

In December last year, Nasa's Curiosity rover took footage that appeared to show a large spoon on the red planet's surface.

It is the second 'spoon' to be found on Mars in recent years, with alien hunters claiming it could be proof of developed life on the planet.

Other objects such as rings and gloves have also been found in recent years.

In December last year, Nasa's Curiosity rover took footage that appeared to show a large spoon (pictured) on the red planet's surface

The Curiosity video was uploaded to YouTube by UFO Hunter account 'secure team' with the description: 'There is a giant spoon on Mars! This thing is amazing! Probably left over from a lost civilisation.'

And some users were amazed at the discovery - one said: 'Wow, it couldn't possibly be natural, could it?'

However, others were more sceptical, suggesting it could be an optical illusion.

One user commented: 'We see what we want to see. Some folk see the face of Jesus in tea-leaves, others see the man in the moon.'
Google Home has come under fire after slipping a promo in for the movie 'Beauty and the Beast' while sharing information about several of its owners' days.

Many Reddit and Twitter users have reported hearing an 'advertisement' for the opening day of the film after using the configuration 'My Day' when speaking to the virtual assistant.

Following information about the weather, commute and daily reminders, the AI seamless said 'By the way, Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast opens today'.

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WHAT CAN YOU HEAR WITH MY DAY? Weather: Hear the days forecast. Commute: Hear an overview of traffic to work and an estimated travel time. Reminders: Hear a list of reminders that you have set for the day. Calendar: Hear details about your next meeting. This calendar is linked to the Google Account that was used to set up Google Home. Flight status: Hear the status of your upcoming flights. Note: You can't turn off flight status Advertisement

There have been numerous cases shared on Reddit, with some users suggesting it could be a result of showing interest in movies that are similar or if the user previously searched for that one specifically  but those who have heard that ad said neither are the case.

And some Twitter users recorded the incident as it unfolded.

'It wasn't intended to be an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales,' a Google spokesperson told DailyMail.com in an email.

'What's circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely content.'

'We're continuing to experiment with new ways to surface unique content for users and we could have done better in this case.'

'My Day' configurations are weather, commute, calendar, reminders, and news, and I definitely haven't searched for the film either,' one Redditor wrote.

After listing My Day information, the users stated that the Assistant went straight into a promo for Beauty and the Beast.

'By the way, Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast opens today', Google Home said.

'In this version of the story, Belle is the inventor instead of Maurice. That rings truer if you ask me.'

After listing My Day information, the users stated that the Assistant went straight into a promo for Beauty and the Beast (pictured). 'By the way, Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast opens today', Google Home said

GOOGLE'S VIRTUAL ASSISTANT At the unveiling of Home in May, Google boss Sundar Pichai said: 'We think of the assistant as an ambient experience that goes across devices - this is more than just phones, it will be on devices they wear, in their car and in their living rooms.' The leading tech companies are all competing to assist consumers in their online activities such as shopping, since that gives the companies a better chance of selling advertising or other services. Home-based systems like the Echo are taking on more importance with the advent of improved voice technology, according to Julie Ask, an analyst at Forrester Research. The smart speaker, which costs $130, can do everything from play music to control your lights - and has the vast knowledge of Google's search engine as its 'brain'. Ask about your day, and the Home speaker will give you the time, weather, estimated commute, the news and upcoming calendar appointments. The speaker is a really lovely piece of design, and it's tough to fault the hardware. If you're not keen on the colour, you can simply swap the bottom part for another color or material. Advertisement

'For some more movie fun, ask me something about Belle.'

Google's Assistant in the messaging app Allo was also found to share some unwanted information this week  other people's search content in the middle of text conversations with other users.

You may want to think twice about your next search query, as Google's mobile messaging app might not keep it a secret.

Google noted that what users heard 'wasn't intended to be an ad' 'What's circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely content,' a Google spokesperson told DailyMail.com in an email

Allo, which includes Assistant, has been found to share people's search content in the middle of text conversations with other users.

The flaw was discovered by Recode after a friend asked the bot a question, which answered using details from a previous search - but Google has since fixed the issue.

'We were notified about the Assistant in group chats not working as intended,' a Google spokesperson told DailyMail.com in an email.

'We've fixed the issue and appreciate the report.'

Google announced earlier this month that it was rolling its Assistant out to more Android smartphones and releasing other features as well.

Google's Assistant in the messaging app Allo was also found to share some unwanted information this week  other people's search content in the middle of text conversations with other users. A flaw discovered by Recode (pictured)

And now Android users can access Assistant via Allo.

For example, if you're making plans to see a movie, you can ask the AI what times it is playing and both you and your friend will see the results.

However, Tess Townsend with Recode has recently found that the AI isn't always perfect.

'In the middle of our conversation, my friend directed Assistant to identify itself,' Townsend wrote.

'Instead of offering a name or a pithy retort, it responded with a link from Harry Potter fan website Pottermore.'

HOW DOES ALLO WORK? Allo accesses Google's smart assistant, which uses the firms neural networks and search engine. It allows users to chat with friends and workers, and has a new feature called 'shout' allowing users to change the size messages appear depending on how important they are. It also predicts responses to posts, and even pictures by analysing what's in them, and has Google's assistant built in. This allows the app to use Googe's search capabilities to access the assistant when booking restaurants, using OpenTable to make bookings, for instance. Advertisement

'The link led to an extract from 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,' the fifth book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.'

'But the response was not merely a non sequitur. It was a result related to previous searches my friend said he had done a few days earlier.'

She also noted that Harry Potter was not included in any of her previous searches, nor was there any mention of it during the conversation.

Although the glitch does raise a few flags regarding privacy issues, Assistant is designed to safeguard some information.

If you ask for your own information while chatting with another users, the AI will first require permission.

But Townsend had asked 'what is my job' in another conversation and Assistant pulled up Google Maps and pinpointed her location for the other users to see.

A reporter with Recode said when their friend asked Assistant a question it answered with a link from one of their previous search queries - without being asked or instructed to do so

Allo has been criticized in the past for its privacy issues, but this time was by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden claimed that the 'smart' messaging app which integrates Google's virtual assistant does not feature important privacy measures that the tech firm said it would have.

Speaking in a series of tweets, the security expert said that the app should be completely avoided.

Google has been criticized for not including the promised end-to-end encryption in the app when it first launched and reportedly storing messages indefinitely.

Allo is 'A Google app that records every message you ever send and makes it available to police upon request,' said Snowden.

Allo has been criticized in the past for its privacy issues, but this time was by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which shared his opinion in a series of tweets

Snowden claimed that the 'smart' messaging app which integrates Google's virtual assistant does not feature important privacy measures that the tech firm said it would have

However, Google claimed that users have still have control over their personal messages.

A Google spokesperson said: 'We've given users transparency and control over their data in Google Allo.

'And our approach is simple - your chat history is saved for you until you choose to delete it.

'You can delete single messages or entire conversations in Allo.

'We also provide the option to chat in Incognito mode, where messages are end-to-end encrypted and you can set a timer to automatically delete messages for your device and the person you're chatting with's device at a set time.'
The International Space Station has travelled more than 2.6 billion miles and circled the Earth more than 100,000 times since it launched into space 17 years ago.

During their time on board, the crews living there have enjoyed some of the best views of our planet imaginable.

These stunning pictures were captured by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet during the past few months from his new home 240 miles above Earth.

They look like vibrant abstract artworks but these jaw-dropping images are of our beautiful Earth, captured by a French astronaut who is currently on a six-month mission to the International Space Station.

These images capture different aspects of life on Earth - from irrigation schemes in Saudi Arabia to the Wall of China win erosion in the Sahara desert.

They range from what Mr Pesquet calls the 'minimalist snow art' of Russian fields to the reds of the Sahara desert 'as if the paint had flowed over tens of kilometres'.

Mr Pesquet is serving as a flight engineer for Expeditions 50 and 51, launched in November 2016 and returning in May 2017.
Supercomputers will speed up advances in medicine and enable us to live for a decade longer.

That's according to Professor Jean-Christophe Desplat, who is the director of the Irish centre for high-end computing (ICHEC).

He has claimed that supercomputers could analyse our complex genetic code to help deliver more personalised medicine, which could extend our lives by as much as ten years.

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Supercomputers will speed up advances in medicine and enable us to live for a decade longer (stock image)

WHAT IS A SUPERCOMPUTER? A supercomputer is a machine that can process information faster than a general-purpose device. The super-fast machines first appeared in the 1960s but the speed at which they operate has massively increased since then. Supercomputers are currently used in weather forecasting, quantum mechanics and climate research. As of June 2016, the fastest supercomputer in the world is the Chinese-built Sunway TaihuLight, which can run quadrillions of calculations per second. Advertisement

A supercomputer is a machine that can process information faster than a general-purpose device.

The super-fast machines first appeared in the 1960s but the speed at which they operate has massively increased since then.

As of June 2016, the fastest supercomputer in the world is the Chinese-built Sunway TaihuLight, which can run quadrillions of calculations per second.

'The Sunway TaihuLight system demonstrates the significant progress that China has made in the domain of designing and manufacturing large-scale computation systems,' Guangwen Yang, the head of China's National Supercomputing Centre, said at the time.

ICHEC formed in 2006 to meet a 'growing demand' for supercomputers.

The Chinese-built Sunway Taihulight is the world's fastest computer and can run quadrillions of calculations per second (file picture)

THE SUNWAY TAIHULIGHT The Sunway TaihuLight achieves 93 Pflops on the Linpack benchmark, and has a peak performance of 125 Pflops. This means it can run quadrillions of calculations per second. It is now the fastest supercomputer in the world, and marks the first time China has achieved this without the use of US technology. The supercomputer may be used to conduct earth system modelling, ocean surface wave modelling, atomistic simulation, and phase-field simulation. Advertisement

'We have all the different competencies put together. We are problem solvers,' Professor Desplat told the Irish Times.

Professor Desplat said supercomputers could quickly read through the genome, our entire set of DNA which is made up of more than three billion letters.

This could help doctors target patients with therapies and medicine tailored to their needs.

Supercomputers will be able to read our genetic code using 'deep artificial intelligence learning', according to Professor Desplat.

Deep learning is a term used to describe how AI devices can 'learn' from their experiences and become more accurate over time.

The computers will also allow doctors to form faster diagnoses, Professor Desplat said.
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Russia-based Kalashnikov announced plans to super-size its 7-ton combat vehicle.

The gunmaker is developing an unmanned 20-ton robot tank capable of carrying both machine guns and anti-tank missiles.

The vehicle's predecessor, BAS-01G Soratnik, is designed to support a 30mm gun or eight anti-tank missiles  all while traveling at top speeds of 25 miles per hour.

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Kalashnikov announced plans to super-size its 7-ton combat vehicle. The firm is developing an unmanned 20-ton robot tank capable of carrying both machine guns and anti-tank missiles. The vehicle's predecessor, BAS-01G Soratnik (pictured), is designed to support a 30mm gun or eight anti-tank missiles  all while traveling at top speeds of 25 miles per hour

SORATNIK TANK Russian debuted its first battle robot, the BAS-01G Soratnik, last year. The 7-ton tank was built to assist human soldier in combat. Soldiers can operate the machine within six miles remotely, but it can also operate on its own with varying degrees of autonomy. Soratnik is fitted with a 7.62mm Kalashnikov PKTM machine gun that can be swapped out for a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, grenade launchers and up to eight Kornet guided missiles with a range of three miles. Kalashnikov next robot tank is a super-sized version of Soratnik that will boast similar features and functions but on a larger scale. Advertisement

Kalashnikov, which is named after the inventor of the AK-47 rifle, has made a name for itself in assault rifles.

It has also expanded into vodka, souvenirs, fashion and video games but its main focus is military weapons.

At Russias Army 2016 Expo, which took place in September, the firm unveiled its first battle bot - the BAS-01G Soratnik, which means Comrade-in-arms.

The 7-ton tank is a result of the Russian Ministry of Defenses need for a vehicle that could assist human soldier in combat.

Soldiers can operate the machine remotely within six miles, but it can also operate on its own with varying degrees of autonomy, reports Popular Mechanics.

And it is able to support the necessary weapons to support its fellow soldiers.

Soratnik is fitted with a 7.62mm Kalashnikov PKTM machine gun that can be swapped out for a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, grenade launchers and up to eight Kornet guided missiles with a range of three miles.

Kalashnikov has yet to share details about its 20-ton robotic tank, but the it is said to be about three times the weight of Soratnik or on par with a U.S. Army M1126 Stryker ICV.

The firms CEO first revealed plans for the massive machine in an interview with TACC, a Russian news site.

After being asked if the firm had plans for other combat automated systems besides Soratnik.

At Russias Army 2016 Expo, which took place in September, the firm unveiled its first battle bot - the BAS-01G Soratnik (middle), which means Comrade-in-arms

Yes, these works are underway, said Kalashnikov Concern CEO Alexei Krivoruchko.

It will be a reconnaissance-strike complex weighing about 20 tons.

The Ak-47 is one of the most popular assault rifles and it is believed that some 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been manufactured worldwide.

In 2015, a firearms company based out of Pennsylvania started selling the first American-made Kalashnikov AK-47s after sanctions against Russia had stopped the flow of the guns into the US.

Kalashnikov has yet to share details about its 20-ton robotic tank, but the it is said to be about three times the weight of Soratnik (pictured) or on par with a U.S. Army M1126 Stryker ICV. Soratnik was recently taken for a spin around in the snow to show off its tricks and features

Soratnik (pictured) is fitted with a 7.62mm Kalashnikov PKTM machine gun that can be swapped out for a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, grenade launchers and up to eight Kornet guided missiles with a range of three miles. Soldiers can operate the machine remotely within six miles, but it can also operate on its own with varying degrees of autonomy

The company said it would start manufacturing AK-47s in January after President Barack Obama's trade sanctions because of President Vladmir Putin's war in Ukraine were put in place.

The USA-made models have new features like nitrocarburized case hardening on their barrels and chambers as well as an enhanced bolt and bolt carrier to provide smoother action.

'The new US models are built on the classic AK 47 rifle and shotgun platforms with a focus on designing firearms for the American shooter using the latest manufacturing technologies,' according to the company.
Lockheed Martin has completed the design, development and demonstration of a radical 60 kW laser weapon for the U.S. Army.

In testing earlier this month, the Lockheed Martin laser produced a single beam of 58 kW, representing a world record for a laser of this type.

Army bosses hope the radical weapon will give protection against threats such as swarms of drones or large numbers of rockets and mortars, and says It could one day be installed on military planes, helicopters and ships.

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A rendering of a truck mounted 60 kW laser weapon system for tactical U.S. Army vehicles. Lockheed Martin has revealed it has completed the design, development and demonstration of a radical 60 kW laser weapon for the U.S. Army.

HOW IT WORKS Lockheed Martin's laser is a beam combined fiber laser, meaning it brings together individual lasers, generated through fiber optics, to generate a single, intense laser beam. This allows for a scalable laser system that can be made more powerful by adding more fiber laser subunits. Army bosses hope the radical weapon will give protection against threats such as swarms of drones or large numbers of rockets and mortars. Advertisement

The Lockheed Martin laser system is now being shipped to the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command in Huntsville, Alabama for more testing.

'Delivery of this laser represents an important milestone along the path to fielding a practical laser weapon system,' said Paula Hartley of Lockheed Martin's Cyber, Ships & Advanced Technologies line of business.

'This milestone could not have been achieved without close partnership between the U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin; we are pleased to be able to deliver this system for their further integration and evaluation.'

Lockheed Martin's laser is a beam combined fiber laser, meaning it brings together individual lasers, generated through fiber optics, to generate a single, intense laser beam.

This allows for a scalable laser system that can be made more powerful by adding more fiber laser subunits.

The laser is based on a design developed under the Department of Defense's Robust Electric Laser Initiative Program, and further developed through investments by Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army into a 60kW-class system.

Army bosses hope the radical weapon will give protection against threats such as swarms of drones or large numbers of rockets and mortars.

In 2015, the company used a 30kW fiber laser weapon, known as ATHENA, to disable a truck from a mile away.

Earlier military security experts successfully managed to stop a truck in its tracks by destroying its engine with a laser using the lower powered system.

The 30-kilowatt fibre laser called Athena burnt through the manifold in seconds, despite being fired by a team from Lockheed Martin positioned more than a mile away.

The security firm said the test signifies the next step to fitting lightweight laser weapons on military aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks.

In 2015, the company used a 30kW fiber laser weapon, known as ATHENA, to disable a truck from a mile away.

'The inherent scalability of this beam combined laser system has allowed us to build the first 60kW-class fiber laser for the U.S. Army,' said Robert Afzal, Ph.D., senior fellow for Laser and Sensor Systems.

'We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air.'

According to Afzal, the Lockheed Martin team created a laser beam that was near 'diffraction-limited,' meaning it was close to the physical limits for focusing energy toward a single, small spot.

The laser system also proved to be highly efficient in testing, capable of translating more than 43 percent of the electricity that powered it directly into the actual laser beam it emitted.

The US Army is planning to deploy the first laser weapons in 2023, it has been revealed previously.

Mary J. Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, told the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities 'I believe we're very close,' when asked how close the Army is to developing offensive and defensive directed-energy weapons.

She said the programmes would be extensively tested as the Army wants to understand the lasers' full capabilities 'before we offer it to a Soldier.'

'It's being done in a 'step-wise demonstration of capability,' she said.

'We have to make sure the lasers work and do the full set of scopes against the threats we project. And those threats include the counter-rockets, counter-artillery and counter-mortar as well as [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] and cruise missile threats.'

The US Army is planning to deploy the first laser weapons in 2023, it has been revealed previously.

Miller explained that the Army wants to understand the lasers' full capabilities 'before we offer it to a Soldier.'

Operators need to trust what lasers can do, she added.

'Lasers have been promised for a long time, but they've never held up and delivered what was asked for, so the operators are rightfully skeptical,' she pointed out.

'That's why the Army is taking lasers out into operational environments and testing them.

In the meantime, 'there will be steps along the way where we spin off lesser capable laser systems that can do good things on smaller platforms.

'Those will come out soon.'

A laser at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Starfire Optical Range on a 6,240 foot hilltop at Kirtland Air Force Base, where the Army and Navy is developing its own laser weapons systems.

The Air Force said it was already flying prototype weapons.

Dr. David Walker, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology and Engineering, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, said the Air Force is working with Special Operations Command to develop an offensive laser that will be fitted to AFSOC AC-130 gunships.

Part of that technology, he said, includes 'beam-steering and power and thermal management.'

'The Air Force is flying every day with lasers under its transport aircraft, using them as infrared countermeasure system,' so we too spun off lesser-capable laser systems and as we get larger power outputs and better thermal management out of smaller package lasers, we will build those powers into defensive to offensive capability as well,' Walker said.

The Navy's science representative described similar laser programs for ships, subs and Marines.

Air Force bosses have previously boasted combat lasers will be fitted to fighters planes by 2020.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, is on track to demonstrate a working laser weapon on a fighter jet by 2020, it has revealed.

'It really is a national tipping point,' Kelly Hammett, chief engineer for the AFRL's directed energy directorate, told CNN.

Initial trials of laser weapon revealed 'unprecedented power' of system, and it will now be tested against live targets at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this year (artist's impression shown)

SHIELDS UP! The AFRL is also working on a defensive laser shield. A 360-degree laser 'bubble' would surround a U.S. warplane. That bubble would disable or destroy anything that comes inside, like a missile or another aircraft. To invent such a shield, you'd need a turret that doesn't interfere with the aerodynamics of the warplane. A turret like that has already been successfully tested in partnership with Lockheed Martin and DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Advertisement

'We see the technology evolving and maturing to the stage where it really can be used.'

The military hopes that the new generation of weapons could lead to radical changes in the way wars are fought, with planes having unlimited ammunition - as long as they have enough power.

'You could have an unlimited magazine ... loitering aircraft that could address and access a wide variety of targets, Hammett said.

'I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,' Air Force General Hawk Carlisle has claimed at the Air Force Association Air & Space conference in a presentation on what he called Fifth-Generation Warfare, according to Ars Technica.

The weapons are expected to be used to shoot down drones.

'That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.'

The US Navy has already deployed a laser weapon at sea aboard the USS Ponce, capable of a range of attacks against small boats, drones, and light aircraft posing a threat, by blinding sensors or operators or heating elements to make them fail or explode.

Other laser weapons are also being tested by the Office of Naval Research for use on helicopters to protect against man-portable anti aircraft missiles.

Directed-energy weapons pods could be affixed to aircraft to destroy or disable incoming missiles, drones, and even enemy aircraft at a much lower 'cost per shot' than missiles or even guns, Carlisle suggested.

The front runner for the Air Force system is believed to be called the High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), and will create a laser small enough to be mounted on a plane, and is expected to be ready for use by 2020.

General Atomics, the firm making, it, has revealed a full scale system is already under construction following tests.

The AFRL is also working on a defensive laser shield.

A 360-degree laser 'bubble' would surround a U.S. warplane.

That bubble would disable or destroy anything that comes inside, like a missile or another aircraft.

To invent such a shield, you'd need a turret that doesn't interfere with the aerodynamics of the warplane.

A turret like that has already been successfully tested under Hammett at AFRL in partnership with Lockheed Martin and DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

'It's a huge deal,' Hammett said.

Earlier this year the US Military Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has revealed it has just completed the first tests of the system that could eventually see laser weapons added to drones and fighter jets.

They say the weapons shows 'unprecedented power' and are about to begin testing it against live targets on firing ranges.

'The goal of the HELLADS program is to develop a 150 kilowatt (kW) laser weapon system that is ten times smaller and lighter than current lasers of similar power, enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats,' Darpa says.

White Sands Missile range, where the HELLADS laser system is set for field testing this summer.

The laser was developed by DARPA performer General Atomics

It said the secretive trials 'demonstrated sufficient laser power and beam quality to advance to a series of field tests.
CARSON CITY  Two of Nevadas pioneer families  the Currys of Carson City and the Mayers of Elko County  are the subject of the first in a new exhibition series at the Nevada Historical Society.

Nevada Families in Focus will debut with a reception from 4-7 p.m. on April 1 with The Currys and the Mayers. The reception is free to NHS members and $5 for non-members. Admission is free for children 17 and younger.

The exhibit includes photographs, documents and artifacts, which combine to tell the stories of these families, how they came to settle in western and eastern Nevada and their contributions to the development of the state.

The Mayer family moved to Fort Halleck, Elko County, in the early 1870s from Missouri. Once the fort was abandoned in the mid-1880s, the family moved to the town of Elko where Charles Mayer operated the Depot Hotel and Mayer Hotel.

Abe Curry is often referred to as the father of Carson City for his role in the citys development and growth from its founding in 1858 to his death in 1873.

The exhibit follows the two families around the mid-19th century, and uses their photographs and artifacts to show who they were, how they came to Nevada, and what they did once they arrived. Photographs are a key component of the exhibit, as the photos within the collections allow us to see the not only the growth of the two families, but also the growth of early photographic processes from daguerreotypes to the more familiar paper-based prints.

The Nevada Families in Focus Series will alternate between families from Nevadas past and present to examine how these families help shape our sense of individuality, community and cultural heritage.

The Nevada Historical Society is located at 1650 N. Virginia St., in Reno. For details, call 775-688-1190.
Little by little, the chimpanzees of Ngogo have slaughtered their way to the top.

With a community of more than 200 members, the Ngogo chimps in the Ugandan rainforest are said to be the most brutal troop in the world, often waging violent attacks on neighbouring tribes to expand their territory.

A new Discovery documentary has provided a captivating glimpse into the lives of these warrior apes, following the group for 23 years to reveal their human-like complexity as the chimps hunt, fight, and support each other.

In one shocking clip, several chimps can be seen cooperating to take down a monkey  and later dividing the kill amongst themselves.

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A new Discovery documentary has provided a glimpse into the lives of these warrior apes, following the group for 23 years to reveal their human-like complexity as the chimps hunt, fight, and support each other. One of the chimps is pictured after killing a monkey

Researchers have observed the chimps at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda for decades, watching as theyve grown from a population of 142 in 1996, to more than 200 today.

Even 20 years ago, their numbers were far more than the largest previously known community anywhere, David Watts, co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, explains in the video.

While it was once thought that chimps may only resort to hunting when theyre hungry  if there isnt enough fruit around  the observations revealed that the truth is exactly the opposite.

Disturbing footage shows several males hunting a monkey, cooperating to corner it up in a tree and grab it from behind. Each took an arm or a leg, and they literally started drawing and quartering this monkey [as if to say] Heres a leg  its yours, Watts says in the documentary.

Disturbing footage shows several males hunting a monkey, cooperating to corner it up in a tree and grab it from behind.

And, once theyd captured and killed their prey, the chimpanzees divvied up the meal.

Each took an arm or a leg, and they literally started drawing and quartering this monkey [as if to say] Heres a leg  its yours, Watts says in the documentary.

Another shocking clip shows the chimps ganging up on a member of their own group, beating and kicking him.

Despite their often brutal nature, the Ngogo chimps were also found to show a much gentler side. Two in particular, named Hare and Ellington, were often seen spending time together

THE NGOGO CHIMPS The chimps at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda are the largest known chimpanzee community. In 1996, researchers estimated the population to be about 142 members. Now, the group has grown to 204, and vastly increased their territory. Over the course of 10 years they had killed so many members from that neighbouring community that they had reduced the coalitionary strength of that neighbouring group to an extent where our chimps could simply move in,' one of the researchers explained in the documentary. With a community of more than 200 members, the Ngogo chimps in the Ugandan rainforest are said to be the most brutal troop in the world, often waging violent attacks on neighbouring tribes to expand their territory Advertisement

But, the victim eventually escapes the attack, retreating into a tree.

Despite their often brutal nature, the Ngogo chimps were also found to show a much gentler side.

Two in particular, named Hare and Ellington, were often seen spending time together.

Researchers have observed the chimps at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda for decades, watching as theyve grown from a population of 142 in 1996, to more than 200 today

The fact that these killers can also be very peaceful very tranquil, very cooperative  I think it just shows how complex these animals are, and really how similar they are to humans, one of the researchers notes in the documentary.

And, when Ellington eventually died, the researchers observed changes in Hare that suggested he was depressed, as he ceased to be one of the groups more social members, and could often be seen searching for his longtime friend.
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Lockheed Martin has revealed a plan to send humans on a three-year trip around Mars.

At the National Space Club Florida Committees meeting this week, former NASA space shuttle pilot Tony Antonelli said the concept of a Mars base camp could be achieved as soon as 2028.

According to Antonelli, the firm is not waiting for some kind of magic to reach the goal  instead, the craft would rely on existing technology, putting Orion deep-space capsules on either end of the outpost to carry six astronauts around the red planet.

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According to Antonelli, the firm is not waiting for some kind of magic to reach the goal  instead, the craft would rely on existing technology, putting Orion deep-space capsules on either end of the outpost to carry six astronauts around the red planet

HOW MARS BASE CAMP WILL WORK The concept is to transport astronauts from Earth to a Mars-orbiting science laboratory. There, they will perform real-time scientific exploration. They will also analyse Martian rock and soil samples, and confirm the ideal place to land humans on the surface. The major components of the architecture will be launched separately. Some are pre-positioned in Mars orbit ahead of time. Others are assembled in in space for the journey to Mars. Six astronauts will launch on Orion, which serves as the heart of the Mars Base Camp interplanetary ship. Advertisement

This is all doable in the next 10 to 12 years, Antonelli said at the meeting, according to Florida Today.

All that we have to do is decide that were going to go collectively, together  government, industry, international participation.

This is a mission for citizens of Earth, and theres a role for everyone to play.

It comes as NASA continues to investigate a request from Donald Trump's administration to asses the feasibility of sending a crew around the moon with the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft.

Lockheed Martin first revealed they were joining the space race to Mars back in May, at the 'Humans to Mars' summit in Washington.

The firm said astronauts orbiting the red planet could perform real-time scientific exploration.

They will analyse Martian rock and soil samples, and confirm the ideal place to land humans on the surface.

Nasa wants to get to Mars in the 2030s, and Lockheed Martin hopes to convince the space agency that an orbiting outpost several years earlier is the way forward.

'Nasa has [orbiting Mars] in their plan,' Lockheed Martin's chief technologist for civil space exploration Tony Antonelli told Popular Science at the time.

'And we're colouring in the detailsAll of these pieces exist today, they're not brand new.

'We're taking advantage of what we've already got.'

Lockheed Martin will use Orion as the mission's command-and-control center, equipped with technologies to help astronauts remotely explore Mars and survive 1,000 days.

Lockheed is also developing space habitats based on Nasa's current designs which would provide both a living space and work space for astronauts.

The plans were revealed at the Humans to Mars summit in Washington last week. The firm wants to get astronauts orbiting the red planet to perform real-time scientific exploration. They also analyse Martian rock and soil samples, and confirm the ideal place to land humans on the surface

'Basically, the habitat would be located just far enough away that astronauts couldn't easily turn around and come home when problems arise,' Bill Pratt, Lockeed's program manager for habitat study said on the company's website.

'That really forces us to operate in a different mindset that's more akin to a long trip to Mars.'

The habitat will use solar electric propulsion based on technology already in place on satellites.

The spacecraft will launch in 2018 without a crew, and this will be followed by a manned mission 5 years later

TRUMP'S MANNED MOON MISSION NASA continues to investigate a request from Donald Trump's administration to asses the feasibility of sending a crew around the moon with the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft Just last week, NASAs top staff was given instructions to assess the feasibility of sending humans to space with the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The mission was originally designed to be uncrewed, and was set to launch in 2018. In a press conference, officials leading the study revealed the evaluations are now well underway, and theyve already created a 'hard, crisp list' of everything that will need to change from a hardware standpoint in order to add crew. But, so far, the team says theyre sticking to their baseline plan for EM-1, and will let the let the data drive any decisions moving forward. It will see Nasa's Orion, stacked on a Space Launch System rocket capable of lifting 70 metric tons will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in November 2018. The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles). The mission will last 22 days and was originally designed to test system readiness for future crewed operations. Advertisement

'This advanced propulsion will pre-position key supplies in Mars orbit,' Lockheed Martin writes.

The spacecraft will launch in 2018 without a crew, and this will be followed by a manned mission five years later.

As well as Nasa and Lockheed Martin, the military-led China National Space Administration (CNSA) has their eyes on Mars.

Wu Weiren, Head Designer of CNSA Lunar and Mars Mission told the BBC that CNSA's goal is to reach Mars by 2021

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, believes it may be possible to send the first humans to Mars within the next 10 to 15 years.

He believes such a mission may be important to help ensure the long term survival of mankind.
St Patrick's Day has rolled around again for another year.

And for many, that means green costumes, group revelry and copious amounts of alcohol.

One image here, jokingly captioned 'Irish Yoga', shows three women supposedly passed out in an array of acrobatic poses, the floor around them strewn with empty bottles.

Another, snapped in the Irish town of Sligo, presents a St Patrick's Day parade that has ground to a halt after the 'breakdown assistance float' itself broke down - irony at its finest.

Over in the US, where St Patrick's Day is hugely popular all over the country, an image shows a frankly astonishing number of beer kegs being delivered to a single bar in Minneapolis ahead of the celebrations.

As for the aftermath, one sign outside an Irish business said it all with the notice: 'CLOSED TODAY LADS. I'm in bits from last night. Not able. Open tomorrow, Mick.'

This image, jokingly captioned 'Irish Yoga', shows three women supposedly passed out in an array of acrobatic poses, the floor around them strewn with empty bottles

This one, which appears to capture a gaggle of pub-goers demonstrating a carefree attitude towards a flood, was captioned: 'The Irish - never too busy for a quick pint'

This admirably honest sign was apparently spotted in an Irish business's window the morning after St Patrick's Day

The owner who shared this snap explained of it: 'Wally and Uma are celebrating St Patrick's Day. They look like they need a drink'

Pictured (left) an American pays tribute and (right) a bartender at the only bar near a St Patrick's Day parade - which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant

In Ireland, a hangover is sometimes referred to as a bout of the 'Irish flu' - and here is your medicine

This snap, taken in America, was captioned: 'What a St Patrick's Day bartender looks like when her 12-hour shift at the only Irish pub in town finally ends'

The grinning man who shared this image captioned it: 'This is a photo of me on St Patrick's Day. It has not been Photoshopped or altered in any way'

It takes a few rounds to crack this so to save you the trouble, the phrase it sounds like is: 'well I'll be f*****d'

In the Irish town of Sligo, a parade ground to a halt when the 'breakdown assistance float' broke down itself - irony at its finest

According to the uploader, this was the number of beer kegs delivered to a single bar in Minneapolis ahead of St Patrick's Day celebrations

St Patrick's Day may be a huge event in America, but in Ireland it can be a much more standard affair - or so this meme suggests

This uploader captioned their snap, taken in an Applebee's restaurant in America: 'Grandma will never lose her Irish side - drinks all around!'

A fluffy cat, dressed up to the nines, who according to its owner had 'too much to drink on St Catty's Day'

An example of a reveller who took his celebrations very seriously indeed, and ended up unconscious
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If you suffer from car sickness then these mind-bending photos of roads and tracks might not be for you.

Turkish artist Aydn Buyuktas travelled around 10,000 miles across America taking photographs of unique thoroughfares before editing the images to give them a stomach-churning effect.

One particularity dizzying image captures a bridge over a river in Texas. It gives the feeling of being at the top of a rollercoaster before a high-speed plummet down.

Another shows a desert road in Arizona, with the red-hot tarmac cracked from the sun.

Buyuktas took the quirky shots from the air using a drone. He told MailOnline Travel that he spent two months planning for his epic photography trip, using Google Earth to scout for spots.

Buyuktas, who has more than 32,000 followers on Instagram and 9,000 likes on Facebook, says that the actual inspiration for the photography style came from the 1884 satirical novel Flatland, which describes Earth as a two-dimensional planet made up of geometric figures.

Pulling into the station: If you suffer from car sickness then these mind-bending photos of roads and tracks might not be for you. This image shows train tracks and motionless carriages in Texas

Turkish artist Aydn Buyuktas travelled around 10,000 miles across America taking photographs of unique thoroughfares before editing the images to give them a stomach-churning effect (left, a desert track in Arizona, right, a bridge in Texas)

Painstaking work: Each of the incredible images took months of planning using a 3D software programme to work out how to make the landscape curve smoothly (above, an interstate road in Texas)

Step-by-step process: The shots were later digitally stitched together after being taken at different angles and altitudes with a drone. Pictured left is a cemetery in Texas and right, a flower nursery under the Texan sun

Mapping it all out: Buyuktas told MailOnline Travel that he spent two months planning for his epic photography trip using Google Earth to scout for spots. Left is a manicured farm in Texas and right, a dead end track in Arizona

Man of the moment: The artist boasts more than 32,000 followers on Instagram and 9,000 likes on Facebook. On the left, cows star in this shot in Texas. Abandoned cars fill the camera lens in New Mexico in the image on the right

Dream-like: The stunning shots look like they have been taken from Christopher Nolan's 2010 film, Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (above, an empty car park in California)

Natural wonders: The photographer travelled through a mix of stunning terrains on his trip. Left is a mine in Arizona and on the right, giant craters in the same state

What a sport: These shots capture an American football pitch in San Angelo, Texas (left, and a baseball field (right)
While a fear of flying is reasonably common, for many it only lingers during take-off, landing and turbulence.

But for a staggering four in ten nervous British fliers their phobia is so severe that it prevents them from taking exotic holidays altogether, new research has revealed.

While aviophobics have admitted missing out on significant life events that involved long haul flights, of those who were able to board a plane 38 per cent said they felt safest on a British Airways aircraft.

One in six nervous fliers have missed out on visiting friends and family overseas, the YouGov Omnibus study found

The data, looking into the attitudes of aviophobics, by YouGov Field & Tab, revealed that 41 per cent of nervous fliers couldnt take long-haul flights.

For people who rate their phobia as severe 60 per cent cannot take long-haul trips and for those who say its moderate, 23 per cent are also too terrified to book exotic vacations.

One in six nervous fliers have missed out on visiting friends and family overseas, the YouGov Omnibus study found.

For fliers with a severe anxiety the number rises to 28 per cent and of all nervous fliers seven per cent have missed an overseas wedding due to their phobia.

To collate the date YouGov researched the attitudes and behaviours of 500 nervous fliers from across the UK, over the age of 18 years old

Over half (57 per cent) of twitchy passengers try to conquer their fear by getting on a plane despite their anxiety. Of those with a severe fear, 39 per cent also bravely apply this strategy.

And among those who force themselves to confront their fear, four in ten (38 per cent) claim they feel safest on a British Airways aircraft, ahead of Virgin Atlantic (24 per cent) and Emirates (16 per cent).

However, for 43 per cent of worried travellers the simplest option is to avoid planes completely, this figure rises to 61 per cent among those with the most crippling fear.

Among those who force themselves to confront their fear, four in ten (38 per cent) claim they feel safest with British Airways

The majority (63 per cent) of anxious British travellers indulge their wanderlust with staycations in the UK or head to Europe without the need to board a plane.

In a bid to still take long haul trips though, 25 per cent of nervous holidaymakers opt for other modes of transport such as a boat.

Lauren Nasiroglu, Director of YouGovs research, said: Fear of flying can have a deep emotional effect on sufferers as well as a knock-on impact on friends and family.

Not only are those scared of flying losing out on new experiences abroad, but they are missing out on seeing friends and family as well as important events including weddings.

'Although many with a moderate fear do still travel, airlines and travel operators need to be aware of this significant group of travellers and make sure they know they are being catered to.

According to the study, one in six Britons suffer from aviophobia.
In December, she shared a close up photo to Instagram of her son Anaca while she breast fed him.

And three months later, Candice Swanepoel took a break from her high fashion shoot for Vogue Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to nurse her five-month-old son.

The 28-year-old model showed off her tanned legs while dressed in a black mini dress, which featured textured white sleeves.

A beautiful moment: Candice Swanepoel took a break from her high fashion shoot for Vogue Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to feed her five-month-old son Anaca

The South African-born cat walker lovingly cradled her son in her arms at the shoot, which took place earlier this month.

Candice wowed in the form fitting look - which she wore with matching black gloves.

The beautiful model wore her long blonde locks loose and sleek while taking a seat on a lounge chair at the Fasano Hotel pool.

The new mom kept her makeup to a minimum, opting for pink lips and a touch of eye shadow.

Doting mom: The 28-year-old model showed off her tanned legs while dressed in a black mini dress, which featured textured white sleeves

Absolutely glowing: Candice, who lovingly cradled her baby, wowed in the form fitting look - which she wore with matching black gloves

Natural beauty: The beautiful model wore her long blonde locks loose and sleek

Candice was later seen enjoying an outdoor shower next to the hotel pool.

The Victoria's Secret Angel held a towel around her body as she rinsed off her golden tresses.

While at the shoot, the stunner shared a snap with photographer Mert Alas; she added: 'Back at it with the best.'

Good looking family: Candice held her son in her arms as she took break from the shoot

So sweet: The cover girl showed off her long legs in the fitted look while on the set of her shoot

Relaxing: Candice was later seen enjoying an outdoor shower next to the hotel pool

On Wednesday, Candice stepped out in snowy New York City with her son, who was bundled up in a onesie.

The beauty wrote: 'Snow and bear snuggles.'

The blonde beauty welcomed Anaca on October 5, 2016 with her longtime partner Hermann Nicoli.

What a beauty: The Victoria's Secret Angel held a towel around her body as she rinsed off her golden tresses

Strike a pose: While at the shoot, the stunner shared a snap with photographer Mert Alas; she added: 'Back at it with the best'

Staying warm: On Wednesday, Candice stepped out in snowy New York City with her son, who was bundled up in a onesie

Candice and Hermann, a Brazilian model, began dating when she was only 17 years old; the duo announced their engagement in August 2015.

In December, she shared a close up photo of her breast as she nursed her son.

The veteran model penned a lengthy caption about openly breast feeding alongside the snap; she wrote: 'Many women are shamed for breastfeeding in public, or even kicked out of public places for feeding their children.'

Adding: 'I have been made to feel the need to cover up and somewhat shy to feed my baby in public places but strangely feel nothing for the topless editorials I've done in the name of art..?'

So in love: The blonde beauty welcomed Anaca on October 5, 2016 with her longtime partner Hermann Nicoli
She spent time with her new beau, Jack Donnelly just days earlier in Puerto Rico as the couple made their public debut.

But Malin Akerman spent Thursday with another special man in her life as she stepped out with son Sebastian, aged three, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The 38-year-old Billions star went boho chic in light wash bell bottoms and a black fringed shawl.

Hot mama! Malin Akerman stepped out with son Sebastian, aged three, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles on Thursday

The blonde beauty teamed her figure-hugging denims with a lavender buttoned-down shirt.

She stepped out in black leather boots which contributed extra height to her 5ft 8in statuesque frame.

Malin slung a small brown leather messenger purse across her chest, adding a touch of retro vibes to her ensemble.

The Watchmen actress swept her platinum tresses back in a low bun and opted for minimal make-up, highlighting her natural beauty and flawless complexion.

Boho babe! The 38-year-old Billions star went hippie chic in light wash bell bottoms and a black fringed shawl

Little Sebastian - who turns four next month - looked adorable in a blue and white starry hat which covered his curly mane, camouflage pants and Vans slip-ons.

The Wanderlust stunner shares her only child with ex Roberto Zincone, with whom she ended her six-year marriage to in 2013.

Meanwhile, Malin and the British actor went public with their new romance as they were spotted together Friday at an event celebrating Ariana Rockefeller's collection of handbags.

The pair also were spotted kissing while in Puerto Rico, according to an article Monday by People.

'They are together': The Swedish-born beauty was spotted just days after making her public debut with new beau, Jack Donnelly

'They are together and really happy in one another's company,' an insider told the magazine.

However in January 2016, Malin opened up to the publication about her split from Zincone, one year after their split, saying: 'It was jarring at first.'

'You cant control life. I roll with the punches and ultimately its like, "Where is the opportunity in this?" ' the mother-of-one continued.

'Really happy': Malin and the British actor went public with their new romance as they were spotted together in Puerto Rico on Friday at an event celebrating Ariana Rockefeller's collection of handbags

Malin added: 'And thats been a nice way to look at it. Like, oh my God, I get to have so much special time with my son now.'

'Its hard because your heart is so full for your child, the next guy that comes along is going to have a lot of competition!' she confessed.

The award-winning actress currently stars in the Showtime hit series Billions as Lara Axelrod, the wife of an ambitious hedge fund king, Bobby Axelrod, played by actor Damian Lewis.

Season two of Billions currently airs on Showtime Sunday nights.
She put on a sizzling display during her recent Icelandic getaway with fiance Alex Bowen.

And Olivia Buckland continued to hot things up on home turf as she arrived with her main man at the Britain's Next Top Model launch at the Village Underground in London on Thursday.

The Love Island star, 23, looked absolutely eye-catching in a floral satin blouse which was neatly tucked into a pair of skin-tight lined trousers.

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Glam arrival: Olivia Buckland continued to hot things up on home turf as she arrived with her fiance Alex Bowen to the Britain's Next Top Model launch at the Village Underground in London on Thursday

Olivia looked like the ultimate fashionista as she mixed prints - ensuring she would stand out from the sea of rising models.

The striking blouse skimmed her sensational curves and ample assets, while her three quarter length monochrome trousers flaunted her gym-honed pins.

The reality sensation ensured to boost her height in a pair of towering heels as she cosied up to her man who was clad in an all-black ensemble, topped off with a denim shirt.

Getting in on the modelling action herself, Olivia whole-heartedly worked her angles as she got comfortable against the wall and peered seductively over her shoulder.

Fashionista: The Love Island star, 23, looked absolutely eye-catching in a floral satin blouse which was neatly tucked into a pair of skin-tight linked trousers

Wow: Olivia looked like the ultimate style queen as she mixed prints - ensuring she would stand out from the sea of rising models

Trendy: The striking blouse skimmed her sensational curves and ample assets, while her three quarter length monochrome trousers flaunted her gym-honed pins

Olivia's blonde tresses were styled super straight and she opted for a glamorous coat of make-up, which included heavily smoked out eyes and deep pink coat of lipgloss.

A pair of black-rimmed specs added an element of geek chic to her ensemble.

The star looked in high spirits as she mingled at the event to launch the series of the new show, which is sponsored by sponsored by Colgate Max White, with the other glam guests, while also keeping her hunky inked other half close.

The beauty recently returned from a trip to Iceland where she lined her Instagram with a number of raunchy bikini snaps.

Alex and Olivia met 10 months ago on the 2016 series of Love Island, and swiftly became engaged in December during a romantic trip to New York City.

Sign her up! Getting in on the modelling action herself, Olivia whole-heartedly worked her angles as she got comfortable against the wall and peered seductively over her shoulder

Awesome twosome: The reality sensation ensured to boost her height in a pair of towering heels as she cosied up to her man who was clad in an all-black ensemble, topped off with a denim shirt

Stunning: Olivia's blonde tresses were styled super straight and she opted for a glamorous coat of make-up, which included heavily smoked out eyes and deep pink coat of lipgloss - Pictured with TOWIE's Jessica Wright

Recently speaking to new! magazine about whether she'd invite the Love Island girls to her hen do, Olivia said: 'Yeah, I've spoken to a few of them.

'I still speak to Cara quite a lot, so she's definitely going to be there. Yes. [She might be a bridesmaid]. We're still really close.'

Olivia then admitted that she and Alex do have plans for children - but are keen to spend time alone as a couple before adding to their brood.

She said to MailOnline: 'We have said we want kids eventually. We just want to enjoy our time together, we have a lot to do, experiences to have, holidays to take.

Having a blast: The star looked in high spirits as she mingled at the event with the other glam guests, while also keeping her hunky inked other half close

Sizzling star: The beauty recently returned from a trip to Iceland where she lined her Instagram with a number of raunchy bikini snaps

Love story: Alex and Olivia met 10 months ago on the 2016 series of Love Island, and swiftly became engaged in December during a romantic trip to New York City

'It will be nice but maybe not in the next seven years. I'm still a baby anyway. I would never let my kids watch Love Island! There's not as much controversy in sex on TV as there used to be. But I won't be showing my kids Love Island. Maybe keep it secret from them for quite a while.'

Meanwhile, BNTM judge Abbey Clancy pulled out all the stops during the launch in a semi-sheer floral applique gown.

The 11th series, set to debut on on Lifetime on March 16, sees Abbey teaming up with male model Paul Sculfor, fashion guru Hilary Alexander OBE and photographer to the stars Nicky Johnston.

It will see the latest batch of hopefuls endure a gruelling process of photo-shoots and tasks in the hopes of landing a top modelling contract.
She recently hinted at a romance with Spencer Matthews.

But Lydia Bright opted for best friend Jessica Wright to be her date on Thursday as they headed to the launch of Britain's Next Top Model in London.

Rivalling the contestants for the limelight, the TOWIE star, 27, looked sensational in a little black dress with a sheer bodice.

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Double trouble: Lydia Bright opted for best friend Jessica Wright to be her date on Thursday as they headed to the launch of Britain's Next Top Model in London

Flaunting her phenomenal figure, the gown featured a sheer panel across the bust which offered a look at her bra.

Cinching in at her tiny waist, the gown then flared out to full length, with more panels showing off her enviably toned legs.

Oozing glamour, the star wore her golden locks in a chic chignon bun with a fringe that frame her flawless features.

Model moment: Rivalling the contestants for the limelight, the TOWIE star, 27, looked sensational in a little black dress with a sheer bodice

Sheer delight! Flaunting her phenomenal figure, the gown featured a sheer panel across the bust which offered a look at her bra

Leggy lady! Cinching in at her tiny waist, the gown then flared out to full length, with more panels showing off her enviably toned legs

Blonde bombshell: Oozing glamour, the star wore her golden locks in a chic chignon bun with a fringe that frame her flawless features

Bit of all white! Jessica also looked incredible for the outing, complementing her hourglass curves with a crisp white blouse featuring billowing sleeves

Pretty in pink! She teamed the garment with baby pink trousers, whilst a pair of studded heels gave her frame some extra height

Jessica also looked incredible for the outing, complementing her hourglass curves with a crisp white blouse featuring billowing sleeves.

She teamed the garment with baby pink trousers, whilst a pair of studded heels gave her frame some extra height.

Jessica finished off the look by styling her glossy chestnut tresses in loose waves that cascaded past her shoulders.

Tress-ed to impress: Jessica finished off the look by styling her glossy chestnut tresses in loose waves that cascaded past her shoulders

Having a laugh: The pair shared a giggle as they made their way to the exclusive celebration

Holding it together: Jess ensured she was picture perfect as she walked past photographers

On the list: The pals were seen wearing silver wristbands, presumably for entrance to the event

Clutch: The pair toted eye-catching leather clutch bags as they made their way into the club

On the lash: The pair enhanced their looks with eyelash extensions and lashings of mascara

The pair's outing came after Lydia appeared to tease at romance with Spencer , as she cosied up to him for a congratulatory selfie after he reigned victorious on The Jump.

She took to Twitter to praise the Made In Chelsea star after his win - posing beside him on a bed and even giving him the affectionate nickname 'Puggles'.

Lying on a bed together, Lydia is seen cheekily pouting beside the 27-year-old while he appears to be fast asleep.

Call me maybe: As well as their clutch bags, the pals walked with their trusty phones in hand

Busy: The pair enjoyed a busy night of partying as they visited a number of exclusive spots

Tall: The glam ladies stood tall in their fancy heels as they enjoyed their night of revelry

Model behaviour: Inside the bash, the posed for a snapshot with BNTM judge Paul Sculfor

New couple? The outing came after Lydia appeared to tease at romance with Spencer Matthew as she cosied up to him for a congratulatory selfie after he reigned victorious on The Jump

Clearly proud of the hunk, who she formed a close friendship with on the Channel 4 reality show, the blonde beauty wrote sweetly beside the snap: 'Well done Puggles @SpencerMatthews so very happy for you. I hope to see you this drunk tonight!'

Lydia has previously dismissed any chances of a dalliance with Spencer - admitting that the pair are more like siblings than lovers.

Also spotted out and about in London last night was one of Lydia's closest friends and former cast mates, Danni Park-Dempsey.

On to the next one: Later that night, Lydia was seen across town making her way into DSTRKT

Chilly: She appeared to be unfazed by the chilly night air as she enjoyed her night of clubbing

Out and about: Also spotted out and about in London last night was one of Lydia's closest friends and former cast mates, Danni Park-Dempsey
She deliberately gained 35 pounds for her role in Jason Reitman's upcoming comedy Tully.

But Charlize Theron presented a slimmer figure while running errands in Hollywood on Thursday with her kids, Jackson and August.

The 41-year-old star was beaming as she showcased her slender pins in a pair of distressed jeans.

Slender star: Charlize Theron presented a slimmer figure on Thursday after gaining 35 pounds for her upcoming comedy Tully

The Academy Award-winning actress teamed the cuffed denims with a grey top which included a white sheer back, revealing a lace camisole beneath.

She stepped out in white sneakers which rounded out the Mad Max: Fury Road star's laid-back look.

Charlize shielded her emerald green eyes from the southern California rays in a pair of dark movie star shades.

The South African stunner portrays mother-of-three Marlo in the movie, and is gifted a night nanny named Tully - played by Mackenzie Davis - from her brother.

She's got great jeans! The 41-year-old star showcased her slender pins in a pair of distressed denims while running errands in Hollywood

Mom on the run: The Academy Award-winning actress was spotted during her afternoon outing with her kids, Jackson and August

The pair forge a unique bond as the unpredictable and sometimes challenging Tully helps Marlo regain control of her life.

She also stars alongside Ron Livingston and Mark Duplass in the film which is due in theaters later this year.

Charlize, a known method actor, previously gained 30 pounds for the 2003 film Monster, in which she portrayed serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

Sheer beauty! The Mad Max: Fury Road star teamed her skinny jeans with a grey top that included white see-through back

Her dramatic transformation and stunning performance led her to win 17 awards for the role, including the 2004 Academy Award for Best Actress.

In April 2016, she told British GQ that beauty can work against an actress when it comes to landing strong roles.

'Jobs with real gravitas go to people that are physically right for them and thats the end of the story,' she said.

'How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, f***ing, gown-wearing eight-foot model? When meaty roles come through, Ive been in the room and pretty people get turned away first.'
ELKO  A master plan needed to launch enhanced 911 was approved Thursday, a day after the county received a $10,000 donation to top the estimated $200,000 start-up cost.

The Elko County Enhanced 911 Board approved its five-year master plan and will send it to the commissioners for approval.

The board chairman, Elko Police Chief Ben Reed, presented the master plan. The plan is broken into steps to be taken each year, but the board intends for it to be a living document that will be refreshed or updated occasionally as progress moves forward.

Its a start, Reed said. I did notice one thing, when I went back through the statute, the state statute and also the county ordinance, directs us to put cost estimates for each step on the plan, which are not on here.

He said one of the reasons the cost estimate is not on the plan is because the board needs a consultant to help figure out what technology is needed to upgrade the system. Reed proposed adding the estimate for the consultant of $30,000 to $50,000 when it is sent to the commissioners.

We need the first edition to the commissioners, he said. If they want to direct us to redraft it or start over or to add things or take things out, they will of course, but at least get it on their agenda.

Undersheriff Ron Supp agreed with Reed.

A lot of the things are in place locally here already, as far as the addressing and the mapping and all of those things, its just a matter of finding the right way to get them all into dispatch, he said.

Spring Creek Association President Jessie Bahr reiterated the plan needs to be revisited as steps are completed.

I think its basic, very basic, just to get us going so that we can implement that charge, she said.

The commissioners will review the plan during their April 5 meeting.

Donation Fund

Despite not being able to collect the surcharge yet, the county wont start at zero when it starts to upgrade the system. A donation from the employees of Kinross Gold Corp. put the enhanced 911 fund above the estimated $200,000 to improve the system.

Earlier in this program we donated $30,000 on behalf of our company, Christine Whetten the HR manager at Bald Mountain Mine, told county commissioners Wednesday. We went back and on behalf of our workforce, which is based out of Elko County and White Pine County, we wanted to donate an additional amount to get us to $200,000. So, on behalf of our employees wed like to donate an additional $10,000 to bring our total donation to $40,000 for this wonderful program.

The commissioners thanked the employees and the company for their help.

Including this money, direct donations to the County for E-911 fund totals $196,450, but that doesnt include individual donations the public made through an account at Nevada Bank and Trust. In January that account was at $9,782.50.

The county has estimated $200,000 was needed just for the initial setup of the enhanced 911 systems. The ongoing costs would be funded through a surcharge on phone bills that the commissioners approved in September. Residential and commercial telephones and cellphones will be charged 25 cents a month for each line, and each trunk line will be charged $2.50 a month. The estimated revenue would be $170,928 a year.

Before the surcharge can be collected, the county had to appoint an advisory board to watch over the implementation of the new system. This board, which meets every month, must develop a five-year plan.
Stephen Daldry, the award-winning film-maker behind Billy Elliot and The Crown, is to make a major movie about a teenage swimmer who fled war-torn Syria and competed in the Rio Games.

In 2015, Yusra Mardini, 18, and her sister Sarah left their home town and began a perilous journey that included their boat capsizing between Turkey and Greece. As the only swimmers, they saved fellow passengers.

In Rio last year, Yusra competed for the official refugee team in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.

Stephen Daldry is to make a major movie about Yusra Mardini, 18, who fled war-torn Syria and competed in the Rio Games. She competed for the official refugee team in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly

Daldry and Eric Fellner, co-chair of Working Title Films, are now looking for the right screenwriter.

Then they will begin the search for an actress to portray Yusra.

They have good form in finding young unknowns to take on star-making roles: Jamie Bell in Billy Elliot is one example.

Its rather important that we find someone who can act and swim, Daldry told me last night.

Daldry and Eric Fellner, co-chair of Working Title Films, will look for an actress who can act and swim to play Yusra (pictured)

He has been focused on several projects involving refugees.

In the autumn he will direct a National Theatre production about the Good Chance refugee theatre in Calais.

He wants people to be able to connect to these incredibly brave people.

Shes an amazing woman, Daldry added of Yusra, who now lives in Berlin. One story must speak for many, he said, while observing that people are often confused about the terms illegals, refugees and migrants.

What we do know is a catastrophic situation in their town made them flee war.

'They made an extraordinary journey across Europe, and the one skill she [Yusra] has  swimming  was what saved her life.

Fellner said he likes it when films humanise taboos: Refugees are normal people without homes. This is just a great story about a kid with an ambition, just like Billy Elliot. Fellner hopes to open the film next year.

Gary Barlow (right) and Tim Firth (left) are planning a new show called Paradise, which will be set on a cruise ship. The pair joined forces on sublime Olivier-nominated musical The Girls

Barlow books a trip to Paradise

Gary Barlow and Tim Firth  who joined forces on sublime Olivier-nominated musical The Girls  are planning a new show, this time set on a cruise ship.

The duo, whose leading ladies are appearing at the Phoenix Theatre, London, begin exploratory work on the new show, Paradise, in the autumn.

Its about cruise liners that sail to an island known as Paradise, but its really a walled off Disneyfied section of Haiti, packed with perfect beaches, hotels, and locals.

But visitors never see the real Haiti. Barlow and Firth will work with producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers.

Early next month, Barlow, Firth and The Girls company will record the shows cast album.

Theyll sing edited formats of the songs featured in the musical about members of a Yorkshire branch of the Womens Institute who raise funds for leukaemia research by posing nude for a calendar.

Dawn Hope (pictured) will join Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee and Tracie Bennett in a production of musical Follies, which will run at the National Theatre from August

Watch out for...

Dawn Hope who will join Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee and Tracie Bennett in director Dominic Cookes production of the Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman musical Follies, which will run at the National Theatre from August.

The shows about a reunion of former Follies performers who get together once more 30 years after the last show. Ms Hope, playing Stella Deems, will lead a big show-stopping number called Whos That Woman? which will be choreographed to perfection by Bill Deamer.

I remember seeing London-born Ms Hope kick up her heels way back in Aint Misbehavin and she sure knows how to dance!

F. Murray Abraham, who plays dastardly Dar Adal in C4s Homeland, joins Maggie Smith, Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Daniel Radcliffe, Lucian Msamati, Michael Gambon, Simon Callow and many others at a memorial gala for playwright Peter Shaffer in the Nationals Olivier Theatre on March 30 at 2pm.

The family is allowing some public tickets, limited to one pair per applicant. Contact ticketssirpetershaffermemorial@gmail.com stating your name and address.
Moral support came from some very familiar faces on Thursday evening as Laura Whitmore made her stage debut in new theatrical production Not Dead Enough.

Unwinding backstage at Richmond Theatre  the latest stop on its winding six month tour of the United Kingdom  the TV personality was happily reunited with Ore Oduba and Robert Rinder, her former co-stars on BBC talent show Strictly Come Dancing.

Looking typically stylish in a black vest top and ripped jeans, Laura, 31, beamed as she posed for photos with the assorted group of friends and colleagues.

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Centre of attention: Looking typically stylish in a black vest top and ripped jeans, Laura Whitmore beamed as she posed for photos backstage at Richmond Theatre following her appearance in touring play Not Dead Enough on Thursday evening

The Irish star added to her casual ensemble with a black tuxedo jacket, while on-trend ankle boots rounded things off.

Laura, who takes a prominent role as Cleo Moray in the new play from bestselling author Peter James, was later joined by leading man and on-stage love interest Shane Richie.

The former EastEnders star, 53, plays DS Roy Grace in the touring production, and he was in high spirits while rubbing shoulders with Laura following their latest performance.

In good company: the TV personality was happily reunited with Robert Rinder and Ore Oduba her former co-stars on BBC talent show Strictly Come Dancing

Moral support: The pair were on hand to watch Laura take to the stage in her new theatrical production

Taking it easy: Laura was unwinding backstage at the Richmond venue - the latest stop on its winding six month tour of the United Kingdom

Speaking to the Irish Independent about her feelings towards mortuary assistant Cleo, Laura said: 'Peter (James) has created a strong character in Cleo Morely and I can't wait to sink my teeth into the role.

'Before I trained in journalism, I studied drama and played some great roles. I have been waiting a long time to return to acting and for a great role like this to come along, so I can't wait to get on stage.'

Directed by Ian Talbot, Not Dead Enough finds Grace attempting to solve a perplexing murder while dealing with the disappearance of his own wife.

Co-stars: Laura, who takes a prominent role as Cleo Moray in the new play from bestselling author Peter James, was later joined by leading man and on-stage love interest Shane Richie

Say cheese: Robert Rinder, Laura Whitmore, Ore Oduba and wife Portia Oduba

Upbeat: Former EastEnders star Richie plays DS Roy Grace in the touring production, and he was in high spirits while rubbing shoulders with Laura following their latest performance

Chatting to Good Morning Britain presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid in January, Laura and Shane were quizzed about the play - but attention quickly shifted to their onstage kiss.

Discussing the romantic relationship between the two characters, Shane joked: 'I hate it. I have to kiss her, Im forced to kiss her!'

A giggling Laura was then asked if she switched career paths from TV presenter to actress in an attempt to lock lips with Shane.

'Thats pretty much it,' she quipped. 'Ive been auditioning for EastEnders and everything, and now finally I got cast with you.'
The Last Kingdom

Rating:

Harken to me and settle yourself down by the fireside, for here be tales of great deeds and mighty foes, that we should mutter mutter . . . TO THE NORTH!

The dialogue of The Last Kingdom (BBC2), the historical drama re-enacting Alfred the Greats war against the Vikings, is infectiously strange.

Part Shakespeare, part folk ballad and frequently inaudible, it is made all the more odd by the hodge-podge of accents its characters speak.

The dialogue of The Last Kingdom (pictured), the historical drama re-enacting Alfred the Greats war against the Vikings, is infectiously strange and is made all the more odd by the hodge-podge of accents

Hild the sword-wielding nun (Eva Birthistle) declaims Chaucerian English with the clipped tones of Cheltenham Ladies College. The Danish hordes prefer a rustic growl, as if the cast of the Archers had decided to go in for a spot of pillaging.

Best of all is the hero Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon) who veers from South African to Norse to Russian, often in the space of a line.

Hero Uhtred looks like Giant Haystacks and sounds like Greta Garbo. It becomes a caricature of bad swords-and-sorcery novels. The Last Kingdom is Game of Thrones wihtou the dragons or boobs

He looks like Giant Haystacks and sounds like Greta Garbo, as he reminds us of the events of the last series: Young Ragnor was my brother and Brida my friend, until my family were murdered by Kjartan the Cruel and his one-eyed son Sven.

Summarised like that, it becomes a caricature of bad swords-and-sorcery novels. In fact, The Last Kingdom is the fantasy epic Game Of Thrones without the dragons or the boobs, and clearly lacking sufficient candles.

Too many scenes feature characters whispering in dimly-lit dungeons, which is all very atmospheric but not much use if youre trying to work out whats going on.

Even the cast dont seem too sure, which is why they spend so much time explaining what they already know. King Alfred (David Dawson) gathered his advisors in a gloomy castle hall and announced, Wessex is safe! as if this was news.

And when Uhtred and his friends discovered a burning village, they needed to spell out what they saw: Smoke!

GANGLAND SLANG OF THE NIGHT Gangland slang of the night: Bank robber Cliff (Alun Armstrong) was plotting to steal a plum in Prime Suspect 1973 (ITV)  a cool 100,000. Pulling out a plum ... that beats Arfur Daleys old 500 monkeys and 25 ponies. Advertisement

The show does have great fight scenes, both hand-to-hand swordplay and epic battles.

If you enjoy a gory set-to, its worth sitting through all of the muffled exposition and half-lit plotting, just for the clang of steel.

All the budget has gone on the stunt scenes, though.

Their aftermath is unconvincing, the battlefield strewn with rubber heads and corpses soaked in ketchup.

What The Last Kingdom deserves is a cameo appearance from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Hes got the build, hes got the accent and with practice his stilted acting might just be wooden enough.

Smile! The Nation's Family Album

Rating:

We can all manage a bit of unconvincing acting, as the stiff grins and awkward poses of holiday photos proved in Smile! The Nations Family Album (BBC4).

This delightful browse through photograph collections treasured by ordinary families was a heart-warming pleasure.

One couple, John and Sandra, had taken 20,000 pictures documenting their love affair almost from the moment they met, when he was a biker and she was a dolly bird.

The books of palm-sized black-and-white snaps of their young family in the Sixties gave them a happiness that simply couldnt be beaten.

Smile! The Nation's Family Album, was a glorious visit to a world where the sun always shone and everyone looked happy. Pictured, mother Glenda, son Marc and nan Eileen

Every image was carefully dated and captioned, their own autobiography preserved in snapshots.

Another dad had taken a photo of his son every day, beginning the hour he was born. All 7,500 of them, up to the day the boy turned 21, flickered before our eyes.

Sometimes we needed more time to reflect on these pictures than this one-off documentary could provide.

But it was a glorious visit to a world where the sun always shone and everyone looked happy.
They're the Hollywood father-son duo who are often seen supporting each other.

And on Friday, Arnold and Patrick Schwarzenegger touched down in Melbourne just an hour apart, after hopping separate flights.

The former Californian Governor is Down Under to host his bodybuilding seminar The Arnold Classic this weekend, with son Patrick, 23, meeting up with him ahead of the fitness festival.

He's back! Arnold Schwarzenegger landed in Melbourne Friday morning, ahead of his appearance at the Arnold Classic this weekend

Like father like son: Patrick Schwarzenegger also jetted into Melbourne Friday, looking refreshed like his dad

Both men looked refreshed after their flights as they made their way through the airport and out into the autumn sun.

The 69-year-old actor arrived around 10am, sporting dark wash jeans, a navy polo shirt and tartan-style cobalt blazer.

Wearing sensible white sneakers, the Terminator star finished his look with a chunky silver watch and chain.

He stopped to speak to the media after his arrival and signed autographs for fans who ventured out to the airport to greet him.

Bodybuilder: The 69-year-old will speak at a health and fitness seminar Sunday about his legendary career as a bodybuilder

All smiles:Stopping to talk with the press, Arnold also signed autographs for fans who ventured out to the airport

Blink and you'll miss it: The Terminator star's show is sold out, with more than 70,000 people visiting the event in previous years

Meanwhile, Patrick opted for a more comfortable ensemble when he landed, emerging in dark sweatpants, grey shirt and black letter-man jacket.

He teamed this with red-and-black strapped sneakers and a grey cap, carrying another blue hat and patterned brown jacket with him.

The young model had a checked backpack slung over his shoulders and showed off his trademark brown locks under his hat.

Patrick also seemed to graciously stop and chat with the press, before going on to meet up with his dad.

The rising star has been following in his father's career footsteps, set to grace screen in his first leading role later this year in the romance Midnight Sun.

Following in his dad's footsteps: Patrick became an actor like his father, starring in his first leading role this year

Casual and comfortable: The 23-year-old emerged from the airport in dark sweatpants, grey shirt and black letter-man jacket.

The Arnold Classic is a health and fitness event which will take place this Sunday at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Now in its third year, the festival will run over the whole weekend, and will feature a bodybuilding show, exhibitors section and meet and greet.

A forum on the final day will reportedly see Arnold speaking about his legendary career, which has spanned the sport, film and political spheres, as well as his plans to help make the world a healthier place for future generations.

Crowds of more than 70,000 have graced the three day event in previous years, with similar numbers expected again.

Family: Despite Arnold divorcing Patrick's mum Maria Shriver, the pair have remained close
He's kept their romance largely under wraps.

But Jeremy Clarkson appeared to be ready to take the next step with girlfriend Lisa Hogan as they made their first public appearance together at the Roundhouse Gala at The Roundhouse in London on Thursday.

The Grand Tour host and 6ft 2in blonde beauty - who is the ex-wife of a playboy known as Baron Bonkers - put on a very cosy display as they posed for snaps, looking happily loved-up on the outing.

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Cute couple: Jeremy Clarkson appeared ready to take the next step with girlfriend Lisa Hogan as they made their first public appearance at the Roundhouse Gala in London on Thursday

Lisa looked effortlessly chic in a pair of black satin trousers that she teamed with a tailored blazer and grey fluted sleeve top, whilst Jeremy - who was divorced from his wife, Frances, in 2014, following 21 years of marriage - looked dapper in a fitted black suit.

Lisa is an Irish-born mother-of-three who separated from playboy Baron Steven Bentinck - known as Baron Bonkers - in 2005.

She was 'discovered' by John Cleese in the early 1990s when she was struggling to get a second-hand-clothes business off the ground.

He subsequently employed her as a researcher, became a close friend and even gave her a role in Fierce Creatures, his follow-up to A Fish Called Wanda.

Perfect pair: The Grand Tour host and 6ft 2in blonde beauty - who is the ex-wife of a playboy known as Baron Bonkers - put on a very cosy display as they posed for snaps

Jeremy and Lisa have kept their relationship low-key, but were spotted enjoying a romantic getaway in Barbados last month.

A passer-by told The Sunday Mirror, which reported they were dating: 'Jeremy looked very relaxed around Lisa, and they seemed very taken with each other.

'They were laughing and joking around like a new couple.'

Chirpy: It came as no surprise to see Ronnie Wood, 69, and wife Sally, 39, looked in good spirits as they let their hair down at the Roundhouse Gala at The Roundhouse in London on Thursday

They weren't the only happy couple in attendance as Ronnie Wood, 69, and wife Sally, 39, looked in good spirits as they let their hair down at the Gala.

Cuddling up close to each other, the pair put on a cosy display on the outing, where they were joined by Fearne Cotton, 35 - Ronnie's daughter-in-law.

Sally - who is an ambassador of the Roundhouse - looked sensational on the evening, showing off her svelte figure in a black floor length gown that clung to her slender curves.

Adorned with gold brocade print, the actress ensured she would have all eyes on her as she paraded across the hall.

Adding to the glamour, she styled her raven locks in retro Hollywood waves, whilst she painted her plump pout with a slick of red gloss.

Two's company: Sally posed for snaps with her daughter-in-law Fearne Cotton, 35

Cosy: Cuddling up close to each other, the pair put on a cosy display on the outing

Sheer delight: Sally looked sensational on the evening, showing off her svelte figure in a black floor length gown that clung to her slender curves

Ronnie also looked stylish on the evening, showcasing his usual flair for fashion in a silver suit.

Sally looked delighted to see her daughter-in-law Fearne at the event.

The radio presenter - who is married to Ronnie's son Jesse - looked incredible in a green lace co-ord that flattered her lithe frame.

Gorgeous: Adding to the glamour, she styled her raven locks in retro Hollywood waves, whilst she painted her plump pout with a slick of red gloss

Suited and booted: Ronnie also looked stylish on the evening, showcasing his usual flair for fashion in a silver suit

Fearne in ferns: Fearne - who is married to Ronnie's son Jesse - looked sensational in a co-ord adorned with leaf print that she teamed with red barely there heels

All eyes on her: Fearne turned heads as she took to the stage during the gala

All together now: Ronnie and Fearne were joined by Jeremy Clarkson, Karoline Copping and Jimmy Carr at the star-studded gala event

Loving life: The group were all smiles as they posed for snaps on the night

Terrific trio: The pair seemed delighted to be with Jeremy Clarkson

Loving it: The group were in great spirits on the outing

All smiles: The group kept laughing away on the night

With the charity being close to Sally's heart, the trio had no doubt splashed out on a Gold table for the night at a pricey 10,000.

Silver tables on the night - which did not include the perks of champagne and membership perks - cost 5,000, whilst seat prices began at 500.

During the night there was also an auction, with Ronnie appearing to sell off a guitar signed by the Rolling Stones.

Murder on the dancefloor: There were no false steps on the floor as Sally cosied up to Sophie Ellis-Bextor on the evening

Radiant: Sophie looked sensational in a canary yellow lace dress that cinched in at her slender waist

Cute couple: She cosied up to husband Richard Jones on the night

Sweet: The pair looked in good spirits on the night

The outing would have come as a well-deserved break from caring for their twins.

Ronnie has been doting over his ten-month-old girls Gracie Jane and Alice Rose, who he calls his 'little gorgeous dolly girls' since they were born last May.

They are his fifth and sixth children, but the first for theatre producer wife Sally.

Ronnie already has a son Jesse Wood, with his first wife and former model, Krissy Wood - with his firstborn now married to TV presenter Fearne Cotton.

He also has daughter Leah and son Tyrone from his second marriage, to Jo Wood, and Jamie, Jo's son from a previous marriage, whom Ronnie adopted.

Taking to the stage: Sally addressed the star-studded crowd at the event

Loving it: Barbara Windsor looked lovely in a floral shift dress at the event as she joined dapper Scott Mitchell at the party

Two of a kind: Camilla Kerslake (L) and Chris Robshaw looked in good spirits on the outing

Suited and booted: : Boris Becker payed homage to the 70s with a brown pinstripe suit

Perfect pair: Sadie Frost looked sensational in a satin emerald dress as she cuddled up to boyfriend Darren Strowger at yhe event

Two's company: Sadie posed for pictures with Frances Ruffelle on the night

Gorgeous in green: Sadie looked sensational in a satin green gown teamed with red heels

Sally first met Ronnie just over a decade ago, when she was working at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, but Ronnie was still married to his second wife, Jo, at the time.

He divorced Jo in 2008 and in 2011 they became involved - and tied the knot at the Dorchester Hotel in London that December after a whirlwind six month romance, with Rod Stewart acting as the best man.

Sally gave birth to twins Gracie Jane and Alice Rose - Ronnie's fifth and sixth children, but her first - in May.

To the stage: Jeremy Clarkson appeared behind the mic at the auction

Nostalgic: During the night there was also an auction, with Ronnie appearing to sell off a guitar signed by the Rolling Stones

Careful: The singer was careful to place the prized guitar back in its holdall

All together now: Martin Bayfield (L) and Boris Becker were in stitches on the stage

Getting down: Roger Daltrey put on quite the show at the gala

Jazzy: The star put on a very energetic display on the night

Loving it: Roger Daltrey and Wilko Johnson were in great spirits on the stage

They came under heavy criticism after announcing they were expecting twins at the end of last year, with some accusing the rocker of being selfish for becoming a father at 69.

But his third wife defended their decision, telling Hello! magazine: I do accept this is a shock to some people and ridiculous to others, but these children are loved.

There are other children being born to younger people who arent loved. Which do you prefer?

She also described her husband as 'eternally young' and admitted she's 'not blind' to his age.

Rock and roll: Ronnie took to the stage to perform some hits to the braying crowds

Pucker up! The star got affectionate on stage with Imelda May

It takes two: The pair enjoyed a duet as they took to the stage

He's still got it! The star put on a very energetic display on the outing

Cosy: Later in the night Ronnie posed for snaps with Imelda and Leah Wood

Carr-y on: Ronnie and Sally shared a table with comedian Jimmy Carr
She's an advocate for body confidence and isn't afraid to flaunt her incredible figure.

But Ashley James kept her hourglass curves under wraps as she headed to gal pal Pandora Christie's birthday celebrations in London on Thursday.

Opting for a low-key look, the former Made In Chelsea star, 29, was casual yet chic for her outing.

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Low-key: Ashley James kept her hourglass curves under wraps on Thursday as she headed to gal pal Pandora Christie's birthday celebrations in London

Concealing her ample bust, the DJ donned a baby pink jumper which she wore beneath a padded jacket.

She teamed the garment with distressed black skinny jeans and slipped her feet into chunky black boots.

Her golden locks were worn in a centre parting, whilst a neutral make-up palette accentuated her pretty features.

Blonde bombshell: Whilst Ashley opted for a low-key look on the night, she has never been afraid to don a daring ensemble; she accessorised with an Aspinal handbag

Pretty in pink: Concealing her ample bust, the DJ donned a baby pink jumper which she wore beneath a padded jacket

Ashley was joined on the night by her model friend Charlotte De Carle, who rocked a vintage vibe in double denim.

Injecting a splash of colour, the star donned an eye-catching lei around her neck as she headed into the bash.

Once inside, the pair were greeted by Pandora, who looked sensational in a mustard blouse and her own bright lei.

Jean-ius: Ashley was joined on the night by her model friend Charlotte De Carle, who rocked a vintage vibe in double denim

Natural beauty: Ashley's golden locks were worn in a centre parting, whilst a neutral make-up palette accentuated her pretty features

Whilst Ashley opted for a low-key look on the night, she has never been afraid to don a daring ensemble.

Having opened up about her previous personal battles with her appearance, Ashley is often promoting 'self-love' and encouraging others to be confident with the way they look.

The TV personality admits she has struggled with body dysmorphia in the past and it has taken her a 'long time' to feel comfortable in her own skin.

Terrific trio: Once inside, the pair were greeted by birthday girl Pandora, who looked sensational in a mustard blouse and a colourful lei necklace

Reflecting on her experiences, Ashley took to Instagram in just her lingerie to prove there is no such thing as a 'disgusting' body, only 'unflattering angles'.

Ashley's post featured a side-by-side comparison of lingerie selfies taken seconds apart; one that complemented her and another that she admits did no favours for her figure.

She wrote: 'We can all feel beautiful or ugly in photos depending on the right angles and lights, and these photos [were] taken 2 seconds apart.'
Julie Andrews isn't happy with President Donald Trump's disregard for the arts.

The 81-year-old entertainer and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton penned an opinion piece for CNN Thursday, stressing why it's important to keep artistic programs intact.

The Celebrity Apprentice host, in his new proposed budget for 2018 unveiled Wednesday, sought to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Legend: Julie Andrews, 81, penned an op-ed piece with her daughter opposing President Donald Trump's cut of two major artistic endowments. She appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last month

National treasure: The iconic entertainer was snapped last fall at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia

Brazen: Trump's 2018 budget plans call for a total elimination of the arts and humanities endowments

'This is mind-boggling to us, considering how much the arts benefit our lives and our world,' said Hamilton and Andrews, best known for cinematic classics such as 1964's Mary Poppins and 1965's The Sound of Music. 'The arts are fundamental to our common humanity. Every time we attend the theater, a museum or a concert, we are literally feeding our souls, and investing in and preserving our collective future.'

Hamilton and Andrews cited research that showed the beneficial effect the arts have on young people, communities and society, in general.

'They cultivate empathy and tolerance, by bridging cultural and socioeconomic divides,' they wrote. 'They're also good for business: They spur urban renewal, promote tourism and generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity annually.'

Classic: Andrews' legendary career included an Academy Award for Best Actress in Mary Poppins in 1965

Honored: The celebrated film also took home four other Oscars, in categories for editing, effects and music

Andrews and Hamilton said that 'with the shifting priorities of our new presidential administration, artists and arts organizations are at serious risk of losing the support they need to do their invaluable work,' with a 'disproportionate' amount coming from 'poor, inner-city and rural communities.'

Andrews, who appeared in 2001's The Princess Diaries in addition to its 2004 sequel, said she 'has witnessed the impact that arts education has for young people on an international basis' in her experience working with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Artists Committee for Americans for the Arts.

The hills are alive: Andrews played Maria in the 1965 film The Sound of Music

The mother-daughter duo said that 'it has never been more critical to advocate for and support the arts -- not just in our schools, but in our communities and our lives.'

They asked for 'every member of our society -- individuals, educators, administrators, business leaders' to let the politicians know how essential the arts are in our everyday lives.

In another presidential first, Trump is the only president to ever propose cutting off finances to the arts. Such endowments have been intact for more than 50 years, under legislation from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Other branches targeted by Trump in his new budget include the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and Housing and Urban Development.

Julies Greenroom, a family-oriented show hosted by Andrews that examines the arts, premieres Friday on Netflix.

Next up: Andrews will host a Netflix program named Julie's Greenroom that debuts Friday
Eva Mendes was back in the spotlight this week after taking time off to care for her young daughters Esmeralda and Amada.

The 43-year-old looked absolutely stunning as she modeled one of her own creations at the New York & Company store opening in Miami on Thursday.

Eva has been focused on motherhood for the last six months, staying home while husband Ryan Gosling, 36, has been busy with promotional duties for his Hollywood hit La La Land.

Amazing in aqua! Eva Mendes was back in the spotlight on Thursday as she promoted her fashion line at the opening of New York & Company store at Dadeland Mall in Miami

Grand opening: It's the first time the actress has attended an event in six months after focusing on motherhood and her two daughters with husband Ryan Gosling

On Thursday the actress helped promote her fashion line which is available at the Dadeland Mall in Miami.

The mother-of-two looked great in an aqua Alonza one-shoulder maxi dress, which retails at her store for $99.95.

She broke it up with a colourful belt, and finished off in an equally-striking pair of candy stripe heels.

The Place Beyond The Pines star accentuated her exquisite Latina features with dark eye-make-up, pink lip and a touch of blush.

Her magnificent curls meanwhile unfurled enough to show off her large gold hoop earrings.

Wow: The mother-of-two stunned in an aqua Alonza one-shoulder maxi dress, which retails at her store for $99.95

Style: She broke it up with a colourful belt, and finished off in an equally-striking pair of candy stripe heels

She and Ryan, who have been together since 2011, have two daughters: two-year-old Esmeralda, and 10-month-old Amada.

Eva chose not to attend any Oscars events so she could be at home with her children and recently revealed she's not a big fan of the glitzy events.

In an interview for April's Shape magazine, she explained: 'What people don't know about me is that I love being home. Instead of hitting the red carpet, I'd rather be with our girls.'

Mom of two: In April's edition of Shape, Eva talks about how she'd rather be at home with her daughters than on the red carpet

Beauty: The Place Beyond The Pines star accentuated her features with dark eye-make-up, pink lip and a touch of blush

Ryan went solo to all the major award shows this year, including the Academy Awards where his movie scooped five gongs for best actress, best director, best original music score, best cinematography and best production design.

Eva also talked about how it was tougher to shed the baby weight after her second child.

'In some ways, its been more challenging to get back in shape after my second daughter,' she said.

Spring has sprung: Eva's collection is seen in the window of the New York and Company store

Shades of blue: Turquoise is a key color in Eva's collection

'Yet its not as hard as I thought it would be, because Im always running around with the kids. I never sit downIm on the move all day.'

She has had to say goodbye to some nice treats, though.

'I dont keep junk food at home anymore, because Im trying to set a good example,' she added. 'So there are no more Krispy Kremes for me to grab.'

All smiles: Store employees got together for a photo as they modeled some of the designs
She shares her marital issues on reality show The Real Housewives Of Sydney.

And Lisa Oldfield, known not to bite her tongue when it comes to her apparent disdain for husband David Oldfield, fired another shot at him on Thursday night.

The 41-year-old took to her Instagram to share her love for the television show Vikings and at the same time threw a disrespectful jab at her husband of 16 years.

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Domestic bliss? Lisa Oldfield, known not to bite her tongue when it comes to her apparent disdain for husband David Oldfield, fired another shot at him on Thursday night

She uploaded a shirtless image of actor Clive Standen in his role as Rollo on the History Channel's popular series, Vikings.

'When you're dreaming of Rollo and you wake up to the nightmare of being married to David Oldfield,' the reality star wrote in the photo's caption.

She then added the hashtag '#irolloverforrollo'.

'When you're dreaming of Rollo and you wake up to the nightmare of being married to David Oldfield,' the reality star wrote in the photo's caption

Supporters flocked to the capture's comments section to share their reactions to the outspoken brunette's evident contempt for David.

One follower called her 'brutal' while another added she was 'savage'.

A fellow Vikings fan gushed: 'So true Rollo or Ragnar either one'.

'I love where we're living, I love my children, I love all my animals, I love my beautiful home... I just hate the mongrel that I'm living with' she said

During Sunday's episode of the Real Housewives Of Sydney, the married couple were filmed having an explosive fight which left Lisa in tears.

Afterwards she told friend and co-star Victoria Rees, 'I feel like I'm a failure as a mother and a wife'.

She continued: 'I love where we're living, I love my children, I love all my animals, I love my beautiful home... I just hate the mongrel that I'm living with.'
When boho meets baby things get very adorable very fast.

Ashlee Simpson and daughter Jagger could not have looked cuter as they ran errands around town.

The 32-year-old mom and her tot headed out in Los Angeles, California, on Thursday.

Team of two: Ashlee Simpson and daughter Jagger could not have looked cuter as they ran errands around Los Angeles on Thursday

The duo both wore denim looks with Ashlee wearing flared jeans with a black tank and a light floral print kimono.

The star finished off her look with a pair of simple flip flops and round sunglasses and wore her long blonde locks out and straight.

Jagger, 19 months, was dressed in a chambray dress with white embroidery on the sleeves and hem.

Making the look more rock 'n roll, the tot wore the dress with high top Vans sneakers.

Boho babe: The duo both wore denim looks with Ashlee wearing flared jeans with a black tank and a light floral print kimono

Later in the evening, Ashlee left Jagger with a sitter and had date night with husband Evan Ross.

The duo headed to Hollywood's hottest party on Thursday, the TAO, Beauty & Essex, Avenue and Luchini LA Grand Opening.

With some on New York's biggest hot spots all opening on the West Coast in unison it drew a who is who of celebrities but the couple only had eyes for each other.

Date night: Later in the evening, Ashlee left Jagger with a sitter and had date night with husband Evan Ross

Party time: The duo headed to Hollywood's hottest party on Thursday, the TAO, Beauty & Essex, Avenue and Luchini LA Grand Opening

Family time: Mom and daughter along with Evan went to Park City, Utah on the weekend

The couple and Jagger spent the weekend in Park City, Utah.

The family hit the slopes for the annual Operation Smile's Celebrity Ski & Smile Challenge.

Operation Smile works to provide cleft lip and palate repair surgeries to children all over the world.
ELKO  Communities In Schools of Northeastern Nevada received a $62,420 donation from the Newmont Legacy Fund, the annual employee giving campaign that has been conducted in the state for each of the last seven years by Newmont Mining Corp.

It is exciting to see the impact that Communities In Schools is making in our communities by helping our young people stay in school, graduate and succeed in life, said Nancy Ostler, executive director of Newmont Legacy Fund and external relations specialist for Newmont. "Through the Newmont Legacy Fund, Newmont and our employees are proud partners with Communities In Schools in providing the support necessary to empower our youth and to help build healthy communities across northern Nevada.

CIS of Northeastern Nevada is one of three regional centers operated by CIS of Nevada in the state. As affiliates of the nations most effective dropout prevention organization, CIS of Nevada provides students with whatever they need in their lives that will make them most successful in the classroom on their way to graduation.

Sometimes it can be as simple as a new backpack, a pair of shoes without holes, pencils, pens, food for the weekend  whatever it is we are able to provide for the students to give them every opportunity to focus in the classroom, we will, said Melissa Schultz, executive director of CIS of Northeastern Nevada. When you are talking about notebooks, apples or a new toothbrush as having the potential to change the course of a childs life, you can imagine how far a donation of this magnitude can go and what a difference it can make. We are so grateful for the generosity of Newmonts employees and their dedication to the success of our students and the future of our community.

During the most recent Legacy Fund campaign, nearly 75 percent of Newmonts Nevada employees pledged a combined $1.316 million, which will be deducted from their 2017 paychecks. With a dollar-for-dollar match from Newmont, the total donation, which will impact more than 200 nonprofit organizations across Northern Nevada in 2017, reached $2.62 million. The charity groups to which the donations are made are determined solely by the employees who chose to donate to the fund.

For information on CIS of Nevada and its mission, please visit www.cisnevada.org.
Her pneumatic charms attracted the attentions of Justin Bieber.

And Chantel Jeffries showcased her ample assets yet again as she attended a nightclub opening in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The beauty made sure she stole the show on a night she was playing a DJ set by wearing a racy bondage-esque leather bustier as she attended the unveiling of the latest branch of Tao.

Hell bent for leather: Chantel Jeffries wore a racy bustier to the opening of Tao LA on Thursday

The studded piece was the highlight of an outfit that featured a fishnet top, black silk trousers and high heels.

It certainly helped the 21-year-old stand on out a night when such big beasts of showbusiness as Katie Holmes and Hailey Baldwin were also in attendance.

But no doubt it was her work in the DJ booth that really impressed peers such as Serayah, Charlotte McKinney and Shaun Ross.

In addition to spinning the discs Chantel, who also works as a model, has also started her own make-up and jewellery line.

Dramatically pneumatic: She certainly made sure all eyes were on her on a star-studded night

True Belieber: Her ample charms won her the attentions of pop pixie Justin Bieber

A real handful: She adjusted herself as she prepared for yet more snaps to be taken

Natural beauty: Chantel's flawless complexion and features were a sight

The Instagram star first shot to fame in 2014 when she began dating pop star Justin Bieber.

She was famously with him in his rented Lamborghini at the time of his Miami arrest for DUI, drag racing and resisting arrest in January, 2014. They were believed to have briefly reunited this summer.

Despite the breakup, she has remained great pals with another one of his exes, Barbra Palvin.

The beauties were seen together at the same restaurant on a gal pals' night out in November.

Making it look easy: Chantel proved to be a dab hand at spinning discs and twiddling knobs

Turning heads: She was revelling on the attention as she lingered on the red carpet

Catch of the day: The attention-baiter won even more looks thanks to her netted top
Last week she was juggling feeding her infant son and posing for Vogue in Brazil.

So on Thursday it seems Candice Swanepoel took a well deserved afternoon off for some shopping with a friend.

The 28-year-old model also took the opportunity to showcase her amazingly svelte body during the outing.

Break time! On Thursday it seems Candice Swanepoel took a well deserved afternoon off for some shopping with a friend

The Victoria's Secret darling's epically long legs were on full display thanks to some very tight black leather trousers.

On top, she layered a black leather motorcycle jacket over several other black layers, including a zip up sweatshirt.

A pair of high heel, lace up boots added a few more inches to the stunner's 5ft9in frame.

Leggy lady! The Victoria's Secret darling's epically long legs were on full display thanks to some very tight black leather trousers

Keeping warm: While she did protect her eyes from a glaring sun with some mirrored aviators, the chilly temperatures still necessitated a grey knit beanie

Not so practical? Her high-heeled boots may not have been very useful for dealing with snowdrifts

While she did protect her eyes from a glaring sun with some mirrored aviators, the chilly temperatures still necessitated a grey knit beanie.

Of course her exquisite visage was glowing thanks to some light blush and pale rose lipstick.

Last week, Candice took a break from her high fashion shoot for Vogue Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to nurse her five-month-old son.

The blonde bombshell showed off her tanned legs while dressed in a black mini dress, which featured textured white sleeves.

A beautiful moment: Candice took a break from her high fashion shoot for Vogue Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to feed her five-month-old son Anaca

The South African-born cat walker lovingly cradled her son in her arms at the shoot, which took place earlier this month.

Candice wowed in the form fitting look - which she wore with matching black gloves.

The beautiful model wore her long blonde locks loose and sleek while taking a seat on a lounge chair at the Fasano Hotel pool.

The new mom kept her makeup to a minimum, opting for pink lips and a touch of eye shadow.

Doting mom: The 28-year-old model showed off her tanned legs while dressed in a black mini dress, which featured textured white sleeves

Absolutely glowing: Candice, who lovingly cradled her baby, wowed in the form fitting look - which she wore with matching black gloves

Natural beauty: The beautiful model wore her long blonde locks loose and sleek

Candice was later seen enjoying an outdoor shower next to the hotel pool.

The Victoria's Secret Angel held a towel around her body as she rinsed off her golden tresses.

While at the shoot, the stunner shared a snap with photographer Mert Alas; she added: 'Back at it with the best.'

Good looking family: Candice held her son in her arms as she took break from the shoot

So sweet: The cover girl showed off her long legs in the fitted look while on the set of her shoot

Relaxing: Candice was later seen enjoying an outdoor shower next to the hotel pool

On Wednesday, Candice stepped out in snowy New York City with her son, who was bundled up in a onesie.

The beauty wrote: 'Snow and bear snuggles.'

The blonde beauty welcomed Anaca on October 5, 2016 with her longtime partner Hermann Nicoli.

What a beauty: The Victoria's Secret Angel held a towel around her body as she rinsed off her golden tresses

Strike a pose: While at the shoot, the stunner shared a snap with photographer Mert Alas; she added: 'Back at it with the best'

Staying warm: On Wednesday, Candice stepped out in snowy New York City with her son, who was bundled up in a onesie

Candice and Hermann, a Brazilian model, began dating when she was only 17 years old; the duo announced their engagement in August 2015.

In December, she shared a close up photo of her breast as she nursed her son.

The veteran model penned a lengthy caption about openly breast feeding alongside the snap; she wrote: 'Many women are shamed for breastfeeding in public, or even kicked out of public places for feeding their children.'

Adding: 'I have been made to feel the need to cover up and somewhat shy to feed my baby in public places but strangely feel nothing for the topless editorials I've done in the name of art..?'

So in love: The blonde beauty welcomed Anaca on October 5, 2016 with her longtime partner Hermann Nicoli
She's the newly-single radio host who recently split from ex-NRL star Eric Grothe Jr.

But Sophie Monk looked more confident than ever this week as she stripped down to lacy lingerie for a pin-up inspired photo shoot.

The 37-year-old posed for the Wear Beautiful Campaign by Australian fashion label Homebodii, which encourages positive body image.

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Sexy and single! Radio personality Sophie Monk looked more confident than ever this week as she stripped down to lacy lingerie for a pin-up inspired photo shoot

The glamorous actress, who previously modelled for several lads' mags, looked sensational as she posed in several racy ensembles.

In one photo, the blonde sits at a make-up bench in a silk romper with lace trimming, as she delicately holds a glass of Champagne.

Sophie gives a luscious pout to the camera wearing light pink lipstick as she flirtatiously places her other hand on her neck.

Racy in lace! The glamorous actress, who previously modelled for several lads' mags, looked sensational as she posed in several racy ensembles

Her hair were styled in '50s inspired pink rollers, while the setting was feminine with a pink bouquet of flowers and a matching faux fur rug.

Her ample assets were also on full display as she relaxed on a nearby bed in another glamourous photo.

She flicked her hair over one shoulder while exposing her decolletage in the low-cut lace bodice, and accessorised with a pink material choker.

Hello, boys! Sophie's ample assets were also on full display as she relaxed on a nearby bed in another glamourous photo

Confident: She flicked her hair over one shoulder while exposing her decolletage in the low-cut lace bodice, and accessorised with a pink material choker

Her make-up was flawlessly applied as usual with a soft highlighter and blush on her cheeks and a neutral palette on her eyelids.

After recently splitting from her boyfriend, the Australia's Got Talent judge also shared advice on how to live life to the fullest, and deal with daily pressures.

'I believe in embracing our uniqueness, its what makes us attractive,' she said.

'In todays world its really important to encourage young women to love themselves, find an inner confidence and truly own who you are because ultimately you can only be yourself,' Sophie added.

Perfection: Her make-up was flawlessly applied as usual with a soft highlighter and blush on her cheeks and a neutral palette on her eyelids

Sophie was previously engaged to rock star Benji Madden and millionaire Jimmy Esebag, and also once dated Hollywood actor Sam Worthington.

And after several heartbreaks, the media personality recently confessed she is ready to settle down and have a baby of her own.

She told the Daily Telegraph that she wants to become a mother - but acknowledged that she needs to find a man first.
He recently finished a series of concerts in Australia for his Purpose World Tour, and will soon be flying to New Zealand.

And Justin Bieber has certainly had no shortage of female company during his busy few weeks Down Under.

On Friday, the 23-year-old stepped out for lunch in Mosman, Sydney and caught up with Australian model Bronte Blampied.

It is rumoured the pair had a brief 'fling' last year, around the time Justin was dating 18-year-old model Sofia Richie.

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Nice to see you! Australian model Bronte Blampeid (right) looked happy to see her rumoured ex-fling Justin Bieber (left) in her home country, as the pair caught up in Sydney on Friday

It is unknown if Bronte was invited to Justin's table at the restaurant or just happened to walk past at the right time.

It is understood the two have been close in the past, having spent time together last year in both Hawaii and London.

Bronte joined Justin on a Hawaiian holiday in August. It was there he infamously stripped down for a skinny dipping session with bikini model Sahara Ray.

What a coincidence! It is unknown if Bronte was invited to Justin's table at the restaurant in Mosman or just happened to walk past at the right time

Old flames? It is understood the two have been close in the past, having spent time together last year in both Hawaii and London

Just weeks later, Justin and Bronte were spotted in London together on two separate occasions. The pair partied into the early hours at Tape Nightclub before leaving the venue together.

The UK rendezvous came just weeks before Justin confirmed he was in a relationship with model Sofia Richie, who, coincidentally, is a friend of Bronte's.

The Aussie model, who spends much of the year in LA, is still close with Sofia and were pictured together in November, following her break-up with Justin.

They have history! Bronte joined Justin on a Hawaiian holiday in August. It was there he infamously stripped down for a skinny dipping session with bikini model Sahara Ray

Late nights in London! Bronte and Justin were spotted partying in the UK twice in August

Close: Justin and Bronte made headlines after partying together in London - but weeks later he announced he was dating Bronte's friend, model Sofia Richie

With a barrier of NSW police keeping fans at bay, Justin rose to meet the statuesque blonde, who brought along her dogs for the outing.

The pop star wore his trademark spectacles with a black bomber jacket. Meanwhile, Bronte looked effortlessly chic in an active-wear ensemble.

She is currently signed with Chadwick Models. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to her agency for comment.

Model behaviour! Bronte is currently signed with Chadwick Models. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to her agency for comment
As Angelina Jolie's humanitarian efforts continue, the actress and UNHCR special envoy met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, on Thursday.

But when the 41-year-old screen star sat down with the leading Church of England figure - and posed for shots - fans immediately noticed that she wasn't wearing a bra.

Images of their meeting were shared by the archbishop on Twitter, quickly prompting one viewer so joke: 'She needs a bra. Looks like she could poke someone's eye out. How embarrassing!'

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Meeting of minds: Angelina Jolie met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at London's Lambeth Palace on Thursday

'And the nipples are out for the archbishop,' observed another, followed by the quip: 'I'm sure the archbishop appreciated her showing her nipples.'

Explaining why she might have felt comfortable about going braless, a commenter shared: 'I always have to wear a bra with a slight padding as my nipples always stand to attention no matter what the temperature or company and I find it embarrassing.

'I'd love to wear a pretty unpadded one and not care, but I don't have the guts. She clearly might.'

Understated: She went for understated style for the meeting, wearing a simple grey sweater

Big issues: The pair discussed sexual violence in conflict, the refugee crisis, South Sudan

Social media: The archbishop later took to Twitter to share snapshots of their meeting

After the meeting, the archbishop took tweeted snapshots of his time with the star, alongside the caption: 'Privilege to welcome UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie. Discussed refugee crisis, South Sudan and prevention of sexual violence in conflict.'

In the the trio of snpashots, the mother-of-six is seen wearing a simple grey sweater with an ivory pleated skirt as she spoke with the archbishop at Lambeth Palace.

Angelina, who was appointed to her United Nations post in 2012, previously worked with the archbishop in 2015 at at the opening of the Centre for Peace and Security at the London School of Economics, where she spoke out against sexual violence.

Shock, awe, amusement: Soon after the news broke, readers were quick to share their thoughts on her decision to go without a bra

'The role of the U.N. Secretary Generals Special Envoy on Refugees, Angelina Jolie Pitt, is one that has been extraordinary,' the archbishop said of her at the time.

'What she said just now sums up so beautifully the issues we are facing, and puts it so precisely in terms of the challenge that there is.

'Its wonderful that she has committed her time, her energy, and has taken great personal risks in order to be able to speak authentically as to what shes done.'

A day earlier, she headed to the United Nations offices in Geneva for the annual lecture of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation lecture.

In good company: A day earlier, she headed to the United Nations offices in Geneva for the annual lecture of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation

Radiant: The Oscar-winning actress, 41, looked enthralled as she listened in on the presentation before taking to the stage to deliver a speech of her own

Speaking out: Rousing the audience, the mother-of-six explained: 'We need to stand true to the ideals of the UN...we are the UN'

The Oscar winning actress looked enthralled as she listened in on the presentation with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi before taking to the stage to deliver a speech of her own.

Rousing the audience for her Viera de Mello memorial lecture, the mother-of-six explained: 'We need to stand true to the ideals of the UN...we are the UN.'

She added: 'There is no shortcut to peace and security... I am a proud American and I am an internationalist.'

Surprise appearance: A busy day in London culminated in grand surroundings on Tuesday evening as she paid a visit to London's Buckingham Palace

In good company: The actress was joined by son Maddox ahead of the visit

Rousing the audience for her Viera de Mello memorial lecture, the mother-of-six explained: 'We need to stand true to the ideals of the UN...we are the UN.'

Sergio Vieira de Mello was a Brazilian United Nations diplomat who worked for the UN for more than 34 years before he was killed in the Canal Hotel Bombing in Iraq along with 20 other members of his staff in 2003.

Just a day before that, she had a busy day in London that culminated in grand surroundings when she paid an evening visit to London's Buckingham Palace.

Let's go: The pair were side by side as they edxited their hotel and made their way towards a waiting car

Natural beauty: With her brunette hair swept back, Angelina revealed her sharply defined features, accentuated by deft touches of make-up

The Hollywood actress was joined by son Maddox as they took the short trip from their lavish hotel, just hours after she accepted a new role as professor in practice of London School of Economics.

Dressed appropriately in a smart black evening dress and matching leather boots, Angelina looked typically elegant as they made their way towards a waiting car.

With her brunette hair swept back, Angelina revealed her sharply defined features, accentuated by deft touches of make-up.

Walk this way: A doorman observed the actress and her young son as they swept past

Walking alongside his mother, Maddox appeared to be in high spirits ahead of their visit to the Queen's historic London home.

Given their destination the 15-year old looked surprisingly casual in a loose fitting shirt, jeans and trainers.

With a hotel doorman quietly observing, the pair offered bystanders a polite smile as they climbed into their vehicle.

Looking good: Dressed appropriately in a smart black evening dress and matching leather boots, Angelina looked typically elegant

Moments later their car was been being accepted through the wrought iron gates of the Palace.

It is understood Angelina and Maddox were given a highly unusual private tour of Buckingham Palace, where no members of the royal family were present.

The Palace will be open daily for visits to its State Rooms from 9:30am to 7:30pm from July 22 to August 31.

It will reopen for tourists from September 1 to October 1, with exclusive evening visits running from 5:30pm.

Upbeat: Walking alongside his mother, Maddox appeared to be in high spirits ahead of their visit to the Queen's historic London home

Leading the way: Angelina walked ahead of her son as they began their journey on Tuesday evening

Earlier that day the star said she was 'feeling butterflies' before she lectured at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, beginning a new master's course on the impact of war on women.

Despite her nerves, she embodied her new, visiting professor mantle perfectly, paring down her iconic Hollywood image in favour of a simple yet sophisticated longline coat.

Angelina told London's Evening Standard: 'Im a little nervous, feeling butterflies. I hope I do well. This is very important to me.'

Busy: The actress was making her way to the Palace just hours after she accepted a new role as professor in practice of London School of Economics

Here they come: Angelina's car was later seen making its way through the wrought iron gates of Buckingham Palace

The actress addressed a class of students taking the same-titled postgraduate course, Women, Peace and Security - and her speech went down well with the class, who described the presentation as 'wonderful'.

The course helps scholars, practitioners, activists, policy-makers and students to develop strategies to promote justice, human rights and participation for women in conflict-affected situations around the world.

They conduct original research and teach with the aim of promoting gender equality and enhancing womens economic, social and political participation and security.

As part of her fellowship, Angelina will also be able to conduct her own research in the field.

A new role: Angelina arrived to address post-graduate students at the London School of Economics on Tuesday morning

Humanitarian work: Angelina accepted the new role of professor in practice for Women, Peace and Security last year

'Amazing': Angelina's presence at LSE went down very well on Tuesday

High praise: Students from the lecture were full of high praise for the actress on social media after the lecture

Calming her nerves: She was told that her lecture was 'incredible'

The activist spoke about her experience and what has motivated her work as United Nations Special Envoy.

Afterwards, students were full of praise for the actress, sharing pictures from inside her lecture and calling her presentation 'wonderful'.

One starstruck attendee reassured the 'nervous' speaker by saying: 'Ms. Jolie, you did wonderfully!' while another simply said: 'Incredible lecture by Angelina today'

Another post-graduate student added: 'She'll make an amazing visiting professor. So honored to hear her inaugural lecture at LSE on sexual violence, rape, working w/ refugees'

Praise from the students: She was told that she would be welcome to come back

Visiting: It is understood to be her first lecture at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security

One other shared a group picture with the actress and captioned it: 'When Angelina Jolie is the guest lecturer at LSE'

In her new role, Angelina is invited to attended public events and workshops in association with the course, 'as her schedule allows'.

She co-founded the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative - aiming to end the stigma suffered by survivors of sexual violence, and children born of rape - five years ago.

Her work includes minimising the long term consequences this may have in communities as well as reconciliation and peacebuilding.

The school announced the presence of Angelina on their own social media account on Tuesday morning and word quickly spread across campus.

New work: Angelina (seen here giving evidence at the House of Lords committee, in 2015) may be best known publicly for her acting and directing but her work as United Nations Special Envoy has set her on a global mission to end the stigma suffered by survivors of sexual violence, and children born of rape

Activism: Angelina (here at Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict in June 2014) launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative five years ago

For the cause: In her new role, Angelina (seen here again at the Global Summit in 2014) will be able to conduct research but also educate students on her experiences as United Nations Special Envoy

'Was just sitting in an LSE cafe waiting for my lecture,' one stunned Facebook user wrote. 'And Angelina Jolie strolls past and into the upstairs offices followed by flashing cameras.

'Needless to say, I was looking fairly out of place, we made eye contact and I saw my life flash before my eyes... Jokes but seriously if you're around on campus, Angelina is currently in Tower 2'

Naturally, the moviestar's visit wasn't without anticipated hysteria with some even suggesting that it was the best thing to happen to the university during their study.

'Angelina Jolie on campus,' one gushed. 'I'm finally seing the advantages of going to LSE jk'

Another concurred: 'Everybody sharing that picture of Angelina Jolie at LSE bc it's the best bit of being here'

Buzzing: The student body was awash with hysteria about the moviestar's visit to campus

Noticing the student body buzz, one other added: 'Angelina Jolie just gave a lecture at LSE and everybody is going crazy lol'

The not-so subtle attention Angelina had drawn was not to every student's taste and another joked: 'Is Angelina Jolie on campus today? If only loads of people shared it on every social media platform, we'd know.'

Announcing her role back in May, Angelina originally said: 'I am looking forward to teaching and to learning from the students, as well as to sharing my own experiences of working alongside governments and the United Nations.'

In the unpaid role, Angelina, alongside ex-foreign secretary William Hague, has agreed to teach a minimum of one lecture in the one-term master's course.

From September, the course will develop students will be able to take an entire masters - which makes the London School of Economics the first to offer this.

Professor Christine Chinkin, Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, said in a statement issued to MailOnline: 'I am delighted that LSE postgraduate students have had the unique opportunity to learn directly from the valuable insights, perspectives and experiences that Angelina Jolie brought to the class.'

Big voice: She this week celebrates the fifth anniversary the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative

Working hard: The initiative aims to end the stigma suffered by survivors of sexual violence, and children born of rape

Chinkin continued: 'Global action to enhance women's human rights, and the economic, social and political participation of women takes place at all levels  through local activism, international institutions, and cross-border initiatives.

'Critical and constructive engagement with this work is at the core of the education programme of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security.'

Previously, Angelina was there to see the centre opened in February 2015 and has therefore been a supporter ever since.

It was Angelina's humanitarian work that brought her to London from Los Angeles with her six children, at the weekend.

Delighted: Angelina came over to London from Los Angeles for work, this week

Unsupported by ex-husband Brad Pitt during her visit to the British capital, Angelina has been looking after Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox, all by herself.

Angelina filed for divorce from her husband Brad in September 2016 after 10 years together, and confirmed that the family was 'coping' after a 'difficult time', last month.

So far, the family's stay has seen them stocking up on books at Waterstone's and also treated to new toys at Hamley's.

Working mum: With her she brought her six children Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox

On Monday, Angelina commenced a busy week by taking part in a panel discussion at World Vision UK HQ on the 5 year anniversary of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative.

Angelina said: 'All of us involved in PSVI are proud of the work so far.

'But with much more to do we are very focused on the next steps: taking the tools that have been developed into the field to help document crimes and support prosecutions, working with militaries to change doctrine and training, and pushing for the implementation of laws to protect the very vulnerable victims.'

Angelina is now promoting the Time to Act initiative and work will place a greater focus on dealing with trauma and support to child and male survivors.
It's been well-publicised that Danny Dyer is taking some time out from EastEnders on an extended break.

And now writers on the hit BBC soap are reportedly 'working around the clock' to amend his character's impending storylines.

The actor, who plays pub landlord Mick Carter, has fast become a fan favourite and is currently involved in some big storylines, including the funeral of his grandmother.

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Break time: Danny Dyer, 39, is currently taking some time out from EastEnders on an extended break, which has reportedly led to writers to 'work around the clock' to amend his storylines

But due to his recent break from the soap, writers may have to come up with an 'excuse' why the character will not attend the funeral.

An insider told the Daily Star newspaper: 'It's going to look very odd for Mick not to attend the funeral, but the writers are having to come up with some excuse as to why he cannot be there.

'We all know Danny comes first so the writers are working around the clock to tweak key stories.'

However, an EastEnders spokesperson told MailOnline the claims have been exaggerated, revealing that show writers 'were well aware of Danny's break and are not working around the clock to amend storylines'.

Drama: The actor, who plays pub landlord Mick Carter, has fast become a fan favourite and is currently involved in some big storylines, including the upcoming funeral of his grandmother

The actor, 39, recently took a break from the soap amid claims he was suffering from 'exhaustion and stress'.

Danny jetted off to South Africa last month to recuperate in the midst of his momentary split from the BBC show.

But the actor returned to Britain earlier this week as he was spotted reunited with wife Joanne Mas on a shopping trip in Essex on Wednesday.

It was reported in January that an incident at the National Television Awards saw an 'intoxicated' Danny become embroiled in a 'meltdown' leading to claims that he was bowing out of EastEnders for a rest period.

Despite the claims, and an accompanying video, soap bosses came forward after the leaked clip to deny that he is 'spiralling out of control, exhausted and needs to control his temper.'

Loved up: Danny Dyer is reportedly planning to whisk his wife Joanne Mas on a 'no expenses spared' second honeymoon following his alleged work woes

Following the explosive allegations, Danny has removed himself temporarily from his role as Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter to recuperate in South Africa.

Now, sources have revealed that aside from his professional dramas he is planning to dedicate himself to his wife Joanne, who proposed in February 2015, before they walked the aisle in Hampshire last year.

According to The Mirror the couple are now set to relight their romance by jetting to the Maldives: 'Since they got married Danny has been working non stop, they havent had a lot of time together and he wants to make Jo feel special.

'Hes very focused on his family. His time in South Africa has done him the world of good. Now he just wants to do lots of fun things with his family.'

Say cheese! Danny jetted off to South Africa last month to recuperate in the midst of his momentary split from the BBC show




He's currently in Australia to host the multi-sports festival, The Arnold Classic.

But Arnold Schwarzenegger is not in the mood to discuss his feud with US President Donald Trump while Down Under.

On Friday, the 69-year-old former Governor of California shut down a question about Trump during an interview on Channel Ten's The Project.

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Changing the subject! Arnold Schwarzenegger shut down a question about whether President Donald Trump will last four years in office during an Australian TV interview on Friday

Host Gorgi Coghlan directly asked The Terminator star: 'Do you think Trump will last the four years (of his presidency)?'

But Arnold bizarrely deflected the question by pretending the journalist had asked about The Arnold Classic, the event he was promoting.

In a surreal exchange, he said: 'The Arnold Classic, we will be here for four years, much longer. I think for the next 400 years you will see Arnold Classic in Melbourne.'

Arnold is a prominent Republican who served two terms as the Governor of California from 2003 to 2010. He stated last year that he would not vote for Trump in the presidential election.

Quick thinking? Arnold bizarrely deflected the question by pretending the journalist had asked about The Arnold Classic, the sports event he was promoting

Feud: Arnold is a prominent Republican who served two terms as the Governor of California from 2003 to 2010. He said last year he would not vote for Trump in the presidential election

The Kindergarten Cop star explained he wouldn't be voting for the billionaire businessman, despite having voted for the Republican candidate in every election since becoming an American citizen in 1983.

The bitter fall-out between the two intensified when Arnold signed up as host of The Celebrity Apprentice, taking over from Trump.

In January, Trump claimed Arnold's tenure on the show was plagued by poor ratings, as he posted several tweets about the reality TV series.

Tirade: The fall-out between the two intensified when Arnold became host of The Celebrity Apprentice, taking over from Trump. And in January, Trump claimed Arnold's tenure on the show was plagued by poor ratings, as he posted several tweets about the reality TV series

'At least he tried!' Donald tweeted in February, 'Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprentice'

'Wow the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got 'swamped' (or destroyed) by comparisons to the ratings machine, DJT.

'So much for 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 (John) Kasich and Hillary (Clinton)'.

Last month, Trump again took to Twitter to criticise the Jingle All The Way star.

'Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprentice... but at least he tried hard!'

In an interview with Men's Journal, Arnie addressed Trump's tirade by jokingly saying: 'I called my assistant and said, "I think what we really should do is request a meeting and go back to New York. And then we just smash his face into the table,".

'We just smash his face into the table': Arnold has previously suggested as joke requesting a meeting with Donald Trump and 'smashing his face'

The bad blood between the pair has continued, with Arnold announcing he was stepping down from Celebrity Apprentice this month after just one season.

He claimed the show has 'baggage', saying: 'With Trump being involved in the show people have a bad taste and don't want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show.'

But the President hit back, saying that Arnold was instead fired from the show for 'pathetic ratings'.

'The key thing is not to be so concerned about the party label': Despite the feud with Trump, Arnold told The Project he is still proud to be a Republican

But despite the feud with Trump, Arnold told The Project he is still proud to be a Republican.

'I always felt proud being a Republican. I think the key thing is not to be so concerned about the party label,' he said. 'In the end I think that we have to all be public servants rather than party servants.'

Meanwhile, Arnold was joined in Australia by his son Patrick on Friday, as The Arnold Classic continues across the weekend.
Earlier this week, he refuted claims he had been 'friend zoned' by his Married At First Sight bride Michelle Marsh.

But it now appears Jesse Konstantinoff has accepted the fame-seeking blonde was just not that into him after all.

The 31-year-old told Now To Love this week that viewers may have been correct in calling out Michelle for 'leading him on'.

'Her sister being there helped her stay': Married At First Sight's Jesse Konstantinoff (left) has now accepted fame-seeking blonde Michelle Marsh (right) was just not that into him after all

Jesse said he believes Michelle's motives to stay on the show weren't simply for the sake of progressing their relationship.

He explained Michelle chose to 'stay' at the weekly commitment ceremonies simply to remain close with her twin Sharon.

'I think that her sister being there helped her stay,' he confessed.

'There were some nights where I was very anxious': Jesse said he believes Michelle's motives to stay on the show weren't for the sake of progressing their relationship.

Jesse also admitted he struggled with the pairing, saying: 'There were some nights where I was very anxious with a sense of not knowing where my life was heading and if Mish was still going to be there.'

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Michelle for comment.

On Tuesday night's episode, viewers watched Jesse pour his heart out to Michelle in a romantic letter.

Awkward: Groom Jesse poured his heart out in a bizarre love letter to his bride Michelle

But Michelle, 31, clearly did not appreciate the gesture, telling him: 'Thank you for that letter, that's really nice'.

Later, while watching their wedding video back, Michelle told producers she had a realisation that she 'hasn't been very true to herself'.

After the segment aired, fans took to social media suggesting Jesse had been 'friend zoned' by his bride.

Not that into him? The 31-year-old did not appear too impressed, acknowledging his hard work with a: 'Thank you for that letter, that's really nice'

The next day, Jesse appeared on the Today show to refute criticism by viewers who claimed Michelle 'was not that into him'.

The Adelaide local said: 'I know her very well and I know that's not her intent. We're both very open with each other. We both spoke to each other.'

He added: 'If she had no feelings towards me she definitely would have left... We felt really comfortable together and that is what made us want to give it a shot.'
They've been enjoying some quality time as a family since Tess' hectic Strictly schedule has ended.

And Tess Daly and Vernon Kay looked to have had a good night as they left The Dorchester Hotel in central London at 1am following a glamorous evening out on Tuesday.

The pair appeared a little tired, looking ready for bed as they emerged in the early hours of Friday night, hailing a taxi and speeding off into the night.

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Date night: Tess Daly and Vernon Kay looked to have had a good night as they left The Dorchester Hotel in central London at 1am following a glamorous evening out on Tuesday

Tess, 42, was dressed to impress in a smart white blazer, layered over a sequin embellished dress with a bold orange skirt.

The presenter matched her bold coral lipstick to her attire and wore her blonde hair down loose, a smart buckle-embellished bag slung over one shoulder.

Husband Vernon, also 42, joined her in the entrance as they waited to be ushered into a cab.

The couple's outing comes shortly after it was claimed Rhian Sugden may be set to appear on the upcoming series of Celebrity Big Brother.

Glamorous look: Tess, 42, was dressed to impress in a smart white blazer, layered over a sequin embellished dress with a bold orange skirt

According to The Sun, the model, 30, is currently being poached by Channel 5 bosses - who are keen for her spill on her fling with Vernon in order to draw in viewers.

The Manchester native first appeared on the popular show five years ago, alongside the likes of Coleen Nolan, Martin Kemp and Julian Clary, who went on to win.

However the paper claim that show bosses are keen to produce another 'All Stars vs New Stars' show later this year - after the popularity of the series airing this month.

Clearly excited about the prospect, Rhian confessed to The Sun on Sunday: 'I would love to go back in and experience it properly. I am more mature now and less hot headed.'

Calling it a night: The pair appeared a little tired, looking ready for bed as they emerged in the early hours of Friday night, hailing a taxi and speeding off into the night

Continuing on her turbulent stint in 2012, she added: 'My time was ruined in the house, I went in and had to lie about having a boyfriend at the time and it got me in all kinds of trouble.

'I am a natural-born flirt, I wasn't doing anyone any harm.'

Rhian became embroiled in not one but two sexting scandals with the DJ, and Vernon was famously forced to make a public apology to his wife on Radio 1 back in 2010 after a set of saucy messages to Rhian emerged.

The father-of-two went on to promise live on air that he would no longer contact Rhian or the four other women he had been caught messaging at the time.

Awkward? The couple's outing comes shortly after it was claimed Rhian Sugden may be set to r appear on the upcoming series of Celebrity Big Brother

However Rhian then alleged the pair had got back in touch in December last year - with Vernon sending hundreds of texts asking to 'reconnect' with the model.

After a break of six years, the busty blonde admitted after her confession that his reaching out to her had felt like an 'old friendship coming back'.

Meanwhile Vernon claimed at the time of the allegations that his WhatsApp messages asking her to meet had been taken out of context, that he had done 'nothing wrong' and that his wife was completely aware of all contact.
They're expecting their first child in the near future, and it is possible Lauren Brant and Barry Hall could be planning a wedding.

The former Hi-5 star wore a diamond sparkler on her hand during a date night in the Gold Coast on Friday, sparking rumours of a secret proposal.

But fans of the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! couple shouldn't get too excited as it could simply be her engagement ring from her ex-fiance Warren Riley, which she is known to still wear despite the break-up.

What's that ring? They're expecting their first child in the near future, and it is possible Lauren Brant (left) and Barry Hall (right) could be planning a wedding

Barry shared a loved-up photo of the couple on Friday, with Lauren wearing the diamond jewel on what appeared to be her ring finger.

And while it may appear the ring is on Lauren's right hand, selfies taken via the Instagram app can be 'flipped', meaning it's possible the ring is on her left hand.

At first glance, it looks similar to Warren's ring - but now it appears to have a thicker band, suggesting Lauren has modified it or slipped on another ring underneath.

Something to celebrate? But fans of the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! couple shouldn't get too excited as it could simply be her engagement ring from her ex-fiance Warren Riley

Alternatively, it could be a different ring altogether, albeit similar looking.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Lauren's representatives for comment.

In the photo, taken and shared by Barry, the couple smile into the camera as Lauren's bejeweled hand rests on her partner's shoulder.

Getting inspiration? They attended Lauren's brother's wedding just over a week ago, where Lauren served as a bridesmaid, so it's possible marriage is on the couple's minds

They attended Lauren's brother's wedding just over a week ago, where Lauren served as a bridesmaid, so it's possible marriage is on the couple's minds.

Barry captioned his photo with no mention of an engagement, instead writing: 'Date night at @jupitersgc KIYOMI - Japanese is my favourite food and they did not disappoint. Best Japanese Doughnuts ever'.

Lauren also shared a picture from the Friday night dinner, showing the happy couple joined by her parents, who were both smiling proudly.

Moving on! Lauren was previously engaged to personal trainer Warren. They split in 2015 after allegations she had an 'affair' The NRL Footy Show's Beau Ryan

Later in the evening Lauren shared a video to her Instagram story, showing off her growing baby bump.

'I think I've got a food baby!' Lauren exclaimed, as ex-AFL star Barry laughed, before she added, 'Oh wait, it's a real baby!'

Lauren was previously engaged to personal trainer Warren. They split in 2015 after allegations she had an 'affair' The NRL Footy Show's Beau Ryan.
Travis Bornstein never told his friends about his son Tylers drug problem. He was too embarrassed.

Then, on September 28, 2014, Tylers body was found in a vacant lot in Akron, Ohio. The 23-year-old had become addicted to opioid pain killers after several sports-related injuries and surgeries. Unable to afford long-term treatment, he ultimately turned to a cheaper drug  the heroin that killed him.

Now I have no choice but to speak out, the elder Bornstein, president of Teamsters Local 24 in Akron, told a crowd of thousands at the unions convention in 2016. As he shared the unvarnished tale of how a middle-class, star athlete wound up in that vacant lot, Bornstein lit a fire under the 1.4-million-member organization.

The Teamsters pledged $1.4 million for a nonprofit organization the Bornstein family set up to expand treatment for addicts in Ohio. Theyre also going after the drug industry CEOs whove been profiting off a national opioid problem of epidemic proportions.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription drugs and heroin) has quadrupled since 1999. In 2015, opioid deaths in the United States hit a record-breaking 33,000.

The labor union is targeting the three largest U.S. prescription drug wholesalers  McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen  for flooding hard-hit areas with the highly addictive pills.

Between 2008 and 2012, for example, these companies shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone opioid doses to West Virginia  433 for every man, woman, and child in the state. During that time period, 1,728 people in the state overdosed on the painkillers.

The companies deny any wrongdoing, pointing the finger instead at corrupt doctors and pharmacists who sell pills directly to addicts and dealers. But as West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin recently told the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Obviously, they had to know, with a state this size, and that many pills coming in, that something wasnt right.

The Teamsters are using their clout as pension fund investors to demand that drug wholesalers take responsibility for their role in the epidemic, conduct full investigations of their distribution practices, and hold CEOs accountable.

At AmerisourceBergen, for example, CEO Steven Collis hasnt coughed up a penny of the tens of millions of dollars he pocketed as the firm was reaping opioid windfalls  even though the company has paid $16 million to settle a West Virginia case over their negligence.

The Teamsters are demanding that some of the CEOs pay be clawed back, in the same way that Wells Fargo executives involved in last years bogus account scandal had to forfeit some of their compensation.

Theyve made similar demands on McKesson, where CEO John Hammergrens compensation has amounted to an astounding $368 million over the past five years.

Part of the problem with accountability at McKesson, according to the Teamsters, is the fact that Hammergren serves as both CEO and chairman of the company. The union is filing a shareholder resolution urging the board to appoint an independent chair.

Meanwhile, Travis Bornstein is continuing to speak out, telling his son Tylers tragic story to students, policymakers, and others as he works to expand the availability of drug treatment for communities ravaged by the opioid crisis.

Since Tylers death, hes learned that opioid addiction isnt a moral failure, but rather a disease, like cancer or diabetes. Now my son is my hero for everything he was able to accomplish with such a gut-wrenching disease, Bornstein said. I was the fool.

A small number of drug companies reap windfalls from peoples pill addictions. Now, working people are holding them accountable.
She jetted out to Dubai with her Made In Chelsea co-stars back in 2012 to celebrate her 22nd birthday.

And Louise Thompson appears to be enjoying being back in the city, putting on a very racy display as she posed in a plunging swimsuit on Friday.

The 26-year-old showed off her taut abs and toned pins in the black halterneck jumpsuit in an Instagram snap to her 969,000 followers.

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Racy: Made In Chelsea star Louise Thompson posed in a plunging swimsuit while on holiday in Dubai on Friday

But she appeared to make a dig at her former MIC co-stars, captioning the picture: 'Beach + skyscrapers. I can't get over this place.

'It's been 5 years since I was last in Dubai (filming with Made in Chelsea) but I wanted to revisit with a fresh perspective and better company.

'Plus I'm seeking refuge to recover from the removal of 4 x wisdom teeth! and the ensuing chipmunk face.'

Blooming lovely: The 26-year-old flashed her abs as she posed in a lacy floral bustier as she posed for a selfie last week

This time around, Louise put on a typically stylish display, accessorising the daring one-piece with a stylish green tote, black pom-pom loafers and a pair of large shades.

The reality star, who is now dating personal trainer Ryan Libbey, had shared another sexy Instagram snap last week, in which she looked incredible in a pretty push-up rose bustier.

Displaying her rock-hard abs and wearing her hair in tousled waves, she posed with a can of fake tan, a couple of months after her brother Sam poked fun at her constant posts.

Another day, another bikini: She recently took the opportunity to show off her svelte figure - this time in a bikini adorned with dollar bills while on holiday in Sri Lanka

Louise captioned the image with the words: 'Been keeping my holiday tan topped up with my new favourite @utanandtone Turbo Tan.

'This tan is great because it's free of nasty chemicals and parabens which is important to me. The colour is really dark yet natural.'

Her followers quickly bombarded Louise with compliments and fashion requests.

Beachy: Louise ran her fingers through her wet hair in yet another swimsuit snapshot

One wrote: '@louise.thompson the best thing in this photo is that bra top and the way your curvy bits fill it. Brava! x'

Another fashion-forward fan added: 'Woah I want the bra and bod!'

She has honed her already petite figure into a flawless muscle machine over the past year.

Meanwhile, her artfully posed slew of bikini snaps in recent weeks has prompted her brother Sam to tease her mercilessly via Instagram, even revealing how she achieves the perfect 'selfie'.

The cheeky Made In Chelsea star even posted a snap showing the lengths his sister and her beau Ryan Libbey will go to share the snaps.

Sam used an Instagram Story to show how a professional photography and lighting team appeared to be involved in setting up some of his sister's snapshots.

It featured one image from beside a pool with two figures, who appear to be the couple, sat in front of a professional camera.

Louise enjoyed an idyllic trip to Sri Lanka in January, where she has spent much of the holiday stripping off to show off the figure Ryan has helped her hone.

Secret's out! Hilariously, her co-star brother Sam recently decided to out the lengths the couple will go to in order to share their self-promoting, body-baring snaps - with the results including a professional photographer and lighting team

Still going! Louise shared a series of artistically posed images on the romantic break for two

The genetically-blessed pair shared images on their respective social media accounts with Ryan teasing Louise for stealing screen time.

He added a caption on the shot reading : 'Trying to get some camera time on my own before the misses takes over, again!... She caught me red handed though...'

The ripped couple have posed in a number of images - often with both in front of the camera leading to questions over who was snapping.

This is the second time Sam has laid into the couple on this holiday alone, as he recently enlisted the help of his co-star girlfriend Tiffany Watson to replicate his sibling's picture, in which Ryan scooped her up with one hand.

Louise, who has undergone a massive body transformation of late after hooking up with her personal trainer beau, litters her social media accounts with sponsored posts, often publicising fashion brands.

Life's a beach! Louise posted another snap on Instagram recently of the couple enjoying 'tans, tummy feeding and top knots' on their Sri Lankan break

Top joker: Yet Sam, who frequently mocks his sister on social media, took to his Instagram story to share an image from beside a pool with two figures who appear to be the couple sat in front of a professional camera

Ouch! This is the second time Sam has laid into the couple on this holiday alone, as he enlisted the help of his co-star girlfriend Tiffany Watson to replicate his sibling's picture, in which Ryan scooped her up with one hand

While the brunette beauty wins thousands of likes on the posts, hilarious Sam opted to swoop on his sister's penchant for promotion by mimicking her snaps near-exactly - much to her chagrin.

The funnyman recruited Tiffany to help him rib Louise's self-satisfied snap, which she posted on Monday from her New Year Maldives getaway.

Louise posed in a powerful shot in which Ryan made a seemingly effortless move to launch the brunette reality star into the air with just one hand, while the caption read: 'We're gonna crush 2017'.

Eek! The couple were seen stumbling around on the grass as Sam tried and failed to lift her into the air - with great difficulty

Agh! Slimline Tiffany seemed outraged that she could not be erected with ease, as she gasped: 'Can you really not lift me?' before they eventually managed a feeble imitation of her the original snap

Hilarious Sam, who recently enjoyed a romantic break in Morocco, shared a video which opened with the image of Louise and Ryan before transcending into a slip with Tiffany.

The couple were seen stumbling around on the grass as Sam tried and failed to lift her into the air - with great difficulty.

Slimline Tiffany seemed outraged that she could not be hoisted with ease, as she gasped: 'Can you really not lift me?' before they eventually managed a feeble imitation of her the original snap.

Don't hurt yourself: It looked as though Sam was at risk of dropping his girlfriend

Who wore it best? Sam raided his sister Louise's wardrobe for a third time as he continues to mock her Instagram poses

At the start of the year, Sam raided his sister wardrobe for a third time as mocked her Instagram poses by teaming a slinky lace minidress with an eye-catching statement necklace for the amusing snap.

Remaining straight-faced for the comical picture, Sam was unable to match Louise's impressive plump pout.

He leaned against the same fireplace from his sister's snap, with an abstract art piece hanging above his left shoulder.

The cheeky chappy wrote beside the image: 'Just being strong and independent in our misspap loungewear... for discount use Louise's code: I'm a k**b'

Taking the mickey: Sam took the mickey out of his sister Louise, as he uploaded a picture of himself wearing the same feminine sequined frock

Recycled: Louise shared a stunning shot clad in a lace grey dress last week, but little brother Sam couldn't resist mimicking the shot

He previously slipped into some festive sequins to imitate the brunette beauty, 26.

Doing a convincing impression of his big sister, Sam even flicked his head back with vigor to create the same flirty pose as Louise.

Captioning the picture in the tiny white minidress, Sam wrote: 'Me and @louise.thompson slaying in sequins.'

In a nod to Louise's penchant for fashion promotions, he name-dropped the brand, adding: 'Rocking our #motelrocks And you guys thought last week was a one off! Louise.....YOU'RE A BELLPIECE'

The public takedown began earlier this month when Sam playfully attacked Louise's 'barrage' of Instagram posts by posting a shot of his own.

Moving on: Louise didn't let being mocked deter her from sharing more snaps, taking to the photo-sharing site just hours later to post another shot of herself, this time clad in her lingerie

Somehow getting hold of one of his sibling's ensembles, he expertly mirrored a snap she'd uploaded the week before, complete with the same accessories and sultry pout.

He quipped: 'After the past months barrage of @louise.thompson instagrams...I think it's time I took some serious p**s!

'So here we go! Gliding into 2017 wearing our Lacey #axparis dresses.'

Adding insult to injury, Sam's post garnered a whopping 36,700 likes, whilst Louise's original post only received 15,800.

Before seeing the huge amount of likes he had amassed, Louise commented: 'OMG, you freak !!! If you get more likes than me @samthompsonuk.'

Fuming: Louise jokingly labelled Sam a 'freak' after seeing the post

Luckily, Louise later saw the funny side, commenting on his post: 'I guess you're going to get endorsed by ladies frocks now?'

And whilst she may have been joking, fans seemed to suggest this could be the case, with one quipping: 'I saw Louise's post and loved the dress. Now I love it even more.'

Other fans then hunted down Louise's original post, merely to tease that Sam had 'worn it better'.

But she didn't let it deter her, taking to the photo-sharing site just hours later to post another shot of herself, this time clad in her lingerie.
On April 9, Victoria Beckham releases her new women and children's range for Target.

And her daughter Harper has expressed how 'excited' she is to wear the designs.

Victoria, 42, is releasing a 200-piece selection, which five-year-old Harper helped her devise.

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'She tried everything on and she loved it!' Harper Beckham is her mother's biggest fan as she reveals she is 'excited' to wear Victoria's new designs for Target

Family brand: The Spice Girl-turned-designer designed the collection for the American company to 'celebrate' the sister company to her Victoria by Victoria Beckham label, her youngest child and her relationship with the brood

The brunette beauty told Elle.com: 'I didn't show her until I could physically show her the dresses. She came to my studio and she tried everything on and she loved it. She helped advise me with the sticker books, and the colouring books.

'I said Harper, "As a little girl what do you like that we do together?" And she pulled out her favourite colouring books and sticker books. She was involved in that part and she's excited to get her hands on the full collection.'

She elaborated further, saying: 'Things like this [the colouring book] these are things that we do together. We colour together, we do stickers. We walk to the park and collect flowers and press them. You can see there's press flower story within the collection, as well.'

The Spice Girl-turned-designer designed the collection for the American company to 'celebrate' the sister company to her Victoria by Victoria Beckham label, her youngest child and her relationship with the brood.

Young fashionista: Victoria Beckham claims that Harper was instrumental in creating the range

Hype: There's always a great deal of buzz surrounding Target's designer collaborations, but this season's partnership with Victoria Beckham is causing a brouhaha

'For me this really is about celebrating VVB, which is the sister category to my ready-to-wear collection. And VVB has always been about celebrating Harper,' she said.

'When I was pregnant with Harper that's when I started working on VVB and it was always the other side to my wardrobe: fun, conversational prints, fun energizing colours, pieces that are very easy to wear.

The mother-of-four added: 'With this collection I feel that I've been very honest: This is about me, this is about Harper, the relationship that we have together.'

Victoria - who also has Brooklyn, 18, Romeo, 14, and Cruz, 12, with her husband David Beckham - teased the range this week, ahead of it's April 9 launch.

Start them young: Victoria, 42, is releasing a 200-piece selection, which five-year-old Harper helped her devise

In an interview about the venture with The Today Show in the states, Victoria spoke about her family, saying of David: 'Hes my soulmate. Hes the most incredible husband. We complement each other.

'He inspires me every day, with the children, the way he treats me; it just works. We are lucky to have each other.'

The 200+ collection for womens, girls, toddler and baby, ranges in price from $6-$70, with most items under $40 and will be offered in sizes XS-3X for women and NB-XL for girls, toddler and baby.

Mama's girl: Harper has always been by Victoria's side when it comes to her recent fashion projects

For mums and their daughters: The 200+ collection for womens, girls, toddler and baby, ranges in price from $6-$70

Affordable: Most items in the collection are under $40 and will be offered in sizes XS-3X for women and NB-XL for girls, toddler and baby

'Its sophisticated and chic [and] my goal was to create something people would enjoy and remember for years to come,' Victoria told Vogue.com.

The former Spice Girl's elegant collection was inspired by the Victoria, Victoria Beckham line, as well as being a mom and her everyday life with daughter, Harper.

'Harpers been really involved in the design process, she said.

Colour: 'Its sophisticated and chic [and] my goal was to create something people would enjoy and remember for years to come,' Victoria told Vogue.com

Floral themes: It will be available at all Target stores and on Target.com beginning April 9 and select pieces will be available for sale on Victoria's website

Now on the high street: This is Victoria's first high street collaboration, and many are hoping it's not her last

Inspiring: The former Spice Girl's chic collection was inspired by the Victoria, Victoria Beckham line, as well as being a mom and her everyday life with daughter, Harper

'I know what fabrics [children] like because Ive been dressing them for a long, long time,' she said. 'Take that and apply what Ive learned through being a mum.'

Victoria knows what women like, too. As her eponymous collection continues to remain a favorite with stylish celebrities.

Pieces in her Target collection mimic some of her most signature styles, including shift dresses, peplum tops and coordiating trousers.

'I know what fabrics [children] like because Ive been dressing them for a long, long time': She said added that she applies what she's learned through being a mum

Global brand: Ladies (and their children) all over the world will be able to get the chic Beckham look come April 9

Ladies (and their children) all over the world will be able to get the chic Beckham look come April 9.

Items will be on sale at all Target stores and on Target.com, and select pieces will be available for sale on Victoria's website.

Baby chic: The mum of four knows what women like, as her eponymous collection continues to remain a favorite with stylish celebrities

Fashion forward: Her goods for Target will be available at all Target stores and on Target.com beginning April 9 and select pieces will be available for sale on Victoria's website

Cute: With a keen attention to detail, Vicotria's collection includes cute bibs and even coloring books

Hitting the high street: It's not only the singer's first high-street collaboration but also her first kid's range
Married At First Sight twin Sharon Marsh has responded via social media after topless photos of her were published by New Idea this week.

The reality TV bride revealed the 'tasteful' images were taken by a photographer who she briefly knew after splitting with her ex-fiance.

On Friday, she wrote on Instagram: 'Media, get your facts straight. Grrr. (See recent New Idea article regarding me posing semi-nude.)'

'Media, get your facts straight': Married At First Sight twin Sharon Marsh has responded via social media after topless photos of her were published by New Idea this week

'Tasteful': The reality TV bride revealed the 'tasteful' images were taken by a photographer who she briefly knew after splitting with her ex-fiance

Sharon then explained how the photos were taken, writing: 'Before the show in disbelief my ex-fiance left me for my so-called friend.

'Soon a free-spirited soul and I cross paths and enjoy two full moons together until our journeys took us our separate ways.

'What I have left from our moments in time is his photography and his request for me to be his vision. That is all. Only memories.'

She added the hash tags: 'friends for life', 'tasteful' 'free spirit' and 'art'.

'Free spirit': Sharon explained how the photos were taken, saying she had a brief encounter with a man who took semi-nude photographs of her, which she is proud of

Something to hide? New Idea reported on the photos this week, alleging the 31-year-old was trying to 'erase' details of her past before appearing on Married At First Sight

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Friday, Sharon said: 'I wasn't posing for a stranger but for someone who I respected and who meant something special to me at the time and who saw the tasteful beauty in a woman's body.

'It was for him as a favor to build up his public portfolio. We both had had our hearts broken and the universe brought us together to ease our wounds.

'These photos are wonderful memories of how someone can be so broken yet once the wind turns the hurt can be undone. The photographer and I remain friends.'

Sharon also claimed that New Idea did not approach her for comment before publishing the photos. Daily Mail Australia has reprinted them with the permission of the photographer.

'Soon a free spirited soul and I cross paths and enjoy two full moons together until our journeys took us our separate ways': The photos were taken during Sharon's friendship with an artist

'Good work on the rig': Sharon's twin sister Michelle, who is also on Married At First Sight, apparently approved of the photos and wrote positive comments about them on Instagram

New Idea reported on the photos this week, alleging the 31-year-old was trying to 'erase' details of her past before appearing on Married At First Sight.

A source allegedly told the publication: 'She didnt want her past to come back and haunt her. So she deleted all of her old Instagram posts and started fresh.'

But the tabloid magazine discovered the black-and-white pictures, which Sharon's twin sister Michelle apparently approved of.

The magazine claimed Michelle commented under the photos, 'Lurrrve this shot' and 'Good work on the rig'.

Michelle was paired with 29-year-old carpenter Nick Furphy on Married At First Sight.
Cindy Crawford is 'very excited' for parents-to-be George and Amal Clooney.

The 51-year-old supermodel and her husband Rande Gerber are thrilled their close pals are expecting twins and think it is a 'natural next step' for the couple.

She said: 'I'm very excited. Obviously, we're friends of parenthood. I think it's incredible for George and it really took Amal, I think. She's just so amazing and they're just so happy. It just seemed like a natural next step.'

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Thumb's up: Cindy Crawford is 'very excited' for parents-to-be George and Amal Clooney. Here she is seen Thursday in Santa Monica at the Cindy Crawford x Umami Burger Artist event

Thrilled: The 51-year-old supermodel and her husband Rande Gerber are thrilled their close pals are expecting twins and think it is a 'natural next step' for the couple. Pictured February

However, Rande joked his close friend and business partner wouldn't be the one changing diapers.

He said: 'I'm not sure he'll be changing diapers.'

Whilst Cindy quipped back: 'By the way, you don't know how to do diapers.'

Her words: She said: 'I'm very excited. Obviously, we're friends of parenthood. I think it's incredible for George and it really took Amal, I think'

Hee hee: However, Rande joked his close friend and business partner wouldn't be the one changing diapers. He said: 'I'm not sure he'll be changing diapers.' Pictured at Tao

And Cindy - who has Kaia, 15, and Presley, 17, with Rande - recalled how she knew Amal was the one for George when he first introduced her to them.

She told E! News: 'It was like all of a sudden he might get married and he might have a family. It's incredible. We are very excited for them.'

Meanwhile, George previously revealed the couple have 'decided to be much more responsible' after finding out they are expecting twins.

Word buddies: Together Rande and George own the company Casamigos

He said: 'We decided to be much more responsible, to avoid the danger. I will not go to South Sudan anymore and in the Congo, Amal will no longer go to Iraq and she will avoid places where she knows she is not welcome.

'Before, I did not care, I would even say that there was a pretty exciting side to going where no reporter had ever been. We have the chance to live between three countries: Italy, America and England.'

And the pair will choose somewhere to settle once their twins reach school age.

On the move: The Oscar winner see here at LAX on March 11

He added: '[When they go to school, we'll] choose where to settle. In the meantime, we will continue to move according to our respective schedules. People think we're never together, but we have not been separated for more than a week.'

And George previously described how he thinks parenthood will 'be an adventure.'

He said: 'We are really happy and really excited. It's going to be an adventure. We've sort of embraced it all with arms wide open.'

His Italian pad: The Ocean's Eleven star said they will still stay in Lake Como, but also live in the US and England
Tara Reid brought some sophisticated chic to the Tao Group Los Angeles Grand Opening Block Party on Thursday.

The 41-year-old actress looked great in a striking black and white blazer encrusted with sequins.

She kept the rest of her look understated in black pants and a short top which flashed a little midriff.

Shimmering: Tara Reid looked glam at the Tao Group Los Angeles Grand Opening Block Party on Thursday night

Standing out from the crowd: The American Pie star brought sophisticated vibes in a striking black and white sequin blazer

A diamond heart-shaped necklace added a little bling to her look.

It's been a fun week for the star as on Wednesday night she was out with pal Dean May, the partner she got kicked off reality show Marriage Boot camp with after they admitted faking their relationship.

The duo were all smiles as they hit Nightingale nightclub together in Los Angeles.

They were axed from Marriage Boot Camp last August when producers became suspicious that their relationship wasn't the real deal - after overhearing conversations between the two.

Blonde beauty: The actress looked great in black pants and ankle boots

Where to now? The 41-year-old beauty snuggled up to a mystery man outside the venue

The counselors' suspicions were confirmed when they overheard a private chat in which the duo admitted to being just friends who were chasing fame and money.

Confronted, they initially acted ignorant - with Dean calling the claims 'ridiculous' and insisting: 'We have had a romantic relationship in our 15 years of friendship, of course!'

But they were confronted by Tara also having given admitting earlier to a producer earlier their key motivation for being there, saying: 'Part of the reason we did the show is he owes money in taxes, and he could use the money, and he wouldn't mind the fame.'

Looking good! The Sharknado star flashed her midriff in a crop top

Busy schedule: Tara is set to star in the fifth installment of her hugely successful Sharknado film franchise, as well as the drama thriller Worthless

Dean quickly flipped out, accusing his 'best friend' of 'throwing everybody under the bus' - and it soon became clear that even though they are not a couple their ferocious fights were not necessarily all an act.

Meanwhile, Tara has several film commitments keeping her busy this year.

She is set to star in the fifth installment of her hugely successful Sharknado film franchise, as well as the drama thriller Worthless.

She will also grace the big screen with the flicks - Dark Ascension, Due Justice, Baby Bulldog and Andy The Talking Hedgehog.
It was love at first sight when they met at a Manchester United match back in 1997.

And two decades on, Victoria Beckham is still just as besotted with her husband David, calling the retired sportsman her 'soulmate' in a new interview.

The 42-year-old designer lavished the handsome star - with whom she raises children Brooklyn, 18, Romeo, 14, Cruz, eleven and five-year-old Harper - with praise during an appearance on the Today show in the States on Friday.

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Smitten: Victoria Beckham heaped praise upon her husband David during an appearance on the Today show on Friday

'He inspires me every day': Victoria says she loves the way David treats her and their children whom she raises children Brooklyn, 18, Romeo, 14, Cruz, eleven and five-year-old Harper

Victoria spoke about her family, saying of David: 'He's my soulmate. He's the most incredible husband. We complement each other.

'He inspires me every day, with the children, the way he treats me; it just works. We are lucky to have each other.'

The couple married in a lavish ceremony in at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland in 1999, complete with thrones, crowns and a big bucks magazine deal.

Tell-all interview: Victoria was discussing her new fashion collaboration with Target during the televised chat on Today

Chic: The fashionista was impeccably dressed and perfectly groomed for her TV appearance

Doting dad: The former Spice Girl raises children Brooklyn, 18, Romeo, 14, Cruz, eleven and five-year-old Harper with David

The former Spice Girl has also revealed that she regularly borrows David's clothes.

She told Instyle.co.uk: 'I steal so much of his stuff. He was away the other day and I phoned him and said "I've just found these trousers hanging up in your wardrobe. Is it OK if I take them and sort of tweak them a little bit?"'

Victoria says she encourages her children to be 'individual' and to dress how they want to, adding that they do 'pay attention' to what they wear.

Speaking about daughter Harper, she said: 'She is very feminine, she loves to wear pretty dresses and pretty skirts, but she has got three older brothers so she's a little bit of a tomboy as well.'

Victoria also added that her style has evolved over time, admitting that her tracksuit bottoms are her guilty pleasure.

Posh and Becks for life: The couple married in a lavish ceremony in at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland in 1999, complete with thrones, crowns and a big bucks magazine deal

Still going strong: David previously stated that the secret to his and Victoria's marriage is being able to 'work through' the 'tough times'

Speaking on the 75th anniversary edition of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, David revealed: 'We did throw a lot at (our first wedding). We have renewed our vows since then and it was a lot more private, there was about six people there in our house.

Mulling over their relationship history, David also revealed the rather bizarre dates they once shared: 'I drove down, I picked her up ... we used to sit in a Harvester car park and we just used to kiss, of course, and spend time together.'

Further on in the insightful interview, he stated that the secret to his and Victoria's marriage is being able to 'work through' the 'tough times'.

He admits that he and Victoria know each other inside out - and it is this mutual love and understanding of each other and their children that has kept them together for so long.

David explained that their union works due to their strong moral backgrounds, as well as their ability to discuss any 'mistakes' that occur during their high-profile romance.

He said: 'We've got strong parents. We were brought up with the right values.'
He was rumoured to appear on the new series of the hit MTV dating show, Ex On The Beach.

But Jeremy McConnell may not get to appear, as his place on the series has 'been put into jeopardy' following his recent arrest on suspicion of assault and criminal damage.

The Celebrity Big Brother star, 27, has since been released by police but according to new reports his arrest has consequently lead to to MTV bosses contacting Jeremy to discuss his involvement with Ex On The Beach.

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Ex On The Beach appearance in 'jeopardy': Jeremy McConnell, 27, has been contacted by MTV Bosses after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting ex Stephanie Davis

A spokesperson for MTV has declined to comment to MailOnline. Jeremy McConnell's rep also had no comment to make.

A source told The Sun show that bosses are 'considering dropping Jeremy from the lineup'.

They claimed: 'Jeremy has been called by EOTB regarding the assault allegations against him.

'Whilst there is still an ongoing investigation with the police regarding this, MTV are considering dropping him from the latest series.'

The Irish model and reality star was set to come face-to-face with Stephanie Davis' ex-boyfriend Sam Reece - who is allegedly in talks with the show - for the first time.

'MTV bosses are considering dropping Jeremy': Stephanie's ex was released by police on Thursday following his arrest but the investigation is still ongoing

Unlikely to cross paths: Stephanie's ex boyfriend Sam Reece (pictured) had reportedly been set to face Jeremy on the dating show's new series

Jeremy had struck up a romance with Stephanie on CBB early last year when she had still been dating the First Dates star.

Reports Jeremy will no longer appear on Ex On The Beach come after he was released on Wednesday following his arrest.

A spokesperson for Merseyside police told MailOnline on Thursday: 'A 27-year-old man arrested earlier today on suspicion of assault and criminal damage has been released pending a disposal decision.'

The comment follows an earlier statement which explained Jeremy had voluntarily attended a police station.

That was then: A police spokesperson confirmed the news while a representative for Jeremy explained: 'Jeremy denies any wrong doing, however he is fully cooperating with the police in their investigations' (pictured entering the Big Brother house in January 2016)

Stephanie was reportedly 'shaken' after calling the police on Jeremy at the home she shares with their baby son Caben-Albi, a source told MailOnline.

Jeremy has previously vehemently denied any wrong-doing. A spokesperson for the star has been contacted for further comment.

On Wednesday, one newspaper named the alleged victim as former Hollyoaks actress Stephanie, 24, following pictures she posted of her heavily bruised legs.

Merseyside Police previously confirmed to MailOnline that were called to a property in the city on Sunday regarding an incident that happened there on 9 March.

Shock: The investigation comes after Stephanie stunned followers on Snapchat with a picture of her bruised legs. She made no reference to the marks, simply writing: 'Trying to relax'

Naming Stephanie as the victim, The Mirror claims Jeremy allegedly began 'behaving oddly' during a visit to the home where Stephanie lives with son Caben-Albi.

A spokesperson for Merseyside Police had told MailOnline: 'Merseyside Police can confirm a report was received of an assault at a property (in Liverpool) on Thursday (9 March). Officers were contacted on Sunday, 12 March and an investigation into the incident is on-going. At this time no arrests have been made.'

Meanwhile, a representative for Jeremy explained to MailOnline: 'Jeremy denies any wrong doing, however he is fully cooperating with the police in their investigations.'

The claims come a mere few days after his ex posted shocking pictures of her bruised legs on Snapchat.

Though she did not mention how she received the marks, she simply wrote: 'Trying to relax.'

Investigating: Police say they were called to a home in the city on March 9. It is alleged Stephanie made a statement

The actress went on to 'like' a tweet from a concerned fan, who wrote: 'What the hell has happened to your legs love?'

Another message liked by Stephanie read: 'Jesus love, them bruises. Hope youre OK.'

Jeremy is said to have relocated to Liverpool in recent weeks to be closer to his ex-girlfriend - who split from last year - and their two-month-old son Caben-Albi.

It was reported earlier in the week that Jeremy's auntie had died in his native Ireland, just days after his father's death - leading to claims he has jetted back to Ireland to deal with his grief.

Tough times: A spokesperson for Merseyside Police told MailOnline: 'Merseyside Police can confirm a report was received of an assault at a property (in Liverpool) on Thursday (9 March)'

Sources told The Sun: 'Jeremy has temporarily left Liverpool  where hes been renting a flat nearby Stephanies home  to be with close friends and family in Ireland. He needs the support of loved ones during this tough time and has headed home so he can have space to properly grieve.

'Its been an incredibly stressful for Jeremy... As a result his relationship with Stephanie has become strained again but hopefully some time apart will do them both good.'

Jeremy has always been candid about his tragedies, having discussed his triple loss when he first appeared on TV on MTV's now-defunct reality show Beauty School Cop Outs, with his father and sister being his only remaining family members.

Moved: Sources told The Sun: 'Jeremy has temporarily left Liverpool  where hes been renting a flat nearby Stephanies home  to be with close friends and family in Ireland'

The Dublin native had already been through incredible heartbreak, having previously opened up about his mother, brother and sister passing away within months of each other when he was a teenager.

He said: 'When I was 15 I was at my cousin's and my mum fell asleep. I got back about two hours later and she was gone  she had a brain haemorrhage. Shortly after that my brother broke his neck in a motorbike accident. After that, my sister had a heart attack  she suffered with epilepsy. All in the space of 15 months.

'Of course I miss them, I loved them dearly, but I think that's what levelled me out a bit  I express myself the way I want to. I just grew up really fast.'
She's never been shy about showing off her incredible curves, no matter the occasion.

And on Thursday, Amber Rose put her pert derriere and sculpted legs on full display in second skin leggings while heading to the movies in Calabasas with her mother Dorothy Rose.

The 33-year-old, who paired the curve hugging bottoms with a colorful hoodie, stayed close to her mom after they arrived in her white Rolls Royce.

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Having a laugh: Amber Rose put her curves on full display in second skin leggings while heading to the movies in Calabasas with her mother Dorothy Rose on Thursday

Amber showed off her rounded backside in the deep red hued bottoms while opting to cover up her top half.

The busty beauty chose a green, grey and maroon hoodie, adding black and white sneakers.

The mother of one clutched a black and gold purse in one hand while rocking large framed sunglasses.

Amber, who chose to go makeup free, covered up her platinum blonde hair with her hoodie pulled over her head.

Fancy: The 33-year-old, who paired the curve hugging bottoms with a colorful hoodie, stayed close to her mom after arriving in her white Rolls Royce

Views: Amber showed off her rounded backside in the deep red hued bottoms while opting to cover up her top half

Good looking family: The busty beauty chose a green, grey and maroon hoodie, adding black and white sneakers; pictured with her mother

Amber, who clutched a furry key chain with her car keys, arrived to the movie theaters with Dorothy Rose in her $371,000 Rolls Royce.

Her ageless mom looked incredible in grey leggings with a graphic T-shirt and a blue cardigan tied around her waist.

The good looking mother and daughter duo stayed close as they headed inside together.

Show stopper: The mother of one clutched a black and gold purse in one hand while rocking large framed sunglasses

So close: Her ageless mom looked incredible in grey leggings with a graphic T-shirt and a blue cardigan tied around her waist

Luxurious arrival: Amber, who clutched a furry key chain with her car keys, arrived to the movie theaters with her mother Dorothy in her $371,000 Rolls Royce

Two days earlier, Amber decided to focus on her ample cleavage; the stunner shared an Instagram video where she rocked a barely there bra.

In the ad, the beauty held her breasts up in the lace-up backless and strapless bra, before tightening the lace to add even more cleavage.

For the eye opening Sneaky Vaunt ad, the talk show host added hoop earrings and smokey eye makeup.

Wow factor: Two days earlier, Amber decided to focus on her ample cleavage; the stunner shared an Instagram video where she rocked a barely there bra
There's a hot new sister duo in town - and they seem to be taking notes from established models and famous sibling team Gigi and Bella Hadid.

On Thursday night, Delilah Hamlin, 18, and Amelia Hamlin, 15, stepped out in Hollywood to attend a star-studded grand opening of Tao restaurant.

The daughters of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin looked stunning in contrasting looks as they enjoyed a girls' night out with some friends - looking strikingly similar to the Hadid sisters.

Double take! Amelia Hamlin, 15, and Delilah Hamlin, 18, stepped out in Hollywood to attend the star-studded grand opening of Tao and Beauty & Essex. They appear to be taking style tips from fellow model sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid, pictured right

Make way for the Hamlins: The daughters of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin are trying to make it big in the modeling world

The girls seem to be stepping up their style game and taking tips from their Beverly Hills neighbors, who have taken the fashion world by storm.

For the grand opening event, the Hamlin borrowed the black-and-nude color scheme the Hadids favor.

Delilah wore a cute, yet comfortable outfit consisting of a tan long-sleeve crop top with an attached choker.

The up-and-coming starlet chose to go bra-less for the event, and paired the top with black track pants with a matching tan stripe down each leg.

Before: The girls have certainly stepped up their style game, following in the Hadid sisters' tracks as they climb the ladder in the fashion industry

Bronzed: The Dolce & Gabbana model wore her highlighted tresses up in a tight, high ponytail and rocked a bold burgundy lip

On-duty: Delilah wore a cute, yet comfortable outfit consisting of a tan long-sleeve crop top with an attached choker

The Dolce & Gabbana model wore her highlighted tresses up in a tight, high ponytail and rocked a bold burgundy lip.

Meanwhile, her raven-haired younger sister chose a black off-the-shoulder long-sleeved body suit tucked into leather high-waisted skintight pants, held up by a large, antique silver buckle belt.

For shoes, the aspiring model chose black Nike sneakers as she held onto a mini black backpack.

The raven-haired beauty chose a black off-the-shoulder long-sleeved body suit tucked into leather high-waisted skintight pants, held up by a large, antique silver buckle belt

She slung a white blazer over her shoulders and finished the look with over-sized translucent sunglasses and several chokers.

The 15-year-old - who is often seen in the company of models such as Sara Sampio, Winnie Harlow, and Jourdan Dunn - had on makeup that was light and fresh, featuring her signature bold brows and a swipe of lip gloss over her pouty lips.

The event - which hosted the likes of Paris Hilton, Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber (whom a source says didn't go into the party because he was in gym clothes) - was in celebration of the grand opening of a nightlife complex situated in the upcoming Dream Hotel in Hollywood.

The complex houses Tao Asian Bistro, Avenue Nightclub, The Highlight Room, and Beauty & Essex, and will undoubtedly become the next big celeb hot spot.

Similarities: Gigi and Delilah, both blonde bombshells, are the older sisters of the respective teams. They are both signed to modeling agencies and walked in the same fashion show

While the brunette-and-blonde partners are uncontested stunners all on their own, their likeness to another famous sister duo is indisputable.

Gigi and Delilah, both blonde bombshells, are the older sisters of the respective teams.

Both are signed models - Gigi is signed with IMG Models while Delilah is with Elite Models - and are the daughters of RHOB stars.

Twins! Bella (L) and Amelia (R) are dark-haired, mysterious beauties who work hard to not be o overshadowed by their sunny sisters

The two golden-haired beauties have even walked in the same show for Tommy Hilfiger.

Bella and Amelia, meanwhile, are the dark-haired, mysterious beauties, who work hard to not be overshadowed by their sunny sisters.

Bella is also signed by IMG Models, while rising starlet Amelia snagged a contract with The Lions Model Management in September.

Statement look: The up-and-coming starlet chose to go braless for the event, and paired the top with black track pants with a matching tan stripe down each leg

Recently, the girls' mother Lisa appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.

Lisa and the Hadid sister's mother Yolanda Foster are frenemies - to put it lightly - and the Bravo night show host was curious if there was any drama between the girls because of it.

'I was so curious if there was any drama with walking with Gigi Hadid, given what had gone on with you and Yolanda?' Andy asked.

Rinna replied: 'Absolutely zero! In fact, Delilah, you could tell the story how you went up to Gigi and said, "I don't know how to walk, can you help me?"'

Delilah added 'She's so nice.'

So - no drama there, after all.

The family also revealed they've never met Bella, only the older Hadid sister.
On Thursday, she testified on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. about early childhood education.

One day and over 2,600 miles later, Jennifer Garner stepped out in Brentwood, California while rocking bright green socks in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

The 44-year-old actress beamed during her solo stroll, opting to pair the bold socks with charcoal slacks and a black blouse.

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In the spirit: Jennifer Garner stepped out in Brentwood, California while rocking bright green socks in honor of St. Patrick's Day

The former Alias star was in Washington D.C. on Thursday to testify before the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education subcommittee hearing.

Jennifer, who is a trustee and ambassador for the Save The Children charity, spoke on childhood education and poverty.

The brunette beauty, who talked for about 25 minutes on Capitol Hill, revealed that she's met families across the US and seen poverty first hand during her visits.

For her St. Patrick's Day outing in Los Angeles, Jennifer covered up in loose steel grey trousers.

Looking good: The 44-year-old actress beamed during her solo stroll, opting to pair charcoal slacks with a black blouse

Putting her best foot forward: For her St. Patrick's Day outing in Los Angeles, Jennifer covered up in loose steel grey trousers

The mother of three paired the formal bottoms with a black top, adding oxfords, orange aviators and a pendant necklace.

The movie star wore her brunette tresses loose with no makeup, showing off her natural beauty.

Her daytime outing comes three days after her estranged husband Ben Affleck revealed he went to rehab for alcohol addiction.

Devoted to kids: On Thursday, she testified at Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. about early childhood education

Focused: The former Alias star was in Washington D.C. on Thursday to testify before the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education subcommittee hearing

Ben penned a heartfelt note, which he shared on his Facebook account on Tuesday: 'I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I've dealt with in the past and will continue to confront.'

Ben continued: 'I want to live my life to the fullest and be the best father I can be. I want my kids to know there is no shame in getting help when you need it.'

Ben and Jennifer are parents to Violet, 11; Seraphina, eight; and Samuel, five.

The two married in June 2005; 10 years later they announced they were divorcing.

According to People's sources, the actors called off their split and are working on a reconciliation.

Family: Her outing comes three days after her estranged husband Ben Affleck revealed he went to rehab for alcohol addiction; Ben in December with kids Samuel, Seraphina and Violet
Marilyn Monroe proved to be an absolute showstopper as she sang in the 1953 classic, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

And Karlie Kloss channelled the late Hollywood icon as she wowed in a sensational bright pink top and mini-skirt to pay tribute to Swarovski's history in a stunning new commercial.

The 24-year-old supermodel, who has been the jewellery company's brand ambassador since 2016, oozed glamour in the off-the-shoulder garment as she was trailed by a number of hunky suitors.

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Who's who? Karlie Kloss channelled the late Hollywood icon as she wowed in a sensational bright pink top and mini-skirt to pay tribute to Swarovski's history in a stunning new commercial

The sensational garment served to accentuate Karlie's fabulous form as she was led down the stairs to unveil her long legs, which were clad in a tiny mini-skirt.

Karlie, who's striking attire was already dripping in diamonds, proved to unsatisfied as she shooed away the men when they presented her with love hearts.

They immediately came rushing back with Swarovski boxes and Karlie goes on to fawn over the sensational pieces of bling that she's presented with.

Despite the new age fun touches, it's hard to miss the 6 ft 2 in star's homage to the iconic Marilyn Monroe, who pulled out all the stops during the classic over sixty years ago.

Era-defining: The 24-year-old supermodel, who has been the jewellery company's brand ambassador since 2016, oozed glamour in the off-the-shoulder garment

Too hot to handle: Karlie, who's striking attire was already dripping in diamonds, proved to unsatisfied as she shooed away the men who fawned over her

Enviable figure: Her sensational garment served to accentuate Karlie's fabulous form

Needs more: The Chicago native proved to unsatisfied when the hunky suitors presented her with love hearts

And Karlie didn't stop there as she channelled the beautiful Audrey Hepburn from the legendary 1961 film Breakfast At Tiffany's, where she sat at the table.

The blonde bombshell looked sensational in a plunging sequinned blazer and heavy-duty pearl necklace.

A bedazzled coffee cup and pair of sunglasses also recreated the famous scene.

About the brand's history tribute commercials, Karlie told Marie Claire: 'What I love most about icons like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe is the confidence they bring to every scene and character they played.

Pucker up: She sports a much more flirty demeanour when finally presented with Swarovski boxes full of diamonds

Capturing the moment: The men all rejoiced as she snapped a group selfie

Iconic moment: Despite the new age fun touches, it's hard to miss the 6 ft 2 in star's homage to the iconic Marilyn Monroe, who pulled out all the stops during the classic over sixty years ago

'Like many of my role models, theyve shown that a woman who is confident and strong-willed will always be in style.'

'I have always been an admirer of the timeless Hollywood glamour of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, and being able to evoke their iconic movie scenes and add a modern spin was such a fun experience.'

Karlie was announced as part of the Swarovski team back last year and at the time she revealed: 'It's an honour to join the Swarovski family and to be part of the brand's long history of bringing elegance to women through brilliant, unique designs'.

Going back in time: And Karlie didn't stop there as she channelled the beautiful Audrey Hepburn from the legendary 1961 film Breakfast At Tiffany's, where she sat at the table

Recreating the moment: The blonde bombshell looked sensational in a plunging sequinned blazer and heavy-duty pearl necklace

Swarovskis Yelena Aschberger also revealed: 'No matter what age or generation, everyone knows these iconic moments and what they represent in terms of style and glamour.'

Meanwhile, Karlie was recently spotted celebrating International women's day in NYC.

The keen women's advocate has her own scholarship program which aims to get more girls interested in computers and coding at the Flatiron Pre-College Academy.

And the cerebral clotheshorse recently advised her followers not to be afraid to try new things and follow your passions.

'I love the confidence they bring to everyday': Karlie opened up about channelling the two famous icons

'Like many of my role models': She continued, 'theyve shown that a woman who is confident and strong-willed will always be in style'

'It's an honour': Karlie was announced as part of the Swarovski team back last year

Earlier this week, Karlie was spotted celebrating International women's day in NYC.

The keen women's advocate has her own scholarship program which aims to get more girls interested in computers and coding at the Flatiron Pre-College Academy.

And the cerebral clotheshorse recently advised her followers not to be afraid to try new things and follow your passions.
She's named after the City of Light.

And Paris Hilton certainly sparkled brightly in a semi-sheer, low-cut gown at an event in Hollywood on Thursday.

The 36-year-old made sure all eyes were on her in the crystal encrusted frock but she only had eyes, and lips, for her new beau, actor and model Chris Zylka, 31 at the TAO, Beauty & Essex, Avenue, and Luchini LA Grand Opening.

Very public display of affection: Paris Hilton and her new beau actor Chris Zylka couldn't keep their hands, or their lips, off one another as they kissed at Hollywood event on Thursday

The pair put on a very public display of affection, kissing at the celebrity laden affair.

Paris was dressed to the nines with her blonde hair cascading in loose curls over her shoulders.

She accessorized with a flashy statement diamond choker.

The Leftovers star was more casually clad in a black T-shirt, a black zip-up hoodie, matching pants and black sneakers.

Look of love: The 31-year-old actor gazed at the hotels heiress, 36, adoringly at the Tao Group's launch of TAO Asian Bistro at the Dream Hotel in Hollywood, along with the opening of the Beauty & Essex restaurant and lounge, Avenue nightclub and Luchini Pizzeria

Keeping her close: The Leftovers star kept his arm around the the blonde beauty's back as he guided her into the venue

The pair, who came out as a couple on social media last month, basked in the glow of new love as they walked into the venue arm-in-arm.

Paris and Chris were celebrating the Tao Group's launch of TAO Asian Bistro at the Dream Hotel in Hollywood, along with the opening of the Beauty & Essex restaurant and lounge, Avenue nightclub and Luchini Pizzeria.

They joined a slew of celebrities at the event including Katie Holmes, 38, Cindy Crawford, 51, and husband Rande Gerber, 54, actor Wilmer Valderrama, 37, DWTS pro Cheryl Burke, 32, rapper Flo Rida, 37, Alec Baldwin's model daughter Hailey Baldwin, 22, Ashlee Simpson, 32, and husband Evan Ross, 28, to name a few.

Sparkling star: The actress-turned-DJ wore a crystal encrusted, semi-sheer dress and a blingy diamond choker

Glitter girl: Paris showed off her fabulous figure as she stood next to her beau, who was seated and enjoying a drink

Meanwhile, Paris and Chris have been almost inseparable in the last few weeks.

They have just returned from a romantic getaway to an exclusive nature-centered resort in Tulum in Mexico.

The hotels heiress shared Instagram snaps from the beachside paradise, close to impressive ancient Mayan ruins.
Candice Swanepoel was spotted on Friday cradling her five-month-old son Anaca and a female friend of hers while out and about in New York City.

The Victoria's Secret model let her platinum blonde hair fan out from under a black leather pageboy cap that clashed with her pale green bomber jacket.

She'd flung the leather number over a black top with a sloping neckline that stopped just short of baring a bit of cleavage as she pounded the pavement.

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Out and about: Candice Swanepoel was spotted on Friday cradling her five-month-old son Anaca and a female friend of hers while out and about in New York City

The top matched her torn trousers and her boots, and the South Africa-born 28-year-old had accessorized with a glinting drop pendant.

For much of her outing, her firstborn - whom she welcomed into the world last October - was sitting safely in a black Stokke stroller.

Swanepoel's been married to Anaca's father, Brazil-born model Hermann Nicoli, since 2005, having met him in Paris when she was all of 17.

Artful contrast: The Victoria's Secret model let her platinum blonde hair fan out from under a black leather pageboy cap that clashed with her pale green bomber jacket

Dropping hints: She'd flung the leather number over a black top with a sloping neckline that stopped just short of baring a bit of cleavage as she pounded the pavement

Garnishing the look: The top matched her torn trousers and her boots, and the South Africa-born 28-year-old had accessorized with a glinting drop pendant

The model had been seen last week nursing her newborn in between snapshots while working on a Vogue Brazil photo-shoot in Rio De Janeiro.

She'd slid on a black cocktail dress with massive white fabric roses at each shoulder and a small slit at the hem, which itself was cut off around mid-thigh.

Swanepoel's reflected on breastfeeding in the lengthy caption of a close-up Instagram photo she posted in December of herself nursing Anaca.

In the shade: For much of her outing, her baby - whom she welcomed into the world last October - was sitting safely in a black Stokke stroller

Background: Swanepoel's been married to Anaca's father, Brazil-born model Hermann Nicoli, since 2005, having met him in Paris when she was all of 17

Building the family: Baby Anaca is her firstborn

'Many women today are shamed for breastfeeding in public, or even kicked out of public places for feeding their children,' she wrote

'I have been made to feel the need to cover up and somewhat shy to feed my baby in public places but strangely feel nothing for the topless editorials I've done in the name of art..?' the model pointed out.

'The world has been desensitized to the sexualization of the breast and to violence on tv...why should it be different when it comes to breastfeeding?'

Noting: 'Breastfeeding is not sexual it's natural-,' she insisted: 'Those who feel it is wrong to feed your child in public need to get educated on the benefits breastfeeding has on mother and child and intern on society as a whole.'

Multitasking: The model had been seen last week nursing her newborn in between snapshots while working on a Vogue Brazil photo-shoot in Rio De Janeiro
She's reportedly at the beginning stages of a custody battle with her ex husband Romain Dauriac over their two-year-old daughter Rose.

But Scarlett Johansson proved to be in great spirits as she attended the press conference ahead of her upcoming flick Ghost In The Shell at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul, South Korea on Friday.

The 32-year-old actress looked sartorially savvy in a chic beige blouse, which was neatly tucked into a pair of bright pink high-waisted trousers.

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Chic: Scarlett Johansson proved to be in great spirits as she attended the press conference ahead of her upcoming flick Ghost In The Shell at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel in Seoul, South Korea on Friday

The ensemble showcased Scarlett's flair for fashion as she stood out amongst her co-stars.

Her button down top skimmed her sensational frame, while the vivid bottoms - which were held in place by a chic buckle belt - teased at her lithe legs.

The New York native kept the rest of her look simple, which just a subtle slick of make-up, which complemented her short stylish blonde locks.

A pair of strappy nude-coloured heels gave her a little bit of height as she stood up on the stage to present her new flick.

Stylish: The 32-year-old actress looked sartorially savvy in a chic beige blouse, which was neatly tucked into a pair of bright pink high-waisted trousers

Fashionista: Her button down top skimmed her sensational frame, while the vivid bottoms - which were held in place by a chic buckle belt - teased at her lithe legs

Walking the walk: A pair of strappy nude-coloured heels gave her a little bit of height as she stood up on the stage to talk about her new flick

Ghost In The Shell is out this month and also stars Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt and Juliette Binoche.

Its based on the Japanese manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow, and previously became an animated film in Japan in 1995.

Scarlett's casting in as Asian role initially received some backlash, however the film's producer Steven Paul was quick to defend the whitewashing claims.

Beauty: The New York native kept the rest of her look simple, which just a subtle slick of make-up, which complemented her short stylish blonde locks

Star cast: Johan Philip Asbaek, Scarlett Johansson, Juliette Binoche and Rupert Sanders

Trendy: Juliette Binoche opted for a funky multi-coloured blouse as she joined the line-up

'I don't think it was just a Japanese story. Ghost in the Shell was a very international story, and it wasn't just focused on Japanese; it was supposed to be an entire world,' he explained to Buzzfeed News.

'That's why I say the international approach is, I think, the right approach to it,' he continued.

Drawing on his 'international' inspiration, he stated: 'There (are) all sorts of people and nationalities in the world in Ghost in the Shell.

Happy: Scarlett couldn't contain her smiles as she spoke about the eagerly anticipated flick

The film: Ghost In The Shell is based on the Japanese manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow, and previously became an animated film in Japan in 1995

'We're utilising people from all over the world. There's Japanese in it. There's Chinese in it. There's English in it. There's Americans in it.'

Meanwhile, Scarlett's appearance on SNL earlier this week was the star's first public appearance since officially filing to divorce husband Dauriac on March 7.

It is reported that the exes are at the beginning of a custody battle of their two-year-old daughter Rose.

'It's a very international story': Scarlett's casting in as Asian role initially received some backlash, however the film's producer Steven Paul was quick to defend the whitewashing claims

It was said that Dauriac was taken aback by the request because he has been the 'primary parent' for the two-year-old while Johansson has been involved with her career.

The Frenchman Dauriac plans to petition the court to take the child to live with him in his native France, Mayerson said, adding that Johansson will have 'access to her daughter any time she wants to come to Paris.'

Scarlett's first husband was Ryan Reynolds who is now married to and has two children with actress Blake Lively.
He was forced to undergo emergency surgery in January after doctors discovered he had a brain tumour.

And The Apprentice UK star Dillon St Paul, who made his first public appearance at the Britain's Next Top Model launch on Thursday since leaving the hospital, has opened up about the near-death turn of events.

'I felt like I had a spiritual experience, I definitely had an experience like that,' the former reality star told The Sun Online.

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'It was a spiritual experience': The Apprentice UK star Dillon St Paul has opened up about his time recovering in the hospital following surgery to remove a brain tumour in January

Dillon continued: 'It was very personal for me. It sounds a little bit soppy but I felt someone take my hand, and I was reassured, it was lovely.

'It was a very powerful experience,' the Irish contestant - who took part in the business show last autumn - revealed after he was rushed to hospital earlier this year after suffering a seizure at work.

Recalling the drama in a lengthy blog post, the businessman admitted he was stunned when doctors told him he had a non-cancerous mass wedge in his brain.

Drama: The Irish star was forced to undergo emergency surgery earlier this year after doctors discovered he had a brain tumour

'It was very personal': Dillon also admitted that his near-death experience being powerful. He made his first public appearance since leaving the hospital at the Britain's Next Top Model launch on Thursday

'After the seizure I was rushed to emergency where they found a tumor in my brain,' he wrote. 'Before I knew it I was in hospital prepping for surgery to have it removed; what followed was a whirlwind of pain, emotion and disappointment.

'I was about to write that this blog post is the hardest thing Ive ever done because, believe me, writing this while in recovery is no easy feat (it took me a week and two failed attempts to navigate my way through this keyboard).

'But in actuality, the hardest thing was obviously surviving the brain surgery  a journey of pain and sorrow unlike anything Ive ever experienced.'

Painful: Recalling the drama in a lengthy blog post, the businessman admitted he was stunned when doctors told him he had a non-cancerous mass wedge in his brain

Dillon experienced his first seizure while he was working on a new project with his friend Vicki - with whom he co-created magazine Stellar - and admits he was grateful that she supported him during the episode because he had no idea what was going on.

He explained: 'My left hand felt like it was moving in thick jelly and my speech froze. I say speech rather than mouth because it felt like the power to communicate deserted me not just the mechanism, if that makes sense.

'This was the moment my first seizure began. The single most terrifying thing you can ever imagine.

Emergency: The businessman was rushed to hospital two weeks ago after he suffered a seizure at work

'I desperately tried to tell Vicki what was happening but my mouth wouldnt work and the left side of my face felt like it was melting and being pulled to the floor like gooey molasses.

'I fixed on Vickis face but with no way to share what was happening I felt completely trapped. Reality vanished and time stopped.'

He added: 'Fast forward to the emergency room where they tried to get to the bottom of what exactly was going on within my brain with callous candour. After being poked and prodded they ran a CT scan which showed up a small dark area- so a more detailed MRI was required.

Previously: Dillon took part on business related reality show The Apprentice UK last autumn

'When you get an MRI they run a line into youre arm and inject you with dye that shows up everything in more detail- this ran into my unusually narrow blood vessels too quickly and hurt like hell and so marked the first of many small necessary evils which would plague me for the following weeks. I seemed to be constantly prodded, poked and injected until reduced to tears on several occasions ...

'What they found was something called a low-grade glioma tumour. It had caused my seizure and was located on the right side of my brain in an area I was was told was easily operable."'

Dillon underwent the surgery and, although he couldn't see in front of him for the first week afterwards, he's now got his sense of smell back and has been recuperating by watching back-to-back episodes of Absolutely Fabulous.
EastEnders commendably continued to address the important, decidedly contemporary, issue of bullying.

Wed become accustomed to Albert Squares schoolchildren or innocent victims of gay-bashing being persecuted. But now this blight on our society was so bad, and brutal, even Shirley Carter was being bullied. A pretty terrifying conclusion in anyones book...Even more terrifying than Shirley herself.

The ongoing abuse being endured by Rebecca Fowler in the lawless hellhole that was Walford High School was unpleasant enough. But at least it was impressively/ horribly convincingly portrayed  standard probably for any schoolchildren, parents, and teachers watching.

Scary times: Wed become accustomed to Albert Squares schoolchildren or innocent victims of gay-bashing being persecuted. But now this blight on our society was so bad, and brutal, even Shirley Carter was being bullied

Shirley Carters ordeal was another matter. Shirl was currently away, inside, or doing bird as they say in The Vic  or in prison to put it more simply.

Billy Mitchell and his missus Unny werent the only ones to express surprise that Shirleys three-month sentence for Perverting The Course of Justice and Impersonating A Terrahawk was apparently her first stretch.

Like the rest of us they could have sworn they had seen her running the wing in Bad Girls, plus they had seen her in action  or Shirleys version of action, habitually snarling at even the few people she liked, usually in between glugs of vodka, glaring with a face that looked like a Cockney peroxide Medusa chipped out of a concrete breeze block.

Ive been to worse oliday camps than this, she had insisted to her son (Danny Dyer) during his visit in Tuesdays episode. She pointed out that being in prison provided her with showers, a telly, and three decent meals a day, which was more than she used to get at home with Aunt Babes cooking.

Shrugging it off: Ive been to worse oliday camps than this, she had insisted to her son (Danny Dyer) during his visit in Tuesdays episode

Oblivious: Shirleys cell-mate - a young, evidently unhinged, veteran of being banged up (as it were) named Debbie  seemed bizarrely oblivious to how scary Shirley was

The reality, we were asked to believe, was different, albeit not very realistic/believable.

Shirleys cell-mate - a young, evidently unhinged, veteran of being banged up (as it were) named Debbie  seemed bizarrely oblivious to how scary Shirley was.

Bit toytown isnt it? Debbie mocked when she discovered Shirley was in jail for selling alcohol outside the Licensing Laws (i.e. for breakfast). Theres me thinking youre some kind of hard nut. It turns out Im sharing a cell with Minnie Mouse!

No one had ever called Shirley that before. Not even Phil when he was on crack.

Confrontation: Things didnt go well for Bex this week either, even when the teenager did what everyone always tells people in her (unfortunate, unhappy) position to do  namely stand up to the bullies and identify them

Campaign of hate: Viewers saw the character attacked by fellow students Alexandra and Madison in the school toilets

Cowards: Her bullies daubed the word DIRTY on her forehead in marker pen

I dont want to make any enemies, she told Debbie, uncharacteristically meekly.

Its a bit late for that! her tormentor sang.

Things didnt go well for Bex this week either, even when the teenager did what everyone always tells people in her (unfortunate, unhappy) position to do  namely stand up to the bullies and identify them (i.e. grass).

You feel no ones on your side but we all are, her father Martin assured her. Your family are and your mates are.

Terrified: Bex was left cowering in the corner of a toilet cubicle following her ordeal

In fact Rebecca only had one mate (Louise Mitchell) and she wasnt on her side. On the contraryLouise had been complicit with the campaign of teasing, intimidation, and sick cyber-bullying against Bex orchestrated by their fellow students Alexandra and Madison.

Now Louise did nothing as they beat Bex up - standing outside the Girls toilets listening to her screams as the bullies daubed the word DIRTY on her forehead in marker pen.

If what were being told is true you are mixing with some seriously nasty individuals, the head teacher Mrs Lund warned Louise the day after. Girls who could be leading you down a very dangerous path.

Some friend: Bex only had one mate (Louise Mitchell) and she wasnt on her side. On the contraryLouise had been complicit with the campaign of teasing, intimidation, and sick cyber-bullying against her

Keeping her distance: Louise did nothing as they beat Bex up - standing outside the Girls toilets listening to her screams

If this speech was supposed to encourage Louise to inform on the bullies, unsurprisingly it reminded her precisely why she shouldnt.

Theyre cowards and they wont win, the head told Bex, even though they had won when she questioned them and failed to force them to confess. Maybe now that they know the school is on to them, maybe this is what they needed. Maybe this is a wake up call. Maybe now theyll back off.

As Rebecca said: 'It sounds like a lot of maybes.

Elsewhere the long-awaited appearance of Linda Carter back at The Vic served as a reminder of EastEnders previous bullying storyline  about her son Lee.

Friendly advice: If what were being told is true you are mixing with some seriously nasty individuals, the head teacher Mrs Lund warned Louise the day after. Girls who could be leading you down a very dangerous path'

Not helpful: If this speech was supposed to encourage Louise to inform on the bullies, unsurprisingly it reminded her precisely why she shouldnt

After several weeks encompassing various disasters Linda had finally been phoned and informed about them by Jane Beale.

I think you better come home, she told L. Its Danny Dyer. Hes cracking up.

He was too. He was lying on the marital bed, hugging a pillow, crying like a baby. No way for a proper geezer to behave at all.

What were you thinking?! Linda demanded when she found out about all the problems hed kept from her  a question wed been asking ourselves for weeks. Shed only been living in Watford.

The list was quite a long one: Lees lies about his job, Lees debts, Lee arranging the robbery, Lee hitting Whitney, Lee leaving to live in Dover with a bloke called Beanbag, the family taking on his debts, being nicked trying to re-pay them, Shirley going to prison as a result.

Here we go: There was still more bullying too, of a kind. The way the Carters treated Sylvie (who was suffering from alternate attacks of Alzheimers and over-acting) was criminal, probably literally

Thank God: When Tina belatedly phoned about putting Sylvie in a care home thankfully a happy ending was in sight  for her and for us

And for some reason there was still a hole in the roof. Linda didnt ask why, if they were in such financial trouble, her husband hadnt sold his jeep.

Instead, sensibly, she legged it back to Watford.

There was still more bullying too, of a kind. The way the Carters treated Sylvie (who was suffering from alternate attacks of Alzheimers and over-acting) was criminal, probably literally.

Shirley had dosed her muvver up on sleeping pills and Tina left the old girl on her own all day so that she could do her shifts in the caff making fry-ups. Even when Sylvie had a crisis or attacked someone, taking her to the doctors seemed out of the question.

So much for the sacred ancient East End tradition of faaaaamily.

Light relief: At least the final subplot to do with bullying was relatively harmless. This involved Sharons monstrous son Denny using Michelle Fowlers affair with Preston to blackmail her to procure trainers, days off school, and pizza

When Tina belatedly phoned about putting her in a care home thankfully a happy ending was in sight  for her and for us.

At least the final subplot to do with bullying was relatively harmless. This involved Sharons monstrous son Denny using Michelle Fowlers affair with Preston to blackmail her to procure trainers, days off school, and pizza.

Choosing who we wanted to win most (or least) between Denny and Michelle wasnt easy.

Denny has always been a nasty little brat and since she returned to the Square/the series having had a head transplant Michelle had been almost impressively unlikable.

If nothing else the notion of Michelle the paedophile (in the state of Florida anyway) being bullied by a child was enjoyably ironic.
There had been speculation they intended to offload their Chateau in the South Of France.

But now estate vintner Charles Perrin has revealed to Agence France Presse that estranged couple Angelina Jolie, 41, and Brad Pitt, 53, will not be selling Chateau Marmont, which they have owned for three years.

Not only that, but the estate, which produces wines, has recently begun selling gourmet olive oil, according to People.

Not for sale! The French Chateau owned by Angelina Jolie and her estranged husband Brad Pitt is now selling olive oil

Speaking with Agence France Presse, Charles called the rumors 'false' and said the property 'is an investment for their family and their children.

'We have long-term projects,' he added, citing an upcoming batch of vintage rose that are labeled 'bottled by Pitt, Jolie, and Perrin'.

The 1,200-acre property was purchased by the now estranged couple for an estimated $60 million back in 2012. They had previously leased it starting in 2008.

Its vineyard and winery produce a highly-regarded rose.

Gourmet product: Chateau Miraval, which also produces a line of wines, has been selling Miraval Olive Oil in France ever since the beginning of March, according to People

Un-wine: Its vineyard and winery produce a highly-regarded rose

Miraval Olive Oils, meanwhile, is the latest product to come out of the estate.

The gourmet olive oil is currently only available in Europe, but a spokesperson told People that the product, which is developed with the Perrin Family, will be 'available in the U.S. in a very few weeks'.

Priced at $30 a bottle, the product is currently being sold on the company's website and two family-run boutiques in the French towns of Aix-en-Provence and Chateauneuf du Pape, adds the website.

Angelina filed for divorce from her husband Brad in September 2016 after 10 years together.

They are parents to Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.
Her latest project, HBO's Big Little Lies, is filled with drama.

So Reese Witherspoon was ready for a little whimsy when she accompanied her mother and two of her children on a fun-filled trip to Disney World on Thursday.

The 40-year-old Walk The Line star was in town for the official opening of Planet Hollywood Disney Springs, and shared many of her activities on Snapchat.

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A big fan! Perhaps Reese Witherspoon was ready for a little whimsy when she accompanied her mother and her children on a fun-filled trip to Disney World on Thursday

Big kid: The actress seemed thrilled to be on the arm of Mickey Mouse at the Planet Hollywood Disney Springs opening

Perhaps in a nod to the Magical Kingdom, the Oscar winning actress donned some wild, gigantic cat-eye shades with gradient lenses, and quirky sky blue top which featured a large collar and tiny white pompoms along the seams.

It seems she started the day off with a selfie, which showed the film star in front of the iconic castle along with 'I [heart] Disneyworld!' scribbled in magenta.

She also added an adorable pair of magenta ears to herself as well.

Family fun! Another snap showed Reese with her mother Betty, who are both smiling and employing a bunny Snapchat filter, along with the caption 'with my moms'

Work and play: After enjoying a fun-filled day at the theme park with her family, the Legally Blonde star headed over to the opening of Planet Hollywood

Plus one: With Minnie Mouse nowhere in sight, Reese happily stepped in to be Mickey's date at the Planet Hollywood opening

Another snap showed Reese with her mother Betty, who are both smiling and employing a bunny Snapchat filter, along with the caption 'with my moms.'

Of course no trip to Disney World would be complete without a trip to see Mickey Mouse.

Reese documented her four-year-old son Tennessee waiting eagerly in line with bigger brother Deacon, 13.

Almost there! Reese documented her four-year-old son Tennessee waiting eagerly in line with bigger brother Deacon, 13, to see Mickey

Smile! The two boys were then joined by two female friends for a portrait with the famous cartoon mouse

Finally it was the big moment, during which Mickey bent down for a warm embrace. She captioned the snap 'Hugs from Mickey.'

The two boys were then joined by two female friends for a portrait with the famous cartoon mouse.

Apparently the trip was quite a success, as the Water for Elephants star posted yet another picture from the excursion on Friday, which seemed to show Deacon sitting with a buckled-up Tennessee.

'Off to Disneyworld,' proclaims the caption, which is also underlined in red.

New memories: Apparently the trip was quite a success, as the Water for Elephants star posted yet another picture from the excursion on Friday, which showed Deacon sitting with a buckled-up Tennessee

And after a fun day at the theme park with her family, the blonde beauty slipped into a pretty pink lace dress for the Planet Hollywood opening.

Accessorizing her look with peach-colored tie-up high heeled sandals, the Legally Blonde actress was on hand to cut the ribbon at the event.

Reese seemed thrilled as she posed for pictures alongside Mickey Mouse, who put in a second appearance on her trip, proving you're never too old for the Magic Kingdom.

Cutting ribbon: The blonde beauty was on hand to officially open the new Planet Hollywood Disney Springs
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Treasury Department "is unable to fully invest the portion of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund not immediately required to pay beneficiaries"

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday announced his department is suspending contributions to government retirement and disability funds in order to keep the country's debt under the mandated limit.

Mnuchin said the new financing steps were required, and permitted by law, to avoid breaching the roughly $20 trillion debt ceiling set by Congress.

"I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible," he said in a recent letter to House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.

Congress in late 2015 suspended the debt limit through March 15, but have taken no action either to increase the limit or reinstate the suspension to avoid the risk of a default on US obligations.

Mnuchin's predecessors also had been forced to resort to "extraordinary measures" when the US debt level has bumped up against the ceiling, which gave the Treasury a few months of leeway while negotiations with Congress continue.

Congress historically has raised the debt ceiling as a matter of course with bipartisan support. But during the prior presidency of Democrat Barack Obama, Republicans used the debt limit as leverage to force other policy changes and limit spending, repeatedly taking the country to the brink of default.

The battles came to a head in August 2011 when, amid the impasse, Standard & Poor's downgraded US debt for the first time from its coveted AAA rating.

Mnuchin said the Treasury Department as of Thursday "is unable to fully invest the portion of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (CSRDF) not immediately required to pay beneficiaries."

It also is "unable to invest fully the Government Securities Investment Fund (G Fund) of the Federal Employees' Retirement System" or the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, he said.

But the Treasury chief said no retirees would be impacted by the action, and the fund "will be made whole once the debt limit is increased."

The department as of Wednesday already had suspended the sale of state and local government securities which count against the debt limit.

In his March 8 letter to Ryan, Mnuchin stressed: "Honoring the full faith and credit of our outstanding debt is a critical commitment."
An armed Somali pirate walks along the coastline near Hobyo in 2010

Somali pirates on Thursday handed over an oil tanker and eight Sri Lankan hostages captured just days ago, the Oceans Beyond Piracy NGO told AFP, bringing to a close the first such attack since 2012.

"The Puntland maritime police force freed the ship. They made (the pirates) an offer they couldn't refuse and the pirates have left," said John Steed, a former British army officer with the NGO who has spent years negotiating the release of piracy hostages in Somalia.

Earlier on Thursday the Puntland coastguard had threatened to use force if the talks to convince the pirates to release the vessel failed.

Armed attackers seized the Aris 13 on Monday as it made its way from Djibouti to Mogadishu, the first hijacking of a large merchant vessel by Somali pirates since 2012.

Steed said the pirates had left the Aris 13 ship, which was under control of the coast guard and on its way to the port city of Bossaso in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, on the northeastern tip of Somalia.

He was not able to provide more details on the conditions for the release of the vessel.

Abdirahman Mohamud Hassan, the director general of the Puntland maritime force, said earlier that a regional governor, who was not named, had been appointed to negotiate with the pirates.

Anupama Sanjeewani, a relative of Sri Lankan hostage Janaka Shamendra uses a handkerchief during a press conference in Colombo on March 16, 2017

The successful release came after a fierce firefight between the coast guard and armed men aboard a boat believed to be taking food and provisions to the hijacked tanker.

"Our forces were doing a normal routine patrolling around the area when they came under gunfire from these gunmen who were onboard a small skiff and they returned fire," said Hassan.

Steed said an unknown number of people had been injured in the exchange of gunfire.

At the time the tanker was taken it was forced to change course and head toward Puntland. The Aris 13 was about 18 kilometres off the Somali coast when it was attacked, according to Steed.

He said the vessel was not following the "best practices" put in place to avoid piracy, since it was taking a cost- and time-saving route too close to Somalia's coastline, was travelling too slowly and was without an armed escort.

- Illegal fishing fuels piracy -

Village elders in Alula where the hijacked vessel first docked, said the pirates had not made clear demands, but claimed to be driven by anger over illegal fishing.

"These are fishermen who are infuriated with the illegal fishing off their coasts. They desperately need to show their grievances by seizing the boat," said Abdiwahab Ahmed, an elder in Alula.

Somali pirates began staging waves of attacks in 2005, seriously disrupting a major international shipping route and costing the global economy billions of dollars.

At the peak of the piracy crisis in January 2011, 736 hostages and 32 boats were held.

Though anti-piracy measures ended attacks on commercial vessels, fishing boats have continued to face attacks.

Steed says the international community had taken significant steps to improve security, boosting naval forces in the area and requiring ships to take protection measures.

"Hundreds of pirates were arrested, others gave up, and we hadn't had an attack of a commercial ship for five years," he said.

"But the one thing that's not really been addressed is the real root cause of this, which is poverty and the lack of jobs on the ground. There's also a drought, so there's no food, no water."

Illegal fishing has long been used by Somali pirates as an excuse for attacks and Steed has in the past warned that the presence of foreign vessels emptying Somali waters could reverse the gains against piracy.

"The question wasn't really if an attack was going to happen, the question was when," said Steed.
Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman arrives for a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on January 8, 2017

Israel's Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday labelled the Palestinian National Fund, which provides assistance to Palestinians held in Israeli jails, a "terrorist organisation", his office said.

In a statement, it said the decision "stems from (the fund's) continuing and ongoing activity in providing massive support for elements responsible for committing severe acts of terrorism against Israel".

Around 7,000 Palestinians are currently detained in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian rights groups.

Lieberman's office said the fund acts "as a significant financial pipeline for tens of millions of shekels that are transferred on a monthly basis to security prisoners held in Israel for committing acts of terrorism and to members of their families.

"As of today, all necessary actions will be taken in Israel and overseas in order to seize and confiscate property and assets designated for, or belonging to, the fund," it added.

Based in Amman, the fund is operated by Mahmud Abbas' Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Hardliner Lieberman, defence minister since May, has been a fierce critic of the Palestinian president, regularly accusing Abbas of supporting extremism.
General Mike Flynn, pictured at Trump Tower in November, resigned as US national security advisor over his contacts with the Russian envoy to Washington

Russian and Russia-linked entities paid President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Mike Flynn $55,500 for work that included attending a gala with President Vladimir Putin, according to documents released Thursday.

The retired general, who once headed the US Defense Intelligence Agency, earned $33,000 just to go to the December 2015 party held by RT, the international television agency that the US now says is an arm of Russian intelligence.

Flynn's Moscow trip, where he sat at the gala's central table together with Putin, was well-known.

But the amount he was paid was revealed for the first time in documents released by Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who called for a probe into whether Flynn broke Defense Department security rules in taking that and other payments from Russian entities.

Flynn was forced to resign as Trump's national security advisor on February 13 after it emerged he had lied about the content of phone calls with Russia's ambassador in late 2016.

Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Government Oversight Committee, noted in a letter addressed to Trump, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and FBI chief James Comey, that Flynn also received $11,250 from a Russian charter airline and $11,250 from the US arm of Kaspersky, a prominent Russia-based cyber security company.

He also pointed out that Flynn only in recent weeks officially reported that he had been hired late last year to lobby for Turkey, for $530,000.

"I cannot recall any time in our nation's history when the president selected as his national security advisor someone who violated the Constitution by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from an agent of a global adversary that attacked our democracy," Cummings said.

Cummings' letter spelled more trouble for Flynn, a once-lauded army general who fell from grace in February only weeks into his job as a top presidential aide.

According to reports, he first met Trump in mid-2015 and later became an advisor to his campaign.

After the election Trump named him White House national security advisor -- only to have to ask for his resignation weeks later amid a storm over his calls with the Russian ambassador.

The calls came at a time when the Obama administration was preparing to retaliate against Moscow for its alleged interference in the US election. Flynn later admitted he discussed that retaliation -- new sanctions and expulsions -- with the ambassador.

Cummings said that Flynn, as a retired general, was bound by government rules not to accept payments from rival governments, and called on the Defense Department take steps to seize Flynn's earnings from those deals.
US President Donald Trump speaks during the Friends of Ireland Luncheon for the visit of Taoiseach of Ireland Enda Kenny at the US Capitol March 16, 2017

Donald Trump wants to act swiftly, but 55 days after moving into the White House the president has little to show for his hustle, hamstrung by Congress, the courts and his own unorthodox style.

Two of his flagship campaign promises have yet to be fulfilled.

Judges have blocked both versions of the billionaire tycoon's executive order to temporarily close US borders to refugees and nationals from several Muslim-majority nations.

Trump's highly promoted effort to replace "Obamacare," the health coverage law implemented under his predecessor, has lagged in Congress, where some fellow Republicans are opposed to the new plan.

The first two months of the Trump presidency have been a testimony to both the constitutional limits of US executive power and the sluggish pace of on-the-job training for the first-time politician, who has surrounded himself with government novices.

"They simply have fallen far behind their schedule for... the main things that they planned to accomplished during the first few weeks," said Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Republican reform of health care is a case in point.

"The Trump campaign and the Trump transition did not have a plan for replacing Obamacare," Smith told AFP.

Complicating matters, Trump the campaigner promised coverage for everyone, and vowed not to touch key entitlements Medicare and Medicaid.

"All of that simply forced the House Republicans to take more time than they expected to get a bill prepared," the professor said.

- Accomplishments -

The record is not without signs of progress.

"It's been a little over 50 days since my inauguration and we've been putting our America First agenda very much into action," Trump declared at a campaign-style rally Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee.

"We're keeping our promises."

Among his undeniable early successes is his move to change the culture in Washington by appointing outsiders into his political circle, including several entrepreneurs but also members of the Trump organization and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The stock market has soared into record territory, and unemployment is down.

US President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Nashville, Tennessee on March 15, 2017, where he said "We're keeping our promises"

Trump has kept his word on several commitments: withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, relaunch of the Keystone XL pipeline, and freezing federal hires.

He has given law-enforcement broader discretion in deporting undocumented immigrants.

The number of arrests of people illegally crossing from Mexico into the United States decreased by 40 percent from January to February compared to last year, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which usually sees an increase in the period.

- Slow start -

No major Trump-backed legislation has passed Congress however, aside from a trio of repeals of Obama-era regulations on finance, the environment and firearms.

At this stage of his presidency, in 2009, Barack Obama had signed a massive economic recovery bill into law in response to the financial crisis.

The 30 executive orders signed by Trump are for the most part policy signposts or decrees that concern long term goals.

The saga over the order to bar US entry to nationals of certain mainly Muslim nations illustrates the improvisational nature of several early actions by the Trump White House.

This is attributed in part to the fact that his cabinet is still not fully in place, due to unprecedented obstruction by opposition Democrats in the US Senate.

But the urge to act quickly, bypassing certain institutional safeguards, paradoxically has blurred the presidential message, especially in foreign policy.

"This is a president whose management style is very difficult to figure," Smith said.

"Sometimes he jumps in and gets involved in minutiae, in sometimes unpredictable ways," he added. "In other cases he seems to be disinterested, and it's left to the others."

- 'Deep state' -

Trump expended early political capital by commenting on the issue of Russian meddling in the US election, and refuting any collusion between his associates and Moscow.

His repeated interventions have ruffled feathers among congressional Republicans.

Faced with various hurdles, the president and his supporters have denounced what he sees as partisan judges and biased media

Faced with various hurdles, the president and his supporters have denounced what he sees as partisan judges and biased media.

Trump supporters have spoken out against a so-called "Deep State," the idea that there is a conspiracy of bureaucrats determined to secretly manipulate or control the presidency through the use of intelligence services and leaks to the press.

It is a concept that has seduced some on the far right, but experts remain skeptical.

"From my experience, the great majority of Washington leaks come from the White House and Congress, not from inside the intelligence community," former CIA officer John Sipher wrote on The Cipher Brief.
Brothers Yaser (L) and Mohamed Jamous, who set up Refugees of Rap in 2007, rap in Arabic about the war in Syria that they have fled and their new life in France.

Staccato lyrics may be no match for Bashar al-Assad's military firepower, but two brothers, who fled to Paris from Syria and perform as "Refugees of Rap", find sniping with words a liberating experience.

Having grown up officially stateless in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Yaser and Mohamed Jamous rap in Arabic about the war they have fled and their new life in France.

"We chose the name because for us, rap represents a country where we can say what we think," Mohamed, 28, told AFP.

"And we're seeking asylum there."

Over a pounding beat, solemn music blending high piano keys and low violin tones, the brothers "spit", or speak, the chorus in unison: "We have to wake up, stop dreaming. The time for silence is long gone, swept away by words."

The lyrics are from their 2011 song "The Age of Silence", one of the last they sung before fleeing Syria via Lebanon.

Performing their hip-hop at a Paris community centre, the brothers said the song had been the "first time we dared speak up openly against the (Assad) regime" despite the risk in doing so.

"One word, and you got 20 years (in prison) or death. Here, we wanted to say that the time for silence is over."

The duo were born and raised in the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of Damascus, which was once home to 160,000 people -- including Syrians -- but has been ravaged by fighting.

Their grandfather fled to Syria from Haifa in 1948 when the state of Israel was created.

Yaser and Mohamed left Syria in early 2013 as fighting for control of the camp intensified. The rest of their family also fled and is in Sweden.

- Inspiration in revolt -

The brothers created "Refugees of Rap" in 2007 with two friends, an Algerian and a Syrian, and were one of the first such groups to emerge out of Syria.

It now comprises just the two of them -- the Syrian member refused to leave and the Algerian went to Germany.

The Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk in southern Damascus was once home to 160,000 people -- including Syrians -- but has been ravaged by fighting.

Released in 2010, their first album recounts living in the overcrowded camp, as they advocate for the Palestinian cause.

Then, after 2011, the revolt provided inspiration.

They penned "The Age of Silence", "Haram" ("Forbidden"), which is about the horrors of the war, "Aysheen" meaning "We Live", and "Corruption in the Country".

They had completed eight tracks for the second album when they began receiving anonymous threats on social media.

- Got touring -

"We received two or three messages on Facebook," Yaser, 29, said.

"The messages said 'We know you're preparing an album and if you don't stop... it's over for you. We're going to destroy your studio, we're going to stop you. We're going to kill you.' "

It was not the only hurdle they faced.

During fighting in Yarmuk in 2012, the group's recording studio was destroyed in bombings. Their younger brother was then jailed for 40 days for an unknown reason.

"When he was released, he was in a horrible state," recalled Mohamed, who now works in a hotel. "He'd been tortured."

Shortly afterwards, they decided to leave Syria. They were granted refugee status in France, with the mention "nationality undetermined, Palestinian origin" a few months later.

"When we got here, there was no housing... no aid," Yaser said. "You had to wait for months to get set up, so we chose to book some concert dates and get to work."

They toured in Denmark, Sweden and France, where they completed "The Age of Silence" and released the album in 2014.

- 'Not from nowhere' -

"In Syria, people understand (Arabic)," Yaser said. "That's what we miss here."

The brothers work on their language skills by listening to French rappers.

But on stage, they get around the language barrier by reading translated lyrics and then leading the audience in chants of the Arabic chorus before each track.

For their upcoming third album, the group will "tell the story of our time here in France, our exile," said Yaser, who now works in a souvenir shop.

But they have not forgotten Syria.

They have little hope of returning but "in exile, the future is never clear," said Yaser.

"We are exiles everywhere but we're not from nowhere," said Mohamed. "We are proud to be Palestinian because it's our history, and in Syria, we were made to feel like we were Palestinians.

"But we also grew up feeling Syrian because we were raised there. Now, we feel Parisian."
The British ambassador to Indonesia is summoned after a cruise ship damages coral reef at Raja Ampat in West Papua

Indonesia summoned the British ambassador Friday after a cruise ship on a voyage organised by a London-based company smashed into coral reefs in a popular tourist spot and caused extensive damage.

Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse marine habitats on Earth, and attracts intrepid travellers and divers to its palm-fringed islands surrounded by coral and fish.

The accident happened this month when the 4,200-ton Caledonian Sky smashed into the reefs at low tide around Kri, one of hundreds of small islands in Raja Ampat, after taking tourists on a bird-watching expedition.

The boat, which was carrying 102 passengers and 79 crew, was grounded on the reefs and only refloated later on a high tide. Numerous attempts to free it using a tug boat failed, causing further damage to the corals.

The incident in West Papua province infuriated the government, who say the British captain could face criminal charges, while local residents believe it will impact the tourism industry and the livelihoods of fishermen.

On Friday Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Panjaitan, a senior figure in the cabinet who is close to President Joko Widodo, summoned the British ambassador to Indonesia, Moazzam Malik.

Damage to coral reef at Raja Ampat in Indonesia's West Papua could cost $16.2 million to restore

After the meeting at Panjaitan's office in the capital, Malik told reporters he had a "very good discussion" with the minister.

"I'm disappointed to learn about the damage to this coral reef in West Papua, as we are with any environmental incident that occurs in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world," he said.

"We hope the matter can be resolved quickly between the Indonesian authorities and the company that is responsible for this accident and was managing the ship."

- Serious concern -

However, Malik also noted that the ship was in fact owned by a Swedish company. The tour operator Noble Caledonia, which organised the voyage to Indonesia, is based in London.

Panjaitan said authorities were taking the reef destruction "very seriously".

"He (the captain) attempted to break free from the reefs and made the damage even worse even though he was ordered to stop," he said, adding it could take up to 100 years to restore the corals.

Authorities have expressed anger that the Bahamas-flagged vessel left Indonesia and sailed on to the Philippines without waiting for a full damage assessment to be completed.

The government has set up a task force to investigate the devastation of the reef and promised to take firm action.

Ricardo Tapilatu, a marine researcher from the University of Papua who headed a team assessing the impact, has said the March 4 accident damaged an estimated 13,500 square metres (145,000 square feet) of coral reef which could cost up to $16.2 million to restore.

Noble Caledonia has apologised for the accident and said they are working to reach a settlement with the government.

In a statement earlier this week, the company said: "We value our relationships around the world with local people and we are sorry to have impacted the local community."
President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in the Oval Office hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues

Donald Trump hosts Germany's Angela Merkel at the White House Friday, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of words between the two ostensible allies.

The cautious German chancellor and the impulsive US president will hold talks in the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues.

Talks had been scheduled for Tuesday, before a blizzard in the eastern United States forced a postponement.

For years, Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.

With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a 140-character Twitter missive.

Before coming to office the US president called Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and said she was "ruining Germany."

He also demanded countries like Germany step up defense spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytizes fiscal prudence.

In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind the real estate mogul of democratic values.

Any "close cooperation," she said, must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."

Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world," a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House.

- Voice of Europe -

Between meetings, the pair will hold a joint press conference at 1:20 pm (1720 GMT) that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements.

"Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence," said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain," he added.

"And Germany has placed all of its security eggs in multilateral baskets."

The Washington Monument is seen behind the snow-covered Mall on March 14, 2017 in Washington, DC

Since coming to office, Trump has tempered his comments slightly, but is still likely to press for higher defense spending.

And European officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.

Bannon who has championed trade protectionism and opposed the European Union and other multilateral institutions that underpin the world order.

Merkel is sure to raise the issue of a proposed US border tariff that would hit German manufacturers hard. To underscore the point she will bring a host of German business leaders along for the trip.

Before departing for the United States, Merkel also noted she was going to Washington as an envoy not just of Germany, but of Europe too.

"I will of course point out that for us, our country and our membership in the European Union are two sides of the same coin," Merkel said ahead of the visit.

Hours before the pair was set to meet, Germany's Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries warned that Berlin could take Washington to an international trade court if it insists on imposing punitive tariffs on German goods.

Amid the heightened rhetoric, she acknowledged that "a lot is at stake" as Merkel meets Trump on Friday, calling for clarity and "creating a reliable base" for relations to reduce the "poisonous" uncertainty clouding the economic outlook.

In a conciliatory tone, a White House official said that Trump will seek out Merkel's views on Russia.

That is a nod to her years on the international stage and experience growing up in communist East Germany, where she learned Russian.

"The president will be very interested in hearing the Chancellor's views on her experience in interacting with Putin," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Of course she has been doing this for more than a decade," the official said. "He's going to be very interested in hearing her insights on what it's like to deal with the Russians."

Trump's own background may also help break the ice.

His family hails from Kallstadt, a tidy village nestled in southwest Germany's lush wine country.

His grandparents left for America more than a century ago fleeing poverty and later, after a brief return, trouble with the law.
Israel carried out air strikes on Syria, prompting the launch of missiles, one of which was intercepted north of Jerusalem by Israel's Arrow air defence system (pictured)

Israeli aircraft carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, prompting the launch of ground-to-air missiles in response, one of which was intercepted, the army said on Friday.

It was the most serious incident between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (army) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles."

None of the missiles hit their targets, the army added.

Both Israeli and foreign media have reported Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeting arms convoys of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

But normally Israel makes no official comment.

The missile fire prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

The missile was intercepted north of Jerusalem by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.
South Korean and US marines take part in an exercise in the western port city of Incheon in September 2016

Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said Friday.

The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.

Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

Demilitarized Zone

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.

Even so, Tillerson announced the end of United States' "strategic patience" -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under the earlier policy, the US ruled out diplomatic engagement with the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) takes part in a press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se in Seoul on March 17, 2017

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."

But in separate remarks Russia's deputy foreign minister called for an end to a "vicious circle" of tough US reactions to nuclear tests by Pyongyang, which in turn further escalate tensions on the peninsula.

US Navy personnel take part in a joint military exercise with South Korea east of the Korean Peninsula on March 14, 2017

"We suggest looking at the situation in a multi-dimensional way in order to break the vicious circle of tensions," Igor Morgulov told Japan's JiJi Press in an interview posted on the foreign ministry's site Friday.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to be recognised as a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

- China is key -

Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

North Korean soldiers at the border between the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, on March 17, 2017

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but Pyongyang's main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

The accusation that China is not doing enough was repeated by Donald Trump Friday, when the US president said on Twitter: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.

Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South.

Its reaction was "unnecessary" and "troubling", Tillerson said.

- North's gaze -

Earlier, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area in the Demilitarized Zone, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks -- and at one point were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one pointing a camera towards him.

US officials have been spooked by North Korea's accelerating progress towards building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten US mainland cities.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes

Analysts said that Tillerson's comments could signal a sweeping change in Washington's stance.

"It could be rhetoric to pressure both North Korea and China but considering the current atmosphere in Washington, it doesn't seem like it will end as 'just words'," said Choi Kang of the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

"We will have to see how far they will be willing to go with the military option," he added. "But what he is trying to show is that Washington is not interested in engaging in dialogue with North Korea."

Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves.

But Tillerson has sought to reassure Tokyo and Seoul of Washington's backing in the event of an attack by the North.
Standard & Poor's has cut its credit rating on embattled Japanese industrial giant Toshiba to 'CCC-' and warned the company's finances were quickly deteriorating

Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating on Toshiba again Friday, warning that the troubled company's finances were quickly deteriorating owing to huge losses at its US nuclear unit.

The ratings agency slashed its outlook on the Japanese industrial giant by two notches to 'CCC-', pushing it further into junk status after earlier downgrades in December and January.

Loss-hit Toshiba, a pillar of corporate Japan, could be running out of options for turning around its business or securing emergency bank funding, it added.

"There is a growing likelihood that Toshiba will become unable to fulfil its financial obligations in a timely manner or will undertake a debt restructuring we classify as distressed in the next six months," S&P said.

Toshiba's multi-billion-dollar losses are likely to multiply, it added, as it faces the embarrassing prospect of being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

"The heavy losses and financial burden related to Toshiba's US nuclear power business will grow further, increasing uncertainty about (its) prospects for restructuring and bank support," S&P said.

The downgrade comes after Toshiba's beleaguered shares rebounded earlier Friday, closing 3.5 percent higher, on reports that Tokyo is mulling using state money to support the spin off of its prized memory chip business.

The government denied the reports.

"The specifics of its plan to sell its (memory chip) business have yet to be determined and it will be some time before the proceeds of a sale materialise," S&P said.

Toshiba shares have been hammered this year, losing more than half their value since late December when it first warned of eye-popping losses at atomic division Westinghouse Electric -- and pointed to a possible accounting fraud.

The company is probing a whistleblower's claims that one or more Westinghouse executives exerted "inappropriate pressure" on the division's accounts.

This week, Japanese financial regulators gave Toshiba until April 11 to publish its fourth-quarter results, which were originally due in mid-February.

Toshiba had said it needed more time to probe claims of misconduct at Westinghouse and gauge the impact on its finances before reporting its numbers.

Toshiba has previously warned it was on track to report a net loss of 390 billion yen in the fiscal year to March, as it faced a writedown topping 700 billion yen at Westinghouse.

The crisis comes less than two years after Toshiba's reputation was badly damaged by separate revelations that top company executives pressured underlings to cover up weak results after the 2008 global financial meltdown.
The March 13 takeover of Mobileye by computer chip giant Intel was the largest ever in Israel's tech sector

Intel's $15-billion purchase of Israeli firm Mobileye could help fuel the country's rise in the driverless car industry -- not as a builder of vehicles, but as the brains behind them.

Monday's deal, the largest ever in Israel's tech sector, could help boost trade despite the fact no commercial cars are assembled in the country.

The self-styled "startup nation" has no real tradition of auto manufacturing: an ignoble previous stint in the 1960s and 70s produced the fibreglass Sussita car, parts of which, according to legend, were edible for camels.

But the rise of new technology including driverless cars has opened space for the tech-savvy country to excel.

In 2013, Google paid more than $1 billion (900 million euros) for Waze, an Israeli crowd-sourced app that plots the quickest journeys in real time, followed by Monday's $15 billion Mobileye deal.

The company makes advanced driver assistance and accident avoidance systems for car manufacturers, and has already collaborated with Intel and BMW on self-driving car technology.

It was founded in 1999 but Yossi Vardi -- considered one of the fathers of Israel's high-tech startup scene -- said the automobile industry's growth in Israel really began in 2007 when General Motors established a research and development centre.

"It surprised everybody that a company like General Motors would go to Israel to source innovation and technology."

In the last three years, Vardi said, Honda, Ford, Volkswagen, Volvo and others have followed suit.

Most Israeli companies in the field don't involve production, but ways to make driving more efficient.

Among them are Otonomo, which provides in-depth data on car usage; Argus, one of the market leaders in protecting cars from cyber hacking; and VocalZoom, dubbed "Siri for cars."

Elan Zivotofsky, general partner at the OurCrowd equity platform that invests in a number of companies working on autonomous cars, compared it to smartphones, laptops and other sectors where Israeli technology is heavily used but the final products are still made elsewhere.

"Israel is not going to be in the business of building cars," he said.

"Israel is in the business of building some of the most important core elements that will enable autonomous driving."

- 'Doors will open' -

Vardi said the country's military experience, with some of the world's most advanced monitoring, laser-guiding and other technologies, place it in a good position.

"When you drive a car, you cannot stop the car and wait 15 minutes for the computer to process. It has to be immediate," Vardi said.

"This kind of talent you find in the military -- in airplanes etc."

The impact of Mobileye could be significant, said Yaniv Feldman, editor-in-chief of the Israeli Geektime tech blog.

There are dozens of companies in the sector and Feldman reckons Israel is already one of the leading players in autonomous driving behind the United States and China.

In 2016, around $70 million was invested in automotive tech in Israel, he said, but that will increase by "somewhere between 25 to 40 percent."

"We will probably start seeing much more activity in the space and investor interest rising," he told AFP.

None of the other companies were as advanced as Mobileye, though, he added.

Aquarius Engines, an Israeli firm that claims to have developed a radically improved combustion engine, is currently seeking $10 million in a second round of funding.

Chairman Gal Fridman said they had already noticed a change.

"Since Mobileye happened, our phone is ringing all the time," he told AFP.

"Until now, when I came and told (car companies) I was an Israeli developing an engine, it was a bit odd as the country has no history of automobiles," he said.

"Now, after Waze and Mobileye, we have more credibility, I think, and doors will open easier."
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz has cancelled his trip to the Maldives, where the government has shuttered schools in the small capital of Male to try to stem the spread of swine flu

The Saudi king has cancelled a scheduled visit to the politically-troubled atoll nation of the Maldives because of an outbreak of swine flu in its capital, the government in Male announced Friday.

The Maldives was to be the final stop in the monarch's ongoing Asian tour that has already taken him to Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Japan.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim said a new date for King Salman's trip to the Indian Ocean archipelago would be announced later.

Dozens of people tested positive this month for the H1N1 influenza strain, also known as swine flu, Maldivian health authorities said. Two people have died so far.

The government has ordered the closure of schools in the one-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometre) capital island of Male to prevent the spread of the disease and has discouraged residents in neighbouring islets from visiting.

The country's main opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), had protested the planned state visit, accusing President Abdulla Yameen of planning to sell an atoll to Saudi investors, a charge the government has denied.

"With growing public outrage and strong opposition to President Yameens attempts to sell-off Faafu atoll to the Saudi royal family, the MDP feels that the time is not right for the royal visit," the party said in a statement.

Yameen lifted a ban on foreign ownership of real estate in 2015.

Land is scarce in the Maldives where 99.9 percent of its territory is sea and the nation's 1,192 tiny coral islands account for just 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of land.

However, the islands are strategically located -- scattered some 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator -- straddling the main East-West international shipping lanes.

The country is a popular upmarket holiday destination but its image has been hit by political unrest in recent years.

Opposition leader and former president Mohamed Nasheed is currently living in exile in London after he was jailed on terror-related charges widely criticised as politically motivated.
Bangladesh commandos take part in exercises in Dhaka on October 6, 2016

A man blew himself up on Friday at a camp for Bangladesh's elite security forces, wounding two others, in an apparent botched suicide attack.

The incident came a day after a series of raids on suspected militant hideouts in the troubled country, which has suffered a series of Islamist attacks in recent years.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said a man carrying explosives entered the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) camp near the Dhaka international airport on Friday morning.

The explosives went off after he was challenged by two RAB men, wounding them both but causing no other casualties.

"Security has been beefed up at all international and domestic airports," Bangladesh Civil Aviation authorities' spokesman Rezaul Karim told reporters.

The bomb exploded after the man, who entered the camp by jumping over a wall, was confronted by RAB officers, RAB spokesman Mufti Mahmud Khan told reporters. It was not clear whether the detonation was deliberate.

The spokesman said the man's identity was not known, but that the attack was similar in style to that of previous ones by Islamist extremists.

The attacker was in his late 20s, local newspaper Daily Star said, quoting witnesses.

"The force of the blast was such that it ripped apart his torso and sent pieces of him flying in all directions for about 15-20 metres," the newspaper said.

After the attack, a bomb disposal unit swept the spot and recovered a live improvised explosive device (IED), RAB spokesman said.

The camp, which hosts a mix of elite police, army and air force personnel, has since been cordoned off.

Bangladeshi security forces launched a nationwide crackdown on Islamist extremists following a deadly siege at a cafe in Dhaka last year, arresting scores.

The drive was led by the RAB, which is tasked with tackling militancy and serious crimes in Bangladesh.

Four alleged militants were killed on Thursday when a raid on a building in the southern port city of Chittagong sparked a 15-hour stand-off with militants armed with guns and grenades.

Police said they were all members of the extremist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and that at least two were killed by a suicide explosion that they set off.

Last year's attack on the Holey Bakery, a cafe popular with foreigners, badly undermined Bangladesh's reputation as a relatively moderate Muslim nation.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which 22 people including 18 foreign hostages were killed in July.

The Sheikh Hasina government has denied the presence of IS in the country and blames local extremists.

Rohan Gunaratna, a professor of security studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, warned that the Bangladesh government needed to acknowledge the threat to tackle it comprehensively.

"Denying IS will neither help to secure Bangladesh nor create the mindset required to counter the rising threat," he told AFP.
A man walks past 'Mao' a 1973 screen print by US artist Andy Warhol, during a pre-auction preview by Sotheby's in Hong Kong, on March 17, 2017

An Andy Warhol portrait of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong will be auctioned in Hong Kong in a landmark sale that could fetch $15 million -- but mainland buyers may be wary of putting in a bid.

The classic 1973 screen print by the legendary US pop artist will go under the hammer at Sotheby's next month with the highest estimate the auction house has ever seen for a painting in Asia.

It comes as demand grows among collectors in the region for a wider variety of high-profile works, driven by appetite in China.

The auction house describes the event as the first "significant" sale of Western contemporary art in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, which was handed back to China by Britain in 1997.

But while buyers from mainland China have developed massive market clout, Warhol's images of Mao have drawn controversy there.

A major touring retrospective of his works removed pictures of the former leader when it visited Shanghai and Beijing in 2013.

Organisers at the time said it was a mutual decision after concerns were raised by the institutions displaying the show.

There is also general sensitivity about any use of Mao's image in China, where he remains a controversial figure.

His legacy as Communist China's founding father makes him inseparable from official propaganda extolling the party's ruling legitimacy, and his huge portrait still overlooks vast Tiananmen Square and appears on Chinese bank notes.

Yet his mistakes, such as disastrous economic policies blamed for mass starvation and the political witch hunts of the 1966-76 "Cultural Revolution", left a bitter aftertaste and depictions of him otherwise remain strictly controlled.

Sotheby's said it hoped Warhol's artistic merit would outweigh any political concerns.

"We hope people won't be stopped by any political issues...we are talking about serious art," Sotheby's Isaure de Viel Castel told AFP, as the portrait was unveiled Friday for the first time in Hong Kong ahead of the sale.

Castel, senior director of modern and contemporary art for Asia, described the work as a "masterpiece".

Warhol made hundreds of vibrant images of Mao, using a portrait of the leader from the "Little Red Book" of his thoughts and sayings as a template.

The prints piled colour onto Mao's face, adorning him with rouge, eye shadow and lipstick in an irreverent take on China's totalitarian propaganda.

The 127cm x 107cm silkscreen portrait to be auctioned by Sotheby's on April 2 overlays his face with a blurred sphere of yellow and daubs his shirt orange.

Chinese artists have also depicted Mao in their works, including painter Li Shan, who shows the leader with a lotus flower in his mouth.

Warhol himself visited China in 1982, five years before his death.

China's economic slowdown, a corruption crackdown by Beijing and global instability have affected art markets.

But auctioneers have always remained optimistic that the highest quality pieces would find homes among the super rich.
Taken on March 15, this photo shows Ugandan police spokesman Andrew Kaweesi (L) speaking to reporters in Kampala. On Friday, he was shot and killed as he left his home in Kampala

Uganda's second most prominent policeman was shot and killed in his car on Friday along with two other officers as he left his home in Kampala, police said.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Kaweesi served as the force's spokesman and was one of the country's most high-profile officers.

"He was shot dead this morning as he was leaving his home coming to work," Inspector General Kale Kayihura told AFP.

"Kaweesi had two police officers guarding him who were also killed. The motive is yet to be established," he added.

A large crowd of local residents gathered at the scene where the officers' dead bodies slumped inside a black vehicle, blood pooling under shattered glass alongside the car. The bodies were later taken away.

A local resident described seeing four men on two motorcycles attack the car the police officers were travelling in at around 9:30 am (0630GMT) as they left for work.

"Two motorbike drivers and two men with guns fired at the car. They shot very rapidly with guns that looked like AK47s," said Mohammad, a motorcycle taxi driver who lives and works in the area.

"The motorbikes came from behind as the car was leaving Kaweesi's house. The car driver tried to increase speed but they drove past the car and shot into it," said the 30-year old who declined to give his surname.

"The motorbikes were new and the shooters looked professional. They weren't wearing masks but I didn't see their faces because I ran for cover."

- 'Shower of bullets' -

Local mayor Charles Sserunjogi said he heard "a shower of bullets -- many shots -- from my house nearby".

He said Kaweesi had lived in the neighbourhood of Kulambiro for about 10 years.

"I don't believe what I'm seeing right now. I knew Kaweesi well and met with him about a week and a half ago to discuss tarmacking the road he was shot on."

Kaweesi rose to prominence as he spearheaded the police response to widespread opposition party protests following a controversial 2011 presidential election.

After a stint as commander of Kampala Metropolitan Police he was appointed director of operations and then head of human resources before assuming the role of main police spokesman in August 2016.

He appeared regularly on television talk shows, his most recent appearance being Thursday night on NTV, one of the major private channels in the country.

Kaweesi's killing resembles the assassinations of other high profile legal and military personnel.

In March 2015 Joan Kagezi, a senior public prosecutor, was shot in the street and the assailant escaped with an accomplice on a motorcycle.

In November last year Ugandan army officer, major Sulaiman Kiggundu -- a former Allied Democratic Forces rebel -- was shot in his car by gunmen travelling on two motorcycles. Both crimes remain unsolved.
Syrians walk past a giant poster of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo

In Aleppo, portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin hang shoulder-to-shoulder with those of his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, signalling Moscow's rise at the expense of Damascus's other ally, Iran.

The rivalry between the two primary backers of the Syrian government is becoming increasingly palpable, according to Syrian officials and a Russian analyst.

Iran is proud to have intervened early on in Syria's six-year war, bolstering the Assad regime with men, weapons, and economic aid.

But it was Russia, which entered the conflict with its first air strikes in support of Assad on September 30, 2015, that transformed its trajectory.

"Although both countries support the regime, their strategies on how to defeat the uprising differ," said a Syrian member of parliament, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The primary divergence is over Turkey, a years-long rebel backer with which Syria shares its long northern border.

Moscow has formed an unlikely alliance with Ankara since 2016, envisioning an end to the Syrian conflict as a compromise with Turkey.

But Tehran abhors this approach.

Iran has "differences of views with Turkey with regard to Syria, and they're very serious differences of views, but we have found a common ground," its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently told Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television.

Tabnak, a website run by the former chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai, presents a less diplomatic view, suggesting in January that "the inclusion of Turkey in efforts to put an end to war in Syria" could pose "a threat" for Iran.

- 'Price we had to pay' -

Those differences truly crystallised in December as Syrian government forces battled to retake Aleppo's devastated opposition-held east.

Syrian pro-government forces walk past rubble in old Aleppo on December 9, 2016

Iran and allied militias sought total surrender from rebels encircled in the second city, a source close to the regime told AFP in Aleppo.

But, the source added, Russia had already agreed with Turkey on safe passage for east Aleppo's 34,000 residents.

The deal infuriated Iran and its allies in the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah, who tried to spoil the agreement.

As a consolation prize, however, Iran and its allies successfully included the evacuation of Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite villages besieged by rebels, in the deal.

"The agreement with Turkey was indispensable for finishing with Aleppo because every time the Syrian army advanced, Ankara allowed hundreds of rebels in," a retired Syrian officer told AFP.

"To avoid yet another failure, Moscow got Ankara to agree to close the border, strangling the rebels. Russia then secured a safe exit for them," the officer said.

"It was certainly difficult for those that were fighting on the ground but it was the price we had to pay to win," he said.

Tensions have only grown since, with Russia and Turkey leaving Iran out of a cessation of hostilities they brokered in late December.

Tehran joined Ankara and Moscow in sponsoring the first talks between regime forces and rebels in January in Kazakhstan.

- 'Interests align' -

After Aleppo's fall, all eyes turned to the largest remaining rebel bastion: Idlib, the northwestern province controlled by an increasingly tense alliance of rebels and jihadists.

Tehran has advocated a blitz assault on Idlib, mainly to break the rebel siege of Fuaa and Kafraya, but Russia has vetoed the idea.

A new front so close to the border and against Ankara-backed rebels would risk direct confrontation with Turkey, a possibility Moscow is unwilling to entertain.

"Russia is wary of Turkey, but it prefers squeezing it and limiting its movement, instead of mounting a full-frontal attack," a political figure in Damascus said.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels gesture as they drive in the northwestern border town of al-Bab on February 23, 2017 after capturing it from the Islamic State group

Turkish forces and allied rebels have indeed been left with little wiggle room in northern Syria. They seized the town of Al-Bab from Islamic State group jihadists in February without a word of protest from Russia.

But now, surrounded by government forces and US-backed groups, they are unable to push further east to fulfil Ankara's goal of leading the battle for IS's stronghold in Raqa.

Much of Iran's strength is drawn from the thousands of militiamen it commands in Syria, which "represent a huge contingent of fighters with which (the Russians) must find a way to cooperate," Russian military analyst Pavel Felguenhauer told AFP.

"Our ties with them are very complicated," he admitted.

But Russia is also increasing its own boots on the ground in Syria, even after scaling back its aircraft there.

"Russia's presence in Syria is rapidly growing. Since the fall, the number (of military personnel) has nearly doubled and will soon be 10,000," Felguenhauer said.

Russia is also cultivating its own proxies on the ground just like Iran, for whom Hezbollah, as well as Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, have become indispensable.

"We've created an 'indigenous infantry' which is cheaper than Russian mercenaries," Felguenhauer said, comparing them to US-backed Iraqi tribes that fought Al-Qaeda or Moscow's Chechnyan allies.

Russia has already helped form, finance, or arm two Syrian factions -- the Desert Falcons and the Fifth Legion -- as well as the Palestinian Quds Brigade.

"Russia is a great power with a geostrategic vision that includes Syria, while Iran is a Shiite regional power," the Syrian political figure said.

"Their interests can align, but they are not always identical."
Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, who plays Padmavati, took to Twitter to defend the period drama following the first attack, saying "there is absolutely no distortion of history" in the movie

Indian protesters burned costumes and vandalised the set of Bollywood movie "Padmavati" this week over tabloid rumours the film will romantically link a legendary Hindu queen with a Muslim ruler.

Bollywood stars came out in support of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali after a group of up to 30 assailants on Wednesday torched props at the film set near Mumbai.

It came after members of a caste-based group called Rajput Karni Sena slapped and pulled the hair of Bhansali while filming was taking place at a fort in Jaipur, in Rajasthan in January.

A case has been filed for "arson, rioting and unlawful assembly", police Inspector General Vishwas Nangare Patil in Kolhapur, Maharashtra state, where the filming was moved to after the first attack, told AFP.

The protesters are apparently unhappy at speculation that the film will feature romance between Rajput queen Padmavati, also known as Rani Padmini, and the 13th and 14th century Muslim ruler Alauddin Khilji.

The Rajput caste were historically Hindu warriors, who ruled over kingdoms in western India.

A spokesperson for Bhansali's production company denied that there is any truth to the plot rumours, while supporters of the film say the speculation is being fuelled by opportunistic fringe groups who cannot have read the script.

Rajput Karni Sena accuse the film's makers of distorting historical facts, but historians say the queen is a mythical character and there is no clear evidence that she ever existed.

"Rani Padmini is a character created by (poet) Malik Mohd (Muhammad) Jayasi in his Padmawat (poem) written in 1540. No mention in any historical record before this," Indian historian S. Irfan Habib tweeted after the January incident.

Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, who plays Padmavati, took to Twitter to defend the period drama following the first attack, saying "there is absolutely no distortion of history" in the movie.

India's Hindi film industry churns out hundreds of movies every year but filmmakers often face intimidation from fringe groups, as well as an over-zealous censor board, which fuels fears over creative freedom in the country.

A Rajasthan minister has said that "Padmavati" would not be screened in the state until it had first been viewed and approved for release by Rajput community leaders.

Police say they will provide protection at the set in Kolhapur while directors have rallied behind Bhansali, whose "Goliyon ki Rasleela Ramleela" (2013) and "Bajirao Mastani" (2015) were also the subject of protests.

Bollywood director Karan Johar, whose own film was the subject of violent protests last year by Hindu nationalist groups for featuring a Pakistani actor, told reporters the attacks on "Padmavati" were "deeply saddening".
Conflict-ridden Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa

More than 40 people including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat carrying Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The International Organization for Migration, which has operations in Yemen, said 42 bodies had been recovered.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

More than 30 wounded were reported to have been taken to hospital.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

Major General Ahmed Assiri, spokesman for the coalition, dismissed the accusation and told AFP that the force had not been involved in fighting in Hodeida.

Bodies of people who were killed in a boat carrying Somali refugees arrive in the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeida March 17, 2017

"There has been no firing by the coalition in this zone," he said.

The coalition has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi rebel forces.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said 140 passengers were believed to have been aboard the vessel.

- Civilians bear the brunt -

The attack drew condemnation from UN agencies and the International Committee for the Red Cross, with the ICRC also demanding an immediate investigation.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought the country to the brink of famine, Yemen continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

The UNHCR says that Yemen is hosting more than 255,000 Somali refugees.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen host Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

The UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are starting to use areas further to the north as a transit route.

It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

Conflict in Yemen

The ICRC's Eric Christopher Wyss, quoting survivors at the scene, said many people on the boat "were refugees from Somalia or Yemen, fleeing the conflict".

"It was a gruesome and heartbreaking scene. I saw many men, women and children either killed or horribly wounded," he said.

The IOM said it believed the boat had been headed for Sudan.

"We strongly condemn this attack and deplore such a tragic loss of life," the ICRC's director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

"These people were themselves fleeing conflict, in search of safety and a better life. We call on the warring parties to conduct an immediate investigation into what happened."

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting the UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

On Friday, a rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of the pro-government forces in a camp east of the capital Sanaa, officials at a hospital in Marib town said.
More than 1.8 million Muslim pilgrims took part in the 2016 hajj

Iranian pilgrims will participate in this year's annual hajj, Saudi Arabia said on Friday, despite ruptured ties between the regional rivals.

For the first time in nearly three decades Iran's pilgrims -- which would have numbered about 60,000 -- did not attend last year's hajj after Riyadh and Tehran failed to agree on security and logistics.

Tensions remain as Saudi Arabia repeatedly accuses Iran of fuelling conflicts by supporting armed Shiite movements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

But after talks between the two sides, the Iranians will join this year's ritual which takes place at the beginning of September.

"The ministry of hajj and the Iranian organisation have completed all the necessary measures to ensure Iranian pilgrims perform hajj 1438 according to the procedures followed by all Muslim countries," the official Saudi Press Agency said, referring to this year in the Islamic calendar.

The hajj ministry said that the kingdom, home to Islam's holiest sites, welcomes "all pilgrims from all the different nationalities and backgrounds".

Iran rejects accusations of regional aggression and says Riyadh must stop its alleged support for Sunni "terrorists" like the Islamic State jihadist group and Al-Qaeda.

Although the verbal sparring continued, Saudi media reported in December that the Saudi minister in charge of pilgrimages, Mohammed Bentin, had invited Iran to discuss arrangements for this year's hajj.

An Iranian delegation visited Saudi Arabia in February for talks with Bentin.

In early March, Iran said there had been progress.

"Most of the questions up for discussion have been resolved and a couple of issues are remaining," Iran's ISNA news agency quoted Ali Ghazi Askar, the Iranian supreme leader's representative for hajj affairs, as saying.

"If those questions are resolved, we hope pilgrims will soon be sent to Saudi Arabia."

A major issue was compensation for the families of hundreds of people killed in a stampede during the 2015 hajj. Iran says 464 of its citizens died in the disaster.

More than 1.8 million faithful took part in last year's hajj. The pilgrimage is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims who can must perform it at least once in their lives.

Iranian pilgrims have for the past two years not attended the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in western Saudi Arabia, known as umrah, which occurs outside hajj.

Tehran suspended its umrah participation over the sexual assault of two Iranian teenage boy pilgrims by Saudi police at Jeddah airport in early 2015.

Ghazi Askar said Iran had raised this issue as well, and if the culprits were punished, "the lesser hajj will also be restored".

Despite agreement on the hajj, Riyadh maintains its criticism of Iran, as highlighted in talks on Tuesday between Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump.

The two leaders "noted the importance of confronting Iran's destabilising regional activities", the White House said.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau made his first appearance in month

Boko Haram's elusive leader has made his first appearance in months, claiming responsibility for a spate of suicide bombings and rejecting claims scores of his fighters have been killed.

Abubakar Shekau spoke for nearly 20 minutes of a 27-minute video obtained by AFP on Friday, in a trademark pose in front of a sub-machine gun, flanked by two masked militant fighters.

Speaking in the local languages Hausa and Kanuri, as well as Arabic, Shekau said the recording was made on Thursday and that he was "in good health", contrary to claims he may be injured.

But he appeared subdued compared with previous appearances.

Criticising regional leaders, he singled out Cameroon's President Paul Biya, whose government on Wednesday said troops had killed 60 Boko Haram fighters and arrested 21 others in recent weeks.

Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary also said more than 5,000 civilian "hostages" had been freed in operations along the border with Nigeria from February 27 to March 7.

But Shekau said: "We fought along the Cameroonian border. You lied that you killed 60 of our fighters, that you arrested 20 of our men, that you freed 5,000 of your people.

"Paul Biya, is it that you can't live off lies? Is it with this that you are going to convince the West, your leaders? It is unfortunate. Be careful, Paul Biya."

- Caliphate 'running smoothly' -

Shekau was last seen on camera in a video message in December last year after Nigeria's military claimed it had flushed out Boko Haram fighters from its Sambisa Forest stronghold.

Troops, with the help of regional forces from Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as Benin, have since early 2015 managed to claw back most of the territory lost to the radical Islamists in 2014.

But Shekau insisted "our caliphate is running smoothly". The militant leader declared an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria in August 2014.

Despite its loss of territory and claims from the military it is on the verge of defeat, suicide bomb attacks remain a threat to civilians, particularly in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

At least two people were killed on Wednesday when four female suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the city.

Shekau said the group was "responsible for all the suicide explosions in Maiduguri and we will continue with them".

Boko Haram released another video on Monday showing the execution of three men said to be government spies. But the message did not feature Shekau.

The latest video ends showing militant fighters in combat fatigues with assault rifles and apparently confiscated Cameroon police and army uniforms.

One fighter speaks in heavily-accented French, lending weight to theories that Boko Haram has recruited from parts of Nigeria's Francophone neighbours.
Britain's communications spy agency GCHQ has issued a rare public denial of "utterly ridiculous" claims it spied on Donald Trump

The White House will not repeat again claims that British spies snooped on Donald Trump, Britain said Friday after the UK eavesdropping agency branded them "utterly ridiculous" in a rare public denial.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman reiterated the GCHQ agency's denial of a Fox News report -- which had been repeated by the US president's spokesman on Thursday -- and said the claims "should be ignored".

"We have made this clear to the administration and have received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated," the PM's spokesman said.

Britain's ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch and UK National Security Adviser Mark Lyall Grant spoke directly to the White House, the spokesman said, although he refused to specify whether the US administration had apologised.

The White House said Friday that Spicer had not accused Britain of spying on Trump but was "simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story".

May's spokesman pointed to the limits on employing intelligence capabilities imposed on Britain and the US -- along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand -- under the so-called "Five Eyes" pact.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, pictured on March 17, 2017, said that London had received assurances that Trump's wiretapping allegations "will not be repeated"

The pact is an intelligence-sharing alliance forged from the embers of World War II.

"It's a situation that simply wouldn't arise," the spokesman said of the spying claims.

"We have a close, special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case," he added.

Late on Thursday, a spokesman for GCHQ said: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then-president elect are nonsense."

The press office of GCHQ -- the Government Communications Headquarters -- told AFP on Friday that it was "not unusual" for the agency to make public comment but acknowledged that "perhaps the tone of it was unusual".

The electronic eavesdropping agency does not normally comment on intelligence matters, though it has stepped up its public relations in recent months, including for recruitment drives and warnings on cyber-security.

- 'Get a grip' -

Trump had accused former US president Barack Obama on March 4 of a wiretapping plot that would almost certainly be against US law.

In a subsequent media report, Fox's legal analyst Napolitano claimed that "three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that president Obama went outside the chain of command" to order the surveillance.

"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice," Napolitano said, claiming that Obama used Britain's GCHQ to circumvent US law.

Spicer repeated the allegations on Thursday, quoting from that Fox News report.

Members of Congress from both parties who are investigating the wiretapping allegations have found no evidence to support them.

Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign minister, said the White House should now make clear there was no evidence of any GCHQ involvement.

"That's just foolish and very, very dangerous stuff, and President Trump better get a grip," he told BBC radio.

"We're talking about the president of the US. You cannot have his official spokesman making allegations against a fellow NATO government.

"The White House needs to make it clear that they do not have, and have never had, any evidence that suggests that GCHQ or any British involvement in these matters was ever justified," he said.
In a world-first, a Spanish film crew has managed to shoot footage of a pack of wild Iberian wolves during a hunt. The scene, part of the soon-to-be released nature documentary Cantabrico, shows six animals pursuing a majestic deer across hard snow in the northern Spanish region of Asturias.

After a chase lasting more than two minutes, the leader of the pack takes down its prey and the other members of the group begin to eat the animal alive.

When it comes to protecting the environment, what you dont know about, you wont look after Joaquin Gutierrez Acha, director of Cantabrico

The scene with the deer is a gift from nature: its almost impossible to film something like that, says Spanish naturalist Joaquin Gutierrez Acha, the director of the documentary which is set for nationwide release in Spain on March 31.

Gutierrez Acha and his colleagues spent two years holed up in some of the most remote corners of the Spains Cantabrian Mountains to make the film but wont reveal the exact location of the wolf hunt.

If we said [where it happened], there would be rifles the next day, he explains, referring to a recent spate of macabre public displays of dead wolves in northern Spain. The director doesnt know if any of the animals killed in the film appeared in his movie: there are currently 70 packs in the Cantabrian Range.

'Cantabrico' by Joaquin Gutierrez Acha Images from 'Cantabrico' by Joaquin Gutierrez Acha. Photo: atlas | Video: Herminio M. Muniz / Wanda Vision

But the wolf hunt is not the only surprise in Cantabrico, which was shot in the regions of Castilla y Leon, Cantabria and Asturias.

Using ultra high-definition cameras, drones, and equipment capable of capturing up to 1,500 frames a second, the crew managed to film two brown bears copulating and the birth of a venomous Vipera seoanei viper. Other sequences recorded for posterity include those of carnivorous plants devouring wasps and ants deploying chemical warfare against the largest woodpecker in Europe.

The scene with the deer is a gift from nature: its almost impossible to film something like that Joaquin Gutierrez Acha, director of Cantabrico

For one of the most stunning sections of the documentary, the crew used a specially fitted-out helicopter to film a group of Ibex traversing snowy peaks.

But the films seasoned director warns that some of the footage in the documentary is unrepeatable in the forests of the Cantabrian Mountains  such as the presence of five Cantabrian capercaillies in the same shot. Loss of habitat means there are only 200 to 300 males left in the entire range.

When it comes to protecting the environment, theres a golden rule: what you dont know about, you wont look after, says Gutierrez Acha, who has worked with National Geographic and the BBC and whose 2013 film Guadalquivir is considered one of the most important nature documentaries ever shot in Spain.

Cantabrico is a wake-up call. This exists. If nothing is done, all species will go the way of the Cantabrian capercaillie, he says.

English version by George Mills.
Benin's President Patrice Talon wants to limit the head of state to just one term of office

Many Africans have become accustomed to their leaders trying to cling to power at all costs, but in tiny Benin, the president appears to be trying to do the opposite.

President Patrice Talon, a former businessman dubbed the "cotton king" of Cotonou, has put forward a proposal to limit the head of state to a single term of office.

Reform of the "political model" was a central part of his election campaign last year, which saw him beat then-prime minister Lionel Zinsou in the race to replace Thomas Boni Yayi.

He also proposed setting up a court of auditors and revamping political party funding.

But a lack of clarity over the one-term presidency plan has stoked some controversy, and after months of waiting it is only now that parliament is getting to study the proposals.

For some, the plan indicates that Talon wants to be considered a modern head of state.

Opponents, however, have condemned what they say is a stifling of public debate on the issue and questioned Talon's motivations.

"It's too easy to argue a revision is necessary because the constitution is 27 years old," said Victor Topanou, who was justice minister under Boni Yayi, Talon's predecessor.

Revising the constitution is just to "satisfy your ego, to prove you've succeeded here where other regimes have failed," added Topanou, who is now a law lecturer.

Talon himself has said he recognises that "touching the constitution is the subject of a lot of anxiety and worry" but that "technical modifications" are needed to develop democracy.

Exactly what that might entail, though, is causing widespread concern, with details of the proposal not yet made public.

- 'Complacency and corruption' -

Several political and civil society figures were appointed to a special commission to look into changes to the constitution, and they delivered a 60-page report last June.

Talon had promised a referendum on the changes, but he now appears to be backtracking on that promise by instead taking it to parliament, where he has strong support.

The west African nation, which is dwarfed by its giant neighbour to the east, Nigeria, is often cited as an example of regular, democratic transfers of power.

But the idea of a single presidential term has divided the political class.

President Patrice Talon's proposals have divided the political class in Benin

For one lawmaker, who asked to remain anonymous, having a single mandate makes "taking risks for development" an absolute necessity.

"Once someone is elected, he starts the campaign for re-election and that becomes a fertile ground for complacency and corruption," he added, saying the single term would probably be capped at six years.

But opponents fear that holding office for a single term could have the opposite effect if a president does not have to court the favour of voters at the end of his term.

"The logic of a single mandate is that the president is answerable to no one," said opposition lawmaker Hugues Agonkan.
US President Donald Trump receives a traditional bowl of shamrock from Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny at the White House on March 16, 2017

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny caused a stir at the White House on the eve of Saint Patrick's day Friday, pointedly telling President Donald Trump that the festival is in honor of an immigrant.

Before a sea of green-clad revelers in the East Room of the White House Thursday night, Kenny made a pointed reference to controversies over Trump's immigration policies, as the president looked on.

"It's fitting that we gather here each year to celebrate St. Patrick and his legacy. He, too, of course, was an immigrant," Kenny said.

The saint is believed to have been born somewhere in Britain.

"And though he is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland, for many people around the globe, he is also a symbol of, indeed, the patron of immigrants," Kenny said.

Around 35 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, ensuring that successive presidents have put on a green tie and greeted the Irish prime minister -- or Taoiseach -- to the White House on or around Saint Patrick's day.

Trump praised Ireland as "a truly great country" and the Irish as "tough." "I know a lot about the Irish -- they fight. They're tough," he joked.

This year Saint Patrick's falls on the day that Trump's ban on refugees and migrants from six majority Muslim countries was due to have gone into effect.

The ban was halted by a federal judge, but Trump has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Kenny, amid controversy in Ireland over whether he should have met Trump at all, pressed his point further.

"The Irish have contributed to the economic, social, political and cultural life of this great country over the last 200 years," Kenny said.

The Irish "came to America because, deprived of liberty, deprived of opportunity, of safety, of even food itself, the Irish believed, four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the 'wretched refuse on the teeming shore','" Kenny said.

"We believed in the shelter of America, and the compassion of America, and the opportunity of America. We came, and we became Americans."
Arab Israeli Knesset member Basel Ghattas, seen on January 18, 2017, will announce his resignation from parliament, a ministry spokesman said

An Arab Israeli lawmaker has agreed to admit charges of smuggling mobile phones to Palestinian prisoners in return for a reduced sentence, the justice ministry and his spokeswoman said Friday.

Basel Ghattas, of the Arab-dominated Joint List, will plead guilty to handing mobile phones and SIM cards to Palestinian detainees in the high security Ketziot prison during a visit in December, the justice ministry said.

He will also announce his resignation from parliament, a ministry spokesman said.

"It was concluded between the parties that they would apply to the court for a two-year sentence."

Ghattas could have faced up to 10 years in prison.

Speaking to AFP, he confirmed the deal, saying it came after "lengthy negotiations and after they removed from the list of charges terrorism and threatening state security".

He will resign from the Israeli parliament on Sunday.

"I decided (to accept) after consultation with my lawyers and taking into account my personal and family situation," Ghattas said.

Israeli media have reported that 12 mobile phones were found on two separate prisoners in searches after Ghattas visited.

The 60-year-old Christian allegedly used his parliamentary immunity to avoid being searched.

One of the prisoners is serving time for the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier in 1984, the Ynet news website reported.

Ghattas said in an earlier statement his action was motivated by his "humanitarian and moral positions towards prisoners and he is ready to assume full responsibility for it".

Lawmakers of the Joint List, the third largest bloc in parliament with 13 seats, frequently clash with Israeli authorities.

Arab Israelis make up some 17.5 percent of the country's population and are descended from Palestinians who remained on their land after the creation of Israel in 1948.

They hold Israeli citizenship but most see themselves as Palestinians.

Ghattas's party, Balad, is especially critical of Israeli policies.

Its three lawmakers triggered outrage among Jewish Israelis last year when they met relatives of Palestinians who authorities say were killed while carrying out attacks.
In a frequently awkward joint press conference, US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel showed little common ground

Stark differences between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on everything from trade to immigration were in full view during an icy first meeting at the White House.

In a frequently awkward joint press conference, Trump and Merkel showed little common ground as they addressed a host of thorny issues including NATO, defense spending and free trade deals.

For most of the 30 minutes in the East Room, Merkel was stony-faced as Trump ripped into Washington's NATO allies for not paying for their "fair share" for transatlantic defense and demanded "fair and reciprocal trade" deals.

The veteran German chancellor had arrived at a snowy White House hoping to reverse a chill in relations after Trump's incendiary election rhetoric.

The visit began cordially, with the pair shaking hands at the entrance of the White House.

A White House visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel began cordially with a handshake, but later Merkel's suggestion of another one went unheard or ignored by President Donald Trump

But later, sitting side-by-side in the Oval Office, Merkel's suggestion of another handshake went unheard or ignored by Trump -- an awkward moment in what are usually highly scripted occasions.

There was never going to be an easy rapport between the cautious German chancellor and impulsive US president.

For years, Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.

Before coming to office in January, Trump had set the tone by calling Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and suggested she was "ruining Germany."

In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind -- some in the White House would say lecture -- the real estate mogul about democratic values.

Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world" -- a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House.

During the press conference, Merkel said "it's much, much better to talk to one another and not about one another, and I think our conversation proved this."

But even the lighter moments were tinged with tension.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and Ivanka Trump (R) talk before a meeting with US President Donald Trump and business leaders in the White House

Amid a furor over Trump's unfounded allegations that he was wiretapped by Obama, the new president cracked a joke referring to past revelations that Merkel's phone had also been bugged by his Democratic predecessor.

"As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps," he said.

Merkel appeared not to find the humor in what had been a major political scandal.

And neither side tried to make small talk about Trump's own background.

His family hails from Kallstadt, a tidy village nestled in southwest Germany's lush wine country. His grandparents left for America more than a century ago fleeing poverty and later, after a brief return, trouble with the law.

- Voice of Europe -

European officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon (pictured)

Although Trump has tempered his criticism of NATO and the personal attacks against European leaders, officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.

Bannon has championed trade protectionism and opposed the European Union and other multilateral institutions that underpin the world order.

Trump on Friday pledged to "respect historic institutions" but Bannon, also in the East Room, gave a chuckle as Merkel was asked whether she believed Trump had lied and treated the European Union disrespectfully.

Trump insisted he was not isolationist, saying: "I'm a free trader but also a fair trader."

Merkel rejected Trump's suggestion that individual European countries should negotiate free trade deals with the United States, rather than under existing EU-US negotiations.

"I hope we can come back to the table and talk about the agreement" between the EU and US, she said.

Trump departed Washington later Friday, arriving in Florida where he will spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate, accompanied by his youngest son Barron, wife Melania and the first lady's parents.
"Sesame Street" is just one of many educational television programs that receive public funding and would be affected by Trump's push to eliminate culture funding

The art world is voicing horror at President Donald Trump's push to eliminate US cultural funding entirely, saying that poor and rural Americans will be hardest hit.

In his first budget outline Thursday, Trump called for the complete end of federal support to public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts as part of a trimming of government spending.

Trump has also pushed for sweeping cuts to environmental protection, social services and foreign aid, although he is also advocating a major hike in military expenditure.

"I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio, the coal-mining family in West Virginia, the mother of two in Detroit, and I'm saying, okay, I have to go ask these folks for money and I have to tell them where I'm going to spend it," Trump's budget chief Mick Mulvaney told reporters.

"Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye and say, look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation (for) Public Broadcasting?"

But arts advocates say that those most adversely affected will in fact be rural Americans and not a big-city elite against whom Trump frequently rails.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which this year marks its 50th anniversary, provides educational programming -- which can be rare on US television -- including seminal children's show "Sesame Street."

A 2012 study by the corporation found that, in the case of a total end to federal funding, 54 local public television stations and 76 radio stations would risk shutting down.

The elimination "would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media's role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history and promoting civil discussions -- for Americans in both rural and urban communities," Patricia Harrison, CEO and president of the CPB, said in a statement Thursday.

The National Endowment for the Arts -- which Trump hopes to shut down in two years -- brings music and other cultural programs to rural areas, some ravaged by addiction.

- Sliver of federal spending -

Previous Republican presidents also sought with mixed success to curb funding for the cultural world -- long a bugbear for conservatives who complain of artists' left-wing tiltings.

The National Endowment for the Arts -- which Trump hopes to shut down in two years -- brings music and other cultural programs to rural areas, some ravaged by addiction

Cultural funding is already far lower in the United States than in most of Europe, where governments often directly subsidize major institutions.

The CPB in 2016 took $445 million, or 0.01 percent, of US federal spending, and the National Endowment of the Arts received $146 million, or 0.004 percent, in 2015.

Public stations rely largely on donations, although sponsors only run announcements and not advertisements like on commercial networks.

At WNET in New York City, federal funding accounts for only 15 percent of the budget, said Jeanne Ammermuller, the public station's director of institutional marketing.

But that figure can go up to 50 percent in rural areas, said Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University.

Television choices have grown enormously in the past 50 years, with a growing number of viewers going online.

Thompson, however, noted that public television produced much local programming that is often taken for granted, from history specials to local children's shows.

And not all Americans can afford high-speed internet connections.

"Those who are not purchasing broadcast services to cable or satellite -- those are the ones who are the most likely to be impacted," said Dominic Caristi, a professor at Ball State University in Indiana.

- Fight ahead -

In the art world, the most vulnerable institutions will paradoxically be the least expensive ones -- smaller museums and modest theater and music programs that do not have deep pockets.

Thomas Campbell, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, said that federal funding was essential to smaller institutions around the country.

The budget plan "is shortsighted and does a terrible disservice to the American people," he said in a statement.

But many in the cultural world were confident about fighting to retain funding through Congress, which controls appropriations and where Trump's proposals have been met with skepticism.

"We've been through this fight before, and we know that our legislators on both sides of the aisle appreciate our value," Ammermuller said.
Israel has denied a claim by Syria that it shot down an Israeli plane carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra

Israeli warplanes struck several targets in Syria early Friday, prompting retaliatory missile launches, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes targeted weapons bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah, and that the Jewish State would do the same again if necessary.

Syria's military said it had downed an Israeli plane and hit another as they were carrying out pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from jihadists this month.

The Israeli military denied that any planes had been hit. The Syrian government has made similar unfounded claims in the past.

"The safety of Israeli civilians or the Israeli air force aircraft was at no point compromised," Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner told AFP.

Netanyahu said in footage aired on Israel's major television networks: "When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah and we have intelligence and it is operationally feasible, we act to prevent it.

"That's how it was yesterday and that's how we shall continue to act," he added.

"We are fully determined and the evidence of that it that we are acting. Everybody must take that into account -- everybody."

The Israeli air force said earlier that it had carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, but that none of the ground-to-air missiles fired by Syrian forces in response had hit Israeli aircraft.

It was an unusual confirmation by the Jewish state of air raids inside Syria.

"Overnight... aircraft targeted several targets in Syria," an Israeli army statement said.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and (Israeli) aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles," it said.

None of the missiles fired from Syria hit their targets, the army added.

One missile was intercepted by Israel's Arrow air defence system, Israeli media reported.

It would be one of the first times the system has been used.

A Jordanian military source said shrapnel from one missile fell in the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

- 'Significant shift' -

In April 2016, Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.

Israel does not usually confirm or deny each individual raid, but it may have been led to do so this time by the circumstances of the incident.

The missile fired from Syria prompted air raid sirens to sound in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict began.

Assaf Orion, senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, said Syria's response was a "significant" shift.

Until now, he said, when Israel attacked Hezbollah convoys there, it "usually went without a response or with an insignificant response from the Syrian side".

"(With this attack) the Syrian regime is trying to tell Israel it can't stand it any more and those actions will not be free of charge."

President Bashar al-Assad's position has been strengthened in recent months with his forces reclaiming all of Syria's second city Aleppo, as well as enjoying continuing Russian support.

Orion said the Syrian leader was feeling emboldened.

"He is saying: 'Dont push me. I am not as weak as I used to be.'"

Yaakov Amidror, a former head of Israel's National Security Council, said weapons convoys of the Iran-backed Hezbollah remained a "red line" and that Israel would continue to attack them when deemed necessary.

The Arrow 3 interceptor, designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, was deployed to Israeli air force ground crews in January after successful testing by Israel and the United States.

Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel pays close attention to developments in the Syrian conflict for fear that it could be exploited by its arch-rival Iran to instal allies close to the armistice line on the Golan and Israel's borders.
US President Donald Trump has accused president Barack Obama of ordering wiretaps at his Trump Tower in New York, but has not delivered any evidence

US President Donald Trump repeated his charge that predecessor Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap against him, rejecting rising calls from Republicans and Democrats to withdraw the charge and apologize.

Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump answered a question on the wiretap allegation by referring to the US National Security Agency's reported tapping of Merkel's phone several years ago.

"As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps," Trump said.

But Trump also said he did not endorse a Fox News claim that Britain's GCHQ spy agency did the wiretapping for Obama -- an allegation repeated by Trump's spokesman Thursday, sparking a sharp rebuke from London.

"We said nothing" about the GCHQ claim, Trump told journalists.

"That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox," he said.

Fox News said it could not confirm the allegations.

"Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop," anchor Shepard Smith said, reading an official statement on-air.

- Waiting for evidence -

President Donald Trump has accused the Obama administration of wiretapping his Trump Tower in New York before his November 2016 election victory

Trump has accused Obama of ordering wiretaps at his Trump Tower in New York, but two weeks after the extraordinary claim, he has not delivered any evidence.

The claim has led to investigations in Congress and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but so far no one has provided any evidence to substantiate it.

Top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committee have all said they have seen no evidence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has remained quiet, however.

On Friday, the Justice Department said it had complied with requests from the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees in both houses of Congress for information related to surveillance during the 2016 election.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes confirmed Friday evening that the DOJ had "fully complied" with his panel's request for information regarding potential surveillance of Trump or his circle during the presidential race. He did not elaborate on the details of the information.

The National Security Agency had partially met the committee's request with plans to fully comply by end of next week, Nunes said, but "the committee still has not received information requested from the CIA and FBI... that is necessary to determine whether information collected on US persons was mishandled and leaked."

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey is to testify before lawmakers on that and other issues relating to what US intelligence says was Russian interference in the election.

Trump first made the wiretapping accusation on March 4.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" he tweeted.

"Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" he continued, accusing Obama of crimes comparable to those of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.

Obama flatly rejected it, but the White House refusal to back down has kept the issue alive.

On Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer defended his boss, citing news stories alleging wiretapping including the Fox News report.

That sparked a rebuke from GCHQ and calls from British officials.

The White House said Friday that Spicer "was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story."
An armed Myanmar police officer is posted on the road during the arrival of the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar in Buthidaung to visit areas of northern Rakhine State on January 14, 2017

China and Russia blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement on Friday that would have expressed concern over the tense situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state, diplomats said.

Myanmar's military carried out a four-month offensive against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine that UN human rights investigators have said likely resulted in atrocities and crimes against humanity.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters "there was no consensus in the room" for the statement.

Diplomats said China and Russia had raised objections, but the diplomatic missions of the two countries did not respond to requests from AFP for information.

The proposed British-drafted statement "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country and stressed the importance of humanitarian access to all the areas."

"We support the peace process and are one of the largest bilateral humanitarian aid donors, including in Rakhine state," said Rycroft, whose country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

An agreed statement expressing concern could have led to further action, but the move by China and Russia -- which both have veto power -- was seen as a clear signal that Myanmar should be left off the council agenda.

UN rights officials have accused the Myanmar military of extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and probable ethnic cleansing during the campaign against the Rohingya.

The 1.1 million Rohingya are loathed by many from the Buddhist majority, who insist they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have lived in the country for generations.
Members of the Namibian delegation and members of the press wait for the arrival of Herero chief Vekuii Rukoro to a news conference on March 16, 2017 in New York

Namibia is to launch a 30-billion-dollar (28-billion-euro) lawsuit against Germany over genocide committed during colonial rule, when tens of thousands of people were killed, according to documents seen by AFP on Friday.

The Namibian government has previously avoided demanding financial compensation, but it changed its stance as two indigenous groups filed a class-action suit in New York against Germany.

Legal documents provided to AFP and The Namibian newspaper show that the government has engaged lawyers in London to pursue a case of violation of human rights and a "consequent apology and reparations process."

Over 65,000 people are believed to have been killed when colonial Germany massacred Namibian tribes such as the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908.

Namibian Vice President Nickey Iyambo issued a statement on Friday saying it had sent a report to Germany last year on the genocide, an official apology and reparations.

"We trust the government of the federal republic of Germany is giving serious attention to the position," Iyambo said, giving no details on the level of reparations sought.

Namibia could approach the International Court of Justice in The Hague to advance its case, the documents show.

While some German officials have acknowledged a genocide occurred, the government has refused to pay reparations, saying aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years was "for the benefit of all Namibians".

Germany seized the territory of modern-day Namibia in the late 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, as part of the so-called Scramble for Africa by European colonisers.

It was called German South West Africa during Germany's 1884-1915 rule, and then passed under South Africa rule for 75 years, finally gaining independence in 1990.

The separate US class-action suit was filed by the Herero and Nama people in New York on Thursday, seeking compensation for "incalculable damages".

Chief Vekuii Rukoro of the Herero, one of the tribes believed to have 65,000 members killed by colonial Germany between 1904 and 1908, speaks at a conference in New York

They are also demanding to be included in negotiations between the two countries.

Tensions boiled over in 1904 when the Herero rose up, followed by the Nama, in an insurrection crushed by German imperial troops.

In the Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, around 80,000 Herero fled including women and children.

German troops went after them across what is now known as the Kalahari Desert. Only 15,000 Herero survived.

The Namibian government case alleges Germany was guilty of slave labour, mass murder, sexual abuse, human trafficking and theft of land.

The two governments have been in talks about a joint declaration on the massacres for two years.

Iyambo said Namibia wanted an "amicable closure to this sad history".
A secret Service agent stands guard outside of Trump Tower in April 2016 in New York City

A laptop was stolen from a US Secret Service agent in New York and remains missing, the agency said in a statement Friday, amid reports that the device contained floor plans of Trump Tower.

CNN -- citing law enforcement sources in New York -- said that though the computer was highly encrypted, it contained Trump Tower floor plans and other sensitive contents.

US President Donald Trump resided in the luxury high-rise before moving into the White House. His wife Melania and youngest son Barron still live there.

The Secret Service did not detail the contents of the laptop, but emphasized that such devices "contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information," adding that an investigation is ongoing.

CNN said the laptop was taken from the agent's car in Brooklyn on Thursday morning.

The elite agency is tasked with protecting the US president, former presidents and vice presidents, as well as foreign heads of state on official visits.
Madrid supports a negotiated solution to the dispute between Spains energy utility Gas Natural Fenosa and the Colombian government, after the latter on Tuesday liquidated Electricaribe, the electricity distributor that supplies electricity to almost 2.5 million Colombians.

Police outside the Electricaribe customer service center. EFE

More information Colombia inicia una ofensiva diplomatica para evitar la fuga de inversiones espanolas

On Thursday, the Spanish government expressed regret over the Colombian decision and said it would support Gas Natural if it decided to pursue legal action.

Speaking during a visit to Mexico, Spains foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, pointed out that if Gas Natural Fenosa cannot reach an agreement with Colombia, there are juridical mechanisms, referring to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Sources at Gas Natural Fenosa have told EL PAIS they will file a complaint within 15 days with the World Banks ICSID agency over Colombias decision to liquidate Electricaribe.

In November, the Colombian government took control of the company, which is 85.38% owned by Spanish energy utility Gas Natural Fenosa, citing risks from lack of payment and quality of service.

High-level meetings

The Colombian government has launched a diplomatic offensive in a bid to calm Spanish investors in the South American country. There have reportedly been high-level meetings between senior government officials and the heads of Spanish companies operating in Colombia this week to emphasize that their assets are protected by law and that the governments intervention in Electricaribe has been an exception and justified, say diplomatic sources.

Alberto Furmanski, the Colombian ambassador to Spain, in Madrid. R. M.

The message being sent out by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos is that the takeover of Electricaribe is not an expropriation and that the Colombian government is not looking, nor is it empowered to, hold onto the company, and that it will always protect private investment.

More than 400 Spanish companies are present in Colombia, among them Telefonica, Sacyr, Repsol, Mapfre, and Aena.

Ongoing trouble

Electricaribe, which serves the Colombian Caribbean provinces of Atlantico, Bolivar, Cesar, Cordoba, La Guajira, Magdalena and Sucre, hit problems early last year, with customers complaining about frequent power outages.

Gas Natural Fenosa, which bought a controlling stake in Electricaribe in 2000, has been accused of failing to invest in infrastructure and had stopped paying electricity suppliers. The Colombian government intervened in November due to a cash crunch at Electricaribe caused by a high number of unpaid bills and widespread consumer fraud. Gas Natural Fenosa says the company has accumulated unpaid bills of 1.26 billion from some 1.5 million of its customers.

Madrid said it would support Gas Natural if it decided to pursue legal action

Dastis defended Gas Natural Fenosa, saying that it had worked positively and was prepared to adapt to new conditions.

Spanish diplomatic sources say that two main points of disagreement between Gas Natural and the Colombian authorities had been overcome: payment of Electricaribe bills run up by public bodies and fighting consumer fraud.

But so far there has been no agreement on new tariffs, and above all, on them being maintained long enough to be able to amortize the investments Gas Natural Fenosa was prepared to implement to ensure supplies. Without these conditions, say diplomatic sources, the viability of Electricaribe could not be guaranteed.

English version by Nick Lyne.
The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal with the district court in Greenbelt, Maryland, pictured here on March 15, 2017

The Trump administration on Friday appealed a Maryland court's block of its revised travel ban, aiming to reinstate the temporary halt to immigrants and visitor arrivals from six majority Muslim countries.

The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal with the district court in Greenbelt, Maryland, two days after that court and one in Hawaii dealt a new blow to the White House's travel ban, both ruling that it discriminated against Muslims.

The case now goes to a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia.

Trump has said a travel ban is needed to preserve US national security and keep out extremists.

His first effort, in January, banned travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries and all refugees but was blocked by a court in Washington state on the grounds that it violated the constitution's prohibition of religious discrimination.

That block was upheld on appeal, and the administration said it would revise the ban to better adhere to the law.

But the new ban has run into the same problems.

It aims to close US borders to nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, and all refugees for at least 120 days. Iraq was on the original ban but removed in the revision.

The White House said the six countries were targeted because their screening and information capabilities could not meet US security requirements.

While the ban does not mention Muslims, the courts have accepted arguments that Trump's statements while he was running for president last year -- that he would open his White House term with a ban on Muslim arrivals -- effectively defined his approach.

Arguing the case in Hawaii, Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said of Trump's comments: "There is a difference between a president and a candidate."

"This order doesn't draw any religious distinction at all," he added.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday the Trump administration would "vigorously defend" its travel ban, and would seek "clarification" before appealing the Hawaii court decision in the near future.

The American Civil Liberties Union had filed the lawsuit in Maryland on behalf of several refugee assistance groups and was optimistic about its chances in the appeals court.

"President Trump's Muslim ban has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason -- it violates fundamental provisions of our constitution," said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

"We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court."
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's proposed budget would gut programs for science and the environment, reflecting the Republican's rejection of mainstream science.

Trump has frequently called climate change a "hoax," and his EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, said last week he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. Trump's proposed budget would cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 31 percent - nearly one-third - and eliminate more than 3,200 jobs.

That amounts to 20 percent of the agency's current workforce of 15,000.

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney speaks about the Trump Administration's budget proposal during daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration is cutting spending for climate change efforts because "we consider that to be a waste of your money."

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Mulvaney said: "I think the president is fairly straightforward. We're not spending money on that."

The EPA budget would drop to $5.7 billion from its current $8.1 billion.

Trump's proposed budget goes far beyond EPA cuts.

It would eliminate funds for the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama's signature effort to address climate change by restricting greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Four different NASA Earth science missions would be shut down, including one championed by former Vice President Al Gore, a leading climate change activist.

The plan also would eliminate funding for the State Department's Global Climate Change Initiative and the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which help developing nations address climate change. It also would cut $250 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants that help coastal communities adapt to climate change, deal with invasive species and maintain healthy water and fisheries.

The budget also eliminates funding for regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes, Puget Sound and Chesapeake Bay, as well as Energy Star, a popular program to promote efficiency in home appliances. Midwest Republicans in Congress were upset with the Great Lakes program cut, while Democrats denounced the overall plan in stark language.

"Literally and figuratively, this is a scorched-earth budget that represents an all-out assault on clean air, water and land," said Gina McCarthy, who led the EPA in Obama's second term.

Margie Alt, executive director of Environment America, called the budget proposal "dirty and dangerous" and said it would cripple U.S. efforts to combat climate change.

"It is basically a 'get out of jail free card' for polluters," Alt said.

But Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, said Trump's budget "offers a much-needed resetting of the relationship between the federal government, the states and the American people."

By slashing budgets for the EPA, Interior, Energy and other departments, Trump is taking needed steps to "eliminate the architecture of President Obama's politically motivated climate action plan" and re-emphasize the core mission at federal agencies, Pyle said.

Waleed Abdalati, NASA's former chief scientist and now head of an environmental science research institute at the University of Colorado, said Trump's budget "really makes a troubling statement." The only reason to cancel the already-launched satellite championed by Gore "is not money - it's just you don't like it," he said.

Trump and other administration officials are wrong if they think ignoring global warming will make it go away, Abdalati added.

"Climate change will never disappear," he said. "It's not changing because we're studying it. We're able to meet the challenges associated with it because we're studying it. The Earth will go on doing what it does."

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AP writers Seth Borenstein and Catherine Lucey contributed to this story.
GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina man has been charged with murder after his roommate's body was found in a barrel behind his home.

Twenty-three-year-old Shannon Maurice Smith Jr. was charged Wednesday with murder in the death of 68-year-old Michael Mullikin.

Local media reports Smith was arrested in St. Peters, Missouri, and is awaiting extradition to South Carolina. Smith previously had been charged with stealing Mullikin's car.

Mullikin was found after his daughter reported him missing Feb. 27. Authorities used DNA to positively identify him.

Police say there was no sign of a break-in at the home but there was sign of a struggle. They say Mullikin's blood was found in the home.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Greece's finance minister says in a perfect world he'd like to take a break from arduous negotiations with bailout creditors for a drink with Scarlett Johansson, but isn't keeping his hopes high.

Euclid Tsakalotos tried to lighten the mood at a parliamentary briefing on the bailout talks Thursday, describing the main opposition party's economic program as highly optimistic- like his chances of a date with the American actress.

"I, too, would like to go for cocktails with Scarlett Johansson, but that doesn't mean anything," Tsakaloto said.

FILE - A Friday, Jan. 27, 2017 file photo of Greece's Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos at a round table meeting of EU finance ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels. Greece's finance minister says he'd like to take a break from arduous negotiations with bailout creditors for a drink with Scarlett Johansson, but isn't keeping his hopes high. Tsakalotos tried to lighten the mood at a parliamentary briefing on the bailout talks Thursday, March 16, 2017, describing the main opposition party's economic program as highly optimistic_ like his chances of a date with the U.S. actress. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)

Tsakalotos, 57, is leading the tough negotiations over new austerity cuts and reforms Greece must implement to receive further rescue loans.

He said he hope a comprehensive agreement can be reached by April 7, when finance ministers from European countries that use the euro currency are scheduled to meet.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Carol T. Christ, a scholar of Victorian literature and former president of Smith College, was named the next chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley on Thursday and the first woman in the school's 149-year history to hold the position.

The UC Board of Regents, the governing board of the UC's 10 schools, voted unanimously to approve Christ's nomination and welcomed her with a standing ovation.

UC President Janet Napolitano called Christ "a remarkable person, a visionary and a first" and praised her as a tireless champion of gender equality and diversity.

Christ started her academic career as an assistant professor at Berkeley in 1970, at a time when only 3 percent of the faculty were women, and stayed on campus for the next 32 years holding a variety of positions from chair of the English Department to dean of humanities and ultimately executive vice chancellor, the UC president's office said in a statement.

She then served as the president of Smith College president from 2002 to 2013, when she retired but her hiatus didn't last long. She returned to Berkeley in 2015 to become interim executive vice chancellor and provost.

"Berkeley transformed me and it transformed my understanding of education," Christ told the Regents meeting, saying she was deeply honored "to lead Berkeley at this critical moment in its history."

Christ will start her new position on July 1 with a base salary of $531,939, the UC president's office said.

Christ will replace Nicholas Dirks, who resigned last August after critics alleged he was too lenient when handling sexual harassment cases involving several high-profile faculty members.

Christ did not refer to the scandals that tarnished the image of one of California's leading public universities. She spoke of the financial challenges ahead at a time of decreased public funding and the need for Berkeley "to reimagine our financial model while always staying true to our public mission."
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A second child has died from a fire in Pennsylvania that fire officials blamed on an exploding hoverboard, a coroner said Thursday.

The deaths - if definitively linked to the two-wheeled, battery-powered scooter - would be the first in the United States caused by a hoverboard fire.

A county coroner said 10-year-old Savannah Dominick died at a hospital from severe burns.

Another child, 3-year-old Ashanti Hughes, died Saturday from the fire that broke out March 10 in the living room of a row house in Harrisburg, the state capital.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it was working with the fire department to confirm the cause, and trying to figure out if the make and model is one of the hundreds of thousands the agency has recalled due to fire hazards.

Acting commission chairman Ann Marie Buerkle warned people who own hoverboards not to charge them overnight or in unattended areas, and to maintain smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. She said last year's recall remains active and consumers can get replacement batteries or refunds.

The commission suggests consumers look for an indication their hoverboard meets the Underwriters Laboratories standard UL 2272, which means it is designed to prevent the battery and electrical components from overheating and catching fire.

The agency has investigated more than 60 hoverboard-related fires. The recalls announced last summer for 10 companies came after at least 18 injuries had been reported, including neck, leg and arm burns. Safety concerns led to them being banned by some airlines, railroads and college campuses.

In the Harrisburg fire, several others were injured and a fire lieutenant responding to the blaze was killed in a car crash.

Fire Chief Brian Enterline said family members heard "sizzling and crackling" before their hoverboard, which was plugged in and recharging, exploded into flames.

Rescuers used a ladder to get victims to safety, and one person jumped from a second-floor porch roof.
Since he was a young boy, Houston James Largo had dreams of one day wearing a uniform and a badge and helping communities on the nation's largest American Indian reservation, where he grew up.

There were tears, laughter and ovations as speakers shared stories Thursday at an emotional funeral service for the decorated 27-year-old officer, touching on those early dreams, Largo's incredible sense of humor and the many times he went above the call of duty during his law enforcement career.

Family, friends, community members and officers from across the region packed a school gymnasium in the community of Rehoboth to honor Largo, a nearly five-year veteran of the Navajo Nation police force who was gunned down Sunday while responding to a domestic violence call in remote western New Mexico.

This undated photo provided by the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, shows Navajo Nation police officer James Largo. Largo died Sunday, March 12, 2017, after responding to a domestic violence call near the small town of Prewitt, N.M. (Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President via AP)

His flag-draped casket was flanked by photographs and flowers as his family sat nearby.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez consoled Largo's mother during the service as Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye thanked the family for allowing Largo to serve as a member of the police force.

Begaye then asked the community to take the time to thank officers and for parents and grandparents to teach their children to respect law enforcement. He said it's devastating for the tribe, which spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, to lose an officer.

"Every officer is precious to us," Begaye said, at times repeating himself in Navajo. "And let me tell you ... beyond that uniform, beyond that badge, there's an individual that is loved by somebody. There is a real person with a big heart wanting to protect the public, wanting to protect you, wanting to protect our nation."

At the ceremony, Largo was called a hero and a Navajo warrior who had built "an amazing legacy" in such a short time. He also was recognized for his fearlessness and integrity.

Largo started his career with the Gallup Police Department in 2010, then joined the McKinley County Sheriff's Office before going to work for the tribal police force.

Authorities have yet to say what led to Largo's shooting. A suspect is in custody, but no charges have been filed.

Largo had stopped a vehicle on a dark county road north of the community of Prewitt. He was found lying about 50 yards from the vehicle with his duty pistol by his feet, sheriff's deputies said. He had been shot twice. His bulletproof vest stopped one shot to his abdomen, but he suffered a gunshot wound to the forehead.

A woman who came upon the scene used Largo's radio to call for help, deputies say. Largo was flown to an Albuquerque hospital, where he later died.

The shooting has renewed focus on the challenges officers on the Navajo Nation and other American Indian reservations face. They often have to patrol vast jurisdictions alone.

Tribal officials and the governors of New Mexico and Arizona called for flags to be lowered in honor of Largo.

When Edmund Yazzie, chairman of tribal council's law and order committee, spoke at the funeral, he asked the crowd to stand up and let Largo hear them, spurring a long and loud round of cheers, hoots and whistles.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - A pregnant mother of four in North Carolina who is facing deportation to her native Guatemala will get a review by a federal immigration court.

One of her attorneys says 34-year-old Lilian Cardona-Perez was 15 when she entered the U.S. illegally.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman told The Associated Press that she came to the agency's attention when she was arrested in Wake County in 2010 on a property crime charge. That charge was later dismissed, but the Harnett County woman was ordered deported, and her appeals have since run out.

Court records also show a 2015 arrest for driving while impaired.

Her lawyer tells the Fayetteville Observer that it typically takes three weeks for the court to decide whether to deport someone.
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. (AP) - Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said Thursday he'll oppose any legislation that takes health care away from West Virginians and urged people to "bombard" President Donald Trump with calls and emails to halt the Republican plan.

Manchin said Trump needs to be enlisted to stop the immediate Republican push to repeal former President Barack Obama's health care law. The law added coverage to about 210,000 people in West Virginia, including 25,000 getting treatment in a state ravaged by the opioid epidemic.

"I think President Donald Trump is the only one who can stop this right now," Manchin told more than 200 people at a town hall meeting. He cited Trump's campaign promise that people wouldn't lose health insurance. "I would bombard the White House."

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks with Diane Hughes and Stephanie Frederiksen at a Town Hall meeting, Thursday, March 16, 2017, in Martinsburg, W.Va., focused on the possible loss of health coverage under the proposed House Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Both women said they got badly needed treatment under the current law. (AP Photo/Michael Virtanen)

Without bipartisan support, the alternative that would provide billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans will prove as divisive as the current program that was approved by only Democratic legislators, Manchin said.

The current program is flawed and the focus should be on fixing those problems, which include mandatory coverage levels that make options so expensive that many younger people stay uninsured, he said.

He noted that many people who got coverage under the health care law don't know who made it happen. "They will know one thing - who took it away from them," Manchin said.

Manchin planned to attend three more town hall meetings organized by health care advocates.

Organizers said the state's Republican lawmakers - Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Reps. Alex Mooney, David McKinley and Evan Jenkins - have declined so far to attend.

Several doctors, other providers and patients emphasized the importance of continuing coverage.

"Ordinary citizens like me are literally fighting for their lives," said Stephanie Fredericksen, a former insurance agent who had to quit working because of Lupus and other ailments and lost company-provided insurance. "Now it's up to the people that represent us to put their egos and agendas aside."

Manchin said he agreed with the analysis presented Thursday by Kat Stoll of West Virginians for Affordable Care that found 257,000 of West Virginia's 1.8 million people were uninsured before the law, which has dropped to 108,000. About 35,000 got insurance through the federal marketplace, 70 percent with premium subsidies, and another 175,000 got it through the Medicaid expansion that would end, she said.

The Republican House proposal will shift $880 billion in costs to the states, provide $592 billion in tax breaks to the wealthy and change other Medicaid funding limits, Stoll said. It would drive up premiums by thousands of dollars for older people getting commercial insurance through the health exchange, she said.
NEW YORK (AP) - A volunteer safety patrol member who admitted bribing New York City police officers to get dozens of gun permits for others was sentenced Thursday to nearly three years in prison.

Alex "Shaya" Lichtenstein had weakened the faith New York City residents have in their police department, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein said. Lichtenstein also must forfeit $230,000 and pay a $20,000 fine. Prosecutors said he had earned between $150,000 and $200,000 from the scheme.

"I'm still perplexed at what led Mr. Lichtenstein to do this," the judge said.

Lichtenstein, 45, said he initially didn't charge people in his community when they asked him to help them get a gun permit. But then, he said, he began charging money "and it went from a little to more and more."

Prosecutors said Lichtenstein charged $10,000 to $16,000, using some of the money to pay police officers up to $1,000 per application.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell Capone said Lichtenstein also gave police officers money and gifts. He said some people who obtained gun permits through the scheme had criminal histories, including domestic violence, though none of the guns have apparently been traced to any crimes.

A defense lawyer described his client's numerous acts of charity and pointed to over 100 supporters who showed up at the sentencing, many of them having benefited from Lichtenstein's help.

Lichtenstein blamed the crime partly on an addiction to alcohol that he said he had gone to rehabilitation to overcome.

"I made terrible, terrible mistakes. I know that," he said. "I am very, very sorry for my mistakes."

The Pomona, New York, resident pleaded guilty to bribery charges in November. Prosecutors say he had bragged that he'd gotten at least 150 licenses for people to carry guns.

In a release, acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said: "By engaging in an egregious scheme to trade cash for gun licenses, Alex Lichtenstein and his co-defendants in the New York Police Department corrupted the sensitive process of evaluating gun license applications in New York City."

Prosecutors said Lichtenstein is a member of the Borough Park Shomrim, a volunteer Orthodox Jewish patrol group that seeks to fight crime and locate missing people.
Tongs in hand, Sandra Allende, 65, walks decisively towards her favorite bread, a baguette paysanne. It is noon at one of Mexico Citys most popular bakery chains, and Sandra is in a hurry: her three grandchildren are coming over for lunch. I already have the tortillas. Ive rushed over for the bread. I buy a baguette nearly every day. My husband loves to dip it in stews.

The Da Silva bakery in Mexico City. Oswaldo Ramirez

More information El auge del pan en el imperio del maiz

In Mexico, the legendary cradle of corn, the latter lives in peaceful coexistence with wheat. But the younger brother is starting to grow up fast.

After tripping last year over a tax on processed food, including industrial baked goods, consumption of wheat products has been rising to a record 116 million tons, according to the industry group Canainpa.

The fastest-growing segment, at 3%, is artisan bread. Nearly 37,000 small bakeries have opened up in the country in recent years.

We need to abandon our prejudices that bread is fattening and bad for you

Joan Bagur, baker

These businesses tend to be concentrated in higher-income areas. In the popular neighborhoods, people still eat mostly corn, but this new eating habit is also making inroads, based on slower-fermentation breads that use natural yeast and have a hard crust, following European tastes, explains Canainpa president Carlos Otegui.

Eduardo Da Silva, the son of Portuguese and Mexican parents, is one of the pioneers in the crusade to bring artisan bread to the country. Two decades ago, the umpteenth crisis put an end to his shoe business, and he decided to take cooking lessons with a French instructor.

Seventeen years, six shops and 100 kilograms of bread a month later, Da Silva recalls his own beginnings in the industry: Industrialization had annihilated neighborhood bakeries. I decided to go back to the recipes of old, using sourdough and long preparation times. Spaniards, Germans and French people began to show up, recognizing this bread as something familiar.

Joan Bagur at his bakery, Sal y Dulce Artesanos. Oswaldo Ramirez

There is a global yearning for old-fashioned recipes and healthier foods, and a market for those who can afford it. From Europe to New Zealand, people are tired of eating unhealthy things, notes Da Silva. And even the large chains are trying to get into that niche by selling what they call artisan bread, even though it is, in fact, the same as commercial bread. They add industrial yeast or sugar to speed up fermentation and to give the crust that darker color.

At the bakery department of Walmart, Superama and Chedruai, three of Mexicos largest supermarkets, it is now easy to find whole-wheat bread. Some retailers like El Globo have even launched a German-looking line, delibrot, and also offers San Francisco sourdough bread, and multicereal bread studded with pumpkin seeds or black olives from Morocco.

But Elena Reygadas, winner of the 2014 50Best award to best chef in Latin America, and head of two bakeries and two restaurants, feels that bread should not be an elite product.

Bread at Da Silva bakery. Oswaldo Ramirez

She defends the bread tradition that arrived in Mexico with the Spanish Conquistadors, from the telera or bolillo breads, common in central Mexico, to the slightly acidic tortas of Jalisco, good for dipping in tomato sauce, or the wheat tortillas made in the northern states.

Sonora and Baja California are the main producers, but Mexico still needs to import around 60% of national consumption, mostly from the United States.

We use imported flour becase it guarantees that it does not have pesticides and because they supply us with different ancestral forms of wheat, explains Bernardo Flores, a partners at BreAd bakery in Monterrey, where they have been making sourdough bread for six years.

Flour, salt, water, and then we let it thrive in the ecosystem created with yeast and natural bacteria, at stable temperatures. This gives you more nutritious bread that is easier to digest, he says.

The market in Mexico is growing. We need greater specialization and to abandon our prejudices that bread is fattening and bad for you, says Joan Bagur, who supplies bread to hotels, restaurants and catering firms in the capital.

But perhaps the most vivid image of Mexican syncretism when it comes to both cereals is to be found at the street food stands, where people stand in line in the morning to buy a torta de tamal: a rectangle of corndough stuffed into a piece of white bread.

English version by Susana Urra.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican-led House approved legislation Thursday to make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire, suspend or demote employees for poor performance or bad conduct, part of a renewed GOP effort targeting VA accountability in the new Trump administration.

The bill, which passed 237-178, would reduce the time that workers have available under a union grievance process to appeal a disciplinary action. Any employee facing discipline would receive advance notice of 10 days. The secretary would have another five days to complete the decision.

The measure would also allow the VA to recoup bonuses awarded to employees later disciplined for misconduct.

FILE - In this June 21, 2013, file photo, the seal a fixed to the front of the Department of Veterans Affairs building in Washington. The Republican-led House on March 16, 2017, has approved legislation to make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire, suspend or demote employees for poor performance or bad conduct, part of a renewed effort targeting VA accountability in the new Trump administration. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Phil Roe of Tennessee, said current the grievance process could take up to 350 days to complete.

"It is beyond comprehension that with as much outright malfeasance that Congress, the American public, the media and our courageous whistleblowers have uncovered at VA ... that we still see far too many instances of VA employees not living up to the standards America expects," Roe said.

"This legislation doesn't just build back the trust of America's veterans; it gives VA employees the trust to know that bad actors within the department will no longer have the power to taint their good name."

The bill has the support of the White House and VA Secretary David Shulkin. But Democrats and unions cast the measure as an attack on workers' rights, saying the House version is too aggressive and unfairly punishes rank and file employees. Last year, a bipartisan Senate bill by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and backed by the American Federation of Government Employees as more in balance with workers' due process rights stalled during the presidential campaign.

Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., said protecting worker rights and holding VA accountable were not mutually exclusive. He unsuccessfully argued that the House adopt wording in Isakson's previous legislation to "get to the heart of this by going after managers," not rank and file employees.

Lawmakers complain that few employees were fired after a 2014 wait-time scandal and other malfeasance at the VA, such as rising cases of drug theft. A 2014 law gave the VA greater power to discipline executives, but the department stopped using that authority after the Obama Justice Department deemed it likely unconstitutional.

The White House said it would recommend Trump sign the bill into law if passed. With more veterans receiving health care through the VA than ever before, "it is critical that federal employees be held to the highest performance standards," the Office of Management and Budget said.

Accountability at the VA was a key campaign promise by Trump, who called the department "the most corrupt." Trump's proposed 2018 budget seeks an extra $4.4 billion for the VA to strengthen its health care while also extending a Choice program aimed at giving veterans more access to private care.

The bill was one of three measures Thursday targeting VA changes.

The House approved legislation aimed at protecting the gun rights of veterans. The bill, which passed 240-175, would allow veterans to legally designate someone to handle their finances without being barred from owning firearms.

Supporters called it affirmation of Second Amendment rights, while opponents worried it could too easily put guns in the hands of veterans with mental health distress.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where prospects are uncertain.

The VA currently classifies veterans as "mentally defective" if they designate another person to handle their affairs. Under the measure, the VA could no longer report this classification to the FBI. A magistrate or judicial authority would have to find the veteran to be a danger to himself or herself or to others before losing gun rights.

The House also took up consideration of a bill aimed at improving the VA's ability to hire and retain top-level doctors and other employees. A vote was expected Friday.

Also Friday, Trump planned to host a "listening session" at the White House with Shulkin and representatives from the various service organizations that advocate for military veterans, spokesman Sean Spicer said.

Veterans' groups have been seeking to meet with Trump since he took office in January. Trump has held multiple listening sessions with different groups, but Friday's session would be Trump's first with veterans, a constituency he has promised to take care of.

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) - Authorities in El Salvador say at least 30 people, most of them gang members, have been killed in one of the Central American nation's bloodiest 24-hour spans this year.

The wave of violence includes a shootout between gangsters and private security guards that killed six in the capital Wednesday.

Gang members also shot dead three women and then ran into a firefight with police, resulting in six suspected criminals killed.

A woman walks past a wooden tray stained with human blood near the scene where a shootout between private security guards and gang members took place, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

National Civil Police Commissioner Howard Cotto said Thursday that at least 17 of the 30 people slain nationwide are suspected gang members.

Justice Minister Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde told local radio that the country's insecurity problem is "complicated and difficult."

El Salvador has posted some of the highest homicide rates in the world in recent years amid raging gang violence.

Police investigators carry a body to a forensic vehicle, after a shootout between private security guards and gang members, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

A forensic workers checks the body of a victim of a shootout between private security guards and gang members, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Vendors watch forensic workers investigate the scene of a shootout between private security guards and gang members, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

The body of a victim of a shootout between private security guards and gang members, lies next to a wheelbarrow filled with mangoes at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Vendors and bystanders watch forensic workers investigate the scene of a shootout between private security guards and gang members, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Special forces soldier guard the scene of a shootout between private security guards and gang members, at the central market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2017. At least 30 people, mostly gang members, died in the last 24 hours in El Salvador on one of the most violent days so far this year. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Washington officials say their efforts to let people know more quickly about missing person cases have led to some unfounded worries.

Mayor Muriel Bowser and police officials held a news conference Thursday to address concerns that the number of missing people, especially teenage girls, is on the rise in the city. They say there is no evidence that missing person cases are increasing or that the city's recent cases are related to human trafficking.

The mayor says what has changed is the use of social media to spread the word about cases more quickly.

WTTG-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2neVhOF ) the news conference came after recent media reports questioned whether there had been a sudden increase in disappearances and whether the issue had received adequate attention.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Two Louisiana sheriff's deputies won't face prosecution in the shooting death of a man they pursued from a suburb into New Orleans last year, state and federal officials said Thursday.

The FBI office and Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's Office each issued statements saying there would be no criminal charges in the death of 22-year-old Eric Harris.

Both said the decision was made after attorneys reviewed an investigation by the FBI-led Greater New Orleans Civil Rights Task Force.

The statement from Special Agent Jeffrey Sallet, who heads the New Orleans FBI office, said career attorneys in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans "determined it (the shooting) did not involve a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statute."

Assistant District Attorney Christopher Bowman issued a similar statement.

Jefferson Parish deputies said they chased Harris because he pointed a gun at people at a mall.

Harris was black. Authorities last year said the two deputies - one white and one black - told investigators they shot because they feared for their safety when Harris put his car in reverse.

The shooting sparked protests.

One in July coincided with protests in Baton Rouge over the videotaped fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. The New Orleans protest began on a side street where Harris was shot and included a march by more than 150 people to a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Rita Ora is out and Tyra Banks is back in as the host of TV's "America's Next Top Model."

VH1 announced Thursday that Banks will return to the reality show next season. Production is set to begin this summer.

Banks created "America's Next Top Model" in 2003 and served as both executive producer and host until last year, when Ora was named the new host.

FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2015 file photo, Tyra Banks attends The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Breakfast in Los Angeles. VH1 announced Thursday, March 16, 2017, that Banks will return to host the reality show, "America's Next Top Model," next season. Production is set to begin this summer. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Fellow executive producer Ken Mok said Thursday that Banks' absence was "deeply felt" by the show's fans.

Banks said they inspired her to "have a change of heart" and return as host.

Banks is also the new face of "America's Got Talent."

NBC announced earlier this week that she will replace former host Nick Cannon when the show returns this summer.
HONOLULU (AP) - A 19-year-old college student pleaded no contest Thursday in a case involving seabirds killed at a Hawaii nature reserve.

Christian Gutierrez pleaded no contest to animal cruelty, theft and other charges. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 14 remaining counts.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources began investigating after three Laysan albatrosses were found dead in December 2015 at the Kaena Point Natural Area Reserve. There were 12 attending adult albatrosses missing, which was concerning because the birds never leave an egg unattended, the department said. There were also 15 destroyed nests with smashed, dead or missing eggs, the department added.

A photo from the department showed a bird's severed leg.

The Laysan albatross is a federally protected species.

Gutierrez attends New York University, according to a police report.

Gutierrez's statement filed in court said while he was camping with others at Kaena Point, they entered a prohibited area and "participated in illegal activities that resulted in the death of numerous albatross birds and eggs and the theft and destruction of surveillance equipment owned by the Pacific Rim Conservation Organization."

His defense attorney, Myles Breiner, has said Gutierrez was camping with classmates from Punahou, a prestigious Honolulu prep school. Gutierrez was the only one who was 18 and the other cases are being handled in family court, Breiner said.

"Because he was an adult he became the face and the name associated with this incident," Breiner said. "Whereas all the individuals involved ... they are taking advantage of being a few months shy of their 18th birthday."

Pleading no contest is Gutierrez's way of taking responsibility, Breiner said.

"The plea deal was necessary to secure evidence against others who may be involved," said Chuck Parker, spokesman for the Honolulu prosecuting attorney's office.

A cooperation agreement with prosecutors says that Gutierrez must pay restitution to Pacific Rim Conservation Group and must write an apology letter to them.

"He's 19 years old and very intelligent and has a bright career ahead," Breiner said.

The maximum sentence for animal cruelty is a year in prison. Breiner is asking the judge to defer acceptance of the plea, which would allow Gutierrez to avoid a conviction if he stays out of trouble for a specified amount of time.
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - It sounds like an idea that would warm a conservative Republican's heart: Kill funding of a regional environmental cleanup that has lasted seven years and cost the federal government more than $2 billion, with no end in sight. If states want to keep the program going, let them pick up the tab.

That is what President Donald Trump's 2018 budget plan proposes for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ambitious push to fix problems that have long bedeviled the world's largest surface freshwater system - from invasive species to algal blooms and toxic sludge fouling tributary rivers.

During the Obama administration, the program generally got about $300 million a year. Trump's offer is zero. His spending plan released Thursday says it "returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities."

FILE - In a June 30, 2005 file photo, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Lake Michigan is seen from the Mackinac Bridge in Mackinaw City, Mich. President Donald Trump wants to eliminate federal support of a program that addresses the Great Lakes' most pressing environmental threats. Trump's 2018 budget released Thursday, March 16, 2017, would remove all funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which has received strong support from members of Congress in both parties since President Barack Obama established it in 2009. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

The response from Republicans in Great Lakes states: No, thanks.

"I think it makes sense for us to continue to make prudent investments in protecting and improving the Great Lakes," Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told The Associated Press, adding that he would lobby the Trump administration and congressional leaders to put the money back.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan considers Great Lakes funding "very important to Michiganders, therefore we know there is strong support among Michigan's congressional delegation and we will work with them to preserve the funding," spokeswoman Anna Heaton said.

GOP lawmakers from the region also rushed out statements defending the program. It "helps protect both our environment and our economy," U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said.

The reaction illustrates a political fact of life: Whether you consider something in the budget valuable or wasteful can depend a lot on where you're from.

And it underscores the resistance Trump may encounter to some spending cuts he is proposing for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior and other agencies that draw frequent attacks from congressional Republicans yet fund projects and services with support back home.

The president's spending blueprint also targets a Chesapeake Bay cleanup begun in 1983 that received $73 million last year, plus other "geographic programs." It doesn't identify them, but a proposal by the Office of Management and Budget this month called for cutting all or most funding for San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked for more details, EPA released a statement saying the plan "reflects the president's priorities" and that Administrator Scott Pruitt "is committed to leading the EPA in a more effective, more focused, less costly way as we partner with states to fulfill the agency's core mission."

Before his confirmation as EPA chief, Pruitt told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee he would "continue EPA's support" of the initiative. In a written response to questions, Pruitt made no promises about funding, but said he would consider what the program received previously when making budget recommendations.

The Great Lakes region includes swing states crucial to Trump's election - Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. There's also New York, Minnesota and Illinois. And Indiana, whose former governor, Mike Pence, is now Trump's vice president.

Coincidentally, the budget plan was released as about 100 Great Lakes advocates paid a yearly visit to Washington, D.C., in support of the restoration initiative. They flocked to the offices of home-state lawmakers, reminding them that Congress voted only last year to extend the program another five years.

"We are going to turn once again to our bipartisan congressional champions," said Todd Ambs, director of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

While Democratic lawmakers excoriated Trump's proposal - "incredibly short-sighted and reckless," said Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan - Republicans noted that former President Barack Obama at times recommended more modest reductions to the initiative, which Congress rejected.

Some also pointed out that former President George W. Bush signed initial legislation authorizing a wide-ranging Great Lakes cleanup, although he sought little money for it.

The initiative has funded nearly 3,000 projects across the eight states. Among them: efforts to prevent Asian carp from invading the lakes, prevent nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algal blooms, rebuild wetlands where fish spawn and remove sediments laced with PCBs and other toxins.

Nearly all the federal grants require cost-share payments from a state, local or tribal agency, or perhaps a nonprofit organization. But Ambs said they can't afford to shoulder the burden alone.

Without federal support, "all of this restoration work would come to a halt," he said.

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Contributing to this story were Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia.

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Follow John Flesher on Twitter at https://twitter.com/johnflesher
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) - The International Olympic Committee has moved closer toward picking both Los Angeles and Paris to host a Summer Games in an unprecedented double vote this year.

IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly hinted at awarding the hosting rights for both the 2024 and 2028 Games at the IOC Session on Sept. 13 in Lima, Peru. Only the 2024 Games is currently scheduled to be voted on in Lima.

"All the options are on the table, and this includes also the '24-'28 procedure and vote," Bach said Friday when announcing a working group to study changing the candidate process.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, left, is escorted by South Korea's Prime Minister and acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn for a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 14, 2017. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Pool Photo via AP)

The IOC executive board asked its four vice presidents to "explore changes" in Olympic bidding and report back in July.

"We have two excellent candidates there from two major Olympic countries," Bach said at a news conference after a two-day board meeting. "This is a position you like to be in."

Bach said the four-man working group will make proposals to the board and full membership. They meet from July 9-12 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where LA and Paris will make formal presentations of their 2024 hosting plans.

A full IOC meeting can change the Olympic Charter, which currently says host cities must be picked seven years in advance.

"You must always have room for interpretation to adapt to changing times," said Bach, who noted that he co-wrote the current book of Olympic rules. "The charter is flexible enough also in this respect."

Los Angeles and Paris are in a two-candidate race after several rivals dropped out facing public opposition to expected spiraling costs and doubts about the long-term value of being an Olympic host.

Since December, Bach has repeated warnings about a bid process that produces "too many losers," suggesting concerns that the city which lost a 2024 vote would not return with a candidacy for the 2028 Olympics.

"We are in a comfortable situation. Now it will be up to the working group how to best explore, how to best exploit, the positive situation," Bach said. "We should not miss the opportunity to explore this opportunity."

The four vice presidents are John Coates of Australia, Yu Zaiqing of China, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain and Ugur Erdener of Turkey.

Bach returned his focus to curbing excessive spending by hosts by welcoming budget cuts by organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Talks between government and Olympic officials have reduced the expected costs to $15.2 billion from an initial $30 billion estimate, Bach said, adding that "even more savings can be made."

A discrimination issue for the Tokyo Games could be resolved this weekend, Bach said.

The Kasumigaseki Country Club, which was picked to stage men's and women's golf tournaments, will have a board meeting to review its policy of not allowing women as full members.

"The Olympic Games are about non-discrimination in every respect," Bach said, adding he hoped the club will "grant the same rights to women as for men."

Also, Kenya avoided being suspended by the IOC after its national Olympic committee officials backtracked and agreed to pass a new constitution and hold elections.

Kenya had its funding from the IOC cut last week and faced a ban after refusing to make the changes the IOC called for. But the National Olympic Committee of Kenya wrote to the IOC this week promising to "rectify the situation," the IOC said in a statement to The Associated Press.

NOCK must now adopt the new constitution at a meeting on March 28 and then organize elections.

The IOC executive board decided funding to Kenya would continue to be on hold "until further notice."
BEIJING (AP) - China plans to build the first permanent structure on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, in a move likely to renew concerns over Beijing's robust assertions of its claims in the strategically crucial waterbody.

The top official in Sansha City that has administered China's island claims since 2012 was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying that preparations were underway to build an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.

The preparatory work on the stations and others on five other islands in the strategically vital waterway was among the government's top priorities for 2017, Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie was quoted as saying in an interview published in the paper's Monday edition seen online Friday in Beijing. No other details were.

Beijing seized tiny, uninhabited Scarborough in 2012 after a tense standoff with Philippine vessels. Taiwan also includes the island within its South China Sea claims that largely overlap with those of China.

The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group that China has controlled since seizing parts of it away from Vietnam in 1974.

China's construction and land reclamation work in the South China Sea have drawn strong criticism from the U.S. and others, who accuse Beijing of further militarizing the region and altering geography to bolster its claims. China says the seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, which it has equipped with airstrips and military installations, are mainly for civilian purposes and to boost safety for fishing and maritime trade.

Prior to the announcement, South China Sea tensions had eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines. The verdict invalidated China's sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal.

China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunal's ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.

Scarborough has no proper land mass and any structure on it would likely have to be built on stilts. The shoal forms a triangle-shaped lagoon of rocks and reefs running for 46 kilometers, with its highest point just 1.8 meters (about 6 feet) above water at high tide. Known in Chinese as Huangyan Island, it lies about 200 kilometers (120 miles) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon, and about 600 kilometers (370 miles) southeast of China.

U.S. diplomats have said privately that reclamation work on the shoal would be seen as crossing a red line because of its proximity to the main Philippine islands and the threat it could pose to U.S. and Filipino military assets.

During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson compared China's island-building and military deployments to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and suggested China's access to the islands should not be allowed. The U.S. says China has reclaimed more than 1,295 hectares (3,200 acres) of land in the area.

The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when Tillerson visits Beijing for talks with top officials on Saturday and Sunday.

Meanwhile, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang was visiting the Philippines, just days after Duterte said Monday that he had told the military to assert Philippine ownership of a large ocean region off the country's northeastern coast where Chinese survey ships were spotted last year, in a discovery that alarmed Philippine defense officials.

China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have long contested ownership of the South China Sea, which straddles one of the world's busiest sea lanes and is believed to sit atop vast deposits of oil and gas.

Also this week, the commander in chief of China's navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing.

China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnam's central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam.

The two navies and their countries should "together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea," Shen was quoted as saying by China's defense ministry.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The Florida prosecutor who thrust herself into the forefront of the anti-death penalty movement is a political novice who was elected just seven months ago.

Aramis Ayala, a Democrat and former public defender and assistant state attorney, surprised many of her own supporters when she announced this week that her office would no longer seek capital punishment in a state that has one of the largest death rows. In response, the state's Republican governor promptly transferred a potential death penalty case - the killing of a police officer and a pregnant woman earlier this year - to another Florida prosecutor.

"I understand this is a controversial issue but what isn't controversial is the evidence that led me to my decision," said Ayala, the first black State Attorney elected in Florida.

In a press conference on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse, Florida Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces Thursday, March 16, 2017, that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

She said there is no evidence that shows the death penalty improves public safety for citizens or law enforcement, and it's costly and drags on for years for the victims' families.

Advocates seeking to abolish the death penalty said Ayala sent a powerful message. Her decision reflects decreasing support for capital punishment in the U.S., said Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

"There are some prosecutors who in practice are following her lead. They just haven't spoken out like she has," Clifton said. "It would be wonderful if they spoke out and we could have a louder voice."

Ayala spent the first decade or so of her career as an assistant state attorney and public defender. She was a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office for Orange and Osceola counties for about two years before she decided to seek the top job. The county is home to Walt Disney World and other tourist attractions and has grown more liberal over the past two decades.

Ayala was a political newcomer last year when she took on her former boss, then-State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who had been one of the prosecutors in the Casey Anthony case. Anthony was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

Ayala didn't run on an anti-death penalty platform when she campaigned, since at the time Florida's death penalty law was in question after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. A new death penalty bill was signed into law this week.

She instead emphasized during her campaign that she would engage with average citizens if elected. She acknowledged that her husband had served time in prison for drug conspiracy and counterfeiting checks years ago.

Even some of Ayala's supporters said Friday they were taken aback by her decision.

Lawson Lamar, a former State Attorney and sheriff, who backed her run for office, said: "Anyone who raises their hand and takes the oath to be State Attorney must be able to go with the death penalty even if they feel it's distasteful."

Ayala's campaign was helped by a Washington-based political action committee with ties to liberal Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros. The committee gave Ayala's campaign almost $1 million, as well as millions of dollars to candidates in local races around the nation.

When asked if the donations influenced her decision, she said it did not.

Florida has 381 inmates on death and shows no sign of slowing down future prosecutions. The other State Attorneys in Florida issued a statement Friday saying they would continue to seek the death penalty.

Rafael Zaldivar, whose son was murdered in Orlando in 2012, said Ayala's decision is part of a political agenda and has no place in the State Attorney's Office. He demanded her resignation.

"She is an activist. She isn't a prosecutor. She has an agenda," said Zaldivar, whose son's killer was sentenced to death in 2015. Questions over Florida's death penalty law have cast doubt over the sentence. His case is currently on appeal.

After Ayala announced her decision, Gov. Rick Scott transferred the case of Markeith Loyd from her authority to another State Attorney in a neighboring district. Loyd is charged in the killing of police Lt. Debra Clayton, as well as Sade Dixon, who was Loyd's pregnant ex-girlfriend.

Dixon's mother said she supported Ayala's decision, saying the death penalty would drag out the process for her family.

"I would love for him to die right now, but that isn't going to happen," Stephanie Dixon-Daniels said at a news conference outside the Orange County Courthouse.

Ayala's decision could play into any future political aspirations. In California, then-District Attorney Kamala Harris faced similar circumstances a dozen years ago when she decided not to pursue the death penalty against a man accused of killing a San Francisco police officer. Harris went on to become the state's attorney general and a U.S. senator.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikeschneiderap . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/Mike-Schneider

In a press conference on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse Thursday, March 16, 2017, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

In a press conference Thursday, March 16, 2017, on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)
Civilian intermediaries speaking in the name of ETA, the Basque terrorist organization, will notify the French judiciary of the location of its arms caches in what constitutes a unilateral and unconditional disarmament to be completed on April 8.

ETA hands over part of its arms in 2014. Arquivo/BBC

ETA has made us responsible for disarmament of its arsenal, and by the afternoon of April 8, ETA will be completely unarmed, said Jean Noel Etcheverry Txetx, an activist with a radical Basque group called Bizi, in statements to French newspaper Le Monde.

The disarmament process will be supervised by the International Verification Commission (IVC), created in 2011 after ETA announced a permanent cessation of violence, and by the Basque government.

In January 2011, ETA announced a permanent, general and verifiable ceasefire

This operation has been in the works ever since the arrest of five civilian intermediaries in the southern French town of Bayonne on December 16. These individuals were trying to film the decommissioning of an ETA arsenal in France.

But the impossibility of carrying this out, coupled with permanent police tracking of ETAs movements, has pushed the organization into a change of strategy.

ETAs arsenal has been out of use for over five years, making the decommissioning a symbolic affair. The latest police seizure of weapons in France, last December, yielded 12 submachine guns, nine machine guns, 25 light weapons and two grenades. This was estimated to be around 20% of ETAs entire arsenal.

In January 2011, ETA announced a permanent, general and verifiable ceasefire with the express aim of ending its more than 50-year campaign of terrorist violence.

After the definitive end of violence, ETA attempted to negotiate the terms of decommissioning with the Spanish government. The terrorist organization sent a delegation to Norway to await a representative of the Popular Party administration, but nobody showed up. In February 2013, the ETA delegation was asked to leave Norway following pressure from the Spanish government.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Years before Russian intelligence agencies stood accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential election and of orchestrating a massive Yahoo data breach, there was lingerie model Anna Chapman and her band of "Illegals" - Russian spies who assumed false identities and lived as deep-cover agents in middle-class America.

The busting-up of that spy ring, along with the arrest two years ago of a Russian spy who posed as a Manhattan banker and this week's announcement of an indictment of Russian agents in the Yahoo email hack, underscore long-running efforts by the American authorities to closely monitor and occasionally interrupt the Kremlin's intelligence-gathering operations.

Though allegations of meddling in the political process represent a stunning new flare-up in relations between the two countries, U.S. intelligence agencies for years have been concerned by Russian efforts to infiltrate American society and government.

FILE - In this May 25, 2016, courtroom drawing, defendant Evgeny Buryakov, left, stands with his attorney Scott Hershman during sentencing on espionage charges in New York. U.S. intelligence agencies have been concerned for years about Russian efforts to infiltrate American society and government. Those concerns came long before Russian intelligence agencies stood accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential election and of orchestrating a massive Yahoo data breach. It's not surprising that once the public understands the capabilities and motives of Russian intelligence "that there's a great deal of concern about their ability to gather intelligence and use it to influence real-world events," said Adam Fee, who was lead prosecutor in the 2015 prosecution of Evgeny Buryakov, who posed as a banker in New York while spying on the U.S. for the Russian Federation.(AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, file)

"What we have seen as far as the arrests is really only scratching the surface of the real Russian activity here," said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis at the Texas-based Stratfor intelligence firm.

Many counterintelligence investigations can last for years without resulting in criminal charges, preventing the public from having a complete grasp of evidence collected or tactics that are used.

But a few sensational Justice Department prosecutions in the last decade have brought to light Russian efforts to recruit university students, gather information on the stock market and on sanctions, sway public opinion and cultivate well-placed contacts. And recent hacking allegations make clear that old-fashioned spying techniques have now been augmented by cyber expertise that can in some cases accomplish similar goals.

"They want to understand how the White House is going to work, and how Washington will respond to what Russians are doing in Europe and the Middle East," said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former foreign service officer focused on Russia.

It's not surprising that once the public understands the capabilities and motives of Russian intelligence "that there's a great deal of concern about their ability to gather intelligence and use it to influence real-world events," said Adam Fee, who helped handle the 2015 prosecution of Evgeny Buryakov, who posed as a banker in New York while spying on the U.S. for the Russian Federation.

"It's interesting to see an area you worked on splash in the forefront of the national consciousness," Fee said.

Public interest in counterintelligence operations spiked with the U.S. assessment in January that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking of Democratic email accounts and for sharing that information with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website, with the goal of aiding the Trump campaign.

That interference remains under federal investigation, but some experts see parallels between those cyberattacks and prior Russian espionage efforts.

Alarmingly to American authorities, Russian hackers engaged in more conventional crimes, such as stealing credit and debit card account information, have in some cases piggybacked off Russian intelligence services. The Justice Department this week announced charges against two Russian intelligence agents and two hired hackers. The four were accused in a 2014 breach of at least 500 million Yahoo user accounts.

"I view cyber as merely being a new tool of espionage to pursue the same goals of espionage - whether that's recruiting, stealing information, it's basically the same things they've always done," Stewart said. "It's just a new tool to accomplish those tasks."

Probably the most notable prosecution is the 2010 case of "The Illegals" - a ring of Russian sleeper spies who burrowed into workaday America instead of more customary positions inside Russian embassies and military missions.

Tasked with developing contacts with government policymakers, the Russians took civilian positions in cities throughout the country and in some cases lived as husband and wife.

A long-running FBI investigation called "Operation Ghost Stories" revealed how the secret agents relied on specially coded radio transmissions, invisible ink and furtive cash drops as they patiently worked to develop sources and send information back to Russia.

Once captured, 10 spies charged with acting as foreign agents were swapped for four Russians who'd been imprisoned for spying for the West. An 11th suspect accused of delivering money and equipment to the secret agents was freed by a court in Cyprus and later vanished.

Chapman herself became a model and corporate spokeswoman upon her return to Russia, the saga said to have been an inspiration for the hit FX show "The Americans."

The motive was different than last year's election hack, said Glen Kopp, a prosecutor in the case.

What's similar, he added, is "the obsession with seeing the world as us versus them."

More recently, Buryakov was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for his spying efforts, which in addition to working to gain information about the New York Stock Exchange, also included an attempt to shape political opinion.

He admitted to working to sway union opinion about a Canadian company's planned deal to build aircraft in Russia - efforts known among experts as "active measures." That political engagement in some ways resembles what U.S. officials say was a Russian effort to use an email hack to politically harm Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"What I see in the cyberattacks last year, it's a modernized version of those active measures," Pifer said.

Counterintelligence concerns faded in the post-Cold War era as the Soviet Union splintered and as counterterrorism fears from the Middle East rose to the forefront. But more recent events have brought renewed focus on Russia, Pifer said.

The cyber realm, he said, "creates possibilities for the Russians to do things that they couldn't do before."

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
PARIS (AP) - Prince William and his wife, Kate, were in Paris Friday to meet the French president and survivors of the 2015 extremist attacks, a trip that marked William's first official visit to the city since his mother died there.

President Francois Hollande greeted the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on Friday afternoon in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace.

The meeting "continues the longstanding relationship between the Presidents of the French Republic and the royal family," the British Embassy said in a written statement.

Britain's Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge meets families of soldiers at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

After the meeting, the couple was scheduled to meet with victims and first responders from the deadly 2015 attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other Paris sites. They also plan to attend a France-Wales rugby match Saturday.

While the royal couple has visited France several times, it was William's first official visit to Paris since his mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a 1997 car accident.

The visit comes amid anxiety across Europe over Britain's departure from the European Union. British Prime Minister Theresa May plans to trigger by the end of the month the two-year process that would take Britain out of the EU.

Before Kate and William headed to France on Friday, the royal couple met the families of soldiers at a St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, and presented shamrocks to the 1st Battalion Irish Guards.

The two-day visit doesn't include any official memorial events for Diana. Near the tunnel under the Alma bridge, where the car accident took place, tourists paid tribute to her, leaving flowers and photos.

Nicolas Herrera, 20, a Colombian studying in Paris, thinks Diana continues to be an object of affection for people around the world because she was "different."

"She was part of the royal family, part of people from the important world, but she was near the real people," Herrera said. "She was more close to poor people."

Nina Abboud, an American tourist from Missouri, said people still mention Diana as an example of leadership and generosity.

"So I think she definitely influenced and it was positive and has been for all these 20 years," Abboud said. "You've never heard more about her."

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Milos Krivokapic contributed to the story.

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, smiles after she presenting a shamrock to Domnhall the Irish Wolfhound Mascot, at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, laughs as she presents shamrocks to with Britain's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, left, and Britain's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards meet soldiers and their families at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate,The Duchess of Cambridge meets families of soldiers at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate,The Duchess of Cambridge, smiles as she presents shamrocks with Britain's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, laughs as she presents shamrocks with Britain's Prince William, Colonel of the Irish Guards, left, at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, smiles as she presents shamrocks at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Their Royal Highnesses visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, looks towards baskets of shamrocks before she presents them with Britain's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge and Britain's Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards, stand on a dais before presenting shamrocks with at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge and Britain's Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards arrive at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate,The Duchess of Cambridge, smiles as she presents shamrocks with Britain's Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, smiles as she presents shamrocks with Britain's Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, laughs as she presents shamrocks with Britain's Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, Colonel of the Irish Guards at the St. Patrick's Day Parade at the Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, London, Friday, March 17, 2017. Prince William and his wife Kate visited to present shamrocks to the Officers and Guardsmen of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
NEW DELHI (AP) - A suspected militant died Friday when he exploded a bomb at the future headquarters of a Bangladesh security agency, officials said.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion comprises military and police personnel and has conducted numerous raids on militant hideouts over the years. Its future headquarters is being constructed at a site in the Ashkona area, opposite Dhaka's international airport.

The explosion happened when security officials challenged the man as he entered the camp, Rapid Action Battalion spokesman Mufti Mahmud Khan said.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) stand guard at the entrance of a camp of the RAB as a man walks across the spot where an unidentified intruder has died in a blast in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, March 17, 2017. A suspected militant died Friday when he exploded a bomb at the future headquarters of the Bangladesh security agency, officials said. (AP Photo)

Some security officials were in the camp, but it was not immediately known whether the blast caused any other deaths or injuries.

The suspect died at the scene. Khan said security agencies did not have any clue about the identity of the suspect or involvement of any particular group. "We are checking," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Bangladesh is experiencing a surge in attacks by suspected militants. A major attack on a restaurant in July left 20 hostages, including 17 foreigners, dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the restaurant attack, but the government has blamed a banned militant group, Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.

Officials said four JMB members were killed Thursday in a police raid in the southeastern district of Chittagong.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) walk cross the spot where an unidentified intruder has died in a blast after attempting to enter a camp of the RAB in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, March 17, 2017. A suspected militant died Friday when he exploded a bomb at the future headquarters of the Bangladesh security agency, officials said. (AP Photo)
LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) - A former "Power Rangers" TV actor has pleaded guilty to killing his roommate, who was stabbed to death with a sword.

Thirty-eight-year-old Ricardo Medina entered a plea Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a sword. He faces six years in state prison.

Prosecutors say Medina stabbed Joshua Sutter several times in the abdomen two years ago at their house in Green Valley, a mountain town north of Los Angeles.

The two had argued over Medina's girlfriend.

Medina played the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger on "Power Rangers Wild Force" in 2002. He was the voice of Deker on "Power Rangers Samurai" in 2011 and 2012.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - The Maldives' government said Friday that Saudi Arabia's king has postponed an official visit because of the spread of swine flu in the archipelago nation.

King Salman was scheduled to visit the Maldives on Saturday. The president's office quoted Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim as saying that a new date will be decided later.

According to health ministry statistics, 105 people have tested positive for the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, since January and two have died in the small country of 340,000 people.

Schools and the state university have been closed to control the spread of the disease.

The 81-year-old king is making a monthlong swing through Asia. Accompanied by a 1,500-strong retinue of businessmen, princes and support staff in close to a dozen aircraft, he has already visited Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and China.

Opposition parties in the Maldives had planned protests during Salman's visit against what they said was a government plan to sell 21 tiny islands to a member of the Saudi royal family.

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This story has been corrected to show that name of virus is H1N1.
Trump sidesteps blame over wiretap row with Britain

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump defiantly refused to back down Friday from his explosive claim that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, and sidestepped any blame for the White House decision to highlight an unverified report that Britain helped carry out the alleged surveillance.

In brushing off the diplomatic row with perhaps America's closest ally, Trump also revived another: the Obama administration's monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump quipped during a joint news conference with Merkel.

Merkel, who was making her first visit to the White House since Trump took office, looked surprised by the president's comment, which he appeared primed to deliver. The Obama administration's spying infuriated Germany at the time and risked damaging the U.S. relationship with one of its most important European partners.

Trump's unproven recent allegations against his predecessor have left him increasingly isolated, with fellow Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers saying they've seen nothing from intelligence agencies to support his claim. But Trump, who rarely admits he's wrong, has been unmoved, leaving his advisers in the untenable position of defending the president without any credible evidence.

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Trump OKs changes in GOP health care bill, winning support

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill Friday, bolstering the measure with support from some conservative lawmakers but leaving its prospects wobbly. House leaders discussed other amendments calibrated to round up votes and scheduled a showdown vote Thursday.

"I just want to let the world know I am 100 percent in favor" of the measure, Trump said at the White House after meeting around a dozen House lawmakers and shaking hands on revisions. "We're going to have a health care plan that's going to be second to none."

While the rapid-fire events seemed to build momentum for the pivotal GOP legislation, its fate remained clouded. One leading House conservative said the alterations were insufficient and claimed enough allies to sink the measure, and support among moderates remained uncertain.

"My whip count indicates that there are 40 no's," enough to defeat the bill, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who leads the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. He said the change "doesn't move the ball more than a couple yards on a very long playing field."

Across the Capitol, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., facing re-election next year, became the fourth Republican senator to announce his opposition. That left Senate GOP leaders at least two votes shy of what they'd need to prevail.

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Social worker accused of hiding religious sect abuse resigns

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - A veteran social worker accused of coaching congregants and their children on what to say during a 2015 child abuse investigation of her secretive religious sect has resigned, an attorney for a child welfare agency said Friday.

Andrea Leslie-Fite said Lori Cornelius left her position at the Cleveland County Department of Social Services. The development came less than two weeks after The Associated Press published a report that quoted former members of the Word of Faith Fellowship sect saying that Cornelius and two assistant district attorneys - all members of the church - had helped undermine abuse investigations. The prosecutors resigned their posts and are under investigation by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

SBI spokesman Patty McQuillan said Friday the agency isn't currently investigating Cornelius or the Rutherford County Division of Social Services. But she said that could change.

Leslie-Fite did not answer questions about the circumstances of the Cornelius departure. In her letter of resignation, Cornelius cited to various unspecified reasons. Leslie-Fite added only that the resignation had been submitted earlier in the week, effective Friday.

In her letter, Cornelius did not mention the cover-up allegations that stem from an investigation of abuse at the secretive sect located in Spindale, North Carolina, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Military attack kills 42 Somali refugees off Yemen's coast

HODEIDA, Yemen (AP) - The boat packed with dozens of Somali refugees was more than 30 miles off war-torn Yemen's coast when a military vessel and a helicopter gunship swooped in, opening fire in the dead of night Friday, killing at least 42 people. The attack, which Yemen's Shiite rebels blamed on a Saudi-led coalition, highlighted the perils of a heavily used migration route running from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf, right through Yemen's civil war.

The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni port of Hodeida, where it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from Yemen, which has been racked by conflict for more than two years.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told The Associated Press the boat left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel open fire, followed by the helicopter gunship.

He described a scene of panic in which the terrified refugees waved flashlights, apparently to show they were not combatants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

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Tillerson: Pre-emptive force an option with NKorea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States signaled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table."

Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend. China has been advocating diplomacy to avoid a conflict on the divided peninsula.

Also Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

Past U.S. administrations have considered military options against North Korea and have publicly said that an attack on the U.S. or its allies would prompt a devastating response.

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New to the job, prosecutor takes on anti-death penalty fight

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The Florida prosecutor who thrust herself into the forefront of the anti-death penalty movement is a political novice who was elected just seven months ago.

Aramis Ayala, a Democrat and former public defender and assistant state attorney, surprised many of her own supporters when she announced this week that her office would no longer seek capital punishment in a state that has one of the largest death rows. In response, the state's Republican governor promptly transferred a potential death penalty case - the killing of a police officer and a pregnant woman earlier this year - to another Florida prosecutor.

"I understand this is a controversial issue but what isn't controversial is the evidence that led me to my decision," said Ayala, the first black State Attorney elected in Florida.

She said there is no evidence that shows the death penalty improves public safety for citizens or law enforcement, and it's costly and drags on for years for the victims' families.

Advocates seeking to abolish the death penalty said Ayala sent a powerful message. Her decision reflects decreasing support for capital punishment in the U.S., said Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

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Coroner: Man in fatal house fire was shot in the head

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A man found dead inside a burned home in southern Illinois had been shot in the head, and a gun was found in his ex-wife's SUV after she drove into a nearby lake and died shortly after the fire was reported, authorities said Friday.

The pair's infant son was pulled from the submerged SUV by a paramedic who swam through frigid water, quickly realized a baby and not a doll was floating inside, and performed CPR on the boy atop the vehicle's roof. Six other children safely escaped the Thursday fire at the house, where the divorced parents - who had a history of domestic violence - both lived.

Preliminary autopsy results released Friday show 37-year-old Justin Campbell died from the gunshot wound. But testing can't be done to determine whether the gun found in Cristy Campbell's SUV was used to shoot Campbell because the bullet that struck him hasn't been found, according to Madison County Coroner Steve Nonn.

Nonn later told The Associated Press that nothing in the investigation or autopsy suggests the gunshot wound was self-inflected.

Police said the tangled chain of events began when some of the children ran to a Wal-Mart store near their home around 5:15 a.m. Thursday in Glen Carbon, Illinois. They told an arriving worker to call 911 because their house was on fire. Responding firefighters found Justin Campbell's body.

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Harvard-educated lawyer gets 40 years for bizarre kidnapping

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Matthew Muller was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for a kidnapping so elaborate and outlandish that investigators first thought his victims were carrying out a bizarre hoax.

The Harvard University-trained lawyer and former Marine who meticulously planned his attack was tripped up months later by a stupid mistake: He dropped his cellphone at a burglary scene.

Here's how it all went down:

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THE ATTACK AND THE VICTIMS

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Running for president? Some states want tax returns public

HONOLULU (AP) - Lawmakers in nearly half the states want to add a requirement for presidential candidates: Show us your tax returns.

The issue has dogged President Donald Trump, who became the first presidential candidate in modern times to refuse to make his returns public. It flared anew this week after MSNBC said it had obtained two pages of Trump's 2005 federal return, prompting the administration to release the documents preemptively.

State lawmakers around the country, mostly Democrats, want to ensure transparency in future presidential campaigns so voters can evaluate candidates' sources of income and any possible conflicts of interest. Most of the bills would require presidential contenders to release copies of their returns as a condition for appearing on that state's ballot, although it's unclear whether they could pass constitutional muster.

The aim is to find out about potential conflicts that candidates might have before they take office, said Hawaii Rep. Chris Lee, a Democrat who introduced one of the Hawaii bills.

"With what we've seen so far with this administration, there are clear conflicts with respect to whether or not parts of the president's business empire are directly benefiting from federal contracts to house Secret Service at his own hotels, for example, or pressuring foreign dignitaries or other corporations indirectly to patronize the businesses that the president or his children run," Lee said. "And the real question is, What else don't we know?"

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Day 2 of NCAA Tournament opens with red-hot Michigan

Day 2 of the NCAA Tournament won't have much work to do if it wants to top a decidedly staid Day 1.

The higher seeds went 14-2 on Thursday, the only upsets coming by 12th-seeded Middle Tennessee and 11th seeded Xavier.

The rest of the field gets underway Friday, with streaking Big Ten champion Michigan taking on 10th-seeded Oklahoma State at 12:15 p.m EST. The early games include third-seeded Baylor against 14th-seeded New Mexico State, eighth-seeded Arkansas against ninth-seeded Seton Hall and third-seeded Oregon against 14th-seed Iona.

Top seeds North Carolina and Kansas get started a little later.

The upset alert button will be ready for 10th-seeded Wichita State against seventh-seeded Dayton in the South Region. Over 70 percent of brackets on Yahoo opted for the Shockers over the Flyers.
NEW YORK (AP) - Sean Hannity says he never pointed a gun at Fox News colleague Juan Williams, despite a CNN report to the contrary.

CNN reported Thursday that Hannity pointed a gun directly at Williams and turned on the laser sight off-air following a heated segment last year.

In a statement, Hannity said he was showing "my good friend Juan Williams my unloaded firearm in a professional and safe manner for educational purposes only."

FILE - In this March 18, 2016, file photo, Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in Phoenix. Hannity denied a CNN report on March 16, 2017, that he pointed a gun at Fox News colleague Juan Williams on the network's set following an on-air argument between the pair. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri, File)

Williams said on Twitter that he and Hannity are "great friends" and the "incident is being sensationalized." He says "everything was under total control throughout and I never felt like I was put in harm's way."

Fox News said in a statement that Hannity is well-trained in firearm safety and is licensed to carry a gun.

"The situation was thoroughly investigated and it was found that no one was put in any danger," Fox said.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States signaled a tougher strategy toward North Korea on Friday that leaves open the possibility of pre-emptive military action and rejects talks with the communist nation until it gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table."

Tillerson was speaking after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. His comments are likely to displease Beijing, where he travels this weekend. China has been advocating diplomacy to avoid a conflict on the divided peninsula.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, looks on South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se during a press conference in Seoul Friday, March 17, 2017. Tillerson visited the world's most heavily armed border, greeting U.S. soldiers on guard near the tense buffer zone between rivals North and South Korea.(Jung Yeon-Je/Pool Photo via AP)

Also Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

Past U.S. administrations have considered military options against North Korea and have publicly said that an attack on the U.S. or its allies would prompt a devastating response.

Tillerson's comments were unusual, however, as he appeared to be implying, in public, that the U.S. would consider military force as a way of preventing an attack by Pyongyang, and not just as a means of retaliation. It also comes amid a greater sense of urgency about the threat because of North Korea's rapid progress toward developing the means to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile. Risks of military action are high as North Korea could unleash a massive artillery barrage on Seoul in retaliation.

The Trump administration says it is conducting a review of North Korea policy. At a news conference in Seoul, alongside his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se, Tillerson said U.S was exploring the new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures and emphasized that Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience"- that saw tightening of sanctions to try and get North Korea back to negotiations aimed at denuclearization - had ended.

Asked about the possibility of using military force against North Korea, he said, "all of the options are on the table."

Tillerson said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, "but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table."

Former members of the Clinton administration have said that the U.S. considered a strike on a North Korean nuclear facility in 1994 when it appeared on the brink of producing weapons-grade fissile material and refused U.N. inspections. A diplomatic deal was struck to avert conflict.

Since then, North Korea has violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and has been undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Last week, after the U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills that the North views as rehearsal for invasion, it test-fired four missiles into seas off Japan.

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains North Korea's most powerful ally and dominant trading partner. China recently announced it was suspending coal imports that are an important source of revenue for North Korea for the rest of the year in adherence with U.N. sanctions.

Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement the sanctions. He criticized China's opposition to a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in South Korea and accused it of waging "inappropriate and troubling" economic retaliation against the South. China sees the system as a threat to its own security although the U.S. says it is only targeted against North Korea. Tillerson said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary.

Tillerson also rejected Beijing's proposal of halting the U.S.-South Korean military drills in exchange for a nuclear freeze by North Korea. He said the allies had no intention to stand down the exercises that are defensive in nature and conducted transparently, unlike North Korean missile launches. He further sounded skeptical about the idea of negotiating a freeze that would leave the North with "significant capabilities" that could threaten the region and U.S. forces.

The U.S. retains nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, and nearly 50,000 in neighboring Japan.

More broadly, Tillerson poured cold water on the idea of resuming negotiations with Pyongyang, saying, "20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today."

"It's important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks," he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something it has shown little interest in doing.

Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed. He is flying this week without the usual contingent of journalists who normally cover the secretary of state.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it was the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

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Associated Press photographer Lee Jin-man at Camp Bonifas, South Korea, contributed to this report.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, meets with U.S. and South Korea soldiers before the lunch meeting at the Camp Bonifas near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, South Korea, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, visits with U.S. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea, right, at the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, South Korea, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, second from right, is greeted by U.S. officials upon his arrival at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
DELTONA, Fla. (AP) - Sheriff's officials say deputies in central Florida fatally shot a 58-year-old man who was suffering from mental problems.

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood says deputies responding to a 911 call Thursday learned that the man was bipolar and doctors had been weaning him off some of his medications. Chitwood says the man "had been supplementing by drinking."

Deputies tried to speak to the man through a partially open door, but Chitwood says he screamed at them to leave.

They tried to negotiate with him, but the man pointed a shotgun at the deputies.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal (http://bit.ly/2nyLqR0 ) reports a deputy fired at the man, who died at the scene.

The deputy is on paid leave, pending an internal investigation.

The races of the man and the deputies weren't available.
ORO alliance: Our thoughts will be with Artur tomorrow

The sacrifice of the bringer of bread should make us unite and fight jointly against regime change, the Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanian (ORO) alliance said on Thursday evening. As a tribute to the bright memory of Artur Sargsyan, the ORO alliance will cancel its campaign rallies on Friday, March 17. "Our thoughts will be with Artur tomorrow. We believe that Artur Sargsyans self-sacrifice cannot remain without consequences and should not drive us to despair; rather, we should unite and struggle together. We are obliged to take concrete steps to unite our people and carry and carry out regime change, said the alliance. Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread for taking food to members of the Sasna Dzrer group who seized a Yerevan police building last July and remained barricaded there for nearly two weeks, died on March 16 while being treated at the Armenia Medical Center. He died ten days after being released from prison following a 25-day hunger strike. Sargsyan, 49, underwent urgent bowel surgery at the hospital the previous night. Artur Sargsyan was first arrested last August for aiding the gunmen and released in December because of his deteriorating health condition. He was again arrested in February 2017 allegedly for not showing up in the hearing of last years standoff. Sargsyan began a hunger strike in protest against his detention. He was released from pre-trial detention earlier in March after six MPs from several political parties paid a bail for him in the amount of 3million drams.
NYON, Switzerland (AP) - Manchester United has been paired with Anderlecht in the Europa League quarterfinals.

United, which has never won the competition, will travel to Belgium on April 13 for the first leg against the 1983 UEFA Cup champions. The return match in Manchester will be on April 20.

Also Friday, Ajax was drawn to host Schalke first in a pairing of the two other former winners, while Lyon will meet Besiktas and Celta Vigo was drawn against Genk.

United manager Jose Mourinho gestures at the end of the Europa League round of 16, second leg, soccer match between Manchester United and FC Rostov at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester, England, Thursday March 16, 2017. United won 1-0. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

The final is scheduled for May 24 in Stockholm, Sweden. The winner will earn a Champions League place next season.
REIMS, France (AP) - Five years after his brother killed seven people in the name of Islam, Abdelghani Merah is walking across France to preach tolerance and warn against the dangers of religious radicalism.

Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers in southern France in March 2012. He then turned his anger on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, where he killed a rabbi and his two sons, aged 4 and 5, and an 8-year-old girl.

Abdelghani has denounced the attacks and the radicalization of Mohamed and another brother, Abdelkader. Mohamed was killed in a police shootout and Abdelkader faces trial.

Abdelghani Merah walks near Sezanne, 100 km (62 miles) east of Paris, Friday, March 17, 2017. Five years after his brother Mohamed Merah killed seven people in the name of Islam, Abdelghani Merah is now walking across France to preach tolerance and warn against the dangers of religious radicalism. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)

Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan before returning home. He was 23 when he attacked paratroopers and a Jewish school, claiming links to al-Qaida.

Abdelghani told The Associated Press on Friday that "before becoming a monster, Mohamed Merah was a child like all the others, happy, he wanted to live. People are not born terrorists, they become terrorists."

His brother "became a terrorist via the people who manipulated him, who used him for their propaganda and who have dehumanized him. He had been brainwashed," he said. "They simply stole his heart and his brain."

Abdelghani left Marseille on Feb. 8 for his walk across France and hopes to meet the justice minister Sunday in Paris to encourage stronger de-radicalization measures.

He says he knows that some people in France are offended by his trek.

"I know that the name 'Merah' is hated. I can understand that. I won't change it," he explained, adding that he does not want Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group to use his brother's name for their propaganda. "I want this name, for once, to raise awareness."

Islamic extremists have killed 235 people in France since January 2015.

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Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this story.

Abdelghani Merah, left, walks in Sezanne, 100 km (62 miles) east of Paris, with Pierre Debano, 68, Friday, March 17, 2017. Five years after his brother Mohamed Merah killed seven people in the name of Islam, Abdelghani Merah is now walking across France to preach tolerance and warn against the dangers of religious radicalism. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)

Abdelghani Merah, left, leaves Sezanne, 100 km (62 miles) east of Paris, with Pierre Debano, 68, Friday, March 17, 2017. Five years after his brother Mohamed Merah killed seven people in the name of Islam, Abdelghani Merah is now walking across France to preach tolerance and warn against the dangers of religious radicalism. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)
LISBON, Portugal (AP) - Portugal's attorney general has granted investigators another extension to conclude their 2 1/2-year investigation into a former prime minister who is suspected of corruption, money laundering and tax fraud.

The attorney general's office says prosecutors now have at least until the end of April to decide whether to formally charge Jose Socrates or drop their case against him. The deadline for a decision had been Friday.

The Portuguese legal system is notoriously slow, but Socrates' defense lawyers say the delays in the high-profile case are scandalous.

Socrates was Portugal's center-left Socialist prime minister from 2005 to 2011.

The attorney general's office said the latest postponement is justified because of the unusual complexity of the case, which requires cooperation from foreign authorities in sifting through international money transfers.
CINCINNATI (AP) - Authorities say an off-duty Cincinnati police officer pointed an assault weapon at fellow officers while intoxicated, and has been charged with misdemeanors.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports (http://cin.ci/2mPUUaE ) officers responded Monday to a 911 call about a fight at an apartment building and were confronted by 45-year-old David Jenkins, who was wearing a police jacket and carrying an AR-15 assault weapon.

Officers initially didn't believe Jenkins when he identified himself as a police officer, prompting them to retreat and call for backup. Jenkins surrendered after hearing a request over a police radio to step outside.

Jenkins has been a Cincinnati police officer since 2002. He's been charged with using weapons while intoxicated and disorderly conduct. Court records didn't indicate if he has an attorney.

A Cincinnati police union official declined to comment.

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Information from: The Cincinnati Enquirer, http://www.enquirer.com
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's main opposition party said Friday it is seeking a parliamentary vote of no-confidence against the conservative government which, it said, is "demolishing" the country and wants to bring it out of the European Union.

Civic Platform's leader in parliament, Slawomir Neumann, said that regardless of the vote's slim chances, the debate would expose what he called the harmful policies of the 17-month-old government, led by the Law and Justice party.

He said the Cabinet of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo is "demolishing Poland, Poland's democracy, the rule of law and takeing over civic freedoms," among other things, and it recently "compromised Poland in the international arena."

Neumann was referring to a fierce but ultimately unsuccessful protest that Poland put up last week against the re-election of Donald Tusk to a top EU job. Civic Platform founder and Poland's prime minister from 2007-2014, Tusk is the chief political foe of the nation's most powerful politician, the ruling party's head Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

EU leaders are criticizing Poland's current policy, saying it threatens democracy and the rule of law.

Leaders of the pro-EU Civic Platform said they will request a so-called constructive vote of no-confidence early next week. In theory, the vote could overturn Szydlo's government, but the ruling party holds a majority of 234 seats out of 460. The vote could be held at the soonest during a parliament session starting April 5.

The leader of the ruling Law and Justice party in parliament said its lawmakers were open to debate.

"We know how much our government has done in this year and a half, definitely much more than the Civic Platform government did in its eight years in office," said Ryszard Terlecki.
BALI, Indonesia (AP) - An American woman convicted in her mother's "suitcase murder" in Indonesia gave custody of her young daughter on Friday to an Australian woman until her release from prison.

Heather Mack is serving a 10-year sentence for assisting her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder, in which the body was stuffed in a suitcase. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The baby girl, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan prison until she turned 2 years old on Friday.

Security guards and a lawyer escort Stella Schaefer, center, covered with a scarf, the two-year-old daughter of Heather Mack, an American woman convicted in her mother's death in Indonesia, as the baby leaves Kerobokan Prison with Australian Balinese woman Oshar Putu Melody Suartama, also partially covered by the scarf, who will take care of her until her mother is released, in Bali, Indonesia Friday, March 17, 2017. Under Indonesian law, Mack has been allowed to live with her daughter at her prison's cell until Schaefer reaches the maximum age of two-year-old. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Prison chief Tony Nainggolan said the girl's development will be supervised by government social workers.

"We will allow the girl to meet her mother any time," Nainggolan said.

Mack, 21, broke down in tears as she gave Stella to Oshar Putu Melody Suartama, an Australian woman married to a Balinese man, said Mack's Indonesian lawyer, Yulius Benyamin Seran.

He said Suartama, who has two sons and lives in Bali, befriended Mack when the couple was first detained for murder. She helped Mack as an interpreter and supported her during the trial.

"She is the right person to raise Stella, she loves her," Seran said.

Von Wiese-Mack's badly battered body was found stuffed in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St. Regis Bali resort. She reportedly did not approve of her daughter's relationship with Schaefer.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania couple has been sentenced to federal prison for sneaking a Nigerian woman into the country so she could basically become what a judge called "a slave."

John and Godever Ibechem were sentenced Thursday to serve nine months each, The Express-Times in Easton reported (http://bit.ly/2nMnybQ).

The nanny "essentially became a slave," according to U.S. District Court Judge Edward Smith.

The Palmer Township couple acknowledged they plotted to smuggle the woman in to care for their two sons, ages 1 and 2, and didn't pay her minimum wage. She was 54 when she posed as John Ibechem's mother, who was actually dead, and used the mother's passport to enter the U.S. unlawfully.

The victim provided around-the-clock care for the children and was paid about $20 every other week. She was swindled out of about $205,000 in wages, prosecutors said.

"I felt trapped. I thought I was going to die," the woman said in a letter read Thursday in federal court. She wasn't in court for the sentencing.

Defense attorney Gilbert Scutti said the couple also sent money to the nanny's family in Nigeria.

"I'm not going to say it was all roses when she was here, but we're not talking about physical abuse, sexual abuse or deprivation of liberty," Scutti said.

The Ibechems agreed to pay the woman $50,000 as part a plea deal.

John Ibechem, who was born in Nigeria, as was his wife, said he wouldn't treat someone like an indentured servant.

"That's not my nature," he said. "That's not in my family's nature."

___

Information from: The (Easton, Pa.) Express-Times, http://www.lehighvalleylive.com
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) - Moldova's prime minister is asking the president to approve the suspension of the agriculture minister, Eduard Grama, who has been detained as a suspect in a scheme to illegally expropriate state-owned vineyards and buildings.

Premier Pavel Filip asked President Igor Dodon on Friday to agree to suspend Grama, who was detained this week by anti-corruption prosecutors. He has denied wrongdoing. Prosecutors say more than a dozen people are suspected of involvement in a scheme to illegally lease 30 hectares (74 acres) of land and buildings owned by the National College of Viticulture and Winemaking.

In November, anti-corruption prosecutors arrested 12 people in the case, saying suspects illegally changed ownership documents to make the land more expensive and bribed state officials.

The college was founded in 1842 by Nicholas I, the Tsar of Russia, under the name "the Horticulture School of Bassarabia," the historical name for Moldova.

Best known for its red wine, Moldova is one of the top producers of wine in the former Soviet Union. Some 70 percent of its wine exports went to the European Union last year.

The former Russian market dried up after Moscow banned imports of Moldovan wine, fruit and some vegetables in 2014, shortly after Moldova signed an association agreement with the EU.
NEW YORK (AP) - Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said the company could need several more months to resolve customer damage tied to its massive sales practices scandal, such as figuring out if people had trouble getting approved for other loans because of the fake accounts bank employees opened.

Speaking with The Associated Press on Friday, Sloan reiterated what he has said since becoming CEO in the wake of the scandal, that rebuilding trust with customers is his primary focus since taking the job.

Wells Fargo has seen a sharp drop in new account openings and bank traffic since admitting in September that employees pressured to meet ambitious sales goals opened up to 2 million accounts without customers' permission. Sloan said he believes the declines have bottomed out, and customers are incrementally returning. Its January branch traffic data showed that while checking and credit cards applications and traffic were down from a year earlier, they were up or stable compared to December.

Wells Fargo CEO & President Timothy Sloan is interviewed in one of his bank's branches, in New York, Friday, March 17, 2017. Sloan says that it's too early to gauge President Trump's job performance, but says that he will succeed as long as the White House focuses on jobs and economic growth. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

While Wells has changed its sales practices, ousted some executives and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question, Sloan acknowledged that the full scope of the effect is not yet known. Determining how a negative mark on a customer's credit score caused by Wells Fargo affected a person's ability to borrow money or take out a mortgage is more complex than concluding whether a customer paid fees on their checking account when they shouldn't have, he said.

"I will describe it as more complicated than anyone could have imagined, but that's not an excuse. It's going to take a few more months to work through. But I assure you we will remediate all those customers," Sloan said.

The scandal resulted in a $185 million fine from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and directly led to the abrupt retirement of Sloan's predecessor, John Stumpf, in October. Both Stumpf and Carrie Tolstedt, the executive in charge of Wells Fargo's retail banking division, lost their 2016 bonuses and had tens of millions of dollars in promised compensation clawed back.

Wells Fargo's board of directors is conducting its own investigation into the bank's sales practices, a report that is expected to be out in April ahead of the annual shareholder meeting. While that is still in progress, the board has cut bonuses to major executives - including Sloan - as well as publicly firing four high-level managers. Sloan, who got a 17 percent raise to $12.8 million when he became CEO, says he supports the board on that move.

"If the board feels there are other people responsible, there should be consequences," he said.

Shareholder groups have submitted proposals for the annual meeting, pushing for more transparency about what took place during the scandal. The board of directors has pushed back, saying shareholders should wait to see the board's own review. Sloan agreed with that.

"The board is saying, 'Hey we are doing exactly what you are asking us to do. So why do we need this proposal?' My bet is that they will be satisfied with the board's report," he said.

Beyond the scandal, Sloan said he feels the U.S. economy is doing well. He said it's too early to gauge President Trump's job performance, but that Trump will succeed as long as the White House focuses on jobs and economic growth.

Sloan said the bank has seen a noticeable slowdown in the number of Americans applying for mortgages since the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates. But Sloan says most of that slowdown is tied to customers who were trying to refinance at lower interest rates, and does not reflect any fundamental slowdown in the U.S. housing market or economy.

"If rates rose dramatically, that could have a big negative impact, but I think the Fed is cognizant of the fact they want to raise interest rates without having a dramatic impact on economic growth," he said.

But people shouldn't expect higher interest rates to translate into higher returns on savings accounts and CDs, he said. Banks are awash in customer deposits, and there are more ways for banks to compete than just on the yield on a savings account.

"It's about how many ATMs you have to offer. Or what type of features you offer on your mobile offerings, or where you have branches," he said.

____

Ken Sweet covers banks and consumer financial issues with The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at @kensweet.

Wells Fargo CEO & President Timothy Sloan is interviewed in one of his bank's branches, in New York, Friday, March 17, 2017. Sloan said that it's too early to gauge President Trump's job performance, but says that he will succeed as long as the White House focuses on jobs and economic growth. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Wells Fargo CEO & President Timothy Sloan is interviewed in one of his bank's branches in New York on Friday, March 17, 2017. Referring to the bank's ongoing sales scandal, Sloan said Wells Fargo is still working to make things right with up to 2 million of its customers. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Wells Fargo CEO & President Timothy Sloan is interviewed in one of his bank's branches, in New York, Friday, March 17, 2017. Sloan says that it's too early to gauge President Trump's job performance, but says that he will succeed as long as the White House focuses on jobs and economic growth. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

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Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

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Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A federal judge should let President Donald Trump's travel ban apply to a Syrian family trying to relocate to Wisconsin, U.S. Justice Department attorneys argue in a new court filing.

The case revolves around a Syrian Muslim who fled the war-torn country in 2014 and settled in Wisconsin. He's been working since last year to win asylum for his wife and 3-year-old daughter, who remain in Aleppo. They were trying to obtain visas when Trump issued his first travel ban in January.

The man filed a federal lawsuit in Madison asking a judge to block the ban from applying to his family so they could continue the visa process. U.S. District Judge William Conley declared that request moot last month after a federal judge in Washington blocked the ban. The family is now slated to travel to the U.S. embassy in Jordan next month for visa interviews.

Trump has since issued another ban, however, temporarily prohibiting travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria, from entering the United States. The new order prompted the man to renew his request last week.

He argued the new ban is anti-Muslim and violates his rights to freedom of religion and due process. Conley issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting immigration officials from enforcing the ban against the man's wife and daughter, saying they're in danger daily. Now the man wants Conley to issue an injunction, which would further cement the court's protection.

Conley has set a hearing on the injunction request for Tuesday. The Justice Department filed a brief late Thursday night arguing against an injunction.

Agency attorneys wrote that the man's request is unnecessary since federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland completely blocked the ban this week. The order also includes waiver provisions for people who seek to reside with a family member admitted to the United States legally and the man can't show he's been harmed, they wrote.

The attorneys went on to say that the ban is a valid exercise of the president's authority to temporarily suspend certain classes of aliens from entering the country and the ban draws distinctions based on the risk of terrorism, not religion.

"More fundamentally, Plaintiff misses the point: the Order's objective is to prevent future terrorist attacks before they occur," the government's brief said.

According to the Syrian man's lawsuit, he fled his country to avoid near-certain death at the hands of two military factions, one fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's regime and another that supports it. Both sides thought he was working for the other; each faction tortured him and threatened to kill him. He didn't identify himself in the lawsuit to protect his family.

His attorney didn't immediately respond to an email message Friday morning.

___

Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
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New York City was awash in green and Irish pride as throngs celebrated the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

More than 150,000 people marched from 44th to 79th streets in the 256th annual parade, and the marchers Friday came from all walks of life - military members, teachers and students, police and firefighters, politicians, plumbers and steamfitters.

Heavily armed officers kept a no-nonsense eye on security around the parade route as a pipe band played 'God Bless America.'

Scroll down for video

Mayor Bill de Blasio, Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, and Police Commissioner Patrick O'Neil at the St Patrick's Day parade, New York

The Irish Prime Minister Enda Kelly stands alongside Cardinal Timothy Doland and Governor Andrew Cuomo who also walked along the with the group, wearing a green, white and orange banner and waving his Irish flag

More than 150,000 people marched from 44th to 79th streets as part of the annual celebration of all things Irish in New York City

A sea of green: These party-goers headed to the St Patrick's Day Parade in New York to celebrate the day

Bagpipe players outside St Patrick's Cathedral in New York for the St Patrick's Day Parade

Thousands of people cheered as the New York National Guard's 'Fighting 69th' brought its mascots - Irish wolfhounds.

Additionally, dressed in the traditional olive green camouflage, the 69th regiment of New York led the parade for the 165th year, accompanied with a bagpipe-player. It was originally the organized militia for Irish immigrants in New York.

St. Patrick's Cathedral displayed both the American and Irish flags. A special Mass was held there before the parade stepped off.

The route also passed Trump Tower, the home of President Donald Trump and his family.

Mayor Bill de Blasio made an appearance in the parade, walking alongside Police Commissioner Patrick O'Neil. Governor Andrew Cuomo also walked along the with the group, wearing a green, white and orange banner and waving his Irish flag.

A gingery woman wears a painted on gold shamrock as she watches the annual New York City parade

A man with his face painted with the Irish flag watches the St Patrick's Day parade on 5th Avenue in New York City

Firefighters pose for a photo with a paradegoer in New York

The route also passed Trump Tower, the home of President Donald Trump and his family

This year's parade was dedicated to New York's Catholic charities and the New York State Police, both of which turned 100 years old this year

There was barely a trace of the city's Tuesday snowstorm after sanitation crews scrambled to clear off the iconic street. It was even a relatively warm and sunny day.

This year's parade was dedicated to New York's Catholic charities and the New York State Police, both of which turned 100 years old this year.

Marching in the parade, members of the FDNY honored EMT Yadira Arroyo, carrying a banner displaying her picture and name with the words 'Rest in Peace'. She was killed Thursday night in the Bronx after police said she was struck down by her own ambulance that had been stolen, reported WINS.

The parade also honored NYPD Detective Steven McDonald, who died last year at the age of 59. He was shot in 1986 while confronting a bicycle thief, and was paralyzed from the waist down, but publicly forgave the shooter.

Stadiums, statues, castles and towers around the world will go green today, with big new additions for 2017 including the One World Trade Center in New York- the main building of the re-built World Trade Center in New York and the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

There was barely a trace of the city's Tuesday snowstorm after sanitation crews worked to clear it off of the parade route. It was even a relatively warm and sunny day

The parade also honored NYPD Detective Steven McDonald, who died last year at the age of 59. He was shot in 1986 while confronting a bicycle thief, and was paralyzed from the waist down, but publicly forgave the shooter

Crowds doned fancy dress as they gathered along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to watch the annual parade

New York City was awash in green and Irish pride as throngs celebrate at the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

An army of bagpipe players paraded through the centre of New York for St Patrick's Day

Revellers in leprechaun hats and face paint lined the streets for the St Patrick's Day parade in New York, USA

Heavily armed officers kept a no-nonsense eye on security around the parade route as a pipe band played 'God Bless America'

People have been celebrating with a few beers or shots of whiskey around the city as well, and police are on high alert as there are far more people in the street than usual.

All day long people have been camped out at Irish themed bars and restaurants celebrating the raucous occasion.

Police officers outside Connolly's Pub and Restaurant in Manhattan had to force multiple people to empty their drinks as they attempted to carry them from one location to the other.

Celebrators have also been posting photos on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram to share photos of their drinks or how they are celebrating the occasion.

Police officers force two men to empty their drinks outside Connolly's Pub and Restaurant in Manhattan
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (all times local):

2:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump says his White House shouldn't be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who accused British intelligence of helping former President Barack Obama spy on him.

President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel participate in a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

There is no evidence such spying took place and GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, has called the allegation "utterly ridiculous."

Trump says during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that "we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television."

He says, "you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."

He's also doubling down on his unproven wiretapping allegation with a reference to 2013 reports that the U.S. listened in on Merkel's phone calls.

He says that when it comes to wiretapping, "At least we have something in common, perhaps."

___

2:40 p.m.

President Donald Trump is pushing back on whether his "America First" agenda is isolationist.

In a Friday news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said: "I don't believe in an isolationist policy."

Trump has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements. Yet the president suggested that he is only trying to revise them to better serve U.S. interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany was $64.9 billion last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

Trump bristled at the indication from a German reporter that this could be interpreted as isolationist.

He said: "I don't know what newspaper you're reading, but I guess that would be an example of fake news."

___

2:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he expects the House Republican health plan will be passed "substantially pretty quickly."

Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday, Trump calls it a "great plan" and says it is "getting more and more popular with the Republican base, the conservative base and with people generally."

Trump repeated his claim that so-called Obamacare is "a disaster." He said that in the end of the process it will be a great plan.

Several Republicans have said they can't support the law as it stands and are demanding changes.

___

2:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he has "strong support" for NATO but that allies "must pay what they owe."

Trump, making his first appearance with Merkel, opened their White House news conference Friday by saying that "many nations owe vast sums of money" and that situation is "very unfair to the United States."

Trump said these nations need "to pay their fair share" in order to receive the promise of defense from the rest of the alliance.

The president has long complained that the U.S. shoulders too much of the burden of the cost of the alliance, which now comprises 28 nation.

Merkel said she was encouraged that Trump supports NATO, stressed its vital role and pledged that Germany will increase its own payments.

___

2:20 p.m.

President Donald Trump is stressing the need to protect the U.S. from what he calls "radical Islamic terrorism" in his joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The remarks come days after a federal court again struck down his executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. refugee program and barring people from a handful of Muslim-majority countries.

Trump says that both countries must protect themselves from the threat.

He says, "Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first, without question."

Trump spent a good part of 2016 bashing the chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees into Germany.

While Merkel insists that Germany will continue to take in people who genuinely need protection, her government has toughened asylum rules.

___

2:20 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says of her visit with President Donald Trump that it's "much better to talk to one another than about one another."

She says the two discussed apprenticeship programs, and international politics during the early part of their visit. She says they will continue speaking over lunch, with a focus on fair trade and other matters.

Trump is listening to her remarks through a translation earpiece.

___

12:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he is discussing a myriad of topics with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key European leader he harshly criticized for opening the door to refugees from Syria.

The two leaders posed for photographers in the Oval Office before a one-on-one meeting. Trump joked: "send a good picture back to Germany, please."

They are expected to discuss strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraine's conflict - all matters that require close cooperation between the U.S. and Germany.

A joint news conference will be held in the afternoon.

___

11:45 a.m.

President Donald Trump has welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House.

Merkel arrived Friday morning for a series of meetings with Trump. The itinerary includes discussions on strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group and resolving Ukraine's conflict.

Trump spent much of 2016 bashing the chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.

Merkel was originally supposed to visit the White House Tuesday. That meeting was delayed due to snow.

President Donald Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel participate in a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump greets German Chancellor Angela Merkel outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
RABAT, Morocco (AP) - Morocco's king named a new prime minister Friday, former top diplomat Saadeddine Othmani, after ousting his predecessor over five months of government deadlock.

The royal palace said in a statement that Othmani, a former foreign minister, has been given the responsibility of forming a new government.

Othmani's Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development, won an election in October but did not win enough votes to govern alone. So far it has failed to persuade rival parties to join it in a new government coalition.

King Mohammed VI holds ultimate power in Morocco but rarely intervenes in politics, and his decision Wednesday to oust previous Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane came as a national surprise. Benkirane was blamed for the failed coalition building.

The lack of a government has threatened to hurt the Moroccan economy and the country's reputation for political stability after years of turmoil in the Arab world.

The ouster was a blow to the PJD, a moderate Islamist party that won an election for the first time in 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. Protests in Morocco prompted the king to hold a referendum on constitutional reforms, granting more power to the elected government.

The past PJD-led government was a coalition of parties from left and right, but tensions have surfaced and Benkirane no longer enjoyed the same broad support.
MOSCOW (AP) - A leading Russian bank says it was targeted by hackers who created a fake cyber trail to suggest extensive links with businesses owned by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"These badly intentioned attacks were carried out to create the false impression that Alfa Bank secretly maintains contacts with the Trump Organization. Whereas in actual fact such contacts don't exist and never existed," Alfa Bank said in a statement Friday.

Alfa Bank, Russia's second-largest privately owned bank, said it was targeted by several waves of such attacks this month and last month. The bank said it has appealed to U.S. law enforcement to help find the perpetrator.

A possible server connection between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization was widely reported by U.S. media last year.
SAO PAULO (AP) - Two big Brazilian meatpackers bribed inspectors to keep rotten meat on the market, police charged Friday in issuing dozens of arrest warrants, while a judge accused the Agriculture Ministry of betraying the country.

Part of the money allegedly paid by meatpackers JBS and BRF was channeled to two major political parties, including the one of President Michel Temer, police said after a two-year investigation.

Authorities warned that the case was a severe blow to the international image of Brazil's agribusiness sector, which officials have been counting on heavily for helping Brazil recover from its worst recession in decades.

Investigator Mauricio Moscardi Grillo said at a news conference that the two meatpackers used chemicals to improve the appearance and smell of expired meats. He said at least one executive reported that rotten meat was mixed with healthy meat to be sold to consumers.

Cheaper products like water and manioc flour were also blended with meat sold by the two companies, Grillo said. Adding that three plants have been shut down.

The investigator said school children in the southern state of Parana were fed with dangerous meat. "They are getting food made of outdated, rotten and many times cancerous products so the economic interest of this mighty crime gang is obeyed," Grillo said.

Police said the meatpackers had direct influence in the Agriculture Ministry so they could pick the inspectors who would visit their plants. Those inspectors would produce sanitary certificates regardless of the adulteration of the products, police said.

In his decision to authorize arrests, Judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva said the Agriculture Ministry has a "staggering" involvement in fraud and corruption. "The ministry was taken hostage by a group of individuals that repeatedly betrayed their obligation of serving society," Silva wrote.

Grillo said some of the expired meat was exported to Europe. He said four containers of BRF meat contaminated with salmonella were stopped in Italy in 2016, but nothing was done against the company.

JBS and BRF issued separate statements denying any wrongdoing and said they comply with regulations.

"The company vehemently repudiates any adoption of practices related to the adulteration of products," JBS said. BRF said it "assures the quality and the safety of its products and guarantees that there is no risk for consumers."

JBS is one of the largest meat processers in the world, producing beef, chicken and pork. It has about 150 plants worldwide and it is based in Sao Paulo. BRF was formed by the merger of two of the best known Brazilian meat processers, Sadia and Perdigao, both from Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. They also produce margarine, pizza and other processed foods.

Eumar Novacki, a spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, said at a news conference that the revelations caused outrage and would affect Brazil's image around the world. He said Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi ordered the suspected inspectors to be removed from office.

"We will take action to punish those who committed this. It is 33 servants in a group of thousands. It is not a routine problem; it is an isolated issue," Novacki said. "Brazilian meat is in 150 countries because it has good quality. Those countries also have their agencies that inspect products."

Novacki said there were "very small risks" in consuming meat processed by JBS and BRF. "It is not the majority of the meat. But there is (a risk)," he said. "The three or four plants where this happened were shut down today for us to see what happened in each of them."

Shares in JBS closed Friday on the Sao Paulo stock exchange down more than 11 percent, while those of BRF fell almost 8 percent.

Grillo said some of the bribes paid to inspectors were channeled to two political parties - Temer's centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and the right-leaning Progressive Party, which is part of the president's governing coalition.

Investigators said federal Justice Minister Osmar Serraglio had been taped in a conversation with one of the leaders of the alleged bribery scheme in his home state of Parana in southern Brazil in which Serraglio calls an investigated inspector "big boss."

Brazil's federal police said that was not enough evidence to open an investigation of Serraglio, who oversees the force. In a statement, Serraglio said the police raid was a clear sign that he was not interfering in federal police investigations.
For the third time, a judge in New Jersey has ruled that a special prosecutor won't be appointed to oversee a criminal complaint against Republican Gov. Chris Christie over the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal, a decision that could signal the end of a nearly six-month legal odyssey.

The official misconduct complaint was filed last fall by former firefighter William Brennan, who also has declared his candidacy for governor as a Democrat in this year's election. Brennan alleges Christie failed to act to stop a purported political retaliation plot against a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse him.

Three ex-Christie allies have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the 2013 lane closures that caused gridlock for four days.

The decision Friday by State Superior Court Judge Bonnie Mizdol comes after the Bergen County prosecutor's office issued a statement two weeks ago saying it wouldn't pursue the complaint because it believed the charge couldn't be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The office issued a similar statement in January.

Mizdol wrote that Brennan's current appeal "is nothing more than a disguised request for reconsideration of an issue that has been presented thrice before this court. Mere dissatisfaction with a court's decision is insufficient."

Mizdol and a municipal court judge had previously denied Brennan's request for a special prosecutor, ruling that he lacked standing to ask for one. Mizdol also declined Brennan's request to refer the matter directly to a grand jury.

Brennan argued that although the state attorney general and Bergen County prosecutor, both appointed by Christie, removed themselves from the case, their subordinates also would have a conflict of interest.

He vowed in an email that he would appeal and added, "Nowhere in her decision does she state that there is no conflict, that says far more than the nonsense she did write about."

Through a spokesman, Christie has called the complaint "factually and legally baseless."

Former Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly and former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official Bill Baroni, a top Christie appointee, were convicted in November and are scheduled to be sentenced this month. A judge rejected their appeals for a new trial.

Another former Port Authority official, David Wildstein, a high school classmate of Christie's, pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.

Brennan based his complaint on testimony during the trial of Kelly and Baroni. He claimed their accounts, along with Wildstein's, showed Christie lied about when he knew about the alleged plot or its motives. Christie didn't testify at the federal trial and has denied prior knowledge of the plot.

The municipal court judge who ruled there was probable cause for Brennan's complaint to go forward quoted Kelly's trial testimony that she told the governor about the traffic study and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich's complaints that he was being targeted.

He also quoted Wildstein, who testified Christie laughed and made a joke about the traffic jams and Sokolich's calls not being returned when told about them at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony, while the lane closures were in progress.
ST. LOUIS (AP) - A man convicted of shooting two police officers during a 2015 protest in the fallout over the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison.

Jeffrey Williams, 22, was found guilty in December of first-degree assault and other crimes for the shooting on March 12, 2015. Jerryl Christmas, Williams' attorney, said an appeal is likely.

Brown, who was 18, black and unarmed, was fatally shot on Aug. 9, 2014, during a street confrontation with white Ferguson officer Darren Wilson. Some residents living near the shooting said Brown was trying to surrender, but a St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice both cleared Wilson of wrongdoing. He resigned in November 2014.

FILE - This March 2015 file photo provided by the St. Louis County Police Department shows Jeffrey Williams. A St. Louis County judge on Friday, March 17, 2017, sentenced Williams to 25 years in prison for shooting two police officers during a protest in Ferguson, Mo., on March 12, 2015. His lawyer says Williams plan to appeal the conviction. (St. Louis County Police Department via AP, File)

In March 2015, the Justice Department issued a scathing report about racial bias and profiling in Ferguson law enforcement, prompting renewed protests. Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson resigned soon after the report came out.

Protesters near police headquarters were celebrating Jackson's resignation when shots rang out from a passing car. St. Louis County officer Scott Brown was struck in the shoulder. Webster Groves, Missouri, officer Cameron McKay was hit in the cheek. Both survived, but McKay never returned to duty and left the Webster Grove department.

Williams has said that another man in the car fired the shots. But police said Williams confessed, and a pistol found at his home matched shell casings at the shooting scene.

In a recording of jail phone calls obtained in April 2015 by The Associated Press, Williams said he was shooting at someone else, not the officers.

"Nobody aiming at no police," he says in the audio. "I ran up the hill and he (an unidentified person) shot at the car. ... I shot back."

Later in the conversation Williams said he knew he was likely headed to prison but guessed low on the length of his sentence.

"Even though I was in the wrong, though, I should have just went the other way," he said. "Oh man, now I'm looking at 10 years."
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Some 1,500 workers at three Indiana factories are still facing layoffs, despite hopes that President Donald Trump would intervene to prevent their jobs from moving to Mexico.

The first wave of 50 layoffs has already happened at United Technologies' 700-worker electronics plant in Huntington, which is slated for closure.

Another 550 job cuts are expected at Carrier Corp.'s Indianapolis factory, where Trump's intervention last fall curbed job losses but didn't halt them altogether.

Local union president Chuck Jones says he expects layoffs to start within weeks at a 300-worker Rexnord bearings factory in Indianapolis that is moving to Monterrey. A Trump tweet in December accused Rexnord of "viciously firing" the American workers.

Laid-off Huntington worker Julie Marsh said Friday that some remaining employees are starting to panic about their futures.
A 53-year-old man who waited more than three decades to confess he killed a 13-year-old girl was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison, the maximum a judge could impose.

Jose E. Ferreira's sentence came 35 years to the day after he shoved Carrie Ann Jopek down a flight of stairs at a Milwaukee home on March 16, 1982.

Police questioned him several times over the years, but it wasn't until late 2015 that he confessed to his wife, a local television station and a police detective.

Sentenced: Jose E. Ferreira (left) confessed to killing 13-year-old Carrie Ann Jopek (right) decades after it happened at her Milwaukee home

Discovery: Ferreira took her body to the rear porch of the house, where 17 months later a carpenter found her while doing some remodeling.Authorities are pictured at the scene

Police had been unable to build a case against Ferreira, who lived just two houses from Jopek and was always a suspect, the New York Times reported in 2015.

Jopek's mother Carolyn Tousignant told the newspaper she knew Ferreira when he was a teenager and didn't think it was likely he was the one responsible.

She said that something which gave her pause was 'After they found Carrie's body, he told me she was haunting him.'

A criminal complaint quoted by the Times said that on October 11, 2015, Ferreira's wife told police that her husband 'told her that he was responsible for killing a female and burying her body under a porch in Milwaukee'.

Also on October 11, 2015, television station WISN and a crisis hotline counselor each told authorities that a caller gave them similar accounts, the newspaper reported.

Information from the caller apparently pinpointed him as Ferreira, and he was arrested on October 12, 2015, and told police his account, the Times said.

Remembered: Carol Tousignant, left, holds a photo of her daughter during a sentencing hearing for Jose Ferreira on Friday in Milwaukee

'I can't take back how it happened,' Ferreira said in a soft voice before he was sentenced by Judge Jeffrey Conen. 'Sorry, from the deepest pain in my heart, sorry.'

Throughout Friday's hearing, Jopek's mother held a picture on her lap of her daughter when she was 13.

She also held the photo when she faced the judge to speak before the sentencing, as Ferreira sat with his head down a few feet away, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit.

'He's still alive. Carrie's gone. They only time I'll see her again is in heaven,' Caroyln Tousignant said.

Jopek had been suspended from school on the day of her death because she was walking the halls without a pass.

That afternoon, she went to a friend's house where several other teenagers were drinking.

Ferreira, who was 16 at the time, told police that he and Jopek were going to the basement and he assumed they were going to make out.

But Jopek expressed reservations at the foot of the stairs, and that's when Ferreira pushed her, according to the account he gave detectives.

He said he initially thought Jopek was unconscious, so he began fondling her before realizing her neck was broken.

Mother: Carolyn Tousignant holds a photo of her daughter Carrie Ann Jopek, at her home in Milwaukee in this October 2015 photo

Case: Pictured is the back porch in Milwaukee under which Carrie Ann Jopek's body was found in 1983 (2015 photo)

He took her body to the rear porch of the house, where 17 months later a carpenter found her while doing some remodeling. Jopek was still wearing a coat and high-top sneakers.

Tousignant said she didn't buy Ferreira's apology. She believes her daughter has been haunting him this whole time.

'That girl was very persistent,' her mother said. She said she wished Ferreira's sentence was longer but was grateful for closure.

Despite Ferreira's confession, he initially pleaded not guilty to second-degree homicide.

But just as attorneys were about to select a jury for his trial in January, he struck a deal with prosecutors, saying at the time: 'I just want this over and done with.'

He pleaded guilty to reduced charges of attempted second-degree sexual assault and false imprisonment.

Assistant District Attorney Karl Hayes acknowledged the case would've been difficult to prosecute, saying there was 'a paucity of evidence' and that there are questions about what happened that will never be answered.

He referred to Ferreira as a 'pathetic individual' who posed no danger to the public anymore.

He and Ferreira's attorney painted a picture of a man who led a tortured life, having brushes with the law over the years and suffering from mental illnesses. He was drinking heavily before he confessed.

'Mr. Ferreira had hit a wall, sort of a rock bottom,' Hayes said.
One million dollar to AUA students from Aurora Initiative

Students from five Middle Eastern countries will receive scholarships to study at the American University of Armenia between now and 2023, as part of the Aurora Gratitude Projects. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in cooperation with Scholae Mundi Armenia will grant scholarships to students from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt to study at the American University of Armenia (AUA). This scholarship fund (US $1 mln) is created as part of the Aurora Gratitude Projects. The scholarships are for citizens of the above-mentioned countries, who wish to pursue the following degrees: BSc in Computer Science, Engineering Science, Data Science (starting 2018), Master of Public Health, Master of Engineering in Industrial Engineering & Systems Management, Master of Science in Computer & Information Science, Economics, Strategic Management, Master of Political Science & International Affairs, and Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Armenia has a potential to become a global educational hub and we encourage the engagement of young people from the Middle East to come and study in Armenia.This scholarship offers opportunities to talented youth who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by wars in their region. We believe that it makes an impact not only on these young people who come to the country and benefit from its hospitality and qualitative education but enrich AUA community with highly motivated international students who will become ambassadors of Armenia and its culture in the future. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, thus not only offers scholarships to individual students, but also expresses gratitude to the nations who were the first to open their doors to offer a helping hand to the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, said VeronikaZonabend, the co-founder of ScholaeMundi Armenia Foundation, and together with her husband Ruben Vardanyan, co-founder of the RVVZ Foundation which helped create the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and the Aurora Gratitude Projects. The American University of Armenia is extremely grateful to the creators of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, specifically Ruben Vardanyan and VeronikaZonabend, who through their immense generosity have created an opportunity not only for students from the countries that hosted Armenian refugees from the Genocide to study in Armenia, but also afforded AUA an opportunity to serve these students. Their presence on our campus will provide enhanced diversity and enrich the lives of all students. We are proud to be a part of this initiative and, through our educational programs, be able to express gratitude to the descendants of the people who sheltered Armenians during the most tragic part of their history, said Dr. Armen Der Kiureghian, President of the American University of Armenia. The recipients will continue to receive the scholarships throughout their study at AUA as long as they are in good academic standing. The scholarship will cover tuition fees, travel and housing costs of the students. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and Scholae Mundi Armenia have committed to granting the scholarship through the year 2023. Scholae Mundi Armenia Foundation continues to support the Aurora Gratitude Scholarship program which initiates humanitarian and educational projectsto help children, refugees and other vulnerable citizens in the Middle East. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the descendants of the survivors of the Genocide transform their gratitude into action by helping with educational initiatives and scholarships, grants to humanitarian projects and promoting public awareness of humanitarian efforts. The scholarship programs of the Aurora Gratitude Projects are valued at US $7 million.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on the decision by a top prosecutor in Florida to no longer seek the death penalty (all times local):

1:10 p.m.

The mother of one of the victims of a suspect in the killing of a police officer in Florida says she supports the State Attorney's decision not to seek the death penalty in any case.

In a press conference on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse Thursday, March 16, 2017, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

Stephanie Dixon-Daniels said Friday that having the death penalty on the table in Markeith Loyd's case would drag out the process for her family. She spoke at a news conference outside the Orange County Court along with other supporters of State Attorney Aramis Ayala's decision.

Loyd's case is perhaps the most high-profile case affected by Ayala's decision not to seek the death penalty.

Loyd is charged with killing police Lt. Debra Clayton, as well as Dixon-Daniels' daughter, Sade Dixon, who was Loyd's pregnant ex-girlfriend.

After Ayala announced her decision Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott transferred the case from her authority to another State Attorney in a neighboring district.

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12:35 p.m.

The father of a murder victim is calling for a prosecutor in Florida to resign after she announced her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any case.

Rafael Zaldivar said Friday that State Attorney Aramis Ayala's decision is part of a political agenda and has no place in the State Attorney's Office.

Ayala said Thursday that there was no evidence that executing criminals improves public safety or law enforcement.

Zaldivar's 19-year-old son, Alex, was killed in 2012 by a man who Alex Zaldivar had planned to testify against in a home invasion case. Bessman Okafor was sentenced to death in 2015, but questions over Florida's death penalty law cast doubt over the sentence.

His case is currently on appeal.

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3:30 a.m.

Florida's governor has rebuked Orlando's top prosecutor and transferred from her authority a case involving the slaying of a police officer after she announced her opposition to the death penalty.

Signaling he wants the Jan. 9 killing of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton prosecuted as a capital case, Gov. Rick Scott transferred the first-degree murder case of suspect Markeith Loyd out of the office of State Attorney Aramis Ayala.

The case was assigned to another prosecutor.

Ayala's unusual stance surprised angered many, including her city's police chief. But the prosecutor said she concluded there was no evidence that executing criminals improves public safety or law enforcement.

Scott said Ayala "made it clear that she will not fight for justice." But civil rights advocates praised her.

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AP writers Gary Fineout and Curt Anderson contributed to this report.

In a press conference on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse, Florida Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces Thursday, March 16, 2017, that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

In a press conference Thursday, March 16, 2017, on the steps of the Orange County Courthouse, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces that her office will no longer pursue the death penalty as a sentence in any case brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran says it has reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia for 85,000 Iranian pilgrims to attend the hajj after Tehran boycotted last year's annual Muslim pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency said Friday that the agreement was reached between an Iranian delegation and Saudi officials.

Iran boycotted last year's hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims in 2015 killed at least 2,426 people. Iran had the highest death toll of any country, with 464 killed.

Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals who support opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen. Riyadh cut diplomatic relations with Tehran last year after demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
A California tattoo artist has detailed to jurors the violent artwork he inked on Aaron Hernandez that prosecutors say memorialize the former New England Patriots star's killing of two men.

California tattoo artist David Nelson told a Boston court on Friday that he inked an image of a gun and the phrase 'God Forgives' on the ex-NFL star in 2013.

He told the jury that Hernandez had visited his tattoo parlor with his fiancee Shayanna Jenkins and their infant daughter when he asked for an image of a revolver with the gun barrel facing forward, as if pointing at the viewer.

Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez listens to testimony during his double murder trial in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston on Friday

California tattoo artist David Nelson told a Boston court on Friday that he inked an image of a gun barrel on the ex-NFL star in 2013. The image was shown to the court as evidence

Hernandez also instructed him to draw five bullets visible in the cylinder of the gun and one cylinder empty.

The former Patriots star also had the tattoo artist ink to separate gun muzzles, a spent shell casing and the phrase 'God Forgives' etched backward so that it could only be read in a mirror.

'Just like any other client, he came in, told me what he wanted and where he wanted it,' Nelson told the court.

'He wanted a front view of a pistol, like it's pointing at you, the cylinder part of the revolver that holds the bullets.'

Nelson said he also tattooed the phrase 'Blood. Sweat. Tears.' on Hernandez's right hand.

Prosecutors argued the tattoos are evidence Hernandez killed two men in 2012.

Hernandez also instructed him to draw five bullets visible in the cylinder of the gun and one cylinder empty on his arm

The jury were shown images of Hernandez's body ink for the first time on Friday. California tattoo artist David Nelsons said the ex-NFL star asked for the phrase 'Blood. Sweat. Tears.'

The former Patriots star also had the tattoo artist ink to separate gun muzzles, a spent shell casing and the phrase 'God Forgives' etched backward so that it could only be read in a mirror

Authorities said Hernandez killed Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado when he fired five shots from a revolver into a car outside a Boston nightclub club.

Prosecutors said Hernandez killed the men after one of them bumped into him at the nightclub earlier that night and spilled his drink.

Hernandez's lawyers have strongly denied the prosecutor's theories about the tattoos.

During his cross examination of Nelson on Friday, defense attorney Jose Baez appeared to make light of the argument.

At one point, he jokingly asked Nelson if he'd also inked gun tattoos for Rihanna, Angelina Jolie and other celebrities.

Hernandez is already serving a life sentence for killing Odin Lloyd - a semi-pro football player who had been dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee - in 2013.

Hernandez is accused of killing Daniel de Abreu (left) and Safiro Furtado (right) when he fired five shots from a revolver into a car outside a Boston nightclub club in 2012

California tattoo artist David Nelson (above) testified in a Boston court on Friday

Prosecutors argued the tattoos are evidence Hernandez killed two men in 2012 outside a Boston nightclub
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A jury in Las Vegas spent a full day deliberating Friday whether the former mixed martial arts fighter named War Machine is guilty of charges that could get him life in prison in an attack on his porn star ex-girlfriend and her male friend in August 2014.

Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver could face life in prison if he's found guilty of the top charges of attempted murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in the violence that jurors were told left Christy Mack and Corey Thomas bloodied and injured.

But those are just some of the 34 charges the state court jury is considering.

FILE - In this March 9, 2017 file photo, former mixed martial arts fighter War Machine, also known as Jonathan Koppenhaver, left, listens to testimony during his sexual assault and attempted murder trial at the Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas. Koppenhaver made a tactical move Thursday, March 16, to close his trial, admitting guilt to some charges to try to avoid the possibility of life in prison on more serious attempted murder and kidnapping charges in the beating of his porn star girlfriend and a man he found her with in August 2015. (Brett Le Blanc/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File)

Koppenhaver's defense attorney took the unusual step Thursday of conceding Koppenhaver's guilt on eight domestic battery charges for punching and injuring Mack and using a knife.

The Associated Press doesn't usually identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but Mack gave AP permission to use her name. Her legal name is Christine Mackinday.

Attorney Jay Leiderman told the jury that Koppenhaver also is guilty of threatening Mack's boyfriend at the time, Corey Thomas, to dissuade him from going to police.

Convictions on those nine felony counts alone could get Koppenhaver decades in state prison. Other charges include coercion and burglary.

Koppenhaver, 35, legally changed his name to War Machine during his 19-fight MMA career that ended in 2013. He has gone by his birth name since his arrest a week after the alleged attack.

He did not testify during his two-week trial.

Mack, 24, spent eight hours on the witness stand, telling the jury she was beaten and raped by Koppenhaver in the months before his confrontation with her and Thomas.

Thomas testified that he suffered a broken nose, dislocated shoulder, scrapes, bruises and bite marks in a bedroom brawl with Koppenhaver.

The jury saw photos of Mack with a broken nose, missing teeth, fractured eye socket and leg injuries, and she testified that she also suffered a lacerated liver.

Deliberations resume Monday.
GRANDE-SYNTHE, France (AP) - French authorities plan to evacuate more than half the migrants living in a camp on the English Channel.

Housing Minister Emmanuelle Cosse announced the plan Friday at the camp in Grande-Synthe, a suburb of Dunkirk, where people fleeing war and poverty in the Mideast and Africa have come in hopes of sneaking into Britain.

She says "with 1,500 people, it is impossible to manage" the camp properly. She said authorities will move asylum-seekers to special reception centers to reduce the camp's population to 700.

Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux wants the camp dismantled because of recent fires and knife attacks. Dunkirk Mayor Damien Careme opposes an abrupt closure but says the camp is seeing increasing cases of scabies and rats.

France closed a larger, unkempt refugee camp in Calais last year.
HONOLULU (AP) - Lawmakers in nearly half the states want to add a requirement for presidential candidates: Show us your tax returns.

The issue has dogged President Donald Trump, who became the first presidential candidate in modern times to refuse to make his returns public. It flared anew this week after MSNBC said it had obtained two pages of Trump's 2005 federal return, prompting the administration to release the documents preemptively.

State lawmakers around the country, mostly Democrats, want to ensure transparency in future presidential campaigns so voters can evaluate candidates' sources of income and any possible conflicts of interest. Most of the bills would require presidential contenders to release copies of their returns as a condition for appearing on that state's ballot, although it's unclear whether they could pass constitutional muster.

The New Jersey legislature listen as assemblyman John McKeon, D-Madison, speaks about a bill requiring presidential candidates to disclose tax returns in order to appear on ballots in the state during a meeting in the state legislature, Thursday, March 16, 2017, in Trenton, N.J. The measure, which was approved by the assembly, requires presidential and vice presidential candidates to release five years of federal tax returns to appear on the ballot. The bill will head to Republican Gov. Chris Christie to sign or veto. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

The aim is to find out about potential conflicts that candidates might have before they take office, said Hawaii Rep. Chris Lee, a Democrat who introduced one of the Hawaii bills.

"With what we've seen so far with this administration, there are clear conflicts with respect to whether or not parts of the president's business empire are directly benefiting from federal contracts to house Secret Service at his own hotels, for example, or pressuring foreign dignitaries or other corporations indirectly to patronize the businesses that the president or his children run," Lee said. "And the real question is, What else don't we know?"

Hawaii was the first state to have votes on the bills before the full Legislature. The Democratically controlled House and Senate recently passed separate but largely similar measures, which would prevent the state's delegates to the Electoral College from voting for candidates who withheld their tax forms.

Lawmakers are likely to send just one of those to Hawaii Gov. David Ige, a Democrat who expressed concerns about whether the proposed changes are constitutional. He said he does not think the state can place limits on the presidential election that are inconsistent with how the election is conducted around the country.

Some legal experts raised similar flags, saying states do not have the power to create additional qualifications for the office of the president. That's up to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states and the federal government cannot add to the qualifications of senators and congressional representatives outlined in the Constitution. Some legal experts said that guidance likely would extend to the office of the president.

"I think a requirement of revealing one's tax returns would be regarded as an additional qualification," said Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School. "And then there's the tax law problem, because federal law guarantees the confidentiality of tax returns. And I think that law would pre-empt any state law requiring someone to divulge their returns."

But Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the Constitution has conflicting provisions.

"The question is whether a law that would deprive a presidential candidate of ballot access on the basis of a failure to provide a tax return would be creating an unconstitutional additional qualification, or whether it would be permissible within the state's power to set the rules for presidential elections," Hasen said. "Nobody's tried it before."

Trump has refused to make his tax returns public, breaking a decades-long tradition among presidential candidates. He initially promised to do so but then claimed he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and said his attorneys had advised against it. Experts and IRS officials said such audits do not prohibit taxpayers from releasing their own returns.

Trump's full tax returns would contain key information, including his sources of income, how much he earned from his assets and what strategies he used to reduce his tax bill.

Presidential tax return legislation has been introduced in at least 24 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most were introduced by Democrats, although bills in Kansas and Minnesota were introduced by Republicans.

New Jersey's Democratic legislature approved a presidential tax return bill on Thursday. Its prospects are uncertain once it lands on the desk of Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump supporter.

New Jersey Republicans criticized the measure as a stunt.

"This is a doozy," GOP Assemblyman Jay Webber said. "This is both transparently political and blatantly unconstitutional."

While bills in Democratic-leaning states such as Maryland and Vermont have had legislative hearings, those introduced in Republican-controlled statehouses such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania are stalling.

"I suspect that these bills will be very similar to the birth certificate legislation introduced after President Obama's election - political statement bills that likely aren't constitutionally sound or likely to be signed into law," said Daniel Diorio, senior policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "If one were to become law, I'm sure it would be challenged immediately."

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Associated Press writers Bob Christie in Phoenix; Michael Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Jonathan J. Cooper in Sacramento, California; Cory Dawson in Montpelier, Vermont; David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; Kathleen Foody in Atlanta; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Kyle Potter in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this report.

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Follow Cathy Bussewitz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/cbussewitz

New Jersey assemblyman John McKeon, D-Madison, foreground right, speaks about a bill requiring presidential candidates to disclose tax returns in order to appear on ballots in the state during a meeting in the state legislature in Trenton, N.J., on Thursday, March 16, 2017. The measure, which was approved by the assembly, requires presidential and vice presidential candidates to release five years of federal tax returns to appear on the ballot. The bill will head to Republican Gov. Chris Christie to sign or veto. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin resident Jean Smith snatches up entire stocks of her beloved Kerrygold Irish butter from stores when visiting family in Nebraska, thanks to an antiquated law in her dairy-obsessed state that bans it and any other butter that hasn't been graded for quality.

"We bring back 20 bricks or so," Smith said, noting she plops a tablespoon of the Ireland-made butter into her tea each morning. "It's creamier, it doesn't have any waxy taste and it's a richer yellow."

Tired of trekking across state lines to stock up, she and a handful of other Wisconsin butter aficionados filed a lawsuit this week challenging the law, saying local consumers and businesses "are more than capable of determining whether butter is sufficiently creamy, properly salted, or too crumbly." No government help needed, they say.

On the books since 1953, the law is strict: It requires butters to be rated on various measures - including flavor, body and color - by the federal government or people licensed as butter and cheese graders with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Wisconsin's grading scale dictates that the highest-graded butter must "possess a fine and highly pleasing butter flavor." Graders might describe a butter as "crumbly," ''gummy" or "sticky," and its color as "mottled," ''streaked" or "speckled."

Anybody convicted of selling unlabeled or ungraded butter is subject to a fine between $100 and $1,000 and six months in jail.

Wisconsin is the only state in the nation with such a stringent butter provision, which the lawsuit argues amounts to an unconstitutional "government-mandated 'taste test.'" The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative legal group representing the plaintiffs, said the grading process is subjective and doesn't protect consumers. The real issue, the group argues, is personal freedom.

Institute attorney Jake Curtis acknowledged it's a light-hearted case, "but economic liberty is a civil right."

Department spokesman Bill Cosh released a statement saying his consumer-protection agency has to uphold state law, but noted that enforcement "has been limited to notifying retailers of what the law says."

Ornua, the company that markets Kerrygold, isn't part of the lawsuit and declined to comment on the case. The Wisconsin Dairy Products Association didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.

Curtis said he's also heard from residents frustrated they can't buy their favorite Danish and Icelandic varieties near home. Smith said Kerrygold butter, which uses milk from grass-fed and hormone-free cows, occasionally shows up in stores near her home in Waukesha, but its availability is unpredictable.

"If I couldn't get Kerrygold, I would use the other butter," Smith said. "It just doesn't taste as good."

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Follow Cara Lombardo on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CaraRLombardo
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - South Dakota's Republican governor on Friday vetoed a pair of bills that would have loosened restrictions on carrying concealed guns in the conservative state.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard had warned he would veto the bills - one to let people carry concealed handguns without a permit, the other to allow concealed weapons in the Capitol building. Daugaard has said the state's current gun laws are reasonable.

"As a longtime member of the NRA, I support the right to bear arms," Daugaard said in his veto letter for the permitless carry bill. "It is paramount that our state protect the rights of our citizens while at the same time protecting the lives of our citizens. I believe our current laws appropriately protect both interests, and I ask that you sustain my veto."

FILE - In this Jan. 10, 2017, file photo, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard waits to give his State of the State address at the state Capitol in Pierre, S.D. Daugaard has vetoed a pair of gun bills coveted by conservative lawmakers, setting up likely veto override attempts when the Legislature returns to Pierre in March. (AP Photo/James Nord, File)

Supporters of both bills plan to attempt overrides - and if that's not successful, to try again next year. Neither bill got the two-thirds support that suggests an override would succeed. Both passed one chamber only narrowly.

Daugaard's vetoes are the latest evidence of a split between a more moderate GOP governor and a Republican-held Legislature that grew even more conservative after the last election. Daugaard is in his second term and can't immediately seek a third, and has said he's looking forward to leaving politics in 2019.

The governor rejected a permitless carry bill in 2012. In the sessions since, he has won a pair of tax increases and also vetoed a bill to restrict the school facilities transgender students could use. When a transgender bill came back this session, he threatened another veto before it was pulled.

But Daugaard, described by confidants as a thoughtful, pragmatic leader, has also supported ideas backed by conservative lawmakers. Last week, he signed a bill to give legal protections to faith-based organizations that refuse based on their religious beliefs to place children in certain households.

This session, the so-called constitutional carry bill would have allowed people who can legally carry a concealed handgun in South Dakota to do so without a permit. Right now, it's a misdemeanor for someone to carry a concealed pistol or to have one concealed in a vehicle without a permit.

Republican Rep. Lynne DiSanto, who sponsored the constitutional carry bill, said that it should be a "no-brainer" for the Republican supermajorities in the statehouse to override the veto, urging people to contact their GOP lawmakers to support gun rights.

"Gov. Daugaard just continues to disappoint," she said. "You can call him a Republican governor, because he has the, 'R,' but I wouldn't necessarily agree that he is."

The Capitol carry bill would have let people with an enhanced permit bring concealed handguns inside if they registered beforehand with security. There are no metal detectors or other security checks at the Capitol entrances to enforce the current prohibition on most people carrying guns in the building.

"During the legislative session, meaningful debates among the public and legislators are frequent and oftentimes passionate," Daugaard wrote in his veto message. "Our law enforcement officers are uniquely able to protect the public, and I believe this bill would complicate that work."

House Majority Leader Lee Qualm, its main sponsor, said he hopes to override the veto when lawmakers gather in Pierre on March 27 for the final day of the 2017 session.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A robber in Virginia ruined his own getaway - first by breaking his leg in a jump off a balcony, and then by calling the authorities to help him.

Police say 21-year-old Leoul Yosef will be charged with burglary for robbing an Alexandria apartment on Wednesday and then jumping off the second-story balcony after the owner returned home.

Fairfax County Police Officer Don Gatthardt says Yosef left tracks in the snow when he jumped.

Officers say they were following the snow trail when they received a 911 call from a man in the vicinity saying he'd broken his leg. Responding officers matched the identity of the caller to the burglary suspect.

Gatthhardt says Yosef will be charged after his release from the hospital.

It's unclear if Yosef has an attorney.
HAMILTON, Ontario (AP) - A Canadian man of Kazakh origins who was arrested in a massive hack of Yahoo emails appeared briefly via video link in a Hamilton, Ontario court on Friday where a date has been set for his bail hearing.

Karim Baratov did not say anything during his appearance, looking straight ahead with his hands in front of him.

The 22-year-old hacker is set to appear again on April 5.

He was arrested under the extradition act on Tuesday in the Ontario community of Ancaster, Ontario. Baratov, also known as "Kay," ''Karim Taloverov" and "Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov," is a Canadian and Kazakh national and a resident of Canada.

U.S. authorities said earlier this week that Baratov and three others, including two men alleged to be officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, were indicted for computer hacking, economic espionage and other crimes.

Baratov's lawyer Amedeo Dicarlo has said the allegations against his client are unfounded and that he will fight efforts to have his client extradited to the United States.

"Our essential goal is to get Mr. Baratov out," Dicarlo told reporters outside court before Baratov's Friday hearing. "This is an attack by the U.S. government, it's a challenge by the U.S. government. We are fighting that challenge."

Dicarlo said his client is "healthy" and "confident" but declined to answer questions about Baratov's personal life or profession, describing him only as an "entrepreneur."

"I cannot describe what Karim does nor who he is until the time is right," he said. Baratov's family is also asking for privacy, he said.

People who said they know Baratov told The Associated Press he's an exotic car buff who has owned an Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Porsche and Mercedes, among others. His Facebook page is peppered with photos of cars and includes one post in which he says he was suspended from school four years ago for threatening to kill a former friend as a joke.

Friend Saqar Khudairy confirmed the Facebook profile as Baratov's and said his pal told him he owned a network of servers that hosted websites, mainly in Russia.

Mike Le, owner of All In Detailings in Mississauga, Ontario, said Baratov was once a popular and flashy client but reserved about anything personal and very secretive about his life.

The three other suspects in the case are Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, and Alexsey Alexseyevich (Magg) Belan, 29, all Russian nationals and residents. It's not clear whether they will ever step foot in an American courtroom because there's no extradition treaty with Russia.

Dokuchaev and Sushchin are said to be Russian intelligence agents who allegedly masterminded and directed the hacking, the U.S. Justice Department has said.
Candidates demand that law enforcement agencies answer two questions (video)

Manuk Sukiasyan from the Tsarukyan alliance demands that law enforcement agencies reply two questions concerning the death of Artur Sargsyan, the man who died in a Yerevan hospital on Thursday. Was his second arrest a matter of necessity? Who Artur interfere anyone if he was not kept in custody? I demand explanations from the Investigation Committee and the Office of the Prosecutor General. If they are unable to give an explanation, it means they carried out a political order. Artur became a victim of conscience; his death will remain a stigma on the forehead of our state as long as investigators continues to execute a political order each time when arresting a new person, Manuk Sukiasyan said on March 17. Edgar Arakelyan from the Armenian Renaissance Party added in turn, Artur could have been released earlier and shown proper medical assistance. I am sorry and I think that they could prevent Arturs death. Gevorg Gorgisyan from the Yelk (Way Out) alliance said death cannot become a subject of populism. We are not going to stop our campaign rallies and we shall fight to rule out repetition of such occurrences. We must win the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK). As long as the law does not work in our country, none of us is insured against incidents. We should make voters understand this, he said. Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread for taking food to members of the Sasna Dzrer group who seized a Yerevan police building last July and remained barricaded there for nearly two weeks, died on March 16 while being treated at the Armenia Medical Center. He died ten days after being released from prison following a 25-day hunger strike. Sargsyan, 49, underwent urgent bowel surgery at the hospital the previous night. Artur Sargsyan was first arrested last August for aiding the gunmen and released in December because of his deteriorating health condition. He was again arrested in February 2017 allegedly for not showing up in the hearing of last years standoff. Sargsyan began a hunger strike in protest against his detention. He was released from pre-trial detention earlier in March after six MPs from several political parties paid a bail for him in the amount of 3million drams.
NEW DELHI (AP) - An Indian flight attendant who was injured in the Brussels airport blasts last year said she has recovered 70 percent of her previous fitness level and would like to resume her passion, flying.

Nidhi Chaphekar suffered burns and a broken foot in the explosions. She said she is looking forward to visiting Brussels next week to take part in the anniversary commemoration and meet the doctors and others who helped her.

The March 22 bombing in the Brussels airport and subway killed 31 people and wounded 270.

In this Friday, March 17, 2017 photo, Nidhi Chaphekar, Jet Airways flight attendant and a victim of the Brussels airport terror attack, talks to the Associated Press at her residence in Mumbai, India. Chaphekar, 40, mother of two from Mumbai is one of the survivors of the last year's Brussels airport terror attack in which at least 30 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. Chaphekar said she has recovered 70 percent of her previous fitness level and would like to resume her passion, flying. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

A photograph of Chaphekar, a flight attendant with India's Jet Airways, became an iconic image of the attacks. It showed the 40-year-old mother of two sitting dazed and bloodied, with her bright yellow uniform ripped.

In an interview in Mumbai on Friday, Chaphekar said the picture gave her family in India hope that she was alive.

"I appeared to be in a state of shock. It was a compelling picture as it depicted everything - shock and trauma," she said.

In the past year, Chaphekar's life has changed.

"From a very independent female, I became dependent on others as I recovered from injuries. I used to run a lot. I can't run now," she said.

"I am 70 percent fine now. A bone has to be put in my injured right foot. Physically, there are challenges," Chaphekar said.

"I have not yet started flying. My dream is to fly back," she said, adding that she would be flying to Brussels on Sunday for a 10-day visit.

Chaphekar said she is writing a book and has been asked to give motivational speeches. She wants to inspire people and tell them that everything is possible in life.

"I used to be a very difficult person, but the love and affection of people after the Brussels experience has changed me," she said.

In this Friday, March 17, 2017 photo, Nidhi Chaphekar, Jet Airways flight attendant and a victim of the Brussels airport terror attack, paints at her residence in Mumbai, India. Chaphekar, 40, mother of two from Mumbai is one of the survivors of the last year's Brussels airport terror attack in which at least 30 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. Chaphekar said she has recovered 70 percent of her previous fitness level and would like to resume her passion, flying. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

In this Friday, March 17, 2017 photo, Nidhi Chaphekar, Jet Airways flight attendant and a victim of the Brussels airport terror attack, shows her watch which stopped soon after the blast at her residence in Mumbai, India. Chaphekar, 40, mother of two from Mumbai is one of the survivors of the last year's Brussels airport terror attack in which at least 30 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. Chaphekar said she has recovered 70 percent of her previous fitness level and would like to resume her passion, flying. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - It all came down to a missing comma, and not just any one. And it's reignited a longstanding debate over whether the punctuation is necessary.

A federal appeals court decided this week to keep alive a lawsuit by dairy drivers seeking more than $10 million in an overtime pay dispute.

It concerned Maine's overtime law, which doesn't apply to the "canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of" foods.

There's no Oxford, or serial, comma in the "packing for shipment or distribution" part. The drivers said the words referred to the single activity of packing, which the drivers don't do. The defendant, Oakhurst Dairy, said the words referenced two different activities and drivers fall within the exemption.

Circuit Judge David Barron wrote: "For want of a comma, we have this case."

The court sided with the drivers.

"Comma sense ain't so common," Jeffrey Neil Young, an attorney for the drivers, said Friday.

David Webbert, another attorney for the drivers, said the "fight for overtime rights has been vindicated" by what he called a "landmark" ruling made possible by an ambiguous exemption and a lack of a punctuation mark.

"Our argument was that it was a train wreck of a sentence," Webbert said. "The tie goes to the workers."

Oakhurst representatives said they plan to keep fighting the suit and declined to comment on the comma kerfuffle. A trial could follow. The company is well known in Maine for its line of milks, creamers and other dairy products.

Since the ruling, the internet has become a battlefield for defense - and derision - of the comma. News website Vox tweeted that the "Oxford comma is the world's most controversial punctuation mark."

Indeed, use of the Oxford comma has divided people for years. FiveThirtyEight and SurveyMonkey Audience polled more than 1,000 people about it in 2014 and found that more than half favored the extra comma.

The Associated Press Stylebook advises against the use of the Oxford comma, except when it's needed for clarity. Other authorities differ - notably, the Oxford University Press, from which the comma draws its popular name.

The Oxford style guide, published as New Hart's Rules, states that it is Oxford style "to retain or impose this last comma consistently."
A selection of AP offerings that are especially good reads, shareable, consumer-friendly, or likely to generate talk or buzz. Please see the News Digest and News Coverage Advisory 10:15 for top stories and other highlights. All times EDT.

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AMBULANCE DRIVER KILLED - Man accused of killing medic with ambulance: 'I'm innocent'. SENT: 540 words, photos, video.

FUKUSHIMA RADIATION-FACT CHECK - AP FACT CHECK: Fukushima radiation not cause for alarm in US. SENT: 450 words, photo.

BOY INJURED-CYANIDE TRAP - Federal cyanide trap injures eastern Idaho boy, kills dog. SENT: 480 words.

SODA TAX-PHILADELPHIA - "Soda tax" stakes escalate in pivotal Philadelphia fight. SENT: 1020 words, photos.

RALEIGH FIRE - Chief: Apartment building inspected 50 times before blaze. SENT: 530 words, photos, video.

NEW ORLEANS BARS - New Orleans bars stay open for those needing chronic tonic. SENT: 250 words.

MONOPOLY TOKENS - Boot, wheelbarrow, thimble ousted from Monopoly board game. SENT: 370 words, photos.

FRANCE-BRITISH ROYALS - British royals William and Kate visit Paris as Brexit looms. SENT: 430 words, 19 photos.

TODDLER MODEL-DOWN SYNDROME - Toddler with Down syndrome models for British retailer. SENT: 130 words, photos.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE-NYC - New York City awash in green for St. Patrick's Day parade. SENT: 340 words, photos, video.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS-COLD - Cold weather kills many cherry blossom blooms in DC. SENT: 130 words, photo. UPCOMING: Developing.

BOLIVIA-INDIGENOUS HEARTS - Indigenous Bolivians have some of the healthiest hearts. SENT: 450 words, photos.

HOT FEBRUARY - No El Nino? No problem. Earth sizzles to near record heat. SENT: 130 words.

IRISH BUTTER BATTLE - Ban on Irish butter sparks fight in butter-loving Wisconsin. SENT: 140 words. UPCOMING: 500 words by 3:30 p.m.

OBIT-GEORGE BRAZILLER - George Braziller, literary publisher, dead at 101. SENT: 730 words.

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PHOTOS

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IRELAND-ST. PATRICK'S DAY - Mythic creatures dance through Dublin on St. Patrick's Day. SENT: 6 photos, 340 words.

HOUSE EXPLOSION - Home explodes in DC suburb: 'It's just a pile of bricks'. SENT: 9 photos, 500 words, video.

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HOW TO REACH US

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At the Nerve Center, Alexandra Olson can be reached at 800-845-8450 (ext. 1600). For photos, ext. 1900. For graphics and interactives, ext. 7636. Expanded AP content can be obtained from http://www.apexchange.com. For access to AP Exchange and other technical issues, contact apcustomersupport@ap.org or call 877-836-9477.
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - A judge in Guatemala has ordered the arrest of Edgar Justino Ovalle, a lawmaker and adviser to President Jimmy Morales.

Attorney General's office spokeswoman Julia Barreda said Friday that Ovalle is sought for suspected crimes during the nation's 1960-1996 civil war when he was a military officer.

Now a member of Congress, he had immunity from prosecution but the Supreme Court lifted that protection earlier this week.

He is suspected of murder, forced disappearance and crimes against humanity in connection with the kidnapping of multiple people in 1983 and 1984, when he was second in command of a military zone in Coban, north of Guatemala City.

The victims were later killed and buried in clandestine graves on a military base.
SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Justice Department said Friday that it will temporarily transfer immigration judges to six detention centers mostly near the border with Mexico in an effort to put President Donald Trump's immigration directives into effect.

The department's Executive Office for Immigration Review said the transfers to four locations in Texas and one each in Louisiana and New Mexico will occur Monday. Judges were previously moved to two immigration detention centers in California.

Trump's executive order on border and immigration enforcement in January says judges should immediately be assigned to immigration detention centers. Many courts are for immigrants who are freed before their cases are heard.

The clogged immigration courts have gotten less attention than other aspects of Trump's orders, such as construction of a wall on the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and the addition of 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officers and agents. There was a backlog of 542,646 cases at the end of January, including 20,856 people who were being held in custody.

Jeremy McKinney, a Greensboro, North Carolina, attorney and board member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said transfers to detention centers means longer waits for people who aren't being held.

"Now we're starting to see cases postponed out into 2021," he said. "Those families continue to live in legal limbo."

The president's budget proposal for the 2018 fiscal year released Thursday calls for a 19-percent increase in immigration judges to 449 positions.

There are currently about 300 judges, even though the office is funded for 374 slots. Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said 50 applicants are in various stages of the hiring process, which can take up to 12 months.

Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said hiring is "exceedingly slow and cumbersome."

Marks, also a judge in San Francisco, said the temporary assignments are expensive and will cause delays elsewhere. "There's always going to be some dockets that are going to suffer when a judge is taken from one location," she said.

Starting Monday, a detention center in Jena, Louisiana, will have three judges, Mattingly said. Detention centers in Dilley, Karnes City, Laredo and Livingston - all in Texas - and in Chaparral, New Mexico, will each have one. They currently have none, though hearings can be done by video connection with other courts.

Judges were previously transferred to detention centers in San Diego and Adelanto in California.

"The detained cases are our priority," Mattingly said. "They have always been a priority but they are our highest priority right now."

Andrew Nietor, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's San Diego chapter, said earlier this week that having judges physically present in the courtroom is better for clients than judges who connect by video from remote locations. Judges on video may miss emotional cues and mute voices of immigrants while relying on interpreters.

"There are due-process concerns when they are not physically in the same room," he said.
OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) - The Canadian government apologized on Friday to three Canadians who were tortured in Syria and said it had paid them compensation to settle lawsuits.

It provided no details on the settlements reached with Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

An inquiry in 2008 led by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci found that Canadian officials contributed to the torture of the three men by sharing information with foreign agencies.

Iacobucci concluded the men were brutalized while in Syrian custody and, in the case of El Maati, in Egypt as well. He cited the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Foreign Affairs Ministry for mistakes.

All three men have denied any involvement in terrorism and none has ever been charged.

"Our clients are gratified to have received an apology from the highest level of the Canadian government," said Phil Tunley, lawyer for El Maati and Nureddin. "They and their families are pleased that their long legal ordeal is over."

Tunley declined to elaborate on the settlement.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland apologized to the men "for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to their detention and mistreatment abroad and any resulting harm."

"We hope that the steps taken today will support them and their families in their efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in their lives," the officials said.

Legal actions filed by the three men had been stuck in the courts for years. They sought compensation for experiences that they said shattered their reputations and left them physically and psychologically wounded.

In statements filed years ago in the cases, the government had said that if mistreatment did occur, responsibility rested with Syrian and Egyptian authorities.

Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for 22 months. El Maati, a former truck driver, was arrested in November 2001 upon flying to Syria to celebrate his wedding - nuptials that did not take place. Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, was detained by Syrian officials in December 2003 as he crossed the border from Iraq, where he was visiting family. He was held for 34 days in Syria in late 2003 and early 2004.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A doctor in Puerto Rico has been sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty in a $1.2 million health care fraud case.

A federal judge on Friday also ordered Dr. Juan Jose Tull Abreu to pay more than half a million dollars in restitution to six Medicare Advantage insurance carriers.

Dr. Tull was accused of submitting Medicare claims for services that federal authorities said were never rendered. He was convicted last year after witnesses testified that he submitted invoices for office and home visits when in reality his office was closed or he was traveling outside the U.S. territory.

Dr. Tull's attorney could not be immediately reached for comment.
FREEPORT, Maine (AP) - Outdoors specialty retailer L.L. Bean says sales were flat for a second straight year in 2016 - a year in which the family-owned company weathered a boycott over a relative's political contributions in support of President Donald Trump.

Revenues reached $1.6 billion for the fiscal year. The Freeport-based company had been on a run of five consecutive years of growth before 2015.

The L.L. Bean family and board of directors approved a 3 percent cash performance bonus to its approximately 6,000 workers, the company announced Friday.

A early version of the Maine Hunting Shoe is displayed at the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport, Maine, Friday, March 17, 2017. The company reported a slight increase in sales for 2016 and said Friday that employees will be given a 3 percent annual bonus. The family-owned company said annual net sales last year were $1.6 billion. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

"While it has been a challenging year in the retail environment, our employees delivered world class service and products to our customers," said Steve Smith, president and CEO.

The year marked continued growth in sales of the company's iconic boot - but also controversy surrounding an L.L. Bean board member's political contributions.

The Federal Election Commission questioned whether a $60,000 donation by Linda Bean, founder Leon Leonwood Bean's great-granddaughter, to a political action committee supporting Trump exceeded limits.

But the PAC's chairman cited a paperwork error and said it was supposed to be registered as a super PAC with unlimited donations. Updated reports indicated that her donations were overstated and that she actually gave $25,000.

The reports and an ensuing call for a boycott amounted to unwanted attention for a 105-year company that tries to be apolitical.

The company had declined to say if the publicity hurt sales.

Looking ahead, L.L. Bean plans to cut costs by freezing pensions and offering voluntary early retirements, and company officials say they are going to re-examine its generous shipping and return policies. The company expects to trim the workforce by about 500 workers through early retirement incentives next year, officials have said.

It's part of a broader look at all aspects of the business. Smith said the company is trying to return to the stronger growth that it experienced in the 1980s and 1990s so it can invest.
DALLAS (AP) - A Maryland man has been arrested on a federal cyberstalking charge of sending a Dallas-based magazine reporter an image on Twitter intended to trigger an epileptic seizure.

Federal officials say twenty-nine-year-old John Rayne Rivello, of Salisbury was arrested in Maryland on Friday on a criminal complaint filed in Dallas.

The complaint was filed in December by Kurt Eichenwald, a Newsweek reporter who has epilepsy and was sent a strobe image to his Twitter account on Dec. 15 intended to trigger a seizure. Included with the image was the message: "You deserve a seizure for your posts."

The image was apparently sent in response to Eichenwald's outspoken criticism of then-President-elect Donald Trump.

Eichenwald thanked federal and Dallas law enforcement for the break in the case.
METAIRIE, La. (AP) - A 20-year-old man has been arrested in this week's drug-related slaying of four people at a suburban New Orleans apartment complex.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said Friday afternoon that Armande Stephen Tart of Metairie faces four counts of first-degree murder in Wednesday's deaths.

Three people were shot to death in one apartment in Metairie, and a fourth victim in a nearby apartment was fatally stabbed in the head.

Tart also faces an attempted first-degree murder charge in the shooting and wounding of a fifth victim.

Normand said Tart wanted to steal drugs. He said there were "significant amounts of cocaine" in one apartment. He said those killed, ranging in age from 40 to 61, had previous drug arrests.

Normand said authorities believe Tart acted alone.
HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP) - Comedian Artie Lange was arrested recently on drug possession charges outside his New Jersey home.

Hoboken police spokesman Sgt. Edgardo Cruz tells to NJ Advance Media (http://bit.ly/2mEaW6G) that 49-year-old Lange was arrested on Sunday after allegedly being found with drugs in the parking garage of his building.

Officers found cocaine, heroin and drug paraphernalia both on him and in his car.

FILE - In this Feb. 15, 2017 file photo, Artie Lange attends the LA Premiere of "Crashing" in Los Angeles. Hoboken police spokesman Sgt. Edgardo Cruz told the NJ Advance Media that 49-year-old comedian was arrested on Sunday, March 12, after allegedly being found with drugs in the parking garage of his building. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

Lange has a history of drug addiction.

He was recently featured on HBO's new comedy series "Crashing," which stars Peter Holmes and is produced Judd Apatow. He plays himself as a mentor to Holmes' character who is trying to make it as a stand-up comedian.

On Friday he tweeted about the arrest, saying he's "doing great."

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Information from: NJ.com, http://www.nj.com
Stan Wawrinka remains on course for a second ATP Masters 1000 title after advancing through to the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open.

Wawrinka, who is the highest ranked player left in the tournament in Indian Wells, came out victorious in a thrilling contest with Dominic Thiem, which he won 6-4 4-6 7-6 (7/2).

The Swiss has won three grand slams  as many as Andy Murray  but has failed to produce at the level below, with just a solitary title to his name.

Stanislas Wawrinka is into the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open

But he looks in the mood to take advantage of Murray and Novak Djokovics early exits after winning a deciding tiebreak for the second game in a row, having earlier saved break points which would have seen Thiem serving for the match.

"I'm happy to win again in a tiebreak in the 3rd set," Wawrinka says on court. "The player who was more aggressive in the end won" #BNPPO17  BNP Paribas Open (@BNPPARIBASOPEN) March 17, 2017

Wawrinka will meet Pablo Carreno Busta in the last four after the Spaniard won an enduring battle with his friend and doubles partner Pablo Cuevas.

It was both mens first foray this far into a Masters 1000 tournament and it was Carreno Busta who came out on top in three sets, winning 6-1 3-6 7-6 (7/4) in over two hours.

Carreno Busta had to save two match points in the final set and then triumphed in the tiebreak and he knows it was a special win.

He said in his post-match press conference: Its an amazing feeling. Its my first time in the semi-final in a Masters 1000.

This tournament is one of the best tournaments in the year and maybe one of the tougher, because all the people is playing here. So I think its a really great result for me.

.@stanwawrinka in press: "I think in those (close) moments you need to trust your game and that's what I did well." #BNPPO17 pic.twitter.com/T5lERRXJB6  BNP Paribas Open (@BNPPARIBASOPEN) March 17, 2017

Meanwhile, in the womens competition, Kristina Mladenovic and Elina Vesnina both caused upsets to reach the semi-finals.

Frenchwoman Mladenovic, seeded 28th, fought back from a set and a break down to post an impressive 3-6 7-6 (7/4) 6-2 win over in-form Caroline Wozniacki in their quarter-final.

It is the first time she has reached the last four at a tournament of this standing, while the win also ensures she will break the top 20 when next weeks rankings are released after an impressive start to the year.

She said in her post-match press conference: It feels great, but in the same time, every day I go out there on the court, its for moments like that. So Im not getting too excited. Im just super satisfied that I am on that kind of stages right now and trying to use my chances and the my opportunities I have.

Waiting for Mladenovic in the last four is Vesnina, whose brilliant week in the desert continued with a battling win over Venus Williams.

Vesnina, seeded 14th, beat top seed Angelique Kerber in the previous round and followed it up with a 6-2 4-6 6-3 success over the veteran.
Manchester City host Liverpool on Sunday as the battle continues for places in the top four of the Premier League.

Pep Guardiolas side will be looking to bounce back from being knocked out of the Champions League in midweek but Liverpool have not lost against any of the other five teams in the top six this season.

Here, we look ahead to the fixture in numbers.

Liverpool v Manchester City

 Meetings between the sides in the Premier League. Liverpool have won 18 and City seven, with 14 draws.

 Goals in the last 10 meetings between the two sides in all competitions.

 Liverpool have won the last four Premier League meetings, but lost to City in last seasons League Cup final.

 Players who could face their former club on Sunday. Liverpools James Milner and Daniel Sturridge will both return to the Etihad Stadium, whilst Raheem Sterling moved from Liverpool to City for 50m in 2015.

A man who knows @ManCity better than many...



 James Milner on the big threats and how we'll look to win on Sunday: https://t.co/yl5cyQeYyu pic.twitter.com/cZB4QMIBxH  Liverpool FC (@LFC) March 17, 2017

 The last time there was a draw between the two sides in the Premier League.

 Top scorers Sadio Mane and Sergio Aguero each have 12 Premier League goals this season, though Aguero has added the same again in other competitions.

 Liverpool have only won one league game at the Etihad Stadium since 2008, although that victory came on their most recent trip when they came out 4-1 winners last season.

 Goals in the last six league meetings at the Etihad Stadium.

Etihad Stadium

 It will be the 10th fixture between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp. They each came out on top on four occasions while managing Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund respectively, Guardiola victorious in the 2014 German Cup final along the way, while Klopp enjoyed the upper hand earlier this season with Liverpools 1-0 win at Anfield.
Manchester United will play Belgian side Anderlecht in the quarter-finals of the Europa League.

Manager Jose Mourinho will be relieved that it will be a short trip for United this time following their narrow last-16 win over Russian side Rostov.

The first leg will take place in Brussels on April 13, with the second match at Old Trafford a week later.

Jose Mourinho

United are the favourites to win the competition  which would complete their set of major European trophies and also earn a spot in next seasons Champions League.

It will be the fourth tie between the sides, with United coming out on top of the three previous ones.

Their record European victory came against Anderlecht when they were 10-0 winners at Old Trafford in the European Cup preliminary round in September 1956.

More recent ties have been tighter, with United losing in Belgium in 1968 and 2000 but dominating at home.

It might interest you to know that our biggest-ever victory came against Anderlecht. 



Find out more: https://t.co/UN3xL7w9c9 pic.twitter.com/6M9fq6i2CR  Manchester United (@ManUtd) March 17, 2017

Anderlecht started their Europa League journey in August with a play-off victory over Slavia Prague and then came through a group including Gabala, St Etienne and Mainz.

The last 32 saw them beat Zenit St Petersburg on away goals while they won both legs against Apoel Nicosia in the last 16.

Anderlecht top the Belgian league by two points and are looking to win the title for the first time since 2014.

With a Premier League clash against Chelsea in between the two legs, the crucial thing for United was to keep travel to a minimum, and the good news was they avoided Turkish side Besiktas.

The official result of the #UELdraw... pic.twitter.com/0HJacqyLWX  UEFA Europa League (@EuropaLeague) March 17, 2017

Juan Mata, the match-winner for United against Rostov on Thursday, has his sights firmly set on European silverware.

He said: It became a while ago very important for us. I still think we have the chance to get to the Champions League through the Premier League. I still think we can win a lot of games and get into the third or fourth positions.

But its another chance for us and we will take it very seriously. Its very important  it could be one more trophy and it means we play Champions League.

Anderlecht president Roger Vanden Stock described the United tie as the hardest possible draw for us but believes his side can pull off an upset.

He said on the club website: You never know, we didnt think we would beat Zenit either.

Its a team at Champions League level with a lot of qualities. If we were to qualify, I would light a few candles.
Donald Trump has said the White House should not be criticised for quoting a Fox News analyst who accused British intelligence of helping former president Barack Obama spy on him.

There is no evidence such spying took place and GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, has called the allegation utterly ridiculous.

During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US president said that we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television.

Mr Trump met with Angela Merkel in Washington (Evan Vucci/AP)

He added: You shouldnt be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox.

He also stood firm on his unproven wiretapping allegation with a reference to 2013 reports that the US listened in on Mrs Merkels phone calls. Mr Trump said that when it comes to wiretapping, at least we have something in common, perhaps.

Mr Trumps comments came after his press secretary Sean Spicer directly assured Britains ambassador to the US he will not repeat allegations that GCHQ spied on the president.

Ambassador Sir Kim Darroch spoke to Mr Spicer after the allegations were described by GCHQ as utterly ridiculous, in a rare public intervention which was backed by UK Government officials, including Sir Kim and the PMs national security adviser Sir Mark Lyall Grant, in conversations with the US administration.

Sean Spicer

At a regular Westminster briefing, Prime Minister Theresa Mays official spokesman refused to say whether US officials apologised.

He said: We have made clear to the (US) administration that these claims are ridiculous and that they should be ignored and we have received assurances that these allegations wont be repeated.

Asked if the allegations posed problems for the special UK-US relationship, he replied: We have a close, special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case.

He added: We have received assurances that these allegations wont be repeated and this shows the administration doesnt give the allegations any credence.

GCHQ

The PMs spokesman said it would not be possible for GCHQ to spy on Mr Trump as both countries are members of the Five Eyes alliance, a joint intelligence co-operation agreement which also includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

I would add, just as a matter of fact, with the Five Eyes pact, we cannot use each others capabilities to circumvent laws, he said. Its a situation that simply wouldnt arise.

During a media briefing at the White House on Thursday, Mr Spicer drew reporters attention to comments made earlier this week on Fox News by former judge Andrew Napolitano in relation to Mr Trumps controversial claim that his New York residence had been bugged.

Detailing a long list of reports about the wiretap claims, Mr Spicer quoted Mr Napolitano as saying: Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command  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.

In a surprise break from its normal practice of refusing to comment on allegations about its activities, GCHQ released a statement on Thursday night, saying: Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wiretapping against the then president elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

Mr Spicers intervention came shortly after the US Senate Intelligence Committee released a statement saying it had seen no evidence to support the US presidents claim  made in a series of Twitter posts earlier this month  that Mr Obama had bugged Trump Towers.
A man has walked free from court after pleading guilty to the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

Lady Scott took the wholly exceptional decision to grant Daniel Cieslak an absolute discharge at the High Court in Glasgow on Friday.

Cieslak, 21, met the victim and her friend, aged 12 and 13, in a taxi queue in Edinburgh after a night out in the summer of 2015 and went back to a party with them thinking they were 16 and 17, a statement on the Judiciary of Scotland website said.

Glasgow High Court

He was 19 at the time.

Lady Scott said: You understood from chat in the taxi that the victim was 16 years old and her friend was 17 years old. The taxi driver had the impression that the victim was about 20 years old.

Once at the flat, after some time, you paired off and you and the victim engaged in sexual intercourse.

She left the next morning. She had no concerns and there was no suggestion of her being distressed.

Police officers who had spoken to the victim earlier in the night in relation to another matter also had no concerns over her age, Lady Scott said in her order.

The judge said Cieslak was culpable under strict liability, where victims under 13 are deemed by law to be incapable of consent.

But the judge said there were a number of exceptional circumstances which applied.

She said: Although the factual absence of consent is not an ingredient of the offence, it is a material factor for the purposes of sentencing. Here the victim willingly participated in the sexual intercourse and there was, in fact, consent.

So too, whilst there is no defence to this offence because of strict liability, the fact is that you would have had a defence if the victim had been a few months older.

The statutory offence for girls aged over 13 to 16 years provides for a defence based on reasonable grounds of belief by the accused that the victim was above the age of consent.

It is clear from the agreed facts presented to me that the Crown would have been unlikely to, or unable to, exclude such a defence and they do not dispute this. Accordingly, it is very unlikely the Crown could prove a crime had the victim been over 13 years of age.

Cieslak became distressed when he was told the age of the victim by police officers and has dropped out of a college course, Lady Scott said.

Taking into account that all witnesses on the night thought the victim was over 16, that Cieslak was told she was 16 and with no signs of distress, Lady Scott said: Your criminal culpability here is wholly restricted to the application of strict liability within this offence.

That is in marked distinction to other reported cases under this statutory provision, which have involved conduct involving assault or recklessness or force, or the absence of consent or have resulted in distress to the victim  all of which are factors which raise the need for punishment.

In addition, there is no suggestion here of predatory conduct or grooming or manipulation or deception.

I do not consider there is any need for, or public interest in, punishment. To do so would in my view be disproportionate given the nature of the criminal culpability here.

Nor do I consider there is any basis for, or real public interest in, requiring your notification under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Considering all of these factors I have reached the conclusion that justice is best served in this case by taking the wholly exceptional decision not to sentence you and instead I discharge you absolutely.

As a result, the requirement of any notification does not arise under the relevant statutory provisions.
A baby has helped reunite a married couple with a wedding ring they had given up as lost.

Andy Freeman, 33, and his 28-year-old wife Steph had searched their Norwich home from top to bottom when Mr Freemans wedding band went missing last year, but it was nowhere to be found.

They sold their old sofa on a Facebook selling group to 24-year-old Cloey Jordan, of Wortwell near Harleston, Norfolk, in December 2016.

Kaleb Jordan with his mother Cloey

Months later, Ms Jordan said her seven-month-old son Kaleb flung his dummy across the room and when she went to retrieve it, she found Mr Freemans wedding ring down the side of the sofa.

She had lost the contact details for Mr and Mrs Freeman, but soon found them after posting an appeal on Facebook. They have now been reunited with their wedding ring.

Mrs Freeman said: It was unbelievable. I cried. You get married and think you will have the ring forever. I just assumed that had gone.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have attended a reception at the British Embassy on Prince Williams first visit to Paris since his mothers death in a car crash in the French capital almost 20 years ago.

The Duke and Duchess, Her Majesty's Ambassador and Lady Llewellyn arrive for the reception at the British Embassy #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/SXpgfVY6Nf  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

The couple attended a reception at the British Embassy (Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror/PA)

William and Kate

The Duke and Duchess chat to young French leaders at tonight's reception hosted by Her Majesty's Ambassador #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/p1IRNBUesx  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

The trip is the first of a series of European visits the Cambridges and the Prince of Wales will make in the coming months, seen by some commentators as a bid to enhance Britains relationships with the Continent as Brexit negotiations loom.

The embassy also hosted a dinner for the couple with guests including British actress Kristin Scott Thomas, French actor Jean Reno and former French footballer Robert Pires.

The Duke and Duchess are tonight attending a dinner hosted by Her Majesty's Ambassador at the British Embassy #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/yK3kA1StHY  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

Kate with Jean Reno

The dinner was hosted by her Majesty's ambassador to France, Edward Llewellyn (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

The Duke delivers a message from Her Majesty The Queen at the British Embassy #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/hspBqI03FY  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

The ballroom's all set for tonight's dinner hosted by Her Majesty's Ambassador at the British Embassy, Paris  #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/pjCZN0WtO0  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

Earlier, the royal couple received a warm Gallic welcome from Frances President Francois Hollande at the start of their two-day visit.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are greeted by French President Francois Hollande

William and Kate

The royal couple with their host inside the Elysee Palace (Thibault Camus/AP)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are greeted by French President Francois Hollande
The Duke of Cambridge has reassured France that despite Brexit the depth of Britains relationship and co-operation with its neighbour will not change.

William spoke about the enduring bonds between the UK and France during the Cambridges first official visit to Paris - a trip that has seen them dubbed Brexit Ambassadors by the media.

Kate and William with president Hollande

Despite strong press criticism directed at the Duke over a lads only weekend break, he looked relaxed and was all smiles when the royal couple were greeted by Frances president Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace.

Later when he attended the launch of Les Voisins - a celebration of UK-French links - the second in line to the throne told young French leaders from a range of fields: Like all neighbours, sometimes our two nations encourage each other through mutual support.

Sometimes we attempt to outdo the other through rivalry  as we will see tomorrow when Wales play France at the rugby. But always our two nations continually inspire one another to become better: more creative, more prosperous, more innovative.

The Duke delivers a speech at the British Embassy in Paris highlighting the strong ties between the UK and France #RoyalVisitParis pic.twitter.com/uqRe6WMbC3  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 17, 2017

This partnership will continue despite Britains recent decision to leave the European Union.

The depth of our friendship and the breadth of our cooperation will not change.
Irish premier Enda Kenny has said he and Prime Minister Theresa May are in agreement that there will be no return to direct rule in Northern Ireland.

Addressing a business event in New York, Mr Kenny urged the parties at Stormont to focus on forming a new powersharing executive.

Following a snap election at the start of the month, politicians next week will enter a third and final week of negotiations to strike a deal before a statutory deadline.

Enda Kenny addresses staff at Bloomberg headquarters in New York (Niall Carson/PA)

If the deadline passes without an accord to bring together a new powersharing executive involving the two main parties  Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionists  the UK government is legally obliged to call another election.

Some have predicted that, in those circumstances, the UK government might move to pass emergency legislation to reintroduce Westminster direct rule in Northern Ireland.

Mr Kennys remarks at Bloombergs offices in New York suggested that Mrs May has ruled that option out.

SofS @JBrokenshire is focussed on seeking resolution in the days ahead #NIOrals pic.twitter.com/YQLJ5CxsE5  Northern Ireland Office (@NIOgov) March 15, 2017

I hope that the elected members of the Assembly will now focus through their parties on actually putting an executive in place within the three weeks from the date of the election, he said.

If that doesnt happen the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (James Brokenshire) would then either have to hold further elections or have direct rule again from Britain.

I have spoken very clearly to the British Prime Minister and we are both agreed that there will be no return to direct rule from London.

So I do hope that the executive can be put in place, because this has implications for the peace process.

The last powersharing administatrion in Belfast collapsed amid a bitter row between the DUP and Sinn Fein over a botched renewable energy scheme. The subsequent election campaign exposed further bitter disputes between the parties.
Donald Trumps first meeting with Angela Merkel produced an awkward moment as the US president did not shake the German leaders hand in front of photographers in the Oval Office.

Mr Trump told photographers to send a good picture back to Germany, please.

He said the leaders had enjoyed very good talks while Mrs Merkel praised the friendly reception.

Photographers then shouted handshake! and Mrs Merkel quietly asked Mr Trump do you want to have a handshake?

There was no response from the president, who looked ahead with his hands clasped.

The pair spoke in the Oval Office (Evan Vucci/AP)

German weekly Der Spiegel commented that the overall impression of this meeting was rather cool.

German daily Bild wrote on its website: Trump didnt want to give Merkel his hand in his office!

Mr Trump had previously spoken against Ms Merkel (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

At a joint news conference with the German chancellor, Mr Trump hit back at claims his America First agenda is isolationist.

He said: I dont believe in an isolationist policy.

Mr Trump has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements. Yet the president suggested that he is only trying to revise them to better serve US interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Ms Merkel has reportedly studied Mr Trump's speeches and policies in advance of her trip (Evan Vucci/AP)

Mr Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits, although the US trade deficit with Germany was 64.9 billion dollars last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

Mr Trump bristled at the suggestion from a German reporter that his policies could be interpreted as isolationist.

He said: I dont know what newspaper youre reading, but I guess that would be an example of fake news.
Google has been accused of profiting from hatred by MPs over its YouTube advertising system that saw taxpayer-funded adverts appear alongside extremist content on the video site.

The Home Affairs Select Committee has written to the technology giant asking for an explanation into how Government adverts were placed on inappropriate and hate-filled sites and YouTube videos.

The Cabinet Office said it has placed a temporary restriction on its YouTube advertising pending reassurances from Google that Government messages can be delivered in a safe and appropriate way, while The Guardian, Channel 4 and the BBC have also halted their advertising with the firm.

The committee wrote to Google's communications vice president Peter Barron (PA)

Googles advertising network uses an automatic filtering system which places adverts on websites and videos.

In a letter to Googles communications vice president Peter Barron, committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper said: Government advertisements and major brands advertising is still being placed on inappropriate and hate-filled sites.

As a result Google and these organisations are still profiting from hatred.

In addition to explaining to the Government and to your advertisers how this has happened and what you are doing to prevent it ever happening again, please can you provide the Committee with a full explanation of this, including whether you will be refunding money to the Government and other advertisers.

Mr Harris said 400 hours of content was uploaded to YouTube every minute (PA)

The internet giants UK managing director Ronan Harris had earlier admitted the company can and must do more to combat what it called bad advertising.

Weve begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network.

An investigation by The Times claimed that rape apologists, anti-Semites and hate preachers were among those receiving payouts from publicly subsidised adverts on YouTube.

Mr Harris had said that while Google had practices in place to combat these incidents, it can not prevent them all: With millions of sites in our network and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recognise that we dont always get it right.

Committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper called on the company to do more (PA)

In a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our monetization policies, he said. We promptly remove the ads in those instances, but we know we can and must do more.

However, Ms Cooper said the companys lack of effort and social responsibility towards the content was extremely troubling.

It is inexplicable to us that Google can move very fast to remove material from YouTube when it is found to be copyrighted, but that the same prompt action is not taken when the material involves proscribed organisations and hateful and illegal content, she said.

The Committee expects to hear from you on how you are using some of YouTubes very significant revenue to put this problem right by devoting sufficient resources to ensure that vile and illegal material is removed proactively from your platforms, and that neither you nor those that create these videos profit from hatred.
England Women became Grand Slam champions in Dublin the night before their male counterparts will look to do likewise after a 34-7 victory over Ireland.

Amy Wilson Hardy, Laura Keates, Amy Cokayne, Leah Lyons, Emily Scarratt and Lydia Thompson all scored tries in Donnybrook as England won their first RBS 6 Nations title since 2012.

The hosts had won their previous four fixtures and were aiming for their own clean sweep on St Patricks Day but, hours after Englands Under-20s had completed their own Grand Slam with a victory in Dublin, Englands women completed part two of what could be a Grand Slam hat-trick this weekend.
Matt Parcell continued his bright start to life in Super League to inspire Leeds to a 38-14 victory over neighbours Wakefield.

On the day the Rhinos announced they had agreed a settlement with NRL club Cronulla over hooker James Segeyaro, his replacement Parcell ran the show as Leeds backed up last weeks demolition of Catalans.

Kallum Watkins opened his 2017 account with two first-half tries either side of Anthony Mullallys powerful finish to give the Rhinos a commanding 20-4 half-time lead.

Matt Parcell (Danny Lawson/PA)

The Rhinos have won 38-14 against Wakefield with second half tries from Hall, Cuthbertson and Parcell pic.twitter.com/OI4CiB5Y7W  Leeds Rhinos (@leedsrhinos) March 17, 2017

Ryan Hall went over early in the second period to end the match as a contest and further tries from Adam Cuthbertson and Parcell completed a comfortable win that sent Leeds back into the top four.

Wakefield could only respond through a Tom Johnstone brace and David Fifitas try as they failed to build on back-to-back victories over St Helens and Salford.

After a tight opening 10 minutes a series of Wakefield errors allowed Leeds to set up camp in their half.

The Rhinos initially struggled to break Trinity down but, after the returning Brett Ferres was twice held up over the line, they turned their possession into points when Watkins plucked Danny McGuires cross-field kick out of the sky to score under the posts.

#SLLeeWak



TRY! 80' What a catch by Johnstone, a second beauty by the Young Player of the Year



Rhinos 38-14 Trinity pic.twitter.com/qVvRDTWI4K  Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) March 17, 2017

Leeds lad Johnstone ensured Wakefield were not behind for long as he collected Jacob Millers bouncing kick before turning McGuire inside out and racing clear to score his first try of the year.

A Sam Williams 40/20 kept the Rhinos on the back foot but Trinity were unable to take advantage of the field position and Leeds took control in the final 10 minutes of the half.

Mullally, who had a loan spell at Wakefield in 2015, powered his way over after spotting a hole in the Trinity defence, a sign the visitors were becoming ragged.

Ashton Golding converted from just to the right of the posts and moments later slotted over a penalty from in front to make it 14-4 to the Rhinos.

CC: "It was really disappointing. We were out-muscled and our-enthused all game. Leeds were by far the best side tonight." pic.twitter.com/gGZQBT5J0H  Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) March 17, 2017

Wakefield needed the half-time hooter but they were unable to see out the final few minutes as Watkins took dummy-half Parcells flicked pass to dart over for his second try.

Leeds were good value for their lead after building on their impressive attacking showing against Catalans and more slick play from right to left allowed Hall to finish in the corner.

Golding made it five from five from the boot to put Leeds in full control, although their lead was cut to 16 points when Fifita brushed off McGuire to slam the ball down and Williams converted.

Cuthbertson took advantage of soft tackling to cut short a potential Wakefield comeback and it was a case of damage limitation for the visitors after Danny Kirmond was sin-binned for a late tackle on Rob Burrow as the 250th appearance of his career turned sour.

Parcell jinked his way over to score a try his performance merited but Johnstone had the last word on the final hooter by touching down Millers cross-field kick.
By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA, March 16 (Reuters) - Emergency workers in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa searched through a mountain of garbage for the fifth consecutive day on Thursday as the death toll from a landslide at a rubbish landfill site rose to 115.

The Horn of Africa country has declared three days of national mourning for the victims of the disaster that occurred at the 50-year-old Reppi dump on Saturday evening.

Two bodies were uncovered on Thursday morning, rescue workers and residents taking part in the search said, a day after a government spokesperson raised the toll to 113, 75 of whom were women.

"As the number of missing people is still high, we expect to pull more bodies out today and in the coming days," an emergency worker told Reuters.

Residents of the area say at least 80 people remain unaccounted for. Dozens of victims have so far been buried at the Abune Aregawi Church nearby since Tuesday.

Hundreds of people live near the dump, the city's only landfill site. Some of the victims scavenged for food and items that could be sold, such as recyclable metal.

The landslide destroyed dozens of homes. Officials in the capital say they plan to resettle most of the tenants and build a waste-to-energy plant.

Ethiopia is one of Africa's fastest growing economies, but the drive to industrialise has also stoked discontent among those who feel left behind. (Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana)
By Costas Pitas

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - Japanese carmaker Toyota said it plans to invest 240 million pounds ($294 million) to upgrade its car plant in central England for future output, but retaining tariff-free access to EU markets after Brexit remained crucial.

The company said it would also move to use more locally sourced components, an area carmakers in Britain are focusing on as a way to overcome currency fluctuations and potentially meet new local content rules which could come into force after Britain leaves the European Union.

Toyota builds the Auris hatchback and the Avensis family car at the plant in Burnaston in Derbyshire. It said it would begin upgrading equipment and technology at the plant this year to allow it to build models on its new car-building platform, which can be used for different models and is being rolled out globally.

"Our investment demonstrates that, as a company, we are doing all we can to raise the competitiveness of our Burnaston plant in Derbyshire," Chief Executive of Toyota Motor Europe Johan van Zyl said in a statement.

The British government would contribute an additional 21 million pounds to the investment, the carmaker said.

Toyota said last week that it could delay a decision on whether to build its next-generation Auris model in Britain to see the outcome of Brexit negotiations.

The carmaker, which also operates an engine plant in North Wales, has invested over 2.5 billion pounds in Britain and employs over 3,000 people at its sites.

Only 41 percent of the parts in British-built cars are made within the country on average, less than the typical 50 to 55 percent local content requirement which Britain would have to agree to in some bilateral trade deals.

But van Zyl warned that it was important for the government to secure unfettered access to Europe for British-built car exports as part of a Brexit deal.

"Continued tariff-and-barrier free market access between the UK and Europe that is predictable and uncomplicated will be vital for future success," he said. ($1 = 0.8164 pounds) (Reporting by Costas Pitas, Editing by Paul Sandle and Susan Fenton)
By Matthias Williams

CHISINAU, March 16 (Reuters) - Two months ago, Moldova's Deputy General Prosecutor Iurie Garaba travelled to Moscow with an invitation to attend an official function for Russia's General Prosecutor's Day.

The visit didn't go as planned.

Garaba was stopped by border guards at Moscow's airport and taken in for questioning. He said one guard rifled through his passport for 15-20 minutes while another asked what he was doing in Russia - despite his official invitation and a document naming him as the head of the Moldovan delegation.

"I was asked questions that have absolutely nothing to do with border document checks. For example, 'How do I pronounce my last name?', or 'How to write it correctly?', Garaba told Reuters by telephone.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm his version of events.

But some Moldovan officials say the incident is part of a campaign by members of Russia's security apparatus to humiliate officials from the ex-Soviet state as they travel to or through Russia.

The primary aim, four top Moldovan officials including Garaba's boss Eduard Harunjen told Reuters, is to derail a Moldovan probe into a Russian-led money laundering operation that funnelled $22.3 billion of Russian money through the Moldovan financial system between 2011-2014.

Russia has countered by saying its own citizens, including lawmakers, journalists and military personnel, had been subjected to "detention and zealous searches" or outright bans at the hands of the Moldovan authorities.

"We confirm our readiness for constructive cooperation with the Moldovan side to resolve all complex issues," Russia's foreign ministry said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Moldovan investigators have probed a scheme under which Russian shell companies took fictitious loans from offshore companies based in Britain. The transactions were guaranteed by Moldovan citizens, a move designed to allow Moldovan judges complicit in the scheme to order the fake loans be paid out, thus ensuring the transfer of money out of Russia, according to Moldovan prosecutors who have been investigating the matter.

Moldova, Europe's poorest country, borders EU member Romania, with which it has close linguistic and cultural ties, but remains heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies.

As in Ukraine and Georgia, moves by Chisinau to forge closer ties with the EU have been strongly resisted by Moscow. Moldova signed a political and trade pact with the EU in 2014, prompting Russia to slap a retaliatory ban on Moldovan produce.

The Moldovan officials interviewed by Reuters said Moldovan intelligence had detailed knowledge of individuals in Russia's FSB security service who allegedly ran the scheme together with a Moldovan businessman called Veaceslav Platon. Platon's wife told Reuters by phone that he denies any wrongdoing.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Interior Ministry, in response to written questions submitted by Reuters, said the ministry could not comment on Moldova's complaints of harassment because the Garaba case and others described in this article were not within its remit.

Reuters also sent requests for comment on the harassment to the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the General Prosecutor's office, but received no response.

PRO-MOSCOW PRESIDENT

The row comes at a time when Moldova's recently elected president, Igor Dodon, is looking to pull the country away from the European Union's orbit and back towards Moscow, in opposition to the country's staunchly pro-Western government.

After months of waiting for Russia to change its behaviour or for Dodon to intervene, the Moldovan government went public with its grievances last Thursday and announced that no officials would travel to Russia until the issue was resolved.

Its March 9 press statement said "all this abuse, harassing Moldovan officials at the entry into the Russian Federation and putting them on international monitoring, took speed and size once the (money laundering) investigation progressed."

Russia's foreign ministry responded in its email: "With regard to the recommendation of the Moldovan government to Moldovan officials to refrain from trips to Russia, in our view such actions do not facilitate the restoration of bilateral relations and the activisation of cooperation."

The Moldovan officials said they do not believe the harassment is orchestrated from the Kremlin but by people in the interior ministry and the security service. In Russia, the FSB oversees the border guards service. They believe FSB officials used part of the money from the money-laundering to further Russian state interests.

The Moldovan government has not specified an exact number of cases or when the abuse started, but estimates 25 officials had been harassed just in the last few months, and one officer at the Interior Ministry was stopped and questioned 35 times.

"We have tens of such cases," Interior Minister Alexandru Jizdan told Reuters.

One interior ministry official said she had been stopped three times at Moscow airport, most recently in January. On the third occasion, she said she jokingly told the Russian guard she could find her own way to the interrogation room.

"RUSSIAN LAUNDROMAT"

The complaints of harassment comes as Moldovan prosecutors have launched criminal cases against 14 judges as well as 10 senior bank managers, senior central bank officials and four bailiffs in the money-laundering investigation.

Russian law enforcement authorities also say they have been investigating the Moldova scheme for several years. Some lawyers who work in the Russian criminal justice system say it is common for one arm of Russian law enforcement to investigate a crime while another arm resists that effort because they have competing interests.

Moldova says it has sent repeated requests to Russia over the past six years for help getting to the bottom of a scheme dubbed by local press as the "Russian Laundromat" which allegedly washed money from more than 100 Russian companies and 21 Russian financial institutions.

The Russian Interior Ministry said in response to inquiries that it could not comment on the money-laundering case itself because of the on-going Russian investigation into it.

Last week Moldova's Prime Minister and the President of the Moldovan parliament met the Russian ambassador in Chisinau to send a note of complaint to Moscow about the way Moldovan officials were being treated.

The note also said that the Russian authorities had repeatedly ignored Moldovan requests for help to trace the origins of the laundered money and information to piece together how the scheme was carried out and who was involved. (Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, Maria Tsvetkova, Svetlana Reiter and Tatiana Ustinova in MOSCOW and Alexander Tanas in CHISINAU; editing by Mark John; update edited by Peter Graff)
MADRID, March 16 (Reuters) - Homebuilder Neinor Homes will price a planned March stock market flotation at 16.46 euros per share, it said on Thursday, valuing the company at 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in Spain's first listing of a residential builder in more than ten years.

The deal, aimed at institutional investors, will include a capital increase of about 100 million euros to repay corporate debt and fund land purchases.

Neinor, which is based in Bilbao in northern Spain and is backed by U.S. private equity firm Lone Star, buys land for developments in areas with high demand for housing, including Madrid, Barcelona and the Basque Country.

Residential construction is returning to Spain after a 2008 property crash left a glut of unsold properties built with specultaive cash.

Neinor will begin to receive offers on March 17 and books will close on March 27, with a listing planned for March 29, it said in a prospectus posted with the Spanish stock exchange regulator.

Lone Star bought the property management arm of unlisted Spanish bank Kutxabank and about half the real estate assets on its books in December 2014.

Since then, the real estate management platform Neinor has more than doubled its land bank by investing in land that already has permits for construction.

It has 161 developments and more than 9,000 homes on its books with a gross asset value of 1.12 billion euros, according to a Savills real estate valuation.

The deal is one of three stock market listings announced so far this year in Spain. The two others are car parts maker Gestamp and cash-in-transit unit Prosegur Cash.

Citigroup and Credit Suisse are acting as joint global coordinators and bookrunners on the Neinor listing. Santander, BNP Paribas and J.P. Morgan are also bookrunners on the deal. Investment bank Lazard is advising. ($1 = 0.9314 euros)

(Reporting by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by David Goodman)
ZURICH, March 17 (Reuters) - Switzerland has rejected a Turkish request for legal assistance in prosecuting a suspect accused of insulting President Tayyip Erdogan, ruling that the comments in question were protected by Swiss free speech provisions.

Switzerland helps foreign prosecutors only if the crime they are investigating is a criminal offence in Switzerland as well, and that was not the case here, a spokesman for the Federal Office of Justice said on Friday.

"If similar criticism of a member of the government were expressed in Switzerland within the framework of a political discussion, this would be tolerated as a free expression of opinion," he said.

He did not identify the suspect in the case, which arose in part from postings on social media. Three similar requests from Turkey are still pending and would be judged individually on their merits, he added.

Ties have become increasingly fraught between Turkey and many European countries over Turkish campaigning for a referendum next month that would give Erdogan more power.

The Swiss government said last week, however, there was no reason to ban Turkey's foreign minister from addressing a rally in Zurich despite local authorities' opposition. The speech was eventually cancelled for lack of a venue.

Swiss government statistics show around 68,000 Turkish citizens live in Switzerland, a nation of 8.3 million whose population is a quarter foreign. The Turkish embassy's website refers to around 130,000 Turkish citizens. (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Toby Chopra)
SOFIA, March 17 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- The foreign ministry said that it was recalling Bulgarian ambassador in Ankara, Nadezhda Neynsky, for consultations. The statement gave no reason why Neynsky was being called back to Sofia but the development comes amid continuing controversy about reported interference by Turkey in Bulgarias March 26 early parliamentary elections (Standart, Sega)

-- Bulgarias interim Prime Minister Ognyan Gerdzhikov said that his administration will nominate the Balkan countrys next European Commissioner if no stable government is formed within 10 days of the March 26 elections (Standart, Trud, 24 Chasa, Monitor)

-- In reaction to the measles outbreak in neighbouring Romania, Bulgarian health officials have sent recommendations to the regional inspectorates, in an attempt to keep the disease from spreading into Bulgaria. The National Institute of Public Health in Bucharest released numbers, according to which 3,446 people were infected in Romania until a week ago, while 17 children have died from measles. The outbreak has spread to 37 of 41 Romanian districts
Activist Vardges Gaspari holds protest over death of Artur Sargsyan (video)

Civil activist Vardges Gaspari was not allowed to stand in front of the presidential motorcade today. In this way, the civil activist wanted to express his indignation over the death Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread, who died yesterday after a prolonged hunger strike A police officer was standing near me, he tried to prevent me from getting nearer to the vehicle. Anyway, I managed to come nearer and stand in front of the motorcade with a poster in my hand. The policeman caught hold of me and we fell down together. The motorcade then diverted its way and passed us, Mr Gaspari told A1+. The activist blames Serzh Sargsyan for the occurrence and says nothing in Armenia happens without his knowledge. It was a premeditated murder. The medical centre, prison and personally Serzh Sargsyan were aware of his poor health condition and deliberately killed him, he said. If Artur had not been detained for a second time and had not started a hunger strike in protest of his detention, he would be alive today. Vardges Gaspari will return to the presidential residence tomorrow morning to continue his protest. Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread for taking food to members of the Sasna Dzrer group who seized a Yerevan police building last July and remained barricaded there for nearly two weeks, died on March 16 while being treated at the Armenia Medical Center. He died ten days after being released from prison following a 25-day hunger strike. Sargsyan, 49, underwent urgent bowel surgery at the hospital the previous night. Artur Sargsyan was first arrested last August for aiding the gunmen and released in December because of his deteriorating health condition. He was again arrested in February 2017 allegedly for not showing up in the hearing of last years standoff. Sargsyan began a hunger strike in protest against his detention. He was released from pre-trial detention earlier in March after six MPs from several political parties paid a bail for him in the amount of 3million drams.
By Stephen Jewkes

MILAN, March 17 (Reuters) - Italy's biggest utility Enel said any major deals in the European industry would have to wait until new industry rules were in place after elections this year in France and Germany.

German peer RWE this week fuelled merger talk in Europe's crisis-hit power sector, saying it was weighing options including tie-ups with rivals and possibly selling part of its stake in its Innogy renewables unit.

However Enel Chief Executive Francesco Starace played down the prospects of his company doing a major deal at this point.

"No more big plants, no more big M&A," Starace said, signalling a price tag for potential acquisitions of between 1.0 and 1.5 billion euros.

In the first half of this year Enel expects to spend 1.2 billion euros on deals, mainly the purchase of Brazilian power distribution company Celg-D.

Enel, which paid around 39 billion euros ($42 billion) to take control of Spanish utility Endesa eight years ago, said in November it would reinvest about 2 billion euros of proceeds from asset sales in bolt-on acquisitions.

"Large-scale M&A is potentially value-destructive and we don't like it," Starace, who has been in his current role since May 2014, told financial analysts.

Falling power prices, oversupply and a boom in renewable energy have prompted traditional utilities to reshape their businesses, fuelling speculation the sector is now ripe for consolidation.

Starace saw scope for some activity further down the line.

"There will be some opportunities in Europe after the French and German elections and when Europe's new regulatory framework is in place," he told reporters on a media call.

France will elect a new president in May and Germany is set to hold a national election in September.

Enel, Europe's biggest utility in terms of customers, is looking to its grids and green power businesses to drive growth, especially in emerging markets.

It has pledged to upgrade its networks to prepare for a digital era and take advantage of the "Internet of things", where appliances like washing machines and fridges can be managed remotely.

Earlier on Friday it raised its dividend and confirmed its targets for this year after posting a 12.3 percent rise in net profit for 2016.

Net ordinary profit for last year came in at 3.243 billion euros, in line with an analyst consensus and its own target.

Goldman Sachs, which has a 'Buy' recommendation on the stock, said the results indicated a strong year ahead.

"We ... see Enel as one of the fastest growing utilities in the space," analyst Alberto Gandolfi said in a note.

At 1140 GMT, Enel shares were down 1.8 percent while the European utility index was down 0.5 percent. ($1 = 0.9313 euros) (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Keith Weir)
By Ju-min Park and James Pearson

SEOUL, March 17 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday issued the Trump administration's starkest warning yet to North Korea, saying that a military response would be "on the table" if Pyongyang took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces.

Speaking in Seoul after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula and some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, Tillerson said former President Barack Obama's policy of "strategic patience" towards Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs was over.

"We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told a news conference.

He said any North Korean actions that threatened U.S. or South Korean forces would be met with "an appropriate response," turning up the volume of the tough language that has marked President Donald Trump's approach to North Korea.

"Certainly, we do not want for things to get to a military conflict," he said when asked about possible military action, but added: "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table."

In spite of Tillerson's warning, U.S. officials have stressed that while an ongoing review on North Korea policy includes military options, such contingency planning has been conducted for decades and that the preferred course is to press Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs through increased sanctions and other diplomatic pressure, particularly on China.

Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, travels to China on Saturday, where he will press Beijing, North Korea's only ally, to do more to rein in its neighbour.

The main focus of Tillerson's trip, his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, has been on developing a "new approach" to North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to persuade it to denuclearize. Tillerson also visited Japan on his trip.

Trump said on Friday that North Korea was "behaving very badly" and accused China of doing little to resolve the crisis over the North's weapons programs.

"They have been 'playing' the United States for years." Trump said in a tweet, referring to North Korea. "China has done little to help!"

ACTION WOULD BE HIGHLY RISKY

For now, U.S. officials consider pre-emptive military action against North Korea far too risky, given the danger of igniting a regional war and causing massive casualties in Japan and South Korea and among tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in both allied countries.

Such ideas could gain traction, however, if North Korea proceeds with a threatened test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Just before he took office in January, Trump tweeted: "It won't happen!" when Kim said North Korea was close to testing an ICBM.

Any preemptive attack on North Korea carries huge risks.

"As a practical matter I dont see the administration deciding to preemptively strike North Koreas capabilities," Asia expert and former White House official, Mike Green of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies said this week.

"We wouldn't get them all and theres a risk North Korea would open fire with its hundreds of missiles and thousands of artillery tubes and its nuclear and chemical and biological weapons on Japan and Korea and even China."

Tillerson will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the weekend and press him to do more on North Korea.

He called on Beijing to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea.

China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security.

North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year.

Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told a joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country.

China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people.

It has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula.

"As a close neighbour of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Christine Kim in SEOUL and David Brunnstrom and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alistair Bell)
COPENHAGEN, March 17 (Reuters) - Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of South Korea's ousted president Park's friend Choi Soon-sil, will challenge the Danish public prosecutor's decision on Friday to extradite her to South Korea, her lawyer said.

"We had hoped for a different outcome, but on the other hand, it was to be expected. Now we will bring it to the courts and fight it there," Chung's lawyer, Peter Martin Blinkenberg, told Reuters.

Blinkenberg did not rule out appealing to the High Court if the District Court upholds the public prosecutor's decision. (Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
ZAGREB, March 17 (Reuters) - Croatian food group Agrokor, which is under government pressure to clear up its debt problems, has secured a 300 million euro ($323 million) loan from Russia's Sberbank, one of its creditors, local media reported.

Agrokor is Croatia's biggest private company and the prime minister said on Wednesday that his government would ensure that its debt problems did not destabilise the country's economy and financial system.

The food producer and retailer had debt of 45 billion kuna ($6.5 billion) against capital of around 7.5 billion kuna, according to latest available data from last September. A major portion of that debt will mature in early 2018.

"In the last two weeks Agrokor agreed with Sberbank loans worth 300 million euros, which is enough for paying its obligations towards suppliers and the state," the Vecernji List daily reported.

Agrokor was not immediately available for comment.

Bond investors have become increasingly concerned this year about Agrokor's financial position and the transparency of its accounts.

Analysts say the company expanded its business too aggressively and relied on risky borrowing. One option for Agrokor could be the sale of some of its profitable assets or a change in ownership structure, analysts say. The Zagreb-based company is currently controlled by local businessman Ivica Todoric.

It employs nearly 60,000 people across the Balkans and had an annual revenue of 50 billion kuna in 2015. It is not listed but its assets include ice cream producer Ledo and mineral water producer Jamnica.

Sberbank is one of Agrokor's major creditors.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Wednesday urged Agrokor's management to make "wise and useful" decisions as soon as possible.

Agrokor said on Wednesday that it was considering options for stabilising its business. According to the media reports, the company has hired a foreign consultancy to help. The yields on Agrokor's foreign bonds, maturing in the next few years, have jumped to above 30 percent in recent weeks from around 7-8 percent in early January. ($1 = 0.9289 euros) ($1 = 6.8790 kuna) (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA, March 17 (Reuters) - A Nigerian court on Friday overturned a request by Nigeria's financial crimes agency to seize an oilfield from Royal Dutch Shell and Eni .

In January, a court had ordered the seizure of the OPL 245 oil block and transfer of operations to the federal government on the request of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Oil companies Shell and Eni had filed motions to dispute this.

The EFCC is investigating whether the $1.3 billion purchase of OPL 245 in 2011 involved "acts of conspiracy, bribery, official corruption and money laundering", according to court papers seen in January by Reuters.

"The chairman of the EFCC failed to meet the precondition for making an application for interim attachment of properties. So the application as such was irregular and the order granted on its basis ought to be discharged," Justice John Tsoho of the Federal High Court said.

"Eni reaffirms the correctness of its conduct within the acquisition of the license," Eni spokesman Roberto Carlo Albini said following the ruling.

Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO) said it welcomed the judgment.

"As the case itself, relating to the 2011 settlement of the associated long-standing disputes of the offshore block, is the subject of ongoing investigations, it would be inappropriate to comment further," a SNEPCO spokesman added.

Shell had previously said the EFCC conducted "a gross abuse of process and an abuse of power" to get a court order asking for the forfeiture, according to a document obtained by Reuters.

The Nigerian court case is the latest of several inquiries, following those by Dutch and Italian authorities, into the purchase of OPL 245, which could hold up to 9.23 billion barrels of oil, according to industry figures.

The oilfield's licence was initially awarded in 1998 by former Nigerian oil minister Dan Etete to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company in which he held shares.

The licence was then sold for $1.3 billion in 2011 to Eni and Shell. A British court document has shown that Malabu received $1.09 billion from the sale, while the rest went to the Nigerian government. (Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos and Libby George in London; writing by Ulf Laessing; editing by Jason Neely/Dale Hudson/Alexander Smith)
By David Ingram

March 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is clashing in court with Democratic state officials and civil liberties advocates over his plan to temporarily ban entry to the United States by refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries.

After a pair of rulings this week stopped parts of the ban from being enforced, the president vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to save the executive order he signed on March 6 after an earlier effort was blocked in the courts.

Below are some questions and answers about the legal fights.

Q: In recent days, two judges ruled against the administration on parts of the travel ban. How do those rulings differ?

A: A Hawaii federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday against Sections 2 and 6 of Trump's executive order. Those are the heart of Trump's plan, restricting nationals from six "countries of particular concern" for 90 days, as well as all refugees for 120 days. On Thursday, a Maryland federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against one provision of Section 2, which deals with travel restrictions, but it leaves the temporary refugee ban in place. Although the Maryland ruling is narrower in scope, the Hawaii order covers refugees nationwide.

Q: Does this mean the Trump administration has lost the cases and its executive order is defunct?

A: No. The order has a section that says if any provision of it is found to be invalid, the remainder will not be affected. So any part of the order not covered by the court rulings took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) on Thursday. Also, complex lawsuits such as these have many steps and the Trump administration may ultimately prevail as the cases get full hearings in court and on appeal.

Q: What parts of the ban are left standing after the rulings?

A: Section 4 of the executive order requires "thorough review" of Iraqi nationals seeking a visa or admission to the United States, although such reviews are already extensive. Section 5 orders changes to the screening of all immigration applications, including "a mechanism to assess whether applicants may commit, aid, or support any kind of violent, criminal, or terrorist acts."

Q: What happens next in the legal fight?

A: The Trump administration, through its lawyers at the Justice Department, is expected to appeal against one or both of this week's court rulings to regional appellate courts. Both the 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit, where the appeals would be heard, have more judges appointed by Democrats than by Republicans. Last month, a panel of 9th Circuit judges upheld an order from a court in Washington that barred the first executive order from being implemented.

Q: What is the Trump administration likely to say in its appeal?

A: The White House will assert the authority of the chief executive to issue orders limiting entry to the United States in service of national security. It laid out its justification for the action in the text of the executive order itself: "It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, including those committed by foreign nationals." Improving the screening and vetting procedures is crucial to meeting that goal, the administration says.

Q: After the appellate courts rule, what is the next step? Is it a certainty that the U.S. Supreme Court would take the case?

A: The only certainty at the Supreme Court is the justices' three-month summer vacation. They have the authority to accept or reject cases, and sometimes stay out of divisive cases, for procedural reasons or otherwise. This year they declined to hear a potentially landmark case about transgender rights that they had previously said they would hear.

Q: Is it possible that Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, could be seated before the case goes to the Supreme Court?

A: Yes, but it is unlikely he would be seated in time to hear an emergency appeal. Gorsuch is due to appear next week for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where senators are likely to ask him about the travel ban. Republicans hope the Senate confirms him to the court by mid-April. That could mean he would be seated if the appeals follow a more traditional timeline, although it seems doubtful the administration would want to wait considering the urgent need for the order that it has asserted. (Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Tait)
March 17 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Salman has postponed a visit to the Maldives due to an outbreak of flu, the government of the Indian Ocean archipelago said on Friday.

Salman, who is on a month-long Asian tour, was due to visit the Maldives on Saturday.

The visit "has been postponed due to the high prevalence of the flu in the Maldives," the government said in a statement, adding that a new date would be confirmed.

The Maldives has been hit by an outbreak of flu, with some cases showing signs of H1N1 influenza A, or swine flu.

The government said this month a planned multibillion dollar, Saudi-funded investment project on one of its atolls would focus on high-end tourism, and it rejected opposition claims that the islands would be sold to the government of Saudi Arabia.

Maldives former president Mohamed Nasheed's party early this month said the project would effectively give a foreign power control over Faafu atoll in a form of colonialisation by Saudi Arabia. There have been public protests about the project over the suspected land sale it involves.

Despite its reputation as a tourist paradise, the largely Muslim island chain of 400,000 people is struggling with a large number of youths enlisting to fight for Islamic State in the Middle East.

The opposition says allowing Saudi influence in the country would result in more radicalisation. (Reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Nick Macfie)
MANILA, March 17 (Reuters) - The Philippines derided the European parliament on Friday for interfering in its affairs after it issued a resolution calling for the release of a top critic of the president's war on drugs, which it said should target narcotics networks instead of users.

EU lawmakers on Thursday adopted a resolution condemning the "many extrajudicial killings" taking place in the Philippines and showing concern for the safety of Senator Leila de Lima, a fierce critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, who is being held on charges of involvement in the drugs trade.

"They should mind their own business," said Salvador Panelo, chief presidential legal counsel.

"They cannot dictate on the Philippine government on what to do with its constituent facing criminal charges," he said. "Nor can they can interfere with the judicial processes of our country."

More than 8,000 people have been killed since Duterte took power on June 30 last year and delivered on his election promise to launch a merciless campaign against crime and drugs.

Police take responsibility for over 2,500 of those deaths during their anti-drugs operations, but reject allegations by local and international human rights groups that police are involved in thousands of mysterious murders of drug users.

The EU parliament's resolution said it supported fighting drugs, but from the source, not the consumer.

It called on Manila to "prioritise" the fight against trafficking networks and drug barons over tracking down small-scale consumers.

Duterte's spokesman, Ernesto Abella, singled out the EU for criticism, rather than the parliament, and said it had been "spooked" into making "unwarranted threats" as a result of flawed information.

Duterte's ally and Senate President Aquilino Pimentel said the EU parliament was trying to "micro manage" the Philippines' internal affairs.

De Lima, a former justice minister, was last month arrested in her Senate office after being accused of accepting bribes from convicts engaged in the drug trade.

She says the charges are politically motivated and intended to stifle criticism of Duterte, whom she has called a "sociopathic serial killer".

The foreign ministry also rejected the resolution and said European lawmakers had no right to comment on the judicial system of a sovereign state.

"The Philippine government asks the international community to refrain from influencing the outcome of a case that is rightly under the jurisdiction of Philippine local courts," it said in a statement.

It said the government was "taking pains to investigate the veracity of these allegations of state-sponsored extrajudicial killings". (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty)
BERLIN, March 17 (Reuters) - Germany could file a suit against the United States at the World Trade Organization over President Donald Trump's proposed border tax, the economy minister said on Friday ahead of a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Trump later in the day.

Trump has warned that the United States will impose a border tax of 35 percent on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the U.S. market.

Asked how Germany would react to the proposed tax, Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Deutschlandfunk radio it was very difficult because of the complexities of such a tax system.

"The other option is that we file a suit against him at the WTO - there are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that you're not allowed to take more than 2.5 percent taxes on imports of cars," Zypries said.

Later on Friday Trump and Merkel are due to hold their first meeting since the new U.S. president took office in January.

Merkel is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union and a commitment to fight climate change while he is expected to seek her support for his demand that NATO nations pay more for their defense needs.

Germany's 50 billion euro trade surplus with the United States has been a source of tension between Washington and Berlin.

"We know ourselves that that's a problem and we're working on it," Zypries said.

"Thankfully we just heard today that wage rises have been agreed again so that means domestic demand can increase again and we want to address tax incentives for research ... so we're on a good path," she added.

Around 72,000 steel workers in northwestern Germany will get 2.3 percent more pay from April and then a further wage increase of 1.7 percent from May 1, 2018 employers' group Arbeitgeberverband Stahl said on Friday.

"The Americans need our machines and our plants ... and the other point is that we only have an export surplus in the machines and plants sector; in the service sector it's the other way round," due to big internet companies in the United States, Zypries said.

Carl Martin Welcker, president of Germany's VDMA engineering industry association, warned in an interview with newspaper Tagesspiegel about the "poison of protectionist measures".

He said any such measures would hit Germany's engineering sector hard at a time when there is widespread concern, following Britain's decision to leave the European Union and calls from French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for a referendum on France's EU membership.

"First there's America first, then England's withdrawal and then perhaps a referendum in France soon - we're scared of this contagious disease because we sell 75 percent of our products abroad," Welcker said. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Nick Macfie and Toby Davis)
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday North Korea is "behaving very badly" and China has done little to help, hours after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said a U.S. policy of strategic patience with North Korea had ended.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said in a message on Twitter.

Tillerson, who is currently in Seoul, is due to visit China on Saturday and Sunday to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

(Reporting by Washington Newsroom)
HAK-HZhK alliance calls on relevant authorities to carry out investigation and punish those guilty

The alliance set up by the Armenian National Congress (HAK) and Peoples Party of Armenia (HZhK) has issued a statement, expressing its concerns over the recent incidents. According to media reports, the election campaign is accompanied by acts of violence. In particular, an incident occurred during a campaign rally held by the Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanian alliance in Jrarat village (Armavir province). As a result, four people were hospitalized with injuries. The accusations addressed to Deputy Police Chief Lyova Yeranosyan and his brother, senior police officer Lernik Yeranosyan, who went unpunished after organizing the beating of oppositionists prove once again that unpunished crimes give birth to new crimes. Another incident was reported in Ajapnyak Community of Yerevan where loyalists of Republican candidate Arman Sahakyan tried to settle accounts with Vahan Karapetyan of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK). The HAK-HZhK alliance is concerned about incidents during the campaign which is resulted by the inadequate response of the law enforcement agencies. We urge the relevant authorities to carry out an investigation and punish those guilty. The rapid disclosure of these incidents is necessary to ensure the legitimacy of the election campaign and equal footing for all candidates," the alliance said in a statement.
STOCKHOLM, March 17 (Reuters) - Swedish lenders Nordea and Handelsbanken will face no further sanctions for their involvement in the Panama Papers scandal as they had already been fined and acted to remedy the shortcomings, the country's financial watchdog said on Friday.

The financial watchdog opened investigations into all four major Swedish banks after they appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents last year from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama.

While the probe of Handelsbanken and Nordea has now been wrapped up, investigations into Swedbank and SEB are continuing, the FSA said.

"In the investigation we have made as a result of the Panama Papers, we have determined that it is the same deficiencies that they (Nordea and Handelsbanken) have already received a penalty for," Victoria Ericsson, spokesperson at the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, told Reuters.

She said both banks had launched comprehensive action plans in connection with the sanctions last year.

"We believe the shortcomings we have seen in the Panama investigation will be taken care of when the banks' action plans are completed," she said.

Nordea and Handelsbanken were fined 50 million Swedish crowns ($5.7 million) and 35 million crowns respectively in 2015 for breaching money laundering rules.

The FSA said at the time that the severity of the compliance breaches would have justified revoking Nordea's banking licence. However, because the bank had taken steps to address the problems, it opted to issue a warning alongside the fine, which was the maximum amount at the time. ($1 = 8.7977 Swedish crowns) (Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Anna Ringstrom; editing by Niklas Pollard/Keith Weir)
By Polina Devitt and Humeyra Pamuk

MOSCOW/ISTANBUL, March 17 (Reuters) - Turkey has unexpectedly removed Russian wheat from an import licence scheme, effectively disrupting Russia's shipments to its second-biggest wheat export market, according to trade and industry sources.

Import licences issued by the Turkish government no longer included Russia in a list of tax-free accepted origins as of March 15, the sources said.

This would effectively close off the Turkish market to Russian wheat as exports from countries not included in the import scheme have to pay a prohibitive tariff of 130 percent, several sources said.

"There is a restriction for Russian wheat," Zekeriya Mete, head of Turkey's exporters association for grains, pulses, vegetables and oilseeds, said.

"There isn't a formal note on this but Russia has been removed from the list of countries from which we could import tax-free," he said.

Turkish government officials did not immediately confirm the decision. Russia's Agriculture Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Under the import scheme, buyers in Turkey are allowed to import certain products with no duty as long as they process and then export the same amount, Mete said.

"The new import licences do not include Russia as an origin, therefore de facto you cannot import Russian wheat," said a Turkish miller who imports wheat.

Turkey bought 1.9 million tonnes of Russian wheat from July 2016 to January 2017. Russian exporters continued sending wheat and maize to Turkey on March 15-16, Russian news agency TASS reported on Friday. Mete said new shipments were unlikely.

NORMALISATION

Turkish importers, including millers who benefit from import licences as part of a system that supports Turkey's large flour exports, may be able to bring in wheat that was shipped from Russia before March 15 but the status of subsequent shipments was less clear, he said.

The Turkish government had not explained the policy change, according to several sources, some of whom said it may be connected with a previous spat between Turkey and Russia.

Mete said the move may be related to Russia's failure to lift all restrictions on imports of Turkish fruit and vegetables despite positive governmental steps and a meeting between the two countries' presidents last week in Moscow.

Russia had imposed damaging trade restrictions on Turkish goods after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border in November 2015.

The two countries restored ties in August and Moscow had lifted most of the restrictions but it is yet to resume purchases of tomatoes and some other products from Turkey.

A Kremlin spokesman said on Friday that the problems over wheat supplies were unlikely to affect the normalisation of ties.

A Russian exporters' lobby, the National Association of Agriculture Exporters, sent a letter to Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev on Thursday asking him "to take energetic measures" to resolve the matter.

(Reporting by Polina Devitt in Moscow, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Gus Trompiz in Paris, Humeyra Pamuk and Nevzat Devranoglu in Istanbul; Editing by Dale Hudson)
By Ardo Abdullahi

BAUCHI, Nigeria March 17 (Reuters) - A man purporting to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram denied in a video posted on Friday that 5,000 people held by the group had been freed by West African forces earlier in the week.

On Wednesday, Cameroon said regional forces had rescued the hostages, who were held in villages by the jihadist group, in an operation along the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

"You are telling lies that you killed 60 of our men and rescued 20 children, and that you rescued 5,000 of your people, Paul Biya," said the man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, referring to Cameroon's president.

He also claimed responsibility for attacks earlier this week which included suicide bombings in the city of Maiduguri and a raid on the town of Magumeri, both of which are in the northeast Nigerian state of Borno.

Nigeria's military has said on multiple occasions in the last few years that it has killed or wounded Shekau.

Such statements have often been followed by video denials by someone who says he is Shekau, but poor footage makes it difficult to confirm if the person is the same man as in previous footage.

Boko Haram has killed around 15,000 people and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to strict Islamic laws in the northeast of Africa's most populous nation.

The jihadist group, whose attacks have increased since the end of the rainy season in late 2016, also carries out cross-border attacks in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Kingimi; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, March 17 (Reuters) - Air France-KLM, British Airways and nine other airlines were hit with a 776 million euro ($835.5 million) fine by EU antitrust regulators on Friday for taking part in an air cargo cartel more than a decade ago.

The European Commission re-imposed the penalties after Europe's second highest court in 2015 annulled the EU executive's 2010 decision due to a procedural error.

The fines were unchanged for all the airlines except for the amount due from Martinair - cut to 15.4 million euros ($16.53 million)from the 29.5 million euro ($31.67 million) amount set in 2010.

Air France was fined 182.9 million euros ($196.32 million), the highest, followed by KLM at 127.1 million ($136.43 million), British Airways at 104.4 million ($112.06 million), Cargolux at 79.9 million ($85.76 million)and Singapore Airlines at 74.8 million ($80.29 million).

Other carriers penalised were Air Canada, Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Airlines, LAN Chile and SAS. Lufthansa, along with subsidiary Swiss International Airlines, escaped a fine as it alerted the cartel to the EU competition authority.

The Commission said it had fixed the procedural error cited by the court.

"Working together in a cartel rather than competing to offer better services to customers does not fly with the Commission," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

SAS, with a 70 million ($75.14 million) fine, and Air Canada, with a 21 million ($22.54 million) fine, have said they would appeal the new decision.

"Air Canada will contest it vigorously," a spokeswoman for the airline said by email.

The Commission in its 2010 finding said the cartel fixed air freight services, fuel and security surcharges between December 1999 and February 2006.

The decision led to a series of damages claims against the airlines from companies such as Germany's Deutsche Bahn, carmaker BMW and car supplier Bosch. ($1 = 0.9288 euros) ($1 = 0.9316 euros) (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek, Toby Davis and Chris Reese)
By Steve Scherer

ROME, March 17 (Reuters) - Italy will host a meeting between European and North African countries next week in a bid to strengthen support for an agreement it struck with Libya to fight people smuggling as migrant arrivals surge.

The prime minister of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Fayez al-Seraj, will meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and interior ministers from eight European countries including Germany and France on Monday.

Last month Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help Libya fight people smugglers, a deal that was endorsed by European Union member states.

But Libya is still far from stable. Two governments are vying for power - in Tobruk to the east and Tripoli to the west - and the country remains mired in factional fighting and lawlessness.

The authorities in eastern Libya have rejected the deal struck between Rome and Tripoli.

"I'm not so naive as to not understand the situation there," Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters. "But we cannot remain immobile and wait for the country to stabilise."

He said the Libya agreement and next week's meeting were not just "talk", but strategic steps toward managing mass migration to Europe.

So far this year more than 16,000 migrants - a 36 percent increase on the same period last year - have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy after Libya-based people smugglers piled them onto flimsy boats.

As part of the deal, Italy and the EU have promised to fund migrant camps on Libyan soil, but they need U.N. agencies to help manage them. Those same agencies have said Libya is not safe for migrants.

"Migrants and refugees in detention (in Libya) are held outside any legal process and in conditions which are generally inhuman. They are exposed to malnutrition, extortion, torture, sexual violence and other abuses," four U.N. chiefs said in joint statement last month.

On Friday, Italy's opposition 5-Star Movement also took issue with the Libya agreement, calling it "a sham". In a statement, 5-Star lawmakers said Libya was too dangerous for Italy's diplomats, urging the closure of the embassy in Tripoli.

Last week Tripoli was gripped by heavy fighting as armed groups allied with Seraj took over a compound that had been occupied by a rival leader, while forces in Libya's Oil Crescent battled for control of two major oil ports.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and interior ministers from Algeria and Tunisia will also attend the meeting. (Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Richard Lough)
By Nicolas Misculin

BUENOS AIRES, March 17 (Reuters) - Argentina is pushing for closer ties with Britain ahead of its largest trade mission to London in two decades later this month by avoiding a historical point of disagreement: competing sovereignty claims to the Falkland Islands.

Under President Mauricio Macri both sides have sought common ground on fishing and flights to the British-held islands some 500 kilometers off Argentina's coast 35 years after Britain won a brief war over their control.

Argentina has also expressed interest in a bilateral trade deal as Britain exits the European Union, a conciliatory approach that contrasts with former President Cristina Fernandez threatening lawsuits and sanctions on oil companies operating in the Falklands.

"There is a clear difference in the approach of the Macri government," Mike Summers, a long-time representative of the Falkland Islands' Legislative Assembly, told Reuters by email.

The change is in line with a promise by Macri, who took office in December 2015, to open Argentina to the world after 12 years of protectionism. Growing closer to Britain is politically complicated in a country where recollection remains strong of the nearly 1,000 lives lost, mostly Argentine, in the 1982 war.

Macri's strategy is to focus on what Argentina calls the 80 percent of issues of common interest between the two countries. It avoids the other 20 percent, namely the competing sovereignty claims. Nearly all the 3,000 islanders, 99.8 percent, prefer to remain a British territory according to a 2013 survey.

An Argentine government source who participated in recent talks told Reuters the British government also accepts negotiations that avoid touching on sovereignty claims.

In December, Argentina and Britain agreed on a framework to identify the bodies of dozens of Argentine soldiers buried on the islands, known as Islas Malvinas in Argentina.

But Summers said Argentina's government had not yet upheld a September 2016 agreement to remove restrictions on the oil and gas, shipping, and fishing industries and introduce new flights originating from third-party nations.

A spokesman for Chile-based Latam Airlines Group, which runs the only direct flight from Argentina to the islands, said the airline had not received any official notification about a formal intention to introduce new air links.

Looser restrictions on fishing, a primary source of income for islanders, are more likely and Britain and Argentina could exchange information to combat illegal catches by Asian trawlers, a British government source said.

The March 20-24 trade mission to Britain will bring representatives of a range of sectors including oil and small-and medium-sized businesses.

HEALING WOUNDS

With mid-term congressional elections in Argentina scheduled for later this year, the opposition Peronists may use the Falklands to rally political support with Argentines who preferred Fernandez's more nationalist approach.

In one recent episode illustrating the need to tread carefully, Argentina issued a statement criticizing Brazil for allowing at least six flights from Brazilian military bases to the Falklands last year.

A Brazilian diplomatic source told Reuters the flights were for humanitarian purposes and Argentina had issued the statement only after opposition lawmakers accessed the information on the flights and used it to criticize what they called increasing militarization of the islands.

The British government says the number of troops in the Falklands has fallen steadily since the April 1982 conflict to 1,200 currently. There were actually fewer flights from Brazil last year than in 2015, the Argentina statement said.

While some Argentines continue to protest British control of the islands and rock stars wear T-shirts supporting them, others want reconciliation. Human rights activist and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel traveled to the islands with other activists earlier this month.

"We hope to be able to communicate with the islanders and for them to come visit the continent ... to see the possibility of healing wounds," Perez Esquivel said during the trip. (Additional reporting by Caroline Stauffer in Buenos Aires, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia and Rosalba O'Brien in Santiago; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
BELGRADE, March 17 (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development may tap the Serbian market later in the year with another dinar bond to boost borrowing in the domestic currency, the head of lender's mission in Belgrade said on Friday.

The EBRD issued its first three-year, 2.5 billion dinar ($21.68 million) bond in December 2016. The maturity came with a rate of 3-month BELIBOR -- the rate on dinar deposits in the interbank market -- plus 0.4 percent.

Daniel Berg, EBRD director for Serbia, said that the bank now has two projects under way that would use money from the bond and that he hoped the first deal should be signed by the end of March.

In December, the EBRD said it hoped 15 to 20 percent of its lending to Serbia could eventually be in dinars. The bank has already issued bonds and lent in local currency in a number of countries, including Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

"What I hope ... is that those first loans will be signed ... and we'll come back to the market for additional dinar fundraising later in the year, and I hope the next fundraising will even be at more competitive pricing," Berg said.

"The first one (bond) is competitive enough, but I am not sure it's going to be easy to sell that price forever."

The EBRD has so far lent 4.5 billion euros ($4.8 billion) to Serbia where more than 70 percent of borrowing is in foreign currencies.

Berg said that the EBRD wants to boost borrowing in the dinar as unhedged borrowers in foreign currencies can be exposed to exchange rate risks.

"People have dinar incomes, dinar revenues and they are borrowing in euros ... they have a risk on their balance sheet which they are not addressing if they are borrowing in euro," he said.

Berg also said that the EBRD was considering working with commercial banks to invest in Serbia's energy sector including wind farms and environmental projects such as a Belgrade landfill.

"If you are financing a couple of them then you are talking about 100 to 125 million euros from the EBRD," he said.

(1 = 115.3100 Serbian dinars) ($1 = 0.9307 euros) (Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Reuters) - South Sudan's government is mainly to blame for famine in parts of the war-torn country, yet President Salva Kiir is still boosting his forces using millions of dollars from oil sales, according to a confidential United Nations report.

U.N. sanctions monitors said 97 percent of South Sudan's known revenue comes from oil sales, a significant portion of which is now forward oil sales, and that at least half of the budget - "likely substantially more" - is devoted to security.

"Revenue from forward oil sales totaled approximately $243 million between late March and late October 2016," the panel of U.N. monitors said in the report to the U.N. Security Council, seen by Reuters on Thursday.

"Despite the scale and scope of the political, humanitarian, and economic crises, the panel continues to uncover evidence of the ongoing procurement of weapons by the ... Government for the SPLA (South Sudanese army), the National Security Service, and other associated forces and militias," the report said.

The United Nations has declared a famine in some parts of the world's youngest country, where nearly half its population - some 5.5 million people - face food shortages. A civil war erupted in 2013 when Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who has fled and is now in South Africa.

"The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine ... has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of military operations undertaken by the SPLM/A in Government in southern Unity state; denial of humanitarian access, primarily by the SPLM/A in Government; and population displacement resulting from the war," the report said.

The United Nations says at least one quarter of South Sudanese have been displaced since 2013.

'NOT CORRECT'

South Sudan's government rejected the report on Friday.

"We have not bought arms for the last of two to three years," government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

"We have rights to buy arms for self-protection or self-defense ... So this idea of the U.N. saying the government of South Sudan doesn't care about its people and they are fan of buying arms all the time is not correct," he said.

The annual report of the sanctions monitors to the 15-member Security Council comes ahead of a ministerial meeting of the body on South Sudan next Thursday, which is due to be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

While the previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama was heavily involved in the birth of South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and led Security Council efforts to try to end the civil war, the policy of new U.S. President Donald Trump toward the African state is unclear.

In December, the Security Council failed to adopt a U.S.-drafted resolution to impose an arms embargo and further sanctions on South Sudan despite warnings by U.N. officials of a possible genocide. The U.N. monitors again recommended in their report that the council impose an arms embargo on South Sudan.

The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015 and has blacklisted six generals - three from each side of the conflict - by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

The U.N. monitors said all parties to the conflict continue to commit widespread human rights violations "with near complete impunity and a lack of any credible effort to prevent these violations or to punish the perpetrators."

U.N. peacekeepers have been in South Sudan since 2011. (Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
By Crispian Balmer

ROME, March 17 (Reuters) - Italy has abolished voucher payments for workers, which were highly popular with employers, to avoid a bruising referendum championed by the country's main union, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Friday.

Payment by vouchers was introduced in 2008 as an experiment for seasonal farm labourers. The flexible and unregulated form of payment was aimed at encouraging bosses to stop hiring workers on an illegal, ad hoc basis.

Its use has spread rapidly across many sectors, with 1.7 million people -- about 8 percent of all working Italians -- receiving some or all payment in vouchers in 2015, angering the CGIL union, which has promoted a referendum on the issue that was due to be held on May 28.

The ruling centre-left Democratic Party lost a referendum in December on constitutional reform, forcing the resignation of then prime minister Matteo Renzi, and the government is anxious to avoid another bruising ballot-box battle.

"We have done this in the knowledge that Italy does not need an election campaign on themes such as this in the months ahead," Gentiloni told reporters. He said cabinet had approved an emergency decree to abolish the vouchers, which must now be passed into law within 60 days.

The CGIL hailed the move as a "great success" but employers and centre-right political parties said it would push parts of the economy back into the shadows and complicate legal job creation.

Under the voucher system, workers are not paid directly in money but with certificates which the employer buys online, or at a post office or tobacconist, for 10 euros ($11), 20 euros or 50 euros each.

Workers then cash their vouchers in and receive 7.5 euros for each 10 euros of face value, with 2.5 euros going to the state to cover insurance and pension contributions.

Without an employment contract, workers have no rights in areas such as sick pay, holidays or leave, while there are obvious advantages and savings for employers. Unions said bosses were also abusing the system, paying only some wages in vouchers and the rest in cash.

The government said it would work with unions on drawing up a replacement system.

The government also legislated to pre-empt another referendum that was slated for May 28, extending the rights of people working on projects assigned by tender processes as was demanded by the CGIL.

The Eurointelligence think-tank said the end of the easy-to-use vouchers showed the impossibility of reforming hidebound Italy, which has regularly underperformed other eurozone economies since the launch of the single currency in 1999.

"The underlying problem is that the chances of Italy converging towards the eurozone are nil, no matter who is in government," the British-based Eurointelligence wrote in a note. (Additional reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Toby Davis)
By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - The Trump administration is crafting a big new arms package for Taiwan that could include advanced rocket systems and anti-ship missiles to defend against China, U.S. officials said, a deal sure to anger Beijing.

The package is expected to be significantly larger than one that was shelved at the end of the Obama administration, the officials told Reuters on the eve of a visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

"The political desire is there to do a substantial sale," one administration official said, adding that internal deliberations had begun on a deal "that's much stronger, much more significant than the one that was not accepted by the Obama people."

President Donald Trump's administration is eager to proceed with the sales, but it is expected to take months and possibly into next year for the White House to overcome obstacles, including concern that Beijing's sensitivities over Taiwan could make it harder to secure cooperation on priorities such as reining in North Korea, the official said.

Completion of a package also could be held up by the slow pace at which the Trump administration is filling national security jobs, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because initial work toward new arms sales has not been made public.

Discussions between Taiwan and the new administration already have begun, according to a person in Taipei familiar with the matter.

The White House declined comment.

Details of the administration's approach to Taiwan emerged as Tillerson was due to visit China this weekend, where he will seek more Chinese support on North Korea and firm up a first meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected next month.

In December, President Barack Obama's administration put the brakes on a Taiwan deal under discussion. That package was worth $1 billion, Washington's Free Beacon newspaper reported this week, citing unnamed officials, who also were quoted as saying the Trump administration was now preparing new sales.

Ned Price, a National Security Council spokesman under Obama, said the previous administration put a "relatively modest" arms package for Taiwan on hold, in part to let the new administration make the decision.

The Trump administration source told Reuters that the new deals under consideration would likely top the $1 billion mark.

The new administration plans to focus more than the previous one on enhancing Taiwan's "asymmetric" capabilities, possibly with advanced multiple launch rocket systems, anti-ship missiles and other technologies that would enable Taiwan's military to defend against a much larger Chinese force in the event of an attack, the U.S. official said.

Lockheed Martin Corp is the top U.S. manufacturer of multiple launch rocket systems. Other foreign companies involved in the sector include Germanys Diehl and Britains BAE Systems .

A $1.83 billion arms sale to Taiwan that Obama announced in December 2015, to China's dismay, included two Navy frigates in addition to anti-tank missiles and amphibious attack vehicles.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of "one China." But successive administrations have continued providing billions of dollars in arms as part of a congressionally mandated requirement to ensure the island can defend itself.

Taiwan has already been a major point of contention between Trump and China, which considers the island a renegade province.

As president-elect, Trump broke with protocol and accepted a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in December, angering China. He then suggested he might abandon Washington's "one China" policy, which accepts the self-ruled island as part of China. Once in office, Trump reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the decades-old policy.

The White House is mindful that tensions could flare again over new arms sales. But some Trump aides insist they are needed to make clear that the United States, Taiwan's sole arms supplier, is committed to upgrading the island's defenses. (Additional reporting by J.R. Wu in Taipei and John Walcott in Washington; Editing by John Walcott and Tom Brown)
Citizens demand that Artur Sargsyan be buried in Yerablur Pantheon (video)

A group of citizens started a march from Liberty Square to the building of the Armenian government to pose their demands to the executive body. They demand that Artur Sargsyan,nicknamed the bringer of bread, be buried in Yerablur military pantheon. Secondly, they demand punishment for those responsible for Artur Sargsyans death. The group gave the government ten minutes to answer them. Deputy Chief of Yerevan Police Valeri Osipyan told the protesters that the answer will be given on Saturday. Shahen Petrosyan said they would return on Saturday to get a reply. Artur Sargsyan, nicknamed the bringer of bread for taking food to members of the Sasna Dzrer group who seized a Yerevan police building last July and remained barricaded there for nearly two weeks, died on March 16 while being treated at the Armenia Medical Center. He died ten days after being released from prison following a 25-day hunger strike. Sargsyan, 49, underwent urgent bowel surgery at the hospital the previous night. Artur Sargsyan was first arrested last August for aiding the gunmen and released in December because of his deteriorating health condition. He was again arrested in February 2017 allegedly for not showing up in the hearing of last years standoff. Sargsyan began a hunger strike in protest against his detention. He was released from pre-trial detention earlier in March after six MPs from several political parties paid a bail for him in the amount of 3million drams. Armenias Investigative Committee (IC) today launched a criminal investigation into the death of Artur Sargsyan.
BERLIN, March 17 (Reuters) - Europe and the United States should keep sanctions in place against Russia until there is progress in implementing the 2015 Minsk accords aimed at ending the violence in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said.

Tensions are again running high between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists: Kiev this week cut off cargo shipments from the breakaway regions until the separatists hand back control of businesses they have seized.

"It is important that Europe and the United States present a unified front and stick to the sanctions against Russia until there is progress in implementing the Minsk agreements," Gabriel said in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, to be published on Saturday.

"So far the United States has supported this common understanding and I hope it stays that way," he added.

Chancellor Angela Merkel held her first meeting on Friday with U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he appreciated the leadership of Germany and France in trying to find a peaceful solution in Ukraine.

Trump's positive comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin during his campaign for the White House last year have made Ukrainian officials nervous that he might be inclined to relax the economic sanctions.

Merkel, who will travel to Moscow in May, said in Washington she was working for a "safe and secure solution for Ukraine, but the relationship with Russia has to be improved as well."

More than 10,000 people have been killed in three years of conflict in eastern Ukraine. Merkel said there had not been the desired progress in implementing the Minsk accords, but Germany would continue to work to ensure they were implemented. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By John Miller

ZURICH, March 17 (Reuters) - Peru is moving closer to recovering up to $50 million linked to corrupt arms deals involving ex-president Alberto Fujimori, according to a Swiss-based group assisting its efforts.

It said about a third of that sum could be returned in the coming months, starting as early as April, once courts in Switzerland and Luxembourg resolve disputes over frozen bank accounts.

Peru is trying to wrest back the funds in an ongoing 15-year-old corruption probe against Fujimori and his spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, who are both in jail for corruption.

They are suspected of getting "commissions" from weapons dealers that were secretly deposited into overseas bank accounts.

Peru has already recovered about $93 million linked to the 1990s arms deals, which included a purchase of Russian MiG-29 fighter jets, said the Basel Institute on Governance, the legal assistance group helping Peru.

Another $17 million -- some $1.5 million from Swiss accounts and $15.5 million from Luxembourg -- could be returned in the next few months, while recovery of $33 million in five other accounts in the two countries is less advanced, it said.

In one case outlined in a Swiss court ruling, the Russian company that sold Peru the MiG-29 jets deposited $16 million into Zurich bank accounts linked to Fujimori and Montesinos, according to court documents.

A portion of that money, now totalling nearly $1 million including interest, was then transferred to a separate account controlled by the man who signed the sales contract for the Russian company.

A three-judge panel of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court, in a ruling made public last week, rejected the man's last-ditch appeal to unfreeze his account and block repatriation to Peru.

The man's name has not been released by Swiss courts. Felix Fischer, one of his two lawyers in Zurich, declined to comment on the case, citing attorney-client privilege.

"The decisions are important because they bring new insight into legal practice advancing the fight against corruption and the recovery of stolen assets," the Basel group said.

A decision on the Luxembourg accounts is due to be announced in early April, said its managing director, Gretta Fenner.

Peru's Attorney General Pablo Sanchez Velarde did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the transfers or when they could take place.

The Basel organisation said this is the first time a Peruvian confiscation order in a corruption case is being executed in a foreign jurisdiction. "Peru is writing history with these cases," it said. (Reporting by John Miller in Zurich, Mitra Taj in Lima; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN, March 17 (Reuters) - The German government plans to buy six Lockheed Martin C-130J military transport planes for around 900 million euros ($966 million) starting in 2019 under a joint operating agreement with France, German government documents show.

Germany and France first began working on the deal in October and announced broad outlines of their plans in February at a meeting of the NATO alliance, part of a broader push to increase European defence cooperation.

The German finance and defence ministries provided first concrete details about the cost of the aircraft -- and 110 million euros in additional costs for infrastructure and training simulators -- in documents sent to lawmakers, who must approve the funding for the planned German-French agreement.

The German finance ministry said Berlin would formally request procurement of the airplanes in 2019, according to the documents seen by Reuters.

France has already ordered four aircraft and plans to buy two more for the fleet, which is to be based in Evreux, France and operated jointly by both countries, the documents showed.

France would match Germany's spending of 110 million euros for infrastructure improvements at the air base and to buy simulators for joint training, they said.

The joint fleet is to be ready for use by 2021.

The German defence ministry told lawmakers that the simulators for the C-130J were built by Canadian firm CAE Inc , and official discussions with Canadian authorities about the procurement were planned in 2017.

The German air force had initially hoped to buy up to 12 C-130J military transports itself for the joint fleet so it could operate some in France, and set up a second base in Germany, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The defence ministry settled on buying six aircraft, citing financial constraints, but several sources said the issue could be revisited in coming years.

"The need was identified and it hasn't changed," said one of the sources.

Germany says it need the C-130J transports to augment a planned fleet of 53 Airbus A400M transports and fill a capability gap that will come up starting in 2021 when Germany retires its fleet of smaller C-160 Transall transports, which can land at a broader array of airports and runways. ($1 = 0.9314 euros) (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
Lets begin by remembering how widely the effects of a disaster can be felt. If an individual company experiences a disruption, it can be devastating for the people who work in it or rely on its products or dividends. But imagine large-scale disasters, like the Japanese tsunami or the bush fires in Australia that put many businesses out of commission. If the companies cannot get back, up and running quickly, the effects are multiplied, consequently the tax base is affected and economic

recovery delayed.



Criticality of BCM

Business continuity management (BCM) is critical because it looks beyond dealing with the emergency itself. It takes into account what will be required to get the business up and running as soon as possible and keep it and its dependents working and contributing to the economy for the long term. The failure of BCM affects the company concerned, a number of people who will experience personal disasters when operations cease, as well as the government.

One could even argue that BCM is not only a risk management process, but also as a basic human right because it provides:

Employment continuity by making sure the employees have a job/workplace to return to after a disruption or disaster.

Confidence continuity by ensuring the staff and stakeholder retain their confidence in the ability of the business to recover from disaster.

Social continuity by ensuring that the state will not be negatively impacted financially through the non-collection of taxes.

BCM (or the lack of it) thus has far-reaching effects. In order to make it work, stakeholders across the business and its value chain all have to be involved: managers, process owners, strategic planners, project and procurement teams, key suppliers and directors all have to be involved in managing risk. It goes much deeper than just preparing for a major eventa flood, a terrorist attack or the likebut of preparing the business and its employees for anything. An effective BCM plan based on international best practice will generate the following six clear benefits:

Minimize the effect of a disruption on an organisation.

Reduce the risk of financial loss.

Retain company brand and image and give staff, clients and suppliers confidence in the organisations services.

Enable the recovery of critical systems within an agreed timeframe.

Meet legal and statutory obligations.

Measure the level of compliance to international business continuity standards from the Business Continuity Institute.



Benefits of business continuity planning

Business continuity planning is an essential part of running any modern organisation that takes its business and its clients seriously. With so many potential business disasters looming that can befall an organisation at any time, it seems unwise not to take actions to prepare for and try to prevent the devastating impact of such catastrophes.

There is a multiplicity of benefits in planning for business continuity within your organisation. Not only will your data, hardware, software, etc., be better protected, but the people that compose your organisation will be better safeguarded should a disaster occurs. In addition, the employees will be informed and rehearsed as to what actions to take to immediately start the recovery process and ensure business continuity if a disaster strikes.

Without this type of preparation, any unexpected event can severely disrupt the operation, continuity and effectiveness of your business. Disabling events can come in all shapes and varieties. They can vary from the more common calamities like hard drive corruption, building fires or flooding to the rarer, yet more severe and often longer lasting disruptions that can occur on a city-wide or even national basis; events such as disruptions in transport (oil crises, metro shut-downs, transport worker, strikes, etc.), infrastructure weakening from terrorist attacks or even severe loss of staff due to illness like a pandemic flu. All of these strike a blow at an organisations struggle for business continuity.

For smaller companies, the impact of the above-mentioned and even lesser disasters can hit much harder. For example, unexpected non-availability of key workers alone could be catastrophic, potentially causing as much disruption to business continuity as technological hardship, especially if it occurs during the height of the companys busy season. If only one person is trained to do particular and/or essential tasks, their unexpected absence can severely disrupt productivity. Thus, putting business continuity plans into practice in your organisation now can prepare your business for most any potential disaster, help ensure that you will be able to maintain continuity of your business practices and reduce or even possibly remove the effect such calamities could have on your organisation.

In addition to the above-mentioned benefits, the following are also advantages of business continuity planning:

If not already, your organisation my soon be required to incorporate some type of BCM planning into its policies by either corporate governance or governmental legislation.

With an effective and practiced business continuity plan, your insurance company may well view you more favourably should some sort of disaster ever require you to call upon their services.

In creating a business continuity plan, the process of evaluating potential weakness and planning how to deal with what could possibly go wrong often offers management the chance to gain a better understanding of the minutia of their business and ultimately helps an organisation identify ways to strengthen any shortcomings. Frequently the greatest and most immediate value of the business continuity planning process is the awareness one gains of the details of his/her business and not necessarily the streamlining of how to handle disaster as an organisation. Business continuity planning can often create awareness of useful ways to improve an organisation, sometimes even in areas that had previously gone unconsidered.

Business continuity planning will make your organisation more robust. It can strengthen your organisation not only against large-scale problems; it can also help make smaller problems that might have caused continuity interruptions to become moot, through detailed planning.

Business continuity plan will show your investors that you take business seriously, that you are prepared and desire to maintain productivity regardless of difficulty. This preparation will also show your staff that you have their employment and personal well-being in mind. It will show that you care.

Informing your customers that you have a business continuity plan, that you have taken steps to ensure continuity of your productivity so that you can keep your commitments to them, lets them know that you consider the provision of quality service a high priority which in turns instils their confidence in your business.

A business continuity plan helps protect your organisations image, brand and reputation. Being known as a reliable company is always good for business.

And finally, a business continuity plan can significantly reduce your loses if ever you are hit by disaster.

BCM today has become a major concern to all industry sectors and has now been recognized as an integral part of good management and governance practice. It is increasingly required by compliance regulations and organisations that want to do business with you.

(Kamran Ziauddin is Associate Director at MSI Management Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd, Sri Lanka. Subject matter expert  risk and business continuity management. He is available on email: Kamran@msiconsultants.lk)
I wont send letters without the permission of the Ex-Co or Bar Counci

I thought it was the right time to come forward

they spread the news that my rival supported hybrid courts. The majority of Tamils voted for him

Legal education needs to be regulated and periodically evaluated

We must have a dialogue between the JSA, the AGs department and the BASL over judicial appointments

This is the first time there has been deliberate mudslinging

The election of Attorney-at-Law U. R. De Silva as the new president of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka was accepted by Solicitor General Suhada Gamlath yesterday, after what appears to have been a stormy campaign. De Silva won by a narrow margin, saying he would have won far more votes if not for the keen contest. These developments reflected an unprecedented attempt to politicize the campaign that De Silva said he has not seen before in BASL elections. In a wide-ranging interview with the Dailymirror he commented on matters including the recent controversial appointment of High Court judge R Kannan, professional ethics for lawyers, the appropriateness of BASL accepting foreign funding, issues relating to legal education and the laws delays. Excerpts from the interview:

QTell us something about the campaign  was it closely fought?

Earlier, candidates usually came forward after some period of service to the bar, or as Presidents Counsel. In my case I have been here right through. I was called to the bar in 1983. I was Chairman of the Social and Welfare Committee in 2000, the Treasurer from 2001 to 2003, and elected Secretary BASL in 2008 (till 2010). I was appointed a Commissioner of the Legal Aid Commission and did a lot of public service. So I thought it was the right time to come forward and contest the presidency of BASL.



Earlier we did not have this kind of campaign. There was political branding as well.



Q Is that true?



I had no connection with the UPFA. Though I had 30 years experience I was not appointed a Presidents Counsel.



Q What is your comment on the politicization of the election?



It had not happened before. Earlier we came forward as non-political candidates. My view is that it should be non-political. That is the view of my predecessors also. This time there were stories spread on Facebook. We are not going to answer each and every thing that was said. It was done deliberately. The outgoing Deputy President of BASL Saliya Peiris had even issued a statement (appealing) not to have any mudslinging. I put the correct picture on Facebook. My colleagues used Bar Council and ExCo records to show there was no such thing.



Q Was Facebook used during campaigns in previous BASL elections?



(It was used) To some extent. This is the first time there has been deliberate mudslinging.



Q As new president of the BASL what do you propose to do about it?



My view is this type of campaign should be stopped. Those candidates who do it should be disqualified.



Q Do you think you have a case for libel?



Yes. One of the stories spread about me was that I appear for rapists. A lot of people didnt vote for me because they believed these stories. That is the reason for my low majority in the results. Out of 8000 members in Colombo only 2600 came out to vote. One would have expected at least 4000 to vote. In Tamil areas they spread the news that my rival supported hybrid courts. The majority of Tamils voted for him. I have done a lot of work for Tamil people.



Q Did the recent controversial appointment of lawyer R. Kannan as a High Court judge come up as an issue during the campaign?

It affected the election in the sense that the Judicial Service Association protested and initially refused to participate as presiding officers in the election. But it was not a campaign issue. I am thankful to the judges (for their participation).



Q What is your view on this appointment?



It is not my personal view that is important. It is a matter for the profession. If I am president I wont send letters without the permission of the Ex-Co or Bar Council. At the same time a BASL president should be able to decide whats right and whats not. If this was (former BASL president) Alagaratnams personal view he shouldnt have used the letterhead (to recommend Kannan). He has explained (his position) to the Bar Council. If they are not satisfied they could query. We could appoint a committee of seniors who can give their thoughts. After the first convocation there will be a meeting between the Chief Justice, the Judicial Service Association and the BASL ExCo, in order to arrive at some criteria. There should be some criteria in these matters. We cant say that only judges should be in the judiciary either. There should be a ratio. We must have a dialogue with all parties  the JSA, the AGs department, the BASL. Why cant senior lawyers from the unofficial bar be appointed? We need to discuss it.



Q What are your other priorities as new president?



One is to address the question of laws delays. A Judicial Service Commission circular says we should have day-to-day trials. (meaning, once a case is taken it should be heard continuously from day to day and not postponed for weeks). I am a member of the Criminal Procedure Committee. My view is there should be a pre trial stage where it is possible to find out whether the witnesses are there, the documents are in order etc and whether it is possible to go for a trial. If stenographers are not available how can you go for day-to-day trials? Also if both parties are in agreement on some issues we can decide not to take up those issues. This is why there are delays.



Another matter is professional ethics. Lawyers conduct has to be addressed, including their attire. Some come dressed in saris of various colours, men come with coloured ties. There should be a dress code.



We need to have a lot of conferences for lawyers to educate them. There is no proper apprenticeship program for students. More practical knowledge should be given in the final year apprenticeship programs. An increasing numbers of lawyers are passing out. There were 800 this time, there will be 1200 next time (November 2017). In my view the curricula of Law College needs to be changed.

The other issue is evaluation of Law institutions. We have various institutions awarding LLB degrees We must find out if they are doing a proper job, not just charging money to give a certificate. Students go straight from O-levels and A-levels into these private institutions. They study for London LLB degrees. We have a Council of Legal Education managing the legal education programs. We should persuade the Council of Legal Education to evaluate these universities.



Q Is there no monitoring of these institutions?



Thats right. I am not against private legal education if it is done properly. They are charging a lot of money. The British system is being taught, with the London LLB, and they can practise after going through Law College. Legal education needs to be regulated and periodically evaluated. We need a dialogue on this.



Q What is your view on BASL accepting foreign funding?



If foreign people are ready to help us genuinely conducting educational programs, enhancing public knowledge it is alright. When I was Secretary there was a UNDP project. They did not instruct us to do this or that. Only asked us to make our proposals. We did it in our own way. They shouldnt control the BASL. The BASL needs money, to do more programs for the public. Law Week and Legal Aid are important for vulnerable sections of the population to get their legal work done. If they can establish they have low income we help them to file cases.



Q Any other priorities?



Outstation bars should do more work in consultation with the Justice Ministry. They are interested in helping. Both the Minister and Secretary, who knows his stuff. They are ready to think out of the box.



QWill you propose ethical guidelines for lawyers?

We need to consult senior lawyers and get together to arrive at a proper mechanism.
While the majority of the world seemed unaware, Sri Lanka and its diverse citizens grappled with a 25 yearlong civil war throughout most of the 80s, 90s and the 2000s -- a war that pitted race against race, religion against religion and districts against districts. Many of the young people born into this war were fated to know nothing more than the division and segregation it caused across the country.

As the civil war drew to a close, the initiators of Sri Lanka Unites (SLU) recognised the need for reconciliation amongst the younger generation in order to ensure that the wounds of prejudice do not deem the country to be divided in years to come.



Sri Lanka Unites is a movement initiated by Prashan De Viss as he took the opportunity to replace a culture of divisiveness and conflict and be a voice for change, hope and reconciliation. As the name suggests, SLUs vision was to unite the youth of all ethnic and religious groups across Sri Lanka thereby creating a peaceful and prosperous nation for future generations.



The movement began with a small team of volunteers but 10 years on, due to its growth and impact, SLU now has a team of full-time employees who work alongside to oversee projects throughout all 25 districts of Sri Lanka. SLU describes the heart of their movement as the SLU clubs in schools throughout all districts, which now has 20,000 members of different gender, race, and religion, all working towards one goal; a united Sri Lanka.



Through events such as the Future Leaders Conference which brings together the top student leaders from around the country for five days, SLU catalyses the process of integration and reconciliation.

The conference enables student leaders to meet their peers from various parts of the island and provide them the opportunity to challenge the prejudices they may have inherited, empowering them to be agents of change and part of the solution. Furthermore, the recently-established reconciliation centres in Mullaitivu, Kalmunai, Matara and Monaragala aim to provide education to youth in these districts through Information Technology and language and entrepreneurial education skills. Providing counselling and career guidance, many of the graduates from these educational hubs go on to pursue higher education, creating employment opportunities and making them a symbol of hope and reconciliation in their own regions. While celebrating their 10th anniversary, SLU will be recognising the pioneers who forged a path for reconciliation and peace in our beautiful nation. The 10th anniversary celebrations will include the acknowledgement of eight key individuals who have made significant contributions to the cause of peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka by the awarding of the Outstanding Sri Lankan Role Model. Among the eight recipients of the award are Mrs. Visaka Dharmadasa, Chair and founder of the Association of War Affected Women, Dr. Jayantha Dhanapala, former UN Secretary General for Disarmament, Mr. Kushil Gunasekara, founder of the Foundation of Goodness and Dr. Selvy Thiruchandran, Trustee and Board member of the Womens Education and Research Centre (WERC).



As the next generation moves into leadership, the future of this nation is in their hands. The hope that they make choices for peace and unity is the vision and mandate of Sri Lanka Unites. As we celebrate a decade of their efforts, we can join hands with this movement to ensure all generations and the ones to come only know of a reconciled and unified Sri Lanka.
Chinese Communist Party International Department Minister Hon Song Taopaid visited the BMICH during his recent visit to Sri Lanka.

He toured and viewed all the facilities of the BMICH and was very impressed with the high standard of maintenance and upkeep of the premises.

He regarded the BMICH as a symbol of the strong bond and cordiality between Sri Lanka and China.
Britains GCHQ (Britains communications intelligence agency ) issued a rare public statement dismissing White House claims that the UK Intelligence agency may have helped Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump.



The White House latched onto a disputed Fox News report Thursday in its latest battle with the press to produce evidence of President Donald Trumps claim that Barack Obama wiretapped him.

Just before press secretary Sean Spicer was due to take questions from reporters on camera, the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the panels top Democrat released a joint statement affirming a lack of evidence to support the presidents claim.



Responding to ABC News Jon Karl attempt to question Spicer on their statement, Spicer pointed to a March 14 Fox & Friends broadcast in which Judge Andrew Napolitano claimed he had three sources telling him that Obama used GCHQ to spy on Trump.



In a rare public rebuke, a statement from GCHQ said: Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.



Immediately after the broadcast a spokesperson for the British government told Fox that no part of this story is true.



A British security official told Reuters the same thing. The claim was totally untrue and quite frankly absurd, the representative of the British government said.

(Daily Mail, US), 17 March 2017
By D.B.S. Jeyaraj

That Politics is a blood sport was a famous saying by former Sri Lankan President Junius Richard Jayewardene. In the cut-throat competitive world of Sri Lankan politics there have been many casualties, who aspired to high office but failed to fulfil their ambitions. Even people with powerful bloodlines in Sri Lankas dynastic political realm fell or were felled in this blood sport arena.One such striking political personality was Anura Bandaranaike who passed away nine years ago on March 16, 2008 .



Anura as he was generally known was the son of two Sri Lankan Prime Ministers and was often referred to as the crown prince  within the context of Sri Lankas dynastic politics. Though Anura did hold several high posts during his eventful political career, the offices of Prime Minister or President he yearned for eluded him. In that sense he was the political crown prince who was never ever crowned as king.



I have interacted with Anura Bandaranaike in my professional capacity as a journalist during 1977 to 88. I have met him on several occasions and engaged in several conversations with him -- both on and off the record. I once interviewed Anura at length for an Indian publication. For some reason the interview was never published. When I told him about it not being published, Anura took it lightly and said, I know it was not your fault. I have also written about Anura on earlier occasions and would be drawing from such writings in penning this piece about him.



Anura Priyadarshi Solomon Dias Bandaranaike was born on February 15, 1949. Being the youngest child he was called Malli and regarded as the family pet. Unlike his father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who studied at St. ThomasCollege and then went to Oxford university, Anura went to Royal College and then to a University in London where he read for a BA degree specializing in history and political science. His political detractors had a field day raising doubts about his educational qualifications. They ridiculed him as Anura Gona and claimed that he had not even passed his GCE Olevels. Anura was compelled to display his certificates publicly at one point. Among Anuras contemporaries at Royal were Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and de-facto opposition leader Dinesh Gunawardena.



Upon his return to Sri Lanka in 1974, Anura plunged with zest into the family Vocation of politics. He was placed in charge of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) youth wing and also appointed as a director of the National Youth Services Council. Young Anura was then the heir apparent to the partys crown and national leadership. It was expected that he would have his inevitable tryst with destiny in due course. But fate decreed otherwise. The Crown Prince kept waiting and waiting to be crowned but the expected coronation never materialised. Finally he departed uncrowned as the prince who never became King at the age of 59 on March 16th 2008. The saying Always the brides maid never the bride applied appropriately to Anura Bandaranaike.



Three degrees of greatness

Greatness,was of three types, said the Bard of Avon. Some are born great and some achieve greatness while there are also some who have greatness thrust upon them. Anura Bandaranaike was an embodiment in different degrees of this greatness as defined by Shakespeare.He was born great as the only son of Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike and Sirima Ratwatte  hailing from aristocratic low-country and Kandyan Sinhala families  who were both prime ministers of this country.



The accident of birth enabled Anura to have greatness thrust upon himself to some extent. Being elected as a twenty-eight year old member of Parliament in an unfamiliar electorate on his maiden effort was more due to his family background rather than his intrinsic merits. So too was becoming the Leader of the Opposition at the age of thirty-four.



Anura also achieved limited greatness. He was both cabinet minister and speaker. He was also in Parliament continuously from 1977 till his death in 2008.Yet he never realised his full potential as a political leader or attained his ambition to be Premier and/or President.



While Anuras sisters Sunethra and Chandrika were left of centre in their political beliefs, Anura was firmly to the right. In terms of ideology and political outlook Anura was closer to J.R.Jayewardena than many of his party colleagues. He was class conscious and was for class solidarity cutting across party lines. Anura engaged in talks with JR about an anti-left UNP-SLFP alliance in the seventies. When a by  election to Kalawewa was held in 1974, JR announced that the United National Party would not field a candidate if Anura was the SLFP choice. This did not happen as Anura was not the SLFP candidate then. Later JR was to wish Anura many more years as leader of the opposition on his birthday.



Pedigree played a crucial part in Anura being an MP, opposition leader, speaker and cabinet minister etc at different times. Yet in his own right Anura Bandaranaike was an impressive orator in both Sinhala and English. He extensively researched facts before his Parliamentary speeches. He was one MP who made full use of the Parliament library delving deep into past Hansards. He was also well-versed in Shakespeares plays and the Bible and would often quote from them. Anuras address on the occasion of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers visit in 1985 was a splendid effort. It was perhaps the best indication of Anura being a chip of the old block as his father SWRDB had been dubbed silver  tongued orator.

Anura Bandaranaike was an impressive orator in both Sinhala and English. He extensively researched facts before his Parliamentary speeches.

He was one MP who made full use of the Parliament library



Anura Bandaranaike was to the Manor (or Walauwe) born and the tragedy of his life was that he was always conscious of it. He thought that being a Bandaranaike entitled him to the highest offices of the land. That however was not to be. Many persons would have been delighted to have gained at least a part of what Anura Bandaranaike had had in terms of political office. But the man had set his sights on something he thought was his birthright. Being born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth Anura expected everything would be delivered to him on a platter. This never happened and so he was disillusioned and disappointed .



Anura Bandaranaike was the grandson of Maha Mudliyar Bandaranaike and Ratwatte Disawe. The marriage of his father Solomon Bandaranaike and mother Sirima Ratwatte was hailed then as a political union between two prestigious Low Country and Hill-Country Sinhala families.The wedding was the beginning of a new political dynasty- What a political dynasty that was! In the first sixty years of independence from 1948 to 2008 there has always been a Bandaranaike in the legislature (Parliament or Senate ) except for 10 months from Sep 1959 to July 1960. Members of the family have been Prime Ministers for 21 years; President for 11 years; leaders of the opposition for 14 years; With Anuras demise that dynasty has come to an end.(Unless Chandrikas children Yasodhara and/or Vimukthi enter politics).



Family based political succession

The phenomenon of family based political succession in Sri Lanka began not with the Bandaranaikes but the Senanayakes when Dudley Shelton succeeded his father Don Stephen Senanayake as Prime Minister in 1951. Then came the Bandaranaikes turn when the widowed Sirima became Prime Minister in July 1960. SWRD was assassinated in 1959. Indias Jawarhalal Nehru who was Prime Minister for 17 years died in 1964. His daughter Indira Gandhi became premier in 1966. The Nehrus and Bandaranaikes were regarded as close, both politically and personally.



There is a famous photograph of both families where Nehru, Bandaranaike, Indira and Sirima are seen with their children Rajiv, Sanjay, Sunethra, Chandrika and Anura.There is an interesting story about this picture.When the photograph was taken only Nehru and Bandaranaike were premiers. But soon Sirima and then Indira also became Prime Ministers. Who of the children would become Prime Minister first? was the question.



The elder Rajiv became a pilot and married Sonia from Italy. He did not evince any interest in a political career. It was the younger Sanjay who got engrossed in politics with his wife Maneka. But Sanjay died in a plane crash soon after he became an MP in 1980. A reluctant Rajiv was forced to fill in as MP and then after his mothers assassination in 1984 became Prime Minister. He too was assassinated by the LTTE in 1991. Rajivs widow Sonia Gandhi heads the Congress party and is an MP. Son Rahul Gandhi is also a parliamentarian and is seen as Rajivs political heir. Incidentally Sanjays widow Maneka and son Varun are also MPs. Maneka Gandhi is a minister in Modis

BJP government.



As for the Bandaranaike siblings both Sunethra and Chandrika are elder to Anura and were in the political limelight to an extent before Anuras entry into active politics. Sunethra who played an important role in the Socialist Study circle was co-ordinating secretary to her mother when she was PM. Chandrika after a stint at Sorborne was director at the Land

Reforms Commission.



Yet it was the younger brother Anura who became an MP first in 1977 when he was just 28 years old. Six years later he became Leader of the Opposition at 34.



Since his father was leader of the opposition from 1952 till he became Premier in 1956, Anura also was expected to be PM in the same manner. Indeed he may very well have been PM if his mother had won in 1988 and become President. But that was not to be.

Anura was a decent human being ! A gentleman-gentle and genteel, in the old fashioned way. In that sense he was a misfit in todays hurly-burly world of cut-throat politics.



Anuras sister Chandrika had broken off from the SLFP with her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga and formed a new party the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya (SLMP). After her husband was assassinated by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in 1988 Chandrika left for London in a state of self  exile. Chandrika however returned and re-joined the SLFP. This led to tensions between Anura and Chandrika and also between mother and son. Accusing his mother of favouring the daughter the son walked out of the party and joined the arch-rival UNP.



When the SLFP heading the Peoples Alliance came to power in 1994 it was Chandrika who became Prime Minister in August. In November she contested the Presidency and won in a landslide. Sirima was made Prime Minister. The Bandaranaikes who made history as the first husband-wife prime ministerial duo had made history again as the first father-mother-daughter premier trio and also as the first daughter President  Mother Prime Minister combination. Anura with his record-creating ambition was out in the cold.



Constituency of Maskeliya-Nuwara Eliya

When Anura first contested elections in 1977 he did not do so in the Gampaha district where the Bandaranaike family had much political clout. Instead he went to the Central province and contested in the three-member constituency of Maskeliya -Nuwara Eliya. It was only a few months before elections in Sri Lanka that parliamentary polls were held in India. Angered by the excesses of emergency rule the Indian voters delivered a resounding blow to the Congress which had been in power for 30 years since Independence. Both Indira Gandhi in Rae Bareilly and Sanjay Gandhi in Amethi lost.



The UNP notably JR Jayewardena and Ranasinghe Premadasa hoped for and sought a parallel result in Sri Lanka. Just as the cow(Indira) and calf (Sanjay) lost in India the Cow (Sirima) and calf (Anura) will lose their seats here also, thundered the UNP. The SLFP suffered a disastrous defeat in 1977 winning only eight to the UNPs 141 in a Parliament of 168. But both Sirima and Anura won. The SLFP suffered a temporary split in the opposition when Anura along with people like Maithripala Senanayake and Haleem Ishak rebelled against Mrs. Bandaranaikes leadership. President Jayewardena tried to widen the intra  SLFP chasm further. The crisis was ultimately resolved and Anura was politically re-united with

his mother.



In 1983 the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) lost their seats as they refused to take oaths disavowing separatism under the sixth amendment to the Constitution. Mrs. Bandaranaike had been deprived of her civic rights in 1980 and was out of Parliament. So Anura became Leader of the Opposition. He succeeded Appapillai Amirthalingam. S.Perinbanayagam was the opposition leaders secretary. When Perinbanayagam appealed to Anura that he be retained as secretary to Bandaranaike also, the SLFP leader consented despite the political differences. That was Anura the magnanimous.



In 1988 Anura, Kumar Ponnambalam and Dinesh Gunewardena went up to Vavuniya to meet with former LTTE political commissar Narendran alias Yogi. But that trek came to naught as the tigers refused to play ball.



It was in the early nineties of the 20th century that Chandrika returned to SLFP folds again. Mrs. Bandaranaike felt that Chandrika was better equipped to lead the SLFP to victory and favoured her. Anura resented this and instead of resisting such attempts within the party, crossed over to the UNP in 1993. He became the Minister of Higher Education and National Reconciliation under Dingiri Banda Wijetunge. In 1994 the UNP was out of office after 17 years. Anura was in the opposition again.

Mrs. Bandaranaikes declining health and consequent death saw an end to sibling enmity. There was rapprochement among both the sisters and brother. After the 2000 October election Anura was elected unanmiously as Speaker in Parliament.



As Speaker Anura distinguished himself by upholding the independence and supremacy of the Legislature during a difficult period. Anura later broke ranks with the UNP and re-joined the SLFP in 2001. The UNP came to power a few months later but once again Anura was in the opposition.

It was finally in 2004 that Anura came to be on the winning side. He was instrumental in forging an alliance with the JVP. Anura was made Investment Promotion, Enterprise Development and Industries Minister in the Govt headed by sister Chandrika Kumaratunga. Anura was appointed Foreign Affairs Minister after Lakshman Kadirgamars death in August 2005.



Mahinda played second fiddle to Anura

When S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike crossed over from the UNP in 1951 it was President Mahinda Rajapakses father D.A. Rajapaksa who followed him in the house. Thereafter he remained a loyal deputy to the Bandaranaikes. In 1970 Mahinda entered Parliament as its youngest MP. Though Anura was not an MP, Mahinda used to play second fiddle to him then. People compared the Anura-Mahinda duo to the SWRDB-DAR duo of old in political terms. In fact Mahinda and some of his siblings referred to Anura as lokka. It was both a term of respect and endearment. Later it turned derisive.



Fluctuating political fortunes saw Mahindas stock rise and Anuras fall. It was Mahinda who became PM in 2004 and also Presidential candidate in 2005 after Chandrika. Anura was to be a running mate of sorts. He would be Prime Minister if Rajapakse was elected President. But then Anura was always star-crossed.



He did not co-operate in the presidential campaign as he ought to have. Thus when Rajapakse won due to the tiger enforced boycott, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake was made PM instead of Anura Bandaranaike. Anura was made Tourism Minister and later demoted to National Heritage Minister in a cabinet re-shuffle. With Rajapakse becoming President the spotlight shifted from Horagolla to Medamulana. The Bandaranaike dynasty declined. The new Ruhunu Rajapakse dynasty emerged within the SLFP.



A disgruntled Bandaranaike described the Mahinda Govt as a carnival of clowns and revolted twice. The first was with Mangala Samaraweera and Sripathy Sooriaraachi in Feb 2007. Within two weeks he was back again with Mahinda.The second was on the 2007 Budget voting day when he crossed over rashly to the opposition. Realising that he had been taken for a ride Anura walked out of Parliament. Once again he mended fences with Rajapakse but restoration of ministerial portfolio was delayed due to his declining health. He had been afflicted with cancer and received medical treatment in Singapore. Though he showed signs of recovery, the situation took a turn for the worse shortly after his 59th birthday party on Feb 15th 2008. Anuras physical condition rapidly deteriorated and he was bed -ridden in March. And then came the final farewell on March 16th 2008 when Anura bade adieu to the world.



Anura Bandaranaike had a peculiar sense of humour and was fond of playing pranks and practical jokes on his friends. He would however be miffed if he was at the receiving end of jokes and tricks. But his anger never lasted long. Anura was fond of wining and fine dining. He dressed with sartorial elegance. He used to smoke Havana cigars occasionally. Anura was also an avid reader of books and magazines. He had a fine collection of contemporay fiction as well as biographical books. Another of his passions was watches. He collected them. Among his possessions was a Cartier watch presented by former Malaysian premier Dr. Mahathir Mohammad. Anura also prized a watch bestowed with blessings by Indias Sathya Sai Baba at his Puttaparthi ashram. Anura was a Sai baba devotee.



Anura was also an aficionado of films since childhood. As a schoolboy he had an album where he pasted newspaper and magazine articles about the films he had seen. Later on he acquired an impressive collection of DVDs and also set up a state of the art home theatre system. Anura had a Japanese made luxurious armchair on which he reclined watching English and Hindi films. Despite having this arrangement at home, Anura liked to watch current films in movie theatres. Speaking of films the year 2017 saw the movie La la Land win six Oscars. The film was set in the City of Angels Los Angeles. Had Anura been alive he would have loved to see La la Land as Los Angeles was his favourite city. He would visit LA at least twice or thrice a year sometimes staying for weeks at a stretch.



For all his follies and faults and foibles, few could be angry with Anura or nurse grudges against him. Neither could Anura Bandaranaike be angry for long with others. This personality trait was his greatest asset. He may not have been very lovable but like Billy Bunter of Greyfriars, was not entirely unlikeable either.



Anura was not corrupt or vindictive

Above all, Anura was a decent human being ! A gentleman-gentle and genteel, in the old fashioned way. In that sense he was a misfit in todays hurly-burly world of cut-throat politics. Anura had two characteristics that were rarities or oddities among most politicians. He was not corrupt and he was not vindictive. But was snooty and a snob. Due to this snobbishness Anura always looked down upon his brother-in-law Vijaya Kumaratunga. However Anura did bequeath the bulk of his property and assets to his nephew Vimukthi.



Time and tide waits for no man, they say. In the case of Anura his sense of political timing was atrocious. He frequently made the wrong move at the wrong time and so was always in the wrong place. He regularly missed the tide in the affairs of men. Against that backdrop Anura Bandaranaike was truly a tragic figure of Sri Lankan political history.



D.B.S.Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com
The winner of the FlySmiLes - Dialog Axiata Register & Win Promotion, Dayananda Kukulewithana, received a prize of a return air ticket to the fabulous Maldives on SriLankan Airlines.

I always fly SriLankan Airlines because its our national carrier and the service is excellent. Im delighted to have won after joining the FlySmiLes programme and I look forward to travelling to the Maldives, as I havent been there before, said Kukulewithana, a retired school principal who is now Human Resources Director of a private sector company.

The FlySmiLes - Dialog Axiata Register & Win Promotion created awareness among Dialog Roaming customers of the many rewards of SriLankan Airlines FlySmiLes and rewarded all new members during a recent six-week period with an additional 1,000 Bonus Miles.

Kukulewithana was presented his prize by SriLankan Airlines General Manager Commercial Operations Dimuthu Tennakoon and Dialog Axiata Head of Group Business Development New Business Development Chinthana Jayasekara. The frequent flyer programme of SriLankan Airlines, FlySmiLes, is in partnership with oneworld, which is an alliance of the worlds leading airlines coming together as one to provide customers with a seamless travel experience of the highest standard. SriLankan Airlines global network covers 100 cities in 47 countries and as a member of the oneworld global airline alliance, SriLankan also connects its passengers to the alliances worldwide network of more than 1,000 destinations in 160 countries.
Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, Transport Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, Finance State Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena and Minister of City Planning and Water Supply Rauf Hakeem and Treasury Secretary Dr. R. H. S. Samaratunga

Pic by Kithsiri de Mel

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe

Most of Sri Lankas state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have stopped bleeding under the good governance regime, after it took over two years ago, Sri Lankas Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said this week.

There are 403 state-owned enterprises, of which 200 were making losses when we took over. The loss making entities are now below 50. That too should be reduced. The others are either making profits or breaking even, Karunanayake said.

Speaking at the signing of Statements of Corporate Intents (SCIs) for 5 state-owned enterprises this week, he said most SOEs were capable of making profits, but that due to political interference, they were not making profits.

However, the good governance regime is also more or less following this modus operandi by not allowing the Ceylon Electricity Board to charge market prices, which in turn requires injections from the Treasury to stay afloat. Karunanayake said the aim of lower electricity rates is to protect the consumer.

SOE reforms are crucial for continued balance of payments support from the International Monetary Fund through a US$ 1.5 billion Extended Fund Facility.

Under the previous regime, SOEs were said to have undertaken debt exceeding Rs.1.1 trillion, or 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), without including such debt in the national accounts, where national debt is measured at around 75 percent of GDP.

Treasury Secretary Dr. R. H. S. Samaratunga noted that most SOEs forget that they are public institutions running on public finances.

Most of the capital and investments in state-owned enterprises are funds taken from the public as tax. The management has to remember this, but unfortunately many in the management of state-owned enterprises have forgotten about this, he said.

He noted that about 95 percent of the requests coming from SOEs are for further funding allocations, without taking into consideration that they are spending public money.

He further added that around 15-20 loss making SOEs have not made payments towards the Employees Provident Fund and the Employees Trust Fund.

EPF and ETF payments havent been made by 15-20 state-owned enterprises for the past 10-15 years. These payments are taken from the employees salaries and from the government, but the payments havent been made to the Central Bank on a timely manner.

These 15-20 state-owned enterprises have made a loss of Rs.16 billion in 5 years, he said. Transport Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said that the Sri Lanka Transport Board is one of these SOEs, which had Rs.12 billion in outstanding EPF/ETF payments, of which Rs.8 billion has been paid somehow over the past couple of years. Dr. Samaratunga said the statements of corporate intent will be also signed with other SOEs in order to improve their performances.

We hope at least the laws would be followed in a timely manner, he said.
With the outbreak of the H1N1 flu in the Maldives, the SriLankan Airline has activated Communicable Disease Procedures on its flights that are being operating in and out of Male, Srilankan Airline today said.

Concerning the advice issued to the general public by the Maldives Health Protection Agency (HPA) has restricted the travel movements to their country. While an official said that the crew would be wearing face masks and will provide a face mask to any passenger who requests one during the flight as a safety measure.

These proactive measures have been taken in the best interest of all our passengers and crew. SriLankan Airlines regrets any inconvenience caused to its passengers during this period, he said.
DAMASCUS AFP March17, 2017

Syrias army said on Friday it shot down an Israeli plane that had carried out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra, the famed desert city it recently recaptured from jihadists.



Four Israeli planes penetrated our air space at 2:40 am (0040 GMT) via Lebanese territory and hit a military target on the way to Palmyra, the army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.



Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one and forced the rest to flee, it added.



The incident is the most serious between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.



The Israeli air force had earlier said it carried out several strikes on Syria overnight and that Syria had fired surface-to-air missiles in response.
Two individuals including a woman were arrested on charges of having aided and abetted the suspects in connection with the shooting at a prison bus in Kalutara recently, Police said.

They said a woman from Walahanduwa, Galle was arrested by the CID on charges of sheltering a gunman who was found to have been involved in the shooting.

They said it was revealed in the investigations that the suspect woman had provided shelter for the culprit for a week after the shooting.

Meanwhile, another man from Pinwatte, Panadura was arrested last night on charges of spying over the shooting.
Kurunegala District UNP MP Thushara Indunil lamented that the confrontational politics within the coalition government was causing him frustration.

He made these observations at a Kurunegala District convention of the March 12th Movement. He said that there were doubts being created among the people about the activities of the government and that people were asking whether the government was nabbing the rogues or whether the rogues were nabbing the government.

He said that he was the only MP who attended the convention. He said he felt frustrated as he had striven so hard towards the victory of President Maithripala Sirisena, but been overlooked when ministerial portfolios were being handed out. He said three persons from Kurunegala who had worked against Mr. Sirisena at the presidential election were now ministers.

He said that he was surprised that the university students had not protested against SAITM during the time of the previous administration. He said that when he asked the students about this they had said it was because they were afraid of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

He said politicians had become so corrupt that people had begun to realise their mistake in voting for them. He added that the coalition government was unable to go forward as there were conflicting views and agreement was not possible. (Pushpakumar Jayarathne)
Sri Lanka Telecom and Mobitel Chairman P. G. Kumarasinghe Sirisena exchanging the MoU with Head of Ericsson Sri Lanka Denis Brunetti in the presence of the Minister of Telecommunication & Digital Infrastructure Hon. Harin Fernando.

Ericssonin collaboration with Mobitel and the Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructurehas formally signed the 5G Island of Innovation Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Colombo, Sri Lanka on 10th March 2017, representing a landmark strategic ICT partnership that aims to bring 5G Internet of Things (IoT) innovation and entrepreneurship to Sri Lanka for the first time in South Asia. Mobitel was also the pioneer in South Asia to launch a Super 3.5G network, to successfully demonstrate HSPA + MIMO technology and successfully trial 4G-LTE and 4.5G-LTE Advanced Pro technology.

The 5G Island of Innovation environment will further advance the nations ICT skills and capabilities, supporting the ambition to transform Sri Lanka into a digital and knowledge based society, driving new and increased employment opportunities enabled by ICT ecosystem innovations.

Hon. Harin Fernando, Minister of Telecommunication & Digital Infrastructure, says: I commend Ericsson and Mobitel for taking the lead as responsible corporate citizens and long term Nation Building partners to the people of Sri Lanka. We are delighted to have partnered with Ericsson and Mobitel in forging this pivotal 5G Island of Innovation collaboration, which ultimately aims to leverage the power of home grown ICT innovation and entrepreneurship to create new employment opportunities and reduce the digital divide in the country. Indeed, the Ministry of Telecommunication & Digital Infrastructures ambition is to leverage the 5G Island of Innovation at the Mobitel Innovation Centre to stimulate entrepreneurial ICT ecosystem collaborations that combine the complementary skills and capabilities of a broader cross-section of ICT players for the benefit of all Sri Lankans.

Denis Brunetti, Head of Ericsson Sri Lanka, says: In recognition of the enduring Nation Building partnership Ericsson has shared with the people of Sri Lanka for over 20 years, it gives me great pleasure to join hands with Mobitel and the Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure in realizing the countrys inaugural 5G Island of Innovation strategic partnership. Ericsson will implement its 5G test bed technology in the Mobitel Innovation Centre in Colombo with the prime purpose of jointly creating a 5G IoT ecosystem designed to provide Sri Lankan ICT innovators an environment to develop and test 5G IoT applications and services.

Mr. P.G.Kumarasingha Sirisena, Chairman of Sri Lanka Telecom and Mobitel, says: We are delighted to contribute our state of the art Mobitel Innovation Centre to the 5G Island of Innovation initiative, providing a suitable environment for 5G IoT development in partnership with Ericsson and the Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure. Mobitel is committed to creating an environment that is conducive to the generation of new and exciting mobile broadband products and services, adding value to the ICT landscape and our customers across Sri Lanka.

Through their long-standing history in the Sri Lankan market, Ericsson and Mobitelhave remained diligently focused on serving their shared interests by leveraging their leading ICT capabilities for the greater good of the nation.
Industry Minister Rishad Bathiudeen signing the guest book at the newly opened Vidatha Centre in Mannar

Sri Lankas apex State operated entrepreneurship developer, the National Enterprise Development Agency (NEDA), is now on a major youth entrepreneur drive-and the latest node in Sri Lankas grassroots market linkage network to start operations will be serving the small time young farmers and fisher-folk in Northern Provinces Mannar district.

We encourage our youth not to be a burden on the public resources, said Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen. Minister Bathiudeen who is also a Vanni district MP, was addressing the inauguration of the Vidatha Resource Centre in Museli, Mannar on March 16, joined by State Minister of Technology & Research Lakshman Seneviratne.

The National Enterprise Development Agency (NEDA) under our Ministry already works with Vidatha. There are many informal partnerships between Vidatha offices and our NEDA field network. I thank the State Minister of Technology & Research Lakshman Seneviratne and his Minister Susil Premajayantha for not only support extended to NEDA but even Mannar District development, said Minister Bathiudeen, and added: As per the youth development vision of the Unity Government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, we are working on providing one million jobs, with least burden on State resources.

We encourage our youth to be not a burden on the public resources and therefore greatly support them to commence in entrepreneurship. NEDA under my Ministry is working on serving this aim and its graduate entrepreneurship project the Upadidharee Vyavasayaka Udaanaya is a major project. In this project 215 graduates have been introduced to technology based new SME start-ups at a cost of more than Rs 32 million. 13 graduates from the total 215 are selected from North. The importance in this project is that proposals submitted by youth are evaluated on models of viability and financing potentials. More importantly, the businesses encouraged are new technology based. I encourage graduates of Mannar and Museli area too to join this programme. The Vidatha centre launched today can help Mannar and Museli youth in farming and fishery sectors to link to main markets using latest technologies.

State Minister Lakshman Seneviratne said that Vidathas vision is to empower grassroots. The Vidatha programme started in 2004. It is to boost the rural economy and enhance its contribution to national development added Minister Seneviratne.

To-date, more than 260 Vidatha Resource Centres (VRC) covering the entire island are in operation representing 80 percent of the total number of DS divisions of the country.
Oman Air, the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman, successfully participated at ITB Berlin from March 8 TO 12, 2017. In addition to celebrating its dynamic programme of fleet and route expansion, the airline also celebrated its fourth consecutive Media Awards for German media.

The airline has exhibited at ITB Berlin, the worlds leading trade event, for the past 10 years. The event has been an important venue for Oman Air to showcase the airlines growing network and award-winning products and services as well as making and renewing relationships. With a growing presence in Europe and increased frequencies on European routes announced in 2016, there was significant interest from both trade and consumer visitors at the show.

Whilst at ITB Berlin, Oman Air promoted its recent developments and future expansion plans. At the end of 2016, Oman Air introduced its first destination in China, Guangzhou and the commencement of a four times weekly flight to Najaf, Iraq in November last year. Network developments are continuing apace in 2017 with the revised flight agreement with the Government of India resulting in increased frequencies to five of Oman Airs 11 Indian destinations and news of a new four times weekly flight from Muscat to Nairobi, Kenya to be launched at the end of March this year. Also a new daily flight to Manchester, UK starting from May 1, 2017 and the increase of services to Pakistan with the launch of a new Muscat to Peshwar flight later in the year.

Oman Air Chief Executive Officer Paul Gregorowitsch commented, ITB Berlin is the ideal stage for us to promote Oman Air to a huge trade and consumer audience and to highlight our award-winning service, growing network and world-class fleet. We are continuing with our ambitious expansion plans in 2017 with three new additions to the fleet already. The latest aircraft is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which joined the fleet on February 23, 2017, beside two new 737-800s added to the fleet in January and February this year. In addition, a new Dreamliner B787-9 will be joining Oman Airs fleet in the coming April.

Oman Airs Media Awards winners were announced at an official reception, held at Oman Airs stand at ITB Berlin on March 8. Building on the success of previous Media Awards, a panel of experts recognized the best articles on Oman from an impressive number of entries of the highest standard from journalists and bloggers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The winners were:

Lange Simon  Neue Presse Hanover (Madsack Media Group)  Best article about Oman in a daily publication

Olaf Tarmas  Welt am Sonntag  Best article about Oman in a weekly publication

Frauke Hunfeld  Stern - Best article about Oman in a magazine

Kristina Kreisel  Focus Online  Best article about Oman travel in online media

Frank Littek  Aero International - Best airline portrait of Oman Air

Ute Werner  TV station Saarlandischer Rundfunk (ARD)  Special Award for destination coverage

The overall winner was Olaf Tarmas, who received a long-weekend break for two in Muscat, including Business Class return flights from Frankfurt, Munich or Zurich, airport transfers and three nights half-board accommodation in one of Muscats most luxurious hotels.

Chief Executive Officer Oman Air Paul Gregorowitsch said, We were delighted with the response to our Media Awards this year and received a high number of outstanding entries. This is a great opportunity for us to recognise and thank the media for the role they have played in building our reputation as a world-class airline. There is no doubt that the media has played a crucial part in helping us raise our profile in the European market.
The World Water Day is commemorated on March 22 highlighting the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of the water resources.

Sri Lankas chemical giant, Paranthan Chemicals Company Limited, functioning under the purview of Industry and Commerce Ministry proudly celebrates the World Water Day with the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, which serves the country by providing quality drinking water.

It is a privilege for Paranthan Chemicals Company Limited to be a partner for a national endeavour of the National Water Supply and Drainage Board. Paranthan Chemicals has been successful in supplying liquid chlorine for more than five decades.

This years Water Day is celebrated with the theme Water and Wastewater, which is closely related to Paranthan Chemicals as it makes tremendous contribution to water purification and waste water treatment with the supply of essential chemicals.

Paranthan Chemicals Company Limited is the specialized state agency mandated to deal with manufacturing and marketing chemicals in Sri Lanka. The company has the monopoly in chlorine and fulfils the national chlorine demand since its inception in 1954.

Historically, chlorination at a water treatment plant was made in 1893 in Germany and in 1897 the town of Maidstone in England was the first to have its entire water supply treated with chlorine.

However, permanent water chlorination began in 1905, when a contaminated water supply caused serious typhoid fever epidemic in Lincoln, England and Dr. Alexander Cruickshank Houston used chlorination of the water which helped to prevent the epidemic

and as a precaution the chlorination was continued.

Generally, chlorine is not only the most widely used water disinfectant but also highly effective against waterborne pathogens. In particular, this helps to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and typhoid.

Despite the fact that manufacturing and processing of chemicals such as chlorine gas is associated with considerable risk factor, it is very commendable that the company has been successful in handling these chemicals backed by specialized knowledge and technical knowhow accumulated over the decades.

The company also markets sodium hypochlorite, HCL acid, bleaching powder and caustic soda, which are also essential chemicals for water purification and wastewater treatment.

As the demand for water treatment chemicals is likely to grow with the raising needs of high-quality water for drinking and daily household use and with the expected growth in industrial sector, Paranthan Chemicals is taking proactive steps by expanding the product range, enhancing production capacity to meet the chemical demand and expansion of warehousing to ensure that adequate stocks of essential chemicals are readily available.

By looking at its past, today the company is proud having been associated with the Water Supply and Drainage Board, local government authorities and industrial sectors in water purification and waste water treatment and thereby contributing for enhanced public health and environmental sustainability.

The company celebrates the World Water Day proudly with the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, which serves the country by providing sustainable water, together with other stakeholders.
From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, its going to be only America first, America first.



-US President Donald Trump

This statement was declared by the new American President Donald Trump in his inaugural speech on January 20, 2017. Trump became famous even before his appointment as president, for his number of controversial statements on Islamic fundamentalism, immigration policy, China and Russia. At the end, Trump took office with an agenda that marks a radical break with the past.

Although it is too early to predict the prospects on Trumps new foreign policy, can make an effort to examine his foreign policy in regard to the developing world. Apparently, it is understandable that the arrival of a nationalist leader might be a radical break for the US after having a number of liberal-centred presidents.

The America First ideology of Trump reflects the new concept of Responsible Nationalism in politics and international relations. Charles W. Eliot stated that Responsible Nationalism is when countries are expected to pursue their citizens economic welfare as a primary objective but where their ability to harm the interests of citizens elsewhere is circumscribed. (Summers, 2016)

He further stressed that international agreements would be judged not by how much is harmonized or by how many barriers are torn down but whether citizens are empowered. When analysing Trumps statements, it is crystal clear that Trump has ethics of responsible nationalism with his America First ideology.

In his inaugural speech, he stated, Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. This manifests, the urge of Trump to make the American people empowered.

Trumps argument on international trade agreements and the countrys competitiveness gave an impression to the world that he will go for a radical change with reference to trade. He was very open about his future trade relations with China. Once he emphasized that he will promise to get tough with China and withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is still not finalized. Basically, Trump is of the opinion that the US as the victim of free trade, which he blames for the decline of US economic competitiveness, the shrinking of middle class and the insufficient employment rate.

He also stressed, NAFTA has been a total disaster for the US and has emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs and he further stated that he would not hesitate to launch a trade war, especially against China to change this current situation.

During his election campaign, Trump pledged to build tariff barriers in order to protect the American economic and trade interests. Therefore, it is justifiable to predict that the world will be able to see a more aggressive policy for trade protectionism under Trumps administration such as many tariffs, trade sanctions and policies. Apparently, this situation definitely affects the developing world, especially those who are conducting trade relations with the US and China.



Impenetrable physical wall

The actions of Trump regarding immigration and security policies caused many verbal confrontations in the past few weeks. Trumps promise to build an impenetrable physical wall across the US southern border commenced in his first week in office. On the other hand, Trumps administration has pledged to pursue a temporary ban on migration from regions; he assumes exporters of terrorism are migrating. These decisions of Trump are definitely going to create huge havoc especially within North South dialogues.

If Trump tries to put trade or political sanctions on selected countries, it is expected that the rest of the world is also will have to be biased at least in some aspects in order to have good relations with Trump. This situation might badly affect the developing world and its future. For countries like Sri Lanka, it is essential to have well balanced relations with everyone. Therefore, this situation might be unhealthy to the current world order.

President Trump is a realist, believing power to be the only law of international relations. That he proved from his ideology over Russia and China to improve relations from a position of strength. He further emphasized that he would expand Americas military spending and strengthening of the military within the coming years. From this perspective, Trump gave the impression that he would not hesitate to use military power when there is no alternative.

Trumps views on the United Nations (UN) were another controversial issue. The UN is the worlds largest mechanism to promote international cooperation with nearly 193 member states. Whatever weaknesses the UN has, still three-fourths of the world accept it as the only mechanism to encourage diplomacy and peace between states. But Trump has criticized and questioned the UNs existence most of the time.

Once he stated, It is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. He added, As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20. These statements gave an impression that the new environment is uncertain and wary. The developing world will have to follow this situation at the UN carefully since, those are the countries that will be mostly affected by the immediate changes.

On the other hand, Trump has appointed a new ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. This appointment and its nature will decide the future of the developing world in the coming years. In this regard, the importance of the new appointment and the way she is going to handle the UN will

be noteworthy.



Trumps nepotism policy

As the last point, the nepotism policy of Trump also can be counted as his new prospect. Trumps eldest daughter and her husband Jared Kushner, 36-year-old Jewish, is currently playing a major role in the White House politics. He was the only family member, among the small group of advisers who accompanied Trump on his first visit to the White House. Although Kushner has no administrative or political experience, his devotion to his father-in-law was praised by Trump several times because of his loyalty. Prof. Swaran Singh in his latest paper article in Indian New Express has stated, The New York Times has already crowned Ivanka as the most influential first daughter since Alice Roosevelt Longworth and with Kushner, the two are set to become the most powerful couple in Washington circles.

Currently Kushner acts as a Senior White House Advisor together with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Kushners appointment was questioned on the basis of a 1967 anti-nepotism law in the US. But, the US Department of Justice issued an opinion stating the President may appoint relatives to his immediate staff of advisors. on January 20, 2017 and Kushner was sworn in on January 22, 2017.

He was among the senior advisors of Trumps presidential campaign too and it was reported that he played a major role in developing Trumps digital media strategy. When considering the recent appointments of the White House, it is reported Kushner had persuaded Trump to fire his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and later advised to pick Reince Preibus as the White House chief of staff.

Although, Chris Christie was being considered for the role of Trumps running mate Kushner disapproved it and made sure Mike Pence was picked. Chris later took charge of Trumps transition team but Kushner again ensured his exit. Recently, Trump has named Reed Cordish, Kushners friend, as assistant to the president for intra-governmental and technology initiatives. (Prof. Swaran Singh, 2017)

It is very interesting to note the way Trump changes the current laws and proceedings according to his personal interest while being a nationalist. Recently, Trump has put Kushner in charge of brokering peace in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict as well as making deals with foreign countries. It is clear that most of the prospects and policies of Trump are closely connected to his personal interests, beliefs and relations when observing the current scenario at the White House.

However, the world has more time to reach conclusions rather than giving assumptions regarding Trumps foreign policy. Trump himself needs more time and experience to think about a new security policy and foreign policy for the USA. Therefore, there is hope that the world will see more interesting twists and turns in politics in the coming years.

(Vibusha K. Madanayake [B.A. (Hons.) International Relations, University of Colombo] is a Research Assistant at the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSSSL). This article does not reflect the stance of the INSSSL or Government of

Sri Lanka)
The Sri Lankan Government today expressed its deep appreciation to the President of Puntland, the semi-autonomous region of Somalia, and his Chief of Staff Abdinasir Sofe, who cooperated and collaborated with the relevant officials of the Sri Lankan Government in securing the release of the vessel and crew.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that this task would not have been made possible without their unstinted and active effort.

The statement said the Government of Sri Lanka also expressed its gratitude to the Government of the United States of America, the Us Ambassador, the Combined Naval Force in Bahrain, the EU, and all other Governments, Organisations and individuals who extended their assistance in this effort, as well as all local Ministries, Departments, and individuals.

The Ministry said that the vessel Aris 13 that was hijacked by pirates was released late last night/ early this morning (16-17 March Sri Lankan time) along with the eight Sri Lankan crew unharmed, without the payment of a ransom.
There are "no indications" that Trump Tower was under surveillance by the US government before or after the election, a Senate committee has said, the BBC News reported today.

The statement from Republican Senator Richard Burr, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, dismissed US President Donald Trumps claim that his phones were tapped.

President Trump had accused his predecessor Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential race. However, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer said President Trump maintains his claims. "He stands by it," Mr. Spicer said at a daily news briefing on Thursday.

The press secretary refused to accept the Senate Intelligence Committee report, saying "they're not findings".

Mr. Spicer quoted at length from an unproven Fox News report suggesting former president Obama had dodged US restrictions by asking Britain's GCHQ electronic surveillance agency to monitor President Trump, an allegation already dismissed as "utterly ridiculous" by the Cheltenham-based complex.

Mr. Burr joins a cadre of Republican lawmakers who have rejected the allegation. "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016" Mr. Burr said in a joint statement with Senator Mark Warner, the committee's vice-chairman.

Earlier on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan also said "no such wiretap existed".

Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee Devin Nunes said on Wednesday he doesn't believe "there was an actual tap of Trump Tower".

But that has not deterred President Trump, who on Wednesday told Fox News a "wiretap covers a lot of different things". He also hinted that more details about the alleged surveillance could be revealed in the coming weeks.

"Wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," he said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday night.
Somali pirates released a hijacked oil tanker and its eight Sri Lankan crew on Thursday, a Somali security official and the pirates said, bringing the first hijacking since 2012 to an unusually swift conclusion without the payment of a ransom.

The release followed a gunfight earlier in the day between the pirates and the marine force, and then intensive negotiations between the marine force, clan elders and the pirates.

"There has been discussion going on after the gunfight of this afternoon ... We pulled our forces back and so the pirates went away," said Abdirahman Mohamud Hassan, the director general of the maritime police force for Somalia's semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

A pirate confirmed the release was made without a ransom payment. In previous hijackings, many crews remained in captivity for years before a ransom was paid. Eight Iranians are still being held.

But the pirates said they agreed to forego a ransom after learning that Somali businessmen had hired the ship, which was taking oil from Djibouti to the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Pirates have traditionally been wary of tangling with Somalia's powerful businessmen.

"After we came to know that the Somali traders hired the oil tanker, we released it without a ransom," pirate Abdullahi told Reuters.

The release will be seen as a success for the regional Puntland government and its counter-piracy force, which is funded by the United Arab Emirates.

The hijacking was the first time Somali pirates have taken over a commercial ship since 2012 and followed an outpouring of anger by locals over foreign fishermen flooding into their waters. The Somalis are also angry with their government for licensing some of the ships.

The vessel was hijacked on Monday. Residents living near where it was being held said four civilians were injured by stray bullets during Thursday's gunbattle.

In their heyday in 2011, Somali pirates launched 237 attacks off the coast of Somalia, data from the International Maritime Bureau showed, and held hundreds of hostages.

But attacks fell sharply after crews put safety measures into place and regional naval forces stepped up patrols. Some pirates returned to fishing, and others became involved in smuggling people and weapons across the Red Sea to Yemen. (Reuters)

Related : Firing put our lives at risk-Captain of hijacked ship -
On Tuesday, March 21 the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, with this years theme being racial profiling and incitement to hatred, including in the context of migration. This is significant in view of the emergence of the explosive Donald Trump as President of the United States and his two executive orders imposing a temporary ban on immigrants from six Muslim majority countries. In the states of Hawaii and Maryland, federal judges have ruled that Mr. Trumps orders are illegal. The judges went beyond the letter of the law and gave a contextual ruling provoking the Twitter tycoon to accuse the judiciary of going beyond its limits. But many legal analysts have praised the rulings as judicial activism. The trend towards populism, which started with the Brexit in Britain, set off a political nuclear explosion with the election of Donald Trump and has cast a cloud over upcoming elections in the mainline European Union states of France and Germany. Thankfully, Holland on Wednesday gathered up plenty of Dutch courage to reject Populism or extremism and give new hope for moderation and the respect for diversity.



According to a United Nations statement, every person is entitled to human rights without discrimination. Yet in many parts of the world, discriminatory practices are still widespread, including racial, ethnic, religious and nationality based profiling and incitement to hatred. According to the UN, racial and ethnic profiling is defined as a reliance by law enforcement, security and border control personnel on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin as a basis for subjecting people to detailed searches, identity checks and investigations or for determining whether an individual is engaged in criminal activity.



Refugees and migrants are particular targets of racial profiling and incitement to hatred. Last year with wars raging in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, the number of refugees or migrants reached the highest proportions since the Second World War. While the US, Britain and other countries reacted negatively if not wickedly by slamming the door in the face of people suffering from deep despair and destitution, countries like Germany responded in an enlightened way with Chancellor Angela Merkel risking even her political career to accommodate about one million refugees. Not surprisingly Mr. Trump slammed Chancellor Merkel for her liberal or merciful policies. The two leaders met at the White House on Thursday and reports indicated that Chancellor Merkel told President Trump that the US - German relationship needs to be value- based and not just a business partnership.



In the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, adopted in September 2016, United Nations Member States strongly condemned acts and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance against refugees and migrants. It asked members states to give a commitment to a range of steps to counter such attitudes and behaviours, particularly regarding hate crimes, hate speech and racial violence.



In September last year, a Summit for Refugees and Migrants sparked Together, a United Nations initiative to promote respect, safety and dignity for refugees and migrants. It aims to change negative perceptions and attitudes towards refugees and migrants, in partnership with Member States, civil society and the private sector.



The UN Human Rights Office is asking people around the world to stand up for Someones Rights Today. The campaign, launched on Human Rights Day 2016, aims to encourage and support actions in our daily lives to defend the human rights of others. Wherever we are, we can make a difference. It starts with each one of us.



In Sri Lanka the national government is giving high priority to multi-ethnic and multi-religious unity in diversity. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have repeatedly called upon all political parties, religious groups and others to work proactively, towards reconciliation and lasting peace. While we sincerely practice our own religious or cultural beliefs or traditions, we need to respect the beliefs and traditions of others to bring about unity which could be sustained by the parallel economic process of bringing about a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources. So let us mark this year with a personal resolution to stop racial or ethnic profiling and

hate speech.
The Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Eva Wanasundera and Nalin Perera today granted leave to proceed with the fundamental rights petition filed by MV Avant Garde's Ukrainian Captain challenging his arrest and detention.

Court fixed April 4 to consider interim relief and fix the date of the hearing.

Petitioner 49-year-old Gennadiy Gavrylov said he was arrested in October 2015 outside Sri Lankan territorial waters and was being detained at the Galle remand prison.

He said he had no political affiliations to any group or political party in Sri Lanka and that by some misfortune had been embroiled in a political tug-o-war prevailing in the country.

The petitioner cited the CID OIC, CID Director, CID DIG and Rakna Arakshaka Lanka Limited (RALL), a government-owned business undertaking affiliated to the Defence Ministry, Avant Garde Maritime Services (AGMS), Sri Lanka Shipping Company Limited, Lanka Maritime Services Limited, the Defence Secretary and the Attorney General as respondents.

He said the MV Avant Garde was chartered by Avant Garde Maritime Services belonging to Sri Lanka Shipping Company and was seized while in international waters in the wake of the change of government in Sri Lanka.

The petitioner said some of the respondents subjected him to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment through falsely accusing him of entering Sri Lankan territorial waters in the vessel which he took over as captain on July 24, 2015. (S.S. Selvanayagam)
At the current 34th sessions of the UNHRC the draft resolution on Reconciliation, accountability and human rights, to be placed before the Council shortly, requests Sri Lanka to fully implement the measures identified in HRC Resolution 30/1 that are outstanding, while extending the time limit. In this context we have to once again look to the setting up of judicial mechanisms for accountability in respect of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and the question of Hybrid courts.



Before we do so we have to clear our minds of certain preconceptions and view this question within the context of the global international scene. In Sri Lanka there are some who are of the view that the UN Human Rights Council is like the Inquisition of old (which persecuted Heretics), specifically tasked with the project of persecuting and punishing the Sri Lankan State for having won an armed conflict/war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an Insurgent armed group. Although there can be political motivations for the actions of international players, one cannot view the UNHRC resolution in those terms alone. Just as the poem by John Donne says No man is an island, today we could say, no state is an island. States are connected together by international laws constituted of treaties, multi lateral conventions and customary international laws which regulate and govern the relations of states interse as well as with their own citizens. Matters as diverse as international trade, nuclear proliferation, diplomatic and consular immunities, the law of the sea, outer space, human rights and the laws of war, (called International Humanitarian law today) are only a few of the areas regulated by international law. A states human rights record within its borders, and even wars against third states, or armed conflicts within its borders are circumscribed or regulated by treaties and international law. States themselves give reports of the implementation of their treaty commitments to UN bodies and their actions are open to the scrutiny of other nations. The UN Human Rights Council consists of 47 member states and is a part of the UN system. It is a body tasked to strengthen human rights, combat impunity and strengthen accountability and the rule of law.



Sri Lanka has been a part of the community of nations and been an active member of the UN system. I quote a letter from the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka at the United Nations addressed to the President of the General Assembly dated march 2007, which states as follows Sri Lanka has been a firm supporter of the UN system and has been active in deliberations on human rights in the international fora including the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Human Rights Council.



The letter presents Sri Lankas candidature for membership of the Human Rights Council for the term 2007-2008. Sri Lanka had been earlier elected to the vice presidency in 2007. The letter also sets out various pledges. This letter is in the public domain. It may be noted that this was during the regime of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa and shows an appreciation of the need to work with the UN system. The present Government has also worked with the UN system and even co-sponsored Resolution 30/1 of 2015, where it undertook to implement measures to establish Accountability, Reconciliation and Human Rights after the prolonged armed conflict in the country.



Sri Lankas situation is not unique. At the upcoming, 34th session the UNHRC will also focus on accountability issues in Syria, Burma and South Sudan.



These are all countries where there have been armed insurgencies/civil wars fought or in the process of being fought.



International law recognizes that wars either international or internal can be legitimately fought in self-defence or to protect the integrity of a state. It is only wars of aggression which are prohibited under the UN Charter. However, a war or armed conflict has its own rules and regulations and certain actions are prohibited and certain actions are delineated as war crimes. Hence the question that arises after a war or armed conflict is to determine whether the rules have been observed.

It is a settled principle of international law that war crimes attract universal jurisdiction. In this case the Office of the UNHRC has already submitted a report which found that there was evidence that violations of human rights and war crimes had taken place. This is not unusual as rarely is a war fought in which the parties are completely blameless. In some cases as in the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia an International Criminal Tribunal was set up to try these cases. Rather than have an international court try the cases, Sri Lanka co-sponsored Resolution 30/1 of 2015, which interalia provided for the setting up of Hybrid courts, constituted of local and foreign judges, as also other measures to aid the process of reconciliation. It must be also noted that the Commissions appointed under the previous government, the LLRC and the Paranagama Commission in its second mandate, acknowledged the need for investigating specific allegations of violations and the Paranagama Commission accepted the need for foreign expertise.



On the question of foreign judges there is now opposition even from the present government which co-sponsored the resolution. The question of a hybrid court has to do with competence and expertise in a particular area of the law. Just as we would call in a foreign architect or Chinese Construction Company which is more competent to do a particular job, foreign expertise from neutral countries such as Japan or Nepal could be of assistance to us. It will be recalled that during the Rajapaksa regime an international group of eminent persons IIGEP was established to observe the work of the Commission of Inquiry which was set up to investigate into alleged abductions, disappearances and extra judicial killings. Justice Bhagavati, an Indian Judge, was a member of this Group. Inviting an eminent legal expert from a country such as for example Japan, selected by the Government and judiciary will in no way have the effect of diminishing the countrys sovereignty. Whereas the question of sovereignty is arguably more relevant to issues such as handing over parts of the country to another state, Niran Anketell, (in an earlier article in the Daily Mirror on this subject), has pointed out that special courts tasked with hearing cases pertaining to such matters, whether international, hybrid or purely domestic only target a handful of cases, particularly those bearing the greatest responsibility up the chain of command. He cites Cambodia where the special Court convicted only four persons and the International Criminal Court only three.



The reason given for opposing a judicial mechanism is usually on the grounds that we must protect our brave soldiers. Certainly those who fought bravely in accordance with the laws of war some even giving their lives to rescue civilians, are to be given due honour. However such persons have nothing to fear because there are no allegations that can be proved against them. Similarly the junior officers and soldiers who acted on commands from their superior officers would not face prosecution except perhaps in exceptional circumstances. But is it reasonable that those who are alleged to have given the orders to do illegal acts such as attacking innocent civilians, using torture or rape or sexual violence as tools of interrogation or to terrorize a population, should not face prosecution where there is credible evidence of such actions. It is of course for them to prove otherwise if they are innocent.

This same principle applies in the case of the insurgents / militants, as under IHL today, non-state actors are also governed by the laws of war.



Apart from the question of reconciliation in the aftermath of the war, it is in the larger interest of the country that the culture of impunity is eradicated. Otherwise it can continue long after the war and lead to a breakdown of the criminal justice system in the whole country. All communities should think rationally and not be carried away by emotive words and slogans. While all sections of the people were affected by the war it is recognized that the Tamil-speaking people who were in the actual theatre of the war were affected the most and many persons are still missing or disappeared in this community. They are not aliens but citizens of the country and as such are deserving of the same measure of support and protection from the Government in their quest for justice. This is not a matter for the international community alone but more so for their own countrymen and fellow Sri Lankans.

The High Commissioners report which is to be officially released makes a number of useful recommendations. One very pertinent one is to formulate a communications campaign to inform the public about details of the reconciliation agenda. This is a recommendation that should be taken to heart.



The report also requests the government to adopt legislation establishing a Hybrid Court. Hopefully a communications campaign will be able to convert those who oppose these measures and help them to see the UNHRC process from a world view one in which all states which have experienced conflict attempt to go on the path of accountability, reconciliation and human rights. Many centuries ago the great Indian Emperor Asoka after the war with Kalinga took this same path. Should not Sri Lanka a country with a long Buddhist heritage emulate this course of action.
The use of Whatsapp and connections made through American diplomats ensured the safety and release of the eight-member Sri Lankan crew of the hijacked Aris-13, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Harsha de Silva said today.

The hijacked vessel and its Sri Lankan crew were released by Somali pirates on March 17 without any ransom payment.

At a media briefing soon after the release came to be confirmed, Dr. de Silva thanked diplomats of various countries, especially the US, naval officers and institutions which supported the Sri Lankan government during time of need.

He said the American Embassy had helped the SL Government get in touch with Puntland President's Chief of Staff Abdinasir Sofe, who in turn had ordered the countrys navy to stop shooting at the ship and move aside to allow discussions between the pirates and the owners of the vessel.

This is a semi-autonomous region that we have no diplomatic ties with. We were grateful to have come in contact with the President, who had authority over the navy which was shooting in the general direction of the vessel, Dr. de Silva said.

He said the Puntland Navy was not firing at the ship but at the logistical boats in the vicinity. We are not sure what prompted them to do so, but we are grateful for the results of the discussions we had with the President's Chief of Staff, Abdinasir Sofe, Dr. de Silva said.

The ship and its crew were now safely on its way to Bossoa, the commercial capital of Puntland, where the crew would be treated for injuries and sent on their way.

When questioned about when the crew would arrive in the country, he said he was unsure of the crews future plans. We have done everything necessary as a government. It is the decision of the crew and the owners of the vessel as to what they will do now. We will of course intervene if the crew has issues applying for visas to return home, Dr. de Silva said and added that he was kept appraised of the situation on the Whatsapp messenger service. Messages exchanged with the President of Puntland prior to the news briefing ensured the safety and release of the crew.

General Operations Director Dharmendra Weetawa, who was also present at the briefing said, the situation led the Navy to appoint a permanent representative at the Combined Naval Forces Headquarters.

It was they who provided surveillance during the situation and provided updates every three hours, of the situation on-board the vessel. We have officers stationed there for various reasons, but we have decided to appoint a representative for Sri Lanka as we have the need for it now, he said.

Naval relations in the area was not fully developed in the area, but the Navy had received necessary backing in the time of need. Rear Admiral Wettawa said the owners of the vessel had not taken the necessary precautions when sailing in such dangerous seas.

Meanwhile, family members of the crew who were also present at the briefing thanked the government and other officials who had done everything in their power to rescue the sailors and ensure their safe return. (Nabeela Hussain)
Coca-Cola Beverages Sri Lanka Ltd organized an internal event for its executive staff on 8th March. At this inspirational event, leading women entrepreneurs in Coca-Colas 5by20 network converged on the venue from diverse regions such as Negombo, Hambantota, Vavuniya and Kandy, to share their success stories with a rapt audience. Although Coca-Cola celebrates women every day through its commitment to gender equality and womens empowerment, the special occasion of International Womens Day provided the right fillip to acknowledge how these women entrepreneurs had overcome monumental odds to establish their financial independence. The international theme Be Bold for Change was very evident during this powerful session, as the women recounted their personal struggles and how they took a bold step towards entrepreneurship for the well-being and future security of their loved ones.

The women entrepreneurs shared their experiences in overcoming economic crisis, physical disabilities and society pressures and norms, to become successful entrepreneurs, only because of the support and guidance they received from Coca-Colas 5by20 programme.

The 5by20 programme is conducted locally in partnership with Women in Management (WIM) in the form of Business Skills Development training programmes, which are customized to suit the training needs of different women and serve a larger societal need by economically empowering women and promoting inclusivity.

The inspirational storytelling session was followed by the women entrepreneurs showcasing their products ranging from beautifully handmade, leather and cloth shoes and bags, organic jams and pickles, kurakkan based products and batik and wax creations. Both male and female executives had the opportunity to engage one-on-one with the women entrepreneurs, and purchase their goods in support of their incredible journeys, their resourcefulness and creativity.

All associates were invited to share their insights via video on what the theme, Be Bold for Change meant to them. Judging from the heartfelt responses to the event, the female executives of Coca-Cola were truly touched, inspired and grateful for the opportunity to commemorate the spirit of women.

Commenting on the 5by20 experience, Nisha from Kandy said, To be bold, what I believe is that every woman should have both discipline and strength. This strength will help us face obstacles and overcome any problem in life. The 5by20 initiative has given me the confidence to achieve my target.

Samanthi from Seeduwa added, Being bold for change is an important concept in life. I would like to share the story of my life as an example. I started my shoe manufacturing business, which is a very competitive business, because I was empowered I was able to be successful but I also had to be willing to take that bold step.

Meanwhile, Sulochana from Vavuniya added, We never expected to be where we are today; we were bold enough to make a change.

At Coca-Cola, International Womens Day 2017 was a week-long celebration with activities wherein both men and women could actively join hands in creating a more inclusive work environment, conducive to their needs and creating a culture that empowers women.
In characterestic Chinese subterfuge diplomacy, Dai Bingguo, the former Special Representative (SR) for boundary talks with India, in an interview with a Chinese magazine, holds India responsible for the existing impasse in negotiations.

If the Indian side takes care of Chinas concerns in the eastern sector of their border, the Chinese side will address Indias concerns elsewhere, he has said. According to him, The disputed territory in the eastern sector of the China-India boundary, including Tawang, is inalienable from Chinas Tibet in terms of cultural background and administrative jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction

He claims, Even British colonialists who drew the illegal McMahon Line respected Chinas jurisdiction over Tawang and admitted that Tawang was part of Chinas Tibet. He believes India is not acceding to Chinas reasonable requests on border settlement.

By demanding that India cede Tawang, Dai Bingguo is repudiating Article VII of the 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of India-China Boundary Question. This cardinal provision states, In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.

The imperative word shall has been used and the reference is to their settled populations. This clearly excludes Tawang from negotiations as India is neither claiming any territory beyond the McMahon Line nor seeking sovereignty over settled populations on the Tibetan side.

The practical difficulties involved in Tawang changing hands apply only to India and not to China.

The use of the word their implicitly recognises that the settled populations on our side are Indian, not Chinese.

This is not the only article that Dai Bingguo ignores in his interview. Article IV states, The two sides will give due consideration to each others strategic and reasonable interests, and the principle of mutual and equal security.

By claiming Tawang, which is strategically of key importance for the defence of Arunachal Pradesh, China, under the guise of historical cultural and administrative links with Tibet, is actually brushing aside Indias strategic and reasonable interests in the context of the Chinas increasing militarisation of Tibet and the threat to Indian security.

Because it is not offering to India anything in return by way of a critically located settled area on its side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the requirement of equal security is not being met.

Dai Bingguo is in breach of Article V of the Agreement too which says: The two sides will take into account, inter alia, historical evidence, national sentiments, practical difficulties and reasonable concerns and sensitivities of both sides, and the actual state of border areas.

It is not clear why Chinas reasonable concerns require it to claim Tawang, whereas Indias reasonable concerns about China occupying Tawang and outflanking Indian defences are clear.

Besides this, the practical difficulties involved in Tawang changing hands apply only to India and not to China. Once China accepted practical difficulties as a consideration, its stand on Tawang is spurious to that extent.

Concerns

Article VI of the Principles negotiated by Dai Bingguo himself has also been conveniently overlooked by him in his psychological warfare against India. This says, The boundary should be along well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features to be mutually agreed upon between the two sides.

Implicitly this means acceptance of the easily identifiable high watershed principle defining the natural geographic boundary in the east, a principle accepted by China in defining its boundaries with Nepal and Myanmar. Tawang being well to the south of the Himalayan high watershed, Dai Bingguos position on Tawang is once again counterfeit.

China is actually claiming the Tawang tract, which makes its claim fluid. In 2006, Chinas ambassador to India had said brashly: In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it.

While Dai Bingguo has talked vaguely of addressing Indias concerns elsewhere, Chinas claim in the eastern sector is being made more concretely.

Flexibility

China wants to retain full flexibility to decide what to offer in the western sector after India is trapped into agreeing in principle to a major territorial concession in the east. In our view, China not only initially occupied Aksai Chin unilaterally, it is, post-1962, occupying areas that transcend its own 1959 claim line.

In 1962 it occupied Tawang but subsequently withdrew to the McMahon Line, accepting it implicitly as the de facto border. Besides this, China was in the past willing to accept the McMahon Line in exchange of India ceding claim on Aksai Chin.

It has subsequently reversed its position by seeking major concessions in the east against some adjustments in the west. Its position on the border settlement is, therefore, based on power equations and not on any principle.

China has repeatedly demonstrated that either it does not respect the agreements it signs or interprets them as it wants. In 1996 it agreed to clarifying the alignment of the LAC in those segments where they (the two sides) have different perceptions. In 2002 (when the writer was Foreign Secretary) China decided to repudiate this agreement unilaterally.

If Dai Bingguo claims that even the British admitted that Tawang was part of Chinas Tibet, he should explain why Tawang is 37km south of the British drawn McMahon Line which also the Dalai Lama accepts.

Dai Bingguo stands reason on its head by portraying Chinas self-serving propositions on settling the border as reasonable.
The recent visit of our foreign secretary, S Jaishankar, to China and the press briefings post his visit mentioned that the chief points of discussion included Masood Azhar, Nuclear Suppliers Group membership, Afghanistan, South-South cooperation in BRICS, trade deficit, etc.

This was followed in a few days by a press statement by Dai Bingguo - a former state councillor and Chinas special representative for the boundary talks - that made headlines like "India and China on the cusp of a final border settlement" that brought in a sense of deja vu.

For this final border settlement, Bingguo announced that flexibility on the eastern sector was crucial and would be followed by flexibility by the Chinese on the western sector. The flexibility that Bingguo sought was handing over of Tawang, which he claimed was inalienable from China's Tibet in terms of cultural background and administrative jurisdiction.

When you look towards our eastern border and Chinese interests in Tawang, it is evident that this has very little to do with the spiritual and cultural concerns of Tibetans, which are of little significance to the Chinese.

In fact, the Chinese have done their best to undo the culture of the Tibetans, which has resulted in periodic self-immolations and uprisings by the Tibetan Monks. It is also evident that geography favours India, which explains the Chinese decision to unilaterally withdraw from this area after occupying it during 1962.

No democratically elected Indian government can gift away Tawang, an important Buddhist spiritual centre having a settled population. Equally evident is that China cannot give Aksai Chin to India or make any meaningful concessions in that sector, especially after the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

So why would China ask for an area in the eastern sector, impossible to give by India as a prelude to border settlement for concessions on the western sector which has so much of strategic stake for the Chinese.

The deductions are self-explanatory; the Chinese do not want a settlement, they would rather not settle the border dispute and provoke an escalation to settle the dispute to their advantage at a time and place of their choosing.

The Chinese dilemma

The map (pictured below) depicts the maritime trade routes of China. It also captures the strategic challenges and the dilemma facing China.

It was in 2009 that China started showing the entire state of J&K as disputed territory. The country had refused a visa to the Army Commander of the Northern Command and started giving stapled visas to residents of J&K.

When the Modi government came to power, there was widespread expectation of large investments by China when Xi Jinping visited India. These did not materialise and a series of incidents followed, from LAC flashpoints and NSG membership denial to finally China preventing a west-sponsored resolution in the UN to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.

China in the meantime also signed the CPEC agreement with Pakistan and committed $46 billion in building this road which will pass through some of the world's harshest terrain through India-claimed POK and the restive province of Balochistan. These when viewed purely through the prism of economics make little sense, but when viewed through the prism of geopolitical strategy have ominous portends for India.

A casual study of the map showing the maritime trade routes of China brings out that CPEC is a calculated Chinese attempt to break out of American control of maritime trade routes, where its export-dependent economy can easily be strangled by the superior naval power of the west.

Equally evident is that, to fully secure the CPEC, the Chinese would ideally like Ladakh to be under their control. Ladakh under Chinese control can only be achieved by the Kashmir dispute being settled in favour of Pakistan.

Kashmir for Pakistan was always about control of the headwaters of the Indus river system and has little to do with Islamic solidarity. In fact, Islamic solidarity is just a facade for fooling the masses on both sides of the LOC, and explains why the Punjab-dominated Pakistani establishment sacrificed the Pakhtoons, their fellow citizens, in the American global War on Terror.

The same Pakistani establishment in spite of American pressure continues to persist with their Kashmir agenda. These two strategic interests of our neighbours with maritime trade routes to China's revisionist agendas coinciding highlight the inevitability of war.

J&K in that sense is also strategic territory from an Indian perspective as the national granaries of Punjab and Haryana are watered by the same river system.

That modern India is a nation that suffers from a deficiency in strategic thinking is well known.

This particular phenomenon has been the subject matter of numerous studies that has documented the absence of a strategic culture among the Indian elite. Westerners have attributed this to Hindu culture and outlook on life and many Indians seem to have bought into this particular line of argument.

In fact, during a recent talk I delivered at an international seminar in a university near Delhi on the lack of a national strategy in our cyber security policies, a gentleman of unknown lineage got up to state in front of the international audience "that not having a national strategy is our national strategy".

Mythology, metaphors and sentiments masquerade for critical and coherent thinking when it comes to national security even among the educated circles. That we do not have a well articulated national strategy when it comes to dealing with pressing matters of state like the J&K issue, the Chinese border issue etc, and this allows matters to fester.

That a nation/civilisation imbued with strategic thought process would have fought its major wars in other countries instead of mostly in the sub-continent seems to escape our national leadership. Now war might finally not happen due to a variety of reasons, but the actions of the Chinese give limited comfort.

A prudent nation would have to plan for this impending conflict. A statesman can try to prevent this by offering the Chinese overland access to the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea through Nepal. This would lessen their strategic vulnerabilities and also make the CPEC less important.

An India-China detente is the need of the hour. Photo: Reuters

Such an overland access would be more viable both from an economic and security perspective compared to the CPEC. A border dispute resolution and economic investments/concessions should be the prize dangled for such access.

An India-China detente will put paid to Pakistani dreams of wresting J&K by force and make the Pakistani leadership more amenable to rational policy initiatives. An India-China detente that would arise from such an initiative would also get rid of most of the issues for which the foreign secretary visited Beijing.

Civil-military divide

A strategic thought process is a dire necessity for a major nation like India but this has not taken firm root due to a variety of reasons - the most prominent being the civil- military divide. In India, the military has been kept away from national strategic decision-making process, which has been dominated by the civil services.

This has harmed the national cause in two respects - creation of a military leadership insular in its thought process and consequently a nation deficit in a strategic planning process. The world over, national security strategic planning is the domain of the military under political leadership with the civilian bureaucracies participating and this can be discerned in the preponderance of people with a military background dominating the national security apparatus both in the west as well as in authoritarian regimes.

This institutional weakness has resulted in the Indian nation having a poor strategic culture, in spite of a world-class human resource; this has nothing to do with Hindu philosophy or worldviews. That this weakness is clearly seen/felt but is not fully understood and addressed is also evident.

Further this is the cause behind the various systemic deficiencies in our national policymaking initiatives. Policy should be a derivative of strategy and not the other way around, which is a classical error in military parlance called "situating the approach"; this is not fully grasped by our national leadership.

A nation the size of India, with its various security challenges, can never reach its full potential without addressing this systemic flaw. To highlight this simple fact, it has come out in the press multiple times that the nuclear cores are under control of civilian nuclear scientists!

This in a country where natural calamities have repeatedly seen the civil administration among the first to flee, a rational human reaction to impending doom. Imagine a nuclear catastrophe where whole societies are devastated, how does one expect civilian hierarchies to function in a cohesive manner; can the nation bank on this sort of ad-hocism in matters of national security?

The military man, especially the officer corps, which is the soul of any military, is specially selected by psychological profiling and trained by a lifetime of submitting to military discipline to prepare for such calamities.

One need only remember the tsunami in Andaman and Nicobar and the story of the air force pilots with their families missing still flying their rescue missions. The world over, the military work under a different set of laws and a code much harsher than the rest of society to achieve this conditioning.

Conclusion

The solution to this cannot be applied in isolation only to the military and needs to systemically address the entire civil-military-bureaucratic edifice that has come up post Independence. The nation needs people of high calibre to volunteer and serve in the armed forces - a largely thankless job in the 21st century, but the last resort of a nation.

The nation also needs armed forces that respect the Constitution. The evidence till date and the cultural and organisational ethos of the armed forces have withstood this test. The civil-military divide, wherein the bureaucracy believes that the forces have to be kept in check by bureaucratic machinations, is a self-defeating and dangerous process.

This leaves the officer cadre of the forces feeling humiliated and shackled and can have grave implications for the nation both in war and peace. A part of the answer lies in creating a leaner and more professional permanent cadre for the officer corps by ensuring a much larger intake of short service commission.

Senior military officers should be given exposure in government bureaucracies and be made a part of the strategic planning process. These measures will change the organisational culture of the military and give longer tenures to senior military leadership. This one measure will ensure that a strategic culture takes root wherein long-term solutions instead of the present quick fix and scoot policies that bedevil our national security narrative emerge.

As a fledgling democracy that saw many surrounding nations succumb to military interventions, it was but natural that the initial political leadership was wary of the military and kept the armed forces at an arms length in national affairs.

Indeed the national leadership at that time had very simplistic and idealistic views on foreign policy and in matters of defence of the nation.
For more than five decades, the strategic situation in the South Asian region continues to be dominated by the strained India-Pakistan relationship. While the intensity of the tensions between the two neighbours has varied, the current decade has witnessed escalation in tension levels, increasing mistrust and inability to communicate between the two nations.

Recently, General Joseph L Votel, Commander US Central Command, in his statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee, raised concerns about the tensions between the two countries.

He said: India remains concerned about the lack of action against India-focused militants based in Pakistan and even responded militarily to terrorist attacks in India-held territory earlier this year. We assess that these types of attacks and the potential reactions, increase the likelihood for miscalculation by both countries.

Commenting on Indias stance on Pakistans diplomatic isolation, General Joseph said: Indias public policy to diplomatically isolate Pakistan hinders any prospects for improved relations. This is especially troubling as a significant conventional conflict between Pakistan and India could escalate into a nuclear exchange, given that both are nuclear powers.

General Josephs statement caught ample media attention which was not unexpected. No doubt, the situation in the region is risky with two nuclear states sharing a hostile relationship. The question here is: Is New Delhi expected to absorb continued terror attacks without any response?

Is New Delhi expected to absorb continued terror attacks without any response?

India has shown considerable restraint until now and has been a responsible nuclear state which has abstained from issuing nuclear threats. Indias actions via-a-vis Pakistan in the last few months have been in response to Islamabads constant support to terrorist organisations operating against India and its resistance to alter its strategic options.

The threat of nuclear weapons has been created and hyped by the Pakistani leadership in order to restrict India from retaliating against Pakistans acts of terror. Islamabads support to non-state actors is not unknown and General Joseph in his testimony admits that:

20 US-designated terrorist organisations operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan sub-region; seven of the 20 organisations are in Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan became overtly nuclear in 1998 and the two states differed in their objectives of going nuclear. For India, nuclear weapons were important in order to combat the threat of nuclear weapons emanating from its neighbourhood where it has a border dispute.

Indian nuclear weapons are aimed at defending itself against nuclear weapon use and thereby, New Delhi adopted a much debated no first use doctrine implying that it would use nuclear weapons only in retaliation of a nuclear attack.

India has not ruled out the option of conventional war even after it declared itself as a nuclear state. It has a written doctrine with clearly stated no first use and has never in the past indicated any willingness to use nuclear weapons. In fact, leveraging the threat of using nuclear weapons has not been an option for New Delhi even in the most stressed situations.

On the other hand, the central assumption on which Pakistan has progressed and built its nuclear arsenal is that a credible nuclear deterrent would compensate for the inferiority of its defence forces.

Pakistan received direct support from Beijing for its nuclear programme, and in its pursuit of nuclear power status, it also got financial support from Saudi Arabia and Libya. Eventually, it shared nuclear data and expertise with Iran, Libya and Iraq.

Pakistan has long held the belief that being the weaker state, it can compensate that weakness by taking bold initiatives, preferably with strategic surprise, to attack Indian military capability and reduce the adverse margin of capabilities. This was the military strategy that it practiced in all the wars it waged against India.

This was evident in the last war in Kargil in 1999 and, perhaps even more importantly, in the war which it continues to wage through terrorism across the border for the last quarter of a century.

The specific concentration of terrorism in the border districts in Punjab, west of River Beas, was clearly aimed at similar goals. Seen in the context of this strategic mind set, it is not surprising it has adopted a nuclear doctrine of first use.

For Islamabad, nuclear weapons serve threefold objectives: avoid conventional war, support non-state actors conducting terrorism against India, ultimate guarantor of its security against India and the major powers (such as the US).

Islamabad believes in ambiguity, as it enhances deterrence, and till date does not have a written doctrine. It claims to be extremely transparent on the safety and security of the nuclear arsenal, but has maintained silence on other aspects of its nuclear programme.

Pakistan has used the nuclear card to facilitate and implement its strategy of terrorism as a foreign policy tool for more than three decades now (Pakistan acquired the nuclear weapon capability in 1987.).

In 1989, the then Pakistan Army Chief, General Aslam Beg announced the famous offensive defence doctrine. It is noteworthy that during the late 1980s, the activities in the Valley witnessed a shift and the terrorist acts increased significantly in numbers and were planned in a more organised manner.

Pakistan has been pursuing the strategy of covert war through terrorism for more than four decades now. It used nuclear weapons to blackmail not only India but also send a message to the international community, feeling that it could potentially put pressure on India not to retaliate militarily in stressed situations and help Pakistan to attain its diplomatic and political objectives.

The central strategic assumption of the Pakistan nuclear strategy has been that India cannot impose a conventional war against Pakistan, leave alone achieve a decisive victory, without the risk of catastrophic consequences of Pakistans nuclear attack.

Pakistani leadership believes that Islamabads possession of nuclear arsenal, its first use policy, and, now, full spectrum deterrence would be sufficient to deter war. This logic in Pakistan has been reinforced by the common Pakistani perception that it was able to deter Indian military action on various occasions after highly provocative terrorist attacks.

Indias reaction to the Uri terrorist attack is a distinct departure from the strategic position it adopted in the past. Indias restrained positioning as a responsible power has been misunderstood by the Pakistani leadership as lack of its political will and military capability.

Indias stance on demanding diplomatic isolation for Pakistan did get support from many major powers, particularly the South Asian region. The countries in the South Asia region stood in support of Indias positioning and the scheduled SAARC summit (2016) to be held in Islamabad was cancelled due to boycott from all the member nations due to lack of a conducive atmosphere.

Pakistan certainly needs to opt for a change in its strategic options through its continued actions and not just statements and projection of victimhood. The recent string of terror attacks in Pakistan in February have led Pakistani leadership to adopt counter-terror measures and the military is very optimistic about Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad.
Synthomer plc operates as a specialty chemicals company. It operates through four segments: Performance Elastomers, Functional Solutions, Industrial Specialities, and Acrylate Monomers. The company offers pressure sensitive adhesives, acrylic polymers, acrylic dispersions, saturants, release coatings, and other adhesives; water-based carboxylated styrene butadiene rubber, redispersible powder, flooring adhesive, and additives for construction applications; and impregnation binders, styrene butadiene copolymers, dispersions, polymer binders, and butadiene-based binders for textiles applications. It also provides binders for various carpets; synthetic binders for graphic, packaging, and specialty paper coating applications; paper coating additives and plastic pigments; binders, dispersions, water-based and solvent-borne resins, and other products for various coating applications; foamed bedding products and footwear; elastomeric modifiers for thermoplastics and friction components; reinforcement resins for rubber compounds; and latex for tire cord. In addition, the company offers compounds and aqueous curing pastes for carpets and other applications; acrylic monomers for enhancing the performance characteristics of polymer formulations; antioxidant products; latices for medical examination, clean room, food handling, chemotherapy drug handling, chemical laboratory, and medical device and balloon applications; and nitrile latex, which enhance performance of industrial and fabric-supported gloves. Further, it provides liquid polybutadienes, polyvinyl alcohol suspending agents, polyvinyl acetates, thermosetting resins, butyl ethyl propanediol, and inorganic materials for various industrial applications; and coalescing agents for enhancing the properties of coatings. The company was formerly known as Yule Catto & Co. plc and changed its name to Synthomer plc in 2012. Synthomer plc was founded in 1863 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
125 Years of Progress takes you inside The Daily Progress' archives every day in celebration of our 125 years serving Charlottesville and the rest of Central Virginia. Sponsored by Hanckel-Citizens Insurance Charlottesville

By 1926, some of the animosity between Confederate and Union Civil War veterans had dissipated and a mutual respect had formed. That respect was evident during the funeral for Union Maj. Gen. William Bull Nelson, as reported by The Daily Progress on March 20. During the many eulogies, Col. A.J. Cole shared the story of Nelsons compassion towards his fellow soldiers during the battle of Vicksburg. While standing night watch over the Union troops, a Confederate officer called out to Nelson:

Hello there, Yank! Have you got any coffee over there?

Yes replied Nelson. Come over and get some.

We would like to come, but there are fourteen of us on this post.

All right, Johnny; bring them all along. Well divide with you. Come over boys and get your coffee.

The Johnnies accepted. At two oclock in the morning they sat down in the trenches with the boys in blue, and told war jokes on each other while drinking their coffee together. Looking at his watch the Major said: Its time for you Johnnies to get away from here. The inspector will be along soon, and he will put every one of you in prison, and me too, if he catches us at this business.

The Confederates at once sprang to their feet and left with this salutation: Good night Yanks; we are greatly obliged to you. We have had a nice visit and enjoyed your coffee very much. We hope you will get a good rest tonight; we are going to give you hell tomorrow.

Nelsons body was escorted to Riverview Cemetery by the Monticello Guard and delegations from the John Bowie Strange Camp, Confederate Veterans, and the R.T.W. Duke Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
For a number of years my mom flirted with the idea of moving down to Charlottesville from Rhode Island with varying degrees of seriousness -- and then, as she got older, with varying degrees of worry. Could she find a comfortable place she could afford? When was the right time? Could she get enough for her old place? Had she waited too long? Was she strong and healthy enough to make the move?

When seniors are buying or selling real estate, there are a whole host of special things to consider -- and not only for the seniors, but for the whole family as well.

It has to be a real careful analysis, said Linda Broadbent, a Charlottesville realtor who specializes in working with seniors. About finances, health, long-term goals. And talking with your whole family is important. You need to do it before a senior is hit with a challenge, because then you wont have any control.

Indeed, being proactive and making a move or change sooner rather than later is key, Broadbent said.

I talk to seniors, and their families, who say they are looking to move in a couple years, says Broadbent, People say, 'Yeah, well wait a little longer.' But then, bang, it can be too late. I always ask, Why are you thinking about this now? It often means that now is the time to move.

My mom, then approaching 80 years old, eventually brought a condominium at Branchlands, an affordable older-than-55 community along U.S. 29, after selling her condo in Rhode Island.

The move down was taxing on her, as was the condo search, as she was trying to find the best place within her price range. Moving in and getting used to her new home, her new environment, new neighbors, and a new town to navigate, also proved taxing. While she enjoyed her time here and eventually did settle in, a series of health problems hit her pretty hard after about a year and a half. After she passed away last summer, our family realized she probably should have moved down here several years ago, as she would have enjoyed being closer to us all for much longer.

Broadbent said seniors often dont talk to their families -- either not wanting to bother them, or because the idea of moving scares them.

There are a lot of fears when you are in your 70s, Broadbent said. You just want to be comfortable and sit at home in your chair. But you need to have that thoughtful conversation with your family.

Because the questions can be overwhelming. Do I have the financial means to move? Will I eventually need in-home care? Does the home Im trying to sell need updating? How much space do I really need? Is what Im buying a good investment that will be handed down to my heirs? Who will help me declutter the old home and make the move? Will the new neighborhood have access to public transportation and other services should I no longer be able to drive?

Empty nesters with older parents are part of this, too, Broadbent said, even if their parents arent talking to them directly about these issues. Eventually, its going to hit them, and they need to have that conversation.

As an agent for seniors and their families, Broadbent said, she really enjoys listening to people and trying to figure out what they are thinking and why, because often they arent sure themselves. I just keep asking questions, she laughed.

The biggest problem Broadbent sees in the area is the high cost and low inventory of one-level homes.

We are still short of having affordable homes for seniors in this town, says Broadbent, and its really disturbing to me. We could use more affordable senior communities.

Indeed, Broadbents advice for families also might apply for the community. As our senior population continues to grow, we cant afford not to be proactive; we cant afford not to sit down and have a really careful analysis, and to make some real decisions. Otherwise it may be too late.
ROANOKE  A former Virginia prosecutor credits a convicted drug dealer for a newly launched charity to help former inmates get out of legal debt.

Timothy Heaphy said he didnt immediately recognize the man working the counter at a Charlottesville U-Haul store last year as someone he had personally prosecuted in a federal narcotics case. But the man recognized Heaphy, 52, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia who is now in private law practice. The man detailed his struggle to return to the community after eight and half years in custody.

He just started talking about the difficulties he had when he came home. I said, What was the hardest thing? He said it was debt, money. I owed this much to Fluvanna County. I owed this much to Albemarle. I had child support, I couldnt get my license, Heaphy recalled him saying.

Something clicked when Heaphy realized that the man helping him rent a moving vehicle, once a pretty successful drug dealer in Charlottesville, had found an employer and a legal outlet for his hustle and drive. But the man had been unsteady from legal debt, which can include court fees and costs, fines and victim restitution orders. Courts demand ex-inmates make payments or set up payment plans to comply with terms of release, hold a drivers license or access benefits such as government housing assistance, Heaphy said.

Heaphy said his continuing interest in criminal justice issues and the words of the man propelled him and others to start The Fountain Fund, a nonprofit lender to help ex-inmates saddled with unpaid court fines and costs. Job skills or a viable plan for an entrepreneurial business venture are prerequisites to borrow. He estimated that many future clients will need between $1,000 and $3,000, but he said no solid numbers on post-prison legal debt exist for Virginia.

The fund, which already holds $300,000 raised through donations, launched an active campaign Thursday in Roanoke, according to Heaphy.

Lending is expected to begin next month under the auspices of a newly hired executive director. The fund will have an office in Charlottesville but intends to serve a wider area that includes Roanoke. Heaphy said he knows of no similar programs.

The organization took its name in part from Fountain Hughes, a slave born in Charlottesville whose memories were preserved in audio recordings before he died in 1957. Heaphy said he was moved by a recording in which Hughes decried the burden of debt.

For details, go to fountainfund.org.
A group of law students I teach were recently discussing the merits of the traditional three-year law degree program. "Why not only have two years?" one suggested. "The third year could be a practicum, or a working internship." That same week, an undergraduate student asked me what I thought about five-year business degree programs that offer a bachelor's and a master's degree in one package.

This is something of a trend: whittling down graduate school requirements or fusing them with undergraduate programs to reduce the amount of time spent in school.

But graduate school courses are narrowly targeted for specific career preparation. As such, they are harder to eliminate and easier to justify. What is becoming increasingly difficult to justify is what passes for undergraduate education, and the skyrocketing costs associated with it. There, higher education is ripe for disruption.

Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author Clayton Christensen made the term "disruptive innovation" a household word. But many still misunderstand the concept. An innovation is poised to disrupt when it hits at the confluence of technological advancement and widespread public dissatisfaction with the pre-existing business model. For example, digital audiotape made it possible to copy songs without degrading the sound quality. MP3 file formats and the internet made it possible to widely share those copies. Peer-to-peer file-sharing pioneer Napster was disruptive not just because of those technologies, but also because of the artistic community's and the consuming public's shared loathing of the music industry's business practices.

Higher ed is in the middle of just such a perfect storm.

What threatens to disrupt the traditional business model of a four-year college education? Online education.

True, if you asked any student admitted to a top-tier college or university over the past few years whether she considered an online undergraduate program, her answer would almost inevitably have been "no." But that is typical of disruptive innovations, the initial quality of which is perceived to be poor, and thus not widely accepted by mainstream customers. And yet, later iterations improve, perceptions change and, as they do, products move upmarket.

I've watched for more than two decades as online education has morphed from being an option of last resort to entire programs offered online at respected research institutions. Stanford was among the first to offer a massively open online course and now offers several hundred online courses. Ohio State, Penn State and Arizona State universities offer nationally ranked, completely online bachelor's degrees. The University of Illinois, among others, has an online MBA program.

What about the second prong? Is there widespread public dissatisfaction with college education today?

Just look at the headlines.

In recent weeks, riots broke out at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Middlebury College. Students, faculty and administrators routinely curb freedom of speech, association and other constitutional liberties of those holding views with which they disagree. There has been a proliferation of courses  and policies  founded on questionable concepts like "privilege" and "cultural appropriation." Across the country there are calls for "trigger warnings" or the elimination of course content that "offends," for the creation of "safe spaces," or even complete racial segregation. Complaints of faculty bias  in teaching and in hiring  are rampant. The general public has been horrified to hear about courses offering demonstrations of sex toys, a professor sidelining as a phone-sex dominatrix, and multiple sexual misconduct scandals, among others.

Outside of class, students today must navigate the "hookup culture," the "campus rape culture" hysteria, and the 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter from then-President Obama's Department of Education, resulting in widespread denial of due process for (usually male) students accused of sexual assault (resulting in dozens of successful lawsuits against colleges and universities).

Parents, educators and government officials alike are concerned about alcohol and substance abuse on campus. (According to one online addiction resource, those attending college full-time are twice as likely to abuse drugs and alcohol as those not enrolled in college.)

Throw in some hazing in the campus Greek systems, and it's a truly toxic mix.

The clincher? Skyrocketing tuition, which has increased more than 1,100 percent since 1978, double that of medical expenses. (The average cost of one year at a private college or university is now nearly $50,000. Columbia University is now over $70,000 a year.) Most students finance their educations with debt. Many don't repay; 1.1 million Americans defaulted on their student loans in 2016.

Is it any wonder that people are exploring alternatives like two-year colleges (either as stand-alone degrees or less expensive gateways to finishing at four year-institutions), certificate programs, vocational schools and  yes  online programs.

Higher education is in a bubble, and bubbles burst. Will it be as bad as the housing meltdown and financial collapse 2008-09? That's hard to say. Mega-banks banks aren't bundling and selling worthless college degrees; those losses are left to fall on individual families and graduates  many of whom are saddled with debt that will impede their ability to build wealth for decades  and perhaps for their entire lives.

The business model of higher education needs to change, for the sake of our future graduates as well as our own survival. As history has shown, either you anticipate the disruption or you are made obsolete by it.

Laura Hollis is a Creators Syndicate columnist and a teacher of business law and entrepreneurship who holds faculty appointments at the Mendoza College of Business and the Law School at the University of Notre Dame.
On the weekend before Easter, Culpeper will host a Stations of the Cross processional which will bring together the towns major denominational churches in a commemoration of the final day of the life of Jesus.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 10:30 a.m. on April 8 in the social hall of St. Stephens Episcopal Church on N. East St.

Michael Watts, a deacon-candidate for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, said parking and shuttle services for the processional will be provided beginning at 10 a.m. at Culpeper United Methodist Churchwhich will host the final two stations.

The idea came out of a meeting last year between me and Pastor Kate Costa of St. Lukes Lutheran Church about ways we could cooperate in prayer this year, which is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luthers 95-theses and the start of the Protestant Reformation, Watts said.

From there, Watts said the idea expanded to include all the major denominations and congregations in a Way of the Cross processional through downtown Culpeper, with 14 stations located at churches and community sites along the route.

Watts said each of the stations is being coordinated by one of the participating churches. In addition, two of the 14 stations will be delivered in Spanish by local Latino churches.

According to information at culpepercross.info, the events website, the ancient tradition of the Way of the Cross originated in the Holy Land where pilgrims to this day trace the footsteps of Christ to Mount Calvary. Over the centuries the practice spread to communities all over the world, so that people didnt need to travel to the Holy Land to experience the power of following in the footsteps of Jesus.

Costa said St. Stephens Lutheran Church hosted Station of the Cross events in Yowell Meadow Park for several years beginning in 2012. However, this is the first time so many different denominations have come together for such an event.

This is a lot of churches looking at a chance to come together and celebrate our unity in the Body of Christto celebrate the fact that we really are one church, Costa said.

We hope to have at least 100 people. There will be people walking, plus the folks coordinating at each station, Costa said. We are planning for about 10 minutes at each Station; there will be a Scripture reading, a prayer and a song.

Costa said choirs from the participating churches will be leading songs at the individual Stations during the event.

Costa said the churches sponsoring each Station coordinated how their Station would be presented.

St. Lukes is sponsoring the first Station, which will be located at St. Stephens Episcopal Church, Costa said.

Watts said the processional route from St. Stephens to CUMC is 1.4 miles. The walk is expected to conclude at CUMC after 1 p.m. Along the way, there will be stops at the Culpeper Christian Community Center, which is across the street from St. Stephens, Precious Blood Catholic Church, Culpeper Presbyterian Church, the county courthouse, Antioch Baptist Church, Culpeper Baptist Church and Culpeper United Methodist Church.

A wooden cross provided by His Village will be carried to lead the procession throughout the event, Watts said.

Hopefully, it will become an annual event, Watts said. One of the unique things about this is it lets people learn about the individual worship styles of each of the groups.

Watts said April 8, the day before Palm Sunday, seemed an appropriate day to hold the event.

Watts said the Culpeper Town Police Department helped determine the best route for the walk, while members of the Knights of Columbus John J. Cempre Council will act as crossing guards during the event.

The Town Police Department and the Town of Culpeper have both given their approval for the walk, Watts said.

Pastor Dan Carlton of Culpeper Baptist Church praised Watts as the driving force behind this first-of-its-kind event.

Dr. Watts deserves a whole bunch of credit, Carlton said. It was Dr. Watts who got everybody together. When you have a person like coordinating an event, it makes it very easy to say, yes.

I hope this will spur other activities where we can all come together, Carlton said.

Carlton said participation will probably depend on the weather, but said he expects a good crowd to come out for the walk.

I think were going to have a good response, and I think its going to be a really unifying day, he said.
New Delhi: Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has been elevated to the post of Senior Vice President, Amazon. The company confirmed the development in an emailed statement.

"This indicates how excited Amazon is about the progress the company is making in India and the opportunity Amazon sees ahead," it added.

The promotion comes within a year of Agarwal's inclusion in a senior leadership team that reports directly to Amazon CEO and President Jeff Bezos. Agarwal will continue to head the India operations.

Amazon, which has committed investments to the tune of USD 5 billion, remains one of the fastest growing for the US-based e-tailer.

The company faces intense competition in India from local player, Flipkart. The competition is further heating up as Chinese e-tailer Alibaba gears up for a stronger play in India through Paytm.
New Delhi: IT company Tech Mahindra will market enterprise products and services of Chinese telecom company Huawei across 44 countries, including India, under an agreement signed between the two companies today.

"Tech Mahindra, a specialist in digital transformation, consulting and business re-engineering and Huawei Enterprise Business Group (EBG) have signed a global partnership agreement. Basis this agreement, Tech Mahindra will market Huawei's enterprise products and services across 44 countries including India," the firms said in a joint statement.

The alliance would also involve launching a joint go-to-market strategy by leveraging each other's core strengths. "Huawei and Tech Mahindra complement each other well, and, more importantly, we work towards the same goals.

As specialists in our respective domain, we now work together to present competitive solutions for the global enterprise market," Huawei India, President, Enterprise Business Group Derek Hao said.

Under this partnership, Tech Mahindra would take Huawei's enterprise products and services and build solutions around various platforms and solutions of the Indian firm. The platforms and solutions are in areas of Internet of Things (IoTs) such as connect care, connected car, connected factories and fleet management solutions, and solutions in areas of utilities such as smart cities, smart metering and smart grids, the statement said.

"This partnership enables us to implement our unique solutions along with Huaweis innovations and latest ICT infrastructure to bring faster ROI (return on investment) for our customers," Tech Mahindra President Enterprise Business Manoj Chugh said.

The partnership will help Tech Mahindra gain access to newer enterprise markets in geographies like Europe, Latin America, Africa, India, Middle East and South East Asia while enabling it to provide maximum value to the clients, the statement added.
New Delhi: The country's textiles exports dipped by about 4.5 per cent to USD 26 billion during April-December of this fiscal.

"The exports of textiles during 2016-17 (April-December) were USD 26 billion compared to USD 27.2 billion during 2015-16 (April-December)," Minister of State for Textiles Ajay Tamta said today in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

He also said that during the three quarters of this fiscal, the total production of man-made fibre stood at 1,037 million kg while spun yarn production was 4,254 million kg.

In a separate reply, he said that in order to develop the textiles industry and infrastructure, the government has implemented various schemes such as technology upgradation fund scheme and the one for integrated textiles parks, among others.
2.9 million cards were used at ATMs that were connected to switch of Hitachi, which was subjected to malware attack. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: A total of 29 lakh debt cards were subjected to malware attack last year through ATMs that were connected with the switch of Hitachi, the government said today.

As reported by commercial banks, 2.9 million cards were used at ATMs that were connected to switch of Hitachi, which was subjected to malware attack, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

However, he said the successful attempts of misuse of compromised cards as reported to the RBI by banks was only 3,291. "RBI has informed that Hitachi Payment Services (HPS) appointed SISA Infosec for PCI forensic investigation.

The final report suggested that the ATM infrastructure of HPS was breached and the data between May 21 and July 11, 2016 were compromised, but not the POS (point of sale) infrastructure," he said.

According to the minister, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has said no independent investigation was carried out by it. He further said the RBI advised banks to improve and maintain customer awareness and education with regard to cyber security risks.

"Banks were also asked to educate the customers on the downside risk of sharing their login credentials or passwords etc to any third-party vendor and the consequences thereof," he added.

RBI has set up a Cyber Security and IT Examination (CSITE) Cell within its Department of Banking Supervision in 2015, he said, adding that the bank issued a comprehensive circular on June 2, 2016 covering best practices pertaining to various aspects of cyber security.

In another reply, Gangwar said total stressed assets (gross non-performing assets and restructured standard advances) of scheduled commercial banks were Rs 9.64 lakh crore as on December 31, 2016.
Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman along with Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Denis Manturov at IESS (Photo: PTI)

Chennai: Russia is open to localizing component production of its modern Sukhoi super jet even as it is talking to Mahindra and Mahindra for partnership for the MC 21 civil aviation aircraft, Russian Trade and Industry Minister Denis Manturov said here.

"We have a very good example of a modern aircraft, the Sukhoi super jet project. We are open to both exporting it to the Indian market as well as localising some of the components production.

We are working on another civil aviation project, the MC 21 aircraft which is scheduled to have its first flight soon and we are having talks with Indian aerospace company Mahindra and Mahindra," Manturov said at the International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) organised by EEPC India here. He let out that a Mahindra subsidiary is manufacturing interiors for the Sukhoi super jet. "I think they can also be a part of the MC 21 project, both for manufacturing some components and producing the interiors for the aircraft," the minister said.

Manturov, who held bilateral talks with India's Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the sidelines of IESS, which opened yesterday, said having been associated with India's defence sector, Russia is keen to get involved with the country's civil aviation as well.

"We are currently having another project for 2114 (commercial) aircraft for regional airlines. We think that it is really compatible with the Indian market. It has a lot of demand for the Indian market and we are open to both Mahindra and Mahindra and other aerospace companies to manufacture components for this aircraft in India," he said.

As for India's defence requirements, Russia will supply 60 multi-purpose Kazan helicopters in the first phase while joint facilities will be set up in India for the manufacturing of 140 helicopters.

The agreement for the project will soon be finalised and announced, a Russian official said. As a partner country, Russia has a predominant position at IESS, being organised by EEPC India with active support of the Commerce and Industry Ministry, besides the Department of Heavy Industry. Over 400 global companies are participating in the sixth edition of the event.
Mumbai: Known for her daring film choices like Parched and Phobia, actress Radhika Apte has set the bar real high as far as semi-nude photoshoots are concerned. A monotone picture of Radhika in a see-through white-hued bra is doing the rounds on social media and her fans cannot stop gushing over the actresss bold avatar.

The picture, originally shared by designer by Nimish Shah on Instagram, has made headlines and everyone seems to go gaga over Radhikas bold fashion choice. Goes without saying, the actress looks uber stylish and sexy in the photo.

The actress has always been comfortable with bold scenes and nudity on scree. In an earlier interview, Radhika had reportedly said, I had no apprehensions about going bold. I have been brought up watching world cinema, and I have travelled a lot, so I am very comfortable with my body. I have seen people performing nude on stage in India and abroad I dont see why I should be ashamed of my body. Thats the one tool I use as a performer. I had no apprehensions doing bold scenes. I was also sure that I was really in good hands.

Radhikas next is with Twinkle Khannas debut production Padman alongside Akshay Kumar and Sonam Kapoor.
The pictures of Akshay and Radhika shared on Twitter by his fan club. (Photo credit: twitter.com/@Akkistaan)

Mumbai: After the success of Jolly LLB 2, Akshay Kumar has quickly moved on to his next film Padman being directed by R Balki.

The film is set to be the maiden production venture of his wife, former actress Twinkle Khanna, and the superstar had shared a picture of him walking hand-in-hand with her to announce the start of the film.

The superstar started the shoot of the film with a romantic track in Maheshwar, Indore on Thursday with Radhika Apte who is reportedly playing his wife in the film. Akshay is seen taking Radhika on a bicycle ride in the rustic setting.

Several fan clubs of the superstar shared the pictures on social media which started going viral.

Akshay plays the character of Arunachalam Muruganantha, who is known as a revolutionary in the field of affordable menstrual hygiene, in the film.

The film also stars Sonam Kapoor in the lead and is set to release later this year.
A gift to cherish: Prabhas, S.S. Rajamouli and Rana Daggubati present Karan Johar with the sword that was used by Katappa in the movie to kill Baahubali

Karan Johar is always known for his befitting reply to any question raised! His pun intended answers, undoubtedly, bring laughter to everybody around. Now, we are all aware of the kind of films Karan makes  out-and-out commercial and romantic sagas. Naturally, it was surprising to see Karan turning presenter for Baahubali  The Beginning and The Conclusion.

Crediting Rana for helping Karan to associate with Baahubali 1 and 2, the filmmaker clarifies not giving any inputs for both the movies.

When asked by a journalist about his creative inputs for the films, he questions the journalist instead, Have you watched the kind of films I make? I can never give inputs for such a huge film. I am associated with this film  that is enough.

Well, so being the presenter, does Karan share the royalty? Pat comes the reply, No dear, we share love! Steering the conversation to that of Karan becoming father, he quips, I am a happy father at the moment and I am doing very well. My kids are doing well too.

At the event, Karan was also gifted the same sword with which Katappa had killed Baahubali in the movie. When Rana and Rajamouli gifted the sword to Karan, he was heard saying, I feel honoured to have been gifted this sword. I will put this sword up in my office. This is a great present for my newly born twins. I shall gift it to them when they grow up. So, what will the importance of the Baahubali sword be to little Yash and Roohi Johar? Only time will tell!
Mumbai: Richard Median Jr, an actor best known for his role in the Power Rangers children's television series who prosecutors said stabbed his roommate to death with a sword during an argument pleaded guilty on Thursday to manslaughter.

Richard Medina, 38, entered the plea during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. He faces up to six years in state prison when he is sentenced on March 30.

Prosecutors said Medina stabbed Josh Sutter with a sword multiple times on Jan. 31, 2015 as the two men argued about the actor's girlfriend at their apartment in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles.

Following the fatal confrontation Medina called the 911 emergency number and remained at the scene until sheriff's deputies arrived. Sutter died of his injuries.

Medina was arrested at the time of Sutter's death but was released within days after prosecutors asked for further investigation into the high-profile case.

Medina played the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger on the popular Power Rangers Wild Force children's television series.

He also voiced the character of Deker on a later series, Power Rangers Samurai, which, like Power Rangers Wild Force, was a rebranded version the 1990s series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He has also appeared on such prime-time shows as CSI: Miami and ER.
Henry will soon be seen reprising his role as Superman in the 'Juctice League' film.

Mumbai: Actor Henry Cavill is teaming up with Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise for the sixth instalment in Mission Impossible series.

Director Christopher McQuarrie took to Instagram to break the news that the Superman star will be joining the American action spy movie with Cruise in the lead.

"Say, @henrycavill. Had a thought. Curious if youre interested in a role in the 6th installment of Mission: Impossible. No pressure," wrote McQuarrie, along side his open picture.

The director-actor duo had a humorous exchange when

McQuarrie said, "Just a few caveats: must enjoy extreme heights, high speeds, motor vehicles of all varieties (especially aircraft), practical stunts, firearms, and sporadic exposition. All good?"

To this Cavill replied, "Oh ok... I'm in!" and the director wrote back with, "Outstanding. Welcome aboard. Your social media account will self-destruct in five seconds."

Mission: Impossible 6 will hit the US theatres on July 27, 2018.
The operation requires the girls to reach Saudi Arabia through Jordan but is very expensive the costs are passed on to the Palestinian Authority. (Photo: AFP)

Hebron: A Palestinian woman gave birth on Thursday to conjoined twin sisters who share a heart, her husband said, as he launched an urgent search for funds to pay for their surgical separation abroad.

"My wife and my two daughters are in hospital and doctors say they are all in good health," Anwar Zyadat told AFP in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron."The operation that will allow them to be separated is impossible in Palestine, but doctors tell us that it might be doable in Saudi Arabia."

The two sisters, Acil and Hadil, who are joined at the waist, share a single heart and circulatory system, according to medics.The operation, which would require the girls to reach Saudi Arabia through Jordan, is "very expensive," according to Zyadat."We don't know who can help, perhaps private donors, though no one has approached us so far," said the father of 10.

Many Palestinians receive medical treatment abroad, most often in Israel. Much of the costs are passed on to the Palestinian Authority that runs the occupied West Bank.Last year two conjoined twins were born in the Gaza Strip but the sisters did not survive.
The air conditioning system has come a long way, from the Egyptian hanging reed curtains with water sprayed on them, to the water powered fan wheels of the Chinese, to aqua ducts circulating within walls in Rome.

From then on, through more technological advances, the modern air conditioner made life comfortable for millions across the planet. It enabled life in ways that could not be imagined before. Along with it also came the negative repercussions, that is now being felt across the planet. Air conditioners guzzle enormous amounts of electricity, which are produced by burning fossil fuels, that cause Co2 emissions that is now recognised as the cause of global warming and the resulting climate change and extreme climate events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that by 2100, the need for electricity to power cooling will have surged to more than 30 times what it was in 2000. All this has led to the quest for air conditioning systems that are much more energy efficient. Here is a rundown of all that is happening in this space.

The world of solar thermal, where air-conditioning units rely in part on dark glass tubes that turn sunlight into cooling power, is gaining popularity. These aren't the normal solar panels that we see on roof tops that convert sunlight to electricity. Instead, these glass tubes harness heat from the sun to chill buildings through a magical thermodynamic act. Research groups are showing off their systems at a growing number of hotels, shopping centres and other buildings across the world. Today, there are some 1,200 installations - more than 10 times the total from a decade ago. Companies that produce solar-thermal chillers say that they use 30-90% less electricity than the conventional air conditioners that operate in most buildings. And researchers are working to make the systems more efficient and cheaper to build. In a world that 100 million conventional air conditioners, which rely on compressors powered by electricity, the solar-thermal technology is expensive, typically costing about five times more than conventional ones. Research continues and more technologies are being experimented as we speak.

A group led by Stephen White at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Newcastle, Australia, has developed a desiccant-wheel system that since June 2016 has been cooling a shopping centre in Ballarat, Victoria. First, ambient air passes through a slowly rotating wheel containing a material that adsorbs moisture, leaving the air hot and dry. This dry air moves into a chamber where it causes water to evaporate, thereby lowering the temperature. The chilled, moist air is used to cool air from the building that runs through a separate conduit. That moist air is then expelled outside, and solar heat is used to dry the moisture-adsorbing material in the wheel.

Another approach is to create a hybrid: a conventional electrical compression machine that uses heat from the Sun to help the energy-guzzling compressor. Ecoline's air-conditioning system at Hotel Star Sapphire is an example. The company has installed more than 1,000 air-conditioning units in 6 countries and, in mid-2018, will be air conditioning a dormitory at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. In side-by-side tests, Ecoline says, its air conditioner delivered 35% energy savings compared with a standard high-efficiency air conditioner. The hybrid systems cost 15% more to install but are cheaper to run and recoup the extra expense in 2 years, based on electricity prices in Singapore, says Chia.

As we all brace ourselves for a predictably hotter than normal summer, we are all going to use more air conditioning in our homes, and offices. While we indulge in this necessity, can we also support these new technologies, by implementing them in our commercial complexes that are huge consumers of air.
Coimbatore: In an unusual order, a court on Thursday asked a man accused of poaching to fill water tanks kept for animals for a month as a condition for releasing him on bail.

Selvaraj (35) was arrested on February 20 near Annur in the rural limits for possessing venison and was lodged in the Central Jail here after being produced before Mettupalayam judicial magistrate Sureshkumar.

When the bail plea came up for hearing, the magistrate granted him bail with a condition that he has to fill the water tanks for one month.

In another unique condition, a court in Ariyalur had yesterday asked an accused who sought bail to remove 100 'Seema Karuvelam' (prosopis) trees considered harmful to the eco-system.
Kannur: Three persons, including the former chairman of Wayanad Child Welfare Committee (CWC), charged with covering up the rape of a minor girl allegedly by a catholic priest in Kottiyoor, surrendered before police on Friday.

CWC Chairman, Fr Thomas Joseph Therakam and one of the committee members, Betty Jose and Superintendent of the orphanage in Wayanad Sister Ophelia, surrendered before the Peravoor CI, Sunil Kumar, who is the Investigating Officer in the case, police said.

"They surrendered at 6.30 AM... they will be produced before the court in the afternoon after questioning and medical examination," Sunil Kumar said.

The Kerala High Court had on March 14 directed the four accused, the three and one Thangamma-a midwife who had moved for bail, to surrender before the investigating officers within five days.

Fr. Robin alias Mathew Vadakkencheril, who was the vicar of the local church in Kottiyoor and the prime accused in the case was arrested on February 28 on charges of sexually exploiting and impregnating the 16-year-old girl.

The victim gave birth to the child on February 7 at a private hospital in Kuthuparamba in this district. The child was taken to an orphanage at Vythiri in Wayanad district.

The officials of the orphanage had alleged that the CWC did not take any action even though they had informed it about the newborn on February 8, a day after the infant was admitted there.

Eight persons had been booked for their alleged role in the sexual exploitation and subsequent delivery of the baby by the girl, police said.
Now, the scenario is completely different and an overhaul of criminal justice system is much needed, says Senior advocate Pramila Nesargi. (Representational image)

Bengaluru: While the government and police are emphasising on curbing crimes against women, the recent incidents of repeat offenders involved in sexual crimes getting bail has raised serious concerns about the safety of women in the city.

The case of notorious serial rapist Shivarama Reddy, 31, who has more than ten cases of rape, molestation and robbery against him and was shot at and arrested by the police on Marathahalli Outer Rind Road, is a classic example of how repeated offenders are getting let off on bail. But who is to be blamed - the police or the judiciary?

Pramila Nesargi, a senior advocate and women rights activist, is very clear that there must be a difference in treating a first time offender and a second time offender.

In my opinion, we are practising the law framed decades ago. Now, the scenario is completely different and an overhaul of criminal justice system is much needed. It is surprising that a rape offender gets away on bail even after committing several offences. It is important for the police and the prosecution that they should ensure that the court is informed that a person has history of committing offences, so that the chances of the accused getting bail will be very less.

Further, she stressed that criminal laws should be amended as per the recommendations of Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System, headed by Justice V.S. Malimath.

The Committer had made several recommendations including that a suitable provision should be made requiring the officer investigation to complete investigation of cases of rape and other sexual offences on priority basis and requiring the court to dispose of such cases expeditious within a period of four months.

It has been years that the committee proposed its recommendations but where is it implemented? It is high time that we bring in change in system and expedite trial of sexual offences. There should be a clear line to discriminate first time offender and the repeated offender, Ms. Nesargi added.

Another advocate, Jayna Kothari, said the Karnataka High Court has set a guideline on granting bail to those accused in rape cases. It clearly mentions that repeat offenders should not be granted bail in rape and sexual offence cases. The court may not be knowing the history of an accused and the accused would never tell he is repeat offender. Unfortunately, prosecution also treats many cases casually.It is the duty of the prosecution to bring it to the notice of the court and convince the court the impact on the society if an offender is granted bail.

However, noted defence lawyer, Shankrappa V, argued that its the police who have to ensure that right evidences are provided to the court so that court rejects bail. Once the police arrest an accused, they should fight to prove that he is the culprit and also provide proper information to the public prosecutor so that the court gets correct information about the accused. In most of the cases, the police will just handover the case details to the prosecutor and he also does not bother to go through them. Ultimately, such practices work in favour of the accused.
Visakhapatnam: K. Kalyani, an R&B department Class-IV employee, who attempted suicide in front of the AP Assembly on Wednesday, created a flutter in front of RIMS in Srikakulam Town on Friday accusing minister K. Atchannaidu of threatening her and alleging that he had also kicked her.

Ms Kalyani staged a protest in front of RIMs against the minister claiming that she was not paid her salary since the past four months.

She told newsmen that she had met Mr Atchannaidu a few days ago and brought to his notice her ordeal of not being paid salary for the past few months, but the minister, instead of helping her, had insulted and assaulted her.

Ms Kalayani, who hails from Tekkali of Srikakulam district, had attempted suicide by consuming sleeping pills after failing to meet Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

Sources said that she had got the post after her fathers death and she had submitted a fake SSC certificate to get promotion.

The officials of the department lodged a complaint against Ms Kalyani for submitting fake certificate. Upset that she was found guilty, she has been blaming others, said the police.
New Delhi/Lucknow: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah is likely to hold consultations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) tonight, to finalise the name of the next Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister.

According to a report in NDTV, Union Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha is emerging as the top contender for the job.

Sinha had earlier today said he was not in the race for UPs top job, but is seen to be the most acceptable face, said the report.

Tomorrow, the partys 312 legislators will formally elect the Legislature Party leader for UP, who would be the CM pick.

A grand show of strength is also planned on Sunday at the oath taking ceremony, with Modi, Shah and other senior BJP leaders attending.

The event will be held at the sprawling Smriti Upvan complex near the Ambedkar memorial in Lucknow.

Though BJP UP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya has said that the decision on CM post would be taken by 4 pm tomorrow, Amit Shah on Thursday said Maurya as the state president would make the choice. Maurya, who is himself a top contender, will be hard pressed to choose himself.

Modi and Amit Shah, said NDTV, want someone who will be acceptable to all the different social groups and communities that have voted for the BJP, so that the party can retain their loyalty. They also want a proven administrator who can tackle UP's never-ending law and order problem and further Modi's development agenda in the country's most populous state.

An MTech from Benares Hindu University, Manoj Sinha is recognised for a strong ability to connect with masses, especially at the rural level. He belongs to the Bhumihar Brahmin caste and is considered a firm administrator, said the report. His only drawback may be that he is not a backward caste leader.

Maurya ticks the box that Sinha doesnt  he comes from the Most Backward Caste (MBC) category, and played an important role in BJPs win in UP. But the UP chief has many cases pending against him, and picking him as CM might jeopardize BJPs narrative of fighting against corruption.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who has been CM of UP in the past, is also in contention for the post.

The BJP has already formed governments in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, the last two by cobbling together a majority through alliances, in spite of winning less seats than the Congress. Elections to 5 states  Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab.
Uttarakhand Governor Krishna Kant Paul appointed BJP Legislative Party leader Trivendra Singh Rawat as CM and invited him to form government. (Photo: ANI Twitter)

Dehradun: Uttarakhand BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat was on Friday elected as the Legislature Party leader in the state, thus making him the Chief Ministerial choice of the saffron party.

Uttarakhand governor Krishna Kant Paul invited Rawat to form the government, and appointed him the CM later in the evening.

Rawat will take oath as the CM of the hilly state on Saturday at 3 pm.

The BJP leader is close to party chief Amit Shah, and helped him during the 2014 Uttar Pradesh campaign, where BJP won 71 seats.

Rawat is also a former pracharak of the RSS.

He has left behind other probables for the CM post like Satpla Maharaj, who left Congress to join BJP in 2014, and Prakash Pant, the first Speaker of the state after it was formed in 2000.
Congress senior spokesperson C P Joshi also said the BJP playing politics of this kind is dangerous for the country and today when the government was formed there was a day for introspection in democracy. (Photo: PTI/ File)

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday accused the BJP of a "manufactured majority" in Manipur saying the new precedents set by the saffron party are of concern and challenge to parliamentary democracy in the country.

Congress senior spokesperson C P Joshi also said the BJP playing politics of this kind is dangerous for the country and today when the government was formed there was a day for introspection in democracy.

He also questioned the role of the Governor there and accused her of playing into the hands of the ruling party as she ignored the Congress' claim of forming a government after emerging as the single-largest party in the state.

"BJP talks about moral practices but has shown political expediency in Manipur by forming a government. If on the basis of political expediency you form governments, it poses a big challenge to the country in the coming times...Today is a day for introspection in our democracy," he said.

"BJP playing politics of this kind in a sensitive border state is dangerous for the nation," he said.

Joshi said the BJP had no pre-poll alliance and it even claimed the support of a Congress MLA saying he was with them, besides illegally detaining an independent MLA who flew into Imphal.

"It is a manufactured majority because they have not elected the Leader and Governor is saying that the BJP has the support of 32 MLAs. Governor never invites party; Governor invites the individual, elected representative," the party's general secretary incharge of Manipur also said.

He claimed the Congress promptly elected the Legislative Party leader after it won 28 of the 60 seats and emerged as the single-largest party for the fourth time in a row. But BJP which won only 21 seats out of the 60 that they contested staked its claim through "illegal means".
New Delhi: Police will scan the call logs and chat records of the mobile phone and social media accounts of Dalit JNU student Muthukrishnan who allegedly committed suicide.

The deceased who had named himself 'Krish Rajini' on Facebook, allegedly hanged himself at his South Korean friend's house in Munirka using a blanket on March 13.

On Wednesday, a case of abetment to suicide and the relevant section of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs) Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Act was registered in connection with the incident.

"We will access his laptop data and go through his SMSes to ascertain the reason why he took the extreme step," said a senior police officer.

The officer also said that they will also request the two professors under whom he was pursuing his dissertation to join the probe.

Police has also issued notices to the university seeking clarification over allegations that he faced "caste-based" discrimination.

His roommate in the hostel Amritangshu will also be spoken to in detail whether he had noticed any suicidal tendencies in Krishnan in the days leading to his death.

Police is also trying to contact the woman whom he had spoken to on the morning of March 13, the day he allegedly killed himself. His mobile phone and laptop have been sent for forensic examination.

Police are also scanning through the five Facebook posts in which he had narrated a story about being discriminated while in Salem and in Delhi.

In the posts titled, "Manaa", the 28-year-old had narrated his struggle to get over the discrimination.

To verify the allegations about his being discriminated, notices are likely to be sent to the JNU administration, head of the student's welfare board and the head of department of Centre for Historical Studies where he was enrolled for his M.phil.

Police have also approached a few of his batchmates and friends to verify the allegations.

Family members have told the cops that in order to pursue a course in JNU, Muthukrishnan had taken up different jobs and was emotionally strong. He was a member of Dalit student's association at the Hyderabad Central University but never took part in active student politics.

Muthukrishnan's body was cremated at his hometown in Salem.
New Delhi: After Manohar Parrikar won the trust vote in Goa Assembly, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Friday lamented that money power proved stronger than people's power finally.

"Finally Money Power proves to be stronger than People's Power. People of Goa defeated BJP but those who got elected on anti BJP vote sold Goa to BJP. Sad," he tweeted.

The Congress failed to cobble up a majority despite winning 17 of the 40 seats in Goa, even as all opposition members other than Congress joined hands with BJP to form a government under Parrikar.

Singh is the general secretary incharge of Congress in Goa, who was negotiating with various parties and elected MLAs after the results came in on March 11.
New Delhi: India and Russia on Friday signed two key agreements for long-term maintenance and technical support for Russian-made Su-30MKI fighter jets of the Indian Air Force.

Currently, the IAF operates around 230 Su-30MKI fighter jets and as per the agreements, Russian defence majors United Aircraft Corporation and the United Engine Corporation will render technical support and provide maintenance services and spares for the fleet for a period of five years.

The pacts were signed between India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and the two Russian companies in presence of Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and Russia's Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov.

Speaking on the occasion, Manturov said Russia will provide critical support for maintenance of Russian-origin aircraft and military platforms.

"Along with the work on the programs of licensed production, repair and upgrade of Su and MiG planes, the United Aircraft-Building Corporation is carrying out work jointly with HAL on jointly developing the FGFA (Fifth- Generation Fighting Aircraft)," he said.

United Aircraft-Building Corporation President Yuri Slyusar said his company will ensure proper maintenance of the frontline fighter fleet of the IAF.

"We believe the pact will allow the United Aircraft- Building Corporation to considerably increase the efficiency of providing after-sale services for the jets," he said.

The agreements were signed at a conference on India-Russia Military and Industrial Cooperation.

The conference is aimed at addressing issues relating to life-cycle support and maintenace of Su-30MKI aircraft, Mi-17 helicopters, Mig-29K jets, T-90 tanks and aircraft carrier Vikramaditya.
New Delhi: Sitting Calcutta High Court Judge Justice C.S. Karnan in a letter addressed to seven senior most judges demanded a compensation of Rs 14 crore for disturbing his mind and normal life.

This came days after a bailable warrant was issued against him for his allegations against the Supreme Court and High Court judges.

Justice Karnan has said if his demand is not met then he would restrain the judicial and administrative work of these judges.

Justice Karnan in his two page letter to the seven judges said, "You have constituted an unconstitutional bench after breaking the Indian constitutional law and passed a suo motu contempt order and restrained me from judicial and administrative work and that order was passed with malafide intention in order to harass a Dalit Judge (myself)."

"Judge means a dignified person of law who has to hear both sides of the case and pass order in accordance with law. Hence, I request you (CJI and other six judges) to cancel the unconstitutional bench and restore my normal work. The seven judges should pay compensation, a sum of Rs 14 crore since you have disturbed my mind and my normal life, besides you have insulted me in the general public consisting of a population of 120 crores in India due to lack of legal knowledge," the letter added.

In his letter, he alleged that these senior judges have issued the order to protect the 20 judges against whom he has filed a complaint for dishonesty.

"All seven judges shall pay a part of the compensation within a period of seven days from the receipt of this order, failing which on the same stand (on the same footing), I will restrain judicial and administrative work of yours," the letter states.
Islamabad/New Delhi: Two Indian clerics, including the head priest of New Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah, have gone missing in Pakistan, prompting India to take up the matter with the Pakistani government.

According to official sources in New Delhi, Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight from there to Karachi on Wednesday.

"As per their families, while Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, Nazim was stopped at the Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete travel papers.

"While Nazim went missing from Lahore airport, Asif went missing after arriving at the Karachi airport," a source said.

The matter has been taken up with the Pakistan government both in New Delhi as well as through the Indian mission in Islamabad, the source said.

The duo had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.
Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today ruled out possibility of early Assembly polls.

His assertion came in the backdrop of opposition Congress' claim that Assembly elections are likely to be advanced in Telangana.

"Elections will happen as per schedule," he said in the Legislative Assembly, referring to the comments of state Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy.

The term of current Assembly ends in 2019.

Rao's comments came during a debate on the annual budget for 2017-18 while talking about the measures announced by the TRS government for the welfare of backward classes.

The decisions announced by the state government were not aimed at any political gains, but to strengthen rural economy, he said.

The government is going to spend about Rs 10,000 crore-Rs 20,000 crore on giving a boost to rural economy, he said.

The government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for the Most Backward Classes Corporation and proposed an amount of Rs 5,070.36 crore for welfare of backward classes in the budget.

Responding to queries raised by Opposition Leader K Jana Reddy, Rao said the issue of identifying the most backward classes, to receive the benefits from the government, has been referred to the Backward Classes Commission.

Talking about the TRS government's move to promote traditional occupations like sheep rearing and fisheries in a big way, Jana Reddy wondered whether the targeted beneficiaries have been identified.

On the criticism of opposition parties that there is not much progress in implementing the promise of two-bed room houses for the poor, Rao said two lakh houses will be built by the end of this year.

On the comments of Jana Reddy and BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy about mounting public debt, the chief minister said taking loans and repaying them is a "continuous process".

The government would pay back Rs 20,000 crore this year, he said.
New Delhi: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today expressed unhappiness over the handling of probe into the assault on a student from Arunachal Pradesh in Bengaluru saying investigation was not "unsatisfactory".

"Action at the investigating officer level is not satisfactory. I have communicated this to the DGP of Karnataka and Commissioner of Bengaluru Police," he told PTI here.

The Union Minister of State for Home has been closely following the incident of attack on Higio Guntey, who hails from Arunachal Pradesh and is a fourth-semester student of Christ University.

Guntey was allegedly beaten and forced to lick his house owner's shoes for using excessive water in Bengaluru on March 6.

Rijiju said he was assured of all follow up actions by senior officials of the Karnataka government in the case.

The Minister appealed to police forces of all states to be more prompt in taking action if there is any incident of attack on people from Northeast in any part of the country.

There have been protests by students from the Northeast in different parts of the country against the attack on the student from Arunachal Pradesh.
Trivendra Singh Rawat has left behind other probables for the top post like Satpla Maharaj, who left Congress to join BJP in 2014, and Prakash Pant, the first Speaker of the state. (Photo: Facebook)

Dehradun: Former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak Trivendra Singh Rawat, who is now part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is the front runner to become Uttarakhand Chief Minister.

According to reports, Trivendra Singh Rawat has left behind other probables for the top post like Satpla Maharaj, who left Congress to join BJP in 2014, and Prakash Pant, the first Speaker of the state after it was formed in 2000.

However, Rawat is not merely an RSS man, but also enjoys the support of BJP President Amit Shah, reports said. The two worked closely together during the 2014 national election when Shah was in charge of UP and Rawat was his deputy.

BJP lawmakers will meet on Friday to select a Parliamentary party leader. But the final decision will be Amit Shahs.

BJP won 57 out of the 70 seats in Uttarakhand, demolishing the ruling Congress in the recently concluded elections. The new Uttarakhand CM and cabinet will be sworn in tomorrow at Dehraduns parade ground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Amit Shah will attend the ceremony.

An announcement on who will be the Uttar Pradesh CM will also be made on Saturday. The BJP won a record 312 of the 403 seats in the state Assembly, the second-biggest electoral win in the state since Independence.
Police personnel giving a gun-salute to mortal remains of CRPF H C Nandram Atram who was killed in a Naxal attack in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The government on Thursday asserted in Parliament that the sacrifices of 12 CRPF personnel, who were killed in a naxal attack in Chhattisgarh last week, will not go in vain.

The government said all support will be provided to the forces as well as states in dealing with the naxal menace and the Left-wing extremists will not be allowed to succeed in misleading the people and depriving them from benefits of development.

Making a statement in the Rajya Sabha on recent attack on security forces at Sukma, Chhattisgarh, Minister of State for Home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said 12 personnel were martyred and 2 were seriously injured in this unfortunate incident.

The condition of injured personnel is stable and they are out of danger, he said, and read out the names of all 12 martyrs and two injured security forces. "I assure the House that their sacrifices will not go in vain," Ahir said.

Claiming that the Left-wing extremists have suffered unprecedented losses during last year, the minister said, "They (naxals) will continue to attempt such incidents to restore the flagging morale of their cadres."

He said the country's brave soldiers and officers would continue to respond with firm resolve and contribute towards elimination of Left-wing extremism.

On the incident of March 11, he said, "There is a need for introspection in this incident."

Ahir said the Home Minister has directed the DG, CRPF to conduct a detailed inquiry into the incident in order to identify lapses and reduce the possibility of such incidents in the future.

"I assure the House that the government is committed to providing all support to the CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces) in order to prepare them for their tasks. In the same way, the government is also committed to supporting the states for training, capacity building, provision of CAPF battalions as required and intelligence sharing," Ahir said.

Referring to the Chhattisgarh incident, he said the next of kin of the martyred CRPF personnel will be provided Rs 35 lakh as ex-gratia from the central government, Rs 20 lakh from the Risk Fund of CRPF and Rs 1 lakh from the CRPF Welfare Fund.

They will also get Rs 25 lakh as insurance benefits and Rs 3 lakh as ex-gratia from the Chhattisgarh government.

The next of kin will also be provided full salary till the age of superannuation of the personnel martyred under the Liberalised Pensionary Award, the minister said.

He said the unprecedented success of the security forces of late has led to evident uneasiness among the Left-wing extremists groups.

Reeling out data, he said 135 Left-wing extremist cadres were eliminated, 779 arrested and 1,198 surrendered in Chhattisgarh during 2016. The number of violent incidents in the state fell by 15 per cent from 466 in 2015 to 395 in 2016.

Talking about the improved efficacy of the security forces, Ahir said the number of Left-wing extremists killed increased by 150 per cent at 222 last year against 89 in 2015.

"Surrenders and arrests registered a combined increase of 47 per cent over 2015 (2238 to 3282). Only 3 weapons were lost by the security forces in 2016 as against 15 in 2015," the minister said.

Moreover, he said that 67 per cent of encounter/exchange of fire resulted in neutralisation of Left-wing extremist cadres as against only 36 per cent in 2015.

The sustained operations by the security forces ensured that South Bastar districts witnessed a considerable fall in violence in 2016 at 252 incidents against 326 in 2015.
Lucknow: Security has been enhanced at the Taj Mahal in the wake of a media report of a threat to the 17th century monument from terror outfit ISIS.

"A link has been circulated in which it is claimed that Taj Mahal is on the target of ISIS. We are probing it.

However, security has been enhanced in and around the monument," Additional Director General, Law and Order, Daljeet Singh Chowdhury told PTI here.

The security was jacked up after a website showed graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looked like a weapon.

According to reports, a pro-ISIS media group published a graphic depicting Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world, as a possible target of the terror outfit.

The graphic was released almost a week after security agencies carried out combing operation in Uttar Pradesh in which one accused - Saifullah - was killed and six others were arrested.

It was reported that Saifullah was brainwashed by ISIS through the online medium and had carried out an attack on a train in Bhopal.

The graphic features an ISIS fighter wearing combat fatigues and black headgear armed with an assault rifle standing near the Taj Mahal.

It also features three inset pictures - an image of Taj Mahal within crosshairs with the words "New Target" below it, a van with the Arabic text "Agra istishhadi" (Agra

martyrdom-seeker) written in English, implying the threat of a suicide bombing, and an image of a "bomb".

The internal security of Taj Mahal, the biggest draw for foreign and domestic tourists, is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force, a central para-military force entrusted with the task of protecting industrial units, airports, metro rail and various other sensitive places.

The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) man the outer periphery.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams keep a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking slot towards the eastern gate.
The anti-Muslim posters emerged overnight after the results of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls were announced. (Photo: AFP/ Representational Image)

Bareilly: Posters asking the Muslim community to leave Jiyangala village or else face "Trump-like" action have come up in the village, situated about 70-km from in Bareilly, police said today.

The posters, found pasted on the houses of the members of Muslims, warned that since the BJP has come to power in Uttar Pradesh they will have to leave the village by December 30 or face consequences, Senior Superintendent of Police Jogindra Kumar said.

District Magistrate Surendra Singh said that the matter has come under his knowledge and the police have been alerted to maintain a vigil.

Soon after getting the information by locals, police teams rushed to the village and took two persons into custody for questioning after lodging an FIR at the Shishgarh police station, he added.

The SSP also said that owners of computer typing and printing shops were also being questioned.

The posters emerged overnight after the results of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls were announced.

They also warned that if the members of the community do not leave the village they will have to face a situation like their community members were facing under the Trump administration in the US.

The posters were apparently referring to US President Donald Trump's executive orders banning travel from six Muslim majority countries.

Most of the posters have since been removed by the police and the administration.
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday said there would not be any need to provide free power to the agriculture sector in the state once the irrigation projects being taken up by the government are completed. Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Mr Rao said that free power was being provided since Telangana is a drought-prone state and lack adequate irrigation facility for agriculture, forcing farmers to depend on borewells that require huge amount of unaffordable power.

Once we complete all our irrigation projects as planned, the drought problem will be resolved and there will be no need to provide free power to the agriculture sector, he said, intervening in the discussion on the 2017-18 Budget. The state at present has nearly 20 lakh agriculture pumpset connections; it had decided to give an additional one lakh connections last October, bringing the total to 21 lakh.

Free power to agriculture has been among the most crucial schemes for any political party since 2004. Former CM Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy had promised free power for seven hours per day that helped him dethrone the TD government in 2004 after it ruled for nine years. In 2009, YSR had promised to increase free power duration from seven hours per day to nine.

The TRS too promised free power to agriculture in its manifesto for 2014 elections. The TS government has allocated `4,203 crore subsidy in new Budget 2017-18 to provide free power.
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday ruled out power tariff hike this year. Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Mr Rao said the Discoms had submitted tariff hike proposals but he had rejected them as the entire debt burden of Discoms (over Rs 11,000 crore) was taken over by the state government by joining Centres UDAY scheme and there was no need to burden the people by increasing power charges on account of this.

The entire debt burden has been taken over by government. This has saved Discoms from paying over Rs 850 crore interest on loans every year. Now Discoms are free from debt and interest payment. In these conditions, I told them where was the need to hike power charges and rejected the proposals, Mr Rao said. However, the Discoms are insisting on power tariff hike. The TSERC is yet to take a decision on revising power charges.
New Delhi: India does not have any government-run breast milk bank but the Centre is "in the process" of framing national guidelines on human milk banks, the Lok Sabha was informed today.



"Presently there is no breast milk bank in the country run by the government of India. However, the government is in the process of framing national guidelines on human milk banks," Minister of State for Health Faggan Singh Kulaste said in a written reply.



"These guidelines are to be seen as an extension of the breastfeeding promotion campaign programme to cover babies not getting benefits of breastfeeding due to inescapable reasons," he said.



The Health Minister had last year launched a nationwide breastfeeding programme "MAA - Mother's Absolute Affection" aimed at promoting the practice among mothers.



Union Health Minister J P Nadda while launching the programme had said that it will greatly help to reduce the under-five mortality among children.
The students of the college had reportedly started 'Apec Memes', which is critical of the college administration and which got highlighted in social medial like Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Vijay reportedly 'liked' one such meme.

Chennai: Based on the complaint from the mother of engineering student, J Vijay, the godman Bangaru Adigal's son, GB Senthil Kumar, who is the Correspondent of Aadiparasakthi college of engineering in Melmaruvathur, Kancheepuram has been booked along with some others by the police under various sections of IPC for criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement and voluntary causing of hurt with dangerous weapons.

In a complaint to the Melmaruvathur police station, Vijay's mother, Panchavarnam Jayaprakash, recorded that Vijay was brutally assaulted by Senthil Kumar and Sakthi Kannan along with a lawyer and others seeking the background details of a Facebook post.

The students of the college had reportedly started 'Apec Memes', which is critical of the college administration and which got highlighted in social medial like Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Vijay reportedly 'liked' one such meme. The college administration reportedly wanted to know who is the admin for 'Apec Memes' and Senthil Kumar was trying to extract that information on the meme from Vijay, who had 'liked' it on FB.

In the complaint lodged in the police station on March 15, Panchavarnam, hailing from Tirunelveli, said that her son was initially beaten up on Monday and paraded through all the classrooms. Later he was taken to a room where he was locked up. He was stripped of his dress and hit with a plastic chair by Senthil Kumar, said the compliant.

They had also kicked on his private parts, she further said. Vijay was asked to collect his TC and leave the college. The Correspondent reportedly told him that if he tried to inform about the torture to anyone, he would be buried alive. He was asked to tell everybody that he suffered injuries due to a fall from terrace.

The boy was taken to Kilpauk medical college initially and later to Rajiv Gandhi government GH. A scuffle among some friends of Vijay, a fourth year chemical engineering student, and the staff at the Rajiv Gandhi government general hospital in Chennai had triggered a road roko on Poonamalee high road on Thursday.
New Delhi: Opposition Congress on Friday forced an adjournment of Rajya Sabha proceedings over the conduct of the Goa Governor in inviting BJP to form the government in the state after she reportedly consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Congress members alleged breach of propriety and constitutional norms in the consultations Goa Governor Mridula Sinha held with Jaitley. They stormed into the Well of the House raising slogans against murder of democracy, forcing Deputy Chairman P J Kurien to adjourn the House till noon.

Earlier when the House met for the day, Digvijaya Singh (Cong) said he has given a notice under rule 267 seeking setting aside of the business of the day to take up "gross constitutional impropriety committed by Governor of Goa."

Singh read out from an interview Sinha gave to a newspaper in which she reportedly said she did not expect BJP to form the government but spoke to Jaitley before arriving at the decision to call the party to form the government ahead of Congress which had emerged as the single largest party in elections.

Kurien said the conduct of a Governor can be discussed only on the basis of a substantive motion and he had disallowed Singh's notice under 267.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the conduct of Governor was discussed when the Arunachal Pradesh issue was debated in the House. "Why don't you move a substantive motion," Kurien asked.

"No. I have to go by rules. You can bring substantive motion, Chairman will consider it."

Azad said his party colleague Singh had not raised any issue with the conduct of the Governor but merely stated what she had said in an interview.

In the interview, he said, the Governor said she did not accept BJP to form the government and she had called Jaitley at 2130 hours on Sunday night before inviting BJP to form the government.

"How can the Governor seek permission of a Cabinet minister to form a government," Azad asked as Kurien insisted on a substantive motion for any discussion.

Singh said the House was supreme and a sense of members present can be taken and his notice under rule 267 converted into a substantive motion.

Anand Sharma (Cong) said the Constitution clearly defines the duties and powers of Governor in appointing chief minister and it does not anywhere state that the Governor is supposed to consult serving cabinet minister. "Constitution does not allow Governor to consult cabinet minister" for government formation, he said.

Kurien said if the Governor has violated the Consitution, a substantive motion can be brought. "You are going by a newspaper report. I am not bothered about that. I have made it very clear that if you feel that the Governor has violated any of the provision of Constitution, please bring a substantive motion. I cannot allow you to discuss the conduct of Governor," he said.

Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) said a cabinet minister is answerable to House. To this, Kurien said if any minister has violated any provision of the Constitution, there can be a motion for that as well. "We can discuss that. I have no problem."

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the government is ready to discuss if the Congress was to bring a substantive motion. He went on to say that the opposition party by its continued protests was insulting the verdict of the people as also the ruling of the Chair.

Congress members then trooped into the Well shouting slogans against what they said was murder of democracy. Treasury benches also countered the slogan shouting.

Kurien again said he was not against any discussion. "I am not denying or refusing any discussion... if you want to discuss (Governor's conduct), please give a substantive motion. I will also request Chairman (to consider it) and then we can have a discussion anytime."

But Congress members continued to insist on a discussion. Singh said Jaitley is a member of the House and he can avail of his right to reply. He then went on to state that a substantive motion will be given.

Azad said the House should be adjourned for an hour for the substantive motion to be framed and submitted and the same can be discussed thereafter.

But this was not agreeable to the Chair or the treasury benches. As the slogan shouting continued, Kurien adjourned the House till 1200 hours.
UP BJP President Keshav Prasad Maurya flashes victory sign with party workers at a press conference after the party's victory in State Assembly elections in Lucknow. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya on Friday said the state legislature party will decide on the chief minister tomorrow.

"Legislature party will decide who will be the chief minister. The oath taking ceremony will be on March 19 and all national leaders of the party will attend the ceremony," he told reporters outside Parliament.

Maurya, who was admitted to hospital yesterday after he complained of uneasiness, said he was "fully well" now.

"There were slight problems and I was taken to hospital yesterday. I was discharged from hospital yesterday only. I am now fully well," he said

Repeatedly asked about the possible candidates for the chief minister's post, he said, "There will be a legislature party meeting tomorrow at 4 PM. You will get to know tomorrow as to who will head the government."

Maurya was also asked about BJP president Amit Shah's remark yesterday that he had given Maurya the responsibility to select the CM. "It was said in a lighter vein. Whatever is my responsibility as party's state president I will fulfil that," he said.

Though the BJP has formed governments in Manipur and Goa, it is yet to declare its chief minister in UP where it has got two-third majority.

The selection of Chief Minister in UP is crucial for BJP as the person would be expected to steer the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the crucial state.

There were conjectures within the party after Shah's remark as to whether Maurya, who is BJP's OBC face in UP, is out of the reckoning.
Chennai: Spicing up the electoral battle in Dr Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency further, the rebel AIADMK camp led O. Panneerselvam on Thursday fielded party veteran and strong man E. Madhusudhanan against official nominee T. T. V. Dinakaran.

Panneerselvam, who also exuded confidence that the Election Commission would allot the partys two leaves symbol since they represent the original AIADMK, announced Madhusudhanans name for the prestigious battle on April 12.

The choice of Madhusudhanan, who has been residing in North Chennai for the past 50 years and has excellent rapport with AIADMK workers and public alike, is expected to make the battle tougher for Dhinakaran, who is being viewed as an outsider. DMK has also fielded a local functionary Marudhu Ganesh. Besides Madhusudhanan, Deepa Jayakumar and the DMK candidate, the AIADMK will have to fight the public perception against it in the wake of V K Sasikalas conviction in the DA case.

Though Madhusudhanan has won from Dr R K Nagar constituency only once in 1991, he has been working for the AIADMK in North Chennai, particularly in the assembly segment, ever since late MGR launched the party in 1972.

A veteran of many political battles, Madhusudhanan was handpicked by MGR as the powerful dt secretary of North Chennai to make inroads into arch-rival DMKs vote bank and was made Presidium Chairman of the AIADMK by late Jayalalithaa. Interestingly, the DMK and AIADMK managers in the constituency - P K Sekar Babu and P Vetrivel  were followers of Madhusudhanan.

I am sure to win this elections. I am the son of the soil and I know the length and breadth of the constituency. I will defeat Dhinakaran decisively in the battle for dharma, the AIADMK veteran said.

DMK asks EC to transfer George as CoP

DMK on Thursday knocked at the doors of the EC seeking transfer of Chennai Police Commissioner S George till the bypolls to Dr R K Nagar is over, alleging that he was supporting AIADMK general secretary V. K. Sasikala with an eye on the DGP post.
New Delhi: Senior BJP leader and former RSS pracharak Trivendra Singh Rawat will be the next Chief Minister of Uttarakhand where the saffron party won 57 of the total 70 seats in the recently-concluded Assembly elections.

The BJPs state legislature party unanimously elected Mr Rawat as its leader on Friday, and the swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and other top BJP leaders are expected to attend the oath taking ceremony.

Narendra Singh Tomar, the BJPs central observer for the legislature partys meeting, said in Dehradun that Mr Rawats name was proposed by senior leaders and MLAs  Prakash Pant and Satpal Maharaj  and was seconded by a host of other legislators.

Satpal Mahraj, also a former Union minister, was among the contenders for the top job. He is likely to be appointed as the Assembly Speaker.

After the legislature party meeting, the MLAs left for the Raj Bhavan where they submitted the resolution on Mr Rawats unanimous election to governor K.K. Paul.

A graduate in journalism from the Garhwal University, Mr Rawat will be sworn in as the eighth Chief Minister of the hill state at the Parade Ground. He was appointed as the partys Jharkahnd in-charge in 2014, and had assisted Mr Shah in Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He has considerable administrative experience as he was minister in the BJP governments led by B.C. Khanduri and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. He had joined the RSS when he was 19, and six years later he was appointed pracharak for Dehradun city. He contested his first election in 2002 from Doiwala.

BJP state in-charge Shyam Jaju described Mr Rawat as the most suitable choice for the new responsibility since he was a leader who had both organisational and ministerial experience.

He is perfectly equipped to give the state the kind of leadership it needs, Mr Jaju said. Mr Rawat promised to work towards PM Narendra Modis goal of eliminating corruption and poverty. Giving people a corruption-free government and bringing a change in the lives of the poorest of the poor will be our priority, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP President Amit Shah greet party members during the BJP Parliamentary party meeting at Parliament house in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The much-awaited name of Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh might be announced on Saturday when the newly-elected BJP MLAs meet in Lucknow to elect the legislature party leader.

Top leaders have said they were not in the race for the top job in the state, whose importance for the BJP for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections cannot be overstated. It can be expected that the top BJP leadership will keep a very close watch on the party and government in UP in the months leading up to the general elections.

Union minister of state Manoj Sinha took the lyrical route on Friday to say he was not a contender: Naa, mujhe kisi race kaa pata hai, naa main kisi race main hoon (Neither do I know about any race [for CM], nor am I in any race).

Other names being mentioned for the top post are Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma, MLAs Suresh Khanna and Satish Mahana and state unit chief Keshav Maurya.

Dark horse might also emerge as CM

Mr Maurya, an OBC leader, who had checked into hospital a couple of days ago, said, Whatever is my responsibility as the partys state unit president, I will fulfil that. He was asked about party president Amit Shah's remark that he had given Mr Maurya the responsibility to select the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. After these remarks, speculation was rife that Mr Mauryas name was out of the race for CM.

Earlier this week, Union minister Rajnath Singh replied Ram Ram when asked if he was headed to UP. These discussions are futile and unnecessary, he had said.

Some media reports said Mr Rajnath Singhs security team had gone to Lucknow. The home minister, several leaders have said, is a natural contender due to his profile and vast administrative experience. Speculation is rife that a dark horse might also emerge as the Chief Minister.

Preparations have begun in the state capital for Sunday's swearing-in ceremony at the Kanshiram Smriti Upvan. The BJP had bagged 325 seats along with its allies in the 403-member Assembly.

In a statement in Lucknow, UP Governor Ram Naik said, the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, along with his Cabinet colleagues, would take the oath on March 19 at 5 pm at Kanshiram Smriti Upvan.

State BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi said the legislature party meeting would be held on Saturday at Lok Bhavan, the newly-constructed chief minister's office which is adjacent to the state BJP office.

The partys central observers  Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav - will be present at the meeting to elect the chief minister.

The swearing-in ceremony is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Amit Shah and other top party leaders, said official sources.
On March 8, three years ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 vanished from radar as it was crossing the Indian Ocean. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew and was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when air traffic control declared it missing from their screens. Three years later, there's still no trace of the plane and authorities who had once promised to keep searching, seem to be giving up. Narendran K.S., whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on board the plane, explains why the search must continue.

At the outset, let me make it clear: the responsibility for the search (of MH370) remains with the Malaysian government. Sadly, that government has chosen to suspend the search under questionable pretexts. It is very important for the aviation sector and the flying public to uncover how a large jetliner, claiming to be the safest, most sophisticated and successful commercial aircraft with hundreds of passengers on board, can just disappear without a trace. Finding the missing plane is crucial to understanding what might have happened. Knowing the answer can help evolve strategies to avoid a recurrence. I don't believe we can feel safe while flying when the possibility of another similar incident lurks.

Our immediate priority then is to press the governments around the world to urge Malaysia, China and Australia to resume search and persevere until we find satisfactory answers to what actually happened. The attitude of governments, aviation-related businesses and the world at large of 'business as usual' must end. There exists poorly-understood safety and security hazards that need sustained inquiry.

The search and investigation is a complex challenge, a hazardous one that MH370 families don't have the resources and capacity to manage. However, we are unequivocally against the premature end to the search. Should Malaysia fail to respond, we will work to elicit fund commitments from world governments, corporations, high net-worth individuals and the travelling public. This is not likely to be easy. It brings up its own challenges of mobilisation, utilisation, accountability to the public, and suitable systems and processes.

The search in the ocean also requires experts, expensive equipment, and importantly, bathymetric data. If the fruitless efforts of the past three years, and the successful search for Air France flight 447 is anything to go by, it is a painstaking venture not to be taken lightly. We have had initial discussions with the best and highly-experienced experts in the world to scope the entire task.

Sometime in the future, we may see an alternatively funded and managed search prominently represented by the next - of -kin of MH370 passengers. We do not envisage such a search replacing the government or in any way releasing the governments involved in the search thus far from their obligations. We are clear that such an unprecedented search not directed by governments will nonetheless draw on their willing cooperation, data resources, analysis and assets.

Who knows, this may yet turn out a model for collaboration, even if its origins are traced to a sense of disappointment anger, betrayal, and sadness.

Also, Malaysia has at most times in the past three years not engaged as much with the families as desired or as mandated by international conventions. We have on many occasions pointed out that Malaysia has avoided any direct dialogue or consultation with the affected families, and have given every reason to believe that the families have been seen as irritants rather than those deserving active listening.

Our meetings with authorities have been few and far between and in any case, way fewer than the circumstances warranted. It hasn't mattered whether one is in India, Malaysia, Beijing, or elsewhere. The meetings have been formalities focused on rolling out prepared briefs or repeating what is already out in the press, rather than an occasion for deep engagement. Our most recent meeting with the transport minister of Malaysia, early March 2017 in Kuala Lumpur, offered some possibility that we may have turned a corner. We remained unconvinced with his reasons from suspension of the search and told him so. We expressed our dissatisfaction with the efforts to locate debris along the African Coast along the Western Indian Ocean. We expressed our wish that our relations with the authorities don't have to be adversarial, and greater transparency and more frequent contact could offer a productive bridge. He lent a patient ear. For the first time in three years, he, from the government participated in a remembrance event on March 4.

Australia has tended to be more forthcoming in its contacts with families, and demonstrably exerted itself to search without let up based on the advice from experts and directions from Malaysia. The families had hope for more from China considering that it had 152 of its nationals on board MH370, and continue to be optimistic that it will lend its weight and resources to a more sustained search and effort to find answers.

Because unless we have a credible investigation and a commitment to transparency, any number of theories will emerge. In the absence of independent verification / scrutiny of facts, data, analysis, video footage, etc, we continue to feed those who seek to sensationalise and speculate. There are far too many theories doing the rounds, some even re-circulating after having been debunked, to merit a serious response. In the first week of March this year, there have been two such stories: one suggesting that North Korea was responsible of the hijacking of MH370, presumably to ride the wave of news about the killing of North Korean dictator's brother in Kuala Lumpur recently. The other suggest that there was a suspicious extra passenger on board MH370, not hitherto accounted for. I would leave this for the authorities to respond to this one.

So at present, our energies are focused on getting the search back on track. There was a recommendation in December last by experts assembled by authorities as part of the First Principles Review held in Australia to search an additional 25,000 sq kms in an area north of the search area in the Southern Indian Ocean focused on till recently. This factors in the ocean drift patterns and the debris found in places such as Reunion, Madagascar, Tanzania, South Africa and Mauritius... yes, thousands of kilometres west of where the search has been on for the past three years.

Like most family members of passengers, I have survived. It is not to say, that the living process has been repaired and normal has been restored. While I presume that lives of passengers have ended, memories are strong, vivid and make the process of looking ahead painfully difficult. It is made worse by the knowledge that we actually don't know very much more than what we gathered on March 8, 2014... that a plane had just disappeared.
Karachi: Whatever we may think or say about Husain Haqqani, he was not primarily responsible for the US assault in Abbottabad on the night of May 1 and 2, 2011. He denies he had anything to do with the planning and execution of the assault, and despite widely held reservations about his conduct as ambassador in Washington, nothing has surfaced that contradicts his denials. However, his recent statements do raise questions. In an article in the Washington Post, Haqqani states: The relationships I forged with members of Obamas campaign team ... eventually enabled the US to discover and eliminate Bin Laden without depending on Pakistans intelligence service or military which were suspected of sympathy toward Islamic militants. He goes on to say: Friends, I made from the Obama campaign, were able to ask, three years later, as National Security Council officials, for help in stationing US Special Operations and intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistans civilian leaders, who approved and these Americans proved invaluable when Obama decided to carry out the operation without notifying Pakistan. Once again, there is an even stronger suggestion of an active role and a sense of pride in achieving a shared objective.

So? Pakistan was under an international obligation to cooperate in the apprehension of OBL. An elected government apparently decided to act upon this obligation. The leaders of this government instructed their ambassador in Washington accordingly. They also sent specific instructions to enable the ambassador to facilitate the rapid issue of necessary visas to US special operations and intelligence personnel  who obviously disguised their real identities in their visa applications  and who proved invaluable when the time for action came. What is wrong or illegal about this? And if there was anything, who should be held responsible: the subordinate ambassador or the elected leaders? But, then, why not stand up and say so  publicly as well as in testimony to the Abbottabad Inquiry Commission? In fact, the President, the PM and the COAS declined to meet with the commission. Haqqani who did meet with the commission has always publicly criticised the attack.

Despite some possible misstatements to the commission regarding the issue of visas, there has been no proof of his involvement until his suggestions in the article. Why is he simultaneously denying any involvement with the US assault and suggesting the contrary in his article? Whatever conclusions one may draw about the consistency and purpose of his statements and the credibility of his behaviour, they do not add up to treachery. He was, at most, a willing instrument of his political superiors. However, Haqqani has effectively pointed a finger towards his civilian leaders at the time. No wonder, they are calling for another commission of inquiry! The new Commission of Inquiry Act of 1956 will require the government to make such reports public within 30 days of submission. The Prime Minister, accordingly, should now release the reports. This matter, and not hounding Haqqani, should be our urgent priority.

By arrangement with Dawn
The move reportedly contemplated by Pakistan to alter the status of Gilgit-Baltistan, an integral part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir under illegal Pakistani occupation since 1947, and declare it as that countrys fifth province, is evidently designed to present India with a fait accompli. Such a unilateral step is retrograde in the context of normalising India-Pakistan relations, and will be a further setback to bilateral relations. As an Indian spokesman observed on Thursday, this project of Islamabad violates the 1972 Shimla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration, wherein India and Pakistan had resolved to settle their differences, including issues relating to Kashmir, bilaterally and without resort to force.

The scheme to detach Gilgit-Baltistan from the political geography of J&K is not new. In 1970, Pakistan separated it administratively from PoK. Subsequently, under President Zia-ul Haq, there was a concerted effort to change the demographics of this overwhelmingly Shia area by settling Sunnis from other parts of Pakistan. Then an artificial demand was whipped up to make Gilgit-Baltistan a new province of Pakistan, obliterating its status as a territory of J&K. That is apparently now reaching the stage of fruition, as the leaked report of a committee headed by Sartaj Aziz, Pakistans de facto foreign minister, suggests.

There is speculation that this move may also derive from Chinese pressure to remove uncertainties about the status of Gilgit-Baltistan since much Chinese infrastructure building in Pakistan is in this region and nearby areas. If so, New Delhi will have to sharpen its diplomatic instruments.
A line is really a plane

Its breadth stretches to a virus horizon

An edge or a boundary explain

Why the present is just an illusion

There is only the immediate past

Or the further stretch of neurological making

The future is fate, the die is cast

Look up at the clouds, the monsoons breaking

From Sand Bolo Sandweetz by Bachchoo

Oh dear! The hijab has reared its head, so to speak, once again on Europes political landscape. Ruling on a case brought by French and Belgian citizens, the European Court of Justice has ruled that employers in Europe can ban employees from wearing visible insignia of religion in the interests of a uniform uniform code. The judgment could apply to dangling crucifixes, yamulkas, hijabs and of course niqabs  the full face covering. But would it apply to Sikhs wearing turbans or Muslims wearing beards? The judgment is problematic. Does the forbidding employer have to prove that the employee has a religious motive in wearing a hijab? What about the non-Muslim, who wears a beard? Would he be allowed, whereas the mullahfied Muslim would be told to shave it off or be dismissed?

The judgment is enforceable in all countries of the European Union who have signed up to the ECJ and that includes Britain until, of course, Brexit is accomplished and Britain quits its jurisdiction. Would it mean that employers and employees, on appeal against such a restriction, would have to have theologians arguing in tribunals or courts whether the piece of clothing, the crucifix, the symbol or accoutrement, is religious or not? Is the ruling designed to give employment opportunities to theology-wallas? There are those on both sides of the argument about hijabs, niqabs and beards. There are Muslims who will insist that the covering of the hair of a woman is dictated by the Quran or by the Hadith.

There are equally heavyweight theologians who will argue that Islam doesnt require women to cover their faces or their hair and the holy book enjoins women to modesty as a virtue  and modesty as we well know has myriad interpretations and varies from age to age and society to society. Or perhaps it doesnt vary from age to age in all societies and countries. It certainly progresses in Christian Europe. The present Pope, Argentinian Francis, has virtually told his church to give communion to divorced women. The good book Leviticus, far from allowing them into any Judeo-Christian sanctity, prescribes they should be stoned to death. Of course, Jesus revised the prescription saying: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, but both statements exist in the same book. Interpretation is all!

And even Christians will continue to argue that toss, but nowhere in the Bible does it prescribe the wearing of the crucifix around ones neck. And so we come to the turban and the Sikh adherence to the word of the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh Sahib, that they ought to let their hair grow. As far as I know there was an accompanying injunction to carry a comb, which would indicate that the guru considered hygiene to be paramount, but the five symbols of the Khalsa do not include a turban. Very many Sikh friends, who wear turbans themselves, insist that Guru Nanak founded a Sufi eschatology and it was historical persecution and the necessity for resistance, and not any impulse to change the doctrines of the founder, that brought about Guru Gobind Sahibs injunctions. As far as the turban is concerned, the British state, respectful of the Sikhs who fought for its empire in both world wars, has allowed Sikhs to wear turbans in place of motorcycle helmets, instead of military berets and even in the case of a Sikh in the guard at Buckingham Palace to substitute a turban for a busby.

Britain, even before leaving the European Union, will be much more liberal about applying this European injunction. In the last decades there have been battles about hijabs and niqabs, but Britains only determination has been that a teachers face and expressions ought to be accessible to pupils, that doctors faces ought to be accessible to patients and that witnesses in court ought to be seen. So niqabs are restricted where faces are necessary to social, educational, medical or legal intercourse and hijabs are free to roam. I strongly believe that employers in Britain will not object to Jews wearing a yamulka or even Parsis wearing a little crimson skull cap while they attend to customers across the counter at a popular bank.

The rest of Europe is more problematic. This week Holland elects its next government and the man making the news is Geert Wilders whose political platform is basically an appeal to anti-Islam. He proposes banning hijabs and niqabs, closing mosques and even raiding houses to confiscate Qurans. I am, gentle reader, totally conscious that comparisons to Nazi appeals and practices are often just lazy name-calling, but what is one to say about Mr Wilders and his fascist nonsense? Shall I compare him to the Buddha instead? The Dutch election results will be announced after this article was written, and my prediction is that the Dutch will not vote to put him in power. (His party gained seats, but did not win the election.)

And now I take the risk of declaring my support for the hijabis  I risk losing several progressive Muslim and feminist friends. My support stems from a belief that people should wear what they want within the bounds of decency and short of wearing a balaclava and entering a bank. I take on board the argument that Muslim women who wear the hijab are brainwashed by their dominant men and by tradition. But then the young black men who unbutton their trousers and wear then around their knees are brainwashed by American television and people who wear foot-rotting trainers, breeding grounds of athletes foot, are brainwashed by the advertising world and so on. Let a hundred flowers bloom and wither.
Another creature that contracted was a lemur-like animal that's the earliest known primate. It shrank about 4 percent; while it may not seem like much, it's noticeable because studies of the animal over millions of years showed it was usually getting bigger over time (Photo: AP)

Global warming shrank certain animals in the ancient past, and scientists worry it could happen again. Warm-blooded animals got smaller at least twice in Earth's history when carbon dioxide levels soared and temperatures spiked as part of a natural warming, a new study says.

University of New Hampshire researcher Abigail D'Ambrosia warned that mammals  but not people  could shrivel in the future under even faster man-made warming.

"It's something we need to keep an eye out for," said D'Ambrosia, who led the new work. "The question is how fast are we going to see these changes."

Three different species shrank noticeably about 54 million years ago when the planet suddenly heated up. One of them  an early, compact horse  got 14 per cent smaller, going from about 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms) to 14.6 pounds (6.6 kilograms), according to an analysis of fossil teeth in Wednesday's journal Science Advances .

"These guys were probably about the size of maybe a dog, then they dwarfed," said D'Ambrosia. "They may have gone down to the size of a cat."

Another creature that contracted was a lemur-like animal that's the earliest known primate. It shrank about 4 percent; while it may not seem like much, it's noticeable because studies of the animal over millions of years showed it was usually getting bigger over time, D'Ambrosia said.

Previous studies have documented a similar shrinking of mammals, including another early horse ancestor, during an earlier warming about 56 million years ago. Scientists and farmers have also long tracked animals, such as cows, that shrink and give less milk during hotter stretches. This latest work shows heating and shrinking are connected over millions of years.

"These results are very significant because they provide another independent test of whether climate drives changes in body size in mammals," said Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, who wasn't part of the study. "If we start to see patterns repeat themselves, we can learn from that. And what we learn from these lessons will certainly be important as we think about the possible response of plants and animals to future climate change."

Both D'Ambrosia's study and that of the earlier warming are based on fossils recovered from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. D'Ambrosia said it's unlikely that the shrinking only happened there.

In hotter climates, mammals and other warm-blooded animals need to shed heat so they shrink. Smaller animals have more skin  or fur  per pound than bigger animals so more heat can escape, making them better adapted for warmer climate. Larger animals do better in the cold because they have less skin per pound and keep their heat.

The bigger natural warming  56 million years ago  saw temperatures rise 9 degrees (5.8 degrees Celsius) or more probably from giant belches of methane from dead plants and animals that had accumulated on the sea floor, said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer.

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US technology companies have faced tight scrutiny in Europe for the way they do business, from privacy to how quickly they remove illegal or hateful content.

European consumer protection authorities will ask social media companies Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc to amend their terms of service within one month or possibly face fines, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The companies proposed some ways to resolve the issues and discussed them with the authorities on Thursday, the person said, adding that the meeting was constructive. The source was not authorised to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

US technology companies have faced tight scrutiny in Europe for the way they do business, from privacy to how quickly they remove illegal or hateful content. The authorities sent letters to the companies in December saying that some of service terms broke European Union consumer protection law and that they needed to do more to tackle fraud and scams on their websites.

According to the letters seen by Reuters, some of those terms include requiring users to seek redress in court in California, where the companies are based, instead of their country of residence. Other issues include not identifying sponsored content clearly, requiring consumers to waive mandatory rights such as the right to cancel a contract, and an excessive power for the companies to determine the suitability of content generated by users, according to the letters.

In the case of Alphabet's Google unit, the concerns were about its social network Google+. Google and Facebook were not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment.

The authorities are being supported by the European Commission and could impose fines if they are not satisfied. The authorities also proposed setting up a standard communication channel to notify the companies of content deemed illegal and the action requested, according to the letters.

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Rocket's shares, which dropped last month after major investor Kinnevik sold half its stake in the company, were up 2.3 percent at 1351 GMT.

Qatar's sovereign wealth fund took a stake in Rocket Internet's loss-making recipe and ingredients business HelloFresh in a December fundraising, the German company said on Thursday.

Founded in Berlin in 2007, Rocket has built up dozens of businesses from fashion e-commerce to food delivery, but many investors have become concerned about heavy losses and falling valuations for its key start-ups.

Rocket's shares, which dropped last month after major investor Kinnevik sold half its stake in the company, were up 2.3 percent at 1351 GMT.

Rocket said in December that HelloFresh had raised 85 million euros ($91 million) from an unidentified leading global investor and existing shareholder Baillie Gifford, at a 2 billion euro valuation, down from a previous 2.6 billion euros.

On Thursday, German magazine WirtschaftsWoche cited HelloFresh Chief Executive Dominik Richter as saying that Qatar had been part of the fundraising.

A spokeswoman for HelloFresh confirmed the report, saying it was very happy to welcome Qatar as a long-term investor, noting the fund usually only invests in big corporations and listed companies.

Founded in 2011, HelloFresh has been investing heavily in marketing and logistics, expanding from its base in Europe to the United States, Canada and Australia.

HelloFresh made a loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 66.3 million euros for the first nine months of 2016 on revenues of 438 million euros. Rocket Internet reports full-year results on April 27.

Rocket's stake in HelloFresh now stands at 53 percent. HelloFresh is one of its biggest holdings and is viewed as a potential candidate for an initial public offering, though a previous attempt to list the business stalled in 2015.

HelloFresh confirmed a report in WirtschaftsWoche that it agreed a 50 million euro credit line from Rocket in April, which a spokeswoman said would "be used towards expanding our business."

Meanwhile, online takeaway firm Delivery Hero, which is Rocket's other major investment, is set to report a loss of 117 million euros for 2016, WirtschaftsWoche reported.

A Delivery Hero spokesman declined to comment on the figure, but said the group's marketplace business had turned profitable by last summer, while the Foodpanda business it bought from Rocket in December was still loss-making, although growing fast.

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Koh distinguished the settlement from a similar accord with Yahoo Inc that she said required more disclosures.

A federal judge has rejected Google's proposed class-action settlement with non-Gmail users who said it illegally scanned their emails to Gmail users to create targeted advertising.

In a decision on Wednesday night, US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, said it was unclear that the accord, which provided no money for plaintiffs but up to $2.2 million in fees and expenses for their lawyers, would ensure Google's compliance with federal and state privacy laws.

Koh called the proposed disclosure notice inadequate. She said this was because it did not clearly reveal any technical changes that Google would make, or that Google scans non-Gmail users' emails to create ads for Gmail users.

The judge also said the notice did not make clear that Google could still extract data for the "dual purpose" of creating targeted ads and detecting spam and malware, and then use that data once emails went into storage after being transmitted.

"In sum, based on the parties' current filings, the court cannot conclude that the settlement is fundamentally fair, adequate, and reasonable," Koh wrote.

Google, a unit of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc, declined to comment.

Koh distinguished the settlement from a similar accord with Yahoo Inc that she said required more disclosures.

Michael Sobol, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.

The named plaintiffs, Daniel Matera of New York and Susan Rashkis of San Francisco, had accused Google of violating the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California Invasion of Privacy Act through its scanning practices.

Koh ruled six days after Google won preliminary approval from a different judge in her court of a separate $22.5 million settlement with businesses over internet ad placements.

In that case, known as Google AdWords Litigation, businesses accused Google of placing their ads in obscure places such as error pages and undeveloped websites known as parked domains, causing them to overpay for the placements.

The case is Matera v Google Inc, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 15-04062.

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US President Donald Trump wants to increase the number of air strikes and possibly put more US forces on the ground. (Photo: AP)

Washington: President Donald Trump's 2018 budget outline includes an almost 10 percent hike in defence spending, which already surpasses that of the next seven countries combined.

Overall Pentagon funding would swell from about USD 583 billion budgeted for the fiscal year 2017 to USD 639 billion next year and would be paid for by deep cuts to other agencies and the scrapping of a plethora of programs.

Trump has asked for USD 30 billion of the military money immediately, in the form of a supplemental request on the current budget.

The president has offered few specifics, but here are some key reasons he says the Pentagon needs the money: The additional funding "provides the resources" needed to increase the tempo of the war against the Islamic State group.

The United States has spent about USD 12 billion since fall 2014 bombing IS targets in Iraq and Syria, but Trump wants to increase the number of air strikes and possibly put more US forces on the ground.

This year's supplemental budget request calls for an immediate additional USD 2 billion for the campaign.

A constant refrain from military leaders has been a lack of "readiness" across the services and generals have warned lawmakers that aging equipment, chronic underfunding and understaffing have impacted how the military can effectively respond to crises.

Trump's budget states it would ensure America is "the best led, best equipped, and most ready force in the world."

He has promised a "great rebuilding" of the US military and his budget reiterates that pledge, again without specifics.

Trump particularly wants to swell the Army's ranks and the budget "begins to rebuild the US armed forces by addressing pressing shortfalls, such as insufficient stocks of critical munitions, personnel gaps, deferred maintenance and modernization, cyber vulnerabilities, and degraded facilities."

The budget says America needs to spend more on defence in the air, land and sea -- and also in cyberspace.

The president, in January signed an executive order to begin increasing the size of the US military, promising new aircraft, naval ships and more resources for the Pentagon.

He offered few specifics but has said he envisioned a naval fleet of 350 vessels, up from the Navy's current 274 and more than its 310-vessel target.

The budget "reflects a down payment" on that pledge. Despite the apparent bonanza, hawkish Republicans say Trump's military budget doesn't go far enough, and some Democrats are horrified the president wants to fund America's war machine by deep cuts to other programs and agencies.

The result is that the proposed budget will likely look very different from the one that passes. "It is clear to virtually everyone that we have cut our military too much and that it has suffered enormous damage," Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry said.

"Unfortunately, the administration's budget request is not enough to repair that damage and to rebuild the military as the president has discussed, he added.

Trump also would struggle to get this year's supplemental request passed, given the fiscal year is half done and Congress would need to raise spending caps.
El Salvador: Families across Central America are living in fear that US President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies will stem the vital flow of money sent home by migrants each year.

The concern is that relatives who have emigrated without authorization will be deported, suddenly ending the billions of dollars in annual remittances sent to their impoverished countries.

There are millions of Central Americans living legally in the United States -- but also 1.7 million unauthorized migrants from the region, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. Most of them come from the poorest, gang-ridden three countries known as the Northern Triangle -- Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Intipuca, a town south of El Salvador's capital, symbolizes the life-changing value of the US dollars sent back home. The town features big, colored houses adorned with iron-forged moldings that stand empty. Their owners live in the United States, and return only for special occasions like Christmas, weddings and family events.

In the park in front of the town hall there is a statue dedicated to Sigifrido Chavez, who in 1967 became the first local to migrate to the United States. Near the statue Jose Corpeno paces around as he speaks into a cellphone. He explains that he was talking with his daughter, who has been living in the US state of Maryland for a year and now "is living a nightmare."

"We are so worried. Immigration agents went to a place close to where she lives," Corpeno said. The daughter paid a smuggler $10,000 to lead her up north, and now she is living without authorization in the United States.

"She's working. But she's afraid that at any moment she could be found out and detained," Corpeno said. The money the woman sends goes to a small plot of corn that her family depends on to survive. "If she ends up being deported, then we'll be in a bad way. We are poor, and the money she sends helps us," Corpeno said.

Victoria Flores, 70, said she relies on her 50-year-old son Estuardo, who works as a dental technician in Los Angeles and whose remittances pay the mortgage, electricity, water and telephone service where she lived.

"This is a difficult situation, with worries every day because this president (Trump) has said that he will deport all the illegals from the United States," Flores told AFP.

The small woman called that policy "unfair." But she also lays part of the blame on Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama for overseeing changes in US migration law. Remittances make up a significant chunk of the economy in the Northern Triangle countries, so any decline would be felt immediatly.

"Ninety percent of remittances go to consumption, and any decline will impact consumption and tax income," said Mauricio Diaz, a coordinator in FOSDEH, a non-governmental Honduran body that monitors the country's external debt and development.

In Honduras, remittances received amounted to $3.9 billion last year. In El Salvador, it was $4.6 billion, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.

Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America, received more: $7.1 billion in 2016 -- an amount nearly as big as the $10 billion it makes in exports. US aid to try to stem the violence and poverty in those countries was increased at the end of Obama's term, but has so far had little effect.

Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly visited Guatemala in February to say that, while citizens should not try to illegally enter the United States, there would be no mass deportations.

But the situation on the ground appears to contradict that. Kelly's department has issued internal memos setting out guidelines to boost arrests and accelerate the expulsion of undocumented immigrants. Official figures for 2016 show that the United States deported 21,500 Salvadorans, the same number of Hondurans and 35,500 Guatemalans.
Stone says the car he was riding in was 'T-boned' by a large, gray four-door car with a tinted windshield. (Photo: AP)

Washington: Longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone says a car he was riding in this week in Florida was struck by a hit-and-run driver.

In a statement, Stone described the incident as "suspicious," coming as he is under scrutiny for his communication with the Russian-linked hacker Guccifer 2.0.

Stone tweeted that he was uninjured in the crash except for blurry vision in his right eye. Stone says the car he was riding in was "T-boned" by a large, grey four-door car with a tinted windshield.

The Broward Sheriff's Office says the driver the vehicle did not stop or make any attempt to exchange information. Police says Stone was a passenger in a car driven by John P. Kakanis, 29, of Hallandale Beach, Florida.
Washington: The US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling "get out of my country". Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divided or define" the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them."

"These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

"I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'.

"We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said.

"This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said. "Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan", Brownback said, adding that his story is similar to that of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

"Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protecting all its neighbours and its guests. In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of. Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candlelight vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candlelight vigil was attended by a large gathering of Indian-Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love.

"We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said. "And with the resolve to fight hate."
US President Donald Trump without providing evidence, accused his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, of wiretapping him near the end of the campaign.(Photo: AP)

Washington: The leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan statement on Thursday rejecting President Donald Trump's assertion that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, added his voice to a growing chorus of lawmakers saying there was no sign of a wiretap.

In a testy briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended the president, citing news reports of intelligence collection on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia in the presidential campaign.

"There is no question that there were surveillance techniques used throughout this", Spicer said.

The Republican president, without providing evidence, accused his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, of wiretapping him near the end of the campaign. An Obama spokesman said that was "simply false."

"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement.

Ryan also said there was no evidence of surveillance.

"The point is that the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom - at least so far - with respect to our intelligence community that - that no such wiretap existed," the House speaker told reporters.

Pressed at the White House briefing on whether Trump would back down from his wiretap accusations, Spicer said: "He stands by it."

Spicer also chastised the media for focusing so much attention on comments disparaging Trump's claim about surveillance. He said reporters had not focused enough on comments from officials denying the evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The Russian government has rejected an accusation by US intelligence agencies that it worked to influence the election in Trump's favour by hacking computer systems, among other methods.

Trump has been dogged by allegations that his associates had ties to Russian officials. Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month after he failed to disclose contacts with Russia's ambassador before Trump took office on Jan. 20.

An official familiar with the investigations by Congress and intelligence and law enforcement agencies said investigators had looked as aggressively and thoroughly as they could for evidence of any spying on Trump or his associates but had found none.

On March 4, six weeks after he took over from Obama, Trump made the wiretap accusations in a Twitter post.

"How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump wrote.

At least four congressional committees included the startling accusation in their investigations of possible Russian meddling in the election campaign and Russian ties to Trump and his associates.

On Wednesday, House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and top Democrat Adam Schiff told reporters they had seen no evidence that Trump Tower was tapped and said they would ask Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey about the issue during a public hearing on Monday.

On March 9, Comey briefed Nunes, Schiff, Ryan, Burr, Warner and three other top congressional officials on the same intelligence.

Trump appeared to back away from his accusation of wiretapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday night.

"But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump said.
Boston: A Massachusetts man has been sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to posting on an FBI website that he planned to kill the president of the United States.

The U.S. Attorneys office says Andrew OKeefe, of Mansfield, will be under supervised release for five years after being sentenced Thursday in federal court in Boston.

Last May, prosecutors say OKeefe wrote on an FBI tips site that he was planning to kill President Barack Obama, and had a really good plan. He invited the Secret Service to pay him a visit and signed the posting with his Social Security number.

A search of OKeefes home and car turned up more than 100 weapons, including swords, double-edged knives, hatchets and spears.

OKeefe pleaded guilty in December and spent about six months in custody.
The quickly deleted tweet offered an uncharitable appraisal of Trump, saying, "You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have Barack Obama back, also you have tiny hands." (Photo: Instagram)

New York: McDonald's has apologised after it briefly posted on Twitter a blast criticising President Donald Trump, which the company blamed on a hack from an external source.

The quickly deleted tweet offered an uncharitable appraisal of Trump, saying, "You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have Barack Obama back, also you have tiny hands."

The tweet was removed mid-morning yesterday soon after being posted to one of McDonald's official Twitter feeds -- but not before being retweeted more than a thousand times and garnering plenty of attention in political and media circles.

"Based on our investigation, we have determined that our Twitter account was hacked by an external source," said McDonald's spokeswoman Terri Hickey in a statement yesterday.

"We took swift action to secure it, and we apologise this tweet was sent through our corporate McDonald's account."

Hacking has been a persistent problem in recent years with the growing influence of Twitter and other social media sites.

In April 2013, a hack of the Associated Press resulted in an erroneous post that the White House had been attacked, briefly sending US stocks markets down in a panic.
Investigators were still trying to determine why his body was moved. (Photo: AP/ Representational)

Little Rock, Arkansas: An 89-year-old man whose body was discovered in a suitcase on a rural Arkansas farm was a World War II veteran from New York, police said.

Police Lt. David Gilbo from Johnstown, New York, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Robert Brooks died of natural causes at his home about a month before his body was discovered in Arkansas on March 5.

Gilbo said investigators were still trying to determine why his body was moved.

Two people considered to be caregivers of Brooks have been detained on suspicion of abuse of a corpse.

Brooks served in the military and was a gunner in a B-17 bombers ball turret.
Washington: The United Nations and dozens of its affiliated agencies are facing deep funding cuts and possibly an end to US contributions, as the Trump administration seeks to slash billions of dollars from diplomacy and development assistance in next year's budget.

Peacekeeping missions and international organisations that rely heavily on American financial contributions are reined in significantly in the White House's proposal to reduce funding for the State Department and US Agency for International Development by roughly 31 percent in the next fiscal year.

That's in addition to dramatic cuts in US-led health, development and climate change initiatives that will require other donors to fill the gaps.

Thursday's proposal doesn't spell out all details of the cuts. But it gives clues about which agencies and organisations will be affected, prompting a wide array of human rights groups, aid workers and lawmakers from both parties to voice objections.

Francois Delattre, the UN ambassador from US ally France, was the most outspoken, lamenting "America's retreat and unilateralism."

Even some Republicans, traditionally enthusiastic about less federal spending, baulked. House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said he was "very concerned that deep cuts to our diplomacy will hurt efforts to combat terrorism, distribute critical humanitarian aid and promote opportunities for American workers."

But President Donald Trump's UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, said the UN "spends more money than it should," burdening the US more than other countries. She said she was working with the UN to reform the organisation and "restore trust and value."

At the top of the cutting block: UN climate change programs designed to help poorer countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration had sought nearly USD 1 billion for its Global Climate Change Initiative. Under Trump's blueprint, that money is gone.

Foreign aid is being shrunk, too. Asked how much, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said simply: "A lot." Shielded is USD 3.1 billion in aid to Israel, which officials described as the only carve-out. Money to Jordan, Egypt and other countries is still being evaluated, they said.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency was "redefining priorities." "One of those is how we better defend national security," he said.

The administration says the budget "seeks to reduce or end direct funding for international organisations whose missions do not substantially advance US foreign policy interests, are duplicative or are not well-managed." To do this, it says less UN funding sets the expectation "that these organisations rein in costs" and that other countries spend more.

America's contribution to UN peacekeeping costs would be capped at 25 percent. It currently pays 28.5 percent. Based on that amount, then-President Barack Obama's last budget sought USD 2.4 billion on UN blue helmet missions around the world.

Cutting 3.5 percent from that total could hasten drastic changes or even the end of several missions that are winding down, such as those in Liberia, South Sudan and Haiti.

For the UN's general budget, the Obama administration had sought more than USD 1 billion to pay dues this year. That included payments for UN organisations for health, atomic energy, civil aviation, labour, telecommunications, weather and intellectual property.

The US also has voluntarily funded other UN programs, such as children's fund UNICEF and the World Food Program, by billions of dollars. The future level of US funding for all these agencies is unclear.
New York: A defiant President Donald Trump has pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to fight for his revised travel ban, parts of which were halted by two different federal judges in recent days.

The legal path forward will be challenging, though, as lawsuits work their way through federal courts on opposite sides of the country, in Hawaii and Maryland. On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington state said he was also weighing a temporary restraining order.

The Justice Department's first step would likely be filing an appeal in either or both of the cases it lost this week, an action likely to come within days. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment on the administration's intentions.

In granting a temporary restraining order against the ban challenged in a lawsuit brought by the state of Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson found on Wednesday that "a reasonable, objective observer ... would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion."

Trump's executive order would temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. The president has said the ban is needed for national security.

Early on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in a case in Maryland brought by refugee resettlement agencies represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.

Chuang ruled that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the travel ban portion of the executive order was intended to be a ban on Muslims, and as a result, violates the U.S. Constitution's religious freedom guarantee. He did not enjoin the refugee portion of the ban.

"To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation's identity plainly serves a significant public interest," Chuang wrote in his ruling.

The court orders, while victories for the plaintiffs, are only an early step in litigation and the government could ultimately win its underlying case. Watson and Chuang were appointed to the bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump, speaking after the Hawaii ruling at a rally in Nashville on Wednesday, called his revised executive order a "watered-down version" of his first.

The president said he would take the case "as far as it needs to go," including to the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling that the ban is legal.

The Trump administration won a small legal victory later on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who last month blocked Trump's first travel ban, ruled that the second travel ban was different enough from the first that he would not simply apply a preliminary injunction he issued against the first ban to the second one. He said he was weighing a request for a temporary restraining order on the new travel ban.

The likely next stops if the administration decides to contest the two rulings that it lost this week would be the 4th and 9th U.S. circuit courts of appeal. Both may be frosty venues for Trump's arguments, with majorities of the judges in each appointed by Democratic presidents.

Three judges on the 9th Circuit upheld Robart's order last month on the first travel ban. Rather than appeal further, the administration withdrew the ban, promising to retool it in ways that would address the legal issues.

The Supreme Court is currently split between four conservative and four liberal justices, with no ninth justice since the death of Antonin Scalia more than a year ago.

Trump's nominee to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat, Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative, is likely to be asked about the travel ban next week when he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing.

Republicans are hoping that the Senate votes to confirm Gorsuch for the court by mid-April, which would likely be too late for him to weigh in on an emergency appeal about the travel ban.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order, which caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before Robart stopped its enforcement in February.

Watson's order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing schedule to determine if his ruling should be extended.
President Donald Trump also wants to boost immigration courts by USD 80 million to pay for 75 additional teams of judges. (Photo: AP)

Washington: For core supporters counting on President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration, his proposed budget reads like a wish list: billions of dollars for some of his most controversial campaign promises, including a USD 2.6 billion down payment on a border wall that he had insisted Mexico would pay for.

Trump's spending blueprint released on Thursday is light on specifics, but makes clear that his campaign pledge to confront illegal immigration is a top priority. Even as he plans to cut the Justice Department's budget by more than USD 1 million, Trump is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to hire 60 federal prosecutors and 40 deputy US Marshals to focus on border cases.

He also wants to boost immigration courts by USD 80 million to pay for 75 additional teams of judges. That would speed up removal proceedings for people in the United States illegally and address a backlog of more than 540,000 pending cases. The plan foreshadows a greater emphasis on prosecuting people who cross the border illegally, those who come back after being deported, and anyone tied to human and drug smuggling.

Trump's proposal also calls for adding USD 1.5 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's budget to find, detain and deport immigrants living in the US illegally, along with more than USD 300 million to hire 500 new Border Patrol agents and 1,000 immigration agents.

The president's budget is the first step in a lengthy process of funding government agencies, and it's not clear which of Trump's priorities will be approved by Congress.

But Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer, said the calls for more spending are a "good sign" that Trump is following through on his promises and early actions cracking down on illegal immigration.

"It's part of this whole push by the president that's been expressed in three different executive orders," von Spakovsky said. "That means also getting more immigration judges in there to handle the backlog."

Trump's proposal also suggests the president is gearing up for legal challenges to his immigration enforcement machinery. In particular, there are sure to be a fight over efforts to seize property at the border for his promised wall.

The budget includes proposals to hire 20 lawyers who would focus on land acquisition and 20 more attorneys and support staff for "immigration litigation assistance."

Time-consuming legal challenges are sure to accompany Trump's orders detailing stricter enforcement at the border and in the interior of the country, said Leon Fresco, who led the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation during the Obama administration. Efforts to buy private land for his planned wall are also likely to generate lengthy court cases, he said.

During the George W. Bush administration, landowners, environmentalists and others waged court battles to stop hundreds of miles of fencing from being built.

Bush administration ultimately built more than 600 miles (965 kilometres) of barriers from Texas to California, with Obama-era officials continuing legal fights to build additional fencing.
Tokyo: Dozens of people from a Japanese coastal city took part in the country's first evacuation drill of a missile attack Friday, as regional tensions soar over accelerating North Korean threats.

The exercise in the city of Oga came less than two weeks after three North Korean missiles landed in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off the northern municipality.

Japan has been on edge over North Korean launches since a mid-range ballistic missile flew without warning over the northern part of the country and into the western Pacific in 1998.

The pace of the North's missile development has intensified and its projectiles have since last year been landing ever loser to Japan's coast. A total of 110 residents, including primary school students, participated in the drill, an Oga city official said.

"A missile appears to have been launched; there is a possibility that part of the missile will come down; it fell in the Sea of Japan," read a series of mock alerts sent to officials in cities in Akita prefecture.

The drill did not specify North Korea by name, only referring to "country X". But the exercise was held on the premise that a North Korean missile had landed in Japan's territorial waters, a Cabinet Secretariat official said.

The drill was planned last year and was not conducted as a result of the North Korean launches earlier this month, officials said. Three of four missiles Pyongyang fired on March 6 came down in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) -- waters extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from its coast -- off Oga. Under international law, territorial waters extend up to 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) from the coast of a landmass.
A government spokesman confirmed children were detained in the operation but said authorities had followed the law. (Photo: Representational/AP)

Sittwe: Children as young as 10 years old are among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims detained on charges of consorting with insurgents, according to a police document seen by Reuters that sheds new light on Myanmar's security campaign in the country's north-west.

Thirteen juveniles are among more than 400 people arrested since October 9, when insurgents attacked three police border posts in northern Rakhine State near the frontier with Bangladesh, the March 7 dated document shows.

Police said some of the children had confessed to working with insurgents and that they were being detained away from adult suspects.

A government spokesman confirmed children were detained in the operation but said authorities had followed the law. He said he knew of only five juveniles currently being held.

Myanmar's leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who took power almost a year ago, is under international pressure over alleged abuses including killings, gang rapes and mass detentions against the stateless Rohingya, about 1.1 million of whom are prevented from travelling freely and accessing basic services in Myanmar.

The government has released few details about the hundreds detained in the Rakhine operation or the charges they face.

The document seen by Reuters lists 423 people held under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act. All appear from their names to be male. Their average age is 34, but the youngest is 10 and the oldest 75. One has been crossed out and marked "dead".

Two police captains in Maungdaw, the district at the centre of the violence, confirmed the veracity of the 11-page document.

"We police have to arrest those related with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty, we cannot decide," said Police Captain Than Shwe.

Myanmar has ratified international conventions that require additional protections for children accused of crimes.

Reuters was unable to establish whether all those provisions, such whether they have been able to communicate with their families or have legal representation, were being followed.

All 13 juveniles below the age of 18 were sent to be detained outside of prison at a Border Guard Police (BGP) facility in the town of Buthidaung, and were not shackled, said the second police captain, who did not want to be identified.

"Some of the children already confessed that they are involved with the attackers, group during interrogation," the police captain said. They were not beaten during questioning, he said.

The domestic law says children aged between seven and 12 are only criminally responsible if mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Two listed detainees are under 12, while two more are 13.

Zaw Htay, director general of Suu Kyi's office, said he was only aware of five children currently detained at the Buthidaung BGP camp.

Authorities were under strict orders not to violate detainees' rights, Zaw Htay said, adding: "We will not forgive anyone who does."

Cases had been opened against all 423 people on the list under the Unlawful Associations Act, said the second police captain. Many on the list, which is not a complete record of all those detained in the operation, were also charged with additional crimes, including murder, he said.

"We suspect that these people joined the attackers' training or supported them with funding, or they cooperated during the attacks or were involved in the attacks," he said.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International say the Unlawful Associations Act has long been used to arbitrarily arrest and detain ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar.

In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Myanmar said 526 people were "under interrogation" relating to the conflict. Eight detainees had died in custody, the government said.

The government has set up two "special courts" in Buthidaung, said Rakhine's senior state judicial official, advocate general Kyaw Hla Tun. The government would not block the accused from accessing lawyers, he added.

"We want to process them quickly. There are security concerns with the prison being over capacity," he said.

UN human rights envoy Yanghee Lee visited Buthidaung prison, where most detainees are being held, in January. Most did not have lawyers, were not informed of the charges against them and had not been able to contact their families, she said.

Reuters also spoke to people who had been released from detention and later fled across the border to Bangladesh, a journey made by about 75,000 refugees since the conflict began.

Di Dar, 22, said he spent 10 days in a military camp after his village was burned in mid-November. The 300 or so people detained with him were constantly handcuffed and beaten during interrogations, and he witnessed two men killed, he said.

Reuters was unable to corroborate his account, or similar accounts from three other former detainees.

"The soldiers would come three times a day and would beat us for about an hour at a time," Di Dar said. "They asked, 'Did you fight us?' 'Were you involved in the insurgency?'"
Brussels: The European Union on Friday re-imposed a fine on 11 air cargo companies totaling $835 million after the original decision was thrown out by a high court on a procedural issue.

After the initial fine had been annulled in 2015, the European Commission said Friday it fixed the original error and decide to re-establish the fines since the EU's General Court never rejected the antitrust case as such.

The Commission found that the companies colluded to fix the level of fuel and security surcharges between 1999 and 2006. Among the 11 companies, Air France was fined $197 million and its strategic partner KLM $137 million.

"Air France-KLM will analyze the new decision, and the advisability of appealing it," the group said in a statement. It added the fines had already been fully covered in its financial accounts since 2010, when the initial EU decision came in.

Another of the companies, Scandinavian Airlines, maintained that its division SAS Cargo had not participated in the global cartel, and that it will appeal the decision.

"We strongly question the European Commission's move to re-impose a decision that has already been annulled once," SAS spokeswoman Marie Wohlfahrt said.

"SAS takes the competition rules extremely seriously and does not accept any breaches. We have a clear regulatory framework in place for compliance with competition law."

The Stockholm-based carrier said its 70.2 million euro fine will be recognized as a non-recurring expense in its earnings for the second quarter of 2016/2017.

British Airways now faces a $112 million fine.
London: In a case of gruesome cannibal attack and murder, a 34-year-old man harmed a 22-year-old woman with a screwdriver and tried to eat her face, in November 2014. The incident took place at the Sirhowy Arms Hotel at Argoed, near Caerphilly in South Wales.

The hotel owner, Mandy Miles, 50, heard the woman, Cerys Yemm, screaming and called the police to help the woman. Miles was frantic when she saw the man, Matthew Williams eating Yemm.

"He's actually eating her. It's awful. His name is Matthew Williams and he's in Room 7. There was screaming and screaming. Oh my God. It's awful. I went into the room and he's killed her. Oh my God. Is this real? , she cried to the 999 operator.

According to The Independent, Williams and Yemm had met only sometime before the murder. Miles told Gwent Coroners Court that the incident occurred at around 1 am and she unlocked the hotel room after hearing the screaming. She found Yemm, a waitress lying on her back and Williams on top of her.

She was shocked and told the court that the scene looked like a horror film. She had also called out to Williams, who did not seem to have heard her at all.

Williams died after the police tasered him on their arrival. The court was told that Williams, a paranoid schizophrenic, had been released from the hospital two weeks earlier. But unfortunately, he was not given any medication despite his complaints of hearing voices. He was also not supervised, even though he had previous records of mental health issues.

His mother, Sally Ann Williams claimed that the family had tried to fix appointments with doctors but they couldnt. She also said that her son told her he was feeling paranoid and hearing voices, few days before the murder took place.

Williams would often steal money for drugs and became paranoid as a result of drug-induced paranoid schizophrenia, but his mother did not want him to go to prison. He finally did go to prison, but his mental health deteriorated after his release.

His best friend said that his mother was trying her best to get him medical help. Williams too wanted to be helped.
Numan Kurtulmus was referring to matchmaking reality television shows which are very popular in Turkey but receive thousands of complaints every year. (Photo: AFP)

Ankara: Turkey is planning to ban popular television dating shows as they do not fit in with Turkish traditions and customs, the deputy prime minister has said.

Numan Kurtulmus was referring to matchmaking reality television shows which are very popular in Turkey but receive thousands of complaints every year.

"There are some strange programmes that would scrap the institution of family, take away its nobility and sanctity," Kurtulmus said in comments to a provincial TV channel published by the Hurriyet daily today.

"We are working on this and we are coming to the end of it. God willing, in the near future, we will most likely remedy this with an emergency decree," Kurtulmus added.

"God willing, we will meet these societal demands," he said in the interview which took place yesterday.

His comments are set to raise concerns in a country whose political system rests on the secular foundations laid by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at its creation in 1923.

Opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government frequently voice fears that Turkey is sliding toward conservative Islam.

Kurtulmus described such programmes as counter to Turkey's "customs, traditions, beliefs, the Turkish family structure and the culture of Anatolian lands".

He hit back at those who claimed they were ratings successes: "So what the ratings are very high and thus the advertising revenue is high? Let there not be that kind of advertising revenues."

The deputy premier said he had been told there were 120,000 individual cases of complaints against such programmes.

Last year, Turkey's audiovisual authority RTUK said it received comments from 10,691 citizens about such programmes, most of which were complaints.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously caused controversy when he likened abortion to murder in 2012 when he was prime minister.
London: Britain's communications spy agency GCHQ has issued a rare public denial of "utterly ridiculous" claims it spied on Donald Trump, acknowledging that the vehement tone of its statement was "unusual".

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then-president elect are nonsense," a GCHQ spokesperson said.

"They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," the spokesperson said in a statement late Thursday. GCHQ's press office told AFP on Friday that it was "not unusual" for the agency to make public comment but acknowledged that "perhaps the tone of it was unusual".

The agency does not normally comment on intelligence matters, though it has stepped up its public relations in recent months, including for recruitment drives and warnings on cyber-security.

Britain and the United States -- along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand -- are part of the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing alliance forged from the embers of World War II.

Trump accused former president Barack Obama on March 4 of a "Nixon/Watergate"-like wiretapping plot that would almost certainly break US law.

President Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer repeated the allegations on Thursday, quoting from the Fox News report in which Napolitano spoke.

Trump had accused former president Barack Obama on March 4 of a "Nixon/Watergate"-like plot that would almost certainly break US law.

In the subsequent Fox report, Napolitano claimed that "three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command" to order the surveillance.

"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice," Napolitano said, adding that Obama used the GCHQ.

Members of Congress from both parties who are investigating the claims have found no evidence to support them. Tim Farron, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, an opposition party, called Spicer's repetition of the claims made by Napolitano "shameful".

"Trump is compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment," he said, adding: "This harms our and US security."
London: The British intelligence and security agency GCHQ has denied allegation that it helped former US president Barack Obama "wiretap" Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

"Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," The Guardian quoted a GCHQ spokesperson as saying in a statement.

Earlier this week, Fox News judicial analyst Napolitano claimed during an interview that three intelligence sources confirmed to him that the Obama administration used GCHQ to spy on Trump so that there would be "no American fingerprints on this".

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, quoted Napolitano's allegation in an effort to validate Trump's unfounded claim that Obama wiretapped his phones last year.

The British and American intelligence agencies cooperate closely along with their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They are members of the Five Eyes, which work together on intelligence.

According to documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British officials allowed their US counterparts to store and analyse British citizens' internet and e-mail records. Snowden also revealed that the NSA paid 100m to GCHQ in secret, reports the Guardian.

Earlier in a series of tweets, President Trump accused Obama of wiretapping his phones.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" Trump tweeted on March 4.
Ankara: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged Turks resident in Europe to have five children, telling the millions strong diaspora community "you are Europe's future."

Turkey and Europe are locked in a bitter spat after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies to campaign for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused EU states of behaving like Nazi Germany over what he sees as discrimination against Turks, in comments that have caused outrage across the continent.

"From here I say to my citizens, I say to my brothers and sisters in Europe... Educate your children at better schools, make sure your family live in better areas, drive in the best cars, live in the best houses," said Erdogan.

"Have five children, not three. You are Europe's future." "This is the best answer to the rudeness shown to you, the enmity, the wrongs," he added in a televised speech in the city of Eskisehir, south of Istanbul.

Some 2.5 million Turkish citizens resident in Europe are eligible to vote in elections in their homeland. But millions more people living in EU states have Turkish origins.

Erdogan, a father of four, has previously urged women in Turkey to have at least three children to help boost the population, in comments denounced by women's rights activists.
Addi Ababa: President Donald Trump's proposed deep cuts to humanitarian aid go against the global development goals the United States committed to in 2015, the European Union's international development chief warned Friday.

"Any withdrawal or cut in the development assistance would actually go contrary to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda," the EU commissioner for international cooperation and development, Neven Mimica, told The Associated Press.

The ambitious set of global goals take aim at eradicating poverty, reducing disease burden and ensuring clean water around the world, among other issues, by 2030. They were adopted by the international community at a United Nations summit.

The EU official was responding to a question about Trump's budget proposal, which would carve $17 billion from funding for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. That's a drop of 31 percent, a dramatic shift for the world's top humanitarian donor.

The budget proposal still requires Congress' approval. Mimica added that "the EU, however, shall do its best to be the best donor in the world."

He was in Ethiopia's capital to announce 165 million euros ($177 million) of support for Somalia and South Sudan, which are suffering from drought and famine.

Both countries are part of what the United Nations has called the largest humanitarian crisis since the world body was founded in 1945, with more than 20 million people in four countries - including Nigeria and Yemen - facing starvation and famine.
Rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris. (Photo: Representational/AP)

Beirut: The US military says it carried out an airstrike in northern Syria against an al-Qaeda target, but denies deliberately targeting a mosque where at least 42 people were killed according to an independent monitor.

The US-led coalition has been bombing jihadist groups in war-torn Syria for several years, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

"We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target -- which was where the meeting took place -- is about 50 feet (15 metres) from a mosque that is still standing," said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: "US forces conducted an airstrike on an al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists."

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

"We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike," he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people had died in the attack on the village mosque, most of them civilians.

The head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said "the raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians".

"More than 100 people were wounded," he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from the rubble and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, said that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time when there is usually religious lessons for men in it".

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

An AFP reporter at the scene said rescuers earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the debris.

Footage published by Halab Today, an online media group focused on news in Aleppo, showed piles of rubble where the mosque allegedly stood.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began six years ago with anti-government protests.

A cessation of hostilities was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued across much of the country.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

But the skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out air strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition, meanwhile, has been bombing jihadist groups in Syria since 2014.

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014. Critics say the real number is much higher.
Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie said that preparatory work on the stations was among the government's priorities for 2017, but gave no other details. (Photo: Representational/AP)

Beijing: China plans to build an environmental monitoring station on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, potentially raising new concerns over Beijing's actions to assert its claims in the strategically crucial water body.

The top official in Sansha City that administers China's island claims was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying such stations were being built on six islands and reefs, including Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.

Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie told the paper that preparatory work on the stations was among the government's priorities for 2017, but gave no other details. Beijing seized Scarborough in 2012 after a prolonged standoff with Philippine vessels. Taiwan also includes the island in its South China Sea claims.

The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group that China has controlled since seizing parts away from Vietnam in 1974.

Also this week, the commander in chief of China's navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing.

China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnam's central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam.

The two navies and their countries should "together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea," Shen was quoted as saying by China's defence ministry.

South China Sea tensions have eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines, invalidating China's sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal.

China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunal's ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated USD 5 trillion in global trade passes each year.

China's creation of seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, complete with airstrips and military installations, has drawn criticism from the US and others and focused attention on Beijing's long-term plans for Scarborough.

US diplomats have said privately that reclamation work on the shoal would be seen as crossing a red line because of its proximity to the main Philippine islands.

During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson compared China's island-building and deployment of military assets to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and suggesting China's access to the island should not be allowed.

The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when Tillerson visits Beijing for talks with top officials on Saturday and Sunday. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have long contested ownership of the South China Sea, which straddles one of the world's busiest sea lanes and is believed to sit atop vast deposits of oil and gas.
Beijing: China plans to step up military cooperation with "all weather" friend Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and a multi-role combat

aircraft, official media here reported as Pakistan's new army chief held talks with top Chinese officials.

On his first visit to China after he took over as Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa yesterday held talks with General Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission.

Bajwa also called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Fan Changlong and Commander of the People's Liberation Army General Li Zhuocheng and discussed regional security, economy defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.

The "all-weather" strategic partnership has withstood changes in the international community, Fang said. The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges

between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force), told state-run Global Times.

Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong which in Pakistan called JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting, Song said.

China's authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said.

The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song said. The military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, the report said.

The two sides also vowed yesterday to ensure the safety of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important part of China's One Belt and One Road initiative. Military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, experts noted.

Masood Khalid, Pakistan's Ambassador to China, said at a news conference on Tuesday that Pakistan has deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC and the country's navy has raised a special contingent for the protection of Gwadar Port.
Lahore: Pakistan today said it has no clue so far about the two Indian clerics, including the 80-year-old head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, who went missing in the country.

"No clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far. However, we are pro-actively pursuing this case," Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI.

"We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter," he said, adding the Foreign Office yesterday received the request of the Indian government to trace the two missing clerics.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today said the Indian government has taken up the matter with Pakistan. "We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," Swaraj tweeted.

Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at Karachi airport. Syed Asif Nizami is the head priest of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah.

The two had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight to Karachi on Wednesday. The clerics had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

A Federal Investigation Agency official at the Lahore airport told PTI that they have no idea about the missing of the two clerics from the airport premises. "It is not clear whether they have gone with someone on their own or there is some other matter," he said.

A senior Punjab police officer also expressed his department's ignorance about this matter saying: "Neither we have received any application about the missing Indian priests nor the federal government has asked us to look into this matter".

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.
Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs vision clearly states Pakistans foreign policy objective of achieving regional prosperity through peaceful neighbourhood. (Representational image)

Islamabad: Pakistan wants to resolve all issues, including Kashmir, with India through result-oriented dialogue which should not disrupt or breakdown on flimsy grounds, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.

Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs vision clearly states Pakistans foreign policy objective of achieving regional prosperity through peaceful neighbourhood.

We want a peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues with India, particularly, the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, Zakaria said at a regular briefing in Islamabad.

He said Pakistan was hosting the upcoming Indus Waters Treaty Commissioners meeting.

We have been emphasising the need for sustainable and result oriented dialogue vis-a-vis our relationship with India - dialogue which should not disrupt or breakdown on flimsy grounds, the official said.

Zakaria said Pakistan has shown a number of gestures which were not reciprocated by India.

We hope that India will soon realise that dialogue is a key to peace and stability in the region, as well as peace between our two countries, particularly in the context of the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, he said.

It is only through peace and dialogue that we can lift millions of our people from the throes of poverty, he said.

The spokesman criticised alleged Indian belligerent posture and what he called irrational defence build-up, saying that India remained the largest importer of defence equipment in the region and its hegemonic designs are endangering peace and security in the region and beyond.

He lambasted India for alleged human rights violations in Kashmir and said Pakistan raised the issue at the Human Rights Council in Geneva during its ongoing 34th Session.

Zakaria also said the BJPs policy of using Pakistan card in their domestic politics was unfortunate and regrettable.

He said Pakistan and India should engage in meaningful discussions on further measures for confidence-building, avoidance of arms race and promotion of strategic stability in South Asia.

Pakistan stands ready for such talks with India. Our proposal for a Strategic Restraint Regime for South Asia is still on the table, he said.
Islamabad: Pakistan navy said on Thursday it conducted a successful test of a new land-based anti-ship missile, bolstering its operational reach to launch long- range, anti-ship missiles from land.

The trial of the missile was conducted from the coastal region and the missile secured a hit on a target placed at sea, a press release from the navy said.

The missile is equipped with advanced technology and avionics, which enable engagement of targets at sea with a high degree of accuracy.

However, the navy did not give more details, including the name of the new missile.

The test-launch was witnessed by vice chief of naval staff Admiral Khan Hasham Bin Saddique and senior officers of Pakistan navy.

Admiral Saddique commended the accomplishment of the objectives of the trial, the release said.

Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah in his message said that the weapon system has added a new dimension to the operational reach of Pakistan navy, allowing it to bolster seaward defences by giving the navy the capability to launch long-range, anti-ship missiles from land.

On January 24, Pakistan had test-fired 2,200-km range indigenously-developed surface to surface nuclear-capable missile Ababeel. The missile is capable of delivering multiple warheads, using Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.

The Ababeel test flight was aimed at validating various design and technical parameters of the weapon system.

During the same month, submarine-launched cruise missile Babur-III was successfully test-fired. Babur weapons system incorporates advanced aerodynamics and avionics that can strike targets both at land and sea with high accuracy at a range of 700km.

Babur-III is a low flying, terrain hugging missile, which carries certain stealth features and is capable of carrying various types of warheads.
Pakistani students of Islamic seminaries take part in a rally in support of blasphemy laws, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan said on Thursday it has asked Facebook and Twitter to help it identify Pakistanis suspected of blasphemy so that it can prosecute them or pursue their extradition.

Under Pakistan's strict blasphemy laws, anyone found to have insulted Islam or the Prophet Muhammad can be sentenced to death.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said an official in Pakistan's Washington embassy has approached the two social media companies in an effort to identify Pakistanis, either within the country or abroad, who recently shared material deemed offensive to Islam.

He said Pakistani authorities have identified 11 people for questioning over alleged blasphemy and would seek the extradition of anyone living abroad.

Facebook said it reviews all government requests carefully, "with the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users."

"We disclose information about accounts solely in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law. A Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or other formal request may be required for international requests, and we include these in our Government Requests Report," which is publicized each year, it said in a statement.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report says women and children are among the dead. (Photo: Twitter)

Sanaa: A boat packed with Somali migrants came under attack overnight off Yemen's coast close to a strategic Red Sea strait that killed 42 people, a U.N. agency and a Yemeni medical official said Friday.

According to the International Organization for Migration, the victims carried UNHCR papers. Laurent De Boeck, the IOM chief in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, said the agency believes all the people on board the stricken vessel were refugees but it was not immediately clear where they came from in Somalia.

The SABA news agency in Yemen, run by the country's Shiite rebels, said the attack was an airstrike that took place off the coast of Hodeida province, close to the Bab al-Mandab strait. It did not say who was behind the airstrike.

De Boeck added that 77 survivors who were pulled out of the water were taken to a detention center in Hodieda. He said the IOM is in contact with the hospital, clinics, and the detention center to provide the necessary medical care the victims.

In Geneva, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told reporters that he was unable to confirm news reports indicating that an Apache helicopter gunship was responsible for the attack. "Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths and many dozens of survivors brought to hospitals," he told The Associated Press.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is fighting alongside Yemen's internationally recognized government, has accused the Shiite Houthi rebels of using Hodeida as a smuggling route for weapons. There was no immediate comment from the coalition.

The coastal province has been under heavy airstrikes over the past two years since the coalition joined the conflict in support of the government. African migrants continue to head to Yemen, a transit point to Saudi Arabia where they seek jobs and a better life.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said bodies of the dead were being retrieved from the sea and taken to the morgue of a hospital in al-Thawra. Only 14 bodies had arrived at the morgue so far, the Yemeni official said, adding that women were among the dead.

There were also 25 wounded, including those who lost arms and legs, who were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

On its Twitter account, the UNHCR said it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen."
Gen. Bajwas talks with his counterpart will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, said a military expert Song Zhongping. (Photo: video grab)

China plans to scale up its defence cooperation with its all-weather ally Pakistan to co-produce ballistic missiles, in an apparent retaliation to India developing the nuclear-capable Agni V missile that has a range of over 5,000 km covering whole of China.

Declining to react to Chinese official media reports that Beijing plans to co-produce ballistic and cruise missiles with Pakistan, besides mass production of military aircraft, Chinese foreign ministry, however, said Beijing stands for strategic balance in South Asia.

On his first visit to China, Pakistans army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa held talks with Fang Fenghui, chief of the joint staff department under the Central Military Commission of China on Thursday.

Gen. Bajwas talks with his counterpart will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, said a military expert Song Zhongping. Chinas authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said.

It is not clear whether the Global Times report about Chinas plans to co-produce missiles with Pakistan was a retaliatory move by Beijing in response to Indias Agni-V test.


The matter has been taken up with the Pakistan government both in New Delhi as well as through the Indian mission in Islamabad, the source said. The duo had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine. Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.



Two Indian clerics, including the head priest of New Delhi's Nizamuddin Dargah, have gone missing in Pakistan, prompting India to take up the matter with the Pakistani government.According to official sources in New Delhi, Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight from there to Karachi yesterday."As per their families, while Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, Nazim was stopped at the Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete travel papers. "While Nazim went missing from Lahore airport, Asif went missing after arriving at the Karachi airport," a source said.
China plans to step up military cooperation with "all weather" friend Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and a multi-role combat aircraft, official media here reported as Pakistan's new army chief held talks with top Chinese officials.



On his first visit to China after he took over as Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa yesterday held talks with General Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission.



Bajwa also called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Fan Changlong and Commander of the People's Liberation Army General Li Zhuocheng and discussed regional security, economy defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest. The "all-weather" strategic partnership has withstood changes in the international community, Fang said.



The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force), told state-run Global Times.



Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong which in Pakistan called JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting, Song said.



China's authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said. The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song said.



The military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, the report said. The two sides also vowed yesterday to ensure the safety of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important part of China's One Belt and One Road initiative.



Military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weapons and anti-terrorism sectors, experts noted. Masood Khalid, Pakistan's Ambassador to China, said at a news conference on Tuesday that Pakistan has deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC and the country's navy has raised a special contingent for the protection of Gwadar Port.



As Pakistan faces frequent threats from terrorist forces such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, military's support is necessary to ensure a safe environment in the regions where China has invested heavily, Song said.



The two countries agreed to enhance anti-terrorism cooperation at the meeting, vowing to resolutely strike against terrorist forces including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement active in China's restive Xinjiang which is the connecting point of the CPEC.



China blames the East Turkistan Islamic Movement for the violent attacks in the past few years. The daily quoted Bajwa as saying that Pakistan's military is willing to deepen the cooperation with the Chinese army and fully support the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism in Counter Terrorism by Afghanistan-China-Pakistan- Tajikistan Armed Forces.
Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said today.



The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.



Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.



The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.



Even so, Tillerson said the United States' "strategic patience" had ended -- the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.



Under that policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.



"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.



"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that option's on the table."



North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.



Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.



Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.



The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.



On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.



"I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries," he said.



"We know that other nations can take actions."



Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.



The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.
President Pranab Mukherjee today stressed on the need to guard against "majoritarianism", saying those in power must take the entire nation along at all times.



"Consultation and consensus is the best and often the only way forward," he said while lauding the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after BJP scored landslide victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.



"In a Parliamentary democracy, we must always guard against majoritarianism. Those in power must involve and take the entire nation along with them at all times," Mukherjee said in his speech at a conclave organised by India Toady here.



Appreciating Modi's felicitation speech following the resounding win, he said, "I was extremely happy to hear Prime Minister Modi speak about the need for humility in the aftermath of his party's victory in recent elections to Uttar Pradesh and other state assemblies.



"He asserted that while electoral verdicts are determined on the basis of 'Bahumat' (majority), the states will be governed on the principle of 'Sarvamat' (consensus). This is indeed India's tradition and what the large majority of our people desire to see in action."



In the speech circulated at the function, the President also chose to flag the issue of freequent disruption of Parliament, saying "I speak with some anguish because my entire public life has been defined by my role in Parliament."



"It is, therefore, difficult for me to stand and watch this fundamental pillar of Indian democracy being rendered ineffective.



"In my view, there is absolutely no justification for constant disruption of proceedings, low level of attendance, shrinking in number of days that the Parliament and state legislatures meet as well as the irresponsible manner in which important legislation, including the budget and financial proposals, get passed with hardly any discussion," he said.



Mukherjee said it was of benefit to both the ruling party and the opposition "to break this vicious cycle" of disruptions and disorderly behaviour and also made an appeal to political leadership across the spectrum to arrive at an agreement that all protests and airing of grievances will be undertaken in a manner that the functioning of Parliament and legislatures are not disrupted.



President Mukherjee also pitched strongly for values and principles enshrined in the Constitution which must be respected by all, especially those in positions of authority and in public life.



"Executive action and legislation must indeed conform to the Constitution, but going beyond that, day-to-day activities of political parties and all those associated with it must also conform to the Constitution and its provisions as interpreted by our judiciary.



"The tendency of individuals and groups taking the law into their own hands should be strongly resisted." he said.



The progress of a nation, he said, was not possible if it was not united.

"One of the principal lessons India's history teaches us is that united we stand, divided we fall," he said, citing instances from India's freedom struggle.



"It will be impossible for us to achieve the progress that we seek, if in our country man turns against man in the name of religion, caste or politics," the President said.

In the wake of debates on social media about targeting individuals for having a different opinion, the President said "Free speech and expression is not only guaranteed by our Constitution but has been an important characteristic of our civilisation and tradition."



Indians, he noted, are known to be argumentative, but never intolerant. In fact, a conclave such as this is one of the best examples of the free debate and discussion that should take place in our society, he said.



Mukherjee, whose five-year term comes to an end in July this year, spoke about the two Prime Ministers -- Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi-- with whom he had worked as the first citizen of the country.



"I have learnt a lot from the calm wisdom and great scholarship in the field of economics of Dr. Manmohan Singh, who has been a colleague and friend of long years. I have also been deeply impressed by the focused approach, energy and capacity for hard work of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he said.



In his circulated speech, Mukherjee spoke about former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and also asked the political leaders to learn from strengths and mistakes of Gandhi, who he termed as his "mentor".



Addressing the India Today Conclave here, he said courage, fearlessness in action and boldness in decision making was the unique hallmark of her character.



Mukherjee said she fought relentlessly against communalism and rose above all divisions of religion, caste, community and creed during her entire life.



The President said 1971 Bangladesh war was a high point of her career as she demonstrated her leadership skills as well as ability to take tough decisions in the interest of the people and the nation.



Speaking on the topic "Such a Long Innings: Politics, Power, Office", he said excessive power and popularity led his "mentor" Indira Gandhi into making mistakes.

"The misadventure of Emergency is an example of this. It is also believed that the tendency to overcentralise decision making and the evolution of the Prime Minister's Office into a powerful centre of decision making, began from the tenure of Mrs Gandhi," he said.



The President said it would be wise for succeeding generations of leadership in India to learn from Gandhi's "strengths as well as her mistakes".



"Our system of governance is Parliamentary and not Presidential. In a Parliamentary system, all Ministers are collectively and severally responsible to the Parliament and through it, to the people.



Quoting Nehru, he said "the Prime Minister is 'Primus inter Pares' or first among equals. It is my belief that a country as complex and diverse as India can be administered only through delegation of authority."



He invited scholars and political scientists to analyse the consequences and long term implications of moving away from the classic tenets of a Parliamentary system.

Underlining the need for a strong opposition standing guard, the President quoted the first Prime Minister who had said, "I do not want India to be a country in which millions of people say 'yes' to one man, I want a strong opposition".



Mukherjee said Nehru strongly discouraged all forms of "hero worship" as he used to say "India is too large a country with too many legitimate diversities to permit any so-called 'strong man' to trample over people and their ideas."



"In Nehru's thinking, only a democratic structure which gave space to various cultural, political and socio-economic voices could hold India together. Nehru was unhappy with the banning of the Communist Party in 1948 by Dr B C Roy, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, even though he was against its policies," he said.



Mukherjee said despite the majority enjoyed by the Congress Party, he ensured that the Parliament always reflected the will of the entire people.



He said if India is today admired across the world as the largest functioning democracy, it is because of the strong leadership and liberal values provided by Nehru which enabled democracy take deep root in our country.


President Donald Trump greeted Germany's Angela Merkel with a handshake at the White House today -- a cordial start to difficult talks between long-time allies who now differ on a host of issues from immigration to NATO.



The veteran chancellor arrived at a snowy White House, hoping to reverse a chill in relations after Trump's tough election rhetoric.



The two leaders shook hands and smiled for the cameras before entering the West Wing, for a meeting that had been delayed three days because of bad weather.

The unlikely pair -- a cautious German chancellor and impulsive US president -- moved to the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on immigration and NATO but also Russia and global trade.



For years, Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.



With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a unkind 140-character Twitter missive from the US leader.



Before coming to office in January, the US president called Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and said she was "ruining Germany."



He also demanded that countries like Germany step up defence spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytizes fiscal prudence.



In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind -- some in the White House would say lecture -- the real estate mogul about democratic values.



Any "close cooperation," she said, must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."



Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world" -- a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House.



Between meetings, the pair will hold a joint press conference at 1:20 PM (locla time) that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements.



"Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence," said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.



"Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain," he added.



"And Germany has placed all of its security eggs in multilateral baskets."

Since coming to office, Trump has tempered his comments slightly, but is still likely to press for higher defense spending.



And European officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.
To ensure quality mobile phone service in remote areas, Public Accounts Committee on Friday suggested that the Department of Telecom (DoT) should come up with better system of planning, coordination between different implementing agencies in setting up telecom infrastructure.



Though the targeting of setting up towers in rural or remote areas was achieved 99% under the Department of Telecom sponsored Shared Mobile Infrastructure Scheme, the objective of providing mobile services to uncovered areas including rural, remote, hilly and tribal areas had been achieved only to the extent of 72%, said a report titled Shared Mobile Infrastructure Scheme tabled in Parliament.



The panel headed by Congress Lok Sabha member K V Thomas prepared the report after studying the Shared Mobile Infrastructure Scheme launched by the Department of Telecom in 2007, to provide mobile connectivity to remote areas. As per the scheme, there was a provision of provide subsidy to setting up and managing 7,353 infrastructure sites in remote areas. Each site was to be shared by three service providers to provide mobile services in uncovered areas.



Though several difficulties like diverse location, remote and tough terrain, lack of proper infrastructure, insurgency had been cited by the DoT for poor quality of services in remote areas, these excuses were not acceptable, the report said.



The panel also said that there were deficiencies the scheme including defective subsidy support to telecom companies and ineffective penal clauses in service level agreement, non existence of clauses to safeguard Department of Telecom against defaulting infrastructure providers and mobile service providers.



The panel also suggested the Department of Telecom to take action against the those responsible for non-implementation of green towers under the scheme.


Close on the heels of its partial stake sale in One97 Communications, the parent of Paytm, Anil Ambani-led financial services company Reliance Capital is planning to sell more non-core assets in the upcoming fiscal.



Reliance Capital is solely focused on financial services businesses and profitable monetisation of all non-core investments is underway, and will be substantially completed by March 2018, Anil Ambani said addressing analysts in Mumbai.



According to the presentation given to analysts, some of Reliance Capitals non-core assets include investments in a couple of wine firms like Sula Vineyards and Grover Vineyards, online travel portal Yatra.com, Mahindra First Choice and monetisation of some non core assets including film and media services, exhibition business and radio and TV business is underway.



Reliance Capital had recently sold its stake in One97 Communications to Chinas Alibaba for nearly Rs 275 crore with a whopping 27x return on its investment.



Speaking on the occasion, Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management Company (RNLAMC) chief executive officer Sundeep Sikka said that the company is expanding its reach in the international markets.



Nippon Life Insurance is a 127 year old company with assets of over $600 billion. We will look at exploring international markets together to expand our reach, Sikka said.



RNLAMC is Indias largest AMC with assets under management of over Rs 3.5 lakh crore and is the second most profitable AMC in the industry. The company had recorded a profit before tax of Rs 502 crore in FY16.



Digital transformation

India and China are the largest digital markets in the world, and Reliance Capital intends to go digital in all its businesses to serve the new age customers, Reliance Capital Executive Director Anmol Ambani said.



At the meeting held on Thursday, which was attended by other senior executives of the group as well, the analysts were also told that financial services remain a core and high growth business for Reliance Group.



The 24-year-old Anmol, who joined Reliance Capital as a Director last year, after two years of training at the company, said it aims to be amongst the top three players across all its businesses.

DHNS and Agencies
There is a twist in the mysterious death of a purported Nigerian national, Ifeanyi Madu. The Bengaluru police who seized his phone say they have stumbled upon a SIM card racket in Karnataka whose beneficiaries were foreigners.



When police went through the call detail record (CDR) of Madus Tata Docomo phone number 8951******, they found that it was registered in the name of a Bengalurean named Vijay Kumar. When police contacted Kumar, he was shocked to learn that someone was using a SIM card bought in his name.



Further scanning of incoming and outgoing calls uncovered a racket: the phone numbers used by many foreigners were registered in the names of Indians without their knowledge. Shockingly, these (Indian) people are unaware that their bona fide documents are being used for activation of SIM cards and even broadband connections, said a senior police officer who wished not to be named.



How the racket operates



According to police sources, SIM card retailers use the photocopies of documents provided by genuine customers to apply for another number without the knowledge of the said persons. Later, the retailers activate the number by giving service providers an alternative number for verification. Once activated, these pre-active SIM cards are sold at a premium to foreign nationals like Madu or just about anyone willing to pay a few thousand rupees more. If the new SIM card costs Rs 100, the pre-activated numbers are sold for a few thousand rupees, the officer said.



It works well for foreigners like Madu as they need not provide personal details for obtaining SIM cards. In some cases, if the person is involved in nefarious activities, it suits them to have a phone number in somebody elses name. Retailers, too, make a handsome profit. In some cases, if the pre-activated SIM card remains unsold for a few months, retailers apply for number portability which makes it tougher for police to trace how the SIM card was obtained.



Calls to Nigeria



While police are yet to find documents to establish the nationality of Madu, the call detail record of his phone showed that he not only made calls to Nigeria but also received calls from there.




The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has affirmed her governments commitment to the $16.5 billion Carmichael mine project, a mine proposed by Adani Mining, a part of global integrated infrastructure conglomerate, Adani Group.



My visit here shows that Queensland supports the Adani project for its potential to create many jobs for regional Queensland and will also help boost the Indian economy. Queensland will also be part of the solar project of Adani and we are delighted to be part of Adani in that project too, Palaszczuk said.



Adani Group on Friday hosted a high level delegation led by Annastacia Palaszczuk, Premier of Queensland, Australia at Mundra Port.



Indians are a great community in Australia and the Indo-Australian relations are growing from strength to strength. The Australian Prime Minister will also be visiting India shortly and that shows the significance of the relationship, she added.



The project involves construction of a near-400km rail line from the Carmichael mine site to the Adani owned and operated bulk coal-loading facility at Abbott Point near Bowen.



Adani Group ventured into Australia commenced in 2010 with the purchase of the Greenfield Carmichael Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin, Central Queensland, and the Port of Abbot Point near Bowen in North Queensland.



Last year, the Queensland state's department of environment and heritage protection (EHP) issued a final environmental authority (EA) for Adani's Carmichael Mine project in the Galilee Basin. The EA application was vigorously assessed by the department and acted on recommendations made by the land court.
India and Russia are setting up a $1 billion fund to promote mutual investments in infrastructure and technology projects, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.



Both the countries would contribute $500 million to the fund, Sitharaman said while addressing India-Russia Business Forum at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) here.



While the Russian funds would be channeled through Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Indian contribution will be accrued from National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.



She elaborated upon other measures being taken by Russia and India to scale up their economic engagement and to boost bilateral trade and investment.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Russia is estimated at $1.2 billion till date while Indian investment in Russia is around $4.9 billion.



India and Russia are engaged in robust cooperation in the energy sector.



Share defence tech

India has asked Russia to adopt a liberal approach in sharing technology for components of major defence platforms saying it was critical to keep them in operational readiness as most of its weapons systems are of Russian-origin.



Calling for deeper bilateral engagement in defence production, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said Russia should at least facilitate manufacturing of parts and sub systems which are needed in large numbers and where the requirement is recurring in nature.



Two agreements were signed at the conference between Indias Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) and Russias United Aircraft Corporation and United Engine Corporation for long term supply of spares and technical assistance for Sukhoi 30MKI aircraft for five years.

PTI
Police are hot on the trail of a serial peeping Tom believed to be active in BEML Layout in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, west Bengaluru.



The man, said to be mentally unstable, was seen scaling the compounds of several houses and peeping into bathrooms and bedrooms. Police believe he is a night owl as he carried out his plans after 11 pm. During the day, he usually did a recce of the houses.



The peeping Tom first came into the limelight on September 9, 2016, when a woman took to Facebook to narrate her ordeal. She described how the man suddenly emerged at the window of her bedroom but disappeared in the dark as she got up. The next day, he came back and caressed her cheek as she was asleep. She woke up and raised an alarm, but the man slipped into darkness, a senior police officer said.



The womans Facebook post went viral and was noticed by the Rajarajeshwari Nagar police. They contacted her but she refused to file a complaint. Three days later, a social activist complained to the police that he had seen a man trying to peep through the window of a house.



The complainant tried to catch him but he ran away. Luckily, a CCTV camera had caught his act. Police picked up four men but they turned out to be innocent. They later showed the CCTV footage to local residents for possible clues about the peeping Tom but that didnt help either, the officer said.



Police had almost forgotten the man until two days ago when another local resident approached them and claimed to have seen the suspect roaming the area. Acting on the information, police formed two special teams on Friday to hunt him down.



M N Anucheth, DCP (West), said policemen were intensively patrolling the streets of the locality and talking to residents for clues. They are also scanning the CCTV footage of the area.


Criticised for his failure to install a Congress government in Goa, party general secretary Digvijaya Singh on Friday said his efforts were sabotaged by our own leaders.



In a damage-control exercise, Singh asserted that there was no delay in electing the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, saying a meeting of the newly elected MLAs was convened on March 12, the day after the results of the Assembly polls were declared.



The Congress emerged as the single largest party with 17 seats in the 40-seat Goa Assembly, while the BJP finished with 13.



However, the saffron party made quick moves to ensure that it had the support of the smaller parties and the independents.



Singh also slammed Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, who claimed in an interview that she consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley before inviting Manohar Parrikar to form the government.



As a strategy, I had proposed a secular alliance with regional party headed by Babush Monserrate and Goa Forward headed by Vijay Sardesai. Our alliance with Babush went through and we won 3 out of 5 but our alliance with Goa Forward was sabotaged by our own leaders. Sad, Singh said in a series of tweets.



Later, interacting with the media in Parliament, Singh accused Union Minister Nitin Gadkari of indulging in horse-trading to cobble up the numbers to form the government in Goa.



The Congress had struck a pre-poll understanding with the Goa Forward Party, which won three seats.



But it eventually supported Parrikar, who was sworn in as the chief minister on Tuesday and proved his majority in the Assembly on Thursday.



Goa Forward won 3 out of 4 (seats) they contested. Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22. Still Digvijaya guilty? I leave it to you to judge, Singhs tweet read.



He also pointed out that traditionally the party in power at the Centre formed governments in Goa whenever there was a fractured mandate.



In 1994 and 2007, when elections in the state threw up a hung Assembly, the Congress, which was in power at the Centre, managed to form the government.


The police on Friday arrested a 26-year-old man after receiving a complaint from his neighbour that he had intercourse with a calf.



The incident took place on Thursday night and according to the police, he left the two-and-a-half-month-old animal bleeding. According to the SHO of Pratap Nagar police station Rashpal Singh, the police arrested Mohammad Iqbal on Friday on the basis of a complaint lodged by his neighbour Nathu Lal who said he saw Iqbal having intercourse with a calf inside his cow shed.



Police has registered a case under section 377 (carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal) of the IPC. Nathu Lal said he grew suspicious after he heard the calf wail. When he reached the cow shed, he saw the calf bleeding and in a bad condition, while the other cows were restless. According to the SHO, When we reached the spot, the cow was bleeding badly. Medical tests are being done.



Iqbal, who originally hails from Bhaptiyahi in Bihar, used to live in Pratap Nagar area of Jaipur with his brother-in-law in a rented house.



The brother-in-law is absconding since the incident took place. However, complainant Lal told the police that Iqbal confessed to him that he had intercourse with the calf twice.




India on Friday signed two pacts with Russia for long-term maintenance of the Su-30MKI combat jets, which have poor serviceability at the moment.



The two nations are exploring the possibility of having similar agreements for T-90 tanks, opening up a new window in India-Russia military cooperation.



Other military platforms under discussions for long-term spare support are INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier, MiG-29K naval fighters and Mi-17 helicopters.



As most of the critical Indian military platforms are of Russian origin, sourcing their spares and looking after their timely maintenance remains a big challenge. The Su-30MKI fighter fleet is plagued by frequent engine failure-in-air and engine-related problems and poor operational serviceability, due to spare supply problems.



The two agreements between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) with United Aircraft Corporation and United Engine Corporation are likely to address the servicing issues in the next five years.


A former member of the Town Municipal Council (TMC) tried to immolate himself demanding taluk status for Terdal here on Friday.



Members of Terdal Taluk Action Committee had organised a protest in Terdal.



While submitting a memorandum to the tahsildar, Subhash Rayannavar, a former TMC member, doused himself in kerosene and tried to set himself ablaze, shouting slogans. Police and other protesters snatched the kerosene can and prevented Subhash from taking the extreme step.


Militants holed up in Batnoor village of south Kashmirs Pulwama district managed to escape after an encounter with security forces on Friday morning.



Sources said the security personnel had cordoned off the village after inputs about the presence of two to three militants in the area during the early hours on Friday. However, when the forces reached Batnoor village around 2 am, they came under heavy fire from the hiding militants. Under the cover of darkness, the militants managed to escape, they said.



Reports said dozens of youth took to the streets after the cordon was lifted at 7 am and pelted stones at the security personnel.
India on Friday continued to press Pakistan to trace the two clerics from the Nizamuddin Dargah of Delhi as more than 48 hours has passed since they disappeared.



We have taken up this matter with the Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.



New Delhi conveyed to Islamabad its concerns over disappearance of Syed Asif Ali Nizami and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami when both of them were on a religious tour to Pakistan.



The Nizamuddin Dargah has a strong spiritual link with Data Darbar in Lahore. The clerics of Nizamuddin Dargah have visited Pakistan several times in the past.



Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on 8 March 2017, tweeted Sushma. Sources in New Delhi said that the clerics reached Lahore Airport together to catch a flight to Karachi.



Nazim Ali was asked to de-board the plane, while Asif Ali was allowed to fly to Karachi, sources in New Delhi said.



While Nazim Ali went missing from Lahore Airport, Asif Ali called up his family in Delhi from Karachi to inform about disappearance of his younger brother.



Asif Ali, too, could not be traced or contacted after he made the last call to Delhi from Karachi. Also missing is a Pakistani national who had come to receive Asif Ali at the Karachi Airport.




In Rajasthans Jhalawar district, the administration and health department has launched a unique initiative of offering 4G Android smartphones to men and sarees to women for opting sterilisation. The scheme launched on March 10 is on till month end.



Jhalawar, also the home district of chief minister Vasundhara Raje, topped in family planning in 2015-16.



To keep that zeal alive and draw more people, particularly men, before the end of the fiscal, and also to give tough competition to nearby districts such as Pali and Baran, the administration has come up with this innovative idea.



Jhalawar chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Dr Sajid Khan told DH, This scheme is an incentive we are providing to men and women who opt sterilisation. According to norms, the department was paying Rs 2,000 to men opting for non-scalpel vasectomies and Rs 1,400 to women undergoing laparoscopic tubectomies. But the idea is to encourage more men to undergo the procedure.



The department hopes to give a boost to family planning through this scheme.

The health department has been trying to create awareness through the media by publicising the scheme in 252 gram panchayats of Jhalawar.



In order to improve the number of males opting for sterilisation, we decided to offer them either Rs 5,000 extra or a 4G phone. We shortlisted Spice phones for distribution. Suddenly we saw an increase in the number of males coming forward, Dr Khan added.



According to the data given by CMHO office, the sterilisation target was 8,703 people, of which 8,181, comprising 8,089 women and 92 men, has already been achieved.




After the election debacle in Goa, the Congress top brass is likely to replace Karnataka incharge AICC General Secretary Digvijaya Singh with former Union Minister K V Thomas.



A decision in this regard is likely to be taken after Congress president Sonia Gandhi returns from the US along with party vice president Rahul Gandhi. Karnataka assumes importance for the party as the Assembly elections in the state are due early next year. With the party suffering a loss in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the organisation wishes to concentrate on Karnataka. Congress leaders from Karnataka too have been pressing for a change in the setup so that a central leader who can better understand the problems of the organisation in the state is appointed.



Thomass name has started doing the rounds as he was earlier sent to the state as AICC observer for the Rajya Sabha elections. Thomas will hand over the chairmanship of Public Accounts Committee, an important Parliamentary panel, to Mallikarjun Kharge in two and half months. At present, Kharge is Congress floor leader in the Lok Sabha and will take additional charge as PAC chairman. Ernakulam Lok Sabha MP Thomas term as PAC chairman will end on May 1.



Singh, who is in charge of Goa, is facing criticism from a section of party leaders for his failure to instal a Congress government in the coastal state though it was the single largest party. Singh, considered a close confidant of Rahul Gandhi, is currently in-charge general secretary for four states  Karnataka, Goa, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.



With the demand for making structural changes to strengthen the party to overcome the humiliating defeat in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, in-charge general secretaries of several states are expected to be replaced, said the leader.
Koti Koti... Looty Looty. Looty Looty, Saviraru Koti...Govinda, Govinda... slogans raised by the BJP reverberated in the Legislative Assembly on Friday. They were in reference to Congress MLC K Govindarajs diary. The BJP, for the second consecutive day, created a din in the House over the issue.



As soon as the Assembly met in the morning, BJP members continued their dharna demanding that Speaker K B Koliwad allow a discussion on the controversial Govindaraj diary entries. JD(S) members were heard demanding waiver of farm loans.



However, the Speaker did not budge from his stand of not allowing a discussion on the diary. Upset BJP members led by Jagadish Shettar said that names of certain ministers, the high command (meaning the Congress) and a payoff of Rs 65 crore figure in the diary. Thousands of crores have been looted.



The government should not stand on prestige. A debate should be allowed, they vociferously demanded. The ruling Congress did not agree to this.



When there was no meeting point between the ruling party and the BJP, the Speaker adjourned the House for a short while. When the House reassembled amid the din, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, in a raised voice said the BJP has been politicising the issue for publicity.



Nimma appana aane (I swear on your father) you (BJP) will not come to power. We will continue to be in power. You are assuming that you are going to win the polls.



You are under an illusion. The elections are still one year away. Do whatever you want... people will not trust you. Your ministers had gone to prison. People will teach you a lesson. You are wasting the time of the House. It is you who have looted crores of rupees. Criminal cases have been booked. You have no shame... Siddaramaiah said.



The BJP continued to raise slogans against the government. Finally, Koliwad adjourned the House till Monday.

DH News Service
A watered-down version of a Bill that proposes to curb question paper leak and examination malpractices was passed in the Legislative Council on Friday.



The Legislative Assembly had passed the Karnataka Education (Amendment) Bill, 2017, in February this year which declared question paper leak a serious criminal offence attracting imprisonment for up to five years. The Bill proposed that those guilty of instigating teachers to boycott examination work or evaluation duty can be punished with a five-year jail term.



However, the Legislative Council members had stalled the passing of the Bill and referred it to a House committee. The amended Bill, as recommended by the House Committee, was taken up by the Council on Friday. The jail term for those indulging in question paper leak has been reduced from 5 years to 3 years (for first offence) and the penalty had been reduced from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh. However, a repeat offence will attract five-year jail term/Rs 5 lakh fine.



Besides, the jail term for instigating teachers to boycott evaluation duty has been reduced to six months from five years. Despite the dilution of the penal clauses, Opposition BJP and JD(S) members raised a hue and cry in the House stating that the provisions could be used to harass teachers. A majority of the MLCs are elected from the teachers and graduates constituencies.



The members said previous instances have shown that question paper leaks occurred at the printing stage or from state treasuries and teachers were not involved in it. K T Srikantegowda (JD-S) said the provisions of the bill are totally anti-teacher. V S Ugrappa (Congress) said if salary hike is withheld twice for those who threaten to boycott the exam work, then no teacher would go on strike. The Bill should have made provision for such punishment, he added.



Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait repeatedly tried to convince the members that the Bill has been introduced to curb question paper leaks and protect the sanctity of examinations. However, the Opposition staged a walkout. The Bill was passed by a voice vote.



The provisions of the Bill will be applicable to examinations conducted by Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) and Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE). The government had promised to come out with such Bill after facing severe embarrassment following two consecutive leaks of the second-year PU chemistry paper last year.



The provision to empower KSEEB and DPUE to debar students, suspend or withdraw recognition of educational institutions indulging in malpractice has been retained in the amended Bill. The Bill would have to be placed before the Assembly again.

DH News Service
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) meets Lao Minister of Public Security Somkeo Silavong in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)



During a meeting with Lao Minister of Public Security Somkeo Silavong in Hanoi on March 16th, the PM expressed his hope that the public security ministries of the two countries will continue supporting each other in protecting national security and social order and safety in each country in all circumstances.

The two ministries should maintain meetings between leaders of agencies and local police in diverse and flexible forms to exchange information and experience, thus promptly handlingarising problems and crushing schemes to harm bilateral ties.

They should also strengthen cooperation on personnel training, he added.

The two sides should also work together to foil hostile forces sabotage activities that aim to induce ethnic minority people, while preventing crimes and hunting criminals, ensuring a shared border of peace, stability and development.

PM Phucpledged that the Vietnamese side is willing to share experience with and support Laos in its national construction and development.

For his part, SomkeoSilavong briefed the host on the outcomes of his visit, especially his talks with the leader of the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam.

The two ministries agreed to implement their cooperation in 2017 in accordance with agreements reached between leaders of the two Parties, States and Governments to suit the reality, especially amidst the changing world situation, he said.

He also underscored the importance of security affiliation between the two countries, noting that the two sides should continue fighting all schemes of hostile forces to destroy the bilateral relations.

The same day, Minister of Public Security Senior Lieutenant To Lam held talks with his Lao counterpart, during which he lauded the fruitful cooperation between the two ministries in 2016.

The two sides competent agencies regularly exchanged international and regional information related to the national security as well as social order and safety in each country, he noted.

He suggested that this year they effectively implement agreements reached by leaders of both countries in the new situation, while maintaining meetings between senior leaders to discuss issued related to security and order in each country.

The two sides should also collaborate in raiding cross-border drug trafficking rings and hunting criminals, ensure utmost security and safety during visits and meetings of Party and State leaders, and createfavourable conditions for citizens of this country to live and work legally in the other.

SomkeoSilavong expressed his pleasure with the strong political trust between the two countries as well as the two ministries affiliation and mutual support at the world arena, which contribute to preserving national interest and security of each country.

He also showed high consensus on the cooperation orientations between the two ministries in 2017, adding that he hopes their partnership will become more fruitful in the future.

On the occasion, the two ministers also signed the 2017 cooperation minutes between their ministries./.
Principal Adviser to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, E Sreedharan, met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday, to discuss a joint survey for the proposed Nilambur-Nanjangud railway line.



The railway line, proposed nearly a decade ago, was in cold storage till the Kerala government asked Sreedharan to prepare a detailed project report for the project.



While the railways made a proposal for 236-km project at a cost of Rs 6,000 crore, Sreedharan conducted a new survey and proposed a 154-km route at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore.



The Kerala government and the railways signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last year to execute the project on a cost-sharing basis. As per the MoU, a joint venture company will work on the project, which will cut the travel time between Mysuru and Wayanad from more than three hours to around one hour.



About 74 km of the line is in Karnataka. The major challenge for the project, which goes through Bandipur reserved forests area, is to get approval from the forest officials in Karnataka.



According to reports, Sreedharan has proposed 11-km underground tunnel in the forest area. However, sources in the forest department said clearance for the project was unlikely.



No survey has been done and we cant allow such a project because of environmental issues, they said.



A previous proposal of the project was stonewalled by the forest officials in Karnataka. In the present situation, where drought has led to many problems in the Bandipur forests area, officials may not welcome such a project.



Sources in the government said even the Kerala forest department has problems with the project. DH could not get reaction from Kerala forest officials despite many attempts.



There is a proposal to lay another line between Mysuru and Thalassery in Keralas Kannur district.




The Hoskote police have reportedly arrested a man in connection with the murder of BJP leader Srinivas Prasad alias as Kithaganahalli Vasu (45) in Anekal on March 14. The suspect, Satish (29) is a native of Uganekatte village in Chitradurga district.



Satish was in constant touch with suspects before the murder. The police are interrogating him to ascertain his role in the murder, said a police officer.



A team of Hoskote police picked up Satish at his native place and brought him for interrogation.



When contacted, Bengaluru Rural SP Amit Singh said that some suspects were at large and the police would arrest them soon.



The suspects accosted and stoned Vasus vehicle at a truck terminal at Bommasandra Industrial Area on Hosur Road. They pulled him out of the car and attacked him with lethal weapons and escaped. He died on the spot.




At the ceremony, participants validated a toolkit developed to assist APEC countries with quality assurance in online education.

The toolkit was first considered by 13 APEC economies, including Vietnam, in October 2016 and is now being road tested before seeking endorsement at APEC later this year. Vietnam is one of three countries receiving in-country assistance under the project.

It aims to promote a shared understanding of good practice and provide some practical tools for evaluating aspects of online delivery, for example, around teacher skills and integrity of assessment.

The signing ceremony in Hanoi (Source: CPV)

Participants at the workshop discussed Vietnams directions and challenges in accrediting online education and looked at how the toolkit might assist Vietnam to strengthen its quality assurance processes. This assistance is especially timely for Vietnam which is currently developing guidelines on distance education.

Addressing the seminar, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Pham Manh Hung said that Australia is one of the leading countries providing scholarships to Vietnam, with over 400 scholarships granted per year.

Now, nearly 24,000 Vietnamese are studying and researching at universities and research institutes in Australia.

Australian Ambassador to Vietnam Craig Chittick said that Australia is committed to supporting educational reforms in Vietnam, and online education will provide great opportunities for universities in Vietnam and Australia./.
Iraq, China, Qatar, Yemen and Jordan have imposed a ban on supply of poultry from all territory of Ukraine.

According to a posting on the website of Ukraine's State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Rights Protection, Hong Kong, the EU, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) applied the regional principle. These countries ban shipments of poultry only from those Ukrainian regions where outbreaks of avian influenza were recorded.

The authority also said that at present China is assessing the process of heating egg products. The interested enterprises will be informed on the results of the assessment.

"These bans have been in effect for the second month. Today the State Food Safety Service published the list of countries that introduced the restrictions," Head of the Union of Poultry Farmers Serhiy Karpenko.

He said that the temporary ban is usually in effect three months more since the last outbreak recorded.

Karpenko said that despite the restrictions Ukraine continues boosting exports of poultry and eggs in January and February 2017, diversifying the markets.

According to the State Fiscal Service, Ukraine in January and February 2017 exported 31,730 tonnes of poultry and byproducts, and this was 45.4% more than a year ago. Exports of shell eggs grew by 53.5%, to 8,100 tonnes.

As reported, a ban on supply of Ukrainian poultry to the EU is in effect for Chernivtsi, Odesa and Kherson regions where avian influenza outbreaks were recorded.
Chinese vendors are pouring increasing amounts of investment into Thailands smartphone market as they look to supplant South Korean vendor Samsung as the markets leading device manufacturer.

Equipment and device supplier Huawei is tripling its marketing budget in Thailand, with the short-term goal of pushing its market share above 10% and taking second place by the end of 2017. In the long term, it aims to be the countrys largest smartphone brand by 2020, according to the deputy country director for its Thai consumer business, Tossaporn Nisthanon.

Another Chinese firm increasing its marketing spend in Thailand is Oppo, the worlds fourth largest smartphone manufacturer. It took third place in the Thai market last year, supplanting Huawei following a 76% leap in Thai handset sales, and is accordingly increasing its advertising budget by 20% to THB1 billion ($28.5 million).

Taiwans Asus also saw strong results in 2016 having pushed its global marketing budget up from 3.5% to 5% of revenue, and is forecasting its revenue in Thailand to increase by 20% over the next year. It will increase the amount of branded retail outlets in the market from five to ten across 2017  a move echoed by Huawei, which is adding a further 1000 stores to take its total to 8000.

Oppos sales director for Thailand, Chanon Jirayuakul, has stated that the firm anticipates Chinese smartphone firms to increase their share of the Thai market, overtaking Samsung across the next two to five years. Samsung had a 40% share of the Thai smartphone market at the end of 2016, followed by Apple, Oppo, Huawei and Asus.
Five stunning locations across Devon have been named among the best places to live in the country , according to the Sunday Times Best Places to Live in Britain survey.

Last week it was revealed Exeter was in the top 20 'old favourites' in the Sunday Times list - places that are excellent to live in, and have made the survey year after year. Now the national newspaper has revealed its 15 best places to live in the south west for a guide to be published this Sunday.

The supplements assess a wide range of factors, from jobs, exam results and broadband speed to culture, community spirit and local shops in order to compile the definitive top locations to make your home.

The analysis relies on hard data and robust statistics on crime and education, but also on expert knowledge from The Sunday Times judging panel. The judges combine the numbers with their own experience of the villages, towns and cities, such as local pubs, ease of transport and the range of attractive property to ensure the chosen locations truly are places where readers and their families can thrive.

In Devon the winners are Chagford, Exmoor, Kingsbridge, Tavistock and Totnes.

Deputy mayor of Totnes, Rosie Adams, said: "It's very wise of them to choose us because it probably is one of the best places in the UK in which to live.

"And it is well deserved because the people of Totnes work very hard to keep it looking good and it is a most welcoming town. We sit between the sea and the moors of Dartmoor and we have a lot of history but we also look to the future as well. So this really is a thrill for us."

Here's the full list...

The Sunday Times Best Places to Live: South West

Place County Blockley Gloucestershire Chagford Devon Exmoor Devon Frome Somerset Kingham Oxfordshire Kingsbridge Devon Lizard Peninsula Cornwall Lyme Regis Dorset Marlborough Wiltshire Sherborne Dorset St Agnes Cornwall Swanage Dorset Tavistock Devon Tisbury Wiltshire Totnes Devon

(Image: David Rowlatt)

In addition to the above list, Bath, Cheltenham, Exeter and Falmouth have been named in the Sunday Times Best Places Top 20 perennials, the list which celebrates the places that have that have appeared in almost every list over the past five years.

The Sunday Times Best Places to Live in Britain Part 2 is the second in a two-part series. This weekend it reveals the best places to live in the South West, East, London, Scotland and the North West, as well as the overall best place to live in the UK. Last weekend it revealed the top places in North and North East, Midlands, Northern Ireland, South East and Wales.

Commenting on The Sunday Times Best Places to Live, Home Editor Helen Davies said: "This is the fifth year we have compiled the list, and this year's is even bigger and better - the guide is more personal, more detailed and more comprehensive than ever before. The list weighs up everything from considering the likely impact of the local plan, to whether the post office is still open, the range of housing, and the quality of the coffee. Numbers on a spreadsheet can only tell us so much, so we carefully balance statistics with our writers' decades of knowledge and expertise to create the definitive list of the best places to live in the UK."

(Image: Dr Jonathan Roberts)

Johnny Morris, Research and Analytics Director at Countrywide plc, said: "Using extensive data from across our businesses, along with official statistics, we have been able to paint a detailed picture, not just of how much it costs to buy or rent in different places across the country, but what it is like to live there too. We've been able to do this for all types of people, from someone renting their first flat to a family buying their forever home."
Lack of rule of law still main obstacle for investors in Ukraine - Head of EU Delegation to Ukraine

Ukraine in the past several years conducted many important reforms, in particular in the financial and energy sectors. However, the non-reformed judicial system hinders the arrival of investors to the country, Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Hugues Mingarelli has said.

A lack of the rule of law is the main reason why investors refrain from coming to Ukraine, he said at the 13th Dragon Capital Annual Ukraine Investor Conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

Mingarelli said that the judicial reform must significantly advance and the judges are reshuffled.

He said that new anti-corruption courts should be created, and the international inspectors should be attracted to the selection of judges for them.

The head of the EU Delegation said that the renewed judicial system should have the resource base.

He also expressed alarm with the situation around the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

Mingarelli expressed hope that the future audit of the bureau will be intended to reveal weak points in its functioning and will not replace NABU top managers who have coped with their duties well.

He also called to continue the reform of the Prosecutor General's Office.

One cannot see the positive signs expected, he said.

He also said that a new Supreme Court and High Council of Justice could be created.
Public joint-stock company Ukrzaliznytsia has said that accusations of Kriukov Car Building Works (KCBW, Poltava region) of biased conditions of a tender to buy six diesel trains are groundless.

"The conditions of the tender were drawn up in line with the needs of the sector, and the term of production and supply of diesel trains are realistic for manufacturers of this rolling stock," Ukrzaliznytsia said in a press release.

Director for passenger transportation and servicing at Ukrzaliznytsia Ihor Romankiv said that the price which Ukrzaliznytsia plans to pay for diesel trains is based on the financial plan of Ukrzaliznytsia. The price is fair for this rolling stock, he said.

Ukrzaliznytsia said that the expected cost of one diesel train (UAH 177 million with VAT) exceeds the preliminary cost of procurement in 2015 by 1.61 times, and it was calculated using offers of Ukrainian manufacturers at the end of 2016.

"In February 2017 the Ukrainian manufacturer proposed to increase the expected cost by 1.2 times," the company said.

"Ukrzaliznytsia calls on KCBW not to spread provocative and distorted information, but develop its facilities, improve them and win at tenders thanks to the quality of their product and the balanced price policy," the company said.

Earlier KCBW said that the plant intends to appeal to Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine with a complaint against discriminative conditions of the Ukrzaliznytsia's tender to buy six passenger diesel train, which make impossible the participation of the national manufacturer in the tender.

In an open letter Chairman of the supervisory board of KCBW Volodymyr Prykhodko said that the conditions of the tender announced by Ukrzaliznytsia on March 7, 2017 repeat the concrete technical characteristics of Polish Pesa rail buses and bar the national manufacturer from participation in the tender.

Prykhodko also said that the term of supply of the trains  by the end of 2017, taking into account the announcement of the tender in March and signing the agreement no earlier than the second half of May  is unrealistic for the national manufacturer.

The tender to buy the trains was announced on March 7. Bids can be submitted until March 31. The expected cost of the trains is UAH 1.062 billion.
Adults with type 2 diabetes who take SGLT2 inhibitors are less likely to experience diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) than those on insulin treatment, a study suggests.

These findings existed for those with type 2 diabetes either prescribed SGLT2 inhibitors as a single treatment or in combination with another drug.

Scientists from the Steno Diabetes Center, Copenhage, Denmark examined 415,670 people with type 2 diabetes during 1995-2014, all of whom were treated with medication, including insulin.

They sought to evaluate the rates of DKA within patients to assess if any association could be made between DKA, a dangerous short-term complication, and SGLT2 inhibitors.

SGLT2 inhibitors work by helping the kidneys to lower blood glucose levels, with excess blood glucose removed through urine.

During follow-up, 4,045 first events of DKA were identified, but this incidence went on to decrease by 5.6 per cent per year.

The risk of DKA was highest for people on insulin, followed by people who were on a combination of insulin and oral diabetes drugs.

Those who filled prescriptions for SGLT2 inhibitors had no registered events of DKA, while six events of DKA occurred in those who were treated with an SGLT2 combination treatment.

The researchers said: This is the first study to estimate nationwide incidence of DKA in type 2 diabetes with 20 years of follow-up and three million person-years of observation combined with prescription data.

Compared with canagliflozin trials, our DKA incidence rates in the SGLT2 inhibitor-treated groups are higher, but the rates presented here indicate what we are likely to face in clinical practice; out of 1,000 people classified as having type 2 diabetes, one will be hospitalised with DKA each year, a potentially life-threatening acute situation, especially in the older population, demanding hospital admission and intensive treatment.

The excess risk associated with SGLT2 inhibitor treatment was, however, not significant and is hardly clinically relevant.

The study has been published online in Diabetes Care.
The company will deliver seven units from 2018-20 and retrofit existing reactor water clean-up motors with its seal-less technology for a 3,400 megawatt US nuclear facility.

Chief executive Ewan Lloyd-Baker said that the contract win demonstrates the companys determination to turn the extensive order pipeline into new order intake.

We have a strong reputation within the US market and it is promising to see that our capabilities and products continue to meet demand, providing operating value to our customers."

Separately, Hayward said that it is still in talks with the Royal Bank of Scotland for the repayment of 2.4m of short term banking facilities, which has been extended to 30 April from 31 March, while the annualised measurement of the financial covenants has also been put back to the end of April.

Lloyd-Baker said that RBS "continues to be supportive through our ongoing journey and we are working together to find the optimal funding structure for the group to support its long term development".

Shares in Hayward Tyler Group were down 2.38% to 41p at 1151 GMT.
HSBC has downgraded Centrica to 'reduce' due to political risk surrounding the energy company over calls for self-regulation and concerns over its new business ventures.

The bank downgraded the FTSE 100 company to 'reduce' from 'hold' and cut its price target to 200p from 223p, assuming a 6% dividend yield from 5% before.

Centrica said it will not raise energy prices for domestic customers from 1 April, while its its five rivals, EDF Energy. E.On, Npower, ScottishPower and SSE, have decided to hike rates, ignoring politicians' and regulators' calls for self-regulation.

HSBC claims that the "political noise" on this issue is growing as Iain Wright, the chair of the House of Commons Business Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, held a debate on energy prices on Thursday and according to Reuters he said the government would set out proposals "shortly" to address issues in the energy market.

After 2017, HSBC said Centrica will not generate high levels of free cash flow as it will have to continue to invest in new businesses for potential earnings growth in the future, which concerns the bank.

Centrica plans to invest between 400-600m per year in upstream activities in the North Sea and spend 100m on investment in technology to enhance its connected home offer and its distributed energy and power business, which are both loss-making.

HSBC warned that this new paradigm  growth through technology associated with the connected home and distributed generation  is unproven.

The company maintained its 12p dividend as expected in 2016 and indicated that it will restore a progressive dividend when net debt is between 2.5-3bn, which HSBC thinks is deliverable in this year, but the broker assumes a flat dividend depending on assurances of no political intervention.

Shares in Centrica were down 0.51% to 216.70p at 0816 GMT.
A surge in purchases from overseas cut into the euro area's trade surplus at the start of the year, as France's exports crumbled .

In seasonally adjusted terms, the single currency bloc's total trade surplus fell from 23.1bn in December to 15.7bn for January, according to Eurostat.

That was less than the 24.1bn which economists had penciled in.

Exports fell 0.6% month-on-month to 177.8bn while imports jumped 4.1% to 162.1bn, with French exports down 19.7% month-on-month to 14.6bn.

However, the external trade performance of the bloc's largest economies was very disparate.

While France's surplus shrank from 4.1bn in December to just 0.1bn for Janaury, the trade surpluses of Germany and Italy in fact edged higher, while Spain's deficit was steady at -2.6bn.

In the Netherlands, the deficit widened from -10.3bn to -10.5bn.

"This is a big hit and worse than we expected [...] These data are subject to revisions, but they increase the risk that net exports will be a drag on Q1 GDP growth. We think the trade surplus in the Eurozone will fall in 2017, mainly due to weaker demand in the U.K., but strong demand in the U.S., and growing exports to China, should make up some of the shortfall from weakness across the Channel," said Claus Vistesen, chief euro area economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has not ruled out the possibility of using military action in a long-running dispute with North Korea.

Tillerson is currently visiting several Asian countries for a series of diplomatic summits to discuss issues such as the increasing nuclear threat from the Kim Jong-un regime.

When asked about the likelihood of Donald Trumps administration engaging in military action against North Korea during a press conference in neighbouring South Korea, the former ExxonMobil boss said it was an option on the table.

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict, Tillerson said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table."

Earlier on Thursday the foreign minister spoke of the need for a new approach towards the thorny issue of how to deal with North Korea, which has so far defied UN sanctions to decelerate its nuclear programme.

"I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN Security Council resolution with full participation of all countries," he said.

The US has accused China of not contributing enough to stabilise the actions of its ally, while Beijing has pointed towards the conduction of joint military exercises in South Korea as a threat to Kims regime.
Asian markets traded lighter in Friday, after a relatively flat Thursday session on Wall Street overnight.

Japans Nikkei 225 lost 0.35% to 19,521.59, as the yen moved slightly stronger on the greenback.

It was last ahead 0.07% at JPY 113.23 per $1.

On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite was down 0.97% at 3,237.31, while the Shenzhen Composite lost 0.81% to 2,029.73.

Chinese authorities upped the geopolitical stakes, vowing a serious response to any Japanese interference in the South China Sea.

That followed media reports that Japan had planned to sent the Izumo helicopter carrier - the countrys largest warship - to the disputed maritime territory.

It was expected to stop in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before taking part in the Malabar joint naval exercise, alongside US and Indian ships, in the Indian Ocean in July.

The naval outing would be Japans biggest since the Second World War.

On the investment front, Chinese manager The Global CEO Fortune Club launched its maiden overseas fund on Thursday, with a stated goal of directing capital to Australian infrastructure projects.

The fund, headquartered in Melbourne, was hoping to seek public-private partnerships down under.

Also in China, Saudi King Salman watched the signing of $65m worth of deals on day one of his visit to Beijing.

They included a memorandum of understanding between China North Industrial Group and Saudi Aramco, to investigate the possibility of constructing more plants in the Peoples Republic.

In South Korea, the Kospi was up 0.67% at 2,164.58, while Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index finished

Korean eyes were on a visit from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over the weekend, as he continued his trip to Asia.

Tillerson told media in Japan on Thursday that his visit was part of a bid to seek a new approach in dealing with the North Korean threat.

Hong Kongs flag carrier Cathay Pacific added 1.26% during the session, after it confirmed media rumours that it was looking at 30% cuts to its cost of management.

It had reported its first full-year net loss since 2008 in the last financial year.

Oil prices were down during US hours overnight and into early Asian trading, but recovered as the baton was handed to Europe.

Brent crude was last up 0.27% at $51.88 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate added 0.37% to $48.93.

Australias S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.24% at 5,799.65, while in New Zealand the S&P/NZX 50 added 0.09% to 7,158.15.

One of the largest companies on the Wellington bourse, construction and supplies group Fletcher Building, was up 1% in early trade before it was placed in a trading halt minutes later.

It explained the halt by flagging an announcement for Monday, over a review of its financial performance in the construction division, and its impact on previous earnings guidance.

The down under dollars were both stronger on the greenback, with the Aussie last ahead 0.19% at AUD 1.2999 and the Kiwi advancing 0.45% to NZD 1.4248 per $1.
London stocks were edging higher by midday on Friday, with the blue-chip index chugging towards the intraday high hit in the previous session.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.3% to 7,434.63, just shy of the intraday high of 7,440 reached on Thursday, with banks providing some upside. RBS was boosted by an upgrade to 'buy' at Natixis.

IG's Joshua Mahony said: "Yesterdays record close for the FTSE highlights that it has been a particularly positive week for UK stocks, which enjoyed a substantial boost in the wake of the Dutch election and FOMC meeting."

Investors will also be looking to the start of the Group of 20 meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, with the focus likely to be on US President Trump's intentions when it comes to global trade.

In corporate news, property group Berkeley rallied as it said full year pre-tax profits are expected to be at the top end of analysts' expectations, with the actual outturn dependent upon completion timing on Berkeley's larger developments.

Prudential was on the front foot after being upgraded to neutral by JP Morgan Cazenove, while Weir Group benefited from an upgrade by Barclays.

Stockbroker Panmure Gordon rocketed after agreeing to be bought by Atlas Merchant Capital - the private equity firm of former Barclays boss Bob Diamond - and Qatari investment vehicle QInvest for around 15.5m in cash.

Manager and developer of student accommodation, Unite Students, nudged higher after acquiring an asset under development in Durham for 34m.

The FTSE 250 was marginally lower, led by Tullow Oil, which slumped after announcing plans to carry out a 607m rights issue at a 45% discount to its last closing price as it feels it is the "right time to get our balance sheet in order".

Hochschild Mining also retreated after its chairman, Eduardo Hochschild, sold almost 42m worth of stock.

Among the blue chips, AstraZeneca ticked lower on news that US regulators have rejected its new drug for high potassium levels.

Amec Foster Wheeler edged down even though it was awarded a contract with the US Air Force Civil Engineer Center to sustain and improve Air Force and other US Department of Defense installations worldwide.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,434.63 0.25%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 19,018.84 -0.04%

techMARK (TASX) 3,473.83 -0.07%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 246.40p 2.41%

Antofagasta (ANTO) 860.00p 1.90%

Barclays (BARC) 233.05p 1.57%

Barratt Developments (BDEV) 542.50p 1.50%

Convatec Group (CTEC) 259.80p 1.48%

Admiral Group (ADM) 1,936.00p 1.47%

Prudential (PRU) 1,779.00p 1.45%

Royal Dutch Shell 'A' (RDSA) 2,146.00p 1.35%

Royal Dutch Shell 'B' (RDSB) 2,244.00p 1.31%

easyJet (EZJ) 1,017.00p 1.29%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Old Mutual (OML) 223.40p -1.46%

Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 329.50p -1.41%

United Utilities Group (UU.) 990.00p -1.30%

Severn Trent (SVT) 2,358.00p -1.05%

Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 767.00p -0.97%

Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 2,170.00p -0.91%

Next (NXT) 3,875.00p -0.87%

GKN (GKN) 370.90p -0.80%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 7,045.00p -0.77%

Mediclinic International (MDC) 767.00p -0.71%

FTSE 250 - Risers

Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 3,139.00p 5.94%

Weir Group (WEIR) 1,933.00p 3.09%

Clarkson (CKN) 2,897.00p 2.73%

AO World (AO.) 149.90p 2.67%

Marshalls (MSLH) 347.40p 2.33%

Bellway (BWY) 2,813.00p 1.96%

International Personal Finance (IPF) 173.80p 1.94%

Brown (N.) Group (BWNG) 211.50p 1.93%

Savills (SVS) 877.50p 1.68%

Polymetal International (POLY) 1,002.00p 1.47%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

Tullow Oil (TLW) 200.00p -15.72%

Hochschild Mining (HOC) 269.70p -7.45%

Balfour Beatty (BBY) 261.10p -3.87%

Investec (INVP) 603.00p -2.58%

Go-Ahead Group (GOG) 1,719.00p -1.88%

Nostrum Oil & Gas (NOG) 486.60p -1.86%

Pets at Home Group (PETS) 182.40p -1.62%

Ocado Group (OCDO) 248.20p -1.51%

Acacia Mining (ACA) 476.90p -1.34%

Vectura Group (VEC) 152.90p -1.23%
The Russian State Duma has urged national parliaments and European international institutions to use their powers for stopping violence against Russian banks' subsidiaries in Ukraine and to assess Kyiv's conduct from that angle.

"State Duma deputies are urging their European counterparts, who have voted for the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, to efficiently exercise their powers to stop crime and violence and to appropriately assess the conduct of the Ukrainian authorities," the State Duma said in an address to the parliaments of European nations, the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the Council of Europe secretary-general adopted on Friday in the wake of the attacks on banks in Ukraine.

The State Duma expressed its "extreme outrage over the attacks on banks in Ukraine, which reached their peak on March 14-15, 2017." These unlawful actions have paralyzed the operations of Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, which have millions of clients and employ several thousand Ukrainian citizens, the appeal said.

"Ukrainian law enforcement agencies did not take any measures to stop the illegal actions, thereby jeopardizing the lives and health of bank employees. For the first time in Europe's modern history, employees of financial institutions were in fact walled up inside the attacked offices. The statements made by Ukrainian governmental agencies incited the neo-Nazi assailants to commit illegal and violent actions," the appeal said.

"Instead of fulfilling his constitutional duties and ensuring law and order, the Ukrainian president ordered the imposition of sanctions on the financial institutions with Russian capital, which are Ukrainian legal entities registered in accordance with Ukrainian laws, account for a hefty share in the national banking system and comply with Ukrainian legal requirements in good faith," it said.

Russian parliamentarians believe that such actions "are at odds with international law and the commitments undertaken by Ukraine at the time it entered into the Association Agreement with the European Union; they are eroding the investment climate in Ukraine and deteriorating the already desperate economic situation in the country."
Amec Foster Wheeler announced on Friday it had been awarded a contract with the US Air Force Civil Engineer Center to sustain and improve Air Force and other US Department of Defense installations worldwide.

The FTSE 250 firm said the five-year contract had an aggregate maximum value of $950m for the multiple awardees, and was estimated to reach completion by 2022.

It said the Worldwide Engineering and Construction contract placed Amec Foster Wheeler in a prime position with the US Air Force for installations work.

We are honoured to receive this contract which is a testament to our proud history of successfully delivering on AFCEC projects for more than 25 years and builds upon our strategy to increase our work with the DOD, said Ann Massey, president of Amec Foster Wheelers environment and infrastructure division.

We look forward to leveraging our global resources and project experience to support the AFCEC mission around the world.

Under the contract, Amec Foster Wheeler will compete for design-build and design-bid-build task orders for new construction, renovation, site work, demolition, and emergency response in environments that could be remote and challenging worldwide.

Additional services in the scope of work would include radiological and hazardous waste remediation, aircraft fuel storage and hydrant systems, unexploded ordnance remediation, and range services.
European Commission antitrust regulators have fined 11 air cargo carriers including IAG 's British Airways, Air France-KLM and Qantas a total of 776.5m for operating a pricefixing cartel.

The airlines fined were Air Canada, Air France-KLM, British Airways, Cargolux, Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Airlines, LAN Chile, Martinair, Qantas, SAS and Singapore Airlines.

Lufthansa, and its subsidiary, Swiss International Air Lines, received full immunity from fines after blowing the whistle on their rivals and providing the Commission's "valuable information".

The largest fine was for Air France of 183m with its arm KLM also fined 127m, followed by BA's 104m, Singapore Airlines at 75m, Cargolux 80m and SAS 70m.

The EC re-adopted its decision after an original 2010 decision was annulled by the EC's General Court on procedural grounds.

All the companies apart from Qantas were subject to the 2010 decision challenged the decision before the EU's General Court.

In December 2015, the General Court annulled the Commission's decision against the 11 cartel participants that appealed, concluding that there had been a procedural error. However, it did not rule on the existence of the cartel.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who leads the EC's competition policy efforts, said: Millions of businesses depend on air cargo services, which carry more than 20% of all EU imports and nearly 30% of EU exports.

"Working together in a cartel rather than competing to offer better services to customers does not fly with the Commission. Today's decision ensures that companies that were part of the air cargo cartel are sanctioned for their behaviour.
George Osborne has been named as the new editor of the London Evening Standard newspaper, but the Conservative MP has stated his intention to continue his role in the House of Commons rather than open the party to a byelection in his Tatton seat.

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer will take up the post at the capital's daily paper following current editor Sarah Sands move to BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev, who also owns the Independent group of newspapers, announced the news on Friday morning via Twitter, with an official announcement coming via the papers website afterwards.

Osborne served as David Camerons chancellor for six years before leaving the post in the aftermath of Britains vote to leave the European Union last June.

"This is such an exciting and challenging job and Im thrilled to take it on, Osborne said on Friday.

Osborne affirmed his intention to remain as an MP while simultaneously working as the editor of one of Londons most influential dailies.

I was elected by my constituents in Tatton to serve them and I intend to fulfil that promise, Osborne said. I remain passionate about the northern powerhouse and will continue to promote that cause.

Lebedev hailed Osbornes accomplishments in public office, citing him as the obvious choice to lead the newspapers team.

In George, we have appointed someone of huge political achievement, and economic and cultural authority. Once he put himself forward for the position, he was the obvious choice.

The appointment was called a kick in the teeth by a senior source from the Standard, Buzzfeed reported.

"It is a kick in the teeth for all hard-working journalists who dream of editing a newspaper one day after years of toil, and does nothing for our negative reputation as a Tory mouthpiece."

Political experts have placed doubt over Osborne's ability to hold political office and be the chief of such an influential newspaper at the same time.

"While many MPs have other sources of employment, such a high-profile, demanding and prominent position would arguably make his continued role as an MP very difficult and potentially untenable," said Dr Ben Williams, a politics and political theory lecturer at the University of Salford.

"Consequently, there will be growing calls for him to stand down and force a parliamentary by-election," Williams added.
The US has reportedly made a grovelling formal apology to the UK over claims that it used British intelligence services to spy on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The Telegraph and Daily Telegraph both cited unnamed sources as saying the apology was delivered overnight by Trumps National Security Advisor H R McMaster to his opposite number in Downing Street.

Britain's intelligence agency had earlier dismissed as utterly ridiculous the claims. Government Communications Headquarters, known commonly as GCHQ, responded furiously to suggestions from an analyst for US television network Fox News -- and endorsed by the White House -- that President Barack Obama had used it to spy on Trump.

GCHQ does not makes public statements on its activities, and Friday's intervention was seen as a sign of real anger at the allegations.

Andrew Napolitano, Fox's judicial analyst, claimed three intelligence sources confirmed to him that the Obama administration engaged GCHQ so here would be no American fingerprints on this.

In response, GCHQ said: Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wiretapping against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer used the allegation in an effort to validate an as yet unproven claim by Trumps that Obama tapped his phones last year.

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - he used GCHQ," Spicer told reporters.

"So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot."

Things got worse for Trump on Thursday when the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate intelligence committee said they had seen no evidence of any wiretapping.
London's FTSE 100 was up 0.2% to 7,430.06 in afternoon trade, with broker notes playing their part in the action.

RBS was the standout gainer as Natixis upgraded its stance on the stock to 'buy' from 'reduce' and lifted its price target by 29% to 289p, saying the investment thesis is reaching a turning point.

The French investment bank said the time is near when the long-standing strengths of the core bank will outweigh the material drag of legacy items. It pointed out that management, which has built a reputation for realism, foresees a statutory profit in 2018 after 10 years in a row of losses.

Also on Friday, Sky News reported that RBS has accelerated talks about a legal settlement with thousands of former investors ahead of a trial that would see former boss Fred Goodwin called to give evidence.

Barclays was also boosted by a broker note, as Morgan Stanley bumped the stock up to 'overweight'.

Housebuilder Barratt Developments got a lift as peer Berkeley Group said full year pre-tax profits are expected to be at the top end of analysts' expectations, with the actual outturn dependent upon completion timing on Berkeley's larger developments.

Prudential gained ground after JP Morgan Cazenove upgraded it to neutral from underweight and lifted the price target to 1,705p from 1,450p.

The bank said its key concerns around the US and the UK businesses have receded due to the strong US macroeconomic backdrop and strong UK Solvency II ratio.

On the downside, Old Mutual was under pressure despite its price target being upped to 180p from 160p by RBC Capital Markets.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals was weaker for a second day in a row after JPM cut the stock to 'neutral' from 'overweight' on Thursday.

Risers

Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 246.80p 2.58%

Admiral Group (ADM) 1,950.00p 2.20%

BT Group (BT.A) 336.50p 1.92%

Antofagasta (ANTO) 859.00p 1.78%

easyJet (EZJ) 1,021.00p 1.69%

Prudential (PRU) 1,782.50p 1.65%

Barclays (BARC) 233.20p 1.63%

Barratt Developments (BDEV) 542.50p 1.50%

Convatec Group (CTEC) 259.50p 1.37%

Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 238.60p 1.32%

Fallers

Old Mutual (OML) 223.10p -1.59%

Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 2,162.00p -1.28%

Mediclinic International (MDC) 763.00p -1.23%

Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 330.50p -1.11%

Pearson (PSON) 652.00p -1.06%

United Utilities Group (UU.) 993.00p -1.00%

Severn Trent (SVT) 2,363.00p -0.84%

Sage Group (SGE) 637.00p -0.78%

Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,694.00p -0.70%

Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,612.00p -0.68%
Shares rose in Stellar Diamonds on Friday after the miner announced that a church minister had discovered a 709 carat diamond in Sierra Leone, which it claims is the 13th largest ever found.

The diamond was found in the Konu district, which had been ravaged by civil war in the 1990s, by a pastor who supplemented his low income by mining for minerals.

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AIM-listed investor MP Evans Group has completed the sale of its 36.84% stake in the PT Agro Muko palm oil plantation in Indonesia to Belgian Sipef Group, an agro-industrial firm, for $100m. Following the sale, the company will pay a special dividend of 10p per share.

The sale is part of the companys strategy to sell its minority-held Indonesian estates which it does not manage in order to buy or develop its own, directly managed new projects.

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Frontier IP has raised gross proceeds of 3m through the placing of 7.5m ordinary shares at 40p each.

The company, which specialises in the commercialisation of intellectual property, said the net proceeds will be used to accelerate its growth and develop and expand in areas of key activity in the UK and overseas.

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Shares in Rose Petroleum are up almost 4% after after recovering some of the substantial IVA (value added tax) owed to it by Mexican tax authorities.

It had already received the first tranches of outstanding funds, totalling MX$1.4m. A further total of about MX$4.2m was expected to be received by the end of March.

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Adgorithms, the creator of artificial intelligence marketing platform Albert, announced a significant new customer win on Friday.

The AIM-traded firm said following the successful implementation of the company's land and expand" growth strategy, it secured a 12 month rolling contract with one of the world's largest nutrition, health and wellness companies, which remained unnamed.

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Billing, charging and customer relationship management software solutions provider Cerillion announced that it won a major new contract with an initial value of 2.4m with a wholesale telecoms operator in Europe.

The AIM-traded firm said the contract, secured after a competitive tender process, was for the supply of the company's enterprise CRM and billing solution and the ongoing provision of a managed service to operate it.

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CyanConnode, a maker of narrowband radio mesh networks, is planning to raise about 3.2m in order to cover costs for growth and the integration of its technology with its partners.

The company will place 230.44m shares of 0.01p each, an 18% discount on the Thursdays closing price, and there will be a subscription of 1.67bn shares, also for 0.01p each by way of an accelerated bookbuild.

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Shares in Ortac Resources are up almost a third, albeit off a low base, after it confirmed subsidiary ORTAC s.r.o has been re-issued with an underground mining permit for the Sturec Gold Project in Slovakia.

ORTAC s.r.o is the project developer, and the permit was re-issued by the District Mining Bureau in Banska Bystrica.

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Shares in Horizonte Minerals are up almost 2% after it booked a marginally wider full-year pre-tax loss and confirmed achieving several milestones at the Araguaia Nickel Project in Brazil.

"These (milestones) include the delivery of a Pre-Feasibility Study, the receipt of our Preliminary Environmental Licence, and raising the (9m) funds to deliver a Feasibility Study in 2017," the company said in a statement.

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AIM-listed Equatorial Palm Oils tax and duty free allowance has been extended for a further five years by the government of Liberia following slower production development at its sites in the country.

The palm oil producers agreement with the Liberian government extends the concessions reached in 2008 for its subsidiaries in the country for the development of two existing oil palm estates at Palm Bay and Butaw.

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Shares in AIM-listed Global Ports rose more than 1% on appointing Mikhail Loganov as CEO and swinging to a full-year pre-tax profit of $109.9m amid a sluggish Russian container market.

The company's loss for 2015 was $30.3m. Revenue was lower at $331.5m, from $405.7m.

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Range Resources released its unaudited half-yearly report for the six months ending 31 December on Friday, with revenues increasing by 38% to $3.8m, which the board said was mainly due to a higher realised oil price of $42 per barrel.

The AIM-traded company said its operating expenses improved by 9% to $40 per barrel, and it retained a healthy unrestricted cash position of $20.6m, up from $13m at the start of the period.

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Specialist bank Private & Commercial Finance Group (PCF) is aiming to raise 10m in order to maintain the level of capital required by regulators.

The proceeds will allow the bank to maintain the level of regulatory capital and liquidity it is required to hold as agreed with the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) when it received authorisation last December.

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Following the conclusion of due diligence, Spectra Systems new chief financial officer Brian McLain is able to carry out his duties.

AIM-listed Spectra Systems, a supplier of authentication technology for banknotes and tax stamps, appointed McLain on 23 January but he was subject to due diligence enquiries by certain Spectra customers and standard regulatory AIM background checks.

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International assistance business CPP Group announced the acquisition of Blink Innovation on Friday, for an initial consideration of 1m and an earn-out based on future products developed by Blink.

The AIM-traded firm said the initial sum would be paid on completion, with a total maximum earn-out based on up to 20% of defined profits generated up to a maximum of 20m in profits over the next five years.

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Oilex announced on Friday that Jonathan Salomons term as managing director of the company had been extended by a further one year with immediate effect.

The AIM-traded firm said Salomon has over 30 years of experience in the oil and gas exploration and production business in both conventional and unconventional projects, and brought specific Indian business and oil and gas expertise.

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Specialist provider of rapid response deep cleaning and emergency decontamination services, React Group, announced its final results for the year to 30 September on Friday - its first full year since listing on AIM in mid-2015 via a reverse takeover.

The AIM-traded firm said turnover for the period was 2.4m - compared to 700,000 for the shorter reporting period from 24 June to 30 September 2015 - with a cost of sales of 1.4m, up from 350,000 in the short 2015 period.

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Out-of-hospital service provider Totally has won a 90,000, six-month contract with NHS Blackburns Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

From 1 April the companys subsidiary About Health, which has been under contract to the NHS since 2009, will provide dermatology services to Darwen CCG.
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We're talking with a retired expat couple to Cuenca after the one year honeymoon mark.

Do they still love Cuenca? Watch the video to see what their experience has been living abroad.
Avangard agroholding, the largest exporter of eggs and egg products from Ukraine, will continue to export its products to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the European Union (EU), and to its other export regions which have not banned imports from Ukraine.

According to a report on the companys website on Friday, avian influenza was not detected at any of Avangard's production facilities, which are located at a significant distance from the outbreaks.

Iraq (76% of Avangard's proceeds from egg sales) and Jordan (5% of Avangard's proceeds from sales of egg products) introduced a temporary import ban on poultry products from across Ukraine.

The UAE (17% of Avangard's proceeds from egg sales) and the EU (57% of Avangard's proceeds from sales of egg products) have banned imports only from three aforementioned regions where avian influenza was detected.

"Avangard continues to monitor this situation and has rigorous safety procedures in place in all its production facilities as Ukrainian authorities seek to lift this temporary import ban. At the same time the company is working closely with its customers in Iraq and Jordan in order to find alternative solutions whilst looking for new export opportunities where it can grow its market share," the company said.
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High-profile bond fund managers are urging their shareholders not to lose hope. There's even an upside to rising rates.



By STAN CHOE

AP Business Writer

NEW YORK  Rising rates don't have to mean despair for bond-fund investors.

Yes, the Federal Reserve raised short-term rates Wednesday, the latest move higher in what economists expect to be a long campaign. Bond investors have historically seen rising rates as the enemy because they result in falling prices for the bonds they own.





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SEDRO-WOOLLEY  Construction projects in Skagit County will be the focus of an open house next Tuesday in Sedro-Woolley.

Staff from the Washington State Department of Transportation, Skagit County, city of Sedro-Woolley, Skagit Transit and Port of Skagit will discuss projects such as resurfacing state Route 20 between Anacortes and Concrete, improvements to the state Route 9 intersection with Francis Road, and fish passage work on Gribble Creek near Mount Vernon and Fisher Creek below Interstate 5.





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$400M plan for California's Salton Sea

www.theatlantic.com The lake is often called The Accidental Sea because it was created in 1905 when the Colorado River breached a dike and two years of flooding filled a sizzling basin that today is about 35 miles long, 15 miles wide and only 50 feet deep.

SAN DIEGO (AP)  California Gov. Jerry Brown's administration on Thursday proposed spending nearly $400 million over 10 years to slow the shrinking of the state's largest lake just as it is expected to evaporate an accelerated pace.

The plan involves building ponds on the northern and southern ends of the Salton Sea, a salty, desert lake that has suffered a string of environmental setbacks since the late 1970s. During its heyday of international speed boat races, it drew more visitors than Yosemite National Park and celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys.

The proposal comes at a critical time for the lake about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles because San Diego's regional water agency will soon stop sending water to help preserve the lake. San Diego agreed in 2003 to contribute water through 2017 under a landmark deal to buy Colorado River water from the Imperial Valley, which includes the lake.

The $383-million proposal ran into immediate questions over who will pay for it. The state has set aside $80 million under a voter-approved water bond measure, leaving a shortfall of $300 million.

The lake is often called The Accidental Sea because it was created in 1905 when the Colorado River breached a dike and two years of flooding filled a sizzling basin that today is about 35 miles long, 15 miles wide and only 50 feet deep.

The lake, which has no outlet, would have quickly evaporated if farmers hadn't settled California's southeastern corner. The Imperial Valley provides the U.S. with much of its winter vegetables on farms that feed off the Colorado River and drain into the Salton Sea.

The 2003 agreement to wean California's dependence on the drought-stricken river called for San Diego to buy large amounts of Imperial Valley water. The San Diego County Water Authority and other local agencies agreed to deliver water to the Salton Sea for 15 years while the state developed a long-term fix.

The Brown administration said the U.S. Agriculture Department recently committed $7.5 million to preserve the lake and identified federal, state and local governments and philanthropic groups as potential contributors.

Even fully funded, the plan wouldn't cover newly exposed lakebed, which may cause respiratory problems for residents who breathe the dust and erode a key habitat for hundreds of species of birds.

Projects outlined in the 26-page plan released by the California's Natural Resources Agency would cover 29,800 acres of the 48,300 acres expected to dry up by 2028 if nothing were done.

The Sierra Club said the plan addressed many of its short-term concerns such as potential funding sources and specific projects to protect air quality and wildlife habitat. It said the lack of secured funding required state leaders to work together to avoid a human health, ecological and economic disaster.

The 10-year plan is a real step forward for the state of California  and one that could not come soon enough with sharp declines in water to the Salton Sea coming in less than 10 months, said Sarah Friedman, senior representative of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign.

The Imperial Irrigation District, which manages the Imperial Valley's water, asked the State Water Resources Control Board on Thursday to hold hearings that could lead to binding measures to preserve the lake.

Kevin Kelley, the district's general manager, wrote that the plan constitutes substantial progress and that he was encouraged by its specific milestones and cost estimates. But he said State Water Resources Control Board's regulatory intervention and oversight was needed to ensure the lake's future after Brown leaves office in 2018.

We recognize that the Brown administration has limited time left during its tenure and that it cannot bind its successors' hands, he wrote.




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FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP)  Nine Alaska sled dogs mushing near a scenic river helped tourists with an SUV that was stuck in the snow, managing to pull it free.

Musher Neil Eklund and his son were returning from a dogsled tour on the Chena River near Fairbanks on Sunday when they came upon the stranded people with their vehicle, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported Tuesday.





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Q. When does biology trump psychology in human behavior?

A. A case in point: After a Virginia teacher started collecting sex magazines, visiting child pornography websites, and then making subtle advances on his young stepdaughter, he was convicted of child molestation, say David Myers and C. Nathan Dewall in Exploring Psychology. Despite his participation in a sexual addiction rehabilitation program, his sexual urges still overwhelmed him and a prison sentence awaited him. Just before that happened, he checked himself into the local ER complaining of a headache, suicidal thoughts and distress over his uncontrollable impulses, which even led him to proposition the nurses.





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BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Gov. C.L. Butch Otter is urging Idaho lawmakers to approve a resolution authorizing state officials to negotiate the purchase of $126 million in new office space.

Otter announced Thursday that he needs approval from the House and Senate to enable the Department of Administration to finalize the purchase office space on the former Hewlett-Packard campus in Boise. The buildings will house the Idaho State Tax Commission and possibly other state agencies.





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The European Investment Bank (EIB) on March 10, 2017 approved the financing of a production line for processing tomatoes in Ukraine.

The bank said on its website that the proposed investment underpins the promoter's strategy to increase the competitiveness of its business through expansion of capacity and resource efficiency.

The total cost of the project and the recipient of the funds are not disclosed.

As reported, in May 2016 the International Finance Corporation (IFC) from the World Bank Group said it would provide $10 million to Agrofusion Group to boost its working capital. Agrofusion is the largest Ukrainian vertically integrated industrial tomato paste producer created by former co-founder of Sandora juice producers businessman Serhiy Sypko. The funds were invested late October 2016, the IFC said on its website.

Early November 2016 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said that the bank could provide a $15 million loan to Agrofusion. The EBRD Board was to discuss the provision of funds on December 14, but now the information about the project was removed from the bank's website.

Agrofusion Group was founded by Sypko in 2007. Agrofusion Group in 2014 reached its maximum production of 52,778 tonnes of tomato paste, in 2015 it expanded its capabilities through investment, reaching a figure of 61,500 tonnes.

The companys operational assets include two tomato paste plants with total processing capacity of approximately 500,000 tonnes of tomatoes per season; two seedling green-houses; and 20,000 hectares of irrigated leased land in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions as well as modern farming equipment.
In unwelcome news for India, 'all-weather friends' China and Pakistan are set to not just increase weapons exchanges, but China is also expected to authorise Pakistan to produce ballistic, cruise, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles and battle tanks, China's state-run media reported late yesterday.

The weapons exchanges include the mass production of the FC-1 Xiaolong, a lightweight multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, reported Global Times, run by the Chinese Communist Party.

The two sides also agreed to strengthen anti-terrorism cooperation and strike terrorist forces including China's insurgent East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

These were the outcomes of Thursday's meeting in Beijing between Pakistan's army chief Qamar Bajwa and a top Chinese military official, Fang Fenghui. In return for Beijing's largesse, Islamabad agreed to ensure the safety of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

"Pakistan and China enjoy a special friendly relationship with each other and have a common destiny," Bajwa reportedly said at the meeting, according to a statement on the website of China's defence ministry.

Pakistan has deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect CPEC and the country's navy has raised a security contingent to protect the Gwadar Port, said Masood Khalid, Pakistan's Ambassador to China, at a news conference on Tuesday, according to Global Times. The Port is a key component of the CPEC project.

"As Pakistan faces frequent threats from terrorist forces such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, military support is necessary to ensure a safe environment for the regions where there is huge investment from China," Song Zhongping, a military expert who has served in the Chinese army, told Global Times.

Bajwa is reported to have said the country's army is willing to "deepen the cooperation with the Chinese army and fully support the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism in Counter Terrorism by Afghanistan-China-Pakistan-Tajikistan Armed Forces".
India fast-tracks 3 hydel projects in Kashmir; Pak unhappy

India has fast-tracked hydro-power projects worth $15 billion in Kashmir in recent months, says a Reuters report citing three unnamed central and state officials. The acceleration by India ignores warnings from Islamabad that power stations on rivers flowing into Pakistan will disrupt water supplies.

The swift approval of projects that had languished for years came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested last year that sharing the waters could be conditional on Pakistan clamping down on anti-India terrorists.

Pakistan has opposed some of these projects earlier as well, saying they violate a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries upon which 80 per cent of its irrigated agriculture depends.

The schemes, the largest of which is the 1,856 mw Sawalkote plant, will take years to complete.

Six hydro projects in Kashmir have either cleared viability tests or the more advanced environment and forest expert approvals in the last three months, two officials in India's water resources ministry and theCentral Electricity Authority said separately, according to Reuters.

Together, these projects on the Chenab river, a tributary of the Indus, would triple hydropower generation in Jammu and Kashmir from the current level of 3,000 mw, the biggest jump in decades, added the officials, declining to be named because the approvals had not yet been made public.

"We have developed barely one-sixth of the hydropower capacity potential in the state in the last 50 years," the senior official at the water resources ministry said. "Then one fine morning, you see we cleared six to seven projects in three months; it definitely raises concern in Pakistan."

Pakistan's water supply is dwindling because of climate change, outdated farming techniques and an exploding population.

A 2011 report by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations said Delhi could use these projects as a way to control Pakistan's supplies from the Indus, seen as its jugular vein.

"The cumulative effect of these projects could give India the ability to store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the growing season," it said.

India says the projects are "run-of-the-river" schemes that use the river's flow and elevation to generate electricity rather than large reservoirs, and do not contravene the treaty.

Modi told a meeting of government officials on the Indus treaty last year that "blood and water cannot flow together", soon after a deadly terror attack on the army base in Uri in Kashmir which left 19 people dead.

Modi's message was two-fold, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay said. Terrorism had to stop and India must fully utilise the economic potential available to it within the Indus treaty.

The projects that have won technical approvals in recent months are Sawalkote, Kwar, Pakal Dul, Bursar and Kirthai I and II.

"I say the way you look at these projects, it is not purely a hydro project. Broaden it to a strategic water management, border management problem, and then you put in money," said Pradeep Kumar Pujari, the top ranking official in the power ministry.

Most of the projects have been held up for at least a decade awaiting multiple clearances. Sawalkote, which was cleared by a government-constituted environment committee in January, was first given techno-economic approval in 1991.

It is now up for forest clearance from the state authorities, after which the government will finalise financing and begin construction.

Some projects like Pakal Dul were stuck in litigation, but that has been resolved, Jammu and Kashmir's power minister Nirmal Singh told Reuters in the summer capital Srinagar. "Things are now in a position of take-off," he said.

Environmental groups have questioned whether the government has followed proper procedures in fast-tracking projects located in a highly seismic area.

"It's on one river, the Chenab, where you are doing so many projects. This is a very vulnerable region. It's landslide-prone, it's flash flood-prone, earthquake-prone," said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People.

Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Nafees Zakaria, said India will be attending a regular meeting of the Indus Commission later this month in Lahore, even though a broader peace dialogue is on hold.

"It seems that finally India has realized the importance of this mechanism under the IWT (Indus Waters Treaty) for resolving water disputes related to the Indus water and its tributaries," he claimed.
Vietnam yesterday asked all companies doing business in the country to stop YouTube, Facebook and all social-media advertising until they found a way to block the publication of "toxic" anti-government information.

The companies, including Unilever, Ford and Yamaha agreed and suspended YouTube advertising.

Critics of the government say, the development comes after socialist Vietnam started building pressure on advertisers in a bid to get Google and other companies to remove content from foreign-based dissidents.

However, according to information and communication minister Truong Minh Tuan, the response had not been satisfactory. The ministry said there were 8,000 anti-government videos on YouTube, but the government had blocked only 42 and had not removed them completely, the ministry said.

"Today we call on all Vietnamese firms that are advertising not to abet them to take advertising money from firms to use against the Vietnamese government," Tuan told companies at a meeting in Hanoi.

"We also call on all internet users to raise their voice to Google and Facebook to prevent toxic, fake content violating Vietnamese law in the online environment."

YouTube said it thoroughly reviewed government requests to block content it believed was illegal and restricting it where appropriate. Facebook offered no immediate response.

Meanwhile, millions of pounds of advertising had been pulled from the video platform YouTube after major brands and government departments found that their advertisements were appearing next to content promoting extremism.

An investigation by The Times newspaper revealed that advertisements for the cabinet office, Honda and Argos were appearing alongside videos for racists, white supremacists and rape apologists.

Following the disclosure of the findings, many advertisers chose to withdraw their advertisements from the Google platform until action was taken to resolve the issue.


From increases in deadly diseases to choking air pollution and onslaughts of violent weather, man-made climate change is making Americans sicker, according to a report released Wednesday by 11 of the nation's top medical societies. The report was prepared by the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, a new group that represents more than 400,000 doctors, who make up more than half of all US physicians. ''Doctors in every part of our country see that climate change is making Americans sicker,'' said Mona Sarfaty, the director of the new consortium and a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. ''Physicians are on the frontlines and see the impacts in exam rooms," she said. "What's worse is that the harms are felt most by children, the elderly, Americans with low income or chronic illnesses, and people in communities of colour.'' The report pinpointed three types of harms from climate change: Direct harms, such as injuries and deaths due to increasingly violent weather; asthma and other lung diseases exacerbated by extremely hot weather and wildfires; and longer allergy seasons

Increased spread of disease through insects that carry infections like Lyme disease or Zika virus, and through contaminated food and water

The effects on mental health resulting from the damage climate change can do to society, such as increasing depression and anxiety The burning of fossil fuels - gas, oil and coal - to power our world releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth's atmosphere, warming the planet to levels that cannot be explained by natural climate cycles. Scientists have warned for years of the potential impacts of climate change on human health. The federal National Climate Assessment released in 2014 said, "Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather events, wildfire, decreased air quality, and illnesses transmitted by food, water and diseases carriers such as mosquitoes and ticks." And the World Health Organization estimated climate change will be responsible for about 240,000 deaths per year by 2030. ''Here's the message from America's doctors on climate change: it's not only happening in the Arctic Circle, it's happening here. It's not only a problem for us in 2100, it's a problem now. And it's not only hurting polar bears, it's hurting us," Sarfaty said. The mission of the new medical consortium, which includes groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians is to inform the public and policymakers about the "harmful health effects of climate change on Americans, as well as about the immediate and long-term health benefits associated with decreasing greenhouse gas emissions." The report, titled Medical Alert! Climate Change is Harming Our Health, will be distributed to Congress.










Today, a small ceremony at Fanad Lighthouse will mark the 200th anniversary of the first time the iconic tower first cast its light across the water.

The light was first lit on St. Patricks Day, March 17th, 1817.

Fanad Lighthouse will be open this holiday weekend, with tours from 11am to 4pm and music during the day.

A ticketed celebration planned for Saturday night is already completely and utterly sold out, Eimear Ni Mhathuna, manager of Fanad Lighthouse, said.

The event sounds lovely: At about 6.30pm, local children will take part in a lantern parade from the nearby Lighthouse Tavern to the lighthouse, where the Luxe Landscape Theatre Company will provide illuminations and fire sculptures.

But again, the event is sold out and site capacity limits mean admission is by ticket only.

At about 7pm today, Friday, a small group of people will assemble at the helipad by the lighthouse for a countdown to the lighting of the lighthouse 200 years after the first time the lights went on. There will be music in the exhibition space at the lighthouse as people gather to cut the cake for the anniversary.

There is a lot to celebrate this year. Not only has the lighthouse been a beacon for the past two centuries, but appreciation of its iconic beauty and landmark status has grown internationally. Standing between Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay, Fanad Lighthouse is also one of 15 designated discovery points along the Wild Atlantic Way tourism route.

The lighthouse project has been developed through a partnership involving the Commissioners of Irish Lights, Fanad Lighthouse Committee, Donegal County Council and Failte Ireland. EU funding was secured to develop accommodation on the site as part of the Great Lighthouses of Ireland trail.

Last spring, guided tours were introduced and accommodation opened in the two original lightkeepers cottages and another lodging that had been used for people who worked for Irish Lights.

At this time of year, tours are offered only on weekends, but every weekend is better than the last, Eimear said. And accommodation is open all year round and that is keeping very steady, so were delighted with it, actually.

From Easter on, the lighthouse will be open seven days a week. They also accommodate group bookings and have hosted school tours.

The local committee and voluntary board of trustees of the not-for-profit project have more changes planned for the coming season, including opening a new visitors centre and car park.

And as one of the 12 Great Lighthouses of Ireland that are now open to the public, Fanad Lighthouse will also host a Shine a Light on Summer Festival on the May Bank Holiday weekend.

They will also be marking the lighthouse anniversary throughout the year.

It is very much an evolving project, Eimear said.
Communities across Donegal braved rain and winds today to celebrate St. Patricks Day with parades and other festivities.

While some parades were called off today due to the poor weather conditions, many parades and other celebrations carried on.

There was an excellent turnout for what was billed as Irelands first St. Patricks Day parade today in Glenties, which kicked off shortly after midnight, down the main street of the village. Their early scheduling also meant they missed the rain that fell later in the morning and through much of the day.

The parade in Letterkenny this afternoon, led by members of the Irish Army, took 40 minutes to pass the viewing stand at the Market Square.

Usually the streets of the Cathedral Town are packed on St. Patricks Day, but the strong winds and rain had a major impact on the numbers attending this year.

Despite the adverse conditions, local businesses, groups and organisations werent wanting in terms of colour, effort and ideas.

In Donegal town, some people even took advantage of spinning lessons in the Irish House, as the crowds gathered for the local celebrations.

Crowds lined the main road through Stranorlar and Ballybofey for a local St. Patricks Day parade that included everyone from St Patrick, to characters from Frozen, to local schools and sporting organisations.

We had almost 40 entries booked in, Kathy Taaffe, chairperson of the St. Patricks Day Parade organising committee. I have to admire their resilience and their pure doggedness and determination to come out and have St. Patricks Day, and they have.

The annual parade in Gaoth Dobhair was called off today because of the weather, but the Gaoth Dobhair event is to be held on Easter Sunday instead.

See Mondays Donegal Peoples Press and Donegal Democrat for more.
The body of the young Donegal woman murdered in India earlier this week is expected to be flown home early next week.

Danielle McLaughlin (28) from Buncrana was murdered in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the popular coastal resort of Canacona in Goa.

According to media reports, suspect Vikat Bhagat (23) will now be charged with murder and rape, after the results of a post-mortem examination showed the young woman had been sexually assaulted. He is also expected to be charged with robbery. He appeared in court last Wednesday.

A repatriation fund set up by Danielle's friends has already raised 30,000.

In a statement issued by a friend on behalf of the family, Danielle's mother, Andrea Brannigan, said Danielle would be sadly missed by all.

"The family would like to express our thanks to all who have got in touch since receiving this awful news," she commented.

"As you can expect we are finding it very difficult at this trying time."

She added: "We want to thank the Irish and British consulates, along with Colin from the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, and many friends who have assisted at this time. Danielle will be sadly missed by us all."
Every year since 1993, Enterprise has been host to The Worlds Smallest St. Patricks Day Parade, and this year thegrand marshal was James E. McDaniel.

McDaniels Irish ancestry can be traced to Wicklow, Ireland in the 1600s.

McDaniel has been attempting to win the nomination to be grand marshal since 2006 because he wanted to honor his friend Pat Donahue, who started the parades tradition as the first grand marshal.

Ive always wanted to do it in remembrance of Pat Donahue, my good friend, McDaniel said. I just always loved him to death; I wanted to do it in honor and remembrance of Pat.

McDaniel marched from the Coffee County Courthouse down E. College Street to the Boll Weevil monument dressed in his Irish best, as well as a kilt honoring his Scottish heritage, and waving an Irish flag.

This is just so fabulous. Im tickled to death about this, McDaniel said. It means a lot to me.
OZARK  The citys mayor and police chief joined the Dale County Sheriff and other elected and law enforcement officials to express opposition to two bills currently in the Alabama Legislature.

Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson and Ozark Police Chief Marlos Walker said Friday they oppose a bill that would remove the current permit requirement necessary to carry a concealed weapon in Alabama. Ozark Mayor Bob Bunting, Daleville Mayor Jamie Stayton and others also expressed opposition to a bill that would change the way business license fees are assessed for pharmacies.

Senate Bill 24 would allow any citizen not previously convicted of a crime of moral turpitude or otherwise previously restricted from carrying a firearm to freely carry without first getting a permit.

Many gun rights groups support the bill, arguing that citizens should not first have to obtain a permit in order to exercise their second amendment rights. Some law enforcement agencies support the bill as well.

Some do not, however. Olson said the bill hamstrings law enforcement.

A gun in the hands of a good person is a good thing, Olson said. A gun in the hands of a bad person is a very bad thing.

Olson said law enforcement routinely uses the permit restriction to remove guns from people during traffic stops and other encounters with law enforcement, then later learned the person had a prior criminal record.

You are talking about taking a necessary tool away from us that we use on a daily basis, Olson said.

Walker said his opposition should not be construed as anti- Second Amendment.

This is not for the good people, the good citizens, Walker said. The bad people get the benefit if this bill passes.

Supporters of the bill claim law enforcement agencies opposed to the bill fear losing the revenue generated from pistol permit fees. Olson disagreed.

Its not about revenue. If you take away the tools we have right now, you handicap law enforcement even more, Olson said.

The bill is currently pending in the Senate.

Bunting also expressed dismay over Senate Bill 31, which has passed the Senate and is currently pending in the house. The bill would exempt prescription drugs from business license taxes based on gross receipts. Prescription drugs are already exempt from sales tax.

Bunting said the bill, if passed, would result in a revenue reduction of about $10,000 for Ozark.

That may not seem like a lot, but this is money we use to pay our officers and other personnel and provide services. This is money that the pharmacies arent going to return to the customer. Its all about greed, Bunting said.

Supporters of the bill claim that, as the cost of prescription drugs rise, the profit margins for small, independent pharmacies decrease. Assessing prescription drugs when figuring gross receipts for business license fees means pharmacies pay larger business license fees than they should since the drugs are also exempt from sales tax.
Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), which owes about UAH 300 million to the aviation special fund, wants to sign an amicable agreement with the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure.

According to the press service of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, this is stated in the letter of Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan in response to the request of MP Viktor Chumak, the text of which is attached to the press release.

According to Omelyan, the debts of UIA to the state fund for financing general state expenses for aviation activity and Ukraine's participation in international aviation organizations have already increased to UAH 295.5 million.

"UIA proposes to resolve the dispute with the state by signing an amicable agreement. At the same time, the company offers paying out only UAH 47 million but not the entire amount of the debt," the letter says and notes that the ministry rejects such an offer by the airline.

Omelyan added from March 2016 UIA stopped charging this fee as the UD code from passengers, but tickets did not become cheaper, because UIA recorded collection of these funds from passengers to other payment items.
Home Two wheelers Honda To Manufacture Middleweight Motorcycle In India  To Rival Royal Enfield oi-Sukesh

Japanese auto major Honda has formed a team of engineers from Japan and Thailand to work in India to develop a global middleweight motorcycle to compete with Royal Enfield.

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Launched in 2016, Xiaomi Mi MIX is successfully gathering the attention of tech freaks across the world. It is Xiaomi's concept phone which is implemented with an end-to-end display design. It was unveiled by the company as a China-exclusive handset in Nov. 2016, but the Chinese company now announced that it will soon launch the phone for its nearby countries.

The news arrived at an event held at Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday. In the event, the company disclosed that it had signed a partnership deal with distributor Digiworld to sell Xiaomi Mi MIX for the first time outside the China. But the company even disclosed that the products are only available to its neighborhood country Vietnam.

Besides revealing the deals, the company even stated that other Xiaomi products including Xiaomi Mi MIX, Redmi Note 4, Redmi 4A and many Mi power banks will also be available for Vietnamese users. The products will be available in the country starting Mar. 22. Previously, the company wanted to launch the phone in UAE in the middle of March, but with the recent announcement, it seems UEA freaks have to wait for the launch.

The Xiaomi Mi MIX is a bezel-less technology with 6.4-inch and 17:9 display. The phone has a ceramic body which enhances the overall appearance of the device. But the design is not always the first priority for the mobile devices.

The front camera of the device is located on the bottom of the device which means that the user needs to flip the phone upside down for taking selfies. Furthermore, the piezoelectric speaker which produces sound by vibrating device body offers poor audio quality to the users. It is possible that the company might resolve the issues for the updated Xiaomi Mi Mix before supplying it to Vietnam. Let's hope that Xiaomi Mi MIX will be available globally soon.
The man arrested yesterday in connection with a serious assault on a ten-week-old baby in Ardee has been released without charge.

He was arrested in the Dublin area at approximately 6pm and is currently detained in a Co Louth Garda Station under the provisions of Section 4  Criminal Justice Act 1984.

Gardai said that a file has been prepared for the DPP who will decide if there are charges to be brought against the man.

The baby girl remains in serious condition after suffering serious injuries.

It is understood the little girl was taken from an apartment complex in Ardee to the local hospital on that day and gardai were notified.

Given the severity of her injuries, she was later transferred to Temple Street Childrens Hospital in Dublin.

CCTV footage is also being studied to see if that gives any indication as to how the injuries were sustained.

Investigations are continuing.
Each year, some of the best thinkers, makers, and doers converge at Pause Fest to share new ideas across industries spanning creative, tech, and business. This years theme, Different Perspectives, explored diverse experiences of being human in an increasingly digital world.

Erminio Putignano, from brand consultancy PUSH Collective, gave a keynote opening by reminding us that, above everything, brands are stories, ones shaped by our belief of the world and encompassing our opinions, fears, and aspirations. Its hardwired in us to find stories far more compelling than facts alone, so it follows that the greatest brands are those capable of weaving the most passionate and coherent narrative for people to be swept up in. And as the world around us evolves, so too do brands stories need to evolve.

How then might these stories be affected when marketings blue-sky optimism has been marred by a decidedly gloomy outlook? The news has grown particularly grim, with rising nationalist movements sprouting up across the world, state-funded cyber criminals tampering with our democratic elections, and the average YouTube comment section managing new levels of hostility. Technology has certainly had its hand in getting us into our current predicament, so what might be the opportunities for it to get us out?

Virtual reality (VR) was the darling of the conference this year and for good reason. Its the latest evolution of a journey weve been on since we first started scrawling pictures on cave walls thousands of years ago  fulfilling our desire to craft narratives of worlds so vivid we might find ourselves transported to them. This technologys real point of distinction is its ability to instil a sense of alterity in users  the ability to see from anothers perspective. Now, even brands in otherwise traditional industries have begun to create experiences that take full advantage of that opportunity.

Both The Guardian and the New York Times have had success with apps that use VR to put readers at the centre of their stories, be it a prisoner in solitary confinement, or a journalist on the frontlines in Falluja. Clouds Over Sidra, the first UN-funded VR film, follows a child through a day in a Jordanian refugee camp. After UNICEF adopted it as part of their street fundraising campaigns, they reportedly doubled the number of conversations that led to monetary contributions. The technology has created tremendous opportunities for brands who rely on empathetic narratives to captivate their customers, an area that is becoming increasingly difficult. They now operate in an environment where even simple messages seeking to foster unity have become battlegrounds. Could campaigns like Airbnbs #weaccept be more impactful if we actually experience the importance of diversity?

Other speakers warned us to be cautious when considering our virtual future. Monika Bielskyte, digital creative and strategy advisor, proposed that technology would soon advance to the point that our reality would simply be the level of transparency we choose. It raises an interesting question for brands  when every aspect of the physical world can potentially be modified, where is the threshold for appropriate exposure? Its not difficult to imagine a world where brands might plaster themselves over every piece of empty visual space. So is there a responsibility to limit how much an individuals private life might be consumed by that marketing?

In the end, I found the closest answer to this came from some of the youngest patrons of Pause Fest. As part of a project with Clemenger BBDO, three groups of RMIT students pitched ideas to their client, Myer, on how technology might be used to improve the department stores value proposition. The most ambitious one imagined a somewhat Jetson-esque service that could use Googles advanced analytics system to decipher the mood and feel of an uploaded family photo.

It then connected that information to scents in the natural world (think liquorice for shoe polish, fresh-cut grass for springtime, and even sea salt for tears) and distilled it into a bottled scent smelling like the memory, which could be collected in-store.

I think inside that proposal lay a great lesson for us all. As we become more connected, brands are starting to feel like a gas  expanding to occupy all the space, both physical and virtual, available in our lives. But in an age of unprecedented technological wonder, we shouldnt just be using those resources to sell the same stuff, better. In portraying an idea absent of data mining or social media integration, the students reminded me of a worldview often forgotten; one where technology is deployed not to monitor, but to surprise, enthral, and delight us. In a world of post-truths, fake news, and political blues, isnt that what we need right now?

About the author

Eugene Healey is a brand analyst for PUSH Collective, an independent strategy and creative agency based in Melbourne. Eugenes experience stretches across education, healthcare and superannuation industries, where he has developed brand strategies, coordinated market research, and conducted in-depth competitor reviews and analyses. Eugene graduated with a Masters in Commerce as valedictorian from the University of Melbourne, where he also taught Marketing in a past life.
The captain of the Sky Moon vessel (Tanzanian flag) has been found guilty of moving (from Crimea) over 3,000 of commercial soda outside the Ukrainian customs control area, the Malynovsky District Court in Odesa ruled.

During the hearing of the relevant administrative protocol on violation of the customs rules, the court ordered confiscation in favor of the state of the contraband matter, namely: the cargo, nearly UAH 18.5 million worth of soda, and the vessel itself as a transport vehicle that was used to commit the law violation, a spokesperson for the military prosecutor's office in Ukraine's Southern Region said on Thursday. The vessel's worth was not disclosed.

This is the largest contraband haul in Ukraine's history, the spokesperson said.

"For the first time in the history of Ukraine a court decided to confiscate the maritime vessel as well," the spokesperson said.

Military prosecutors are also going to bring criminal charges against the captain of the vessel, a co-founder of the company that owns the cargo (a Moldovan citizen) and possibly the ship owner's representative (a Romanian).

Furthermore, based on results of the inquiry, military prosecutors will formally notify Czech authorities about violation by a Czech-registered company of the European ban on trade with Crimea.

The inquiry found that the Sky Moon ship captain, having conspired with the ship owner's representative and the senders and recipients of the goods, had the ship visit the closed Crimean ports of Kerch, Feodosia and Sevastopol eight times throughout 2016.

In violation of international law and the Ukrainian laws, and being aware of the sanctions against Crimea, the captain moved scrap metal, sodium carbonate and commercial soda, and linseeds to Turkey and Moldova.

These facts led to a criminal inquiry on charges of "violation of the rules for traveling to and from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory" and "forgery by an official."

In December 2016 the ship owner's representative tried to bribe a military prosecutor to settle the criminal case issue.

It was reported that on November 30, 2016 Ukrainian border guards detained the Sky Moon cargo vessel with nine people on board, including the captain and eight crew members. The vessel was carrying over 3,000 tonnes of sodium carbonate at the time.
Ukrainian FM postpones his visit to Georgia on recommendation of doctors

The visit of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin to Georgia, scheduled for Friday, has been postponed due to his state of health, Ukrainian ambassador to Tbilisi Ihor Dolhov told journalists on Friday.

"We received an official communique from Kyiv and asked the Georgian Foreign Ministry to postpone the visit of Minister Klimkin to a later date. Pavlo Klimkin received strict medical advice and would not participate in the next few days," the ambassador said.

He noted that the minister is particularly interested in examining the occupation line in Georgia.
 

Agreement signed to explore ways of increasing EBRD engagement

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has signed an agreement with the government of Uzbekistan to explore ways of increasing its investment activity in the country. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti and the authorities in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

The signing came towards the end of a visit by President Chakrabarti and a senior delegation from the Bank. An official meeting was held with Uzbekistans President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The delegation also met with First Deputy Prime Minister Achilbay Ramatov. There were discussions with Minister of Finance, Batyr Khodzhaev; Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdulaziz Kamilov; Minister of Economy, Galina Saidova; First Deputy Speaker of the Senate, Sodiq Safoyev; Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Alisher Shaykov; and several officials including those from the Central Bank of Uzbekistan and the National Bank of Uzbekistan.

The EBRD President said: I am delighted that the EBRD is re-engaging with Uzbekistan. These discussions have been highly fruitful and there is great interest on both sides in reinvigorating the relationship between the Bank and Uzbekistan. This is a new beginning in EBRD-Uzbek relations. It comes in the context of the EBRD having even greater impact in its countries of operations. In 2016, we delivered 9.4 billion of investment, equalling the record amount achieved in 2015. Our profits in 2016 also rose by 25 per cent to around 1 billion. These profits help build up our capital and sustain our high levels of lending. It was an excellent performance by a strong and successful Bank.

The discussions with the authorities explored opportunities for cooperation with Uzbekistan.

The Memorandum of Understanding signed with the government sets out these areas for potential cooperation. It includes a potential programme of advice and financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, a trade finance programme to support cross-border trade and cooperation, and measures to improve the competitiveness of the Uzbek economy, including through attracting foreign direct investment that will result in the transfer of technology and know-how.

The EBRD President signed an agreement to work with Uzbekistan to address the legacy of Soviet-era uranium mining and processing in the region, under the Environmental Remediation Account for Central Asia supported by the EU.

The President also met representatives from private sector companies, the diplomatic community, other international financial institutions and civil society organisations.

After the official meetings, President Chakrabarti spoke at an event for students and staff at the Westminster International University in Tashkent. He told them how the EBRD invests in the region and the contribution that the students could make to their countrys development and in the Bank.

The EBRD is the largest institutional investor in Central Asia, with close to 11.6 billion (US$ 12.3 billion equivalent) committed to date to projects in a variety of sectors, from infrastructure to agriculture, with a focus on private sector development.

The Bank has invested 894 million in Uzbekistan. Its current portfolio of 8 million in the country is managed from Tashkent and London.

Read the full MoU English and Russian.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced charges against four individuals, including two officers of Russias Federal Security Service, or FSB, for carrying out the massive cyberbreach that affected about 500 million Yahoo account holders in 2014.

The FBI carried out the investigation with the assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMB Sergeant Harold Pfleiderer told the E-Commerce Times.

A federal grand jury in Northern California charged the defendants  the FSB officials and two Russian cybercriminals  with using stolen data to gain illegal access to the accounts of Russian journalists, Russian and U.S. government officials, and private sector employees of financial, transportation and other companies.

The indictment alleges that Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33, a Russian officer in the FSB, and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43, Dokuchaevs superior, directed, facilitated, paid and provided protection for criminal hackers to collect information using cyberintrusions in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Yahoo and Beyond

At the direction of the FSB agents, Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka Magg, 29, a Latvian-born Russian national, in late 2014 allegedly stole a copy of at least part of Yahoos secret User Database, which contained usernames, emails, recovery emails, phone numbers, and information to create mint Web browser cookies for about 500 million Yahoo members.

He also allegedly gained access to Yahoos Account Management Tool, proprietary software that allowed users to log changes to their accounts.

The co-conspirators also used spear phishing tactics to trick users into giving up access to their accounts, according to court filings.

After the suspects learned they had information to customer accounts outside of Yahoo, the fourth suspect, Karim Baratov, aka Kay, a 22-year old Canadian and Kazakh national, allegedly gained access to 80 accounts in exchange for commission payments.

Kay was arrested in Canada on Tuesday, following the DoJs issuance of a provisional warrant to Canadian officials last week.

The Justice Department has charged all four defendants with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, carrying up to 10 years in prison.

The DoJ also charged Dokuchaev, Sushchin and Belan with conspiracy to commit economic espionage, carrying 15 years in prison; theft of trade secrets, 10 years; conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 20 years; and counterfeit access device fraud, among other charges.

Baratov and both FSB officers were charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud, carrying 7 1/2 years in prison; and wire fraud, carrying 20 years in prison. Dokuchaev and Baratov also were charged with aggravated identity theft, carrying two years.

With these charges, the United States Department of Justice is continuing to send the powerful message that we will not allow individuals, groups, nation states, or a combination of them to compromise the privacy of our citizens, the economic interests of our companies or the security of our country, said Mary McCord, acting assistant AG for national security.

Belan has been indicted twice before in the U.S. for three cyberattacks into e-commerce companies that impacted millions of customers, McCord noted, and has been one of the FBIs most wanted cybercriminals for three years.

Despite his history and an Interpol red notice, the FSB failed to detain Belan but continued to use him for illegal hacking, McCord said.

Election Connection?

The charges announced Wednesday are consistent with Yahoos prior disclosures about the hack, said Chris Madsen, assistant general counsel and head of global law enforcement, security and safety at Yahoo.

Yahoo last fall disclosed that it believed a state-sponsored attack had resulted in the theft of a copy of certain information for about 500 million user accounts as of late 2014.

Yahoo later disclosed further details on the forging of cookies to gain access to user accounts without a password and linked some of that activity to the same state-sponsored actor, according to Madsen.

Were committed to keeping our users and our platforms secure and will continue to engage with law enforcement to combat cybercrime, he said.

Due to the lack of a U.S. extradition treaty with Russia, its unlikely there will be more evidence concerning Russian involvement unless there are further proceedings involving Baratov, who was arrested in Canada, suggested Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president for cloud research at Trend Micro.

In any case, the Yahoo and Verizon names will continue to be linked to this case while the companies focus on recovery and strengthening defenses going forward, Nunnikhoven told the E-Commerce Times.

The charges come amid congressional investigations into the Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. No direct link has been established between the Yahoo hack and the election, but the case at best reflects the United States wide vulnerability to attacks by foreign state actors.

State-sponsored activity such as this is being carried out by all well-resourced nations, which include Russia, China  and of course, the U.S., noted Troy Hunt, a Microsoft regional director and MVP  developer security.

What it shows us is how valuable digital capabilities are becoming, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The reach, effectiveness and cost efficiency of cyberactivities like these make enormously attractive weapons. As we digitize and connect more and more critical infrastructure, their effectiveness only increases  and consequently, so does the threat, Hunt explained.

Obviously, the U.S. needs to strengthen cybersecurity, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, but EPIC also believes there should be greater focus on specific threats to personal information.

The U.S. needs a data protection agency similar to agencies in other democratic governments, he told the E-Commerce Times.

EPIC sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Russian interference in the election, Rotenberg noted, and has submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests seeking additional details.
The militants have fired on the positions of the Ukrainian military in Donbas 77 times over the past day, the ATO press center said on its Facebook page on Friday morning.

"Two soldiers were killed and eight suffered injuries during the day," the ATO staff said on Facebook.

In the Mariupol sector, Ukrainian army strongholds came under attack by grenade launchers, infantry fighting vehicle weapons and 120mm mortars in the vicinity of Novotroyitske, 122mm artillery and 120mm mortars near Vodiane, mortars near Krasnohorivka and Maryinka, SPG grenade launchers and machineguns near Hnutove, and small arms and infantry fighting vehicle weapons in Shyrokyne, the staff said.

In the Donetsk sector, 122mm artillery and mortars bombarded Ukrainian armed forces positions near Troyitske and Avdiyivka, the report said, adding that the militatns fired mortars and 122mm artillery near Troyitske, Avdiyivka and the Butovka coalmines, while a tank engaged in the hostilities later. Fortifications in the Kamyanka area came under attack by 120mm mortars, and SPG grenade launchers and 82mm mortars were fired in Zaitseve and Nevelske. Infantry fighting vehicles were engaged near Luhanske, and 82mm mortars were fired near Pisky, the staff said.

In the Luhansk sector, 120mm mortars shelled Ukrainian government forces' positions near Krymske, 82mm mortars were used in Lobacheve, SPG grenade launchers and small arms in Novozvanivka, and mortars and heavy machineguns in Novo-Oleksandrivka, it said.
Qualcomm on Wednesday announced a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate next-generation cloud services on the 10nm Qualcomm Centriq 2400 ARM-based platform.

The collaboration will span multiple future generations of hardware, software and systems.

The companies have been working for several years on ARM-based server enablement. They have been optimizing a version of Windows Server for ARM running on the Centriq 2400, which Microsoft will use in its data center.

Possible Synergies

Qualcomm made the announcement at the Open Compute Project Summit in Santa Clara, California, where it conducted the first public demonstration of Windows Server on the Centriq 2400.

Qualcomm also submitted a server spec  the Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard  to the OCP.

The spec, based on the latest version of Microsofts Project Olympus, pairs the Centriq 2400 with the most advanced interfaces for memory, network and peripherals, and lets devs design ARM-based servers for the most common cloud compute workloads.

The motherboard fits into a standard 1U rack server system. It can be paired with compute accelerators, multihost network interface controllers, and leading-edge storage technologies to optimize it for specific workloads.

Microsofts looking for more efficient compute architecture for Azure, and Qualcomm wants a slice of the [Infrastructure as a Service] business, said Holger Mueller, a principal analyst at Constellation Research.

When two vendors see synergies, good things can happen, but its too early to tell how well this spec will do, he told TechNewsWorld.

Why the ARM Move?

Microsoft has been running evaluations of ARM servers side by side with its Intel-based production workloads, noted Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Leendert van Doom.

ARMs high Instruction Per Cycle counts, high core and thread counts, the connectivity options, and the integration that we see across the ARM ecosystem [are] very exciting.

Intel has about 98 percent of the server market today, and this is a choke hold on innovation, remarked Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at Tirias Research.

The industry needs competition, or Intel will use the industry as its piggy bank to fund other projects, he told TechNewsWorld.

Cavium, which collaborated with server supplier Inventec, also developed an OCP-based motherboard compatible with Project Olympus and presented a demo with Windows Server for ARM on its server processor SoCs at OPC.

All About the Cloud

Microsoft is looking for the cheapest solution for the cloud, suggested Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, and its working to make sure all its eggs arent in one basket.

The companys Azure cloud business is going gangbusters, based on its Q2 results.

Microsoft considered where ARM servers would be applicable and provide the most value, van Doorn pointed out. Those areas include search and indexing, storage, databases, big data and machine learning.

Cloud systems have to be able to scale from the very large to very small almost instantly, so they need dense, high-core technology which is very similar to what AMD and ARM have been working on, Enderle told TechNewsWorld.

Microsoft has been looking at optimization of servers, and this goes to its cloud first strategy, because it wants to have the best cloud on the planet, he added.

In addition to Qualcomm, Microsoft is working with AMD, Intel, Cavium, Nvidia and others on the Olympus project.
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By Perry Wheeler

Following global pressure on pet food companies, industry giants Mars and Nestle have announced that they will take steps to ensure their pet food supply chains are free of human rights abuses and illegally caught seafood. Their commitments to act on transshipping at sea increase the need for global seafood giant Thai Union, a supplier for both companies, to eliminate any outstanding risks of human rights abuses and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in its own supply chains.

[facebook https://facebook.com/EcoWatch/videos/1485947578084841/ expand=1]

Nestle has committed to a full ban on transshipment at sea in its supply chains, while Mars has committed to suspend the use of transshipped products in its supply chains if its seafood suppliers cannot adequately address the human rights and illegal fishing issues associated with the practice in the coming weeks.

Pet owners and activists have demanded that companies eliminate human rights abuses from their pet food supply chains. This move toward stopping out of control transshipment at sea means were finally seeing results, said Greenpeace USA oceans campaigner Graham Forbes.

These are the two largest pet food companies in the world and their commitments to address transshipping at sea will put significant pressure on suppliers like Thai Union to show the leadership needed to clean up their own seafood supply chains. Well be closely monitoring Mars and Nestles progress to ensure these policies lead to real changes on the water, added Forbes.

Greenpeace launched a campaign in 2016, Cats vs. Bad Tuna, to demand that Mars ensure its supply chains were free of any potential human rights abuses. A Greenpeace Southeast Asia report, Turn the Tide, demonstrated the unacceptably high risk of tainted seafood entering numerous supply chains throughout 2016, including Nestle and Thai Unions. Nestle immediately committed to address the concerns when they were raised in the report. Mars committed to tackle unchecked transshipment at sea in its pet food supply chains this month.

Over the past several years, Nestle and Greenpeace have worked together to strengthen Nestles policies governing the procurement and responsible sourcing of seafood, said Nestle Purina PetCare head of sustainability Jack Scott. In light of Greenpeaces research findings, Nestle has committed to a ban on all transshipments at sea.

Transshipment is a process through which companies move fish from one vessel to another, enabling them to remain at sea for extended periods of time to plunder the oceans, dodge regulations and keep fishers as a captive workforce. In addition to its connections to human rights abuse, transshipment at sea provides an opportunity for illegal fishing vessels to unload their illegally caught loads into supply chains, away from port authorities. In 2015, an estimated 40 percent of these transfers happened on the high seas, outside of the jurisdiction of national authorities. Transshipment at sea has also been linked to other organized crime, including drug, weapon and wildlife trafficking.

Mars and Nestles commitments send a strong message to Thai Union to address transshipment in its supply chains. Greenpeace is currently pressuring Thai Union to make sweeping changes for workers and our oceans across its seafood supply chains. Greenpeace has campaigned on Thai Union since 2015 and is asking the company to lead the seafood industry by ending transshipment at sea, addressing overfishing and destructive fishing and increasing traceability from sea to plate.

Mars recognizes the risks of transshipment at sea. We want to see human rights respected and the environment protected in our seafood supply chains said Isabelle Aelvoet, global sustainability director at Mars Petcare.

The current problems associated with transshipment are serious and demand urgent attention. We are committed to working with our suppliers to remedy these problems, but if we cannot resolve these issues to our satisfaction quickly, we will seek to end the use of transshipped products in our supply chains until these serious problems are fixed.

Thursdays news follows a new report from Global Fishing Watch highlighting the problems with transshipment at sea. The report found that from 2012-2016, refrigerated cargo vessels participated in more than 5,000 likely transshipments. Concerns were raised about Mars and Nestle supply chains in a 2015 New York Times investigation into human rights abuses at sea.
For more than three months, an underwater pipeline has been spewing hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of processed natural gas per day in Alaskas Cook Inlet, possibly threatening critically endangered beluga whales, fish and other wildlife.

The 8-inch pipeline, owned and operated by Hilcorp Alaska, is leaking more than 210,000 cubic feet of gas per day. The gas is 99 percent methane and provides fuel for four platforms in Cook Inlet.

250 Protestors Demand Enbridge Pipeline Shutdown Over Fears of Great Lakes Oil Spill https://t.co/eLpahRacT2 (@ecowatch)  Sierra Club (@SierraClub) March 14, 2017

A notice from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) revealed that Hilcorp knew about the leak as early as December but did not report the leak until Feb. 7 after a helicopter spotted gas bubbling to the surface of the water.

PHMSA said that the natural gas discharge could pose a risk to public safety, the environment and marine mammals and has given Hilcorp until May 1 to permanently repair the line or shut it down.

But conservation groups warn that waiting until May could allow the release of another 16 million cubic feet of gas. Seven groups have submitted a letter to the Trump administration urging for an immediate shutdown of the 52-year-old pipeline.

This dangerous leak could stop immediately if regulators did their job and shut down this rickety old pipeline, said Miyoko Sakashita, the Center for Biological Diversity oceans program director. Were disgusted with the Trump administrations lack of concern about this ongoing disaster. Every day the leak continues, this pipeline spews more pollution into Cook Inlet and threatens endangered belugas and other wildlife.

The letter was signed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands, Greenpeace and the Eyak Preservation Council.

Hilcorp contends that Cook Inlets heavy ice cover and strong tides has made it too risky for divers to immediately fix the problem and is waiting until at least late March or April for the ice to clear.

The ice cover has also made it impossible to survey the leaks risks to environmental and wildlife. But scientists have already warned that the impact could be disastrous.

There are three potential impacts that we worry about, Chris Sabine, a chemical oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), detailed to InsideClimate News.

First, methane exposure could be harmful to fish, potentially disturbing its main functional systemsrespiration, nervous system, blood formation, enzyme activity and others. Secondly, Sabine explained that bacteria metabolizing the methane-saturated water could produce additional carbon dioxide and deplete oxygen levels in the water, creating a hypoxic zone. Lastly, this extra CO2 can cause the water to become more acidic, which can cause shells of some animals to weaken.

Sadie Wright, a NOAA marine mammals specialist, added that the hypoxic zone could impact the food supply for Cook Inlets estimated 340 belugas.

The the noise coming from the leak could also be a potential stressor, she said, as excessive noise can cause belugas to abandon their habitat.

We dont have any idea how loud the leak might be, said Wright.

Not much is known about what is happening under Cook Inlets icy waters. State regulators only issued a preliminary approval of Hilcorps sampling and environmental monitoring plan on Tuesday.

So far, aerial surveys of the leaking gas field has not uncovered any injured birds or marine mammals, including beluga whales, state officials reported.

To slow the leak, the company lowered pressure in the affected line on March 4, estimating that leak was reduced to 210,000 to 310,000 cubic feet of gas daily. It again lowered the pressure on Monday and estimated the line is leaking 193,000 to 215,000 cubic feet daily.

As for why Hilcorp hasnt just shut down its line, the company said that an oil spill could occur because the line was once used to carry oil.

Shutting down the pipeline would risk it taking in water, freezing and potentially rupturing, Lori Nelson, external affairs manager at Hilcorp Alaska, explained last month to Alaska Dispatch News. Nelson also said that the line needs to be kept pressurized or else it could fill with water, allowing residual crude oil to escape from what was previously used as a crude oil pipeline.

The Center for Biological Diversity has sent a notice of intent to sue Hilcorp under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Homer, Alaska nonprofit Cook Inletkeeper has sent a similar notice to sue.

If Hilcorp cannot or will not stop polluting our public resources, then it should have no right to operate in our waters in the first place, Cook Inletkeeper executive director Bob Shavelson wrote in a blog post. Hilcorp has put forth various excuses why it cannot shut down the leaking pipeline in Cook Inlets icy conditionsincluding that water would infiltrate the gas line and other reasonsbut the fact remains Hilcorp simply wants to maintain production and profits without interruption.
(Photo: REUTERS / Umit Bektas)Pope Francis and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan leave after addressing to media at the presidential palace in Ankara November 28, 2014. Pope Francis begins a visit to Turkey with the delicate mission of strengthening ties with Muslim leaders while condemning violence against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Europe of staring a "clash" between Christianity and Islam with a ruling allowing employers to ban headscarves as part of wider restrictions on religious and political symbols.

Speaking hours after his foreign minister warned that "holy wars will soon begin", the Turkish President on March 16 launched a fresh attack as part of an ongoing row over the cancellation of his supporters' rallies in different European countries.

Erdogan's strong words come as enmity between North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Turkey and different EU nations has ratcheted up in the past week.

Using terminology alluding to the period of the Crusades, he said the European Court of Justice ruling that upheld the dismissal of two Muslim women who refused to remove their hijabs started a "clash between crescent and cross."

"Shame on the EU. Down with your European principles, values and justice," Erdogan told supporters in Sakarya, The Independent reported. "They started a clash between the cross and the crescent, there is no other explanation."

In his combative speech, Erdogan lashed out at European leaders in The Netherlands and Germany after they prevented Turkish ministers from holding events designed to drum up support Erdogan ahead of a constitutional referendum, that could strengthen his powers.

The Turkish President said the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who the beat far-right leader Geert Wilders in the March 15 general election in Holland, had lost Turkey's friendship by banning its ministers political campaigning in the country.

Earlier Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign minister had claimed "holy wars will soon begin" in Europe, in spite of the defeat of far-right leader Geert Wilders in the Netherlands elections.

Cavusoglu did not welcome the victory for Rutte's centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

"Now the election is over in the Netherlands...when you look at the many parties you see there is no difference between the social democrats and fascist Wilders," he said according to a translation by Turkey's Hurriyet news.

"All have the same mentality. Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe? You have begun to collapse Europe. You are dragging Europe into the abyss. Holy wars will soon begin in Europe."

Then on March 16, Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu threatened to "blow the mind" of Europe by sending 15,000 refugees a month to EU territory.

Almost a year ago Turkey and Belgium on March 18 signed a landmark deal that substantially lessened the flow of migrants from Turkey to Europe.

But the accord is now hanging in the balance due to the diplomatic crisis over the blocking of Turkish ministers from holding rallies in Europe, Agence France-Presse reported.

"If you want, we could open the way for 15 000 refugees that we don't send each month and blow the mind" of Europe, Soylu said in a speech, quoted by Turkey's Anadolu news agency.
The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation has handed over to Ukraine 12 prisoners serving sentences in penitentiary institutions in the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea of the Russian Federation, Mykhailo Chaplyha, representative of the Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, has said.

"The transfer of 12 POWs from Crimea has started," Chaplyha wrote on his Facebook page on Friday afternoon.
After years of ill-fated attempts, Kentucky is on a sure-footed path to becoming the 44th state to allow charter schools, one of two sweeping measures the legislature passed this session that promises to reshape the states K-12 education system.

Kentuckys new majority of Republican lawmakerssupported by a GOP governorapproved legislation to allow charter schools, start a process that could change or eventually repeal the Common Core State Standards, and strike at the core of the states unusual governance of schools. (Update: Kentucky Governor Signs Charter Schools Bill )

Strongly backed by Republican Gov. Matt Bevinwho took the unusual step of testifying before education committees in the House and Senatethe charter legislation empowers local school boards and mayors to authorize charter schools. The law sets no limit on the number of charters that can open.

The sweeping overhaul of the states central K-12 education lawin place since 1990 and seen for years as a model for raising student achievement on a broad scalewould bring about major changes to who controls decisionmaking over academic standards, curricula, and hiring at the school level.

But Republicans failed to muster enough support to dismantle long-standing integration efforts in the states largest school systemthe Jefferson County district, which includes the city of Louisville.

Overall, the coming changes to Kentuckys K-12 landscape are hopeful and potentially put the state on track to take its next giant leap on behalf of student achievement, if state officials provide adequate oversight and fiscal support, said Brigitte Blom Ramsey, the executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a nonpartisan education think tank in the state.

Timeline: Kentucky K-12 Highlights The Bluegrass State has been in the national spotlight for four decades of developments in the public education arena, from desegregation efforts to bellwether K-12 overhaul efforts. 1974-1976

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals orders the mostly black Louisville district and mostly white Jefferson County school system to desegregate. A plan for merging the two systems is adopted and implemented, largely through busing. Above

Sept. 1975

Police link arms to stop an anti-busing march in downtown Louisville. Some arrests were made after demonstrators skirmished with police on the first day of court-ordered busing in the area. 1983

The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence forms as a private, nonprofit advocacy group focusing on all levels of public education. 1989

The Kentucky Supreme Court rules the states public school system unconstitutional and orders the legislature to re-create and re-establish it. 1990

Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) is enacted. 1992

The Kentucky Association of School Councils formed to promote shared decisionmaking at the school level. 2001

The Jefferson County district adopts voluntary desegregation plan after the federal court ends its court-ordered desegregation plan. Above

Dec. 2006

Demonstrators gathered at the Supreme Court in Washington during arguments in a case brought by parents in Louisville and Seattle who challenged the two districts race-based school integration efforts. 2007

The U.S. Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that race-based student-assignment plans in Jefferson County and the Seattle school district violate the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. 2008

Jefferson County crafts a new student-assignment plan that uses a number of factors to achieve integrated schools. 2009

Lawmakers overhaul the states K-12 testing system with an eye toward alignment with new college- and career-ready standards. 2010

Kentucky becomes the first in the nation to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Nov. 2015

Matt Bevin, a Republican opposed to the states use of the common core, is elected governor, replacing the outgoing Democratic incumbent. Nov. 2016

Republicans win control of the Kentucky House of Representatives, consolidating GOP control of the legislature. Jan. 2017

A bill is introduced to overhaul Senate Bill 1, the key legislation that created KERA. SOURCE: Education Week

While the Kentucky Education Reform Act has been the states main vehicle for increasing education spending, empowering parents to participate in school-level decisionmaking, and raising student achievement for more than two decades, state education officials now say the law has run its course.

The gains it helped bring about for disadvantaged students have stalled in recent years, especially for the states black and Latino children, officials say, and the states lawmakers saw the federal Every Student Succeeds Act as an opportunity to chart a new path.

This will be our next shot in the arm, Stephen Pruitt, Kentuckys education commissioner, said of the legislation known as SB 1, which was awaiting the senate presidents signature on Friday.

Expected to be signed by Bevin, the bill drew widespread support, including from the states teachers union, the superintendents association, and conservative and rural legislators.

But the plan was strongly opposed by the states most grassroots level of local control: the thousands of parents, teachers, and principals who, under the 1990 act, won authority to hire principals, select curriculum, set a schools budget, and experiment with new teaching methods. While parents elsewhere may envy such local input, superintendents and state officials say its become burdensome.

My biggest fear with this bill is were going to see a reduction in true local decisionmaking, said Lynne Slone, a lobbyist and lawyer for the Kentucky Association of School Councils, prior to the bills final passage.

The Prichard Committee praised most of SB 1, but said the legislature should go further and increase funding to help public schools cope with an ongoing fiscal crisis, review the states 27-year-old funding formula, and set new and ambitious academic goals.

Charter Measure Prevails

While charter school bills had been proposed in Kentucky before, passage seemed a given this year after Republicans took control of the legislature last fall, on the heels of Gov. Bevins victory in 2015.

Republican supporters said with Kentuckys late entry into the charter game, the state has the advantage of emulating successes and avoiding mistakes made by those that were earlier adopters

State Sen. Mike Wilson, the chairman of the Senates education committee, said pastors in the Louisville and Lexington black communities have begged the legislature for years to allow charter schools.

I think that charter schools show that they have the most success in urban areas where you have kids in poverty, and thats where we have some of the biggest achievement gaps, Wilson said ahead of the measures full passage.

While Democrats in many states embrace charter schools, the Kentucky bill passed largely along party lines. Republican proponents argued that charter schools will provide more schooling options for families and students, particularly students who are at risk of academic failure.

Democrats in the legislature argued that charters will divert already scarce resources from traditional public schools.

The bill allows parents, teachers, and nonprofits to apply to open charter schools, and for-profit companies would be allowed to run charters under contracts with those entities that receive charter approval.

Under the legislation, individual local school boards or a collective of local school boards can be charter authorizers. Mayors could also potentially authorize charters.

Charters would only be allowed to hire teachers who are state-certified, a rule that some charter supporters said stifles flexibility that the schools need to innovate. The bill explicitly bans the opening of virtual charter schools, which have a spotty track record in many other states .

The Jefferson County school board tried to influence its final form, succeeding in some cases.

Among the provisions it sought: the ban on virtual charters, local school boards as sole authorizers, hiring of certified teachers, and no for-profit charter operators.

Chris Brady, the chairman of the Jefferson County board, said charters are not the best way to improve the states education system on a broad scale. Stability in the system as well as increased financial support for traditional public schools would be more effective, he said.

Charter schools seem to be a silver bullet for some, he said. They look at public school results without looking at poverty levels and how persistent and endemic it is.

Randy Poe, the superintendent of the 21,000-student Boone County district in Florence, Ky., said hes not categorically opposed to charters.

Given the right situation, charter schools can be an effective tool, Poe said. What I would prefer is that the state would release us from the rules and regulations they are willing to give charter schools to begin with, without me having to create a dual, parallel system.

Louisville in Crosshairs

At the top of the Republicans agenda early this session was a so-called neighborhood schools bill that would have made districts give students preference to attend the school nearest their home. Many viewed the measure as a direct attack on Jefferson Countys long-running initiative to keep its schools racially and socioeconomically balanced.

Many parents and residents say the districts complex school-assignment process that relies heavily on busing students to schools far beyond their neighborhoods has led to academic improvements, especially for black students on the citys impoverished west side.

Every school board candidate who has run on a platform opposing the school assignment plan in recent years has lost, Brady said.

But some conservative lawmakers said the districts integration efforts have run their course, scrambled community cohesion, and yielded lackluster academic results.

Still, the measure failed to gain traction as the focus on passing a charter school measure took precedence.

But Jefferson County still faces potential intervention from state officials. Pruitt, the state education commissioner, earlier this year launched an audit of the district for what he described as concerns over student safety, poor culture and communication. The audit could potentially lead to a state takeover of the district.

Changes to Core K-12 Law

In 1990, in response to a damning state supreme court decision that deemed its schools unconstitutional , Kentuckys general assembly, then controlled by Democrats, enacted a series of academic goals that led to a radical overhaul of the financing and delivery of its K-12 services.

Over the next decade, the state increased by more than $1 billion its spending on public education, capped local spending, and targeted millions more dollars toward poor students. The state also used the funding formula to introduce a standards- and performance-based model that provided bonuses to teachers and schools for test gains.

To limit the influence of politics on K-12 policy, lawmakers bolstered the powers of the states commissioner of education and set up school-based decisionmaking councils made up of parents, teachers and principals. The councils can hire principals, choose curriculum, and establish budgets for schools.

In education circles, that overhaul cast Kentucky as a bellwether state for school reform. Its testing, teacher bonuses, and school funding model were replicated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

But inside the state, the law was controversial, and Republicans over the years disputed the states touted academic gains and questioned the programs monetary value.

Kentucky again became a frontrunner on the national K-12 scene when it became the first state to adopt the common core in 2010 , spurred in part by the federal Race to the Top grant competition issued by the Obama administration. Over the next several years, the state made a variety of changes to its accountability system and tried to make changes to its statewide standardized testing. Teachers and parents became agitated over the use of the common core, which also animated the states cantankerous tea party activists, who complained about federal intrusion.

Bevin successfully ran in 2015 on a platform to slash away at state government and to abolish the states common standards, which he said on a radio show were a liberal conspiracy to foist down the throats of our young people the theory that Republicans hate poor people.

Republicans across the nation this year have fawned over Kentuckys ability to pass in quick succession a series of staple GOP legislation. Just two weeks into this years session, Bevin signed legislation making Kentucky a right-to-work state, a move that could damage the states teachers union.

Diminished Local Control?

Under SB 1, the state education agency will be tasked with creating an accountability system that places schools unable to close achievement gaps fast enough in a targeted assistance and support category. Falling into that category will require school-based councils to get approval for school improvement plans from their local school board. The councils could also potentially lose their authority to choose principals..

More than 1,000 of the states 1,200 schools will ultimately fall into this category, effectively dismantling the local councils powers, according to the Kentucky Association of School Councils. (A state education department spokeswoman said its too early to predict the effects of the states accountability system.)

This is a very complex issue, and all of the school councils are hard at work on this now, Slone, of the association, said of the states achievement gap. Absolutely, it needs to be worked on. But getting rid of councils is not going to do it.

The states superintendents association and the state schools chief said the councils have, in many instances, become dysfunctional. Rather than acting on research, the councils oftentimes act based on gut, Pruitt said.

David Karem, who retired last year after 40 years serving in the legislature and on the state school board, has urged lawmakers to hold true to their constitutional and financial obligations toward the states public schools.

I think all of us who were involved with KERA understood that legislation is a living entity and that as years go on, you have to look at the things that are working, and support and bolster those things, and for the things that need fixing and tweaking, you need to tweak them, he said.
Lithuania makes inroads into China dairy market

Lithuania is making inroads into China's dairy market as one of the country's largest dairy producers has shipped its first product delivery to the Northeast Asian country.

Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that dairy company Rokiskio Suris has sent the first testing cargo of lactose to business partners in China.

The company said it had signed a contract for "a few hundred tonnes of the product".

"Further cooperation will be negotiated when the partners receive the product and make trials of it at their own facilities", the company added.

According to the news report, this was one of the first attempts by Lithuanian dairy companies to enter the Chinese dairy market. In August last year, 16 Lithuanian dairy producers were granted permission by Chinese authorities to export their products to China.

Earlier this year, dairy producer Vilkyskiu Pienine was the first to enter the Chinese market by exporting around 20 tonnes of mozzarella cheese.

The Lithuanian dairy industry was hard hit by Russia's embargo on food imports from the EU in 2014. Russia was one of the main export markets of Lithuanian dairy producers. Since then, Lithuania has been pursuing efforts to enter new markets.
Washington is closely monitoring the situation related to the transport blockade of Donbas by the Ukrainian authorities and expects that the situation will be peacefully settled.

"We are closely keeping watch over this blockade," the State Department spokesman Mark Toner said during a telephone briefing.

He expressed hope that the situation could be "settled peacefully."

Answering the question about how the current situation could affect implementation of the Minsk agreements, Toner said: "This can have potentially dangerous consequences. Therefore, we want this situation to be settled."

He recommended that further comments should be directed to the government of Ukraine, and assured that the U.S. supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine in its internationally recognized borders.
Miami, Mar 17 (efe_epa).- An internationally acclaimed Cuban novelist said in Miami that she believed that many women on the Communist-ruled island were writing in obscurity.

Wendy Guerra, whose works have been translated into more than a dozen languages, made her remarks in an interview with EFE in Miami, where she has traveled with her husband - jazz pianist Ernan Lopez-Nussa - for a Latin Jazz concert.

"I wonder how no other woman has written a character like Cleo, a girl who simply tries to write and is viewed by the Cuban authorities as someone who wants to do harm," the author said of the main character of her novel "Domingo de Revolucion" (Revolution Sunday), which was published by Anagrama in 2016 and will have a second print run this year.

Guerra told EFE that silence in itself was a means of emancipation.

"There are marches. There's slamming the door and leaving Cuba behind and there's cooking, which also is a good means of freeing oneself," said Guerra, who unlike many of her countrymen has opted to stay in her homeland even though she is essentially ostracized and never appears in the national media.

The 46-year-old author of the 2006 autobiographical novel "Todos se van" (Everybody Leaves) also reflected on how her life has changed since leaving behind her career as an actress in Cuban film and television and embarking on a new stage as a writer whose works are viewed as critical of government policy.

"They silence you and that's it, without anything in writing. It's the same with the (Havana) Book Fair, which they don't invite me to," Guerra said.

The writer also told EFE that she was very pleased that Colombian filmmaker Sergio Cabrera had made a movie version of "Todos se van," which is available on Netflix in some countries.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry waiting for Serbian Ambassador in connection with trip of Serbian deputies to Crimea

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has condemned the trip of a group of Serbian parliamentarians to the temporarily occupied Crimea and is waiting for the Ambassador of Serbia to Ukraine to provide explanations on this issue.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine resolutely condemns the trip of a group of Serbian parliamentarians to the occupied Crimea," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mariana Betsa said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

Betsa noted that the Serbian parliamentarians demonstratively violated Ukrainian legislation and international law.

According to her, the deputies openly call for the recognition of the annexation of Crimea by Russia and thereby violate the official position of Serbia, which supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

"The Foreign Ministry today has called the Ambassador of Serbia to the Foreign Ministry to give explanations on this issue," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
As many high school and college students around the country plan their annual spring break vacations, the U.S. State Department warns against travel to Mexico.

Popular resort destinations like Acapulco, Cabo San Lucas, Guadalajara, La Paz, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and even Tijuana are among the locations the feds caution travel to because of violence attributed to the "activities of criminal organizations."

As Breitbart Texas reported, the tourist hotspot of Acapulco, Guerrero, has become the scene of of a fierce turf war as rival drug cartels continue to fight for control of the region. In December, the State Department named Guerrero "the most violent state in Mexico in 2015 for a third year in a row, and self-defense groups operate independently of the government in many areas," noting that armed members of these groups in Guerrero maintain roadblocks which "although not considered hostile to foreigners or tourists, are suspicious of outsiders and should be considered volatile and unpredictable."

Officials also urge spring break travelers to exercise caution in Baja California Sur getaways like Cabo San Lucas and La Paz because of homicides, many of which happened in La Paz "where there have been ongoing public acts of violence between rival criminal organizations."

Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco are subject to travel restrictions related to "continued instability" in the bordering states of Michoacan and Zacatecas. Baja California, home to Tijuana, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate, and Mexicali, experienced increased homicide rates last year because of "targeted criminal organization assassinations" and "turf battles between criminal groups."

This "spring break" alert stems from the State Department's December 2016 Mexico Travel Warning. It classified Mexico as a country with a high potential for kidnapping, carjacking, homicide, robbery, and other crimes because of a lack of security measures in place for travelers. Fourteen of Mexico's 31 states were flagged as dangerous after Americans became victims of these and other violent crimes.
Mexican presidential hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Wednesday against U.S. President Donald Trump's planned border wall and his administration's treatment of immigrants.

Lopez Obrador, a fiery leftist who has led recent polls for the 2018 election, said he expects the commission to "speak out in accordance with the law to protect immigrants from the harassment they are suffering since Trump took office."

Trump has ordered a wall built along the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border, has moved to strip federal funding from "sanctuary" states and cities harboring illegal immigrants, and expanded the force of U.S. immigration agents.

During his election campaign, Trump described Mexican illegal immigrants as rapists and criminals and insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall. That caused simmering diplomatic tension and angered everyday citizens south of the border.

Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and two-time runner-up for the presidency, said he hoped the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights would view Trump's moves as a "violation of human rights and discriminatory."

The commission, an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS), is tasked with promoting and protecting human rights in the American hemisphere.
Police issue warning over fake PPI calls

Police are urging the Manx public to be cautious when receiving calls about PPI.

The warning comes after a local resident was contacted by from someone claiming to work for the UK Ministry of Justice asking to collect a money-gram or postal order.

Officers say if you're not expecting a payout this type of call is most likely a scam.

The police also advise searching a phone number online if you receive an unexpected call to see if the caller's claims are genuine.
Director of the Institute of Global Strategies Vadym Karasiov believes that politics in Ukraine has acquired a spontaneous, street-level nature and this 'street' is starting to be engaged in politics.

"Politics is determined by chaos, spontaneity, spontaneous decisions. Today politics has gone to the street and moreover, the street has entered politics," he told a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Friday.

The political expert said that it is demonstrated by the arrival of a group of police officers of the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region to the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada on March 15.

Karasiov noted that the crisis in Ukraine acquires a comprehensive character, not only parliamentary, but a governmental one as well.

According to him, the parliament does not actually work in Ukraine.
Meghan Markle is set to have first meeting with Queen Elizabeth this coming Mother's Day and that's what reports were claiming. Prince Harry is keen for his girlfriend to officially meet his grandmother before the wedding of Pippa Middleton.

It has been reported that Meghan Markle already met Prince William and Kate Middleton and was even given an approval from Prince George. After this, her net appointment will be meeting Queen Elizabeth and will have a face-to-face encounter with the royal's big one.

According to a publication in the UK, Prince Harry is very keen for Queen Elizabeth to finally meet Meghan Markle and he wasn't this to happen before the wedding of Pippa Middleton as per Metro. Since he is automatically invited during the wedding, there were reports claiming that the actress sis reportedly in the guest list as his plus one. But before this, Harry and Meghan need first the approval of the Queen.

Further, Meghan Markle knows that this will not be an ordinary meeting since she needs to make a solid impression with the most important member of the royal family. Rumors were rife that Prince Harry may already have the wedding bells on his mind and is reportedly ready to ask the question to the "Suits" actress in the future.

Reports about an impending wedding proposal escalated after the two were spotted socializing during Prince Harry's friend's wedding at the Caribbean. This was Harry and Meghan Markle's first public appearance together after months of dating.

Prince Harry fell for Meghan Markle last year but he only confirmed the news last November when he released an official statement calling for the media to leave his girlfriend alone. This was the first time the prince released a statement to protect his girlfriend from unfair criticisms as per Forbes.

But before any wedding that might take place in the near future, there seems to be a catch. The English law tells that for a royal wedding to happen, Queen Elizabeth needs to give her approval first. Exactly, this would what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle need to do before the next royal wedding.
Ex-head of Ukrspecexport Bondarchuk arrested in London as part of extradition

Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has said that former head of Ukrspecexport Serhiy Bondarchuk has been arrested in London (Britain). He is accused of gross embezzlement.

"Thanks to the coordinated cooperation of Prosecutor General's Office with British colleagues on March 15 one more 'hero' of Ukraine  former head of Ukrspecexport Serhiy Bondarchuk  was arrested as part of the extradition process in London," Lutsenko wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.

He said that the Royal court will close the chapter on the Bondarchuk extradition case. The date of the court hearing will be set on March 24.

"Prosecutor General's Office armed British partners with convincing arguments for the provision of the extradition. My visit to London in November 2016 was not useless," Lutsenko said.

As reported, on January 21, 2015, the chief military procurator's office said that Bondarchuk is suspected in embezzling $7.428 million from the state-run company. He is suspected under part 5 of Article 191 (gross embezzlement via abuse of office under a preliminary collusion by a group of persons) and part 2 of Article 366 (fabrication caused serious consequences) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

On January 29 the investigating magistrate of Pechersky district court of Kyiv permitted to detain the former head of Ukrspecexport and sent him to court to decide on his arrest.

The court also arrested assets of the suspect - $10 million at one of the Ukrainian banks and two Range Rover cars worth over UAH 2 million.

In February 2015 the Interior Ministry of Ukraine put Bondarchuk on the wanted list.

Interpol placed former head of Ukrspecexport Serhiy Bondarchuk on the international wanted list on June 15, 2015.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt separating during the end of 2016 has become one of the world's most devastating break-ups to date. However, it seems as if even both parties have a hard time letting go of each other's company.

As per ET Online, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were said to have gone to Cambodia and had imprinted on them what was said to be matching tattoos. Jolie was said to have gone there as a short break for the movie she directed, "First They Killed My Father," and with her husband accompanying her. Pitt, 53, also received his own flesh art, even if not entirely similar.

The Sak Yant art on Angelina Jolie's back showed a creative detailing, illustrated by Ajarn noo Kanpai who was a former monk in Thailand. Brad Pitt, on the other hand, received a Buddhist symbol but on the left side of his stomach. The ink used for the tattoo was the same as that of his wife, which signifies a union of husband and wife, as the interpretation of such implies. Ironically, the two split only a few months after, in September. It is yet to be figured out if the couple will have the tattoos removed or if they are to retain them for sentimental reasons.

In other news, Angelina Jolie was seen with her son Maddox in a luxurious trip to Buckingham Palace. It was said that the actress came from an event that officially made her a professor in practice at the London School of Economics. Jolie's course looks to aid in the pursuit of justice, human rights and the conflicted areas around the globe, permitted to conduct her research in the field as well.
Zac Posen recently refused to make fashion creations for First Lady Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump. Posen had been their fashion designer in the past. Zac His refusal directly states that Posen was deeply affected by the current administration of the state run by Donald Trump.

Zac Posen is an American Fashion designer who is globally known for his technique in artisanal craftsmanship, anatomical construction, and textile manipulation. His daily wear, suiting, and red carpet evening wear are infused with his bold sophistication, sexy femininity, and distinctive glamor. Zac Posen also serves as a judge with Heidi Klum and Nina Garcia on Lifetime's mainstay Project Runway showcasing its fifteenth season. Being such an eminent personality in the fashion world, his statements and deeds will be obviously counted.

As mentioned in Daily Beats, the 36-year-old designers stated that he has no current plans to dress the members of the first family. He added that as of now he is staying away from bringing his brand into politics. He explained his deep concerns for the issues that are fundamentally disturbing him. The current state of affairs is what driving him crazier. He acknowledged that the issues like LGBT rights, immigration, funding for the arts, Planned Parenthood, and women's rights are very close to his heart. He affirmed that he uses his private voice and funds to fight for them and in support of them. He also insisted that one should use their own voice and he thinks that every brand and person has a right to be vocal. Zac Posen has joined the squad of big-name designers who have refused First Lady Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump from dressing them up and this squad lists the name of Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Sophie Theallet and Philip Lim.

Zac Posen is not agreeing to Trump's way of running administration. As mentioned in US Magazine, Posen is among those designers who have dressed A-listers such as Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Oprah Winfrey in the past. He also had been a designer to Michelle Obama. He also mentioned that he think everybody has got a political responsibility and everybody has got a voice which can and has to be used for the right cause no matter from whichever field one is from. We can expect Zac Posen to be a diplomatically answering judge but in this very case, he is much concerned which can be easily seen from his refusal of designing the dress for First Lady Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump.
"Call The Midwife" Season 6 garnered mixed reactions from the viewers as two of the main female characters finally kiss after several episodes portraying a unique chemistry that led to romance. Mostly, the LGBT community gave the series a thumbs-up considering that it was quite a brave thing to do when the series time slot was on prime time.

According to Mirror UK, the love affair of the Patsy and Delia began almost two years ago, but they only had their first real and passionate kiss in the latest episode of "Call The Midwife" Season 6. The relationship of Patsy and Delia was conveyed in a realistic note as the two female characters initially kept their relationship a secret.

The much-talked-about kiss of Patsy and Delia in "Call The Midwife" Season 6 may have raised a few eyebrows from the critics, but most of the viewers agree that the kissing scene was done tastefully and was truly fit for the flow of the story. Given that Patsy and Delia have been separated for quite some time, it was only logical for two lovers who have been missing each other for a while to share a sweet kiss like that.

Soon after the credits rolled for the said "Call The Midwife" Season 6 episode, viewers reportedly took to social media to express their thoughts and feelings about the show. On another note, fans may have another delightful news to be excited about as there might be a possibility that Camila "Chummy" Noakes might be returning in the upcoming episodes.

Miranda Hart, who plays the role of Chummy Noakes, left the series in 2014. However, according to Romper, the actress has said in several interviews that she is not closing doors on the possibility of returning to "Call The Midwife" Season 6.
The ball has officially started rolling for "The Bachelorette" 2017. On March 16, Rachel Lindsay took the spotlight as the newest bachelorette looking for her one true love.

Rachel Lindsay is one of Nick Viall's castoff in "The Bachelor" 2017. Following the grand finale of "The Bachelor" 2017 where Nick Viall proposed to Vanessa Grimaldi, the mansion has been prepared for "The Bachelorette" 2017.

Suitors and possible life-long partner of Rachel Lindsay arrived in limousines and entered "The Bachelorette" 2017 mansion one by one. Four men trying out their destiny in "The Bachelorette" 2017 were earlier introduced during the "After The Final Rose" episode of "The Bachelor."

According to U.S. Weekly, Rachel Lindsay shared that her biggest fear in "The Bachelorette" 2017 was that the process might not work. Admittedly, looking for and choosing the best suitor in front of millions of viewers is quite a grappling thing to do.

Rachel Lindsay's role in "The Bachelorette" 2017 is quite a big deal as she makes history being the first African-American woman to sit on the throne of the female searcher. According to People, the 31-year old attorney from Dallas was more than ready to find her one true love in the reality series.

When asked how she plans to approach the hurdles of choosing among the men in "The Bachelorette" 2017, Rachel Lindsay reportedly plans to take the same route as Nick Viall did, and that is to go with the flow and her gut feel. While she failed to receive a rose from the latest Bachelor, it seems like things eventually turned out for the best as Rachel Lindsay got her turn to choose among some of the best bachelors in the United States.

In an interview in last Feb., "The Bachelorette" 2017 has given the public an idea of what she is looking for in a man. "I'm at a stage in life where I'm ready for a family, I'm ready to get married. I want a guy who is not afraid of that. I've come across that in my past."
From the WaPo:

Irelands leader was in Washington for a series of events in celebration of St. Patricks Day, including breakfast with the vice president, a luncheon at the U.S. Capitol, a one-on-one meeting with President Trump and a long-standing annual ceremony in which the U.S. president is presented with a bowl of shamrocks. ...

And as the day went on, the awkward and at times embarrassing Irish cultural references from Washington politicians were nearly as bountiful as their green neck ties. ...

But perhaps the most appalling moment of the day for some came as [House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)] offered a toast, in honor of Irelands visit.

While addressing the luncheon, Ryan suddenly pulled out a pre-poured pint of Guinness beer from under the podium.

To what our forefathers have started and our children will continue, may the light always shine upon them. Slainte.

The speaker may have used the correct word for the toast, but all Irish Guinness enthusiasts could focus on was that despicable pint. Anyone who has lived in or traveled to Ireland knows the law of the land: a dark, Irish beer should always be topped with a creamy, white, thick foam.

One person tweeted she would be ashamed to be seen holding that pint. It looked like a pint you find in the smoking area at the end of the night, its owner stumbled home long ago, said another.

The Irish news website the Journal summed it up this way: Some questionable Guinness pouring going on in Washington by the looks of Paul D. Ryans pint.
It was a case of virtual hijack of victory out of what seemed to be certain defeat for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Manipur. In the two phase assembly elections on 4 and 8 March, the party won just 21 seats to come a distant second to the Congress which won 28 seats in a house of 60 seats. However, as the incumbent party it used its superior clout and manipulated a thin majority to get an invitation to form the next government by the state governor Najma Heptulla. It is a point of dispute whether not inviting the single largest party first to form the government in a hung assembly amounts to breaking a constitutional norm. Eminent jurist Fali S Nariman definitely thinks so.

Belying all exit polls most of which predicted a clear BJP victory in Manipur, the Congress returned in 28 seats to become the single largest party while the BJP trailed with 21 seats. The remaining 11 seats were lapped up by the smaller parties like the Meghalaya based National Peoples Party (NPP) founded by former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno S Sangma and now run by his son Conrad Sangma. The NPP won four seats, the Nagaland based Naga Peoples Front (NPF) won four seats, Ram Vilas Paswans Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Mamata Banerjees All India Trinamool Congress and an independent candidate all won one seat each.

On the day the results were declared (11 March), the BJP claimed the support of all the 11 smaller party MLAs, plus that of a lone Congress MLA, and was prompt in sending its representatives to the state governor to stake its claim. The Congress was a little late off the block, perhaps complacent because it had emerged as the single largest party and the NPP had promised its support but it too staked its claim to form the government. The governor was surprisingly quick to conclude that it was the BJP which had the majority support. She also told the press that when the Congress leader and then Chief Minister Okram Ibobi met her, she told him to resign first so that the government formation process can begin, implying that the outgoing chief minister was refusing to vacate his post. A large section of the media seized on this part of her statement and publicised it prominently. Ibobi clarified the next day he was well aware of the rules and would resign ahead of the Election Commissions formal notification of the list of winning candidates, and he did.

The Congress needed the support of just three more MLAs to reach the majority mark of 31 while the BJP needed the support of 10. Since it was unlikely the NPF would extend support to the Congress as the latter was vehemently opposed to its main election plank of facilitating the severance of Naga dominated areas of Manipur to be part of a Greater Nagaland being pursued by the Naga militant organisation, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), the Congress only hope was to enlist the support of the four NPP legislators. The Congress could have courted the support of two other MLAs, one of the Trinamool Congress and the other an Independent but even that would not have helped it to reach the magic number of 31.

The NPPs crucial position in the equation became evident in the distribution of cabinet berths when the new BJP government was sworn in on the afternoon of 15 March. It made sure of the NPPs support by not only giving all four NPP legislators cabinet berths but also giving the post of deputy chief minister to the party leader. The BJP also inducted one MLA of the NPF and the lone LJP MLA. Intriguingly, one Congress defector also made it to the cabinet list. Other than these seven cabinet berths, the Chief Minister N Biren Singh and another BJP leader and a contender for the chief ministers post T Biswajit Singh were also sworn in, bringing the BJPs presence in the cabinet to just two members. With many of its own legislators to please, the BJP leadership will have to walk a tight rope indeed.

The lone Congress defector T Shyamkumar was given a cabinet berth despite the foregone conclusion that he would have to face disqualification when the floor test is conducted and he votes against his original partys whip. Perhaps the BJPs strategy is to buy out Congress MLAs and then get them disqualified. This will not only deplete the Congress ranks but also lower its majority in the House. After disqualification, Shyamkumar will continue to be a minister for the next six months before a by-election is held in his constituency from where he will seek re-election from the commanding position of a minister.

When the BJP entered the election fray it was unable to announce a chief ministerial candidate. There were several likely candidates for the post who fought the elections. However, only the two mentioned earlier  N Biren Singh, who is now the Chief Minister, and TBiswajit Singh actually remained. The latter was one of two sitting BJP MLAs in the last assembly who had won their seats in a mid-term by-election.The former was once a Congress minister who left the party after falling out with the then Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh over his exclusion from the cabinet after a reshuffle. Sources say that the BJP legislature partys vote for a CM candidate went to Biswajit. The BJP overseers from Delhi and Assam, led by Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma, however prevailed upon Biswajit to concede to Biren who is the older and more experienced politician, but more than that, is also an important Congress turncoat.

A Clever Ruse

The Election Commission of India had issued a notification saying that on the eve of the polling and the actual polling day (3 and 4 March) no election advertisements would be allowed to be published in the media unless the advertisement had prior certification of the state election offices Media Certification and Monitoring Committee MCMC). The BJP went ahead and had two full page colour advertisements certified by the MCMC for these two days. The party then sent them to all the major newspapers published from Imphal, each to be published on 3 and 4 March. These advertisements were sent to the newspapers along with certificates issued by the MCMC. However, to the dismay of the editors of eight newspapers, it was discovered that the contents of the certified advertisements meant to be published on 3 March had been swapped with one which the MCMC had not vetted. The uncertified advertisement, titled 15 years of Loot, castigated the Congress for its alleged misrule and plunder of public property during three terms in power. The Election Office has now lodged FIRs against the editors of these eight newspapers although the MCMC did not specify what it had certified or withheld. Obviously, only winning matters.

The electoral battle is now concluded, and the BJPs victory is nearly definite, pending a floor test. Unless the NPP changes its mind and decides it is not happy with the compensations the BJP conceded for the loyalty of its four MLAs, the Congress cannot hope to reverse the situation. Even if in the short run the BJP has scored convincingly, there is no guarantee that the new governments problems are over. It will have to keep its own MLAs happy when a majority of the cabinet ministers are members of the smaller parties. There is also the NPF and its manifesto promising the division of Manipur to form Greater Nagaland. The negotiation of the Framework Agreement signed in August 2015 between the Union government and the NSCN (IM) also hinges on the question of Greater Nagaland again. The BJPs strategy hence would be to try and induce more Congress MLAs to defect so that it is not forced to be at the mercy of the NPF.
Assembly elections were held in five states in India in February-March but the news and discussions are predominantly centred on the results in one stateUttar Pradesh (UP). Not only political observers and poll analysts, but even ministers in the Narendra Modi government are busy describing the historic significance of the UP outcome.

The UP poll results indeed underline what many have refused to recognise in the last three yearsthe emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the central force in Indias politics. In a sense, then, the surprise is partly situated in the inability or unwillingness to read the indications of an emerging polity. Suddenly, everyone seems to have awakened to that inevitability and has to take lessons in political science from ministers in the present government. While there is no point denying the effect this present moment may have on the future course of competitive politics and democracy in India, it is necessary to put the outcomes in perspective, at the risk of reducing the dramatic for the prosaic and perhaps being petty! So let us first move away from the extra-ordinary and take stock of the more mundaneand yet importantfeatures of the outcome.

Question of Anti-incumbency

Given the fractured election cycle, a few states go to the polls to elect their respective state legislatures at any given time in a year. In this sense there is a season of a mini-general election almost every year. Slowly but surely these rounds of state elections keep shaping the larger picture that will finally become visible only at the time of the parliamentary elections. This time around, in all the five state elections voters rejected the incumbent governments. While the scale of defeat varies from state to state before we join the bandwagon of the rising new India, we need to acknowledge that this new India indeed has space for voters to defeat the government. If elections are about alternation among the claimants, these elections have underscored that element.

In Manipur, the (Congress) government was three terms old and in Punjab (the Akali-BJP government) was two terms old. In the remaining three states, the governments were in power only for one term each. In view of the utter arrogance and self-indulgence that marks our elected representatives one is tempted to believe that even a mindless alternation is good for democracy. So if misgovernance was the cause of the outcome in one state, it should have played a role in the others too. Similarly, the defeat of the Punjab government which benefitted from the Midas touch of the Prime Minister, and the drubbing in Goa which was being assiduously protected by the (then) Defence Minister, do not sit well with the Modi magic (Modi magic as the faithful call itsee Venkaiah Naidus article in the Hindu of 13 March)! While Modi inaugurates the vision of new India and prepares to preside over the 75th anniversary of its freedomin 2022this aspect of electoral politics that it might continue to have space for voters to reject the incumbents, should send a sobering signal.

The voters have not necessarily singled out any one party for rejectionin the five states they have rejected incumbent governments of various parties. If the elections did not involve the big prize of UP, newspaper headlines would have described the outcomes as mixed fortunes for the different parties involved. And had UP not hogged the limelight, the elections could have been read as some good news for the beleaguered Congress waiting for the tide to turn. As it happened, the elections were centred around one single stateUttar Pradeshand perhaps the implications of this round of state elections would surely deserve focus on not the smaller though significant stories of anti-incumbency but the larger narrative they have unfolded. So, it would indeed be inadequate to shrug these outcomes merely as anti-incumbency.

The Larger Narrative

Over and above the towering influence of Modi, the outcome in each state has had its own characteristics that require attention. Modi turned the election at least in UP into a plebiscite on his leadership so that voters were not choosing a chief minister but were confirming Modi in his office, as it were. In any case, state elections do matter in shaping political competition at the national level. The critical link between state elections and the all-India party competition can be ignored only at the risk of losing sight of the complex dynamics of party competition.

Punjab

Let us begin with the separate state stories first. In Punjab the Akali-BJP alliance should have lost the previous election itself, but the Congress managed to lose it in 2012 mainly due to factionalism. Then, during the last five years, the Akali-BJP government did almost everything to ensure that it would not remain popular. The only unpredictable element was the Aam Admi Party (AAP). Touted as the party on the verge of victory, celebrated as the party of hope for Dalits and one that caught the imagination of the youth of Punjab, it ended up as a poor second. This allowed the Congress a clear victory. But the Punjab outcome presents the Congress with a huge challenge. For the first time since its humiliating defeat in 2014, it has some good news; but how good it would be and how durable the partys newly found fortune would remain, are open questions.

The Punjab of today is not an easy state to govern and the Congress seems unable to bring any freshness to the politics of the state. Given the lacklustre governance records of most Congress governments in the recent past, ruling the state is bound to prove challenging and the Congress is most likely to falter in meeting the challenge. There is a further complication for the party. Amarinder Singh represents a challenge to Rahul Gandhis ways of functioning and for the party it would be an awkward situation where its only success so far since 2014 comes along with an implicit challenge to its only leader at the all-India level. Coupled with its failures elsewhere and the growing exasperation of its middle level leadership, the return of Captain Amarinder Singh might signal the assertion by Congress many local and regional strongmen. So, the party would probably not know whether to welcome this victory or be wary of it for the cascading effect in the near future.

Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand

In Goa and Manipur, the Congress should probably be thankful to the BJP for jumping the signals of constitutional propriety and rushing in to form the government. In both states, the party would have been unable to genuinely form a working coalition. In both states, the BJP trailed the Congress in terms of seats but was the party of the majority in terms of vote share. In Goa, the split in the state Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the attempts of AAP to gate-crash the arena of competitive politics proved inadequate to inflict defeat on the ruling BJP. While the party got almost defeated, the Congress was not able to take advantage of the favourable circumstances. For the Congress, it is surely a moment of serious introspection: the new chief minister of Manipur was a Congress leader until last year and in Goa, the king makerthe leader of the Goa Forward Partywas also a disgruntled Congress leader of yesteryear. This factor doubly underscores the need for a more dynamic and two-way relationship with state level leadershipsomething that the party seems to be lacking consistently.

In the case of Manipur, the task both for the BJP and the Congress is even more delicate. Both parties would need to avoid the temptation to indulge in a cynical game of inflaming the already frayed ethnic fabric of the state. While the entire focus of both pre-election discussions and post-election analyses has been on UP, the most dramatic results have actually come from Manipur. Where the BJP had not a single MLA last time, it has won 21 seats with the largest vote share (36%). This state has witnessed prolonged protests against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA); it has been the theatre of bitter intercommunity clashes between the Meitis, Kukis and Nagas. Close on the heels of Assam, the BJP will now rule Manipur. Immediately after it came to power, the party had trumpeted its breakthrough in the negotiations with the Naga rebels. With a much-too-vocal minister from Arunachal Pradesh installed in the Ministry of Home Affairs (Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, the BJP is poised for a major ideological penetration of the delicate terrain of the North East and the Manipur victory will be significant in this respect.

While the Congress historically has always faltered in its dealings with the various political groupings and ethnic communities of the North East region, the Hindutva forces have believed in relentless efforts to Hinduise the communities of the region. Now, using formal power and the half-baked eagerness of various elements to join the ruling powers, the region would be open for further experiments of the Hindutva organisations. These experiments would most likely create many new fractures and widen the pre-existing cleavages both between Indias mainstream nationalism and identities of the communities from the region on the one hand and among the various communities themselves over the issue of their self-identification and their location within the Indian nation-state.

Uttarakhand is a two-party state and the Congress and BJP have almost alternated in power there. Both are deeply divided parties internally and prone to intra-party rebellions. The victory of the BJP in this state has also been accompanied by defections from the Congress, including by the veteran N D Tiwarythough the extent of its impact is somewhat doubtful. What should however deserve note is the fact that in this bipolar state, the BJP has wrested power convincingly with 46% of the vote share and more than 80% seats.

But all these state specificities pale in the backdrop of the BJPs dream comeback in Uttar Pradesh. In the days and months to come, details about the UP outcome would be proffered and objective facts about the Samajwadi Party (SP) misrule would be touted. Suffice it to remember that the victory of the BJP comes with an enviable near-40% vote sharesomething that is in itself the centrepiece of these elections given the fractured polity UP has been and the three-way competition that it witnessed. So what distinguishes this election outcome is not just the BJPs victory in UP, but the scale and timing of that victory. The party has managed to retain the voter support that it had acquired in 2014. That support in its turn, has been the expansion of the partys dramatic performance in 1998-1999.

This remarkable continuity suggests that the BJP has more or less succeeded in shaping a durable base in the state. That base did not translate itself into seats and electoral success in the 2004 and 2009 elections, nevertheless the core had remained intact. In 2014, the BJP succeeded in not only strengthening that base but marginally improving and expanding it. But three years since then, not many would have expected it to replicate the 2014 performance. The BJP managed this and therein lies the special nature of the 2017 outcome. With 40% vote share, the BJP ended up getting over 75% of the seats.

Decisive Restructuring of the Party System

The scale and depth of the BJPs victory in UP have overshadowed almost everything else since the results became known. This massive victory of the BJP in UP brings to the forefront the changed nature of the polity and the structure of the emerging pattern of party competition. This new pattern has two core elements. One pertains to the party system and competitive politics; another relates to the grounds of political contestation and the terrain of ideas.

The first element of the emerging party system might appear as more descriptive than analytical. But to the extent that the opponents of BJP are not prepared to accept the descriptive element, this point requires elaboration. In 2014, Modis handsome victory inaugurated a new framework of party competition. The BJP clearly emerged as the dominant party not in mere numeric terms, but more substantively. It stretched to a large number of states, received support from a cross section of the society, placed the leadership factor at the centre of competitive politics and above all, set the tone for the political debates. Since then, but also during that election, the BJP and Modi made every effort to set aside the state-specific factors, make them less relevant and bring about an all-India imagination that dominated the electorate. This feature of the BJPs politics went against the established pattern of state-dominated competition.

After coming to power in Delhi, the BJP has alternated between acquiescing into the dynamics of state-specificity and the shaping of an all-India paradigm of politics. The Modi factor continued to push state-specificity aside. Bihar was a rude reminder of the importance of state-specificity, but the BJP still persisted with its strategy of countering state-specificity by the national or the all-India factors. The crusade against black money and the hype over nationalism are both instances of this strategy. Modis address to the party after the election results indicates this turn most explicitly. After UP, he was not talking onlyor even primarilyabout UP. The vision he talked about was the vision of new India. So, it was clear that UP or any other state assembly election would no more be treated by the BJP as the choice of a state government, but a plebiscite on the partys larger vision and a mandate for executing that vision. The micro-management that Amit Shah is famous for is distinct from treating the state as the central platform; it is only a tactic to ensure that the all-India narrative receives its sustenance from localised moves. This shift away from the states may pose a serious crisis for state parties.

In fact, it might be reasonable to expect that the BJP would strengthen the all-India narrative as the central focus of politics since that would help the party neutralise some of its tougher opponents who are based in the narrative of the state. The BJP had two tough tests: one in Bihar and the other in UP. It failed the first test, but the performance in the second has almost neutralised that failure. Similarly, in 2014, the performance of the BJP was much better against the Congress compared to its performance against the state parties. This was of course, partly due to the fact that state parties dominated in many states where the BJP has had a limited presence. However, with UP, the party has now shown that it can steamroll the state parties just as it can wash out the Congress. Therefore, the BJPs current stature makes it quite invinciblein regional terms and also in terms of the structure of the electoral contestsbi-party or multiparty. This clearly ushers in the era of single party dominance. As of today, the BJP rules a large part of the countrysomething that would now be reflected in the changed equations in the Rajya Sabha.

It has also been the only and first party to win a clear majority since Rajiv Gandhi did so in 1984. Also, in the post-Indira Gandhi period, Modi is the only leader to truly claim mass appeal almost throughout the country. Therefore, as I argued initially in the aftermath of the last parliamentary elections, the coming of Modis BJP in 2014 marked a shift away from the past quarter of a century. This indeed was a new phase that was commencing in Indias competitive politics ((Hindu 23 May 2014). The outcome in UP has again underlined developmentand now it seems that many observers are ready to accept this reality. The present moment is undeniably the moment of the second dominant party system.

Terrain of Ideas

But more than the inauguration of the second dominant party system in terms of structure of competition, it is the ideological terrain this development needs careful scrutiny. In tune with the true implication of the idea of a dominant party system, the rise of BJP as the dominant force also underscores emergence of a new politics. That brings us to the second critical aspect of our current political scene. While the BJP has yet to truly emerge as a dominant party by getting re-elected in 2019, the party is already busy ushering in a new hegemony. The idiom and import of this new hegemony are complex. The new politics of Modis BJP is going to be a blend of new Hindutva and the political economy of a new variety. Newspaper columns and unsolicited counsels to Modi keep hoping and advising that this moment be used by Modi to rein in Hindutva elements and focus on the economy. Indeed, a whole lot of the commentators love Modi as the messiah of development and governance and think that the other Modi would fade into the background. What they conveniently ignore is the fact that it is unthinkable that BJP and Modi have given up, or for that matter would ever give up, Hindutva.

To be sure, Hindutva has travelled a long way from the ideas of M S Golwalkar. While Modi has never pretended to proffer a new vision of Hindutva (much of his approach originates in the Savarakarite view of Hindutva), his politics and that of his party has the ability of shaping the Hindutva rhetoric and also shaping the popular imagination about what Hindutva constitutes. Modis Hindutva exhorts the followers to become Hindu politically. The conflation between nationalism and Hindutva has been the backbone of the new hegemony. That is why the BJP has been so happy with intellectuals trying to problematise the nation. That particular intellectual initiative simultaneously places the BJP in a position of immense advantage and ensures that anti-BJP would necessarily be equated with the anti-national! The mixing of the registers of nationalism and Hindutva adroitly strengthens the BJPs new hegemony because while many people may not have any emotional connect with the idea of Hindutva, a majority certainly has emotional investment in the idea of nation. Because the BJP succeeds in conflating these two, new recruits to Hindutva come from a cross-section of the society.

The other key component of the new hegemony consists of the idea of development. On the one hand, the Congress was the initial architect of this component but does not have the political courage and ideological sophistication to capitalise on it in present times. On the other hand, the social justice discourse and the left discourse chose to emphasise the fact of poverty and inequitable distribution of wealth. While that was not an inaccurate point, the presentation of that narrative has begun to appear far removed from the collective expectations of economic comfort. As a result, throughout the decade since late 1990s, the popular expectations fanned by globalisation and inadequately satiated by Indias political economy remained unattended.

The BJP faltered in making haste on the platform of shining India, but no other party really took note of the potential of that politics of hope and expectation. Ironically, the Congress did have the past record of similarly tapping hope and expectationthrough the audacious Garibi hatao slogan! But the party had ceased to allow any political imagination and therefore, instead of seizing the initiative, it went on hoping that voters would be willing to support it only on the basis of a discourse of palliatives. Modi took over from where Pramod Mahajan had left the politics of hope and received enough response to it to turn that into an integral element of his ideological offering.

The second key element of the new hegemony was thus carved out from the utterly innocuous but eminently evocative term of development. So much so that after the UP victory, Modi felt assured enough to inaugurate his idea of new India---a land of opportunities rather than doles. It would require more analytical energy, time, and indeed space, to decipher this language of the new hegemony. There are gaping holes in the new set of dominant ideas that are gaining ground and surely, there is bound to be deep unease at the fundamentally inegalitarian and anti-pluralist populism informing these ideas. But the arrival of this hegemony is not easy to contest.

In the coming two years, the BJP would be entering electoral battles on its home ground in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. A defeat in these states would be embarrassing but whether that defeat would fracture this hegemony is doubtful. Independently, both these ideasHindutva and developmentare potent political discourses. By weaving them together with nationalism Modi has bound them into an arsenal of his political offensive. Therefore, the coming times would be less about electoral victories and more about the onward march of this hegemony in the realm of popular imagination; about how democracy shapes in Modis new India.

Reference

Palshikar Suhas (2014): A New Phase of the Polity Hindu, 23 May
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Get the latest on all the biggest court and crime news in Essex direct from our expert court reporter

A senior Essex Police detective has sought the help of the people of Brentwood to catch a group of thieves who have used motorcycles and motor scooters to commit a series of robberies.

Investigating officers believe the spate of incidents, which include opportunist snatchings of mobile phones in the street, theft of motor vehicles and criminal damage, may be linked to criminals operating out of London.

Police have also reported that suspects have also been using weapons to intimidate and threaten, as well as making off without payment.

Officers are urging the public to remain alert and vigilant, particularly for motor scooters or motorcycles travelling in pairs with pillion passengers.

Detective Chief Inspector Jason Hendy said: "The net is closing on the people responsible for these crimes and we'll be using all the tools in our box to bring these criminals to justice.

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"We believe these incidents may be linked to criminal groups in London and my officers are working with Metropolitan Police colleagues to share intelligence.

"My message to those gangs is to stay out of Essex because we are coming after you. We will take strong, visible action and are building the evidence and intelligence we need to take down the people committing these crimes once and for all.

"The people responsible for these incidents commit their crime and escape rapidly, so in addition to our police response I need the public in Shenfield, Brentwood and Hutton to help me catch them."

If you witnesses one of these incidents or have any information, call Essex Police on 101.

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Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin received assurances during his visit to the U.S. that Crimea and Donbas would not become bargaining chips of Washington, D.C., and Moscow and that sanctions against Russia would remain in place, the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Mariana Betsa has said.

"We've received clear assurances and clear guarantees from the American side that Crimea and Donbas are not bargaining chips, are not the subject of any deal [between Washington, D.C., and Moscow], and that sanctions will remain until the occupation of Crimea and Donbas ends," Betsa said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

According to Betsa, U.S. representatives assured Klimkin that sanctions are an important tool in handling Russian aggression and putting an end to the occupation of Ukrainian territory.

Klimkin was in the U.S. from March 6 to March 7 on a working visit. He met with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as well as representatives from the U.S. presidential administration.
In January 2016, the body of 28-year old Italian academic Giulio Regeni was found in Cairo. The autopsy showed that he had been tortured for days. To this day, the crime has not been fully explained and the perpetrators have not been caught, although the evidence is damning. Mr. Regeni disappeared on the 5th anniversary of the 2011 uprising when there was a robust security presence in downtown Cairo.

Egyptian human rights activists say that the torture methods used bore the signs of those of the security forces and the police attempted to cover the circumstances of the disappearance. The assumption is that Mr. Regeni was a victim of rising police brutality in the country. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly referred to the regular use of torture in Egyptian police custody and Mr. Regenis case is a bitter reminder that it is barely possible to conduct independent research in Egypt these days. The problem is not only the individual breaches of the human rights but also with the way the Egyptian authorities deal with them.

Instead of solving the cases and making the perpetrators accountable for them, the regime largely denies the incidents and explains them with absurd conspiracy theories. In doing this, Cairo ignites the already widespread paranoia within the population, thereby detracting from the regimes failures. But first and foremost, it is sending an unwavering signal: even if police brutality is not conducted under an official order, in todays Egypt, no one can and should feel safe.

Conducting academic research in Egypt has become increasingly difficult since the 2013 military coup detat, which had a negative impact on Egyptian academics in the first place. Academics have since then been exposed to travel and publication restrictions and financing possibilities for independent research have also become more restrictive. International academics have also been forced to reconsider their activities in the country. While academic research has never been easy in the country, since the murder of Mr. Regeni many academics fear even to enter Egypt.

The fate of academics is also shared by journalists, who are often banned from publishing reliable information. Most state and private media back up the regime by disseminating its propaganda. The few remaining critical media outlets are being silenced and their reporters thrown in jail for the alleged spread of misinformation. The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces Egypt as one of the biggest jailers of journalists worldwide. On the current World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, this North African country is infamously ranked 159th out of 180.

The European Union was the only entity that issued a condemning statement to the government of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi for its negligence to investigate the death of the PhD student. The statement also criticized EU member states that continue to strive for a normalization of relations with Egypt, despite reports of serious human rights violations.

The Regeni Murder: Egypts Repression of Academics and Journalists  Commentary by Stephan Roll and Lars Brozus  Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP).

(The commentary can be downloaded here)
Written by ACM





*Strasbourg/SupraMolecular RST Institute/Angelo Marcopolo/- The President of EU's Scientific Research Council, (ERC), Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, a Top Mathematician from France, speaking to "Eurofora", Highlighted Europe' Highest Science body's current Policy on International Relations, and particularly vis a vis Russia, USA, and China, as well as various other Countries in the World.



He was in Strasbourg, Together with EU Commissioner responsible for Science and Technology, Carlos Moeda, (Comp. f.ex. Moeda's Replies to "Eurofora" Questions, also at : ...), for several Events organized on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary since the Creation of ECR (2007-2017), as well as for various relevant Meetings with European Politicians at EU Parliament, during its Plenary Session this week here.



ECR's 10th Anniversary's Events were Hosted at the University of Strasbourg, in the presence of its New President, Professor Michel Deneken, and Welcomed also by the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Thierry Mandon, but realized in close Cooperation with famous NOBEL Prize in Chemistry, Professor Jean-Marie Lehn, CEO of the Supra-Molecular Institute for Research and Engineering, where he has recently Succeeded to Gather also anOther 2 NOBEL Prizes : First Martin Karplus and recently also Jean-Pierre Sauvage, creating, together with several Younger Researchers, a kind of scientific "Lehn Galaxy"...



(See Both Deneken's, Mandon's and Lehn's Replies to "Eurofora"s Questions, at Other, Specific NewsReports).





ECR has a Multi-Billions  Pluri-Annual Budget in order to Select and Fund various Research Projects on the sole Criterium of their "Scientific Quality", which are due to be prepared in Europe and/or at an ECR-Associated Country, (Comp. Supra).This includes also Projects about Teaching and/or Diffusing, i.e. Popularizing Science, as 2 recent examples show, President Bourguignon revealed to "Eurofora".

-------------------



On International relations, to put it in a Nutshell, ECR's President would Like to Develop Stronger Links with Russian Scientists, given their traditional Importance, naturaly finds relations with the USA of primordial interest, while also wishing to find out asap the New Science Policies of the Trump Administration, and is Glad that Cooperation whith China has entered recently into a very Good Direction, making him Multiply his Visits to that "Huge" Country, as he Told us, (See Infra).



Added to an Area Closer to the EU, (which is destinated for "Association" Agreements), in fact, the Biggest Players in the World, (such as USA, Rusia, China, etc), are expected to conclude "Cooperation" Agreements with the ECR, he explained, in substance, inter alia.



------------------------------

On Russia, and Other Countries

-----------------------------------------------------



- "The Scientific Tradition of Russia is of Exceptional Value. So that, certainly, for EU Scientists it's Important to Develop Good Relations with the Russian Scientists", ECR's President told "Eurofora" from the outset.



- However, "in the specific situation of the Russian Federation, we (ECR) do not yet have a Special Agreement with Russia", he regretted, for the Time being.



- While, nevertheless, "During the last Decade (2007-2017), we have concluded Special Agreements with 9 Countries out of the EU.



- But Russia is not yet part of that", while, f.ex., "USA - the First -, China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, etc", already do.



+ "And we are currently in the process of Negotiating with India, Australia, etc.", he added.



+ In Addition, there is also the "Different situation of <<Associated>> Countries, which have concluded a real Agreement with EU Commission, including Long-Term Commitments".



- "This concerns, typically, Countries like Norway, Switzerland, Israel, etc., but also, Recently Ukraine, Tunisia, FYROM, etc"., (i.e. Countries very Close to the EU, located at its vicinity, "in an EU Area", as he observed).



------------------------------

USA Changes

------------------------------



- "Concerning the USA", nowdays, "Nobody Knows yet how things will Evolve, since", inter alia, "there is also a quite Radical Change of Administration", ECR's President observed, for the Time being.



- In particular, "the New American Administration is going to Design a New Policy to Support Science, that hasn't yet been determined".



- "So, Nobody knows Today, how it will be done".



- "The only known point is that, f.ex. the US Environment Agency had its Funding considerably affected, particularly after the nomination of a Director", that some find "controversial", as he noted.



- But, "We don't know yet what will happen for other Agencies, which have an Essential Importance for us (EU)".



- "F.ex. the NSF (National Science Foundation), whose Director is a nice Lady, Mrs France Cordova, (an AstroPhysicist), that we know quite well, and, normally, is not part of what Americans call "the Political Pools", i.e., those who Change with each (New Presidential) Administration".



- However "it still remains to Know", f.ex., "what Budget it (NSF) might have, in which Context, etc", Bourguignon carefuly added.



--------------------------

China (and Shanghai)+

------------------------------------



- "In the case of China, We (ECR) have recently Signed a Cooperation Agreement with what is called <<the Chinese NSF>>, and that Deal "is now Evolving very Well", f.ex., "I make several Visits to China", and "the Commitment of the Chinese Minister (of Science and Technology), Mr. Wan Gang, a Good Friend of Europe, is very Strong", ECR's President appreciated.



+ "Eurofora" reminded the Fact that, at one of the Latest EU - China Summits in Brussels, Back on July 2015, (Comp., f.ex., "Eurofora"s NewsReports from that event, at : ... + ..., etc), a Key point was Beijing's offer to practicaly Advance Beyond simple Trade, and start Considering Co-Productions, based mainly on Cooperation in Science-Research and Technological Development, in order to Export also Joint Products to various Other Countries in the World



- "These (above mentioned) Cooperation Agreements with China had been somewhat Affected, Back on 2014, when China moved from the status of a Developing Country, to that of another (Higher) Status, where, if it participated in European Projects, then, it should Fund that by itself" too, he reminded.



- But, "finaly, an Agreement was Found, Negotiated between EU Commissioner Moedas and the Chinese Minister of Science (and Technology), Mr Wan Gang, so that the 2 Parties, EU and China, Decided what Amounts of Funds they would make Available".



- "This might represent some Tens of Millions , even Hundreds of Millions  for Certain Projects, but it does not affect directly the ECR" itself, Bourguignon explained.



- Because, "we, as ERC, have directly Negotiated with the Agency often called "the Chinese NSF" (i.e. National Science Foundation-like), which Funds f.ex. Visits of Chinese Chientists inside ERC's (European) Teams".



" This is Independent from the Political level Agreement which has bee Concluded (almost in Parallel) between EU Commission and the (Chinese) Minister" of Science/Technology, he Distinguished, showing their Additional and the quite Differend, specialized character of each.



- "We (ECR) have Signed" that (2nd) Agreement Last Year" (2016), "and, therefore, it practicaly Started to Operate from This Year (2017)".



- "So that, we have Already Chinese Scientists, supported, for their Travel Expenses, by that Chinese Agency, who arrive in Europe, and go visit European (Research) Teams".



- As for that, above-mentioned, quasi-Parallel Agreement with EU Commission, (Comp. Supra), "it was Also, almost at the Same Time, during Last Year", (2016), he reminded.



- For the rest, "China is a Huge Country, insie which there are a Lot of Scientific Activities, in Many Cities and Regions" : It's not only Pekin and/or Shanghai, but "it's almost Everywhere" f.ex. Cheng Doo, Kong Jo, Shanghai, Shiang, etc : "Science is Present at a Great Number of Areas in China", he found.



- Thus, Personaly, ECR's President has "made almost 40 Visits in China !", he told "Eurofora". "To be more precise : My Next one will be the 39th", he smiled.



- Last, but not least :

On the occasion of his visit, Today, in Strasbourg, ECR's President, to whom we had just said that "Eurofora"s Scientific Advisor, Dr. Constantin Marcopoulos, from Strasbourg University, whose PhD Research area is quite Near to that of New, 2016 NOBEL Prize Winner, J-P. Sauvage, present Today in ECR's Events here, but works now in China's Shanghai city, (Similar to New York, Geneva, Saint Petersburg, Sudney and Strasbourg), suddenly reacted by telling us, with a Smile, that, by an astonishing Coincidence :



- "Next week I will be in Shanghai !"...

(ECR's 10th Anniversary Cake, with Candles' Fire, among 2 NOBEL Prizes, 1 Minister, European ECR + French CNRS Research bodies' Chiefs, etc).



(../..)





***

("DraftNews", as already sent to "Eurofora" Subscribers/Donors, earlier. A more accurate, full Final Version, might be published asap).
Written by ACM



*Strasbourg/CoE/Angelo Marcopolo/- A Pioneer of Internet Global Communications, since the Early 1980ies, Professor in German University of nearby Karlsruhe (an EU "MIT" for many), as well as Experienced Top Representative of Internet Providers Associations, both at the European/International Level, and, particularly, for the currently Thriving German Digital Industry, Professor Michael Rotert, speaking to "Eurofora" on the sidelines of a CoE's PanEuropean/International Conference in Strasbourg, (See Infra), clearly Confirmed the Interest also of ISP Businesses in Europe to carefuly examine certain Delicate and "Hot", Topical Issues, affecting Both Human Rights and Economic/Social Interests, including that of Recently Growing, Controversial Attempts to activey involve Internet Providers in attempts to Block so-called "Hate Speech" by various Users, which raises Complex Questions whenever it goes Far Beyond the obviously Legitimate Fight against Violence, but might alsoo affect People's Views and Opinions on Political or Social matters, etc.

- F.ex., in several such cases, it' Not always Evident what might be Really "Hate Speech", or Not, while, also, Different Experts might give Contrasting Verdicts, on a matter which Concerns also ECHR's Art. 1O on "Freedom of Expression", as well as EU's Fundamental Rights' Charter, etc., Prof. Rotert criticized earlier.



By doing so, as an Official Representative of Internet Providers Associations at a European level's Debate, he Revealed, in Fact, that this, currently, very "Hot" and Topical Issue, does Not concern Only the Human Rights' Defenders and Community, (which had been the 1st to Raise relevant Question Marks : See Infra), but also Hard Facts and Real Interests of Economic Actors in EU/CoE Member Countries, opening an way for some possibly Interesting Synergies.



Already, in a Recent Past, various relevant NGOs, including from the UK, Belgium and the USA, etc, with activities Spreading from Christian Values supporters, to Businesses, Medias, or Internet Freedom Associations, etc., which used to Cooperate also with EU Commission in Brussels, had launched Strong Protests and "Hot" Alerts against a Commissioner's controversial attempt to broker a Deal with Big Corporations among Internet Access Providers, (Most of them from the USA, such as "Google", "Facebook", etc), in order to Block and/or Muzzle any eventual Publication at the Web of Contents which might be considered as "Hate Speech", even if they had Nothing to do with Violence (i.e. Appeals for - and/or - Apology/Negationism of Violent Acts, etc), but Only concerned EU Citizens' Expression of Opinions and various Views on Social Issues and/or Values, Political Debates, etc, (See, f.ex., inter alia, also "Eurofora"s NewsReports at : ... + ...).



Things became even "Hotter" After the recent US Presidential Elections of November 2016, particularly when the Out-Going Obama Administration and some of its Closest Allies, had become quite Upset by the very Active and apparently Efficient Role that have Played Many and Various New Internet Medias in the UnExpected Victory of New US President Don Trump, (in Addition, also, to several Other such Socio-Political Developments, recently, also throughout Europe, etc).



To the point that, in Addition to various Similar Developments, launched inside the USA during the Last Months of that Out-Going Obama's Administration, (i.e., f.ex. between October/November 2016 and January 2017), we witnessed, even inside CoE's PanEuropean Parliamentary Assembly, during its Latest Plenary Session in Strasbourg, on January 2017, the Astonishing, and apparently UnPrecedented event, at the Vote of Amendments in a Report on "Internet Medias", addressed Only from Negative points of View, such as "Hate Speech", etc, a PACE Rapporteur from a State Notoriously "Problematic" on Internet Freedom and/or Free Speech Issues, (Turkey), to Systematicaly and Totaly Oppose All Amendments, even the most Lenient ones, presented by certain Mainstream and Experienced Top MEPs, as, f.ex, also the former Long-Time PACE Commitee President, Valeriu Giletchi, a prominent ChristianDemocrat MEP from Moldova, etc., including a Simple Mention of the Word "Freedom of Expression", and even a Faithful Citation of ECHR's well-established Case Law's famous Formula on the Legal Definition of the Human Right for Free Speech, its content, interest, scope and limits, (which were all, curiously, Rejected, with a Small Difference of Votes, by a Tiny Minority of MEPs Present at the Hemicycle until a very Late Hour of that Evening, while Most MEPs were Absent, during a particularly Busy Session Date)...



Therefore, it was, naturaly, a Welcome and Timely Development, to see, Today at the COE, that even a Representative of Internet Providers' Businesses, with Strong European, PanEuropean and even International Experience at Top Jobs in that area, and coming from one among the Biggest EU and CoE Member Countries, (Germany), as Professor Michael Rotert, was Motivated enough in order to Actively Raise such a nowadays "Hot" and Delicate Issue, which Affects Both Human Rights, GeoPolitics, and the Economy of Europe, (Comp. Supra and Infra). Particularly when it comes from an Historic Pioneer of Internet, who has reportedly Worked in certain practical Coperations Bringing Together Germany with France and USA, even China, etc., f.ex. already as Early as since the Middle 1980ies, when he managed to set up the First Email and/or other Trans-Continental Internet Communications, even Before the Creation of the World Wide Web during the 1990ies, (when f.ex., the 1st Web Page was notoriously Published from Geneva on 1995 by a Brittish Scientist on Physics, one of the 1st multilingual Internet Medias was Published and Experimented by "Eurofora"s co-Founder and some other Journalists Friends, under the Initial Name of "EIW", at the Beginning of 1996 in Strasbourg, closely Followed by the Famous "Drudge Report" in the USA, from 1997, etc. : See, f.ex. ...). But also by a Well Experimented Top Representative of European/PanEuropean/International Associations of Internet Providers, (before Focusing recently on the relevant German Industruy Association), often Invited at various Top European and/or International Fora, (including f.ex., the "Internet Foundation", "IGF", etc), and EU/CoE Expert.





Rotert was a Keynote Speaker in an exceptional CoE's Conference, Today Afternoon in Strasbourg, on "Key Trends from the AudioVisual Market, and Regulation", organized by CoE's PanEuropean AudioVisual Observatory (EAVObs), for the Celebration of its 25th Anniversary since it was Founded (1992 - 2017), (which had Invited also "Eurofora" to attend), on the occasion of which it Published its New, 2017 "YearBook" on recent Developments around Cinema, TV and Video on Demand (VoD), etc., Production, Circulation, Services, Distribution and Markets, as well as main "Players", concluding on current Perspectives for the emergence of "PanEuropean Groups" in Broadcasting and/or Medias Services.



Even Symbolicaly, EAVObs had been created by the COE on a very "particular" Year, 1992, when, (as Reminded earlier one among its Experts : Fransisco Cabrera-Blasquez, from Spain), the US was under Bill Clinton's Presidency, a Bloody War was Starting in former Yugoslavia, and "Mickey Mouse" was Arriving in Europe, (All this at the Same Time)... "Eurofora" remembers that by a Timely Coincidence, 1992 was also the Year during which Opened in Strasbourg the "European Press Centre" superb, Modern Building, (then Serving Journalists and Medias who covered Both the COE and EU Parliament, etc), in an overall Context of a Will to Help Boost Europe's role in the World of Global Informational/Cultural flows.



Today, 25 Years Later, Professor Rotert seemed to Agree, at least in principle, with "Eurofora"s subsequent remark that, in fact, the Issue that he had raised now, had at least a Threefold Dimension : (1) Human Rights and Freedom of Expression, (2) GeoPolitical, since most Big relevant Internet Providers are still located out of Europe, mainly at the US, (and particularly nowadays California). (3) Economic, as Users and/or other relevant Players, who might find, eventualy, too cumbersome and/or controversial, one or another relevant EU/COoE Rules about certain Delicate areas of so-called "Hate Speech" and Internet Providers' possible role and/or Duties, could Search to Find anOther Location, at anOther, Different Jurisdiction, elsewhere, (f.ex. Switzerland or Iceland, as far as EU Rules are concerned, and even USA or various Other Countries in the World (as some Interet-related Businesses have already done), as far as COE is concerned, possibly resulting in a regrettable loss for European Economy too.



CoE's Director on Medias and Internet, Silvia Grundmann, in a subsequent Intervention at that Conference, and afterwards speaking further with "Eurofora", warned that the PanEuropean Organisation for Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law's competent Steering Committee on Medias and Information Society (CDMSI) currently Prepares a brand New official Recommendation, includig several relevant Norms, whose Draft is expected to be presented to COE's Highest Political Body, its Committee of Ministers, for Final Decision, towards the End of 2017.



The work of such Inter-Governemental Committees of the CoE is, in principle, largely "Confidential", and everything depends on Final Political Decisions by its Committee of Ministers, which will be Chaired, then, by Danemark.



Meanwhile, during the current Preparation period, CoE's Inter-Goveremental work is under the supervision of Committee of Ministers' rotating Chairmanships by Cyprus, which will be succeeded from the End of May 2017, by the Czech Republic, and Prof. Rotert ensured "Eurofora" that he intends to be well Present, as an Expert and/or relevant NGO/Civil Society representative, to the Work of CDMSI and other related CoE or EU bodies, "in order to Defend the Positions of Internet Providers" also on the above-mentioned, mainly Human Rights Issue.



That matter becomes even more Topical Nowadays, from Manifold points of View, including even the AudioVisual Content Creation and Industry, whose Consumption model's "No 1 Shake-up", recently, is the Transition between Cinema and TV towards a "Rise of Internet Platforms", (including for VoD, etc), as stressed CoE's AudioVisual Observatory Expert, Agnes Schneeberger, speaking during the Conference Concluding session, together with the PanEuropean Body's CEO, Suzanne Nikoltchev, well experienced particularly on Legal affairs.



However, CoE's PanEuropean AudioVisual Observatory's Committee Chairman, Johannes Studinger, concluding the work of the Conference invited for a "Dialogue with Legislators" nowadays, inviting "Not to be Afraid to Ask Questions", even if Critical.







(../..)





***

("DraftNews", as already sent to "Eurofora" Subscribers/Donors, earlier. A more accurate, full Final Version, might be published asap).





***






The Donetsk water filtration plant (WFP) has resumed operations and water supplies to Avdiyivka in Donetsk region, according to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Hennadiy Zubko.

"Starting at 13:50 local time [on Friday, March 17] the WFP began supplying water to the city," Zubko said on his Twitter page on Friday.

Spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Svyatoslav Tsegolko on his Facebook page on Friday said water would be pumped into the water distribution system of Avdiyivka around 16:00 on Friday.

"The Donetsk WFP is again operating. Around 16:00 water supplies will arrive in Avdiyivka's water distribution system. Water is now filling the city's reservoirs. Head of the Donetsk Regional Administration Pavlo Zherbivsky has reported this to the president," Tsegolko said on his Facebook page.

As earlier reported, on March 14, 2017, electricity transmission lines were damaged and water supplies to Avdiyivka were disrupted as a result of military operations.

On March 16, Zherbivsky reported on the resumption of electricity supplies, saying water supplies would be resumed on March 17.

A joint center for control and coordination of relief efforts received safety guarantees from Ukrainian troops and combined Russian-separatist militant groups, allowing repair works to the water filtration system to be carried out.
When Medina County resident Clara Aragon-Delk posted online her displeasure over a body-contouring procedure she underwent at a San Antonio medical facility, her doctor allegedly retaliated by uploading a video of the woman in her underwear to YouTube and Facebook.

I will damage your professional reputation, and you will be humiliated! Dr. Tinuade Olusegun-Gbadehan warned in a 2015 email to Aragon-Delk, according to an administrative complaint the Texas Medical Board filed against the doctor in September.

The board said Olusegun-Gbadehan violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA, a federal law, prohibits medical providers from disclosing confidential patient information.

Aragon-Delk expressed shock at the incident.

I was just mortified, Aragon-Delk said in an interview. It was the most humiliating experience I think anyone could experience. I just couldnt believe it was happening.

Aragon-Delk had alerted the Texas Medical Board, which oversees physicians, and the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, which enforces patient privacy and security rules. Aragon-Delk said she never gave her consent before the video was uploaded on the internet.

Olusegun-Gbadehan, of the Dr. O Medical & Wellness Center in the Stone Oak neighborhood, agreed to an order with the Texas Medical Board two weeks ago, avoiding a contested hearing before a state administrative law judge. Under the order, Olusegun-Gbadehan must retake the Texas Medical Jurisprudence Examination within the next year. The exam addresses laws and rules in the practice of medicine. Her medical license will be immediately suspended if she doesnt pass it after three tries.

Tony Cobos, an Austin lawyer representing Olusegun-Gbadehan, disputed Aragon-Delks allegations.

We deny that any violation occurred, Cobos wrote in an email. The matter was originally a billing dispute. However, to avoid a time consuming and expensive hearing process, the matter was settled by agreement. The Agreed Order itself indicates that the matter was in dispute by Dr. Olusegun and that remains our position.

The order states the doctor neither admits nor denies the boards findings and that she entered into the order to avoid further investigation and the expense and inconvenience of litigation.

Also as part of the order, the doctor must complete 24 hours of continuing medical education, including eight hours on HIPAA rules. She also has to pay a $2,000 administrative penalty.

Lou Burton, a spokesman in the Office for Civil Rights, declined to comment, citing agency policy on open or potential investigations.

Olusegun-Gbadehans troubles arent over. Last week, Aragon-Delk sued her for as much as $1 million in damages for mental anguish and physical pain and suffering. Olusegun-Gbadehan has not yet responded to the action.

On its website, the Dr. O Medical & Wellness Center promotes a nonsurgical tummy tuck that is the preferred treatment of Latin American television and movie celebrities living on South Beach.

The Nigerian-born Olusegun-Gbadehan graduated from Georgetown University Hospital and was issued her state medical license in 2009.

According to the Texas Medical Board complaint, Aragon-Delk started the first of six noninvasive laser contouring procedures on her abdomen, buttocks and legs in April 2015. Her medical records dont contain a consent form sufficiently authorizing the treatment, the complaint noted. But she gave consent for Olusegun-Gbadehan to take photographs and authorized their anonymous use, the compliant added.

In May 2015, Aragon-Delk made a video testimonial on the results of the procedures. But by the following month, Aragon-Delk had a different opinion. According to the complaint, she posted a comment on a link Olusegun-Gbadehan had shared on Facebook.

Beware! Aragon-Delk wrote, according to the Texas Medical Board complaint. Send me a message, and Ill share my experience with this crap.

Charles Brown, a Houston lawyer representing Aragon-Delk, said she made no public comments about the doctor or the procedure.

Aragon-Delk has alleged in her lawsuit that during the first procedure she was burned on the left side of her torso, below her breast and throughout her abdomen. She also accused the practice of overbilling her.

The Texas Medical Board complaint, though, said Olusegun-Gbadehans records show that Aragon-Delk was informed of the disputed charges and that no burns had been documented.

Olusegun-Gbadehan responded to the overbilling charge by sending Aragon-Delks video testimonial to the merchant processing company, which the Texas Medical Board alleged was a HIPAA violation as well as unprofessional.

In August 2015 Aragon-Delk wrote, If you like you can message me, on the link Olusegun-Gbadehan previously shared.

Ten days later, Olusegun-Gbadehan emailed Aragon-Delk to point out that what she was now saying contradicted comments in the video testimonial. The doctor also allegedly posted a video of Aragon-Delk on YouTube, according to the Texas Medical Board.

This video result, when posted as a response to your next slanderous comment about the Dr. O Lift on social media, will be just as damaging to YOUR professional reputation, the doctor wrote in the email, according to the board complaint. Let this communication serve as our formal legal notice to you regarding these matters.

Included in the email was a link to the video on YouTube, according to the Texas Medical Boards complaint. The unsecured communication breached Aragon-Delks confidentiality and was unprofessional, the board said.

Dr. Hubert Weinberg, a New York plastic surgeon who prepared an expert report that accompanied Aragon-Delks lawsuit, said Olusegun-Gbadehan violated the standard of care to maintain patient privacy when she uploaded the video containing images of Ms. Aragon-Delks face and nearly naked body on public websites.

Aragon-Delk directed Olusegun-Gbadehan to remove the video and filed police reports with the San Antonio Police Department saying the doctor was harassing her by posting a video of her in her underwear on YouTube and Facebook, the complaint added. Aragon-Delks lawsuit said the video contained the words Clara in her own skin. There was no mention of that in the Texas Medical Boards complaint.

Olusegun-Gbadehan sent another unsecured email to Aragon-Delk in September 2015. I will damage your professional and you will be humiliated! the doctor wrote, according to the complaint. She said people will see your glowing testimonial and your body, enjoy your Hi-Def video. Enjoy as others will do the same.

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Olusegun-Gbadehan committed a HIPAA violation by continuing to threaten the patient with disclosure of (the) videotape, the board alleged.

I would say this is a blatant violation of HIPAA privacy rules, said Ramona Lampley, a professor at St. Marys University School of Law whos not involved with the case.

Asked if Olusegun-Gbadehans conduct was criminal, Lampley said she was hesitant to say because she hasnt spoken to the parties.

Hypothetically, if a doctor acted in the way you describe and intentionally threatened in an email with personal protected health information, and did post personal protected health information on the internet to retaliate, then yes, I think that is willful conduct giving rise to a potential criminal penalty, Lampley said after being briefed on the case by the Express-News.

A person who knowingly violates HIPAA with the intent to use individually identifiable health information commercial advantage, personal gain or malicious harm can be fined up to $250,000 and/or face up to 10 years in prison, the law states.

If she did this  assuming she did this, shes a person who should not be practicing medicine, said Edward F. Malone, a Chicago lawyer familiar with HIPAA and who is not involved in the matter but was briefed on it by the Express-News. If this isnt malicious, I dont know what it is. Its pretty stunning. I think she got off easy from the medical board.

The Texas Medical Board considered mitigating factors before imposing sanctions on Olusegun-Gbadehan, according to the mediated agreed order. Those factors were that doctor has no prior disciplinary history, she admitted she was responsible for poor patient communications and she cooperated with the boards investigation.

Texas Medical Board spokesman Jarrett Schneider declined to say why the board didnt take harsher action, saying, we typically allow the order to speak for itself.

Patients cant sue a doctor for a HIPAA violation. Theres no mechanism in the law that allows it.

Frankly, its really unfair because the person who is injured by this is the patient, said Brown, Aragon-Delks lawyer.

So Aragon-Delk is making a health care liability claim under state law against Olusegun-Gbadehan. The suit alleges the published video and harassing emails were meant to damage (Aragon-Delks) personal and professional reputation and to continue circulating confidential health information.

pdanner@express-news.net
Fitch Ratings on Thursday downgraded much of iHeartMedia Inc.s debt after the company offered a sweeping new debt exchange program aimed at extending bond maturities dates and staving off bankruptcy.

Fitch Ratings bumped the San Antonio-based radio and billboard giants debts down a notch to C from CC. Both ratings are considered junk bond ratings.

As an incentive for the new debt exchange offer, iHeartMedia is offering debt holders up to 49 percent of the equity in its international billboard subsidiary, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc., according to iHeartMedias debt exchange offer announcement. The billboard subsidiary is considered the healthiest part of iHeartMedia.

The remaining 51 percent would be spun off into a separate company owned by iHeartMedia shareholders, including the two Boston-based private-equity firms that acquired 70 percent of the former Clear Channel Communications company in 2008. Those companies are Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

If the offer doesnt draw enough interest from debt holders, the radio-and-billboard company would remain consolidated and intact.

IHeartMedia owns 89.9 percent of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings. The rest of the billboard companys stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The board would separate the radio and billboard sides of the company it it gets enough interest, but the level of participation necessary remains unclear, Fitch Ratings analyst Patrice Cucinello said Thursday. IHeartMedia has not announced a percentage of participation needed to spin off the billboard subsidiary.

IHeartMedia is offering to exchange up to $14.6 billion of the $20.37 billion in debt the company held as of Dec. 31. Much of the total debt stems from the 2008 leveraged buyout of the company by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

The debt exchange offer expires April 14. But a smaller iHeartMedia debt exchange offer that was completed in February was modified and extended twice as negotiations dragged on between the company and bondholders.

This (exchange offer) will probably see a similar path, Cucinello said.

Fitch estimates that iHeart could reduce its aggregate debt balance up to $4.3 billion assuming full participation by lenders and noteholders, the debt ratings company said in a report Thursday.

IHeart sees its holding of Clear Channel Outdoor as a tool to tear down the debt levels. The timing makes sense, Cucinello said, referring to the $8.3 billion in debt coming due in 2019.

The company wants to push out maturities by two more years to create more runway  to avoid bankruptcy. IHeart wants to try to recapitalize its debt outside of bankruptcy, Cucinello added.

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Investors who bought iHeartMedias debt at par, or full price, will have to take a loss. The company is offering investors a range of between $750 and $880 per $1,000 in bonds due in 2019 that would be pushed out to 2021. For senior notes due in 2021, the company is offering its lenders $350 for new secured notes per $1,000.

Fitch views the proposed exchange offers as distressed debt exchanges given our belief that the present capital structure is unsustainable and that the exchange offers are being conducted largely to avoid bankruptcy, the Fitch Ratings report stated.

Fitch will re-evaluate the companys debt ratings once the results of the exchange offer is reported by iHeartMedia, Cucinello said.

A call seeking comment from Bruce Bennett of the Jones Day law firm, which represents some of the investment firms and hedge funds that hold iHeartMedia debt, was not returned Thursday.

dhendricks@express-news.net
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LONDON  Britain asked regulators on Thursday to investigate whether 21st Century Foxs $14.3 billion deal to take full control of the British satellite television giant Sky would give media mogul Rupert Murdoch too much control over the countrys media landscape.

The takeover for the 61 percent of Sky that 21st Century Fox does not already own was agreed on in December and is the second such effort to combine the two companies since 2011. The latest attempt quickly raised a wave of criticism in Britain, where Murdoch already holds several media interests.

Karen Bradley, Britains minister for culture, media and sport, said in a statement to Parliament on Thursday that she had referred the deal to regulators on the grounds of media plurality and commitment to broadcasting standards.

Bradley said that although 21st Century Fox had contested her position, none of the representations have led me to dismiss the concerns I have regarding public interest issues.

I am of the view that it remains both important, given the issues raised, and wholly appropriate for me to seek comprehensive advice from Ofcom on these public interest considerations and from the CMA on jurisdiction issues, she said, referring to Ofcom, Britains broadcast and communications regulator, and the Competition and Markets Authority. The two regulators have until mid-May to report back to her.

Along with the investigation in Britain, the merger is expected to face a review by antitrust regulators in the European Union. Sky offers television, broadband and telephone services to nearly 22 million customers in Austria, Britain, Germany, Ireland and Italy. It also runs the only commercial 24-hour news channel based in Britain, Sky News. The British Broadcasting Corp. also operates a 24-hour news channel, but it is funded by a license fee.

Concern over the role of Murdoch and his family in the British media has been a major issue over the years, and the takeover bid has renewed fears about their potentially increasing power in Europes media.

Debate will center on the steps required to mollify regulatory concerns, said Martin Moore, the director of the Center for the Study of Media, Communication and Power at Kings College London.

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In the past, they have talked about ways of separating out Sky News, Moore said. There will be lots of discussions made around whether the commitments made around Sky News are adequate.

In 2011, News Corp., 21st Century Foxs predecessor company, made and then withdrew a $12 billion offer for Sky as it was confronted with a controversy over phone hacking by journalists in Britain, which led to one of its newspapers being closed.

That bid in 2011 prompted Ofcom to conduct a fit and proper test of whether the people who would be running the company were fit to do so. The review concluded that Sky met the necessary standards, but according to Moore, its decision this time could be affected by the dual roles held by James Murdoch, Murdochs son who is chief executive of 21st Century Fox and chairman of Sky.

News Corp., which is now a sister company of 21st Century Fox after the two split, owns the British daily newspapers The Sun and The Times of London, as well as The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch is executive chairman of both companies.

When 21st Century Fox, which is based in New York, announced the takeover of Sky in December, it said it expected the transaction to close by the end of this year.
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Canada Goose Holdings Inc.s shares surged in their debut Thursday after the high-end coat maker went public with a richer valuation than its global peers.

Shares climbed almost 27 percent to close at $16.08 in Toronto, where the company is based, after the retailer priced its initial public offering at $12.76 apiece. That gives Canada Goose, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a market value of about $1.72 billion.

Known for its $900 parkas worn by celebrities from Toronto rapper Drake to Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista, Canada Goose is more expensive than its publicly traded peers, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Maja Rakic wrote in a note Thursday.

Based on Rakics estimated 2017 earnings, the company has a price-to-earnings multiple of 45.5, beating out Hermes Internationals 37.2 and Brunello Cucinelli SpAs 33.5.

Investors are betting on international sales growth of the retailers flagship coats, as well as potential expansion into new products, said Bruce Winder, partner and co-founder of Toronto-based consultancy Retail Advisors Group.

Investors have to be careful because theres always that first day of trading halo, Winder said. The jackets across the world will work. Its more about the other things and how much they are banking on that.

For Chief Executive Officer Dani Reiss, broadening the number of people who are familiar with the brand will be one of the first steps. He attributes much of the past growth on organic word-of-mouth and the companys relationship with the film industry. The trademark upside-down North Pole map logo can be spotted in the latest James Bond film, Spectre.

So far, that seems to have worked well: When Bain Capital acquired a 70 percent stake in Canada Goose in 2013, the company was valued at about $250 million, people familiar with the matter have said.

We are investing in digital marketing to accelerate that brand awareness, he said in a phone interview Thursday. That plays directly into the relatively new e-commerce strategy the company is employing and touted on its IPO road show. The direct-to-consumer business is very important because we want to have more relationships with consumers, he said.

Expanding direct-to-consumer sales should keep the companys revenue growing, Rakic said.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, the company posted revenue of $218.3 million. It had a compound annual growth rate of 38 percent for the past three years. Net income, which hit $19.9 million last fiscal year, grew at a rate of 196 percent over the same period, according to the IPO prospectus.

Canada Goose operations likely support near-term expansion plans aimed at Germany and Scandinavia, Rakic said. The company needs to make further investments soon, which could weigh on profit. Keeping tight cost controls while driving sales will be key.

Much of the companys recent success can be attributed to the perceived authenticity of its brand. Canada Goose was founded in a small warehouse in Toronto in 1957 as Metro Sportswear Ltd., specializing in woolen vests, raincoats and snowmobile suits. In recent years it has shifted its focus to luxury consumers, targeting shoppers who drive Land Rovers rather than dogsleds.

Theres also an emotional aspect to investing in Canada Goose  a Canadian company, with great visibility and an endearing brand, said David Soberman, a professor of marketing at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management.

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The company plans to expand into markets that include knitwear, footwear, hats and gloves, as well as travel gear and bedding, in the coming years, according to the deal prospectus. CEO Reiss says it will do so thoughtfully, to avoid the brand dilution seen at other retailers that expanded too quickly.

Every product we make needs to be a best-in-class product, he said. We dont just put logos on products.

As past retailers have seen, chasing growth is easier said than done. Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. is an example of a brand whose expansion plans went awry, according to Winder of Retail Advisors Group. The company has been trying to diversify in menswear and accessories like smart watches and perfume, while sales of its trademark handbags dwindled.

In the process, the proliferation of its trademark MK emblem has meant diminished prestige because of increased availability, Winder said.

Some, like Soberman, will be closely watching the shares when the weather warms.

You have a company that is doing very well and is very visible at this time of year, he said in a telephone interview. People dont think that these things have a big effect, but if it were really sunny out, Im not sure it would be doing as well.

Canada Goose raised $255.3 million in its IPO, pricing the shares above the marketed range of $10.50 to $12 a share, according to a statement Wednesday.

Reiss, 43, received $48.4 million from the IPO, selling 3.85 million shares at $12.75 each. He maintains a 24 percent stake in the company. Bain will continue to hold a 57 percent controlling interest in the company after the IPO, filings show.
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Two years ago, as Alexus Arizola volunteered at a FIRST Robotics Competition regional, she noticed there were all-girls teams from Austin and Houston. But she didnt see any from San Antonio.

Then a freshman at the Young Womens Leadership Academy, an all-girls school, Alexus said to herself: OK, we can have our own team then.

She contacted a competition organizer and eventually got the green light to form a team.

That part was simple.

Schools with more established programs, like South San Antonio High  the citys first school to establish a robotics team  enjoy sprawling workshops, a reserve of tools and robotics classes.

In contrast, YWLAs ElektraBots team had few tools and a few hundred dollars to work with.

In lieu of a real workshop, the girls worked out of a small converted storage room at the school, where towers of spare plastic chairs were pushed up against a wall to make room for two folding tables that served as the main assembly areas.

The girls treated robotics as any other extracurricular activity, volunteering time after school and coming in on Saturdays to build.

The teams main mentor was school counselor Ashley Cash, who at the time knew little about robotics but was just as excited as the girls to learn.

Victor McLerran, the principals husband and a retired power plant worker, signed on as a community mentor, teaching the girls how to properly handle tools and occasionally bringing home sections of aluminum to cut with the saw in his garage.

Expectations were not exactly high for the newcomers.

But the rookie team members advanced to regional quarterfinals, much to the surprise of other teams  and themselves.

Cash sensed competitors disbelief turn to awe as they advanced through the competition. Now this year, with some experience under its belt and a significant funding boost through grants, the team is striving to improve its standing.

Ive been on this journey with these ladies, Cash said. We have come a long way.

This years steam power theme challenges teams to build robots that can briefly operate autonomously, climb and deploy hollow plastic balls and gears.

As is the case with most engineering exploits, the girls began at the drawing board in January.

Over six weeks, the board grew crowded with various lists, diagrams and formulas. They would first construct a duplicate robot with which they could practice, experiment and work out problems, followed by the assembly of an identical competition bot.

Throughout the build, the team looked to student leaders like Alexus and senior Klarissa Gonzalez, who were both on the schools nascent team. As more experienced team members, Alexus and Klarissa were both excited about progressing this year. Klarissa, who wants to pursue a career in aerospace engineering, quickly fell in love with robotics.

This basically just helped me know that I really want to go into an engineering field and make a difference in the world, she said.

In mid-January, the team members started constructing the practice robot. Instead of agonizing over the instruction manual as they did last year, the team got to work after a week of planning.

Later that month, the team still was in the prototype phase, but what began as a box of random parts finally was starting to look like a robot. Alexus leaned over a laptop, playing a tutorial about wiring control systems. The girls shared ideas about how they wanted to install the mezzanine, a layer of plexiglass that would protect the motors and software. Sophomore Gaby Garcia laughed over her handiwork as she manually threaded several small metal rods.

Oh, I did a terrible job, she said with a laugh.

The students still had much work ahead, prompting Cash to joke that the girls should host a weekend sleepover at the school. But they were still way ahead of schedule compared to last year, Klarissa said.

Weeks later, toward the end of February, the build season was drawing to a close. On the final Saturday before the building deadline, the YWLA team was at Sam Houston High School to test its creation on a makeshift competition field. A loud whirring sound filled the air as the robots wheels sought traction against the carpet. Students and mentors bustled around, conferring with each other and making final adjustments.

The fact that the YWLAs robot was functional was an achievement, after a crisis earlier in the week. For three days, the robot simply would not work. Alexus, who was in charge of programming, frantically tried everything, to no avail. Finally, the team begged a mentor from Brandeis High School to lend a hand. But as soon as he plugged in the battery, the problem seemed to have fixed itself.

Sometimes, thats how the process works, Cash says  two steps forward, three steps back.

Finally, Feb. 21 marked the arrival of bag day, when all teams were required to encase their robots in thick plastic, in compliance with a midnight deadline. The day brought some relief to students who had spent endless hours on the devices. The girls giggled as they awkwardly wrangled the heavy robot into plastic that created static on Klarissas hair.

Its official, Klarissa declared once a zip tie had sealed the bag. Building seasons over.

When Cash asked how they felt, the girls said they were tired, hungry, relieved. Then they launched into a debate about the design of the team shirts.

Theres no other team thats going to have that discussion  how much glitter should the shirt have? Cash said.

As the YWLA robotics program has developed, Principal Delia Montelongo-McLerran said she has watched her students learn about more than just engineering.

These young ladies  not only are they learning the nitty-gritty of the design process and engineering and robotics, theyre learning how to collaborate together, Montelongo-McLerran said.

The YWLA team will compete at the Alamo Regional in early April.

lcaruba@express-news.net
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Lynlie Wallace, who has been seen as a serious contender in the District 9 City Council race, does not actually reside in the political jurisdiction she hopes to represent  or even the city of San Antonio  interviews and documents show.

At a San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board meeting this week, Wallace acknowledged questions about her residency have been a topic in the District 9 race and emphasized her primary residence is at a house on the North Side.

She told the newspaper that a woman who has been the listed account holder on the San Antonio Water System account for the address since 2013 was a roommate.

On Thursday, however, Wallaces story changed after her campaign was presented with information obtained by the Express-News, including interviews with neighbors of the Goldcrest Run house who said theyd never seen Wallace there.

The candidate backtracked and said through a campaign consultant that the person occupying the house isnt a roommate but a tenant who is set to move out this summer.

Questions over her residency arose, in part, because property records show she also owns a home in Austin, where she claims a homestead exemption, which is a tax break on the property a person owns and occupies as his or her principal place of residence.

City law mandates candidates must have lived in the city for a year and in the district theyre running in for six months preceding their filing for a place on the municipal ballot. Wallace filed her application on Jan. 25, meaning that she would have needed to be living in San Antonio by July 25, 2016.

Wallace, whos the chief of staff for state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio and the girlfriend of U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio, is among 10 contenders seeking an open District 9 seat in the May 6 nonpartisan council election.

City Clerk Leticia Vacek could not be reached for comment, but she has said residency issues have to be resolved in district court. Earlier this year, District 8 candidate Manny Pelaez faced similar questions about residency. Pelaez continues to campaign and has denied any wrongdoing.

Wallace told the newspaper on Wednesday during the Editorial Board meeting for the District 9 race that the home on Goldcrest Run, which shes owned since 2012, is her primary residence. She said she is registered to vote there and lives there when shes not staying in her Austin house during the legislative session.

I spend part of my time in Austin for work, but I live in San Antonio, said Wallace, 33. I stay there (at the Austin home) sometimes when Im there for work.

The campaign acknowledged Thursday that Wallace cannot enter the house unannounced  because shes a landlord, not a roommate.

Public records show she purchased the house on Goldcrest Run, valued last year by the Bexar County Appraisal District at $147,760, in February 2012. Travis County records show she purchased a house, valued last year at $212,086, in northeast Austin in June 2014.

Though Wallaces voter registration has been tied to the San Antonio address for years, beginning in 2013, the Bexar County Elections Office began mailing Wallaces voter registration cards to addresses in Austin.

Thats the same year that the name on the SAWS account for the Goldcrest Run account changed from Wallaces to another person. The account still is active in that persons name, according to SAWS records obtained under the Texas Public Information Act.

On Wednesday, Wallace told the Editorial Board that the person on the SAWS account was her roommate. Asked to confirm, again, that the person living at the Goldcrest Run house shared the space with her, Wallace said, Yes, she is my roommate.

After the meeting, a reporter asked for the persons contact information. Wallace said she would share it but asked if she could first take a phone call, though her cellphone didnt appear to be ringing, and stepped out of the conference room, saying she would be right back.

She never returned.

Nor did she return a call seeking comment.

Several neighbors said theyve seen a family living in the house and said theyd never seen Wallace there.

On Thursday, through her campaign manager, Wallace walked back use of the term roommate. The person living in the home is a tenant, not a roommate.

Lynlie misspoke and wanted to amend that, campaign consultant Justin Hollis said.

In a prepared statement, Wallace said shell be in San Antonio if shes elected to the District 9 seat.

I have fought for and served the constituents of District 9 for the past 11 years in multiple public service roles. From time to time my work takes me away from home on a temporary basis, she said. Given the opportunity to serve, I will be right here, at my home in District 9, one hundred percent of the time.

Marco Barros and John Courage, two candidates in the 10-way race, said theyd heard the questions surrounding Wallaces residency.

Barros said he thought Wallaces responses at the Editorial Board meeting were confusing and raised several questions. Courage said she doesnt appear to be a qualified candidate.

People in the district need to know at least that theres some dishonesty behind her campaign, he said.

jbaugh@express-news.net
Former head of state-owned arms export and import firm Ukrspecexport Serhiy Bondarchuk has been released on bail, a court hearing on a date of hearings on his extradition is scheduled for March 24, Ukrainian prosecutor general's press secretary Larysa Sarhan said.

"Ex-head of Ukrspecexport Serhiy Bondarchuk was detained on March 15, but was released on bail, as is foreseen by British laws. A court hearing at which a date for hearings on extradition will be set is scheduled for March 24, 2017," she wrote on Facebook on Friday.

According to her, being out on bail, he should stay in London until March 24.

As reported, on January 21, 2015, the chief military prosecutor's office said that Bondarchuk was suspected of embezzling $7.428 million from the state-run company. He is charged under Part 5 of Article 191 (gross embezzlement via abuse of office under a preliminary collusion by a group of persons) and Part 2 of Article 366 (forgery caused serious consequences) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

On January 29 the investigating judge of Kyiv's Pechersky district court permitted to detain Ukrspecexport's ex-head and sent him to court to decide on his arrest.

The court also seized assets of the suspect, which include $10 million in a Ukrainian bank and two Range Rover cars worth over UAH 2 million, or $74,000.

In February 2015 the Interior Ministry of Ukraine put Bondarchuk on the wanted list.

Interpol placed him on the international wanted list on June 15, 2015.

Hearings on Bondarchuk's extradition from Britain to Ukraine are expected not later than the second half of May 2017, according to Deputy Prosecutor General Yevhen Enin.
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AUSTIN -- Legislative budget-writers looked for creative ways to blunt the pain of tight revenues as they worked to finalize competing state spending plans Thursday.

On the House side, there's a proposal to dip a bit more deeply into the state rainy day fund to pay for items including border security.

Among senators, theres a proposed new way to funnel money to higher education.

And in both chambers spending plans at this point, Gov. Greg Abbotts high-quality prekindergarten initiative appears to be toast, which isnt going over well with the top statewide officeholder.

Abbott in his State of the State address urged lawmakers to put more money into the prekindergarten program he championed, saying they should do it right or not at all. House budget-writers earlier picked not at all, and their Senate counterparts have now followed suit.

It's incomprehensible that the Senate is jeopardizing the future of Texas students by depriving them of high quality pre-K, instead forcing them into an unaccountable program, said Abbott spokesman John Wittman.

The Senate Finance Committee proposal would put some money into a different high-quality pre-kindergarten program. The House Appropriations Committee would put the funding into a program that allows school districts to decide how best to provide prekindergarten services.

It gets more mileage out of the money, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Zerwas, R-Richmond, in an interview with the Express-News. When the governor made the proclamation in his State of the State, If youre not going to fund it completely, dont fund it at all, we took him at his word. Youve got to be careful what you wish for.

The budget wheeling and dealing is far from over, but both the Senate Finance Committee and House Appropriations Committee marked a major milestone Thursday by making key decisions on spending for state services and facilities.

The committees expect to vote next week on their spending plans. After that, each chamber will pass a budget, and then the House and Senate will negotiate differences.

Budget decisions are particularly difficult this time because of tight revenues due to the uncertain oil-and-gas industry and past legislative decisions to cut taxes and set aside big money strictly for transportation.

While changes will occur along the way, the House and Senate budget-writers plans already appear to be closing the huge gap between the measures as originally filed.

While they agreed on some initiatives from the start, such as putting more money into the troubled system of protecting abused and neglected children, they differed in other areas.

The initial House proposal would have spent $108.9 billion in state general revenue, which is $4 billion more than state Comptroller Glenn Hegar has said will be available over the next two years. It would have totaled $221.3 billion in state and federal funds combined.

House budget-writers plan on lowering that with cost-containment measures, Zerwas said, including $500 million in contracting cost savings and $1 billion in anticipated Medicaid savings due to expected changes at the federal level.

Zerwas also has filed a supplemental spending plan to take care of lingering expenses in the current two-year budget period, largely for Medicaid, which would be covered with a bit over $1 billion thats unspent in state coffers.

His supplemental measure also would spend about $2.5 billion from the state rainy day fund, covering items including border security and problems in TRS-Care, the health care plan administered by the Teacher Retirement System.

Some Republicans have balked at spending any money from the rainy day fund. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, said he and senators are determined not to tap the fund for ongoing expenses.

Some are willing to use the savings for one-time expenses, and Zerwas suggested border security spending qualifies: I think its a good assumption that well see the federal government come in and start paying for some of these things we typically have paid for.

The Appropriations Committee hasnt voted on the supplemental measure, but Zerwas said he believes committee members are supportive of it.

On the Senate side, budget-writers have voted to add money to what was an austere starting-point plan of $103.6 billion in state general revenue over the next two years, a cut from the $106.8 billion budgeted for the current fiscal period. In state and federal funds combined, the initial plan by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, totaled $213.4 billion.

Among key points, Nelsons starting-point plan would have cut higher-education items by $800 million. Senators voted to add back $400 million and to change funding formulas so that entities that lost big under the initial plan would see smaller cuts. The plan also means, however, some bigger cuts for entities that fared better under the initial plan.

Senators also added money to pay for a measure that would address a shortfall in the Teacher Retirement System, and Nelsons office said funding would be increased to take into account Medicaid caseload growth, which was left out of her initial budget proposal. It also assumes more than $400 million in health-care cost containment.

Among other areas, lawmakers remembered the Alamo in their budgets.

House budget-writers stuck with a plan to add $75 million in general revenue requested by Land Commissioner George P. Bush for the ambitious ongoing effort to restore the Alamo and redevelop the surrounding area. That would give a total of $83.5 million for the shrine known as the cradle of Texas liberty over the next two years.

Senate budget-writers beefed up their initial proposal, which would have allocated about $9 million for the Alamo project. They added $37.2 million in general revenue for a total of $46.2 million.

pfikac@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac
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While defending an accused drug-running kingpin of a South American rebel army who went by the nickname Megatron, a San Antonio lawyer helped scam more than $1 million from the group, authorities say.

The lawyer, Jamie Balagia, 56, pleaded not guilty Thursday in Sherman, in North Texas, to federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice.

He represented Hermes Alirio Casanova Ordonez, also known as Megatron or Megatronico, one of 17 defendants in a drug case filed in 2013, other court records show.

Balagia, an investigator named Charles N. Morgan and a third unnamed defendant are accused of conspiring to launder $1.2 million provided by the narco-guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, whose leaders were told that the money would be used to bribe judges and prosecutors in Megatrons defense, federal sources said.

The FARC was formed in 1964 as a leftist insurgency and up until recent years controlled considerable territory, financing itself with kidnappings and drug trafficking and leaving 260,000 people dead in the process. After a sharp decline since 2011, its remaining fighters have begun disarming under a peace deal reached with the government late last year.

The federal sources said the trio of defendants tried to get $2 million, didnt actually bribe anyone and kept the $1.2 million, with Balagia reportedly getting $600,000.

Balagia, who markets himself as the DWI Dude, is a former Austin cop who ran for Texas attorney general as a Libertarian in 2014. His lawyer has not returned calls or emails seeking comment.

A judge Friday allowed Balagia to be released on a signature bond this Monday, under several conditions, including wearing an ankle monitor while living in his home near Austin, according to the court clerks office.

U.S. prosecutors had accused Casanova of trafficking more than 100 tons of Colombian cocaine into the United States, and extradited him from Colombia to Texas to face the charges. He allegedly worked as the link among the western bloc of the FARC, a smaller paramilitary narco-trafficking gang in Columbia called the Clan Usuga, and two major Mexican drug-running organizations, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Casanova, in a plea deal Balagia negotiated in May 2015, admitted to sending 450 kilograms of cocaine to the United States and to being a narco leader, court records show. He is awaiting sentencing.

Balagia had been preparing for Casanovas sentencing, and on Feb. 27 filed objections to Casanovas pre-sentence report. Sources said Balagia traveled to McKinney to meet with his client March 9, and the FBI arrested him there on the federal indictment charging him, Morgan and the third defendant, a Colombian lawyer whose name has not been made public.

At the bail hearing, defense witnesses, including Balagias wife, a nephew and North Texas attorney Deandra Grant, all vouched for Balagia and said they could serve as custodians if he was granted bond. His defense lawyer noted Balagia has ties to Central Texas, where he and his family live. Several lawyers  from states that include Texas, Colorado, Ohio and Arkansas  submitted letters vouching for his character and ethics.

Jamie has never hinted or suggested, when discussing cases or strategies, to ever cut corners or break the rules to try and get a better deal or win a case, wrote Douglas Wilder, one of the attorneys. He has always played within the rules and advises accordingly.

Prosecutors argued that Balagia is a flight risk and a danger to the community, something all his supporters denied. The prosecutors also told U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Nowak that Balagia has a history of not following the rules  citing his reported drug use when he was an Austin police officer several years ago  and that he was on probation with the State Bar of Texas when the alleged money laundering and obstruction crimes occurred.

In 2014, the State Bars disciplinary arm sued Balagia for misconduct over allegations that he improperly kept $50,000 from a pair of clients in Amarillo. Balagia agreed to a fully probated suspension of nine months, through August, 2015, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said.

As an Austin Police Department officer from 1979 to 1990, he gained fame working undercover on its original vice squad in the mid-1980s, his website said in 2014. Balagia was fired amid allegations that he failed a drug test, but sued successfully to get reinstated. He then left the department.

As a lawyer, Balagia has been a vocal critic of law enforcement's use of warrantless blood draws in driving while intoxicated cases and a vocal supporter of marijuana legalization. He has offices in San Antonio and Austin, with ads in both cities calling him the DWI Dude and telling people to call him if they get stopped on a DWI charge.

He also calls himself the 420 Dude  420 is code for marijuana  and provides guidance on another website for defendants who might get caught possessing the drug.

In the Western District of Texas, headquartered in San Antonio, Balagia has been a defense lawyer on 98 criminal cases, records show.

gcontreras@express-news.net

Twitter: @gmaninfedland
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A federal grand jury has indicted two people accused in last months robbery and shooting of a mail carrier, along with a man authorities say helped them elude officers in one of the two wild police chases that followed.

Bradley AHearn, 22, and Sara Richford, 26, are alleged to have been involved in most of the mayhem that began with the Feb. 11 shooting and carjacking in Spring Branch and continued during their four days on the run, including two car chases in which shots were fired at pursuing officers.

AHearn allegedly shot the mail carrier in the legs and carjacked her pickup  which still had mail and her purse inside  fleeing in it as Richford followed him in a stolen Toyota Venza, according to court documents and testimony.

On Feb. 13, the pair were in the Venza, driving the wrong way south on a busy U.S. 281, with AHearn shooting at federal postal inspectors and police who returned fire before breaking off a miles-long pursuit, according to testimony. A day later, investigators saw them with Piper Lee, 40, at a motel on San Pedro Avenue where stolen mail was also found. With the pair in his vehicle, Lee led police on a high-speed chase and helped AHearn shoot at their pursuers, according to testimony.

The trio abandoned Lees car in a parking garage at North Star Mall and fled in another vehicle with the help of one of Richfords friends, evading a police dragnet, but the friend went to police afterward and the trio was captured the next morning, Feb. 15, at a motel south of downtown, court records show.

In a later search of Lees apartment, postal inspectors found stolen mail, a postal inspector testified at a bail hearing for Richford.

The indictment charges AHearn and Richford with five counts of aiding and abetting an assault on a federal officer, three counts of aiding and abetting the use of a firearm during a crime of violence, one count of aiding and abetting a carjacking, one count of aiding and abetting the possession of a stolen firearm, and one count of possession of stolen mail.

The indictment charges Lee with two counts of aiding and abetting the assault of a federal officer, one count of aiding and abetting the use of a firearm during a crime of violence and one count of possession of stolen mail.

AHearn and Richford could face up to life in prison.

gcontreras@express-news.net
The Verkhovna Rada's committee on issues to combat corruption was not able to conduct a meeting on Friday, which was planned to review the credentials of candidates for an independent commission on auditing the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

Only eight of the 24 members of the committee attended the meeting on March 17, a correspondent from the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency has reported.

"There are not enough members for a quorum. This is already the ninth sitting of the committee over the last three months ignored by the group of parliament deputies from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (PPB) parliamentary faction," said BPP deputy Serhiy Leshchenko.

The next committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 29.

As earlier reported, on February 23, 2017, Ukraine's parliament was unable to delegate its choice of a candidate for conducting an independent audit of the efficacy of NABU. MPs reviewed resolution No. 5571, which recommended appointing Deputy Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice Robert Storch to the position. However, PPB faction head Ihor Hryniv instead proposed British citizen Nigel Brown. As a result of haggling, neither candidate was chosen.

On March 15 and on March 16 the anti-corruption committee was again unable to decide whom to appoint.

Parliament during a plenary session on March 16 was unable to floor a motion to resolve the issue. The measure was supported by only 205 MPs, 21 short of the 226 simple majority required.
WASHINGTON  Ohio Farm Bureau county leaders went to the Hill to discuss agricultural issues like trade, a new farm bill and regulations, but with the recent introduction of plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, farm leaders added these discussions to their agendas as well.

The Ohio Farm Bureau County Presidents trip took place March 13-15 in Washington, D.C., with a full schedule of meetings with legislators and agricultural leaders.

Health care

Right now, agricultural policy takes backseat while the health care issue is being sorted out, but health insurance is very much a part of agriculture and small businesses.

Following party lines, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said the Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable, saying small businesses have seen an increase of 82 percent in premiums.

More providers are dropping out of the program, leaving many counties with only one insurance provider option, which drives up the cost. What we have now is unacceptable, said Portman, who added the U.S. pays more than any other country in health insurance and has the least amount of people covered.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told the Ohio farm delegation the Affordable Care Act may not have been the most ideal health insurance plan put in place, but it did attract more Ohioans to sign up for health insurance than in years past. We need to get more young healthy people in the insurance pool to drive premium prices down, he said.

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also spoke to the Ohioans, and explained, as part of the plan to repeal Obamacare and open up free markets for health care, the Trump administration wants to offer association health plans. These plans would let you buy your insurance through the American Farm Bureau plan if you want to, he said.

Lets take, not just the buying power of all Ohio farmers, why dont we take the buying power of all farmers in America and allow them to set up a purchasing pool so you can get insurance. Having the buying pool of farmers across the nation would push costs down for all those purchasing into the pool.

Ryan said the new administration has a full agenda ahead oh and then, by the way, we got to get to writing our farm bill.

Farm bill

Randy Russell, president of the Russell Group, offered an insiders view on the D.C. political landscape, and said we have a real chance of getting a farm bill done on time.

One of the keys to making sure the bill is passed is continuing to link to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

There are only 34 House districts that are a majority rural and 195 that are a majority urban, he explained, which means there are not enough rural voters to pass the farm bill. To keep interest from the urban districts, the SNAP program needs to be included in the farm bill, Russell said.

Brown said his top priorities are centered around positioning the farm economy to thrive under the new farm bill. Im concerned about prices, he said, noting programs like the dairy Margin Protection Program (MPP) isnt working. But, he said, the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program is working and providing grain farmers the help they need.

However, John Newton, director of market intelligence for American Farm Bureau Federation, disagrees. Newton said there is a major disparity in payments being made to farmers at a county-level (the ARC-County program).

Related: Ohio Farm Bureau Leaders visit the Capitol

Regulations

Portman, stressed the importance of reining in government agencies like the EPA.

The EPA has created over 29,000 regulations in the past eight years, many without using common sense and cost-benefit analysis, that had a big impact on our economy, said Portman.

Waters of the U.S.  repealed by the Trump administration  was one of those that demonstrated this overstep of the government and was unacceptable, said Portman.

Regulations usually start out with good intentions, but they usually end up not making sense, said U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio.

The EPA has not been helpful in protecting the environment, said Gibbs, who added the agency has actually made it harder to obtain the permits necessary to do the right thing.

Russell suggested the Trump administration will be good for agriculture in terms of regulations. I think there is a real opportunity to get production agriculture back in a seat at the table, instead of taking it in the seat of the pants, which is how its been, said Russell.

Tax reform

Speaker Ryan told the Ohio farmers legislators are working on tax reform that will lower tax rates, lower capital gains and dividends and abolish the estate tax. Because the last thing we want to do is have the government stand between you and your dream, and the ability to pass your dream on to the next generation, he said.

American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall said the Trump administration offers the best opportunity to get the federal estate tax repealed.

Trade

Duvall also suggested the Trump administration presents a bumpy ride in trade policy at first, but will hopefully be better for agriculture in the long run.

NAFTA needs updated and we have to make sure agriculture is represented in the process, said Portman. Portman said the United States exports 47 percent of its products to only 10 percent of the world. We have a trade surplus with that 10 percent of the world and a trade deficit with the rest of the world, he said.

We have a good opportunity for good trade agreements.

Immigration

Duvall said if he could spend more time discussing one topic, it would be immigration and farm labor because, it is such a big issue for us.

Jim Rowe, of Tuscarawas County, said many of the dairies in his county employ Spanish-speaking laborers. They want to be a part of the community, he said, but they fear living in an environment that does not make them feel welcome.

Rowe challenged Brown to come up with an immigration policy that helps immigrant workers integrate with their communities, so they dont have to fear a knock on their door that forces them to leave.

Opioid crisis

Brown and Portman both touched on the severity of Ohios opioid crisis and the need for health care treatment programs and education. Ohio has moved to the number one spot in the nation when it comes to opioid deaths. Ohio is also No. 1 in the nation in fentanyl abuse and in the top five for heroin abuse.

The opioid crisis is also the number one cause of crime in Ohio, said Portman. Fifty percent of the cost of Medicaid goes toward substance abuse, he said. Portman is working to introduce legislation that focuses on education and prevention of opioid use.

Buckle up

Russell told Farm Bureau members to expect the unexpected with the Trump administration. The three key issues for agriculture going forward will be the farm bill, trade and regulations.

Buckle up. Its going to be an interesting ride for about three years and 10 months.

Images from Ohio Farm Bureau leaders trip to the Capitol
WASHINGTON  One of the highlights for many Ohio Farm Bureau leaders, who traveled to D.C. March 13-15, was a surprise visit from American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall.

(Duvall was elected in January of 2016, during the AFBF annual convention.)

He gave a speech that showed a lot of optimism for the future of agriculture under the new administration. He said he personally knows the nominee for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, and said he is a good man.

But it was a personal story that Duvall shared with Farm Bureau members in the room that revealed a lot about his character. He reflected on re-engaging with his own spirituality and finding time to break away from the busy farm life and reconnect with a neighbor in need.

A neighbor in need

The neighbor had a son who was born with spina bifida. For months, Duvall had neglected to visit with his neighbor because there was just so much work to be done on the farm.

One day  after Duvall got word that the young boy was not doing so well  he had been doing his daily chores, but everything seemed to be going wrong that morning. When he came into the house that afternoon, he decided the evening chores could wait. He was going to visit his neighbor.

When he arrived, paramedics and family were all gathered around the young boy as he struggled to breathe. Duvall just sat on the couch  nobody knew I was there, but it wasnt about me.

When the young boys breathing was restored, the boys father turned to see Duvall sitting on the couch. He simply looked at Duvall and asked that they go somewhere. So they went out to the fields and picked up hay bales, because it was what he wanted to do.

As they were out in the field, the boys father turned to Duvall and said, Im losing my faith. These were powerful words to Duvall, who had himself been neglecting his faith because farm life was just too busy.

Re-engage

Something in the way his friend spoke those words to him and the way he showed his gratitude for a friend and neighbor being there that day for him, really hit home for Duvall.

The young boy died not long after that visit, at the young age of 15. But from that day on, Duvall worked to find time to break away from his chores and be a better neighbor and restore his own faith in God.

He used this story to encourage Ohio Farm Bureau members to re-engage with their legislators to make sure their voice is heard. If we disengage from this country, we will lose it, he said. If you dont answer the call  nothing is going to happen.

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan echoed those sentiments in his own speech to Ohio Farm Bureau members the next day. if you are not here sharing your concerns, sharing your stories, theyre not heard.

Related

Ohio Farm Bureau leaders told to expect the unexpected with Trump

Ohio Farm Bureau leaders visit the Capitol
Restoration Farmers

Video: Restoration Farmers We are a family farm in Ontario showing you what we do on our farm to produce eggs and what goes on day to day. Every day we do chores, gather eggs and make feed. On our farm we plant the crops and harvest them to feed the chickens, also we start our laying hens from day old chicks and raise them to be the best birds they can be to give you a grade A quality egg. After we are finished looking after our chickens, anything could happen from washing, waxing, fixing, welding, working on engines, working on classic cars, and more. I hope everyone enjoys cheers.
Two medical experts who examined 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams before and after he died in 2012 testified on Wednesday they didnt find any indicators he succumbed to natural causes.

Some of the medical testimony in Prince William Circuit Court was conflicting. But all three experts agreed on one thing: simple febrile seizures are not known to be fatal. Two experts agreed that the cold, wet state first-responders found Prince in is consistent with drowning and wouldnt make sense for a child having a febrile seizure.

On Oct. 20, 2012, Joaquin Shadow Rams Sr. is alleged to have held his 15-month-old son Prince McLeod Rams under running water, drowning him. Prosecutors say Rams greed, debt, sloth and opportunity made killing his son for life insurance policy payouts worth over $500,000 desirable.

According to the defense, Prince died of natural causes. They say Rams was following instructions for intervening in a febrile seizure. They say a 911-call recording will exhibit the panic, fear and desperation of a father trying to save his sons life.

Former Northern Virginia Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Constance DiAngelo testified that the boys airways, sinuses, lungs and intestines were filled with fluid. She said there was about 350 milliliters of thin fluid in his small intestine and about 10 milliliters in his large intestine.

That is significant, she testified, because as water comes in to the body, it passes quickly into the large intestine. Finding a large amount of water in the small intestine before it is able to pass to the large intestine is consistent with drowning, DiAngelo said.

Under cross examination, defense attorney Christopher Leibig asked DiAngleo about other possible sources of the thin fluid. He asked her about an intravenous bolus that was administered to help start his heart again.

Could the fluids from the bolus result in water leaking into the lungs? Leibig asked.

Some, yes, said DiAngelo.

The medical examiner said she did have knowledge Princes family history of febrile seizures and of the multiple seizures he suffered leading up to his death. But Leibig pointed out DiAngelo didnt note either in her report.

When asked about her cause of death ruling being overturned in October 2014 by Virginia Chief Medical Examiner William T. Gormely, DiAngelo said she still believes Prince died by drowning, adding that cause of death rulings are always opinions.

The low body temperature of the toddler is an indication that the boy didnt have a febrile seizure during the incident that lead to his death, both DiAngelo and Dr. Stephen Keller, a pediatric intensive care physician at INOVA Fairfax, testified.

When first-responders arrived, they didnt take a body temperature of Prince, but they reported that his body was blueish grey and cold to the touch when they arrived about five to seven minutes after 911 was called. When Prince was admitted to the hospital about 30 to 35 minutes after the 911 call, his temperature was taken rectally and recorded at 91.2 degrees. The experts agreed a fever constitutes a body temperature at least over 100 degrees.

Children with febrile seizures are typically still febrile when they are presented to the [emergency room], Keller said. And that is a very low body temperature. It would be very unusual.

Leibig asked the experts if splashing cold water, air temperature, room temperature and exposing the body without clothes would affect body temperature.

Keller and DiAngelo answered yes to some, but the medical examiner said, I dont believe that would cause body temperature to go down that quickly.

Dr. Charlene Banks, INOVA Fairfax pediatric intensive care physician, testified that Princes white blood cell count was initially high, but it returned to normal on its own without antibiotics, which wouldnt have been possible if he had a bacterial infection. She also said blood and urine cultures came back negative for bacterial infections.

The medical experts differed on what constitutes a complex febrile seizure or whether or not Prince had them. But they all agreed that simple febrile seizures are not fatal.

The defense indicated in their opening arguments they will present their own medical experts as witnesses who will testify complex febrile seizures can cause death.

Joaquin Rams trial is expected to last at least three weeks. He is facing life in prison.

Reach Hannah Dellinger at hdellinger@fauquier.com

Jailhouse informant refuses to testify in Manassas City murder trial In a dramatic twist, one of several inmates who were expected to testify in the murder trial
Airbus Group SE said Thursday that French investigators have opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery, and corruption in the companys civil aviation business.

Frances financial crimes investigator  the Parquet National Financier  is investigating the same allegations already being probed by the UK Serious Fraud Office.

Toulouse, France-based Airbus said it will cooperate fully with both authorities.

The SFO confirmed in August last year that it had opened a criminal bribery and corruption investigation into Airbus Group.

The SFO said the allegations relate to irregularities concerning third party consultants.

In April 2016, the UK Export Finance agency suspended funding for Airbus because of a lack of transparency with third-party payments. France and Germany also suspended export funding.

In 2016, Airbus Group generated revenues of 67 billion with a workforce of around 134,000.

In 2012, the SFO said it was investigating possible bribes in Saudi Arabia by a UK-based company owned by Airbuss military division. The military division was formerly known as European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., or EADS.

A former employee of the EADS unit said middlemen gave Saudi officials cars, jewellery, and cash to win a 2 billion ($2.6 billion) communications contract.

Prosecutors in Munich, Germany confirmed in 2014 that Airbuss miliary division was under investigation for bribery connected with border security contracts in Romania and Saudi Arabia. The border contracts were worth $3.7 billion.

Earlier this year, Airbus competitor Rolls-Royce PLC reached agreements with prosecutors in the UK, the United States, and Brazil to settle bribery allegations. The company agreed to pay about $809 million for the global resolution.

* * *

Heres the full statement from Airbus Group of March 16, 2017:

Airbus (stock exchange symbol: AIR) announced on 7 August 2016 that the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had opened an investigation into allegations of fraud, bribery and corruption in the civil aviation business of Airbus Group relating to irregularities concerning third party consultants.

Airbus has now been informed that the French authorities, the Parquet National Financier, had also opened a preliminary investigation into the same subject and that the two authorities will act in coordination going forward.

Airbus will cooperate fully with both authorities.

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
Privately-held Lindsey Manufacturing is the only corporation to ever face a full jury trial for alleged FCPA offenses.

It lost at trial but eventually won a dismissal because of prosecutorial misconduct.

A jury trial, though, means jury instructions. And the instructions Judge Howard Matz gave the jury teach a critical lesson about corporate liability for FCPA offenses. His instructions reflect the American legal doctrine of respondeat superior.

Respondeat superior makes corporations responsible for crimes committed by agents or employees when theyre acting at least in part for the benefit of their employer or principal.

Because of respondeat superior, theres no good-faith or compliance defense for companies accused of FCPA offenses. So for purposes of ultimate criminal responsibility, compliance programs dont matter.

The DOJ can and does consider compliance programs when deciding whether to charge a company or bring an enforcement action. And the DOJ can and does consider a compliance program when negotiating penalties a corporate defendant should pay to resolve FCPA offenses.

But all that is within the discretion of the DOJ. Companies cant win if an employee or agent committed an FCPA offense. Theres no defense. So the DOJ holds all the cards.

Dont blame the DOJ for respondeat superior. It was the courts that created the American version of respondeat superior, through a series of cases across circuits and eras. The U.S. Attorneys Manual has a good recap of the legal authorities here.

The DOJ, like the rest of us, has to live with respondeat superior. So it uses its discretion to soften the impact of the doctrine and encourage compliance. Thats partly what the Pilot Program is about. Companies that have effective compliance programs are far less likely to be prosecuted than those without effective compliance programs.

The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines also attempt to reward companies that have effective compliance programs, and punish them for not having one. But theres nothing in the Sentencing Guidelines that would stop a conviction based on respondeat superior. At trial, in front a federal judge or jury, theres no discretion when it comes to corporate liability. Respondeat superior takes over.

It automatically imposes criminal responsibility on corporate defendants, even if there was a compliance program, even a wonderful compliance program.

Heres how the U.S. Sentencing Commission described respondeat superior in its May 2004 release:

Criminal liability can attach to an organization whenever an employee of the organization commits an act within the apparent scope of his or her employment, even if the employee acted directly contrary to company policy and instructions. An entire organization, despite its best efforts to prevent wrongdoing in its ranks, can still be held criminally liable for any of its employees illegal actions.

* * *

This is how Judge Howard Matz instructed the jury in the case against Lindsey Manufacturing. The company was on trial in 2011, along with its CEO Keith Lindsey and CFO Steve Lee.

Lindsey Manufacturing Company is a corporation. A corporation may be found guilty of an offense. A corporation acts only through its agents and employees, that is , those officers, agents, employees, or other persons authorized or employed to act for it.

To sustain the charge of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or violation of the FCPA against Lindsey Manufacturing Company, the government must prove the following propositions:

First, the offense charged was committed by one or more agents or employees of Lindsey Manufacturing Company;

Second, in committing the offense, the agent or employee intended, at least in part, to benefit Lindsey Manufacturing Company; and

Third, the acts by the agent or employee were committed within the authority or scope of his employment.

For an act to be within the authority of an agent or the scope of the employment of an employee, it must deal with a matter whose performance is generally entrusted to the agent or employee by Lindsey Manufacturing Company.

It is not necessary that the particular act was itself authorized or directed by Lindsey Manufacturing Company.

If an agent or an employee was acting within the authority or scope of his employment, Lindsey Manufacturing Company is not relieved of its responsibility because the act was illegal.

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
International investigations are the heart and soul of FCPA inquiries. As denoted by its title, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act deals with bribes and offers to foreign officials and those of foreign state owned enterprises.

While U.S. domiciled law firms may lead such investigations from the U.S., there can also be a large international component staffed by law firm partners, associates and employees outside the United States. For U.S. lawyers, two of the most sacrosanct rules are the attorney-client and work-product privileges. Now such protections may be in jeopardy outside the United States.

The New York Times reported that German prosecutors raided the offices of the U.S.-based law firm Jones Day, which is heading the Volkswagen internal investigation.

The raid, which removed documents and other materials, suggests that the authorities believe the firm has not divulged all documents that may be relevant to the case. If so, it would be a blow to Jones Days reputation while raising the possibility of new revelations that would further tarnish Volkswagen.

While I would opine that such a raid in the United States would be almost unheard of, unless the law firm was part of a criminal conspiracy, in Germany things are more fluid. Matthias Jahn, director of the Institute for Economic Crimes Law at the University of Frankfurt, told the Times the rules on lawyer-client privilege are less absolute in Germany.

Also, the raid had court approval, so there must have been some reasonable basis presented to a presiding magistrate who granted the order.

One of the things German prosecutors may been seeking is evidence of senior management or even Board level knowledge or involvement. VW has resolutely denied that higher-ups participated in the fraud or were even aware of the existence of the defeat device for its almost 10 years of existence. Yet VW has steadfastly refused to disclose Jones Days findings.

Even if viewed as an outlier of prosecutorial conduct, this raid opens up one very large can of worms not only for VW but also U.S. law firms that use their foreign offices to lead or even participate in international investigations.

If the most basic U.S. legal privileges can be tossed aside, things will become much more difficult in conducting FCPA investigations outside the United States.

____

Tom Fox is a Contributing Editor of the FCPA Blog. He has practiced law in Houston for 30 years. Hes the creator of the award winning FCPA Compliance and Ethics website. He is the Compliance Evangelist. His best-selling seminal book, Best Practices Under the FCPA and Bribery Act: How to Create a First Class Compliance Program (available from Amazon here) is widely viewed as one of the top volumes on the nuts and bolts of compliance.
Angelina Jolie has met with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Angelina Jolie

The 41-year-old actress and Justin Welby, the head of the Church of England, spoke at Lambeth Palace in London on Thursday (16.03.17) to mark the fifth anniversary of the Preventing Sexual Violence initiative (PSVI), which the screen beauty - who is a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - founded five years ago, and the Christian figure was honoured to meet the Hollywood star.

Speaking about the convention, Justin posted on Twitter: "Privilege to welcome UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie. Discussed refugee crisis, South Sudan and prevention of sexual violence in conflict (sic)"

During the visit, the 'Maleficent' star - who has six children, Maddox, 15, Pax,13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox, whom she raises with estranged husband Brad Pitt - and Justin spoke at length about what could be done about the humanitarian crisis in South Sudan where people are starving from famine due to the civil war which has ravaged the African country.

This is not the first time Justin and Angelina have met; the pair joined forces two years prior at the launch of the Center for Peace and security at the London School of Economics, which saw Angelina converse with significant figures from across the globe about bringing an end to sexual violence in conflict.

Justin has previously praised the star for taking "great personal risks" and spoken "authentically" about the topic.

Speaking at the time, he said: "The role of the U.N. Secretary General's Special Envoy on Refugees, Angelina Jolie, is one that has been extraordinary. What she said just now sums up so beautifully the issues we are facing, and puts it so precisely in terms of the challenge that there is. It's wonderful that she has committed her time, her energy, and has taken great personal risks in order to be able to speak authentically as to what she's done."
John Legend believes his wife Chrissy Teigen has a crush on Zac Efron.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend

The 31-year-old model - who married the 'All of Me' hitmaker back in 2013 and went on to have 11-month-old daughter Luna with him - is a big fan of Zac's movies and because she watches him act so much the musician is certain she has the hots for him.

Speaking with guest Samantha Hoopes during the third and final episode of 'Convos with Chrissy' about who their 'Hall Pass' guys are, Chrissy spilled: "John thinks that I really like Zac Efron because I can't stop watching his movies."

The 29-year-old actor shot to fame after starring in Disney's 'High School Musical' franchise and his career has gone from strength-to-strength with roles in 'Neighbors', 'Dirty Grandpa' and the upcoming 'Baywatch' remake.

American model Samantha, who is three years younger than Zac, admits she too finds him attractive but prefers an older "man" like his 'Baywatch' co-star Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, 44.

Samantha shared: "He's cute, but he's little boy cute, I like a man ... I love The Rock too, he's like a man, dude!"

And she quipped back to Chrissy: "So are you two going to go see Baywatch together?" but Chrissy didn't reply.
I have just come back from a fabulous trip to Turin, I was asked by Ford to come and join them for a couple of days whilst trying out there new Vignale luxury car range. The Ford S-Max, Kuga and the Edge. After landing in Turin we were taken to the parking bays to pick up our car for the journey to the hotel. I have always liked big cars so I was not daunted by the Edge a huge family size car, one that all 5 of you can get in even when your kids have grown from children to young adults and teenagers - lots of seat and leg room. Our Sat Nav was started, and off we went it was a far better than the one I have in my car. Travelling abroad can also be a bit strange especially when its night fall, but the car just guided me and we didnt have any trouble navigating the city centre and its little side roads, arriving at our first hotel in good time.

Ford Edge Kuga S-Max

We checked in to the Hotel Villa Savoia which is in the centre of Turin over looking the river which was very nice. We had canapes and drinks before getting picked up and driven 5 minutes away, to a beautiful restaurant Circola dei Lettori, we were going to be eating in La Tampa, which translates to hole. This stunning building was a Palace many years ago. Our menu consisted of 6 delicious courses the food and wine we had were delicious. After our evening meal we went for a little wander around the city, we passed the Egyptian museum, with the biggest collection of Egyptian artefacts outside of Cairo - it has two huge statues outside, guarding the entrance. We then took the short drive back to the hotel most of us decided to say for a little night cap before we were off to bed, we knew it was going to be a long days driving tomorrow to a new location, so to bed it was for me.

I was up bright and early the next morning and the view from my balcony was breath taking - the sun was up and glistening on the Alps in the distance. My room was spacious really comfortable and wanted for nothing, the large king sized bed was what I had needed for a good night sleep.

Breakfast in the hotel was served nice and early with a selection of cakes, pastries, meats, and for the healthy ones fresh fruit and yogurts.

Again the cars were ready for us and I opted for the Edge as I said before it was a great drive, very comfortable spacious and with it being automatic a dream to drive. I was the last one to parked up the night before, so I was the one to take the lead. We had been told when you start to go up the hill stop before you get to the top make sure you are safe, pull over and just look at the view, you will see the whole of Turin with the Alps in the back ground. Well, to late was the cry, I just got carried away enjoying the drive as we started to descend, I knew it was to late we missed it. Well I will have to get someone to send a picture.

The vine yard belonging to the Cerretto family

We were headed for Alba to a vine yard belonging to the Cerretto family - I think it was due to take us about 1.20 hours across country - we did a little bit of motor way driving so you could really put your foot down and experience the sheer luxury with strength of the car. I loved it if I didnt have 4 kids and a husband it could well be the car for me

We all seemed to arrive pretty much together, and just stood in awe at the view in front of us, 97 hectares of vine yard and hazel nut trees, neatly cris-crossed the landscape with the odd Farm house dotted here and there. What better way to appreciate life than sitting there in the nice warm sun sipping wine and with a view to die for life couldnt be better. We were introduced to Frederico, a third generation whose family own the vineyard and all the surrounding land. He gave us an insight into how it all started and after many years of struggling in the last 10 years something happened and things just started to slot into place and now they are a thriving vineyard with 160 hectares of estate owned vineyards 4 wineries 17 different wines and 150 employees how good is that his father still comes daily to visit. We had a full tour of his cellars to see how the wine was stored and the different types of wine they produce, then upstairs for the bit I like, we had a little wine tasting whilst we were there, along with some home grown hazelnuts. The setting is something off a film, set we had the choice to stand on the balcony or to go in a futuristic bubble which stand out on a ledge to do the tasting but we opted to stay out in the fresh air. Frederico then introduced us to two really great tasting wines, I just wish I hadnt been driving I could have really appreciated them.

The Vignale's head off road

We got back in our cars and went for a spot of off-roading around the Cretto estate to see where they produce all the vegetables specifically grown for a salad that is renowned in Alba and put together by a 3 Michelin star chef Eurico Crippa of the Piazza Duomo Restaurant. It is known as the Insalata 21.31.41.51 a salad that depending on what time of the year is put together consists of either 21  31- 41 -51 individual pieces. After seeing and tasting a selection of ingredients in the greenhouses off to the artist house where we were going to be served lunch. This is where Fredericos family allow artists to come and stay and its free to use, just to give them inspiration, but who would not be inspired with views like this, After lunch we were informed that the Insalata that we had, had actually had 100 ingredients in it, it was just beautiful to look at and the taste was unreal. Our mains were veal in pasta, again this just enough followed by cake and ice cream, again we tried a couple more glasses of wine.

After lunch I decided to try a different Vignale car so I opted for the S-Max this is more what I need with having a 4 grown up children. Driving through small villages, and very windy roads the car really handled the corners well, and again with it being automatic going up steep inclines the car had no problem handling any of it, a real joy to drive. We stopped off at a little church that the Ceretto family let artists work on whilst they stayed with them - its multi-coloured and very creative - and it bring lots of visitors to the area, Again the landscape is just incredible.

Back in the S-Max for a short drive, all still in convoy off to go truffle hunting. I have to say its something I have never done but to watch the dog doing it was really good fun when we split into 2 teams to see whose dog dug up the most. Well need I say more, ours won and we were going to sample our winnings later that night.

Our last destination before heading back to our hotel was Bricco Rocche Winery, this is set right in the centre of the Barolo area up on the top of a hill with this amazing huge glass cube. You have 360 degrees of pure breath taking views. While we were all taking in the view Federico allowed us to taste a glass of Bricco Rocche 2005 - they only produce 3000 bottles per year - this bottle alone would cost you 350 euros, how lucky were we. The wine, the location, and the sun setting ,you couldnt want for anything more. I didnt want to leave the view but we had a little more driving and this was taking us back to our final nights accommodation and we hit the Sat Nav and we were off again, this time only a short journey to Piedmont. The S-Max drives great, really comfortable, and very easy on the steering you could almost forget you are actually driving.

In Piedmont I stayed in the Vincafe, a great little city bed and breakfast, the room was huge and had the great balcony were you could sit and see all the hustle and bustle of every day going on around you.

The Enoclub

We all met at the Enoclub for our evening meal, we ate in the amazing room a cellar of some sort they obviously let you use it for large parties, and we sat around the biggest table I have ever seen in my life . Our menu again was incredible, I have never had Fondant potato with black truffle but I would definitely recommend it, that was followed by noodles with bra sausage ragout, I was full after that but then they brought Guinea fowl with hazelnuts, I new I was going to struggle with that one, but I did manage a mouth full, and the Amaretto and chocolate panna cotta desert, I could only look at, but it was all so amazing I new I was going to be a stone heavier, then when I got off the plane. This was all finished off with some well chosen wine and again Frederico gave us a huge bottle of Barolo to have during the meal.

Heading back to the hotel everyone decided to have a night cap, I just had one and headed for bed as I knew we had an early start the following morning. I slept like a log the bed was huge and so comfortable.

Next morning up and down stairs for breakfast, all the locals were sitting having coffee and tapas before heading off to work, I just had a pastry and headed off to the S-Max . All ready to go Sat Nav set and off we went, we were off to the Car Museum and to meet an incredible character called Arrigo Gallizio who designed the car doors on the Lamborghini , he gave us a guided tour and he told us all about the cars he designed over the year. Also he showed us a concept car that his son had produced from a drawing that Arrigo had done 50 years earlier it was stunning, but it hadnt dated it looked like it had been made for todays market. We even had a look at one of the original Fords, the Ford T made in any colour as long as it was black.

Back in the S-Max and this time for a short drive for a bit of chocolate, we went to visit the Guido Gobino, you couldnt come to Italy and not try some chocolate. We were spoilt with trip around the factory to see how their chocolate is produced and what goes into making it. We had a special treat set out for us, we were going to make our own chocolate truffles and to make something from fruit and chocolate it was really good fun and we were allowed to bring home what we had made, not sure that my kids appreciate that I had made them, but still they were edible. After we went for lunch which was rather unusual but different they had prepared meals for us that incorporated chocolate and hazelnuts in the starter main and obviously desert. Before we set off for the airport and my final time in the S-max destination all set, and away we went. Again both of the cars I drove first the Edge and then the S-max handled really well, whether it was off roading, driving stop star in peak time city traffic, or cruising on the motorway I really did enyoy the drive, if I didnt have 4 kids to have to chauffer around I think I would be tempted into getting the Edge its great.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) holds a welcome ceremony for Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud before their talks in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2017.(Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and visiting Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud have agreed the two countries will step up cooperation in all areas and push forward their all-round strategic partnership.

In their talks Thursday in Beijing, Xi recalled his visit to Saudi Arabia last year, during which he reached consensus with King Salman in advancing bilateral ties and cementing cooperation in international and regional affairs.

Xi said he was happy to see that consensus had been implemented by both sides.

China supports Saudi Arabia as it advances on a development path suitable to its national conditions, maintains national sovereignty, security and development interests, and plays greater role in regional and global affairs, Xi said.

China supports Saudi Arabia in its "Saudi Vision 2030" plan, and welcomes the country to be a partner in the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said.

China is a reliable and stable market for Saudi Arabia's oil, Xi said, calling for closer cooperation in such areas as energy, communication, aviation, finance and investment, culture, education, public health, technology, tourism, media and security.

Xi said China and Muslim countries respect each other and set an example of harmonious coexistence between civilizations.

In Middle East affairs, China advocates respecting national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs, Xi said.

China advocates solving disputes through dialogue, easing tensions on hot issues, giving full play to the United Nations' key role and paying more heed to the voice of regional organizations and countries, he added.

The solution to many issues in the Middle East lies in development, Xi said.

China hopes to boost the Belt and Road Initiative with countries along the route including Middle Eastern countries, he added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attend the closing ceremony of an exhibition of archeological relics from Saudi Arabia after their talks in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2017.(Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

King Salman voiced adherence to the one-China policy, and vowed to cement cooperation with China in the areas of trade, investment, finance and energy, in order to upgrade their all-round strategic partnership.

Saudi Arabia highly values China's stance of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, and solving disputes through dialogue and peaceful means, he said.

King Salman also appreciated China's role in maintaining international peace and security, expressing his hope for China's greater role in Middle Eastern affairs.

After their talks, the two heads of states witnessed the signing of cooperative agreements on trade, economy, energy, capacity, culture, education and technology.

They also attended the closing ceremony of an exhibition of archeological relics from Saudi Arabia.

King Salman is on a state visit to China from March 15-18 at Xi's invitation. It is his first China visit since becoming king of Saudi Arabia in 2015.
Meghan Markle is reportedly set to meet Queen Elizabeth on Mother's Day (26.03.17).

Meghan Markle

The 35-year-old actress is currently in a relationship with the monarch's grandson Prince Harry, and the flame haired royal is reportedly planning on taking his girlfriend to meet the Queen for the annual celebration of motherhood.

Prince Harry - who's mother Princess Diana passed away in 1997 after being fatally wounded in a car crash in Paris - has already introduced the 'Suits' actress to his father Prince Charles, and sources say the next step is getting the mark of approval from the 90-year-old monarch.

The source told the Daily Star newspaper: "Meghan is headed to meet the Queen on Mother's Day. She's already been given the green light from Prince Charles, the next step is the Prince's grandmother."

And it isn't just Prince Harry's family that the couple - who have been dating since May last year - need to impress, as the 32-year-old royal was previously tasked with meeting Meghan's father Thomas.

Meghan's brother, Thomas Markle Jr., explained recently: "'My dad knew about [the relationship] from the start.

"He first met Prince Harry about six months ago out in Toronto. He goes once every couple of months - [Meghan and Thomas Markle Senior] are very close and they stay in close contact.

"He's pretty happy about Harry and he's extremely proud of her. They have an amazing relationship, they're very close and they always have been."

Meanwhile, it was recently reported Prince Harry is planning on fashioning his late mother's tiara into an engagement ring to propose to the American actress.

A source claimed: Diana's jewellery collection was left in trust for the boys and Meghan apparently loves emeralds. For Harry, like Wills before him, using his mother's gems means the two loves of his life will forever be linked.

"After Diana died, the boys both chose a keepsake from Kensington Palace when they moved to Charles' rooms in St James's Palace. Prince William picked his mum's Cartier watch, and Harry picked her sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

"But they had an agreement that whoever got engaged first would have Diana's ring - and of course that was William and Kate. Harry wants the same sentiment when he proposes to Meghan, so he is working with the jewellers to design something incredible."
Prince Charles has teamed up with chocolate manufacturers to help end deforestation.

Prince Charles

The 68-year-old royal has joined forces with companies such as Mars, Nestle, and Ferrero to come up with a plan to make chocolate production greener, after environmental group The Mighty Earth warned that chocolate was "killing west African forests on a massive scale", due to the cocoa needed to make the sweet treat.

Speaking at an industry reception at Spencer House in central London, the Prince of Wales said: "There are many reasons for this being, intrinsically, the right thing to do.

"I have for many years have been deeply committed to the protection of the world's tropical rainforests. They play an absolutely crucial role, both globally, and locally, in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

"But perhaps the most powerful direct reason for action is that deforestation threatens to undermine the very resilience of the cocoa sector itself, and with it the livelihoods of the millions of smallholders who depend on it, due to the increased climate variability that follows forest loss."

Chocolate manufacturers are expected to come up with a plan which includes tighter policing of rainforests, and use higher-yield crops which require less land.

The companies have promised to have finalised details of the plan by November, where it will be presented at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP 23) meeting in Bonn, Germany.

World Cocoa Foundation Chairman Barry Parkin said: "Today marks a crucial step forward because 12 leading World Cocoa Foundation member companies have agreed to work together, and in partnership with others, to tackle the challenge of deforestation in cocoa.

"We look forward to more companies joining the effort and are grateful for the leadership provided by The Prince of Wales in convening today's landmark event."
Prince Harry has met with a veteran who survived being set on fire.

Prince Harry

The 32-year-old royal met with Private Karl Hinett at a Veterans' Mental Heath conference on Thursday (16.03.17), as he made an impassioned speech which urged veterans to open up about their mental health, so as to be able to seek appropriate help.

Former serviceman Karl was just 19 years old when he almost lost his life during active service in 2005, after he was torched by a mob in a dramatic attack in Iraq.

The then teenager, from Dudley in the West Midlands, was inside a warrior tank which was attacked by rioters during a raid on a jail in Basra to free two undercover soldiers.

Whilst the four other soldiers in the tank escaped without serious injury, Karl was left with 37 per cent burns, and had to undergo five years of gruelling skin grafts and operations.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry attended the conference on behalf of mental heath campaign Heads Together, which he spearheads alongside his brother Prince William, and sister-in-law Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

He said whilst at the conference: "It is incredibly difficult to talk about mental health in the armed forces. It is still a very difficult conversation.

"As a military person, once you put that uniform on during your training, you are taught to be invincible and not to let anybody down.

"However, a lot of individuals prefer turning to alcohol rather than a friend."

And it isn't the first time Harry - who previously served two tours of duty in Afghanistan - has talked about mental health in connection with the military as he previously drew on his own experiences to urge people not to face their mental health battles alone.

He said: "Stigma cannot and must not be the reason we shy away from equipping ourselves and our families for the day that a dark cloud may appear.

"I have seen the threat that this fear and stigma poses in my work with veterans and my former Army friends.

"Guys and girls in the armed services often need to think they are invincible.

"I know first-hand from my time as an Apache pilot that you do not want anyone to question your ability to cope with pressure and stress."

"When you are called on to assist with a rescue mission in a dangerous situation, you want everyone to know you won't be fazed by the challenge.

"Questioning can bring about doubt, when you know the training will kick in. We all consider ourselves at the top of our game and strive for perfection."
Prince Harry has urged military personnel to "talk about" their mental health.

Prince Harry

The 32-year-old royal - who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan before leaving the Army - visited a Veterans' Mental Health conference in central London on Thursday (16.03.17) where he told over 200 audience members that mental health issues are "not a life sentence" and should be discussed so those affected can get help.

He said: "It is incredibly difficult to talk about mental health in the armed forces. It is still a very difficult conversation.

"As a military person, once you put that uniform on during your training, you are taught to be invincible and not to let anybody down.

"However, a lot of individuals prefer turning to alcohol rather than a friend."

Prince Harry made the visit to the conference on behalf of mental health awareness campaign Heads Together, which he spearheads with the help of his brother Prince William, and sister-in-law Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

The conference was made up of participants including former military personnel like himself, academics, and representatives from organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS) and the Ministry of Defence.

It isn't the first time Prince Harry has been vocal about the mental health of army veterans, as he previously said it was "really important" to make sure former soldiers regain their mental health as well as their physical health when they leave the forces.

He said: "Getting back your mental as well as your physical fitness is a really important thing. One of the biggest struggles is accepting that there is a problem in the first place. Rather than operating at fifty or sixty per cent you can operate at eighty or ninety percent and be a better person."

Meanwhile, Harry also highlighted the importance of soldiers "reintegrating into society" when he visited the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy project in Epping Forest on Wednesday (15.03.17).

He said: "We have to remember that when you leave the force you have to somehow integrate yourself in society. You need to appreciate you're not invincible.

"We could do better to prepare people for that. You've been looked after by the army for so many years, and you have got to somehow reintegrate yourself in society."
Debbie McGee has paid tribute to husband Paul Daniels - one year after his death.

Debbie McGee (c) Twitter

The 58-year-old television performer - who married the magician in 1988 - took to her Twitter account on Friday (17.03.17) to mark the first anniversary of Paul's passing as she gushed about his talent and the "happy years" they spent together.

Alongside a photograph of her beloved spouse, she wrote: "A year today since this smiling face vanished from us. I was SO lucky to have so many happy years with Paul who made me laugh every day, (sic)" followed by a heart emoji.

She then recalled a time in 2015 - a year before his death - in Remini, Italy, performing magic tricks to an audience while they waited in line for a convention.

She said: "Paul was always happy entertaining whether on stage or off. Waiting to see a show FISM magic convention Rimini Italy 2015 No one was bored."

Paul tragically passed away at the age of 77 from a brain tumour - something he only found out at four weeks before his death - and, although he was initially being cared for in hospital, Debbie was determined to get him home so he could spend his final days in comfort and around his beloved friends and family.

She previously said: "The last two weeks he was at home. We had one fantastic week. And my big thing was that I had to get him home. The torture was that if he stayed in hospital and I never got him back to the house - I couldn't bear the thought that he'd never come home. So once I knew I could get him home then I just thought, 'Well, whatever time we have left ... this has got to count.' "
'Great British Bake Off' finalist Jane Beedle doesn't think it matters if the show's new co-hosts have no baking skills.

Jane Beedle

The baking competition's 2016 contestant has given her opinion on Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig taking over from Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc for the new series of the popular show on Channel 4 and she doesn't have any problem with the fact the 'Mighty Boosh' star and 58-year-old comedienne might not know much about cake.

Appearing on ITV's 'Good Morning Britain' on Friday (17.03.17), she said: "I don't think it matters if they can bake or not I'm not sure whether Mel and Sue could bake. They could eat! They do like a slice a cake and as long as you eat and enjoy it I think [they'll] be absolutely fine."

Selasi Gbormittah - who also competed on the show when it was on the BBC - wasn't shocked by the choice of presenters and she thinks Noel, 43, will be a great addition because he'll provide much-needed humour in the intense baking tent.

She said: "It's not surprising news to be fair because they are both really good presenters in their field and you've got Noel Fielding who is very funny which is what we need in the tent, or the new bakers need in the tent."

And she says people need to give him and Sandi a chance before they "knock" them.

Speaking about their lack of baking experience, Selasi added: "Well that's his new challenge now so we just have to wait and see, again we can't knock it till we try it so we just have to wait and see what they've both got to offer. And you've got Sandi who is of course Danish, so she will be good with her pastries. She has got that behind her and Noel of course we just have to wait and see but I think they will ace it."

'The Great British Bake Off' will move to Channel 4 from the BBC later this year and will see Paul Hollywood joined by 'Great British Menu' judge Prue Leith in place of Mary Berry.
Actress Jacqueline Fernandez says she is not sure if she would be able to join superstar Salman Khan for his maiden live concert in Australia and New Zealand.



There were reports that she would do a special act in the 'Da Bang' tour, which is likely to see performances by several Bollywood stars like Sonakshi Sinha, Bipasha Basu, Prabhudheva, Daisy Shah, Badshah and Maniesh Paul.



"Nothing has been confirmed as yet actually, so there is no word on that. I will be shooting for 'Drive' and 'Judwaa 2', so I am not sure if the dates will work out," Jacqueline told.



The actress has wrapped up shooting for Sidharth Malhotra- starrer 'Reload' and is currently filming Tarun Mansukhani's 'Drive', which features Sushant Singh Rajput opposite her.





Jacqueline, meanwhile, also plans to open a restaurant in Bandra and says it is her passion project.



"I have a restaurant in Sri Lanka. My passion is to feed people and entertain them. My best friend owns two restaurants so we decided to open it together. I am quite a foodie myself so this seemed good," she says.




Shabana Azmi has warned against painting all Muslims as one for "narrow political gains", saying it would negate the complex layers of culture in shaping a person's identity.



Addressing an event in the UK Parliament complex, she said, "Do not box me, do not try to restrict me in the desire 'to integrate'.For narrow political gain do not polarise the atmosphere and force people to create a 'model community' - a model community of either women, dalits, tribals or any other label that can be used to make me feel like 'the other'".



The 66-year-old actor and activist is on a UK tour with her one-woman play 'Broken Images' to mark the 10th anniversary of arts organisation Baithak UK and film 'Chalk and Duster', which is screening at the annual Tongues on Fire: London Asian Film Festival.



"If you ask me who I am, I will say I'm a woman, an Indian, a daughter, wife, actress, Muslim, activist etc - my being Muslim is only one of the aspects of who I am but all over the world it seems as though a concerted effort is being made to compress identity into the narrow confines of the religion I happen to have been born into at the exclusion of all other aspects of my identity," she added.



Addressing the 16,000-member Indian Ladies in UK (ILUK) group at the launch of its new website, she called on women to stand together against attempts at polarisation.



"To paint all Muslims as one would be negating the complex layers of culture in shaping a person's identity. I am not a practising Muslim...For me Muslim means Urdu, Biryani, Eid, the Urdu language and my ganga jamuni tehzeeb, my composite culture.



"I am an Indian Muslim and I feel no affinity to the Saudi Arabian Muslim. I feel much closer to my Indian Hindu, Indian Christian and Indian Sikh friends. What I have with them in common is a shared history, a shared identity and a shared future," she added.



The speech coincided with International Women's Day celebrations in London last week.
Alibaba owned Tmall Global has unveiled a Denmark Pavilion on its ecommerce website, which will feature about 20 Danish brands from the fashion, lifestyle and home categories. This will enable these 20 brands from Denmark to reach more than 440 million Chinese consumers shopping on Alibaba Groups ecommerce sites and thereby access the vast Chinese market.Most of these brands are already selling on Tmall Global and Tmall.com, Alibabas domestic B2C shopping site, through their own flagship stores.

Alibaba owned Tmall Global has unveiled a Denmark Pavilion on its ecommerce website, which will feature about 20 Danish brands from the fashion, lifestyle and home categories. This will enable these 20 brands from Denmark to reach more than 440 million Chinese consumers shopping on Alibaba Group's ecommerce sites and thereby access the vast Chinese market.#

"However, the Denmark Pavilion gives them a dedicated channel through which they can introduce Danish culture and the countrys products to Chinese consumers," Alibaba said.Denmark joins the United States, Australia, Germany and 12 other countries to open pavilions on Tmall Global. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday morning held a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the topic of strengthening bilateral relations.

During the conversation, Xi noted that 2017 marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Germany and that relations between the two countries have witnessed a comprehensive and in-depth development over recent years.

"We're willing to work together with Germany to push the China-Germany comprehensive strategic partnership further forward. As both being two of the world's most important economies and firm advocates of globalization, China and Germany are obliged to push all parties to jointly build an open global economy, maintaining the effectiveness and authoritiveness of multilateral trade rules and systems," Xi said.

Xi added that strengthening cooperation is in the fundamental interests of both countries and the European Union as a whole.

The Chinese president noted that economic and trade cooperation are the key driving force of China-Germany relations and called on both countries to ensure that economic ties are mutually beneficial. Xi called for more high-level financial talks, security dialogues and people-to-people exchanges, among others.

Xi also voiced China's support for Germany to host this year's Group of 20 leaders summit in Hamburg, saying China is willing to work with Germany to ensure the Hamburg summit, on the basis of Hangzhou summit held in China last year, sends out a clear and positive signal for stronger global economic cooperation and governance. Xi called for a global economy that features stronger growth, more effective governance, more open trade and more inclusive development.

In addition, Xi reaffirmed China's support for European integration, saying China and the EU should, from a strategic and long-term point of view, be committed to establishing a partnership defined by peace and growth.

During the telephone conversation, Merkel expressed satisfaction with the development of Germany-China relations. She said Germany speaks highly of the important speech Xi delivered at the World Economic Forum held in January in Davos, Switzerland, supports the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, and appreciates China's support for the upcoming Hamburg G20 summit.

She said Germany is willing to increase high-level exchanges with China, boost economic and trade cooperation, and deepen people-to-people exchanges in a bid to lift their comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.

Germany, Merkel added, is willing to play a key role in further developing EU-China relations.
A.T.E. has joined hands with Quanzhou Jingmei Machine Co., Ltd. to sell 'Jingmei' brand circular knitting machines in India (except in Ludhiana city) and Bangladesh effective from February 2017. The A.T.E.-Jingmei combination is now all set to provide the best-in-class products and services to the discerning customers in India and Bangladesh.

A.T.E. will also provide service support for Jingmei customers across India and Bangladesh. It will also maintain certain essential spares for immediate distribution to the customers.

Jingmei is a well-known brand from China having already sold hundreds of circular knitting machines in India, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world which include China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, South Africa and Italy.

A.T.E. has joined hands with Quanzhou Jingmei Machine Co., Ltd. to sell 'Jingmei' brand circular knitting machines in India (except in Ludhiana city) and Bangladesh effective from February 2017. The A.T.E.-Jingmei combination is now all set to provide the best-in-class products and services to the discerning customers in India and Bangladesh.#

Quanzhou Jingmei is now wholly owned by the Santoni Group of Italy. The company manufactures the entire range of circular knitting machines in body size from 13 to 24, as well as large diameters from 25 onwards upto 44 from 12G upto 40G, which include single jersey, three thread fleece, double jersey in rib and interlock, spacer fabric, auto striper in 4 and 6 colours, jacquard, striper jacquard, mattress ticking fabric, terry and reverse terry in tubular as well as open width configurations. The company also offers high leg frames on request.

Of the production capacity of more than 1,000 machines annually at Jingmei, 30 per cent of the production is dedicated to exports, and the percentage is growing year on year. Jingmei has a unique R&D facility at its factory in Xiamen, to offer better products to its customers through continuous innovation.

A single jersey tubular machine with 4 feeders/inch, 34 dia and 28G has been installed in A.T.E.s Surat showroom as a demo unit for customers, as well as to produce samples to convince customers on the quality of deliverables on Jingmei machines.

Jingmei, which showcased its machines at the Knit-tech exhibition, Tiruppur, and DTG 2017, Dhaka, in February 2017 has caught the attention of the knitting fraternity for its technical prowess and engineering excellence. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) council headed by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has cleared the State GST (SGST) and Union Territory GST (UTGST) draft bills. These two legislations will go to the Cabinet for an approval along with the GST compensation law before the Council presents them in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session.

The government hopes to get Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST), UTGST and the compensation law approved during the current Parliament session in order to roll out GST from July 1. The SGST needs to get a clearance from state legislatures.

The next GST Council meeting will take place on March 31 for approving rules and for placing goods and services in the 4-slab tax structure, said media reports quoting Jaitley.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) council headed by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has cleared the State GST (SGST) and Union Territory GST (UTGST) draft bills. These two legislations will go to the Cabinet for an approval along with the GST compensation law before the Council presents them in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session.#

As for the cess on demerit goods, it has also been capped at 15 per cent. It will be levied on luxury goods and aerated drinks that come under the 28 per cent slab of the tax structure.

The cess on luxury goods will help compensate states for the loss of revenue due to GST implementation for the first five years and it could be lower than the cap as the Council has considered keeping a little headroom for future requirements, said Jaitley. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has drafted a new regulation on use of azo dyes and formaldehyde content in textile and apparel products sold in the country. The new regulation stipulates limits and inspection of content of formaldehyde and of aromatic amines derived from azo colourants in textile and apparel products.Under the new regulation, formaldehyde in textile products for children under 36 months of ages should not exceed 30 mg/kg, in textile products in direct skin contact, the limit is 75 mg/kg, while in textile products without direct skin contact, the limit is 300 mg/kg. In case of aromatic amines, the limit is 30 mg/kg in all the three categories.

The Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has drafted a new regulation on use of azo dyes and formaldehyde content in textile and apparel products sold in the country. The new regulation stipulates limits and inspection of content of formaldehyde and of aromatic amines derived from azo colourants in textile and apparel products. #

This regulation applies to all textile manufacturers and importers in Vietnam and state inspection is carried out by organisations that are appointed and authorised by the Minister of Trade and Industry. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
HON PM VOREQE BAINIMARAMA AT THE OPENING OF THE HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT PACIFIC REGIONAL PREPARATORY MEETING ON OCEANS CONFERENCE





My fellow Pacific island leaders,Honourable Ministers,Members of the Diplomatic corp,Senior officials,Ladies and GentlemenBula vinaka and good morning. We are gathered here because we face a threat to our very existence. Yes, on the surface we are charting our progress toward the UNs SDG14, but our real objective is not to simply reach a milestone. Our objectives are to stave off disaster, to save our oceans for ourselves and all humanityand then to move from surviving to thriving.In a very real sense, we are fighting a two-front war. One front is the fight to keep the oceans clean and to sustain the marine plant and animal life on which we depend for our livelihoods and that keep the earth in proper balance. Land-based pollution, waste in the ocean, and growing maritime traffic are all deteriorating the marine ecosystem, and a growing world population with ever-more purchasing power is increasing pressure on the stocks of food fish in the oceans.So it is heartening that we will have the first-ever UN Conference on Oceans in June, and I have very high expectations that it will set the stage for our collective action to save our oceans. As you know, Fiji is co-hosting the conference with Sweden because we believe it is important for Pacific Island states to be very visible in the struggle to protect our oceans.At the conference, we will learn the truth about the current state of the ocean. The top technical agencies and the worlds foremost scientists and scholars will inform us of the current state of our oceans, based on the best science and data available.This will be the moment of truth. It will tell us what we need to doas governments, communities, industries and people. Seven partnership dialogues will provide a platform for governments and communities of scholars, industries, citizens and NGOs to work together constructively. I think we will see old partnerships invigorated and new and innovative ones formed.Our regional preparatory meeting here will provide the necessary direction for the negotiations, which begin this monthon the call to action on oceans that will be issued in New York in June. So this is our chance to reach a consensus that will push the conference to take bold action. We have the facts before us, and we know intimately the way our people, our cultures, and our economies depend on the ocean. We are knitted closely together, and I believe there is very little daylight among us in our positions. So this is no time for timidity, and we can show that one thing we are not is timid.My fellow leaders,The other front is the fight to slow the growth of global warming and, unfortunately, also to adapt to the changes we know are comingto rising seas, encroaching sea water, violent storms and periods of drought. Not all the stresses on our oceans are caused by global warming, but many are. The two are related, and we must work together to confront both these challenges at the same time.We in the Pacific dont need to be reminded of the effects of climate change. The people of Fiji and Vanuatu have had a very bitter recent experience with Cyclones Winston and Pam and realise more than most the urgency of addressing this crisis. And in Fiji, we have already begun relocating villages to higher ground away from the water.Of course, we Pacific Island nations are not the only ones affected by the stresses on our ocean and by climate change. The pollution in the oceans is everyones problem. Human society is simply producing more rubbish than we can comfortably handle, and every day, disposable items find their way into the hands of people who dont think twice about tossing them onto the street, into a storm drain or directly into the sea. Add to that ocean-borne refuse produced by tsunamis and other events, and you know why beaches anywhere can look like landfills on any given day. And that goes for our beautiful Pacific Island beaches as well.They have been suffering in California from climate change, where years of drought caused a water emergency and were then followed by enough snow and rain this year to create a new crisis. And if the snow that just fell in the mountainsto great cheers and sighs of relief, I might addmelts too quickly, they have another problem altogether, because California doesnt have anywhere to put all that water.So no, this is not a Pacific problem or an island problem. It is a problem for everyone. But it is a particular problem for us, because most of us sit on the small patches of land that God gave us millions of years ago, when they rose up above the waves from the ocean floor. For us, the effects of global warming and stresses on the ocean are immediate and potentially catastrophic.That gives us tremendous moral authority to lead the charge on both these frontsto promote sound global stewardship of the oceans and to slow the rate of climate change.When Fiji stepped forward to take on the presidency of the next UN Conference on Climate Change, we did it not only for ourselves but for all Pacific Islanders and all those people living in other vulnerable parts of the world. As COP President, I am obliged to act on behalf of all 7.5 billion people on earth, but I will naturally be bringing a Pacific perspective to the proceedings.Our most important goal is to preserve the multilateral consensus for decisive action on climate change that was reached in the Paris Agreement at the end of 2015. We cannot afford to have any government renege on the commitments that were made. Many countries face short-term domestic pressures, and there is no doubt that changing the behaviours that led us to this crisis will not be easy, but the rewards will be great. And besides, we have no choice.My fellow leaders,The time for casting blame is over. I will be the first to admit that I have railed against the developed economies for causing this crisis. And to be sure, its the developed economies that produce the most carbon emissions. But they are also responsible for most of the gains in technology, science, medicine and other fields that have improved the lives of all peopleand the technology and learning we will need to solve this crisis. And it is also a fact that we have been striving to give our people a chance at that same standard of living.As developing countries have modernized and created a middle class, they have also contributed a share of emissions and waste to the environment.So we are all responsible in some way for the warming of the planet, and the time has come to pay the bill. We all must work together to deal with the consequences of modernity. For sure, our part in this is small, but we strengthen our moral authority and our political case by fully accepting our small share of the blame. Every nation must do what it can. All people must do what they can.My fellow leaders,I am very concernedin fact, I am alarmedby some of the latest scientific research that we are being shown. Even at the current rate of global warmingone degree above that of the industrial agesome of the effects of climate change are very grave. The damage to our coral reefs continues, as we have seen with the latest research on the state of the Great Barrier Reef. And agriculture is suffering and causing mass migrations of people. It is happening already in Africa and on the Asian mainland.This isnt some crisis down the track. It is a crisis that we are living todaynow. We must get the world to not only adhere to the agreement we made in Paris and fully implement it. But even that will not be enough: We must start devising more radical action to accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions.So I am making an earnest appeal to you all as Pacific leaders to get behind Fijis presidency. I say this not for me or for Fiji, but because this presidency will take OUR case before the world. This presidency will represent a consensus effort on the part of Pacific Island nations to lead the world to do what is right. And necessary. And just.I will be counting on your strong support over the coming monthsall the way to Bonn in November. We need to present a strong and united front at that meetingPacific Island leaders of one mind, with arms locked together to achieve one goal: to save humanity from its ultimate folly.I am taking the opportunity that this gathering presents to invite my fellow Pacific leaders to join me in Bonn. We need to present a united face to the world because as you all know, we are bearing the brunt of climate change and desperately need to get our message across.So please be in Bonn with me. We owe it to our own people and to every citizen on Earth to take every advantage of the opportunity we have this year to put our case before the world. We have the credibility that goes with living the effects of climate change. And we have the moral authority that goes with the fact that we are bearing a disproportionate risk and a disproportionate burden. We are doing as much as we can right here at home, and we will need help.That is why I also intend to place a special emphasis on climate adaptation through financial models and technical solutions, to get the world to focus on developing new and innovative ways to build our resilience to the effects of climate change. This is not a time for continuing arguments about the science. It is time to do more to equip vulnerable nations with the means to survive the extreme weather events, changing weather patterns and rising sea levels that we are experiencing now and are bound to get much worse.Thank you for attending this gathering, and I again ask you for your support and your prayers. It is time for the Pacific - with one voice - to raise it on behalf of the many hundreds of millions of people in vulnerable parts of the world. And thats what we intend to do in Bonn and beyond.I thank you for attention and for your support.Vinaka vakalevu.
It's A Stressful Time For Aishwarya

According to India.com, ''It is a very stressful time for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who is spending sleepless nights in the hospital.''

Aishwarya Was Seen Having A Meltdown

''She was seen having a meltdown in the hospital on seeing her father's condition. But thankfully amidst all this, she has her husband Abhishek Bachchan by her side all the time.''

Abhishek Bachchan Makes Sure That Aishwarya Eats Properly

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been ignoring herself while taking care of her father. However, Abhishek, who is being the much-needed pillar of strength that Ash needs right now is making sure that she doesn't go without a proper meal.

Abhishek Is Not Leaving Aishwarya Alone

"Abhishek Bachchan was in New York for some work commitments, but as soon as he came to know about his father-in-law's deteriorating health, he flew back to the city immediately and he has been by Aishwarya's side ever since then.''

Both Abhishek & Aishwarya Spend Most Of The Time In The Hospital

Abhishek has been taking care of her and making sure that she eats and sleeps every few hours. He has made sure to be around. Both of them spend most of their day and night at the hospital.

They Go Home To Check On Aaradhya

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan step out to go home only to freshen up and to check on daughter Aaradhya.

Amitabh & Jaya Are Taking Care Of Aaradhya

According to reports, Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan are taking care of Aaradhya at home.

The Bachchans Didn't Celebrate Holi This Year

The Bachchans are famous for hosting a grand Holi party every year but this year they skipped the celebrations, owing to Aishwarya Rai's father's ill health.
Katrina & Salman

Katrina & Salman slay in their latest photoshoot and we're absolutely loving their pictures. What about you guys?

Katrina-Salman: A Hit Pair

Katrina & Salman have done many films including Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya, Yuvraaj, Ek Tha Tiger and Partner and they are one of the most loved on-screen pairs of the B-town!

Katrina On Working With Salman

Not so long ago, while taking to a leading daily, Katrina had expressed her happiness over re-uniting with Salman on screen. She had mentioned, "It is going to be great for Salman and me to work together in Tiger Zinda Hai. And I'm really happy we are coming back with this movie."

Katrina Talks About Her Comfort Level With Salman

She had further added, "The sequel is possibly the perfect film for both Salman and me to do together now. We were the most comfortable on the sets of ETT, as Tiger and Zoya. I think it worked well for us. It's going to be interesting to be back on sets together. "

Salman On The Sets Of TZH

On a related note, here's the latest picture of Salman Khan, from the sets of Tiger Zinda Hai. Currently, the team is in Austria for the shoot.

Stunning Location

A couple of days ago, director Ali Abbas Zafar had posted the picture of Tiger Zinda Hai shooting location and it has left us spellbound!

Just Beautiful!

"View from the room, technical recce begins as sun plays hide and seek. Austria @TigerZindaHai," captioned Ali Abbas Zafar.
Salman Khan's upcoming film with Katrina Kaif, 'Tiger Zinda Hai' will have an unusual fight scene which has never been seen before in Bollywood cinema. The actor will be seen fighting with a pack of wolves in a remote jungle in Austria and the sequence is going to be a high-octane one. The film-makers have roped in Hollywood stunt crew, lead by Tom Struthers to train Salman Khan for the scene. A source revealed,

Veena Malik Opens Up About Her Painful Divorce! Now Wants Her Husband Back!

"The international action crew is taking all cautionary measures to ensure the wolves are taken care of by their trainers, who have been working with the team for several days now, and the action sequence will follow all guidelines."



Karisma Kapoor's Ex-husband Sunjay Kapoor To Marry Priya Sachdev?

The source further adds, "It is producer Aditya Chopra's vision that the film matches with international standards of action and the crew is going the extra mile to ensure that the spy drama TZH delivers on that vision. Salman will be seen fighting off a pack of wolves in a high-octane action scene in the snow-laden forests of Austria."

Wow! All these are just adding excitement and we surely cannot wait for Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif starrer Tiger Zinda Hai to hit the theatres. Salman is also shooting for Kabir Khan's Tubelight in Ladakh.

Riya Sen: I Am Hot, Even Girls Make Passes At Me!
Shruti Haasan

The gorgeous Shruti Haasan was in Italy and ended up experimenting with her hair.

Hippie!

Shruti Haasan is absolutely loving her new 'hippie' hairstyle!

Italy

Apart from the hippie hairstyle, Shruti Haasan also shared pictures of Italy's landscapes.

Hippie Hairstyle

Shruti Haasan is enjoying her new hairstyle and flaunts it as well.

Hairstyle

Shruti Haasan loves to experiment and she looks like a beauty no matter what!
We all know how celebrities are often asked about a visit from the stork once they tie the knot. While some choose to invade the question, Vidya Balan is not the one to stay mum when constantly pestered with this question.

Machine Movie Review: There Is Nothing Mast About This Mustafa- Kiara Advani's Heartless Love Story!

In a recent explosive interview with Mid-day when she was quizzed about her frequent visits to the hospital, she angrily bursted out, "It was annoying. I could be going to a clinic for an acne too! Why is it that every time a woman, post marriage, visits a doctor, there are whispers of her pregnancy? I don't think it's anyone's business except mine and my husband's (producer Siddharth Roy Kapur). It was a serious invasion on our privacy, but our country is such. Neighbours and relatives ask us."

She further added, "The day I got married, one of my uncles told me at the wedding venue, 'Next time I see you (her and Siddharth), I should be looking at three people, not two'. This was even before our wedding pictures could be clicked. I politely laughed because we hadn't even decided on our honeymoon destination then. What is this baby obsession? I am not a baby-making machine. Anyway, the world population is on a rise. If some people don't have children, it's fine!"

We hope that the gossipmongers get your message loud and clear and stop prying in your personal life, Vidya!

Meanwhile on the work front, Vidya will be next seen in Begum Jaan which revolves around the trauma faced by displaced women in a brothel during the partition of India and has her essaying the role of a madam of a brothel.

VIRAL: 'Padman' Akshay Kumar & Radhika Apte Shoot A Love Song In Maheshwar; Check Out All Pics!
It's been three weeks since Hebbuli released and one week before another biggie Raajakumara hits the screens. Producers of five medium budget flicks have put in efforts to release their film today(Mar 17) before the storm hits next week.

The five Kannada releases today are Shuddhi, Urvi, Eradu Kanasu, Kalaberake and Dhwani. First three films are getting decent release wherein the latter two has to adjust with theaters that are left.

Shuddhi did not make any news during the making and not many knew about this film until the trailer was released. Once the trailer released and became viral, things changed quickly as film was classified as a must-watch by the movie buffs.

The film is released by Jacob Films in over 50 theaters throughout the state. It has garnered excellent responses from the special show, which was organized for media and film industry.

Urvi, even though had notable names, was not in the news much, but things for this film changed as well, once the teasers and trailer were out. The film has Shruthi Hariharan, Shraddha Srinath and Swetha Pandit playing the lead roles.

Mysore Talkies has released the film in over 50 theaters in Karnataka. Makers intend to release the movie pan India and overseas a week or two later, based on the responses they receive from domestic release.

Eradu Kanasu has Vijay Raghavendra, Karunya Ram and Krishi Thapanda playing the lead roles. Songs has managed to create buzz for the film to an extent. Surprisingly, the team has done not much promotions during pre-release.

The film has been released in over 50 theaters throughout the state by Vijay Cinemas. Vijay Raghavendra, who tasted success recently with Chowka, would want to continue the success streak with this film.

Kalaberake has Anirudh Jatkar in the lead role. Dheeraj Cinemas have released the film in a few theaters in major centers of Karnataka.

Dhwani marks the debut of television journalist Chandan Sharma into film industry. Trailer of the film had garnered good responses. VG Films has released the film in over 35 theaters.
BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday sent congratulatory messages to an opening ceremony of the China-ASEAN tourism cooperation year, which was held in Manila, the Philippines.

China and the ASEAN countries, either connected by mountains and rivers or only separated by the sea, have a long history of friendly cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, Li said in his message.

China has set ASEAN as a priority of its foreign policy and supports ASEAN's central status in regional cooperation, said Li.

China is willing to build a closer China-ASEAN relationship by sharing development opportunities in the region and abiding by the principles of mutual respect, understanding, trust and support, and to work together for a closer China-ASEAN community with common destiny, promoting peace,stability and prosperity of the region and the world as well, Li added.

Tourism plays a key role in China-ASEAN people-to-people ties, contributing to a deeper mutual understanding and pragmatic cooperation in various industries, said Li.

So far China has become the biggest source of foreign tourists for ASEAN.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the association and is also the year in which both sides will focus on boosting two-way tourism. Li said China will use this opportunity to bring relations between both sides to a new level.

For his part, Duterte said cooperation between China and ASEAN sends a clear message to the world about the resolve of both sides to work together to accomplish their shared goals.

The Philippine leader said he expects closer relations between China and ASEAN to boost inclusive and sustainable development and lead to peace, security and development in the region.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang presented Li's congratulatory message while attending the ceremony in Manila.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/28/17 -- SelectCore Ltd. ("SelectCore" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SCG) is pleased to announce that it was able to settle debts of $2,749,000 related to its telecommunication business for an aggregate amount of $478,000 net.

The Company has successfully negotiated the discount and terms on the mentioned debt, and has funded the necessary payments. The full settled amount of $478,000 has been paid in full, with the last tranche was recently funded.

"The Company has strived to cleanse its balance sheet and will continue to do so, as a stronger balance sheet will enable SelectCore to achieve more corporate and governmental business," stated Mohammad Abuleil, President of SelectCore.

About SelectCore

Established in 1999, SelectCore is a leading prepaid financial services provider and transaction processor for under-banked and underserved markets. From prepaid mobile top-up to stored-value cards and remittance solutions, SelectCore services a market of millions of under-banked consumers through its technology platforms and extensive retail distribution network. SelectCore is a publicly traded company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "SCG" (TSX VENTURE: SCG). SelectCore was ranked by Profit100 as one of Canada's fastest-growing companies in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010. SelectCore was also ranked one of North America's fastest growing companies on Deloitte's 2011 Technology Fast 500.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on assumptions, uncertainties and management's best estimates of future events. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward- looking statements are detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Ontario Securities Commission and other regulatory authorities. The Company has no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contacts:

SelectCore Ltd.

Mohammad Abuleil

(866) 825-1267 ext. 246

mabuleil@selectcore.com

www.selectcore.com




Due to tightening budget constraints and recent innovations in the healthcare sector, many industries are relying on market access to increase the availability of products to the patient population. Through market access, patients can get timely and seamless access to medical devices at an affordable price.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170706006030/en/

Infiniti Research offers numerous healthcare market intelligence solutions. (Graphic: Business Wire)

A global healthcare consulting company recently approached Infiniti Research to help them understand the healthcare market access landscape in the Middle East, South East Asia, and African regions. Infiniti's goal was to identify key trends, potential drivers, and challenges to create an effective corporate strategy. A shortlist of key competitors and the potential stakeholders in the market was also provided.

View the study: https://www.infinitiresearch.com/casestudy/market-access-landscape-assessment

The market assessment comprised of extensive primary research including interviews and discussions with leading market stakeholders, business executives, consultants, researchers, analysts, and key opinion leaders. As a part of the secondary research, Infiniti's analysts collected information from proprietary databases such as company publications, relevant websites, and industry forums.

This study provides insights such as:

Current healthcare infrastructure and forecast over the next 5-10 years

Assessment of overall market size and target regions

Identifying potential clients in the market and how to tap relevant market access opportunities

Identifying the key competitors and their service offerings in the market

Have questions about this study? Request more information on this report

About Infiniti Research

Established in 2003, Infiniti Research is a leading market intelligence company providing smart solutions to address your business challenges. Infiniti Research studies markets in more than 100 countries to help analyze competitive activity, see beyond market disruptions, and develop intelligent business strategies. With 14 years of experience and offices across three continents, Infiniti Research has been instrumental in providing a complete range of competitive intelligence, strategy, and research services for over 550 companies across the globe.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170706006030/en/

Contacts:

Infiniti Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

http://www.infinitiresearch.com

Contact Us
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - KKR & Co. (KKR) and Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec are nearing a deal to jointly acquire insurance broker USI Insurance Services for about $2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter. The deal would value closely held USI at about $4 billion including debt. USI is currently owned by Canadian private-equity firm Onex Corp., which has been running an auction for the Valhalla, N.Y.,-based broker. USI generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue and has 4,400 associates in more than 140 offices in the U.S., according to its website. 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.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Being a small business has always been considered as one of the banes of being an enterprise. SMB's have their own kinds of challenges and their success majorly depends upon the support received from the ecosystem or the visionary strengths of its management team.

According to Entrepreneur 360' Intelliber Technologies has been recognized as one among top 360 companies and it is now considered as one of the Best Privately-Owned Businesses in America. Entrepreneur 360' releases its lists through a magazine named as Entrepreneur magazine. This magazine includes a list of highly anticipated companies which is also known as Entrepreneur 360' list of companies which comprises of Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America.

In this Second Annual Entrepreneur 360' List, which was issued on 25th October 2016 comprises of 360 companies in which America's Best Privately-Owned Companies are showcased. According to this list Intelliber Technologies (Previously Intelliber) has been ranked332ndBest company in America in the 2nd annual list of Entrepreneur 360 Companies. This list is based upon comprehensive study where independently-owned companies are ranked using exclusive algorithm and advanced analytics. This algorithm is fabricated on a scorecard which is measured on the basis of four metrics innovation, growth, leadership and impact which reflects a true entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur 360' looks for crazy business ideas and identifies 360 small business companies in America every year and.

About Intelliber Technologies

Intelliber Technologies is an innovation, customer focused and primarily a product startup and has some of the best products industry has ever seen, named Socialyk, Employrr, Convask apart from other subsidiaries in its portfolio like ITMRD, Contentuals and Network Story. Intelliber Technologies is also known for providing industry leadership in areas like BPM, Cloud Computing, Mobile Apps designing, Cyber Security, Ecommerce and Software Automation Testing and functionality focused business platform via its IT Solutions concern ITMRD. Intelliber Technologies is a fully bootstrapped enterprise running under the tactful leadership of our Founder & CEO; Mr Jyoti Ranjan who is an IIMC dropout.

Intelliber Technologies rank can be viewed in this exclusive list of Entrepreneur 360': http://features.entrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-360/ranking

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479506/Intelliber_Logo.jpg
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 registration in Germany received

Basis for ELATUS Era and ELATUS Plus fungicides

Delivers outstanding control of major cereals diseases

First sales in Germany in 2017 season

Syngenta announced today that the registration of its SDHI fungicide SOLATENOL has been further extended in Europe following approval by the German authorities. This most recent registration will allow Syngenta to introduce the products ELATUS Era and ELATUS Plus to the cereals market in Germany. ELATUS Plus is a solo formulation of the active ingredient SOLATENOLTM sold in co-packs with a range of other products. ELATUS Era is a combination of the two active ingredients SOLATENOLTM and prothioconazole.

The launch of SOLATENOL in Germany for the 2017 season gives growers in another major cereals market access to this leading new technology. SOLATENOL is already registered in France, Croatia, UK, Ireland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Austria.

SOLATENOL is a carboxamide fungicide offering an unrivaled performance against Septoria and rusts two important diseases which can significantly impact cereals production. In trials, it has proven to be extremely consistent in providing excellent disease control on all important cereals varieties in a wide range of situations over several years. The product offers outstanding levels of leaf protection resulting in higher yield and return on investment for the farmer.

SOLATENOL is also available for use on soybean in Latin America and on a wide range of crops in the USA and Canada.

About Syngenta

Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown. We are committed to rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities. To learn more visit www.syngenta.com and www.goodgrowthplan.com. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Syngenta.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as 'expect', 'would', 'will', 'potential', 'plans', 'prospects', 'estimated', 'aiming', 'on track' and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. We refer you to Syngenta's publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for information about these and other risks and uncertainties. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors. This document does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer, to purchase or subscribe for any ordinary shares in Syngenta AG, or Syngenta ADSs, nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract there for.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170316006458/en/

Contacts:

Syngenta International AG

Media Office

Tel: +41 61 323 2323

Fax: +41 61 323 2424

www.syngenta.com

or

Media:

Leandro Conti

Switzerland, +41 61 323 2323

or

Paul Minehart

USA, +1 202 737 8913

or

Analysts/Investors:

Jennifer Gough

Switzerland, +41 61 323 5059

USA, +1 202 737 6521
Realize Mobile Communications Corp. ("Realize Mobile"), a member of the SoftBank Group, and J.MORITA CORPORATION ("Morita") announce that they have developed the world's first* dental treatment simulation system that utilizes mixed reality (MR) technology, a technology that combines augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies. Realize Mobile and Morita will demonstrate this system at the 37th International Dental Show, the world's largest dental industry exhibition, which will be held in Cologne, Germany, from March 21 to 25, 2017.

This system, developed under the supervision of dentists Tsutomu Kubota and Gaku Yoshimoto, is intended for dental treatment training in dentistry education. Some previous treatment training tools have used either AR or VR, but a unique feature of this system is its utilization of MR. This enables actual training on practice models in real environments with guidance enabled by computer-generated (CG) images in the virtual space.

When the practitioner wears the head-mounted display, the stereo camera displays videos of the patient's (the practice model's) oral cavities and affected areas. CG images are superimposed on this video data, including information on the locations and shapes of nerves and blood vessels in the affected areas, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. This enables the practitioner to perform treatment while visually confirming the areas that must not be harmed. The practitioner can also refer to CG images to confirm if the treatment is proceeding according to the initial plan, such as the depth and direction of the procedure. This system does not rely on the experience of the practitioner, but rather leverages various types of information for training on safer, less risky treatments. More information can be found at these video links. https://youtu.be/EGhq_WRbj-w, https://youtu.be/z37Z5uLsLt4

This dental treatment simulation system features advanced technology that uses external sensors to track the locations of the practitioner, patient and dental instruments in real time, enabling it to recognize the respective spatial locations of each. With an eye towards future clinical applications, its user interface also supports control using voice and gestures.

Realize Mobile and Morita will strive to enhance the safety and technological levels of dental treatments and develop technologies that are useful in clinical practice as well as education.

* Source: Realize Mobile company research

Demonstration videos

Demonstration videos of this system can be viewed at the following links:

https://youtu.be/EGhq_WRbj-w

https://youtu.be/z37Z5uLsLt4

Live demonstrations

Demonstration schedule at the 37th International Dental Show Date: From Tuesday, 21 March to Saturday, 25 March 2017 10:30~, 12:00~, 13:30~, 15:00~, 16:30~ Venue: KOELN MESSE in Cologne, Germany J. Morita Europe GmbH booth (Hall 10.2 Stands: R040 S049, S051)

About Realize Mobile Communications Corp.

Realize Mobile Communications Corp., a member of the SoftBank Group, offers services that range from smartphone applications to virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) solutions development. Our services utilize mixed reality (MR) and other technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) for applications within fields that include medical care, monitoring and transportation. To learn more, please visit http://www.realize-mobile.co.jp/w/en/.

About J.MORITA CORPORATION

J.MORITA CORPORATION is a distributor wholesaler leading the dental industry.

Through a network of 50 sales offices and some 400 dealers nationwide, we offers a broad range of products, including MORITA branded products which are developed through MORITA's manufacturing, marketing, and distribution channels, and also jointly developed products with our partners around the world.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005201/en/

Contacts:

Media contact:

Realize Mobile Communications (Japan)

Atsushi Katsumoto, +81.3.5549.1350

info@realize-mobile.com
CUPERTINO (dpa-AFX) - Apple Inc.(AAPL) said that it plans to set up two more research centers and boost investment in China. The company plans to build new research facilities in the eastern Chinese cities of Shanghai and Suzhou, on top of centers already slated for Beijing and the southern city of Shenzhen. It also pledged to spend at least 3.5 billion yuan or $507 million on research institutions. All four centers will open later this year, the company said in a statement on its Chinese website. They will help Apple cooperate with local partners and attract talent from its local suppliers as well as from top educational institutes, according to its press release. The announcement came a day before Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is scheduled to address a high-profile economic forum in Beijing. 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) - Tullow Oil plc (TLW.L) said that it intends to raise about 607 million pounds by way of a Rights Issue, consisting of the issue of 466.93 million New Ordinary Shares in aggregate at an issue price of 130 pence per New Ordinary Share.



The Issue Price represents a discount of approximately 45.2 per cent. to the Closing Price of 237.3 pence per Ordinary Share on 16 March 2017 and an approximate 35.3 per cent discount to the theoretical ex-rights price of 201.1 pence per New Ordinary Share calculated by reference to the Closing Price on the same day.



The Rights Issue is conditional on, amongst other things,the passing of the Resolutions at the General Meeting without material amendment; Admission becoming effective by not later than 8.00 a.m. on 6 April 2017 and the Underwriting Agreement becoming unconditional in all respects and not having been terminated in accordance with its terms prior to Admission.



The Rights Issue will be offered on the basis of 25 New Ordinary Shares for every 49 Existing Ordinary Shares held on the Record Date, and so in proportion to any other number of Existing Ordinary Shares then held and otherwise on the terms and conditions set out in the Prospectus.



The Directors believe stepped reduction of debt will improve Tullow's financial and operational flexibility, and enable growth within the next three to five years by allowing the Group to invest in further infill drilling opportunities in both its operated and non-operated portfolio; undertake exploration and appraisal around the Jubilee and TEN fields to further develop the high return near field resource base; undertake further exploration and appraisal activity in Kenya to further prove up the resource base.



Separately, Tullow said it will now work with Total and CNOOC to conclude definitive sale documentation in relation to the farm-down. Completion of the farm-down is subject to certain conditions, including the approval of the Government of Uganda. Once the farm-down has completed, Tullow will cease to be an operator in Uganda but will retain a presence in-country to manage its non-operated position.



Tullow Oil noted that it had agreed to farm-down 21.57% of its 33.33% interests in Exploration Areas 1, 1A, 2 and 3A in Uganda to Total E&P Uganda B.V. for a total consideration of $900 million. CNOOC Uganda Limited has notified Tullow that it has exercised its pre-emption rights under the joint operating agreements between Tullow, Total and CNOOC to acquire 50% of the interests being transferred to Total on the same terms and conditions that were agreed between Tullow and Total.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Women Advancing Africa Forum to convene African women leaders and global champions August 10-12 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Graca Machel Trust (GMT) announced today the launch a Pan-African initiative to 'Multiply the Faces and Amplify the Voices' of African women as a force for economic and social transformation.

The Women Advancing Africa (WAA) initiative seeks to 'Multiply the Faces and Amplify the Voices' of African women to drive inclusive, sustainable growth across the continent. The Trust will challenge African leaders, government participants and private sector partners to design innovative solutions and commit to specific "Calls for Action" that will increase women's economic power and elevate the role of women in African development.

On what makes the Women Advancing Africa Forum different, Mrs. Graca Machel says, "To our knowledge there are not many places or platforms where extraordinary examples of successes by African women is showcased. Through this forum, we want women to come together to strategise, share and learn from each other on how to grow and develop to the next level in their economic and social journey."

The inaugural Forum will take place from 10-12 August in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and will convene more than 250 women leaders, rising stars and global champions to explore the critical role women play in shaping Africa's future. Under the overarching theme of 'Driving Social and Economic Transformation', the Forum will focus on three core pillars: promoting financial inclusion, increasing market access and driving social change. The Trust believes that the selection of these three thematic areas provides a common agenda for women in the economy, as they are cut across all sectors of the economy and speak to all women at different levels of the economy.

"Driving Social and Economic Transformation means that we need to look holistically at womens' roles and perceived value. Transformation is not only about numbers, although the numbers of women represented on Boards, as CEOs, or Department Heads is important, we need a transformative agenda which challenges the conceptualization, social norms, outlook and value given to women and their contribution to the economy and society," adds Machel.

African women are a powerful economic force but continue to face significant barriers across the continent. Today, seventy percent of African women are financially excluded and many lack access to critical markets, resources and services needed to succeed. In a report released on International Women's Day, the Trust found that more than 50 percent of female entrepreneurs in East Africa cite access to finance and markets as major challenges in growing their businesses.

Initial support for the WAA initiative is generously provided by The Intel Foundation and The UPS Foundation. Media partners include: the ABN360 Group, incorporating CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa; the Nation Group and locally based Azam Media Group. These partners share the Trust's belief that advancing women economically is crucial to the health and prosperity of African families, communities and nations.

The Trust is seeking additional partners to assist in the execution of WAA.

The Trust has also selected APCO Worldwide, the largest women-owned communications firm in the world, to be the convening partner for the Women Advancing Africa initiative. With deep roots in Africa and a long history of planning and executing high-profile events around the world, APCO is working closely with the Graca Machel Trust to bring this important, first-of-its-kind initiative to life.

For more information about the Women Advancing Africa Initiative and the Graca Machel Trust, please visit http://womenadvancingafricaforum.com and http://gracamacheltrust/new.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGracaMachelTrust

Twitter: @G_MachelTrust

Email: waa@gracamacheltrust.org

ABOUT:

The Graca Machel Trust is an organisation that works across the continent to drive positive change across women's and children's rights, as well as governance and leadership. Through our support of local initiatives and connecting key stakeholders at a regional, national and sub-national level, we help to catalyse action where it is needed. By using our convening power the Trust seeks to: amplify the voices of women and children in Africa; influence governance; promote women's contributions and leadership in the economic social and political development of Africa.

ABOUT:

APCO Worldwide

Founded in 1984, APCO Worldwide is an independent global communication, stakeholder engagement and business strategy firm with offices in more than 30 major cities throughout the world. We challenge conventional thinking and inspire movements to help our clients succeed in an ever-changing world. Stakeholders are at the core of all we do. We turn the insights that come from our deep stakeholder relationships into forward-looking, creative solutions that always push the boundaries. APCO clients include large multinational companies, trade associations, governments, NGOs and educational institutions. The firm is a majority women-owned business. For more information, please visit www.apcoworldwide.com.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479563/Graca_Machel_Trust_Logo.jpg




AMMAN, March 16 (Xinhua) -- A consortium of several banks from China has provided 1.58 billion U.S. dollars and 15-year debt facility to support an oil shale power plant in Jordan, which will be the largest private sector project in the country.

The debt facility has been lead arranged by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Exim Bank of China, according to a statement from the Attarat Power Company (APCO) for the financial close of the project.

APCO said in the statement that work will start soon on the 554 megawatts project, which will be located at the Attarat um Ghudran oil shale deposit, about 100 km southeast of the capital Amman.

The power station, with an investment valued 2.1 billion dollars, is scheduled to start operation in mid-2020.

The project is the first to commercially utilize Jordan's abundant oil shale reserves and will significantly reduce the country's reliance on imported oil and gas.

The two-unit power station will be the first oil shale fired power station and mine project in the world funded by limited recourse project financing. It is expected to meet 10-15 percent of Jordan's annual power demand.

"The project will promote the strategic partnership between Jordan and China, and finally sets a model for the similar projects in the future," Jordan's minister of energy and mineral resources, Ibrahim Saif, said on the financial close ceremony.

The power station and oil shale mine are expected to employ approximately 5,500 people during construction and 1,000 during operations.


PEORIA (dpa-AFX) - Caterpillar Inc. has hired former U.S. Attorney General William Barr to help the company in ongoing government investigation.



In a statement, the heavy-machinery maker said it has retained Barr as outside counsel to assess and help address the investigation. The federal probe is going on into tax issues surrounding its Swiss subsidiary Caterpillar SARL.



Chief Executive Officer Jim Umpleby, who took the office on January 1, has tasked Barr with reviewing matters relating to the search warrants executed at Caterpillar facilities on March 2, and assisting the company in appropriately addressing those matters.



Earlier this month, federal agents searched three Caterpillar offices in Illinois, including the company's headquarters in Peoria. The search was part of an Internal Revenue Service investigation related to profits earned by Caterpillar SARL. The IRS reportedly has demand the company to pay $2 billion in taxes and penalties for profits assigned to the Swiss unit.



According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois, agents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the U.S. Department of Commerce also participated in the searches.



Barr served as the 77th Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush, and before that as Deputy Attorney General and as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice.



He is currently of counsel to the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. After his public service, Barr served for over 14 years with Verizon Communications, Inc. and its predecessor company, GTE Corp.



Umpleby said, 'Bill Barr is one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, with an impeccable track record, well known for his integrity and direct, honest advice. I have asked Bill - who has no prior connection with Caterpillar - to draw on his experience and that of his colleagues at Kirkland & Ellis and other advisers, to take a fresh look at Caterpillar's disputes with the government, get all the facts, and then help us bring these matters to proper resolution based on the merits.'



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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SHANGHAI, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Jin Jiang International (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Jin Jiang International) and its main brands jointly appeared on the "51st ITB Berlin" after it successfully purchased Louvre Hotels Group, Plateno Group and Vienna Hotels Group.

Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170314/0861702267

First overall appearance in ITB Berlin, Jin Jiang International shows its strength

From March 8 to 12, the world's largest tourism exposition ITB Berlin was held in Berlin Exhibition Center. Jin Jiang International, as one of China's largest integrated tourism business groups, had a grand debut in the 119th booth of the 9th hall. Within Jin Jiang Exhibition Hall, Jin Jiang Hotel, Louvre Hotels Group, Plateno Group and Vienna Hotels Group, the American partner Magnuson hotel as well as Jin Jiang exit and entry tourism agency subordinate to Jin Jiang International were gathered there, so as to show the strength of Jin Jiang Tourism in terms of hotel, tourism, development and investment and other aspects to the global business travelers, exhibition buyers and visitors, thus providing visitors with face-to-face communication opportunities.

Over the past two years, Jin Jiang International has successfully acquired the second largest hotel group in France, Louvre Hotel Group, and then conducted the strategic investment in Plateno Group and Vienna Hotels Group. The number of hotels and resorts has quickly increased to 7260; the number of rooms is more than 720,000, distributed in 537 cities in 64 countries and regions. It ranks among the top five of the global hotels.

Integrating global resource allocation, accelerating the process of internationalization

In order to fully grasp the global opportunity, Jin Jiang International, as a sponsor, fully supported the ITB "China Night" theme activities, inviting industry partners, suppliers, experts representatives to jointly discuss about the international tourism cooperation. "Jin Jiang has an old business model, but at the same timeit isalso a young company. In terms of the number of hotels, Jin Jiang has been ranking the first in China and Asia and the fifth in the world." Chen Liming, Vice President of Jin Jiang International said in ITB Berlin, "Jin Jiang will continue to invest our resources to encourage Chinese travelers to travel overseas, especiallyto Europe." This compelling commitmentmade foreign tourism companies really excited.

Jin Jiang International, after the successful completion of mergers and acquisitions, constantly explores the subject research of the global allocation of resources, combines the international resources and their own advantages, integrates the domestic and international markets and the two kinds of resources, takes "global layout, transnational business" as its strategy and upgrades from "going out" to a global enterprise.

It is because of the firm pace of "going out" taken by China's outstanding tourism enterprises, led by Jin Jiang International that the entire Chinese tourism industry has had an increasingly high status in the world and has attracted more and more attention.

Jin Jiang International Hotels becamethe first official hotel partner of ITB China

Not long ago, ITB Berlin decided to move the show to China and named it ITB China. At the ITB China 2017 press conference held atJin Jiang Tower in Shanghaion March 2, the organizers announced that the first ITB China would be held in Shanghai from May 10 to 12 this year; the three-day fair would focus on China's exit travel market. At the same time, Jin Jiang International Hotels announced to become the first ITB China's official hotel partner, which will further enhance Jin Jiang's support to the international tourism exhibition industry and also win the industry's unprecedented attention; ITB China booth has also been sold out.

As China's leading hotel group, Jin Jiang International is based in China, facing the world and is committed to bringing the reputed European Louvre brand in Asia, so that guests can experience the unique products and services. Meanwhile, it also hopes to boost Jin Jiang brand to the international community and make the world know more aboutthehistoryand attentive service concept of Jin Jiang hotel. In the future, Jin Jiang International will learn from the international advanced experience, and further broaden the domestic and international market layout, focus on the formation of domestic and international full range of hotel brand system, so as to better meet the increasingly diverse and personalized market consumer demand.
LONDON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The global niobium industry has witnessed substantial alterations to its corporate landscape over the past few years. As recently as 2011, the Brazilian niobium and ferroniobium giant CBMM was wholly owned by the Salles family, with Anglo American providing the balance of the country's ferroniobium output. The only other significant ferroniobium producer, Canada's Niobec, was in the hands of the Toronto-listed miner IAMGOLD.

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Things now look very different Roskill states. During 2011, CBMM sold 30% of itself for US$3.9Bn to two consortia of Asian investors, one Japanese/Korean, the other Chinese. Both groups include steelmakers (i.e., CBMM's own clients). In 2015, IAMGOLD sold Niobec to the Toronto-based private-equity firm Magris Resources, which is backed to a large extent by investors in Singapore and Hong Kong. That deal was worth US$0.5Bn. This was followed by the conclusion in 2016, of China Molybdenum's (CMOC) acquisition of Anglo American's Brazilian niobium and phosphate businesses for a total of US$1.7Bn, an earnings multiple that surprised most in the industry. With this, CMOC gained the Catalao operation, the second-largest producer of ferroniobium in the world.

These changes have been set against the backdrop of a relatively stable niobium market. Since 2011, ferroniobium supply has remained with the narrow range of 53-54ktpy Nb, with the exception of 2013. Brazil and Canada continue to dominate mine and ferroniobium supply with the Rest of the World accounting for only 2% of ferroniobium production.

For a metal that many people have never even heard of, upwards of US$5Bn of investment in less than five years is pretty impressive. Equally remarkable is that, from a standing start, Asian investors have gained control of, Roskill estimates, at least a third of global ferroniobium production capacity.

So why are people still investing very large sums of money in the industry, when growth prospects for steel are not spectacular and even the current ferroniobium production capacity is far bigger than demand and will remain so?

The reasons why the three ferroniobium producers divested are fairly clear. CBMM certainly didn't need the money; it wanted to lock-in some of its largest customers. IAMGOLD had acquired Niobec as part of a purchase of another gold miner and did not see it as a core business. It definitely needed the money to plug a gaping gold-related hole in its balance sheet. Anglo American simply wanted to get rid of non-core businesses, not to mention a large pile of debt.

Why other companies would have wanted to invest in this industry is somewhat less obvious. Demand for ferroniobium surged during the 2000s, more than doubling during the first half of the decade and continuing to grow until the global financial crisis kicked in. There are two main reasons for the growth. One is that consumers gained better understanding of the benefits of using ferroniobium in steel. The addition of niobium at the rate of fractions of a per cent by weight, and at a cost of only a few dollars per tonne of steel, greatly increases the strength of steel. This is of benefit in structural applications, where large structures can be built using less steel, and in automotive applications, where benefits come from weight savings and thus increases in fuel efficiencies.

The other driver was the explosive growth in global steel production, particularly in China. Related to this and applying mainly to CMOC, is the desire on the part of China to gain greater influence over its raw material supply chains (and CMOC is part-controlled by the Chinese government).

The global financial crisis caused a huge fall in demand for steel and for ferroniobium but it recovered quickly and in recent years has remained within a fairly narrow range close to the peak level of the late 2000s. The outlook for global steel production now seems starkly different to what it was just a few years ago, especially in China. Overall growth in steel production is not going to be the main future driver of demand for ferroniobium, Roskill contends.

Although the ferroniobium market is already comfortably met by existing (huge) surplus production capacity, and will remain so, new producers are trying to enter the market. There are several projects in the pipeline and at least two of them are at, or near, the financing stage. They would not be large in tonnage terms by CBMM standards but is there even a place for them? It all boils down to the market's desire for diversity of supply of what is, essentially, a commodity product and made using similar and well-understood processes by existing producers; processes that would also be used by any new producer. For any project these days, securing offtake agreements is key to securing project finance, particularly debt finance (which makes getting equity finance rather easier, too).

On the non-steel supply side, in 2008, Peruvian tin miner Minsur purchased Mineracao Taboca and its Pitinga tin mine from Paranapanema for US$0.47Bn. Mineracao Taboca's main product is a FeNb-Ta alloy (40% Nb, 7% Ta min), which is exported mostly to processors in China, USA, Estonia and Germany. In 2011, US-based Molycorp acquired the Sillamae plant in Estonia, which produces a variety of niobium and tantalum products. Following Molycorp's exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2016 under the name Neo Performance Materials, Molycorp Silmet was renamed NPM Silmet. Also in 2011, Uralkali gained the loparite mining operation at Lovozero and the niobium and tantalum oxide producer, Solikamsk (SMW), incorporating them into the same corporate group.

Consumption of niobium in non-steel market segments, such as high performance alloys, remains concentrated in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. These are used in aerospace and land-based power generation. These markets show trends that generally mirror overall economic trends very closely and future growth in demand for niobium will reflect that of the global economy. Consumption of niobium in non-steel applications in 2016 is estimated to have amounted to roughly one-tenth of total consumption.

The niobium industry in its current form is really only a few decades old. It has seen big changes over the last decade or so and there may well be more to come.

Roskill has released its new niobium market report with forecasts out to 2026. It is essential reading for anyone requiring a comprehensive overview of this sector.

Niobium: Global Industry, Markets & Outlook to 2026, 13th Edition is now available from Roskill Information Services Ltd, 54 Russell Road, London SW19 1QL UK. Click here to download the brochure and sample pages.
OneSqin CIC is the world's first health and beauty brand to donate 100 percent of profits to get girls in need into life-changing education.

From the outset, all profits from OneSqin's premium personal care products and cosmetics (organic cotton tampons and botanical moisturising cream) go to charities that provide education for girls in poverty. So simply by using everyday items, conscious consumers can fight inequality.

The project channels collective purchasing power towards positive social change on the premise that, given the opportunity to make a difference, pro-social users will happily switch to a better product at no extra cost.

Products are ethically manufactured using natural ingredients making it easy to choose change.

As it grows, OneSqin will help more and more girls to escape a cycle of poverty and allow them to flourish investing in a change that goes beyond the individual to their wider community.

OneSqin is a Community Interest Company registered in the UK. It is a certified member of Social Enterprise UK and is supported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

OneSqin certified organic cotton tampons are sold online, by subscription and on demand in the UK and the USA. 100% natural, all-purpose skin cream is sold online worldwide.

Support for pupils at the SEGA Girls School in Tanzania has already begun, through the charity Nurturing Minds.

OneSqin now needs your help to grow. Many small actions have a huge impact: please sign up at www.OneSqin.org, and help create the OneSqinEffect.

Company: OneSqin C.I.C. Headquarters Address: 3rd floor 207 Regent Street London W1B 3HH United Kingdom Main Telephone: +44 203 637 647 1 Website: www.onesqin.org Type of Organization: Non-profit Industry: Cosmetics Key Executives: Co-founder: Neil Richmond Co-founder: Sinisa Jovic Public Relations Contact: Neil Richmond Phone: +44 203 637 647 1 Email: neil.richmond@onesqin.org

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BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 6:00 am ET Friday, Eurostat is slated to release euro area foreign trade data for January. The trade surplus is expected to fall to EUR 22 billion from EUR 24.5 billion in December. Ahead of the data, the euro showed mixed trading against its major rivals. While the euro fell against the pound and the Swiss franc, it held steady against the U.S. dollar and the yen. As of 5:55 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.8691 against the pound, 1.0722 against the Swiss franc, 1.0776 against the U.S. dollar and 122.02 against the yen. 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.
RENO NV -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Viratech Corp. (the "Company") (OTC PINK: VIRA) a mobile & social networking technology company, focused on creating Social Network Application Platforms (SNAPs), specifically, social network driven wikis, harnessing social collaboration in a way to give the user a more in depth perspective of a researched subject or action. Announced today that Viratech, Corp. will be holding its Annual Shareholders' Meeting to be held on Friday, March 31, 2017 at 1:00 pm (PST) at 429 Plumb Lane, Reno Nevada 89509

MATTERS ON THE AGENDA OF THE ANNUAL SHAREHOLDERS' MEETING

1. To ratify the acquisition of the Newswire.net in the purchase and sale agreement with Cancer.im.

2. To implement the Revenue Recognition policy under FASB 65 and SAB 109 in accordance to best practices.

3. To mandatorily convert all classes of issued and outstanding preferred stock.

4. To adopt better practice standards for corporate governance.

5. To engage a PCAOB auditing firm to complete a filing and registration with the SEC.

6. Evaluate Board of Directors and other key management positions to guide the Company in sales and marketing, of our new completed product offering.

7. Engage an investor relations firm to handle the communications function of the Company to its shareholders and the public markets.

8. To adopt and to ratify the creation of the following operating divisions:

a. Sales Division;

b. Licensing Division;

c. Advertising Division;

d. Build Operate Maintain Division.

About Viratech, Corp.

Viratech is a mobile & social networking Technology Company, focused on creating and licensing, Social Network Application Platforms (SNAPs), in the medical oriented vertical space. Our first network we have successfully created with our core IP offering resides at www.cancer.im/1/ and its complimenting Apple iOS Application residing at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cancer.im/id1195005856?mt=8. The engine and power behind the mobile application and social networking sites is our REST API, which is available to the development community, for more information please our API documentation HERE.

Forward-Looking Statements

Our press releases may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may affect the actual results of operations. Forward-looking statements in this press release include statements regarding our belief about the market applications. The following important factors, among others, have affected and, in the future could affect, the our actual results: the effect of new branding and marketing initiatives, the integration of new leadership, the introduction and acceptance of new products, the levels and particular directions of research and product development by our customers, the impact of the growing number of producers of biotechnology research and diagnostics products and related price competition, general economic conditions, the impact of currency exchange rate fluctuations, and the costs and results of our research and product development efforts and those of companies in which we have invested or with which we have formed strategic relationships. For additional information concerning such factors, see the section titled "Risk Factors" in our annual report and quarterly reports. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements we make in our press releases due to new information or future events. Investors are cautioned not to place undue emphasis on these statements.

Fred Schiemann

CEO/Director

Viratech Corp.

Email: fschiemann@yahoo.com

(775) 238-6672



Chris Ryan

CEO

Cancer.im, Inc.

Email: chris@cancer.im

(619) 354-0122

www.linkedin.com/in/cancer/




DUBLIN, Mar 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Underwater Concrete Market Estimates & Trend Analysis By Raw Material (Admixtures, Aggregates, Cement), By Application (Hydropower, Marine, Shore Protection, Underwater Repairs, Tunnels, Swimming Pools), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2014 - 2025" report to their offering.

The global underwater concrete market size is expected to reach USD 229.80 billion by 2025

Further key findings from the report suggest



Hydropower energy harnessing constructions accounted for over 29% of the global consumption volume on account of high hydropower capacity expansion primarily in Asia Pacific and North America

and The use of admixtures in the product accounted for over 11% of the market revenue on account of technological developments leading to the production of advanced admixtures with superior strength, workability and anti-runoff properties

The market in China is expected to register a CAGR of over 9% by revenue, from 2016 to 2025 on account of significant marine infrastructure developments coupled with the growing adoption of hydropower as an alternate energy source

is expected to register a CAGR of over 9% by revenue, from 2016 to 2025 on account of significant marine infrastructure developments coupled with the growing adoption of hydropower as an alternate energy source Key companies operating in the industry include CEMEX, Conmix, Heidelberg among others. The companies in the industry are involved in mergers, acquisitions and capacity expansions as the major strategies to increase the market presence and annual revenues

Growing adoption of underwater concrete on account of improved technological efficiency pertaining to the concrete placing is expected to propel growth.

The demand for the product is expected to grow on account of the growth in the underwater repairs of the existing underwater structures. In addition, the development of advanced admixtures such as superplasticizers and anti-washout admixtures is expected to translate drive the demand over the next nine years.

The industry exhibits a number of technological advancements pertaining to the chemicals used for improving and adjusting the workability, adhesive strength, and setting time of the cement used in the underwater concrete. In addition, the demand for chemicals such as carboxylates and cellulose is expected to lead to an increase in the strength of the concrete, leading to the industry growth.

Rising demand for luxury amenities in the developed economies is expected to result in an increase in the construction of swimming pools, which is expected to fuel growth. The decline in the global price levels of Portland cement is expected to result in the reduction in the price of the product, leading to market growth.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Methodology and Scope

2. Executive Summary

3. Underwater Concrete Market Variables, Trends & Scope

4. Underwater Concrete Market: Raw Material Estimates & Trend Analysis

5. Underwater Concrete Market: Application Estimates & Trend Analysis

6. Underwater Concrete Market: Regional Estimates & Trend Analysis

7. Competitive Landscape

8. Company Profiles

- CEMEX S.A.B de C.V.

- Conmix Ltd.

- Dyckerhoff Basal Nederland B.V.

- HeidelbergCement AG

- Five Star Products Inc.

- Hanson UK

- King Construction Products

- Tarmac (Lafarge Tarmac)

- MAPEI

- MUHU (China) Construction Materials Co., Ltd.

- Rockbond SCP Ltd.

- Sika AG

- Larsen Building Products

- Kingstone Chemical China Co., Ltd.

- E.I du Pont de Nemours and Company

- Huntsman Corporation.

- Ashland Inc.

- BASF SE

- Lanxess AG

- The Dow Chemical Company

- LyondellBasell Industries Holdings B.V.

- Clariant AG

- Eastman Chemical Company

- Evonik Industries AG

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/mhn3r2/underwater

Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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OXFORD, England, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Oxitec today announced the appointment of Jorge Espanha as General Manager of Oxitec's Brazilian subsidiary, Oxitec do Brasil. Mr. Espanha will oversee Oxitec's programs in Brazil to deploy the environmentally-friendly vector control solution, Friendly' Aedes.

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Hadyn Parry, Chief Executive Officer at Oxitec, said, "We are delighted to welcome Jorge to the Oxitec team. Jorge's managerial experience in the life science sector and track record in marketing and driving growth will be an asset to the company as we continue to expand our operations in Brazil and beyond."

Mr. Espanha brings to Oxitec over 20 years of marketing, commercial and operational experience in local, regional and global markets including the United States, Europe and Latin America. Most recently he was General Manager at Merial for Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. In October 2016, for the second time in four years, he was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in Brazilian Agribusiness by Dinheiro Rural Magazine. Prior to Merial, Mr. Espanha held key roles at Zoetis, Pfizer Animal Health, and SmithKline Beecham having a significant growth record in the businesses he managed. Mr. Espanha is also president of the Brazilian Association for Rural Marketing & Agribusiness (ABMR&A).

Mr. Espanha added, "It is an honour to be part of the Oxitec/Intrexon group. Oxitec has the noble mission of helping Brazilian authorities prevent the spread of vectors that transmit serious diseases and implement new technologies in Brazil."

In conjunction with Piracicaba City Hall, Oxitec do Brasil is currently deploying its self-limiting Friendly' Aedes mosquitoes in an area of 65,000 people, in order to suppress the dangerous mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. In October 2016, the company opened a new mosquito production facility in Piracicaba, which has the capacity to produce 60 million Friendly' Aedes per week. A survey conducted in November showed that 92.8% of the city's population support Oxitec's vector control solution.

About Oxitec

Oxitecis a pioneer in using genetic engineering to control insect pests that spread disease and damage crops, and was founded in 2002 as a spinout from Oxford University (UK). Oxitec is a subsidiary ofIntrexon Corporation(NYSE: XON), which engineers biology to help solve some of the world's biggest problems. Follow us on Twitter at@Oxitec.

Oxitec Contact:

Matthew Warren

Press Officer

Tel: +44(0)-1235-832-393

info@oxitec.com


TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- All amounts in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Onex Corporation ("Onex") (TSX: ONEX) and its affiliates (the "Onex Group") today announced they have agreed to sell USI Insurance Services ("USI") to an affiliate of KKR & Co. L.P. and CDPQ for an enterprise value of $4.3 billion. The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2017 subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval.

In December 2012, the Onex Group made a $610 million equity investment in USI, of which Onex' share was $170 million. Upon completion of the transaction, the Onex Group will have received proceeds of approximately $2.1 billion, including a prior distribution of $181 million in 2015. This results in a gross multiple of invested capital of 3.4 times and a 34% gross rate of return. Onex' portion of the sale proceeds will be approximately $563 million, including carried interest of $65 million.

"USI's management team has done a terrific job establishing the company as a market leader with a differentiated value proposition," said Bobby Le Blanc, a Senior Managing Director of Onex. "We'd like to thank Mike Sicard and the entire USI team for being great partners to Onex and its investors and wish them continued success in the future."

"We are grateful for the support Onex has provided the last four years. Our partnership has allowed us to significantly grow USI and further develop our innovative and comprehensive set of solutions," commented Mike Sicard, Chairman and CEO of USI Insurance Services.

About Onex

Onex is one of the oldest and most successful private equity firms. Through its Onex Partners and ONCAP private equity funds, Onex acquires and builds high-quality businesses in partnership with talented management teams. At Onex Credit, Onex manages and invests in leveraged loans, collateralized loan obligations and other credit securities. Onex has approximately $24 billion of assets under management, including $6 billion of Onex proprietary capital, in private equity and credit securities. With offices in Toronto, New York, New Jersey and London, Onex invests alongside its fund investors and is the largest limited partner in each of its private equity funds.

Onex' businesses have assets of $44 billion, generate annual revenues of $29 billion and employ approximately 161,000 people worldwide. Onex shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the stock symbol ONEX. For more information on Onex, visit its website at www.onex.com. Onex' security filings can also be accessed at www.sedar.com.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations and are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated or implied by such forward-looking statements. Onex is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein should material facts change due to new information, future events or otherwise.

Contacts:

Onex Corporation

Laura Carrigan

Director, Investor Relations

416.362.7711

www.onex.com




KABUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- China and neighboring Afghanistan vowed on Thursday to deepen cooperation in the field of urbanization.

Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Yao Jing together with Afghan Minister of Urban Development and Housing Sadat Mansoor Naderi agreed that the two countries should further enhance cooperation in the field of urbanization and city development.

Earlier on Thursday, Yao and Naderi signed an agreement on launching the first phase of a housing project, which has been the largest housing scheme in the war-torn country.

"We are a neighbor to Afghanistan, and we are a partner to Afghanistan," Yao told the ceremony.

The agreement is part of a large residential housing program that will be built by China in Afghanistan.

The first phase of the project, which consists of 1,400 apartments, will be completed in Dar-ul-Aman, a locality in southwestern side of Kabul. According to Naderi, Afghans who lost their family members in terrorist attacks and family members of soldiers who were killed during fight against insurgents will be the first to receive the houses.

Naderi thanked China for supporting Afghanistan's reconstruction and for helping Afghanistan facilitate the reconciliation process.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 17, 2017) - Canadian Silver Hunter Inc. (TSXV: AGH.H) ("CSH" or the "Company"). Further to the press release dated March 16, 2017, CSH is pleased to announce that First Cobalt Corp. has secured an option to acquire 100 per cent of the historic Keeley-Frontier silver-cobalt mine in Northern Ontario, as per the First Cobalt press release of March 16, 2017.

CSH now acknowledges their relationship with First Cobalt Corp., as well as First Cobalt's participation in the Keeley and Frontier mines project.

About Canadian Silver Hunter Inc.

CSH is a Canadian exploration company focused on the exploration of silver-cobalt deposits on its flagship South Lorrain Project (formerly the Keeley Frontier Project). The South Lorrain Project is located within the historic South Lorrain Silver Camp, which along with the historic Cobalt and Gowganda silver camps is part of a world class cobalt-silver district in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt between Temagami and Kirkland Lake, in northeastern Ontario.

For further information please contact:

Canadian Silver Hunter Inc.

Jeffrey Hunter

President and CEO

(416) 707 4230

info@cshi.ca

www.canadiansilverhunter.ca

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT: Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This release includes certain "forward-looking statements". These statements are based on information currently available to the Company and the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include, or may be based upon, estimates, forecasts and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the timing of the Company's exploration, development and business plans, strategic acquisitions, the focus of the Company in the future, progress in and success of development of the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's performance, business prospects and opportunities. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, outcomes of acquisitions or other corporate transactions, exploration or development on the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; operational difficulties encountered in connection with the activities of the Company; and other matters discussed in this release. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Onex Corp. (ONEX.TO) and its affiliates said Friday that they agreed to sell USI Insurance Services to an affiliate of KKR & Co. L.P. (KKR) and CDPQ for an enterprise value of US$4.3 billion. The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2017 subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval. In December 2012, the Onex Group made a US$610 million equity investment in USI, of which Onex' share was $170 million. Upon completion of the transaction, the Onex Group will have received proceeds of about US$2.1 billion, including a prior distribution of US$181 million in 2015. Onex noted that its portion of the sale proceeds will be about US$563 million, including carried interest of $65 million. Separately, KKR and CDPQ, along with USI employees, confirmed their joint acquisition of USI Insurance Services, a leading U.S. insurance brokerage and consulting firm. As partners with equal ownership, KKR and CDPQ will acquire USI from Onex Corporation and its affiliates in a transaction that values USI at US$4.3 billion. KKR noted that the investment will primarily be made through KKR and CDPQ's core private equity partnership which includes funds from KKR's balance sheet and from CDPQ's pool of capital. Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec or CDPQ is a long-term institutional investor that manages funds primarily for public and parapublic pension and insurance plans. 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) -- 03/17/17 -- Candente Copper Corp. (TSX: DNT)(LMA: DNT) ("Candente Copper", "Company") has received notification from Compania Minera Zahena S.A.C. ("Zahena") that they have decided to discontinue their right to earn an interest in the Arikepay property, located in Southern Peru.

In excess of 8,200 metres (m) were drilled in 13 diamond drill holes and a 14th hole will be completed in the next few days. Candente Copper has received drill logs for only 6 of the diamond drill holes and assay results for 4 of these holes (see NR 089).

"It is always a disappointment when exploration does not result in significant discoveries, however, we appreciate the funding and technical expertise Zahena provided for our Arikepay project. Upon receipt of all final results a review will be completed to determine what additional exploration may be warranted," commented Joanne Freeze, P.Geo., Candente Copper's CEO.

In 2012, Candente Copper identified a mineralized porphyry system measuring at least 2,200m by 700m to 1,200m laterally and extending at least to a depth of 300m. Candente Copper had drilled 3,630m in 14 widely spaced RC holes most of which terminated at 300m due to machine capacity. Within the mineralized porphyry system, Candente Copper identified a zone of significant copper, gold and silver mineralization measuring 1,200m by 800m laterally and open at depth. Approximately two-thirds of the mineralized porphyry system is covered by recent gravel cover deposits.

About Candente Copper

Candente Copper is a mineral exploration company engaged in acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties. The Company is currently focused on its 100% owned Canariaco project, which includes the Feasibility stage Canariaco Norte deposit as well as the Canariaco Sur deposit and Quebrada Verde prospect, located within the western Cordillera of the Peruvian Andes in the Department of Lambayeque in Northern Peru.

Joanne C. Freeze, P.Geo., CEO, and Michael Thicke, P.Geo., VP Exploration, are the Qualified Persons as defined by National Instrument 43-101 for the projects discussed above. They have reviewed and approved the contents of this release.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Candente Copper relies upon litigation protection for forward-looking statements.

On behalf of the Board of Candente Copper Corp.

Joanne C. Freeze P.Geo., CEO, Director

NR-090

Contacts:

info@candentecopper.com

www.candentecopper.com



Walter Spagnuolo

Investor Relations

mobile: +1 (604) 306-8477

local: + 1 (604) 689-1957 ext 3




OAKVILLE, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Editor's Note: There are 3 images associated with this release.

Staff and executives of Kalahari Resorts and Conventions broke records on March 17, 2017 as they celebrated the completion of Kalahari Pocono Mountains' Phase II 110,000 square-foot addition. This expansion has doubled the Pennsylvania waterpark's size, giving guests a total of 220,000 square feet of aquatic attractions and earning Kalahari the title of largest indoor waterpark in the United States. With its abundance of natural light this record-breaking waterpark and resort offers visitors an outdoor atmosphere any time of year, thanks to its three skylights, two large translucent roofs, three glass clearstories and two high glass walls designed and built by OpenAire.

This grand opening marks the completion of Phase II of OpenAire's work for the popular African-themed waterpark and resort. Phase I of the park project opened in 2015 with 110,000 square feet of original attractions under an expansive retractable skylight. Kalahari continued with its designers, Architectural Design Consultants Inc. (ADCI), Kraemer Brothers Construction, and OpenAire, on Phase II in 2016 and into 2017. The resort now covers a total of 150 acres and features more than a dozen new slides and attractions. These include the thrilling Sahara Sidewinder and Screaming Hyena slides, which include a near-vertical drop; the swirling Victoria Falls; Coral Cove for younger kids; an expanded lazy river; a swim-up bar; an indoor/outdoor spa; and much more. Kalahari's management are thrilled to open these new attractions, as well as over 500 new guest rooms and extra convention space, in order to meet high demand from throughout the northeastern United States.

OpenAire's expansive, customized skylights ensure that Kalahari guests can experience these great features in an authentic outdoor atmosphere no matter what the weather outside. The completed waterpark includes a soaring glazed roof enclosure measuring 134' x 50' with a 34' high glass front wall and a huge 134' wide glass sidewall rising from a height of 34' to 51'; as well as an incredibly large polycarbonate glazed single-slope roof measuring 134' x 53' feet; three sloping clearstory windows measuring 136' x 6'-8" high and two large pyramid skylights measuring 50' x 50'. Over the slide tower is a ridge skylight measuring 30' x 40', which features two 10' wide retracting roof panels which allows fresh air to enter and naturally vents the moist aquatic atmosphere. These skylights and roofs flood the space with natural light and with the retracting skylight gives Kalahari the best of both an indoor and an outdoor waterpark environment. OpenAire is very proud to complete this multi-year project with Kalahari Resorts and Conventions, which has allowed OpenAire to bring outdoor-style aquatic environments to the world on an unprecedented scale.

About OpenAire

OpenAire has been designing and manufacturing beautiful, high-quality, environmentally conscious retractable roof structures and skylights for over 25 years. We bring unique visions to life from initial design to installation, transforming buildings into sunlit spaces customers love. Headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, OpenAire is approaching 1,000 projects throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Some of our projects include four cruise liners in Royal Caribbean's new Quantum series of ships; the Rooftop Bar at the Refinery Hotel in New York NY; Restoration Hardware's "RH Gallery" in Chicago IL; Fort Lewis College Observatory for the Geosciences, Physics and Engineering Hall in Durango, CO; Aqua Sferra Water Park (the biggest aluminum dome in the world) in Donetsk, Ukraine; Kalahari in Pocono Mountains PA (the largest waterpark under one roof in the USA); Tropicana Water Park in Stadthagen, Germany; Jay Peak Ski Resort's Pump House Indoor Waterpark in Jay, VT; the Palms Casino & Resort in Las Vegas NV; and a pool enclosure at the Hilton Toronto Airport Hotel in Toronto, ON. To learn more about OpenAire Inc.'s projects and capabilities, visit http://www.openaire.com/ and follow us on Twitter. For more details on this project, please e-mail sales@openaire.com

To view the images associated with this release, please visit the following links:

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20170316-1089085a800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20170316-1089085b800.jpg

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20170316-1089085c800.jpg

Contacts:

Sales

OpenAire

T: 905-901-8535

TF: 1800-267-4877

E: sales@openaire.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Select Sands Corp. ("Select Sands" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SNS) (OTCQX: SLSDF) announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Select Sands America Corp., has entered into a multiyear frac sand supply agreement with Liberty Oilfield Services, LLC of Denver Colorado. Initial rail shipments were completed in February, 2017 and are anticipated to continue throughout 2017 with volumes expected to increase in 2018 and 2019 to surpass a total of one million tons per year. The 40/70 and 100 mesh products to be supplied under the agreement will be sourced from the Company's facilities in Arkansas.

Select Sands Corp. President and CEO, Zig Vitols commented: "Liberty Oil & Gas is a valued partner and we look forward to the continued supply of their proppant needs into the future. This agreement is another milestone in our strategy to optimally expand capacity and become a supplier to a diverse customer base."

About Select Sands Corp.

Select Sands Corp. is an industrial silica product company developing its 100% owned, 520-acre Northern White, Tier-1, silica sands project located in Arkansas, U.S.A. Select Sands' Arkansas property has a significant logistical advantage of being approximately 650 rail-miles closer to oil and gas markets located in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release includes forward-looking information and statements, which may include, but are not limited to, information and statements regarding or inferring the future business, operations, financial performance, prospects, and other plans, intentions, expectations, estimates, and beliefs of the Company. Information and statements which are not purely historical fact are forward-looking statements. Such statements in this press release include statements regarding the future shipments of frac sand to Liberty Oil Field Services, LLC and the anticipated increase in volumes of such shipments as well as statements regarding the expansion of the Company's capacity. Forward-looking information and statements involve and are subject to assumptions and known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause actual events, results, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future events, results, performance, and achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking information and statements herein. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the ability of Liberty Oil Field Services to satisfy its obligations under the supply agreement and the ability of the Company to execute on its plans to expand capacity together with the risk factors set forth in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended September 30, 2016 under the heading "Risks & Uncertainties", a copy of which is filed on SEDAR at www.SEDAR.com. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Although the Company believes that any forward-looking information and statements herein are reasonable, in light of the use of assumptions and the significant risks and uncertainties inherent in such information and statements, there can be no assurance that any such forwardlooking information and statements will prove to be accurate, and accordingly readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such risks and uncertainties and should not place undue reliance upon such forward-looking information and statements. Any forward-looking information and statements herein are made as of the date hereof, and except as required by applicable laws, the Company assumes no obligation and disclaims any intention to update or revise any forwardlooking information and statements herein or to update the reasons that actual events or results could or do differ from those projected in any forward looking information and statements herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, or otherwise, except as required by applicable laws.

For more information about Select Sands Corp., please visit www.selectsandscorp.com.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this Release.

Contacts:

Zigurds Vitols

President & CEO

Phone: (604) 639-4533






CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro drifted lower against its major counterparts in the European session on Friday, after a survey showed growing support for the anti-euro candidate Marine Le Pen in the first round of French Presidential election on April 23.



The latest Opinionway poll showed Le Pen beating Emmanuel Macron by 28 percent - 25 percent of votes in the first round of election.



The support for the Front National leader has surged ahead by one percentage points in the second round, although the centrist candidate is tipped to win by 59-41 percent of votes.



The euro dropped to 1.0732 against the greenback and 121.42 against the yen, from its early 1-1/2-month high of 1.0782 and a 3-day high of 122.25, respectively.



The euro slipped to 1.5296 against the kiwi and 1.3954 against the aussie, off its early 4-day high of 1.5440 and a 3-day high of 1.4055, respectively.



The euro was trading lower at 0.8684 against the pound, compared to an early high of 0.8737.



Pulling away from early highs of 1.4368 against the loonie and 1.0742 against the franc, the euro weakened to 1.4314 and 1.0697, respectively.



The next possible support for the euro may be seen around 1.06 against the greenback, 120.00 against the yen, 0.85 against the pound, 1.06 against the franc, 1.42 against the loonie, 1.38 against the aussie and 1.51 against the kiwi.



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CAMBRIDGE, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Emerging technology is changing the way we live. Nowhere is this more apparent than with advances in healthcare. Technology is connecting patients, caregivers and healthcare companies. Doing so empowers all parties with data to make better decisions.

On March 29, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge (MITEF) Innovation Series will host, Connected Health: Emerging Technologies Poised to Make our Lives Better. The event will explore some of the most exciting technologies leading a transformation in healthcare. From devices that measure brain activity and track workouts, to systems that stimulate muscles to minimize workouts, to body sensors and voice-activated collaborative care solutions that help improve patient engagement and quality of care, the possibilities are near endless. Do today's realities measure up to the promises? Where are they exceeding expectations?

"Boston is the epicenter of medical device innovation and the perfect place for a robust discussion on the marriage of technology and healthcare," said Katja Wald, executive director of MITEF Cambridge. "We're at the vanguard of this digital revolution, so this event offers a tremendous opportunity to see how innovative companies are affecting people's lives in real and exciting ways."

Dr. Joseph Kvedar, vice president of connected health at Boston-based Partners HealthCare, will provide the evening's opening remarks. He will be followed by leading entrepreneurs and innovators in the connected healthcare space who will showcase emerging technologies, including:

Neumitra: Founder and CEO Rob Goldberg -- Embedded biomodules help measure and manage the autonomic nervous system.

Humon: Co-founder Allesandro Babini -- The first wearable that measures oxygen levels within muscle, providing real-time feedback to optimize workouts and perfect training.

Orbita: CEO Bill Rogers -- Empowers non-technical users to design and maintain "voice-first" digital healthcare assistants; also the first app combining data from wearables and connected devices to guide insightful care journey management

MC-10: Co-founder and SVP of Corporate Development Ben Schlatka - Reshapes electronics to create thin, conformal systems that flex, stretch and bend seamlessly with the natural world.

Scensio Systems: Senior Advisor Howard Brick -- Monitors and improves patient healthcare leveraging AI and personalized health coaching.

MobioSense: Chief Medical Officer Justin Yang -- Instant and affordable heart disease monitoring to prevent acute heart attacks.

Emerald Innovations: An executive from Emerald Innovations -- Modern fall detection for caregivers.

Additionally, the evening's moderator, John Loughnane, MD, chief of innovation, Commonwealth Care Alliance, will discuss how these technologies are being used to improve healthcare and overall quality of life.

The session will conclude with a networking reception and technology showcase.

Event Details

March 29, 2017, 5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

MIT Stata Center, Room 123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Registration

Keynote

Tech Showcase

Panel discussion

Drinks and networking

To register and for more information: http://bit.ly/2miFGcj

Follow MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge @mitefcmb

Sponsors supporting this event include CHEN PR; Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds; Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton; Withum.com and Wolf Greenfield.

About The MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge

The MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge is the founding chapter and one of 27 worldwide chapters comprising the MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc. Offering more than 40 programs and events annually that inspire innovation, MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge initiatives facilitate critical one-on-one mentoring while providing team services that increase the skills and expertise necessary for entrepreneurs to succeed.

MITEF CONTACT:

Katja Wald

MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge

617-253-8238

Email Contact



MEDIA CONTACT:

Carro Halpin

CHEN PR for MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge

781-672-3132

Email Contact




GUANGZHOU, China, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The 39th China International Furniture Fair (Guangzhou) (CIFF) officially opens in China Import & Export Fair Complex & PWTC Expo from March 18-31, 2017, and is expected to receive over 170,000 professionals from more than 190 countries. Themed "Better Life, Better Work", this year's fair embraces 3900 exhibitors from over 30 countries featuring modern furniture, home decor and textile, outdoor furniture and leisure products, office furniture, hotel furniture as well as furniture materials.

Home Furniture: Quality Home, Quality Life

The Home Furniture section brings new intelligent home furniture, convertible furniture, home remodeling and neo-Chinese furniture from leading brands like Ashely, Natuzzi, M&D.

Meanwhile, this year's CIFF demonstrates its unique taste and lifestyle by showcasing multiple scene layouts of home decor and textiles. Diamond star, a US company, will demonstrate more than 1000 new products after its debut in North America.

Outdoor & Leisure: A New Interpretation

Focusing on the idea of "Slow Down & Enjoy the Sun", the outdoor & leisure section highlights the complete industry chain including material, tailored design, functional products and accessories from Leading enterprises such as Meiyaxin, Marstone, Seren, ISOTOP, and Yalees Textile.

Intelligent Office: Smart Office, Smart Work

The Office Show unfolds the trendy topic of health-conscious furniture and smart office furniture, revealing modern items with concise contour and smart technology system. Leading brand Quama builds an elegant work environment through less material and more gracious details.

Smart technologies will also make their appearances in the machinery & raw material section. Biesse, leader in woodworking, provides a comprehensive range of manufacturing equipment from design software to cutting tools and drills. Meanwhile, audiences could have a look at the latest Armour series from Kolity and HQ2 and HQ3 hidden slideway from SACA Precision Manufacturing.

"This time CIFF provides a series of forums in addition to our characteristic exhibitions to offer additional opportunities for audiences to follow market dynamics," noted CIFF committee, "We would like every visitor to have a fruitful journey at the show."

Please visit: http://www.ciff-gz.com/

About CIFF

The first and largest furniture fair inChina, the 39thCIFF (Guangzhou) will be organized by China National Furniture Association, China Foreign Trade Center (Group), Guangdong Furniture Association, Hong Kong Furniture & Decoration Trade Association and hosted by China Foreign Trade Guangzhou Exhibition General Corp.


MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - The European Commission said Friday that, following discussions with Facebook Inc. (FB), Google and Twitter Inc. (TWTR), it has given them one month to come up with detailed plans on how they would comply with EU regulations. If final proposals are not satisfactory, consumer authorities could ultimately resort to enforcement action.



The European union consumer authorities and organisations have received a growing number of complaints from consumers, who have been targeted by fraud or scams when using social media websites, as well as having been subject to certain terms of services that do not respect EU consumer law, the EU said.



On this basis, EU consumer authorities, under the leadership of the French consumer authority and with the support of the European Commission, sent a letter to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ last November asking them to address two areas of concern.



On 16 March 2017, EU consumer authorities and the European Commission met with these companies to hear and discuss their proposed solutions. The companies in question will finalise detailed measures on how to comply with the EU regulatory framework within one month. The Commission and the consumer authorities will review the final proposals. If they are not satisfactory, consumer authorities could ultimately resort to enforcement action, European union said.



Commissioner Jourova said,'.... Social media companies also need to take more responsibility in addressing scams and fraud happening on their platforms. I want to thank the EU consumer authorities who have worked tirelessly with the Commission on this important issue over the past months. From today, social media companies have one month to come up with solutions to comply with EU rules.'



The companies have agreed to propose changes on two areas: Unfair terms and conditions; addressing fraud and scams that mislead consumers when using the social networks.



The EU noted that the Social media companies must remove any fraud and scams appearing on their websites that could mislead consumers, once they become aware of such practices. In this connection, national consumer protection authorities should have a direct and standardised communication channel to signal such wrongdoings to social media operators and obtain take down of content, as well as information concerning the traders responsible for the infringements. This is in line with EU consumer legislation and the E-Commerce Directive, which gives the possibility to Member States to establish procedures governing the removal or disabling of access to illegal information.



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VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

According to Future Market Insights,

Advent of digital imaging technology can be identified as the point from where roll films were ordained to go out of business.

The declining demand for cameras with film rolls is directly associated with growing adoption of digital cameras. Consumers grew more inclined towards digital cameras, thereby making photo printing and merchandise obsolete.

Furthermore, time consumed by dye sublimation photo printers added to this shift towards instantaneously-rendered digital images. Poor image quality and expensive costs of conventional inkjet printers further deterred consumers from photo printing & merchandise.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO )



Future Market Insights' recent report predicts a very unavailing future for the global photo printing & merchandise market. Above factors have been compiled in the report to define the dynamics of global market for photo printing & merchandise. Based on these, the US$ 16.8 Bn market for photo printing & merchandise will see a decelerated revenue growth at 2.6% CAGR, bringing in just over US$ 21.7 Bn by the end of 2026. Future Market Insights projects that in the ten-year forecast period, photo printing & merchandise worth a little less than US$ 5 Bn will be sold across the globe. The report also highlights trends which will, in one way or another, boost the sluggish adoption of photo printing among digital age consumers.

Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1588

Firstly, manufacturers of photo printing merchandise are expected to maintain more focus on introducing kiosks for increasing marketing exposure. Companies like Fujifilm Group have already deployed their SmartPix photo kiosks across various commercial settings such as supermarkets, malls and camera shops, and have also augmented them with enhanced connectivity features. Instating NFC capabilities in photo printing kiosks can be also observed as another promising opportunity for manufacturers to generate interest among customers towards conventional photo printing.

Although, almost half of global photo printing & merchandise revenues are likely to be coming from online sales. While instant kiosks account for less than 10% of the market value, online distribution of photo printing & merchandise will bringing more than US$ 12.2 Bn revenues through 2026. Meanwhile, distribution of photo printing & merchandise through retail channels will be scaling down rigorously, exhibiting a negative 1.6% CAGR during the forecast period.

Preview Analysis on Global Photo Printing and Merchandise Market Segmentation By Module - Film Printing, Digital Printing; By Mode Of Printing - Desktop Application, Mobile Application; By Distribution Channel - Instant Kiosk, Over The Counter, Retail and Online: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/photo-printing-market

The report has analysed that in 2016, an estimated one-third of global photo printing & merchandise revenues emanated from sales of film printing. This indicates that a majority of consumers are preferring digital printing merchandise. Also, over the forecast period, the report projects an impressive growth in demand for mobile application-based photo printing. Desktop applications are expected to lose out to mobile applications as this mode of printing is projected to register a comparatively faster revenue growth at 4.9% CAGR.

Speak with Analysis for any Report Related Queries: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1588

The report also predicts fastest revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan region - 3.9% CAGR. North America is also expected to dominate with nearly one-fourth stake in global revenues, although the region is likely to lose out its presence beyond 2020. Leading manufacturers of photo printing & merchandise, profiled in the report, include Sanpfish, Eastman Kodak Company, Cimpress NV, Bay Photo Inc., Digitalab, AdoramaPix LCC, Shutterfly, Inc., and Mpix.

More from FMI's Cutting-edge Intelligence:

Europe & Asia Pacific Herbal Beauty Products Market Segmentation By Type - Hair Care (Hair Oil, Powder, Shampoo, Conditioner, Masks And Creams), Skin Care (Cleansers & Toners, Cream & Lotion, Scrubs & Facewash), Fragrance and Oral Care; By Distribution Channel - Supermarket, Specialty Stores, Departmental Stores, Drug Stores, Beauty Salons and Online/Direct Selling: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/europe-and-asia-pacific-herbal-beauty-products-market

Segmentation By Type - Hair Care (Hair Oil, Powder, Shampoo, Conditioner, Masks And Creams), Skin Care (Cleansers & Toners, Cream & Lotion, Scrubs & Facewash), Fragrance and Oral Care; By Distribution Channel - Supermarket, Specialty Stores, Departmental Stores, Drug Stores, Beauty Salons and Online/Direct Selling: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/europe-and-asia-pacific-herbal-beauty-products-market Middle East Flooring and Carpet Market Segmentation By Product Type - Carpets, Tufting, Woven, Rugs, Artificial Grass, Carpet Tiles, Vinyl Flooring and Laminate Parquet Flooring; By Material - Polypropylene, Nylon, Polyester and Others; By Application - Residential, Commercial Offices, Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare & Hospitals, Education Institutes, Automotive, Industrial and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/middle-east-flooring-and-carpet-market

Segmentation By Product Type - Carpets, Tufting, Woven, Rugs, Artificial Grass, Carpet Tiles, Vinyl Flooring and Laminate Parquet Flooring; By Material - Polypropylene, Nylon, Polyester and Others; By Application - Residential, Commercial Offices, Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare & Hospitals, Education Institutes, Automotive, Industrial and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/middle-east-flooring-and-carpet-market U.S Men's Underwear Market Taxonomy By Category - Regular Brief, Boxer Brief, Boxer Shorts, Trunks and Thongs; By Distribution Channel - Mass Merchant, Mono-Brand Outlet, Pharmacy Store, Online Store and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/us-mens-underwear-market

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 and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.

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China's just-concluded Two Sessions meetings have delivered an important message to the world: China is full of confidence and hope. This sentiment can be attributed to the country's achievements in recent years.

The first major achievement is economic growth. China predicted its economic growth for this year as coming in around 6.5 percent, according to a government work report delivered by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The goal proved attainable, as the National Bureau of Statistics revealed on March 14 that the added value of above-scale enterprises has registered a year-on-year increase of 6.3 percent from January to February of 2017, up 0.3 percent from December 2016.

Over the past several years, China has found a development path that confirms its national conditions. The country is confident of its path, philosophy, system and culture, as was demonstrated throughout the Two Sessions.

China has embarked on a path of stable and consistent diplomacy featuring clear-cut stances and firm principles. Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed a guiding principle of "China has opened its doors and will not close them." Xi elaborated on the philosophy during the Two Sessions.

The national confidence is rooted in the CPC Central Committee's strong leadership, with Xi as its core. The Two Sessions provided a platform for the world to see how China's national policies are made, and, more importantly, to foresee the direction and future of the country's development. Therefore, in some ways, China's confidence comes not only from within but also from without--from people around the world who pay attention to China's development.

Data indicates that China's contribution to the global economy has remained above 30 percent since the 2008 financial crisis. At present, the country is an important force pushing forward the world's economy, despite of its own economic slowdown and a stubbornly lackluster global economy.

Later this year, China will host a series of meetings with major world economies to discuss ways of pushing the global economy in a more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial direction. China is confident that it can avoid the political and economic consequences caused by the prevalence of so-called Black Swan events in recent years. A confident China will boost assurance of global community, create more certainty around world.

The author, Wang Yiwei, is a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Note to editors: An image is included with this press release on Marketwired's website.

On March 16, 2016, the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), the Government of Bermuda, and Aecon Group Inc., announced that commercial and financial close had been achieved for the redevelopment of L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda.

Under a government-to-government contract between CCC and the Government of Bermuda, CCC will deliver a new, world-class airport terminal and associated infrastructure.

CCC's contract is for the construction of the new airport terminal as part of a Public-Private-Partnership (P3) business model. Aecon, CCC's qualified Canadian sub-contractor and one of Canada's leading construction companies, is responsible for the project's development, financing, and long-term operation and maintenance.

Quick Facts

-- CCC will subcontract the work to Aecon, a contract valued at US $274 million. -- Construction of the new terminal will begin in April 2017 and is expected to take approximately 40 months. -- CCC and Aecon successfully delivered a new airport project in Quito, Ecuador in 2013 using the same model that will be used in Bermuda. Quito's new Mariscal Sucre International Airport has over a dozen international awards celebrating its innovative design and overall operations efficiency as a leading South American airport. -- The Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Crown corporation of the Government of Canada, is the Government of Canada's international government-to-government contracting organization, helping governments around the world acquire expertise and proven capabilities available for export from Canada. -- Every contract signed by CCC with a foreign government buyer has an inherent guarantee, backed by the Government of Canada, that the terms and conditions of the contract will be met. This helps mitigate the buyer's risks and provides added incentive to procure from Canada.

Quotes

"This government-to-government contract embodies the value, trust and collaboration of the long-standing bilateral relationship between Canada and Bermuda. Knowing the positive economic impact a modernized airport can have on Bermuda, CCC is excited to play a key role in the delivery of a world-class customized Canadian solution to meet the needs of Bermudians - while working with one of Canada's leading infrastructure firms."

-- Martin Zablocki, President and CEO, Canadian Commercial Corporation

"Reaching financial close of this significant agreement has been a long and complex process. We have completed the negotiation of definitive, detailed terms to oversee the project's implementation and I am happy to say that construction of our much needed, new state-of-the-art airport can commence. The Airport Redevelopment Project is one of the most important capital projects ever undertaken on our island shores and will play a crucial role in the recovery of the Bermuda economy."

-- The Hon. E.T. Richards JP, MP, Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance, Bermuda

"Through Aecon's select participation in international projects such as the Bermuda Airport Redevelopment Project, we continue our long history of building airports globally to add to our successful roster of experience as concessionaire. The combination of the government-to-government and P3 procurement models is a unique offering brought to the table by CCC and Aecon to facilitate the delivery of a tailor made solution for Bermuda."

-- John M. Beck, President and CEO, Aecon Group Inc.

Associated links

www.ccc.ca

To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Bermuda_Financial_Close.jpg

Contacts:

Media Relations

Canadian Commercial Corporation

communications@ccc.ca



Government of Bermuda

Honey Adams

441-294-9016

hsadams@gov.bm



Aecon Media Relations

Nicole Court

(416) 297-2600 x3824

ncourt@aecon.com






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, has indicated her opposition to the House GOP's bill to repeal and replace Obamacare as it is currently written.



'This is not a bill I could support in its current form,' Collins said in an interview with the Portland Press Herald on Thursday. 'It really misses the mark.'



Collins pointed to a Congressional Budget Office analysis that found the legislation known as the American Health Care Act would increase the number of uninsured people by 24 million by 2026.



The Maine senator also said the bill doesn't come close to achieving the goal of allowing low-income seniors to purchase health insurance.



'We don't want to in any way sacrifice coverage for people who need it the most,' Collins told the Portland Press Herald.



Collins said she hoped major changes would be made to the legislation but called it unacceptable in its current form.



The comments from Collins reflect the difficult balancing act Republican leaders are trying to pull off in their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.



In addition to the opposition from Collins, other moderate Republicans have been critical of a provision in the bill curbing federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid.



Meanwhile, more conservative lawmakers have indicated their opposition to the legislation amid complaints that it does not go far enough to repeal Obamacare.



House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has expressed confidence the bill will pass, although the GOP has little margin for error in the narrowly-divided Senate.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had to deal with the media and defend President Donald Trump's allegation that his predecessor ordered wiretapping or surveillance of Trump Tower, despite Senate Intelligence leaders' statement that they see no indication that it happened. In a joint statement Thursday in response to Trump's claims on wiretapping evidence, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said, 'Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.' Spicer had said on Tuesday that he was extremely confident that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees would ultimately vindicate the President's allegation that Trump Tower was wiretapped. In a news conference Thursday, reporters sought his reaction, and Spicer responded by accusing reporters of ignoring key information and the intelligence committee leaders of speaking before they have all the facts. Spicer refused to say if the President still stands by his allegation. Instead, He cited passages from a series of articles, and sought to recast Trump's words. Spicer said he believes Trump will be vindicated. He read a Fox News report which quoted Judge Andrew Napolitano as saying that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the US agencies, but the British Intelligence Spying Agency GCHQ. 'He was able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this.' 'Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot,' Spicer told reporters. GCHQ denied the allegations made by the White House, which assured No 10 that it would not be repeated, BBC reported. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The University of Michigan is scheduled to release final consumer sentiment index for March at 10:00 am ET Friday. Economists are looking for a reading of 97.6, unchanged from the preliminary estimate. Ahead of the data, the greenback traded mixed against its major rivals. While the greenback held steady against the pound, franc and the euro, it fell against the yen. The greenback was valued at 1.0685 against the euro, 1.2472 against the pound, 111.63 against the yen and 1.0006 against the franc as of 9:55 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The Board of Latvijas Gaze calls up and announces that the Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders of Latvijas Gaze will take place on 15 August 2017 at the premises of Latvijas Gaze, 20 Vagonu Street, Riga. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 11.00 a.m. Registration for the meeting opens at 10.30 a.m.



The meeting is set to adopt a decision on the company's reorganisation. Under the requirements of the European Union and the relevant amendments to the Energy Law passed on 11 February 2016, Latvijas Gaze has to unbundle natural gas trading and distribution by 1 January 2018. Unlike with transmission and storage, which were spun off in 2016 by setting up the Joint Stock Company "Conexus Baltic Grid", there is no ownership unbundling required. Hence, the company to be spun off may be a subsidiary.



The initial decision on the company's demerger model was taken at the shareholders' meeting of 16 June 2017, with the shareholders voting favourably for the separation of distribution system services from trading by setting up a subsidiary. Hence, if a favourable decision is made at the shareholders' meeting of 15 August, the distribution company will have one shareholder - Latvijas Gaze, and all shareholders of Latvijas Gaze will become owners of the group.



A positive vote requires that three-fourths of shareholders be present and 85% of the present shareholders vote in favour. In such event, shareholders absent from the meeting will still retain their shares in Latvijas Gaze and accordingly in the distribution operator as part of the group.



The distribution operator will be the Joint Stock Company "Gaso".



Vinsents Makaris Head of Investor Relations Phone: + (371) 67 369 144 E-mail: IR@lg.lv



Attachment:

https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=638189

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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 17, 2017) - Royal Road Minerals Limited (TSXV: RYR) ("Royal Road Minerals" or the "Company") announces that Donald R. Njegovan has informed the Company that, due to other professional commitments, he is to regretfully resign from the Board of Directors.

Dr Tim Coughlin, Royal Road Minerals President and CEO stated; "Don has been instrumental in positioning Royal Road for success. He has been an energetic and committed member of the Board and helped us push through two very tough years for the exploration and mining industry. We are sad to see him go, but we understand the new pressures on his time and wish him all the very best for the future."

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary statement:

This news release contains certain statements that constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements") and includes statements relating to the Offer and those describing the Company's future plans and the expectations of its management that a stated result or condition will occur. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company and Caza, or developments in the Company's and Caza's business or in the mineral resources industry, or with respect to the Offer, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include all disclosure regarding possible events, conditions or results of operations that is based on assumptions about, among other things, future economic conditions and courses of action, and assumptions related to government approvals, and anticipated costs and expenditures. The words "plans", "prospective", "expect", "intend", "intends to" and similar expressions identify forward looking statements, which may also include, without limitation, any statement relating to future events, conditions or circumstances. Forward-looking statements of the Company contained in this news release, which may prove to be incorrect, include, but are not limited to, the various assumptions set forth herein and in the Company's take-over bid circular prepared and filed in accordance with applicable securities laws in Canada as well as the ability of the Company to effect a compulsory acquisition and to de-list the Caza shares from the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Company cautions you not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. There is no guarantee that the anticipated benefits of the Offer and the Company's and Caza's business plans or operations will be achieved. The risks and uncertainties that may affect forward-looking statements include, among others: economic market conditions, anticipated costs and expenditures, government approvals, and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's and Caza's filings with Canadian provincial securities regulators or other applicable regulatory authorities. Forward-looking statements included herein are based on the current plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions of the Company management and information provided to the Company by Caza, and, except as required by law, the Company and Caza do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements should assumptions related to these plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions change. Nothing in this news release should be construed as either an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy or sell the Company's securities.

For further information please contact:

Dr. Timothy Coughlin

President and Chief Executive Officer



USA-Canada toll free 1800 6389205

+44 (0)1534 887166

+44 (0)7797 742800

info@royalroadminerals.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Top Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan is President Donald Trump's choice to be the United States' new Deputy Defense Secretary. The White House Thursday announced the nomination of Shanahan as well as five other individuals to key civilian posts at the Department of Defense. Robert Daigle, Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation; Elaine McCusker, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense; David Norquist, Under Secretary of Defense and Comptroller; Kenneth Rapuano, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security; and David Joel Trachtenberg, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. A Pentagon spokesman said all are highly qualified individuals who were personally recommended by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Bob Work will continue to serve as Deputy Defense Secretary until Shanahan is confirmed by the Senate. Shanahan, from Washington state, is currently Boeing's Senior Vice President for supply chain and operations, responsible for oversight of the company's manufacturing operations and supplier management functions. Previously, Shanahan was vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems and vice president and general manager for Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia, where he was responsible for all U.S. Army Aviation, including the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, and the CH-47 Chinook and the AH-64D Apache helicopters. 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) - Declaring an end to a policy of strategic patience, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Friday the possibility of using military force is on the table if North Korea continues to elevate the threat of their weapons program. Tillerson's comments came during a press conference in South Korea as he made his first official visit to Asia as President Donald Trump's Secretary of State. 'If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action then that option is on the table,' Tillerson said. 'Certainly we do not want for things to get to a military conflict,' he added. 'But obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces then that would be met with an appropriate response.' Tillerson suggested previous diplomatic efforts to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program had failed and said the Trump administration is exploring a new range of measures. The Secretary of State noted there are many steps that can be taken before military action is needed and expressed optimism North Korea can be persuaded to take a different course of action. President Donald Trump followed up Tillerson's comments with a post on Twitter accusing North Korea of 'behaving very badly.' 'North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!' Trump tweeted. 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.
According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global interventional image-guided systems marketis expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 5% during the forecast period.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005283/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global interventional image-guided systems market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

This research report titled 'Global Interventional Image-guided Systems Market 2017-2021' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This report also includes an up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

According to Srinivas Sashidhar, a lead analyst at Technavio for medical imaging research, "The demand for interventional CT, X-ray and fluoroscopy, PET, and MRI image-guided systems is growing due to the rising number of cardiology and oncology cases. In addition, new opportunities are emerging in the interventional image-guided systems as researchers and manufacturers focus on developing portable imaging equipment that can be used by mobile healthcare providers."

Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=57048

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 market research analysis categorizes the global interventional image guided systems market into four major application segments. They are:

Cardiology

Oncology

Orthopedic and neurology

Gastroenterology and urology

Cardiology

Interventional image-guided systems are used for interventional cardiology procedures such as coronary angiography, heart valve replacements, balloon angioplasty procedures, and stenosis. The increasing number of cardiac cases will escalate the demand for interventional image-guided systems in the market. The market is dominated by Siemens Healthineers, Toshiba Medical Systems, Philips Healthcare, and GE Healthcare

"The integration of interventional image-guided systems with hybrid operating rooms is a growing focus on the market. The hybrid operating room can be used for surgical procedures and catheter-based surgical interventions such as for angiography procedures," says Srinivas.

Oncology

Interventional image-guided systems help in pre-procedure planning, which includes identification of tumor, targeting the tumor, and its biopsy. In September 2016, Philips Healthcare launched its next-generation interventional oncology treatment system, the OncoSuite system, at the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe's annual meeting in Barcelona, Spain. The product integrates tumor embolization and ablation procedures with Philips Healthcare's X-ray system. It combines XperCT Dual for imaging, EmboGuide for live 3D image guidance and tumor embolization, and XperGuide for live 3D image guidance of tumor ablation.

Orthopedic and neurology

Interventional image-guided systems are used for orthopedic treatment such as vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty, and neurological treatment. In vertebroplasty, a special cement is injected into the bone for which imaging systems are used. In the kyphoplasty procedure, a balloon is introduced and inflated into the vertebra by using catheters. The market is dominated by Philips Healthcare, Ziehm Imaging, and GE Healthcare. Small companies, such as OrthoScan, focus on the development of C-arms, which is mostly used for orthopedic procedures.

Gastroenterology and urology

Abdominal or gastrointestinal disordersaffect many people, due to which, physicians, as well as individuals, rely on diagnostic tools to find the cause of the ailment before proceeding for treatment. This awareness has led a segment of individuals to opt for preventive medicine, which has created a higher adoption of medical imaging equipment in the recent years. Interventional image-guided systems are used for diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the bladder, kidney, and the ureter. Olympus and GE Healthcare dominate the market.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's healthcare and life sciencesmarket research analysts in this report are:

GE Healthcare

Olympus

Philips Healthcare

Siemens Healthineers

Toshiba Medical Systems

Browse Related Reports:

Global Interventional Cardiology Market 2017-2021

Global Gastrointestinal Stents Market 2016-2020

Global Hybrid Imaging Market 2017-2021

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 patient monitoring devicesurology devices, and vaccines. 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 media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005283/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
BLACKROCK FRONTIERS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC (LEI: 5493003K5E043LHLO706)

All information is at 28 February 2017 and unaudited.

Performance at month end with net income reinvested.



One

month

% Three

months

% One

year

% Three

years

% Five

years

% Since

Launch*

% Sterling: Share price 1.1 12.7 43.1 33.0 118.2 77.3 Net asset value 2.4 10.0 36.0 38.2 99.6 73.3 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) 0.7 9.6 26.7 28.7 70.2 41.5 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) 4.2 9.4 45.0 40.2 26.0 22.7 US Dollars: Share price 0.0 12.2 27.7 -1.1 70.3 42.0 Net asset value 1.3 9.6 21.4 2.7 55.7 38.6 MSCI Frontiers Index (NR) -0.4 9.2 13.2 -4.4 32.6 13.0 MSCI Emerging Markets Index (NR) 3.1 8.9 29.5 4.1 -1.9 -2.1

Sources: BlackRock and Standard & Poor's Micropal

* 17 December 2010.



At month end

Ordinary Shares US Dollar Net asset value - capital only: 172.92c Net asset value - cum income: 173.75c Sterling: Net asset value - capital only: 138.96p Net asset value - cum income: 139.63p Share price: 145.25p Total assets (including income): 233.6m Premium to cum-income NAV: 4.0% Gearing: Nil Gearing range (as a % of gross assets): 0-20% Net yield*: 3.7% Ordinary shares in issue: 167,283,108 Ongoing charges**: 1.4% Ongoing charges plus taxation and performance fee: 2.4%

*The Company's yield based on dividends announced in the last 12 months as at the date of the release of this announcement is 3.7% and includes the 2016 final dividend of 4.00 cents per share declared on 22 November 2016 and paid to shareholders on 17 February 2017 and the 2016 interim dividend of 2.60 cents per share announced on 16 May 2016 and paid to shareholders on 1 July 2016.

**Calculated as a percentage of average net assets and using expenses, excluding performance fees and interest costs for the year ended 30 September 2016.



Sector Analysis Gross assets(%)* Country Analysis Gross assets(%)* Financials 36.0 Argentina 16.6 Consumer Staples 18.3 Kuwait 11.5 Telecommunication Services 14.0 Romania 10.0 Materials 10.6 Pakistan 9.9 Energy 8.4 Bangladesh 8.5 Health Care 7.8 Vietnam 8.4 Utilities 6.7 Kazakhstan 8.1 Information Technology 6.0 Sri Lanka 6.6 Industrials 4.1 Ukraine 6.5 Real Estate 2.4 Kenya 5.4 Consumer Discretionary 1.5 Morocco 4.6 ----- Egypt 4.2 Total 115.8 Nigeria 3.2 ----- Saudi Arabia 2.7 Short positions 0.0 Philippines 2.1 ===== Estonia 2.0 Colombia 1.7 Turkey 1.7 Slovenia 1.6 Caribbean 0.5 ----- Total 115.8 ----- Short positions 0.0 =====

*reflects gross market exposure from contracts for difference (CFDs).

Market Exposure



31.03

2016

% 30.04

2016

% 31.05

2016

% 30.06

2016

% 31.07

2016

% 31.08

2016

% 30.09

2016

% 31.10

2016

% 30.11

2016

% 31.12

2016

% 31.01

2017

% 28.02

2017

% Long 108.1 109.2 108.8 110.5 103.4 105.7 104.0 106.4 102.3 108.4 115.0 115.8 Short 1.2 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Gross 109.3 110.5 108.8 110.5 103.4 105.7 104.0 106.4 102.3 108.4 115.0 115.8 Net 106.9 107.9 108.8 110.5 103.4 105.7 104.0 106.4 102.3 108.4 115.0 115.8



Ten Largest Equity Investments

Company Country of Risk % of gross assets MCB Bank Pakistan 4.6 Mobile Telecommunications Kuwait 4.3 Pampa Energia Argentina 3.9 Halyk Savings Bank Kazakhstan 3.7 Banco Macro Argentina 3.6 Square Pharmaceuticals Bangladesh 3.4 Maroc Telecom Morocco 3.3 S.N.G.N. Romgaz Romania 3.2 Grupo Financiero Galicia Argentina 3.0 Luxoft Ukraine 2.9



Commenting on the markets, Sam Vecht and Emily Fletcher, representing the Investment Manager noted:



In February, the Company's NAV rose by 1.3%, while the MSCI Frontier benchmark fell by 0.4% (on a US Dollar basis with net income reinvested). On a 12-month basis, the Company outperformed the benchmark by 8.2%, returning 21.4% against the benchmark's 13.2%. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose by 3.1% and by 29.5% respectively, over the same periods.

After very strong performance in January, performance at the index level was more muted in February. Fund performance during the month was driven by stock specifics, with a number of different companies rising strongly during the month. Our off-benchmark positioning in Egyptian healthcare names performed well with Cleopatra Hospitals and Integrated Diagnostics gaining 21.4% and 20.2% respectively, with both stocks catching up with the strong Egyptian market performance that we have seen after the devaluation at the end of 2016. Whilst both companies will see short term margin compression on the back of the EGP devaluation, we believe that they will be able to recoup these margins and return to seeing strong revenue growth as the local economy normalises. Philippine conglomerate, LT Group, rose 13% on news that the government are looking to clamp down on tax avoidance by its competitors in the tobacco industry. Trading at one of the lowest levels globally on an enterprise value/stick basis, we believe that there is substantial upside to valuations for this stock. Transilvania Bank in Romania did well during the month with the stock rising 12% after announcing better than expected full year results. GDP growth in Romania has accelerated to 4.5% and the bank continues to benefit from normalisation of both the domestic and wider European economy. Argentinean software company Globant was another notable performer rising 10% during the month after reporting results in line with expectations, but reiterating the company's confidence that they will return to seeing 20% annual top line growth after disappointing numbers in the second half of 2016.

Our overall underweight to Nigeria (-7.2% relative) continued to benefit the fund as the country's FX issues persisted with the central bank's decision not to devalue the Naira any further resulting in a scarcity of USD available at the official rate, and a further surge in the dispersion between the official and black market exchange rates.

On the other hand, our overweight in Pakistani bank MCB weighed on performance, falling 6% as the company missed on headline net income results. The performance of this stock has been disappointing over the last year but we continue to believe that it is attractively valued and have maintained our position. Recent strong performer, Kuwait, saw a modest retrenchment in February with KIPCO, an investment holding company, detracting from Company returns.

Broadly, Frontier Markets continue to exhibit strong GDP growth and low government debt levels, and represent an opportunity to invest in companies with strong cash flow and high dividend yields, on some of the lowest valuations in the world.

17 March 2017

ENDS

Latest information is available by typing www.blackrock.co.uk/brfi on the internet, "BLRKINDEX" on Reuters, "BLRK" on Bloomberg or "8800" on Topic 3 (ICV terminal). Neither the contents of the Manager's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on BlackRock's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement
LOS ANGELES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Cathy Rich, daughter of the iconic and Award-winning drummer Buddy Rich and vocalist with the Buddy Rich Band, announced today that a year-long tribute will take place celebrating the life and legacy of Buddy Rich on the occasion of the legend's centennial. After her father's passing, Cathy devoted herself to preserving the legacy she was born into. It was Buddy's wish to keep his band and music alive for young people in future generations and it has been her mission to make sure her father's wish comes true.

The kickoff for a full year of celebratory dates and festivities takes place on April 7 and 8 at Lincoln Center for special performances titled, "Buddy Rich Centennial: Celebrating the Jazz Drum." The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis, will perform a musical tribute to the legendary drummer featuring Ali Jackson on the drums in a virtuosic display of big band drums and rhythm, with arrangements he has created to honor the music of Buddy Rich.

This will be followed by dates in the United States and abroad by the 16 piece Buddy Rich Band featuring Gregg Potter on the drums with Cathy continuing her reign as guest vocalist with a backdrop of vintage photographs and footage of Buddy, Buddy and Cathy, and the original Buddy Rich Band.

Events that will punctuate the touring schedule throughout the year include the unveiling of stars for Buddy Rich on both the Palm Springs and Las Vegas Walk of Stars, a special event with the Percussive Arts Society, a Christmas show, and in honor of his Centennial, a flag will be flown over the U.S. Capitol on Buddy's birthday, September 30, when the commemoration of his Centennial will also be read into the official Congressional record where it will be a permanent part of the United States archive for all time.

Cathy, under the banner StraightAhead Productions, is producing a feature film about the life of her father, Buddy Rich. The company is currently working with representatives to cast the role of Buddy. The picture is planned to start in 2017. Recently, Cathy was called upon by Oscar winning director Damian Chazelle to be a music consultant on Whiplash, with the main character a young drummer who idolizes Buddy Rich.

Buddy Rich, whom Gene Krupa defined as "the greatest drummer to ever draw breath," was honored with a President's Special Merit award GRAMMY, induction into the Downbeat Magazine, Modern Drummer and Playboy Halls of Fame, three GRAMMY nominations, Jazz Unlimited Immortals of Jazz Award, numerous reader's polls, awards for his philanthropic efforts, and he was named greatest Drummer of All Time by Modern Drummer magazine. He rose to fame playing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, where he met lifelong friend Frank Sinatra, who gave the eulogy in 1987 at Rich's funeral. Rich toured around the globe, performing for millions of fans and numerous world leaders including the King of Thailand, King Hussein of Jordan, Queen Elizabeth of England, and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Contact:

Jo-Ann Geffen

(818) 905-5511

Email Contact




SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- A small envelope brought a flashback of days past to a Union Square hotel in San Francisco last month much to the surprise and elation of hotel associates.

At a time in the hotel industry when room keys are advancing from magnetic keys to RFID key cards to keyless mobile devices, the Courtyard San Francisco Union Square obtained a U.S. Postal Service envelope that contained a true heirloom -- a metal key to Room 1102 of the Maurice Hotel, the original occupant of the hotel property. The treasured heirloom tells its own tale of the history behind the Courtyard. Opened over 86 years ago at the same location on San Francisco's Post Street, the Maurice Hotel followed tradition of the day with metal room keys tagged with return instructions -- "Drop in Any Mail Box -- We Guarantee Postage."

Hardly the "Express Checkout" known to today's travelers, the envelope containing the key was postmarked in San Antonio, Texas and received at the Courtyard San Francisco Union Square in February with $3.27 postage due. The missing key, if removed by a guest, may have been the cause of great stress for hotel staff decades ago when the normal check-out process included leaving the room key at the front desk. Referred to by Courtyard associates as the great-grandparent of today's lodging, the Maurice Hotel opened in 1930.

Now, as the hotel beckons guests to downtown San Francisco with smart amenities and refreshing designs, discovery of this antique has brought new meaning to the legacy of hospitality found just three blocks from the popular SF Union Square.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, total renovation of the building into a Courtyard was completed in 2015, and included modernization of elevators, new mechanical, electrical and life-safety systems, massive seismic and structural upgrades and a complete rebuild of 166 guest rooms over 17 floors. The full-scale makeover also embraced preservation and restoration of original detailed plaster work of the historic hotel lobby.

About the Courtyard San Francisco Union Square

Defining a history all its own, the Courtyard San Francisco Union Square welcomes travelers with a quiet energy that offers a refreshing take on both business and leisure travel. An open lobby, free Wi-Fi and on-site dining at Table 761 offer travelers an opportunity to escape the confines of their guest room and enjoy a change of pace. Kick back and enjoy a drink with friends on our spacious outdoor terrace. GoBoard technology, a business center, library and home theater area offer home-like options, just steps from your room. Additional amenities include a boardroom for hosting small business or social gatherings and a well-equipped fitness center. Explore San Francisco while enjoying a relaxed and uncomplicated stay at the Courtyard San Francisco Union Square.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3120182



CONTACT:

Courtyard San Francisco Union Square

761 Post Street San Francisco California 94109

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sfocn-courtyard-san-francisco-union-square/

415-346-3800




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Mooncor Oil & Gas Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MOO) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that Further to the January 12, 2017 press release, Mooncor Oil and Gas Corp. has conducted field operations at the Company's two Lloydminster wells (the "Wells) and is pleased to announce that Our 2 wells have produced a estimated total of 400 Barrels of Oil to date.

Well 04-28 has produced 275 Barrels of Oil in a 16 days period. Production from the 03-28 Well has produced 125 Barrels of Oil, for a 12 day period. Well 03-28 well which has produced sporadically but has encountered some difficulties both down hole (wellbore cleanout, tubulars and pump) and with the surface equipment (corrosion, seized valves, engine issues and various leaks) as a result of the long prior shut-in period, however the Company anticipates the well will resume sustained production shortly.

The re-activation of the Wells is intended to bring the Company back into production and position the Company and its assets to explore and pursue a variety of short and long term strategies.

In the meantime the Company through it's wholly owned subsidiary, Primary Petroleum Company USA, Inc., is still actively working with American Geophysical Corporation ("AGC") (www.americangeophysical.com) to market the Company's 3D Seismic. So far numerous parties have approached AGC regarding Primary Petroleum seismic database, AGC is reaching out to various parties that are interested in the Company's 3D Seismic. The goal of the Company is to license its 3D Seismic leading to future opportunities for potential joint ventures, partnerships or farm in agreements.

About Mooncor Oil & Gas Corp.

Mooncor is a junior oil and gas exploration company. Mooncor holds interests in lands in the Pondera and Teton Counties in Northwestern Montana, the Muskwa / Duvernay liquids rich shale gas area in Hamburg, Alberta, and in southwest Ontario where the focus has been on conventional oil and gas opportunities.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The information in this news release includes certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward looking statements, including Mooncor conducting extended production tests on two suspended wells by September 31, 2015, or at all. These statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Because of these risks and uncertainties and as a result of a variety of factors, the actual results, expectations, achievements or performance may differ materially from those anticipated and indicated by these forward looking statements. Although Mooncor believes that the expectations reflected in forward looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, Mooncor disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward looking statements or otherwise.

Contacts:

Mooncor Oil & Gas Corp.

Allen Lone

Chief Executive Officer

905.275.7570

atlone@mooncoroil.com




HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Fantasia Holdings Group Co., Limited (HKSE: 1777)

Financial and business highlights:

Completed the Group's contract sales target and results met expectations

The Group achieved contracted sales of RMB12.21 billion in 2016, up by 8.3%;

The Group's total revenue increased significantly by 33.8% to RMB10.92 billion;

Gross margin maintained at 32.3%, which was higher than the industry's average;

EBITDA amounted to RMB5.14 billion, increased 30.3% year on year;

Suggested final dividend of 5 HK cents per share, cash dividend for 8 consecutive years.

The Group sets contract sales target for 2017 at RMB15.0 billion, 25% more when compared with the contracted sales in 2016, reflecting the Group's optimism about the prospect.

Steady financial development with fairly strong cash flows

The Group successfully capitalized on the conditions of the foreign capital market by issuing RMB1.6 billion worth of domestic senior notes and USD500 million worth of foreign senior notes, to raise fund through rational financing leverage for the Group's business development. In January 2017, the Group redeemed in advance the USD300 million bonds which will mature in 2019. The debt structure and interest level continued to be optimized.

Net gearing ratio was 83% at the end of 2016 (at the end of 2015: 75.6%) which was led by the Group's repayment of a perpetual capital instrument of RMB710 million and the Group's acquisition of a number of promising property development projects in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu in the second half of the year, which bode well for the Group's financial performance and earnings in the future.

Maintained a fairly strong cash flow with the bank balance and cash of more than RMB11.13 billion at the end of the year.

"Community Plus" strategy progressed well and capitalization accelerated; the Group's transformation into an industrial finance Group began to take shape

Colour Life expanded the GFA under its management to 395 million sq.m. in aggregate in 2,339 projects, and thus maintained its position as the world's largest residential community service enterprise by GFA covered. During the year, the Group and Shanghai Yinwan entered into strategic cooperation, and thus started the mode of operation in which the Group took a minority stake in a property projects and was in charge of its development. During the year, GFA under Colour Life platform's management amounted to 770 million sq.m. The revenue from value-added services rose by 48.1% to RMB157 million with the gross profit recorded 91.9%, which contributes to 30.2% of the distributed profit.

Home E&E's projects were located in 38 cities across the country, with 18.80 million sq.m. in GFA under management. During the year, it assisted Fantasia Group to take over Wanda Property and became the property management consultant of Wanxiangmei Property Management. It acquired the equity in Aerospace Property and became its largest shareholder in December.

Achieved breakthroughs in other business segments, including the Financial Group, Business Management, the Culture and Tourism Group, Futainian and the Education Group with business development meeting the management's expectations.

Fantasia's company incorporated in Singapore successfully acquired a 70% equity interest in SunProp, a property management company, and thus became one of the three biggest property management companies in Singapore.

Fantasia Holdings Group Co., Limited ("Fantasia", or the "Company", which together with its subsidiaries, is referred to as the "Group") (HKSE: 1777), the largest community service platform in China, today announced its annual results for the year ended 31 December 2016.

During the year, Fantasia's revenue rose by 33.8% to RMB10.92 billion. The gross profit margin was 32.3%, which was higher than the industry's average. EBITDA recorded RMB5.14 billion with y-o-y increase of 30.3%, the compound growth rate of the past four years achieved 23.2%. The net profit increased by 5.7% to RMB1,730 million after excluded the foreign exchange loss (Exchange loss after capitalization is a non-cash loss and an accounting method, not a loss of actual cash flow). The basic earnings per share were 14 RMB cents.

The Board of the company proposed the payment of a final dividend of 5 HK cents per share. The group maintained steady financial conditions in the course of its development. By the end of 2016, the Group's bank balances and cash totalled RMB11.13 billion, 6.91 billion more than that at the end of 2015.

Exceeding the target and achieving steady growth in property development

During 2016, Fantasia's real estate business sold 1,325,320 sq.m. of gross floor area ("GFA") under contracts and its contracted sales increased by 8.3% to RMB12.21 billion, achieved the sales target for the year.

The Group's contracted sales in 2016 were mainly derived from 13 cities, including Wuhan, Chengdu, Guilin, Huizhou, Suzhou, and 37 projects, including Wuhan Fantasia Town, Suzhou Lago, Tianjin Meinian, Chengdu Longnian International Center, Guilin Lakeside Eden and Huizhou Kangchengsiji. Regarding land acquisitions, the Group maintained its prudent strategies which was geared towards property developments in first-tier and second-tier cities with great market potential and attractive returns, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Chengdu. As at 31 December 2016, the planned GFA of the Group's land bank totaled approximately 14.98 million sq.m. and the planned GFA of properties under framework agreements signed totaled 7.98 million sq.m. Of these projects, five are urban renewal projects in Shenzhen over which the Group have signed framework agreements. Kuichong project is expected to put 250,000 sq.m. of GFA up for sales in the second half of this year and will maintain the supply of 500,000 sq.m. to 600,000 sq.m. per year afterwards, thus laying the solid foundations for the growth in contracted sales in the next three to five years.

The Group sets contracted sales target for 2017 at RMB15.0 billion, up by 25% compared to the contracted sales target of 2016, which reflects the Group's optimistic attitude of 2017.

The Group's advantage of being the largest community service provider continued to be consolidated; the establishment of Colour Life's business ecosystem was taking shape

Colour Life (HKEx code: 1778), a Fantasia subsidiary, continued to expand the area of properties under its management and maintained rapid growth through receiving carte and acquisitions. By the end of 2016, the area of properties under Colour Life's contracted management totalled 395 million sq.m., which belonged to a total of 2,339 property projects under management in 209 cities. As a result, the Group has built up nationwide business presence, covering such regions as eastern China, southern China, north-western China, south-western China, north-eastern China, northern China, central China, Singapore and Hong Kong.

By the end of 2016, registered users of Caizhiyun increased by 51.1% to 3.03 million, of which 1.74 million were active users, which represented an increase of 102.4% compared with the corresponding figures at the end of 2015. The active users accounted for 57.4% of the registered users. The revenue from value-added services rose by 48.1% to RMB157 million with the gross profit recorded 91.9%, which contributes to 30.2% of the distributed profit, became the second largest source of income and profit contribution, which is a sign of the results of Colour Life's transformation and upgrading. "Double Colours", the core products for Colour Life, made a breakthrough in 2016. The accumulated newly-added investment to "Colour Wealth Life Value-added Plan" amounted to RMB1.82 billion. Meanwhile, Colour Life Residence signed agreements with 27 property developers, and achieved annual sales of 4,513. "Meal coupons", as the connection of the commercial ecosystem, will also further promote the improvement of the ecosystem.

In November 2016, Colour Life and Shanghai Yinwan Technology Limited Company announced their strategic cooperation. Residents living in the area 370 million sq.m. in GFA which is managed by Yinwan Technology and Silver Key Alliance, will gradually use the platforms and services of Colour Life. As of 31 December 2016, the GFA of service platform of Colour Life reached 770 million sq.m. The continual increase in the area of the service platform will further promote the growth of the value-added business, thus accelerating the overall transformation and upgrade of the Group.

Included in the category of innovative businesses in NEEQ, Home E&E accelerated its business development

As at the end of 2016, the Group's Shenzhen Home E&E Commercial Services Group Co., Ltd. ("Home E&E", stock code: 834669.OC) had set up 16 branches in in 38 cities in China, managing a combined area of 18,800,000 sq.m. It has formed a strategic business presence in core regions of China. In June 2016, Home E&E, succeeded in getting listed on NEEQ in the category of innovative businesses because of its profitability which was based on its high-quality property services, its capability to innovate in business model and strong financial performance.

By using financial leverage, Home E&E continued to deploy its capital to acquire small and medium-sized property enterprises. For example, it assisted Fantasia Group to take over Wanda Property and became the property management consultant of Wanxiangmei Property Management in August of 2016. It also acquired an equity stake in Aerospace Property and became its largest shareholder in December of 2016. These moves enhanced Home E&E's nationwide business presence in China, and would help it achieve rapid growth in the scale of the property management business and boost its profitability.

Industrial Finance Group taking shape, gets ready to export light-asset

In respect of community finance, Qian Sheng Hua, the online financial platform of the Community Financial Group, now covers the mainstream online channels such as personal computers and app-based mobile phones. In 2016, the number of its registered users was 1.2 million and the entire invested amount was RMB2,914 million. It generated the total revenue of RMB73.28 million and recorded net profit of RMB6.01 million for 2016. Zhong An Xin, an insurance broker, is currently in strategic cooperation with major insurance companies in China. Heying Financial Leasing successfully built a business model of community leasing.

Fantasia Business Management already undertook 30 commercial property management projects with asset-light business model in such provinces and regions as Tibet, Jiangxi, Jilin, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan and Guizhou, etc. Among those projects, Nanjing OMG Mall achieved an occupancy rate of over 90% and Guiling OMG Mall achieved over 80%. The two OMG Malls have become the flagship shopping centres in the places of their operation. "Fantasia World Outlet" Project in Chengdu commenced operation in December 2016. Following the development of this commercial property management business with the asset-light business model, Fantasia Business Management can provide quality service for property owners throughout China and this is aimed at generating more fruitful returns.

In 2016, Fantasia Cultural and Tourism Company puts "hotel and travel" as its core development components. The formation of the Wechat platform of "U Hotel" built an extensive database for hotels while the publicity of U Hotel was raised through the Wechat platform to promote cultural activities and enhance the interaction between hotels and customers. The golden-ager market of Geyuan Hotel already secured a stable and matured source of customers while the regimen market was further enhanced in this year. In August 2016, the project of Jingchuan, the largest cultural and tourism complex in Gansu region, commenced operation. While leveraging on its own brand and operational advantages on the cultural tourism, Fantasia Cultural and Tourism also take advantage of the special cultural resources on Buddhism, culture of the Queen West, ecology and regimen to promote the culture and tourism in Jingchuan. In August, Cultural and Tourism commenced the acquisition of Shenzhen Tiantai Travel Agency to build a platform for its community tourism at later stage and lay the foundation for its comprehensive accommodation business.

In respect of community nursing service, Shenzhen Futainian Investment Management Co., Ltd. ("Futainian") continued with its thorough study of the consumer behaviour of the senior citizens and core healthcare products and services for senior citizens. It also established a Futainian membership which kept increasing. Futainian treats the health management as a value-added service which draws on various quality medical resources and uses smart senior care facilities to build an extensive smart database for senior citizens. In respect of product line and services, Futainian offered services such as senior group travelling, home-based homecare, health management, rehabilitation and senior university. In 2017, Futainian will continue to focus on the collaboration of institutional service, community service and homecare service and to further implement the "3-in-1" retirement life service system and to gradually complete the three retirement service product lines of institutional service, community service and homecare service so as to build a one-stop retirement service model.

In May 2016, the Group's community education business was commenced and the first child development experience centre started its operation. In October 2016, the community education business launched some projects to diversify its income sources. The first two projects were successfully put into operation in Bao'an District, Shenzhen. Occupational training and community education are complementary to each other, and over 40 communities have been covered by the occupational training business while 37 service courses, training systems, and systems of undertaking community education management projects were generally well received by the residents of the communities. In respect of civil education, Fantasia Group closely collaborated with the Chengdu Foreign Languages School to build the largest education and art complex in south-western China in 2016. They also established the Meinian Campus of the Primary School which is attached to Chengdu Foreign Languages School. The first kindergarten project of the Group's education business will also be launched in Huizhou in the future.

Accelerating the pace of building its business presence with overseas assets

In 2016, Fantasia Singapore became one of the top three property management companies in Singapore by successfully acquiring a 70% equity interest in SunProp. After the acquisition, Fantasia Singapore had approximately 150 apartment projects under its management. The newly established branch in the United States has invested in elderly care services which creates effective synergy with the Group's existing elderly care operations in the community. In 2017, the Group will plan to establish a branch in the United Kingdom. Fantasia is integrating the Group's eight business segments with a global vision.

Conclusion

Mr. Pan Jun, Chairman of Fantasia said, "In 2016, the Company deepened the transformation of its mature business segments and fostered its new types of business segments by exploring different possibilities, with the aim of bolstering its comprehensive community services. 2017 will be an important year for the Group's development and expansion. The Group will continue to adjust its business mix which is geared to communities. It will also enhance the community service business in the residential areas of Colour Life and in the Jiefang District so as to support the fast growth in the communities for business, commerce and elderly care. The Group will also actively build up its business of technology as new growth drivers. We will actively promote the synergy among our businesses and the integration of such businesses and finance. We will also build a system that combines communities with businesses. This will enable us to realize the integration of asset-heavy and asset-light business models and thus lay the solid foundations for the long-term development and maximize the return for shareholders."

For more information, please contact:

Fantasia Holdings Group Co., Limited

Capital Markets and Investor Relations Department

Tel: +852 3521 1536 / +86 755 2269 0972 / +86 755 2269 0971

Email: Email Contact




Technavio analysts forecast the global surgical navigation software marketto grow at a CAGR of over 7% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005349/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global surgical navigation software market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global surgical navigation softwaremarketfor 2017-2021. Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. The analysts have presented the various facets of the market with a particular focus on identifying the key industry influencers.

The surgical navigation software has been technologically upgraded many times. Technological advances and highly specialized features of the software allow surgeons to perform surgeries with high precision. With technological advances, vendors are anticipated to produce more advanced, risk-free surgical navigation software that supports computer-assisted MIS. This will boost the global surgical navigation software market.

Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=57085

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.

Technavio ICT analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global surgical navigation software market:

Increased investments on ambulatory surgery centers

Many surgeons have started practicing surgeries using the surgical navigation systems, especially for spinal, ENT, and orthopedic disorders. This trend is expected to continue during the forecast period and many complicated surgeries will be converted to MIS with the help of these surgical navigation systems. These factors have driven the market growth for the surgical navigation software.

Ishmeet Kaur, a lead enterprise application research analyst at Technavio, says, "Insurance companies provide high reimbursements for outpatient settings compared with hospital stays. This will also encourage surgeons to adopt computer-assisted navigation surgeries for the treatment of many disorders in an outpatient facility

Fall of the hospital conglomerate

Before 2010, large hospitals developed research machines, while medium-sized hospitals merged to form conglomerates, and smaller hospitals struggled through various economic consequences. Large centers had advanced research infrastructure for capital-intensive surgical procedures. Since 2010, with the emergence of MIS practices, physicians and surgeons are gradually moving to start their own specialty practices and surgical centers by buying small hospitals, getting rid of unprofitable emergency rooms, and focusing on high skill and efficient procedures.

"Many hospitals have bi-weekly newsletters, interactive websites for patients, and media departments. Some advertise their use of MIS technologies, ranging from robotic surgery to surgical navigation systems, and seek to be the early adopters of new procedures. This will drive the market growth of surgical navigation software," adds Ishmeet.

Increased government support for surgical navigation systems

The governments of many regions, such as the US and China, support the adoption of surgical navigation systems and it has increased since 2012. As of 2016, there were more than 2,000 surgical robots and navigation systems in the US. FDA has requested surgeons to get used to the new computer and robotic-assisted surgeries by accepting the fact that they can no longer physically touch the operation site under the new procedure paradigm. The Chinese government is also encouraging every province to install at least one of these machines.

Top vendors:

Brainlab

Medtronic

Stryker

Browse Related Reports:

Global Surgical Microscope Market 2017-2021

Global Surgical Navigation Systems Market 2016-2020

Global Surgical Power Tools Market 2016-2020

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 cloud computing, data center, and IT hardware. 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 media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005349/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Canada is celebrating the global drive towards open and transparent government today with the announcement that it has been elected to a seat on the Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Canada will be represented by the Honourable Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board, when its three-year term begins on October 1, 2017.

Canada was elected to one of four state-level seats, along with Italy, South Africa and South Korea

Minister Brison acknowledged the important work that remains to be done and congratulated the other governments elected to the Steering Committee. He also paid tribute to the invaluable contributions of the departing members of the Steering Committee, all of whom played a critical role in founding the Open Government Partnership in 2011.

Quick Facts

-- The Open Government Partnership is an international multi-stakeholder initiative that brings together 75 governments and hundreds of civil society organizations. It was launched in 2011 to provide a global platform for those committed to making governments around the world more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. -- The Open Government Partnership Steering Committee elections for government representatives were held from February 22 to March 15. -- Newly elected members will rotate onto the OGP Steering Committee as of October 1, 2017, for a three-year term. -- The Government of Canada recently announced its intention to adopt the International Open Data Charter, and its endorsement of the "Declaration, 4th Global Summit of the Open Government Partnership: Collective Actions to Accelerate Open Government".

Quote

"The Government of Canada welcomes this opportunity to take on a prominent role in sharing our experiences, learning from others, and advancing the principles of openness and transparency around the world. We look forward to supporting a greater focus on open, meaningful dialogue between governments and their citizens. Public engagement and collaboration will be at the heart of our work as a member of the Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership."

- The Honourable Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board

Associated Links

- Open Government Partnership Steering Committee

- OGP Steering Committee Government Election Results

- Third Biennial Plan to the Open Government Partnership (2016-18)

Follow us on Twitter: @TBS_Canada, @OpenGovCan

Contacts:

Jean-Luc Ferland

Press Secretary

Office of the President of the Treasury Board

613-369-3163



Media Relations

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

media@tbs-sct.gc.ca

613-369-9400



TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired)

613-369-9371




HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- GEMS Investment Management Limited ("GEMS") announces that on December 15, 2015, $US 10 million principal amount of Tranche A Bonds issued by Primeline Energy Holdings Inc. ("Primeline") (TSX: PEH) to GRF Prime Limited ("GRF Prime"), a special purpose vehicle owned by a resources fund managed by GEMS (GEMS as fund manager has control and direction over all securities beneficially owned by GRF Prime) on August 14, 2015 became convertible into Common Shares at a price of Cdn. $0.70 per share. The Tranche A Bonds were issued pursuant to a subscription agreement between Primeline and GRF Prime dated June 5, 2015, as amended and restated by a supplemental deed made by Primeline dated November 10, 2015 (the "Subscription Agreement"), and constituted by a Deed Poll made by Primeline dated August 14, 2015, as amended by a supplemental deed made by Primeline dated November 10, 2015 (the "Deed Poll"). Pursuant to the Deed Poll, the term of the Tranche A Bonds is three years extendable for two one-year periods. Interest is payable quarterly at 7% per annum, of which 4.5% is payable in cash and 2.5% in Common Shares, issuable at a deemed price per share equal to the greater of (i) the closing price of the Common Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSX-V") on the trading day prior to the interest payment date; and (ii) the volume-weighted average trading price of the Shares on the for the 10 days preceding the interest payment date, on March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15 of each year of the term of the bonds ("Share Interest"). At the Bank of Canada noon rate for conversion of $US to $Cdn. of 1.3728 on Dec. 15 2015, 19,611,429 Common Shares became issuable upon conversion of the Tranche A Bonds. On December 15, 2015, GEMS also acquired 760,881 Common Shares as Share Interest at a deemed price of Cdn. $0.1479 per share.

At the open of business on Dec. 15, 2015, GEMS had control and direction over 131,647 Common Shares issued as Share Interest on September 15, 2015 at a deemed price of Cdn. $0.21 per share and pursuant to the Subscription Agreement was entitled to acquire 3,140,775 Common Shares as a finder's fee (the "Finder's Fee Shares") at a deemed price of Cdn. $0.16 per share, which became issuable on December 5, 2015, together representing 1.83% of Primeline's issued and outstanding Common Shares assuming issuance of the Finder's Fee Shares. At the close of business on Dec. 15 2015 GEMS had control or direction over 23,644,732 Common Shares assuming conversion of the Tranche A Bonds and issuance of the Finder's Fee Shares on such date, or 11.69% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares assuming such conversion and issuance, representing a change in the percentage of the issued and outstanding shares over which GEMS had control or direction of 9.86%.

On March 11, 2016, $US 8 million principal amount of Tranche B Bonds issued by Primeline to GRF Prime on November 10, 2015 became convertible into Common Shares at a price of Cdn. $0.85 per share. The term of the Tranche B Bonds is three years extendable for two one-year periods. Interest is payable quarterly at 7% per annum, of which 4.5% is payable in cash and 2.5% in Share Interest . At the Bank of Canada noon rate for conversion of $US to $Cdn. of 1.3215 on Mar. 11 2016, 18,878,571 Common Shares were issuable upon conversion of the Tranche A Bonds and 12,437,647 on conversion of the Tranche B Bonds. At the close of business on March 11, 2016 GEMS had control or direction over 35,349,521 Common Shares assuming conversion of the Tranche A and B Bonds, or 16.52% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares assuming such conversion, representing a change in the percentage of the issued and outstanding shares over which GEMS had control or direction of 4.83% from Dec 15, 2016.

On December 15, 2016, GEMS was issued 2,480,625 Common Shares as Share Interest at a deemed price of Cdn. $0.06 per share At the Bank of Canada noon rate for conversion of $US to $Cdn. of 1.3397 on December 15, 2016, 19,138,571 Common Shares became were upon conversion of the Tranche A Bonds and 12,608,941 Common Shares on conversion of the Tranche B Bonds. At the close of business on December 15, 2016 GEMS had control or direction over 42,333,453 Common Shares assuming conversion of the Tranche A and B Bonds, or 19.15% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares assuming such conversion, representing a change in the percentage of the issued and outstanding shares over which GEMS had control or direction of 2.64% from March 11, 2016.

GRF Prime will acquire beneficial ownership of further Common Shares as Share Interest, and may convert Tranche A Bonds or Tranche B Bonds, or purchase or sell Common Shares in the market, in the future depending on market conditions and other factors relevant to GEMS' investment decisions. It has no plans or future intentions by itself or with any joint actors which relate to or would result in: a corporate transaction involving Primeline or any of its subsidiaries; a sale or transfer of a material amount of Primeline's assets or those of any of its subsidiaries; a material change in the present capitalization or dividend policy of Primeline; a material change in Primeline's business or corporate structure; a change in Primeline's Articles or another action which might impede the acquisition of control of Primeline by any person or company; any class of Primeline's securities being delisted from the TSX-V; Primeline ceasing to be a reporting issuer in any jurisdiction of Canada; a solicitation of proxies from Primeline's securityholders; or any similar action or actions. Pursuant to the Subscription Agreement, GRF Prime is entitled to appoint one director to Primeline's Board of Directors. GRF Prime appointed Timothy Baldwin to Primeline's board effective November 3, 2015. GEMS intends that GRF Prime will continue to exercise such rights under the Subscription Agreement. GEMS has no further plans or future intentions that would result in a change in the board of directors or management of Primeline, including any plans to change the number or term of directors or fill any existing vacancy on the board.

Contacts:

A copy of GEMS' early warning report relating to the

transactions described above can be obtained from

Patrick Lam

Tel. +852 2501-1328






BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss stock market ended Friday's session with a slight gain. The market got off to a weak start, but hesitantly began to increase late in the morning. However, the market broke out going into the close of trade and finished at the session highs.



Traders took a bit of a pause Friday after an eventful week. The Dutch elections and the Federal Reserve rate hike garnered much of the attention this week, in addition to policy meetings by the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank. Investors were also somewhat cautious ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors being held in Germany over the next two days.



The Swiss Market Index increased by 0.36 percent Friday and finished at 8,698.53. The SMI ended the trading week with an overall gain of 0.3 percent. The Swiss Leader Index climbed 0.30 percent Friday and the Swiss Performance Index added 0.30 percent.



Swisscom was the top gainer of the session, with an increase of 2.0 percent. HSBC confirmed its 'Hold' rating on the stock.



Galenica advanced 1.9 percent after investor Martin Ebner strengthened his position, bringing his stake in the company to over 20 percent.



Cyclical stocks were also in demand Friday. Kuehne + Nagel climbed 1.4 percent and LafargeHolcim added 1.3 percent. Adecco increased 1.2 percent and Geberit rose 0.9 percent.



Among the index heavyweights, Roche gained 0.6 percent, while Novartis and Nestle added 0.4 percent each.



Credit Suisse dipped 0.1 percent and UBS surrendered 0.6 percent. Julius Baer also dropped 1.2 percent.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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A federal court in Cincinnati, Ohio concluded its public hearing on a Chinese-American scientists wrongful termination case on March 15, after the disgraced scientist filed an appeal asking for her job back.

The hydrologist, Sherry Chen, was fired from her position at the National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio after she was arrested at her workplace in 2014 and indicted on federal charges including theft of government property and illegally accessing a U.S. government database. Though all the charges against her were dropped in 2015, she was still dismissed and left with towering legal bills.

According to China Central Television, an administrative judge of the U.S. Merit System Protection Board carried out a two-day hearing beginning on March 14 to consider Chen's case. Chen was petitioning to return to her position and get her legal fees paid.

My life was turned upside down ... Im a dedicated worker. I didnt do anything wrong and I love my job, Chen told the CBS television network during an interview in 2016.

Chen was not the only Chinese-American scientist victimized and potentially scapegoated by the U.S. government. According to 60 Minutes, a CBS news television program, the Justice Department has won convictions in 14 cases related to Chinese economic espionage since 2012, while charges were dropped for five Chinese-born scientists, all American citizens.

Chens firing upset many Chinese-American communities, with a number of supporters flocking to her side during the public hearing.

As a PhD student in computer science, I may become a scientist working and living in the U.S. in the future. Will I be treated unfairly just because of my nationality, like Chen? Her suffering reminds me of the Salem witch trials ... The dangers of discrimination, false accusations and lapses in due process may ruin a decent persons life and career, which is horrific, Boris Zhang, a student currently living in Washington, told Peoples Daily Online.

Non-governmental organizations have also advocated for Chen, noting that her case is one in a string of cases involving Chinese Americans wrongfully accused of espionage, including Xiaoxing Xi, Guoqing Cao and Shuyu Li.

These cases fit in a concerning historical trend of the U.S. government unfairly targeting Chinese Americans as threats, from FBI targeting of Chinese Americans during the McCarthy era to the prosecution and solitary confinement of Wen Ho Lee, read a statement from Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the nations first legal and civil rights organization serving low-income Asian Pacific American communities.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - White House officials have reportedly apologized for alleging that a British intelligence agency helped former President Barack Obama wiretap Trump Tower. Reports from British paper The Telegraph and CNN said apologies were offered by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. The Telegraph said Spicer conveyed his apology through British Ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, while McMaster contacted his British counterpart Sir Mark Lyall Grant. A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May previously said the White House had offered assurances the allegations would not be repeated. The White House apologies come after Spicer cited claims by Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano that Obama used British intelligence agency GCHQ to spy on President Donald Trump. 'Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ,' Spicer quoted Napolitano as saying in a press briefing on Thursday. The GCHQ was quick to respond to the allegations and issued a rare public statement describing the claims as 'utterly ridiculous.' The comments from Spicer were part of an effort to continue to push Trump's claims of surveillance even though several leading Republican lawmakers have acknowledged there is no evidence to support the allegations. 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.
GATINEAU, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Canadian Heritage

The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today announced that a project for a Francophone heritage, culture and tourism corridor has been approved to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Canadian Heritage is supporting this project with funding of $2.4 million in 2016-18; the Reseau de developpement economique et d'employabilite (RDEE Canada) will be responsible for its implementation.

This project emerged from the 2015 Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie in Toronto, which brought together the provincial and territorial ministers responsible for Francophone affairs. The corridor will highlight the tourist attractions of all provinces and territories in Canada with a Francophone cultural heritage.

RDEE Canada, whose mission is to promote the economic development of Canada's Francophone and Acadian communities, has already appointed a coordinator. The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism, has also expressed a strong interest in the project.

Quotes

"Our two official languages are at the heart of who we are, and we are proud to support the French language and culture in Canada. This project, adopted by all provinces and territories, will promote community development and make Canada's Francophone communities better known across Canada and around the world. It will leave a major legacy of the 150th anniversary of Confederation for the country's Francophones and Francophiles."

-The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage

"Canada is an outstanding destination, and this project is an asset that enriches what Canada has to offer. By highlighting the French language, we hope to give visitors a rewarding experience and wonderful memories of an important aspect of our identity."

-The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism

"Our network is very pleased to be entrusted with the responsibility of implementing such an innovative, unifying and beneficial project for Francophone and Acadian communities throughout Canada. This historic project will highlight the contributions of all of Canada's Francophone communities to the development of our country, and will support Canada's tourism industry. We thank the Government of Canada for its leadership and the provincial and territorial governments for their collaboration. Through this synergy, this project will help unify Francophone communities and build Canadian economic prosperity."

-Jean-Guy Bigeau, President and CEO, RDEE Canada

Quick Facts

-- More than four centuries of French presence have profoundly marked Canada's history and heritage. -- All provinces and territories of Canada have Francophone or Acadian communities. -- The corridor will include sites, tourist attractions, museums and service points that reflect the French fact in Canada. -- The year 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of Confederation, and communities are at the heart of the celebrations. -- The major themes for Canada 150 are diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the environment and youth.

Associated Links

Canada 150

Reseau de developpement economique et d'employabilite (French only)

Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie

Small Business and Tourism

Stay Connected

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Contacts:

Pierre-Olivier Herbert

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage

819-997-7788



Media Relations

Canadian Heritage

819-994-9101

1-866-569-6155

pch.media-media.pch@canada.ca




Robust, durable coatings perfect for luxury sector

When Carrafont, a French luxury goods design company, discovered that the products from Spies Hecker, one of the three global refinish brands of Axalta Coating Systems (NYSE: AXTA), a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, provided the best finish for its prototypes and scale-models 22 years ago, it was the beginning of a long and successful collaboration between two very diverse industries.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005585/en/

Carrafont compact coated with Spies Hecker, one of the premium refinish brands of Axalta Coating Systems (Photo: Axalta)

Carrafont, based near Paris, France, has been creating scale models for the biggest names in the cosmetics and luxury goods industries as well as to perfumiers, jewelers, architects and designers for 30 years. The company gives shape to perfume bottles, make-up palettes and other luxury items for prestigious clients such as Armani, Dior, Guerlain, Hermes, Lancome, Louis Vuitton, to name a few.

"Our company has extremely high standards and the reason we have been loyal to Axalta for over 20 years is because its Spies Hecker products are not only of high quality and meet our needs perfectly, but they are also constantly evolving and getting more efficient and environmentally responsible," says Denis Carre, Manager of Carrafont.

Carrafont's reputation is built on professionalism, innovation, expertise and cutting-edge technology and it works predominantly with plexiglass, brass, aluminum, glass, wood, as well as low- and high-density polyurethane foams. The company has been using an array of Spies Hecker products for 22 years available through the paint brand's distributor SPORV, based outside Paris.

Carre adds, "What's interesting is that because they are formulated for the automotive industry, Axalta coatings are extremely durable. Initially, all we needed was to paint the scale-models made in our workshops. But today, our demands extend to the research and development of new colors, the creation of color samples, applications on works of art and unique pieces of furniture, blind tests and more. Spies Hecker can deliver that all for us."

Carrafont uses a variety of Spies Hecker products. Raderal Spray Polyester 3508 with Permasolid HS Premium Surfacer 5310 and Permasolid HS Performance Surfacer 5320, in grey and white, are chosen for their good coverage, fast curing and good sanding properties. Permahyd Waterborne Base Coat 280/285 is the choice for the quality of its colors and its good vertical stability, and Permafleet HS Topcoat 670/675, for its flexibility and robustness. Pieces are finished with Permasolid HS Optimum Plus Clear Coat 8650 high gloss and Permacron Matt Clear Coat 8085.

For more information about Spies Hecker and its products, please visit www.spieshecker.com/products. To find out more about Carrafont and its prototypes, please visit www.carrafont.com.

About Axalta Coating Systems

Axalta is a leading global company focused solely on coatings and providing customers with innovative, colorful, beautiful and sustainable solutions. From light OEM vehicles, commercial vehicles and refinish applications to electric motors, buildings and pipelines, our coatings are designed to prevent corrosion, increase productivity and enable the materials we coat to last longer. With more than 150 years of experience in the coatings industry, the approximately 12,800 people of Axalta continue to find ways to serve our more than 100,000 customers in 130 countries better every day with the finest coatings, application systems and technology. For more information visit axalta.com and follow us @Axalta on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170317005585/en/

Contacts:

Axalta Coating Systems

Chantal Bachelier-Moore

DA Public Relations Ltd

D +44 207 692 4964

chantal@dapr.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- In a settlement agreement with the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), Robert Alexander Sim and Brian Edward Sims have admitted they breached a cease trade order and illegally distributed securities in First Choice Products Inc. Both men are B.C. residents and were officers and directors of First Choice during the relevant period. Robert Sim was First Choice's CEO and Brian Sims was the company's CFO.

The agreement states that from January to March 2014, Sim and Sims distributed First Choice securities to 19 investors for proceeds of $105,500. These distributions breached a cease-trade order (CTO) issued by the Executive Director of the BCSC on February 4, 2013, prohibiting any person from trading First Choice securities. The CTO remains in force.

The agreement also states that Sim and Sims distributed securities to 12 of the 19 investors without filing a prospectus and without a valid exemption, for proceeds of $49,000.

For their misconduct, Robert Sim has agreed to pay $5,000 to the BCSC and Brian Sims has agreed to pay $3,000. Both men have been ordered to resign any positions they hold as, and are prohibited from becoming or acting as, a director or officer of any reporting issuer. They have also been banned from trading in or purchasing any securities (with limited exceptions), acting in a management or consultative capacity in connection with activities in the securities market, and engaging in investor relations activities. Their bans are to remain in effect until the later of the date that they fulfil their payment obligations to the Commission and March 16, 2020.

Sim and Sims have also agreed to successfully complete a course of study on the duties and responsibilities of corporate officers and directors that is acceptable to the Executive Director prior to acting as a director or officer of a reporting issuer upon the expiry of their market bans.

You may view the settlement agreement on our website, www.bcsc.bc.ca, by typing Robert Alexander Sim, Brian Edward Sims or 2017 BCSECCOM 95 in the search box. Information about disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website.

Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' (CSA) Disciplined List for information relating to persons disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA).

About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca)

The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering:

-- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital

Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org.

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Alison Walker

604-899-6713



Public Inquiries:

604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free)

inquiries@bcsc.bc.ca




LONDON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump sidestepped a question about allegations a British intelligence agency helped former President Barack Obama wiretap Trump Tower on Friday and suggested reporters speak to Fox News about the claim. During a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump noted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was referencing a claim made by Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano. Trump described Napolitano as a 'very talented legal mind' and argued questions about the allegations should be directed to the former judge. The comments from Trump come even though Spicer and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have reportedly apologized to the British government for mentioning the claim. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May previously said the White House had offered assurances the allegations would not be repeated. When asked about the allegations of wiretapping, Trump suggested he had something in common Merkel, whose cell phone was allegedly tapped by Obama. Trump also discussed several other issues during the press conference, reiterating his support for NATO but once again calling on members to pay their fair share. The president also denied that he is an isolationist and stressed that he is in favor of a trade policy that is both free and fair. Asked about the House Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump once again expressed confidence that the bill will pass 'pretty quickly.' Trump pointed to an earlier meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee during which several lawmakers were convinced to support the legislation. (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.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/17/17 -- Scientific Metals Corp. ("STM" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: STM)(FRANKFURT: 26X)(OTCQB: SCTFF) is pleased to announce that it has completed a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.45 per Unit. Pursuant to the Offering, the Company issued an aggregate of 2,117,777 Units, generating gross proceeds of $953,000. Each Unit is comprised of one common share in the capital of the Company and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at a price of $0.65 per share at any time within 18 months of the date of issuance. All of the securities issued under this private placement are subject to a four month resale restriction.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the offering to advance its lithium and cobalt properties and for general working capital purposes.

The Company also announces that, further to its press release issued February 21, 2017, it has completed the acquisition of 25 unpatented lode mining claims, totalling 500 acres to the south extension of its flagship Iron Creek cobalt project. In consideration for the mining claims, the Company issued 2.1 million common shares to the arm's length vendors at a deemed price of $0.62 per share.

Reader Advisory

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. In particular, forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the proposed use of proceeds from the private placement. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Canada and globally; industry conditions, including governmental regulation and environmental regulation; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; competition for, among other things, skilled personnel and supplies; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions; geological, technical, processing and transportation problems; changes in tax laws and incentive programs; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions and dispositions; and the other factors. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

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:

Scientific Metals Corp.

Wayne Tisdale

President

T: (604) 639-4457

E: info@scientificmetalscorp.com

Website: www.scientificmetalscorp.com




Harbour.Space University, a Barcelona, Spain-based tech powered university, raised a funding round of undisclosed amount.

Backers included Social Discovery Ventures and a few other European angel investors, including its Chairman, ex -McKinsey and Co. Director Ingo Beyer von Morgenstern.

The university will use the funds to scale operations.

Led by Svetlana Velikanova, founder and CEO, with support from Kamran Elahian, Harbour.Space University aims to build an innovative university while leveraging the latest technologies. It offers selective undergraduate and graduate programs in Computer Science, Data Science, Cyber Security, Digital Marketing, Interaction Design and iTechpreneurship. It also launched a foundational course, Math as a Second Language.

It offers distinct progressive university programs for students, professionals and executives, which are offered in 3 week immersive modules taught by leading experts in industry and academia from around the world.

Harbour.Space University founding class commenced courses in September 2016 with students from 11 countries. The university received more than 3,000 applications from students from around the world and only accepted students who passed its high admissions criteria  resulting in an acceptance rate of 1.2%.

FinSMEs

17/03/2017
New Delhi: Globally acclaimed economist Jagdish Bhagwati today said demonetisation will promote growth while Amartya Sen and other experts who denounced it stand "humiliated and exposed".

"On the effects of demonetisation on growth, I should say that I was the one economist who had argued (with my co-authors), from first principles, that demonetisation would increase, not diminish, growth," he said.

"And that is exactly what appears to have happened," he said further.

"The Prime Minister's success in Uttar Pradesh has therefore meant that Amartya Sen and his friends who argued that demonetisation would hurt growth, have been humiliated and exposed as much as the Congress," Bhagwati told PTI in an email interview.

He is a professor of Economics, Law, and International Relations at the Columbia University.

"After BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh, indeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now in an even stronger position than when he was first elected resoundingly," Bhagwati said.

He also said that three things ought to be noted that made (Prime Minister Narendra Modi's) current position 'unassailable'.

"First, he has finally decimated the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, so the Congress is not merely on the ropes; they also lack currently anyone of stature who can rescue it from oblivion," he said.

Second, the Muslim vote no longer is a monolithic anti-BJP vote, Bhagwati said, adding, "I suppose that while BJP did not field Muslim candidates in the Uttar Pradesh

election, surely Muslims were aware that the propaganda that Prime Minister Modi was anti-Muslim was an outrageous lie."

Noting that Modi has appointed a brilliant Muslim, ambassador Syed Akbaruddin to the United Nations as our representative, India's best journalist M J Akbar is in his

team also, and the new ambassador to the United States is a Sikh of great distinction, Bhagwati said, "India's diversity is thus manifest in Prime Minister Modi's approach to governance."

Referring to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen's assertion that demonetisation was a 'despotic act', the eminent economist said, "Not knowing finance, he (Amartya Sen) made the mistake of taking the strange position that the demonetisation action was 'despotic'".

"But Sen seemed eager to rush quickly into the fray: here perhaps was his chance to 'get' at the Prime Minister, whom he had long denounced but without success," he said.

"Like Sen, I was also not an expert on finance but I had taken my time and educated myself and I paired myself with finance experts so I would not make a fool of myself."

"Unfortunately, with Sen and me on opposite sides on the demonetisation issue, many in the press seemed to seize on this coincidence and try a repeat of the old controversy, they had conjured up between Sen and me over the issue of the efficacy of growth in reducing poverty," Bhagwati said.

"He (Sen) had lost that time around, flipping from a 'growth does not matter' to 'I always argued for growth' position," the eminent economist said, adding, "Here was his chance to get both me and the Prime Minister, a double dividend."
Honda Motor Company, the Japanese motorcycle giant and one of the pillars of India's fast-growing two-wheeler industry, will now be betting big on the country's middle-weight motorcycle category.

This will directly pit the company against the home-grown Eicher Motors's Royal Enfield bikes, which have commanded significant market share over the past few years amid growing demand from the country's young aspiring luxury bike lovers.

In order to ramp up its plans here, Honda Motor has moved some its engineers from Thailand and Japan to India for making a new concept mid-sized motorcycle.

We (have) already allocated the people, some from Thailand and some from Japan to India to make a new concept mid-sized motorcycle in India, Noriaki Abe, president and chief executive officer (CEO) at Asian Honda Motor Co. Ltd, told the Mint newspaper.

Besides making these motorcycles in India, Honda Motor also plans to export the product to Japan, although demand for two-wheeler motorcycles have been shrinking there for quite some time.

Some of the motorcycles from the Honda stable in India are Honda CB Trigger, Honda CB Unicorn Dazzler, Honda Twister and Honda CBG Stunner.

The present Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India is the fourth installment of the company's presence in India. Previously, the company's presence in India was through several joint ventures beginning with Kinetic Honda Motor Ltd between 1984-1998, followed by Hero Honda JV from 1984-2011 and Honda Siel Cars India between 1995-2012.

However, the company's plans to make it big in India's middleweight motorcycle segment may not be that easy, as Royal Enfield bikes already has a cult following here.

Royal Enfield reported a 18.88 percent jump in total sales at 58,439 units in February as against 49,156 units sold in February 2016.

Exports during the month grew by 7.11 percent to 1,702 units as compared to 1,589 units in February 2016.

Between April 2016 and February this year, Eicher Motors clocked robust volume of 592,558 unit, a 32 percent rise year on year.

Not just that, Eicher Motors CEO Siddhartha Lal has been eyeing overseas markets for its 250cc and 750cc bikes, which are priced between $3,000 and $7,000, the Mint report added. The company's growing presence in overseas markets can be gauged from the fact that it exports rose 70.56 percent at 13,819 biks between April-February.

Despite a stiff competition, Honda can still make a big impact in the middle-weight motorcycles segment here as India provides a big cost advantage to the company.
GST Council on Thursday managed to take a few major decisions, giving rise to expectation that the government will indeed be able to roll out the crucial indirect tax reform on 1 July itself.

With the Council on Thursday approving the remaining two draft bills -- UTGST (Union Territory GST) and SGST (state GST) -- all the five enabling draft bills stand approved to enable a likely rollout of the new indirect tax regime by 1 July.

"The 12th Council meeting approved UTGST and SGST today. Officers had already done the groundwork, The drafts were already circulated. In the past meetings, the Council has already approved CGST (Central GST), IGST (Integrated GST) and Compensation drafts," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who chairs the Council, told reporters here.

The council also approved a maximum of 15 percent cess on top of the peak GST rate of 28 percent on luxury goods and aerated drinks.

The actual cess on demerit goods, which will help create a corpus for compensating states for any loss of revenue from GST implementation in the first five years, may be lower than the cap as the Council has kept a "little" headroom for future exigencies, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said.

Giving an example, he said if a luxury car at present commands a total tax of 40 percent, under the new indirect tax regime, a GST of 28 percent plus 12 per cent cess would be levied to keep the tax incidence at the same level.

While the 15 percent cess cap would apply on luxury cars and aerated drinks, on pan masala, the cess has been capped at 135 percent ad valorem.

Tobacco cess will be capped at a mixture of Rs 4,170 per 1,000 sticks or ad valorem of 290 percent. Cess on coal would be at Rs 400 per ton. No decision has been taken to levy cess on bidis as of now, an official said.

The supporting S-GST and UT-GST legislations together with the GST Compensation Law will go to the Cabinet for a formal nod before they are presented in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session that ends on April 12.

The government is hoping the C-GST, I-GST, UT-GST and the GST Compensation laws will be approved in the current session of Parliament and state legislatures will soon clear the S-GST bills so that the new indirect tax regime can be rolled out from July 1.

Meanwhile, the GST draft law will have to be approved by the legislative assemblies of Delhi and Puducherry.

The UTGST draft law is for the union territories like Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, which do not have legislative assemblies.

The new indirect tax regime also has nine set of rules and regulations, out of which the Council has already approved five -- registration, payment, refunds, invoices and returns.

"Four other rules - composition, valuation, input tax credit transitions - require a formal approval of the Council," Jaitley said adding the next meeting will be held on 31 March.

After 31 March, the Council will take up the exercise of fitment of various commodities in the GST tax slabs - 5 percent, 12 percent, 15 percent and 28 percent, he added.

The officials have already started the fitment process, which will be put up for discussion and approval before the Council.

Experts have hailed the development and termed it a landmark.

Pratik Jain, Indirect Tax Leader, PwC India, said, It's a landmark day in India's GST journey." Jain expects most of the states to approve the state GST laws in April/ May.

"It's also good to see a capping on cess at 15 percent along with clear statement that cess will apply only on select commodities. However, industry still awaits clarity as to whether some of the existing cesses such as swach Bharat cess will continue to operate," he said.

However, he is of the opinion that given the amount of work involved, the government may be looking at the deadline of 1 September.

"The rules are still to be finalised and rates are to be determined over next couple of months. Given all this, the Government may want to consider to implement GST from 1 September so as to give some more time to industry to prepare for this radical change, he said.

(With inputs from IANS, PTI)
India's civil aviation secretary Rajiv Nayan Choubey said on Friday it was not possible for a foreign airline to fully own an Indian carrier, but will examine whether it can be done through an investment partner.

Choubey also said the government had not received any proposal from Qatar Airways to start a local airline.

Last week, Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said he wanted to set up a full service Indian carrier to fly domestic routes with around 100 narrowbody planes, now that the country has opened up the airline industry to foreign investors.

Under current rules, foreign airlines are still restricted to holding a maximum stake of 49 percent in Indian carriers, but other foreign investors may own up to 100 percent.

Qatar Airways, which is among the top three Gulf carriers, has been exploring investment opportunities in the fast-growing Indian aviation market.

"We are joining hands with the investment arm of State of Qatar to start a domestic airline in India with a 100 percent investment," Al Baker had said at a press meet in Berlin recently.

"We are doing this because Indian government has opened up the foreign direct investment in (setting up) an airline in India," he had added.

While announcing the plan, Al Baker had said it is yet to apply to the Indian government.

Last June, India allowed foreign investors -- barring overseas airlines -- to own up to 100 percent stake in local carriers by liberalising FDI regulations.

(With Reuters, PTI inputs)
After a firm start in early Friday trade that saw key equity benchmark equity indices, Sensex & Nifty, surge ahead, gains have tapered off a bit in noon trades on the back of select profit taking.

The benchmark Nifty breached 9,200-mark for the first time and touched a high of 9,218.40, up 64 points, while Sensex gained 239 points to touch a high f 29,824.62 in early trade.

At 12:15 pm, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex was at 29,661.02, up 75.17 points, or 0.2 percent from previous close, while the broader 50-stock Nifty was flat at 9,154.

The prospects of a steady approach to US rate hike removed a big uncertainty, which gave markets enough to cheer for.

The GST Council on Thursday cleared the two remaining pieces of supporting legislation, paving the way for their introduction in Parliament and state legislatures for the planned rollout of the indirect tax reform in July.

The stocks have been spurred by buying in key FMCG heavyweight shares. Investors bet that favourable liquidity will continue to spur the rally in emerging markets.

FMCG major ITC stock was the biggest gainer in the Sensex pack so far, rising 7 percent as the market is relieved following clarity over GST rate.

Others such as Lupin, Wipro and Maruti were up around a percent each.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel led the losers pack, falling 2.5 percent. While SBI declined 1.4 percent, ICICI Bank was down 1.2 percent.

Other laggards such as L&T, Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, M&NM and Gail were down over 1 percent each.

Foreign institutional investors continued to view India as a bright spot among the emerging markets, particularly after BJP's win in recent state elections that reinstated confidence of continuity in reforms going ahead.

Remaining net buyers of equities in the current month so far, FIIs on Thursday purchased shares to the tune of Rs 1,360.10 crore, according to provisional data.

Asian stocks extended their previous climb. US stocks closed mostly lower yesterday as modest gains in financial stocks failed to offset declines in healthcare and utilities stocks.
New Delhi: Alibaba-backed Paytm announced on Thursday its foray into the Canadian market with the launch of its bill payments service in the North American country.

"Users in Canada will now be able to pay for their cell phone, cable, internet, electricity and water bills. In addition to this, users will also be able to pay for their insurance and property taxes by using the new Paytm Canada app," Paytm said in a statement.

The app will be available for both Android and iOS users in Canada, it added.

"We are excited to announce that starting today, consumers in Canada will be able to access the seamless Paytm experience that is already well-known in India for its convenience. We are confident that Canada will be a very successful market for us," Paytm Labs CEO Harinder Takhar said.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, who was present at Paytms headquarters in Noida, said the city has been home to the Paytm Labs team since 2014.

Paytm Labs, located in Toronto, Canada, is the research and development division of Paytm.

"Toronto is the city for a company looking to locate in North America with our multisector strength and our exceptional diverse talent pool. With the Canadian app launch, we look forward to Paytms success and being an integral part to its growth story globally," Tory said.

Paytm has expanded its team, growing from a two-person operation to a full-fledged team of data scientists and engineers.

In India, Paytm is one of the largest financial technology platforms. With a current user base of over 200 million, Paytm offers services like payments/recharges, mobile wallets, e-commerce and will soon launch payment banking services.

Its investors include Ant Financial (Alipay), Alibaba Group, SAIF Partners and Mediatek.
Mumbai: Paytm Payments Bank, which got the final approval from the Reserve Bank in January, hopes to start operations by the month-end, PayTm founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma said here today.

"If the RBI blesses us, we will be able to have our bank by this month-end. Banking must be made available to everyone, the money that the customer puts in isn't a

liability but an asset," Sharma said at the India Today Conclave here.

Stating that banking in the present form is outdated, he said, "Versace suits will not change the banking model. Our payments bank will be built on a new model that will be focussed on bringing financial services to the hundreds of millions of unserved/under-served."

Taking a swipe at the way banks have dealt with loans given to industrialists and especially in dealing with the big-ticket defaulters, Sharma said, "the present financial system penalises a sincere person, but if someone speaks the language of those in the corridors of power, he takes a loan of hundreds of crores and fails to pay it back, he will still manage to live in London or such locales."

Sharma expressed belief that with greater penetration of mobile Internet connectivity, his business will grow further.

Paytm currently has about 21.5 crore subscribers, Sharma said adding as against this SBI has 20.7 subscribers. Paytm does about 20 crore transactions a month, while according to RBI data, all other e-wallets put together do 19 crore transactions.

"You can undermine a business but not a technology; it is a tsunami," he said on online payments and smart phones. To further deepen this, we need better Internet network and telecom connections, he added.

Meanwhile, at the startup function TiECON here late in the day, Sharma said, "The payments bank venture is awaiting regulatory approvals for board of directors, the CEO, and compensation and such matters. As far as Paytm is concerned we were ready to launch the bank two months ago." Earlier, Paytm had a plan to launch the bank on 7 March.

He said, parent Paytm will capitalise the bank with Rs 150 crore initially, and will pump in an additional Rs 400 crore going forward.

On the note ban impact on his business, he said "during the past 60 days, Paytm has finished the work of the last 600 days. We had over 15,000 staff working 24/7 to ensure that our offline tieups with merchants took off."

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba recently led a $200 million round of funding into Paytm, which Sharma plans to pump into the company's e-commerce venture, Paytm Mall.
The Chinese port of Manzhouli in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region imported 1,387 tons of fresh water from Russia in January and February 2017, setting a record high that has been interpreted by some experts as a "positive signal about the countries cooperation on water supply.

According to a statement released by the Inspection and Quarantine Bureau of Manzhouli on March 16, China imported 77 batches of drinkable water from Russia in January and February, at a total cost of $327,000.

Due to increasing trade between China and Russia, more Russian commodities have entered Chinese market in recent years. That includes fresh water, especially from Siberias Lake Baikal, which contains highly desirable mineral substances. According to the official statement, water from Baikal can satisfy the daily needs of Manzhouli residents, and will be sold to other Chinese cities as well. Local authorities will facilitate the importation of Baikal water in an effort to promote Sino-Russian trade.

China and Russia have been working hard to include water in their bilateral trade, as Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and can offer significant relief to drought-stricken regions in China. According to a recent Global Times report, officials in Lanzhou, Gansu province intend to build a pipeline through Russia and Mongolia to China.
New Delhi: A maximum of 15 percent cess on top of the peak GST rate of 28 percent will be levied on luxury goods and aerated drinks after the GST Council on Thursday approved a cap on cess along with supporting legislations.

The actual cess on demerit goods, which will help create a corpus for compensating states for any loss of revenue from GST implementation in the first five years, may be lower than the cap as the Council has kept a "little headroom" for future exigencies, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said.

Citing an example, he said if a luxury car at present commands a total tax of 40 percent, under the new indirect tax regime a GST of 28 percent plus 12 percent cess would be levied to keep the tax incidence at the same level.

The 15 percent cess cap would apply on luxury cars and aerated drinks. On pan masala, the cess has been capped at 135 percent ad valorem.

Tobacco cess will be capped at a mixture of Rs 4,170 per 1,000 sticks or ad valorem of 290 percent. Cess on coal would be at Rs 400 per ton. No decision has been taken to levy cess on bidis as of now, an official said.

The panel also cleared the State-GST (S-GST) and Union Territory GST (UT-GST) legislations, Jaitley said while briefing reporters on the deliberations at the 12th meeting of the all-powerful GST Council.

The panel at its last meeting approved the final draft of central GST (C-GST) and integrated GST (I-GST) laws.

The supporting S-GST and UT-GST legislations together with the GST Compensation Law will go to the Cabinet for a formal nod before they are presented in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session that ends on April 12.

The government is hoping the C-GST, I-GST, UT-GST and the GST Compensation laws will be approved in the current session of Parliament and state legislatures will soon clear the S-GST bills so that the new indirect tax regime can be rolled out from July 1.

Jaitley said the GST Council will meet again on 31 March to approve rules after which fitting goods and services in the four-slab tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent will be taken up.
Imagine a bank with pan India presence where you need just Rs 50 minimum balance in your bank account (with no penalties) and Rs 20 is all you need to open this account. It might sound unreal at a time when private, foreign and now even public sector banks insist for a minimum balance anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 1,50,000 and levy charges on almost any transaction you do with them, including cash transactions.

These figures are true and this savings bank is Indias postal department. For accounts with cheque facility, the minimum balance and initial amount needed is Rs 500, but still way cheaper than all other banks. Postal savings accounts offer a rate of interest of 4 percent on such savings, promises no yearly charges/ no hidden fees and has a massive branch network of about 1.5 lakh (about 1.3 lakh in villages and about 25,000 in cities and towns), the department has much bigger network than even the State Bank group combined (about 25,000).

To become the dream bank of the common man, the postal department only needs to ramp up its infrastructure and product offerings. In terms of reach, it is a giant. Take a look at these figures. As on 27 December, 2016 about 23,091 post offices have been migrated to CBS (core banking services) and 968 ATMs are operational.

The postal department already has years of experience in maintaining savings accounts. Total outstanding balance under all National Savings Schemes and Savings Certificates in post office is over Rs 6,39,254 crore as on 31 March, 2016. Out of this, amount garnered under the savings accounts is about Rs 55,082 crore and Rs 76,181 crore under recurring deposit scheme.

With ATMs becoming interoperable, India Post customers having debit card can do transactions on other bank ATMs and similarly other bank customers can transact on post bank ATMs. The CBS spread means you can transact your postal banking account in any of these branches covered under CBS, just like a normal bank. And what more, the department promises no charges for any number of transactions you do at their branches and ATMs.

In short, this means postal department can offer a major alternative to a poor farmer or a salaried employee who dont want to get harassed with the massive charges imposed by traditional banks, if it gets the act together. The present industry situation offers a major opportunity for the department to get its act together and ramp up its infrastructure, technology platform to take on the competition. It needs to act in the following areas urgently:

One, create a strong technology platform that can offer mobile, internet banking to the postal savings customer. As of now, postal bank customers do not have the facility to bank on mobile and internet platforms. In the era of new age banking, it is absolutely necessary for the department to offer technology-based banking platforms to the aspiring customers who look for an alternative to the traditional banks.

Make no mistake. Postal savings bank customers no longer need to be confined to retired employees and housewives who would stand for hours in queues to reach the post office counter. The new age customer of the department will be tech-savvy, cost-sensitive younger generation and to appease this class, the department needs to go for a major makeover using technology.

Second, look for synergies with the recently launched postal payments bank. For this, the government may have to change the laws governing the department since payment bank is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. But, this synergy is a must to avoid confusion among the common man regarding the seemingly similar offerings coming from the same department.

According to AP Singh, who heads the payments bank operations, the activities are still at a concept stage and presently the bank has only eight access points though it has an ambitious plan to acquire new clients. The payments bank cannot use the captive client base of postal savings department since these two are separate entities. Just that the postal savings customers have an option to avail payment bank services.

Third, for such a big makeover, and competition with regular banks, the postal department needs to get its staff ready. This needs special skill sets and dedicated staff and cant be just another activity apartment. The new customer needs attention and speed of transactions.

The bottomline is this: Time is ripe for the postal department to get its act together and ramp up its infrastructure to position itself as an alternative to common savings bank customers. There is a big opportunity particularly given the widespread resentment (read here) against the greedy commercial banks on account of the high transaction charges they levy on common customers.
Akshay Kumar has played a soldier and a navy officer in AR Murugadoss' 2014 film Holiday and Tinu Suresh Desai's 2016 period drama Rustom respectively. It explains why he has a soft corner towards the jawans in not only reel life but also real life.

The Times of India reports that the actor donated a huge sum of Rs 1.08 crore to the families of 12 jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) who were martyred in a clash in the Sukma district of Chhattisgarh last week.

Kumar had been in touch with Amit Lodha, DIG of Jaisalmer sector north. He inquired about the details of the slain jawans' kin and decided to donate Rs 9 lakh each to the families of the 12 jawans.

The same report quotes Lodha as saying, "Akshay himself has been in touch with me and he keeps enquiring about incidents and when I told him about the Sukma incident he immediately told me he would like to contribute and do his bit for the families of the martyred jawans, we are all grateful to him for this kind gesture."

This is not the first time Kumar has expressed his gratitude towards jawans. The Economic Times reports that he recently met Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi to discuss a plan to create a phone application that facilitates transparent and convenient donations to the kin of martyred jawans by anyone who wishes to extend monetary help.

The Indian Express reports Kumar as saying, "They are decorated with lot of medals and that is good. But I looked at their faces. The samman (honour) was required for them but they need money too. You have to be practical." The same report states that he had earlier donated Rs 9 lakh to the family of a martyred Border Security Force (BSF) jawan.
Similar to the January episode when Sanjay Leela Bhansali was attacked and the sets of his upcoming period drama Padmavati was vandalised in Jaipur, the filmmaker has received support from all quarters of the Indian film industry after another set of the film in Kolahpur was torched by a group of 50 to 60 unidentified men.

Filmmaker Karan Johar, a self-confessed fan of Bhansali's work and a victim of a similar case of arm twisting last year, condemned the incident and expressed his fears as a filmmaker.

News 18 quotes him as saying, "It's deeply saddening to me as a filmmaker, as a human being, as a citizen of our prestigious and wonderful country that we have to endure something like this. My thoughts, my support and all my ideologies are with Sanjay. Everytime I read something like this, it deeply saddens me."

"The Producers' Guild is in support of Sanjay and his entire cast and crew. And I hope that adequate measures can be taken to prevent something like this from happening again," said Johar at the trailer launch of SS Rajamouli's war epic Baahubali 2: The Beginning.

Rajamouli also echoed the same opinion at the event. The Times of India quotes him as saying, "I completely agree with Karan on that. Any artist, be it a filmmaker or a musician or a writer or anyone else, should have the freedom to express themselves. We don't even know what Mr Bhansali is going to present. Even if the film's content is not in tune with people's thoughts, he should be able to express his views. Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental rights of this country. Any artist should be able to express their views."

Shahid Kapoor, who is part of the star cast of Padmavati, condemned the attack as well. "I am not aware of is who has done it. It is unfortunate that something like this has happened for the second time. As soon as there is some more clarity, the production house will respond to it,"said Kapoor, as per a report by The Asian Age.

Manoj Bajpayee also came out in support of Bhansali.

Bollywood Life quotes him as saying, "It is disturbing not because the set belonged to Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Padmavati; it is disturbing because it has been happening frequently. If it is happening frequently then it shows that the tolerance level of many of the segments is going down."

His Naam Shabana co-star Taapsee Pannu shared similar thoughts. The same report quotes her as saying, "The whole Meryl Streep incident that happened when she spoke, a lot of people from the media questioned our actors on why we dont have an opinion, why we dont speak out. If we say anything, stones are pelted at our house. We are the ones in danger, we need security after that. That didnt happen to Meryl Streep. Before even Padmavati is complete all this is happening, just imagine once it is complete."

Bengali filmmaker Aparna Sen also condemned the attack. News 18 quotes her as saying, "I think it's shameful that a director's freedom of expression is being curbed in this manner. Who are these so called moral guardians of Hinduism? The incident showed a great lapse on the part of administration. When you are in governance you have to control these elements in society. It is part of your responsibility."
The number of people who died in the violence following Indias independence struggle is still disputed, but most historians believe it was a million civilians or more. What is not in doubt is that they died in the most horrifying circumstances.

Arson, torture, mass rape, desecration of temples and indiscriminate murder was commonplace. This is the backdrop of Gurinder Chadha's next film, Viceroy House.

"The film is a timely reminder of what happens when politicians and leaders start using divide and rule," Gurinder Chadha told Reuters in an interview. "Eventually, it leads to violence and it leads to death, and that doesn't serve anyone."

The film focuses on the final pre-independence days in office of Lord Mountbatten, played by Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville.

Bonneville's co-star as Lady Mountbatten is The X-Files actress Gillian Anderson. The main protagonists among their staff are played by award-winning Indian actress Huma Qureshi and U.S. actor Manish Dayal. The film also stars veteran Indian actor Om Puri, who died in January.

However, Pakistani writer Fatima Bhutto launched a scathing attack on the film in The Guardian, calling it 'a deeply colonised imagination' and a 'servile pantomime of partition'.

Speaking to Scroll.in, Chadha addressed Bhutto's scathing attack. "My film has been misinterpreted by some. But I dont mind criticism."

Chadha wrote a counter-piece to Bhutto's in The Gaurdian that said, "My film does not ignore the freedom struggle  it celebrates that struggle. It does not ignore the colonial policy of divide and rule, but challenges it. Above all, it does not show the Muslim community as sole perpetrators of violence."
Filmmaker Mani Ratnam's forthcoming Tamil romantic drama Kaatru Veliyidai has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with a U certificate and without cuts, the makers announced on Friday.

In a statement, the makers confirmed that the film has been cleared with a U certificate, making it fit for unrestricted public exhibition.

Starring Karthi as a fighter pilot and Aditi Rao Hydari as a doctor, the film will hit the screens worldwide on 7 April.

Shot in places such as Ooty and Kashmir, it is nearly after two decades that Ratnam has travelled out of country to shoot in Belgrade, Europe.

Produced by Madras Talkies, the film also stars Shraddha Srinath, Rukmini Vijayakumar, RJ Balaji, Delhi Ganesh and veteran Malayalam actress Lalitha. Double Oscar-winning A.R. Rahman has composed the music while Ravi Varman has cranked the camera. According to a source from the film's unit, its audio will be released on 20 March.
Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are all set to share screen space in their eighth film together. It is the sequel to their 2012 film, Kabir Khan's action thriller Ek Tha Tiger, Ali Abbas Zafar's Tiger Zinda Hai.

Khan posted a picture of him and Kaif, engaged in an adorable stare off, on Twitter.

BACK TOGETHER , IN TIGER ZINDA HAI . pic.twitter.com/H8D0Gv8cTT  Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) March 22, 2017

The two former lovers have romanced onscreen in Sohail Khan's 2005 romantic comedy Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya, Subhash Ghai's 2008 musical Yuvvraaj and Ek Tha Tiger. They have also shared the screen space in Rajkumar Santoshi's 2009 romantic comedy Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, David Dhawan's 2007 comedy Partner and Atul Agnihotri's 2008 thriller Hello.

It was earlier reported that Tom Struthers, the action director of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, has been roped in by Yash Raj Films to choreograph the action sequences of Ali Abbas Zafar's upcoming action thriller Tiger Zinda Hai. Now, the shooting of the film has begun in the sub-zero locales of Tyrol, a state in Austria. Bollywood Life reports that Salman Khan has requested the makers to shoot his action sequences, or the non-action sequences of him and Katrina Kaif first, since Kaif is still recuperating from a back injury that she suffered on the sets of Anurag Basu's upcoming action comedy Jagga Jasoos.

DNA reports that the producer Aditya Chopra wants the action sequences to match up to the international level. Thus, Khan will be seen wrestling with a pack of wolves on the ice-laden forests of Austria. The international action crew, led by Struthers, is ensuring all safety guidelines to train the wolves for the sequence. The same report states that Khan and Kaif have already shot for a romantic song. This is just the first schedule of the shoot. The cast and crew will visit a host of exotic countries throughout the shooting of the film.

View from the room, technical recce begins as sun plays hide and seek. Austria @TigerZindaHai . pic.twitter.com/2RK7Yilvcy  ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) March 10, 2017

Though the crew is ensuring that no picture from the sets gets leaked online, a few fans did get hold of Khan during the shooting and off the sets and posted picture of him posing with them. Khan is sporting a lean rugged look on the lines of the prequel, Kabir Khan's Ek Tha Tiger.

Pinkvilla quotes the actor as saying, "There is a lot of pain in undergoing a physical transformation. I have been training for Tiger Zinda Hai and there is another film that I am training - it's a dance film (referring to choreographer-cum-filmmaker Remo D'Souza's film). For Sultan, I was 96 kgs. I have shed 18-20 kgs."

Tiger Zinda Hai also stars Paresh Rawal and is slated to release on this Christmas.
By Balazs Koranyi

| BADEN-BADEN, Germany

BADEN-BADEN, Germany The world's biggest economies will pledge to jointly fight cyber attacks on the global banking system, one of the biggest coordinated efforts yet to protect lenders since an $81 million heist of the Bangladesh central bank's account last year. Meeting in the German resort town of Baden-Baden, G20 finance chiefs will agree to fight attacks regardless of their origin and promise cross-border cooperation to maintain financial stability, according to a draft document seen by Reuters. "We will promote the resilience of financial services and institutions in G20 jurisdictions against malicious use of information and communication technologies, including from countries outside the G20," it said.However, it dropped an earlier reference for enhanced security requirements for financial services.

Cyber crime became a top priority after an elaborate heist on the Bangladesh central bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year, an unprecedented theft that exposed the vulnerabilities of the system.The agreement, set to be finalised on Saturday, will come just days after the United States charged two intelligence agents from Russia, another G20 member, with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts.

The indictment was the first time U.S. authorities have criminally charged Russian spies for cyber offences including for computer fraud, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and wire fraud.The charges came amid a swirl of controversies relating to alleged Kremlin-backed hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible links between Russian figures and associates of U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the banking world, attacks through the global SWIFT bank transfer system have continued to increase with the network recording a "meaningful" number of attacks with about a fifth of them resulting in stolen funds since the Bangladesh heist, the firm said late last year.In other highly publicised attacks, retailer Tesco Plc's banking arm said 2.5 million pounds ($3 million) had been stolen from 9,000 customers last year while hackers also stole more than 2 billion roubles ($34 million) from correspondent accounts at the Russian central bank and from accounts in commercial banks.The European Union is considering testing banks' defences against cyber attacks with concerns growing about the industry's vulnerability to hacking. (Editing by Julia Glover)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON Japan's industry minister said on Thursday he had agreed with the U.S. energy and commerce secretaries to share information on developments involving Toshiba Corp (6502.T) and its troubled U.S. nuclear affiliate, Westinghouse Electric Co, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.Toshiba said on Tuesday it was "actively considering" a sale and other strategic options for Westinghouse, as it expanded a probe into problems there that caused the parent group to miss an earnings deadline for a second time.The Japanese conglomerate said it believed it could findbuyers for a majority stake in Westinghouse but sidestepped questions about a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for the unit, saying only there were various options. Sources have said bankruptcy lawyers have been hired as an exploratory step. Kyodo said Hiroshige Seko, Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry, told Japanese reporters after talks in Washington with U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that he had agreed with them to share information about developments in the case.

According to Kyodo, Seko said the U.S. Cabinet members had said they considered the fiscal stability of Toshiba extremely important.Kyodo said Seko had a separate meeting on Thursday with Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council.

A White House official said, "The Westinghouse issue did come up in the meetings and both sides are monitoring it closely."The U.S. Commerce and Energy departments and the National Economic Council did not respond to requests for comment.

Seko was on a one-day visit to prepare for a high-level bilateral economic dialogue due to start next month led by Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.A sale of Westinghouse would represent the latest in a series of steps Toshiba is taking to grapple with losses stemming from the nuclear unit's ill-fated purchase of a U.S. nuclear power plant construction company in 2015. Toshiba has already put up most or even all of its memory chip business for sale to cope with an upcoming $6.3 billion writedown for the nuclear business and to create a buffer for potential losses down the road. Westinghouse has been plagued by huge cost overruns at two U.S. projects in Georgia and South Carolina, and liabilities related to those projects mean it is unlikely to be an easy asset to sell, despite attractive technology.Westinghouse has been negotiating a multi-billion-dollar deal to build six nuclear reactors in India after a 2008 civil nuclear accord, a deal supposed to showcase a new era of economic and strategic cooperation between the United States and India. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Leslie Adler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
LONDON Eleven non-OPEC oil producers that joined a global deal to reduce output to boost prices delivered 64 percent of promised cuts in February, an industry source said on Friday, still lagging the higher levels of OPEC itself.The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers agreed to cut production by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1 to boost prices and reduce a supply glut.

Compliance numbers were reviewed at a meeting in Vienna on Friday comprised of officials from countries monitoring adherence to agreed output levels -- OPEC members Kuwait, Venezuela, Algeria plus non-OPEC Russia and Oman. Russia plans to step up its adherence, saying on Friday that it will cut output by the full amount it had pledged -- 300,000 bpd -- by the end of April and will maintain that level until the deal expires at the end of June.

The meeting also discussed OPEC's own compliance, which it put at 106 percent, in line with figures published in OPEC's latest monthly report on Tuesday. [OPEC/M]

The panel, which met at OPEC's headquarters in Vienna, is the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) established in January as part of efforts to monitor adherence to supply cuts.Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia is also a member of the JTC in its capacity as 2017 OPEC president. (Reporting by OPEC team; Editing by David Goodman)

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U.S. state secretary says all options on table for Korean Peninsula nuke issue

(Xinhua) 18:05, March 17, 2017

SEOUL, March 17 -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that all options are on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.

Tillerson said during a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all of diplomatic, security and economic measures and all options will be reviewed for the peninsula's denuclearization.

"All options are on the table," said the top U.S. diplomat who arrived here earlier in the day for the second stop of his first East Asian tour since taking office.

He visited Japan on Thursday, meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to fly to China on Saturday.

Before the press conference, Tillerson toured the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the two Koreas since the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice. He also visited the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ.

Tillerson said a so-called "strategic patience" policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has ended, referring to the U.S. foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearization.

The top U.S. diplomat indicated a need for tougher UN Security Council sanctions on the DPRK's nuclear program, but he did not go so far as to say that any immediate military action is required.

Tillerson said the United States is prepared to take a military action if necessary, but he said Washington do not want to cause military conflicts.

He said that if the DPRK conducts any provocative act to threaten South Korea and the U.S. forces stationed here, his country will take action against it.

The United States, he said, would come to the dialogue table for the peninsula's denuclearization only if the DPRK gives up its nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the South Korean foreign minister said it was urgent to deal with the DPRK's advanced nuclear threats, and that he will discuss countermeasures against the threats with his U.S. counterpart who has said Washington is examining a "new approach" to the peninsula's nuclear issue.

Yun said no change has been made in the joint goal of the two allies to achieve a complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang carried out its fourth and fifth nuclear tests last year, the latest in September, while test-firing ballistic missiles over 20 times in 2016 alone.

The DPRK test-launched four ballistic missiles earlier in the month, after testing a new type of missile the previous month that uses solid fuel and is fired from a mobile launcher, two key features indicating its advanced ballistic missile technology.
FRANKFURT Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) powerful labour chief Bernd Osterloh told German newspaper Handelsblatt that a dispute with embattled VW brand chief Herbert Diess over how to implement reforms at the carmaker's core brand, has been laid to rest.A truce between Diess and Osterloh would mark an end to months of infighting at the world's biggest carmaker, which is struggling to regain its footing after a damaging diesel emissions cheating scandal. In recent months talks with management over how to implement a turnaround plan were broken off by the company's labour leaders, who control nine out of 20 seats on VW Group's board of directors, leaving in limbo a deal on cost-cutting.

"There was a fundamental dispute between works council and the brand chief. That's history," Osterloh told the paper. "All participants now have the goal to enter calmer waters."Osterloh said the company's core brand could implement a 3.7 billion euros ($4 billion) savings programme by working together with Diess, in what amounts to a marked change of tone for the labour chief.

"Herbert Diess is a good technician who has mastered purchasing, development and production. I have always said we have a lot in common and analyse many topics in a similar manner. Now we have consensus that we want to do this together, management, IG Metall and the works council," Osterloh said.

VW already has around 2,000 fewer staff than at the beginning of 2015, in line with a staff attrition plan, Osterloh said. In addition to VW overhaul plans agreed upon in November 2016, there are ideas to hike efficiency by a further 10 million euros, he said. And by implementing VW's current turnaround proposals VW has saved 40 million euros more than planned, he told the paper.Osterloh further said he continued to see Volkswagen's supervisory board backing Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler even after prosecutors stepped up an investigation of the premium brand's role in a diesel cheating scandal. (Reporting by Edward Taylor)

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The National Health Policy has been cleared and the view persists that it falls short of the 2015 draft. The Indian Express says, while marshalling the fine details, that it fails to make health a justiciable right in the way the Right to Education 2005 did for school education. There would be justified debate which is healthy, for in India, the healthcare is nowhere even near the halfway mark to where it ought to be.

Aim is to raise public health expenditure to 2.5 percent of the GDP, but here is the catch  in time-bound manner as the Minister (Health), JP Nadda put it. Also, it advocates two-thirds or more of resources to primary care, ensure a ratio of two beds per 1,000 population spaced in a manner to reach them within the golden hour, proposes free drugs, free diagnostics and free emergency and essential health care services in all public hospitals.

Sounds nice right? But the healthcare activists will have quite a lot to say for now a poor, ramshackle healthcare system has to be brought to vibrant life. To assume that it was good earlier even to an extent would be a false belief. The target of 2.5 percent spends of the GDP was set earlier too and had to be met by now. But according to Nadda, now this would happen by 2025. Which means, we have to wait like one does in a doctors waiting room. Till then, be happy with palliatives  promises.

The policy promises a system which sets and ensures standards in both government and private healthcare arrangements. National Healthcare Standards Organisation (NHSO)-set standards would be the measure against which the patient can complain and an empowered tribunal will deal with grievances. Sounds good but does not inspire confidence because so far, the system comprising of both public and private healthcare have taken the patients not to good health but on a ride.

Anyone using the public healthcare system has serious complaints about the quality of care, diagnosis made, absence of hygiene within hospital premises, or the profiteering by the private sector. Even hospitals which are set up by trusts and style themselves as research institutions to secure concessional land allocation and beat the taxman are no better than the corporate hospitals. Both set increasingly higher targets of revenue per quarter. And there sits the devil.

If a hospital does not increase the bed strength, or the number of operating theatres or expand its outpatient, it can achieve higher revenues (which it requires), only by extracting more from the patients. There is a variety of ways to achieve these targets and hospital managements will usually deny it, but one of the ways to achieve it is by performing procedures on patients which are perhaps not needed. Way back in the 1970, in Guntur, the women without uteruses (female reproductive organ) outnumbered with it for it had become a practice to recommend that surgery.

Of late, we have seen a racket of sorts getting exposed. One such exposure has come from the government, which showed how stent prices were increasing  up to 10 times  at every step (starting with the manufacturer) before it reached the patient. The biggest jump came at the hospital end, and the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority got wise to it and put ceilings on their prices, as it has on many drugs used for treatment of cancer. Not only does cancer kill, but often enough it also kills the economic well-being of the family of the cancer victim.

Several questions remain unanswered with regard to healthcare (one of them is the bill amount patients are asked to pay). It is common practice for in-patients to be visited by another specialist and billed for that. In certain hospitals, an appendectomy would cost Rs 1 lakh or more, but some other hospital would console the patient that the surgery would cost a third of that. But all this while no one reveals that the patient didnt even need that surgery.

Why for instance do some doctors order non-requisite tests (which are out of the scope of the diagnostic assessment)? Is there a system of cutbacks between the laboratories and the doctors? Why is it that a surgery cost a particular sum in a general ward, as opposed to private wards? Does the quality of surgery differ from shared to single-bedded rooms?

These issues could be dealt with on priority basis, by making private healthcare affordable even if not as cheap as in the public hospitals. And public hospitals could be made more healthcare-friendly by upping the standards at every level, including reducing the level of neglect which comes by poor staffing at most levels, contrived non-availability of drugs which force patients to go and buy it from doctor-friendly pharmacists. Or, simply put, make both sectors caring.

These relate to ethics. To honesty. And it does not need a new health policy to attend to.
New Delhi: The opposition on Friday accused the government of reducing the allocation for the defence ministry

to the lowest level since the 1962 war with China and claimed that the acchhe din (good days) have not come for soldiers.

Leading the opposition charge in the Lok Sabha during a debate on the Demand for Grants of the Defence Ministry, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said security challenges from China and Pakistan had increased and the lack of modernisation of the defence forces is a "ticking time bomb".

He said the defence allocation had been increased to 2.5 percent of GDP during the UPA government but it has now been reduced to 1.5 percent, which is the "lowest" since 1962.

The allocation for capital expenditure was only Rs 86,000 crore and 90 percent of it will go to service the existing contractual liability, Scindia said.

"Our army is not getting new weapons. The budget for them is not adequate and still all of it is not being spent. Rs 7,000 crore of the capital expenditure has been returned and Rs 13,000 crore was returned in the preceding year...," he said.

While Pakistan had been "caged" by the UPA government, it is now launching counter attacks on us, he said.

He added that China had sided with Pakistan during the Brics Summit held in India last year.

This government has neither a proper defence policy nor has it right intentions, the Congress leader said.

Describing the 'Make-in-India' programme as "big cheating", he said not much has happened under it.

He hit out at the government over terror strikes in Pathankot, Uri and Nagrota while recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's attack on the previous UPA government during the Lok Sabha polls, when he was the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.

Scindia said the UPA government had signed a deal to procure 126 Rafale aircraft which would have increased the air force's squadron of fighter aircraft to 40 from 33. However, the NDA government has reduced the procurement size to only two squardons, he said.

Claiming inadequacy of weapons and equipment for all three wings of defence forces, he said against the need of 3.5 lakh bullet proof jackets, only 50,000 has been procured.

"If you do not modernise, it is a ticking time bomb," he said.

Taking a dig at former defence minister Manohar Parrikar, he said he was often away from Delhi.

He also found fault with the execution of OROP policy.

Countering the opposition charge, BJP member Meenakshi Lekhi took a dig at the Congress, saying in the earlier governments there was "scam and ban" and then "a lot of noise" as far as defence contracts were concerned.

The present government has stopped such things and it would be better not to remind the Congress about AgustaWestland issues, she added, in an apparent reference to the scam in the purchase of VVIP helicopters.

She favoured audit of the land owned by the defence forces to ensure there is no exploitation and defence economic zones.

Gaurav Gogoi (Congress) said dignity should be ensured for the defence forces and there should also be parity in pay.

About the preparedness of the forces, he said there is shortage of aircraft and the vacancies in the defence forces are staggering.

He said the government should look at opening more Sainik schools and wondered why ordnance factories are vulnerable.

Taking a swipe at the government over a recent incident where a jawan complained about quality of the food served, Gogoi said, "We need to be sensitive... let us not question his mental state... What the army needs is dignity and respect."

AIADMK member K Gopal also said there was only a meager hike in defence budget and that there was a shortage of equipment in the armed forces.

He wanted focus on security in the southern coast and said the killing of fishermen from Tamil Nadu by the Sri Lankan forces should be considered as an "unfriendly aggression".

Trinamool Congress member Pratima Mondal said the cross-LoC surgical strike last September had sent out a credible and strong message but there is a threat to internal security.

NK Premchandran (RSP) said the government was trying to take political advantage from the surgical strikes even though such actions had been conducted three times during the UPA rule but never made it public.

He also said that the share of defence budget in proportion to GDP has come down from 1.65 percent in 2016-17 to 1.56 percent in the current fiscal.

Expelled RJD member Rajesh Ranjan said bribery was still taking place in defence contracts because India has failed to become self-reliant in the sector.

Jaiprakash Narayan Yadav (RJD), Neelam Sonkar (BJP) and Kaushalendra Kumar (JD-U) also spoke.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being a quick learner despite having no experience at the national level prior to taking charge at South Block.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a quick learner and he quickly picked up things, said President Pranab Mukherjee while addressing the India Today Conclave in Mumbai.

Mukherjee said Modi despite being a rank outsider from the state level and without experience as a parliamentarian, he gained mastery over external relations and complicated external economy. The president said Modi has his own way of dealing with things.

While appreciating Modis way of dealing with issues, he delved on the functioning style of various Indian prime ministers. He said a prime minister derives authority from people and how he uses that authority is important. Office (that of the president and prime minister) is nothing but a service, service to people, said Mukherjee, who spent 37 years as a parliamentarian and more than 22 years in various ministries.

The president also praised former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his art of winning his opponents.

Walking down the memory lane, the president cited how Vajpayee used to remind representatives of people on how to win over opponents and influence others in the House without being loud and brash.

He narrated an incident related to Vajpayee during the NDA government's first full term to drive his point home.

One day in Rajya Sabha, PM Vajpayee walked to my seat and requested not to be too harsh to his cabinet colleague George Fernandes as the latter was very competent. I was surprised and told him instead of coming to me, he should have called me. That was PM Vajpayees way of handling issues. We should learn from him how to win over critics, Mukherjee said.

Referring to a meeting he had with a few parliamentarians two days ago, he said, As a President, Im an ornamental head, yet people come to me with representations. Two days back some parliamentarians came to me with a representation to resolve the Kashmir issue. I asked them to take a leaf out of Vajpayees way of dealing and convincing opponents.

Mukherjee even gave an idea on what he would like to see before his term ends in July. He said that he wants to see that Parliament functions effectively and with lesser disruptions.

In his candid speech, the president expressed serious concern over disruptive politics and mentioned how Lok Sabhas productivity had declined over the years due to disruptions and walkouts.

Citing statistics, Mukherjee said, In the first Lok Sabha (1952-57), there were 677 sittings and 319 bills were passed, whereas in the15th Lok Sabha, only 357 sittings took place and 181 bills were passed. This happened due to disruptions, which is unacceptable to me. The first budget was of Rs 397 crore, whereas the size of the latest budget is Rs 17 lakh crore. Make a comparison of the time spent on discussions on expenditures! Nobody has the moral authority to disrupt or stall the proceedings of the House at the cost of taxpayers money.

Almost two-third of his speech witnessed his deep concern over the decaying proceedings in Parliament.

We should build a strong and broad consensus to stop disruption in Parliament, so that our system can function. Dont make Parliament ineffective, its a primary forum of debate, Mukherjee said.

In course of his speech, the president also referred to the influence India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had on him.

"Nehru had a dominant influence on me. I still remember what he had said, I dont want India to say yes to one man.

Holding former prime minister Indira Gandhi in high esteem for her role in the 1971 Bangladesh war, Mukherjee said that he had the longest tenure of 10 years as a minister under her.

The president also had a word of appreciation to the last prime minister he served under  Manmohan Singh  saying he has profound knowledge and gave a free hand to his ministers with minimum interference.

Making his retirement plan clear, Mukherjee said he would like to quit public life and go back to his native place in West Bengal and lead Durga Puja at his home as long as he can.
A pro-Islamic State media group has warned of attacks in India in a graphic in which the Taj Mahal was shown as a target.

According to non-governmental counter-terrorism organisation Site Intelligence Group, pro-Islamic State Ahwaal Ummat Media Center published a graphic which threatened attacks in India and showed the Taj Mahal in Agra as a target.

Earlier in November, the Lok Sabha had been informed that the NIA and state security agencies had arrested 68 supporters of dreaded terror outfit Islamic State in various parts of the country till then.

Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir had said that a total of 50 people had been arrested by security agencies during 2016 of whom 11 belonged to Maharashtra, 11 belonged to Telangana, seven belonged to Karnataka, four from Uttarakhand, sic from Kerala, one from Delhi, two from West Bengal, one from Rajasthan, two from Uttar Pradesh, one from Madhya Pradesh, one from Jammu and Kashmir, one from Bihar and two from Tamil Nadu.

Ahir had said that the Islamic State is using various platforms to propagate its ideology and to attract recruits from across the world.

"The intelligence and security agencies maintain a close watch to identify those engaged in such anti-national activities and persons or preachers misguiding the youth and action is initiated against such persons under the relevant laws," he had said.

With inputs from PTI
A board with the 'beti bachao beti padhao' slogan greets you as you enter Sangli district's Mhaisal village on the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. Incidentally, just a few metres away is the Bharati Hospital of Dr Balasaheb Khidrapure, the doctor who was arrested for allegedly running an illegal abortion and female foeticide racket.

Swati Jamdade died on 1 March while undergoing an abortion performed by Khidrapure. Following Swati's death, her husband Praveen Jamdade was arrested. During investigation, police found 19 foetuses, some in a state of decay, some buried under a stream close to the hospital. Gradually, a horrifying tale of female foeticide unfolded.

On 1 March, Swati had gone to Khidrapure's hospital to undergo sonography, during which the doctor allegedly revealed the sex of the foetus to the couple. She later underwent an abortion which caused her death. Suspecting foul play, Swati's parents lodged a police complaint. Investigation revealed that she underwent the illegal abortion as the sex of the baby was that of a girl. A case was registered against Khidrapure, following which he fled the village. He was later arrested in Belgaum, Karnataka, along with his wife. The police also found that he had a well-equipped hospital with an operation theater in the basement of the hospital.

Khidrapure was a homeopath and was legally not allowed to conduct surgeries. The police suspected a Maharashtra-Karnataka cross-border racket. This led to the arrest of 12 people till date, three of which, including Khidrapure, are doctors. Arrested include Dr Shrihari Ghodke (homepath) from Kagwad and Dr Ramesh Devgikar (MBBS) from Vijapur. These doctors had appointed agents in the two states who would get cases to the doctors. The patients in Maharashtra were sent to Karnataka and vice versa to avoid raising suspicion. They also made sure that the patients undergo tests in four to five different hospitals before the abortion is conducted. Instead of conducting the abortions in an operation theatre, a temporary hut would be built where the patient would undergo surgery and could stay for further treatment. Investigation revealed that sometimes, in the absence of doctors, the compounder or the nurse would perform the abortion. After the abortion, they would bury the foetus or flush it down the toilet with acid or feed it to the dogs. It was only because some foetuses were put inside plastic bags and buried underground that the entire racket came to light.

An agent, whose identity remains undisclosed, revealed, "Doctors would charge Rs 25,000 per abortion. There are times, when the patients would be informed that it was a female foetus, when it was male, just for the money."

A complaint against Khidrapure was filed last year which had led to a raid by the officials of the health department, but they now claim that they did not find anything during the raid. However, this year, another raid was conducted after the police case was filed, they found that illegal medicines were being used and that the operation theater was illegal and the doctor had no licence for years to conduct surgeries.

"We are still investigating the matter. Twelve people have been arrested from Maharashtra and Karnataka so far. We are investigating their involvement," Deputy superintendent of police Deepali Kale, who is investigating the case, said.

"A raid was conducted on a tip-off. But the official claimed that he did not find anything, therefore, no action was initiated," Archana Patil, additional director health services, said.

"Police can initiate action only when there is a criminal angle involved. We could initiate the probe because of Swati's death. But why aren't the health officials taking any action? There were more than enough factors that could have aroused suspicion. But they conducted only one raid and claim to have found nothing. Everything seems fishy," said a police officer investigating the case.

But this is not the first such case in Maharashtra. On 18 May, 2012, Vijaymala Patekar from Beed district died while undergoing an illegal abortion. This led to the arrest of Dr Sudam and Dr Saraswati Munde. Munde too was accused of conducting sex determination test a year before his arrest. But he managed to continue with his practice despite the allegations. Seventeen people were arrested in connection to this case. And now after five years, trial is still going on.

Incidentally, Sangli and Beed both happen to be the districts with the lowest child sex ratios in the state. The sex ratio in Beed has been on a constant decline since 1991.

CHILD SEX RATIO Year Beed Sangli 1991 1,000:939 1,000:924 2001 1,000:894 1,000:851 2011 1,000:807 1,000:867

Yearly data collected by the authorities has also shown a rise.

The data on the Maharashtra health department website indicates that sex determination and female foeticide take place in these districts. Does the health department wait till a patient dies to investigate the doctor?

"The problem lies in the way cases are registered," said Girish Laad, an activist working for 'Save the Girl Child' campaign. "We had conducted a research a few years ago and found that doctors can be charged under Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act only when the documents are incomplete or the agency concerned has proof that sex determination was conducted. There is an easy way out  under-reporting. If the foetus is female, they simply don't record it, but go ahead with the abortion," he said.

"Silent observer installed in the machines a few years ago was able to keep a check to some extent. But doctors found a way out by using old machines which did not have the equipment installed," he added.

A recent case registered in Daund taluka of Pune district proved this theory right. Dr Shinde from Phaltan was arrested along with four accomplices in Yawat village, Daund taluka while conducting a sex determination test. He had installed the ultrasound machine in a car and would take it to various places. Police acted on a tip off that led to the arrest.

"We had sent a proposal to the government for the installation of a device that we have developed called active tracker," said Laad. "This equipment is like a CCTV camera for ultrasound machines. It is connected to the power supply and keeps a track of all the sonographies conducted on the machine and simultaneously sends the data to government officials. But we did not get any response from the government. Union minister Maneka Gandhi has ordered the installation of device marked under the 'Beti Bachao' campaign. Few states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan are using this technology. But there is no response from the ministers and officials of Maharashtra. We had even told them that we will give it for free," he said.

Kiran Moghe, president of Janawadi Mahila Sanghatna, posed a pertinent question: Why don't the health and revenue department officials, who have the authority, initiate any action? Why wait for a police complaint? "The PCPNDT Act is near perfect. There are no loopholes. What we are probably falling short of is action," she added.

The long pendency of cases is another problem. In Maharashtra, 572 cases were registered under PCPNDT Act since 2002, of which 26 are decoy cases. Hearing of almost 55 percent cases is going on. As most cases are registered based on incomplete documentation, it becomes difficult to prove them in court. Decoy cases are small in number. According to a Supreme Court judgement, these cases should reach to a conclusion within six months. This seems far from possible.

"The mentality needs to change. Moreover, the doctors make a large profit in these kind of cases and tend to influence patients. Apart from the burden of dowry, an insecure environment for girls remains a concern for parents. Probably why it leads to female foeticide. We need to take these issues into account and focus on the action that can be taken under the PCPNDT Act," said Moghe.

When the Mhaisal issue was raised in the ongoing Assembly session of Maharashtra, minister Deepak Sawant announced that a report about the case will be tabled before the Assembly. The health department has also formed a committee which will be chaired by the dean of the medical college of Sangli to help the police investigation. "They will focus on the technical aspects," said Patil.

After the Beed and Mhaisal cases came to light, multiple raids were conducted but these are just temporary measures. The declining sex ratio is alarming. Awareness drives are being conducted, but the government should play a serious role to curb such incidences.
With a population of 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil but with an economy the size of Qatars  which has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnore  the new government of Indias most-populous state faces a myriad of problems.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is comparable to Kenyas, and its infant mortality rate rivals Mauritania, a poverty-ridden, west-African nation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented victory in UP in the 2017 assembly election, winning 312 out of 403 seats  77.4% of all assembly seats  but with some of Indias worst development indicators, there is much to do.

We analysed six major challenges and the corresponding promises made by the BJP to fix them in its election manifesto, called the Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra-2017.

1. Indias second highest maternal mortality, half of the child population stunted

Despite having the largest population, UP spends Rs 452 per capita on health, 70% less than the average spending by states.

One in two children in the state is not fully immunised, and the state has Indias second-highest maternal mortality rate (258 deaths per 100,000 live births) and highest infant mortality rate (64 deaths per 1,000 live births), according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).

UP Has Indias Worst Infant & Under-Five Mortality Rates

Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16

There are 84% fewer specialists than needed, 50% fewer nursing staff, and the lowest share of health workers (19.9%) in India, found an analysis by the Observer Research Foundation in February 2017.

As many as 46.3% of UPs children are stunted (low height-for-age), 17.9% are wasted (low weight-for-height) and 39.5% of its children are underweight, according to NFHS-4.

What the manifesto said: The BJP, in its manifesto, has promised to have a primary sub centre in all villages with the latest equipment and technology. Further, it promised to set up 25 new medical colleges and speciality hospitals and one hospital at par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in every six blocks.

The BJP has promised to turn UP into a malnutrition-free state in five years.

2. Low learning levels, high absenteeism in the state with 21% of Indias child population

UP has achieved high enrolment of children in primary school, with 83.1% of primary school-aged children enrolled in school in 2015-16, according to the data from the governments Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE).

Major issues for the new government now include low learning outcomes, high absenteeism, and lower enrolment in grade VI and further60.5% of upper-primary school-aged students enrolled in school in 2015.

In 2016, about half (49.7%) of grade I students surveyed in households in UP could not read letters, while 44.3% could not recognise numbers up to nine, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizen-led assessment of learning in rural India, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2016.

The survey also found that a little over half of students (56%) were present in primary school on the days of the survey.

Source: Annual Status of Education Report, 2016

What the manifesto said: The BJP manifesto on education is labelled improvement in quality of the education sector. It majorly concentrates on inputsfree education, books, uniforms, teacher-student and classroom-student ratios, along with laptops and free internet for college students, and a Rs 500 crore scholarship fund for poor students.

3. High youth unemployment, high migration to other states for jobs

The low quality of education in the state (and dearth of jobs) is reflected in UPs high unemployment. In 2015-16, more people per 1,000 were unemployed in UP (58), compared to the Indian average (37). Youth unemployment was especially high, with 148 for every 1,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 years in UP unemployed, compared to the Indian average of 102, according to 2015-16 labour ministry data.

UPs Unemployment Problem

Source: Ministry of Labour and Employment data here and here

Between 2001 and 2011, over 5.8 million people between the ages of 20 and 29 years migrated from UP in search of jobs, but, for most of these migrants, low educational attainment likely resulted in low-paying jobs in the informal sector.

Voters recognise the lack of jobs as a major issue in the state. As many as 20% of voters surveyed said jobs were the most important issue this election year, according to a FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey.

What the manifesto said: The BJP government will create seven million jobs or opportunities for self-employment in the next five years, its manifesto said. As many as 90% of all jobs in industries in the state will be reserved for youth from UP. The manifesto also promises Rs 1,000 crore for a start-up venture capital fund, which will also create jobs for the youth.

4. Industrial growth one of the slowest in the country

UP reported an annual industrial growth (2004-05 constant prices) of 1.95% and 1.93% in 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, according to the NITI Aayogamong the bottom five in the country.

The state is struggling even in industries that have traditionally been strong. For instance, Kanpurs leather industry is in deep distress with 146 of its 400 leather tanning units shutting down in ten years, IndiaSpend reported in January 2017.

UP ranked 20th out of 21 states on the 2016 State Investment Potential Index, a ranking of states on labour, infrastructure, economic climate, political stability, governance, and perceptions of a good business climate.

The index, released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, identifies a shortage of electricity and vocationally trained people as the main concern in the state.

Source: National Council for Applied Economic Research

What the manifesto said: The BJP manifesto promises to triple current investment in the state by the creation of an investment board. Further, it calls for a single-window clearance department, headed by the chief minister, for industries. The manifesto also promises to build six information technology parks in the state, a pharmaceutical park, and a dry port connected to a sea port to encourage exports from the state.

5. UP has 20% of Indias agricultural households, but slow agricultural growth

By 2012-13, UP, with an estimated 18.05 million agricultural households, made up 20% of Indias total agricultural households. Three out of four rural households in UP depend on agriculture, making agricultural reforms a key agenda in one of Indias most fertile belts.

For the nine years between 2004-05 and 2012-13, the agriculture and allied sector in UP recorded the slowest compounded annual growth rate of 2.9% (out of all the BIMARU states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP), below the national growth rate of 3.7 %.

UP recorded a growth rate of 4.2% in agriculture and allied activities (constant 2004-05 prices), slower than Uttarakhand, formed out of UP in 2000, which recorded a growth rate of 5.12%, and Madhya Pradesh, which grew at 18.85%, in 2014-15.

Outstanding farmer loans in UP stood at nearly Rs 75,000 crore as of two years ago, Business Standard reported on March 15, 2017. Of these, a little more than 10%, or Rs 8,000 crore, was loaned through state cooperative banks or primary agricultural credit societies, which are the only loans that the newly formed government can choose to waive offthe other loans are controlled by scheduled commercial banks. This amount includes loans to all farmers in the state, and not just small and marginal farmers.

What the manifesto said: Under agriculture, the BJP manifesto promises that all agricultural loans will be waived off for small and marginal farmers, while future loans will be provided interest-free. The new government will also create a roadmap to double agricultural income in the state by 2022.

Further, the BJP promised to pay sugarcane farmers in Indias largest sugarcane-producing state within 14 days of the sale, while also coordinating with mill owners and banks to repay previously owed amounts to sugarcane growers within 120 days of forming the new government.

6. More than half the households unelectrified, progress slow with corruption and red tape

In UP, power cuts were the leading election issue for one-third of voters polled, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2017.

UP remains one of Indias most poorly electrified stateswith 51.8% of rural households unelectrifieddespite having the third largest installed coal capacity in the country at the end of January 2017.

Corruption and red tape within electricity distribution companies, which are responsible for the timely disbursal of funds for electrification projects, are a major factor in the lackadaisical progress of electrification across the state, as IndiaSpend reported in March 2017.

Source: Ministry of Power

What the manifesto said: Every household in the state will be provided with 24-hour power supply, while poor households (below the official poverty line of Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas) will be given electricity connections free of cost. Poor households will also be provided the first 100 units of electricity at a discounted rate of Rs 3 per unit.
In a fresh turn to the case of Indian clerics gone missing in Lahore, according to CNN-News18, Pakistan has accepted that their intelligence agencies have detained the two Sufi clerics. The news channel reported that Pakistani authorities have claimed that there were serious charges against the two Indians, and their movements were being monitered before they were detained.

India, on it's part has rubbished Pakistani claims, stating that the Indian clerics were not on any "unautorised movement," adding that the clerics from Lahore's Data Darbar shrine and India's Hazrat Nizamuddin exchanging visits was a common phenomenon.

#BREAKING India rubbishes Pak's 'unauthorised movement' claim on Indian clerics; says visits between Nizamuddin & Data Darbar clerics normal pic.twitter.com/RTaYctkOI3  News18 (@CNNnews18) March 17, 2017

#EXCLUSIVE -- Top Pak govt sources say the charges against Nizami are serious. Authorities looking into priest's movement in two cities  News18 (@CNNnews18) March 17, 2017

Two Indian clerics, including the head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, had gone missing in Pakistan, prompting India to take up the matter with the Pakistani government. Early on Friday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had posted on Twitter a series of posts in which she confirmed that two Indian clerics had gone missing in Pakistan. She tweeted that the two Indian nationals, Syed Asif Ali Nizami who is the head priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia dargah and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone missing after they landed at Karachi airport. Later, Minister of State for External Affairs Ministry also reiterated that the government was putting in all efforts to ensure safe return of the two Indian Nationals.

Indian nationals Syed Asif li Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on 8 March 2017. /1  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Syed Asif Ali Nizami is Head Priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizammuddin Aulia dargah. /2  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Both are missing after they landed at Karachi airport. /3  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Swaraj further said that India has taken up the matter with Pakistan and had requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals.

We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan./4  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

According to official sources in New Delhi, Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Data Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight from there to Karachi on Wednesday.

"As per their families, while Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, Nazim was stopped at the Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete travel papers."

"While Nazim went missing from Lahore airport, Asif went missing after arriving at the Karachi airport," a source said.

The matter has been taken up with the Pakistan government both in New Delhi as well as through the Indian mission in Islamabad, the source said.

"My father Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Nizami, 60, went missing from Lahore and Karachi airports, respectively, on Wednesday evening," Asif's elder son Sazid Ali Nizami told IANS.

He said that his father and cousin went to Karachi in Pakistan on 6 March from where they visited Lahore on 13 March to offer "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine, the master of Baba Nizamuddin.

"On 14 March, they offered another chadar at Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore. The next day they reached at Lahore airport to take a flight for Karachi at 4.30 pm. At the Lahore airport, my cousin was stopped by the airport authorities to clear some documentation and my father was asked to board the flight."

"My father reached Karachi airport at 6 pm but my cousin could not join him. At the airport, my father talked to my relatives on phone and informed them to come outside, but he did not come," Sazid said.

Sazid further said that my father and cousin's mobile phones were also switched off. "Pakistani authorities and police are still clueless about them," Sazid said.

Sazid, however, added that Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other officials had taken the issue seriously and assured me of taking appropriate action over the issue.

External Affairs Ministry officials told IANS that they were concerned about the issue and that proper action was being taken.

According to The Hindu, Nizami and his nephew had reportedly travelled to Lahore by private airlines Shaheen Air. As the Nizamuddin Auliya shrine of Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin has very close links with the Data Darbar shrine of Gharib Nawaz or Moinuddin Chisti, khadims or custodians exchange visits every year.

The Hindu reported that at the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, relatives and other custodians of the famous shrine said that they had not heard from either of the two men since Wednesday, and that their families had even visited the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, as worries about them grew, to little avail so far.

With inputs from agencies
Agra: Police on Friday patrolled the Yamuna river bank in Agra and mounted extra vigil after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love.

An official said the information was passed on to the police and the intelligence agencies on Thursday after which several teams combed the area and stepped up vigil.

Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials, however, tried to play down the threat, saying the security arrangements were routine.

Local newspapers have published a photo from the website showing a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon.

The world heritage monument is visited by over six million tourists annually.

Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh said police teams were on alert and a close watch was being kept on crowds.

The internal security in the Taj Mahal is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force. The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts.

SWOT commandos have been put in charge at vantage points. Mock drills are being conducted every few hours to test the state of preparedness.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams are keeping a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking towards the eastern gate, the sources said.

Superintendent of Police Sushil Dhule and a team of the bomb disposal and dog squads on Thursday evening visited the entire area around the Taj Mahal.

The number of visitors to the Taj Mahal is on the rise. The annual Taj Mahotsava is set to begin on Saturday.
Events in Goa tell us exactly why the Congress is dying a slow, painful death and instead of empathising with it, why people are celebrating.

Goa was within the party's grasp. Voters had given it enough seats to form the next government with the help of parties that had contested on an anti-BJP plank. On its part, the BJP was humbled and rejected, the defeat of the chief minister and his senior minister being evidence of the popular mood. Yet, the Congress not just failed to form the government but it also allowed the BJP to beat it in the race for the numbers.

For the moment, let us keep aside questions on the Goa governor's conduct. On some other day, under some other dispensation, the governor may have invited the single-largest party to take the first shot at government-formation. But, that debate has ended with the Supreme Court's decision for a quick floor test, which the BJP won through whatever means were available to it.

Supporters of the Congress are now pointing to a Pramod Mahajan speech that mocks minority governments. In his speech in Parliament, the late BJP leader is heard laughing at the irony of the single-largest party (his own) being in the opposition, the smaller groups running the government and lone victorious members of their parties becoming powerful ministers. Just like Mahajan then, the Congress has reasons to be angry.

But, the blame for letting Goa slip from the grasp should go to the Congress and its leaders. Smug in the belief that the majority was with them, the Congress high command did a Hamlet and took ages to get its act together. Several Goa leaders now privately berate senior leader Digvijaya Singh, who couldn't help the legislators choose their leader. Reportedly, while the Congress legislators were haggling with each other and the high command, the BJP reached out to other parties and independent legislators and secured their support.

Such lethargy, confusion and anarchy would have been unimaginable under a strong leader. But, it is a reflection on Rahul Gandhi's presumed leadership. That the Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory shows the Congress vice-president has no hunger for success, clarity of thought and purpose. Reflecting his style and temperament, the Congress too has turned tired, pessimistic and defeatist.

Goa, incidentally, is not the first instance of the Congress handing over state governments to the BJP on a platter. It has happened in the past in Arunachal Pradesh, where the Congress made a fool of itself in spite of the backing of the Supreme Court and allowed its legislators to defect en masse. It almost lost the government  before it was voted out in the recent elections  in Uttarakhand when Rahul failed to deal with internal rebellion.

Rahul's inability to deal with discord shows either he is naive or disinterested and arrogant to the point of preferring his ego over the party's interests. His failure to deal with individual aspirations is the reason why the Congress allowed the BJP to make inroads in the northeast. Rahul's indifference and inept handling of the situation forced Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sharma to quit and seek revenge. Sharma is now helping the BJP spread like wildfire in the northeast. Left to him, Rahul would have also ensured the party's destruction in Punjab by preferring sycophants over Captain Amarinder Singh. But, some quirk of fate made Rahul relent and give Singh independence to run the campaign in Punjab.

But, the Congress still doesn't figure out the source of the conflagration burning the party. Instead of addressing the source of the problem, it is behaving like a cantankerous old man who can't do anything except make some noises that nobody is willing to take seriously.

On Friday, in characteristic fashion, the Congress disrupted the Rajya Sabha, complaining of impropriety. But, how does throwing a fit in the House help its cause when the battle has to be waged elsewhere? To make itself heard, the Congress needs to get out of the cosy confines of the Rajya Sabha and hit the streets with a cogent argument and a credible leadership.

Its inability to do both tells us what ails the party and why it is destined to die because of faulty diagnosis and inadequate treatment.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

International community must do everything possible to ensure resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told reporters Mar. 17 on the sidelines of the 5th Global Baku Forum.

The two-day forum, titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests, kicked off in Azerbaijans capital on March 16.

The international community should also make efforts for the four UN resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to be implemented, as this is the first step to the conflict resolution, according to Kwasniewski.

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.

Kwasniewski, speaking of the Azerbaijan-Poland ties, noted that quite strong relations were established between the two countries in the political and economic spheres.

The two countries have many opportunities to develop economic cooperation, according to him.
After Vishwajit Rane, another disgruntled Congress MLA Savio Rodrigues resigned from the party on Friday. He blamed the Congress high command and general secretary in-charge for Goa, Digvijaya Singh, for failing to form the government despite emerging as the single largest party in the recently held Assembly election.

I have resigned from the Congress. I am too small a voter to merit even a phone call. @OfficeOfRG @nayanchandra @sureshnakhua  Savio Rodrigues (@PrinceArihan) March 17, 2017

Alliance or non-alliance. We got enough numbers. Did we not fail to go the governor or elect leader @digvijaya_28 @OfficeOfRG @nayanchandra  Savio Rodrigues (@PrinceArihan) March 17, 2017

The infighting within the Goa Congress unit came out in the open after Rane disappeared before the crucial floor test on Thursday. Later, the three-time Congress MLA submitted his resignation to pro-tem Speaker Siddharth Kuncolienkar and quit the party.

Rane said that he was upset with the party leadership as it failed to form the government in Goa despite getting the people's mandate in the Assembly polls. "The mandate in Goa was against the BJP. Now, they (the Congress) have given BJP the mandate on a platter," he said.

Rane said the Goa Forward Party, whose three MLAs later extended support to Manohar Parrikar and which had contested the election on anti-BJP plank, wanted former chief minister Digambar Kamat to be elected as the Congress Legislature Party leader and not Luizinho Faleiro.

"I do not expect anything from the Congress. They have betrayed the trust of Goa by not forming the government despite people giving them a clear mandate," Rane told PTI.

In a series of tweets, Digvijaya defended his way of handling party affairs in Goa and said the party is going raise the issue in Parliament and submit a petition to the President of India on the conduct of Goa governor Mridula Sinha.

Going to raise in Parliament and petition to the President on conduct of Governor, Goa  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

He blamed the governor and said that letter to the governor is sent after the leader of the legislative party is chosen, but in the case of Goa, the governor took a premature decision in favour of the BJP. He also attacked Rane and alleged that he is in cahoots with Parrikar.

Letter to Governor goes after the leader is chosen. Which we did but the Governor took the decision without before that  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

What was he doing when CLP leader was being chosen? Having coffee with Parrikar in a Hotel when we were choosing CLP leader.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Digvijaya also tweeted about an alliance with a regional party headed by Babush Monserrate and Goa Forward and said "our own leaders" sabotaged the alliance.

As a strategy I had proposed a secular alliance with regional party headed by Babush Monserrate and Goa Forward headed by Vijay Sardesai.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Our alliance with Babush went through and we won 3 out of 5 but our alliance with Goa Forward was sabotaged by our own leaders. Sad !  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Rajya Sabha was in uproar over the government formation in Goa. Over the uproar, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the BJP is ready for discussion, Rajya Sabha Deputy Speaker PJ Kurien said Goa governor's conduct can be discussed on the basis of a substantive motion. Members of the Congress party stormed the Well raising slogans.

Uproar in Rajya Sabha after Congress MP Digvijay Singh raises #Goa issue pic.twitter.com/6lzHTBayfs  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Governor's conduct can only be discussed on the basis of a substantive motion: Rajya Sabha Dy Speaker P J Kurien #Goa pic.twitter.com/erzpJgzWkS  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Congress protests in well of Rajya Sabha, raises slogan 'Loktantra ki hatya band karo, band karo' over #Goa issue pic.twitter.com/YyhpFhDINz  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

The Congress failed to cobble up a majority despite winning 17 of the 40 seats in Goa, even as all opposition members other than Congress joined hands with BJP to form a government under Parrikar.

With inputs from PTI
Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday refuted suggestions that he could be appointed as Union Minister, saying he is going to be around in the state.

Fadnavis was speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai. Asked about speculations of his promotion as Defence Minister at the Centre, he said, "If your organisation can hold a national event in Mumbai, first time outside New Delhi, I do not need to go to Delhi. I am going to be around." Earlier, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also denied reports of Fadnavis being shifted to the Union ministry.

"Media speculates and gets the joy of writing various things. However, no decision has been taken in Delhi on this," Gadkari said on Thursday.

Fadnavis said that the BJP-led government at the Centre was in control of things and handling the bureaucracy well to increase the efficiency of the state machinery. "For instance, the Navi Mumbai airport clearance was pending for over 10 years. In just one video conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered us clearances of eight various departments," he said.

"There is a lot of positivity in the bureaucracy right now," he said. Brushing aside ally Shiv Sena's threat to the state government and the critical editorials in its mouthpiece Saamana, Fadnavis said he does not read it.

On Shiv Sena acting like an 'opposition party', he said, "I take inspiration from our former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. If he can run a successful government of 22 regional parties at the Centre, I can easily manage one ally in Maharashtra."

Asked if he thought that the BJP's growth will lead to decline of other parties, Fadnavis said, "BJP is not of the mindset to finish any party. It is done by people, who select or reject a party."

"In case of BJP, Prime Minister Modi is setting up new standards and those who could comply with it...will sustain," he said. On the Goods and Services Tax, he said, "Every state will gain from GST. We will gain something but at the same thing we will lose too. I am confident that the GST will roll-out by July."
Manoj Sinha seems to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shahs choice to be Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. In neighbouring Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, national secretary of the party, could be the party's choice to lead the state for next five years. An announcement to this effect will be made after designated party observers' meetings with MLAs in Lucknow on Saturday.

Rawat's appointment is likely on Friday.

Sinha's imminent elevation to the top post in the politically critical and biggest Hindi heartland state is yet another indicator that Modi and Shah place a higher premium on merit than on any other consideration. A tall well-built Sinha, an alumnus of IIT-BHU in civil engineering, is a three-time MP. As Union Minister of Communication (Independent charge) and minister of state of Railways, he maintains a conscious low profile but is seen as a sincere quiet doer, whose work speaks more than his words.

His biggest asset is being at equal ease when dealing with the biggest corporate honchos in the communication ministry as with earthly labour unions in the railways. Long ago, he was the BHU Students Union president. He is soft-spoken, suave and articulate, but wears a dhoti and a long kurta, which gives him that rugged son-of-the-soil look and feel.

While in the run-up to the elections and upon the declaration of poll results, a lot had been said about the social engineering effected by Modi and Shah, but by choosing Sinha, they have sent out a clear message that caste and community considerations dont guide their preference on issues relating to governance and as such, the caste of the person at the helm is immaterial. In the last public meeting Modi had addressed in Varanasi just before the last phase of campaigning ended, he went to great lengths to praise Sinha for the work he was doing as railway minister.

What was initially considered a handicap for Sinha  his Bhumihar caste is limited only to a few districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh  turned out to be his advantage. Sinha became a caste-neutral chief ministerial contender just like Devendra Fadnavis in Maharastra, Vijay Rupani in Gujarat, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Manoharlal Khattar in Haryana. Even though Shivraj Singh Chouhan belongs to the OBC category, his caste and its numerical strength is not known to the wider world.

Modi is breaking conventional stereotypes that a chief ministerial nominee has to be considered only from a caste that has numerical preponderance. As the prime minister is stressing on delivery, he has been opting for people who can deliver best. He perhaps has taken this lesson from himself. Modis own caste had a miniscule presence in Gujarat, yet he became the most cherished leader in the state as its chief minister and later across the nation as polls after polls have indicated. He has yet again shown that he not afraid of experimenting with bold ideas as long as he thinks that they are for the long-term benefit of the people at large.

Just as by securing a clear majority on its own in 2014, Modi broke that old politicians' and political pundits' myth that the coalition era was here to stay and no party could secure a majority of its own for the coming decades. And by selecting Sinha to lead Uttar Pradesh for the next five years, Modi has broken another political myth that no upper caste person could become chief minister of a north Indian state.

Sinha has the confidence of the Modi-Shah duo and shares an excellent relationship with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

Sources told Firstpost that though there was general unanimity that Rajnath is the tallest leader in Uttar Pradesh and had all the required credentials to once again lead the state he led 15 years ago, it was felt by Modi and Shah that his presence with the kind of statute he had and the kind of acceptability he had across the political spectrum, was required more in Delhi. With the post of Minister of Defence also falling vacant subsequent to Manohar Parrikars resignation (to become Goa chief minister), External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj not in best of health and Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys confrontational approach vis-a-vis the Opposition, Modi needs Rajnath with all his experience and connections to be the political troubleshooter for his government, as also to be at the helm of the home ministry.

Rajnath, who relinquished the Uttar Pradesh chief ministers post exactly 15 years ago (March 2002) to move to national politics, is content being at the Centre.

The other contender's (Keshav Prasad Maurya) candidature for chief ministers post ended on a slightly bizarre note on Thursday when Shah in the presence of Maurya, told media persons, "Keshavji jiska naam tay karenge, uspe mohar laga denge (whoever's name Keshav picks, we will put our stamp on it)." Shahs message was clear that Maurya couldnt be a contender for the chief ministerial post. Ironically, Shahs comment came while Maurya was distributing "Prasad" from Tirupati to media persons. Subsequent to that, the BJP state chief developed a low blood pressure problem and had to be moved to hospital.

Unfortunately for Maurya, he had too many interviews as most probable chief ministerial nominee. In contrast, Sinha didnt even give a bite or a brief statement to the media. He kept away from the sunshine for last four days when everyone else in his peer group was basking in glory. In Uttarakhand, Rawat was seen as an efficient leader who delivered as a minister in state and as an organiser at the Centre. His other advantage was the personal rapport he had developed with Modi when the latter worked for the organisation.
Its now official. Trivendra Singh Rawat, who was elected the leader of BJP legislature party on Friday afternoon, will now be the new chief minister of Uttarakhand.

Trivendra's oath taking ceremony will be held on Saturday at the Dehradun Parade Ground, which several big shots from the BJP including Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to attend. Preparations for the swearing-in were started a day before the chief ministerial pick was announced, and the venue is all decked up to welcome the dignitaries scheduled to attend the swearing-in.

In his cabinet, there are names like Rekha Arya, Madan Kaushik, Subodh Uniyal, Harbans Kapoor, Vanshidhar Bhagat, Gopal Rawat, Bishan singh Chufal and Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion. Satpal Maharaj is likely to be made the Uttarakhand Assembly Speaker.

Trivendra's name was proposed by senior BJP leader Satpal Maharaj and former Assembly speaker Prakash Pant at the meeting of the BJP legislature party, both of whom were frontrunners in race for the states top job. However, Trivendra's close association with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) is said to be a strong factor behind him being chosen as the chief minister. He was a full-time pracharak of the RSS from 1983 to 2002 and held the post of organisation secretary in Uttarakhand region and later the state, after its secession from Uttar Pradesh in 2000.

Moreover, Trivendra's debut into Uttarakhand politics came with the state's very first assembly election in 2002, when he contested from Doiwala seat. He retained his seat in the following elections in 2007 and also served as the states agriculture minister. He, however, lost the by-election in 2014 and was given the responsibility to head the BJP state units both in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.

Besides this, the fact that Trivendra is in the good books of BJP national president Amit Shah and has worked with him in adjoining state of Uttar Pradesh before the general elections of 2014, would have helped his case for the top job in the hill state.

Hailing from Pauri district in Uttarakhand, Trivendra is considered to be a disciplined and devoted organisational worker who would tow the party line, come what may. He also enjoys a reputation of being averse to political manipulations within the party. He has shouldered several responsibilities given to him within the party, because of which he caught the central leadership'e eye and was subsequently trusted with running the state.

Trivendra's elevation to the post of Uttarakhand chief minister is also a clear indication of the BJP's strategy to send out a positive message among the party cadres  that hard working ground leaders and party workers will be rewarded eventually. All the former chief ministers and high profile names from BJP, of the likes of Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, Ramesh Pokariyal and BC Khanduri had taken a back seat in the last leg of the race for the Uttarakhand throne. By electing Trivendra, a grassroots leader, party has also dropped hints about its new modus operandi, wherein performance and connect with people is prioritised over political stature.

BJP has always targeted the erstwhile congress over its poor performance, therefore showing development in the state in the coming two years will be of paramount importance for the saffron party. Besides this, Modi's electioneering also revolved around seeking the "double engine of growth" (a BJP government both at the Centre and state). Now that the people have handed it the mandate, the BJP must realise that the "double engine" is available only for two years before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 are due again, and the party must have work to show before it goes back to the people to seek votes again.

Therefore, soon after ascending the throne Trivendra would have the task cut out for him. The first major challenge before the new government will be to micromanage the the Char Dham Yatra (between Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath), which will begin next month. As tourism remains the main source of income for the people of the hill state, Trivendra will have to give his top priority to restoring confidence of tourists to visit the state during the Yatra season. Other major challenges will include resolving the issue surrounding the increase in area of Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ) in the hills in Uttarkashi area, which some people sea as an impediment to the states development. Outgoing Chief Minister Harish Rawat has been opposing the Centre's move to expand the ESZ, which he said has adversely affected scores of developmental projects, including tourism activities and hydel projects in the state, according to Business Standard.

Since the BJP has got a massive mandate of 57 seats in a 70-member Assebly, it will not be an easy task for the new government to meet the people's expectation and fulfill all it's poll promises.
Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) legislators and their chief K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) have suddenly found such virtues and merits in the office of the Governor that any criticism of the first person of the state is now termed as blasphemy. Opposition parties who were critical of the Governor for showering praise on KCR as the best Chief Minister have now also dubbed him as 'brand ambassador of KCR and PRO of the CM following the continued bonhomie between them.

As if in a thanksgiving gesture, the Telangana chief minister threatened to invoke the prove or perish Act against all Opposition leaders who hurled such remarks on Governor ESL Narasimhans address to the joint session of the Telangana legislature. Narasimhan's second term as Governor of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana ends in April this year.

Last Friday, firebrand TDP (Telugu Desam Party) MLA from Kodangal A Revanth Reddy and Sattupalli MLA S Venkata Veraiah were suspended for the rest of the Budget session by Assembly Speaker Madhusudhana Chary for raising slogans while Governor Narasimhan addressed the joint session of state legislature. The intolerant mood of the ruling TRS was on display at the last session of Assembly when the Opposition was warned of suspensions' if they disrupted the proceedings or even the Governor's address during the Budget session.

Revanth Reddy claimed that the Governors speech was full of lies. In 2014, the Governor had said Rs 10 lakh assistance was given to families of martyrs of Telangana agitation and also listed that 1,569 people committed suicide. But until now only 500 people were granted assistance, he said, contending that he was suspended for exposing the hollowness of the government articulated by the Governors address. This displays how the government is scared of exposure and intolerant of people who raise questions. By just sacking Deputy CM T Rajaiah on charge of corruption, KCR claimed that his government had become corruption-free. But things are different on ground and in reality, said TDP Telangana president L Ramana.

TRS leaders though contend that the TDP, BJP and Congress MLAs have made it a habit of criticising KCR and the government for everything that was reported in the media. They blame us for non-functioning of ATMs, delay of trains, and also fog in the air. The government is not shirking its responsibility but a two-year-old state government cannot take responsibility for everything that happens on the streets, said senior TRS leader and Home Minister Nayini Narasimha Reddy.

Another prominent TRS leader and Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao said the TDP and Congress blame the TRS as they are unable to sit in Opposition and accept the peoples mandate. Congress leaders are finding fault with the Governor and all constitutional bodies for failing them. They even called Governor as PRO of KCR, he chided.

An aggressive ruling party

In his reply to the Governors address, KCR set the mood by defending the action against TDP legislators. The Governors speech reflected the programmes and schemes implemented by Telangana government. If anyone proves they are lies, I will quit my post within five minutes, he said.

We will no longer tolerate this. Anyone making allegations against the goverment should prove them, else they have to face stringent action. We will soon bring an Act (Prove or Perish Act), he said in the House.

The chief minister went on to explain that dissent was a democratic right but it should be contextual. The suspension of TDP members was to act as a lesson and a message for dignified behaviour in the House, he said. Cant they hide their intolerance when a Constitutional authority is speaking? he asked.

When BJP floor leader G Kishan Reddy retorted that TRS too had behaved in the same manner in the past, KCR said things were different then and now no such environment exists. Why dont you check what your government (BJP) has done in Maharashtra where MLAs were suspended for two years for disrupting the Governors speech? KCR countered the BJP leaders.

Speaker Madhusudhanachary said that the issue was discussed threadbare during the last session and it was decided that in the Budget session in March, if any MLA tries to disrupt the Governor's speech on the opening day of Assembly session, he/she would be suspended for one year. All had agreed then, but now they are protesting, he told media after the suspensions.

The Assembly suspension has come as salt on the wounds of Opposition members in the state. Thanks to the Governors docile role in Telangana , a city-based TDP MLA Tasalasani Srinivas Yadav who had defected to TRS ahead of the Hyderabad civic polls last year was inducted as a cabinet member. With scant regard to public uproar, KCR had put pressure on the Governor for induction of Yadav in the cabinet and the Governor had signed on the dotted line. As per regulations the Governor should have rejected Yadavs appointment to Cabinet and sent back the file as he did to Kiran Kumar Reddy, several appointments of whose the Governor had turned down, said legal and political analyst KVV Charya.

Opposition united against TRS

This move to muzzle legislators has consolidated the Opposition in Telangana against the ruling party. The recent public utterances of Governor ESL Narasimhan praising KCR as visionary, man with a mandate and Best CM had irked Opposition leaders. Unlike other CMs, KCR was a regular visitor to Raj Bhavan under one pretext or another  presenting Telangana delicacies, variety produce from KCRs farms and seasonal prasad (holy food offerings) from various temples. The House is being run like Telangana Bhavan, the ruling TRS headquarters, TPCC Chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy said.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) national council secretary, K Narayana questioned the Telangana governments right to suspend the MLAs on the ruse of obstructing the Governors speech. Both the Speaker and the Governor, though termed as constitutional heads, deserve no respect as they were encouraging defections and promoting unconstitutional acts of those in power, he said.

How can the Speaker, who remained silent over defections, now suggest to the members to respect the Governor, who also has been maintaining a tactical silence on this issue? Harish Rao, now Legislative Affairs Minister, who was at the forefront of such acts in the Assembly (protests and demonstrations in the Assembly before bifurcation) now ironically speaks of rules and regulations? asked the Communist leader.

Why is KCR pleasing the governor?

Why is Governor Narasimhan bending backwards to please KCR and absolve him of breaking the rules? And why is KCR keen to appease the Governor?

It appears that the TRS government is very keen that Narasimhan should continue for another term as Governor of Telangana. Narasimhans second term as the Governor ends in April 2017. He was first given the joint responsibility of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh in 2009 following the ND Tiwari scandal and was given an extension in the wake of the Telangana movement in April 2012.

The TRS leadership initially criticised his continuation as Narasimhan was termed as an anti-Telangana campaigner. The NDA government asked Narasimhan to continue and complete the bifurcation as he had been involved in the process from the beginning. It is reported that ahead of Presidential elections, a new Governor would be installed in the Telugu states and the name of DH Shankara Murthy, senior BJP leader and chairman of Karnataka Legislative Council, is being floated in Delhis power corridors.

Andhra Assembly to take a cue from TRS

The ensuing Budget session of the Aandhra Pradesh Assembly is also likely to see similar suspensions of YSR Congress MLAs and their leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy as Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is vexed with their jarring tirades. Andhra Speaker Kodela Shivprasad Rao was said to be examining a report of the Assembly Disciplinary Committee on the issue in addition to the proposal for extension of the suspension of Nagari MLA K Roja who has already been suspended for one year.

The issue was discussed at length in the TDP legislative party meeting early this month ahead of the Budget session and members endorsed by voice a proposal to authorise the Finance Minister and Legislative Affairs Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu to take suitable action at the appropriate time.

But the ruling TDP in Andhra had no soft corner towards Governor Narasimhan, though they entertained his weekly visits to Tirumala for Friday pujas with his family and friends. During the Telangana agitation, TDP leader Ramakrishnudu had showered the choicest potshots at Narasimhan.

The TDP leadership was also unhappy that Governor Narasimhan had been pursuing the Vote for Note case more vigorously against Chandrababu Naidu allegedly at the behest of Telangana CM KCR.
Just when the media circles are warm with rumours claiming to have cracked the mystery around BJP's pick for Uttar Pradesh chief minister, the saffron party has a way of surprising everyone.

As media circles were busy proclaiming, how MoS(Independent Charge) Department of Telecommunication, Manoj Sinha becoming UP chief minister was a done deal, the man himself has dismissed speculations around his name being considered in the chief ministerial race in UP stating that he was not a part of any such race.

"Naa mujhe kisi race kaa pata hai, naa main kisi race main hun (neither do I know about any race (for UP CM), nor I am in any race," Manoj Sinha told reporters on Friday outside Parliament.

Rajnath Singh, who was also considered among the frontrunners in the race, had also dismissed reports in a similar fashion on Wednesday, calling them "baseless and futile."

BJP state unit chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is being credited for a large chunk of the OBC votes BJP garnered in these polls, also bowed out of the race as he was given the responsibility to choose the party's pick to lead Uttar Pradesh government. "How can I choose myself," Maurya had responded mysteriously to reporters when asked whether he was still in the race to be the chief minister.

And now comes Sinha's comments, which are likely to keep everyone on tenterhooks, until 4 pm on Saturday when the final announcement will be made, according to CNN-News18. The announcement is likely to come after the newly elected BJP MLAs in Uttar Pradesh will meet to elect their legislature party leader, a week after the party's emphatic victory.

The repeated dismissal of reports by BJP leaders could mean that none of these leaders but a dark horse is likely to spring surpirse on everyone by winning the race. However, given the strong undercurrents in favour of Sinha, it could also be a simple strategy to keep the lid on rumours and keep everyone guessing until the party puts out a formal communication. If reports from various news sources is to be believed, it is merely a matter of formality before Sinha is elected to lead the UP legislature. Meanwhile, here is a glimpse into who the man is and why we think he deserves a chance to head his home state as BJP is set to form a majority government.

As a report in The Times of India points out, Sinha picked up fame in politics at an early age. He was initiated to the aleph of politics at the young age of 23 as he became the student union president in the reputed Benaras Hindu University. He then made his mark as a leader of the grounds, when he moved on to the national dais by winning the Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket in 1996 from Ghazipur and then again in 1999.

In 2014, riding the Modi wave, Sinha became a third-time parliamentarian, but this time he caught the prime minister's eye, who is himself an organisational man, and came to the limelight as one of many first time ministers in Modi's cabinet.

An M.Tech in civil engineering, Sinha if picked as the UP chief minister, also flaunts the qualification to head a state and demography as vast and complex as Uttar Pradesh.

The IIT-alumni is also known for his wit and oratory skills. When asked about his chances to head his home state after the resounding BJP win, Sinha quipped in poetically, "Khwahishe badi bewafa hoti hain, puri hote hi badal jaati hain... isliye main aisi koi khwahishein nahi palta (Ambitions are capricious, they change the moment they are fulfilled, which is why I do not harbour any such ambitions.)," as quoted by ABP news.

Sinha was handpicked by Modi to assist Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu as a Minister of State, but he worked his way up impressing the prime minister to earn independent charge as the Minister of State in the telecommunications ministry.

He is known to be a soft-spoken calm personality. The 57-year-old leader is in the league of the top-job as he is in the good books of both, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah after he impressed the duo with his performance as deputy to Prabhu.

Moreover, Sinha also performed rather impressively and further rose in the eyes of the central and state leadership by planting BJP's roots in seven Assembly segments that fall in his constituency in the 2017 polls. In 2012 the BJP had failed to secure even one of these seats, and even this year the contest wasn't easy as Akhilesh Yadav had appointed four sitting legislators from the region in his cabinet, according to Business Standard.

He was also given the responsibility to oversee development work in prime minister's constituency Varanasi, not much far from his own, and Sinha seems to have impressed Modi even there.

What adds on to his credibility and popularity in the region is further displayed by an anecdote as reported in CNN-News18. A local BJP worker opened a dhaba in the outskirts of Sinha's constituency and hometown Ghazipur. He sent Sinha an invite to inaugurate the eatery, not really expecting a Union minister and Member of Parliament to turn up, but he did. This not only surprised the BJP worker but cemented his place in the hearts of people in his constituency who heard about the incident.

Sinha, according to CNN-News18,is also known to keep in close touch with his constituency, where at least until late last year, he was in the habit of spending his weekends. He holds regular meetings at his residence and is considered approachable, despite his stature as a minister in the Central government.

Weigh him on the caste scales, so painstakingly balanced by Amit Shah's political strategists, and Sinha comes out to be more or less the ideal pick once again. He belongs to the Bhumihar caste that is so few in number and concentrated solely along the Poorvanchal belt, that Sinha almost becomes a caste-neutral candidate. Unlike Yadavs and Jatavs or Muslims and Jats there are no inherent anti-Bhumihar narrative present amid any other social group. Plus, his stature as a national leader and minister in the Centre further lends him some immunity from the regional caste biases.

Another reason why the saffron party has reportedly zeroed down upon Sinha is because he is the least opposed leader. With a clean image, and a reputation as an astute grassroots politician who earned his way up the ladder through sheer hard work, Sinha is a man with few enemies.

Besides, Sinha would have been a natural choice in ruling out the least suited candidates amid the crop of frontrunners the party faced after the victory. True that many party workers and leaders were rooting for the return of Rajnath Singh, but it would have been much difficult for Modi to find himself both, a Home Minister and a Defence Ministrer from the current rank and file of the saffron party. Besides looking at the situation in the country, from Sukma to Shopian, the home minister really had too much on his plate to relinquish all duties and hand over the key portfolio to a novice.

Take, on the other hand, the BJP state unit chief KP Maurya, who was until Thursday considered the top contender for the key job. While Maurya, an OBC coming from humble beginnings like Modi, had orchestrated the BJP win by augmenting the non-Yadav, non-Jatav backward class vote for the party, he had his blind spots.

Maurya's image as an extreme right-winger and the close to 10 criminal cases lodged against him, including charges of murder, made it tough for the BJP to appoint him chief minister. Certainly Akhilesh Yadav wouldn't have forgotten all those Gayatri Prajapati jibes, that Modi made to take on his government. Maurya's tainted background would have come to haunt the party.

That said, whether the outcome of the BJP MLAs meet puts another dark horse at the helm, or whether the mild-mannered grassroots leader Sinha is given a chance, the BJP is right in not hurrying up the decision. Given the political significance of the state, which will send 80 MPs to the Lower House in 2019, the BJP does not want to botch up the chance it was handed out to impress the Uttar Pradesh voters by delivering the so promised "progressive governance". The party needs a man who would not only quell sounds of discord amid the party but run the state in tandem with the Centre's vision and electoral promises.
Beijing: China plans to scale up its defence cooperation with its "all-weather" ally Pakistan to co-produce ballistic missiles, in an apparent retaliation to India developing the nuclear-capable Agni V missile that has a range of over 5,000 km covering whole of China.

Declining to react to Chinese official media reports that Beijing plans to co-produce ballistic and cruise missiles with Pakistan, besides mass production of military aircraft, Chinese Foreign Ministry however said Beijing stands for "strategic balance" in South Asia.

"On Pakistan army chief's visit to China, the Pakistan military has released information about the meetings between the him and the Chinese counterpart," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told media briefing in Beijing.

"From the news release, we did not see anything about the agreement about ballistic missiles," she said while answering a question about a report in the state-run Global Times that China plans to step up its defence cooperation with Pakistan, including ballistic, cruise missiles besides joint mass production a multi-role combat aircraft.

On his first visit to China, Pakistan's army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa held talks with Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the Central Military Commission of China on Thursday.

Bajwa also called on Chinese Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Gen Fan Changlong and Commander of the People's Liberation Army Gen Li Zhuocheng and discussed regional security, economy, defence cooperation and other issues of mutual interest.

This is the first time the official media mentioned about the likely cooperation between the two all-weather allies on the co-production of ballistic and cruise missiles.

Pakistan is heavily reliant on its defence needs from China.

"What I can tell you is that China and Pakistan maintain normal defence exchanges and relevant cooperation," Hua said.

Asked whether China is open to the idea of working closely with Pakistan on developing missiles specially in the light of the 1998 UN Security Council resolution 1172 which called on India and Pakistan to stop testing ballistic missiles, Hua said all the UN members have the obligations and responsibility to observe the UN resolutions.

The non-binding UNSC resolution passed in the backdrop of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 called on both the countries to cease testing of ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

"Our position on the strategic balance on the South Asia is consistent," she said without elaborating. Last December reacting to India's successful test firing of Agni-V missile, Hua referred to the particular UNSC resolution.

"On whether India can develop this ballistic missile that can carry nuclear weapons, I think relevant resolutions of the UNSC have clear rules," she had said. "We have always believed that safeguarding strategic balance and stability in South Asia is conducive for the peace and prosperity of countries in the region," she said.

The reference to the strategic balance in South Asia apparently meant the military balance between India and Pakistan.

Agni-V, the 5000 km range intercontinental ballistic missile was widely regarded as a strategic missile meant for China as it can reach almost all parts of Chinese mainland.

It is not clear whether the Global Times report about China's plans to co-produce missiles with Pakistan was a retaliatory move by Beijing in response to Agni-V test.

Bajwa's talks with his counterpart will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be

discussed, said Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force.

Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong which in Pakistan called JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting, Song said.

China's authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda, he said.

The talks will consolidate and deepen military exchanges between China and Pakistan, while new cooperation on military techniques might also be discussed, Song said.

The military cooperation between China and Pakistan will be further enhanced especially in weaponry and anti-terrorism sectors, the report said.

The two sides also vowed yesterday to ensure the safety of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important part of China's Belt and Road initiative.

Pakistani Ambassador to China Masood Khalid said that Pakistan has deployed over 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC, and the country's navy has raised a special contingent for the protection of the Gwadar Port.

Recent report here said China itself is increasing the strength of its Marine corps from 20,000 to one lakh, some of whom would be deployed in Gwadar and Djibouti, where China is building a logistics military base.

As Pakistan faces frequent threats from terrorist forces such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, military support is necessary to ensure a safe environment for the regions where there is a huge investment from China, Song said.

The two countries agreed to enhance anti-terrorism cooperation at the meeting, vowing to resolutely strike against terrorist forces, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement active in Xinjiang which is the connecting point of the CPEC.

China blames East Turkistan Islamic Movement for the violent attacks during the past few years.
MADRID Basque militant separatist group ETA are set to announce plans to disarm and have scheduled a full handover of weapons for April 8, six years after declaring a permanent ceasefire, France's Le Monde newspaper reported on Friday. Several Basque political leaders, including the leader of the regional government, said news of a final possible weapons handover was credible. A disarmament would mark one of the last chapters in the drawn-out demise of ETA, which formed in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco with the aim of establishing an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France.ETA, which killed more than 800 people over several decades through bombings and assassinations, called a unilateral ceasefire in 2011.

It has only handed in part of its arsenal so far, though the group was also severely weakened in recent years after hundreds of its members, including its leader, were arrested and police seized several of its weapons stashes. "ETA has handed us responsibility for the disarmament of its arsenal and, as of the evening of April 8, ETA will have completely handed over its weapons," Txetx Etcheverry, an activist with environmental campaign group Bizi, which favours Basque independence, was quoted as saying in Le Monde.

ETA has tried on several occasions to negotiate a disarmament with the Spanish and French governments, which have refused to deal with the group but have urged it to hand over its arsenal. "ETA has to do two things: disarm and dissolve itself," Spanish government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo told a news conference on Friday. He said the government would not speculate on any potential disarmament.

Other politicians welcomed signs that a handover was nearing. "The Basque government will do everything in its power to make sure this goes according to plan, even if not everything is in our hands," said regional leader Inigo Urkullu. He said the Basque government had been informed of a possible weapons handover. Arnaldo Otegi, leader of far-left Basque pro-independence party EH Bildu, said the disarmament was an "exciting historical moment". Otegi was released from prison last year after a six-year sentence for belonging to an armed group. "Let's hope that this time the weapons handover will be final," a smiling Otegi told a news conference. (Reporting by Sarah White and Inmaculada Sanz; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Toby Davis)

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By Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall

| MANILA

MANILA In the past eight months, a death squad known as the Bonnet Gang has gunned down more than 60 drug suspects in the Philippine town of Pateros. Mayor Ike Ponce has had enough.He has put up banners across Pateros, in the southeast of Metro Manila, to denounce the gang, which is named for the hoods its motorbike-riding gunmen wear to hide their identities.Extrajudicial killings are "not the right process to stop the proliferation of illegal drugs," read the banners. "We value human life and adhere to the rule of law."Ponce knows his actions could anger not just the Bonnet Gang but also someone far more powerful: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. More than 8,000 people, mostly petty drug users and dealers, have been killed in the "war on drugs" pursued by Duterte since he took office on June 30. Ponce is the only one of Metro Manila's 17 mayors to publicly oppose the violence. In many cases, local politicians have worked with the police to draw up lists of drug users and dealers, who then often end up dead at the hands of police or vigilantes.He is, though, a symbol of increasing resistance from parts of society, including the country's influential Catholic Church, which has called the campaign a "reign of terror." Duterte has put local politicians and officials under unprecedented scrutiny and pressure. Police have accused those who lack enthusiasm for the campaign, or object to its violent methods, of protecting or profiting from drug traffickers.Duterte has publicly brandished a thick list of what he says are thousands of "narco-politicians" and warned mayors involved in the drug trade to resign or die."Son of a bitch, if your name is there, you have a problem," he said in January. "I will really kill you."Still, Ponce questions Dutertes methods, even as he repeatedly stresses his support for Duterte's goal. "He is really trying his best to solve the drug problem," he told Reuters. "The manner in which it's being executed - that's what we oppose." In March, a former policeman testified in the Philippine Senate about his role in vigilante-style killings in Davao City, where Duterte was once mayor. Duterte has denied ordering killings, either as president or mayor. Police say they have shot dead 2,555 suspects in anti-drug operations. Human rights groups also blame thousands of vigilante-style killings on the police or people associated with them, a claim the police and government deny.

Police operations were halted for much of February after it emerged that an anti-drug unit had killed a South Korean businessman but last week they resumed.

PROFESSIONALLY TRAINED

Pateros has only 63,000 people, but they are densely packed into a warren of shops, houses and shacks radiating from a 200-year-old church.The Bonnet Gang terrorizes the town with apparent impunity, picking off targets in slick operations usually after dark. Mayor Ponce blames it for all of the 64 vigilante-style killings in Pateros since the drug war began, including three in February. Supporting the president while decrying the violence his policies have unleashed is not Ponce's only dilemma.

He must also try to reassure fearful constituents, many of whom say they believe the Bonnet Gang is secretly run and staffed by police. "Why? Because from day one ... we have not arrested anyone," he said. "That is why people are thinking they are police officers." Joven Gatpayat, a city councillor who heads Pateros's anti-drug abuse council, said the killers carry out operations like professionally trained men. "They don't run, they don't panic," he said. Ponce has urged the police chiefs of Pateros and the Southern Police District "to do something" about the Bonnet Gang.Pateros police chief Joel Villanueva told Reuters that one suspected gang member had been arrested and 11 others identified. He attributed the killings to "a feud among drug lords" and denied police involvement."We are appealing to the public, if the culprit is one of us, to give us information," said Jenny Tecson, a spokesperson for the Southern Police District.

"We try to clean up the ranks," she said. "There is no place for evil here." "WE'RE STILL SCARED"

One evening in December, Kim, a call-centre worker, saw four masked men on two motorbikes stop on a crowded Pateros street, shoot two people and speed away. "I was shaking when I got home," said Kim, 23, who wouldn't give her second name. "We're still scared. We don't know who will be next." Michael Almeda, 39, was sleeping when eight hooded men on four motorbikes arrived outside his family's wooden house at about 2.30 a.m. The men kicked in the door, dragged Michael outside and shot him eight times, said his brother Rey. "The last bullet was in his head," Rey said. Michael died on the spot. Ponce said he attends the wake of every Bonnet Gang victim to comfort the bereaved and explain that "we cannot control these things happening right now." A lawyer by training, Ponce said mayors haven't been shown Duterte's list of narco-politicians, which is kept by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG). "I assumed if my name is there they will call on me and invite me to the office," he said.Joel Egco, a DILG undersecretary, said the list was treated with "utmost confidentiality" and he had no way of finding out whether Ponce was on it. Ultimately, says Ponce, only Duterte has the power to halt the activities of the Bonnet Gang. "Whoever these people are," he said, "it's still in the hands of the president to stop this." (Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall; Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Howell)

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BEIRUT The head of the United Nation's West Asia commission resigned on Friday, after what she described as pressure from the secretary general to withdraw a report accusing Israel of imposing an "apartheid regime" on Palestinians. The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a U.N. body had clearly made the charge. U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf announced her resignation at a news conference in Beirut. After Secretary-General Antonio Guterres insisted on the withdrawal of the report "I submitted to him my resignation from the United Nations," she said. The U.N. chief accepted Khalaf's resignation after asking her to remove the report from the internet, a U.N. spokesman said. The report had concluded that "Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole". Israel fiercely rejects the accusation, often directed at it by its critics.Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman likened the report to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. The United States, Israel's main ally, said it was outraged by the report.

"It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary-general to renounce the report," Khalaf said.She stood by the report, calling it the "first of its kind" from a U.N. agency that shed light on "the crimes that Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people, which amount to war crimes against humanity". U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, had called for the report to be withdrawn and said on Friday that Khalaf's resignation was appropriate. "U.N. agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary-General's decision to distance his good office from it," Haley said in a statement.

The report, prepared at the request of ESCWA member states, was taken off the commission's website, Khalaf said.But she added: "Let me be clear, the report was issued ... and has impacts. The member states received copies of this report. And it is available." The report was published without consultation with the U.N. secretariat, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric had said.

"This is not about content, this is about process," Dujarric told reporters in New York on Friday."The secretary-general cannot accept that an under-secretary general or any other senior U.N. official that reports to him would authorise the publication under the U.N. name, under the U.N. logo, without consulting the competent departments and even himself," he said. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon welcomed the resignation, calling it "long overdue". "Anti-Israel activists do not belong in the UN," Danon said in a statement.The ESCWA report said it had established on the "basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid". "However, only a ruling by an international tribunal in that sense would make such an assessment truly authoritative," it added. The report said the "strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people" was the main method through which Israel imposed apartheid, with Palestinians divided into four groups oppressed through "distinct laws, policies and practices". (Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut and Michelle Nichols in New York; editing by Andrew Roche, Bernard Orr)

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Details added (first version posted on 15:11)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

Trend:

Greek Ambassador Dimitrios Tsoungas was summoned to Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry in connection with the issue related to the visit of Karen Mirzoyan to Greece, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend Mar. 17.

Karen Mirzoyan introduced himself as the representative of the illegal regime created in Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is under Armenias occupation.

The Azerbaijani side brought to the attention of the Greek diplomat its dissatisfaction and concern over this visit, which contradicts the memorandum, signed in 2014 between the two countries foreign ministries on cooperation in the issues of the European Union that reaffirms the commitment to sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders, said Hajiyev.

During the meeting with Dimitrios Tsoungas, it was proposed to inform Greek citizens about the illegality of visiting Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia that will lead to legal liability.

Tsoungas, for his part, noted that Greece supports territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan and promised to inform the officials of his country about the dissatisfaction and concern of the Azerbaijani side.

Greeces Foreign Ministry told the Azerbaijani embassy that Mirzoyans visit was of private nature and there were no meetings with Greek officials.

Hikmat Hajiyev added that in general, it is regrettable that the European Unions ban on visits of representatives of separatist regimes is applied selectively by some EU member states with regard to the regime, illegally established in the Armenia-occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Mirzoyan and other representatives of this regime pay visits to foreign countries with diplomatic passports of Armenia, noted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys spokesman.

Such provocative visits are aimed at encouraging the so-called regime and damage the peace process and lead to an escalation of the situation in the region, added Hajiyev.
By Gabriel Stargardter, Lizbeth Diaz and Anna Mehler Paperny

| REYNOSA, Mexico/TORONTO

REYNOSA, Mexico/TORONTO Shortly after crossing the Rio Grande into the gang-infested border city of Reynosa, dozens of Mexicans deported during U.S President Donald Trump's first days in office said they would soon try to head north again - but this time to Canada.In a Reynosa migrant shelter, just yards from the U.S. border, 26-year-old Cenobio Rita said he had earned about $3,000 a month installing playgrounds in Richmond, Virginia, before he was deported on Feb. 15 after police found marijuana in his car. Having left Mexico as a 14-year-old, he fretted about returning to his violent home state of Michoacan. With Trump taking a tough stance on undocumented immigrants, he ruled out a common path for many deportees - back into the United States. "I want to go to Canada with my passport," he said. "For those without documents, I think (the United States) is over. Now it's Canada's turn." As Trump seeks to crack down on undocumented immigrants in the United States, about half of whom are Mexican, there are some nascent signs that more Mexican migrants see a future in Canada, which in December eased travel for visitors from Mexico.Canadian government data shows a tripling of Mexicans seeking to travel to Canada in the three months since the visa requirement was shelved.It is not a firm indicator as many people could be genuine tourists. But tie it to a surge in calls and emails to immigration lawyers from recently arrived Mexicans looking for work permits, as well as the accounts of deportees like Rita and Mexicans already in Canada, and it suggests a new migration pattern may be emerging. Seven immigration lawyers, consultants and activists told Reuters that requests for legal advice from Mexicans who had entered Canada since Dec. 1 had roughly tripled compared with the same period in 2015-2016, while Mexico's Canadian consulates are also receiving more requests for help.Between December and late February, Canada has granted more than 61,500 eTAs (Electronic Travel Authorization forms) to Mexicans, about triple the number of quarterly tourist applications received in the year before the visa requirement was scrapped, official Canadian data shows. The true scale of Mexican immigration will only become fully apparent in June, when early arrivals on these eTAs are due to leave. Flight bookings from Mexico to Canada also swelled 90 percent in January and February versus the same period in 2016, according to travel analysis company ForwardKeys, which reviews all major travel agency bookings. It is unclear what percentage of those bookings were made by people looking to work illegally in Canada.Marcela Gonzalez's telephone and Facebook page may be a good indicator. The immigration paralegal in Toronto used to receive four calls a month from Mexicans in Canada, before Trump's election and the new visa-free travel.

"Now I get four in less than 10 minutes," from people wanting to know how to get work permits and permanent residency, she said. Gonzalez said 200 Mexicans looking for immigration advice wrote to her on Facebook on a recent day, including parents already in Canada asking her how to enroll their children in local schools.Mexico's foreign ministry said it, too, had noticed an uptick."Between January and March 2017, our consulates in Canada received more requests for assistance and protection than were seen in the same period of the previous year," it said.The ministry, which estimated 90,000 Mexicans live in Canada, said it did not think Trump's election win was driving the surge, adding it was too early to detect a definitive trend.Canada is closely monitoring "migration trends regarding Mexican travelers to Canada, including asylum claim rates," said Camielle Edwards, spokeswoman for Immigration and Refugee Minister Ahmed Hussen.

Reuters spoke to about 30 Mexicans in Reynosa who had been deported the previous night. More than half said they wanted to head to Canada. While it is unclear how many will succeed, almost nobody envisaged a future in the United States. But tough border checks, hard-to-find jobs and fine-tuned enforcement policies mean it can be hard to enter and harder to stay.In 2015, Victor Avila, a 37-year-old architect from Oaxaca, returned home voluntarily from the United States after five years working illegally in Freehold, New Jersey. Shocked by the low wages in Mexico and traumatized by the local murder of his brother, he applied for an eTA. Avila arrived in Toronto a few weeks ago and found work in a restaurant. He was in the process of applying for a work visa, but said he would stay on illegally for a year if it wasn't granted."I think for many of us in Canada, there's no other option but to stay and work illegally," he said.CAUTIONARY TALE

Many Mexicans believe the eTA is all they need to set up in Canada, but in almost all cases they are wrong, immigration lawyers said. The eTA does not even guarantee entry.Even if they get past the airport, many low-skilled Mexicans hoping to work illegally are likely to be disappointed, lawyers said, noting that it's difficult for those entering on tourist visas to get work permits without an employer's sponsorship. Some Mexican visitors told Reuters that Canadian immigration officials went through their phones and asked tough questions designed to trip up those seeking to stay and work illegally. While some got through, others were sent home.Canada says those convicted of crimes, as well as gang members, are inadmissible, making it hard for criminally convicted Mexicans deported from the United States to enter. Some 313 Mexicans with eTAs were denied access to Canada in January, according to official Canadian data obtained by Reuters, more than the total number rejected each year in 2012, 2013 and 2014. (For a graphic on the number of Mexicans blocked from entering Canada see tmsnrt.rs/2n5egvh)Alejandro Becerra's experience is a cautionary tale for Mexicans dreaming of a new life in Canada.The 30-year-old former bankteller from Mexico City got a job offer to work in construction in Toronto and flew to the city on Feb. 7 on an eTA.Becerra told a border official at the airport that he was coming as a tourist and showed him his return flight. The official didn't believe him and examined his phone, where he found messages discussing Becerra's job in Toronto. Becerra spent the night in a detention center, and the next morning he was taken in handcuffs to a plane that would return him to Mexico.($1 = 19.6240 Mexican pesos) (Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Ross Colvin)

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By Steve Scherer

| ROME

ROME Italy will host a meeting between European and North African countries next week in a bid to strengthen support for an agreement it struck with Libya to fight people smuggling as migrant arrivals surge.The prime minister of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Fayez al-Seraj, will meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and interior ministers from eight European countries including Germany and France on Monday. Last month Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help Libya fight people smugglers, a deal that was endorsed by European Union member states. But Libya is still far from stable. Two governments are vying for power - in Tobruk to the east and Tripoli to the west - and the country remains mired in factional fighting and lawlessness. The authorities in eastern Libya have rejected the deal struck between Rome and Tripoli.

"I'm not so naive as to not understand the situation there," Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters. "But we cannot remain immobile and wait for the country to stabilise."He said the Libya agreement and next week's meeting were not just "talk", but strategic steps toward managing mass migration to Europe.

So far this year more than 16,000 migrants - a 36 percent increase on the same period last year - have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy after Libya-based people smugglers piled them onto flimsy boats.As part of the deal, Italy and the EU have promised to fund migrant camps on Libyan soil, but they need U.N. agencies to help manage them. Those same agencies have said Libya is not safe for migrants."Migrants and refugees in detention (in Libya) are held outside any legal process and in conditions which are generally inhuman. They are exposed to malnutrition, extortion, torture, sexual violence and other abuses," four U.N. chiefs said in joint statement last month.

On Friday, Italy's opposition 5-Star Movement also took issue with the Libya agreement, calling it "a sham". In a statement, 5-Star lawmakers said Libya was too dangerous for Italy's diplomats, urging the closure of the embassy in Tripoli.Last week Tripoli was gripped by heavy fighting as armed groups allied with Seraj took over a compound that had been occupied by a rival leader, while forces in Libya's Oil Crescent battled for control of two major oil ports.EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and interior ministers from Algeria and Tunisia will also attend the meeting. (Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Richard Lough)

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Washington: The US state of Kansas has recognised 16 March as 'Indian American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and hisKansas recognises 16 March as Indian American Appreciation Day to honour Srinivas Kuchibhotla friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on 22 February before yelling "get out of my country". Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divide or define" the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them."

"These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the state of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the state capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

"I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise 16 March as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'.

"We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the state of Kansas," the governor said. "This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said.

"Srinivas embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

"Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests. In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candlelight vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla. To celebrate true American spirit, India House also decided to honour Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candlelight vigil was attended by a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love. "We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said. "And with the resolve to fight hate."
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday rejected a call for a referendum on Scottish independence before Britain leaves the European Union  a move condemned as a "democratic outrage" by Scotland's nationalist leader.

May and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon both dug in their heels in a showdown that could complicate Britain's path out of the EU and threaten the future of the United Kingdom.

May said "now is not the time" to reopen Scotland's independence debate, though she did not rule out a referendum in the future. Britain is to begin the two-year exit process from the 28-nation EU by the end of this month.

The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK as a whole decided in a 23 June referendum to leave the EU, but Scots in that ballot voted 62 to 38 percent to remain.

Sturgeon announced earlier this week that she will seek a referendum on Scottish independence to be held between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019, so Scottish voters can decide whether to leave the EU with the rest of the UK or go it alone.

The Conservative-led British government, however, must agree to a legally binding referendum, and May said "now is not the time."

"All our energies should be focused on our negotiations with the European Union," May said, adding that holding a Scotland referendum while EU exit talks are still underway would "make it more difficult for us to get the right deal for Scotland and the right deal for the UK."

The British government's Scotland minister, David Mundell, said May's administration "will not be entering into discussions or negotiations" about a new referendum on Scottish independence.

But Sturgeon, undeterred, plans to ask the Scottish parliament next week to start the process of seeking a new referendum.

She said it would be a "democratic outrage" for the British government to stop the people of Scotland "having a choice over their future."

"It is for the Scottish parliament  not Downing Street  to determine the timing of a referendum, and the decision of the Scottish parliament must be respected," she said.

She said "having sunk the ship with Brexit," the British government was "trying to puncture Scotland's lifeboats as well."

May's office said the prime minister hopes the Scottish government will back away from its plans for a referendum within two years. May has not ruled out a later independence vote  but her stance could boost support for independence because it smacks of London meddling in Scottish affairs.

Still, Sturgeon's Scottish National Party does not hold an outright majority in the Scottish legislature, and her plan will face opposition. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, whose party has the second-largest bloc of seats, said the Tories would "reject conclusively the timetable for a referendum set out by the Scottish government."

Davidson said voting on independence without knowing how Britain was faring outside the EU would mean that "on the most important decision we can make, we would be voting blind."

Scottish voters rejected independence by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent in a 2014 referendum that was billed as a once-in-a-generation vote. But Sturgeon says the UK's decision to leave the EU has changed everything.

Also Thursday, Britain's EU exit moved closer when a bill authorizing the British government to begin divorce proceedings with the bloc became law. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act had received the assent of Queen Elizabeth II.

May is now free to invoke Article 50 of the EU's key treaty, triggering two years of exit negotiations. She says she will do that by 31 March.

Under the terms of the EU treaty, Britain will no longer be a member of the bloc two years after May issues the notification. The British government hopes to seal a new free-trade deal between the UK and the bloc in that time.

But EU negotiators warn it could take two years just to settle the divorce terms, and say agreeing on a new relationship for the UK and the EU could take years longer.
By Yeganeh Torbati and James Pearson

| SEOUL

SEOUL The liberal South Korean politician most likely to become the country's next president would, if elected, review how the government would deploy an advanced U.S. missile defence system and would consult China, two of his top advisers said on Friday.If Moon Jae-in, front-runner for the May 9 presidential election, reverses policy on the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, it will place him at odds with the United States, South Korea's biggest ally.The conservative government of impeached president Park Geun-hye agreed to deploy the THAAD to guard against attack by North Korea, but the decision sparked outrage in China, which responded with restrictions on some companies doing business with and in South Korea.China says the system's radar can be used to spy into its territory.Moon would likely "do a review of the validity of the decision", Choi Jong Kun, an adviser to Moon on foreign policy told Reuters. "While doing it, he will consult with the United States, as well as China.""At the end of the day, if the reality unfolds in a way that South Korea's national security and the economy were damaged because of the THAAD, not because of the North Korea issue, then it's not really a rational situation, is it?"The comments are at variance with a tough stand taken by the new U.S. administration on North Korea.U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, visiting Seoul for the first time since taking office, said on Friday a U.S. policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea has ended and military action would be "on the table" if North Korea if Pyongyang took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces.Tillerson also said he expected the next South Korean government would "continue to be supportive" of THAAD.

A Pentagon spokesman said THAAD deployment was "a critical measure" to defend South Koreans and U.S. forces against North Korean missiles.China is South Korea's largest trading partner and the dispute over THAAD has left shopping districts in Seoul devoid of their usual crowds of Chinese tourists. In China, the row has led to a freeze of South Korean television dramas and music, and product boycotts.Moon, a liberal facing little in the way of a significant conservative challenger, said in a debate this week China should stop the economic retaliation and South Korea had to make diplomatic efforts to assuage Chinese anger."It's only right for the THAAD deployment issue to be decided by the next administration," Moon told foreign media recently.

RAPPROCHEMENT

A 63-year-old human rights lawyer, Moon has said he will extend an olive branch to North Korea if elected and visit Pyongyang before making a trip to the United States. Just two North-South summits have been held since the 1950-53 Korean war. Choi said the decision to deploy the THAAD battery had been made hastily. China's reaction was foreseeable and yet was largely ignored by Park's government, he said. "We had a strategic partnership with Beijing, until this THAAD issue," Choi said. "Our relationship had been pretty OK and pretty good."

Kim Ki-Jung, another foreign policy adviser to Moon, said he had tried to convince U.S. military officials and diplomats in Washington last month that the deployment of the THAAD should be left to the leader who succeeds Park. "We are going to acknowledge that two governments made an agreement ... but the actual process of deployment, that should be given to the next government," he said.Instead, the United States started to deploy the first elements of the system this month, after North Korea fired off four ballistic missiles into the sea off northwest Japan.Moon has criticized the two former conservative presidents  Park and her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak - for derailing progress made in inter-Korean relations under previous liberal administrations. He calls for a "two-step" approach on North Korea, with talks leading to "economic unification" and ultimately "political and military unification." His viewpoints could spark friction with Washington, but Moon would have no problem distancing South Korea's interests from those of the United States, Kim said."The basic assumption is that we are going to maintain the success of our bilateral alliance," Kim said. "We are going to keep it ... as long as we admit that South Korea is not the 51st state of the United States. We are an independent country, we have our own national interest, and we should have our own foreign policy strategy." (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalkrishnan)

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By Susan Cornwell and David Morgan

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday stepped up his fight for support on Republicans' plan to dismantle Obamacare, wooing some conservative lawmakers at the White House while legislation advanced toward a possible vote in the House of Representatives next week.Republicans remain deeply divided over their U.S. healthcare overhaul, Trump's first major legislative initiative and one that aims to make good on his campaign pledge to repeal and replace the healthcare plan put in place by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.Trump met at the White House on Friday with 13 members of the House Republican Study Committee, a large group of conservative lawmakers seeking changes to Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor."I'm 100 percent behind this," Trump told reporters after the meeting.Trump said all the lawmakers in attendance now supported the healthcare bill after previously questioning it."We made certain changes but frankly very little," he said.U.S. Health Secretary Tom Price also did his part to win over reluctant Republican lawmakers in a meeting at the Capitol.

The healthcare measure championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan passed through a key House panel on Thursday despite objections by some conservatives who consider it too similar to the 2010 law that became known as Obamacare.The Republicans' proposed replacement plan still faces a battle in the full House and then the Senate, despite efforts by the White House and Republican leaders to satisfy conservative opponents who are pushing for several changes.Democrats have roundly rejected the Republicans proposal, saying it harms the poor, elderly and working families while offering tax cuts to rich Americans and companies.Price told reporters on Friday the proposal addressed several issues important to Trump, such as maintaining insurance coverage of patients with pre-existing medical conditions.

"The president's very supportive of this plan, thinks that it addresses his priorities," Price said at a news conference ahead of a meeting with House Republicans to help coalesce support.Without Democratic support, Republicans cannot afford to lose many votes from their own ranks, even though they control both chambers of Congress, as well as the White House.Conservatives have criticized the legislation as too similar to Obama's law. Some have said they want a quicker end to Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid, while others are concerned about insurance costs for consumers.

Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, wants changes in private insurance mandates that he says will lower healthcare premiums. But after Friday's meeting with Price, he expressed frustration there were no commitments from leadership on any changes except a possible optional work requirement on Medicaid, which "doesn't move the ball more than a couple yards on a very long playing field."He said his group has spoken with Senate Republicans about potential changes and will propose an amendment on Monday.Several Senate Republicans also have said they would reject the measure in its current form.Obamacare expanded insurance to about 20 million Americans but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Monday that 14 million Americans would lose medical insurance by next year under the Republican plan.The CBO projected 52 million people would be uninsured by 2026 if the bill became law, compared with 28 million who would not have coverage that year if the law remained unchanged. (Additional reporting by David Morgan; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott)

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By Jeff Mason and Andreas Rinke

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump reiterated his strong support for NATO on Friday and pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet NATO's military spending target, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.The meeting between the leader of Europe's largest economy and the U.S. president was billed as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship."I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defence," Trump said at a joint news conference with Merkel.Merkel said she told Trump Germany needs to meet NATO spending goals. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan.Trump said he expected the United States to do "fantastically well" in trade with Germany, while Merkel said she hoped the United States and the European Union could resume discussions on a trade agreement. Trump said he did not believe in isolationism but that trade policy should be fairer.

"We held a conversation where we were trying to address also those areas where we disagree, but we tried to bring people together ... (and) tried to find a compromise that is good for both sides," Merkel said.Trump said he "very seldom" regrets anything he tweets, brushing off questions about his claims without evidence that his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, wiretapped him during last year's presidential campaign.

Trump said, "At least we have something in common," apparently referring to reports during Obama's presidency that the United States bugged her phone. Congressional leaders from both political parties say they do not believe Trump was wiretapped.Earlier, the new U.S. president greeted the long-serving stateswoman at the White House with a handshake before they began talks in the Oval Office. Both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good. The meeting is consequential for both sides.

As a presidential candidate, Trump criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany. At the news conference, Merkel hinted at differences, saying: "This is obviously something we had an exchange of views about."Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman."Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government. (Additional reporting by Noah Barkin in Berlin, and Emily Stephenson and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and James Dalgleish)

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DUBAI Twenty two people were killed in an attack on a mosque during Friday prayers inside a military base in Yemen's Marib province, local officials said.

Two missiles were fired at the mosque located inside the military camp of Kofal in the west of Marib after a rocket was fired, the officials said.

Most of Marib is under the control of forces loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi. Iran-allied Houthis are battling his internationally recognized government. (Writing By Maha El Dahan; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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Washington: Two American judges have halted Donald Trump's revised travel ban on citizens of six Muslim-majority nations, stating that his own comments suggested religious bias, in a blow to the US President who has vowed to take the legal battle all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The order by the federal judge in Hawaii late Wednesday night came after the state sued the Trump administration over the revised travel ban issued last week. Hawaii argued that the revised travel ban was still unconstitutional.

"The illogic of the government's contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed," judge Derrick Watson wrote in his 43-page court order.

"It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7 percent to 99.8 percent. It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam. Certainly, it would be inappropriate to conclude, as the government does, that it does not," Watson said.

"Any reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the Court for purposes of the instant Motion for TRO (Temporary Restraining Order), that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims," the judge said.

A second federal judge in Maryland issued a separate block on just the core provision concerning travel from the Muslim world, ruling it would cause "irreparable harm" were it to go into effect.

US District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a partial injunction on a separate complaint filed by advocacy groups claiming that the amended order discriminates against Muslims.

"While the travel ban bears no resemblance to any response to a national security risk in recent history, it bears a clear resemblance to the precise action that President Trump described as effectuating his Muslim ban," he said.

The revised travel ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 day was scheduled to come into effect midnight of 15 March.

Reacting to the development, the White House said the Trump administration would "vigorously defend" the travel ban and would battle its suspension in the federal courts.

"We intend to appeal the flawed rulings," said White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

Trump, commenting on the ruling by the Hawaii judge, said it "makes us look weak" and vowed to challenge the order in the Supreme Court.

"We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go, including all the way up to the Supreme Court," Trump said as his supporters booed the Hawaii federal judge.

Appearing in a combative mood, Trump alleged that the decision of the Ninth Circuit court was an example of "unprecedented judicial overreach".
By Ju-min Park and James Pearson

| SEOUL

SEOUL A U.S. policy of strategic patience with North Korea's nuclear and missile programs has ended, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday, warning that military action would be "on the table" if Pyongyang elevated the threat level.On his first Asian visit as secretary of state, Tillerson will travel to China on Saturday with a main focus on finding a "new approach" on North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to denuclearize the insular nation."Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told a news conference in Seoul.In spite of his warning, U.S. officials have stressed that while an ongoing review on North Korea policy includes military options, such contingency planning has been conducted for decades and that the preferred course is to press Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs through increased sanctions and other diplomatic pressure, particularly on China.U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that North Korea was "behaving very badly" and accused Pyongyang's neighbor and only ally China of doing little to resolve the crisis over the North's weapons programs. "They have been 'playing' the United States for years." Trump said in a tweet, referring to North Korea. "China has done little to help!" Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, said any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with "an appropriate response"."If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table," he said when asked about military action.For now, U.S. officials consider pre-emptive military action against North Korea far too risky, given the danger of igniting a regional war and causing massive casualties in Japan and South Korea and among tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in both allied countries.Such ideas could gain traction, however, if North Korea proceeds with a threatened test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Just before he took office in January, Trump tweeted: "It won't happen!" when Kim said North Korea was close to testing an ICBM.Tillerson is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the weekend and press him to do more on North Korea.

He called on Beijing to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea.China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security."We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling," Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system."We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat for everyone. So we hope China will alter its position on punishing South Korea.""We hope they will work with us to eliminate the reason THAAD is required."

North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year.Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States.South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told a joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country.FACING OFF AT THE DMZ

Earlier, Tillerson visited the Demilitarized Zone, and looked across the heavily fortified border at armed North Korean guards, staring back. He met some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.Tillerson also met South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is also acting president.

The latest bout of tension with North Korea comes at a time of political turmoil in South Korea. President Park Geun-hye was ousted last week after being impeached in a corruption scandal and an election for a new president will be on May 9.A liberal opposition politician, Moon Jae-in, who has raised questions about the THAAD deployment, is leading in the opinion polls.Tillerson said he expected a new government would "continue to be supportive" of the deployment, adding it was also intended to protect U.S. troops in South Korea. China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people.It has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula."As a close neighbour of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing.Hua also said the THAAD would "upset the regional strategic balance". Its radar, with a range of more than 2,000 km (1,250 miles), meant it could cover a large part of China, far outside the scope of the threat South Korea faces, Hua said."We do not oppose South Korean taking necessary measures to protect its security, but these measures cannot be based upon harming the security interests of South Korea's friendly neighbour, China," she said. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Christine Kim in SEOUL and David Brunnstrom and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alistair Bell)

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be solved through peaceful means, Kyrgyzstans former Prime Minister Apas Jumagulov, who is attending the 5th Global Baku Forum, told reporters on March 17.

The two-day forum titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests kicked off in Baku on March 16.

Jumagulov noted that everything possible should be done for the settlement of this conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Washington: Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was paid more than $67,000 by Russian companies before the presidential election, according to documents released on Thursday by a Democratic congressman.

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland asked the Trump administration to provide a comprehensive record of Flynn's contacts with foreign governments and interests.

Flynn accepted $33,750 from Russia's government-run television system for appearing at a Moscow event in December 2015  a few months before Flynn began formally advising President Donald Trump's campaign  and thousands more in expenses covered by the network and in speech fees from other Russian firms, according to the documents.

Flynn's financial relationship with the RT network may violate a constitutional provision against gifts from foreign governments, said Cummings, who released documents obtained during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's inquiry into Flynn's activities before Trump appointed him to become national security adviser.

In addition to the record of Flynn's foreign contacts, Cummings, the senior Democrat on the committee, also asked the Defence Department to compel Flynn to pay the money he received to the US government.

"I am writing to request information about whether General Flynn fully disclosed  as part of the security clearance and vetting process for his return to government his communications with Russian agents, Turkish agents and other foreign agents, as well as his payments from foreign sources," Cummings wrote. Last week, Flynn registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent whose lobbying work may have benefited the Turkish government. The lobbying occurred before Election Day from August to November, during the period when Flynn was Trump's campaign adviser.

Trump fired Flynn as national security adviser last month, saying the former US Army lieutenant general misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the US. Flynn's ties to Russia have been scrutinised by the FBI and are part of House and Senate committee investigations into contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians.

The newly-released files show that RT  designated by the US intelligence community as a propaganda arm of Russia's government  also paid for luxury hotel stays and other expenses incurred by Flynn and his adult son, Michael Flynn Jr, during the Moscow trip.

Flynn, who was fired in August 2014 as chief of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the climax of the televised RT gala.

Cummings said Flynn's acceptance of payments from RT violated the emoluments provision of the US Constitution, which prohibits retired military officers from accepting gifts from foreign powers. RT identifies itself as an independent news network, but a report by US intelligence agencies made public in January said RT has long been considered by the US government a Russian propaganda arm.

In letters sent to Trump, Defense Secretary James Mattis and FBI Director James Comey, Cummings said Flynn "violated the Constitution by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from an agent of a global adversary that attacked our democracy." Cummings was referring to the intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia instigated cyber-hacking of Democratic party officials and organisations in the months before the presidential election.

The Defence Department has said retired military officers are covered by the emoluments clause because they could be recalled to military service. The department has also noted that the prohibition on accepting foreign gifts includes commercial groups controlled by foreign governments or others "considered instruments of the foreign government."

A Flynn spokesman said Flynn informed the DIA before he went to Moscow and after his return. Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said that "as many former government officials and general officers have done, General Flynn signed with a speakers' bureau and these are examples of that work."

DIA spokesman Jim Kudla said Thursday that Flynn did report to the agency in advance that he was traveling to Moscow "in accordance with standard security clearance procedures."

Separately, the Army is looking into the matter of Flynn's reporting and compensation, but has found no answers yet, according to spokesman Colonel Pat Seiber.

Emails indicate Flynn initially asked for a higher fee than the $45,000 paid to his speakers' group, Leading Authorities Inc, but was asked to reduce his price. Flynn's take from RT was ultimately $33,750 after Leading Authorities received its commission.

"If General Flynn is coming, we would like him to be front and central at the Moscow conference," an RT official told Flynn's representatives in a November 2015 email. During his Moscow stay, Flynn was interviewed by an RT personality on national security affairs before attending the lavish RT gala with Putin.

In an addition to the RT payments, Flynn was also paid $11,250 for two speeches in Washington  one in August for Volga-Dnepr Airlines, a Russian charter cargo airline, and a second, in September, for Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc, a US subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab, a Russian-based cybersecurity firm.

Flynn and his son also received an unspecified amount in expenses paid by RT for business-class flights to and from Moscow and for their three-day stay at the Hotel Metropol. RT representatives said the stay offered tours of the Kremlin, RT headquarters, the Bolshoi Theater and art museums. Another attendee who took part in some of the tours told The Associated Press they did not see Flynn at those events.

Cummings said he has given the Trump administration, the FBI and the Defense Department until 7 April to produce documents related to Flynn's contacts with foreign nationals and any documentation of funds he received from foreign sources.

Cummings also asked for documents about Flynn's security clearance over the past 10 years. They include how Flynn answered questions about his contact with foreign nationals, his work for foreign governments and businesses, and any international real estate holdings.

The release of the documents comes one week after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group, registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents whose lobbying work may have benefited the government of Turkey.

The registration involved $530,000 worth of lobbying that Flynn's firm performed for a company owned by a Turkish businessman. In that filing, Flynn acknowledged the lobbying on behalf of the company, Inovo BV, "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey."

The AP reported last week that while Flynn was under consideration for the top national security post, his attorneys informed the presidential transition team that it was likely he would have to register as a foreign agent. After Flynn was appointed, his attorneys then notified the White House counsel's office that a filing was imminent.

The White House initially said it had no recollection of the second discussion but later acknowledged such a contact had occurred.
By Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump stands by his accusation that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign, the White House said on Thursday, despite three senior lawmakers rejecting Trump's claim.The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a statement they saw "no indications" of surveillance at Trump Tower in New York as the president claimed in Twitter posts on March 4."Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," Republican Chairman Richard Burr and Senator Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement.The top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, on Thursday added his voice to those saying there was no sign of a wiretap.But White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended Trump's assertion during a briefing, citing media reports that have discussed intelligence collection on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia in the campaign."There is no question that there were surveillance techniques used throughout this," Spicer said.

When pressed for further evidence, Spicer chastised the media for focussing so much attention on comments disparaging Trump's claim about surveillance. He said reporters have not focussed enough on comments from officials denying evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.The Russian government has rejected an accusation by U.S. intelligence agencies that it worked to influence the election in Trump's favour by hacking computer systems, among other methods.House Speaker Ryan told reporters: "The point is, the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom - at least so far - with respect to our intelligence community that - that no such wiretap existed."An official familiar with the investigations by Congress and intelligence and law enforcement agencies said investigators have looked as aggressively and thoroughly as they can for evidence of any spying on Trump or his associates but have found none.

Trump, a Republican, made the accusation six weeks after he took over the presidency from Democrat Barack Obama.Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him during the late stages of the campaign, but provided no evidence. Obama said through a spokesman that it was "simply false." "How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump wrote.

At least four congressional committees added the startling accusation in their investigations of possible Russian meddling in the election campaign and Russian ties to Trump and his associates.On Wednesday, House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and top Democrat Adam Schiff told reporters they had seen no evidence that Trump Tower was tapped and said they would ask Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey about the issue during a public hearing on Monday.Ryan told reporters he received the same intelligence briefing as Nunes and Schiff. Trump appeared to back away from his accusation of wiretapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday night."But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump said. (Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by David Alexander and Grant McCool)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.




Written by The Editorial Board of The Guardian Newspaper





The Senates recent assurance that the law to govern Nigerias oil and gas industry, hitherto known as the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), will be passed latest by March or April this year is worth acknowledging and the distinguished Senators should be held to their words. Passing the PIB is one step to sanity in an oil and gas sector that has been mismanaged over the years.

In the event of a proper re-structuring of Nigeria into a functional federation not taking place in the immediate, this law should receive total attention to bring some transparency into the sector.



The PIB has remained un-passed for nearly 10 years since it was presented to the National Assembly (NASS), even though Nigerians expected a prompt passage when it was first introduced in May 2009.

Three legislative assemblies have since sat over it. The first legislative assembly under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration actually passed the bill but the president refused to sign it into law.

The bill was re-presented under the Umaru YarAdua administration, and ever since then, has lingered, making this re-awakened interest in the bill is, therefore, a welcome development.

The Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) had made the disclosure of the renewed interest at a plenary in Abuja to discuss new legislation and policy to transform the oil and gas sector.

The plenary was held on the margins of the 16th Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition (NOG) where solutions were proffered on how government policies could help develop the oil sector.

According to the Committees chairman, Tayo Alasoadura, the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill will by the end of March go through its third reading, to address all governance-related issues in Nigerias oil and gas sector.

He noted that once the bill gets to its third reading, it is as good as passed and said Senate expects the bill to be passed latest by April.

Along with the PIB is the Local Content law which Alasoadura also promised the Senate would give proper attention to.

According to him, Nigeria needs a national oil company that will be smooth in operation, commercially viable and transparent in management.

He reiterated that the lawmakers decided to have only one regulatory body in the oil/gas sector to ease the process of doing business and attract more investments.

A situation where it takes about a year to set up a business in the industry is an aberration and the ideal thing is to have a timeline for all businesses to be completed within six months.

While it is heartening that the Senate is gearing up to finally pass the PIB into law, it needs to be reiterated that, perhaps, no other piece of legislation has been so politicised like it.

It would be recalled that the fundamental objective of the PIB is to vest oil and gas resources in the Sovereign State of Nigeria, which is tantamount to changing the existing order whereby foreign interests rule Nigerias oil industry while Nigerians are marginalised in poverty.

Shortly after the bill was first introduced, two strong forces rose vehemently against it. Whereas, the international oil companies (IOCs), which constitute the major players in the industry, were afraid of what could become of their investment in the sector, an internal hurdle arising from the geopolitics of oil revenue sharing in Nigeria created another problem.

Some states which for long have been sustained by oil revenue allocation received from the Federation Account couldnt understand why the existing arrangement should change. Consequently, they wanted the status quo to remain.

At a point, as if to accommodate such varying interests, the Federal Government renamed the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) the Petroleum Reform Bill (PRB), which seemed to foreclose the prospect of having the bill passed in its original formulation.

The original bill, no doubt, has been watered downed to satisfy vested interests.

The PIB, in its original form, represents the single most ambitious piece of legislation that has the capacity to transform the Nigerian economy, which under the present structure, is mono-product and oil-based economy.

Given the importance of the bill, it is baffling why the National Assembly should have delayed to get it passed into law. Now the question is: How much longer would this bill remain in limbo, especially, if the current lawmakers fail to pass it?

That the PIB has dragged on for 10 years without passage smacks of lack of patriotism on the part of all those involved. And there is no better illustration of how dysfunctional the structure of Nigeria is in its present form than the inability to pass that law till date. Suffice to say that since the ideal to which Nigeria should aspire is a proper federation in which all resources are vested in the people of the areas where such are found, the delay over this oil industry bill has made the quest for that ideal more urgent.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 17

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

The settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will bring stability to the region, Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis told reporters on the sidelines of the fifth Global Baku Forum Mar. 17.

The two-day forum titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests kicked off in Baku March 16.

It is very important for the international community to contribute to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through diplomatic methods, President Vejonis added.

The president touched upon the meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, with whom he also discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, international topics, cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan, Latvia and Azerbaijan.

Latvia is interested in closer cooperation with Azerbaijan in implementing the North-South project, which partially passes through Azerbaijan as Latvia has always been and will be a good regional hub, the president said.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 17

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

The work of the Global Baku Forum will definitely make a positive contribution to the solution of global problems, said Ismail Serageldin, co-chair of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, director of the Library of Alexandria, at the 5th Global Baku Forum, kicked off in the Azerbaijani capital on March 16.

Alongside with Serageldin, the two-day forum titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests is also attended by Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Albanian President Bujar Nishani, Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, Saudi Arabian Prince, Chairman of the Board of Directors of King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies Turki Al-Faisal.

Serageldin noted that the forum grows and develops every year, current and former presidents and prime ministers from all over the world actively participate in it.

He also thanked the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for supporting the forum on behalf of all forum participants.

The director of the Library of Alexandria said that the current forum is taking place during a period of global instability, when the world faces challenges and changes in many regions, and the forum participants will try to find ways to solve these problems.

Nearly 300 delegates from 53 countries, as well as a number of influential state figures, politicians, experts, and political scientists who play a pivotal role in shaping the modern global politics are attending the 5th Global Baku Forum.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Azerbaijan has every right to control its sovereign territory, said former Bulgarian president Rosen Plevneliev, who is taking part in the 5th Global Baku Forum.

Plevneliev made the remarks while commenting on the process of settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan has its sovereign territory, and it has every right to control it. International laws must be applied to Armenia, and we call on Armenia to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and withdraw its armed forces from the occupied territories, said Plevneliev. We call on Armenia to respect the norms of international law.

We all want peace, he noted, when international laws are applied to everyone without exception, when there is respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries, it becomes possible to achieve peace.

On the contrary, when small and great states dont comply with international law and violate the sovereignty of other countries, it becomes impossible to achieve peace, added the former Bulgarian president.

Plevneliev noted that the people and leadership of Azerbaijan quite fairly note the existence of double standards.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

Trend:

The 5th Global Baku Forum created favorable opportunities for discussing global issues, former Prime Minister of Belgium Yves Leterme told Trend Mar. 17.

The two-day forum titled The Future of International Relations: Power and Interests kicked off in Baku March 16.

Discussing the existing problems and finding ways to solve them is important for the whole international community, said Leterme.

He highlighted the role of Azerbaijan, which created opportunities for finding solutions to global problems by giving a platform for discussion to presidents, politicians and experts, and thus, contributed to peace and security.
Randy Bradley, owner of Burger Kings in Iowa and Missouri for the past 27 years, said he is rooting for the House Republicans proposal to replace Obamacare, especially the Trump-endorsed American Health Care Acts (AHCA) plan to eliminate Obamacares employee mandate provision.

According to Bradley, who employs more than 80 people, Obamacares employee mandate  which requires that all businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees provide health insurance to at least 95% of staff and dependents up to age 26, or pay a fee  caused some of his workers to receive worse insurance than they previously had and other employees to experience up to a 20 percent reduction in wages.

Basically, the government interfered and told me I couldnt provide my managers with that premium level of coverage anymore and my only option was to provide them with Obamacare, Bradley told FOX Business. Furthermore, even if I wanted to reimburse my managers for the premiums they paid for purchasing their own insurance on the open marketplace, I couldnt without facing major fines.

Prior to Obamacare, Bradley said he provided his managers with a competitive group health care insurance policy, in which he contributed 75% of the premium and half of the deductible. However, a non-discrimination clause in Obamacare prevented Bradley from providing this plan to his managers if he didnt also provide the same plan to his hourly-wage employees, which he said would have bankrupt his business within three to four months.

Implemented under Obamacare, according to Section 4980D of the Internal Revenue Code, if business owners reimburse employees the premiums they paid for purchasing their own insurance on the open marketplace, they are subject to a $100 penalty, per day, per employee -- or $36,500 per employee annually.

As for Bradleys non-managerial, hourly-wage staff, he said a majority experienced a loss in wages due to Obamacare, and many still didnt qualify for employer-based coverage while many of those who did chose not to take it.

A full-time employee, which must be provided insurance under the Obamacare employer mandate, is categorized as someone that works 30 hours or more per week. Therefore, Bradley said his employees who were working anywhere from 31-40 hours per week had their hours cut down to below 30, thereby not receiving insurance as intended by Obamacare, but actually losing hours, thus wages. For Bradleys other hourly-wage employees that kept their full-time, 30-plus hour schedule, Bradley was required to offer them Obamacare, in which he would pay 90.5% of the premium and they would contribute 9.5%.

Ironically, most of my full-time crew that I offered Obamacare to, didnt take it, as they felt the penalty they would have to pay for not having it was actually less than they would have to spend on the premium to have the insurance, said Bradley. Only 4 out of Bradleys 40 full-time, hourly-wage employees opted for him to provide them with Obamacare.

In addition, Bradley said the insurmountable amount of time he had to spend deciphering Obamacares rules and filling out the required paperwork, cost him revenue. Without a full Human Resources department given his businesses size, Bradley said he did most of the work himself, plus he was forced to hire an outside accounting firm to ensure he was in compliance with the 2,700-page law.

Obamacare has created fear among business owners that an innocent mistake can cost their business millions in fines, said Bradley.

National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) President and CEO Juanita Duggan, who categorizes Obamacare as devastating to small businesses, wrote a letter to Congress on March 14 urging each of its members who cares about small business to vote for the AHCA measure (which is Speaker Paul Ryans Obamacare replacement bill).

Small business optimism has soared since November because small business owners anticipate a change in policies. Driving that optimism is the expectation that Congress will repeal Obamacare, said Duggan. Theres a lot more work to be done in order to make the health care system affordable, flexible and predictable, but the American Health Care Act is a necessary first step.

Sixty percent of small business owners across the country, like Bradley, are in favor of repealing Obamacare, according to a BizBuySell.com survey of 700 small business owners and prospective buyers.

Respondents of the survey cited the individual mandate as the aspect of Obamacare theyd most like to see repealed (51%), followed by the employee mandate (33%) and government subsidies (34%).

As the bill currently stands, the AHCA would keep several popular provisions of Obamacare, including the following three that small business owners stated in the survey were most important to them: 1) banning the denial of health coverage to people because of pre-existing conditions (55%), 2) the right to keep children on their parents insurance plans up to the age of 26 (53%) and 3) prohibiting insurers from charging women higher rates than men for the same services (42%).

According to the NFIB  a conservative-leaning small-business lobby based in Washington, D.C., small business has long supported repealing and replacing Obamacare.

The American Health Care Act would repeal the most punishing elements of Obamacare, including the massive tax increases and mandates that have increased costs, limited choices and smothered job creation, said NFIB CEO Duggan in a statement.

However, most Democrats denounce the AHCA as a cruel attempt to strip Americans of their health care. According to projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), 14 million fewer Americans would be insured after one year under the Republican planas [s]ome of those people would choose not to have insurance because they chose to be covered by insurance under current law only to avoid paying the penalties, and some people would forgo insurance in response to higher premiums.

But small business advocacy groups such as the NFIB argue that the AHCA will provide more health insurance choices, as it reduces health insurance costs for small businesses.

This idea of choice is important to Wyoming-based Rayne Faubion, co-owner with her husband of R&R Rig Service, a 30-40 employee oil field company that repairs and moves oil field rigs in the Rocky Mountain region.

Soon after Obamacare hit the market in 2010, Faubion and her husband found that Wyoming, where health care costs are high due to a small population, only had one insurance provider participating in the states online marketplace.

All of the competing companies offering competitive insurance in our state went out of business, said Faubion. For a family of four, the Faubions went from paying $600 per month for insurance with decent deductibles and co-pays to $1,800 per month under Obamacare with worse deductibles and co-pays, she said.

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) opposes the House plan, arguing that it would shorten the life of Medicare, hike costs for those who can least afford higher insurance premiums, risk seniors ability to live independently, and give tax breaks to big drug and health insurance companies.

Older Americans want affordable health care  including less expensive prescription drugs and continued protections for the most vulnerable, AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said in a statement released this week. When Americans over age 50 look at the details of the House health care reform plan, they dont like what they see. They dont want big insurance and drug companies to reap massive profits at their expense.

It is not just Democrats and groups like AARP, as of Thursday, there was still opposition to the plan from inside the GOP, dividing the party and President Trump.

"We have not cut the deal yet," said House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, as reported by FOX News. At press time, it was still unclear whether the full House vote would happen Thursday, as originally was expected.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Seba Aghayeva  Trend:

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed Turkeys firm stance on the Turkey-Armenia border issue in a speech in Azerbaijans Parliament during his last visit to the country, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

Erdogan stated that Turkey closed its borders with Armenia after it occupied Azerbaijans territories and therefore the borders would only be reopened after Armenia ceases the occupation, Hajiyev noted.

Earlier, Russian foreign minister in his interview with the Armenian media touched upon the issue of opening Armenian-Turkish border.

Turkey supports the resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on Azerbaijans territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of internationally recognized borders in accordance with the norms and principles of international law and the relevant four resolutions of the UN Security Council, Hajiyev said. This just and fair position of Turkey is highly appreciated by the government and people of Azerbaijan.

We should also bear in mind that Armenia has territorial claims against Turkey and those claims are embedded in the Constitution of Armenia, Hajiyev added.

Armenia also puts forward groundless blames against Turkey on the so-called fabricated genocide which has no historical background, he said.

Ending occupation of Azerbaijani lands and ceasing the claims against neighbors by Armenia would consequently serve to establishment of lasting peace in the region and pave the way to creation of comprehensive regional cooperation and restoration of transport links, he noted.

First and foremost, Hajiyev said, Armenia and Armenian people will get benefit from the prospects of this cooperation.

Turkey and Armenia severed diplomatic relations in 1993. Occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenian Armed Forces and Yerevans claims to recognize the so-called Armenian genocide were the reasons for the closure of the Turkish-Armenian border in 1993.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Peabody Energy (OTC:BTUUQ), the largest privately held coal miner in the U.S., is on track to exit bankruptcy in April. The news comes as President Donald Trump continued his effort to roll back the Obama administrations regulatory measures placed on the coal industry.

The judge overseeing the process said Thursday he intends to approve Peabodys amended plan to emerge from bankruptcy early next month, about a year after Peabody filed for Chapter 11 protection. The St. Louis-based coal company expects its new equity to trade on the New York Stock Exchange, separate from its existing ticker symbol BTUUQ.

Peabody has accomplished the goals set out nearly a year ago, against an industry backdrop that has strengthened, Peabody President and CEO Glenn Kellow said in a statement.

As Peabody plots its return, a battle between Trump and lawmakers is heating up. In the White Houses budget proposal released this week, Trump is asking Congress to pull funding for President Barack Obamas Clean Power Plan, which is stuck in federal court amid a legal battle.

On the campaign trail, Trump was a vocal critic of clean energy policies, instead pushing his support for coal. These efforts helped him win key states, including West Virginia, and ultimately the election.

Peabody is one of several mining companies that sought bankruptcy protection after coming under heavy pressure from low natural gas prices and new regulations. Patriot Coal, a Peabody spinoff, went bankrupt in May 2015 for the second time in 18 months. About 50 coal companies in total have filed for bankruptcy during coals recent decline, Peabody said at the time of its filing.
There are currently 50 companies whose stocks qualify as "dividend aristocrats," meaning they're components of theS&P 500, and they have paid a dividend -- and raised it -- for 25 consecutive years.

Considering that dividend growth stocks often make for market-crushing investments, finding a company with the potential to be one of the biggest in America and to have given investors a raise every year for at least a quarter-century could make for a strong addition to anyone's portfolio.

Dividend aristocrats are as close to money trees as investors will find, paying out increasingly bigger dividends year after year. Image source: Getty Images.

Here's a closer look at three companies, including two giants within striking reach of joining the club inInternational Business Machines Corp.(NYSE: IBM) and United Technologies Corporation(NYSE: UTX), and an outsider in both size and dividend history, Polaris IndustriesInc.(NYSE: PII), which is on track to be a future dividend aristocrat worth owning. Our Fool contributors explain.

Big Blue wants to join this exclusive club

Anders Bylund (IBM): Would you believe that IBMhas never qualified as a bona fide dividend aristocrat, despite offering uninterrupted payouts for the past 101 years?

It's true. The business-computing giant traces its unbroken streak of annual payouts all the way back to 1916, but with plenty of dividend cuts and multi-year periods of simply stable dividend checks along the way. Through world wars and global economic crises, through market disruptions and competitive pressures, Big Blue has always found a way to keep those payout checks coming -- just not always at an accelerated pace. So the coveted dividend-aristocrat club has never counted IBM as a member.

That may be about to change, though. In fact, I would be downright shocked if it didn't happen by 2021.

The current streak of consecutive years with dividend increases goes back to 1995. IBM is only four years away from reaching that elusive 25-year threshold and joining the dividend-aristocrat elite.

And there's little reason to believe that IBM would falter before getting there.

The company has explicitly focused on returning oodles of cash to shareholders for many years, often going as far as financing its dividend increases and share buybacks with fresh debt. Management still swears by these principles, promising to return at least 70% of its rock-solid free cash flow directly to shareholders.

Dividend increases have become the preferred method of cash returns in recent years, and the company still has plenty of room to boost its payouts further. Big Blue has boosted its annual dividend payouts by a staggering 2,140% over the past 22 years, including 250% in the past decade.

This dividend streak is going places. IBM really wants to become a dividend aristocrat, and we shareholders sure appreciate that owner-friendly ambition.

Black Hawk down; dividends going up

Cory Renauer(United Technologies Corporation): After selling its Sikorsky helicopter unit toLockheed Martin, this company no longer manufacturers the iconic Black Hawk helicopter. The $9 billion sale was part of a long-term pivot away from the tricky military market to strengthen segments with competitive advantages that could easily help it become a dividend aristocrat two short years from now, when it would reach 25 straight years of divvy growth.

The company's Otis brand is far and away the world's most popular elevator, and that segment jibes well with United Technology's leading climate control, fire, and security products. Combined, these segments make United Technologies a one-stop shopping center for new building construction.

While the sale of commercial and industrial building equipment alone doesn't carry the widest margins, the aftermarket services required to maintain such equipment do. The same can be said of its aerospace operations, and long-term service contracts give the company a stable source of cash flow even during economic downturns.

United Technologies isn't stingy with the cash it generates, either. Over the past two years it has returned $16.5 billion to shareholders in dividends and share buybacks. At recent prices, the dividend offers a 2.4% yield that should rise as dependably as an Otis elevator. It used just 44% of the free cash flow generated last year to make payments, which gives it plenty of room for annual increases in the years ahead.

Maybe not the "next," but the next one worth buying first

JasonHall(Polaris Industries): Polaris is both too small to make the cut as a component of the S&P 500, and has "only" increased its regular dividend for 22 consecutive years. In other words, there are going to be a few companies to join the ranks of the dividend aristocrats before the powersports-vehicle maker does. But if it's strong dividend growth as well as steady capital appreciation you're looking for, this smaller company with a big opportunity for growth might be the best one to buy.

Over the past several years, Polaris has dealt with a number of challenges -- none bigger than general weakness in demand across several of its key product categories, but also including reputation-damaging recalls that could have a lingering negative effect on sales.

Yet even with these challenges, Polaris' management has done a solid job managing capital. The company remains solidly profitable even in a weak part of the demand cycle for its products, giving it a significant amount of wiggle room to both invest in the future of the business, while continuing to pay out and increase its dividend.

Furthermore, the U.S. economy continues to do well, and that bodes well for demand for motorcycles and ATVs going forward. Factor in international growth, and the best time to buy a "future" dividend aristocrat is when there's still a lot more room to grow. That's likely the case for Polaris today.

10 stocks we like better than IBMWhen 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.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now and IBM wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

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Anders Bylund owns shares of IBM. Cory Renauer has no position in any stocks mentioned. Jason Hall has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Polaris Industries. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Author Ann Coulter said Russian President Vladimir Putin is a much better ally in the fight against radical Islam than Germanys Angela Merkel.

Its strange that much of the media seems to, I mean with this obsession with NATO, see Merkel as more of an ally and Putin as the enemy, Coulter told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. Right now the real enemy of the United States and all of Western civilization is radical Islam and Putin is obviously a much better ally in that fight than Merkel is.

Coulter said Germanys open door migrant policy is destroying all of Western Europe.

Shes inviting all of these Muslim migrants in. They have to have training programs for the refugees Youd think theyd be able to control themselves and they cant do it, she said.

In her opinion, the medias perception of Russia is no longer relevant.

The whole idea of the NATO alliance was to oppose a communist Soviet Union bent on world domination well that doesnt exist anymore, she said. So we really are set in this as Obama and the entire media ridiculed Romney for one stupid remark in the 2012 campaign. This is really a 1980s Cold War mentality that bears no relation to whats happening right now.

Coulter also pointed out that Russia has been dealing with the Chechens, Muslims and Islamic terrorism for centuries now.

They warned us about the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston bombers and our government officials ignored them, she said. The fight now is with [radical] Islam, which openly says they are going to come in our country various countriesthe West, infiltrate and turn us all Muslim this is the new Soviet threat there is no Soviet threat.
The U.S. government said Friday it would appeal a ruling by a Maryland judge that halted pieces of President Trumps revised travel order. Earlier this week, two judges, including the one from Maryland, blocked the Trump administrations directive, which temporarily restricts travel from six predominantly Muslim countries. Former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman joined FOX Business to discuss why Trumps immigration policies are hurting the U.S.

If you look at who does the attacks it isnt the refugee from 5 countries or 7 countries who slipped in unvetted, it is someone in our countrywhose an American who grew up in Newark and went to Orlando and who needed an outlet and decided to hate the United States, he told FOX Businesses Liz Claman.

Gutman believes Trumps travel order will actually make the U.S. less safe because it puts a target on the back of America.

The security system is far greater in Zaventem Airport than in Kennedy Airport or Dallas Airport or any airport or U.S facility, but also the best news for the Europeans is the hate got transferred from them to the America, he said.

One person President Trump has criticized on immigration is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he met at the White House on Friday to discuss the economy and international security.

While the president pressed the German Chancellor on her contributions to NATO, Gutman cautioned President Trump against taking credit for Germanys willingness to increase its contributions to the international organization, also commenting the press conference was a skit worthy of Saturday Night Live.

So she [Angela Merkel] stepped up and said we will reach the two percent mark by 2025. When I went to see Belgium and my co-ambassadors went to see their European counter parts they already committed to meeting their share by 2020 so as President Trump was smiling Chancellor Merkel just took a five year extension on getting to the two percent, he said.
The man behind Brexit, Nigel Farage, said Queen Elizabeth has given the all-clear for negotiations to proceed.

Royal assent has now been given for us to go and trigger Article 50, Farage told the FOX Business Networks Stuart Varney.

The former UK Independence Party leader said the Queen, who is thought to remain neutral, made it quite clear during the referendum campaign that she was very much in favor of Brexit.

Wait a second, interjected Varney, the Queen subtly expressed a political opinion? Really?

Yes, its remarkable, replied Farage. Shes been on the throne now for 65 years but she made it pretty clear to people during the referendum that one of the big problems with being part of the European Union is we werent able to reach out to the commonwealth and the English speaking world and have the kind of relationship that we should.

He added, I think the Queen was very pleased with the Brexit result and did nothing when there were newspaper rumors and gossip about the Queens Brexit position, Buckingham Palace did nothing to deny any of it.

Nevertheless Farage said it may be a year before Brexit negotiations start.
As the debate over sanctuary cities continues, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke discusses their potential impact on American citizens and the looming showdown between sanctuary cities and the federal government.

According to Sheriff Clarke, American citizens have fewer protections compared to illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities, telling the FOX Business Networks Stuart Varney, Theyre aiding and abetting criminality when they allow safe haven and safe harbor for people who are in the country illegally and have been arrested or convicted of some very serious crimes.

Sheriff Clarke then pointed out that local law enforcement has an ethical responsibility to assist other agencies as well.

I think theres an ethical obligation as well, Stuart. Under the law enforcement code of ethics, one of the tenets is to assist with other lawful and legal law enforcement agencies in the pursuit of justice. And thats what this is here.

Clarke says Immigration and Customs Enforcement cant make local law enforcement honor ICE requests to detain illegal immigrants who have been arrested for serious offenses, but sanctuary cities could face financial consequences long term.

The feds can withhold federal funding and Im hoping that they do that because thats the carrot that we need to encourage people, when I say people, law enforcement executives, elected officials, mayors, governors who want to be sanctuary cities. I dont want to live in a sanctuary city.

When Varney asked if sanctuary cities were all about the Hispanic vote, that politicians who oppose sanctuary cities would risk losing the Hispanic vote, Clarke responded, Thats what they think it is on the left, but you dont because Donald Trump didnt do too bad with the Hispanic vote and he was preaching this the entire time.
President Donald Trump welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House on Friday for a meeting that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape the working relationship between two of the world's most powerful leaders.

The new U.S. president greeted the long-serving stateswoman at the White House with a handshake upon her arrival before they began talks in the Oval Office. Both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good.

The leader of Europe's largest economy and the U.S. president were expected to discuss funding for NATO and relations with Russia in their first meeting since Trump took office in January. Asked if they talked about NATO, Trump said the two leaders had discussed many things.

Merkel smiled comfortably in her chair next to the president, who sat with his legs apart and hands together. They are scheduled to hold a joint press conference around 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT.)

The meeting is consequential for both sides.

Merkel, who officials say has prepared carefully for the encounter, is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union.

Trump, who as a presidential candidate criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, will seek her support for his demand that North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations pay more for their defense needs.

Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman.

"Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government.

Trump is eager to see follow-through on his demand that European countries shoulder more of the burden of paying for the NATO alliance, which he has criticized.

He will also seek ideas from Merkel on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader Merkel has dealt with extensively and whom Trump, to the consternation of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, has praised.

"The president will be very interested in hearing the chancellor's views on her experience interacting with Putin," a senior administration official told reporters.

CLIMATE ACCORD

A U.S. official said the Trump administration's position on U.S. participation in the Paris agreement to curb climate change would likely come up in the Merkel meeting and be further clarified in the weeks and months ahead. Merkel is a strong supporter of international efforts to fight global warming.

Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed during his campaign to "cancel" the Paris agreement within 100 days, saying it would be too costly for the U.S. economy.

Since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue. In a New York Times interview in November, he said he would keep an open mind about the Paris deal.

Merkel is also likely to press Trump about U.S. support for European security, despite assurances from Vice President Mike Pence about that issue on a recent trip to Europe.

"There is still lingering doubt about ... how the U.S. sees European security, and whether the U.S. sees its security and Europes security as intrinsically linked and inseparable," Jeffrey Rathke, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told reporters.

(By Jeff Mason and Andreas Rinke; Additional reporting by Noah Barkin and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney and James Dalgleish)
President Donald Trump met Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a group of prominent CEOs with a vested interest in maintaining a beneficial business relationship between the two countries. The president also used the meeting as an opportunity to criticize international payments to NATO, the majority of which fall short of the target level. He did reaffirm his administrations commitment to the international organization, while saying it is only fair other countries step up their contributions to meet the two percent target, which Germany currently falls short of.

Despite the NATO jab, the president once again kept the focus on jobs, emphasizing the need to modernize training for Americas workforce, especially with respect to manufacturing jobs, which he noted were returning to the country big league.

The President lauded Germanys vocational program as one of the best in the world, saying: Germany has been a model for highly successful apprenticeship programs. As a result the youth unemployment rate is much lower than other countries.

Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) CEO Marc Beinoff, Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW) CEO Andrew Liveris and IBM (NYSE:IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty were among the American executives represented at the White House Friday.

Joe Kaeser, CEO of Siemens - the largest manufacturing and electronics company in Europe - and Harald Krueger, CEO of automaker BMW, accompanied Merkel to the meeting with Trump--which was postponed due a snowstorm on Tuesday.

After the press conference, the pair will touch on some more of the contentious economic issues between the countries, including trade.

Over lunch the Chancellor and I will talk about our economic partnership. We must work together toward fair and reciprocal trade policies that benefit both of our countries. Millions of U.S. citizens have been left behind by international commerce, Trump said.

President Trump has promised to tackle Americas mounting trade deficits, reiterating that pledge Wednesday during a speech in Detroit at the American Center for Mobility.

[Politicians] said [these chronic deficits] helped us win friends abroad. I don't want friends abroad if that's what it's going to takeThey dont like us. They think were stupid, the president said before a group of auto executives, workers and union members.

Trump's buy American, hire American agenda could include a House GOP proposed border-adjustment tax; a 20% tariff on goods produced outside the U.S. and sold domestically. The tariff is expected to be among the topics Merkel will bring up during the lunch.

There arereports that Merkel will urge against a border adjusted tax and is considering retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, American Action Forum president, in an interview with FOX Business. "In theory, the House Blueprint wouldnt affect U.S. trade at all, but other details of the House tax plan might.

Merkel called the U.S. border-adjustment tax a protective tariff and has said Berlin would consider retaliating with higher taxes on American businesses, according to Germanys Der Spiegel magazine.

In 2016, Americas trade deficit with Germany was its fifth largest at more than $64 billion. In January, the U.S. imported a surplus of $4.9 billion worth of goods from the European country when compared to the amount it exported there, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Earlier this month the presidents top advisor on trade, Peter Navarro, told a group of economists Germany is one of the most difficult trade deficits that we're going to have to deal with."

On Friday, Merkel thanked the United States for its contributions to the economic rise of Germany.

Germany is the third largest export economy in the world; in 2016 it enjoyed a record surplus of more than 8% of GDP, according to the countrys statistics agency. Last year, the U.S. served as the top purchaser of German goods, importing $114 billion worth of German products, chief among them vehicles and car parts. The proposed U.S. import tax has become a mounting concern for both Merkel, who faces reelection in September, and German business leaders.

German companies have made significant contributions to job creation in the U.S., where Siemens employs 50,000 American workers and BMWs South Carolina plant, with 8,000 jobs, is the nations top auto exporter. BMW says it is directly or indirectly responsible for 70,000 jobs in the U.S.

"During our talks, I informed the President about our operations in the USA: our largest manufacturing plant worldwide is in South Carolina and we are the countrys largest vehicle exporter by value," BMW CEO Harald Krueger said in a statement following the business roundtable.

Trump has been openly critical of automakers, including BMW, which he derided for its plans to build a new $1 billion plant in Mexico. He also criticized German car manufacturers for unfair trade practices in an interview with German newspaper Bild: "How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not too many, maybe none, you can see nothing over there, it's a one-way street.

The president will also likely discuss a prospective new trade alliance with the German chancellor. The Trump administration is still considering entering into the proposed trade agreement with the European Union, known as the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

Trend:

Young people especially like to celebrate Novruz, which the most favorite traditional holiday in Azerbaijan. On the eve of Novruz Bayrami, a Khoncha Festival dedicated to the forthcoming holiday was held at Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS). Arranged by the Higher Schools English Language and Humanitarian Disciplines Centre, it gathered 14 teams representing 14 study groups. Nearly 20 beautiful khonchas traditionally decorated with samani, national sweets, candles and dyed eggs, all of which are symbols on Novruz, were submitted to the festive contest. The khoncha prepared by the team N2 (second study group of the Foundation Course) was recognized as the winner of the Festival.

Within the celebration, other popular traditional contests were also held. They raised a vivid interest from the audience loudly and cheerfully supporting the participants. First-year Petroleum Engineering student Asaf Safarov became the winner of the Egg tapping contest and first-year Chemical Engineering student Farid Taghiyev won a Cake eating contest.

BHOS Rector Elmar Gasimov expressed his sincere congratulations on Novruz to the Khoncha Festival winners and participants as well as to the academic teaching staff and students of the Higher School. He wished them and their families happiness, nice holidays and new successes. The participants will certainly remember the festival, which was jointly celebrated by BHOS teachers, undergraduates and staff members to commemorate Novruz, for a long time.
"Power Rangers Samurai" actor Ricardo Medina has pleaded guilty to killing his roommate with a sword.

Medina, 38, entered a plea Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court to voluntary manslaughter.

He is facing six years in state prison.

Medina had been charged with murder and faced 26 years to life in prison if convicted on that charge.

Prosecutors say Medina stabbed Joshua Sutter in the abdomen with a sword two years ago at their house in Green Valley, a mountain town north of Los Angeles.

The two had argued over Medina's girlfriend and Medina initially claimed the stabbing was in self defense.

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In addition to his fatal abdominal wound, the autopsy showed Sutter had sustained sharp force injuries, including hand injuries consistent with defensive wounds.

Sutters sister Rachel Kennedy told local TV that her brother would have been 38 on Thursday.

Medina played the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger on "Power Rangers Wild Force" in 2002, and he was the voice of Deker on "Power Rangers Samurai" in 2011 and 2012.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Apparently, Starbucks doesnt appreciate a well-played pun.

The coffee chain has reportedly sent a letter to the owner of the tiny Star Box Coffee kiosk in London, telling him that hes infringing on the trademark rights of the coffee corporation.

Nasser Kamali, the Iranian refugee who has been running the stand for the last five years, has subsequently covered up the word star on his kiosk and on his coffee cups  even though he claims he didnt name his business after Starbucks.

As he told the Camden New Journal, Kamali is a Marxist, hence the red star reference.

I do believe in Marxism and that is very important to me, said Kamali, 52. That is why I had the red star logo on my stickers. I am in a box. Its my red, star box.

STARBUCKS NEW SPRINGTIME CUPS ALREADY GENERATING MIXED EMOTIONS

However, Kamali told the Camden New Journal that he isnt planning to fight Starbucks in court, as he believes he doesnt have the resources to win.

They have all the lawyers  and the government  so I just made the changes, said Kamali.

Starbucks first contacted Kamali last month  via the U.K. law firm of Burges Salmon  by hand-delivering a letter to his kiosk. In it, they claimed that Kamalis use of the Star Box name could weaken the strength of the brand.

Starbucks tells the Star Box Coffee hut in Swiss Cottage to change its name - after five years of trading https://t.co/nNiFFS2tq1 pic.twitter.com/Fm9kYDbAd5  Camden New Journal (@NewJournal) March 16, 2017

As a spokesman for Starbucks further explained to CNJ, Trademark law is there to protect brand identity. In this instance it was too close to our brand and could lead to such confusion.

Starbucks has also pursued legal action against similarly named coffee shops in the past. The once brought a lawsuit against a New Hampshire-based coffee shop called Charbucks in (they lost in 2011, and again lost an appeal in 2013), and more recently, the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Dumb Starbucks, a parody coffee shop opened by a comedian in 2014. (However, as Eater notes, Dumb Starbucks may have actually won their right to use the name under parody law.)

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Still, Kamali isnt planning to fight this one, but he did send Starbucks a small message by refusing to accept their 300-pound ($370) goodwill payment from the company.

I may be small, but inside I am big, said Kamali. Im not taking their money.
Green beer is a fixture at St. Patricks Day parties, right alongside Kiss Me, Im Irish t-shirts and guys in cartoonishly large leprechaun hats.

But unlike t-shirts and oversized headgear, theres a small chance that emerald-hued ales could devastate a delicate stomach.

Dr. Partha Nandi, a board-certified gastroenterologist and a fellow of the American College of Physicians, tells Fox News that consuming green dye, while generally harmless, has the potential to send St. Paddys Day revelers straight to the bathroom if ingested in larger quantities.

If you're just drinking green beer and snacks one day of the year, a few drops of the dye should not make any difference to your health, Nandi tells Fox News. [But] you may experience some GI distress with diarrhea.

The problem, as Nandi points out, is that artificial dyes are not meant to be consumed in anything other than moderate amounts.

ANHEUSER BUSCH SUED OVER SPUDS MCKENZIE SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL

In a 2012 article published in The Huffington Post, Dr. Braden Kuo, a gastroenterologist who works at the Digestive Healthcare Center of Massachusetts General Hospital, further explained that artificial dyes arent easily absorbed into the body. And, upon reaching the large intestine, they have the potential to draw water into the bowels.

Additionally, food colorings may actually dye the stools of those who ingest them, although colorful stools are not necessarily an indicator of a larger health problem. Who could forget Burger King's Halloween-themed burger from 2015?

And just this month, a pink poop pandemic swept the internet after Oreo fans noticed peculiar-hued stools caused by ingesting Peeps-flavored Oreos. But according to Dr. Jamile Wakim-Fleming, a gastroenterologist at the Cleveland Clinic who spoke with Health.com, those occurrences were likely the result of undigested dye.

In the case of Oreo Peeps, it's a food dye called FD&C Red Number 3, said Wakim-Fleming.

Another possible side effect of green beer is green teeth, but it usually only affects teeth with moderate plaque build-up.

Green beer can act like the colorful disclosing plaque rinses used to teach kids where theyre missing brushing, explained dentist Joseph Roberts in Philadelphia magazine. So you might want to avoid swapping spit with people sporting green mouths.

The green food coloring that is added to the beer stains the bacterial cell walls in plaque. So if his smile is looking all green, its probably not just the beer.

DRINKING AT THE DENTIST'S OFFICE MIGHT SOON BE ILLEGAL IN TEXAS

There are always natural dye alternatives, too, but unless a foodstuff lists its ingredients on the label  and a glass of green beer at a pub likely does not  it can be hard to determine the makeup of the food colorings used.

One New York bartender, who wished to remain unnamed, told Fox News that he knows exactly which kind of dye his bar utilizes, because he mixes each beer with green coloring to order. Meanwhile, a representative for a different New York-area bar revealed that they outsource the process, and dont know exactly how its dyed.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

But if the origin of the dye is that great a concern, Dr. Nandi might be able to put your fears to rest.

If you eat minimal to moderate amounts, you should have no real health effects, explains Nandi.

Nandi is actually more concerned with bar patrons keeping their beer consumption to appropriate levels  after all, theres only a small chance that green beer will cause diarrhea, but a much larger chance that too many pints can lead to a much worse condition.

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You can develop liver disease, heart disease, certain forms of cancer, and pancreatitis, warns Nandi, who recommends no more than a single drink per day for women, and two per day for men. Excessive drinking can also lead to problems at home, at work, with friends, and even with strangers, he adds.

That said, Nandi isnt totally against enjoying an alcoholic drink on St. Paddys Day  be it green-tinted or otherwise.

This Friday, have a green beer with friends, says Nandi. But don't drink excessively.
It's the last thing any single woman should have to deal with.

Police are on the lookout for a serial dater after several ladies in Los Angeles claim they met a man who not only wasted their time, but used them as a foil in his plot to eat for free, reports KCAL 9.

One female victim, who did not want to be identified, alleges she met the man who called himself Paul Gonzales online. Another says the man called himself Dave Gonzales.

CHEF'S HILARIOUS MATERNITY PHOTOS GO VIRAL

One of the women says she met the man in a BJs in Pasadena, Calif. and thought she was in for a great time.

She told KCAL 9, he ordered a glass of Pinot, a Caesar salad with a side of shrimp, a steak, and a baked potato.

She says he gobbled up his food, and then got a phone call. He told his date he needed to take the call and then she says he never returned  leaving her to handle thewhole bill.

Recalled the jilted woman, The waiter came back and said Hes not out there. Is this a first date? And I said: Yes, this is a first blind date, and he said, Hes gone. 

After doing some research online, the woman discovered that she wasn't alone. Her diner-dasher date had been caught via security video last summer running out on a cut and color from a Burbank hair salon.

She also found two previous stories on Gonzales about him stiffing at least two other women on dates.

CHATEAU MIRAVAL OWNER CONFIRMS BRAD PITT, ANGELINA JOLIE NOT SELLING ESTATE

According to the L.A. County District Attorneys office, 44-year-old Gonzales has two bench warrants out for his arrest after not showing up to court for petty theft and driving without a valid license. Records show hes already been to jail several times for misdemeanor arrests.

I was shocked that anybody would do this. And I even texted him, is everything OK? And obviously he never responded, one of the women told KCAL.

In at least one incident, the restaurant decided to pay for Gonzales' food so his date only had to fork over cash to pay for his wine.
An Alaska Airlines flight attendant is one step closer to retaking the skies after receiving a life-saving kidney transplant from inside the cockpit. Jenny Stansels surgeon told PEOPLE that Alaska Airlines pilot Jodi Harskamps donated a kidney immediately began working for the 38-year-old, who was on medical leave after being diagnosed with kidney failure in March 2016.

We could not be more pleased with the initial outcomes from both Jodi and Jennys surgeries, Dr. Andrew Precht, director of Seattle Swedish Medical Center, told PEOPLE. Everything went as planned, and as soon as the surgical connections were made, the donor kidney immediately started working. Jodi gave Jenny a new lease on life with a beautiful, healthy kidney.

A GoFundMe page set up to help cover travel and medical expenses had detailed the run-up to the surgery, which included details about Stansels 10-hour daily dialysis regimen.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Just last March 10  one year to the day  was my very last day at work, Stansel told Q13 Fox ahead of the March 13 transplant. I had to take a passenger seat on my way home I was so sick.

Stansels kidney failure was brought on by a lupus diagnosis 15 years earlier. She had sent out a company-wide email asking for a volunteer kidney donor who matched her O-positive blood type. Harskamp told Q13 Fox she remembered Stansel handing out flyers and setting up a Facebook page, and decided to volunteer when she discovered how sick she was.

Theres a small chance that I will never return to flying if my remaining kidney does not pick up the slack for my removed kidney, Harskamp, who has been flying with Alaska Airlines for 11 years, told Q13 Fox. Ive always said that my job is risk assessment, thats what I do for a living, and I have determined that the reward in this is far greater than the risk. Im going to lose a kidney, and she gets to live  its a pretty fair trade-off.

Harskamp, who has two children and is based in Anchorage, Alaska, volunteered to fly to Seattle for pre-op testing and will spend several weeks away from her family for recovery.

I have so much love for this Super hero! Stansel, a mother of three, posted on their GoFundMe page.

The pair hope their story inspires others to become a volunteer donor in honor of Marchs National Kidney Month.
Below is a statement from a spokesperson for British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in response to the op-ed "Did Obama spy on Trump?" by Judge Andrew Napolitano:

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."
Three years ago ISIS began attacking Iraq's Christians and Yizidis in an onslaught of rape, murder and ruin that was properly designated as genocide on March 17, 2016 by the State Department.

Now, as their hometowns in Iraqs northern Nineveh Province become liberated in an ongoing coalition offensive, a few brave Christian and Yizidi genocide survivors are straggling back to the rubble that was once their homes and businesses.

The next six months will be the moment of truth for them.

This period will determine whether these ancient communities -- some of whom still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth and trace their faith to Thomas the Apostle  will be able to leave the squalid refugee camps and displacement shelters to return home. It will determine whether they can rebuild their shattered lives in the lands their families have lived in for millennia.

The imminent defeat of ISIS control over Nineveh is necessary. But these genocide survivors need more help and protection if they are to survive.

While the Obama State Department acknowledged the genocide, it took little diplomatic action to help its survivors.

As the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil told Congress, on September 22, it has received no U.N. or State Department USAID-administered humanitarian aid for 70,000 genocide survivors, since 2014. This encompasses the largest community of Iraqi Christian refugees, as well as some Yizidis under its care.

In the State Departments recently-released human rights annual reports for Iraq  drafted under the Obama administration  there was no mention whatsoever of ISIS genocide in Iraq, though genocide is the worlds worst human rights atrocity, one about which, after the Jewish Holocaust, we solemnly vowed never again to be silent.

There is a new danger that Christian areas will be omitted from U.N. reconstruction plans and an ISIS genocide investigation in Iraq to be initiated by the U.N. Security Council. Nothing can justify such oversights.

Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq had 1.4 million Christians. After being killed or driven out, they now they number about 250,000. Incredibly, despite everything that's happened, Iraqs Christian community remains the Middle Easts fourth largest indigenous Christian community. We should be doing more to preserve it. We should be helping all these beleaguered minorities.

Christian sources tell me that two Christian families have returned to Mosul, an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim city of 2 million, whose western part remains a war zone.

Several hundred more Christian families have gone home to a handful of majority-Christian villages close to Kurdistan, including Teleskof, where U.S. Navy SEAL Charlie Keating IV lost his life last May, fighting to liberate it.

Ninevehs largest Christian city, Qaraqosh, which is not within the protection zone of Kurdish Peshmerga forces, sits as a ghost town, the walls of its homes and churches still reek of the oil and fires from when the jihadis laid waste to it.

Bartella and other nearby once-Christian towns are now controlled by Iranian-backed militias who man check-points there and populated mainly by Shiites flush with money, likely provided by Iran.

Singar, the Yizidi center in western Nineveh, was liberated over a year ago, but only a few families have resettled there. It lies in ruins and over a dozen mass graves, filled with its former residents, remain untouched. This month, skirmishes broke out between Yizidi and Kurdish militias formed to protect it.

President Trump, at the National Prayer Breakfast this month, and Vice President Pence, in a recent tweet, have acknowledged the genocide suffered by these minority faith communities. They now should act.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley should be instructed to ensure that the U.N. fairly assists each of these vulnerable minorities in its aid and reconstruction programs and in genocide investigations.

Amb. Haley has already been a bold voice for the reform of glaring human rights imbalances at the U.N. She must address this one as well.

At a March 22 State Department summit being convened with 68 state members of the anti-ISIS coalition, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should lead to ensure continuing protection, help and investment for these genocide-targeted minorities.

After all these centuries, without more Western help, these minority communities will not be able to survive a rapidly radicalizing Middle East.
One year ago, on March 14th, 2016, Congress embraced something more elusive than bi-partisanship: unanimity. The House of Representatives voted 393-0 to declare that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.

Led by Representatives Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the resolution was a lesson in complete cooperation on an issue that transcends politics.

A few days later, on March 17th, then-Secretary of State John Kerry followed suit, declaring that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims. In July, the Senate concurred, also unanimously.

Such unanimity is rare in government.and so are genocide designations by our State Department. Only two such declarations have ever been made, both for situations still ongoing  ISIS persecutions, and, in 2004, the Sudanese governments massacres in Darfur.

Now a new Congress and a new Administration can act again-- to go beyond declarations to action.

A year ago, Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria were elated by the genocide designation. They hoped it would be followed by direct U.S. action to stabilize their communities through government aid.

They were wrong. Shockingly, far too often, that was not to be. Despite the declarations that the crime of crimes was being committed, there was, by and large, no special outreach or direct funding by the U.S. government to communities that suffered through the atrocities.

When I visited Iraq last May, I spoke with Christian and Yazidi genocide survivors, who had been overlooked in this terrible way. As I had tea with a group of Yazidis  living by an open sewer in the Erbil suburb of Ozal City  I asked them if they had received aid from the U.S. government or the United Nations.

They said: No. Only Iraqi Christians had helped them.

Then one of them thought hard and spoke up. We did receive two kilos of lamb from the U.N .in the summer of 2014, he said.

And since then? I asked.

Nothing, he responded. Only the [local Catholic] Church has helped us.

That Catholic Church in the form of the Archdiocese of Erbil  is caring not only for Yazidis, but also for 12,000 families, the largest population of displaced Christians in Iraq. Despite that enormous responsibility, the Church has yet to receive money or anything else from the U.S. government or from the U.N.

At the U.S. Consulate in Erbil last spring, officials told me they prioritized individual needs. But as we spoke further, they admitted they did not think in terms of the groups targeted by the genocide at all. The only priority was meeting basic needs of any refugee There was no thought being given to supporting communities that faced genocide lest they disappear. It was the same story at the U.N. compound.

It doesnt need to be this way.

This should not have been allowed to happen. But more importantly, this should not be allowed to continue.

The United States government could assist genocide survivors  as we have done over and over again for the past 100 years and more. Action is needed  the kind of action we took in Darfur a decade-and-a-half ago that resulted in more than $7 billion in aid being given to the people in that region, with almost $3 billion in direct assistance to Darfur via USAID.

Two weeks ago, I received a phone call from an archbishop in Iraq. He was hopeful. He told me that he recently had an excellent meeting with a U.S. official there and the attitude that excluded his community was changing.

He was optimistic that this would soon result in meaningful financial support for his shrinking flock  a flock that has lived as refugees for two-and-a-half years and is losing hope.

There is another reason for optimism, which I witnessed just before Christmas. I was in Iraq again, this time with Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), and he was committed to helping fix the aid situation.

We spoke with displaced Christians, UN and U.S. officials, and Church leaders. Congressman Smith wanted to know why communities like the Christians in Erbil were not getting U.S. and U.N. aid and what could be done about it.

Congress had not acted last year on Smiths bill to help provide aid to these genocide survivors (H.R. 5961).

But based on our trip to Iraq, he  along with Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA)  reintroduced an enhanced version of the bill this year. Known as the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act (H.R. 390), the proposed legislation would ensure that those who suffered genocide are not ignored in U.S. aid distribution.

The budget for 2017 is already in place, so the benefits of action taken now would be immediate. Going forward, until the situation for these communities stabilizes, the United States will continue to have the opportunity to play a major role in ensuring that religious and ethnic minorities from the region do not disappear. This can be done by continuing to provide funds in future years for the assistance of genocide targeted communities in Iraq and Syria.

Such actions would change the future of a devastated region. It would also be a step toward transcending the partisanship of politics at home.
Suggesting that Donald Trump should keep his head down, ignore petty slights and soldier on is like telling a raging bull to cover up his privates; both are unlikely propositions. Nonetheless, its good advice. The country elected Mr. Trump because voters were unhappy with the status quo  a sputtering economy, the loss of power and pride to overseas rivals, the unaffordability of healthcare, the inability to stem illegal immigration and the dithering over how to protect the country from terrorism. Outrage from a jilted Left doesnt make those problems any less real.

For the good of the country, and the good of the GOP, President Trump needs to make progress on these issues; astonishingly, if you can peer through the volcanic eruption of liberal disapproval, youll see hes doing just that.

Take immigration. Despite being pilloried as hateful and barbaric, Mr. Trump has stood by his position that legal immigration into our country is welcome and beneficial, but that illegal immigration will not be tolerated. Sending that message loud and clear has already had an impact, as common sense would have predicted. Border crossings plummeted 40% in Trumps first month, to the lowest level in five years.

Thats a victory, and it could lead to an even greater accomplishment. For many years conservatives have demanded that secure borders precede immigration reform. If Trump can stem the inflow of undocumented people, perhaps he can then resolve the status of the 11 million living in the country illegally. That would be a major win, and Trump loves winning.

Look at healthcare. For all the sturm und drang, the GOP has managed to wrangle a complex bill through several committees in the House that would effectively dismantle Obamacares onerous taxes and fines, reduce the deficit and begin a much-needed reform of Medicaid. Despite predictable posturing from all sides, the bill will likely be punched and pulled into legislation that most Republicans can live with. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than Obamacare, with its narrowing choices and spiraling costs? You bet.

How about trade? The Trump White House last week laid down a significant marker, hitting Chinese telecommunications company ZTE with a $1.2 billion fee for shipping goods illegally to North Korea and Iran in violation of sanctions. The penalty is the largest-ever levied by the Commerce Department; more important, Secretary Wilbur Ross says payment will be demanded. The Obama administration was so deferential to China that even when it won assessments against Beijing through the World Trade Organization, it failed to collect the billions owed in fees. When our trading partners cheat, as they have done with impunity, we will hold them accountable, vows Ross. High time.

Want federal spending to decline? Take a look at Trumps budget. This is another marker, putting Washington on notice that nothing is sacred. The establishment is howling over cuts to sacred cows like the EPA, but with $20 trillion in debt and deficits poised to rise again, something has to give.

The punditry is aghast that Trump wants to cut spending at the EPA, but the agencys ineffectiveness weakens the case for the status quo. In spite of its 15,000 employees, 10 regional offices and a budget of over $8 billion, the EPA completely whiffed on fixing the poisoned water disaster in Flint, Michigan. Its own Inspector General reported that the agency should have intervened and issued an emergency order a full seven months earlier than it did. They should have had a greater sense of urgency, said the watchdog group, since protecting the health of our citizens is surely the EPAs number one goal.

At least it used to be. During the Obama years, management fired many older workers to cut costs. They recruited a younger, more diverse workforce, reaching out for the first time to historically black colleges, for instance. They hired people fired up by President Obamas climate crusade and by the mission of the EPA, a place the local union leader described as a great place to work because you get to do something you believe in."

In other words, they stocked the place with zealots, which is why Scott Pruitt, the new agency head and others are being purposefully undermined. David Schnare, who was on the Trump transition team at the EPA, recently resigned, noting the pushback he and others faced from a group of employees who were definitely antagonistic to the incoming administration. He described the group as here for a cause. This is not new news, since EPA workers took the unprecedented step of lobbying against the confirmation of Mr. Pruitt, but it is not good news.

As with most federal agencies, the EPA has outgrown its mandate and its mission. One excuse management gave for the Flint debacle is that they were uncertain of the states role. That confusion was reasonable, in that much of what the EPA purports to do is already handled by the states. The reality is that a lot of the work done in D.C. (but not all) can and should be done at the state level. That would lead to greater efficiency, and also lower costs.

Trump is on the right track, as is the country. His instincts are sound, pressing for more accountability and more common sense in government. Its not easy draining the swamp, but that is what the voters want, and that is what he is already delivering. He needs to stay the course. Now if he could just have one speedbump in his Twitter feed.
President Trumps America First budget released Thursday that calls for steep cuts to the State Department and Environmental Protection Agency in order to increase defense spending was called by some Republicans as a pie-in-the-sky wish list that will never pass Congress in tact.

It is not uncommon for a presidents initial skinny budget to face an uphill fight with congressmen who control the governments purse strings. But the early resistance is notable since Republicans control both the House and Senate. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared to hedge his optimism on the plan that he called a blueprint.

For better or worse, Trumps budget appears to make good on some of his key campaign promises. He calls for an increase in defense spending by $54 billion, which The Associated Press points out is the largest increase since President Reagans military buildup of the 1980s. The defense increase will be paid for by cuts to the EPA, State Department and federal funding for the arts.

A budget that puts #AmericaFirst must make safety its no. 1 prioritywithout safety there can be no prosperity: https://t.co/9lxx1iQo7m  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2017

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who often finds himself at odds with Trump, said plainly, It is clear that this budget proposed today cannot pass the Senate.

Trump said in a statement that to keep Americans safe, we have made the tough choices that have been put off for too long.

Republicans leaders spread out across the country have found items in the budget that would likely not still well with their voters.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, spoke out against the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., called out the budget cut on the Appalachian Regional commission, which assists communities in his region. He called Trumps budget cuts draconian, careless and counterproductive.

I just want to make sure that rural America, who was very supportive to Trump, doesnt have to take a disproportionately high cut, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., told the AP.

Republicans praised the president for beefing up the Pentagon, but they were far less enthusiastic about accepting Trump's recipe for doing so without adding to the nation's $20 trillion debt.

The very programs that most help the middle class are those that get clobbered the hardest by these #Trumpcuts.  Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 16, 2017

"While we support more funding for our military and defense, we must maintain support for our farmers and ranchers," said North Dakota Republican John Hoeven, blasting a 21 percent cut to the Agriculture Department's budget.

KRAUTHAMMER: TRUMP'S BUDGET PROPOSAL IS 'DEAD ON ARRIVAL'

Democrats have spoken out against the budget they say would devastate the work done by agencies like the EPA. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted, Democrats in Congress will emphatically oppose these cuts & urge our Republican colleagues to reject them as well.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said this is not a take-it-or-leave-it budget. He told The Washington Post that the message were sending to the Hill is, we want more money for the things the president talked about, defense being the top one, national security. And we dont want to add to the budget deficit. If Congress has another way to do that, were happy to talk to them about it.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 17

By Jani Babayeva  Trend:

The Azerbaijani capital, Baku, is hosting the Days of Hungary on March 16-17, Trend Life reports.

The Days of Hungary includes a series of events to present history, culture, art of Hungary in Azerbaijan. The events organizer is the Hungarian embassy in Azerbaijan.

As part of the Days of Hungary, the Boulevard Hotel Baku hosted a fashion show and presentation of Hungarian cuisine. The event was attended by Aniko Levai, spouse of Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as prominent public figures, representatives of science, culture and art, representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Azerbaijan.

Before the events official opening ceremony, Hungarys Ambassador to Azerbaijan Imre Laszloczki told reporters that as part of the Days of Hungary, the Library of Azerbaijans National Academy of Sciences hosted the presentation of Imre Madachs The Tragedy of Man book, published in Azerbaijani language.

Meanwhile, the Nizami Cinema Center demonstrated a movie based on this book and the International Mugham Center hosted a concert program, during which Hungarian folk music was sounded.

The diplomat noted that relations between Hungary and Azerbaijan are at a high level. There are quite strong relations at the level of the two countries ministries, added Laszloczki.

During the fashion show, titled FolkTREND, the Hungarian brands manufacturing clothing and adornments - Zema, Anni Pastor, Meyke, Romani, Igezo, Innoe  were presented.

Alongside with the Hungarian designers, famous Azerbaijani designer, winner of the European Fashion Award-2016 Fakhriya Khalafova also showcased her collection during the event.

Khalafova in her collection used national Azerbaijani ornaments and national symbols, which made the collection unique.

The Azerbaijani designer noted that the events main aim is the demonstration of folk costumes in a modern interpretation.

After the fashion show, guests were invited to another hall, where they could taste the Hungarian cuisine.

It should be noted that Hungarian cuisine is distinguished by a wide variety of meat dishes, using seasonal vegetables, fruits, fresh bread, dairy products and cheese.

The most delicious and exquisite dishes of Hungarian cuisine were presented during the event.
The daughter of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was detained nearly six months ago and remains held in a Turkish prison without formal charges, is pleading for an audience with President Trump and asking for his help securing her father's release.

"We really, really want to get this case, my father's case, to President Trump," 19-year-old Jacqueline Brunson, a student in North Carolina, told Fox News in an interview via Skype. "We really feel it would be helpful to have the president's support and have him personally arguing for my father's case to get him back home safely to his family."

Brunson was detained in October along with his wife in the Turkish coastal town of Izmir where he has carried out his ministry for two decades. The arrests were part of Turkish authorities broad crackdown after the 2016 failed military coup.

According to Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, who has worked quietly behind the scenes to secure Brunson's release, the couple was called in for a routine visa check when the ordeal began.

"Instead they were detained there at the police station, saying they may be part of a terrorist plot," Lankford said. "Then they released his wife but kept him and then later transferred Dr. Brunson to a prison facility."

In December, Lankford personally travelled to the Turkish capital Ankara and met with their department of justice. "For the first time, we learned what these charges are. They were given to me orally."

Lankford said the Turkish authorities alleged that Brunson had helped Kurdish refugees (Turkey labels the Kurds an insurgent group) and that the pastor attended a conference sponsored by Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turkish government accused of instigating the 2016 coup from his Pennsylvania base.

"It seemed very odd for them to be able to pick up ... an American citizen that's been serving for more than 20 years in Turkey, and has been very engaged, very accepted by the culture and then suddenly, for him to be swept up and to be part of a terrorist investigation without any evidence, with just an accusation -- and still to this day, six months later, no charges," Lankford said.

"This is a completely false accusation, there is nothing to back this up," Jacqueline Brunson said. "In it all, he's remaining faithful. He's saying, God I don't understand what is happening, I don't know how much longer this can last. I don't know what is going to happen in the end. What he is saying, is, God I'm still choosing you to follow despite everything."

The Embassy of Turkey in Washington, D.C., has not responded to questions from Fox News for this report.

Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), has worked for the successful release of other Americans wrongly detained. In the Brunson case, Sekulow said they are working through the United Nations and the Trump administration. "We have heard from nearly 230,000 people demanding his release. The fact is Pastor Andrew is wrongfully being held for his Christian faith. He should be released immediately and allowed to return home to his family in America."

Lankford said it is very clear that through the last six months of the transition of the Obama administration to the Trump administration this fell through the cracks at the State Department.

We are trying to keep it alive," Lankford said, adding there is a simple solution for all involved. "There is a way to be able to resolve this. If they are having concern about this United States citizen, deport them  but not just hold them indefinitely with detention."

A State Department official told Fox News the department takes seriously its obligation to assist U.S. citizens arrested abroad: When a U.S. citizen is detained overseas, we seek to visit as soon as possible and to provide appropriate consular services. Privacy considerations prevent us from commenting further."

In February, a bipartisan letter from the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees was signed by 78 members of Congress to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "seeking the unconditional release of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been unjustly detained in Turkey since October and denied regular and appropriate access to legal counsel and American consular services."

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Brunson's home state, said through a spokesperson that he "is aware of this case and his office has been in touch with appropriate authorities."

"As frank as I can say it, one of the things the Brunson family would ask of all Americans is to be able to pray for Dr. Brunson and for Mrs. Brunson as she is there waiting," Lankford said. "They are extremely confused about what's happening. We are asking for the American government to be as involved as we can, to continue to raise this with the Turkish government, and to continue to pray for the Brunson family."
Now were talking real money.

With President Trump detailing the budget cuts he would make to pay for his sharp rise in defense spending, the battle for control of the swamp is getting under way.

The apocalyptic reaction, led by the media, reminds me of 1981, when Ronald Reagan proposed what were then described as draconian proposals to slash the budget. Trumps cutbacks are far larger. And its worth noting that while Reagan got much of what he wanted, the federal budget wound up being bigger by the end of his tenure, and he didnt eliminate a major agency.

But even the smaller cuts that Trump wants to make are hard because every program in that gargantuan budget has a fiercely loyal constituency backed up by lobbyists who know how many jobs would be lost and in which congressional districts.

Those who dont want their programs slashed have a built-in PR advantage. They can generate coverage of real-life victims who would be hurt by the withdrawal of this or that federal subsidy, while the other side has to make abstract arguments: Government is too wasteful, the deficit is out of control, were living beyond our means.

A Washington Post headline: Massive cuts to the arts, science and the poor.

A New York Times headline: Trump Proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments.

A Huffington Post headline: "Trump Government Bloodletting."

A BuzzFeed headline: Slash and Birdwith a picture of Big Bird, since Trump would end aid to PBS, along with National Public Radio.

Some of this is part of a culture war, and Republicans have tried before to zero out PBS. While big-city stations and programs like News Hour and Sesame Street would survive, some of the smaller of PBSs 350 stations would be faced with extinction.

Another Washington Post story ticks off some of the subsidized services that lower-income people rely upon:

If youre a poor person in America, Trumps budget is not for you. It would slash or abolish programs that have provided low-income Americans with help on virtually all fronts, including affordable housing, banking, weatherizing homes, job training, paying home heating oil bills, and obtaining legal counsel in civil matters.

A New York Times piece says that many Trump voters would be among those penalized:

Some of the budget losers, it turns out, may be some of the very constituencies that have been most supportive of the new president during his improbable rise to power.

While border guards will have more prisons to lock up unauthorized immigrants, rural communities will lose grants and loans to build water facilities and financing to keep their airports open. As charter schools are bolstered, after-school and summer programs will lose money. As law enforcement agents get more help to fight the opioid epidemic, lower-income Americans will have less access to home energy aid, job training programs and legal services.

All this is true. Its also the price that must be paid to slim down governmentalthough Trump is demanding deeper cuts in part to offset his proposed $54-billion boost in defense spending and his planned tax cuts.

Of course, some agencies employ the Washington Monument defense, singling out the services that will most outrage the public as opposed to the training and research programs where much of the fact may lie. (No threat to close the monument this year, since its already shut down for repairs.)

Its reminiscent in some ways of the ObamaCare debate, where the rallying cry of repealing the program is being tempered by the impact on millions of Americans who could lose their coverage.

No president gets everything they want in a budget. But by taking an ax to so many programs, Trump has created a major test with Congress in what is likely to be an unsympathetic media climate.
A remark that President Trump made to Fox News on Wednesday isnt sitting well with the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who is now suggesting that the commander-in-chiefs comments, if true, could be compared to the actions of government leakers.

In an exclusive interview with Foxs Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, President Trump suggested "the CIA was hacked and a lot of things were taken." He added "that was during the Obama years. That was not during us."

The president may have been referring to the recent publishing of what are alleged to be CIA documents and hacking tools by the website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims that the leaks are real, and highlight what he calls the devastating incompetence of the agencys cybersecurity. The CIA has yet to confirm whether the materials are, in fact, authentic.

On Thursday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, took serious issue with the presidents suggestion that the agency was hacked. And Schiff says that, if true, the presidents comments are akin to the actions of those who leak government secrets.

WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS STAND BY TRUMP WIRETAPPING CLAIM

"It would be one thing if the presidents statements were the product of intelligence community discussion and a purposeful decision to disclose information to the public, but that is unlikely to be the case," Schiff said in a statement.

He added that while he thinks "the president has the power to declassify whatever he wants... this should be done as the product of thoughtful consideration and with intense input from any agency affected. For anyone else to do what the president may have done, would constitute what he deplores as 'leaks.'"

A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows a record 73 percent of voters have confidence in the CIA, up from 67 percent in December.

In recent weeks, the president has made clear his distaste for leakers. On February 24, the president lamented on Twitter that "the FBI is totally unable to stop the national security 'leakers' that have permeated our government for a long time Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect."

Critics point to his support for WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign as evidence to the contrary. I love WikiLeaks, then-nominee Trump said during campaign remarks in October.

The investigation into possible CIA hacking isn't the only thing over which Schiff seems to be at odds with Trump. On Wednesday, Schiff and House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) repeated their assertions that they have yet to see any evidence that supports the president's claim that Trump Tower was the subject of wiretapping.

TRUMP GIVES CIA POWER TO LAUNCH DRONE STRIKES

And on Thursday, the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee took that assertion one step further, suggesting in a statement that they have seen no evidence that Trump Tower was under surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.

In a March 4 tweet, the president suggested that "Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory." When asked on Wednesday why he didnt withhold comment until he had proof of his claim, President Trump told Tucker Carlson don't forget, when I say wiretapped, those words were in quotes [T]hat really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that was in quotes, but that's a very important thing.

New Fox polling also suggests that 76 percent of voters think President Trump should produce documents to back his claim about the wiretaps. That includes 63 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents.

The Department of Justice has until Monday to comply with an order from the House Intelligence Committee to gather evidence related to President Trump's surveillance claim, though Rep. Nunes suggests he expects some of that evidence on Friday.

Monday is also when the committee expects to hold its first open hearing on Russia's interference in the 2016 race and possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia. FBI Director Comey is expected to face direct questioning at that hearing, and it isnt just the House thats looking for answers.

Senator Lindsay Graham suggested earlier this week that subpoenas arent out of the question if lawmakers dont get the information theyre looking for.

"Congress, Graham said, is going to flex its muscles."
A Secret Service laptop was stolen from an agent's vehicle parked in front of a New York residence, law enforcement sources confirm to Fox News.

The U.S. Secret Service can confirm that an employee was the victim of a criminal act in which our Agency issued laptop computer was stolen, the agency said in a statement Friday. An investigation is ongoing and the Secret Service is withholding additional comment until the facts are gathered.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

"The Secret Service believes this is a petty theft, which is not uncommon in the area, not a national security incident in which the agent was targeted," former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino told Fox News.

Since the agent left her PIV card with access codes with the computer, that makes it easier to access the information on the computer. However, the good news that is once the computer is connected to the internet, it can be wiped, according to Bongino.

If the security information for Trump Tower was somehow on the laptop and was then removed from the laptop, however, the entire security plan for the Manhattan skyscraper would have to be overhauled, Bongino added.

Bongino said that the security plan would likely include information on where assets are located, where people are located, sensitive locations, where the water comes in, where the air comes in, where the hard rooms are.

Law enforcement sources could not confirm specific information that may have been housed on that laptop, but Fox News is told that such laptops have in place security features that would prevent someone without authorized access from simply logging on and searching through its contents.

The laptop was taken from an agents vehicle parked outside of her home in Brooklyn, according to a New York Daily News report.

Some items that were taken, such Secret Service pins  which could be used to get access to secure areas  and an agency radio have been recovered, a Secret Service source told Fox News, but not the laptop.

"The Secret Service is very heavily involved and, citing national security, there's very little we have on our side," a New York City Police Department source told the New York Daily News.

"There's data on there that's highly sensitive, the police source added. They're scrambling like mad.

The Secret Service source told Fox News that they dont believe the laptop was stolen by a foreign power and that the incident is being investigated as a street crime.

Fox News Matt Dean, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Henry contributed to this report.


EXCLUSIVE: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in an exclusive interview with Fox News, refused to rule out increased weaponization and even nuclearization of Americas East Asian allies to deter North Korean aggression.

Were exchanging views, Tillerson said, while standing a few feet within what is technically North Korean territory inside what is known as the Joint Security Area.

Nothing has been taken off the table, he said, when asked whether he would rule out nuclearization of the peninsula, during the interview with Fox News.

Tillerson, whos called the past 20 years of diplomacy toward North Korea a failure, has said the world needs a new strategy.

Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended, said Tillerson in a later press availability in Seoul with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level we believe requires action that option is on the table," Tillerson also said, adding the U.S. wants to avoid military conflict and hopes other measures convince North Korea to suspend its weapons programs.

President Trump, bolstering his secretary of states comments, tweeted Friday morning that North Korea is behaving very badly.

Then-candidate Donald Trump received criticism when, in a March 2016 interview with The New York Times, he said of nuclear weapons: would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if thats the case.

In a tweet, Trump later denied he said more countries should have nuclear weapons. Tillerson is in the middle of a trip to Japan, South Korea and China, largely to discuss coordinated efforts to halt North Koreas advancing nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

He travels to China Friday, after pressuring that government to further curtail the threat from its ally, calling its approach to North Korean aggression troubling and inappropriate

Fox News' Nick Kalman contributed to this report.
With Chancellor Angela Merkel at his side, President Donald Trump said Friday that Germany and other NATO allies have been "very unfair" to the U.S. by failing to boost military spending.

At a joint news conference with Merkel in the White House East Room, Trump first stressed "my strong support of NATO" and then renewed his campaign criticism of members of the alliance -- Germany among them -- who were not spending at least two percent of gross domestic product on defense.

"It's very unfair to the United States," Trump said. "These nations must pay what they owe -- at least two percent." The nations falling short of the goal owe "vast sums," Trump said without giving any figures.

Merkel responded that Germany had boosted defense spending by eight percent last year and was committed to reaching the two percent of GDP goal by 2024 under the agreement with all 28 members of the alliance.

Currently, five NATO nations meet or exceed the two percent goal -- the U.S. (3.6 percent), Greece (2.4), Poland (2.2), Britain (2.1) and Estonia (2.0), according to NATO statistics. The next three countries in order of contributions were France (1.8), Turkey (1.7) and Norway (1.5). Germany ranked 15th among NATO members at 1.2 percent. Luxembourg was last at 0.5 percent.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels last month, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Defense sought to leverage the threat from Russia to prod NATO allies into spending more on common defense.

"I owe it to you all to give you clarity on the political reality in the United States and to state the fair demand from my country's people in concrete terms," Mattis told NATO defense ministers.

"America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to the alliance, each of your capitals needs to show its support for our common defense," Mattis said.

In his annual report Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that alliance members were making progress in increasing defense spending. Last year, 23 member states increased their defense expenditures in real terms by 3.8 percent, which added up to about $10 billion, he said.

He acknowledged that only five NATO members currently meet the two percent goal and added that "It is realistic that all allies should reach this goal. All allies have agreed to it at the highest level and it can be done."

Stoltenberg said that Romania plans to reach two percent his year and both Latvia and Lithuania expect to do the same in 2018.

At the news conference, Merkel appeared to shrug off Trump's history of making disparaging remarks about her. During the campaign, Trump called her tenure a "disaster" and said she was "ruining" Germany on immigration, trade and defense.

Merkel said after meeting Trump for the first time, "It's always much better to talk to one another than about one another."

Merkel also appeared to be surprised when Trump sought to use her to deflect questions about his unsubstantiated claims that the administration of former President Barack Obama tried to wiretap or surveil him.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said in a reference to the monitoring of the cell phone of Merkel and other world leaders by the U.S. National Security Agency.

Merkel shuffled papers on her lectern as Trump made the charge, gave him a long look, and then went back to shuffling papers.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
President Trump claimed Friday that House conservatives previously opposed to ObamaCare replacement legislation moving through the chamber are now on board after changes were made  an assertion that could be put to the test as early as next week.

The president voiced confidence during a meeting with members of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

We are doing some incredible things  I am 100 percent behind this, Trump said, before looking around the room and saying: All of these nos, or potential nos, are all yeses. Every single person sitting in this room is now a yes.

He added, We made certain changes.

RSC Chairman Mark Walker, R-N.C., said in an earlier statement that he could support the bill after changes he discussed with Trump, including: work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients without dependents, and an option for states to block grant the program.

'I am 100 percent behind this'  President Trump

Lawmakers at the meeting included Rep. Gary Palmer, a Republican from Alabama, who voted against the plan in a House budget committee vote. One lawmaker said the changes include "work requirements and block grants."

Several participants later confirmed to reporters that those who attended the meeting indeed are now a "yes."

GOP leaders are hoping to push the legislation through the House next week, after the budget committee narrowly approved the Republican legislation on Thursday.

Whether they can will soon become clear. Apparently in a deal-making mode, Trump was trying to offer assurances Friday amid concerns voiced from both the right and center, as well as from Democrats.

Were going to take care of people at all levels, Trump said.

Much is at stake for Republican congressional leaders and the Trump White House. The package represents the first major piece of legislation aimed at fulfilling a top 2016 campaign promise  further, Trump has said Washington must first deal with health care before officials can tackle the next policy priority of tax reform.

On the sidelines of Trumps Friday meeting, Health Secretary Tom Price prodded divided Republicans on Friday to "get together and collaborate."

Still, the leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus -- whose members want to curb Medicaid, reduce a new tax credit and eliminate requirements on insurers  said earlier there's been little give from House leaders.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said the only change leaders might be willing to make was imposing an optional work requirement on some recipients of Medicaid, which helps finance health coverage for the poor. He said he believes they have not agreed to quickly phase out an expansion of Medicaid, another conservative demand.

"They won't have the votes unless they change it" further, Meadows said. He said that optional work requirement "doesn't move the ball more than a couple yards on a very long playing field."

Conservatives and moderate House Republicans want to pull the bill in opposing directions, GOP senators are rebelling and Republican governors say the House bill gives them almost no new flexibility and lacks sufficient resources to protect the vulnerable.

If Trump is offering changes to mollify conservatives, its unclear whether that risks losing votes on the other end of the spectrum.

The House bill would repeal major elements of former President Barack Obama's 2010 law. It would create new, leaner tax credits for health insurance, cap federal spending on Medicaid for low-income people and reverse tax increases on wealthy Americans used to finance Obama's statute.

One House GOP leader, Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, said leaders were on track to bring the legislation to the House Rules Committee early next week. That panel's meeting -- usually a prelude to bringing legislation to the House floor -- is expected to produce amendments aimed at securing votes.

Critics say it would make health insurance more expensive for individuals, especially older adults and those with modest incomes. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found 24 million people would drop or lose their health insurance over a decade though the bill would also reduce the deficit.

In the Senate, Susan Collins, R-Maine, told the Portland Press Herald, "This is not a bill I could support in its current form." She joins Kentucky's Rand Paul and Utah's Mike Lee in opposing the legislation. Collins' opposition leaves the bill short of the support it needs in the Senate unless it changes, since GOP leaders can only lose two votes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel hard on NATO dues during the leaders Oval Office meeting on Friday, Fox News is told  a point the president underscored during their joint press conference minutes later.

Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States, Trump said at the press conference, discussing the need for NATO allies to pay their fair share for defense. These nations must pay what they owe.

He then thanked Merkel, who was standing beside him, for Germanys apparent commitment to increase defense spending and work toward contributing 2 percent of GDP to NATO.

According to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting, the comments came after Trump privately pressed Merkel during their discussion to increase NATO spending. While NATO already has asked members to invest 2 percent of their GDP, Germany has fallen under that line.

The joint press conference was amicable, despite Trumps blunt criticism of the German leader during his presidential campaign.

In a nod to that history and other ongoing disagreements, Merkel said it is much better to talk to one another than about one another.

The two leaders met after the visit was postponed from earlier this week due to weather. It marked one of the more potentially awkward encounters between Trump and a foreign head of state, considering his past criticism of the German leader.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump accused her of ruining Germany by allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.

You watch what happens to Angela Merkel, who I always thought of as a very good leader until she did this. I don't know what went wrong with her," said then-candidate Trump at an August rally in Virginia.

But Trump has shown a willingness to move past some his 2016 feuds  both with foreign leaders and U.S. Republican lawmakers  and the focus of Fridays discussions was pressing security business.

The itinerary included talks on strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State and resolving Ukraine's conflict, all matters that require close cooperation between the U.S. and Germany, the White House said.

At the press conference, Trump said they discussed workforce development and vocational training, and numerous global issues. He said they seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine and added, Our two countries must continue to work together to protect our people from radical Islamic terrorism. 

The meeting could be a restart of a relationship complicated by Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Merkel shared a strong bond with former President Barack Obama. And as the leader of Europe's biggest economy and most stable government, Merkel emerged in recent years as the leading voice for a continent struggling with slow growth, identity issues and increased security threats after a string of terrorist attacks.

Despite his criticism during the campaign, Trump still found ways to voice respect. When a television station in September asked him to name a world leader he admired, he cited Merkel.

Merkel's first major encounter with Trump came as she seeks a fourth term as chancellor in elections later this year. She has acknowledged the contest could be difficult and has stressed a need for stability after Britain's decision to leave the European Union.

She reportedly has studied Trump's speeches and policies in advance of her trip, eager to find areas for cooperation.

At the press conference, Trump also disputed any characterization that he is an isolationist, scolding a reporter for a related line of questioning. He said hes a free trader and a fair trader and reiterated his belief that the U.S. has not been treated fairly.

Meanwhile, he continued to tout the prospects for the House Republican legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare which could face key votes next week, amid turbulence inside the GOP.

Trump said its coming together beautifully and predicted it will pass by a substantial margin.

Fox News Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump on Friday welcomed Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House for what is expected to be an amicable encounter despite Trump's campaign criticism about her "ruining" Germany.

Merkel was reportedly on her way to the airport Monday to fly to Washington when Trump called her to postpone the trip due to the impending snow storm that blanketed the Northeast. The cancelation was seen by some as a metaphor for the current U.S.-German relationship.

The meeting is one of the more highly anticipated ones of Trumps young presidency. Politico posted a picture of Merkel and blared a headline, The Leader of the Free World Meets Donald Trump.

TRUMP MERKEL HOLD JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE AT WHITE HOUSE AT 1:20 PM ET. WATCH LIVE ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL AND FOXNEWS.COM

Shes used to awkward meetings, Constanze Stelzenmueller, an expert on German and trans-Atlantic policy at the Brookings Institution, told McClatchy. Shes handled them quite well. You dont linger over the personal.

The encounter will be aimed at building a personal rapport with a European partner who was among former President Obama's strongest allies and international confidantes, White House officials told the Associated Press earlier this month.

The two are expected to discuss strengthening the NATO alliance, collaborating to fight terrorism and taking steps to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. The BBC reported that the two will also discuss transatlantic trade. Merkel will be joined by top officials at German companies including Siemens and BMW.

Merkel reportedly said that the German relationship with the U.S. is important and a two-way street. She said a BMW plant in the U.S. exported more cars than GM and Ford together from the U.S. Officials told Reuters that Merkel has prepared carefully for the meeting.

Trump has not been shy in his criticism of the European Unions immigration policy, and Merkel has criticized Trumps travel ban.

Trump frequently criticized Merkel during his presidential campaign, accusing her of "ruining Germany" by taking in large numbers of refugees. Merkel, who wields significant sway in Europe, was critical of Trump's refugee and immigration travel ban, which was blocked by the courts.

Merkel, who is seeking reelection later this year, reportedly told a German newspaper, Its always better to talk with each other than about each other.

Bloomberg reported that a day before Merkel left for her U.S. visit, she spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping to reaffirm their common support for free trade and open markets. The report pointed out that the partnership has gained significance since Trump was elected.

Peter Wittig, Germanys ambassador to the U.S., told PBS that he believes Merkel is interested in forming a strong, constructive relationship with Trump.

And she has said many times she will not go back to the campaign, but will want to engage with him in a constructive manner, he said. And I think thats what we want to see tomorrow.
President Trump on Friday once again suggested former President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 election, joking during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that they have "something in common."

The president briefly touched on the wiretapping comment controversy when asked by a reporter about his allegations from earlier this month.

At least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump quipped.

Merkel cracked a smile as reporters in the room laughed.

Trumps comment was a reference to 2013 reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had listened in on Merkels phone calls. An inquiry was launched into the allegations after former NSA worker Edward Snowden revealed details of the secret U.S. eavesdropping programs.

Merkel declared at the time that spying among friends was unacceptable. The incident blemished an otherwise strong diplomatic relationship between Obama and Merkel.

Trump continues to face pressure to provide evidence for his widely disputed claims that Trump Tower was the target of an Obama administration wiretap during the presidential campaign.

On the sidelines of the press conference, Trump's Justice Department said it had "complied" with a request from several congressional committees for information relating to surveillance during the 2016 election. A high-profile hearing is set for Monday that could turn up answers on the matter, and confirm or refute certain allegations.

At the same press conference Friday, Trump also was asked about claims originally made by a Fox News analyst regarding British intelligence services.

"We said nothing," Trump said. "All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for [the claim].

Trump was referring to a report by Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News senior judicial analyst, charging that British intelligence services were involved in the alleged spying of then-candidate Trump.

The allegation was cited by spokesman Sean Spicer at Thursdays White House briefing. British officials have vigorously denied the claims, and Fox News cannot confirm the allegations.

Trump and Merkel held a press conference after meeting earlier in the Oval Office, where Trump apparently pressed Merkel on Germanys NATO dues. Later, Trump discussed the need for NATO allies to pay their fair share for defense.

Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States, Trump said. These nations must pay what they owe.

He then thanked Merkel, who was standing beside him, for Germanys apparent commitment to increase defense spending and work toward contributing 2 percent of GDP to NATO.

The joint press conference was amicable, despite Trumps blunt criticism of the German leader during his presidential campaign.

In a nod to that history and other ongoing disagreements, Merkel said it is much better to talk to one another than about one another.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Samir Ali  Trend:

Cengiz Ciftci, a Turkish national, who has been granted a presidential pardon, expressed his gratitude to Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.

Ciftci was accused of drug trafficking and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, seven of which he has already served.

Nobody visited me during the period of serving the sentence. I havent seen my family for seven years, he told Trend. I was pardoned because this is my first conviction. I will never do this again.

Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed an order on March 16 to pardon 423 people.

Among those pardoned there are 40 foreign citizens, including 13 Iranian nationals, six  Pakistanis, four nationals of Georgian, Russia and Nigeria per each, three nationals of China and Turkey per each, two citizens of Uzbekistan and one Ukrainian national. There are also two activists among the pardoned people.
A U.N. official resigned Friday after her commission came under fire from U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley for releasing a report, authored by an anti-Israel scholar, which called Israel an apartheid state  a report Haley demanded withdrawn and that has since been removed from the commissions website.

Rima Khalaf, who was Executive Secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, said in a press conference she had resigned after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demanded she retract the controversial report.

"It was expected, naturally, that Israel and its allies would exercise immense pressure on the U.N. secretary general to distance himself from the report and to ask for it to be withdrawn," she said, referring to fierce objections from Israeli and U.S. officials.

By Friday afternoon, the report had nevertheless been removed from the commissions website. The report said Israel's policies in regards to Palestine today meet the definition of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.

Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law, the report said.

Particularly egregious for U.S. and Israeli officials was the decision to get controversial scholar Richard Falk to author the report.

U.N. COMMISSION PUSHES LEGAL AND PROPAGANDA OFFENSIVE AGAINST ISRAEL

Falk, a former U.N. special rapporteur to the Palestinian territories, is known for outlandish criticisms of both America and Israel, particularly on matters of Islamist terrorism. After the 2013 Boston Bombings, Falk remarked: The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.

Falk repeatedly has questioned what he calls the official version of 9/11. In 2013, he told a radio show host about gaps in the standard 9/11 narrative.

"That [the report] was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising," Haley said in a statement Wednesday, in which she also called on Guterres to withdraw the report.

Guterres initially only distanced himself from the report, and said via a spokesman that it was published without prior consultation with U.N. headquarters. On Friday, his spokesman said that Guterres had demanded the report scrapped because of the lack of consultation.

This is not about content, this is about process, spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. The Secretary-General cannot accept that an under secretary-general or any other senior U.N. official that reports to him would authorize the publication under the U.N. name under the U.N. logo without consulting the competent departments and even himself.

Haley, who had blasted the report as anti-Israel propaganda, released a statement after Khalafs resignation, praising Guterres decision.

When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign. UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary-Generals decision to distance his good office from it, she said.

Among the reports recommendations was a call to broaden support for boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society actors. It also called for the secretary-general to recommend to the General Assembly and Security Council that a global conference be convened to determine what action should be taken by the U.N.

The controversy over the reports comes as the Trump administration has been taking a tougher line against the international body. The Trump administration is already considering pulling back support for and participation in various U.N. programs, in part due to its perceived anti-Israel stance.

In an interview with "America's Newsroom" Friday, Haley reiterated that the administration intends to take a hard stance with the U.N.

"The U.N. has been Israel-bashing for decades and what we are trying to do is make sure they understand that there's a new administration in town and we're not going to put up with it," she said.

Israeli diplomat Eitan Weiss praised Haley and said the removal of the report was a sign that, the winds of change are blowing in the [corridors] of the U.N.
Google Home surprised users Thursday by slipping in a promo for the movie Beauty and the Beast into its My Day feature.

A group of Google Home users posted their findings on Reddit, noting that after asking for the weather and news as part of a daily briefing, Google Home added that Disneys Beauty and the Beast movie was opening. "By the way, Beauty and The Beast opens in theaters today, the smart speaker said.

WARNING: DANGEROUS NEW GMAIL PHISHING ATTACK CAN EASILY STEAL YOUR GOOGLE LOGIN

However, the company said it wasnt an ad, rather an experiment, running on the smart speaker.

"This wasn't intended to be an ad," said a Google spokesperson in a statement to CNet. "What's circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely content. We're continuing to experiment with new ways to surface unique content for users and we could have done better in this case."

Disney, the movie studio behind Beauty and the Beast,' could not be immediately reached for comment for this story.

LEVI'S AND GOOGLE HAVE FINALLY UNVEILED THEIR CONNECTED COMMUTER JACKET

Google has been under fire from investors on how its advertising business will evolve in the age of artificial intelligence and voice search.

At the unveiling of the device in May 2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the Google Assistant was an ambient experience that goes across devices - this is more than just phones, it will be on devices they wear, in their car and in their living rooms.

Google Home, which costs $130, is intended to compete with Amazons Echo series of speakers. It can do everything from providing information about the weather, news, upcoming calendar events and more.
Israels sophisticated Arrow anti-missile system has scored its first hit, taking down a surface-to-air missile fired from Syria, according to media reports.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Arrow interceptor was used for the first time after Israeli fighter jets were targeted with Syrian anti-aircraft missiles during an operation over Syria.

Newspaper Haaretz said the interception took place north of Jerusalem. Israeli Channel 10 TV reports the Israeli military had been on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which is backed by Iran and fights alongside Syrian government forces.

Arrow provides the top layer of the countrys complex aerial defense system. Whereas the countrys Iron Dome system deals with short-range threats such as rockets, and Davids Sling is designed to tackle midrange threats, Arrow can take out targets outside Earths atmosphere.

US NAVY DESTROYER TESTS NEW DEFENSE SYSTEM, TAKES OUT BALLISTIC MISSILE

Earlier this year the Israel Air Force took delivery of the state-of-the-art Arrow-3 system, which is developed by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) in conjunction with Boeing. Arrow-3s first test flight was in 2013, with its final test flight in 2015.

Each Arrow-3 rocket is estimated to cost about $2.2 million, according to Haaretz. The project is co-managed by Israel's Missile Defense Organization and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Overnight, IAF aircrafts struck several targets in Syria and were fired upon by anti-aircraft missiles. pic.twitter.com/Woodc8Pd7w  IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) March 17, 2017

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said, without elaborating.

Designed to eliminate ballistic missiles high in the stratosphere, it is not clear why the Arrow system was used in the incident, according to reports.

US ALLY USED PATRIOT MISSILE TO SHOOT DOWN SMALL DRONE

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is extremely rare, though Israeli military officials reported a shoulder-fired missile a few months ago.

A Syrian military statement said four Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace  flying into Syria through Lebanese territory  and targeted a military position in central Syria.

Damascus said Syrian anti-aircraft systems confronted the planes and claimed one of the jets was shot down in Israeli- controlled territory and that another was hit. The Israeli military denied the allegation and there was no sign that any of the jets had been hit or downed.

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The Arrow system has been used in Israel since the 1990s, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More details about the activities that led to one of the biggest data breaches in history are coming to light now that the Department of Justice has indicted four suspects for the 2014 Yahoo hack that affected more than 500 million accounts. An early report revealed how Russian spy operatives and hackers were able to access user accounts without actually stealing passwords. The attackers were able to get their hands on two critical Yahoo resources that they used to trick Yahoo servers into thinking that they were the genuine account owners.

A second report now reveals that in order to actually breach the accounts they were targeting, the hackers first needed to hack just one single Yahoo employee.

FBI special agent Malcom Palmore told ArsTechnica in an interview that the hack likely started with an attack on a "semi-privileged" Yahoo employee rather than a top executive. Social engineering or spear fishing "was the likely avenue of infiltration" for hackers to gain the credentials they needed to infiltrate Yahoo's server.

The direct result of this attack was access to Yahoo's internal networks. That's where one of the hackers conducted reconnaissance work and discovered the key assets the attackers needed to be able to break into specific user accounts. The hackers obtained a large database that helped them create forged cookies, which were enough to access a Yahoo Mail account without the owner's knowledge and without any login credentials.

Yahoo disclosed the 2014 security breach that affected more than 500 million accounts only a few months ago. Since then, it confirmed that the company suffered two similar data breaches that affected more than one billion users in total.

The FBI agent did not say whether the government or Yahoo discovered the 2014 breach, and he did not reveal more details about the initial attack on the unnamed Yahoo employee. Furthermore, Palmore did not say how long the intrusion lasted.

FBI special agent John Bennett said during a news conference in San Francisco that Yahoo was a great partner during the investigation, and that the company was under no obligation to tell customers about the breach. Yahoo apparently withheld the disclosure for nearly two years, he said.
The house always wins  especially if the house is one of these esteemed casinos, dating from the Belle Epoque to the present.

Here, a collection of world-class destinations for gamblers (and non-gamblers) whose other-era allure and attractive design are certain to awe.

The Ritz Club London

This members' club is at one of Londons poshest addresses, the Ritz. The world-class main salon is situated in the former ballroom, which is embellished with a domed ceiling and trompe loeilpainted walls (a panoramic scene with guests depicted in formal dress). The ambience of the casino  which hosts gamblers around the clock  is at once classic and contemporary.

Wynn Las Vegas

The premier casino-resort in the U.S. is, without doubt, the Wynn Las Vegas (and its more intimate Encore Resort). This destination caters to the nations wealthiest casino-goers with an understated (for Las Vegas) amount of flash, thanks to Roger Thomas, who also designed the Bellagio Resort & Casino. He and Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, have created a new standard for casinos, focusing on indoor-outdoor space that is grand and not mazelike.

Casino de Monte-Carlo

The casino from Ian Flemings "Casino Royale" was based on the Casino de Monte-Carlo: a brilliant destination that could entertain even Bond, James Bond. In 1863, Prince Florestan constructed this Belle Epoqueera paradise to address his nations debt, an effort to entice the English elite (and their wealth) to Monaco. Today the glamour of this casino is unmatched. The Casino de Monte-Carlo is, perhaps, the grandest  and the most iconic  casino in the world.

Marina Bay Sands

Singapore welcomed the Marina Bay Sands in 2010. It was Moshe Safdie, the Israeli-born architect who apprenticed with Louis I. Kahn, who designed the $5.7 billion casino-resort, a three-tower creative wonder that, Safdie has said, is meant to resemble a deck of cards. The resorts four-floor casino is one of the most extensive in the world, boasting 1,500 slot machines and 600 table games as well as one of the greatest Swarovski chandeliers in existence.

Casino de Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

This beloved winter-sport destination features a casino with old-world charm, an enhanced version of the apres ski experience. The Casino de Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, established in 1992, is new. But its home is historic: The former hotel, le Royal, was constructed around 1816 and once hosted Napoleon III.

Casino Baden-Baden

The name, Baden-Baden, comes from the German word for bath. Baden-Baden is famous for its spa culture  which for centuries has attracted Europes aristocrats to the Black Forest town. The salons of this Belle Epoqueera casino are ornate: Crimson walls and richly colored murals are embellished with gilded elements (gold sconces, gold statues). In 2016, Casino Baden-Baden debuted the Grill, an Oana Rosendesigned steak-and-sushi restaurant whose chic, modern aesthetic is a welcome contrast to the classic establishment.

The Venetian Macao

Macao is considered Asias answer to Las Vegas. And the Venetian Macao is twice the size of its sister casino, the Venetian Las Vegas, featuring 376,000 square feet of games (640 table games and 1,740 slot machines). This Venice-themed destination also includes three 500-foot canals and 44 authentic gondolas with gondoliers.

This article originally appeared on Architectural Digest.
The company that owns British Airways thinks theyll fare pretty well in the low-cost carrier market.

The International Airlines Group, which operates the U.K.'s largest airline, has announced the launch of Level, a new low cost longhaul airline brand to initially operate out of Barcelona, Spain.

Level is an exciting new IAG airline brand which will bring a stylish and modern approach to flying at prices that are even more affordable, said IAG CEO Willie Walsh in a press release. It will benefit from having the strength of one of the worlds largest airline groups behind it.

BRITISH AIRWAYS GROUNDS FLIGHT FOR FOUR HOURS OVER A MOUSE

IAGs newest airline brand will officially launch in June, with flights departing from Barcelona to destinations around the world including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

One-way flights range in price from 99 to 149 euros (about $105 - $160), with tickets currently on sale at FlyLevel.com.

Included in the price of a premium economy ticket is a checked bag, meals, seat selection, and the latest movie releases. Regular economy passengers will be able to purchase their preferred amenities from a menu, the press release states.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

The airline will be operating two Airbus A330 planes, to be staffed by the IAG-owned Iberia airline, which also offers low-cost flight options under Iberia Express. (IAG also owns Aer Lingus, based in Ireland, and Vueling, out of Spain.)

Walsh also suggested that, in addition to Barcelona, Level will soon be looking to offer flights to and from other destinations in Europe.

This is just the start, said Walsh. Were really excited about the opportunities for expansion and we plan to bring Level to other European destinations."

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IAGs move to launch Level comes as competing carriers in Europe have begun offering more low-cost flight options, like Eurowingss flights to the Caribbean and Asia, or Norwegian Airlines plan to offer more low-cost flights to the U.S., reports the BBC.

It also marks a trend toward the expansion of low-cost carriers in general. Volaris, a low-cost airline based in Mexico, has recently started offering flights to New York, Milwaukee and Houston. Spirit Airlines also added seven new routes in February, and Frontier Airlines plans to expand to 12 new markets in the spring and summer.

Level will being flying from Barcelona to L.A. beginning on June 1, with destinations in San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Punta Cana to begin departing in the following weeks.
Americans planning trips to Europe this summer may have to do much more than book flights and hotels. Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution to require U.S. citizens traveling to EU countries to obtain visas.

The move, which Parliament said should go into effect within two months, is intended to pressure the U.S. to extend its visa waiver program to every EU nation.

Essentially, the issue is reciprocity. Though U.S. citizens can visit all 28 countries in the EU without a visa, the same rules dont apply for citizens from five member countries  Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania  when they visit the U.S.

In April 2014, the EU notified five nations  the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Canada and Japan  that they were not in agreement with its reciprocity policy and warned them to add all the EU nations to their visa-free lists within two years.

TRAVEL INDUSTRY EXPERTS WARN US TOURISM COULD TAKE MAJOR HIT UNDER TRUMP

No legal action was imposed when that deadline expired last April. But now, three years later, Australia, Brunei and Japan have lifted their visa requirements for citizens of all EU countries. Canada still requires Bulgarians and Romanians to obtain visas, but it will lift that demand in December.

That leaves the U.S. standing alone, and  as reported in European Parliament News  the EU is obligated to take measures temporarily reintroducing visa requirements to nations that dont waive their visa demands to all EU countries.

The lack of visa reciprocity affects at least 14 percent of EU citizens, namely the citizens of Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Cyprus and Poland as well as some EU citizens with dual nationality, Filiz Hyusmenova, vice president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, said in a statement following EU Parliaments vote.

It is high time for the commission to show administrative will and political strength, not only for defending those citizens rights, but also for reinforcing the strength and unity of the European Union on the international scene.

Travel insiders say the move will likely hurt European countries that are struggling financially and depend on U.S. tourism. But Ally Bolour, a California-based immigration attorney, said he believes it could hurt all travelers.

Whenever you suspend peoples freedom to move around, everyone gets hurt. Its an unnecessary pain to take, he said.

I know a lot of Iranian Americans who voted for Trump and support travel restrictions. If this happens theyll realize that the nightmare will impact everyone  including them. Its poetic justice. Once this train leaves the station, it carries everyone with it.

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Others agree that the imposition will undoubtedly have an impact.

I think it will make a difference in people traveling, perhaps making them more hesitant, and theyll choose to go someplace easier to get to. said Chris Balciyan, owner of European Travel, a Los Angeles based company that specializes in planning trips throughout the European continent.

With the summer travel season upon us, this could impact a lot of people. The truth is, the majority of European countries want U.S. travelers. They spend more money, and without them those countries will suffer.

EU officials have contacted the Trump administration to push for full visa reciprocity before representatives of the EU and U.S. hold a scheduled meeting on June 15, a European Commission spokeswoman told Reuters.

We will report on further progress made before the end of June and continue to work closely with both the European Parliament and the Council, she said.

Steve Born, vice president of marketing with Globus travel, said he believes cooler heads will prevail.

Were nearing record demand for European travel, he said. All the conditions are so good right now.

"Thankfully, it looks like it would be a stretch for this to actually pass.
Nearly 75 years after the Japanese military forced American prisoners of war to march 65 miles through the Philippine jungles, eight survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March are gathering in New Mexico with thousands of others to memorialize the atrocity.

Besides the eight survivors, more than 7,000 athletes and supporters this weekend will also gather in the New Mexico desert to participate in the 27th annual Bataan Memorial Death March.

The event is one of several taking place over the next month to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Bataan Death March, one of World War IIs greatest atrocities.

It is particularly significant this year because very few people actually know the story of Bataan and being the 75th anniversary, there are very few survivors left to tell the story. This could be one of the last times that the community can honor these men and recognize their bravery, says Lyn Rolf III, director of programs at the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Of the 10,000 Americans who endured starvation and torture in 100-degree temperatures, fewer than 50 survivors are alive today.

The story of Bataan began hours after the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor when Japan launched an assault on several islands in the Pacific, including the Philippines. Despite a lack of naval and air support, 75,000 American and Filipino forces held off the invading Japanese troops until they were eventually forced to retreat to the Bataan Peninsula.

On April 9, 1942, U.S. Gen. Edward King Jr. surrendered to Japanese forces, who would soon show they had no intention in honoring the Geneva Convention.

Over eight days, the Allied forces made their way from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, to San Fernando.

While no definitive numbers are available, historians estimate that 1,000 Americans perished while 5,000 and 10,000 of a total 65,000 Filipinos soldiers succumbed to the harsh conditions or were killed by their Japanese captors.

The survivors would spend the next three years in captivity in the Philippines or in Japanese POW camps, an experience that forged intense bonds among the men.

It brings great satisfaction to me personally and makes me feel I have done my duty for those special men who are not here today, says Ben Skardon, a 99-year old Bataan survivor who will make his 10th trip to the White Sands Missile Range to walk 8  miles on Sunday.

If you knew about the sacrifices of those men in the prison camps, you would know I am the weak one. They brought me back, time and again, from death and they are so much of a part of my years in incarceration that I cannot ever forget them, adds the Army veteran who will celebrate his 100th birthday in July.

Before his capture, Skardon earned two Silver Stars and four Bronze Stars for valor while leading Company A of the 92nd Infantry Regiment PA (Philippine Army), a battalion of Filipino Army recruits.

According to the U.S. Army Center of Military History, American government and military officials first learned of the Bataan Death March in the summer of 1943 from an officer who escaped from a prison camp. On April 3, 1946, General Masaharu Homma, the commanding general of the Japanese Army during the Bataan Death March, was executed.

While the surrender of Allied forces was a military defeat, the stubborn defense of the Bataan Peninsula was a key victory that showed the Japanese were not an invincible force.

It was perhaps the second most consequential event of World War II after Pearl Harbor, but even the people in the Philippines do not know the history of the Bataan. It is so important to educate people about Bataan and to honor those who survived, says Robert Hansen, a member of the board of directors of the Bataan Legacy Historical Society and the grandson of a Bataan survivor. http://www.bataanlegacy.org/index.html

Hansen tells Fox News his family members talked about their experiences during the war, but never mentioned Bataan.

It was only through doing outside research that I learned my grandfather was on the march. They didnt talk about it because of the bad memories it brought back, says Hansen, a retired U.S. Navy senior chief mass communications specialist.

The Historical Society will hold a wreath-laying ceremony in San Francisco next month as part of its efforts to honor and inform the public about Bataan and the role of the Filipinos who fought alongside Americans in the Pacific.

The story of the Bataan survivors carries special importance in New Mexico, home of the Armys 200th and 515th regiments, which sent 1,800 men to the Philippines.

Only 987 soldiers made it home after being liberated from prison camps, according to Jennifer Talhelm, communications director for Sen. Tom Udall.

The New Mexican Democrat has been working for years to award Congressional Gold Medals to the survivors and plans to reintroduce his bill supporting that recognition soon.

Many believe it is the least the nation can do for them.

Their hearts and their sheer unwillingness to give up even while hundreds of their friends died alongside them on the march. If anything, that is the American spirit right there, says Rolf.
A driver entering the U.S. from Mexico was arrested Tuesday after customs officials discovered four Chinese immigrants stuffed in the trunk of his car.

The man, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, was crossing through the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego around 5:45 p.m. local time in a 2014 Chrysler 200 sedan when he stopped at the inspection booth, according to a news release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

While the vehicle was at the booth, a roving canine team was then alerted to the sedan.

When officers opened the truck, they found three women and one man, all Chinese citizens, packed tightly into the trunk.

Customs officials said the four did not have legal authorization to enter the U.S., and later placed an immigration hold on the group to initiate removal from the U.S. at the conclusion of criminal proceedings.

Concealing persons in vehicles is dangerous and could have severe consequences, Pete Flores, Director of Field Operations for CBP in San Diego said in a statement. San Ysidro CBP officers stopped a violation of our immigration law and were able to resolve the incident safely.

The driver faces federal immigration smuggling charges, and was transported to the Metropolitan Correctional Center to await arraignment.

Customs officials also seized the man's car.
An 89-year-old man whose body was discovered in a large suitcase on a rural Arkansas farm was a World War II veteran from New York, police say.

Robert Brooks died of natural causes at his home about a month before his body was discovered in a Prairie County field on March 5, Lt. David Gilbo of the Johnstown, New York, Police Department told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

He was a war hero who could have been buried at the (Arlington) National Cemetery, Gilbo said. Instead, he ends up in a suitcase dumped in a field in Arkansas.

Police said Brooks, who was 4 feet 11 inches tall, wasnt dismembered.

Gilbo said investigators are still trying to determine why his body was moved.

Two people considered to be caregivers of Brooks have been detained on suspicion of abuse of a corpse. Police are not considering the case a homicide, but authorities are reportedly looking into the possibility that the two were planning to defraud Social Security.

Gilbo said authorities will not be extraditing them to New York because of Arkansas strict laws on abuse of a corpse. In New York, the offense is punishable by three years in prison, while in Arkansas it is punishable by 10 years.

Brooks served in the military and was a gunner in a B-17 bombers ball turret.

Its the most dangerous assignment in war, Prairie County Sheriff Rick Hickman said. The belly gunner is in a small bubble on the bottom of the plane. The enemy wants to shoot at him first. Life expectancy on that job is very short.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
The Thomson Reuters Department Director Oleg Utkin and Head of Department Valentin Bogorov met with UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov. The three directions of the future cooperation between the Thomson Reuters and the University- Organization of International Conference, establishment of a Science metric laboratory and the foundation of the School for Young Scientists were the main issues debated within the meeting.

It was said that the international conference on The Scientific Performance Management Model of Modern Universities: Innovative Development and Perspectives to be held by UNEC and the Thomson Reuters will bring the worlds prestigious universities scholars together at UNEC. At the same time, the event will also render assistance in getting access to the platform of web of Science. This will play a significant role in introducing scientific- research works among the scientific community. Note that, a plenty of appeals in connection with the presentation of scientific articles written by the world scholars have already been submitted.

The School for Young Scientists to be established under the UNEC was debated in detail within the negotiations. O. Utkin considered that the foundation of the School for Young Scientists in UNEC that pretend to become a world-class university will serve to young scholars in the preparation of scientific works meet modern requirements and improve the quality of scientific investigations.

Views on creating Science metric laboratory to meet the requirements of Azerbaijan and the other countries of the region as well and publication of scientific journal on Economy of Caspian littorial Countries were exchanges within the meeting.

UNEC is the brand of Azerbaijan State University of Economics. The brand of UNEC has been registered and patented by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent on January 21 2016.
A colonel was sentenced Friday to 12 months in prison in South Carolina -- and dismissed from the U.S. Air Force -- after he pleaded guilty in a child pornography scandal.

Col. William Jones, former 20th Fighter Wing vice commander, was sentenced on Shaw Air Force Base. It took Judge J. Wesley Moore less than 2 1/2 hours to hand down the sentencing. Jones wife and daughter hugged each other as the judge read the verdict.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Jones had pleaded guilty to wrongfully possessing images and videos of child pornography in violation of Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The South Carolina Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force notified the Air Force Office of Special Investigation (OSI) that they had a reason to believe someone living on Shaw AFB was downloading child pornography from the Internet. OSI began investigating the claims and it led them to Jones.

More than 7,000 images and 10 videos were found in a folder labeled jail bait on an external hard drive owned by Jones. Also found on the hard drive was a classified document. Images also were found on his laptop, desktop computer, and iPhone.

VIDEO: VETERAN WEIGHS IN AFTER VA HOSPITAL REMOVES TRUMP PORTRAIT

Testimony during the trial revealed Jones began downloading the images in August 2012 and continued until around the time OSI began investigating him in February 2016. Jones was charged for downloading material from 2015 to 2016 and was relieved from his position as vice commander shortly after.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, Jones described his childhood as tumultuous. His father killed himself when Jones was seven, and his mother abandoned him and his brother shortly after. Jones also told the judge months before he committed the crimes in October 2015 his adopted brother committed suicide. A few months later his adopted mother tried to kill herself.

Jones read a letter to the court acknowledging what he did was wrong, and apologizing. He made one request to Judge Moore: to keep health benefits so his wife could continue to get care.

Other witnesses called by his defense team consisted mostly of retired officers who were deployed downrange in Jordan with Jones. Each took the stand and they all gave similar comments about his character. Driven, exceptional, caring of his airmen, go-getter were the words they used to describe Jones. Through tears Retired Lt Col. Kendall Dean Potter stated, Anybody that knows him or has served under him is trying to make sense of it, Potter said. Maybe he snapped, something happened, I dont know. CMSgt. Henry Hamby, also deployed with Jones, told the court he felt blessed to know Jones.

Retired Lt Col. Richard Jorgensen testified I owe everything to him as an officer. I have a hard time believing this. Its so out of character, Jorgensen said before the court. The same seven witnesses declared they wanted to paint a picture of who he was as a person.

His wife and daughter also took the stand during the trial. They both stated faith will get them through what is to come and that they support him no matter the outcome.

I know him better than anyone, the wife said on the stand. He is a great father, great friend, and he loves teaching people. and I love him.
Death row inmates in Arkansas are seeking to stop the state from carrying out a string of executions over 10 days.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

The case revolves around the use of lethal injection drugs, which lawyers for the inmates say are unconstitutional. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has asked a judge to dismiss the case. A motion to stop an execution for one of the eight inmates was rejected by the Arkansas Supreme Court on March 16.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the executions are scheduled for April 17-27, at a rate of two inmates per day. Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says its unprecedented to carry out so many executions at one time.

DEPORTED KILLER NABBED SLIPPING BACK INTO UNITED STATES FROM MEXICO

No one has carried out that many executions over that short period of time, Dunham said. The most executions that any state has conducted in an entire month is eight and that was Texas. Texas has only done that in two months.

He adds that a short supply of Midazolam, one of three drugs used to administer the executions, is behind the quick turnaround of the executions. Dunham says the drug has been controversial since the preferred drug of choice for lethal injection became unavailable. He says the drug is a sedative and not an anesthetic increasing the risk of consciousness when the state administers the more deadly drugs.

The reason that Arkansas is doing it is purely expedience, Dunham said. Arkansas supply of Midazolam expires at the end of April. So they have a choice of carrying out the execution quickly, or carrying out the executions right.

There are currently 34 people on death row in Arkansas and the last execution was carried out in November of 2005 according to the states Department of Corrections.
Chicagos historic crime wave has been blamed on gangs, guns and drugs. But now, harsh critics are taking it a step further  pointing the finger at the citys judicial system and accusing it of being soft on criminals who keep pulling the trigger.

The Cook County court system, largest in the country, is traditionally very, very soft on most gun charges, said Jim Warren, a policy and politics columnist for U.S. News & World Report. Warren called Chicagos judicial system a joke.

In 2016, 762 people were murdered in Chicago. More than 4,000 people were shot. Police recovered more than 5,000 guns from the streets.

Yet, federal prosecutors tried just 123 gun cases last year.

Chicagos Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson argues known criminals shoot and keep shooting-- because they know they can get away with it. The citys top cop has pleaded for the citys attorneys and judges to throw the book at repeat gun offenders.

This has got to stop somewhere, Johnson said. Our children shouldn't have to keep paying the price for our inability to hold repeat gun offenders accountable for their actions."

According to data obtained by Fox News, criticism of Chicagos judicial system might be warranted. While the U.S. Attorneys office in Chicago prosecuted 123 gun crimes, nearby Kansas City  which has a fraction of the population and lower crime  prosecuted nearly triple that total amount: 340 cases. Detroit prosecuted more with 171 cases. And even New York City, where the crime and gun problem pales in comparison to Chicago, is not far behind with 72 cases.

The U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, Zach Fardon, was asked to resign last week as part of a purge of Obama administration holdovers. In a scathing exit letter, Fardon wrote that he is a non-partisan and did his best to bring convictions by regularly talking with neighbors in the citys most dangerous neighborhoods. He said his office needs a staggering 20 more prosecutors to get the job done.

A spokesperson for Fardon wrote in an e-mail that in 2016 the office prosecuted its highest number of cases in 20 years and chose cases based on impact over volume.

"One case like the recent Hobos gang prosecution takes years and enormous resources to bring, but we bring it because its the right thing to do, without regard to statistics, Joe Fitzpatrick wrote.

The States attorney for Cook County, Kim Foxx, admits the county is in a crisis.

We have an issue of credibility with our criminal justice system, Foxx said.

Foxx and the Cook County Chief Judge, Timothy Evans, say the court system doesnt deserve the full blame. Fighting crime, they say, is a group effort that includes local and federal agencies.

"If we want to stop violence, we have to go after people who are doing violent crime," Foxx said. "And thats an obligation we have to have with our partners in federal law enforcement."

"To simply say lock em up, keep em away longer, in my view, thats not the total answer," Evans said.

There is a possible solution on the horizon: a new bill recently cleared a state senate committee in Springfield that would instruct courts to lengthen penalties for repeat gun offenders and require judges to publicly explain why they gave a lighter sentence.

And, Foxx just announced the launch of a new gun-fighting unit in the citys two most dangerous neighborhoods on the south and west side that for the first time will pair federal prosecutors with state and local police. Its intended to result in much more immediate and thorough gun cases being prosecuted.

Foxx says the new gun unit will also remove more firearms from the streets. Chicago currently recovers more illegal guns annually than New York and Los Angeles combined.

"The frustration that Ive had when we talk about guns is this complacency about guns that we have in Cook County," Foxx said. "I told someone, its like we have the Bulls, pizza and we have guns in the city of Chicago."
A deported killer has been caught on the Arizona border trying to slip back into the U.S., officials said.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials took Genaro Galvan-Mora, 26, into custody Wednesday evening near Nogales, Arizona.

A records check during processing by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents showed Galvan-Mora was convicted in May 2016 on a reckless homicide charge in Tennessees Loudon County. The charge stemmed from a deadly game of Russian Roulette, according to a Loudon County newspaper and police records.

CHICAGO TOO LAX ON GUN CRIMES, CITY'S JUDICIAL SYSTEM A 'JOKE,' CRITICS SAY

Galvan-Mora was deported on Feb. 27 after nine months behind bars, the Associated Press reported. He had been sentenced to 3 years in prison after pleading guilty, according to court records.

He was arrested on the reckless homicide charge in 2014 when he was 23, The Loudon News-Herald reported at the time.

Evidence and circumstances surrounding the case suggested that Mora and the victim, 25-year-old Diego Cisneros Fonseca, were involved in Russian Roulette by putting one round in a six-shot, .357-magnum revolver, the paper reported.

Investigators suspected Mora discharged the gun by spinning the cylinder and then pressing the gun to Fonsecas head and pulling the trigger, the paper reported, citing police.

Alcohol was involved. I dont know how intoxicated they were, but they were definitely drinking, Loudon Police Detective Brian Jenkins was quoted as saying. Anytime you do something that you either know or should know possesses a great risk of death, its considered reckless homicide.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A dog rescued from the dinner table but left with half a face in Thailand has found a new home in New Jersey and is thriving.

Karen Quigley and Michelle Weirich raised more than $11,000 through a fundraising website to adopt and care for the 2-year-old mixed breed dog, named Teresa. A man unsuccessfully tried to butcher the animal for food.

"Unfortunately in Thailand people do eat dog meat, and a person had a machete and he was trying to cut her head off," Quigley said.

In Thailand, catching, selling and killing dogs for meat is not illegal, but exporting them without an official certificate is. Dog meat is not popular in Thailand but is considered a delicacy in Vietnam.

Teresa was left without a nose and parts of her top jaw. The money paid for her travel and surgery to remove teeth and mend her tongue.

Teresa is doing well at Quigley's home in Sewell. She does everything a normal dog would do, Quigley told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia (http://6abc.cm/2mzwdO6 ).

"She can do everything and that's what's so remarkable about Teresa," Quigley said. "She's so amazing because she's really so happy. She wakes up happy. She loves to run in the yard."

The animal's Robbinsville surgeon, Dr. John Lewis, said the animal is doing well besides some cosmetic issues.

"She can always breathe through her mouth, but the fact she can breathe through her nose just increases her quality of life. She's able to eat and drink, can play with toys, so that's the important thing," he said.

Quigley eventually wants to get Teresa certified as a therapy animal so she can comfort disfigured patients at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
A West Virginia school district being sued for offering an elective Bible class has filed a motion to dismiss the suit brought by an atheist group.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Mercer County Schools is being sued by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation for offering a course called "Bible in the Schools" since 1939.

The First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based legal firm, filed the motion to dismiss earlier this week on behalf of the school district.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY: SOME CATHOLICS GET EXEMPTION FROM MEATLESS FRIDAY

In their motion, First Liberty argued that the FFRF lawsuit should be dismissed in part because the plaintiffs lack the standing to sue Mercer County Schools.

"The purported harms Plaintiffs allege are merely speculative, resulting from choices the [Plaintiffs] say they may have to make well into the future and related fear of potential ostracism that is grounded only in speculation, not in fact," read the motion.

In January, the FFRF filed a lawsuit against Mercer County Schools for offering an elective Bible course that has existed in some capacity since 1939.

FFRF filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Bluefield Division on behalf of an unnamed parent who is raising her child as an atheist.

"This program advances and endorses one religion, improperly entangles public schools in religious affairs, and violates the personal consciences of nonreligious and non-Christian parents and students," read the lawsuit.

Click Here to Read the Full Story at ChristianPost.com
A former Pennsylvania state trooper has been arrested in the 2014 shooting death of his pregnant wife.

Prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia say 36-year-old Joseph Miller was arraigned Friday on two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Joanna Miller and their newborn baby.

Joanna Miller was 24 weeks pregnant when she was shot in the head at their East Norriton home. She died at a hospital after delivering the girl via an emergency C-section. The baby died shortly thereafter.

Joseph Miller told police he was cleaning his gun feet away from her when it discharged.

Prosecutors say a two-year investigation showed the gun was 3 to 6 inches from Joanna Miller's head when it went off.

A message seeking comment from his lawyer wasn't immediately returned.
Floridas governor has reassigned a case involving the killing of an Orlando police officer after a prosecutor said she would not seek the death penalty.

A spokesperson for Gov. Rick Scott said Thursday that the governor was taking State Attorney Aramis Ayala off the Markeith Loyd case after her office announced it would no longer seek the death penalty in cases.

ILLINOIS PARAMEDIC SAVES INFANT FROM SUV SUBMERGED IN LAKE

I am outraged and sickened by this loss of life and many families lives have been forever changed because of these senseless murders. These families deserve a state attorney who will aggressively prosecute Markeith Loyd to the fullest extent of the law and justice must be served, Scott said in the statement.

Through an executive order, the case was handed off to State Attorney Brad King, a prosecutor in a neighboring district northwest of Orlando.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

According to FOX 35 Orlando, Scott had earlier asked Ayala to recuse herself from handing Loyds case; however she refused.

Under Florida law, a governor can only suspend an elected official for "malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, habitual drunkenness, incompetence, or permanent inability to perform official duties." But the law does allow a governor to reassign a particular case for "good and sufficient" reasons.

Loyd faces two first-degree murder counts and other charges in the deaths of his ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon and Lt. Debra Clayton. Authorities have said Dixon was fatally shot at her home in December and that Clayton was gunned down Jan. 9 outside a Wal-Mart while attempting to capture Loyd.

Ayala defended her decision on Thursday, saying capital punishment in Florida has led to chaos, uncertainty and turmoil.

She argued that the evidence showed that the death penalty did not increase public safety and that it was not in the best interest of this community or the best interest of justice.

EMT KILLED, PARTNER INJURED AFTER MAN HITS THEM IN NYC WITH STOLEN AMBULANCE

"I have given this issue extensive, painstaking thought and consideration," Ayala said at a news conference Thursday. "What has become abundantly clear through this process is that while I do have discretion to pursue death sentences, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interests of this community or in the best interests of justice."

Here is a statement from @ChiefJohnMina about the State Attorney's decision regarding Markeith Loyd: pic.twitter.com/qlvFR84Kua  Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) March 16, 2017

In a statement to Fox News, Ayala said the governer declined to have "full conversation" with her regarding her reasoning behind the death penalty.

"I have since learned he issued an Order removing my office from any cases related to Markeith Loyd," she added. "Upon receipt of any lawful order, my office will follow that Order and fully cooperate to ensure the successful prosecution of Markeith Loyd."

Ayalas decision regarding the death penalty caused outrage in Florida, especially from Orlando Police Chief John Mina.

I have seen the video of Markeith Loyd executing Lt. Debra Clayton while she lay defenseless on the ground. She was given no chance to live. A cop killer  who also killed his pregnant girlfriend should not be given a chance, Mina said in a statement posted on Twitter. The heinous crimes that he committed in our community are the very reason we have the death penalty as an option under the law.

Dixons father, Ron Daniels, seemed to support Ayala, despite her decision.

"Life, no chance of parole, we get closure, but now if you give him the death penalty, he comes back, he told Fox 35 Orlando. Every time he appeals this family or any family has to relive that case all over again."

He said with or without the death penalty, Loyd would still die in prison, if convicted.

Legal challenges in the past year brought executions to a halt in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the state's sentencing law unconstitutional because it gave judges too much power to make the ultimate decision. State lawmakers responded with a new law that capital punishment be decided by split juries, with at least a 10-2 vote. The state Supreme Court struck that down, ordering unanimous jury decisions.

Ayala announced her categorical opposition only days after Scott signed a bill complying with the court requirements.

Fox News' Kathleen Reuschle and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch made it clear in a book and other writings what he thinks about assisted suicide and euthanasia: He's not a fan.

His reasoning is not based on religious conviction but rather stems from his investigation of the subject stretching from ancient Greece to modern times.

In his 2006 book, "The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia," Gorsuch derided the idea that a person could take their own life as a way of achieving "death with dignity."

He wrote, "Human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong."

Gorsuch, whose nomination is to be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, favors the power of the states and sticking closely to the texts of laws and Constitution as they were understood when written. But his views on some controversial subjects, such as how widely the Second Amendment applies or whether abortion should be legal, are not known. Assisted suicide is a different matter.

Legalizing the practice, he said, could be a slippery slope. Doctors, insurance companies and the healthiest in society might wind up looking for ways to shorten the lives of the frail and the elderly to preserve resources for those with more promising futures. Doing so, he said, would have a disproportionate impact on the poor, the powerless and minorities who sometimes do not receive the same quality of medical care and pain-control management when they are ill.

"If a right to consensual homicide is eventually accepted into the law, we might ask what other ripple effects it could have on social and cultural norms. Why not, for example, allow individuals to sell their body parts or their lives?" he asked.

And he suggested that if killing became a professional duty under certain circumstances, medical care professionals may someday face "wrongful life" lawsuits from families upset their relatives suffered needlessly when a doctor or nurse failed to advocate for death.

Still, his book made clear that his views do not interfere with a right of individuals to choose through living wills to reject certain potentially life extending measures, such as the use of a ventilator. That right was established in a landmark court case brought after the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan asked doctors to remove the ventilator from their comatose and severely brain damaged daughter. After the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in the Quinlans' favor in 1976, the respirator was removed. She did not die, however, until 1985, of pneumonia, at age 31.

Gorsuch's opposition to assisted suicide is among the reasons that abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups alike believe that Gorsuch generally would join conservative justices in voting to restrict abortion. Gorsuch himself has not had a lot to say about abortion, either in his book or in more than 10 years as a federal appeals court judge. He was careful to note in the book that in the seminal Supreme Court abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, "a fetus does not qualify as a person."

Gorsuch's largely dispassionate analysis of assisted suicide and euthanasia was published by Princeton University Press the same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

In it, Gorsuch traced the history of assisted suicide from ancient Greece through the modern-day legalization of the practice in the Netherlands and the state of Oregon.

He notes, for instance, that it was referred to as "self-murder" in Rhode Island in 1647 in an age when the bodies of those committing suicide would be dragged around town, stakes driven through them. Sometimes, grieving families were forced into poverty as property was snatched away.

By 1939, he said, a poll showed up to 46 percent of Americans favored some form of legal euthanasia.

The book contains few religious references, but he wrote: "Though the Bible nowhere explicitly forbids suicide, from its earliest days Christianity taught against the practice."

The book, catering to those interested in an in-depth legal analysis, had a limited audience until Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump. Amazon.com now lists it as its hottest-selling euthanasia book. It came out less than a decade after the Supreme Court in 1997 ruled unanimously against doctors and their patients who claimed a constitutional right to death assisted by physicians.

The court left states free to resolve the question for themselves by voting 6 to 3 to reject then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's directive to preclude doctors in Oregon from aiding suicides. The justices did not address the constitutionality of laws banning assisted suicide for terminally ill adults and Gorsuch wrote that he believed the court's language encouraged state legislatures to experiment.

Besides Oregon, laws permitting assistance in dying for individuals have been passed in California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Montana and Washington.

In his book, Gorsuch wrote that in Oregon, the first state to permit assisted suicide, those who sought to die in the first seven years after legalization were almost all white and highly educated.

That, he wrote, highlighted the question of whether assisted suicide was "a matter of necessity or more of a lifestyle choice for persons who have always tended to control their lives and now wish to control their death."

Poll after poll, he said, suggests that ethnic minorities in the U.S. are more concerned about the potential impact of legalized euthanasia on them than are their white counterparts. He said their relative unease might not be irrational given the quality of medical treatment provided to minority groups.

Derek Humphry, an 86-year-old best-selling author of "Final Exit," about the practicalities of assisted suicide for the dying, said he was not alarmed by Gorsuch's nomination while the "right to die is gathering momentum."

He predicted more northern states would pass laws within the next two decades allowing physician-assisted suicide. And if the issue reaches the Supreme Court, "it's a matter of nine opinions, not just his," Humphry said.

Besides, he added, "People can change their minds on this as they grow older or see suffering."

___

Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report from Washington.

___

Find AP's reporting on Neil Gorsuch here: http://apne.ws/2mfXk4V

___

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Huseyn Veliyev  Trend:

The Association of Packaging Industry has been created in Azerbaijan with the support of the countrys Economy Ministry and National Confederation of Entrepreneurs.

The Association will coordinate the activity of entrepreneurs engaged in manufacturing and exports, develop manufacturing of packaging products, and eliminate problems faced by producing businesses.

A round table meeting with participation of nearly 30 entrepreneurs was held on March 17 in connection with the Associations creation.

During the meeting, Azerbaijans Deputy Economy Minister Sahib Mammadov said that the Economy Ministry discussed with local entrepreneurs the packaging industrys development in the country, particularly, the organization of an exhibition.

Holding such an exhibition is very significant for the development of packaging goods production in Azerbaijan, as today there are voids in the local packaging market, said Mammadov.

Azerbaijan has a great potential for the development of packaging industry and activities in this direction should be improved.
Indiana State Police, the FBI and Carroll County sheriffs deputies are serving a search warrant Friday in connection with the murders of two Delphi teens.

The warrant is being served at the home of Ronald Logan, the owner of the property where the bodies of 14-year-old Liberty German and 13-year-old Abigail Williams were found.

Logan is being held right now on a charge unrelated to the case. Investigators said they were looking for evidence that would link or clear Logan in the girls deaths.

The girls disappeared during a hike on Feb. 13, 2017, prompting a large search effort involving volunteers and several law enforcement agencies. A search team found their bodies a day later, and police said foul play was suspected in their deaths.

Since then, the case has gained national attention, with a national billboard campaign and a reward exceeding $230,000.

Police released two key pieces of evidence in their search for the killer, including a photo and a recording of a mans voice saying, Down the hill. Both clues came from Libby Germans phone, police said.

Police have received thousands of tips as they try to find the person responsible for killing Abby and Libby, and have served numerous search warrants in connection with the investigation.

Anyone with information should call the tip line at (844) 459-5786 or send an email to abbyandlibbytip@cacoshrf.com.

Click for more from Fox 59.
The Latest on a body being found and a child being rescued from a lake near St. Louis (all times local):

4:40 p.m.

Authorities say a man found dead during a southern Illinois house fire had been shot in the head, and that a gun was found in his ex-wife's SUV after the vehicle plunged into a lake.

The Madison County coroner released preliminary autopsy results Friday for 37-year-old Justin Campbell. Firefighters found his body after responding to the blaze Thursday at a house where he lived with his ex-wife, 32-year-old Cristy Campbell.

The fire was reported about 15 minutes before her SUV was seen driving into a nearby lake. The Campbells' infant son was rescued from the submerged SUV by a paramedic, and six other children survived the house fire.

Christy Campbell's body was found hours later in the lake.

Coroner Steve Nonn says a gun was found in the SUV. But he says testing can't be done to determine whether the gun was used to shoot Justin Campbell because the bullet that struck him hasn't been found.

___

3:35 p.m.

The paramedic who swam into a southern Illinois lake to save a baby says he briefly questioned his decision to jump into the frigid water, but is glad he did.

Paramedic Todd Zobrist spoke at a news conference on Friday, a day after jumping into 46-degree water at Silver Lake near St. Louis and saving 3-month-old Julian Campbell.

Zobrist says he swam about 75 feet and thought a doll was floating inside the SUV, but realized he was holding a baby when he reached inside the vehicle. Zobrist performed CPR on the roof of the SUV, then swam the infant to shore. The baby is expected to survive.

Authorities say the boy's mother was driving the SUV that plunged into the lake Thursday morning, about 15 minutes after a fatal fire erupted at the family's nearby home. The mother, 32-year-old Cristy Lynn Campbell, was found dead in the lake hours later.

___

9:15 a.m.

A woman found dead in a lake near St. Louis where an infant was rescued hours earlier has been identified as the child's mother.

The coroner in Madison County, Illinois, released the information Friday as investigators try to untangle the events that preceded the death of 32-year-old Cristy Lynn Campbell.

A fire broke out at her home around 5:15 a.m. Thursday in nearby Glen Carbon, Illinois. Six children escaped, but an adult died.

Coroner Steve Nonn says an autopsy will be conducted Friday to positively identify the person killed in the fire. Campbell's ex-husband, 37-year-old Justin Campbell, is unaccounted for.

About 15 minutes later, an SUV was spotted driving into Silver Lake, about 16 miles away in Highland, Illinois. A paramedic found Campbell's 3-month-old son in the car and saved him.

___

12:30 a.m.

Authorities have praised the actions of a fast-thinking paramedic who dove into a frigid Illinois lake and saved an infant from a submerged SUV.

Madison County Sheriff John Lakin says a motorist called 911 Thursday morning to report a car heading down a hill toward Silver Lake in Highland, Illinois.

Paramedic Todd Zobrist arrived on the scene and swam toward the SUV, where he found a baby floating inside. He pulled the baby onto the hood of the vehicle and administered CPR. The child was then taken to a hospital.

Lakin says the baby is expected to make a full recovery. Highland Emergency Medical Services chief Brian Wilson called Zobrist's actions heroic.

Authorities later recovered two bodies in related incidents. One was recovered from the lake and the other after a house fire.
During the 17 days that 140 million gallons of raw sewage poured from Mexico into the Tijuana River and then into the ocean fronting several popular South San Diego communities, no Mexican official disclosed the potential health and environmental hazards.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Despite the silence when the spill began Feb. 6, some 200,000 people living in South San Diego, Imperial Beach and Chula Vista knew there was something amiss. Even a mile away from the Tijuana River they could smell the eye-watering, throat-burning, overwhelming smell of raw sewage. Theyd eventually learn this was the worst sewage spill in the region in a decade.

The spill resulted in several miles of beaches being closed for five to six weeks from the Mexican border north to the city of Coronado. One beach by the border is still closed.

HIGH-TECH BACKPACKS OPEN WORLD OF WHALES TO DEAF STUDENTS

For San Diego, which is defined by its relationship with the ocean, this kind of massive sewage spill across the border is unacceptable, U.S. Rep. Scott Peters, a Democrat who represents some of the affected areas, told Fox News. From surfing, to the Navy and Marine Corps presence, it drives our way of life and large parts of our economy.

The U.S. International Boundary Water Commission, which operates under the U.S./Mexican Water Treaty of 1944 to oversee sanitation, water quality and flood control in the border region, is investigating the recent sewage spill, and why Mexican wastewater authorities didnt report it even as sewage was visible in the ocean and beaches.

We need cooperation on both sides of the border for this investigation to get all of the answers on how this sewage spill happened. Then we can figure out how to apply resources across the border to prevent it from happening again, Peters said.

Serge Dedina, mayor of Imperial Beach, a working class beach community whose border abuts the Mexican border, said it was frustrating the spill hadnt been reported, even though it could impact the health of beachgoers, surfers, those using the many trails through South San Diego for biking or hiking and the small business owners that run the many organic farms, ranches and equestrian centers along the border.

We never had anything like this  such consistent complaints and duration of the stench, so we knew it was a pretty severe problem, Dedina said to Fox News.

But this isnt a one-time occurrence -- Dedina deals with the sewage problems that flow from Mexico every single day. A lifelong resident of Imperial Beach, Dedina has been working seriously on the sewage issue since 2004. Since becoming mayor two years ago he has worked daily on the problem. He is considered one of the leading experts on the matter.

The real issue is that this consistently happens, there is no accountability, there is very little transparency and almost no commitment to fix the problem, Dedina said.

Mexican sewage flows into the U.S. in two ways. Between 30 and 40 million gallons of sewage are discharged every day onto the beach from Mexicos Punta Banderas sewage treatment plant six miles south of the border, and during south swells and south winds, the sewage washes up on U.S. beaches, Dedina said.

We assume everything is good, and then go in the water, and then realize too late, we are awash in sewage. It is the worst feeling ever, said Dedina, an avid surfer. Last summer, we had some of the worst consistent flows of sewage across the border that we ever experienced.

The second way Mexican sewage flows into the U.S. is from the Tijuana River. About 15 million gallons per day of treated sewage discharged into the Tijuana River, Dedina said.

There is a diverter pipe in the Tijuana River operated in Mexico just before the border that in theory should be turned on all the time  but if there is an electrical outage or it breaks down, which happens frequently, then the Tijuana River flows into the U.S. and can pollute our beaches, Dedina said.

The International Boundary and Water Commission reports Mexico has no plans or timeline at all to turn on the diverter pipe, Dedina said, which means the river of treated sewage will flow freely into the U.S.

Border Patrol Agents who work along the Tijuana River have been impacted by the dust and smells. A decade ago, the National Border Patrol Council, which is the exclusive representative of some 2,400 Border Patrol agents, filed a related lawsuit and fought for hazard pay for the agents in San Diego.

We have had have had some complaints from agents about feeling sick or nauseous because of the sewage spill, confirmed union president Terence Shigg, noting the union could take further when the results of recent environmental tests are returned.

Imperial Beach adjoins Coronado, which has a large military presence. The Navy SEALs used to train in Imperial Beach, but because of health concerns the Navy relocated the training, Dedina said.

Besides being home to the famous big wave surfing spot known as the Tijuana Sloughs, Imperial Beach is surrounded by stunningly beautiful wildlife refuge sanctuaries. But last year when it rained, sewage flooded the estuary and hundreds of leopard sharks, among other sea creatures, died.

Dedina suggests there should be a river management plan, new and upgraded infrastructure and regular river cleanups.

In the last week there has been some good news, Dedina said. The Mexican federal government and the governor of Baja have joined the effort to upgrade the sewage system in Tijuana, which will be funded partly by the U.S. taxpayers through the North American Development Bank and partly by the Mexican federal government.

This is a big step, Dedina said.
A convicted felon who is not allowed to possess a gun is being sought by Pittsburgh police days after a 3-year-old girl was fatally shot at his home.

Forty-year-old Paul Parrish was charged with the weapons violation Friday, and police continued to search for him.

Police say Parrish was one of three adults smoking marijuana in the basement Sunday afternoon when little Yasha Ross was shot upstairs.

Police are still investigating, but Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. says it appears the girl shot herself with Parrish's gun. Her mother drove her to a hospital, where she died. Police say Yasha's mother had been smoking pot with Parrish.

Zappala says authorities are still investigating a woman who may have bought the gun for Parrish.
Prosecutors in Florida have found no evidence of a crime in the death of a prison inmate left for nearly two hours in a hot shower.

A memo released Friday by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office concludes that 50-year-old Darren Rainey died accidentally in June 2012, in part because of undiagnosed heart disease. The memo said he suffered no burn injuries.

The investigation also found no evidence that officers at the Dade Correctional Institution regularly used the hot shower to punish or torture inmates, as some of them claimed after Rainey's death.

Rainey was taken to the shower after he had smeared feces on himself, the walls of his cell and his bedsheets. He was found dead about two hours later. An autopsy ruled his death an accident.

The investigation found temperatures in the shower were not excessively high.
The man suspected of shooting and injuring two Detroit police officers Wednesday night is also suspected in the fatal shooting of a Wayne State University police officer last fall, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said Friday afternoon in a news conference.

Chief Craig confirmed DNA of 60-year-old Raymond Durham matches both crime scenes. Craig wouldn't elaborate on the match, but sources have told FOX 2 Durham's DNA was found on a flashlight, gloves and a hat where Rose was shot and killed back in November of 2016. Police also recovered a .38 caliber revolver during Durham's arrest, which authorities are also currently testing for a match.

"Our work is not at all over," Craig reiterated, but added they're "optimistic."

Also on Friday, Durham was arraigned on charges stemming from Wednesday's police shooting, including two counts of Assault with Intent to Murder; two counts of Resisting and Obstructing the Police Causing serious Impairment; and one count of Felon in Possession of a Firearm; and five counts of Felony Firearm.

Sgt. Rose, 29, was shot in the Woodbridge Community neighborhood when he stopped a man on a bike. Rose's murder has been unsolved for nearly four months now. A reward has increased to more than $100,000 for information that helped track down the suspect. Chief Craig said earlier this week that the manner of the two shooting attacks on the officers are certainly similar, as well as physical descriptions of the suspect from both cases.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

The two officers who were shot Wednesday were shot about a mile from where Sgt. Rose was killed. They are expected to recover.

A 20-year veteran was shot in the neck. The second officer who was hit, a 4-year veteran, was hit twice in the upper torso and was saved by a bulletproof vest. He was also shot in the ankle. Both officers are recovering in stable condition. Their names have not been given.

The officers were conducting a narcotics investigation on Tillman Street, which is near I-96 and Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., when they approached a man who was "acting fidgety," Police Chief James Craig said. The man pulled out a gun and fired before the officers returned fire.

Durham was injured when he was arrested. He had been shot at least once when officers returned fire.

Family members say Durham, who has had two previous breaking and entering convictions, is mentally ill and hasn't been the same since a piece of steel fell on his head decades ago.
A Texas school district says Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is raising unfounded concerns about religious freedom over a spare classroom where Muslim students pray.

Muslim students at Liberty High School in Frisco have been allowed since 2009 to pray in a classroom that's vacant for part of the afternoon. School officials say the initiative never has attracted controversy.

But Paxton's office sent a letter to the district Friday questioning whether students of other faiths are excluded from using the room to pray, and asking that the school "ensure" it is open to everyone. Paxton's letter cited a positive profile of the prayer room that ran on the high school's student-run news website.

School district spokesman Chris Moore says the room is available to "students of all walks of life."
After covering more than 1,500 square miles, the Coast Guard has suspended its search for two young men missing near the Pass-a-Grille channel entrance since Tuesday.

Jie Luo, an international student from Colorado State University, disappeared in the gulf Tuesday evening. He and 14 classmates had chartered a 71-foot yacht for spring break.

TWO MISSING AFTER SPRING BREAK BOAT TRIP NEAR FLORIDA'S GULF COAST

Luo went swimming in the choppy water with four other students. The current pulled the students from the boat, and all but Luo were able to make it back to the boat.

Andrew Dillman, a crew member aboard the yacht, jumped in to rescue Luo, but he too, was not able to make it back to the boat.

Authorities believe both Dillman, 27, and Luo, 21, were swept away in the rough waters and strong current. Both are still missing.

Although the search was suspended, the Coast Guard is still investigating the situation surrounding their disappearance, and whether the charter was certified to hold so many people.

SECOND AMBER ALERT FOR TENNESSEE TEEN WHO DISAPPEARED WITH HER TEACHER

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Jie Luo and Andrew Dillman," said Capt. Holly Najarian, Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg commander. "Suspending a search is the most difficult decision I have to make in my position, and despite our best efforts, we were unable to reunite Andrew and Jie with their families."

Crews from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Coast Guard Station St. Petersburg, Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission conducted 39 searches totaling 80 aircraft and surface hours and covering more than 1,577 square miles - an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Click here for more news from Fox 13.
The search for a missing 15-year-old Tennessee girl believed to be with a teacher has gone fairly cold, Fox 17 Nashville reports.

The hunt for blond-haired Elizabeth Thomas entered a fifth day Friday. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is searching for her and 50-year-old Maury County Schools health teacher Tad Cummins. The TBI has issued a second Amber Alert for the girl. Investigators believe Cummins may have abducted the girl to potentially sexually exploit her.

'GONE GIRL' KIDNAPPING CASE: EX-LAWYER GETS 40 YEARS IN PRISON

It's absolutely important that everyone in this nation know about these individuals because frankly, they could be anywhere right now, TBI spokesman Josh DeVine said Thursday, according to the station. We've amped up our language because we really need the public to know that this young girl is in danger.

The pair may have driven to Decatur, Ala., on Monday, the station reported Thursday.

UPDATE: Here's the latest in our ongoing #TNAMBERAlert. We're doing everything we can to bring Elizabeth home. https://t.co/iJs4ZXusme pic.twitter.com/tnamANlpi7  TBI (@TBInvestigation) March 16, 2017

DNA REPORTEDLY CONNECTS SUSPECT TO 2 POLICE SHOOTINGS IN MICHIGAN

DeVine said that investigators have received 125 leads. He said that number was alarmingly low.

Cummins is believed to be armed with two handguns, according to the station. An arrest warrant accuses him of sexual contact with a minor.

A friend dropped Elizabeth off at a Shoneys in Columbia, Tenn., Monday morning.

Authorities released surveillance video showing Cummins at a gas station near the restaurant a short time later.

TBI believes Cummins took out a $4,500 cash loan a few days ago.

Cummins, 50, was caught kissing Thomas at school Jan. 23, the attorney for the Elizabeths father, Anthony Thomas, told The Columbia Daily Herald.

Attorney Jason Whatley said school officials knew a day later but allowed Cummins to keep teaching until Feb. 6 while they investigated, the paper reported Thursday.

Our client was only informed of the incident on Jan. 31, Whatley told the paper. All of his focus is on finding his daughter, and finding her alive. But we have grave concerns about the school's delay in telling Mr. Thomas, and for allowing him to remain in the classroom.

The school district fired Cummins on Tuesday, according to Fox 17.

Click for more from Fox 17.
Citizens have 911. Employees have the EEOC. Distressed sailors have the Coast Guard.

But what do Americas college students have? Where can they turn when they find themselves outside campus safe spaces and suffering a microaggression?

Fortunately, the University of Arizona has an answer. It recently distributed a 20-page booklet suggesting to faculty that when a student is victimized by a microaggression the appropriate response should be saying ouch. And the correct response for the offender should be saying oops, according to the guide.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

If a student feels hurt or offended by another students comment, the hurt student can say ouch. In acknowledgement, the student who made the hurtful comment says oops. If necessary, there can be further dialogue about this exchange.

The guide was authored by Jesus Trevino, vice provost of the big taxpayer-funded university, whose salary reportedly is $214,000 per year.

For those unfamiliar with the apparently epidemic scale of microaggression and thus not able to spot such offenses, the booklet offers a definition: Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.

The University of Arizona isnt the first to suggest the ouch/oops protocol. Iowa State University, among others, has also urged a similar approach.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 17

Trend:

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has provided the second senior loan of EUR 20m to AccessBank. The loan will be utilized by AccessBank to provide financing to small and medium enterprises in Azerbaijan. Since AccessBank is a leading bank in Azerbaijan specialized in providing financial services to local micro and SME businesses in the country, that transaction will further support the development of private sector.

We highly value the support of the EIB who has been a close partner of us since it launched its operations in Azerbaijan in 2014, AccessBanks CEO Michael Hoffmann said. In the light of the current challenging economic environment the transaction is an important signal of trust and confidence from the side of the EIB in our Bank and reflects that AccessBank enjoys strong support of its international partners.

The issued loan contributes to the objectives of the EIB External Lending Mandate, which focuses on the development of the local private sector, in particular support to SMEs, as well as social and economic infrastructure and climate change.

AccessBank was founded in 2002 by organizations such as the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, EBRD, IFC, KfW, a German consulting company LFS Financial Systems (LFS) and AccessHolding. AccessBank  one of the leading banks of Azerbaijan, offers a full range of banking services and has an extensive branch network. The Banks international IDR credit rating remains unchanged at the sovereign level of BB+ (FitchRatings) which is the highest rating among commercial banks in Azerbaijan.
The state of Tennessee is challenging the constitutionality of the federal governments refugee resettlement program.

We believe its a violation of the 10th Amendment, which declares states are sovereign and that the federal government cant use state money, cannot use state employees, to run a federal program, said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center.

The socially-conservative nonprofit group filed the lawsuit Monday on the states behalf. Although the timing coincides with President Donald Trumps embattled efforts to impose a temporary travel ban on visitors and refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries, Thompson said the effort behind this lawsuit began long before Trumps election.

300 REFUGEES SUBJECTS OF FBI TERROR INVESTIGATIONS, U.S. OFFICIALS SAY

Tennessee was the first state to challenge the program.

Last year, Tennessee legislators passed a resolution calling on the state to sue the federal government over its refugee program. But Gov. Bill Haslam and Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, both Republicans, took no action on it.

Catholic Charities has been administering the federal refugee resettlement program in Tennessee since 2008, when the state officially withdrew from the program. But legislators backing the lawsuit say state taxpayers continue to pay costs associated with refugees who require public assistance with health care and education.

NEW TRUMP TRAVEL BAN CAN'T BE ENFORCED ON SYRIAN FAMILY TRYING TO FLEE TO WISCONSIN, JUDGE SAYS

If they go to a public school and they dont speak English and they need to have English language learning classes, those are paid for in part by the State of Tennessee, said state Sen. John Stevens, a Republican.

The lawsuit has drawn criticism from immigrant rights advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union.

We believe that the actions of these politicians do not represent the majority of Tennesseans who believe in helping those in need  especially those fleeing violence and terror to protect their families, Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement published by the organization.

The lawsuits supporters insist their intention is not to harm refugees, but to get the federal government to take responsibility for unfunded mandates it imposes on states.

If its a priority for the federal government to resettle individuals in the various states, its only fair that they should pick up the tab for it, Stevens said.

Fox News Chip Bell contributed to this report.
An admitted Al Qaeda fighter was convicted on Thursday of federal terrorism charges for participating in a fierce firefight in Afghanistan that left two U.S. servicemen dead.

A jury in federal court in Brooklyn deliberated for about two hours Thursday before convicting Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun.

"As demonstrated by this case, the United States will be tireless in its efforts to hold Al Qaeda members accountable when they target American citizens serving their country abroad," Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde said in a statement.

Harun, 46, was extradited from Italy to the United State in 2012. Prosecutors told jurors that while in Italian custody, he confessed that he threw a grenade and shot at an American military unit in a 2003 ambush that killed Army Pvt. Jerod Dennis, of Antlers, Oklahoma, and Air Force Airman Ray Losano, of Del Rio, Texas.

While on the run, Harun later masterminded a failed plot to bomb a U.S. embassy in Nigeria, the government said. He was under the direct supervision of Al Qaeda higher-ups, including some still held at Guantanamo Bay, it said.

"The defendant is a man who made terrorism his life story," Assistant U.S. Attorney Melody Wells said in closing arguments on Thursday. "He made a career out of violent jihad."

The Saudi-born defendant who claims Niger citizenship had insisted he was a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than a civilian court prosecution. He refused to attend his trial, and his lawyers took the usual step of not giving a closing argument and focusing on post-trial motions challenging a conviction.

Harun faces a possible life term at sentencing on June 22.
A massive statue recently unearthed in Cairo and thought to depict one of the country's most famous pharaohs may be of another ancient Egyptian ruler, the country's antiquities minister said Thursday.



Khaled el-Anani said the colossus discovered last week in a Cairo suburb by an Egyptian-German team almost certainly depicts Psamtek I, a little known pharaoh from the 26th dynasty who ruled Egypt between 664 and 610 B.C.



"We are not going to be categorical, but there is a strong possibility that it's of Psamtek I," el-Anani told reporters in the front yard of the famed Egyptian museum in the heart of Cairo.



Sitting just yards away were parts of the statue, including the torso and a partial head, which were ferried across the city before dawn on Thursday. The statue was thought to be of Ramses II, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.



"There is a possibility, albeit small, that Psamtek I reused an older statue that may be of Ramses II," el-Anani said.



Psamtek I, credited for bringing stability to Egypt after years of turmoil, ruled some 600 years after Ramses II and sat on Egypt's throne for about 50 years. Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, ruled for around 60 years.



The discovery of the quartzite statue has offered a piece of welcome news at a time when most of Egypt's 92 million people are struggling to make ends meet amid an economic crisis. The tourism industry has yet to recover from the years of unrest following the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.



Egyptian officials appeared keen to bring international attention to the find.



The press conference called to clarify the statue's identity was held at the Egyptian museum, which houses the world's largest collection of pharaonic artifacts, and was attended by senior government officials and diplomats.



El-Anani allowed the anticipation to build, delivering his remarks after four archaeologists and restoration experts spoke.



He said the size of the statue -- with an estimated height of some 26 feet and a weight of seven tons -- was typical of Ramses II's era, but that hieroglyphs discovered at the statue's back-pillar after it was unearthed showed that it was of Psamtek I.



"We will not be 100 percent certain that it is of Psamtek I, but give us days, weeks or months and we will be certain," he said.



For now, said the Egyptian museum's chief of restoration, Moamen Othman, the challenge is to prepare the statue to survive in an environment different from the one in which it was submerged: Water and mud.



"It's important that we study the process of environmental adjustment for the statue. It will take three months to do."



The statue will eventually be displayed at the yet-to-open Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza Pyramids.
Several hundred protesters gathered Thursday in the Armenian capital after an activist died in prison while on hunger strike.

Artur Sarkisyan was detained on charges of aiding terrorists by delivering food to armed men who seized a police compound in Yerevan last year.

Sarkisyan died of heart failure earlier Thursday after being transferred to hospital where he underwent emergency surgery, according to Suren Makaryan, one of the doctors who treated him. He had announced a hunger strike after being re-arrested by police in February.

Demonstrators angry about his death marched through downtown Yerevan despite heavy rain, but were stopped from reaching the Justice Ministry by a police cordon. Some shouted slogans accusing Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan of being responsible for Sarkisyan's death, while others called for the resignations of the justice and health ministers.

The unrest comes ahead of a parliamentary election scheduled for April 2.

Another demonstration in central Yerevan was planned for Friday, protester Shagen Arutyunyan said.

Two people died and several wounded in a two-week standoff in July when about 30 armed members of a radical opposition group took hostages and barricaded themselves inside a police station. Sarkisyan was accused of breaking a police cordon to deliver food to the gunmen.

The violent confrontation triggered political unrest in the Southern Caucasus nation, galvanizing the opposition movement and leading to repeated clashes between protesters and police.

__

This story has been corrected from an earlier version to show that Sarkisyan died Thursday, not Wednesday.
Justice is blind, and its apparently bald, too.

A bald New Zealand man convicted of murder has been granted the right to wear his toupee in prison, arguing it was his human right, the BBC reported.

IN WORLD FIRST, NEW ZEALAND RIVER GRANTED SAME RIGHTS AS PEOPLE

Philip John Smiths toupee was part of his disguise when he fled the country, and, on his recapture, authorities confiscated his rug, too.

But Smith  serving a life sentence for murdering the father of a boy he had sexually abused  said the toupee was an artwork integral to his self-worth. A High Court judge agreed, saying Smiths fundamental right to freedom of expression was ignored.

Smith represented himself in court and said the taking of his toupee was initially done as payback.
Cuba is offering Colombia 1,000 medical school scholarships to support a peace accord in which the South American country's largest rebel army will relinquish its weapons.

The scholarships will be distributed mostly to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and those affected by the decades-long conflict.

Colombia's Cuban ambassador Jose Luis Ponce said Thursday that the move will help soldiers reintegrate into society. Some 200 scholarships for Cuba's renowned Latin American School of Medicine will be awarded annually for the next five years and will cover all costs except flights to Cuba.

State-owned Cubana de Aviacion said it would offer affordable tickets to scholarship recipients.
Syria launched anti-aircraft missiles toward Israeli jets Friday after a series of attacks by the Israeli air force.

ISRAEL'S ARROW ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM SCORES FIRST HIT



At least one of the missiles was intercepted midair by the Israeli anti-missile system Arrow in the first reported use of the system. It marks the most serious incident between the two countries since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war six years ago, according to analysts.

"Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission, and IDF aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles," the Israel Defense Forces reported in a statement. "The safety of the forces and Israeli civilians were not compromised."

TRUMP'S ENVOY TRIES TO REVIVE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE PROCESS

The rare statement did not specify which targets were attacked. Arab media reported that the target of Israel's strikes was a Hezbollah weapons convoy heading toward Lebanon.

"Our policy is clear. We will continue to act in order to stop weapons transfer to Hezbollah. When we see a possibility, and we have the intelligence and the capabilities, we act," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded.

At approximately 3 a.m. local time, warning sirens sounded in the Jordan Valley and in the West Bank. Several moments later, two loud explosions were heard in Jerusalem. Only three hours later, the Israeli army spokesman issued the statement.

A Syrian military statement said four Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace -- flying into Syria through Lebanese territory -- and targeted a military position in central Syria. It said Syrian anti-aircraft systems confronted the planes and claimed one of the jets was shot down in Israeli-controlled territory and that another was hit: a claim Israel denied.

After the strike in Syria, the Russian foreign ministry summoned the Israeli ambassador to Moscow.

This would not be the first time the Israeli air force has targeted weapons convoys in Syria headed for Hezbollah -- Iran's proxy group in Lebanon. Israeli officials repeatedly have vowed to take any necessary action to prevent weapons shipments from Iran to Hezbollah via Syrian territory.

Netanyahu traveled five times to Russia to meet with his counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, making sure Russia complied with Israeli interests in the region. In Fall 2016, Russia agreed to let Israel continue defending itself, and preventing any accidental clashes.
An official says the benefactor who bought French presidential candidate Francois Fillon two suits worth 13,000 euros ($14,000) last month is an unofficial adviser for African and French presidents.

Lawyer Robert Bourgi had close links to former French presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as the former leaders of Senegal and Gabon.

The judges who already were investigating Fillon have extended their probe to include the suits he says he received as a gift.

The Journal du Dimanche newspaper reported this week that the candidate had received the suits in what it described as a possible conflict of interest.

Fillon is facing charges for allegedly using public funds to pay his wife and children for work they never performed.

He has vowed to keep campaigning for the April-May election.
Out of dusty old documents found in a La Paz, Bolivia warehouse has come out the extraordinary story of Mauricio Hochschild, a German immigrant and mining tycoon who helped thousands of Jews escape from the Nazis in the late 30s.

Hailed by the local media as the Bolivian Schindler, Hochschild left behind a trove of files and photographs that document his leading role in saving at least 9,000 lives. In many cases he paid for their travel and initial accommodations out of his own pocket.

The discovery is all the more surprising because in his time Hochschild was vilified as a ruthless tycoon.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

These papers are going to change many things of the Bolivian history; the political ramifications are yet to come, said Edgar Ramirez, the archive director of the Mining Corporation of Bolivia (Comibol). Hochschild was the bad guy.

Hochschild was born in Biblis, western Germany, in 1881 and moved to Bolivia in 1921 lured by his love of mountain climbing.

A Jew himself, he amassed his fortune mostly through tin mining  he is one of Bolivias Barons of Tin  and became an influential figure in political circles. Thats how in 1938 he persuaded President German Busch to provide especial visas to Jewish migrants who were fleeing Europe amid escalating Nazism. He argued they could contribute to the countrys force labor, especially in the farming sector.

Ramirez said he believes Hochschild had high connections with the Resistance.

I am convinced that Hochschild was part of the anti-fascist apparatus, Ramirez told Fox News. In order to do what he did he had to be a man linked to the resistance movements that were operating around the world.

CHILD OF 'BRITAIN'S SCHINDLER' APPEALS FOR HELP FOR REFUGEES

The documents show Hochschild also placed some of the newcomers in his mining firm and set up schools for the children in La Paz. One handwritten letter on behalf of the children asks Hochschild to expand their facility "in view of the number of children who are here and others who want to come."

Organizing and filing the Hochschild documents was a titanic task, Ramirez said, because they had been left exposed to the elements and in complete disarray. He said they were mixed up with garbage and all kinds of unrelated material.

After being moved at least twice throughout the decades, the giant pile of documents was found in a Comibol storage warehouse.

'WE ARE ALL JEWS': ISRAEL HONORS US SOLDIER WHO STARED DOWN NAZI 70 YEARS AGO

When we started rescuing the documentation, everything was mixed: mixed with titles and deeds, with cartons, with trash, Ramirez recalled. A selection was made, the material was classified and that is when the find takes place.

He said the papers show Hochschild created two organizations directly related to the aid effort: the Society for the Protection of Israeli Immigrants (SOPRO), dedicated to obtaining funds for the Jewish families, and the Colonization Society of Bolivia (SOCOBO), which managed an agricultural project in Nor Yungas, where he bought three estates to receive the Jews.

Was he a charitable man? I have a question mark there because Hochschild is considered the worst of the three Barons of Tin; they say he was short-tempered, he didnt pay taxes, he exploited his workforce, said Ramirez.

The other two mining magnates were Victor Aramayo and Simon Patino. All three were responsible for over half of global tin production at the time.

Things changed quite drastically for the industry in the mid-40s, when the government enacted a law requiring more tax contribution from mining corporations. Hochschild refused to comply and ended up in prison. After his release in 1944, he left Bolivia for the United States and never returned.

He died in Paris in 1965, by then owner of a worldwide empire still thriving today.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Fitch Ratings international ratings agency has affirmed Southern Gas Corridor CJSCs (SGC) senior unsecured Eurobonds Long-Term foreign currency rating at 'BB+', reads the message of the agency Mar. 17.



The affirmation reflects Fitchs unchanged view on SGCs $2 billion Eurobonds maturing in 2026 fully guaranteed by Azerbaijan.

The reserves for the guarantee coverage have been taken into account in Azerbaijan governments budget for 2017.

According to the Azerbaijani companys managements forecast, SGCs net financial needs for operations and capital expenditures will be close to $5.4 billion in 2017-2019 taking into account proceeds from the operation of Shah Deniz Stage 1 and South Caucasus Pipeline.

SGCs funding stems from a combination of debt and equity originated from the Azerbaijani state, $2.5 billion bonds issued in favor of State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan at below market rates (LIBOR + 1 percent) and regular capital injections, which totaled $2.4 billion as of end-February 2017, reads the message. In addition, SGC placed initial guaranteed bonds of $1 billion in March 2016.



In Fitchs view, projects under SGCs development carry strategic importance for Azerbaijans long-term macroeconomic stability as it is highly dependent on hydrocarbons, which accounted for 61 percent of current account receipts in 2016.

The strategic importance of SGC is further strengthened by the cross-border nature of its projects, involved intra-governmental commitments and political support from transit states, the EU and consumers, Fitch said in its message. Most of the gas is already contracted up to 2045 by buyers from the EU and Turkey.

Southern Gas Corridor CJSC is a company which represents Azerbaijan in the Southern Gas Corridor project.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.



At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.



As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans Adriatic Pipeline.
The Pentagon is seeing evidence a Chinese aircraft carrier is making preparations to get underway, days before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to arrive in Beijing.

Satellite evidence shows China's only aircraft carrier is making preparations to get underway, U.S. defense officials have told Fox News.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Known as Lionang, China's aircraft carrier last conducted flight operations in early January in the South China Sea, the same location where U.S. officials suggest the carrier will return.

This week, Japan announced plans to send its largest warship to patrol the South China Sea, drawing the ire of Beijing.

USS Carl Vinson, an American aircraft carrier, is also in the region training with South Korea, and could soon be dispatched to the South China Sea, making for a crowded space with large-deck warships from three different countries.
An American woman convicted in her mother's "suitcase murder" in Indonesia gave custody of her young daughter on Friday to an Australian woman until her release from prison.

DJ, GIRLFRIEND SENTENCED IN BALI KILLING OF POLICE OFFICER

Heather Mack is serving a 10-year sentence for assisting her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder, in which the body was stuffed in a suitcase. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The baby girl, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan prison until she turned 2 years old on Friday.

INDONESIAN COURT SENTENCES REPORTER TO 7 MONTHS IN DRUG CASE

Prison chief Tony Nainggolan said the girl's development will be supervised by government social workers.

"We will allow the girl to meet her mother any time," Nainggolan said.

Mack, 21, broke down in tears as she gave Stella to Oshar Putu Melody Suartama, an Australian woman married to a Balinese man, said Mack's Indonesian lawyer, Yulius Benyamin Seran.

He said Suartama, who has two sons and lives in Bali, befriended Mack when the couple was first detained for murder. She helped Mack as an interpreter and supported her during the trial.

"She is the right person to raise Stella, she loves her," Seran said.

Von Wiese-Mack's badly battered body was found stuffed in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St. Regis Bali resort. She reportedly did not approve of her daughter's relationship with Schaefer.
A military vessel and a helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen overnight Friday, killing at least 42 people, according to a U.N. agency, Yemeni officials and a survivor who witnessed the attack.

Yemen's Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni city of Hodeida, and it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons into the port in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

PASSENGER PLANE LANDS SAFELY IN AUSTRALIA AFTER PROPELLER FALLS OFF

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from war-torn Yemen.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told The Associated Press the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles (50 kilometers) off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel and then the helicopter gunship opened fire.

He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up flashlights, apparently to show that they were poor migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

SEARCH IS ON FOR 10-FOOT CROCODILE WHO ATE A MAN WHILE FISHING IN MEXICO

A top official with the U.N.'s migration agency said 42 bodies have been recovered from the attack. Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, said the attack at around 3 a.m. on Friday was "totally unacceptable" and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat "before firing on it."

He said about 75 men and 15 women who survived the attack were taken to detention centers, and some bodies were laid in a fish market in the town of Hodeida because of a lack of space in mortuaries. Laurent De Boeck, the head of the IOM's Yemeni office, said the U.N. agency believes all those on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.

The Houthis said they had shot down a helicopter gunship in the same area a day earlier, without providing evidence. They also said the coalition had carried out a wave of airstrikes over the past 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed a number of fishermen hours before the strike on the migrant boat.

The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognized government. The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said only 14 bodies had arrived so far, adding that women were among the dead. Another 25 wounded people, including some who had lost arms and legs, were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

The U.N. refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen."

Despite more than two years of fighting in Yemen, African migrants continue to arrive in the war-torn country, where there is no central authority to prevent them from travelling onward to a better life in neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

More than 111,500 migrants landed on Yemen's shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.

The turmoil has left migrants vulnerable to abuse at the hands of the armed trafficking rings, many of which are believed to be connected to the multiple armed groups involved in the war.
The populist politician Geert Wilders failed to score victory for his far-right party in this weeks Netherlands elections, but that hasnt stopped Turkeys foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from lumping all Dutch parties into the same category and declaring wars of religion are looming in Europe.

Many parties have received a similar share of votes. Seventeen percent, 20 percent, there are a lot of parties like this, but they are all the same, Cavusoglu said at a rally in the southern city of Antalya on Thursday, Reuters reported. There is no difference between the mindsets of Geert Wilders and social democrats in the Netherlands.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

According to the Turkish official, they all have the same mindset and that mindset is propelling Europe towards wars of religion in the very near future.

Wilders second-place to center-right Prime Minister Mark Ruttes Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy on Wednesday was perceived as a triumph for European progressives fearing a far-right domino effect. But it seems to have done little to simmer growing tensions between the two countries.

Last weekend Dutch officials, citing security concerns, prohibited Cavusoglu from entering the Netherlands to attend a pro-referendum rally in the largely immigrant city of Rotterdam.

DUTCH PM RUTTE CLAIMS WIN OVER 'WRONG KIND OF POPULISM'

President Tayyip Erdogan too has made his criticism of the Dutch government well-known, accusing them of behavior akin to Nazi remnants at a recent rally. He also condemned the European Union for failing obligations regarding visa-free travel for Turks. However, senior EU officials have stated that Turkey is not delivering sufficiently on reforms to meet the terms of a migration deal that would allow Turks visa-free travel into the European Union, falling short specifically in the realm of appropriate terrorism legislation.

Europes Muslim population is steadily increasing, from four to six percent between 1990 and 2010, according to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, Turkey  a Muslim majority country  is formally secular. Yet Erdogan  who founded and heads the Islamist-based AKP Party  has endeavored to bring religion back into the focus of public life.
Iran says it has reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia for 85,000 Iranian pilgrims to attend the hajj after Tehran boycotted last year's annual Muslim pilgrimage.

The official IRNA news agency said Friday that the agreement was reached between an Iranian delegation and Saudi officials.

Iran boycotted last year's hajj after a stampede and crush of pilgrims in 2015 killed at least 2,426 people. Iran had the highest death toll of any country, with 464 killed.

Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals who support opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen. Riyadh cut diplomatic relations with Tehran last year after demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Twenty-five years after an Iranian-linked terror attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Israeli survivors, relatives and diplomats relatives will for the first time meet with an Argentinian president to commemorate the tragedy.

4 KILLED, 15 WOUNDED AS TRUCK RAMS INTO ISRAELI SOLDIERS IN JERUSALEM

Israels Foreign Ministry director-general, Yuval Rotem, and the deputy director-general for Latin America, Modi Ephraim, are slated to lead the Israeli delegation in Argentinas capital on Friday. The 30-person group  including family members of victims  is expected to meet with President Mauricio Macri at his official residence, as well as Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta prior to a ceremony marking the bombing's quarter-century anniversary.

JORDAN HANGS 10 FOR ATTACKS, SOME TIED TO ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

We knew straight away that Iran was behind this heinous attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a remembrance ceremony held in Jerusalem on March 6, in alignment with the Hebrew calendar. Iran set it in motion, Iran planned it and Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah, also carried it out.

It was March 17, 1992, when a suicide bomber claimed the lives of 29 people  four Israelis and 25 Argentinians  and wounded more than 200.

An outfit linked to Tehran and the Lebanese designated terrorist group Hezbollah later took responsibility. The Argentinian Justice Department also blamed Iran for being behind the attack, which remains the deadliest assault on an Israeli diplomatic mission.

The memory of those terrible days in Argentina is etched on our hearts, the images never fading from our hearts, Netanyahu added.
Protesters have demonstrated in the Armenian capital of Yerevan over the death in prison of an opposition activist.

Over 1,000 people gathered Friday in downtown Yerevan for a second day to criticize the government and demand a proper investigation into the death of 49-year old Artur Sarkisyan.

Sarkisyan went on a hunger strike last month to protest his incarceration. He died of heart failure on Thursday.

Investigators have opened a criminal case into his death.

Sarkisyan was arrested last year, accused of aiding terrorists for delivering food to a group of gunmen who seized a Yerevan police station. The armed radicals called for the release of an opposition leader during a two-week standoff with police that resulted in two deaths and triggered large street protests.
At least one person was reported dead and three others were hurt after two small planes collided mid-air Friday above a shopping center in Quebec, local media reported.

2 pilots injured after planes collide above shopping centre on Montreal's South Shore https://t.co/SkWvEQAbY6 pic.twitter.com/CC76Rs36Tq  CBC News (@CBCNews) March 17, 2017

One plane crashed in a parking lot and the other on a roof in Saint-Bruno, just outside Montreal, the CBC reported. Police said the crash appeared to be accidental.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

Paramedics rushed both pilots to nearby hospitals, police added.

One of the planes involved in the collision belonged to Cargair, a flight and pilot training school operating in nearby Saint-Hubert, according to the CBC. The company declined to speak to the news agency.

The shopping center was evacuated and police asked people to avoid the area. A witness described hearing "a loud boom" at the time of the crash.

A video posted on social media showed shoppers inspecting a severely damaged plane in the parking lot.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Mar. 17

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Uzbekistan and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will by late 2017 develop a strategy of cooperation for the next four years, EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti told a press conference in Uzbekistan March 16.

A memorandum of understanding was signed between the EBRD and the Uzbek government, according to him.

The EBRD president said that during the meeting with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the sides discussed priority areas of cooperation.

Those include projects for support of small business, support of reforms in the banking system, transportation, communications and infrastructure, as well as trade facilitation, said Suma Chakrabarti.

The EBRDs main goal is helping Uzbekistan to make full use of the existing potential for economic development, he added.

Chakrabarti noted that he supports Uzbekistans development strategy for 2017-2021, which was presented to the banks delegation.

Uzbekistan joined the EBRD in 1992. According to the EBRD, the bank invested almost 900 million euros in the country and implemented about 54 projects in energy, entrepreneurship, transportation, construction, development of mineral resources, etc.
A U.S. airstrike in Syria killed "dozens" of Al Qaeda fighters -- and may have eliminated some of the terror network's "high value" leaders -- but did not directly strike a mosque, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters Friday.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

"This [strike] hit its intended target," Capt. Jeff Davis said. He showed a photo of the bombed-out building to Pentagon reporters and added that the Pentagon was still assessing the damage from Thursday's strike.

Davis said the U.S. strike was planned around a "meeting" around Al Qaeda leaders in the terror-linked building. "It was a meeting of Al Qaeda leadership that we had been tracking for some time."

SYRIAN MISSILE FIRED AT ISRAELI JETS IS INTERCEPTED

He also admitted there "could be damage" to the side of the mosque next door. The strike unfolded in Al-Jinah, Syria, located 17 miles southwest of Aleppo, around 7 p.m. local time.

In the photo shown to reporters, the mosque appeared intact.

It was unclear if the mosque had any connection to the targeted building aside from being next-door, according to the Pentagon. The strike was conducted using drones and jet aircraft, Davis said.

The airstrike came a month after a CIA drone strike killed Al Qaeda's #2, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, in Syria.

Also, during the final hours of the Obama presidency, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber killed more than 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Syria. They were at a camp "where more than 100 fighters were being trained in terror tactics," the U.S. military's Central Command reported.
An official says the spokesman for Uganda's police has been shot dead by gunmen outside his home in the capital, Kampala.

Presidential spokesman Don Wanyama says Andrew Felix Kaweesi's car was attacked early Friday as he was being driven to work.

He says Kaweesi's bodyguard and driver also were killed.

There is no word yet on the possible motive, but the suburb where the attack occurred is noted for its relatively high crime rate.

Kaweesi's last public appearance as spokesman was at an event Wednesday where he disputed a Human Rights Watch report that accused Ugandan forces of killing scores of people during an attack on a tribal leader's palace in November.

Uganda has been rocked by a series of apparently targeted killings, many involving Muslim clerics, in recent years.
In some parts of the world, it could be a dangerous mission just to get clean drinking water.

Women (the job often falls on females) and children sometimes have to walk miles to reach a well, creek or pond. They walk along remote and often lawless routes where they are sometimes assaulted or raped.

Collecting water is a critical, daily task for poor people in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The figures from the United Nations are staggering:

663 million people have no safe drinking water in or near their homes;

more than 2 billion do not own a toilet;

almost 1 billion people don't use toilets;

hundreds of children under age 5 die every day from sanitation-related illnesses.

On World Water Day, March 22, the U.N. will ask governments to spend the money necessary so that by 2030, all poor people can have what people in wealthier societies take for granted: uncontaminated water and working toilets in or near their homes.

SLOVENIA MAKES DRINKING WATER CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

Its unclear how much progress is possible. According to the World Bank, it could cost about $114 billion a year to reach the 2030 goal. Foreign aid, by itself, isn't expected to cover the cost.

The task is not just about figuring out how to bring clean drinking water to developing nations  but helping the poorest communities develop proper hygiene and sanitation practices.

Activists are shocked that much of the world seems to turn a blind eye to all the people who struggle to find water to survive.

Ibrahim Musah, a manager in West Africa for the non-profit group Wateraid, is enraged by all the cases of little girls being raped, and being attacked by snakes while they gather water for their families.

TOXIC CHEMICALS IN DRINKING WATER FOR 6M AMERICANS

Wateraids director in Mali, Mamadou Diallo, said pregnant women are sometimes forced to search for water just a few days or even hours before giving birth.

Quentin Kelly, CEO of Princeton, N.J.-based Worldwater & Solar Technologies, said that people in developing nations have grown so accustomed to water-borne sickness that they believe its just part of life.

He said he asks adults how they feel. They say 'OK,' Kelly said. Then when I ask how often their kids get diarrhea, they say every day. They dont understand what sickness is.

Kelly's company designs and builds solar-powered pumps and filtration systems that can help impoverished people pump safe water from lakes, rivers and deep wells for irrigation and municipal water supply. The company intends to launch a new solar water purification product in conjunction with World Water Day.

Various organizations and companies are developing technology to bring clean water to people who don't have it. But its a delicate balancing act: How do you create purification systems in areas that cannot pay for them? And how do you teach communities to improve their sanitary practices?

Vincent Casey, a senior policy adviser at Wateraid, says theres no silver bullet  no technology or payment plan this is guaranteed to work. But he said its critical that national and local government provide training, maintenance and tools for whatever water program a village chooses.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is having some success in his country with the Clean India campaign. But hes not just relying on a slogan. New regulations require Indian banks to make loans for the installation of home toilets and water taps.

Rachel Brumbaugh of Water.org, who worked for years in India, said politics and economics seems to have persuaded some Indians to improve their sanitary practices. Her organization has helped at least 800,000 people in India alone obtain small loans which cover of toilets and clean water.

Water activists expect a lot of speeches on World Water day. Musah of Wateraid said its time for political leaders to act, not just talk.
United Real Estate Announces Top-Performing Agents and Offices for 2016

March 17, 2017 // Franchising.com // DALLAS - United Real Estate, a fast-growing real estate and franchise operation company, recognizes the top-performing agents in total sales volume, commission income, and total transactions closed and the top-performing offices for 2016. United credits the success of their diligent agents and offices to individual dedication and the company's full-service brokerage model accompanied by unmatched training, marketing, technology and 100-percent commission.

United Real Estate is proud to highlight the following top-performing agents in overall sales volume, gross commission income and number of transactions closed for 2016:

Top Agents  Sales Volume

Amanda Alejandro, United  Select Properties, produced over $35 million in sales volume

Annie Chen, United  Los Angeles

Dan Jenkins, United  East Carolina

Edgar Davis, United  Kansas City

Jessica Enochs, United  Philadelphia

Doug Dilling, United  Indianapolis

Top Agents  Gross Commission Income

Amanda Alejandro, United  Select Properties

Dan Jenkins, United  East Carolina

Jessica Enochs, United  Philadelphia

Top Agents  Total Transactions Closed

Dan Jenkins, United  East Carolina, closed 119 transactions during 2016

Amanda Alejandro, United  Select Properties

Edgar Davis, United  Kansas City

Doug Dilling, United  Indianapolis

Pat Grace, United  Kansas City

Martin Stiff, United  Louisville

United Real Estate is also proud to highlight the following top-performing offices in their commitment to Project Blue, overall agent growth  velocity award, leadership excellence in the local marketing and the United network and top brokerage offices based on sales volume for 2016:

Office Award Recipients

Commitment to Project Blue  Terri Jeffries, United  Chicago

Velocity Award  Todd and Jeff Bailey and Anthony Laurita, United  North Jersey

Leadership Excellence Award John and Jeff Finn, United  Richmond

Brokerage Company of the Year  Brenda Thompson Managing Broker, United  Dallas

Affiliated Company of the Year  Bonnie S. Mays and Eli Haddad, United  Lexington

"Our goal as a company is to provide agents and offices exactly what they need to elevate their careers and enable them to be a true entrepreneur in the real estate industry," said Peter Giese, president, United Real Estate. "At our recent convention held in Austin, Texas, this goal was strongly reinforced as we recognized our agents' incredible success during 2016. We are proud of the outstanding accomplishments our agents and offices achieved this year and the apparent passion individuals in our network possess to be the best. We look forward to the year ahead and the exponential growth that we are striving to achieve in agent and transaction counts in 2017."

A Closer Look at United Real Estate

United Real Estate  a division of the United Real Estate Group  was founded with the purpose of offering solutions to the challenges facing agents in the residential real estate brokerage industry. Providing the latest training, marketing and technology tools to both agents and brokers under a 100-percent commission strategy, United Real Estate makes it more profitable for an agent to sell real estate and for real estate brokers to leverage a complete system to better grow a successful, thriving real estate brokerage. Named as a "frontrunner" in the real estate industry in the 2013, "part of the next generation of real estate brokers" in 2014, as well as being listed in the "Power 200 Most Influential" in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by the Stefan Swanepoel Power 200 TRENDS Report, United Real Estate has more than 50 offices and over 2,700 agents. Through a worldwide franchise solution, United continues to rapidly expand. Driven by an unwavering commitment to giving back, a pillar of United's core values and guiding principles, United Real Estate is proud to support and partner with Autism Speaks, the world's leading autism science and advocacy organization, as United's charity of choice.

Members of the media needing information on United Real Estate or our marketplace, contact Public Relations Department - EMS@unitedrealestate.com

SOURCE United Real Estate

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar.16

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Irans renewable power projects progress slowly, Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian said.

According to him, Iran has planned to increase renewables volume by 5 gigawatts (GW) during next five years, Mehr reported Mar.16.

He said that during last year, Iran added only 16 MW to renewables, this year the volume reached 100 MW and next year 600-700 MW renewables would added to power generation capacity.

According to the latest weekly report of Irans energy ministry, the country added only 5 MW to its renewable power capacity during the current fiscal year, started March 21. Iran also added 75 MW to its hydroelectricity generation capacity during this fiscal year.

Before, Chitchian said during an interview with Trend in August 2016 that in five years, Iran expects to have actualized 5,000 MW of the power generated from renewable sources. "The figure would reach 7,500 MW by 2030".

He added that Iran has devised worth $30 billion plans for developing its power infrastructure in the following five years, which include building power plants, repairing and upgrading current ones, as well as developing and making the power grid smart.

Iran's power output increased by almost 2,000 MW during current fiscal year to 76,000 MW. It is projected to increase by 25,000 in five years and hit 125,000 in 10 years.

In 2015, Iran agreed to the terms of the COP 21 meeting in Paris, meaning by 2030, the country should be producing about 7,500 megawatts of power from renewable sources.

Currently Irans renewables capacity stands at 240 MW in total, according to the latest weekly report of Energy Ministry.
The Stafford County School Board expects to vote April 25 on redistricting students to Falmouth Elementary School.

Fewer than half a dozen parents spoke at a hearing Thursday night at Gayle Middle School, in contrast to highly attended Colonial Forge High School redistricting meetings this winter.

I think thats what we struggle with at Falmouth. Not only are we a Title I school, were a working family school, said parent Michelle Goshorn, who also spoke to The Free LanceStar on the issue in December.

Board Vice Chairman Scott Hirons, who represents the Falmouth District, said that while not many people turned out, their comments reflected what he has heard at town hall meetings.

I was happy that everybody else got to hear the things that Ive been hearing. Active parents, they know the best, Hirons said. The big thing that Ive been taking notes on is, what is the effect going to be on Falmouth Elementary?

Falmouth parents seem to favor a plan that redistricts about 65 students from the overcrowded Margaret Brent Elementary School, but does not also transfer an additional 50 students or so from Ferry Farm Elementary.

Id like to see the School Board visit the school, parent Katie Willis said. Go into Falmouth, see how its used today, the students that it has. Because I think theyll be surprised what they see.

On paper, I think it looks like we have all these open rooms, she continued. But across the board, theyre used for critical services for many of our students.

Falmouth hosts special needs students who use all available space for therapy classes, she said.

Ferry Farm students have a longer bus ride, board members have said, but the school is not overcrowded. At Margaret Brent, crowding is not severe, but it is higher than at other schools in the southern end of the county, where schools are generally well within their 730- to 950-student capacities.

Ferry Farm is due to be rebuilt, but the ongoing process of combining the schools capital improvement plan, or CIP, with the countysto create a joint plan, for which, in concept, both boards would set prioritiescould affect that plan, Hirons said.

Because the joint CIP would start fresh in some ways, the boards might reconsider whether Ferry Farm needs to be rebuilt or could be remodeled, he said.
Westmoreland County attorney Susan Rager pulled out all the stopsand some of her most expensive fashion accessoriesto make a point about the impact fracking could have on her waterside community.

The Board of Supervisors held a second public hearing Wednesday about proposed changes to its zoning ordinances for oil and natural gas drilling. Rager, who lives in the Coles Point home where she was born and calls herself a tree-hugger from way back, had addressed various aspects of this fracking fiasco at other county gatherings.

At the most recent meeting, she added some drama.

She told the standing-room only crowd of about 160 people that she paid $5,000 for the full-length mink coat she was wearingyes, its realand another $1,300 for the Louis Vuitton briefcase she carried and $800 for the ankle boots by the same designer.

Combined, the items total $7,100.

If she sold them and got half their retail value, shed have $3,550 to spend on bottled water, which she would need if her well was contaminated during hydraulic fracturing.

Also called fracking, thats the process of injecting water and chemicals deep into the ground to loosen trapped gas and oil. Potential damage to water supplies is one of the impacts Westmoreland officials listed in their reasons for studying the issue.

Rager estimated conservatively that she and her husband would use $26,000 worth of water a year to drink, cook and batheif she paid the wholesale price of $1.20 per gallon.

Money from her mink and Vuitton items would pay for less than two months of water.

Nobody has really talked about this, but what do you do when you become Flint? she asked, referring to the impoverished Michigan community where water supplies were poisoned by lead. This is the real picture of what would happen if theres one mistake by fracking operations.

Rager was among 30 residents who spoke at the hearing, the latest of a long line held by supervisors and Planning Commission members. Many speakers echoed sentiments expressed before, that Westmoreland should ban the practice of fracking altogether to protect the pristine quality of county rivers, creeks and tributaries.

No one from the industry addressed the board, but one speaker, Robert Fogg, supported fracking in Westmoreland. Hes among landowners who have leased 84,000 acres in whats known as the Taylorsville basinan area south and east of Fredericksburgfor possible drilling.

The Board of Supervisors didnt take any action as members said they want to digest all that had been said. They also asked for more information about Augusta County, the Shenandoah Valley locality that last month became the first in Virginia to ban fracking.

Officials there didnt do away with the extraction of gas, oil or minerals by traditional methods; they simply prohibited the practice of fracking.

Westmoreland officials have echoed concerns by those in adjacent King George County, who didnt want to risk a lawsuit from the gas and oil industry by imposing an outright ban on fracking. Instead, King George put restrictive measures in place, saying drilling would not be allowed within 750 feet of any waterways or roads, homes or public buildings.

Westmorelands proposals are even more restrictive. They would put in place a 1,000-foot buffer around the same features. An additional option would include creating a new zoning district which would give the county greater legislative authority over approvals of drilling activities, according to the proposed amendment.

In short, the creation of a new district would mean potential applicants would have to appear before the Westmoreland Board of Supervisors twice, said County Administrator Norm Risavi.

Applicants would have to apply for rezoning to become part of the newly created extraction district, and again to get a special exception permit. Both processes would include public hearings and allow the supervisors to consider each application separately.

Risavi said hes not sure residents grasp how much control the two measures would give county officials.

That is the greatest authority that a local government has, Risavi said, its zoning powers.
A journalist who was held hostage for seven years in the 1980s and 1990s will speak at the Lake of the Woods Democratic Club on Sunday. Terry A. Anderson, a retired Associated Press correspondent, was taken hostage in 1985 by Shiite Hezbollah militants. Sundays meeting, which will begin at 1:30 p.m., is open to the public regardless of political affiliation. Anderson, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, authored the book Den of Lions about his experience as a hostage. Here, he hugs daughter Sulome during a hometown parade in his honor in 1992.
What does the government do with a coffin it no longer needs that was used to train soldiers how to conduct military funerals? Sell it at an auction, of course.

With a casket costing an average of more than $2,000, buying one for only $200 can save someone a lot of money, said Steven L. Barva, a contract specialist at Dahlgren with the Air Combat Command.

You can just store it until its needed, but it can save you thousands of dollars later on, he said.

Every year, the government buys hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and supplies for more than 4 million federal employees, everything from pencil erasers to aircraft carriers.

While the sheer size of such a supply system can frustrate even the best efforts to understand it, stringent rules govern not only the purchase of government property, but also, how to get rid of it when it is no longer needed.

The long and short of it is, as Barva explained, If anything has any value, you cant destroy it or abandon it.

Most government property begins its trip through the bureaucracy by being assigned a number called a unique identifier, according to Matthew S. Ament, the inventory manager at the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, one of nine separate agencies located at the Dahlgren naval base in King George County. Like a fingerprint or DNA, that number (147,326) for the monitor this writer is using) becomes the ID for each piece of equipment, whether it is an automobile or a zip drive, and stays with it for as long as it remains in government hands.

To be sure, not everything gets a serial number. Office supplies, like pens and notebooksbecause they are nondurable property in government speakare not tracked individually. Such items are just used until they wear out.

Other things, like computers or office furniture, can be used for years, so they get a serial number the minute they are unloaded from a delivery truck, Ament said. As tedious as that may sound, there is a simple reason for it.

Its to protect the taxpayer, Barva said. If we cant track it and we dont know where it is, we end up buying it again.

That could get expensive. The government buys thousands of items every day. Even for someone like Barva, who has spent more than a decade in government procurement, it is uncertain exactly how many items total are available for purchase, he said.

Its like asking how many grains of sand are on the beach, Barva said. Theres no answer to that. Companies come and go. Technology changes. For instance, overhead projectors are no longer made, but we used to buy them.

Costs vary, too, ranging from dollar-store knickknacks that a chaplain may buy to give to kids overseas, Barva said, to the militarys newest stealth fighter, the F35, which at more than $7 billion is already the most expensive acquisition in U.S. history.

Once property is no longer needed by the government, it begins a journey that can take it across the country or around the world, a process that can last more than a year, according to Barva.

At Dahlgren, surplus property ends up at an inconspicuous 1920s airplane hangar that stands beside the base airfield. Still known by its former acronym DRMO (pronounced DerMo by base employees), it stands for the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office, one of those unwieldy names that government agencies frequently adopt to describe their functions.

Although no planes have parked inside its cavernous interior in decades, the hangar still retains much of its original appearance from that earlier time. Cold and drafty in the winter and sweltering in the summer, it is now the final stop for everything leaving the base: computers, printers, podiums, office furniture and more.

DRMO makes the equipment available to other agencies on the base. If none of them want itand mostly they do notit is then shipped to Richmond to another government warehouse. There, it is logged into a computer system maintained by the Defense Logistics Agency that is accessible to any military unit or agency anywhere in the world.

If there are still no takers after that, it is made available to the rest of the federal government and then, eventually, to state governments, school systems, nonprofit organizations like the Boy and Girl Scouts, and private citizens.

Sales to private citizens are handled by Government Liquidation, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company with more than 150 locations around the country. The closest locations to the Fredericksburg area are Richmond, Arlington and Petersburgs Fort Lee.

Anyone can go to the companys website, set up an account, and begin bidding on surplus property. The opportunities are endless. There is everything from aircraft parts to cold-weather jacket liners for pilots, from dental chairs to weapons racks.

The kicker is you have to pick it up in Richmond. If computers become available in Monterey, Calif., you have to go there to get it (or have it shipped). It may not be worth it. You can buy it instead for what you pay for the price of an airplane ticket.

Weapons such as tanks and airplanes are not sold to the public for obvious reasons, but even here, a process exists for disposing of surplus property.

Police departments can buy Humvees, for example, or M16 rifles when the fully automatic firing mechanism has been made inoperable, Barva said. More elaborate rules govern purchases by foreign governments.

We are authorized to work with any country that submits a Letter of Request to us, said Peter E. Beronja, a foreign military sales case manager with DLA Disposition Services in Battle Creek, Mich. Once we create and submit a case package to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, they will review the case to determine if the country is eligible to receive property, and the types of property authorized.

In rare instances, surplus weapons can also be sold to the public. As if to make the point, Barva showed me an M121 training grenade that had been rendered inert and is now used as a paperweight on his desk. Similar models can be found on eBay.

Now, you couldnt go buy a white phosphorous grenade, he said.

This also illustrates the difference between reusing something, say a computer going from one government agency to another, but still being used as it was originally designed, and repurposing it when it meets a different function than the one it was made for. The military or a law enforcement agency might want a vehicle or a desk not to drive or to write on, but to blow up, Barva said.

Through reutilization, an agency could take a seemingly mundane item such as a desk and use it for firearms or breach training, Barva said. Ive watched them transfer a government vehicle and put it on a range for artillery or aircraft to use for target practice.

As for horseshoes, yes, the government buys these, too. The Old Guard at Fort Myer in Arlington and the U.S. Park Police in the Washington area are just two government agencies regionally that still use horses to perform their duties. However, dont expect to see horseshoes auctioned off any time soon. As nondurable property, they are used until they wear out. You will have to buy your own.
Real estate taxes went up 7 cents in King George County last yearand would go up another 3 cents under a proposal the Board of Supervisors is considering.

At a work session this week, supervisors looked at the spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1presented by new County Administrator Neiman Young. He proposed the 3-cent increase to provide the $43 million needed in local funds to continue existing servicesand to hire six more fire and rescue workers, six additional special education teachers and several part-time positions in other departments.

Young also suggested moving money from other county funds to cover some of the increases in personnel and equipment. He proposed the hike after board members balked March 6 at a bare-bones proposal that they said didnt cover county needs.

Young, a retired Army officer who was preparing his first municipal budget, said he gave the board options with a 3-cent increase because he didnt want to pigeonhole them.

One option that was put back on the table was pay raises for the supervisors themselves. King George salaries are $5,000 a year, among the lowest in the region, and Chairman Ruby Brabo had proposed raising the pay to $15,000 a year.

Fellow supervisors supported the increase in past work sessions. But on March 6, Supervisors Richard Granger and John Jenkins Jr. rejected it after hearing about so many other county needs, including from the school system.

Supervisor Jim Howard, who is retiring from the board in December, asked fellow members to reconsider the raises. He said that in the last week, people from King George to Fredericksburg, where he sees a dentist, told him they couldnt believe how little the board members make,

Please dont cut yourselves short, he said, adding he and Supervisor Cedell Brooks Jr. had tried unsuccessfully in the past to get incremental raises. Had we done this over time, we wouldnt be here today, but were here today. Its been 30 years since anybodys done anything.

Board members compromised and agreed to double their pay instead of tripling it. The new annual salaries of $10,000 will start Jan. 1 under the budget proposal.

Brooks also will leave the board at the end of this year and jokingly asked if the increases could be retroactive.

When told they couldnt, he said: You all better give me something for retirement, I know that.

Supervisors agreed to hire three of the six fire and rescue workers for the entire fiscal year and to hire the other three on Jan. 1, halfway through it.

They also have appropriated money for a part-time county engineer. Travis Quesenberry originally was hired for that job in 2002 and put many of those duties on the back burner when he became county administrator in 2008. Quesenberry will go back to being a part-time engineer next month and make $65,000 a year, compared with his $155,000 annual salary as county administrator.

The budget proposal also includes $16.9 million in local funding for schools. Superintendent Rob Benson explained March 6 that King Georges special education population is growing even though its overall attendance has stayed the same, with an average daily membership of 4,200. Supervisors agreed to fund six new teaching positions for special education students as well a bus driver for them.

The budget also would cover the mandated increase in payments to the Virginia Retirement System, money to keep teacher salaries competitive with smaller, surrounding counties, and a cost-of-living adjustment for other school workers.

The proposal includes a part-time grant writer. The $25,000 position had been removed, but Granger suggested bringing it back, saying such a worker could bring a lot of dollars into the county.

Theres $829,000 worth of new equipment in the budget. More than half of it, $423,500, would go to schools for new computers and the software and hardware that come with them. The remainder is for tactical equipment, such as shields and gas masks for the Sheriffs Office, new voting machines and various vehicles.

On Tuesday, Young will make a formal budget presentation to the supervisors, who plan a public hearing on the spending proposal April 4.

Supervisors are scheduled to adopt the budget on April 18. If the 3-cent increase is approved, the real estate tax rate of 71 cents per $100 of assessed value would go into effect July 1.
Spotsylvania County leaders will not raise the real estate tax rate in order to increase spending on public schools.

The Board of Supervisors voted 43 Thursday to advertise the current rate of 85 cents per $100 of assessed value ahead of a March 28 public hearing on next fiscal years budget. Supervisors can only lowernot raisethe advertised rate when they set taxes April 11.

Supervisors Greg Cebula, Gary Skinner and Chris Yakabouski, who favored advertising a 2-cent increase, cast the dissenting votes. Advertising no change to the tax rate limits discussion for the political privilege of saying you held the line or reduced taxes, Cebula said.

We effectively spit in their faces when we establish an advertised rate that leaves no wiggle room to consider public wants and needs, and it totally [disincentivizes] their participation in the public hearing, he said.

But Supervisors Chairman David Ross characterized many of the comments at the annual budget hearing as politically motivated. He said his vote to maintain the tax rate is in line with feedback he receives from constituents on fixed incomes.

County Administrator Mark Taylors budget proposal keeps taxes steady, but is more than $4 million shy of what the School Board says it needs to help cover 2 percent pay raises, in addition to rising health care rates and Virginia Retirement System payments. He said Thursday that he thinks the county can significantly close that deficit without a tax increase, which he said he could not recommend in good conscience.

Supervisor Timothy McLaughlin accused the School Board of playing politics with teachers salaries. The only three items that didnt make the cut were teacher salaries, health care and VRS, he said of the School Boards budget proposal. Why arent teachers the number one priority? They should be the first things funded in your budget.

Yakabouski took issue with that remark, noting that the School Board does not control the purse strings. And school officials have noted that personnel costs make up the vast majority of their budget. To say that the schools now have taken teacher pay and put it at the back of the aisleis disingenuous because it is absolutely not true, Yakabouski said to applause.

Prior to the meeting, a small group of public schools supporters held signs to passing motorists outside the Holbert Building. One of the posters stated Save Our Schools, while another encouraged supervisors to advertise an 87-cent rate, or a 2-cent increase.

Later, during two public hearings at the meeting, 11 of the 14 speakers expressed support for the School Boards budget proposal.

Spotsylvania resident Anthony Lofaro had especially strong words for supervisors, telling them, Youre a disgrace as he walked away from the podium. He said county leaders have subsidized numerous residential developments at the expense of schools.

Sue Sargeant, a preschool speech pathologist for Spotsylvania schools, accused Supervisors Paul Trampe, McLaughlin and Ross of having contempt for public education. She said McLaughlin should recuse himself from voting on the tax rate because he owns multiple properties in the county.

Its to Mr. McLaughlins advantage to flat-line the tax rate, she said.

McLaughlin, who said he owns 10 propertiesincluding his homecalled that comment a red herring in a brief interview. He said he has listed the properties on financial disclosure forms as required by law.

Sargeant also asked Supervisor Greg Benton, a Republican who is viewed as the swing vote on taxes, to please dont vote party ideology.

Benton said later that nobody influences me but the stuff I dig into myself.

I dont let any party or any one person dictate what I do or how I do things, said Benton, who noted that he did not accept any campaign contributions when he ran for political office in 2015.

We effectively spit in (the publics) faces when we establish an advertised (real estate tax) rate that leaves no wiggle room to consider public wants and needs, and it totally [disincentivizes] their participation in the public hearing. SUPERVISOR GREG CEBULA
A Stafford County supervisor who served in the Marine Corps will seek the Republican nomination for the 28th District House of Delegates seat.

Bob Thomas, 39, confirmed in an email Friday that he will vie to succeed House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, who is retiring in January after a 30-year political career. He said he made a soft announcement at a Stafford Republican Committee meeting earlier this week.

We must send someone to Richmond who, like Bill Howell, has the character, temperament, skill and reputation of building coalitions and consensus around issues and someone who has worked with officials from outside our district, Thomas said in written remarks. He said he would build on relationships he made in a leadership position with the Virginia Association of Counties.

He is the second Republican to enter what could be a crowded field in the June 13 primary. Paul Mildeanother member of the Stafford Board of Supervisorsdeclared his candidacy last month, the day after Howell announced his retirement.

In addition, former Stafford Supervisor Susan Stimpson said she is seriously considering another bid for the seat. She unsuccessfully challenged Howell two years ago in a bitter primary contest.

Thomas, who has represented the George Washington District on the Board of Supervisors since 2012, said the countys conservative budgeting and tax policies have generated more revenue for public schools and public safety while reducing the pressure on property taxes.

He said he would draw on his business experience as a legislator to ensure Virginia is winning the economic development battle against our competitor states. Thomas co-founded Capriccio Software Inc., a government contractor with about 30 employees, in 2006.

Like Stafford and Fredericksburg, the commonwealth must diversify our economy away from the federal government to protect us if the fragile economic recovery fails, he said.

Thomas is married with eight children, all of whom attend Stafford Public Schools. He served in the Marine Corps from 1995 until 2003, when he received an honorable medical discharge.

I thoroughly enjoy serving on the Board of Supervisors ... but the overwhelming encouragement from many of our friends and neighbors confirms my belief that I can have an even greater impact on the community we all call home, Thomas said.
Civil War history-lovers the world over know of the fighting that raged in 1863 on the south end of Culpeper Countys Fleetwood Hill. Its the heart of Brandy Station battlefield, where Gen. Robert E. Lee began his Gettysburg campaign.

Far fewer people are familiar with Fleetwoods north end. But it, too, figured decisively in the June 9 battleand now the Civil War Trust aims to preserve it.

On Thursday, the nonprofit trust appealed to its 50,000 members to chip in to buy 70 acres on the other end of Fleetwoods long ridge, at Brandy Rock Farm. It bought the lands development rights from the farm family, and will place a conservation easement on the acreage.

The trust also announced that it is raising money to finish paying for another Civil War site in Culpeper, where Brandy Stations lesser-known Stevensburg phase was decided.

On Fleetwoods northern crest, Confederate Gen. W.H.F. Rooney LeeRobert E.s second sonfell back from his cavalry troopers defenses along a stone wall near the Rappahannock River. On the battlefields highest ground, Lee held off an attack by Union Gen. John Bufords horsemen that one witness called the finest fighting of the war.

Far to the south, near the village of Stevensburg, the trust has purchased 174 acres at Hansbroughs Ridge, commanding terrain crucial to the battles outcome that also provided a winter-quarters site for the Unions Army of the Potomac in the winter of 1863-64.

The 2nd South Carolina Cavalrys bold defense of a narrow gap in Hansbroughs Ridge prevented a Union cavalry division from reinforcing comrades in final the winner-takes-all fight for Fleetwood Hill, said Virginia historian Clark B. Hall, the leading expert on the battle.

Any chance the Union armys cavalry corps had to win the Battle of Brandy Station was compromised at the ridge, he has written.

To complete both deals, worth $1.23 million, the trust needs to raise $190,000, President Jim Lighthizer said in a letter to members. Thats roughly a $6.50-to-$1 match, leveraging private contributions against state and federal funds, a gift from a generous trust board member and donated valuation from one of the landowners, he wrote.
The artistry of John Adams Elder, one of Fredericksburgs 19th-century leading lights, received state recognition Thursday.

And thanks to action by the Board of Historic Resources and State Review Board, an Alexandria statue inspired by Elder is now in line for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

But whether that will matter in Alexandrias ongoing dispute over moving the 1889 statue of a Confederate soldier is unclear. The monuments listing on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the national register is honorary, and doesnt accord it physical protection.

Still, officers of the United Daughters of the Confederacywhich sought its placement on the registerswere clearly delighted by the boards unanimous decisions.

The boards voted Thursday during a joint meeting at Gari Melchers Home and Studio in Falmouth, itself a national historic landmark and the former estate of a famed American artist.

Their action immediately places the 7-foot-tall bronze statue on the state register and recommends it to the U.S. Department of the Interiors keeper of the national register for federal recognition. The boards accorded the same honor Thursday to a stone monument in Harrisonburg that marks the spot where Confederate cavalry commander Turner Ashby was killed in 1862.

Only a few Confederate statues are individually named to the state register, said James Hare, director of VDHRs survey and register division. But dozens of Confederate monuments and four Union monuments are included as contributing elements in historic districts across Virginia.

Elder, the son of a bootmaker whose lifelong home still stands in downtown Fredericksburg, achieved renown as a painter of Civil War scenesmost memorably the 1864 Battle of the Crater in Petersburgand a portraitist of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other Confederate noteworthies.

In tribute to Alexandria soldiers who died in the war, the R.E. Lee Camp No. 2 Confederate Veterans commissioned the Alexandria statue, based on Elders plaster model of the central figure in one of his best-known paintings, Appomattox. Elder was at Appomattox when Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, according to a profile written by the late Fredericksburg magazine publisher Barbara Crookshanks.

The Appomattox statue is unique in Virginias documented Confederate iconography, states the register nomination, which calls it the work of a master possessing high artistic value.

Unlike many mass-produced or stock statues that present soldiers armed or in the midst of battle, this statue represents a simple unarmed private, the nomination says. His head is downcast, his uniform is rumpled and his expression is pensive as he surveys the destruction four years of war has caused to Virginia. The [R. E. Lee Camp] men wished to erect a monument to their fallen comrades, not a monument to what was already becoming known as the Lost Cause. The statue was not intended to glorify an ideology, but to remember those who sacrificed all.

Versions of Elders painting, which may have been his most popular work, were purchased for the collections of the Virginia State Library and the Virginia Historical Society. Elder rests in Fredericksburgs Confederate Cemetery.

The Alexandria statue was unveiled to fanfare on May 24, 1889, 28 years after the local militia companies marched out of town. Later, it was copied for similar Confederate statues in other Virginia localities, the first being Toms Brook in the Shenandoah Valley.

The bronze figure was sculpted by Casper Buberl, a Bohemian immigrant whose best-known work locally is the 1,200-foot-long frieze of marching Union soldiers that adorns the Pension Building in Washington, now the National Building Museum.

The Henry Bonnard Bronze Co. of New York, the late 19th centurys pre-eminent foundry, cast the sculpture. Bonnard cast the works of top American sculptors, including Augustus SaintGaudens, George Grey Barnard, Frederic Remington, and Daniel Chester French, famed for his statue of the 16th U.S. president inside Washingtons Lincoln Memorial.

Appomattox marks the site where Alexandria militia units left to join the Confederate armys 17th Virginia Regiment on May 24, 1861. Its soldier faces battlefields to the south where his comrades were killed. The names of Alexandria Confederates who died in the war are inscribed on the base of the statue, which occupies the middle of a busy intersection next to the U.S. courthouse.

Last September, the Alexandria City Council voted unanimously to ask the Virginia General Assembly for permission to move the statue.

It went beyond the recommendations of a task force that studied what to do about the citys controversial Confederate symbols after a lone gunman, trying to spur a race war, murdered nine parishioners inside a historic AfricanAmerican church in Charleston.

The council seeks to relocate the statue from Prince and Washington streets, where thousands of motorists pass it each day, and move it to the adjacent lawn of The Lyceum, a local history museum. It also wants to add signage with contextual information about the statue so people can put its history into perspective.

Several state lawmakers have said it is unlikely that the council will succeed in moving the statue, according to The Washington Post. Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg met cordially last fall with UDC chapter President Deborah Mullins, but they didnt find common ground on the issue.

The UDC owns the monument, which is on city land.

In a Feb. 22 letter to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Alexandrias city manager supported the statues inclusion on the state and national registers, but wrote that the city will continue pursuing its relocation.

I believe that the shifting the statues location ... will not affect the statues overall integrity, and in fact will enhance it, Mark B. Jinks wrote.

The council also voted last fall to rename the citys section of Jefferson Davis Highway. A group of students at the University of Mary Washington suggested the same idea, but Fredericksburgs City Council declined to appoint a task force to study the idea.

Last November, Gov. Terry McAuliffes Monuments Work Group issued a statewide report on the overarching issues, declaring that decisions about the appropriate treatment of monuments rests within the communities that house them.

Last month, the Charlottesville City Council voted 32 to move an equestrian statue of Lee and to rename its site, Lee Park. Many community members view the statue as a symbol of white supremacy.

On Feb. 25, the Library of Virginia hosted a daylong symposium on such monumentstitled Lightning Rods for Controversyat which scholars shared their thoughts on how communities commemorate Civil War history, C-SPAN3 broadcast the lectures and discussions, which can be viewed online.

Next week, the University of Virginia School of Architecture will host a symposiumRace and Public Space: Commemorative Practices in the American Southto discuss how race, memory and commemoration intersect.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Dalga Khatinoglu  Trend:

Iran exported 2.298 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil as well as 700,000 b/d of gas condensate in February, National Iranian Oil Companys CEO Ali Kardor told SHANA Mar. 17.

He added that in March the crude oil export reached above 2.1 million b/d and the gas condensate export reached about 500,000-550,000 b/d in average.

According to him, currently Iran exports 0.5 million b/d of oil and gas condensate to the EU, but the volume will reach 0.8 million b/d in two months.

Kardor said Irans crude oil output will increase by 0.1 million b/d to 4 million b/d by April 20.

However, according to OPECs monthly report, Irans crude oil output reached 3.814 million b/d in February.

Kardor said that 45,000 b/d of oil output will be added from the South Azadegan field by April 20, while 15,000 b/d from the Azer field, 35,000 b/d from the South Pars gas fields oil layer and 10,000 b/d from the Yaran field will be added to the oil production capacity.

Touching upon the needed investment in upstream sector, he said that NIOC has $50 billion debts and is not able to fund the oil and gas projects on its own.

If Iran cant absorb the needed investments, the countrys oil production will decrease by 1.5 million b/d in 20 years, he said.

Iran has introduced the newly designed oil contract model, called the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC).

The country plans to sign agreements with foreign companies to develop 49 oil and gas fields based on IPC.

The first tender on South Azadegan will be issued no later than April 20, Kardor said, adding that the second tender will be on the Yadavaran oil projects.

Iran expects to attract $100 billion investment, of which 80 percent would be foreign funds to develop its upstream projects by 2021.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 17

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

Iranian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi has stressed the significance of accelerating the development of bilateral relations with Russia in all fields as the two countries are gearing up for President Hassan Rouhanis imminent visit to Moscow.

Vaezi, co-chairman of Iran-Russia Joint Economic Commission, who believes that Moscow-Tehran ties are turning into an all-out strategic cooperation, has briefed Trend on the ongoing economic cooperation between the two regional powers, and also documents which are likely to be discussed between President Rouhani and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trade turnover between the two countries saw a huge surge over the past year following the high level-talks between officials, rising by 80 percent to more than $2 billion, with energy, agriculture and defense sales forming the bulk of the transactions.

According to Vaezi, about 10 documents are expected to be inked for broadening cooperation between Iran and Russia during President Rouhanis upcoming visit, expected to take place over the next two weeks.

Speaking about the documents, Vaezi described a document that draws up a roadmap for industrial cooperation as very important.

Elaborating on plans for deepening cooperation, he further added that Iran and Russia have targeted increasing the volume of bilateral trade to $10 billion over the coming three years.

Oil and gas fields

According to the Iranian minister, the sides consider cooperation in oil and gas fields as well as exporting crude.

He added that several Russian companies are studying opportunities for developing 11 oil fields in Iran and currently the representatives of Russias Gazprom are in Tehran for discussing projects on developing some fields.

The two sides have made efforts to put into operation an energy agreement under which Iran would export 100,000 barrels per day of oil to Russia.

Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak earlier said that Iran would supply the oil within the framework of the "oil-for-goods" arrangement between the two countries.

Iranian and Russian oil companies earlier signed seven memorandums of understanding to study the countrys oil fields.

Oil fields Oil in-situ (billion barrels) Current production (thousand b/d) API Russian company Mansouri 15.142 60 20-25 Lukoil Ab Teymour 15.258 60 22-22.5 Lukoil Aban 0.138 9 21 Zarubezhneft West Paydar 0.952 28 18-20 Zarubezhneft Cheshmeh Khosh 3.74 72 20-29 Gazprom Neft Changouleh 2.367 0 24 Gazprom Neft Dehloran 5.184 24 30 Tatneft

Eurasian Economic Union

The two countries are discussing the issue of cooperation between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on reduction of duties on some exports of goods, which may eventually lead to the elimination of customs duties in future, Vaezi noted.

The EEU is a regional political and economic bloc that aims to optimize the flow of goods and services between its members.

Power plants

According to the minister, the sides have made efforts to expand cooperation on building thermal and nuclear power plants in Iran.

He said that Iran and Russia have recently launched a project to construct four units at a thermal power plant in the Islamic Republics southern province of Hormozgan, adding that the cost of the project is estimated at $1.1 billion.

Back in February, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak attended a ceremony to launch the project in the southern city of Bandar Abbas.

The construction is set to be completed in the next five years.

Russia has reportedly agreed to provide Iran with a loan to cover 85 percent of the cost of the project.

Railways

Mahmoud Vaezi also touched upon talks with Moscow to electrify a train line, linking north-central Iran to the northeastern border with Turkmenistan.

He said the sides have finalized the talks on financial issues of the project and technical talks are almost over, expressing hope that the document on Russias participation in the railway project would be signed during the visit.

The earlier reports suggest that the 1.2 billion euros agreement would include construction of power stations and overhead power lines along the Garmsar-Inche Burun route in Iran.
Attorney general serves our nation, not just president

I am shocked that columnist Linda J. White would so mischaracterize the role of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates in her March 5 op-ed [No place to escape infuriating politics these days]. Its troubling because Mrs. White has credibility as a former assistant editorial page editor for The Free LanceStar.

Sally Yates did not swear an oath to support the current president, or any president. When she was sworn in, she swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the laws duly enacted from it.

If, in her legal determination, she found an executive action legally indefensible, as in this case, the first travel ban Executive Order that President Trump signed, then she was doing her job.

If Mrs. White wants to argue the merits of Ms. Yates decision in that case, she can do so, although given the facts that a court and the appeals court halt to the order, and that the Trump administration has now issued a new order, the preponderance of the evidence so far seems to support Ms. Yates conclusion.

We are a nation of laws, not of men and women, as the saying goes. The attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president, but his or her allegiance is, and must always be, to the Constitution and the law, not to any person, including the president of the United States.

David Pearce

Fredericksburg
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Baku, Azerbaijan, March 17

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:



Iranian security forces recently arrested the administrators of some Telegram social media app channels, which have to do with upcoming presidential elections, said Hesameddin Ashna, advisor to President Hassan Rouhani.



The countrys security organizations launched some Telegram channels and then arrested some people on charges of having connections with those channels, Ashna said in a tweet March 17.



The presidential, city council, and mid-term parliament elections of Iran are set for May 19. The moderate Rouhani is set run for a second term as president. Most security organizations, governed by conservative ultra-governmental elites, are against Rouhani.



The presidents adviser in his tweet accused the security bodies of using the New Year holiday as the best moment to crack down on their opponents.



Reports say that IRGC recently arrested 12 pro-reform and pro-Rouhani social activists - the administrators of some Telegram channels.



The mentioned channels are: Reform News, Rouhani Fans, Reform Society, Khatami Fans (translated).



The arrests have drawn criticism from MPs Ali Motahari, Mahmoud Sadeqi, and Mohammad Ali Vakili, condemning them as election engineering.
Two missiles hit worshippers attending Friday prayers inside military base in Yemen's western Marib province, Al Jazeera reported.

At least 22 members of pro-government forces have been killed in a rebel attack on a mosque inside a military base in Yemen, according to medical sources.

Two missiles fired by Houthi rebels on Friday hit worshippers in Sirwa, western Marib province.

The first missile hit the mosque inside the Kofal military camp during prayers, while the second struck during rescue efforts, local sources said.

Dozens of people were also wounded in the attack, which was claimed by a rebel news agency.

Most of Marib is under control of forces loyal to the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

In 2014, Houthi fighters overran Yemen's capital Sanaa and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile.

An Arab coalition was assembled by Saudi Arabia in 2015 to fight the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who have fired missiles into neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
NOTE: this is an archived page and the content is likely to be out of date.

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of technology to integrate and rapidly analyze NoSQL databases, used for accumulating large volumes of unstructured IoT data, with relational databases, used for data analysis for mission-critical enterprise systems.

NoSQL databases are used to store large volumes of data, such as IoT data output from various IoT devices in a variety of structures. However, due to the time required for structural conversion of large volumes of unstructured IoT data, there was an issue with the processing time of analysis involving data across NoSQL and relational databases.

Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology that optimizes data conversion and reduces the amount of data transfer by analyzing SQL queries to seamlessly access relational databases and NoSQL databases, as well as a technology that automatically partitions the data and efficiently distributes execution on Apache Spark(1), a distributed parallel execution platform, enabling rapid analysis integrating NoSQL databases to relational databases.

When this newly developed technology was implemented in PostgreSQL(2), an open source relational database, and its performance was evaluated using open source MongoDB(3) as the NoSQL database, query processing was accelerated by 4.5 times due to the data conversion optimization and data transfer reduction technology. In addition, acceleration proportional to the number of nodes was achieved with the efficient distributed execution technology on Apache Spark.

With this technology, a retail store, for example, could continually roll out a variety of IoT devices in order to understand information such as customers' in-store movements and actions, enabling the store to quickly try new analyses relating this information with data from existing mission-critical systems. This would contribute to the implementation of one-to-one marketing strategies that offer products and services suited for each customer.

Details of this technology were announced at the 9th Forum on Data Engineering and Information Management (DEIM2017), which was held in Takayama, Gifu, Japan, March 6-8.

Development Background

In recent years, IoT and sensor technology are improving day by day, enabling the collection of new information that was previously difficult to obtain. It is expected that connecting this new data with data in existing mission-critical and information systems will enable analyses on a number of fronts that were previously impossible.

For example, in a retail store, it is now becoming possible to obtain a wide variety of IoT data, such as understanding where customers are lingering in the store by analyzing the signal strength of the Wi-Fi on the customers' mobile devices, or understanding both detailed actions, such as which products the customers looked at and picked up, and individual characteristics, such as age, gender, and route through the store, by analyzing image data from surveillance cameras. By properly combining this data with existing business data, such as goods purchased and revenue data, and using the result, it is expected that businesses will be able to implement one-to-one marketing strategies that offer products and services suited for each customer.

Issues

When analyzing queries that span relational and NoSQL databases, it is necessary to have a predefined data format for converting the unstructured data stored in the NoSQL database into structured data that can be handled by the relational database in order to perform fast data conversion and analysis processing. However, as the use of IoT data has grown, it has been difficult to define formats in advance, because new information for analysis is often being added, such as from added sensors, or from existing sensors and cameras receiving software updates to provide more data, for example, on customers' gazes, actions, and emotions. At the same time, data analysts have been looking for methods that do not require predefined data formats, in order to quickly try new analyses. If, however, a format cannot be defined in advance, the conversion processing overhead is very significant when the database is queried, creating issues with longer processing times when undertaking an analysis.

About the Technology

Now Fujitsu Laboratories has developed technology that can quickly run a seamless analysis spanning relational and NoSQL databases without a predefined data format, as well as technology that accelerates analysis using Apache Spark clusters as a distributed parallel platform. In addition, Fujitsu Laboratories implemented its newly developed technology in PostgreSQL, and evaluated its performance using MongoDB databases storing unstructured data in JSON(4) format as the NoSQL databases.

Figure 1: Structural concept of the newly developed technology

Details of the technology are as follows:

1. Data Conversion Optimization Technology

This technology analyzes database queries (SQL queries) that include access to data in a NoSQL database to extract the portions that specify the necessary fields and their data type, and identify the data format necessary to convert the data. The query is then optimized based on these results, and overhead is reduced through bulk conversion of the NoSQL data, providing performance equivalent to existing processing with a predefined data format.

2. Technology to Reduce the Amount of Data Transferred from NoSQL Databases

Fujitsu Laboratories developed technology that migrates some of the processing, such as filtering, from the PostgreSQL side to the NoSQL side by analyzing the database query. With this technology, the amount of data transferred from the NoSQL data source is minimized, accelerating the process.

3. Technology to Automatically Partition Data for Distributed Processing

Fujitsu Laboratories developed technology for efficient distributed execution of queries across multiple relational databases and NoSQL databases on Apache Spark. It automatically determines the optimal data partitioning that avoids unbalanced load across the Apache Spark nodes, based on information such as the data's placement location in each database's storage.

Figure 4: Automating distributed execution of Apache Spark clusters

Effects

Fujitsu Laboratories implemented this newly developed technology in PostgreSQL, and evaluated performance using MongoDB as the NoSQL database. When evaluated using TPC-H benchmark queries that evaluate the performance of decision support systems, application of the first two technologies accelerated overall processing time by 4.5 times that of existing technology. In addition, using the third technology to perform this evaluation on an Apache Spark cluster with four nodes, a performance improvement of 3.6 times that of one node was achieved.

Using this newly developed technology, it is now possible to efficiently access IoT data, such as sensor data, through an SQL interface common throughout the enterprise field, which can flexibly support frequent format changes in IoT data, enabling fast processing of analyses including IoT data.

Future Plans

Fujitsu Laboratories will continue trialing this newly developed technology when applied to large scale Apache Spark clusters, planning for commercial implementation by Fujitsu Limited within fiscal 2017.
A new style of agri-environment scheme which promises producers less red tape and greater control over how they manage their land is being trialled by farmers in North Yorkshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

The farmers are taking part in an EU-funded payment by results project which, if successful, could influence thinking about the future direction of the UKs stewardship schemes.

The main difference between the new initiative and existing schemes such as Countryside Stewardship is there is no detailed management plan that farmers must stick to, regardless of whether it fits their own circumstances.

See also: How the Farmers Clusters conservation system works

Farmers are free to manage the land as they see fit, supported by advice and training, in order to achieve the desired environmental outcome.

The pilots were set up in 2016 and will run for three years.

Grassland pilot

A total of 19 farms in Wensleydale are taking part in the grassland pilot, which is being co-ordinated by Natural England and delivered in partnership with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA).

Two priorities have been identified  the first is maintaining and restoring species-rich hay meadows and the second is establishing good-quality habitat for breeding waders such as curlew, snipe, lapwing and redshank.

The farmers and project staff will annually assess the well-being of habitats against a set of agreed indicators to achieve an overall health score.

From this self-assessment, they can measure their success and set targets for the following year.

For meadows, the greater the number of plant species, the higher the payment, which will range from 112-371/ha.

For breeding waders, where payments will range from 35-174/ha, good results will include the right rush cover, varied sward height and a high quantity of wet features.

Farmers will be marked down, and receive a lower payment, if the land is heavily poached, or cut up because of the use of heavy machinery.

Monitor farms under Higher Level Environmental Stewardship agreements have also been established in the pilot area in order to compare the two approaches.

Helen Keep, the YDNPAs senior farm conservation officer, said the pilot was designed to be simpler and more cost-effective than other agri-environment schemes.

It works on the principle that farmers know their land better than anyone, and should not be required to follow prescribed land management methods.

Farmer involvement in the design of the scheme has ensured it is understandable, practical and achievable.

Tom Fawcett, one of the farmers involved with the pilot, said: Without this compensation, youd need to increase your stocking ratio to meet rising costs. That would mean improving the land by draining it, or adding lime or fertiliser.

I only hope this scheme is carried on. Millions of pounds have been wasted when Environmentally Sensitive Area schemes have been dropped overnight, with land being improved after the payments stopped.

Arable pilot

The arable pilot, which involves 15 farms in south Norfolk and north Suffolk, is the first time that the payment by results principle has been applied in an arable setting.

The area was chosen as a national hotspot for farmland birds, including corn bunting, grey partridge and tree sparrow and because at least seven of the 12 target pollinator species are also found there.

Farmers in the pilot have been asked to establish plots of winter bird food and pollen or nectar mixtures.

Assessments will also be carried out on a number of control farms in the area.

Vicky Robinson, project manager for Natural England, said there would be six tiers of winter bird food payments ranging from 0-842/ha depending on the number of crops setting seed.

There would be 10 tiers of pollen and nectar payments ranging from 0-705/ha, depending on the number of species present and cover.

The payments were based on the typical costs incurred by a farmer managing the land to achieve the results, undertake an annual assessment and attend a training event. But they had been calculated for the pilot only, so were not an indication of future payment rates.

This is a pure payment by results approach hence the 0 payment rate, said Mrs Robinson. There was much discussion on having a minimum payment rate for establishment costs, but in theory, someone could then do nothing and receive payment.

In addition, if this hybrid approach was taken there would have to be a set of management prescriptions in order to receive the minimum payment (this would not then be a payment by results approach).

Mrs Robinson said there was a real buzz around the pilot from the participating farmers.

The feedback is positive in that it has really made them think about the options and they are incentivised to do the best they can using their skills as farmers, rather than following a set of prescriptions.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel to Turkey on March 30, Ankaras foreign minister confirmed on Thursday, Anadolu reported.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking in a live TV interview, said he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would meet Tillerson in two weeks.

Cavusoglu also said Erdogan was planning to meet U.S. President Donald Trump after the upcoming April 16 referendum in Turkey.

Next month, the Turkish electorate will be asked to vote Yes or No to an 18-article reform bill, which will also change the current parliamentary system to an executive presidency.
Story Highlights 76% of small-business owners optimistic about living comfortably in retirement

Over half don't want to fully retire

30% have a succession plan for their business

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Retirement is not necessarily a desired career outcome for many U.S. small-business owners. The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index finds that if money were no object, over one-half (53%) of the nation's small-business owners would continue working in a full- or a part-time capacity. Only about one in four say they would retire completely. These sentiments are essentially unchanged from surveys conducted in 2014 and 2010.

If money were no object, which of the following would you do today? Continue working in current business^ Start another new business Work for someone else Retire completely Don't know/Refused % % % % % Quarter 1, 2017 53 17 2 27 1 Quarter 1, 2014 55 13 4 26 2 Quarter 3, 2010 51 18 2 28 1 ^ Question wording: Continue working full or part time in your current business Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Survey

These and other results from the latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey, conducted Feb. 6-10, provide insights into U.S. small-business owners' views on a number of issues relating to their economic future.

If they do decide to retire, 76% of small-business owners feel they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, up from 66% in the first quarter of 2014 and back to the level seen before the recession.

When you do retire, do you think you will have enough money to live comfortably, or not? Yes No Don't know/Refused % % % Quarter 1, 2017 76 21 3 Quarter 1, 2014 66 30 4 Quarter 3, 2010 63 33 4 Quarter 4, 2007 79 16 5 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Survey

The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey has asked owners about retirement finances four times over the past decade. In 2007, before the beginning of the recession, 79% said they would have enough money to live comfortably in retirement. In 2010 and 2014, that percentage dropped into the 60% range, but it has now essentially recovered to where it was 10 years ago.

These figures are substantially higher than what Gallup has measured over the years when asking the same question of all nonretired adults. In April 2016, 48% of nonretired U.S. adults said they would have enough money to live comfortably in retirement. At its highest point in the pre-recession years of 2002-2004, nonretired Americans' level of confidence in having a comfortable retirement reached 59%.

Owners Most Likely to Project Using 401(k)s, IRAs to Fund Retirement

When asked about sources of funds in retirement, 40% of small-business owners say retirement savings accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs will be a major source of money -- more than mention any other source listed. Between 22% and 27% of owners say a number of other entities will be major sources of money in their retirement -- including Social Security, home equity, individual stock investments, rent or money from property or real estate, and regular savings accounts or CDs.

Further, 27% of owners say the sale of their business will be a major source of retirement money, while 23% give that designation to income from their business.

When you retire, how much do you expect to rely on each of the following sources of money -- will it be a major source of income, a minor source of income or not a source at all? Major source Minor source Not a source % % % A 401(k), IRA, Keogh, or other retirement savings account 40 39 20 Social Security 27 60 12 The value of the sale of your business 27 38 33 The equity you have built in your home 27 42 30 Individual stock or stock mutual fund investments 24 44 30 Rent or money from property or real estate 23 35 41 Income from your business, even after your retirement 23 41 34 Other savings such as a regular savings account or CDs 22 54 23 A work-sponsored pension plan 13 22 63 Annuities or insurance plans 11 42 45 Money from inheritance 9 30 60 Part-time work 6 51 42 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Survey, Feb. 6-10, 2017

These projected sources of income mirror what Gallup has found from the general nonretired population. However, one exception is work-sponsored pension plans, which 26% of all nonretirees, but only 13% of small-business owners, cite as a major source of retirement money.

Most Owners Not Worried About Financial Issues in Retirement

Few small-business owners say they are "very worried" about a list of five financial problems that could affect them in retirement, perhaps reflecting that many don't plan on retiring at all. They are most worried about paying medical costs in retirement (21%). But fewer than one in seven small-business owners say they are very worried about the other concerns tested, including the basic issue of not having enough money to pay cost-of-living expenses in retirement. Only 5% are very worried about not being able to sell their business.

Notably, owners' worries about these issues have decreased for the three issues that were last measured in the first quarter of 2014. This most likely reflects owners' generally more positive sentiments about their business and the economic environment in which it operates.

Thinking ahead to retirement, please tell me how concerned you are right now about each of the following financial matters. Very worried Moderately worried Not too worried Not worried at all % % % % Not being able to pay medical costs of a serious illness or accident in retirement 2017 Quarter 1 21 25 26 27 2014 Quarter 1 31 26 22 19 2010 Quarter 3 35 29 19 16 2007 Quarter 4 23 24 24 27 Being able to build back retirement savings lost during the recent economic downturn 2017 Quarter 1 14 28 25 31 2014 Quarter 1 23 27 24 21 2010 Quarter 3 36 32 17 13 Not being financially prepared for an unexpected life event 2017 Quarter 1 14 31 28 27 Not being able to pay for basic cost-of-living expenses in retirement 2017 Quarter 1 10 22 32 36 Not being able to sell your business when you are ready to sell it 2017 Quarter 1 5 16 26 48 2014 Quarter 1 15 18 27 35 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Survey

Bottom Line

Small-business owners have a more optimistic view of their retirement in 2017 than they did three years ago. This reflects a substantial uptick in optimism shown in the overall Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index, which in turn reflects improved overall economic confidence. Small-business owners tend to have a more positive outlook about retirement than U.S. adults overall. Many owners don't want to retire at all, but keep working in their business in some capacity as long as they are able. These attitudes reinforce a generally upbeat small business environment today.

For more information about retirement issues, see the Wells Fargo/Gallup Retirement and Investor Optimism Index.
Story Highlights 66% of Democrats now worry a great deal, up nine points from 2016

Independents are also more worried; Republicans are not

Gap between parties significantly wider than on other issues

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A landmark year in 2016 for global warming politics has further deepened the already formidable divide between Republicans and Democrats on the issue. Two-thirds (66%) of Democrats say they worry about global warming a great deal, compared with 18% of Republicans.

The 66% of Democrats worrying a great deal about the issue is the highest percentage in Gallup's annual polling on the question since at least 2000 and is nine percentage points above last year's previous high of 57%. Forty-five percent of independents now say they worry a great deal, a jump of 11 points from 2016. The rise in concern among both Democrats and independents has pushed the overall percentage of Americans saying they worry about global warming to 45% -- the highest level in nearly three decades of Gallup polling. Republicans' 18% who say they worry a great deal is the same as last year's percentage and 11 points below the party's high of 29% in 2000.

The widening gap between Republicans and Democrats comes after a year that highlighted vast differences between the parties on global warming issues. In April 2016, the United States joined 195 other countries in signing the Paris Agreement on climate change -- the most comprehensive international agreement to date on combatting global warming. It had been a long-standing goal of Democratic President Barack Obama, who said of the day the agreement was signed: "History may well judge it as a turning point for our planet."

But in November, only four days after the agreement went into effect, Republican Donald Trump was elected president on a campaign that included a vow to cancel U.S. involvement in the treaty.

Concern About Other Major Issues Less Affected by Partisan Differences

The glaring contrast in the percentages who are worried a great deal about global warming -- an overwhelming majority of Democrats on one side and fewer than one in five Republicans on the other -- resulted in a gap of 48 percentage points, notably larger than the partisan gap on five other environmental problems measured by Gallup and on all but one ("quality of the environment") of 13 other national problems asked elsewhere in the same poll. Even on such partisan issues as race relations and illegal immigration, the percentages of Republicans and Democrats who worry a great deal are within 30 points of each other.

Percentage Worried a Great Deal, by Political Party Democrats Republicans Difference % % pct. pts. Environmental problems Global warming or climate change 66 18 48 Air pollution 63 28 35 Pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs 69 38 31 Extinction of plant and animal species 55 24 31 The loss of tropical rain forests 56 25 31 Pollution of drinking water 75 47 28 National problems The quality of the environment 66 21 45 Race relations 59 29 30 Hunger and homelessness 58 37 21 The availability and affordability of healthcare 67 48 19 The Social Security system 59 40 19 The economy 50 42 8 The availability and affordability of energy 28 20 8 Unemployment 33 26 7 Crime and violence 45 53 -8 Federal spending and the budget deficit 44 54 -10 Drug use 40 51 -11 The possibility of future terrorist attacks in the U.S. 35 52 -17 Illegal immigration 26 54 -28 Gallup

Neither Party Unified on All Global Warming Issues

While the differences between Republicans and Democrats are stark on global warming issues, both parties are not unified within themselves on all aspects of global warming.

Despite their greater concern about global warming or climate change, 41% of Democrats do not expect global warming to ever be a threat to them or their way of life in their lifetime. And, in spite of Republicans' lack of concern about global warming, many acknowledge that increases in Earth's temperatures are occurring, and human activities may be the cause. Forty percent of Republicans believe that increases in Earth's temperatures are due more to the effects of pollution caused by humans, and 57% believe that natural changes in the environment are the cause.

In general, Democrats are much more likely to agree on the seriousness of the global warming problem than Republicans are to be skeptical about it.

Ninety percent of Democrats worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming or climate change. Among Republicans, 36% worry a great deal or a fair amount, and 64% worry only a little or not at all.

Seventy-three percent of Democrats think the effects of global warming are already happening. Among Republicans, in addition to the 41% who think the effects are already happening, 21% expect the effects to occur at some point but not in their lifetime, and 20% believe the effects from global warming will never happen.

Among Democrats, 86% say most scientists believe global warming is occurring. Fifty-three percent of Republicans agree, while 35% say most scientists are unsure.

Republicans are more in agreement than Democrats about how the subject of global warming is treated in the news: 66% say it is generally exaggerated. Among Democrats, 52% say it is generally underestimated, and 37% say it is generally correct.

Eighty-five percent of Republicans do not think global warming will pose a serious threat to them or their way of life in their lifetime. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats think it will, and 41% think it will not.

Bottom Line

Even in the highly partisan atmosphere of politics today, global warming stands out as an issue where little common ground exists between the two parties. This is perhaps best illustrated by the contrast in attitudes between Obama, who has described global warming as the greatest threat to future generations, and Trump, who has called it "a hoax."

Although there are different levels of concern about the issue by age, gender, income and race, all are much smaller than those based on political party preference. With Trump already taking steps to undo the Obama administration's actions against global warming, it seems unlikely that the divide between the parties will narrow any time soon.

Historical data for these questions are available in Gallup Analytics.
'Beauty And The Beast' New York Screening (Photo : http://www.gettyimages.com/license/653028822 )

China may be more tolerant of gays than Hong Kong. In November, Fathers, a Thai gay movie was show over Tianfutaiju, or Heavenly Thai Drama, a platform in China promoting the Thai pop culture through Weibo and other social media sites.



In Hong Kong, the Family School Sodo (Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance), an anti-gay group, wrote a letter to the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration to criticize the movie Beauty and the Beast for failure to denounce gay-related behavior or lifestyle. The group referred to a scene in the film in which Le Fou (Josh Gad), a male character, dances with another man at a ball.



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Gay Moment of Le Fou



Bill Condon, the films director, called the dance a nice, exclusively gay moment. Roger Wong Wai-ming, convenor of Family School Sodo, warned such gay scenes could instill in some children some values that their parents do not agree with, particularly the belief that being gay is a problem and not normal, Shanghaiist reported.



He pushed for Hong Kong authorities to ban the entire movie, delete the scene or classify it not suitable for viewers below 18 years old without supervision of parents. But the government had determined that Beauty and the Beast is appropriate for all ages. In Singapore, the movie was given a parental guidance rating and in Malaysia the censor required the deletion of the gay scene which Disney disagreed with, resulting in the postponement of the movies exhibition in the conservative country.



Malaysia & Alabama Ban Movie



Disney moved the release date in Malaysia to March 30 to give the censors board time to decide if it would allow the exhibition of the fairy tale without cuts or not, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Even in the U.S., the movie had the same problem with a cinema in Alabama which did not screen Beauty and the Beast because of the gay moment.



The owners of Hengar Drive-in Theater explained in a Facebook post which it later deleted, If we can not take our 11-year-old grand daughter and 8-year-old grandson to see a movie, we have no business watching it. If I cant sit through a movie with God or Jesus sitting by me then we have no business showing it.


A committee of the Oregon State University Board of Trustees is recommending a 4 percent tuition increase for resident undergraduates and a 2 percent hike for nonresident undergrads.

The board's Finance and Administration Committee made the recommendation on Thursday to offset the impact of rising costs in the face of what's expected to be little or no increase in state funding.

The full board is expected to vote on the proposal when it meets on the Corvallis campus today.

If the board approves the plan, tuition would climb from $8,715 to $9,075 a year for in-state undergraduates, while the rate for out-of-state and foreign students would jump from $27,195 to $27,735 a year. One-fourth of the increase is to be set aside for need-based financial aid.

Resident undergrads at OSU's Cascades campus in Bend also would see their tuition rise about 4 percent, as would students taking classes online through the Ecampus program.

Student fees would rise 4 percent, or $23.59 per term, at the Corvallis campus and 50 percent, or $97 per term, in Bend. (The Bend increase is higher because students have approved a new fee to pay for a student center on campus.)

In general, tuition would go up about 2 percent for resident graduate students and 4 percent for nonresidents, but students in some master's programs  including counseling, fine arts and business administration  would see hikes as sharp as 33 percent.

Even with the tuition hike, OSU officials anticipate a budget deficit ranging from $16.6 million to $24 million, depending on how much money is allocated for higher education by the Legislature. The governor is recommending no increase in funding over last year, while the co-chairs of the Joint Ways and Means Committee are calling for an 1.13 percent increase.

OSU's proposed tuition hike is much smaller than increases adopted by some other state schools. The University of Oregons board, for instance, has adopted a 10.6 percent increase for resident undergrads, while Portland State is considering an increase in the same ballpark.

Nevertheless, OSUs chapter of the American Association of University Professors registered its concern and disappointment that the university would consider any additional tuition increases.

It is our view that the decision to increase costs on students once again is damaging to the public good of higher education in the state of Oregon, the chapters president, Joseph Orosco, wrote in an open letter to OSU President Ed Ray.

The letter goes on to urge Ray to find other ways to balance the budget, such as cutting administrative salaries. According to an audit commissioned by the AAUP chapter, more than 60 administrators at OSU are making more than $150,000 a year.

The proposal to the Finance and Administration Committee laid out several possible tuition increases ranging from 4 percent to 8 percent for in-state undergrads.

Ray, who holds a nonvoting seat on the OSU board, argued that anything higher than 4 percent would place an undue burden on students.

I just feel like our students have been beaten on very heavily over the last year or two or three, he said. I feel good about the fact that, by doing the 4 percent, we can make the statement that were not making students our first resort in dealing with our challenges.

But several committee members argued for a higher tuition increase, saying that the universitys financial challenges are likely to get even tougher in the coming years, which could require deep cuts to programs and possibly even higher tuition increases down the road.

Im really concerned that 4 percent will compromise our excellence, said Board of Trustees Chair Pat Reser, who cast the lone vote against the proposal on Thursday. We have to have the guts and the brains to do what we know is part of our fiduciary responsibility.

The board is expected to make a final decision on the tuition matter today. The trustees will meet from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Horizon Room of the Memorial Union, 2501 SW Jefferson Way.
Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige (L) and actress Brie Larson attend the San Diego Comic-Con International 2016 Marvel Panel in Hall H on July 23, 2016 in San Diego, California. Marvel Studios 2016. (Photo : Getty Images / Alberto E. Rodriguez)

"Captain Marvel" is arguably one of the most highly anticipated movies coming from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This will be MCU's first movie that is led by a female superhero. What's more, it stars Oscar-winning actress Brie Larson in the titular role. But really, what else should we expect from the movie? Here's everything you need to know about "Captain Marvel."



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"Captain Marvel" begins production next year



"Captain Marvel" still has a long way to go before it hits theaters. Production start date for the film has been scheduled for Jan. 8, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia, according to ScreenRant. One of the first few things on Marvel's to-do list is finding a director for "Captain Marvel," and it is said that the studio is eyeing a female director to helm the superhero flick.



According to The Hollywood Reporter, female directors Niki Caro ("North Country"), Lesli Linka Glatter ("Homeland") and Lorene Scafaria ("Seeking a Friend for the End of the World") are the top contenders for the spot. It's unlike that a decision will be made soon, as Marvel is being very thorough on its search for a director.



Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve have been enlisted to do the "Captain Marvel" screenplay. Perlman co-wrote "Guardians of the Galaxy" and LeFauve worked on Pixar's "Inside Out." Given this combination, it's possible "Captain Marvel" with have that warm, comedic touch amidst all the action and conflict.



Brie Larson is playing Carol Danvers



So far, only Larson has been confirmed to appear in "Captain Marvel." No additional casting has been announced yet.



"I find it's really hard for me to condense what she means to me. I was once a young girl and I was confused by what a hero was and what I wanted to be when I grow up and what was important to me," ComicBook quoted Larson as saying about what it means for her to play the superhero. "I'm getting emotional just talking about this, it feels so important to me... I'm just inspired."



Larson previously stated that she took on the role because of the material and because of what Captain Marvel represents and the message the movie is going to convey to the world.



"Captain Marvel" release date



"Captain Marvel" will be out in cinemas on March 8, 2019.






Recently the Gazette-Times did a story and interview with the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters. Readers might be interested in hearing the rest of the story" because you sure wont get it on the news pages.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed cleanup of the protesters camps on federal land at the Dakota Access Pipeline site in North Dakota. There were three camps, one of which, Sacred Stone, was partially on tribal land. According to the corps, a total of 8,170 cubic yards of debris  835 roll-off dumpsters of trash and garbage  were removed from the camp sites at a cost to the taxpayer  you and me  of $1.1 million. In addition, 12 abandoned dogs were rescued by the local humane society.

This is not new  the Occupy Wall Street sites were also characterized by heaps of garbage and trash. It is noteworthy that these instances of pollution have not been condemned by other environmentalist organizations. I guess nothing says environmental sensitivity and concern for the planet like leaving mountains of garbage and filth behind you. I sincerely hope federal, state and local governments will assess the groups involved with the cleanup fee. Maybe that will teach them some adult behavior.

Jonathan Hayes

Corvallis (March 15)
Time for a survey

To the Editor: Its time for a St. Paul survey One of the mistakes of the past with respect to deciding on the future of St. Pauls is that previous...

Election for St. Pauls

To the Editor: Perhaps someday there will be an election where some folks decide about St.Pauls. If the election is conducted in the most popular way, the outcome might not...

Proposal on the ballot

To the Editor: On the bottom of your ballot you will be asked to vote yes or no on creating a state bond which will amount to $4.2 billion. Subject coverage should be...

Botched RFP process

To the Editor: During the last several weeks, village officials sent out RFPs (requests for proposals) seeking candidate firms to provide them with comparative analysis and cost estimates -- ...
The committee supervising the Egyptian press syndicate elections has announced the start of the vote counting process after an end to more than four hours of voting.

The elections saw voting for the post of head of the syndicate and six board members.

Around 4,000 journalists cast their ballots, sources in the supervising committee told Ahram Arabic news website.

Voting in Egypt's press syndicate elections started on Friday at 2:30pm after member attendance reached a 25 percent (2,150 journalists) minimum requirement. The elections had been postponed in early March due to lack of quorum.

On 3 March, only 1,300 journalists attended the assembly to vote, far fewer than the 50% attendance required.

The syndicate comprises around 10,000 members with full voting rights. Given the low turnout on 3 March, the assembly lowered the proportion of members required to attend on Friday to only a quarter.

Seven journalists are competing for the top post. Current syndicate head Yehia Kalash and Al-Ahram Managing Editor Abdel-Mohsen Salama are main contenders.

Around 70 others are seeking posts in the syndicates council.

In late 2016, Kalash and two board members were given a two-year suspended prison sentence on charges of harbouring fugitives inside the syndicate's headquarters.

The court's sentence came after two journalists, who were wanted for spreading false news regarding Egypts Red Sea island deal with Saudi Arabia, were arrested in May inside the syndicates Cairo headquarters.

Kalash and the two board members were released on bail of EGP 10,000 each and mounted appeals. The court set 25 March to issue a ruling on their appeals.

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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.
Development aid Minister : More UN organisations should come to Bonn

Bonn As soon as Gerd Muller was put in front of a globe in the foyer of the Deutsche Welle Schurmann building, the Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development started to play.

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The Pacific  no, we do not need to look there now, he says and turns the world on its head. Then the CSU Minister from Franken points to the African Savannah and says thats where weve got to go. That is the future. On Thursday evening, a few months before his parliamentary term comes to an end, Muller came to the first official residence of his Ministry to speak to Bonn citizens about his visions for the future. He addressed 200 people in the conference room at the Deutsche Welle.

The Minister was introduced to 20 aid organisations and associations working in development cooperation, ranging from working groups for development aid to civil peace services. Muller disarmingly explained that he had pictured chatting to a few pioneers over a glass of wine.

After a few words on the upcoming elections, Muller came down from the stage to meet his audience, put his speech to one side and made a plea for his Marshall Plan for Africa. This was good practice, as he had presented his project in Brussels only a few hours beforehand. 230,000 babies are born in Africa every day, 89 million every year, and will reach two billion by 2050. This presents alarming challenges, alerted the Minister. Either we will succeed in creating prospects with and for these people, or climate change, world nutrition and the refugee crisis will spin out of control.

On the other hand, Muller also referred to the prosperity of the African continent. Eight of the twelve countries with the highest economic growth are found in Africa. He said it should be up to the government to lead their countries in the future. In 1960, Ghana had the same conditions as South Korea but did not make anything of it. The elites need to do more, he demanded and announced the desire to give more support in future to forerunners in democratic development.

This is a good approach, said Hans-Jurgen Dorrich from Don Bosco Mondo. He only hopes that Muller will act quickly in putting his concept into practice. He shouldnt wait until after the elections. He could get many things off the ground now.
St Patricks Day : Where to celebrate in Bonn

Bonn Today the celebrations for St. Patricks Day are taking place, not only in Ireland but also in the Irish pubs in Bonn. Here you can find out what is going on and where to join in.

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James Joyce

James Joyce is one of the most popular Irish pubs in Bonn. A rustical pub offering food alongside Irish beers and whiskey as well as a pool table, live sport and a darts board. The famous "Alle-mal-malen" man from Bonn visits every day and on request he paints the guests portraits. Today on St. Patricks Day the James Joyce pub in Bonn opens its doors at 2pm. To celebrate, there will be live music with traditional Guinness flowing. Entrance is free. If you cant make it today, the pub is also open at other times:

Info It's St Patrick's Day What is St Patricks Day all about? Saint Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland. On 17th March the Green Isle celebrates their Saint, who lived in the years 385-461, with parades and street parties. Houses and streets are decorated in the Irish national colours of green, white and orange to honour St. Patrick who brought Christianity to Ireland. St Patrick is not only remembered in Ireland: parades are held across the world every year, such as in New York, where many Irish people emigrated and up to 250,000 people take part. Here in Germany, an impressive procession of 5000 people takes place in Munich every year and attracts over 20,000 visitors.

Opening hours: Mon-Thurs: 4pm  3am, Fri + Sat: 3pm  2.30am, Sun: 3pm  3am

Address: Mauspfad 6-10, 53111 Bonn

Tel.: (0228) 18 03 22 09

The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man is also in the city centre and is rated as the number one Irish pub by Google reviews. The staff speak German, English, Spanish and other languages, depending on who is serving. Its worth dropping by to see the art vending machine. For 4 euros, you can select an artistic object from the machine, similar to a chocolate bar vendor. The traditional Paddy's Party starts here tonight at 6pm. But we wont give away exactly what guests can expect! Entrance is free. Already got plans tonight? Never mind, you will find the pub open at other times:

Opening hours: Mon-Thu: 6pm  1am, Fri: 6pm  3am, Sat: 3pm  3am, Sun: 5pm  midnight

Address: Colmantstrae 47, 53115 Bonn

Tel.: (0228) 98 14 733

The Fiddlers

The Fiddlers pub is located in the historical Fronhof in Endenich. The pub stands out for its traditional homemade food and quaint atmosphere. If you are in a hurry, you can also order your food to go. A pub quiz takes place every week and there are several karaoke nights. You can also watch live sport. Today on St. Particks Day, the Irish band Witless will be playing. Entrance is free.

If you want to pop by on another day:

Opening hours: Mon  Thurs: 5pm  1am, Fri: 5pm  2am, Sat: 3pm  2am, Sun: 3pm  midnight

Address: Frongasse 9, 53121 Bonn

Tel.: (0228) 61 41 61

E-Mail: fiddlerspubbonn@gmail.com

Dubliner Irish Pub

The Dubliner Irish Pub is in the city centre. A different event takes place every evening when the pub is open. On Tuesdays a Pitcher Night, Wednesdays a pub quiz, on Thursdays from 23rd March a Beer-Pong Night, on Fridays different live events and Saturday is Karaoke Night. The pub is closed for a rest on Sundays and Mondays. The Dubliner Irish Pub is not only celebrating St. Patricks Day today. Parties will go on until Sunday. We wont give away exactly what is on offer! Not around this weekend? Dont worry, the pub is also open at other times:

Opening hours: Tue  Sat 7pm  3pm, closed on Sundays and Mondays.

Address: Maxstrae 18-20, 53111 Bonn

Tel.: (01517) 43 94 447

Flynn's Inn Whiskey Bar & Pub

The Flynn's Inn is not only in Bonn but there is also one in Karlsruhe. The pub in Bonn opened around two years ago and has a wide variety of drinks on offer, as well as some Irish dishes. A quiz night takes place every Tuesday. There are prizes suitable for everyone, including a bottle of whiskey. Live sport is also shown regularly.

Opening hours: Sun-Thurs: 5pm  1am, Fri & Sat: 5pm  3am

Address: Wolfstrae 45, 53111 Bonn

Tel.: (0179) 73 41 679

E-Mail: bonn@flynsinn.de
Article

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.
OPPO took the Selfie-Experience to next level with innovative front camera features

It was in 2012, when OPPO realized that users were crazy about sharing beautiful pictures of themselves with their friends, but there were no cameras on the market that could really do this phenomenon justice. To fill the gap and give users something that was never before seen in the market, OPPO introduced the first-ever 'Beautify mode' packed inside the camera of OPPO U701 smartphone. It was the world's first handset with built-in beautify mode to allow users to capture flawless selfies with smartphone's front camera. The breakthrough technology become an instant hit among smartphone users and provoked other brands to research and include the same in their products.

That said, beautify mode has now become a standard feature on Android devices; however OPPO is still leading the trend with the latest version-Beautify 4.0, which includes advanced processing algorithms and 7 levels of intelligent beautification, an exclusive feature on OPPO smartphones.

To further enhance the selfie experience, OPPO in 2012 introduced the industry's first 80-degree 'Golden Angle' field of view on the smartphone's front camera. The feature ensures that users could get the whole group in the picture. And the company didn't just stop there; it also introduced a Selfie Panorama feature for even bigger group shots that makes sure you don't miss on a group member while capturing a selfie. Seems they are now ready to bring us some new tech for a better group selfie this time.

OPPO pushed the limits with first-of-its kind Rotating camera

It was in 2013 when OPPO redefined what a smartphone's rear camera can achieve. The company launched OPPO N1, the world's first smartphone with a 206 degree rotating camera allowing users to capture regular images and selfie shots 13MP resolution. The camera worked on CMOS sensor with a specially-designed Fujitsu IPS imaging chip and a 6-piece lens design, which once again was the first of its kind on a mobile phone. The smartphone also offered dual-mode flash light up the front and back shots. OPPO further improved the design and performance with the launch of OPPO N3 in 2014.

Worlds first Ultra HD Camera mode delivering stunning 50MP resolution images

To make sure users also capture the best-in-class pictures from the rear camera, OPPO in 2014 introduced OPPO Find 7. The flagship smartphone offered class-leading camera technology packed inside its 13MP rear snapper. Once again it was the world's first handset to achieve images with 50MP resolution with the help of 'Ultra HD' mode. Such high resolution images can be easily transformed into giant posters to decorate your home or office interiors or to simply create high quality prints for magazines. The rear camera on OPPO Find 7 featured a six element lens, dedicated ISPs for image processing, a reliable HDR mode, and a bunch of other tricks to forever change the smartphone photography experience.

OPPO made Screen Flash a standard feature in smartphones

With OPPO smartphones, users don't need to worry about light conditions while capturing images. While the company's smartphones comes packed with bright LED flashlights at the rear panel, the company also introduced 'Screen Flash' technology with OPPO R7 line-up in 2015. The Screen Flash offers selfie snappers a light from the screen to brighten even the darkest areas in selfies that users capture. The innovative feature has been adopted by a number of smartphone makers in the last two years.

OPPO 5x Dual Camera Optical Zoom- the recent breakthrough in mobile camera technology

OPPO's most recent breakthrough in mobile camera technology is '5x Dual camera Optical Zoom'. The technology was first showcased in the 'Mobile World Congress (MWC 2017) and is bound to set new benchmarks in the field of smartphone photography. Termed as 5X Precision Optical Zoom, the camera setup comprises of a dual-lens camera setup that features a wide-angle lens paired with a telephoto lens to offer lossless 5X digital zoom.

It is world's first periscope style dual-camera technology that has the setup to divert the incoming light through a prism using a periscope-style structure placed at a 90-degree angle to the rear-facing wide-angle lens. The wide-angle lens also integrates OIS technology. This all-new optical image stabilization solution is said to improve performance by over 40 percent when compared to OPPO's previous camera technologies. This suggests that the pictures taken by the OPPO's 5X dual-lens camera setup will come out to be sharp and free of blur even when a user zoom-in the camera by 5X.

What's next?

OPPO F1 series is another gem in company's selfie-focused smartphones series. The recently launched OPPO F1s packs in a powerful 16MP front camera that simply blows away the competition in terms of sharpness and image quality. Powered by an octa-core processor, the smartphone's 16MP front camera has an f/2.0 aperture that delivers pretty detailed selfies even in non ideal lighting conditions. Besides you also get Beautify 4.0 mode to get rid of any 'blemishes' while capturing selfies.

Having said that, OPPO is once again set to become the world's 'Selfie Expert' with the company's upcoming launch. The Chinese smartphone maker will launch its latest handset- OPPO F3 Plus that will take selfie technology onto another level with its dual-selfie camera at front. What will OPPO bring us this time? Let's keep an eye on the coming launch event on March 23rd.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 launching in India on March 20 will be exclusive to Amazon News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Xiaomi Redmi 4 will be exclusive to Amazon.

Yesterday, we reported that Xiaomi India is all set to host an event in India on March 20. The company was believed to release the Redmi 4 series of smartphones at the event.

Now, it has been confirmed officially by the company. Xiaomi has taken to its Twitter handle to announce that it will be launching a new Redmi device. Following the same, Amazon India announced that the same will be available exclusively via their website. From the tweets made by the companies, it looks like Bollywood celebrity Shilpa Shetty has been roped by them for the launch of the Redmi device.

Both the Redmi 4 and Redmi 4A smartphones went official in November last year and went on sale soon after their launch. Lately, the company even announced the Redmi 4X smartphone, which a variant of the Redmi 4 standard. We can expect these smartphones or at least one of them to be released in the country at the March 20 launch event.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 pre-order service now open for all

While there is no information on which Redmi device the company is planning to launch, it is speculated that the Redmi phones those are likely to hit the Indian shores might be priced around Rs. 10,000. After all, Xiaomi is known for pricing its offerings competitively and the same has made the company a successful brand in the market with this strategy.

Talking about the event on Monday, stay tuned to us as we provide you with the updates regarding the same.

Source

Best Mobiles in India
Overall, dont let the bhoot mislead you, nothing bhootiya about this story. Had the makers tried to push the envelope, the idea could have been outstanding for a bhootiya comedy.
Egypts Defence Minister Sedki Sobhy and Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar met with security forces in North Sinai, the armed forces said on Friday.

In an official statement, the army said the two ministers also toured the city of El-Arish accompanied by North Sinai security director and Second Army field commander Nasser Al-Assi.

During the meeting, Sobhy passed on Presidents Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi regards and appreciation for the forces' defence of the country, honouring a number of army and police officers for their sucess in some security operations.

There has been no slacking in the protection of Egypt's national security and in cleansing Sinai from all forms of extremism and terrorism thanks to the cohesion of the honourable people of Sinai who stand in the same trench with the armed forces and police, Sobhy said.

The minister discussed efforts by the countrys institutions to restore security, stability and development, saying that Sinai will remain a symbol of the triumph of the will of the great Egyptian people."

Abdel-Ghaffar discussed ongoing security efforts to foil militant attacks.

Egypts army and police forces have been waging a war over the past several years against an Islamist militant insurgency in North Sinai, concentrated in the cities of Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zweid.

Hundreds of security personnel have been killed in terror attacks by militants.

The army says it has killed hundreds of militants in intensified comprehensive military campaigns in the governorate since 2013.

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Retired officer arrested for spying for China: report

ROC Central News Agency

2017/03/16 16:33:48

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) A retired military officer who was on the security detail of former Vice President Annette Lu () was arrested Monday for spying for China, a local newspaper reported Thursday, citing unnamed investigators and law enforcement officers.

Major Wang Hong-ju (), 46, was allegedly recruited by China as a spy while he was doing business there after his retirement from the Special Service Command Center under the National Security Bureau (NSB), according to the report.

Wang was accused of creating spy rings for China and trying to persuade his former colleagues and Military Police Command officers to steal confidential information from their agencies, although his attempts failed, according to the report.

The report said Lo was arrested Monday on arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and was taken to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office for questioning.

The prosecutors' office had obtained the warrant since last year to arrest Wang on charges of violating the National Security Act, according to the report.

On Tuesday, the report said, the Taoyuan District Court granted an order for Wang to be held incommunicado.

When asked about the matter Thursday, the Presidential Office declined to comment, except to say that the current presidential security detail comprises excellent, professional and highly patriotic officers.

"We cannot comment on a case under investigation," Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang () said.

Meanwhile, former Vice President Lu said Wang had been assigned by the NSB as one of her bodyguards during the 2000 presidential campaign.

According to the Ministry of National Defense, the Investigation Bureau has found that all the individuals recently charged with spying are retired military officers and no active military personnel are involved.

On Thursday, the legislative caucus of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party proposed an amendment to the National Security Act to impose stiffer penalties for espionage crimes, and suggested increasing the maximum prison sentence for spying for China from less than five years to 3-10 years.

(By Sophia Yeh, Lu Hsin-hui, Wen Kuei-hsiang and Evelyn Kao)

Enditem/pc



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MAC denies 5,000 Chinese spies in Taiwan

ROC Central News Agency

2017/03/16 21:43:50

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday denied a media report that 5,000 Chinese spies are currently in Taiwan.

According to MAC Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (), the government has never suggested such a figure.

He was responding to a story published by the Liberty Times on Monday that claimed Taiwan has been seriously compromised by Chinese spies.

The paper said "national security authorities" have estimated the number of Chinese spies in Taiwan to total up to 5,000.

(By Kao Chao-fen and Y.F. Low)

ENDITEM/AW

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

March 15, 2017

Department of Defense Press Briefing by Col. Dorrian via teleconference from Baghdad, Iraq

STAFF: Good morning. I'm Eric Pahon. I'll be your briefing host today.

With us today, joining us from Baghdad, Iraq is Colonel John Dorrian. Colonel Dorrian is the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman.

Colonel Dorrian, can you hear us okay?

COLONEL JOHN DORRIAN: I've got you loud and clear, Eric. Thank you.

STAFF: Colonel Dorrian will read a short opening statement and then we'll take questions. I'm gonna ask you guys to please state your name and affiliation prior to asking the questions. I interact with a lot of you daily, but I'm not so great on the names.

So Colonel Dorrian, if you're ready, go ahead and take it away, sir.

(CROSSTALK)

COL. DORRIAN: Are we ready to launch in, Eric?

STAFF: Yeah, we're ready to go whenever you are, sir. Interesting delay there.

COL. DORRIAN: Brilliant. Well, that was motivational. So we'll go ahead and get started. Good morning, all. We'll start in Syria and move on to Iraq.

Syrian Democratic Forces and their Syrian Arab Coalition continue operations to isolate Raqqa along two axes east of the city. Our partners have rolled back ISIS territorial gains to the east, north and west of the city, capturing more than 7,400 square kilometers of territory. To support our partners' operations, the coalition has conducted airstrikes which have destroyed more than 130 enemy armored and soft-skin vehicles, 57 vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and more than 450 enemy fighting positions, enabling the momentum of the campaign to continue.

As you know, the coalition leaders have continued to bring in capabilities on a temporary basis to meet specific objectives. A recent example of this was the deployment of the Marines to provide fire -- all-weather fire support. This was a capability designed to accelerate the campaign and the momentum of our partners who are isolating territory that's been under ISIS control for more than two years.

In addition, as you've seen on social media, a small coalition force continues its actions. Started around Manbij on August 13, 2016 when the city was liberated. Since that time, coalition forces have continued to train, advise, assist and accompany Manbij Military Council forces as they provide security to the people of Manbij and restore local governance and public works to the city.

Coalition forces being present in the area improves transparency and facilitates communication among all parties in the area to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation. Coalition are in part a reassuring presence for partner forces that can -- that they can rely on to ensure the focus is against ISIS as we turn toward Raqqa.

Partner forces are made up of local Syrians from the area, and while performing these patrols and while embedded with partner forces, coalition forces have not observed any ISIS activity in the area or any actions that would threaten our NATO ally, Turkey.

In Iraq, the counterattack to liberate west Mosul from ISIS control is on its 25th day, with Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service and emergency response division and federal police operating in the dense urban terrain in the city, while to the west of the city, the 9th Iraqi Army Division continue clearing in the vicinity of Badush and continue the main -- and continue clearing the main route out of Mosul toward Tal Afar.

East of the Tigris on the northern part of the city, the 16th Iraqi Army Division retain their control of a major water treatment plant and cleared along the Tigris River. Despite spotty weather conditions, the coalition has conducted nine strikes to support Mosul operations, with 64 engagements and 130 munitions dropped in the last 24 hours. These destroyed 11 ISIS fighting positions; a number of tactical units, including a sniper; two vehicle-borne improved explosive devices; and an ISIS headquarters, among other targets.

Momentum is clearly on the side of the Iraqi security forces who are imposing their will on ISIS, despite the tactics the enemy continues to employ in their efforts to keep Mosul in their grip. They have fired indiscriminately into civilian areas; used human shields; and they continue to destroy a lot of the structures they occupy in the type of scorched-earth attacks that we've seen in other areas that they've held.

It's not working for them, and although there will be tough fighting in the days ahead, it's just a matter of time until all of Mosul is free and stability operations can gather momentum throughout the city.

Now, I'll be delighted to take your questions.

STAFF: Okay. And first we go to Bob Burns with Associated Press.

Q: Thank you.

Colonel Dorrian, I think you mentioned the Marines going into Syria with artillery. Are they -- are they all in now? And can you say approximately now many?

And secondly, with regard to the reassurance mission that U.S. troops are doing in and around Manbij, is that an indefinite mission? And have they yet encountered any kind of confrontation with armed forces?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, Bob, we'll -- we'll start early with this.

With regard to the number of forces that are going into Syria, and their exact locations, what they're doing, their comings and goings, the exact capabilities we're bringing in -- the coalition is really not going to get into the business of giving play-by-play updates on those -- on those capabilities.

We've provided the information about the Marines last week in the interest of transparency because it was a very significant movement overall. And we did provide good information about our Ranger force up around Manbij that's there for the assurance of our partners. But we're really not going to be in the business of briefing daily on the comings and goings of our troops.

This is a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment. That's a U.S. Army War College term. And it's just -- there are a number of actors operating in Syria, especially in northern Syria. And we have effects that we wanted to achieve with the deployment of those Army capabilities in the north and the Marines. But we do recognize that there are other actors who are pursuing their own agendas and their own operations and their own objectives.

And sometimes those objectives are going to differ with ours. And some of those present danger to our forces because it's not just our partners and ISIS in this area. There are a number of other actors. And we're just not going to be able to brief their movements with a lot of fidelity.

So I just want to go ahead and manage expectations in that regard. We do -- we do want people to have a deep understanding of what's happening overall with the campaign; what our objectives are; the effects that we're achieving on the battlefield; and our overall aims, but we're just not going to be able to get into the level of depth that you've asked for.

As far as the Manbij presence, it has been an enduring presence there since the city was liberated. For a short time, our forces have been more visible. You've seen this on social media, the flags flying and that sort of thing. I don't have an estimate as to when they'll kind of go back to a more normal presence, but at some point, they will.

STAFF: (Off mic)

Q: Yeah, I -- you didn't address the other question about the Rangers, as to whether they've had any kind of encounters or engagements with other forces on the  in the battlefield.

COL. DORRIAN: Sorry for -- for not readdressing that. I -- I thought I covered that in the -- the -- the topper. They have not encountered any enemy activity or any type of engagements during their patrols.

STAFF: Go to Tom Bowman, NPR.

Q: Colonel, we've been told that some of the Syrian forces now are moving east from Aleppo toward the Euphrates. Could you give us a sense of the number of Syrians? What do you think they're doing? And also, you said as we move toward Raqqa. Do you still expect a Kurdish presence entering Raqqa? And is there any sense at this point of about any Turkish involvement in the Raqqa campaign?

COL. DORRIAN: Tom, I don't have a tremendous amount of fidelity on the size of the Syrian force. They do continue to do movements around the forward line of troops between our partners and -- and Turkey and also with ISIS. So I don't -- I just don't have that level of fidelity.

With regard to the Kurds and whether they will be involved in liberating Raqqa, we do expect that they will be involved at some level. What I would say is we continue working with the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Arab Coalition. Right about 75 percent of that force that is now isolating Raqqa is Syrian Arab, and this is a reflection that's demographically fairly consistent with what you would find in that area.

So that is a fundamental principle of the campaign, that we are going to try and generate with our partner force a force that's fairly consistent with what you find in Manbij -- excuse me, in Raqqa, and that includes Syrian Arabs, that includes Kurds, that includes Syrians, Christians, all others. The Syrian Democratic Forces are a multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian organization, and that is one of the reasons why we're working with them and they have continued to build the Arab element of their force.

Q: As far as the Turks are concerned, they've said they want to have some role in Raqqa. Any sense on the number of troops that would be involved?

COL. DORRIAN: As far as a role for Turkey, we have made clear from -- of many, many weeks, actually months, that we are open to a Turkish role in the continued operations to defeat ISIS in northern Syria. We don't -- we haven't come to an agreement about what that role will be or if there will be one, but we talk to Turkey through military channels and I believe at diplomatic levels every day. So we'll have to let that continue to be worked out. It has yet to be determined.

STAFF: We're gonna dip toward the back of the room to Kasim Ileri from Anadolu.

Q: Hi, Dorrian -- Colonel Dorrian.

I have two questions. In Manbij last week, there was a meeting among civilian parties to establish a civilian government or civilian governance in the city. Do you as a coalition have any role in that effort? I will have a follow-up.

COL. DORRIAN: Your -- your question didn't really come through completely. Are you asking about a Syrian regime role in Manbij?

Q: The parties in Manbij -- the civilian parties in Manbij came together last week to establish this civilian governance in the city. And as a coalition, do you have any role in setting up this meeting or helping them establish a government on the ground in Manbij? That's my question.

COL. DORRIAN: We don't have any role in the meetings that you're describing.

Q: And also, there are group -- Syrian Kurds called Rojava Peshmerga that is -- these guys are being trained by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq and they have a desire to take part in the fight against ISIS in northern Syria, including Raqqa. Do you have any plan to incorporate them into the forces that the SDF efforts or other efforts in northern Syria against ISIS?

COL. DORRIAN: We don't have any plans to incorporate them at this time. We're working with the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Arab Coalition and we're open to working with others if everyone will get on the same page and work to defeat ISIS. At a minimum, we look to deconflict our operations with some of the actors. The coalition is present. We continue to discuss the possibility of a Turkish role and then we work with the Syrian Democratic Forces who continue to build their force.

STAFF: Ryan Browne, CNN. Then I'll come to you next, sir.

Q: Hello, colonel. Thank you for doing this.

I know you said that the forces in Manbij, the coalition forces hadn't observed any enemy -- clashes or enemy activity. But have they actually had eyes on some of these Russian forces that we see in Manbij, we've seen social media? Have they actually put eyes on those Russian forces, the U.S. troops there? Have they been close enough to have visual contact?

COL. DORRIAN: Yes.

Q: And --

(Laughter.)

-- to follow up on a -- on a different topic, President Assad in a recent interview said that the U.S. forces in Syria were -- I think he used the word "invaders."

Is there a concern, given how close in proximity regime forces are now moving into the Raqqa operation, that -- that coalition forces there will have to kind of keep eyes on the Assad forces, considering that he's made that statement so very clear in recent days?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, our -- our forces are focused on defeat of ISIS, but they do maintain awareness of what's happening around them. This is probably very consistent with the discussion that I had early on in response to Bob's question.

Our forces, we're gonna have to be very careful because our number one goal for our force is to enable our partner forces to liberate their lands. The presence of our forces is gonna have devastating effects on the enemy that enables our partner force to do that. Our number two role is to make sure that we protect our own force as they execute that mission. So, we're gonna do both of those things and we most certainly are gonna maintain awareness of what's happening around our forces in Syria.

Q: Have Marines actually any delivered any fires on ISIS at this point?

COL. DORRIAN: You lost me there. Have we delivered any fires on ISIS?

Q: The Marine contingent.

COL. DORRIAN: Not to my knowledge, I don't believe so.

STAFF: I don't remember your name. I'm sorry.

Q: Hey, colonel. Brian Bender with Politico.

To follow up on what you just said about enabling partner forces, given that there are additional U.S. troops on the ground -- the Marines, the Rangers and talk of additional troops -- and given what you said about not being able to provide a whole lot of transparency about numbers and missions or locations, how do you -- how do you convince the American public, how do you convince the Congress that this advisory role really is an advisory and support role and is not bleeding into a more active role on the battlefield?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, I think that the -- the results of the operation probably speak for themselves. We have managed to protect the force as our partner forces have gone in and taken back a tremendous amount of territory. More than half the territory that ISIS used to control in Iraq and Syria is now back in the hands of our partner forces.

We have not lost a lot of troops. We've not had a lot of injuries. We have delivered a tremendous amount of ordinance on the enemy. We've provided a tremendous amount of information about that. We've given a lot of information about our advise and assist role. We're just not gonna do it as a play-by-play each and every day.

But I would say that the by, with and through model that we've used has proven effective. It's just that we're not gonna give you a daily, you know, troop locations, exact things that they are doing. It's just not appropriate for protecting the force, and I think we've explained that many times to you and we will also of course explain it to the Congress. I'm quite certain that they understand the need for force protection.

STAFF: Michael Gordon, New York Times.

We'll come to you next, Tara.

Q: Colonel Dorrian, just one question, and then just one quick follow-up. Has the ISIS commander for the old Mosul been killed, as was reported the other day?

And one point of clarification. You said that Kurdish forces would be part of the operation to liberate Raqqa. Just to clarify, does that mean the YPG will be one element of the seize force for Raqqa?

COL. DORRIAN: Thanks, Michael.

I -- I don't know if the commander of the old city for ISIS is killed or not. I've seen the same reports that you have, but I don't have any updated information where I can provide that clarity. Certainly, that's of interest. I would say that the Iraqi security forces have made a tremendous amount of progress in recent days. Their campaign continues to accelerate. The enemy continues to be surrounded, and is being hammered with air and artillery strikes. Each and every day, they weaken.

And the momentum for the Iraqi security forces grows. Very few, if any, of the enemy are going to escape. And so, things are going very well in Mosul right now.

With regard to whether the YPG will be a part of the force, I think I'd like to leave it at we would expect Kurds to be involved. And that's probably about where we're at.

Q: Be involved in -- as part of the seize force for the city, not just cordoning off the city?

COL. DORRIAN: Again, there are Kurds in the city. There have been Kurds that lived in Raqqa for, you know, a very long time. And we expect the demographic makeup of the force that liberates the city will likely reflect the residents of the city, either the present ones or the historic presence within the city. So, we do expect there to be Kurds involved.

STAFF: I'm sorry, I forgot your name, sir.

(CROSSTALK)

STAFF: Ben Kesling, Wall Street Journal.

(CROSSTALK)

(Laughter.)

Q: Hey, Colonel Dorrian. How are you?

I have two questions. One is, to follow up on Brian's question about troop locations. You know, I understand and I think the case has been made that if, you know, if there's new -- new special forces deployments; if -- or special operations forces deployments or anything of that nature, there's, you know, arguments you made about keeping those locations secret. And even after engagements are taken by special operations forces, oftentimes their locations are kept secret.

But for conventional forces, I don't know if this is what Brian was alluding to, but to push this forward a little bit -- for conventional force deployment, why is there such secrecy in saying the numbers of conventional forces that are down-range and general locations, whether it's basing or not?

You know, not -- and it seems like it -- the only time we find out about conventional force deployments is after somebody finds out about it and locals send something out on social media, or in the case of Fire Base Bell, a service member is killed in -- in combat. And then at that time, these bases are -- are talked about publicly.

Q: I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about if -- if there's going to be more -- if there's going to be more transparency in talking about conventional force deployment. I'm not talking about special operations forces.

COL. DORRIAN: Yep. Thanks for -- thanks for that, Ben.

I -- I do understand the tension with regard to the -- the -- the desire to have more information about our forces.

The reason for this is because the number of forces and the types of force protection measures that we're able to put in place for them, the dynamic nature of their mission; all those things lead to a force protection situation that's a little bit different.

So, I know that you're a -- a veteran. I know that you were involved in large operations with, you know, tens of thousands of U.S. troops moving in big columns all over the place.

That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about much smaller troop presences. And we're talking about operating in isolated conditions in many cases.

Sometimes there's going to be social media. And that is a part of the battlefield and it's something that we're gonna take into account.

But we're just not gonna get in the business of verifying each and every movement, even when it's conventional force.

I hope -- I do understand the tension and we are gonna provide the information that we can. And I think, you know, as far as their general location, I think, you know, we have done a pretty good job of that. So -- and we will continue to do so.

Q: Okay. And then just a -- a quick Mosul follow-up.

Last week, I was in Mosul and talking to -- talking to some folks on the ground, saying that ISIS is forcing car bombs or other large explosives (inaudible) closer to civilian areas in order -- in hopes of deterring -- deterring airstrikes by -- by coalition and Iraqi forces. I wonder if concern with sympathetic detonations of -- of car bombs, et cetera, is having any effect on -- on airpower in Mosul.

And then also, do you have any update on possible numbers of militants and the effect and number of foreign fighters and what that's doing on the battlefield in Mosul right now?

COL. DORRIAN: Yeah, Ben, you -- you broke up just a little bit. I don't know if you're sitting a little bit toward the back or not. What -- what have -- we've detected in the past is when people are sitting in the back, the audio really doesn't come through very well.

So, I'll -- I'll say, I think that you're asking me what the effects of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devises have been in the city, particularly on the western side. And what I would say is it's less than it was on the eastern side, for a variety of reasons.

Number one, the types of VBIEDs that the enemy is able to use is different, because they've expended a lot of the heavily machined Mad Max-style vehicles that they were using on the east. And then more than 200 of them have been destroyed by coalition airpower.

There are also reasons that makes it kinda difficult for them to use those in some parts of the city, because some parts of the -- the old -- the older part of the city, the streets are so narrow that they're not able to really maneuver those as capably as they could in other parts of the city.

Likewise, we've done a lot of terrain-denial strikes, where we have cratered roads between the Iraqi Security Forces as they advance and then open areas where VBIEDs might be able to come out. So that has also been a formula that helped very much on the eastern side of the city, and it continues to be very effective on the west side.

Let's see. As far as moving on to the discussion of foreign fighters, we have encountered a lot of foreign fighters and there has been tension between the foreign fighters in some cases and the fighters that are from Iraq, particularly in Mosul, because Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has essentially provided a little bit more power to some of the foreign fighters because he knows they're in no position to leave, because they'll be found and screened as they try to escape the city.

This has been a source of tension amongst the enemy, and we expect that to continue because as things continue to devolve for them, as they continue to lose momentum, we do see them turning on each other in some cases. And we have seen instances where some of these foreign fighter commanders are executing members of the Iraqi forces. They decide that they really don't want to fight anymore.

This is a calling card or a very typical thing for ISIS fighters to do. It works very well for us because it saves our partner force the trouble of fighting them. So that -- those are a few of the effects that we're seeing on the battlefield. There are significant numbers of foreign fighters. I don't have a percentage of what part of the force they represent.

STAFF: Okay. Next, and Tara Copp from Stars and Stripes; got some feedback here.

Q: Hey, Colonel Dorrian.

Earlier, you were talking about that the U.S. flags on the Strykers are being flown for just a short time and would later on maybe be taken down. Were they put up specifically to address escalating tensions? And have you likewise seen Russian flags on your counterparts' vehicles? Is this kind of a show of force or a show of presence in Manbij?

COL. DORRIAN: Yeah, we have -- we have seen the Russians do similar. This is just a measure of transparency on what our actions are, to make sure that there is no mistake or miscalculation about who is there.

Q: If this is to avoid miscalculation, it would seem it would be beneficial to keep the flags up. I suspect that those flags are up there specifically to reassure -- to be part of the reassurance mission there.

COL. DORRIAN: Generally, I would say that when -- when our forces to into a city and they say that their intent is to make sure that there's no nefarious activity there, and they're visible, that this has a reassuring effect on the people in the area. Because our forces, although they are operating in some very isolated conditions and very dangerous conditions, they are some of the most capable in the world, and they're not going to be trifled with.

So, so far, what they've done there has been very effective.

Q: Two more. Just getting back to Ryan's question, can you give us any ballpark of how close in approximately U.S. forces are to Russian forces? Are you still only communicating via, you know, a phone call or is there any sort of visible signals? Anything you can tell us about that?

COL. DORRIAN: Eric, can you hear me?

STAFF: Yes, we can hear you, sir. Can you hear us?

COL. DORRIAN: Can -- can you repeat that question for me? Because it came through very garbled.

Q: Sure. Can you hear me better now?

COL. DORRIAN: That's way better.

Q: I was getting back to Ryan's question about the proximity of U.S. and Russian forces. And are the -- still the main way of communicating is still the phone call or because they can see each other, are there other ways of communication going on between the two sets of forces?

COL. DORRIAN: We continue to use the deconfliction channel as our method of deconflicting our operations, but certainly, they're operating in a -- in a city there and both our forces and there's are visible. And so they do -- they can observe each other's movement.

Q: Are they communicating with each other as they see each other?

COL. DORRIAN: They can see each other. They're not talking to each other and they're not hanging out together.

Q: And just one last one. We've often heard about how U.S. forces are on the ground, you know, by, with and through local forces, and my question is which local forces are U.S. working by, with and through? Obviously not regime forces, but is this a -- you know, especially as we've heard about kind of the conflicting goals between some of the SDF forces or some of the Turkish forces, maybe if you could clarify that for us?

COL. DORRIAN: Yes, we work with the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Arab Coalition. That's the force that we're working by, with and through to isolate Raqqa. We're working with the Manbij Military Council in Manbij to help them maintain security in the city. We worked very closely with Turkey on their operation to liberate al-Bab. We work closely with the Iraqi security forces and often with the Peshmerga in Iraq.

STAFF: If you can hand it back to -- Lucas Tomlinson, Fox News is up next. We're gonna hand him the mic, Colonel Dorrian.

Q: Colonel, can you explain the importance of having U.S. troops in Manbij?

COL. DORRIAN: Sure. The -- the presence of our forces there is intended to assure both our partners and our allies of our commitment to their security and their safety. They observe what's happening in the area and report back to higher echelons of command to make sure that decision-making takes into account the highest level of fidelity on information on what's happening in that area.

So those are the two things that are really happening.

Q: And are you concerned, since the Russian forces and the American forces are backing two different groups that are opposed to one another in this conflict, that the chance of something nefarious happening or an accident or miscalculation, as you put it -- how concerned are you that something might happen between American and Russian forces?

COL. DORRIAN: Certainly, it's a concern. That is the reason that we have this de-confliction channel. So, as these forward lines of troops converge, and all these forces are operating closely together, the amount of coordination on that de-confliction channel continues to increase. It went from many months ago just, you know, a few times a week, to much more often as our forces converge.

So, it is a concern. It's a concern of ours. It's quite clear it's a concern of theirs as well. What we're trying to do is make sure that the primary threat in the area, ISIS, remains the focus of all hostile intent.

STAFF: Lucas, if you can pass it back we're going to Carlo Munoz next, with the Washington Times.

Q: Hey, sir. Thanks for doing this. Quick question -- two quick questions on Raqqa and a follow-up on Mosul.

Regarding Raqqa, we've heard -- seen recent reports that a lot of senior Daesh leadership have begun moving out of the city into areas near Dawr az Zawr and other safe havens; possibly, you know, obviously in preparation for the upcoming assault.

My first question is: Do you think that, with all the confusion that's going on the ground with Syrian, Russian, American, Kurdish troops, Turkish troops in that vicinity, has contributed to creating a situation where these -- where these Daesh leaders are able to flee down to Dawr az Zawr and areas there?

And two, with that movement, do you think that the upcoming fight for Raqqa will be the death knell of ISIS that we've all sort of been hearing from coalition spokesmen and here in the building?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, I'll start with the second question. I'm not sure what spokesman you heard that from, but you didn't hear it from this one. So, defeating ISIS in Mosul and defeating them in Raqqa is a necessary step. It's a very important step because of the value they place on these two cities.

In Iraq, Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq. They control a giant population there that they can tax to fund their operations. There's a level of prestige and symbolic importance to Mosul because this is where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself the caliph in a mosque that's just about to be released from ISIS control in the next several days.

In Raqqa, this is their worldwide capital. So we expect them to fight very hard to try and preserve their grip on that city. And we don't think they're going to go quietly. And we are going to work very closely with our partners to make sure that, you know, it's taken away. But make no mistake, we don't consider the taking of those two cities to be the death knell. We consider it a very necessary and important step in the demise of this barbaric organization.

As far as their movement, ISIS from Raqqa to Dawr az Zawr, we have seen some fighters moving around Syria, including toward --

(AUDIO GAP)

COL. DORRIAN: -- is in the crosshairs. Next, we're working very closely with our partnered force to further isolate Raqqa. There is still plenty of ISIS fighters and still plenty of ISIS leaders in Raqqa, and in the days ahead, that city will be much more difficult to escape. In these other areas, like Dawr az Zawr, that may be where we go next.

STAFF: Colonel Dorrian, we kind do lost the middle part of your answer. We had a little bit of a technical difficulty. I can't remember exactly where you cut out.

Did you have a follow-up, Carlo?

Q: Just another quick -- one quick question on Mosul. You talked in your opening statement about starting to shift gears towards sustainment and security-type operations. As far as that shift is concerned, where is the coalition planning at right now regarding the possibility of including more trainers to support this -- to support this sustainment force? We've heard in the past that it might be required more U.S. and coalition forces to do that.

COL. DORRIAN: Well, where we are on that now is we've trained right about 90,000 forces, and that includes the Iraqi army, the CTS, the Counter Terrorism Service, the federal police, Peshmerga and then tribal mobilization forces that are used as hold forces in the city. So that's something that we continue. There are police and army and CTS being trained even this very day. That's something that we continue to do.

As far as how our mission evolves, this is a matter of some discussion between coalition nations and the government of Iraqi. Right now, the main focus is on the defeat of ISIS in Mosul. But that is a task that there are some ongoing discussions on, but as far as what that looks like, the size of the presence and all that sort of thing, each coalition nation will have a political process that determines what they're willing to do. And Iraq, of course, as a sovereign country will certainly start that by asking for what they need.

We do think though that there is probably some type of enduring requirement.

STAFF: Carla Babb, Voice of America.

Q: Colonel, two quick questions kind of following up on points that have been discussed.

The first is in Manbij, with the Russians being there and the Americans being there, they can see each other. But I mean, what is -- what is the day-to-day? Are they overlapping in areas of the city or is there some sort of tacit agreement that the Americans stay on one side of the city and the Russians stay on the other side of the city? Was that ironed out when General Dunford talked to his counterpart? That's question one or topic one.

And then also, you mentioned early in this briefing that the U.S. didn't have a role in the meeting on the Manbij civilian governance, but our stringers on the ground, the head of the new council, Ibrahim Kaftan, told VOA earlier this week that the U.S. did have a role and local officials had been saying that U.S. advisers did help form the civilian entity. So, help me square that.

COL. DORRIAN: Yeah, as far as their proximity to the city -- or excuse me, their -- the proximity of our forces and the Russians, this is something that's worked out through the coalition -- through the deconfliction call. They tell us where they're gonna be and we tell where we're going to be and our forces do what they can to just stay away from each other and conduct their operations and do what they're there to do.

As far as what reports you have, I haven't seen those. So, we'll have to take that question. I'm not aware of any. So, we'll check in on that one.

STAFF: Here, ma'am. I'm sorry, I can't remember your name.

Q: Patty Culhane, Al Jazeera English.

Moving back to Manbij, you sad the U.S. wasn't having any sort of fighting in Manbij. Is there any fighting at all? And you also said you've seen no presence of anyone who would upset Turkey. Who specifically are you talking about?

COL. DORRIAN: I'm talking about anybody. As far as fighting, we haven't seen any, none of any kind from anybody.

Q: Sir, did- what are the total number of ISIL fighters in Raqqa and also in Mosul that you think you're dealing with?

COL. DORRIAN: In -- in Mosul, we think there's probably on the order of 2,000. That's a number that's moving downward by the day. It may be less than that at this point. That's the latest number that I have.

Again, that's a very difficult number to predict because of the level -- the level of commitment of each fighter is very difficult to assess. There are the hardcore foreign fighters, there are hardcore Iraqi fighters and there are some who've been forced into service. So, that's something that just has to be stepped through and the Iraqi security forces continue to advance and make that determination.

As far as the number that we think are in Raqqa, we think ballpark 3,000 to 4,000.

STAFF: Okay. A follow-up from Kasim Ileri, Anadolu.

Q: Colonel, you said -- you mentioned the tension between the foreign fighters and local Daesh fighters in Mosul. Could you tell us a little bit more how visible that tension is? What are they doing to each other as a reflection of the tension you mentioned?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, I told you one thing. That in some cases, they're killing each other because if some are not as committed to the fight and decide they want to lay down their arms, try to escape, some are being killed. They're being executed by ISIS. So, this is something that we've seen on the battlefield.

We've also seen bickering, you know, between the various factions sometimes over resources, sometimes over operations. This is the type of thing that happens when it's not going well. And for ISIS, it's not going well.

Q: And -- and also, you said that the next target might be -- for the coalition might be Dawr az Zawr. And we know that current Russian and Assad forces are also working against -- or fighting against ISIS around that area.

How would you -- you know, move toward there, while Assad forces and Russians are already engaging ISIS to recapture the city?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, one of the things that's a fundamental premise of the campaign that we discuss often is that the enemy is subject to being struck by the coalition anywhere on the battlefield that they can be found and identified. So, we've done many strikes around Dawr az Zawr. We've done many strikes in places like Abu Kamal, Raqqa, other places in northern Syria.

So, we'll strike them anywhere we can find them. It's really as simple as that.

STAFF: Okay. And do we have any more questions?

Okay. Colonel Dorrian, I think you're done for the day, sir. Thank you very much. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for us?

COL. DORRIAN: Well, I don't know if there's a word of wisdom, but I do want to note for all of our friends in the Pentagon press that this spokesman is probably going to be on a short mid-tour leave. And I would encourage you to continue asking questions, but please do so through our press desk. I know that if you don't have the contact information, our friends over at OSD will be delighted to provide it.

And thanks for your patience while I do that. I look forward to getting back and getting back going with this. Thank you.

STAFF: Stay safe over there, sir.

Okay. And that concludes today's briefing. Thank you.

-END-

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1119873/

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New Soldier armor weighs less, offers more options

By C. Todd Lopez March 16, 2017

WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- The average generation II improved outer tactical vest weighs about 26 pounds. But the new torso and extremity protection system or TEP, under development now at Program Executive Office Soldier, sheds about five pounds of weight and also adds a wide degree of scalability that commanders can make use of depending on threat level and mission.

The TEP is part of the new Soldier Protection System under development now at PEO Soldier. The SPS includes both the TEP and the integrated head protection system.

RANGE OF OPTIONS

The TEP can replace the IOTV, at less weight and greater scalability, depending on the mission. It includes the modular scalable vest, the ballistic combat shirt, the blast pelvic protection system, and a battle belt, which is aimed at getting weight off a Soldier's shoulders and onto the hips.

With the TEP, commanders can require Soldiers to go with full protection -- which provides the same level of protection as a fully-loaded IOTV -- or go all the way down to wearing soft armor under their uniforms for missions that require less protection.

"It's about giving commanders on the battlefield the ability to use the modularity capability of the equipment to fit their particular mission profile or protective posture level," said Lt. Col. Kathy Brown, the product manager for Personal Protective Equipment at PEO Soldier, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

BALLISTIC COMBAT SHIRT

The IOTV sometimes required Soldiers to wear the deltoid auxiliary protection -- cumbersome parts that snapped on to the IOTV and protected their shoulders. Soldiers might have also been asked to wear the smaller, easily-lost collars that also snapped on to the IOTV. Both are gone with the TEP. They've been replaced by the ballistic combat shirt, which is a shirt with breathable fabric and which also includes those smaller ballistic protection parts built in. Soldiers would wear the BCS under the TEP's modular scalable vest.

"We have tested it," Brown said of the ballistic combat shirt. "Soldiers like it. There is 95 percent Soldier acceptability of it. What we are working on now is tweaking the sizes."

NEW PELVIC PROTECTION

The TEP also includes the blast pelvic protection system, which is designed to protect a Soldiers thighs and groin against ballistic threats and burns. The BPPS is meant to replace the current combination of the pelvic undergarment and the pelvic outer-garment, or "PUG" and "POG." The PUG has sometimes been referred to as "ballistic underwear."

Brown said the BPPS "provides the same level of protection" as the PUG and POG combined, including both burn and fragment protection. She said Soldiers have reported that it feels more like it is "part of the pants."

BELT TAKES LOAD OFF SHOULDERS

The battle belt included with the TEP is part of a weight management system, but it also offers some protection as well.

"It's designed to remove the weight from your shoulders and put it on your hips," Brown said. Whereas Soldiers might strap a radio or other gear onto their IOTV in the past, the battle belt can now take that gear and move the weight onto a Soldier's hips.

Brown said that after successful ballistic testing, production of the TEP will begin in probably May of this year, and that Soldiers could see it in 2018 or 2019.

NEW HELMET

Another part of the Soldier Protection System is the integrated head protection system, or IHPS. In its full configuration, it looks similar to a motorcycle helmet.

The IHPS consists of a base helmet, similar to the polyethylene enhanced combat helmet that some Soldiers are already wearing. The IHPS also includes add-ons for the base helmet, including a visor, a "mandible" portion that protects the lower jaw, and a "ballistic applique" that is much like a protective layer that attaches over the base helmet. The complete ensemble is known as the "high threat configuration."

Brown said that eventually all deploying Soldiers will get the IHPS with the base helmet, which is the standard configuration. Other Soldiers, vehicle gunners in particular, will also get the mandible portion and the ballistic applique as well, known as the turret configuration.

The IHPS currently has a Picatinny rail mounted on the side for attaching gear, and will also provide for attaching head-mounted night vision goggles.

NEW SUNGLASSES

The visor portion on the IHPS provides ballistic protection to a Soldier's face but doesn't provide any protection against the sun. So Soldiers wearing it will need to wear darkened sunglasses underneath the visor if they are in bright environments.

Maj. Jaun F. Carleton, also with PEO Solider, had a pair of new sunglasses that are authorized for use by Soldiers if they want to buy them, or if their commanders buy them for them.

The sunglasses, which also come in a face mask version as well, start off as un-darkened -- offering no protection against the sun. But with the press of a button, LCD modules that adhere to the lenses darken and provide protection against the sun. That happens in less than a second.

"The benefit is that using one pair of protective eyewear, you wouldn't have to switch from a clear goggle to a dark goggle -- you'd have one protective eyewear for all conditions," Carleton said.

Brown said the goggles will be available for units to be able to requisition as part of the Soldier Protection System.

"If we are able to drive the price down, the Army could eventually make a decision to include that on the list of items that we carry for deploying Soldiers," Brown said.

SOLDIER TESTING

Brown said the IHPS will likely be available to deploying Soldiers sometime between 2020 and 2021.

As part of extensive human factors evaluations, Brown said that PEO Soldier has used Soldiers, extensively, to evaluate the new gear.

"We had a massive scale of Soldiers to evaluate the equipment, usually over a three-week to month-long timeframe, where they would perform their different mission sets, where they will execute basic rifle marksmanship, and ruck marches," she said.

Afterward, she said, those same Soldiers were asked what they think of the gear through a qualitative evaluation methodology (Soldier survey).

"They would give us the good, the bad, the ugly," Brown said. "It's extremely important to get Soldiers' input. First, Soldiers are brutally honest and they are going to tell you exactly how they feel about the equipment. Second, why buy equipment Soldiers won't wear? And third, who's better to give us the best answer about how the kit should be designed than the Soldier who will actually wear the equipment?"

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Air Force may join Army in refining multi-domain concept

By Sean Kimmons March 16, 2017

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Army News Service) -- The Air Force may soon join the Army in developing new capabilities for multi-domain battle, senior leaders say, just a few weeks after Army and Marine Corps leaders came together to publish an outline on future combat operations.

In tomorrow's complex battlefield, the Army will need stronger air defense systems to counter emerging anti-access/anti-denial capabilities and free up airspace for friendly aircraft, said Maj. Gen. Bo Dyess, acting director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center.

The Air Force could then fly unimpeded during combat operations and provide close-air support to help ground troops move freely in contested areas.

"We would work on the air defense and the Air Force would be able to come in and conduct the missions that they need to conduct," Dyess said, while speaking Monday at the Association of the United States Army's Global Force Symposium. "It's a symbiotic relationship and we all need to work together to achieve the mission."

According to Dyess, the Air Force is "very close" to collaborating with the Army on the multi-domain battle concept in preparation for future warfare, which planners predict will involve Soldiers fighting in dense urban areas against near-peer enemies.

In February, the Army and Marine Corps published a white paper providing an overview of what ground troops may face in 2025-2040. In addition to discussing other potential threats, the four-page document states that Russia and China continue to improve and export integrated air defense systems, which can allow ground forces to establish air superiority on their own.

The white paper also states that ideas expressed in it will likely be refined and expanded based on input from the other services.

"This has got to be a joint fight from the beginning," Dyess said. "There is some urgency to this. We cannot afford as a nation to wait 10 years to develop this concept."

At AUSA's annual meeting in October, the Army officially announced the multi-domain battle concept, which is meant to broaden how the service fights on land -- sometimes with the assistance of air assets -- and allow for the incorporation of capabilities in the maritime and cyber domains.

Also during the meeting, leaders representing all services participated in a panel discussion, expressing their support of the concept.

Last week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein rolled out a new concept called multi-domain command and control, which is intended to improve situational awareness, rapid decision making and employment of Air Force assets in future warfare.

U.S. Army Pacific has also been working directly with the joint Pacific Command, headed by Navy Adm. Harry Harris Jr., to finalize exercises to test and develop new multi-domain capabilities.

"Multi-domain battle is an evolution, not a revolution," Dyess said. "It's a natural evolution of combined arms designed to meet challenges of the 21st century."

Army Training and Doctrine Command has been developing the multi-domain concept and is now incorporating aspects of it into the Army Doctrine Publication 3-0, which outlines a common operational concept for Army forces, he added.

Improving interoperability with coalition partners is also a key part, he said, since they could support the U.S. Army against near-peer enemies. Last year, he noted, British, Australian and Italian military members, among other foreign troops, took part in an Army Warfighting Assessment at Fort Bliss, Texas, to test new capabilities like robotics and autonomous weapons systems.

"We would not fight on the future battlefield without allies," he said. "It will be joint, it will be a coalition, it will be intergovernmental."

Soldiers are also doing their part in envisioning future fighting capabilities, said Paul Rogers, director of the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, or TARDEC.

Through Soldier innovation workshops, he said, young NCOs are plucked from their units to team up with creative design students from an industrial design college in Detroit to draw up capabilities the Soldiers would like to see in combat.

A dozen NCOs and up to 20 designers typically come up with nearly 300 advanced concepts over a 2 1/2-day workshop, he said Monday at the symposium.

"This is driven by the NCOs. They quickly take control and run the workshop, and it's their outbrief that we get after two and a half days," he said, adding that they've done almost 10 workshops so far. "It's really a great way for us to grab innovation from the Soldier."

In the near future, Army leaders plan to delve deeper and identify gaps in the capabilities that may be needed to fight in a multi-domain environment. At an event slated for August, specific gaps will then be addressed to industry partners, allowing them to hone in on their efforts, according to Dyess.

Examining capabilities in areas where the U.S. military has been dominant, like air supremacy, is also an important step in this process.

"We don't want to be surprised on the future battlefield," he said. "If we're surprised on the future battlefield, that means Soldiers, Marines, Airmen are going to be killed. In order to not be surprised, we have to question the assumptions that we have."

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed Bin Salman March 15, 2017

Remarks by Secretary Mattis at Top of Meeting with Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed Bin Salman at the Pentagon

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JAMES MATTIS: Please, everybody have a seat. Please.

Well, welcome.

Your royal highness, excellencies, distinguished members of the kingdom's delegation. Welcome to the Pentagon.

Mindful of our legacy, our relations between our two nations go back to when your king and our president met on board a U.S. cruiser in Bitter Lake in 1945. So, this does not start with us here at the table, and certainly it will not end with us here as we continue the legacy that was established by President FDR and by King Ibn Saud.

The warmth of that relationship has held firm through good times and bad times over many, many years -- 70-odd years now. And it's been the basis for an indispensable economic and security partnership together. The kingdom's regional leadership providing stability to the region and our military-to-military relationship remains steady and consistent.

And I appreciate your vigorous leadership, Your Royal Highness, your political commitment and your willingness to broaden and deepen the kingdom's support for our common efforts. But again, welcome to you and your delegation.

DEPUTY CROWN PRINCE AND MINISTER OF DEFENSE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for making us feel welcome today at the Pentagon.

The Saudi-U.S. relation is longstanding and it's been there for the past 80 years. And the cooperation between us was very positive to deter and counter the challenges facing both of us. And we've gone through very important historical phases.

So the challenges facing us today are not the first challenges to face our two nations. Today, we are facing a very serious danger in the region and in the world, either when it comes to the hostile activities of the Iranian regime that has supporting the extremists and terrorists in the region and around the world, or the challenges posed by the terrorist organizations.

We in Saudi Arabia are at the front line in facing these challenges. Any terrorist organization, their primary target to recruit and spread their ideology is to start with Saudi Arabia, the house of -- the holy city of Mecca. Once they put their hands on Saudi Arabia, they will get access to the entire Islamic world. That's why we are the primary target.

That's why we suffer the most. That's why we need to work and cooperate with our allies. On top of the list comes the United States, the leader of the world. Today, we are very optimistic under the leadership of President Trump and we believe these challenges will be easy to tackle under the leadership of the president.

SEC. MATTIS: Thank you again, shukran Thank you very much, sir.

And for the press, thank you very much.

Q: Your highness will be putting ground troops into Syria?

MIN. BIN SALMAN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): We are ready to do anything that will eradicate terrorism, anything without limits.

SEC. MATTIS: Thank you. Thank you again.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1121387/

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Energy C2 dashboard will help Marines, soldiers extend operational reach

US Marine Corps News

By Mathuel Browne | March 16, 2017

The Marine Corps and Army are jointly developing a fuel tracking system that will automatically record fuel usage to better assess energy efficiency in theater.

The Joint Operational Energy Command and Control program, initiated in 2014, is focused on customizing commercial fuel monitoring systems to automate fuel tracking for fuel storage assets, fleet vehicles and generators. Still in testing, the system will collect vehicle diagnostic and fuel transaction details using microchips embedded in the fuel valves of refueling trucks as they resupply fuel-powered assets. Data will then be sent wirelessly to the commander for a visual representation of energy consumption.

"Instead of a Marine tracking in a log book how much fuel they are issuing, JOEC2 will automate the process, removing the potential for errors and decreasing the time it takes for leaders to receive data," said Maj. Douglas Peterson, project officer for JOEC2 at Marine Corps Systems Command. "We are working to extend operational reach and give decision makers the quickest, most accurate picture of their energy use."

JOEC2 has three fundamental components: data collection, communication and an integrated computer dashboard. The data collection will happen each time a vehicle or generator is refueled. The information is then transmitted wirelessly to the command operation center. Computers, running an energy dashboard application, receive the data and display the information for commanders to further analyze.

"Right now, we are targeting JOEC2 for unit leadership evaluation through Tactical Service Oriented Architecture, an approved Marine tactical app store," said Peterson. "The raw data received by the energy dashboard is then converted into useful informationfrom the amount of fuel currently stored on the refueling trucks to the mileage since the last fueling event."

The initiative became a joint effort between the Marine Corps and the Army when the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office at Headquarters Marine Corps and the Office of the Army, G-4, began working together to find ways to decrease oil dependency, thus curbing cost and risk in a contingency environment.

"We started working with the Army on this program last year," said Peterson. "They are more focused on base camp needs, while the Marine Corps is more expeditionary focused."

In December, the system was showcased during a Great Green Fleet demonstration to Navy and Marine Corps leaders to highlight Marine Corps fuel-efficiency efforts. GGF is a Department of the Navy initiative that demonstrates the sea service's efforts to transform its energy use. MCSC enlisted the support of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific to assist with technology demonstrations.

"We were also able to show that JOEC2 can gather secondary information such as mileage, idle times and fuel efficiency through an onboard diagnostic system similar to a personal car," said Christine In, deputy project manager for Energy C2 at SSC Pacific. "Just like energy use, Marines should not have to wait until there is a failure to diagnose a maintenance issue."

SSC Pacific is testing the system with the 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, to further understand the warfighter's needs.

"Just recently, we received great feedback from one of the officers that they plan to use JOEC2 in the future for maintenance planning," she said. "Looking even beyond energy, participants are thinking about how to use the system to monitor maintenance issues and better equip their Marines."

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Yemeni forces down Saudi helicopter in Hudaydah province: TV

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 2:8PM

Yemeni army soldiers and fighters from Popular Committees have shot down an Apache helicopter operated by Saudi Arabia in the western province of Hudaydah, a report says.

The chopper was brought down in Hudaydah's Bayt al-Faqih district on Thursday, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.

On January 25, the Yemeni forces shot down another Apache helicopter belonging to the so-called Saudi-led coalition in Dhubab neighborhood of Yemen's Ta'izz province.

Ten Saudi soldiers slain

Separately on Thursday, al-Masirah reported that a Saudi trooper had been killed in the al-Dukhan military base in the kingdom's southwestern Jizan region.

Nine other Saudi soldiers lost their lives in several places across Saudi Arabia's southern region, including Jizan's al-Dafinah village.

According to later reports, one of the slain soldiers came form the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In a statement carried by the UAE state news agency, WAM, the Emirati armed forces identified the soldier as Zakariya Suleiman al-Zaabi.

Some 85 Emirati soldiers have been killed since the beginning of Saudi Arabia's military campaign against Yemen two years ago.

Additionally on Thursday, Yemeni fighters managed to thwart an attack by Saudi mercenaries on a border crossing near Saudi Arabia's southern region of Najran and inflicted heavy losses on them.

Yemeni sources said a number of Saudi mercenaries were killed and injured in Najran's al-Khazra' crossing following a mine explosion.

Elsewhere, Saudi mercenaries shot dead a Yemeni woman in the town of Ma'afir in Yemen's Ta'izz province.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a deadly military campaign against Yemen since March 2015. The kingdom has also imposed an aerial and naval blockade on its southern neighbor.

Britain and the US have provided huge amounts of arms and military training to the Saudi forces.

The war by Saudi Arabia, which seeks to restore Yemen's former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, to power, has killed over 12,000 Yemenis, according to recent tallies.

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Trump Proposes Slashing Foreign Aid, Environment In Budget Plan

RFE/RL March 16, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has presented a budget plan that would slash funding for foreign aid, the State Department, environmental programs and other initiatives to make way for a big boost in military spending.

In the plan issued by the White House on March 16, Trump proposed a 10 percent jump in defense spending and an increase in homeland security spending, including funding for a wall on the Mexican border.

The State Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been targeted for some of the biggest reductions: 28 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

The proposed overhaul of federal government spending comes after Trump promised to "put America first" and "make the safety of our people [the] number one priority."

He named the $3.8 trillion budget plan America First: A Budget Blueprint To Make America Great Again.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled support for the plan, saying in Tokyo on March 16 that the level of State Department spending in the past was "simply not sustainable."

Trump has proposed a combined $25.6 billion budget for the State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a $10.9 billion reduction from current spending.

Tillerson said the department was "coming off a historically high allocation of resources" adding that a lot could still be done with "fewer dollars."

The proposed cuts in State Department spending would cut deeply into foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies such as the World Bank, and climate-change programs at the United Nations.

Resistance In Congress

The Republican president's budget plan would take effect in the 2018 fiscal year, which begins on October 1 of this year.

Many of its proposals are expected to face strong resistance from U.S. lawmakers in Congress, whose support is key because they vote to authorize government appropriations.

Republicans have criticized Trump's plans for heavy cuts in foreign aid and diplomacy.

"The administration's budget isn't going to be the budget," Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said. "We do the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets."

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that the White House is open to negotiation but defended the proposed cuts.

"This budget represents a president who is beholden to nobody but the voters," Mulvaney told reporters.

The EPA is also a major target for reductions in the proposed budget. Climate change programs at the EPA also are targeted for elimination, with Trump proposing to get rid of more than 50 environmental programs in all.

The Health and Human Services and the Labor, Agriculture, and Transportation departments would also face significant cuts.

The budget plan leaves some of the biggest programs -- Social Security and Medicare for the elderly -- untouched.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and The Washington Post

Source: www.rferl.org/a/white-house-propose-slashing-foreign -aid-environment-2018-budget-plan/28372763.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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Thirty-one Somali refugees were killed off the coast of Yemen late on Thursday when a helicopter attacked the boat they were travelling in, a local coast guard in the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah area said.

Coast guard Mohamed al-Alay told Reuters the refugees, carrying official UNHCR documents, were on their way from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

A sailor who had been operating the boat, Ibrahim Ali Zeyad, said 80 refugees had been rescued after the incident.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack.

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EU Commissioner Tells Western Balkan Leaders To Embrace European Future

RFE/RL's Balkan Service March 16, 2017

The European Union's enlargement commissioner has urged Western Balkan leaders to fully embrace their European future and refrain from stoking regional tensions.

Johannes Hahn, the commissioner for European neighborhood policy and enlargement negotiations, addressed the prime ministers of Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia at the end of a one-day meeting in Sarajevo on March 16.

Hahn said the EU understands it's in its "hard-headed self-interest" to promote the troubled region's future within the 28-member bloc when there are "unprecedented levels of involvement from further east" -- an apparent reference to Russian meddling in the Balkans.

"We now have one of those windows of opportunity where either the region as a whole picks up momentum and we generate a genuinely positive narrative, or we end up in a really awkward spot, with a stream of bad news slamming the window firmly shut," Hahn told a news conference after the meeting.

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said all the leaders who attended the meting were committed to EU integration and economical cooperation.

However, the countries are at different stages of efforts to join the bloc and recent domestic political clashes and tense relations between states in the region have posed obstacles to the process.

The EU said in a March 15 statement that Hahn would discuss "economic and political perspectives for the Western Balkans" with the leaders in preparation for a summit of some EU and Western Balkan nations in the Italian city of Trieste on July 12.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on March 15 that the region needed a clear message about joining the bloc, citing growing nationalism and pro-Russian sentiment in the region.

In Albania on March 14, Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano urged the EU to strengthen its commitment to integrating Western Balkan countries to help counter rising nationalist tensions in the region.

"Balkan countries have a strategic importance not only for Italy, but for all Europe," he said.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/eu-commissioner -western-balkan-leaders-meet-for- talks-in-sarajevo/28373240.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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India Slams Pakistan Bid to Make Disputed Gilgit-Baltistan Area Its Province

Sputnik News

19:39 16.03.2017

India has reacted strongly to Pakistan's decision to convert Gilgit-Baltistan area of India's state of Kashmir into its fifth province, stating that this is a very serious matter concerning India's sovereignty and integrity.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The Indian establishment was reacting to reports that Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzadar had said that a committee headed by Sartaj Aziz had proposed giving the status of a province to Gilgit-Baltistan. A bill to amend the constitution of Pakistan is likely to be presented in the National Assembly, its parliament.

"The position of the government on Jammu and Kashmir is consistent and well-known. The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947. It has been, is and will always be an integral part of India. <> Any unilateral step by Pakistan to alter the status of that part will have no basis in law and will be completely unacceptable. It will also be a violation of the agreement between the two countries to address all issues bilaterally through peaceful means, which was enshrined in the Shimla Agreement of 1972 and reiterated through the Lahore Declaration in 1999," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Gopal Baglay said at a press briefing on Thursday.

"Pakistan has attempted this earlier. Their main objective is to separate Gilgit-Baltistan from Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan is unsure of the population of Gilgit-Baltistan as they have agitated against Pakistani establishment time and again. In fact, keeping these areas as a disputed territory is problematic for Pakistan so they want to make it their fifth province. But the fact is that Pakistani constitution has no status for Gilgit-Baltistan, " Alok Bansal, Director, Center for Security and Strategy in the Delhi-based think tank, India Foundation, told Sputnik.

Indian lawmaker D Raja told Sputnik, "Pakistan should desist from this as it will further affect peace and security in the region."

 Sputnik

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China to Retaliate If Japan Sends Izumo Warship to South China Sea

Sputnik News

15:03 16.03.2017

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated that the situation in the South China Sea was improving in comparison with the last year due to the efforts of the regional states, and countries outside of the region must respect the efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.

BEIJING (Sputnik)  China will take the necessary response measures if Japan sends its largest warship, the Izumo helicopter carrier, on a three-month tour to the South China Sea, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Thursday at a briefing.

Earlier this week, media reports emerged that Japan planned to send the Izumo on a tour with stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka in order to test the ship's capabilities before joining the Malabar joint maneuvers with India and the United States.

"Based on its own interests, Japan has recently been creating problems and polarization over the issue of the South China Sea. This approach has caused strong resentment of the Chinese citizens. Japan continues to do this, and the attempts to have military presence in the South China Sea indicate a threat to the interests of China and increase tensions in the region. China, of course, will take countermeasures in this case," Hua said.

Hua added that the situation in the South China Sea was improving in comparison with the last year due to the efforts of the regional states, and countries outside of the region must respect the efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.

Hua noted that Tokyo was not a party involved in disputes over the South China Sea, and Japan should reflect on its history and refrain from steps that could harm peace and stability in the region.

China and several countries in the region, namely Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, are involved in a dispute on maritime borders and responsibility areas in the South China and East China seas. Japan and China have had a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, called in Chinese the Diaoyu Islands, since the 1970s. Japan controls the territory, while China lays claim to it.

 Sputnik

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Dubious Defense Cooperation With Colombia Whets Saab's Appetite

Sputnik News

13:46 16.03.2017(updated 13:54 16.03.2017)

During his visit to Colombia, Swedish Industry Minister Mikael Damberg signed off on a defense cooperation agreement. Sweden's Saab is particularly enthusiastic about the agreement, which may help the troubled airplane manufacturer sell some of its vaunted Gripen fighter jets.

According to Swedish Industry Minister Mikael Damberg, the Colombian Armed Forces are an integral part of the peaceful transition of a country scarred by a decade-long civil war, and may be making major investments in the future, the Swedish economic daily Dagens Industri reported.

Sweden's Saab, which previously experienced problems trying to market its Gripen fighter jets amid heavy competition from US, EU and Russian aircraft, is pinning its hopes on Colombia's future arms procurement. Saab has previously tried to woo the Colombian military by sending Swedish military pilots and holding seminars for the Colombian Air Force.

During the fifth Gripen seminar in Stockholm, Saab marketing chief Richard Smith acknowledged interest in the E/F generation of the Gripen fighter jet, following Saab's recent contract in Brazil for 36 Gripens.

"We have begun to open talks with Colombia," Richard Smith said, as quoted by Swedish trade magazine Ny Teknik. In 2016, Smith identified Colombia as one of the potential buyers of the Gripen.

The sale of 36 new Gripen aircraft to Brazil meant a giant step forward for the Gripen project and was described as a "game changer" by Saab. During the seminar, a hopeful Smith ventured that the Gripen will "dominate the market" for single-seat multi-role aircraft.

The Gripen is currently in use in Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa and Thailand. Saab is also hopeful for major deals with India and Finland, which are preparing for major air force updates with 150 and 40 jets respectively, and is also in discussion with Botswana. Previously, Saab's bids failed in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Poland.

In Colombia, however, Saab's marketing efforts may prove to be a bad PR move for the Swedish giant. In late 2016, Colombia signed a peace agreement after years of difficult negotiations, which earned Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. The left-wing guerilla movement FARC agreed to demobilize, but has not yet handed over their arms, whereas the second-largest guerilla force ELN has just begun peace talks. In connection with this, human rights activists believe it is the wrong time for Sweden, which previously emerged as one of the driving forces for the peace agreement, to campaign for new arms deals.

"Strengthening our arsenal is basically the worst thing we can do now. The military should be restrained, and the world should help us with that instead of trying to sell us arms," Colombian senator and human rights activist Ivan Cepeda told Swedish Radio.

Mikael Damberg emphasized that Sweden has trained the Colombian Armed Forces exclusively in human rights and gender issues. Sweden's previous Conservative government, however, landed in hot water for helping Saab to export radar systems to Colombia. Damberg, who represents the Social Democrats, insisted that today's situation in Colombia is entirely different.

"The reality has evolved since then. The way I understand it, the authorities have given the preliminary green light to the export of this type of product," Mikael Damberg told Swedish Radio.

The Saab JAS 39 Gripen is a light single-engine multi-role fighter aircraft in the same class as the Eurofighter Typhoon by Airbus, the Rafale by Dassault and the Joint Strike Fighter by Lockheed Martin.

 Sputnik

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Half of Central African Republic's people need aid; Security Council discusses peace operations

16 March 2017  Senior officials today called for strong political support and adequate resources for the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic (CAR), where half of the population urgently needs aid, according to the latest United Nations figures.

Addressing the Security Council alongside CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera, Under-Secretary-General for UN Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous lauded the efforts of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) in helping to pave the way for the gradual stabilization and restoration of State authority.

"As MINUSCA illustrates, when peacekeeping has the right leadership and capabilities, it can play an irreplaceable role in supporting national efforts, and with international partners, promote and support reforms that are essential to the sustainable resolution of a country's conflict."

Mr. Ladsous noted the security and operational efforts in the city of Bambari have loosened the armed groups' grip, and led all of the main 14 armed groups to join a national committee on disarmament.

The move is important for a nationwide disarmament programme, without which, Mr. Ladsous noted, MINUSCA peacekeepers will be unable to provide security by force in a territory the size of France.

To further such progress, the World Bank has said that it would provide $30 million for social reintegration of fighters in a national programme on disarmament, demobilization, reintegration and repatriation.

Among other issues he raised, Mr. Ladsous called on the international community to follow through on $2.2 billion worth of pledges made at the Brussels conference hosted by the European Union in November.

Supporting development to build peace

In addition to peacekeeping efforts, the Council was briefed today on the peace building programs, including the work being coordinated by the UN, the European Union and the World Bank. These three organizations are working to, respectively, support peace, review the social contract between the population and the Government, and promote economic recovery.

In his address, Omar Hilale, the Permanent Representative of Morocco to the UN, who briefed in his capacity as the Chair of the CAR Configuration of the Peacebuilding Commission, announced that he would visit CAR "soon" to discuss the main challenges and ways to optimize the international community's support.

The Peacebuilding Commission works between the Security Council, the General Assembly, whose membership includes all 193 Member States, and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) which works with the 14 specialized UN agencies, to address root causes of conflict in a country and try to stabilize it before conflict breaks out or help it restabilize after fighting.

Half of the country in dire need of aid

CAR also faces an immediate humanitarian crisis. The upsurge in violence since last September has left roughly 2.2 million people  half of the population  in dire need of aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) today announced.

In addition, the fighting since the upsurge in fighting last September, one in five Central Africans are either displaced or a refugee in a neighbouring country.

"Let us not leave Central African Republic to become a forgotten or neglected crisis by the international community", said the Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for CAR, Michel Yao, alongside the Minister of Humanitarian, Social Affairs and National Reconciliation, Virginie Baikoua, at a briefing session for donors yesterday in Yaounde, Cameroon.

The UN and its humanitarian partners had appealed for $399.5 million to aid CAR as part of the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan. To date, only five per cent of that amount  roughly $19 million  has been raised.

Mr. Yao warned that without adequate funding, the country risks plunging into an acute humanitarian crisis.

The situation is particularly concerning because aid workers deliver much of the basic social services. For example, more than half of the health infrastructure is managed by the humanitarian community.

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Somalia: UN-backed cholera vaccination campaign targets 450,000 people

16 March 2017  The Government of Somalia has launched an oral cholera vaccination (OCV) campaign today with the support of the United Nations health agency, targeting over 450,000 people in seven high-risk areas around the country.

The first-ever OCV campaign to be conducted in the country comes at a critical time after Somalia announced the ongoing drought as a national disaster and faces the possibility of another famine, according to a news release issued yesterday by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"This is one of the largest oral cholera vaccination campaigns conducted in Africa," said Ghulam Popal, WHO Representative in Somalia. "This vaccination campaign will contribute to the reduction in the number of new cholera cases, interrupt transmission and limit the spread of cholera," he said.

Somalia is currently experiencing a large-scale outbreak of cholera with roughly 11,000 cases and 268 deaths reported in 11 regions since the beginning of 2017. This is more than half the number of cases reported for 2016.

Somalia has long experienced a humanitarian emergency due to conflict, insecurity, displacement of people and limited access to health system. This situation is further compounded by drought, malnutrition and lack of access to clean water and sanitation facilities. If the current drought and food insecurity continue, the number of cholera cases is likely to increase. Preventative measures such as oral cholera vaccine can mitigate these numbers, and save lives.

The campaign is being held in select communities in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Beledweyne through a combination of fixed and mobile sites for maximum accessibility by the communities. The vaccines, which will be administered to at-risk persons aged one year or older, are being delivered in 2 rounds. The first round of the campaign has commenced today and will continue until 19 March, and the second round of the campaign will be held from 18 to 22 April.

The response efforts by the Ministry of Health, WHO, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and health partners have included active case search, effective case management, intensive household chlorination campaign, and community awareness.

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Senate Intelligence Leaders say No Evidence Obama Wiretapped Trump

By Ken Bredemeier March 16, 2017

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee say there is no evidence to support President Donald Trump's allegation that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower headquarters in New York in the weeks before last November's election.

"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016, said Senators Richard Burr and Mark Warner.

Trump has said he will produce evidence "very soon" to support his allegations.

"You're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump told Fox News.

Congressional leaders refute claim

Numerous congressional leaders, both opposition Democrats and Republican colleagues of the president, have said they have seen no evidence that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, the skyscraper where the billionaire real estate mogul ran his campaign and his home before winning the White House.

The latest to dismiss Trump's wiretap allegation was House Speaker Paul Ryan, who told reporters Thursday, "We've cleared that up, that we see no evidence of that."

Trump made his explosive wiretapping charge against his predecessor March 4 in a string of Twitter comments. One of them said, "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory."

But Obama dismissed the allegation as "simply false" and Trump since then has not substantiated his claim. Until the Fox interview, Trump dodged reporters' questions about the allegation.

Trump told Fox his Twitter comment "really covers surveillance and many other things. Nobody ever talks about the fact that (the words 'wire tapped') was in quotes, but that's a very important thing."

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Devin Nunes, who has been supportive of Trump, held a news conference about Trump's wiretapping allegation.

"We don't have any evidence that took place," he said. "I don't think there was a tapping of Trump Tower."

The committee's top Democrat, Congressman Adam Schiff, agreed, saying, "To date, I see no evidence (of Obama-ordered wiretapping), no basis for that whatsoever."

Nunes and Schiff said they are waiting for information from the country's Department of Justice by next Monday about whether the agency knows of any court-ordered wiretaps of Trump, but said they have learned of no such bugging in their investigation. The congressional probe was requested by the White House after Trump made his wiretapping allegation.

Trump & Russia

The House Intelligence Committee is also looking at links between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials during the billionaire real estate mogul's long run for the White House and in the weeks after he won the election before assuming power January 20.

Nunes said that James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country's top law enforcement agency, would testify next Monday before the intelligence committee about the wiretapping allegation and the agency's investigation of Russian meddling in the election aimed at helping Trump win.

Nunes said the panel expects to learn Friday from U.S. investigators of any names of Trump aides who talked with Russian officials beyond the one known such contact, conversations between Trump's ousted national security adviser, retired Army general Michael Flynn, and the Russian ambassador to Washington. Trump dismissed Flynn after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

One key U.S. senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Congress is going to flex its muscle."

He vowed, if need be, to subpoena the FBI to determine whether any U.S. judge issued a secret wiretapping edict the FBI carried out.

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Zimbabwe's Mugabe: Indigenization Law Ensures Security

By Sebastian Mhofu March 16, 2017

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe says foreign companies that comply with his indigenization law are guaranteed security. His comment is a deviation from his earlier promise that he would revise the policy, which analysts repeatedly have said scares away investors.

At the official launch Thursday of an $82-million cement manufacturing plant by a South African company, PPC Zimbabwe, a frail looking 93-year-old Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said he was happy the company had not resisted the indigenization law, as other foreign companies have done.

"By so doing, PPC Zimbabwe has demonstrated what so many companies are struggling to put in place," said Mugabe. " And it has demonstrated also that the indigenization policy and philosophy is no hindrance to foreign investment. But instead the policy guarantees security of such investment."

The southern African nation passed the controversial indigenization law in 2008, which forces foreign companies to cede 51 percent of their stake to black Zimbabweans. Mugabe argues that indigenization policy is meant to correct colonial imbalances that marginalized blacks in Zimbabwe.

On Thursday, PPC Zimbabwe managing director Kelibone Masiyane did not want to be drawn into the politics of the controversial law while speaking to reporters after Mugabe's speech.

"I always say the cement business is a 30-year business," said Masiyane . "So whatever we might be encountering at the moment is only short-term. We are looking into the future, so we are here in Zimbabwe for the long run."

Last year, indigenization minister Patrick Zhuwawo gave a 90-day ultimatum to foreign companies that had not submitted plans for how they would comply with the indigenization law. He did not implement his threat of revoking their licenses when the deadline passed, which made investors jittery.

Before that, Zimbabwe had nationalized all diamond mining, but some took the matter to court and the cases are still pending.

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Kansas Army National Guard deploys to fight fires in central Kansas

By Catherine Horner, Kansas National Guard Public Affairs, and special to the 1st Inf. Div. Post March 16, 2017

FORT RILEY, Kan. -- As wildfires burn in multiple counties across the state, the State Emergency Operations Center continues to monitor and coordinate assistance for the affected counties.

There were active fires reported in Clark, Cheyenne, Comanche, Ellsworth, Finney, Ford, Hodgeman, Lane, Meade, Ness, Pratt, Pottawatomie, Rawlins, Reno, Rice, Rooks, Russell, Seward, Shawnee, Smith and Stevens Counties. Although some fires have been mostly contained, fire crews continue to monitor the burned areas for flare-ups.

Approximately 10 to 12,000 residents of Hutchinson, Kansas, were voluntarily evacuated due to fire risk. Voluntary evacuations also took place in Wilson and Dorrance. Wilson evacuated approximately 300 individuals and Dorrance approximately 100 individuals.

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes affected portions of the state during the evening hours of Tuesday, March 6. Crawford County reported wind damage to one residence and minor damage to local businesses. Two tornadoes reportedly touched down in Wabaunsee County and one in Shawnee County.

Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved Federal Fire Management Assistance Grants for Clark, Comanche, Ellsworth, Ford, Lincoln, Ness, Rooks and Russell Counties. Additional requests may be made as the current emergencies continue.

Kansas Division of Emergency Management is seeking additional firefighting resources from other states through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact and from the National Forestry Service. A Type II Incident Management Team has also been requested.

March 6 the Kansas Army National Guard deployed four Black Hawk helicopters from Company B, 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation Regiment out of Salina equipped with 660-gallon buckets. The helicopters dropped more than 33,600 gallons of water on the fire in Reno County.

Four helicopters equipped with buckets will launch at daylight March 7, to continue to assist affected counties with fire suppression. Two helicopters and crews are based out of Topeka and two are out of Salina.

The American Red Cross opened shelters for displaced residents in Coldwater, Dodge City, Hutchinson and Jetmore. The shelter in Coldwater is located at the Coldwater High School, 600 Leavenworth Ave., and currently houses 75 residents.

The shelter in Dodge City is located at the Dodge City Community College Student Activity Building, 2501 N 14th Avenue and currently houses 7 residents. The Hutchinson shelter is located at the state fairgrounds at 2000 N Poplar Street. The shelter can house 1,700 people but currently holds 210 residents. The shelter in Jetmore is located at the 4-H Building on the Hodgeman County Fairgrounds.

There are multiple road closures due to the fires. Information on the latest road closures are available from the Kansas Department of Transportation by calling 5-1-1 or visiting the Kandrive website at kandrive.org.

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Trump Blasts U.S. Court Ruling Freezing Revised Travel Order

RFE/RL March 16, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump blasted a federal judge who suspended his revised travel order, accusing him of "unprecedented judicial overreach."

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a decision blocking the order late on March 15, hours before it was to take effect, saying he found a strong likelihood it would be ruled unconstitutional and would cause "irreparable injury" to the state of Hawaii and its citizens.

The executive order aimed to temporarily bar travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries, as well as all refugees, from entering the United States. It was due to go into effect on March 16, but the Hawaii-based judge's ruling means that will not happen.

"This is in the opinion of many an unprecedented judicial overreach," Trump said. He told a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, that suspending a "watered down" order he said was designed to keep terrorists out of the country "makes us look weak."

Trump vowed to fight the decision and take it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. "We're going to win" the legal battle, he told supporters.

"The constitution gave the president the power to suspend immigration when he deems it to be in the national interest of our country," he said.

The suspended order, signed on March 6, was a revision of Trump's original January 27 order, which would have placed a 90-day bar on entry by travelers from Iraq in addition to the six countries covered in the new one: Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen.

Both the original order and the revised one would also bar all refugees from the United States for 120 days.

The Hawaii judge, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, was highly critical of the new order, saying it relied on "questionable evidence supporting the government's national security motivation."

He said the state of Hawaii's argument that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protection against religious discrimination is likely to succeed in the courts.

An objective observer "would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion," Watson wrote, adding that targeting the six Middle Eastern and African countries "likewise targets Islam" because their Muslim populations range from 90.7 percent to 99.8 percent.

The judge noted that Trump explicitly frames his proposed actions on immigration in religious language and cited a March 2016 interview in which Trump said, "I think Islam hates us."

Hawaii was not the only state trying to stop the travel order. More than half a dozen states have filed court challenges.

Courts in Maryland and Washington state also heard arguments on March 15, and are expected to rule soon on whether the order should be allowed to stand.

The Justice Department called Watson's ruling "flawed both in reasoning and in scope," and insisted that the court did not give sufficient weight to the president's broad legal authority in national security matters.

"The Department will continue to defend this Executive Order in the courts," it said.

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Paul Ryan, said the ban was needed to improve vetting of people entering the United States and prevent terrorist attacks. He said he had no doubt that it would be upheld eventually by higher courts.

Watson's order is in place temprarily, until the broader arguments in the case can be heard under an expedited schedule before his court.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/trump -blasts-us-court-ruling-hawaii- watson-freezing-revised-travel- executive-order-muslim-countries/28372630.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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A senior figure in Bulgaria's Turkish community lashed out Friday at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a further escalation of a spat ahead of elections in the EU country and a referendum in Turkey.

In a rare outburst, Ahmed Dogan, the long-serving former leader of the main party representing the Turkish minority, said that the Turkish referendum on creating an executive presidency was "madness".

"On April 16 neighbouring Turkey will hold a referendum to turn Kemal (Ataturk's) Republic of Turkey into a sultanate," the 62-year-old said in a statement.

Bulgaria is home to a 700,000-strong ethnic Turkish minority, a legacy of the Ottoman empire.

Turkey, its neighbour, is home to more than 200,000 ethnic Turks with Bulgarian passports who left Bulgaria during the communist era.

Around a third of them are expected to vote in Bulgaria's election on March 26.

Sofia has accused Ankara in recent weeks of meddling in its election, summoning Turkey's ambassador and recalling its own envoy from Turkey for consultations.

Turkey's envoy openly backed Dost, a new party that split from Dogan's Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in 2016, which is the third biggest in parliament.

Ognyan Gerdzhikov, Bulgaria's interim prime minister, on Friday acknowledged there was a problem.

"There is a certain amount of tension linked to one of the political parties that receives backing from the Turkish side but we are taking measures to stop that," Gerdzhikov said.

It is still unclear how many votes Dost, which unlike the MRF openly backs Erdogan, will garner on March 26 but experts believe it will fail to pass the four-percent threshold to enter parliament.

A wider row is meanwhile raging between Turkey and the European Union ahead of the referendum, with a number of countries preventing Turkish ministers from attending referendum rallies.

An angry response by Ankara has seen German and Dutch politicians called "Nazis" and Turkey threaten to scupper a 2016 deal with the EU preventing migrants entering the bloc.

This could be a major problem for Bulgaria, the EU's poorest country, since it shares a 270-kilometre (165-mile) border with Turkey.

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Kremlin Denies Any Russian State Involvement In Cyberattacks

RFE/RL March 16, 2017

A day after U.S. authorities indicted two Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers over a massive hack targeting Yahoo, the Kremlin reiterated its claim that the Russian state has never been involved in any cyberattacks.

"As we have said many times earlier, any official involvement by any Russian agency, including the FSB, in any unlawful activities on the Internet is out of the question," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on March 16.

He was responding to a question about the U.S. Justice Department's March 15 announcement that FSB officers Dmitry Dokuchayev and Igor Sushchin had been charged in absentia along with two other men -- a Russian and a Kazakh-born Canadian.

The blanket denial echoed statements the Kremlin has issued in response to allegations by U.S. intelligence officials that Russia used hacks, leaks, and other methods to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

Asked whether FSB officers could have been involved in cyberattacks without their supervisors' knowledge, Peskov took issue with the wording of the question and referred reporters to the FSB for any further information.

Peskov also said that Russian authorities had learned about the U.S. indictments from the media, suggesting that U.S. authorities had not informed Russian officials of the investigation or any developments in the case.

"As far as we know, we did not receive any information through official channels," he said. He said the Kremlin is unaware of the details of the U.S. case.

Dokuchayev was an officer with the FSB's Center for Information Security, which oversees cybersecurity efforts by the agency.

He was arrested in Russia in December, along with another officer at the Center for Information Security, and charged with high treason, according to Ivan Pavlov, a Russian lawyer who is representing a suspect in the treason case.

Russian media reports have said Dokuchayev is a former hacker who used the alias Forb.

With reporting by Interfax, RIA, TASS, and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-yahoo- cyberattacks-denial-peskov/28373792.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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China-US cooperation holds promise, Li says

People's Daily Online

By MO JINGXI,LI XIAOKUN (China Daily) 08:21, March 16, 2017

He warns against trade war, calls for steady ties, stable region

China expects that cooperation with the United States in the Asia-Pacific region will bring opportunities to ASEAN countries instead of trouble, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday.

Beijing does not want to see any party in the region feel compelled to choose sides under the influence of a Cold War mentality, he said at a news conference at the end of the annual plenary session of the National People's Congress.

He said China and the US have been cooperating for a long time in the region and noted that many US multinational companies have chosen China for their Asia-Pacific headquarters.

"China believes regional affairs should be decided and handled on the merits of each case," Li said.

The premier also said China hopes that the Asia-Pacific region will enjoy order and stability, be able to work out issues through consensus-building consultation, properly manage differences through dialogue and have the wisdom to resolve differences.

Li made the remarks in response to a question by a reporter from Thailand who said Southeast Asian countries are watching the administration of US President Donald Trump make its Asia policies and do not want to see conflicts between China and the US in the region.

When asked about Beijing's relations with Washington, Li warned the US about starting a trade war while expressing optimism that the world's two largest economies could keep relations steady.

"We do not want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries. That wouldn't make our trade more fair," Li said.

During his election campaign, Trump had threatened to label China a currency manipulator and impose hefty tariffs on imports from China.

Li cited a report that he said indicated that if a trade war occurred, "foreign-invested companies, in particular US firms, would bear the brunt of it".

He said statistics show that bilateral investment and trade created nearly 1 million jobs for the US in the past year.

The premier stressed that the one-China policy constitutes the political foundation of the relations.

"With that foundation in place, we believe that there are broad prospects for China-US cooperation."

China and the US are currently working to arrange a meeting between the top leaders of the two countries, the premier said.

Ruan Zongze, executive vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the premier's remarks on China-US ties sent a signal of confidence.

Ruan said that, based on Li's tone when answering questions about diplomacy, it seems China will "seek advancement while maintaining stability" in its diplomatic efforts this year.

Li Haidong, a professor of US studies at China Foreign Affairs University, said the question from the Thai reporter reflected widespread concerns of countries in the Asia-Pacific region about interaction between China and the US in the region.

The professor said the concerns are due to a Cold War mentality of some countries that is disturbing the region. "China does not welcome such a mentality. The premier stressed today that our security view highlights inclusiveness and stability."

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China Headlines: Xi Jinping: Leader of China's great revival

Xinhua

Source: Xinhua | 2017-03-13 20:11:12 | Editor: huaxia

BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Can China do it? This is the crucial question for the world's biggest and boldest economic, political and social experiment.

At the core of understanding the country's prospects is the governance philosophy of its leader, Xi Jinping.

Xi is leading more than 1.3 billion people on the march toward the Chinese Dream -- an end to the worst kinds of poverty, and the rejuvenation of a nation that has already made astonishing progress in creating prosperity.

The 63-year-old reformer has brought his own thinking to bear on problems that will be faced down the road, especially after a year of tumultuous world events.

With the concerns of the people his first and foremost concern, Xi's experience, commitment, determination and ability to govern and lead have become something of a rarity on the global political stage.

Later this year, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will elect new leadership for another five-year term, the crunch period for Xi's vision of a well-off nation by the Party's 100th anniversary.

By 2020, China's gross domestic product is expected to exceed 90 trillion yuan (13 trillion U.S. dollars). There should be a middle-class population of about 400 million in the country by then, a huge market for the world.

The goal is fast approaching, and will only be met if officials at all levels can align their thinking with that of the central leadership, and act according to the "four comprehensives" raised by Xi: the cornerstones of prosperity, reform, rule of law and strict Party governance. The strategy aims to lead the country to modernization and a standing at the center of the world stage.

This is China's own story, one neither copied from other countries nor imposed on any.

At the annual "Two Sessions" of the national legislature and political advisory body in Beijing this month, Xi expressed his confidence.

"As long as we gather the wisdom and strength of more than 1.3 billion Chinese people, there can be no limit to the success of our cause," he said.

NEW THOUGHTS, NEW ACTIONS

From being the youthful head of an impoverished village in northwest China via Party chief in the nation's advanced eastern regions to leader of the nation, Xi has shown deep understanding of state governance, evident in economic and social reform, foreign affairs and military transformation.

In the economic sphere, he has led China to achieve remarkable growth, even though other major economies are faltering. China now contributes to over 30 percent of world economic growth.

Xi calls the current phase the "new normal," from which an economy is emerging that is more sustainable and inclusive.

To ensure the success of this rebalancing, he has put forward supply-side structural reform as the cure.

Fundamentally different from the supply-side economics of the West, Xi's policy means taking a harsh stance against outdated and inefficient industries and putting in their places new, innovative systems of work and production which will neither destroy the environment nor succumb when the next global financial crisis hits.

China hopes to increase its GDP by about 6.5 percent this year. At this rate, the nation will generate more output than it did during the days of double-digit growth.

Xi is at the wheel of a reform juggernaut, revitalizing and renewing almost every aspect of the economy and society, from the financial sector to health care. Changing the lives of hundreds of millions of people means the abandonment of what is no longer relevant, including the one-child policy and "re-education through labor," a way of dealing with minor offenders that was introduced more than half a century ago.

Xi emphasizes the rule of law and checks on power, as seen in his decision to create a national supervision commission. Lawmakers are compiling a civil code to better protect people's rights.

His campaign against corruption, a threat he warned could destroy the Party and bring about the downfall of the state, has gained "crushing momentum." Since the 18th CPC National Congress, at least 240 senior officials and more than 1 million lower-level officials have been investigated.

As Chinese business people, tourists and students reach almost every corner of the globe, Xi sees China as not only a beneficiary of globalization, but a contributor to it. He has visited around 50 countries as head of state, pursuing his mission to build "a community of shared future."

His strong defense of free trade and warnings against protectionism -- "locking oneself in a dark room" -- have surprised and delighted observers.

The China-U.S. trade relationship now "supports roughly 2.6 million jobs in the United States across a range of industries," according to a January report released by the U.S.-China Business Council based in Washington,D.C.

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Xi in 2013 is expected to connect Asia with Europe and Africa. In three years, Chinese businesses have helped build 56 economic and trade cooperation zones in 20 countries along the Belt and Road, with total investment exceeding 18 billion U.S. dollars. They have helped generate more than 1 billion U.S. dollars in tax revenue and create more than 160,000 jobs for host countries.

China's commitment to the Paris agreement on climate change is comforting and unshakable.

CODE OF SUCCESS

Making a great country requires strong and competent leadership devoted to the fundamental interests of the people.

"China's most important successes rest on strategic planning and decision-making by the central leadership," said Zhang Weiwei, director of the Institute of China Studies at Fudan University.

Unlike Western democracies, which seem increasingly obsessed by showmanship and short-term elections, China's leadership has a long-term target and is more inclined to plan for the next generation and beyond. Once the Chinese leadership makes a blueprint, it sees it through to completion.

Poverty relief is one such example. It has been included in the work plans of the Chinese leadership of each generation for decades.

Fundamental to a well-off society, poverty alleviation gave better lives to 55 million Chinese people in 2013-2016, a number greater than the population of the Republic of Korea. The government of China has boldly pledged to eradicate poverty by 2020.

It is up to local authorities to make sure that every family has an achievable plan to cast off poverty. Xi picked up a farmer's budget on a visit to a village in Hebei Province in January and showed him how he could increase income to give his family a better life.

Poverty alleviation is not the only matter to hand. Time is short. Speed and efficiency are of the essence. When working in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou, Xi reminded officials of their duty to "ma shang jiu ban" -- take immediate action -- the working style that the president wants to see right across the country.

China's system of governance remains resilient and robust because of how it selects and mobilizes officials. A cadre can be promoted only after he or she has served at various grassroots posts and acquired enough experience. How many jobs has an official created? Where are the tangible results regarding economic and social development? Is the environment cleaner or more polluted? These key factors are considered for any promotion. Those found to be ineffective are demoted and, in some cases, punished.

The latest five-year plan has made local officials accountable for the environmental damage they cause, even if it is discovered after they have left office.

China stresses the unity of Party leadership, people being the masters of the country and the rule of law. The Chinese approach has shown its advantage over the so-called "Western model," Zhang said.

MAKING HISTORY

The "Two Sessions," among China's most important political events, are poised to support the next round of reform. Thousands of lawmakers and political advisors have raised suggestions on development. Crucially, the sessions have gathered a national consensus to unite more closely around the CPC Central Committee with Xi as the core.

"Xi's core status came through his leadership in advancing the Party's great cause," said professor Dai Yanjun with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

The largest modernization movement in human history has a political party with 88 million members united around a core leader, bringing better lives to more than 1.3 billion people.

This common dream not only benefits the Chinese, but also the whole world.

The real test, however, lies ahead.

Xi and his colleagues are facing a number of challenges. Few developing countries, for example, have avoided the "middle-income trap."

Daunting as the difficulties may be, in Xi's opinion, "History is created by the brave."

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Tillerson admits failure of North Korea policy

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:37AM

In his first trip to Asia as US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson has said two decades of US policy vis-a-vis North Korea have failed to deter the Asian country from advancing a military nuclear program, calling for "a new approach."

"I think it's important to recognize that the political and diplomatic efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to the point of denuclearization have failed," said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a joint press conference with his Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Thursday.

"In the face of the ever-escalating threat, it is clear that a new approach is required," Tillerson added, without explaining what that approach would be.

Tillerson, who had never served in the US's diplomatic corps before becoming the country's top diplomat, also urged Beijing to "to fulfill its obligations and fully implement the sanctions called for" in the United Nations Security Council's resolutions against North Korea.

Kishida, for his part, said Tokyo recognized that "threats" from North Korea had entered a new stage and, to eliminate the threats, Japanese officials "need to continue working with the United States and other countries concerned to demand North Korea refrain from provocations and observe UN Security Council resolutions." He also urged Beijing to push North Korea to change.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Japanese top diplomat said that the fact that his country had been Tillerson's first stop in his Asia tour showed the importance the US attached to the "unwavering bond" between the two sides.

Tillerson also met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later in the day.

On Friday, the US secretary of state will travel to South Korea, where American military forces are engaged in annual military exercises with South Korea in what have been described by Pyongyang as rehearsals for an invasion.

The US military has just begun deploying an advanced missile system in South Korea known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), raising the ire of North Korea, China, and Russia.

Washington and Seoul claim that the missile system is for defense against North Korea, which has conducted numerous ballistic missile tests in the past, including most recently on March 6.

Back then, the North Korean military fired four ballistic missiles, three of which landed into the Sea of Japan, in an area where Tokyo claims as its sovereign territory.

Tillerson will on Saturday travel to China, where he is expected to try to convince Chinese leaders to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. China is North Korea's main ally.

The UN and the European Union have already imposed an array of crippling sanctions on the North over its missile and nuclear programs. Pyongyang says the programs are meant to protect the country from US hostility.

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Pyongyang Blasts US B1-B Nuke Bombers Taking Part in South Korea War Games

Sputnik News

22:03 16.03.2017(updated 22:40 16.03.2017)

On Thursday, North Korea denounced the US and South Korea for conducting joint military drills near the divided peninsula using the USS Carl Vinson and US strategic bombers, accusing the two nations of "escalating nuclear attack threats" against Pyongyang.

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a fleet of B-1B Lancer bomber planes from Guam's Andersen air base conducted an hour-long stealth flight on Monday over South Korea's Sangdong firing range as part of a nuclear bombing drill. KCNA claims the exercise is designed to simulate strikes against key DPRK targets.

Tensions have been running high in the region since the assassination of DPRK leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia, not to mention Pyongyang's repeated nuclear weapons tests and ballistic missile launches.

The US and South Korea's joint drills began this month and have two major segments: the Foal Eagle field drills and Key Resolve, which focuses on computer simulations. The drills are expected to conclude in April.

Despite Washington asserting that such exercises are purely defensive, the North sees them as dry runs for an invasion, and criticize the annual drills every time they take place. When the Vinson entered waters off South Korea, Pyongyang warned of "merciless ultra-precision strikes from ground, air, sea and underwater" if the vessel infringed on their sovereignty.

The isolated nation fired four ballistics missiles in a show of disapproval of the exercises earlier this month, and denounced recent trilateral drills by Japan, the US and South Korea to monitor the North's missiles using destroyers equipped with Aegis. KCNA posits that the probability of rival nations making a preemptive nuclear strike has reached a "very dangerous phase."

Anticipating a reaction, military chiefs from Seoul and Washington warned on Tuesday that Pyongyang might "conduct provocative actions" in response to the drills. General Joseph Dunford wrote a statement saying, "The chairmen recognized the possibility that North Korea could conduct provocative actions during the Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercise, or in connection with North Korean major political events in April."

Dunford added that he and his counterpart in Seoul, General Lee Sun-jin, had a 30-minute phone call where they "discussed response options."

Last year's drills included about 300,000 South Korean troops and 17,000 Americans. The numbers will reportedly be similar this year.

Compounding regional strife is the North's relationship with China, an ally that has grown increasingly concerned over Pyongyang's weapons testing. On Wednesday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang analyzed the friction during his annual news conference, stating, "Tensions may lead to conflict, which would only bring harm to all the parties involved  So what we hope is that all the parties concerned will work together to de-escalate the situation, get issues back on the track of dialogue and work together to find proper solutions."

Li added, "It's just common sense that nobody wants to see chaos on their doorstep."

North Korea balked at China banning its coal imports in February, accusing Beijing of "dancing to the tune" of Washington.

 Sputnik

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Tillerson: Different Approach Required With Nuclear North Korea

By VOA News March 16, 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says "it is clear that a different approach is required" after 20 years of failed diplomatic efforts to prevent North Korea from having nuclear weapons.

Speaking Thursday in Tokyo on the opening leg of his first trip to Asia as the top U.S. diplomat, Tillerson said part of the reason he is in the region is to exchange views with Japan, South Korea and China on other ways forward.

"North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea," Tillerson said at a joint news conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. "With this in mind, the United States calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and refrain from any further provocations."

He further pledged the U.S. commitment to defending Japan and other allies "is unwavering."

On to South Korea, China

Tillerson goes Friday to South Korea and then to his final stop in China, where his agenda includes a meeting with President Xi Jinping.

The secretary of state said Thursday China plays a very important role in efforts to encourage North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, and he encouraged China to fully implement U.N. sanctions meant to pressure the North Korean government.

"We will be having discussions with China as to further actions we believe they might consider taking that would be helpful to bringing North Korea to a different attitude about its future need for nuclear weapons," Tillerson said.

Japan and South Korea, which host U.S. troops and are within range of North Korean missiles, support U.S. efforts to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea. A statement by the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet said the three allies were conducting drills Wednesday in seas east of the divided Korean Peninsula and north of Japan to promote interoperability.

Groundwork for Florida talks

Tillerson's talks with Xi will also lay the groundwork for a summit between Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump, which is expected to take place in early April in Florida.

One reporter is traveling with Tillerson, instead of the usual, larger group from news organizations that traditionally have gone with the secretary of state.

Erin McPike of the conservative leaning website the Independent Journal Review, was chosen to travel with Tillerson on this trip. Under intense questioning from beat reporters Wednesday, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said McPike was selected by a group of decision makers in an attempt "to look at outside-the-box approaches to how we handle coverage of the secretary."

Toner tried to reassure inquiring reporters the media will "have broad access" to Tillerson. He said 23 journalists, including 17 from the U.S., will have access during media availabilities.

But when asked if McPike will have access to Tillerson when other reporters will not, Toner could not respond definitively.

"I can't speak to what additional access may be provided to this reporter," he said.

The State Department originally said Tillerson would not take journalists with him because the plane he was traveling on was too small. He ended up taking a Boeing 737, which could have accommodated some of the regular agency reporters, each of whom is required to cover his or her own costs.

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Navy commander: Iran able to confront all threats in free waters

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Abadan, March 16, IRNA -- Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced that Iran is able to confront all threats in the world's free waters.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is capable of confronting any threat in the world's free waters," Rear Admiral Sayyari said on Thursday, addressing a conference here.

He reiterated that full security has been restored to Bab al-Mandab Strait which is 3,000 kilometers away from Iran, and said, "Although about 30 to 40 countries in the world are located in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab regions which are under seas terrorism, they Islamic Republic of Iran's strategic navy force is actively present in that region.

Rear Admiral Sayyari said that 90 percent of imports and exports take place via sea and today the Gulf of Aden is the most important venue for imports and exports, adding, "We did not allow the country's economy to be harmed."

He noted that a total of 3,900 cargo ships and oil tankers have been escorted in the current year to help the country's economy remain unharmed.

"Given the capabilities we have gained today we will continue this path with honor in defending the sear borders in the high seas and as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said free waters belong to all nations, therefore we can navigate in the free waters.

2050**2050

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Commander: Iran's navy conducts escorts for 10,000 cargo ships, oil tankers

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Abadan, March 16, IRNA -- Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced that his forces have conducted a total of 150 escort operations for 10,000 cargo ships and oil tankers in the free waters.

"We have conducted 150 escort operations for 10,000 cargo ships and oil tankers in the outgoing Iranian year," Sayyari told reporters on the sidelines of opening an exhibition of the Navy.

The 44th Navy Flotilla returned home last week after spending 150 days of sailing in Southern Indian and Atlantic oceans.

"Russia hosted us in the Caspian Sea over past three days and concurrent with that another flotilla of the Navy was present in Oman Sea and it is now trying to reach India's Kochin port and concurrent with that there was a program for hosting Pakistani flotilla in Bandar Abbas which showed the capacity and power of the navy in marine diplomacy.

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Over 150,000 Iraqis flee amid operations to liberate western Mosul

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 11:16AM

Iraq says more than 150,000 people have fled fighting in and around the western side of Mosul since security forces launched an operation to retake the area from Daesh terrorists.

According to Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displaced, civilians continue to leave Mosul's western side as armed forces are struggling to dislodge Daesh terrorists from their last urban stronghold in the country.

The ministry said Thursday that 152,857 people have so far fled the operation zone since February 19, when the battle began.

In the figures released on Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration had put the number of those who have escaped at nearly 100,000.

Iraqi forces and allied fighters had gained control of the eastern side of Mosul in January, after 100 days of fighting.

They have managed to liberate several areas of western Mosul, a city divided into two halves by Tigris River.

On Thursday morning, Iraqi soldiers were trying to encircle Mosul's Old City to bottle up Daesh elements, but military officials say the operations have been slowed due to bad weather as well as the bombs and booby traps planted across the combat area.

"Operations in the Mosul west Old City have been halted on Thursday due to bad, rainy weather. We can't advance without airstrikes cover due to the fog," Reuters quoted an Iraqi Rapid Response unit as saying.

A federal police officer confirmed the halt and said commanders were meeting to adjust their plans.

"The new offensive plans should adapt with the difficult terrain of the complicated, narrow alleys," he said.

Federal Police Major General Haidar Dhirgham also said the complete liberation of Mosul to take at least a month.

"I will not tell you one or two weeks, because that's not true, but within one or two months it will be completely liberated," he said.

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Relief operations in western Mosul reaching 'breaking point' as civilians flee hunger, fighting  UN

16 March 2017  The United Nations and its humanitarian partners in Iraq are scrambling to get emergency sites ready amidst a mass exodus from West Mosul, with nearly 700,000 civilians still living in the city where Iraqi forces are fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country.

"The number of people is higher than expected," Lise Grande told journalist in New York via videoconference from Iraq. "If the pace accelerates further, it's going to stretch us to the breaking point."

She added that if 50,000 civilians flee in a single day, the current system would not work properly. The UN and its partners have already started to set up large warehouse size structures which will house the families as they await "the dignified support they deserve," said Ms. Grande.

According to the latest figures she disclosed, there are still an estimated 650,000 to 680,000 civilians in Mosul's Old City.

"We fear the civilians there might be trapped in an extremely difficult situation. Families that chose to stay are at risk, families that leave are also at risk," said Ms. Grande, noting that ISIL is targeting people who try to flee what is expected to be a prolonged siege.

Meanwhile, people who stay are without food and water. No steady supplies have been able to reach the city since mid-November, Ms. Grande said.

Families with resources are trying to trade what they can to eat even one meal a day, according to stories from people who were able to flee, while some people go for days without meals.

"Whether you stay or whether you go there are significant risks to the civilians," Ms. Grande noted. "The greatest problem is water."

When the military operation to oust terrorists from the area began on 17 October 2016, some 1.5 million civilians were living in Mosul. In the eastern part of the city, some 345,000 were displaced  of whom about 70,000 returned home because "conditions are ready and safe to do so," journalists were told today.

The western part of Mosul is more densely populated, however. There is hope that civilian casualties will be limited because the Iraqi forces adopted a so-called "humanitarian concept of operations" which prohibits artillery strikes, requires civilians to remain in their homes, and provides humanitarian exit corridors wherever necessary.

Those who do flee are screened at the Hammam al Alil site, with the men separated from the women and children. Once interrogated and cleared, the families are reunited.

The senior UN official said the Organization and its humanitarian partners are working "around the clock" in support of the Iraqi Government to quickly get sites ready for the displaced civilians. Aid workers receive the site, set up tents and mattresses, clear and construct sanitation areas, and then transfer the areas to Iraqi military, who move in civilians on civilian buses.

Ms. Grande said that there are concerns about water and sanitation at the screening sites, and that the Government has asked for additional support to help it correct those conditions.

The UN and its partners are supplying food, water and other services to the sites, with more than 1.4 million people reached.

Coordination between the UN, its partners and the Government is good, but "complicated," Ms. Grande acknowledged, noting that the UN is part of 19 daily coordination forums, which include a range from local to national officials.

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The US said it carried out an air strike in Syria against an Al-Qaeda meeting but denied deliberately targeting a mosque where a monitor said on Friday 46 people were killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in the Thursday evening raid on the village of Al-Jineh, in the northern province of Aleppo, were civilians.

The US has been bombing Islamist militants in war-torn Syria as part of an international coalition since 2014, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

"We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target -- which was where the meeting took place -- is about 50 feet (15 metres) from a mosque that is still standing," said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: "US forces conducted an air strike on an Al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists."

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have hit the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

"We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike," he added.

The US-led coalition striking the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Iraq and Syria did not mention the raid in its daily round-up for Thursday, indicating that the strike was carried out unilaterally by the US.

An AFP correspondent saw rescue workers in white helmets working under spotlights with picks and shovels late on Thursday to dig people out of the rubble.

Much of the building, identified by a black placard outside as a mosque, had been flattened.

The empty prayer hall was covered in debris, and rescue workers stepped through it carefully, deliberating how to break down a wall to search for more survivors.

Fearing additional air strikes, weekly Friday Muslim prayers were cancelled in towns and villages across northern Syria, AFP's correspondent said.

Rescuers had earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the rubble.

"More than 100 people were wounded," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said on Thursday, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by Islamist groups, but the Observatory said no Islamist militant factions are present.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he "heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after prayers at a time when there are usually religious lessons for men in it.

"I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn't even recognise some of the bodies," he added.

The strike was condemned by Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, which said targeting mosques was a war crime under international law.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests six years ago.

A ceasefire between government forces and non-Islamist militant rebel groups was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued.

The skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.

Critics say the real number is much higher.

Israel has also carried out air strikes elsewhere in Syria.

Before dawn on Friday, its warplanes hit several targets near the famed desert city of Palmyra, prompting retaliatory missiles launches, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war started in 2011.

The Syrian army said it had downed one Israeli plane and hit another but the Israeli military insisted the safety of its aircraft had not been compromised.

Israel said it intercepted one missile. Jordanian military sources said missile shrapnel struck in the north of the kingdom without causing any casualties.

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Libya unity government, rival factions agree ceasefire after Tripoli battle

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 3:2PM

Libya's unity government and rival armed groups in Tripoli have signed a ceasefire deal, ending fierce fighting for the control of the capital.

The deal, signed by the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), local mayors and powerful militias from Tripoli and Misrata provides for an "immediate ceasefire."

The agreement calls for armed groups that do not recognize the GNA to leave Tripoli within 30 days.

According to GNA's Defense Ministry, the deal also demands the release of people arrested since fresh battle triggered on Monday.

The Thursday deal cements the UN-backed government's control over large parts of the capital. It also charges GNA forces with securing areas controlled by rival groups.

The city has been paralyzed amid exchanges of rocket and artillery fire between pro-unity government forces and rival militias, whose members are mainly from Misrata, the hometown of former prime minister Khalifa Ghweil.

The fresh battle saw pro-GNA forces expand their clout in the capital. The forces have taken several districts from rival militias, including groups allied with Ghweil.

On Wednesday night, violent clashes rocked the capital's southern Salaheddine district.

However, the city and its surroundings were quiet on Thursday morning following the overnight deal.

An inter-Libyan political deal, backed by the UN and signed in December 2015, gave rise to the GNA and called for armed groups to leave Tripoli and other Libyan towns.

The capital is home to dozens of militias. Since taking office, the GNA has secured the backing of several, but many parts of Tripoli remain out of its control.

The unity government wants to see heavy weapons withdrawn from the capital to allow its security forces to operate effectively.

On Tuesday, heavy fighting rocked eastern Libya, where forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, the military commander of Libya's eastern government, regained control of two major oil ports of Ras Lanuf and al-Sidra from a rival faction that had seized them earlier this month.

Haftar's forces do not recognize the UN-backed government. Haftar was an ally of Libya's former long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi but joined the Libyan revolution against the dictator in 2011.

Libya has been rocked by violence since NATO military intervention that followed the 2011 uprising and led to the overthrow and death of Gaddafi. Rival governments were set up in Tripoli and eastern Libya in 2014.

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EU seeks UN probe into crimes by Myanmar military against Rohingya Muslims

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 7:19PM

The European Union has called on the United Nations to urgently send an international fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate widespread crimes being committed by the government armed forces against persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

The draft resolution, submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, demands that the 47-member forum investigate allegations of torture, rapes and executions by the military against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

The EU resolution strengthens language in an earlier draft circulating that stopped short of demanding an international probe into atrocities.

The council, currently holding a four-week session, is set to vote on the resolution from March 23-24.

The UN rights body would "dispatch urgently an independent international fact-finding mission" to Myanmar if the resolution is adopted.

The mission will investigate violations "with a view to ensure full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims."

The resolution also calls on Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi to "fully cooperate with the fact-finding mission, including by making available the findings of the domestic investigations."

Myanmar has long faced international condemnation for its treatment of the Rohingya. Suu Kyi, who has received the Nobel Peace Prize, has been incapable of containing the violence against the minority community.

Rights campaigners say that national efforts have not been credible, calling for an international inquiry.

A panel led by former UN chief Kofi Annan said earlier on Thursday that Myanmar needed to immediately start allowing the Rohingya to return home and ultimately close rundown squalid camps for the displaced people.

The 15-member UN Security Council will be briefed on the Rohingya situation behind closed doors on Friday.

Rakhine has been under a military siege since October 2016 over a raid on a police post that was blamed on the Rohingya. A four-month crackdown on the minority group has seen some 75,000 Rohingya Muslims flee to Bangladesh.

Buddhist-dominated Myanmar has a history of discrimination against Muslims, considering the Rohingya illegal immigrants.

Rights groups and governments have challenged the claim, arguing that the Rohingya had historical roots in the country.

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Myanmar must allow Rohingya Muslims to leave camps, return home: Annan commission

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:10PM

A panel led by former UN chief Kofi Annan says Myanmar needs to close the squalid camps in Rakhine State, where thousands of persecuted displaced Rohingya Muslims have been trapped for nearly five years, and allow them to return home.

"It's really about time they close the camps and allow the people in the camps, particularly those who have gone through the (citizenship) verification process, access to freedom of movement and all rights of citizenship," Annan told Reuters on Thursday by telephone from Geneva.

More than 120,000 Rohingya Muslims have languished in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) since they were driven from their homes by extremist Buddhists in 2012.

Most are not allowed to leave the bleak displacement camps, where they live in rundown shelters with little access to food. They have also been denied access to basic education and healthcare.

"We have made recommendations that can be implemented now and help improve the situation," Annan said.

Ghassan Salame, a member of the body, also said at the launch of the body's interim report in the Myanmar city of Yangon on Thursday that the commission calls for "an independent investigation into the violence in Rakhine."

The report calls for the Myanmar government to ensure "security and livelihood opportunities at the site of return/relocation" for those leaving the camps. It also suggests building new houses for the displaced Muslims.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi's office said it would implement the "large majority of recommendations" without giving more details.

Myanmar has long faced international condemnation for its treatment of the Rohingya. Suu Kyi, who has received the Nobel Peace Prize, has been incapable of containing the violence against the minority community.

Rakhine has been under a military siege since October 2016 over a raid on a police post that was blamed on the Rohingya. A four-month crackdown on the minority group has seen some 75,000 Rohingya Muslims flee to Bangladesh.

UN investigators, who interviewed Rohingya escapees in neighboring Bangladesh, have blamed Myanmar's government forces for responding with a campaign of murder, gang rape and arson that they say may amount to genocide.

On Monday, Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, warned that the Southeast Asian country may be seeking to "expel" all members of the Rohingya Muslim community from its territory.

The UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, has said treatment of the Rohingya merits a UN commission of inquiry and review by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Buddhist-dominated Myanmar has a history of discrimination against Muslims, considering the Rohingya illegal immigrants.

Rights groups and governments have challenged the claim, arguing that the Rohingya had historical roots in the country.

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'We Should Never Trust Russia,' Warns U.S. Ambassador To UN

RFE/RL March 16, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says Washington should "never trust Russia," the latest in a series of hawkish statements that have made her a leading Russia critic in President Donald Trump's administration.

The statement by Nikki Haley in a television interview broadcast on March 16 came on the same day that the U.S. State Department issued a stern condemnation of Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory, which Haley has also publicly denounced.

Haley's comments also came amid the ongoing furor over what U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin-directed campaign to meddle in last year's presidential election aimed at helping Trump defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The Kremlin denies the charge.

After expressing initial skepticism, Trump conceded that he believes Russia was behind a hacking-and-propaganda effort to interfere in the election but that the operation did not influence the outcome of the vote.

Asked by the U.S. television network NBC what Trump should do about Russia's actions, Haley said: "Take it seriously."

"We should never trust Russia," she said, while adding that the United States needs "all the facts" in order to formulate a proper response to Moscow.

NBC asked whether Haley was on the same page with Trump "in terms of your level of distrust for Russia and [President] Vladimir Putin."

"I would not say that," Haley replied. "I'm not going to talk about where the president is, because I don't know."

Throughout his campaign, Trump spoke positively about Putin and pledged to seek better relations with Russia.

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress expressed concerns that a potential softer U.S. line on Russia under Trump could effectively give Moscow a pass for its expansionism in Ukraine.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/us-un-ambassador-warns- never-trust-russia/28374036.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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'Tightening the Noose': Syrian Democratic Forces Now Control Areas Around Raqqa

Sputnik News

14:55 16.03.2017(updated 14:56 16.03.2017)

The Syrian Democratic Forces' troops have gained complete control of areas surrounding the "capital" of Daesh.

DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  The units of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have gained full control of areas surrounding the Daesh jihadist group's (IS, banned in Russia) stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria, an SDF operation spokeswoman said Thursday.

"Our forces have tightened the noose on Raqqa," Jihane Sheikh Ahmad told the Al-Monitor online daily. "Within a short period, we took complete control of Raqqa's countryside and liberated hundreds of villages and strategic hills."

She said the SDF and its Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) military wing reached the Euphrates from the east and Euphrates Dam from the northwest.

"We have advanced thanks to the increasing air support and military participation from the international alliance," Ahmad said, estimating that the battle to liberate Raqqa would take months, "but definitely not years."

The offensive to liberate Raqqa from Daesh, codenamed Operation Euphrates Rage, was launched by the SDF on November 5, 2016.

Earlier in March, President Bahsar Assad said the Syrian Army will liberate Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor from Daesh terrorists within several months provided that there is no interference of foreign actors

Turkey, whose army's unauthorized presence in Syria is viewed by Damascus as occupation, has also taken aim at Raqqa. Damascus insists on Ankara's withdrawal from Syria.

The civil war in Syria has been lasting for around six years with government troops fighting against numerous opposition factions and terror organizations such as al-Nusra Front and Daesh, outlawed in Russia.

The nationwide Syrian ceasefire regime was introduced on December 30, 2016. Terrorist organizations are not part of the ceasefire.

 Sputnik

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Taiwan can strike enemy troops at their home bases: defense official

ROC Central News Agency

2017/03/16 14:20:48

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) Taiwan's military has the capability to strike Chinese troops at their home bases, should a war in the Taiwan Strait break out, a Defense Ministry official said Thursday while presenting a defense review to the Legislature.

Asked by a lawmaker whether the military has the ability to project fire into enemy forces' territory should they initiate an attack on Taiwan, Lt. Gen. Chiang Chen-chung () -- responsible for operations planning -- answered in the affirmative during a hearing in the Legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.

During the hearing, Legislator Wang Ting-yu () of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) noted that the Chinese army base closet to Taiwan under China's Eastern Theater Command is only 250 kilometers away from the coastline of Taiwan, with the most distant 1,380 km away from Taiwan.

The Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army is based in Nanjing and would supposedly be in charge of military operations against Taiwan should Beijing decided to launch an attack.

He asked Chiang if the military is confident that it will be able to strike enemy forces at their home bases -- as far as more than 1,300 km away from Taiwan.

In response, Chiang said the military has the ability to do so, noting that related training and planning are underway in an effort to beef up the military's combat readiness.

Thursday's hearing was held so that the Ministry of National Defense could present its latest Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) -- the first such report since the DPP government was sworn in last May -- to the Legislature.

In response to questions by Legislator Chiang Chi-chen () of the opposition Kuomintang about the biggest challenges in Taiwan's defense, Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan () said one is a limited defense budget and the other is establishing an all-volunteer force amid the country's low birth rate.

The defense budget for the year accounts for about 2.05 percent of Taiwan's overall gross domestic product (GDP) and Feng expressed hope that this will be increased to nearly 3 percent of GDP next year.

Asked about the ministry's "multi-deterrence" strategy mentioned in the QDR, Feng said that this demonstrates the military's efforts to use asymmetrical methods to force the enemy into "multi-dilemmas."

To that end, the military is working to develop smart sea mines and unmanned aerial vehicles that can not only be used for reconnaissance but also as weapons, Feng said.

Under the National Defense Act, the Defense Ministry is required to submit a QDR outlining military policy, combat readiness and armament status to the Legislature within 10 months of a presidential inauguration.

In its QDR, the ministry proposes a military strategy of "resolute defense" and "multi-deterrence" and a policy for the development of the defense industry that focuses on aerospace, shipbuilding and information security, as well as measures to strengthen electronic warfare capabilities.

(By Lu Hsin-hui and Elaine Hou)

ENDITEM/J

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Taiwan Seeks Warplane Like F-35B as China Boosts Defense Budget

Sputnik News

22:39 16.03.2017(updated 22:40 16.03.2017)

As the US and China smooth out the details of new budgets that dramatically increase military spending, Taiwan announced that it plans to bolster its forces with a vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft, and Lockheed Martin's F-35B is certain to be a prime candidate.

Sputnik reported Wednesday that during the waning days of Barack Obama's tenure as US president, the administration scuttled an arms deal that would have sent heavy military equipment, missiles and F-16 parts to Taiwan. US lawmakers berated Obama for failing to strengthen Taiwanese democracy by cutting such support for Taiwan.

Taiwan has approximately 140 F-16s that the island state hopes to upgrade into F-16V variants. Taiwan's air force doesn't seem to be satisfied with that, however, and hopes to add stealth aircraft to the fleet as well, according to a filing from Taiwan's Ministry of Defense (MoD).

On Thursday, the ministry said in a "Quadrennial Defense Review" that stealth fighters and V/STOL-capable jets would be necessary for the navy and air force to offset China's 7% uptick in military spending, the Taiwan News Agency reported.

The Trump administration has vowed "more and better" weapons packages for Taiwan, according to a document obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Any type of deal between Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is likely to be announced after Trump hosts Chinese President Xi Jingping at Mar-a-Lago (the 'Winter White House') in South Florida.

Stealthy V/STOL aircraft are "necessary" to counteract China's growing military capabilities, the MoD report said, especially "rapid response" threats. The idea behind adding the new jets, which are likely to be Lockheed's F-35s seeing as few other V/STOL aircraft exist and Lockheed is actively shopping for new buyers for its pricey jet, is to create a "double-level deterrence" against a potential Chinese invasion.

Taiwanese lawmakers were skeptical of the MoD report, claiming that it was heavy on rhetoric and skimpy on details. Tsai added that "double level deterrence" was not sufficiently defined in the report, Taiwanese media reported.

 Sputnik

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Turkey threatens to cancel refugee deal in row with EU

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 16, 2017 4:25PM

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to end a contentious agreement with the EU, aimed at halting the refugee influx into the continent as tensions between the two sides continue to escalate.

Speaking in a televised address on Thursday, Erdogan said the EU could "forget about" the deal, which was sealed in March 2016 to stem the flow of refugees to Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara.

Erdogan further accused the European Union of not sticking to a promise to grant Turkish nationals the right to travel visa-free in Europe.

He also censured a recent ruling by the EU's top court in favor of curbs on wearing headscarves, accusing the body of having launched a "crusade" against Islam.

"The European Union's court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), my esteemed brothers, have started a crusade struggle against the (Muslim) crescent," he said.

On Tuesday, the ECJ said it is okay if a firm has an internal rule banning the wearing of "any political, philosophical or religious sign" such as headscarves.

"Where is freedom of religion?" Erdogan asked. "Shame on your European Union acquis. Shame on your values. Shame on your law and justice!"

Erdogan said, "Europe is swiftly rolling back to the days before World War II."

EU expects Turkey to comply with refugee accord

Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC), the EU's politically independent executive arm, said on Thursday that the bloc expects Turkey to honor the refugee deal.

"We remain committed to the implementation of the EU-Turkey statement.... This is an engagement of mutual trust and delivery and we expect that both sides will comply with their commitments," EC spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, said.

Dutch liberals, fascists not different: Cavusoglu

In a related development, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said there was "no difference" between the ruling Dutch liberals and the "fascist" politician Geert Wilders, adding "they have the same mentality."

Cavusoglu made the remarks, cited by the state-run Anadolu news agency, a day after general elections were held in the Netherlands.

With 99 percent of votes counted, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's VVD Liberal party has won 33 of parliament's 150 seats while far-right Wilders of the PVV Party is second with 20 seats.

"Where are you going, where are you taking Europe?" Cavusoglu asked, addressing European leaders.

"You have begun to disintegrate Europe and take Europe to the cliff. Soon religious wars will begin in Europe," he warned.

The top Turkish diplomat further questioned Amsterdam's understanding of "humanity, democracy and freedom," saying Turkey would not remain passive against the recent Dutch moves.

Turkey's dispute with the EU erupted earlier this month after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies to secure a 'Yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.

The Turkish president has accused the European countries of acting like "Nazis."

Hollande, Merkel rap Erdogan's Nazi jibe

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone on Thursday and condemned Erdogan's Nazi jibe.

In a joint statement released by the French president's office, the two officials said they "consider comparisons with Nazism and aggressive statements against Germany and other member states unacceptable."

Bulgaria-Turkey ties sour

In another development on Thursday, Bulgaria recalled its ambassador to Turkey for consultations but the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry did not provide any further details about the move.

The move came after Sofia summoned Turkey's envoy last week after he supported Bulgaria's pro-Turkish Dost party, which is running in the snap parliamentary election on March 26.

The eastern European country further accused Ankara of "direct interference in Bulgarian domestic affairs" by encouraging some 60,000 Bulgarian citizens living in Turkey to vote for Dost party.

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Ankara Not to Integrate S-400 System Into NATO Missile Defense System

Sputnik News

13:01 16.03.2017(updated 17:36 16.03.2017)

S-400 missile system that Ankara plans to buy from Russia will not be integrated into NATO missile defense system, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isk said on Thursday.

"The Russian S-400 system will not be integrated into NATO missile defense system," Isk said.

On Wednesday, Turkish Defense Minister said that Ankara and Moscow made certain progress in talks on delivery of Russian-made S-400 air defense systems to Turkey, but the sides are still not ready to strike a deal.

Russia's Rostech CEO Sergei Chemezov earlier confirmed that Moscow and Ankara were in talks on deliveries of S-400 air defense systems to Turkey. The S-400 is Russia's next-generation air defense system, carrying three different types of missiles capable of destroying aerial targets at a short-to-extremely-long range. The weapon is capable of tracking and destroying all existing aerial targets, including ballistics and cruise missiles.

Turkey canceled last November its $4-billion tender for the procurement of components for a domestic missile defense system announced in 2009.

The S-400 Triumf Mobile Multiple Anti-Aircraft Missile System (AAMS)

 Sputnik

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Turkey's Top Diplomat Warns of Religious Wars in Europe

By VOA News March 16, 2017

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is warning of "religious wars" coming to Europe in response to the re-election of Mark Rutte as Dutch Prime Minister.

Cavusoglu said Thursday there is "no difference" between Rutte and the losing right-wing candidate Geert Wilders, whom Cavusoglu referred to as a "fascist."

"Where are you going, where are you taking Europe? You have begun to disintegrate Europe and take Europe to the cliff. Soon religious wars will begin in Europe," Cavusoglu said.

Wilders's anti-Islam Party for Freedom came in a distant second to Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) with 20 seats, compared to 33.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday during a speech that Rutte had lost Turkey as a friend, even though he beat out Wilders.

"Hey Rutte! You may have emerged as the number one party in the election, but you must know that you have lost Turkey as your friend," Erdogan said.

He also accused the EU of engaging in an anti-Islam "crusade" after a court ruled earlier this week that European companies can ban religious head-covering at work.

"The European Union's court, the European Court of Justice, my esteemed brothers, have started a crusade struggle against the [Muslim] crescent," he said. "Europe is swiftly rolling back to the days before World War II."

Earlier Thursday, Cavusoglu threatened to scrap a deal made last year to stem the tide of refugees pouring into the European Union. He said Turkey could unilaterally block the deal, though he hadn't yet spoken to his EU counterparts about the possibility.

"From now on, we can say 'we will not apply it and it will be over,'" he said.

A European Commission spokesman said Thursday the bloc expects Turkey to honor the deal.

Turkey's diplomatic rift with European leaders deepened last week when Turkish diplomats were blocked from holding political rallies in Germany and the Netherlands.

The relationship between Turkey and the European Union has been on edge since Turkey began engaging in a post-coup crackdown last year.

Cavusoglu was scheduled last Saturday to hold a rally in favor of a Turkish constitutional amendment in Rotterdam, but Dutch authorities withdrew permission for his plane to land, setting off a series of violent clashes in the city.

In April, Turkey will vote on a constitutional amendment that will cede more power to Erdogan. The Dutch and German rallies were meant to shore up support for the amendment among the millions of Turkish citizens living in Europe.

Erdogan repeatedly has referred to European politicians as "Nazis" and said Wednesday the "spirit of fascism" is widespread in Europe.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a joint statement calling Erdogan's Nazi comments "unacceptable."

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A Lebanese military court on Friday charged 18 people, most of them Syrians, with transferring more than $19 million from Lebanon to the Islamic State (IS) militant group, a judicial source said.

Fifteen Syrians, one Palestinian and two others were accused of "belonging to Daesh (IS), creating a money smuggling network and transferring money out of Lebanon for IS's benefit", the source said.

The network had "transferred $19,300,000 to IS in Syria and Iraq from 2014 until now".

The suspects were referred to a military investigator for further questioning, the source added.

Lebanese security forces in early March raided currency exchange offices and money transfer companies on suspicion they had sent huge sums of money to IS.

The judicial source said the accused "rented currency exchange offices from Lebanese nationals at very attractive prices and began transferring money to IS in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria."

"Each transfer was valued between $10,000 and $100,000... Most of the money would eventually reach IS's stronghold in Mosul in Iraq, or in Raqa, Aleppo, Palmyra, or Qalamun in Syria," he said.

While money to IS in Iraq was transferred directly, the wires to Syria always went through Turkey first.

Lebanon has been heavily impacted by the war in neighbouring Syria since it erupted in March 2011.

Security forces have on several occasions arrested suspected IS members, including in February when two men were detained on suspicion of planning an attack in central Beirut.

Lebanon's central bank imposes strict rules on financial institutions intended to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing, including caps on the amount that can be transferred overseas without additional supporting paperwork.

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United Kingdom - Hellfire Missiles

Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov

Transmittal No: 17-02

WASHINGTON, Mar. 16, 2017 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the United Kingdom for Hellfire missiles. The estimated cost is $150 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale today.

The Government of the United Kingdom (UK) requested a possible sale of 1,000 AGM-114-R1/R2 Hellfire II Semi-Active Laser (SAL) missiles with logistics support services and other related program support. The estimated cost is $150 million.

This proposed sale directly contributes to the foreign policy and national security policies of the United States by enhancing the close air support capability of the UK in support of NATO and other coalition operations. Commonality between close air support capabilities greatly increases interoperability between our two countries' military and peacekeeping forces and allows for greater burden sharing.

The proposed sale improves the UK's capability to meet current and future threats by providing close air support to counter enemy attacks on coalition ground forces in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility (AOR) and other areas, as needed.The UK already has Hellfire missiles in its inventory and will have no difficulty absorbing these additional missiles.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

There is no principal contractor for this sale as the missiles are coming from U.S. stock.

Implementation of this proposed sale will not require the assignment of any additional U.S. Government or contractor representatives to the UK.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.

All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov.

-30-

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European Parliament Calls On Russia To Free Ukrainians

Rikard Jozwiak March 16, 2017

The European Parliament is calling on Moscow to free more than 30 Ukrainian citizens who are in prison or other conditions of restricted freedom in Russia, Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

In a resolution adopted on March 16, the parliament urged Russia to "release without further delay all illegally and arbitrarily detained Ukrainian citizens, both in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and to provide for their safe return."

It listed 30 people, including filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is serving a 20-year sentence in a Russian prison after being convicted of plotting terrorist attacks in a trial supporters called absurd, and reporter Roman Sushchenko, held on suspicion of espionage.

The list, which the parliamentary statement said was not complete, also included several leaders of the Crimean Tatar minority, which rights groups say has faced abuse and discrimination since Russia seized the peninsula from Ukraine in April 2014.

The nonbinding resolution called on Russia "to allow all the above-mentioned people to travel freely, including Mykola Semena, who is being prosecuted for his journalistic work for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty."

Semena, an RFE/RL contributor in Crimea, is scheduled to go on trial at a Russian-controlled court there on March 20 on separatism charges based on an article he wrote on his blog that was critical of Moscow's seizure of the peninsula and expressed support for strengthening a blockade of the peninsula initiated by Ukrainian activists. The column was part of a wide-ranging discussion on RFE/RL's Krym.Realii (Crimea Realities) website about options for Crimea and was a response to an earlier column that opposed a blockade.

Semena is barred from leaving Crimea and must request permission to travel outside its capital, Simferopol. He could be sentenced to five years in prison if convicted.

The European Parliament resolution was adopted on the third anniversary of the referendum that Russia staged in Crimea as part of its operation to seize control of the Black Sea peninsula.

The referendum, which came after Moscow sent in troops without insignia to establish control over key facilities, has been dismissed as illegal by Ukraine, the United States, and a total of 100 countries in the UN.

EU lawmakers also called for more sanctions against Russian nationals "responsible for gross human rights violations, including the freezing of assets in EU banks."

Estonian lawmaker Tunne Kelam, speaking before the vote in Strasbourg, said the bloc needed to "strike with all force on secret bank accounts of those responsible and deny them entry into the EU."

The resolution also calls for "EU support for Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar media projects" and initiatives to protect Crimean Tatars' cultural heritage.

Russia has been sharply criticized by international rights groups and Western governments for its treatment of Crimea's indigenous Turkic-speaking, mainly Muslim Crimean Tatar population.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/european- parliament-russia-free-ukrainians -sentsov-semena/28373615.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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U.S. Denounces Russia's Crimea Annexation On Referendum Anniversary

Carl Schreck March 16, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The United States on March 16 issued a sharp condemnation of Russia's seizure of Crimea and the referendum that Moscow staged there and later held up as justification for its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.

The denunciation by the U.S. State Department came on the third anniversary of the referendum organized following the seizure of key government buildings in Crimea by Russian special forces without insignia after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia amid mass street protests across the country.

It was also the latest example of the continuation of Washington's tough public stance on Crimea that President Donald Trump, who has pledged to seek better ties with Moscow, inherited from his predecessor, Barack Obama.

"The United States does not recognize Russia's 'referendum' of March 16, 2014, nor its attempted annexation of Crimea and continued violation of international law," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. "We once again reaffirm our commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Trump said during his campaign that he would like to boost cooperation with Russia on a range of issues, including counterterrorism, and that he would seek to make a deal a "that's great -- not good, great -- for America, but also good for Russia."

Trump's stated desire for rapprochement with Moscow -- and his suggestion that he could consider lifting sanctions imposed by the Obama administration on Russia in response to the Crimea annexation -- has rattled European allies who fear he could turn a blind eye to Russian expansionism.

Less than two months into Trump's presidency, however, there is no public indication that his administration is giving ground on Crimea. Senior members of his cabinet -- most notably his ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley -- have publicly denounced Russian "occupation of the peninsula."

In his March 16 statement, Toner said Washington "again condemns the Russian occupation of Crimea and calls for its immediate end."

"Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine," he said.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow the same day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the possibility that Crimea could be returned to Ukraine under some sort of deal with the United States.

The Trump administration has also continued the Obama administration's stiff opposition to Russia's backing of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict that has killed more than 9,750 since April 2014.

Earlier on March 16, the European Parliament called on Moscow to free more than two dozen "illegally and arbitrarily detained" Ukrainian citizens, "both in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and to provide for their safe return."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/united- states-denounces-crimea-annexation- referendum-anniversary/28373961.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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English Finnish

FIT Biotech Oy

Company release

March 17, 2017 at 09:30 EET

Notice Convening the 2017 Annual General Meeting of FIT Biotech Oy

The shareholders of FIT Biotech Oy are invited to the annual general meeting, which is to be held on Friday April 7, 2017 starting at 10:00 am (Finnish time) at an address Itamerentori 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland. The reception of persons who have registered for the meeting will begin at 09:30 am.

A. Matters on the Agenda of the General Meeting

At the general meeting, the following matters will be considered:

1. Opening of the meeting

2. Calling the meeting to order

3. Election of the persons to scrutinise the minutes and to supervise the counting of votes

4. Recording the legality of the meeting

5. Recording the attendance at the meeting and adoption of the list of votes

6. Presentation of the annual accounts, the report of the board of directors and the auditor's report for the year 2016

- Review by the CEO

7. Adoption of the 2016 financial statements

8. Use of the financial result shown on the balance sheet

The board of directors proposes that no dividends be distributed for the 2016 financial period and that the financial result of EUR -3,651,186.26 for the financial period be transferred to the profit/loss account.

9. Resolution on the discharge of the members of the board of directors and the CEO from liability

10. Resolution on the remuneration of the members of the board of directors

The board of directors proposes that align with previous practices members of the board be paid the following remuneration for the term ending at the end of the 2018 annual general meeting:

- Chairperson of the board EUR 2,000 per month

- Other members of the board (including deputy chairperson) will be paid a meeting compensation of EUR 800 for each physical meeting in which the board member is personally in attendance throughout the duration of the board meeting.

- The members of the board who reside abroad would be paid a meeting compensation of EUR 500 also for meetings which they attend by telephone, provided that the member is in attendance via telephone throughout the duration of the board meeting and that the board meeting would otherwise be considered a physical meeting.

- In addition, the chairperson of the board and other board members will be paid for their reasonable travelling expenses to board meetings.

Resolution on the number of the members of the board of directors

The board of directors proposes that the number of members of the board of directors be confirmed as five (5).

12. Election of members of the board of directors

The board of directors proposes that Chitra Bharutsha, Erkki Pekkarinen, Eero Rautalahti and Rabbe Slatis be re-elected to the board and Anne-Maria Salonius be elected as a new member. All the candidates have consented to being elected.

13. Resolution on the remuneration of the auditor

The board of directors proposes that the auditors be reimbursed in accordance with the auditors' reasonable invoice approved by the company.

14. Election of the auditor

The board of directors proposes that audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy, which is currently the company's auditor, be re-elected as the auditor. PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy has stated that the responsible auditor is Janne Rajalahti, APA.

15. Closing of the meeting

B. Documents of the General Meeting

The proposed resolutions and the financial statements, report of the board of directors and auditor's report of the company will be available on FIT Biotech Oy's website at http://www.fitbiotech.com/investors/shareholder-meetings/ on March 17, 2017. The proposed resolutions and the other documents mentioned above will also be available at the meeting, and copies of these documents and of this notice will be sent to shareholders upon request. The minutes of the general meeting will be available on the above website as of April 21, 2017 at the latest.

C. Instructions for the Participants in the General Meeting

1. Shareholders registered in the shareholders' register

Each shareholder, who is registered on March 28, 2017, the record date of the meeting, in the company's shareholders' register maintained by Euroclear Finland Ltd, has the right to participate in the annual general meeting. A shareholder whose shares are registered on his/her personal Finnish book-entry account is registered in the shareholders' register of the company.

A shareholder, who wants to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders, shall register for the meeting no later than April 4, 2017 at 10.00 am by giving a prior notice of participation at FIT Biotech Ltd's website http://www.fitbiotech.fi/sijoittajille/yhtiokokoukset/ilmoittautuminen-yhtiokokoukseen or by mail to address FIT Biotech Oy /co Ari Tamminen, Aalto Capital, Keskuskatu 8, 00100 Helsinki, Finland. When giving a prior notice by mail that should arrive before abovementioned deadline.

In connection with the registration, a shareholder shall state his/her name, personal identification number or business identity code, address, telephone number, as well as the names and personal identification numbers of assistants or proxy representatives, if any. The personal data given to FIT Biotech Oy will be used only in connection with the annual general meeting and with the processing of necessary registrations.

Upon request, a shareholder, his/her representative or proxy representative must be able to prove his/her identity and/or representation right at the meeting venue.

2. Holders of nominee registered shares

A holder of nominee registered shares has the right to participate in the general meeting based on the shares that would entitle him/her to be registered on March 28, 2017 in the shareholders' register maintained by Euroclear Finland Ltd. The right to participate in the general meeting also requires that the shareholder has on the basis of such shares been temporarily registered into the shareholders' register held by Euroclear Finland Ltd at the latest by April 4, 2017 at 10 am (Finnish time). As regards nominee registered shares, this constitutes due registration for the general meeting.

A holder of nominee registered shares is advised to request without delay the necessary instructions regarding registration in the temporary shareholder's register of the company, the issuing of proxy documents and registration for the general meeting from his/her custodian bank. The account operator of the custodian bank has to temporarily register a holder of nominee registered shares who wants to participate in the general meeting into the shareholders' register of the company at the latest by the time stated above.

3. Proxy representatives and powers of attorney

A shareholder may participate in the general meeting and exercise his/her rights at the meeting by way of proxy representation. A proxy representative must produce a dated proxy document or power of attorney or otherwise in a reliable manner demonstrate his/her right to represent the shareholder at the general meeting. When a shareholder participates in the general meeting by means of several proxy representatives representing the shareholder with shares in different securities accounts, the shares by which each proxy representative represents the shareholder must be identified in connection with registration for the general meeting. Any proxy documents and powers of attorney are requested to be delivered by post to the address FIT Biotech Oy /co Ari Tamminen, Aalto Capital, Keskuskatu 8, 00100 Helsinki, Finland or by e-mail to the address ari.tamminen@aaltocapital.com no later than on April 4, 2017 at 10 am (Finnish time).

4. Other instructions and information

Pursuant to Chapter 5, section 25 of the Limited Liability Companies Act, a shareholder who is present at the general meeting has the right to request information with respect to the matters to be considered at the meeting.

As at the date of the notice convening the general meeting March 17, 2017, FIT Biotech Oy has a total of 53,658,534 shares, which each carry one vote regardless of share class. The shares are divided into classes as follows: 5,229 A shares, 65,235 D shares and 53,588,070 K shares.

Helsinki March 17, 2017

FIT Biotech Oy

Board of directors
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GCHQ has taken the rare step of issuing a statement on its activities after the White House suggested it had helped Barack Obama to spy on US President Donald Trump.

The Cheltenham-based intelligence hub said claims by Fox News pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano that it helped former President Obama 'wiretap' the incoming President were nonsense.

A spokesman for GCHQ said: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president elect are nonsense.

"They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

The unfounded claims about GCHQ were first made on Fox News on March 14.

Napolitano told the TV network: "Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.

"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice.

"He used GCHQ. What is that? It's the initials for the British intelligence finding agency.

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"So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot."

Trump's press secretary quoted this words, used to claim that GCHQ helped Obama to spy on Trump Tower, in the lead up to the Presidential election, on Thursday evening.
A rebel missile attack killed at least 26 members of pro-government forces in a camp Friday east of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, hospital officials in the town of Marib said.

A loyalist military source said the attack, targeted the mosque at Kofel camp in Marib province during Friday weekly prayers.

The attack was carried out with Katyusha-type rockets, said a military official in Marib.

Shia Houthi rebel-controlled news agency Saba said rebels had carried out the attack.

It said the main weapon used was Zelzal-1 Iranian-made missiles and it was followed by artillery fire.

"Dozens of bodies of burned soldiers were evacuated from the site," it said, without mentioning that a mosque had been hit.

Pro-government forces have retaken large parts of Marib province from Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels since the March 2015 launch of a Saudi-led intervention in favour of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

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A US air strike in northern Syria did not hit a mosque, rather a nearby building with "dozens" of Al-Qaeda members inside, the Pentagon said Friday, as it showed reporters a photo of the strike's aftermath.

"The mosque is still standing and relatively unscathed," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, promising the image would be made available to the public.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier said warplanes had targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people.

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A Pittsylvania County man is circulating a petition calling for the city to examine other options to tearing down the White Mill Dam.

Steve Adkins began circulating the petition online and in the community Tuesday.

It calls on Danville City Council to find alternative options to the destruction of the White Mill Dam.

I just prefer that a lot of other options are looked at, Adkins, a Ringgold resident, said Thursday. Id like to see all the other options.

Mitigating the safety issues surrounding the dam  instead of tearing it down  should not be that expensive, he said.

The petition is to let council know that more than just a few people are interested in saving the dam, Adkins said.

By Thursday evening, 181 supporters had signed the online petition. Adkins said he did not know how many have signed the hard-copy versions circulating in the community. He would like to see 1,000 signatures by Tuesday, when the council is set to meet.

He said he plans on taking the petition to City Council.

A recent review by consultants hired by the city found that full removal of the dam  also called the Long Mill Dam  would bring the most benefits and the fewest concerns.

Getting rid of the dam would allow for more flexible design of a proposed riverfront park, according to consultants with DHM Design Inc., in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The dam review was conducted along with a conceptual plan for the proposed riverfront park near the dam on four acres between the White Mill building and the King Memorial Bridge across from the YMCA and accessible from the Riverwalk Trail.

Other benefits of the dams removal  which has been estimated to cost between $100,000 and $250,000  would be restoration of natural habitat and an extended view up and downstream of the existing dam showing water rushing over natural rocks in the Dan River, according to the review.

Removing the dam would come with no ongoing maintenance costs or dam safety concerns, a consultant told councilmen during a special work session last week.

By removing a giant obstruction, smaller obstructions could be added to get more recreational benefits from the river. The only drawback would be the elimination of visual cues of the dams presence, according to the review.

Instead of removing the structure, Adkins proposes mitigating the dams dangers by blocking/denying access to the dam on each shore and destroying the hydraulic effect of the first 20 feet of the dam on each shore.

You could mitigate an accidental exposure to the hydraulic just by taking care of the first 20 feet offshore, Adkins said.

Use of rip rap build-up  loose stone forming a foundation for a breakwater or other structure  below the dam would destroy the dangerous hydraulic effect, Adkins said. It would create a cascading effect and prevent that hazard, he said.

Other methods also could be considered on each shore to lessen the danger, as well as fencing, the petition states.

Pedestrians and children using the Riverwalk [trail] cannot accidentally come into contact with the hydraulic, the petition states.

In the petition, Adkins states that the White Mill Dam is the focal point in the area between the Main Street bridge and the covered bridge that crosses the Dan River.

The dam creates a beautiful waterfall, the sounds of cascading water, and the reflective pond effect behind it, according to the petition. If a canal or other access were provided, the pond area above the dam will be very attractive to canoeists and kayakers. Once removed, however, the area behind the dam [if historical references are true] will likely only be good for waders, and catching debris.

It could make the area behind the dam much less navigable, he said.

Danville Mayor John Gilstrap said city council members will carefully consider the options for the dam presented by DHM earlier this month. Though he leans toward tearing down the structure, Gilstrap said he will weigh all the options.

Removal of the dam would open up opportunities for uses of the river without the structures hazards, he said. It would be a natural area as it was before the dam was built, he added.

However, its too early to be circulating a petition because a decision is at least three months away, Gilstrap said.

Were heading into the budget session right now, he said.

City Council will have one or two work sessions to discuss the citys options, Gilstrap said.

Adkins petition states that leaving the dam in place with modifications will be in keeping with Danvilles downtown revitalization concept of reimagine that; preserve a historic feature of the namesake of the city; have the potential to attract tourists to the area; have known aesthetic results versus the unknown of demolition; and be safe for pedestrians and children in the area.

As for the review by consultants, probing behind the dam found depths ranging from 2 to about 6 feet, according to reviewers. The dam was likely installed across a part of the river that may have an uneven bottom.

DHM also looked at two other options for the dam  including taking no action (leaving the dam in place) and partial removal.

Taking no action would yield no costs and would retain the sounds and continual visual interest provided within the River District, according to the review.

Disadvantages would include unknown long-term maintenance or emergency costs as the dam continues to age. The Virginia Municipal League considers the dam an attractive nuisance and it exposes the city to increased liability if someone gets injured.

Also, the nearby proposed riverfront park on the southern bank would most likely introduce more people to the area and increase the chance of accidents at the dam, according to the review.

If no action is taken, it would cost money to ensure its safety, he added. DHM would recommend someone makes sure the structure is secure.

Partial removal would cost about $100,000 to $200,000, with minimal demolition. However, structural improvements or a gate control device may be needed, according to the review.

Other advantages of partial removal would include continued visual interest and sound within earshot of water traveling over the dam.

Drawbacks would include more rapid weakening of the dam than if its left as is; unknown long-term maintenance and or emergency costs as it continues to age; the attractive nuisance and increased liability concerns and more people increasing likelihood of accidents, according to the review.
The Launch Place is investing $250,000 in a company that enables doctors to record patient encounters using an app and have the medical information documented and entered into their medical records by remote writers.

Representatives with Durham, North Carolina-based iScribes and The Launch Place announced the investment Friday morning at Spectrum Medical in River District Tower.

The money is to further iScribes operation capacity and technology for delivering its virtual services, said Jimmy McGarry, who serves on the board of directors for The Launch Place.

Its an investment, which means we have confidence in their company, McGarry said during the announcement.

Community leaders attended the event, including city officials and Delegate Danny Marshall, R-Danville.

iScribes, which started in 2014, has 27 employees in Virginia and is in eight states, said CEO and founder Dr. Jared Pelo. He hopes to hire scribes in the Dan River Region who would work from home.

I plan on bringing lots of jobs to the region, Pelo told the Register & Bee.

Christopher McGuire is the co-founder and head of sales at iScribes.

The company will have a satellite office at The Launch Place, Pelo said.

With iScribes, health care providers record patient encounters using the mobile app, and remote, virtual writers listen to the interaction, write medical documentation and enter it into electronic medical records for the providers. It saves physicians hundreds of hours per year of clerical work, according to Pelo.

Doctors spend 40 percent of their time documenting patient visits in electronic medical records, decreasing available time for patient care, Pelo said.

The use of medical records has been an important step in the modernization of health care, but it has posed challenges for providers. It has also affected the doctor-patient relationship, with some physicians conducting exams facing a computer instead of their patients.

iScribes exists to make health care functional and efficient, Pelo, an emergency medicine doctor for Centra, said in a prepared statement. Virtual medical scribes enable providers to conduct patient encounters naturally and efficiently with exceptionally high-quality documentation.

No dictation is required and the scribes complete documentation directly in the providers electronic medical records.

Two physicians at Spectrum Medical use iScribes, Pelo said during the announcement.

The problem of time-consuming documentation for every patient office visit has been reduced, said Dr. John Mahoney, orthopedic surgeon at Spectrum Medical, who has used iScribes since October. I can focus more on my patients instead of spending long hours at a computer or working with dictation services.

Dr. Jonathan Krome at Spectrum Medical also uses iScribes, Pelo said.

iScribes has continued to grow since it began in March 2014, Pelo said.

We love this region, we love Southern Virginia, he told attendees. We want to grow the ecosystem in this area.

Its exciting even to be in this building today, McGuire said, referring to the new River District Tower.

The Launch Place led the investment deal in which Triangle Angel Partners II, LLC (TAP II), an angel investment fund in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, co-invested for a total of $410,000.

We have had a strong relationship with TAP for multiple years and look forward to continuing our work together, said Launch Place President and CEO Eva Doss, in a prepared statement. iScribes use of technology to improve a health providers productivity and accuracy as well as overall patient satisfaction has shown tremendous traction in the last year by the number of customers that have selected to use iScribes for their medical documentation.

iScribes is the 12th investment for The Launch Place, totaling $2.25 million.

As for providing jobs, Pelo said the company is hiring. A medical background is not needed for positions, he said.

Applicants must be hard workers and decent writers, Pelo said. Those interested can apply online at iscribes.co.

The Launch Place, from a $10 million grant received from the Danville Regional Foundation in 2012, helps with entrepreneurship and business development, and job creation and retention through its business consulting, mentoring and training, residential and office subsidies, and two seed investment funds in the Dan River Region.
GREENSBORO, N.C.  North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said Thursday he s hopeful the federal government will help revive Edens closed MillerCoors brewery, but he hasnt received a response yet from his bipartisan request for help.

Democrat Stein joined with North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) in recently urging the U.S. Justice Department to require the huge plants owner, InBev, to sell it as a condition of the international giants merger with fellow beer maker Anheuser-Busch.

The asset is just sitting there unused and it could be put back into production, Stein said of the shuttered Eden plant.

Berger and Stein sent their request to newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on March 8, but have not heard anything back. The plant closed last year, costing Rockingham County more than 500 well-paying jobs.

Gov. Roy Cooper made a similar request of the federal government last fall when he held Steins office  before the gubernatorial election  but the Justice Department under the Obama Administration did not agree.

We werent successful, said Stein, a former member of the state Senate. But now theres a new administration and a new attorney general.

Stein made the comments Thursday in a meeting with the News & Record editorial board, presenting the bipartisan effort on the MillerCoors facility as an example of his willingness to work across party lines.

He expressed disappointment in Bergers dismissive response and that of other Republicans to Coopers recent State of the State speech in which the new, Democratic governor sharply criticized the lingering HB 2 controversy as a partisan thorn, but also put forth numerous areas of potential cooperation.

Berger responded sharply to the speech, saying that Cooper was the political lefts new champion and that his proposals promised only a return to excessive spending and repeated tax increases.

The new attorney general singled out as another area of welcome bipartisanship the proposed STOP Act that targets opioid abuse and aims to help people addicted to prescription painkillers.

The act under review in the GOP-run General Assembly would tighten controls on physicians and pharmacists dispensing opioids, but also provide $20 million to help treat people who are addicted.

Twenty million dollars is not going to solve the problem, Stein said. But $20 million is an important first step in recognizing that we as a society have to value helping people get well.

Stein pointed to an area of potential friction with the General Assembly in the so-called Sanctuary Cities bill that is moving through the state House of Representatives. The measure would crack down on any local government that helps people living in the country illegally by failing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

The bill would require Steins office to supervise an investigation of any city or county accused of not following immigration laws and make it possible for any legal resident to lodge such a complaint.

Stein said his office was ill-equipped to supervise the sort of investigation the bill envisions being completed within three-and-a-half months, with millions of dollars in tax revenue at risk for a city or county that the attorney general deems out of compliance.

On another hot-button issue, Stein said he was still evaluating what position he should take on behalf of North Carolina regarding President Donald Trumps most recent travel ban on residents of six, Muslim-majority nations.

He continues to demonstrate that this really is about anti-Muslim sentiment, Stein said of the president.
Toronto, March 16, 2017 - Queens University and Eagle Graphite Inc. (TSXV: EGA) (FSE: NJGP) (OTC: APMFF) ("Eagle Graphite" or the "Company") are pleased to report encouraging progress resulting from their joint multi-layer graphene research effort. The research was carried out under the NSERC Engage grant program as outlined in the Company's press release of October, 2016.

Multi-Layer Graphene ("MLG") is potentially useful when incorporated into polymer composites, with a consequent large improvement in strength, stiffness and heat resistance. This is important to the aerospace and automotive industries, where high performance composites are used to reduce weight and thus fuel consumption. For electric vehicles, a reduction in weight means longer range between charging points.

Dr. Aristides Docoslis, PhD, P.Eng. and Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, describes the progress made during the preliminary phase of the project. "We have developed a new environmentally-friendly, mechanical/chemical, aqueous-based process that exfoliates graphite to very fine, micron-sized multi-layer graphene (MLG) particles of controlled size distribution and aspect ratio. The yield of graphite exfoliation and MLG size distribution correlates well with key process parameters, which is promising from a process scalability point of view. The size and aspect ratio of the produced MLG makes it suitable for use in polymer-matrix based composite materials with fine-tuned properties."

George Hawley of Supermin, who acted as a consultant to the project, adds "Our work at Queen's University aims to develop a mechanical-chemical method for exfoliating Eagle's graphite to produce MLG of an aspect ratio that is estimated to be in the correct range. Preliminary results indicate that this is achievable without using conventional exfoliation methods that rely on strong acids and explosive chemicals."

"It is important to develop new methods such as this because there is presently no practical way to incorporate graphene's extremely high strength and stiffness into advanced materials such as plastic composites reinforced with carbon fibre. Monolayer graphene is so thin that it rapidly increases the viscosity of any composites beyond the capability of today's processing equipment. Current production equipment can handle only about 1% graphene, and such a tiny amount will not make enough of a difference to be worthwhile. Multi-Layer Graphene ("MLG") on the other hand should provide the right balance between strength and workability."

"We at Eagle are excited to be at the forefront developing a potentially high value product with enormous target markets," says Jamie Deith, CEO of Eagle Graphite. "These early results are very encouraging, and we plan to continue this research for as long as it shows promise."

About Queen's University

Queen's is one of Canada's oldest degree-granting institutions and a full-spectrum, research-intensive university that conducts leading-edge research in a variety of areas. It balances excellence in undergraduate studies with well-established and innovative graduate programs. The department of Chemical Engineering at Queen's is an award-winning department in both research and teaching, reflecting the dedication in the Department to achieve the highest standard of academic excellence. Its mission is to provide internationally recognized leadership in education and research at the interface of science and engineering, anticipate the needs of our students and society as a whole, and contribute to responsible solutions for future generations. The Department of Chemical Engineering is nationally recognized as one of the top research departments in Canada and internationally acknowledged as a leading department in North America.

About Supermin

Supermin Enterprises is the consulting company of George C Hawley. Mr. Hawley worked in the UK as a Research & Development Chemist for Morgan Crucible company, a leading global manufacturer of synthetic graphite products. Later, as Technical & Marketing Director at Martin Marietta Corporation in Quebec, he was responsible for the development of the Suzorite Mica business. Working closely with auto manufacturers Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and Volkswagen, and with plastics producers GE, DuPont, GAF, and Hercules, he pioneered the reinforcement of plastics using high aspect ratio mica flake, and brought this to a production capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year.



Since 2000, Mr. Hawley has been a consultant providing expert guidance to the industrial minerals industry, including graphite.





About Eagle Graphite



Eagle Graphite Inc. is an Ontario company that owns one of only two natural flake graphite production facilities in North America, located 35 kilometres west of the city of Nelson in British Columbia, Canada, and 70 kilometres north of the state of Washington, USA, known as the Black Crystal graphite quarry. The Company's shares are listed on the TSXV under the symbol "EGA", on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol "NJGP", and on the US OTC market under the symbol "APMFF".





Cautionary Statements: Disclosure Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Such information is based on assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management in light of its experience, current conditions and its expectations of future developments as well as other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking information and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such information. Although the Company believes, in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. In evaluating forward-looking information, readers should carefully consider the various factors which could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward looking information. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties in respect of the Company or its securities, its financial or operating results, as applicable.



Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.





Eagle Graphite Inc.

Jamie Deith, Chief Executive Officer

(604) 909-4237

jdeith@eaglegraphite.com


Vancouver, March 17, 2017 - Equitorial Exploration Corp. (TSX-V: EXX, Frankfurt: EE1) ("Equitorial" or "Company") is pleased to announce the filings of an NI 43-101 technical report for its 100%-owned LNPG Lithium property in the Northwest Territories.

"The 43-101 technical report concludes that, 'results such as 10.35m at 1.13% Li2O, 71.1 g/t Ta2O5 and SnO2 are highly encouraging'. This confirms our view that LNPG is an extremely significant, high potential lithium play," comments CEO Jack Bal.

About the LNPG Property

The property lies 30 km northwest of the Cantung Mine Site, immediately east of the Yukon Territory border. Lithium-cesium-tantalum pegmatite dyke swarms on the property have been traced over a combined length of 13 km in mountainous terrain that is deeply incised by several east- or west-facing cirques. The vertical extent of these dykes has been traced for 300 m through natural exposure and diamond drilling in 2007. The dykes are well exposed on cirque walls and strike northerly, with near vertical dips. Where sampled, each dyke swarm is up to 52.60 m wide and contains multiple dykes that range from 0.2 to 10 m in width.

In 2016, Equitorial collected 81 channel samples along cliff faces from parts of dyke swarms comprising the Prison Wall, Berlin Wall, Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall (see news release dated September 6, 2016). Highlights from this sampling program include:

-1.57 % Li2O, 250.3 g/t Ta2O5, 0.95% SnO2 across 1.70 m -2.04% Li2O, 57.8 g/t Ta2O5, 0.05% SnO2 across 4.00 m -3.10% Li2O, 53.6 g/t Ta2O5, 0.03% SnO2 across 0.95 m -2.33% Li2O, 59.0 g/t Ta2O5, 0.05% SnO2 across 1.20 m -1.67% Li2O, 41.4 g/t Ta2O5, 0.03% SnO2 across 3.75 m -1.83% Li2O, 67.3 g/t Ta2O5, 0.05% SnO2 across 1.25 m -1.63% Li2O, 52.9 g/t Ta2O5, 0.01% SnO2 across 5.15 m

In 2017, Equitorial is anticipating a field program at LNPG to resample the 2007 drill core, diamond drilling, channel sampling, geological mapping and prospecting.

The Technical Report titled "Geology and Summary Report of the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Prospect" was prepared by Timothy Liverton, Phd, C.Geol, FGS, an independent qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. The report has been filed on SEDAR and can be viewed at www.sedar.com under the Equitorial Exploration Corp. profile.

The 2016 field program on the Li property was managed by Archer, Cathro & Associates (1981) Limited (Archer Cathro). Technical information in this news release has been approved by Matthew R. Dumala, P.Eng., a geological engineer with Archer Cathro and a qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101.

About Equitorial Exploration Corp

Equitorial is aggressively developing three 100%-owned, high-potential, lithium projects in North America. The Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group (LNPG) is a 43-101 compliant, hard rock, lithium property in the NWT. The Tule Lithium Brine Project and the Gerlach Lithium Brine Project are located in lithium-rich Utah and Nevada within easy reach of the Tesla Gigafactory #1.

All three projects demonstrate highly encouraging grades and Equitorial will actively explore these Lithium opportunities.

For more information please visit: http://www.equitorial.ca

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Equitorial Exploration Corp.



_

Jack Bal, CEO and Director

For further information, please contact Jack Bal at 604-306-5285.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES

Copyright (c) 2017 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.


At least two Pakistani security personnel were killed in cross-border fire from Afghanistan Friday, the military said, when gunmen attacked a checkpoint near the frontier in the troubled northwest.

The attack in Khyber tribal district was claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), a faction of the umbrella Pakistani Taliban, and came at a time of heightened tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Terrorists from across the Pak-Bdr attempted physical attack on Pak FC (Frontier Constabulary) Post in Khyber Agency," said a military statement, adding that six militants were also killed in the exchange of fire.

Islamabad blames Kabul for hosting JuA and other militants responsible for carrying out a wave of attacks in February that killed 130 people across the country and prompted fears of a militant resurgence.

Afghanistan also routinely accuses Pakistan of providing safe haven to the Afghan Taliban.

Earlier Friday, Pakistani troops also fought two suicide bombers trying to enter an FC training centre in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Suhail Khalid, police chief in Charsadda district, told AFP that the suicide bombers first opened fire at the main gate and then tried to enter the training camp.

"One bomber blew himself up, while second was shot dead," Khalid said. One FC soldier was killed and a second injured, according to a military statement.

Charsadda was among the places targeted in last month's attacks, with three people killed and 19 injured when multiple suicide bombers attempted to enter a court complex on February 21.

Pakistani security forces have been on high alert since February's attacks, which also included a suicide blast at a Sufi shrine that killed 90 people and was claimed by the Islamic State group.

The attacks, most of which were claimed by the Islamic State group or the Pakistani Taliban, dented optimism after the country appeared to be making strong gains in its decade-and-a-half long war on militancy.

The military announced the launch of a nationwide anti-terrorist operation, and Islamabad has closed the two main gates along its porous border with Afghanistan, Torkham at the Khyber Pass and Chaman in Balochistan province.

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A recentarticle documented the increasing trend of liberal arts colleges in small-town America taking a much more active role in trying to build up their communities. Thehighlighted two colleges that share their names with their towns: Albion in Michigan, where the school is giving scholarships to local residents and investing tens of millions of dollars into downtown, and Ripon in Wisconsin, where the colleges president has moved his office downtown to Main Street.This trend made it onto my radar several years ago when I first received an invitation to talk on the subject from another small-town college in Michigan. The invitation surprised me: As a writer on urban economic issues, most of my work had focused on large cities. Still, I am originally from a rural area and have an affection for the people in small towns, even if I dont live in one today. And many of the techniques of civic improvement in these places are derived from urban redevelopment projects, albeit on a smaller scale.Whats been happening with these colleges and their towns is really no different from what has happened in large cities. Globalization, economic change and technology have produced an all-hands-on-deck competitive environment. Just as major corporations, research universities and foundations have engaged in helping to make the bigger cities where they are located succeed, so have the institutions in smaller communities. For many small towns, that means the local college.A second reason for this shift comes from the changing preferences of todays world. The stand-alone campus, separated from the place where its located, used to be the preferred form. We see this, for example, in the rise of the suburban office park 30 to 40 years ago. Looking for a bucolic refuge from the world, companies wanted to isolate themselves in the way that colleges long had.Today thats changed, for companies and colleges alike. People increasingly want to be embedded in and a participant in a dynamic, diverse surrounding. Companies are opening offices in downtowns, and some suburban office parks have fallen on hard times. Colleges are following suit: Chicagos downtown Loop, for example, is now home to what is known as Loop U, a collection of more than 30 higher education institutions that host more than 60,000 students.Thus we now see liberal arts colleges investing in the downtowns of the smaller communities where so many of them are based, renovating buildings and moving functions up to and including the presidents office. They are sometimes also working to bridge the physical gap between campuses and downtowns. And they are getting involved in initiatives ranging from economic development to educating local residents.One school I spoke at was Franklin College in Franklin, Ind., a community of about 24,000 in a rural portion of the Indianapolis metro area. Franklin was then in the midst of a debate over a series of proposed community improvements. Some residents favored them, while others thought they were a waste of money. The college wasnt taking a position, but it did help convene a community gathering where I shared some of my thoughts.Ultimately, Franklin did move forward with investments including improvements to the downtown, new road signs to the town and a major gateway installation at the interstate highway exit. As it happens, the mayor of Franklin was a graduate of the college, and two of the new businesses that opened downtown were started by its alumni. The college was also involved in luring a life-science firm to the community. B2S Life Sciences decided to locate within walking distance of the college to be able to partner more effectively with the school, especially around placing students with the company as interns.Many of the efforts these colleges are undertaking are still in their early days. But theres a good chance that they will have staying power. Colleges increasing interest in the communities they anchor is not just a matter of civic altruism. In many cases, the schools face increasing pressures of their own. Between 2009 and 2014, according to, 43 percent of the 300 small-town colleges it analyzed suffered declining enrollments. The squeeze has been particularly acute for schools with weak endowments. In 2015, Sweet Briar College in rural Virginia made headlines when it announced plans to close, though this was later rescinded after a public outcry and a number of new donations (and lawsuits).These small liberal arts schools tend to have very high tuition rates, though because of student financial aid the actual price paid is often well below the posted rate. But with student loan debt levels through the roof and the media filled with anecdotal reports of graduates with large debts and no jobs, prospective students are looking harder than ever at the price-value ratio.Still, for prospective students who value the intimacy of small colleges and communities, small towns have a lot to offer. The pressures they face are many of the same ones that have been brought to bear on big cities, corporations and big research universities. So lets be hopeful that the same kinds of collaborations that have helped to revive parts of urban America can produce results in the small communities where so many seek out their educations.
Buried in President Donald Trump's budget proposal released Thursday was an opening salvo against so-called sanctuary cities, local jurisdictions he promised to punish for refusing to cooperate with deportation officers.Trump wants to slash $210 million in federal reimbursements to state and local jails that hold immigrants convicted of crimes while in the country illegally. The Trump administration called the program "poorly targeted," adding that two-thirds of the money goes to only a handful of states, including California and Illinois, "for the cost of incarcerating certain illegal criminal aliens."The money, awarded by the Department of Justice, can make up a sizable portion of budgets for state and local police and sheriff's departments.Trump, who promised weeks before he was elected to "cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities," appears to be using it as a cudgel to force those local governments to comply with his administration's efforts to deport people who are in the U.S. illegally."They are not working with the feds to try to address the immigration problem, so why should they be reimbursed for the costs of unsuccessful federal immigration enforcement?" said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restrictive immigration policies.The proposal is part of Trump's effort to fulfill his campaign pledge to toughen border security. The president immediately began a widespread crackdown on illegal immigration when he took office, issuing executive orders that targeted for deportation all 11 million people estimated to live in the U.S. without authorization.The "sanctuary cities" designation has existed for decades and is applied differently by each place that claims it, but generally it means that local political and law enforcement leaders have rejected taking part in immigration enforcement, saying it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes or help police conduct investigations.A California law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013 bars state police from holding someone for immigration agents unless the suspect has been charged or convicted of a serious crime such as drug trafficking, child abuse or gang activity.Trump often said during the campaign he would cut federal funds to cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, that routinely refuse to hold people in local jails until immigration officials can take them into custody.His budget proposed eliminating the money from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, the Justice Department program that distributes the reimbursements. The cut would nearly zero out its funding for those types of payments.The California state government received $50.6 million in reimbursements under the program last year, according to the Department of Justice. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department received $6 million. The Illinois Department of Corrections brought in $4.7 million, and Cook County, home to Chicago, received $1.3 million.Trump would use the savings in part to ramp up immigration enforcement personnel in the Department of Justice. His budget called for hiring 75 new immigration judges, bringing the total to 449, as well as adding 60 federal prosecutors to focus on border enforcement and 40 more deputy U.S. marshals to aid in the "the apprehension, transportation, and prosecution" of those in the country illegally.Democrats and others condemned Trump's proposal."This cut is utterly illogical and would force state and local law enforcement to divert funds from hiring and training officers," Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement."Local law enforcement should not be punished for Congress' failure to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill," Feinstein said.The reimbursements to jails have been part of a cat-and-mouse game between the White House and Congress before.Previous presidents, including Barack Obama, have proposed eliminating funding for the program, only to have lawmakers preserve it in appropriations bills. Obama's budget last year sought to divert the funding to juvenile justice programs, crime statistics research and body cameras for local police, among other initiatives."Sanctuary cities are nullifying federal law, taking federal law into their own hands," said Krikorian, who sent policy proposals to the Trump transition team.Nonetheless, Krikorian expects Congress will preserve the money for local jails."It might be useful to keep because then you can use it as a sweetener for some jurisdictions not to be sanctuary cities," he said.Denying funding to some states and cities and not others could open the Trump administration to lawsuits, warned Chris Rickerd, an expert on border security at the American Civil Liberties Union. Slashing the entire fund may be an easier way to get the same result, he said."This is a test for what he can touch in terms of grant funding," Rickerd said.Trump has called for local officials to be required to identify people who are in jail and could be deported when they are released.During the campaign, Trump also met repeatedly with people whose loved ones were killed by immigrants in the country illegally, and he has told aides that he sees taking on sanctuary cities as necessary to improve public safety.The July 2015 shooting of Kathryn Steinle, 32, on a pier at San Francisco's Embarcadero brought the issue of local cooperation with immigration officials into the national spotlight, and Trump cited her on the campaign trail in calling for stricter immigration enforcement.The man arrested in her death had been jailed on an immigration law violation after returning to the U.S. despite being deported five times. He was released from custody months before the shooting after San Francisco prosecutors decided not to pursue a decades-old bench warrant in a marijuana case.When Trump addressed Congress last month, four people whose relatives were killed by people in the country illegally sat in the House gallery. The president called them "very brave Americans whose government failed them."
A defiant President Donald Trump has pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to fight for his revised travel ban, parts of which were halted by two different federal judges in recent days.

The legal path forward will be challenging, though, as lawsuits work their way through federal courts on opposite sides of the country, in Hawaii and Maryland, as well as in Washington state, where a judge may rule soon on another challenge to the new ban.

The Justice Department's first step would likely be filing an appeal in either or both of the cases, an action likely to come within days. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment on the administration's intentions.

In granting a temporary restraining order against the ban challenged in a lawsuit brought by the state of Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson found on Wednesday that "a reasonable, objective observer ... would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion."

Trump's executive order would temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. The president has said the ban is needed for national security.

Early on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in a case in Maryland brought by refugee resettlement agencies represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.

Chuang ruled that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the travel ban portion of the executive order was intended to be a ban on Muslims, and as a result, violates the U.S. Constitution's religious freedom guarantee. He did not enjoin the refugee portion of the ban.

"To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation's identity plainly serves a significant public interest," Chuang wrote in his ruling.

The court orders, while victories for the plaintiffs, are only an early step in litigation and the government could ultimately win its underlying case. Watson and Chuang were appointed to the bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump, speaking after the Hawaii ruling at a rally in Nashville on Wednesday, called his revised executive order a "watered-down version" of his first.

The president said he would take the case "as far as it needs to go," including to the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling that the ban is legal.

The likely next stops if the administration decides to contest the two rulings would be the 4th and 9th U.S. circuit courts of appeal. Both may be frosty venues for Trump's arguments, with majorities of the judges in each appointed by Democratic presidents.

Three judges on the 9th Circuit upheld a restraining order on the first travel ban issued by a federal judge in Washington state. Rather than appeal further, the administration withdrew the ban, promising to retool it in ways that would address the legal issues.

The Supreme Court is currently split between four conservative and four liberal justices, with no ninth justice since the death of Antonin Scalia more than a year ago.

Trump's nominee to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat, Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative, is likely to be asked about the travel ban next week when he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing.

Republicans are hoping that the Senate votes to confirm Gorsuch for the court by mid-April, which would likely be too late for him to weigh in on an emergency appeal about the travel ban.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order, which caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February.

Watson's order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing schedule to determine if his ruling should be extended.

Trump's first travel order was more sweeping than the second revised order. Like the current one, it barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days, but it also included Iraq. The first travel order also banned the entry of all refugees for 120 days and indefinitely banned refugees from Syria. The revised travel order did not order separate treatment for Syrian refugees.

The revised order also excluded legal permanent residents and existing visa holders from the ban and provided waivers for various categories of immigrants with ties to the United States.

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claimed that the motivation behind it was Trump's campaign promise of "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

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California and Georgia might not seem like they have much in common. But both states are struggling to contain a spike in the number of newborns infected with congenital syphilis.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of congenital syphilis cases has reached its highest level since 2001 . In 2015, the latest year for national data, 487 babies were born with the disease, which was nearly eradicated around 2000. Meanwhile, rates for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in general are at an all-time high.Congenital syphilis is when syphilis is passed down from a mother to her fetus. The disease can cause miscarriages and stillbirth. For newborns, it can result in brain and nerve problems, bone deformities, meningitis and death.Kern County, Calif., in the states Central Valley, is experiencing unseen rates of the infection. Three cases in 2013 jumped to 18 in 2014 and topped out at 28 in both 2015 and 2016. This is after decades of seeing one case at most per year, says Denise Smith, the county's director of disease control.California has the third highest rate of congenital syphilis, after Georgia and Louisiana. Outbreaks vary in size and scope, but health officials agree there are at least two common factors contributing to the problem everywhere: the opioid epidemic and lack of prenatal care.If someone is actively engaged in substance abuse, theyre not thinking about their health care, says Kern County's Smith.Women who use drugs, particularly opioids like heroin and methamphetamine, are more at risk of contracting syphilis because it can be transmitted through needles as well as sex. Karen Landers, medical director for communicable diseases at the Alabama Department of Public Health, says that pregnant women using drugs are less likely to seek prenatal care and therefore learn they have syphilis. Unless treated with antibiotics early in a pregnancy, syphilis has a 50 percent chance of infecting a baby. CDC data shows that overdose deaths involving opioids began to rise sharply in 2013, the same year congenital syphilis started to come back. Before that, overdoses were actually steady after years of gradually increasing.To tackle the problem, areas have ramped up STD testing and public awareness campaigns.In Alabama, where the number of congenital syphilis cases tripled from three to 10 last year, the state has dispatched additional staff to the hardest-hit county. "If someone comes into a [health department] building and is pregnant, were testing her, says Landers. While 10 cases is small, Landers says it's too high for a treatable and deadly disease.In California, Kern County launched a public awareness campaign called Know Your Risk. It encourages everyone -- through billboards, fliers and PSAs -- to get regular STD tests.And Smith says the county's efforts appear to have paid off so far: In 2016, Kern County prevented 60 cases of congenital syphilis.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio got a double dose of good news Thursday as federal and local prosecutors in Manhattan announced they were ending -- without filing charges -- grand jury investigations into his campaign fundraising, lifting a dark cloud from his re-election campaign.The outcomes were seen as likely after the mayor met with prosecutors over the past few months and voluntarily answered questions. De Blasio greeted the news by declaring in an upbeat radio appearance, "We did everything within the law, everything in clear ethical standards."But the end of the twin probes was far from a complete exoneration.Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, whose office investigated the funneling of donations to upstate State Senate races to skirt contribution limits, said the mayor and aides couldn't be prosecuted because they acted on "advice of counsel," but still engaged in an "end run" around state laws."This conclusion is not an endorsement of the conduct at issue," Vance said in a letter to the state Board of Elections, which referred the case. "Indeed, the transactions appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws that impose candidate contribution limits."Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, who closed a probe of whether de Blasio traded favors for contributions from donors that included Long Island restaurateur Harendra Singh, said prosecutors found "several circumstances" where the mayor "made or directed inquiries to relevant City agencies" on behalf of donors seeking "official favors."But he said recent legal changes -- a reference to a 2016 Supreme Court decision narrowing federal corruption laws -- and the "difficulty in proving criminal intent in corruption schemes where there is no evidence of personal profit" made prosecuting inappropriate."After careful deliberation . . . we do not intend to bring federal criminal charges against the Mayor," said Kim, who replaced U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara -- fired Saturday by President Donald Trump.The two probes began nearly a year ago. Vance's investigation was triggered by the Board of Elections' referral questioning whether de Blasio or his campaign team broke the law when funneling donations to Democrats in a failed bid to flip control of the State Senate from the GOP -- and enhance de Blasio's influence -- in 2014.The mayor's team coordinated six-figure donations totaling nearly $1 million to county Democratic committees, which could pass through larger donations to candidates than they could receive directly from donors. Vance said the scheme had been approved by campaign lawyer Laurence Laufer, but urged the legislature clarify the law.The federal probe explored a range of reported donor favors, from City Hall's stance on carriage horses to its role in a controversial real estate deal and a trash bag contract, to allegations that the mayor's office applied pressure in a dispute over Singh's lease of the city-owned Water's Edge restaurant property in Long Island City.Singh of Laurel Hollow is currently facing federal corruption charges on Long Island. He was linked to more than $50,000 in donations to de Blasio, whose office, sources say, contacted the city's leasing agency twice during a fight over arrears. He cooperated in the de Blasio investigation.After months under siege from subpoenas and negative press, de Blasio aides at City Hall were noticeably more buoyant following Thursday's announcements, shaking hands and smiling in the Rotunda shortly after the news broke.De Blasio, who had refused to answer specific questions about his fundraising since news of the interlocking probes first broke, disputed both prosecutors' critical descriptions of his behavior in a brief session with reporters after discussing the effects of Trump's budget."I believe they have an assessment," he said of Vance's criticisms. "I don't share that assessment. . . . We comported in a legal, appropriate, ethical manner."When a reporter read de Blasio Kim's statement about contacting agencies on behalf of donors, the mayor responded: "I disagree with your characterization." But de Blasio said he would not rule out passing donors' "concerns" on to city agencies in the future.He also responded for the first time to questions about intervening with the city's leasing agency on behalf of Singh."No one interfered in any way," said de Blasio, who told reporters his comments Thursday would be the final time he discussed the investigations.Paul Massey, a Republican real estate executive who is so far de Blasio's leading announced opponent in the mayoral race, said the decision by prosecutors did not eliminate the "stench of corruption." Massey also complained about the legal costs of defending the de Blasio administration."New York taxpayers have already been forced to pay $11.6 million to defend the Administration on criminal charges, while critical programs that help children, seniors, veterans and our most vulnerable are facing sharp cuts," Massey said in a statement.The mayor's Democratic ally, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, said the criticisms from prosecutors didn't matter."He's vindicated," she said. "There have been no charges issued and the case has been dropped, so, you know, we move forward."And de Blasio press secretary Eric Phillips, in a statement, said: "We have been confident . . . the actions of the Mayor and our administration have always been within the law. The United States Attorney and the Manhattan District Attorney have now put to rest any suggestion otherwise."The mayor, in his morning interview on radio station WNYC, said he had been "upfront" all along and cooperated with investigators throughout the course of the year."My focus now is to get back to business," de Blasio said.
T-Mobile engineers and city officials said Thursday they've made "significant progress" in figuring out why the Dallas 911 call center has been so bogged down by spurious calls.City spokeswoman Sana Syed said a series of complex technological issues have helped create a debacle that has correlated with at least two deaths. What remains unclear is who shares in the blame and whether the problem is fixed.T-Mobile has made some technological upgrades, which officials declined to elaborate on for security reasons. And city officials say they plan to make their own changes. The city will also add a dozen call takers a day until the issues are resolved.The days ahead will be critical, Syed said."The genuine hope here is that it's a combination of things ... and this might do the trick and we may have figured this out," Syed said. "But it's not over yet."The wireless carrier's engineers, who started working Wednesday at City Hall, will remain on the ground in Dallas for the next two weeks to help deal with any other issues that arise. Other than that, T-Mobile officials believe their job is done."We have done everything we can do to smooth out the calls," said Stacey DiNuzzo, a spokeswoman for T-Mobile. "Now, the city was pretty clear they are working on some things on their end."Mayor Mike Rawlings said in a statement that he was "pleased that our staff and T-Mobile worked through the night" to identify problems and look for solutions. He had been critical of the company in recent days.Engineers and executives from T-Mobile flew into the city after WFAA-TV (Channel 8) reported that a baby sitter had trouble reaching 911 when a 6-month-old boy named Brandon needed medical assistance. The sitter was left on hold for 30 minutes. Brandon later died.When two T-Mobile executives took part in a news conference Wednesday, Dallas Voice reporter David Taffet revealed to them that his husband, Brian Cross, 52, was dying while Taffet was on hold with 911 for about 20 minutes.At first, city officials blamed a "ghost call" problem coming from T-Mobile phones. They said the issue started in October, seemingly disappeared and then started back up again in February.City officials had said the T-Mobile and MetroPCS phones appeared to be calling 911 multiple times, flooding the queue and leaving hundreds of callers on hold.T-Mobile now believes it wasn't alone in the problem. Company officials claim their large market share in Dallas made it appear that T-Mobile was the lone troublemaker when they were not.And on Thursday, T-Mobile determined the problem was actually abandoned calls, not so-called ghost calls in which phones dial 911 unbeknownst to the caller.DiNuzzo said Thursday that it appears callers, for whatever reason, were hanging up the first time they called 911. Those hang-up calls have to be returned, creating more calls in the queue that have to be answered and returned.But some 911 fail-safes used by T-Mobile and required by the Federal Communications Commission exacerbated the problems. When a cellphone user is on the phone with 911, no other calls can go through to that cellphone. That means the call taker spends time trying fruitlessly to reach someone who has hung up on 911 and then called back.Making matters even worse is that 911 call takers also cannot see who is still on the line and who has hung up and whether someone has called a second time."That's a problem that we need to look at -- how can we help our call takers?" said Syed, the city spokeswoman. "That one piece -- think about how that could help the situation."Syed said the city will look at several other technology upgrades, too.T-Mobile representatives have suggested something unique in Dallas is causing a problem they don't seem to have in other cities.Dallas does have a recent history with inadequate staffing at the 911 call center. The problems came to light after The Dallas Morning News reported on problems with the call center's staffing levels following the 2012 slaying of Deanna Cook. The 32-year-old woman's ex-husband was choking her while she was on the phone with 911, but she did not receive a timely police response because of apparent communication issues.City officials will use overtime to add call takers for now to prevent long hold times for 911 callers. They've also got longer-term plans to add staffing by training up other city employees to help out in the future.City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who took office in February, said in a statement that he is committed to solving the problems, whatever they may be."We want our citizens to know that their safety is our No. 1 priority and they can count on us when they call 911," he said.
A conservative state senator who once wanted to be a missionary was accused Thursday in a child prostitution case of offering to pay a 17-year-old boy for sex.Sen. Ralph Shortey, R-Oklahoma City, was charged with three felony counts, one week after police found him with the teenager in a Moore hotel room.Gov. Mary Fallin, Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, Senate leaders and many others called Thursday for him to resign.The accusations "do not reflect the character and decorum that we expect of an elected official," Fallin said. "It is not acceptable."The evidence against Shortey includes a graphic online conversation where the two discuss having sex and smoking marijuana, police reported in a court affidavit. The conversation was found on the teenager's Kindle tablet.Shortey, using the online name "Jamie Tilley," at one point during the discussion about sex called the teenager "baby boy," according to the affidavit.Police reported finding an open box of condoms in Shortey's backpack and a bottle of lotion in the teenager's backpack after confronting them at the Super 8 in Moore.Shortey, 35, turned himself in at the Cleveland County Detention Center around noon Thursday and was released about two hours later after posting bail. He had no comment.The state Senate on Wednesday voted to punish Shortey for "disorderly behavior." The unanimous vote stripped him of most of his privileges at the Capitol, including his office and parking space.Shortey has been a senator since 2010 and has championed law-and-order issues. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has spoken repeatedly of her importance in his life. They have three children.Shortey is charged with engaging in child prostitution, engaging in prostitution within 1,000 feet of a church and transporting a minor for prostitution. Bail was set at $100,000.Prosecutors specifically allege in the case that Shortey offered the teenager "money in exchange for sexual contact." They allege that he knowingly took the teenager to the hotel room "for the purpose of engaging in prostitution." They allege the hotel is within 1,000 feet of the First Christian Church in Moore.The maximum punishment, if convicted, is 25 years in prison.The teenager was not charged because prosecutors consider him to be a victim. He is listed on the charge, by his initials, as a witness against Shortey.Police found Shortey and the teenager in the hotel room early March 9, according to a police report on the investigation. Police described the room as reeking of raw marijuana.Police reported Shortey at first refused to open the door and initially told officers no one other than him was inside the room. Shortey had rented the room for one night, a front-desk manager said.Police went to Room 120 about 1 a.m. March 9 after being called by the teenager's father, according to the police report. The father had been contacted by the teenager's girlfriend. She had seen the teenager picked up by a male in a white Jeep Cherokee and followed them.Police were told the teenager has a history of soliciting himself on Craigslist for sexual conduct and also had a history of drug abuse. The girlfriend was watching his house because he had said he was "going to get paid tonight" and she feared he was still involved in illegal narcotics, according to the police report.Police reported in the court affidavit that the teenager, in the online conversation, told Shortey, "I need money for spring break." Police reported Shortey replied, "I don't really have any legitimate things I need help with right now. Would you be interested in 'sexual' stuff?" Police reported the juvenile then wrote, "Yes."Police reported the teenager later wrote, "Hey keep updated cause I want you bad daddy." Police reported Shortey, using a graphic word, replied he was going to have sex with the teenager "like a good little boy if you keep calling me daddy."The teenager told police he had known Shortey for about a year and the two originally met through a Craigslist personal encounter ad, according to the court affidavit.The teenager said the two were smoking marijuana in the hotel room when police knocked on the door, police reported. He also told police both he and Shortey brought marijuana to the room.Police reported later seizing a green plastic container with the label, "Colorado Retail Marijuana." Police reported the container smelled of marijuana and contained a small amount of marijuana residue.Police also reported Shortey had asked the teenager during the online conversation, "You gonna wanna smoke?" The teenager wrote back, "That's up to you." Police reported Shortey then wrote, "Sounds good, can you bring a pipe or something, and a lighter?"Prosecutors said they did not file a marijuana charge against Shortey primarily because of evidence issues. Police did not find the container until officers returned to the hotel room.Shortey had studied in college to do mission work in Uganda but decided to go into the oil and gas industry after having his first child. "I actually planned my life around being a missionary," he said in a TV interview.He later went into politics -- both as an elected senator and as a paid political consultant.Last year, he helped former state Rep. Mike Christian, who lost a bid to become Oklahoma County sheriff. Christian is running again for sheriff this year in a special election but has a different consultant.Christian was among those calling for Shortey to immediately resign. "Sen. Shortey has betrayed our trust and violated our values," Christian said.
Maryland U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang ruled Thursday against President Donald Trump's revised travel ban, establishing a double barrier preventing the policy from going into effect.For Trump's order banning entry for people from several majority-Muslim nations ban to begin, the Justice Department will now have to persuade judges in two federal appeals courts to overturn rulings against it.The new executive order, issued March 6, had been scheduled to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. The Trump administration tweaked a previous order, which also had been blocked by the courts, to try to avoid claims that it constituted a "Muslim ban."But Chuang, who sits in Greenbelt, and a federal judge in Hawaii looked to the president's past statements and concluded that the ban still discriminated on the grounds of religion.Chuang found that the executive order likely violated the Constitution's religious freedom protections and that some of its provisions violated parts of federal immigration law.Chuang acknowledged that the courts should typically defer to the executive branch on national security matters but that security concerns could not be used as a cover for religious discrimination."While the travel ban bears no resemblance to any response to a national security risk in recent history, it bears a clear resemblance to the precise action that President Trump described as effectuating his Muslim ban," Chuang wrote."Thus, it is more likely that the primary purpose of the travel ban was grounded in religion, and even if the Second Executive Order has a national security purpose, it is likely that its primary purpose remains the effectuation of the proposed Muslim ban."Chuang did not put on hold provisions of the executive order suspending the admission of refugees into the United States. The judge in Hawaii did.
Description

GIS - 17 March, 2017: The Ministry of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms, in collaboration with the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), South Africa, would host the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) workshop in May/June 2017.

The objective of the UNPAN portal, an electronic network for the SADC region, is to support the development of effective and efficient public administration systems and competencies especially in developing countries.

The workshop would provide a platform for dialogue, sharing of knowledge, and exchange of innovative practices in public administration and management. Around 40 to 50 delegates from SADC countries would attend the workshop.

UNPAN is designed to help developing countries and countries in economic transition, to respond to the challenges that Governments face in bridging the digital divide between the rich and the poor and to achieve their development goals.

One of the objectives of UNPAN is to establish an internet-based network that links regional and national institutions devoted to public administration, thereby facilitating information exchange, experience sharing, and training in the area of public sector policy and management.

The CPSI is a Government Component in the portfolio of the Minister for Public Service and Administration of South Africa. It was established to identify, support and nurture innovation in the public service, with a view to improve service delivery.
Description

GIS - 17 March, 2017: The Indian Ocean region holds strong strategic significance since it handles 30% of global trade and almost half of the global traffic of containers passes through the Indian Ocean waters. Keeping the region safe is critical to our economy and prosperity. That is why we must convey a strong signal that we are united and totally determined in our battle against terror.

This statement was made by the Minister Mentor and Minister of Defence and Rodrigues, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, on 16 March 2017, in his address during the 3rd edition of the Counter Terrorism Conference which was held in New Delhi, India, from 14 to 16 March 2017.

He highlighted that terrorism is posing the gravest threat to mankind while adding that it is a global problem requiring universal action starting with coordination in and between regions. The Global Terrorism Database indicates that from 1970 to 2015, there have been more than 150,000 domestic and international terrorist incidents registered. If in 2010 there were 4782 cases registered, the number almost quadrupled in 2014 with 16,818 incidents, he pointed out.

Speaking about Mauritius commitment to combat terrorism, the Minister Mentor pointed out that the country is committed to the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and has joined the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism as part of its resolve to combat terrorism.

Sir Anerood Jugnauth said he adheres to the initiative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to create a New Counter-Terrorism Office to be headed by a new Under Secretary-General to ensure that due priority is given to counter-terrorism across the UN system.

In a bid to tackle the issue of terrorism more effectively, he enumerated on a number of proposals and recommendations. They include:

Elaboration of a concerted plan of action that will bring all Indian Ocean countries on a single platform

Development of an Ad Hoc Task Force to deliver capacity-building assistance and share counter-terrorism experience among states

Stepping up of collaborative efforts through capacity building, greater information sharing and usage of more sophisticated technologies

Implementation of National Counter Terrorism strategies to address the root causes of terrorism

Development of effective counter-narratives against extremist propaganda

Enlistment of the cooperation of civil societies, NGOs, parents and teachers in identifying and deterring home-grown violent extremists that seek to disrupt social harmony

Engaging of religious leaders to promote inter-faith dialogue, tolerance and a rejection of the doctrine of violence

Establishment of legal systems that criminalise the movement of foreign terrorists, their logistical support and the networks that facilitate their movements as well as the standardisation of punishment procedures

The Counter Terrorism Conference

The conference, under the theme Terrorism in the Indian Ocean Region, was hosted by the India Foundation in association with the Government of Haryana and the National Investigation Agency in India. It brought together field operatives, senior officials from security agencies, policy makers, scholars, and government leaders involved in counter terrorism operations, planning and sensitisation.

During the three-day conference, several themes were discussed. They include: Economic impact of terror and terror financing; Technological dimensions of terrorism; Tackling terror through good governance; Terrorism in South Asia; Terrorism in Africa and South east Asia; Terrorism in West Asia; and Cooperative mechanisms for countering terror in the Indian Ocean Region.
Description

GIS - 17 March, 2017: Nine Mauritian companies will participate in ProWein, one of the leading international trade fairs for the promotion of wines and spirits, to be held in Dusseldorf, Germany from 19 to 21 March 2017. Local exhibitors will showcase products such as rum, blended spirits, vodka, wine, fruit wine and liquor. The delegation will be led by Enterprise Mauritius. Nine Mauritian companies will participate in ProWein, one of the leading international trade fairs for the promotion of wines and spirits, to be held in Dusseldorf, Germany from 19 to 21 March 2017. Local exhibitors will showcase products such as rum, blended spirits, vodka, wine, fruit wine and liquor. The delegation will be led by Enterprise Mauritius.

The main objectives of this participation are to increase the visibility of Mauritian spirits in the European Union, to explore new markets in Europe particularly Eastern Europe, and to enhance the image of Mauritius as a producer of quality spirits.

ProWein represents an ideal platform for Mauritian spirit manufacturers to promote their whole range of spirits and alcoholic beverages to influential buyers, traders and distributors from Europe.

Participation, at the initiative of Enterprise Mauritius, in specialised events in the past seven years, namely Rumfest UK, Rumfest Germany and Rumfair Paris, have yielded favourable outcomes for the sector and the country Mauritius has positioned itself as a reliable supplier of spirits after having obtained numerous awards during the recent years.

The rum industry has over the past seven years emerged as a potential pillar of growth for the country. Since the production of agricultural rums in Mauritius, local spirits producers have significantly diversified their portfolio with the addition of flavoured rums, liquors, fruit and fizzy wines to their range.

Export of spirits and alcoholic beverages has increased steadily from Rs 68.2 million in 2010 to Rs 249 million in 2015. This increase is the result of continuous efforts to promote the spirits sector of Mauritius.

ProWein

ProWein is one the worlds leading trade fair for wine professionals where the whole range of wines and spirits is represented. The fair is only visited by top-quality trade specialists, with 82 % of them involved in the decision making process.

More than 52 000 visitors are expected in the 2017 edition of ProWein.
Description

GIS  17 March 2017: Mauritius is hosting the Inaugural African Economic Platform (AEP) from 20  22 March, 2017 at Westin Turtle Bay Hotel, Balaclava. The Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Jugnauth will be present at the opening ceremony together with a number of African Heads of States and governments. Mauritius is hosting the Inaugural African Economic Platform (AEP) from 20  22 March, 2017 at Westin Turtle Bay Hotel, Balaclava. The Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Jugnauth will be present at the opening ceremony together with a number of African Heads of States and governments.

The AEP will institutionalise a new annual platform for African leaders and create an avenue for dialogue amongst a range of sectors, including the African political leadership, business leaders in the private sector, universities and intellectuals.

The AEP is an initiative driven by Africans to provide the policy space for Africans across sectors, to set their own agenda and explore realistic continental and global opportunities and options for implementing this agenda. It will operate within the framework of the implementation of the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063 and other progressive decisions and programs designed to promote African integration and development. Each forum will set measurable short to medium term milestones and establish a clear road map for achieving them.

The forum will also act as a lobby and advocacy platform to influence the agenda of the AU summit and other world summits for the fast tracking of African integration and development.

A number of plenary sessions will be held during the three-day conference and the President of the Republic, Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, will be the moderator for plenary panel 4 which will discuss about how to empower the youth for employment, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The objectives of the Platform are to undertake constructive multi stakeholder dialogues around common themes for Africa, led by Africans and to influence continental policy by engaging directly with African leaders on matters of mutual interest and establish multi-country multi-sector priorities and plans for common action with clear mechanisms for follow up.

It will also provide an opportunity for stakeholders to work with African leaders to remove policy obstacles for doing business in Africa, increasing the investment attractiveness of the continent, the implementation of strategies for economic diversification and industrialisation, and domestic and other resource mobilisation.
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The Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF) hosted a VIP opening on Thursday that gathered Egyptian and foreign artists as it gears up for its 6th edition, which will run between 17 March and 8 April.

The brainchild of arts manager Ahmed El-Attar, D-CAF is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts festival taking place across numerous locations in Downtown Cairo.

The opening included little glimpses of art performances by Egyptian children from Darb El-Ahmar Arts School (DAAS), in addition to a jazz performance by Cacoon band.

El-Attar, the founder and director of the festival, gave a speech mentioning the importance of supporting D-CAFs existence as theyre on the search for more companies.

We tend to forget that art and culture are important in our daily lives. It restores hope that makes us move forward, El-Attar said.

He then invited the guests to purchase Golden Tickets at whatever price they find suitable in efforts to support two segments of the festival: Art and Disability, and Egyptian Performances.

Throughout the past editions, a large number of Egyptian and international artists have participated in numerous segments of the festival, presenting music, theatre, visual arts and street events.

D-CAF has also been attracting an increasing number of audiences. The festival's website points to 2,800 audience members in 2012 to approximately 10,000 in 2016.

"Every year D-CAF presents something new. This time we are focusing on promoting disability arts through three performances that tackle mental disability, with artists from Ireland, Holland, and Switzerland as a first entry attempt in the Arab world," El-Attar told Ahram Online.

This years programme continues to present events spanning performing arts, music, film, literature and visual arts, in addition to special events, such as Arts and Disability, and the Arab Art Focus.

As such, the festivals Performing Arts segment will feature contemporary performances by French choreographer Jerome Bel and Theater Hora.

The shows will include The Rite of Spring (Spain), Nights with El-Warsha 1- Doomsday (Egypt), Disabled Theater (Switzerland), Cloture De Lamour by Pascal Rambert (France), and street performances by Hungary, the UK, Egypt, Ireland, and the Netherlands, among others.

"The contemporary dances/ performances will take to Sultan Ahmed Street and the newly renovated courtyard in the Qaitbay School and Mosque," said El-Attar.

The music programme will include a variety from France, Egypt, and Denmark, such as Project 99 (Music and poetry), Yassin El-Tohamy (Sufi) and Amir El-Saffar (Jazz and contemporary music).

D-CAF will be collaborating with Zawya Cinema to screen its multi-cultural film and literature programme, including Incendies (Canada), Monsier Lazhar (Canada), and a public play reading by Bashir Lazhar.

"The blend of literature and film this year helps promote the concept of adaptation," adds El-Attar.

The festivals visual arts this year will display the history of contemporary art in Cairo through the Cairo Museum of Contemporary Art (CAMOCA).

Some displays will include Adelita Husni-Bey, Manuel Pelmus, Brad Butler and others who aim to challenge the traditional exhibition display and protocols of museums, according to D-CAFs website.

The Arts and Disability segment will run a special programme conducted by Swiss group, Theater Hora, British Act, Stopgap Dance Company, and Dutch dancer Joop Oonk.

Another special segment of the festival, the Arab Art Focus (AAF) will include works by Arab artists that develop sustainable contemporary arts held in the region.

The festival will also provide educational workshops of diverse culture such as Into the Wild Workshop: theater and dance from Switzerland, 30 Years of El-Warsha in Pictures (Egyptian Photography Exhibition), and The Question is African Dance (an Egyptian-based dancing workshop).

Pulling this year's programming was particularily challenging mainly due to the November 2016 flotation of the Egyptian pound, which has doubled its costs.

El-Attar explained to Ahram Online that the festival managed to overcome this mainly due to the generous support received from the embassies of the countries participating in the festival.

Check the D-CAFs complete programme here

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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(TNS) -- Eugene beat out 47 other cities to be named a high-speed Internet Gigabit City by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.The designation brings national recognition to Eugene and $150,000 in grants from Mozilla to launch local education and workforce development projects using high-speed, high-capacity Internet connections.Eugenes collaborative tech community, supportive environment for startups, and unique approach to bringing gigabit Internet to the region, including a high-speed fiber network being installed downtown, caught Mozillas attention.Gigabit Internet connections are about 250 times faster than most other Internet connections, according to Mozilla. A gigabit is a measure of storage or data transfer equal to 1 billion bits.Eugene is at a tipping point and Mozillas partnership here stands to have a very positive impact in furthering Mozillas mission to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all, Jenn Beard, Mozilla gigabit fund manager, said in a news release.Eugene and Lafayette, La., are the latest cities to join the prestigious group, which also includes Austin, Tex.; Kansas City, Mo., and Chattanooga, Tenn.Mozilla this spring will ask for project proposals from entrepreneurs, educators, researchers, nonprofit groups, and others. Grants will typically range from $5,000 to $30,000 for a 16-week pilot project.Examples might include:Distance learning  delivering online courses taught by Lane Community College instructors to students in Oakridge and Westfir.Telemedicine initiatives designed to link patients in rural Lane County to health care experts in larger metropolitan cities.Collaborations between the University of Oregon and off-campus researchers and entrepreneurs who use gigabit connections to tap into the universitys new supercomputer to help solve big, hairy problems, said Matt Sayre, director of the Technology Association of Oregon, and one of a group of local advocates to bring faster, more affordable fiber Internet connections to Lane County.He and others have built on a decades-long effort to create the largest publicly owned, open-access fiber optic network in Oregon.The network, with pieces owned by public utilities, the city of Eugene, and a regional fiber consortium, extends to Oakridge, Westfir and Cottage Grove.This network is called EUGNet www.eugnet.org At the heart of the network is a municipal fiber project, bringing high-speed, affordable Internet service to about 120 buildings in downtown Eugene.Some buildings are connected and scores more will be brought on starting this summer and continuing over the next 18 months, said Anne Fifield, a Eugene economic development planner. On March 21, the city of Eugene, Technology Association of Oregon and others will celebrate the launch of the so-called middle mile, 100-gigabit Internet connections from an exchange in downtown Eugene to Portland and to San Jose.That will enable all the fiber hooked to the publicly-owned downtown Eugene exchange to use advanced services in Portland and San Jose like youre next door to them, increasing Internet speeds and lowering costs, Fifield said.The downtown and middle-mile fiber initiatives are a $3.8 million project, using property tax-based downtown urban renewal district funding, Fifield said.Connections that fast put in the hands of ordinary people can lead to extraordinary opportunities, local fiber advocates say.I think weve helped create the platform for things to open up, and well see what comes, Fifield said.This has the potential to tap into the creative things we can do in technology, the arts and education, she said.The City of Eugene has a long history of innovation, Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis said in a news release. We are the birthplace of Nike, the home of a world-class university and the heart of the regions tech and creative sector, known as the Silicon Shire. With Mozillas partnership and our emerging gigabit infrastructure, we look forward to ushering in our next generation of entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, and educators. We are excited to make new connections with other Mozilla Gigabit cities across the nation and to share our successes with the world.
Netherlands curator Michel van Dartel and Egyptian artist and educator Heba Aziz gave a talk on Bio-Art at Darb 1718 as part of Di-Egy Fest 0.2 last Wednesday

Related PROGRAMME: A week of digital art with Di-Egy Fest 0.2 Second Di-Egy Festival for digital arts set to open early March Dutch curator Michel van Dartel and Egyptian artist and educator Heba Aziz gave a talk last week on Bio-Art covering different aspects of this relatively new field that emerged in the 1990s, discussing the various artistic approaches and ethical issues that it brings up, as well as its link to identity.



Bio-Art is an art where living organisms, as well as life processes, inspire artists in their work.

The Bio-Artist uses scientific technologies to either observe living organisms to produce art or to incorporate them directly into their practice.

Some artists can go as far as transforming -- and even deforming -- their own or their subject's bodies, using them as a canvas for an artwork or an artwork in itself. Since most Bio-Art is at the crossroad of art, science and engineering, many of the practices are done within the laboratory environment.

Directions, discourse and dilemmas

Van Dartel holds an MSc in cognitive psychology, a PhD in artificial intelligence, and leads the research group in human-centered creation at the Expertise Centre for Art and Design at Avans University of Applied Sciences.

Though not a Bio-Artist himself, he is interested in how art interacts with science, and in his talk outlined three main directions that Bio-Artists take. By looking at these directions critically, his talk attempted to answer bigger questions of What should Bio-Art do and how can its contribution be different than the work of scientists?

The first approach is what van Dartel called the Outlaw, which is when Bio-Art is taken out of the space in which it is created. An example of this would be an artist holding a workshop on Bio-Art.

Van Datrel felt this approach usually missed its mark, as the process ends up being focused on grasping the science and technicalities, while the artistic aims are moved to the side.

I think that when it turns out this way, it is a mistake to call it an art practice, he said.

Science-fiction is another approach, which sees artists making their own ventures and speculations of what is possible, to create things that may or may not be scientifically feasible.

This kind of approach may take as a starting point a real scientific finding, or a potential direction that science is on the verge of uncovering, and plays with it to fantasise about where it could go.

The speaker gave an example of a group of artists that created an online spoof company that allows people to customize the leather of a manta ray fish with colorful patterns, to later be used to produce shoes.

What van Datrel found problematic with this project, and a trap that similar works fall into, is that its success was measured based on its wide popularity and the large number of people who wanted to buy these shoes, so that it merely ended up as a fun joke.

If contemporary art is a tool for examining the world, stirring thought and raising questions, van Dartel thinks what was missing is creating a critical discourse around the technology.

With a project like this, the artists could have steered the public conversation towards the ethics and consequences of this technology; Is it ethical to farm custom-designed marine animals only to skin them for shoes?

What we need right now is for artists to look critically at what is already possible and how it affects us, he said, adding that he thinks artists should bring balanced arguments or questions to the table.

The third direction is the Embedded approach, where artists get immersed in the realm of science and involved with the scientific production or the culture around it.

Brazilian-American artist Eduardo Kac provides an example with his famous transgenic artwork titled GFP Bunny. Kac created a green fluorescent rabbit through genetic engineering, by splicing it with fluorescent genes from a jelly fish (Aequorea Victoria).

To the artist, however, the project was not only about the artwork (the rabbit), but also the public dialogue that it would spark, as well the social integration of the rabbit he named Alba, which he considered it to be his pet and fought for her custody against the scientific and artistic institutions that claimed her.

Kac followed up the GFP Bunny project with a book titled 'It's not easy being green,' which traces the poetic and humorous public responses to "GFP Bunny."

Kac believed that in the past artists were imagining things or creatures, but now it is possible to make them a reality, Aziz added during the talk.

The advantage here is that artists have more freedom to do things that could be ethically problematic for scientists. The GFP Bunny would have been highly controversial as a scientific endeavor, but as an artistic one it is acceptable and serves the discourse.

We expect artists to provoke and find out where these ethical boundaries are Projects [like this] show in practice where the boundaries are, van Dartel says.

Van Dartel also brought up how what happens behind the scenes in the scientific environment is far richer than what is cleanly announced and published.

There are conversations between scientists, failures, emotions, debates, many aspects that dont make it to the formal scientific papers and statements the public usually sees, he says.

They offer a type of parallel, subjective knowledge, which can be very interesting for an artist to explore and be a part of.

This point echoed what Nour El-Safoury, co-curator of PhotoCairo 6, told Ahram Online in an interview on how the discourse around art can itself be part of art.

Van Dartel gave an example of SymbioticA, an Australian artistic laboratory where artists can actively use the tools and technologies of science to explore possibilities and articulate cultural ideas around scientific knowledge.

One of SymbioticAs project's titled ArtMeatFlesh saw the creation of artistic lab-grown meat. They then brought together philosophers, artists, and chefs to the eat-lab-meat debate, where the different disciplines can engage in a discussion.

"While scientists examine the nature of things as they are, artists explore what something does in the world, van Dartel said.

Bio-Art and identity

For her part, Aziz presented a panorama of different Bio-Art practices through the works of several artists, with a special focus on how they reflect or express identity.

Our biology contains a physical aspect of our identity, in finger prints, blood type, DNA, etc.

Many artists tackle this notion directly, such as Mark Quinn with his artwork Self, where he created a frozen sculpture of his head made from five litres of his own blood immersed in frozen silicone.

Stelarc, a Cyprus-born performance artist, took it a step further by making three videos of the inside of his body.

Stelarc is also interested in expanding the bodys capabilities, and has acoustically amplified his body by attaching a prosthetic ear to his forearm. He initially wanted to attach it behind his natural ear, but for years no doctor would agree to the project - another example testing the ethical boundaries of artistic and scientific practices.

French artist Orlan was even more extreme in 'The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan: A Struggle Against the innate' project, where she altered her face through a series of plastic surgeries based on idealised features of women in Western paintings such as Botticelli's Venus and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

The Guardian describes her work as a series of rebirths and triumphs of will over technology in an article where the artist says she aimed to sculpt [her] own body to reinvent the self.

As one of the audience members at Darb 1718 mentioned, these works border on the extremities of self-harm. Of course the artist only has control over his own body with such projects, however, even these artists face some limitations.

What artists can and cant do is part of the art, because it shapes it, Van Datrel highlighted.

Another prominent Bio-Artist, Susan Anker, chair of the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan, uses the iconography of chromosomes to create calligraphic artworks in Zoosemiotics and Codex: Genome

The DNA portraits created from peoples hair strands by Manglano Ovalle are another example, while Sabrina Raff looks at breath as a carrier of identity, and creates artwork using breath cultures. Jeffry B Geckof is one of the artists who uses bacteria culture on photographs to organically alter them.

Aziz herself has a project in which she placed her own bacteria onto photographs of places that meant something to her.

In Ergo Sum Charlotte Jarvis donated parts of her body to stem cell research, and hosted the donation as a performance and a public anatomy lesson including a lecture and debate.

According the artists website, A second self has been created, a self-portrait, a synecdoche, made from a collage of synthesised body parts. Brain, heart and blood all biologically Charlotte, yet distinctly alien to her.

Through these numerous directions, this overlapping of art and science is a fertile ground for questioning the world in which we live, to probe questions about identity and humanity as a whole.

As van Datrel noted, "the role of the Bio-Artist changes from a means to represent us, to a means of questioning technologies."

Bio-Art also offers a means to better understand scientific issues, and has the power to make arguments and stir social critiques that explore and challenge the boundaries of our experience with both disciplines.

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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She had to endure a tearful 22 years of childlessness until she was blessed with a baby of her own when she turned 45, a blessing she described as a divine miracle that should motivate other childless women to look up to God.

Speaking at the naming ceremony of her daughter, Nana Akua Ahenkan Nyamekye Adjei Twinin, at the Trinity Congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in Koforidua, Ms Baiden recounted the numerous ordeals she suffered at the hands of society because of her childlessness.

22 years of tears

She recalled that her inability to conceive for two decades caused society, mainly people close to her and some church members, to subject her to constant ridicule, both in private and in public.

She stated that to overcome such hostile ordeal, she cried day and night to God to give her a child, a prayer that strengthened her to draw closer to God.

For years, people did not only give up on me but they also insulted me both in public and private; but in spite of all that, I never allowed peoples attitudes towards me to ruin my happiness, she recounted.

God has honoured me

The happy-looking mother recounted; There were times when people in my own church accused me of using my money to buy shoes and not using it to take care of any child. However, people close to me know the number of children I take care of.

To limit the incessant embarrassment she faced from close friends and society in general, she desisted from disclosing her worries to people, saying; Man will only listen to your concern but will turn around to laugh at you and spread rumours about you.

She, however, was full of gratitude to God for making it possible for her to conceive and deliver a baby she described as a beautiful, healthy and extraordinary child.

Nasty dawn preacher

Barima Twinin recalled that he went home one day and found his wife weeping uncontrollably after a dawn preacher had used a megaphone to preach about women who had exchanged their wombs for juju to build big hotels.

My wife cried for days and told me that what the preacher said did not bother her but the use of a megaphone to cast insinuation to the hearing of her neighbours disturbed her the most, he explained.

He described such conduct as unfortunate, given the fact that many people knew how he and his wife began his hotel business from scratch.

Today, God has blessed me to pay all the loans I took to put up my hotels and we now need to do more expansion, he stated.

Be compassionate

According to him, a life of childlessness caused women considerable grief, a challenging period that required society to rather show more compassion and love towards them instead of pointing accusing fingers at them.

Conceiving a child is a gift from God so it is disheartening when society, particularly dawn preachers, accuse childless women of exchanging their wombs for riches and call them names, he added.

Such stereotype and mistreatment hurt badly and dampen the spirits of women who, through no fault of theirs, remain childless, he said.

Dedicating the baby to God and the church, Barima Adjei Twinin noted that prior to having their child, he and his wife visited various hospitals where doctors informed them that they had no medical condition that should prevent them from having a child.
The school bursar, Mr Amos Kodzo Gborgla, made this known to The Mirror when the Accra Presbytery Mens Ministry of the Global Evangelical Church (GEC) donated assorted food items and toiletries to the school last Saturday.

He said the situation had placed enormous pressure on caregivers who had to combine their stressful work with fetching water.

He, therefore, appealed to the public to support the school to pay the bill, since efforts to get the responsible authorities to pay the bill had not yielded any fruit.

The Mens Ministry of the GEC put smiles on the faces of pupils of the school with the presentation of items including bags of rice, cartons of soap, tins of tomato paste and toilet roll.

The Coordinator of the ministry, Rev. Dr Alex K. Dzameshie, who presented the items, said whoever met the needs of the under-privileged in society was fulfilling scriptures.

He asserted that God had plans for every child, adding: Whatever we do for these children, we do it for God. We want to support you to take care of these children. It is our way of showing love, which is a commandment from Christ.

It is our prayer that God will continue to give you the strength and zeal to take care of them. Whatever we do on earth, we will be accountable to God someday, so we must excel at what we do.

Rev. Dr Dzameshie urged the teachers not to think that their work was a degraded one but rather be inspired because they were contributing significantly to the lives of the children.

Mr Gborgla, receiving the donation, expressed appreciation to members of the association for the support.

We are grateful that you remembered us. But, like Oliver Twist, we would ask for more of these visits, he said.

Established in 1995, the school has a population of 100 pupils who have conditions including Downs syndrome and low IQ.
Galp Energia is the second European refiner to license the Ecofining technology, which produces a direct hydrocarbon substitute for diesel fuel featuring a high cetane value of approximately 80. Eni S.p.A, which co-developed the technology with UOP, is in the process of installing an Ecofining unit at its facility in Livorno, Italy. ( Earlier post .)

The Galp Energia facility, to be located in Sines, Portugal, will process 6,500 barrels per day of vegetable oils to supply European refineries with the high-cetane renewable diesel fuel. Compared to diesel found at the pump today, which ranges from 40 to 60 cetane, the Ecofining renewable diesel offers value as a blending stock for fuel producers and blenders seeking to enhance existing diesel fuels and expand the diesel pool.

The Ecofining process was designed to seamlessly integrate into existing infrastructure to reduce capital costs and simplify adoption. And in addition, the properties of the green diesel product eliminate the need for changes to automobile power trains, fuel pumps and fuel distribution networks. Jennifer Holmgren, director of UOPs Renewable Energy & Chemicals business uni

The Ecofining process, like other hydroprocessing technologies being developed to produce renewable fuels, requires hydrogen and works well on triglycerides and high free fatty acid (FFA) feeds (vegetable oils and greases). The process is very feed-flexible.

UOP and Eni have so far tested the process with soybean oil; canola oil; palm oil; jatropha; used cooking oils; and tallow. Feeds for future testing include algae oil; tall oil; and yellow grease.

Ecofining uses a discrete unit in the refinery for the production of the renewable diesel, rather than pre-treating the vegetable oil feed an co-processing it in an existing reactor as some other approaches do. Co-processing vegetable oils can carry a significant cost, UOP and Eni argue. Reactor design changes may be necessary to accommodate the additional heat release; the recycle hydrogen system may need to be revamped to account for CO, CO 2 and H 2 O production; a pre-treatment reactor is required to remove Na, Ca, P and other metals in the vegetable oil feedstock; and cold flow property issues may limit the volume of vegetable oil that can be processed.

The Ecofining approach of relying on a unit optimally designed to process biologically derived feedstocks is more cost-effective, the companies assert.

Biodiesel and UOP/Eni Ecofining Green Diesel Properties Property Petroleum

ULSD Biodiesel

(FAME) UOP Green Diesel % Oxygen 0 11 0 Specific Gravity g/ml 0.84 0.88 0.78 Sulfur content, ppm <10 <1 <1 Heating value MJ/kg 43 38 44 Cloud Point, C -5 -5 to +15 -10 to +5 Distillation, C 205-350 340-355 265-320 Cetane 40 50-65 70-90

The Ecofining technology is the first commercial product from UOPs Renewables Energy & Chemicals business unit. Launched in late 2006, the unit is focused on developing and commercializing technology to produce transportation fuels and chemicals from biofeedstocks ranging from vegetable oils to second generation cellulosic waste feedstocks like corn stover or wood chips.

UOP is also currently developing technology for the production of renewable Jet Propellant-8 (JP-8) jet fuel from vegetable and algal oils backed by $6.7 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). (Earlier post.)

Galp Energia, is a leading Portuguese producer and distributor of refined products in Portugal. The Sines refinery is the largest in the country producing 225,000 barrels per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) for distribution in Spain, Portugal and Africa.

UOP LLC is a leading international supplier and licensor of process technology, catalysts, adsorbents, process plants, and consulting services to the petroleum refining, petrochemical, and gas processing industries. UOP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc. and is part of Honeywells Specialty Materials strategic business group.
In 2009, the ARB approved the LCFS regulation to reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of transportation fuel used in California by at least 10% by 2020 from a 2010 baseline. In 2015, the Board re-adopted the LCFS to address procedural issues, which began implementation on 1 January 2016. The LCFS sets annual carbon intensity standardswhich reduce over timefor gasoline, diesel, and the fuels that replace them.

The staff of the California Air Resources Board (ARB) staff is considering including alternative jet fuel (AJF) in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). ARB staff is hosting a public working meeting today to consider the matter.

Fuels and fuel blendstocks that have a CI higher than the applicable standard generate deficits. Correspondingly, fuels and fuel blendstocks with CIs below the standard generate credits. Compliance is achieved when a regulated partyusually the fuel produceruses credits to offset its deficits. (The importer of the fuel is the regulated party if the fuel is produced out-of-state.)

Producers of certain fuels are exempt and may voluntarily opt-in to the regulation in order to receive credits. Credit trading in the LCFS occurs between regulated parties.

Exemptions to the LCFS currently are:

Alternative fuel that is not a biomass-based fuel or that is supplied by all providers of that particular fuel at an aggregated volume of less than 420 million MJ/year.

Propane.

Military tactical vehicles and tactical support equipment.

Locomotives.

Ocean-going vessels.

Aircraft.

ARB staff is now considering developing a proposal to allow alternative jet fuel (AJF) to generate LCFS credits as an opt-in fuel. Conventional jet fuel would not be subject to the regulation and would not generate deficits. As part of this, ARB would not develop a new set of specifications for jet fuel.

AJFs are drop-in fuels which can replace a portion of conventional jet fuels without the need to modify aircraft engines and the existing fuel distribution infrastructure. When blended with conventional jet fuel, AJFs have the same performance characteristics as conventional jet fuel. Feedstocks include both renewable and non-renewable sources.

There are five main types of AJFs currently within the ASTM International Standard D7566 specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons:

Fischer-Tropsch Hydroprocessed Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (FT-SPK); maximum blend 50%

Synthesized Paraffinic Kerosene from Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA-SPK); maximum blend 50%

Synthesized Kerosene with Aromatics Derived by Alkylation of Light Aromatics from Non-Petroleum Sources (SPK/A); maximum blend 50%

Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (ATJ-SPK); maximum blend 30%

Synthesized Iso-Paraffins Produced from Hydroprocessed Fermented Sugars (SIP); maximum blend 10%

The use of AJFs offers a number of benefits, including reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions; significant reduction in PM and SO x (e.g., earlier post); and a slight reduction in NO x .

The CA-GREET models would be used to calculate the CI of alternative jet fuel pathways as well as the 2010 baseline for conventional jet fuel.

ARB staffs initial thinking is to allow producers or importers of AJF to opt in as credit generators, and to allow credit generation for AJF loaded to all planes in California, whether the destinations are in-state or out-of-state. Credits could also be generated for military use of AJF.

A potential rulemaking would go into effect 1 January 2019.
Members of the Supreme Courts conservative majority are questioning the continued use of affirmative action in higher education. In lengthy arguments Monday, the justices wrestled with persistent, difficult questions of race. The justices heard from six different lawyers in challenges to policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard. Those policies consider race among many factors in evaluating applications for admission. One conservative justice likened affirmative action to giving some college applicants a head start in a footrace. But a liberal justice said universities are the pipelines to leadership in our society and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
There was no ambiguity in President-elect Donald Trumps promise for better health-care coverage:

Were going to have insurance for everybody, Trump told The Washington Post shortly before his inauguration in January. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you cant pay for it, you dont get it. Thats not going to happen with us.

The reality is that there wont be insurance for everybody under the American Health Care Act proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives and championed by Trump, and far more people will be priced out of the insurance market  especially in states like North Carolina.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 14 million Americans will lose coverage under the AHCA in the first year, with 24 million Americans losing insurance by 2026.

Some would lose coverage because the plan reduces Medicaid contributions to states. States that expanded Medicaid might discontinue the program and those, like North Carolina, that did not expand Medicaid could curtail existing coverage when the federal government caps contributions in 2020.

Some would lose coverage because their employers would no longer be required to provide it.

But many would lose coverage because they simply cant afford it.

North Carolina is one of 11 high-cost states most disadvantaged by the plan, because the AHCA tax credits are based solely on age, whereas subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were adjusted for geographic variations in health costs.

Those variations can be extreme. Benchmark health insurance coverage this year for a 45-year-old ranges from a low of $3,600 in New Hampshire to a high of $12,600 on average in Alaska, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This nonpartisan research and policy institute analyzes federal budget policies with an eye toward how they affect low-income Americans.

Only Alaskans would suffer more than North Carolinians under the repeal of the ACA, based on the centers state-by-state analysis.

North Carolina ranked second among states in which Obamacare participants would see the largest cut to financial assistance and the largest increase in premiums.

Tax-credit subsidies to North Carolinians would shrink by $5,360 on average, a reduction of 65 percent. The cost of premiums for a typical marketplace consumer (45 years old with an income of $22,000) would grow by a whopping 382 percent, and credits would drop proportionally by an average of $4,514.

And if youre older, the news is even worse. The Houses plan allows insurance companies to charge older people five times more in premiums than they charge young people. Under the ACA, insurance companies can only charge three times as much for older adults.

The very people who voted for Donald Trump  lower-income, older voters in conservative, rural parts of the country  are likely to suffer most, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Times. Hardest hit would be 60-year-olds with annual incomes of $30,000, particularly in places such as North Carolina, where health care costs and the subsidies now provided by Obamacare are higher.

In nearly 1,500 counties nationwide, such a person stands to lose more than $6,000 a year in federal insurance subsidies. Ninety percent of those counties backed Trump, the analysis shows. And 68 of the 70 counties where these consumers would suffer the largest losses supported Trump in November.

Subsidies are predicted to fall by more than $10,000 in western North Carolina, according to the Times analysis. Rural areas in eastern North Carolina will be similarly impacted. In Wayne County, tax-credit subsidies will fall by more than $11,000 per year, according to Dr. Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of social medicine at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Would everyone have access to coverage? Sure. We have access to private jets and Lamborghinis as well  if we have the money to buy them. But access is meaningless without resources.

While the poor would go without health care, the folks who can afford private jets and Lamborghinis  people like Trump and many millionaire members of his cabinet  would be rolling in cash. The AHCA would eliminate taxes levied under Obamacare for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000  taxes that helped fund coverage for low-income Americans.

During the next decade, that amounts to $346 billion in tax cuts going to the wealthiest Americans.

Anyone who believes Trump sticks up for disenfranchised Americans need only look closely at this plan. Trump supporters should do just that and urge their senators and representatives to vote against it.

Otherwise, they will be at ground zero for the brutal reality this plan creates.
GREENSBORO  JCPenney this morning named the stores that it plans to close in the next months, and no Triad stores are on the list.

In North Carolina, JCPenney is closing stores in Albemarle, Boone, Gastonia, Hendersonville, Monroe and Roanoke Rapids, according to the list the retailer released Friday morning.

JCPenney said earlier this month that it will close 130 to 140 stores over the next few months. In the Triad, JCPenney has stores at Four Seasons Town Centre, Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem and Alamance Crossing shopping center in Burlington.

Marvin R. Ellison, JCPenneys chairman and chief executive officer, said the company is adjusting its business to better compete against online retailers.
North Carolina's senators joined their voices to a group asking Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin to look into wait times at VA centers, including several in North Carolina.

Sens. Thom Tillis of Cornelius and Richard Burr of Winston-Salem joined a bipartisan group of senators, including the leadership of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, in writing to Shulkin March 8 after seeing an Inspector General report earlier this month on veteran wait times.

The report did not find intentional misreporting, but showed that wait times across the region including North Carolina were "drastically different" than what had been reported by VA medical facilities, the senators said in a joint news release.

The region includes locations in Asheville, Durham, Fayetteville, and Salisbury.

The senators want Shulkin and the VA to provide more details on how VA facilities record and report wait time data, how they schedule appointments, and how the VA plans to ensure timely access to quality care for North Carolinas veteran population.

They said veterans "deserve to be seen more quickly" than what has happened in this area.

"Congress, veterans, and the American public must be able to trust that the wait time information being provided by VA is accurate," they said in the statement. "That we, once again, cannot trust VA data is more than disappointing.
A month ago, presidents of the nations 100+ historically black colleges and universities had reason to be optimistic: They got an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, who promised their institutions would be "an absolute priority." They also got a daylong meeting with some key congressional figures.

Now that the Trump administration has put out a budget plan, its looking like the HBCU presidents got played. (It's also looking like the post-White House-meeting naysayers weren't wrong.)

Heres the Grade Point blog on Thursday at washingtonpost.com:

Instead, Trumps first presidential budget released Thursday calls for maintaining $492 million in appropriations for HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. Combined discretionary spending for those schools, however, is actually $577 million right now. The White House directed questions about the discrepancy to the Education Department, which did not respond to requests for comment.

There is no mention in the budget of any federal investment in scholarships, technology or campus infrastructure for historically black colleges that leaders requested. And instead of expanding Pell grants for low-income students to cover summer courses as they had asked, the budget raids nearly $4 billion from the programs reserves.

Less than three weeks ago, this administration claimed it is a priority to advocate for HBCUs but, after viewing this budget proposal, those calls ring hollow, Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), a graduate of the largest HBCU, North Carolina A&T State University, said in a statement.

The proposed budget makes significant cuts to TRIO and GEAR UP, a pair of federal programs that help disadvantaged students (i.e., a not-insignificant proportion of current or future students at HBCUs like N.C. A&T, Bennett College and Winston-Salem State). It also would eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, which goes to the neediest college students, and reduce Federal Work-Study funds, some of which go to students at HBCUs. This Inside Higher Ed piece has a lot more details on these programs and more.

The good news for HBCUs (and all universities, really): The Pell Grant seems safe for now. The publicized cut to the Pell Grant is to its reserve fund; the maximum award wont be cut under this plan. That said, Pell Grants wont increase in any significant way.

The leaders of United Negro College Fund (we are deeply concerned ) isnt enamored of the presidents plan. Leaders of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund ((HBCUs) fared much better than other higher education stakeholders and federal agencies, in light of the Education Departments 13 percent reduction ...) took a glass half-full approach. The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus went scorched earth (This budget proposal is not a new deal for African Americans. Its a raw deal )

As this Forbes columnist notes, the proposed higher ed cuts are neither bold nor brutal (his words) because they dont really touch the Big Four: Pell (except for the reserve), tuition tax credits, veterans education benefits and federal student loans. The vast majority of college students and their families wont be affected.

HBCU leaders had reasons to be hopeful. Now, I suspect, that good feeling might be replaced with relief that things wont be much worse and worry that federal support for the entire higher ed industry could go south in future years.

As this HBCU Digest story asks: Are we thankful that HBCU funding sources were spared in a scorched earth approach to reducing spending?  Or are we waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Those are both good questions.

P.S. I hesitated to write this blog post mostly because Trumps budget plan is merely a starting point to the whole convoluted process. Congress doesnt vote a budget plan up or down like, say, a school board or the General Assembly do. Still, the budget plan is a big tell for the current administrations priorities.

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.
GREENSBORO  Reserved spots remain open for the police departments community classrooms, which continue later this month.

Detectives with the Family Victims Unit, who also speak for school organizations, youth groups and concerned parents about risks to their children when on the Internet, based the seminars on demand, according to a police news release.

Teen Dating Violence and Internet Safety for Teens, geared toward teenagers, includes information on cyber bullying and texting. A parent or guardian is required to accompany their children to the seminar. It is to be held from 5:45 to 7 p.m. on March 29 and April 19 at the Guilford County Family Justice Center, 201 S. Greene St. Free parking will be available in the Greene Street Parking Deck.

For more information and to sign up for the seminars, go here or call the police departments Office of Community Engagement at (336) 373-2636. Registrations are limited to 100 people.

Keeping Your Child Safe in the Digital Age, for adults only, stresses the importance of monitoring your childrens social media activity. Detectives also provide parents methods to check their childrens digital devices and monitor their social media activity.

The seminars are from 5:45 to 7 p.m. March 30 and April 20 at the Guilford County Family Justice Center, 201 S. Greene St. Free parking is available on the Greene Street Parking Deck.

The department is to have a demonstration of its K9 Units, called Dogs and Demo, from 6 to 7 p.m. April 25 at the Public Safety Training Center; 1510 N. Church St. The seminar is limited to 30.

Other classes in clued Traffic Stops: What to do, Testing and Driving: Demo and Information, Defense Tactics: How We Train Our Police, Crimes in Progress: What Would You Do? and Decision Making: When to Use Force.

Seminars are limited. Check here for availability and to sign up.
What is Trump thinking? Does he think at all? Brush aside all the pop psychology and pseudo-science and what is left is a simple answer. Our president is a dolt. Not a bit slow, but truly a chowderhead.

Children struggle to trace the implications and consequences of their choices. Not our president. As children grow up, we hope they mature. Too late for Trump. So far, Trump has had screaming matches with the elected leaders of allies, tantrums over constitutional checks on his absurd Muslim ban, and regular Twitter tirades and verbal invectives against news organizations that critique him. Trump cannot control his temper or self-destructive tendencies. Thoughtfulness, self-awareness and willingness to listen to anothers point of view are beyond our presidents abilities.

The stunning leaks from the West Wing in what should be the honeymoon phase of a new administration portray a doddering man-child president who cant be bothered to read briefing books or his own executive orders. But Trump finds time for hours of cable news and Twitter. What happens if a true crisis requires immediate action? Can Trump remain calm, demonstrate poise? There is no evidence that he possesses these qualities.

What were we thinking?

Jim Morrison

Belmont
On Monday, Aug. 21, in the middle of the day, the sky will go dark. The temperature will suddenly get several degrees colder. Birds will stop chirping and retreat to their nests. And tens of millions of people, crammed into a 60-mile-wide path that crosses from Oregon to the Carolinas, will stand in America looking up at the sky.

It's easy to understand why many people will view this as an act of God.

The total solar eclipse that will cross America this summer - an event that last happened 99 years ago - will be an important moment for scientific observers and a massive nationwide spectator event. It will also, for many people of faith, be evidence of God's majesty - and even, to a few, a harbinger of the coming end of the world.

"I don't think it's an accident that God put us human beings here on Earth where we can actually see total solar eclipses. I think God wants us to make these discoveries," said Hugh Ross, who is both an astronomer and a minister. "I would argue that God on purpose made the universe beautiful, and one of the beauties is a solar eclipse."

Ross will be leading a trip to watch the eclipse for about 80 people interested in finding spirituality in science. They'll travel down a dirt road into a field in Eastern Oregon, where they will wait for the sun to be blotted out. Across the country, other church groups will do the same.

A solar eclipse isn't all that rare. The moon is always rotating around the Earth, while the Earth rotates around the sun. Usually the moon appears slightly higher or lower than the sunlight hits the Earth. But twice a year, it's right smack in front of it, and the moon blocks out the sun during the daytime, and that's at least a partial solar eclipse.

When a total eclipse occurs, the shadow falls on just a tiny part of the Earth, about 60 to 100 miles wide, and then moves about a thousand miles over the course of a few hours. Because so much of the Earth is water, this almost always happens over an ocean.

The last total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States was in 1979, and it was only over a corner of the Pacific Northwest.

Something like this summer's event, where so many people on land can see a total solar eclipse, is exceptionally rare - although the United States actually will experience another one, crossing an opposite diagonal swath of the country, in 2024.

This August, the "path of totality" cuts across the entire country, and every single spot in the continental United States will see an eclipse up to 60 percent.

That means that anyone in the country can step outside and see some darkness on that Monday in August. But eclipse-watchers - including Jay M. Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer who has traveled around the world to witness an astonishing 65 eclipses - say that one truly has to see totality to really grasp the awe-inspiring nature of an eclipse. Even 99 percent, Pasachoff said, is nowhere near as dramatic as the moment it totally goes dark, which will last for up to two minutes and 40 seconds.

"You have to be in totality to do it. Basically the universe gets a million times darker," Pasachoff said. "It is absolutely necessary to be in the path of totality. It's a poor second to be off to the side."

For Ross and other clergy planning to showcase the eclipse as both a scientific and a religious event, that stunning experience of seeing totality is an opportunity for discussing God's handiwork. When Ross was a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, he would take his fellow scientists on hiking trips in the Sierra Nevada, he said.

"When they would say, 'Yeah, it's gorgeous,' I would say, 'Why is it so beautiful?' It would always lead to a discussion about the Christian faith," he said. For that reason - the opportunity to use natural beauty as a tool for evangelism - he thinks this eclipse will be a popular Christian event. "A lot of leaders of churches are going to be encouraging people," he said, to go see the eclipse in August.

It's certainly not just church leaders who have that idea. Visitors from as far as Europe and Asia started booking hotel rooms months ago in sleepy little corners of Wyoming and Idaho where they will be able to see the eclipse.

The population living in that long path of totality, from Oregon to the Carolinas, is about 12 million people, by the count of Angela Speck, co-chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's task force on the 2017 eclipse. Speck says another 12 million or many more could easily visit for the eclipse date. Nearly everyone in the continental United States lives within one day's drive of the eclipse path - so if 4 percent of the country decided they wanted to drive to the right spot that day and see the sun go dark, 12 million would turn to 24 million overnight.

There's precedent: In 1991, Speck said, so many people tried to enter Mexico to see a total eclipse that the country closed parts of its borders.

Speck and others involved in this year's eclipse preparation are concerned that rural communities on the eclipse path won't be prepared for the massive traffic jams, the food and water needs of the hordes of visitors, or the safety glasses that every eclipse-watcher should have. (They cost about a dollar, but supplying one to every American who may look up at the total or partial eclipse is a staggering task.)

In certain religious communities, the talk surrounding the eclipse has to do with a different sort of preparation. Gary Ray isn't worried about just travel plans and adequate eye protection. He's focused on the Rapture.

Ray, a writer for the evangelical Christian publication Unsealed, views this eclipse as one of several astronomical signs that the day when Christians will be whisked away from the Earth is fast approaching.

"The Bible says a number of times that there's going to be signs in the heavens before Jesus Christ returns to Earth. We see this as possibly one of those," Ray said about the eclipse.

He is even more interested in another astronomical event that will occur 33 days after the eclipse, on Sept. 23, 2017.

The Book of Revelation, which is full of extraordinary imagery, describes a woman "clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head" who gives birth to a boy who will "rule all the nations with an iron scepter" while she is threatened by a red, seven-headed dragon. The woman then grows the wings of an eagle and is swallowed up by the earth.

Ray says that image will be created in the sky on Sept. 23. The constellation Virgo - representing the woman - will be clothed in sunlight, in a position that is over the moon and under nine stars and three planets. The planet Jupiter, which will have been inside Virgo - in her womb, in Ray's interpretation - will move out of Virgo, as if she is giving birth.

Astronomers don't see this as a particularly unusual event. But to Ray and others, it could be the sign that the Rapture is ready to happen: "We think it's God signaling to us that he's about to make His next move."

And Ray thinks the two eclipses that are slated to travel across the United States in 2017 and 2024, together marking an X across the nation, could be the starting and ending signs bookmarking a seven-year period of awful tribulations that Revelations says waits in store for nonbelievers who are left behind on Earth when the Rapture occurs.

"That time frame is speculative, 2017 to 2024. But it makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of things that really point us to that," he said.

Therefore, the eclipse preparation that Ray recommends is a bit different from the scientists' association's advice.

"My number one encouragement to people would be to just trust God. More importantly, to trust the right God," he said, warning that those who do not believe when the day of the Rapture comes will be left behind to face the tribulations. "If people want to be ready, the one thing you can do is accept what He has offered, which is the gift of grace and forgiveness. That's all we have to do to be ready."

University of Redlands astronomer Tyler Nordgren, who is advising the National Park Service on handling this eclipse, looked at prior events. Just a partial eclipse, not a total one, set visitor records in 2012 when it crossed through National Park Service sites in the Southwest. For this summer, he told the Park Service, "Imagine the biggest event you've ever had, and double it."

So come August, even nonbelievers looking out at the crowds on the eclipse path may find themselves comparing it to an apocalyptic event. For one Eastern Oregon park, Nordgren predicts 25,000 to 50,000 sky-watchers. The park has one toilet.

eclipse

Washington Post News Service (DC)

3/15/2017 10:40:18 AM Central Daylight Time
Entrepreneur Network

Entrepreneur TV focuses on entrepreneurs, startups and stars who have created their own products or launched their own businesses. You'll learn success secrets from celebrities, productivity hacks from billionaires and more.

On the eighth episode of Entrepreneur TV, learn from stars like:
To the editor,

My heart broke when I watched the U.S. House vote to pass House Joint Resolution 69, which allows egregious and cruel killing methods of wildlife on 76 million acres of federal public lands in Alaska. This resolution would allow the slaughter of wolf pups and bear cubs in their dens and allow grizzly bears and wolves to be caught in barbaric, steel-jawed leg-hold traps and wire snares, and/or shot from the air.

How Congress voted to pass such a horrific and senseless bill is beyond comprehension. Even the majority of Alaskans are opposed to these cruel practices. What sort of human being finds this to be an acceptable?

If youre wondering why someone in our state should care about what happens on national wildlife refuges in Alaska, the answer is that this resolution establishes a precedent that will endanger all of our national parks and preserves. These lands and wild animals belong to all of us, not to a single group of cowardly hunters in a single state. Is allowing hunters in Yellowstone National Park next?

In this age of social media, voters are able to monitor and share how their legislators vote on issues and hold them accountable. I do want to thank my representative, Jim Himes, for voting against this horrible resolution. Im grateful that Congress has members willing to listen to their constituents and stand up against this cruelty. This inhumane resolution is about to come before the Senate. Its imperative that you contact your senators today and ask them to Vote No on Senate JR 18 so we can stop this horror from becoming a reality.

Sherry Wernicke

Riverside
GREENWICH  Abilis, the social service agency based in Greenwich, is hosting a number of lectures this spring. The first one is scheduled for Tuesday and covers the issue of autism and young people.

From the non-profit:

GREENWICH , Conn., March 13, 2016  Abilis, the non-profit organization that provides services and supports for individuals with special needs and their families, is pleased to announce its Spring Speaker Series. The Abilis speaker series are available free-of-charge to parents, caregivers, grandparents, and educators who are caring for or working with children. Seats are limited and registration is required. Registration can be made through Abilis website at abilis.us/calendar. For questions, please contact Karen Feder feder@abilis.us.

Events are:

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM

Abilis Speaker Series: The Visual Learner: Using Visuals to Help Children with Autism Cope with Changes

Presented by Jillian Aili, M.Ed, Meaghan Nagurney, M.Ed,BCBA

Location: Abilis 1150 Summer Street, Stamford, Connecticut

There are many good reasons to use visuals with children with autism who struggle with changes and communication. These include helping to cope with tantrums to increasing communication skills with peers and family. Come and learn about how to use these visuals to help cope with the upcoming changes in routines that may occur with the spring holidays. You will learn how to individualize these strategies after this speaker event. Refreshments will be provided. For additional information and to register, visit http://www.abilis.us/calendar.

Thursday, April 27, 2017, 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Abilis Speaker Series: Understanding Special Education 101

Presented by Maria Engborg and Ida Lupinacci

Location: Abilis 1150 Summer Street, Stamford, Connecticut

This workshop is designed to teach parents how to best advocate for their child as they enter or transition through the Special Education system. This overview will give a basic understanding of the process, rights, laws and terminology in special education to help guide them through this journey. A continental breakfast will be served. For additional information and to register, visit http://www.abilis.us/calendar.
One councilman thinks theres a better way. Photo: Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images

A New York councilman has an ingenious plan that could help reduce the citys not-so-insignificant contribution to the problem of food waste. As the Daily News reports, Rafael Espinal is introducing a bill today that would create a classifieds-style site where restaurants and supermarkets could advertise free leftovers to groups that feed the needy.

This would jibe with the citys current efforts to curb food waste. City Harvest, the worlds first food-rescue program, has saved more than 500 million pounds of food since 1982, and theres been a recent boom in tech start-ups like Transfernation, an Uber for food rescue that coordinates food deliveries from things like catered events to homeless shelters and food pantries. But Espinal argues that the city still lacks the painless, centralized donation hub thats necessary to get private companies onboard. Theres no clear way to get that food that theyre dumping into their organizations so they can provide it to hungry New Yorkers, Espinal says.

He wants the site to be set up by the Sanitation and the Information Technology and Telecommunications departments. Grocery stores, restaurants, bodegas, and other businesses could post about the leftovers, where theyre located, and when theyre available for pickup. Interested nonprofits could then arrange a time and means to acquire them. Espinal explains that the city would step back and let a third party manage the site once its up and running.

Estimates put the number of New Yorkers who cant reliably access healthy food at 16 percent. Espinal adds that the site would help cut into that, and also work to curb the food discarded around the city  about a third of what goes into New York landfills.


Taber, Hewitt, and the rest of the team. Photo: 1951 Coffee

This is a good reason to support a local coffee shop: 1951 Coffee Company is a Berkeley, California, cafe that opened earlier this year, and is staffed 100 percent by refugees. Started by Rachel Taber and Doug Hewitt, two former International Rescue Committee workers, the spot has eight baristas working right now. They fled to the U.S. from their home countries of Syria, Eritrea, Uganda, Afghanistan, Iran, Bhutan, and Myanmar  two of which are on President Trumps reembattled travel ban.

Taber and Hewitt, who was already a coffee nerd, say the real aim is to provide skills training, not permanent jobs. Their goal is to help refugees  who often struggle to find sustainable work once theyve resettled in America  move into more stable employment elsewhere in the coffee world. Fast Company reports theyre already connecting team members with jobs at the in-house cafes that are practically de rigueur at Bay Area tech companies nowadays. A big perk of this is that workers also get access to these companies often-amazing benefits packages.

The cafes name refers to the year the U.N. created the Refugee Convention, the multilateral treaty that set forth guidelines protecting refugees. The Scandinavian-y decor has sort of a map theme going on, and the walls feature info on the convention. Of course, the store also has a nice $15,000 three-group La Marzocco espresso machine, and all the other prograde, third-wave trappings for the staff to learn on. So far, so good it seems:


Some happy journalists. Photo: Gene Park / Twitter

Some things are better than Pulitzers: Tons of free pizza showed up yesterday in the Washington Post newsroom as part of a crowdfunded thank-you by a GoFundMe campaign created to recognize the papers extraordinary work during the first weeks of the Trump administration. Post journalists wasted no time showing gratitude by posting pictures of themselves mid-bite, including three of the writers (David Fahrenthold, Robert Costa, and Rosalind Helderman) who spend a lot of their time covering a man who believes theyre the enemy of the American People.

There is so much donated pizza for @washingtonpost employees, they're bringing it in on carts pic.twitter.com/rfV4Zh8QkU  Peter Stevenson (@PeterWStevenson) March 16, 2017

Thanks from a very pregnant reporter to everyone who donated free pizza to The Post today. pic.twitter.com/Hel51PscuI  Katie Zezima (@katiezez) March 16, 2017

Hey dear readers: thanks for the pizza! pic.twitter.com/CK0SEABQUe  Gene Park (@GenePark) March 16, 2017

A generous GoFundMe campaign bought our newsroom pizza today. Not to get too cheesy here, but thank you.  Posted by Washington Post on Thursday, March 16, 2017

Pizza for the Newsroom, as the GoFundMe effort is called, was started by exAtlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kevin Austin, under the auspices of feeding those with a track record of protecting a free press in these very dark times. The Post and New York Times were supposed to be the only two recipients  but Austins original goal of $2,000 ballooned into $7,800, so he had to find a few extra newsrooms. The 20 new additions read like Sean Spicers fantasy press-briefing blacklist: CNN, Politico, Glenn Greenwalds site the Intercept, and the Advance, the paper stuck reporting in Trump-loving Staten Island.



Post staff got a memo from deputy managing editor Tracy Grant that said: A little pizza, a little March Madness all while working in the greatest newsroom on the planet: whats not to love? Grant tells the Washingtonian that the pizza was a nice gesture by a group of readers that also (in case the White House is wondering) was well below any gift threshold.

Its not clear when the rest of Americas newsrooms can expect their pies, but the GoFundMe donors arent the only people giving tasty rewards to media singled out by the Trump administration. Tom Hanks, youll recall, gifted the White House press corps an espresso machine a couple weeks ago:

BREAKING: White House press corps receives brand-new espresso machine from @tomhanks. Come for the coffee... stay for his note.  pic.twitter.com/cirbLKHEt0  Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) March 2, 2017

He stuck a note on it that read:



To the White House Press Corp



Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.



Especially for the Truth part.



Tom Hanks
Boilermaker. Photo: @matthattanyc

The best happy hours let you get tipsy quick, yes, but those are a dime a dozen, and you probably already have a favorite within walking distance of work. So we searched for truly excellent bars offering particularly happy specials like steep wine discounts, and not just on the house red; or well-shaken cocktails priced at half what neighborhood bars typically demand. And of course we looked out for quick, friendly service  its not a happy hour if youre waiting 20 minutes for a bartenders attention to get in that last drink order before the clock strikes 7 p.m. Finally: Lots of restaurants offer fun happy hour deals (like Empellon Cocinas $5 taco-and-beer and Bobwhites $5 chicken-and-beer) but we focused on true bars, meaning all these places work for groups of co-workers looking to have more than a polite two drinks.

The Absolute Best 1. Boilermaker

13 First Ave., at 1st St.; 212-995-5400 Happy hours in office-heavy locations get crowded quickly  and often the specials arent that good to begin with. And happy hours at bars in, say, Bedford-Stuyvesant or Jackson Heights often end too early for Manhattan workers. But Boilermakers East Village location is a good compromise. Weekdays from 5 to 8 p.m., 12 fantastic cocktails like Mai Tais, daiquiris, and old-fashioneds are $8 apiece, plus: $4 Brooklyn Lagers and $7 wine. Foods not a part of the happy-hour menu, but its cheap enough already (and good  we even like the pickle-and-fig-aioli-topped veggie burger). And if you stay after 8 p.m., well, you can drink $7 beer-and-shot specials till midnight, when the late-night pancake-and-mimosas menu begins.

2. La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels

249 Centre St., nr. Broome St.; 212-343-3660

From 5 to 7 p.m. daily, dishes like zaatar-spiced chickpeas are $5; wines by the glass are $5 off. Try Smallfrys Stella Luna from South Australia, a cinsault-shiraz blend, or test your skills with the Mystery Wine: Guess the wine and win the bottle! Theres lots of seating in the pretty, mirror-heavy room thats good for groups, including a semi-private room off the bar (call ahead).

3. Terroir

24 Harrison St., nr. Greenwich St.; 212-625-9463

The excellently selected wines by the glass are several bucks off from 4 to 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. to close daily; bar snacks like chicken-liver toast are $2 off. The joyfully educational nature about the place is a testament to brilliant, funny owner-sommelier Paul Grieco and his ace serving team; theres perhaps no bar staff in New York that knows or cares more about wine.

4. 169 Bar

169 E. Broadway, nr. Rutgers St.; 646-833-7199

In the city, the easiest and most fun place to drink a lot for really cheap is at 169 Bar, where a PBR and a shot are $3 from noon to 7:30 p.m. The bar is divey as all get-out but still wonderful, and happiest during the day, while the sun still streams through the shutters but before the crowds of 24-year-olds pile in.

5. Donna

27 Broadway, at Dunham Pl., Williamsburg; 646-568-6622

The happy-hour specials run from 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and till 11 p.m. on Tuesdays, when you can also get two tacos for $5 when you buy a drink. Draft and frozen cocktails are just $8  try the Bird-Colada, which mixes a frozen Jungle Bird and a Branca Mentaenhanced pina colada and is normally $13. The airy space is beautiful and the service poised and friendly.

Honorable Mentions

Eastwood

221 E. Broadway, at Clinton St.; 212-233-0124

Two-for-one is always fun, and at Eastwood the frequently changing beer selection is great. From 5 to 8, order one beer and receive a little stone  a token for a second for free. Its not the only bar in town to have a special like this, but its likely the only one to also offer such excellent falafel sandwiches, and crispy fries with tartar sauce.

Onderdonk and Sons

566 Onderdonk Ave., at Menahan St., Ridgewood; no phone

This low-key, old-school-feeling sister bar to Greenpoints Pencil Factory has a great happy hour: $11 for a beer (Sixpoint, Victory, etc.), fries, and a burger that tastes deliciously like a backyard-grill special. From 4 to 7 p.m. and midnight to close, seven days a week.

The Waylon

736 Tenth Ave., nr. 50th St; 212-265-0010

If youre looking for cheap drinks in midtown, you probably already know where to go (Rudys). But if youre looking for relatively cheap drinks at happy hour time  and a space where you can find a seat and hear yourself think  try the Waylon, which has $6 wines by the glass and cold Lone Stars and Shiners for $5 from noon till 7 p.m. Use the money you save to order some queso, which tastes imported from Texas, and to feed the country-heavy jukebox. (P.S.: In warm weather, you can take your drinks in the spacious backyard.)

*A version of this article appears in the March 6, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Flora Bars version is studded with crisp potatoes and black truffle. Photo: Liz Clayman

Tuna tartare? Really? Hear us out: Any food can have a moment  remember rainbow bagels?  and tuna tartare had the moment to end all moments. The simple seafood prep dates back at least 40 years, and it essentially defined dining in the late 80s and early 90s. Now, however, its fallen so far out of fashion that chefs who do decide to put it on their menus better have a good reason. Fortunately, a few do, and the throwback dish is in the midst of something like the early stages of a culinary rediscovery. These are the versions that remind you why this dish rose to prominence in the first place  and which could convince you to order it once again.

The Absolute Best 1. Flora Bar

The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th St.; 646-558-5383 Chef Ignacio Mattoss uptown tartare is as unassuming as it gets: a small red disc, with a similarly small spoonful of creme fraiche on the side. As with many of the chefs dishes, it only reveals itself once you dig in and focus on the details. The tiny dice on the tuna (a mix of yellowfin and bluefin that Mattos says is sustainably farmed in Spain) is a marvel of knife work. Its studded with crisp potato and slivers of black truffle. Fish sauce, a little egg yolk, shallot, olive oil, lemon zest, and chili flakes, are all judiciously applied, as well. Its very simple and very good, and in many ways its a natural evolution of the chefs fabled steak tartare at Estela, but lightened, refined, and thoroughly modernized.

2. Gotham Bar and Grill

12 E. 12th St, nr. Fifth Ave; 212-620-4020

Like the restaurant in which its served, chef Alfred Portales tuna tartare has spent the last three decades largely immune to the prevailing culinary trends, a calm in the sea of ever-undulating appetizer currents. This is the dish you picture when you hear the words tuna tartare: clean cubes of ruby-red flesh, subtle Japanese notes thanks to the addition of shiso and ginger, a towering presentation that rises from the plate. Touches like a salad of microgreens and a circular fan of cucumber slices would feel futzy if they werent so authentic to the dishs origins and its worldwide fame. Tastes change. Trends are fleeting. This tartare remains true only to itself.

3. Nougatine at Jean-Georges

Trump International Hotel and Tower, 1 Central Park West; 212-299-3900

A base of avocado, a middle layer of tuna thats cut perhaps a touch too finely, and a striking layer of dressed, fluttering radish slices on top, all in a pool of vinegary lime-leaf-and-ginger marinade. The dish is all about acid, with a sharpness that gives way to the heft of avocado and sweet, understated freshness of the fish.

4. Dirty French

The Ludlow, 180 Ludlow St., nr. Houston St.; 212-254-3000

Served as a large quenelle under a light, eggy crepe Indochine, team Carbones take on tuna tartare feels like a throwback to a 90s restaurant that never really existed. Its also surprisingly lively. Chopped chive adds some bite, while Thai chiles lend heat that sneaks up as you eat. A little swoosh of anchovy aioli sauce helps to round things out. (You can, and probably should, use the crepe to make little tacos, too.)

5. Le Bernardin

155 W. 51st St., nr. Seventh Ave; 212-554-1515

The line on Eric Riperts food at Manhattans most exquisite French restaurant is that it constantly evolves with the times, when the chef could probably get away with relying on more of his greatest hits. If the tuna tartare thats served at the bar has changed over the years, though, its hard to tell how, exactly. Nicely cut yellowfin tuna is stacked with triangles of endive, dosed with ginger, and dotted with jalapeno brunoise, of all things. Its lovely, and makes an excellent snack with a glass of Champagne and one of the restaurants very nice mini-baguettes.

Honorable Mentions

Bar Masa

Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Cir.; 212-823-9800

Masa Takayama made his name with the toro tartare with caviar he serves as part of his pricey tasting menu  first in L.A. before moving to New York  at Masa. You can order it a la carte at Bar Masa, but it will cost you $78. And Shuko serves a similar dish  with toasted milk bread  as part of its $175 tasting menu.

Marea

240 Central Park S., nr. Broadway; 212-582-5100

The delicate flavor  just enough vinegar  is somewhat undone by an unappealing presentation: The tartare itself is shaped into a long rectangle, and scooched all the way to the side of an oversize plate. (It is, perhaps, a bit too dated. Tasty, though.)

The NoMad Bar

10 W. 28th St., nr. Broadway; 347-472-5660

If tuna tartare represents the early 90s, the presentation here  served in a little glass preserves jar  feels like an early-aughts farm-to-table throwback. The tartare itself is unique, incorporating pine nuts and apple, yet is also the most mild version weve tried.

Toro

85 Tenth Ave., at 15th St.; 212-691-2360

The menu description reads tartar de atun with stuff that we all really like, which is very coy. At the moment, that means its dressed with coconut milk, lime leaf, chiles, jicama, and Thai basil, all served in a small sardine tin. On the night Grub Street tried it, the tuna could have tasted a touch fresher, but it nevertheless wins points for doing something different.
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(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two former executives with masterminding a fraudulent scheme to steal millions of dollars through phony expense reimbursements, inflated invoices, and other improper accounting tactics.

The SECs complaint alleges that iPayments then-senior vice president of sales and marketing Nasir N. Shakouri and then-executive vice president and chief operating officer Robert S. Torino routinely reimbursed themselves for payments that were never actually made to third-party vendors using their personal credit cards. They also allegedly conspired with vendors to inflate invoices and receive kickbacks from the overpayments, and claimed improper commissions and bonuses related to other corporate funds they improperly diverted in various ways.

The SECs complaint also charges three other iPayment executives  Bronson L. Quon, John S. Hong, and Jonathan K. Skarie  with participating in the scheme and helping Shakouri and Torino falsify books and records to hide the thefts of corporate funds. Quon, Hong, and Skarie were allegedly rewarded for their assistance with misappropriated iPayment funds.

As alleged in our complaint, these executives manipulated iPayments internal accounting systems, lied to the external auditor, and caused approximately $11.6 million in losses to the company, said Sanjay Wadhwa, Senior Associate Director of the SECs New York Regional Office. In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California today announced criminal charges against Shakouri and Torino. The SEC is seeking disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest and penalties as well as officer-and-director bars.
The allegations involve Finnfund, a majority government-owned company that is led by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Rather than giving aid directly to developing countries, an organization such as Finnfund helps to boost the economy of these countries by investing in private projects and ventures. In this case, one of the companies that Finnfund is associated with, Dasos Capital Oy, is involved in potentially illegal tax planning through a private equity fund based in Luxembourg.

Finnish development aid has been invested in a fund that is part of a suspected tax evasion scheme, according to a new report by Finnwatch .

Dasos Capital is an independent Finnish company that acts as an adviser to clients that are interested in international timberland investments. One of these clients, Dasos Timberland Fund I, is a private equity fund based in Luxembourg. The new report claims that Finnfund has used Finnish development aid to invest in Dasos Timberland Fund I, which is in turn part of a tax evasion scheme that runs through Finland, Luxembourg and a Malaysian plantation company.

According to Sonja Vartiala, Executive Director of Finnwatch, the scheme takes advantage of advance tax agreements from the Luxembourg government. She goes on to say that the European Commission is currently investigating Luxembourg and these ATA agreements because they are illegal.

Finnwatch was able to find out about this complex tax scheme by examining Dasos Capitals financial statements, as well as secret documents that were leaked to Luxleaks. Sonja Vartiala claimed in Tuesdays press release that these records proved that Dasos Capital has avoided paying taxes in both Finland and Malaysia.

Finnfund has denied the allegations made by Finnwatch and cited factual errors in their report. In any case, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is now planning to monitor the companys tax liability.

When asked about how situations like this can be prevented in future, Sonja Vartiala explained: As Finnfund is using development aid money, the government should make sure that policies are put in place to prevent aggressive tax dodging in Finnfunds investments. The case related to Finnfund is about the ownership policy of the Finnish government, so they need to make sure that Finnfund is more transparent and there are proper policies against tax evasion.

Dan Anderson

Helsinki Times

Photo Lehtikuva
An application to reserve a land plot for the large mosque has already been submitted to the Land Division of the City of Helsinki Real Estate Department, reveals Sami Haapanen, the head of the Land Division.

Helsinkis decision-makers may have to decide as early as this spring whether or not to give a green light to a project to build a grand mosque in the city.

Haapanen tells that the central administration will be asked to inquire, for example, into the sources of funding for the project. Bahraini royals have reportedly offered to contribute towards the costs of the construction project.

[The inquiry] will deal with a number of issues: not only the issue of funding, but well also lend an ear to the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and so on, he says.

Then there are some major questions about how the project will affect the relationship between various Islamic communities, continues Haapanen.

The Real Estate Department, he says, will examine the findings of the inquiry before presenting its proposal for either granting or rejecting the application to the Helsinki City Board. If the City Board then votes in favour of granting the reservation, the city plan will have to be revised before the construction can begin.

That, in turn, falls under the purview of the City Council, says Haapanen.

The Real Estate Department may be able to make its decision on the project by the end of the current council term, he gauges.

The application is for constructing a building complex of a maximum of 18,000 square metres on the plot of the Hanasaari Power Plant, following the planned closure of the coal-fired co-generation plant in 2024. The building complex would not only include a 3,000 square metre mosque but also a culture and activity centre.

Haapanen reveals that the project co-ordinators have also stated their interest in erecting a minaret on the plot.

It wouldnt necessarily have to be a traditional minaret. It could also be something else. It could be something that uses light signals, he says, adding that the minaret is not a threshold issue for the applicants.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Handout/Helen

Source: Uusi Suomi
Finlands gross domestic product is set to grow by 1.6 per cent year-on-year in 2017, by 1.5 per cent in 2018 and by 1.3 per cent in 2019, according to the updated forecast published on Thursday. In December, the Bank of Finland forecast that the gross domestic product would grow by 1.3 per cent in 2017 and by 1.2 per cent in 2018.

The Bank of Finland has upgraded its growth forecast for the national economy for the period between 2017 and 2019.

Juha Kilponen, a head of forecasting at the Bank of Finland, says the forecast was upgraded on grounds of three key developments.

The global economic situation has improved, the euro has gone down in value and confidence in the Finnish economy has strengthened, he lists in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat.

The Bank of Finland acknowledges in its analysis that private consumption and investment are likely to remain the primary drivers of economic growth in Finland. The importance of exports for economic growth, however, is expected to increase in the wake of growth in the eurozone and the recovery of the Russia economy.

Finland, it points out, recorded a year-on-year increase of 0.7 per cent in the volume of exported goods and services in 2016. The value of exports, on the other hand, decreased as a result of a drop in export prices, by four per cent to both EU and non-EU countries and by six per cent to Russia.

The growth in the volume of exports is forecast to hit 3.0 per cent in 2017 before regressing to approximately 2.5 per cent in the following years, according to the Bank of Finland.

The Bank of Finland on Thursday also announced that it expects the countrys cost competitiveness to improve in relation to the rest of the eurozone over the three-year forecast period due to a marginal improvement in productivity and only a moderate increase in unit labour costs.

The growth in unit labour costs in the country is expected to come to a halt this year due to the minimal wage increases and reductions in the social security contributions of employers agreed upon in the competitiveness pact. In the eurozone, meanwhile, the increase in the cost of labour is on average expected to pick up.

However, the deteriorating terms of trade will be an obstacle to improving cost competitiveness, the Bank of Finland adds.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Markku Ulander  Lehtikuva
WHEN it was announced that Disney would be producing a live-action remake of its 1991 animation classic Beauty and the Beast, it was hard to believe a quarter of a century had gone by.

The original is still with us, after all. DVD and Blu-ray editions have sold in the millions and the film is now available to buy digitally  to say nothing of the various spin-off toys populating the shelves of the Disney Store.

Not that the story was original to the House of Mouse. A French fairytale  the best known version of which dates from the 1700s  was among the most popular Ladybird books of its day, with an enduring hold over the popular imagination.

Such is the nature of folk and fairy stories  they are told and retold, partly in order to reflect the times in which the telling takes place.

Rewind a year and Disney was gearing up to release a live-action version of The Jungle Book. The result was a smash hit on all fronts  and theres no reason to think the tale of Belle and her furry friend will be any different.

As played by Emma Watson  no stranger to the fantasy genre  Belle is a courageous young woman who is taken prisoner by the mysterious Beast in his castle in exchange for the freedom of her father, Maurice.

Despite her fears, she befriends the castles enchanted staff  among them Cogsworth the clock, Lumiere the candlestick, Plumette the feather duster, Mrs Potts the teapot, and her son Chip the teacup.

In time Belle learns to look beyond the Beasts fearsome exterior to recognise the true heart and soul of the human prince within.

Meanwhile, a hunter named Gaston is on the loose, looking to hunt down the Beast at any cost and take Belle for himself.

Known for his work on The Twilight Saga, Dreamgirls and Mr Holmes, veteran director Bill Condon has refashioned the characters for a contemporary audience but stayed true to the animations music, with several new songs and an amended score by the 1991 films composer, Alan Menken.

Its worth reflecting that that film was released just a few months after Terminator 2: Judgment Day had stunned film fans worldwide with its ground-breaking computer-generated special effects.

A quarter of a century on, some of the same technology is now being used to bring to life characters that were previously only thinkable using cartoon animation. Disney is justly famous for its Magic Kingdom. On reflection, though, better make that the industrial light and magic kingdom.

Beauty and the Beast is now showing at Henleys Regal Picturehouse cinema.

Matthew Wilson
THAMES Water faces another record fine for dumping more than a billion litres of raw sewage into the River Thames, a judge has warned.

Hundreds of fish and birds died between 2013 and 2014 when "out of control" sewage treatment centres owned by the company leaked untreated waste into rivers and streams in the Henley area and beyond.

One was the facility off Marlow Road in Henley, which is next door to the Four Oaks Caravan Club site, while the others were at Little Marlow, Didcot and Aylesbury. A large sewage pumping station at Littlemore, near Oxford, and an unmanned treatment works at Arborfield were also involved.

During a hearing today at Aylesbury Crown Court, Judge Francis Sheridan said the penalty would be "certainly in excess" of the record 1million fine the utility firm paid last year for polluting a canal in Hertfordshire.

As a result of the latest series of incidents, the court heard, tampons, condoms and sanitary towels were left floating in the river and a crayfish fisherman had to lay his staff off for three years.

Elsewhere, a farmer had to stop his cattle from drinking from the river after they suffered tapeworm infestations while a nine-year-old sailing student became seriously ill with a stomach bug after coming into contact with raw sewage.

Workers at the Aylesbury site logged a series of issues including babies' nappies not being removed and cases of illegal leakage. It was alleged that management did nothing to resolve the ongoing problem and one logbook entry warned the situation was "a failure waiting to happen".

In September 2013 the Arborfield site pumped out untreated sewage after one of its treatment pumps became blocked. More than 200 dead fish were seen floating in Barkham Brook, a tributary of the River Loddon, which itself its a tributary of the Thames.

The court heard how a similar problem had been reported at the same treatment works in 2010. Sailesh Mehta, prosecuting, said: We submit that the company should have been on high alert.

The River Wye and the River Thame, another tributary of the Thames that runs between Aylesbury and Dorchester, were affected by the other leaks.

Thames Water had already admitted several charges of unlawful discharge and breaching ammonia levels under the Environmental Permitting Regulations in relation to five of the sites. Today it pleaded guilty over the Arborfield leak.

It was due to be sentenced today but has been postponed as another charge is to be put to the firm. It is now likely to happen on Tuesday.

Judge Sheridan said he would sentence all offences at once as he felt it was a case of "systemic failure" rather than individual breaches.

He told the court: "The fine has to get the message home to Thames Water that 140 million tons of excrement straight into the river is unacceptable. It doesn't get much plainer than that.

"There were alarms going off for days on end, certainly more than 24 hours, and poor quality equipment.

"The anglers are put out of business, the fishermen are put out of business and the farmer's cattle are poisoned by the water. That is why the fine must be sufficiently large to bring home to Thames Water: 'you must start to comply'.

"One has to get the message across to shareholders that the environment is to be cherished and protected, not poisoned and polluted."
A rapist who has been jailed six times for sexual offences over the past 25 years has been remanded in custody pending imposition of a prison term for the sexual assault of a woman.

Paul Moore (51) had been on bail awaiting sentencing for the offence, which took place on a Dart train in 2014.

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Melanie Greally indicated she would impose a three-year sentence, with the final 18 months suspended, at the end of this month.

Conditions

However, she said she wanted time to "fine tune the conditions" that would apply on Moore's release.

She said she was putting the case back to confirm if a special request could be made for urine analysis to be taken as part of post-release supervision by the Probation Service.

She remanded Moore in custody until the end of the month after hearing evidence from his case manager and probation officer on what conditions should apply to a partly-suspended sentence to assist him in refraining from offending.

They confirmed to the court that Moore had been compliant with the terms of his supervision after release from his previous jail term last year.

They advised that he should remain sober in public and his case manager suggested he observe a night-time curfew.

The court previously heard that Moore assaulted the victim, an au pair, as she was travelling home from college. Gardai examined CCTV footage of the incident, but Moore was not identified until last year.

In the meantime, he sexually assaulted two women in separate incidents in the city centre. On each occasion, he stopped them in the street and asked for a cigarette.

In 2015, he was jailed for 15 months for those attacks. He was released last April and was subject to probation supervision.

In that case, Judge Martin Nolan noted that Moore "has a predisposition to violence towards women, which manifests as rape and sexual assault".

His other offences include raping a musician in 2001, for which he received 10 years, and raping a woman in 1995, for which he received seven years.

Moore, of Mountjoy Square, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting the woman on the Dart on August 28, 2014.

At a previous hearing in February, Moore's defence counsel, Breffni Gordon, said his client had spent a significant part of his life in prison.

Disorder

Counsel said there were conflicting opinions on what caused Moore to commit these crimes. One psychiatric report blamed a head injury he received in 1982, while another blamed an "organic personality disorder".

Mr Gordon had asked the court to hear from Moore's case officer in the Probation Service to see if Moore could "deal with his problems" without going to prison.

Judge Greally said Moore's inability to desist from offending, no matter what punishment was imposed, was a matter of real concern to the court.

The judge said any sentence would have to "maximise the ability of the services to supervise Moore".
A jilted lover told his ex in a WhatsApp message: "You destroyed my life and now I am going to do the same to you."

One month later - in June last year - John Kavanagh (27) pursued her car along a motorway in an intimidating manner before pulling up alongside at a roundabout and throwing the contents of a milkshake all over her car door.

Kavanagh, of Moy, Kinvara, Co Galway, also sent the victim's brother a Snapchat message of a photo of his ex and her new boyfriend, stating: "She is going to pay big time."

Kavanagh pleaded guilty to harassing his former partner over a six-month period between March and September last year, and sending her offensive messages by phone on dates between March and July.

He also admitted assaulting her new partner "with a severe box that drew blood" at the Queens Hotel nightclub in Ennis, Co Clare, on October 31.

Judge Patrick Durcan described Kavanagh's actions against his ex as "reprehensible".

The judge ordered that she should not be named.

"This has been a terrible case with terrible facts outlined. An excess of love can be the most damaging thing that can affect people and, in this case, Kavanagh's excess of love has been very damaging and ended in the realm of severe criminality," said Judge Durcan.

Kavanagh has already spent five nights in Limerick prison after breaching his bail terms by making contact with his ex-girlfriend through Instagram.

Judge Durcan yesterday remanded Kavanagh on bail until April 5 with the warning: "If there is another breach, you will go to jail. This is not a creche."

Judge Durcan granted Kavanagh bail after he agreed to the directions of his consultant psychiatrist, Dr Moosajee Bhamjee.

Angela Dempsey, for Kavanagh, said her client was in a bad place mentally last year. She said he has never been in court before.

Judge Durcan said that he has great sympathy for Kavanagh, adding he is a fine young man with much potential and comes from a loving family.

Outlining Kavanagh's intimidating driving, Garda Micheal O'Gorman said, as the victim made her way back from Cork, Mr Kavanagh tailgated her on the Limerick-Ennis motorway.

Veered

Gda O'Gorman said the woman was travelling at 120kmh and Kavanagh veered right as if he was going to overtake her on the grass margin.

She pulled off the motorway into Ennis and Kavanagh eventually pulled up alongside her at a roundabout.

"Mr Kavanagh pulled up beside her and fired a carton of liquid like a milkshake at her, splashing it all over the driver's door," said Gda O'Gorman.

He said that, more than a month previously, on May 6, Kavanagh met his ex, who was with her new boyfriend, at the prom in Lahinch.

Kavanagh said to them, "What's going on here? What are ye not telling me? Why are ye lying to me?". He then "blocked their path and came into their faces in a threatening way".

Kavanagh pursued them to her boyfriend's car, and started punching the car with his fist and took a picture of them.

Gda O'Gorman said Kavanagh blocked his ex from entering the car and, after she got in, he opened the door and said "I will be f***ing coming to get you" before slamming the door shut.
Divers are hoping to carry out a search for the wreckage of Rescue 116 and its three missing crew members on Sunday.

The news came as it emerged that investigators in Blacksod, Co Mayo, had found no indication that the helicopter flew into Blackrock Lighthouse, which is 12km west of Blacksod and the last known location of Rescue 116.

Funeral details were ann-ounced yesterday for Capt Dara Fitzpatrick (45), who was recovered on Tuesday morning but later pronounced dead.

The search operation yesterday focused on the lighthouse, close to the area where the Sikorsky helicopter's black box has been located.

Members of the Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) and their British colleagues were airlifted on to the island to carry out an inspection and locate any debris.

Evidence

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A senior source said they had found pieces of wreckage, but there was no indication that Rescue 116 had hit the rock on which the lighthouse sits.

"The wreckage recovered may have washed up on the rock from the sea. There is, as of yet, no evidence that the helicopter collided on Blackrock," the source said.

Co-pilot Mark Duffy and winchmen Ciaran Smith and Paul Ormsby have still not been found after Rescue 116 lost communication shortly before 1am on Tuesday.

Derek Geoghegan, of the Irish Coast Guard, said a window of good weather was para- mount for sonar scanning and for a dive to be carried out.

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The next such window is expected on Sunday afternoon.

"We're going to clear the debris first," said Mr Geogh- egan. "With the weather window we've established we're going to go straight in with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) or a naval dive team once we've established where the black box is, that the wreckage is there and hopefully that our colleagues are with that wreckage.

"We have identified a weather window of three to four hours on Sunday afternoon."

Mr Geoghegan said coast guard personnel would clear the area just off Blackrock of obstacles before beginning a detailed search of the area.

"The preparatory work, we'll have to do a lot of that this evening and tomorrow," he added.

"There will be a scheduling of the vessels going in. It's about 100 metres from the rock.

"When you're working in there with a huge swell, there's obviously a danger to the person, we would say."

A relative of Mr Duffy, a father-of-two from Blackrock, Co Louth, paid tribute to the heroic co-pilot.

"I woke up early on Tuesday, turned on the radio and found out what happened. I hopped in the car and came straight up here," said Ben Ronayne.

"It's disbelief. None of us have been able to get over it yet, it's still a shock. It's not real. It doesn't seem real at all.

"Mark was a fantastic guy. He just had a persona about him. He was an absolute fantastic father and brilliant husband to my cousin.

"The waiting is the biggest problem now. It's the hardest thing that the families have to deal with.

"The families have been so well looked after up here."

The ILV Granuaile - a multi- functional vessel that can oper- ate in difficult conditions - was expected to arrive at Blackrock in the early hours of this morning.

It will carry out an under- water sonar-scan, which is expected to take about an hour, once the weather improves.

Funeral

When the exact location of the black box has been verified, an ROV or a naval dive team will inspect the wreckage.

As conditions are expected to deteriorate today and tomorrow, this phase of the search operation is expected to take place between 12pm and 3pm on Sunday.

The funeral of Capt Fitzpatrick, who along with the three missing men saved the lives of scores of people over her distinguished career, will take place tomorrow.

The mass for the mum-of-one will be held at 11am in St Patrick's Church, Glencullen.

The families of the missing crew are being supported by the agencies involved in the search for their loved ones as well as the local community.

Gda Supt Tony Healy said: "They're being kept fully up to date with any developments.

"They're coping as best as any family could in these circumstances."
High hopes for a cable car run in the Dublin Mountains have taken a knock after it emerged it could cost more than 50m to build.

South Dublin County Council agreed last year to commission a feasibility study to examine the cost of constructing a cable car between Tallaght and the Hell Fire Club.

The study had been requested by Sinn Fein councillor Dermot Richardson.

Tourism

It was hoped the cable car would add to the attraction of the popular beauty spot and boost tourism.

However, the outline report, which has now been finalised, said the construction cost would probably be 50m or more, while the operating cost would be "significant" - probably 200,000 a year.

The report predicted that on the basis of a projected 300,000 visitors a year to the proposed Dublin Mountain Visitor Centre, the potential yearly passenger demand for a cable car route would be 30,000.

The report said that if each passenger was charged 25, revenue of 750,000 could be generated each year.

This, according to the outline report, is "equivalent to 1.5pc of an investment cost of 50m, and without taking account of the operating costs".

The report said the original idea was to run the cable car from Tallaght Stadium, which is the most direct route at 4.5km.

However, this would "not be acceptable in terms of safety or for residential amenity for a cable car to traverse above buildings, especially houses".

The outline report suggested a 6km indirect route that would follow open spaces beside public roads at Whitestown Way and Firhouse Road West to Old Bawn before turning south along the Dodder Valley for 1km.

It would then turn eastward at Bohernabreena and pass south at Bohernabreena graveyard to cross farmland and forestry on to the lower mountain slope.

Investors

"I know 50m is a lot out of someone's pocket, but I do believe there are investors out there who would be interested in such a venture," said Mr Richardson. "It's great that the report is back so quickly."

He had said a cable car would be a great asset to the county "and encourage visitors who don't drive to visit the area".

The outline report will now go before the council's Econ- omic and Environment Strat-egic Policy Committees for discussion.
Flight attendants are the latest to weigh in on the debate about the world's best travel destinations. Asiana Airlines asked 1,825 of its cabin crew members for their preferences for different travel purposes.

As for family-oriented vacations with children, Saipan came out on top with 46 percent. Respondents cited the natural environment, recreational facilities and relatively short flying time from Seoul, according to survey results released on Thursday.

Cebu, one of the most popular destinations in the Philippines, and Phuket in Thailand came next with 13 and 11 percent, respectively.

Bangkok was chosen as the best destination for elderly parents with 33 percent, due to its diverse cuisine, exotic tourist sites and massage spas.

Japan's Fukuoka, well known for its hot springs, and Okinawa, dubbed the "Hawaii of the East," came in second and third with 13 and 8 percent, respectively.

Phuket topped the list for couples with 26 percent, though Sydney won out with 29 percent when flight attendants were asked about honeymoons due to its proximity to the Gold Coast.

France's Paris was picked as the best destination for solo travelers, and Hong Kong was selected as the best place to go with friends.
The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The country as a whole decided in a June 23 referendum to leave the EU, but in that ballot Scots voted 62 to 38 percent to remain.

May said "now is not the time" to reopen Scotland's independence debate, though she did not rule out a referendum in the future. Britain is due to begin the two-year exit process from the 28-nation bloc by the end of this month.

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday rejected a call from Scotland's leader for a referendum on Scottish independence before Britain leaves the European Union.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced earlier this week that she will seek a referendum on Scottish independence between the fall of 2018 and spring 2019, so voters can decide whether to leave the EU with the rest of the United Kingdom or to go it alone.

The British government must agree to a legally binding referendum and May said "now is not the time." "All our energies should be focused on our negotiations with the European Union," May said, adding that holding a referendum while EU exit talks are still underway would "make it more difficult for us to get the right deal for Scotland and the right deal for the U.K."

May's stance sets up a showdown with Sturgeon's Edinburgh-based administration. Sturgeon will ask the Scottish parliament next week to start the process of seeking a new referendum.

Sturgeon's Scottish National Party does not hold an outright majority in the legislature. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, whose party has the second-largest bloc of seats, said the Tories would oppose it. "We reject conclusively the timetable for a referendum set out by the Scottish government," she said.

Davidson said voting on independence without knowing how Britain was faring outside the EU would mean that "on the most important decision we can make, we would be voting blind."

Britain's EU exit moved closer Thursday when a bill authorizing the British government to begin divorce proceedings became law. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow announced that the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act had received the assent of Queen Elizabeth II.

The bill was passed by Parliament on Monday but needed royal assent to become a law. Such assent is a formality - no monarch has refused to sign a bill for more than 300 years.

May is now free to invoke Article 50 of the EU's key treaty, triggering two years of exit negotiations. She says she will do that by March 31, calling it a "decisive moment" for Britain. The prime minister's office has indicated notification will come in the last week of the month.

Under the terms of the EU treaty, Britain will no longer be a member of the bloc two years after May issues the notification. The British government hopes to seal a new free-trade deal between the U.K. and the bloc in that time.

But EU negotiators warn it could take two years just to settle the divorce terms, and agreeing on a new relationship for the U.K. and the EU could take years longer.
President Donald Trump's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year -- released early Thursday -- outlines an aggressive immigration-related plan that focuses on building a wall on the border with Mexico and bolstering the removal of undocumented immigrants.

Trump's budget would boost military and security spending at the expense of many government agencies, with the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of State facing cuts of roughly 30 percent.

In keeping with those priorities, the budget calls for freeing up billions of dollars for border security and immigration enforcement, which the Trump administration has linked to national security.
Freedom of speech is a privilege. We need to treat it that way.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office has no plans to raid Cheong Wa Dae or ex-President Park Geun-hye's home in Samseong-dong, Seoul, a spokesman said Thursday.

"A raid would have been needed to gather evidence in the initial stage of the investigation," a prosecutor said. "But now that the investigation is nearly complete it no longer makes much sense."

That suggests prosecutors already have enough evidence to bring charges against Park and are aware that the Cheong Wa Dae shredders have had since October to destroy the paper trail there.
Six North Korean defectors were arrested in China's Hebei Province last weekend and are at risk of being sent back to the repressive state. They were arrested with two other people who were helping them. Last month, another two South Koreans who help North Korean defectors were arrested in China.

There are fears that Chinese authorities could come down harder on people fleeing North Korea amid a spat with South Korea over the stationing of a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here.

A source on Thursday said the six defectors, all women, left Shenyang in China's Liaoning Province on Saturday night aboard a rented bus and arrived in Hebei on Sunday. They were accompanied by two Chinese people smugglers. But they were arrested at a police checkpoint.

"Out of all of the vehicles that were passing that checkpoint, police stopped the bus carrying the defectors, which suggests that they were tipped off."

The women had apparently been hiding in China for between one and five years after fleeing from the North and were now setting off on the arduous trip across China and the "green" border into Southeast Asia.

China's hardline policy of treating North Korean defectors as illegal aliens and sending them back had eased considerably since 2014, when Seoul-Beijing relations were at their peak.

But South Korean human rights groups say China has turned hardline again since Seoul agreed late last year to let the U.S. station the THAAD battery here.


March 26 through 28 over 18,000 pro-Israel activists will come together in Washington, D.C. for AIPAC's Policy Conference, the largest annual gathering of America's pro-Israel community. Through presentations of groundbreaking Israeli innovations, keynote speeches by American and Israeli leaders, inspiring moments on stage, and intimate educational sessions, Policy Conference delegates experience the full scale of pro-Israel activism in three powerful days.

The conference culminates with the opportunity for delegates to lobby their members of Congress in support of legislation that enhances the relationship between the United States and Israel. Conference delegates will meet with every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives. The group of more than 50 delegates representing the Greater Orlando area will be able to lobby both their senators as well as their representatives in support of legislation that strengthens the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Confirmed speakers include Vice President Mike Pence, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bob Corker, plus many more not yet announced.

You can still attend the bipartisan conference by visiting http://www.policyconference.com or connect with the AIPAC Orlando Area Director Jacob Shapiro at jashapiro@aipac.org.
RAANANA, Israel (JTA)-Dan Shapiro can't seem to leave Israel.

Before stepping down as the U.S. ambassador to the country in January, he said he would stay long enough for his daughters to finish the school year. On Sunday, he announced he would be sticking around even longer to join the Institute for National Security Studies, a top think tank in Tel Aviv. He and his wife, along with their three daughters, are living within commuting distance, in a rental house in an upscale neighborhood of Raanana.

"I can say the primary reason we made the decision was to let the kids finish their school year. But we are very much looking forward to the opportunity to experience life in Israel as a normal family," he said in an interview next to his backyard pool, which he hopes to get a chance to use this summer. "It was something we considered long ago, like many Jewish parents."

Shapiro acknowledged it was somewhat unusual for him to remain in country after his service. But his ties to Israel are much more than professional. The six years he spent representing the Obama administration here were part of a lifelong commitment to the country.

Shapiro first visited in 1973, when he was 4 years old. His parents, both English professors at the University of Illinois, brought him and his young siblings to Jerusalem for a sabbatical. When the Yom Kippur War broke out in October, they abandoned their research to contribute to the war effort-volunteering at a bakery, a chicken coop and a school, "anywhere jobs had been left vacant by men who went to fight," Shapiro said.

The experience left an impression on Shapiro, who still recalls the air raid sirens and bomb shelters. It also created a connection between his family and Israel that persisted after they returned home to Champaign, Illinois.

"By the time we left, we as a family, our relationship with Israel had been transformed, and it really forged a bond that I don't think would have happened without the war," Shapiro said. "For the rest of my childhood, Israel was this very, very prominent part of life and discussion."

Shapiro returned to Israel in 1987 for a gap year before college and again in 1989 for a year abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with his then-girlfriend Julie Fisher, whom he had met at a Reform Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin and started dating as a counselor there. Building on the Hebrew he learned at the camp and at synagogue growing up, Shapiro became fluent in the language.

"I just fell in love with Israel, and I knew from then that I would keep coming back," Shapiro said.

After returning to the United States, Shapiro and Fisher both graduated from Brandeis University. They got married in 1992 while Shapiro was earning a master's degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Harvard University. When he graduated, they moved to Washington, D.C, where Shapiro did political and consulting work on Capitol Hill and Fisher worked at a prominent local Jewish day school. Between 2000 and 2006, they had a daughter and adopted two others from Guatemala.

Sometimes, the couple plotted ways to spend a year in Israel, waiting for a time when the kids were old enough to "really get something out of it, as I did," Shapiro said.

Those plans were set aside during Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, though they did manage a "great" family trip to Israel after the Democratic primaries, he said. Shapiro was one of many Chicago-area Jews who advised Obama when he was a Democratic U.S. senator for Illinois, including on his first trip to Israel in 2006, and worked on the campaign.

It turned out, he said, that he and Obama shared similar political views: They are both consensus-minded progressives when it comes to the U.S., and strong supporters of a two-state solution in Israel-in part to ensure Israel's Jewish and democratic character. The idea of a homeland also resonated with Obama, he said.

"But of course I understood that wherever me and my family actually ended up choosing to live, our destiny was going to be shaped in part by the survival and the success of Israel and that we wanted to be connected to it. Whether living in it or whether living in the Diaspora, that connection was really profound and a direct connection. I think it's a little different for a non-Jewish person."

After serving several years as a Middle East advisor on the National Security Council, Shapiro in 2011 was appointed ambassador to Israel. The family moved into the official residence in Herzliya, just east of Raanana, and began attending a Conservative synagogue, as they had in Washington. The only person to attend every meeting between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Shapiro was often caught in the crossfire of the leaders' famously contentious relationship.

When Shapiro criticized Israeli policy in the West Bank last January, a former Netanyahu advisor publicly called him a "little Jew boy." And after Secretary of State John Kerry's speech in December blasting Israeli settlement expansion, Netanyahu summoned Shapiro for a dressing down.

But Shapiro said he had a friendly working relationship with the prime minister. "My personal relationship with Netanyahu was always very good, very warm. We were able to talk candidly," he said. "There were definitely occasions where we had meetings that reflected the tensions between our governments, but it was never personal."

Shapiro was well-liked in Jerusalem, even among right wing ministers and lawmakers. At a farewell party for Shapiro at the Knesset on Jan. 17, ministers from the ruling Likud party heaped praise on him even while acknowledging U.S.-Israel tensions. Minister Yuval Steinitz, a close ally of Netanyahu, called him "the best U.S. ambassador to Israel the country has ever had." Shapiro's most important role-"fulfilled in an impeccable manner during a period of passionate disagreements and difficult conditions"-was as a "shock absorber," he said.

Asked if there was a downside to an ambassador having a personal connection to the country where he serves-as does David Friedman, President Donald Trump's ardently pro-settlement ambassador-designate - Shapiro said it had worked for him. But he stressed the importance of serving the entire country. Shapiro made an unprecedented effort to do this, regularly appearing in mainstream, national religious and haredi media.

"I thought it was 'davka' important to have very open, very friendly dialogue with parts of the society that I didn't know and maybe that we wouldn't agree on certain issues," he said, noting that the ambassador ultimately acts and speaks on behalf of the president.

Since leaving his post on Jan. 20, Shapiro has been speaking for himself. He has written opinion articles, including one for Foreign Affairs laying out some of the potential benefits of a well-managed move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And he has opened a new personal Twitter account, where he posts wonky takes on Israel-U.S. relations, including threads that are widely shared among journalists and influencers in the Jewish world.

He has not shied away from tweeting criticism of Trump on the issues he knows best: Israel, diplomacy and Jews. Over the past month, Shapiro dismissed the president's stated willingness to give up on a Palestinian state as "theater," said the administration was "stunningly dumb" to nix former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad 's appointment as a U.N. envoy, and repeatedly questioned the White House's failure-until recently-to condemn the bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the United States.

"Seriously, what is wrong with him?" he tweeted of the president on Feb. 15. "... I can't understand why he can't condemn blatant anti-Semitism when he sees it."

Asked if he is enjoying speaking his mind, Shapiro laughed and gave a diplomatic answer. "I am. I can't deny that I spent more than 20 years of my life in government service, which I'm very proud of and was very content to do. But of course it comes with the built-in restriction that you articulate publicly the policy of the people you work for," he said.

Still, Shapiro has largely kept his disagreements with the Israeli government to himself, sticking to touting the country's LGBT-friendly culture and high-tech prowess. He explained that he has a different relationship with Israel than with the United States.

"As a concerned and patriotic American citizen, I think I have every right and even responsibly to say what I think and offer my best-hopefully constructive-commentary and analysis about my own government, and that means there will be times that it will include criticism," he said. "I try to maintain a more analytical approach to policy questions from the point of view of the Israeli government. You know, I remain a guest in this country, and I think that's an appropriate way for me to conduct my activities at this stage."

Shapiro said along with his research at INSS, he plans to continue writing, including possibly a memoir. Fisher is looking for a job in education. Their daughters will start a new school year in the fall, he said, and it would be a shame to move in the middle of their studies.
Israel's Knesset last week passed landmark legislation against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, representing just one of several setbacks this month for BDS around the world.

The Israeli bill, which passed its third and final reading with a 46-28 vote, grants the interior minister authority to deny entry visas to non-Israeli citizens who actively support boycotts of the Jewish state.

Conveying the rationale for the anti-BDS measure, Member of Knesset David Amsalem (Likud), chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, said that "if someone demeans me, I do not let them into my home." Responding to critics of the legislation, Amsalem clarified that the new law is not intended to stifle free speech, but was implemented to combat anti-Semitism and enemies of the Jewish state. These opponents of Israel he said, "are not talking about boycotting only the settlements; they are talking about boycotting the state as a state, without any distinction. We are talking about anti-Semites here."

One of the bill's initiators, MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home), expressed similar sentiments, saying, "In recent years, a new anti-Semitic front has been initiated against Israel. Our enemies carry out a campaign to delegitimize and boycott Israel. Banning BDS supporters that come here to harm us from within is the minimum we can do against those Israel-haters."

Left-wing Knesset members and several American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League as well as the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, were highly critical of the new anti-BDS law. MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) said the law "is against freedom of expression" and "is meant to silence people." The left-wing American Jewish lobby group J Street claimed the law "damages Israel's democracy and helps the BDS movement." The American Jewish Committee, a centrist group, said that it is "troubled" by the legislation.

Despite the controversy, Israel's new anti-BDS law represents just one of several recent setbacks for the global BDS movement. Last week, the Republican-led New York State Senate passed its own anti-boycott legislation with an overwhelming 49-11 majority. The bill seeks to withhold state funding from any student group that engages in hate speech and actively calls to boycott Israel or other "allied nations." The bill will now move to the State Assembly, where it is anticipated to encounter some opposition.

Much like Israel's anti-BDS bill, the New York measure has come under scrutiny. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the pro-Palestinian group Palestine Legal asserted that the law unfairly denies public funding to students practicing constitutionally protected political speech. New York State Senator Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Island) responded to the bill's critics by saying, "We don't have to stand by and give taxpayer money to groups that sell such hate."

Another victory against BDS on U.S. college campuses came at Ohio State University (OSU) last week. Three OSU students led a successful initiative against the anti-Israel group "OSU Divest," which had petitioned to place a pro-BDS referendum on the student government ballot under the guise of a humanitarian initiative. The BDS petition was defeated in a 4,084-3,843 vote.

The setbacks for BDS also extended to Europe. Spain's ruling Partido Popular party approved new amendments that categorically reject the BDS movement. Partido's move represents the first initiative explicitly opposed to BDS by a Spanish political party. Angel Mas, the president of Spanish pro-Israel group ACOM, told the Jerusalem Post that "the time has come to end the impunity, force accountability and create real deterrence against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Spain."

Also last week, Christian Imark-a member of the conservative Swiss People's Party and deputy leader of the National Council, the lower chamber of Switzerland's legislature-introduced a groundbreaking anti-BDS bill that passed in a 111-78 vote in the lower chamber. The legislation seeks to halt government funding of organizations that support BDS and contribute to the spread of anti-Semitism. The bill must now clear the legislature's upper chamber, The Council of States, before it can be enacted into law.
Students interested in applying for an Israel travel scholarship through the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando have until midnight March 31 to complete an online application.

The Ronald Colman Israel Scholarship Fund was made possible by a generous endowment established by the Colman family to encourage Jewish teens in the Greater Orlando area to participate in educational experiences in Israel. The scholarship is open to all Jewish teens in 9th12th grades who are permanent residents of Central Florida. Gap-year programs are not eligible.

Additional application criteria:

Teens who apply must be traveling on an organized educational youth/peer Israel program, including adventure travel, community service, volunteer work or academic programming.

Family trips are not eligible. Scholarship funds are for programs in the summer of 2017 and programs during the 2017-18 school year (such as the Alexander Muss High School in Israel). Funds will be distributed directly to the sponsoring organization of the selected trip.

Students who apply must submit a 500- to 800-word essay about their goals for a trip to Israel. Detailed essay guidelines are provided in the application.

Upon completion of their trips, teens selected for scholarships must submit a 500- to 800-word essay, along with a photograph, describing their experiences and insights gained during the trip.

Eligible students may apply on the Federations Jewish Teen Education Network web page, http://www.jfgo.org/jten, before midnight March 31. A review committee will select the scholarship recipients, who will be notified no later than April 30, 2017.

For additional information, please contact Jennifer Cohen, the Federations JTEN coordinator, at jcohen@jfgo.org or 407-645-5933, ext. 239.
Henri Landwirth, a Holocaust survivor, used his experience as a Florida hotelier to build a resort to help terminally ill children get their wish.

KISSIMMEE-Give Kids the World Village's Ice Cream Palace is getting a new look and new name to honor the 90th birthday of Village founder Henri Landwirth.

The Ice Cream Palace will become "Henri's Starlite Scoops," the nonprofit resort for children with life-threatening illnesses announced. The name is a nod to The Starlite Motel, the Cocoa Beach property Landwirth managed during his early years in the hospitality industry. During the Mercury era, the Starlite was popular with astronauts and journalists, several of whom, including John Glenn and Walter Cronkite, became supporters of Give Kids the World and lifelong friends with Landwirth.

A Holocaust survivor and philanthropist, Landwirth founded Give Kids The World in 1986, creating an organization that makes dreams come true for children with life-threatening illnesses who wish to visit Central Florida's theme parks and attractions.

To pay for the renovation-which will feature a retro space theme-the Village also announced a fundraiser aimed at collecting the funds necessary for the capital and operating costs of the venue. The "$90 for 90" campaign invites friends, supporters, volunteers and companies to donate to a project that is sure to bring smiles to the more than 8,000 children who visit the Village each year.

To donate, visit http://www.GKTW.org/90for90.

Village President and CEO Pamela Landwirth said the redesign of the Ice Cream Palace was a great way to honor Henri's legacy. Pamela, Henri's former wife, has been leading the Village since the mid-1990s.

"Just like the men and women who worked in the early stages of the space industry, Henri was a pioneer and a visionary," she said. "His dream to give back a bit of a childhood lost, to give families hope again, has not only become a reality but has grown and flourished. It seems fitting, then, that Henri's name will always be related to one of the most memorable and beloved parts of the Village."

The project will have interactive elements to entertain the children, and will hold mementos from the early days of the space era. Its colorful interior will include furniture and design elements inspired by both a 1950s diner and a sci-fi lounge, serving up such out-of-this-world treats as "The Starlite Scoop" and "The Solar System Sundae." Henri's Starlite Scoops will feature lower counters so that all children, even those in wheelchairs, can comfortably see into the ice cream bins to choose their favorites.

Designed by a team at Walt Disney Imagineering, the venue was envisioned as an intergalactic diner where astronauts "gather to relax and recharge after an adventurous day at space."

Give Kids The World Village has hosted more than 151,000 children whose wish is to enjoy central Florida's theme parks and attractions. The Village community will welcome more than 8,000 families in 2017. For more than a decade, the Village has been Four-Star rated by Charity Navigator, earning top marks for fiscal responsibility. Last year, it received a perfect score from Charity Navigator. GKTW is funded by generous donations from businesses, individuals, and other groups.
Jewish Academy of Orlando's kindergarten hosted a program, "Shema Pillowcase." This program is the culminating activity for the Shabbat and Havdalah units in kindergarten. All year the kindergarteners have a separate Shabbat celebration in their class on Fridays. This is a teaching Shabbat where they learn the prayers and traditions associated with Shabbat. They even role play and have "ima" and "aba" while celebrating. Following that, they learned how Shabbat ends and how the start of the week begins at the conclusion of Havdalah.

At the event, the students gather with their families at the school to lead the Havdalah service. The students led the prayers, decorated a keepsake pillowcase and decorated their own spice box.

"We have done this event for years," said Shari Wladis, principal. "It is a truly heart-warming experience that helps meld our studies with our core values."

To further support Jewish education and your local Jewish day school, to get involved or for any questions, please contact Alan Rusonik, Head of School, at 407-647-0713.
The most recent round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations failed because the Palestinian Authority (PA) responded to each Israeli concession with new demands and the Obama administration kept taking the Palestinians side, according to a veteran Israeli negotiator.

Brigadier-General (ret.) Michael Herzog, a member of Israels negotiating teams since 1993, disclosed previously unknown details about the U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian talks that took place in 2013-2014, in an essay for The American Interest Feb. 27.

Herzog disputed claims by former State Department envoy Martin Indyk that Israeli housing construction was the main reason the talks failed. I doubt that even a full settlement freeze would have salvaged these talks, Herzog wrote. More compelling causes determined their outcome.

The major cause for failure, he argued, was that each time Israel offered concessions, Palestinian leaders would respond by demanding more and by taking an extreme step. For example, in hopes of keeping the PA at the negotiating table, Israel at one point offered to give the Palestinians partial control over some sections of Area C, the portion of Judea and Samaria that is under Israeli control. The very next morning, the PA signed a unity pact with the terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza.

On another occasion, Secretary of State John Kerry hoped to convince the PA to extend the negotiations by pressing Israel to release an additional 400 imprisoned terrorists. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to convince his reluctant cabinet to agree to the demand. Before the cabinet meeting had even concluded, the PA announced it was asking 15 international agencies for recognition as the state of Palestineviolating the conditions Kerry set for the talks.

These Palestinian actions shattered our nascent hopes for a peace agreement, Herzog wrote. They confirmed the Palestinian mindset I have witnessed for years. It is as if negotiations are simply about exacting what Palestinians perceive to be their rights, rather than engaging in a two-way give-and-take.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that Kerry sometimes presented the PA with concessions by Israel that were more extensive than what the Israelis were actually offering. Our jaws dropped when they learned what Kerry had been offering the Palestinians, Herzog wrote.

In one instance, PA President Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Israeli Arabs be included among the terrorists who were going to be released. The Israelis were unwilling to bargain over its own citizens convicted under its own laws, and conveyed this position to the U.S. side early on, Herzog reported. They were soon surprised to find out that Kerry had nonetheless promised this to Abbas, later claiming a misunderstanding with Israel.

There was a similar misunderstanding when Abbas demanded the terrorists be permitted to return to the territories. The head of Israels General Security Services, Yoram Cohen, warned all along that some of these prisoners were still dangerous and would likely go back to murdering Israelis if released to their homes in the West Bank, and this was conveyed to the U.S. side early on, according to Herzog. Kerry nevertheless assured Abbas that all prisoners would be released to their homes, and when the Israelis protested, Kerrys aides said the diplomat was not aware of this nuance, he wrote.

U.S. negotiators put great pressure on the Israeli side to feed the extension of negotiations with gestures, Herzog recalled. It soon felt like a bazaar, with the Palestinians adding more and more to their cart of insatiable demands. Even after Kerry agreed to Israeli construction inside existing Jewish communities that were within the major settlement blocs, he wrote, the U.S. side complained about the construction and Kerry began to press for significant restraint in the future.

For Alan Baker, a former Israeli diplomat who directs the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Herzog revelations illustrate Kerrys bias against Israel. Baker, who served as Israels ambassador to Canada, told JNS.org he is not at all surprised to learn that Kerry misled the Israeli negotiators, because Kerry, despite his false claims of friendship and sympathy [toward Israel], consistently displayed ignorance, utter naivete, and even hostility.

President Barack Obama made one last attempt to convince the PA to continue negotiating. At a White House meeting March 17, 2014, Herzog wrote that Abbas was presented with new ideas and formulations that departed from traditional official U.S. positions and tilted toward his positions and that were never shared with Israel. One of the ideas involved turning the Old City of Jerusalem and adjoining neighborhoods into the capital of Palestine. Abbas never responded, and to this day, he has not provided a response, Herzog concluded.

David Bukay, a professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Haifa, told JNS.org that Herzogs account demonstrates how the fundamental problem in the negotiations was the Obama administrations failure to understand that the PAs goal is ultimately to conquer Israel in its entirety. That, he said, is why all the mediators and schemes have failed in finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and why we are still at square one.

Raphael Israeli, an emeritus professor of Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University, said the tactics used by the PA in the 2013-2014 negotiations show that the Palestinian leadership will accept only peace on their terms, which ultimately can involve only a de-Zionized, de-Judaized Israel, never a Jewish state.
The Orlando Chapter of Hadassah recently held the Bunny Rosen Women's Heart Health Fashion Show Luncheon at the Westin Hotel in Lake Mary/Heathrow. Once again this annual event proved to be a great success. In keeping with Hadassah's 2016-2017 "Celebration of Women," the theme of "My Fair Lady-Race Day at Royal Ascot" made for an entertaining afternoon with genial company, excellent food and a beautiful venue.

This event contributes charitable funds to promote heart-health awareness, training and information to women in the greater Orlando area. The chapter also provides funds for research to unravel the mysteries of heart disease through the Hadassah Medical Organization's Heart Institute in Jerusalem.

Currently, physicians at HMO are researching ways to use specialized stem cells to replace cells lost to heart attacks or disease. A technique is under investigation that would enable a patient's own cells to repair the heart, as opposed to transplanting foreign cells from outside the body. The hope is to induce parts of the heart to regenerate and limit the damage done by heart attacks.

In the not so distant future Hadassah doctors hope to take a CT or MRI picture of a person's heart valve, model the image with a 3D printer, and then build a personalized new valve to implant in an individual's heart. This work is preliminary but it may be the next frontier in personalized medicine as it relates to cardiology.

These are but a few of the concepts Hadassah researchers are working on to improve heart health in the U.S. and abroad.

The members of the Orlando Chapter have contributed their time and funds to support these extraordinary medical projects as well to promote heart disease awareness among area women. We wish to thank those whose exceptional efforts led to the rousing success of this annual event. Our appreciation to Susan Livingstone for her overall support, and financial direction and to Emily Rotenberg for her assistance throughout the planning and implementation of the event. Our gratitude to principal sponsor Rita Weissmann for her advice and assistance whenever called upon.

Models (l-r), Sheida Jahani, Roslyn Leventhal, Bernice Davids, Susie Stone, Janet Wenger, and Lara Schwartz.

Kudos to Paula Roth for planning and preparing the lovely centerpieces and to Nancy Greenfield for handling the arduous job of taking reservations, meal requests and organizing the seating. Hats off to Joan Schwebel for preparing the beautiful gift baskets and handling the basket auction. And speaking of hats, Joan was the winner of our Royal Ascot Race Day Hat Contest. Our own "Eliza Doolittle," Morgan Schwartz, was the runner-up.

A huge thank you to Marj Smith for her efforts to provide black and white cookies as a reward to all who dressed in black and white to mimic the film's race day. We gratefully acknowledge Andrea Silverman, Carol Wolfson, Debbie Selnick and Paula Rubin, our fund raisers, and Ima Coordinator, Claudia Glick, whose efforts brought in a record number of baskets and contributions for our Chinese auction and to Roslyn Leventhal our problem solver who stepped in with solutions whenever needed. Thanks to Marcia Wasserman for coordinating the event and designing the programs and place cards.

Our gratitude to our models, sponsors, members, and Chico's Winter Park and Altamonte Springs whose efforts made this event possible.
Emma Kauffman and Jacob Stein donate their Gan Rishonim Four's classroom tzedekah money to CEO Keith Dvorchik and #ThenNowAndAlways campaign chair Jodi Krinker, who led the successful fundraising campaign.

Due to the added costs resulting from the recent bomb threats that JCCs have received since Jan. 4, The Roth Family Jewish Community Center took a risk. In order to raise the needed monies to cover the operating expenses of the JCC impacted by the threats, a 24-hour online fundraiser for a total goal of $200,000 was set up. If the goal was not met in that timeframe, all the donations would be returned.

To reach this goal, three anonymous friends of the JCC had set up matching gifts of 3:1 (a $25 gift would become $100, and so on).

The online website opened at 6 p.m. on March 8. In the event room at the JCC, chaired by JCC volunteers Samantha Taylor and Rita Issak, JCC CEO Keith Dvorchik, Executive Director Robby Etzkin, Marketing Director Amy Schwartz Kimlat, and #ThenNowAndAlways campaign volunteer chair Jodi Krinker, along with many others, sat on furniture donated by Orlando Party & Wedding Rentals watching a big screen with the web page showing donations coming in-and they came in fast and stead.

"There was a monitor that showed the percentage of where we were," said Krinker. "And it kept going up!"

Within the first two hours the $200,000 goal was met.

"WE DID IT! And we completely crushed our $200,000 goal!" said an ecstatic Dvorchik.

Only two hours into the fundraiser and calls still coming in, a $40,000 bonus round was initiated-and was met in another two hours.

"This is the fastest our fundraising platform, Charidy, has ever seen a campaign hit its goal! We're so thankful to our 550+ individual donors," Dvorchik said in an email to JCC members, and then announced a second bonus round. Because they were inspired by the overwhelming support of the Jewish community, longtime supporters Dick and Dottie Appelbaum pledged a new $20,000 match.

Again, the goal was met.

"We were floored," said Krinker.

Then, with only four hours left in the fundraiser, Marilyn Shapiro, Samantha and John Taylor, Susie and Ed Kleiman, Autumn and Andrew Ames, and an anonymous donor pledged $60,000 in matching gifts. So, the JCC announced they were doubling all gifts.

The final goal was set at $426,000.

When the deadline came, 916 individuals had donated a total of $428,274.

"The donations came from all demographics and all ages," Krinker said, "even children gave and people from Israel!"

"To this amazingly strong community, we say thank you-on behalf of the entire staff, the Board of Directors, and all of the lives that our JCC has touched then, now and always. Together, we showed the world that community always wins," said Dvorchik.

The final moments of the fundraiser were videoed and an obviously tired but elated Dvorchik and Etzkin spoke on camera.

"I am completely awed and blown away by the love and support for the Roth Family Jewish Community Center. The JCC is going to flourish. We're going to grow. We're going to be the place everybody wants to be."
By Ben Sales

(JTA)When Cincinnatis Mayerson Jewish Community Center was hit with a bomb threat on Jan. 18, Adam Bellows was satisfied with how the staff handled the preschool kids, including his two-year-old son.

The kids, said Bellows, had no idea the threat had happened. They were evacuated and taken to a secure location where they watched cartoons.

But after he got home, Bellows son started having a tough time. He couldnt sleep, and was scared to return to preschool the next day.

It was hard to see how much it disturbed him, Bellows said. He wasnt scared at the time or anything, but the next day he was saying, I dont want to go to the JCC. He kept asking, Are we going to watch Mickey Mouse again? Is mommy going to come pick me up again? His world was interrupted.

More than 100 bomb threats have targeted JCCs, day schools and other Jewish institutions, coming in six waves since the beginning of the year. The latest wave, on Tuesday, targeted more than a dozen locationsincluding JCCs, schools and offices of the Anti-Defamation League.

While many JCCs report that members and preschoolers are staying put, there have been some exceptions. In Birmingham, Alabama, where the JCC has been targeted four separate times, six families have withdrawn their children.

Parents who spoke to JTA were happy with how the centers have handled the threats. The kids have returned promptly to their programs, and business has been able to carry on as usual

She wasnt scared, she wasnt worried, said Matt Mandell, 39, of his four-year-old, a preschooler at the JCC in Rockville, Maryland, which was threatened on Jan. 9. They did a great job of keeping everyone calm and not getting them scared unnecessarily. I feel very, very comfortable with it. Theres only so much you can do.

And yet despite appeals from JCCs for calm and defiance, the repeated bomb threats have taken their toll. The Roth Family JCC in Orlando held an online fundraiser March 8, called #ThenNowAndAlways, whose donor pitch said that, in light of challenges greater than we expected, this year it will take significant effort just for us to break even. (The community more than broke even with a resounding responds to meet the goal within the first two hours of the 24-hour fundraiser, and then raising an additional $228,000 before the deadline.)

An open letter to President Donald Trump, signed by all 100 U.S. senators, urged specific action on anti-Semitism and alluded to the fiscal pressure on JCCs.

We are concerned that the number of incidents is accelerating and failure to address and deter these threats will place innocent people at risk and threaten the financial viability of JCCs, many of which are institutions in their communities, the March 7 letter said.

Even among parents who are keeping their kids in JCC preschools, the bomb threats are creating stress in a place meant to be immune from danger. Even as their kids remain unaware of the calls, theyve resulted in scenes of cribs being pulled outside, and law enforcement officials investigating campuses. Last month, the Anti-Defamation League put out a brochure titled, 5 Tips for Talking with Children about Bomb Threats at Jewish Community Centers.

While the threats have all been hoaxes, the disruption and inconvenience are having an impact on members and parents who might have other options.

Im not scared, Im infuriated, said Emily Hausman, 29, whose three kids all attend preschool at the Birmingham JCC. I find the whole thing infuriating. A threat is just a threat. Theyre not real, and were being inconvenienced, and our poor kids are being inconvenienced, and dragged out into the rain.

In the wake of the threats, some JCCs have upped security, posting guards, hiring security coordinators or limiting access to the building. JCCs have sent parents a series of emails and text messages updating them on the threats and responses, and have held community meetings to address concerns.

Others are wary of becoming less welcoming by hardening their facilities, and undermining the purpose of a community center.

While they are responding well to some of these concerns, theyve stuck to this theory, which in my opinion is a little head-in-the-sand, that were an open facility, weve been that way for 100 years, were going to stay that way, said Brian Federman, a lifelong member of the West Hartford JCC, which received a threat on Jan. 18.

David Jacobs, the West Hartford JCCs executive director, told JTA the centers staff is trained to respond to a variety of threats, and is aware of everyone who enters and leaves the building.

Despite his complaints, Federman says he and his wife have not at all discussed pulling their daughter out of the preschool. Other parents agreed, and said they view JCCs as a local hub they dont want to abandon.

Its really troubling, and really scary, but we live at that center, said Nurit Friedberg, whose 2-year-old daughter goes to preschool at the JCC of Greater Columbus. Whether were exercising or swimming, were there six days a week. She loves her school. We live there, and the idea of avoiding it doesnt occur to me.

Several parents werent shocked when anti-Semitism came to the JCC. Sam Zerin, the parent of a 22-month-old at the JCC in Providence, said the Feb. 27 bomb threat there reminded him of an incident from his childhood.

When Zerin was 13, anonymous threats arrived at his Indiana public school promising a mass shooting of Jews on Adolf Hitlers birthday. While the shooting didnt happen, students had to participate in response drills, and Zerin skipped school that day. He said the incident taught him that anti-Semitism, even at school, is part of being Jewish.

On the one hand, its like, Oh my God, how is this happening, Zerin said. On the other hand, its like some things never change, and life goes on. Life has to go on. To a certain extent, I dont want to give the anti-Semites what they want.
(JTA)At least 12 Jewish community centers and institutions across North America and four Anti-Defamation League offices have received threats of lethal attack, the sixth such wave since the beginning of the year.

As of Tuesday afternoon, March 7, threats had been reported at Jewish institutions in Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, Oregon, Florida, Alabama and at least two community centers in New York, according to Secure Community Network, the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America. In addition, two threats were directed toward Canadian JCCs, in Toronto and London, Ontario.

Some threats were called in over the phone, others were emailed.

Chicago5, NBCs Chicago affiliate, reported a bomb threat at the Chicago Jewish Day School on the citys North Side. The Boston Herald reported that a day school housed at Temple Beth Shalom in Framingham, Massachusetts, and the Solomon Schechter Day School in Newton, Massachusetts, were both evacuated on Tuesday.

At the JCC in Syracuse, New York, the threat was different in nature from the others, according to Paul Goldenberg, the SCN director, who declined to elaborate. On Twitter, the Syracuse JCC said people inside had sheltered in place before getting the all-clear.

Meanwhile, the ADL said its national office in New York, its office in Washington, D.C., and its regional offices in Atlanta and Boston had been threatened.

This is not normal. We will not be deterred or intimidated, ADLs CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement. It is time for action, and we call on the administration and Congress to take concrete steps to catch those threatening the Jewish community.

The Portland, Oregon, threat came in Monday evening by email. The JCC alerted local police and the FBI and closed early for a sweep.

In Rochester, the evacuation of members and staff on Tuesday was ordered shortly before 6 a.m., the local ABC affiliate 13WHAM reported. About 75 people were evacuated from the building. Parents whose children attend the JCC day care were notified and asked to make alternate child care arrangements for the day, according to the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper.

Local and state police officers and FBI agents reportedly were on the scene to sweep the building.

The bomb threat comes less than a week after at least five headstones were toppled at the Waad Hakolel Cemetery, also known as the Stone Road Cemetery, in Rochester.

A JCC Toronto client posted photos on Facebook of the downtown building being evacuated. We are huddled inside the Second Cup where they are giving out free coffee and tea, she said, referring to the Canadian coffee shop chain.

Ron Halber, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, said a threat to the JCC in Rockville, Maryland, was emailed late Monday night, and necessitated an additional sweep of the premises with bomb-sniffing dogs, in addition to the routine daily sweep the JCC undergoes There was no evacuation, he said.

The person who is doing this will fail, Halber said. If anything its bringing people together, it makes people want to stand up more, this is being a catalyst for greater Jewish involvement and pride.

Goldenberg, the SCN director, said that in every instance protocols were observed and went smoothly.

The protocols and processes that these institutions have in place have gone smoothly, he said. Our constituents and members have remained safe.

More than 100 Jewish institutions, mostly JCCs, have received bomb threats since the beginning of the year. The last two weeks saw vandalism at Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia, St. Louis and Rochester, as well as two more waves of bomb threats called into JCCs, schools and institutions across the country, representing the fourth and fifth waves of such harassment this year. No explosive device was found after any of the calls.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer condemned a new wave of bomb threats against Jewish sites, including Jewish community centers and Anti-Defamation League offices.

I want to acknowledge that theres been an additional wave of threats to Jewish community centers and Anti-Defamation League offices, Spicer told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday.

I share the presidents thoughts that he vehemently hopes that we dont continue to have to share these reports with you. But as long as they do continue, well continue to condemn them and look at ways in which we can stop them, he said.

Trump, who has come under fire for delayed responses to the threats, noted them during his address to a joint session of Congress last week.

Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our nations path toward civil rights and the work that still remains, Trump said at the opening of his speech. Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last weeks shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.
An extremist Arab Knesset member who endorses violence and has been condemned by the Likud and Labor parties alike was cheered at the recent J Street national conference. For an organization that supposedly promotes peaceful coexistence, they sure have some strange bedfellows!

The object of J Streets enthusiastic applause was Member of Knesset Ayman Odeh, leader of the parliamentary bloc known as the Joint Arab List.

Odeh is well-known in Israel for his extremist rhetoric. Last year, for example, he claimed that Israel murdered Yasser Arafat. Not only is that a discredited conspiracy theory, but its a potentially lethal blood libel, because it could incite Arabs to murder Jews in revenge.

Not that Odeh has any problem with Palestinian violence. In an interview with Israel Army Radio on October 6, 2015, Odeh was asked about that weeks Palestinian murders of U.S. citizen Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama. Their four young children, seated in the back of the Henkin family car, watched their parents being murdered. At first, Odeh avoided endorsing the murders, but then he added that Palestinians have a right to struggle against Israel. He cited the first Intifada as an example of struggle which is fully justified.

Pressed by the interviewer as to whether throwing rocks at Jews is legitimate, Odeh replied, I always blame the occupation for being guilty. I cannot tell the nation how to struggle, where and which target to throw the rock. I do not put red lines on the Arab Palestinian nation.

Israeli political figures from right to left denounced Odehs support for violence.

MK Itzik Shmuly (Zionist Union) said Odehs statements were angering and disappointing. I understand MK Shmulys anger. Many Israelis have been permanently maimed, and some even murdered, by Palestinian rock-throwers.

I wonder if anybody at the J Street conference remembers 64-year-old Alexander Levlovitz, who was driving through Jerusalem with two friends, on their way home from Rosh Hashanah dinner, when Palestinian rock-throwers caused his car to crash, killing him. I wonder if the J Street delegates recognize the names of U.S. citizen Asher Palmer and his young son, Yonatan. Terrorists rocks crashed through their front windshield, causing the car to crash and killing both Asher and Yonatan.

Rocks are not the only kind of violence that Odeh is comfortable with. In an interview with Al-Arabiya television March 4, 2016, Odeh was asked about the wave of Palestinian knife attacks against Israelis that was then raging. He replied, We should examine our history and the history of the nations to determine strategies. There is no doubt that a popular intifada is most beneficial to the Palestinian people. I, from my place, cannot tell the Palestinian people how to resist.

Sadly, J Streets support for Odeh was not diminished by the fact that several representatives of his bloc last year paid a solidarity visit to the family of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered an American Jewish peace activistin other words, someone from J Streets own camp.

On Oct. 13, 2015, Baha Alyan and a fellow terrorist, armed with guns and knives, boarded a bus in Jerusalem. One of the passengers was 78-year-old Richard Lakin, a civil rights veteran from Connecticut. Lakin taught English to Israeli and Palestinian children in Jerusalem and never missed a peace rally, according to his rabbi. Thats the kind of resume that many J Streeters undoubtedly boast, as well.

In February 2016, three Knesset members from Odehs Joint Arab List decided to show their solidarity with Palestinian terrorism by meeting with members of dead terrorists families, including Baha Alyans father. Their action, which was denounced across the Israeli political spectrum, put party leader Odeh to the test. Would he penalize MKs Hanin Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka and Basel Ghattas for their pro-terrorist action? Would he at least condemn them? Not at all. Ayman Odeh, the beloved speaker at the J Street conference, was not bothered in the least by his comrades pro-terror stance.

Did even one J Street official ask Odeh about Richard Lakin? Did even one delegate to the conference wonder why they were applauding a man who refused to penalize or even criticize supporters of Lakins killer?

In a recent article, I wrote about another Odeh (I have no idea if the two are in any way related)Rasmea Odeh, the convicted murderer of two Israeli college students. I asked how the mainstream American Jewish left would respond to the news that Rasmea will be speaking at the upcoming national conference of a Jewish anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace. I called on Jewish doves to distance themselves from Arab terrorists such as Rasmeah Odeh. Not only did they not do so, but now one of them, J Street, has itself openly embraced another terror supporter. What a tragedy!

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
(JTA)The fear itself thing? FDR was on to something.

The rash of JCC bomb threats and cemetery desecrations, combined with a general sense that the country is becoming more intolerant, has Jews on edge in ways they havent been in years. The head of a major American Jewish organization wrote to me that the recent outbreak of anti-Semitic activity is the worst America has seen since the 1930s. (Its not.)

Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress has declared that in recent weeks and months we have witnessed an unprecedented and inconceivable escalation of anti-Semitic acts in the United Statesagain, an exaggeration.

The stats, tracked rigorously but narrowly by the Anti-Defamation League and haphazardly by the FBI, arent in for 2016 or early 2017, the period covering the presidential campaign and that presumably would include the kinds of spikes many would like to attribute to Donald Trumps racially and ethnically charged campaign and emboldening of the alt-right.

One of the more worrisome accountings came from the NYPD, which found that anti-Semitic incidents were up 94 percent in the city over this time last year, with 35 anti-Semitic incidents reported in January and February.

But such numbers dont yet point to an unprecedented and inconceivable escalation in anti-Semitism. And they dont take into account the counter-evidence, like a Pew study that found that Jews are the most warmly regarded religious group in the U.S. (Great news! said parents and staff huddled outside an evacuated JCC). Or the acts of kindness and concern that followed many of the attacks, from Muslims raising money to restore a vandalized cemetery to the unanimous Senate letter urging the White House to boost security measures at Jewish institutions and assure the investigation and punishment of hate crimes.

Nor can it be overlooked that American Jews are as comfortable and accepted as they have ever been in history. No school, no neighborhood and no profession is off limits. Jews are over-represented in politics, academia and media. Even the high rate of intermarriage is a sign of social acceptance of Jews. Unlike many parts of Europe, where armed guards protect synagogues and observant Jewish men often hide their kippot under caps, American Jews can be out, proud and as loud as they want to be.

But the numbers and sociology cant account for the way Jews feel, and right now many are not feeling good. The high levels of Jewish anxiety owe t0 a combination of the commander in chief, the political mood, the nature of the JCC attacks and the media.

Lets start with President Trump: Most Jews didnt vote for him, and regarded his campaign antics as particularly unsettling, from his appeal among white supremacists and ethno-nationalists to his willingness to exploit the countrys racial and ethnic divides.

In his embrace of a fiercely chauvinistic economic nationalism, White House strategist Steve Bannon represents something unprecedented and inconceivable in the minds of many Jews. Until Trump, resurgent nationalism seemed very much a problem for Europe, where economic malaise, fear of immigrants and the ghosts of the 20th century have combined into a particularly toxic brew on the right.

Recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike gave at least lip service to the idea of America as a vivid tapestry in which people of all races, religions and nationalities are welcome. Bannon, youll recall, is not just a foe of illegal immigration, but of legal immigration, which has kinda overwhelmed the country, as he said in a 2016 radio interview with (wait for it) Trump adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller.

Even for those who believe Trump is the savior Israel has been waiting for, and who accept his disavowals of the alt-right, it upset Jewish assumptions about their position as a privileged minority when Trump couldnt bring himself to forthrightly denounce the JCC threats and other anti-Semitic acts.

The nature of the JCC attacks are diabolically brilliant in their ability to unsettle Jews. I imagine a lone wolf or a team of hackers, armed with some cheap electronics and a motive to maximize mischief, working off an easy to find list of institutions with Jewish and community in their very names. There are far fewer JCCs than synagogues, but targeting JCCs assures you of hitting at least one easily identifiable Jewish institution in every consequential Jewish community across the country. Im betting its only an unhappy accident that the hoaxer picked one of the few Jewish places that cuts across all movements and ideologies, and even attracts non-Jews to their fitness centers and childcare programs. That potentially puts every Jew on edge.

Coverage of these attacks, while unavoidable, also instills fear. As the editor of a Jewish news service, I feel implicated: What if in the name of informing the community, we are merely spreading anxiety? Readers rely on us to cover acts of anti-Semitism large and small. These include nasty anti-Zionist demonstrations on college campuses, grotesque internet memes originating with the alt-right and increasingly bizarre examples of swastika graffiti, including some carved in snow and one shaped out of human feces.

But do these various acts, in a country of over 300 million, represent a growing trend or the salacious exception?

And what if we and the anti-Semitism watchdogs are wrong? What if the JCC attacks arent the vanguard of the New Anti-Semitism, but a weird and personal vendetta on the part of the hoaxer? Sure enough, Juan Thompson, a suspected copycat charged last week in at least eight of the JCC attacks, turns out to be an unhinged young man whose apparent motivation wasnt even anti-Semitism but revenge on an old flame.

That doesnt make the targeted Jew or Jewish institution feel any better. Fear has its own dynamic. JCCs arent talking about the members or preschool students theyve lost as a result of the hoaxes, but word is getting out that the numbers might be significant. You cant blame the families who just dont need the tsurris, but you can look at your own behavior and ask in what ways you are making a bad situation worse.

So yes, we need strong enforcement of our hate crimes laws. And institutions that have the security they need. And careful monitoring of anti-Semitism in all its forms. And government leaders who have the backs of targeted minorities and pledge to defend the diversity of multicultural America.

But we also need a reminder that Jews have it pretty good here, and that we shouldnt give too much power to a kid with a Sharpie, or a hacker with a speed-dial, or a disturbed, disgraced stalker. We have to stand up and say these institutions are ours, and were here to stay.
French President Francois Hollande is disturbed that President Donald Trump criticized a U.S. ally, describing the terrorism that has plagued France in recent years as the product of an open border policy. Yet it is Hollande who should self-reflect on his own criticism of a French ally.

Take a look at whats happening in Germany, Trump said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. Take a look at whats happened in France. Take a look at Nice and Paris. We fully understand that national security begins with border security.

Hollande responded to Trumps comments with some pique, saying, I think its never a good idea to show the least disapproval with respect to an ally. I wouldnt do that to an ally and I would ask that the American president not do that with regard to France.

That would be a policy of extreme forbearancenever to publicly express the least disapproval or doubt about an allys policy, or a situation produced by a policy?

Where would that leave former French President Jacques Chirac, who publicly attacked President George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq as unwarranted and unjustified, and expressed great reservations about Bushs doctrine of pre-emption?

For that matter, where would it leave Frances current uninhibited criticism of Israeli policies, like permitting Jews to live and build homes in communities in the West Bank?

This January, Hollande said, The two-state solution is threatened due to settlements, as well as terrorists who were always afraid of peace. Back in 2013, he declared, France calls for the total and definitive end to settlement building because it compromises the two-state solution.

With these statements, Hollande not only displayed the least disapproval of a friendly country, but publicly rebuked that nation. (Moreover, Palestinian terrorists are not afraid of peace, as Hollande arguedthey oppose peace until Israel disappears. But that is another matter.)

Hollandes remarks are not an exceptional case of Gallic brusqueness. In 2009, his predecessor, President Nicolas Sarkozy, declared very publiclyin an address to the Knesset in Jerusalem, no lessthat peace cannot be achieved without a complete and immediate cessation of the settlements... Peace cannot be achieved without the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of two states and guaranteeing freedom of access to holy sites for all religions.

In short, French presidents, past and present, have felt free to publicly criticize Jewish residence in the West Bank as at least partially responsible for the lack of peace. They have challenged the national unity of Israelis who oppose re-dividing Jerusalem.

French officials have gone even further. In 2001, without citing any specific Israeli policy, Frances ambassador to the U.K. at the time, Daniel Bernard, felt free to assert that all the current troubles in the world are because of that s****y little country Israel.

Bernard was not apologetic, nor was he sacked. The French Foreign Ministry even decried the malevolent insinuations that Bernard was anti-Semitic.

The broader question is not whether criticism of an ally in any given instance is correct or mistaken, but rather, whether it can or should be expressed. Certainly, French leaders have often believed that such criticism can and should be voiced.

Why, then, does Hollande take offense when Trump states the obviousthat mass immigration to Europe from the Middle East has greatly enlarged the Muslim communities from which radical Muslim terrorists have sprung? This was not even an explicit criticism of French immigration and security policies, though it was certainly an implied one.

It was also a well-based critique. The perpetrators of the January 2015 Paris massacres at the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (12 murdered) and at the Hyper Cacher supermarket (four murdered) were all children of Muslim immigrants. The perpetrators of the November 2015 mass-casualty attacks in Paris (130 murdered) consisted of both foreign- and local-born radical Muslims, including several who had fought in Syria and several who entered France amid the flow of refugees from Muslim-majority countries.

More recently, the perpetrator of the July 2016 truck massacre in Nice (86 murdered) was an immigrant from Tunisia.

Clearly, identifying and preventing radical Muslims from entering a country is not a complete solutiona perfectly moderate Muslim with no past terrorist associations can immigrate, only to radicalize later, like the Nice attack perpetrator. But a wiser immigration policy is surely a vital element of any responsible effort to protect such a country.

Trump has promised no less for America, and the record as it already stands obliges him to act on this imperativeaccording to a 2016 report by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, 380 out of 580 people convicted in terror cases since 9/11 were foreign-born.

Of course, if French leaders want to adopt a policy of desisting from all public criticism of allies, both the U.S. and Israel would undoubtedly be pleased. In the meantime, everyone, including Hollande, must roll with the punches.

Morton A. Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization of America.
Does your bacon glow in the dark?

If so, you may have gotten hold of a radioactive pig. Yep, I said radioactive pig.

It is a problem of global proportions, or at least a problem where radioactive pigs raise hell.

Six years after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, experts who will probably never live anywhere near it say radiation is now low enough that former residents can safely return home. The problem is, with no humans around, wild boars in the area have bred like rabbits and the aggressive  and potentially radioactive  creatures freely roam the abandoned towns.

It is not really clear now which is the master of the town, people or wild boars, Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie, told Reuters this month. If we dont get rid of them and turn this into a human-led town, the situation will get even wilder and uninhabitable.

Japan isnt the only country plagued by radioactive pigs. In 2013, the New York Daily News reported that Italian officials discovered several cases of radioactive boars in the northern part of their country. Because there are no nuclear power stations in Italy, experts believe the radiation came from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

In 2010, the NPR show All Things Considered discussed the discovery of radioactive pigs in Germany.

Charles Hawley, editor of Spiegel Online International in Berlin, said the number of wild boars in his neck of the woods was estimated to be around 2.5 million and quite a few of them are indeed radioactive, mostly in southern Germany. That was sort of the major fallout zone of the Chernobyl disaster, and so as a result, there's quite a bit of radioactivity still in the ground.

And what kind of problems do radioactive pigs cause?

Well, there are stories of them bursting into supermarkets, Hawley told NPR. Occasionally, they'll break up a church meeting. Quite often they'll be causing car accidents, that kind of thing.

As the interim senior nuclear swine correspondent for this award-winning publication, Ive put together the following Q&A to help you understand and deal with this growing threat.

Q. It seems radioactive pigs are a problem in faraway places, places that have previously had trouble with other evil creatures like Godzilla, Mothra and Hitler. Should we worry here in the good ol USA?

A. Yes. All it takes is one spilled cup of coffee at the Springfield Nuclear Plant and radioactive pigs will swarm the country like locusts  radioactive locusts with an unquenchable thirst for human blood and a three-movie deal with the SyFy channel.

Q. I plan on visiting Germany this spring and would like to go to supermarket to purchase beer and bratwurst because that is all I know about the countrys cuisine and then go to a church meeting. What should I do if a radioactive pig bursts in?

A. First, remain calm. Do not make eye contact. If approached and confronted by a radioactive pig, tell him you are an American tourist and a personal friend of TV icon David Hasselhoff. All Germans love David Hasselhoff, even the radioactive pigs.

Q. What happens if I eat a radioactive pig? Is it dangerous?

A: As Charles Hawley told NPR, it's not so much of a huge danger for people. Generally, radioactivity builds up over time in people. And if you're eating boar every meal that has never been checked for radioactivity, it could be a problem over time. But most people, of course, are not.

But, if you are eating plenty of radioactive pig, there are some advantages. For instance, eventually youll be able to cook a Hot Pocket just by holding it in your hand.

And, as Porky might say, Th-th-th-that's all folks!

Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News and a humor columnist.
Thank you for your recent editorial explaining what this Republican replacement for the Affordable Health Care Act really is.

I knew some of this but your editorial gave me a fuller picture of how this is a law that lets the rich pay less while the poor, low, and even middle-income people will be paying more, putting them further away from access to health care.

I agree with your conclusion that a single-payer system, something like Medicare for everyone, is the best long-term alternative. This would reduce both the costs of administration of the system and excess profits and the gain then could be spent on actual care.

Further we know that when people have regular access to health care with prevention services and early intervention, this not only improves peoples health but also reduces the cost of care for all.

And we also know that the single biggest cause of bankruptcies is catastrophic medical expenses so everyone needs to be protected from this. When a serious illness strikes, knowing that regardless of income one has basic coverage not only reduces financial stress but also psychological harm which aids in illness recovery.

We all know of people who have gotten seriously sick, lost their job and health coverage. They can neither afford any insurance on the private market nor is there any public coverage, so they and their family are in a terrible state.

Another advantage for universal coverage is that it reduces the risk entrepreneurs take on when they launch new enterprises and thereby encourages more people to create startups and more jobs.

The concept of insurance is to spread the risk out so that when a need arises, help is available. Wise people do this voluntarily by buying it on the open market if they can afford it. Wise laws help and if necessary compel people who dont want to pay their part and then rely on the others who are doing their part to bail them out.

The law requires all owners of automobiles to have liability insurance so when an accident occurs, they will have the resources needed to pay whats due. The same should follow in the health insurance area with help for those who cant afford the cost of premiums such as the disabled, dependent children, and the poor.

With universal coverage, help with premium payments could be based on a sliding scale of income just as with the graduated income tax system.

My sister and her family are immigrants to Canada and they have basic coverage for everyone which is a real blessing providing all with a sense of security. And they are well pleased with the care their family has received.

We can make universal coverage happen here, as it has in all other developed countries, if our leaders present a clear pathway toward this goal and we organize to create the political will to make it happen.

Bill Garrard

Hickory

Response to Eckards letter to the editor

In response to your letter inquiring about our local Indivisible group, we are sure that you have taken the time to research our Indivisible chapter that is a part of a much more substantial socio-political force moving voters to action all over the nation.

We are more than happy to elaborate on our local Indivisible group and the values we hold.

To begin with, as we are sure you took the time to read the helpful guide that you so affectionately referred to, it is true that it serves as kind of a main lever in our machine for political unity, if you will.

We are a local non-partisan group of individuals who feel concerned for the health of our democracy, civil liberties, and human rights. Our members contribute individual concerns on a plethora of wide ranging issues. Therefore, as a group, we concluded that if we focused on one issue at a time, it would serve better to communicate our message to our strongly red community by making it quite clear and simple for you to understand.

We regret that this simplified message was not received as intended.

The A.C.A. has wonderful qualities, and it has flaws. We urge McHenry, and all N.C. representatives and senators to work with their constituents, to support policies that help their fellow citizens live happier, safer, longer, more quality lives. In reply to your suggestion that by repealing the A.C.A. no one will be left without health care, we respectfully disagree with you.

Common conservative rhetoric of give him a chance is now so conveniently preached. Apply that to the A.C.A, and reasonable conservative members of congress (MOC) would have given the A.C.A. a chance instead of not working for several years except when it was to try and to repeal it.

Conservative MOCS have the opportunity to improve the law. So, when you are angry about homeless veterans (as we all are), try taking your own advice. Would they have expanded state marketplaces and accepted Medicaid expansions, then greater the plans, the coverage, and the competition there could have been.

The take-away here is a universal truth eloquently orated by Christ in the Apostle Matthew- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

As you said, space does not allow all of the issues to be addressed. So, the next time we have a demonstration that is literally about one specific issue, please pay attention to what is being advocated for instead of pivoting to other issues in a way that is not helpful to finding common ground. Which, we are confident we have despite our political labels.

God bless these United States; one nation, Indivisible, for liberty and justice for all.

Indivisible Citizens of Catawba County

Hickory
The North Carolina General Assembly recently proposed bringing back the Teaching Fellows Program to help improve recruitment of new teachers in the state.

Its a program the General Assembly voted to end in 2011.

On Tuesday, Sen. Chad Barefoot (R-Wake) and Rep. Craig Horn (R-Union) filed Senate Bill 252 and House Bill 339.

While the name is the same, its not exactly what many would remember from the previous program the state created in 1987.

The original Teaching Fellows Program offered competitive, four-year scholarships in return for a commitment to teach in North Carolina public schools for at least four years, according to a Public School Forum of North Carolina report.

If a recipient could not repay the scholarship through teaching service, the loan had to be repaid to the state with 10 percent interest.

According to the 2017 proposed bill, the state promises to forgive a Teaching Fellows loan if, within 10 years after graduation from a licensure program, a recipient serves as a teacher in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or special education licensure area two years for every year the recipient was awarded the loan.

Working at a low-performing school would increase the time to forgive the loan  a year for a year.

The loans would pay up to $8,250 per year for up to four years at any of the five institutions of higher education chosen by the governing commission.

The return of a program like Teaching Fellows would be a great step in the right direction to recruit and retain high quality future teachers for North Carolina, Catawba County Schools superintendent Matthew Stover said.

The last cohort of original Teaching Fellows students graduated in 2015.

The overall state attrition rate of teachers leaving the profession for 2014-2015 was 14.84 percent, up from 11.2 percent in 2010-2011, according to a report by the North Carolina General Assembly.

The original program was offered at 17 public and private colleges and universities in North Carolina, generated 47,611 applications, enrolled 10,708 Fellows, and produced 8,523 graduates.

During the 2013-14 school year, 4,632 Fellows were employed throughout the state with 20 or more in 60 of the states counties including Catawba, Caldwell, Burke, Lincoln and Alexander.

Hickory Public Schools employs more than 22 within their own system, the systems Director of Communications Beverly Snowden said.

"The teaching fellows program has always been a calling card for our state and a wonderful incentive to recruit and retain extraordinary teachers in our school district, Newton-Conover City Schools Superintendent David Stegall said.

New policy, new focus

The focus of drawing in new teachers for STEM classes also is part of a current trend school systems have seen throughout the state.

Balls Creek Elementary Principal Rita Lail said the need for more STEM trained teachers has grown because of what local industries and businesses have been asking from their school systems.

They need that science and technology and engineering, all of those things that make the students marketable, Lail said.

Two years ago, her school established a fulltime position and class dedicated to STEAM, a cousin program to STEM  just add the component of the arts to the others.

Stephanie Eddings was chosen to fill the role. This is Eddings 11th year at Balls Creek, and prior to becoming the schools STEAM teacher, she taught fifth grade science and reading and also had a background in computer technology.

Typically, weve had teachers who have been so focused on one area of science, whether its biology, chemistry and then you had your technology teachers who were separate, Lail said. Now with the STEM focus its bringing all those pieces together, like tying in a 3-D printer into a science class.

She certainly sees the value of having more teachers trained with that broad range of knowledge.

The proposed bill's other focus of encouraging new teachers to work in low performing schools reflects one of the shortcomings in the original Teaching Fellows Program, according to a 2012 University of North Carolina study.

First, while a key goal of the original program was to help deploy teachers to schools with lower-performing, higher-poverty students, the study found Teaching Fellows taught in schools and classrooms with greater concentrations of higher-performing, lower-poverty students.

There were no restrictions regarding where a Teaching Fellow taught, only that service payback had to be in a public school in North Carolina.

So while Teaching Fellows today work in every county in North Carolina, they tend to be clustered in the larger metropolitan areas where teacher recruitment overall has historically been less problematic than in the states poorer and rural districts, according to the study.

It Is exciting that the legislators have a renewed focus on bringing back the program, and even more so with the focus being on hard to staff areas, Stegall said. We are very grateful that this is a possibility once again."

The loss of the previous program also impacted all those colleges and universities training new teachers, including Lenoir-Rhyne University (LRU).

That hurt us all in 2012 when it came to recruitment because there was a set group of students we knew we could bring in who were highly qualified and would make it through and become great teachers, LRU Dean of the College of Education and Human Services Hank Weddington said in a previous HDR story.

Three years ago, LRU created its own Teacher Scholars program to help turn that around. Scholarships of up to $5,500 per year for the four years of study are available to eligible incoming freshmen.

From 1987 to 1997, the General Assembly funded scholarships of $5,000 a year for up to four years for each new group of 400 Teaching Fellows, and scholarships of $6,500 a year from 1998 to 2005, according to the Public School Forum of North Carolina report in 2015.

From 2006 to the end of the program, the General Assembly funded 500 scholarships of $6,500 a year. In its final year, the program received more than 2,000 applications for the 500 scholarships available.

Funding was another issue for the program, according to the report.

Every governor and legislature regardless of party has transferred funds from the Teaching Fellows Trust Fund to the General Fund. Since 2001, nearly $35 million has been transferred from the Teaching Fellows Trust Fund to the General Fund.

The new policy would appropriate from the General Fund to the Board of Governors of The University of North Carolina for the 20172018 fiscal year $250,000 to implement the Teaching Fellows Program.

Six million dollars in recurring funds would be used for the operation of the program and for the award of forgivable loans beginning with the 20182019 academic year.

Members of the General Assembly arent the only ones interested in using forgivable loans to entice new teachers into North Carolina.

Gov. Roy Cooper (D) recently proposed a similar plan called NC Best and Brightest Forgivable Loan in his proposed budget for 2017-19.

His plan would draw talented North Carolinians into the field of education by providing forgivable loans of $10,000 per year to students who commit to teaching in a state public school for four years after graduation, or three years at a low-performing or low-wealth school, according to highlights from the budget for education.
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As world leaders wonder whether Donald Trump will launch trade wars on China and Mexico, undermine NATO, and aggressively antagonise much of the Muslim world, it has become increasingly clear that the poor state of the US economy should concern outsiders almost as much as the new presidents ill-defined foreign policy plans. The United States is still home to the worlds largest consumer market, and Donald Trump is likely to stimulate growth. But that wont solve the US economys underlying issues, and thats a problem for the entire global economy.

The headlines tell a misleading story. The US stock markets continue to scale record heights. Trumps speech before Congress recently sent stocks soaring even higher on hopes that a plan to sharply reduce corporate taxes and spend $1 trillion to upgrade US infrastructure will jump-start US growth. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett recently predicted more boom to come, and backed his opinion with new investment. Hes right that US equities have room to run, but that wont help middle class voters who have lost their purchasing power, and in many cases their jobs, in recent years  the voters who cheer Trumps pledge to make America great again.

The loss of manufacturing jobs over the past generation has taken a particularly heavy toll in the United States. As Nicholas Eberstadt pointed out in a powerful recent article for Commentary magazine, per capita growth in America has averaged less than one per cent a year from 2000 to 2016, a sharp decline from the 2.3% annual growth the US enjoyed from 1948-2000. In addition, Trump is right that the official US unemployment rate is deceptive because it does not include the growing numbers of working-age Americans who have stopped actively looking for work. Not coincidentally, addiction to drugs, both legal and illegal, has spiked over the past generation. Eberstadt cites a study conducted in 2016 by Alan Krueger, former chairman of the Presidents Council of Economic Advisors, which found that nearly half of all male working-age Americans who have dropped out of the economy now take pain medication daily. Among these legions of the disaffected there is demand for system-upending change. Trump has promised to deliver it.

Yet, debt-wary lawmakers will ensure that Trumps promises to invest historic sums to upgrade substandard US roads, bridges, ports, and airports will take longer than he expects and produce a smaller package than promised. Further, the new president wont deliver on the most ambitious of his plans to sharply cut the corporate tax rate. In fact, Congress wont accomplish much of anything until Trump and the Republican Party leadership find a way to credibly end the Obama healthcare programme without stripping millions of voters of their health insurance, assuming thats possible.

Trump will spend much more on the Pentagon, though the new money wont change his opinion that the US military might should be used exclusively to advance narrowly defined US security and commercial interests. Trade wont be back on the agenda anytime soon. Mega-deals with Asian and European partners are dead. Potential deals with Britain and Japan will take years to negotiate. Other agreements are unlikely, at least for now.

Its also inevitable that, in the US as elsewhere, more jobs will be lost to advances in automation and the expansion of artificial intelligence in the workplace. A 2015 study conducted by Ball State University found that automation and related factors, not trade, accounted for 88% of lost manufacturing jobs. In addition, artificial intelligence is reducing the number of  and changing the skill sets needed for  a fast-growing number of service sector jobs. More than half of jobs in the retail sector could be lost, and two-thirds of jobs in the finance and insurance sectors are likely to disappear when computers are able to understand speech as well as humans do, according to the study. That might be the biggest obstacle to Donald Trumps plans to put middle and working class voters back to work.

Economic frustration will make the US an even less predictable international actor, because Trump has persuaded his core supporters that outsiders  China and Mexico, in particular  are to blame for stealing US jobs and that some allies are free-riding on US military support. If the real US economy continues to generate growth and wealth without jobs, and more working class Americans feel left behind, Trumps search for scapegoats will become an even more important part of his foreign and trade policies.

As if Donald J Trump werent unpredictable enough.

Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and author of Superpower: Three Choices for Americas Role in the World.

The views expressed are personal

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Rabindranath Tagores short story on a Kabuliwallah has had two outings in cinema. In 1957, director Tapan Sinha made a Bengali film starring actor Chhabi Biswas in the role of the protagonist, Rahman. In 1961, Balraj Sahni played the middle-aged dry fruit seller from Kabul in a Bimal Roy production.

Rahman hawks on the streets of Kolkata and lends money on the side. The only person with whom he does not have a relationship of barter and exchange is little Mini, a chatty five-year-old who calls out to him from her window one day. Rahman visits her daily and gifts her pistachios, almonds and walnuts. Mini reminds him of his daughter Amina whom he has left behind in Afghanistan.

Minis father overcomes his initial fears of a stranger and lets Rahman play with his daughter. His wife, whose middle-class gentility seems forever threatened by the appearance of cobwebs, real and imagined outbursts of malaria and the sudden appearance of an unknown face on the street outside her home, disapproves. This story of two fathers  Aminas and Minis  and the possibility of a relationship of affection in unfamiliar places gets another showing this weekend in Delhi.

Read more: A Tagore Primer for non-Bengalis

Stage actress Jalabala Vaidya presents The Cabuliwala (That is how Tagore spelt it in his English translation, she says) at the Akshara Theatre which has also been the home of Vaidya and Gopal Sharman, her playwright-husband. Sharman died last year. Vaidya, a veteran of one-woman performances, most notably the Ramayana, plays Tagore.

I have played men before, not a big dealI play Tagore on stage reflecting about the play, adds Vaidya who staged Cabuliwala for the first time in the early 90s. This weekend, the play will go on stage for the 30th time.

In 2006, three years after his retirement, British High Commissioner Rob Young, in fact, returned to Delhi to play the fruit seller on the Akshara stage. Reports are he did a neat Pathan accent. It must have raised a few laughs  an Englishman being asked to bitch about British colonial policy in the Northwest Frontier provinces. The Anglo-Afghan war was the stage of what is called the Great Game, the first face-off between Britain and other Western powers in the 19th century for control over central Asia. There are lines in the story when Minis father asks the Cabuliwalla about whether there were any advantages of being ruled by the British.

And he answers: Ive just come for Mini. In Tagores story, he is a character who is being true to his own emotions as a father. He is not interested in what states or governments do, explains Vaidya. A bond of affection is possible between a middle-aged Cabuliwalla and a middle-class child. At the first sign of an unfamiliar bond, we might immediately now see child abuse, but Tagore was saying you cannot be so hide-bound by convention. You must not be

This weekend, Ananya Anil plays Mini; R S Raghu plays Cabuliwala; and Yuvraj Bajaj acts as Minis father.

What does the play take from the film? Vaidya says she has seen the Balraj Sahni version. The poignant Ae ere pyare watan song has been the only takeaway. A recording of the song is played at the end of the play.

And the protagonist? Was Sahni an influence? Every actor, says Vaidya, represents himself. A Punjabi leftist, Sahni played Cabuliwalla too strongly. An actual Cabuliwalla might not have expressed his opinions so assertively, she says. In his dealings with Minis father, Sahni made it a relationship of equals. With Mini, he did okay.

What: The Cabuliwala

When: 7 pm, March 18 and 5.30 pm, March 19

Where: Akshara Theatre, 11 B, Baba Kharak Singh Marg

Nearest metro station: Patel Chowk

Tickets: Available on bookmyshow.com

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On her first visit to Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, artist Manisha Parekh was struck by the size of the stupas that dotted the sacred city. Gigantic white domes spread against the blue skies inspired a certain awe that when mixed with the serenity of the pilgrimage site was simply overwhelming.

I felt like a midget in front of the stupas, she says. There is a certain calm attached to Anuradhapura and the other sacred sites we visited there such as Dambulla, says the Delhi-based artist of her research trip  part of an art project involving 11 artists from India and Sri Lanka. The impression the visit left is visible in her works, which interpret the sacred as a private space and are on display at an ongoing exhibition, titled A Tale of Two Cities, in the capital.

My work has that blue of the sky and the white of the stupa, says Parekh of her abstract watercolour series titled A Chant. Varanasi, the second city the artists visited, is for Parekh the complete opposite in terms of character. It is bustling with activity. In just one boat ride from one end of the ghats to the other, youll see rituals involving birth, death and everything in between, she says. Her second series titled Home Shrine reflects that robust colour and energy.

Read more: After the tigers are gone in Jaffna

The Plain of Aspiration (Detail), 2016, by Sri Lankan artist Paula Sengupta is a series that maps her travels to Buddhist shrines. Each panel depicts a holy Buddhist site. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

Kolkata-based artist Paula Sengupta associates a similar seamlessness of the different rhythms of life with Varanasi. That same seamlessness exists in the textiles of Varanasi where centuries of weavers, craftsmen, embroiders have come in from different places not only across India but as far as China and Tibet, she says.

Her interest in and exposure to the textiles of Varanasi made her choose the medium of textile and embroidery to map her extensive travels to Buddhist shrines over the past 12 years. Each of the eight panels on her installation of four grass-mat and cotton-cloth colonial-style pankhas depicts a Buddhist sacred site. The sites depicted include not just Anuradhapura and Sarnath but places as far as Rumtek Monastery in Gangtok, Tabo Monastery in Spiti, the Stupa of Boudhanath in Kathmandu, and the ruins of Nalanda in Bihar, among others.

Sengupta also weaves in the conflicted histories of some sites: figures in military fatigues holding guns co-exist with sacred imagery and structures in panels made with embroidery and applique on silk. The pankha  a common object in Indian homes in colonial times  was used to animate the installation, says Sengupta. By pulling the pankha, I wanted the viewer to metaphorically be able to travel with me to these sites, she says.

The year-long project (it began in October 2015 with a visit to Anuradhapura and then to Varanasi and Sarnath) was conceived by Gallery Espace director Renu Modi and supported by the Serendipity Arts Trust and the Theertha Artists Collective from Sri Lanka.

The artists got to know each other on the first trip. When we met in Varanasi three months later, we were stronger as a collective and ready for more than the introductory sessions. In addition to site visits, we also organised a series of conversations between the artists every day to reflect on our everyday experience of Varanasi, says Colombo-based Ruhanie Perera, the curatorial advisor of the project.

Parekh agrees. The interactions made you think of situations differently. You feed off each others perspectives and start to see things which you may not have noticed before, she says.

Read more: Retelling epics for the modern age

The Man, The World, The Tree, The Lotus (Detail), 2016, by photojournalist Ram Rahman uses images from his trips to Sarnath to examine how contemporary politics distorts religious philosophy. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

Other participating artists include Indian artists Manjunath Kamath, Riyas Komu, Ram Rahman and Chintan Upadhyay and Sri Lankan artists Anoli Perera, Pala Pothupitiye, Pradeep Chandrasiri, Bandu Manamperi and Jagath Weerasinghe.

For Delhi-based photojournalist Ram Rahman, the journeys triggered off connections across time and geographies. In his photo-and-text installation  The Man, The Word, The Tree, The Text  Rahman reproduces excerpts from ancient texts (Buddhas sermon, meeting the five disciples, the arrival of the Bodhi Tree in Anuradhapura) with photographs from trips to Sarnath and Anuradhapura. These are juxtaposed with video grabs of the LTTE massacre at the sacred Sri Maha Bodhi site in 1985 and newspaper reports on the violence propagated by extremist Sinhalese monks in Sri Lanka, the political appropriation of sacred symbols, and how Buddhist conversions in India (BR Ambedkar and, more recently, the family of Rohit Vemula) became the recourse for those trying to stand up to right-wing ideologies.

I was interested in looking at what the Buddha had initially propagated and how contemporary politics is distorting religious philosophy, using it for conflict, says Rahman.

What: A Tale of Two Cities: Traversing Sacred Geographies  Varanasi (India) and Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka)

When: 10 am to 6 pm, until March 31, 2017

Where: Gallery 1, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Mansingh Road

Nearest metro station: Central Secretariat

Entry is free

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Rajat Kapoors Shakespeare Comedy Theatre Festival rolls into the city. But what if youve never read the bard and only briefly know the plays? Heres how to sound smart even if youve lost the plot

At the outset: Heave a sigh of relief

Because its finally here. The Shakespeare Comedy Theatre Festival, which consists of four plays, opened in January in Pune and will travel to seven cities before it makes its final stop in Delhi next month.

Say: Shakespeares comedies are so underrated

Because, of course, everyone talks about the playwrights tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth. But keep in mind that the festival doesnt perform Shakespeares comedies either. The four plays have been written and directed by actor Rajat Kapoor, and they turn the not-quite-comedy into comedy. Everyones a clown, a good portion of the dialogue has contemporary references, and no ones delivering monologues in tights.

The plays are pieces of devised theatre, says Puja Sarup, who plays Getrude, and Bozo, a fading diva nursing both the bottle and a broken heart, in Hamlet  the Clown Prince. Scripts are developed in workshops. Actors discover their characters in rehearsal, she says. We basically tell Rajat, lets kill that play, says actor Vinay Pathak, who has roles in all four productions.

Theyre all clowns, but they do much more than clown around. At the Shakespeare Comedy Theatre Festival, they take the bards stories to places ordinary characters cannot.

Dont say: But so much of Shakespeare is about the language.

Because public love for the plays has changed. You know those English Lit types who reel off quotes by heart? Theyve been replaced by fans of modern-day adaptations of the 400-year-old stories. Kapoor himself felt intimidated by the language initially. He only came around to the bard after he translated Taming of the Shrew into Hindi in 1994. I think its exciting that we can move from gibberish to Shakespeares lines and back to gibberish without losing the wonderful quality of the plays, Kapoor says. Shakespeares themes, motivations, and moral dilemmas have endured, even if lines like if my love thou holdest at aught havent.

Read: Will Rajat Kapoor take his Shakespeare adaptations to the screen?

Point out: That the fool is actually a pretty important recurring character.

Because in Kapoors version, the clowns are funny, foolish even. But theyre certainly not dumb. Theyll twist the plot, step out of the play to address the audience, but still manage to tell their story.

If one character in What Is Done, Is Done (an adaptation of Macbeth) is called Macky B and another calls people Puta Madre, remember theyre not quoting but honouring the spirit of the original script. Theres a kind of purity in playing a Shakespeare character as a clown, says Pathak. Our faces are painted on, much of the expression comes from the body. Plus, clowns can do anything, even steal Lady Macbeths lines.

In Hamlet - The Clown Prince, the clowns speak gibberish, switch to the original text and back to nonsense, without ever losing their grip on the spirit of the play.

Argue: That comedy is not a clowns only job.

In Kapoors Macbeth, the clowns are dark, often scary. Some (like in the King Lear adaptation Nothing Like Lear) are crotchety. Yet our Lear often makes audiences cry, Kapoor says. In ...The Clown Prince, theyre all struggling to understand the play, talking gibberish and making it up as they go. I Dont Like It, As You Like It gets male and female clowns to switch parts, but the mix-up isnt just for laughs. Its to examine gender roles today.

Read: Meanwhile, the original clown Hamlet takes Shakespeare in a new direction, with dance

Remark: That Shakespeare was both ahead of his time and restricted by it

Because so few of his most memorable characters are women. Sure, theres Lady Macbeth, Desdemona, Portia  but none gets a solo title role or a killer soliloquy. Many argue that the Shakespeare tradition holds back actresses  an overwhelming number of Hollywoods Royal Shakespeare Company alumni are men. Shakespeare wrote at a time when womens parts were played by men, its probably why he limited their stage time. Thats where clowning scores. I dont need a soliloquy, says Sarup. With the clowns, its almost like diving into the story and pulling out a magic trick.

In the clown version of Macbeth, the Scottish king is called Macky B. The clowns themselves are dark and scary.

End with: Im trying to understand Shakespeare

Because 400 years after the plays were written, so is everybody, including Rajat Kapoor. Sarup recalls that the Clown Prince team visited Shakespeares grave on a tour of the UK. We did a little thank you and sorry if weve offended you, she says. I think we cracked a deal with him.

Do clowns tickle your fancy? Find out here:

What: Shakespeare Comedy Festival

Where: St Andrews Auditorium, Bandra (W)

When: I Dont Like It - As You Like It (Saturday, 4 pm); Nothing Like Lear (Saturday, 7.30 pm); Hamlet - The Clown Prince (Sunday, 6 pm); Macbeth - What Is Done, Is Done (Sunday, 9 pm)

Tickets cost upwards of Rs 300 per show. Available at the venue or on BookMyShow.com

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The Election Commission has brushed aside allegations of electronic voting machine tampering in the recently concluded five-state elections, emphasising that the panel ensured multiple checks and expert certification of the apparatus before polls.

Dhirendra Ojha, the poll panel director, said EVMs were electronically protected to prevent tampering and evaluation of the software was carried out by an independent testing group.

There is no possibility of data corruption since these machines are not networked either by wire or by wireless to any other machine or system, he said.

The ECs rebuttal comes days after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati alleged widespread irregularities in EVMs cost them the elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, respectively.

Kejriwal said faulty EVMs transferred a fifth of the Aam Aadmi Partys votes to the Akali Dal in the border state while Mayawati called for election results to be cancelled following a landslide BJP victory.

But the EC has dismissed any speculation about the efficacy of EVMs, which was first introduced to replace paper ballots in 2000. Voters have cast their vote using EVMs in 107 state assembly elections as well as 3 Lok Sabha elections- 2004, 2009 and 2014, said Ojha.

The software of EVMs is developed in-house by a select group of engineer in BEL and ECIL independently from each other. A select software development group of two to three engineers design the source code and the work is not sub- contracted, maintained the EC.

The software is so designed that it allows a voter to cast the vote only once. The EVM does not receive any signal from outside at any time, Ojha said.

In Punjab, the chief electoral officer also rubbished Kejriwals charge, saying the hardware and software of EVMs went through multiple checks. There was administrative intervention also to make elections fool proof, also, the polling agents of all the parties were involved, VK Singh told HT.

Ojha said the issue of possible tampering of EVM has been raised before the Madras high court (2001), Delhi high court (2004), Karnataka high court (2004), Kerala high court (2002) and Bombay high court (Nagpur Bench) in 2004.

Each time high court checked all aspects of technological soundness and administrative measures involved in the use of EVMs and in their order held that EVMs are credible, reliable and totally tamper proof, he said.

A petition was also filed in the Supreme Court in 2009 which advised the petitioner to go to Election Commission (EC). The EC asked them to demonstrate as to how a machine owned by the EC can be tampered. No one could demonstrate how any tampering with the machine can be done, he said.

In 2009 too, the EC had invited leaders of political parties and individuals to address their reservations on the issue.

Over 100 EVMs were brought from various states and technical expert groups as well as engineers were summoned to show that tampering of EVMs was not possible, said Ojha.

Both officials also pointed at the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) that was installed in select constituencies to ensure further transparency. Under the system, the voter gets a paper receipt of her vote and can check whether it has been cast in the right manner.
Union minister Manoj Sinha has emerged as a possible candidate for the chief ministers post in Uttar Pradesh, following the BJPs stupendous success in the just-concluded assembly polls.

While a section of the party is confident that Sinhas name will be announced after the meeting of the newly-elected party MLAs, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, however, has not spelt out its choice.

Here are 6 points on Sinha, a low-profile but hard-working minister in the Modi government:

1) Sinha, minister of communication (independent charge) and minister of state for railways, is a civil engineer. He was a student of IIT-BHU.

2) During his student days, Sinha was the students union president in the Banaras Hindu University.

3) In his last meeting in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi effusively praised Sinha for his work and commitment as the railway minister.

4) Sinha is a Bhumihar (an upper caste) by birth. He deliberately maintains a low-profile image, wears his trademark dhoti and long kurta.

5) Sinha is a three-time BJP MP in Lok Sabha. He represents Ghazipur in the Lower House.

6) As the junior minister for railways, Sinha handled key assignments including the task to connect several cities in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

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Junior railway minister Manoj Sinha said on Friday afternoon that he wasnt in the race to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, a day before the BJPs pick for the states top job is to be announced.

Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, the three-time BJP MP who represents Ghazipur in the Lok Sabha said he didnt know of a race for the CMs position.

The BJP won a sweeping victory in Indias largest state with 312 seats in the 403-member house but is scheduled to meet on Saturday to decide on a chief minister. State party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya  also seen as a contender for the top job  has confirmed that a CM will be chosen at the party legislature party meeting.

Neither I am in the race (for UP CM) nor do I know of any such race: Manoj Sinha, Union Minister pic.twitter.com/wQROjVuXCe  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Known as a Bhumihar leader, Sinha was seen as the choice of many lawmakers because of his unassuming style and hard work  praised even by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also had deep ties to the Banaras Hindu University that falls within Modis Lok Sabha constituency, having served as the student union president.
The Lucknow district administration and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have finalised the date, time, and venue for the swearing-in ceremony of the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Preparations for the ceremony scheduled to be held around 2 pm on Sunday at Smriti Upvan near Aashiana residential colony on the fringes of the city are in full swing.

However, the party is yet to declare the name of the new chief minister. The newly-elected 312 new MLAs will meet in Lucknow on Saturday to propose names for the top post in the state and ratify one.

NAMES DOING THE ROUNDS

Manoj Sinha

Sinha is the telecom minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modis government. A two-time parliamentarian, the 57-year-old represents the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat from eastern Uttar Pradesh. An upper caste Bhumihar leader, Sinha is considered close to Modi and manages the PMs Varanasi parliamentary constituency.

Read | Manoj Sinha: 6 things about contender for UP chief ministers post

Keshav Prasad Maurya

The 47-year-old MP from Phulpur comes from a backward community. He currently heads Uttar Pradesh BJP and was closely associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad during the Ram Temple movement in the 1990s. His appointment as the president of BJPs state unit was aimed to garner support among the non-Yadav OBCs.

Rajnath Singh

Indias home minister, Singh was the last BJP chief minister in Uttar Pradesh. The senior-most BJP politician from the state, the 65-year-old Thakur leader is considered close to the RSS. He has the experience of running a state government.

Read | Rajnath Singh says discussion over his nomination for UP CM post unnecessary

Mahesh Sharma

Sharma is a first-time member of the Lok Sabha from Gautam Buddha Nagar and is currently the tourism minister in Modis cabinet. A practising doctor, who owns the Kailash Hospital in Noida, Sharma has been a member of the UP legislative assembly. He is considered close to the RSS.

Adityanath

Gorakhpur MP and the firebrand BJP leader Adityanaths name has been doing the rounds as the BJPs CM face since the last one year. Adityanath is also the Mahant of Goraknath Mutt. The 45-year-old is a Thakur.

Dinesh Sharma

The 53-year-old leader was first elected the mayor of Lucknow in 2008. He teaches at the Lucknow University and is currently the national vice-president of the BJP. He is considered close to BJP president Amit Shah. That said, Modi is known to spring surprises. It is possible he might pick a candidate few would have considered a frontrunner.

Satish Mahana

He is the only MLA among all the contenders. The 57-year-old politician has won a Kanpur seat for 7 times in a row.

CHOICES FOR VENUE

Principal secretary Debashish Panda held a meeting on Friday with senior administration and civic officers to make necessary arrangements at the venue. Initially, three sites were suggested for the swearing in ceremony.

First was La Martiniere College ground where Akhilesh Yadav took the oath of office on March 15, 2012. The venue was dropped because of the ongoing board examinations.

The other was the KD Singh Babu Stadium where two former BJP CMs Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh took oath of office. But this too was ruled out because of ongoing Metro rail construction site that would have created traffic issues.

Then the administration considered Ramabai Maidan which was also cancelled because it was built by the Mayawati government. Finally, they settled on Smriti Upvan because it was developed by a previous BJP government in memory of Kargil martyrs.
Senior BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat, who has a long RSS background, will be sworn in as the Uttarakhand chief minister on Saturday, ending speculation about the partys choice for the post after its landslide assembly election victory.

The BJP went to the polls without naming a candidate for the chief ministers position, which fuelled a guessing game for the past six days since the election results were announced. The party won 57 seats in the 70-member assembly.

The 56-year-old Rawat, known to be close to BJP chief Amit Shah, emerged as the frontrunner in Uttarakhand from a pool of at least six names.

He was elected leader of the BJP legislative party on Friday, which cleared the way for him to become the ninth chief minister of the young state.

The swearing-in will be in Dehradun on Saturday afternoon in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Shah.

I have a single point agenda, which is development  I will ensure 100% to offer better services to the people, the chief minister-elect said in an interview to Hindustan Times.

People are struggling for basic amenities even 16 years after Uttarakhand was formed. The condition of schools, public healthcare and roads is pathetic. Besides, there is no employment opportunity.

Rawats immediate task will be to select his council from more than four dozen claimants for ministerial berths. Besides him, the Uttarakhand cabinet can have no more than 11 ministers.

All 57 candidates who won the assembly elections belong to the BJP. Ours is a cadre-based party and no decision is taken alone. Distribution of portfolios too will be done with due consent of the legislators and national party leaders, Rawat said.

The party will have to make its choice between loyalists and Congress turncoats who joined the BJP last year after rebelling against outgoing chief minister Harish Rawat.

Among the 10 Congress rebels who contested, eight won. They are reportedly eyeing a big role in the government now.

At least two former Congressmen  Harak Singh Rawat and Subodh Uniyal  could be accommodated in the cabinet, sources said.

Political scions  Vijay Bahugunas son Saurabh and BC Khanduris daughter Ritu  are likely to make it to the coveted list too. Both Bahuguna and Khanduri are former chief ministers.

We have won with a huge mandate and obviously legislators have expectations. But let me assure you, it (cabinet formation) will be a smooth affair, said Ajay Bhatt, the state BJP president.

Rawat, a Thakur, faced stiff competition himself for the chief ministers post from former minister Prakash Pant and former parliamentarian Satpal Maharaj, a Congress leader who joined the BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

But Amit Shahs support to Rawat seems to have tilted the balance, a BJP source said.

Rawat was one of Shahs three deputies in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP swept all but seven seats in the 2014 parliamentary elections. He is also credited with the BJPs win in Jharkhand.

The BJPs organisational man and party in-charge in Jharkhand served as a minister in the hill states BJP government in 2007.

Rawatjis track record as minister was noticed, not only because of his ability to deliver but also for the way he handled the bureaucracy, state BJP spokesperson Virendra Singh Bisht said.

Born into a soldiers family in Khaira-sain, a mountain village 60km from Pauri, Rawat took an unconventional step to join politics after his graduation.

My father wanted me to take up a career in the army but I chose politics, he said.

In the latest elections, he won his traditional Doiwala seat by defeating Congresss Hira Singh Bisht with more than 24,000 votes.

The BJP is likely to accommodate one of its senior legislators as the assembly speaker. The frontrunner race is eight-time MLA Harbans Kapoor, who was speaker in 2007.

(With inputs from Deep Joshi, Nihi Sharma and Kumar Uttam)

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Actor Varun Dhawan says he doesnt think nepotism exists in the Hindi film industry.

The nepotism debate took centre-stage in Bollywood after actor Kangana Ranaut kicked off a controversy recently with her remarks on filmmaker Karan Johars talk show Koffee With Karan.

Karan hit back at Kangana, saying that he did not know what Kangana meant by nepotism as he has not worked with his family members, and instead launched several actors and directors, who hail from non-film background.

Actors Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan promote their film Badrinath Ke Dulhania at India Gate, New Delhi. (IANS)

When asked if nepotism exists in the film industry, Varun said, I dont think so. I dont want to talk much about it.

The 28-year-old actor, however, praised Kangana, saying, I like Kangana, her style and more power to her.

Though Varun was not launched by his father, director David Dhawan, his big ticket break by Karans Dharma Productions in Student of The Year provided a launchpad.

He consolidated his position by delivering hits like Humpty Sharma Ki Dhulania, Main Tera Hero and critically acclaimed Badlapur.

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As much as Vidya Balan advocates that women must raise their voice against violation of their rights and personal space, she hates it when an incident is blown out of proportion just to catch everyones attention. During her recent visit to Kolkata  to promote her upcoming film, Begum Jaan  Vidya objected to a male fan placing his arm around her without her consent as he leaned in for a selfie. It was not molestation, retorts the actor, disapproving of how it was reported by some sections of the media.

I think words like feminism, molestation and sexual harassment are used loosely, and thats upsetting. Someone behaved inappropriately (with me), he touched my back when he was taking a selfie and I objected to it. Thats what it is. But to grab headlines, to say that I was molested is incorrect! Vidya  known for power-packed performances in films such as Ishqiya (2010) and Kahaani (2012)  told Hindustan Times during her recent visit to Delhi.

The 38-year-old actor admits that she doesnt pay heed to such news items, but it makes her friends and family unhappy. I dont read the papers or watch TV, so someone brought it to my notice, asking: Did you get molested? And I felt, for Gods sake lets get some fundas clear! Yes, I thought he [the fan] was behaving inappropriately, and I said [to him]: Its wrong, dont try and act smart! I didnt let him take that selfie and thats okay. We have to open our mouth when we dont like something, added Vidya, who advises all women to speak up if theyre made to feel uncomfortable.

You have a voice, use it! [Yes] its difficult, there are repercussions, there are opinions that can probably damage your confidence, your self-esteem sometimes, but it doesnt matter. Its high time we use our voices.

Meanwhile, in another interview, Vidya  whos married to producer Siddharth Roy Kapur  made a strong statement that shes not a baby-making machine and that its unfair for people to intrude her personal space and link her visit to the doctor with pregnancy. She expressed her dissent over the obsession of people with a married couple having babies. As for rumours about her being pregnant, Vidya said it doesnt matter if some people dont have children.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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Indian markets closed up on Friday on hopes of Goods and Services Tax roll out from July and tracking Asian bourses even as dollar continue to slide following Federal Reserves signal of a gradual rate hike and other major central bankers maintaining status quo.

The 30-share benchmark Sensex opened in the green and jumped 239 points or 0.8% to 29824.62 in early trade while Nifty breached 9,200-level to continue to climb higher to from its all-time high touched on Thursday.

The Sensex closed up 63 points or 0.2% at 29,649 while Nifty was marginally higer at 9,160.05.

ITC led the Sensex chart gaining 4.9% while Infosys was up 1%, Wipro 0.9%, Axis Bank 0.7%, Tata Steel and HDFC Bank 0.6% each.

Indian markets were buoyed up after the GST Council on Thursday cleared two pending legislation SGST and UT-GST, which along with three other draft laws CGST, IGST and Compensation Rule, takes India closer to roll out the countrys biggest tax reforms from July.

On Wednesday, Fed hiked key policy rates by 25 basis points or 0.25 percentage point to a range of 0.75-1.00% while Chinas PBOC hiked rates, Bank of Japan and Bank of England maintained status quo.

Global investors took comfort from the Fed stance of a slower pace of tightening going forward. Earlier, market experts were expecting rapid rate hikes that could have led to capital outflow from riskier assets and emerging markets.

Asian stocks were little changed in early trade but poised for recording the best week since September.

The MSCIs broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.1% but was poised to end the week 3.3% higher, its biggest weekly increase since September.

The Nikkei closed down 0.35% but Hang Seng gained 0.1%, Kospi 0.7%, Strait Times 0.2% while Shanghai was down 1%.

US President Donald Trumps budget outlined higher regulatory costs for the pharma sector and a cut in federal funding for medical research, dragging down shares of the sector.
The Uttarakhand high court asked the state government to prepare solid waste management plans for all towns and villages, and ensure land allotment for disposal sites in three months time.

The BJP, which won 57 of the states 70 assembly seats, will form the new government on Saturday. Trivendra Singh Rawat, elected as the BJP Legislative Party leader on Friday, will take oath as the chief minister in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Giving its ruling on multiple public interest litigations (PILs) on Thursday, the high court asked the government to provide adequate garbage management facilities across the state in the stipulated time. Fixing accountability for land allotment on district magistrates (DMs), the court directed them to work in coordination with the urban development department.

Experts said executing the task will be a tall order for the new government, given the poor waste disposal infrastructure in the state. According to a Centres report, 74% village households in Uttarakhand lack sites for garbage disposal; 60% of urban local bodies have no proper waste disposal sites and mechanism.

Executing the high courts order will be a big challenge for the new government as most of the towns and villages in the state lack proper dumping sites, leave alone scientific ones, said Brij Mohan Sharma, secretary of Dehradun-based Society of Pollution and Environmental Conversation Scientists (SPECS). Unscientific garbage disposal is quite detrimental for the hill states environment, he added.

The biggest issue is lack of resources, proper planning and availability of land sites for disposing waste. The new government should take up these issues in a planned and phase-wise manner to ensure execution of the court order, a retired official of the urban development department told HT on Friday.

Uttarakhand currently generates about 3,000 metric tons of solid waste per day, of which approximately 50% is lifted and disposed through unscientific methods.

Dehradun mayor and newly elected BJP MLA Vinod Chamoli, who has a long experience in dealing with waste management issues, said he will liaise with the government to ensure that waste management gets its due. Our government will look into it on a priority basis, Chamoli told HT.

The court asked urban local bodies to ensure cleanliness in public places, parks and streets on Sundays and public holidays, besides ensuring distribution of two free dustbins to all households across the cities.

WASTE STINK

3000 metric tons: Total waste generated in Uttarakhand per day

74% village households in Uttarakhand lack sites for garbage disposal

60% urban local bodies lack proper waste disposal sites

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The tiger that killed two people in Ramnagar near Corbett on Thursday died the same night in captivity due to septicaemia and asphyxiation, wildlife officials said.

The eight-year-old tiger had suffered injuries during rescue operation and succumbed eventually.

Forest officials with the help of tranquillizers and a JCB machine had managed to cage the tiger at the end of a nearly nine-hour operation. The tiger (nicknamed T-28) had first killed a woman after dragging them deep inside the forest near Corbett National Park on Thursday morning. Her father-in-law met with the same fate when he came to her rescue. It was then cornered and ensnared by forest officials.

But the tiger suffered serious injuries as one of its canine teeth broke down which resulted in bleeding, septicaemia and later choked to death.

As it leaped on the JCB machine, its canine broke down and started bleeding. It lost too much blood. Meanwhile, some past injuries on its forelimbs had maggots and the animal died due to septicaemia and choking, divisional forest officer, Terai, Kahkashan Naseem told Hindustan Times.

Officers inform due to movement of tigers in the area, T-28 must have had infighting with others due to which its fore limbs were severely injured. The presence of five tigers and one tigress is reported within 5 sq km area in the range.

Conservator, western division (Terai), Parag Madhukar Dhakate said T-28 might have attacked the two victims after being enraged over their presence in mating season of tigers. The area has high concentration of big cats that resulted in tiger deaths in the past due to mating- and territory-related issues, he added.

Tigers and dense forests in Corbett attract thousands of tourists every year but the area is also seeing a growing man-animal conflict. Both the number of tigers and human population in the neighbouring villages of the reserve has increased over the years. Home to around 200 tigers, Corbett has the highest density of big cats in India. Villagers often enter the reserve for firewood and fodder but fall prey to tigers. In October, a man-eater was killed near Ramnagar after a massive 40-day search.
Having failed to finish his graduation from two Delhi University colleges, former Delhi law minister Jitender Singh Tomar was desperate to get a degree, reads the 54,000-page chargesheet filed by Delhi police.

In a chargesheet filed in a Delhi court, police said Tomar forged documents and obtained fake mark sheets since he could not finish his formal college education. Apart from the former AAP minister, 16 others have been chargesheeted in the case.

Read: Delhi Police says ex-AAP minister Tomars degrees fake, submits 50,000-page proof

Tomar studied only till class 12. He obtained a fake BSc degree from Awadh University, Faizabad, in 1986-87. Later he got admission in the Munger Law college affiliated to Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University (TMBU). However, neither he attended classes nor did he appear for any exams. As per the universitys record, Tomar was declared failed but he was still given a law degree, reads the chargesheet.

Those accused of forgery in the case includes the former principal of Munger Law College, Surinder Kumar Singh. Members of the examination department of the university and clerical staff have also been charged in the case.

An FIR was registered against Tomar on June 8, 2015 at Hauz Khas police station on a complaint by Bar Council of Delhi. The bar body alleged that Tomar submitted fake academic documents, including marksheets, BSc degree, provisional documents and law degree in 2010, to get himself registered as a lawyer. He is currently on bail.

Tomar was booked under cheating, forgery, using forged documents as genuine, forgery with intent to cheat and criminal conspiracy under the IPC. He was arrested on June 9.

Police said that Tomar got admission at Delhi Universitys Shivaji College in 1983-84 in BSc but he left studies after first year. Later, he pursued BA (Pass) course in 1985 from Delhi Universitys Rajdhani College but again left midway.

Read: How law, duty-bound cops caught up with Jitender Tomar

Since he could not succeed in getting a degree formally, Tomar used illegal means to get fake documents/degrees, marksheets, RTI replies, etc, said the chargesheet.

Police said while the migration certificate at Munger Law college should have been registered in three months, in Tomars case, the certificate was registered after seven years. Also, Bundelkhand University(from where he showed to have migrated) officials told police that they did not issue any such certificate to Tomar.

Police also mentioned in the chargesheet that both signatures -- on admission papers in the Munger college and on the affidavit at the bar council -- were found to be that of Tomar. The signatures were examined at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) laboratory. Police said it shows that Tomar deliberately cheated to obtain the law degree.

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A 46-year-old army officer was found hanging outside his house in southwest Delhis Dwarka on Friday morning.

Lieutenant colonel Jagdish Prakash, who was reportedly facing an inquiry over allegations of misappropriation of funds, was posted with the armys corps of engineers. The police control room received information about the incident after Prakashs wife saw him hanging from a grill of the railing outside his flat in Salaria apartment, Dwarka Sector 20. No suicide note was recovered from the spot.

According to the police, the army officers family said that Prakash was depressed over a probe into allegations of misappropriation of funds against him. His wife is learnt to have told police that for the past few days, Prakash was not sleeping well and stayed awake at night. She told police that at around 7am on Friday, she did not find her husband inside the house and went out to check. It was then that he found him hanging and raised an alarm. Prakash was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead. His wife told us that he used to regularly step out of the house for fresh air in the wee hours. On Friday also he had stepped out at around 3am. 
The Delhi government, in a bid to ease the parking woes of the city, is considering the idea of first seeking proof of parking space from taxi owners before issuing permits.

The idea was mooted after Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal expressed concern over the increasing number of cabs in the city during a recent meeting o the citys parking policy. According to figures available with the transport department, the number of cabs, especially those under aggregators like Ola and Uber, has increased by around 20,000 in the past 4-5 months.

We plan to come up with a policy where before issuing permits to taxi drivers they will be asked to submit proof of space to park cars. A separate policy will have to be made for that, a government official said.

At present, there are no designated parking places for cabs which have crossed the 1.5 lakh mark in Delhi-NCR. The rapid surge in their number has made roads more chaotic as drivers often take a nap or wait for customers by parking cars on busy roads. This adds to the perennial problem of traffic congestion in the city.

At present, there is no rule asking owners of taxis to submit proof of parking space before permits are issued to them under the City Taxi Scheme, 2015. The government is already preparing a City Taxi Scheme, 2017 and if the rule gets all approvals then it would also be included in the new scheme, the official added.

When not on duty, most of taxis are parked in residential colonies that has become an issue for colony residents. A large number of cabs end up blocking the narrow 8-12 feet wide streets in unauthorized colonies as majority of drivers live in such localities. They prefer to park their cars right in front of their houses. A number of RWAs have complained about the menace of cabs being parked in their colonies overnight, said a official in the transport department.

The department said areas where such parking was rampant included places like Uttam Nagar, Najafgarh, Shahdara, Sangam Vihar, Rohini and Dwarka. But it also expressed its inability to take any action right away as there is no policy in this regard as of now.

The L-G, while reviewing the draft parking policy presented by Delhi transport commissioner on Wednesday, also directed that differential pricing be introduced depending upon the area and demand as one of the rules. Under the No Tolerance Zone move, under which parking or even halting would be prohibited, Baijal directed the traffic police and local bodies to ensure strict enforcement to maintain road discipline, parking and vehicle movement on particular road stretches.

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A 22-year-old fugitive, accused of allegedly kidnapping, raping a minor girl multiple times in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, was arrested last week, almost eight months after he escaped from police custody by breaking the lock-up of the Nangloi police station, police said on Friday. A cash reward of Rs25,000 was announced on his arrest.

Lal Singh was arrested on June 28, 2016, for allegedly kidnapping and sexually assaulting a minor girl. He was kept in the lock-up, as he was to be produced before a city court. But in the wee hours of June 29, Singh somehow removed the iron bars of the lock-up and escaped.

When Singh could not be arrested despite multiple raids, the Delhi Police announced a reward of Rs25,000 to anybody who provided them any lead about Singh or helped the police arrest him. Apart from the kidnapping and rape case, a case of escaping from police custody was also registered against Singh, said police.

MN Tiwari, deputy commissioner of police (outer district), said that the fugitive was arrested following multiple raids conducted by their team in various parts in Haryanas Mewat and Nuh and in Uttar Pradesh. Our team received information about Singhs hideout in Gurgaon on March 11. The information was developed and he was caught after a raid the very same day, said Tiwari.

On June 23, 2016, Tiwari said, one person approached the Nangloi police and filed the missing complaint of his minor daughter. A kidnapping case was registered and during investigation the girl was rescued and reunited with her family three days later.

In her statement before the child welfare committee, the girl alleged that Singh, whom she had earlier met at her relatives house in Nuh, met her outside her home on June 23 and offered her some spiked drink. When she felt dizzy, Singh put her in a van and took her to an unknown place in Haryana. He further took her to different places in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and raped her multiple times.

We rescued the girl on June 26 and Singh was arrested two days later, said an investigator.
The Delhi Congress has indicated that all sitting councillors in three municipal corporations will be given tickets. However, several senior elected members of civic bodies may not contest the elections scheduled in April.

The list includes the names of leader of oppositions in north and south Delhi Municipal Corporations Farhad Suri and Mukesh Goel.

At present, the Congress has 91 councillors in the three municipal corporations of Delhi (MCDs).

A party insider said these corporators have already apprised the state leadership about their unwillingness to enter the fray.

Primarily, change in the geographical boundaries of all municipal wards and reservation of wards for women and SC category contestants are two reasons behind their reluctance. A few others want assembly ticket in future so they may not participate in the civic polls this time, he said.

Post delimitation, Suris Nizamuddin ward has been abolished and is now called Daryaganj, which is reserved for a woman candidate. A significant portion of the erstwhile ward has been rechristened into Siddharth Nagar ward, which is reserved for SC category. I have not taken any decision and I will follow what my party leadership asks me to do. I will obey the diktat of the party, Suri said.

However, the nature of Goels ward  Dhirpur  has not changed. It is still under general category. Reports are not correct. Who will not want to contest the election if the party gives ticket? Goel said.

Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken said Suri had discussed the matter with me and his point is justified. The nature of his (ward) has changed. His case is exceptional one. Otherwise, it is not true that our councillors are not willing to contest. In fact, four former MLAs and three unsuccessful assembly election nominees are seeking ticket, he said.

The Congress leader further said around 60 BJP councillors had also approached him for the party ticket. We cant give ticket to them. It is unethical. We cant ignore our workers, he said.

On the other hand, another councillor, wishing anonymity, said one of the reasons for not participating in the polls is possible tough competition with the third player (Aam Aadmi Party) in the race.

My ward has totally been changed. If I shift to a neighbouring ward or some other area, possibility is that I may not find support from leaders from that particular ward. Its quite obvious that if I manage to win, I de facto become claimant for assembly ticket from that area. And AAP has made the competition triangular, he said.
It has been six months since JNUs first-year MSc student of Biotechnology, Najeeb Ahmed, went missing from his hostel on October 15. Several search teams have been formed since and various locations have been raided but the case still remains unsolved.

Ever since the reward to give any information on Najeeb has been increased from Rs1 lakh to Rs10 lakh, police have been receiving countless inputs from people across the country, all however, were found to be hoax.

Due to political pressure the search operation had paced, however, now the case seems to be lying in cold storage with the Crime Branch.

We have done everything possible to trace him. Several teams were formed and sent to different locations across the country. We recorded statements of his friends, relatives, batch mates but nothing concrete was found. All we were able to establish was that he was under treatment for depression. His doctor told us that he was suffering from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), an investigator said. We got numerous calls saying that Najeeb was seen in Allahabad, then Tamil Nadu, then some village of Maharashtra and even Assam, also one person made an extortion call to his family who was later arrested, all these calls were, however, hoax, he added.

Najeeb went missing from his room in Jawaharlal Nehru Universitys Mahi hostel allegedly following a scuffle with a few students from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The incident triggered massive protest by students, forcing the police to launch a massive hunt.

Delhi Police earlier announced a reward of Rs50,000, which was then increased to Rs1 lakh, then Rs2 lakh and subsequently to Rs5 lakh for anyone providing information that could help locate Najeeb, who has been missing for over three months now.

The Crime Branch has also managed to trace the auto driver who reportedly took Najeeb from JNU. The clue, however, could not help them trace Najeebs location.

A thorough search using sniffer dogs and police horses on campus was also carried out for two days inside JNU campus. More than 600 police personnel, 20 inspectors, 16 ACP rank officers and two DCPs were part of the operation.

We traced the auto driver who told us that he had dropped him to Jamia Nagar. The following days an intensive search was carried out inside Jamia and JNU campus. Ten canines, six stallions and horses were even taken to the forested area of 1,000 acres in the campus. Sniffer dogs were taken to the hostels and academic buildings but nothing was found, an investigator said.

They also analysed his Facebook, Gmail and Twitter accounts to see if they were active but nothing was found.

Our teams also kept a close track of all unidentified dead bodies. All states were asked to keep a photographic evidence that could be tallied for all the bodies. Also, we kept in touch with the accident cell and teams went there everyday to check bodies. All the psychiatric wards in hospitals were also searched. No specific or actionable input was however received, he added.

In November 2016, an SIT was also formed to trace Najeeb following an instruction from the Union home minister to the Delhi Police chief. The SIT, however, failed to gather any relevant clues and the case was shifted to the Crime Branch.

Sadaf Musharraf, Najeebs sister, said that the family has now lost all hope. We have lost hope. It has been six months during which we have tried everything, from protest to police complaints, to knocking at the doors of the court. But there is no result. She said the police has not been able to find a single clue to trace Najeeb.

If they had to do something they would have done something in the start of the case. But the students accused of beating Najeeb have not been questioned. Till now in the court hearings the issue of their consent is being going on, she said.

We are in touch with police regularly. We are keeping a track of this case but now only police can do anything. There is nothing in our hand. We have given support to the police in every possible way, said JNU registrar Pramod Kumar.

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The first time Animesh Jha smoked heroin with his friends in Pune in 2007, he did not like the taste or the paranoia he experienced. But the dense smoke that engulfed his room caught his imagination. To recreate the smoky atmosphere, he smoked again the next day.

The fascination for the smoke soon turned into addiction and recurring experiences of paranoia. Over the next few years, 32-year-old Animesh jumped from one well-paying job to another before quitting working altogether as he sank deeper into the world of drugs that also included marijuana, thinner and cocaine at times.

Educated in Malaysia, Animesh is well-read, speaks in immaculate English and is popular for striking interesting conversations. He is possibly the most confident criminal I have ever met. He looks you straight in your eyes while answering questions, said a police officer who interrogated him after arresting him for allegedly killing his mother Meeta Jha.

Investigators say that the combination of addiction and loss of job made Animesh dependant on his 53-year-old mother for money. The paranoia that had gripped him led him to suspect his mother and sister, Anjali, of plotting against him. He began to fear that his mother would sell their flat in Dwarka and give all the money to Anjali.

He told the police that Meeta initially gave him money, which he used to buy drugs. When she refused, she saw the violent streak in him. He would manhandle her and threaten to kill her. The last time she actually felt he would carry out his threat was just about a month ago, said an officer.

The mother and son were on a visit to Nepal. When Meeta refused to give him money for drugs, he beat her, locked her in a room and took her credit card to withdraw around Rs 15,000. The Nepal Police caught him, but his mother requested them to let him off, the officer added.

Meeta did not know that her mercy would cost her life just a week later. When Animesh asked her for money again around 3 am on February 24, she refused. Animesh tried to grab her purse containing the cash, but she stood up to him.

A restless Animesh responded by grabbing her by the neck and pushing her to the wall next to her bed. Meeta suffered a skull fracture. To ensure she died, he strangulated her, said Surender Kumar, DCP (South-West).

CCTV cameras installed at the Sai Sadan Apartment in Dwarka Sector-3 showed him locking his flat from outside and riding away on a Yamaha FZ motorcycle with his mothers laptop, credit cards and jewellery.

The 16 CCTV cameras installed in his apartment were no simple security arrangement. Animeshs antics after smoking up were what compelled the owners of the other 11 flats in the posh apartment to install the cameras.

Animesh had become a menace. He would break our car windows and push our motorcycles for no reason. He would switch off the buildings power supply and halt the lift just to trouble us. Earlier he used to accuse his mother of plotting to kill him, but over the past few months he had started accusing us too, said a resident of Sai Sadan on condition of anonymity.

The drugs had damaged Animeshs reputation such that when Anjali, a London-based doctor, was unable to contact her mother for four days after Meetas murder, she called the Dwarka (North) police station around midnight on February 28 and told them she suspected her brother had killed her mother.

Meeta had messaged her daughter after Animesh beat her in Nepal. She knew of her brothers problems with addiction. So when she feared her mother was not safe, she suspected her brother, said an investigator. A police team broke into the flat to find Meetas decomposing body lying on her bed.

Over the next 13 days, Animesh visited 13 cities, including Rishikesh, Haridwar and Kasol. He chose some of these cities as they provided him an easy escape from police and at the same time easy access to smack and marijuana, said the investigator.

All this while, a police team led by Dwarka (North) SHO, Jasmohinder Chaudhary and inspector Rang Lal, followed trails left behind by him. Animesh was finally nabbed from Patna railway station in the early hours of Wednesday while he was planning to escape to Nepal. Highly intelligent Animesh had created a LinkedIn account to contact a distant cousin for help, but that led to his arrest.

Animesh has allegedly confessed to having killed his mother for refusing to fund his drugs, but often comes up with stories that reflects his deep paranoia. Sometimes he says his mother is actually alive and that she and his sister have staged all this to get rid of him, the investigator adds.

In police custody for 10 days, Animesh often leaves his interrogators confused about whether he is making up the stories or imagining them. We have ample scientific and circumstantial evidence to link Animesh to his mothers murder, said the DCP.
Chicagos universities will sponsor start-up founders on H1B visas which wont come under the annual H1B visa cap restricting spots to 65,000 (with another 20,000 for holders of masters degrees or higher), Indian-American news porta americanbazaaronline has reported.

Chicago-based Columbia College, DePaul University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University and Northwestern University  will launch Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR), inviting entrepreneurs to campuses.

The Indian American news portal quoted Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel as saying that the universities will work with the City of Chicago and sponsor between 10 to 20 visas for start-up founders in the first year of the programme. We want entrepreneurs to see Chicago as a place where their ideas dreams their companies can happen, he had said.

This initiative is saying yes to entrepreneurship, yes to diversity and most importantly, yes to the future of the city of Chicago, he reportedly said.

The universities will assess a companys growth before sponsoring its entrepreneurs. Those whose startups are at an early stage will be employed part-time for the university and work separately on their companies. Established start-ups will get a chance to make a home base at their sponsor university and mentor its students.

Applications are likely to be exempt from an annual cap on H-1B visas, which restricts spots to 65,000, with another 20,000 reserved for those with masters degrees or higher. The universities will run the admissions and reviews independently.

Massachusetts also launched a similar programme in 2014, first at University of Massachusetts Boston and Lowell campuses, and later at Babson College. The university has sponsored 23 local entrepreneurs whose companies have created 416 jobs and raised $185 million in private investment, the mayors office said.
Taking note of a suggestion given by the Supreme Court-appointed oversight committee, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has done away with all restrictions placed on candidates appearing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET).

NEET is an all-India examinations that qualifies candidates for entry into undergraduate medical schools.

In a resolution passed on Thursday, the executive committee of the MCI said restrictions such as the three-attempt limit and age ceiling of 25 years would be done away with. The oversight committee wrote to the MCI and the ministry of health and family welfare on February 28, asking them to remove these restrictions. The ministry asked the MCI to adhere to its advice, said a source.

Following that, the executive committee passed a unanimous decision to abide by the apex court-appointed panels recommendation.

The MCI is expected to apprise the Supreme Court about its changed stand in its next hearing  slated for March 20, 2017.

In January, the government had issued an executive order limiting the number of attempts accorded to a NEET candidate to three and capping the age ceiling at 25. Both the decisions were made on the MCIs recommendations. Within days, students challenged the government order in various judicial forums  including high courts and the Supreme Court.

The MCI, in its affidavit, had batted in favour of restriction. A candidate aspiring to study medicine needs to have a certain level of maturity of mind and body to undertake such a technical course, it had said.

Now, students want the Supreme Court to order restarting of the application process that the Central Board of Secondary Education closed on March 1.

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On Thursday, fashion week in the Capital gave us fall/winter inspiration to take home. From folk prints inspired by travels to sheer necklines and re-imagined capes  there are some takeaways that you need in your wardrobe now. Read on to make sure you are all set for the coming season.

VELVETS CONTINUE TO TREND:

Actor Vaani Kapoor along with designer Rina Dhaka.

For autumn/winter, Rina Dhaka gave velvet her vote. Her showstopper, actor Vaani Kapoor walked out in a floor-length gown in the fabric, with a sneaky cut-out at the waist. Let next season be all about the luxurious fabric.

A SHOCK OF SHEER FOR THE SEASON, DENIM+DENIM:

Creations by label Huemn on the runway.

Sheer refuses to go off the style radar. Huemn by Pranav Mishra and Shyma Shetty presented a collection high on puffer jackets and sheer dress. For winter, continue to add sheer inputs to your dresses and go for ankle-length boots to top the look. Denim on denim also made a comeback on the runway, and maybe with a jacket, you could triple the trend.

FAUX FUR FOR SOME FALL FUN:

Vineet Bahls creations on the ramp on Day 2 of fashion week.

Faux fur has been trending in Milan, Paris and Delhi ramps gave their stamp of approval to the trend too. At Vineet Bahl, fur-trimmed necklines caught our attention. Team leather, faux fur for a grunge-perfect look.

SOME GOLDEN INSPIRATION:

Muga Silk was the backbone of designer Samant Chauhans collection.

At the National Rail Museum, Samant Chauhan paid a tribute to Assamese Muga Silk, celebrating delicate, luxurious golden threadwork. Men, here are your fashion goals for fall. Pick up handwoven fabrics and go for winter-perfect neutrals in monotones, especially for your suits.

THE FUTURISTIC WINTER CAPE:

The cape got a makeover at Pankaj and Nidhi.

Designer duo Pankaj and Nidhi presented a largely monochromatic collection. For the upcoming season, culottes seem to be on trend, along with laser-cut (or intricately hand-carved) statement pieces. We are loving the future-ready cape.

TASSELS, POM-POMS, NATIVE PRINTS:

Creations by Pero at the off-site showcase at the Crafts Museum.

Souvenirs in the form of travel memories made up Pero by Aneeth Aroras show at the Crafts Museum. For fall, opt for handcrafted embroideries on cropped toppers and boho midi-skirts with a touch of tassels and colourful pom-poms.

FLORALS ARE NOT JUST A SPRING THING:

Hemant-Nanditas collection celebrated autumnal florals.

At Hemant & Nandita, the designer duo romanced florals in mustards, pastels and monochromes. For autumn, opt for jacquard floral-printed A-line dresses and add that old-school, experimental edge with the socks-and-heels combo to .

PRINT PARTY FOR FALL/WINTER:

High-on-print styling at Patine.

Amalgamation of print on print with embroidery added a lot of fun to Patines collection. Mish-mash stripes, florals, geometric prints...go for a graphic overload to light up autumn! Cropped boleros are also on-point for the next season.

DITCH FALL GREYS, ADD SOME COLOUR:

Anupama Dayals collection was inspired by the forest.

She is known for never steering away from bright hues and with her collection, Anupama Dayals Mangar-inspired creations gave us #colourgoals for winter. Team scarlets or vermilion red with a leather jacket and youll be good to go.
The quantum of sentence in a case of violence and rioting at Maruti Suzuki plant at Manesar, 20 kms from Gurgaon city, will be delivered on Saturday at 4 pm.

After arguments of the prosecution and the defence over quantum of punishment concluded, the court of additional district and sessions judge RP Goyal on Friday reserved its order.

Thirty one workers were convicted and 117 acquitted on March 10. Thirteen accused were held guilty of murder whereas 18 were convicted of rioting and other crimes under various sections of the IPC.

Awanish Kumar Dev, general manager (human resources) of Maruti Suzuki, was burned to death and several executives injured in the violence in the car plant allegedly triggered by workers on July 18, 2012. The police had arrested 148 workers in connection with the murder, whereas 62 others could not be arrested and have been declared proclaimed offenders.

Violence was triggered after tussle between workers and the management over various demands including registration of a trade union at Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki.

The prosecution demanded capital punishment for the accused citing it to be a rarest of the rare cases. The victim Awanish Kumar Dev was beaten brutally and he could not escape from fire because of the injuries inflicted by the accused, said district attorney Lal Singh.

Defence lawyers Rebecca John and Vrinda Grover sought release of 18 accused and opposed death sentence for the 13 murder accused. The arguments verdict was announced in the court of additional district and sessions judge RP Goyal here on Friday amid heavy police presence. Administration had imposed section 144 in the district court premises.

The accused held guilty for murder and related charges included Ram Mehar, Sandeep Dhillon, Ramvilas, Sarabjit Singh, Pavan Kumar, Sohan Kumar, Pradip Kumar, Ajmer Singh, Jia Lal, Amarjeet Kapoor, Dhanraj Bhambi, Yogesh Kumar and Pradeep Gujjar.

They have been held guilt for under sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 436 (rioting), 427 (destruction of property), and 325 (mischief) of the IPC.

Eighteen others were convicted under various sections for voluntary causing hurt (323), destruction of property (427), rioting (147 IPC) and rioting armed with deadly weapons ( 148 IPC) and other sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

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The members of Maruti Suzuki Workers Union and trade unions of other auto companies were present in large numbers at the court complex in Gurgaon on Friday, reiterating their support for the workers convicted in the 2012 Maruti Manesar plant violence case.

The court was expected to declare the quantum of punishment for the convicted workers on Friday but it hasbeen reserved for Saturday.

Trade union leaders said they will fight in the higher courts and on the streets as it had become a battle between workers and the capitalist class that has maximum support from the government. We were not allowed to sit inside the court and some of the workers were even asked to not attend the hearing. The workers have faith in the judiciary but they wont allow the subversion of evidence as has been happening in this case, Ajmer Singh, president, Maruti Suzuki Workers Union from the Manesar plant, said.

The Maruti union leaders also demanded compensation and jobs for the 117 acquitted workers. All of them have spent three to four years in jail for committing no crime. Their lives have been destroyed. No one is ready to marry them and their families have lost hope. Who will save them? Singh said.

The Maruti workers also said that there was intense pressure on them from the management to refrain from supporting their co-workers.

Satish Kumar, member of the Maruti Workers Provisional Committee, which is fighting for the expelled and incarcerated workers said many workers were in depression and have lost the zest for life after being involved in the case. One of the convicts sister committed suicide after he was arrested... There are several such instances of suffering, he said.

A large number of trade union leaders from Gurgaon, Manesar, and Neemrana had also come for the hearing, and they unanimously pledged to support the cause of the convicted workers. We had boycotted lunch and dinner on March 16. The future strategy will be formed once the verdict is announced, Kuldip Janghu, a trade union lawyer, said.

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An accident near Haldirams on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway led to a massive jam on the highway for over two hours. Long line of vehicles were seen from Kherki Daula to Narsinghpur, and, later, it extended till Hero Honda Chowk.

The traffic police said around 11.30am, a white Audi car collided with a canter, while trying to avoid another car overtaking from the left. The front wheels of the car got stuck under the canter making it difficult for the expressway concessionaire to remove the vehicles.

Problems compounded when the owner of the Gurgaon registered Audi refused to let highway officials use the normal crane to remove the car from the accident spot. The vehicle could be shifted to the side lane after a hydra crane was booked by the owner, a Skylark official said.

Police said it took almost an hour more to normalise the situation as only two lanes were operational while removing the vehicle. To ease the situation, police got the toll barriers lifted for an hour.

Dilip Yadav of Kherki Daula said, The distance I cover in 10 minutes took me over two hours because of the accident.

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Research from Cardiff University in the UK suggests that it could be time to stop using antibiotics to treat moderate eczema in children and to focus instead on corticosteroid and emollient creams.

According to the study, 40% of eczema flare-ups in children are currently treated with topical antibiotics. However, the scientists found no meaningful benefit from using oral or topical antibiotics for milder types of eczema. The study is published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine.

Eczema is an inflammatory skin disease that causes patches of skin to become itchy, red and cracked. It can also cause spots and blisters. It is often associated with food allergies, allergic rhinitis and asthma.

The researchers studied 113 children, who were given oral antibiotics (flucloxacillin) or topical antibiotics (fusidic acid) or placebos. All the children also received emollient creams and steroid creams.

The results showed no significant difference between the two groups in the resolution of eczema symptoms after two weeks, four weeks or three months.

As a result, the scientists dont recommend the use of antibiotics in children with mild eczema, even if there are signs of infection. Whats more, their use can promote resistance and allergy or skin sensitization, explains Dr Nick Francis, who led the study.

Instead, the scientists advise using steroid creams and applying emollient creams (moisturizers) on a daily basis for long-term treatment.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more.
To address the growing demand for trained pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers, aerospace giant Airbus will set up Indias first full flight simulator and training centre near Delhis Indira Gandhi International Airport.

The Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL), a GMR-led consortium, signed a land licence agreement with Airbus India on Thursday to set up the facility.

Civil Aviation minister P Ashok Gajapati Raju performed the ground-breaking ceremony of the project.

The land licence agreement was signed between the DIAL and the Airbus India for a period till 31st March, 2036. The DIAL has received the initial security deposit and the advanced development charges (ADC). It will also receive an annual license fee from this license, said a DIAL spokesperson.

India, the fastest growing domestic aviation market in the world, is expected to grow at an annualised 9.3% over the next 20 years, outpacing the world average of 4.6%.

To cater to this huge demand, the European aviation major forecasts a requirement for at least 1,600 new passenger and freighter aircraft by 2035. The consequent increase in Indian in-service aircraft fleet will lead to an accompanying need for over 24,000 new pilots and maintenance engineers.

We have only scratched the surface when it comes to the growth of civil aviation in India. This training centre will be the first such facility fully owned by us in Asia. It is a symbol of our enduring partnership with this country, said CEO of Airbus Tom Enders.

The Airbus India Training Centre spread over almost 7000sqm will be built in a modular concept in order to become operational by end-2018 with two A320 full flight simulators, increasing to four and potentially to six in due course.

It will start with an initial capacity to train over 800 pilots and 200 maintenance engineers annually.

Vistara, a joint-venture of Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, has also signed a five-year agreement with the Airbus to provide training services to Vistara pilots for the A320 type aircraft.

This partnership underlines our uncompromising commitment to uphold the highest safety standards and operational excellence. I am confident that our pilots will immensely benefit from Airbus in-depth and specialized training solutions. It will help us tread a path towards industry leadership, said Phee Teik Yeoh, chief executive officer of Vistara.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday pooh-poohed the idea of the BJP posing any threat to her party, Trinamool Congress, in the next assembly polls, saying it was just a party No.3 or 4 in the state.

They cannot... they cannot. What do you think? Now they are the party No.3 or 4 in Bengal... How will they be able to capture all the seats? Forcefully? she asked.

The TMC supremo asserted that if the BJP can take on her party in West Bengal, the TMC would target the BJP in entire India. If the BJP targets West Bengal, the TMC will target India, she stated.

If they target Bengal, dont you think we will target India? If they target Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, we will go all the way, she added.

Banerjee made the assertion in response to a reporters query on the BJPs reported move to chalk out a strategy to take on the TMC in the assembly elections as well as in the zilla parishad polls.

She said West Bengal was not the place where the politics of division would succeed.

I have full trust in Bengal. Bengal is not the place where you will divide and say anything and people will start accepting that, she said.

Banerjee also said she would be happy to join a combined anti-BJP front if any formal proposal comes her way before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

I will be happy if there is a combined front. If there is any formal proposal, I am there. I have no problems, she said.

She said that existence of a good government and a strong political opposition was important for the betterment of the country.

In democracy, there is a government and an opposition. For the betterment of the country, the party running the government should do good work and the opposition party should also be strong, she said.
Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya has been discharged from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, where he was admitted to the ICU after he complained of uneasiness.

Maurya was discharged around 9.45 pm on Thursday, nearly six hours after being admitted, RML medical superintendent Dr A K Gadpayile said.

Examination of his blood sugar level, CT scan and ECG, among other tests, revealed that he was fit to be discharged, he said.

His clinical conditions were normal. The uneasiness was because of the cough and cold he was suffering from. There was also anxiety due to overwork because of political commitments, he added.

Maurya, who won the Lok Sabha election from Phulpur constituency in Allahabad in 2014, was made the BJPs Uttar Pradesh unit president in April last year.

In the recently assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh the BJP decimated all rivals, bagging 312 out of the 403 seats in the state.

Maurya was seen as one of the forerunners for the chief ministerial post in UP but the BJP chief Amit Shah has left everyone guessing by entrusting him with the responsibility of choosing the candidate for the top job.
The Calcutta high court on Friday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct a preliminary probe into bribery allegations against top Trinamool Congress parliamentarians and ministers. The allegations  running into several crores  were first unearthed in a purported sting operation by Naradanews.com last year.

Here are key points about the case:

What is it about?

The Naradanews sting operation -- aired just a fortnight before the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections --showed a dozen Trinamool leaders purportedly accepting cash from the representative of a fictitious company in exchange for doling out favours to them. The sting was carried out by Narada News, an investigative news website.

What the court said:

Acting chief justice Nishita Mhatre and justice T Chakraborty of the Calcutta high court asked the CBI to complete a preliminary inquiry in 72 hours and file an FIR, if necessary. They also observed that it is because a senior police officer is involved in the case, that they had to ask CBI to investigate it.

Who were involved?

Six Lok Sabha MPs of the party, three top state ministers and the mayor of Kolkata were allegedly seen taking money on behalf of the party. they include: Lok Sabha MPs Saugata Roy, Suvendu Adhikari, Sultan Ahmed, Aparupa Poddar, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Prasun Banerjee and West Bengal ministers and MLAs Subrata Mukherjee, Firhad (Bobby) Hakim, Madan Mitra, Iqbal Ahmed, Sovan Chatterjee.

IPS officer SMH Mirza, who claimed that he was taking money on behalf of the partys number two and MP Mukul Roy.

The Trinamool Congress position

The party has described the timing of the expose right before the elections as a political conspiracy meant to malign the party. In April 2016, the party announced an internal probe on the sting operation which was slammed by Opposition parties as desperate attempt to counter allegations. This is the third big scam  after the Saradha and Rose Valley scandals  that involves top Trinamool leaders.

Forensic report

The Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Chandigarh confirmed that the Narada tapes were genuine and had not been tampered with.
For Narada News editor and chief executive officer Mathew Samuel, the Calcutta high court order on Friday spells relief.

Samuel, who is admitted in hospital for an undisclosed surgery, told HT over phone that he expects some reprieve from an alleged witch-hunt by the Kolkata police that forced Narada news operations to shut down in Delhi last month.

Nearly one year and a few days after the news website Narada News published a sting operation online purportedly showing 11 ruling Trinamool Congress leaders accepting money, the high court ordered a CBI probe into the charges.

I havent even seen the order yet. I have just heard about it Because of their witch-hunt, 45 people have lost their jobs, Samuel said.

The Kolkata police have been harassing everyone from my journalist colleagues to my driver. They picked up my driver and asked him things like how much do I drink or if I have any girl friends.

Samuel said Narada News was forced to shut down after the Kolkata police sealed its office in New Delhi last month.

It is a small website, some colleagues have been updating it using their mobiles. But the operation as such has shut down. The false cases against me have chased away the investors, he added. If there is a fair and impartial inquiry, a lot will come out.

Investigating an alleged extortion call made to a former Bihar MP, Kolkata police raided Samuels Delhi home and office on February 14.

They claimed to have found a laptop in a hotel somewhere and came after me trying to link me to the call. From the time I did the sting, I knew I would be harassed, he said.

Narada News published the sting last year in March in which Samuel, posing as Santosh Shankaran, a businessman from Chennai, approached TMC leaders from Parliamentarians to ministers in the West Bengal state government.

The investigations and sting operation, he said, started before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and continued for two years before an edited version was published online.

In April last year, the HC asked Samuel to hand over the tapes for safe custody.

The matter, which has serious ramifications on the entire system if the information is true,  we feel the video tapes and device be kept in safe custody for meeting the ends of justice, the bench headed by then chief justice Manjula Chellur observed. Samuel said he handed all evidence including 52 hours of video footage to the court.

I have handed over everything to the court. The CBI should investigate all aspects, he said.

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Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh is under fire for allegedly mishandling Goa, where the party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Congress emerged as the single largest party with 17 seats in the 40-member assembly when results were declared on March 11.

But, it was the BJP with 13 legislators that formed the government, as it moved quickly to secure the support of the Goa Forward, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Independents in a hung House.

I dont know whether Digvijaya really wanted to form the Congress government in Goa. Looking at his actions, it did not seem like he did, said Vishwajit Rane, who quit the Congress and the Goa assembly on Thursday.

The sentiments were echoed by senior Congress leaders. Rajya Sabha member Renuka Choudhary demanded Singh be removed. How we lost Goa was stupid, she said.

The 70-year-old Singh brushed aside the accusation and accused governor Mridula Sinha of acting against the Constitution by not inviting the single largest party to form the government.

There was no delay in electing a leader in Goa. By 3.30pm (on March 12), we had decided on our leader and were trying to contact Vijay Sardesai (of Goa Forward), who had promised support to us at midnight (March 11), Singh said on Friday.

Sardesai set some conditions that were accepted and he even spoke to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Singh said.

They tried to get in touch with Sardesai after the Congress legislature party leader was elected but by that time, he had had dealings with Nitin Gadkari, Singh told media at Parliament.

The Congress Goa chief narrated a different version.

Singh insisted there was no need to write to the governor as she would call the Congress first, Luizinho Faleiro said in Panaji.

Another blunder was to not insist on letters of support from potential partners on the night of March 11, he said.

If MGP and Goa Forward can give letters of support to the BJP..., the same night, a letter could have been given to us after speaking to our vice-president, Faleiro said.

Another MLA, Jenniffer Monserrate, said they had no idea what was happening behind closed doors.

Nobody was interested in communicating with the members the course of the party. Its shameful we lost despite being so close to majority, he said.

Singh, however, accused party colleagues of sabotaging the alliance with the Goa Forward. Goa Forward won 3 out of 4 they contested. Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22. Still Digvijaya Guilty? I leave it to you to judge, he tweeted.

Goa Forward won 3 out of 4 they contested. Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Still Digvijaya Guilty? I leave it to you to judge.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

This is not the first time that his handling of state units has been criticised.

He was blamed for the drubbing in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh election, bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and the rout the party faced in the state polls in 2014.

In Karnataka, due for polls in March 2018, a rebellion is brewing in the ruling Congress that could help the BJP. Many MLAs have complained about Singh and want him divested of the states charge.

Digvijaya should now take retirement from politics, an angry Rane said.

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The ED has filed a charge sheet against Jignesh Bhajiawala, son of Surat-based businessman Kishore Bhajiawala, in a demonetisation-related money laundering case of Gujarat.

The charge sheet, called prosecution complaint in ED parlance, has been filed on Thursday before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Ahmedabad.

Jignesh has acquired and possessed the proceeds of crime and committed an offence of money laundering in terms of section 3 of the PMLA, punishable under section 4 of the said Act, the agency said in a statement.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a criminal FIR against Bhajiawala and his sons Jignesh and Vilas based on a CBI FIR against him.

The CBI registered the FIR after the Income Tax department conducted searches and seized gold and cash from his premises as part of their operation in December last year to check black money following ban on high value currency notes.

Jignesh was also arrested by the ED in this case in January and at present he is in judicial custody.

Investigations have revealed that Jignesh Kishore bhai Bhajiawala converted a huge amount of his unaccounted money, post demonetisation, into new high denomination currency through collusion with bank officials of private and public sector banks and private persons by impersonation and by using forged documents.

Jignesh, in collusion with Pankaj Bhatt, the then senior Manager of Surat Peoples Co-Operative Bank Limited, Udhna branch, managed to procure 1109 IDs from records of the said bank and using the same, the accused (Jignesh) filed thousands of Annexure-5 forms (exchange forms prescribed by RBI for exchange of old notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000) and these forms were used by him to exchange his demonetised currency in collusion with bank officials, it said.

The agency charged that Jignesh has therefore abused or misused the demonetised currency exchange scheme announced by the government and the RBI on November 8, 2016 by forging thousands of exchange forms in names of various persons...and obtained new currency notes in connivance with bank officers, it said.

The ED, last month, had also attached under PMLA over Rs 1.02 crore cash in new notes in the case.

The I-T department had recovered Rs 1.45 crore cash, with about Rs 1.05 crore in new currency notes, bullion worth Rs 1.49 crore, gold jewellery valued at Rs 4.92 crore, other ornaments worth Rs 1.39 crore and silver ingots priced at Rs 1.28 crore after raids on the premises of the Bhajiawalas.

Further investigation is in progress, the agency said.
Riding high on the resounding success of its protege - the BJP - at the recently concluded five state assembly elections, the RSS has begun shaping its offensive against the Left government in Kerala and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) accuses the TMC and the LDF-led Kerala government of perpetrating violence against Hindus in the states. In the 2016 assembly polls in the two states, the BJP won three seats in West Bengal and one, for the first time ever, in Kerala.

Later this week, the RSS top brass and the chiefs of its over 40 affiliates will congregate in Coimbatore for an annual meeting of the highest decision making body, the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, to take up the issue of violence against Hindus and design its future course of action.

A top Sangh functionary said West Bengal more than Kerala would be the focus, as the TMC government has failed to protect the rights of the majority community. In Kerala, the Sanghs cadre is at the receiving end of aggravated violence, but in West Bengal it is the common people. And this is going on unchecked, the functionary said.

This is not the first time that the Sangh has flagged the issue of what it calls communal violence in both the states.

In October last year, at its all India executive meeting in Hyderabad, it weighed in on the politically motivated murders in Kerala and attacks on Hindus in West Bengal by Jehadi elements. Resolutions were also passed on the violence in both states that called for Union government to take urgent action against the perpetrators of violence. Petitions were submitted to the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, human rights commission and nation-wide protests were organised, but there has been no abatement in the attacks.

Earlier too we raised the issue of molestation and killing of Hindu girls, some from the SC/ST community, by some anti-social elements of the Muslim community. These instances are happening with the connivance of TMC, the functionary said.

The RSS helmed the electoral campaign for the BJP in the two states; helping it increase its vote share in the states from 6% to 10.5% in the Left bastion of Kerala and from 4% in West Bengal to 10.2%. It is now hoping that the BJP government at the Centre would address its concerns over continued attacks against the majority community. West Bengal has turned into a laboratory for anti-social elements. Instead of cracking down on those who trying to weaken the country and have robbed poor through ponzi schemes, TMC is busy dropping Hindi names from text books, a state-level functionary told HT.

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There were 15 terror attacks on the army last year as the force lost 68 soldiers, the Lok Sabha was on Friday informed.

The year 2016 also recorded 449 instances of ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the Line of Control and international border in Jammu and Kashmir combined.

In a written response to a question in Lok Sabha, Subhash Bhamre, minister of state for defence, said 10 cases of terror attacks were recorded in 2014, followed by 11 in 2015, 15 in 2016 and three until March 15 this year.

2015 and 2016 also saw a spike in the number of deaths of army personnel, recording 67 and 68 casualties respectively in terror attacks and along the border. In 2014, 38 army personnel died in terror acts while 13 have lost their lives this year.

Bhamre said, in 2016 the area along the Line of Control, which is under operational control of the army, saw 228 instances of ceasefire violations while the area along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, under the control of the Border Security Force (BSF), recorded 221 instances of ceasefire violations.

This accounts for more than one instance of ceasefire violation everyday.

In 2017, 30 instances of ceasefire violations were recorded along the LoC while six such instances along the international border were recorded until February 6 by the BSF.
India and Russia on Friday signed two agreements for long-term supply of spares for the Indian Air Forces Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, a fleet plagued by engine troubles and poor serviceability.

The IAF has contracted 272 Su-30 MKI fighter aircraft, out of which nearly 240 have been delivered and the remaining planes are likely to be inducted over the next three years.

The two pacts were inked at the two-day India-Russia Military and Industrial Conference jointly inaugurated by defence minister Arun Jaitley and Russias minister for industry and trade Denis Manturov.

Defence minister Arun Jaitley and Russias minister of industry and trade Denis Manturov at the signing ceremony during the India-Russia Military and Industrial Conference in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI)

Seven Su-30 jets have crashed since 2009, including the fighter that went down in Rajasthan on March 15.

The agreements lay down the terms and conditions for technical assistance and supply of spares for five years.

Jaitley said issues related to maintenance and life-cycle support of Russian equipment in the Indian armed forces would be discussed during the conference being attended by 150 representatives from Russia. More than 100 Indian private firms are also taking part in the event.

Defence minister Arun Jaitley talks with Russias minister of industry and trade Denis Manturov during the India-Russia Military and Industrial Conference in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI)

Russian companies should come forward for technology transfer to Indian companies and facilitate manufacturing of components/parts and sub-systems at least for those cases where the requirement is in large numbers and is recurring in nature, Jaitley said.

The Su-30 fighters recorded as many as 35 engine failures/engine-related problems between January 2013 and December 2014. The serviceability of the Su-30 fleet currently stands at 60%, meaning only 60 out of 100 fighters are available for missions at any given time.
All India Jat Arkashan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) president Yashpal Malik will meet chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in Delhi on Friday after the third round of talks between protesting Jats and the government delegation remained positive.

The talks on all seven demands were positive and now two-three members of the the Jat delegation will meet chief minister at 2pm on Friday in Delhi, Yashpal Malik told HT after the meeting.

When asked if the Jat agitation, which started on January 29, will end after meeting with the chief minister, Malik said, The agitation will end if chief minister accepts all seven demands being raised by the members of community. We will meet the chief minister tomorrow (Friday) and next decision will be announced after meeting him, he added.

However, hinting at a breakthrough to end the impasse between the government and Jats, education minister Rambilas Sharma, who was leading the government delegation said, The talks were positive and we have reached an agreement over some demands. Chief minister will now meet the delegation on Friday. There is a possibility that the agitation will end soon, he said, adding that all Haryanvis should live with peace and harmony.

The meeting between 150 members of the Jat community and the eight-member government delegation lasted for an approximate five hours at the guest house of Panipat refinery as the government seems soft to persuade the protesting Jats, who have threatened to gherao parliament on Delhi 20.

Meanwhile, sources said the talks were positive and there is a possibility that the protest may end on Friday and chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Yashpal Malik may address a joint press conference after the meeting.

According to sources, withdrawal of pending cases and release of Jats, arrested for their involvement in last years violence was the main demand raised by the Jat delegation during the meeting.

Besides the release of those jailed during last years agitation, withdrawal of cases slapped during the protest and demand of government jobs for kin of those killed and injured while taking part in the stir, the Jats are demanding for filing of a time-bound application in the Supreme Court to provide reservation to Jats and other five communities.

They also demanded that the government should take steps to include reservation to Jats and other five communities in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution to prevent legal wrangles.

As per sources, the government was ready to accept most of the demands but the delegation expressed helplessness to withdraw the pending cases registered under Section 307 and 302 of the Indian Penal Code and cases being investigated by the CBI.

This was the third meeting between the members of the Jat community and government delegation. Earlier, two meetings, held on February 11 and 20 at the same venue, remained inconclusive. After the second meeting, All India Jat Arkashan Sngharsh Smitit president Yashpal Malik refused to hold further talks with the five-member government delegation, which was led by chief secretary DS Dhesi, saying the delegation was toothless. A day before the third meeting the government added three non-Jat leaders into the delegation, including education minister Rambilas Sharma, minister of state Krishan Bedi and chief parliamentary secretary Kamal Gupta.

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Embattled Calcutta high court judge CS Karnan on Friday rejected a bailable warrant by the Supreme Court, moments after it was delivered by police directing him to appear before a seven-judge bench of the top court.

Karnan is facing the top courts ire for accusing several Madras high court judges of corruption.

Bengal director general of police Surajit Kar Purakayastha, Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar and another senior IPS officer went to the New Town residence of justice Karnan to serve the bailable warrant.

The top court issued the warrant directing him to appear before it on March 31.

I rejected the same (the bailable warrant) after assigning valid reasons. This kind of demeaning acts from your lordships and further perpetrating the Atrocities Act is absolutely out of law to the utter embarrassment of a Dalit judge, justice Karan wrote in his response.

Hence, I request you to stop your further harassment in order to uphold the dignity and decorum of our courts.

He wrote this to the seven judges of the Supreme Court bench and called it his order on the warrant.

While talking to the media at his residence on Friday, Karnan said: By ordering this bailable warrant against me the Supreme Court has made itself a laughing stock before the whole world.

When asked what he would do if the Supreme Court takes stronger action, he said,I am seeking legal opinion.

On March 10, Karnan had hit back at the apex court, calling its warrant against him unconstitutional and an attempt to ruin his life because he was a Dalit.

Karnan had signed an order in front of the media at his residence, directing the Central Bureau of Investigation to register, investigate and file a report before the appropriate court of law under Article 226 read with Section 482 CrPC to prevent abuse of process of any court....

In the same order he said: I further direct the secretary generals of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to place the entire facts of the case before the Speaker for appropriate inquiry under the Judges Enquiry Act.

On April 11, Karnan stepped up his tirade against the Supreme Court and his fellow judges by releasing before the media written allegations against two Madas high court judges where he alleged that one had tampered records to get into service and amassed wealth through unfair means while the other had raped an intern.

Justice Karnan had made these allegations in 2013 and 2014. I wrote to the chief justice of Madras high court but no action has been taken against them. I brought specific allegations against 20 judges. But while those 20 are silent a seven-member bench of the Supreme Court issued a warrant against me. Today I openly admit that Indian judiciary is corrupt, Karnan said at a press conference.

These seven judges dont know law. The Supreme Court did not apply mind. Thats why public confidence (in the judiciary) is decreasing day by day, he said.

Asked whether he would appear before the Supreme Court on or before the deadline (March 31), Karnan said: Why? For what purpose? This is a wrong order. It is out of law.

I am a sitting high court judge. Any place where I sit and pass an order becomes the court, Karnan said.

On March 10, a seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar had issued the warrant, directing Karnans presence on March 31 after the judge ignored earlier summons in connection with contempt proceedings initiated against him for accusing several judges of the Madras high court, where he had earlier served, and an SC judge of corruption, nepotism and casteism.

The SC had on February 8 issued contempt notice to the judge and asked him to appear before it on February 13. But he did not appear and instead, wrote a letter questioning the contempt proceedings against him.

According to Karnan, only Parliament had the power to initiate action against a sitting high court judge by way of an impeachment motion.

This was the not first time Karnan took on colleagues in front of the media.

In 2011, he called a press conference to accuse a fellow high court judge of caste discrimination on the ground that the judge who sat next to him deliberately touched him with his foot.

In 2015, he interrupted arguments going on in another courtroom in the Madras HC regarding judicial appointments, demanding to be heard.

In April 2015, he began suo motu contempt proceedings against the chief justice of the Madras high court, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, accusing the latter of harassing and belittling him because he was a Dalit and by giving him insignificant and dummy portfolios. The Supreme Court stayed the same.

Karnan then accused Kaul of corruption in February last year, following which the top court transferred him that month, which Karnan issued a stay order on. When a two-judge Supreme Court bench lifted his stay order, he asked the Chennai police to book a case against the two judges under the SC/ST (atrocities) Act.

The top court threatened to haul him up for contempt for some of the statements that he made, but Karnan apologised saying that his mental balance was severely affected. He finally took charge at the Calcutta high court after a private meeting with then-Chief Justice of India T S Thakur.
Just a day after he presented a populist budget, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah is back on the defense with a gathering storm of corruption scandals plaguing his government. On Thursday, 16 March, BJP leader Jagadish Shettar posed a few straightforward  and rather embarrassing  questions to the top guns of the ruling Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee. He also pressed for an inquiry into the diary allegedly recovered from Congress MLC K Govindaraj that has blown open a can of worms for the government, including details of kickbacks for the infamously proposed steel flyover project that was recently shelved.

Chaos erupted in the state assembly and the session was disrupted. The BJP leaders have now taken it upon themselves to bring up the issue time and again to ensure the Congress partys credibility comes under the scanner.

There is a new term in Karnatakas political circles when it comes to scandals  its called diary politics, and it has been plaguing Karnataka for weeks now. The diary in question was recovered from Congress MLC Govindarajs residence during an IT raid conducted in March 2016 (apart from seizures of Rs 120 crore, with Rs 1.10 crore in cash and 10 kg of gold). However, its contents were made public only last month. It reportedly contains information about bribes given to Congress central bigwigs by state leaders, through entries that have initials such as RG (allegedly Rahul Gandhi), SG (Sonia Gandhi) and so on. The bribes given by the state government are reported to be worth Rs 1,000 crore.

The ruling Congress in Karnataka has naturally denied the allegations, claiming that a diary cannot be a piece of incriminating evidence as per the Supreme Courts acquittal of BJP bigwigs such as LK Advani and VC Shukla in the 1997 Jain Hawala case. Furthermore, in a rebuttal of sorts, the Congress released a video on 13 February of BJP leaders happily discussing the diarys political fallout.

Continuing this tit-for-tat, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) working president Dinesh Gundu Rao, on 25th February, released contents from BJP MLC Lehar Singh Siroyas alleged diary, to prove his claim that even state BJP leaders pay money to their party high command. The alleged diary contains two pages where one maintains a record of received payments and the other, paid, with each category having initials corresponding to names of state and central BJP leaders and corresponding amounts. Dinesh Gundu Rao claimed that this second diary was recovered in November 2013 when IT officials raided Siroyas house.

Siroya filed a complaint on 1st March against Dinesh Gundu Rao stating that the diary did not belong to him, nor was the handwriting in it his. In his complaint, Siroya has accused the latter of fabricating documents and forging his signature to hatch a conspiracy to malign him.

A pertinent question that Karnataka Congress has been asking is, why should the Govindaraj diary be taken with any credibility in the first place? The Karnataka Congress also wants to know why the diary has been conveniently made public now, and how the BJP got hold of it.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, senior Congress leader Manish Tewari said, At the outset, we are very clear about Karnataka. The diary in question is not permissible evidence as ruled by the Supreme Court. Hence, even in this case, we would assume same thing applies. There cannot be different strokes for different folks.

Has the state Congress decided to take on the BJP at the same level of this fight? No sooner did the BJP release Govindarajs diarys contents, the Congress posted a rebuttal on 13 February in the form of a recorded video conversation between BJPs senior leaders Ananth Kumar and BS Yeddyurappa (BSY). The conversation is now under forensic investigation to ascertain whether the voices in the video actually belong to the leaders. Allegedly, one of the voices that resembles Yeddyurappas says in the video, Now that we have released it [the diarys contents], let him [Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah] go around the state answering our allegations.

This was something that the BJP didnt expect and it comes as a blow to their preparation for the state polls next year, even as the BJP has left no stone unturned to diminish Congress image based on corruption charges. Recently, even political enemies have come together to put a dent in Siddaramaiahs image, like JD(S) chief HD Kumaraswamy, who revealed that the CM was found wearing a lavish Hublot watch. The issue progressed in twists and turns and finally ended up as a major embarrassment to Siddaramaiah. But the Congress has recovered well from that, with JD(S) and Congress leaders coming together to uphold the states interest during the Cauvery and the Mahadayi water sharing issues.

However, the diary leak has once again upped the ante on the Congress. Sources close to Govindaraj said, He has disowned the diary in a complaint made to the police last year itself. There is no question of those pages revealing anything about the corruption or the party. The diary wont even matter in the larger scheme of things.

Congress in denial

A total rejection of diarys contents is the standard answer from the Congress. While the BJP is pressing for a CBI inquiry to prove its claims of corruption, the Congress is scaling it down to a state issue and thus trying not to appear over-reactive to the issue. However, both parties are planning their next move in great detail.

The Congress, both at state and national levels, seems to be playing this game with more finesse than on earlier occasions. Whether the diary was planted or not is something for Govindaraj to prove in court, said Manish Tewari, cautious enough to keep the party out of this issue.

BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra told this reporter that their party is in solidarity with the respective leaders. Our leaders at state level are carrying out a crusade. We will be with them, he said.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, former Karnataka chief minister and current BJP state president Yeddyurappa said the Congress in Karnataka is under great pressure to feed the national unit since it has no other choice. They [the Congress] are not in power anywhere else, he said. How will the party fight the elections? They are the pioneers of corruption.

Given his stance, it is ironic that in the leaked video, the voice resembling Yeddyurappas says, We all have done it, sending money to the party headquarters.

The Congress, on the other hand, is calling this a political conspiracy. The party maintains that the question of responding to kickback allegations does not arise since the diary itself is a hoax. During his recent visit to Karnataka on 26th February, AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh said the diary was brought out after 11 months of it being reportedly confiscated in an IT raid. Why was the government silent till now? This has been done to create trouble for Congress and deflect the attention of people of Karnataka, he told the media.

While experts are divided on the legal merits of Govindarajs diary, Yeddyurappa maintains that the Congress defense is weak. They [the Congress] pose a question about who gave me the details of a diary that was in the custody of IT department, he said. Thats not the crux of the matter. This diary was seized from a persons house. This is tangible evidence. He may have disowned it later, or acted in caution to lodge a complaint, but that does not issue any clearance on the corruption that exists within the party. In the coming days, we will release more documents and more cases of corruption against the Congress government.

They have produced a video footage of myself and Ananth Kumar discussing the alleged kickbacks we paid to our party seniors, said Yeddyurappa. This was done to ensure I was in a spot. This is a doctored video and forensic tests will soon reveal the truth. I am sure about the evidence I hold against the scale of corruption in this state. So I am open for all investigations. Can CM Siddaramaiah say the same thing with confidence? Who is he scared of?

Scrambling into damage control

Call it a coincidence, but within days of the BJP releasing the pages of Govindarajs alleged diary, the Congress announced on 2nd March that it would scrap its plans to build a controversial steel flyover in Bengaluru  a project with a cost of nearly Rs 1,791 crore to cover a distance of 6.72 km, which was supposed to cut down the time taken to travel to the city airport. Though the plan was vehemently opposed by Bengaluru residents, the government had refused to take note of it and the project was also heavily opposed by the National Green Tribunal. However, residents joy may be short livedthe project has only been temporarily shelved, as only the current tender has been cancelled and not the entire project.

Interestingly, Govindarajs alleged diary has details of kickbacks worth Rs 65 crore paid to Congress high command through Siddaramaiah for this very same flyover project. It is unclear whether there were intermediaries for this supposed transaction and how the payment was carried out.

On his part, BSY maintains that Siddaramaiah paid the Congress leaders at the Centre to save his seat. He has bought this chair. And this is something he should be answerable to the people of Karnataka, said Yeddyurappa.

The Greens may well gloat to assume this is their victory. But that is far from the truth, said Prasanna Joshi, who was part of the groups opposing the steel flyover. Its now common knowledge that the details of diary are hurting the government, especially with the amount of kickbacks which is as high as Rs 65 crore [from the promoters to the CM and his family]. With people upping the heat, the government just saved its own image by cancelling the project.

The steel flyover kickback allegations and Govindarajs diary scandal have now reached the Lokayukta. But the BJP is insisting that anything less than a CBI investigation will not bring out the truth of the matter.

When it comes to Siroyas diary, Manish Tewari says it is a state issue and that Congress will only act to defend its position. However, senior BJP leaders point out that Govindaraj is the same person who was allegedly the intermediary involved in receiving kickbacks from potential contractors of the steel bridge. He had accompanied Siddaramaiah to Belgium when his son had health complications, said a senior central Congress leader who chose to remain anonymous. Govindaraj is in the CMs close circle. The CM is probably left feeling alone with most of his colleagues mired in corruption charges, and with the sudden death of his closest friend and colleague Mahadeva Prasad. All this has left Siddaramaiah very weak and defenseless.

Since demonetisation, there have been a number of raids on ministers and people who are close to CM Siddaramaiah  Congress MLC MTB Nagaraj, SC Jayachandra, Ramesh Jarkiholi and Lakshmi Hebbalkar, among others, have been found to be in possession of illegal money. Surprisingly, BJP legislators have escaped such raids and this has kept the opposition in the clear so far.

There is something else that is also protecting the BJPs image. With this diary episode, the BJP seems to have robbed the Congress of its most important weapon of harping on the corruption allegations against PM Modi during his stint as the Gujarat chief minister. This quid pro quo situation presents Congress with a challenge of having to look for better charges to press against the BJP in the states, including Karnataka.

Yeddyurappa himself was, of course, accused of corruption, cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery in an alleged Rs 40-crore mining scam, forcing his resignation as Karnatakas chief minister in 2011. However, he was acquitted by a CBI court of all the charges in October 2016.

Many ministers have already deposed before IT officials in an enquiry that was carried out in connection with Govindarajs diary. Energy Minister DK Shivakumar, known for his organising skills in party circles, for instance, deposed before the authorities after the corresponding initials DKS were mentioned in the diary. But since then, I have told them I didnt have any transaction with Govindaraj. The authorities are free to conduct any checks if they need to, he has told the media.

In the meantime, Govindaraj plans to issue a legal notice against those who had conspired against him and his party.

The Congress in Karnataka is acting with caution to ensure that the Govindaraj diary row dies soon, as it has good chances of being permissible in court. The party is not yet exploring the case of Siroyas diary, as the minister in question has already filed a complaint. Siddaramaiah is doing everything he can to retain the confidence of people, especially in the rural areashis party won the zilla and taluk panchayat polls, but he might not find much favour with urban voters, what with the decision to construct a steel flyover and raids on his close aides that have revealed Rs 162 crore assets.

For its part, the BJP is looking to present further evidence of CM Siddaramaiah and his governments corruption in the days to come. The Congress remains less worried about the Govindaraj diary and more apprehensive of their opponents next move.

(Published in arrangement with GRIST Media)
Kashmirs separatist leadership on Friday flayed a reported proposal by Pakistan to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as its fifth province, and asked it to desist from embarking on a needless adventure of annexation.

Both moderate and hardline separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik, issued a joint statement terming any proposal to declare Giglit-Baltistan as the fifth state of Pakistan unacceptable.

Kashmir, Ladakh, Jammu, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are a single entity, they said, adding that the political destiny of Jammu and Kashmir was yet to be decided. The separatist leaders also asked Pakistan to not take steps that could hamper the political and geographical position of Jammu and Kashmir.

Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik expressed hope that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will fulfil his commitment regarding the geographical entity of Jammu and Kashmir, and will desist from undertaking this adventure of annexing Giglit-Baltistan as the fifth state of Pakistan, the statement said.

India also reacted strongly against Pakistans reported designs on the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region, which borders the disputed PoK territory, stating that such a move would be entirely unacceptable.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said Pakistan will not succeed in concealing the illegality behind its occupation of certain parts of Kashmir through such an action. He also asked the neighbouring country to vacate PoK without delay.

The separatist leaders said though the people of Kashmir have always accepted Pakistan as a prime party in the territorial dispute, any step that could hamper its disputed status was unacceptable. We hail the role played by Pakistan in international forums, but any deviation in its stance on Kashmir and its geographical entity is improper and will prove detrimental to the cause, the statement added.

No divisions, alterations or changes were acceptable until the residents of Kashmir have been provided with an opportunity to decide the future course of the state, they said, adding that neither India nor Pakistan have the right to alter the geographical status of the region.

The separatist leaders also termed Indias stand on the issue as a brazen lie. The country has no right to claim or issue ridiculous statements because it has forcibly occupied the state, they said.

Supporters of the separatist leaders later organised a joint agitation to protest the killing of a girl in Kupwara on March 15, besides a campaign aimed at exhorting residents to boycott the upcoming Lok Sabha bypolls in the Valley.

Another protest organised in the old city turned violent, with youngsters pelting stones at the police.
The mass production of a jointly developed multi-role combat jet and a wide array of missiles in Pakistan was on the agenda for meetings of the Sino-Pakistani military top brass in Beijing on Thursday, experts said.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) topped the agenda, with both countries vowing to protect the $46-billion project by increasing security along its route and strengthening manpower. A top Chinese official said the CPEC will be made into a landmark project.

Pakistan Army chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, held separate meetings with Gen Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) that is headed by President XI Jinping, and Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC.

Li Zuocheng, commander of the Peoples Liberation Army, and Shao Yuanming, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department, also attended the meetings.

Besides military officials, Bajwa met vice-premier Zhang Gaoli, a member of the elite Standing Committee of the Communist Partys Politburo.

Song Zhongping, a military expert who served in the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the PLA Rocket Force), said: Weapon exchanges, including the mass production of FC-1 Xiaolong, a lightweight and multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the two countries, will be furthered after the meeting.

Song told the nationalistic Global Times tabloid: Chinas authorisation to Pakistan to produce ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and main battle tanks in Pakistan is also on the agenda.

Chinas foreign ministry played down the reports, saying defence cooperation with Pakistan was normal.

China and Pakistan maintain normal defence exchanges and relevant cooperation, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing.

Referring to the joint production of aircraft and missiles, Hua said: from the news release, we didnt see anything on an agreement on ballistic missile.

Asked about Chinas UN obligations on missile technology, Hua said all UN members have obligations and the responsibility to observe UN resolutions. Our position on the strategic balance in South Asia is consistent, she said.

During his meeting with the Pakistan Army chief, Gen Fan Changlong said the military-to-military relationship is an important part of bilateral relations. He described the two sides as all-weather strategic cooperative partners and said the people of both countries maintain a fraternal friendship.

Over recent years, the two militaries have carried out all-round cooperation in such fields as mutual visits, joint exercises and training, exchanges among military academies and so forth, he was quoted as saying by defence ministry.

Fan said the CPEC is the flagship project of One Belt, One Road initiative and leaders of both countries have attached great importance to it and positive progress has been made.

Fan stressed that China appreciates Pakistani militarys positive efforts to safeguard the security of the CPEC and is willing to further strengthen the cooperation with Pakistan, so as to promote the pragmatic cooperation between the two militaries in all fields to a new high, the defence ministry said.

Pakistan is willing to work with China to firmly fight against the terrorist forces, so as to guarantee a complete success of the CPEC project, Bajwa said.

Earlier this week, Pakistans envoy to China, Masood Khalid, told a news conference his country had deployed more than 15,000 troops to protect the CPEC, and that the Pakistan Navy has raised a contingent to protect Gwadar port.

The port, which was built and is now operated by China, is a key part of the CPEC.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is challenging BJP leaders to spread the partys ideology to the farthest corners of the country. And he is doing it with a directive cloaked as a caution  na baithunga, na baithne dunga (Neither will I rest nor will let you).

Modis exhortation, at a meeting of BJP parliamentarians in New Delhi on Thursday, was on the lines of a similar statement he had made just after he was installed as the Prime Minister in 2014.

Then it was targetted at corruption, one his key election planks. Na khaunga, na khaane dunga, Modi had said, warning people that neither he will accept bribes, nor allow anyone to do so.

The Prime Ministers new goal for BJP leaders was aimed at ensuring the partys victory in the 2019 parliamentary polls, said party sources who attended the meeting.

Modi led the BJP to spectacular victories in the recent five-state assembly polls, winning Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand with overwhleming majorities. The BJP also managed to form the governments in Manipur and Goa despite ending up as the second-largest party. The only black spot was the defeat in Punjab where its alliance government wiht the Shiromoni Akali Dal was ousted by the Congress.

At the BJP parliamentary party meeting, the sources quoted Modi as telling MPs that after nearly three years in office, people have started believing that this government was performing.

And the party must now explore new options to reach out to more people.

One untapped area is youth. Before May 26 (the governments third anniversary), you should come out with suggestions to make youth the brand ambassadors of BJP. No institution should be left out, he said.

Modi also set out another target for party leaders between April 6 and 14, between the partys foundation day and BR Ambedkars birth anniversary.

And that is to promote the governments ambitious plan of making India free from open defecation under the Swachchta Mission. He also asked MPs to promote the of the BHIM app among street vendors, part of the governments mission to create a cashless economy.

Become vistarak (campaigner) for the party for at least 72 hours during this period, Modi said.

Bhim is a new currency. It will transform lives of people of lower starta, Modi said, hinting the more it was used there could be incentive through banks. It will bring them out from the clutches of money lenders.

MPs gave Modi and party president Amit Shah a standing ovation at the meeting.

Parliamentarians also adopted a resolution hailing Modi for leading the party to the historic victory. Sweets from the Tirupati Venkateswara Temple, arranged by parliamentary party secretary Balasubrahmanyam Kamarsu, were distributed to all MPs.

In his speech, Shah said the result of the 2017 assembly elections has unshackled democracy from three ills -- casteism, nepotism and appeasement.

Maintaining that a new order of polity is emerging, Shah said the Vikas Yatra that started from Gujarat has been ratified by the people.

2014 victory was historic. People attached significance to the 2017 elections as well. Victory should not make you complacent. 2019 should be the target now, Shah said.

Earlier during the day, MPs greeted Modi with a slogan when he walked into the Rajya Sabha.

Dekho dekho kaun aya, Gujarat ka sher aya (See who has come, the lion of Gujarat has arrived).

Opposition MPs, however, taunted BJP for its loss in Punjab.

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The Trinamool Congress will approach the Supreme Court to challenge a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into a sting operation that purportedly showed a string of top leaders taking bribes, party chief Mamata Banerjee said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters hours after the Calcutta high court ordered a central probe into the scandal, Banerjee alleged the scandal  first aired on Naradanews.com in March 2016  was sponsored by the BJP.

Everyone knows this that the sting was published from BJP officewe will approach the higher judiciary, ANI quoted the chief minister as saying.

Calcutta high court acting chief justice Nishita Mhatre and justice T Chakraborty asked the CBI to complete a preliminary inquiry in 72 hours and file an FIR, if necessary.

The probe sets the stage for fresh confrontation between Banerjee  who emerged as the fulcrum of anti-BJP protests over demonetisation  and the Centre. This is the third big scam  after the Saradha and Rose Valley scandals  that involves top Trinamool leaders.

The Naradanews sting operation featured a dozen Trinamool leaders purportedly accepting cash from the representative of a fictitious company. Six Lok Sabha MPs of the party, three top state ministers and the mayor of Kolkata were seen as taking money on behalf of the party.

The timing of the expose triggered a torrent of allegations from Mamata Banerjee who described it as a conspiracy. The Central Forensic Science Laboratory has ruled that the videos were genuine.

But despite the criticism, Mamata won a sweeping victory in the assembly elections that followed. The Trinamool Congress is the fourth-largest party in the Lok Sabha and has a sizeable presence in the Rajya Sabha.
The Patna Petroleum Dealers Association (PPDA), on Thursday, threatened an indefinite strike of petrol pumps in Patna district unless the state administration takes effective steps to prevent frequent incidence of robberies on their premises.

If the association carries out its threat, around 200 petrol pumps in the district will stop serving customers. But it says it wont stop at that. We will begin our indefinite strike with Patna district and gradually extend it to the rest of Bihar unless remedial measures are taken, said PPDA president Brajendra Kumar Sinha.

He said that there were eight incidents of robbery by armed goons at petrol pumps in Patna during the past six months. What we got from the police authorities was just verbal assurances. This is indirectly encouraging the miscreants. This has forced us to consider the extreme step of an indefinite strike, Singh said.

According to Sinha, in the eight incidents during the last six months, a total sum of Rs 20 lakh was taken away. He said that before going for an indefinite strike, the association would hold some preliminary protests.

The first of these will be a token black out period when no pump will sell petrol or diesel for 15 minutes from 8pm to 8.15pm on March 23 and for 30 minutes, from 8pm to 8.30pm, on March 28. The second protest gesture will be stopping of night services at all petrol pumps in Patna district, he said.

According to Sinha, petrol pump employees were afraid to work at night, following the recent incidents of robbery. In such a situation, we will be forced to stop night services, he added.

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Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati, who was arrested in Lucknow on Wednesday on charges of gang rape, spent a sleepless night in Lucknow district jail.

The former minister skipped the meal at night and lay on the floor of a quarantine barrack, along with at least 32 undertrials lodged there. He did not have breakfast on Thursday morning.

Prajapati, who was usually seen surrounded by supporters in the past five years, kept himself to a corner and spent the entire day on Thursday without speaking much with his six other associates lodged in the same barrack.

He was found awake every time jail guards checked the barrack on Wednesday-Thursday intervening night, superintendent of Lucknow district jail SK Mishra said.

Sources said jail authorities checked Prajapatis barrack multiple times in the past 24 hours to convey a stern message that no special treatment would be given to him. A jail guard said it was also done as initially, Prajapati showed arrogance when he was brought to jail on Wednesday afternoon.

He behaved arrogantly with the jail guard and asked him to open the big gate for his entry. He, however, had to enter through a narrow and small gate, the guard said.

The guard said jail personnel even checked Prajapati thoroughly by asking him to remove his clothes before allowing him entry into the premises. The former minister was initially hesitant in removing his clothes but had to follow the instructions, he added.

Prajapati refused to have the meal that was brought for the jail inmates on Wednesday night and only had tea on Thursday morning, said the guard. He added that the former minister had a bowl of Urad daal and three chapatis in the afternoon.

The guard said some of his family members and supporters reached the jail on Thursday afternoon and requested authorities for a meeting with him but only two of them were allowed to talk to him from behind a grill.

Prajapati, who lost from Amethi in the just-concluded assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested from Para area on Wednesday morning, nearly two weeks after he went missing.

He was booked on a Supreme Court directive and an FIR was lodged on February 17 against the minister and six others for allegedly gangraping a woman and attempting to rape her minor daughter. He was sent to jail for 14 days by the court.

In the FIR registered with Gautampalli police station on February 18, the 35-year-old woman from Chitrakoot accused Prajapati and six of his aides of raping her when she met them for a mining contract in 2013.

He is also accused of taking obscene photos of the woman and threatening her of making the pictures public and raping her for the past three years. However, Prajapati claimed it to be a conspiracy of the BJP in order to distract peoples attention from the assembly polls.

Prajapati, who was considered a favourite of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, had won the last assembly poll from Amethi constituency and was inducted in the state cabinet as mining minister later. He enjoyed immense political clout during the SP government.

Prajapati was sacked by former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav from his cabinet in 2016 during a bruising feud with his father Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle Shivpal Yadav. He was later reinstated, triggering outrage and denting the law-and-order plank that Akhilesh was running his campaign on.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court here, which is hearing Samjhauta blasts case, summoned 13 Pakistani nationals on Friday.These people are those who were either travelling on the train on that fateful day or are next of kin who died in the blasts.

The blasts on Samjhauta Express train had taken place on February 18, 2007, killing 68 people, mostly Pakistanis. The train was targeted as Pakistani Muslims used to travel by it, as per NIA chargesheet.

It is not clear whether they (13 Pakistani nationals) will come to depose at Panchkula or some other place near the border. The information will be sent to them through a proper channel. They will be called from July 4 to July 7, said Rajan Malhotra, NIA counsel.

Meanwhile, in support to NIA, two videojournalists on Friday told the court here that when Kamal Chauhan, one of the accused in Samjhauta blasts case, was produced in Panchkula district courts he confessed to have conducted the blasts.

One of the witnesses was a cameraperson with NDTV and another with Asian News International (ANI). The footage of that day was played in the court as well.

Ashwini Kaushal, who is a cameraperson with ANI, told the court that on February 14, 2012, when a reporter asked Kamal Chauhan whether he was involved in Samjhauta blasts, he said he did the blast as his own wish, informed Rajan Malhotra, counsel for NIA. He added that similar statement was given by Arpit Jaiswal, who works as a cameraperson with NDTV.

Along with Kamal Chauhan, the other accused included Aseemanand, Rajinder Chaudhary and Lokesh Sharma. There were four more accused in the case  Sunil Joshi, who was murdered on December 29, 2007, Sandeep Dange, Ramchandra Kalsangre and Amit alias Ashwani Chauhan  who are absconding.

Sharma, Chaudhary and Chauhan have planted bombs in Samjhauta train as per NIA. Sharma and Aseemanand have been recently acquitted in Ajmer Dargah blast case. A number of witnesses in Samjhauta blasts case have turned hostile so far.
Shashi Tharoor has finally broken his silence over a viral petition calling on the UPA to name him as their prime ministerial candidate for the 2019 general elections.

The petition, which was started by a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoors Lok Sabha seat, has already garnered more than 16,000 signatures. The online petition has come at a time when the Congress, following a humiliating defeat in the recently held assembly elections, is looking for a face in the grand alliance of opposition parties to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

On Friday, Tharoor posted his response to the petition on his Facebook account, saying while he was touched by the gesture, he would request the creator to withdraw it.

I am a member of Parliament for the Congress Party, nothing more and nothing less. The party has a settled leadership, which is not up for debate. When changes occur they do so through an established procedure, Tharoor writes in the post.

The senior Congress leader has made headlines with his latest book, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India. His speeches and television appearances where he discusses Britainshistorical amnesia over the excesses of the empire have been widely shared on social media.

In response to Tharoors post, Vikrant Gupta, a commentator said, I believe its time for the leadership of your party to recognise the greater role you can play in Indian politics. The ruling party recognises your potential but alas your own party does not.
India has made it clear to Pakistan that the solution to Siachen issue is part of the larger issue which includes Pakistans support to terrorism in the country, the government on Friday said.

In a written response to a question in Lok Sabha, minister of state for defence Subhash Bhamre said, 13 rounds of talks to resolve the Siachen issue have already taken place between the two countries, led by their respective defence secretaries.

Indian government has made it clear to Pakistan that the solution to Siachen Glacier is a part of the larger issue to include Pakistans support to terrorism in India, he said.

Bhamre said the government is cognizant of the strategic importance of Siachen, also known as worlds highest battlefield, and requisite forces have been deployed in the area keeping in the view the threat perception, ground situtaion and other operational aspects.

Besides, various modern technological equipment are being utilised by army for surveillance in Siachen which includes Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and different types of radars, Bhamre said.

Responding to another question on steps taken by the Indian Coast Guard to prevent Indian fishermen from crossing the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL), Bhamre said, since 2007, approximately 34,886 Indian fishermen/ fishing boats have been shephereded back from the IMBL.
Barely two days into his job, Manipurs deputy chief minister Yumnam Joykumar Singh is doing some serious fire-fighting on social media, courtesy his son, Yumnam Devjit.

Singh, a former director general of police, took to Facebook on Friday to apologise for the arrogance of Devjit and requested people to ignore his outbursts that have followed his elevation.

My son has a wild imagination when it comes to politics and democracy. Please forgive him. If his arrogance takes the better of him, please do inform me, Singh wrote on his Facebook page.

The Facebook post by Yumnam Joykumar Singh. (Photo courtesy: Facebook)

The 63-year-old who belongs to National Peoples Party (NPP), a constituent of the new BJP-led coalition in the state, took oath of office on Wednesday.

He confirmed to HT that he did write the post in response to what his son had posted. Singh, however, didnt say which of the posts had offended him.

But, Devjit has been busy.

The day Singh took oath of office, Devjit updated his Facebook cover photo and captioned it: I am Manipur Dy CMs son.

The Facebook cover photo posted by Yumnam Devjit on March 15, the day his father was sworn in as deputy CM of Manipur. (Photo courtesy: Facebook)

Yumnam Devjit. (Photo courtesy: Facebook)

It was a follow up of a post put out a day earlier that said, The good, bad and ugly (NPP, NPF and BJP resptly).

A distressed Singh took on his son.

Stop commenting and updating your status unnecessarily with half baked knowledge of democracy. Your imagination is running wild, control it, he wrote.

Devjit is the owner of a solar energy service provider firm called Mayol.

This is the first time that the BJP has been voted to power in Manipur. Though the party finished second with 21 seats behind Congress 28 in a hung House, it cobbled together an alliance to have the support of 33 MLAs in the 60-member House.

Besides NPP, the other coalition partners are the Naga Peoples Front, Lok Janshakti Party, Trinamool Congress, an Independent and a Congress MLA who switched sides.

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A Supreme Court-appointed panel has vetoed a government move to cap the age of students and the number of attempts they are allowed to clear a top all-India exam for entry into undergraduate medical schools.

The panel, headed by former chief justice RM Lodha, said it was in favour of striking down the governments eligibility criteria because there is a dearth of doctors in the country.

In January, the government issued an executive order limiting to three the number of times a student could take the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). It also capped the eligibility age of candidates at 25  both decisions made on the recommendations of the Medical Council of India (MCI). Within days, the governments order faced legal challenge from students.

The Lodha panel made its recommendations on February 28. Hindustan Times reviewed the communication on Thursday.

The Supreme Court will take up the panels suggestions on March 20. Should the court accept those, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which conducts NEET, might have to rework the applications process that closed on March 1.

Earlier, an eligible student above the age of 17 could apply, and there was no cap on the number of attempts. The Lodha panels letter to the government did not make any suggestions on an upper age limit or the number of times a student could be take the exam.

Over the past few years, undergrad medical studies in India have been mired in controversy. In 2013, authorities introduced the NEET as a single, nation-wide entrance test for top state-run and private medical schools.

The move, initially opposed by many states, was aimed to end multiple exams and corruption in admissions. The exam was also challenged in court and the top court struck it down in 2013 before restoring it with changes three years later.

The governments eligibility restrictions this year led to new protests from students.

Last May, as part of its efforts to clean up medical education in India, the top court had asked Justice Lodha to head an oversight committee for the MCI.

Asked about the Lodha panels eligibility recommendations, Arun Singhal, joint secretary in-charge of medical education in the union health ministry, refused to comment, saynig the matter was sub-judice.

Neither the MCI nor members of the oversight committee responded to HTs telephone calls and text messages.

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Concerned over the reported killing of an Indian fisherman and arrest of many by the Sri Lankan Navy, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will meet aggrieved fishermen from Tamil Nadu, commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

The fishermens representatives wanted to meet officials of the external affairs ministry. But the government has made arrangements for them to meet the external affairs minister herself. She (Swaraj) has come back to Parliament after recovering and is ready to meet them, Sitharaman told reporters at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show organised by EEPC India on Thursday.

She said the Centre is taking efforts at every level to resolve the issue. Asked about a timeline for such resolution, the minister said that since it involves another country (Sri Lanka) and its fishermen, many factors should be taken into consideration.

On the protests on Jallikattu, Sitharaman said whether it is Jallikattu or the fishermens issue, people have taken to such a recourse because there is a gap between the people and their representatives which needs to be bridged.

The purported killing of the fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy and arrests of several others have prompted India to raise the issue with Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Bridgo, 22, from Thangachimadam in central Rameswaram of Tamil Nadu, was allegedly shot dead earlier this month when he was fishing in a mechanised boat off the Katchatheevu islet, triggering protests in the state.

Besides, 24 Indian fishermen were picked up by the Sri Lankan Naval personnel on Sunday for allegedly crossing the international maritime boundary line and fishing in the island nations territorial waters.
Indias new national health policy (NHP), released by health and family welfare minister JP Nadda on March 16, 2017, is largely a repackaged version of a similar document released in 2002 with similar funding commitments and targets, according to FactCheckers analysis of both documents.

Ambitious infant- and maternal-mortality and disease elimination targets rolled out under the NHP 2017 are the same targets fixed 15 years ago; these targets were to be achieved by 2010. The new health policy has now fixed 2019 or later to achieve these targets.

Source: National Health Policy, 2017, National Family Health Survey, 2015-16, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation

The NHP 2017 will address the current and emerging challenges necessitated by the changing socio-economic, technological and epidemiological landscape.

#NationalHealthPolicy2017 is comprehensive & futuristic, placing the interests of the citizens first & foremost. https://t.co/2emooDj6fd  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 16, 2017

The new health policy declares it will increase health spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), which is Rs 2.83 lakh crore ($42 billion)-nearly as much as the budget estimate for defence spending for 2017-18, from 1.16% of GDP in 2015.

The 2002 policy said the government-then headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-would increase health spending to 2% of GDP, which never happened either under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA-1) or during 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) administration.

Here is what our fact check of main targets fixed by the national health policy of 2017 found:

1. The NHP 2017 sets a target of reducing infant mortality rate (IMR, or infant deaths per 1,000 live births) to 28 by 2019; the target set in the 2002 health policy was to reduce it to 30 by 2010. The IMR in 2015-16 was 41.

2. The NHP 2017 sets the target for maternal mortality ratio-deaths of women per 100,000 live births-at 100 to be achieved by 2020; the target set in 2002 was to reduce it to 100 by 2010. The MMR in 2015-16 is 167.

3. The NHP 2017 has set the target to eliminate leprosy by 2018, kala azar (black fever or visceral leishmaniasis) by 2017 and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) in endemic pockets by 2017. The 2002 NHP had set the target of eliminating leprosy by 2005, kala azar by 2010 and lymphatic filariasis by 2015-none of which could be achieved yet.

4. The NHP 2017 has set the target of reducing the incidence of new tuberculosis cases and reach elimination status by 2025. This would mean a reduction of 95% in new cases, FactChecker reported on March 15, 2017. The 2002 document set the target of reducing mortality due to TB by 50% by 2010. The mortality rate for TB was 59.7 per 100,000 population in 2000, which reduced to 42.6 in 2010, missing the target set. In 2015, TB mortality rate was 35.9 per 100,000 population.

Source: National Health Policy, 2017; National Family Health Survey, 2015-16, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Ministry of health & Family Welfare

This is not the first time India is failing to achieve health targets. The 12th five-year plan (2012-17) had a target to reduce IMR to 25 and MMR to 100, reduce total fertility rate-children born per woman of childbearing age (15 to 49 years)-to 2.1 and raise sex ratio in the 0-6 year age group to 950 per 1,000 by 2017, which it has failed to achieve, according to National Family Health Survey 2015-16 data. IndiaSpend had reported about India missing health targets in 2013.

Apart from setting targets, the NHP 2017 is also planning to introduce yoga more widely in schools and workplaces as part of promotion of good health. The policy also seeks to move away from sick care to wellness with the thrust on prevention and health promotion.

Primary health centres, which will now be called as health and wellness centres, will include care for non-communicable diseases, mental health, geriatric care, palliative care and rehabilitative care services.

(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.)
With festival of colours over and passengers returning to their respective destinations, rush has once again returned to Patna , Rajendra Nagar terminal and Pataliputra junctions of the East Central Railway (ECR).

Despite the ECR operating 10 Holi special trains in Sonepur, Danapur, Dhanbad, Mughalsarai and Samastipur railway divisions, to clear up the rush, passengers complained that they had a harrowing time returning from Bihar after Holi.

Many passengers said that despite having reserved berths they were not able to occupy them, as their berths were taken up by those having unconfirmed tickets. They alleged that train ticket examiners (TTE) were virtually non-existent. Even cops were busy checking passenger baggage for liquor, rather than ensuring that only bonafide passengers, holding confirmed tickets, travelled on reserved berths on trains.

Bihar has enforced total prohibition since April 5, 2016.

Shailendra Kumar of Kankarbagh, who got a Patna-Delhi tatkal ticket for his son going to New Delhi, a day after Holi on Wednesday, said: My elder son travelled by the Sampoorna Kranti Express to New Delhi. Though my son had a confirmed berth but it was occupied by someone else, not holding a confirmed ticket. No ticket examiner visited the compartment and it was free for all throughout the journey.

Ravinder Kumar of Nehru Nagar locality in Patna said, The journey to Patna was horrible with no Railway Police Force (RPF) personnel willing to help us occupy our reserved berths. Scores of passengers, holding unreserved tickets, had occupied our berths. However, both GRP and RPF kept searching our bags for alcohol at many places. Hope the return journey is not a repeat of the same.

Prabhat Singh, travelling with his family to Surat, said, We limited our luggage to bare essentials to avoid harassment by police in the name of bag checking for liquor. He lamented that some individuals, claiming to be cops in civil uniform, dropped in and even scanned his smart phone to check if it contained pornographic visuals.

Anita Devi, another passenger from Mithapur locality in Patna, complained that train announcement at station was not audible due to the heavy rush of passengers . She thanked porters for helping her board the train.

However, students Ritesh Kumar, Varun Kumar and Anjani Prakash, travelling from Patna to New Delhi were mentally prepared that the return journey will not be easy. Rush in trains is common during festivals, the students said in chorus.

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Peeved at their neglect, several MLAs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday conveyed their ire against the functioning of the state government, headed by Manohar Lal Khattar, to the partys central leadership.

The miffed legislators, who have openly questioned the state governments working style and contentious decisions in recent weeks, expressed displeasure at a party meeting in Delhi with the present set-up for the step-motherly treatment being meted out to them.

The meeting held by joint general secretary (organisation) V Satish had the ruling partys plans to celebrate its resounding victory in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh across the state on March 18 and the need to boost social media outreach to publicise its welfare initiatives among its main agenda.

While most party legislators were present in the meeting, the disgruntled group, whose number has doubled to 16 in the past six weeks, set the tone when asked for feedback and made their discontent known.

Uchana Kalan MLA Prem Lata said though the agenda of the meeting was different, several legislators candidly expressed their views. There are issues such as freehand allowed to the state bureaucracy, neglect and lack of progress on development works that have riled the legislators. The members raised all these concerns in the meeting, she told HT.

Prem Lata added that her own area was neglected by the (Om Prakash) Chautala-led INLD government for five years, (Bhupinder Singh) Hooda government for the next 10 years. It has been more than two years now. We want speedy progress on projects. We will have to face the people, she said.

HT spoke to half-a-dozen legislators, including Randhir Singh Kapriwas (Rewari), Santosh Sarwan (Mullana) and Umesh Aggarwal (Gurgaon), who confirmed having raised the issue of discrimination  preferential treatment to some MLAs and neglect of others by their own government.

However, some of them cloaked their criticism by attributing the free rein to officials and their overassertive attitude to the chief ministers sharafat (decency).

Kapriwas said they had nothing against any individual but wanted vyavastha parivartan (change in system). A few of them met Satish individually, however he gave them no assurance.

But, not everyone was piqued with the bureaucracy or the working of the state government. Several other MLAs, who are not part of this miffed group, spoke on the achievements of the state government.

While BJP state unit chief Subhash Barala attended the meeting, neither Khattar nor any of his ministerial colleagues were present. The chief minister held an informal meeting of his cabinet colleagues and a meeting of party MPs was also held. The core group of the party also met on Thursday evening. On Wednesday, a meeting of district party heads and members of the state executive was also held where the party leaders had raised similar concerns and questioned decisions related to Gwal Pahari land and change in route of metro rail.

Meanwhile, CMs media adviser Amit Arya termed the meetings as a routine exercise held every three months for feedback and better coordination between the party and the government. It is getting more attention because of a few concerns raised by some MLAs. They have no complaints with the CM. There are mainly issues related to officials or their attitude. This feedback will make the working more robust and improve coordination between the government and the party, he said.

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The Opposition Congress party forced an adjournment of Rajya Sabha proceedings over the conduct of Goas Governor in inviting BJP to form the government in the state after she reportedly consulted finance minister Arun Jaitley.

Congress members alleged breach of propriety and constitutional norms in the consultations governor Mridula Sinha held with Jaitley. They stormed the well of the House raising slogans against murder of democracy, forcing deputy chairman PJ Kurien to adjourn the House till noon.

Earlier in the day, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said he had given a notice under rule 267 seeking the business of the day to be set aside and to take up gross constitutional impropriety committed by the Governor of Goa.

Singh read out from an interview Sinha gave to a newspaper in which she reportedly said she did not expect BJP to form the government but spoke to Jaitley before arriving at the decision to call the party to form the government ahead of Congress which had emerged as the single largest party in the elections.

Kurien said the conduct of a governor can be discussed only on the basis of a substantive motion and he had disallowed Singhs notice under 267.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the conduct of governor was discussed when the Arunachal Pradesh issue was debated in the House.

Why dont you move a substantive motion, Kurien asked. No. I have to go by rules. You can bring substantive motion, Chairman will consider it.

Azad said his party colleague Singh had not raised any issue with the conduct of the governor but merely stated what she had said in an interview. In the interview, he said, the governor said she did not consider BJP to form the government and she had called Jaitley at 2130 hours on Sunday night before inviting them.

How can the governor seek permission of a cabinet minister to form a government, Azad asked as Kurien insisted on a substantive motion for any discussion.

Singh said the House was supreme and a sense of members present can be taken and his notice under rule 267 converted into a substantive motion. Anand Sharma of the Congress party said the Constitution clearly defines the duties and powers of the governor in appointing the chief minister and it does not anywhere state that the governor is supposed to consult a serving cabinet minister.

Constitution does not allow the governor to consult a cabinet minister for government formation, he said.
Jaipur police have arrested over a dozen bookies who had come to the Rajasthan capital allegedly to settle disputes following betting in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh elections.

Police arrested them from a five-star hotel in Jaipur. The bookies included those who had sustained major losses after placing bets on the UP elections. Many of them are also dealers, who were distraught over the fact that they were being pressurised to pay up the money they had taken from other people during the elections, said deputy commissioner of police (east) Kunwar Rashtradeep.

Police said the general perception among the betters was that the BJP was going to win around 200 seats, and they had placed their bets accordingly.

Many of these people lost their money when the BJP won more than 300 seats in the polls. Right from that time, there was a lot of pressure on the bookies and the meeting was convened to sort out these differences, said Rashtradeep.

Police said that around 18-19 rooms were booked in a five-star hotel, where the people attending the meeting were staying.

Our estimate is that around 70 people attended the meeting, which took place on Thursday evening. Most of the people who stayed in the hotel were from places outside Rajasthan such as Punjab and Delhi, although many well-known bookies from various districts of Rajasthan were also present, said the DCP.

Officials said that shortly after the meeting, 18 people were arrested in a police raid.

By the time of the raid, many of the bookies had left. However, we arrested 18 people and have booked them under section 151 (arrest to prevent the commission of cognizable offences) of CrPC. We are currently interrogating them to find their links with betting rackets, said Rashtradeep.

Police said they will be lodging an FIR after further investigation.

Preliminary investigation suggests that around Rs 500-600 crore is involved in this betting racket, said Rashtradeep.
Jaipur Police arrested on Friday a 27-year-old man who allegedly had sex with a calf and left the animal bleeding.

The arrest came after a local resident told police he caught the suspect, Mohammad Iqbal, on Thursday night in his cow shed while the accused was allegedly having intercourse with the two-and-a-half-months-old calf.

I called out to my other family members and even though Iqbal tried to escape from the spot, we caught him. We saw the calf was bleeding profusely as a result of the intercourse and the other cows were also restless and mooing, the complainant, Nathu Lal, told HT.

Lal and other members of the family told police that Iqbal confessed to having sex with the calf. He told us that he had intercourse with the calf one or two times earlier as well and thereafter we took him to the police, said Lal.

Iqbal used to live in a rented house near the cow shed in Jaipurs Pratap Nagar and originally hailed from Bhaptiyahi in Bihar.

We have registered a case under section 377 (voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal) of the IPC against Iqbal and investigation is on, said head constable Raxpal Singh from the Pratap Nagar police station.

Lal said his suspicions were aroused as the calf was often heard wailing along with other bovines. He and others rushed to the cow shed

The condition of the calf is worsening by the hour. The bleeding isnt stopping ever since the incident and we are waiting for the police to conduct the medical tests of the animal for the purpose of investigation, said Lal.

Police said Iqbal used to live in Jaipur with his brother-in-law who was absconding since the incident. A search has been initiated for his brother-in-law.

The rest of his family is back in Bihar and we are currently interrogating Iqbal to know more details about him, said the police.

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With a BJP government in the state and at the centre, long-delayed projects like Kukrail and Pipraghat flyovers are expected to be completed soon.

The construction of Kukrail flyover began in 2011 but it is incomplete till date due to objections raised by the Army, which claims that a part of land in the project is its own.

The construction of 970-metre-long overbridge was stopped in March 2014 because of the objections by Army as around 200 metres of the bridge was supposed to pass through their area.

In May 2015, the Army agreed to allow construction of Kukrail overbridge on its land after examining the state governments proposal.

KUKRAIL FLYOVER Construction began in 2011 but the project is incomplete till date due to objections raised by the Army, which claims that a part of land in the project is its own. After elections, commissioner (Lucknow division) approached army authorities for a solution and offered a piece of land in Sarsawan village. This proposal has been accepted by army authorities in principal.

In September 2016, the deputy director lands, ministry of defence cleared construction of the six-lane flyover on Kukrail nullah from Khurram Nagar to Gomti Barrage. But the land issue remained unsolved as the matter was pending in court. Thats why work on the bridge was not allowed by the army.

However, after the elections, commissioner (Lucknow division) Bhuvanesh Kumar approached army authorities for a solution and offered a piece of land in Sarsawan village. The cost of land is around Rs 125 crore. This proposal has been accepted by army authorities in principal. This is expected to pave way for the construction of Kukrail flyover.

Officials said as the coordination between the central and state governments is expected to be better now, projects facing official hurdles are likely to get quick response from the central government.

The six-lane kukrail flyover being constructed since 2011 with the aim to reduce traffic burden on Faizabad road and Lohia Path, Polytechnic crossing would be completed within six months from the date of start of work, said officials of UP State Bridge Corporation.

Residents of Khurram Nagar, Mahanagar, Kalyanpur, Sitapur road, Aliganj, Munshipulia and Indira Nagar would be benefitted by the project.

The approval for Pipraghat flyover on Gomti (that began in May 2015) is also expected soon. After the completion of project, Pipraghat area would be directly connected with Gomti Nagar near Janeshwar Mishra Park.

The bridge has 12 pillars and needs only one more for completion.

Since March 2016, not even a single brick has been laid on the bridge as Army raised objection because one pillar was being constructed on their land.

However, officials are hopeful that the remaining stretch of 35 metres would be completed by the end of this year.

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Among the 403 lawmakers elected to the 17th UP assembly, Suresh Kumar Khanna, 63, the BJP legislature party leader, is the only one to have won for the eighth consecutive time.

Khanna, a bachelor and Khatri by caste, has seen it all  from the Ram temple wave of the 1990s to the Modi wave that led to the BJPs unprecedented sweep.

Being talked about either as a contender for the CM post or that of Speaker, Khanna spoke to HT, saying the BJP will live up to its promise of changing the UPs image from being a bimaru state to a developed one.

Excerpts:

The BJP has got a clear mandate in UP. Why this delay in announcing your chief minister?

The BJP is a big party and a democratic party. Naturally, all decisions are taken by consensus. Our party leadership will take the right call at the right time. The Parliamentary Board has already authorised the party chief Amit Shah to take the decision. The UP CM will be chosen by consensus. Consultations are on.

The buzz in the social media says you are among the CM hopefuls?

I have been a loyal party worker. I will do whatever role the party assigns me with. I have been a minister of several key ministries, including planning, that CMs usually keep with them. But its the party that will decide my role.

The BJP legislature party was to meet in Lucknow on Thursday. Are we going to know the CM-pick tomorrow?

March 16 was said to be the date but then there is no meeting on the date tomorrow. We will meet and decide.

Is the delay because the BJP governments performance would perhaps have a bearing on 2019 Lok Sabha polls. So you want a leader who can ensure this?

We will implement our promises in letter and spirit.

The BJP seems to have done well even in minority-dominated areas in UP. Does it make you hopeful that if the trend holds, your party may no longer be the untouchable it once was?

Under Modijis leadership, we are moving ahead with the philosophy of sabka saath, sabka vikas.

You didnt field any Muslim in UP. Now, will you provide them some representation in the ministry?

Who will be in the government will be decided once the process of government formation is set in motion. But, we have already said that we will be moving on the principle of sabka saath, sabka vikas.

The UP win has set you on course for your majority in the Rajya Sabha. Once that happens, will you be willing to bring legislation on Ram Temple as demanded by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad?

The matter is sub judice and there is no point commenting on it.

Your party made over 200 promises during the UP campaign. You will now be expected to live up to your promise?

We will abide by the Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra. Its our commitment.

In your manifesto, you have promised to set up a commission to inquire into all cases of corruption during the last 15 years of SP-BSP rule. Your leaders have even talked of sending SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati to jail. Are you serious?

(laughs) The law will take its course. In our partys three-year rule at the centre, we have shown its possible to run a clean government that thinks of the poor. Irrespective of who becomes the CM, the BJP government in UP will also be run on the same lines.

Read more: Uttar Pradesh CM to be decided on March 18 at BJP legislature party meet

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The first thing you notice about Tamasha is its size: broad and cavernous, its probably one of the biggest restaurants in the city. The second thing you notice is that it looks like every other all-day restaurant bar of the 2010s. Theres the large, long bar at the back, the familiar row of Edison bulbs on an exposed ceiling, high-tables with high chairs, parquet floors and an exposed brick wall.

Its so wonderfully generic, with so many possibilities, that Rotarians could happily host a brunch in the morning and an EDM DJ could use it as gig space at night. And should the owners decide to change the concept or the cuisine, they can do so without pulling out a single nail from the wall.

Tamasha is broad and cavernous, quite an unusual thing for a restaurant in Mumbai. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

A restaurant this size, particularly one that can easily accommodate large groups (we saw at least four tables of ten diners) necessarily needs a modestly priced, one-size-fits-all menu. Tamasha has covered all their bases by offering a wallet-pleasing, trendy mix of traditional Indian, modern Indian, fusion Indian, rasta Indian and a sprinkling of world cuisine.

The palate-pleasing Mumbai mawa cake, a milk-soaked, tres leches-style dessert with custard and cherry puree, is representative of the fusion Indian cuisine served at Tamasha. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

With such a broad spectrum, theres a danger of things going haywire. But apart from the Tamasha aranchini (batter coated, deep fried risotto balls with a stuffing of grated paneer in a spicy tomato sauce) which is more strange than unpleasant, the food is mostly on the mark.

The bhatti murgh souvlaki, served on a pita bread along with creamy, thick hummus and a tangy tzatziki, intelligently substitutes smoky, tandoor-cooked tikkas for traditional Greek kebabs. Theres only a faint trace of vodka in the vodka, clove, cardamom biryani. But it comes shaped like a large burger, with the masala sandwiched between two bun-shaped layers of rice. The picture is completed by a scoop of burrani raita on the side of the bun and a tangled nest of onion rings tossed in mint chutney.

The bhatti murg souvlaki, served with hummus and tzatziki, incorporates an intelligent twist in offering chicken tikka in place of the traditional Greek kebab. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

Even though nothing in our Konkani thali tasted like it should have, it was enjoyable. The tambda rassa was more like a Mangalorean meat sambar, the overpowering flavour of curry leaf made the shredded chicken sukka taste more Chettinad than Maharashtrian. The pandhara rassa was weak, but went well with the rice.

The Konkani thali is a mixed bag, with the rassa being more Mangalorean and the sukka having more Chettinad than Maharashtrian flavours. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

The Mumbai mawa cake cream toast was a palate-pleasing milk-soaked, tres leches-style dessert, topped with a cherry puree and custard. While theyve managed to pull off the food our solitary cocktail was execrable; Ive never tasted a negroni so unbalanced. It was too bitter, had an unpleasant alcohol burn and was too watery.

While Tamashas food largely hits the mark, the same cannot be said of the dreadful Negroni on offer. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

But then, with its punchy, in your face, middle management flavours and cheap drinks Tamasha doesnt seems to be the place youd go for a sophisticated cocktail. Its where the team would go to celebrate the end of a project, or the 40-somethings to have a boozy, college reunion.

ANTOINE LEWIS

HT pays for all meals and reviews anonymously

WHAT: Tamasha

RATING: 3 / 5

WHERE: Ground Floor, Victoria House, PB Marg, next to Kamala Mills, Lower Parel

WHEN: 12 pm - 1 am

COST: Rs 2000 for two including a cocktail each

CALL: 3395-1579
Beauty and the Beast

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad

Rating: 4.5/5

Recently, we heard that Emma Watson let go of La La Land for Beauty and the Beast. We called her a fool, we laughed at her misfortune then.

Look there she goes! That girl is strange, no question

Givin up an Oscar for this bore!

But she did no such thing,

Her fortunes straight as string

This film is a beauty, you should be sure!

At the outset, Beauty and the Beast might remind you of Cinderella, another live action adaptation of an old Disney classic, but the parity is pointless as Beauty and the Beast moves on to reveal a stunning musical treat for your eyes, ears and heart.

Sure, the 1991 Oscar-nominated animated film works as a skeleton, but the pasts of the charactersintroduced in this versionadd flesh and the music blood and the rich sets, gorgeous costumes and the grand production form the flawless skin, binding everything together and bringing to life the classic fairy tale.

We deserved Emma Watson as Belle.

I could be wrong but I think a lot of us willed this film into existence. We campaigned that Emma be cast as Belle, a beautiful young girl in a small town in 18th century France who, unfortunately, also has a braina fact her townspeople cannot digest. Emma, who is also attributed with the same two qualities in real life, was, of course, the only choice for the part and our collective conscience didnt fail us.

You saw the doe-eyed Belle drawn by an artist on screen all those years ago, but it still escapes me how Emma could be just as perfect for it. She has Belles stern, confident charm, but is the sweetest petal of rose when you need her to be.

Of course, that gorgeous, very familiar voice makes you think it is a friend, but it is so perfect that you discard that thought. All her three songs in the film evoke a different mood. She dreamily hopes for an adventure in Belle, the opening number, strikes a sombre note in How Does a Moment Last Forever, and is just a girl falling in love in Something There.

If there was ever anyone who could play real life Belle, it was only Emma Watson. (AP)

Dans Prince Adam is the first, very painted face we see and we hate him instantly as he ridicules the enchantress who ultimately curses him and his castle. But even from under his thick beast-suit and from on top of his stilts, he manages to change our hearts about him. His booming voice and the kindness in his body work despite his non-expressive, furry face.

As for the changes from the original, there are quite a few very subtle, but significant ones. Belles father, Maurice, was a town idiot in the original and we couldnt care less if he got eaten by wolves. But this time, Kevin Kline plays a man with a painful past, raising the stakes further when he gets taken prisoner by the Beast.

Emma Watson as Belle (right) and Kevin Kline as Maurice in a scene from Beauty and the Beast. (AP)

There is not an entire library in the town just for Belle and she visits Pere Robert, the only considerate man in town who lets her borrow any of his ten odd books. Belle is not only an avid reader herself but also tries to teach other girls to read.

Both the lead characters are given short back-stories that, though unnecessary, add immensely to the film. Prince Adam gets a five-second-long scene from his childhood, wrapped in a song that leaps over to the present. For Belle, an entirely new magical element is conjured.

Then of course, their is Le Fou -- the first openly gay character in any Disney film ever.

But what makes this film more than just another fairytale with extra CGI, pretty dresses and a happy ending, are the songs. What could one do to give the already-loved songs a new life? We will have to learn from director Bill Condon. His aesthetic has come a long way since the days of Breaking Dawn (Parts 1 and 2).

Luke Evans in a scene from Beauty and the Beast. (AP)

Josh Gad and Luke Evans make you want to turn into a shotgun-wielding hooligan for just one night with Gaston. You want to tap with them on bar tables, create horrible rhymes and simply sing panegyrics in the glory of the town brute. That song makes having fun with a bunch of idiots look so appealing.

Beauty and the Beast has always had a special place in my heart. No, not because I watched it as a girl; I watched it as a full grown woman for the first time. The music and the idea of falling in love with a human, and not his looks, always seemed like the kind of fairytale I didnt want to find faults with. And years later, how many faults did I find this time?

Follow @soumya1405 for more

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Kattappava Kanom

Director: Mani Seiyon

Cast: Sibi Sathyaraj, Aishwarya Rajesh, Mime Gopi, Chandini, Kaali Venkat, Livingston

Rating: 2.5/5

Debutant Mani Seiyons Kattappava Kanom is fun for the most part but it isnt funny enough and the lack of it isnt a bad thing. Its just one of the films that would have worked big time if it was funnier and wackier, say, a la Nalan Kumarswamys Soodhu Kavvum.

Nevertheless, with an interesting premise about the lives of a few characters that revolve around a Feng Sui fish-and not a heroine for a change--its an amusing diversion from the regular Tamil cinema, and thats a change that deserves to be welcomed even if its not worth celebrating.

Its slightly disappointing that the film doesnt capitalise on an extremely fun, double entendres-filled second half. After a sporadically fun-filled first half, as a viewer youre taken by surprise by the course the second half takes and the adult humour leaves you in splits.

If only the writing was as fun as it was in the last half hour of the film, we would have had a thoroughly entertaining film till the last minute. But still theres so much to like about Kattappava Kanom, and Kaali Venkat and Yogi Babu are so good, they warrant a trip to the theatres.

Kattappava Kanom also works because it treats its actors as characters. The hero takes a good beating; he doesnt fight back and instead thinks how to get out of a situation.

The heroine meets the hero for the first time in a pub. She doesnt think twice about breaking up a prospective alliance. Shes independent and likes to live life on her own terms.

However, the issue with most characters is that we dont quite empathise with them at any point. Mime Gopi, for instance, plays the antagonist and the story revolves around his missing Feng Sui fish, but we dont understand its importance in his life. All we see him do is scream and sulk when his fish goes missing. A small back-story about why the fish means so much to him would have made sense.

The writing, too, isnt tight enough. The pace of the narrative is lethargic, almost testing ones patience. If not for the well interspersed comedy at regular intervals, it would have been a tiresome watch.

Even with some concerning issues, Kattappava Kanom rises above mediocrity and shines due to excellent comedy and a unique premise.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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The Bombay high court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday to submit a chart detailing the names of convicts in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gang-rape case and how long they have been incarcerated for.

In November last year, a division bench of justices VK Tahilramani and Mridula Bhatkar had reserved judgement on the appeals filed by the CBI seeking to increase the convicts sentence, as well as the appeals of the 11 convicts challenging their conviction.

The bench asked CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar to submit a chart detailing the sentence awarded to each of the convicts, the exact time they have spent in jail pending trial, and the period of their imprisonment following their conviction and sentencing. The bench said this would help it pass a judgement.

In January 2008, a city court had convicted 11 people of gang-rape, the rape of a pregnant woman, and murder. It sentenced them to life imprisonment.

The CBI had moved the high court in 2011, seeking the death penalty for three of the convicts  Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai, and Sailesh Bhatt. It said Bilkis sister and mother had identified them as the rapists.

The CBI had also urged the court to overturn the clean chit granted to five Gujarat police officials in the case, arguing that the police were hand in glove with the convicts.

The court had been conducting day-to-day hearings on both pleas since July last year.

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Officers from the Cyber police station in Mumbai arrested one person for allegedly sending obscene messages to BJP national spokesperson Shain NC. The arrested accused was identified as Jayantkumar Singh. Ironically, Singh is a BJP worker from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

I fought for my dignity by registering a police complaint. Many women in such situations get scared and hesitate to approach the police. I want them to come out and file complaints against such harassment, Shaina told HT.

An officer from the Cyber police station said that the BJP leader had approached them last month and lodged a complaint against an unidentified person for sending her obscene messages.

Based on her complaint, an FIR was registered under Section 354 (sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 (transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.

In her statement, Shaina had then told the police that she had received several vulgar messages via WhatsApp. She even provided the police with the mobile number from which the messages were sent.

In a similar incident, the Vile Parle police had arrested a man from Jalgaon for sending abusive SMSes to two women Member of Legislative Council (MLC)  one from Shiv Sena and another from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Also read: UP man detained for sending obscene texts to BJPs Shaina NC
For a trio from Pune  husband, wife and their son  burglary is a family business. This came to the fore after officers from Pune crime branch detained their 17-year-old son for his alleged involvement in a mobile phone theft. Investigation later revealed about the familys involvement in 14 other break-ins and thefts.

Nanabhau Lanke and his wife Deepali were arrested after the police detained their son in a case pertaining mobile phone theft. During his questioning, the teenager spilled the beans about the involvement of his parents and how the three worked as a team to execute break-ins and thefts.

Accordingly, officers from crime branch (Unit IV) raided Lanke residence at Kasturba housing society in Vishrantwadi and recovered laptops, tablets, gold and other valuables, collectively worth Rs8 lakh.

Narrating their modus operandi, deputy commissioner of police Deepak Sakore said the teenager would commit the break-ins and the valuables he stole were sold by his parents at cheaper rates.He added that Deepak was in-charge of selling the stolen gold to the local jewellers. The police have arrested Pravin Parkhe, a jeweller from Khadki Bazar, for purchasing jewellery from Deepak.

Assistant commissioner of police Arun Walture said while the teenager has six cases against him, his parents have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities (MPDA) Act.

Police said Deepak heads the Bharatiya Minorities Suraksha, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for the minorities, and often used it as a decoy to pressurise the police.

Also read : Rs1.56 crore stolen from van parked outside SBI ATM in Mumbai

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A couple was arrested for spitting on and assaulting a police constable at Thane on Thursday after he stopped them for not wearing helmets.

The incident was captured on video by many passers-by. The couple  Imtiyaz Honnaali,25, and Girishma Nayar,24  lives in Ambernath and while the girl is a graduate, the boy does odd jobs.

Both were produced in court and remanded in police custody till Monday. Police said the couple was going back to Ambernath via LBS Road after consuming alcohol in Thane.  As the couple approached the barricades, they were asked to stop but they tried to dodge the cops and flee. Our police constables ran behind them and stopped them. The couple was then asked to disembark from the bike and when we checked them with breathalyser, we found that both of them were heavily drunk, said R Malekar, senior police inspector from Wagle Estate police. Later, they were taken for a medical test, which also confirmed that they were under the influence of alcohol.

They first abused the police constable and later they spat pan that they were chewing on the constable, said the police.

Malekar further added, The couple also threatened to strip police constable of his clothes. They were so loud that the locals gathered near the spot and shot the incident on their mobile phones. The police said the couple also threatened to abduct the constable and assault him.

They were booked under sections 353, 332, 504, 506, of 34 of the IPC and Motor Vehicles Act.

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Cases of rape: 23; cases of murder: 5; cases of attempt to murder: 32; cases solved: all of them.

The Shivaji Nagar police was quick to respond to most serious crimes filed in 2016, solving all of them, barring one rape case. Overall too, the police here solved 76% of the 544 cases filed last year  among the best in the city.

A look at police records shows assault (112) and house break-ins at night (45) were the most common crimes in this area.

The residents, however, are still shaken by a burglary in November last year, when three men barged into the home of Narendra Jain, 52, attacked him and his two children, and ran off with cash and ornaments.

There were some cases, however,that had the police stumbling. Of 39 cases of theft, only 11 were solved, of 45 cases of house break-ins at night, only 17 were solved.

This area sees a lot of assault cases. People get into fights over petty reasons as the area has problems of poverty and low education, said Shahji Umap, deputy commissioner of police, Zone 6.

Also read: 533 cases registered in Mulund last year

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Five people including two chartered accountants (CA) were arrested with demonetised currency worth Rs99.8 lakh on Thursday night at a commercial complex in Mulund.

The arrested accused have been identified as Harish Deshnehre, 30, Vipul Jain, 39, Malay Doshi, 27, Junj Patel, 27, and Krishnakumar Nadar, 45. Police seized 9,964 notes of Rs 500 denomination and 4,998 notes of Rs 1,000 denomination.

Police said Doshi and Patel are CAs and they had loaned some money to a man called Mandar, a Chembur resident. When Mandar was unable to pay back the amount, he allegedly offered demonetised notes to them. The CAs thought that they would exchange the notes with someone for a commission and keep whatever money would be left, said a police officer requesting anonymity.

Sources said the two CAs and three accomplices were about to meet at Parmeshwar centre in Dalmiya estate in Mulund (west) with the currency and the cops laid a trap to catch them. The police were tipped off about the currency being stocked at the location. We are investigating about the backward and forward linkages of the currency, said Sachin Patil, deputy commissioner of police, Zone 7.

Mandar, who allegedly gave the currency to the accused, is at large. The Income Tax department has been alerted for further investigations. Police suspect involvement of more people in the case. Investigations are on to ascertain how they were going to exchange the notes.

Last Wednesday, The Mumbai police intercepted three vehicles, one in Tardeo and two at Antop Hill, collectively carrying Rs 2.56 crore in demonetised notes. Five people were held in connection with the case.

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The home department of the state government has proposed a hike in the licenses that it issues to hotels, bowling allies, discotheques in star-rated hotels, cyber cafes and clubs by more than five times.

This comes in after the cash-strapped state government issued a diktat to all its departments to collect revenue in the best ways possible.

In its proposal, the department has suggested that orchestra bars be charged Rs 2 lakh for a performing license. Currently, the bars pay only Rs2,000 per year for the license.

Mumbai has 584 orchestra bars which mushroomed after the Maharashtra government banned dance bars in 2006. These bars are legally permitted to play live orchestra and are allowed to serve liquor within the premises. Dance performances, however, are strictly prohibited.

Thane houses 250 orchestra bars while 140 such licenses were issued in Navi Mumbai.

A source from the home department said that the government expects to earn around Rs25 crore per year if the proposal for the hike is accepted. Of this, the government would get Rs16 crore a year from granting licenses specifically to orchestra bars.

The dance bar Act passed in 2016 increased the license amount from Rs2,000 to Rs2 lakh. We have proposed the hike for licenses issued to orchestra bars along the same lines, said an official from the home department.

He added, Orchestra bars earn huge profits and the amount that we recover from them is meagre. In comparison, the hike that we have proposed for establishments that host folk performances such as tamasha, lavani and circus, is negligible.

The proposal has been accepted by the minister of state for home and is pending chief minister Devendra Fadnavis approval as he heads the department.

We expect the chief minister to clear the proposal in a couple of days. If approved, the hike will be implemented from April, said the official. The last hike had been proposed in 2001, he added.

Commenting on this, Adarsh Shetty of Ahars bar cell said, We not aware of any such proposal. We can react to it once the proposal is approved.

Read: Despite demonetisation, Mumbai police get 64 applications for new dance bar licences

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A 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly passing lewd comments on a 28-year-old woman, an immigration official, while he was standing in a queue for security check at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on Thursday morning.

According to Sahar police, the arrested accused Darshan Hatnolkar, a Kalyan resident, was on his way back home from Dubai. The incident took place at 6.50 am when Hatnolkar, under the influence of alcohol, was standing in the queue. He was staring at the official and when she looked down on realising that, he said, Dont be shy, look up. The official ignored him even when he twice repeated his comment. However, another woman, also an immigration staffer, confronted him on which he went mum.

The woman then alerted their wing in-charge SM More who rushed to the spot. When Hatnolkar was being taken aside for questioning, he began abusing the woman and More recorded this on his mobile phone.

Listening to the loud noise, crew members of the plane he took to fly to Mumbai came and identified him as the same person who was misbehaving on the flight. They said he had tried to molest another woman passenger.

He was handed over to Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) who gave custody to Sahar Police. Hatnolkar was booked under IPC sections 509, 353, 504 and 506. He has been remanded to police custody for two days, said a police official.

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In the second such incident in a week, three doctors and a nurse at Nashik General Hospital were assaulted by a mob after a patient died during treatment.

The 700-member staffers at the hospital, which has four guards, have threatened to resign if they are not provided with more security.

The assault has taken place at a time when the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) is protesting against assaults on colleagues. Over 1,000 doctors from MARD and Indian Medical Association had staged an agitation at Azad Maidan on Friday morning. They were protesting the attack on Dr Rahul Mhamunkar of Dhule Civil Hospital who was beaten up by the relatives of a patient after he referred the patient to another facility.

Dr S P Jagdale, medical superintendent of Nashik General Hospital said that the attacks on the three doctors and the nurse took place at 10.30pm on Thursday when a patient who was diagnosed with swine flu was brought to the hospital in a critical condition. We told the family that the patient is extremely critical and there is a little chance that the treatment can save him. They asked for a written confirmation and we gave it to them, said Dr Jagdale.

The patient was apparently brought to the hospital after a preliminary treatment at Sangamner. They forced us to admit the patient. However, he died during the treatment and the 25-30 people who had accompanied him turned violent, added Dr Jagdale.

The mob allegedly thrashed Dr Rahul Patil, two trainee doctors and a nurse. They yanked the nurses apron and belt so hard that it tore her uniform. Those people were violent beyond control. We have informed the local police station about the incident, said Dr Jagdale. While none of the staffers sustained severe injuries, they suffered bruises and minor cuts in the incident.

Officials from Directorate of Health Services said that 18 guards are allotted to the hospital but only four works in one shift. The hospital doesnt have any security personnel from the local police station.

The hospital staffers immediately called for a strike after the incident which was called off only at 3pm on Friday after the police officials filed an FIR.

Speaking about the delay in filing the complaint, the investigating officer Mithun Mhatre said that they started the procedure only after receiving a written complaint from the hospital officials. We have not arrested anyone yet and the investigations are underway, he said.

Read: Stringent laws, penalties wont help improve worsening doctor-patient relationship, says study
Its 1854. Bombay has just got its first textile mill.

Within half-a-century, this mill and several more revolutionised the city. The chawls and workers colonies around them gave Bombay that unique character it is known for today. Steeped in history and rooted to that culture, centuries later, Central Mumbai is quite literally this megapolis heart. But a heart that has lost its beat many times.

In the 1980s, as the mills began shutting down, the underworld began rising. Heartland turned bloody gangland, and the likes of gangsters Arun Gawli, Amar Naik and Ashwin Naik rose to power. And, in the sprawling slums of Dharavi not very far away, there was Vardharaja Mudaliar. Several young mill worker who were left unemployed joined these gangs. A decade of tough police crackdown and encounter killings managed to restore some order, but the peace is threatened today again by the mighty divide between the rich and the poor that live here.

The transition

The out-of-work mills left behind vast expanses of land that were soon reused to build swanky malls, commercial towers and ultra-modern residential complexes that edged the chawls and the working classes to the regions fringes. A quintessential case of the rich getting richer, the poor poorer, the rising inequality has started showing in the areas crime patterns. The regions 20 police stations recorded 8,748 crimes in 2016  thats 24 cases daily.

All the different crimes

There were 127 cases of rape in the region, one of the highest in the city. The area was in the news four years ago, for the brutal gang rape of a 22-year-old photojournalist inside the abandoned Shakti Mill compound. Experts had pointed out then how unsupervised mill lands like these were growing hubs for criminal activity.

In 2016, there was also a rise in cybercrime cases  threatening e-mails and SMSes and card frauds  compared to 2015. There were 167 cases filed compared to 2015s 95 cybercrime cases. Crimes against children recorded an increase too, at 446 cases in 2016, compared to 269 cases the year before. Some 929 cases of crimes against women, such as molestation (451) and kidnapping of minors (170), were filed. And then, theres the Dharavi challenge. One of Asias largest slums came second in the number of crimes recorded.

Cases fall, detection down

While fewer cases were filed in 2016, fewer cases were solved too. Of 8,748 cases filed, the police managed to solve just 5,985. Of all the cyber crimes recorded, just 18 were solved. But police sources said this was because those involved worked from far-off places, sometimes abroad. Of 1,332 theft cases, 430 were solved; 117 robberies filed, 96 were solved. When it came to major crimes  rape, crimes against women and murder  the polices record was better. Of 929 cases of crimes against women, 684 were solved; 22 murders, 19 solved. We are working to ensure detection rates get better, said a senior officer.

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The states 2017-18 budget, which will be tabled on Saturday, may not burn a hole your pockets. State finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar indicated as much on Thursday, pointing out that with the Goods And Services Tax (GST) likely to be implemented from this July in the country, hiking taxes or introducing new ones for the next three months would bring little help to the state exchequer. Instead, the states focus will now move to non-tax revenues, of which land monetisation and state-related fees and levies can play an important part.

Why would we want to hike taxes and earn brickbats when GST is likely to be implemented across the country soon ? Now onwards, our focus will be on increasing non-tax revenues of the state because that will be in our hands, said Mungantiwar. The state government is looking to increase its income through various other non-tax measures such as monetisation of land by selling Floor Space Index (FSI), increasing rent of leasehold government plots or hiking fees and penalties levied through various instruments such as court fees and parking challans.

We get a miniscule amount as revenue from all big government plots like say the Turf club or gymkhanas where public functions, marriages are held for rent of lakhs of rupees for a day. The government can in the future seek 25% of such earnings from them, after all the land belongs to us, he said.

A restructuring of the state lottery on the lines of Kerala, he said could net the state revenue of Rs1,500 crore instead of paltry the Rs10 crore it earned now.

Mungantiwar also admitted that farmers would remain the focal point of this budget like last year, with funds being collated across departments to help increase productivity of agriculturists rather than a loan waiver at this stage.

The economic survey report of Maharashtra to be tabled in the state legislature on Friday is also likely to usher in ache din for farmers, at least by way of numbers, with indications that the agriculture and allied sectors growth rate in the state is likely to be positive than negative as had been the trend of the past four years. The overall growth rate is also likely to inch higher than 8%. The agriculture growth rate last year was negative 5.3% and taken with allied sectors it was negative 2.7%.

You will see the progress made in agriculture when we table the Economic Survey report tomorrow [Friday]. Overall, our aim is to achieve a double-digit growth figure in two years, said Mungantiwar

The finance ministers big worries are the seventh pay commission, which will cause a burden of Rs21,500 core and the loan waiver (if granted), which will cost Rs30,500 crore.

While the state debt is expected to increase in absolute numbers at more than Rs3 lakh crore, the finance department has taken solace in the fact that its proportion to the states GSDP is reducing and is hence with the centres parameters.

The state will also make a bid for fixed deposits of all government aligned public companies to raise finances and ensure better debt servicing. This could include deposits of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, City and Industrial Development Corporation and Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, among others, which collectively have deposits more than Rs70,000 crore.

The state government will set up a non-banking financial corporation on the lines of Gujarat, said Mungantiwar, for keeping these deposits.

I will do this post budget and travel to Gujarat for the same,he said.

Also read: Maharashtra budget: How will state combat debt, poor revenue?

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Maharashtras 2017-18 budget, to be tabled on Saturday, will likely focus on non-tax revenues such as land monetisation and state-related fees and levies. With the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill expected to be implemented in July, newer taxes and tax hikes are unlikely to be on the agenda. State finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar indicated as much on Thursday when he said the government will be looking at ways to generate funds from non-tax revenues.

Why would we want to hike taxes and earn brickbats when GST is likely to be implemented across the country soon? he said.

A look at what can be expected from the state budget.

No new taxes or big hikes

The budget may not burn a big hole in your pocket with the GST Bill expected to be implemented across the country from this July. But, other levies and fees may see a hike. There could also be an effort to broaden the tax net and offer an amnesty scheme to collect pending sales tax. The finance minister has indicated that he will not hike taxes in a big way or introduce new ones just for three months. The states focus will now be on non-tax revenues like monetising land or hiking state levies and fees like court fee, parking challans, and so on.

Focus on farmers

For a second year in the row, the state budget will revolve around the agrarian crisis and could have maximum allocation for farmers. This will be done by putting together funds set aside for schemes across departments like irrigation, water conservation, and marketing. New schemes and subsidies may get announced for this sector given that there is pressure on the government to announce a loan waiver.

Debt to increase, revenue deficit likely

The state is unlikely to meet its revenue targets with the slump in the housing sector hitting the expected income from stamp duty and registrations. The revenue from sales tax, which brings home the largest chunk of funds at over Rs 70,000 crore, may also fall short of the target. As a result, a revenue deficit budget is a given. The debt of the state is the highest in the country at Rs 3.56 lakh crore, and is also expected to increase in absolute figures. The government, though, maintains that its ratio vis-a-vis the Gross State Domestic Product will come down to 16%, within the Centres parameters.

Measures for fiscal prudence

The state government is hoping to cut back on wasteful expenditure by shaving off existing schemes that are redundant. There are over 17,000 schemes currently, many of which may get cut. The states finance department has already saved Rs 5,000 crore by simply not clearing bills post February 1 that they claim are often cleared in haste. The utilisation of last years budget itself has been below 55%.

Infrastructure to get a boost

Followed by agriculture, the state will focus on infrastructure by allocating funds for irrigation and the public works department. There will also be an attempt at wooing youngsters through skill development and training schemes to reduce stress on agriculture.

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There should be no room for intolerance, prejudice and hatred within the spaces of our educational institutions. They must act as flag bearers for the co-existence of multiple views, thoughts and philosophies, said President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday.

He said, Ancient India was known for the high level of philosophical debate and discussion it nurtured. Conversation and dialogue are part of our ethos and life. They cannot be done away with. Universities and higher education institutions are the best for a free exchange of views.

The statements come in the wake of recent conflict between student groups at Delhi Universitys Ramjas College. The row erupted after JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid were invited to speak at a literary seminar in Ramjas College. Khalid was arrested last year and booked for sedition for organising a rally on the JNU campus. Rashid was the then vice-president of the JNU students union. Both the speakers were dropped from the event after the college students union opposed their participation, leading to violence on the campus.

The President invoked Mahatma Gandhi in an effort to push for more tolerance on the college campuses. I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any, he said quoting Gandhi.

Mukherjee was speaking at a special convocation to award genetic scientist MS Swaminathan an honourary doctorate of laws (DLL). Swaminathan is known as the father of green revolution in India for his contribution in developing high yielding varieties of wheat.

Read: Ramjas College protest highlights: Clashes between ABVP, DU students, cops crack down

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As the political parties push for total farm loan waiver in Maharashtra, the governments own figures paint a dismal picture about the effect of money spent on relief for farmers. In the last 10 years, Rs33,627 crore has been spent in the state on various loan waivers and relief packages, but the number of suicides by farmers during the same period was 17,861. If you count the money spent in the name of farmers since 2002, the amount goes up to Rs51,000 crore. The number of farmer suicides since then add up to 23,864.

There was a loan waiver, too, much like the one being demanded by the Shiv Sena and the Opposition Congress and NCP now. In 2008-09, the Congress-NCP government waived off loans worth Rs8,898 crore. According to official records, however, this did not help reduce farmer suicides. The average annual suicide rate remained more than 1,500 for the next eight years. In the past two years alone, 6,281 farmers have committed suicide.

And while the legislature remains stalled over the issue of a loan waiver, agricultural activists are not in favour of it.

A loan waiver is not a long-term measure. The farmer should be brought to a position where he can pay off the loan on his own. After the loan waiver of Rs8,898 crore in 2008-09, farmers were indebted for the next two years because of consecutive droughts, said Vijay Jawandhia, farm activist. About 40% of the farmers in the state are not able to get loans as the 7/12 extracts[a record of the plot of land] do not have their names on them owing to various reasons. The farmers are in distress because the fruits of the liberal economy were reaped by urban areas in the past 25 years. The pay commissions have raised the minimum pay of a government employee to Rs18,000 from Rs2,500 in the past 20 years, but farmers income saw no change, he said.

The state government has begun the process of drawing up an estimate of the burden on the state exchequer in case a loan waiver is announced. We have been distributing loans worth Rs22,000 crore a year for the past two years through various banks, including nationalised and district cooperative central banks. The annual distribution during the Congress-led government was Rs14,000 crore. The waiver will be applicable to the land holding of certain acres and a cap of the loan amount will also have to be ascertained. The amount could range between Rs20,000 and Rs25,000 crore, said an official from the cooperation department.

After the central government announced a loan waiver of Rs70,000 crore in the country in 2008-09, about 38 lakh farmers in the state got the benefit of Rs7,871 crore. The state government added Rs1,027 crore more to cover the remaining 6.72 lakh farmers ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Also read: Three farmers in Vidarbha region commit suicide

Maha govt ropes in Amul to help debt-ridden farmers in Yavatmal

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A well-coordinated communication system rather than stringent laws or penalties is the need of the hour, stated the team of researchers who recently studied the worsening doctor-patient relationship across India.

Published in the International Journal of Applied Research and Studies, the research was a joint effort between the faculties of Navsahyadri Education Society, Pune and Smt Laxmibai Radhakishan Toshniwal College Of Commerce, Akola.

Most of the (research) papers published on these topics were by the medical people. To some extent, it was inclined towards one group, said the authors, Prof Sachin Divekar and Dr Varsha Sukhdeve, talking about the reason for their research.

In Maharashtra alone, more than 45 doctors and medical staffers have been subjected to violence by patients relatives in the last three years.

Great transformations happen in social, technical and medical field, which dilute the relationship, said Prof Divekar while focusing on the reasons for the failing doctor-patient relationship.

Diminishing concept of family doctors, emergence of specialty and multispeciality hospitals, age of information, well-informed patients and certain practices followed by doctors and patients alike are said to be the major causes for fuelling the deterioration of the relationship.

No more family doctors

One of the major causes listed was the diminishing numbers of general practitioners (GPs) in the society, which earlier used to cater to a limited population. These GPs, who looked after five or more villages, were taking ample time to discuss cases with the patients. The consultation involved a chat about the problems, medical examination, description of the diagnosis and a feedback from the patient. It was a win-win situation for the doctor and the patient alike, as they shared mutual understanding and trust. the paper mentioned.

Experts added that this mutual connect vanished after the emergence of specialty and superspecialty hospitals. Most of the specialised doctors collaborated with all possible hospitals, and started their own private practices simultaneously. As a result, specialised doctors didnt have time to listen to their patients carefully, said Prof Divekar and Dr Sukhdeve .

They add that the problem started after diagnosis and treatment become a speedy affair. This resulted in poor communication between the doctors and the patients or the relatives, thus creating confusion.

Age of information

Today, patients arriving at a clinic are armed with information they found on web. They want to actively participate in the therapeutic decisions and want all decisions to be informed and intelligent, pointed out the researchers.

They mentioned that earlier, unethical practices followed by the doctors went unnoticed due to lack of knowledge, information, restricted income, blind faith in doctors and limited number of superspeciality medical establishments. Literacy rate was low. So whatever was told and asked by the doctors was taken as the final word by the patients and their relatives, said Prof Divekar.

Researchers added that since the main concern of the medical fraternity was variable and the unreliable nature of medical information available on the internet, doctors stared perceiving such people as problem patients.

Population and disposable income

Another major factor recognised in the research was the increasing buying power of the middle-class for quality western medicine. The Indian population spent 7% of its disposable income on healthcare in 2005, which increased to 14% by 2009-2010 and almost doubled (26%) by 2014-2015.

With this trend, people are ready to pay higher amount for saving lives of their beloved and in return they expect best possible services. Poor services and negligence flares up the emotion of patients and relatives, said Dr Sukhdeve.

Focusing on the matter, researchers pointed out that poor doctor-patient ratio in India, which is 6:10,000, is insufficient for the growing needs of the people. Around 70% population resides in rural areas, where the ratio is six times lower. About 80% doctors, 75% dispensaries and 60% hospitals are located in urban localities, said Dr Sukhdeve.

Advancement in medical technology

Researchers added that while the changes in medical technology, including special ventilators, artificial pulmonary surfactant to help infant lungs develop and neonatal intensive care helped decrease mortality, the advancement was also perceived by the patients and relatives as the proof for saving a life. Early and accurate detection doesnt mean 100% surety of saving a life. Patients and their relatives must understand this. Also, this needs to be communicated clearly by the doctors, said Prof Divekar.

Consumer rights

In the age of information and technology, patients and their relatives are able to raise their voice against the alleged malpractices. But in most cases, they believe that physical assault or vandalising a medical facility is the best tactic to resolve an issue, the researchers mentioned in their study.

They added that the causes of this outrage were inept redressal system and lack of initiatives taken by either the government or the medical fraternity.

It is the duty of Medical Council of India to look into the issues and introduce a protocol where both the doctor and the patient can seek redressal. Only a handful of cases have been resolved since the enactment of the Medical Council Act, 1956, said one of the researchers.

Need for change

Talking about the necessary change in the attitude of doctors, experts said that a future doctor will not only require medical skills but will have to learn sociology, psychology and acquire man management skills like effective communication and being a patient listener.

We have to develop a system through which we can resolve the issue or discrepancies in the doctor-patient relationship. Passing or implementing non-bailable laws is not going to solve the problem, said the researchers.

They also mentioned that at least regional doctors associations and patients or social activists can sit together and work out solutions to tackle the issue.

Also read: Maharashtra to increase security for docs, restrict number of relatives visiting patients

Karnataka better than Maharashtra at protecting its doctors
Look one way, and you see swanky malls, upmarket gated colonies and the Metro trains zipping past. Turn around, and dimly-lit chawls, narrow by- lanes and men lying around drunk fill your view.

Stuck in the middle are the Mumbai police.

Last year, 19 crimes were filed every day in the sprawling, crowded eastern suburbs, where the police hunt not just for burglars and murderers, but also battle the challenges that come with a society of people as vast and diverse as the region itself.

What is the problem?

The eastern suburbs house the citys first Metro and Monorail lines and crucial roads like the Eastern Express Highway, eastern freeway, Sion-Panvel Road and LBS Marg. These roads not only brought this side of town closer to the rest of the city, but also turned the area into a real estate jackpot. Soon, high-rise residential complexes and malls started coming up at every corner. Ideally, this is kind of boom is great news, but the unplanned and haphazard development mean its effects are seen in the polices complaints register. People, whose homes were on the spots where flyovers and Metro lines had to be built, have been rehabilitated in areas such as Mankhurd, Govandi and Shivaji Nagar. They were painters, carpenters and masons who had for decades worked in one area, building contacts and catering to a loyal bunch of customers. When they were moved, they lost their livelihood, said Raj Kumar Sharma, the co-ordinator of the NGO AGNI. Kumar, who was born and brought up in Chembur, was witness to this change. No one knew them anymore, jobs were hard to come by. Desperate, they took to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and eventually crime.

Two worlds, many issues

The inequality here is glaring, because of which crime is rising.

Chembur, Ghatkopar, Vikhroli, Bhandup and Mulund, once industrial areas, are now full of multiplexes and posh residential colonies. In Mankhurd, Govandi, Shivaji Nagar and Trombay, the poor continue to jostle for space in chawls and slum colonies. Here, unemployment reigns, and drugs and potli (country-made liquor) have a stranglehold over the people.

To add to the trouble are pockets in Tilak Nagar and Ghatkopar  once the citadel of underworld gangsters Chhota Rajan and Kumar Pillai  where criminals seem emboldened by the areas past.

The result? Between Mulund and Chembur, 7,208 cases were filed in 2016, the police solved 4,706, or 65%, of them.

The drug challenge

Cheap drugs that are easily available in the vast slums of Govandi, Deonar and Shivaji Nagar are a huge problem, locals and the police told Hindustan Times. The police said the drug problem was directly connected to crimes in the area.

A case in point is the September 2016 stabbing of a 30-year-old man, killed when a bunch of friends smoking marijuana started fighting for the larger share. Tackling the drug problem, said the police, was their Number 1 task.

We are working on ways to curb drug-related crime, and have sent 80 people to de-addiction centres, said Manoj Lohia, the additional commissioner of police, east region. Lohia said crime went up slightly in 2016, but the force was cracking down.

Some good news

Compared to the rest of the city, the police in the east were quick to probe, follow and solve cases. In Zone 6 (Chembur, Nehru Nagar,Trombay, RCF, Deonar, Shivaji Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Mankhurd, Chunabhatti and Govandi), 70% cases filed were solved. Zone 7 (Ghatkopar, Pant Nagar, Vikhroli, Parksite, Bhandup,Kanjurmarg, Mulund and Navghar) saw its police solving around 60% of the cases.

Also read: Lights, camera, crime in the land of Bollywood

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There is no need for the state government to spend public funds on providing police protection to political leaders because their parties are perfectly capable of taking care of them, the Bombay high court said on Friday.

Why is the taxpayers money being spent on former members of the legislature and their relatives? asked a division bench comprising chief justice Manjula Chellur and justice Girish Kulkarni. It appears that you are providing police protection to select people because they are affiliated to certain political parties.

Referring to a list of politicians benefiting from police protection across Maharashtra, the court told government pleader Abhinandan Vagyani: Let them or their political parties take care of them and their relatives. It cant be that their burden is shifted on the state exchequer.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by Ashok Udayvar and Sunny Punamiya, who expressed concern over the huge outstanding dues owed by individuals provided with police protection.

According to a chart submitted by the state government, as many as 1,034 people  including 242 from Mumbai  have been provided police protection across Maharashtra. On an average, four police personnel are deployed per person on protection duty. The list includes 482 people who are not constitutional functionaries, such as elected representatives, bureaucrats and judges.

The bench also expressed its displeasure over the service being provided free of cost to people who can easily afford to pay the requisite dues to the government. You have categories under which some people pay and others dont, said the bench. This reflects complete non-application of mind.

The bench said it was also essential to review the governments decision to exempt certain categories of people from payment for protection services.

During the course of the hearing, Vagyani told the court that Rs 15 crore of the total outstanding dues (Rs 21 crore in Mumbai alone) has been recovered. As much as Rs 6.85 crore is yet to be collected from people who have availed the service in other parts of the state.

The government pleader also assured the court that police and home department officials will take a relook at the entire scheme. He said the department has already decided to not provide police protection to private individuals unless they deposit a certain amount in advance.
A 27-year-old woman was allegedly raped by two men and sustained serious injuries when she fell from a building in south Mumbai while trying to escape, police said on Friday.

The two accused have been arrested.

The incident came to light in the early hours on Friday when the woman, a native of Uttar Pradesh, was spotted lying in a duct of the building in Mumbais Pydhonie area.

After getting information about the incident, the Pydhonie police rushed to the spot and admitted the woman in a state-run hospital.

The Pydhonie police has registered an offence of gangrape and arrested the two accused. Further investigation is on, deputy commissioner of police, Zone-II, Dnyaneshwar Chavan said.

The woman was allegedly gangraped on Thursday night by the two persons in a house on the fifth floor of the building where she had came with one of the accused, whom she knew previously, another police official said.

The accused had brought her to Mumbai 10 days back on the pretext of getting her employment, he said.

Both of them stayed in Bhiwandi township of the neighbouring Thane district for eight days where also she was allegedly raped by him, he said.

They came to the building in Pydhonie on Thursday at the godown-cum-residence of the other accused, he said.

The woman and the two men had dinner together after which they allegedly raped her, the official said.

At around 4am, she was spotted in the duct of the building by some residents.

Police said the woman fell in the duct while trying to run away from the house while the two accused were asleep.

She suffered serious injuries and has been admitted in a hospital, the official said.
Taking a cue from the recent revelation of 20,000 students submitting irregular documents, Dr Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) will be scrutinising the admission process for academic year 2017-18.

A total of 841 institutes are affiliated with AKTU with 93 colleges in Ghaziabad and 75 colleges in Gautam Budh Nagar.

At the time of admission, students are supposed to submit class 12 mark sheet, transfer certificate, character certificate and domicile certificate. For scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and other backward caste students, caste certificate is also necessary

Recently, AKTU administration had kept the admission of 20,000 students for the academic session 2017-2018 on hold after they found documents submitted at the time of admission in 2016-2017 to be fake or filled improperly.

The 20,000 students were given another opportunity to submit their documents.

Read more: AKTU to cancel admission of students without documents after March 8

Friday was the last day to submit the documents and we will come to a decision in two-three days on revoking the suspension of students, said Aashish Mishra, spokesperson, AKTU.

The university administration has decided to check the documents of students during the admission process itself. Every year, the university administration conducts a national level Uttar Pradesh State Entrance Examination (UPSEE) to select students. This is followed by a counselling process where students are allotted colleges according to their preference and marks.

This year, we have decided that we will scrutinize documents at the time of admission so that such cases are not repeated. The decision was taken at an academic meet in March when many raised questions on the admission process of the university as the students documents were checked at the end of the academic year. Therefore, we have decided that by November end, before the first semester exams begin, we will check the documents of every new student, Mishra said.

The university has decided that admission of students, whose documents are found to be irregular after rechecking, will be cancelled. Such students will not be allowed to sit for the first semester exams, Mishra said.

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Kannur VC Dr Gopinath Ravindran was the last to respond to Raj Bhavan shortly before the 5pm deadline.


Even after a horrific bus accident in Etah district that left several children dead and stern guidelines issued by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) over safety norms in school buses in the wake of the incident, district schools are still flouting norms when it comes to ferrying schoolchildren to and from school.

Greater Noida Police on Friday seized a white private bus that was being used by Cambridge School for transportation of schoolchildren.

No school can run a bus that doesnt have yellow colour, as it marks a violation of the rules laid down for school buses. We impounded this white private bus while checking vehicles in the morning at Pari Chowk. We have seized the bus and registered a case under Section 207 of the Indian Penal Code section 207, Manish Sharma, station house officer, Knowledge Park police station, said.

On January 19, a school bus in Etah district of Aligarh met with a horrific accident. As many as 12 children and the driver were killed.The bus had collided head-on with a sand-laden truck on a foggy morning.

Post the incident, the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) issued a set of guidelines to schools across India for ensuring safety of children in school buses. In a circular issued by deputy secretary of CBSE, K Srinivasan, all schools were asked to install Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, CCTV cameras, first-aid boxes and speed governors in their buses. They also asked for the buses to be painted in yellow with provision of horizontal grills in windows and displaying all details regarding the driver and conductor.

Read I Noida police announces crackdown on school buses flouting safety norms

However, schools in Noida and Greater Noida refused to pay heed to the guidelines issued by CBSE and the district administration, as private vans and unauthorised minibuses were hired to ferry schoolchildren. Crammed with students, these vehicles continue to ply with abandon.

Even Noida and Greater Noida police launched a crackdown on the school buses that did not comply with the norms. In February alone, the police fined at least six private vehicles that were found to be flouting the safety norms.

Post the accident in Etah, we had stepped up checking to ensure the school buses adhere to the safety regulations. Many buses were found to boarding students beyond capacity and many did not ave necessary papers and documents to operate. We will continue our crackdown, said SHO Sharma.

The city magistrate Ramanuj Singh said that he will soon arrange a meeting with the police officers to ensure such incidents are not repeated in future.

Flouting safety norms in school buses is a serious matter and we will soon hold talks with the police to find a solution to this problem, Singh said.

Despite repeated attempts, the authorities at Cambridge School couldnt be reached for comments.


While the examinees in Noida and elsewhere are sweating it out in the quest of good marks in the ongoing board exams, medical experts in Delhi-NCR have stressed on good sleep between the study hours as it is critical to dealing with pressure, keeping a calm head and faring well.

Stressing on the need for proper sleep for a healthy lifestyle, doctors believe that at least eight hours of relaxation is necessary for students to de-stress their minds and bodies and give their best in the exams.

Sleep encompasses one third of our lifespan and it is one of the most important requirements for a healthy body and mind. Growing bodies in the age gap of 12-18 years need proper sleep as their brain and other organs get time to recharge. It is essential that students who have to appear for exams the next day, sleep well, Gyanendra Agarwal, pulmonologist, Jaypee Hospital, Noida, said.

Doctors claim that when a person sleeps, his/her mind is still active or in a semi-conscious state .

It is a misconception that sleep is waste of time and much can be achieved without it. When we sleep, our mind is awake and many hormonal changes occur during this time. These changes are more prevalent in the case of infants and growing bodies. If we dont sleep, we are depriving our body of these essential changes, PP Bose, president, Saans Foundation, Delhi, said.

Read I CBSE board exam: English paper provides an easy start for Noida students

Board exams for the students of standards 10 and 12 kicked off earlier this month. As many as 20 lakh students are appearing for the exams this year.

According to doctors, the students must sleep for at least eight hours every day to beat exam-related stress and perform to potential.

Sleep is necessary to de-stress the body and mind and on the night before an examination, students are anxious about their performance and they choose to devote their sleeping time for study and revision. This is not a wise thing to do as it might affect their performance. Lack of sleep could prove counter-productive for them. All their preparation will come to nought if they dont put in the minimum hours of sleep, PN Arora, director, Yashoda Hospital, said.

Doctors also advised against taking naps and sleep for a minimum eight hours.

A sound sleep should not be anything less than 6-8 hours. I would caution students against taking naps for 2-3 hours. Many tend to do that during exams as they believe that 2-3 hours of sleep is enough to de-stress their minds and bodies. Unless the body gets 1/3rd of the 24 hours cycle, it will not have the capacity to give its best, Agarwal said.
Something is rotten in the township of Kaushambi and a committee of officials from the Central Pollution Control Board, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, UP Pollution Control Board and the Ghaziabad municipal corporation have found not one but several shortcomings at the Kaushambi bus depot and Anand Vihar ISBT that majorly contribute to air and noise pollution.

A physical survey of the area was conducted by the officials on February 9 on the directions of the National Green Tribunal. The Kaushambi Apartment Residents Welfare Association (KARWA) had approached the tribunal over the issue of rising pollution in the area. The survey report was filed before the NGT on Friday.

Kaushambi, a residential locality, is hemmed in by two interstate bus depots  ISBT Anand Vihar and IBST Kaushambi  the Ghazipur landfill site and Sahibabad industrial area. The township also gets heavy traffic throughout the day and night. The high levels of air and noise pollution have adversely affected the lives of nearly 10,000 residents of Kaushambi.

In its report, the committee said that parts of Kaushambi bus depot are still unpaved and ill-maintained, resulting in the dust flying, significantly contributing to air pollution.

Although the construction activity to develop the bus station is underway, movement of buses through unpaved areas was causing dust to fly and water has to be sprinkled to settle the dust.

The report also observes that buses and autos outside the Kaushambi bus depot moved in a haphazard manner, while trying to board passengers, thereby hampering the smooth traffic flow.

Loose soil, which was excavated for laying a sewerage system near the new Wave Cinema, covered the entire road. Floating waste, from nearby Bhovapur village, was also found in the drain.

The committee also found deep potholes on the main carriageways and municipal solid waste dumped at Anand Vihar ISBT.

Also read: Pollution, civic issues irk Kaushambi residents

Anand Vihar interstate bus terminal was found in an unorganised condition with respect to the solid waste management as well as the carriageway condition was in very bad shape (sic), the report said.

According to the online ambient air quality data, monitored from February 16 to February 23, high levels of fine particulate matter (PM)2.5 and PM10 were recorded at Anand Vihar.

The PM2.5 levels were recorded up to two times the standard limit of 60 micro grams per cubic metre (g/m) while PM10 levels were found six times higher than the standard limit of 100g/m.

High levels of PM10 were also recorded near community centre near EDM mall and Satpur-Nanda Towers in Kaushambi.

Also read: Ghaziabad: Pollution watchdog checks air quality in Kaushambi

On the matter of noise pollution, the report said, Noise pollution in the area is mainly created by private bus operators near the bus stand or outside bus terminus at Kaushambi ISBT / Anand Vihar ISBT. There are multiple roads encircling the residential area.

The day and night noise levels exceeded the limit of 60 decibels at Anand Vihar, the community centre near EDM Mall and Satpura-Nanda Towers.

VK Mittal, president, KARWA, We accept the report but we disagree with several points. The NGT had also ordered the constitution of a committee, headed by Ghaziabad district magistrate, to oversee the implementation of the tribunals direction. We have never been invited to committee meetings though we are a member, said .

KARWA had moved a petition regarding the pollution on August 17, 2015, which the NGT disposed of with directions on May 18, 2016. However, the pending issues were not taken up by Ghaziabad agencies and KARWA filed a contempt petition on July 20, 2016.

In its February 9 directions, during the contempt petition hearing, the tribunal sought a report from the committee on whether its directions were complied with; the extent of performance with reference to ground realities at the site; and, submission of a short term and long term action plan to prevent pollution.

The tribunal also directed that data of ambient air quality and noise pollution shall be taken and its analysis report be placed before it. The committee was also directed to observe the traffic scenario in the area.

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If there is one claim being made by the BJP, that nothing like this has happened since Indias independence, which rings true, it is the BJPs success in introducing a discourse of binaries in the way nation or nationalism ought to be understood.

What do I mean by this discourse of binaries? The central point of this discourse is not the way nationalism is constructed, but the manner in which a rhetoric of anti-nationalism is articulated, and then morphed into an ideal nationhood. Significantly, this binary perspective of nationalism/anti-nationalism was put into the public arena in the post-9 February 2016 confrontation in JNU, and the issue of sedition, which was subsequently crafted raised it to an altogether different level. The programmatic aspect of this construction is that dissent which questions one particular kind of nationalism is considered dangerous, and is immediately labelled seditious or anti-national. Discussions on Kashmir, tribal rights, human rights violations, and radical movements of social and political emancipation, or of regional self-determination, are all labelled anti-nationalist. Gradually, the scope of anti-nationalism has been made to increase through pincer like attacks on dissent, speech, and freedom of expression in general, among other things.

Such a view of anti-nationalism denies dialogue, not in a broad liberal sense of occupying a middle position among contending views, but as a fractious embroilment of opposing political and ideological dispositions, which is necessary to expand and broaden the democratic space in a free-thinking environment. The worst victim, in my view, of this kind of constriction is old-style liberalism. What we are seeing in India increasingly is a vicious attack on that. Old-style liberalism, earlier articulated as an idea unattached to narrow sectarianism or ideology, has now been relegated into a weak, supine, and ineffective adherence to a Congress-type view of the nation. A combination of conservative and right-wing ideologies is positing this view as anachronistic, and subverting it as unsuited for India today because of its adherence to the idea of the nation as a pluralistic, inclusive, and secular entity. The counter-point to this old style liberalism is the neo liberalism of the conservative-right-wing combination, now being vociferously aired in academic and non-academic circles.

There are essentially two variants of this neo-liberal position. The more conservative one is that of equivocation. All views ought to be heard, or ought to be heard, without necessarily taking sides, almost as if a non-partisan hearing of randomly expressed ideologies is enough for sustaining the democratic process. However, this equivocation has inherent boundaries. Certain views are anathema, for they hurt the new nation building project. From this, follows an almost inevitable ideological attack on institutions seen as bastions of old-style left-liberalism, for instance the JNU. The recent incident in Ramjas college where a student of JNU was not allowed to speak on tribal protests because of his radical views, following which the random violence of the ABVP, an organisation closely affiliated to the BJP was post-facto justified by the fact that a yoga expert closely affiliated to the ruling party was earlier not allowed to speak in JNU. The argument thus being made is that random intolerance begets a counter random intolerance, and therefore, equivocation is the best defence of a true liberal structure.

A university is an open-ended entity, where multiple voices, ideologies, arguments must find space to be heard, but not necessarily accepted by everyone. People can choose to ignore, protest, and question as they choose. They can also express strong reservations against speakers, but must not, coercively keep people out. However, despite these caveats, I believe that this idea of equivocation plays into the end-game of conservative and right-wing ideologies. Allowing space to express views does not justify bland equidistance from all views, for ideas and their entanglements are essentially ideologically charged and political acts.

On the surface the mask may be liberal, but the face behind the mask is of a closet right-winger, or an out in the open conservative. Further the idea of equivocation also implies an acceptance that all political views, and political activity are of equal value. This is destructive valorisation, as the politics of social emancipation and the politics social exclusion of the hard-right are fundamentally at variance from each other. Radical student politics, as it is vocalised in many Indian universities, particularly in JNU, calls for a direct opposition to the deeply entrenched caste/class interests which are protected and nurtured by the ruling dispensations.

On the other hand, neo-liberalism and big corporation-political nexus foregrounds such right-wing and conservative politics. This is a politics which must stifle dissent, or at best make it of residual significance, and equivocation, in the avatar of a new `liberal language is precisely designed to marginalise radical dissent. In a nutshell, this is the more genteel face of the shift towards conservatism in India by many, but particularly by some who had in the years prior to 2014 been quite happy adherents to an old-style Congress-type liberalism.

But the liberalism of the new conservative has another face. This is the face, which again wears a mask of equivocation, but the dead giveaway here is the argument it advances. First, the onus of an unacceptable, and disruptive, form of praxis is laid at the doorstep of all forms of left-wing student politics. They are indiscriminately blamed for undermining civil forms of political life, the responsibility of whose defence is then shifted to the right-wing student. All forms of right-wing violence (including rape threats to left-wing women activists) are elided, and made into an unwilling reaction to the unnecessary and unwarranted intrusion of the left-wing. The right-wing spectrum of the political system is therefore absolved of coercive agency and culpability, and instead, is imbued with the grace of innocence and the earnestness of defending the democratic space. Such elision is then justified in the name of equivocation or being objective.

The second important component of this new liberalism is a call to disconnect education from politics. De-politicising students, it is argued is a way of protecting the nation from the poison of radicalism. Some spurious examples are then randomly thrown in to show how some technical institutions, or one or two universities where students unions are banned have become exemplars of academic life. The single biggest problem with this line is JNU, which despite all its radical politics has been recently recognised as the best university in India, while none of the so-called excellent technological institutions have ever figured within the first one hundred of global rankings. One should recall the immense international groundswell of support which poured in from the topmost academics and institutions, and has been pouring in for JNU after 9 February 2016, precisely stressing the academic excellence of this university, as well as the uniqueness of its radical politics.

The call to de-politicise students is a fig leaf to legitimise an ultra-right wing ideology under the mask of equivocality. De-politicisation does not mean the absence of politics. It is another means of covertly creating the space for the right-wing to take over, without opposition, the space to be vacated by left and left of centre political formations. Once this happens universities will die; so, will the nation.

Rajat Datta is a professor with the Centre of Historical Studies, Centre for Historical Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University

The views expressed are personal
It has been 10 years ever since 45 year old Sampuran Singh, a farmer based in Katana village in Ludhiana has been involved in a bitter and prolonged legal battle with the Northern Railways over compensation awarded to him for land acquisition. With the court coming down heavily on Northern Railways yesterday for not paying him the enhanced compensation amount to the farmer and ordering attachment of the Swarna Shatabdi, the aggrieved farmer, who had lost all hope, is now optimistic that he will finally get the amount.

Yesterday, Sampuran Singh became the temporary owner of the premier train of Northern Railways- the Swaran Shatabdi- for precisely five minutes as it had arrived at the Ludhiana Railway Station courtesy the court order to attach the train.

Must read | Express justice: When a Ludhiana farmer became owner of Swarna Shatabdi train

The court came down heavily on the Northern Railways for failing to abide by its orders passed in January 2015 directing them to pay Rs 1.05 crores to the agriculturist towards land acquisition. Besides the evening Shatabdi, the court also ordered attachment of office room of overall incharge/station master of the Ludhiana railway station. The Swarna Sharabdi Express was later released on superdari implying that it now the property of the court.

After attending umpteen court hearings over the last ten years, it finally seems that my efforts have borne fruit as the court pronounced to attach the Swarna Shatabdi. However, all I want now is my compensation amount so that I can get rid of the having to attend court hearings, he said.

The land measuring 5.5 bighas was acquired by the Railways in 2007 for laying the Ludhiana Chandigarh Railway line. Sampuran used to cultivate wheat on that land.

My land was taken away from me and they paid me just 42 lakhs in all. On the other hand, the same amount of land in the neighbouring village of Barwala was acquired at a higher price. The Railways had no explanation for this, he said.

The place where the Railway line has been constructed is now elevated and while my land has been divided into two, one part of the land is totally inaccessible, he said.

The matter

As per the execution petition filed by Sampuran Singh, the Northern Railways failed to pay compensation amount of Rs 1.05 crores to him towards land acquired for laying of Ludhiana Chandigarh Railway Line in 2007. The compensation amount was enhanced by court from Rs 25 lakhs to Rs 50 lakhs per acre but the railways failed to pay the amount.

Out of the total 1.47 crores that was due, the Railways had paid 42 lakhs but the remaining Rs 1.05 crores is still remaining. While the claim petition was filed in 2012, the Court had ordered the railways to pay the compensation amount to the petitioner in January 2015. As the amount was not paid, an execution petition was filed.
Filmmaker SS Rajamouli on Thursday said the unfortunate leak of the trailer of his upcoming magnum opus Baahubali 2: The Conclusion happened due to a bug in Facebook.

Talking to the media here at the trailer launch on Thursday, Rajamouli said the trailer leak happened due to a bug in Facebook. He did not elaborate on it any further.

Piracy is different, and a leak is totally different. We are still trying to find out how the trailer leak happened. It is very irritating for the entire team but we cant blame anyone without knowing everything about the leak, Rajamouli said.

The trailer was supposed to be launched at 5 pm on Thursday. However, following a leak of the Tamil version of the trailer, the makers were forced to release the trailer of all the versions online.

Talking about the second part of the franchise, he said: Unlike the first part, which was low on emotions and high on grandeur, the second part will have both factors in equal proportion.

Rajamouli said he was tense while working on the trailer, but the output is satisfactory.

When I saw the trailer with Keeravanis background score, the output was beyond my expectations, he said.

The film starring Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia, Ramya Krishnan and Sathyaraj is due for release on April 28.

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HT has learned from reliable sources that the makers of Rajinikanths 2.o are planning to conduct a grand event in Chennai sometime in June to launch the highly-anticipated album of the film scored by Oscar award-winning composer AR Rahman.

Veteran editor Anthony has already started working on the films rough edit pattern. With only one song and some loose assemblage of shots left to be canned, the team hopes to wrap up the entire shooting before early April and focus on full-fledged post-production activities, including the extensive work on VFX.

The movie was recently in the headlines after Lyca Productions struck an unprecedented satellite deal with Zee Television Network at a whopping sum of Rs 110 crores, thereby bringing an approximate 25% return on the Rs 450-crore production, which is tipped to be the Indias most expensive project.

The film, a sequel to the blockbuster Enthiran, is again helmed by Shankar and stars Rajinikanth and Amy Jackson as leads. Akshay Kumar makes his Tamil debut as Dr Richard, an ornithologist and will be pitted against Rajinikanth in the movie, which has music composed by AR Rahman.

The movie is slated to hit screens in the 3D format in Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi worldwide on October 18 for the festival of lights.

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Comedienne Jamie Lever, who has made a mark for herself in the industry, admits that the audience has accepted her with a lot of warmth because of her father Johnny Levers stature and goodwill.

The credit goes to my father and the efforts that he has put in to entertain people. When an actor does comedy, there is an instant connect and audiences think hes one of them. My dad has never been Johnny sir but Johnny bhai. So that friendly relation with the fans is always there. Thus, people also took me as their daughter, because main johhny bhai ki beti hun, (Im Johnny Bhais daughter), says Jamie, who will be seen hosting the reality show Sabse Bade Kalakar.

However, Jamie, who also shared screen space with actor comedian Kapil Sharma in his debut film Kis Kisko Pyaar Karun, says that she had to continuously prove herself ever since she began her career. People welcomed and accepted me, but I had to prove myself.It wasnt easy for me, and I feel it is only fair for me to do that. Im happy that I got the opportunity to do it, she says.

On being asked what does she enjoy more  being part of a reality show or do stand up comedy  Jamie shares, I started off doing stand-up comedy. Performing for live audience has always been my thing. The first big show I did was comedy circus, which was also in front of live audience and thats something Ive always enjoyed. If I get an opportunity to do a televised show, I would give a shot. But for a comedian, to stand in front of an audience and perform is something that comes naturally.

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Turns out, Matthew Perry has had an awkward playground moment with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the 47-year-old Friends star revealed about a time when young Trudeau ended up on the losing side of a fight, E! Online reported.

I have a story about him that Im not proud of... My friend Chris Murray who was also in the fifth grade in Canada reminded me we actually beat up Justin Trudeau, the sitcom star began, adding that the confrontation was sparked by pure jealousy.

I think he was excelling in a sport. He was the only kid in school that we could beat up, Perry said of the politician.

Perry, who is not proud of his 10-year-old self, further said, Im not bragging about this. Its terrible. I was a stupid kid I didnt want to beat him up.

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The lights go off, the projector whirls and for the first time in years Afghan families find themselves sharing popcorn and soda as Hollywood and Bollywood stars romp across the silver screen.

A family-friendly cinema has opened in Kabul, creating a rare venue in Afghanistans war-torn capital where women, usually confined to the home, can spend time in public with their husbands and children.

Kabuls movie halls are popular with raucous male audiences who clap and whistle at screens wreathed in clouds of hashish and cigarette smoke.

As Zahra Sozan, a 25-year-old mother-of-one, said it is not traditional for women or children to go to the movies.

But when the Galaxy was built in 2016 it became the first cinema in Kabul to ban single men for certain hours when families are inside, sheltering women and children from harassment, smoke and unsuitable behaviour.

Its my first ever experience visiting a cinema in Kabul, and the experience has been great, said Sozan, smiling despite having just emerged from watching the 2016 Hollywood supernatural thriller Lights Out.

When the families are inside the hall nobody else is allowed to get inside, the families feel secure, said Abubakar Gharzai, one of the Galaxys owners.

Sixteen years ago this simple pleasure would have been impossible, with the cinema halls destroyed by civil war and the Taliban regime forbidding nights at the movies.

The queue at the Galaxy is an echo of a time before the Talibans dark era, when Afghan men, women and children openly attended films, theatre and concerts.

A family-friendly cinema, Galazy Family Cinema, has opened in Kabul, creating a rare venue in Afghanistan's war-torn capital. (AFP)

Young couples wait for tickets, enjoying the novelty and boldness of being in public together -- though many are still cautious, shying away from being interviewed.

Its higher prices -- 300 Afghanis ($6, Rs 393.27) for a ticket, six times the cost of other cinemas in Kabul -- also puts it beyond the reach of many in the capital, where unemployment is rampant, adding to the sense of security for those who can afford it.

There arent many places for women in Afghanistan to hang out, they have a tough life, and this is a secure place, Sozans husband Hamed said.

Defying tradition

Samira Sozan, visiting the Galaxy with her brother, agreed.

We have a bowling club, recreational park, and Kabul zoo, the 22-year-old embassy worker said, ticking off the public places suitable for women in the capital.

Even at home women are usually too busy washing and cooking to enjoy time with husbands and children, she said.

Then, her brother heard about the Galaxy. We will come again and again, she said.

The queue at the Galaxy is an echo of a time before the Talibans dark era, when Afghan men, women and children openly attended films, theatre and concerts. (AFP)

It is not tradition to visit the cinema, but we do not care what people say. It is one of the few places for us to spend time with our families... We cannot ask for a better place to come.

Her happiness sums up why Gharzai chose to run his cinema the way he has.

We want to show the world the positive side of Afghanistan, he told AFP. That Afghanistan is not about bombs and attacks, but there is also something which makes our people happy.

The biggest threat to the cinema, he said, is piracy and online streaming.

Afghan audiences prefer US and Indian movies to those produced by a homegrown film industry stunted by nearly four decades of war.

However, by the time the Galaxy screens recent high-definition offerings such as Dangal, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Sultan, many would-be spectators have already watched them online.

Horror films, Gharzai said, are popular. We could not air horror movies because of the children, but the demand was very high, so now we show them.

Afghanistan is still at war with a resurgent Taliban, and security fears at the Galaxy, located inside a Kabul shopping centre guarded by armed police, extend beyond protection from wolf whistles and shame.

Islamist militants have long villified Hollywood and Bollywood as vulgar and sinful, although no cinemas have been attacked in Kabul in recent years.

There are threats, admits Gharzai. But we rely on the Almighty.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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Two Pakistani paramilitary personnel and six militants were killed when insurgents carried out a cross-border attack from Afghanistan on a security post in the Khyber tribal region on Friday.

The militants were killed in the exchange of fire that erupted after the attack early on Friday, officials of the Frontier Constabulary said.

Terrorists from across the border attempted a physical attack on Frontier Constabulary post in Khyber Agency. Pakistani troops effectively responded. Six terrorists (were) killed. In exchange of fire, two Frontier Constabulary soldiers also killed, the militarys media wing said in a brief statement.

According to security officials, the Speena Sooka post in Khyber Agency, which is manned by the paramilitary personnel, was attacked from the Afghan side.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack. It claimed 110 of its fighters took part in the attack.

In a separate incident, a soldier and two suicide bombers were killed when security forces foiled an attack on security forces training centre at Charsadda district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Another soldier was injured.

Fridays skirmish on the Durand Line was the latest in a series of cross-border attacks on Pakistani troops. Earlier this month, five Pakistani soldiers were killed in cross-border attacks on several security posts.

Torkham, the main trade route with Afghanistan, has been closed for all traffic since a suicide attack on a Sufi shrine in southern Sindh province that Pakistani officials believe was planned on Afghan soil.
More than 30 Somali refugees including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat in the Red Sea off the coast of war-torn Yemen, officials said Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida but managed to dock in the citys port, an official there said.

The bodies of 33 refugees were taken to hospitals where 35 wounded were also admitted, a hospital official said.

The International Organization for Migration said 80 survivors were rescued and taken to hospital, including 24 in extremely critical condition.

Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths, said spokesman Joel Millman.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the citys prison.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition, which has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemens Red Sea coast from Huthi forces.

It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was heading for Sudan.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought Yemen to the brink of famine, the country continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen are hosting Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

Civilians bear the brunt

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are leaving the country from further north than previously.

It called on all sides in Yemens war to protect civilians.

UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen, it said.

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemens western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UNs humanitarian chief Stephen OBrien has called Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.
Anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory early on Friday following a series of Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the Israeli military said.

The military said its warplanes struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but it said the safety of Israeli civilians and the safety of the Israeli aircraft were not compromised.

The army said the incident was the cause of sirens that wailed in Jewish settlement communities in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank. The military would not immediately comment on media reports that explosions were heard in the area.

The Jordan Valley part of the West Bank borders Jordan. Israel captured it along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians demand the areas for a future state.

Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes on advanced weapons systems in Syria including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah positions but it rarely confirms them. The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is rare.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering only sporadic incidents of spillover fire over the frontier that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors of the Assad regime. Israel has responded to these cases lightly, with limited reprisals on Syrian positions in response to the errant fire.
China on Friday evaded a direct response to its reported involvement in Pakistans decision to declare the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region, bordering Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), as the countrys fifth province.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project in President Xi Jinpings Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to achieve connectivity spanning continents, passes through Gilgit-Baltistan.

Asked to respond to reports that Beijings concerns played a hand in Islamabads decision to upgrade the status of the region because of the CPEC, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying didnt give a direct response.

The essence of the question is Kashmir (dispute), she said, adding the dispute was leftover from history.

Repeating Chinas official stand on the dispute, she said: It should be resolved between the two sides through dialogue and consultation. The CPEC will not affect Chinas position on the relevant issue.

Estimates have put the CPECs value at more than $46 billion.

India has reacted strongly to the move on Gilgit-Baltistan, saying it will not be able to hide the illegality of Pakistans occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir.

Huas statement was a repeat of Chinas official stand on the issue, without responding to new developments taking place in the region.

In 2016, the foreign ministry had responded to a question on Kashmir by saying: The ownership of the Kashmir region is an issue between India and Pakistan left over from history and should resolved through dialogues and consultations between the two sides. Relevant cooperation between China and Pakistan in the region aims to promote local economic and social development. It does not target any third party nor affect the positions held by different parties on the relevant dispute.

Earlier this week, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the move on Gilgit-Baltistan would not be able to hide the illegality of Pakistans occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which it must vacate.

The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part, has been an integral part and will be an integral part of India. No attempt or unilateral attempt or step to change that would have any legal basis, whatsoever, and it will be entirely unacceptable, he said.

Referring to the move to make the region a province, Sajjadul Haq, spokesperson for Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister Hafiz Hafeez ur Rehman, told AFP in Islamabad: A high level committee formed by the prime minister is working on the issue, you will hear good news soon.
Pakistan has said a team from Facebook will arrive in the country to address Islamabads reservations over what it calls blasphemous and objectionable material being distributed on the social media platform.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry said Facebooks administration had responded positively to a request from the government and on Thursday agreed to send a delegation to resolve Pakistans reservations.

The spokesperson said Facebooks management also conveyed to the authorities that it was aware of Pakistans reservations and wanted to settle the issue through mutual consultation and dialogue.

In a separate development, the regulator of the telecom sector  Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA)  has appointed a focal person to be in constant contact with Facebooks administration.

Last week, the Parliament passed a resolution against blasphemous content shared on Facebook.

On Wednesday, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters the government is determined to use every option to remove blasphemous material from Facebook and other social media sites.

He was hopeful Facebooks management would respect the religious sentiments of 200 million people of Pakistan and millions of other users, and extend its complete cooperation.

Khan said he had also directed investigation agencies to identify elements involved in allegedly spreading blasphemous material on social media.

A person found guilty under Pakistans controversial blasphemy laws can be sentenced to death. The laws also have stringent punishments for anyone convicted of spreading blasphemous materials. Rights activists say the laws have been misused to settle personal scores or to persecute members of minority communities.
A disturbed teenager with guns and grenades opened fire in a school in southern France on Thursday, wounding four people, officials said, rattling nerves in a country scarred by jihadi attacks.

Investigators said the boy, a student at the Alexis de Tocqueville high school in the hillside town of Grasse, was carrying a small arsenal of weapons as well as a homemade explosive device in a bag.

They said he is obsessed with guns and had relationship problems, and the incident was not apparently terror-related. The name of the suspect, a minor, has not been disclosed.

Education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said heroic actions by the schools head teacher appeared to have helped prevent greater bloodshed.

Police inside the Tocqueville high school after a shooting took place in Grasse, southern France. (Reuters)

The head teacher rushed towards the pupil as he pulled out his guns to try to reason with him, Vallaud-Belkacem said, adding that the educator was injured in the process. We avoided the worst, she said.

Three pupils and the head teacher suffered minor gunshot injuries, and another 10 students were treated for shock or injuries sustained during a stampede, according to an updated toll. One person remained in hospital late Thursday.

The assailants age was initially given by investigators as 17, but they later amended it to 16.

Local prosecutor Fabienne Atzori ruled out a terror motive and said the shooting appeared to have been motivated by the gunmans bad relationships with classmates.

Schoolchildren, wrapped in blankets, wait nearby their high school in Grasse, southern France, after a 16-year-old student opened fire. (AP Photo)

Fascinated by guns

The teenager was described by Vallaud-Belkacem as unstable and fascinated by guns and was carrying a rifle, two handguns and grenades -- which may have been dummy devices -- when he was detained by police shortly after the lunchtime attack.

Investigators also found a homemade explosive device in his rucksack, which was made safe on the spot.

He used a pump-action firearm, but not the other weapons, and offered no resistance to his arrest, the prosecutor said.

The suspect had shared pictures and videos on social media of infamous US school shootings, including the 1999 Columbine massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two teens killed 13 people before committing suicide.

France is still in a state of emergency after a series of terror attacks, including the November 2015 massacre in Paris and a truck attack in Nice, just 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Grasse, in July last year.

Firefighters help a person to walk toward a vehicle near the Tocqueville high school in the southern French town of Grasse. (AFP Photo)

Many feared the worst when news first filtered through of the violence, with elite police response teams immediately dispatched to the scene.

The shooting comes around 40 days ahead of the first round of Frances two-stage presidential election, in which security is one of the main issues on voters minds.

We ran for it

Witnesses described scenes of panic as pupils fled the shooting or looked for places to hide.

Fifteen-year-old Mokhtaria told AFP she was having a cigarette in the school garage when she heard shots ring out.

We saw people coming down shouting: Theres a nutter firing at people. We ran for it, she said.

Sonia, 42, the mother of a 16-year-old girl called Ines, said she had received a text message from her daughter at 12:30 pm (1130 GMT) that said, We are going to die, someone has a gun, I love you, Mum. Goodbye!

All schools in Grasse were locked down after the shooting and police threw a cordon around the building in the town which is home to several perfume factories.

Security is at its highest level in France following the spate of jihadist attacks since January 2015 that have claimed hundreds of lives.

More than 3,000 reservists were called up to help keep watch outside the countrys 64,000 primary and secondary schools when pupils returned from their summer holidays in September.

US-style school shootings are almost unheard-of in France, a country with low levels of gun violence.

The last major attack at a school was in 2012, when an Islamic extremist from Toulouse, Mohamed Merah, shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the city before being killed by police.

In March 1984, a 15-year-old student shot and killed a teacher in the southwestern town of Castres before turning the gun on himself.
The Madhesi Morchas decision this week to sever ties with the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda was evidence yet again of how the ferment in Nepals southern plains continues to impact national politics.

The Morcha, an alliance of seven parties, acted on March 15 after the government did not address its demands for amending the Constitution and putting off polls to local bodies within a seven-day deadline. The Morchas decision was expected but it raises key questions about its impact on polls to local government bodies scheduled for May 14 and the future course of Nepals polity.

The decade-long tumult in Madhes, which accounts for more than 51% of Nepals population living in 17% of the countrys territory, has resulted in the loss of around 200 lives.

A flare-up in Gaur town, where 25 people died in March 2007, was the turning point for the Madhesi movement that forced Kathmandu to realise the gravity of the issue.

But experts contend little has changed after a decade. There is a deep sense of alienation in Madhes, prominent activist and advocate Dipendra Jha told Hindustan Times.

The youth in Madhes are desperate and their hope and ownership towards the nation is running down, said Jha, who is involved in back-channel negotiations with the government.

If the state is ready to accommodate the Madhesis by ensuring their participation in civil services, police, army and other state entities, it will water down the anger. Otherwise, it will be difficult to handle the situation before it is too late.

Upendra Yadav, chairman of the Samajbadi Forum Nepal who was at the forefront during the first uprising in 2007, said: The current achievements like federalism, identity and inclusiveness were established in national politics by the Madhes movement but we are still excluded from enjoying such rights.

Madhes in focus The region, spread over the southern plains (Terai) of Nepal, has occupied a vital place in the countrys politics DEMOGRAPHY

12 mn The estimated population of Madhes, including many ethnic groups such as Tharus and Rajbanshis LANGUAGES Hindi, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithali and Tharu PRESENCE IN PARLIAMENT: Madhesi parties have 42 lawmakers in the 596-member House ECONOMY: Called Nepals food basket, economy based on agriculture. As locals migrated to Middle East and Malaysia, remittances became vital. Madhes also has major industrial areas where many work in factories and manufacturing hubs THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN MADHES

Ahead of the formation of the government led by PM Prachanda, the Madhesi Morcha, Nepali Congress and CPN (Maoist-Centre) signed an agreement last August that was aimed at amending the constitution and the holding of three-tier elections to local bodies, provincial governments, and central government

After Prachanda failed to garner the two-third votes in Parliament needed to amend the Constitution, the Madhesi Morcha stopped backing his government on March 15

The Madhesi Morcha is expected to announce fresh protests though Prachandas government may not fall because the premier has gained the support of other parties to shore up his position. The region, spread over the southern plains (Terai) of Nepal, has occupied a vital place in the countrys politicsThe estimated population of Madhes, including many ethnic groups such as Tharus and RajbanshisHindi, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithali and TharuMadhesi parties have 42 lawmakers in the 596-member HouseCalled Nepals food basket, economy based on agriculture. As locals migrated to Middle East and Malaysia, remittances became vital. Madhes also has major industrial areas where many work in factories and manufacturing hubs

So we have been seeing frequent fragmentations and unrest in the Terai since then, Yadav said.

After the Gaur incident in 2007, Nepal held its first Constituent Assembly elections the following year and Madhesi parties emerged as the fourth largest political force. Several top leaders of mainstream parties such as the Nepali Congress, CPN-Maoist and CPN-UML quit and formed regional parties in Madhes.

Madhes waited for four years for its grievances to be addressed through the Constituent Assembly but the body was dissolved in 2012 without delivering a new constitution.

Nepal held the second election to the Constituent Assembly in 2013 and, once again, the Madhesis silently looked to major parties to accommodate their grievances as Madhes-based parties and leaders failed to get elected to the assembly.

But major parties, despite calls from India and other international stakeholders, did not address these grievances, and this resulted in the blockade of the border with India from September 2015. The five-month-long protest left 59 people dead but many Madhesis now feel such sacrifices were in vain.

After the killing of eight police officers in the western Tikapur city in August 2015 by thousands of members of the marginalised Tharu community, experts had warned that Madhes too was polarised and violence could spread if the grievances were not heard.

But Kathmandu did not heed the message from Tikapur and kept on sidelining Madhes.

Activists take part in a rally to support ethnic Madhesis and condemning killing protesters in Rajbiraj, during a demonstration in Kathmandu on March 9, 2017. (REUTERS)

We are looking for space in key state organs by making the Constitution more Madhes-friendly and friendly to ethnic and linguistic minorities. So, our foremost condition is to amend the Constitution, Yadav said.

While moderate forces such as the Madhesi Morcha have pushed demands such as the provision of citizenship and redrawing of federal boundaries, more radical elements such as CK Raut, a US-returned scientist now in police custody, have gained widespread support with calls of Swaraj (self-rule) for Madhes.

Raut was detained for allegedly making anti-national statements at some mass gatherings in the Terai region.

Experts fear Kathmandus failure to engage with moderate forces will only allow radical elements to take centre stage in the southern plains. The moderate forces also face opposition from Kathmandus elite, such as former premier KP Sharma Oli, who contend the Madhesi groups are backing an Indian agenda.

Rajesh Ahiraj, the first person to pursue a PhD on Madhesi politics, feels ethnic politics alone wont work in the region. Sooner or later, ethnic politics will no more work in Madhes and we are seriously lacking competent leadership in Madhes, he said.

Prachandas coalition was installed after an agreement with Madhesi parties on accommodating their demands. But Madhesi leaders believe the government is now shifting the goal posts for amending the Constitution.

Madhesi leaders say Parachandas recent move to induct Rastriya Prajatantra Party leader Kamal Thapa, who is opposed to amending the statute, as deputy prime minister clearly shows the government is not taking the crisis in Madhes seriously.

Had our agenda been accommodated, the country would have taken a peaceful path towards prosperity. If the state will try to impose elections (to local bodies on May 14) forcefully, we will oppose it and this will further complicate the issue. We will be forced to take another stage of stern action, said Yadav.

All mainstream parties and lawmakers from Madhes have said in one voice that they will not allow the holding of the elections unless it is preceded by the constitution amendment process.

The ball is in Kathmandus court and its decision on accommodating the Madhes will determine the future course of Nepali politics, including the holding of elections, implementing the new Constitution, restoring stability and making Nepal a peaceful and stable South Asian nation.
A Christian pastor has found one of the worlds largest uncut diamonds - weighing 706 carats -- in Sierra Leones eastern Kono region.

The stone, a photograph of which was posted on the presidents official website, is being stored in the countrys central bank, government sources said.

A local chief from Kono handed the stone to President Ernest Bai Koroma on behalf of Emmanuel Momoh who made the discovery. The government plans to auction it.

The presidency said in a statement on Thursday that Koroma thanked the chief who acted as an intermediary for not smuggling it out of the country.

In this photo taken from video footage, Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma hands a diamond during a meeting with delegates of Kono district, where the gem was found, at the presidential office in Freetown, Sierra Leone. (AP)

Diamonds fuelled a decade-long civil war that ended in 2002 in which 50,000 people were killed. Rebels forced civilians in the east to mine the stones and bought weapons with the proceeds, leading to the term blood diamonds.

He (Koroma) underscored the importance of selling such a diamond here as it will clearly give the owners what is due them and benefit the country as a whole, the statement said.

The stone is yet to be valued but could be worth millions of dollars. Sierra Leones gross national income per capita stood at $620 in 2015, according to World Bank data.

The diamond, which is yet to be valued, could be worth millions of dollars. (Reuters Photo)

The United Nations lifted a ban on diamond exports from Sierra Leone in 2003. The International Monetary Fund expects the country to export $113 million worth of diamonds this year though the sector remains plagued by smuggling.

Despite its size, this weeks discovery is considerably smaller than the Cullinan diamond, which was found in South Africa in 1905. That 3,106-carat stone was cut into several polished gems and the two largest pieces are part of Britains crown jewels.

A 1,111-carat diamond was unearthed in a Botswana mine in 2015.
Britains communications spy agency GCHQ has issued a rare public denial of utterly ridiculous claims it spied on Donald Trump, acknowledging that the vehement tone of its statement was unusual.

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wiretapping against the then-president elect are nonsense, a GCHQ spokesperson said.

They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, the spokesperson said in a statement late on Thursday.

GCHQs press office told AFP on Friday that it was not unusual for the agency to make public comment but acknowledged that perhaps the tone of it was unusual.

The agency does not normally comment on intelligence matters, though it has stepped up its public relations in recent months, including for recruitment drives and warnings on cyber security.

Britain and the US -- along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand -- are part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance forged from the embers of World War II.

Trump accused former president Barack Obama on March 4 of a Nixon/Watergate-like wiretapping plot that would almost certainly break US law.

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

President Trumps spokesman Sean Spicer repeated the allegations on Thursday, quoting from the Fox News report in which Napolitano spoke.

Trump had accused former president Barack Obama on March 4 of a Nixon/Watergate-like plot that would almost certainly break US law.

In the subsequent Fox report, Napolitano claimed that three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command to order the surveillance.

He didnt use the NSA, he didnt use the CIA, he didnt use the FBI, and he didnt use the Department of Justice, Napolitano said, adding that Obama used the GCHQ.

Members of Congress from both parties who are investigating the claims have found no evidence to support them.

Tim Farron, leader of Britains Liberal Democrats, an opposition party, called Spicers repetition of the claims made by Napolitano shameful.

Trump is compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment, he said, adding: This harms our and US security.
India on Friday pushed for including sustained support for terrorism and radical extremism as one of the grounds for disqualification of a member state from the Commonwealth.

There are currently eight grounds on which the Commonwealth can take action against a member country, including violation of democratic values and good governance.

At the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meet in London, India stressed that this must be expanded to nine, to include sustained support for terrorism and radical extremism, an official source said.

India was also successful in keeping action against Bangladesh off the agenda against Pakistans concerted efforts at the CMAG meeting, where India is being represented by minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar.

In a way, this was a big victory. There was an attempt to bring Bangladesh on to the agenda (for alleged human rights violations) by our friends on the west (Pakistan), but we managed to keep it from being raised, the source said.

India will also play a key role with the Maldives, which had left the Commonwealth last year after CMAG had put it on notice for undermining democratic institutions.

It was agreed at Fridays meeting that regional countries should continue to engage with the island nation to try and bring it back into the fold of the Commonwealth.

Pakistan ruled itself out from playing a role until the Maldives government improves its conduct.

However, the Indian side was in agreement with other member countries to play the role of interlocutor and continue the process of dialogue in the region.

The central message from the Indian side was of a more people-centric approach within the Commonwealth, with a focus on development and poverty elimination.

The Commonwealth should not just be an exercise in meetings between governments. It must become more people-centric, Akbar told PTI.

The CMAG is held for ministers from the 52 Commonwealth countries to raise important issues and action points for the benefit of the organisations membership.

Asked if India had specific issues it wanted to raise, the minister said, We have no hostility towards any one. We believe that the Commonwealth is a values-based organisation and should really keep on doing what its name suggests.

It should increase the things that it has in common, rather than reduce, and certainly it should add something to the wealth of this group and find ways of cooperation and creating meaning for the people who live in the Commonwealth, he said.
Syrias army said on Friday it shot down an Israeli plane that had been carrying out pre-dawn raids on a military target near Palmyra, the famed desert city it recently recaptured from jihadists.

Four Israeli planes penetrated our air space at 2:40 am via Lebanese territory and hit a military target on the way to Palmyra, the army said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

Our air defence engaged them and shot down one warplane over occupied territory, hit another one and forced the rest to flee, it added.

The incident is the most serious between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.

The Israeli air force had earlier said it carried out several strikes on Syria overnight and that Syria had fired surface-to-air missiles in response.

But it said none of those missiles had hit their targets.

This flagrant attack is part of the Zionist enemys persistent efforts to support the terrorist gangs of Daesh, the Syrian army said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group.

It will be responded to directly with all possible means, it added.

The Syrian army recaptured Palmyra from IS on March 2, three months after losing it to the jihadists for a second time. Syrian troops backed by Russian forces had first retaken it in March last year.

In January, the army accused Israel of carrying out missile strikes on the Mazzeh air base near Damascus.
Sirens blared and loudspeakers broadcast warnings in Japans first civilian missile evacuation drill on Friday, conducted in a fishing town by officials wary about the threat of North Korean missiles.

The exercise comes more than a week after North Korea launched four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japans northwest coast, with one rocket landing about 200 km from the town of Oga.

Fridays drill played out a scenario in which North Korea had fired a ballistic missile on the Japanese islands.

The missile is seen to have landed within a 20-km boundary west of the Oga peninsula, a speaker blared during the evacuation. The government is currently examining the damage.

Residents of the largely rural peninsula made their way to a designated evacuation centre equipped with emergency kits and protective gear. Schoolchildren in another part of town crouched down to the ground before hurrying inside a gymnasium.

Ive seen missiles flying between foreign countries on television, but I never imagined this would happen to us, said Hideo Motokawa, a 73-year-old who participated in the drill.

Officials said the exercise was prompted by growing concern about the regional security situation.

Anything can happen these days, and its even more true when we cannot anticipate the behaviour of our neighbouring countries, said Osamu Saito, a security supervisor in the prefecture of Akita where Oga is located.

North Korea is also developing nuclear-tipped missiles, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions, and conducting nuclear tests in what US secretary of state Rex Tillerson described during a visit to Japan as an ever-escalating threat.

Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday the missile drill was worthwhile, to help educate the public.

Some Oga residents worried about how they would react in a real attack.

Its a scary thing, said participant Emiko Shinzoya, 73. If it did actually happen, I dont think we can do what we practiced today. Well just be panicked.
The US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as Indian-American Appreciation Day to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling get out of my country. Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence will not divided or define the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them.

These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas, Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla.

Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

Id like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery, he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the Indian American Appreciation Day.

We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas, the Governor said.

This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people, he said.

Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan, Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms, he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests.

In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter.

The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love.

We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace, Kumar said.

And with the resolve to fight hate.
A traveller has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled racist slurs and even kicking a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the at John F Kennedy Airport.

Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison.

Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, Are you [expletive deleted] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?, said Queens district attorney Richard Brown.

The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employees chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, You did nothing but I am going to kick your [expletive deleted] a**, the complaint said.

Rhodes then kicked the employee in the leg, after which she tried to get away, but Rhodes persisted, kicking the door and stepping into her office and blocking her from escaping.

Another person, also not identified, tried to calm Rhodes and moved him away from the door, while the employee ran out of the office to the lounges front desk.

Rhodes allegedly followed the employee, at one point getting down on his knees, bowing down in imitation of a Muslim praying.

He shouted, [Expletive] Islam, [expletive] ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens.

According to the charges, the victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg and was placed in fear of physical injury, annoyance and alarm.

In the wake of the attack, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the Transportation Worker Protection Act, which would make any assault against an airport worker a felony, punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison.
A pair of suicide bombers attacked a Pakistani training facility belonging to the countrys frontier troops early on Friday, killing an officer, while an overnight cross-border attack in the Khyber tribal region killed two troops, officials said.

According to Liaquat Ali Khan, the commandant of the Frontier Constabulary, the attackers sneaked into the training facility in northwestern Pakistan to try to cause maximum casualties.

Over 70 recruits were staying at the facility, located near the town of Charsadda. Khan said the guards quickly responded and a shootout with the attackers set off their explosives vests. One of the guards died in the explosion while two officers were wounded, he added.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hours earlier, in the Khyber tribal region, the cross-border attack late Thursday left two Pakistani soldiers and six suspected militants dead, a military statement said.

Asad Mansoor, a spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar breakaway faction of Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the groups fighters targeted the army post and warning of more such attacks.

Later Friday, the military said it had launched airstrikes in the Khyber region the previous night after receiving intelligence about the presence of a local militant leader, Mangal Bagh. Several suspects were killed, it added, providing no further details. It did not elaborate on the fate of Bagh, who has escaped such airstrikes in recent years.

Pakistani militant have carried out numerous attacks in the country over the last decade, killing thousands of people, including police and paramilitary forces.

The countrys boundary with neighboring Afghanistan is especially volatile and Islamabad claims many of the attacks in Pakistan are orchestrated from militant safe havens next door. After a string of suicide attacks killed more than 125 people in Pakistan last month, Islamabad closed the Pakistan-Afghan border indefinitely.
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on Friday said the United States may take military action against nuclear-armed North Korea if the threat from the rogue regime escalates.

The strong comments from Washingtons top diplomat, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards Pyongyang. His tour comes after a missile launch last week, which was described by the North as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.

The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but Seoul is within range of Pyongyangs artillery, and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties. Even so, Tillerson said the United States strategic patience had ended  the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

Under the Obama policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table, Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung Se.

Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict, he said. If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that options on the table.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

Tillersons remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had failed and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more.

I dont believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries, he said.

We know that other nations can take actions.

Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyangs attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.
There are fears that two senior clerics from Delhis Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah, who have been reported missing in Pakistan, may have been taken into custody by intelligence agencies or kidnapped by a militant group.

The clerics - Asif Nizami, 82, and Nazim Ali Nizami, 66  are members of the extended family of the Sajjada Nashin (hereditary administrator) of the shrine in Delhi. They were reported missing on Thursday after their families were unable to contact them in Pakistan, where they had gone for a pilgrimage.

There was official silence on the issue but Pakistani law enforcement officials said the two men may either have been taken into custody by intelligence agencies or kidnapped by a militant group. No further details were immediately available.

The clerics reportedly visited the dargah of Khwaja Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar, popularly known as Baba Farid, at Pakpattan, some 160 km from Lahore, on March 13. The next day, the visited the Data Darbar dargah in Lahore.

Sources said when the clerics went to Lahore airport to take a flight to Karachi on March 15, Nazim Ali Nizami was detained while Asif Nizami was allowed to board the aircraft. Though Asif Nizami reached Karachi, his relatives were unable to trace him at the airport, the sources added.

There is a possibility that they were detained by intelligence agencies, a source said.

The clerics also shared photos with their relatives on WhatsApp that apparently showed them at the Data Darbar shrine.

In a series of tweets, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said the matter had been taken up with the Pakistan government, which had been asked to give an update on the whereabouts of the clerics.

We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan./4  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

However, Swaraj said both clerics went missing after arriving in Karachi.

Photo of clerics Nazim Ali Nizami and Asif Nizami at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan. (WhatsApp)

Pakistans Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria told the media that an Indian request for assistance for recovering the clerics had been received. He said this request had been forwarded to the interior ministry, which is actively pursuing the matter.

Asif Nizamis family said the clerics left for Pakistan on March 6 and had their return flight scheduled on Thursday, which they failed to make. Amir, the son of Asif Nizami, said his father was visiting Pakistan after 35 years and had last spoken to the family at 4 pm on Wednesday.

They had planned to travel to Karachi to meet Asif Nizamis sister.

A home ministry official visited us today (Friday) and told us the government is following the matter and taking it up seriously, Amir said.
Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean who became the regions most internationally famous writer, has died on the island of St Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott died early on Friday at his home, according to his son, Peter. The family planned to issue a statement later.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity of his writings including the 1990 Omeros, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as majestic.

In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet, said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the very rich and complicated experience of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theatre, Walcotts work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Walcott to regional status because of an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man.

Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer, he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. The English language is nobodys special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets.

Walcott was born in St. Lucias capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

In his autobiographical essay What the Twilight Says, he wrote: Both the patois of the street and the language of the classroom hid the elation of discovery. If there was nothing, there was everything to be made. With this prodigious ambition one began.

Walcott once described straddling two worlds during his childhood in St. Lucia, then a sleepy outpost of the British empire.

Colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles; that being poor, we already had the theater of our lives. In that simple schizophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives: the interior life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect, he wrote.

Early on, he struggled with questions of race and his passion for British poetry, describing it as a wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body, as if the flesh were coal from which the spirit like tormented smoke writhed to escape. But he overcame that inner struggle, writing: Once we have lost our wish to be white, we develop a longing to become black.

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called 1944, in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play Henri Christophe was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St. Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaicas University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theatre in Trinidads Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcotts treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, The Star-Apple Kingdom, he wrote of the groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream.

For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including Dream on Monkey Mountain and The Last Carnival, and founding theatres such as the Boston Playwrights Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries.

Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write The Capeman story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics.

His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St. Lucia.
Pakistan said on Thursday that it has asked Facebook and Twitter to help it identify Pakistanis suspected of blasphemy so that it can prosecute them or pursue their extradition.

Under Pakistans strict blasphemy laws, anyone found to have insulted Islam or the Prophet Muhammad can be sentenced to death.

Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said an official in Pakistans Washington embassy has approached the two social media companies in an effort to identify Pakistanis, either within the country or abroad, who recently shared material deemed offensive to Islam.

He said Pakistani authorities have identified 11 people for questioning over alleged blasphemy and would seek the extradition of anyone living abroad.

Facebook said it reviews all government requests carefully, with the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users.

We disclose information about accounts solely in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law. A Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or other formal request may be required for international requests, and we include these in our Government Requests Report, which is publicized each year, it said in a statement.

Twitter declined to comment.
The United States strategic patience with nuclear-armed North Korea is over, secretary of state Rex Tillerson said in Seoul on Friday after visiting the Demilitarised Zone.

The announcement signals a clean break from the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama, when the United States ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to de-nuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change.

The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table.

Tillerson is in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, and his remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had failed and promising a new approach, without giving specifics.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

Leaving the North with its present level of weapons technology was not an appropriate goal, Tillerson said in Seoul. That would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

Tillerson will be going on to Beijing on Saturday to press it to do more.

I dont believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries.

We know that other nations can take actions.
Changes in Indias neighbourhood, technology and threat perceptions should trigger a review of the countrys nuclear doctrine once a decade, according to former diplomat Rakesh Sood, who served as the prime ministers envoy on disarmament and non-proliferation.

Addressing an event on India's Nuclear Doctrine and Nuclear Diplomacy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) here on Thursday, Sood, who held several ambassadorial and other senior roles, said that India, as a responsible nuclear weapons state, needs to update its doctrine once a decade.

Insisting that he would not pre-judge such a review, he said: The credible minimum deterrent, no first use policy and sole purpose would remain intact and ought to remain intact. This would be a result of India being on its way to achieving the (nuclear) triad, which is going to constitute the mainstay of its nuclear deterrent.

The nuclear triad is the nomenclature used to refer to a countrys ability to launch a nuclear-capable missile from land, air or sea.

Sood said once India is in a position where the triad gets operationalised, then I think that would be an appropriate time to take a look at elements of the doctrine. He added, This doesnt mean you necessarily have to change.

The change depends on a whole host of other technological developments. What happens to missile defence? What happens to the world around us? I think there is a huge element of unpredictability in todays age. So I would not pre-judge that.

Sood further said there is a worrisome doctrinal asymmetry between India and Pakistan. He added this is not surprising as Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons geared towards full spectrum deterrence.

As Pakistan has a different doctrinal approach, it has a different arsenal. It is important to revive the Lahore MoU talks from 1999, revive certain risk reduction measures to bring stability in the region. It is not enough for Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi just to drop in on surprise visits to wish (Pakistan Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif on his birthday, he said, referring to Modis visit to Lahore in 2015.

I do think we need to develop some kind of communication (between India and Pakistan), that to me is critical. A more sustained, substantial dialogue on limited, modest objectives, we are not talking of resolving long-standing differences on Kashmir, but limited, modest objectives that contribute to nuclear stability, he added.

Noting that the sole purpose of Indias nuclear weapons is to prevent nuclear blackmail and aggression against India, he said New Delhis 2003 nuclear doctrine (which states atomic weapons will be used in the event of an attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere) did not imply that India would be engaging in nuclear warfighting.

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, IISS senior fellow for South Asia, recalled that former defence minister Manohar Parrikar had publicly questioned Indias no first use policy but later clarified this was only his thinking and Indias nuclear doctrine had not changed.

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A man blew himself up on Friday at a camp for Bangladeshs elite security forces, wounding two others, in an apparent botched suicide attack.

The incident came a day after a series of raids on suspected militant hideouts in the country which has suffered a series of Islamist attacks in recent years.

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said a man carrying explosives entered the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) camp near the Dhaka international airport on Friday morning. The explosives went off after he was challenged by two RAB men, wounding them both but causing no other casualties.

The camp, which hosts a mix of elite police, army and air force personnel, has since been cordoned off.

RAB spokesman Mufti Mahmud Khan told reporters the bomb exploded after the man was confronted by RAB men, although it was not clear whether the detonation was deliberate.

The spokesman said the mans identity was not known, but that the attack was similar in style to that of previous ones by Islamist extremists.

Bangladeshi security forces launched a nationwide crackdown on Islamist extremists following a deadly siege at a cafe in Dhaka last year, arresting scores.

The drive was led by the RAB, which is tasked with tackling militancy and serious crimes in Bangladesh.

Four alleged militants were killed on Thursday when a raid on a building in the southern port city of Chittagong sparked a 15-hour stand-off with militants armed with guns and grenades.

Police said they were all members of the extremist group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and that at least two were killed by a suicide explosion that they set off.
At least 42 people were killed and dozens more wounded on Thursday in air strikes on a village mosque in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians, said the head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman.

US official says that they were targeting an "Al Qaeda meeting place" that was across from the mosque in Aleppo. "We took the strike."  Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) March 16, 2017

More than 100 people were wounded, he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said.

Footage published by Halab Today, an online media group focused on news in Aleppo, showed piles of rubble where the mosque allegedly stood.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began six years ago with anti-government protests.

A cessation of hostilities was brokered by rebel backer Turkey and regime ally Russia in December, but violence has continued across much of the country.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

But the skies over Aleppo province are busy, with Syrian regime and Russian warplanes as well as US-led coalition aircraft carrying out air strikes.

Russia began a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, and in the past has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes.

The US-led coalition, meanwhile, has been bombing jihadist groups in Syria since 2014.

The US-led coalition fighting IS said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.

Critics say the real number is much higher.
Terror groups across the globe cooperate more than the nation-states seeking to counter them, according to Indias minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar, who told an event here on Thursday that terrorism is the biggest obstacle to India's goals.

On his first visit to London after being appointed to the post in July 2016, Akbar met British ministers, including Alok Sharma (foreign office) and Priti Patel (international development), and participated in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group meet.

Addressing MPs, lords and members of the Indian community in the House of Lords, Akbar, who is better known for his journalism than politics, presented an account of India in the Changing World that placed the country in a pivotal geo-political role in the 21st century.

Regretting attempts to replace nation-states with faith states, he said fear is being used to build walls between groups.

Akbar said: The major obstacle to prosperity is not the presence of problems, but the presence of terrorism. This really is the one thing that can deflectIt is naive to believe that those who encourage, those who believe in terrorism, do not have a political motive.

Whether it is the Daesh, or Jaish-e-Mohammed or the Lashkar-e-Taibaone of their objectives is to destabilise, if not destroy, the architecture of stability that has been created in the last 100 years through the nation-state.

He added: It is an unfortunate fact, and I have evidence, that there is probably more international cooperation between different terrorist groups than between the nations who are fighting terrorism. The UN has been trying since 1996 to find a definition of terrorism. The search has become an adult, 21 years old, and we still dont have the definition. How do you fight an enemy you cant even define?

Without naming Pakistan, Akbar mentioned the 2008 Mumbai attacks and forces providing sanctuaries to terror groups, and said there were no good or bad terrorists. To the west of India, he said, there was a narrative of turbulence.

Organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the Indian high commission and the All Party Parliamentary Group on India, the event saw Akbar reiterating Prime Minister Narendra Modis objective of replacing poverty alleviation with poverty elimination.

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, IISS senior fellow for South Asia, noted Indias neighbourhood first and Act East policies and said New Delhi's evolving relationships were taking place in a fast-changing geo-political environment marked by shocks and surprises, such as Brexit and Donald Trump's election as the US president.

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US President Donald Trump reiterated his strong support for NATO on Friday and pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to meet NATOs military spending target, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.

The meeting between the leader of Europes largest economy and the US President was billed as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship.

I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense, Trump said at a joint news conference with Merkel.

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a news conference in the White House on Friday. (AP)

Merkel said she told Trump that Germany needs to meet NATO spending goals. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Trump said he expected the United States to do fantastically well in trade with Germany, while Merkel said she hoped the United States and the European Union could resume discussions on a trade agreement. Trump said he did not believe in isolationism but that trade policy should be fairer.

US President Donald Trump and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel at a meeting with business leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Friday. (AFP)

We held a conversation where we were trying to address also those areas where we disagree, but we tried to bring people together ... (and) tried to find a compromise that is good for both sides, Merkel said.

Trump said he very seldom regrets anything he tweets, brushing off questions about his claims without evidence that his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, wiretapped him during last years presidential campaign.

Trump said, At least we have something in common, apparently referring to reports during Obamas presidency that the United States bugged her phone. Congressional leaders from both political parties say they do not believe Trump was wiretapped.

US President Donald Trump and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel during their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Friday. (Reuters)

Earlier, the new US President greeted the long-serving stateswoman at the White House with a handshake before they began talks in the Oval Office. Both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good.

The meeting is consequential for both sides.

As a presidential candidate, Trump criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany. At the news conference, Merkel hinted at differences, saying: This is obviously something we had an exchange of views about.

Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trumps Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman.

Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune, said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government.
US President announced outlines of his first budget on Thursday, with many federal government agencies facing a funding axe. Among them is the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), that has worked with India on Prime Minister Narendra Modis pet urban renewal project  the Smart Cities Mission  providing technical expertise and assistance.

Also on the chopping block was the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal agency that backs American private sector with loans, grants and insurance against political risk to invest in seemingly perilous emerging markets. It has more than 40 ongoing projects in the micro-finance and power sectors at present in India.

Though it could not be immediately ascertained how severely any of these projects and schemes will be impaired by the cuts, and how soon, some impact was anticipated. But Indians did not seem worried. An official said, To be honest, we are not dependent on them for our schemes.

Trump has proposed a $54 billion hike in the US defence budget to be met partly by proposing to eliminate funding to around 19 independent agencies such as the USTDA and OPIC, and the national endowment for the arts and national endowment for the humanities, according to the blueprint called America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.

There was no response to emails and phone calls to the USTDAs Washington and New Delhi offices requesting information about the extent of the ongoing cooperation and how much of that will continue, or be terminated, in view of the coming cuts.

The USTDA website said, USTDA manages a strong portfolio in support of the strategic US-India partnership, introducing innovative solutions from US industry to promote sustainable development in Indias key infrastructure sectors. It has invested in over 130 priority projects across India, achieving a win-win scenario. Its Indian partners have developed sustainable infrastructure with the help of $3 billion worth of US goods, services and technologies.

USTDA is leveraging its cross-cutting expertise to deliver technical assistance and pilot technologies that can support Indias goals of developing 100 smart cities.

The agency said that Ajmer won the Smart Cities challenge with the help of USTDA-funded assistance and it helped Visakhapatnam launch the next phase of its efforts to become a clean commerce capital.

The prime minister launched Smart Cities Mission in 2015 but he has been discussing it with the US since 2014, during his first visit after taking office. After his next visit in 2015, the India-US joint statement talked about Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan signing MoUs with the USTDA earlier that year to develop Vishakhapatnam, Allahabad, and Ajmer as Smart Cities with the participation of US industry.

For both USTDA and OPIC, the ultimate goal remains the furtherance of American business interests abroad and to create and expand markets for American goods and services, but emerging markets such as India tend to benefit from it, and actively seek this kind of intervention.

OPIC has 42 ongoing projects in India, the oldest going back to 2009, which finances, through loans, private sector entities involved in micro-finance, solar and wind power generation, affordable housing and expansion of broadband.
A Turkish pro-government newspaper on Friday depicted Chancellor Angela Merkel on its front page in Nazi uniform with a Hitler-style moustache, labelling the German leader She Hitler amid a bitter war of words between Ankara and Berlin.

Right-wing tabloid-style daily Gunes (Sun) printed the picture along with the words in German: #Frau Hitler and called her an ugly aunt.

The mocked-up image took up most of the front page of the daily, with a Nazi swastika on Merkels uniform and another swastika next to her head while she is shown holding a gun.

Turkey and Europe are locked in a bitter spat after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies to campaign for a yes vote in next months referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogans powers.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused Germany and the Netherlands of acting like Nazis, and claimed Merkel is supporting terrorists.

His behaviour has prompted an angry reaction from Europe, with Merkel and French President Francois Hollande lashing the comments as unacceptable on Thursday.

The front page also accused Merkel of trying to be the leader of fascists, creating anti-Turkish enmity using Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium in Germanys backyard.

Germany, which has open arms for terrorist organisations... is trying to instigate the whole of Europe against Turkey, the daily said.

German deputy government spokesperson Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: We are not taking part in a game of provocation.

The front page was published two days after German mass circulation daily Bild lashed out at Erdogan, accusing him of endangering Europes stability through his lust for power.

Bild tells the truth to Erdogans face -- you are not a democrat! You are hurting your country! the German daily had said.

Bilds front page hugely upset Ankara and the foreign ministry issued a statement describing the article as mind-boggling and part of a mindset hinging on hatred.

The media outlets that publish such articles are are doomed to take their places in the trash of history, the foreign ministry said.
Two senior clerics from Delhis Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah, who were reported missing in Pakistan, have been taken into custody by intelligence agencies for suspicious activities, sources said on Friday.

The clerics - Asif Nizami, 82, and Nazim Ali Nizami, 66  are members of the extended family of the Sajjada Nashin (hereditary administrator) of the shrine in Delhi. They were reported missing on Thursday after their families were unable to contact them in Pakistan, where they had gone for a pilgrimage.

There was official silence on the issue but the sources said late on Friday night that the clerics had been detained by intelligence agencies. The sources did not give details of the suspicious activities for which they were held. There was no information on the current whereabouts of the two men. The sources also said no FIR has been filed against the clerics.

The clerics reportedly visited the dargah of Khwaja Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar, popularly known as Baba Farid, at Pakpattan, some 160 km from Lahore, on March 13. The next day, the visited the Data Darbar dargah in Lahore.

Photo of clerics Nazim Ali Nizami and Asif Nizami at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan. (Whatsapp)

Sources said when the clerics went to Lahore airport to take a flight to Karachi on March 15, Nazim Ali Nizami was detained while Asif Nizami was allowed to board the aircraft. Though Asif Nizami reached Karachi, his relatives were unable to trace him at the airport, the sources added.

The clerics also shared photos with their relatives on WhatsApp that apparently showed them at the Data Darbar shrine.

In a series of tweets, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said the matter had been taken up with the Pakistan government, which had been asked to give an update on the whereabouts of the clerics.

We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan./4  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

However, Swaraj said both clerics went missing after arriving in Karachi.

Both are missing after they landed at Karachi airport. /3  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Pakistans Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria told the media that an Indian request for assistance for recovering the clerics had been received. He said this request had been forwarded to the interior ministry, which is actively pursuing the matter.

Asif Nizamis family said the clerics left for Pakistan on March 6 and had their return flight scheduled on Thursday, which they failed to make. Amir, the son of Asif Nizami, said his father was visiting Pakistan after 35 years and had last spoken to the family at 4 pm on Wednesday.

They had planned to travel to Karachi to meet Asif Nizamis sister.

A home ministry official visited us today (Friday) and told us the government is following the matter and taking it up seriously, Amir said.
Britain, a close US ally, extracted an apology from White House for accusing it of spying on Trump Tower, the presidents New York home and office as candidate, and Germany, another close ally, was expected to push Donald Trump Friday on protectionist trade measures he has been touting to boost the American economy.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she planned to raise with the president, at their meeting in the White House on Friday, his threat to impose import duties on countries that have a trade surplus with the US, and other protectionist measures. And she is expected to put on the reciprocity, that Europe could all of that as well.

Just hours before Trump received Merkel, his aides, National Security Adviser HR McMaster and press secretary Sean Spicer, delivered the British an abject apology for accusing its signals intelligence, GCHQ, of spying on Trump Tower for President Barack Obama during the elections.

The White House said in a statement that McMaster and Spicer explained to the British that Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story. The press secretary had in his daily briefings recycled an unsubstantiated claim made on the conservative-leaning TV new network Fox that the British intelligence agency, GCHQ, which is NSAs counterpart, was spying on Trump Tower for Obama.

But London has said the Americans apologized and gave an undertaking that they will not repeat that charge again.

The claim that Obama had ordered the surveillance was first made by Trump himself in a tweet in which he had accused Obama of ordering a wire-tap and had called him a sick guy. He has not provided any evidence in support of his claims yet, despite continuing calls even from his own Republican party. His aides, meantime, have pushed all sorts of theories, with one of them suggesting a microwave oven might have been used as a spying device.

That the Trump administration thought nothing of accusing a close ally like Britain of spying on the president will give US further grief about an administration that has seemed inexperienced and, worst, unhinged in phases.

Donald Trump and Angela Merkel at the Oval Office of the White House. (AFP)

Germany, specially. Trump has been extremely critical of Merkel about her policy on immigration and has accused her of ruining Germany. And the German chancellor has publicly criticized Trumps travel ban, as has the other US ally, Britain.

Germany is said to be most concerned, however about the Trump administrations economic and business policies. Merkel is accompanied to the White House meeting by CEOs of auto giant BMW, engineering behemoth Siemens, manufacturing major Schaffler.

Merkel plans to let Trump know German companies in the US are creating thousands and thousands of jobs. And, according to the BBC, she will also tell Trump that BMWs South Carolina facility exports more cars from the United Sates than Ford and GM together. Ill make that clear, she had added.

Trump, on the other hand, plans to ask Merkel about Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to White House officials, who told NBC that the president will be very interested in hearing the chancellors views on her experience interacting with Putin.
The US said it carried out an air strike in Syria against an al-Qaeda meeting but denied deliberately targeting a mosque where a monitor said on Friday 46 people were killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in the Thursday evening raid on Al-Jineh, in the northern province of Aleppo, were civilians.

The US-led coalition has been bombing jihadist groups in war-torn Syria since 2014, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighbouring Iraq.

We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target -- which was where the meeting took place -- is about 50 feet from a mosque that is still standing, said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: US forces conducted an air strike on an Al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists.

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have hit the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike, he added.

An AFP correspondent saw rescue workers in white helmets working under spotlights with picks and shovels on Thursday to dig people out of the rubble.

Much of the building, identified by a black placard outside as a mosque, had been flattened.

The empty prayer hall was covered in debris, and rescue workers stepped through it carefully, deliberating how to break down a wall to search for more survivors.

Rescuers had earlier left the wreckage site but were forced to double back when they heard moaning coming from the rubble.

More than 100 people were wounded, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said on Thursday, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by Islamist groups, but the Observatory said no jihadist factions are present.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after prayers at a time when there are usually religious lessons for men in it.

I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldnt even recognise some of the bodies, he added.

More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests six years ago.
German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said on Deutschlandfunk radio on Friday that Germany could file a suit against US President Donald Trump over a proposed border tax.

Trump has warned that the United States will impose a border tax of 35% on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the US market.

Asked how Germany would react to the proposed tax, Zypries said it was very difficult because it was possible to adjust such a tax system, but it would then be necessary to change it around the world and that would not be possible from one day to the next.

The other option is that we file a suit against him at the WTO - there are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that youre not allowed to take more than 2.5 percent taxes on imports of cars, Zypries said.
A lesser-known member of the distinguished Adams family of Massachusetts is Union cavalry officer Charles Francis Adams Jr., son of Congressman Charles Adams, who served as U.S. ambassador in London during the Civil War, and brother of Henry Adams, who accompanied his father to London as his private secretary and wrote anonymous commentaries on the war. Charles Francis Adams letters offer a sophisticated, frank look at the war and the issues central to it. Raw cotton imports from the American South were a huge component of Englands textile industry, and the Federal blockade of the Souths cotton trade was shutting down work in the Lancashire mills. In the following two letters, Charles Francis urges his brother Henry to make the case for England allying with the Union and outlines the stark future freedmen will face following emancipation and the transformation of the Souths cotton-based economy. Adams survived the war and went on to become a historian and a prominent figure in the railroad industry.

This cotton question is beginning to pinch and soon, if ever, if you have any desire to be useful to your country, you can be useful where you are.

For some time I have been turning over in my mind an elaborate article on this cotton supply question, but necessarily to be of any good to any one it must be directed more to English eyes than to ours. I touched on it in my last letter, and now I should like to hand it over to you, to see if you can do anything with it. I would write it for the Edinburgh or some really influential review or magazine, but to have effect it should appear in November, when the cotton-shoe will begin to pinch dreadfully.

Start at once with the paradox that, instead of desiring to break this blockade, England should pray it might last for two years and if necessary assist in enforcing it, as if enforced its inevitable result must be, after one or at most two years of high prices, to forever break down the price of cotton to a reasonable profit over the cost of its cheapest possible production. This opens the whole question of supply. Two things are necessary to the production of cottonan abundance of labor and a cotton soil. Look into the question of soil first. A semi-tropical heat, with a distribution of rain, are the only essentials. India has not the last and will not do; but Central and South America, all of Africa (which is not a desert), Australia and the Fiji Islands are better than our cotton states and need only organized labor. This with all the necessary material of ships, channels of trade, custom and experience, our planters have to such a degree that while they would furnish a fair supply of cotton on moderate terms, they could kill competition.

Now is Englands chance to free herself from what has been her terror for years. In India, in Egypt, in Abyssinia and in South Africa, there is an unlimited amount of cotton land of the finest quality and labor is abundant, costing almost nothing, but unorganized. Two years competition will organize it and once organized it can sell the South. In Australia, the South Sea Islands and Central America, there is no labor and here the cooley questions rises. Properly regulated the trade would be a blessing. This would bring cotton down to the cost, with a profit, of its production in cheap labor countries, say three pence a pound. But it would also lead to immense indirect advantages. As a missionary scheme Africa would be opened up; slavery in America would be killed and the slave-trade closed for ever, as the African would be more useful at home than abroad.Finally it would open the untold tropical fertility of Africa to the commerce of the world and these advantages cannot be estimated. Thus cotton would be produced on both sides of the equator year round in unlimited quantities, and England would have by two years suffering cut the meshes which she could never have broken.

On the other hand [if] England breaks the blockade, or the South is victorious, England may then as well hug her chains, for she must wear them. The Southern confederacy will be aggressive and more slaves and more cotton will be the cry. In spite of England the slave-trade will flourish and their system will spread over Mexico and Central America. Then with the advantages of their organization, slave labor will win the day and England may look for competition in vain. The cotton monopoly will stifle her in the end. They will pretend in Parliament that the recognition of the Confederate States will not extend the area of slavery. Expose this, for it will be a victory of slavery. Recognition will mean war and the prostration at the feet of slavery of free society in America. England can do this if she chooses, but let her not deceive herself and let the results of her action be patent.

Milne Plantation, Port Royal Island

Monday, April 6, 1862

Adams was serving as a cavalry officer under Brig. Gen. Isaac Stevens, drilling pickets on South Carolinas Sea Islands, which were captured early on by Union troops. Missionaries, educators and cotton agents joined Federal forces on the islands in a project known as the Port Royal Experimenta dry run for emancipationin which some 10,000 former slaves worked abandoned plantations and were taught to read.

Here I am on the Milne Plantation in the heart of Port Royal Island. Cotton fields, pine barrens, contrabands, missionaries and soldiers are before me and all around me. A sick missionary is in the next room, a dozen soldiers are eating their suppers in the yard under my window and some twenty negroes of every age, lazy, submissive and as the white man has made them, are hanging about the plantation building just as though they were not the teterrima causa of this consuming bella [Adams Latin words refer to a quote by the Roman poet Horace meaning the most shameful cause of war]. The island is now just passing into its last stage of spring. The nights are cool, but the days are hot enough to make the saddle no seat of comfort. The island, naturally one of the most delightful places in the world, is just now at its most delightful season.

The brown unhappy wastes of cotton fields unplanted this year and with the ragged remnants of last years crop, still fluttering in the wind, do not add to its beauty, but nothing can destroy the charm of the long plantation avenues with the heavy grey moss drooping from branches fresh with young leaves, while the natural hedges for miles along are fragrant with wild flowers. As I canter along these never ending avenues I hear sounds and see sights enough to set the ornithologist and the sportsman crazy. Nor are less inviting forms of animal life wanting, for snakes cross your path more frequently than hares and, even now, the soldiers under my window are amusing themselves with a large turtle, a small alligator and a serpent of curious beauty and most indubitable venom, a portion of the results of their afternoons investigation.

One can ride indefinitely over the island and never exhaust its infinite cross-roads and out-of-the-way plantations, but you cannot ride fifteen minutes in any direction, however new, without stumbling over the two great facts of the day, pickets and contrabands. The pickets are recruits in active service without models excellent material for soldiers and learning the trade, but scarcely soldiers yet. The contrabands were slaves yesterday and may be again tomorrow, and what slaves are any man may know without himself seeing who will take the trouble to read [Frederick Law] Olmsteds books. No man seems to realize that here, in this little island, all around us, has begun the solution of this tremendous nigger question.

The war here seems to rest and, for the present, Port Royal is thrown into the shade, and yet I am much mistaken if at this minute Port Royal is not a point of greater interest than either Virginia or Kentucky. Here the contraband question has arisen in such proportions that it has got to be met and the Government is meeting it as best it may. Some ten thousand quondam[former] slaves are thrown upon the hands of an unfortunate Government; they are the forerunners of hundreds of thousands more, if the plans of the Government succeed, and so the Government may as well now decide what it will do in the case of the success of its war plans. While the Government has sent agents down here, private philanthropy has sent missionaries, and while the first see that the contrabands earn their bread, the last teach them the alphabet. Between the two I predict divers results, among which are numerous jobs for agents and missionaries, small comfort to the negroes and heavy loss to the Government. Doubtless the world must have cotton and must pay for it, but it does not yet know what it is to pay for it if the future hath it in store that the poor world shall buy the next crop of Port Royal at prices remunerative to Government.

The scheme, so far as I can see any, seems to be for the Government, recognizing and encouraging private philanthropy and leaving to it the task of educating the slaves to the standard of self-support, to hold itself a sort of guardian to the slave in his indefinite state of transition, exacting from him that amount of labor which he owes to the community and the cotton market. The plan may work well; if it does, it will be the first of the kind that ever has. Certainly I do not envy the slaves its operation. The position of the Government is certainly a most difficult one. Something must be done for these poor people and done at once. They are indolent, shiftless, unable to take care of themselves and plundered by every comerin short, they are slaves. For the present they must be provided for. It is easy to find fault with the present plan. Can any one suggest a better? For me I must confess that I cannot. I think it bad, very bad, and that it must end in failure, but I can see no other more likely to succeed.

This is the solution of the negro question I take it no one but the missionaries and agents will contend. That is yet to come, and here as elsewhere we are looking for it, and trying to influence it. My own impression is that the solution is comingmay already in some degree be shadowed out, but that it is a solution hurried on by this war, based on simple and immutable principles of economy and one finally over which the efforts of Government and individuals can exercise no control.

This war is killing slavery. Not by any legal quibble of contrabands or doubtful theory of confiscation, but by stimulating free trade. Let any man ride as I do over this island. Let him look at the cotton fields and the laborers. Let him handle their tools and examine their implements, and if he comes from any wheat-growing country, he will think himself amid the institutions and implements of the middle agesand so he would be. The whole system of cotton growingall its machinery from the slave to the hoe in his handis awkward, cumbrous, expensive and behind the age. That the cultivation of cotton is so behind that of all the other great staples is the natural result of monopoly, but it is nonetheless disgraceful to the world, and to give it an impulse seems to have been the mission of this war. The thorough and effectual breaking up of its so much prized monopoly will be the greatest blessing which could happen to the South, and it seems to be the one probable result of this war. Competition involves improvement in ruin, and herein lies the solution of this slavery question. Northern men with Northern ideas of economy, agriculture and improvement, are swarming down onto the South. They see how much behind the times the country is and they see that here is money to be made. If fair competition in the growth of cotton be once established a new system of economy and agriculture must inevitably be introduced here in which the slave and his hoe will make room for the free laborers and the plough, and the change will not be one of election but a sole resource against utter ruin. The men to introduce this change or any other are here and are daily swarming down in the armies of the Government, soon to become armies of occupation. A new tide of emigration has set in before which slavery has small chance.

But how is it for the African? Slavery may perish and no one regret it, but what is to become of the unfortunate African? When we have got thus far we have just arrived at the real point of interest in the nigger question. The slaves of whom I see so much here may be taken as fair specimens of their race as at present existing in this country. They have many good qualities. They are good tempered, patient, docile, willing to learn and easily directed; but they are slavish and all that the word slavish implies. They will lie and cheat and steal; they are hypocritical and cunning; they are not brave, and they are not fiercethese qualities the white man took out of them generations ago, and in taking them deprived the African of the capacity for freedom.

My views of the future of those I see about me here are not therefore encouraging. That they will be free and free soon by the operation of economic laws over which Government has no control, I thoroughly believe; but their freedom will be the freedom of antiquated and unprofitable machines, the freedom of the hoes they use which will be swept aside to make way for better implements. The slave, however, cannot be swept aside and herein lies the difficulty and the problem. My impression from what I see is that Emancipation as a Government measure would be a terrible calamity to the blacks as a race; that rapid emancipation as the result of an economic revolution destroying their value as agricultural machines would be a calamity, though less severe; and finally, that the only transition to freedom absolutely beneficial to them as a race would be one proportioned in length to the length of their captivity, such a one in fact as destroyed villeinage in the wreck of the feudal system.

Were men and governments what they should be instead of what they are, the case would be different and all would combine in the Christian and tedious effort to patiently undo the wrongs they had done, and to restore to the African his attributes. Then the work could be done well and quickly; but at present, seeing what men are, and how remorselessly they throw aside what has ceased to be useful, I cannot but regard as a doubtful benefit to the African anything which by diminishing his value increases his chances of freedom. A revolution in cotton production springing from competition may work differently by gradually changing the status of the African from one of forced to one of free labor but I do not regard this as probable. The census already shows not only that cotton can everywhere be cultivated by free labor, but also that the best cotton now is so cultivated, and the most probable result of a permanent reduction in the price of cotton would seem to me to be a sudden influx of free white emigration into the cotton felds of the South. Such a result would produce untold advantages to the South, to America and to the white race; but how about the blacks? Will they be educated and encouraged and cared for; or will they be challenged to competition in the race, or go to the wall, and finally be swept away as a useless rubbish? Who can answer those queries? I for one cannot; but one thing I daily see and that is that no spirit exists among the contrabands here which would enable them to care for themselves in a race of vigorous competition. The blacks must be cared for or they will perish, and who is to care for them when they cease to be of value?

I do not pretend to solve these questions or do more than raise them, and their solution will come, I suppose, all in good time with the emergency which raises them. But no man who dreams  at all of the future can wander over Port Royal Island at present and mark the character and condition of its inhabitants, without having all these questions and many more force themselves upon his mind. I am a thorough believer in this war. I believe it to have been necessary and just. I believe that from it will flow great blessings to America and the Caucasian race. I believe the area of freedom will by it be immensely expanded in this country, and that from it true principle of trade and economy will receive a prodigious impetus throughout the world; but for the African I do not see the same bright future. He is the foot-ball of passion and accident, and the gift of freedom may prove his destruction. Still the experiment should and must be tried and the sooner it is tried the better.

Adapted from A Cycle of Adams Letters, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford and originally published by Houghton Mifflin Co. in 1920.

Originally published in the September 2014 issue of Americas Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
The creation of a battlefield park at Antietam was contentious and uncertain, much like the battle itself.

On September 17, 1867, a large cadre of dignitaries and interested parties descended on Sharpsburg, Md., a province of rolling hills just east of a bend in the Potomac River. Having lost its bid to become the county seat of Washington County a century beforea distinction that went to Hagerstown to the northSharpsburg had retained its sleepy quality well into the 19th century. Therefore, a crowd of such stature was certainly unusualbut not unprecedented. It was exactly five years before, after all, that the town had ballooned from its normal population of 1,300 to about 100,000, during and after the maelstrom of Antietam.

This day, by contrast, was meant to be more serene; a crowd of nearly 15,000 had assembled to dedicate the new Antietam National Cemetery, to pay final respects to the Union soldiers whose bodies had once littered the fields and who had now been re-interred in the cemetery (nearly 5,000 in all, representing 19 states). Located atop a hill east of Sharpsburg, the cemetery encompassed 9 acres, with the burial plots set in a handsome semi-elliptical pattern. Men and women in hats and bonnets had arrived from near and far, some carrying umbrellas in preparation for the storm gathering overhead, which seemed to reflect an unspoken tension in the air. Along with several state governors and other dignitaries, one of the days speakers was President Andrew Johnson. The North Carolinaborn Johnson was supportive of Reconstruction and was conciliatory toward the South, something the pro-Union crowd didnt appreciate, especially with the memory of the high casualty count at Antietam so close at hand. When Johnson rose to speak, he was met with tepid applause and more than a few hecklers, and he and his entourage fed shortly afterward. The New York Tribune called the ceremony a stupidly farcical affair.

It was an inauspicious beginning for what would eventually become Antietam National Battlefield. As a border state, Marylands loyalties were divided during the war and just as divided when it came to memorializing its most famous battle. Even as the Unionists were hustling the president off the stage at Sharpsburg, for example, still others were working to include a section in the cemetery for the Confederate deada controversial effort that brought deep sectional feelings to the fore once again. It would be the work of several more decades to establish both the physical boundaries of the park and, just as important, the message the park was sending to the residents of Maryland and the nation beyond.

The first phase of memorializing the Battle of Antietam began almost as soon as Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia retreated across the Potomac. For months and even years afterward, the field was littered with the detritus of war: bullets, cannon balls, soldiers accoutrements and, gruesomely, skeletal remains. As park historian Ted Alexander writes in his book The Battle of Antietam: The Bloodiest Day, a Union soldier passing through Sharpsburg two years after the battle remarked that, at every stop, the eye rests upon something to remind the traveler of that awful day of carnage.

At Antietam as elsewhere, relic hunters began collecting these items and passing them around parlors as objects of conversationa nascent effort, one might say, to interpret what had occurred there. (Even a notorious boulder on the battlefield, known as Lees Rock, was subject to appropriation.) It wasnt long before the nations first Civil War souvenir shops were open for business. O.T. Reilly, only 5 years old at the time of the battle, would amass such a collection of artifacts that he opened a novelty store in Sharpsburg years later, selling candy on the main floor and relics in the basement, according to historian Stephen Recker. Although Sharpsburg has never had the bustling tourism that, say, Gettysburg has enjoyed (for good or ill), attracting visitors has long been part of the battlefields history.

Preserving and interpreting the landscape was a decidedly more complicated business. At Antietam, the primary concern in the immediate aftermath of the war was burying the dead. But even that was fraught with controversy from the beginning, as conciliatory legislators (including Maryland Governor Thomas Swann) sought to reserve a section of the new cemetery for Confederate soldiers. In Washington, D.C., according to park superintendent Susan Trail (whose doctoral dissertation, Remembering Antietam: Commemoration and Preservation of a Civil War Battlefield, is an authoritative source on the development of the park), the Chronicle ran an editorial calling the plan to include Confederates akin to interring, side by side with loyal men who perished to save the Government, the traitors who sought to destroy it. Union factions ultimately prevailed, and the Confederate dead of the Antietam Campaign were buried instead in Hagerstown and Frederick in Maryland, and in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

In the end, locating the Confederate cemeteries away from the battlefield represented a step toward the battlefield becoming a Union landscape, writes Trail, one upon which Confederate soldiers had little place. At least Maryland officials were willing to acknowledge the Confederate losses enough to allow burials within their state, Trail adds. She points out that the Confederates who perished at Gettysburg were transported out of Pennsylvania altogether, primarily to Richmond.

In July 1879, the cemetery was transferred from the private Antietam National Cemetery Association to the U.S. War Department, thus beginning the long period of federal government oversight at Antietam. It would coincide with a growing impetus to turn the battlefield into a commemorative landscape through the erection of monuments. The largest of these is the Private Soldier monument that stands at the center of the cemeterydepicting a 21-foot-high soldier at parade rest. Including its pedestal, the monument stands 44 feet tall. With his U.S. belt buckle displayed so prominently, Trail says, the monument struck another blow for the Union and against a spirit of reconciliation with the South.

But a generation is a long timelong enough for healing, and long enough to forget. By the 1890s, writes historian Timothy B. Smith, the old wounds of the Civil War began to fade into memory as the North and the South developed new issues other than the racial questions that had so divided them. By that point, nearly half the members of Congress were Civil War veterans, according to Smith, and veterans filled the ranks of state legislatures as well. These men wielded enormous power and influence and, as they began to comb gray hair, they were rightly concerned with the legacies they would leave behind. They turned their attention to preserving what they saw as the five most prominent and symbolic battlefields of the late warChickamauga and Chattanooga, Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

But even in this golden age of battlefield preservation, things did not come easy at Antietam.

In light of all the changes and threats the 20th century wrought upon other battlegrounds, Antietam remains incredibly well-preserved hauntingly like it was in 1862. This is especially remarkable given that the legislation establishing the battlefield park covered only rights of ways for the park roads, not the large farms between them. Although Congress offered widespread support for creating a national battlefield park at Antietam, after setting aside large tracts of land at Chickamauga, Ga., the legislators realized they could save money at Antietam by focusing solely on acquiring the roadways and thin strips of land on either sidewhat Ted Alexander calls a minimalist approach to preservation. They also established the Antietam Battlefield Board, whose first two agents were Col. John C. Stearns of the 9th Vermont Infantry and former Confederate Maj. Gen. Henry Heth. They were tasked with mapping out troop movements and staking out what would become the park boundary.

The work was slow and difficult; eventually Stearns resigned, and Major George B. Davis became president of the board (he was later succeeded by George W. Davis, who was not related). Stearns departure had opened the door for Ezra A. Carman, who had himself fought at Antietam and had steadfastly gathered information on the battle ever since. He was soon named the boards historical expert and worked tirelessly with both of his Davis colleagues to lay out the park road scheme, draft the text for the iron interpretive tablets that would line those roads and negotiate with landowners who were willing to sell. Slowly, the battlefield came together. In 1900, Congress appropriated funding to name the battlefields first superintendentCharles W. Adams.

Although the battlefield plan had solidified, relations between the park and the townspeople were sometimes rancorous. This was never more true than in the spring of 1912, when Superintendent Adams had taken a stand that farm machines and cattle were forbidden to travel on park roads. One Sharpsburg resident, Charles Benner, took such offense to this and other perceived slights by the superintendent that he approached him on the morning of June 6, 1912, and shot him several timesleaving his lifeless body, somewhat ironically, lying on a park road. Benner, whom one newspaper called maddened with drink, then went home and turned the gun on himself. Incidentally, Adams had been superintendent when the 90th Pennsylvania Association placed one of the battlefields most distinctive markers on Cornfield Avenuea stack of three rifles from which hung a kettle with an inscription that read, in part, Let us have peace. (The monument fell into disrepair around 1930 and was replaced with a replica in 2004.)

Despite the challenges, the turn of the 20th century saw a growing appreciation forand acceptance ofconciliatory efforts toward the former Confederacy. In 1900, the most significant manifestation of this change of heart came in the form of the Maryland Monument, the classical domed structure just north of the parks visitor center and the iconic Dunker Church. It remains the only monument on the battlefield that honors soldiers from both sides. When it was dedicated on Memorial Day, approximately 20,000 people attended, including several generals and then-President William McKinley, himself an Antietam veteran who would soon have a monument to his service dedicated there. I am glad to meet on this field the followers of Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, and Johnson, McKinley said, with the followers of McClellan, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan.This meeting after these many years has but one sentiment, love for Nation and fag.

With the healing passage of time, McKinleys reception was no doubt far different than the one lobbed at President Johnson 33 years earlier.

By the time the War Department turned control of the battlefield over to the developing National Park Service in 1933, it was simply a case of luck and geography that the battlefield had remained wholly unspoiled. The acreage owned by the government was shockingly smallonly about 65 acres. It was only with the celebration of the Civil War centennial in the 1960s and the Park Services new Mission 66 program for park improvements which saw construction of modern visitor centers such as the one at Antietam and the recently demolished Cyclorama building at Gettysburgthat Congress appropriated more funding for land acquisition at Antietam, bringing its acreage up to about 600. That number held until the 1980s, with a series of battlefield expansions bringing the current acreage up to about 3,200.

The park now faces the challenge of adapting its signage, trail markers and other interpretive materials to encompass all the property that has been added to the park  since those early park roads and signs were laid out by Ezra Carman and his colleagues more than a century ago, when acreage was minimal. Park staff are now engaged in creating a new long-range plan for literature and signage, which will not only reflect the additional acreage but broader cultural and societal themes as well. Also under consideration are different ways of bringing this information to the modern visitor, who might want to get information through a mobile app instead of an iron tablet.

Critical preservation work continues as well. This winter, for example, a small but significant section of Burnside Bridge collapsed. Although the bridge was stabilized and repaired, Trail says the failure is an indication of potentially greater structural issues that must be addressed.

My emphasis here is to get all our historic structures and buildings to a good condition, Trail says. You always want to leave something better than you found it.

In the not too distant future, it will be time for another ceremony at Antietam. In 2017, the park will celebrate the sesquicentennial of the national cemetery. With the wounds of war still fresh, it was nearly impossible for many to consider honoring the enemy when the cemetery was created. A century and a half later, however, with its pristine fields still undisturbed by suburban sprawl, and its solemn markers to Union and Confederate dead, its impossible to think of Antietam as anything but a place of peace.

Former Maryland resident Kim OConnell writes regularly about history and preservation for national and regional publications.

Originally published in the September 2014 issue of Americas Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
The president and his best general knew they had to end the menace in Virginiabut which strategy would work?

In the mind of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the great problem with Union strategy up to 1864 had been that Northern armies had generally acted separately and independently of each other. After he was appointed general-in-chief of the Federal armies on March 9, 1864, I determined to stop this, Grant bluntly declared in his memoirs.

Grants determination was reflected in the plan he developed in the weeks after his appointment for Union operations in Virginia. Oh, yes, I see that, Abraham Lincoln exclaimed when Grant presented it. As we say out West, if a man cant skin he must hold a leg while someone else does.

But as is usually the case in war, the course of operations would compel adjustments, and there would be a profound change in who was to do the skinning and who was to do the holding in Virginia.

During the first week of May 1864, Grant ordered four separate Union forces to more or less simultaneously begin offensive operations in Virginia. The most important of these was Maj. Gen. George G. Meades hard-luck Army of the Potomac, assisted by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnsides independent IX Corps. To this force, Grant assigned the unenviable task of crossing the Rapidan River to take on Gen. Robert E. Lees seemingly indomitable Army of Northern Virginia. As Grant saw it, the key was to eliminate the main Confederate armies in the fieldand Lees army was unquestionably the center of the Confederate war effort. Lees army will be your objective point, Grant told Meade. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.

As Meade and Burnside went after Lee under Grants personal direction, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butlers Army of the James was to operate along its namesake river and menace the Confederate capital at Richmond, holding forces there that might otherwise be sent to Lees aid.

West of the Blue Ridge, where the past three years had been a tale of unmitigated woe for the Union war effort, Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel was in charge. Grant assigned him two tasks. The first was to have a cavalry force commanded by Brig. Gen. George Crook and a mixed force commanded by Maj. Gen. E.O.C. Ord and Brig. Gen. William W. Averell target vital Confederate resources in the mountains and valleys of West Virginia. The second was for a force under Sigels personal command to advance south up the Shenandoah Valley from Harpers Ferry, W.Va. But Grant made clear in a letter to William T. Sherman that he did not have high expectations of Sigel and considered his efforts in the Valley decidedly secondary to his own. At the least, Grant declared, if Sigel cant skin himself he can hold a leg while someone else skins.

Butler and Sigel proved unequal to the task of holding, however. Defeats at New Market and Drewrys Bluff in mid-May cost Sigel his command and compelled Butler to take refuge in an entrenched position at Bermuda Hundred. Meanwhile, in what became known as the Overland Campaign, Grants and Lees forces suffered horrific casualties in a series of brutal engagements at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Totopotomoy Creek and Cold Harbor.

Yet by mid-June, Grant had placed Meades command in a position near Richmond, where it could cooperate with Butlers. And Sigels replacement, Maj. Gen. David Hunter, led Union forces to an all-too-rare battlefield victory in the Shenandoah Valley at Piedmont on June 5. The win had the happy effect of allowing Hunter to push farther south toward Lexington, keeping Confederate manpower in the Valley and away from Grant. One week after Piedmont, Grant opened an offensive against Petersburg, ordering his forces from Cold Harbor south toward the James.

On learning Grant had crossed the James, Lincoln relaxed his stance on keeping the Army of the Potomac where it could not directly shield Washington. I begin to see it, he wrote Grant. You will succeed. God bless you all.

But Grant came a hair short of seizing Petersburg. Nonetheless, with Hunter holding in the Valley, Lee and the forces defending Richmond and Petersburg seemed ripe for skinning. Grants first try, an attempt to extend the Union lines to the South Side Railroad on June 22, proved a fiasco, ending with the vaunted II Corps losing 1,700 prisoners in the Battle of the Jerusalem Plank Road.

Grant, however, was undeterred. He authorized Federal forces east of Petersburg to begin regular siege approaches against the Confederate defenses protecting vital Cemetery Hill. Grant wasnt convinced siege operations alone could bring timely results, but believed he had enough troops around Petersburg to also move around the Confederate right to seize roads and rail lines south of the city that sustained its defenders. In addition to Meades four corps, Grant had one of Butlers in the trenches in front of Petersburg; the rest of Butlers command could man the trenches at Bermuda Hundred and maintain a bridgehead at Deep Bottom on the north side of the James. On top of this, Grant anticipated the arrival of the XIX Corps, fresh from Louisiana.

Then, as he had done so often threw a massive wrench into Union plans. The Confederate commander gambled that Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Earlys Corps would do more for the Con- federate cause against Hunter than it could as part before, Lee of the force confronting Grant. Earlys command reached Lynchburg June 17-18, linking up with Confederate forces commanded by Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge as Hunters Federals advanced from the west. Earlys menacing forces caused Hunter to fall back toward Charleston, W.Va.which gave Early a clear road north to the Potomac River. On July 5-6, Early pushed his 14,000 men across the Potomac then turned east in the direction of Washington, D.C. He defeated a Federal force commanded by Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace near Frederick, Md., on July 9. The following day Grant, who had sent Maj. Gen. Horatio Wrights VI Corps from Petersburg and diverted a detachment from the XIX Corps to defend Washington, received a message from Lincoln politely requesting a wholesale rethinking of who was holding and who was skinning. Now what I think is that you should provide to retain your hold where you are certainly, and bring the rest with you personally, Lincoln declared, and make a vigorous effort to destroy the enemys force in this vicinity.

Grant resisted making as big a diversion as Lincoln sought, advising the president that he believed it would have a bad effect for me to leave here and that he already had sent from here a whole corps commanded by an excellent officer.One division of the Nineteenth Corps, six thousand strong is now on its way to Washington.

After a sharp engagement with the Federals at Fort Stevens on July 11-12, Early fell back and had the last of his command re-crossing the Potomac at Whites Ford on July 14.

Grant could be forgiven perhaps if he thought he had done enough. Wright prepared to return with his corps and the XIX Corps detachment to Petersburg, and Grant went ahead with operations north and south of the James River beginning July 26 with a mixed force of infantry and cavalry testing the Confederate defenses in the First Deep Bottom expedition. That was followed four days later with an attempt to break the Confederate lines east of Petersburg by digging a mine under them and then blowing a hole large enough to let an assaulting force seize Cemetery Hill, which would render the Southern defenses at Petersburg all but untenable.

Partly to avoid that political meddling in military operations contributed mightily to the armys problems in Virginia, Lincoln had planned to leave combat decisions to Grant. But when Early arrived on the outskirts of feeding a widely held perception Washingtonand then fell back to Virginia for all intents and purposes unmolestedLincoln wasnt convinced Grant clearly understood just how serious the situation was. The presidents frustration was further exacerbated when news arrived that Early had taken advantage of Wrights departure to inflict yet another embarrassing defeat on Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley at Second Kernstown on July 24. In particular, Lincoln wanted Grant to fix the command situation around the capital and in the Shenandoah Valley, with the obvious solution being to combine the four separate departments that had bungled their response to Early into a single command.

Two days after Second Kernstown, a member of Grants staff traveled to Washington to present Lincoln with a proposal to combine them into a single military department under Meades command. While Lincoln agreed with the idea of combining the departments, the president had had enough of dealing with Grant through intermediaries and telegraph messages. On July 26 and 28 Washington informed Grant that Lincoln intended to meet you at Fort-Monroe. Grant begged off on a July 30 meeting because of the pending mine operation, so the meeting was rescheduled for July 31.

By that time, however, events had further fouled the mood when the president arrived at Fort Monroe. While the mine did workspectacularlythe follow-up assault was badly botched. The failure at the Crater came on the heels of the bungled first assault on Petersburg and the fiasco at the Jerusalem Plank Road. As if this were not bad enough, the very same day the Crater debacle unfolded, elements from Earlys command suddenly appeared at Chambersburg, Pa., and, with their demand for a ransom of $500,000 in U.S. currency or $100,000 in gold unmet, put the town to the torch.

No record exists of what exactly was said between Lincoln and Grant when they met at Fort Monroe. Grant made no mention of the meeting in his memoirs at all. At the least, whatever thought Grant had that his original vision could remain intact about who would hold and who would skin was undoubtedly put to rest.

On the back of a telegram from Grant, Lincoln had scribbled Meade & Franklin/McClellan/Md. & Penna. Grant had proposed in preparing for the meeting that a unified command around Washington and in the Shenandoah Valley be placed under the direction of either Meade or Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin. For his part, Lincoln had been entertaining the possibility of bringing McClellan back in a military capacity. This had a significant political calculation behind it: McClellan had been approached to find out if hed be willing to accept a new command, thus eliminating the prospect of the Democratic Party nominating him for president. Though Grant later recalled hed been interested in bringing Little Mac back to active service earlier in 1864, Lincoln may have raised the subject at Fort Monroe as a thinly veiled reminder to Grant of the hazards of not managing affairs to the presidents satisfaction.

In any case, Lincoln undoubtedly made clear that he did not believe that any of these men possessed the qualities necessary for dealing with Early. To be sure, all three had demonstrated their ability to conduct defensive operations and were thus suited to a holding mission. But that was not what the president had in mind for the Valley. Lincoln wanted a skinner.

Finally, Grant proposed Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan for the job, a man who had repeatedly displayed the will and ability to skin the Confederates. Some in Washington had qualms about whether Sheridan was experienced enough for such an important command, but he had the qualities Lincoln wanted. He approved the appointment and Grants instructions for Sheridan to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also.

Until Early had been eliminated as a menace once and for all, Grant knew he could not hope to get Sheridan back to the task of defeating Lee. Thus, in front of Petersburg and Richmond, Grant would spend the late summer and fall of 1864 conducting relatively limitedthough by no means inconsequential or bloodlessoperations around the James.

If there was going to be a skinning in Virginia in the summer and fall of 1864, Grant recognized that it would be Sheridans job in the Valley. As history shows, Little Phil was fully up to it.

Historian Ethan S. Rafuse is a professor at the U.S. Army Command General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and is the author of Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865.

Originally published in the September 2014 issue of Americas Civil War. To subscribe, click here.
A nor' easter may have spared New York City and Philadelphia but it heavily hit other parts of the region Tuesday with heavy snow and high winds.

The storm has disrupted travel and daily life, with almost 8,700 US flights canceled between Monday and Wednesday while thousands of schools were closed at the same period. Connecticut banned highway travel for several hours Tuesday, and some major regional rail traffic was in total chaos. At least three weather-caused deaths were reported.

According to Fox 2 Now, a blizzard warning was issued for parts of Pennsylvania, upstate New York and many parts of New England. Winter storm warnings and watches have been lifted over a region covering from Ohio and West Virginia into Maine.

"Local and state authorities warned residents to be prepared and to avoid unnecessary travel as winds in some coastal areas could hit 50 mph to 60 mph, reducing visibility to zero. More than 20 inches of snow have been confirmed in parts of upstate New York, and similar amounts could drop in northeastern Pennsylvania and parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, as the storm moved north into New England, weather models showed." The report added.

Commuter buses in Pennsylvania and New York canceled service in advance of the storm. Along the New Jersey coast, strong winds can be seen pushed ocean water into neighborhoods, resulting in coastal flooding and beach erosion.

However, parts of southern New Jersey saw as little as 2.3 inches of snow. As much as 20 inches was recorded in the northwestern part. The storm had subsided enough for Gov. Chris Christie to lift New Jersey's state of emergency.

The governor said the storm has been "a tale of three storms," calling out its impact on different regions of the state. Parts of southern New Jersey saw as little as 2.3 inches of snow. As much as 20 inches was recorded in the northwestern part.

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Warner Bros. is said to be considering "The Matrix" reboot, however, it is in the early stages of developing a rebooted version. It is also being said that Michael B. Jordan could be signed in to play the lead.

"The Matrix" reboot might become a reality in future as the original producer of the 1999 classic has approached Warner Bros. with the idea of a remake. It is said that Warner Bros. is in the early stages of talks with Zak Penn. For those who do not know, Penn has been associated with some well-known superhero movies and has provided story assistance to other established writers for hit movies like "The Avengers," "Elektra," and "X-Men: The Last Stand."

Though Penn has not been finalized for "The Matrix" reboot, it is said that his chances of getting roped in are pretty high. Also, producer Joel Silver (behind the original) has got in touch with Warner Bros. However, the latter is wary of his high-spending and budget excesses. His relationship with Wachowskis, the creators of "The Matrix" is also a cause for concern.

As of now, the Wachowskis are not involved with the "The Matrix" reboot but it is said that Warner Bros. will try to seek their approval before they go ahead with this project. According to Deadline, Warner Bros. is said to be creating a writers' room of scribes to come up with the best solution to re-launch the classic franchise.

It may be mentioned here that the original that released in 1999 was a huge hit, earned a total of $463 million while the sequel "The Matrix Reloaded" even bettered the record with a total of $742 million. However, the finale that arrived in 2003 could only manage $427.3 million.

In light of all these facts, it would be interesting to watch how "The Matrix" reboots finally takes a shape and who gets to helm the movie.

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Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's Foreign Minister, has warned Europe is headed for wars of religion. He stated that Dutch politicians are taking the continent to a cliff. The statement came amid a dispute between Turkey and Netherlands. Cavusoglu was speaking at a rally in Antalya, he gave his assessment of the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands.

The elections were a failure for the politician Geert Wilders, after a campaign for the banning of the Koran and closure of mosques. Russia Today reports that instead of rejoicing that Wilders had been defeated by Mark Rutte, Cavusoglu said there is no difference between the mindsets of Wilders and social democrats. Cavusoglu added: They all have the same mindset... that mindset is taking Europe to the cliff. Soon wars of religion may and will start in Europe.

The comments come amid a fight between the Netherlands and Turkey. Ankara suspended high-level relations with the Netherlands, after it banned ministers from addressing Turks at a rally in Rotterdam. This problem between both countries has been growing.

Origin of the feud

After the ban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Netherlands of acting like Nazi remnants. He also accused the Netherlands of state terrorism and having a "rotten" character. The Turkish President stated the Dutch were responsible for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, allowing Bosnian Serb forces to kill up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

Prior to Turkey imposing diplomatic sanctions on the Netherlands, Rutte warned Turkey that his country would never negotiate under threats. Rutte stated that he would try to de-escalate the row, but stressed that it takes two to tango. Erdogan is lobbying for 5.5 million expatriate Turks to favour him in an upcoming referendum that would give him new powers to issue decrees, declare emergency rule, appoint state officials and ministers, and dissolve parliament.

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An air attack on mosque kills 42 people and others have been injured in a rebel-held village in Aleppo, Syria. The air raid is said to have taken place in al-Jineh, Aleppo province. The mosque was packed with worshippers for evening prayers, most of those killed were civilians. Many people have been killed in Syria because of the war the last years.

The village is located in one of the most important rebel-held regions of Syria. The BBC reports that it is not clear who was behind the attack, but Syrian and Russian war planes fly in the region. US war planes also target jihadist rebels in that area.

The attack came just a day after no less than 31 people were killed in a suicide bombing at the main court complex in the Syrian capital, Damascus. This bombing was on the sixth anniversary of the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. There are many factions taking part in the war in Syria.

The war has been devastating

Since the war in Syria began, more than 320,000 people have been killed and 11 million have been displaced according to activists. This has created a humanitarian crisis, there are millions of Syrian refugees. A high percentage of them have gone to Europe. There is a huge economic damage and Syria faces dramatic living conditions these days. Some western politicians dislike the fact that many Syrian refugees have moved to Europe and US.

Russia has sided with the Syrian government, both countries cooperate in the fight against the rebels. Many countries have involved in the war and they give economic and military support to several factions. Russia has attacked the areas in the hands of the rebels. This is possible that the war in Syria could last much longer and it will cause much more pain.

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The US intelligence community and the Defense Department are anticipating that North Korea will begin a new round of missile and nuclear tests. US officials are watching the regime's programs, there are growing indicators of concerning activity inside North Korea. US spy satellites are observing the activities of North Korea.

There is intelligence indicating the communist regime is moving equipment to certain areas, believing the US cannot track them. CNN reports that General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a statement after speaking to his South Korean counterpart, General Sun Jin Lee. Dunford stated both recognized North Korea could conduct provocative actions during US-South Korean military exercises or during upcoming celebrations in the communist country.

North Korea has moved some launch equipment that is associated with an intercontinental ballistic missile launch. The equipment has been observed near parade grounds, but the concern is it could quickly become part of an actual launch. The US does not believe a North Korean ICBM could currently reach the US, but any launch of a missile with that potential range would be very provocative.

US satellites have watched North Korea

At the same time, there is movement of equipment in other areas associated with the potential of mobile launchers firing solid-fueled medium-range missiles. The North Korean regime recently fired one of those missiles, renewing concerns that US satellites have a limited ability to track fast-moving mobile launchers. US spy satellites have watched a test site for several weeks and seen signs of digging and activity at tunnel entrances.

A website recently posted satellite imagery showing activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The images indicate the area is ready for an underground test. This comes as the Trump administration is reviewing if there are new options for dealing with North Korea. US military commanders have stated any pre-emptive strikes by the US would result in a North Korean attack against Seoul, leading to disastrous consequences.

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There are different types of punishments for rapists, some countries have very drastic laws. In China, a rapist is sentenced to death penalty or even castration. Many victims of rape remain silent in China, because they feel ashamed.

A rapist is sentenced to be shot in North Korea, while his victim can join the firing squad. Pravda reports that in many Muslim countries raped women are punished. According to the law, if a woman is raped, she has to marry the man who raped her in order to keep her honour.

In Russia, a person convicted of rape can go to jail for up to 30 years. In Egypt, they practice a strange prevention of crimes, convicts get publicly hanged. In the Netherlands, rapists can be jailed from four to fifteen years.

Punishments in other countries

In Iran, a rapist is sentenced to death by shooting or hanging. If a convict avoids death penalty, he will be sentenced to torture or life in prison. In Saudi Arabia, a rapist will be shot immediately after the trial. Rapists are beheaded in public, then, the body and the head are stitched together. Rapists can also be sentenced to death by stoning. In Israel, a rapist can go to prison from four to sixteen years. In the United Arab Emirates, a rapist is executed during seven days after sentencing.

Almost 1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Statistics show that 55% of rape victimizations occur at or near the victim's home, and 12% occur at or near the home of a friend, relative, or acquaintance. There is an average of 293,066 victims ages 12 or older of rape each year in the US. About 1.5% of all men have been raped, 47% of bisexual men have experienced unwanted sexual contact. About 60% of child sexual abuses are perpetrated by someone the victim knows outside the family, and 30% are assaulted by family members.

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Russia will improve its weapons, it will launch eighth-generation aircraft to challenge NATO. Specialists of the United Aircraft Corporation are ready to start designing it. The designers want to to create a new multipurpose combat aviation system with advanced developed technical intelligence. Russia and the West are competing for supremacy.

The United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) will establish a group of designers and technologists to create a complex fighter aircraft against NATO. Pravda reports the scientists will be able to elaborate an algorithm for the creation of fighter aircraft of the 9th, 10th and next generations. UAC specialists intend to design manned and unmanned models.

They will be light and medium class and most likely single-engine aircraft. The manned fighter will take part in battles in the company of unmanned aircraft. Unmanned fighters will set the course, conduct reconnaissance activities and protect the manned aircraft.

More details about the aircraft

The unmanned aircraft will conduct tactical air reconnaissance, attacks in dangerous environments with a high intensity of threats. It will bring changes in the flight program of an unmanned vehicle, redirecting it to new targets. Additional protection will be provided by electronic warfare of a new level. Piloted and unmanned fighters will operate in the company of virtual simulators to make the destruction of the real squad as highly problematic as possible.

The new Russian aircraft of the 8th generation will carry missile-gun arms. Missiles will be inside and outside the aircraft. The designers also want to give artificial intellect of Russian origin to the new aircraft. Equipped with hypersonic engines, the fighter jets will reach near-earth orbits, perform combat missions there and come back to Earth.

The new Russian planes will resemble space fighters from Star Wars. The new aircraft will be created by different design bureaus at the same time. This complex fighter will not be called either MiG or Su, it will have its own original name. It will be a challenge for NATO.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is visiting President Donald Trump, they will talk about many topics. Nato, trade and Ukraine are very important issues on the agenda. Trump has called Merkel's migration policy catastrophic.

There was a warm reception as Merkel arrived, Trump said they had been discussing many issues. When Time magazine chose Merkel as its person of the year in 2015 instead of him, Trump said she was ruining Germany. The BBC reports that Trump also has German ancestry.

Merkel has criticised Trump's controversial travel ban against citizens of several Muslim countries. She explained the Geneva Convention obliges signatories, which includes US, to take in refugees of war. Merkel and Trump are two leaders with different styles.

They will talk about key issues

Angela Merkel has to build a relationship with Trump without appearing to sacrifice her values. This first meeting comes as Merkel prepares for an election battle later in the year. During his presidential campaign, Trump threatened higher taxes for countries like Germany that have a trade surplus over America. Merkel is accompanied by top executives from German companies like Siemens, Schaeffler and car giant BMW.

Merkel stated BMW's plant in the US exported more cars than GM and Ford together from the United States. Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries stated Germany could file a suit against any increase in import duties at the World Trade Organization (WTO). She stated that there are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements you're not allowed to take more than 2.5% taxes on imports of cars. We have to add that Trump has suggested a 35% levy.

Nato is also on the agenda, Trump has insisted that members have to pay their fair share. Only four nations reach the benchmark of spending 2% of GDP on defence, Germany is not one of them. The meeting will cover issues involving Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Middle East peace process.

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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
Flag selection is one of the most critical decision you have to make when building a new hotel or rebranding, outside of location and financing. It can have sweeping impacts on just about every operation, and yet there are few guides available, apart from speaking to each firm's sales folks and eliminating those brands in immediate geographic conflict.

Accordingly, I've arranged a panel discussion with four individuals representing a broad range of experience in flag selection. Below their brief profiles are eight questions I posed to them during the confab.

Rupesh Patel ([email protected]), CEO of 3Hospitality. Rupesh is an owner/operator of several Dayton Beach properties.

Michael Pleninger ([email protected]), Chairman of Newport Hospitality Group. Michael's team manages over 40 branded properties primarily in the Mid-Atlantic United States.

Vikram Sood ([email protected]), Principal of Nupala Hospitality Development. Vikram manages critical hospitality projects for owners/operators, primarily in Southern California.

Anil Taneja ([email protected]), President of Palm Holdings Group. With more properties under development, Anil currently owns and manages numerous hotels in Canada, Florida and the United Kingdom.

What are the most important elements in the selection of a brand?

Pleninger: We are strong believers in brands. Rarely can an independent hotel's performance not be enhanced by a brand affiliation. The increased value results not just from higher RevPAR during the time of ownership, but also, and perhaps more importantly, a higher profit multiple upon sale.

The variance between brands is significant. This improvement is the result of enhanced national marketing, brand loyalty and better yield management. In terms of higher sales multiples, certain brands appeal to a broader audience of potential buyers, thus improving the overall marketing viability in a sale and improving any sale proceeds.

In terms of the expense of a brand, an owner must first factor in all the franchise fees  royalties, marketing, reservations, loyalty programs, OTA commission rates and others. These fees can be rather significant in many cases, but they may really only be the tip of the iceberg.

The real cost of adopting a franchise is the cost of becoming and remaining brand compliant. These costs range from significant capital expenditures to alter the building itself to ongoing operating costs to support differing amenity requirements. As a whole, these increased costs are generally a good investment as they serve to maintain the quality of the guest experience and improve guest loyalty.

Sood: To echo Mike's thoughts about financing, I start by with overall strategic thinking regarding the positioning of the hotel in terms of luxury, upscale, limited service and so forth. Look for proven results in delivering profit and qualitative objectives in the designated market. Understand what kind of support is provided, such as sales, e-commerce input, public relations, technology platform, human resources and training.

Next, look at the owner relations team. Are they effective in communicating with ownership through regular reporting, owners' events and so on? How do they respond to owner grievances? How responsive are they to resolving issues?

From a market standpoint, will the flag provide a competitive advantage based upon demand for that flag? Is the market saturated in that segment? This is critical to determine. And along that line of thinking, can you get some sort of territory protection agreement?

Once you've addressed those questions, then look at financial requirements. What kind of property improvement plan (PIP) is required if the hotel is a takeover or in the midst of a renovation? In other words, what are the costs to 'play'? Some flags are just not worth the money after you add up franchise, marketing and purchasing fees.

When making a selection, what process do you undertake?

Patel: There are dozens of key elements to decide from when selection the right brand to marketing and selling your property. Selecting the proper flag that fits your location, property and rates are probably most important. One of the biggest mistakes an owner can make is rushing into signing an agreement without learning how they plan to improve the property and business, whether the flag will help with setup, and all related costs (which in itself can be a hefty PIP).

Taneja: Here is our topline list. First comes brand representation in a specific area. Next is market demographics  in other words, is that brand stronger in leisure or in corporate? We then look to see if the brands have representation with major demand generators as well as if such generators exist  for instance, major local employers. Lastly, costs to operate brands vary, such as the spread in costs between a Best Western when compared to a Holiday Inn Express.

Pleninger: When we are choosing a brand for a hotel, we consider three primary points  market demand, existing brand penetration in a market and brand cost. In terms of demand demographics, we want to get a thorough understanding of the current guest demand and how that aligns with guestroom supply. When we look at a market, we look at the existing brands to determine if a suitable brand option exists. We are looking to see if one brand is underrepresented in the mix.

We are also very mindful of the broad impact of loyalty programs being spread over too many hotel rooms. Finally, we breakdown our brand options in terms of operating cost and development or conversion cost. We analyze the anticipated increase in operating cost against any improvement in RevPAR.

Sood: I start with interviewing ownership. Do they have a penchant for one particular flag over another? Next, look at the market. Which flag is underrepresented? Reach out to various brands and have them view the property, and then make a formal presentation. Ask them for a modified strategic plan to see if they have the right mindset and skills to deliver the result.

Next, interview all the key stakeholders, including operations, sales and marketing, technology, brand performance teams and so forth. Are they skilled enough to support the property once the agreement is signed? Don't forget to ask for references from other ownership groups and find owners that may not be on their list to provide further insight.

How important is local support, such as having a regional representative?

Patel: Many hoteliers will consider conducting a feasibility study to determine the economic value. If a brand you are considering does not have local support, simply ask yourself, why?

Sood: It depends on the destination. In locations where one has to work hard to create demand, then it is vital as the brand team has to understand the destination and its key demand drivers. In some cases, it is important to have boots on the ground in the primary feeder markets for your property in order to determine if those conditions exist.

Pleninger: On the whole, local support is not terribly important to us as we have a very deep operating bench. As a successful hotel management company, we have a highly experienced team of hospitality professionals supporting our hotels. We have dedicated teams in operations management, revenue management, sales and marketing, renovations, purchasing, and human resources.

Are franchisee requirements negotiable and what areas are the most negotiable?

Taneja: Yes, they sure are! If we are doing a portfolio deal, we are able to secure better rates or key locations. We find that some brands are more flexible than others. The smaller the brand, the more flexible it is. All items can be negotiated, and usually we see more flexibility on length of contract than anything else.

Pleninger: While everything in life is negotiable, we have found that brands are most amenable when the negotiated topics are minimized. Additionally, the success of a negotiation is dependent on the quality of the proposed location. Brands are also willing to negotiate around the initial fee structure to help a developer defray initial ramp-up costs. My advice is to make a short list of critical points then present them in terms of the impact to the guest experience or deal viability.

Sood: In my mind all points are negotiable if your property is of particular interest to the brand or is an iconic building. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to get the big brands such as Marriott or Hilton to bend on their fees. They have too much influence and, in good economic times, are turning down more than they are accepting. In some cases, the marketing fee can be lowered as can fees associated with participation in some of their brand-wide marketing programs. I have also seen fees frozen for the first four or five years by a brand in an effort to secure a management contract. However, be forewarned that early termination fees are difficult to get out of with the big brands.

Are there any new brands that come to mind that represent especially lucrative opportunities for those looking to expand their portfolios?

Pleninger: Every franchise company is looking to expand its brand offering. For new builds, we are attracted to DoubleTree, Home2 and Tru as well as the new generations of Fairfield Inn & Suites and TownePlace Suites. These five brands are sponsored by Hilton and Marriott respectively, both offering strong brand development teams and versatile demand characteristics that will allow them to succeed in many markets. Of note, it will be important to see what brand opportunities come out of the Marriott acquisition of Starwood.

Sood: I am keeping a keen eye on Kimpton 2.0. With the IHG engine behind them, they are developing some very interesting hotels in key markets. Next would be Two Roads Hospitality, a merger between Commune and Destination Hotels. Once the details are sorted out, this will be a very compelling option. Last comes Auberge Resorts. They have built a world-class team and are going to be significant players in the future.

How much support can you expect from a franchisor insofar as hiring, training, build, FF&E and so on?

Patel: Franchisors are known to steer away from actually helping you run the 'operations' itself. However, nearly all brands have a construction and opening services team that will help open and guide you in the right direction.

Taneja: Select-service brands such as Hampton and Holiday Inn Express provide a lot more support to owners than when you go up a tier. They tend to deal with private owners as well as regional hotel companies and have geared themselves up to support just that. Marriott is extremely helpful with FF&E as you purchase directly through their own procurement department. All brands provide guest-facing training as well as general manager training. However, it is up to each manager to keep the training updated and for all necessary follow-up.

Sood: For me, it really depends on the franchisor. They will typically provide very good support in terms of design and construction input as well as support during the development phase. They may also provide valuable guidance on the physical layout, soft goods, technology, and occasionally public area design and space planning. Some do well with FF&E procurement because of their purchasing power, but this is typically an owner decision.

My experience on the hiring and training side has varied, though. Some have been great at sourcing senior leaders for their properties while others have really struggled. As for training, the big brands do a good job with the basics of fire/life safety, cyber-security, food safety and a general orientation with the hourly staff. But it is really up to the property general manager to provide a deep dive into developing the employee culture and operationalizing the brand.

Pleninger: You have to think broader for these sorts of questions. Once selected, a good brand will act as your partner  good and bad. They will support your development process with thorough design reviews, FF&E purchasing assistance and detailed opening plans. As you open, they will assess your initial marketing plans and help with rate strategies to accelerate the ramp-up process.

Some franchisors even provide opening training assistance, usually confined to reservation systems and franchise standards. In the event that the franchisor feels that the developer is not equipped to manage the hotel, they will recommend that a professional team  either brand-affiliated or independent  be hired for management.

Is the franchise business competitive? As in, can you play one franchisor off against another?

Sood: This can be done at times when one contract is ending and the owner is looking at other option. It does not pay to have a combative relationship with your brand unless they are in violation of their agreement or are falling short of the performance measures that were laid out. There is a proper way to document any shortfalls and escalate the issues to the top of the food chain. In the independent space, this may happen more often as the franchise fees are often more flexible if an owner is exploring a soft brand or looking for a regional management company that will sometimes back off their fees.

Pleninger: While the market is certainly competitive, the top brands know their value to the ecosystem. Additionally, this is a small enough industry that if you are seen as being manipulative, your reputation and ability to complete deals will inevitably suffer. Rather than playing brands off each other, franchisees are probably better in the long-term by asking for marketing assistance and reasonable concessions based on economic or guest situations.

Taneja: Just to add one more thought, now that Marriott bought Starwood, this particular aspect is going to get a little more difficult to pin down. Generally, in the lower-tier brands, you are able to do so. However, we try to look at which brand would fit the hotel better versus trying to get the best deal by playing them all off each other.

Does a franchise ever get tired?

Sood: This happens quite often. There are many case studies (IHG-Holiday Inn, Hilton and Marriott already come to mind) showing that certain segments within these brands became stale as travel trends changed and client preferences evolved. This may have pushed the formation of Curio, Autograph Collection, Tru and other new soft brands or lifestyle brands. Some may argue that the Starwood merger was driven by Marriott wanting access to a fresh family of brands.

Patel: Absolutely, there are more than a handful of flags that haven't moved forward with the rest of the industry insofar as marketing, trends and standards. These brands are known to take in any and every property under the sun. I think this is when a brand gets tired. Reinvention is hard when a brand gets old and worn out.

Taneja: Also in agreement! We saw that with Howard Johnson and many other brands out there today. Brands try to lift the customer perception of those weaker brands, but owners are quite often resistant when they don't make an acceptable ROI. This ultimately becomes a double-edged sword.

(Article by Larry Mogelonsky, published in Today's Hotelier on December 1, 2016)

Larry Mogelonsky

Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

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GAINESVILLE, FLA.  Concord Hospitality, operator of the AC Hotel by Marriott Gainesville, today announced that the project has reached a major construction milestone. Roughly twelve months after construction began, hotel development has reached the 10th floor, with a grand opening scheduled for fall 2017.

"AC by Marriott Gainesville's proximity to the University of Florida, refined design and emphasis on technology will appeal to both business travelers and visitors of the university," said Grant Sabroff, SVP of Business Development at Concord. "The AC Lounge will feature a locally-inspired food and beverage experience that will encourage daytime networking and nighttime relaxation for guests and locals alike."

The 144-room AC Hotel, located at the main crossroad through Gainesville, bounded by W. University Ave., NW 3rd Ave., NW 13th St. and NW 14th St., is directly across from the University of Florida. The hotel is an integral component of The Standard at Gainesville, a mixed-use project that includes luxury student housing, structured and on-site parking, and street-level retail including Chick-fil-A, Target Express and other restaurants.

"Complete with high-quality accommodations provided by the AC Hotel, The Standard at Gainesville mixed-use development will be an incredible venue for students, locals and visitors," said Andrew Young, EVP of Development at Landmark Properties. "We're excited to work alongside Concord in creating an even more vibrant mixed-use community in downtown Gainesville."

The ten-story hotel will have similar features and upscale, European feel as other properties under the AC flag. Amenities will include the AC lounge, AC Library and AC breakfast, featuring a European-inspired breakfast with artisan meats, cheeses, other healthy items and juices. There will be a roof top amenity with a state-of-the-art fitness center; outdoor pool and deck; three meeting rooms for business and social events; and a business center.

About Landmark Properties Based in Athens, Ga., Landmark Properties is a fully integrated real estate firm specializing in the investment, development, construction and management of high-quality student housing communities across the country. With more than$1 billion of student housing under construction and more than $2 billion in additional pipeline projects, Landmark has been ranked the top developer of student housing in the nation for multiple years. From pioneering "The Retreat" student cottage concept to creating and defining the market for luxury infill housing with its "Standard" brand, Landmark has been at the forefront of the student housing industry since its inception more than 10 years ago. With a deep understanding of its markets, a commitment to quality and a strong track record of success, Landmark is responsible for some of the premier student housing communities in the nation.

About Concord Hospitality Enterprises Company

As an award-winning hotel development, ownership and management company, Concord Hospitality Enterprises Company has spent the last three decades partnering with owners and its investors on more than $1 billion in premium branded properties across the United States and Canada. As an operator, both for third party owners and partners, Concord Hospitality instills value from the ground up, developing and managing with a sustainable viewpoint, a focus on quality and a hands-on involvement to ensure long-term profitability. Learn more at concordhotels.com.

Alex Ellis

919-277-1188

Concord
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Actor Aziz Ansari has just announced on his social media pages that season two of the Emmy award-winning Netflix original series 'Master of None' will premiere exclusively on Netflix on 12 May.

In season two, after traveling abroad, Dev (Aziz Ansari) returns to New York to take on challenges in his personal and family life, a new career opportunity, and a complex, developing relationship with someone very meaningful to him.

Master of None was created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang who also serve as executive producers along with Michael Schur, Dave Becky, David Miner and Igor Srubshchik. Master of None is a Universal Television production for Netflix.



For more information, follow the Master of None social pages:

https://www.facebook.com/MasterofNone/

https://twitter.com/masterofnone

https://www.instagram.com/masterofnone/
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The cost of federal flood insurance will likely rise for thousands of Houston-area homeowners after Congress hits its September deadline to renew and reform the deeply troubled program.

The National Flood Insurance Program was created because private insurers couldn't bear the risk of catastrophic loss, but the program is $24.6 billion in debt and struggling to remain solvent. It covers more than 300,000 homes in Harris and Galveston counties.

"The program offers rates that do not fully reflect the risk of flooding." the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a report last month.

Ed Schreiber, Houston region president for Bancorp South GEM Insurance Services, which sells federal flood policies, says long-delayed changes have to come soon. "We have a product whose pricing hasn't been able to support the losses," he said.

Congress tried to fix the problem in 2012, but the program lapsed for a month amid the effort, stalling home sales in flood-prone areas. The reforms that finally passed caused some rates to soar, so they were swiftly repealed. Now, a five-year extension is set to expire this fall, demanding fresh action. No one can say exactly what measures lawmakers will take, but one thing seems probable: rates will rise, especially in flood-prone places.

Christian Rumscheidt, like many Houstonians who live in low-lying areas, knows how necessary it is to carry flood insurance.

More Information By the numbers NFIP policies in force nationwide: 5.01 million

In Texas: 606,052

In Harris County: 254,780 Total NFIP coverage nationwide: $1.2 trillion

In Texas: $163.5 billion

In Harris County: $73.3 billion Total NFIP claims paid nationwide: $56.7 billion

In Texas: $6.8 billion

In Harris County: $3.05 billion See More Collapse

When water started rising on Tax Day 2016, he bolted from his front door and started swimming, nine doors down El Miranda Drive to the house he inherited from his father. There, boxes of watercolors his late grandmother had painted rested on the floor as floodwater pressed on the front door.

RELATED: The trouble with living in a swamp

He threw a brick through a window, climbed in and salvaged every painting but one. In both houses, about 18 inches of water claimed almost everything else: Furniture, carpet, new wood floors, a leaf blower and a washing machine, baseboards, insulation, Sheetrock, and even the wood inside the walls.

He avoided financial ruin because he paid $446 annually for an NFIP policy on each of his houses. After the flood, he claimed $110,000 for one and $270,000 for the other.

He pays that relatively low rate because, like 60 percent of the homes that flooded that day, Rumscheidt's houses sit outside a 100-year floodplain, the low-lying space beside waterways most prone to flooding. Rumscheidt's homes overlook Horse Pen Creek, and the floodplain ends in his back yard, within feet of his house, according to current maps.

Homes outside a floodplain can pay about $450 for full coverage, getting $250,000 for structural damage and $100,000 for contents, said Ruth Escamilla, a sales executive at Bancorp South GEM in Houston.

A Harris County homeowner living inside a 100-year floodplain without certain mitigation measures - a raised foundation, for example - can pay about $3,200 per year for flood insurance, with a $2,000 deductible, while someone living near the coast in Galveston can pay up to $8,000.

"The rates are only going to get worse as time goes on," she said. "They're taking away more of the subsidies, so that we're going to be more and more responsible for the floods."

Between 2008 and 2012, the federal program survived a series of 17 short-term Congressional renewals that left policy unchanged. Once in 2010, inaction allowed the program to lapse for 33 days. The National Association of Realtors calculated that, in turn, caused the delay or cancellation of about 1,420 home sales per day for that period. A repeat of that lapse is the biggest immediate concern for Houston.

"The inability to obtain flood insurance freezes this entire marketplace," said Ed Wolff, co-chair of governmental affairs advisory group for the Houston Association of Realtors.

In 2012, lawmakers eventually passed a five-year extension and reform with an act that phased out subsidies for some high-risk homes, which it said paid "artificially low rates." Some homeowners in Florida, in particular, saw their rates projected to rise nearly tenfold. Groups protested, and virtually all key provisions of the 2012 reform were repealed two years later.

"They've been punting this ball down the street," said Mark Hanna, spokesman for the Insurance Council of Texas. "Eventually, they've got to come up with some type of remedy."

Meanwhile, flood-related claim costs have surged. All but two of the 15 most expensive events for the flood insurance program have occurred since 2000. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 tops the list at $16.3 billion, followed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, $8.4 billion; Hurricane Ike in 2008, $2.7 billion; and Louisiana floods of 2016, $2.1 billion.

Torrential rains that swamped Houston and other parts of Texas in 2015 and 2016 take spots 14 and 15, respectively.

There's little to suggest the rising costs of these floods will abate.

RELATED: Houston rains are getting worse, state climatologist says

One priority to reform flood insurance is to deal with properties that flood repeatedly.

Harris County has 9,700 "repetitive loss" properties, defined as property for which two or more flood insurance claims of more than $1,000 have been filed within 10 years.

There are another 1,965 "severe repetitive loss" properties, defined as a property that has claimed more than $5,000 dollars of flood insurance on at least four separate occasions, or has filed at least two claims that amount to more than the structure's worth.

Across the state, "a small percentage of structures are responsible for a large percentage of claims," Texas Floodplain Management Association executive director Roy Sedwick said.

Michael Bolton bought a home in Northwest Harris County's Hearthstone neighborhood in 1991. Though the house was not in the 100-year floodplain, he bought flood insurance when he noticed water creeping higher in the street with each major rain.

After his home took eight inches of water during a 2008 storm, flood insurance paid him $85,664.

In 2009, it was 18 inches and $55,055. In 2016, 25 inches and $65,000. By that third time, Bolton had reduced his coverage because of skyrocketing premiums.

Bolton's home, worth $206,000, has incurred about $205,720 worth of flood-related repair costs.

"People like me should be bought out," he said.

RELATED: How to fix the Houston flooding

FEMA has funded buyouts of more than 2,000 Harris County properties since 1985, primarily targeting homes in the 100-year floodplain, where about 105,000 remain. Bolton's house is not one of them, according to current maps.

Besides buyouts, FEMA may address repetitive loss properties by funding improvements, such as raising foundations, that reduce flood risk. In Harris County, 1,860 repetitive loss properties have undergone some sort of risk mitigation, along with more than 900 severe repetitive loss properties. FEMA spent $199 million on such improvements nationwide in 2016, a small expenditure compared with $3.1 billion in flood repair costs that year.

Spending more on risk reduction means either finding new funds or cutting expenditures on claims. But FEMA is facing an 11 percent cut in the president's 2017 budget, which proposed "eliminating the discretionary spending appropriation for the NFIP's Flood Hazard Mitigation Program" in order to"ensure that the cost of government services is not subsidized by taxpayers who do not directly benefit from those programs."

The most likely outcome of flood insurance reform will be increased privatization of the program to relieve FEMA's burden of risk.

In a letter to flood-weary constituents last week, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Kingwood, wrote that Congressional committees are beginning work on flood insurance renewal, and that "preliminary plans allow private insurers greater and easier access to the marketplace."

"To remain financially viable, the flood insurance program must be restructured," he noted.

RELATED: Exasperation overflows at flooding round table

Virtually all reform proposals issued by industry groups call for increasing privatization of flood insurance, but that won't be cheap. The federal program was created precisely because private insurers couldn't bear the risk of catastrophic loss.

A small number of private insurers have begun offering their own insurance in recent years, mostly for extremely high-value properties.

"They're going to make to make it somewhat attractive for the industry to want to take part in this program," said Hanna of the state insurance council.

One way to do that, he said, would be to allow insurers to "charge whatever rates they felt necessary, knowing that flooding would be very likely."

SmarterSafer, a coalition of housing and insurance groups, is lobbying Congress to adopt a more "risk based" pricing system, by which homes are re-evaluated for flood risk and assessed new premium rates accordingly.

"There should be a phase in," SmarterSafer spokeswoman Jenn Fogel-Bublick said. "People should not be hit with an immediate increase that would displace them."

The group also advocated rate subsidies for low-income homeowners in high-risk areas.

FEMA acknowledged in a statement that private carriers offer a viable alternative to the federal program. Still, without a renewal of the program this year, the agency noted it would stop selling and renewing policies for millions of properties nationwide.

That must not be allowed to happen, NFIP director Roy Wright told the U.S. Senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs on Tuesday.

"The stability of the real estate and mortgage markets depend on this," he said.
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Saudi Arabia-based Bahri, a logistics and transportation company, officially opened its Houston office Thursday as the region prepares for an uptick in drilling activity that should rejuvenate the amount of oil field equipment that crosses the Port of Houston's docks.

In industry terms, such equipment is called breakbulk cargo. These are large items that must be transported individually, such as windmill blades, instead of in containers. These types of shipments have faltered amid the drop in oil prices. Steel for oil field equipment, for instance, was down 39 percent last year, according to the Greater Houston Port Bureau's analysis of Census Bureau data.

"Whenever you see people running from any business, I think it's the time to enter," Bahri CEO Ibrahim Abdulrahman Al-Omar told the Chronicle.

Houston remains the country's largest port in terms of breakbulk cargo, and Al-Omar said he sees value in a local office to expand its breakbulk business.

Capt. Bill Diehl, president of the Port Bureau, agreed.

"If you're going to be in the breakbulk market, you've got to be able to service Houston," Diehl said.

And stabilizing oil prices should help the local market. Diehl expects breakbulk coming through Houston to continue improving this year. He's heard that energy companies are beginning to call manufacturers and ask about pricing for future contracts.

"We may even approach 2014 peak levels, but that remains to be seen in terms of what goes on with oil prices and energy prices in general this year," said Robert Kramp, director of research and analysis for the Texas and Oklahoma region of CBRE.

Bahri Logistics, a subsidiary of Bahri, opened its first U.S. office in Baltimore in 1992. Its main focus was shipping containers and roll-on/roll-off cargo, but the company further expanded into breakbulk four years ago with new vessels capable of carrying cargo that weighs up to 220 metric tons.

The company found that a lot of its customers had requirements or demands from the Houston and Gulf region. Bahri's new office in the Energy Corridor employs eight people but is likely to expand as Bahri grows its local footprint.

'Major milestones'

"We think this is one of the major milestones for Bahri to open in Houston," Al-Omar said.

And while the office is new, Bahri ships have called on the Port of Houston for more than 30 years. It currently has four vessels that, in a rotation, visit every 22 days. These vessels are capable of carrying breakbulk, roll-on/roll-off and container cargo, and they connect Houston to Saudi Arabia as well as to major ports in the Gulf, Indian Subcontinent and Mediterranean Sea.

The new office will mainly assist companies with exporting cargo for large construction projects to the Middle East. On the import side, it will help customers bring in project materials needed to build LNG and petrochemical facilities in the Houston area. Bahri can put such cargo on its four vessels that call on Houston, or it can charter other ships and planes.

"Looking forward, we think it's the right time actually to invest here in Houston and to have a very strong presence preparing for the boom that will come in the future," Al-Omar said.

Royal decree

The Saudi Arabian company was created by royal decree in 1978 with 22 percent owned by the Public Investment Fund of the Saudi government, 20 percent owned by Saudi Aramco Development Co. and the remainder owned by Saudi Nationals.

Bahri currently has a global fleet of 84 vessels, including 37 Very Large Crude Carriers, 36 chemical/product tankers, six multipurpose vessels and five dry-bulk carriers. It has 10 additional Very Large Crude Carriers on order and expects those to be delivered this year or next year.

It's also the sole transporter of the delivered sales of Saudi Aramco and the Ministry of Defense of Saudi Arabia.

After introducing its Bahri Logistics business in Houston, the company hopes to bring its Bahri Chemicals business later this year to capitalize on the region's petrochemical boom.

Kramp, with CBRE, said Bahri isn't alone in opening a Houston office. More foreign firms have been looking into Houston locations to take advantage of the petrochemical boom.

Tariff hedge?

These companies may also be seeking to hedge against potential tariffs that could come from President Donald Trump's administration, Kramp said.

Later down the road, Al-Omar said, Bahri could bring its oil division here, too.

"We see Houston as a good hub, and we are here for the long term," he said.
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President Donald Trump's first budget blueprint, released Thursday, would hit Texas' state and local finances hard if enacted as proposed, cutting deeply into housing and environmental programs as well as scientific and medical research that supports the state's health care and energy industries.

The proposal is likely to be changed dramatically by Congress, but it still drew outrage from Democratic leaders, city officials, and community advocates - and muted reactions from Republicans, who are walking a fine line between constituents and the White House.

"It is important to keep in mind that the President's budget proposals are just the beginning of the negotiation process with Congress," said Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican representing a district between Houston and Austin. Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn did not return requests for comment.

Overall, Trump's $1.15 trillion budget strips $54 billion from discretionary programs - excluding entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, which constitute nearly three quarters of federal spending - and adds it to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Details to come

Texas' state government receives nearly one-third of its funding from Washington - $68 billion in the 2016-2017 biennium. The majority of that money goes into health care, which would be little affected by Trump's budget.

The replacement that Republicans have proposed for Obamacare, however, would likely cut that funding.

The rest of the federal money sent to the state, about $25 billion, could be substantially reduced under Trump's budget, although precisely how much is difficult to determine given the lack of detail in the plan (A more comprehensive version will be released later this spring).

For example, although Trump would cut the Department of Transportation's funding by 13 percent, his budget document contains nothing about the National Highway Performance Program and another block grant used for road construction, from which Texas received nearly $3 billion in 2016.

The Department of Agriculture sustains a 21 percent cut, but there is no mention of the national school breakfast and lunch programs, from which Texas received $2 billion.

The impact of some budget cuts, however, is more explicit.

After-school academic enrichment programs for low-income students, for which Texas received $103 million, would disappear.

Trump also would eliminate the Community Services Block Grant, which helps low-income people access job training and other resources - including the popular nutrition program for seniors, Meals on Wheels - and Low Income Home Energy Assistance, which helps poor families pay utility bills. Those programs sent Texas $148.5 million in 2016.

In fiscal 2016, Houston spent at least $72.6 million federal funds from Housing and Urban Development programs that Trump's budget would eliminate.

'Significant impact'

"Any proposed funding cuts to these grants could have a significant impact on Houstonians and, in particular, those who rely on local resources to gain access to affordable housing, job creation & retention programs, and other core public services," Houston Controller Chris Brown said.

A host of other smaller grants and programs, such as support for Amtrak, disaster mitigation and rural air service, also would be curtailed or cut entirely.

Trump's proposals also would force NASA, which has the sprawling Johnson Space Center in Houston, to dump its earth science and education programs. The Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial accidents such as the deadly explosion in Texas City in 2005, would be eliminated.

The budget proposes an 18 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health, which provided $1.1 billion in research grants to Texas institutions in 2016.

The Department of Energy's research programs - supporting new advances in technology for wind and solar generation, which Texas has added rapidly, as well as fossil fuels - also would be dramatically cut back.

"I'm not sure that Trump understands that fracking came from DOE money going to George Mitchell," says Jim Marston, founding director of the Texas office of the Environmental Defense Fund. George Mitchell was the natural gas mogul who ushered in the shale revolution using drilling techniques furthered by Department of Energy research.

Many of these programs, however, have support from both sides of the political aisle and likely will be spared deep cuts in the negotiation process.

Not the time for panic

Paul Furrh, the director of Lone Star Legal Aid, receives half his funding from the Legal Services Corp., which Trump's budget would axe. But he's not panicking yet.

"I've been in legal aid since 1980, and there's been four major attempts to eliminate funding for LSC," Furrh said. "They've all failed, because we have pretty strong bipartisan support. We expect that all the people who support legal aid will be out front and center pretty soon."

Trump's proposal would maintain support for some of programs for which Texas relies on federal funding, such as special education grants. Texas also would benefit uniquely from the priorities for which Trump has requested additional funding: $2.6 billion for additional border security and the construction of a border wall, which is only a fraction of the expected cost, as well as the hiring of 1,500 new border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Leaders of border communities slammed the proposed funding, saying it shorts technology that could improve border policing and judges who could speed the backlog of asylum applications.

"President Trump's first budget proposal squanders the chance to advance real border security and instead budgets more than $4 billion on the false promise of a border wall," said J.D. Salinas III, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, which represents mayors and county executives in far south Texas.

Kevin Diaz contributed to this report.
AUSTIN - The promise of the transportation revolution is seductive: Computerized cars lead to fewer accidents, shared cars lower expenses, and better public transit lessens traffic.

To take full advantage of this potential, though, cities will need to buy smart traffic signals, install Bluetooth navigation beacons, upgrade buses and trains, and integrate transit systems with ride-hailing services. They'll also need to worry about the downside of this new technology, because like any revolution, there will be losers.

First, though, let's look at the problem.

Cities are rapidly expanding, collectively adding a new Manhattan every day. By 2025, 6 billion people will live in cities, and about 8 million of them will be in Houston. Population density is increasing, and there is not enough space for everyone to drive a car to work or around town.

If Houston does not want to end up like New Delhi, where I spent 90 minutes in a cab traveling 10 miles last year, city leaders need to give up on adding lanes and purchase technology that uses our roads more efficiently. In Wednesday's column I wrote about how internet-connected cars and traffic signals can work more efficiently, but ultimately, cities can't build enough roads. The best solution may be to reconsider our entire system.

"Every time you expand a freeway, it just fills up with more traffic," Long Beach, Calif., Mayor Robert Garcia said during a presentation at the SXSW Conference & Festivals in Austin. "We've given all of this space to automobiles, so how do you move from that as we focus on multi-modal transit and autonomous vehicles? How do we reclaim that public space and make it more usable and not just for car traffic?"

The answer mayors chose for the Los Angeles area is to double the rail network, add bike lanes and improve the bus system. In Raleigh-Durham, N.C., the transit system increased ridership 20 percent after it offered a smartphone app that allows people to track their buses in real time.

A tech startup called TransLoc is working with Raleigh-Durham to offer an app that calls a taxi to take you to a train or bus at exactly the right time and then arranges another taxi to take you the final mile to your destination. The app calculates and pays for the entire trip with one click on your phone.

"Most people think buses are unreliable," Douglas Kaufman, the CEO of TransLoc, said. "The more we connect these different modes, and the more transit agencies accept these new technologies that are rider-centric, the more they'll increase rider trust."

Computers can use existing roads more efficiently, which is why self-driving technology is critical. While automakers at the conference disagreed on whether self-driving cars will ultimately require tiny and inexpensive Bluetooth beacons to navigate cities, everyone agreed that cities that employ them will get self-driving cars, vans and buses sooner.

The most difficult truth for local politicians to admit, though, is that the only proven way to reduce traffic is to charge people to bring their cars into the city. London uses license plate readers to identify cars operating between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on workdays and levies a $15 fee. Other European cities are following suit, with some planning to ban all private cars.

American cities will ultimately need to consider congestion charges because greater public transit usage and self-driving taxis will mean lower revenues from gasoline taxes, parking fees and traffic tickets.

"Cities make an enormous amount of money on parking tickets, so this whole paradigm about how these vehicles will change our cities is huge," Garcia said.

There will also be massive job losses. About 4.5 million people in America work as professional drivers, and many of those jobs will go away. Fewer accidents also mean less work for body shops and insurance adjustors. Electric motors have a third fewer moving parts than internal combustion engines and require little maintenance, hurting the auto-repair business.

The Port of Long Beach already has autonomous cranes and railcars off-loading container ships, and soon self-driving trucks will haul the containers out of the port, Garcia said. Job losses are already mounting.

"So much of our economy is ingrained in these middle-class jobs of truck drivers and dockworkers, and now these jobs are in danger," he said.

President Donald Trump has proposed spending $1 trillion over the next 10 years on infrastructure, but with technology changing fast, city planners need to think more about technology than concrete. Employers will be paying close attention, because they don't want their workers and goods sitting in traffic and will locateto the most convenient cities.

We also need to worry about our communities. This past election demonstrated the profound frustration felt by those who lost their jobs to technology and trade. How we will help them, and those who will soon lose their jobs to new technology, must be a top priority.

We'd better prepare for the coming changes, because there is no stopping them.
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Luke Bryan has, after six consecutive years, settled into a comfortable RodeoHouston groove.

He's performed every year since 2012 and has four shows in the all-time top 20 paid attendance. Thursday's performance at NRG Stadium drew 75,033. (That number actually pushed one of Bryan's past shows outside the top 20.)

Bryan is accustomed to big local crowds. He sang the National Anthem last month at Super Bowl LI and sold out an October show at the Woodlands Pavilion.

BACK AGAIN: Garth Brooks returns to RodeoHouston

His Thursday performance hit all the familiar cues. He swiveled his hips. He purred like a cat. He turned his ball cap backward, forward and back again. He inspired country girls to shake it for him.

Every move incited a barrage of screams.

He sang a bit of The Gatlin Brothers' "Houston," saluted the military and led the crowd through sing-alongs during "Crash My Party" and sweet ballad "Fast."

Every song, in fact, was a bonafide hit, from "Move" and "That's My Kind of Night" through "Rain is a Good Thing" and "Roller Coaster." It's a canon that can stack up against any artist.

Bryan attacks every moment with an enthusiasm that's tough to resist. He seems truly happy to be onstage.

BRONCOS, BOOTS AND MUSIC: Scenes from the 2017 HoustonRodeo

He's also improved as a vocalist through the years, gaining nuance and emotion. It was evident during "Play it Again" and "Strip it Down."

He amped up the energy even more during "All My Friends Say" and "Country Man." The band got louder as he yelped between verses. They worked "Huntin,' Fishin' and Lovin' Every Day" into a frenzy.

That urgency fed into the crowd. They almost drowned him out during "Drink a Beer." By the time Bryan jumped off stage and raced through "I Don't Want This Night to End," it seemed an all-too-fitting theme for the evening.
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The man in a tweed hat stands at the entrance of NRG Center, gaze fixed toward the floor, scanning the crowd for scuffed cowboy boots or worn-out dress shoes.

"Boot shine! Boot shine!" John Lopez shouts as people arrive Wednesday morning at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Most breeze by, staring down at cell phones or rodeo programs.

Lopez got his start as a shoe shiner 57 years ago, when he was 10. He and his cousins would load a milk crate with polish, rags and a brush and set up outside of bars in north Houston. Back then, Lopez says, even the drunks liked to have their shoes cleaned and polished.

But now?

"Boot shine, young lady?" Lopez says to a woman in a cowboy hat.

"No, thank you. I like them dirty."

Lopez shakes his head and mutters: "You're going to regret it."

The boots on his feet are jet black, and boy, do they shine. They're several years old but look new -- the mark of someone with a little self-respect, Lopez says.

For years, shoe shining was just his hobby. He'd spent three decades as a chef, including a stretch as head of catering at the Astrodome. Then, about 20 years ago, he offered to shine a pair of work boots for a police officer friend, and word soon spread through the precinct.

"Before you knew it, the neighbors were saying, 'What are all these cop cars doing lined up outside your house?'" Lopez says, laughing. "Those guys take pride in how their shoes look."

The man striding past him now in a pair of scuffed leather boots seems less concerned. "Let me clean those up," Lopez says, but the man doesn't acknowledge him.

For some, a boot shine at the rodeo is an annual tradition. Like the people who pay to ride a camel or eat deep-fried butter, parents line up to have their kids' faux leather boots polished. City slickers who bought a pair on the way to the rodeo sit down to have them shined. But those are the minority.

Lopez calls out to a teenage girl in pink boots; she doesn't look up from the screen in her hand. He points down at the faded boots of a passing rodeo volunteer; the man shakes his head. Lopez smiles at a woman in a leather vest: "Can I clean your shoes up, ma'am?"

"Why would I want my shoes cleaned?" she snaps, a look of disgust on her face.

After an hour, more than 50 people have turned Lopez down. He walks back to his shoe shine chair and sits.

"It seems the whole world has got into a big hurry," he says, and then, optimistically: "It'll get busier this afternoon."

He's right. Later, as the crowd swells ahead of the night's main rodeo events, a woman will ask him to spruce up her brown cowboy boots. A cattleman will plop down and fork over $7 for a wash and polish. A mother will set her 8-year-old boy down in his chair and take pictures of the shoe shiner to post on Facebook.

For now, though, Lopez sits watching people rush by and tells stories of the way things used to be.
I thought I had seen it all when a legitimate Texas-style barbecue joint, The Beast, opened in Paris back in 2014.

Twenty years ago, the idea of American comfort food in the City of Light was mostly unheard of. The French, after all, are pretty good at making their own comfort food - like boeuf bourguignon, cassoulet and coq au vin. But these days, American-style burger, burrito and taco joints are flourishing all over Paris.

So, too, is legitimate Texas-style barbecue, if the recent opening of Melt restaurant is any indication.

Melt is the creation of two Paris-born childhood friends, Antoine Martinez and Jean Ganizate. Both are Swiss-trained restaurateurs, having graduated from the hospitality management program at the Glion Institute of Higher Education.

Such highly trained European restaurateurs usually aspire to open a haute-cuisine, Michelin-starred restaurant. Instead, they opened a Texas barbecue joint. The story of how this came about is another example of how the culture of Texas barbecue continues to capture the imaginations of chefs and restaurateurs all over the world.

Martinez grew up in the Vincennes neighborhood of Paris. He was on track to pursue a traditional career in architecture but fell in love with the restaurant business while working his way through school. After graduating from the French equivalent of high school, he worked at the Michelin-starred restaurant yam'Tcha. From there he went on to Glion and reconnected with childhood friend Ganizate.

More Information Melt 74 Rue de la Folie Mericourt 75011, Paris, France meltparis.com See More Collapse

After graduating in 2013, they both moved to New York City. Martinez worked for highly regarded chef Paul Liebrandt; Ganizate took a management position for Maison Kayser, an outpost of the Paris-based chain of high-end bakeries.

Their "eureka moment" came in the summer of 2013, when the two friends walked past the Texas-style barbecue joint Mighty Quinn's, located in the East Village.

"We'd never seen anything like this," Martinez says. "You could smell the smoke, and people were lining up inside to watch them slice the meat at the counter."

Coincidentally, the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, where they met Scott Roberts of The Salt Lick barbecue restaurant near Austin, was taking place at the same time. Roberts invited them to visit, which they did in September of 2013. They also made a trip up to Dallas to check out the barbecue scene there.

After arriving, they headed straight for Pecan Lodge, Dallas' most celebrated barbecue joint, but it had closed for the evening. They walked around back and found the night-shift pitmaster, Jeff Howard, who gave them a tour of the pit room.

Inspired, they eventually moved back to Paris to plan for their own Texas-style barbecue joint. But first, they needed someone who could cook barbecue. They had kept in touch with Howard and offered him the job. He moved to Paris in 2016 to start work on the project.

The next challenge was to acquire a legitimate smoker. They ordered an Ole Hickory from the U.S., but that got turned away at the French border because it did not pass safety inspections. They found a restaurant equipment dealer in Germany that already had a Southern Pride smoker on hand, which they acquired, and now use as their only smoker. Melt - as in "melt in your mouth" - opened in November.

Howard insists on importing only U.S.D.A. prime-grade briskets from the U.S. On a recent visit to Melt, I ordered a full platter of meats - brisket, pork ribs, sausage and chicken. All were expertly prepared - some of the best and most authentic Texas-style barbecue in Europe.

As I sat in the small dining room, I watched as Parisians wandered in and warily looked around. The personable Ganizate waved them over to the order counter and patiently explained how to order Texas barbecue. Howard and Martinez manned the cutting table, mesmerizing the people standing in line watching them carve brisket and ribs.

The dining room was full at the height of lunch hour. The customers were obviously enamored of this Texas culinary transplant, all of them cutting away small portions of brisket with their knives and forks. More than a few furtive glances shot my way as I stripped apart the brisket and gnawed away at the pork ribs with my fingers.

Pro tip: If you want to find the Texas expatriates in a barbecue joint in Paris, they're the ones not using utensils.
Pin Lim/For The Chronicle

A state appeals court is considering an appeal by a group of Friendswood residents that challenged the validity of an election in which voters agreed to pay additional sales taxes for downtown redevelopment and street maintenance.

State District Judge Elizabeth Ray dismissed the case last November, but the eight Friendswood residents who challenged the result filed an appeal. The First Court of Appeals has requested mediation, but the city is objecting to that option, city spokesman Jeffrey A. Newpher said.
It's unusual for an 18-year-old high school senior to wear a tie and slacks while on Spring Break. It's even more unusual that the teen would hang around a playground filled with elementary school students.

But Mike Floyd isn't like most of his Dawson High School classmates.

Instead of soaking up sun or sleeping in until noon, Floyd has spent his week off - and much of the past month - campaigning for a seat on the Pearland ISD board. If elected, he would be among the youngest elected officials in the state.

"I think young people have a different perspective on how things should be," Floyd said as he talked with parents at the park. "The decisions we make now are going to impact us more than those who are making the decisions. It's time for young people to stand up and speak out."

At least 11 Houston-area school districts are holding elections for board trustees on May 6. Most - including the Pearland, Fort Bend, Katy, Spring Branch, La Porte, Clear Creek and Alvin ISDs, as well as Stafford MSD - will see two or three positions decided. Meanwhile, the Goose Creek, Pasadena and Humble ISDs will have four positions up for election.

Pearland ISD's Position 2 race is noteworthy because of Floyd's age. According to the National Association of School Boards, only 0.4 percent of school board members nationwide are younger than 30. There's no data for school board members younger than 25 or 20.

The Fairfax County, Va., school system - the nation's 10th largest - has had a nonvoting student representative on its school board for decades. But that representative is elected by a countywide student advisory council and steps down around graduation.

In Texas, Desoto ISD voters elected three school board members who were 30 or younger in 2013. The Dallas Morning News said officials there felt the three brought a fresh perspective, as college readiness and technology took on increased roles in the classroom.

"We have to find creative ways, with the way technology has evolved," longtime board trustee Don Gant told the Morning News. "They bring to the board an understanding of being able to do that."

In 2014, 18-year-old Kelvin Green made history as the youngest mayor in Texas history when he was sworn in to serve tiny Archer City, located about a half hour south of Wichita Falls.

Qualifications questioned

Pearland ISD board member Rusty DeBorde, who is running for reelection against Floyd, said he was heartened to see a student eager to participate in civic and community life. But he worried about Floyd's inexperience when it comes to drilling down on policy or navigating property taxes, let alone paying taxes of his own.

"When you get down to it, you have to ask: Is he qualified? Is that who you want to run a $160 million-plus budget and all the other things that go into the school district?" DeBorde said. "When I was 18, I think I had a checkbook for a year or two and was still learning to manage that."

But Floyd said he is much more in touch with the day-to-day realities of students and teachers than others on the board who haven't attended high school in decades.

"I wouldn't call myself inexperienced, but I would say I have stuff to learn," Floyd said. Having attended many board meetings, he also suggested "there's a transparency problem in the district."

The teen's lexicon and knowledge of local education leaders and issues is impressive. On Wednesday, he chatted about one of Houston ISD's new school board members as well as Pearland ISD's budget deficit. He talked about the difficulty that Pearland schools face in paying off bonds and debt service as well as Texas' antiquated school-funding formula. He bemoaned the Pearland board's decision to move public comment up to 4:30 p.m. - when, he says, fewer working parents will be able to attend - and the fact that the board in January renewed Superintendent John Kelly's contract for three years with little public discussion in January.

While Floyd said Kelly has done a good job operating the district on a day-to-day basis, he disagrees with the superintendent's stance on transgender students, which he says was a motivating factor to run. Kelly has been a staunch advocate for requiring transgender students to use the restroom that matches the sex on birth certificates. Of allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity, Kelly once asked, "What's next? Legalizing pedophilia and polygamy?"

Floyd cited the case of Kai Shappley, a 6-year-old transgender Pearland ISD student whose mother called for Kai to be able to use the girls restroom.

"I can't imagine myself in that position, being five years old and having the superintendent of the district say, 'What's next, polygamy or pedophilia?" Floyd said. "Meeting her inspired me to take a step forward in running."

Encouraged by support

Floyd acknowledged that he's the underdog, but said he's encouraged by the money he's raised and support he's gotten. He's still finalizing the logistics of going to college: he's been accepted to the University of Texas and the University of Houston, but was wait-listed at his college of choice, Georgetown University. He said he doesn't know what he'd do if he gets into Georgetown, but said he will most likely attend UH's honors college while living in Pearland. Not surprisingly, he plans to major in political science.

While DeBorde said he appreciates Floyd's eagerness to work on the teen's priorities - which include live-streaming board meetings, opening up more public comment slots, creating an anti-discrimination policy that would protect transgender students and providing more equitable funding across the district - he said accomplishing those goals may prove more difficult than the teen expects.

"There's a period of time, the first year - it's just getting used to the board and understanding," DeBorde said. "There are so many layers to the school board. You start poking at something asking, 'Can we do this? But it's the state funding, state mandates, the different entities that have jurisdiction. But I feel like (the board) is now getting to a point where we've got really good processes in place, the board is working very corroboratively."

Floyd said the board could benefit from a fresh perspective.

"I think it's time for a student representative, someone who can speak for the 22,000 kids in the district who right now have no representation on the board," Floyd said. "I would say that perspective is very valuable - something the district needs and not just in Pearland. In Texas, there's a law where boards cannot appoint a student position. A student has to run and win, and that's what I hope to do."
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When Dr. Stacey A. Godley told a group of nearly 500 Spring ISD students that she worked as an OB-GYN delivering babies and helping women, 16-year-olds Jade LeBlanc and Maddison Joyce shrieked as if Beyonce had just walked into the Westfield High School gymnasium.

"I want to be an OB-GYN so badly," LeBlanc said as Joyce nodded in agreement.

Their hands shot up into the air when the doctor asked if students knew about her line of work and if any had similar career aspirations.

Nearly all of Westfield High's 1,248 female students took part in the Pretty Girls Rock Female Empowerment Summit, organized by the school's teachers and students.

It was among a series of events held across the Houston area meant to educate and inspire young women during March, which is Women's History Month.

Last Friday, nearly 150 young women from Houston ISD's South Early College High School went to the school's inaugural Young Women's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Conference. With the theme "Inspiring Young Women to Rise," the conference included presentations and guest speakers from NASA, Rice University and the John P. McGovern Museum of Health and Medical Science. Women from about 20 STEM fields answered questions about their careers and others provided scholarship and internship information.

Girlstart, a nonprofit that recently expanded to Houston and is dedicated to education for girls, is hosting a week of STEM activities at Discovery Green this week for spring break. Students will create balloon boats that propel through water, explore how parachutes work, play with "insta-snow" and "slime" created from polymers and engineer structures with gumdrops and toothpicks. The programs are free and start at noon each day.

And on March 25, Houston Community College will host hundreds of eighth-grade students from as far away as Corpus Christi at its Gulf Coast Young Women's Leadership Symposium. Speakers will talk with teens about taking on leadership roles, how to conduct oneself in a professional setting and what qualities they should look for in close friends.

Westfield High's symposium last week was much less focused on science, instead giving students a girls-only crash course in everything from recognizing the signs of dating violence to making sure college admissions officers won't cringe at their social media posts.

Venitra Brisby, a counselor at Westfield, said it was the first time the school had hosted the symposium in four years and hopes to sponsor a similar event for young men in May or in the fall.

Brisby said the women's event was needed after she saw several students fall victim to dating violence, simmer in suicidal thoughts and deal with body-image issues.

"Women in general don't necessarily use their voice, but this helps them find it," Brisby said. "You can be the next president if you learn to care and advocate for yourself."

Joyce, who is a junior at the school, said it's nice to discuss issues affecting her and her friends that can be taboo to talk about in front of men.

"When you get comfortable around other girls, you can discuss mutual issues without boys being immature," Joyce said. "This is encouraging, it brings us closer."
A White House proposal to eliminate funding for the U.S. Chemical Safety Board signals a full retreat from two decades of progress against chemical disasters and would, if enacted, put American lives in jeopardy, health and safety experts said.

While little known to the masses, the CSB is to chemical disasters what the much better-funded National Transportation Safety Board is to airline crashes, train derailments and bridge collapses. Without the recommendations that come from these boards, preventable accidents repeat themselves.

Gutting the CSB is "standing up for death and destruction," said chemical safety consultant Paul Orum. "It's disrespectful to those killed in such incidents."

A Houston Chronicle investigation last year found that federal agencies, including the CSB, don't have enough resources to provide adequate oversight to facilities that handle dangerous chemicals.

Three of the most far-reaching investigations in the history of chemical safety resulted from the CSB.

More for you Chemical Breakdown

Chemical Breakdown

Enhancing safety

In 2005, a unit at BP's Texas City refinery overfilled with hydrocarbons, releasing a massive cloud of liquid and gas that exploded, killing 15 and injuring more than 180.

Just as important as the agency's causal findings was its recommendation that BP launch an independent examination of its corporate safety culture. Together, these two reports rippled through an industry that had long harped on worker safety, like preventing falls and wearing the right equipment, to the detriment of process safety - designing and monitoring chemical and refining units to prevent releases and explosions.

"It's a seminal investigation," said CSB Chairwoman Vanessa Allen Sutherland. "The lessons ... are frequently cited and discussed, and it was 10 years ago."

They've been incorporated into academic curriculums, industry technical standards and corporate behavior, and triggered a massive emphasis on refinery safety by the Labor Department.

No specifics given

Then in 2010, BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, leading to an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 people, injured 17 and caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history. CSB findings in 2016 showed gaping holes in offshore safety and regulatory oversight that hadn't been addressed despite numerous earlier investigations and lawsuits.

The disaster cost BP more than $60 billion - some of which could be subsidized by taxpayers. By contrast, the CSB budget is about $12 million annually, or one thousandth of 1 percent of the $1.1 trillion that President Trump proposes spending.

Chemical Breakdown: Read our series on chemical dangers in Texas

So while it's difficult to prove any one disaster has been prevented by the agency, stopping just one could justify the cost of the CSB since its inception in 1998, said Mike Wright, director of safety for the United Steelworkers union.

"We think it's a remarkably stupid move" to kill the agency, Wright said. "The CSB is probably one of the best deals in Washington in terms of spending the taxpayer's money."

It's also the only agency that investigates chemical accidents without companies having to worry about fines or indictments. That's because its focus is finding root causes and lessons that can be shared across industries. And it examines the failings of regulators.

The CSB was given no specific indication why it was targeted, Sutherland said, though it falls in line with the president's pledge to cut broadly to pay for a beefed-up military and border protection.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was unclear where industry stands. The two major trade associations, the American Chemistry Council and the American Petroleum Institute, offered statements that didn't directly address the merits of eliminating the CSB.

Shakeel Kadri, executive director of the Center for Chemical Process Safety, a division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, said his group supports the CSB and says the agency's independent investigations are critical.

"We can't do that. I don't see anyone else being able to do that, either," he said.

It's widely believed the overall budget proposal was dead on arrival at the Capitol, as even Republicans blanched at what was and wasn't being cut.

"I think the Trump budget is a fantasy," said Rep. Gene Green, a Democrat whose district includes much of Houston's heavy industry. "I don't think so much of it will ever be considered."

That doesn't mean the CSB will survive unscathed. Among its 40 employees, some were already privately assuming that Congress would significantly scale back the agency this year. And, as a measure of the administration's priorities, Thursday's proposal was an exclamation point on a flurry of activity aimed at rolling back worker and chemical safety regulations.

A 'really sad matter'

On Monday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt acceded to industry demands by agreeing to delay and reconsider implementation of Obama-era rules that came as a direct result of the 2013 West Fertilizer disaster. It killed 15 people, including 12 first-responders who rushed to a fire at the plant before it exploded.

Sutherland said the resulting CSB investigation was another of the agency's most important, exposing major gaps in emergency planning and response across the nation.

In agreeing to delay the rules, and perhaps scrap them altogether, Pruitt accepted the industry's argument that, because investigators last year ruled the West fire an arson, it renders them moot.

But the arson ruling has no bearing on other factors in the explosion, Sutherland said. Had the fertilizer been stored differently, had first-responders received training on the well-known explosion hazards of ammonium nitrate, had the town not grown perilously close to the plant over the years, much of the death and destruction would have been averted.

Republican lawmakers already have introduced a bill that could roll back the Obama regulations, should the EPA not take up the task.

At least 46 people have died in U.S. chemical plants since West.

Sam Mannan, director of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, called elimination of the CSB a "really sad matter."

"Everyone uses the CSB's videos and reports," he said.

Orum, the consultant, noted the gap between congressional authorization of the CSB in 1990, and its actual funding in 1998. The budget argument was that OSHA and EPA could handle chemical accident investigations. But they weren't as thorough, and industry preferred the CSB, because it didn't come in looking for violations, Orum said.

He expects "cooler heads" in Congress.

"Chemical incidents are highly visible when they happen," he said. "There's smoke, flames and news cameras. If it looks like they've undermined safety, it could come back to bite them."
The question remains unanswered: are the human bones found in the wall of Mary Cerruti's home in the Heights actually hers?

Medical examiners are still doing the forensics. Police remain mum about the extent of their 2015 search of the home. And the internet buzzes with sometimes ghoulish speculation.

What had been an obscure missing person's case now swirls with unknowns - thanks to the discovery made March 4 by new tenants in her modest bungalow.

It's easy to obsess over what could have happened to Mary. The possibility that she died where she lived has baffled neighbors, friends and extended family.

"This has hit me kind of hard, thinking about what happened to her," said Joy Stewart, who employed Mary at House of Coffee Beans more than 30 years ago.

RELATED: Bones found in wall of Heights home of woman who disappeared in 2015

It's harder still to pull together a detailed narrative of her life. Her parents died early. She married at least twice. She battled financial and health issues, as she held odd jobs along the way. Some people knew her only for a time.

Those close to her are guarded. A few fear she will be defined as a crazy cat lady, because dead cats were found inside her home.

The bits of information that have surfaced don't provide clues to how she might have died.

But they do offer a glimpse of how she lived.

****

Mary was born Mary Wootton Stewart on June 12, 1954 in Kingsville, a small city in south Texas with ranching roots, not far from Corpus Christi.

Her father, S. Boyd Stewart, chaired the English department and directed the arts and sciences division for what is now Texas A&M University - Kingsville. Her mother, Elsie Ruth Davis Stewart, participated in the Faculty Wives Club.

Neither lived to see their only child turn 20. When Mary was 13, her mother fell ill at home and suddenly died, according to news reports. Mary's father passed when she was 19 and in her second year at the University of Houston. He had a heart condition, recalled Nancy Stewart Stoddard, an elder cousin of Mary's.

Stoddard, who lives in Amarillo, had few memories of time spent with Mary and her parents. She recalled her aunt's slacks. Her uncle's pipe. But she and her cousin had lost track of each other. When she recently embarked on a family genealogy project, she found the missing person poster online.

Stoddard had looked forward to reconnecting. Instead, she provided DNA for the police investigation. Analysis could take weeks.

In the meantime, Stoddard hopes anyone with relevant information will contact authorities. She also wants people to tell her more about her cousin, to fill in the missing years.

Courtesy of Corpus Christi Caller-Times

****

Mary spent eight years studying at the University of Houston, but never earned a degree.

She moved among majors: biology, psychology, history.

In 1979, toward the end of her enrollment, 24-year-old Mary wed 31-year-old David Cerruti, whom she had met through mutual friends.

The Cerrutis listed their address as a two-story, 1920s home on Fargo Street. It sat on the fringe of Montrose, an area that attracted artsy, bohemian types. Mary had inherited the ramshackle place from her grandmother, said Stewart, who employed her at the coffee store. Water didn't run in the kitchen sink.

Mary was remarkably thin in those days, with long, dark hair, remembered Stewart. She was quirky and funny, and had a talent for photography. She also could be distant, with good days followed by bad ones.

Mike Mulloy, who later bought the store, remembered Mary as intelligent and ready to move on from the shop.

"She just drifted away," he said

He raised a hand to his face in shock when he heard the news of what followed.

****

The same year the Cerrutis married, the Texas Junk Co. opened nearby. The shop became a local mainstay, known for eclectic finds, until it closed last year.

Mary befriended the Junk Co.'s owner, Bob Novotney. He recalled how she would bring fashionable books to his store to exchange for credit. How he would sometimes stop by her house, and she would grind beans to make coffee.

It was the foundation of a friendship on which Mary could depend. Novotney would take her to get injections to treat worsening migraines. He would help fix a leak in her attic. Once, when she wouldn't open the door, he threatened to call the police.

Novotney saw Mary when he could. In later years, that meant going over for tea in the Heights - at the home at 610 Allston St., where she lived until she disappeared.

There, Novotney saw her health deteriorate. Her hands trembled. Her muscles lost mass.

Those who knew her mentioned a variety of ailments, including suicidal tendencies, lupus and the migraines.

"She was a little bit troubled," he said. "That's as far as I'll go. She was troubled."

Mary by then had hung tapestries to keep out peering eyes, Novotney said. The house was dirty. Her possessions numbered fewer and fewer. When she disappeared, he figured she would turn up - maybe in Utah, which she loved, or St. John in the Virgin Islands, where she had lived for a time with her husband.

****

Here are some of the items Mary owned at the end of 1990, when she and David divorced: a drafting table. An Eames chair. A typewriter.

Six weeks later, she married Roy Law Elliott.

Harris County Clerk file

The whirlwind wedding occurred on Valentine's Day, 1991. Mary became Elliott's sixth wife, he said.(He married the first four days after he met her.) It did not last.

Elliott moved out by the end of the next month, according to court documents. Contacted recently, he had few kind remarks.

And yet. After hearing that Mary had disappeared, Elliott went by her house. He looked inside. He saw her photo equipment. He saw dead cats. But the house didn't look ransacked.

"I hate to see anything like that happen to anybody," he said.

****

Mary kept moving forward. She had been living in a smaller home on Fargo Street. (As the story goes, a hoarder previously owned it.) It stood a few doors down from the larger one that had belonged to her grandmother, which she'd sold.

Summer of 1991, Mary bought back the bigger home. Fall of 1991, she started a pet care-taking business. Spring of 1992, she learned she owed $22,003.52 to the IRS - and then she paid it back.

There was another romance, too, one with Ellsworth Milburn, a founder of Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.

Milburn had been interested in a home Mary managed, said Milburn's colleague Richard Lavenda. One thing led to another, and a relationship blossomed. They lived together in the big Fargo home.

The pairing puzzled Lavenda. How could this woman, who seemed constantly sick, be Milburn's match?

But Milburn supported Mary, perhaps even after the romance ended in 1997. His daughter, Lauren Remkes, said she thought it sweet how he had cared for her. (He died in 2007.)

Mary had shown her affection with gifts. To Lavenda: a rosemary plant. To Remkes: wire sculptures of a motorcycle, a bike. To Remkes' children: a stuffed cat dressed up like a witch, ready to trick-or-treat.

Mary, after all, loved Halloween and Day of the Dead.

****

Mary's love of the October celebrations stood clear to the owners of Casa Ramirez, a Mexican folk art store in the Heights, on the now-trendy 19th Street.

Mary worked in the store when they needed extra help, owner Macario Ramirez said. She appreciated the unusual, handcrafted items. And she joined in for in its annual Day of the Dead celebration.

Karen Warren/Chronicle

Ramirez and his wife worried about Mary. Like Novotney, they helped with her health needs, taking her to get medicines.

Mary's financial issues worsened over the years. Notice of the suit to foreclose on her house arrived in March 2015, around when she had last been seen. Someone signed illegibly in receipt of that document.

With Mary unreachable, her home sold at a foreclosure auction on Nov. 3, 2015. It went for $261,000 at 1:32 p.m. The new owner painted it blue, and today, the house is listed again for lease or sale.

A giant apartment complex Mary had fought against surrounds the house. She hadn't been bashful about how much she hated it.

Among those who heard her complaints was Robert Anderson, who did Mary's yard work.

In those later years, Mary went longer periods without hiring him, Anderson said. Spider webs accumulated. Then she stopped calling. But Anderson kept checking on her  until the day a neighbor told him she had vanished.

For more mementos of Mary's life, view the gallery below:




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After years of having a K-9 unit, the Bay City Police Department is in no hurry to replace its latest dog, which bit two innocent bystanders in its first two weeks.

One bite victim, a woman who was buying coffee at a convenience store on her way to work, remained Thursday at Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital, three days after the incident Monday in Bay City, about 70 miles southwest of Houston.

The 3-year-old Belgian Malinois named Rico started working for the department on March 1 and bit a city employee that day, said Lt. Irene Kjergaard, Bay City Police Department spokesperson.

Bay City purchased Rico from US K9 Unlimited in Kaplan, La., which has trained more than 5,000 teams of police dogs and handlers in 28 years of business, owner Roger Abshire said Thursday.

THE NOSE KNOWS: Fort Bend k-9 sniffs out car burglary suspect hiding in pool house

Abshire said he couldn't speculate on what happened in the two bite incidents, but could vouch for the dog.

"All I can tell you is Rico is a great dog," Abshire said. "He was trained properly and is a very social dog. We don't put out unsocial dogs."

US K9 Unlimited prides itself on hand-picking superior dogs and providing excellent training, he said.

Bay City's first bite incident with Rico happened at the city warehouse, where a worker who is afraid of dogs ran when she saw him, Kjergaard said.

RODEO SHOW: Police dogs display power, training in Houston Rodeo competition

"He took off after her," Kjergaard said. The employee received treatment for the bite wound and was released, she said.

At that point, Rico got a week of remedial training with a local trainer who is certified in working with police dogs and did very well, responding appropriately to all commands, Kjergaard said.

On Monday, Rico and his handler were setting out for a trip to Louisiana for a previously scheduled training when they stopped at a gas station.

"The handler opened the door to make sure the dog had enough water for the trip," Kjergaard said. "He reached in to adjust something and the dog got out."

CARJACKING CHAOS: Police dog shot after attacking officer during pursuit of suspects

That's when Rico attacked and seriously injured Jocelyn Amtower, who was getting her morning coffee.

"We were just shocked," Kjergaard said of Rico's inappropriate aggression, which his predecessors never exhibited.

The dog he replaced, Kim, also came from US K9 Unlimited and served the department well for six years, Kjergaard said.

Rico has gone back to US K9 Unlimited and has not returned to service.

"As for our department, we've postponed getting a new dog for now," Kjergaad said.
AUSTIN  State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, author of the so-called bathroom bill, said Thursday she had received a threat on her life.

Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, spoke of the threat during a speech to a Faith and Family Day rally on the Texas Capitol steps, where supporters of legislation including the bathroom bill and anti-abortion legislation gathered.
It was June 2013, and U.S. law enforcement thought they were finally getting their hands on a slippery target: Russian hacker Alexsey Belan, indicted in Nevada and California for computer intrusions at three U.S. e-commerce companies, had been arrested in Europe.

Instead, Belan escaped to Russia, where the U.S. charges didn't hamper his job prospects. Rather than handing Belan over to the U.S., Russia's Federal Security Service enlisted the man to help the agency hack into American Internet companies, including Yahoo.

The conspiracy, laid out in an indictment in Federal Court in San Francisco, reveals the internal workings of Russia's state cyber-spying regime, implicated in alleged attempts to influence the U.S. election last year. Increasingly, it's a system that capitalizes on a vast and talented pool of Russian-speaking cyber criminals, blurring the lines between profit and intelligence gathering.

"We believe that their technical capabilities are not where they're purported to be and they're using criminal hackers," said Jack Bennett, the San Francisco Division special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's San Francisco office. He spoke at a news conference on Wednesday.

Besides Belan, the U.S. indicted two FSB officials, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, and a second hacker, Karim Baratov, a Kazakh living in Canada. It's a first for the U.S., which has never before indicted anyone from the FSB for cyber-crimes, said Edward McAndrew, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor and now co-chair of the privacy and data security group at the law firm Ballard Spahr.

"It obviously comes at a very intense time in our relationship with Russia and its cyber activities," he said. "It also provides the public with fresh insight into the way that nation-state actors are enlisting cyber criminals of all types, from syndicates to lone wolves, to engage in sophisticated cyber campaigns."

The indictment offers a lot of new information about the hack into Yahoo in 2014 that affected some half a billion accounts. Yahoo disclosed the breach last year, and pointed the finger at a "state-sponsored actor." The intrusion, along with a second, earlier hack that exposed even more accounts, has complicated Yahoo's planned acquisition by Verizon Communications.

"The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored," Chris Madsen, an assistant general counsel for security and law enforcement at Yahoo, said in a statement. "We're committed to keeping our users and our platforms secure and will continue to engage with law enforcement to combat cybercrime."

Belan, also known as "Magg," was born in Latvia but holds a Russian passport, according to the FBI. He has a fondness for hair dye, based on an FBI wanted poster that features three snapshots of the hacker with three different-colored manes.

The FSB recruited Belan in part by providing him with information that helped him avoid detection by law enforcement, according to the indictment. He quickly repaid his handlers with access to Yahoo's computer network; by early 2014 he'd gotten them inside Yahoo's system, and from there into the internal control center for Yahoo email accounts, the tool the company used to administer changes to accounts, like new passwords.

That allowed them to see things like recovery email accounts, indicating specific companies and institutions of interest to the FSB, which helped them zero in on which of the stolen accounts might be of most use.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Oklahoma prosecutors on Thursday filed child prostitution charges against a Republican state senator after police found him in a hotel room with a 17-year-old boy.

Ralph Shortey, 35, is charged in Cleveland County with engaging in child prostitution, transporting a minor for prostitution and engaging in prostitution within 1,000 feet of church. An arrest warrant was issued for him.

Shortey, a conservative Republican from south Oklahoma City, hasn't replied to several phone messages seeking comment, and court records don't show if he has retained an attorney yet.

Moore police said that acting on a tip from the teen's father, officers went to the Super 8 Hotel last week and smelled marijuana coming from a room. They found Shortey and the teen alone inside.

A search of the teen's tablet uncovered a series of sexually explicit exchanges in which Shortey offered the teen cash in exchange for "sexual stuff," according to a police report. Police also found lotion and a box of condoms inside a backpack in the room.

The age of consent in Oklahoma is 16, but Oklahoma's prostitution statute applies to any person under 18 years old.

The Oklahoma Senate imposed sanctions Wednesday on Shortey, voting 43-0 for a resolution that accuses him of "disorderly behavior." Among other things, it removes Shortey from membership and leadership of various Senate committees, bars him from occupying his office and reserved parking spot at the Capitol, blocks his expense allowances and authorship of bills, and revokes his right to have an executive assistant.

Shortey, who was a county coordinator and early supporter of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, wasn't present when the resolution was adopted and didn't show up to his Capitol office on Wednesday.

In a statement following its passage, Senate President Pro Tem Mike Schulz said it was not intended to be "a presumption of guilt or innocence."

"The Oklahoma Senate has full faith that the judicial system will play out appropriately and bring this matter to a lawful conclusion," Schulz said. "This resolution reserves the right of the Oklahoma Senate to pursue further action if more facts come to light."

___

Senate Resolution 7: http://bit.ly/2nG84WX

___

Associated Press writers Sean Murphy and Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
For those of you planning to quaff a St. Patrick's Day pint, it would be appropriate to celebrate close to the downtown intersection of Preston and Main. At that corner sits the historic white-brick tower known as the Scanlan Building - namesake of Houston's Irish-born Reconstruction-era Mayor Thomas H. Scanlan.

Our city is no Boston or Chicago. The Irish community has long since mixed into the Texas pressure cooker, and it is impossible to dye the refried-bean hue of Buffalo Bayou into any shade of green. But underneath the layered silt of history, Houstonians can discover a legacy of Irish immigrants, traders and politicians who helped transform our city into a booming trade hub.

It was no random chance that Scanlan was selected as Houston's mayor under Union-led Reconstruction in 1870. After moving to the Bayou City in 1853, Scanlan made a name - and fortune - for himself smuggling cotton through Mexico. He then poured his wealth into Houston and Galveston real estate, marrying into a prominent family along the way.

After Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Scanlan was one of the few powerful Houstonians to declare himself a Union-aligned Republican, setting up an appointment as chairman of the city's finance committee and, eventually, mayor. Whether the Irish businessman was a true believer or simply ambitious is a question shrouded by history.

But, as Lyndon Johnson said, what's the point of power if you're not going to do anything with it? Scanlan used his new position to oversee a radical racial integration of city government. He appointed African-Americans to the Houston police force and supported black candidates for local office. With Scanlan at the top of the ticket, a full slate of so-called Radical Republican candidates won election at City Hall, including two African-American aldermen.

The democratic vigor of the newly liberated slaves wasn't exactly welcomed by the traditional power structure in Houston. A local newspaper, The Weekly Telegraph, claimed the election results were marred by rampant voting fraud - although the editor admitted he could not prove the allegations and confessed that registration laws were vigilantly enforced at the polls.

The newspaper also warned blacks against voting altogether: "If you should now demand [the franchise], the effect of it will be to lose it before long, and then the prejudice will become so strong that you may never again obtain the privilege."

That warning proved all too true. Reconstruction eventually ended, Texas passed a new Constitution and voting rights were restricted to whites only.

Scanlan was reviled for his role in Reconstruction and saw his reputation tarnished by hollow allegations of corruption and waste. And when it came time to commemorate an Irish-born Houstonian in 1892, city fathers chose to go with Dick Dowling, a Confederate soldier.

The Confederate legacy was secured throughout the city by changing streets, naming schools and erecting statues. That mythology of the Lost Cause also worked to conceal the generation of forgotten Houston politicians who achieved a level of racial equality not seen again for nearly a century - politicians like Mayor Scanlan.

So if you're celebrating today, raise a glass to Thomas H. Scanlan of Limerick County, an Irish Houstonian ahead of his time.
We Texans are fortunate when it comes to access to government information.

Correction. We were fortunate.

For more than 40 years, Texas' open records law was one of the nation's strongest. The Texas Public Information Act, originating during a time of scandal in the early 1970s, presumes all government records are available to citizens, unless there's a specific exception preventing release of the document.

But our modern era of openness shifted dramatically with two state Supreme Court decisions in 2015 known as the Boeing ruling and the Greater Houston Partnership ruling. Both put many government financial records off limits to citizens.

If the damage isn't repaired in this legislative session, Texas will be way back in the pack compared with other states' transparency laws.

Details on the spending of many millions of dollars in taxpayer money will be secret.

Sadly, the message to citizens will be: "Don't bother asking. It's none of your business."

As we observe Sunshine Week this week, let's commit to maintaining Texas' national standing as a leading right-to-know state. The free flow of accurate information has always been important. It's especially so in this time of misinformation and fake news.

The so-called Boeing ruling allows all sorts of contracts the government holds with private businesses to be sealed from public view. The government or the private entity simply must claim a record's release would lead to a competitive disadvantage - not a decisive disadvantage, but any disadvantage.

Do you want to see your school district's bus or food service contracts so that you know whether your taxpayer money is being well spent? Good luck. Already, some of those basic documents have been ruled unobtainable. The same has happened to requestors seeking taxi and ride-sharing company filings with the government. Small business owners who want to view the winning contracts awarded by a local community college also have been thwarted.

In one of the most unbelievable examples, the city of McAllen refused to reveal how much taxpayer money it paid entertainer Enrique Iglesias to perform in a city holiday festival. The Attorney General's Office, citing the Boeing court ruling, agreed to the withholding. The state office has made hundreds of similar closed records decisions because of the Boeing case.

The Greater Houston Partnership decision prevents the public from viewing the financial books of nonprofits that are supported by taxpayer money and act in a government agency fashion. Often, economic development activities are farmed out to these types of nonprofits, as they were to GHP. To prevent corruption and hold these agencies accountable, public oversight of how they spend money is necessary through the Texas Public Information Act.

Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, are working together on the bipartisan issue of protecting the public's right to know and each have filed bills to reconstruct what the Texas Supreme Court dismantled.

Senate Bill 407 and House Bill 792 address the Boeing decision, while Senate Bill 408 and House Bill 793 address the Greater Houston Partnership ruling.

The Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and other open government advocates are pressing for additional transparency measures in the Legislature.

One attempts to improve access to public records stored in private email accounts and on private electronic devices. Another seeks to resume access to dates of birth in certain public records, including crime documents and election filings, which fosters accuracy and informs the public. House Bill 2670 and House Bill 2710, respectively, address these two big issues. Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, authored the bills.

Meanwhile, open government supporters are working to block bills that hinder citizen access to government information. Many secrecy bills are filed every legislative session.

The clock is ticking on the time we have to preserve openness in Texas. The current Legislature meets until May 29. We should all urge state lawmakers to let the sunshine in as they do the people's work.

Shannon is executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, a nonprofit promoting open government laws and the First Amendment rights of free speech and press.
The growing fight between the Senate and the House is appearing like an ugly divorce in the making.

After House Speaker Joe Straus suggested the Senate needed to step up its pace in writing its version of the the state's spending blueprint, the upper chamber quickly whipped out its final version.

After the Senate passed the controversial "bathroom bill" and sent it to the House for consideration, a House chairman whose committee will hear the measure said he sees 'no evidence' that Texas needs the bill at all, indicating it could be a dead issue.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate's presiding officer and no fan of Straus or the House, told a Dallas radio station that Straus' lack of interest in passing the measure showed that he was out of touch with most Texans on the issue.

Even the tough Senate-passed ban on so-called "sanctuary cities" appears headed for trouble in the House, where leaders say they are considering major changes before letting it come up for a full vote in the chamber.

Even the budget was a flash point between with the two chambers, with Straus pledging that the budget will have to pass first in the House before other issues are considered. His budget gurus are talking about taking $2 billion from the Rainy Day Funds -- the state's savings account -- to make up for a revenue shortfall, an option the Senate has said it won't consider.

In another wild week at the Legislature, battle lines were showing up on a number of fronts -- and there seemed to be no end to the increasing bickering over most every topic.

Get the lowdown on that and all the other intrigue going on beneath the state's Pink Dome on this week's Texas Take: The Podcast -- the leading political podcast in the Lone Star State -- where you get the inside scoop on the Legislature in simple language every Texan can understand -- unvarnished straight talk, as they say.

No political-speak here, y'all.
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Yesterday, Labours Sue Moroney spoke up during Parliaments Question Time, calling on Transport Minister Simon Bridges to revisit the redundancies and find out if those employees were dismissed simply because they voiced their concerns.

"Will he order an investigation to ensure that staff who raised concerns about Joanne Harrison's financial transactions and were subsequently made redundant in a restructuring influenced by Joanne Harrison were treated fairly by his ministry? asked Moroney.

Bridges, however, has refused to order an investigation.

What is now very clear from public interviews, from the select committee ... and other documentary evidence as well is that the person in question here was not involved in the decision making process in the restructure, he claims.

Moroney also asked how Harrison was able to secure a position in the ministry despite having a conviction for fraud in New Zealand while also being investigated for fraud in Australia.
Cindy Reids university career had a suitably bold start: in the first year of her psychology degree at Sydneys Macquarie University she leaves a note on the door of the head of her desired program pleading for admission with the headline Desperately Seeking Mass Communication. The gambit is successful and she spends the next few years in the study of mass media

We produced shorts and studied advertising  it was fantastic; but [later] I felt it wasnt that meaningful for me.

1989  Joins IBM
It's not all about the money, apparently.

According to a new ADP Sentiment Survey, 40 per cent of Canadian workers would take a pay cut at a new job in order to overcome a "growth gap"  a lack of career development opportunities from their current employers.

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Of the 828 working Canadians surveyed, 23 per cent said they would take a five per cent pay cut, 12 per cent of employees would take a 10 per cent decrease, and four per cent would take a hit of more than 15 per cent.

One-third of Canadians said their employers didn't offer support such as skills development programs, training, and career mentoring. Others (19 per cent) said they haven't asked for support, while nine per cent said their bosses don't have time for their concerns.

The paradox of a growth gap is that while many employers say they need workers to be increasingly adaptable to new tasks and responsibilities, many workers are saying they lack the development support to deliver on these expectations, Sooky Lee of ADP Canada said in a press release Wednesday.

"This study should be a wake-up call for any employer that cares about employee retention and productivity."

The survey says Canadians facing a "growth gap" can be divided into three categories: "The Ready," "The Resigned," and "The Relaxed."

"The Ready," are employees who are eager for growth, but feel their company isn't investing in their careers. This makes up 65 per cent of Canadian workers. Employees who want progress, but have given up on their company are labelled, "The Resigned," and represent 53 per cent of Canadians. The last group, "The Relaxed," are those who say career advancement would be nice (21 per cent), but it is not that important.

Whether the under-developed employees in your organization are ready, resigned or relaxed, this study should be a wake-up call for any employer that cares about employee retention and productivity, said Lee.

Mentoring costly and time-consuming

While employees may face frustration in dealing with a growth gap, managers aren't always able to satisfy their needs. A 2012 Forbes article said many managers recognize the importance of mentoring and training, but they are costly and time-consuming tasks.

"Companies must either come up with the resources to meet up the expectations of their talented employees or be constantly in the market to replenish them," the article read.

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How can companies make workers stay?

Companies that provide workers with new job titles and a clear path forward are more likely to retain them, a February study by Glassdoor found.

"Every additional 10 months an employee stagnates in a role makes them one per cent more likely to leave the company when they finally move on to their next position," according to the job recruitment company.

The study went on to say that employees won't stay for job titles alone. Pay increases and a healthy workplace culture are also important.

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Windy weather can often mean a yard littered with branches, or a tangled swing set.

But one Wisconsin man had much more to worry about when strong winds blew his ice-fishing shack across one of the Great Lakes last week.

John Buvala of Air Fox Photography took his drone out on Sunday to help his friend Randy search for his missing shack. The pair had hoped it would be a quick search-and-rescue mission  how far could a building go?

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But, it actually took two days to find the shack, which had blown from the coast near Oak Point, Wis., across a frozen Lake Superior to Long Island.

When the pair finally found it, they attached it to an all-terrain vehicle and drove it back to an original spot.

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A 20 per cent tax on companies that make sugary drinks could help save more than 13,000 lives over the next 25 years, according to a University of Waterloo study released Thursday.

It would also save $11.5 billion on health-care spending and bring in $43.6 billion in government revenue.

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"We know Canadians  including our children  are consuming too much sugar and sugary drinks in particular are harming our health," said Mary Lewis of the Heart and Stroke Foundation in a release.

"These products are not essential groceries, providing little to no nutritional value, and a levy is one proven way to help reduce consumption and support healthy living initiatives

In 2015, the average Canadian youth consumed 578 millilitres of sugary drinks each day  or approximately one-and-a-half standard pop cans.

If sugary drink manufacturers were taxed, researchers estimate it would prevent:

600,000 cases of obesity

200,000 cases of type 2 diabetes

60,000 cases of ischemic heart disease

20,000 cases of cancer

8,000 strokes

In light of the report's findings, nearly two dozen organizations, including Diabetes Canada, the Childhood Obesity Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society, have endorsed a call to action for Canadian government to tax sugary drinks.

In October, the World Health Organization called for global action against sugary drink consumption. The organization suggested not only taxing unhealthy foods, but subsidizing fresh fruits and vegetables as much as 10 to 30 per cent.

The U.K. announced in 2016 that it would tax drinks with more sugar than five grams per 100 millilitres, and some soda companies have already begun to reduce the amount of sugar in their offerings, according to CNN.

Mexico, France, and Norway are among countries that have implemented a sugar tax, as well as cities in the U.S. like Philadelphia.

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In Canada, the Northwest Territories has proposed a pop tax that could be implemented as early as next year.

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While many are aware that most imagery spread about this group and their attire is simply untrue, who better to speak on religion, modesty, feminism and fashion other than the women of Islam themselves?

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Speaking to seven Muslim women from a range of diverse backgrounds, we got a first-hand take on their day-to-day lives and surrounding communities as it relates to their religious practices and style. Their responses give those looking from the outside in a refreshing new perspective on these women's realities.

"I chose to wear a hijab when I was about 13 years old. My reasons have varied over the years, but at this point, my hijab is one of many ways I choose to express myself. Every day we make conscious choices as to how we wish to be perceived by those around us  and I choose to be perceived visibly as a Muslim woman. I am proud of my faith, and Im happy to be a symbol of it. Wearing long sleeves and pants even through the summer, making small adjustments to let current fashion work for me, all while wrapping a hijab on my head and staying on trend. Modesty varies between cultures  in some spaces, it is commonplace to show more skin, in others the opposite  but I think the constant theme is not being ostentatious.

I view modesty in the same way I view humility, and it encompasses far more than your dress; its about how you carry yourself, how you speak to those around you. To me, modesty in fashion is less about how much you cover, and more about how you present yourself. Hijab does not define modesty because a simple piece of cloth will never accomplish that on its own  rather it is the individual who gives the hijab its meaning. I am thankful that within my Muslim community I am accepted as the individual that I am. My community recognizes that hijab is a personal choice and that each woman who chooses to wear it has the agency to decide what that entails. Im sure that I may not fulfill every expectation of what a Muslim woman should wear, but I am also not here to fit into narrow boxes."

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"My style leans toward the eccentric and so I have a wardrobe full of patterns and bright colours. I use my hijab as a stand-alone statement piece or as a complementing factor. The hijab is meant to serve as a positive force in your life. For me, it means serving as an ambassador for Islam in the most colourful way possible. Unfortunately, I think the idea of 'modesty' in Islam has been, to a degree, corrupted by the traditions of those who practice the faith. One side of my family is conservative Pakistani, with them, being modest doesnt require a hijab, and instead subservience and a soft tongue. Needless to say, I think that wearing a hijab made me the opposite of a traditional modest Pakistani girl. It made me brave and confident enough to voice my opinions and fight for what I believe in. I dont think older, conservative Muslims rooted in cultural traditions understand why I dress the way I do and I tend to get a lot of backhanded compliments from the 'aunty community.' Luckily, I come from a line of resilient and fiercely independent women, so I dont pay much attention to those who try to bring my self-confidence down."

"I can't remember exactly when I wore the hijab full-time, but I might have been about 12.

There are so many pressures to being a hijabi  as if how you dress is directly indicative of how religious you might be. That's not really the case, my relationship with God is exactly that, my relationship with God. I know my hijab makes me visibly Muslim  and I'm proud of that. It makes me even stronger in my faith. But just because I wear the hijab doesn't mean I make more trips to the mosque than the girl who doesn't wear one.

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In my everyday wear, I try to have fun with my outfits. Culture plays a big role  being Yemeni-Canadian, I love pops of colour and long tunics, but also prefer layering patterned shirts with heavier fall knits. There's also the ability to tap into traditional wear for fancier gatherings or as a statement piece. Over the years, my style has evolved and has been influenced by so many things  but one thing remains stagnant, and that's my commitment to it being an extension of my very self. I love that I'm in a space where I don't have to hide who I am to make other people comfortable.

"In the western world, even in Canada, I know that my hijab is seen as a political statement. Both within and outside my community, there are those who think a Muslim woman should dress a certain way  that is, not be interested in looking good. But thats unfair to both the religion of Islam and Muslim women. There is a saying, hadith, from the Prophet Muhammad, 'God is beautiful and He loves beauty.' When the Prophet was asked, 'What if someone likes that his clothing and his shoes are beautiful?' the Prophet replied, 'Allah loves to see the effects of His grace upon His servant.'

My hijab has become so much of my personal identity that I cant imagine life without it. The experiences I have had while wearing my hijab have shaped me into the person I am today. My hijab has shaped my personal style, too. While I was a teenager, I gravitated towards Vogue and Teen Vogue, in an attempt to learn more about high fashion and personal style. I have always found it hard to adopt fast fashion trends, but much easier to learn how to build a personal style that is unique."

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"I decided to wear the hijab solely based on my own personal choice. It was a huge step for me as an adolescent who was discovering her identity. When I first began wearing the hijab, I was not too comfortable in it since I was not familiar with incorporating it in my everyday wardrobe. However, over the years I began to grow a huge interest in fashion, which helped me develop my sense of style. I am proud to say that my hijab has impacted my life in a very positive way and has played a huge part in shaping my identity growing up, into the individual that I am today. By wearing the hijab I am not conforming to the societal beauty standards that are set for me to follow as a young woman. Rather, it is my way of resisting the negative social and political backlash as well as the societal expectations of how I should look or dress as a woman. In fact, wearing the hijab makes me feel beautiful, confident and resilient.

Especially with the rise of modest fashion, I feel empowered and inspired by Muslim women fashion designers and bloggers such as, Dina Tokio and Dian Pelangi, who are sharing their unique personal styles on social media. This is critical in our ever-changing global society, as the fashion industry needs to be more representative of our current society. As a modest fashion blogger, I love sharing and showcasing my personal style on my Instagram account in order to make hijab wearing Muslim women more visible in the fashion world."

"I have always loved dressing up since I was a little girl, in fact, it is one of the ways I choose to express my femininity, which is a core part of my identity. So having to separate my Muslim identity, from my female identity, is almost impossible, because the Hijab is a core part of who I am.

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Islam is an extremely diverse religion of 1.6 billion people. This means that based on the culture and the customs of the country the definition of modesty varies for both men and women. What is interesting is that when people think of modesty, they think of ones clothing, especially as it pertains to women, which is inherently sexist. It should be highlighted that there is a clear distinction between culture and religion. The Quran clearly states modesty for both men and women. In fact, the Quran emphasizes the modesty of the eyes first, in Surah Al-Nur (The Light), in which God commands men not to gaze at women lustfully. When in fact, in most cultures, including the west, the women are often blamed and held accountable for the actions of men in regards to rape culture. When in fact, as the Quran states, it is the men who should be held accountable for their actions and not gaze at women lustfully, regardless of the way they choose to dress."

"I wore the hijab at a young age. My mother wore it, my aunts and sisters wore it. All the female adults in my presence wore it. I knew why a Muslim woman wore the hijab, the reasons behind the teachings, but it took me couple years of self-reflection to come to terms that yes, I am my hijab, and my hijab is me.

I love fashion. Ill hit the mall and grab an outfit from Aritzia or Club Monaco, you name it. And Ill take that outfit and 'hijabanaze' it a.k.a. turn it into hijab friendly outfit.

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What I want folks to stop doing is assuming Muslim women are oppressed. I am a feminist, and for me, I choose to cover my body and celebrate it. And with that, we all celebrate our differences. Women from different cultures may dress modestly with their cultural-infused taste. A woman from Pakistan will dress different compared to a woman from Somalia. Both modest, both culturally infused styles.

And to anyone who thinks hijabs are worn because a man said so, the reality is, the hijab is not to protect men. Matter of fact it has nothing to do with men  its to honour the women."

Note: Responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Yes, you definitely got your nose from your parents, but they're not the only ones you should be thanking (or blaming) for the shape of your schnoz.

According to a new study published in the journal PLOS Genetics, the shape of your nose is the result of a combination of genes and ancestral climate adaption.

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The study looked at seven nose traits of 2,637 people across four demographics  West Africa, East Asia, Northern Europe and South Asia  and found that although noses vary from person to person, they also vary across communities. In particular, the researchers noted that in regions subject to higher temperatures and humidity, locals tended to have wider nostrils.

We selected these to maximize the distance across populations, the study's co-author Arslan Zaidi told The New York Times.

And it makes sense as narrow nostrils make it easier for the nose to humidify and warm the air which is more beneficial for people in regions with cold, dry climates.

To dispell the belief that the shape of the nose is solely dependent on genetics, the researchers based at Pennsylvania State University used a series of scientific calculations to eliminate the genetic drift factor. In doing so, they concluded that the shape change was a result of natural selection.

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Zaidi and his team hope to continue the study by looking at more groups.

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Sophie Gregoire Trudeau continues to emphasize the need for men to be involved in the fight for gender equality.

On Wednesday, the 41-year-old mom, activist and wife of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended a reception for United Nations 61st Commission on the Status of Women.

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Gregoire Trudeau was announced as one of five influencers by Women Deliver, Deliver for Good, a global organization that advocates for the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women. She gave a speech where she emphasized the importance of good role models for boys.

I was talking to a group of teenagers on International Womens Day. When I asked the group, Raise your hands, who has somebody in the room that they can tell their suffering to, share their struggles, and be vulnerable with? Almost every girl. And then I asked the boys. What do you think happened? she said.

Our boys dont have a lot of mentors out there. There are so many great, amazing, wise men in our societies. We need you. We need you on this quest for more equality because it means a more just world for everybody.

Hadrien, my little teddy bear you are surrounded by love! Happy 3rd birthday!  Hadrien, mon petit nounours... tu es entoure d'amour ! Joyeux 3e anniversaire ! A post shared by Sophie Gregoire Trudeau (@sophiegregoiretrudeau) on Feb 28, 2017 at 5:38pm PST

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Boys often have a harder time expressing themselves due to the stereotype that men dont cry or show emotions. According to parenting expert Alyson Schafer, [Boys] are socialized to pack away their emotions and not to reveal their authentic selves. This is problematic because human beings need to feel a sense of connection and belonging.

This isnt the first time the mom-of-three (who has two sons) has called out the need for men to help fight for gender equality. On International Womens Day, Gregoire Trudeau encouraged women to embrace their male allies to ignite change.





Lets celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are, who treat girls & women with respect, and who arent afraid to speak up in front of others, she wrote on Instagram. Together, we can create a movement that inspires more men to join the fight to build a better tomorrow with equal rights & opportunities for everyone  because #EqualityMatters.

The 41-year-old was criticized for putting the focus on men on a day that celebrates women. Calgary MP Michelle Rempel called out Gregoire Trudeau on Twitter, writing, I've never had to have my hand held. #equalitymatters.

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I've never had to have my hand held. #equalitymatterspic.twitter.com/z46NCZcZ4Z  Michelle Rempel (@MichelleRempel) March 7, 2017

Gregoire Trudeau followed up her initial response to the backlash and explained why she thinks men and boys are so important in the fight for equality in her speech Wednesday.

This is why, a week ago, on International Womens Day, I wrote a joint op-ed with the CEO of PLAN Canada, Caroline Riseboro, and we were talking about the importance, through Champion of Change  thats their program  to educate young boys and men on the fact that not only do we have to treat women as our equals, but because they are our equals, she said.

They give us life. These life-givers, through our bodies, through our genetics, we foster a type of democracy. Any kind of disrespect towards that means a high price to pay for everybody.

Last week, she emphasized the need to do away with gender roles.

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True equality for women comes when we break down gender stereotypes and have frank discussions about what boys and girls should be, and should do, she wrote.

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Subway is fighting back against a CBC report saying the fast food chains chicken is only about half chicken.

"We have issued a Notice of Action in Canada against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that asks for $210 million in damages over allegations made by its program, 'Marketplace,' that are defamatory and absolutely false," the company said in a statement issued to The Wrap.

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Despite our efforts to share the facts with the CBC about the high quality of our chicken and to express our strong objections to their inaccurate claims, they have not issued a retraction, as we requested, Subway told the New York Post.

The CBC reported last month on findings from research at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., that Subways oven roasted chicken contained only 53.6 per cent chicken DNA, and its chicken strips had just 42.8 per cent chicken DNA. The rest was soy.

The researchers found competing chains had considerably higher levels of chicken DNA. A&Ws chicken was found to contain 89.4 per cent chicken DNA, compared to 84.9 per cent at McDonalds, 86.5 per cent at Tim Hortons, and 88.5 per cent at Wendys.

In statements to the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, both McDonald's and Wendy's asserted that their chicken products are 100 per cent chicken.

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Chicken bought at supermarkets is typically 100 per cent chicken, the researchers found.

We do not know how they produced such unreliable and factually incorrect data, but we are insisting on a full retraction, Subway told Business Insider last month.

The CBC is standing by its reporting. Public affairs manager Emma Bedard told the Toronto Star the broadcaster will file a statement of defence if Subway launches a lawsuit. So far, the chain has only notified the CBC of its intent to sue.

We believe our journalism to be sound and there is no evidence that weve seen that would lead us to change our position, Bedard said.

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gawrav via Getty Images Indoor low angle image at day time in domestic room, near window of a beautiful, attractive Asian young woman reading a book while enjoying a mug of hot steaming coffee. One person, horizontal composition with selective focus and copy space.

As someone with ADHD, who grew up with reading difficulties, sitting down with a book was never my go-to pastime. I preferred hands-on learning over classroom education -- so when I traded in my textbooks to run my own business, I don't think anyone was surprised.

But even though I believe experience is the best teacher, there are always opportunities to learn from the experts (whether you're in startup or 30 years into your business). If you don't know where to start, here's my shortlist of the best books for business and life as an entrepreneur.

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3. The 4-Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss

When I first started 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, I spent every waking hour on growing the company. I believed if I wasn't working, I was killing the business -- because to me, time away from the office meant missed opportunities. The reality can actually be the opposite.

If you think more hours logged equals more money and success, you're going to overwork yourself. And an overworked leader is an unproductive leader (not to mention an inattentive partner, parent, and friend). If you don't balance your time between work and home, every aspect of your life will suffer.

Now, I use Mondays as out-of-office 'Think Days' to focus solely on big picture goals and priorities. I also take Fridays off completely, to spend time with my kids or learn a new skill. I haven't gone as extreme as a 4-hour work week (and neither has Ferriss, who always goes full throttle). But this book opened my eyes to how taking time away from work can be the best thing for business in the long run.

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2. Good to Great - Jim Collins

It took almost a decade for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to hit its stride. We'd been on a steady growth path for years out of our small scale operation, but we knew we could be bigger and better. So we decided to franchise, opened our next location in Toronto -- and we shot into a period of hyper-growth we never could've expected.

Jim Collins calls this the "flywheel effect." He says starting a business is like getting a 5,000-pound flywheel to rotate on its axle as fast and for as long as you can. At first, the effort seems futile -- with each push, the wheel only budges an inch. But as you keep pushing, it picks up speed exponentially, until you hit a breaking point and it propels forward through the power of its own momentum.

We saw this phenomenon with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and we're on the verge with our other three brands: WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, You Move Me, and Shack Shine. Though we're still in startup, we know long-term gain starts with upfront effort. Any moment now we'll become unstoppable.

1. The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber

Back in 1995, I moved to Victoria, BC, to open our second operation. I wanted it to look and feel the exact same as the original, but wasn't sure how to decentralize our standards and practices. That's when I came across a simple concept from Michael Gerber that forever changed the trajectory of the business: "People don't fail, systems do."

This idea inspired me to create an operations manual so detailed that anyone could operate a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? business. We made continuous improvements year over year until we became so well oiled that the next step was obvious: franchise on a major scale.

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Systematizing our business took 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to the next level. We then replicated the model across three more brands to round out our family of home service companies. If I'd never read Gerber's book, we wouldn't be half of what we are today.

Not every book you read will have a game-changing impact on your life or your business. To be successful as an entrepreneur, you need to always be learning and adapting to new ideas. Whether it's finding work/life balance, catapulting your company to full potential, or streamlining the way your business operates -- the lessons we learn only take full effect when we put them into practice.

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For decades, Liberal and Conservative politicians have argued that free trade is the panacea for all our economic ills. That they negotiate our trade deals in backrooms not for themselves, but for all of us.

Most recently Liberals were spinning and waxing on about how their multilateral trade deals were done for Winnipeg mukluk producers and Nova Scotia blueberry pickers. The free-trade ideology has been given a free ride for so long that we don't even roll our eyes to such ridiculous claims. Even worse, it's led us to pretend like no one loses out because of these deals.

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That's bunk, of course. Just take a look at our manufacturing base and you can see that these trade deals leave too many Canadians worse off. Last week I visited with workers from the CAMI plant in Ingersoll to see it firsthand.

The CAMI plant has been repeatedly voted the most efficient auto manufacturing plant in all of North America. It is so profitable that GM forces the workers to work six days a week so they can maximize the bottom line.

The disintegration of the middle-class dream is happening before our eyes.

But running the most efficient plant at a significant profit isn't good enough, so they are going to ship out production of the Terrain to Mexico, costing 625 people their jobs .

This is the face of Canada's trade orthodoxy no one wants to talk about: it doesn't matter how hard you work, how many concessions you give or how profitable the plant, you can be sold out.

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And rest assured that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn't going to stand up for jobs at a plant as important to the economy as CAMI, he sure as hell isn't going to stand up for you if you are working in a contract or temp job someplace else.

While Liberals continue with their failed Bobby McFerrin "Don't worry be happy" economic mantra, the data paints a different picture. In 2009 the number of Canadians who considered themselves working class or poor was 29 per cent. That number has since jumped to a stunning 44 per cent.

The disintegration of the middle-class dream is happening before our eyes and the Liberals' only solution has been to keep on with their failed trickle-down economics, giving bigger tax breaks to the upper management types who oversee the bleed-off of stable Canadian employment.

Canadian workers across this country deserve a government that is willing to have their back.

But just pointing to the problem won't cut it, so what practical steps can we start taking to ensure the federal government plays its role in sharing gains broadly?

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First, with Donald Trump putting NAFTA on the negotiation table, we have an enormous opportunity to fight like hell for Canadian workers like those being ripped off by GM's move to Mexico. So far public discussions have only been about expected concessions from softwood and beef, to auto parts and dairy. This negotiation should be about ways to redress the trade imbalance.

Secondly, let's talk about a simple job pledge for Canadian investment. GM was given massive concessions and bailouts during the 2008 economic crisis. Now that the good times have returned, it's not acceptable that they give us the pink slip. What goes for GM would go for Bombardier, Irving or any other company. Any company that expects money and support from the Canadian government must commit to a job pledge -- proving that handouts are clearly linked to jobs.

Finally, specific to the auto sector we need to get serious about a proactive industrial strategy. Rather than sitting back and watching it be moved job by job to Mexico, my colleague MP Brian Masse (Windsor West) has spoken for years about the need to have the government working as a positive partner with industry, labour, auto dealers and the communities to strengthen the manufacturing economy.

And this is just a start. Simply put, it is the federal government's job to work with the corporate sector to share gains broadly and rebuild the Canadian middle class.

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The workers at CAMI, like Canadian workers across this country, deserve a government that is willing to have their back. That's exactly why I am running for leader of the NDP, and that is my pledge.

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I'm old enough that I can remember when Canadian banks kept true banker's hours. Back in the 1980s, you were lucky if your local branch was open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, with maybe a couple of extra hours on Fridays.

It was primarily for that reason that I finally gave up on the big banks and switched my account to Canada Trust in the late 1980s. Unlike the Big Five, Canada Trust made every effort to make banking convenient for its customers. Their branches opened early and often stayed open well into the evening hours. Plus they were also open on Saturdays.

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As an added bonus, not long after I switched, Canada Trust opened a branch in my neighbourhood. Once I had a nearby branch with convenient hours, I figured I could say goodbye to the Big Five forever.

Given their size and financial clout, it was probably inevitable that one of these mega-banks would gobble up my bank. And so it came to pass in 2000 that Toronto-Dominion Bank bought Canada Trust, giving birth to what we know today as TD Canada Trust.

At the time, I was skeptical about this change but, luckily for me and millions of others, the TD banking bigwigs were smart enough to recognize Canada Trust's strengths and incorporate them into the merged branches. They were also smart enough to make Canada Trust's pioneering leader Ed Clark the new CEO of the combined bank.

However, it looks like my initial skepticism was warranted after all, just 15 years after the fact. Since Ed Clark's retirement in late 2014, cracks are starting to appear in the solid, customer-friendly edifice that once was TD Canada Trust.

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All that will be left of TD Canada Trust is TD Bank - just another money-grubbing member of Canada's Big Five.

Just last month, I learned that my friendly neighbourhood branch was going to close. No reason was given, just a letter in the mail that assured me that I'd enjoy the "same great service" at a location almost three and a half miles from my home.

I know the employees at my branch are not happy about the move and I'm doubtful the service I get at the new branch will be the same. Nevertheless, I figured I could probably live with this change. Despite the inconvenience to me, the new branch's hours are generous and hopefully many of the staff at my current branch will make the move.

But the latest news suggests that I may have to look elsewhere to do my banking. CBC News recently reported that TD tellers are under severe pressure to sell customers products and services they don't need. The tellers have to meet unrealistic quarterly sales quotas, quotas which have tripled in the last three years.

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In the last while, I have to admit that I've occasionally experienced this worrisome trend at my local neighbourhood branch, although the instances of sales pitches have, so far, thankfully been few and far between. Sadly, I do know of at least one employee who quit because of the increased pressure from management.

It's hard to comprehend why TD would risk its hard-earned goodwill with its customer base just to squeeze a few more shekels out of us. After all, this is the bank that just made record profits of $2.5 billion in its last fiscal quarter, up 14 per cent from a year ago.

What I'm seeing is the disappearance of many of the factors that first attracted me to Canada Trust 30 years ago. No longer will I have a bank branch in my neighbourhood and no longer will I have friendly, motivated tellers who have my best interests at heart.

I guess I should have seen this move coming once my bank started phasing the words "Canada Trust" out of its name. You can see it slowly disappearing from the bank's logo, stationery and advertisements. Before long, all that will be left of TD Canada Trust is TD Bank -- just another money-grubbing member of Canada's Big Five.

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The NDP are the only party with policies that support working people. They are the party with a social conscience that puts working Canadians before big businesses and profit. They uniquely understand businesses need to make a profit in order to survive, but they also know that profit has to be the servant of social need rather than a singular purpose unto itself.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals have shown that they continue to be a government for big business, serving the singular goal of its profits.

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What happened to the compassionate Justin proffered during the last election? For instance, Justin has done nothing to provide for adequate and appropriate housing, to say nothing of putting money into health care and social programs to eliminate suicides in indigenous communities.

When prime minister Trudeau looks in the mirror, he should feel shame.

The NDP needs a strong leader to hold the Liberals accountable to the people of Canada, just as Thomas Mulcair did with such surgical precision against the Harper Conservatives. Unfortunately, we can't have Thomas back.

Though the candidates we have at this time are all quite thought provoking, we should be very cautious of the approach advocated by leadership hopeful Peter Julian.

Recently, Peter Julian has decided to declare war on Alberta and pipelines. His position in 2017 is ridiculous and would be quite amusing if it was not so problematic. To say that fossil fuel corporations will target him and that we will be locked into a new raw bitumen-based economy for the next 50 years is nothing more than pure supposition.

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Peter rightly suggests we need bold action to stop climate change. However, we need to be rational in our thoughts and actions in making decisions that will allow success in saving the planet. To say that Kinder Morgan, Energy East and Keystone should be scrapped makes as much sense as Mr. Julian thinking he can be the next prime minister.

The NDP needs a leader who is rational and has an abundance of common sense and knowledge about what they are talking about. We need a leader that everyday workers can believe in. A leader that understands that B follows A, and C follows B.

Peter is either naive or living under a mushroom, unable to deal with this reality.

This person is not Peter Julian. By denying Alberta pipelines now, Peter jumps into a future that has not yet arrived. And that will leave workers in Western Canada behind. It beggars common sense to move to a point that you are not prepared to occupy yet.

Yes, we need to move to a sustainable, climate-friendly and solar-powered future. But that is a transitional process. We can't skip ahead a decade or more to get there. Rationality requires us to move in a linear fashion. Morality requires us to transition economies and workers as we move.

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There is no framework in which farmers get the fuel to run their equipment to farm their land, the transportation industry moves our consumables inland, and airlines fly us from one end of Canada to the other without petroleum -- in the next 10 to 20 years. Peter is either naive or living under a mushroom, unable to deal with this reality.

We need to have discussions and plans like those that Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has developed and has begun implementing. Positive, responsible and measured decisions that will work for Alberta and all of Canada.

The fearmongering that Mr. Julian is hoping you will believe makes him more suitable to be a member of the Alberta Wildrose party, not the NDP.

There is no doubt NDP members want a Canada we are all proud of. One where social justice, equality, fairness and green energy will allow our environment to be a place that is able to sustain life in perpetuity. This is a value we all share. But life just isn't a book that we can flip all the way to the end.

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Peter, if you really cared about Canada you would follow the lead of Rachel Notley's NDP in Alberta, who are taking rational, progressive steps to simultaneously protect jobs and the environment while working strategically towards a more sustainable, green-energy fuelled world.

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artisteer via Getty Images Weight Scale, Balance, Mental Illness.

One in five children in Canada lives in poverty. One in ten will experience homelessness at some point in their lives. Food banks are overwhelmed. First Nations are rocked by a youth suicide crisis. Meanwhile, income inequality continues to rise, real wages for half the workforce are stagnant or falling, consumer debt is soaring, and the top 10% takes nearly half of all income.

It is time for the federal government to act on reducing income inequality. For decades, the IMF, OECD, and World Bank have warned governments about its destabilising effects. Last month, the World Economic Forum in Davos reported that inequality constitutes the single greatest threat to the global economy. More than an ageing population. Even more than climate change.

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The federal government is now more than a year into its mandate and has yet to tackle this problem. A marginal tax cut for the middle class won't get us there. Not even close. To have any chance of curbing the trend will require a fairer, more progressive tax system that helps the poor, a tougher stance on tax evasion, and a bold policy agenda that tackles the root causes of inequality - not just poverty but extreme wealth as well.

Trouble is, the rising inequality not only shortens lifespans and divides communities, it also blinds government to the needs of the most vulnerable. Despite its feel-good rhetoric about fairness and inclusiveness, the federal government seems content to double down on Conservative-era policies that will deepen inequality and send more wealth to the top income strata.

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To figure out why this happens, consider this. Public spending serves the common good more than it benefits the rich, whom can probably manage fine with low taxes, private clinics, private schools, no public transit, and so on. When incomes and inequality rise together, as they are in Canada, the rich gains political influence to cut taxes and regulations and keep spending down.

The results are predictable: under-investment in health, education, and other social services, and cash transfers to low-income families, and rising relative poverty. A poor country for rich people. A plutocracy. Or, as the late economist JK Galbraith famously described it, private opulence and public squalor.

Canada is fortunate to not have an economic growth problem. But it does have a wealth distribution problem. Compared to other wealthy but more equal countries like Finland or oil-rich Norway, it spends a lot to manage the impacts of inequality while doing little to prevent it. Making matters worse is the tendency to compare Canadian policy and leadership styles to only the US -- an outlier among outliers in both respects. So long as things are not as terrible up here then no worries.

Consider the record on child poverty and health in Canada. The poverty rate increased from 15 to 19% since 1989 and is now 2.5 times higher in Indigenous children. Internationally, Canada is a laggard with respect to child health due in large part to deep-rooted inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians and high income inequality. In 2012, UNICEF ranked Canada 17th out of 29 rich countries with respect to overall child health and wellbeing. Its 2016 follow-up report on child health inequalities (that is, the gap between the bottom and the norm) ranked Canada an abysmal 26th among 35 rich countries, between Lithuania and Poland. And since coming to power, the current federal government has spent a small fraction of the money it promised during the election campaign to Jordon's Principle - on closing the gap in healthcare outcomes for First Nations children. Remember that campaign promise to install a federal children's commissioner? Long forgotten.

If all this seems callous, that's because it is. The good news is that inequality isn't beyond our control. It's a result of priorities and policy decisions. The Liberals need to hold their nerve, stare down the plutocrats, and reexamine what they want to achieve with their time in office. Because time is running out to deliver on its promise to create a fairer, more just society.
St. Patrick's Day is once again upon us. While St. Patrick's Day is only an official holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador, many people across Canada will be celebrating St. Patrick's in the upcoming days. Canada stands in a significant Irish tradition, as roughly 4.5 million Canadians claim Irish heritage. While this Irish heritage is rightly a source of pride for many Canadians, many of the St. Patrick's Day revellers may not know about the archaic nature of Ireland's law.

Women throughout Ireland are denied access to safe, free, and legal abortions, as abortion is illegal and criminalized throughout the island of Ireland. This includes Northern Ireland, which is a part of the United Kingdom.

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Firstly the hypocrisy of this scenario must be pointed out. Abortion was legalized throughout the rest of the United Kingdom in 1967, however the act that established legal abortion in Great Britain was never extended to Northern Ireland to fall in line with England, Scotland and Wales. This leaves Northern Ireland in a position where abortions are only permitted under the law in cases where the life of the mother is endangered. Abortion is still illegal even in cases of rape, incest and fatal fetal abnormalities. This means women in Ireland have been forced to carry babies to term that they know will not survive after birth.

Abortion law is comparable in the Republic of Ireland as well, which only legally allows abortions when the life of the mother is at risk. This is set out in the eighth amendment of the Irish Constitution, which equates the life of the mother as equal to the life of an unborn child. If you are found guilty of having an illegal abortion in Ireland it is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

In both jurisdictions procuring pills online that induce abortion are also criminal, and cases of illegal abortion are actively prosecuted. The current state of the law in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland effectively refuses women and girls one of their most basic human rights, which is to have autonomy over their own bodies. Women in Ireland have died because of a lack of access to legal abortions except in the most extreme circumstances, and will continue to do so until there is a change in the law.

Until Ireland's archaic abortion laws are changed both North and South, women in Ireland will continue to be denied their fundamental human rights.

Many people within Ireland and around the world, including in Canada, are campaigning for a change to abortion laws in both the North and the South. These campaigns often share harrowing statistics, such as the fact 10-12 women per day travel from Ireland to England to obtain abortions. This is a phenomenon that deeply divides Irish women along the margin on class. Women who can afford to travel to England to obtain abortions are able to do so legally. This is in contrast to women who cannot afford to travel, who are consequently forced to either carry their babies to term or obtain illegal abortion pills, for which they risk prosecution. Therefore the lack of free, safe and legal abortions unduly burdens and criminalizes poor women.

The crux of the campaign to change abortion laws in Ireland is that politicians need to trust women. All women have different reasons for pursing abortions, but politicians must trust that women are making the right decision based on their own deeply personal circumstances. While Irish-Canadians should proudly celebrate their Irish heritage this St. Patrick's Day, we should also be outraged what's going on in Ireland right now. As the law currently stands women and girls are losing the right to bodily autonomy upon becoming pregnant.

Until Ireland's archaic abortion laws are changed both North and South, women in Ireland will continue to be denied their fundamental human rights. Therefore as you pour a pint this St. Patrick's Day, take a moment to recognize that while you are celebrating a great Irish tradition, there is also an injustice in Irish society which must be addressed.

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Geber86 via Getty Images Close up of a happy young couple enjoying city life.

Ooh, couples, what is it that really breaks our heart?

A lack of joy.

It doesn't matter if we're embroiled in anger and blame, or frozen out by cold and distant withdrawal. Couples in crisis are not experiencing joy, either individually or together.

In The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (with Douglas Abrams), eight pillars of joy are presented to help bring happiness to our lives. As a relationship therapist, I realized with nerdish glee that each of these pillars can be applied specifically within our relationships to bring connection, intimacy and -- of course -- joy.

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1. Perspective

"With our mind we create our own world." Wise words from the Buddha and oh how true for couples: we create our relationship by the way we view it and our partner. Many of us get stuck believing our perspective is right... and therefore our partner is wrong! The Dalai Lama suggests we hold a wider perspective.

For couples this can mean seeing that our crisis comes from a broader dynamic in which we each play a role. Instead of honing in on a partner's perceived flaw, we can consider the context for this behaviour, and how we may be contributing to it. If we want to take an even bigger view, we can try and understand the impact of our childhoods, and society, and other factors. We do not have to take the narrow -- and joyless -- view that our partner is fundamentally wrong or bad.

2. Humility

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop insist that "We can't solve everything or control all aspects of life. We need others." Yes, it can feel vulnerable to admit that we depend emotionally on our partners. Scary enough that we put up defenses to protect ourselves, which actually pushes our partner away. Real intimacy comes from acknowledging our basic needs (and neediness!) and turning toward our loved one to be there for us. (This also requires bravery, so let's be humble and brave.)

3. Humour

No surprise that the Dalai Lama and Archbishop spend most of their time joking, laughing, and kindly teasing one another. Alas, this playfulness is notably absent for couples in distress. The Dalai Lama says, "It is much better when there is not too much seriousness." How true of relationships! As the Archbishop mentions, learning to laugh in times of adversity is a skill. Couples can learn to use humour to diffuse tense situations, and to laugh at themselves rather than getting stuck in perpetual crisis. (Note: sarcasm is really not funny and will harm a relationship.)

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4. Acceptance

The Dalai Lama tells us that "stress and anxiety come from our expectations of how life should be." So it is for couples who expect their partners to change. Of course we can learn to be more skillful in our relationships, and learn to break self-defeating patterns, but that is not the same as wanting our partner to be something they are not.

We have to accept our partners for who they are, otherwise we perpetuate a cycle of disappointment and frustration. And frankly, we give up control when we expect someone else to change. Rather, we can be empowered and change our perspective from criticism to compassion and kindness. This is one of the most powerful and joyful things we can do in a relationship -- see our partner for who they are, flaws and all, and truly accept them.

5. Forgiveness

Sometimes our acceptance requires forgiveness first. The Archbishop recounted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and of mothers whose children were killed and who were able to forgive those responsible for their deaths. It makes me believe that forgiveness is always possible. And that means we can "heal ourselves and be free from the past."

It can be devastating to endure betrayal in a relationship. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, ignoring, or condoning the behaviour. And it is "a thousand per cent wrong" to see forgiveness as weakness, says the Dalai Lama. It means getting to a place where we can have empathy for our partner, understand the context, and release the relationship from ongoing resentment and hostility. If we choose to hurt back our partner instead, we just keep the cycle of harm going. And then really, we will never feel joy.

6. Gratitude

Oh Honey Bun, I'm so lucky to be with you! Can you imagine if we expressed this (or some version of it) to our loved one every day? Imagine how good our partner would feel, and how this positivity would impact the relationship. Not surprisingly, according to research in this book, "Grateful people report more positive emotions, more vitality and optimism, and greater life satisfaction as well as lower levels of stress and depression." Couples that regularly express gratitude in their relationship benefit from a stronger, closer, more trusting relationship... and that certainly brings joy.

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7. Compassion

"Too much self-centered thinking is the source of suffering', says the Dalai Lama. Relationship expert Stan Takin also cites 'pro-self' thinking as a cause of relationship breakdown. It is only when we shift our thinking to our partner, or to protecting the couple, that we build a secure relationship.

The Dalai Lama is emphatic that the 'true secret to happiness' lies in alleviating the suffering of others. The more we worry about ourselves and getting what we want, the less content we are, and the less stable our relationship. The more we think about our partner, and have compassion for their feelings and needs, the stronger our connection.

8. Generosity

"Our book says that it is in giving that we receive," says the Archbishop. This does not only mean giving gifts to our partner, but includes the generosity of our efforts, attention and affection. Why hold back? Couples that measure out who is doing more, or getting more, or not doing enough, are at risk of tension, disconnection, and just plain misery. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop talk about "the generosity of spirit" -- being big-hearted, magnanimous, tolerant, broad-minded, forgiving and kind. It is precisely this generosity of spirit that can infuse our relationships with joy.
The dust mercilessly cuts its way, meandering across the pathways of Badanrero Village, located 100 kilometres from the border town of Moyale near Ethiopia. The terrain is flat and desolate, with nothing but dried up shrubs for miles.

As the dirt whirl picks up momentum, small children and goats can be seen scurrying for shelter in tiny semi-permanent stick and grass-thatched structures that make up their homes, for now. The majority of the inhabitants who live in this arid region of Northern Kenya are nomadic pastoralist families.

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Dabo Boru, 21, is a mother of three who trekked with her family to Badanrero from her home village of Ambato, 38 km away. They were forced to move here in order to save their cattle from dying of thirst and hunger due to drought.

"I brought all these cows here in the hope that they will survive. I even bought for them fodder and water but 18 of them have already died and we are only left with three," says Dabo, as she stares sadly at the decomposing carcasses of her dead livestock lying just a few metres from her hut.

In late 2016 when the rains failed, a severe drought hit the arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya, affecting over 2.7 million people. Marsabit is one of the hardest hit counties, where thousands of children are food insecure and in dire need of treatment for severe malnutrition.

Dabo says, "Hunger is a major problem here, children don't have milk and we don't have food and water. Where we fetch water from is very far and it is dirty. We are really suffering because of this drought."

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Most natural open water sources in Moyale have dried up, putting immense pressure on the few available boreholes and dwindling water pans. Households like Dabo's now have to walk up to 10 to 15 km to access water.

"My husband has been away from home for two weeks now, looking for pasture for our remaining animals. I am now left alone to protect my children and make sure that they eat, which is very difficult without the animals that provide the milk," says Dabo.

People are at a higher risk of falling sick because they are malnourished and lack good sanitation. At the nearby Badanrero Dispensary, Hiliki Diba, 27, has brought her nine-month-old twins to be treated for malnutrition and acute watery diarrhea.

Hiliki says, "I have been taught how to breastfeed exclusively for six months, but having twins and the drought have made it very difficult for me to breastfeed them. First, I don't produce enough milk because I don't eat enough because there is no food. I am also weak and I fall sick often."

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While visiting Badanrero Village as part of a multi-agency and Government delegation to assess the impact of the drought, the UNICEF Representative in Kenya, Werner Schultink, joined the Under Secretary General and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, to raise awareness and appeal for support to respond to the crisis.

Werner says, "Because of the drought there will be at least 100,000 children under five years who will need treatment for severe malnutrition. UNICEF has put all the requirements in place to treat these children. We are also working with County Governments on the repair of broken down boreholes to increase access to safe water."

"Over 180,000 children are no longer going to school because either there is no water or there is no school feeding happening. Imagine the impact this will have on their future lives and that of their community if it persists," says Werner.

Fortunately for Hiliki Diba, her twin daughters were screened and admitted to the outpatient therapeutic nutrition treatment program. The girls were treated at the UNICEF- supported dispensary using Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a peanut-based paste that is fortified with nutrients and essential minerals, alongside vitamin A supplementation.

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They were also treated for diarrhea and given soap, a bucket and water treatment tablets for use at home. Mothers coming to the clinic are also taught basic home hygiene and nutrition practices in order to safeguard their health and that of their children during the drought.

Stephen O'Brien says, "The forecast for the necessary rains in the coming months is not promising and therefore the fear is that the drought can only get worse. It now requires the international community to step up, because we (UN) are already here. There is need to back this successive track record of saving lives and protecting civilians, who through no fault of their own, have found themselves caught up in the drought."

According to the Kenya Government, which has appealed for humanitarian assistance, the number of food insecure people will rise to four million in April 2017 if the situation is left unchecked.

Daniel Oloo, Communication Specialist, UNICEF Kenya

To help UNICEF continue providing live-saving support to families like Hiliki's, click here.

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In case you missed it, Canadian food delivery service SkipTheDishes is in the middle of a social media crisis, and it all stems from the way one of their hiring managers answered a question about salary.

It started when job applicant Taylor Byrnes emailed the company the following questions: "How much do you think I'll be getting paid an hour? Benefits will be included, right? Sorry, I just thought I should ask now. Thanks for your time and have a lovely day."

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Victoria Karras, a talent acquisition coordinator at SkipTheDishes, responded this way:

Byrnes posted a screenshot of this exchange to Twitter, which sparked outrage and the use of a #BoycottSkip hashtag.

SkipTheDishes, you should know, was recently purchased by the U.K.-based Just Eat plc for $110 million. Maybe this shouldn't factor into the equation, but the fact that the company is presumably flush with cash makes it especially difficult to defend their response.

The way they responded, however, does reinforce conventional wisdom about salary questions in the interview process (that you should delay the discussion as long as possible). The traditional reasoning for this was that it gives the wrong impression (that you're only interested in money), and that it pushes the conversation into a negotiation (and you've just blinked first).

According to a Robert Half survey cited by this Payscale post, 31 per cent of managers are comfortable with applicants asking about compensation and benefits in the first interview; 38 per cent say it should wait until interview number two; and nine per cent think it can be discussed during an initial phone interview.

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Is this accurate?

"You can get away with a lot of so-called taboo questions if they're delivered in a professional, thoughtful manner." -- Shawn D'Souza, Workopolis

"It shouldn't be up to the candidate to ask this question at all," says Shawn D'Souza, talent acquisition manager at Workopolis. "If a company is not listing salary on their job posting, it should be discussed during an initial phone interview, before any face-to-face meetings. This lets the company and candidate know if they have the same expectations, and makes sure nobody is wasting their time."

And if the hiring manager does not bring it up?

"A lot of companies have their own questions during the application process, and salary is usually one of them. If they don't bring it up, though, it's valid for an applicant to ask, even during an initial phone discussion. If you're worried about how it might come across, you can wait for the end of the conversation. If it's gone well, and you feel like this is an opportunity you want to continue to explore, it's valid to ask about the salary range, especially if you're currently employed at another company," D'Souza says.

Before you do that, though, D'Souza suggests keeping a few things in mind:

Know your worth

StatsCan, Payscale, and the aforementioned Robert Half are some of the online resources that offer salary information. Use them to understand the salaries offered for similar job titles in your region. Keep in mind, though, that this should be used as a rule of thumb; your skills, education and experience can create exceptions.

"By doing the research, you go into any salary conversation on solid footing. You'll also know right away when a proposed salary range does not measure up," D'Souza says, adding that you need to be both realistic and confident in your abilities.

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"You don't want to price yourself out of the opportunity. Name a wide, but realistic, salary range, and then define why you should be in the higher end of that range," he says.

Be professional

No two hiring managers and companies are alike, so if you want to ask about salary early on in the process, be as diplomatic and professional as possible.

"You can get away with a lot of so-called taboo questions if they're delivered in a professional, thoughtful manner. You can also use the circumstances of the interview to your advantage. If you need to take time off work, for example, or if it sounds like the hiring process has a lot of steps, use that to frame the question," D'Souza says.

He suggests using this kind of question:

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but as it's a bit difficult for me to take time off work for an interview; could you give me a sense of the salary range before we move forward?"

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Know what's important to you

A good salary is always important, but as the saying goes, money isn't everything. If a job or company sounds and feels like a good fit for you and your career, don't be put off by a lower salary.

"That's not to say you should take a pay cut, but you need to know what's most important to you. Do you want more responsibility? Do you want to take the next step in your career? Do you want to work from home more often? These are all things you should be taking into account when you start the conversation about salary. If the opportunity offers something that would really make you happy, it's sometimes worth making a compromise on salary," D'Souza says.

So, there you have it. Don't be afraid to ask the question. Just make sure you've done your homework (and be on your best behaviour).

See also:

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The five things you need to know on Friday, March 17

This morning's Waugh Zone is by Ned Simons, so is 'utterly ridiculous and should be ignored'. Paul is away.

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1) SPOOK REBUKE

GCHQ has publicly denied a suggestion by the White House it spied on Donald Trump at the request of Barack Obama as "utterly ridiculous", "nonsense" and something that "should be ignored". The claim was first made by Fox News pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano. It was then repeated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer as he attempted to justify Trump's assertion that Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower last year - despite intelligence officials saying theres no evidence that ever happened. It is highly unusual for GCHQ to comment in this way. But as the spy agency's director of communications added on Twitter: "Well it is a very unusual allegation." One of the five eyes is certainly narrowed this morning.

In the White House briefing room yesterday, Spicer was visibly flustered as reporters pressed him on Trumps charges, given that there is bipartisan consensus among intelligence leaders that there is no basis for his claims. But the White House spokesman wouldnt accept that. Instead, for half an hour, he berated reporters for refusing to cover the possibility that Obama had spied on Trump. At one point, apparently annoyed that the media isnt looking for signs of Obamas espionage, he shouted, Where is your passion?

Crazier things have happened however, remember as Kellyanne Conway warned us, microwaves have ears.

2) REFERENDUMS FOREVER

If there was ever a time when Britain was not holding a referendum, then I don't want to know about it. Sounds dull. Theresa May yesterday firmly insisted she would not allow Nicola Sturgeon to hold a second Scottish independence vote until she had got this whole Brexit thing out of the way. The Scottish first minister wants to hold it in 2018 or 2019. But the prime minister told ITV's Robert Peston that "now is not the time". Pressed on when the time would be right, the PM carefully avoided answering.

Sturgeon has condemned the move as "undemocratic". And the SNP's deputy first minister John Swinney told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning he believed May's position was "utterly unsustainable" and should change her mind like she did on the Budget. Asked repeatedly if the Scottish government would hold an advisory referendum without Westminster's agreement, Swinney four times refused to answer yes or no. He also did not rule out holding a third referendum should the second one not end in independence. This is of course all timed nicely to coincide with the start of the SNP's conference in Aberdeen, which will kick off with a speech from Angus Robertson. The prime minister meanwhile, will be delivering a speech at the Conservative spring forum in Cardiff.

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English-Scottish relations were probably not helped a great deal by the BBC Question Time audience member in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, asking SNP MP Joanna Cherry whether the currency of an independent Scotland would be the "groat". Although Cherry did not say what it would be.

3) CAMERON DENIES CONSERVATIVE CAMPAIGN CON

David Cameron has played down the significance of Conservative breaches of election spending rules which have left the party facing a record 70,000 fine. The former prime minister said undeclared spending in the 2015 general election amounted to only around 0.6% of the Tories total budget for the campaign, and that the party had kept well within the permitted spending limit. Former Tory treasurer Simon Day is facing a police investigation after an Electoral Commission report found numerous failures in Conservative reporting of expenses for the general election and three by-elections in 2014. In terms of a party being fined, this is not the first time this has happened. Other parties have been fined," he told a charity event in London. Tory chairman Patrick McLoughlin took a different approach to questions over party electioneering, and decided to try and knock Sky News' Darren McCaffrey's phone out of his hand.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Nick Clegg is in a poster for airport maintenance in Las Vegas.

4) PLAN FOR BRITAIN.COM

Theresa May says she has a plan for Brexit Britain. And it has a website (that now actually works after a bit of an awkward false start that in no way was a metaphor for anything). The site tells voters they can use it to "find out about some of the work the government has undertaken to prepare for the UK leaving the EU". Not available on the website is David Davis' assessment of the economic impact of leaving with no trade deal in place - because he hasn't done one.

5) COMMONS PEOPLE

This week on The Huffington Post UK's Commons People podcast, Owen, Paul and I rattle through Brexit, Budget u-turns, student immigration figures, Jeremy Corbyns PMQs performance and more. There is also a quiz about Scotland which mostly served to prove how painfully English I am. As well as listening online, you can subscribe to on iTunes by clicking here.

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If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox.
Trump's latest attack on the media is unprecedented. It is turning heads and raising eyebrows in every corner of the world. While he claims to fight 'fake news', in his argument and general rhetoric, he does not distinguish between different publications, insinuating that all media outlets condone fake news - Buzzfeed is no different to CNN, nor is CNN different from the New York Times. What's alarming is that his attempt to delegitimise the media as an influential opponent to his presidency seems to be working.

This brings in question the efficacy and impact of the media's current approach.

The role of media generally - and news publications specifically - has traditionally been three-fold: informing people of everything new, providing an editorial and curatorial filter to news, and, on a broader scale, representing and amplifying the public's voice.

However, in our new reality, this is becoming less and less essential. Let's take a step back to understand the broader macro-trends causing this.

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People become the media

Empowered with live broadcasting technology, individuals have become a medium themselves, enabling wide and niche audiences to access timely and fresh news around the clock. A smartphone is all you need - no permissions, knowledge or effort required. With the advent of live technology, people's ability to communicate beyond their inner circles has come full circle, affecting both written and televised forms of media. The technology and privilege of getting to news first no longer belongs to media brands, diminishing one of the oldest and simplest functions they served.

Social platforms help people make the news

In the past, media channels decided what is news and what is not, what makes it to the front pages and what gets hidden in small print. But today, with the help of social platforms, people decide what news is and what isn't. Twitter has recently repositioned itself as a source of live news, leveraging its crowd-fed platform to facilitate conversation around current events. Facebook uses a human-less algorithm to inform people of what's 'trending', promising a more objective way of curating news. An event becomes news based on how many people are talking about it - a filter that some deem non-academic or rigorous enough. While the editorial role of news publications is not completely obliterated, it is certainly weakened.

New celebrity challenge media authority

In the old days, people connected to the social and political elite through the media. But today, there is a community of new elites who have direct means of exchange with the mainstream. Communication is open and freedom of speech is more accessible than before. Going through the media to amplify one's voice is not necessary. The fiasco with Pewdiepie is telling of a power struggle between new influencers and established media. In his video response to WSJ, Pewdiepie criticises news publications, describing them as traditional and 'old school'. Milo Yiannopoulos is another controversial personality who has been heavily criticised by the media. These two examples indicate a changing value system amongst a rising community of online influencers. Media brands have found themselves incapable of representing these voices, advocating instead the moral system of a world gone by. Over time, media have lost the power to represent the many voices of the people, claiming a polarising position of opposition - opposition to the same people they were meant to represent.

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What then becomes of the role of media?

It is without a doubt that media brands, whether online or offline, written or televised, are facing an existential problem. Their competitive set is widening. Survival is already difficult as it is, with big advertising money going to giant tech firms. The New York Times recently launched an advertising campaign, bringing attention to its role as protector of the 'truth'. It seemed a direct response to Trump's consistent attacks, but it also reflects the voice of a category that is fighting for relevance and credibility.

As any brand knows, sustaining relevance is an everyday challenge. Fighting change is never a winning battle. Media brands have to embrace the new reality, redefining their value and how they deliver it - but how?

Bridging the gap

Being a source of news is not enough anymore. The analytical and expert voice need not alienate or divide. Rather, it must strive to be always fresh and consistently inclusive, connecting and partnering where possible. Having a point of view is always applauded, but being polarising today is proving to be more costly than ever. Media brands must find and create common ground, uncovering new truths to help bridge the gap between the new and old, the left and right, the East and West.

Opening up

That means facilitating and moderating conversation rather than being an active part of it. Technology is more accessible than ever and as such, one of the core assets of news publications is not the ability to broadcast, but their ability to influence through their platform and follower database. Opening up that platform to enable greater broadcasters to have greater influence adds dynamism and currency to their role. It takes them off the high moral ground and widens their remit to become champions of novelty and diversity in the community.

The imperatives then for media brands of the future are clear:

Mediate rather than criticise

Nurture rather than judge

Enrich rather than condemn
In spite of working in some fantastic schools: Independent, State and International, I am aware of a steady and worrying decline in many of the skills that school children have. In 22 years of teaching children in British Schools I can honesty say that the cohorts coming through now are, despite the best intentions from parents, generally, a lot less able than the ones I worked with years ago- who are now becoming parents themselves.

What are we noticing in schools?

This decline in skills manifests itself in a some obvious ways. The children we work with today will find it harder to do most of the following tasks:

Draw a straight line, even with a ruler

Measure anything - guessing a weight...almost impossible.

Sharpen a pencil

Tie shoe laces

Fold paper accurately

Follow more than one instruction at a time

Sit fairly still and enjoy listening to a story

Remember lines for a play

Think through a problem and apply a strategy BEFORE asking for help

Keep kit / musical instruments / equipment in a safe place

Follow basic dining conventions

Accept a harder challenge voluntarily

Amuse themselves without electronic assistance of any sort

What does this mean in schools?

We have had to adapt over the years to this change in the 'assumed' skill set of the children. On one hand they are infinitely more adept at responding to electronic devices and at grasping new crazes, however fleeting and bizarre - the kids need little explanation and are instantly able to decipher the required meaning and reaction, leaving us floundering, open-mouthed asking "Why? What for?" when we consider bottle-flipping or dabbing. But they are losing the older 'concrete' skills we once took for granted and this has meant that we reduce the demand on them to fold their own worksheet, to cut out a grid, to glue in a drawing - OFSTED might scrutinize your class books and you can't have them looking crappy, so you'd better remove the chance that they will. We note the decline in scissor skill and we adjust expectation, increasing the decline in scissor skill.

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We have to remain ambitious for the children but with the knowledge that we will frequently have to guide them through every single detail of a task in order to end up with the desired outcome. The parents still have high expectations and want the best outcomes (click to see previous post on A*s being the Only Acceptable Grade) but the children are less able to manage this alone and immediately lean on those around them to provide the exact tools to ensure they meet the success criteria. Teachers find themselves taking all the responsibility for the attainment of the class. If they are not succeeding in tests then we are the ones feeling stressed, often feeling the 'failure' more keenly than the students. We are organising catch up sessions and revision boosters, we are meeting to get course work done. We are seeing the Head to explain. It's become a test of us; a lot of the responsibility has been taken away from the child.

Why is This Happening?

In my opinion there are two main factors here. 1) Parents are trying their absolute best to be the best. This means doing everything they can for their child and it is backfiring. 2) Technology is lessening children's attention and focus, is damaging sleep and is changing the skills they grow up with.

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As parents (I am included in this) we do our best. That means that we want the best for the children and we are prepared to 'push' for it. We want them to feel every bit as loved as we were, and then some. We want them to like us. And we want them to be successful. That's a hard call. If you think back at the teachers you liked best in your school days, they were most likely the ones who were firm, fair and then fun. It can only be fun when you have established clear boundaries, routines and order. Otherwise it's chaos and children do not like chaos. They quickly feel stressed and push out to try to find those boundaries. Unless you can deal with being unpopular at least a few times a day (teeth brushing, early enough bed routine, eating decent food before treats) you are not going to find things easy in the long run. As your grandma will tell you, you are making a rod for your own back and you will feel the pain of the short term gain.

We all need (I include myself here) to be slightly tougher, not softer when it comes to allowing the children to stand on their own. The term 'helicopter parenting' is what I'm talking about; the micro-management of every facet of their lives, every school issue, friendship issue, bedroom clean up, the filling of every waking moment with swimming, Japanese, ballet, horse-riding, basket weaving, sea scouts, piano, Kumon, ice-skating. What we see as a result of this frantic schedule is an exhausted child who has had no time to ever be bored. Some of the best games, plans and adventures of childhood were born from the temporary seeds of boredom. It's an underrated gift. And, with the greatest degree of understanding from a woman who knows the trap too well - you should not be trying to be their friend. They need a parent. They have friends.

Technology is required. It is not going away. It is going to be part of our children's lives and there is little point in refusing to accept that. We have to approach its place in their childhoods with some consideration though. There is undeniable evidence that the effects of technology on the developing brain are detrimental and powerful - even providing the user with the physiological equivalent of a heavy drug addiction: the white matter in the brain has been found to show signs of damage akin to addiction in MRI scans of teenagers who have had years of screen interaction (Read Dr A. Sigman). On a less radical level, the fine motor skills of young people are adapting to enable them the speed of swiping, holding, flicking, deleting etc that they need to keep up with the platforms they exist within, but it's so far all very two dimensional and they are just moving fingertips across glass. Nothing is an actual material with different textures and reactions, different states and feedback. All the feedback they are getting through their fingers is a flat glass sheet. They are losing an understanding of materials through a lack of exposure and the effects of this are already visible, within a generation, in our schools.

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What Can We Do?

This very much depends on whether you see this as a problem. There is an intelligent argument that for millions of years we have evolved and adapted in order to meet the technological progress that we have created. This is an essential phase in the reprogramming of humans to exist in the modern world and that middle aged teachers mourning the loss of ruler skills is hardly a reason to slam any brakes on. I agree - everything is changing, always. The reason I think we need to take this very seriously though is that while we: 1) try to be the best parents we can be by constantly entertaining and stimulating the children - my poor first born - and 2) Allow them to depend so heavily on screens to provide all solutions, what we are also seeing is the monumental rise in anxiety and dissatisfaction from our children.

To work hard and to try hard and to put your own effort into something leaves a result so different from an accidental or incidental gaining, children are not stupid. They feel the difference in pride when it's their work. Humans are actually much happier and more resilient beings when they are challenged.

We need to allow them the space to do their own jobs, to make their own stuff and to get bored sometimes. I believe that a small lean backwards towards concrete and physical skills will help our children to cope with the huge surge forwards that they are facing in their lifetimes.
Whatever the prevailing economic, political or social climate, Londoners have always prided themselves on living in a cosmopolitan capital, the eclectic culinary fabric being one of the city's bedrock pillars. Celebrating this diversity, Mayor Sadiq Khan's recent social media initiative has called on foodies to share their #MyLondonDish as a way of showcasing the myriad of cuisines and cultures intertwined across the thousands of restaurants, cafes, shops, street stalls and markets. I have far too many favourites to name just the one dish, so here's rounding up a fair few which pay homage to London's global food scene...

Delica pumpkin at Kricket Soho

Image is author's own

An edifying cross between a pumpkin curry and paneer makhani, this revelatory dish was the peak of one of the most transfixing meals I've had in recent times. Inspired by chef Will Bowlby's experiences living and working in Mumbai, the trendy new restaurant in Soho harmoniously marries seasonal British ingredients with classic Indian flavours, culminating in an experience which manages to both thrill and comfort in equal measure!

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Kheer creme brulee at Jikoni

Image is author's own

Chef Ravinder Bhogal was born in Kenya to parents of Indian origin and brought up in London. Imbibing these richly varied influences, her endearingly-cosy restaurant in Marylebone fuses the different culinary traditions without abandon. Think sweet potato bhel, mutton keema sloppy joe and worldly desserts such as a kheer creme brulee - the slick sweetness of the classic French pudding foiled by the gentle softness of a carrot and cardamom-suffused Indian rice pudding.

Kubaneh at The Palomar

It is quite possible to make an entire meal of the warm and fluffy Yemeni pot-baked bread at the Palomar - a buzzworthy restaurant dishing up the food of modern-day Jerusalem in a quiet street off Chinatown. Of course you'll find plenty else to whet your appetite once seated at the highly charged kitchen counter here. Of Kurdish-Moroccan heritage, head chef Tomer Amedi's fascination with culinary diversity manifests in a bold melting pot of cultures, not to mention a heady education in a new world of herbs and spices!

Poke bowls at Eat Poke London

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Image is author's own

As is the case for most foodies, one of the major highlights of my life in London has always been the continual exposure and introduction to traditional foods from around the world, such as poke - the vibrant Hawaiian dish which took London by storm last year. Pronounced poh-kay, this is essentially a deconstructed sushi or ceviche bowl which starts with a base of black rice and continues with marinated raw fish, before you pile on a medley of other veggies (and even fruits), topping off with a zesty dressing. While there are now many dedicated poke cafes across London, I'm particularly partial to Eat Poke London - a street stall trading at Kerb, which is itself an exemplary case of the city's all-encompassing food markets.

Bubble waffles at Bubblewrap

Image is author's own

And then we have Londoners' current obsession with bubble waffles, which originated in the 1950's in Hong Kong as a way of using up cracked eggs which couldn't be sold on to customers. Expect a more modern and rather Instagram-friendly take at the new-age kiosks, food trucks and stores in London such as at Bubblewrap Waffle's new home in Chinatown, where you can have your curled-up cone filled to the brim with generous wallops of gelato and all sorts of sweet trimmings and sauces - from mochi and red bean paste, to crushed Oreos, peanut butter and fudge!

Pierogi at L'Autre

Image is author's own
Luke MacGregor / Reuters

It was a measure of what an incredibly good year 2016 was for British drama that the discussion for who should win the Broadcasting Press Guild's award ran deep, and loud, into the night recently, when the nominations were being decided - before putting the vote to the Guild's equally opinionated members.

When the Awards are handed out today in London, it is the stars and makers of 'The Night Manager' who will be stepping up on stage to take home their gong. Was it Tom Hiddleston's bottom what won it? Well, very possibly, but also the fact that its glamorous settings, charismatic villains and an enigmatic hero competed with anything the cinema has to offer. And a story by our peerless spy master John Le Carre. And director Susanne Bier pulling off the unthinkable - making even Hugh Laurie and Tom Hollander thoroughly unlikeable. An all-round triumph!

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The BPG Awards are unique in that they are the only ones voted for by TV and radio writers, reviewers and broadcast correspondents. We equally doff our caps to those established broadcasters - 'Desert Island Discs' is our radio programme of the year as it continues to make headlines in unique, intimate fashion in its 75th year - as well as celebrating the new. 'The Crown', another winner today, jumped on the opportunities of streaming with Netflix, enjoyed the mutual benefits of timeless drama, brand new platform, scooped up Emmy Awards first season out and proved, when it comes to world-class drama, you really can't beat British.

Some winners are a marriage of the best of the old with the technology of the new. Can you guess who is collecting the BPG Award for Best Factual TV Series? Well, the winner is one that has once again sealed its status as a generation-defining exploration into the world around us, and the creatures within it. Armed with cutting edge filming techniques and the timeless skills of the world's most beloved communicator, this series made us once again ask the question 'What is out there?' and glory in the answers. Of course. Planet Earth II. What else?

Other winners today include the peerless Graham Norton, who continues to make everything he does look deceptively easy, the talent of Robbie Coltrane which brought us the morally ambiguous, complex and enigmatic figure at the centre of 'National Treasure', and the ever-transforming Keeley Hawes.

Best Writer? The brand new talent of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who brought her stage show to screen, and so made us question all our preconceptions about what it means to be a 21st century young woman. She had us flinching, conspiring, admonishing, sympathising. We watched a lot of it through our fingers - and how we laughed, even while we wept.

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Anyone who says it's all reality TV, talent shows and same old soaps on British TV, and that radio is just people arguing and plugging stuff, look again. There's a lot to celebrate!

The full list of BPG TV and Radio Awards winners is:

Best Single Drama:

The Witness for the Prosecution

Best Drama Series:

The Night Manager

Best Single Documentary:

Hillsborough

Best Documentary Series:

Planet Earth II

Best Entertainment:

The Graham Norton Show

Best Online First/Streaming:

The Crown

Best Comedy:

Mum

Radio Broadcaster of the Year:

James O'Brien

Radio Programme of the Year:

Desert Island Discs, presented by Kirsty Young

Best Multi-Channel/Non-PSB Show:

Alan Partridge Mid Morning Matters

Best Actor:

Robbie Coltrane for National Treasure (Channel 4)

Best Actress:

Keeley Hawes - for Line of Duty (BBC Two), The Durrells (ITV) and The Missing (BBC One)

Best Writer:

Phoebe Waller-Bridge for Fleabag

Innovation Award:

Exodus: Our Journey to Europe

For innovative use of crowd-sourced content and camera phones, including first-person points of view from refugees themselves to tell a compelling story about the migrant crisis

Harvey Lee Award for Outstanding Contribution:
This week I feel awesome.

I have previously only ever covered 5km, and when I do it's a sweaty and slow affair. I frequently cry during the run and at the finish line, but if you follow my blog you will learn I cry a lot. Happy crying, sad crying, tired crying, believe me I cry for all kinds of emotions.

I signed up to do the Great Manchester Run (10km) with Manchester Metropolitan University to support the First Generation campaign, which aims to raise 1 million to fund a new scheme that will target young people who will be the first generation in their family to go to university.

I have also signed up to do 10km in Burnley and then Bury to support Jane Tomlinson's Run for All charity which was launched as a lasting legacy to Jane Tomlinson CBE who died from cancer in 2007. Before her untimely death aged just 43, Jane raised 1.8m for children's and cancer charities through a series of incredible endurance feats - despite suffering from terminal cancer.

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Scroll back to last Saturday when I set about doing a run for International Women's Day in the beautifully named Boggart Hole Clough in Manchester. I knew it was about 5km, so thought no bother, I'll do that, I'll be slow and most likely last but it's a great cause and in a place I never knew existed even though I've lived in the area for 20 years. Plus I was told there was cake at the finish line! It was tough. Hill? Hill? The incline that was described as a 'challenge' put Everest to shame. I did it, but it hurt. And to add insult to injury, it was 5.7km. An extra 0.7km made all the difference. I was broken.

Waking up the next day, and knowing 5.7km proved such as problem, those 10km runs for such amazing causes were creating a mental blocker in my head of 'I can't'. I took the approach of tackling that 'can't' and turning it into a 'can'.

Sunday afternoon, the next day after the killer 5.7km, my friend Mel and I set off to do 10km. I knew it would be slow, I had put in my expected time when booking my places on the 10km as 1 hr 55min - 1hr 59min. I thought so long as I can walk 10km I can at least finish. I moaned a lot, a common response I'm told for anyone who has the (dis)pleasure of accompanying me on a run/walk. And yes we did it. It took me 1hr 54mins. Spot on and with 10 weeks until the first 10km I have a bit of time to try and bring that time down a bit.

But you know, having covered around 25km in total last week, I lost not a pound of weight. People keep telling me about losing inches not pounds in my journey but that did slightly stick in my craw. Today was my day off and I spent it in the gym. Who is this odd, happy, upbeat woman who favours the gym and wearing active wear and what did you do with the unhappy, unhealthy, inactive woman who was here less than a year ago?

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In addition to the above I am supporting Cancer Research UK's Race for Life in partnership with Tesco. Run, walk or jog. Every pound raised, from 10 to 100, will beat cancer. Sign up right now at http://raceforlife.org For more infromation ab

out my 1000km challenge, go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Dawn-Nisbet2017

Thanks for reading
My husband and I met late, married soon after and began trying for a baby somewhere in between. We bought a house in leafy Chiswick, back when you could, settled in, and kept on trying. By the time I hit thirty-eight I was desperate for a child and it wasn't happening.

We began our quest with our local GP. She was sympathetic as she told us there was no chance for fertility treatment on the NHS. Our age worked against us. But then, I guess it counted in our favour when it came to the savings we had both managed to put aside over many years of well-paid employment. These we were to plunder over the course of a couple of years of back-to-back private IVF treatments.

Lately, IVF is much in the news again. Not least because celebrities are feting the fact that they have been able to get pregnant through IVF - and are happy to announce as much, whereas in years gone by some stigma may still have lingered. But also right across the nation, health authorities are clamping down on the right to IVF on the NHS.

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England has always been a postcode lottery for IVF. While the NICE fertility guideline recommends access to three full cycles of NHS treatment, only four of England's 209 local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) follow this guidance fully. The others have either slashed the number of cycles offered from three down to two, one or even zero. How cruel. First it was Croydon in the news, with its plans to fund IVF only in exceptional clinical circumstances (whatever they might be), then Richmond in Surrey, which has proposed to restrict IVF to those having been affected by cancer or chronic viruses.

Now the cuts seem to be contagious, with a raft of other CCGs latching on in a bid to save money. There are non-medical criteria at stake too. Are you a healthy weight? Do you smoke? Are you young enough? You might come a cropper if not. Would it be churlish of me to bet that none of those in charge of these new policies has ever spent years trying to conceive? Has ever cried themselves to sleep at night when it seems they will be forever childless?

Well I have been there. Cycle after cycle of IVF failed to leave us with the child we yearned for. Everyone who has battled through IVF will know that as soon as one awful cycle fails, you want only to drag yourself back in there for another go. The physical burden is gruelling. Recently a woman posted photos of the 452 needles she had injected herself with during her IVF journey. The horror of my own self-injections stays with me. What's more, at thirty-eight, I had never once been in hospital, by forty-two I was a pro at succumbing to the old general anaesthetic and had been under ten times.

The emotional toll of IVF is even worse. The weeks of hormonal surges, of waiting to see if it's worked, of feeling that every twinge is a miscarriage, that every buzz is a pregnancy. Of hoping. Then the tears when it doesn't work - even worse the tears when it does work but then a few weeks in there is no foetal heartbeat and you miscarry.

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In that brutal world of fertility treatment we suffered both failure and miscarriage, but at least we were able to access that world. Everyone should have the right to try and I cannot imagine how punishing it must feel not to be allowed even one shot at it. I know I would have slid into depression. To not have known that intense love which kicks in the moment they're born. To never have held that small hand in mine. To not have felt that connection so tight that it's painful.

The wonderful Fertility Network UK, which is there for those struggling to conceive, with its support groups, helplines and counsellors, has launched a campaign to counter the harsh moves of the CCGs. It is urging all who have been affected by the unfair rationing of NHS fertility services to join its patient day of action in March. You can lobby your local MP, bid them to highlight the issue in Parliament, to ask why CCGs are being allowed to ignore national guidance and cut funding. And on Saturday 25th March, at 3pm precisely, you can tweet your support and help create a fertility funding Thunderclap https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/52716-the-right-to-try-campaign.

IVF bestows hope on so many couples in the UK - one in five now struggle to conceive. A privately funded IVF cycle now costs in excess of 5,000. Surely fertility treatment should not be limited to only those who can afford it? How warped is that? Warped enough to send a slight shudder, surely?

Last year the UK celebrated the anniversary of 250,000 babies being born through fertility treatment. And one of those babies is mine. I am one of the lucky ones, one of those who got there. She's a teenager now but still she might walk into a room with a smile and I will stare at her in wonder.

My second novel, Moondance, draws on my personal experience of IVF. Moondance is about a couple who are very much in love but unable to conceive naturally. Infertility is draining for both, not just for her. Sex becomes a technical necessity, blame is inevitable and trust crumbles, until ultimately their marriage is at stake. But then there is also hope in their story, there always has to be hope.

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Hope is what we are all grasping onto in the fight underway to save NHS access to IVF. To secure the right to try for a baby. I will be taking part in the campaign to blast the world with Fertility Network UK's message. If the powers that be consider IVF access to be the soft underbelly of a body where easy savings can be gained, they may well be staggered by the potency of the conflict. I for one dearly hope so.
In the years since University education became the norm for a majority of young people, employers have found yet another thing to moan about when it comes to young people and their readiness for the 'world of work'. In addition to the now time-aged platitudes about a lack of practical skills and common sense, amongst many other things, employers now moan about graduate's expectations, that they "think that a University education entitles them to higher salaries, faster progression and more responsibility than everyone else".

It is of course true, that more people graduating means that the average employer now requires a degree for entry level roles - graduating from University has become less prestigious and much more common. Yet the mismatch in expectations has as much to do with the expectations set by the previous generation (for whom graduating DID guarantee a well-paid job), as it does with young people not understanding how the jobs market has changed in the last two decades (not that they stand a realistic chance of doing so, given the desperately poor careers advice available to them).

Yet there is another, more troubling, consequence of this paradigm. That is, that young people with aspirations of reaching the top of their field, are often blocked in their formative years by employers that can't tell the difference between a graduate looking for the pay and opportunities they think they deserve but are not yet capable of justifying, and a young person with burning ambition, looking to improve their chances of reaching their potential, that doesn't need the promotion or the title, just more support to develop themselves.

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As a result, it is becoming more and more difficult as a young person to forge a path towards a position of leadership.

Here are my 5 tips to help you do just that, gathered from my journey along this path in the last decade.

1/ Never be afraid to start small

I always look at this as having to build your own 'power-base'. You can't rely on others affording you a platform for advancement - certainly not in the early days. So start by taking roles on the side that are relatively meaningless in the context of your future ambitions - or working on projects that are small. For me, this was creating an online magazine and working on it for very little reward in the hope that someone eventually wanted to read it (!) - I also took a role as a school governor and as Chairman of my local political party. The advantage, is that this kind of activity is obtainable for you, that it gives you more experience and therefore it makes you more interesting - you suddenly have something interesting to talk about. The lessons I learned from those roles remain invaluable to me today - how to chair a meeting well, how to manage difficult characters, how to work effectively with many different people, from many different walks of life, the basics of building a business. I learned these early, so when I obtained more substantial roles later on, I was able to focus on other areas of my performance and I presented myself as calm, capable and self-assured , rather than young, flustered and out of my comfort zone.

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2/ When you ask for the ball, make sure you can catch it

This one is about ensuring you can competently fulfil all that you claim to be able to. This can be tricky to judge as, if you're anything like me, the experience of being dropped in the deep end and learning to swim quickly is what actually gives you the cutting edge. Tough call, but what you need to consider is how deep the deep end is - you need to be sure that you can navigate the waters with comparative ease, as you won't be rescued if you start to drown. It's quite easy to spot a young person that is over-reaching, so be sure that you are up to the challenge if you ask for it. There's no greater challenge to a person's credibility than an inability to follow through on their promises, so take smaller but more frequent steps to help you reach your longer-term targets.

3/ Beware of the middle management curse

In my opinion, this curse is the biggest barrier to the advancement of a young person and therefore to social mobility more generally in the UK. The first management opportunity for most people is one where you are reporting to a member of the senior management team, or the MD/CEO directly, but have a couple of very junior reports yourself. Here's why it's such a barrier:

You are responsible for the performance of junior staff that are developing, yet senior management often have greater expectations of junior staff than is reasonable. The consequences of this mismatch of expectations lie squarely with you however, not your report;

Your reports are also likely to be hungry to move up the career ladder. You are directly 'in their way', so are they more likely to work with you, or try to undermine you? Go figure;

You are also going to be inexperienced at management yourself - this will be apparent to both your reports and your line manager. But the above factors mean that this won't be taken into consideration in terms of your performance;

It's so easy for your reports to blame you and so easy for your line manager to blame you - so both parties will - it's frankly often an impossible situation to navigate, particularly in management structures that are taller than they are wider.

What should you do about this? Well sometimes there's not a lot you can do, but here are a few tips:

Don't take such a role until you are sure you are ready (see both the above and below points);

Make sure that you exercise control and instil confidence in both your reports and line manager from day one - you have some responsibility now, take it seriously and lead;

Ensure that you maintain a smooth flow of information between your line manager and your reports. If you become a blocking factor, they will bypass you and that's the beginning of the end;

Leave time aside to manage your reports - 20/30% of your week in fact. Set your reports clear objectives, monitor them regularly, report this to your line manager and be clear about the actions you are taking. Meet with your team regularly and always have time for them. Learn to delegate effectively too.

4/ Learn to lead

Leadership skills can be innate, but broadly speaking must be learned. Employers rarely take the time to teach you, so go out and seek external opportunities to do so, join networks like the Future Leaders Network that offer courses and experiences to help you develop. Then make sure you apply what you've learned when a leadership position comes along. As per the previous point, set time aside to apply these techniques - make it a key part of your job - don't get lost in your work.

5/ Never lose your ambition and desire, never forget your beliefs and motivations - it's harder than you think
Peter Nicholls / Reuters

At the NUS' recent Trans Conference, the Trans Campaign voted for a policy pledging to campaign against the attendance of police staff in uniform at Pride events. This move has been widely reported as a 'ban' of police attending Prides. In doing so, it attributes more power to the student movement than it has - most students I know can't even paint their own bedrooms without the permission of their landlord, never mind exclude a powerful state institution from attending a particular event. Imagine if the student movement did have this sort of power - we certainly wouldn't be paying 9,000 a year in tuition fees.

Many LGBT people have forgotten that the first Pride was organised to mark the one year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Stonewall was a spontaneous uprising of trans women of colour, drag queens, and homeless queer kids in response to the frequent police raids of gay bars in New York. The first Pride looked more a protest than a carnival, but even now as Pride has lost its connection to its overtly political roots it still tends towards rebellion and irreverancy. For people who know that radical history, who understand that Pride is a commemoration of an anti-police riot and who see Pride as a protest still, the presence of police marching with us at Pride often feels uneasy.

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Some say it is a welcome sign that times have changed, that the police have come on leaps and bounds in their treatment of LGBT issues. Its undoubtedly true that the days of raids on gay bars and entrapment of LGBT people are, thankfully, in the past. I can understand, given this improvement, that perhaps people might be confused - angry even - about the majority of the Trans Campaign's delegates voting in favour of this particular motion. However, in all of the considerable discussion this policy has generated, it is striking that I have not seen one person ask why so many trans students, from all areas of the UK, live in fear of the police.

We know that the police have a problem with institutional racism in this country, and we know that the police are more likely to patrol working class areas. Because the police do not usually collect data on trans status of the people they search or arrest, we cannot know for sure whether the police are institutionally transphobic. However, the little data we do have points in that direction: trans people are more likely to be unemployed, have mental health problems, to be poor, and more likely to need to take on criminalised work in order to survive. This means that they are more likely to come into contact with the police, to be searched or arrested. And as a general rule, the more you come into contact with the police the more you fear them.

Like many people, I was brought up on the advice that if ever I was lost or needed help, I should find a police officer and ask for assistance. It came as a shock when the first time I was victim of a hate crime, the policeman I reported it to laughed at me. When I was sexually assaulted and went to the police, the police victim-blamed me. When I went to my first protest, despite the fact I was not breaking any laws, I was hit so hard by a police baton I fell unconscious. When I did break the law at a protest and I got arrested along with 5 other non-trans people, I was the only one of our number to be strip-searched, the only thing setting me apart from the others was my trans status. Perhaps I have had a string of bad luck, encountering all the bad apples in the barrel. But talking to other trans people, many of whom have had similar experiences, this mistreatment no longer shocks me. When it comes to transphobia, bad apples are unfortunately rather common.

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I know that work is being done to educate the police in order to make them more culturally competent when it comes to dealing with the trans community. This is an education that every person in public life desperately needs, and I applaud those who are working - often unpaid - to provide this service. But this work is a drop in the ocean in terms of the work that is needed to reform society such that everyone regardless of gender, class, race or any other factor, is protected and served equally.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has decided that it is not an act of religious discrimination for an employer to ban an employee from wearing an Islamic headscarf at work provided that the employer has a "neutral dress" policy in place.

The case in question centred around a Belgian Muslim employee who informed her employer that she was going to start wearing an Islamic headscarf at work. The employer, G4S Secure Solutions NV, told her that wearing a headscarf would contravene its rules on neutrality when in the company of customers and subsequently amended its dress code to the effect that employees were not permitted to wear any visible symbols connected to political, philosophical or religious beliefs. The employee claimed this was religious discrimination.

Upon analysis, the ECJ has decided that an employer is allowed to have a policy which instils a 'neutral' dress code on its employees, in effect banning Islamic headscarves at work. This ban would not represent direct religious discrimination. However, that is not the only risk with this type of policy and the Court indicated that there may still be a risk of indirect religious discrimination. Employers who have, or wish to implement, a dress code policy of the same type as the employer in this case should ensure it is drafted and implemented with caution.

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Employers with a dress code aimed at ensuring neutrality must, therefore, be sure that the policy applies to all employees within the organisation and avoid singling out people of a particular religion for different treatment etc. If the effect of a policy was to treat some employees differently from others based on their religion, this is likely to make a dress code based on neutrality directly discriminatory towards those groups who are adversely affected by it.

In addition, the reason behind a blanket ban on political, philosophical or religious manifestations through dress is a key element when deciding whether the policy is indirectly discriminatory.

This is because indirect discrimination is capable of being objectively justified. Indirect discrimination occurs in the situation when a rule is applied to everyone equally but the imposition of the rule disproportionately affects members of a particular group or groups more than others, and the employer does not pass the objective justification test. There must be a legitimate aim, and the employer's measures must be a proportionate way of achieving the aim.

In this case, the aim of the employer to project an image of neutrality when in the company of customers was considered to be legitimate.

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The Court suggested that employers may need to look at ways to accommodate employees who still wish to wear religious items of clothing at work, for example, moving them to another role which did not involve contact with customers.

The Court was clear, however, in its message that the neutrality policy must be that of the employer itself. Relying simply upon the wishes of a customer not to come into contact with employees who wore items of religious clothing as a reason for a ban would not be sufficient to defend a claim of discrimination.

Commentators have immediately taken to social media to give their opinion on the decision. Some express concerns that they will be driven out of work by employers who impose a ban on headscarves, saying that in the event they had to choose between work and their headscarf, they would give up work.

It is important to note that a neutral dress policy would not only affect Muslim employees who wanted to wear a headscarf; there are several other items of clothing and jewellery which are connected to religion. Christian employees who wanted to wear a cross on a necklace; Sikh employees wearing turbans and Jewish men wearing skullcaps may also be affected. Ostensibly, this employer's policy would have to ban them all; to allow some but not others would likely constitute direct religious discrimination.
When Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti, killing thousands of people and causing widespread devastation, Nurse Christine Casimir accepted the call to help without hesitation.

A dedicated professional with more than ten years of nursing experience, she is known to the local residents of her hometown as "Mamie": an affectionate term meaning 'grandmother', but Christine's determination to help others stems from a more personal cause. It was during the earthquake six years ago that Christine's seven-year-old child was killed.

At the time, Christine was working with International Medical Corps' mobile medical teams, treating earthquake victims and cholera patients.

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"I was especially shocked at the number of child victims," Christine said.

Following her work with International Medical Corps in 2010, Christine decided to step back from first responder duties to recover from the physical and psychological exhaustion which comes after such demanding work - but she continued working tirelessly with Haitian institutions, training nurses and coordinating with universities to promote the mobile health clinic model.

On October 4th disaster struck Haiti yet again.

In addition to taking hundreds of lives and causing widespread destruction, Hurricane Matthew brought with it the deadly threat of cholera, with infections rising fast throughout Haiti's southern areas - leading health experts to fear a new epidemic, similar to that which killed over 9,000 people in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

Shortly after the hurricane struck, Christine was invited to join International Medical Corps' Emergency Response Team by her former colleagues. The team had set up a base of operations on Haiti's southern peninsula in Les Cayes - Christine's hometown.

Once again, Christine felt personally invested in helping her community.

"Cholera excludes no one - but it is the poor and the vulnerable who suffer the most."

A medical team quickly set up a temporary cholera treatment unit (CTU) to treat cholera patients while the water, sanitation and hygiene team planned a larger facility behind the health clinic. Christine works in the CTU every day, rotating between day and night shifts. On top of that, she uses her spare time to travel around town to provide urgent medical care for people unable to travel to the clinic.

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"I like the way International Medical Corps works on the ground," Christine said. "Their teams are really dedicated and take special care of children and patients. The organisation is committed to spending the time needed, and being there to help people."

In addition to the work on Haiti's southern peninsula, International Medical Corps - with support from the European Union - has been working in the north of the country since early 2016, responding to cholera outbreaks and deploying mobile medical teams to assist vulnerable communities.

Christine has treated cholera patients of all ages - from three to eighty-four years old. More than 60 patients have received her care since the hurricane, but she knows there is so much more to do and time is limited.

With International Medical Corps, Christine sees a valuable opportunity to address the population's most acute needs while transcending issues like politics or religion.
Dan Kitwood via Getty Images

Our prisons are in crisis - violence, self-harm and deaths in custody are an at all-time high, prison capacity is stretched way beyond its limits and far too few prison officers struggle - under utterly unacceptable pressure - to deliver more with less. Against this backdrop the Government has published its long-awaited Prisons and Courts Bill. They now accept that prisons must be more than human warehouses; they must be places of education, rehabilitation and reform. The Conservatives are finally adopting the Liberal Democrat approach: better late than never! But their stated ambitions will be worthless if the Government fail to get a grip on prisoner numbers.

The last three decades have seen numbers in England and Wales rising more sharply than ever, almost doubling to today's level of about 85,000. The latest figures again show that we have the highest rate of imprisonment in Western Europe. This is crippling the system. Prisons are massively overcrowded, while chronic staff shortages prison mean staff cannot even ensure safety, let alone take on the extra work required to rehabilitate prisoners in their care. This is a political failure that needs a political solution.

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We need to take a hard look at sentencing policy, unafraid of the popular press. The increased use of minimum sentences has tied judges' hands, meaning they can't use their wisdom and discretion to adopt alternatives to prison where appropriate. That is why the Liberal Democrats at our Conference are calling for a drastic overhaul in sentencing policy, which now lacks both rationality and flexibility, as judges feel constrained to pass prison sentences which deny offenders their best chance of rehabilitation. This Government had the opportunity to overhaul sentencing policy in this Bill and their failure to do so risks continuing a policy of chaotic and damaging over-sentencing and an ever-increasing prison population.

Then we have the national scandal of IPP prisoners, serving indefinite sentences, who are still in prison despite having served their tariff sentences. In Coalition we ended these sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection, recognising that they were unacceptable in principle, yet at the end of last year, almost 4,000 IPP prisoners were still awaiting release, the majority having served their minimum tariff. For these prisoners, the uncertainty of not knowing when they will be released is unbearable and has an established adverse impact on their mental health; their continued imprisonment also has an effect on other prisoners, quite apart from the damage it does to the reputation of British justice.

Unless the Government gets prisoner numbers down and devotes the resources necessary to getting staffing levels up, building a renewed prison estate and providing effective education, training and other purposeful activity in every prison, all they will be doing is trying to use small sticking plasters to staunch gaping wounds. Liberal Democrat Conference will once again stand up for doing what works to achieve real change - I hope the Conservatives will be listening.
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Liberal Democrats believe we need an education system that delivers for all young people. The Conservative Government have consistently shown that they are more than happy to turn a blind eye to growing inequalities if it means they can pursue their toxic Grammar and Free Schools agenda. In the spring Budget Hammond announced that the Government would be investing another disproportionate sum of 320 million in Grammar and Free Schools, while just 260 million was outlined for vital school repairs.

The National Audit Office says a minimum of 6.7 billion is needed to restore all school buildings to a satisfactory condition. This figure falls woefully short. To add insult to injury, while other schools are left to suffer without reasonable investment, the Tories' Free School Programme is overspending by billions of pounds. This is utterly unacceptable. If they can find money to spend on education, it should be used to reverse devastating cuts to school budgets. Schools are being forced to make heart-breaking decisions as they struggle to buy books and afford the teaching staff they need. Some schools are even having to consider closing early for a number of days each week.

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Despite this, the Conservatives continue to waste millions on Grammar and Free Schools in areas that do not need them. These do not benefit most children. The Sutton Trust found that fewer than 3% of children attending Grammar Schools received Free School Meals, compared to 20% nationwide. The Tories' completely unbalanced investment in these schools is irrational, exclusionary and divisive. Grammar Schools are extremely harmful and disproportionately benefit children from more affluent backgrounds. As money and resources are diverted away from other schools to Grammars, the majority of children suffer. If only a small percentage of children achieve academically and the majority get left behind then as a result we cease to be a globally competitive country.

It is clear there is a severe funding crisis within the school system. The Tories' policy of neglecting schools in favour of their pet projects, Grammar and Free Schools, continues to worsen this dire situation. Urgent action is needed to tackle these inequalities. Liberal Democrats believe we need an education system which delivers opportunities for all young people - not just a few. During our time in Government, we introduced a series of measures targeted at those who needed them most - free early years learning, the Pupil Premium, Free School Meals and the National Apprenticeship Scheme.

More investment is now urgently needed in the core schools budget. The Liberal Democrats will continue to call for any extra money for education to be spent on reversing the devastating 3 billion of cuts to school budgets that will see an 8% cut in per pupil funding by 2020. We will continue to fight for the schools' budget to be protected per pupil in real terms over this parliament. And we will continue to advocate for empowered, well-resourced local government so that they can adequately provide important services such as music lessons and clothing grants.

At our Spring Conference in York this weekend we are debating how we can create a fairer, more open education system, meanwhile, the Conservative Government is on a divisive warpath. Their education policy has been absolutely unjustifiable. We need an education system that delivers for all young people and we need a Government that is willing to support the system in doing so. It is unacceptable that the wealth of a child's parents and where they are born still has such an impact upon how well they do at school. The importance of accessible, good quality education can not be overstated. It is at the heart of what Liberal Democrats stand for. Education is the key to freedom and opportunity, and a vital part of creating the fairer society Liberal Democrats seek to build.

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St. Patrick's Day has become a worldwide phenomenon and an excuse to celebrate all things Irish. With the whiskey industry in Ireland experiencing an unprecedented boom, more people than ever will be pouring themselves a whiskey from the Emerald Isle this Friday.

Here I choose some of the best new releases from the last couple of years. This will hopefully show there are more diverse options to celebrate with outside of the well-known traditional Irish beverages.

The Quiet Man 8 years old

40% ABV, 45.

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Image  Whisky For Everyone.

This whiskey is named after John Mulgrew, the father of Managing Director Ciaran Mulgrew, who was a highly regarded bartender in Ireland for over 50 years. However, he was a man of few words and became known as The Quiet Man. The brand will shortly also have its own distillery up and running in Derry.

This 8 years old single malt has a lovely aroma of honey, vanilla and tropical fruits. It is incredibly soft and sweet on the palate with green apple and warming baking spices joining those notes from the nose. A background hint of bittersweet malty cereals adds further depth and complexity. Simply exquisite.

***

Redbreast Lustau Edition

46% ABV, 55.

A superb whiskey that combines the best of Irish and Spanish know-how. This expression of Redbreast is a collaboration between Irish Distillers, who produce the pot still whiskey and the Emilio Lustau bodega in Jerez, who produce sherry and the special casks that the whiskey has matured in.

This begins with wonderful aromas of toffee, toasted almonds and sultanas before evolving on the palate. It feels classy, soft and velvety with additional notes of cinnamon, honeycomb, baked apples and a hint of gingerbread and candied orange peel. One of the best Irish whiskeys of recent times.

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***

Roe & Co.

45% ABV, 30.

Image  Whisky For Everyone.

When Diageo sold Bushmills and left the Irish category a couple of years ago, some questioned their decision. Now they are back with Roe & Co. - an Irish whiskey named after the old Dublin-based Victorian distillery of George Roe. The brand will soon be supported by a new distillery in the centre of Dublin.

An expressive mix of aromas - pear, apple, peach, golden syrup and vanilla - combine well with delicate baking spices on the nose. On the palate it feels soft, gentle and creamy with notes of fruit syrup, pineapple, caramel and a hint of treacle joining those characteristics from the nose. Very good value.

***

Teeling Single Grain

46% ABV, 40.

This whiskey was launched back in 2013 by the pioneering Teeling Whiskey Company. Since, they have opened a distillery and award-winning visitor centre in the heart of Dublin. This is a single grain whiskey made from maize and has been matured fully in ex-Cabernet Sauvignon red wine casks sourced from California.

Fresh, sweet aromas greet you with this whiskey - think of vanilla, honey, coconut and a complex blend of wood and baking spices. In the mouth it is initially dry and spicy, but sweeter characteristics come through. There are luscious notes of butterscotch and vanilla fudge plus hints of marshmallow and cranberry.

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***

Tullamore DEW 18 years old

41.3% ABV, 100.

Image  Whisky For Everyone.

Old Irish whiskeys are relatively rare but few that I've tasted are better than this single malt offering from Tullamore DEW. You have to pay for that rarity, like anything in life, but in this case it is worth it. This whiskey has undergone a slightly unusual maturation process that combines ex-bourbon, Madeira, Port and sherry casks.
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS via Getty Images

The path between journalism and politics is well-trodden. Whether it is Michael Gove moving from a column at The Times to a fast track to the Cabinet or Bill Deedes quitting as a minister to edit the Daily Telegraph, there's always been a place for the journalist-politician.

Yet Friday's announcement that George Osborne, is to become the editor of the Evening Standard is still a surprise.

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But if he wants to be an editor he needs to quit as an MP.

A free press is a cornerstone of democracy. Without a vigorous press holding political power to account we risk corrupting our democratic institutions.

Most of us accept that newspapers have views and political positions but that doesn't mean blind obedience nor does it make a newspaper an appropriate place for the powerful to endlessly beat the drum for their favoured policies. Nobody wants all newspapers to end up like the Daily Express.

While that does not mean editors have to be free of all affiliation, I think it does mean an editor can't be a sitting member of the governing Parliamentary party. Especially when they still yearn for high office.

It's a fundamental conflict of interest, especially as his reporters would be covering the impact of policies he championed in government.

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Previous politicians who have tried it have come unstuck. Remember when Boris Johnson tried to combine being Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport with the editorship of the Spectator?

The magazine published an outrageous editorial bemoaning the mawkish sentimentality of Liverpudlians in the wake of the horrific murder of the hostage Ken Bigley in Iraq. And Boris was sent to apologise in person to the people of Liverpool. An apology that was most certainly not accepted.

The point is that as editor you are responsible for everything in the paper and the potential for embarrassment is high. It is not just your own writing that can get you into trouble.

But there are reasons to think that George Osborne could be a good, perhaps even great, newspaper editor.

Back in 2006, I briefly worked with him in opposition. He's incredibly well connected, hard-working, and smart with a surprisingly populist touch. I remember him once asking me whom I thought was the most important doctor in Britain. When I suggested it was Dr Hilary Jones from GMTV he was delighted.

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That populist quality is a vital one for the editor of a daily newspaper, especially a mid-market one like the Standard.

And he's genuinely interested in journalism - at the start of his career he tried and failed to become a graduate trainee on The Times.

If he could bring those journalistic instincts and liberal qualities together with a desire to create change in society, he could make a real impact at the Standard.

But I don't think that is likely. It seems to me that this is just the latest step in George's ongoing quest to become Prime Minister.

The editorship of the Evening Standard may look like a powerful pulpit from which to hurl stones at Theresa May and build momentum for a bid for Downing Street. But it would be an immense disservice to the million people who read the paper. And in the end, the readers have to come first.

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Stefan Wermuth/PA Wire

Earlier today it was announced that George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative MP for Tatton, has been made Editor-in-Chief of the London Evening Standard. As a soon-to-be trainee journalist, it's great to see that journalism continues to be as elitist as ever, and that at the end of the day money and position are worth more than skill and experience.

Any wannabe hack who has spent time applying for jobs will be aware that almost all require a 'minimum of two years experience' with many also looking for an NCTJ diploma, or masters degree in journalism. I have been offered a trainee position with a local newspaper yet these jobs are rarer than hen's teeth so I accept that I am one of the lucky few, and am the exception rather than the rule.

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Many young and talented journalists have to fund themselves through the NCTJ diploma, which can put you in debt to the tune of approximately 5,000. If you want to do a masters degree you're looking at around 10,000 course fees and then the added cost of living in London. This is the cost of a trainee position - so I can hardly imagine the experience and qualifications required to become Editor of one of the most popular London dailies.

In 1993, the young George Osborne intended to pursue a career in journalism. He was shortlisted for but failed to gain a place on The Times trainee scheme. He then applied to The Economist, where he was interviewed and rejected by Gideon Rachman. Not one to give up, in the end he had to settle for freelance work on the Peterborough diary column of The Daily Telegraph. Some time later an Oxford friend of his, journalist George Bridges, alerted Osborne to a research vacancy at Conservative Central Office and thus began his political career.

In 2001 he became the youngest Conservative MP in the House of Commons, and in 2005 he ran David Cameron's successful leadership campaign. As Chancellor he pursued austerity policies aimed at reducing the national debt, and was partly responsible for the UK's loss of its AAA credit rating in 2013.

So let's do a little comparison: I have spent three years working as a student journalist, I have written for two local papers, one American newspaper paper, two student newspapers, one national and I have a acquired a trainee position. George Osborne spent three months working as a freelance journalist, pursued a career in politics, got sacked by Theresa May following his unsuccessful attempts to revive the economy and is Editor of the Evening Standard. Now, I am not saying I am qualified to run the Evening Standard, but when trainees have more experience than George Osborne does, perhaps it is time to admit he might not be the right man for the job.

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Whilst he has had a far-reaching political career, the skills required to run a newspaper on a daily basis are entirely different. Whist I am merely a student editor, I feel I that have a far greater grasp of the responsibilities involved than Osborne does and this in itself is worrying. Furthermore, the industry needs to stop reminding young aspiring journalists that no matter what their experience they can easily be ousted by a male MP with no prior experience.

Do we really want the editor of one of the best London daily newspapers to be someone who doesn't know shorthand and whose grasp of media law is less than the average trainee?
Being a Muslim woman, society has defined my life in many different ways, but one thing I can tell you, is that out of all of those adjectives, dull certainly won't appear on that list. We are always a focal point of discussion and let's face it my presence could liven up any dismal gathering. My very being is always brought to question, as many struggle to decide whether my hijab is a symbol of empowerment or mark of oppression.

From Terrorism, Burkinis and Travel bans to Hijab campaigns in the fashion world, I often find myself having to rectify many misconceptions that are put out in the media regarding Islam and Muslim women. And this often opens up a great dialogue for discussion about religion in general, and this goes for people from all other faiths who wear their religious symbols with pride because, although it can make us a target of negative stigma, it also gives us an opportunity to show how religion can actively integrate itself in to the 21st century.

The greatest example of this is through our workforce. Watching people from all different religious and secular backgrounds united together through their passion for work is living testament to the global age we live in.

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However, this may all change through the new ruling by The European Court of Justice (ECJ) which states that employers are now entitled to ban staff from wearing visible religious symbols. They have argued that if a firm has an internal rule banning the wearing of "any political, philosophical or religious sign" it does not constitute as 'direct discrimination'. Critics however, have called the ban a thinly veiled measure targeting Muslims.

When I first read the news I was certainly worried, let's face it this could rule me out of a lot of potential jobs as I am essentially being forced to choose between my spirituality and professional career. I spent much of my life trying to prove that my faith has never been a hindrance and suffice to say this ruling has certainly put a spanner in to the works. How can I prove that Muslim women are not oppressed or held back when wearing my hijab could potentially put me out of a job?

I turned on the radio to hear what others had to say and I realized this ban stretched further than just Muslim women and workplace discrimination.

I was listening in to an Asian radio station and of course the discussion of this topic was in full swing. The presenter and callers alike where outraged by such a ruling; many constantly referencing Article 9 of the European Convention of Human rights (which provides a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion). Many people of all faiths be they Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu all telling stories of how they have struggled to gain their status in the workforce whilst ultimately maintaining their religious values.

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I expected as much, but there was one caller that really grabbed my attention. An elderly Indian woman rang in to the show and her answer shocked me and the presenter alike.

"What's wrong with making such sacrifices for work?" She said defiantly. "When I first moved in to this country I used to wear my saris and sindoor when I went out. But people started making fun of me and I struggled to find work. So I just stopped wearing it and life became easier for me, why doesn't everyone else just do the same? If it's such a big problem why don't they all just go back to where they came from, because if you want to work in the west you cannot hold on to your religious beliefs and still get a good job. This isn't India"

Much like me, the presenter didn't quite know how to address her statement. It was heart-breaking to think that this was what she had taken away from her years of living in the UK, that to truly integrate herself in to society she had to give up her beliefs and change her identity completely, right down to the way she dressed.

What this answer proved was that such bans and policy not only affect people in the workplace, but essentially affects how people choose to identify themselves altogether and shapes their ideologies towards the concept of tolerance. It does absolutely nothing towards the cause of social cohesion, but in fact just isolates people who stand for different beliefs until they force themselves to conform to the politically correct norm.

Religion is not something we can hide from nor is it something that should be hidden. It is not a light switch that can just be turned on and off, and so it shouldn't be dealt with so clinically. People should not be forced to decide between their spirituality and their pay check. Religious education, be it in schools or the workplace is more important now than ever. A lack of religious knowledge has indeed been a firm cornerstone for religious extremist groups when it comes to recruiting and spreading their misshapen concept of faith. By allowing people to wear their religious symbols in the workplace you are sending out a clear message to those who try to homogenize intolerance with religion. The West is celebrated as a place of opportunity and equality, there should be no clauses or exceptions in that ideology.

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Muslim women in history and indeed contemporary society have proved time and time again that their faith and their religious values have enabled them to excel to the heights they reached. We have seen Muslim women as Monarchs, Presidents, Prime Ministers; they have traveled to space, excelled in all fields of critical thinking and have become global advocates for equal rights and education. Had such bans been placed in their respective countries then a lot of this potential could have certainly gone to waste.
We are strong We are ambitious We are awesome (and into double denim! ) We are women #WeAreGarnier #InternationalWomensDay A post shared by Garnier UK & Ireland (@garnieruk) on Mar 8, 2017 at 12:40am PST

On International Women's Day, Garnier UK released an advert on Instagram of six women with the caption "We are strong, We are ambitious, We are awesome (and into double denim), We are women". All six women in the advert are white.

So why is it important that adverts are diverse?

Approximately 13% of the UK population is from a Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. What message does this kind of advert send to the 13% of the UK population that is not white? Are they not strong, ambitious, awesome (and into double denim), or women? Are Garnier products not for them to use or buy?

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Not seeing yourself reflected in adverts, or on television and in films, can reinforce beliefs you have about your place in the world. Large portions of the world's population carry a common burden accumulated through their historic experiences of war, torture and slavery, to name a few. For example, Indians and Pakistani's may carry the burden of the British Empire rule and partition; African-Americans may carry the burden of slavery; women may carry the burden of exploitation, repression and violence inflicted against them as a gender; the crisis in Syria will likely affect generations of Syrians to come. Whilst people may not have a direct personal experience of these events, they will ultimately have been raised by those that did. What is also passed along with these events is the common burden of suffering rooted in history. Identifying with these experiences helps one identify with who they are and where they come from.

In addition to these common burdens, many people are affected in a similar way by a personal burden accumulated throughout their life of events that were experienced by them directly. Personal burdens affect anyone irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or religion. Both have the same effect when everyday situations, such as adverts not reflecting you, or anyone who is not white, trigger a thought pattern and reinforce a negative belief, such as feeling inferior, not being good enough, or as important as another. The suffering is kept alive, albeit misplaced. These cycles can be broken and advertising can play a small role.

When you see people who represent you, and that you can relate to, it can have a positive impact on your aspirations and what you consider as achievable. Seeing another woman in a senior role in your company can enhance your own career aspirations. Advertising is no different and has a far wider reach.

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In addition to looking for a level of acceptance of our place in the world in adverts and on television, they also shape how we see others by reflecting a more accurate representation of the cultural diversity of the audience, and of the country. It leaves an unconscious imprint in our mind of what the norm is.

Companies in the beauty industry have a huge platform to shape the confidence levels of younger generations and with the reach and influence they have, comes a responsibility to accurately represent the demographic of the country - to be inclusive, not exclusive. It also makes good business sense - represent the population and more people will relate to your adverts and buy your products.
"It's going to rain tonight" [says Heinrich].

"It's raining now", I said.

"The radio said tonight."

"Look at the windshield", I said. "Is that rain or isn't it?"

"I'm only telling you what they said."

"Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses."

"Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they're right. This has been proved in a laboratory. Don't you know about all those theorems that say nothing is what it seems? There's no past, present or future outside our own mind. The so-called laws of motion are a big hoax. Even sound can trick the mind. Just because you don't hear a sound doesn't mean it's not out there. Dogs can hear it. Other animals. And I'm sure there are sounds even dogs can't hear. But they exist in the air, in waves. Maybe they never stop. High, high, high-pitched. Coming from somewhere."

"Is it raining", I said, "or isn't it?"

"I wouldn't want to have to say."

"What if someone held a gun to your head?"

"Who, you?"

"Someone. A man in a trenchcoat and smoky glasses. He holds a gun to hour head. 'Is it raining or isn't it? All you have to do is tell the truth and I'll put away my gun and take the next flight out if here'."

"What truth does he want? Does he want the truth of someone travelling at almost the speed of light in another galaxy? Does he want the truth of someone in orbit around a neutron star? Maybe if their people could see us through a telescope we might look like we were two feet two inches tall and it might be raining yesterday instead of today."

"He's holding the gun to your head. He wants your truth."

"What good is my truth? My truth means nothing. What if this guy with the gun comes from a planet in a whole different solar system? What we call rain he calls soap. What we call apples he calls rain. So what am I supposed to tell him?"

"His name is Frank J Smaller and he comes from St Louis."

"He wants to know if it's raining now, at this very minute?"

"Here and now. That's right."

"Is there such a thing as now? 'Now' comes and goes as soon as you say it. How can I say it's raining now if your so-called 'now' becomes 'then' as soon as I say it?"

"You said there was no past, present or future."

"Only in our verbs. That's the only place we find it."

"Rain is a noun. Is there rain here, in this precise locality, at whatever time within the next two minutes that you choose to respond to the question?"

"If you want to talk about this precise locality while you're in a vehicle that's obviously moving, then I think that's the trouble with this discussion."

"Just give me an answer, okay, Heinrich."

"The best I could do is make a guess."

"Either it's raining or it isn't", I said.

"Exactly. That my whole point. You'd be guessing. Six of one, half a dozen of the other."

"But you see it's raining."

"You see the sun moving across the sky. But is the sun moving across the sky or is the earth moving?"

"I don't accept the analogy."

"You're so sure that's rain? How do you know it's not sulphuric acid from factories across the river? How do you know it's not fallout from a war in China? You want an answer here and now? Can you prove, here and now, that this stuff is rain? How do I know that what you call rain is really rain? What is rain, anyway?"

"It's the stuff that falls from the sky and gets you what is called wet."

"I'm not wet. Are you wet?"

"All right", I said. "Very good."

"No, seriously, are you wet?"

"First-rate", I told him. "A victory for uncertainty, randomness and chaos. Science's finest hour."

"Be sarcastic."

"The sophists and hairsplitters enjoy their finest hour."

"Go ahead, be sarcastic, I don't care."
Bastiaan Slabbers via Getty Images

Although often ridiculed for his way with words, Donald Trump has consistently managed to get his message across very successfully to large proportions of the US population. One of his favoured techniques for this is usurping the language of his opponents - appropriating their lines of attack, and turning them to his own advantage. In this way he's able to frame the debate to suit his own agenda, and thereby make an emotional appeal to his audience. And the challenge for those trying to resist him becomes not only mounting a convincing counter-argument, but also reclaiming the very words that are used to talk about key issues.

During the election campaign one of Trump's central pledges was to give a voice to the voiceless. The laid-off factory workers he'd met on his travels, the communities who'd been affected by 'horrible and unfair' trade deals, these were 'the forgotten men and women of our country,' he said. 'People who work hard but no longer have a voice.' For them, he vowed, 'I am your voice!'.

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In his first presidential address to Congress, at the end of February, he revived this language. Announcing the formation of a new agency for dealing with what he called 'immigrant crime', he declared that this would be a way of 'providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests'. He even named the initiative 'Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement'. Or VOICE for short.

In the same way that he appropriated the term 'fake news' and turned it into an insult used to dismiss anyone he disagrees with, so using the word 'voice' here strategically undermines the critical vocabulary that's traditionally associated with movements which aim to support many of the communities this new policy effectively vilifies.

Giving a 'voice' to the experiences of those disenfranchised by history and politics is a key aim in development and postcolonial studies. It's a way of challenging the inequalities embedded in society, and critiquing the way these are reproduced in institutions such as the law. And this use of the word is reflected in advocate organisations such as America's Voice, whose stated mission is to 'harness the power of American voices and American values to enact policy change that guarantees full labor, civil and political rights for immigrants and their families'.

Trump's 'VOICE' initiative, on the other hand, has the effect of further stigmatising migrant communities, and associating the immigrant experience with a trend for criminality. It does this despite the fact that several studies show that immigrants are in fact less likely to commit a crime than people born in the US. But, as Trump's deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka, said when justifying the programme, it's targeting those who have 'already broken the law by being here'.

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Gorka continued by framing the issue as being about the essentials of American identity: 'If you object to [the principles behind the policy], you are in favor of pain, in favor of tragedy, and in favor of chaos, and that is un-American'. This use of the word 'voice' then is not inclusive, as it is in development studies. Instead it's purposefully erecting barriers around what it means to be a legitimate citizen in Trump's America.

Of course, Trump has a long history of making statements which appear to pervert the conventional meaning of words. Each year, the National Council of Teachers of English gives out an award for the most blatant and outrageous use of 'doublespeak' in the world of politics. Based on ideas most associated with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (and in particular the concepts of 'doublethink' and 'Newspeak'), doublespeak refers to language which deliberately distorts or inverts the meaning of words. Previous winners of the award have included Ronald Reagan, for giving the MX intercontinental ballistic missile system the name 'Peacekeeper' (which recalls all too precisely the Newspeak slogan 'War is Peace' from Orwell's novel). Last year, rather unsurprisingly, Trump himself was the winner, with one committee member commenting that 'I don't think we've ever had a better example of the Doublespeak Award' than him.

His deftness at this sort of linguistic sleight-of-hand was evident throughout the election, where he somehow managed to characterise his opponents as the arch dissemblers, while portraying himself as a plain speaker. Cruz and Clinton became 'Lyin' Ted' and 'Crooked Hillary', despite the fact that it was Trump himself whose relationship with the truth was more problematic than almost any other candidate in history.

Re-appropriating the language of the opposition isn't necessarily a form of doublespeak of course. It's a long-standing political technique. In the ancient Chinese essay listing Thirty-Six Stratagems to be used in war and politics, one of these advises 'killing with a borrowed sword'. In other words, when you don't have the resources to attack the enemy directly you should use their own strength against them. Appropriating the language of your detractors is in many ways the rhetorical equivalent of this.

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There are several examples of minority or marginalised groups attempting to reclaim words which have been used against them as terms of abuse. And in these contexts, language becomes a prime battlefield for political attitudes.

The word 'bitch', for example, has been a touchstone for stages in the feminist movement over the years. It originally arose as an insult in the 1920s at the time of women's suffrage. During second-wave feminism in the 60s, with publications such as Jo Freeman's The BITCH Manifesto, there were moves to reclaim it. These continued during the 90s, with the founding of Bitch magazine by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, for example. But at the same the word was becoming a staple in music, especially rap, where its use was far less positive. Today, it's still very much a problematic term - and as Arielle Pardes comments, 'perhaps the reason it hasn't been truly reclaimed is because conditions for women haven't really changed, either'.

Other examples, such as the reclamation of 'gay' and 'queer' have arguably been more successful, although even these are not without their issues. But there's a very important difference between these campaigns and Trump's linguistic appropriation. And this is the fact that those working to reclaim language that's used as a sexist, homophobic or racist insult are in positions of limited power. Theirs is a project for equality of rights and social legitimacy.

Trump's point would likely be that he's also providing a voice for the disenfranchised. That he himself is speaking out for the powerless, and standing with them against a political tradition which has marginalised them in recent years.
Bloomberg via Getty Images

I think it may soon be time to offer an apology on behalf of the International Consortium of Commentators and Columnists, aka The Punditocracy.

Over the past nine months, you may have gained the impression that the Western world, made up of the so-called liberal democracies, was being engulfed by an unstoppable populist tide of xenophobia, bigotry and nativism. First came the Brexit vote in the UK last June, then the Trump victory in the US in November. In Austria, the Netherlands, France and Germany, populist, Islamophobic parties all seemed to be inexorably gaining support.

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I know that one election result proves nothing, but the Dutch election this week ought at least to lead to a re-examining of what the media studies folk would call the 'dominant narrative'. Perhaps the tide of populism and nativism is not so unstoppable after all.

Let's look at some numbers from recent history. First the EU referendum: UK voters were split almost down the middle last June, 52% to 48%. Despite what Mrs May and her Cabinet colleagues would have you believe, Brexit is not 'the will of the people', but the will of just 35% of registered voters, given that only 72% of them bothered to vote.

Second, the US presidential election. Donald Trump's victory did not represent a violent swing to nativism; after all, he won three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, and most Americans do not support his uniquely toxic brand of bigotry, ignorance and extreme narcissism.

Third, the presidential election in Austria, where last December, Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party beat Norbert Hofer of the anti-immigrant, post-Nazi Freedom Party. By 54% to 46%, Austrians decided not to return their country to the darkest days of its recent history.

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And now, the Netherlands, where the only Dutch politician anyone outside the country has heard of, the viscerally Islamophobic Geert Wilders, won just 13% of the national vote, barely ahead of the centrist D66 party on 12% and the Greens on 9%.

As it happens, support for Wilders was almost exactly equal to UKIP's support in the 2015 UK general election, and far below what UKIP achieved in the European parliament elections of 2014, when it won 27% of the vote, more than either the Tories or Labour. (UKIP's current poll rating is hovering around 10%.)

So why has the 'dominant narrative' given you a different impression? Because, in a nutshell, we journalists love nothing more than a dramatic story - and 'Beware, the Fascists are on the march', or variations on the theme, is certainly dramatic enough to spin into a thousand words on a dull Thursday morning.

I do not suggest for one moment that we should not have reported the rise in support for populist politicians feeding off - and often encouraging - fear of immigrants and of the effect of globalisation on the jobs market.

But I do suggest that politicians are not alone in succumbing to the temptation to feed off fear. Journalists know just as well as politicians that you get a lot more attention shouting 'The barbarians are at the gates' than by gently murmuring that, by and large, and all things considered, we're probably going to be OK.

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(Incidentally, I can't help thinking that the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte may well owe his election triumph at least in part to the way in which he so successfully exploited tensions with Turkey's increasingly dictatorial president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by banning two Turkish ministers from addressing rallies in the Netherlands. What better way to fend off the threat from Geert Wilders than by showing how tough he could be against the Turks?)

So perhaps BBC news producers might be encouraged to resist the temptation to call on Nigel Farage every other day, simply because they know he's likely to say something provocative and get their programme quoted in the news bulletins. Their US colleagues used to feel the same way about the 'joke candidate' Donald Trump - and look where it got them. Interview-bookers, please note: Mr Farage may have turned into a posh-boy version of George Galloway, but as an ex-party leader, he now represents no one other than his own reflection in the mirror.

If the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron wins the French presidential election in June, the 'dominant narrative' may finally be put back in its box. And if the German anti-immigrant, anti-EU AfD party does badly in September -- its current opinion poll ratings are in single figures - the box's lid can finally be nailed down.

And then, perhaps, we'll read more stories from places like St Louis, Missouri, where local Muslims collected tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the repair of gravestones after an attack on a Jewish cemetery, and Victoria, Texas, where a rabbi handed over the keys to his synagogue to local Muslims after an arson attack on their mosque. Real stories from the real world, instead of overblown nationalist rhetoric from cynical populists.

Of course, liberal democracies face major challenges. But we need to beware of scaring ourselves into a sense of despair. And we journalists need to be especially careful not to get carried away by our love of the dramatic and the controversial, which are always so much more exciting than boring old complexity and nuance.

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Me? I cling to the hope that we're living through nothing more than a spasm of history. One day, perhaps sooner than we think, Donald Trump will no longer be the US president. And one day, probably much later than we think, Britain will have worked out a sustainable new relationship with its European neighbours.
More than one tech commentator hailed 2016 as "the year of VR". But will 2017 be the year VR goes too far?

Originally developed as a new way to play video games, virtual reality has now broadened its horizons into cinema, advertising, communication, journalism and even social media, and VR experiences are becoming so immersive that soon we may never need to take off our headsets again.

But there is a risk that comes with all this progress. With VR expanding into so many different areas at once, and with tech developers continually improving VR technology, some of the most important aspects of nurturing a new medium may be falling by the wayside. So is VR going too far?

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VR is multi-sensory - and scarily realistic

As VR headsets have become more affordable over the past few years, more production companies have begun to dedicate themselves solely to creating VR experiences, often pushing the boundaries of the medium.

UK-based production company Rewind made a VR experience for the BBC entitled "Home: A Spacewalk" which realistically simulates an astronaut's experience leaving their spacecraft. The experience uses a heart monitor and a microphone to feed the sound of the user's own heartrate and breathing into the experience, heightening the tension. But there are some VR developers focusing more on the innovation, and less on the experience, essentially creating hardware for the sake of hardware.

Multi-sensory VR goes rogue

The FeelReal peripheral is one example of hardware that exists simply for its own sake, currently adding very little to the VR experience. Attaching to all of the popular VR headsets, the FeelReal covers the user's nose, mouth and cheeks, and comes equipped with a microphone, water mist generators, hot air generators, and best of all an "odor generator".

The parallels between the notorious Smell-O-Vision devices of the 1950s are too strong to ignore, and even though the FeelReal boasts a wide range of generable scents (including "Ocean", "Metal" and "Powder", but sadly not "New Car Smell") it is likely to join the ranks of failed attempts to revive Smell-O-Vision's dream.

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Alongside this olfactory Oculus accessory, a University of Singapore scientist is working a different VR peripheral that simulates both flavours and weather. Using electrodes and clip-on fans, Nimesha Ranasinghe's device promises "the ultimate VR experience," but will sensory simulation really make for a better time in VR?

Is this overreaching bad for the VR industry?

If this technology works, it will certainly be impressive, but may simply be a distraction from what is really important in nurturing this new medium. Now VR is better than it ever has been in terms of realism, those in the industry should focus on mastering the medium in its current form before they push it any further.

This is the opinion of Oculus Story Studio technical developer Matt Planck. Formerly of Pixar, Planck argues that the real way to move the medium forward is to focus on making small, refined experiences and building a new visual vocabulary. "People are making less-compelling experiences," Planck says, "because they're reaching too far."

Developers focusing on making VR experiences more "realistic" are misguided. Though it is important to continually improve and define the technology that brings it to us, what VR developers need to do right now is to focus on storytelling, and on figuring out how to make the medium resonate with its users. No matter how accurate the smells, tastes or weather, VR experiences need artistry to truly connect.

As self-proclaimed "immersive storyteller" Chris Milk says, VR has the potential to become "the ultimate empathy machine." By putting viewers into other people's shoes, and bringing them closer than ever to worlds different from their own, VR could do far more than create "accurate", odorous environments.

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Before today, I was considering writing an article about the controversy of the hijab. I was considering writing about how so many people choose to wear the hijab despite the perturbing fear of being judged by different communities and for a multitude of reasons. But I was going to do that without admitting one thing which has been central to me writing it; I don't know if I want to continue wearing the hijab.

SO here I am, another young Muslim woman writing about the hijab. Must I explain that my hijab is not the centre? My hijab is not the definition of my journey however, it is the non-Muslim perspective that says it is. Wearing hijab does not limit me, it limits the perceptions others have of me. In the non-Muslim world it marks me a Muslim, it is an identifier. Hijab= she's a Muslim. In the Muslim world, hijab suddenly jolts me into this world of religious practice, piety, the identity of a godly woman. It also enables others to decree my 'Muslimness' by looking at how I dress, behave, who I speak to and how I present myself.

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Nonetheless, it seems more fitting to begin with my reason for writing this.

TO HIJAB, OR NOT TO HIJAB? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

It is patronising in both communities when this identification as a Muslim seems to mean that people can ask me things like

"are you forced to wear that?" (Non-Muslim)

or

"have you read Qur'an?" (Muslim).

This is because hijab manifests as an entitlement. Other people become entitled to ask certain things, to chastise me for certain behaviours. A common example is how many Muslim men are offended by my fashion, my decision to wear jeans and baggy shirts with my hijab. It is not Muslim enough, it is "disrespectful" to the ideology that hijab was designed for them. (It never was)

On the contrary, it is also a problem for the non-Muslim, male, and white community.

"But why can't we see your hair?"

"But why do you wear western clothes and still have that thing on?"

So, I guess the question many of you ask is why? Why do so many young Muslim women choose to wear it despite all the controversy?

Aside from the few who wear the hijab by force, most of us wear the hijab because believe it or not, we want to. WE. ACTUALLY. HAVE. A. CHOICE.

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Thus begs the question, why does a proportion of the male, Muslim narrative insist that there is only one way that the hijab exists and that there is no other possible way it should be worn or else you are a haraami.

Let's look at it this way, the hijab is worn by so many women across the world - who have so many different fashions and cultural attires. Here I'm expecting a bearded bloke to interject and give me the classic "mixing Islam and culture is like dirty water" line. Let me stop you right there. Women having varieties of attire, varieties of clothing that have emerged as a result of them seeking an Islamic way of dressing is not mixing culture into Islam, it's an example of how widespread Islam is. But until we are all wearing niqabs and in full black, some Muslim men and women will refuse to recognise it as hijab at all. I cannot help but think that it is the ignorance and lack of understanding or simply seeing the beauty in variety that leads to such conflicting perceptions of the hijab.

The situation is, hijab does not come with ownership. I cannot control the opinions that surround it. It is not just the male narrative, but also the narrative within the female Muslim community, a community that looks down on other Muslimas for being less Muslim, less conservative, for being too loud in the way we present ourselves. And then there's the non-Muslim, female narrative that brands veiled women as oppressed individuals. Where veiled Muslims are less acceptable members of society for fear that they are extremists or training for Isis. Because don't we all have an Al-Qaeda handbook chilling in our backpacks? Among the hullabaloo of Muslims being united under an umbrella and coming together to erase misunderstanding, there is also a posse of self-proclaimed, Islam-preserving, quick-to-pull-out-the-hadith-and-use-it-in-a-nonsensical-way Muslims. Unless you have been living under a rock, you might be staring at that statement wide-eyed and wondering what could possibly stir up such bitter hate in the Muslim community. Successful hijabi women, that's what.

As I mentioned before, there is also the issue that some people see assimilation (wearing western clothes) as a deviation from Islam or seem to have a problem with Muslim women breaking down social barriers and being successful individuals. Look at how people have glossed over Noor Tagouri's success just to bash her for using playboy as a medium to talk about the real issues that exist for Muslim women today. Nobody cared when Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X had feature articles in Playboy magazine! But as soon as it concerns a successful Muslim woman who wears hijab, all metaphorical Jahannam breaks loose. I'm sure the issue isn't her success, or her choice to take up the opportunity from playboy, the problem is her hijab. It echoes what I said before, how wearing the hijab suddenly entitles others to judge us, to mock us, to decree our Muslimness on the Muslim chart. Here we have Muslim men comparing Tagouri's article to "dawah in a brothel", again, complete derailment and smothering of a Muslim woman's success by using distorted analogies. In a letter to her public, Tagouri stated

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"I knew that Playboy had overhauled the look of the magazine and took out the nudity; that was great but it wasn't enough. This wasn't a decision that I could take lightly. I spent time talking to my family and mentors, praying about it, and asking the writers a ton of questions. While doing my research, I learned that the magazine was committed to putting social justice and cultural progress at the forefront of their mission. It may sound wrong and it may make you uncomfortable to associate Playboy with social justice and cultural progress, but that's what I do."

Both her article and her letter were refreshing, especially for a young Muslim such as myself who is struggling with her identity and is torn between the spectrum of arguments surrounding the hijab. Believe it or not, it was just the push I needed to convince myself not to 'dejab'. It was the push that I needed to confirm that no matter how many non-Muslims don't understand it and no matter how many Muslims bash Muslim women and undermine their individuality and success, I can still wear my hijab and be me.
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When I was asked by Paul Dacre to become editor of Metro back in 2000, he told me with a mischievous glint in his eye: 'Make it good...but don't make it too good'.

Metro had been launched a year earlier by Associated Newspapers, owners of the Daily Mail, triggering a lively debate within the newspaper industry. Would the new free newspaper hit the sales of paid-for newspapers, including the Evening Standard, then a paid-for paper also owned by Associated? Would it even cannibalise the mighty Daily Mail?

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This week, Metro overtook the Mail to become the second highest circulation UK national newspaper, according to ABC figures for February. Metro had an average daily circulation of 1,476,115, putting it ahead of the Mail's average sale of 1,454,129. The Mail's circulation figure is boosted by its strong Saturday performance; during the week, Metro (which is only published Monday-Friday) is more than 200,000 copies ahead of the Daily Mail. And it is less than 30,000 copies behind The Sun, the UK's biggest-selling daily newspaper.

It's hard to remember what a trailblazer Metro was at the time of its launch 18 years ago. In those days, free newspapers were local rags shoved through your letterbox, containing plenty of advertising but precious little to read. Commercially, its success was far from guaranteed; in fact, many commentators cheerfully predicted its imminent demise.

But Metro offered something different. It was a neutral, apolitical 20-minute read, which presented the day's essential news in bite-size chunks. Cleverly, its circulation was deliberately restricted so that demand outstripped supply; get to the tube station too late and it was gone. It targeted affluent urbanites aged under 35, a hard-to-reach audience for advertisers. Managing director Mike Anderson coined the phrase 'the Metro Moment' - the 20-minute window of opportunity during the morning Tube or train journey when advertisers could reach them.

Its secret was the slickness of the editing; under launch editor Ian MacGregor and a handful of experienced Daily Mail executives seconded to the paper, it quickly established itself as a credible, quality newspaper, albeit aimed at a very different audience from the Mail. From London, it spread into a handful of big regional cities and its circulation began to grow.

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Now, it is the paper of choice for morning commuters. On my journey from Richmond into central London, I rarely see anyone else reading a paid-for newspaper. So, were the critics right all those years ago to warn that giving away a well-produced, well-edited newspaper for nothing was an irresponsible act by Associated?

The continuing decline of our national newspapers has been well documented; every title has seen its circulation plunge as readers have migrated online. The only surprise is that The Independent has so far been the only casualty.

It's hard to argue that Metro has not taken readers from paid-for papers - and my suspicion is it hit the weaker mid-market and red-top titles particularly hard in those early years - but they would have lost readers anyway. Metro is actually a throwback to the print age - for complicated internal political reasons, it has never had control of its own website - so the focus of its senior staff has always been on the print edition. That may be counter-intuitive for a paper that targets a Generation Z audience, but editor Ted Young argues the 'Metro Moment' is still alive and well - reading the paper is the one fixed point in the day when they can be lured away from a screen.

Interestingly, advertising mogul Martin Sorrell this week argued that print is far from dead. He said his media investment business, GroupM, which buys advertising space on behalf of clients, was platform-agnostic, but part of its remit was to ensure clients understood the benefits of newspaper advertising. He cited research by Newsworks, suggesting that newspapers could increase the effectiveness of an advertising campaign by 300 per cent.

"Studies worldwide show that people are more engaged when reading a newspaper than they are when using social media, an important consideration for advertisers seeking consumers' attention - and access to their wallets," he said.

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For the last six months, I have been looking to try and get some programmes on mental health and wellbeing, and how people live with it in the UK, onto television. My desire is to connect with real people, look at their daily lives, the treatment on offer, the financial limitations, lack of awareness and the exciting future in terms of diagnosis and recovery. To be clear this article is not coming from a jaded place. I am not licking my wounds over it not happening to date, but I do believe that TV networks are missing the point of mental health, and how it should be portrayed.

A few weeks ago, a channel approached me to take part in an immersive treatment experience. They wanted me and four other 'known people' to undergo exposure therapy, which can be defined as:

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'A technique in behaviour therapy used to treat anxiety disorders. It involves the exposure of the patient to the feared object or context without any danger, to overcome their anxiety and/or distress'

For context, the therapy is recommended to take place over between 8-12 weeks. I have undergone similar therapy in dealing with chronic PTSD, an extreme anxiety illness. Exposure therapy it is not something to be undergone lightly and the reason why it is done gradually and gently, is that if one is exposed too quickly to too much it can create a flood of neurological responses that overwhelm the frontal lobes of the brain. This can cause the brain and body to go into trauma hijack. The results if not monitored carefully, can ultimately lead to such a sense of hopelessness that they turn to suicide.

The concept for the programme was for me to undergo exposure therapy in 24 hours, which has never been done before. Having studied somatic re-experiencing (the same as exposure therapy in its goal) this in my opinion is the most foolish and dangerous thing I have ever heard! I was effectively going to be used as a guinea pig to see what would happen under such extreme circumstances. Guaranteed drama. Guaranteed "jeopardy' - a word that is the go-to place for any celebrity-based programme to maximise ratings.

I decided to call the casting agent, to let them know how appalled I was at this idea, and to make them aware of the dangers of such an undertaking. I also stressed that there is no educational element, but purely sensational - a huge difference. The terrifying thing was that the channel clearly believed this was educational, and it was clear the casting person had no idea what he or she was undertaking... although this was not their fault.

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My sadness and frustration is in equal measure, as this is not the only example I have come across. TV networks want to maximise their views, and there is an obsession with 'keeping the audience' by providing an educational element. Mental health isn't exactly Doc Martin, but I am baffled as to how a network can lure in an audience to be 'entertained' by mental health. In my opinion, the networks are missing the point. By hoodwinking an audience into watching sensational viewing they are at best presenting sensationalisation of mental health and at worst failing to educate at all, creating even more shame for people who experience it than they already do.

For me, a conversation about mental health leads to connection. Through my vulnerabilities I connect with others who open up and share about theirs. The connection deepens, and we relate as true humans through all our inner and outer experiences. The shame is replaced by respect, empathy and love. The best way to show how mental health affects people and how we can help is to strip away the sensationalisation and allow people simply to tell their stories. If things are to be experimental then for God's sake do it in a safe way. The upper echelons of networks, the people who are looking to create dramatic are playing a dangerous game without having a grasp on the true facts.
Inmate's death opens records to earlier use-of-force incident

A cause of death for Kyle Skeen has not been determined, but officials say use of force wasn't involved.
Mental Health And The Music Industry

Many are considering 2016 to have been a breakthrough year for mental health in the music industry, with the topic making frequent appearances at panel discussions and in studies. Here we look at important questions surrounding mental health in the music industry, and how the issue rose to prominence.

__________________________

Guest post by Bas Grasmayer of Synchblog

2016 has been labeled a breakthrough year for mental health in music. The topic now frequently appears at panel discussions at conferences, as well as in academic studies. This begs the question: what can be done, and what is being done in result of all these conversations? And what causes the issue?

A look at one of the most important issues at the heart of the music business.



Can music make you sick?

A recent study by the University of Westminster for Help Musicians UK found that "musicians could be up to three times more likely to suffer from depression compared to the general public." Over 70% of musicians surveyed had experienced anxiety or panic attacks, and nearly 70% of respondents reported incidences of depression.

The study points out that while music may actually help people feel better, working in music did not. It suspects working conditions play a big part, as well as "the welding of music and identity into ones own idea of selfhood (and the impact a lack of perceived success can have on this).



How the topic of mental health rose to prominence

Last year saw a number of prominent musicians speak out about their mental health issues, acknowledging the stigma surrounding mental illness. Lady Gaga explained her PTSD diagnosis in an open letter that also takes a jab at poor working conditions:

"The experience of performing night after night in mental and physical pain ingrained in me a trauma that I relive when I see or hear things that remind me of those days."

Other well-known artists that spoke out were Zayn Malik, Kehlani, Selena Gomez, iLoveMakonnen, and Adele. In dance music, Benga openly discussing his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder helped others open up, too. Soon after, Deadmau5 discussed his depression and Carl Cox revealed his fear of burning out.

Fiona McGugan, general manager of the Music Manager's Forum, penned a widely shared article for the Guardian about mental health in music, mentioning that for managers to protect their clients emotional, mental and physical state should be done with as much passion as managing their business interests. Then there were pieces by David Emery and Darren Hemmings bringing attention to working conditions in the wider music business, and they didnt mince words.



The music industry can f**k you up

Emery signals a link between the passion people have for their jobs and the general insecurity of working in music: "the combination of deep set industry-wide job insecurity along with an utter passion for the subject matter that were working on is dangerous. As in, dangerous for your health sort of dangerous."

Both Hemmings and Emery warn of the always-on work culture that exists in the music business, with life at home and at work blending into each other. A natural result of working on something youre passionate about, but Hemmings therefore argues that music companies have a responsibility towards their employees to let them switch off when theyre away from work.

The recurring message in all of these articles is that people should not hesitate to reach out for help when they feel they may need it. The Help Musicians UK survey found that over half of respondents didnt know how to get help, so making help more readily available is an area of focus for many mental health initiatives.



Caring for mental health

Music Support, a charity launched in 2016, provides a 24/7 helpline that people can call when theyre having issues. While there are already organisations that provide general support, Music Support wants to connect music professionals to people who understand the unique circumstances common in the music business. "Working in venues where there are thousands of people enjoying themselves can sometimes be the loneliest place, and we have people at the end of the phone who understand that."

More recently, Passion Pit frontman Michael Angelakos, honoured for his efforts in mental health awareness, founded The Wishart Group and raised $250m in funds from big names in the music & tech industries to provide artists with legal, educational and healthcare services, with particular emphasis on mental health. As of writing, the company doesnt appear to have made any further public announcements.

Besides breaking the stigma and actually providing people who need it with care, musicians and researchers often warn that people tend to romanticise mental illness. Audiences like to think of artists as tortured geniuses and theres a belief that mental issues are good for creativity. This belief is one of the most commonly cited reasons why the music industry doesnt take better care of their artists emotional well-being. Its considered par for the course for artists, but do you perform best at your profession when you feel stressed, burned out, or depressed?

As Darren Hemmings put it at a recent conference panel: "Stress and creativity dont go hand-in-hand."



If you are affected by any of the issues mentioned in this post, please reach out to Help Musicians UK, Music Support, or a similar organisation in your local area.



Our Projecting Trends series is created by digital strategist Bas Grasmayer, who runs the MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE digital strategy agency and newsletter.

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Lia Spiliotes, CEO of Community Health Programs, said the practice hopes to add physicians and wraparound services to fill out its new offices. BHS's Sean Jennings, center, said $20 million has been invested in the former hospital campus. PreviousNext

CHP Looks to Add Physicians, Services in North County



CHP hosted a joint chamber event in its new offices on the third floor of BMC North.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Community Health Programs has opened its renovated offices on the North Adams Campus of Berkshire Medical Center and hopes to add new doctors to its North County practice.



Members of 1Berkshire and the North Adams Chamber of Commerce got to tour the new offices at a joint chamber event on Wednesday catered by Bounti-Fare and Kelly's Package Store. CHP moved into the former 3rd North wing of the hospital last December.



"What you saw is a renovation that we finished about two weeks ago, you can see that we're still working to outfit some of the rooms," said Lia Spiliotes, CEO of Community Health Programs. "We have now 17 exam rooms in total which can support nine providers ...



"We've been light on providers in this particular facility but things have turned for us and we have some additional candidates coming in who will be permanent hires for us, we hope. We have our fingers crossed."



The practice, formerly Northern Berkshire Family Practice, has three medical assistants, two licensed practical nurses and Dr. Anping Han, plus Dr. Thomas B. Irwin once a week. Temporary support includes several practioners and another doctor.



Spiliotes said CHP also picked up a lot of Dr. Shaohua Tang's patients after his practice was forced to close early last year. CHP now services some 3,000 patients and is accepting new ones.



"We accepted 71 patients in the last month, that's a lot," she said. "You take that and you figure how many more patients are there out there for us, it's just going to be a matter of time before those exam rooms are filled."



The practice also has consulting rooms that Spiliotes envisions being used for support services such as behavioral health or nutritional consulting.
United Way CEO Kristine Hazzard, Hillcrest student Brennan Raymond, and Eugene Dellea. Shaun Cusson. Gerry Burke. PreviousNext

Dellea Honored With Hillcrest's Irish Person of the Year Award



There was a large audience at the Pittsfield Country Club for the event. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  It was in the mid-1980s when Michael Dukakis was looking to close the Avalon School, which was in receivership. Meanwhile, Hillcrest officials had taken an idea of expanding into the education field to their Chief Operating Officer Eugene Dellea.

Dellea brought the concept the board chair, financial and legal reviews were done and the leadership was ready to bring the idea of buying Avalon to the full board. But first, they needed the governor's office to stop his efforts to close it.

"In communications with the governor and his staff, we impressed upon him the needs of the students and the economic impact of losing 500 jobs in South Berkshire," Dellea, now president of Fairview Hospital and Berkshire Medical Center's Hillcrest Campus, said.

Dukakis agreed, if a non-profit could take over the school, the jobs and the operations would stay in the Berkshires. But no local bank would finance it. Dellea again used his political connections.

"We went to the state Sen. Peter Weber requesting he file legislation enabling HEC to utilize the state's education health financing authority for a bonding approval. We were successful and here we are," Dellea said.

Now 30 or so years later, Hillcrest Educational Centers continues to be one of the county's largest employers.

Gerard Burke was part of that takeover and continues to serve as its president. He remembers when Dellea was in charge of organizing an appearance for U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy in Worcester. Burke was looking for assistance for Hillcrest and Dellea introduced the two and put them in a position to be able to talk. From then on, Hillcrest was on Kennedy's radar.

The politicians all served a role and can boast about saving jobs and building the service. But in the middle of it all stood Dellea.

"There has not been a significant political event in Berkshire County in the past 30 years that Gene has not been in the middle of," Burke said.

That's why on Thursday, Hillcrest Educational Centers honored Dellea with the Irish Person of the Year Award during the annual Robert "Bees" Prendergast St. Patrick's Reception. Dellea has for years been a quiet player in not just Hillcrest's history but in the economic and political world of all of Berkshire County.

"Tonight we recognize a person I would suggest is one of the most valuable political people in some ways has never been elected in Berkshire County. He doesn't like the spotlight. He always makes arrangements to get things done the proper way. But yet, he leads up by example," Burke said.

"For years Gene's made every effort to avoid the spotlight but in the last couple of years, he hasn't been able to dodge it. The Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce recognized him, Fairview Hospital, the Esther Quinn Award, and tonight. But that's not to suggest he's changed his m.o. He still doesn't like the spotlight. He still doesn't like being recognized. It is just a direct result of all of us figuring out how to pull it off. We no longer ask him. We do one of two things: we surprise him or we tell him. We don't ask him."

And it isn't just because of Dellea's efforts in the political world. Dellea has become a mentor to many in Berkshire County, inspiring and helping new leaders. He's offered guidance and assistance on a number of projects and for a number of people.

Dellea said while he appreciates the honor, what is important is the work Hillcrest does. When he addressed the overflowing crowd at the Pittsfield Country Club his focus was on the non-profit, the people in the room, and on the students.

Jennifer Raymond knows the impact Hillcrest has firsthand. At the age of 4 her son, Brennan, started showing behavioral issues. She went to doctors and therapists.

"He was prescribed several types of medication to address his impulsive, unpredictable behavior. He attended our local school with the assistance of a one-on-one behavioral interventionist. This seemed to be OK for a few years. We say highs and lows. As Brennan grew older, we continued to struggle to find a more definitive diagnosis," Raymond said. "It felt like we were throwing darts at a dartboard."

Brennan's psychologist left the practice and the family found another one, hoping the results wouldn't be the same. Where they live in Vermont, there is a shortage of mental health support so they hoped the new psychologist would pinpoint the issue. Eventually, Brennan was has taken off his medication.

"For three weeks Brennan was a changed person. He was very active. He was mountain biking. He got his first real job in a kitchen at a local restaurant. He took great pride in his job and what he was learning. He was hanging out with friends. He had an amazing work ethic. He was pleasant to be around. We saw an overall positive change in him. We were psyched," Raymond said.

"Literally overnight we saw a completely different person. He became sneaky, deceitful, a step above and beyond anything we've ever seen from him. He got into legal trouble. He was manic, impulsive, he ran away, he was threatening. It was scary."

She went back to the few mental health resources around. She was desperate for help. He was placed in a school in New York. But six months later, he was still misbehaving and several situations led him to leave the school. He went to two temporary placements.

Raymond felt hopeless.



The annual ceremony presents awards to sponsors, the Irish Man of the Year, and the Judge John A. Barry Award. On May 17, 2016, Brennan was accepted to Hillcrest.

"Honestly, I was initially quite worried. We were seeing the same challenging behavior upon his admission in lashing out, destruction of property, running away, blaming others for his behavior, and overall out of control. I was worried that this wasn't the right match and we would never find the right program," Raymond said.

The 16-year-old admits at the time he was "disrespectful and unpredictable." He didn't trust anybody. He wasn't interacting well with his peers and was placed on an individualized program. But then he started to bond with staff. They found the right diagnosis  bipolar and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. They found the right slate of medications to manage it, taught him how to manage himself, and taught him all about his conditions.

"I've been able to actively participate in my therapy and we've found the right medications to help me focus and have more control," Brennan Raymond said.

Now he's attending full school days. He's learning new skills. And, he's started making trips home.

"The thing I am most proud of is the progress I've made at Hillcrest. With this progress, I'll be able to achieve my future goal of returning home to my family," Brennan Raymond said.

Jennifer Raymond said "Hillcrest did what nobody else seemed to be able to do" and now she has something she had thought she lost: hope.

"I finally feel like Brennan is in a positive place for his future," Raymond said.

Hillcrest Senior Vice President Chris Smith says Brennan's story isn't uncommon. He said the majority of the students at Hillcrest who end up there have had multiple placements.

"Our work is not always easy and at times it can be downright challenging," Smith said, adding that families often lose a lot of the hope and trust they've had by the time the students get to the center. "We strive to create an environment all students and families can trust."

And those are the stories Dellea hoped to shine a light on Thursday night, rather than on him. Brennan's story was shared with hundreds who attended the gala, which has been ongoing for 16 years since the merger between Hillcrest Hospital and Berkshire Health Systems. Past award winners include U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, former state Sen. Benjamin Downing, Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo, and others.

"We are here not to recognize me but to support the students such as Brennan, as you heard earlier, and the staff that makes a better life for every student at our institution," Dellea said.

Dellea wasn't the only one being honored though. Hillcrest also gave the Judge John A. Barry Community Service Award to the Berkshire United Way. Hillcrest Executive Director Shaun Cusson said the organization holds employee fundraising drives for the United Way. This year the company made a list of all of the United Way's services and programs. The employees browsed it and Cusson said nearly every one knew or was positively impacted by one program or the other.

"They understand collective impact," Cusson said of the Berkshire United Way. "That's the impact we saw in our own staff."

Creating that direct link not only led to a 14 percent increase in donations from employees but made Hillcrest realize how valuable the United Way is in helping the county. The organization donates some $2.5 million to dozens of organizations and helps between 20,000 and 25,000 area residents.

"United Way goes above and beyond," Cusson said.

The award was accepted by United Way CEO Kristine Hazzard. The event was attended by business, cultural and elected leaders including Mayor Linda Tyer, North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright, state Sen. Adam Hinds, state Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli, state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Sheriff Thomas Bowler, City Council President Peter Marchetti, City Councilors Kathleen Amuso, Peter White, Lisa Tully and Anthony Simonelli, former Mayor Gerry Doyle, former North Adams Mayor John Barrett, and former state Rep. Peter Larkin.
The Williamstown School Committee will review next year's budget for the public during a workshop meeting on Saturday.

Williamstown Elementary Invites Public to Saturday Budget Forum

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The chairman of the Williamstown School Committee hopes a Saturday morning budget workshop will provide more interaction with the public ahead of next week's more formal budget presentations.



The School Committee will hold its public hearing on the fiscal 2018 budget on Tuesday evening and is scheduled to vote a final budget request to the town later that evening. If all goes well, the district will make its presentation to the town's Finance Committee on Wednesday, March 22, likely the last public discussion of the spending plan before the May 16 Annual Town Meeting.



Before next week's hearings, the committee will hold an informal session on Saturday at 9 a.m. in the school cafeteria. It is model that has been used in other school districts but the first time it will be tried in Williamstown.



"It's a chance for School Committee members and the public to talk, which the public comment period at a meeting doesn't really allow," Bergeron said prior to a Thursday morning meeting of the School Committee's Finance Subcommittee.



That subcommittee, Bergeron and Dan Caplinger, took a final pass at the proposed budget, which calls for a 3.64 percent increase in the appropriation to the town over FY17.



That is a return to a level near where the School Committee thought it would be in mid-February and a decline from the 4.12 percent hike cited at the committee's March 1 meeting.



The main reason for the adjustment is that the district has learned of an additional retirement coming at the end of the school year, Bergeron said.



The overall budget is up 2.63 percent from FY17, from $6.6 million to $6.8 million.



The reason the percentage increase in the town appropriation is higher is that the School Committee has made it a priority to rely less on revenue from school choice and move more of its operating expenses into the appropriated budget.



The district anticipates receiving about $155,000 in school choice revenue in fiscal 2018, and has allocated $133,909 of the operating budget against that revenue.


The J.C. Penney's at the Berkshire Mall is slated to close this spring.

J.C. Penney at the Berkshire Mall To Close

LANESBOROUGH, Mass.  J.C. Penney store at the Berkshire Mall will be closing, one of 138 nationwide.

The anticipated closures were announced on Feb. 24 and on Friday the company released the list of specific stores slated for closure. The mall store is the only one in Massachusetts targeted for closure; the next closest, the Penney's in Bennington, Vt., is not on the list.

Liquidation sales are expected to begin in mid-April.

J.C. Penney had announced closures was on the horizon at the end of last month. The closures represent about 13 percent of the company's store portfolio. The company said on Feb. 24 that the stores eyed for closure either needed "significant capital to achieve the company's new brand standard or are minimally cash flow positive today relative to the company's overall consolidated average." The stores identified represent less than 5 percent of annual sales, the company says.

"As part of a continuing effort to advance sustainable growth and long-term profitability, J.C. Penney Company, Inc. will be closing 138 stores, one supply chain facility in Lakeland, Fla. and relocating one supply chain facility in Buena Park, Calif., to align the company's physical store footprint and omnichannel network," reads a released issued Friday morning.

"Approximately 5,000 positions nationwide will be impacted by the store closures, most of which will occur in June. JCPenney is in the process of identifying relocation opportunities within the company for esteemed leaders. Additionally, JCPenney will provide outplacement support services for those eligible associates who will be leaving the company. Most affected stores will begin the liquidation process on April 17."

The local closure is yet another big blow to the Berkshire Mall and the town of Lanesborough. In 2015, Best Buy closed and the following year Macy's closed. Neither space has been filled since. Few anchors are left - Sears and Target remain along with Regal Cinemas.

Mall owner Mehran Kohanseih, also known as Mike Kohan, said he hoped to keep JC Penney at the mall but there wasn't much he could do about the national decision.

"It's very unfortunate. We are definitely going to find a replacement," Kohan said.

Kohan said he was made away of the company's intent a few weeks ago and he attempted to negotiate a way to keep them as a tenant. He said he does have several other companies looking to move to the mall and he'll be reaching out to them about the soon to be vacant spot.

"I was trying to keep them. My focus was on J.C. Penney," Kohan said, but now the focus will shift to finding a new tenant.

Kohan Retail Investment Group purchased the mall just seven months ago for $3.5 million. His hope when purchasing it was to revitalize it and on Friday he said that remains the plan. He will continue to seek out tenants for all of the vacant spaces.

"We just took over the project a few months ago," Kohan said. "The companies have to do their due diligence. It's a process."

For years, the mall had gone in and out of bankruptcy proceedings and changed hands twice more recently. The assessed value of the mall had dropped from as high as $60.4 million in 2008 and is now valued at $19.5 million. The closure of J.C. Penney, if the location is not filled by another tenant, would likely cause that to drop even further.




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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When Personal Shoppers director Olivier Assayas declared his star Kristen Stewart the best actress of her generation, you could probably hear the smack from eyebrows rising so high they hit the ceiling. Stewarts detractors are forceful, they are unforgiving, and they somehow have enough time on their hands to make extensive YouTube compilations on the subject.

Yet, this isnt 2008 anymore. Her critics may not have moved past Twilight, but Stewart certainly has, quietly trying to shrug off those parasitic worst actress labels that still so obstinately cling to her. Adventureland, Camp X-Ray, Certain Women; its all work that speaks for itself far more eloquently than the expectation that an actress will deliver lines about sparkling vampire flesh with absolute sincerity. If only those critics would listen.

Star power may have gotten her in the room, but its pure talent thats crowned her the critical and creative obsession shes increasingly becoming; now the first American actress to win the highly esteemed French Cesar for her work in Assayas previous project, Clouds of Sils Maria.

Both her collaborations with Assayas, in fact, have proved perfect showcases for what Stewart has to offer the world; their quiet, unobtrusive reflections  Personal Shoppers on the ghostly nature of modern communication and Sils Marias on the art of acting  allow Stewart to luxuriate in her most essential element: truth.

Kristen Stewart is real. Real in a way so brusque and unashamed that it can feel off-putting, or even at odds with where her contemporaries are currently at. Critics can poke fun at her lip-biting, her hair-touching, her stuttering; but Stewart is the kind of actress with the centredness not to try and stifle those tics and twitches, understanding that its that kind of awkwardness that defines humanity at its most honest. Watch any interview and youll see the same: the lip-biting, hair-touching, stuttering manner. Nothing is suppressed with her, since she makes herself entirely available to the camera.

Its an attitude, certainly, at odds with the usual transformative aims of the craft; the many perfect, flawless disguises of Meryl Streep, effortlessly slipped into like silk robes. Or that oh-so macho approach to the method; like Leonardo DiCaprio eating raw bison liver so he could replicate the extreme emotions of, well, eating raw bison liver for The Revenant.

 Personal Shopper - Official Trailer 2

Stewarts never really declared herself an adherent to any of the established schools of acting (Meisner, Strasberg, Adler), but shes at least let slip a few revelatory indicators of her approach. She told Elle magazine in 2014, for example, that: Some people try to do that thing where you craft a character. I cannot be anyone other than who I am. If I cant empathize with something [my character] does, its a problem. And sometimes Ive had directors be like, Its not you, Kristen, its the character. And Im like, thats the laziest thing you can possibly say to me. It is me. Its definitely me.

Sure, Stewart has a certain affection for the modern obsession with method acting  at least, in the Strasberg sense of actors immersing themselves so fully in the character that they actually become the character as opposed to just playing it. For her role in Welcome to the Rileys, Stewart deprived herself of sleep, ate endless amounts of junk food, and chain-smoked for the role of a young stripper who was never taught how to take care of herself.

However, Stewart displays a much stronger sense of self in her work than those who focus on the transformative aspect of their roles. Rather than leaving herself behind, she opens herself up to new conditions and perspectives. By stressing that she cant perform if she cant empathise with the motivations of her character, Stewart seems almost to hint that she readjusts her own personality with each new role  that she remains essentially herself, but changed.

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It may be unwitting, but Stewarts doing something incredibly smart here in recognising that a screen star can never truly leave their real self behind. One of the greatest issues with cinematic acting and the star system is that the two almost always bleed into each other, and affect the way we receive and digest film. Try as we might, we are always aware of the star behind the facade. Physical, technical, and emotional transformations on the actors part can certainly help, but theres still an unwavering part of us that sees Leonardo DiCaprio  not his character Hugh Glass  eating bison liver or sleeping inside a horse.

Conversely, theres something quite freeing for an audience to see an actor whos not insistent on going to increasing lengths to lose themselves within a part as completely and outrageously as possible, but instead focuses on losing themselves in the truth of the moment and lives the material as authentically and as honestly as possible.

Stewarts acknowledgment that were always watching Stewart gives us the freedom to re-focus ourselves on the narrative, to channel any natural empathy we may have for our celebrity figure into the pathos of the situation. In Personal Shopper, we may just see Stewart as Stewart receiving mysterious texts that may come from her deceased twin but, boy, are we concerned for Stewarts wellbeing in that moment.



Interestingly, Stewarts really only done the whole celebrity biopic deal once, the most demandingly transformative role out there, since an actor must imitate, at least to a degree, the real life person in the public eye.

Yet, whats fascinating about Stewarts take on rocker Joan Jett in 2010s The Runaways is that its a perfect portrait without needing to betray the actress core mantra; as if shes approached the character by finding the kinship between herself and Jett, instead of trying to launch herself into Jetts mind-set. The result manages to be both quintessentially Jett and quintessentially Stewart, and it somehow works perfectly.

Certainly, Stewarts flaw is that she wont ever be a Meryl Streep; theres no launching her into any role out there and expecting it all to magically fit into place. But its her almost stubborn commitment to absolute authenticity that makes her so utterly unique as a talent, and an absolutely mesmerising presence onscreen. There are plenty of other actors to put on the masks. Kristen Stewart lives truth.
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One of the most interesting things about Ed Sheerans phenomenal album sales was the number of physical units he shifted.

Sales of CD and vinyl for  [Divide] made up 62 per cent of total sales  including a score of the biggest one-week vinyl album sale in more than 20 years.

Obviously Sheeran isnt your average artist, but it does make expert predictions that vinyl sales are unlikely to decline over the next few years look all the more promising.

Recommended Ed Sheeran to headline Glastonbury Festival

This increase in sales has accompanied the sharp rise in the use of streaming services, up 500 per cent from 2013, and industry figures currently seem to be working out how the two formats can work together.

Paris-based firm Deezer is going to considerable lengths to encourage fans to engage with physical music formats as well as online ones.

Sulinna Ong, VP of Artist Marketing at the companys HQ in London, says that the role of streaming companies is going to be even more important in increasing an artists profile.

One of our focuses is, how do we tell the artists story beyond the playlist? she says. And have people care and connect because thats what turns someone from a casual listener to someone who goes to concerts.

Deezer Next was launched as a strategy to help develop close, long-term relationships between the streaming platform, artists and their teams.

We are shifting away from the traditional album format so we need to show artists that were going to be working with them, Ong says.

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One thing that is consistent for all artists is that they want their music heard. How we do that  the focus for me in the marketing department  is to figure out how we make a campaign thats unique for them. All the artists really care about is that people are listening and connecting with their music, and we want to make sure the way we make that happen is authentic.

Ong believes that vinyl will always have a place in the music industry, and that a balance can be created between streaming and physical sales.

Vinyl is something special, something tangible, and I dont see why one has to eradicate the other, she says. Streaming will continue to grow, and we actually work vinyl into our campaigns as well. Vinyl is almost like a memory of an event, as well as having it to stream, its a reminder of something that youve experienced, that lives on. Theyre very much complementary.

A report published by ICM has shown that, perhaps unsurprisingly, streaming actually supports vinyl sales  it makes sense when you ask yourself if youd buy a record before hearing it first.

But where music discovery used to be limited to the radio, listeners now want to find different music that traditional stations wont play.

Deezer is capitalising on this by teaming up with Frances leading music retailer Fnac-Darty, strengthening its hold on the European music market and launching genre-specific channels when it spots a growing interest in a particular type of music.

Less than a year after the platforms US launch, the service has since announced that it will launch a Reggaeton channel, after noticing that its already-huge fanbase was attracting new audiences from around the world.

Jorge Rincon, VP of Deezer North America, explained to Billboard: Our music democratises the way music is available. Its also very important to us that new artists are visible and accessible to the audience.

When you create a particular channel on a genre like Reggaeton that spotlights Reggaetoneros only, you have the ideal platform for that new artist to grow a fanbase and become more popular.

Streaming music often leads on to vinyl purchases (AFP/Getty)

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, noted last year that discovering new artists via streaming encourages them to explore physical formats as well.

Younger fans increasingly discover on digital but collect on vinyl, he said. [They] appreciate the immediacy and convenience of services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play to discover and enjoy a huge range of new music, but still want to own and collect albums by artists they truly love.

David Buttle, founder of Brighton-based independent record label Mr Bongo, says he didnt expect these kind of vinyl sales to come back.

I dont know when its going to run out of steam. Now people are into vinyl  we just opened a new shop in Brighton and we havent had a shop since 2004  and its 60 per cent young people wholl be buying vinyl for quite a while, he says.

Another massive shift is that thats about 10 per cent women, and before that there were none. And DJs as well  that wasnt the case 20 years ago. I think record shops were scary places for people, but the whole things changed.

Owning physical copies of albums by favourite artists is an appealing concept to younger fans (Getty)

Weve always sold vinyl but what happened in 99 with Napster and everything  people suddenly viewed music as free and having no value. People had been ripping fans off with CDs for years, and suddenly kids were getting CDs and ripping them, and the industry was suddenly worth nothing.

He agrees that streaming has become a discovery tool for artists: The thing about streaming is that its become a discovery tool  you get into a band through there, then you might buy a vinyl, you might go to the gig. Streamings been great in that sense  iTunes did well, but streaming is perfect. Its like having a radio station at your fingertips all the time.

Recommended Circa Waves talk Different Creatures and headline ambitions

And while the media has previously pitched vinyl and streaming as opposing concepts that cant work together, Buttle says that there is this complementary feel to it if its handled the right way.

The music industrys changed so much, the gangsters have left and its become more professional,he says. I go to the major labels now and theyre not making the mistakes they used to make, theyre much more on it.

Record Store Day in April, that has a big vinyl uplift. Everyones reissuing everything, labels that were dormant are suddenly reopening

Sometimes it seems like theres too much, its a bit overwhelming. But I dont see the vinyl trend ending any time soon and streaming is going to keep going up. I think labels are more supportive of one another, theres more of a working together attitude. These are the best times weve had.
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Azealia Banks has consented to take anger management classes after pleading guilty to misdemeanour, assault and attempted assault relating to an incident which took place in 2015.

The rapper was arrested after allegedly punching and "biting the boob" of a nightclub bouncer in New York.

According to reports, Banks accepted a plea deal on the incident this week and will complete a 26-week course of anger management classes, which will see her charges reduced to "disorderly conduct".

Banks' lawyer John Vafa told Pitchfork: "After conferring and working with Ms Banks' New York criminal attorney, we were able to negotiate and accept a plea deal.

"Ms Banks will participate in the ordered courses by the district attorney and the judge for 26 weeks."

As well as the anger management classes, Banks will have to avoid all other conflicts and check in regularly with the judge.

Failure to comply with the terms could result in "up to a year" of jail time, Dazed reported.
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The final wave of acts joining the Glow Tent stage at the sold-out Kendal Calling festival has been announced.

Joining the dance stage are Idris Elba, Bugzy Malone, Eli & Fur and Shadow Child, to a stage already including Faithless, Example, Jungle and Tom Zanetti.

Kendal Calling is held at Lowther Deer Park in the beautiful Lake District.

Headlining the festival are Stereophonics and Manic Street Preachers with Frank Turner, Franz Ferdinand, Tinie Tempah, Editors and Jake Bugg also performing.

The legendary Brian Wilson will return to the UK to perform his final show of 'Pet Sounds' in its entirety.

Up and coming acts come in the shape of Loyle Carner, Fickle Friends, Honeyblood, Shame, Blaenavon, Bad Sounds and Fews.

We caught up with Bugzy Malone to see how he's feeling about the gig:

Q&A with Bugzy Malone

What are you listening to at the moment?

At the moment Im listening to a lot of old skool Tupac Shakur, hes a great storyteller and has produced some legendry songs.

Do you think youll check out anything else at Kendal Calling while youre there?

Im hoping to check out as much as I can, as its not too far away from home. There are so many amazing artists to choose from, but Im definitely looking forward to catching Tinie Tempah I feature on his new album Youth, so you never know what surprises are coming.

What are your plans for 2017?

This year I will release my third E.P, its currently untitled and Im just adding the finishing touches to it. My previous E.P Facing Time went straight to number 1 on the I Tunes album chart last summer independently, so Im really looking forward to putting new music out for the fans who have supported me and changed my life.

Whats the best gig you ever did?

When I performed at the Manchester Albert Hall last year on my sold out Facing Time tour. It meant a lot to me as not only was it in my home town, but its the first time that a lot of my friends and family had seen me on stage. Plus the crowd were on another level and it was just a siick night.

Whats been the best so far?

The best so far would have to be performing on Later...With Jools Holland. It was a great experience and its my mums favourite show, so I brought her along and it made her year.

Kendal Calling takes place from 27-30 July 2017.
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If youre trying to trick yourself - or anyone else for that matter - into eating more veggies, a Japanese cafe may have found the solution.

Vegedeco Salad Cafe in Nagoya create incredible cakes that in fact arent cakes at all, but rather salads.

Yes, salads that look like cakes. Theyre reportedly all the rage in Japan.

Its either ingenious or a cruel, cruel trick.

The inventor of the salad cake, Misuki Moriyasu, says theyre fun to look at, fun to eat and full of joy using a new shape of salad. She invented the salad cake as a guilt-free alternative to regular cakes in 2015.

As salads go, theyre certainly prettier than most.

It looks like a normal cake - but it's made of only veggies. You can have it for breakfast, lunch - and it's very suitable for dinner with wine, Moriyasu told CNN.

The cakes feature sponge made from soy flour (because butter, sugar, flour and eggs are obviously overrated) and frosting made of tofu.

Theyre filled with all sorts of marinated, diced and cooked vegetables such as radish and daikon

Everything is gluten-free, sugar-free, low carb and vegan. Yum.

But if you stop thinking about the salad cakes as a poor alternative to a cake and a prettier version of a salad, they seem much more appealing.

And its hard to deny that the salad cakes are absolutely stunning.

Each salad cake takes about an hour to make and Moriyasu now has 50 different designs.

They're apparently particularly popular with Japanese women, but they have received mixed reactions online:

It just goes to show - never judge a book (or a cake) by its cover.
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Two people have died after mysterious ghost calls flooded the 911 emergency dispatch system in Dallas, Texas.

Six-month-old Brandon Alex passed away on Saturday after falling out of his bed.

His babysitter found him unconscious but still breathing and called 911 three times, but was repeated placed on hold and eventually hung up after failing to get through for more than 30 minutes, reports Dallas News.

The youngster was taken to hospital by his mother, Bridget Alex, but didnt regain consciousness.

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The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

In a similar incident last week, 52-year-old Brian Cross was found unconscious at home by his husband, David Taffet.

Mr Taffet was unable to get through to an operator for 20 minutes, and Mr Cross passed away in hospital.

The issue appears to stem from the T-Mobile network.

When T-Mobile users in Dallas call 911 and are put on hold, their phones inexplicably make repeated 911 calls, clogging up the line.

These calls register as hang-ups, which operators then have to return, causing further problems.

Brandon Alexs babysitter called 911 from a T-Mobile handset, and operators said they couldnt get through when they tried to call her back.

Astonishingly, this isnt the first time Dallas has experienced such problems. The T-Mobile ghost call issues started last year, and were believed to have been fixed in January.

Recommended US police departments are adopting pit bulls to save money

The phantom calls are only originating from T-Mobile phones.

It is outrageous that T-Mobile still has not resolved the ghost call issue that is putting Dallasites in danger by clogging our 911 system," said Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings.

The CEO of T-Mobile, John Legere, has promised to send the companys best engineers to Dallas to investigate the problem and says hell them there until the problem is fixed.
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GCHQ's public criticism of the Trump administration might be unprecedented in the history of intelligence agencies.

The British spying organisation has come out to deny claims that it helped Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump, calling the claims "utterly ridiculous".

The statement is in contrast with years of protocol that has meant GCHQ has commented on any stories, let alone criticising its closest ally. The agency has almost always committed never to comment on any intelligence matter, and doing so is a major and meaningful break with its previous behaviour.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then-president-elect are nonsense, a spokesperson said in a statement. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

GCHQ initially refused to comment on the claims that it had helped spy on Trump Tower, when they were made by a Fox News analyst, as it always has. But they were then repeated by Donald Trump's spokesman, Sean Spicer, straining relationships between the US and the UK.

Mr Spicer said that Mr Obama had asked for the UK intelligence agencies' help because it would mean that he could listen in on Mr Trump's conversations without getting "fingerprints" on them.

The two countries' intelligence agencies are so closely aligned that if one of them went offline or was attacked, it would pass all of its work onto the other, it has been said. There is huge levels of sharing between the two groups, meaning that they wouldn't even be able to work on their own  they use each others' code, staff and facilities throughout the world.

Now GCHQ has taken the perhaps unprecedented step of criticising the US president and apparently complicating that relationship.

As well as its official statement, GCHQ's communications director Andrew Pike has further criticised Mr Trump.

He called the claims "a very unusual allegation" in a tweet that was sent Eric King, a privacy campaigner. He responded to another tweet by an anti-Trump campaigner who wrote "Mr Pike please know the majority of us are against the allegations, deeply respect you & your colleagues, and will always stand with you," writing "Thank you".

The posts were the first time that the relatively light tweeter has sent a direct message to anyone.
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A pregnant mother and her husband are carrying their terminally ill baby to full term so her organs can be donated, saying their daughter is "going to do more in her 24 hours than maybe we'll ever do in our lives".

Keri and Royce Young, who have named their unborn baby Eva, went into hospital for a routine ultrasound scan 19 weeks into the pregnancy.

Doctors told them their baby had anencephaly, a rare and inevitably fatal condition where a child is born without a cerebrum and other parts of their brain and skull.

'She has perfect feet and perfect hands. She has perfect kidneys, perfect lungs and a perfect liver. Sadly, she doesn't have a perfect brain' (Keri Young/Facebook)

The baby may live for anywhere from five minutes to a couple of days, but will never become aware of its surroundings. Rather than have an abortion, the couple decided Keri would bring Eva to term so her organs could be donated to society.

The Oklahoma couple appeared on Good Morning America this week, where Mrs Young said: "She's healthy right now, and I love feeling her kick, and that, that was surprising. She's as perfect as she's going to be right now. So I don't want to give that up.

'Now is not the time to be sad. I keep telling people we have a whole lifetime to be sad...But now, she's alive and she's kicked and ... for this pregnancy, that's the most joyful part."

Mr Young, a journalist and sportscaster for ESPN, added: "There's another family out there...hoping that their baby's going to get a kidney. They're praying for a miracle themselves, but Eva can be that miracle."

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. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. 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. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. 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In a Facebook post announcing the decision, Ms Young wrote: "Those first 24 hours were the hardest of our lives. I couldn't eat and when I finally did I didn't keep it down. We were exhausted but couldn't sleep and when we thought we had no tears left we cried and cried again."

Thoughts went through her mind, she wrote, from "There's no way God exists" to "We're going to spend all this money on prenatal care and labour and delivery and not take baby home."

But in consultation with their church pastor, who told them "in your daughter's 24 hours of life she might save 50 lives. She's going to be a very busy girl," the couple decided not to terminate the foetus.

"I've opened up to the thought of holding my daughter and watching her die," Ms Young concluded. "That's going to happen. We will leave the hospital without a baby. That is our reality. But we accept it."

The couple have since been keeping friends and well-wishers updated through social media. In another recent Facebook post, Mr Young sounded a similar note. He said: "A lot of people say things like, 'I wouldn't change anything' after a trying circumstance, but I'm not about to say that. I would definitely change this if I could.

 Browns tell how death of baby daughter helped save John Smith's grandchild

"I want my daughter to be perfect. I want her to blow out her candles on her first birthday. I want to watch her bang her head on our coffee table trying to learn to walk.

"I want her to run up a cell phone bill texting boys. I want to walk her down an aisle. I want to change it all so, so badly. But I can't. This is our reality. And there's no stopping it."

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, a baby born with anencephaly is usually blind, deaf, unaware of its surroundings and unable to feel pain.

"Although some individuals with anencephaly may be born with a main brain stem, the lack of a functioning cerebrum permanently rules out the possibility of ever gaining awareness of their surroundings. Reflex actions such as breathing and responses to sound or touch may occur."

The baby is due on 7 May.
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Bobs back! The Diamond geezer has stepped away from his moneymaking ventures in Africa, returning to the City to gobble up a stockbroker alongside some royal mates from Qatar. Blimey.

Panmure Gordon is the vehicle which, we are told, will drive Mr Diamonds ambitions back in the smoke. Strike a light, because there are going to be some fun times ahead.

Yes, thanks to the involvement of one of the worlds most famous financiers, a small London stockbroker managed to find its way to the top of everyones business news list on a quiet-ish Friday.

However, while we media types got terribly excited because, well, Mr Diamond is a rare celebrity in the world of business and everyone loves celebrity, its doubtful that this really amounts to the return of the Citys prodigal American son as it is being portrayed.

Mr Diamond, once branded the unacceptable face of banking by Lord Mandelson, is not even quoted in the deals announcement. That was left to Matthew Hansen, the head of UK and Europe for Atlas Marchant Capital, Mr Diamonds takeover vehicle.

That shouldnt surprise anyone. Youd hardly expect the big cheese to be making bold statements about a deal valued at 15.5m struck in partnership with Panmures existing major shareholder, the Qatari investment bank QInvest.

After all, Mr Diamond used to make more than 15.5m for a few months work while building up Barclays Capital, better known today as Barclays Investment Bank.

This is not his attempt to cock a snook at Barclays, from which he departed as group chief executive in the wake of the Libor rigging scandal, by using Panmure to create BarCap 2.0.

Id imagine the boys and girls at Panmure would be delighted if he turned up to the odd board meeting so one or two of the younger analysts could get his autograph. In reality, theyll have to make do with Mr Hansen, whose deal this really is.

He and Atlas have acted chiefly because Panmure, which has had its problems, is going cheap. Even were it to be flying right now, its doubtful that the stock market would give it much credit.

Small brokers have never been much loved by it at the best of times. They have a tendency to cycle through owners, public and private, doing a job for smaller companies, making a good living for people who dont much like the atmosphere at bigger places (and who can blame them).

Id imagine Mr Diamond would derive a certain amount of personal satisfaction from Panmure stepping off that treadmill and becoming something of a force, turning into a boutique broker and investment bank with clout. But thats as far as it goes.

It could happen, and its far more likely to do so with the business taken off the public company treadmill by owners willing to give it a bit of love and a lot of capital.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled  leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

Youd hope that most of the current staff are kept along for the ride. Theyre a decent bunch, and thats rare in the City.

But while Mr Diamond is making a noise in the media, and will get the credit if it does happen, it will be down to others to do the work.

Mr Diamond has bigger fish to fry.
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Germanys economy minister has said that the country could file a law suit against the US at the World Trade Organization if Donald Trump implements his proposed border tax.

Speaking to broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Friday, Brigitte Zypries said that if Mr Trump implemented the tax, it would be incredibly complex for the whole system and the adjustment would take a long time.

She said that one option for Germany would be to file a suit against the President at the WTO.

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It is clearly laid out in WTO agreements that you are not allowed to charge more than 2.5 per cent taxes on imports of cars, she said.

She added that shes banking on both the Presidents rationality and the power of the law to make ensure that the tax does not come into effect.

Mr Trump has in the past warned that the US will impose a border tax of 35 per cent on cars that BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the US market.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Trump are meeting on Friday for the first meeting since the new US President took office. The two have so far had a strained relationship.

In 2015, Mr Trump tweeted that the German chancellor was ruining Germany.

Similarly, he compared his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton to Ms Merkel, saying she wants to be Americas Angela Merkel and you know what a disaster the massive immigration has been to Germany and the people of Germany".

However, in 2016, Mr Trump picked Ms Merkel as his favourite world leader, despite his criticism of her position on refugees.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Germany's 50bn trade surplus with the US has also proved a source of tension between the two countries in recent months, according to Reuters.

"We know ourselves that that's a problem and we're working on it," Ms Zypries said on Friday.
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Hundreds of thousands of workers in the gig economy want guaranteed employment rights such as holiday pay, and say that the Government should take action, a new survey shows.

More than 1.3 million people are now working in casual part-time jobs without guaranteed hours or pay if they are sick, research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found. The majority of those surveyed (63 per cent) believe they should be legally entitled to the basic rights enjoyed by employees.

More than half felt firms were exploiting a lack of regulation and just 38 per cent said that they felt like their own boss.

Recommended The gig economy will have to give workers the rights they deserve

Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said the study showed many businesses were trying to have their cake and eat it by using supposedly self-employed workers while at the same time maintaining a level of control over people that is more appropriate for a more traditional employment relationship.

This research shows the grey area that exists over peoples employment status in the gig economy, he added.

Many self-employed workers may already be eligible for basic employment rights, Mr Cheese said, but are confused by their employment status. Currently, people can be defined as an employee, a worker or fully self-employed, with each category entitled to different rights.

Several high-profile legal cases have backed up the findings of the research. In October last year, employment tribunal judges lambasted Uber for not granting drivers employment rights.

The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common platform is in our minds faintly ridiculous, judges said, adding that Ubers arguments were absurd.

10 Best places to work in the UK Show all 10 1 /10 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK 10 Best places to work in the UK

Judges said the supposed contract between drivers and passengers was a pure fiction which bears no relation to the real dealings and relationships between the parties.

The Government has commissioned an independent review into modern ways of working to assess whether legal changes are necessary.

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts began gathering evidence last month and is due to report in the summer.
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The Government has pulled all of its advertising from YouTube after discovering some ads could be funding rape apologists, anti-Semites and hate preachers.

YouTube owner Google has been summoned by ministers to explain how it had allowed taxpayer-funded adverts to be shown alongside extremist content, after a Times investigation uncovered the issue.

The Cabinet Office said on Friday that the restriction was temporary, pending reassurances from Google that Government messages can be delivered in a safe and appropriate way.

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Several other organisations are also said to have put a stop to their YouTube advertising over the issue.

The Guardian said yesterday it had pulled its Google ads after they had also been placed next to extremist videos.

David Pemsel, The Guardians chief executive, wrote to Google to say that it was completely unacceptable for its advertising to be misused in this way, the newspaper reported.

It said the content included YouTube videos of American white nationalists and a hate preacher banned in the UK.

Google UK managing director Ronan Harris said in a statement that the company has strict guidelines about where ads appear, and that in the vast majority of cases the company protects users and advertisers from harmful or inappropriate content.

Mr Harris said that in 2016 Google removed nearly 2 billion ads, banned over 100,000 publishers, and prevented ads from showing on over 300 million YouTube videos.

However, Mr Harris said the volume of advertising that Google serves meant that we dont always get it right.

In a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our policies, he said, adding that the company was committed to resolving the issue.

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. 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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. 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A Government spokesperson defended its digital advertising as a cost-effective way to engage the public in campaigns such as military recruitment and blood donation.

Google is responsible for ensuring the high standards applied to Government advertising are adhered to and that adverts do not appear alongside inappropriate content, the spokesperson said.

The news comes after Google was condemned by an MP for refusing to ban a video by a former Ku Klux Klan leader called Jewish People Admit Organising White Genocide.

Yvette Cooper, the chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, expressed disbelief when the internet giants vice president said the recording  posted by Holocaust denier David Duke  did not breach our guidelines.

More than 1,200 companies have pulled their advertising from American right-wing website Breitbart in recent months. Many of the firms had not been aware that their ads had been shown on the site as it is often bought through third parties, including Google.
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Ex-Tory Chancellor George Osborne has been named as the new editor of the London Evening Standard, in a move that has prompted calls from political opponents for him to stand down as an MP.

Mr Osborne will take up his new role in early May, editing the paper an average of four days a week while continuing to represent the constituency of Tatton.

The new editor said he was thrilled, while proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, also owner of The Independent, called him someone of huge political achievement, and economic and cultural authority.

Recommended Osborne warns against leaving the EU single market without deal

But critics claimed the move raised fresh questions over existing parliamentary systems for preventing conflicts of interest, and cast doubt on whether he could continue as an MP.

It also led to a complaint from Labour over whether the ministerial code has been breached.

Mr Osborne, Chancellor between 2010 and 2016, has registered a series of other jobs since leaving the Treasury, including a contract with the investment company Blackrock, that will see him earn 650,000 a year for one days work a week.

In a statement after the Evening Standard appointment was announced on Friday, Mr Osborne said: I am proud to be a Conservative MP, but as editor and leader of a team of dedicated and independent journalists, our only interest will be to give a voice to all Londoners.

We will be fearless as a paper fighting for their interests. We will judge what the government, Londons politicians and the political parties do against this simple test: is it good for our readers and good for London? If it is, well support them. If it isnt, well be quick to say so.

Speaking later to journalists in the newsroom he said he had a lot to learn from his staff, adding: I may have run a country but I havent actually run a newspaper and I know theres a lot for me to learn.

Downing Street was also caught off guard by the announcement, with Ms Mays official spokesman telling reporters during a briefing: Youll be able to tell that this is the first Im hearing of this.

The appointment threw the systems for monitoring politicians conflicts of interest into the spotlight. The suitability of jobs taken by former ministers are usually checked by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, or Acoba.

A spokesman for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: George Osborne's appointment as editor of the Evening Standard is yet another example of the establishment revolving door, a closely-knit clique who are holding back the British people.

The appointment makes a mockery of the independence of the media. It takes multi-tasking to a new level and is an insult to the electors he is supposed to serve. We are looking forward to an early by-election so the people of Tatton are properly served in Parliament.

Recommended George Osborne named as highest earning MP of 2016

Ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband joked on Twitter: Breaking: I will shortly be announced as editor of Heat magazine...., while Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron wrote: I guess I should apply to edit Viz then?

London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: Congratulations to George Osborne  the new editor of the Evening Standard. Covering the worlds greatest city.

Acoba offers guidance on not using privileged information available to an individual from their time as a minister, on waiting for a period before starting a post  they can insist on up to two years  and on avoiding lobbying the Government in areas where a person may have insider knowledge.

Generally, the body would expect to be told of a potential appointment before it is cemented, so that they can take a judgement on the post and offer guidance on whether, for example, to recommend a period of time before starting.

But with the announcement coming just before noon on Friday, a spokeswoman from Acoba said: Weve confirmed that we received an application earlier this week and that well consider and seek the advice from relevant government departments.

The former Chancellor will succeed Sarah Sands and take up his role in early May (Lucy Young)

In its complaint to Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary John Manzoni, Labour asked the official to "urgently clarify" whether Mr Osborne has breached the Ministerial Code and if officials were aware of the appointment before it was announced.

Mr Osborne told reporters that as someone whos been on the other end of it, he believed journalism was vital for factual reporting and analysis on issues in the UK and abroad.

His day will now start as early as 6am with most key decisions about the days paper taken by 10am or 11am.

Weve got a big job because people out there want great journalism, and we will provide it, Mr Osborne added, naming the Standards digital offering as one area of expansion.

Mr Lebedev said: In George, we have appointed someone of huge political achievement, and economic and cultural authority.

Once he put himself forward for the position, he was the obvious choice.

I am proud to have an editor of such substance, who reinforces the Evening Standards standing and influence in London and whose political viewpoint  liberal on social issues and pragmatic on economic ones  closely matches those of many of our readers.

 New editor of Evening Standard George Osborne addresses newsroom upon

In September last year when Mr Osborne launched his think tank, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Acoba said: The Committee wrote to Mr Osborne and noted with concern that he sought advice on this appointment after the launch of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership. The Committee advised it is unable to offer retrospective advice on appointments that have already been announced.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is responsible for investigating rules around whether MPs second jobs, which are permitted, conflict with their work in the Commons. The Commissioner has the power to launch an investigation if there is sufficient evidence of a conflict.

Patti Goddard, president of the Tatton Conservative Association, welcomed Mr Osborne's appointment and said she was not concerned about it interfering with his work representing the area.

It's exciting that George has got this new big role in our public life. We in the Tatton Conservatives fully support him, she said.

He's a hard-working constituency MP. In the last couple of weeks alone he's being working with local schools on their concerns about the funding formula, and dealing with some tricky constituency cases.

The fact he's editing the Evening Standard in the weekday mornings won't affect that at all. After all, being Chancellor was a 24/7 job.

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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. 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The Official Register of Members Financial Interests shows Mr Osborne has earned some 800,000 mainly making speeches since leaving the Treasury, including at banks JP Morgan, Citi, HSBC and Lloyds.

More recently he revealed that he has a role advising The Blackrock Investment Institute where he will be paid 162,500 a quarter in return for a quarterly commitment of 12 days.

The move into journalism appears to have satisfied a long-held ambition for Mr Osborne, who was rejected by The Times and The Economist when attempting to break into the industry after leaving Oxford University.

He carried out freelance work on The Daily Telegraph's Peterborough diary column before joining the Conservative Research Department, becoming head of its political department in 1993.

Mr Osborne, 45, was the driving force behind the Governments austerity programme after becoming the youngest Chancellor in 120 years, and lost his frontbench position after the EU referendum when Theresa May became leader.
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Food that has been dropped on the floor is usually safe to eat under the so-called five-second rule, a scientist has said.

Germ expert Professor Anthony Hilton, from Aston University, said that although retrieving these morsels can never be completely without risk, there is little to be concerned about if the food is only there momentarily.

Professor Hilton will be demonstrating how the five-second rule works at The Big Bang Fair  a celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people  which opens on Wednesday at the NEC in Birmingham.

He said: Eating food that has spent a few moments on the floor can never be entirely risk-free.

Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn't be eaten, but as long as it's not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor.

That is not to say that germs can't transfer from the floor to the food.

Our research has shown that the nature of the floor surface, the type of food dropped on the floor and the length of time it spends on the floor can all have an impact on the number that can transfer.

It comes as a survey of 2,000 people found 79 per cent admitted to eating food that had fallen on the floor.

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. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. 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. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK, organisers of The Big Bang Fair, said: This is a simple example of how science is present in everyday life.

From testing how safe food is to inventing new food and drink, the limits of how we can apply science and engineering are endless.

PA
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A man has walked free from court after pleading guilty to the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

Lady Scott took the wholly exceptional decision to grant Daniel Cieslak an absolute discharge at the High Court in Glasgow on Friday.

Cieslak, 21, met the victim and her friend, aged 12 and 13, in a taxi queue in Edinburgh after a night out in the summer of 2015 and went back to a party with them thinking they were 16 and 17, a statement on the Judiciary of Scotland website said.

He was 19 at the time.

Lady Scott said: You understood from chat in the taxi that the victim was 16 years old and her friend was 17 years old. The taxi driver had the impression that the victim was about 20 years old.

Once at the flat, after some time, you paired off and you and the victim engaged in sexual intercourse.

She left the next morning. She had no concerns and there was no suggestion of her being distressed.

Police officers who had spoken to the victim earlier in the night in relation to another matter also had no concerns over her age, Lady Scott said in her order.

The judge said Cieslak was culpable under strict liability, where victims under 13 are deemed by law to be incapable of consent.

But the judge said there were a number of exceptional circumstances which applied.

In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Show all 24 1 /24 In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Participants take part in the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets of Dublin PA In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Police officers pretend to arrest a man dressed in a leprechaun outfit as he poses for a photograph along the parade route during the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, Ireland Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The service and pilgrimage to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day takes place at Saul Church in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Racegoer during the Cheltenham Festival Reuters In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Coca-Cola London Eye, on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Prince William, Duke Of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge take a drink of Guinness as they meet with soldiers of the 1st battalion Irish Guards in their canteen following their St Patricks day parade at Cavalry Barracks in London, England Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Coca-Cola London Eye, on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Intu Trafford Centre in Manchester is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Intu Trafford Centre in Manchester is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Kelpies in Falkirk, Scotland, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Gateshead Millennium Bridge in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day PA wire In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world 4 Times Square, The Bank of America Tower and the Empire State Building have their spires lit green for St. Patrick's day in Manhattan, New York Reuters In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world A spectator shows his Irish pride as he watches the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Bagpipers march up Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York AP In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Revellers march up Fifth Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York AP In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The statues of the ducks from the book, 'Make Way For Ducklings,' (R-L) Mrs. Mallard, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack are decorated for State Patrick's Day in the Boston Public Gardens in Boston, Massachusetts, USA EPA In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Tiernan Irish Dancers put on a show as the Capitol Rotunda is filled with Irish music and a clapping audience during the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration at the State Capitol in Helena, Montana, USA AP In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Colosseum in Rome, illuminated in green for St. Patrick's Day Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The magic fountains of Montjuic have lit up green to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, patron saint of the Irish, in Barcelona, Spain EPA In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Burgtheater (Imperial Court Teathre) is illuminated with green lights to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Vienna, Austria Reuters In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world The Chain Bridge is illuminated in green in honour of St. Patrick's Day in Budapest, Hungary EPA In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Christ the Redeemer statue is illuminated in green in honor of St. Patrick's Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil AP In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Girls perform an Irish dance for customers in the the Mercantile, Australias Longest Running Irish Pub in The Rocks in Sydney on St. Patricks Day Getty Images In pictures: St. Patrick's Day around the world Participants pose for a photo during celebrations of St. Patrick's Day at a hotel in The Rocks in Sydney, Australia EPA

She said: Although the factual absence of consent is not an ingredient of the offence, it is a material factor for the purposes of sentencing. Here the victim willingly participated in the sexual intercourse and there was, in fact, consent.

So too, whilst there is no defence to this offence because of strict liability, the fact is that you would have had a defence if the victim had been a few months older.

The statutory offence for girls aged over 13 to 16 years provides for a defence based on reasonable grounds of belief by the accused that the victim was above the age of consent.

It is clear from the agreed facts presented to me that the Crown would have been unlikely to, or unable to, exclude such a defence and they do not dispute this. Accordingly, it is very unlikely the Crown could prove a crime had the victim been over 13 years of age.

Cieslak became distressed when he was told the age of the victim by police officers and has dropped out of a college course, Lady Scott said.

Taking into account that all witnesses on the night thought the victim was over 16, that Cieslak was told she was 16 and with no signs of distress, Lady Scott said: Your criminal culpability here is wholly restricted to the application of strict liability within this offence.

That is in marked distinction to other reported cases under this statutory provision, which have involved conduct involving assault or recklessness or force, or the absence of consent or have resulted in distress to the victim  all of which are factors which raise the need for punishment.

In addition, there is no suggestion here of predatory conduct or grooming or manipulation or deception.

I do not consider there is any need for, or public interest in, punishment. To do so would in my view be disproportionate given the nature of the criminal culpability here.

Nor do I consider there is any basis for, or real public interest in, requiring your notification under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Considering all of these factors I have reached the conclusion that justice is best served in this case by taking the wholly exceptional decision not to sentence you and instead I discharge you absolutely.

As a result, the requirement of any notification does not arise under the relevant statutory provisions.

PA
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Milo Yiannopoulos has sparked outrage for calling for a Muslim group to be banned from Glasgow University.

The far-right provocateur, who has been nominated to be rector of the Russell Group institution, said he would seek to protect the LGBTQ community of students by demanding the universitys Muslim Students Association is shut down.

The former Breitbart editor, who rose to fame for his inflammatory, xenophobic views, suggested the society represented a homophobic, theocratic system.

Aamer Anwar, a Human rights lawyer who is a fellow nominee to be rector, condemned Mr Yiannopoulos position as islamophobic.

The attack by Milo on Glasgow University Muslim Students Association and his call to ban the Muslim Students Association on campus if elected is yet another example of his Islamophobic diatribe, he said in a statement.

No student whatever background should have to study in a climate of fear. The first thing we should all do then is condemn publicly Milos attack on Muslim students and stand together to defend the rights of all those at the university.

The specified aims of the Muslim society, which is one of the largest of Glasgow University's groups, is to provide a means for Muslims to socialise and make friends.

While students at Glasgow will not vote on who they want to be their rector until 20 March, a hustings event is taking place at the University on Thursday, with each candidate, or a representative, declaring their position on issues and taking questions from students. Mr Yiannopoulos, who has previously described Islam as a cancer and suggested transgender people are mentally ill, is not expected to attend the event in person but students have organised a protest against his candidature.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Hollie Hallam, the Glasgow University student who launched a petition against Mr Yiannopoulos which has garnered almost 3,600 signatures, condemned the Kent-born commentators call for the muslim society to be banned.

Ms Hallam questioned his claim he was shutting the society down to protect the LGBTQ community. It is absolutely not his genuine motive. His recent comments about Glasgow being full of spiky-haired lesbian comedians and his remarks about trans people show it is not about LGBTQ students, it about islamophobia, she told The Independent.

I think its a disgusting, provocative notion and I cant see it getting past the senate. I dont think he is in any position to accuse anyone else of not looking out for trans rights. Whats more, LGBTQ students and Muslims are not mutually exclusive groups, there are LGBTQ Muslims.

The decision to nominate Mr Yiannopoulos to be rector in the wake of his controversial remarks about paedophilia has sparked massive controversy, with some fellow nominees coming forward to condemn him.

Mr Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned from Twitter in July after claims he helped lead the racist and sexist abuse of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones, saw his career fall apart in the wake of widely circulated remarks about underage sex. In the space of days, the outspoken Trump supporter resigned from far-right publication Breitbart News and had a lucrative book deal with a prestigious publisher pulled and his appearance at Conservative Political Action conference dropped.

Mr Yiannopoulos, who recently used a university talk to publicly name and mock a transgender student, has railed against those who oppose his candidature, suggesting his close-minded detractors are trying to silence him because they do not agree with him. A Facebook page titled Milo for Rector  University of Glasgow has garnered just over 3,200 likes but it is not clear how many of its supporters are students at the university.

Recommended Milo Yiannopoulos to launch media company after Breirtbart resignation

Although the role of rector is a largely ceremonial one, the person in the position is supposed to chair the universitys court and be the voice of students among the higher tiers of the university. The current rector is exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

If elected, Mr Yiannopoulos has pledged to organise an International Mens Day on campus and take a personal stand against feminist societies at the university.

Mr Yiannopoulos also promised to visit the Scottish city a minimum of three times a year and hold events with students if he is successful. His trips are likely to be plagued with protests  his previous stops at universities in the US have often attracted heated protests.

Ms Hallam said while she thought it was unlikely for him to be nominated, it was hard to be sure. It is always difficult to tell how these sorts of things turn out. Nobody thought Trump would get voted in and people did not think Britain would vote to leave Europe.
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A man has been arrested at a Birmingham branch of Natwest which was sealed off by police after an emergency call reported a gunman in the building.

Witnesses said the man burst into the bank armed with a pistol.

Before the arrest a West Midlands Police spokesman said: Police received an emergency call at 11.45am reporting a man with a firearm inside NatWest bank in Bristol Road South, Northfield.

Response and armed officers have contained the building and police negotiators are on the scene.

The service later tweeted that a man has now been arrested by officers at NatWest in Northfield.

According to the Birmingham Mail, which spoke to witnesses, customers at the bank were allowed to leave, while staff were locked inside.

One witness said: A man had what looked like a 9mm pistol, he pulled it out before he went in.

There were civilian hostages in the bank.

The first armed police turned up within minutes.

The police were using an air vent to talk to him.

A woman, who did not want to be named, told the paper prior to the arrest: Armed police are lined up around the building and the roads are cordoned off.

Its on lockdown.

The police have told us to stay inside and away from the windows.

There is what looks like riot police outside the bank at the moment and its on complete lockdown.

Its so scary, I just really feel for the staff inside the building.

A spokesperson for NatWest said: We're aware of an incident that took place in NatWest Northfield this afternoon, which has now been resolved. We're working closely with the police at this time".
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Over a third of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) people have been racially abused or have witnessed racist abuse since the Brexit vote, a report reveals.

One in five Bame people have suffered or seen a racial assault and two in five  41 per cent  have heard racist remarks or opinions since Britains decision to leave the EU in June 2016.

The research conducted for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) also pointed to a prevalence of racist material being shared online.

Two in five  38 per cent  of those surveyed had seen racist material online, whereas a quarter had witnessed racist graffiti, posters or leaflets.

Carl, a musical instrument manufacturer of Chinese descent, told The Independent he has noticed an increase in casual racism in the workplace since the divisive referendum that saw hate crimes spike in its immediate aftermath.

After the Brexit vote, a colleague was asked if he had packed his bag and when he was leaving the country, he said.

When Eastern European workers speak their language, a comment is made to speak English. Some of the jokes being made are racist like: There was a fire at a Tesco warehouse; two Pakistani nationals died. Well every little helps.

Dev, a train conductor who is British Indian, told The Independent he has been subject to a string of racist comments.

A few months ago a man was on the wrong train and he was drunk. I had to get involved as he was smoking and refused to get off. He said to me: What are you doing here you are a black bastard.

A colleague was told by a passenger: 'Why arent you working in a curry shop?'"

The findings echoed an alarming report published last month that found recorded hate crimes rose by up to 100 per cent in the months following the vote.

Recommended Racism is rife in the LGBT community

The spike in cases came after The Independent revealed police forces across the UK were ramping up intelligence gathering and putting protection in place for vulnerable communities ahead of a projected spike in hate crime when Theresa May triggers Article 50 later in the month.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said Brexit had given racism a new lease of life.

Discrimination has never gone away, but since the referendum, racism has been on the rise, she said.

"It's unacceptable that shop workers, bus drivers and street cleaners face abuse from members of the public and their employers don't have to do anything to protect them."

The TUC poll was conducted by ICM Unlimited and surveyed 1,003 Bame adults living and working in Britain.
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Interceptions of Russian military aircraft accounted for the majority of days on which RAF fighters were scrambled to track down unidentified planes in recent years, figures show.

Quick reaction alert (QRA) pilots were scrambled on 186 days between 2005 and 2016, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sorties were launched against Russian planes on more than half of those101 days, or 54 per cent.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) declined to release precisely how many QRA launches took place on the basis it would be "prejudicial to the defence of the UK".

Under the QRA system, Eurofighter Typhoon pilots can be in the air within minutes to intercept unidentified aircraft, military or civilian, in the UK's area of interest.

On 7 March pilots from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire intercepted a civilian cargo plane en route from Romania, which later landed safely at Birmingham International Airport after it lost communications.

And in February Typhoons took off to meet a pair of Russian Tu-160 "Blackjack" bombers that spent more than five hours skirting the edge of British airspace without entering.

From a high of 19 in 2007, the number of days on which fighters were launched against Russian military aircraft has tapered off. They scrambled on eight days in each of 2013, 2014 and 2015, and just five days last year.

On one day in 2014 jets were scrambled to intercept both Russian and other aircraft, the figures showed.

As well as RAF Coningsby, Typhoon interceptors also fly from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland and from a base in the Falkland Islands.

Eurofighter pilots were tasked with shadowing Russia's smoke-belching aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, alongside the Royal Navy when she passed through the English Channel in January after deployment in Syria.

The carrier supported 420 sorties over two months as Russian air strikes bombarded rebel groups and Isis fighters.

The Russian Embassy referred The Independent to a statement from 2015 it said "remains fully relevant now".

It said: "Russian strategic bombers do regularly fly to remote geographical areas and will continue to do so. This is necessary in terms of training flight personnel and verifying aircraft capabilities.

"All flights are carried out in strict accordance with international regulations regarding the use of airspace. Aircraft fly over high seas without entering the airspace and violating the borders of other states, the fact that can be confirmed by radar data for each case.

"Flights of Russian military aircraft are almost always accompanied by jets from Nato countries and their partners. This is ordinary practice."

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. 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At the time the embassy contrasted the number of Russian sorties with those carried out by Nato aircraft. It added: "It is difficult to avoid the impression of Nato persistently increasing its military capabilities in its eastern member states.

"Allegations of a 'Russian threat' are a convenient pretext for these activities. The question remains open whether their actual aim is just to ensure high military spending and a good level of 'Euro-Atlantic solidarity', or to prepare ground for some aggressive actions against Russian interests."

An RAF spokesman said: "QRA is a routine part of the RAFs air defence role to protect UK airspace.

"QRA are launched to intercept unidentified aircraft because the aircraft cannot be identified by any other means, i.e. the aircraft is not talking to civilian or military air traffic control, has not filed a flight plan and/or is not transmitting a recognisable secondary surveillance radar code.

"The paramount duty of the RAF is to control the air over the UK and, when necessary, UK interests overseas.

"QRA procedures entail RAF aircraft and crews being held at continuous high readiness 24/7, so that they can take off within minutes to protect UK or NATO sovereign airspace."
Modern life has become inundated with claims that Geminis are evil, Virgos are judgy and Scorpios are dangerous, leading some to avoid starting friendships and relationships with specific star signs. Have we all gone mad, asks Ellie Muir, or are people just getting smarter about their compatibility?
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The most senior British EU official has spoken out to warn of the need for strong security cooperation in Europe, just days before Theresa May triggers Brexit.

Writing exclusively for The Independent, EU commissioner Sir Julian King said it was vital for nations to work closely to combat international cyber attacks, terrorists and hostile states and be prepared for whatever the future holds.

The European security chiefs words comes less than 24 hours after the Queen signed off legislation handing Ms May the power to begin pulling Britain out of the EU, potentially risking future security cooperation.

Intelligence sharing will play a central role in negotiations once Article 50 talks are launched in March, with Ms May having specifically highlighted the area in her landmark Lancaster House speech on Brexit.

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Politicians in London have warned how the UK stands to lose international influence and ground in the fight against terror if deep security links with Europe are lost, meanwhile there have been implicit indications that Britain may use its highly valued intelligence services as a bargaining chip in talks.

In his article, security commissioner Sir Julian describes how the world is facing a new and darker phase in its relationship with technology, but adds that countries must work collectively to tackle the threats confronting them.

He wrote: Working with colleagues across the European Commission, we are determined to implement a plan for reducing our vulnerability to cyber threats by increasing our resilience to attacks, reinforcing security by design, stepping up the fight against cyber crime, investing in cyber security  and strengthening international cooperation.

The interconnected world offers many opportunities for citizens, governments and public and private enterprises to make a positive contribution to society. But it also offers unprecedented opportunities to criminals, terrorists, and hostile states.

We must be better prepared for whatever the future holds.

 David Davis says that he has not quantified the economic outcome of getting no deal for Brexit

Sir Julian highlighted Europols work exposing how sophisticated crime syndicates exploit online trade in illicit goods, adding that online fraud is now the most common crime in the UK.

He also promotes a public-private partnership launched last year, expected to trigger 1.8bn (1.6bn) of cyber-security investment by 2020.

Last month, Sir Julian gave evidence to MPs in which he hailed the material contribution to the UKs security from the EUs hard-earned cross-border security agreements.

The commissioner argued there would be legal constraints and some practical constraints for the UK in trying to replicate Europol, adding: However good you are at this threat  and everybody recognises that the UK and its agencies in this field are very good  you are more effective if you are working with your partners.

On Thursday, the Queen gave royal assent to the Article 50 bill giving Ms May permission to trigger a two-year countdown during which a deal on future relations must be sealed.

With many doubting that a divorce agreement and future trade arrangements can be locked in such a short schedule, British politicians have raised concerns about the impact on security cooperation.

A House of Lords report published in December said arrangements currently in place to maintain working between the UK and other EU member states are mission-critical for Britains law enforcement agencies.

Even Ms May, when she was Home Security in 2014, underlined the importance of cooperating with Europe saying a failure to do so would risk harmful individuals walking free and escaping justice, and would seriously harm the capability of our law enforcement agencies to keep the public safe.

Brexit Secretary David Davis has identified maintaining the strong security cooperation as key objectives in the forthcoming negotiations.

In her speech in January at Lancaster House, Ms May also signalled a desire to continue working on security with Europe.

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

She said: Our intelligence capabilities  unique in Europe  have already saved countless lives in very many terrorist plots that have been thwarted in countries across our continent.

After Brexit, Britain wants to be a good friend and neighbour in every way, and that includes defending the safety and security of all of our citizens.

But she juxtaposed those words, just a few sentences later, with a claim that some in Europe want a punitive deal that punishes Britain and adding that such a move would be an act of calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe.
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People who fail to fight against a hard Brexit will be a disappointment to their children, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron will say at the Lib Dem spring conference on Friday.

Mr Farron will urge pro-Europeans not to be cowed by criticism and abuse but to stand up and fight to prevent Theresa Mays extreme plans for EU withdrawal.

The Lib Dem leader will rejoice in his Brexiteer nickname of Remoaner in chief, saying: Obviously Im speechless, incredibly proud.

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And he will tell a rally at the conference: Now is not the time to sit down and shut up. Now is the time to stand up and fight.

There is only one thing worse than being a disappointment to your parents, and that is being a disappointment to your children.

In ten, 20, 30 years from now, our children and our grandchildren will ask each of us what did we do to stop this senseless lurch into division, hardship and intolerance?

And while others will have to look away in numbing shame, we will look our children in the eye and say we did everything, we did everything.

Mr Farron will refuse to concede defeat on Brexit, adding: I am determined that I will be able to look them in the eye and say that we did everything  and that we won.

What experts have said about Brexit Show all 11 1 /11 What experts have said about Brexit What experts have said about Brexit Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond The Chancellor claims London can still be a world financial hub despite Brexit One of Britains great strengths is the ability to offer and aggregate all of the services the global financial services industry needs This has not changed as a result of the EU referendum and I will do everything I can to ensure the City of London retains its position as the worlds leading international financial centre. Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Yanis Varoufakis Greece's former finance minister compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles: You can check out any time you like, as the Hotel California song says, but you can't really leave. The proof is Theresa May has not even dared to trigger Article 50. It's like Harrison Ford going into Indiana Jones' castle and the path behind him fragmenting. You can get in, but getting out is not at all clear Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Michael OLeary Ryanair boss says UK will be screwed by EU in Brexit trade deals: I have no faith in the politicians in London going on about how the world will want to trade with us. The world will want to screw you  that's what happens in trade talks, he said. They have no interest in giving the UK a deal on trade Getty What experts have said about Brexit Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon's chairman has said claims that the UK would see serious economic consequences from a Brexit vote were "lurid" and wrong: We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea" PA What experts have said about Brexit Mark Carney Governor of Bank of England is 'serene' about Bank of England's Brexit stance: I am absolutely serene about the  judgments made both by the MPC and the FPC Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Christine Lagarde IMF chief urges quick Brexit to reduce economic uncertainty: We want to see clarity sooner rather than later because we think that a lack of clarity feeds uncertainty, which itself undermines investment appetites and decision making Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Inga Beale Lloyds chief executive says Brexit is a major issue: "Clearly the UK's referendum on its EU membership is a major issue for us to deal with and we are now focusing our attention on having in place the plans that will ensure Lloyd's continues trading across Europe EPA What experts have said about Brexit Colm Kelleher President of US bank Morgan Stanley says City of London will suffer as result of the EU referendum: I do believe, and I said prior to the referendum, that the City of London will suffer as result of Brexit. The issue is how much What experts have said about Brexit Richard Branson Virgin founder believes we've lost a THIRD of our value because of Brexit and cancelled a deal worth 3,000 jobs: We're not any worse than anybody else, but I suspect we've lost a third of our value which is dreadful for people in the workplace.' He continued: "We were about to do a very big deal, we cancelled that deal, that would have involved 3,000 jobs, and thats happening all over the country" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Barack Obama US President believes Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU: "It is absolutely true that I believed pre-Brexit vote and continue to believe post-Brexit vote that the world benefited enormously from the United Kingdom's participation in the EU. We are fully supportive of a process that is as little disruptive as possible so that people around the world can continue to benefit from economic growth" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Kristin Forbes American economist and an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England argues that the economy had been less stormy than many expected following the shock referendum result: For nowthe economy is experiencing some chop, but no tsunami. The adverse winds could quickly pick up  and merit a stronger policy response. But recently they have shifted to a more favourable direction Getty

The York conference takes place against the backdrop of an apparent Lib Dem revival, with a string of by-election victories built on the partys opposition to Brexit.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr Farron said party membership had doubled since the general election, reaching 82,500  describing that success as the wind in our sails.

Appealing to corporate Britain, he argued that business pressure on the Government represented the best chance of softening the Prime Minister's approach to Brexit.

If you are giving the Tories so much as a penny you are funding your own funeral, Mr Farron said.

The Lib Dems received more in donations than Labour in the final three months of 2016 and Mr Farron is now aiming at the Tories  arguing that supporters should switch now, before Brexit talks get under way.

 Tim Farron and Jeremy Corbyn react to Theresa May's Brexit proposals

Mr Farron told the Press Association: Everybody in business knows that leaving the single market will be massively damaging to our economy, to individual firms, to families and to the Chancellor's own revenues.

So what can we do to prevent a hard Brexit, to keep us in the single market?

You need to persuade Theresa May and Philip Hammond they need to listen to business voices rather than to those extreme pro-hard Brexit voices that are currently within the Tory party.

How would you do that? If you are in business, you should drop the Tory party today like a hot brick.

Mr Farron also claimed that Brexit  and the passage of time  has led the public to change its mind about Nick Clegg, after his vilification over his student fees U-turn.

I often said this during the height of the opposition we received during our time in Coalition, that Nick Clegg would be very, very well regarded by history; history would be kind to him and unkind to David Cameron.

"I think I am already proven right on both counts.
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The man seen by many as Jeremy Corbyns successor for Labour leader has called for an effective split between the English and Scottish wings of the party, saying the move is needed to save the union.

Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, told The Independent he supports the division that would end Britains centre-left party as it is known today, to better enable Scottish Labour to face down Nicola Sturgeons SNP.

His comments come amid fears that involvement of Labours London HQ, and more specifically Jeremy Corbyns office, in any new Scottish independence referendum campaign could damage efforts to hold the UK together.

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Alan Johnsons spokesman said the former Home Secretary believes Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, should be given full authority over any referendum campaign, while another former cabinet minister said Mr Corbyns office should be kept away from planning, adding that it couldnt run a piss up in a brewery.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn confirmed to The Independent that any future referendum campaign would be based in Scotland, but did not go further on Londons involvement.

Mr Lewis resigned as shadow Business Secretary earlier this year after Mr Corbyn imposed a three-line whip on the Governments bill to trigger Article 50 and initiate Britains departure from the EU, something which angered pro-European Labour members.

The favourite among the partys young left-leaning membership, said loosening ties with UK Labour and creating a federated party model for Scotland would give politicians north of the border more power to respond to concerns on the ground.

Speaking exclusively to The Independent, he said: I think a federated party is the way to go.

 Scottish independence: Nicola Sturgeon announces second referendum plans

Everyone wants to see Scottish Labour do well. But one of the reasons we are in the mess we are in is because for too long politicians in Westminster have done things and havent always listened to whats being said on the ground  thats partly responsible.

He added: If you want to save the union  a good start would be to listen to your Scottish colleagues on whats best.

The idea of breaking up the UK party structure has previously been mooted by former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Neil Findlay, who stood to be leader of Scottish Labour in 2014.

Scottish Labour leader, Ms Dugdale, also favours more autonomy for the party north of the border. She backed Mr Corbyns rival Owen Smith in the recent leadership contest.

Mr Lewiss words come as the Scottish parliament prepares to vote next week on whether to approve Nicola Sturgeons plans for a second referendum on independence.

Theresa May has moved to block any vote taking place before the UK leaves the EU claiming now is not the time, but an eventual referendum may be inevitable given the SNPs dominance in Holyrood.

Mr Lewis said: If its going to happen, the best thing for Scotland and Labour would be to have it run from Scotland.

If you learn anything from last time, it was that the campaign was far too Westminster-centric or London-centric.

 Kezia Dugdale: I will never support Scottish independence

A major report carried out by ex-Foreign Secretary Dame Margaret Beckett into the partys 2015 election defeat and collapse in Scotland cited the way the 2014 referendum campaign was perceived, concluding a vote against the government in Scotland turned into a vote against Labour.

Dame Margaret told The Independent that running a new campaign from Scotland was something the party should think very carefully about.

A spokesman for Alan Johnson, said: He does believe that Labour has to have a distinctive and separate campaign if there is another referendum.

Not least because of the perception that undoubtedly existed that Labour in Scotland was subservient to party HQ in London.

 Kezia Dugdale endorses Owen Smith

He added that Mr Johnson thought Ms Dugdale should be given full authority over the campaign.

Another senior party figure said: I would not want anything run by Jeremys office  its a contradiction in terms, they couldnt run a piss up in a brewery.

Scotlands only remaining Labour MP Ian Murray, representing Edinburgh South, maintained that there had been a strong Scottish-led element to the last referendum campaign.

But he went on: The [next] official campaign, in my view should be people from civic Scotland, and not politicians.

Political parties should then run their own individual campaigns with their own messages on the positive case for why staying in the UK is important.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: If there is another referendum Jeremy will work tirelessly to keep our country together, in a campaign that will be based in Scotland.
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Lord Heseltine has said he is not surprised that leading Brexiteers in government appear not to understand what they are doing, in a thinly-veiled attack on senior Eurosceptics promoted to Theresa Mays Cabinet.

While not naming Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox, the Tory peer said it was right that those who campaigned to leave the EU be put in charge of Government departments to ensure they take responsibility for the difficult decisions ahead.

I said at the time, youve got to put the Brexiteers in charge, or otherwise the right wing will never accept it. They will say if wed have been there wed have done it better, he said during a discussion event at Oxford University.

I have to say there was an element of cynicism in my judgment because I knew they wouldnt have a clue what to do. And read todays newspapers and youll see each is bickering with the other.

They say, We must tell the Europeans what we want. But the Europeans will tell us what we can have. We are leaving the club. The club will be the ones that say what the deal is going to be.

Speaking shortly after the emergence of his letter to the Prime Minister in the wake of his sacking from his advisory role in government, he said: She didnt believe Brexit was right but perhaps she now does. If she now does she must be entitled to pursue her new found convictions. It doesnt mean I have to join her.

Lord Heseltine speaking in Oxford; the Tory peer was sacked by Theresa May for rebelling over Brexit

The party grandee also read from the letter he had received from Theresa May, notifying him that he had been removed from his role as a government advisor over his decision to vote against the Withdrawal of the European Union bill.

It said: Im sad that this important contribution had come to an end following your decision to vote against the Government on the European Union Notice of Withdrawal Bill, but I know that with your many years of experience in Parliament, you understand why that must be.

He then read from his own letter to Theresa May, in which he said, the Prime Minister had changed her mind on Brexit, but I have not.

The former Cabinet minister also said he was appalled at the prospect of the breakup of the United Kingdom.

I am appalled by the thought of the dismemberment of the union, he said.

 Michael Heseltine lays into Boris Johnson

I believe the Prime Minister is quite right to stand firm. This argument that were not in a position to know so how can they make up their mind.

That is exactly the question that we faced in the [EU] referendum.

So the Prime Minister is precisely repeating the Remain argument in her relations with the Scots.

The lifelong pro-European campaigner said he had been committed to Europe since standing under German bombs in 1940.

He also praised Margaret Thatcher for the most enlightened achievement in recognising that the UK had to lead the process that would lead to the creation of the single market.

Asked if there could be any positives from Brexit, Lord Heseltine said: You presume there are some. I do not know of a deal that is better than what we have now. And I can think of many that are a great deal worse.

He said that in holding the referendum, David Cameron had bowed to the pressure of the right wing of the Tory party.

I lived through all that with John Major. They made his life hell and theyre still at it now.

It has been widely reported that Britains best hope for a favourable deal lies with how much influence Angela Merkel can wield on the UKs behalf.

Recommended Heseltine reveals he never met Theresa May despite being adviser

Lord Heseltine said: It will be up to Ms Merkels influence? For people of my generation, you cant help but reflect that the Germans lost the war, but they won the peace.

He also suggested the problem of mass migration might be solved by a 21st century Marshall Plan that would persuade people to stay in the countries where they were brought up, rather than crash the borders.

What is happening is this thing, he said, holding up his mobile phone. Weve all got them but theyve also got them in sub-Saharan Africa. They didnt used to see our life, day by day, in every form of media.

Now you come to a position where the youngest, most energetic people from the less prosperous parts of the world want to come here and share in it? How do you deal with it? You have to have immigration controls but can you make them work?

I increasingly wonder about Marshall Aid at the end of the Second World War. I read about Donald Trump cutting foreign aid, the UK cutting foreign aid, I just wonder if the Western world hasnt got to recognise it has an obligation to rebalance the wealth it has created.

Is there a concept of Marshall Aid on a more ambitious and more coordinated scale? People perhaps dont see it this way.
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Nicola Sturgeon has challenged Theresa May to a debate about a second Scottish independence referendum, after No.10 vowed to block her request.

Asked if a face-to-face debate would be preferable to the two leaders staging press conferences and TV interviews, the First Minister replied: I'd be up for it.

The call came as Downing Street removed any doubt that the Prime Minister was ruling out a referendum before Brexit is completed, probably in early 2019.

Recommended Theresa May blocks second Scottish independence referendum

In that timeframe, as put forward by the First Minister, we will not agree to a referendum, Ms Mays official spokesman said.

Asked about post-2019, he added: We are not getting into future timeframes. We are responding to a specific request from the First Minister.

Ms Sturgeons timeframe is for the referendum to be held between autumn 2018 and spring 2019  after the terms of Brexit are known, but before withdrawal is completed.

The spokesman set out Ms Mays reason to make clear she will block the Section 30 request, which will be confirmed by the Scottish Parliament in a vote next Wednesday.

We hope they might step back from next weeks vote now weve made our position clear, he explained.

Earlier, Scottish Secretary David Mundell, went further, insisting the UK Government will not enter into any discussions with Edinburgh about holding a second referendum.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: The proposal brought forward is not fair, people will not be able to make an informed choice. Neither is there public or political support for such a referendum.

Therefore we will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a Section 30 agreement and any request at this time will be declined.

In her TV interview, Ms May said now is not the time for the referendum, because the country was fully engaged in the crucial task of winning the best Brexit deal.

"We should be working together to get that right deal for Scotland, that right deal for the UK. As I say that's my job as Prime Minister and so for that reason I say to the SNP: now is not the time, she told ITV.

It was reported that the Conservatives had been preparing for this moment for three months, by testing the no, not now message with focus groups  and were confident it would work.

But Ms Sturgeon hit back immediately, saying: It is for the Scottish parliament  not Downing Street  to determine the timing of a referendum and the decision of the Scottish parliament must be respected.

Any bid by the UK Government to block the people of Scotland from making a choice will be untenable, undemocratic and totally unsustainable.

The Scottish Greens confirmed they would give the SNP the majority they need at Holyrood to approve the referendum call, by also criticising Ms May.

Ross Greer, the partys external affairs spokesman, said: Scotland deserves to choose between the isolated, angry Brexit Britain planned by the Tories and putting our future in our own hands with independence.

If a Tory Westminster government that Scotland did not elect seriously think they can block our right to choose  and that they can veto a decision of our elected parliament  they will only increase support for independence.
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Theresa May has ramped-up her criticism of Nicola Sturgeon and accused her of trying to force a fundamentally unfair Scottish independence referendum.

Ms Sturgeon has demanded another vote between the Autumn of 2018 and Spring 2019, but this was rejected by the Prime Minister, who categorically stated: Now is not the time.

Explaining her position in The Times, Ms May wrote that another vote is not something to which any responsible government could reasonably agree.

 Theresa May: Now is not the time for Scottish independence referendum

She added: The SNP is trying to force the UK Government to agree to something that is fundamentally unfair to the Scottish people. It wants to ask them to make a crucial decision without the necessary information.

They would not know what the new partnership with the EU would look like, or what the alternative of an independent Scotland would be. It would simply not be fair.

Ms Sturgeon meanwhile, has accused the Prime Minister of taking a "completely outrageous and unacceptable" stance.

Recommended SNP refuse to rule out unofficial Scottish independence referendum

Its an argument for independence, really, in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish parliament," she said. "History may look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the union was sealed.

She added that she would continue to pursue a plan for a vote at the Scottish parliament and seek its permission to request Westminster to stage the referendum.

Ms Sturgeon is expected to narrowly win the vote, with the backing of the Scottish Green Party.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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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. 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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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Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The SNP's leader in Westminster Angus Robertson also pitched into the debate at his party's spring conference in Aberdeen.

He said that the Conservative Party was to "scared" to let Scotland have another referendum.

However, a number of opinion polls have revealed a large majority of Scots do not want a referendum vote before the UK leaves the EU.
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Theresa May will be forced to abandon key planks of her Brexit strategy in order to secure a deal within the two-year deadline for talks, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said.

A paper drawn up by the senior Liberal Democrat suggests that the only practical way forward would be to agree a limited transitional deal, paving the way for future talks on a long-term settlement.

The analysis, produced with a panel of experts and following private talks with key players in Brussels and other EU capitals, suggests the Prime Minister will need to accept paying a "Brexit bill" to the EU in order to secure agreement to run talks on future trade deals at the same time as discussing the terms of the divorce from Brussels.

Mr Clegg, a staunch Europhile and the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman, said: "The cumulative effect of the Prime Minister's decisions to date has been to reduce the already slim chances of striking the deal she wants in the time available.

"This analysis confirms that something will need to give - on both sides, but most significantly on the part of the UK.

"The sooner the Prime Minister explains to the British people that any negotiation involves significant compromise, the sooner we will be in a position to strike the best possible deal for both the UK and the EU. At present, her red lines are internally inconsistent and based on a wholly unrealistic set of assumptions."

Once Mrs May has triggered Article 50, the UK will have two years to secure a withdrawal agreement.

The Prime Minister wants talks on a comprehensive free trade deal to take place at the same time - something Brussels has been reluctant to accept.

Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Show all 14 1 /14 Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Enda Craig, a member of the Loughs Agency Advisory Forum, holds a map of Lough Foyle in Moville, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Oyster farmer William Lynch puts on his wellington boots on his oyster farm on Lough Foyle in Culmore, Northern Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Women walk along the shores of Carlingford Lough with Northern Ireland seen across the lough in Carlingford Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A poster hanging on a wall of a house reads: "No to the ferry", referring to a proposed new car ferry that would run from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland through Carlingford Lough in Greencastle Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Skipper Shay Fitzpatrick (L) and boat owner Brian Cunningham navigate out of Warrenpoint harbour into Carlingford Lough in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A woman with flowers walks past an old fuel station in Carlingford, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A boat is seen at sunset on Carlingford Lough in Greenore, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A mandries off after swimming in Carlingford Lough in Omeath, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A derelict house is seen on the shore of Carlingford Lough in Omeath, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Skipper Shay Fitzpatrick dredges mussels from Carlingford Lough in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Bagged-up farmed oysters at a cleaning facility to get them ready for overseas shipping in Moville, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A man walks his dog in matching hi-vis outfits on Carlingford Lough in Greenore, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland Carlingford Lough and in the distance Northern Ireland are seen at sunset from Omeath, Ireland Reuters Loughs, Brexit and fishermen in Northern Ireland A sign that reads: 'In 1721 nothing happened here' is seen on the shores of Carlingford Lough in Carlingford, Ireland Reuters

Mr Clegg's paper indicates that the actual timetable will be even tighter, because of arguments about money and the sequencing of talks and the need for any deal to be signed off by the European Parliament and 27 member states.

The analysis concludes that the "only practical way forward" is early agreement on a transitional deal, which largely maintains the operation of existing arrangements, so that sufficient time can be created for a detailed and long term settlement.

The paper suggests Mrs May will have to agree to pay a divorce fee, but without finalising a fixed sum, in exchange for the EU to agree to trade talks on her timetable.

It suggested Mrs May will have to accept that European Court of Justice would have jurisdiction of the transitional deal - extending the rule of EU law beyond Brexit, something seen as a red line by ministers.

PA
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Britain will only get the Brexit deal it needs with Scotland pulling together with the rest of the country, Theresa May will say at the Conservative Spring Forum on Friday.

The Prime Minister will appeal to the Scottish people to get fully behind the exit negotiations, saying: We are one people.

And she will make the audacious claim that the Brexit vote was an instruction to change the way our country works  and the people for whom it works  forever.

Recommended Sturgeon challenges May to Scottish independence debate

Speaking in Cardiff, Ms May will say: The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom.

Every person, every family, every business, every community the length and breadth of the United Kingdom  England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It is essential that we get the right deal, and that all of our efforts and energies as a country are focused on that outcome.

We need to do so united, as one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome. That is what we have always done when faced with challenges.

We have pulled together as one and succeeded together. We are four nations, but at heart we are one people.

 Theresa May: Now is not the time for Scottish independence referendum

The speech will come the day after Ms May refused the SNPs demand for a pre-Brexit referendum on Scottish independence  to Nicola Sturgeons fury.

Unveiling her Plan for Britain, the Prime Minister will promise to seize the moment of opportunity to shape a brighter future for the whole country.

She will say: Our Plan for Britain is a plan for a brighter future. A plan to make the most of the opportunities ahead and to build a stronger, fairer Britain that is more united and more outward-looking.

A plan to get the right deal for Britain abroad yes, but also a better deal for ordinary, working people here at home.

Recommended May has made a mistake by refusing to permit a Scottish referendum

At the Conservative Spring Forum, Ms May will argue her ambitious economic and social reforms have three key strands, to build:

* A stronger economy  tackling the problem of low productivity and securing the high-paid, high-skilled jobs of the future.

* A fairer society  breaking down the barriers of privilege and spreading opportunity and prosperity around the country.

* A more united nation  to strengthen the bonds of our precious Union.

The wide-ranging plan  a manifesto in all but name  may be seen as a further indication that the Prime Minister is considering an early general election, despite her frequent denials.

This weeks U-turn over higher national insurance contributions proved the danger of relying on a small Commons majority, some Tories argue  with much bigger battles over Brexit to come.
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The Chairman of the Conservative Party has pushed away a television camera after being asked about the election expenses scandal that saw his party fined 70,000.

Patrick McLoughlin MP, who previously served as Transport Secretary and Chief Whip, appeared angry after being asked by a reporter about the Electoral Commissions decision to fine the Tories over undeclared election spending.

After being greeted by Sky News reporters outside Parliament, Mr McLoughlin pushed the camera away.

As the questioning continued, the party chairman finally said: We have made a statement. Thank you.

We have made a statement, he then repeated.

It comes after an investigation by the Electoral Commission into allegations the Conservatives failed to report a number of expenses incurred during the 2015 General Election campaign.

In total, 104,765 of spending was not declared and a further 118,000 of payments were either not reported or reported incorrectly.

An additional 52,924 of costs did not have the required invoices or receipts.

In response, a Conservative spokesperson said the party had complied fully with the watchdogs investigation and would pay the 70,000 fine.

Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Show all 6 1 /6 Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves The elderly We acknowledge that there are pressures on the health service, there are always extra pressures on the NHS in the winter, but we have the added pressures of the ageing population and the growing complex needs of the population, Theresa May has said. Waits of over 12 hours in A&E among elderly people have more than doubled in two years, according to figures from NHS Digital. Getty Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Patients going to A&E instead of seeing their GPs Jeremy Hunt has called for a honest discussion with the public about the purpose of A&E departments, saying that around a third of A&E patients were in hospital unnecessarily. Mr Hunt told Radio 4s Today programme the NHS now had more doctors, nurses and funding than ever, but explained what he called very serious problems at some hospitals by suggesting pressures were increasing in part because people are going to A&Es when they should not. He urged patients to visit their GP for non-emergency illnesses, outlined plans to release time for family doctors to support urgent care work, and said the NHS will soon be able to deliver seven-day access to a GP from 8am to 8pm. But doctors struggling amid a GP recruitment crisis said Mr Hunts plans were unrealistic and demanded the Government commit to investing in all areas of the overstretched health service. Getty Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Simon Stevens, head of NHS England Reports that key members of Ms Mays team used internal meetings to accuse Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, of being unenthusiastic and unresponsive have been rejected by Downing Street. Mr Stevens had allegedly rejected claims made by Ms May that the NHS had been given more funding than required. Getty Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Previous health policy, not funding In an interview with Sky Newss Sophy Ridge, Ms May acknowledged the NHS faced pressures but said it was a problem that had been ducked by government over the years. She refuted the claim that hospitals were tackling a humanitarian crisis and said health funding was at record levels. We asked the NHS a while back to set out what it needed over the next five years in terms of its plan for the future and the funding that it would need, said the Prime Minister. They did that, we gave them that funding, in fact we gave them more funding than they required Funding is now at record levels for the NHS, more money has been going in. But doctors accused Ms May of being in denial about how the lack of additional funding provided for health and social care were behind a spiralling crisis in NHS hospitals. Getty Images Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves Target to treat all A&E patients within four hours Mr Hunt was accused of watering down the flagship target to treat all A&E patients within four hours. The Health Secretary told MPs the promise  introduced by Tony Blairs government in 2000  should only be for those who actually need it. Amid jeers in the Commons, Mr Hunt said only four other countries pledged to treat all patients within a similar timeframe and all had less stringent rules. But Ms May has now said the Government will stand by the four-hour target for A&E, which says 95 per cent of patients must be dealt with within that time frame. Getty Images Everyone the Government blames for the NHS crisis  except themselves No one Mr Hunt was accused of hiding from the public eye following news of the Red Crosss comments and didnt make an official statement for two days. He was also filmed refusing to answer questions from journalists who pursued him down the street yesterday to ask whether he planned to scrap the four-hour A&E waiting time target. Sky News reporter Beth Rigby pressed the Health Secretary on his position on the matter, saying the public will want to know, Mr Hunt. Sorry Beth, Ive answered questions about this already, replied Mr Hunt. But you didnt answer questions on this. You said it was over-interpreted in the House of Commons and you didnt want to water it down. Is that what youre saying? said Ms Rigby. Its very difficult, because how are we going to explain to the public what your intention is, when you change your position and then wont answer the question, Mr Hunt. But the Health Secretary maintained his silence until he reached his car and got in. Getty

"This investigation and these fines relate to national spending by CCHQ, and the Conservative Party's national spending return for the 2015 general election, they said.

"As we have consistently said, the local agents of Conservative candidates correctly declared all local spending in the 2015 general election.

"CCHQ accepted in March 2016 that it had made an administrative error by not declaring a small amount constituting 0.6% of our national spending in the 2015 election campaign.

"Political parties of all colours have made reporting mistakes from time to time... this is the first time the Conservative Party has been fined for a reporting error.

"We regret that and will continue to keep our internal processes under review to ensure this does not happen again.

"Given the range of technical errors made by a number of political parties and campaign groups, there also needs to be a review of how the Electoral Commission's processes and requirements could be clarified or improved."
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The White House has assured the UK Government it will not repeat allegations that GCHQ spied on Donald Trump, in a bid to avoid a major diplomatic row.

Downing Street said it had told members of Mr Trump's team that the allegations were ridiculous and should be ignored, after the claims were repeated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Theresa May's official spokesman would not confirm whether the administration had offered an apology, but did indicate Mr Spicer had been told not to raise the claims again.

He confirmed that representations had been made by the British ambassador to the US and Ms May's national security advisor to members of Mr Trump's team.

The No 10 spokesman said: Weve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and weve received assurances they wont be repeated.

He said that the situation would not damage the special relationship, and that it was close relations that the US and UK shared that allowed the Government to raise the matter.

 Sean Spicer says Donald Trump did not mean Barack Obama personally wire-tapped him during campaign

Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano alleged during a Fox & Friends broadcast earlier this week that Mr Obama had bypassed the USs intelligence community and used the UK's spy centre to obtain details of Mr Trump's conversations, prompting a rare public and forthright response from GCHQ.

A spokesperson told CNN: Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wire tapping against the then-President elect are nonsense.

They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.

 Trump: 'Wiretapping' covers a whole range of things

The US Senate Intelligence Committee said earlier on Thursday there were no indications Trump Tower was under surveillance by the US government before or after the Presidential election.

President Donald Trump had used a series of Twitter posts to accuse his predecessor, Barack Obama, of wiretapping him.

In an interview on Wednesday with Fox News, Mr Trump suggested he first thought the former president was carrying out surveillance on Trump Tower after reading an article on the campaign in The New York Times.
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Boris Johnson has visited Ethiopia as a father-of-three from London nears his 1,000th day on death row there, following his kidnapping by Ethiopian security forces.

Andargachew Tsege, known as Andy, has been a vocal critic of the Ethiopian government. He was granted political asylum in the UK in 1979 and has lived in Britain ever since, though he continued to advocate for democratic reform in his home country.

He was abducted in June 2014 while en route to Eritrea, and in July 2015 moved to the infamous Kality prison outside Addis Abiba, dubbed "Ethiopia's gulag". A death sentenced had been imposed on him in 2009, in his absence.

The rights group Reprieve, which has been representing Mr Tsege and his family, said on Thursday the Foreign Secretary "should not leave Ethiopia without Andy Tsege beside him on the plane".

Mr Johnson was due to discuss regional security and prosperity on his visit, a Government announcement said.

Reprieve's Maya Foa said: "Andy has endured 1000 days on death row for daring to criticise the Ethiopian Government, which kidnapped him in an international airport and rendered him to the countrys gulag.

"A failure to seek Andys return home would send a dangerous message that the UK is willing to tolerate the abuse of its citizens overseas, with no consequence for the Governments responsible."

In an open letter to campaigners last August, Mr Johnson said: "I am aware of the suggestion that the UK Government should directly call for Mr Tseges release.

"As my predecessor has previously stated, Britain does not interfere in the legal systems of other countries by challenging convictions, any more than we would accept interference in our judicial system.

"We do, however, lobby strongly and consistently against the application of the death penalty, and against the carrying out of such sentences when they are imposed."
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Barack Obama would have a good chance of winning a libel case against Donald Trump over his wiretapping claims, according to George W Bushs former ethics lawyer.

Taking to Twitter, Richard W Painter wrote: 44 v.45 now looks like a very good libel case even under the high standard for libel against public figures,"

Mr Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer for four years during the Bush administration was referring to the fact that Mr Obama and Mr Trump are respectively the 44th and 45th American presidents.

Recommended Donald Trump suing former aide for allegedly leaking information

Known for being a litigious during his business career, Mr Trump said during his election campaign that one of the first things he would do as President would be to change the libel laws, making it easier for people to sue those who make false and defamatory statements about others.

Under British law, the defendant or publisher has to prove the truth of the statements in dispute. The plaintiff only has to show that the statement harms his reputation, without having to show that any damage has actually been suffered.

US courts require such public plaintiffs to show both falsity and actual malice. This actual malice standard requires the plaintiff to show by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant knew the material was false, or published the material with reckless disregard for the truth.

Mr Painter, who is himself currently suing Mr Trump for violating the Constitution, has nonetheless suggested the existing laws mean Mr Obama could already have a strong case against his successor.

Mr Trump has refused to retract the widely discredited claim he made on Twitter that the former President had his offices wiretapped during the election campaign last year.

He has not produced any evidence to back up his allegation, which Mr Obama has dismissed as simply false". US intelligence services have also dismissed it.

Recommended Melania Trump sues Daily Mail for libel over sex work claims

Mr Obama has made no public threats to sue and is not thought likely to do so, although there have been previous attempts to sue presidents.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was sued for damages by FG Fitzgerald after Nixon had him fired from his job as a civilian analyst in the US air force.

The court found the President should be afforded absolute immunity from such civil actions because his unique position made him an easily identifiable target for civil damages - a ruling which would make it difficult for Mr Obama to take action against Mr Trump, although not impossible.

The President can be sued over personal matters while in office, as Bill Clinton was in 1997 when Paula Jones brought a case against him for sexual harassment.

He settled the case out of court with a payment of $850,000 although her lawsuit was dismissed.

Before the election, at a rally at Forth Worth in Texas, Mr Trump pledged to open up our libel laws so that when people say purposely negative and false things about him, we can sue them and win lots of money.

He said he needed to do this so that when journalists wrote things about him that are a total disgrace  we can sue them and win instead of having no chance of winning because they are totally protected.

You see, with me, they're not protected, because I'm not like other people but I'm not taking money. I'm not taking their money .. We're going to open up libel laws, and we're going to have people sue you like you've never got sued before.

If Mr Obama does decide to take legal action against Mr Trump, the Presidents personal legal team has ample experience of dealing with lawsuits.

In February, it was revealed he had been sued more than 50 times in a period of just over two weeks since taking office.

The cases, brought in 17 different states by a range of organisations and individuals, concerned a host of issues from his business deals to his executive orders on immigration.

Mr Painter is one of those who took legal action against Mr Trump, suing him for violating the Constitution after he refused to sell off some of his assets and place the rest in a blind trust, as every previous president has done.
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Bernie Sanders and Planned Parenthood are the popular things in the United States, a new poll has revealed.

In a finding that is likely to anger Donald Trump, the veteran senator and the reproductive health programme both have higher favourability ratings than the US President, as do Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Mike Pence and Obamacare.

The Fox News poll found 43 per cent of Americans approve of Mr Trumps performance as President, compared with 51 per cent who disapprove, giving the Republican an approval rating of -9.

He performed particularly badly in the eyes of the public on the issue of Americas relationship with Russia, with only 33 per cent of people believing he has done well in dealing with Moscow, compared with 55 per cent who disapproved.

A majority (54 per cent) also disapproved of the Presidents revised executive order banning immigration to the US from six mainly-Muslim countries.

Of the people and policies that the survey participants were asked about, Mr Sanders was the most popular, with an approval rating of +29. Planned Parenthood was second, on +25.

Mr Sanders, who sits as an independent but sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, is one of the most of outspoken critics of Mr Trump. He recently called the US President a pathological liar who changes his mind every single day.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The Planned Parenthood scheme has been criticised by some Republicans who oppose the fact it provides abortion services. Although this element of the organisation does not receive federal funding, other parts of Planned Parenthood are given $500 million each year in federal funds.

A White House proposal to maintain the organisations funding if it ceased providing abortion services was swiftly rejected by the programmes leaders earlier this month. Mr Trump has insisted he supports Planned Parenthood and wants to significantly increase federal funding in support of non-abortion services.

The Republican has suffered some of the worst approval ratings of any new US President in history. Within two weeks of taking office in January, Mr Trump saw his standing drop to -9 per cent  a low from which he is yet to recover.
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It was probably the ultimate endorsement for the sisters who describe themselves as Donald Trump's most outspoken and loyal supporters - a retweet from the US leader himself at 5:40am in the morning.

Known as Diamond and Silk, Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson are former Democrats, who changed their allegiance when Mr Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. They say they they love him for his honesty.

The double-act from North Carolina, who post video blogs on YouTube, also claim to stand for the silent majority, who are deeply concerned about political corruption and the unethical tactics of special interest groups and lobbyists.

They have 80,000 subscribers on the video sharing site, where they discuss America's hot political topics.

The pairs blunt political rants on their The Viewers View channel are not politically correct and the sisters say their speak their minds 100 per cent.

Diamond is loud and chatty, while Silk emphasises everything her sister says by repeating the end of her sentence or adding Thats right and Yeah.

Now it seems they have a fan in the US President himself, after he shared their tweet about Preet Bharara, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was fired by Trump after he refused to resign.

Pictured wearing bright red shirts with Trump embroidered on their right shoulder, the sisters called on Mr Bharara to: Pack Yo Stuff and Go.

They repeated their message in a separate YouTube video.

If you are told to resign, that means step down, but if you dont that means you gotta go," they said. "If they say you gotta go that means bye bye, see you later, sawa nawao, adios amigos, thats what that means. That means you should have packed your little boxes and you should have left. It gotta you all over the news as a little crap baby for not resigning, instead you had to be fired."

The sisters YouTube channel was first aimed to talk back at the media elites fake news, but the pair endorsed Mr Trump when he announced his candidacy.

They became known as the Stump for Trump Girls, appearing at rallies in North Carolina and Mississippi.

After he was elected as President, they continued to defend Mr Trump's policies on immigration, his travel ban and the wall he wants to build on the border between the US and Mexico.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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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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He wants to protect us from being coming into our country, who want to chop off our heads, Diamond told the BBC's Newsnight. My President never says anything that is stupid. See, that whats wrong with you left people, you always want to be so politically correct. Well he's not politically correct, he is earnest and we love him for his honesty.

There is nothing my President can do that makes me feel sore. He makes us happy, we love him."

She added that she blamed the media for saying the election had been hacked by the Russians.

Writing on their website, the pair said Mr Trumps appeal was that he was not a politician, who dances to the tune of lobbyists, but a successful businessman who is not dictated to by any interest group.

While some of our supporters may be surprised to see two American (Black) women voicing their opinions about these issues, its not a racial or cultural thing. Its about doing the right thing when it comes to We the American People!, they wrote.
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Donald Trump could reverse his recently announced cuts to arts, poor and elderly services if he cut his trips to Mar-a-Lago and lived permanently in White House instead, figures indicate.

Calculations show four programmes that face elimination - which tackle homelessness, unemployment among over-55s, participation in the arts and helping the poor access higher education - could be maintained at the cost of the Presidents trips to his private Florida resort over the course of four years.

The services amount to a total of $597 million  just less than the $600 million security arrangements for the Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago visits are estimated to cost the taxpayer over the course of his term.

The National Endowment for the Arts, which encourages participation in the arts ($152 million), the US Interagency Council on Homelessness ($4 million), an independent agency coordinating the federal government's efforts to reduce homelessness, the Senior Community Service Employment Program ($434 million), which has helped more than one million people 55 and older find jobs and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars ($11 million), providing scholarships and fellowships in social sciences and humanities, are all facing the axe in Mr Trump's budget.

This amounts to a total of $597 million (483 million). According to CBS News, the President spent every weekend of his first 33 days in office at the Palm Beach estate - for which security is estimated to have cost $10 million (8.1 million).

American taxpayers must foot a bill of more than $3 million (2.4 million) each time he travels there, rather than staying at the official presidential residence of the White House  amounting to $600 million over the four years.

The services are among hundreds of programmes and agencies the budget proposed would be eliminated to pave the way for a $54 billion (44 billion) increase in defence spending.

The $1.15 trillion (1 trillion) budget  titled 'America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again'  which covered only discretionary, not mandatory, spending  also stated plans to slash funding for Meals on Wheels, a program that provides meals for the poor, elderly and veterans, as well as health care and nutrition for low-income women, infants and children.

Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Show all 20 1 /20 Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Donald Trump sits in the living room at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago under Trump. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago under Trump in 2015 The Washington Post/Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Function room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Donald Trump sits in the living room at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The living room in Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Master bedroom at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Library at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Cloister at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Entrance hall at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Spiral staircase at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Patio at Mar-a-Lago in 1928 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Cloister at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 AFP/Getty

Days after the proposals were announced, Mr Trump is to return to his lavish Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach this weekend, marking his fifth visit to the resort during the short period he's been serving the White House.

Mr Trumps frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago stand in contrast to his pledges during the campaign. He told a reporter in 2015: I would rarely leave the White House because theres so much work to be done. I would not be a president who took vacations.

I would not be a president that takes time off You dont have time to take time off.

The President's regular jaunts also appear to contradict his previous criticisms of Mr Obama, who was condemned by Republicans when he flew to Palm Beach during his presidency.

The habitual vacationer, Barack Obama, is now in Hawaii. This vacation is costing taxpayers $4 milion +++ while there is 20% unemployment, the now President wrote on Twitter in December 2011 - when the unemployment rate was actually 8.5 per cent.
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President Donald Trump has announced his proposed federal budget plan, which includes increases for defence and national security but cuts to 19 other agencies.

The plan set out on Thursday was in reality just a "pared-down first draft" of the sort of appropriations request all new administrations submit during their first few months, the New York Times reported.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on a press call: This is just discretionary spending. In May, a broader budget proposal will be released which will include taxation and tackle the majority of government spending - including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The budget cuts will free up approximately $54 billion for increases to Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense, and Homeland Security budgets.

The proposal also does not take into account tax cuts and was not drafted with the assumption that the Obamacare replacement plan proposed by House of Representative Republicans would pass in its current form.

Mr Mulvaney said the Trump administration has targeted the most inefficient, most wasteful, most indefensible programmes and moved money towards defence and national security efforts.

One of Mr Trumps promises, to build a border wall with Mexico to stop illegal immigration, has been worked into the budget.

However, Mr Mulvaney noted that we did not say ok, we need a $1.5bn for the wall, let's go over and reduce this program in education and move that $1.5 billion over to the wall. We dealt with it more holistically.

The $1.5 billion allocated for the proposed wall is what the administration felt they could spend on it this year, but Mr Mulvaney explained that there would be a more in-depth analysis and more money for the project in the budget document coming this May.

We don't know [how many miles of wall that builds] because we haven't settled on construction types or where we're going to start, Mr Mulvaney said of the $1.5 billion.

The amount allows for various construction materials and types of barriers.

Another promise of Mr Trumps was to improve infrastructure. The American Society of Infrastructure Engineers has given the country an overall grade of D+.

However, there are multiple line item cuts in the proposed budget to infrastructure programmes, especially in the Department of Transportation.

Mr Mulvaney deemed these programmes as inefficient and said the White House would be issuing a more detailed infrastructure package later in 2017.

No specific date was given and Mr Mulvaney did not say whether the same projects being de-funded would be included in the upcoming package.

In Mr Trumps first address to Congress, he claimed he wanted to eliminate all disease, but the budget for the National Institutes of Health - where cutting-edge research on common and rare diseases is done - has been cut by approximately $6 billion.

Mr Mulvaney had a muddled response, saying that some federal funding for research on the rarest of diseases will likely remain.

Regarding the cuts to Housing and Urban Development, Mr Mulvaney said Mr Trump and the agencys head Dr Ben Carson worked together. We spent a lot of money on housing and urban development in the last decade without a lot to show for it, Mr Mulvaney noted.

These cuts include the Meals on Wheels program, a home delivery meal service for the elderly and disabled.

The State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Agriculture department budgets appear to have the deepest cuts.

EPA will go from having $8.2 billion to just $5.7 billion, according to the New York Times.

It is in line with EPA head Scott Pruitts unpopular stance on climate change and Mr Trumps commitment to reviving the coal industry.

The cuts to the State Department - which houses the US Agency for International Development are around 28 to 31 per cent. These cuts have already been opposed by Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked for a less stringent cut.

Despite the apparent commitment to national security, the Coast Guards maritime security efforts will be hindered by a devastating 14 per cent cut as will their ocean preservation and environmental monitoring work.

Mr Mulvaney said the full May budget document will be a revised version of the current proposal and that agencies have been given a great deal of discretion when it comes to layoffs of federal employees.
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President Trumps proposed budget plan calls for a $100 million cut in funding for climate change programmes.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said during a press conference: Were not spending money on that anymore because he said federal climate change programmes are a waste of your [tax] money.

David Waskow, Director of the International Climate Initiative at Washington DC research group World Resources Institute, told The Independent that investing in combating climate change is in the US economic and security interests.

Recommended Trump plans EPA budget cut that would end its climate change research

If we dont take serious action on climate change, itll cost us far more money to deal with severe weather events, rising sea levels, and security risks from displacement and resource scarcity, Mr Waskow explained.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget is proposed to be cut by 31 per cent, but the $100 million reduction in spending will target climate change programmes across agencies.

Part of the US climate diplomacy work - including the office of the Special Envoy on Climate Change who represents the US in international negotiations and meetings - is done through the State Department, which is also proposed to have a 28 to 29 per cent cut.

Signing a climate agreement with China in November 2015, ahead of the global Paris Agreement on Climate Change, played a part in easing relations with the country, Time reports.

Mr Trump has proposed the complete elimination of the Global Climate Change Initiative, the payment mechanism for US contributions to international funds established to help developing countries adapt their infrastructure to a worsening climate.

The overall proposed measures will likely result in 3,200 layoffs in the EPA alone, approximately 20 per cent of the agency.

There is also a program in the Treasury Department that could be cut. The Climate Adaptation Plan seeks to measure the financial and economic impact of climate change on the US.

Coastal regions in Louisiana and Florida are particularly concerned about erosion and wildlife in light of ocean pollution. Some say the countrys first climate refugees were those forced to abandon their homes in parts of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

In 2013, allergies and asthma were linked to climate change from high carbon dioxide emissions from cars and manufacturing plants throughout the country.

However Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told Time that the proposed cuts are a much-needed resetting to take the politically motivated actions to combat climate change which he felt President Obama pushed.

Many Republicans do agree with de-funding some EPAs work but some have been encouraged by a recent letter signed by 17 members of Congress from New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania signing a Republican Climate Resolution on 15 March in support of climate action.

US efforts to bring jobs to impoverished communities and fostering American innovation - both of which funded-climate change programmes could do through green jobs training and renewable energy investment promotion.
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Donald Trump intends to appeal against the "flawed" court ruling which blocked his amended travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries, White House spokesman Sean Spicer has announced.

The press secretary said on Thursday that the Trump administration would appeal the rulings against the travel ban in the near future.

The Department is exploring all available options to vigorously defend this executive order," he explained at the daily press briefing. "We intend to appeal the flawed rulings.

He added: "We expect action to be taken soon to appeal the ruling in the Fourth Circuit and seek clarification of the order prior to appeal in the Ninth Circuit . The danger is real and the law is clear."

Mr Spicer cited a section of the federal regulations which states that the President can "suspend immigration if he deems necessary" and noted that the courts did not include that in their arguments.

New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Show all 27 1 /27 New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People gather for evening prayer at a rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 02: Yemeni business owner Musa closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty

A federal judge in Hawaii temporarily blocked the Presidents second attempt at a travel ban on Wednesday. Immediately after the ruling, the Justice Department called the ruling flawed in reasoning and in scope.

In a statement, the Justice Department argued that the measure is well within the Presidents constitutional authority to protect national security. The agency also promised to continue to fight for the restrictions in court.

On Thursday, another judge in Maryland issued a block on the travel ban that sought to prevent people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country.

Mr Spicer also noted that this second version of the travel ban was "tailored" to the concerns of courts who put a stop to the executive order in its original form, signed on 27 January.

Mr Trump's first executive order was also met with opposition from federal courts and thousands of protesters at most major airports in the country.
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Before last years election, Thea Crane tried to talk to her family about how Obamacare had saved her life. Both her parents voted for Donald Trump anyway, as did two of her three siblings, including a brother so angered by her political views that he barred his two daughters from speaking to her.

Alaina Comeaux battled last year to explain to her mother that the law passed seven years ago, known as the Affordable Care Act, ACA, had spared her from a certain death sentence, yet she too took no heed and voted Trump. Now mother and daughter cant discuss politics at all.

The challenges faced by these two young women is as vivid an illustration as any not just of how profoundly divided the United States has become as Mr Trump tries to deliver on his pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare but also of the profoundly grave consequences that the changes he and the Republicans are contemplating may have for real people in the real world.

Both 27 and living in Louisiana, among the poorest and least healthy states in the nation, Ms Crane, who suffered a mini-stroke as a teen and still has blood clotting problems, and Ms Comeaux, a victim of Crohns, a potentially fatal auto-immune disease, are as terrified of the future as they are grateful for the protection that Obamacare has given them until now.

It was a bleak outlook for me without Obamacare, Ms Comeaux, a teacher in New Orleans, explained. I was probably 21 when it passed and for the first time I was able to look forward to the future. Because the new law barred insurers from refusing people with pre-existing conditions she found a plan that took care of all her expenses, which in a good year easily top $100,000. She needs infusion treatments every two months, costing $22,000 each time.

Normally, I would pretty much be uninsurable, noted Ms Crane. I am kind of a ticking time-bomb, they dont know when or if I could have another episode but they know I am predisposed to blood clotting issues. The potential costs to them would be astronomical. She too has coverage she fears she might soon lose.

It is because she has seen it in her own family  in her words very white and very Catholic and all living in Fargo, North Dakota  Ms Crane knows that no appeals for compassion or even common sense will be enough to stop the Republicans in Congress as they hurtle, albeit rockily, towards scrapping a law they see as government meddling in the marketplace and the evisceration of which has been at the heart of their political messaging from the day it was adopted back in 2010.

They just dont see all the kinds of faces that are affected, Ms Crane says, sharing a small table at the Bakery Bar on Annunciation Street in New Orleans. Republicans, she contended, have this preconceived notion that Obamacare was conceived for Americans already dependent on government hand-outs. Thats just not the case at all, she argued. A lawyer just starting out, she often works 70 hours a week, mostly from home.

Obamacare has been transformative for Louisiana, particularly since July last year when the then newly elected Democrat governor, John Bel Edwards, reversed the policy of his Republican predecessor and agreed to embrace provisions in the law that allows states significantly to loosen the requirements for residents to qualify for Medicaid, aimed at the poor.

Thanks to Medicaid Expansion, as it is called, almost half a million residents of Louisiana will have health coverage where they didnt before by the middle of this year, a much higher number than was expected  all people who can now go to a doctor when they fall ill, not the hospital emergency room. Moreover, the states health department reports that 58,000 Louisianans have received preventative care as a direct result, that includes 5,400 previously uninsured adults having colon cancer screenings, of whom more than 1,500 had polyps removed.

Few people are as focused on what the Republicans, led by speaker Paul Ryan, are proposing as the replacement for the ACA, than Susan Todd, the executive director of 504HealthNet, an association of health clinics across New Orleans and the surrounding counties. She is appalled by the plan, which would replace direct subsidies for people buying plans with much less generous tax credits and force Louisiana to end its entire Medicaid expansion programme.

What they have done is just go back to where we were before and that was no great place to be, she explained in her office above a clinic run by a Catholic charity on the edge of the Lower Ninth ward. I mean, why do we want to go back there? We know that this is going to impact hospitals, we know that this is going to impact peoples lives. An immediate result, she said, would be a scaling back by all her clinics as patients lost the plans and funding dried up.

While some seethe, others are resigned to the damage they see coming. With our president right now, I just expect the worst of everything, nothing can surprise me by being bad with what the administration is doing now, commented Mark David LaMaire, a bass player who saw his plan, purchased through a local musicians union, transformed last summer when the Medicaid Expansion kicked in. Under the Ryan plan, it would go back to bare bones.

I know all the worst stuff is happening, Mr LaMaire, 37 years old and healthy, commented as he tidied away a stall at a farmers market in Uptown New Orleans where he cooks and sells Burmese food. Everyone is so worried. Their stress levels is a health problem in itself.

Not so fortunate is John Williams. Now 37, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, MS, when he was 21, an event that forced him to seek a government job with health insurance benefits. When Obamacare was passed, he was able to set up his own small legal practice. But like others, he is fearful that, in spite of promises to the contrary, whatever replaces it will either see the the pre-existing conditions provisions erased or couched in terms that will allow insurance companies to demand ever soaring premiums.

If that happens it will be a parade of horribles for me, Mr Williams explained in his cubby hole office alongside the tracks of a New Orleans streetcar. Whether I have health insurance or not really dictates my life. In a remission-relapse phase he is always fearful of another outbreak of his MS, affecting muscular movement and, in his case, his vision. The first consequence of the Obamacare repeal will be his giving up his practice and seeking employment with health coverage. Aside from regular MRIs, he needs intramuscular injections costing $5,000 (4,045) month.

He wonders if the Republicans understand the devastation they will bring to peoples lives just because of ideology. Politics a lot of time turns into a lot of back and forth and banter but when its real, when its about me not getting my medicine or the treatment I need, people need to say like, Yo, enough with your back and forth, I need to get what I need to stay alive.

Katherine B, who has a history of uterine fibrosis, says: The Republicans are more interested in holding to their party value than serving the people and take care of the population. Because of that condition, she concluded on the day Mr Trump was elected that her current situation, making a living as an artist, will no longer be tenable once Obamacare and the coverage it guarantees her has gone. It is because she is looking already for a full-time job with healthcare benefits  and because of her outspoken views  that she prefers to withhold her full name. They are perfectly willing to let a lot of people lose coverage, which in no uncertain terms means a lot more people will die. They dont connect the dots. Children will die.

I find it astonishing we are going down this road, she offered. But just as with the Ms Crane and Ms Comeaux, she is struggling with something else. Her 83-year-old mother, whom she had just helped settle in hospital because of a skin infection, also voted for Mr Trump last November, in spite of Obamacare being a vital guy-rope of her daughters life. It just blows my mind. Its just, Wait, how could that be? she attempted. We dont talk about it. We decided a long time ago not to talk about politics. She has always been Republican, which I find bizarre.

Silence has never been the strategy of Ms Crane, however, which goes some way to explaining why Facebook chats with her nieces back in North Dakota have now been forbidden. There have been a lot of angry, tearful conversations, she admitted. They didnt know what to say. I broke it down very simply for them. Its been really tough on the family.

But persuading her parents and siblings that they did her wrong by voting for Mr Trump is ultimately a pointless  and hopeless  mission, she conceded. At the end of the day, they cant take it back now even if they wanted to.
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US senator and former presidential candidate John McCain has claimed Kentucky senator Rand Paul is now working for Vladimir Putin in a row over Montenegros bid for Nato membership.

While speaking in the Senate house in support of a bill to advance Montenegros application to join the military alliance, Mr McCain introduced the bill by saying any opposition to it was in support of Russias aims.

He said: If there is objection, you are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin. You are achieving the objectives of trying to dismember this small country which has already been the subject of an attempted coup.

In remarks directed at Mr Paul, Mr McCain added: Ive no idea why anyone would object to this, except that I will say, if they object, they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin, and I do not say that lightly.

After presenting the bill, Mr Paul then stood up and said: I object, before immediately walking out of the chamber.

Mr McCain responded to the dramatic exit by re-iterating his remarks about Mr Paul working for Mr Putin.

He said: The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is that he has no argument to make, he has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of Nato, it is under assault from the Russians.

So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.

In a later statement, his office added: Senator McCain, and certainly the people of Montenegro, would appreciate an explanation from Senator Paul as to why he sought to prevent this small, brave country from joining in the defence of the free world.

In response, Mr Paul later said his colleagues accusations in the Senate were over the top, and said McCain had become a little bit unhinged.

You know, I think he makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe hes past his prime, Mr Paul told MSNBC.

Mr Paul also told The Daily Beast he believed the US should not support the expansion of Nato given the countrys debt. He said: Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan).

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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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Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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He added: In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.
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On a dusky evening last spring, Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez was tossed into the hell that is El Salvadors prison system: a holding cell barely bigger than the bed of a pickup, where more than 50 prisoners were crammed together, some on the sweat-soaked floor and others spilling out of thin hammocks crisscrossed from ground to ceiling.

The air was hot and humid, and prisoners half-naked bodies reeked of urine and ulcers from a recent outbreak of bacteria, according to a guard. A few weeks later, Martinez Chavez collapsed, foaming at the mouth. He was the fifth inmate from that cell to die in four months.

He never should have been there in the first place. Police, prosecutors and a judge mistook him for a different Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez, a man eight years younger with a gang tattoo across his chest and a criminal history that includes charges of extortion, illegal gun possession, and murder.

Martinez Chavezs death exposes deep flaws in El Salvadors justice system, with implications that go well beyond this tiny nation of six million. At a time when thousands of Central Americans are fleeing towards the United States, and border control is at the top of President Donald Trumps agenda, the weaknesses of this regions courts and cops have assumed outsize importance. The same institutions that allowed an innocent man to die have failed to prevent street gangs from turning the country into one of the most violent in the hemisphere.

The US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to help Central American countries capture and prosecute gang leaders and corrupt officials. Although there have been some advances, the system remains dysfunctional. Police in El Salvador frequently dont use forensic evidence, prosecutors handle several hundred cases at once, and prisons are so bad that the Supreme Court has ruled them unconstitutional.

The combination of these failings  during a crackdown in the streets and a lockdown in the prisons  was fatal for Martinez Chavez, 37, a bus dispatcher, volunteer first-responder and father of two with little in common with the fugitive authorities sought.

Gangs use the prison system as a rent-free corporate office, directing murders and extortion rings with sneaked-in phones (Getty)

His only sin was having the same name, said public defender Saul Sanchez.

The crime that would land Martinez in jail occurred in October 2014 in San Pedro Masahuat, a town with cobblestone streets in the La Paz region, an hour southeast of San Salvador. Five men with guns ambushed a sixth man, who ducked behind cars to avoid the bullets. He survived, and later described his assailants to prosecutor Guillermo Molina: four low-level gang members and a leader called Wisper.

The victim knew Wispers name: Jorge Chavez. He had an idea where he lived  a sheet-metal shack on the edge of town  and his age: about 26. Chavez was covered in gang tattoos, including MS (for Mara Salvatrucha) across his chest and an eagle on his back.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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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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The prosecutors investigation was based almost entirely on the victims testimony. This is common in El Salvador. Despite US-led efforts to introduce scientific evidence to the judicial system  starting during El Salvadors 1980-1992 civil war and continuing with the current Alliance for Prosperity aid package, which includes a $4m (3.2m) forensic training programme  reform has been sluggish, according to legal scholars and watchdog groups.

The legal system was created to serve the oligarchy, and continues to favour the rich and powerful, said anthropologist Juan Jose Martinez. These days, corrupt business executives and politicians often escape scrutiny while gang violence overwhelms police and prosecutors.

Authorities in San Pedro Masahuat caught the four lower-level gang members but couldnt find the notorious Wisper. They photographed his house, but according to the case file, didnt do much else to locate him.

Police suspect Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez was poisoned (Getty)

Prosecutors needed more details, so they consulted a federal database of citizens and learned of a 37-year-old man named Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez. A week later, on 17 December, prosecutors checked online prison records and found another, 29-year-old man with the same name.

The differences between the two men were sweeping: not only were they eight years apart, but they hailed from different towns. The younger man was a Mara Salvatrucha gang member who had been imprisoned for extortion in 2010, and was wanted in connection with several slayings. He went by Jorge Chavez  the same name offered by the victim.

The older man was known as Jorge Martinez. He had no criminal record.

Despite the disparities, prosecutors filed charges against 37-year-old Jorge Martinez. Molina said the witness identified Martinez Chavez in a photo lineup. However, the same witness later identified the other man, Jorge Chavez, in another photo reel.

This was the start of the chain that ended in Martinez Chavezs death.

In early 2015, Wisper was accused of killing two young men in San Pedro Masahuat. After a series of blunders, these charges, too, would end up following the other Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez to the grave.

Until 25 April 2016, he had no idea about any of this.

That day, a typical scorcher in San Salvador, capital police stopped Martinez Chavez at the gas station where he worked dispatching buses; they later said he had looked suspicious. They ran his name through a database and couldnt believe their luck. They thought they had stumbled upon Wisper, a gang leader and one of the 100 most sought-after criminals in the country, and promptly detained him.

Although Martinez Chavez was arrested on a single, erroneous warrant, when Judge Daniel Ortiz in San Pedro Masahuat received news that Wisper had been captured, he tacked on the double murder. He didnt notice the discrepancies with the description of that suspect.

We judges arent investigators, Ortiz said. He never saw Martinez Chavez in person but sent him to jail anyway. With heavy caseloads, judges often dont see prisoners until they have spent weeks or months locked up  in Martinezs case, in a disease-ridden, gang-controlled police holding cell in the nearby town of San Juan Talpa.

Martinez Chavez kept insisting he was innocent. He swore to his public defender, Sanchez, that he was not a gang member, stripping off his shirt to show he had no tattoos. His job as a bus dispatcher required him to travel through territory dominated by the 18th Street gang, which would have been impossible if he were a Mara Salvatrucha member.

Everything might have been settled by a police lineup, in which the victim would have to identify Martinez Chavez as the man who tried to kill him. That was postponed twice, first on 16 May because the judge called in sick, and then on 23 May because the prosecutors office forgot to arrange transportation for the victim.

And then time ran out. Martinez Chavez, who had spent a month in jail without ever seeing a judge, died on 25 May in a San Salvador hospital.

At least 25 inmates died in Salvadoran police holding cells between January and June 2016 (Getty)

On 11 July, Judge Ortiz archived the attempted murder case, citing a police report that Wisper had died.

When Martinez Chavez arrived in San Juan Talpa in late April, the holding cells built for 20 people housed more than 110. The jail had become a petri dish for outbreaks of scabies, pneumonia and tuberculosis. In one instance, after 50 sick inmates were quarantined with an unidentified virus, police scrubbed the cells with bleach. Then the inmates were moved right back in.

In April, two prisoners died in the cell in the span of 48 hours. A police officer told the daily newspaper La Prensa Grafica that inmates attributed the deaths to ghosts. But the officer also said prisoners shouted and threw each other against the walls.

Investigators from the national human rights office suspect the men were beaten to death by their fellow prisoners. One was covered in bruises; the other had deep scars on his wrists and ankles. They were among at least 25 inmates who died in Salvadoran police holding cells between January and June 2016. Ninety-six more died in the same period in prisons, hospitals, and transport vehicles; nearly one-third were murdered, and the rest died of illness or suicide.

According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, El Salvadors prisons are the most jam-packed in the Western Hemisphere except for Haitis. The populations began to swell in the mid-2000s as a result of President Francisco Francisco Flores Perezs Strong Hand policy, a series of tough-on-crime measures that included increased police raids and longer sentences. Now a prison system built for 10,000 inmates houses more than 37,000, not including about 5,000 held in police jails.

The Strong Hand policy didnt consider what would happen when all these people got locked up, said Rodil Hernandez, the national prisons director. Gangs are using the prison system as a rent-free corporate office, directing murders and extortion rings with phones sneaked in by guards and visitors.

Last March, Hernandez declared a state of emergency in seven prisons. Since then, thousands of prisoners have been barred from visits with relatives, doctors and judges. Human rights advocates have documented a spike in tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. We found prisoners who were literally rotting, said Gerardo Alegria of the human rights office, describing oozing ulcers, infected gunshot wounds and limbs that needed to be amputated.

Judicial processes have ground to a halt, and the total prison population has increased 10 per cent in the past six months, sending the government scrambling to build new penitentiaries. On 9 February, legislators extended the lockdown until 2018, crediting it for a 20 per cent drop in killings over the past year.

El Salvadors Supreme Court found in an investigation that prisoners have as little as three square feet of space, lack adequate food, water and medical care, and could spend months or years locked up without trial.

Despite the diseases and the violence, Martinez Chavez seemed fine when his father went to the jail on 19 May. Family members dropping off food can catch a glimpse of inmates through the iron bars of the police station door.

Four days later, just hours after the cancelled police lineup, Martinez Chavez collapsed and was taken to a hospital. He died on 25 May.

The police report listed suspected tuberculosis as the cause of death. The autopsy reported pneumonia, although it found that Martinez Chavez had a burst liver. Autopsies in El Salvador are often unreliable, according to international forensic experts; coroners may perform half a dozen on a single shift.

Recommended El Salvador goes a day without any murders for first time in two years

Police at the San Juan Talpa holding cell suspect Martinez Chavez was poisoned. Imprisoned gang members sometimes kill non-gang cellmates as a way to ensure they dont tattle once they leave jail.

The human rights office is investigating how Martinez Chavez died and why he was arrested in the first place.

In an interview, Judge Ortiz said he only realised after Martinez Chavez died that there were two men named Jorge Alberto Martinez Chavez. They had almost the exact same characteristics, he said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Jose Luis Mancia claims officers acted correctly in detaining Martinez Chavez, because there was a warrant for his arrest. The address on the warrant, however, belongs to the other man. Wisper is still at large.

Martinez Chavezs widow, Maritza Garcia, struggles to support two sons on the $15 to $25 a week she makes cleaning a school. Jorge Martinez Sr doesnt expect to learn the truth from the investigation into his sons death.

A better use of time would be to investigate the cases of all the innocent people imprisoned who are still alive, he said.

Last fall, three more prisoners died in the San Juan Talpa holding cell.

 The Washington Post
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A McDonalds employee saved the life of an off-duty police officer by jumping through the restaurant's drive-thru window when she suddenly lost consciousness.

Pedro Viloria was about to hand the woman her order at the branch in Doral, Florida, when he noticed she had irregular breathing.

The off-duty policewoman, who had her two children in the back of the car, suddenly lost consciousness causing her foot to slip off the brakes and her car to roll forward.

CCTV footage reveals the moment Mr Viloria sprang into action as he jumps onto the counter and propels himself out of the window.

According to CBS Miami, Mr Viloria asked the children to call the police and went to seek out help from inside the restaurant.

"In that moment, I thought, 'I'd rather save that woman's life,'" Mr Viloria told WPLG. "I see she's, like, inflating her neck, like trying to breathe, like 'ahh,' and basically I thought something was going wrong."

He was reportedly able to summon two firefighters eating breakfast and an off-duty paramedic, who assisted the woman before she was taken to hospital, where she was said to be in a critical condition on Tuesday.

Miami-Dade Police Department revealed no further information about her condition.

A McDonald's spokesperson said: "First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers are with the officer and her family during this difficult time. I think I speak for our McDonalds family when I say how proud we are of Pedro.

"He is an excellent employee, so it didnt surprise me that he took immediate action and jumped through a window to help save this woman. And he was not the only member of the team that played a pivotal role in ensuring she received the medical attention she needed. A second employee, who asked to remain unnamed, assisted with CPR. Their quick thinking and action were everything in that moment."
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The escalating threat from North Korea's nuclear programme shows a clear need for a "new approach", US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, although he did not say what the Trump administration was planning.

It was the first time that Mr Tillerson, who was speaking at a joint news conference in Tokyo after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, had taken questions from the media since taking office in early February.

Two decades of diplomatic and other efforts, including US aid for North Korea, had failed to achieve the goal of de-nuclearising Pyongyang, said Mr Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, at the start of his first trip to Asia as secretary of state.

"So we have 20 years of failed approach," Mr Tillerson said. "That includes a period where the United States has provided $1.35 billion (1.09 billion) in assistance to North Korea as an encouragement to take a different pathway."

"In the face of this ever-escalating threat, it is clear that a different approach is required. Part of the purpose of my visit to the region is to exchange views on a new approach," he said.

A Japanese foreign ministry official said US officials had discussed potential new approaches regarding North Korea, but he declined to elaborate.

As Mr Tillerson presses the Chinese to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, he is expected to tell them the United States intends to increase missile defence in the region, despite Beijing's strong opposition, a US official told Reuters in Washington.

An advanced US anti-missile system is being installed in South Korea, and the official said the Trump administration wants to discuss similar improvements with Japan.

Mr Tillerson visits South Korea and China later in the week.

Mr Tillerson is also likely to raise the prospects for imposing "secondary sanctions" on Chinese banks and other firms doing business with North Korea, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It is among the options being considered in a full review of North Korea policy expected to be completed by late March or early April, the official said.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday that Mr Tillerson will have "substantive, hard" talks on the next steps in dealing with North Korea but that his visit was not likely to produce an immediate specific response.

In Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated Foreign Minister Wang Yi's proposal last week that North Korea should stop its nuclear and missile tests and South Korea and the United States should stop joint military drills and seek talks instead.

"We welcome all parties, including the United States, to come up with their own proposals," Ms Hua told a daily news briefing. "As long as these proposals are conducive to ameliorating the present tense situation on the Korean peninsula and are beneficial to maintaining regional peace and stability ... China will have an open attitude."

Mr Tillerson made it clear he expected China, North Korea's sole major ally, to do more.

"We will be having discussions with China as to further actions we believe they might consider taking that would be helpful in bringing North Korea to a different attitude about its future need for nuclear weapons," he said.

Mr Tillerson's comments in Japan were eagerly watched by international observers for indications as to what they meant for the Trump administration's foreign policy.

Japan is seeking clues to Washington's policies both on North Korea and China's increasing military and economic clout while hoping to steer clear of trade rows.

Mr Tillerson also held talks with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and had dinner with Mr Kishida.

Donald Trump made it a hallmark of his campaign to call on allies, including Japan, to pay more for hosting US forces and other elements of American protection.

Mr Tillerson issued a far gentler message at the conference, underscoring the "long-standing" US-Japanese alliance.

"While the security environment in this region can be challenging, the United States is committed to strengthening our role, and we welcome an increased Japanese commitment to their roles and responsibilities in our alliance," he said.

Mr Tillerson is the second member of Trump's cabinet to visit Japan. The Defence Secretary Jim Mattis visited last month, and the Vice President Mike Pence is due in April, underscoring US concerns surrounding North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes. Mr Abe was the first foreign leader who met Mr Trump after his November election win.

North Korea last week launched four ballistic missiles, the latest in a series, and is developing nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach the United States, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions.

Washington has said all options, including military, are on the table in its review of policies toward North Korea. In the final months of the Obama administration, US officials warned it would blacklist Chinese companies and banks that do illicit business with North Korea if Beijing failed to enforce UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

The United States has begun deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile defence system in South Korea, a move China objects to because it sees the system's radar as a threat to its security.

Pak Myong Ho, a North Korean embassy official speaking in Beijing on Thursday, said the deployment "will destroy the balance in North-east Asia and the Pacific region."

"The radar is not aimed at just us," Mr Pak said. "It is also aiming for China and Russia."

China's assertiveness in the East China Sea, where it has a territorial row with Japan, and the South China Sea, where it has disputes with the Philippines and several other South-east Asian nations, were also on the agenda.

Reuters
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Donald Trumps administration has conceded the Republican healthcare bill must change if it has any hopes of being passed through Congress.

House speaker Paul Ryan said some necessary improvements and refinements to the legislation will be made, just days after a report found the Obamacare replacement would leave millions without health cover.

The legislation cleared its first hurdle after receiving approval from the Budget Committee, in spite of the damning report and numerous defections from Republican representatives.

David Brat, Gary Palmer and Mark Sanford joined the panel's Democrats in voting against the bill, as the White House and Republican leaders discussed changes to satisfy conservatives who oppose it.

"I don't think we are anywhere near passage," Mr Brat said after the vote, noting that Republican conservatives as well as moderates had problems with the bill.

However Mr Ryan said: "We are on track and on schedule."

Even if it passes the House, it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where Republicans hold a slimmer majority.

The bill faces unified Democratic opposition, as well as criticism from leading healthcare providers, including doctors and hospitals.

Independent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), similar to Britains Office for Budget Responsibility, estimated that 14 million more people would be uninsured next year under the legislation than under under the current arrangement  a figure expected to rise to 24 million by 2026.

Mr Trump told a Nashville, Tennessee rally on Wednesday: Its going to be great.

Democrats say the Republican plan could hurt the elderly, poor and working families while giving tax cuts for the rich. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it "a wreck".

"It's vintage Donald Trump: talks like a populist, but when he acts, it's hard-right, favouring the special interests and hurting the middle class and those trying to get there," Mr Schumer said.

However, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said there's no perfect piece of legislation.

There's gonna be this framework that's gonna be added to or subtracted to during the process, and eventually it's going to pass the House and it's going to pass the Senate," he told Fox News.

Additional reporting by agencies.
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Fox News anchor Sean Hannity reportedly pulled out a gun after a row with a guest during a live TV interview.

The conservative TV personality allegedly turned on the weapons laser light causing a red dot to bob around on the body of Democrat commentator Juan Williams.

Sources told CNN the off-camera incident which took place in October clearly disturbed Williams and others present on set but Hannity did appear to be simply "showing off".

Hannitys colleagues reportedly informed Fox News executives about what had happened but it remains unclear whether anything came of it. Sources claimed the incident was passed on to Bill Shine, the networks co-president and a longtime friend of Hannitys.

A Fox News spokesperson said the incident was referred to the legal and human resources departments.

Williams, who is a political analyst for Fox News, played down the incident in a statement.

"This incident is being sensationalised  everything was under total control throughout and I never felt like I was put in harms way," the Panama-born journalist said on Twitter. "It was clear that Sean put my safety and security above all else and we continue to be great friends."

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Hannity, a well-known supporter of President Donald Trump, denied claims he had pointed the gun at Williams.

Never pointed at anybody. Let's be clear. Unloaded. Never pointed. I have been a gun safety advocate for years, the long-time anchor wrote on Twitter late on Thursday.

In a further statement provided by Fox News, Hannity said: "While discussing the issue of firearms, I showed my good friend Juan Williams my unloaded firearm in a professional and safe manner for educational purposes only.

"Every precautionary procedure that I have been trained in since the age of 11 was followed. I've had a conceal carry permit in five states for all of my adult life. Any other interpretation of this is outright false reporting."

"Sean Hannity has been trained in firearm safety since he was 11 years old and has a license to carry a gun in five states, including New York," Fox News also said in a statement. "The situation was thoroughly investigated and it was found that no one was put in any danger."

Hannity, who has interviewed Mr Trump on a number of occasions, is a leading voice among conservative media in the US. The former talk radio host was one of the first people to be signed by the Fox News channel when it was established in October 1996.
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A Secret Service laptop containing floor plans for Trump Tower has been stolen from an agency vehicle in New York.

Authorities are still looking for the device, which is encrypted, the New York Daily News reported.

It was also said to contain details of the investigation into former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

The Daily News cited police sources and said the thief stepped out of a car in a Brooklyn street before stealing the laptop from an agent's vehicle.

According to ABC, authorities are able to wipe the laptop's hard drive remotely if necessary. They are reportedly using video evidence in an attempt to identify the thief.

The Secret Service said in a statement: "The US Secret Service can confirm that an employee was the victim of a criminal act in which our agency issued laptop computer was stolen.

"Secret Service-issued laptops contain multiple layers of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information."

It declined to comment further "until the facts are gathered".
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Donald Trump will reportedly use more than $4 billion (3.2bn) in US taxpayer money to build his border wall, breaking repeated campaign promises that Mexico would pay for its construction.

White House budget proposals reveal the Republican leader will request $1.5 billion (1.2bn) for the project under the 2017 fiscal year. He will request a further $2.6 billion (2.1bn) in 2018, according to a senior administration official.

However experts have suggested the $4.1 billion figure could be just a fraction of the total cost.

According to leaked calculations by the Department of Homeland Security, the project could come to more than $21 billion (16.9bn).

Throughout his campaign, the former real-estate mogul insisted that not only would he build a great wall but Mexico would pay for it.

However, in January he admitted US taxpayers would foot the bill, however he insisted Mexico would reimburse the US after construction.

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 at the time.

Mexican officials have since repeatedly denied they will contribute financially to the walls construction.

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada said: 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.

The budget blueprint released on Thursday will see the Mexican border wall prioritised over community projects such as Meals on Wheels and housing assistance.

The president's proposals include the complete elimination of the $3 billion (2.4 billion) Community Development Block Grant program, which funds those programs along with other community assistance efforts.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will also see its funds slashed.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The $1.15 trillion (1 trillion) budget  titled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again  will however benefit the military, which will receive the largest windfall since the Reagan administration.
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President Donald Trump nodded in agreement during a Wednesday interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson when told the American Health Care Act, the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, would cause the most damage to people who voted for him in November.

During the interview, Carlson mentioned an analysis by Bloomberg that showed that counties that voted more heavily for Trump in the election would see their tax credits to purchase insurance fall dramatically and likely see the number of people without insurance increase.

"Oh, I know. I know," Trump responded. "It's very preliminary, Tucker."

According to the analysis, people in counties that voted for Trump would see $6.6 billion in annual tax cuts, while people living in counties that supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would get a tax break of $21.9 billion.

Additionally, since the AHCA's tax credits would be flat totals based on age instead of income and cost of living, some states would see a sharper decrease in their average premiums.

Based on an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the seven states in which Americans would see their tax credits decline the most are Alaska, North Carolina, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Each of those states voted for Trump. In fact, the 13 states that would see the steepest declines in tax credits all swung toward Trump in November.

Despite the disproportionate effect the bill could have on his own voters, Trump said the bill would eventually pass. But he suggested changes to the existing version.

"A lot of things aren't consistent," Trump said. "But these are going to be negotiated.

"And by the way, if we're not going to take care of the people, I'm not signing anything," he added. "I'm not going to be doing it, just so you understand."

Read more:

 16 psychological tricks to make people like you immediately

 A new study reveals that certain drugs may make us smarter than we thought

 This is the one thing you should never do if you want a free flight upgrade

Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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Donald Trump has apparently refused to shake Angela Merkel's hand during a joint appearance at the White House.

The pair held an awkward meeting that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape the working relationship between two of the world's most powerful leaders.

While the President greeted the German leader with a handshake upon her arrival at the White House, he appeared to ignore requests to do so as the pair sat together later in front of TV cameras.

In footage of the photo opportunity, as photographers call for the two to shake hands, Ms Merkel can be heard saying: "Do you want to have a handshake?"

Mr Trump briefly turns towards her, but continues sitting with his legs apart and hands together.

She then turns back to face the cameras, smiling thinly.

Despite the seemingly frosty nature of the joint appearance, both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good.

The meeting is consequential for both sides.

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Ms Merkel, who officials say has prepared carefully for the encounter, is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union.

Mr Trump, who as a presidential candidate criticised Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, will seek her support for his demand that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations pay more for their defence needs.

Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Ms Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Mr Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman.

He spent a good part of 2016 criticising the Chancellor, accusing her of "ruining" Germany for allowing an influx of refugees from Syria.

"You watch what happens to Angela Merkel, who I always thought of as a very good leader until she did this. I don't know what went wrong with her," said then-candidate Mr Trump at an August rally in Virginia. "What went wrong? Angela, what happened?"

Then, Mr Trump seemed to care little about the potentially awkward ramifications were he to win. He invoked Ms Merkel as a foil at his rallies, accusing his campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, of wanting to be "America's Angela Merkel." He lashed out at Time magazine when it named Ms Merkel "Person of the Year" in 2015 instead of him.

Mr Trump, at the time, did find ways to voice his respect. When a television station in September asked him to name a world leader he admired, he cited Ms Merkel.

"Those who know the Chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government.

Mr Trump is eager to see follow-through on his demand that European countries shoulder more of the burden of paying for the Nato alliance, which he has criticised.

He will also seek ideas from Ms Merkel on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader Ms Merkel has dealt with extensively and whom Mr Trump, to the consternation of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, has praised.

"The President will be very interested in hearing the chancellor's views on her experience interacting with Putin," a senior administration official told reporters.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are to hold a White House meeting that could help determine the future of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) and shape the working relationship between two of the world's most powerful leaders.

The pair are also expected to discuss relations with Russia and Ms Merkel, who officials say has prepared carefully for the encounter, is likely to press her US counterpart for assurances of support for a strong European Union (EU) and a commitment to fight climate change.

Seen as polar opposites politically and personality wise, the pair appear to have little in common.

During this presidential election campaign, Mr Trump accused the Chancellor of ruining Germany and heavily criticised her open-door policy for refugees.

Ms Merkel, has criticised his executive order, barring travel from six predominantly Muslim countries.

The German leader, who had close relations with Mr Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W Bush, is nonetheless likely to seek a strong working relationship with Mr Trump despite major policy differences.

It is thought that the American leader will seek support for his demand that Nato countries pay more for their defence needs.

Germany's defence spending is currently 1.23% of GDP, below the organisation's two per cent target. Mrs Merkel is expected to reassure President Trump of her country's existing commitment to hit that mark.

The German Chancellor is also expected to ask for Mr Trump to support the EU and commit to fight climate change - both of which appear to go against the US leader's thinking.

Mr Trump has previously described Brexit as a great thing and once tweeted: It's really cold outside... We could use a big fat dose of global warming!"

Germany: Thousands of AfD supporters rally against Merkel's refugee policies

Juergen Hardt, a conservative politician who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government, was nonetheless confident in his leader's ability to charm the US President.

Those who know the Chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions," he said. "I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune."

It is thought the President will also seek counsel from Ms Merkel on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The President will be very interested in hearing the Chancellor's views on her experience interacting with Putin, a senior administration official said.

The Trump administration's position on American participation with the Paris Agreement on climate change would likely come up in the meeting, they added.

Ms Merkel is known to be a strong supporter of international efforts to fight global warming, but Mr Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed during his campaign to cancel the Paris Agreement within 100 days.

He said it would be too costly for the US economy.

But in a New York Times interview in November, Mr Trump appeared to change tack, saying he would keep an open mind about the agreement.
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Donald Trump has told German Chancellor Angela Merkel at least we have something in common over claims his phones were wiretapped by his predecessor Barack Obama during last year's presidential campaign.

Mr Trump, speaking at a press conference with Ms Merkel apparently referring to reports in 2013 during Mr Obama's presidency that the United States bugged her phone. Congressional leaders from both political parties say they do not believe Mr Trump was wiretapped.

Ms Merkel remained stony-faced despite laughs among the gathered press.

Mr Trump said his White House shouldn't be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who accused British intelligence of helping former Mr Obama spy on him. There is no evidence such spying took place and GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, has called the allegation utterly ridiculous.

Mr Trump - defending himself and the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer - said: we said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television.

He added: you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to [the television network] Fox.

The US president said he very seldom regrets anything he tweets, brushing off questions about his claims without evidence that Mr Obama, wiretapped him.

Mr Trump and Ms Merkel were meeting face-to-face for the first time, with the talks between the leader of Europe's largest economy and the US president was billed as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship.

Mr Trump reiterated his strong support for Nato and pressed Ms Merkel to meet Nato's military spending target, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.

"I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for Nato as well as the need for our Nato allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defence," Mr Trump said.

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

Ms Merkel said she told Mr Trump that Germany needs to meet Nato spending goals. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Mr Trump said he expected the United States to do "fantastically well" in trade with Germany, while Ms Merkel said she hoped the United States and the European Union could resume discussions on a trade agreement.

"We held a conversation where we were trying to address also those areas where we disagree, but we tried to bring people together ... (and) tried to find a compromise that is good for both sides," Ms Merkel said.

As a presidential candidate, Mr Trump criticised Ms Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany. At the news conference, Ms Merkel hinted at differences, saying: "This is obviously something we had an exchange of views about."

Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Ms Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman.

Reuters contributed to this report
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Donald Trumps first budget since taking office made-good on his promise to boost military funding while slashing domestic costs  but not only has the financial plan gone after traditional conservative targets, it has cut programmes benefitting the blue-collar Americans who voted for Mr Trump in November.

The closure of a regional airport could force residents of a small town in upper Michigan to drive eight hours to catch a flight. The elimination of funding to keep the Great Lakes clean could hurt business at a waterside Ohio boating club. Cuts to the nation's flood insurance program could mean greater losses after a storm for homeowners on Florida's Gulf Coast.

And among the losers of the 2018 budget proposal, submitted by the White House, are the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and the US Economic Development Administration. Both agencies work to create jobs in areas such as West Virginia and Kentucky to help them recover from the decline of the coal industry.

 Trump's budget director says it is 'as compassionate as you can get' to save taxpayers' money by cutting welfare programs

Last year the Congress approved a record budget of $146m (118m) for the ARC to improve outcomes in areas disaffected by the decline of coal. The agency invested $73m (59) in 89 projects  including teaching coal miners how to code  across 236 counties.

Rural America stepped up to the plate behind the President in his last election, and we're wholeheartedly behind him, Republican chairman of the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee in Alabama Robert Aderholt said.

But he added that he was concerned about cuts that would hurt several rural development programmes.

It doesn't really reflect President Trump's support for rural communities, he said.

Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, who represents eastern Kentucky's coal counties, echoed the comments, telling Reuters he would fight against the cuts to the ARC.

It's true that the president won his election in rural country. I would really like to see him climb aboard the ARC vehicle as a way to help us help ourselves, Mr Rogers said.

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

Four hundred of the 420 counties ARC operates in voted for Mr Trump in the Presidential election.

Trump administration officials have insisted the proposal supports a desire to give states more flexibility and protects taxpayers from seeing their dollars wasted.

You're only focusing on half of the equation, right? Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said when asked about the cuts

You're focusing on recipients of the money. We're trying to focus on both the recipients of the money and the folks who give us the money in the first place.

Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Every weekday, 700 children from some of the poorest parts of the Atlanta area stay after school for three hours with Wings for Kids, a program that aims to bolster not only academic performance, but also social skills, relationships with caring adults and a sense of belonging at school.

The children get a safe and enriching place to spend the afternoon and early evening, and their working parents get child care.

But now, Wings for Kids and thousands of programs like it are on the chopping block, threatened by President Trumps proposal to eliminate $1.2 billion (970 million) in grants for after-school and summer programs.

Its heart-wrenching, said Bridget Laird, chief executive of the program which serves 1,600 children in Atlanta; Charlotte; Charleston and Lake City in South Carolina.

She said that without federal aid, those programs would be eliminated or gutted. I cant imagine if that were turned off  all of those kids running around the streets.

The program Mr Trump is seeking to axe  known as the 21st Century Community Learning Centers  helps school districts, churches and nonprofit groups serve more than 1.6 million children nationwide.

The administration argues that there is no evidence the program has been effective. But Heather Weiss of the independent Global Family Research Project  who has studied after-school programs for nearly 20 years  said thats not true.

There is a lot of evidence, she said. Engaging kids in high-quality after-school programs, many of which are supported by 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants, results in kids doing better in school. Theyre more likely to graduate and to excel in the labour market.

 Donald Trump blast "judicial overreach" as Hawaii judge blocks travel ban

The proposal is one cut among many in a budget that would slash federal education spending by $9 billion (7.2 billion), or 13.5 percent, in 2018. Mr Trump aims to eliminate billions for teacher training and scale back or end several programs that help low-income students prepare and pay for college.

At the same time, Mr Trump is seeking to shift a historic amount of money  $1.4 billion (1.13 billion)  into charter schools, private-school vouchers and Title I portability, a controversial form of choice that would allow $1 billion (809 million) in federal funds to follow poor children to the public school of their choice.

Advocates hope it would give poor children access to better schools and critics fear it would dilute funds available to the nations neediest schools.

The budget places power in the hands of parents and families to choose schools that are best for their children, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement. It is the first step in investing in education programs that work.

Some conservatives hailed the budget as a sign that Trump intends to make good on his campaign pledge to downsize the Education Department.

I see this as a good step toward limiting federal intervention in education and restoring state and local control, said Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation. Its not appropriate for the federal government to be funding and managing after-school programs.

But the budget proposal drew condemnation from many in the education world, including teachers unions, superintendents, school boards, and representatives of state education chiefs and urban school systems.

John King Jr, who was education secretary under President Barack Obama, called the proposal an assault on the American Dream that would disproportionately harm the poor and children of colour. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said it would take a meat cleaver to public education.

Even some advocates for charter schools  which would get a 50 percent funding increase  rejected the blueprint: Charter schools are part ofnot a substitute fora strong public education system, Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, said in a statement. Charter schools cannot succeed without strong teachers and a seamless, affordable path to college for their graduates.

Adding to the unease is the fact that more reductions have yet to be identified. Those disclosed in the two-page budget summary do not add up to the $9 billion total proposed by the administration.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

There are a bunch of cuts we dont know about, said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Mr Minnich said state education chiefs are deeply concerned that the budget prioritizes school-choice experiments over existing programs that serve all students. Among the chiefs top priorities is saving the money for teacher training. The administration proposed eliminating the $2.4 billion (1.94 billion) program, arguing that it is poorly targeted and spread thinly across thousands of districts with scant evidence of impact.

Mr Minnich said there are obviously ways to improve how the money is spent. But it doesnt mean we cut the money, he added. We should be talking about using that money to make sure every kid has a great teacher.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 68 urban school systems, said his members rely on the fund mostly to reduce class size, which is allowed under current rules.

Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Show all 18 1 /18 Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The 12th-century castle dominates Sevnica old town Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The old town has a beautiful riverside setting Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town 'White House' slippers in Sevnica castle Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The annual salami festival, the Salamiada Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Sevnica was a nondescript town before Melania hit the big time AFP/Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Sevnica butchers take their sausage-making skills seriously Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Only men are allowed in the Salamiada Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town As American as.... a Sevnica apple pie Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town There are no plans to make a Donald pie Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The slippers featured in a recent fashion show AFP/Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The castle is one of the top tourist sites in town Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Melanija cake has gone down a storm AFP/Getty Images Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The smart house still owned by Melania's parents Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town They live in America but visit occasionally Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town The communist block of flats in which Melania grew up Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Melania skin cream, for a presidential complexion Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town First lady chocolates, dusted with gold Nick Redmayne Sevnica: Melania Trump's home town Even locals can't get enough of the Melanija cake Nick Redmayne

Mr Casserly estimated that schools in his coalition, including those in the District, receive about $600 million (486 milllion) from the program, which pays the salaries of thousands of teachers.

Several observers said its too soon to predict how Trumps proposal will play in Congress. Despite the Republican zeal for shrinking the Education Department, lawmakers are likely to face pressure to preserve funding for their constituents.

Mr Trumps push for choice is also likely to face political head winds: Democrats almost uniformly oppose vouchers. So do some Republicans. And the presidents proposal to allow $1 billion (809 million) in federal funds to follow poor children to the public schools of their choice  while thin on details  sounds a lot like a proposal that failed to pass the GOP-led Senate in 2015.

Its unclear to me that the politics of that has changed just in the last year and a half, Mr Casserly said.

The Washington Post
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A senior member of Donald Trumps Oklahoma campaign team was booked on felony prostitution charges after police found him in a motel room with a teenage boy and drugs, court documents showed.

Ralph Shortey, who campaigned as a champion of family values, was charged with three felony counts, including engaging in child prostitution.

The 35-year-old who has served as an Oklahoma Republican state senator since 2010, has not spoken to media about the incident.

According to an arrest affidavit, police found Shortey and a 17-year-old male, who was not named, in a motel room in Moore, south of Oklahoma City, on March 9.

"Officers present observed a strong odor of marijuana coming from the room and inside the room at the time of their contact with the defendant," the affidavit said, adding the officers also "found an opened box of condoms in the defendant's backpack."

According to court records filed in Cleveland County, Shortey was booked at a local jail. His bond has been set at $100,000 (81,000) and local media said he was released about two after he surrendered.

Oklahoma politicians from both major parties called on Shortey to resign, including Republican Governor Mary Fallin.

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"The charges against him do not reflect the character and decorum that we expect of an elected official," Ms Fallin said in a statement.

A guns rights advocate who has taken a hard-line stance against abortion, Shortey was sanctioned by the Republican-dominated state Senate earlier this week, on a 43-0 vote for "disorderly behavior."

The sanctions imposed penalties such as stripping him of his office space, removing him from committee positions and cancelling his reserved parking space.
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Donald Trump has accused North Korea of behaving very badly  and said that China has done little to help.

The US President said on Twitter: North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been playing the United States for years. China has done little to help!

His words came as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against North Korea was an option on the table.

The Presidents highest-ranking diplomat said during a visit to South Korea that he would bring an end to the policy of strategic patience, where the US tolerated the Norths nuclear and missile tests.

Instead, he said, the US would explore a range of military options, alongside diplomatic, security and economic measures.

The statement marks a major change from the USs policy on Pyongyang, which has tended to see it criticise but not necessarily respond to hostile actions by Kim Jong-uns regime.

Mr Tillerson made his remarks in Seoul after visiting the buffer zone between the two countries. The area is said to be the most heavily armed border in the world.

 US military action against North Korea 'an option on the table'

He outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Koreas nuclear threat and said he was not interested in talks with Pyongyang unless it started the process of giving up its nuclear weapons.

Asked about the possibility of using military force, Mr Tillerson told reporters all of the options are on the table.

The Secretary of State met with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se and the countrys acting President, Hwang Kyo-ahn, on the second leg of a three-nation trip which began in Japan and will end in China. The Associated Press said US State Department officials have described it as a listening tour as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy.

On his final day in office, Barack Obama was reported to have told Mr Trump that dealing with North Korea would likely be his most pressing challenge once he assumed office.

North Korea has successfully launched hundreds of short- and mid-range missiles, but it has not yet launched a long-range missile that might threaten the US.

However, North Koreas leader recently said the country will soon test intercontinental missiles. Experts have said it is difficult to know if he is bluffing or telling the truth.

During the presidential campaign, Mr Trump frequently voiced concerns about North Koreas nuclear programme and called on China to use its influence to deal with the situation.

China should solve that problem, Mr Trump said last year. And if they dont solve the problem, we should make trade very difficult for China.
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GCHQ has denied it helped Barack Obama spy on then-President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower and called the allegation "utterly ridiculous".

Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano alleged during a Fox & Friends broadcast earlier this week that Mr Obama had bypassed the US' intelligence community and used the UK's spy centre to obtain details of Mr Trump's conversations.

The claim was repeated on Thursday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer as he defended Mr Trump's still-unsubstantiated claim that Mr Obama "had my wires tapped".

It has prompted a forthright response from GCHQ. A spokesperson told CNN: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then-President elect are nonsense.

"They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

The US Senate Intelligence Committee said earlier on Thursday there were "no indications" Trump Tower was under surveillance by the US government before or after the Presidential election.

President Donald Trump had used a series of Twitter posts to accuse his predecessor, Barack Obama, of wiretapping him.

In an interview on Wednesday with Fox News, Mr Trump suggested he first thought the former president was carrying out surveillance on Trump Tower after reading an article on the campaign in the New York Times.

Committee chairman Richard Burr, and vice chairman Mark Warner, said in a statement: "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."
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Jeff Sessions, the US Attorney General, has described marijuana as only slightly less awful than heroin.

The man Donald Trump selected to be the Government's chief lawyer outlined his stance on drug use in a speech to police chiefs on Wednesday.

I realise this may be an unfashionable belief in a time of growing tolerance of drug use, he said, but too many lives are at stake to worry about being fashionable.

I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalising marijuana  so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another thats only slightly less awful.

Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life.

He said telling people the terrible truth about drugs would save lives and turn back the surge in crime that follows increased drug use.

Mr Sessions comments will raise concerns among supporters of marijuana legalisation in the US, who are keen to find out how the Government will approach the drug.

 Hollywood sign changed to Hollyweed' to promote cannabis legalisation

He has previously claimed that legal cannabis causes violent crime, despite a lack of evidence for his claim.

Eight states and the District of Columbia have already legalised marijuana for recreational use. But the Justice Department would have several options available should it decide to enforce federal law.

The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? Show all 6 1 /6 The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258565.bin The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258571.bin The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258570.bin ALAMY The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258568.bin The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258567.bin The ultimate herbal remedy: Can cannabis improve autism? 258566.bin

These include filing lawsuits on the grounds that state laws regulating pot are unconstitutional because they are preempted by federal law.

While marijuana dependence is a growing problem, it actually produces dependence less readily than most other illicit drugs.

Some 9 per cent of those who try marijuana develop dependence compared to, for example, 15 per cent of people who try cocaine and 24 per cent of those who try heroin, a study found.
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White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney has claimed that cuts to a scheme designed to feed the poor were compassionate to the taxpayer.

Community projects like Meals on Wheels are just some of the social welfare schemes which are set to lose their federal funding under the Trump administrations proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

President Donald Trump's plans include the elimination of the $3bn (2.4bn) Community Development Block Grant Program which funds schemes like Meal on Wheels, housing assistance programmes and projects to improve public facilities like parks.

Mr Mulvaney defended the plans to get rid of the fund, which was first introduced by former President Gerald Ford in 1975 and has since won bipartisan support.

He said they could not spend on programmes that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises weve made to people.

He added the budget blueprint, which will also proposes increased funding for the military and an immediate $1.5bn (1.2bn) cash injection for Mr Trump's proposed border wall, was one of the most compassionate things we can do.

At a White House briefing, he told reporters: You're only focusing on half of the equation, right? Youre focusing on 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.

And I think it's fairly compassionate to go to them and say, Look, we're not going to ask you for your hard-earned money anymore  unless we can guarantee to you that that money is actually going to be used in a proper function. And I think that is about as compassionate as you can get.

As well as the Community Development programme, 12 out of 15 federal departments will see their funding slashed.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The most gravely hit will be the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which will reportedly receive $2.5bn (2bn) instead of the current $8.2bn (6.7bn).

The EPA has been at war with the White House since Mr Trump's inauguration when it tweeted a picture comparison of the crowds at Barack Obamas 2009 inauguration with Mr Trumps earlier this year.

Mr Trump repeatedly insisted the crowd at his inauguration was the biggest ever, but the pictures showed a noticeably thinner attendance at his event.

More than 3,000 EPA workers could lose their jobs as programmes such as Mr Obamas Clean Power Plan, aimed at tightening regulations on emissions from power plants, would be eliminated.

Recommended Here are the federal agencies and programs Trump wants to eliminate

Popular state grants to protect local drinking and waste water would remain.

Mr Mulvaney defended the planned cuts to climate change programmes saying the White House consider that to be a waste of your money.

Mr Trump is a noted climate change sceptic who claimed it was a hoax invented by the Chinese during his election campaign.

Other departments which will be affected are Agriculture, Labour, Housing and State. Federal programmes like the National Endowment for the Arts.

Legal aid for the poor and low-income heating assistance will also likely be cut, if the proposals are approved in the House of Representatives.

The proposal only covers a quarter of the approximate $4tn (3.3tn) federal budget and does not address taxes, social security, Medicare and Medicaid  the social health care programme for the countrys poorest.
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The White House says it has contacted the British Government to explain it was "simply pointing to reports" about GCHQ wiretapping Donald Trump.

The Trump administration, which had already told Number 10 that it would not repeat the comments, suggested that it didn't have to take responsibility for the reports cited by Sean Spicer.

Mr Spicer was referring to claims by a Fox News guest that the British security services had helped Barack Obama spy on Mr Trump when he was President-elect. The White House has said that Mr Spicer wasn't pointing to any story in particular but in fact a range of them.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In fact, Mr Spicer specifically repeated claims made on Fox News by former judge Andrew Napolitano, who said that he had spoken to three sources had told him that GCHQ spied on Mr Trump.

The British ambassador Sir Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall "expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and General McMaster", a White House spokesperson told NBC Nightly News. "Mr Spicer and General McMaster explained that Mr Spicer was simply pointing public reports, not endorsing any specific story", the statement read.

Those reports were quickly denied by GCHQ itself, in an unprecedented move. Both Sir Kim and Sir Mark had backed GCHQ's statement, which described the allegations as "utterly ridiculous".

Representatives of the Trump administration have not publicly apologised for the claims, despite the new statement and its commitment not to repeat them. Asked at a briefing, Theresa May's spokesman refused to say whether there had been a private apology.

Number 10 also said that the fact the White House promised not to repeat the claims showed that the administration does not take them seriously.

He said: "We have made clear to the (US) administration that these claims are ridiculous and that they should be ignored and we have received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated."

Asked if the allegations posed problems for the special UK-US relationship, he replied: "We have a close, special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case."

He added: "We have received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated and this shows the administration doesn't give the allegations any credence."

 Sean Spicer says Donald Trump did not mean Barack Obama personally wire-tapped him during campaign

The PM's spokesman said it would not be possible for GCHQ to spy on Mr Trump as both countries are members of the Five Eyes alliance, a joint intelligence co-operation agreement which also includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

"I would add, just as a matter of fact, with the Five Eyes pact, we cannot use each other's capabilities to circumvent laws," he said.

"It's a situation that simply wouldn't arise."
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A Turkish pro-Government newspaper has caused outrage after depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Hitler on its front page, branding her Mrs Hitler and an ugly aunt.

Right-wing tabloid daily Gunes (Sun) depicted Ms Merkel in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler-style moustache in a furious war of words over Germanys refusal to allow rallies in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The mocked-up image has Ms Merkel holding a gun with a swastika on her uniform and another next to her.

Germany and the Netherlands are at loggerheads with Turkey after both countries barred Turkish ministers from holding rallies to campaign for a yes vote in next months referendum on vastly expanding Mr Erdogans powers, following a failed coup against him last year.

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Mr Erdogan and his supporters are anxious to hold rallies in Germany because the country is home to 1.4 million Turkish immigrants who are eligible to vote in the referendum.

The tabloid accused Ms Merkel of attempting to lead a fascists movement against Turkey and of using Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium to stir up enmity in Germanys back yard.

The Turkish President has accused both countries of supporting terrorism and acting like Nazis, provoking an angry response from Europe, with Ms Merkel and French President Francois Hollande branding the comments unacceptable.

The offensive front page was published two days after German biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, attacked Mr Erdogan for threatening the stability of Europe through his lust for power.

Bild tells the truth to Erdogans face  you are not a democrat! You are hurting your country! You are not welcome here! the German newspaper said.

Bilds front page provoked an immediate backlash from Ankara, with the Turkish foreign ministry describing the article as mind-boggling and hinging on hatred.

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Relations between the two Nato partners deteriorated markedly following the failed coup against Mr Erdogan when Ankara accused Berlin, along with other European governments, of failing to condemn the military element of the organisers.

Mr Erdogan has accused Germany of harbouring enemies of Turkey, including Kurdish militants and the organisers of the coup.

Turkeys Government has reportedly called on expats living in Germany to spy on schools and report any criticism of Mr Erdogan to Turkish authorities.

Ankara has also suspended top-level diplomatic ties with The Netherlands until The Hague meets its conditions to allow the pro-Erdogan rallies.

Mr Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for 14 years and is attempting to rewrite the countrys constitution by expanding his own powers in a move that could see him remain President until 2029.

Gunes front page is not the first time Ms Merkel has had the racial stereotype used against her. A senior figure in the Leave.EU campaign was condemned after posting a mock-up movie of The Great Escape featuring Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove as prisoners of war and Ms Merkel as the Nazi dictator.

Ms Merkel has not responded to the front page, but recently urged the Turkish media and Government to stop making Nazi comparisons.

We will not allow the victims of the Nazis to be trivialised  these comparisons of Germany with Nazism must stop," she said.

They are unworthy of the close ties between Germany and Turkey and of our peoples.
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The Indonesian army has demolished a tiger statue at a base in West Java after its cartoonish appearance became fodder for internet memes.

The grinning wooden mascot in a village in Garut was meant to represent the Siliwangi Military Command, whose logo is a fearsome, roaring tiger's head.

The statue was put in place some years ago but only recently gained fame online, the BBC reported.

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Social media users have mocked its cheesy grin, inserting it into movie posters, while the parodic Indonesian Humour Ministry Facebook page declared its sadness for the tiger's passing.

It "will always be remembered" for its "cheerful" face, said a post on the Kementrian Humor Indonesia page depicting the statue as an angel ascending to heaven, being saluted by a tearful soldier.

Siliwangi military commander Maj Gen Herindra told the BBC: "Every unit has their own decision on how the statue was made, but sometimes the artist was not that good."
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A mysterious pyramid-shaped tomb has been uncovered by archaeologists under a construction site in China.

The structure was discovered in a chamber alongside a similar cylinder-shaped coffin in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.

Experts believe the chamber is a burial site, and could hail from the Han Dynasty (202 BC  220 AD), Chinas so-called golden age.

Who was buried there and why remains a mystery, though the site is currently under investigation, reports the Daily Mail.

Chinese media have nicknamed it the pyramid of Zhengzhou, though at six feet tall it is unlikely to draw as many tourists as the real things in Egypt.

The area used to be a village, reports local media, but work was underway to build a new residential compound when the discovery was made.

Evacuation site of a coffin chamber containing two tombs (Imaginechina/REX)

The chamber, which is 30 metres long and eight metres wide, was described by a local as truly magical.

Ive never seen anything like this, he added.
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US military action against North Korea is an "option on the table", Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said.

Donald Trump's highest-ranking foreign policy advisor said that he would bring an end to the policy of "strategic patience", where the US tolerates nuclear tests and missiles from the country, he said during a visit to South Korea. Instead, the US will explore a range of military options, alongside diplomatic, security and economic measures.

The statement marks a major change from the US's policy on North Korea, which has tended to see it criticise but not necessarily respond to hostile actions by North Korea.

Tensions are rising between North and South Korea after a range of tests initiated by the North. It has recently boasted of firing a missile into the sea and has promised to test more weapons in the future.

Mr Tillerson said that any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with "an appropriate response".

He said said that the US does "not want to, for things to get to military conflict". But he said that if North Korea "elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then, that option's on the table".

Mr Tillerson made the comments after a tour of the demilitarised zone between the two countries. He had earlier vowed that the US would be tougher on North Korea's nuclear threat, but didn't give any details on what that "different approach" would consist of.

He pointedly noted that 20 years of "diplomatic and other efforts" had failed to dissuade the isolated communist government from developing its nuclear program, which he called an "ever-escalating threat."

Inside the daily life in North Korea Show all 19 1 /19 Inside the daily life in North Korea Inside the daily life in North Korea People reading a newspaper at the metro station Inside the daily life in North Korea Thoughts of the leaders on the tram. They have about a dozen of these on every tram, all with different thoughts Inside the daily life in North Korea Young people training for a big upcoming festival Inside the daily life in North Korea People at the Pyongyang's annual marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea Many stars on one of the trolleys in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea An intimidating poster in a primary school in North Korea. Inside the daily life in North Korea Solar panels installed on a street lamp. Inside the daily life in North Korea A poster on the window next to one of the venues we visited in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Kids playing football next to the Arch of Triumph. After a while tourists were allowed to join, so some of us did Inside the daily life in North Korea Class in an educational center in Pyongyang (where people over 17 years old can attend any classes they choose after school, for free) Inside the daily life in North Korea People waving at me during the Pyongyang marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea People having a great time dancing at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea A metro driver in a metro station in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Fireworks to mark the birthday of the Eternal President Kim Il Sung on our last night in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea My wonderful tour guide at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea One of the parks in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea A person rowing some boats for the day at a river in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea The National War Museum Inside the daily life in North Korea Public park in Pyongyang

Tensions between North and South Korea come as military exercises become commonplace more generally in the region. Donald Trump's closest advisor has predicted that there will be a war between the US and China in the next few years.

Mr Tillerson called on China to take on North Korea, by implementing sanctions. And he said that the country does not need to punish South Korea, which it is doing for deploying a US anti-missile system that is intended to help it defend against North Korea.

China has called that system  the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)  a threat to its own security and penalised South Korea for allowing it to be built.

"We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling," Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system.

"We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat for everyone. So we hope China will alter its position on punishing South Korea."

"We hope they will work with us to eliminate the reason THAAD is required."

China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people.

China has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead.

Chinese state media reiterated on Friday that the main problem was between the United States and North Korea, and denounced what it called the "throwing of dirty water" at China by Washington and Seoul.

"They seem to have forgotten that the root of the nuclear issue on the peninsula is the deeply ingrained mutual distrust between the United States and North Korea and the long-time, intense confrontation between North and South," the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said in a front-page commentary.
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Zakir Naiks Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) was banned from India to "safeguard national security", according to the Delhi High Court.

The court has ruled that the government order was not arbitrary and is legal, amid fears people could be radicalised by the group.

Dr Naik is an Indian Islamic preacher and has been banned from entering the UK and Canada because of his radical talks.

The decision by the Union of India was taken in the interest to safeguard the sovereignty, integrity and national security of India, Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said, according to India Express.

Dr Naik has responded to the ban and denied the accusations that have been levelled against him.

I have never done a rebellion or conducted terrorist acts against humans all my life. I only deliver a message of peace to people, he told Malaysian newspaper Sinar Harian.

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

There are certain quarters who do not want peace in this world. So, they make baseless allegations against me.

I ask the Indian government to prosecute me in an international court or in Malaysia, he added.
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An imam told a mother her 14-month-old daughter was possessed by an evil spirit before she allegedly murdered the toddler.

Sofina Nikat, 23, was struggling to care for her daughter Sanaya Sahib, who had become irritable and constantly demanding in the months before her death, a police summary released by the court said, reports Melbourne newspaper The Age.

The young mother, who was separated from Sanayas father, asked her parents in Fiji for guidance.

Ms Nikat migrated from Fiji to Australia for an arranged marriage, local media reports.

But her parents reportedly told her they had consulted an imam, who had found Sanaya had negative energy and was possessed by an evil spirit.

According to the Melbourne paper, Ms Nikat received holy water, lockets and prayers to remove the spirit and cleanse both of them.

The police summary said Ms Nikat told her cousin Sanayas behaviour was so irritating that she wanted to kill herself and her daughter in the months and weeks before the alleged murder.

Ms Nikat told the police Sanaya would "cry and growl to the roof", scratch her and pull her hair and that she was better off in a better place.

Sanaya suffered a seizure a week before she was killed.

Ms Nikat was charged with her daughters murder in April after Sanayas body was found in Darebin Creek, which runs through the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

She admitted to police having taken her daughter for a walk because the child would not stop screaming and she covered the babys mouth and nose until she could no longer breath, before throwing her body in the creek, The Age reports.

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

Forensic pathologist Dr Victoria Francis, who performed the autopsy, told the Melbourne Magistrates Court that the exact cause of death could not be determined and that the possibility she had drowned should not be excluded.

The court was told Ms Nikat suffered from mental health problems before and after her daughters birth.

She is standing trial for her daughters murder and reportedly cried throughout the court hearing.
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Surprise. That was the overwhelming feeling in the Netherlands after the results of the elections on Wednesday. Surprise at the margin of victory for the VVD, even among party insiders themselves. But also surprise at the shocking loss of the Labour party, which entered the election as a governing coalition party with 38 seats but ended the day with a historic low of nine.

The traditional bond with party politics has disappeared over the last 20 years .That in combination with our electoral system and the huge amount of parties that participate, means many voters waver and choose to vote differently in the last few days before the election, Kees Aarts, a professor of electoral behaviour at Groningen University, told The Independent. That worked out well for Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who showed off his statesmanship in a diplomatic spat with Turkey during the last few days before the vote.

The result left a parliament that is more fragmented than ever, with 13 parties gaining seats. Although the VVD came out on top, it did so with the smallest number of seats a winning party has ever held, bar one occasion. Back in 2010, when Mr Rutte was also in charge, the party won even fewer seats. It could become a very difficult formation, Mr Rutte admitted in an interview on Dutch radio.

A first attempt will almost certainly be centred on Mr Ruttes VVD party and the Christian Democrats (CDA) and Liberal Democrats (D66), who each won 19 seats. However, that constellation leaves the party five seats short of a majority.

GroenLinks, the party that was the biggest winner yesterday after it quadrupled its seats to 16, is most likely to be approached first. However, party leader Jesse Klaver said that any formation with the VVD party would be difficult.

Another option that would achieve a majority in parliament and the senate would be a coalition with the Christian Union and another smaller Christian party, the SGP. Yet that coalition would need to overcome disagreements on ethical issues, including expanding euthanasia and drug policy.

Geert Wilders PVV will be excluded from such formation talks. Most parties had already dismissed the option of ruling with the PVV before the elections due to the partys extreme positions, which include plans to ban the Koran and the closure of all mosques. Now the PVV has only won five additional seats it becomes easy to justify the exclusion.

The PVV has missed a crucial opportunity, Mr Aarts said. This was the election in which the PVV could and should have had a breakthrough to become the largest party in the Netherlands.

The PVVs base has held steady at roughly 13 per cent of the population since Mr Wilders started his own party in 2006. In 2012 Mr Wilders, who is the third-longest serving MP in the Netherlands, picked up 15 seats.

The problem for the PVV was how well the VVD did, not that it hasnt managed to broaden its base, Mr Aarts said. The strange thing about the electoral system in the Netherlands is that with 20% you can become the biggest  If VVD hadnt done so well, the PVV could have been the biggest with 15%. So you only need a certain base, as long as the other parties are fragmented enough. Mr Wilders is looking towards the future and tweeted on Thursday that he expects to win next time.

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

PVV supporters had mixed feelings about the result, which Mr Wilders hailed as a win. The only consolation I have is that a lot of his positions were co-opted by the other parties. So I can hope that they will be executed in one way or another over the next few years, Jolande Meijer told The Independent by phone. She has supported the party since its founding in 2006.

That shift to the right put the jubilant reaction across Europe, that populism had been vanquished, into perspective. The Dutch population overwhelmingly voted for centrist or centre right parties. A new party which presented itself as a civilised alternative for the PVV, Forum for Democratie, is entering parliament for the first time with two seats.
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Government agencies and financial institutions are on alert across Europe amid fears a Greek anarchist group that sent parcel bombs to French and German officials will strike again.

The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF) vowed to widen their attacks on oppressors after claiming responsibility for an explosive device intercepted before it reached the German finance minister.

The following day, another parcel bomb exploded when it was opened by an unsuspecting secretary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Paris.

 Explosion at IMF offices in Paris

She suffered burns to her face and hands, as well as a damaged eardrum in the blast, which sparked a security lockdown in the French capitals affluent 16th arrondissement.

French prosecutors said the package bomb had been posted from Greece, with fragments of stamps found at the blast site, and Francois Hollande noted similarities with the anarchist attack in Berlin.

Recommended Package bomb leaves one person injured at Paris IMF offices

We are trying to establish the causes of what happened as part of an international investigation, the President added.

An official in Greeces public order ministry said anti-terror investigators had taken charge of the case, which is feared to be a repeat of a Europe-wide CCF campaign more than six years ago.

It is very likely that they were sent by the same organisation, he added, saying there were concerns over the potential distribution of more parcel bombs. It looks as if it could be a repeat of 2010.

The Hellenic Police are now attempting to prevent any more explosive packages being sent out via the Greek postal service, which is investigating how they evaded airport security checks in Athens.

Greece's deputy minister for public order, Nikos Toskas, said the Paris bomb was falsely sent in the name of a senior Greek conservative politician, Vassilis Kikilias, and the address of an office that is no longer in use.

French police officers take position after a parcel bomb exploded at the French office of the International Monetary Fund in Paris on 16 March (AP)

The device intercepted at the German finance ministry on Wednesday was under the name of another politician from the New Democracy party, Adonis Georgiadis.

Mr Toskas acknowledged that the incidents would require a re-evaluation of procedures in Greece and abroad, adding: Clearly they are from the same source, the same organisation...the leftovers of the CCF."

Greek investigators believe the group is the most likely culprit for both bombings, while a source close to the French inquiry said it was focusing on "an anarchist group".

The homemade devices were compared to big firecrackers by authorities, who said they used explosives normally seen in pyrotechnic manufacturing, crammed inside packages designed to trigger when opened.

A previous parcel bombing campaign by the CCF forced authorities to suspend international post leaving Greece for 48 hours in 2010, when devices were sent to targets including Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolas Sarkozy, Europol and international embassies.

The campaign resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of several anarchists but the group ridiculed police claims it had been dismantled in a propaganda statement.

Police crackdowns have resulted in a series of arrests and prosecutions but a message posted online on Thursday claimed the groups comrades would continue their violent struggle.

The CCF, which emerged in 2008 during the Greek financial crisis, hailed the launch of a new phase of Operation Nemesis  a campaign of attacks in revenge for the imprisonment of activists.

The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 10: Greece AP The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 9: Denmark Shutterstock The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 8: Austalia Getty Images The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 7: Sweden Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 6: Mexico Reuters The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 5: Germany Anthony Faiola/The Washington Post The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 4: Israel AP The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 3: US Getty The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 2: France Getty The 10 developed countries suffering the most deaths from terrorism 1: Turkey AP

For each comrade in prison, new comrades are ready to take his place and continue the path of attack, said a Conspiracy of Fire Cells statement, signed off with the phrase LONG LIVE ANARCHY.

We sent parcel bomb to the German finance minister as part of the second act of the Project Nemesis campaign.

Watch for more announcements in the future.

The bomb in Berlin was addressed to German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble, a day before he was due to host his new American counterpart, Steven Mnuchin, while the Paris device was intended for the IMF's Europe director, Jeffrey Franks.

The attempted attacks followed previous targeting patterns focusing on financial authorities and countries linked to Greeces controversial bailout programme.

Many Greeks resent the austerity measures imposed by the IMF and EU in exchange for Athens to receive billions of euros, while anarchists additionally oppose state and international financial systems.

The CCF characterised its campaign as attacks on tyrants supported by militants in Chile and Italy.

CCF is an idea that cannot be contained because it is like the Hydra, said a statement.

A spokesperson for the National Police Chiefs' Council urged authorities to remain alert, although it was not aware of any parcel bomb threats in Britain.

We are not aware of any incidents of this nature in the UK but we always remind people to be vigilant, a spokesperson told The Independent.
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Jehovahs Witnesses should be declared an extremist organisation, according to Russias Ministry of Justice, which asked the country's Supreme Court to ban it and liquidate it.

The legal filing is placed on the court's website, although no is date given for legal action.

Calling the move an attack on their worship, which could have dire consequences for its congregation in the country, the Jehovah Witnesses said they had received reassurances from the ministry that it was not going to go ahead with the lawsuit.

They made the claim in a statement released from their administrative center around 25 miles northwest of St. Petersburg.

However, if the court does declare them extremist, the group said more than 170,000 Witnesses in more than 2,200 congregations in Russia could be criminally prosecuted for meeting for worship,

Reading the Bible together or talking to others about their faith could lead to prosecutions, they added. Properties dedicated to worship and almost 400 legal entities could also be dissolved, they said.

Vasiliy Kalin, a representative for the Russian group, said: The profound desire of each of Jehovahs Witnesses in Russia is just to be able to worship our God peacefully. For over 100 years, the authorities in Russia have trampled on the guarantees of their own laws, which grant us this right.

I was just a boy when Stalin exiled my family to Siberia merely because we were Jehovahs Witnesses. It is sad and reprehensible that my children and grandchildren should be facing a similar fate. Never did I expect that we would again face the threat of religious persecution in modern Russia.

Russian authorities threatened to close Jehovahs Witnesses administrative centre last March, when they issued a formal warning to the congregation that the religious association will be subject to liquidation if it failed to eliminate within two months the violations identified by the government as extremist.

In February, the General Prosecutors Office requested an audit of the religious groups administrative centre and 73,000 documents were handed over for inspection, according to Russia's Sova Center of Information and Analysis, which monitors hate crimes and the enforcement of anti-extremist laws.

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. 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Jehovahs Witnesses first legally registered as a religious group in Russia in 1991 and was registered again in 1999.

They have been repeatedly prosecuted in Russia but for the past decade, they have been targeted by the tightening of restrictions on their religious freedoms.

Several warnings were issued to the religious groups administrative centre, which is located 40km north of St Petersbourg in the village of Solnechnoye, accusing it of being unlawful.

In 2006, Russia changed its legal definition of extremism, removing the element of violence or hatred but stating the incitement of.religious discord as the criteria. This means Jehovahs Witnesses have the same legal status as Isis.

Two year ago, the government banned their international website because it deemed it extremist and a year later it prevented Bibles published by the religious group to enter Russia.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights found a ruling by a Russian court to ban the organisation "unlawful".
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St Patricks Day - For many people around the world it means felt leprechaun costumes, slanderous stereotypes and Guinness shirt stains.

However, March 17 only recently became synonymous with parades, painfully pun cocktails and green rivers.

To get the skinny on this annual Irish celebration  here are four key questions we all want to know the answer to.

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1) Who was St Patrick?

Little is known about St Patrick but according to folklore  He was probably born in Wales around 387AD before being kidnapped by Irish pirates aged 14.

As the legend dictates, St Patrick became an enslaved pig and sheep herder.

Accordingly he was returned to Wales by kind sailors aged 20. It was then he allegedly received a divine vision from God calling on him to become the Voice of Ireland.

On returning to Ireland as a free man, he evangelised converting thousands of pagans to Christianity and establishing churches.

Other legends surround St Patrick include banishing all snakes from the island this is in fact an allegory of his struggles against the Druids.

He is traditionally thought to have died on March 17  explaining the choice of date.

2) Why do we pinch people on March 17?

Pinching people on St Patricks day is thought to revolve around the leprechaun and the legend that wearing green makes one invisible to the mischievous fairies.

As the dubious legend dictates, leprechauns would pinch anyone not wearing green  so people pinch those not wearing green to remind them

3) What is the importance of shamrocks?

This tradition goes back to St Patrick himself. The Patron saint is purported to have used the three leafed shamrock as an illustration of the Holy Trinity.

 Enda Kenny teaches US reporter how to say 'Taoiseach'.

4) Why do people wear green?

Ignoring the leprechaun thing  the Irish connection to the colour green is thought to only go back as far as the late 18th century, reports Time.

Green became synonymous with the non-sectarian Irish republican cause and wearing the colour on March 17th first became a tradition in 19th century New York among the growing Irish immigrant population.
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A Swedish MEP who took her baby to a vote at the European Parliament has called for workplaces to be more child friendly.

A picture of Social Democrat politician Jytte Guteland with her young son on her knees went viral after being shared hundreds of times on Twitter.

The MEP said she wanted to normalise bringing children to work so that parents could do so when necessary.

It's common to have kids at work, but quite uncommon for them to come along and vote. But there is no parental leave for us MEPs, Ms Guteland told The Local.

"I want parents to be able to have parental leave regardless of their job or assignment. I think we should also be child-friendly so that a baby can come along when its possible.

MEPs are not currently entitled to parental leave, and while they are able to take six months maternity or paternity leave, they cannot be replaced by another politician and are obliged to vote in person.

Social media users were quick to praise Ms Guteland, calling her impressive and a good multi-tasker.

It is not the first time Ms Guteland has brought her baby to work. Earlier in the month, Labour MEP Julie Ward shared a photo of her addressing the Parliament while carrying her son.

Sweden is one of the most generous countries in the world for parental leave, with parents able to take 480 days of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted.
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A man who blackmailed dozens of young women into performing sex acts in front of webcams has been jailed for almost 11 years.

Ayden C abused dozens of young girls by gaining their trust through speaking with them on the internet", according to a ruling at an Amsterdam court.

It said the 38-year-old Dutch citizen had then "abused that trust by forcing them to perform sexual acts before their webcams".

It added: "If they refused to do it again, he threatened to send their images to their relatives or to publish them on pornography sites.

Recommended Webcam threat uncovered as police launch computer hijack crackdown

The court heard that some of Ayden C's victims were harassed over a period of years.

Accused of harassing 34 young women and five gay men in countries around the world, including Britain, Canada, Norway and the US, he was found guilty of internet fraud and blackmail and sentenced to 10 years and 243 days in prison.

He faces further charges in Canada for the harassment of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old girl who killed herself in 2012.

A Dutch court ruled in June that he could be extradited to Canada to stand trial over the death of the teenager, although that decision that is currently under appeal.

Photographs of the teenagers breasts had been published online, and shortly before her death she posted a video on YouTube describing how she had been victimised by cyber-bullies.

The man, who is identified only by his first name because of privacy laws in the Netherlands, was arrested in January 2014 after police were alerted by Facebook.

Ayden C pleaded not guilty to 72 charges, including extortion, fraud, possession of hard drugs and making and storing child pornography.

The court heard that some of Ayden C's victims were harassed over a period of years.

Ms Todd's mother, Carol Todd, flew from Canada to the Netherlands to attend the February hearings

She told Dutch broadcaster NPO that her daughter would have wanted to be face to face with him, and tell him what his actions did to her. But she cant."

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. 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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. 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She added: "So Im going to be the one who is sort of standing up for my daughter.

In a separate interview with Netherlands news agency ANP, she said she that she felt relieved at the court's decision.

I hope that this sentence will help the wounds of all the victims heal. It has been a long journey for all of us in the search for justice for Amanda," she said.
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Rights charity Amnesty International has urged US President Donald Trump not to approve arms sales to the Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, warning such moves could implicate the US in possible war crimes in Yemen.

A Saudi-Arabia led coalition of mainly Gulf Arab states has bombed Houthi rebel and al-Qaeda positions for the last two years at the request of the ousted President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadis government.

The campaign has drawn international criticism for allegedly targeting civilian infrastructure, causing unnecessary loss of human life that the UN says could amount to war crimes.

The Gulf alliance maintains that it does not target civilians.

Yemen - now in the third year of a civil war which has killed more than 10,000 and left seven million on the brink of starvation - is also among the seven Muslim countries on which the Trump administration is trying to impose a travel ban.

If approved, this deal would essentially have President Trump throwing gasoline on a house fire and locking the door on his way out, said Margaret Huang, the executive director of Amnesty International USA.

The US should not continue to arm governments that violate international human rights and humanitarian law and simultaneously shut its doors to those fleeing the violence it helps to escalate.

 2.1 million children are facing famine in Yemen

The proposed $300m (240m) package for precision-guided weapons technology for Riyadh and $3bn (2.4bn) deal for F-16 fighter jets for Bahrain were nixed by former US President Barack Obama during his final few months in office after opposition from Congress.

However, it was reported earlier this month that President Trumps administration had cleared the deals for final approval from the White House.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

On Wednesday, Mr Trump welcomed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington DC for talks.

The Saudi delegation later hailed the meeting as a historical turning point in US-Saudi relations which had passed through a period of divergence of views on many issues.
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The Israeli military has said it has shot down one of several anti-aircraft rockets fired at its warplanes by Syria in the most dramatic military skirmish between the two countries since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Air force officials said in a unusual acknowledgement Friday that Israel had struck several targets inside Syria overnight.

The four Israeli planes operating in Syrian airspace were allegedly attacked by three Syrian surface-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted by the Israeli Aerial Defence System, known as Arrow.

 Syria conflict: Six years of war in numbers

Rocket sirens wailed throughout the night in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley. Residents said that an explosion  thought to be the deflected rocket  was heard a few minutes later.

There were no reported casualties, injuries or damage to buildings during the nights events. The Jordanian military also said that debris from the incident landed inside their borders.

It is extremely rare for the Syrian authorities to retaliate to Israeli operations. While Syrian state media initially did not report on the altercation, a later statement said Syria had managed to shoot down an Israeli jet over Palmyra  a claim Israel immediately denied.

Israel had carried out strikes near Palmyra to help Isis terrorist gangs and in a desperate attempt to raise their deteriorating morale and divert attention away from the victories which Syrian Arab Army is making in the face of the terrorist organisations, a Syrian army statement read.

In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Show all 30 1 /30 In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian family arrives at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian woman, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, reacts as she stands with her children in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past resident fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood , after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past residents fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-regime fighter speaks with a child, as residents flee violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops AFP/Getty Images In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Smoke rises as seen from a governement-held area of Aleppo, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers targeting rebels-held areas in the eastern neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria. According to media reports, the army is now holding on 99 percent of Aleppois eastern neighborhoods EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-government forces patrol Aleppo's eastern al-Salihin neighbourhood after troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers rest following the battle at al-Sheik Saeed neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-government fighter walking past closed shops in the Bab al-Nasr district of Aleppo's Old City. Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The crucial battle for Aleppo entered its 'final phase' after Syrian rebels retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The retreat leaves opposition fighters confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in southeast Aleppo, the largest of them Sukkari and Mashhad Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilans arrive at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods. Syria's government has retaken at least 85 percent of east Aleppo, which fell to rebels in 2012, since beginning its operation Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighbourhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The fall of Aleppo would be the worst rebel defeat since Syria's conflict began in 2011, and leave the government in control of the country's five major cities Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee Aliya inside the tent where she lives with her husband and ten children in a camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee women and children outside the entrance to their tents in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee woman outside the entrance to the tent where her family live, in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A vehicle drives past a mosque at night in Idlib, Syria. Picture taken with a long exposure Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The night sky is seen through damaged windows in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, Syria Reuters

Israel largely stays out of the complicated conflict next door, although the border region is restive and authorities have retaliated to occasional stray rockets with reprisals.

Most Israeli air strikes in Syrian territory in the last few years have aimed to prevent weapons smuggling to Iranian-allied Lebanese group Hezbollah, which fights alongside Bashar al-Assads government against Syrias rebels, although the Israel Defence Force (IDF) does not comment on the nature of the missions. Hezbollah, like Iran, is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to voice his concerns that Moscows allies in Tehran are trying to establish a permanent military base in Syria.

Reuters contributed to this report
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At least 46 people - most of them civilians - have been killed, and dozens more injured, after warplanes struck a mosque in rebel-held Aleppo province during prayer time, Syrian war monitors have reported.

More than 300 people were gathered for evening prayers on Thursday at Umar ibn Al-Khattab mosque in the village of al-Jina when the attack occurred, the UK based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Estimates vary as to how many died. The volunteer Syrian Civil Defence rescue service said dozens of people remain buried under rubble.

US Central Command has denied that US jets deliberately hit the mosque, but said that strikes on Thursday targeted an al-Qaeda meeting location in nearby Idlib province.

A later statement clarified that it was not clear where the strikes had taken place.

"We did not target, nor did we strike a mosque. We targeted an al-Qaeda gathering across the street from a mosque. The mosque does not appear to be damaged following the strike," spokesperson Major Josh T Jaques told The Independent.

"We are aware of the reports of civilian casualties and we are looking into it," he added.

 Syria conflict: Six years of war in numbers

Photos shared by activists reportedly from the scene showed bomb debris carrying serial numbers which identified the weapons used as American made Hellfire missiles. Powerful Al-Qaeda affiliated rebel group Ahrar al-Sham also said in a statement that they also believed US planes had carried out the deadly bombing of civilians.

The Syrian and Russian air forces also carry out frequent strikes in Aleppo and Idlib provinces against both Western-backed and al-Qaeda linked rebel forces. A US-led Western coalition is in operation in the east of Syria, where it targets Isis.

Al-Jina, just west of Aleppo, is located firmly within rebel territory.

Its population has been swollen by internally displaced refugees since east Aleppo fell back under government control in December 2016, when under an amnesty deal its inhabitants were bussed out to surrounding rebel towns and villages.

The civil war - which has just entered its seventh year - has left almost half a million people dead and sparked the world's worst refugee crisis since WWII.
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Up to 1,000 US soldiers could join the current 500 officially stationed in northern Syria ahead of the battle to remove Isis from its de facto capital of Raqqa, US defence officials have said.

The mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) managed to cut off all land supply routes leading in and out of Raqqa last week. The offensive to retake the town itself is expected to begin imminently.

The potential deployment, news of which was leaked to the Washington Post, would mean lifting the current caps on ground troops numbers in the conflict.

President Donald Trumps predecessor Barack Obama strongly resisted calls to involve more ground troops in the fight against Isis on the grounds that boots on the ground would draw the US deeper into Syrias complex civil war.

Analysts have also noted an increased US military presence in the country could cause clashes with Russian forces, which operate in the country at the request of ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The new troops would not engage in direct combat, an official said speaking on the condition of anonymity, instead fulfilling the same advisory roles to Arab and Kurdish SDF fighters in Syria the US military currently holds over the border as part of the Iraqi coalition attempts to drive Isis from Mosul.

This would still be by, with and through our local partners on the ground, one defence official said of the potential deployment.

It was reported in January that Mr Trumps administration had reportedly thrown out the pre-existing plans drawn up under his predecessor Barack Obama on how to remove Isis from Raqqa, asking the US militarys chiefs of staff to draw up new strategies for defeating the group, as well as the possibility of establishing safe zones for civilians in Syria.

The new president said on the campaign trail he would defeat Isis quickly after taking office, in the past referencing a top secret plan.

The US and its allies, as well as Russia and the Syrian government, have been fighting to remove Isis from its territory in Syria and Iraq since the group blitzed across the region in the summer of 2014.

While Mr Trump has said in the past he would considering working alongside Russia to defeat Isis, there are no plans to cooperate on the Raqqa offensive at present.

The upcoming battle is further complicated by US ally Turkeys instance the country severs ties with the SDF. The US considers the mainly Kurdish umbrella group the most effective fighting force against the extremists, but Ankara designates them a terrorist threat.
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More than 40 Somali refugees have been killed in an attack on a boat off the coast of Yemen while attempting to flee the countrys brutal civil war.

Coastguard authorities in the Houthi rebel stronghold of Hodeida said a helicopter gunship attacked the vessel they were travelling on in the Red Sea.

A Yemeni people smuggler who survived the attack said the boat had set sail overnight, aiming to cross to Sudan.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed said women and children were among his passengers from the port of Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemens Hodeida province.

African migrants on a boat in the southern port city of Aden on 26 September 2016, before being deported to Somalia (Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

He told the Associated Press that their boat had reached around 30 miles from shore when the helicopter gunship approached and opened fire, sparking panic on board.

Migrants finally managed to hold up torches to show they were civilians, when he said the helicopter stopped firing.

Photos that were too graphic to publish showed the bodies of women and men in civilian clothes lying on top of one another in the partially destroyed boat, their belongings splattered with blood. Children were believed to be among the dead.

Mohamed al-Alay, a coastguard official, told Reuters the refugees, carrying official UN documents, were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

Houthi rebels accused the Saudi-led air coalition of carrying out the attack, following heavy bombardment in the area, where it accuses Shia fighters of smuggling weapons into Hodeida in small boats.

The International Organisation for Migration said at least 42 people had been killed and dozens injured on the boat, which had about 140 people on board. The survivors  75 men and 15 women  were taken to detention centres.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it was deeply distressed by the casualties and called for all parties in the Yemeni civil war to protect civilians in accordance with international law.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen, spokesperson William Spindler said.

UNHCR has been following up to provide urgent assistance and support to the survivors and to the families of those deceased.

The agency warned that conditions in Yemen were continuing to deteriorate, forcing asylum seekers to leave the country either northwards or across the Red Sea, including some with the intention of reaching Europe.

This tragic incident is the latest in which innocent civilians, including Yemenis, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, continue to suffer and disproportionately bear the brunt of the conflict in Yemen, Mr Spindler said.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, although Saudi-led forces including the United Arab Emirates are known to deploy Apache helicopters as part of their air campaign in support of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

The coastal province of Hodeida has come under heavy bombardment in recent years as a stronghold of Houthi rebels, who are fighting the internationally-recognised government alongside forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Yemens civil war, which is about to enter its third year of bloodshed, has allowed terrorist groups including Isis and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to seize territory and carry out attacks.

 2.1 million children are facing famine in Yemen

Despite violence that has left more than 10,000 people dead and 17 million facing starvation, African migrants seeking work in Saudi Arabia have continued using Yemen as a transit point.

Yemen is hosting over 255,000 Somali refugees, with more than 117,000 new asylum seekers arriving in the country last year as the UNHCR ran a campaign warning of the dangers of crossing the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, as well as inside the country.

Oxfam warned that with the conflict worsening, Somalis are being displaced for a second time, joining thousands of people attempting to flee on boats to the Horn of Africa.

Almost 1 million Somalis are displaced in surrounding countries and 1.1 million inside the country itself according to the UN, which said the three-decade-long refugee crisis is among the most protracted in the world.

Peter Salisbury, a senior research fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, said it was the first military attack on a refugee boat he was aware of. Describing the conflict as a forgotten war, he said many migrants had been unable to leave the Yemen.

Although it has displaced hundreds of thousands of people they havent been able to flee or get further than neighbouring countries, he told The Independent.

We havent seen the flow of refugees into Europe, which makes a huge difference in public understanding and the western approach.

Somali refugees were previously killed in Yemen during a brief conflict between northern and southern forces in 1994, when hundreds died after their camp was caught in the crossfire.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Donald Trump is renewing America's ties with Saudi Arabia and this could intensify the regional cold war in the Middle East, an expert has warned.

While relations between Barack Obamas administration and Saudi Arabia turned from chilled to hostile since the Iran nuclear deal, President Trump is clearly distancing himself from his predecessors attitude towards the Gulf.

Following the meeting between President Trump and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week, the White House suggested Saudi Arabia would remain a close consultant to Mr Trump on security and economic challenges in the Middle East.

The Saudis also hailed a "historical turning point" in US-Saudi relations after the two leaders expressed shared views that Iran poses a regional security threat in the region.

Fawaz A Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and the Emirates Chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies told The Independent: We are witnessing a marked shift from the Obama administration to the Trump administration vis-a-vis the Gulf and Saudi Arabia."

He warned the shift in relationship between the two countries could see Saudi Arabia's proxy war with Iran intensify in Yemen, which is being torn apart by civil war.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are backing opposing sides in Syria and Yemen, accusing each other of terrorism and war crimes while denying interference.

We are going to see an intensification of the fierce regional cold war between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shia-dominated Iran.

"We will see a shift from American relative neutrality to major engagement on the side of Saudi Arabia and this will have importance particularly in Yemen.

"Yemen is going to be the major theatre where the US is going to squeeze Iran, said Professor Gerges.

This comes as Mr Trump reportedly gave the Pentagon permission to carry out more raids in Yemen.

The Saudis are delighted that Barack Obama has left the White House. The consensus was that Obama was flirting with Iran at their own expense. The nuclear deal with Iran was the final thing that broke the camels back, said Professor Gerges.

For the Saudis, Mr Trump is now seen as a like-minded ally over Iran, who is unlikely to scrutinise the Saudi government over human rights issues.

On the other hand, Mr Trump is keen to see an increased commitment of fighting Isis in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia could be key in committing to it, he said.

What the Saudis care about and the only thing they care about is Iran. They believe that Iran represents an existential threat to Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump and his team have a visceral hatred of Iran and has made it very clear that Iran is a troublemaker and a supporter of terrorism. The Saudis view the Trump administration through the lens of its stance with Iran," he said.

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

Professor Gerges said the debate over Mr Trump's 'Muslim travel ban' and views on Palestine were secondary and that the US-Saudi relationship relied on a shared position over Iran.

The Trump administration has already increased the volume of its hostile rhetoric towards Iran, he said.

The meeting between Mr Trump and Prince bin Salman was one of a host of high-level meetings between officials from both countries and the White House is showing signs that Saudi Arabia may be taking an influential role in shaping its policies in the Middle East.

Both Iran and Yemen have been listed in Mr Trumps travel ban and while the Saudis welcome Mr Trumps hard-line on Iran, US officials said the President was considering ending a ban on US weapon sales to the Saudis.

The suspension of the arms trade with Saudi Arabia had been implemented by Mr Obama in response to thousands of civilians being killed in the conflict in Yemen.

The relationship between the two countries will also not be limited to diplomatic ties and during the meeting, the two sides discussed the creation of a new US-Saudi programme, which would start initiatives in the energy, industry, infrastructure, and technology sectors, with opportunities worth more than $200 billion (162bn) the statement from the White House said.
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South Koreas scandal-plagued President, Park Geun-hye has been forced from office. Park was impeached by the countrys constitutional court over accusations that she helped a friend win bribes from Samsung and other South Korean conglomerates.

The impeachment follows swiftly on from the arrest of Lee Jae-yong, the de-facto head of Samsung, the countrys biggest conglomerate. He is on trial for a string of corruption charges, including bribery and embezzlement, linked to Parks impeachment. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors allege that Lee donated 41 billion won (29m) to non-profit organisations linked to Parks close friend and advisor, Choi Soon-sil, to secure government support for a merger that would help him to the top of the Samsung group.

Choi, meanwhile, is in detention, accused of using her personal ties with the president to meddle in state affairs and encourage local firms to also donate millions of dollars to non-profit foundations under her control.

All parties deny having done anything wrong. But for a country that ranked the 37th least corrupt out of 167 nations in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, this is a major blow. And South Koreans are up in arms  hundreds of thousands have protested over the reports of corruption and called for Parks impeachment.

The mechanics of corruption

Extensive conflicts of interests, intricate webs of connections and widespread clientelism  where goods or services are exchanged for political support  are the distinctive features of corruption. And they are all too common in the political world across the globe.

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 the absence of proper regulations and corporate governance measures, intimate relationships between economics and politics can lead to corruption. The mechanics is simple and intuitively understandable: through the exchange of favours between business and government, the former can distort political outcomes as a result of the undue influence of their vast wealth.

Besides the devastating effects that corruption may produce on the poor and the economic growth, the distortion of political outcomes may also exert a series of adverse effects on daily business practice. The advantages that a company may gain from a corrupt political system can harm competition. Not only is it bad for competitors, it tends to harm consumers too, as lack of competition typically drives up prices.

Culture change

To counter a distorted relationship between business and government, it is not enough to wait until criminal prosecutions are possible. Not least because there is a whole grey area in which businesses can legitimately influence politics  through lobbying.

Mass protests calling for Park Geun-hye's impeachment (EPA)

Instead, we need to change the way in which companies operate and enhance a culture of anti-corruption. For instance, it could be possible to impose on corporations a transparency rule where they must publicly declare if they or their lobbyists, directly or indirectly, have on the payroll former politicians or public officials close relatives.

The way that corporations are structured is also an important factor in how open they are to corruption. Most companies are organised according to a military model, which is incredibly hierarchical. They adopt a logic of control, which encourages loyalty and obedience to superiors and the company as a whole, but dissuades individualism. These kinds of tyrannical structures foster a culture that passively accepts misconduct.

A recent example of this is Rolls Royce, which recently paid 671m to settle bribery claims that dogged the company for years. An investigation by the UKs Serious Fraud Office into the company revealed that it had an extremely hierarchical and disciplined structure, which ensured high levels of internal confidentiality and facilitated corrupt practices for several years.

If this is true, the particular corporate structure of Samsung could well have played a role in the present scandal. Samsung is a business conglomerate characterised by the concentration of economic power. In fact, in South Korean culture it is called a chaebol, which means dynasty.

Chaebols have been central to the success of South Koreas development and economy today. Each one is controlled by a founding family that, although typically holds only a small portion of the total equity, exerts an unchallenged power within the group. The chairmen are absolute rulers and key managerial posts are almost always given to their relatives. It is this kind of culture of unswerving loyalty that research indicates makes it easy for a companys top management to be enmeshed in corrupt practices.

If we really want to fight corruption in the business world we must also have the courage to transform the internal structure of big companies. Their efficiency must be safeguarded, but the individualism and accountability of employees must be enhanced at the same time.

Costantino Grasso is a lecturer in business management and law at the University of East London. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)
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The transatlantic air fares war of summer 2017 has taken another twist in the shape of a new sister airline for British Airways, which takes to the skies in June.

Level is the chosen name for the new budget long-haul airline from BAs parent company, IAG. It will be based in Barcelona, which is also the hub for Vueling, IAGs Spanish no-frills airline.

The new carrier will initially have two new Airbus A330 aircraft branded in its own livery and fitted with 293 economy and 21 premium economy seats. But Level will not have any pilots or cabin crew of its own. Instead, staff from its sister carrier, Iberia, will operate the planes.

Willie Walsh, the chief executive of IAG, said: Level will become IAG's fifth main airline brand alongside Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia and Vueling. It will complement our existing airline portfolio and further diversify our current customer base.

Barcelona is Vueling's home base and this will allow customers to connect from Vueling's extensive European network onto Levels long-haul flights.

Passengers will have to pay extra for checked luggage, meals and inflight internet access. They will also qualify for Avios, IAGs frequent-flyer currency.

The move emulates what Lufthansa is doing with its Eurowings subsidiary and Qantas has done with its JetStar brand: using a lower-cost offshoot to serve less-profitable routes.

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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 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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. 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The airlines stated mission is: We believe the worlds a better place when we all get out and experience. Were here to make getting there easy and affordable. But the unstated mission is to take on Norwegian, the low-cost airline that is building a big transatlantic network from Spain and the UK. Two of the four routes, to Los Angeles and Oakland (the secondary airport for San Francisco) go head-to-head with Norwegian.

In addition Level will offer flights to Buenos Aires  currently served by Aerolineas Argentinas  and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

British Airways has already responded to Norwegians links from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale in Florida and Oakland by launching its own services on the routes. In June, Norwegian will begin aggressive expansion from Edinburgh and Belfast to secondary airports in the north-east US.

Mr Walsh said Level would expand to fly from other European locations.

Flights on Level are now on sale at flylevel.com.
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British skiers heading for the French and Swiss Alps could find their journeys disrupted this weekend by the shutdown of the third-busiest railway station in France.

Paris Gare de Lyon is to close on Saturday and Sunday as a switch-over takes place from the signal box at the station to a new signalling centre at Vigneux-sur-Seine, 10 miles south of the terminus. All SNCF main-line trains have been diverted to other stations, or cancelled.

The terminus, which is behind only Paris Nord and St-Lazare in passenger numbers, normally handles close to 300,000 passengers a day.

TGV Lyria trains to Switzerland will run from the Gare de lEst, while many services to the Alps will leave from the relatively small station of Versailles Chantiers, south-west of the capital.

Charles de Gaulle airport and Marne-la-Vallee, the station for Disneyland Paris, will serve as stations for services to the Mediterranean.

The Europe by Rail website, which has produced a comprehensive summary of changes, comments: The old signal box at the end of Platform 5 at the Gare de Lyon was state of the art when it was commissioned in the 1930s. But its no longer fit for purpose.

Some RER suburban trains will continue to serve Gare de Lyon.

Direct Eurostar trains to destinations should be unaffected, though there is a chance that the disruption at Paris could cause knock-on delays to some services.

Mark Smith, the founder of the Seat61.com website, said: With TGVs to Lyon, Marseille or Nice requiring a trek out, and TGVs to Spain and Italy cancelled, let's just say I'd postpone any travel plans until this weekend is over.
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Brexit is English nationalism made flesh, but the English underrate its destructive potential as a form of communal identity. Concepts like nationalism and self-determination have traditionally been seen as something that happens to foreigners. An English failing today is an inability to recognise the egocentricity implicit in such nationalism and the extent to which it alienates and invites confrontation with other nations in the British Isles and beyond.

A classic example of this blindness to the consequences of this new type of nationalism came this week when Theresa May denounced Nicola Sturgeon for playing politics with the future of our country in demanding a second referendum on Scottish independence. This immediately begs the question about the nature and location of this country to which such uncritical loyalty is due. If the state in question is the UK, then why do the advocates of Brexit ignore the opposition  and take for granted the compliance  of Scotland and Northern Ireland in leaving the EU?

It is worth recalling the degree to which British politics was divided and poisoned by fierce disputes over Irish independence for the whole of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, right up to the moment that Ireland achieved self-determination in 1921. What used to be called the Irish Question has now been reborn as an all-consuming issue by the Scottish Question and, whatever the timing and outcome of a second Scottish referendum, it is not going to go away. Supposing that Theresa May really believes, as her patronising rejection of another poll in Scotland might suggest, that the Scottish Question can be indefinitely delayed, then she will be joining a long dismal list of British leaders down the centuries who made the same mistake about Ireland.

 Theresa May: Now is not the time for Scottish independence referendum

English politicians have frequently had a tin ear when it comes to other peoples nationalism, imagining that it can be satisfied by material concessions or rebutted by arguments about independence inflicting unacceptable economic damage. English people often have an equally muddled or myopic vision of their own nationalism, using the terms English and British as if they were synonymous or marked a distinction of no great account. They therefore do not see how their nationalism has changed significantly in the last few years and is making the continuation of the UK less and less likely. The transformation is also obscured because the ingredients of nationalist identity are in any case hazy since a successful nationalist movement becomes the vehicle for all sorts of grievances and protests.

British nationalism was in the past more fluid than Irish or continental nationalism because it did not face such intense pressures. It needed to be adaptable and inclusive enough to meet the needs of empire and a post-imperial world. It was primarily territorial within the island of Britain, rather than ethnic, religious or linguistic, and was so successful and self-confident that it did not closely define exactly what made somebody British. Strident assertions by Ulster Protestants about their Britishness sounded foreign and rather embarrassing to people in the rest of the UK.

The new English nationalism that surfaced so strongly during the Brexit campaign is, ironically, much closer to continental traditions of nationalism. It is much more ethnically and culturally exclusive than the English/British tradition, which developed when British politics stabilised after prolonged turmoil and civil war at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

What makes the new English nationalism so dangerous post-Brexit is that it is deeply felt but incoherent and comes with little self-knowledge. It is more dangerous than the elephant in the room, whose presence nobody will acknowledge, because in this case the elephant is scarcely aware of its own bulk and impact upon others. As a system of beliefs the new nationalism is much more appropriate to an English nation state than to a more diverse United Kingdom. Yet there is genuine bafflement among English people when the Scots apply the same arguments as Brexiters used to justify leaving the EU to justify Scottish independence. It takes a good deal of cheek for Theresa May, as she initiates Britains withdrawal from the EU  the consequences of which even its protagonists admit nobody knows  to accuse Nicola Sturgeon of setting Scotland on a course for more uncertainty and division, creating huge uncertainty.

It should be quickly said that there is nothing wrong with there being an English nation state. The left tends to denigrate or suspect nationalism as a mask for racism or, at best, a diversion from more important social and political issues. It can be both, but nationalism has also been the essential glue for progressive and liberal movements since the American War of Independence. If it has fallen into the hands of the xenophobic right in England and the US in recent years, that is the fault of those who saw it as illegitimate, obsolete and irrelevant in a globalising world.

Because the new nationalism sees itself in a vague way as seeking to return to a mythical England, which seems to have had its terminal date in about 1960, it is not good at seeing that its project is new and different from what went before. The old British state, as it developed from the end of the seventeenth century, was known  and often detested by other states  for its acute sense of its own interests. The new English nation state stretching from the Channel to the Tweed seems to have little idea of its own strengths and weaknesses and will be much less capable of charting an independent course in the world, whatever its pretensions to be taking back control.

One of the curiosities of the Brexit referendum was that, while the Leaves frequently beat the patriotic drum and spoke of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the Battle of Britain in 1940, they showed little interest in or knowledge of history. Before the eighteenth century, English governments spent much of their energies and resources fighting the Scots, Irish and Welsh. In the years before Agincourt, Henry V learned to be a soldier suppressing Welsh uprisings. Scottish and Irish rebellions played a central role in precipitating and determining the outcome of the English Civil War. An end to this disunity through repression or conciliation launched Britain as a great power. A return to instability in relations between the nations living in the British Isles will have the opposite effect.

Britain is already weaker as a state than it was two years ago because its government is wholly preoccupied with Brexit and the prospect of Scottish secession from the UK. All other pressing problems facing the country must wait, possibly for decades, until these issues are dealt with. The break-up of Britain is not something that may or may not happen as the result of a second referendum, but is already upon us. The confrontation between English and Scottish nationalism is not going to moderate or evaporate. The one certainty is that The Scottish Question and Brexit have come together to destabilise Britain for years to come.
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There is huge excitement in the world of fashion  finally, a beautiful woman who chooses to wear a head scarf for religious reasons has been signed by a top model agency. Halima Aden stars on the cover of a glossy magazine and appeared on the catwalk in Milan last month for Max Mara. Dressing modestly has become big business for the fashion industry, so you could accuse the company of cashing in  even Marks and Spencer have bowed to the trend and produced all-concealing swimwear. Dozens of top designers have rushed to make modest versions of their collections for websites like themodist.com, a high-end site aimed at the wealthy Arab market, which is worth billions.

Modest fashion has become the politically-correct term increasingly used to describe (generally) female clothing that reflects religious beliefs  but any controversy that ensues from deciding to conceal rather than reveal your body seems mostly to apply to Muslims. The modest way that nuns (or indeed monks and priests and archbishops) have dressed for hundreds of years passes without comment, but the partially-concealing hijab (which shows the wearers eyes) and the all-enveloping burka seem to polarise public opinion in a way that the wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women do not.

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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Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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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. 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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

Far-right politicians have seized on ultra-modest clothing as symbols of everything thats going wrong with Europe. There has been further controversy since the European Court of Justice ruled this week that employers can refuse to employ staff who insist on wearing headscarves  but the implications of the ruling are complex and do not necessarily constitute an attack on one particular faith. Even so, critics, like the Turkish President Erdogan claim this could be the start of a new holy war. This inflammatory talk is as bad as the fear-provoking bilge spouted by the ultra-right.

All over Europe, a growing number of national governments, local councils, some towns and cities have already banned the full-face veil, generally citing security concerns. The Netherlands, Austria and Germany all want to bring in legislation to ban the full veil in public places. France banned the burka outright in 2011, claiming it violated the liberty of the individual, and the EU rejected an attempt to overturn the legislation in 2014. Belgium banned the full-face veil in public spaces in 2011.

Recent terror attacks have led governments to consider extending the burka ban, but the latest EU ruling about headscarves focuses on the right of an employer to insist on an image-neutral policy in the workspace. That means an employer can decide that any religious symbol could be unacceptable, including the crucifix. The ban cannot apply to those already employed, only new recruits. Half the German States already ban teachers from wearing a veil or a headscarf in the classroom. If women want to wear a headscarf, its fine by me, but in the end, an employer ought to be able to set a clothing policy, providing there are sound practical reasons for doing so  although it will be extremely hard to police if they have to apply it across every faith  where does a wig worn for religious beliefs fall under this new ruling? And, are head scarf wearers more persecuted than other minorities? After all, it is their choice.

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Of course, a teacher, judge, fashion model or bus conductor can all do their jobs perfectly well in a headscarf, but the burka and the niqab are another matter. They are highly offensive to a huge majority of people  because, those people argue, they seem to reduce the women inside them to faceless chattels, property of their partners, in doing so demean the wearers.

I find them utterly repugnant, an offence against an entire sex in the name of religion, and I cannot imagine why the government hasnt got the bottle to ban burkas in public spaces, at least on the grounds of security. The sight of a woman in one makes me feel nauseous and pushes my tolerance to the limit. In my opinion, they do not belong on the streets of a civilised country.

But as for the latest EU ruling, I am not sure what kind of employers would feel the need to ban all religious clothing at work, and they are probably not the kind of boss I would feel comfortable working for. It is imperative that all religions are treated equally in our society, but it does seem that some are more likely to moan about victimisation than others.
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Long before Trump and his clones in Europe got near power, right-wing populism already had a pioneer, in India. In 2014, Narendra Modi became Prime Minister and crushed the Congress Party with a campaign that put Trumps race-baiting to shame.

In new state election results out this week, Modi not only cemented that majority but extended it. His party won an overwhelming victory in Indias most populous and politically important state Uttar Pradesh. The margin of victory was especially surprising since the economy has been in doldrums and was barely recovering from a currency chaos when Modi abruptly annulled the vast majority of banknotes in a bid to tackle corruption.

As Bloombergs Mihir Sharma put, he is now Indias most powerful leader in two generations. Worse, he is well on his way of turning India into a Hindu nationalist state. The worlds largest democracy is now the worlds largest playground for right-wing populism.

Narendra Modi bolsters Indo-US ties with Washington visit

So how did Modi become so powerful? And how is he turning India into a Hindu nationalist state? The story predictably starts with a weak opposition party. Congress is being led by Rahul Gandhi and controlled by the Gandhi clan, who are as incompetent as they are inept. Gandhi has neither the personality, nor the vision, nor the hunger for leading the country.

Narendra Modi, like most populists, conducts politics as an act of constant war, not a matter of administration. He is hyperactive  constantly dreaming up new slogans and initiatives  occupying so much of the political landscape himself that his opponents cannot even get heard.

But the primary weapon Modi deploys to polarise his audience and stun opponents is stoking up religious tension. Even before the general election his allies said critics should live in Pakistan instead of India and threatened to evict Muslims from Hindu areas. But the concerted strategy of radicalising Hindus and turning them against other minorities doesnt stop there. In fact it only escalated after his election.

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The following year the BJP started stoking up hysteria against Muslims and low-caste Hindus for not sufficiently respecting cows. Hindu mobs started attacking and lynching Muslims and low-caste Hindus for apparently eating beef  without evidence  on a regular basis. Cows were even used for BJP leaflets until the electoral commission stepped in.

Violent Hindu nationalism isnt just the BJPs crutch during elections  it is embedded in its DNA. The party came to prominence in the 90s after it turned the destruction of a mosque into a political rallying cry. But its targets have also included Christian groups, who they accuse of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity. Violence against Christians escalated so much that last year that US lawmakers wrote to Modi expressing their alarm.

Like all aspiring autocrats the Prime Minister of India also shuns criticism. His government has banned around 11,000 foreign NGOs, many of them small charities helping the poorest, over petty administrative rules. Many of those banned also included groups like Greenpeace, which has frequently opposed environmental policy. At home, opponents are dismissed as anti-Indian and an ancient law against sedition is being increasingly used by allies against them.

But Modis underlying strength comes not from his policies, hate-mongering or his frenetic activity. It comes from his ability to tap into the deep desire of Indians to be taken seriously on the international stage. To make them feel proud of their identity. He carries himself with the kind of swagger and confidence opponents can only dream of. He makes Indians believe he can make India great again. He sold that vision before Trump even thought of running for President.

It is for this reason he continues to defy political gravity. He is able to make Indians believe he is on their side even if his policies cost them dearly. When his government withdrew most Indian currency from circulation in November, the result was chaos and caused immense hardship to the poorest. But because it was sold as a strike against corruption, Indians bought it. In fact they gave him extra credit for trying. As the Hindustan Times editor Bobby Ghosh points out, Modis victory this week was more notable than the one in 2014.

The only way to stop right-wing populists is to expose the emptiness of their promises. Modis biggest challenge remains that he hasnt delivered a faster economy and more jobs. In the meantime, Indias religious minorities have become more polarised and fearful for their future. The secularist ideals the country was founded on are being challenged like never before.

The problem for his opponents is that Modis strength remains so overpowering that the shine may take years to come off. The damage to Indian democracy and ideals may take even longer to heal.
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In response to being called an "apartheid regime" by a UN regional commission, Israel compared the report to Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Sturmer, and foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted: Dont read it without anti nausea pills.

Its a particularly low trick to use past victimhood to dismiss contemporary criticism, and it's such a trite response that it has a name: Godwins Law. The principle, formulated by American attorney Mike Godwin nearly 30 years ago, is that most long-running political arguments sooner or later end with a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.

Israel may consider itself more entitled than most to press Hitler into posthumous service. Even so, invoking the memory of genocide in order to dismiss an allegation by a UN commission is at best a lazy argument and at worst a manipulation to distract from the legitimacy of the claims.

This is the first time a body affiliated with the UN has used the term "apartheid" for the Israeli states treatment of Palestinians, and it is a grave assertion. The commission said that Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, and added that a history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices had left the Palestinian people fragmented.

 Gaza marks 10 years of Israeli blockade

If Israel disagrees with these characterisations, its case must be argued on the facts. Israel can insist  as it always does  that it is the only democracy in the Middle East and that equal rights are the law of the land. It can argue that it does not enshrine institutional separation as an ideal, which is the classic definition of apartheid.

But to its detractors the value of Israels much-vaunted democracy can be precisely reckoned up at 80, the percentage of the population which is Jewish. Those who champion the Palestinians right to justice, fair play and self-determination will point to half-a-century of collective suffering of an entire people. The Palestinians will repeat their view of Israels 708-km separation barrier in the West Bank: a racial segregation or "apartheid wall". For good measure, they might throw in an uncomfortable but undeniable truth: that it would be impossible for an Arab Israeli ever to become prime minister of the Jewish state.

Then there is the case of a rather heavy-handed law recently passed by the Israeli parliament which bars entry to foreigners who have publicly supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The law seems to indicate the extent to which an increasingly defensive Israel is prepared to shut out criticism from the wider world.

Gaza's junior mechanics Show all 13 1 /13 Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics The hands of Palestinian Mohammed Jundeya, 17, are seen as he works in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Mohammed Yassin, 18, works in a car repair garage Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Tamer Yassin, 17, works in a car repair garage Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Tamer Yassin, 17, works in a car repair garage Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Ali al-Batniji (R), 18, poses for a photograph in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Ali al-Batniji (R), 18, is reflected in a mirror as he works in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Mohammed Jundeya, 17, works in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Abed al-Majeed Reheem, 18, poses for a photograph in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Abed al-Majeed Reheem (R), 18, works in a car repair garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian boy Mohamoud Yazji, 16, who works as apprentice mechanic, repairs a car at a garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian boy Mohammad Dader, 12, who works as apprentice mechanic, helps his employer at a garage in Gaza City Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Mohammed Yassin, 18, poses for a photograph in a car repair garage Reuters Gaza's junior mechanics Gaza's junior mechanics Palestinian Ali al-Batniji (R), 18, works in a car repair garage Reuters

This comes at a time when Israel seems to have Donald Trumps unambiguous support, his settlements-supporting choice of envoy to Tel Aviv and the conspicuous and humiliating seven week delay between the US Presidents inauguration and his telephone chat with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel's incendiary words likening the report to a Nazi publication ignores the reasons behind the "apartheid" claim, and gives critics even more ammunition, while allowing Israel supporters an easy response. For everyone else, it simply distracts from the very real problems with the way Israel treats non-Jews, and how these should be addressed.
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Andrew Napolitano, a retired judge working for Fox News, declared this week that Barack Obama had bypassed US intelligence agencies and secretly colluded with GCHQ to wiretap Donald Trump.

Napolitanos claims were risible and were viewed as such in security circles. There was amused musing on the intriguing scenarios being thrown up  did the President, unlike any of his predecessors, have his own hotline to the British intelligence services? Or did he arrive at Cheltenham, disguised in a fake beard perhaps, to make his request in person?

But then Judge Nap of tabloid TV is a colourful character. He is a believer in conspiracy theories about 9/11 and has a reputation for making statements not backed by any known facts, such as, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was secretly arming the slaves in the South before the Civil War.

 Sean Spicer says Donald Trump did not mean Barack Obama personally wire-tapped him during campaign

The matter would have rested had it not been for White House spokesman Sean Spicer repeating the claim during his briefing. Both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Intelligence Committee had dismissed Trumps accusation, which began with a tweet in the early hours of the morning, that Obama had been eavesdropping on his calls, as had James Comey, the FBI director. But Spicer continued with the tale quoting Napolitano: He [Obama] 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.

It is difficult to know whether it was Spicers own decision to try and use the Fox News story to try and shore up the rapidly dissolving allegations or whether he was acting under orders. It appears to be common knowledge in Washington that the hapless White House spokesman is frequently berated by Trump for his performances and told what to say in his briefings. The effect, however, was the same, the allegations were broadcast throughout the world.

GCHQ decided it cannot let this pass and must respond, an unusual move as British intelligence services do not normally make public statements. What followed was particularly robust. Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct wiretapping against the president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored, it said.

This is accusing Napolitano, who said he had three sources for his story, as peddling untruths. But the statement goes beyond him, aimed at Spicer and, by proxy, the White House. The Trump administration had a choice, either withdraw from backing the Fox News claim, or stick with it and effectively saying that British intelligence is involved in a cover-up with Obama in subverting US laws. Hours after the GCHQ response, the UK Government made clear that it had been assured by the White House that the allegations would not be repeated. However, Trumps opponents are unlikely to let the matter rest. Susan Rice, Obamas National Security Advisor was quick to tweet the cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated.

But beyond all this, it is actually the case that there is a British intelligence involvement in events which had been unfolding in America. GCHQ had been the first to alert its US counterpart, the NSA, about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee computers in the run up to the presidential elections: information gained from the hacks which were selectively released to help Trumps campaign.

The Senate Intelligence Committee and the FBI are continuing their investigations into Trumps Kremlin connections and attempts to deflect attention away from that by making false allegations against Obama and GCHQ is not going to defuse that time-bomb ticking away under the new administration.
Former Central Bank economist Colm McCarthy, pictured, has stepped down as a director of Dublin and Cork Airports operator DAA.

He had been on the board since 2012 and was reappointed in 2015 for a two-year term.

Another non-executive director, John Lynch, has also stepped down. He was also originally appointed in 2012 and appointed again in 2015.

Mr Lynch is the head of the EMEA marketing operations at aircraft leasing firm BBAM.

A spokeswoman for the DAA confirmed the pair's departure and said there is no indication yet as to who might fill the now vacant board seats.

The DAA board is appointed by the Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport, who is currently Shane Ross.

The non-executive directors received just under 16,000 each in annual fees in 2015. One non-executive director, Patricia King, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, waived her fee.

The DAA board can consist of a total of 13 directors, which includes the chairman.

Current chairman of the DAA is Padraig O'Riordan, a partner at law firm Arthur Cox.

The board also includes four worker- directors.
Acting assistant attorney general Mary McCord speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington about the investigation, flanked by US attorney Brian Stretch, FBI executive director Paul Abbate, and Office of International Affairs director Vaughn Ary

It was June 2013, and US law enforcement thought they were finally getting their hands on a slippery target: Russian hacker Alexsey Belan, indicted in Nevada and California for computer intrusions at three US e-commerce companies, had been arrested in Europe.

Instead, Belan escaped to Russia, where the US charges didn't hamper his job prospects.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) enlisted the man to help the agency hack into American Internet companies, including Yahoo.

That at least is the conspiracy theory laid out in an indictment in a US Federal Court in San Francisco, which reveals the internal workings of Russia's state cyber-spying regime, implicated in alleged attempts to influence the US election last year.

Increasingly, it's a system that capitalises on a vast and talented pool of Russian-speaking cyber criminals, blurring the lines between profit and intelligence gathering.

"We believe that their technical capabilities are not where they're purported to be and they're using criminal hackers," said Jack Bennett, the San Francisco Division Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's San Francisco office.

Besides Belan, the US indicted two FSB officials, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, and a second hacker, Karim Baratov, a Kazakh living in Canada. It's a first for the US, which has never before indicted anyone from the FSB for cyber-crimes, said Edward McAndrew, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor and now co-chair of the privacy and data security group at the law firm Ballard Spahr.

"It obviously comes at a very intense time in our relationship with Russia and its cyber activities," he said. "It also provides the public with fresh insight into the way that nation-state actors are enlisting cyber criminals of all types, from syndicates to lone wolves, to engage in sophisticated cyber campaigns."

The indictment offers a lot of new information about the hack into Yahoo in 2014 that affected around half a billion accounts. "The indictment unequivocally shows the attacks on Yahoo were state-sponsored," Chris Madsen, an assistant general counsel for security and law enforcement at Yahoo, said in a statement.

Belan remains at large in Russia. So does Sushchin. Dokuchaev, who worked in the FSB's information-security division, was detained in December by Russian law enforcement, on suspicion of having links to US intelligence.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked about the possibility of co-operation on the Yahoo case, told Bloomberg that Russia is interested in cooperating with the US against cyber threats. (Bloomberg)
The fundamental goodness of people is not something upon which one expects Mary Raftery to dwell in the short break she takes from editing her latest television series Behind the Walls, a history of Irish psychiatric hospitals. She mentions, but only briefly, that the stories told to her in this series and 12 years ago, in States of Fear, can haunt her dreams, but she places greater emphasis, somewhat surprisingly, on the uplifting nature of her work.

"The most refreshing thing about what I do is the fact of how good people are," Raftery says. "It's amazing to see how they are fundamentally driven to help others, and that they will do so by revealing themselves and their adversities and their challenges. And it's wonderful. You really do see the best of people."

Of course, Raftery has encountered the worst of people, too. States of Fear, broadcast on RTE in 1999, cracked open the issue of institutional child abuse. She was responsible for the 2002 Prime Time programme Cardinal Secrets, which explosively revealed how the Church and gardai had both ignored reports of abuse, and she is now about to open our eyes to how we made medical cases of many, many Irish people who were not mad, but often simply didn't fit in. Raftery's working life has, for the most part, been about tragedy and suffering, and people's ability to ignore and deny it, but ask her what her work is about and she will say it's about stories. It is, she says, about letting people tell their stories, allowing them to speak and actually listening to them, with a view to helping others. She has taken flak and abuse for this focus, and not everyone has thanked her, but it is to people's stories that Raftery is drawn back again and again, and giving voice to an unheard Ireland has become her defining work.

When she was a child, Raftery's family moved around a lot, according to which country her father was assigned by the diplomatic service. One of four children, she says it was an enjoyable life, where you learned to adapt and to accept change without difficulty. They were Irish, but outside Ireland, which may help in some way her ability to take a step back and regard the place coolly and rationally in her work. They returned here when Raftery was 12 and settled for the sake of the children's secondary education. "I think my father took that decision carefully, because at that stage it was either a case of put us into boarding school, which is what a lot of families ended up doing, or else go away on his own," she says. "So he made the decision to stay here, and it was a sacrifice, I think, on his part, because that was how you got promoted; you went where they sent you."

Mary settled easily into Ireland, and did well at school, going on to study engineering at UCD. "And ended up doing a lot less engineering than I should have and getting a lot more involved with the students' union and the student newspaper," she says. That involvement, then, led her into journalism, with InDublin, Magill and various newspapers.

The industrial schools and the children who had suffered in them first came to Raftery's attention in the early Eighties. She was writing a piece on the first heroin crisis in Dublin and came across one particular Dublin inner city criminal family. "It transpired that almost every one of them was in an industrial school," says Raftery. This fact stuck in her mind, she explains, because the family was so unusual in that it wasn't just one rotten apple who was destroying a community, who was dealing to friends, neighbours and neighbours' children; killing them slowly, apparently without conscience -- it was almost the whole family and she wondered what had twisted them so. "If someone does something awful, you have to wonder what made them that way," she says.

From then on, she collected and collated information, building a picture of a world that people either knew nothing about or didn't want to know about, or, worse, just didn't want to accept existed. By the mid-Nineties, and as a producer in RTE, she was ready to make a programme, but it would be a slow project to get off the ground. The documentary Dear Daughter, made by Louis Lentin, "opened it up and took the first backlash, the brunt of it", and then, despite some opposition, it was time to make States of Fear.

While the Dublin inner-city family brought Raftery to the subject of industrial schools, it was her work on health magazine programme Check Up that brought her to the means of telling the stories of States of Fear, that she continued through Cardinal Secrets and, now, Behind the Walls, which goes back over a century and explores how, in Ireland, for a long time, being mentally ill or simply being an inconvenience could have you locked away for life.

Raftery joined RTE in 1984, and she laughs today, reflecting on her 24-year-old self, who sat down for her interview and "harangued" the panel about everything they were doing wrong with the public broadcaster. For the most part, she worked in current affairs, on Today Tonight and in its incarnation as Prime Time, but Check Up taught her a huge amount about life and about the power of allowing people to trust you with their stories.

"Aside from States of Fear, Check Up was the most valuable thing I did in RTE," she says. "It was a programme talking to people about adversity, and, in this case, it happened to be about their health, but it could have been anything, really. And it treated people like the experts in their own lives, and people responded to that. To my mind, there's nothing people want to hear more than other people's stories of the challenges they've faced and how they've dealt with them. It's the only way to approach television, I think. And while there's an investigative and analytical aspect to all of that, and the key is getting the balance right, but the most powerful thing is the story."

The stories told in States of Fear were its power, and huge credit is due to Raftery for helping them to be told and for shouldering the backlash that followed. She knew it would come, of course. "It was cataclysmic and it was like being in the eye of a hurricane, because there had never been any [revelation] like that before," she says. "The scale was monumental. The Church came back, of course, and they used their pet commentators and there was an assault on the series. I knew when I made the programme that I'd have to be accessible to talk about it, because there wasn't a stable of experts, it was original research, but I didn't think it would go on and on. I didn't think I'd have to do it to the degree I have, or for as long as I have."

"They were calling me a Nazi, citing blood libel, a whole stable of them," she continues. "But there's absolute silence from those quarters since the Ryan Report." Later in the interview, Raftery declines to comment on whether she has or has ever had religious faith, having learned that anything can be twisted in an attempt to prove agenda on her part. "And it's not relevant," she adds. "What's relevant is that I was raised a Catholic. I couldn't do what I do if I wasn't raised a Catholic. You need to be able to understand what drives people and how the Church works and the mechanics of denial, which we're all very good at."

Raftery left RTE in 2002 to become a freelance filmmaker and journalist. The decision to leave secure work didn't come easily, but it was necessary, she says. "My son was 10 at the time, and in current affairs, you just couldn't be as flexible as I needed. But I never regretted the decision. I started writing as well as making programmes and it worked out well."

As she was "dragged back" always to current affairs in RTE, Raftery several years ago found herself drawn to the history of Ireland's mental health services, which has become the two-part Behind the Walls.

"What we did in Ireland for most of the 20th Century, anyway, is that we locked people up in hospitals," she says, returning to our capacity for denial." Any kind of misdemeanour, anyone who didn't quite fit in. I'm not saying everyone in psychiatric care was completely sane, but who is?"

She goes on to outline two very significant statistics. First is that in the 20th Century, Ireland had more people committed, per capita, than anywhere else in the world, with the Soviet Union coming second and, at least, Raftery says, they bothered with show trials.

"We just bundled them in, with 21,000 people locked up in the Fifties," she says.

The other statistic is that Ireland had a huge number of single people in the last century, with three-quarters of men listed as single at one point and two out of three women. So, there were single people who were wanted off the land or out of the family home.

"Put those stats together and you get a lot of inconvenient people," she says. "And it's alarming how little it took to get you committed. Any sexual manifestation; people were put away for masturbation. Forever. Love, jealousy, seduction; Cork had the highest incidence of these, all good reasons for committal. There was one woman whose cause of insanity was listed as 'husband in California'."

One story she cites, from the end of the 19th Century, was not unusual for the time. A sister who wanted to marry was told by her betrothed that if her brother wasn't shifted off the farm, then there would be no wedding. The sister had her brother committed, but when he was found to be sane and sent home, she stabbed herself in the leg, had him branded a "dangerous lunatic" and sent off to the asylum again, where he died, a fortnight later, of dysentery.

Raftery points out, too, that until the Thirties, Forties or Fifties, there were no real treatments for people with mental problems, they were just herded together, and even later, treatments such as insulin comas and early ECT were very experimental and regularly ill-fated. "Lobotomy was pretty common," says Raftery. "Dr Ivor Browne says in the programme that from the Forties to the Sixties, huge parts of Grangegorman were silenced by lobotomy.

"And a big story in the second programme concerns a group of women who were sexually abused in the latter end of the 20th Century, by a doctor in one of these hospitals. One doctor, but other people knew about the abuse and said nothing. And there's no more lethal combination than a psychiatrist and a sexual predator, because they can play with your mind and, in this case, they can heavily medicate. These women were denied justice, because this man died two weeks before he came to trial, but they are amazing women. And what unfolds through them is what's really significant in these programmes; it's people's sense of powerlessness and being made powerless."

It's disempowered people about whom Raftery cares. It is to them she listens. It is their voices she amplifies and makes heard. And which she defends, as is often her role. It's not something she shies away from, either, even if, from time to time, she might wish the focus to turn elsewhere. "I don't relish that aspect of the work," Raftery says. "I make programmes. And I try to stay away, but I always get dragged back.

"But I do it because the work is worthwhile doing. And what it comes down to is that the most important thing you can do is to give a voice to people who have been silenced. And what I think is what else would I be doing?"

Behind the Walls is showing on RTE One tomorrow at 9.35pm (part one), and Monday, September 12 (part two)
Judge Hutton granted the State's request to order that Mr Duffy was being returned for trial to the Central Criminal Court (Stock photo)

A 68-year-old man has been sent forward for trial accused of murdering his long-term partner at their South Dublin home.

Charity shop worker Des Sullivan (59) died after he was injured at his house in Summerville Park, Rathmines, on May 6 last.

His partner Desmond Duffy was arrested at the same location in December and taken to Rathmines garda station where he was charged with murdering Mr Sullivan.

He had been remanded in custody at his first hearing on December 22 last but was later granted bail in the High Court.

He appeared again before Judge Kathryn Hutton at Dublin District Court yesterday when he was served with a book of evidence by Detective Inspector George McGeary, of Terenure garda station.

A State solicitor told Judge Hutton that the Director of Public Prosecutions has directed that Mr Duffy will face trial on indictment.

Judge Hutton granted the State's request to order that Mr Duffy was being returned for trial to the Central Criminal Court.

A date for his next hearing has yet to be allocated.
Anna Finnegan pointed at her former partner and the man who would be accused of her murder and said "He did it", a witness has told a jury.

Korill Allen, a security officer attached to James Connolly Memorial Hospital, yesterday gave evidence in the trial of Vesel Jahiri at the Central Criminal Court.

Mr Jahiri (35), originally from Kosovo but of no fixed abode, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Finnegan (25) at Allendale Glen, Clonsilla, Dublin 15, on September 21, 2012.

He has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting Karl Finnegan, causing him harm, at the same place on the same date.

Last week, Mr Jahiri dismissed his legal team and is now representing himself at the trial.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Paul Coffey addressed the jury and said that there was a prospect on Wednesday that Mr Jahiri would instruct a legal team but unfortunately that had not happened.

Emergency

Mr Allen told prosecution counsel Mr Patrick Marrinan SC that he was with his colleague Svetlana Akopova when he heard a car arrive near the entrance of the emergency department at the James Connolly Memorial Hospital at 8.40pm on September 21.

The witness told Mr Marrinan that they went outside and saw a white Ford Focus car stopping very close to the entrance. He said there was a woman inside the car who he understood to be injured.

Mr Allen recalled an ambulance crew approaching the car and a woman being pulled from the vehicle.

He and an ambulanceman went to get a trolley and brought it out to where the woman was. Mr Allen said the woman was on the ground near the car and when he was in the process of lifting her on to the trolley, she pointed at the driver of the car and said: "He did it."

The witness agreed with counsel that he was holding the patient's head when she said this.

He said the man she pointed to was a few metres away.

The witness agreed that he was bald, in his mid-30s and had blood on his head.

The court heard that Mr Allen recalled moving the woman, who he now knew to be Anna Finnegan, on the trolley into the resuscitation area. When Mr Allen went outside after speaking to his manager, the driver and the car were gone.

In cross-examination Mr Jahiri asked Mr Allen why other witnesses have said they never saw Anna pointing at him and saying he did it.

"I don't know," replied Mr Allen.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Coffey and a jury of nine men and three women.
Applicants for the DIT Access Foundation Programme, which prepares students for third-level study, have been advised that vetting is an entry requirement for next Septembers intake (Stock image)

Dublin Institute of Technology has defended a move to make garda vetting a condition for adult students applying for entry to a "second chance education" course.

Applicants for the DIT Access Foundation Programme, which prepares students for third-level study, have been advised that vetting is an entry requirement for next September's intake.

The one-year programme is open to mature students and young adults who have experienced socio-economic disadvantage. It caters for about 120 students a year and unlike similar programmes, graduates are guaranteed progression to a DIT CAO course.

Independent Senator Lynn Ruane, who won a place in Trinity College Dublin via that university's access programme, wrote to DIT president Professor Brian Norton to express her concerns.

She said that access programmes were a "fundamental part of how we tackle socio-economic inequality and are a key asset in ensuring access to higher education for minority and disadvantaged group".

Ms Ruane said that she appreciated that for certain degree programmes, such as social care, in which graduates would be working with vulnerable adults, garda vetting was required.

But she was "firmly opposed" to requiring access programme applicants to undergo vetting.

Garda vetting is increasingly common on courses where work placements involve dealing with children or vulnerable adults and for student volunteering activities. The DIT decision is linked to the guarantee of a place on an undergraduate course of choice within the college for those who complete the programme successfully.

In a statement, DIT said the decision was taken during the course of a review of the programme on the grounds that a significant proportion of its students chose to continue on to programmes in DIT for which garda vetting is a requirement.

"It was felt that this would prevent a student being accepted onto the programme and subsequently finding themselves disbarred from participating in activities, being restricted from placements and possibly not completing their programme," it said.

The statement added that it was important to note that a criminal record, arrest or other misdemeanour did not prevent an individual from being approved under a garda vetting process - it only addressed issues of concern for protection of children and vulnerable adults.

"We have a long track record in providing pathways for individuals from communities where there has not been a tradition of continuing in education or where an individual's experience of education may have been cut short for a range of social and economic reasons, including custodial sentences," it said.

The statement said that while the requirement could be perceived as an obstacle for some people to pursue an ambition to participate in higher education, "we will make every effort to ensure that this is not the case, and with that in mind we will keep this decision under review."
Putting the finishing touches to its floats were Spraois Mike Leahy and Nicholas Kavanagh. Photo: Robbie Reynolds

Olympic silver medallist Annalise Murphy will lead the Dublin's St Patrick's Day parade today as Grand Marshal, with over half a million spectators expected to travel to line the streets of the city to join in the fun.

"Ireland You Are" is the theme for the country's biggest parade which organisers have promised will be a celebration of "a culturally diverse, complex and brave society, notwithstanding its challenges".

Dublin's parade kicks off at 12pm in Parnell Square, with a new extended route now taking in a viewing point on Kevin Street in the south inner city.

Gathering

More than 3,000 people are taking part in the huge gathering, which this year includes marching bands from America, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Bahamas.

Festival pageant company Spraoi was last night putting the finishing touches to its Festival Parade floats and colourful costumes. Their creations included a bearded giant and horned creatures brandishing clubs.

Susan Kirby, St Patrick's Festival CEO, said they were delighted to be delivering a "spectacular festival" this year, adding: "St Patrick's arrival always heralds a fantastic sense of joy and excitement ahead of the action-packed four days of the festival."

And it's set to be a bonanza weekend for hoteliers and publicans alike, with 100,000 tourists making their way to Ireland for the celebrations.

Expand Close Amy and Madison Teeling (5) at the Sheriff Street Parade in Dublin yesterday. Photo: Gareth Chaney / Facebook

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Whatsapp Amy and Madison Teeling (5) at the Sheriff Street Parade in Dublin yesterday. Photo: Gareth Chaney

Parades are taking place in towns and cities across the country, with festivities set to continue through until Sunday.

In the Galway parade, adventurer Gavin Hennigan is onboard as special guest for the day. The Galway parade starts at 11.30am and will be led by spectacle theatre company Macnas.

Cork city is celebrating the theme of 'Cork - A City of Community, Culture & Commerce' and promised spectators "a carnival of colour, music, pageantry and comic fun".

The parade will celebrate 100 years of the Ford company in Cork and celebrity chef Rachel Allen is the Grand Marshal.

In Limerick, the theme for participants is 'Our stories, this is where we belong' and in Belfast, the parade will leave City Hall at noon and make its way to Custom House Square, with numerous community groups taking part.

Waterford's parade starts at 1pm with a theme of 'Do it the Green way', celebrating the opening of the Waterford Greenway.

Tonight also sees some of Ireland's top comedians including Dara O Briain, Tommy Tiernan and Jason Byrne make their way to the 3 Arena to perform at Paddy's Night in support of Comic Relief.

Tomorrow sees a Treasure Hunt along the banks of the Liffey in Dublin, and the world's largest ceili with over 9,000 dancers at Earlsfort Terrace in the city.

Met Eireann has forecast a cool start for St Patrick's Day, with rain extending across the country throughout the day.

Members of the public attending the parade have been advised to plan ahead, dress appropriately for the weather and where possible to us public transport.

Visit www.transportforireland.ie for details.

For information and updates on parades and events, visit www.stpatricksfestival.ie.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaks during the Friends of Ireland Luncheon at the U.S Capitol in Washington, DC. Photo: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

The Taoiseach's speech on immigration has received global recognition for 'lecturing' US President Trump on immigration.

The Taoiseach used the St Patrick's day visit to speak about the contribution of the Irish community in the United States, leading to the New York Times calling it a lecture for the US President on immigration.

Speaking at a party in East Room of the White House, he thanked Mr Trump for giving so much of his time to help celebrate St Patricks legacy as the patron of immigrants.

He appealed to the President to take a more favourable view of immigrants - but made no mention of Mr Trumps controversial travel ban on six predominantly Muslim countries.

Expand Close The New York Times praised the Taoiseach / Facebook

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Ireland came to America, because deprived of liberty, opportunity, safety and even food itself, we believed.

Four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp we were the wretched refuse on the teeming shore, Mr Kenny said.

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We believed in the shelter of America, in the compassion of America, in the opportunity of America. We came and became Americans.

We lived the words of JFK long before he uttered them  we asked not what America could do for us but what we could do for America. And we still do.

We want to give and not to take, he told a room full of invited guests.

US media in particular were quick to praise the Taoiseach with the The New York Times saying: Irish Premier uses St Patricks Day Ritual to Lecture Trump on Immigration.

The article reads: "Mr. Trump found himself in a roomful of kelly-green-clad lawmakers in the Capitol for the Friends of Ireland luncheon, being lectured by Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, or taoiseach (pronounced THEE-shakh), about the virtues of Americas immigrant legacy and the contributions that immigrants had made to the country."

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The Boston Globe also ran an article under the headline: Irelands leader pushes Trump to help Irish living in US illegally.

Fox News praised the Taoiseach with the headline: "Ireland's leader pushes Trump on illegal Irish immigrants."

The article reads: "Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny is urging President Donald Trump to help Irish people living in the U.S. illegally, saying they just want to "make America great."

Fox News also praised the Taoiseach's humour saying: "Speaking after Trump at the luncheon, Kenny showed off his country's famed wit, saying that he "just saw the president of the United States read from his script."

Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, said Enda Kenny was "on the button" when he appealed to President Donald Trump to support the Irish undocumented.

The republican, who was a guest at Speaker Paul Ryan's St Patrick's lunch along with Mr Kenny and Mr Trump, said the challenge was to turn words into action.

"The Taoiseach's remarks were on the button," he said.

"We now need to build upon that.

"The St Patrick's festival here in the US is a great period of celebration of Irishness and it's very important."

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Businessman and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Mr Kenny for urging Donald Trump to help the US's undocumented immigrants.

"It was great to see him raise the issue of undocumented immigrants when he was at the White House yesterday - thank you for that," he said.

"This is a country that has benefited from immigrants. Without immigrants we wouldn't have a country and immigrants from Ireland have played a very important part and a number of different waves of Irish immigrants coming here and really contributing to our society.

"They contribute to our cuisine and to our culture, to our economy and to our wellbeing and happiness, and I think it's fair to say without the Irish, New York City would not be anything as great as it is today.

"America became a global powerhouse because we welcomed immigrants and to remain a global powerhouse we really do in this country have to continue to welcome immigrants and give them a chance to play their part in our country's future.

"And that's really what celebrating St Patrick's Day is all about."

Mr Kenny told the event he hoped progress could be made on the issue with the new US administration.

With reporting from Press Association
A councillor who paid tribute to Captain Dara Fitzpatrick has revealed an eerie link between the church where her funeral will take place and Rescue 116.

Capt Fitzpatrick (45) was tragically killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Mayo this week while on duty for the Irish Coast Guard.

Mayor George Lawlor tweeted his condolences to Niamh Fitzpatrick, one of Capt Fitzpatrick's three sisters, and pointed out a bizarre connection between the church address and the coast guard crew.

Her funeral will take place in a church on Glencullen Road in Co Dublin - the road is R116.

.@cllrglawlor .@cllrglawlor Dear Lord. Thank u for sharing. See number of road on which is the church that we will bring Dara to. #Rescue116 pic.twitter.com/ji1E1FXSRl  Niamh Fitzpatrick (@NFitzPsychology) March 17, 2017

Ms Fitzpatrick responded: "Dear Lord. Thank u for sharing. See number of road on which is the church that we will bring Dara to. #Rescue116."

Speaking to Independent.ie, Labour Councillor George Lawlor said he knew Capt Fitzpatrick personally as she carried out some work with the Wexford Marine Watch.

The Watch is a voluntary organisation which provides suicide prevention patrols along Wexford's quays.

"She was a very warm and open person who had a wonderful sense of humour. She was very engaging and always had time for people.

Capt. Dara Fitzpatrick died doing what she did best - looking out for others. RIP #Rescue116 #RIPDara pic.twitter.com/qzkJxJMY3r  George Lawlor (@cllrglawlor) March 15, 2017

"We had a gathering of emergency service personnel in Wexford County Council yesterday where a book of condolences was opened for Dara."

The search for the remaining three crew members who were involved with Rescue 116 is still ongoing.

Investigators have found wreckage from the helicopter at Black Rock lighthouse but due to bad weather, their searches have been hampered.

Divers are now expected to wait until Sunday to carry out a search for the wreckage of Rescue 116 and its three missing crew members.

Expand Close (From the top left, clockwise) Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, Captain Mark Duffy, winchman Ciaran Smith and winchman Paul Ormsby. Photo: Irish Coast Guard/PA Wire / Facebook

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Whatsapp (From the top left, clockwise) Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, Captain Mark Duffy, winchman Ciaran Smith and winchman Paul Ormsby. Photo: Irish Coast Guard/PA Wire

Pilot Mark Duffy and winchmen Ciaran Smith and Paul Ormsby have still not been located after their helicopter Rescue 116 lost communication shortly before 1am on Tuesday.

"Its an unimaginable stress and grief for those families. The only consolation is that the whole nation is grieving with them," Cllr Lawlor said.
An Irish fishing boat skipper has been convicted of trying to smuggle more than 92 million of cocaine into the UK.

The haul, weighing 939kg and up to 70% pure, was the biggest single seizure of cocaine in the country last year.

Michael McDermott (68) from Co Waterford, was convicted of drug importation offences following a week-long trial at Bristol Crown Court.

His shipmates David Pleasants (57) of Peppercorn Walk, Grimsby, and Gerald Van de Kooij (27) of Amersfoort, Netherlands, previously admitted the offences.

All three were arrested by National Crime Agency (NCA) and Border Force officers on August 18 last year. They will be sentenced on April 6.

After the case, Mike Stepney, director of national operations at Border Force, said: "The huge haul of dangerous drugs that Michael McDermott and his crew sought to sneak into the UK had the potential to do untold harm to countless people around the country.

"Officers from Border Force and the NCA used sophisticated intelligence and technical expertise to track this vessel and intercept it before its illicit cargo could ever be unloaded.

"The prosecution of this crooked captain and his criminal crew underlines once again how our close work with partners like the NCA is successfully keeping communities in the UK safe from a range of threats."

Two Border Force cutters, the HMC Seeker and HMC Searcher, tracked McDermott's vessel the MV Bianca via radar for more than 24 hours.

This followed intelligence from the NCA that it was carrying drugs.

The Bianca was intercepted as it entered UK territorial waters off the coast of Cornwall and officers boarded, detaining the crew.

During a search in Falmouth, Border Force teams located bales of cocaine hidden under bags of sand and gravel in the boat's fish hold.

There were 38 bales in total, each weighing between 25 and 30kg. It took around two days to remove the drugs from the vessel.

Forensic experts found that the cocaine was between 60 and 70% pure. If cut to street purity, it was worth almost 84m when sold in the UK.

McDermott denied the charge against him, claiming that he knew there were drugs on board but had been forced into shipping them.

He initially denied knowing the two men he was arrested with.

Investigators were able to establish that he had bought the Bianca in Whitstable, Kent for 17,000 - paying in cash weeks before his arrest

He told the seller he planned to sail to Spain and use the vessel for diving and chartered angling trips.

The boat was then taken to Ramsgate for work to be carried out on it before it set sail.

Navigation records show it sailed through the English Channel and out into the Atlantic before turning round and heading back towards Cornwall.

Investigators believe it was at the turnaround point, south of Ireland, that the Bianca took the cocaine on board from another vessel.
AN Irish man reported as missing in Austria is now facing a 2,000 bill after being found drunk in a train station.

The 37-year-old was visiting the city of Salzburg with three friends when he failed to return to his hotel on Sunday evening.

The alarm was raised and a major search operation was launched - including searches of the river Salzach amid fears he may have fallen into the water.

15 people were devoted to the search full time.

However the search was called off after the man was found intoxicated at a train station three days after he was reported missing.

The city operates a 'polluter pays' principle meaning the man could be facing a bill of about 2,000.
The community has continued to rally round the family of Danielle McLaughlin following her shocking murder in India.

After an overwhelming response to calls for funds to bring her remains home to Buncrana, her family has been heartened by further acts of support.

"Now friends of Danielle in Australia have volunteered to fly to Goa to accompany Danielle's remains on the journey back to Ireland," said Buncrana parish priest Fr Francis Bradley.

Fr Bradley has been comforting Ms McLaughlin's mother Andrea Brannigan and her four daughters since the news broke of the 28-year-old's killing. In Buncrana, the local Gateway Hotel was flying the Tricolour at half-mast yesterday, in tribute to the popular local woman.

The generous response has also included pledges of support from Irish immigrants and members of the Donegal diaspora.

"The Kevin Bell Repatriation Fund has been enormously supportive and it all lifts a terrible burden of stress from people because your heart is broken with sorrow but your mind is in overload trying to figure things out," Fr Bradley said.

He added that he met Ms McLaughlin last summer and she expressed her happiness at being home to look after her ill grandfather.

She had travelled to many countries and was always delighted to come back to Buncrana, he said.
Danielle McLaughlin's murder has cast a darkness over one of India's most colourful tourism destinations.

Goa is an exotic, confounding place.

It's at once India and a place where Indians go to escape India. Its seafood is sensational; its jungle thick; its beaches as famous for raves and yoga as for resorts fit for royals.

But it can also madden with tourist hustle, shock with poverty and is festooned with litter.

One of my clearest memories is sitting in the passenger seat of a minibus taxi as it overtook a car on the main road connecting Panjim to the northern beaches. The car was at that moment overtaking a scooter, which was in turn overtaking an Indian elephant.

Goa feels like an Ibiza with extra henna, like Thailand sprinkled with white-washed churches. It's a place where 21st century flower children mix with families on package holidays and locals in psychedelic saris and salwar kameezes.

Now this tiny state has hit the headlines for the worst of reasons - the tragic murder of 28-year-old Danielle McLaughlin, her life cut brutally short in Canacona.

Suddenly sun, sea and spices seem stupid. Suddenly, sexual attacks on female visitors to India are under the microscope.

And so they should be. No tourist destination can be summed up by a single tragedy, but the reality is that tourists have been the victims of sexual assault in Agra, Goa, Delhi, Bangalore, Madhya Pradesh, Kolkata and Rajasthan, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). In 2008, British teenager Scarlett Keeling (15) was raped and found dead in another horrific episode on Anjuna beach.

The land of tigers and the Taj Mahal is also a place where women can receive unwanted attention - including verbal and physical harassment - particularly at night. It's not alone in that, and safety is something all travellers need to weigh up for themselves, but it is a fact.

Travel advice? The DFA recommends female tourists do not travel alone at night, use women's carriages where available on the metro, be smart in their choice of rooms and taxis, and respect local dress codes and customs.

Such caution seems far removed from the hippie paradise of the 1960s and 1970s, when magic buses drove across the Middle East in search of enlightenment - and found it on a string of golden beaches that spawned Goa's reputation for spiritual (and drug-fuelled) escapes.

Ultimately, of course, mass tourism did what mass tourism does. Beaches and roads became crowded. Resorts sprung up. A new wave of travellers discovered Portuguese colonial heritage, spicy seafood, tropical seasons and full-blown, 21st-century hedonism.

Goa remains an enthralling destination, and it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of trips to India pass off safely.

The DFA's warning level ('exercise a high degree of caution') is the same for France, China and Mexico, among other countries.

But that, of course, is no comfort to Ms McLaughlin's family.

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I used to be that cynic who sneered at the sight of green wigs and leprechauns on St Patrick's Day. And I looked down on the shenanigans of the Irish living abroad at this time of the year.

I also questioned the value of sending practically the entire Cabinet to far-flung places around the globe. This was nothing more than a good old ministerial "jolly', and an excuse to party at taxpayers' expense.

But having had a taste of living in Africa for eight months last year, and being there for St Patrick's week, my view on how we celebrate our national day abroad has changed.

I am back in Uganda this week for a short stint volunteering with an amazing charity, Hospice Africa Uganda - and I confess I will be in the thick of the lively St Patrick's Day celebrations here.

Yesterday we had the annual St Patrick's Day reception hosted by the Irish Ambassador to Uganda, Donal Cronin, and his wife Susan, in their residence. That was preceded by a lunch for Irish missionary nuns and priests who have served here for generations. It was a delightful, special gathering.

Tonight there will a seisiun in Uganda's only Irish bar, Bubbles O'Leary's.

And tomorrow there is the social event of the year in Kampala - the Irish Ball - which will be attended not only by Irish and Ugandans, but nationalities from all over the world. I am privileged to have been given the job as MC this year.

It is when you live abroad and meet Irish and see their contribution that you really understand our place in the world. And you feel so proud.

Here in Uganda, the Irish community of approximately 400 is making its mark in many ways.

For example, Irish company Devenish Nutrition Ltd is teaching Ugandans how to be efficient pig farmers. This week it officially opened a model pig farm and feed mill in Hoima District in western Uganda. This project is being led by a dynamic young Meath man, Adam Sweetman, who is only 25 years old. And he is doing a fantastic job.

At the other end of the generational scale 91-year-od Franciscan missionary nun, Sr Cosmas Cullen from Churchtown in Dublin, is the oldest Irish person in Uganda, having lived here for 68 years. She has made a huge contribution to education in this country.

In recent years, despite her great age, Sr Cosmas has been helping destitute young people prepare for their O and A Level exams at the Sharing Youth Centre in Kampala. She was also helping in two nursery schools until a year ago. Another Irish nun who has lived here for many years is Sr Maura Lynch, a medical missionary of Mary. In her mid 70s she is a surgeon working at Kitovu repairing vesico-vaginal fistulae, a condition resulting from prolonged obstructed labour which leaves a woman incontinent.

The Irish diaspora is estimated at 70 million. And St Patrick's Day is a time when links between Ireland and the global Irish is strengthened. It is a time when the Irish in Africa and Asia, the Americas and Australia, and Europe come together to share in our heritage. It is right and fitting that our ministers of state travel abroad this week to reinforce this connection and to remind the world that we are still a force to be reckoned with.

This year more than ever, it is important that St Patrick's Day is used as a platform to highlight Ireland's priorities post-Brexit, and to remind world leaders that Ireland is remaining in the EU, and is still a very attractive investment and trade destination. It is also a top tourist centre and an excellent place to come and study.

It was fitting that Taoiseach Enda Kenny took the opportunity during his St Patrick's week visit to the US to confirm the Government will hold a referendum to allow Irish citizens resident outside the State the right to vote in Irish presidential elections. This is recognition that the Irish abroad do matter, that they have a voice and that voice needs to be heard at home.

Of course, all is not perfect, and the fact the shameful Tuam babies case is making headlines all over the world at the moment is not casting Ireland in a good light. It is right that the ills of the past are highlighted and acknowledged - but we must also reassure the world that this was an old Ireland, and a new progressive Ireland is now in place.

So tonight I will be wearing the goofy green hat and the shamrock T-shirt as I join in the craic with people from all over the world in Bubble's O'Leary's bar. And I will be proud to say I am Irish.

La Fheile Padraig sona daoibh.
America gets Enda Kenny. They love jokes like the one about the man in Cork who gave out to him for "blocking up Irish roads with people going to work".

Whereas we cringe that the idea of phrases like "this one is for you, baby", they burst into uncontrollable laughter.

And when he talks, they see an "extraordinary" and "exceptional" leader who has made Ireland great again.

But Donald Trump wasn't supposed to be just another American who'd fall for a bit of St Patrick's Day paddywhackery.

Entering his Oval Office is a high-stakes game that can end with international embarrassment.

Neither of Mr Kenny's likely successors wanted this trip to Washington, but he did. For whatever reason, the Taoiseach felt he needed one more day of being whizzed around the US capital by the Secret Service.

So, no doubt, he has thought carefully about how to approach Mr Trump, what words to use and how hard to push him on the issues that matter like immigration.

The night before his White House visit, Mr Kenny sat at the Ireland Funds dinner, where George Mitchell gave an awe-inspiring speech.

The Taoiseach acknowledged privately afterwards that it was the perfect tone for such an event and for dealing with the new Washington order.

Mr Mitchell said that every rational American knew the country could not return to days of open immigration - but "from the very beginning our country has been enriched by new ideas and new people".

"The strength of America lies in our ideals. They're not easily summarised, but surely include individual liberty, opportunity for all, an independent judiciary and commitment to those ideals."

Addressing Vice-President Mike Pence, who was also honoured at the event, he said: "Commitment to these ideals makes us Americans, not ideals, race or religion. Mr Pence, you carry with us the best wishes of living up to these requirements."

Without ever raising his voice or using provocative language, Mr Mitchell managed to achieve a lengthy standing ovation.

As they might say in the US, it was a 'schooling' for the Taoiseach.

Mr Kenny has not had the easiest run up to his White House visit. The leadership question hangs over him like a guillotine's blade. His previous comments about Mr Trump's language being "racist and dangerous" resurfaced. And there was the fact his meeting came on the same day as the president's latest travel ban on six predominantly Muslim countries was due to come into effect.

But yesterday he followed Mr Mitchell's lead. The Taoiseach led with courtesy and good cheer, luring the new American president into believing he's "a great guy".

At first, it looked fawning and it was. Mr Kenny's praise for how Mr Trump "beat them all, no matter what they say" will have made a large portion of the Irish population sink behind their sofas. But in the full view of the most senior Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill it drew genuine laughter.

There were the usual jokes about the president packing his golf clubs into Air Force One for a trip to Ireland.

And Mr Kenny presented the vice-president with a hurley. At this stage, we could probably make a Junior B team out of the US politicians that have been given hurleys by the Taoiseach.

As he eased into the day, Mr Kenny took a risk in mocking Mr Trump's ability to read from a script but the president lapped it up, clapping along with everyone else.

The president decided to play along. "Tee-shock, that's my new friend, my new friend," he declared.

It was cringeworthy.

Earlier in the week, Mr Kenny had promised the travelling media he'd give a full debrief on his private talks with Mr Trump.

Outside the West Wing, Mr Kenny gave a press conference where he divulged they talked about immigration, the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry. It was far from inspiring.

He hadn't pulled the president up on his racist language or insisted that illegal Irish immigrants should get a special deal.

The headlines were already half-written about how Mr Kenny 'bowed at the altar of Trump'.

But then back on the Hill, the Taoiseach went off script as he concluded his remarks.

He turned sideways on the podium to address Mr Trump directly, saying Irish immigrants "fought every war for America and died for America, and will continue to do so. All they want is the opportunity to be free".

He pointed out how the American national anthem talks about the land of the free and home the brave.

"Our people are as brave as ever but maybe not as free," he said.

And he even quoted George Mitchell from the night before.

There was heavy applause. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, was almost bouncing in her seat with delight at the Taoiseach's words.

"We would like this to be sorted," Mr Kenny said with a fist pump, adding that millions of undocumented immigrants of all nations would help make America great.

Within that room, there were two very distinct audiences but the Taoiseach managed to flatter both sides and still get a firmer than usual message across.

His problem may be that on the outside there are also two audiences. Those who believe he may have helped inform Mr Trump's future decisions on immigration, and those who believe he should never have gone near a racist bigot in the first place.

It's a case of not being able to please everybody, but the Taoiseach will probably be pleased with himself.
Schoolgirls pay their respects at the site of the unmarked grave at the mother and babies home in Tuam, Co Galway. Photo: Andy Newman

It is frightening that so many letters to the editor, articles, programmes, and interviews are already apportioning "blame" for the deaths of babies and young children found in Tuam, and in possibly many other sites throughout Ireland.

Frightening, because they involve an impatient rush to judgment - well before the agreed facts of what took place have been fully collected, described, and analysed.

In describing what took place in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, some on social media have, disturbingly, exploited the use of the word "Holocaust".

Whatever took place in Tuam and elsewhere may indeed turn out to have been truly horrific, cruel, abusive, and maybe even criminal, but it will never turn out to deserve even the slightest comparison with the "Holocaust" - where millions upon millions were industrially slaughtered, including over one-and-a-half million Jewish babies and children.

Many people are losing their reasoning abilities in all of this and in so doing are leading others to believe the alleged guilt of "the usual suspects" (that is, the Church, the nuns, the State) before anyone can be sure about what exactly took place in Tuam and elsewhere.

Many in the media are not without blame in engaging in this frenzied rush to judgment.

Rather, they should be acting much more responsibly before presuming, implying, or being seen to point the finger of guilt at their usual suspects, especially before a properly conducted scientific investigation has been carried out.

Ivor Shorts

Rathfarnham, Dublin

Christ preached forgiveness

I am in full agreement with Sean Smith's assertion that "religious institutions should not be judged by comparison with the behaviour of other sections of society, but by comparison with the ethos they claim to espouse", in his letter, 'Hypocritical Church should be held to its own 'high' standards' (Irish Independent, March 15).

That ethos finds its source in the person of Jesus Christ. The season of Lent reminds us that there can be no deflection from the awful reality of sin. Denial, shifting blame, cover up and silence can indeed deflect us from the truth of our sinfulness.

But so too can holding on to anger, judgment and condemnation. At the centre of our Lenten reflections stands the crucified Christ. "For our sake," St Paul tells us, "he became the sin" (2 Cor 5:21). He became "a thing despised and rejected by men, a man to make people screen their faces" (Isaiah 53).

The cross shows us both the "high standard" to which all Christians are called as well as the depths to which we can fall. The ethos that Christ wishes all to espouse is that of the forgiveness of one another's sins as well as mercy shown to all, but most especially to those who least deserve it.

And yes, that may very well be us, the bishops, priests and religious.

Fr Freddy Warner sma

Portumna, Co Galway

Hijab ban makes no sense

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that employers can ban workers from wearing religious symbols at work.

However, reacting to the news, British Prime Minister Theresa May said in the House of Commons: "Individual institutions can make their own policies but it is not for government to tell women what they can or cannot wear and we want to continue that strong tradition of freedom of expression."

We must not forget that over the decades, many individual institutions have successfully employed hijab-wearing Muslim women, and their headscarf has never been a hindrance to their work.

The ruling may also result in a ban on all religious dress and symbols at work, such as Christian crosses, nuns' outfits, Jewish skullcaps and Sikh turbans, as well as the Muslim headscarf.

Practically, this would cause much disruption for employers wishing to impose such policies.

It doesn't make sense for any level-headed employer to be influenced by the European Court of Justice ruling to ban workers from wearing religious symbols at work.

Navida Sayed

Address with Editor

We need to engage with loyalists

Southern politicians and journalists never mix, engage or talk with Northern loyalists and therefore have seized upon Brexit to promote the concept of Irish unity encouraged by Northern nationalists, who tell them what they want to hear.

The term 'loyalist' explains it all and until there is a real attempt to understand the mindset of loyalists there will never be any meaningful dialogue between North and South in spite of the acres of print and endless debate on radio and TV.

The only way forward is a return to the approach of former taoiseach Sean Lemass.

William Shortland

Blessington, Co Wicklow

Turkey fuelling Islamophobia

The Turkish foreign minister's claim that Europe would plunge into the abyss of holy wars is far off the mark. This does not help the cause of peace.

In fact, it fuels the surge of populism and Islamophobia and cements the belief that Muslims are after the Islamisation of the European continent. This does not prove that Turkey is fit to be a bridge between East and West.

European countries are right to ban rallies intended to shore up support for foreign agendas.

But it was another proof of Europe's incompetence when it bestowed lavish sums of money on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in return for stemming the influx of refugees.

Meanwhile, the EU has been doing little to support countries like Jordan and Lebanon, which are on the frontlines of the global refugee crisis and the war on terror.

What we need is a coherent policy to heal old, festering wounds and to help set a new path for charity and peaceful reconciliation for humanity as a whole.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London, UK

Appeal for long-lost relatives

I'm seeking the help of the public regarding the Somerville and Hodgins families of Drogheda.

My grandfather was Samuel Peter Somerville, born to parents Samuel Alexander Somerville and Elizabeth Smith. He married my grandmother, Margaret Hodgins, daughter of George Hodgins and Margaret Gregory. My grandparents resided on Platin Road. Does anyone have connections to either family?

Particularly, I'm looking for photographs of my great-grandparents, George Hodgins and Margaret Gregory. George Hodgins served in World War I before he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland.

If anyone has any connections to the above families, please email me at stuartso@live.co.uk, and I will be in touch to share my research.

Stuart Somerville

Birmingham, UK
Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner attend NBCUniversal's 74th Annual Golden Globes After Party at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Loreen Sarkis/Getty Images)

Kendall Jenner walks the runway during the Chanel Spring Summer 2017 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 24, 2017 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Kendall Jenner attends La Perla MFW Collection's Presentation and Milan Store Opening during Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2017/18 on February 23, 2017 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images for La Perla)

Kendall Jenner is the latest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan to be targeted by thieves.

The model and reality TV star reportedly hosted a party for a bunch of friends at her home in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday night and left her place at midnight while her friends were still there. However, when she returned at 1am on Thursday morning, she realised some of her jewellery, allegedly worth $200,000 (185,000), was missing, according to TMZ.com.

The 21-year-old reportedly called the police and officers responded to the scene. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told the New York Daily News the caller claimed the suspect was still there but cops didn't not find the person upon arrival. They found no signs of forced entry and there are currently no suspects.

A source also told TMZ they are certain the thief knew where Kendall kept her jewellery. According to the report, at one point during the party, she heard an alarm warning that someone opened a door, but she didn't think much of it.

Expand Close Kendall Jenner walks the runway during the Chanel Spring Summer 2017 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 24, 2017 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Kendall Jenner walks the runway during the Chanel Spring Summer 2017 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 24, 2017 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

The police are currently investigating the incident, which comes just months after Kendall's half-sister Kim Kardashian was targeted by armed thieves in Paris, France in October. She was bound, gagged, and held at gunpoint in her private hotel suite as they made off with millions of dollars' worth of jewellery and electronics.

In January, French authorities conducted a series of raids and arrested 17 people in connection to the crime. They subsequently filed charges, including armed robbery, kidnapping, and weapon possession, against 10 suspects, and Kim gave her testimony to a French judge during a meeting in New York in February.

She recently opened up about the ordeal during an episode of their show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, confessing she thought she was going to be shot.

The emotional star added, "They had the gun up to me and I knew they were just going to shoot me in the head. Then he duct-tapes my face. Please I have a family. Let me live."

Expand Close Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner attend NBCUniversal's 74th Annual Golden Globes After Party at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Loreen Sarkis/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner attend NBCUniversal's 74th Annual Golden Globes After Party at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Loreen Sarkis/Getty Images)

In an upcoming episode, Kim said she was convinced the thieves had been closely following her during the trip and knew when she would be alone.
Our no-nonsense agony uncle gets straight to the point of your most pressing issues.

Dear Brian,

My best friend and I have been pals since secondary school. We're really close and lived together in college, we even went to Melbourne together for a few years, which was the best time of my life.

My friend got married to a really lovely guy she met in Australia a few years ago and is expecting her first baby in May. We have always seemed to do things together and it seems babies are no different as I recently found out I'm also expecting a baby in September with my boyfriend.

I was very close to my grandfather before he died when I was ten and I have always thought I would choose this name if I have a son. As you do, I've had those light-hearted conversations about what we would call our babies so many times with my friend and I know I have told her of my wish to honour my granddad before. However, during a brunch with our partners, my friend and her husband told us they're giving their son my baby name. I told her that that was the name I had picked for many years, but she said she saw the name in a baby book randomly. I've told her how much it means to me but she's disregarded my feelings completely and it's caused a huge rift. We're not speaking at the moment for the first time in more than 18 years.

My boyfriend thinks I'm crazy to let this upset me so much as I don't even know if I'm having a boy. Do you think I should just try my best to let this go or just move on from the friendship and give my baby my name anyway?

Brian replies

I think your boyfriend has hit the nail on the head with this one.

While I understand your sense of frustration that your friend has chosen a name so close to your heart, nobody owns a name.

It's obviously not coincidental that your friend has chosen this name for her son, but hey - you don't even know if you're having a boy or a girl yet. Maybe you'll have a girl and this will all have been for nothing.

Moreover than that, even if you do have a boy there's absolutely no reason you can't call him after your grandfather, even if it is the same name as your friend's son.

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There's nothing to be gained from falling out over this, unless this is a pattern of selfish behaviour on her part - but you probably wouldn't be friends this long if that was the case.

You can be annoyed at her being disingenuous when she claims she first saw the name in baby book. She didn't. She knew it was your grandad's name and is just covering her borrowing it.

Look, in an ideal world she wouldn't have picked the same name that you're planning on using, but the world's not ideal.

This isn't worth losing a friend over - you've made many important memories together and will no doubt make more with both of you having babies so close in age.

Get over it. It's done. And between now and then she might change her mind anyways.

Plenty of families have relatives with the same names, so it might have been a concept you'd have had to get over sooner or later.

If anything take the positive - you've succeeded in having two babies named after your grandfather, not one.

You're completely over complicating this issue - reestablish contact with your friend and get on with things.

Do you have a problem you'd like some advice on? Email askbrian@independent.ie to submit in confidence.
Dawn Butler was urging British Sign Language be given legal status.

A Labour MP has used sign language to pose question in the House of Commons, in what is thought to be a first.

Dawn Butler, an MP for Brent Central, received praise from those commending her on her efforts to get the Government to give British Sign Language (BSL) legal status, as the country marks the 14th anniversary since it was recognised as a minority language.
After Mike Pence said top of the morning, this was a step too far.

St Patricks Day evokes as much pride in the Irish as their most famous beverage  Guinness.

To offend the nation over one of these is a mistake, but both at the same time takes some doing  which is exactly what Paul Ryan and Mike Pence, of Donald Trumps administration, have managed to do.

It all started when vice-president Pence began his speech addressing a St Patricks Day breakfast at the White House by saying top of the morning.

So clearly, top of the morning is quite a stereotypical thing to say in such circumstances  hence the reaction from Ireland.

Sadly though things were about to get much worse, when Congress Speaker Ryan lifted a pint of Guinness to the crowd gathered there.

To be clear, its not the act of raising a Guinness thats got people upset  its the quality of his pint.

Guinness official website states a perfect pint should be complete with a creamy white head. It seems Irish people take this very seriously  and Ryans pour, with its measly head, hasnt gone down too well.

Oh dear.
Mr Trump was scathing in his criticism of the German leader in the 2016 US election campaign

US president Donald Trump and German chancellor Angela Merkel have tried to sidestep differences after their first meeting at the White House.

Mr Trump said they had at least one thing in common: being wiretapped by the administration of former president Barack Obama.

He repeated his contention that Mr Obama may have tapped his phones in Trump Tower.

He sought to turn it into a joke when asked about concerns raised by the British government that the White House is now citing a debunked claim about UK spies.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Mr Trump said, referring to 2014 reports that the US was monitoring Mrs Merkel's mobile phone conversations.

As for the most recent report, Mr Trump said he should not be blamed for quoting a Fox News analyst who had accused British intelligence of helping Mr Obama spy on him.

When a German reporter asked Mr Trump if he regrets any of his commentary on Twitter, he said: "Very seldom."

On another subject, Mr Trump also pushed back against the notion in Europe that his "America First" agenda means he's an isolationist, responding firmly: "I don't believe in an isolationist policy."

The president appeared to bristle at the suggestion from a German reporter, adding, "I don't know what newspaper you're reading, but I guess that would be another example of, as you say, fake news."

Mrs Merkel often attempted a more conciliatory approach, saying she and Mr Trump had not had much time to discuss economic issues.

She said the "success of Germans has always been one where the German success is one side of the coin and the other side of the coin has been European unity and European integration. That's something of which I'm deeply convinced."

Those comments appeared aimed at making a case to Mr Trump on the benefits of the European Union.

He backed Britain's departure from the EU and has expressed scepticism about multilateral trade agreements.

The two leaders tried to express their common bonds but showed minimal rapport, a departure from Mrs Merkel's warm relations with Mr Obama.

During a photo opportunity in the Oval Office, the two did not shake hands before reporters.

At the start of the news conference, Mrs Merkel sought to break the ice, saying it was "much better to talk to one another than about one another".

She said delicately that while she represents German interests, Mr Trump "stands up for, as is right, American interests".

They were "trying to address also those areas where we disagree but tried to bring people together", she said.

"We need to be fair with each other," Mrs Merkel said, saying both countries were expecting "that something good comes out of it for their own people".

The meetings at the White House included discussions on strengthening Nato, fighting Islamic State, the conflict in Afghanistan and resolving Ukraine's conflict, all matters that require close cooperation.

As a candidate, Mr Trump frequently accused the chancellor of "ruining" Germany by allowing an influx of refugees and migrants from Syria and accused his campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, of wanting to be "America's Angela Merkel".

During the news conference, Mr Trump predicted that a new health care law would be passed by a substantial margin and "pretty quickly".

The new president reaffirmed the United States' "strong support" for Nato but reiterated his stance that allies need to "pay their fair share" for defence.

Prior to his inauguration, Mr Trump declared Nato "obsolete" but has since modified his stance, telling European leaders the alliance remains of strategic importance.

When the topic moved to trade, Mr Trump said the US would do "fantastically well" in its trade relations with Germany.

The president has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements but suggested he was only trying to revise trade deals to better serve US interests.

He said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits. The US trade deficit with Germany was 64.9 billion US dollars (52 billion) last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

"The negotiators for Germany have done a far better job than the negotiators for the United States, but hopefully we can even it out. We don't want victory, we want fairness," Mr Trump said.

Mrs Merkel emphasised the need for trade deals that fairly benefit both countries.

"That is the spirit I think in which we ought to be guided in negotiating any agreement between the United States of America and the EU," she said.

AP
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the call to his countrymen living abroad

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Turks living in Europe to have at least five children, saying it would be the best response to Europe's "injustices".

President Erdogan made the comments on Friday while campaigning in the city of Eskisehir for a referendum that would usher in a presidential system and enhance his powers.

The Turkish leader has unleashed scathing rhetoric toward European nations - especially the Netherlands - after Turkish ministers were prevented from carrying out campaign meetings there.

Mr Erdogan told Turks in Europe: "Go live in better neighbourhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the best houses.

"Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you."
The outpouring of relief from the European political establishment that Geert Wilders did not come first in the Dutch general election is a clear measure of current anxiety-levels among the continent's ruling elite.

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the European Union institutions all rushed onto their secure lines (and then Twitter) to congratulate Mark Rutte and the Dutch people for holding back the populist tide.

They declared a victory for tolerance and optimism, but the reality for the European project is far messier, and the 'victory' far more pyrrhic, than those celebrations would have you believe.

To be sure Mr Wilders, an unabashed xenophobe who used the phrase "Moroccan scum" at one point in the campaign, had a disappointing night, but he still managed to secure 13pc of the vote. His Party for Freedom will now become the second-largest in the 150-seat Dutch parliament.

Mr Rutte, bolstered by his recent handling of the diplomatic spat with Turkey, managed to win just over 21pc of the vote, giving him 13 more seats than Mr Wilders. That is a clear win, yes, but by no means a rout - and certainly not the end of populist anger being directed towards governing elites.

This is particularly so when you consider that Mr Wilders does not represent the entirety of anti-immigration sentiment in the Netherlands. Smaller parties like the Forum for Democracy and as well as the mainstream centre-right parties all played the identity card to some degree.

That includes Mr Rutte, who at one point ran a series of campaign advertisements demanding that migrants "be normal, or be gone", a position which was only a half shade away from Mr Wilders's far cruder pronouncements on the need for integration.

The tone and content of this grubby Dutch election campaign showed just how seriously the vision of a tolerant, multi-cultural Europe is now openly under questioned.

It is true that the two pro-EU progressive parties, D66 and GreenLeft, made significant gains, but their combined vote of just over 21pc was dwarfed by the anti-immigrant consensus on the right of Dutch politics represented by the three largest parties commanding 45pc.

None of this should provide too much comfort in Brussels and Berlin as the first round of the French presidential election approaches next month, with more than a quarter of French voters poised to vote for Marine Le Pen and her far-right Front National party.

Ms Le Pen is a much smarter political operator than Mr Wilders - who at times made a fool of himself during the Dutch campaign - and she carries a far more existential threat to the future of the European Union.

The polls show that Ms Le Pen is still very likely to be defeated in the second round run-off - at this point most likely by Emmanuel Macron - but he is a highly inexperienced candidate, and that cannot be taken absolutely for granted.

Which brings us to the wider point about these elections - populism is not going away in Europe, even if its talismans do not win the highest offices as Donald Trump did last November in the United States.

The major factors that drive populism - weak wage growth, high youth unemployment, growing immigration pressures, technological disruption - are here to stay and they are driving a destablising fragmentation of politics all across the continent.

The Dutch election was yet another example of how establishment parties are losing their grip on power amid a growing cacophony of sectional interest parties.

As recently as 2012 the top three Dutch political parties commanded nearly 65pc of the vote, five years on that figure fell to 47pc - its was consistently above 80pc during the 1980s, and 70pc in the 1990s.

The result is a growing knocking in the pipes of European governance at both national and EU level where the big splits - on values, migration, austerity - are creating a cowed, lowest-common denominator politics that makes Europe less able to compete with the rest of the world.

When the leaders of the 27 remaining European member states meet in Rome on March 25 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their founding treaty, there will be much talk of "rebirth", but amid such fractious politics the substance will show that the price of unity is the avoidance of the really big decisions.

The Dutch election results do not buck that trend, they confirm it. ( Daily Telegraph London)
British Prime Minister Theresa May rejected a call for a referendum on Scottish independence before Britain leaves the EU - a move condemned as a "democratic outrage".

Mrs May said "now is not the time" to reopen Scotland's independence debate, though she did not rule out a referendum in the future.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it would be a "democratic outrage" for the British government to stop the people of Scotland from "having a choice over their future".

"It is for the Scottish parliament - not Downing Street - to determine the timing of a referendum, and the decision of the Scottish parliament must be respected," she said.

Still, Mrs Sturgeon's Scottish National Party does not hold an outright majority in the Scottish legislature.

It came after the Queen signed the Article 50 Bill into law, giving Mrs May the power to start Brexit negotiations.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said Mrs May would formally invoke Article 50 by the end of March, allowing the UK to start talks on creating a "positive new partnership" with the EU.

"The Queen has today given royal assent to the Article 50 Bill, giving the government the formal power to trigger Article 50 and deliver on the will of the British people," Mr Davis said.

"By the end of the month we will invoke Article 50, allowing us to start our negotiations to build a positive new partnership with our friends and neighbours in the European Union, as well as taking a step out into the world as a truly global Britain."

Britain's future trading relationship with the bloc and any exit bill which it may have to pay are both set to be highly contentious issues in the forthcoming negotiations.
TWO of Theresa May's most senior advisers have been dragged into a political scandal as the British Conservative Party was fined 70,000 (80,303) and reported to police over election expenses.

The Electoral Commission published a damning report warning that the Conservatives could have gained an "advantage" as a result of failing to declare key election spending on a UK-wide battlebus tour and staff accommodation.

It warned that "significant failures" by the party to accurately report expenses "undermine voters' confidence" in democratic elections.

Overall, the party's 2015 general election spending return was missing 104,765 in expenses receipts. In addition, 118,124 was not reported to the commission or recorded incorrectly. A further 52,924 in invoices and receipts was also missing.

In South Thanet, the omission of expenses is thought to have breached the strict 15,000 local election spending limits, according to senior Conservatives. As a result Simon Day, the former treasurer of the party, was found to have committed a series of contraventions under the rules. The report also prompted questions over the role of Nick Timothy, one of Mrs May's closest advisers.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
People embrace near the Tocqueville secondary school after a shooting incident injuring at least eight people, in Grasse, southern France, yesterday.

A 17-YEAR-OLD student was being held for attempted murder yesterday after opening fire inside a secondary school on the French Riviera, injuring 14 and prompting the government to briefly issue a terror warning.

Carrying two hand guns, a hunting rifle and two "training" grenades, Killian B, as he has been named, entered the Alexis de Tocqueville college in Grasse and opened fire at about noon.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's education minister, lauded the college's "heroic" headmaster who "rushed towards the student to try and reason with him". Thanks to his actions, "we escaped the worst," she said.

Ms Vallaud-Belkacem described the attack as "the mad act of a fragile, weapon-obsessed young man".

The Grasse prosecutor described him as a loner with a grudge against several other students. A few days before he had reportedly sent classmates a morbid picture of students covered in blood on their group Facebook page.

The boy shot the headmaster, reportedly in the arm, after telling him: "It's not you I'm after."

The headmaster's injuries are not life threatening. Three students were "directly" hit by lead shot but none seriously hurt.

Marianna, a student at the school, told France Info: "I was in English class. We heard a gunshot. We didn't think it was an attack. We had the reflex to go under the tables.

"I went to shut the windows and a guy looked at me in the eyes. He looked like another student. He wasn't very tall. He shot in the air and then ran away. We stayed inside the classrooms until the police emptied the two floors."

Another pupil, Benjamin (16) told 'Nice Matin': "At around 12.40pm, I was sitting down finishing eating.

"I heard a big bang and then two others.

"I turned round and saw someone in the playground firing a shotgun.

"He was shooting through the classroom windows overlooking the playground. When I saw that, I ran away."

Local emergency services advised residents on Twitter to stay at home.

The government briefly launched its mobile telephone application warning of a "terrorist" attack and told people in the area to remain in a safe place.

But an interior ministry spokesman said: "It is clearly too early to confirm the motive for this attack."

The terror alert application warning was later switched off.

Christian Estrosi, president of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region, said that the attack appeared to be "not at all" terror-related.

Sources close to the inquiry said that the teenager had recently viewed videos of American school shootings.

According to 'Le Monde', he was "fascinated" by the 1999 Colombine high school massacre in which heavily armed students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher, and injured 21. The pair subsequently committed suicide.

'Le Monde' said that the Grasse shooter also "made references to Satanism" on social media. Posts on his Twitter account reportedly warned of the end of the world, and showed pictures of armed skeletons, a man with a chainsaw, wolves' heads and scarred skin, said 'Liberation'.

There were earlier unconfirmed reports that police were hunting for a suspected accomplice.

The town hall of Grasse had said the shooting appeared to be linked to a "dispute between students".

It said that two teenagers entered the school and tried to shoot a third student. One of the pair managed to escape.

But the interior ministry later said there was only one shooter.

Pupils in all schools in Grasse were confined indoors. Police said that all pupils were now "safe".

French secondary schools have carried out regular practice drills in case of shootings or bomb attacks in response to a wave of terror attacks in France in the past two years. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
French Police officers secure the scene near the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on March 16, 2017 in Paris, after a letter bomb exploded in the premises.AFP PHOTO / Getty Images

French Police officers arrive with sniffer dogs at the scene of the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on March 16, 2017 in Paris, after a letter bomb exploded in the premises. / AFP PHOTO / Christophe ARCHAMBAULTCHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images

A French Army soldier arrives at the scene near the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on March 16, 2017 in Paris, after a letter bomb exploded in the premises. AFP PHOTO / Getty Images

French POlice officers secure the scene near the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on March 16, 2017 in Paris, after a letter bomb exploded in the premises.AFP PHOTO /Getty Images

Police outside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offices where an envelope exploded in Paris, France Photo: REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

A booby-trapped letter exploded at the French office of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday, injuring one person.

French President Francois Hollande described it as a "terrorist attack".

The incident came as a Greek anarchist group claimed responsibility for a failed letter bomb sent to the German finance ministry on Wednesday.

IMF director Christine Lagarde, who is French, said in a statement that she was informed about the explosion while on a trip to Germany.

"I condemn this cowardly act of violence and reaffirm the IMF's resolve to continue our work in line with our mandate," she said.

Police said one woman was lightly injured when the package, containing what appeared to be a home-made "pyrotechnical device or a large firecracker", blew up at the offices in central Paris.

The victim, an assistant to the director of IMF's offices in Europe, was burned on the hands and face.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot said the package was addressed to the secretariat of the IMF's France representative in Paris and "exploded when the secretary was opening it".

"This was a pyrotechnical device, or a large firecracker. It was pretty home-made, and was in no way a bomb," he added. Mr Cadot said that the IMF had received "a few threats in recent days".

There is no indication yet whether there is any link between this booby-trapped package and one sent to the Germany finance ministry.

Addressed to Wolfgang Schauble, the finance minister, the package came from Greece and contained "an explosive mixture" that could have caused "considerable" damage, police said. It was destroyed before it could explode.

The Greek group that claimed responsibility, Conspiracy Cells of Fire, claimed in an online posting yesterday on a Greek left-wing website that the attack was part of a campaign by international anarchist groups.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Climate may have helped shape the human nose and determined whether a person is born with a beak or a turnip, research suggests.

Noses come in a huge array of shapes and sizes - big, small, long, short, flat, bulbous, narrow or turned up.

Random genetic changes account for some of the differences, but new evidence points to climate having an impact that is not to be sniffed at. Scientists found that nose measurements of people with African, Asian and European ancestry were too different to be explained by chance alone.

But there were strong correlations with climate and humidity. Wider noses and nostrils were more common in warm, humid conditions while narrower noses led the way in places that were cold and dry.

"We are interested in recent human evolution and what explains the evident variation in things like skin colour, hair colour and the face itself," lead researcher and anthropologist Professor Mark Shriver said.

"We focused on nose traits that differ across populations and looked at geographical variation with respect to temperature and humidity."

One important function of the nose and nasal cavity is to "condition inspired air before it reaches the lower respiratory tract", the scientists writing in the journal 'Public Library of Science Genetics' said.

Ideally, inhaled air should be warm and moist. For this reason, narrow nostrils that help the airflow to be humidified by the mucous-covered nasal cavity would have been an advantage to human ancestors moving to colder, drier regions away from the equator.

Natural selection would favour wider nostrils in hotter, stickier parts of the world. The same idea was previously proposed by Oxford University anatomist Professor Arthur Thomson, who came up with Thomson's Nose Rule in the 1800s.

Sexual selection may also have played a role in moulding the human nose, the professor said. Members of a particular group may simply find larger or smaller noses more attractive. If smaller noses are preferred, over time nose size in that population will shrink.
Marianne Quinn the mother of Aaron Quinn, one of Matthew Muller's victims, hugs one of her son's friends (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

A woman who was drugged along with her boyfriend and then dragged from their California home has described the "hell that we have survived" in emotional testimony.

She spoke out before her abductor was sentenced to 40 years in prison for a crime so elaborate and bizarre that police initially dismissed it as a hoax.

"You treated me like an object, a toy, an animal," Denise Huskins told her kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained lawyer who pleaded guilty in September.

She described the two days of physical and psychological torture she endured after Muller snatched her from her and her boyfriend's San Francisco Bay Area home two years ago.

"I still have nightmares every night," she said, fighting back tears. "Sleep is not rest for me. It is a trigger."

Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who was bound and drugged during the kidnapping, said he "cannot and will not ever be the same".

US District Judge Troy Nunley called the abduction a "heinous, atrocious, horrible crime" as he sentenced Muller, 39.

He had faced up to life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

In court, Muller said he was "sick with shame" for the "pain and horror" he caused.

Shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, he looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced.

Mr Quinn's mother Marianne said a life sentence would have been better "because they never would have to worry about him ever again, but again, he's going to be in jail for a long, long, long time".

Defence lawyer Thomas Johnson argued for a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment.

"They want him to be a monster to get to 40 years. Fine. Marginalise mental illness," he told the judge.

Muller used a remote-controlled drone to spy on Ms Huskins and Mr Quinn before he broke into their Vallejo home, tied up the couple and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said.

They were blindfolded while Muller played a pre-recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.

He put Ms Huskins in the boot of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days before eventually releasing her in her home town of Huntington Beach.

He claimed in emails to a San Francisco reporter that Ms Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals who were practising their kidnapping tactics.

After her release, Vallejo police called the kidnapping a hoax and erroneously likened it to the book and film Gone Girl, in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested in an attempted robbery at another Bay Area home.

They found a mobile phone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Mr Quinn, linking the disgraced lawyer to the abduction.

Vallejo police have since apologised. Ms Huskins is suing the city and two police officers, accusing them of defamation and inflicting emotional distress.

Muller, a former Marine, lost his law licence in 2015 in an unrelated incident.

AP
Displaced Iraqis flee their homes in the rain in western Mosul. Photo: Reuters

Iraqi government forces besieged Isil militants around Mosul's Old City yesterday, edging closer to the historic mosque from where the group's leader declared a caliphate nearly three years ago.

The militants, holed up in houses and darting through alleyways, resisted with sniper fire, suicide attacks and car bombs.

Though heavy rain hampered the advance, federal police and rapid response unit troops reached points about 500m from the centuries-old al-Nuri Mosque by yesterday morning.

The black jihadist flag was clearly visible draped from its famous leaning minaret.

The government forces have made significant gains in recent days in a battle that started in October, seizing a main bridge over the Tigris river and closing in on the mosque.

"We are holding positions we took yesterday. There is a lot of resistance in that area with snipers and car bombs," federal police Major General Haider Dhirgham told Reuters.

The capture of al-Nuri Mosque would be a huge symbolic victory as well as a concrete gain. "It's important for them, it's where they declared their state," said Mr Dhirgham, speaking at a police forward base as refugees trudged through the muddy streets and wrecked houses.

Isil leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi chose the mosque as his backdrop for announcing the caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria in July 2014.

Since then, Mosul has been the hardline group's main urban stronghold in Iraq but it has steadily lost ground since the offensive began. Iraqi leaders say the battle is reaching its final stages.

Several more areas of western Mosul had been recaptured, including the hospital, during Wednesday and yesterday morning but officers said progress was slowed by car bombs and booby-traps in houses and alleyways, as well as the bad weather.

Isil hit back with sporadic attacks on government positions, including mortar fire. Suicide bombers had driven explosive-rigged cars at troops, Mr Dhirgham said.

Government forces responded with mortars and helicopter gunships strafed militant positions from above.

Police said they had killed nine militants who tried to counter-attack one of their positions with rocket-propelled grenades.

"Federal police drones bomb dozens of fixed and mobile Daesh targets in the perimeters of the Grand Mosque," a later police statement said, using an Arab acronym for Isil.

A federal police officer said commanders were meeting to adjust their plans for tackling the Old City.
At least 42 people have been killed in attack on a boat carrying Somali migrants off Yemen's Red Sea coast, a UN agency says.

A military vessel and a helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen - killing at least 42 people, according to a UN agency.

Yemen's Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out the attack.

The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni city of Hodeida, and it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons into the port in small boats.

There was no immediate coalition comment.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from war-torn Yemen.

Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told reporters the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemen's Hodeida province, and was 30 miles off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel and then the helicopter gunship opened fire.

He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up torches, apparently to show that they were poor migrants.

He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. mr Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

A top official with the UN's migration agency said 42 bodies have been recovered from the attack.

Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organisation for Migration in Geneva, said the attack at around 3am on Friday was "totally unacceptable" and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat "before firing on it".

He said about 75 men and 15 women who survived the attack were taken to detention centres, and some bodies were laid in a fish market in the town of Hodeida because of a lack of space in mortuaries.

Laurent De Boeck, the head of the IOM's Yemeni office, said the UN agency believes all those on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.

The Houthis said they had shot down a helicopter gunship in the same area a day earlier, without providing evidence.

They also said the coalition had carried out a wave of airstrikes over the past 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed a number of fishermen hours before the strike on the migrant boat.

The Saudi-led and US-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognised government.

The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said only 14 bodies had arrived so far, adding that women were among the dead.

Another 25 wounded people, including some who had lost arms and legs, were brought to the hospital, he said.

The UN refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was "appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen".

Despite more than two years of fighting in Yemen, African migrants continue to arrive in the war-torn country, where there is no central authority to prevent them from travelling onward to a better life in neighbouring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

More than 111,500 migrants landed on Yemen's shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.

The turmoil has left migrants vulnerable to abuse at the hands of the armed trafficking rings, many of which are believed to be connected to the multiple armed groups involved in the war.

AP
Saadeddine Othmani has been named as new prime minister. (AP/Paul Schemm)

Morocco's king has named a new prime minister, former top diplomat Saadeddine Othmani, after removing his predecessor following five months of government deadlock.

The royal palace said in a statement that Mr Othmani, a former foreign minister, has been given the responsibility of forming a new government.

Mr Othmani's Islamist party, the Party of Justice and Development, won an election in October but has failed to form a coalition government.

King Mohammed VI holds ultimate power in Morocco but rarely intervenes in politics, and his decision on Wednesday to oust previous prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane came as a national surprise.

The lack of a government has threatened the Moroccan economy and its reputation for political stability in a volatile region.

AP
At least 10 people have been injured after several tourists and a BBC crew were caught up in an eruption at Mount Etna.

A member of the BBC crew said they were caught up in a "huge explosion" along with several tourists on the Italian island of Sicily.

BBC science correspondent Rebecca Morelle tweeted to say the lava flow mixed with steam causing the explosion.

Ms Morelle said the group, which included one 78-year-old woman, was "pelted with boiling rocks and steam."

She said some had head injuries, burns, cuts and bruises, but added that everyone "had a very lucky escape."

Some of the group were evacuated by a mountain rescue team, she added.

The president of the Italian Alpine Club chapter in Catania, Umberto Marino, was traveling up the volcano in a snowcat when injured people started running in his direction.

''The material thrown into the air fell back down, striking the heads and bodies of people who were closest," Marino said, according to the Catania Today website.

Six people are recovering in the nearby Catania and Acireale hospitals, Il Corriere reports.

One volcanologist told Ms Morelle the explosion was the most most dangerous he had seen in his 30-year career.

"Explosions like this have killed," she added.

"Running down a mountain pelted by rocks, dodging burning boulders and boiling steam  not an experience I ever ever want to repeat."

Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting for the first time this year towards the end of last month.

It is the highest volcano in Europe at 3,330 metres and has burst into life several times each year.
Marianne Quinn the mother of Aaron Quinn, one of Matthew Muller's victims, hugs one of her son's friends Thursday, March 16, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

Huntington Beach police Crime Scene Investigator vehicle is seen at the family home of Denise Huskins in Huntington Beach, California March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr/File Photo

A woman who was drugged along with her boyfriend and then dragged from their California home has described the "hell that we have survived" in emotional testimony.

She spoke out before her abductor was sentenced to 40 years in prison for a crime so elaborate and bizarre that police initially dismissed it as a hoax.

"You treated me like an object, a toy, an animal," Denise Huskins told her kidnapper, Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained lawyer who pleaded guilty in September.

She described the two days of physical and psychological torture she endured after Muller snatched her from her and her boyfriend's San Francisco Bay Area home two years ago.

"I still have nightmares every night," she said, fighting back tears. "Sleep is not rest for me. It is a trigger."

Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, who was bound and drugged during the kidnapping, said he "cannot and will not ever be the same".

Expand Close Huntington Beach police Crime Scene Investigator vehicle is seen at the family home of Denise Huskins in Huntington Beach, California March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr/File Photo / Facebook

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Whatsapp Huntington Beach police Crime Scene Investigator vehicle is seen at the family home of Denise Huskins in Huntington Beach, California March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr/File Photo

US District Judge Troy Nunley called the abduction a "heinous, atrocious, horrible crime" as he sentenced Muller, 39.

He had faced up to life in prison, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

In court, Muller said he was "sick with shame" for the "pain and horror" he caused.

Shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, he looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sentenced.

Expand Close Marianne Quinn the mother of Aaron Quinn, one of Matthew Muller's victims, hugs one of her son's friends Thursday, March 16, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Marianne Quinn the mother of Aaron Quinn, one of Matthew Muller's victims, hugs one of her son's friends Thursday, March 16, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. (Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

Mr Quinn's mother Marianne said a life sentence would have been better "because they never would have to worry about him ever again, but again, he's going to be in jail for a long, long, long time".

Defence lawyer Thomas Johnson argued for a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment.

"They want him to be a monster to get to 40 years. Fine. Marginalise mental illness," he told the judge.

Muller used a remote-controlled drone to spy on Ms Huskins and Mr Quinn before he broke into their Vallejo home, tied up the couple and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid, prosecutors said.

They were blindfolded while Muller played a pre-recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.

He put Ms Huskins in the boot of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days before eventually releasing her in her home town of Huntington Beach.

He claimed in emails to a San Francisco reporter that Ms Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals who were practising their kidnapping tactics.

After her release, Vallejo police called the kidnapping a hoax and erroneously likened it to the book and film Gone Girl, in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was arrested in an attempted robbery at another Bay Area home.

They found a mobile phone that they traced to Muller and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Mr Quinn, linking the disgraced lawyer to the abduction.

Vallejo police have since apologised. Ms Huskins is suing the city and two police officers, accusing them of defamation and inflicting emotional distress.

Muller, a former Marine, lost his law licence in 2015 in an unrelated incident.
The Presidents wife Melania Trump and their son Barron

Taoiseach Enda Kenny brought presents to the White House for Donald Trump's wife Melania and youngest son Barron, in addition to the traditional bowl of shamrock.

This year the crystal bowl handed over by Mr Kenny was made in the Waterford Gaeltacht of An Rinn by Eamonn Terry, founder of Criostal na Rinne and a master glasscutter with more than 45 years' experience.

Mr Kenny also gave the president some Declan Killen cufflinks and a Bord Bia hamper containing a selection of Irish produce.

Irish linen and a Carrickmacross lace brooch was presented to Melania Trump and 'The Moon Spun Round: WB Yeats for Children' was gifted to 10-year-old Barron Trump.

A framed copy of the census of Ireland 1911 was presented to Vice-President Mike Pence.

It includes Mr Pence's grandfather Richard Cawley and his great grandmother Ellen Cawley.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands before their meeting at Abes official residence in Tokyo.

Rex Tillerson, Washington's top diplomat, said yesterday that North Korea "need not fear" the US, as he began a visit to Asia calling for a "new approach" to the rogue nation.

The US Secretary of State said previous diplomatic efforts to rein in the north had failed, but offered no fresh ideas on how to deal with Pyongyang, which is alarming the world with its nuclear ambitions.

China said it would welcome fresh ideas on dealing with simmering tensions in north-east Asia, while a North Korean official in Beijing warned that the US and South Korea were taking the region to the "brink of nuclear war".

Mr Tillerson made his comments after he met with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo. "North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbours in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea," he said.

"With this in mind, the United States calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and refrain from any further provocation."

Tensions were raised last week after Pyongyang fired four missiles, in an apparent response to joint military exercises by South Korea and the US which began a few days earlier. Such manoeuvres had caused Pyongyang to take "tough measures", a North Korean diplomat told reporters in Beijing yesterday.

He said they had bought the Korean peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war", according to a report by the 'Global Times' newspaper.

North Korea caused international outrage in 2006 when it carried out its first underground atomic test. Four more tests have followed, including two last year.

Tough UN sanctions have failed to deter the North from scrapping its ambitious military programme.

Last week the Chinese foreign minister suggested Pyongyang could halt its nuclear plans if the US and South Korea suspended military activities in the region. US officials rejected that proposal, and Mr Tillerson called for a fresh outlook during his visit to Japan.

"In the face of the ever-escalating threat it is clear that a new approach is required," Mr Tillerson said. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: "If the US or another country has a better plan, a better proposal, they can bring it out."

Mr Tillerson travels to South Korea today before heading to Beijing at the weekend. He is expected to urge Chinese officials to exert more pressure on the North, and also lay the groundwork for a visit to the US next month by Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
President Donald Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 17, 2017. Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Donald Trump's first meeting with Angela Merkel produced an awkward moment as the US president did not shake the German leader's hand in front of photographers in the Oval Office.

Mr Trump told photographers to "send a good picture back to Germany, please".

He said the leaders had enjoyed "very good" talks while Mrs Merkel praised the "friendly reception".

Photographers then shouted "handshake!" and Mrs Merkel quietly asked Mr Trump "do you want to have a handshake?"

There was no response from the president, who looked ahead with his hands clasped.

German weekly Der Spiegel commented that "the overall impression of this meeting was rather cool".

German daily Bild wrote on its website: "Trump didn't want to give Merkel his hand in his office!"

At a joint news conference with the German chancellor, Mr Trump hit back at claims his "America First" agenda is isolationist.

He said: "I don't believe in an isolationist policy."

Mr Trump has been deeply critical of foreign trade and national security agreements. Yet the president suggested that he is only trying to revise them to better serve US interests, rather than pull back from the world entirely.

Mr Trump said trade agreements have led to greater trade deficits, although the US trade deficit with Germany was 64.9 billion dollars last year, the lowest since 2009, according to the Commerce Department.

Mr Trump bristled at the suggestion from a German reporter that his policies could be interpreted as isolationist.

He said: "I don't know what newspaper you're reading, but I guess that would be an example of fake news."

Donald Trump also stood by his unproven claim that his predecessor Barack Obama wiretapped his phones.

The US president suggested he was the victim of the same sort of surveillance the Obama administration was once alleged to have used to monitor German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Mr Trump said during a joint news conference with Mrs Merkel.

The chancellor, who was making her first visit to the White House since Mr Trump took office, did not weigh in on the 2013 incident, which angered many in Germany.

Mr Trump's allegations against Mr Obama have sparked reactions ranging from bafflement to anger in Washington, with both Democrats and Republican lawmakers saying they have no evidence to support his claim.

But the White House's refusal to back down has created more problems for the new administration.

On Thursday, spokesman Sean Spicer defended the president's comments by repeating a Fox News analyst's report that GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, had helped Mr Obama wiretap Mr Trump.

The agency vigorously denied the charge and Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, complained directly to White House officials.

Mr Trump tried to distance himself from the report on Friday.

"All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television," Mr Trump said, referring to analyst Andrew Napolitano. "You shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."

The British government said the White House has promised it will not repeat the allegation. Mr Spicer, speaking with reporters following Mr Trump's news conference, said: "I don't think we regret anything."

Mr Trump tweeted earlier this month that Mr Obama "was tapping my phones in October" and compared the incident to "Nixon/Watergate" and "McCarthyism".

The claim is prompting growing bipartisan agreement that there is no evidence to back up the claim and mounting pressure to retract the statement.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence weighed in on Thursday, finding "no indications" that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance.

Republicans in Congress also said Mr Trump should retract his claims. Charlie Dent called the accusation against Britain "inexplicable" and the accusation against Mr Obama unfounded.

"A president only has so much political capital to expend and so much moral authority as well, and so any time your credibility takes a hit, I think in many ways it weakens the officeholder," Mr Dent said.
The US has made a formal apology to Britain after the White House accused GCHQ of helping Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump.

Sean Spicer, Mr Trump's press secretary, repeated a claim on Thursday evening  initially made by an analyst on Fox News - that GCHQ was used by Mr Obama to spy on Trump Tower in the lead-up to last November's election.

The comments prompted a furious response from GCHQ, which in a break from normal practice issued a public statement: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. "The apology came direct from them," a source said.

General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister's National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britain's US ambassador.

Mr Spicer had earlier repeated claims that Barack Obama used GCHQ to spy on Mr Trump before he became president.

"Hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on it," Mr Spicer said of the intelligence supposedly provided to Mr Obama by Britain.

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice - he used GCHQ."

Mrs May's official spokesman said the White House has assured the Government that allegations that British intelligence services spied on Donald Trump will not be repeated.

The Government "made clear" to the US that the "ridiculous" claims should be ignored and received assurances in return that they will not be repeated, showing that the administration does not give them any credence, Mrs May's spokesman said.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, described Mr Spicer's comments as "shameful".

"Trump is compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment," he said. "This harms our and US security."

A White House official said: "Ambassador Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall expressed their concerns to Sean Spirce and General McMaster. "Mr Spicer and General McMaster both explained that he was simply pointing to public reports and not endorsing any specific story."

The president is under increasing pressure to justify his claims, which his opponents charge calls the whole integrity of his administration into question.

In an attempt to provide credibility to the claims, Mr Spicer quoted from a series of articles which discussed surveillance.

He referenced comments made earlier this week on Fox News TV by former judge Andrew Napolitano in relation to Mr Trump's controversial claim that wiretaps had been installed at his New York residence.

On Fox News, on March 14, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement:

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI and he didn't use the Department of Justice.

"He used GCHQ. What is that? It's the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot."

British officials were quick to rubbish Mr Napolitano's claims earlier this week. A government source reportedly said the claim was "totally untrue and quite frankly absurd".

The British official told Reuters that under British law, GCHQ "can only gather intelligence for national security purposes" and noted that a US election "clearly doesn't meet that criteria".

Mr Spicers press conference on Thursday was held shortly after the senate intelligence committee published a statement saying they had no evidence for Mr Trump's claim, made on March 4, that Mr Obama ordered wiretaps on Trump Tower.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Donald Trump has tweeted that President Barack Obama had tapped his phones before the presidential election (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Donald Trump has stood by his unproven claim that his predecessor Barack Obama wiretapped his phones.

The US president suggested he was the victim of the same sort of surveillance the Obama administration was once alleged to have used to monitor German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Mr Trump said during a joint news conference with Mrs Merkel.

The chancellor, who was making her first visit to the White House since Mr Trump took office, did not weigh in on the 2013 incident, which angered many in Germany.

Mr Trump's allegations against Mr Obama have sparked reactions ranging from bafflement to anger in Washington, with both Democrats and Republican lawmakers saying they have no evidence to support his claim.

But the White House's refusal to back down has created more problems for the new administration.

On Thursday, spokesman Sean Spicer defended the president's comments by repeating a Fox News analyst's report that GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, had helped Mr Obama wiretap Mr Trump.

The agency vigorously denied the charge and Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, complained directly to White House officials.

Mr Trump tried to distance himself from the report on Friday.

"All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television," Mr Trump said, referring to analyst Andrew Napolitano. "You shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."

The British government said the White House has promised it will not repeat the allegation. Mr Spicer, speaking with reporters following Mr Trump's news conference, said: "I don't think we regret anything."

Mr Trump tweeted earlier this month that Mr Obama "was tapping my phones in October" and compared the incident to "Nixon/Watergate" and "McCarthyism".

The claim is prompting growing bipartisan agreement that there is no evidence to back up the claim and mounting pressure to retract the statement.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence weighed in on Thursday, finding "no indications" that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance.

Republicans in Congress also said Mr Trump should retract his claims. Charlie Dent called the accusation against Britain "inexplicable" and the accusation against Mr Obama unfounded.

"A president only has so much political capital to expend and so much moral authority as well, and so any time your credibility takes a hit, I think in many ways it weakens the officeholder," Mr Dent said.

AP
CONCORD- Students from Pitts School Road Elementary came out on top at the county Sumdog math competition.

The school came in first in the Cabarrus County Sumdog Challenge. Sumdog is a website that offers free online math contests to motivate students. Scores are based on accuracy and the questions adapt to each students level.

Out of the 582 Cabarrus County Schools students that participated in the math challenge, Pitts School fourth-grader Krish Patel was the overall individual district winner.

Valerie Prices math class at Pitts School Road also placed first in the district out of 58 classes that entered the competition.
A pregnant woman in northeastern Alabama has been charged with rape after authorities said she wrote on a Medicaid application that a 14-year-old boy was the father of her unborn baby.

Police and the state department of human resources launched an investigation after 19-year-old Mekenzie Leigh Guffey, of Hollywood, Alabama, identified the boy on paperwork for Social Security benefits earlier this month, Hollywood Police Chief Jason Hepler told AL.com.

Workers notified the state human resources agency, which then contacted police.

Guffey was arrested last week and charged with second-degree rape and second-degree sex abuse, along with enticing a child for immoral purposes, traveling to meet a child for an unlawful sex act, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography, according to reports.

She posted bond and was released from custody earlier this week. It was not immediately clear whether she has an attorney.

Police said Guffey, from Hollywood, a small town east of Huntsville, met the boy through a mutual friend and started a relationship with him late last year, according to AL.com. Police said she would pick up the boy at his home and drive him to a remote area in town for sex.

Hepler, the police chief, told ABC affiliate WAAY that Guffey admitted to having sex with the boy about 20 times since December.

Ultimately, she became pregnant, authorities said.

"She was proud of him being the father until she found out we were going to become involved," Hepler, the police chief, told AL.com.

The chief also said Guffey and the boy had been sending each other nude photos and videos, which resulted in the pornography charge.

Alabama law defines second-degree rape as "sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex less than 16 and more than 12 years old; provided, however, the actor is at least two years older than the member of the opposite sex."

If convicted, Guffey could face up to 20 years in prison.
A sign of the desire to get into the new Indian dynamic has manifested itself this past few days with the massive over-subscription of several Indian initial public offerings (IPOs) coming to market.

The DMart IPO closed at USD260 million and was oversubscribed by a multiple of 104. The Radio City IPO was oversubscribed by a factor of three, and another four IPOs are due in India this month, excluding todays listings of Laxmi Cotspin, Manas Properties, Maximus International and Octaware Technologies.

This shows the gradual realization that the Indian consumer market is the place to be.

RELATED: Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory Services from Dezan Shira & Associates

The interesting part of the DMart IPO and Radio City IPOs is the amount of latent capital that has not entered the Indian stock market due to over-subscription. The over-subscriptions on the DMART and Radio City offerings this week amount to USD30 billion  equivalent to 1.5% of Indias entire GDP.

Clearly, there is investment capital waiting for good homes in India, and a domestic market with the capital to do so.

The dynamic is similar to the China craze that began about 10 years ago. While the Indian IPO figures may still seem small in comparison with those achieved by Chinese conglomerates in Hong Kong today, it was only ten years ago that Chinese IPOs were listing at the same value as the DMart offering in India now.

India currently possesses a similar sized middle class consumer market to China today, which suggests that Indian stocks are probably undervalued right now.

RELATED: Tapping Into Indias Dynamic Consumer Market

While Chinas consumer market will start to overtake Indias due to various age demographics, the correlation between the boom that fueled massive Chinese growth from 2005 should not be underestimated in terms of its similarity to Indias position today.

Furthermore, the rules for listing in India only require that a company should have shown a profit for the last three years. This is a time for Indian entrepreneurs to get stuck in, and ride what promises to be an exciting ten years in making India both an Asian consumer tiger and the workshop of the world.



Chris Devonshire-Ellis is the Founding Partner of Dezan Shira & Associates  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 emerging Asia. Since its establishment in 1992, the firm has grown into one of Asias most versatile full-service consultancies with operational offices across India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam, in addition to alliances in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Russia and Thailand, and liaison offices in Italy, Germany, and the United States. For assistance with corporate establishment and administration services in India, please email india@dezshira.com. Chris can be followed on Twitter at @CDE_Asia.

Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide.

An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in India. As such, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Indian market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to stay up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.

Passage to India: Selling to Indias Consumer Market In this issue of India Briefing magazine, we outline the fundamentals of Indias import policies and procedures, as well as provide an introduction to engaging in direct and indirect export, acquiring an Indian company, selling to the government and establishing a local presence in the form of a liaison office, branch office, or wholly owned subsidiary. We conclude by taking a closer look at the strategic potential of joint ventures and the advantages they can provide companies at all stages of market entry and expansion.
By Vasundhara Rastogi

Registering trademarks in India just got simpler: the government introduced its new Trade Mark Rules, 2017 on March 6. The new rules replace the Trademark Rules of 2002, and aim to establish a much more streamlines process, with emphasis on digital communication.

A faster, simpler, and transparent registration process will benefit businesses and will serve as an overall boost to Indias Intellectual property regime. Under the new rules, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotions has introduced the following key changes:

Consolidation of forms

The new rules reduce the number of forms to be filed from 75 to 8 making it much easier for businesses, especially first time applicants. The new forms introduced are as follows:

TM-A for application filing;

TM-C for copyright search certificate;

TM-G for trade marks agent registration/renewal;

TM-M for multi-functions;

TM-O to file opposition;

TM-P for replacement of proprietor;

TM-R for renewals; and,

TM-U for registered user application.

Increase in government fees

However, the cost for filing almost all forms and applications has increased significantly. For example, the trade mark application fee has increased from US $61 (Rs 4,000) to US $152 (Rs 10,000) for physical filing, while the fee for the request for renewals has increased from US $76 (Rs 5,000) to US $152 (Rs 10,000) for physical filing.

RELATED: Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory

Concession to startups and small businesses

The government has relaxed the application fee for startups and small businesses. Accordingly, the new trademark application fee for individuals, startups, and small enterprises is US $76 (Rs 5,000) for physical filing and US $68.50 (Rs 4,500) for e-filing.

Under new trademark rules, a firm will be recognized as a startup if it meets the criteria laid down in the governments Start-up India Initiative. A startup is an entity that is not older than five years, has an annual turnover not exceeding US$ 152,776 (Rs 25 crore) in any preceding financial year, and is working towards innovation, development, deployment or commercialization of new products, processes or services driven by technology or intellectual property.

Foreign companies that fulfill the criteria mentioned above can also claim startup entity status. Furthermore, a startup needs to obtain certification from an inter-ministerial board.

In the service sector, a small enterprise is defined as an entity that has an annual turnover of not more than US $764,234 (Rs 5 crore) in any preceding financial years, while in the manufacturing sector the threshold is fixed at a turnover of not more than US $ 1,528,468 (Rs 10 crore) in any preceding financial years.

Promoting E-filing

To encourage digitization, the government has offered a 10 percent concession on online filing of all applications.

Moreover, some requests can only be filed online. For instance, online filing is compulsory for the certification or transmission of an international application, an application for expedited processing for trademark registration or an application for determining a well-known trademark.

Registration for Well Known trademarks

Brands that enjoy a good reputation in the market can now request that their trademark be included in the official well-known marks list.

A person or company requesting this will need to file the TM-M form with the Registrar in the Trade Mark office, and provide a Statement of Case and supporting evidence. The application may also be subject to objections from the public for a thirty-day period by the Registrar.

The official fee to declare a mark as a well-known mark has been fixed at US $1,528 (Rs 1 lakh)

RELATED: Tapping into Indias Dynamic Consumer Market

Provision to register Sound Mark

The new provisions make it easier to register sound marks, which are sounds used to perform the trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services. Applicants can file the TM-A form and submit the sound in an MP3 format  with the length not exceeding 30 seconds  along with the graphical representation for musical notes.

Previously, registering sound marks required an applicant to spell out the tune as well as represent the sound notes graphically. The insertion of this rule is a welcome step as it gives some clarity on the mode of submission of a Sound Mark.

Simplified and expedited registration process

The new rules provide for expedited processing of applications, replacing the earlier provision for expedited examination of applications. With an additional fee of US $610 (Rs 40,000) [or US$305 (Rs 20,000) if the applicant is an individual, startup, or small enterprise], an applicant can speed up not only the examination process, but also fast track every subsequent stage until the grant of registration, as applicable.

Provision to fast track opposition proceedings

The government has also introduced the option of video conference hearings as part of any opposition proceedings in order to remove any delays in the process due to unavailability of any party or counsel. Moreover, a party cannot ask for more than two adjournments in an opposition proceeding.

Renewal of registration

In an additional move to make the trade mark process more efficient, applicants can seek renewal one year before the expiration of the registration. Earlier, they had to wait six months prior to expiration.

Compulsory filing of user affidavits

Previously, an affidavit was filed only when requested by the hearing officer at the time of a show-cause hearing. However, under the new trade mark rules, it is mandatory for any applicant claiming Prior-Use of the mark to file an affidavit of use along with relevant user documents.

Digital drive

To bring ease and efficiency in official correspondence, Trade Mark Office recognizes e-mail as a mode of service between the registry and the applicants. Consequently, every applicant will be required to provide an email address along with their postal address for service in India.



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Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide. An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017 An Introduction to Doing Business in India 2017 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in India. As such, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Indian market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to stay up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.
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In her career spanning over few years, Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt has played a variety of roles and proved her mettle as an actor in the industry over and over again. When she ventured into the movies, she instantly became a butt of jokes for her poor general knowledge, but she took it in her stride and moved on. Nothing stopped her from voicing her opinion about important issues in Bollywood. This time too, she spoke about the word, "Nepotism".

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In a recent telephonic interview with IANS, when the actress was asked about her view on nepotism, this what she had to say: We are talking too much about it. We need to stop.

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It all started after Kangana Ranaut accused Karan Johar of being the flag bearer of nepotism. Many people came forward to voice out their opinion on the scandalous issue. While some took KJos side, there were others on Kanganas.

Nepotism has become the official annoying word of 2017, just like 'intolerance' was for 2016 but just like Alia, we don't want anymore of it.
While many celebrities have such interesting stories to tell about their interactions with Justin Trudeau, Matthew Perry, who is best known for his role as Chandler in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, has the most not-so hilarious memory of Canadas Prime Minister.

The 47-year-old actor recently revealed about his childhood friend Justin on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show and said, We actually beat up Justin Trudeau. He also admitted he is not particularly proud of it.

Matthew Perry and Justin Trudeau attended school together. However, Perry was few years senior to Trudeau.

Narrating the incident, he said, I was reminded this, my friend Chris Murray, who was also in the fifth grade in Canada, reminded me that we actually beat up Justin Trudeau.

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We both beat him up. I think he was excelling in a sport that we werent so it was pure jealousy.

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I think he was the only kid in school that we could beat up. You know, Im not bragging about this, this is terrible. I was a stupid kid, I didnt want to beat him up. In fact, I think at one point I tried to turn it into love play.

And this, they did at the time when Justins father Pierre Trudeau was the Prime Minister of the nation. Quite gutsy, we must say!
If a celebrity steps out of his/her home, even for regular activities like visiting a doctor, it often becomes the headlines of a newspaper. The 'Dirty Picture' actress Vidya Balan has often fallen prey to such news while visiting her family doctor for regular check ups.

And so we are not surprised on why her pregnancy rumours spread like wildfire. But now once and for all, Vidya has slammed everyone for trying to intrude her personal space.

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Vidya has clarified that she is neither pregnant and nor is she planning for a baby soon.

What is this baby obsession? I am not a baby-making machine. Anyway, the world population is on a rise. If some people don't have children, it's fine, she told Mid-day.

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She also, slammed the stereotypical viewpoint.

It was annoying. I could be going to a clinic for an acne too! Why is it that every time a woman, post marriage, visits a doctor, there are whispers of her pregnancy? (sic), she added.

We love how just talking casually, Vidya makes a very valid point! Always.
With her last film Neerja, Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor shut her haters and proved that her craft is in place. On a personal front, Sonam Kapoor is outspoken as far as talking about LGBT rights, body shaming, feminism or dealing with online trolls is concerned. Sonam Kapoor's middle name is 'fearless and bold'.

On Koffee With Karan too, when she appeared with Kareena Kapoor Khan, she was witty, sarcastic and funny.

Sonam has always voiced her opinion about human welfare. Apart from supporting a lot of causes, Sonam revealed how her new mission in life is to fight against hunger and make India, hunger-free. She also became a goodwill ambassador for 'Fight Hunger' Foundation, an NGO dedicated to the fight against malnutrition.

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(Also read: Sonam Kapoor Is On A Mission To Make India Hunger Free And Eliminate Malnutrition)

That's not all, Sonam, who is also the brand ambassador of Cuddles, a charity foundation that helps meet the nutritional needs of children afflicted with cancer, will be seen hosting a gala dinner in Mumbai tonight.

A post shared by sonamkapoor (@sonamkapoor) on Feb 24, 2017 at 4:15am PST

This dinner will be hosted to raise funds for children suffering from cancer. This fundraiser event, hosted by Sonam will be organized today in association with Cuddles Foundation.
A five-year-old Muslim girl in the coastal district of Kendrapara in Odisha topped the Bhagwad Gita recitation contest.

BCCL/representational image

Firdaus topped the Gita recitation contest held on Wednesday by getting the better of senior competitors.

A Class 1 student of Sovaniya residential school, the girl memorised the Hindu religious scripture at an early age when her classmates were learning how to reading alphabets.

Also Read: A Muslim Female Singer From Karnataka Gets Trolled For Singing A Hindu Devotional Song

Firdaus is an exceptional talent and she stood first in the Gita recital competition for the sub-juniors in the 6-14 years category, said a judge of the competition, Biraja Kumar Pati.

google/representational image

Firdaus was miles ahead of her competitors. At one go, she recited the Gita with consummate ease without stopping. Her pronunciation was immaculate. We awarded her 90 marks out of a total of 100, described another judge of the district level competition, Akshyaya Pani.

Also Read: Fatwa Issued Against Indian Idol Junior Runner-Up Because Singing Is 'Anti-Islamic'

My teachers have taught me moral education and have inculcated me the spirit of Live and let others live. I believe that all human beings are members of an extended global family. This is what my dear teachers tell us in the classrooms, the girl said.

I am a proud mother. It is giving me immense satisfaction after knowing that my daughter has stood first on reciting Hindu religious scripture Gita. Credit for my daughters success goes to the school teachers, her mother Arifa Biwi said.

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In 2015, Maryam Siddiqui a 12-year-old Muslim girl from Mumbai had outperformed over 3,000 participants at the 'Gita Champions League' contest, organized by International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon).
Just days into his stunning election victory in Uttar Pradesh's Deoband, which was for years seen as a 'Muslim constituency', BJP MLA from Deoband, Brijesh Singh wants the city renamed.

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According to Singh the city should be called Dev Vrand, liking it to the Pandavas during their exile.

He said it is unfair that the city which has such significance in Mahabharata is only known by the name of Darul Uloom Deoband, which was set up by the Mughals.

Singh said that he will raise the issue in the assembly once the government is formed.

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He, however, maintained that it was not a Hindu-Muslim issue. Singh cited three villages around Deoband as historical proof.

My own village, Jadodajat, is part of Rankhandi village. The ran (war) of Mahabharta started from here. From Hastinapur near Meerut to Kurukshetra, Pandavas travelled for war through my village.

Another nearby village, Jakhwala, was originally named Yakshwala, where the eldest among Pandava brothers, Yudhisthira, was asked questions by the Yaksha (the righteous crane), Singh said. Pandu sarovar (pond) is located nearby in village Jarodapabnda, he said.

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Singh had secured 1,02,000 votes from Deoband, making him the first BJP MLA from the seat.
The Kansas shooting incident has shaken the Indian community in the US unlike anything in the recent past. Given the rise in hate crimes in the country, in the recent times many fear that the community will face more such attacks.

AFP

With this in mind, after the murder of the Hyderabad Techie, the Telangana American Telugu Association (TATA) had advised its people to communicate in English in public places in order to avoid any misunderstanding by the local Americans.

The organisation further advised people not to get into argument with others in public places and leave the place immediately without confrontation.

AP

While it is a practical solution, derived by people who have been living in US and know the situation there, some Hindu right wing groups in India had their own 'advice' to make American Hindus safe - men should wear tilak and women should wear bindi on their forehead, to reflect their identity.

This seemed to be an outcome of the reports that the Kansas attacker shot at the Indian techies mistaking them to be Iranians.

But if anything, it is far from reality and is dangerous, making them only a target easily identifiable to potential attackers.

BCCL/ Representative Image

In fact, a couple of decades ago, these were the exact symbols a hate group used to identify South Asians.

Dotbusters was a notorious hate group in New Jersey which was behind a string of attacks on Indians in the year 1987. As the name implies, people wearing 'dot' (bindi) was their target.

In August of 1987 The Jersey Journal, a local newspaper, had published a letter from a member of "Dotbusters".

"I'm writing about your article during July about the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called the Dotbusters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk down Central avenue and experience what it's like to be near them: we have and we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a weak [sic] race physically and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped."

It outlined the groups' intentions to force Indians out of the community by violent means, if necessary. The author explained the groups' technique of searching the local telephone directory for common Indian surnames. The letter claimed that three Patel attacks - would take place that evening.

The group showed its ugly colour later that year, in September 27, when Navroze Mody, a resident of New Jersey city had gone out for a drink with his white friend in a cafe in the in nearby town of Hoboken.

Asian American League

As they left the cafe Mody was assaulted and beaten into a coma by a group of ten youths. He died four days later.

For the next six months, the attacks continued and the Indian community was left disabled with fright. The attacks had forced many Indians to abandon wearing sari and bindi because both would call attention to their ethnicity.

It is also worthwhile to note here that another community which has come under frequent attacks after 9/11. American Sikhs have been on the receiving end of many hate-motivated attacks mostly because their attire and appearance closely resembled that to Muslims.

So, it is better to blend in with the local community there than trying to stand out with a target marked on your forehead.
Amid fears in the Indian community in the US about the recent rise in suspected hate crimes, the US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day'.

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This comes after Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian techie was killed in Kansas last month by a US Navy veteran Adam Purinton who opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe before yelling "get out of my country".

Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence "Will not be divided or define" the state, Kansas Governor+ Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them."

"These actions can never overshadow our shared values and beliefs, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital.

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Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

"I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'.

"We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said.

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"This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said.

"Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that he is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

"Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candlelight vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

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To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candlelight vigil was attended by a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.
Calling Mumbai the city of dreams is cliched. It is not just the lucrative opportunities that make it the city of dreams, but also its geography. The proud city overlooks the Arabian Sea and gives the tourists a view of its priceless sunsets while giving its residents serene sunrises every single day.

Be it Marine Drive promenade, or the beaches, one of the reasons Mumbai has been loved so much is for its proximity to the sea.

And while most of us can never get enough of the existing sea facing structures, there is another perspective that people can now look at the city with - looking at the city from the sea, instead of the other way round.

Mumbai has recently welcomed 'AB Celestial' - a one-of-its-kind floating restaurant that offers a beautiful view of the city's skyline from the sea. If youre wondering what AB in AB Celestial stands for, it is Aishwarya Bhende, the 21-year-old owner of the three-floor luxury dining yacht.

When you first meet her Aishwarya can be mistaken for the typical girl-next-door, but what sets her apart from the ordinary is the fact that she has designed the entire interiors for the yacht, and been involved with it since its inception. Her parents, she says, were not at all surprised when she put forth the idea of a floatel.

My parents have been thoroughly supportive and my mother and I have worked on all the nitty-gritty of this boat."

View from the entrance of AB Celestial

My father has helped me a great deal with the finances and permissions for making this dream a reality. I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but different from what the world is doing. Having a floating hotel is just that for me, she shared.

Aishwarya Bhende, owner of AB Celestial

The boat, which has three stories for the public was graciously shown around to us by Aishwarya. We enter the floatel through a large ramp with a steep incline, that is the beginning of an exciting experience. We land from the ramp onto a barge, which does not make us feel that we are in the sea at all. This barge leads to the entrance of the boat, and leads us straight into the much anticipated 24-hour cafe.

AB Celestial Cafe

According to Aishwarya, the boat was built in Florida a couple of years ago. With about 3000 square feet of area in all the three levels, it can accommodate as many as 500 people in the boat. The boat comprises a cafe on the lowermost deck, level two is banquet, and the third floor and the upper deck that gives the phenomenal view that the hotel has become so famous for. Watching sunset from the upper deck, with a cup of tea is one of those serene, quiet moments that we crave for whilst near the sea.

It also has a cabin for the captain, but this will be restricted to the public, she told us.

I think that this is the best gift I could give Mumbai since it has a long coastline which is unexplored. We will work only on a reservation basis, be it the cafe or the lounge. We are open to taking bookings for weddings as well, Aishwarya informed.

She also shared with us that it had been quite a struggle for them to set this hotel up. We took about 108 permissions, and it took three years for this dream to become reality. I am grateful that the government has been so supportive of this project, Aishwarya said.

Until we reach the upper deck, we do not feel the 'floating' that is happening. While inside, it is still, but once we settle on a seat on the top, we feel the vessel move ever so slightly.

When we ask her, what measures will be taken for the torrential rains and unpredictable monsoon that Mumbai is famous for, she says, The hotel will be closed for the three months of monsoon, but will be open for the rest of the year and have more to offer with time.

An excited Aishwarya shows us a video of the dolphins that she has spotted in the time that she has been working on the hotel.

They come sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes during sunset. We only managed to capture one video so far, but the having them swim so close is one of the best things that any Mumbaikar will be able to see, she said.

From the upper deck, we also spot police patrol boats doing regular rounds for security purposes. Aishwarya tells us that they have ensured everything for the safety of the people.

Apart from an occasional whiff of the nearby Mahim Creek, the place is a unique experience in itself. From the wooden floors done to perfection to the ambience and lighting, the place, especially after sunset, becomes what the name suggests  Celestial.
A lot of people around Holi become a little paranoid about the presence of folks who are all jacked up.

While it's acceptable to enjoy and get all pumped with the mood of the festival, it's definitely not bearable if people behave like hooligans.

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But let's whine as much as we want, but it will take us really long before we change anything on this note in this country.

In a video that's doing rounds on Social Media, some men can be seen consuming alcohol, out in public.

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These men, are none other than the caretakers of the country, the cops themselves.

This video is from the Chawni police station in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh from Tuesday.

#CaughtonCam Policemen drinking beer inside a Police station in Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior. (14.3.17) pic.twitter.com/tYW9F0GvCX  ANI (@ANI_news) March 16, 2017

In the video, you'll see how one man is forcing others to drink, within the premises of the Police Station. This video comes after Gwalior Police itself ran a campaign, asking people not to consume alcohol while celebrating Holi on the streets. Ironic much?

While it's utterly common in India for people to drink booze and create a menace during Holi, having the cops do it puts us in a troublesome situation.

After the incident happened, Gwalior district Superintendent of Police suspended 15 cops, including two ASI. He's further demanded the credibility of this video.
A day after two Sufi clerics, including Syed Asif Ali Nizami the head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah went missing in Pakistan, the India has taken up the matter with the government in Islamabad.

ANI

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has asked Pakistan for an update on both the Indian nationals.

We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan./4  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 17, 2017

Asif Nizami and his brother Nazim Nizami had gone to Pakistan on March 8, on a religious visit. They have been untraceable since Tuesday after boarding a flight to Karachi from Lahore.

The two clerics had visited Lahore on Monday to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine and offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine, the next day, before leaving for Karachi.

ANI

"On March 14, they offered another 'chadar' at Daata Darbar sufi shrine in Lahore. The next day, they reached Lahore airport to take a flight to Karachi at 4:30 pm. At the Lahore airport, my cousin was stopped by authorities to clear some documentation and my father was asked to board the flight," Sazid Ali Nizami told news agency IANS.

He said that their mobile phones have been switched off since. "We have no information as such. We have been putting up our landline numbers in advertisements," he said.

While it is unclear what happened to them, the two Sufi clerics disappeared at a time when there is an increase in attacks targeting the mystic sect in Pakistan.

Sunni terrorist groups including the Pakistan Taliban, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi who see them as heretics has repeatedly targeted Sufis shrines and worshipers in Pakistan.

At least 75 people were killed last month in one of the biggest terror attacks in Pakistan in the recent years when a suicide bomber targeted the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sindh's Shewan.

The Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Islamic State terrorists have threatened to attack India with Mughal memorial Taj Mahal as their main target. A new poster issued by Ahwaal Ummat Media Center, a pro-ISIS media group on its Telegram channel shows Taj Mahal as the target.

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According to Site Intelligence group, the message was posted on Telegram on March 14. It shows Taj Mahal as "new target".

Site Intelligence Group

The graphics also depicts an armed Islamic State fighter and a van with Agra istishhadi written in English, suggesting that it could be a suicide attack.

The ISIS warning also comes a week after the Ujjain train attack and the Lucknow encounter, involving a self-radicalised pro-ISIS group.

Even though initially it was reported that the attack was carried out by an ISIS affiliate, intelligence agencies are yet to establish any direct link between the Ujjain attackers and ISIS in Syria.

However, there were reports that ISIS have vowed to revenge the Lucknow encounter. ISIS had also urged Indian Muslims to follow Saifullah as an "example".

Pro-#ISIS Telegram Channel Incites for Attacks in #India, Points to Suspected IS Fighter Saifullah as Example https://t.co/pDsM5W29ux  SITE Intel Group (@siteintelgroup) March 11, 2017

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The latest warning also comes at a time when various intelligence agencies are clamping down on ISIS sleeper cells and pro-ISIS groups across India.

Intelligence agencies believe at least 75 Indian nationals have joined ISIS in Syria or Iraq.
There is no proposal to withdraw the Rs 2,000 notes that were introduced post demonetisation, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has clarified, amid rumors.

"There is no proposal to withdraw the Rs 2,000 denomination banknote," the minister said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha. Read more

1. India Tells Pakistan To Find Out Nizamuddin Dargah Sufis, Who Went Missing From Lahore

A day after two Sufi clerics, including Syed Asif Ali Nizami the head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah went missing in Pakistan, the India has taken up the matter with the government in Islamabad.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has asked Pakistan for an update on both the Indian nationals. Read more

2. Newly Elected BJP MLA Wants To Rename Deoband And Call It Mahabharata Inspired 'Dev Vrand'

Just days into his stunning election victory in Uttar Pradesh's Deoband, which was for years seen as a 'Muslim constituency', BJP MLA from Deoband, Brijesh Singh wants the city renamed.

According to Singh the city should be called Dev Vrand, liking it to the Pandavas during their exile. Read more

3. ISIS Terrorists Vow To Intensify Attacks On India, Declare Plan To Target Taj Mahal

The Islamic State terrorists have threatened to attack India with Mughal memorial Taj Mahal as their main target. A new poster issued by Ahwaal Ummat Media Center, a pro-ISIS media group on its Telegram channel shows Taj Mahal as the target.

According to Site Intelligence group, the message was posted on Telegram on March 14. It shows Taj Mahal as "new target". Read more

4. 5-Year-Old Muslim Girl Wins Bhagavad Gita Recitation Contest In Odisha

A five-year-old Muslim girl in the coastal district of Kendrapara in Odisha topped the Bhagwad Gita recitation contest.

Firdaus topped the Gita recitation contest held on Wednesday by getting the better of senior competitors. Read more

5. Two Minor Girls Kidnapped And Gang Raped In Front Of Their Father In Moving Car In Gujarat

Police in Gujarat's Dahod have arrested five people in connection with the gang rape of two minor siblings. According to police, the sixth rapist is on the run and that seven others were also involved in the abduction of the girls.

The accused kidnapped the girls aged 13 and 15 along with their father from his shop in Bhutpagla village on Thursday, forced them into an SUV. Read more
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has responded to an online petition is propping him as the prime ministerial candidate for Congress. The petition, which was started by a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, read: Tharoor is a man well qualified with deep knowledge of international and national issues, who can connect with the people of India and with world leaders."

Reuters

And rightly so, Tharoor is one of the finest politicians our country has. The two-time parliamentarian from Thiruvananthapuram, has his popularity sky rocketing with his immaculate take down of Britain's drain on India's wealth.

But now, the humble politician has very gracefully declined to be part of any such petition.

"Thank you, but no, thank you." He made it clear that he "neither supports nor endorses such a campaign."

Replying to the petition which has now garnered, 16,000 signatures, Tharoor said,"I am a member of Parliament for the Congress Party, nothing more and nothing less. The party has a settled leadership, which is not up for debate. When changes occur they do so through an established procedure."

And quiet obviously, Tharoor floored people with his charisma. all over again! Read the full post below:
Aylan Kurdi lying face down in the sand on a Turkish beach, Omran Daqneesh, caked in dust, dazed and unaware of his injuries, Kim, the little-naked girl screaming after napalm bomb attack on her village in Vietnam in 1972.

These images will remain in our minds forever. They left us all seething over the futility of war and fighting.

Unfortunately, pictures of children have turned into the most powerful portrayal of the human cost war and suffering. And now a young Kashmiri boy, seen wailing at the death of his best friend, has turned into a symbol of the ongoing strife in Jammu and Kashmir.

The picture snapped by Hindustan Times photographer Waseem Andrabi was shared on Facebook by rights activist Khurram Parvez with the following caption:Khoon kay dhabay dulain gay kitni barsaaton kay baad.."

Which translates into, "How many rains will it take to wash away the blood stains." a quote of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

The boy is 9-year-old Burhan Fayaz, caught inconsolably crying at the funeral of his friend Amir Nazir, who was killed in an alleged encounter by Indian security forces, in Padgampora of Pulwama, South Kashmir.

The HT report states that despite being warned, Amir, along with other locals ran towards an encounter to stop the operation and let militants escape.

Amir was like my brother. Who will I play with now, a grieving Burhan told the HT.

A Kashmiri blog site penned a moving poem titled 'A Tribute To The Innocent Face' on the picture of the anguished boy.

Let the world answer his tears

Let the world watch his heart break

Let the world listen to his cries

Let the world see his innocence

Let the world know what he had lost





Isnt it time for him to play?

But he is crying for his players

Who had fallen to the stray bullets

Of those bloody stray dogs.

They say we stand for peace!





Peace! that comes with roars of GUNS

The World is a mute spectator

To all his cries n scream

To all tears and rage

Broken hearted he stands

Goodbye, for now, my friend





With his intentions,

To strive for vengeance.

This is how a rebel is born

From a dormant volcano,

Emitting out lava heat.
Political parties in Pakistan have agreed to revive the military courts for trying hardcore militants for a period of two years after the sudden surge of terror attacks in the country.

The military courts have remained controversial due to their verdicts in last two years. Pakistan had first established military courts in January 2015 after the Peshawar school attack on December 16, 2014, in which over 140 people mostly children had died.

AFP

The military courts had awarded death sentence to 161 militants and so far only 21 have been executed. The decision was taken after Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, the Speaker National Assembly chaired a long meeting comprising both governments as well as opposition parties.

"We have agreed to reestablish military courts for a period of two years, considering it is an issue of national importance," Sadiq told reporters after the talks. He said that the Constitution would be amended to introduce the military courts. Finance minister Ishaq Dar, who was also part of the talks, said that the decision to revive military courts was made in view of the fact that the country is fighting a war against terrorism.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of former president Asif Ali Zardari had opposed the courts but extended its support after some of his party's proposals were accepted. PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan said that the opposition had agreed to the proposal conditionally after consultation.

"The government has agreed to four of the nine demands put forth by Pakistan People's Party (PPP)," he said.
The BJP's emphatic win in the state elections is not very good news for Beijing, a state-run Chinese news outlet wrote today. Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party's news outlet that focuses on foreign affairs, said today in an article that a resurgent BJP very likely means "More difficulties in making compromises" with New Delhi in international spats.

BCCL

PM Narendra Modi's "hard-line attitude" domestically and internationally will only harden, said Global Times. The article also cited other news sources as concluding that the 2019 national polls will be won by the BJP.

"In the international arena, he (PM Modi) changed India's previous attitude of trying never to offend anyone and started to take a clear stance in controversies among other nations to maximize its own interests... If Modi wins the next election, India's current firm and tough manner is bound to continue..., it will likely mean more difficulties in making compromises in rows with other countries," the Global Times article today said.

ALSO READ: Here's How Winning 312 Seats In Uttar Pradesh Makes BJP More Powerful At The Centre As Well

BCCL

As an example, the Chinese Communist Party-run outlet cited PM Modi celebrating Diwali with Indian soldiers at the Sino-Indian border.

"Take the border disputes between Beijing and New Delhi. No silver lining has yet emerged and Modi demonstrated his firm stance over the issue by celebrating Diwali, India's biggest holiday, with soldiers at the Sino-Indian border," the news outlet wrote.

ALSO READ: Charisma, Demonetisation And Caste Equations, How Team BJP Conjured Up Modi Magic In UP

BCCL

It does add though that the Modi government did enhance ties with China and Moscow and applied to be a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet, Modi counterbalanced that, strategically.

"Yet he also upgraded defense collaboration with the US and Japan, articulated his support for the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific strategy and Washington's stance on the South China Sea issue," the state-run outlet writes.

ALSO READ: BJP Leader Sushil Modi Tried To Troll Ex-Bihar CM, But Lalu Yadav's Reply Shut Him Completely

BCCL

Global Times is still somewhat optimistic, as it defines the qualities of "hardliners", which is what it is implying Modi and the BJP are.

"But while seeming inflexible on the surface, hard-liners also have powerful strength in coming to an agreement with others once they make up their mind, given their executive ability and high efficiency. That said, we can still be optimistic in resolving our divergences, including border disputes, with New Delhi during Modi's term as long as both sides are willing," the article said.
The world, its people, and their law work in mysterious ways. I mean, did it ever occur to you that a river could be a person?

A river in New Zealand has now been formally declared as a person, all thanks to the 160-year-old campaign.

On Wednesday, The Whanganui River, which flows 145 kilometres from the central North Island to the sea, was given legal personhood by the country's parliament.

(Also read: They Are Trying To Turn Yamuna's Banks Into A Huge Garbage Dump And We Need To Stop Them!)

takepart

The New Zealand's Maori Iwi people, who've been fighting this battle for so long, have vested their belief and faith in this river. To them, it's revered and sacred. The river's interest will now be represented by this indigenous group.

Going forth, the river will now be jointly represented by the elected members of Maori community and the parliament, one person each.

In a world first, the Whanganui river in New Zealand has been formally declared a living entity https://t.co/yTRd1p5PYb pic.twitter.com/MELPjAaSbj  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 16, 2017

"Whanganui Iwi has fought for recognition of its relationship with the Whanganui River since the 1870s," said country's Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Christopher Finlayson.

New Zealand: treaty recognizes the Whanganui River as living being w/ legal rights, culmination of a 160-yr campaign https://t.co/L4w4lN4Rcp  a_lutacontinua// (@a_lutacontinua) March 16, 2017

This victory has legally ended the longest litigation in New Zealand's history. The negotiation between the committee members and the government formally began in 2009.

wanderlusters

"This legislation recognises the deep spiritual connection between the Whanganui Iwi and its ancestral river and creates a strong platform for the future of Whanganui River." he further added.

Locals were basically concerned about the health and well-being of the river.

doc.govt.nz

" I know some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality," Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson said, according to Newshub. "But it's no stranger than family trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies. "

Well, how long do we need to wait for Indians to feel in the same way for Ganga or Yamuna- India's dying Goddess?

(Also read: Just Spending Money Won't Clean Ganga, Experts Say No Major Improvement Has Come In Water Quality)
Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials.

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AIPAC Gave $60K to Architect of Trumps Muslim Ban

By Eli Clifton

March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been noticeably quiet about the Trump administrations slowness to denounce the spike in anti-Semitic attacks and bomb threats, its nomination of an ambassador to Israel who described J Street as worse than kapos, and its ties to ethno-nationalists like White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller. But AIPAC has done more than just tolerate the U.S. tilt toward extreme and often xenophobic views. Newly released tax filings show that the countrys biggest pro-Israel group financially contributed to the Center for Security Policy , the think-tank that played a pivotal role in engineering the Trump administrations efforts to impose a ban on Muslim immigration.

In 2015, AIPAC launched a 501c4 advocacy group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran (CFNI). Expected to spend $20 million in July and August 2015, the group was formed with the sole mission of educating the public about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal, spokesman Patrick Dorton told The New York Times . The Times reported that the $20 million budget would go to ad buys in as many as 40 states as well as other advocacy.

Indeed, the groups filing ( viewable here ) show that the AIPAC spin-off paid $18 million for media related expenses, $8.35 million for phone program expenses, and $58,200 for survey expenses.

Shortly after the group launched, my colleague Ali Gharib and I noticed that the groups website featured two items promoting an exiled, ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). CFNI even used b-roll footage from a press conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which the State Department deemed the MEKs political wing (earning it a corresponding terrorist designation until the MEK was delisted as a terrorist organization in 2012).

After we reached out for comment, AIPACs anti-Iran deal advocacy group scrubbed their website of the MEK related materials, seemingly acknowledging a PR misstep. But the b-roll footage remained in their television commercials and on YouTube.

AIPACs flirtation with extreme groups appears to have gone even further than borrowing footage from the MEK.

Tax disclosures reveal that CFNI contributed $60,000 to Secure Freedom, a donation to a group with the tax-id number 52-1601976. That tax-id number belongs to Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank largely devoted to advocating for greater defense spending (it received funding from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, and General Electric) and pushing completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about American Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.

The contact address for the contribution was a residential address in New Orleans belonging to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) staffer Marsha Halteman . Halteman did not respond to questions about why her address appeared beneath the donation.

CSP is headed up by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney who baselessly claimed that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and former George W. Bush appointee Suhail Khan were part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. He also asserted that the Missile Defense Agency logo appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo and helped launch an interfaith group to support Trumps anti-Muslim agenda.

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Gaffney and Trump aide Kellyanne Conway played a pivotal role in bringing about the administrations efforts to ban immigration from seven (and now six) Muslim-majority countries.

In 2015, Gaffney commissioned Conways firm to produce a poll about Muslim attitudes. Released in June 2015, the poll found that 51% of Muslims agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice to being governed according to Shariah, among other findings. But the polls methodology was deeply flawed, relying on an opt-in online survey which industry experts consider unreliable. Conways own firm later admitted the data was not statistically representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population.

None of that stopped Trump from citing the poll as his justification for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what is going on, on December 7, 2015.

Its possible that the funds went to support CSPs advocacy opposing the Iran nuclear agreement. Nonetheless, AIPACs willingness to partner with an organization whose president, Frank Gaffney, was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League , the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Conservative Union (which briefly banned him from their events after he accused political opponents of being part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy) raises serious questions about AIPACs commitment to fighting bigotry, discrimination, and, in particular, Islamophobia.

Neither AIPAC nor CSP responded to requests for comment.

 2008-2017 LobeLog.com This article was first published at Lobe Log
US and Israeli Codependent Relationship is Not Just about Money

By Ramzy Baroud

March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - We must look back twenty-five years to realize how far Israel has fallen in world support, wrote famed Jewish scholar, Harvard sociologist, Nathan Glazer in 1976.

In the last forty years since Glazer wrote his piece, which was uncovered and transmitted by Philip Weiss, Israels global support has fallen much further. The country that once appealed to both United States capitalism and the Soviet Unions socialism is now militarily powerful but, otherwise, politically isolated on the international stage.

The misleading perception that Israel is a beacon of light among nations has worn off. Worse, the last time this phrase was uttered at an international level, it was made by Geert Wilders , a Dutch populist right-wing politician perceived by many to be a racist and an Islamophobe .

Yet, the more isolated Israel became, the more its dependency on the United States grew.

Supporting Israel is not in Americas interests, Weiss wrote . In fact, Israel is a strategic liability for the US. That makes American Jewish influence the ultimate pillar of Israels survival.

Although Zionists often speak of a historical bond between the US and the Jewish people, nothing could be further from the truth.

On May 13, 1939, a boat carrying hundreds of German Jews was not allowed to reach American shores and was eventually sent back to Europe.

That was not a foreign policy fluke. Three months earlier, in February 1939, members of Congress rejected a bill that would allow 20,000 German Jewish children to come to the US to escape the war and possible extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

Not only did Congress shoot it down but the public had no interest in the matter either, as allowing Jews into the US was quite unpopular at the time.

Fast forward nearly eight decades, things have changed in name only.

While most American Jews continue to support Israel, they are opposed to the administration of Donald Trump, which they rightly perceive to be dangerous and hostile to all minorities, Jewish included .

However, Israel does not seem to have much qualms with the new administration. On the contrary, the most ardent Israeli Zionists are particularly pleased by Trumps clique of reviled politicians.

Mere days after Trump won the US Presidential election, American Zionists moved quickly to ensure Israeli interests were fully guarded by the new administration.

The Zionist Organization of America wasted no time , either, by fraternizing with individuals accused of having anti-Jewish agendas. ZOAs annual gala on November 20 hosted none other than Steve Bannon, a leader in the so-called alt-right, otherwise known as white supremacy in the US.

Under his leadership, Breitbart, seen as a major platform for the alt-right, fueled anti-Semitism (needless to say, racism of all shades), argued Alex Amend and Jonathan Morgan in AlterNet.

Watching top Israeli officials and leaders of the Jewish community in the United States hosting  ever so enthusiastically  Bannon at ZOAs annual gala appeared perplexing to some.

But Bannons ties with Zionists go back to well before the rather surprising Trump election victory.

In an article entitled: Steve Bannons web of weirdness: Meet the bizarre billionaires behind the president-elects chief strategist, Heather Digby Patron named a few of these bizarre billionaires .

They included, Sheldon Adelson, a right-wing billionaire with a gambling empire, who is singularly focused on the state of Israel.

Adelsons relationship with Bannon (and Trump) has well preceded Trumps victory, and seemed to take little notice of the fact that Bannon and his ilk were viewed by many American Jews as frightening, racist, anti-Semites with a menacing agenda.

Adelson, however, cares little for the true racists. His obsession to shield Israels militant Zionist agenda trumped all other seemingly little irritants.

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But the gambling mogul is not the exception among powerful Zionists in the US, and, despite official Israeli rhetoric, Israel does not make political decisions based on the collective good of the Jewish people.

Writing in Mondoweiss , the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network explained: From Russian Tzars to the Nazis to Mussolini to the colonial British Empire to the Christian Right  Christian Zionists; (The Zionists) embracing of Trump and renowned reactionary political strategist, Steve Bannon, is no exception.

Israeli commentator Gideon Levy agrees .

In an article published by Haaretz on November 21, Levy wrote, When friendship for Israel is judged solely on the basis of support for the Occupation, Israel has no friends other than racists and nationalists.

Thus, it is no surprise that Adelson is funding a massively rich campaign and lavish conferences to combat the influence of the civil society-powered Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), while plotting against Palestinians using the same American elements that consider the word Jew a swear word in their own social lexicon.

By putting Israel and Zionism first, these rich individuals, powerful lobby groups, hundreds of think- tanks, thousands of networks across the country and their allies among the religious right, are now the main wheelers and dealers in any matter concerning US foreign policy in the Middle East and Israels political and security interests.

With no empirical evidence, however, Israel still insists on linking American interests to US support of Israel.

Speaking in the White House on February 15 at a joint press conference with President Trump, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cordially thanked Trump for his hospitality, then uttered these words : Israel has no better ally than the United States. And I want to assure you, the United States has no better ally than Israel.

But it was only half true. The US has indeed been a stalwart supporter of Israel , offering it over $3.1 billion in financial assistance each year over the last a few decades, an amount that dramatically increased under President Barack Obama to $3.8 billion. Coupled with hundreds of millions more in all kinds of financial, military assistance and loans that were mostly unaccounted for.

The cost of Israel is not only financial, but strategic as well.

Since World War II, the US has vied to achieve two main foreign policy objectives in that part of the world: control the region and its resources and prop up its allies, while maintaining a degree of stability so that the US is able to conduct its business unhindered.

Nevertheless, Israel remained on the war path . Wars that Israel could not fight on its own, required American intervention on Israels behalf as was the case in Iraq . The outcome was disastrous for US foreign policy. Even hardened military men began to notice the destructive path their country had chosen in order to defend Israel.

In March 2010, General David Petraeus, then Head of the US Central Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a testimony that Israel had become a liability for the US and that it has become a challenge to the security and stability, which his country aimed to achieve.

Although recent polls have shown that younger Americans  especially among Democratic party supporters and young Jewish Americans  are losing their enthusiasm for Israel and its Zionist ideology  the battle for the US to reclaim its foreign policy and a sense of morality regarding Palestine and the Middle East is likely to be long and arduous.

 Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gazas Untold Story. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net .

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

US 2018 Budget Guarantees Foreign Assistance Only for Israel, State Dept : "Our assistance to Israel is guaranteed," Toner told reporters. "With respect to other foreign military assistance levels, those are still being evaluated and decisions are going to be made going forward."
The Dangerous Reality of an Iran War



A new war in the Persian Gulf could start accidentallyand would take a toll on U.S. forces.



By Sharmine Narwani March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - After weeks of saber-rattling over Iran as the number one terrorist state in the world, the Trump administration appears to have quietly dialed down the rhetoric a notch. Here in the Middle East, however, where every peep and creak out of Washington is scrutinized to death, interested parties havent stopped speculating about a U.S. confrontation with Iran. Fifty days into his term, Trumps foreign-policy course remains an enigma. He swears all options remain on the table with Iranbut do they? There are already some early actions that hint at Trumps policy directionsand limitationsin the Middle East. In three key military theaters where U.S. forces are currently engaged, some important corners have been turned: In northern Syria, Americas Kurdish allies just voluntarily relinquished territory to the Syrian army and Russian forces in order to avoid a direct confrontation with another U.S. ally and NATO member, Turkey. Washington has rejected a Turkish role in the liberation of Raqqa, knowing that Ankara will not tolerate the ISIS capital falling into Kurdish hands either. Its becoming increasingly likely that the winning formula will see the city and its environs ceded to an authority friendly to the Syrian government, under a Russian umbrella.

In northern Iraq, the fight to regain Mosul has accelerated, with Iraqi forces liberating half of western Mosul in just twenty days. Under command of the central Baghdad government, these fighters consist heavily of Shia militias, many of whom have received training and equipment from Iranian forces.

In Yemen, where alarming western headlines warn of U.S. military blunders and overkill, the media is missing a bigger story. The U.S. bombing blitz is actuallynot hypothetically, as once was the case hitting Al Qaeda terrorists, working alongside UAE forces to target Islamist militias who everybody knows are de facto Saudi allies on the ground. Just last week, the UAE reportedly upped the ante by demanding the Saudis abandon their puppet president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadiostensibly the legitimate Yemeni authority the western-backed Saudi coalition was fighting to reinstate. In a few short weeks, Trump has taken an axe to Obama-style dawdling in Mideast hotspotswhether by taking direct action or by no longer impeding the actions of others. Whats notable is that all of these developments, at face value, serve Irans interests in the region and undermine those of U.S. allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But dont be fooled. This is merely Trumps opening salvo. He has larger, unknown ambitions, and these recent moves do not necessarily remove Iran from his sights. The Islamic Republic, its allies, and its detractors will remain part of Trumps larger geopolitical game. He can use them to engage or punish more vital targets like Russia and China, two major powers that have carved out strategic relationships with Tehran. Iran will also be a useful tool to provoke or cajole traditional U.S. allies like Israel, Turkey, and various Arab monarchies into taking positions favored by Trump. Already, several threatening U.S. stances have been employedtheir ultimate aims unknownwith Iran at their center. There are whispers of a Saudi-led  Arab NATO  that could partner with Israel to target Iran. And calls for Damascus and Moscow to eject Iran from Syria are being heard from various western and western-allied Mideast capitals. The Waterways: An Accidental Confrontation Despite the Iran-as-bogeyman narrative, it is unlikely that Trump will launch any direct military attacks against Iran. This is a president who has voiced contempt for the $6 trillion wasted on Mideast wars and interventions. More confrontation in the region will be costly, and is likely to draw him into clashes with major powers with which hed prefer to do business. Although he insists all options remain on the table with Iran, Trumps choices are actually fairly limited. Sanctions never worked and the Iran nuclear deal has ensured that other global players neednt participate in future ones. Under pressure from allies, he has backtracked on his threats to scuttle the nuclear agreement, which he now seems to understand would needlessly isolate the U.S., not Iran. Subversive activitiessuch as color revolution plots, propaganda, or cyberwarfarehave proven futile given Irans historic vigilance on and within its borders. Conventional war would require a substantial Iranian provocation and isnt likely to be sanctioned by the UN Security Council. But there is one theater in which a U.S.-Iran confrontation could easily spark : the various waterways around the Islamic Republic and its neighborhood. Both countries have plenty of naval and shipping vessels in close daily proximity to each other. Tensions are high, rhetoric remains inflamed, and Irans foes in the Persian Gulf and Washington are in a great position to trigger an event, then fan its flames. Defense Secretary James Mattis, a committed Iran hawk, almost did so several weeks ago when he considered letting U.S. forces board an Iranian ship in Arabian Sea international waters, according to a passing mention of the incident in the New York Times. But the Intercept understood the import of the close encounter and led with the headline : Trumps moderate defense secretary has already brought us to the brink of war. War is indeed a distinct possibility if the U.S. makes an aggressive move. Iran is no banana republic. It has endured an eight-year war with Iraq, which was encouraged, financed, and armed by great powers and regional states alike. The Islamic Republic performed a remarkable claw-back from the assault and went on to amass conventional and asymmetrical capabilities to deter future attacks. So when Trump saw fit to slap sanctions on Iran after a January 29 ballistic missile test, Iranians made sure to fire off more , just a day after sanctions were announced. And the Iranian responses keep coming, a reminder that any military confrontation with Iran will be highly unpredictable. The Islamic Republic makes sure to remind us of its overt and hidden capabilities through regular public missile tests, advanced air defense demonstrations and war game exercises , such as the just-concluded Velayat 95 drills in the Strait of Hormuz, Sea of Oman, and Indian Ocean. As tensions between the U.S. and Iran have increased, so have the number of gulfs, straits, seas and oceans in which the two nations navies and commercial vessels now operate. The Pentagon insists its naval presence in so many far-flung west Asian waterways is vital to thwart terrorism and piracy. But this is Irans backyard, and the Islamic Republic needs little justification to police regional waterways against these very same kinds of threatsand to protect its own territorial and maritime borders. During a November visit to Tehran, I asked Dr. Sadollah Zarei, director of the think tank the Andisheh Sazan Noor Institute and a MENA expert close to the IRGC, about this. U.S. actions give us a behavior precedent in our naval reach, he said. The U.S. naval presence in Irans neighboring waters gives us even more right to be active in the Persian Gulf, in the Gulf of Aden, and other waters. As a result, Zarei explained, we are now in the Gulf of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Get access to news not available in the main stream Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Is Zarei worried about an adversary state brandishing its vast military firepower within spitting distance? He cracks a smile and explains calmly: When the U.S. is there, Irans focus and discipline is better. Theyre useful that way. It brings us together, creates support for our security forces, our army, our borders. On the other side of the fence, Washington continues to feed this Iranian discipline and cohesion by elevating recent incidents in the waterwaysmostly unrelated to Iraninto national media hysterics about Iran. Investigative reporter Gareth Porter has worked to untangle fact from fiction over U.S. accusations that Iran is shipping arms to Yemens Houthi rebels through some of these waterways. In short, Porter has shown that most of the Pentagons claims appear to be demonstrably false. And because of Wikileaks 2010 State Department cables cache, we now know thatin private at leastU.S. officials are also skeptical of their own public charges. The Unpredictability of a Waterways War In January 2016, two U.S. navy command boats entered Iranian territorial watersits unclear if knowingly or unwittinglyand were apprehended by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Americans watched as Iranian television broadcasted the capture of 10 U.S. navy sailors on bended knees, hands behind their heads. The Islamic Republic followed maritime regulations and international law in their actions, and released the officers shortly thereafter. But the incident brought home, in technicolor, the unpredictability of waterways operations against this wily U.S. adversary. For decades, the Pentagon has run war games against Iran to test its assumptions and hone its responses. But an acquaintance who has participated in such CENTCOM exercises told me last year that the U.S. military rarely beats Iran in asymmetrical war games unless it cheats or rigs it. Shocked, I was prompted to dig deeper and discovered the Millennium Challenge, a 2002 U.S. armed forces war game in the Persian Gulf between the U.S. (blue team) and an unnamed Mideast adversary (red team), believed to be Iran. According to retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, who led the Reds asymmetrical responseand resigned because rules were changed mid-play to constrict his teams maneuversReds bypassed Blues sophisticated electronic surveillance system using motorcycle messengers sent to the frontline and World War II-style signaling methods, and then destroyed 16 U.S. warships and a significant chunk of its naval fleetall on the second day of the three-week exercise. In an article entitled War Games Rigged? published on the Navy, Marine and Army Times websites (which appears to have been removed and is reposted here ), Van Riper slammed the $250 million war game: It was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue win. Van Riper explains : We were directed to move air defenses so that the army and marine units could successfully land. We were simply directed to turn [air defense systems] off or move them So it was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be. Rather than learning from the exercise, the U.S. military seemed more interested in confirming existing doctrine and maintaining the facade of invincibility. These are dangerous attitudes that, in real-life combat scenarios, can lead commanders to misjudge capabilities and make foolhardy advances. And Iran knows this well. The Cost of Primacy Why are U.S. armed forces in the Persian Gulf anyway? Princeton Universitys Roger Stern calculates that between 1976 and 2010, Washington has spent an eye-popping $8 trillion protecting the oil flow in the Persian Gulf. As of 2010, the U.S. only received 10 percent of those oil shipments. The largest recipients were Japan (20 percent), followed by China, India, and South Korea. Trump should take note: if access to oil was the real goal of U.S. presence in the Gulf, Washington could have achieved it at a fraction of the cost by building pipelines to bypass that waterway. Instead, mission creep has overtaken U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, establishing a policy trajectory few American presidents have dared to challenge. Of the eight littoral states of the Persian Gulf, Iran has the longest coast on the waterway, almost double the length of its other seven neighbors combined. As Washington hawks continue to insist that Iran cannot be allowed to challenge U.S. hegemony in the Persian Gulf, they should first ponder the potential consequences of another avoidable warbefore a catastrophe humbles them into silence. Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut. This article was first published at American Conservative The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Did Obama Spy on Trump? Of course. Andrew P. Napolitano on how.



By Andrew P. Napolitano March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The question of whether former President Barack Obama actually spied on President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition has been tantalizing Washington since President Trump first made the allegation nearly two weeks ago. Since then, three investigations have been launched  one by the FBI, one by the House of Representatives and one by the Senate. Are the investigators chasing a phantom, or did this actually happen? Here is the back story. Obama would not have needed the warrant to authorize surveillance on Trump. Obama was the president and as such enjoyed authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to order surveillance on any person in America, without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant. FISA contemplates that the surveillance it authorizes will be for national security purposes, but this is an amorphous phrase and an ambiguous standard that has been the favorite excuse of most modern presidents for extraconstitutional behavior. In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon used national security as a pretext to deploying the FBI and CIA to spy on students and even to break into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, one of his tormentors. FISA was enacted in the late 1970s to force the federal government to focus its surveillance activities  its domestic national security-based spying  on only those people who were more likely than not agents of a foreign government. Because FISA authorizes judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make rules and establish procedures for surveillance  essentially lawmaking  in secret, the public and the media have been largely kept in the dark about the nature and extent of the statute and the legal and moral rationale for the federal governments spying on everyone in the U.S. The mass spying that these judges have ruled FISA authorizes is directly counter to the wording, meaning and purpose of FISA itself, which was enacted to prevent just what it has in fact now unleashed. We now know indisputably that this secret FISA court  whose judges cannot keep records of their own work and have their pockets and briefcases checked by guards as they enter and leave the courthouse  has permitted all spying on everyone all the time. The FISA court only hears lawyers for the government, and they have convinced it that it is more efficient to capture the digital versions of everyones phone calls, texts, emails and other digital traffic than it is to force the government  as the Constitution requires  to focus on only those who there is reason to believe are more likely than not engaging in unlawful acts. When FISA was written, telephone surveillance was a matter of wiretapping  installing a wire onto the targets telephone line, either inside or outside the home or business and listening to or recording in real time the conversations that were audible on the tapped line. Get access to news not available in the main stream Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Today the National Security Agency has 24/7 access to the mainframe computers of all telecom providers and all computer service providers and to all digital traffic carried by fiber optics in the U.S. The NSA has had this access pursuant to FISA court orders issued in 2005 and renewed every 90 days. The FISA court has based its rulings on its own essentially secret convoluted logic, never subjected to public scrutiny. That has resulted in the universal surveillance state in which we in America now live. The NSA has never denied this. Thus, in 2016, when Trump says the surveillance of him took place, Obama needed only to ask the NSA for a transcript of Trumps telephone conversations to be prepared from the digital versions that the NSA already possessed. Because the NSA has the digital version of every telephone call made to, from and within the U.S. since 2005, if President Obama last year wanted transcripts of Trumps calls made at any time, the NSA would have been duty-bound to provide them, just as it would be required to provide transcripts of Obamas calls today if President Trump wanted them. But if Obama did order the NSA to prepare transcripts of Trumps conversations last fall under the pretext of national security  to find out whether Trump was communicating with the Russians would have been a good excuse  there would exist somewhere a record of such an order. For that reason, if Obama did this, he no doubt used a source on which hed leave no fingerprints. Enter James Bond. Sources have told Fox News that the British foreign surveillance service, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trumps calls. The NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access to its computers, so GCHQ  a foreign intelligence agency that, like the NSA, operates outside our constitutional norms  has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trumps. So by bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints. Thus, when senior American intelligence officials denied that their agencies knew about this, they were probably being truthful. Adding Adding to this ominous scenario is the fact that three days after Trumps inauguration, the head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, abruptly resigned, stating that he wished to spend more time with his family. I hope the investigations of Trumps allegation discover and reveal the truth  whatever it is. But the lesson here is terribly serious. We face the gravest threat to personal liberty since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 proscribed criticism of the government. We have an unelected, unnamed, unaccountable elite group in the intelligence community manipulating the president at will and possessing intimate, detailed knowledge about all of us that it can reveal. We have statutes that have given the president unconstitutional powers that have apparently been used. And we have judges on secret courts facilitating all this as if the Constitution didnt exist. For how much longer will we have freedom? This article was first published at Lew Rockwell - Napolitano: Was candidate Trump spied on? Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Donald Trump press secretary sensationally claims GCHQ may have colluded with Obama: Sean Spicer claimed British spies were drafted in to avoid any American fingerprints" on the alleged surveillance British spy agency denies helping Obama spy on Trump after White House repeats claim : The British spy agency told ITV News that any suggestion it was involved in wiretapping the now president "was utterly ridiculous and should be ignored. EXCLUSIVE Leaked Audio Of Obama & Trump's Phone Calls - CONAN on TBS The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
From Nuisance to Threat: The High Cost of Truth By Paul Craig Roberts March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - I am convinced that the US, and probably the entire Western world, that is, the American Empire, has entered an era in which respect for truth does not exist in public and private institutions. We have been watching this develop for some time. Think, for example, back to August 3, 2002, a recent time in terms of our present predicament, but a time prior to political consciousness of anyone younger today than 33 years old. In the summer of 2002, the world was being prepared by propaganda for a US invasion of Iraq. On August 3 of that year, the prestigous British publication, The Economist , summed up the consensus of ruling opinion in two sentences: The honest choices now are to give up and give in, or to remove Mr. Hussein before he gets his [nuclear] bomb. Painful as it is, our vote is for war. As Lewis Lapham, myself and others asked at the time, what bomb? The only evidence of a bomb was fabricated and known to be fabricated. The UN weapons inspectors concluded that the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction were a creation of US propaganda. President George W. Bush eventually acknowledged that Iraq had no such weapons. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the lies he was deceived by the Bush regime into telling the UN about Saddam Husseins WMD are a stain on his career. Despite the 2003 US invasion known to have been based entirely on lies, US troops were not pulled out of Iraq until 2011, and whether or not they were pulled out, they are back in Iraq now. None of these facts has had any impact on the good opinion that Washington and the media have of themselves. Unchastened, Washington and its presstitutes lied about Libya and destroyed that prosperous country. They lied about Assads use of chemical weapons against his own people, and would have destroyed Syria also had it not been for the Russians. Blocked by Russia, Obama, Hillary, and Victoria Nuland turned on Russia, first overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and when Crimeans voted practically unanimously to reunite with Russia, the Obama regime and its media whores falsely alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine. This false charge, repeated endlessly still today by the Western presstitutes, became the justification for economic sanctions against Russia that Washington imposed on its European vassals, entirely at their expense, which shows what craven cowards European governments are. If Washington orders jump, the UK Prime Minister, the German Chancellor, the French President ask, How High? One of the reasons Donald Trump was elected president was his commitment to normalizing relations with Russia and reconsidering the continuation of NATO a quarter century after its purpose ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trumps commitment constituted a direct threat to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, whose $1,000 billion annual budget requires a major threat that only Russia can provide. Consequently, Russia and its president have been demonized. American propaganda, bald-faced lies, spread fear of Russia and Putin throughout the American Empire. The Empires response to those who confront the propaganda with the facts is to denounce those with the facts as Russian agents or Putins dupes. The hatred of Russia that has been inculcated by the neocons and presstitute media has resulted in Republican Senator John McCain, representing Arizona (to the disgrace of Arizonians), calling on the Senate floor Republican Senator Rand Paul, representing Kentucky, a person who is now working for Vladimir Putin for objecting to tiny Montenegro being made a NATO member. When this website was included on a list of 200 Russian agent/dupe websites by a secret, undisclosed group called PropOrNot, I wondered whose money was behind this entity as well hidden as an offshore money laundering operation. I made a joke of it, which amused the Russians. As no one knows what PropOrNot is, the site has no credibility. So the forces for war moved up several levels to Harvard University Library. On that website someone posted what is essentially the PropOrNot list. Harvard does not say that the list is vetted or explain why anyone should believe it. The list is attributed to a Melissa Zindars, an assistant professor of communication and media at some unnamed institution. It is a list, she says, that she uses in her class to teach students how to avoid fake and false news. In other words, the list reflects her own ignorance and biases. As one reader observed, Melissa tells on her own indoctrination by the presstitute, CIA-serving US media: I read/watch/listen very widely, from mainstream, corporate owned sources (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes) as well as The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and various local and alternative sources with different political perspectives (Truth-Out). Get access to news not available in the main stream Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter So here we have the Western world informed by Harvard University Library of who is safe to read on the basis of an unknown young womans biases. Those safe to read are the lying presstitute media who serve the cause of war and the police state. When you witness this level of total corruption at what pretends to be Americas finest university, and it is on top of the 24 years of nothing but lies from the previous three two-term presidents, who between them have murdered and dislocated millions of people in numerous countries, and not been held accountable for even one of the millons of lives destroyed, you cannot avoid realizing that for the United States and its corrupt vassal states, Truth is something to be avoided at all costs. When Trump collapsed under pressure and fired his National Security Adviser, Gen. Flynn, he unintentionally gave credence to the charge that any and all who think well of normalized relations with the other major nuclear power are Russian agents, and that to be a Russian agent means that you are guilty of treason and deserve to be impeached if you happen to be the President of the United States. The consequence of Flynns removal from office has been to enable the Russophobic forces to define as treason the desire for detente with Russia. If this had been imposed on US presidents during the First Cold War, probably life on earth would not exist today. What is scary about the US and Europe is not merely the gullibility and insouciance of such a large percentage of the populations. What is very frightening is the willingness of the media, government officials, military, and members of professional organizations to lie for the sake of their careers. Try to find any shame among the liars that their lies expose humanity to thermo-nuclear annihilation. It is not to be found. They dont care. Just let me have the Mercedes and the McMansion for another year. The Saker, an observant being, says that the color revolution being conducted by the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, the presstitutes, the liberal/progressive/left, and by some Republicans against President Trump is de-legitimizing the entire [democratic] political process which brought Trump to power and upon which the United States is built as a society. The consequence, says The Saker , is that the illusion of democracy and people power has been destroyed both domestically and abroad. The propaganda picture of American Democracy has lost its believability. As the false picture crumbles, so does the power that was based on authority constructed by propaganda. The Saker asks: do we face an endless horror or a horrible end? As George Orwell said decades ago, In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. This is the way the criminals who rule us see it, and it is the way their whores in the media see it. If you tell the truth in America, you are a purveyor of fake news and possibly a traitor. As long as you support this site, I will continue to face the obvious consequences. Perhaps Neo will turn up. Note from Tom - A huge number of ICH readers value and appreciate PCR's work as I do. May I ask that you click here to support his website so that we can continue to gain knowledge from his experience and insights. Peace and Joy - Tom The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
The Muslim Ban and the Ethnic Cleansing of America



Trump's Muslim ban is integral to his long-term plan to make the US a solely white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant 'nation'.



By Hamid Dabashi March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Al Jazeera " - The Muslim ban did not happen in one day - and it means more than one thing. The Muslim ban did not happen last January or later in March. It happened a long time ago - day after day, piece after piece, one slander after another, systematically, consistently, with liberal laughter and conservative malice alike. The Muslim ban was Trump's triumphant finale of a chorus long echoed in the sinuous xenophobic labyrinth of a nation always in denial of its own foreign origin, too eager to imagine and identify itself as "white" to demonise and expel from the shadow of its own fears all its colourful differences. Trump is no aberration. Trump is a culmination. He is a salesman. He knows what sells in the United States, and he sells the cultivated hatred of Muslims because he knows he has customers. From Michele Bachmann and Pamela Geller, to Bill Maher and Sam Harris, from Bernard Lewis to Daniel Pipes, all have been drumming up customers for Trump's fearmongering against Muslims for a very long time. Laser-beaming on and demonising Trump for taking full advantage of marketing conditions, the liberals and conservatives have come together to create the conditions that have allowed Trump's xenophobia to flower in even more bitter and stranger fruits. The known and unknown Muslims The Muslim ban is not merely against those unknown numbers who can no longer come to the United States. The Muslim ban is far more a condemnation of those known Muslims who are already here - immigrant, naturalised, or US-born. It is to suspend their constitutional protections and Bill of Rights, turn them into strangers in their own land if they are naturalised or US born. It is to wag Trump's finger at them and all other Muslim immigrants and tell them that they will never be "American". The Muslim ban is here to intimidate, frighten, and silence them into obedience, leading to the eradication of any trace of their character and culture. They will not be allowed to add their sign and signature to what it means to be "American". As a noun, "American" is and it is to remain white. The Muslim ban is to silence American Muslims into accepting the final theft of Palestine. There is a link between the Muslim ban and the appointment of a zealot settler colonialist as the next US ambassador to Israel. There is a link between the Muslim ban and the presence of another committed settler colonialist in the Oval Office as Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser. The Muslim ban is here to make an example of them for any other non-white, non-Christian immigrant, never to dare to stand up and claim a pride of place. Every man, woman and child must look like Trump and his family - speak as they do, think as they do, dye their hair blonde if they have to, starch their skin white, wear colourful contact lenses if they must and preferably sport Ivanka Trump's merchandise to prove their patriotism. The Muslim ban is the first strike towards the militant whitening of America. The bigger picture "A close look at what the administration has been doing since the now-infamous executive order was issued on January 27 - banning travellers and refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations," it has been rightly suggested , "reveals a clear intent from Trump's inner circle to depopulate the United States of Muslims." The depopulation of Muslims is the singular sign of an ideological project for the systematic ethnic cleansing of America. "The Real Goal of Trump's Travel Ban Is to Make America White Again," another headline correctly diagnoses this terrorising decision. "White House adviser Stephen Bannon insists that Muslims don't have the right 'DNA' for democracy." Calling Trump's immigration policies "ethnic cleansing" has been in the air soon after his election and even before he assumed office and began implementing his vociferous campaign promises. We are an affirmation - all in our own differently defiant ways and our very existence is the undoing of the very pernicious myth of 'white people' that for the longest time has sustained the unending course of conquest and plundering of this forever immigrant country. Taking a page from the Zionist playbook, Bannon has expanded the puritanical epithet to white Christianity in the US: "When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think  a country is more than an economy. We're a civic society," he is reported to have said. That "civic society", that "nation", for Bannon and his fellow storm troopers is white, it is Christian and it is now militantly triumphalist. It is imperative to see the Muslim ban as integral to the rest of Trump's white supremacy project for America as an exclusively White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) "nation". We Muslims now - as have Native Americans of this land for ever, then blacks, followed by Latinos and Asians - pollute Bannon's puritanical white supremacy conception of "his nation". For him we have become the pariah, the untouchables, the Dalits, outside the fourfold of humanity. The Muslim ban declares Muslims as Muslims as "bare life", as Italian critical thinker Giorgio Agamben calls it, we have become "homo sacer". The Muslim ban is therefore immediately related to the proposed building of a wall along the US southern border specifically designed on the Israeli apartheid wall keeping Palestinians outside their own homeland. Trump's remarks against Mexicans being criminals and rapists just because they are Mexicans echoes similar remarks against Muslim being "terrorist" just for being Muslims. Muslims and Mexicans are now the two bookends of the Trumpian dystopia. But there are many other layers in between. The Muslim ban is equally integral to the systematic gutting of the public schools by Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for these schools primarily cater to the poor and disenfranchised among black and Hispanic communities. She intends to keep these schools underfunded, dilapidated, dispirited, so they would not educate and raise the next generation of visible citizens with a sense of civic responsibility. DeVos' conception of public school is the self-fulfilling prophecy of all supporters of private schools for the rich and mass incarceration for the poor. She wants to see those who go to public school disappear from the public scene and and locked up in prisons, as her boss wants to see Muslims and Mexicans go back to where they came from and make America safe for white supremacy. "White people" is a fiction The Muslim ban is equally integral to the continued theft and desecration of Native Americans' sacred lands for the sustained course of corporate greed leading the cause of predatory capitalism. Trump does not want to see the Comanche, Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, Sioux, Cree, Ojibwe, Chippewa, Aztec or California tribal nations proudly march in Washington against his greedy Dakota Access Pipeline. He wants them to disappear from the public sight as his supporters oppose seeing Muslim mosques or Jewish synagogues in public sight. This is what Trump and his neo-Nazi-like alt-right stormtroopers like Stephen Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka, now all gathered at the White House will and want and intend - and the more they unleash their violent racism against all of us, the more the necessity of not allowing him to play one non-white group against the other. We are not "non-white". We are not "their negro", in the immortal words of James Baldwin. We are people. We are not a negation. We are an affirmation - all in our own differently defiant ways and our very existence is the undoing of the very pernicious myth of "white people" that for the longest time has sustained the unending course of conquest and plundering of this forever immigrant country. "White people" is a fictional code-name for one particularly violent group of settler colonialists who are dead-set determined to repress the fact that they are as much immigrants to this land as everyone else. Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
President Blowback: How the Invasion of Iraq Came Home

By Tom Engelhardt

March 16, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - If you want to know where President Donald Trump came from, if you want to trace the long winding road (or escalator ) that brought him to the Oval Office, dont look to reality TV or Twitter or even the rise of the alt-right. Look someplace far more improbable: Iraq.

Donald Trump may have been born in New York City. He may have grown to manhood amid his hometowns real estate wars. He may have gone no further than Atlantic City, New Jersey, to casino-ize the world and create those magical golden letters that would become the essence of his brand. He may have made an even more magical leap to television without leaving home, turning Youre fired! into a household phrase. Still, his presidency is another matter entirely. Its an immigrant. It arrived, fully radicalized, with its bouffant over-comb and eternal tan, from Iraq.

Despite his denials that he was ever in favor of the 2003 invasion of that country, Donald Trump is a president made by war. His elevation to the highest office in the land is inconceivable without that invasion, which began in glory and ended (if ended it ever did) in infamy. Hes the president of a land remade by war in ways its people have yet to absorb. Admittedly, he avoided war in his personal life entirely. He was, after all, a Vietnam no-show . And yet hes the president that war brought home. Think of him not as President Blowhard but as President Blowback.

Go Massive. Sweep It All Up

To grasp this, a little escalator ride down memory lane is necessary -- all the way back to 9/11; to, that is, the grimmest day in our recent history. Theres no other way to recall just how gloriously it all began than amid the rubble. You could, if you wanted, choose the moment three days after the World Trade Center towers collapsed when, bullhorn in hand, President George W. Bush ascended part of that rubble pile in downtown Manhattan, put his arm around a firefighter, and shouted into a bullhorn, I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you!... And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

If I were to pick the genesis of Donald Trumps presidency, however, I think I would choose an even earlier moment -- at a Pentagon partially in ruins thanks to hijacked American Airlines flight 77. There, only five hours after the attack, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, already aware that the destruction around him was probably Osama bin Ladens responsibility, ordered his aides (according to notes one of them took) to begin planning for a retaliatory strike against... yes, Saddam Husseins Iraq. His exact words : Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not. And swept almost instantly into the giant dust bin of what would become the Global War on Terror (or GWOT), as ordered, would be something completely unrelated to 9/11 (not that the Bush administration ever admitted that). It was, however, intimately related to the deepest dreams of the men (and woman ) who oversaw foreign policy in the Bush years: the elimination of Iraqs autocratic ruler, Saddam Hussein.

Yes, there was bin Laden to deal with and the Taliban and Afghanistan, too, but that was small change, almost instantly taken care of with some air power, CIA dollars delivered to Afghan warlords, and a modest number of American troops. Within months, Afghanistan had been liberated, bin Laden had fled the country, the Taliban had laid down their arms, and that was that. (Who in Washington then imagined that 15 years later a new administration would be dealing with a request from the 12th U.S. military commander in that country for yet more troops to shore up a failing war there?)

Within months, in other words, the decks were clear to pursue what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. saw as their destiny, as the key to Americas future imperial glory: the taking down of the Iraqi dictator. That, as Rumsfeld indicated at the Pentagon that day, was always where they were truly focused. It was what some of them had dreamed of since the moment, in the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, when President George H.W. Bush stopped the troops short of a march on Baghdad and left Hussein, Americas former ally and later Hitlerian nemesis, in power.

The invasion of March 2003 was, they had no doubt, to be an unforgettable moment in Americas history as a global power (as it would indeed turn out to be, even if not in the way they imagined). The U.S. military that George W. Bush would call the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known was slated to liberate Iraq via a miraculous, high-tech, shock-and-awe campaign that the world would never forget. This time, unlike in 1991, its troops would enter Baghdad, Saddam would go down in flames, and it would all happen without the help of the militaries of 28 other countries.

It would instead be an act of imperial loneliness befitting the last superpower on planet Earth. The Iraqis would, of course, greet us as liberators and we would set up a long-term garrison state in the oil heartlands of the Middle East. At the moment the invasion was launched, in fact, the Pentagon already had plans on the drawing boards for the building of four permanent U.S. mega-bases (initially endearingly labeled  enduring camps ) in Iraq on which thousands of U.S. troops could hunker down for an eternity. At the peak of the occupation, there would be more than 500 bases, ranging from tiny combat outposts to ones the size of small American towns -- many transformed after 2011 into the ghost towns of a dream gone mad until a few were recently reoccupied by U.S. troops in the battle against the Islamic State.

In the wake of the friendly occupation of now-democratic (and grateful) Iraq, the hostile Syria of the al-Assad family would naturally be between a hammer and an anvil (American-garrisoned Iraq and Israel), while the fundamentalist Iranian regime, after more than two decades of implacable anti-American hostility, would be done for. The neocon quip of that moment was: Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran. Soon enough -- it was inevitable -- Washington would dominate the Greater Middle East from Pakistan to North Africa in a way no great power ever had. It would be the beginning of a Pax Americana moment on planet Earth that would stretch on for generations to come.

Such was the dream. You, of course, remember the reality, the one that led to a looted capital; Saddams army tossed out on the streets jobless to join the uprisings to come; a bitter set of insurgencies (Sunni and Shia); civil war (and local ethnic cleansing ); a society-wide reconstruction program overseen by American warrior corporations linked to the Pentagon that resulted in vast boondoggle projects that achieved little and reconstructed nothing; prisons from hell (including Abu Ghraib ) that bred yet more insurgents; and finally, years down the line, the Islamic State and the present version of American war, now taking place in Syria as well as Iraq and slated to ramp up further in the early days of the Trump era.

Meanwhile, as our new president reminded us recently in a speech to Congress, literally trillions of dollars that might have been spent on actual American security (broadly understood) were squandered on a failed military project that left this countrys infrastructure in disarray . All in all, it was quite a record. Thought of a certain way, in return for the destruction of part of the Pentagon and a section of downtown Manhattan that was turned to rubble, the U.S. would set off a series of wars, conflicts, insurgencies, and burgeoning terror movements that would transform significant parts of the Greater Middle East into failed or failing states, and their cities and towns, startling numbers of them, into so much rubble .

Once upon a time, all of this seemed so distant to Americans in a Global War on Terror in which President Bush quickly urged citizens to show their patriotism not by sacrificing or mobilizing or even joining the military, but by visiting Disney World and reestablishing patterns of pre-9/11 consumption as if nothing had happened. (Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.) And indeed, personal consumption would rise significantly that October 2001. The other side of the glory-to-come in those years of remarkable peace in the United States was to be the passivity of a demobilized populace that (except for periodic thank-yous to its military) would have next to nothing to do with distant wars, which were to be left to the pros, even if fought to victory in their name.

That, of course, was the dream. Reality proved to be another matter entirely.

Invading America

In the end, a victory-less permanent war across the Greater Middle East did indeed come home. There was all the new hardware of war -- the stingrays , the MRAPs , the drones , and so on -- that began migrating homewards, and that was the least of it. There was the militarization of Americas police forces, not to speak of the rise of the national security state to the status of an unofficial fourth branch of government. Home, too, came the post-9/11 fears, the vague but unnerving sense that somewhere in the world strange and incomprehensible aliens practicing an eerie religion were out to get us, that some of them had near-super powers that even the worlds greatest military couldnt crush, and that their potential acts of terror were Topekas greatest danger. (It mattered little that actual Islamic terror was perhaps the least of the dangers Americans faced in their daily lives.)

All of this reached its crescendo (at least thus far) in Donald Trump. Think of the Trump phenomenon, in its own strange way, as the culmination of the invasion of 2003 brought home bigly . His would be a shock-and-awe election campaign in which he would  decapitate  his rivals one by one. The New York real estate, hotel, and casino magnate who had long swum comfortably in the waters of the liberal elite when he needed to and had next to nothing to do with Americas heartland would be as alien to its inhabitants as the U.S. military was to Iraqis when it invaded. And yet he would indeed launch his own invasion of that heartland on his private jet with its gold-plated bathroom fixtures, sweeping up all the fears that had been gathering in this country since 9/11 (nurtured by both politicians and national security state officials for their own benefit). And those fears would ring a bell so loud in that heartland that it would sweep him into the White House. In November 2016, he took Baghdad, USA, in high style.

In this context, lets think for a moment about how strangely the invasion of Iraq, in some pretzeled form, blew back on America.

Like the neocons of the Bush administration, Donald Trump had long dreamed of his moment of imperial glory, and as in Afghanistan and again in Iraq in 2001 and 2003, when it arrived on November 8, 2016, it couldnt have seemed more glorious. We know of those dreams of his because, for one thing, only six days after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in the 2012 election campaign, The Donald first tried to trademark the old Reagan-inspired slogan, Make America great again.

Like George W. and Dick Cheney, he was intent on invading and occupying the oil heartlands of the planet which, in 2003, had indeed been Iraq. By 2015-2016, however, the U.S. had entered the energy heartlands sweepstakes, thanks to fracking and other advanced methods of extracting fossil fuels that seemed to be turning the country into  Saudi America . Add to this Trump's plans to further fossil-fuelize the continent and you certainly have a competitor to the Middle East. In a sense, you might say, adapting his description of what he would have preferred to do in Iraq, that Donald Trump wants to  keep  our oil.

Like the U.S. military in 2003, he, too, arrived on the scene with plans to turn his country of choice into a garrison state. Almost the first words out of his mouth on riding that escalator into the presidential race in June 2015 involved a promise to protect Americans from Mexican "rapists" by building an unforgettably impregnable great wall on the countrys southern border. From this he never varied even when, in funding terms, it became apparent that, from the Coast Guard to airport security to the Federal Emergency Management Agency , as president he would be cutting into genuine security measures to build his big, fat, beautiful wall.

Its clear, however, that his urge to create a garrison state went far beyond a literal wall. It included the build-up of the U.S. military to unprecedented heights , as well as the bolstering of the regular police, and above all of the border police . Beyond that lay the urge to wall Americans off in every way possible. His fervently publicized immigration policies ( less new , in reality, than they seemed) should be thought of as part of a project to construct another kind of great wall, a conceptual one whose message to the rest of the world was striking: You are not welcome or wanted here. Dont come. Dont visit.

All this was, in turn, fused at the hip to the many irrational fears that had been gathering like storm clouds for so many years, and that Trump (and his alt-right companions) swept into the already looted heartland of the country. In the process, he loosed a brand of hate (including shootings , mosque burnings , a raft of bomb threats , and a rise in hate groups, especially anti-Muslim ones) that, historically speaking, was all-American, but was nonetheless striking in its intensity in our present moment.

Combined with his highly publicized Muslim bans  and prominently publicized acts of hate, the Trump walling-in of America quickly hit home. A drop in foreigners who wanted to visit this country was almost instantly apparent as the warning signs of a tourism  Trump slump  registered, business travel bookings took an instant $185 million hit, and the travel industry predicted worse to come.

This is evidently what America First actually means: a country walled off and walled in. Think of the road traveled from 2003 to 2017 as being from sole global superpower to potential super-pariah. Thought of another way, Donald Trump is giving the hubristic imperial isolation of the invasion of Iraq a new meaning here in the homeland.

And dont forget reconstruction, as it was called after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In relation to the United States, the bedraggled land now in question whose infrastructure recently was given a D+ grade on a report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Donald Trump promises a trillion-dollar infrastructure program to rebuild Americas highways, tunnels, bridges, airports, and the like. If it actually comes about, count on one thing: it will be handed over to some of the same warrior corporations that reconstructed Iraq (and other corporate entities like them), functionally guaranteeing an American version of the budget-draining boondoggle that was Iraq.

As with that invasion in the spring of 2003, in 2017 we are still in the (relative) sunshine days of the Trump era. But as in Iraq, so here 14 years later, the first cracks are already appearing, as this country grows increasingly riven. (Think Sunni vs. Shia.)

And one more thing as you consider the future: the blowback wars out of which Donald Trump and the present fear-gripped garrison state of America arose have never ended. In fact, just as under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, so under Donald Trump, it seems they never will. Already the Trump administration is revving up American military power in Yemen , Syria , and potentially Afghanistan . So whatever the blowback may have been, youve only seen its beginning. Its bound to last for years to come.
The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has set up a panel of experts to investigate the controversies surrounding the level of benzoic and ascorbic acid in the soft drinks being produced by the Nigerian Bottling Company.

Adewole, in a series of tweets on his verified Twitter handle on Thursday, assured Nigerians that the Federal Government had convened a group of experts, including food scientists and nutritionists, to access the safety of preservatives being added to the beverages.

According to him, he will also meet with officials of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria.

He said, A group of experts have been convened to immediately investigate and submit a report. I have also requested a meeting with SON. The issue goes beyond the legal aspects of the court verdict. It is about morality.

Nigerians need to know that we will put their safety first. The questions are: Is the Coca-Cola produced in Nigeria safe? Is the acidity level acceptable? What is the difference between Coca-Cola products available in Nigeria and the United Kingdom?

Nigerians are justifiably angry as it concerns the recent verdict of a case involving an exporter. I have instructed NAFDAC to liaise with SON to address Nigerians immediately concerning the safety of Coca-Cola products made locally.

The Lagos State High Court had ordered NAFDAC to direct the NBC to include a warning on the labels of Fanta and Sprite bottles that the products could not be taken with Vitamin C.

Meanwhile, the National President, Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Dr. Bartholomew Brai, stated that the internationally approved benzoic acid levels for the preservation of beverages was 600mg.

Brai noted that while the body would not tolerate any violation of standards by beverage companies, it would be wrong to assume that Fanta and Sprite were not safe for consumption until evidence suggest otherwise.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Protection Council has said it has summoned the management of the NBC to provide detailed information about the composition and all laboratory tests of two of its products, Sprite and Fanta.

The Director-General, CPC, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, who wrote to the Managing Director of the company, stated that the information to be provided would cover the last 10 years, up to March 2017.

The letter, dated March 15, 2017, with reference number CPC/HQ/2017, was made available to journalists in Abuja.

She said as the apex regulatory agency in charge of the protection of consumer rights in the country, the CPC would be carrying out a detailed independent investigation into the laboratory processes as well as all the composition of the companys products.

She said that the letter gave the NBC seven days to supply the required information for the investigation.

The letter read in part, Pursuant to the CPC Act, the council requests your organisation (NBC) to immediately provide all papers, processes, statements, affidavits, motions, arguments, exhibits and files in the case that was the subject of the judgement.

Identify every witness that the NBC intended to present at the trail, including all witnesses who testified and others intended but who did not testify. In addition, each witness position and the role in the NBC must be identified in your submission.

The agency also directed the NBC to provide the composition of your products, otherwise known as Fanta and Sprite. Any and all quality assurance or laboratory tests conducted by the NBC or commissioned by the NBC, or that have come within the control of the NBC with respect to Fanta and Sprite between 2009 and March 2017.

The company was also directed to identify the custodian of the composition and component of Fanta and Sprite in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Source: Punch
A Lagos State High Court in Ikeja on Thursday convicted an oil marketer, Rowaye Jubril, and his company, Brila Energy Limited, of a fuel subsidy scam of N963.7m.

Justice Lateefa Okunnu, in a judgment on Thursday, sentenced Jubril to a jail term of 10 years for the fraud.

She said the jail term would commence from Thursday.

The judge also ordered the convicts to make restitution to the Federal Government by refunding the N963.7m, which they fraudulently obtained as subsidy on the false claim that they imported 13,500 metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit into the country.

The convicts had fraudulently obtained the money under the Federal Governments Petroleum Support Fund between October 2010 and May 2012.

After uncovering the fraud, the EFCC dragged the oil marketer and his company to court on November 2012 and arraigned them on 13 counts bordering on conspiracy, obtaining money by false pretences, forgery and use of false documents.

The anti-graft agency had told the judge that Jubril and his company acted contrary to Section 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act of 2006.

They were also said to have contravened sections 467 and 468 of the Criminal Code Laws of Lagos State 2003.

In her judgment on Thursday, Justice Okunnu found the oil marketer and his company guilty as charged by the prosecution.

The judge sentenced them to 10 years jail term on count one.

She sentenced them to eight years jail imprisonment on each of counts two to 13.

She, however, held that the sentences would run concurrently.

The conviction and sentencing of Jubril and his company came barely two months after Justice Okunnu convicted the Managing Director of Ontario Oil and Gas Limited, Mrs. Ada Ugo-Ngali, and sentenced her to a jail term of 10 years for a fuel subsidy fraud of N754m.

Also convicted were the Chairman of Ontario Oil and Gas Limited, Walter Wagbatsoma, and the company itself.

Source: Punch
A 42-year-old plumber, Idowu Lasisi, has been arrested by the police in Lagos State for allegedly raping two of his daughters.

The victims were said to be a 15-year-old Senior Secondary School 1 pupil and 19-year-old.

PUNCH Metro gathered that the children lived with their father in the Ketu area of the state.

Sometime in 2015, Lasisi allegedly raped the elder sister, who fled home after the incident.

The mother was also said to have separated with the plumber because of the incident and relocated, leaving the pupil and her 10-year-old sister in Lasisis care.

Our correspondent learnt that Lasisi, who was arrested on Wednesday after the victim raised the alarm, started having sex with the pupil last year.

A police source at the Lagos State Police Command, where the suspect was transferred to, disclosed that the victim said Lasisi gave her N500 each time he had sex with her.

The girl is currently at the Mirabel Centre for medical tests. She said her father had had sex with her three times and that she tried to resist the harassment. He gave her N500 each time he had sex with her.

Her mother fled home two years ago when he raped the girls elder sister. The whereabouts of the other victim had yet to be known.

But the suspect is still denying that he raped them even though her daughter insisted he did, the source said.

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, on Thursday at the commands headquarters in Ikeja, confirmed Lasisis arrest, adding that the two cases were being investigated.

He said, The suspect was arrested for defiling his daughters. The elder one ran away and he continued to serially molest the younger one. The suspect will be paraded after the completion of investigation.

Meanwhile, a student of Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Ijanikin, Lagos State, Michael Emeka, has confessed to belonging to Aiye Confraternity, saying he spent part of his school fee to mark his initiation into the group.

Twenty-five-year-old Emeka said apart from drinks he bought with the school fee, he also paid N25,000 to cement his membership of the group.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Emeka, who had been on the wanted list of the police, was trailed to a place in Ijanikin sometime in February 2017.

He was eventually tracked down on the premises of the Nigerian Foreign Service Academy on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, while charms and a locally-made pistol were recovered from him.

The Imo State indigene told our correspondent that he got the charms from the cult leader to fortify himself against gunshots.

He said, I was initiated into the cult group in 2013. I joined the group to avoid being killed.

Owoseni said the suspect had been terrorising Ijanikin and its environs, adding that he would be charged to court soon.

Source: Punch
The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Maikanti Baru, has explained that the corporation retired some of its staff because they flouted established process and procedures.

He made this known in a statement signed by NNPCs Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Department, Ndu Ughamadu, on Thursday in Abuja.

Baru was speaking when he received a delegation of Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria (ACAN) in his office.

He made it clear that the NNPC supports anti-corruption and promised that they would work with the management of ACAN, the research and training department of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Tribunal (ICPC).

We have retired some members of staff and meted out penalties on others who flouted our process.

NNPC was the first agency of government to form an in-house anti-corruption committee soon after the proclamation of the ICPC Act.

This action shows our commitment to transparency and openness in all we do; it also shows our zeal to ensure that our staff imbibe the culture of fighting corruption, Baru said.

He added that the Corporation was prompt, in its remittance of oil and gas revenues into the Federation Account.

Source: Dailypost
A Magistrate court sitting in Lagos has granted a bail of N100, 000 to a 27-year-old teacher, Benjamin Ibu, who allegedly defiled a four-year-old girl on Friday.

The teacher is facing a charge of defilement.

The prosecutor, Sgt. Anthonia Osayande, told the court that the accused committed the offence on February 28, at Lovedo City School, Ajah, Lagos.

She said the accused took the minor to a secluded area and defiled her.

It was the security guard that caught the teacher in the act and the case was immediately reported to the police.

The offence contravened Section 259 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

The offence carries a life imprisonment.

The accused, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The  Magistrate, Mrs Ipaye Nwachukwu, granted the accused bail in the sum of N100, 000 with two sureties in like sum.

Nwachukwu said one of the sureties must be a civil servant on Grade Level 14, while the other surety should be either a community leader or a cleric.

In addition, she said the sureties should show evidence of tax payment to the Lagos State Government.

The magistrate ordered that the case file should be duplicated and a copy sent to the State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for legal advice.

The case was adjourned to May 9.

(NAN)
If rumors that James Cameron is interested in picking up Terminator 6 prove true, perhaps Bill Gates will be in the running for a cameo.

Gates recently cautioned that robots are replacing humans in a wide range of jobs, and he proposed implementing a robot tax as a way to temporarily slow the spread of automation. He was promptly -- and predictably -- trashed by a bevy of economists.

Burn the Luddite!

Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, dubbed Gates' plan "protectionism against progress," and others scoffed that the founder of Microsoft had joined the ranks of Luddites. Economic growth has slowed markedly in the past decade, they pointed out. Stagnating productivity and falling business investment indicate the problem isn't too many robots -- it's too few.

If the United States wants to become a global leader in manufacturing again, heavy investment in automation and robotics is required, they argued. A tax on robots would hamper the ability of U.S. companies to compete globally, stifle innovation, and impede capital investment and economic progress.

The pertinent question is: "progress for whom?"

Wishing doesn't make it so

Most people wishing for the return of American manufacturing really have in mind the return of good-paying manufacturing jobs. But that's not happening. President Trump has focused on the exodus of manufacturing jobs to countries like Mexico and China, but automation is a bigger culprit. Researchers at Ball State University found that between 2000 and 2010, about 87 percent of manufacturing job losses stemmed from factories becoming more efficient through automation and better technology. Only 13 percent were due to trade agreements and cheap overseas labor.

And it's not just manufacturing. A recent McKinsey report states that half of the jobs done by humans today in the United States are vulnerable to replacement by robots -- a potential loss of about $2.7 trillion in wages. "The next wave of economic dislocations won't come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle class jobs obsolete," President Obama warned in his farewell address.

(Think your job is immune? While 65 percent of American workers expect that within 50 years robots will do much of the work currently done by humans, 80 percent expect their own jobs will remain largely unchanged. Never underestimate the power of the optimism bias.)

Blame the victim

Critics of the robot tax say that workers displaced by the Automation Revolution will eventually adapt and move on to other kinds of jobs, just as they did in the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions. If only it were that simple. "The Agricultural Revolution was about specialized technology that couldn't be implemented in other industries," Martin Ford, author of "Rise of the Robots," told Wired. "You couldn't take the farm machinery and have it go flip hamburgers. Information technology is totally different. It's a broad-based general-purpose technology."

New Scientist concurs: "Previously, when automation hit one sector, employees could decamp to other industries. But the sweep of machine learning means that many sectors are automating simultaneously."

Mind the gap

The Automation Revolution is not only upending employment prospects, it's fueling ever-growing inequality. "Wages that would have been earned by human workers, now displaced by robots, will go straight to [corporate] profits, increasing the wealth gap between those who own the robots and the growing pool of unemployed workers," The Guardian writes.

Gates argued for a robot tax to slow down and ameliorate the effects on displaced workers, but an alternative proposal is to redistribute income from capital gains and dividends, which are now highly concentrated among the wealthy.

Sharing the benefits

Yanis Varoufakis responded to the current debate by proposing a UBD (universal basic dividend). Unlike a guaranteed basic income, which is funded through taxes, with a UBD companies on the stock exchange would set aside a percentage of their shares to be held in common to benefit all citizens. A scheme like this has operated since 1976 in Alaska, where returns from state oil revenues are distributed to all residents via the Alaska Permanent Fund.

"Effectively, society becomes a shareholder in every corporation, and the dividends are distributed evenly to all citizens," writes Varoufakis. "To the extent that automation improves productivity and corporate profitability, the whole of society would begin to share the benefits."

He and other economists point out that the so-called private sector benefits greatly from various forms of public investment, using for free research and intellectual property generated by government-funded universities. "The public sector socializes risks, while rewards are privatized, " writes Mariana Mazzucato, author of "The Entrepreneurial State."

Or as Bloomberg says, why not "redistribute some of the income produced by the robots, giving every citizen a stake in the new automation economy." The government should "think about taxing humans less and redistributing the income of robots more."

Because as Sarah Connor can tell you, stopping the rise of the machines is very difficult.
Theres new hope if you installed the latest Windows patches and saw your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011or possibly CRM 2013 OnPremiseinstalling reports to go wonky.

An anonymous poster on the AskWoody Lounge, working with a Microsoft support tech, has come up with a one-line fix that appears to work, at least in some cases.

The problem can be traced to a change in the way Internet Explorer 11 version 11.0.40 handles certain CSS settings in Dynamics CRM. In this particular case, the poster confirms:

We logged a Premier Support ticket with Microsoft and they were very responsive. During a remote session, they confirmed that data was being returned from CRM server side when clicking links, but it just wasnt displaying. The issue is caused by improper CSS. Modifying the height attribute of CSS allowed the data to be displayed successfully during the remote session. The suggestion was to change one line in CRMs global.css which fixes the issue across all interfaces. Since then, our CRM developer has figured out that the issue goes away if you (add) the following line to global.css.aspx: table.ms-crm-Form-Layout span[type=subgrid] {position:static !important}

Poster NeilMcDonald 82 on the Dynamics Community forum says:

Thats fixed the main part of the problem for me. Any idea on how to correct the size of multi-line text boxes (emails etc)?

Theres been no response as yet.

At this point, Ive seen reports of formatting problem from numerous CRM 2011 Update Rollup 18 (the latest version) sites and one report of the same problem from a CRM 2013 OnPremise site. Theres a report on the Dynamics Community forum that the problem does not occur with CRM 365. I also have a report about Telerik RadListBox controls on web pages not working with IE 11.0.40.

Reports from many sources confirm the problems occur after installing any of these patches:

KB 4013429this months Win10 1607 cumulative update that brings the build number up to 14393.953

KB 4012215this months monthly rollup (Security Monthly Quality Rollup) for Win7 and Server 2008 R2

KB 4012216this months monthly rollup for Win 8.1 and Server 2012 R2

KB 4012204MS17-006, this months cumulative Internet Explorer patch

Please also note that Windows 10, bless its fuzzy little face, will reinstall KB 4013429 automatically after you uninstall it. As I mentioned yesterday, you need to run wushowhide to hide the patch after its uninstalled.

Whos to blame for this latest problem? Good question. Apparently the Dynamics CRM team is pointing the finger at IE. On the Dynamics Community forum, poster Jim Newell says:

Latest update from the Microsoft CRM support team is that its not their fault and our CRM partner needs to raise the issue with the Microsoft IE support team, ill let you know if i hear more.

But poster ch100 on the AskWoody Lounge may have identified the crux:

CRM is full of issues like this one where developers adapted their code to the IE tolerance to faulty code and guessing, and now when web standards are enforced by IE, everyone is panicking.

My overarching question remains: How is Microsoft going to fix this problem? The IE update is found in all sorts of bunched patches. Will Microsoft fix IE, fix CRM or just let CRM customers figure it out for themselves, burning a Premier Support ticket in the process?

Follow the discussion on the AskWoody Lounge.
Will Merck continue its bullish streak? A Wyckoff analysis Trade Precise - 12 minutes ago Merck (MRK) price moved within the range until a gap up on 10 October to rally until $101.50 on 27 October. According to the Wyckoff trading method, the price structure is bullish with enough causes built... MRK : 99.16 (-0.04%)

That Bullish Catalyst Monica Kingsley - 13 minutes ago S&P 500 volatile session Friday ended on a bright note, but the short-term clouds arent over till Treasury yields stabilize. Actually given the heavy dollar downswing, stocks could have done a lot better...

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Premarket summary for the S&P futures in these data-driven markets TradeGuidance - 1 hour ago We take a look at the ON moves in the Asian & European sessions with the S&P futures ESZ22 : 3,786.00 (+0.17%)

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Reporting burdens under Solvency II are eightfold the previous requirements, which has even the regulator balking.

UK life and pensions firms are hoping for a reduction in costs and administrative workloads from the European-wide Solvency II Directive, after the UKs Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) conceded there may be scope to ease requirements.

It comes after the UK governments Treasury Select Committee published a letter it received from the chief executive of the regulator, which acknowledged adjustments could be made to the UKs interpretation of the European rulebook, which came into force at the start of 2016.

The admission follows a length period of lobbying from the insurance and investment industries which claim some reporting requirements are unnecessary and increase costs for companies and their clients.

Steven Findlay, assistant director for prudential regulation at the ABI, explains that for UK plc to remain attractive to investors, it is important that a regulatory regime strikes the right balance. That balance, he tells II, isnt pursuing the financial stability of the graveyard. It is allowing companies to innovate, make a fair profit, and ensuring a high level of protection.

Many of the concerns which we had with Solvency II here in the UK are home grown. It is the result of the PRAs interpretation of the EU requirements. When you start to add together each of those interpretations, the cumulative impact make us question how level the playing field is across the EU.

Findlay says the UKs vote to leave the European Union makes the potential changes more important than ever, if the UK is to retain its reputation as a world center for insurance.

In a letter released to the media, PRA chief executive Sam Woods outlined five areas where he saw the potential for a rethink, including a requirement for firms to hire an external auditor to scrutinize their solvency financial condition reports.

The SFCR is a lengthy public report designed to show a financial institution is in good health, but critics say the cost of employing an external auditor to analyse the report could be better spent in other areas such as product innovation, research, or customer services.

Although the fundamental regime is sound, there are nevertheless adjustments that need to be made to address issues in important areas, Woods wrote in the letter to the House of Commons Treasury Committee chairman.

Other areas where Woods has conceded that change is possible include the reporting requirements relating to firms longevity transfer and hedging arrangements. He also suggested that the reporting burden could be reduced for firms making changes to their internal model  a predictive chart designed to show that the company will remain solvent, even in periods of volatility.

The ABI has said the reporting requirement for firms under Solvency II could be up to eight times greater than under the previous regulatory regime.

The Prudential Regulatory Authority did not respond to a request for additional comment at the time of publication.
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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 now-suspended police chief in the district of Yongsan has been booked for an investigation, along with the head of the Yongsan Ward office and two others, on charges of profess...
A prestigious public speaking competition for young insurance professionals has gone national.The Australian Insurance Law Associations Ron Shorter Memorial Award for Professionalism in Public Speaking, which was originally held in New South Wales in 2012 and expanded to Victoria and Queensland last year, now comes to Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia.Now in its sixth year, the award, conceptualised by the late Ron Shorter, has helped more than 160 young insurance industry professionals hone their public speaking skills.Twenty young public speakers in each state will be selected to attend one of three intensive public speaking training workshops.They will then be asked to deliver two-minute presentations on the topic they nominated in their applications. The three best presenters from each state will compete in the state finals.The winners will jet off to Singapore on October 18-20, 2017, to attend the Asia-Pacific Insurance Conference. Other state finalists will each receive $250 Westfield EFTPOS cards.Aside from the coveted Ron Shorter Memorial Award trophy, and other prizes, the opportunity to speak publicly on an insurance topic of their choice and meet insurance industry peers and luminaries will help participants raise their profiles.Nominations for each state selection are now open and will close on May 03, 2017. Applications can be submitted through the AILA website at https://www.aila.com.au/ron-shorter-submission.php The Ron Shorter Memorial Award is sponsored by Colin Biggers & Paisley and Unisearch.
Despite the presence of environmental liability insurance to cover the damage caused by a cruise ship to a protected coral reef, the Indonesian government has insisted that criminal cases should be filed against the ships captain.

On March 04, 2017, cruise ship MS Caledonian Sky, carrying 102 passengers and 79 crew members, ran aground on a coral reef off Raja Ampat, Papua, in Indonesia. The 90-meter-long ship damaged 1,600 square meters of pristine marine habitat. The area is considered a top diving spot and a hotbed for biological diversity.

The damage by Caledonian Sky, which was captained by Keith Michael Taylor, was devastating and irreparable, Djoko Hartoyo of Indonesias Information and Law Bureau of the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs said in a statement.





Want the latest insurance industry news first? Sign up for our completely free newsletter service now. The destruction of Raja Ampat coral reefs, which were developed by nature for hundreds of years, was done in less than one day by Caledonian Sky and its Captain. It is simply impossible to restore that part of Raja Ampat. Fish that were normally seen in that particular were all gone.

In its response to the tragedy, Noble Caledonia, the British cruise company that owns the ship, has said that it is working with local experts on how to mitigate and help restore the damage caused by the incident.

To this end Noble Caledonia has established a fund with the aim of helping the local population and contributing to the repair of the reef. We would like to send our own expedition teams to help with the regeneration, said the company in a press release.

Separately, we are fully insured and our insurers are currently working in conjunction with the Indonesian Government and a local reef assessment expert. Together we shall work towards a fair and realistic settlement, it continued.

However, the Indonesian government expressed dissatisfaction with just letting insurance handle the problem. Hartoyo stressed that Taylor had violated Indonesian Environmental Law No 32/2009, which prescribes a prison sentence to those who are found guilty of destroying valuable natural resources such as coral reefs and forests.



This is a criminal matter. Insurance company may be willing to pay the environmental damage, but it does not absolve criminal side of the case, Hartoyo said. He asked Taylor, Noble Caledonia, and the insurance companies involved to cooperate for the sake of global environmental concern.
An insurance broker has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison on multiple crimes involving a $1 million fraud scheme, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Thursday.



Last January, Lawrence Rosenbaum pleaded guilty to Grand Larceny, Securities Fraud and Tax Fraud for fraudulently soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors for kosher and halal cheese factories in upstate New York and bio-energy companies in New York State and Costa Rica.



As part of his plea, Rosenbaum agreed to execute nearly $1 million in judgments in favor of his victims, apart from incarceration of three to nine years. He is an insurance broker who owned and operated Rosenbaum Financial Services in Albany, New York, for decades, according to the prosecution.



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In 2001, he formed the Saratoga Cheese Company, which he claimed would develop a halal and kosher cheese plant in the Capital Region.



Between April 2006 and October 2012, Rosenbaum solicited over $1 million in private investments in Saratoga Cheese Corporation and its related entities by promising investors substantial returns and shares of stock in his corporations, said prosecutors.



He then used his various corporate entities as personal bank accounts, diverting over $600,000 by writing checks payable to himself, transferring funds to other accounts, and making numerous cash withdrawals, including withdrawals in both the Albany area and in Costa Rica.



Some of the stolen money was used to travel to and from Costa Rica, where for years he paid for a $1,000-per-month apartment for a girlfriend he had there. None of the production or processing facilities for which Rosenbaum solicited funds were ever built, according to prosecutors.



Exploiting hardworking New Yorkers for personal financial gain is reprehensible, said Schneiderman. My office will continue fighting to root out securities fraud and fully prosecute those responsible for it.






New York-based USI Insurance Services might soon be under new management, as private equity firm KKR & Co. and Canadian fund manager Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) are nearing a deal to jointly acquire it for about $2 billion.

The deal would value USI at about $4 billion including debt, the Wall Street Journal reported. USI has over $1 billion of annual revenue with more than 4,400 associates in over 140 offices across the country, according to its website. It is currently owned by Toronto-based Onex.

Reuters reported. It bought the insurance firm from Goldman Sachs private-equity arm for $2.3 billion, including debt in 2012. USI has since made more than 30 acquisitions to increase its network of insurers across the US, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.



Want the latest insurance industry news first? Sign up for our completely free newsletter service now. Onex has been working with Bank of America to auction USI,reported. It bought the insurance firm from Goldman Sachs private-equity arm for $2.3 billion, including debt in 2012. USI has since made more than 30 acquisitions to increase its network of insurers across the US, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

According to ONEX, it has approximately $24 billion of assets under management, including $6 billion of proprietary capital, in private equity and credit securities.

Other firms have made first-round bids in the auction, Bloomberg reported. These include Carlyle Group CVC Capital Partners.

Onex has been actively divesting parts of its portfolio. This has returned about $1.7 billion to the firm and its limited partners since the start of 2016, according to its latest financial results.
With the recent late-winter storms that have hit the Northeast, many businesses could have suffered a loss of revenue they were not anticipating. If a business owner was impacted by this latest storm, chances are his or her company was affected in one way or another.

While the exact impact is not easy to calculate in a precise dollar figure, businesses suffer significant financial losses due to closures, reduced productivity and unexpected expenses.

There are many steps businesses can take to protect themselves from losses due to storms and other similar disasters. These include a strong crisis communications plan, company-wide implementation of disaster procedures and the procurement of business interruption insurance. Business interruption is a type of business owners insurance that provides coverage to protect lost earnings when a business is negatively impacted by unforeseen events such as storms, fires or mechanical breakdowns.

There are three basic types of business interruption claims:

Losses suffered as a direct result of physical damage to covered property (This would include virtually any peril such as a hurricane, blizzard or someone driving a car through the front door of a business.)

Extended period of indemnity, which covers losses resulting from the business reopening but not being back to normal (This is typically limited to 30, 60 and 90 days but can sometimes extend beyond a year.)

Contingent business interruption coverage that would allow the insured to recover losses as a result of damage to someone elses property, such as a key supplier (This was particularly relevant after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.)

What about incidents like a major storm predicted to hit Atlanta in January, when business closed early but there wasnt significant property damage to trigger coverage? Icy, blocked roads, power outages, government-issued evacuations  those are exceptions to the standard business interruption policy.

These examples, however, could fall under one of three additional coverage options: service interruption, civil authority and ingress/egress. Business owners must request these additional coverage options to ensure comprehensive storm protection. The decision of which additional coverage option to purchase depends a great deal upon the industry sector.

All of these policies require claims to be properly documented. While many insurance companies have gone green, they still require a lot of paper, so it is recommended to over-document a claim if possible. Because not every claim is created equal, there may be additional issues in order for a claim to be paid. For example, in the case of a loss of power, it may be assumed that losses are covered through a service interruption clause. However, if the outage was caused by ice on the transmission wires and not a blown transformer, it may not be covered. One thing to consider when reviewing a policy is to determine exactly which exclusions apply in each type of claim. Another factor to consider is what type of deductible is written into the policy.

Once the claim is filed, the carrier will hire an accountant to review the claim and offer his or her opinion on the value of the business interruption loss. The accountant will review comparative base periods for proper loss valuation and also will calculate any saved or excess costs the business experienced as a result of the loss.

Complex claims involving business interruption typically remain open for a period of time after all repairs are completed, so they tend to take longer to resolve than others. One final piece of advice for policyholders is to request timely advances so theyre not out-of-pocket for an extended period of time.

Chris Frederick is a CPA at Bennett Thrasher LLP who has been assisting business insurance carriers and adjusters in the documentation, negotiation and settlement of insurance claims for the duration of his career. He can be reached at 770.396.2200 or btcpa.net.

Topics Profit Loss
At Dr. Fathalla Mashalis pain management clinics, the waiting rooms were often so packed with patients that people sat on the floor, leaned against walls and spilled into the hallways.

Thats because, federal prosecutors say, Mashali was prescribing oxycodone and other powerful opioid painkillers at alarming rates to people making risky use of drugs. At one point, they say, Mashali wrote out more oxycodone prescriptions in one month  over 1,100  than some of the largest hospitals in Massachusetts.

Mashali pleaded guilty Wednesday to 44 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering, offering a brief apology during his change-of-plea hearing in U.S. District Court.

Im very sorry. I hurt my family. I hurt my patients, Mashali said.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 21. Prosecutors said in a court filing that federal sentencing guidelines call for 121/2 to 151/2 years in prison.

Prosecutors nationwide have cracked down on so-called pill mills like the pain management clinics run by Mashali, places where prescriptions are often handed out without physical exams or tests to determine whether a legitimate condition requires pain medication.

Prosecutors in Boston said Mashali would often see more than 100 patients in one day. A medical assistant who worked at one of Mashalis offices told investigators that only about 5 percent of his patients had legitimate medical conditions.

Mashali, 62, was born in Egypt and received a medical degree from Cairo University. He moved to the United States more than 30 years ago, became a permanent resident, got married, had four children and served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve.

In the early 2000s, Mashali began operating a pain management clinic, eventually opening three offices in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island. As his practice grew, so did his personal spending. In 2008, Mashali filed for bankruptcy, listing $12 million in debts.

Prosecutors say he used the proceeds from his thriving practice to pay for a lavish lifestyle. In 2011, after emerging from bankruptcy, he and his wife bought a $2.2 million home in Dover, one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, and made approximately $2 million in improvements.

The evidence will show that Mashalis lust for exuberant wealth and luxury severely compromised the care and safety of his vulnerable patients, prosecutors wrote in a trial brief last month.

Mashalis practice began to fall apart in 2012, when his former employees alleged he was prescribing high doses of drugs to patients with addictions and fraudulently billing for tests he never did.

In 2013, the Rhode Island Board of Medicine revoked his medical license, finding that he had provided substandard care to six of seven patients who died. After that, Mashali voluntarily surrendered his Massachusetts license.

He was arrested Feb. 7, 2014, while attempting to board a plane to Egypt on a one-way ticket.

In court filings, Mashalis lawyers have said he has severe bipolar disorder and neurosarcoidosis, a central nervous system disease that can be characterized by confusion or dementia. During Wednesdays hearing, Mashali said he is taking more than 20 medications for those illnesses, as well as anxiety and depression.

As the sentencing hearing will show, he is a deeply troubled individual whose underlying psychopathology in large part contributed to the offense conduct, Mashalis attorney, Jeffrey Denner, said after the hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Maxim Grinberg asked for Mashali to be taken into custody while awaiting sentencing.

But Judge Rya Zobel said he could remain free so he can continue to receive daily treatment at a psychiatric hospital. She ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Massachusetts Drugs
XL Catlins insurance operation in Iberia announced an extension of its professional indemnity coverage.

Traditionally, the coverage protects professional service firms against legal costs and claims for damages to third parties which may arise out of an act, omission or breach of professional duty in the course of a business operation, said XL Catlin, explaining that it has now enhanced this coverage to include:

Mitigation Costs (pre-claim): covers the costs incurred by the insured to avoid or mitigate the consequences of an error or omission before the claim.

covers the costs incurred by the insured to avoid or mitigate the consequences of an error or omission before the claim. Image Restitution Costs (post-claim): covers the costs incurred by the insured if they hire an external consultant to reduce the damage to the insureds reputation caused as a consequence of a claim.

covers the costs incurred by the insured if they hire an external consultant to reduce the damage to the insureds reputation caused as a consequence of a claim. Media Liability: covers the risks the insured faces when publishing content or contributing content to the media, e.g., books, newspapers, magazines, corporate blogs, social networks and corporate web pages, as this might cause alleged damages to third parties.

covers the risks the insured faces when publishing content or contributing content to the media, e.g., books, newspapers, magazines, corporate blogs, social networks and corporate web pages, as this might cause alleged damages to third parties. Right to Be Forgotten: In May 2014, Europes highest court ruled that individuals had a right to be forgotten. With this ruling, EU citizens have the right to request that certain links be removed from internet searches if they contain information that is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in light of the time that has elapsed.

The new data protection legislation enacted by the European Commission in April 2016 also includes a right to be forgotten. This policy extension covers the fees of consultants or lawyers reasonably incurred by the insured in filing a request with the search companies  Google, Yahoo and Bing  covering the links they would like delisted, and the basis for making the request.

The Media Liability extension is the newest to the market and hence there are questions about what is covered, said Estefania Taboada, underwriting manager, International Financial Lines, for XL Catlins insurance operation in Iberia (the region covering Spain and Portugal).

If for example, a law firm sends a newsletter to its clients or publishes it on their website, and it inadvertently contains inaccurate information about changes in tax laws, the Media Liability extension would cover any damages the firms clients incurred as a result of decisions they took based on the faulty information, Taboada explained.

The Right to be Forgotten cover is also in demand in Spain and we anticipate a lot of interest in this cover, said Ana Dores, deputy underwriting manager, International Financial Lines, for XL Catlins insurance operation in Iberia.

After the EU established such a right in May 2014  based on the Costeja case in Spain  Google and the other major search companies created a process whereby individuals can request that certain links be removed or certain information related to an error or omission in the provision of professional services be removed, Dores continued.

In this regard, this coverage offers policyholders an additional tool for protecting their professional reputations, and help ensure the continuity of their businesses, she said. In the year since the ruling was issued, Google received more than 253,000 delisting requests covering more than 920,000 links. Approximately 22,500 of these requests were from Spain. It has been reported that Google removed about 380,000 links, or 41 percent, over this one-year period.

Jose Ramon Morales, country manager Iberia for XL Catlins insurance operation, said: We are living in increasingly litigious times, more plaintiffs are willing to pursue claims in court, and courts are awarding higher damages. Broad professional indemnity coverage is becoming more important in Iberia, especially for the legal profession, media and technology organizations and other professional bodies. Our clients are in real need of new, modern coverages and we are committed to meeting that need.

Source: XL Catlin

Related:

Topics Europe AXA XL Google
A court in Japan on Friday ruled that Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) and the government are liable for negligence in a case involving compensation for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the first time the judiciary has ruled the state has liability, Japanese media reported.

The district court in Maebashi, north of Tokyo, ruled in favor of 137 evacuees seeking damages for the emotional distress of fleeing their homes as radiation spread from the meltdowns at Tepcos Fukushima Daiichi plant after an earthquake and tsunami six years ago, the Mainichi newspaper and other media reported.

While courts have ruled in favor of plaintiffs and awarded damages arising from the disaster, it was the first time a court has recognized that the government was liable, the Mainichi said.

Tepco has long been criticized for ignoring the threat posed by natural disasters to the Fukushima plant and both the company and government were lambasted for their handling of the crisis.

Tepco said in a statement it would review the contents of the ruling before making a response.

In December, the government nearly doubled its projections for costs related to the disaster to 21.5 trillion yen ($188 billion), increasing pressure on Tepco to step up reform and improve its performance.

In the worlds worst nuclear calamity since Chernobyl in 1986, three reactors at Tepcos Fukushima plant suffered meltdowns after a magnitude 9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that devastated a swathe of Japans northeastern coastline and killed more than 15,000 people.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori and Aaron Sheldrick; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Mark T. Conklin was named divisional president of Great American Professional Risk Insurance Services (GAPRIS), succeeding Frankie Honeycutt, who recently retired.

Conklin has 22 years of industry experience. He joined the company in January 2015 as divisional senior vice president, and most recently served as divisional executive vice president. Conklin previously worked for Marsh USA Inc.

Cincinnati-based Great American Professional Risk Insurance Services is a member of the Great American Insurance Group and provides specialized excess casualty coverages for medium- to large-size companies in need of high coverage limits.

Great American Insurance Groups roots go back to 1872 with the founding of its flagship company, Great American Insurance Company. The members of Great American Insurance Group are subsidiaries of American Financial Group Inc. (AFG), also based in Cincinnati.
A trial is underway in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is defending itself against more than 300 farmers and other landowners who say the agencys management of the Missouri River has contributed to major flooding in five states, most notably 2011 flooding that caused billions of dollars in damage.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, argues that the Corps has altered its practices regarding the rivers water storage, release and flow management since the mid-2000s, de-emphasizing flood control while pushing to restore habitat for endangered species. It contends that the Corps unconstitutionally deprived plaintiffs of their land, essentially taking it without compensation.

Although the lawsuit doesnt specify the amount of damages being sought, the landowners attorney has said it could exceed $250 million. The plaintiffs believe case law is on their side, given a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in December 2012 that the federal government is not automatically exempt from paying for damage caused by temporary flooding from its dams.

The case, which isnt expected to be decided until this summer at the earliest, reflects longstanding debate about the Corps management of the river as the agency tries to strike a balance among competing interests  landowners, the barge industry, water suppliers, hydropower utilities, environmentalists and recreational users of the waterway, notably on upriver reservoirs. Regulating the rivers levels comes through the Corps management of discharges from a half-dozen large upstream reservoirs, each meant to hold snowmelt and other excess water during the spring before the Corps gradually releases it the rest of the year.

In court filings, the federal government argues that authorities never promised to stop all flooding along the 2,341-mile-long Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. The Corps, which has said it is required by Congress and the courts to act in the rivers best interest, maintains that providing habitat for endangered species didnt exacerbate the inundation six years ago  a claim echoed by a top Midwest volunteer for the Sierra Club.

The Corps typically does not comment publicly about litigation, and it didnt reply to recent messages by The Associated Press.

Outside experts who reviewed the 2011 flooding said the Corps did the best it could in dealing with record amounts of water that flowed into the river after unusually heavy spring rain in Montana and North Dakota.

That flooding lasted more than three months after the Corps began releasing massive amounts of water from swollen upstream reservoirs. It overwhelmed levees, carved gouges up to 50 feet deep, created sand dunes 15-feet-high, deposited debris in farmers fields and devastated hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly farmland in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Caroline Pufalt, the St. Louis-based chairwoman of the Sierra Clubs Missouri River Network, said blaming the Corps on environmental grounds is a red herring, and that while the Corps may make decisions in the interest of habitat, such actions are rare.

Pufalt said the Corps did the best it could six years ago, given unusual circumstances involving so much water in the Missouri River system.

These floods were kind of unavoidable, Pufalt said. The folks who have filed this lawsuit mistakenly think theres some magic thing the Corps can do, given the current river, that will take away their flood risk, and thats not going to happen.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Flood Missouri
While crossing a small wooden bridge in northwestern Iowa last Thursday, 20 rail tank cars in a mile-long train transporting ethanol flew off the tracks, sending fireballs into the sky, while thousands of gallons of the biofuel leaked into the creek below.

No one was injured, in part because the accident occurred in a sparsely populated area. A similar derailment in the more dense Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada, in 2013 killed 47 people after a train carrying crude oil crashed and exploded.

But the incident in Iowa underscores the growing risk of another serious accident along with the increasing volume of the biofuel being moved in unit trains that are mile-long with about 100 rail cars  dubbed rolling pipelines  to slash freight costs.

That is because ethanol shippers are still primarily using the type of rail cars that were deemed too unsafe to carry crude after the Quebec disaster, even though the biofuel is more explosive than oil.

Thousands of replacement cars meant to better withstand an accident are sitting idle in rail yards around the country because the ethanol industry is not required to use them for another six years and as they cost about three time as much as the older cars, according to industry sources.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) gave the ethanol industry until 2023 to employ cars with thicker shells and other safety features. Prior to the Iowa incident, PHMSA said it does not see any safety issues with relying on older cars, known as DOT 111s.

Not everyone agrees.

We would like to see the shippers accelerate their schedule to get these legacy DOT-111 tank cars out of service when transporting flammable liquids  specifically crude oil and ethanol, said Robert Sumwalt, member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency, at a Saturday press briefing in Iowa following the accident.

The train in last weeks accident was heading from Green Plains Inc.s Superior, Iowa, terminal to the Gulf Coast. Green Plains did not comment for this story.

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents biofuels producers and shippers, said safetyis a top priority for the industry and highlighted the rarity of these incidents.

The NTSB has no regulatory authority to change things, Sumwalt said, adding that the power is vested with U.S. Congress.

ROLLING ETHANOL PIPELINES

Ethanol production has grown sharply in the last decade thanks to government rules mandating increased use of the corn-based biofuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Production is now about 1 million barrels per day.

About 650,000 barrels of ethanol is transported by rail daily. A 2015 report by the Federal Railroad Administration estimated about 47 percent of ethanol shipments were by unit trains. But several sources interviewed, including four shippers, said their usage is increasing due to cost efficiencies.

Unit trains have been an increasing transportation efficiencywe are encouraged to do more unit trains, Kelly Davis, director of regulatory affairs at the Renewable Fuels Association, said at an NTSB roundtable in summer 2016.

Shippers want to utilize unit trains if they can to save money, said Tom Williamson, a broker and owner of Sarasota, Florida-based Transportation Consultants. He said 11 of his 12 clients have switched to unit trains in the past two years.

In the last two years, biofuels makers Archer Daniels Midland Co., Green Plains, and Eco-Energy Global Biofuels LLC, and terminal operator Kinder Morgan Inc have planned or built new unit train terminals.

Eco-Energy did not respond to requests for comment, while Kinder Morgan declined comment. ADM, in a statement, said it is committed to making needed investments to meet new rail safetystandards.

Federal regulators have warned longer trains hauling hazardous materials increase the risk of disasters, particularly when using DOT 111 cars.

There have been at least 17 significant ethanol or crude derailments since 2006, and nearly all involved DOT 111s.

U.S. regulators gave the ethanol industry more time to shift because getting oil producers to stop using older cars was considered more important. A 2014 Federal Railroad Administration study found ethanol cars were 1.5 times more likely to explode than oil.

As of September, there were 35,252 tank cars hauling ethanol, and 84 percent were DOT 111s, according to the latest Association of American Railroads data. Newer DOT 117s account for just 6 percent of the ethanol fleet.

Based on current lease rates, a shipper using 1,000 of the older cars instead of the new models would save $5.4 million annually.

BNSF Railway Co. has started offering discounts to ethanol shippers this April if they agree to use DOT 117s.

Generally, shippers have stuck with older cars because most railcar owners would hit shippers with financial penalties if they break long-term leases.

While we are having some success in getting ethanol customers to upgrade to DOT 117s when their leases expire, we are not seeing a lot of demand from customers to make this switch, said Christopher LaHurd, a spokesman with GATX Corp., a leading U.S. leaser of rail cars.

Current lease rates for DOT 111s are roughly $200 a month, while DOT 117s are around $650 a month, brokers said.

In addition to GATX, Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp. and Greenbrier Companies Inc are among the U.S. fleet owners.

Spokesmen for Bank of America and Greenbrier declined comment. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said the company is working with customers to shift to newer cars.

It would cost about billions to replace all of the older cars with 117 model cars, Davis said in a phone interview.

Owners paid $100,000 for these (current) cars, and youre going to melt them down like a tin can to make a new one, Davis said. Thats a lot of stranded capital.

(Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Related:

Topics USA Energy Oil Gas Iowa
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is nominating a longtime Republican lawmaker to the three-member Workers Compensation Commission.

Rep. Mark Formby of Picayune has served in the House since 1993 and helped push a 2012 law that tightened rules about how the commission awards compensation to workers injured on the job.

Among other things, the 2012 law specified that money would not go to a worker hurt while being drunk, using illegal drugs or misusing prescription drugs. It authorized employers to test injured workers for drugs and alcohol. Before the change, state law did not specifically mention drugs or alcohol but said no compensation was owed if the intoxication of the employee was the proximate cause of the injury.

Formby said during the 2012 debate that courts had liberally interpreted the law to favor workers, and a new law would restore balance between workers and employers. Critics predicted the changes could make conditions worse for workers.

The only thing that I have ever expected from workers comp is that it be fair to the employer and the employee, Formby, 60, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. I think our workers comp commission has been reputable over the years.

Formby also said that cases might be complicated with questions about where and how a worker was hurt, but the process for the commission to handle them typically is not.

We will help you if you are hurt  thats the premise, Formby said.

If confirmed to the commission by the state Senate, Formby would resign from the House and Bryant would set a special election for the District 108 seat in Pearl River County. The current House term ends in January 2020.

Its bittersweet leaving a job that Ive loved, Formby said.

He is nominated for a commission term starting the middle of next month and ending in December 2022. He would succeed Liles Williams, another businessman and longtime Republican. Two commissioners are paid $119,568 and the chairman is paid $123,680. Williams is the current chairman, and Bryant will choose the next chairman, said the governors spokesman Clay Chandler.

Formby graduated from Mississippi State University in 1979 and has worked for family retail businesses and in real estate. He also worked on the Washington staff of U.S. Sen. Trent Lott from 1987 to 1991.

The first stop for his nomination is the Senate Finance Committee, where Chairman Joey Fillingane said he considers Formby a friend.

He is, in my opinion, highly qualified, said Fillingane, R-Sumrall.

Formby is the second House member from Pearl River County chosen by Bryant for a higher-paying state job. Last year, the governor named then-Rep. Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, to run the state Department of Revenue.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Workers' Compensation Mississippi Drugs
Ratings company Demotech is holding off on issuing large-scale ratings downgrades of Florida property insurers for now, after a number of insurers heeded its warning of last month about the effects of assignment of benefits abuse and state court rulings by boosting their claims reserves and policyholder surplus.

After warning in February that at least 10 to 15 Florida property/casualty carriers would face downgrades if they did not take immediate action to shore up their reserves in light of deteriorating conditions in the state, Demotech said March 16 that, after working with insurers to make adjustments, it slightly downgraded only one carrier.

The ratings firm said it is also monitoring three insurers  Prepared, Mount Beacon and Elements that have been or are in the process of being sold as a result of the situation in Florida.

Joseph Petrelli, president and CEO of Ohio-based Demotech, which rates 57 carriers in Florida and 397 nationwide, said his company worked individually with companies in Florida to analyze their financial standing, strengthen their claims reserves, and provide other guidance on what they could do to avoid a ratings downgrade. The result has been $355 million in additional reserves and policyholder surplus among the Florida carriers it rates, Petrelli said.

Demotech said last month that Floridas property insurers are facing an uncertain operating environment as a result of the escalating AOB crisis that has caused the number of litigated water loss claims to skyrocket over the past few years, particularly for the state-run insurer Citizens.

As the abuse spreads from south Florida across the state, Floridas private market insurers have also started feeling the effects, with some pulling out of areas of the state and filing for rate increases.

Floridas AOB Abuse by the Numbers: Alarming Trend Reaches Crisis Point

Demotech said AOB, as well as two court cases decided at the end of 2016 that reversed industry claims procedures have led to unanticipated challenges for insurers. Demotech also warned about the effects of Florida Supreme Court decisions involving the reversal of claims procedures, protocols and practices as contributing to the states uncertainties.

In an industry where past is prologue of the future, this is extremely detrimental to efficiently operating an insurance company, Demotech said in its March 16 release.

In response to the events, Demotech last month withdrew its ratings guidance for Floridas property insurance writers and undertook what it said was a comprehensive effort to review the financial statements and business models of 57 Florida carriers to determine if they continued to meet or exceed the objective financial criteria associated with the assignment of Financial Stability Ratings (FSRs), which reflect Demotechs opinion as to an insurers financial stability and provide a baseline of the future solvency of an insurer.

According to Petrelli, Demotech advised carriers to take advantage of statutory accounting rules before Feb. 28 to infuse capital into their surplus to improve their year-end results and avoid ratings downgrades. Petrelli estimated that about 10 to 15 companies would face downgrades if they didnt strengthen their claims reserves.

Demotech said March 16 that the carriers it reviews and rates in Florida responded by adding approximately $200 million in loss and loss adjustment expense reserves, as well as approximately $155 million to policyholders surplus (net worth) through capital contributions or operating results.

This additional $355 million to benefit policyholders or claimants indicate the insurers recommitment to Floridians and financial stability, Demotech said.

Demotech said that in certain cases, it also reviewed carriers rate levels for adequacy and found that the overwhelming majority of the carriers reviewed appeared to have the situation under control.

Demotech said that based upon its review of information including year-end financial statements, its interpretation of the deterioration of the operating environment in Florida, and discussions with rated clients, the FSRs of the carriers were affirmed as appropriate, saying due to recommitments and recapitalization to meet the requirements of maintaining an FSR of A or better, downgrades have been largely avoided at this time.

Only one company was slightly downgraded  Cypress Property & Casualty Insurance Co. was revised from A (A Prime) to A (Exceptional). Demotech said this move was made in part due to Cypress significant underwriting loss reported in 2016, but added based on our interpretation of the current operating environment in Florida, FSRs above A are extremely difficult for Florida property writers to achieve and maintain.

Demotech warned that in the long run, absent meaningful improvement in the AOB situation, it is likely insurers could face downgrades in the future, consumers may face higher and frequent rate increases, and investors who would otherwise capitalize or fund Florida-based insurance companies will deploy their capital elsewhere.

Whether a property insurance carrier is privately-held or owned by a publicly traded entity, Demotech believes the primary focus of carriers should be adequate loss and loss adjustment expense reserves, realistic pricing in support of a business plan, along with a catastrophe reinsurance program whose horizontal and vertical protection addresses the needs of policyholders and investors by assuring, at a high yet reasonable level of maximum loss, the survival of the insurer, the company said.

Demotech said it will not make any further moves until completing its reviews of carriers March 31 financial statements as well as its reviews of preliminary and final catastrophe reinsurance programs by June 1.

Demotech noted, however, that it is monitoring several other companies:

Elements Property Insurance Co. / Avatar

Although the company met or exceeded the level of capital and surplus required and management has committed to do so into the future, the company did not report financials acceptable to Demotech. The investors controlling the company have opted to sell the company rather than recommit to Florida or adapt its business model to the emerging operating environment. Elements Property Insurance Co. has been acquired by Avatar Partners LP, the parent company of Avatar Property & Casualty Insurance Co. Elements will maintain the FSR previously assigned as the pending transaction proceeds towards closure, Demotech said.

Mount Beacon Insurance Co. / Florida Specialty

Although the company met or exceeded the level of capital and surplus required, the company did not report financials acceptable to Demotech. The investors controlling the company opted to sell the company rather than recommit to Florida or adapt its business model to the emerging operating environment. Mount Beacon Insurance Co. has been acquired by Florida Specialty Acquisition, LLC. Mount Beacon will maintain the FSR previously assigned while the remainder of its policies are moved to Florida Specialty Insurance Co. by May 15, 2017, according to Demotech.

Mount Beacon is a home and manufactured home insurance company specific to the state and is located in St. Petersburg. Florida Specialty said it will conclude the last part of its acquisition (announced last June) of the Mount Beacon Insurance Co. effective May 15, 2017 when all of the remaining Mount Beacon policies will be moved onto Florida Specialty paper.

Susan Patschak, CEO and Rick Loden, president/COO of Florida Specialty Insurance Co., are heading up the newly-acquired company. Before acquiring Safeway Property Insurance Co. (re-named Florida Specialty) in August of 2015, Patschak was formerly the CEO of Canopius Bermuda and Loden, president and CEO of Insurance Servicing and Adjusting Company located in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Dan Lavin is Florida Specialtys Chief Underwriting Officer.

Prepared Insurance Co. / PLW Investments, LLC

Although the company raised additional capital to meet the level requested by Demotech, the successful implementation of its business model and plan under the current operating environment would have likely required additional capitalization in the future. In response, the investors controlling the company recommitted to Floridians by selling a majority interest to PLW Investments, LLC. The FSR assigned to Prepared Insurance Co. has been affirmed based on their current situation, business plan, and management underlying future operations, Demotech said.

Legislative Action

Under Floridas current law, policyholders suing their insurer over a claim dispute can recover their attorneys fees if the insurer is shown to have underpaid the claim, by any amount. The industry says third party contractors and attorneys have been abusing the policyholder benefit, particularly for water losses, to inflate claims and fees.

Is there an incentive in the market currently that entices people to abuse the system. We think that the answer is yes, Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier said in an interview with Insurance Journal. The logical step, in our opinion, would be to take that incentive out of the marketplace.

Public officials including Altmaier and private insurers are pressuring the state Legislature to act during its current session, which opened March 7.

Its going to be a hard battle, Barry Gilway, CEO and executive director of Citizens, told the Florida Chamber of Commerce last month. Lets face it, the trial bar is extremely powerful and theres absolutely no question they are going to fight this hard. They are going to fight anything that in any way shape or form impacts their ability to take on vendors as clients and eliminates any possibility for them to get fees.

Related:

Topics Carriers Florida Claims Excess Surplus Property Casualty Property
Sisters who are CEOs of sewing companies that are subcontracted by True Religion jeans have been sentenced for conspiring with their accountant to hide tens of millions in payroll to avoid paying for workers compensation insurance.

Sung Hyun Kim and Caroline Choi, CEOs of Meriko Inc. and SF Apparel Inc., were sentenced on March 14 in a court in Los Angeles.

Sung Hyun Kim, who pleaded no contest in December to workers compensation fraud, was sentenced to two years of either jail or electronic monitoring and two years of probation.

Choi was sentenced to one year of jail or electronic monitoring and five years of probation for failing to pay payroll taxes.

The accountant, Jae Kim, who was also charged in the plot, received the same sentence as Choi.

Restitution of $4.6 million has already been paid in the case.

The California Department of Insurance said in April 2015 that the trio allegedly conspired to underreport $78.5 million in payroll to multiple insurers including the State Compensation Insurance Fund and two insurance companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

Related:

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Topics California Workers' Compensation Fraud
A former Ada County, Idaho, employee who filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging he was retaliated against and wrongly fired has been awarded $1.7 million.

Rich Wrights attorney said a jury awarded the money to his client on March 14, The Idaho Statesman reported.

Wright had been the head of the county Department of Administration before he was fired in January 2013.

Wright claimed he was terminated by the Board of Commissioners for launching an investigation into one of his employees for harassment. Wrights lawsuit claims the employee had been a close friend of two county commissioners.

The commissioners told Wright there were no performance issues with his work and his position was being eliminated as part of a restructuring, the lawsuit states. Wrights position was the only job cut.

Ada County officials have said Wrights firing was legal because he was an at-will employee who could be dismissed without cause.

A district judge in Boise initially dismissed the case, saying Wrights claims didnt fall under the Whistleblower Act.

But Wright appealed, and the Idaho Supreme Court sent the case back to trial court.

This case has dominated four years of my life and to now have a unanimous verdict from the jury makes it all worth it, Wright told the Statesman. I stood up for what was right and I hope this sends a clear message to all public employees that they have rights.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Luxembourgs Cite Judiciare upheld an earlier judgment against the former PwC employee, as well as his ex-colleague Raphael Halet , but reduced Deltours 12-month suspended prison sentence to six months.

There was a lot of support outside the court. It is a partial victory that for the first time in Europe that a national judge recognised the whistleblower status for revealing professional secrecy, but a satisfying judgment would have been a full acquittal, Deltour told International Tax Review.

The Frenchman also revealed to International Tax Review that he is considering appealing the decision.

I need time to read carefully the judgment and then I will make a decision, he said. The last possibility [is] to contest the judgement and it will allow me to go to the European Court of Human Rights, but I havent made a decision yet.

Despite the fact that he was convicted, Deltour is optimistic that his case will have a positive impact and bring greater tax transparency in the future.

Its a step forward to whistleblowers in Europe, as my lawyer said it is the first time a European judge recognised whistleblower statues . I think it is step forward for tax justice.

Unfortunately, the first trial and the appeal trial gave a lot of attention to the messenger and not to the message, which is about tax competition in Europe and how it is more or a little more transparent thanks to the leak. Tax competition is more intense than ever with the decreasing corporate tax rates everywhere in Europe and I think that is having consequences on budgets and public policing.

Todays decision is a recognition of my role in this story, he added.
Herzfeld has significant experience advising public and private companies on corporate and international tax matters. In addition to joining Ivins Washington DC office, she has been appointed to the position of professor of tax practice and director of the LLM in international tax program at the University of Florida Frederic G. Levin College of Law, beginning in the autumn of 2017.

She was previously a contributing editor to Tax Notes International (Tax Analysts) where she wrote more than 150 articles on international tax policy developments and cross-border transactions. She has also written extensively on US tax reform efforts. Her articles have also been quoted extensively in academic and government publications.

Before joining Tax Notes International, Herzfeld started her career at Weil, Gotshal and Manges in New York City and has also worked as in-house tax counsel at a Fortune 50 company. Later, Herzfeld practiced in the international tax group of a Big 4 firm in both its New York and national tax offices, providing transactional advice to US and foreign multinational corporations, private equity funds, venture capital funds and individuals on a broad range of cross-border tax issues. She has structured acquisitions, joint ventures, and dispositions including spin-offs and has led complex cross-border restructuring projects. Herzfeld has also conducted reviews for due diligence and audit purposes of companies' financial statement tax positions. Furthermore, she has served as lead international tax adviser for both public and private clients and investment funds.
The firm will operate as RSM Gibraltar and officially adopt the RSM brand. This move means RSM has now expanded into Gibraltar for the first time and follows recent expansions in Spain and Mexico, alongside new representation in Guatemala, Colombia and Zambia.

RSM in Gibraltar is estimated to be the fifth-largest service provider in Gibraltar, operating across a variety of client sectors, including banking and insurance, retail, real estate, professional services and gaming. The firm employs 30 staff, providing tax compliance and advisory, audit and assurance services, fund administration, company and trust management, accounting and payroll, insolvency and restructuring, among others.
Papa Francesco sara il 17 febbraio in visita allUniversita Roma Tre. Lo ha annunciato il rettore Mario Panizza durante linaugurazione dellanno accademico 2016-2017. Nel corso della cerimonia dinaugurazione il rettore ha sottolineato che quella di Bergoglio sara la prima visita del pontefice in ununiversita statale italiana.

Nella sua prolusione, il rettore Mario Panizza, e nella relazione del direttore generale, Pasquale Basilicata, sono stati delineati il profilo, i risultati e gli obiettivi del piu giovane ateneo di Roma che sempre piu si proietta verso il futuro puntando  spiega una nota  sulla qualita della didattica e della ricerca, nonche sulla presenza negli scenari internazionali, ma anche cittadini. Altra peculiarita dellateneo e infatti la sua collocazione nel tessuto vivo della Capitale, di cui ha contribuito a riqualificare e ad arricchire lurbanistica recuperando immobili di archeologia industriale per metterli a disposizione di studenti e cittadini.

Ospite della cerimonia il prof. Matthew Anthony Evangelista, con la sua lectio magistralis su Diritti umani, conflitti armati e il diritto internazionale: il ruolo dellindividuo nel contesto europeo. Sempre piu, a nostro avviso  ha detto il rettore Mario Panizza  le universita devono impegnarsi a preparare professionalmente i loro allievi, senza pero dimenticare il loro dovere di farne cittadini di un mondo globale. Va quindi salvaguardata la dimensione culturale e sociale dello studente-cittadino, futuro laureato, futuro cittadino-lavoratore, accompagnandolo e aiutandolo nel percorso di approfondimento del suo sapere. Roma Tre si impegna dunque a proporre unofferta formativa che ponga al centro studenti e docenti e che si fondi sulla qualita della didattica e leccellenza del corpo docente.
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Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast  Interview with Founder and CEO of Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN) Discussing Recent Acquisitions, Rollout and Manufacturing of EV Line of Products

Vancouver, Kelowna, Delta, BC - November 7, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a global news source and leading investor resource covering cleantech and renewable energy stocks issues a new edition of the Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast, featuring an interview with Mr. David Michery, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Electric Vehicle Company, Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN).

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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

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On Sunday's all-new episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta  After Phaedra Parks' attempt to reunite the group fails, Kandi Burruss and her husband Todd decide to bring everyone together for a roast of Peter.

Sheree Whitfield is forced to decide if she should move forward with or without Bob, while Cynthia Bailey and Peter come to terms with the end of their marriage.





Meanwhile, Kenya Moore and Phaedra's newfound friendship is put to the test as Kenya hosts a party that has Phaedra feeling seasick on dry land.. Watch a sneak peek preview below!





In this exclusive preview clip via, Sheree tells Bob is over and gets real with him of what he has put her through and why they won't get back together."I want you to have some remorse for what the f--k you did. That's what I want you to have," Sheree tells Bob before bursting into tears. "You just came back like you were there the day before. And that hurt me, Bob. Hurt my kids." As she continues to speak her peace, one gets the sense that this is the first time Sheree's been this honest about how much he hurt her. It's a real punch to the gut.As usual, Bob doesn't have much to say, leading Sheree to finally end this dance they've been doing for good. "I've been content with it for 10 years," she tells him. "You haven't done anything in 10 years since we separated." And that, as they say, is that.In this clip, Kenya Moore throws Cynthia and Phaedra a divorce party, and the ladies play some sexy fun games however not all the ladies are thrilled with the idea, in especially Phaedra.In this other clip, Phaedra Parks is not ready to trust Kenya Moore yet and doesn't let her know about her divorce being finalized.airs Sunday nights at 8/7c only on Bravo. For International TV ListingsSource/Photo Credit: Bravo
Niall FitzGerald told the annual British Irish Chamber of Commerce Conference in Dublin that Irelands position midway between Singapore and Silicon Valley, with deeply embedded relationships with both the EU and the US meant there was much opportunity in the wake of Brexit.

He said co-operation between Ireland and Britain was key, while also retaining Irelands relationship with the EU.

Shared research from Ireland and Britains educational institutions and leveraging Irelands surplus supply of high quality food would provide opportunity, he added.

He said harnessing Britains advanced materials and manufacturing and finance expertise with Irelands burgeoning creative technology base, and jointly developing energy sources and building on pharma and medical devices was also vital.

Mr FitzGerald said Brexit and other challenges could be overcome if social inequality was addressed by business as well as political leaders.

The patron of the chamber said: We dont have to settle for the status quo. We dont have to allow ourselves to be carried along on a global wave of alienation, hatred and divisiveness.

Ireland doesnt have to lose out to the challenges of Brexit, of Trump, of protectionism or to the loss of trust in politics or business.

He said Ireland could become a unique beacon of openness, diversity and social inclusion if there was a clear and compelling national development plan executed through a real partnership between business and the community.

Mr FitzGerald was chairman and CEO of Unilever from 1996 until 2004. The Sligo native became chairman of Reuters in 2004.

British Irish Chamber president Eamonn Egan told attendees that too much had been achieved in recent years both in terms of economic recovery and the blossoming of the relationship between Ireland and Britain for things to rewind to the past.

As representatives of businesses that are the heart of British and Irish trade, it is our responsibility to set out to the two governments  in Dublin and in London, what we see as the areas to safeguard and foster during the negotiations surrounding Britains exit from the Union.

In essence, we must look for opportunities but not seek to be opportunistic, he said, adding a return to border controls would be unbelievable.
As is normal, there is quite a bit of moaning going on about junkets and the waste of taxpayers money that this overseas exit represents.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

For a very small and very open economy such as Ireland, where external trade, tourism and foreign direct investment are so important, the annual opportunity to get out into the wide world and market Ireland in such a welcoming environment is very important and should be exploited to the fullest extent possible.

Not too many countries get that opportunity.

I have been in the US twice in recent years and once in Belgium for Saint Patricks Day, and I was astounded at the manner in which the feast day is celebrated and it does bring home to one, the incredible global impact that such a small country has had in the past and continues to have around the world.

It may sound cliched, but it is true.

Consequently, having our senior politicians present in numerous countries and the access they get to the most important political and business leaders in the world is an opportunity that should be grabbed with both hands.

Those who criticise the overseas travel, are typical of people who know the price of everything and understand the value of little.

Ireland clearly faces two immense external challenges over the coming years in the shape of Brexit and President Donalds Trumps policies towards free trade and corporation tax.

To cope with and ultimately overcome those challenges Ireland will need as much international clout as possible; it will need as many friends as possible, and it will need to expand existing markets and develop new markets.

All of these things are easier said than done, but the activities of our politicians overseas during Saint Patricks week are immensely important to achieve these objectives.

It is also very good for Irelands image abroad amongst potential tourists.

Saint Patricks week offers a similar showcase and we should not waste it. The usual and predictable parade of begrudgers should bear that in mind.

Tourism represents Irelands most important and real high value added service export.

This week Failte Ireland published an interesting survey of visitor attitudes towards Ireland and also some really strong information on the impact that tourism has on the economy.

In 2016, 61% of overseas holidaymakers rated Ireland as good value for money and 57% expressed the view they would definitely return in the future.

US tourists were most impressed, but somewhat worryingly and definitely not surprising, just 51% of British visitors regarded Ireland as good or very good value for money, down from 67% the previous year.

This drop is almost entirely due to the weakness of sterling, a variable we have absolutely no control over.

While prices are important, the quality of the tourism product is even more so.

If we compete on the basis of price alone, it would just lead to a damaging race to the bottom. Failte Ireland data this week show that 8.8 million overseas visitors came to Ireland last year; the tourism industry was worth 7 billion to the Irish economy; overseas earnings totalled 5bn; the tourism industry provides employment to 220,000 workers; every 1m of tourist expenditure supports 29 tourism jobs; and every 1,000 extra tourists supports 14 jobs.

Most importantly, as well as the national significance of the industry, its regional spread is incredibly important for a country that is now paying so much attention to regional economic growth and development.

Have a great Saint Patricks Day.
The Galaxy S8 to be unveiled later this month will blend fingerprint, iris and facial detection to verify users accessing mobile services including Samsung Pay, the sources said.

Its already working with banks to help them embrace facial recognition systems in coming months, they said, asking not to be identified talking about a private matter. Samsung declined to comment.

The Korean company needs to make a splash after killing off the fire-prone Note 7, which cost it more than $6bn (5.6bn) and the global lead in smartphones.

Success for the S8 will be crucial to salvaging Samsungs reputation, especially with de facto chief Jay Y Lee detained in a corruption scandal thats already led to the ouster of the nations president.

And itll be going up against the new iPhone due later in 2017  the 10th anniversary of the iconic device.

While previous Galaxy phones have allowed users to unlock their phones with facial recognition, the S8 would be the first to use the technology to verify financial payment applications.

With mobile security taking on greater importance among consumers, the Korean company has been trying to bolster its facial detection rate over the years, the sources said.

Iris and facial detection capabilities complement each other: Phones can rely on iris detection when theres not enough ambient light to recognise facial features.

But the smartphone unlocks faster and with more accuracy when it comes to recognising faces. Its a technology also sought after by competitors.

Apple had acquired facial recognition developers in past years, and won a patent last week for a method to detect faces using information in digital video feeds.

Samsung is resorting to other features to try and differentiate its most expensive phone in a field now crowded with up-and-coming rivals, including Chinese names such as Huawei and Oppo.

The S8 phone will also come with Samsungs own voice-based digital assistant, the sources said. However, that was developed largely in-house and the first version of the software wont borrow much from Viv Labs.

Samsung acquired the US-based artificial-intelligence software company only in October.

The Galaxy S8 is also said to come with a full-screen front, minus a physical home button.

Samsung will bury a virtual home button in the lower part of glass.

It will also employ more power-efficient OLED technology.

Bloomberg
At the high-profile American Ireland Gala Fund dinner in Washington DC on Wednesday, in front of US vice-president Mike Pence, Mr Mitchell said immigration reforms must not lead to hostility and exclusion for minority groups.

In a speech focussing on immigration, Mr Mitchell, who played a key role in the Norths peace process, stressed that, from the very beginning, our country has been enriched by new ideas and new people.

And, while noting Irish-Americans have been among those involved, he pointedly added that Jewish, Catholics, Italians, Africans, and others are also part of the fabric of the US  a situation he said must not be changed by any anti-immigration policies.

Every rational American knows we cannot return to days of open immigration, he said. But we must work together on policies that focus on how we live up to our principles as an open and just society.

The strength of America lies in our ideals. Theyre not easily summarised, but surely include individual liberty, opportunity for all, an independent judiciary and commitment to those ideals.

Commitment to these ideals makes us Americans, not ideals, race or religion. Mr Pence, you carry with us the best wishes of living up to these requirements.

US President Donald Trump and Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny meet for talks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

The speech was made just hours after a federal judge blocked US president Donald Trumps revised Muslim travel ban from becoming law today, saying it was flawed  a move Mr Trump decried in Nashville, Tennessee, as judicial overreach.

Meanwhile, at the same American Ireland Gala Fund  which was also attended by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Ian Paisley Jr, Democrat leader of the house of representatives Nancy Pelosi, and 35 members of congress  Mr Pence vowed to strengthen the close ties between Ireland and America.

In an emotional speech which saw him refer to his Irish roots and spent as a child in Sligo and Mayo, Mr Pence said he was proud to say with great confidence that our bound is strong and will grow stronger still.

He said his Irish-born grandfather was the first person to enter his mind when he was made vice-president earlier this year.

Mr Pence was notably emotional when he was presented with a framed plaque of his grandfathers primary school attendance roll from his childhood in Sligo and a similarly carved image of his family tree.

However, despite acknowledging the close links between the two nations, he pointedly failed to extend his interest in migrants to those who are not Irish.
Mr Kenny confirmed the move in a short media briefing at the White House moments after holding a detailed meeting with Mr Trump, vice-president Mike Pence, and other senior officials at the Oval Office.

Asked by reporters what issues he raised at the meeting, Mr Kenny said he prioritised the need to cut a deal for undocumented Irish living in the US who have no criminal records, or small ones for incidents such as traffic violations.

He said these issues could be resolved easily via the existing system, and that there is no need to deport such people from the US.

We spoke about immigration, said Mr Kenny. We had a very constructive, beneficial discussion on this. I raised the low response on E3 visas, which are for young people who want to come to America and work here. I also raised the undocumented Irish and the president was surprised at the figure. If there are fines for traffic violations and so on they should clear those up with their legal people. And thats an issue that can lift the fear and concern and anxiety some people might have. The conclusion on immigration is that there is clear agreement that we can work constructively.

Mr Kenny also confirmed he raised the issue of Brexit, the financial impact it may have on Ireland, and the fact that both the EU and Ireland will always be a friend of the US as it is mutually beneficial to do so.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and US President Donald Trump at a Friends of Ireland lunch at the Capitol Building yesterday. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

However, while Mr Kenny further raised Irelands determination to hold onto US firms based in our country, he failed to make any reference during the meeting to Mr Trumps travel ban focussed on six Muslim- majority countries.

The ban was due to be introduced yesterday but has been blocked by US judges.

However, despite being asked about the subject  and his labelling last May of Mr Trumps policies as racist and dangerous  Mr Kenny twice refused to say whether he had raised the matter at any level.

We had a good, friendly, constructive engagement, he said, before repeating that, in his mind, Ireland will remain a close friend to the US in the years to come regardless of its political positions.

Mr Kenny earlier made similar remarks to US vice-president Mike Pence, with Mr Pence and Mr Trump emphasising during a series of public engagements that they believe Ireland and the US will continue their relationship. We sat, we talked, and I think, were friends now, right? And its really an honour, Mr Trump later told a Capitol Hill St Patricks Day lunch event.
Mr Trump and Taoiseach Enda Kenny confirmed that the trip will take place within the next four years during a high-profile meeting at the White House.

Asked by reporters at the Oval Office if he will visit Ireland, Mr Trump said absolutely, Ill be there for sure before Mr Kenny added during the course of his presidency.

At a media briefing minutes later, Mr Kenny confirmed that he had asked Mr Trump to visit as, in Ireland, invitations are always returned in kind, so during the course of presidency of US Ive asked him to come to Ireland.

Mr Kenny has repeatedly stressed the need to work with the Trump administration during his week-long St Patricks Day trip to the US  which ends with events in New York City today  due to the fact that Irelands economy is heavily reliant on foreign direct investment and because of the need to strike a deal to protect illegal Irish immigrants in the US.

Enda Kennys wife Fionnuala Kenny and US President Donald Trump at a Friends of Ireland lunch. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

However, he has been heavily criticised for his appeasing approach to Mr Trump despite repeated racism, sexism, bullying, and fake news allegations, with critics again rounding on the Taoiseachs invitation last night.

Labour leader Brendan Howlin warned that Mr Kenny has failed to reflect Irish values.

When Enda Kenny accepted an invitation to visit President Trump in the White House, I was concerned, said Mr Howlin.

My fear was that our Taoiseach would present Ireland as a supine supporter of Trumpism. By failing to articulate any opposition to the policies and rhetoric of the Trump presidency, Enda Kenny has done exactly that.

Nowhere in this engagement has Enda Kenny sought to challenge the racist travel ban that President Trump has twice attempted to implement. Nowhere did he mention the importance of a free press or the value of a diverse society.

Worse, he issued an invitation to President Trump to visit Ireland. Trumps values are not our values, and there should be no welcome mat laid out for a man of his world-view.

US President Donald Trump and Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny meet for talks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

Similar protest threats were issued by the Green party and Solidarity  formerly AAA  with Greens leader Eamon Ryan saying: Our message in response to Trumps remarks are clear: You are not welcome here. He may claim to love Ireland, but we certainly dont love him.

However, despite the controversy over the planned visit, Fianna Fail has declined to comment, while Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams yesterday told the Irish Examiner he is not opposed to the move.

Mr Kennys visit also saw him urge Mr Trump to cut a deal for law-abiding undocumented Irish to remain in America, saying people with no or minor criminal records for incidents such as traffic violations should not be pursued.

However, while he also highlighted the desire for the EU to be a friend to the US, he pointedly failed to raise Mr Trumps attempted travel ban and US the administrations wider anti-immigrant policies.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and US President Donald Trump at a Friends of Ireland lunch at the Capitol Building yesterday. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

Mr Kenny described his meeting with Mr Trump as constructive, while the US president told officials at a Capitol Hill St Patricks Day lunch: We sat, we talked, and I think, were friends now, right?

The day of events, which ended with the traditional shamrock ceremony last night, included a separate meeting with US vice-president Mike Pence and speaker of the house Paul Ryan, and a lengthy list of gifts to Mr Trump and Mr Pence.

They included a crystal shamrock bowl, a Bord Bia hamper, an Irish linen brooch, a WB Yeats childrens book for Barron Trump, bed linen for Melania Trump, a framed copy of 1911 census information on Mr Pences Irish grandparents, and a hurley.

Separately, the Ireland America Fund also gave Mr Pence a replica of his familys immigrant roots and a framed copy of his Sligo-born grandfathers school roll book.
The Fine Gael MEP highlighted the fact that the European Council can make decisions based on a qualified majority vote, meaning a Brexit deal could be passed by heads of government.

Mr Hayes said this could not be the case in Brexit negotiations, especially given Irelands special status.

The current procedure allows the EU Council, in deciding on the agreement, to decide by way of a strong qualified majority vote. The council should make it clear from the start that all 27 member states have rights in this process and that ultimately all concerns have to be met.

This, from Irelands perspective, is crucial in establishing that we cannot be railroaded by member states into accepting something that is not in our national interest.

Mr Hayes, speaking at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce conference in Dublin, said negotiations could take between six and 10 years and we must be prepared for that time span. For this reason, he said the Government has a special responsibility to include opposition parties at all stages.

He said: This process will outlive this and the next Dail and is something we will have to live with for a long time. Its important from Irelands perspective that we have absolute continuity of policy from opposition to government.

He added that it is in the DNA of Irish nationalism to see Britains difficulties as Irelands opportunities and said there are some who cannot avoid the temptation for a little Brit bashing.

We have seen political posturing and showboating from some on the issue of a border poll on Irish unity. Far from advancing the cause of Irish unity, such calls will only deepen divisions within Northern Ireland and make real reconciliation impossible.

Also at the event, Health Minister Simon Harris said the Good Friday agreement, the Common Travel Area with Britain, and the open border with the North will have to be protected. He said: We cannot and will not let Brexit or the other international challenges derail our vision for Ireland. Our fundamental values and our goals are constant.

He said Brexit will present opportunities for Ireland.

One such opportunity is the future location of the European Medicines Agency. I believe Dublin offers us the best chance to minimise any disruption to the EMAs vital work caused by the relocation.
Relatives of 10 Protestant workmen shot dead by the IRA in South Armagh in January 1976 want details about weapons used, intelligence, and the getaway van employed by the gunmen. They accused the Garda and the Irish Government of only paying lip service to their concerns.

Alan Kane, QC for the Kingsmill victims, told a Belfast preliminary hearing: There is a level of concern based on the failure of the southern authorities to meaningfully engage with the requests, which really have fallen on deaf ears.

Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan has said Dublin is in direct contact with the coroner conducting an inquest into the killings.

Lawyers for the coroner are due to meet representatives of the State Solicitors office in Dublin soon.

Mr Kane said: The system that has been established to deal with this aspect of legacy in Northern Ireland is being obstructed by the failure of the Irish Republic to do anything meaningful to assist.

The victims were lined up on a road in rural south Armagh and shot dead in a sectarian attack blamed on the IRA. Alan Black survived despite being shot 18 times. Mr Kane said the soft Irish border of the last century had allowed heinous massacres like Kingsmill to take place. He said: That soft border which allowed that has been replaced by a hard border of failing to provide meaningful co-operation and disclosure to the inquest.

The entire intelligence framework, the information concerning the suspect, information relating to weapons, issues relating to the palm print, those are just a few matters that we would certainly be wanting more information.

The coroners court inquiry is to resume in May after prosecutors decided a man would not face prosecution over a palm print found on the get away van.

Around 1,000 pages of new material were created by the most recent criminal investigation, lawyer for the coroner Sean Doran QC said.

Mr Kane said most of the information disclosed so far by the Republic was newspaper cuttings. A librarian could do it, he said.

He said relatives were sceptical of the Irish Government or Garda were taking meaningful steps.

They feel that this is but a window-dressing exercise that is being carried out by the authorities in the Republic at the very last moment, knowing full well that this inquest is scheduled to take place in two months time.

Another lawyer characterised it as pulling teeth and said the official response had been disingenuous.

Outside the hearing, victims campaigner Willie Frazer re-iterated the Brexit analogy made by the counsel for families, saying it was a hard border for information coming from the south but a soft border for the escaping killers.
Paul Moore, aged 51, had been on bail awaiting sentencing for the offence which took place on the Dart in 2014.

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court Judge Melanie Greally yesterday indicated she would impose a three-year sentence with the final 18 months suspended at the end of this month but said she wanted time to fine tune the conditions that would apply on his release.

Judge Greally said she was putting the case back to confirm if a special request could be made for urine analysis to be taken as part of post-release supervision by the Probation Service.

She remanded Moore in custody until March 30 after hearing from his case manager and probation officer on what conditions should apply to a partly suspended sentence . They confirmed to the court that Moore had been compliant with the terms of his supervision after release from a previous jail term last April. They advised he should remain sober in public and his case manager suggested he observe a night time curfew.

Previously the court heard Moore assaulted the victim, in 2014 as she was travelling home from college. Gardai examined CCTV footage of the incident but Moore was not recognised on the video until two years later.

In the meantime, he sexually assaulted two women in separate incidents after stopping them in the street and asking for a cigarette. In 2015, he was jailed for 15 months for these attacks. He was released in April 2016 and subject to probation supervision.

His other offences include raping a musician in 2001, for which he received 10 years and raping another woman in 1995, for which he received seven.

Moore of Mountjoy Square, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting the woman on the southside Dart on August 28, 2014.

At a hearing in February, Breffni Gordon, defending, said there were conflicting opinions on what caused Moore to commit these crimes. One psychiatric report blamed a head injury he received in 1982 while another blamed an organic personality disorder. Mr Gordon had asked the court to hear from Moores case officer to see if Moore could deal with his problems without going to prison.

Judge Greally said Moores inability to desist from offending, no matter what punishment was imposed, was a matter of real concern to the court.
Meanwhile, the funeral of the helicopters captain Dara Fitzpatrick takes place in Dublin tomorrow.

While the black box of the helicopter, which crashed off the Mayo coast last Tuesday, was detected on Wednesday evening, the weather has since severely hampered the search.

Declan Geoghegan of the Irish Coast Guard explained the plan for the weekend.

A major underwater sea scan will take place between 12pm and 3pm on Sunday, and depending on how this goes, divers and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) will be deployed to the seabed 40 metres below.

The weather has turned and theres a huge swell out there, about six metres. We had a meeting this afternoon and weve a plan together for the weekend involving the Marine Institute and the Granuaile [an Irish Lights multi-function vessel measuring 80 metres long], Mr Geoghegan said.

With the weather window [on Sunday] weve established, were going to go straight in with an ROV or a naval dive team once weve established where the box is; that the wreckage is there and hopefully that our colleagues are with that wreckage, he said.

On-site inspections were carried out on the island of Black Rock yesterday, which carries a lighthouse and is close to where R116s black box has been detected.

Some pieces of debris were found on the rocky surface but they could have been washed ashore in the swell, investigators said.

Three crew members, Mark Duffy, Paul Ormsby and Ciaran Smith remain missing while their families wait onshore for updates.

The wife of Mark Duffy, Hermione, thanked the public for their support on Facebook yesterday: Thank you for the huge outpouring for my beloved Mark, my hero, my soulmate, my right hand, but we are both ciotogs (left-handed), my babies Daddy.

Her cousin Ben Roynane, who is also in Blacksod where the search is headquartered, said the waiting is very difficult. The waiting is the biggest problem now. Its the hardest thing that the families have to deal with. The families have been so well looked after up here. Any information thats been passed on is being passed on really, really well and really quickly, he said.

Locals are supporting the families by opening up their homes to them and providing them with meals in the heritage centre of Aughleim.

Since we got the sad news on Tuesday morning, the doors were open. Everybody pulled up their sleeves and got together and started working, said local volunteer Maureen Ruadhain.

The search operation will continue over the weekend but the weather is due to be particularly bad today and tomorrow.
Three crew members, Mark Duffy, Paul Ormsby, and Ciaran Smith, remain missing at sea while the cross-agency search team hopes to carry out a major sea scan and dive during a weather window on Sunday.

Declan Geoghegan of the Irish Coast Guard explained the plan for the weekend: The weather has turned and theres a huge swell out there, about 6m. Weve a plan together for the weekend involving the Marine Institute and the Granuaile [an Irish Lights multi-function vessel measuring 80m]. 

He said debris could have built up under water and it would have to be cleared before divers or robots are sent down to locate the black box of R116 or the wreckage.

Members of the Garda Underwater Unit and Coast Guard resuming their search from Blacksod yesterday. Picture Colin Keegan

Prior to the Granuaile going in, we have to clear the area there, because there may be pinnacle obstacles underneath that we are not aware of, for, number one, an ROV [remotely-operated vehicle] and, number two, a dive team.

So, were going to clean that first. With the weather window weve established, were going to go straight in with an ROV or a naval dive team once weve established where the box is; that the wreckage is there and hopefully that our colleagues are with that wreckage.

We identified that window of three to four hours on Sunday.

The tragedy claimed the life of Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, who is to be buried tomorrow in Dublin.

Captain Dara Fitzpatrick

Relatives of the missing crew members are in the area being updated on all developments. Hermione, wife of missing Mark Duffy, posted a message of thanks on Facebook yesterday.

Thank you for the huge outpouring for my beloved Mark, my hero, my soulmate, my right hand, but we are both ciotogs [left-handed], my babys Daddy, she wrote.

Ben Roynane, a relative, said: Its disbelief. None of us have been able to get over it yet. Its still a shock. Its not real. It doesnt seem real, at all.

Mark was a fantastic guy. He just had a persona about him. He was an absolutely fantastic father and brilliant husband to my cousin.

The waiting is the biggest problem, now. Its the hardest thing that the families have to deal with. The families have been so well looked after up here. Any information thats been passed on is being passed on really, really well and really quickly. The wait is just the hardest thing, he added.

Local volunteer Maureen Ruadhain, whose brother was an attendant on the Blackrock Lighthouse close to where R116s black box has been detected, has been preparing food for the families.

Since we got the sad news on Tuesday morning, the doors were open.

Everybody pulled up their sleeves and got together and started working and ran for food and that and the community has been overwhelming.

Theres been food coming in from every corner. We had to go in and buy the first lot to get us going. Homemade soup and sandwiches are being made here and home-baking and that, Ms Ruadhain told the Irish Examiner.

At the time of the crash on Monday night, the Dublin-based R116 had been providing top cover for another Irish Coast Guard helicopter, Rescue 118, that was performing a medical evacuation [medevac] off the coast of Mayo.

Rescue 116 was returning to base when it fell out of contact.

However, it has emerged that the Defence Forces had received a request to provide cover.

Commenting on confirmation from the Defence Forces that a Casa fixed-wing, an aircraft, was initially asked to provide top cover for the R118 during Monday nights medical evacuation, Gerard OFlynn of the Irish Coast Guard said that it was routine to request a Casa as first option and then provide a helicopter if this was not available.

Our contract states we must be available 24/7 and our own aircraft regularly provide support for each other, but we work closely with the Air Corps. The agreement with the Air Corps is not on a 24/7 basis.

We provide support for the Air Corps in medical evacuations and patient transfer, and it supports us in top cover and pollution and other incidents, he added.

The search operation yesterday was assisted by an Air Corps helicopter, which brought crew out to the island of Blackrock to inspect it for debris.

All agencies and local volunteers also carried out land searches for debris that has washed up on nearby shores.

The Irish Coast Guard posted a message of thanks on Facebook.

During what is our darkest hours we find ourselves truly humbled by the out pouring of love and support both here at home and globally, read the post.
Nearly 4,200 Irish people received compensation of 3.8m after Lowcostholidays.ie  a subsidiary of a Spanish company  went out of business last summer.

The payouts came following claims submitted to the Commission for Aviation Regulation which bonds companies selling holidays in Ireland. The Irish division of Lowcostholidays was, however, bonded for just 79,243, according to the ITAA.

A Travellers Protection Fund comprised of contributions from tour operators is administered by the commission. Its reserves had totalled 5m, most of which has now been paid out to customers of Lowcostholidays.

The ITAA, which represents 100 travel agent members and 70 affiliate partners, has called on the Government to review the legislation around bonding among travel providers.

The Lowcostholidays refunds will clear out 75% of the Travellers Protection Fund, said Cormac Meehan, president of the ITAA.

We are calling on the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to meet with the ITAA immediately to review the legislation around bonding and work on the next steps, he said.

Mr Meehan told the Irish Examiner that the impact of the Lowcostholiday payout has left the fund in an alarming position and that the bonding legislation needs to be updated to reflect the changes in modern tour operation.

The current legislation is from the 1970s, pre-internet, pre-smartphones. While the commission obviously has the best interests of the trade and customers at heart, it needs legislation that is fit for purpose, not something written 40 years ago, he said.

The protection fund is under pressure now, another incident like Lowcostholidays would see it dissipated.

Lowcostholidays.ie was licensed and bonded by the Commission for Aviation Regulation so we are amazed at the under-provision in the context of the thoroughness with which the regulator usually deals with our members, Mr Meehan said.

He suggested an approach to ensure operators are properly bonded and licensed, with bonding based on passenger numbers. He said legislation review would address the issue.

The ITAA have been pushing for a collective bond for years, among all travel agents, tour operators and airlines. We would also like to draw the ministers attention to the organisations, within the Irish travel sector, that are not bonded with the Commission for Aviation Regulation at all, he said.

This area must be reviewed immediately to ensure the protection of Irish consumers. If travel agents and operators continue to be under-bonded, the shortfall will ultimately be paid by the taxpayer, Mr Meehan said.

Lowcostholidays said it was entering receivership last July following exhaustive attempts by the groups directors to rescue the group which has been hampered by the recent and ongoing turbulent financial environment.

Company administrators said the development affected 27,000 customers from Europe, taking holidays, at the time of the collapse and a further 110,000 who had booked holidays.
As St Patricks Day trundles around again, our politicians will dutifully fly off to the warm corners of the globe armed with their portfolios of Irelands Unique Selling Points in the hope of drumming up inward investment, tourism, or at least a photo opportunity.

There are indeed many unique points to Ireland, though not all of them have much sales potential abroad.

Take our national day itself.

There is a proven mathematical formula showing that the St Patricks Day experience improves in direct proportion to distance from Ireland.

It is that most international of national days, celebrated from Barcelona to Buenos Aires and from Singapore to San Francisco.

Notably, what those places tend to share each March 17 are the pleasant conditions perfect for throwing a street party.

Here its different. Theres an old saying that March comes in like a lion, and the Irish winter often lurks in the long grass to give us a good mauling at the first glimpse of a visiting majorette.

Does St Patricks Day have to be on March 17? Couldnt we reschedule?

Thats just what we did in 2001 when foot and mouth brought the country to a standstill.

When the capitals parade belatedly took place on a balmy day in late May it drew the biggest turnout ever of 1.2m.

The problem is that even if we moved St Patricks Day to make it less of an endurance test for ourselves, the rest of the world would snub our StPexit.

It cant be moved because its become such a world fixture its no longer ours to muck about with.

We share it with too many lands where snow, rain and hail will never be a case for change.

Some places dont so much share, as piggyback.

March 17 is a public holiday on the Caribbean island of Montserrat because it commemorates a failed slave revolt in 1768, which, by a happy coincidence ties in with the revels of the many islanders of Irish stock.

In Boston, the tacked-on feast doubles up with the original public holiday of Evacuation Day marking the withdrawal of British troops during the 1776 revolution.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of actually having to live here, there are many features of daily life that set us apart from every other society in the world. Take, for instance, that it wouldnt be entirely unusual, listening to the Monday morning sports bulletins, for the results of Sundays provincial junior camogie playoffs to take precedence over the outcome of footballs World Cup final.

And sticking with aspects of the Irish media that catch the attention of foreign visitors, theres the ever-present chance that a cupla focail will leap out to catch them unaware.

Their taxi driver will have assured them on the way from the airport that there are over one million fluent Irish speakers here, according to the census, but after a few days in the country they begin wondering why all these Gaeilgeoirs seem to be avoiding them.

The only logical explanation must be that vast numbers of emigrants return home every few years just to fill in the census form, just as many fly in to vote in elections and referendums.

Many of us residents wonder much the same thing. Radio 1 patriotically switched its midday news bulletin from English to Irish in the run-up to the 1916 jamboree, presumably in response to public demand.

The post-Angelus Nuacht is still with us. Why then, did the station undermine this move almost immediately, by having presenter Sean ORourke finish his show each day just before 12pm with the news headlines in English?

To have a dysfunctional relationship with our native tongue is truly part of what we are.

And speaking of the Angelus. Whether you profess any religion or none, hearing the bells as part of the soundtrack to your daily life is another mark of being truly Irish.

There are other distinguishing features, often detected more in the omission than the observance.

While a tourist in a service station would stop and stare aghast at a gaggle of young women in pyjamas queuing for cigarettes and Pampers, we dont blink an eye anymore.

Of course, the distinguishing marks that separate us from Americans, Russians or Belgians have been ironed out to almost nothing by five decades of rampant cultural and economic globalisation.

Anyone schooled in the Ireland of the 1960s or before, will remember a time when our distinct isolated, separatist Gaelic identity was not only encouraged, but inflicted and enforced with quasi-military zeal.

Back then our Paddys Day parades had the severity and joylessness of the annual May Day march in Moscow past the generals of the Kremlin.

Back then, one newspaper branded Fine Gaels Oliver J Flanagan the prime idiot of Leinster House on numerous counts of saying daft and sometimes hateful things. Most famously, he claimed: There was no sex in Ireland before television.

Ironically, in his own idiotic way he was right. The old insular, Ireland was banished by television. Let us give thanks.

Damian Corless is the author of Hopscotch and Queenie-i-o  A 1960s Irish Childhood, published by The Collins Press, price 12.99. It is available in all good bookshops and from www.collinspress.ie
My name is Matt, I am photographer and "BTS search Guru".On ISO 1200 Magazine we have the best team searching brand new behind the scenes videos around the world to learn all the secrets of the best photographers
Friday, March 17th, 2017 (11:11 am) - Score 1,045

The Lincolnshire County Council in England has recently signed a new Phase 3 roll-out contract with Openreach (BT), which aims to help expand the local coverage of 24Mbps+ capable superfast broadband (FTTC/P) services towards 97% of premises. Expect more FTTP.

At present around 90% of the county should be able to access a superfast broadband (24Mbps+) capable network (this reflects a raw fibre coverage footprint of roughly 97-98%, when including sub-24Mbps areas) via the Onlincolnshire project, while the on-going Phase 2 Broadband Delivery UK contract with BT should push this up to about 95% by 31st December 2017.

Overall this reflects a public and private investment of 48.3 million (15.2m from local authorities, 14.3m from BDUK and 18.8m from BT) and at the end of December 2016 some 122,000 addition premises had already been completed (out of 136,000 contracted for Phase 1 + 2).

However the total size of the countys intervention area (i.e. where upgrade work is needed) has previously been estimated at 150,000 premises (equivalent to half the premises in Lincolnshire), which means that around 14,000 homes and businesses are still missing out on the benefits of faster fixed line broadband connectivity.

The good news is that the local authority has signed a new Phase 3 contract, which actually took place over a month ago but weve only just spotted it now. Better late than never.

Onlincolnshire Update Phase 3 will provide faster broadband to over 9000 additional premises across the county, of which 97% will be in areas designated Rural or Very Rural. The timescale for Phase 3 is a start date of Autumn 2017 and a finish date of December 2019. These timescales align to Government aspirations as we attempt to push Superfast broadband coverage up to 97% of the county.

Further tentative details can be found on the projects website, although its specifically noted that Phase 3 will include a greater percentage of ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology and Copper rearrangement (this usually references the process for tackling Exchange Only Lines), which often makes it more difficult to give exact deployment dates.

Sadly weve not been able to find much detail on the investment being used in Phase 3. We should also add that the Onlincolnshire project hasnt been completely dominated by BT, with Fixed Wireless Access ISP AB Internet also securing a small contract to upgrade a number of areas on the East Coast.
The introduction of a new technology never means the end of what is already in use for a couple of reasons: It takes a long time for the new standard or protocol to work its way through the system and the latest technology is often beyond the needs of most users.

The same will be true as 5G rolls out. ABI Research released data this week that forecasts that the number of LTE subscribers will double from 2 billion now to more than 4 billion by 2022.

Added reasons that LTE will continue to be a major player are that demand is exploding and LTE is speeding up. The release says LTE use will grow from 109 Exabytes last year to 522 Exabytes during 2022. Per-user averages will grow from 1.2 GB per month to 5.7 GB per month during the same period.

5G is getting the hype, but LTE is getting the business:

LTE is and will remain dominant throughout the forecast period. It carries 67% of total mobile traffic today, increasing to 82% during 2022, while 5G will carry a mere 13% of total mobile data. At the same time, operator profitability is under pressure. The Average Revenue per User per month (ARPU) in the U.S.the most lucrative mobile marketis approximately $43 today and will decrease to less than $35 during 2022. Network operator CAPEX is also under pressure and will continue to decrease until 2019, after which 5G deployments will ramp up.

One-Year Rule for the FCC

The era in which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) takes long periods of time to make decisions on emerging technology is coming to an end. New chairman Ajit Pai, in what Computerworld called his first major policy address, said that technologies will be decided upon by the agency within a year of their submission. The speech was delivered this week at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Rules to use this time frame are already on the books, but arent generally enforced. The rationale for the acceleration is that dawdling allows other countries to jump ahead in the development process. A possible early use of the faster pace is opening frequencies above 95 GHz for experimentation, the story says.

LTUV Rheinland Establishes LPWAN Testing

Making long-range Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity a reality requires ambitious development on many levels. A key is establishment of low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) networks. LoRa is a specification for doing this. This week, LTUV Rheinland announced that it is establishing the first authorized testing facility in the United States.

The press release says that the center will offer conformance and pre-compliance testing, regulatory testing and certification, LoRaWAN functional testing, electrical safety testing and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing. The test facility will be Fremont, California.

Battery Explosions Continue

The danger of batteries in personal communications devices exploding and catching fire was supposed to have passed with the recall last year of Samsung Galaxy Note 7s.

It hasnt, and the latest incident was even more frightening. CNET reports that battery-powered headphones worn by a woman on a flight from Beijing to Melbourne exploded. The woman was burned on her face, neck, lips and hand.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has issued a safety warning. The bureau said it believes the batteries caught fire and that they and the plastic cover melted onto the floor of the craft. The brand of headphone was not released.

Next Up: Brain/Computer Interfaces

The MIT Technology Review reports that Bryan Johnson, the founder of Braintree, has invested $100 million in Kernel. The startup is developing implants that could link brains to computers. Johnson, the story said, is not alone in chasing this dream:

According to neuroscientists, several figures from the tech sector are currently scouring labs across the U.S. for technology that might fuse human and artificial intelligence. In addition to Johnson, Elon Musk has been teasing a project called neural lace, which he said at a 2016 conference will lead to symbiosis with machines. And Mark Zuckerberg declared in a 2015 Q&A that people will one day be able to share full sensory and emotional experiences, not just photos. Facebook has been hiring neuroscientists for an undisclosed project at Building 8, its secretive hardware division.

Johnson sold Braintree, an online payment company, to eBay for $800 million in 2013. The story says that he asked almost 200 people for advice on where to invest. The answer was neurotechnology. Last August, he announced the launch of Kernel and built what the story says is the first neural prosthetic for human intelligence enhancement.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.
Just last week, Taiwan Mobile launched the 32 GB variant of the Apple iPhone 6. Dubbed as the iPhone 6 2017, this new version was released by the carrier in a Gold model. Now, new reports reveal that in contrast to early rumors, the 32 GB iPhone 6 isn't only for the Asian markets. In fact, the iPhone 6 2017 is headed to Europe in the coming days.

32 GB Apple iPhone 6 (2017) Heading To Belarus

According to Phone Arena, the special edition iPhone is coming to Europe via the country of Belarus. However, unlike the model that reached Taiwan Mobile, Belarus will only get the Space Gray colored iPhone. It was said that the country's iPhone 6 2017 will be made available at the iStore in Minsk and will be priced at around $520.

Moreover, the said iPhone is expected to draw a considerable amount of attention considering its affordable price. Compared to the current iPhone 6S and the refurbished 16 GB iPhone 6 in Belarus, the iPhone 6 2017 is less pricey. Note that the iPhone 6S is currently priced at around $800 in the country while the refurbished iPhone 6 is priced at around $630 at 16 GB.

Apple iPhone 6 Special Edition 32 GB

When the iPhone 6 was initially released, it was only available in 16 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB versions. There's no clarity as to why a 32 GB iPhone 6 variant has been released into the wild as late as three years after. Needless to say, the new iPhone 6 has been updated to fit into the 2017 era. Instead of the original unit's iOS 8 operating system, the iPhone 6 2017 comes with iOS 10 pre-installed.

As to where the phone is coming to next, it's still hard to tell as Apple isn't talking much about it. Nevertheless, tech experts believe that there is little chance that the iPhone 6 2017 32 GB is coming to the US, especially with the nearing arrival of Apple's 2017 iPhones. The company is expected to release three brand new iPhones this year including the special model that's currently referred to as the iPhone 8.
Since it has been launched a few years ago, the Toyota Corolla Altis in its current avatar has then been considered as one of the best selling cars in its segment. Concurrently, given the fact that it has also been likened to that of the Skoda Octavia and recently the Hyundai Elantra which is both said to be taking over a large chunk of the midsize sedan market, a significant number of car enthusiasts have regarded the need for the Toyota Corolla Altis to have a mid-life facelift. That said, and probably due to insistent public demand, Toyota dealers across India have confirmed that the updated and facelifted version of the popular sedan has just been launched on March 15.

The New And Updated Toyota Corolla 2017 Altis Facelift

According to reports revealed by Auto Car India, Toyota has allegedly launched the Corolla Altis facelift at a starting price ranging from Rs 15.87 lakh for the base petrol up to Rs 19.91 lakh for the top trim. Interestingly, however, with the updated version, the company's executives has revealed that they have discontinued the old base J trim along with reducing the number of diesel variants from three to two as it was known that it has no top trim diesel car before. In addition, in terms of its interior and equipment, the new Corolla Altis also gets updates by having a revised dashboard with new circular side air-con vents, and the center console featuring new air-con controls.

Furthermore, as per Car And Bike, it was found that the updates to the new version are mainly cosmetic with some added features. Additionally, the new Corolla Altis facelift also features a touchscreen infotainment system is offered as standard on the petrol model but is available as an option on the diesel and it now features MirrorLink connectivity. On the safety front, it was found that five airbags and ABS are also said to be offered as standard on the other petrol trims, while the diesel only gets three airbags across the range.

The New Pricing

Meanwhile, the since April 2016-January 2017, the revised pricing positions the Corolla above its chief rival, the Hyundai Elantra was found to have fallen significantly as compared to the previous year. However, with the new facelift and some updated features, Toyota hopes to arrest this decline and stave off the competition. Ultimately, with the emergence of these segments, experts say that forms of the facelifted Octavia and the return of the Honda Civic will likely be expected.
Today

Mostly sunny. High 81F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 58F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.

Tomorrow

Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds. High 79F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA  For centuries, words and instruments have painted pictures of adoration to God that have echoed off the walls of cathedrals and filled the air of secret home churches. Yet, much like the people singing those sacred lyrics, the idea of worship and its musical sound have been on a journey.

Over the past 20 years, Integrity Music recording artist Planetshakers Band has been forging new frontiers, pushing the boundaries of what modern worship sounds and looks like, and they have found a unique voice for conveying praise and love to God. Building on a legacy of innovation, their textural approach has resonated with a global audience, packing out arenas around the world. With the March 17 release of their new EP, Legacy  Part 1: Alive Again, recorded in Manila, Philippines and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, they expand their sound even further.

Their notion of what worship is goes far beyond music. For these international influencers, it is about connecting how we live with the vulnerability and passion of the lyrics they sing to bring together a picture of what it means to be madly in love with the Creator of the universe, Jesus. And for two decades, Planetshakers annual conference has been the best place to experience this union of action and music.

Theres an atmosphere that electrifies your spirit when you come together with the people of God to put action to faith, and thats always been the hallmark of every recording weve done, said Planetshakers Senior Pastor and founder, Russell Evans. When you take the barriers off of worship, theres just a difference thats hard to explain. You have to experience it for yourself.

This April 10-13, thousands of people will come together in Melbourne, Australia, for the 20th anniversary of the conference, eager to dive into this unique musical and spiritual environment that continues to redefine the parameters of worship. Once again, Planetshakers will record the event live for their next album, which will be released through Integrity to a global audience this fall.

However, worship music fans wont have to wait until then to hear the new songs and experience the excitement of Planetshakers Conference 2017. Viewers around the world may join the event via a live television broadcast and online stream thanks to ministry partner, Daystar Television Network, now the largest faith-based network in the U.S. and Canada whose programming is broadcast in every country of the world.

We are very excited to connect people all over the world with the love of God, which unites us all in such a deep way, said Marcus Lamb, Daystars Founder and President. Planetshakers is making worship fresh and personal, and we want to share that with our viewers around the world.

For viewing times, visit Daystar.com and http://www.daystar.com/events/planetshakers-conference/. For more about Planetshakers, visit Planetshakers.org.

About Planetshakers:

At its core, Planetshakers seeks first and foremost to pursue the presence of God. All expressions of Planetshakers, including Dove Award-nominated Planetshakers Band, which is known for its international touring and worship favorites such as "Like A Fire", "Endless Praise", "Nothing Is Impossible", "This Is Our Time" and "The Anthem", find their source in the local church. Planetshakers Church campuses are located in Melbourne, Australia, Cape Town, South Africa, Austin, Texas and soon Geneva, Switzerland. In twelve years, Planetshakers Church in Melbourne has grown to over 14,000 members under the leadership of Senior Pastors Russell and Sam Evans. The husband and wife team also host Planetshakers TV, a 30-minute Christian television program broadcast in over 100 countries.

Planetshakers Church is further involved in numerous community and charitable causes, including prison ministry, school programs, refugee outreach, disaster relief and welfare assistance. It recently helped bring significant social and spiritual reformation to villages in the African nation of Malawi, where poverty was defeated after seven years into a 15-year plan. It also partners with World Vision to assist in urgent humanitarian crises around the world, and runs Planetshakers College in Melbourne, which equips local and international students to impact their world for Christ.

About Integrity Music:

Integrity Music is part of the David C Cook family, a nonprofit global resource provider serving the Church with life-transforming materials. With offices in Nashville, Tennessee (US) and Eastbourne, East Sussex (UK), Integrity is committed to taking songs of substance to the local church and its leaders around the world. Integrity publishes many of the top songs in the Church, including Great Are You Lord, Revelation Song, Open The Eyes Of My Heart, Your Great Name, I Am Free and the No. 1 radio hit We Believe (Newsboys). Additional information is available at www.integritymusic.com.

About Daystar Television Network:

Daystar Television Network is an award winning, faith-based network dedicated to spreading the Gospel 24 hours a day, seven days a week  all around the globe, through all media platforms possible. Reaching over 109 million households in the United States and over two billion people worldwide, Daystar is the fastest growing faith-based television network in the world. To learn more, visit http://www.daystar.com/.
A number of business owners are scared of workers' union. Of course, they have a list of reasons for not wanting their employees to organize. One of those reasons is that workers' union helps employees demand stuff from management that it may otherwise be unwilling to give.

Workers' union give employees hope that someone will stand up for them when the company and its management are implementing rules and strategies that could hurt their livelihood. Through workers' union, employees can demand that their company offers them pay increases and better work environment.

According to a report of The Guardian, business owners are against workers' unions because they feel that operations would be more expensive. Studies show that workers' unions help employees get better pay and other benefits from companies. The report also noted that since there are more unions in the public sectors, employees there have better job security and working environment compared to those who are working in the private sector.

Although companies and managements may think that having a workers' union will be costly, it can actually save the company millions in expenses in the long run. With better job security, employees are more likely to stay longer so that means that there would be lesser money spent on training new hires.

In addition, a better working environment will motivate workers into being more productive. Without worrying about health, housing and other stuff, employees will be able to focus on their work.

In the United States, workers' unions are facing a dilemma with the election of Donald Trump as the country's president. The Atlantic reported that workers' unions are unsure whether they should support the current administration's plans for the country, or whether they should ask for something better.

For businesses that are on the brink of bankruptcy, Jobs & Hire previously reported that business owners can avoid that by taking care of their employees.
The Twitter universe exploded on Thursday morning with retweets of a disparaging McDonald's post regarding the United States President Donald Trump. Now, the fast food company's management is trying to salvage what they can from the public relations snafu.

Everyone was shocked when McDonald's called the United States president "a disgusting excuse of a president." The tweet went on to shame Trump for his "tiny hands." Several Twitter users were amused by the tweet, while Trump supporters reacted negatively to the incident.

Meanwhile, McDonald's executives are trying their best to limit the negative impact of the tweet. According to a report on Business Insider, McDonald's management said it was a victim of a hacking incident.

When the derogatory tweet was posted, it was actually pinned so it would be the first tweet that anyone who views McDonald's Twitter page sees. Twitter informed McDonald's that its account has been compromised, and the tweet had been deleted 25 minutes after posting.

It is understandable that McDonald's management wants to limit the negative impact of the tweet as much as possible. Trump supporters actively call for boycotts of establishments, companies and entities that express their disagreement with the United States president.

CBS news reported that McDonald's said they already secured their account. An investigation showed that their account was hacked by an external source, according to the fast food company.

The fast food company did not apologize directly to Trump. However, it did apologize that the tweet appeared on its corporate account.

The incident highlights how quickly hackers can take on the social media of companies. Investing in stronger security controls can help avoid cyber incidents.

Jobs & Hire previously reported that Edward Snowden asked Trump to show evidence that he had been wiretapped.
Mohanad Azzawi, an Iraqi immigrant, said he cried when he arrived in High Point three years ago and was overwhelmed by the hospitality he received there from the citys residents.

It was indescribable, Azzawi said. It was the most welcomed that I ever felt. I finally got to restart my life.

Azzawi participated in a town hall-style meeting Thursday night at the Green Street United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. More than 100 people attended the session, which was aimed at organizing opposition to President Donald Trumps second travel ban and the Republicans proposed health-care overhaul. The meeting was sponsored by the church and the Indivisible Piedmont, a grass-roots advocacy group.

The audience heard a discussion about refugee resettlements in the wake of the Trump administrations travel ban, temporarily blocked by federal judges, along with presentations from two Wake Forest University professors about Russian interference in the U.S. elections in 2016 and the GOPs proposed American Health Care Act that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Azzawi came to the U.S. from Iraq in 2014 with his older sister and younger brother, he told WGHP/FOX8, the Winston-Salem Journals newsgathering partner, during a 2014 interview. Azzawi told the television station that his sister was threatened in Baghdad because she worked for a U.S. refugee agency and she didnt cover her head with the traditional hijab.

During his brief remarks at the church, Azzawi praised the World Relief for High Point and Winston-Salem and local people who helped him get a job. He said he plans to get married soon.

Thank you so much for all of your help, he told the crowd. You are all difference-makers.

Before Azzawi spoke, Jennifer Foy, the local office manager for World Relief, said she was happy that two federal judges this week put the second, revised travel ban on hold. Foy said those restraining orders, though temporary, send a hopeful message to opponents of Trumps actions.

Its not what we need fully, Foy said of the judicial actions. But it stops the 90-day ban on travel for people from six (predominately Muslim) countries and it also stops 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlements. Those are all wonderful things.

However, since Trump signed executive orders establishing the travel ban, the number of refugees expected in the U.S. this year dropped from 110,000 to 50,000, nearly a 60 percent decrease, Foy said. As a result, federal money to World Relief and other similar organizations also would be cut by nearly 60 percent, reducing the services they could provide to refugees, she said.

Last year, the Obama administration asked organizations that assist refugees, such as World Relief, to prepare to help 110,000 refugees coming into the country in 2017, she said. Trumps travel ban would cap that number at 50,000 refugees, Foy added.

Trump has called the ruling from a judge in Hawaii who rejected the travel ban an example of judicial overreach and said his administration would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The president also called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which was blocked last month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

During her discussion of the Russian involvement in U.S. elections, Helga Welch, a German immigrant and a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, said that Russian cyberattacks on the computers of the Democratic National Committee actually happened and the evidence traced back to the Russian government.

Russian officials used those measures as part of their overall plan to deepen the existing rifts in the U.S., to destablize NATO and to break up the European Union, Welch said.

There is no evidence that the Russian actually tampered with the voting process within the U.S., she said.

Vladimir Putin was suprised that Donald Trump won the election, Welch said.

After Welchs presentation, Mark Hall, the director of Health Law and Policy Programs at the WFU School of the Law, told the audience that Congress should repair the Affordable Care Act rather than repeal and replace it with the proposed Republican health-care overhaul package.

Hall said he disagrees with the Republicans criticism of the existing law.

Its not a big failure, Hall said of President Barack Obamas signature health-care law. Its not collapsing. Congress can only get through a partial replacement.
Winston-Salem has won a national award for its program to help immigrants adjust to life here  even as city leaders debate calls for declaring the city a welcoming place or even a sanctuary city.

The city was among six  two in North Carolina  winning City Culture Diversity Awards from the National League of Cities during that organizations 2017 congressional city conference in Washington.

Winston-Salem won the award for its Building Integrated Communities Newcomers Pipeline program, started from a 2014 grant from the University of North Carolina. The goal of the program is to help Hispanics and other immigrants, including refugees, get help on things like fair and affordable housing, education, health care, food and transportation.

According to the city, the pipeline is a plan that hooks up immigrants with all those services by putting them in touch with the various agencies and organizations that can help. While the citys Human Relations Department is the lead organizer of the effort, many nonprofit groups are involved, ranging from the Hispanic League to the Second Harvest Food Bank, Wake Forest University and Novant Health.

Winston-Salem Council Member Dan Besse was among the city council members who traveled to Washington for the conference, and is also the author of a proposal to declare Winston-Salem a welcoming city  an alternative to the more provocative sanctuary city declaration that some activists want.

I think this (the award) is an excellent example of what Winston-Salem actually does to be a welcoming city, Besse said. It is something that we can cite as a program that reaches out to newcomers in our community and helps them to understand and access the city services available.

Winston-Salem won the National League of Cities award for the category covering cities with a population between 200,000 and 500,000. Aurora, Colo., won second place for its Office for International and Immigrant Affairs.

The other North Carolina city winning a first-place award was Morrisville, in Wake County, for its annual East Meets West food, culture and music festival. Morrisville was cited in the category for towns with fewer than 50,000 residents.

Wanda Allen-Abraha, the director of the citys Human Relations Department, said the pipeline project gives newcomers a way to access city services despite language barriers and cultural differences.

Many newcomers are completely unfamiliar with American systems and how to maneuver within them, Allen-Abraha said, adding that the program will help newcomers to integrate into our local community more seamlessly.

The city award comes at a time when immigration and the fate of refugees are front and center in a national debate that pervaded the 2016 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump has called for stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws and a cut in the number of refugees admitted to the country.

Local activities have cited Trumps election as they appeal for the city to declare itself a sanctuary city  generally understood as a stance of opposition to any cooperation with federal officials on immigration enforcement.

North Carolina law prohibits cities from putting into place restrictions on law enforcement that would stop them from asking people about their citizenship or immigration status. It also prohibits cities from refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials.

Nonetheless, local activists have called on the city to declare itself a sanctuary city, citing their fears of enforcement actions initiated by the Trump administration.
Fans of the namaste bow or tree pose will soon have a new studio to practice their regular stretching and breathing techniques, as Essential Yoga recently held its soft opening at 140 West Richardson Street (upstairs from Katie Mae's) in Summerville's historic downtown area. Read moreEssential Yoga debuts in Summerville
I arrived in the small town of Leap in a rainstorm, with no room booked for the night, and the first thing I saw was a pub called Connollys.

When I first saw Ireland, in 1998, I wasnt a writer. I wasnt evenabout being a writer.It had to be an omen, right?
International rights groups have reported [press release] that refugees and migrants housed in Greek camps are cutting themselves, attempting suicide and abusing drugs. According to a report [text, PDF] made by Save the Children [advocacy website] Thursday and a report [text, PDF] by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) [advocacy website] Tuesday, anxiety, depression and aggression continue to grow rapidly. According to Save the Children, as a result of the deal between the EU and Turkey to halt the flow of refugees and migrants into Greece, mental health [press release] among these individuals continues to decrease due to the conditions they are facing. Save the Children reports that children as young as nine are self-inflicting harm and attempting suicide. According to Save the Children the camps in which refugees and migrants are housed are overcrowded, forcing them to fight for basic needs such as warmth, clothes, food and water. Save the Children urged the EU and Greek government to end the unlawful and unjustified detention of children refugees and migrants, move families into safe environments, and provide children with mental health issues to places that provide care facilities.

Last March EU leaders agreed to a deal [JURIST report] with Turkey to stem migrant flows, particularly of Syrian refugees, to Europe in return for financial and political incentive to Ankara. Under the terms of the deal [WP report], all migrants crossing the Aegean into Greece would be sent back to Turkey, effectively turning the country into the regions migrant holding center. However, procedures and backlog have essentially stranded thousands of asylum seekers [Reuters report] on five Greek islands, which is double the capacity they can hold. As a result advocacy organizations continue to speak on the rights of refugee and migrant populations. In November experts questioned humanitarian conditions at Greek migrant camps when a 66-year-old woman and six-year-old boy died [JURIST report] in a camp fire. In January Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] reported [JURIST report] that the thousands of asylum-seekers confined to the five Greek islands faced fire circumstances due to the irregularly harsh winter conditions. The European Commission [official website] agreed [JURIST report]. HRW also reported in January that Greece is not providing access [JURIST report] to adequate living conditions and medical care despite the significant funding provided by the EU.
A jury in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York [official website] on Thursday convicted Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun [press release] on federal terrorism charges for his involvement in the deaths of US servicemen in Afghanistan. Harun was charged with multiple terrorism offenses, including conspiracy to murder American military personnel in Afghanistan and conspiracy to bomb the US Embassy in Nigeria. According to acting US Attorney for the Easter District of New York, Bridget M. Rohde, [t]he United States will be tireless in its efforts to hold al-Qaeda members accountable when they target American citizens serving their country abroad. We are firmly committed to bringing such terrorists to justice.

The current conflict surrounding Afghanistan [BBC country profile] and the many military forces involved in the region continues to expose its citizens and US military personnel to harm and death. Last month the annual UN report of civilian casualties [JURIST report] in Afghanistan reported a record high for 2016. In November the International Criminal Court stated that during the war in 2001, the US may have been guilty of committing war crimes [JURIST report] against the Afghan people. In October the UN released a report finding that an attack by Islamic State militants [JURIST report] on a peaceful demonstration may have been a war crime. Also in October a German court ruled [JURIST report] that there would be no compensation to Afghan families that were victims of a 2009 airstrike, due to no compensation for violation of international humanitarian law. In September the UN called for an investigation [JURIST report] into a US airstrike that killed 15 people in Afghanistan, which was intended to target Islamic State militants.
[JURIST] The Israel High Court of Justice [official website] recognized on Wednesday the ties of several Jerusalem-born Palestinians, calling them native-born residents. The judges ordered [Times of Israel report] Israel to restore the residency of a Jerusalem-born Palestinian who came to the US in his youth but has since returned to Jerusalem. This is the first ruling of its kind for Jerusalem-born Palestinians, which could create precedent that may help protect the residency rights of these Palestinians in the future. After Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians were deprived of their residency rights.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been at the forefront of recent international news and reports. Last month Amnesty International urged [JURIST report] the Israeli Supreme Court to repeal a 2003 law that bans many Palestinians from entering the country, including those who are seeking reunification with their families. In January Benjamin Netanyahu said he will be lifting restrictions [JURIST report] on Israelis building settlements in East Jerusalem. Also in January US President Donald Trump was warned [JURIST report] by Palestinian leaders not to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. In December a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May condemned remarks [JURIST report] made by then-US Secretary of State John Kerry on the current Israeli government. In a speech given in December Kerry criticized the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, stating that such actions jeopardize prospects of peace in the Middle East.
[JURIST] The Maebashi District Court [official website, in Japanese] ruled that the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) [official website] are liable for professional negligence in their security maintenance at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The two parties have been ordered to pay [BBC report] a total of USD $341,000 to 62 out of 137 evacuees who sought damages for emotional distress. The court concluded [AP report] that in order to ensure safety at the plant, the plants generators should have been moved to a higher floor. The suit, which was filed in 2013, is one of 30 similar suits still pending in the Japanese court system.

Japans court system [JURIST report] and legislature have dealt with a number of legal issues related to the Fukushima disaster that occurred six years ago. Last March the Otsu District Court in Japan ordered an injunction halting the operation of two nuclear reactors [JURIST report], days before the fifth anniversary of the Fukuishima nuclear disaster. In February of last year court-appointed prosecutors charged three former utility executives [JURIST report] with counts of negligence in relation to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. In August 2012 Japanese authorities opened a criminal investigation [JURIST report] into the power plant meltdown after more than 1,300 people filed [JURIST report] a criminal complaint against Tokyo Electric Power Company for causing the catastrophe and the resulting radiation. The complaint came two months after an expert panel reported that the disaster was preventable [JURIST report]. In March 2012 a group of TEPCO shareholders filed a USD $67 billion lawsuit [JURIST report] against the company for failing to prevent the disaster. In August 2011 five months after the meltdown, Japans legislature voted [JURIST report] to create a fund for victims of the disaster.
The New Zealand Parliament [government website] voted Wednesday to approve a law [materials] that grants the Whanganui River the legal rights of a person. According to the new law [text; PDF, in Maori], the river, or Te Awa Tupua as it is known to the local Maori people, is now recognized as an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements, and is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person. In addition, the law mandates that two guardians be assigned to act and speak for and on behalf of the river. One guardian will be appointed by Parliament, and the other by the local Maori tribe. Albert Gerrard, a lead negotiator for the Whanganui tribe [official website], called the 170-year legal fight for recognition a long, hard battle. New Zealand Attorney General Chris Finlayson said [press release] the legal recognition is important to the local Maori people.

I know some people will say its pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality, but its no stranger than family trusts, or companies, or incorporated societies. The approach of granting legal personality to a river is unique. Te Awa Tupua will have its own legal identity with all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person.

In the last decade, the New Zealand government and several Maori groups have negotiated settlements to resolve disputes that go back nearly two centuries. In 2008 the two sides signed a deed [JURIST report] worth nearly NZ $196 million to resolve certain indigenous claims concerning land taken by British settlers in the nineteenth century. Maori claims to the historical Central North Island forests are based on breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi [text] by the New Zealand government. The treaty established the sovereignty of the British crown in New Zealand but guaranteed Maori groups continued use of their land and natural resources. The Maori have fought for remedies [BBC report] for land loss and unequal treatment suffered pursuant to the Treaty since soon after its signing in 1840. Under the Treelords deal [Herald report], the government of New Zealand officially apologizes for breaches of the Treaty.
[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of South Africa [official website] on Friday enforced [judgment, PDF; press release] a contract between the South African Social Services Agency (SASSA) [official website] and Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) [corporate website] to ensure that beneficiaries will still receive welfare. CPS and SASSA entered into a contract in 2012 wherein CPS agreed to pay social grants for SASSA. This contract was declared invalid by the court at that time and suspended. In 2015 SASSA said that it would take over payments when the suspension ended on April 1, 2017. However, it became clear that SASSA would not be able to make payments. The case decided Friday was brought by the Black Sash [advocacy website], a non-profit that protects the beneficiaries of social grants. The court ruled that the government is constitutionally obligated to provide welfare for its citizens. The court reversed the suspension of the contract until April 1, 2018, when SASSA should be able to make the payments itself. Judge Johan Froneman wrote [Bloomberg report], [t]his court and the whole country are now confronted with a situation where the executive arm of government admits that it is not able to fulfill its constitutional and statutory obligations to provide for the social assistance of its people, criticizing South African President Jacob Zumas [BBC profile] administration.

This is not the first time Zuma has faced criticism. Last April Zuma survived [JURIST report] an impeachment vote. Zuma was ousted [JURIST report] as the countrys deputy president in 2005 after an aide was convicted of corruption. He was also charged with rape, but he was ultimately acquitted and reinstated [JURIST report] as African National Congress deputy vice president in 2006. He was first charged with corruption in 2005, but those charges were later dismissed [JURIST report] because prosecutors failed to follow proper procedures.
The Seoul Central District Court said on Friday that it has reassigned the bribery case [Reuters report] of Samsung Groups [corporate website] would-be chief Jae-yong Lee [Forbes profile] to a new judge, after reports surfaced on Thursday concerning the previous judges connection to a woman Lee is accused of bribing. The father-in-law of Young-hoon Lee, the judge who presided over the March 9 pre-trial hearing of Jae-yong and four former and current Samsung executives, was accused the previous day by an opposition lawmaker of proving financial support to Soon-sil Choi, a prime person of interest in the corruption scandal involving the recently impeached [JURIST report] president Geun-hye Park [BBC profile]. Refusing to comment on any specifics, the court stated that Young-hoons father-in-law has denied the allegations and said that he has not met or contacted Choi or her family since the 1979 assassination of Guen-hyes father and former president Chung-hee Park [Britannica profile].

This development comes within three days of the announcement [JURIST report] of the South Korea Supreme Prosecutors Office [official website, in Korean] of plans to question ousted president Geun-hye about her involvement in the corruption scandal that led to her impeachment. Last week the South Korea Constitutional Court [official website] upheld [JURIST report] parliaments decision to impeach Park over a scandal related to government bribes paid by Samsung. Earlier this month five Samsung executives denied charges [JURIST report] of bribery, embezzlement and corruption that were leveled against them in connection with Park. In February Samsungs head Jae-yong was arrested [JURIST report] on charges of bribery and undue influence in connection with the scandal. Now that Park will not have political immunity it leaves her open to being joined in a number of lawsuits that have been leveled in connection to the scandal, which may include the indictment [JURIST report] of former culture minister Yoon-sun Cho and former presidential chief of staff Ki-choon Kim over the coercion, abuse of power and perjury due to suppression of artists involved with the impeachment process.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] released a report [text, DOC] Thursday raising concerns over peace efforts in Colombia. According to the report, 127 activists were killed in 2016, including human rights leaders and members of leftist political organizations. The violence has raised concerns that the Colombian government is failing to implement key elements of a peace accord [JURIST report] brokered between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [official website, in Spanish]. In the report, the OHCHR observed the relationship between violence and coca, marihuana and poppy growing zones, drug trafficking and illegal mining activities.  Such violence increased as FARC initiated demobilisation. UN representative Todd Howland reiterated [NYT report] the importance of sustaining the peace efforts at a panel on Thursday, saying, [t]here is a pattern here relative to where the killings are occurring. It is a really important moment to consolidate the implementation of the accords. This sentiment is reflected in 15 recommendations included in the OHCHR report, including calls to hold government officials who fail to implement peace accords accountable. In response to accusations of government acquiescence to the violence, Colombia Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said [La Semana report, in Spanish] that there is no evidence to tie the activists deaths to paramilitary conduct.

The Colombian Senate on Monday approved [JURIST report] a transitional justice structure that will attempt to bring reparations to the more than 8 million victims of the decades-long conflict between the Colombia government and FARC. The transitional justice system is part of a November 2016 deal between the FARC and the Colombia government to end a conflict [JURIST report] that raged for more than 50 years and claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people. In October Colombian voters rejected [JURIST report] an earlier peace deal attempt by a razor thin margin. Negotiations between the FARC and Colombia government lasted for more than four years, with the UN and US acting [JURIST report] as chief intermediaries.
[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] ruled [order, PDF] that his prior injunction [JURIST report] on President Donald Trumps [official bio] first travel ban does not apply to Trumps newly revised ban [text]. Judge James Robart said [NBC News report] that the revised order is different enough from the original so that his prior injunction should not apply. However, federal judges from Hawaii and Maryland [opinions, PDF] have already temporarily blocked [JURIST report] the revised ban. Critics of the ban say that it still discriminates against Muslims, which Trump has denied.

Trumps travel bans have engendered significant courtroom drama. On Thursday the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied [JURIST report] a rehearing of Trumps original immigration order. Last week the Department of Justice withdrew [JURIST report] their appeal after Trump signed his revised ban. The DOJ had originally sought the appeal [JURIST report] in February.
Private equity group CapVest is nearing a deal to acquire UK pork processor Karro Food Group, just-food understands.

Karro, owned by investment firm Endless, supplies pork products to retail, foodservice and manufacturing customers. The business operates pork farms and processing operations in the UK.

The companys primary market is the UK, with some international sales in countries including the US and China. Karro produces own-label pork products for retailers, as well as branded fresh pork products. The groups brands include Case & Sons, Key Country Foods and Cookstown.

Karro has improved its profitability over recent years and, thanks to a turnaround programme and higher global pork prices, it is believed Karro generated EBITDA of GBP30-35m last year. This compares to EBITDA of GBP8m for 2014 and an EBITDA loss of GBP3m in 2013.

Last January, Karro stepped up production levels, investing GBP2m (US$2.5m) in its production site in Scunthorpe ahead of what it said would be a significant increase in sales.

Spokespeople for CapVest, Karro and Endless declined to comment on the possible deal when approached by just-food for confirmation.
Fazer Group has snapped up Finnish dairy alternative business Bioferme  and set out its stall to invest more widely in non-dairy and plant-based products.

The deal, struck for an undisclosed sum, will see Fazer take on the Yosa brand but also lead to the group set up a new division to focus on non-dairy grain products, plant-based meals and on-the-go snacking.

Christoph Vitzthum, the president and CEO of Fazer, said: Our ambition is to significantly grow this business with a broad international focus. The acquisition of Bioferme is a concrete start for the new business area.

Bioferme, set up in 1977, has a range of fermented oat products, including yogurts. The business generated sales of EUR6.8m in 2016, with Finland as its main market, while also exporting to Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.

The company will be headed by its managing director Niko Scharlin, also a member of the family that set up the business.

The Yosa products found a good home at Fazer. It means a lot to us that we share similar values and that Fazer is a valued family company. We are excited about the new opportunities this cooperation can offer, Scharlin said.
Indias fast growing consumer goods company Patanjali Ayurved is launching a major international expansion initiative with plans to export products to China, Bangladesh and some African countries, just-food has been told.

Free Whitepaper What is the impact of Chinas Zero-COVID lockdowns on economic activity, consumer goods and the foodservice industry? China in 2022: the impact of Chinas Zero-COVID lockdowns on economic activity, consumer goods and the foodservice industry, to examine the current situation in Shanghai and other cities in China, to better understand the worst-affected industry sectors, foodservice in particular, and to explore potential growth opportunities as China recovers. The white paper covers: Which multinational companies have been affected?

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We presume [that] there is a great potential for our herbal products [in those countries], so we are intensifying our efforts to make it available at large, a spokesperson from the Uttarakhand-based company told just-food.

He explained that the exports will mostly constitute natural food products and cosmetics. They will be available through third-party retail outlets, Patanjali-owned stores and online. In China, there is a demand for natural and herbal products and people are looking for pure and healthy products from India, he said. The company did not identify its African target markets.

The spokesperson said these Patanjali products will be sold at competitive prices, adding: We are going to offer healthy and world class products as per the law of the land of the particular country, he said.

Patanjali has already been augmenting its supply chain, investing in new manufacturing units and, according to the spokesperson, by 2020, the company will be able to make annually goods worth US$7.5bn.Export-orienteded units will be based in Noida, Haridwar and Nagpur, he said.

Related Companies
PepsiCo has added a new line to manufacture childrens yogurt at its dairy production facility in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia.

The facility, which also manufactures infant formula, will now produce yogurt under the Agusha and Miracle Babies brands. The new line brings total capacity at the plant to more than 400 tonnes of finished products per day, PepsiCo revealed.

Forty jobs will be added at the site, the company noted.

PepsiCo initially began its investment project in Nizhny Novgorod in 2014. Over the past three years, the company has reconstructed the plant, installed new processing equipment and commissioned bottling and packing lines for baby food under the brands Agusha and Miracle Babies. In 2015, the plant began to produce milk and milkshakes and, in the summer of 2016, a drinking yogurt line was launched.

PepsiCo now operates 15 production lines at Nizhny Novgorod, where, in addition to its childrens dairy brands, it produces milk, yogurt, butter, fermented baked milk and sour cream under the brands of Little House in the Village, Merry Milkman and Frugurt.
New York City, NY, 03/17/2017 /SubmitPressRelease123/

When it comes to airline safety, most people naturally think about pre-flight checks, pilot training, and technological advances. Its probably safe to assume that few people think about the airline crews uniforms as a potential safety hazard.

Yet that is exactly what seems to be happening, as reported in a recent USA Today story. According to numerous American Airlines employees, the companys new uniforms are making crew members sickand not over the fashion choices.

American Airlines recently debuted an entirely new set of uniforms for over 70,000 employees. Apparently, workers response to the new look was mostly positive. However, complaints began to trickle in. Soon, workers began complaining of headaches, rashes, and hives. Others have reportedly suffered eye irritation and respiratory problems. Over 1,600 American Airlines employees have claimed the new uniforms are causing health problems.

The complaints have become so widespread that the collective bargaining unit for flight attendants sent a formal memo to its members saying it is asking American Airlines to recall the uniforms to determine what is causing the health issues.

Not the First Time for Defective Airline Uniforms

Interestingly, this is not the first time the vendor responsible for making the uniforms has come under fire for producing uniforms that caused health problems. CNN Money reports that the company, Twin Hill, supplied uniforms for Alaska Airlines in 2011, but the airline had to recall the uniforms after flight attendants complained of similar health issues.

Twin Hills parent company, Tailored Brands, also owns Mens Wearhouse (intentional misspelling part of the company name). In 2012, a group of Alaska Airlines flight attendants lost a class action lawsuit that claimed Twin Hills uniforms caused an allergic reaction due to the inclusion of a chemical known as Disperse Orange 37/76.

Disperse Orange 37/76 is a dye and a known skin irritant that is banned in apparel clothing in the United States.

An internet search for Twin Hill uniforms also turns up numerous complaints posted online from UPS drivers, who wear uniforms manufactured by the apparel company. Photos posted on UPS employee forums show individuals with red, irritated skin and hives, with workers claiming their health problems were caused by Twin Hill uniforms.

Currently, American Airlines says it is running more tests on the uniforms to determine what is causing the irritation and other ailments. In the meantime, many workers have been allowed to return to wearing their old uniforms.

New York City defective products lawyer Jonathan C. Reiter cautions, Employees should report any health problems they believe to be caused by defective uniforms. Many of the chemicals and dyes used in apparel have been known to cause health problems. When you wear an item of clothing for hours each day, it can cause serious concerns. Employers who require their employees to wear a uniform at work have a responsibility to provide safe uniforms, and they need to address complaints when they arise.

Media Contact:

Aviation Defective Products Lawyer Jonathan C. Reiter

Jonathan C. Reiter. T: 866-324-9211.

Jonathan C. Reiter Law Firm, PLLC

The Empire State Building

350 5th Avenue #6400

New York, NY 10118

T: (212) 736-0979

source: http://injuryaccidentnews.jcreiterlaw.com/2017/03/15/aviation-defective-products-lawyer-jonathan-c-reiter-discusses-airlines-uniforms-causing-sickness/

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91 Years Ago  1926

The hay market has assumed an upward trend again. The hay men around Odessa are busy making shipments, and from 10 to 20 cars are going forward daily from that point.

Announcement was made from Omaha on March 12 that the World Realty company of that city has entered into a 10-year lease with the Masonic Temple Association of Kearney whereby the Omaha concern will assure this city one of the finest theaters operated in Nebraska. The new Masonic Temple building, as announced some time ago, will be erected on Central Avenue and 24th Street.

A large contingent of Kearneyites is expected to make the trip to Holdrege during the remainder of the week and take in the auto show in that city.

66 Years Ago  1951

County Attorney Robert L. Haines has ordered business places and private clubs in the county to remove pinball machines from their establishments. Nebraska Attorney General C.S. Beck ruled March 15 that any pinball machines that give free games are gambling devices and thus are illegal.

Gibbon High School was awarded the trophy in the Tri-Valley declamatory contest. Overton was winner of second place, and Elm Creek, third.

Testing materials to be used in a postal commercial contest in Alaska high schools have been prepared by faculty members of the Kearney State Teachers College Commerce Department. Tests were prepared in typewriting, shorthand and bookkeeping at the request of Mrs. Hazel Muir, organizer of the contest. Mrs. Muir, a 1931 graduate of KSTC, has been teaching in Alaska for 14 years.

41 Years Ago  1976

The covered wagon caravan that will be crossing Nebraska later this month as a part of the bicentennial celebration is attracting interest from other areas. The Hub has received a request for pictures of the wagon train from a resident of Pocahontas, Iowa, who is anxious to learn the details.

John Icenogle, 27, of Kearney was named as new Buffalo County judge on March 13 by Gov. J.J. Exon. Icenogles appointment makes him the youngest of the states 43 county judges, according to the court administrators office in Lincoln.

One of the major projects this year of the Junior High Aquarium Club, which was formed last November, was the purchase of a 55-gallon aquarium. Thirty-seven fish, including 15 varieties, have been placed in the tank. Nearly 35 students are members of the club.

Compiled from files by News Clerk Tammy Eaton
A boisterous crowd of more than 500 drilled Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., with questions at a town hall meeting Friday morning at Elkhorn South High School.

Sasse seemed prepared for the combative crowd and stayed patient, pausing often to ask the audience to stop yelling over him as he fielded their many pointed concerns, mostly about health care legislation and President Donald Trumps budget proposal. Scheduled to last an hour, the event stretched to 90 minutes.

Sasse repeatedly addressed the issue of polarization, which he said was more acute on Capitol Hill than in Nebraska.

This nation is more divided in Washington than any coffee shop in Nebraska, he said as the meeting began.

It was hard to tell that, however, from the tone of the questions and the audience reactions Friday. The loudest voices at the town hall were in opposition to recent Republican actions.

Several people lined up at the microphone with questions about the House GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, which is often called Obamacare. Sasse said he supports a system of portability, meaning health care plans that would follow someone as they age, change jobs and move around the country.

One woman was emotional as she expressed concerns about in-home health care for the elderly in rural areas. Sasse said neither the current law nor the Republican replacement plan would do enough for those populations.

That answer prompted booing and shouts of How would you vote? Sasse replied that the issue, like many, wasnt a binary choice.

Jay Grabow asks a question during Sen. Ben Sasse's town hall meeting at Elkhorn South High School in Omaha on Friday, March 17, 2017.

Countering some critics at the Omaha town hall, Sasse said their positions  especially on environmental regulations  werent necessarily representative of rural Nebraskans. He said he supported more state and local regulations rather than federal ones.

In response to questions about the military budget, Sasse said he doesnt think the country is overspending on defense.

Sasse also spoke briefly on Trumps attempted travel ban, saying that he did not support Trumps first proposal. He did not specifically address the presidents second proposal, except to say that he did support better vetting systems for those wanting to come to the U.S. He said systems need to be in place to make sure terrorists cant come in as refugees.

Its happened a whole bunch of times in Europe, he said to loud booing and shouting.

The U.S. is not at war with Islam, he said. We are at war with people who will kill in the name of religion.

The crowd grew boisterous again when Sasse answered two questions about defunding Planned Parenthood.

I dont support the largest abortion provider in the country, Sasse said twice as audience members shouted back.

Nancy Anderson, 63, said she was impressed by the passion of the crowd, and said it was important to try to hold Sasse accountable on topics such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

I do think he stayed really patient and was overall very well-spoken, Anderson said.

Barry Anderson, 65, said he wished the audience would have been more orderly and refrained from interrupting the senator.

Passions are high on all sides, as they should be, he said. Im just glad he held the town hall and that so many people came to voice their concerns.
Its nearly April and President Donald Trumps Cabinet still lacks a secretary of agriculture. His nomination of Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is in the works, but Perdue still hasnt completed the necessary filings, and a couple of business interests could become stumbling points when he finally goes before the U.S. Senate for confirmation.

According to the Kansas City Star, Trumps action on the ag secretary nomination lags conspicuously behind that of Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama. He had prepared his nomination of Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack by Christmas 2008, whereas Trump was scrambling the day before his inauguration to come up with Perdue.

The Georgia governors nomination is tardy and it could be handicapped if Senate Democrats latch onto a couple of his potential conflicts of interest. According to documents filed one week ago with the federal Office of Government Ethics, Perdue has ownership positions in farm-related companies and is secretary of the Georgia Agribusiness Council. If Perdues nomination were to be blocked, it would be a major setback for agriculture.

Currently, there are four cabinet-level vacancies: secretary of agriculture, secretary of labor, director of national intelligence and the U.S. trade representative. Trump complains that foot-dragging Democrats are to blame for the vacancies, but there are 500 other key posts waiting to be filled.

Every president faces challenges in getting the new government up and running, and the process of nominating individuals for such public service certainly has to be difficult. In this era of divisiveness, the difficulty is amplified, and Trumps claim that Democrats are to blame for his slowness is credible.

That being said, we in farm country certainly hope to see action soon on this all-important appointment. A new farm bill is being drafted, retreating commodity prices are eroding profitability for grain and livestock producers, and the presidents comments about key trade agreements and U.S. withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership arent helping.

Farm-state Americans are to be forgiven if they question whether our new president has an understanding of agricultures role in the U.S. economy. Farming is one of the few industries that creates new wealth, and because U.S. producers are so efficient, Americans spend far less to feed themselves than citizens in most nations.

Its time for action. Its time for an ag secretary who can talk truth with the president on complex farm issues. Its time American farmers receive the attention and support theyre due.
LB505, introduced by Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, was heard on March 2 and currently awaits a committee vote. LB505 requires semi-annual reports from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services specifying how many refugees were received in Nebraska; nation of origin or citizenship; state and federal benefits received; age, sex and family status; and the number of refugees projected for the following year.

The Legislature, governor and members of the states congressional delegation could use that information to consider the fiscal impact on schools, law enforcement and communities and facilitate responsible budgetary projections and appropriation of tax dollars.

Lutheran Family Services, (which receives federal dollars for placement of refugees), Refugee Empowerment Center and Nebraskans Against Gun Violence were among those testifying in opposition. Several alleged those supporting the bill are racist and afraid of color.

Several groups opposing LB505 make large amounts of federal dollars for counseling, literacy and securing their access to food stamps, affordable housing, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other programs. Lutheran Family Services and the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops receive more than $2,000 per refugee resettled here. Its pretty clear why groups receiving large sums are opposed to transparency of taxpayer dollars being spent.

One opponent at the March 2 hearing said that refugees are not resettled who have communicable diseases.

That is false, said Jennifer Schukar, owner of Nurses Inc., who testified. Refugees are allowed to enter who have communicable diseases which are latent at the time of entry. One example: latent tuberculosis. According to Kristin Gall, refugee health coordinator of Lincoln, 20 percent to 30 percent of the refugees coming here have latent TB. The Centers for Disease Control states that 10 percent of latent TB carriers will develop active TB over the course of their lives.

To voice your support of LB505  and the accountability of your tax dollars  contact Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete ASAP at 402- 471-2711 or lebke@leg.ne.gov.

Kathy Wilmot, Beaver City
KEARNEY  A new trademarked brand for Nebraska beef features artwork with red and white stripes, and a white star in a blue circle that clearly identifies from the USA products in foreign markets.

However, the message tied to the artwork, Certified Beef From Nebraska, also makes the trademark a promise that the cattle were born, raised and processed in Nebraska.

At this weeks Governors Ag Conference in Kearney, Nebraska Department of Agriculture Director Greg Ibach of Sumner said the goal is to have a brand readily identifiable by domestic and international consumers.

The department also trademarked two similar messages: Verified Nebraska Beef and Certified Nebraska Beef.

Ibach said that about 18 percent of all U.S. beef exports are from Nebraska processing plants, so one goal is to take that a step further by providing more traceability information for consumers who want to know about the origins of their food.

Still another goal is to capture all the value from Nebraska beefs reputation for consistent high quality.

Were now just beginning to step out, Ibach said, adding that there will be more discussions with Nebraska packers about buying into the source-verified branded beef they can promote to their customers.

Ibach and Assistant Ag Director Mat Habrock said there is a private-public partnership in place with the U.S. Department of Agriculture similar to ones used for breed-certified and other source-verified ag products.

Habrock said USDA verifies proof of ownership from rancher to feeder to processor for the Nebraska brand. Packers must segregate that processed beef to ensure the label message is verifiable.

Were now in a position to make that claim, Ibach said, when asked how consumers can know Nebraska beef actually has been in Nebraska through all those steps.

Bobby Richey Jr., deputy administrator in the USDA Office of Foreign Service Operations, said Nebraska is doing a good job developing export markets. Such markets are valuable and tend to be consistent customers, he said, but they do take care and feeding.

That is especially true in Europe and other places where consumers differentiate products on supermarket shelves.

To sell Nebraska, thats a challenge in overseas markets where many people know only about California, Texas and New York, Richey said. So having nearly 20 percent of all U.S. beef sold overseas coming from Nebraska reflects the hard work done by the state Department of Agriculture.

I want you to be aware that is not the case in other parts of the United States, he added.

Doug Carr, a senior account executive at the Firespring agency in Lincoln, has worked with state officials on several marketing and branding programs, including the beef project.

He said the born-raised-produced brand also has value to expand beef sales into domestic markets.

Research by Ag Department and University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials on brand awareness included surveys of high-end food customers on the East Coast and Phoenix area. Carr said that when the consumers were asked where they thought the best beef comes from, 83 percent said the Midwest.

Then they were asked to be more specific. He said Nebraska was named by nearly 34 percent of respondents, with Texas second at 12 percent.

Thats a ripe market for the picking, Carr said, acknowledging that he doesnt know if the reputation of Omaha Steaks influenced some answers.

He said consumers encounter thousands of messages a day from a lot of people trying to get our attention. That makes it difficult to get a specific message seen or heard and a challenge to make it valuable, strong and consistent.

Developing a brand requires knowing about the target market, Carr said, and understanding that a brand is what consumers think.

He quoted Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as saying, Your brand is what people say about you when youre not in the room.

Its really what customers tell other people about your product, Carr added.

Earlier at the Governors Ag Conference, Ibach said talks are underway with Nebraskas pork producers about developing a brand similar to the new Nebraska beef trademark.

When he was asked if there could be brands for other ag products that reflect production methods, such as crops grown with no-till farming, Ibach replied, I think there are lots of opportunities because consumers are concerned about things like sustainability ... and traceability. Those things have extra value for some people.
with Pat Byrne  Pats dating past and present; crazy moms and Floridians; the jury duty scam; landlord unapologetically murder tenant; justifiable(?) shoplifting; Star Trek: The Next Generation revisited and the holodeck explored; We-Vibe stole your personal sexual information; being stood up and protesting on camera

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I met a man recently who had wandered about life dragging the rotting corpse of his arm barely attached to the rest of his body for over a year. His limb carried such a pungent malodor he stopped eating months ago because the noxious stench of his own dripping pus made him perpetually nauseous. A former handyman, he had jimmied up a poor-mans sling with a tattered Hanes undershirt. It too was crusted in a mix of sweat and pus, maggot eggs embedded in the curdled bodily fluid.

He was emaciated, his cheekbones protruding like wings from his otherwise gaunt face, a sickly yellow that glowed under the harsh fluorescent lights of the emergency room. He was also visibly ashamed of the repulsion he universally elicited.

When he walked into the emergency room with the festering arm hidden under a tattered blanket, the staffs immediate response was, what is that smell?!, followed by the uncovering of his arm and the exclamation, how long have you let this go?!

His story started out simple. Hed been homeless for decades, although he did sometimes find odd jobs doing handyman work. While working on machinery, a beam had fallen and crushed his arm. He went to the emergency room where they told him his arm was broken, and he needed to get surgery. He signed out against medical advice because he wanted to continue his heroin habit, which was not tolerated within the walls of the hospital and certainly not pre-operatively.

He eloped and wandered the streets, and his arm grew more putrid and started its path towards gangrene. He bounced around emergency rooms, only to repeatedly sign out against medical advice to continue using heroin. His arm got worse  at one point it was the chew toy for a stray dog, which is how nearly three inches of bone had become exposed, dried, and outwardly decaying.

As would be suspected, the pain increased in his arm, so he did more heroin to temper it. He finally came to my ER hoping for the arm amputation he knew he would need. His hand by that time was barely attached, flopping around like a mottled, swollen, dead fish.

The inciting event that inspired him to come in after over a year? His drug dealers had refused to sell to him because the stink of rancid purulence dripping through his makeshift sling was not worth the money to them.

He was out of drugs, out of luck and finally seeking help.

Forsaken by even rogue street dealers, we were his last resort.

The beauty of the emergency room is that it truly sees people of all walks of life. It is the only institution in society that has its lights and doors open 24/7, 365 days a year and turns away no one. As such, it is also one of the only places where the absolutely most desolate receive voice.

This man is many things  impoverished, homeless, and underserved. Ultimately, however, each of those words in isolation, as a defining label for a class, is not sufficient to encompass his state.

He is not the single mother working three jobs that cant afford ObamaCare  she gets a long-form feature in the New Yorker. He is not the prisoner on death row  he gets a Netflix documentary. He is not the unidentified homeless man on the street  he gets a viral photo in Humans of New York.

This man gets no one; he exists in a state of terminal depravity that has devolved into hopelessness. Ultimately, he stumbles into the emergency room and gets  depending on happenstance of the shift schedule  Me.

What am I to do? I can fix the medical, a metaphoric Band-Aid slapped on a literal amputation. What I do, however, will do nothing to address the complex web of political, social, economic and often psychological factors that landed this man in front of me in the first place.

Trying to explain the plight of this man will mostly garner just disbelief because of the discomfort it instills in us that our fellow man could exist in such condition. Worse, this man and others in similar states lack any advocates  few know they exist, and the rest dont want to wrestle with the uncomfortable possibility that they do.

There exists a dark underpinning of society that evokes repulsion instead of empathy. As a society, we have long deemed this class unsavory to acknowledge and have been able to ignore it entirely, except for the occasional unidentified and unclaimed decomposing body found in an abandoned alleyway.

This class possesses no agency, no power, and no presence. They exist in a physical exile as well as a political one  roaming the streets under the cover of darkness and unmarked alleys, their voice and existence simply too far removed from the mainstream to ever hope to be heard.

Occasionally, as happened here, they do emerge into the light, to land squarely in my hospital bay. When that happens, we are forced to rectify the society we live in, the one where we preach about equality and minimizing the wealth gap, with the one we work in, the one where we are confronted with the deviants weve passively made castaways in our regular lives because we cant cognitively assimilate them into our linear totem pole of socioeconomic class.

They are the untouchables, the deviants, the repulsive and the foul. They are those whose existence boggles our politely socialized minds. We can understand poor, desperate or mentally ill, at least enough to sympathize and attempt to mobilize around, but we cant understand this underground class of societal lepers. So instead, we embrace ignorance as bliss  we espouse grandiose themes of egalitarianism for the classes we can label and identify, and leave those at the extreme fringe still completely unacknowledged.

But, for the bleeding hearts, these derelicts are still a part of our fellow mankind. And for the more pragmatic, they still do utilize our taxpayer-funded social safety nets. We may not see ourselves in them or them in us, but they are still one of us. We should not ignore them but acknowledge their plight and include it in the political discourse that shapes our social policies. The emergency room may be one of the only places where we come face to face with them  I have looked them dead in their gaunt eyes and I can say they are Man and they do still need our help.

Amy Ho is an emergency physician. She can be reached at her self-titled site, Amy Faith Ho.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The U.S./Mexico Border may be getting another layer of defense to help with the problems facing communities along the southern border.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved the 2017 Defense Appropriations Bill.

The plan includes funding for national guard programs to fight drug trafficking, surveillance along the southern border and collaboration with foreign militaries.

Specifically, the bill includes $234 million for fighting drug smuggling and $19 million for Operation Phalanx to conduct aerial surveillance along the border.

Laredo representative Congressman Henry Cuellar, who sits on the Defense Sub-Committee, issued a statement saying:

"National security issues touch my border district directly. That's why I fought to fund National Guard programs that provide surveillance on the border, and fight transnational threats like drug trafficking."

The approved defense budget totals $577 billion for this fiscal year.
KGNS has received a response from Border Patrol after a report released by the Associated Press says the agency may be looking at exempting some applicants from the requirement to take the lie detector test.

Border Patrol says in order to meet with critical hiring needs, they are exploring ways to recruit individuals the federal government has already vetted to work in sensitive positions.

This includes military and federal law enforcement officers.

The agency says they are working to omit redundancies in the hiring process.

They also say according to the Anti-Border Corruption Act of 2010, it mandates for CBP to administer polygraph exams to all applicants for law enforcement positions with the agency.

Border Patrol says they will continue to abide by all statutory requirements for hiring.
The death has taken place of Regina O Leary (nee Shine), of 9 Saint Mauls, New Road, Kilkenny, who will be fondly remembered here for her passion for music and teaching young people.

Ms O' Leary devoted much of her time to encouraging and nurturing the talent of so many people, both in Kilkenny schools and nationally. She began studying violin and piano and was a member of the St John of God school orchestra.

Her ability and success did not go unnoticed, and soon she went on to inspire and shape music programmes in this county and further afield. She enjoyed extraordinary success at St Canices School, and acclaim at many significant Irish events  music festivals, Feis Ceol, recognition from national bodies and youth orchestras.

Only in 2014, Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald presented Regina with a Special Achievement Award at the annual Festival of Youth Orchestras Concert at the National Concert Hall.

Always, her students and those who worked with Regina spoke highly of her. Her enthusiasm and dedication to developing music for children in Kilkenny never waned.

The beloved mother of Ruth, David and Mark, she died at home in the loving care of her family. She is sadly missed by her children, sister Jacinta, brothers David, Owen, Harry and Kieran, son-in-law Ivan, David's partner Benn, brother-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, neighbours, friends and her colleagues at St Canice's National School, Kilkenny.

Funeral arrangements are as follows:

Reposing at her home from 3pm on Saturday (March 18) with Rosary at 8.30pm. Removal on Sunday afternoon to St. Canice's Church, arriving for Requiem Mass at 2pm. Funeral afterwards to Foulkstown Cemetery. House private on Sunday please. Donations, if desired, to the Carlow Kilkenny Home Care Team. Donation box in Church.
Fan Yanyan shows some of her designs inspired by the folk art and history of the Silk Road in her studio in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. [Photo by Huo Yan/China Daily]

Fan Yanyan is so intrigued by the Silk Road that she established her silk-scarf design studio in a Silk Road museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi province.

The museum's location in Northwest China was the largest market in the capital of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It's celebrated as the traditional starting point of the Silk Road.

The fine-arts graduate believes many artistic treasures scattered along the ancient international trade route harbor "authentic" inspirations from humanity, religion and nature, rather than modern commercialism.

Unlike her classmates, Fan did not look for jobs after graduating from college in Xi'an in 2000. She went to Dunhuang, Gansu province, to create facsimiles of frescoes in the Mogao Grottoes for two years.

The Mogao Grottoes have more than 45,000 square meters of frescoes and 2,415 painted clay sculptures. It's the world's largest collection of historical Buddhist art, created over the period from the third to 13th centuries, a peak period of international trade and cultural exchanges between Central and South Asia and China.
Many of us are likely familiar with the accounting worlds Rules vs. Principles ethics regulation. But you may not be aware that the Department of Labor, since promulgating its fiduciary rule last year, has implemented a similar type of principle-based regulatory approach. Within the financial adviser world, much of the debate over the so-called fiduciary rule has been centered on this approach.

But as a client, whether you are aware of this debate or not, the question becomes: Why should you care?

Rules-Based vs. Principles-Based Regulation

Lets begin by unpacking what a rules-based vs. principles-based regulatory environment looks like. By analogy, the classic example of rules vs. principles comes to us via speed limits. According to a 2007 American Business Law Journal explanation, a rule says, Do not drive faster than 55 mph. A principle in the same scenario will say, Do not drive faster than is reasonable and prudent in all circumstances.

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Rules provide black-and-white clarity that may not always be reasonable in certain circumstances  e.g., a snowstorm where driving 55 mph on the same road would prove hazardous. In this way, a principle is a bit more vague, but also more encompassing and reflexive to various scenarios that a rule may not have envisioned. Its like a blade of grass in a hurricane that will bend in most circumstances, whereas a rule is like a branch that may break in the same storm due to its rigidity.

Traditionally, financial services regulation has been rules-based by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and legal statute (e.g., Dodd-Frank or Sarbanes-Oxley). A rule regulating financial advisers may clearly say that it is illegal to trade on inside information, which is further clearly defined by these codified statutes and laws. This gives a very clear regulatory and legal framework for advisers and investment professionals to avoid bad behavior while at the same time pursuing informational advantages for themselves and their clients that allow them to remain good actors.

Under the Department of Labors fiduciary rule, a principles-based approach now requires financial advisers (especially those regulated under ERISA and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 in their dealings with retirement plan sponsors) to be a bit more interpretive and live with a bit more ambiguity. As an example, under the fiduciary rule, advisers are required to act in the best interest of their clients. What does this really mean?

Clearly it means that an adviser cannot engage in activities that are contrary to the best interest of their client lest they breach their fiduciary duty. As an example, it would not be in a clients best interest for their adviser to engage in excessive trading that racks up a series of fees. But what is the definition of excessive trading in the context of best interest? And what if, at the time the trades took place, there was a good-faith basis for engaging in non-usual patterns of trading? The end result may still be higher-than-usual trading fees for the client, but the adviser may have had a rationale behind that at the time. If those trades dont work to the ultimate advantage of the client despite the good-faith basis, did the adviser not act in their best interest? And, as such, did the adviser breach their fiduciary duty?

As youre beginning to see, the vagaries of a best interest rule can leave much up to interpretation and in the gray area that lawyers, jurists, regulators and politicians love. The financial services industry, on the other hand, abhors shades of gray and prizes certainty above all else.

Why Believe in Principles?

In the opinion of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard (opens in new tab) (an industry group helping guide the fiduciary rules implementation and setting a standard for fiduciary duty within the industry), a principles-based approach is most appropriate. Even though a principles-based approach may mean certain vagaries for advisers, these same vagaries correctly force advisers to err on the greater side of caution to ensure they are acting in the clients best interest.

And here we arrive at the heart of the matter and why you, as a client or potential client of a financial adviser, should care about this debate. In a rules-based world, advisers become complacent to merely check the box. The DoL, FINRA or SEC said do this, so Im doing that, and in this way I am compliant. In the same way that driving down a highway in a snowstorm at 55 mph may not be technically violating the law, checking the box by adhering to rules does not always mean a best-interest outcome for those in the car.

Stretching our speed limit analogy, it is important to note that most states also have implicit principles about driving in hazardous conditions that impose a duty of reasonable prudence on drivers, despite what the explicit highway road signs say. That is to say that you should reduce your speed when conditions are hazardous. This is a principles-based approach that still has consequences for violation, but leaves open what exactly constitutes a hazardous condition. It is still a bit vague, but hardly anyone would challenge its necessity, and most true good actors would err on the side of caution to ensure the safe arrival of themselves, their passengers and their vehicles. Why take unnecessary risk?

In the world of financial advisers, imagine that going 55 mph in a snowstorm was the equivalent of an adviser needing to only provide a client with suitable investment options  decoupled from an elevated duty of care and diligence to ensure that those options were obtained for the lowest possible fee. The adviser was going 55 mph and not technically violating the law in a rules-based system. However, in a principles-based system, that same adviser is now held to a standard of what is not merely suitable but what is in fact in the best interest of that client. Now, rather than going 55 mph in a snowstorm, the adviser is required to slow down to a prudent and reasonable level and provide that same investment lineup with documented diligence on optimizing performance for the lowest fees available.

To conclude our analogy, which driver would you rather be with on that snow-besotted highway? The one clipping along at 55 mph on icy roads or the one tapping the brakes to ensure you reach your destination safely and in the best manner possible? We would highly caution for the latter, especially when you, as a plan sponsor (in our driving analogy a passenger in the car) may reap the same consequences as your adviser for their imprudent behavior.

How to Ensure Youre Working With a Principles-Based Adviser?

The best way to ensure that your adviser is acting in adherence with a principles-based system is to engage only with a true fiduciary. Working with a fee-only, independent and unconflicted true 3(38) fiduciary  especially those who obtain the Centre for Fiduciary Excellence (opens in new tab), LLC (CEFEX) certification and thus adhere to its high level of ongoing scrutiny  is equivalent to getting in the car with drivers who will always err on the side of safety when driving down a snowy highway. CEFEX is an independent certification organization that works closely with industry experts to provide comprehensive assessment programs to improve the fiduciary practices of investment stewards, advisors, recordkeepers, administrators and managers.

The primacy of working with a true fiduciary has never been more evident than in the recent era of breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits levied against plan sponsors. While most of our conversation here has been about a breach of fiduciary duty by an adviser, it needs to be underscored that other plan fiduciaries, especially those involved in selecting the investment adviser, may also be found liable for this same breach  especially if a 3(21) fiduciary is involved.

As we have said several times before, the complexities, vagaries and nuances of fiduciary rules under ERISA, combined with the severe consequences for even inadvertent violation, seem to mandate work with a true and knowledgeable fiduciary.

Joseph F. Bert (opens in new tab), CFP, AIF, the Founder of Certified Financial Group, Inc., has been in the financial planning profession since 1976. He is also President of Certified Advisory Corp. Joe is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional and a member of the Financial Planning Association where he served as its President and Chairman of the Central Florida Chapter.
For cars to drive alone through Karlsruhe in the future, route data have to be collected during test drives. (Photo: FZI)

A test area for autonomous driving, sensors enhancing the skills of robots, quality management with the help of virtual reality, computers that better understand texts, an eye tracking lab for use at home, a vibrating altimeter for paragliders, and a symposium on latest trends in robotics  at the joint CeBIT stand of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and FZI Research Center for Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, visitors are invited to experience fascinating research from March 20 to 24 in Hanover (hall 6, stand A30).

Future Mobility  Test Area for Autonomous Driving:

Enhanced safety, reduced fuel consumption, and less time needed Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology will present a virtual test drive through the city of Karlsruhe to illustrate the opportunities associated with autonomous and networked driving. They are planned to be studied and tested on the Baden-Wurttemberg Test Area for Autonomous Driving.

A special setup at the stand will demonstrate communication between a networked car and a traffic-light system. It does not only take place via light signals and optical sensors, but also by radio. While the vehicle is approaching the traffic light, it is already informed about the latters status and can adapt its maneuvers accordingly, i.e. decelerate or accelerate to reduce unnecessary energy consumption while waiting for the red light to turn green.

On the test area, various types of vehicles, including busses, private cars, commercial vehicles, and municipal cleaning vehicles, will be tested and developed for automated and networked driving under real road traffic conditions. Extensive preparatory work is needed: The test area covers selected routes in urban regions with car, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic as well as district roads and motorways. These routes are presently being recorded for the generation of highly precise 3D maps and equipped with special sensors to measure road traffic and the factors influencing it. Test operation of the area is planned to start this year.

Things Thinking  Computers Learn to Understand Language:

KITs spinoff Things Thinking develops artificial intelligence understanding text and thus helping find deficiencies in technical documents.

Natural language is a revolution in man/machine interaction. Ma-chine learning, statistics, and other approaches will not overcome the obstacles in communication between man and computer as long as machines do not understand the meaning of language, but try to grasp it by a mathematical or statistical approach. Unlike common natural language processing methods, the Things Thinking software understands the semantics of a language.

It understands, processes, and uses semantic concepts and, hence, can be applied in many ways, e.g. for Industry 4.0, in software production or by consulting companies. Future customer service might be improved by virtual assistants or legal-tech solutions might help interpret contracts.

Ruttelflug  The Ultimate Gadget for Paragliders:

Ruttelflug is a variometer that informs pilots about vertical velocities via vibration patterns. This vertical velocity indicator is a less disturbing alternative to indicators with an auditory or visual output for paragliders and balloonists and can simply be worn on the wrist.

A barometric sensor determines vertical velocity and allocates the values to relevant classes of climb and descent values. These are then transmitted to the paraglider via vibration patterns that can be distinguished clearly. Thanks to this novel concept, climbs and descents as well as information about airflows and weather conditions during paragliding can be transmitted in a comfortable and less disturbing way. Ruttelflug is the ultimate gadget for all paragliders wishing to enhance and improve the momentum of paragliding by making it a special, tactile experience.

Market Research  Eye Tracking Lab for Use at Home:

Eyezag, a spinoff of KIT, develops a technology to calculate the exact gaze position on the screen by using a conventional webcam. Laboratory studies with special hardware and staff that have been associated with a large expenditure so far can now be carried out online in an easy and quick way. The target group desired can be addressed via the internet. Upon the users approval, his or her behavior can be recorded under authentic conditions while sitting at the desk or on the sofa. The user interface is designed such that neither test persons nor analysts have to install special software or plugins  a normal web browser opens the way into the virtual eye tracking laboratory. Studies can be planned, performed, and evaluated in the online suite. Diagrams and gaze plots indicating the direction of view are available for representation, statistical calculations are possible. Machine learning approaches are used to constantly improve the self-learning system. The first area of application of the system is market research. Other developments for interaction, diagnosis, and assistance are feasible.

Skilled Machines  Bimodal Sensor for Industry Robots:

Intelligent robots are capable of perceiving their environment in a contact-free manner and reacting accordingly. They can safely interact with surrounding objects and specifically and reliably execute complex tasks, such as gripping of unknown objects.

The sensors developed by KIT can be used to backfit established camera systems, thus allowing for a new type of interaction of machines with their surroundings or a workpiece. One of these sensors is the capacitive tactile proximity sensor. Through electric capacitive coupling, it can detect and localize objects in a contact-free manner. In case of a mechanical contact, it can measure the compressive force of the grip. At the stand, a demonstrator will illustrate the role of such sensors in e.g. teleoperation. Sensor data are represented by a haptic display. The user can follow the perception of the robot live.

AUREUS: Intelligent Data Visualization for Industry 4.0:

Virtual and augmented-reality (VR/AR) applications are to capture industry, logistics, the healthcare sector, trade, and many other branches in the near future. With a 3D printer being used as an example, CeBIT visitors will be shown how data of production facilities can be illustrated in real time with the help of augmented reality: A tablet will show wind intensity and wind direction measured by the sensors of the miniaturized production facility. Such sensor information is of high relevance to production systems or processes that are highly sensitive to the surroundings. Injection molding, for instance, is sensitive to draft and fluctuations of ambient temperature.

Visitors are invited to vary these parameters via rotary knobs and to influence the molding quality in this way. For this intelligent data visualization with augmented reality for Industry 4.0, the data of various sensors are read out with model-driven software development approaches, semantically enriched by context information, such as standards data records or a data history, transformed, and displayed on mobile end devices. Measurement and intelligent visualization enable workers to easily interpret disturbing impacts of airflow and indications of their sources and derive appropriate countermeasures.

Symposium Robotics in the 21st Century:

Renowned German experts will speak about trends and latest developments in robotics at a scientific symposium on Wednesday, March 22, 1 to 3 pm, at the Convention Center (CC), hall 3A.

The experts will be: Prof. Tamim Asfour (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Prof. Oliver Brock (Technische Universitat Berlin), Prof. Wolfram Burgard (University of Freiburg), Prof. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs (Universitat Hannover), Prof. Rudiger Dillmann (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Prof. Sami Haddadin (Universitat Hannover), Prof. Katja Mombaur (Heidelberg University), Prof. Oskar von Stryk (TU Darmstadt), Prof. Britta Wrede (Bielefeld University), Prof. Florentin Worgotter (University of Gottingen).

Symposium Program:

11 bis 11.30 Uhr

Visit of the stand of KIT

(Halle 6, stand A30)

11.30 bis 12 Uhr

Introduction, welcome, and demonstration

(Halle 6, Konferenzforum Future Talk)

Prof. Thomas Hirth, Vice President for Innovation and International Affairs, KIT

12 bis 13Uhr

Snacks and exchange of ideas

(Convention Center (CC), hall 3A)

13 bis 15 Uhr

Scientific symposium Robotik im 21. Jahrhundert (robotics in the 21st century)

(Convention Center (CC), hall 3A)

For more information on KITs appearance at CeBIT, click:

https://www.pkm.kit.edu/cebit2017.php (in German only)

About FZI Research Center for Information Technology

The FZI Research Center for Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is a non-profit institution for applied research into information technology and technology transfer. Its task is to provide businesses and public institutions with the latest research findings in information technology. It also qualifies young scientists for their career in academics or business as well as self-employment. Led by professors from various departments, research teams at FZI interdisziplinarily develop and prototype concepts, software, hardware, and systems solutions for their clients. The FZI House of Living Labs offers a unique research environment for applied research. Every FZI department operates under a quality management system certified according to DIN EN ISO 9001:2008. The FZI main office is located in Karlsruhe.

FZI has a branch office in Berlin.

Being The Research University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.
(Kitco News) - Metals are trying to consolidate at these levels after the strong bounce following the Fed rate increase. There is some concern, as the G-20 meeting begins, that the U.S. may be somewhat aggressive in its stance of America first and potential protectionist measures. Would not expect gold to surprise today, with the range likely to be contained between $1,220- $1,235. The elections in Holland quelled fears that the growing populist trend is accelerating, which took some of the safe-haven edge away from gold, but on the other hand a weaker tone to the dollar has supported continued buying. By Peter Hug Contributing to kitco.com Follow @KitcoNewsNOW

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
HONG KONG, March 17 (Reuters) - China's Guotai Junan Securities has won approval from the Hong Kong stock exchange for its planned about $2 billion share offering, Thomson Reuters publication IFR reported late on Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation.

The Shanghai-listed brokerage plans to start pre-marketing for the deal as early as next week, in what will be the biggest Hong Kong share sale so far this year. It plans to sell not more than 1.04 billion H shares, excluding a greenshoe option of 15 percent of the base deal. Shenzhen-listed Shenzhen Energy Group said last month that it would invest up to $250 million as a cornerstone investor in Guotai Junan's offering. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs , Shanghai Pudong Development Bank International and Guotai Junan's Hong Kong investment-banking arm - Guotai Junan International are joint sponsors of the transaction.

The proceeds will be used to raise capital for domestic and foreign securities-related business development and investment, Guotai Junan said in a Shanghai bourse filing in September 2016.

The brokerage went public in June 2015, raising $4.8 billion, in what is still the largest listing in mainland China since 2010. (Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR, writing by Julie Zhu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
SEOUL, March 17 (Reuters) - South Korea's March exports are expected to rise despite growing economic and political uncertainties, its vice trade minister said on Friday.

"Exports are expected to rise for the fifth consecutive month thanks to March exports growth and our export recovery is strengthening," Vice Trade Minister Jeong Marn-ki said.

"However, we are facing a serious situation of a leadership vacancy while uncertainties are growing amid global trade protectionism and trade issues with the United States and China," the minister said.

In February, Asia's fourth-largest economy posted its best export growth in five years due to improving global demand. (Reporting by Jane Chung and Christine Kim; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
* CEE fx shake off ECB comments on rate rise

* Leu sets 9-month low before CEE fx rebound

* Warsaw stocks at 20-mth high, Prague tests 16-mth peak

(Recasts with rebound of currencies, rise in stocks)

By Sandor Peto and Luiza Ilie

BUDAPEST/BUCHAREST, March 17 (Reuters) - Central European currencies and stocks mostly firmed on Friday, supported by increasing demand for riskier assets since the Federal Reserve suggested this week that future U.S. rate rises will be gradual.

Trade was volatile however.

Currencies briefly slipped earlier in the day after ECB policymaker Ewald Nowotny was quoted late on Thursday as saying that the European Central Bank will decide whether to raise rates before or after ending its bond purchase programme. With the region's central banks retaining loose monetary policies, regional assets could become relatively less attractive if euro zone yields rise.

Currencies reversed course, however, when the euro fell after a new French poll showed far-right anti-EU leader Marine Le Pen extending her lead over centrist Emmanuel Macron in the first round of France's presidential elections. The Hungarian forint firmed 0.3 percent to 308.40 against the euro by 1443 GMT, touching two-week highs, and the zloty revisited Thursday's two-week highs.

The leu , which in early trade touched a nine-month low, was flat at 4.5575 against the euro. That is just above 4.56, the level at which the Romanian central bank has intervened several times in recent years to support the currency.

The leu has underperformed regional peers this year due to worries that Romania's new leftist government will increase the budget deficit.

The International Monetary Fund echoed those concerns at a news conference on Friday after regular consultations with the Romanian government.

Central European stocks were mostly on an uptrend. Warsaw's blue chip index set a 20-month high in line with MSCI's emerging equity index , boosted by the Fed's rate outlook on Wednesday, and Prague tested 16-month highs.

The Czech crown's euro exchange rates implied in forwards contracts hovered around multi-month lows.

Czech central bank Vice-Governor Mojmir Hampl reiterated on Thursday that the bank is likely to end the cap that keeps the crown weaker than 27 against the euro around the middle of the year.

However, a Reuters poll on Thursday found most analysts see the bank scrapping the cap at its May 4 policy meeting or earlier. CEE SNAPS AT 1543

MARKETS HOT CET

CURRENCIES

Lates Previ Daily Chang

t ous e

bid close chang in

e 2017 Czech crown 27.02 27.02 +0.0 -0.05

00 45 2% % Hungary 308.4 309.3 +0.3 0.14% forint 000 250 0% Polish 4.290 4.296 +0.1 2.64% zloty 5 0 3% Romanian 4.557 4.556 -0.02 -0.49 leu 5 7 % % Croatian 7.410 7.421 +0.1 1.96% kuna 0 1 5% Serbian 123.9 124.0 +0.0 -0.44 dinar 000 100 9% % Note: daily calculate previ close 1800 change d from ous at CET

STOCK

S

Lates Previ Daily Chang

t ous e

close chang in

e 2017 Prague 982.6 980.7 +0.1 +6.6

0 8 9% 2% Budapest 32749 33049 -0.91 +2.3

.59 .44 % 3% Warsaw 2295. 2283. +0.5 +17.

19 70 0% 83% Bucharest 7962. 7923. +0.4 +12.

60 82 9% 39% Ljubljana 801.7 800.9 +0.0 +11.

2 8 9% 72% Zagreb 2176. 2168. +0.3 +9.1

77 63 8% 2% Belgrade <.BELEX15 744.2 746.9 -0.36 +3.7

> 9 7 % 5% Sofia 635.9 624.3 +1.8 +8.4

2 1 6% 4%

BONDS

Yield Yield Sprea Daily

d

(bid) chang vs chang

e Bund e in Czech sprea Republic d 2-year <CZ2YT=RR -0.40 0.13 +037 +13b

> 8 bps ps 5-year <CZ5YT=RR 0.183 0.018 +051 +2bp

> bps s 10-year <CZ10YT=R 0.997 0.042 +056 +5bp

R> bps s Poland 2-year <PL2YT=RR 2.124 0.024 +290 +2bp

> bps s 5-year <PL5YT=RR 3.092 0.025 +342 +2bp

> bps s 10-year <PL10YT=R 3.747 0.018 +331 +2bp

R> bps s

FORWARD RATE AGREEMENT

3x6 6x9 9x12 3M

inter

bank Czech Rep < 0.29 0.34 0.44 0

PRIBOR=> Hungary < 0.325 0.44 0.59 0.23

BUBOR=> Poland < 1.76 1.8 1.845 1.73

WIBOR=> Note: FRA are for quotes ask

prices ************************************************** ************ (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague and Anna Koper in Warsaw; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Susan Fenton)
Visitors at China Publishing Group's booth during the London Book Fair, which ran from Tuesday to Thursday in London.[Photo by Li Wensha/provided to China Daily]

Overall revenue generated by China's publishing industry has grown by more than $100 billion since 2011, partly as a result of international collaboration, according to figures revealed at the London Book Fair on Wednesday.

They show China's publishing industry's revenue grew to $315.5 billion in 2015, from $212.2 billion in 2011. In 2016, China's book-retail market grew to $10.1 billion.

The figures were published in a report launched at the 2017 International Publishing Forum of the London Book Fair, a seminar attended by around 100 Chinese and international publishers. Key topics include Chinese and international publishers' expansions into each other's markets, the trading of book copyrights, translation, and joint development of books and digital content.

"This report helps international publishers understand China's publishing market and identify market opportunities," says Mao Yuansheng, president of International Publishing Journal.

Jacks Thomas, director of the London Book Fair, says books are an important way in which people can learn more about China's fast-changing landscape.
* Better funding costs to revive short euro primary

* Issuance to relieve supply squeeze

By Matt Painvin

LONDON, March 17 (IFR) - After shunning the short-end of the euro market in recent years, public sector issuers could finally be tempted back, lured by an improvement in funding costs and investor cravings for an alternative to expensive short German government paper.

Divergence between monetary policy in the US, where the Fed began to taper in December 2013, and in Europe, where the ECB started asset purchases in March 2015, has contributed to a widening of the cross-currency basis swap.

That made it attractive for Europeans to skew their short-dated borrowing towards US dollars, while reserving the euro option for duration.

In 2016, the EIB raised US$21.8bn in dollars from up to six-year maturities against only 7bn from euros in the same tenors. Germany's KfW issued US$37.5bn and 5.2bn in maturities of less than five-years during the same period.

The maturity split between the two currencies has allowed European SSAs to run complementary funding programmes. "US dollars and euros are core funding currencies for EIB," said Sandeep Dhawan, EIB's head of dollar funding.

TURNING WHEEL

Short-end SSA issuance may have been thin, but there is latent interest for paper, especially with core governments trading so expensively.

"There is definitely some demand for short euro assets as investors look for alternatives to Germany to capture some extra yield," said Lee Cumbes, head of public sector origination at Barclays.

The World Bank issued a US$4bn three-year benchmark at mid-swaps less 4bp this week. With the current basis swap that would have come out around -0.48% in fixed euro terms, while three-year Germany was trading at -0.69%.

"There is some demand from European bank treasuries in three-years," said another banker. "However, the book would be almost exclusively European."

The reduced supply is not just a result of European SSAs focusing on US dollars. The ECB's Targeted Long term Operations have provided attractive funding to European banks in tenors up to four years and dramatically reduced issuance at that part of the curve.

That, combined with the ECB's asset purchase programme being expanded to maturities as short as one-year in December 2016, lies behind the squeeze in short-dated government bonds.

The two-year German Schatz yield collapsed to -0.94% in late February as investors, especially money market funds and bank treasuries, competed with the ECB for paper to fulfill their needs for high quality short assets.

BASIS COMES BACK

With some natural demand, recent basis swap moves could be the trigger that helps bring issuers back to the single currency.

There were two main reasons for the widening in the US dollar/euro basis swap late last year.

Firstly, a structural shortage of dollar funding due to the US money market fund reforms enacted in October. And secondly, strong US dollar demand after Trump's election in November as investors anticipated a sharp strengthening of the currency.

But this year, those factors have begun to reverse and the basis has tightened back. The three-year swap has moved 10bp off its January 17 low, to around minus 38bp.

"The short-end still works but the differential is smaller, affecting arbitrage," said Cumbes. "The tightening brought the breakeven between markets shorter on the curve."

For some issuers though, improving funding costs might not be enough given that negative short-end euro yields narrow the universe of potential buyers.

"Bank treasuries can buy negative yields but it is trickier for asset managers and central banks," said Joakim Holmstrom, Municipality Finance's head of funding.

"As an issuer, we prefer to ensure a granular placement."

(Reporting by Matt Painvin, editing by Helene Durand and Julian Baker)
ACCRA, March 17 (Reuters) - The Bank of Ghana said the yield on its weekly 91-day bill rose to 17.2108 percent at an auction on Friday, from 16.4392 percent at the last sale, on March 10. The bank said it had accepted 677.29 million cedis ($149.5 million) worth of bids out of 691.34 million cedis tendered for the 91-day paper, which will be issued on March 20. For full details, click here: ($1 = 4.5300 Ghanaian cedis)

(Writing by Kwasi Kpodo; editing by Andrew Roche)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI Three former managers of the publicly-traded holding company AFK Sistema violated the law on insider trading in 2014, the daily reports citing Russia's central bank.

The newspaper reports that Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service has prepared a new plan on competition for 2017-2019 with one of the main aims stated as reducing the state's role in the economy.

Managers of one of the largest mobile operators in Russia MegaFon expects weak earnings in 2017. Company revenue from mobile services in Russia for the first time fell by 2.6 percent in 2016, daily reports.

KOMMERSANT Turkey has removed Russia from the list of countries that have permission for duty-free import of agricultural products such as wheat, corn, sunflower oil to Turkey, the newspaper said citing the Association of Russian Exporters of Agricultural Products.

The newspaper reports that negotiations between ministers for foreign affairs and defence ministers of Russia and Japan will be held in Tokyo for the first time since 2013.

Deputy foreign Minister of Russia Vassily Nebenzia is seen as the main candidate for the post of permanent representative to the United Nations, the newspaper said, citing sources in the government.

Ivan Kulakov, an ex-partner of tycoon Roman Abramovich in "Sibneft" and Highland Gold, acquiring 82.3 percent of Nezhdaninskoye deposit owned by gold producer Polyus . The deal, according to "Kommersant", will be worth up to $150 million.

IZVESTIA Sales of medicines in Russia increased by 20 percent in 2016, the newspaper said, citing data from Analytics Agency DSM Group.

($1 = 58.2463 Rub)

(Reporting by Margarita Popova, editing by Dasha Afanasieva)
(Kitco News) - In celebration of Saint Patricks Day, Kitco News is taking it back to one of our favorite interviews  Yukon Dan. In the hopes that you will find your pot of gold this March 17, heres a refresher lesson on gold panning 101. The Yukon Territory, home of the Klondike Gold Rush, saw an estimated 100,000 prospectors head to this part of Canada between 1896 and 1899. Yukon Dan is keeping history alive by teaching people this lost technique.

The number one question I often get asked is, who is your favorite interview, and while I have had the honor of meeting some incredibly remarkable folks, Yukon Dan will always be one of the most memorable. I have not seem him since but every time I am at a conference, somewhere in the world, I still look out for him.

Cheers to Yukon Dan and Happy Saint Patricks Day.
LABORS Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh has hit back at claims he is economically misinformed, saying his recently panned opinion piece was not aiming to be the final word on overlapping ownership.

Mr Leigh sparked a wave of criticism when he wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, arguing that five faceless investors  HSBC, JP Morgan, National Nominees, Citicorp and BNP Paribas  own a massive chunk of our listed companies.

Readers derided it as embarrassing and demonstrating an abysmal lack of knowledge for failing to differentiate between ownership and being a trustee. 

In the article, Mr Leigh, who has a PhD in economics from the Australian National University, likened the faceless five to sinister mega-corporations from science fiction, like Lex Luthors Lexcorp, Cyberdyne Systems from the Terminator franchise, or Weyland-Yutani in Aliens.

If you look at the big players in our 20 largest industries, the five faceless investors have a majority stake in most of them, Mr Leigh wrote. They dominate industries as diverse as airlines, insurance, telecommunications and mining.

Lets take investor HSBC, for example. In petrol retailing, it owns one-third of Caltex and one-fifth of Woolworths. In electricity, it owns one-fifth of Origin and one-fifth of AGL. In life insurance, it owns a quarter of AMP and one-fifth of ANZ. In department stores and supermarkets, it owns one-fifth of Myer, David Jones, Wesfarmers and Woolworths. 

ABC Bullion chief economist Jordan Eliseo tweeted: Interesting read Andrew  though isnt part of this just custodians for large super funds with millions of retail customers?

James Chessell, Europe correspondent with Fairfax stablemate The Australian Financial Review, chimed in: Are you sure you arent confusing custodians with actual shareholders? HSBC doesnt own 1/3 of Caltex.

Fund manager and AFR columnist Christopher Joye added: Andrew your research is totally wrong: the 5 firms are all custodians acting as trustees for other investors.

Mike King, investment analyst with The Motley Fool, tweeted: Maybe its time Fairfax pulled this article down given the underlying argument is completely wrong?

Con Michalakis, chief investment officer at Statewide Super, wrote: Seriously you do know what a custodian is  right?
The ODT reports:

A Dunedin academic has warned parts of South Dunedin and the city could have just 17 years before sea-level rise makes them uninhabitable. Prof Jim Flynn told the Dunedin City Council yesterday Australian insurance companies were already excluding sea-level rise as a risk covered in their policies. That could make homes uninsurable in the area in the next five years, he said.  A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) formula showed sea rise for 2014 was 7.2mm and 8.5mm in 2015. If the rate continued to increase, a 25cm increase could occur before 2034. By 2090, South Dunedin would be under 5m of water, along with Forsyth Barr Stadium, the Otago Polytechnic and other low-lying areas.

Jim Flynn is an academic, but not in any climate field. He is a professor of political science. He should stick to that.

Unlike the ODT that just repeated his hysteria, Newshub did some actual research:

Prof Flynn said sea level rise is increasing over time and is almost at 1cm a year, with 2015 rising by 0.86cm and 2014 by 0.75cm, citing NASA data. However Newshub was unable to verify this claim, with NASAs website citing the current rise is at a rate of 3.4mm a year  significantly less than Prof Flynn says.

They also interviewed actual climate scientists:

Dr James Renwick and Professor Tim Naish, both from Victoria University and specialising in climate change, arent particularly confident in Prof Flynns predictions. Hes right to be raising the issue as a real concern but I have a little bit of concern that his numbers are slightly on the high side, or very much on the high side, Prof Naish told Newshub. Instead he said the 30cm rise globally would be more likely to be reached by 2050-60  still near enough to be concerned, but not as frantic as Prof Flynn said.

The rising sea level is a problem, and it is mainly caused by human activity. But it isnt going to be 25 cm in 17 years. Id be willing to make a large bet on it.

On current trends, it is likely to be 5 to 7 cms.

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Esther Mahlangu poses in front of her artwork inspired by Nelson Mandela at the Melrose Gallery in Johannesburg. The 81-year-old lives a simple life in her hut. [Photo/VCG]

Esther Mahlangu's colorful geometric artwork is exhibited in galleries around the world, but she remains in her South African village unfazed by fame and determined to preserve her ethnic Ndebele culture.

The 81-year-old painter and mural artist earned an international reputation with her Ndebele motifs at a time when the art scene in her home country was focused on contemporary styles.

Now Johannesburg is hosting a major exhibition for Mahlangu, an elderly black woman with no art training who rose to global acclaim using a skill passed down for generations.

With just a chicken feather, Mahlangu first painted mud huts and chipboards before moving on to luxury cars, vodka bottles, skateboards and footwear as her intricate patterns became huge commercial hits.

At home in a dusty village in South Africa's eastern province of Mpumalanga, the sprightly great-grandmother looks nothing like an artist who has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and London's British Museum.
Bill Shipley along with his son, Trever, of rural Nodaway, Iowa. Along with operating their row-crop farm in Adams County, the two raise show-pigs as well. Bill is also President-elect of the Iowa Soybean Association.
Success of country's sensible diplomacy creates high expectations for this year's big events

China will host two major international gatherings this year, and expectations are that new initiatives and measures will be unveiled to spur global growth and development amid the rise of protectionism.

The importance of the two events in this year's diplomatic calendar was highlighted for China Daily by Chinese diplomats and experts attending the fifth session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee as members.

The first of the two events is the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that will be held in Beijing in May.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking with the media recently during the fifth session of the 12th National People's Congress, said that the heads of state and government from over 20 economies and the leaders of over 50 international organizations will attend the forum.

He said the forum aims to examine key areas for cooperation and identify a number of major projects for connectivity in infrastructure, trade, investment and finance, as well as people-to-people exchanges.

Also it is hoped that medium- to long-term initiatives will be announced at the forum, and it can explore ways to establish an effective cooperation mechanism and build a closer and result-oriented network of partnerships, Wang added.

Jia Qingguo, professor and dean at Peking University's School of International Studies, says the upcoming forum can benefit both China and the countries along the routes by facilitating the transfer of capital, technology, talent and management experience from the developed eastern coastal region of China to those countries along the routes that need them.

"This would help sustain the development of the Chinese economy and support the development and prosperity of neighboring countries," Jia says.

The other domestic diplomatic event this year, the ninth BRICS leaders' summit, will be held in the coastal city Xiamen in East China's Fujian province in September.

The annual meeting brings together the leaders of the five BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The five nations, with over 40 percent of the world's population, have a combined GDP of about one-fifth of the world's total.

The five countries are busy preparing for the meeting, and a range of ministerial-level meetings are being held beforehand to prepare for the summit, says Li Jinzhang, China's ambassador to Brazil.

Brazil, which is suffering severe economic difficulties, has great expectations of strengthened cooperation with the other BRICS countries, Li says.

"New ideas will be proposed and important agreement will be reached on key issues," Li says.

"The voices of developing countries will be heard by the world" at the meeting in September in Xiamen, Li adds.

Major high-end international gatherings held by China in recent years include the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Week in Beijing in 2014 and the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in 2016.

On these occasions, President Xi Jinping introduced new proposals and concepts aimed at improving global governance and realizing sustainable growth and common development.

Open and inclusive

The two events are being held while the global economy remains sluggish and there is rising trade protectionism, diplomats and experts say, and many countries are looking to China for leadership as well as practical cooperation.

"While some countries are shifting their focus to domestic development, it is China that is ushering in new dynamics for international cooperation," says Zhang Yunling, a senior researcher on Asia-Pacific studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Zhang says that while other countries are looking to protectionism, the multilateral mechanisms promoted by China, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, "all embrace openness".

"China is an advocate of openness when the trends of anti-globalization and protectionism are prevailing," Zhang says.

Shi Mingde, China's ambassador to Germany, says: "The world is in desperate need of cross-regional cooperation that has a bigger spread, a greater standard and is of a higher level. That's why China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013."

The initiative is a key public good for boosting international cooperation and global governance offered by China to the global community, says Shi, who points out that many countries are facing demanding situations regarding their structural reform and development amid the sluggish global economy.

"The initiative will forge a close and strong link between the dynamic economies in Asia and the developed economies in Europe," Shi adds.

Strong impetus

China contributed to sustaining economic globalization by successfully hosting the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, and the two events it is hosting this year will not only be good for China, but also for the rest of the world, says Zhai Jun, China's ambassador to France.

Zhai says that by promoting further integration between China and the world, the Belt and Road forum and the BRICS leaders' summit can provide strong impetus for China's future development, which will in turn benefit the world.

"In the coming five years, China will import commodities worth $8 trillion in total and attract foreign investment of $600 billion," Zhai says.

"Also, Chinese investment overseas is expected to be $750 billion (706 billion euros; 614 billion) over the next five years and there will be 700 million trips abroad by Chinese citizens," Zhai says.

Zhang Yunling, the CASS researcher, also notes that the Chinese economy itself is undergoing a critical phase in which the country is restructuring its economy, and pursuing further reform and opening-up that "benefits both itself and other nations".

"China could gear up the transformation of its economy through improved cooperation with other countries," Zhang says.

Aside from the two events to be held in China, other gatherings - including the APEC meetings in Vietnam and G20 Summit in Germany - will also provide opportunities for countries to cooperate on global governance.

Germany this year takes over the rotating chairmanship from China and will host this year's G20 Summit and related lower-level meetings.

"We expect to maintain close contact and cooperation with the German side to offer new ideas for boosting global governance, introduce new opportunities, and send signals of cooperation, openness, peace and win-win results," says Shi Mingde, the Chinese ambassador to Germany.

New role

Cui Liru, a senior researcher and former president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, noted that China has been proactive in hosting international meetings in recent years, and its home-field diplomacy "is a significant platform for presenting China's new role and its new capabilities".

"The two major events this year will yield greater outcomes than the past meetings, because the country has been consistently learning, accumulating experience and improving, and its foresight is being reinforced," Cui says.

The concepts proposed by China in recent years have shown it to be a quick learner in aligning with accepted international norms and codes, and have highlighted its growing maturity, Cui adds.

Wu Enyuan, a senior researcher on Russian studies at CASS, noted that treating other countries on an equal footing is one of the reasons China has been successful in winning support for its proposals and initiatives from an increasing number of countries.

"The concepts first proposed by President Xi, including the Belt and Road Initiative and a Community of Shared Destiny for All Mankind, are popular in many developing countries partly because they welcome China treating them in a way that would have been unthinkable during the colonial era," Wu says.

While political alignment and security alliances prevail on the world stage, the Chinese proposals "do not categorize or judge countries by political systems or ideologies", Wu says.

Wu cites the wide range of organizations and institutions proposed by China in recent years, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund.

"Such Chinese proposals are based on reality, they are not coming from nowhere, and they meet the actual needs of countries. That's why few countries have said 'no' to the concepts and most have signed up for them," Wu adds.

But Cui, the scholar with China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, cautions that China should strike a balance between being a developing country, albeit the largest, and its greater responsibilities in global affairs.

"China is taking on a new role. It has entered the new role in a short period of time, it will take time for it to adapt to the new situation."

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/17/2017 page7)
More advanced occupations are needed to avoid problems caused by a burgeoning young population

Whether or not a country's labor market can absorb its rising workforce depends upon the size of its youth cohort. China is a good example of this economic dynamic. Since the early 1990s the country has seen nearly 8 million new workers a year enter the labor market. Arguably, for the last decade, this dynamic can be linked to the astronomical growth of the Chinese economy in the international system.

China's meteoric rise into an economic juggernaut has been fueled by four economic drivers: capital-intensive heavy industries dominated by the state; exports, led by specialized manufacturing; construction; and energy.

These sectors have absorbed a lot of low-skilled youth workers with a primary and junior secondary education - especially young migrants from rural areas.

This is not to intimate that the country is not grappling with unemployment in its massive economy. The 2012 China Household Finance Survey puts China's youth unemployment rate (15-24 age bracket) at 9.6 percent.

This figure is not high. However, the International Labor Organization predicts it will weigh in at 11.1 percent for 2016. In light of this, China has enacted reforms geared toward enhancing the professional and creative services sectors in these industries to absorb both tertiary and university youth. By doing this, the so-called jasmine revolutions are mitigated in the country and the traction of economic growth is maintained.

African crisis

By contrast, for Africa, the youth bulge phenomenon presents a bleak picture. This year, the African Union held its 28th Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at its headquarters in late January. The AU theme is "Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in Youth". In light of this, the new chairman of the AU, Moussa Faki Mahamat, will have his work cut out for him in turning the burgeoning youth population into a demographic dividend instead of a curse.

Africa's demographics are showing a ballooning youth population - what some analysts call the "youth bulge". It is postulated that Africa has the largest youth population in the world.

At present, the population between the ages of 15 and 24 years stands at about 200 million. According to the 2012 African Economic Outlook report prepared by experts from the African Development Bank, the UN Development Programme, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the industrialized countries' Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, this figure will double by 2045, given the current trend.

According to the World Bank, in the next decade Africa's population between 15 and 29 years of age will reach 28 percent of the total. The populations of Burkina Faso, Malawi, Niger, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia are predicted to increase by 500 percent. The global population is expected to reach 10.9 billion by the end of the century, with Africa contributing the largest cohort.

The fear of African policymakers is that because of the youth bulge many countries on the continent may become hotbeds for political uprisings and unrest. The current situation is that a large segment of youth cannot find employment. According to the World Bank, 60 percent of all African youth unemployed.

According to the African Economic Outlook, more than 70 percent of African youth live on less than $2 per day (1.89 euros; 1.65) - the internationally defined poverty threshold.

In North Africa, the youth unemployment rate is 30 percent. It's even worse in Botswana, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, South Africa and several other countries. A World Bank survey conducted in 2011 found that 40 percent of youth who joined rebel movements were motivated by a lack of jobs. Thus, of the 67 nations that were experiencing youth bulges, 60 were experiencing civil strife and conflict.

China model applied

Africa will do well to borrow a leaf from China in managing the youth bulge. As earlier stated, African economies need to transition young workers from low productivity activities like subsistence farming, hawking and light manufacturing to high-end and specialized manufacturing for exports - and further, especially in regard to agrarian activities, facilitate access to funds to enhance value chains overall.

This is because, over the last 50 years, very little attention has been paid to both the agro-allied and entrepreneurship sectors that transform farm inputs into final products. These sectors are attractive for several reasons. First, a large youth population in Africa is concentrated in these sectors. A World Bank report showed youth employed in these sectors in Mali at 94 percent, Ethiopia at 74 percent and South Africa at 31 percent. Second, the formal skill requirements are typically low at the beginning, thereby allowing youth to learn gradually as they transition to more sophisticated tasks. Last, these sectors are labor-intensive.

This paradigm shift is anchored in new structural economics, which holds that a country's economic development is built into its endowment structure. Therefore, for African countries to be successful in harnessing the youth bulge, they need to concentrate on their comparative advantages as determined by their endowment structures.

For example in Kenya, our key endowment structures are in agriculture and technology. Pursuant to this, the Kenyan government in its Vision 2030 identified information technology as a key driver for development in which youth are heavily interested. It is expected that this sector can generate 20,000 jobs.

The author is a political strategist at the African Policy Institute in Kenya. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 03/17/2017 page12)
Ant Financial is making life easier for Chinese shoppers in Europe

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is now virtually a household name in the West, but its lesser-known sister company, Ant Financial is also making its mark as it rolls out its global mobile payment system across Europe.

Two years after expanding into Europe, Ant Financial is working with powerful European banks, including BNP Paribas, Barclays and UniCredit, to enable 930,000 merchants to join the payment network of Alipay, Ant Financial's payment platform.

Alipay is not really competing with Western mobile payment providers like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, but it is significantly improving Chinese tourists' overseas experiences by giving them a convenient and secure payment method and offering lots of travel advice.

Alipay service is available at a hotel in Finland. Cecily Liu / China Daily

This customer experience is what Rita Liu, head of Alipay Europe, Middle East, and Africa, calls "fin-life", a new method of easy and convenient living enabled by financial technology.

"We hope to champion the concept of 'fin-life' to make payment easy, and we want to build a big network globally so that Chinese tourists traveling abroad can feel that they are enjoying payment convenience as if they are still in China," says Liu.

"Our expansion overseas has two considerations. We do see the outbound Chinese tourist market as a big opportunity for payment method provision, but also we think from our customers' perspective, to provide them a service they truly need."

With 450 million active users in China, Alipay is now used by European hotels, retailers and other tourist attractions keen to lure high spending Chinese tourists.

Luxury retailer Tripidi at Frankfurt Airport became the first to accept Alipay in 2015. Now it is used in many other famous shopping locations, including Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris. Alipay was used by 120 million users overseas last year.

Its European network operates in collaboration with leading Western payment companies, including Germany's Wirecard and France's Ingenico and BNP Paribas, Switzerland's Six Payment Services, Italy's Unicredit, the UK's Barclays and ePassi in Finland.

"Our expansion model focuses on collaboration with local banks and payment companies, leveraging on their local market reputation, their wide networks with European merchants and other partner," Liu says.

"I find our international expansion is greatly welcomed by our European banking and other payment partners. From my communications with them, I realize they value the future of fintech and mobile payment very much and they are very keen to be partners with a pioneering company in this industry like Ant Financial," Liu says.

The collaboration is really a win-win story. The European payment firms and Alipay each collect a commission on each transaction processed, and Western retailers can sell products and services to Chinese tourists.

Most important, Chinese tourists no longer need to carry so much cash on their trips. They just pay for their purchases by using the Alipay app on mobile phones to scan a QR code provided by merchants. Transactions are processed in seconds.

In addition, tourists can find more local market information on the Alipay app's Discover platform, including details of local markets, restaurants and shops, as well as hot tourist spots and ticket information. The Alipay app's Discover platform now includes information on more than 570,000 European merchants across 20 countries.

Alipay also benefits by working with existing European payment methods such as ePassi, Finland's biggest mobile payment platform, which has helped Alipay become accepted by more than 100 merchants, including hotels, shops and restaurants.

"Our existing reputation in Europe means many merchants trust Alipay even though they may not have heard the name before. Since we launched promotional activities to spread Alipay's name in Finland, many Finnish merchants have been approaching us to install Alipay," says Alexander Yin, chief financial officer of TCG, parent company of ePassi.

The fact that ePassi already owns a payment institution license from Finnish regulators means Alipay's entrance into Finland requires no additional approval.

As an intermediary, ePassi collects payments from Alipay and distributes them among European merchants. Merchants use the ePassi app to take payment in the same way they would take payments from Finnish customers of ePassi, so the fact the payment came from Alipay users made no difference to them.

Jeongwen Chiang, a professor of marketing at China Europe International Business School, says Alipay's European expansion is effective due to the high volumes of Chinese travelers abroad and European retailers will be "sure winners" in Alipay's expansion.

"Besides being able to make more sales to Chinese customers, when their Chinese customers use Alipay the retailers will be able to view the shopping habits of these consumers. This information may help them to develop ways to attract more Chinese customers," Chiang says.

Alipay's history goes back to 2004, when it was still the payment arm of China's ecommerce giant Alibaba. Over the years Alibaba and Alipay both grew very fast. Alibaba separated Alipay from the group and in 2014 its affiliate company, Ant Financial, was created as the parent company for Alipay.

Alipay is the standard payment provider for China's large e-commerce shopping population on Alibaba, so it has a large user base, but it still lags behind Western competitors. Apple Pay dominates this market with "tens of millions" of monthly active users worldwide as of June 2016, which represents a 450 percent year-on-year growth.

Alipay has not reached out to provide services to non-Chinese users so far but industry analysts believe this should be its next step.

Howard Yu, a professor in strategic management and innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, says Alipay's international expansion is now at an "inflecion point" where great benefits can be achieved if it starts serving non-Chinese customers.

"They can bring value especially by helping to connect Western customers with China's payment market. They could serve Western tourists traveling to China, or Western businesses in China," Yu says.

Their existing international reputation would be helpful, and they are bringing a valuable service because, for Western travelers and businesses, carrying cash to China is difficult. It is helpful for Alipay to bring a unique proposition, leveraging its China market expertise, rather than engaging with the whole international market and trying to compete with Google Wallet and Apple Pay, which are already very big internationally," Yu says.

Perhaps one reason Alipay has not yet engaged with Western customers could be due to resource allocation, because Alipay is competing in China's domestic market with other payment providers such as Wechat Wallet. Wechat Wallet, the payment platform affiliated with Wechat, the Chinese WhatsApp, is experiencing big user number growth. Its active users reached 768 million in September 2016, representing a 35 percent year on year growth.

With such significant domestic growth it is, of course, plausible to think that WeChat wallet hopes to consolidate its presence in China, but Yu believes Alipay should place more emphasis on international expansion, leveraging on its existing connections internationally.

"Its historical connection with Alibaba means it already has connections with international customers, many of whom are Western importers and exporters doing business with China."

Yet another huge future potential opportunity for Alipay in China and internationally is to develop targeted products and services with the big data it gathers about what consumers buy, and when and where they make those purchases.

Liu says the Ant Financial team is keen to devise new ways to use such data, although no concrete plans have yet been made.

Looking into the future, Liu says Alipay will continue to expand its European partner networks, so that Alipay can be used by more retailers in Europe.

"We also hope Alipay's product can constantly innovate to improve user experience and provide extra value to retailers by making use of the consumer data it collects," Liu says.

cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 03/17/2017 page30)
Actress Kim Min-hee in a scene from Hong Sang-soo's "On the Beach at Night Alone" / Courtesy of Jeonwonsa Film



By Jason Bechervaise

Writing about any of Hong Sang-soo's films can be a daunting endeavor. There is perhaps an argument that his films are often about the same thing: relationships and awkward encounters as filmmakers, professors or artists consuming soju as they discuss love and life. What is so difficult about that you may ask?

But beneath the surface, Hong's formidable formative approach to filmmaking is quite remarkable. Like a child piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, Hong challenges his audience through the perplexing structure of his films _ Hong's award-winning "Right Now, Wrong Then" (2015) is such an example as he plays with variation telling the same story twice of a director who meets a painter, but with subtle differences.

Slight variation is also echoed in Hong's filmography. In "Hill of Freedom" (2014), Hong scripted much of the dialogue in English providing another set of interesting but different encounters. In "Yourself and Yours" (2016) there appears to be more of a resolution to the film's denouement compared to his other features.

Indeed, Hong invariably works with the same actors, but not always. Jung Yu-mi, for example, has been featured in many of his films such as "Oki's Movie" (2010) and "Our Sunhi" (2013), but more recently he has turned to Kim Min-hee.

Hong has also worked with talent from overseas. "In Another Country" (2012) it stars French actress Isabelle Huppert who is also to appear in Hong's next film, his 20th feature "Claire's Camera" that is set in Cannes during the film festival begging the question, will it premiere in the Croisette in May?

Then there are stylistic choices which he is remembered for: abrupt zooms and long takes. But that doesn't mean all his films look the same. He often shoots in color, but he has also made films in black and white such as "Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors" (2000) and "The Day He Arrives" (2011).

Often scripting the leading characters as filmmakers, professors or artists, one aspect of his films that tends to remain consistent are the parallels to Hong himself, which makes it no surprise that his latest "On the Beach at Night Alone" is personal. But this time, his musings on love and life, evidently shaped by experiences, are certainly bolder than the rest of his body of work.





The film about an actress, played by Kim Min-hee, who had a relationship with an older married filmmaker premiered at the Berlin film festival last month and was very well-received at the festival garnering strong reviews in the international press.

But it was Kim Min-hee who made history becoming the first Korean actress to win the Silver Bear for Best Actress award at the festival.

The film has generated much speculation locally owing to the similarities between the film's narrative and the relationship between the director and the film's leading actress, which was confirmed by Hong at a press conference on Monday following the film's local press screening.





June last year, after the release of Park Chan-wook's "The Handmaiden," which Kim also starred in, it was reported in the local press that the two were having an affair _ though rumours of their relationship were circulating in the local film industry for some months before this.

What is interesting is that Hong appears to have made a film that explores the issues they face being in the public eye even though the film was shot several months before it was made public.

It addresses the problems Kim would encounter as an actress in Korea having been involved in a relationship with an older married man with the film beginning in Hamburg, Germany, where the actress, Young-hee, takes some time out before returning to Korea. But avoiding the Seoul metropolis she heads to the seaside town of Gangneung to meet an older friend. The title suggests such a scandal can result in isolation.

Things come to a head in a scene towards the end between the director played by Moon Sung-keun and the actress. Both drunk, they talk about their relationship at a dinner in front of his staff in what is possibly one of the most intense scenes I have seen in a Hong Sang-soo film. The intensity is all the more awkward owing to the off -screen romance that it appears to be making reference to.

Yet, Hong also manages to add some self-deprecating humour as he refers to his own unorthodox style when the drunken director says, "So I shoot the first scene and see where it goes."





The film is intense, personal and certainly awkward, but this is Hong Sang-soo doing what he does best even though the film lacks the narrative complexity underlying many of his other films.

It is also another opportunity to see Kim Min-hee shine. She will be judged in Korea, unfairly I would argue, because of her relationship with Hong, but she is an immense talent that I hope to see much more of on the big screen.







"On the Beach at Night Alone" will be released in Korea on March 23.





J. Bechervaise is a movie columnist for The Korea Times. He can be reached at jase@koreanfilm.org.uk
Deputy Prime Minister Yoo Il-ho, second from left, speaks to Fitch Ratings Global Head of Sovereign Ratings James McCormack, fourth from left, during their meeting in London, Thursday. / Courtesy of Ministry of Strategy and Finance

By Nam Hyun-woo



Deputy Prime Minister Yoo Il-ho met two major global rating houses on Friday, asking them to keep their "positive" stances in adjusting Korea's sovereign rating.



According to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, Yoo, who doubles as deputy prime minister, met Fitch Ratings Global Head of Sovereign Ratings James McCormack in London and S&P Global Sovereign Chief Ratings Officer Moritz Kraemer in Frankfurt, before attending the G20 finance ministers' meeting in Germany.



Yoo explained the Korean government is promptly reacting to economic events in and outside of the country, despite its political uncertainties.



"Yoo stressed that the government is actively monitoring risks, including the U.S. interest hike; Korea's trade issues between China and the United States; and household debt," a ministry official said.



Yoo also said that Korea's real economy is rebounding, with exports showing sharp growth and facility investment increasing for three consecutive months.



McCormack and Kraemer both said that Korea's political uncertainty has been removed as the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye and evaluated Korea's effort in normalizing its state affairs as effective.



Meanwhile, Yoo will attend the two-day ministers' meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany. His moves in the spa town are drawing keen attention, as he will seek to explain Korea's position to his counterparts from the U.S. and China.



Yoo is set to meet U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He is expected to explain that the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement has been mutually beneficial and the government is not manipulating its foreign exchange market.



However, it is not sure whether he will meet China's Finance Minister Xiao Jie. If they do, their talks will be about China's economic retaliation to Korea's decision to deploy a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.
The four last-remaining North Korean banks will be cut off from the global financial messaging network SWIFT, a news report said Thursday, a restriction that would deepen the isolation of the communist regime for seeking nuclear and missile development.

Reuters cited SWIFT officials as saying that the North Korean banks will be disconnected for failing to meet its operating criteria. But the network declined to specify what the banks' shortcomings were or if it had received representations from any governments, the report said.

The decision came days after a news report that the North's Foreign Trade Bank, Kumgang Bank, Koryo Credit Development Bank, and North East Asia Bank still remain on SWIFT despite U.S. sanctions on the institutions.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on the Foreign Trade Bank in 2013, accusing it of facilitating weapons of mass destruction programs. The other three banks were blacklisted in December for supporting the North's weapons programs.

Specialized financial messaging services are essential for international financial transactions. Without such services, wire transfers and other global transactions are impossible. The most representative of such services is SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. (Yonhap)
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that all options even including military choice remain on the table in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, adding that the so-called strategic patience with Pyongyang has ended. / Yonhap



U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that all options even including military choice remain on the table in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, adding that the so-called strategic patience with Pyongyang has ended.

Tillerson also urged China to refrain from retaliating against South Korea over the ongoing deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system on its soil, calling the move purely a self-defense measure.

He made the remarks during a press conference held in Seoul after talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. He is in Seoul on the second leg of his three Asian country trip following his visit to Japan. (Yonhap)












PARIS  A letter bomb exploded Thursday at the French office of the International Monetary Fund, lightly injuring one person, according to Paris police.

Police outside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offices where an envelope exploded in Paris, France, March 16, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]



Staff from the IMF office were evacuated and armed military officers and police guarded the area, in a chic district of western Paris. The World Bank office in France is in the same compound.



No other damage was reported in the explosion, according to a police official who was not authorized to be publicly named.



It is unclear who sent the explosive. Thursday's incident came a day after a package arrived at the German Finance Ministry containing low-grade explosives, like those used in firecrackers.



Mailroom employees at the ministry quickly identified the package as suspicious and called in explosives experts, who destroyed it with a controlled explosion.

The IMF office in France did not immediately respond to calls.



France remains in a state of emergency after a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks over the past two years.




U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks, left, speaks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is on a two-day visit to South Korea, at the truce village of Panmunjeom on the inter-Korean border,

Friday, while a North Korean soldier takes a photo of them from outside. / Joint press corps



US vows to use all options against NK including military actions

By Jun Ji-hye

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared an end to the Barack Obama administration's policy of strategic patience in dealing with North Korea, Friday, vowing to explore all options including harsher sanctions and military action.

The U.S. top diplomat also stressed the importance of China's role in forcing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, urging Beijing to stop taking retaliatory actions against South Korea over the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here.

He made the comments during a joint news conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul, before the two held the ministerial talks.

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson told reporters. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table."

He also said military action against nuclear-armed North Korea remains a possibility.

"Certainly, we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said, but added: "If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then that option's on the table."

In the policy of strategic patience, the allies ruled out engaging North Korea and waited for positive changes in Pyongyang. The policy sometimes provoked the criticism that Obama did not come up with any new incentives to help curb the North's missile and nuclear programs.

Tillerson indicated that further harsher economic sanctions against the North would follow, saying: "I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the U.N. Security Council resolution with full participation of all countries."

He also made it clear that there would be no talks with the North unless it gives up its nuclear ambitions, noting that all the efforts for the past 20 years to bring the repressive state to the negotiating table ended in failure.
By Ko Dong-hwan





Chung Yoo-ra at a Danish court after being arrested at Aalborg, Denmark, on Jan. 3.

The Danish prosecution said Friday it decided to extradite the daughter of ousted Korean President Park Geun-hye's close friend for an investigation into a corruption scandal that led to Park's impeachment.

"It is the assessment of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions that all conditions to extradite a South Korean woman to her home country are met," the prosecution said in a press release, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Chung Yoo-ra was arrested in the European country's northern city of Aalborg in January after Korean investigators put her on a wanted list. She is suspected of having received inappropriate academic and financial favors based on her mother's close relationship with the former leader.

It remains unclear if Chung will return home immediately as it is possible she appeals the decision.

The Danish court said Chung "has three days to decide whether she will bring the decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions before the Danish courts," adding "If that happens, the District Court of Aalborg will be the first instance."

Korea's independent counsel team that investigated the scandal had asked Denmark to send Chung home for questioning. She has so far refused to voluntarily return home to face the probe.

A number of former and current professors at Ewha Womans University linked to undue favors given to Chung have been arrested and indicted.

Chung's mother, Choi Soon-sil, whose alleged influence-peddling behind Park abused the former president's authority to amass her private assets, is currently standing trial over the charges.

Park is waiting to undergo an interrogation next Tuesday over a string of corruption allegations by prosecutors, who are looking into issues that remain unresolved by the special counsel team.

"I know that the case has been subject to great attention in South Korea," said Deputy Director Mohammad Ahsan from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Denmark.

"I am pleased that there has been a prevalent understanding of the fact that the case has taken the necessary time to handle it both thoroughly and in accordance with our legislation."
Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson arrives at Korea's southern port of Busan on Wednesday. / Yonhap



The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived at Korea's southern port of Busan on Wednesday to participate in the ongoing joint exercises by Seoul and Washington in the latest show of force against North Korea, the US military said.



The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier plans to conduct bilateral exercises with forces from the South Korean Navy in the waters around the Korean Peninsula during the Foal Eagle field training exercise that runs through the end of April, the US Navy said in a press briefing held in the port city.



"The training opportunities we have in this region are world-class and allow us to build upon our strong alliance with the Republic of Korea," said Rear Adm James Kilby, commander of USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group 1.



He also said the port call is aimed at deterring increasing threats on the Korean Peninsula.



"I also understand that the threat has only increased with each senseless act of aggression (by North Korea). To be clear, our presence here today is a clear signal of our commitment to defend this nation and region," he said.



In the same conference, US Naval Forces Korea Commander Commodore Bradley Cooper dismissed speculation that the US has stepped up its drive to complete the deployment of an advanced missile defense system known as THAAD in South Korea by as early as April in line with the drills.



The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense deployment has nothing to do with the annual drill between the allies, he said, adding the system will be used for defense purposes only.



The aircraft carrier is the centerpiece of the 6,500-sailor Strike Group. It also includes two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser and Carrier Air Wing 2, which consists of 74 aircraft.



In the "routine periodic exercise," the two allies have enhanced their interoperability and combat capabilities through expert exchanges, gunnery exercises, and anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare drills, he said.



A day earlier, the US Navy invited dozens of reporters to the aircraft carrier to demonstrate flight operations in seas east of the Korean Peninsula.



In a short briefing on the mainstay naval ship's participation in the annual exercise, Kilby delivered a similar message.

The two navies will be doing a lot of exercises that they planned for the last six months to work together "correctly" as they are working for "one purpose," he said, adding that the purpose of the exercise is to reinforce the alliance between the navies.



Seoul and Washington kicked off their annual joint drills -- Key Resolve and Foal Eagle -- in March. The two-week Key Resolve started Monday, while Foal Eagle runs through the end of April.



Pyongyang has long denounced the exercises as rehearsals for an invasion despite Washington's assurance that they are defensive in nature. (Yonhap)
A non-Korean man was turned over to the police and faces criminal prosecution in the U.S. after sexually harassing a stewardess on Korean Air. / Korea Times file



By Lee Han-soo

A non-Korean man was turned over to the police and faces criminal prosecution in the U.S. after sexually harassing a stewardess on Korean Air flight KE036, according to the airline Thursday.

The man in his 50s, whose identity remains unknown, allegedly sexually harassed the stewardess on the flight from Atlanta to Incheon on Tuesday.

The man, who was wearing a wet shirt at the time of the incident, asked the stewardess if she wanted him to take off his shirt when asked if he needed a towel.

He also allegedly demanded that the stewardess sit next to him, drink wine with him and give him a massage so he could sleep better.

When the stewardess warned the man, he allegedly started to make threats, saying the airline should fire her.

The man was turned over to police at Incheon airport.

Korean Air plans to sue the man in a U.S. court and blacklist him.

The airline also refused to let him board a transfer flight to Bangkok.

"The man was investigated by airport police," said a Korean Air spokesperson. "However, we do not know what happened afterwards. We are taking legal steps for a lawsuit."
By Lee Kyung-min



The prosecution is expected to seek an arrest warrant for former President Park Geun-hye who will be questioned Tuesday over her involvement in the corruption scandal that removed her from office.



A special unit under the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office is said to have internally decided to seek the warrant.



"Filing a request for an arrest warrant appears unavoidable, given the severity of the charges and Park's continued denial of them despite the arrests and indictments of most of her accomplices," an official with the prosecution said.



The prosecution is seeking to prove bribery charges. It said Park granted favors to conglomerates in return for them giving a combined 77.4 billion won ($64.4 million) to the Mir and K-Sports Foundations, set up and controlled by her friend Choi Soon-sil.



Park has claimed that the scandal was fabricated, and the money was donated for the public good and to promote the value of "giving back to the community."



Acting Justice Minister Lee Chang-jae also indicated that the prosecution would seek an arrest warrant for Park.



During a National Assembly emergency hearing session Thursday, Lee said that the questioning of Park will follow "the law and principle."



Lee said that the warrant will be sought if deemed necessary, adding that he expects Park to appear for Tuesday's questioning as confirmed by one of her defense lawyers.



Bribery is one of 13 criminal charges Park is facing that also includes abuse of authority and extortion.



The prosecution amended earlier charges that business groups were victims of extortion by Park and Choi. Bribery carries far harsher punishment than extortion or abuse of authority.



Park could face a life sentence. Under the current law, those convicted of bribery involving more than 100 million won ($87,000) are subject to a minimum of ten years in prison and up to life.



The prosecution is fine-tuning hundreds of questions based on multiple scenarios drawn up anticipating Park's level of cooperation during the face-to-face questioning.



It questioned one current and two former SK Group executives, Thursday, for more than 10 hours each, over their suspected roles in giving money to the two foundations in return for a special pardon for group Chairman Chey Tae-won. He was serving a four-year prison term imposed in 2013 for embezzling 46.5 billion won in company funds.



The group is also suspected of being granted favors in biddings for duty free shop licenses and exemptions from tax audits.



Officials at other major conglomerates, including CJ and Lotte, are likely to be questioned soon.



Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-young has already been indicted and arrested on bribery charges.



Separately, the prosecution said its investigation into former presidential secretary Woo Byung-woo is also underway, refuting suspicions that it was reluctant to thoroughly look into the former prosecutor out of respect.



Meanwhile, defense lawyers for Park continued consultation sessions with her before Tuesday's questioning. Lawyer Yoo Young-ha visited her home in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, Friday, for the second time after Wednesday, to deliver written questions to prepare her for what is expected to be intense questioning.




The presidential office has been sending former President Park Geun-hye's pet dogs to organizations that will preserve their breed after they were left behind by the ousted leader, officials said Friday.

Park raised two dogs of the native Korean Jindo breed during her term. She received them as gifts from a neighbor in February 2013 when she left her private home in southern Seoul to move into the presidential office upon election.

The dogs, named "Saerom" and "Heemang," gave birth twice to a litter of puppies inside Cheong Wa Dae, but the first litter were sent for adoption. Seven more puppies were born early this year as Park awaited the Constitutional Court's final ruling on her impeachment by parliament over a corruption scandal. The court removed her from office last week.

"Former President Park made a special request as she returned to her private home on Sunday that the dogs be sent to a place where their Jindo breed can be preserved," an official of the presidential security service said.












Participants in the last candlelit protest in Seoul on March 11 show their happiness after the Constitutional Court upheld former President Park Geun-hye's impeachment. / Korea Times file



By Kim Ji-soo



A 50-something woman surnamed Bang and living in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province said she started feeling depressed when watching the national news since October last year when the scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye and her confidant Choi Soon-sil broke.

It has been one breaking news story after another as the National Assembly passed an impeachment motion against Park in December and an independent counsel arrested those involved in the scandal including even Lee Jae-yong, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics. Downtown Seoul on Saturdays was largely packed with candlelit protestors who were later "joined" by the former President's supporters.

Bang is now trying to forget about it and concentrates on her health. "But back then, I was down," she said.

"People are always affected by social events or tragic accidents," Yoon Dae-hyun, a professor of psychiatry at Seoul National University said. But what distinguishes the current political turmoil is that it has been going on for some time, and Yoon said that he has seen more people walk into his office to discuss feelings of anxiety or nervousness.

Kim Jong-woo, a professor of Oriental Medicine at the department of psychiatry at Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong, said he sees a different range of emotions among Koreans while the general sentiment had been one of anxiety.

"I think those who opposed the impeachment are anxious that the life they had known will no longer be," said Kim. People in this group are supporters of the former president who may have grown up under former President Park Chung-hee when the fear about war abounded, he said. For the candlelit protestors, Kim said that there had been anxiety there about attending rallies that in Korean history were known for violence.





Supporters of former President Park Geun-hye wave the national flag in this March 9 file photo, a day before the Constitutional Court ruling on her impeachment./ Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



"There was also anger about the injustice," he added. Anger can be dangerous when it is acted upon, but in the case of the candlelit protests, Kim said that a big consensus formed to parse the anger and anxiety into hope to bring about change.

A 56-year-old man named Wang who lives in Seoul said he felt vindicated. "If she had not been impeached, I would have been enraged. Now I feel we have confidence," he said. "The political agenda, which to date had always seemed to be in the hands of politicians, is now in the hands of voters," Wang said.

The days ahead are uncertain as Koreans must go to the polls on May 9 to elect a new president, but people like Wang are fresh with the newly-obtained civic empowerment.

People in their 20s also had various emotions. Y.S. Kim, a junior majoring in English Linguistics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, said that he also felt a small sense of achievement when news of the impeachment came. "Now with the presidential election ahead, I cannot deny there is expectation," he said.

Twenty-seven year old J.S. Park in Seoul, spoke about protecting herself from depressing political news. "I am sensitive, so I did not watch too much political news because I knew I would be affected." Park said her job was already stressful and she did not need to add to it, but added that she was looking forward to the May 9 election.

Kim of Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong assessed that it is time for Korean society to look at conflict as a healthy constant in life.

He also advises people to differentiate what is wrong from what is different. He said that the alleged influence-peddling by former President Park with her confidant Choi falls within the realm of right or wrong, while opinions held by the Korean people is within the latter.

For those still affected by the constant stream of breaking and not the brightest news concerning national politics, Kim advised them not to isolate themselves.

"A wise step would be to listen to people whose opinions may differ from yours or are the same, and decide for yourself. The key is to not shun social happenings around you," Kim said.

"Having to deal with stress requires a lot of energy, both physical and mental, so obviously people may experience anxiety or an inability to sleep," Yoon said.

While the old style of dealing with stress was either flight or fight, the professor advised people to "accept" that life is full of ups and downs.

"When we talk about happiness, it is about living a meaningful life," Yoon said, which invariably will entail pain. "People should accept this aspect about life," he said.

But there are also practical steps to take before stress prompts burn-out that can lead to irritation and an inability to achieve rapport among others. Three simple steps are increasing contact with people, nature and culture.

"To date, we have been trained on how to survive, but now we should seek something that makes us happy such as a hobby," Yoon said.
By Jun Ji-hye



Questions are arising over whether it was lawful for hairdressers to visit former President Park Geun-hye's private residence in southern Seoul to do her hair and make-up.



Critics argue that the visit could be a violation of the Public Health Control Act stipulating that hairdressers or makeup artists cannot offer beauty treatment outside their registered beauty salons or shops.



After the ousted head of state left Cheong Wa Dae and moved to her private house in Samseong-dong, Sunday, two hairdressers, who are sisters, have been seen visiting the house every day at about 7:30 a.m. and staying there for about an hour.



The elder sister, who runs the Tony & Guy hair salon in Cheongdam-dong, has been in charge of Park's hair and the younger one, in charge of make-up, for years while Park was in office.



One the day of the Sewol ferry sinking on April 16, 2014, Park had her hair styled by the elder sister at the presidential office, which provoked severe criticism for having wasted crucial hours in the state of emergency that left 304 dead.



The law has some exceptions that allow beauty treatment services to be offered outside of salons _ when a customer is not able to visit a salon due to a disease, when a customer needs to attend a wedding or other ceremonies, when a customer needs to appear in broadcast shootings, and other situations recognized by mayors or governors.



Critics argue that Park's case seems to not be included in any of these exceptions, so the hairdressers' visit to her private house would be illegal, which could make them subject to 2 million won in fines. If they are offering the service for free, it would not be illegal, but from a common-sense point of view, offering such a service for free is unlikely.



Gangnam-gu Office said that they have not received any reports about the hairdressers' visit, saying, "We cannot punish them only because they are visiting the house. We need to look into whether they were actually offering a service and whether the case is included in the exceptions."




By Kim Hyo-jin



The Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is pressuring the government to seek National Assembly approval for the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here.



It launched a special committee for the move Friday, signaling that it will step up protests against the U.S. anti-missile system ahead of the May 9 presidential election.



The committee will request a meeting with Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, Monday, to demand the government halt the deployment until it gets parliamentary ratification, said Rep. Kim Young-ho.



"We will urge Hwang to stop installing the THAAD battery promptly and get the Assembly's consent first," he said.



While the government says it has the sole authority to decide on THAAD deployment, the DPK claims it is an issue requiring the Assembly's ratification because it involves providing land worth over 100 billion won to the U.S. Forces Korea.



"According to the Constitution, treaties involving national security or deals that put financial pressure on the country should undergo Assembly ratification," Rep. Shim Jae-kwon, head of the committee, said. "Under the Status of Forces Agreement, provision of land requires ratification."



Party Chairwoman Choo Mi-ae said earlier that the party is considering asking the Constitutional Court to decide whether the government infringed on the Assembly's authority by pushing ahead with the deployment.



Along with the legal action, the party can also apply for an injunction, and if the court recognizes it, the deployment of the THAAD battery could be halted until the court makes a final ruling. The first elements of the system, including two launchers, arrived in Korea last week and military officials say it can be operational as early as April.



The DPK is encouraging other parties  the People's Party and the Justice Party  to join them in appealing to the court.



The party and its leading presidential hopeful Moon Jae-in have claimed that the THAAD deployment issue should be handed over to the next government so it can seek a public consensus and go through diplomatic consultations with neighboring countries.



They question whether it is worth risking economic relations with China whose retaliatory measures against Korean businesses are already dimming the prospect of economic growth.



The government, led by Acting President Hwang, rather accelerated the process of deployment, saying it was necessary to counter North Korea's increasing missile and nuclear threats.



The DPK views that the move was made so as not to allow any room for the next government to alter the plan.

"Hwang should just focus on managing the presidential election and stabilizing the livelihood of the people for his remaining term," Shim said.




Universities in China have been ranked second and third in a survey of Asian universities published on Thursday.

Peking University is in second place in the Times Higher Education Asia University rankings for the second year running, while Tsinghua University climbed two places to third.

For the second year in a row, the National University of Singapore topped the ranking.

Joining Chinas institutions in the top 10 are two Hong Kong universities. But the University of Hong Kong, the citys oldest university, slipped one place to fifth.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology stayed at sixth, the same as 2016.

Climbing up the overall rankings are Chinese University of Hong Kong which rose two places to 11th, while City University edged up four places and Polytechnic University ranked 17th, up from last years 22nd.

On the Chinese mainland, Shanghai Jiao Tong University jumped from 32nd to 18th on the table, Fudan University jumped moved to 16th from 19th place and Zhejiang University also broke into the top 20 in the rankings to 19, 6 places up from 2016.

Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings said: Conversations about Asia as the next higher education superpower have tended to focus closely on one nation above all others: China.

He said that China had been transformed into an international research power and set an example for other nations to follow.

Timothy W Tong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University president told the Times Higher Education: The complementary fundamental strengths of Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland help to power the city states universities to create broader economic and social impacts through innovative research and teaching.

Tong noted that many collaborative opportunities have recently opened up for Hong Kong researchers and professors, such as Beijings Belt and Road initiative, which offered unprecedented possibilities to advance research and nurture students in the fields of trade, financial services, construction, engineering and hotel management.

Universities are judged in five areas  teaching, research, citations, international outlook and knowledge transfer.
By Kaushik Basu



NEW YORK  US President Donald Trump's protectionist threats against China have spurred much concern. If he follows through on his promises and, say, officially labels China a currency manipulator or imposes higher import tariffs, the short-run consequences  including a trade war  could be serious. But, in the longer term, a turn toward protectionism by the United States could well be a blessing in disguise for China.



There is no doubt that China is going through a difficult phase in its development. After three decades of double-digit GDP growth  an achievement with few historical parallels  the pace of China's economic expansion has slowed markedly. The combination of rising labor costs and weaker demand for Chinese exports has reduced China's annual GDP growth to 6.9% in 2015 and 6.7% last year. The Chinese government has now lowered its growth target for 2016-2020 to 6.5-7%.



This is still a respectable pace; but it is not the best China could do. As Justin Yifu Lin and Wing Thye Woo have noted, in 1951, when Japan's per capita income relative to that of the US was the same as China's is today, Japan was experiencing sustained growth of 9.2%.



One impediment to such growth for China is a heavy debt burden. A stress-test analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute found that if China continued to pursue its debt- and investment-led growth model, the ratio of nonperforming loans could rise from 1.7% today (according to official figures) to 15% in just two years. That said, the risk of NPLs is not news to the People's Bank of China, which will, the evidence suggests, take steps to mitigate it.



Unfortunately, debt isn't China's only problem. Its dominance in global exports  the main engine of its growth in recent decades  has eroded. India's trade-to-GDP ratio overtook China's last year. And, while labor productivity is rising steadily in China, it remains less than 30% of advanced-country levels.



Given these challenges, it may seem strange to assert that China may now be on the verge of ascending to a new level of global influence. But, because of Trump's policy approach, China has a new and important opportunity to do just that.



While trade and capital flows require regulation, openness, on balance, does vastly more good than harm. Trump's "neo-protectionist" policies  which aim to limit the flow of goods, services, and people to the US  are rooted in nothing other than myopic xenophobia. In the end, this will isolate the US far more than China or Mexico.



History bears this out. On the eve of World War I, Argentina was among the world's wealthiest countries, behind the US, but ahead of Germany. Since then, Argentina's economy has deteriorated substantially for two reasons: inadequate investment in education (a mistake that Trump may also make) and heightened protectionism.



The rise of nationalism in the 1920s culminated in 1930, when far-right nationalist forces overthrew Argentina's government. The new government  which was bitterly opposed to liberalism, not to mention foreigners  raised tariffs sharply in several sectors. On average, import tariffs rose from 16.7% in 1930 to 28.7% in 1933. Jobs in traditional sectors were saved, but productivity declined. Today, Argentina is not even among the top 50 economies worldwide.



So Trump's policy approach can be expected to do great damage to the US economy and have far-reaching implications, given America's prominent global role. But self-imposed economic isolation, combined with an inward-looking "America first" foreign-policy approach, will also create space for other countries  including China, India, and Mexico  to increase their own international clout.



Consider Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the mega-regional trade deal involving 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, but not China. The TPP certainly had its flaws  not least that it would have conferred disproportionate and unfair benefits on large corporations. But it had plenty of redeeming qualities, and was being celebrated in countries like Malaysia and Vietnam for the access it would give to the US market.



Now that the rug beneath these countries' feet has been pulled out, China can lend a helping hand. Already, China has boosted its regional investments considerably, including through its "one belt, one road" initiative. Without the TPP facilitating capital flows among its member countries, China is likely to overtake the US as the largest source of foreign direct investment for the ASEAN countries. China is also seeking to deepen its economic ties with TPP signatories Australia and New Zealand.



Likewise, China has seized the opportunity afforded by Trump's ill-conceived plan to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to reach out to America's southern neighbor. Just over a month after Trump's election, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi met with Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu, pledging to deepen diplomatic ties and increase flight connections and trade. China is already Brazil's top trading partner. It can now aim for the same position in Mexico, and perhaps all of Latin America.



As Trump adopts increasingly closed-minded and xenophobic rhetoric, Chinese President Xi Jinping is toning down his nationalist language and sounding increasingly like a global statesman. China, he seems to recognize, now faces the chance not just to achieve another round of economic expansion, but also to secure a far more prominent role in global decision-making and policy.





Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank, is Professor of Economics at Cornell University. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate.




Time is right to squeeze leaders on NK, THAAD



U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was right to assess the past 20 years of America's North Korea policy as a failure as illustrated by the progress the rogue state has made in developing nuclear weapons and missiles.



Tillerson was also right that a new approach is needed. He did not reveal what the new approach is.



Obviously, the reasons for this monumental policy failure should be considered when seeking a successful alternative.



For that, Tillerson, who will head to Beijing on the last leg of his three-nation tour after Tokyo and Seoul, and, by extension, the Trump administration, should start by putting further pressure on Beijing so it will behave.



Bejing leaders claim China has limited influence on the North _ a blatant lie when considering it is the North's only enabler and provides a lifeline for the impoverished state. Penalizing Chinese companies for trading with North Korea and keeping a closer watch on Beijing's compliance with United Nation's sanctions on Pyongyang would reveal the extent of China's deception.



China opposes the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, a U.S. missile interceptor, as a ruse to drive a wedge in the Seoul-Washington alliance. In a way, this tactic is showing signs of working, with Korean merchants complaining about the dwindling number of Chinese tourists and the authorities there harassing companies. Liberal politicians, including leading presidential candidates, have vowed to stop the THAAD battery if they take power.



Therefore, Tillerson should clearly tell Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to stop the THAAD masquerade and reason with its client state to put a hold on its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. This would ease fears in Korea and prevent any split in the alliance.



China and the North maintain a "lip-and-teeth" relationship to use the WMD and THAAD as a package to fend off the expected U.S. onslaught that will inevitably spread to trade and the South China Sea. So solving the THAAD dispute could prove useful in taming the North. .



For this new approach to succeed, the U.S. should exert the greatest possible pressure, short of war, on Beijing and Pyongyang. Trump's Republican predecessor, George W. Bush boasted about his government's tough approach toward the North by talking about a "bold approach" and a military option, but this failed to emerge during the period of failure cited by Tillerson.



If Tillerson were in Tokyo and Seoul for a final briefing on Trump's North Korea policy, he would report to his boss that it would be more realistic to recognize the North as a nuclear state _ as former Secretary of Defense William Perry suggested in an interview with The Korea Times _ and apply a powerful tit-for-tat approach.




Park Geun-hye arrives at her private house in Samseong-dong, Seoul, on Mar. 12. / Yonhap



By Oh Young-jin





Koreans have always been team players, whether they like it or not.

With perils coming from every direction, Koreans have come to take unity as a survival strategy, while division is the ticket to perdition.

Japanese colonial education during its 36-year occupation brainwashed them, constantly hammering home the message: Koreans are born to be divisive and are fated not to live independently.

The inter-Korean division between the capitalist South and the "communist" North that has continued after the 1950-53 Korean War until now is also thrown in for good measure into the mix that reinforces this totalitarian psychology.

As a result, Koreans are alarmed at the first sign of division, worrying that it could possibly lead to the collapse of their nation. In this environment, conformity is the rule; with a challenge at it being an exception that can't be tolerated.

One such case recently took place when ex-President Park Geun-hye said, "The truth will come to light," upon returning to her private residence, Sunday, after the Constitutional Court stripped her of the presidency in its impeachment ruling.

Park came under fire for disputing the ruling and had to clarify through her aide that she had accepted it.

Another case is about presidential candidates being called upon to send a message of unity to heal the national division after months of demonstrations for and against the impeached head of state.

Moon Jae-in, a liberal frontrunner who is seen as a shoo-in, if the presidential election was held today, held a press conference to do exactly that. Others are following.

If the beauty of democracy is diversity and tolerance, then why should everybody adhere to the one-size-fits-all rule of conformity or risk being ostracized?

True, it is pitiful that Park failed to understand the magnitude of her crimes against the nation  sharing the presidential mandate with her friend and promoting their interests ahead of the people.

But shouldn't she have the right to disagree with the accusations and verdict as much as we call her the B-word? After all, she has denied all along that she had sought any personal gains, although she admitted to a lapse of judgment in allowing Choi Soon-sil to act the way she did.

Isn't it the tyranny of the majority?

The same goes with Moon's call for unity.

He complied with the people's call of the day but it remains to be seen whether it would make him a better candidate or, if he wins, a better president.

Or have we missed something?

The candlelit protests that brought down Park and the counter-demonstrations by "Taegeukgi Units" supporting her have proved the maturity of our democracy.

If the past serves as any guide, Gwanghwamun Square should have been a war zone.

But for weeks, it was a picnic area for people from all walks of life. The turnout included couples, mothers with babies in strollers, fathers with children, high school students and the like, with performances of all sorts being staged.

It was a moment that showed resolving such a serious business as toppling a corrupt leader could be possible without Molotov cocktails, iron pipes and broken pieces of pavement. It defied the tone of the country's violent protest history often against dictators. We have felt it.

Giving an additional shine to this new sign of maturity are pro-Park protests that were peaceful as well.

The two sides, each side numbering tens of thousands, protested peacefully side by side, being separated by a cordon of police buses in downtown Seoul.

One lesson is hidden in plain sight: we Koreans can afford to be different and enjoy being so, depriving the old taboo of its relevance. It means the restoration of our important right so denied by the convenience of the elite in governance.

In a way, the victory of Korea's recent protests comes in the same vein as Brexit in the ordinary Britons' decision to exit the European Union, and the U.S. election of maverick Donald Trump as president. They have debunked the ineptitude of the governing class.

Those leaders have reacted in two ways  taking evasive action or jumping on the coattails of the public wrath.

Irrespective of their political stripes, Korean politicians have taken the second path, trying to identify with the protestors in an effort to gain an advantage in the upcoming election. In the process, their colossal failure to speak for the masses and prevent their anger from spilling over appears all but forgotten. People have done the leaders' job, and so, the leaders should have been fired.

The British ruling class and the American establishment are still in denial, blaming the viral spread of public anger on ordinary people's ignorance. It's their hubris.

Now, the advent of the age of ordinary people appears unstoppable.

In this age, divisiveness, the byproduct of diversity, is no longer a vice but can be a virtue, a new normal and a sign of confidence.

The elite should realize what their new job is all about: rise up to their new calling of the day  cleaning after us. Even if we the ordinary people should enjoy our new-found privilege, the sky won't fall. The elite would break the fall, just in case it does.

Oh Young-jin is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer. Contact foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com.
By Kang Seung-woo

U.S. consumers can order LG Electronics' latest high-end smartphone, the G6, from Friday (local time), with major wireless carriers set to offer various promotions.

As part of its efforts to pre-empt the U.S. market ahead of upcoming debuts of its competitors, LG is also giving away a Google smart speaker for early bird customers.

LG phones have stood out in the U.S., the world's biggest premium phone market, so response from American buyers may determine the future of the handset that has become a big hit in Korea since its release on March 10.

Although LG has yet to announce the release date officially, the fancy device is expected to reach U.S. consumers on April 7.

According to AT&T, the second-largest U.S. provider of mobile telephone services, G6 buyers will get another G6 phone after credits over 30 months when they add another line on the network.

In addition, those who buy a G6 on a two-year agreement will get an LG Watch Sport for $49.99.

Those who pre-order the LG phone through smallest provider Sprint will get a free 49-inch LG HDTV, valued at $349.99, and business bellwether Verizon will also offer a free 43-inch LG smart TV to new customers.

Regardless of which carrier people choose, early buyers will receive a free Google Home, a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant, otherwise priced at $129.

LG said the smart speaker worked seamlessly with the LG G6, which uses Google's intelligent personal assistant.

"At home or on the go, help is always close with the LG G6 and Google Home - both with the Google Assistant built-in. For a limited time, get a Google Home on us," LG says on its U.S. website.

After a series of setbacks with previous models, LG is set to revive its unprofitable smartphone business by focusing on the U.S. and Europe as well as Korea without launching the G6 in China, where it reportedly has less than 1 percent market share.
By Yoon Sung-won



LG Group and its Chairman Koo Bon-moo are setting an example of social responsibility through donations.



Though the conglomerate usually does not make a fuss about its beneficence, its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities are being hailed amid recent corruption scandals involving Korea's major businesses.



According to industry sources, LG Electronics has been providing free repair services of its electronics devices for social welfare centers nationwide for more than a decade.



An LG Electronics official said, "We have provided such services for people in need since 2004 as a part of our CSR campaigns, not for public relations."



LG Group has also awarded citizens who have done good deeds, through LG Welfare Foundation since 2015. The award was established under the chairman's emphasis that corporations should reward those who sacrificed themselves for the country and social justice, according to the group.



The latest award was presented to Katabilla Ketiye Gedara Nimal Siri. On Feb. 10, the 39-year-old Sri Lankan worker in Gunwi, North Gyeongsang Province, jumped into a house that was on fire and rescued an old woman.



The company presented the award and donated 30 million won for burns treatment. "I have felt grateful for senior citizens in the neighborhood for being nice to me. I was so determined to jump into the flames to rescue [her]," Nimal said.



LG Group said Nimal was the first foreigner to receive the award.



Besides the award, LG has donated 310 million, including 10 million won collected voluntarily from its employees, to the victims of a fish market fire in Yeosu, South Jeolla Province, Jan. 15.



LG Group's chiefs are also known for their clean sheets. Koo and GS Group Chairman Huh Chang-soo are the only two heads of Korea's major conglomerates who have not been prosecuted.



In January, Koo made a bold decision to quit the Federation of Korean Industries, the nation's top business lobby, before any other conglomerates with regard to the political scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye and her confidant Choi Soon-sil.



At that time, Koo was summoned to a parliamentary hearing alongside other chiefs of conglomerates. They were questioned about their contribution to the fund-raising for two organizations whose operation was spearheaded by Choi _ the Mir Foundation and K-Sports Foundation.



LG Group provided 7.8 billion won for the last two years to the two foundations, which is the fourth-largest following Samsung, Hyundai Motor and SK groups.



Koo, who hardly received attention during the hearing, said, "In reality, a business has to follow government policy," hinting that the group was forced to pay the money. He also urged lawmakers at the hearing to legislate a law that prohibits the government to force such donations from businesses.



Unlike other tycoons, who were busy making excuses and denying any wrongdoing, Koo was praised for his frank answers.




By Park Jae-hyuk





Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo Hyundai Motor Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun

Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo and Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun have maintained their seats as directors of the group's major subsidiaries.

According to the Seoul-based group, Friday, the chairman was re-elected at the general meeting of stockholders to serve another three-year term as internal director of the automaker and its affiliates Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Powertech and Hyundai E&C.

"Hyundai Motor Group has marked the 50th anniversary this year," he said in a statement. "I will try my best for our company to overcome internal and external uncertainties."

National Pension Service, the group's second-largest shareholder that had opposed Chung's reelection in 2008 and 2011, reportedly cast a blank ballot this time.

Back then, the Center for Good Corporate Governance, a progressive civic group, advised stockholders to oppose the re-election, noting his record of embezzlement and malpractice.

On the same day, Hyundai Mobis shareholders also re-elected Vice Chairman Chung, the chairman's only son and heir apparent of the country's second-largest conglomerate, to serve another three-year term as an in-house director.

The vice chairman has maintained the seat since 2002, and is also a director of Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Steel.

The two and seven other internal and external directors will be paid up to 15 billion won ($13 million) this year.
By Park Jae-hyuk

GM Korea has been fined 1.06 billion won ($883,000) after its Next Spark and New Malibu vehicles manufactured by the Korean unit of U.S. automaker General Motors were found to violate safety standards.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Friday, some Next Spark mini-cars possibly have software problems which may cause too much engine oil to be injected.

The problematic model's engine output was 7.3 percent lower than the car's certified specification, while the allowable difference in power output should not exceed 5 percent.

The ministry fined GM Korea 519 million won, a thousandth of the model's total sales, for this violation and ordered the company to recall 44,567 Next Spark vehicles made between May 31 last year and Jan. 24 this year.

In addition, some New Malibu midsize sedans were found to have failures in lights when their turn signals are on.

For this safety issue caused by a software error, the ministry fined GM Korea 541 million won, which is also a thousandth of the model's sales, and ordered the company to recall 21,439 Malibu vehicles produced between May 10 and Oct. 18 last year.

GM Korea said it would offer free repair services for the Next Spark and the New Malibu models from next Monday and this Friday, respectively, at all GM Korea service centers.

Meanwhile, the ministry also ordered the recall of eight Ducati Multistrada 1200S motorcycles made between Sept. 7 and 30 last year.

The ministry said some of the Italian motorcycles imported by Moto Rossa had fuel leaks. Moto Rossa will offer free repairs from Monday.
This is the seventh in a series highlighting operations of foreign luxury brands in Korea.  ED.





Gucci Group Korea President Karim Fettous

By Park Jae-hyuk

Gucci has recently recovered its reputation in the leather goods market, after appointing Alessandro Michele as creative director in 2015. Its global sales rose 17 percent in the third quarter last year, while other luxury brands suffered under the long-term economic slowdown.

Taking advantage of its high popularity, however, the Italian fashion house is suspected of having discriminated against consumers in Korea in terms of pricing policy.

According to industry officials, Friday, the luxury brand cut the prices of its goods by up to 8 percent in Japan last September, while raising the prices of handbags and jewelry marketed in Korea last year by 6 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively.

"Considering multiple factors including tax, tariffs and transport cost, our global head office has set product prices appropriate for each country," a Gucci Group Korea spokesman said.

But the explanation doesn't seem persuasive enough for Korean consumers who are irritated by the inconsistent pricing policy. Against this backdrop, some resort to overseas direct purchases as a more reasonable choice for getting Gucci products.

Korea Consumer Agency data showed last year that Gucci was the most frequently purchased foreign luxury brand through overseas online shopping malls. Respondents preferred buying Gucci to Prada or Chanel, and said the online malls offer 27.4 percent lower prices on average than domestic outlets.

"Overseas direct purchases are merely consumer choice," the spokesman said. "Mentioning the issue seems unrelated to us."

Industry sources said prices of most luxury brands sold here are confidentially decided by global head offices. They said duty free shops or department stores accommodating the brands cannot influence the prices.
An unmistakable Chinese sound filled the concert hall during the annual visit of Prince Charles to London's Royal College of Music last week.

On a visit to the Royal College of Music, London, Prince Charles listens to a performance on the guzheng given to him during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK in 2015.

Marking a quarter of a century as Royal College of Music president, the heir to the British throne had brought with him a rare 21-string guzheng, also known as a Chinese zither, that President Xi Jinping had given him during Xi's state visit to the United Kingdom in 2015.

Prince Charles has now loaned the instrument to the RCM and it will join the college's collection of "extraordinary instruments" that includes the earliest-dated guitar from the 16th century, the earliest known stringed keyboard instrument from the 15th century, and a collection of 17th century English viols.

Xiao Ran, a guzheng virtuoso from the Xi'an Conservatory of Music, China, played Chinese classic Evening Song from the Fishing Boat on the instrument that the prince donated.

Xi gave the guzheng to Prince Charles during a visit to Clarence House, the prince's London residence, in October 2015 in thanks for his efforts in the "preservation of Chinese culture".

With a 2,500-year history, the guzheng is one of China's oldest instruments, and is still widely played in Chinese classical arrangements. The instrument has also made sporadic appearances in Western music.

A statement from the RCM said the loan was "especially fitting" because the college recently signed an agreement with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to establish a new joint-institute in China, the first such partnership of any British music conservatory.

RCM director Colin Lawson said: "This new relationship will enable aspiring music students in Shanghai to benefit from the rich musical heritage of the RCM."

Lin Zaiyong, president of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, said the RCM was well placed to provide the conservatory with some of the most advanced ideas and resources available in musical education.

During the next three years, the new institute in Shanghai will run an education program for musically gifted high school students in China, and offer exchange opportunities for Royal College of Music and Shanghai Conservatory of Music students and faculty.
Super Junior's Kyuhyun have finally wrapped up his Japan tour. The K-pop idol will now depart for Hong Kong after visiting 6 cities in Japan.

Kyuhyun have performed 16 times during his visit in 6 of Japan's major cities. According to All Kpop, Kyuhyun have visited the cities of Kobe, Ishikawa, Sapporo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Yokohama for his "Super Junior - Kyuhyun Japan Tour 2017 ~One Voice~".

In total, Kyuhyun performed for his 65,000 fans during the entire tour that kicked off in Jan. 18. Kyuhyun also sang songs from his Japanese album "One Voice", a medley from Super Junior's hit songs, and requests from his loving fans as well. The K-pop idol will now depart for the next leg of his tour in Hong Kong.

In other news, Kyuhyun was recently in Taipei to perform "At Gwanghwamun" when the hotel he stayed at caught fire. The K-pop idol was left by his staff and suffered early-stage smoke inhalation, reports Digital Music News.

Kyuhyun was reportedly sleeping at the time and was not aware of the blaze that started in the hotel. His staff, however, evacuated the building without the idol.

Kyuhyun's staff then went to a nearby Starbucks. They staff tweeted and joked about the situation and even took selfies of them with the hashtag #SleepingAtStarbucks and #MeetingOfFireVictims. Savage!

Naturally, Kyuhyun's fans were enraged with the incident, even accusing his staff and manager of "attempted murder". Kyuhyun then made a statement in his Twitter account clarifying what really happened during that night.

"To keep things short, I was in my room with my manager and staff to prepare the comments for my performance, and missed the timing to evacuate," stated Kyuhyun. "We heard that the fire had been controlled, so I chose to stay in the room over going down the stairs and breathing in the smoke that way."

Kyuhyun even blamed himself because he was the one who insisted to stay at the hotel to continue the work they were doing. Unfortunately, the damage has been done by the fans to his manager and proceeded to deactivate his Instagram account after receiving so much hate.
A full house listened attentively to a fascinating lecture by award-winning Stanford University history professor Thomas S. Mullaney, Feb. 21, at the Chinese Historical Society Archives Building in the Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego. The lecture was part of the opening for the exhibit, Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age, on display through April 16, at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Extension of the museum, 328 J St.

We are very excited because ours is the first museum in the country to show this exhibit to the public before it travels all around the world! said Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, executive director of the museum, who recently took over from retiring leader Alex Chuang. This exhibit is highly important because this is the first time the history and significance of Chinese Information Technology (IT) has been examined in a scholarly manner.

It was just the right combination of good luck, good fortune and good connections that brought the exhibit to our fair city.

Tanya Aubin, the museums communications coordinator, added, The exhibit is headed next to the SFO Airport Museum in San Francisco, followed by The Museum of Chinese in America in New York, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, before ending up in Beijing and Nanking.

It consists of items from one of the worlds largest collections of materials pertaining to East Asian IT, encompassing artifacts and texts from the fields of Chinese, Japanese and Korean printing, telegraphy, typewriting and computing. Among the items on display is a pair of rare Chinese and Japanese typewriters, a 1980s Chinese word processor, an interactive Chinese character-generating computer, plus numerous books, pamphlets and posters.

Professor Mullaney introduced the exhibition by stating his purpose was to explore how one of the oldest written languages in the world found its place in the 21st century digital world.

I want to demonstrate, he continued, how the currently popular and accepted history of IT development  which focuses on westerners such as Steve Jobs, founder of APPLE, and the like  is incomplete and erroneous because contributions from East Asia have been left out. In a nutshell, the evidence suggests that East Asians working on the development of a Chinese language typewriter made substantial contributions to IT that ended up influencing the development of the modern computer.

My hope is that visitors will gain a deeper appreciation of the Chinese innovators who made the Chinese typewriter and word processor possible. These Chinese may have experienced a series of grand failures in developing a usable typewriter, but these failures added up to something highly significant.

Mullaney went on to explain that 16 percent of the worlds population (about 1.2 billion people), speak Chinese, which is one of the six languages of the United Nations. Although there are many variants and dialects, the majority of speakers use Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect.

Mullaney said Chinese is one of the worlds oldest languages, dating back over 3,000 years. Although spoken Chinese has changed quite a bit over the millennium, the written script has remained about the same. The first examples of written Chinese were found on divinatory oracle bones, dated to 1,250 BCE, during the Shang Dynasty. The first Chinese books, such as the I Ching or Book of Changes, were written during the Late Shang period.

Although the Chinese language has survived under changing conditions, people were very worried its days were numbered and it would become obsolete as humanity moved into the modern digital age. How could Chinese, a logographic form of writing with no alphabet and over 70,000 characters  and with a knowledge of at least 3,000 characters needed to read a daily newspaper  be fitted onto a keyboard for use with a computer, the Internet or cell phones?

Faced with this seemingly impossible dilemma, the Chinese got to work trying to construct such an instrument. The first Chinese typewriter, called the Tong Xhi, came to life in 1916. It was developed by Hou-Kun Chow, while he was studying at MIT. But it never made it into production. The second Chinese typewriter, the Ming Kwai or Quick & Clear, was built by Lin Yutang in 1946.

Wan Runnan of the Stone Typewriter Company in China developed the first usable word processor in 1984. Called the MS2400, it made his company one of the most successful Chinese businesses during the 1980s and 1990s.

According to Beres, For the longest time, the idea of a Chinese typewriter was laughed at and seen as a metaphor for something that was absurd, complex and backward, but the truth is that its now possible to input Chinese into a computer at a much faster rate than English  making you wonder where the future of computing just might go!

IF YOU GO: Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age, runs through April 16 at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Extension of the Chinese Historical Society Archives Building, 328 J St. in downtown San Diego. Museum hours are 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $5, free to children. Group tours available, (619) 338-9888, e-mail info@sdchm.org or visit sdchm.org
Historic ties of north Meck span throughout region Though the north Mecklenburg area didnt see significant population growth until a few decades ago, its rich history dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was the basis of...

An easier-than-expected first mammogram experience HUNTERSVILLE  Scheduling a cancer screening probably ranks somewhere on your to-do list between "clean out the garage" and "donate those clothes that don't fit." Sure, you'll get to it at...
This article appears in the March 17, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Hack Attack: Pearl Harbor or Watergate?

A Righ t To Contro l t h e Narrativ e, o r Truth?

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chair of the German political party

Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BuSo)

[Print version of this article]

March 11Six weeks after President Trump took office, the neoliberal Establishment has still not reconciled itself with the results of the United States democratic election. The neoliberal, globalist mainstream media are in a head-over-heels, non-stop campaign, claiming that Russian hacking attacks helped Trump to win.

In reality, something entirely different is going on: First, Trump has promised and is determined to end the British imperial policy of endless war in the Middle East, and instead to put the U.S. relationship with Russia and China on a rational basis. And second, this whole campaign is occurring against a backdrop in which the trans-Atlantic financial system could implode at any minute, and in which Trump, according to his press spokesman Sean Spicer, is sticking to his intention to institute the Glass-Steagall system of bank separation, which is a red flag for theCity of London and Wall Street.

Click on any image below to view full size



The Washington Post and New York Times repeat daily the narrative of the alleged Russia-gate, and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has even brought out the big guns and compared the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails to Pearl Harbor, Japans attack which brought the United States into World War II, and to 9/11. Russia has therefore, he claims, attacked the core of our democracy.

But what was the actual content revealed in the first round of Wikileaks publication of these emails? They exposed that the Democratic Party leadership had massively manipulated the electoral process in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders. Second, Wikileaks published the speech Hillary Clinton gave before Wall Street bankers, in which she made it clear that, as President, she would represent Wall Streets interests. Robert Parry, the investigative journalist who won an unassailable reputation for his expose of the Iran-Contra scandal, pointed out in his latest article (The Policy Behind Russia-gate) that it hardly makes sense to call the leaks an attack on the core of our democracy if they helped the American people (as is their right) to be informed of these essential facts about a presidential candidate.

RT video grab

Just as the witch-hunt against Trump and several of his cabinet members and advisers reached a new high point, Wikileaks began to publish a new round of intelligence that surpasses the revelations of Edward Snowden. These revelations concern the total surveillance whichin addition to the NSAthe CIA (and the British intelligence service GCHQ) carries out throughout the entire world through tapping into smartphones, tablets, computers, smart-TVs, and other electronic devices. This involves an unparalleled breach of the law, which has not yet led to a storm of outrage only because the frog is being cooked slowly, as the saying goes: The frog, thrown into cold water, doesnt notice that the temperature is slowly rising until it is too late. The CIA is strictly prohibited from carrying out operations within the United States against Americans. This time Mrs. Merkel has not even ventured her pussyfooting statement that Spying among friendsthat is not acceptable.

But the revelation that the CIA has the technical capacity to take control of peoples electronic devices and carry out hacking and other operations under a false flag, was also part of the new Wikileaks release. That raises the legitimate question as to whether the alleged Russian hacking attacks may not have been carried out from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginiaor perhaps from the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, which has been identified as the secondary base of operations for CIA activities in Europe, China, and the Middle East. The very fact that letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian names appeared in several of the hacking operations raises the question of false flag operations, since the most savvy hackers would hardly be so stupid as to leave their calling card on the tray.

These latest Wikileaks releases have turned the tide in the United States. The alleged links of the Trump team to Russia are no longer the only focus, but attention is now turned to the question of who is responsible for the illegal passing of information about the conversations of Trump associates with, for example, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, conversations that occurred in the reasonable pursuit of their functions as senators or members of the transition team. The Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley, which is probing these questions, is now investigating in two directionsnot only the alleged contacts of the Trump team with Russian institutions but, most notably, where the illegal leaks are coming from within the intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, some former members of the intelligence community are speaking up, such as William Binney, one of the developers of the global NSA surveillance systemthus one of the top experts in this area and today a whistleblower like Edward Snowdenwho condemn the CIAs methods as absolutely unconstitutional. They say that these practices involve a total corruption of the legal system, that the United States is already a police state, and dangerously close to being a totalitarian state.

It may transpire that the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic Party emails to help elect Trump was by no means a Pearl Harbor event, but that, on the contrary, Trumps friend of many years, Roger Stone, is right in his evaluation: Stone, who participated in many Republican election campaigns and administrations after serving as a member of the Nixon Administration, says that as an active witness of the scandals that ended Nixons political career, this current affair is far more serious than Watergate. He says it constitutes the gravest breach of law and public morality in the history of the United States.

As for one of the questions that has now become relevant, as to who arranged for a request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authorization to surveil Trump, Stone stressed that it is improbable that it could have happened without Obamas agreement. In the Nixon case, the truth is that he didnt actually know in advance about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, but despite that, he had to take responsibility for the crime. Today it is only a question of time as to when Obama, the former Secretary of Defense, and the heads of the CIA and FBI have to testify before a Grand Jury, and the whole issue could potentially become the greatest scandal in American history, Stone said. Very soon, the question will be: What did Obama know, and when did he know it?

U.S., Russia, China Must Cooperate

The neoliberals and neoconservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are acting like children who shut their eyes and think that it makes them invisible. The whole world is talking about the bankruptcy of the working model of this Establishment, which thinks only of its own advantage, at the expense of the general welfare.

Donald Trumpwho surely isnt perfect and must still demonstrate whether the trust placed in him was justified, and in whose administration there lurk all kinds of potential submarineswas elected because a section of the American public that the neoliberal Establishment had written off, had had absolutely enough of endless wars, wars that had cost $6 trillion over 15 years, ruined countless soldiers and their families psychologically, and left them penniless; they had had enough of rescue packages for Wall Street, of the drug epidemic, of a life without a future.

The arrogant and pig-headed commentators in Europe should learn from the way that the strategic change is perceived in other parts of the world. On March 8at his annual press conference at the National Peoples CongressChinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed anew that Chinas objective is to stabilize the world situation through cooperation among the United States, Russia, and China, and thus promote worldwide economic, technological, and scientific development. The modern infrastructure projects that China has already initiated in 60 nations along the New Silk Road offer a platform for the most brilliant prospects for the whole world, if the most important nations participate. The New Silk Road initiative comes from China, he said, but it belongs to the whole world, and its success would benefit all nations.

Xinhua/Bao Dandan

It is admittedly difficult for people in Germanywho are faced with the totally lock-step mainstream media and their hysterical anti-Trump campaign, their demonization of Russian President Putin, and their ongoing negative reporting on Chinato form a clear picture of what is happening in the world. But one thing should be clear to anyone who thinks it through: The worlds problems can only be solved if the United States, Russia, and China cooperate. And only the political forces in Germany which are aligned with this perspective deserve to be supported.

Germany has a fantastic opportunity to bring its great cultural and scientific tradition into the shaping of the new paradigm of cooperation among all nations in win-win collaboration in the expansion of the New Silk Road. Dont let the narratives of the mass media block the way.
This article appears in the March 17, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Riemann Refutes Euler:

Background to a Breakthrough

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

[Print version of this article]

Editors note: The magazine 21st Century Science & Technology published, in its Winter 1995 edition, an English translation of a collection of early writings of Bernhard Riemann. We publish here Lyndon LaRouches introduction, Riemann Refutes Euler, by permission of 21st Century.

In the following pages, 21st Century presents the first known publication in English translation, of a group of posthumously published early writings of the famous physicist Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866). These have the special significance of providing some relatively indispensable background for understanding how Riemann came to develop his earthshaking discoveries of 1853-1854.

The special relevance of these pieces, pertains to the fact, that there can be no competent appraisal of Riemanns work, which does not treat his writings as, like those of Karl Weierstrass, a devastating refutation of Leonhard Eulers savage attacks on Gottfried Leibniz. The formal issue is the question, cloaked in a discussion of mathematical series, whether or not mathematical discontinuities exist. The relevant substantive issue behind these attacks on Leibniz by the Eighteenth-Century newtonians, Dr. Samuel Clarke and Leonhard Euler, is, much more today than during Riemanns time, whether physics is a branch of mathematics, or mathematics a branch of physics.

As in the concluding sentence of his famous 1854 habilitation dissertation, Riemann demonstrated that, to settle the underlying issues of mathematics, one must depart that domain, into physics. That statement plants Riemann, like his sponsor Karl Gauss before him, fully within the domain of physics, rather than the virtual reality which one associates with the influence of Bertrand Russell and the Bourbaki Golem upon much of todays teaching of mathematics. The posthumously published papers presented in English translation here, bear directly on Riemanns development of his approach to that issue.

Riemann and Economics

21st Centurys attention to Riemann reflects my own original work in a branch of physical science founded by Leibniz, known as physical economy. My discoveries in this field supplied the principal impetus for the mid-1970s founding of the Fusion Energy Foundation, which ricocheted into the later founding of 21st Century magazine. Although the principal part of my discoveries were not prompted by Riemanns work, the approach adopted for solving the mathematical problems posed by those discoveries was prompted almost entirely by Riemanns habilitation dissertation, leading to the designation of LaRouche-Riemann Method.

To introduce Riemanns posthumously published papers, I indicate the features of his dissertation which are most relevant to the problems of physical economy. To that end, consider, first, the place which mathematical discontinuities occupy in Riemanns discovery, and then, the significance of Riemanns emphasis on what he terms Geistesmassen in the posthumously published papers.

First, to define the significance of mathematical discontinuities, I restate Riemanns point of departure in his dissertation in my own words.

The origin of modern mathematics lies in what is commonly identified as a Euclidean notion of simple space-time. This idea of space-time pretends to represent the real universe, which it does not represent. It is an idea which is not a creation of the senses, but, rather, of the naive imagination. We merely imagine that space is defined by three senses of direction (backward-forward, up-down, side-to-side), and imagine that these might be extended without limit, and in perfectly uninterrupted continuity. We imagine that time is a single, limitless dimension of perfect continuity: backward-forward. Taken together, these presumptions of the imagination define a four-dimensional space-time manifold, or, in other words, a quadruply-extended space-time manifold.

The naive imagination attempts to locate perceptible bodies and their motions within such a quadruply extended manifold. It may be said fairly, that our imaginary space-time manifold is used as a kind of mental mirror, upon which we attempt to project reflections of motion of bodies in space-time. The result of such projections is a simple Euclidean sort of algebraic mathematics, which, we soon discover, is not a mathematics of the real universe.

Classical experiments, typified by the measurement of the curvature of the Earths surface by the ancient Eratosthenes of Platos Academy at Athens, supply measurable demonstration that the motion of bodies in physical space-time does not correspond to what a naive, algebraic notion of space-time suggests. We must add non-space-time dimensions, such as the notions of mass, charge, and so forth, to derive a mathematics which agrees with our measurement of the motions which are reflected, from physical space-time, upon that imaginary mirror known as simple space-time.

Thus, in place of a four-dimensional space-time of the imagination, the attempt to explore physical space-time presents us with a physical-space-time manifold of many more dimensions than the four dimensions of naive space-time. We call these added factors dimensions, because they can be scaled, according to the ordering-principle of greater than and less than, as we do the dimensions of naive space-time. Instead of saying n+4 dimensions, we include the four in our count of n; we speak, thus, of a physical-space-time manifold of n dimensions. Then, commonly, we attempt to portray motion within that physical-space-time, of n dimensions, in terms of its imaginary reflection upon a four-fold space-time.

In each case, the addition of a validatable new dimension to the physical-space-time manifold of reference, corresponds to a change in measurement, a change in the yardstick we must employ to measure the relevant motion, or analogous form of action. For example, Eratosthenes estimated that the Earth was a spheroid of about 7850 miles, from pole to pole (not a bad estimate for the time). This meant, that to measure motion along the surface of the Earth, we must use a yardstick of spherical trigonometry, rather than one appropriate to a simple Euclidean plane. Similarly, once Ole Rmer had demonstrated, in 1676, that the radiation of light was governed by a principle of retarded potential, Christiaan Huygens, in 1677, generalized principles of reflection and refraction accordingly, and, Jean Bernoulli and Leibniz demonstrated that the mathematics of the transcendental domains special relativity must supersede the algebraic methods of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.

The validation of the necessary addition of such an added physical dimension, by measurement, implies the challenge to be considered here. Each such addition signifies, that instead of an n-fold physical-space-time manifold, n is superseded by (n+1). This gives us a generalized term of topology, which we might express symbolically by (n+1)/n. The series of changes, from n to n+1 dimensions, is associated with a series of changes in the choice of the yardstick which we must employ to measure the relevant physical action.

This is also the problem which confronts us, in physical economy, as one may attempt to define the correspondence between scientific and technological progress, on the one side, and, on the other side, a general, resulting increase in the productive powers of labor, per capita, per household, and per square kilometer. For that case, the type of yardstick used is termed potential relative population-density; that yardstick changes its scale (per capita, per square kilometer) as the level of applied scientific and technological progress advances.

Science and Metaphor

All of the issues posed by Riemanns habilitation dissertation, while most profound, are so elementary that they might be understood at the level of a good secondary schools graduate. Once we accept his intention in that location, that paper is among the most lucid pieces of prose ever supplied to the literature of fundamental scientific discoveries. Admittedly, most of the classrooms putatively authoritative commentators have conveyed a contrary, confused view of this work. The failure of all such commentaries examined, is that the commentators, by refusing to accept the fact of what Riemann is saying, project upon him an intention which is axiomatically contrary to his own.

The axiomatic failures of such authoritative commentators occur on two levels.

Closer to the surface, they have sought to defend such post-1815 authorities in taught mathematics as Newton, Euler, Augustin Cauchy, et al. from the devastating refutation provided by Riemanns discovery. This centers around Eulers argument against Leibniz. That relatively more superficial axiomatic assertion, is the hysterical insistence of the positivists, that, ultimately, mathematical discontinuities do not exist.

On the deeper level, there is a more devastating issue, which the opponents of Leibniz and Riemann refuse to debate.

The radical positivists of the Bourbaki cult exemplify this deeper issue. The peculiar, Ockhamite deism of such positivist ideologues, is the dogma, that all questions of science must be settled by mathematical proofs delivered upon a blackboard, or, by a modern digital-computer system. Every demonstration that mathematical formalism is not the god of science, whether by Plato and his academy after him, or from moderns such as Leibniz or Riemann, fills such positivists with an obscene, irrationalist rage, akin in spirit and rationality to that of Marats or Dantons Jacobin mob.

This deeper of the two levels of axiomatic issues, underlies the assignment of Abbot Antonio Contis agent, Dr. Samuel Clarke, for the attacks upon Leibniz. This is the issue underlying the savage, posthumous attacks upon Leibniz by the Conti salons Euler. This was also the basis for the hyena-like attack, led by the devotees of Ernst Mach, upon Max Planck, during the period of World War I.

Once we acknowledge the primary historical fact of mathematical-physical knowledge, that each of those discoveries of physical principle which is validated by the appropriate measurement, presents mathematics with a topological challenge of the indicated (n+1)/n form, mathematical formalism is stripped of that attributed, god-like authority which the devotees of Euler and the Bourbaki cult defend so fanatically. Like Leibniz before him, Riemanns discovery demonstrates that formal mathematical-physics schemes do not embody the potentiality of a truth-doctrine. To find truth, we must depart the domain of mathematics, and go over into another domain, the realm of experimental physics.

The key to all among these, and derived formal issues of mathematical physics, is the connection between the erroneous insistence, that, ultimately, no discontinuities exist in mathematics, and the deeper assumption (also false), as among the followers of the Bourbaki dogma, that mathematics can be a truth-doctrine.

It is admissible to state, that any consistent mathematical physics of a specific, n-fold physical-space-time manifold, can be read as if it were a formal, deductive theorem-lattice. In this interpretation, it appears that every theorem of that lattice has the qualifying attribute of being a proposition which has been shown to be not-inconsistent with whatever set of axioms and postulates underlie that lattice in its entirety. Such a set of axioms and postulates is identified by both Plato and Riemann as an hypothesis, in contrast to the illiterates misuse of the same term in Newtons famous et hypotheses non fingo.

The literate usage of hypothesis, is mandatory in reading even the title of Riemanns June 1854 dissertation, even before proceeding to the body of the text. The key to a literate reading of Riemanns dissertation, is that a topological transformation typified by the transition from a mathematically n-fold physical-space-time manifold, to a manifold of (n+1) dimensions, is a transformation in the set of axioms and postulates underlying mathematical physics.

Consequently, the history of those discoveries of physical principle which, like Eratosthenes discovery of an estimated curvature of the Earth, are validated by the relevant measurement, presents us with a succession of topological changes within mathematical physics, a series of changes which has the form of the One/Many paradox of Platos Parmenides. In this instance, the Many are represented by a series of hypotheses; the challenge is to discover a higher principle, an higher hypothesis, a One, which defines a generative principle by means of which the series of hypotheses, the Many, is ordered transfinitely. If Riemanns dissertation is read in any different sense than this platonic one, the resulting commentary upon the text is a scientifically illiterate one, no matter what the putative classroom authority of the commentator.

Riemann adopts a view of mathematical physics based upon the succession of advances in those discoveries of physical principle which have been validated crucially by relevant measurement, such as Eratosthenes estimate for curvature of the Earth typifies that principle of measurement. Riemanns view of this topological transformation underlying mathematical physics progress, thus defines progress in mathematical physics in terms of a sequence of absolute mathematical discontinuities within a formalist reading of mathematical physics itself. It defines Newton, Euler, and Cauchy, for example, as victims of their own scientific illiteracy, victims of an ontological paradox, of the One/Many form, which they could neither solve, nor comprehendand, apparently, did not wish to comprehend.

In each case, one formal theorem-lattice is distinguished from another by any change in the axiomatic content, from that of the hypothesis underlying one, to that of the hypothesis underlying the other; every theorem of the second lattice is formally inconsistent with any theorem of the first. The difference between the two hypotheses, is a true, and relatively absolute mathematical discontinuity. Such a discontinuity has the same significance in mathematical physics as the proper understanding of the term metaphor in Classical forms of poetry or drama. What discontinuity signifies respecting the formalities of a consistent mathematical physics, is precisely what metaphor signifies for a Classical poem or drama. The understanding of this relationship between metaphor and mathematical discontinuity, is the key to the first of the posthumously published documents, On Psychology & Metaphysics, presented in the following pages.

In physics, a mathematical discontinuity appears as a mere mark. The magnitude of this mark is of transinfinitesimal smallness, so small that no calculable arithmetic magnitude can measure it, yet it exists, nonetheless, as a phenomenon: apparently as a mark of separation of all magnitudes which are less, from all magnitudes which are greater. This mark signifies the functional presence, outside the realm of mathematical formalities, of the mathematical-physical form of what we recognize in Classical poetry as a metaphor.

Riemanns Geistesmassen

The fact that all true metaphors are singularities, is the key to an accurate understanding of Riemanns use of Geistesmassen, translated here as thought masses, in the first of the posthumously published papers, On Psychology and Metaphysics. As an illustration of the principle involved, consider the case of metaphor in either a Classical form of strophic poem, or a song-setting of such a poem by a Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, or Brahms. This case, of the Classical strophic poem, and its musical setting according to principles of motivic thorough-composition, is key for understanding the mental processes by means of which a validatable discovery of new scientific principle is generated. This is also an example of the conception posed by Platos treatment of the One/Many ontological paradox in his Parmenides and other late dialogues.

In the successful Classical poem, efficiently illustrated as to form by Goethes simple Mailied, the strophes represent a succession of metaphors, which march, one after the other, toward a conclusion. The metaphorical attribution of each of those strophes is generated by ironies, to such effect that no proper attribution of either a confining literal or a symbolic meaning for that strophe is to be permitted. The concluding metaphor, especially its final couplet, changes radically the metaphorical attributione.g., the meaningof the poem as a whole. It is that concluding, subsuming metaphor, which identifies the idea of the poem taken in its entirety.

The literate reading of such a poem, or its Classical song-setting, demands a repeated review of the completed poem, until the point is reached that two conditions are satisfied: first, that the idea of the completed poem as a whole is clear; second, that the relationship of each step of progress within the poem, to the reaching of the conclusion, is clear. The satisfaction of that requirement establishes the idea of the poem as a whole, in the mind, as the product of a tension between two, literally platonic qualities of idea. The first, is the idea of the completed poem in its entirety; this idea remains unchanged, from prior to the re-reading of the first line, to the momentary silence following the reading of the last line. The second idea, is the successive metamorphoses which the idea of the poem undergoes, in proceeding from the beginning to the end. In Plato, that latter quality of idea is identified as the Becoming. It is the tension between the fixed conception, the idea of the completed poem as a whole, and the metamorphical character of the process of Becoming, by which the perfected idea is reached, which is the energy of the poem.

The same requirement applies to the performance of any Classical musical composition. In the simplest case of such a musical performance, it is the performers memory of reaching the perfected (completed) composition, which creates the tension of reenacting the performance of the metamorphosis, the tension between the perfected idea of the composition, and the moment of development in mid-performance.

The singularity in question is generated by the difference in direction of time-sensebackwards versus forwardsof the two, interacting ideas respecting the poem or musical composition in mid-performance.

The same principle characterizes Eratosthenes estimate of the curvature of the Earths surface: the principle of development uncovered, by re-experiencing the mutually contradictory individual readings of the midday sundials, to locate a generating principle of change which is consistent with the final result. For Eratosthenes, the key to the generating principle becomes the relationship between the perimeter of a circle and a pencil of lines, from a momentarily fixed position of the point corresponding to the Sun, to the Earth. Thus, Eratosthenes gave a reasonable estimation of the Earths curvature, approximately twenty-two centuries before any person saw that curvature.

These examples, from poetry, music, and the work of Platos Academy of Athens, are each and all examples of platonic ideas, the quality of ideas to which Riemann assigns the term Geistesmassen. In physical science generally, such ideas have initially the apparent character of ideas arising from vicious inconsistencies within observations made by aid of sense-perception, inconsistencies which mock both naive sense-certainty and generally accepted scientific opinion. Relatively often, that mockery occurs in the most cruelly devastating way. Those ideas which purport to identify the generating principle responsible for this paradox, and which are validated by relevant modes of measurement, represent valid discoveries of physical principle. Those qualities of proven principle are classically identified as platonic ideas. Each and all of the validated ideas of dimensionality in an n-fold physical-space-time manifold, have this quality of platonic idea.

Thus, all such ideas have the form of paradoxical singularities relative to the pre-existing mathematical domain of reference. The character of these ideas as singularities arises from the way in which their existence is generated subjectively: by the same kind of processes underlying the reading and composition of a valid Classical strophic poem. The quality of singularity, and the associated form of mathematical discontinuity, arises from the opposing senses of time associated with the interplay of perfected ideas with the process of their development.

These metaphors can never be deduced from the mathematics, or other form of language employed. Within the language itself, they appear merely in the reflected form of singularities, such as either mathematical discontinuities or other paradoxical adumbrations reflected into the language-medium. The ontological existence of the singularity lies outside the form of generation of the relevant mark within the domain of the language itself.

Thus, every theorem which claims to deny the existence of discontinuities within mathematics, such as Eulers, is based upon the tautological fallacy of composition, of using constructions premised axiomatically on linearization, to prove the utterly irrelevant point, that any construction of this type is incapable of acknowledging any mathematical existence which is not linear!

The relevant formal mathematical discontinuity, or literary paradox, is merely the mark which the metaphor imposes, as its footprint, upon the formally defined medium of language. The actual metaphor, which the adumbrated mark, or paradox reflects, exists only outside the medium. It lies within three locations. It lies, first, in the substance of the process which the language is attempting to describe. It also lies, secondly, in the mental processes of the scientist, or the artist. It exists, thirdly, within the sovreign mental processes of those members of the audience who have responded Socratically to the mark of the singularity, by generating in their own mind a replication of the idea which has imposed its mark upon the medium of communication.

In mathematical physics, the validation of the ideas corresponding to such marks occurs commonly through measurements which demonstrate, that those ideas correspond efficiently to an effect which is not in correspondence with the old ideas which the new ideas profess to supersede.

There is a most notable illustration of this point in the case of Riemanns paper, published in 1860, On the Propagation of Plane Air Waves of Finite Amplitude. The fact that acceleration toward speeds above the speed of sound generates a singularity, was recognized by Riemann as showing the existence of the transsonic phenomena studied by such followers as Ludwig Prandtl and Adolf Busemann. It was this principle of Riemanns which resulted, through the mediation of a German aerospace specialist, in the first successful powered, post-World War II, supersonic flight by a U.S. aircraft. This was in contrast to the failed contrary opinion expressed by such frequent adversaries of Riemanns work as Hermann Helmholtz, Lord Rayleigh, and Theodor von Karman.

In the relatively more obvious type of case, such as the cited Eratosthenes case, the empirical validation of such a singularity is accomplished by measurements which lie within the domain of arithmetic magnitudes. However, this is not the only primary form of empirical proof of a platonic idea. As Riemanns referenced paper on shock-waves illustrates the point, in some cases, it is the existence of a non-arithmetic singularity, which has precise cardinality, but not arithmetic magnitude, which presents us the mathematical form of the required proof. Riemanns success in forecasting a class of phenomena not necessarily limited to this cited case, not only powered transsonic/supersonic flight, but isentropic compression in thermonuclear ignition, is an example of this.

Leibnizs Universal Characteristic

Respecting the ontological implications of metaphor itself, within these posthumously published pieces, Riemann picks up on a theme addressed earlier by Leibniz, and later revived by the present writer. We must consider the fact, that those efficient platonic ideas recognizable as validated discoveries of principle, are generated as discoveries within those sovreign mental processes of the individual which are impenetrable by symbolic communications-media, such as a formal mathematics. Yet, despite the ethereal quality one might be tempted to attribute wrongly to such mental processes, the result of such ideas is an increase of the human species physical power to command nature in general.

In this respect, these papers of Riemann turn our attention back to Leibnizs notion of a Universal Characteristic, which subsumes, commonly, non-living, living, and cognitive processes within our universe. This is the topical area addressed in the first two of the posthumously published papers: I. On Psychology and Metaphysics, and II. Epistemological issues. After the writing of these papers, Riemanns published work does not refer explicitly again to such epistemological underpinnings of science. From 1854 on, his published work limits itself essentially to mathematical physics, with some impingement upon biophysics, although he clearly did not abandon that personal standpoint in his thinking about mathematical-physics matters. Therein lies some of the special importance of the posthumously published papers for identifying the deeper implications of Riemanns work as a whole.

My own discoveries in physical-economy were rooted in my youthful profession as a follower of Leibniz, and in my developing a rigorous defense of Leibniz against Immanuel Kants attacks upon him, the latter a matter which bears directly upon the issue of Leibnizs notion of a Universal Characteristic. Furthermore, my discoveries were provoked by both the positivist excesses of Norbert Wieners information theory and the similar incompetence of the work in systems analysis by one of Wieners followers, John von Neumann; these positivist concoctions I had treated as parodies of Kants attack on Leibniz. For this reason, my rereading of Riemann brought to that reading the same emphasis upon Leibnizs Universal Characteristic which we encounter in the first two items among Riemanns posthumously published pieces.

The kernel of Wieners hoax in information theory, was to adopt and misuse a term, negative entropy, which had been used earlier chiefly to identify the qualitative distinction between living and non-living processes as they present themselves on the scale of macrophysics.

In successful modern physical economies, my field of study, the biological appearance of negative entropy is echoed by the requirement that the ratio of relative free energy to energy of the system must not decrease, despite the accompanying requirement of rising per-capita and per-square-kilometer values of capital-intensity and power-intensity. This desired result is realized, typically, by the fostering of increase of the (physical) productive powers of labor through investment in scientific and technological progress.

Consider the following summary of the relevant argument elaborated in other locations.

Physical economy identifies the primary phenomena of economic processes in terms of market-baskets of both necessary physical consumption and certain crucial classes of services, limited essentially (in modern society) to education, health care, and science and technology as such. These market-baskets are defined per capita (of labor-force), per household, and per square kilometer of relevant land-area employed. The market-baskets are defined for personal consumption, for the processes of production, and for those improvements in land-area used which we class under basic economic infrastructure. Physical economy recognizes a required functional relationship between the level of these market-baskets and the productive powers of labor, as measured in terms of both production and consumption of the content of these market-baskets.

That yields an implied differential expression: What level of input (consumption) is required to maintain a certain rate of output of necessary products for consumption? Without yet knowing the exact answer to that question at any given point, the idea of the question is clear. This idea is expressed conveniently as the notion of potential relative population-density.

The levels of combined market-basket consumption which are required to maintain not less than some constant rate of potential relative population-density, are compared to the notion of energy of the system. Output of market-basket content in excess of those required levels, is compared to free energy. The free energy is considered not wasted, on the condition that it is consumed in market-basket forms, for both expanding the scale of the economy, and increasing the potential relative population-density. It the latter case, the capital-intensity (energy of the system per capita, per household, and per square kilometer) must increase, and the power-density must also increase. The requirement is, that the ratio of apparent free energy to energy of the system must not decrease, despite a rising relative value of energy of the system per capita, per household, and per square kilometer.

The increase of potential relative population-density, under the condition that those constraints are satisfied, is treated as the economic-process analog for what is expressed as negative-entropic evolutionary self-development of the biosphere in biology and in the terms of reference supplied by the Academician V.I. Vernadskys notion of biogeochemistry. To avoid confusion with the information theorys popularized misuse of the term negative entropy, the term not-entropy is employed instead.

In the field of what Academician V.I. Vernadsky defined as biogeochemistry, this requires the evolution of the biosphere, to bring the entire system to a higher state of organization; Vernadskys argument typifies the line of thought which is otherwise encountered in various locations, including Leibnizs notion of a Universal Characteristic, and also the referenced portions of Riemanns posthumously published papers.

Wiener made a mess of everything, with the popularization of his wretched insistence that negative entropy, for which he employed the neologism negentropy, was no more than a reversal of the statistical entropy described by Ludwig Boltzmanns H-theorem. Contrary to Wieners mechanistic schemes, if we account for mankind and mankinds activity as part of the planetary system, mans increased power over nature, typified by the increase of mankinds potential relative population-density, is actually an increase of the relative negative entropy, or, not-entropy, of the planetary system as a whole. In other words, mankinds development supplies an evolutionary upward impulse to the totality of the system with which mankind interacts.

In this view of the matter, human cognition has developed within the domain of living processes, but those ecological characteristics of the human species which are entirely due to cognition, place mankind absolutely apart from and above all other living species. Thus, our universe subsumes the interaction among three distinguishable types of processes: non-living, living, and cognitive. The commonly subsuming principle governing such a universe, is Leibnizs notion of a Universal Characteristic.

For todays conventional classroom opinion, what we have just stated poses the question: Is it not necessarily the case, that if the not-entropy of society increases, that this must occur at the price of increasing the entropy of the universe with which society is interacting? In other words, is the relationship of society to the remainder of the universe not what von Neumanns devotees term a zero-sum game? The crux of the issue, is that the idea of universal entropy is not a product of scientific discovery, but of the reckless application of an axiomatically linear, mechanistic world-view, upon the interpretation of the evidence of kinematic models of gases; on this account, there is an amusing ambiguity in the ironical meaning Norbert Wieners work supplies to the term gas theory.

The absurdity of the popular version of doctrines of universal law of entropy, is suggested by the fact, that every rational effort to describe the universe in the large, is an evolutionary model, in which development is vectored as progress to relatively higher states of organization. In mathematical terms, this progress to higher states of organization is indicated by the emergence of physical systems whose characteristics can not be identified without resort to the mathematics of successively higher cardinalities. The attempt to explain the efficient directedness of such universalizing processes of emergence of higher cardinalities, renders absurd every attempt to explain the existence of matter itself in terms of a mechanistic dogma of building blocks. The evidence is, that recognizably higher physical states of cardinality, are accomplished by transformations of the entire system, not by accretions of objects of a mechanistically fixed domain.

The counterposing of the developmental (e.g., not-entropic) and Kant-like mechanistic views is noted by Riemann, in the first of the referenced papers. Crucial is the demonstration, that, as in the case of Eulers absurd 1761 attack on Leibnizs Monadology, the presumption of that Kant-like, mechanistic view, from which Richard Clausius, Lord Kelvin, and Hermann Grassmann concocted their chimerical Second Law of Thermodynamics, is axiomatic linearization in the small. Create a mathematics, in which all is subsumed under the axiomatic assumption, that everything in the universe is consistent with the Euclidean blind faith in the universality of perfectly continuous linear extension, even into the extremely great and the extremely small. The true believer then regards any formulation which is inconsistent with such a mathematical proof, as disproven, and everything which must be assumed to preserve consistency within the theorem-lattice of such a mathematics, is considered as proven by all of the awesomely credulous professorial, head-nodding dupes attending the relevant conference.

Once we recognize, that such a mathematics constitutes no proof at all respecting the issues immediately at hand, the most generous consideration which the advocates of the Second Law might require of rational people, is the famous Scots verdict, not proven. No axiom of a mathematics is proven by the employment of the formal mathematical theorem-lattice whose existence depends upon that included assumption.

Those qualifying observations stated, situate the matter at hand. Now, turn directly to the subject of Leibnizs Universal Characteristic.

The paradigmatic form of all increase in mankinds potential relative population-density, from the several millions potential of a man-like higher ape, to the billions of today, is changes in social-productive behavior typified by general application of the fruits of scientific and technological progress.

Each of the transmitted discoveries is known by means of the replication of that original act of discovery within the mind of the hearer. On the condition that education of the young proceeds according to that latter principle, present-day knowledge is the accumulation of all of those singularities which valid past discoveries have conveyed to the use of the present generations: just as students today would be scientific illiterates, until they re-experience the original discoveries by the members of Platos Academy at Athens in this way, from Plato, Eudoxus, and Theaetetus, through Eratosthenes. Without a Classical education of the young, in the great Classical works of poetry, tragedy, music, and natural science, going back to the foundations of modern civilization over 2,500 years ago, there can not be a truly civilized or even rational society, a cruel fact we see enacted so brutishly on our streets and in our government and universities today.

Each valid such discovery invokes the principle we have associated here with the topological symbol (n+1)/n. Each discovery is a singularity of that type. Progress in knowledge is an accumulation of such singularities. As Riemann emphasizes, within the texts provided below, that accumulation of knowledge is interactive, every new concept interacting with every other accumulated within the same mind. Thus, with every thought, this increase of singularities is reflected efficiently: in mathematical terms, the density of discontinuities for any arbitrarily selected interval of human action, is increased. It is this increase of density of discontinuities which typifies the form of not-entropic and the form of the action which generates not-entropy in, for example, the form of increase of societys potential relative population-density.

The crucial fact is, that this increase of knowledge, as defined in this way, is consistently efficient. The universe obeys the human creative-mental powers command! Thus, as Genesis 1 prescribes, mankind exerts dominion over nature. Conversely, the universe is manifestly so constituted, that it is prone to submit to the authority of that power of creative reason which is a potentiality peculiar to the individual human personality.

By accumulating a reliving of the original valid acts of discovery of principle, which constitute the accumulation of human knowledge to the present date, we are enabled to recognize the distinguishing features of that form of act of creative reason, by means of which valid discoveries have been commonly achieved. That experience becomes known to us, as to Johannes Kepler, as Reason, or, as for Gottfried Leibniz, as necessary and sufficient reason. Once we recognize, that mankinds cumulative development of knowledge represents the power of the human will to command the universe according to the law embedded in that universe, we have shown ourselves that reason as we define it subjectively in this way, is also an efficient approximation of Reason as it exists, ostensibly objectively, as an efficient principle pervading the universe as a whole.

What we recognize in the form of not-entropy, as in the increase of societys potential relative population-density, is the characteristic of Reason, both as it exists efficiently, objectively within the universe at large, and as we are able to adduce the principles of reason, subjectively, through the efficiency of valid discoveries of principle in the domains of science and art.

Once that is acknowledged, then it is clear to us, that the universe is not linearized in the extremely small, or extremely large. It is not-entropic, in the extremely small and extremely large, alike. To see this more clearly, it was sufficient, to shift the emphasis in reading Riemanns contributions to mathematical physics, away from physics narrowly conceived, back to the vantage-point of Leibniz, the vantage-point of physical economy, the vantage-point of the efficient relationship between valid human individual reason, and mans increased power over the universe. Thus, we may say, that not-entropy, as reflected in type by Riemanns topological expression (n+1)/n, corresponds to what Leibniz named a Universal Characteristic.
This address appears in the March 17, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

EIR Editor Testifies on Glass-Steagall

Before the Maryland Legislature

Testimony of Paul Gallagher, EIR Economics Co-Editor, March 3, 2017, before the Ways and Means Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates, on a resolution to move the U.S. Congress to restore the Glass-Steagall Act, Maryland House Resolution HJ4.

[Print version of this address]

Committee Chair and Delegates,

Thank you very much for holding todays hearing on the resolution to the U.S. Congress to restore the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial bank units from all other types of financial institutions, and limiting FDIC insurance to those units.

Creative Commons/ Maryland Reporter

Glass-Steagall restoration legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R.790, the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2017, was introduced Feb. 1 by Republican Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Tim Ryan of Ohio and Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. It has grown to 32 [now 37] cosponsors, and needs support. Twelve state legislatures are now considering resolutions supporting this legislation.

If Glass-Steagall is not restored now, the next large bankor non-bankfinancial failure will again topple the banking system and trigger both new bailouts and confiscation of bondholders and depositors in the form of bail-in. U.S.-based large bank holding companies have $2 trillion in exposure to European megabanks, which are full of non-performing loans and have not had a single profitable year since the 2008 crash, despite hundreds of billions in bailouts and trillions in bond purchases by the European Central Bank.

And if Glass-Steagall separation is not restored now, the largest U.S. bank holding companieswhich dominate the banking system to the extent of 60-70% of deposits and assetswill continue to limit lending, in practice, to the large corporate bond issuers and borrowers, shutting out technologically progressive SMEs from credit.

JPMorgan Chase had $837 billion in loans/leases outstanding at Dec. 31, 2015, just 65.1% of its deposits of $1.279 trillion. Citigroup had $605 billion in loans/leases at the same date, just 66.8% of its deposits. But the entire U.S. commercial banking system has loans/leases outstanding equal to 79.2% of deposits according to the Federal Reserves flow-of-funds report. Since the six largest banks hold more than half of all deposits, the comparative ratio for the nations 6,000 community banks and regionals clearly must be in the range of 90%-plus loans/leases to deposits. The biggest banks loan ratios are very low indeed; they both hurt the economy and demonstrate the great degree to which households and businesses deposits are being used for securities and derivatives speculation.

But since the 2008 crash, the biggest 12 banks have largely absorbed the deposits and assets of some 2,000 small banks that have disappearedone quarter of all the commercial banks which existed in the United States a decade ago.

The largest bank holding companies changed dramatically from 1995the point at which Glass-Steagall enforcement had effectively ceasedthrough the 2007-08 crash. This was studied and effectively described already in a 2011 study by the New York Federal Reserve entitled, Peeling the Onion: The Structure of Large Bank Holding Companies. These giants became impossibly complex, morphing from 100-200 subsidiaries typically in 1995 to 3,000 or more units per megabank in 2011. They became giants dominating the assets and deposits of the entire U.S. banking system for the first time in U.S. history. They shifted their huge and growing deposit bases from lending toward supporting securities trading units, derivatives trades, etc. Derivatives markets exploded ten times in size in ten years 1997-2007.

Already in 1998-99, the failure of a single hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management was admitted to have nearly caused a global bank panic, because 55 U.S. and European banks, through leveraged loans, were into LTCMs immensely risky derivatives trading. By 2008, Lehman Brothers and other investment banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds were in the same blowout event condition.

Today, a media report March 2 identified $321 billion in fines which the worlds biggest banks have had to pay since the 2008 crash, for illegal and/or immoral activities which they continue to commit up to the present. The dominant character of these violations of banking law and practice is the use of the very large deposit bases of these banks to support speculative units, securitization of investments, and derivatives bets. The currently very public Wells Fargo mis-selling scandal is emblematic of this.

To Restore Commercial Lending

If the Glass-Steagall Act is restored by Congress now, financial failures will take down only individual financial institutions, as when important investment banks like Drexel Burnham Lambert and Solomon Brothers failed under Glass-Steagall enforcement without affecting the rest of the banking system. U.S. branches of the biggest European universal banks, which absorbed great volumes of taxpayer bailout loans and recapitalizations, will have to recharter themselves completely independently if they are to operate in the United States at all. But in fact, Glass-Steagall restoration in the United States is likely to be followed more or less immediately in Europe, where many nations have already had Glass-Steagall bank separation legislation introduced.

And if Glass-Steagall is restored by Congress now, even as large holding companies are divesting securities units, their commercial banking units will necessarily be in the business of lending to businesses and households, aside from holdings of Federal and municipal bonds. The common Wall Street argument against Glass-Steagallthat it will reduce bank lending or damage the capital marketis the opposite of the truth. As FDIC vice-chair Thomas Hoenig has frequently argued in recent years, the United States capital markets were the deepest and most reliable in the world in the decades when commercial banking and securities trading were separated and the Federal safety net protected only the former.

If a national bank for great infrastructure projects is established, it will need a system of private commercial banks lending on good terms to its contractors. Glass-Steagall will again make lending the business of those banks.

EIR believes that restoring Glass-Steagall is the initiating action of four laws Congress should take. It should lead to a national Hamiltonian credit institutions for trillions in infrastructure investments; to an accelerated return to manned space exploration and to rapid development of fusion power and plasma technologies.

Thank you again for debating this crucial subject.
PRESS RELEASE

India and Pakistans Entry in the SCO Could Provide a Platform To Resolve Their Differences

March 16, 2017 (EIRNS)An article in Chinas Global Times, widely reported in Indias mainstream media today, noted that the entry of India and Pakistan into the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) "may help boost anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries and provide a platform to resolve their differences." The article pointed out that

"improving Pakistans transportation infrastructure is a major aspect of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and hopefully the entry of Pakistan and India into the SCO will bring new momentum to the development of the CPEC. Pakistans entry will also likely offer convenience for attracting new partnerships into the CPEC."

China is in the process of building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and is committed to an investment close to $53 billion. The CPEC, which enters Pakistan through the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, has not been endorsed by New Delhi, which calls it a violation of its sovereignty, since India considers Jammu and Kashmir as part of India illegally occupied by Pakistan.

India and Pakistan will officially become full members of the SCO in June 2017, and the Global Times article, pointing out the potential of this development, noted:

"The entry of the two nations into the SCO may help boost cooperation between India and Pakistan in areas such as infrastructure and anti-terrorism efforts. As per the framework of the SCO, a third party could step in to prevent an outbreak of conflict between the two countries.... Though New Delhi may try to seek fairly flexible multilateral agreements with the SCO countries, both India and Pakistan will have to adhere to the principle and basic framework under the SCO to strengthen security and anti-terrorism cooperation,"

it said.
PRESS RELEASE

Italian Finance Committee Will Hold Hearings on Banking Separation

March 16, 2017 (EIRNS)The Finance Committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies started the discussion of the 12 draft bills on banking separation yesterday. Rapporteur Marco Di Maio (Democratic Party) made a synopsis of the bills, all of which, in one form or another, push for complete separation between investment and commercial banks. Then, Di Maio presented the various "reforms" and proposals introduced in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in the European Union, from the Dodd-Frank Act, to the Liikanen proposal and the EU Commission fake separation scheme, giving support to opponents of strict separation.

He then concluded by proposing a round of hearings in order to help clarify the subject matter.

Deputy Alessio Villarosa (M5S) intervened by saying that the present discussion is of historical value, as, for the first time, an issue is being addressed, which the country has expected for years. Villarosa is in favor of hearings, but he said it is fundamental to know whether the rapporteur (the majority) is prejudicially against banking separation, or whether it was willing to have an open discussion.

Di Maio replied that his proposal to hold hearings is already evidence of willingness by the majority to discuss the issue. The definitive position of the majority will depend on the result of the investigation.

Pietro Laffranco (Forza Italia) said he was in favor of strict separation, as he had cosigned one of the draft bills, and he, too, requested a clear position from the majority, before organizing hearings that could be a waste of time.

Davide Zoggia (MDP) also demanded pre-emptive clarity and proposed to adopt a "basic text" before agreeing to have hearings.

Committee Chairman Maurizio Bernardo said that even a basic text could not be adopted before going deeper into the issue, and that hearings would aim at that.

The discussion was adjourned to a future date.

The large number of draft bills in the Chamber (and about the same number in the Senate) is a direct or indirect result of the years-long campaign by the LaRouche movement in Italy, whose milestone was the first bill introduced by Sen. Oskar Peterlini in 2012. At least four of the twelve draft bills have been directly influenced, or even co-drafted, by the LaRouche movement.
PRESS RELEASE

House Intelligence Committee Co-Chairs Demand Information on Leaks

March 17, 2017 (EIRNS)If U.S. government agencies did not officially tap the phones at Trump Toweras all testimony so far has assertedhow did the discussions between former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Kislyak get picked up and leaked to the press? That is the question behind a letter sent by House Intelligence Committee co-chairs Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and National Security Agency on March 15.

According to CNN, The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee asked the three leaders of the intelligence community Wednesday about any time during the last seven months of the Obama administration whenever any of its agents and officials improperly named, or "unmasked," and disseminated the identities of American citizens picked up in intelligence collection.

Chairman Nunes (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote that they are concerned that members of the intelligence community have not been sufficiently honoring previously established "robust minimization procedures" to protect the identities of U.S. citizens, including "masking" their names." They specifically ask why Flynns name was released to the public.

U.S. law is supposed to protect Americans caught up in surveillance of foreigners, CNN notes.

"However, as recent news stories, seem to illustrate, individuals talking to the media would appear to have wantonly disregarded these procedures,"

Nunes and Schiff wrote. The congressmen also asked the names of individuals or agencies who "requested and/or authorized the unmasking and dissemination" of these identities.

In covering this story, Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake references the March 1 article by the New York Times which reports that Obama officials rushed to lowers classifications and disseminate information on alleged connections between Russia and Trump associates in the final months of the Administration. Lake concludes that if this practice was responsible for the leaking of Flynns name, it would be effectively a short-circuiting of the legal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process, with deniability of having ordered a wiretap.

The deadline for the disclosure is Friday, the same time that information on the alleged wiretaps is due. Public hearings on the matter are scheduled for March 20.
I discovered Derek Walcott in graduate school after a professor of Caribbean literature recommended The Prodigal. I read it slowly, over the course of several weeks, taking in a section or a stanza at a time. His poetry demanded a certain kind of work from me, and I resented that.

But one afternoon, in order to humorously illustrate how many metaphors he could pack into one line, I read a Walcott poem aloud to a group of friends. Halfway through, I stopped to admit that OK, it sounded good. And later, I had to admit that yes, it was good. That Walcott, a more-than amateur painter and well-regarded theater director, had an exquisite ear for sound and eye for image.

The more I worked on listening and looking at Walcotts poetry, the more love I found for a poet I once resented. His lack of humility, something Id originally misinterpreted as arrogance, became a form of resistance. I found his language choices unexpected and the images he presented familiar, but made new through his language.

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With his passing, we lose a poet of grandeur. He was not without his controversies, and no one would call him modest (least of all himself). But Walcott brought an intensity of conviction, writing through a post-colonial lens, even as he incorporated 19th and early 20th century classically European style with the aesthetics of the Caribbean.

Walcott, who in 1992 won the Nobel Prize for literature, died at 87 on Friday at his home in St. Lucia, the island of his birth, having written 24 collections of poetry, more than 20 plays and several books of essays. For many years Walcott lived abroad teaching and directing theater  often in Boston and New York  but his Windward Islands home always informed his work and worldview.

The ocean is a persistent metaphor in Walcotts work. The ocean teems with life, sound and unceasing crashing of waves. The ocean is vast and lends its amplitude to Walcotts voice. There is something to be said for the grandiosity in his poetry.

In a 1985 Paris Review interview, Walcott said, I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style  I grew up in a place in which if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it.

Perhaps that is why, when thinking about Derek Walcott, I keep returning to lines from Forest of Europe and The Prodigal.

The opening lines of Forest of Europe conjure both the tangible and marvelous, without ever succumbing to surrealism or the fairy tale of Magical Realism.

The last leaves fell like notes from a piano

and left their ovals echoing in the ear;

with gawky music stands, the winter forest

looks like an empty orchestra, its lines

ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

The metaphor turns from the very real leaves to notes and then to a shape that registers as sound (echoing in the ear), underscored by a smooth pentameter. Walcott escalates the image, moving from an individual note to gawky music stands, eventually to a full empty orchestra that quickly dissolves into manuscripts of snow. The clever use of lines ruled evokes the notation of sheet music, college notebooks and the rigidity of form. And the image works  the metaphor of a winter forest as an empty orchestra is haunting and memorable as it is deftly executed.

There is so much more to unpack within the one stanza! I could write a paragraph on the use of gawky alone  which is to say, Walcotts work invites an exuberance in language. Reading Walcotts poetry can be like confronting a work of art piecemeal; to look at each component closely is to see the image whole  the opposite of impressionism, perhaps.

In The Prodigal, a book-length poem, Walcott writes:

I carry a small white city in my head,

one with its avenues of withered flowers,

with no sound of traffic but the surf,

no lights at dusk on the short street

where my brother and our mother live now

at the one address, so many are their neighbors!

Make room for the accommodation of the dead,

their mounds that multiply by the furrowing sea,

not in the torch-lit catacombs of your head

but by the almond-bright, spume-blown cemetery.

In this city of death, there are flowers (withered as they may be), and the neighbors are plenty. There is joy here, almond-bright. Walcotts vision of death is by the sea, which makes sense. The ocean appears throughout his poetry over the decades; the Caribbean never far from his thoughts.

Walcotts love of the Caribbean defined his poetry and his persona, in sharp contrast to his peer and rival, V.S. Naipaul (another Caribbean Nobel literature laureate who was known for his disdain of the Caribbean). His feud with Naipaul escalated to poetry-slam battle levels, culminating in Walcott reading a poem asserting that I have been bitten, I must avoid infection/ Or else Ill be as dead as Naipauls fiction. Walcott was not one to avoid a big gesture.

Grandeur has a bad name these days, perhaps because we associate it with brash politicking. But the kind of grandeur Walcott embodied was different; his was a bold declaration of self and place. What he saw around him, in St. Lucia and throughout the Caribbean, transcended beauty and became muse. Derek Walcott died on the island of his birth, but during his life he gifted the world with the joy and grandeur that he saw. His poetry and his voice never tiptoed. And we all flourished for it.

Ramirez is the author of Dead Boys and one of the L.A. Times critics at large.
Cable company Charter Communications Inc. ballooned in size last year, and the compensation package of its chairman and chief executive, Thomas Rutledge, skyrocketed.

Rutledge, 63, was awarded a compensation package last year valued at $98.5 million, according to a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bulk of Rutledges 2016 compensation is to be paid through stock and option awards that he can collect over time if Charters stock reaches new highs.

Charter is the largest pay-TV company in the Los Angeles region, with its Spectrum service in more than 1.8 million subscriber homes. Last year, the company acquired the much bigger Time Warner Cable and the smaller Bright House Networks. Rutledge signed a new five-year employment contract in May after the mammoth merger closed.

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The bulk of the package  $78 million  came in the form of stock option grants that vest over several years. The options were allocated as part of his new contract. For Rutledge to exercise all of the options, Charters share price has to significantly increase in value.

For example, one-fifth of the options would be paid if Charters stock topped $455.66 a share and, for 60 days afterward, its average price stayed above that level. Another one-fifth would be payable if the stock exceeds $564 a share and similarly stays up.

On Friday, Charters stock rose 0.6% to $325.81 a share. The stock has climbed about 40% since the deal closed, despite the companys challenges retaining cable TV subscribers.

A significant portion of executive compensation is performance-based incentives, Charter said in a statement. The five-year long-term incentive program puts a substantial portion of executive compensation at risk  rewarding executives for performance that enhances long-term shareholder value.

The company said that Rutledge will not be eligible for additional stock or option grants through 2020. His base salary is $2 million a year, and in 2016, he was awarded a bonus of $7.7 million in cash and $10 million in stock.

Rutledges 2015 compensation totaled $16.4 million, according to the proxy.

meg.james@latimes.com

Twitter: @MegJamesLAT

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Amid Californias housing crisis, several state lawmakers want to give cities the ability to dramatically expand rent control, including imposing the kind of strict limits that once existed in Santa Monica and West Hollywood but have been barred since the 1990s.

A bill that would do so, introduced last month, marks the most significant move yet in a growing movement to cap skyrocketing rents as Californias economy booms and housing production lags.

Protests over the high cost of housing and aggressive landlord tactics have erupted in Los Angeles and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. And voters in two cities up north passed new limits on rent increases in November, seeing them as a way to stop dramatic hikes that have displaced lower- and middle-income households.

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But cities can only go so far in capping rents  something AB 1506 seeks to change.

The momentum is very much on the side of rent control, said Dean Preston, executive director of the statewide renters group Tenants Together.

The bill has drawn swift opposition from apartment owners and probably faces a tough slog in the Legislature. Nevertheless, opponents and supporters see its introduction as the start of a longer fight over rent control in Sacramento.

Specifically, the bill would repeal the landmark Costa-Hawkins Act, a 1995 law that an executive with the California Apartment Assn. referred to as the saving grace for landlords.

The law set ground rules for future and existing rent control ordinances, including banning single-family houses from caps and putting restrictions on what sort of apartments can be covered.

Now, cities establishing ordinances cant place controls on apartments built after Feb. 1, 1995, and cities with controls at the time of Costa-Hawkins cant extend their programs, usually meaning units built after the late 1970s cant be covered.

The act also did away with tough regulations in five cities, including Santa Monica and West Hollywood, that limited rent increases even when an apartment was leased to new tenants. Now, landlords can charge market rates for vacant units, but increases are capped once a unit is occupied.

Repealing Costa-Hawkins wouldnt immediately change rules in local municipalities but would give local officials more flexibility to craft new laws and apply them to far more rental units.

About 15 California cities have some form of rent control, including San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles.

The L.A. law was passed in 1978 and generally applies to buildings built before October of that year. It allows landlords to charge market rent for a vacant unit, but then limits annual increases for tenants at 3% to 8%.

Costa-Hawkins provided relief for landlords, but in the process we are seeing an escalation of costs for tenants that at this point in time is untenable and that needs to be addressed, said Assemblyman Richard Bloom, who introduced the bill with two colleagues and represents Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and parts of Los Angeles  all areas with rent control.

Many economists say controls can worsen what they see as the root cause of Californias affordability problems: a shortage of homes after decades of building too few for the states growing population.

They say limits on rent increases discourage residents  even well off individuals  from moving, a lock-in effect that puts upward pressure on rents for units that do become available.

It creates an artificial shortage, said Paul Habibi, a real estate professor at UCLA who owns rent-controlled buildings in Los Angeles.

Opponents of the bill also say housing production could drop off if Costa-Hawkins was repealed and developers become spooked that new buildings would be subject to controls.

We have a housing shortage, said Earle Vaughan, an apartment owner and legislative chair for the California Rental Housing Assn., an industry trade group. Do you think anyone in their right mind will build an apartment building if the thing can be rent controlled at any time?

A recent report from the states nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office said encouraging private housing development was a more effective policy tool to bring down costs.

If rent was capped for new developments, it almost certainly would discourage home building, said analyst Brian Uhler, who wrote the report. But if cities just put limits on more existing buildings, the effects on home building would be less clear.

Bloom, who co-wrote the bill with Assemblymen David Chiu (DSan Francisco) and Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), said hes open to changes in his bill and characterized it as one effort to address a situation in which more than half of California tenants pay rent that is deemed unaffordable.

Median apartment rents in Los Angeles County have risen 23% in the last three years to $2,390 in January, according to real estate firm Zillow. The statewide median was $2,346, up 26% from the beginning of 2014.

Given the level of the crisis, Bloom said, this is a good time to take a step back and look at Costa-Hawkins for reform.

One major change landlords especially fear is losing the ability to set rents when a unit becomes vacant.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, such restrictions were credited with keeping Santa Monica relatively affordable, though rent-control critics said it also discouraged landlords from spending money on maintenance, causing buildings to fall into disrepair.

Jonathan J. Barach runs Vista Investment Group, which owns roughly 750 rent-controlled units in Los Angeles. His costs often rise faster than he can raise rents on existing tenants, he said, but being able to lift rents to market rate after a tenant leaves makes it easier to keep properties in good shape.

That includes fixing up Echo Parks Jensens Recreation Center building with its 46 apartments. When Vista purchased the 1920s building in 2014, Barach said plumbing and sewer lines were constantly backing up and pipes were bursting, but the problems are now fixed.

He said refurbished studio apartments at the building are now going for about $1,700. Some long-term tenants who moved in before the area became attractive to well-off young professionals are paying well under $1,000.

We want tenants to enjoy the building, but it needs to make sense financially, Barach said.

In Long Beach, which doesnt control rents, tenants are increasingly seeing eye-popping hikes. One elderly tenant recently reported a $925 hike on a $1,100-a-month, two-bedroom unit, said Josh Butler, executive director of advocacy group Housing Long Beach.

A rent increase of that magnitude is tantamount to an eviction, he said.

Those stories are driving support for caps, as well as strong eviction protections that typically are elements of the ordinances. Thats particularly true in the expensive Bay Area with its explosion of tech wealth.

In November, voters in Richmond and Mountain View, home of Google, approved rent control ordinances that the California Apartment Assn. is now fighting in court.

Like most ordinances, the laws tie increases to changes in the consumer price index and require a just cause for eviction  such as damaging a unit or failing to pay rent.

Beverly Hills also strengthened its current ordinance this year, reducing the maximum annual increase to 3% from 10%.

But with Costa-Hawkins in place, cities are limited in the number of units they can include for protection.

Advocates say thats a particular problem, because under state law landlords can get out of rent control by converting rent-controlled units into condos, or by selling the building to developers that level the structure to build luxurious for-sale housing.

In Los Angeles, property owners have removed thousands of rent-controlled units in todays hot housing market, a dynamic that was a major focus of the debate surrounding Measure S, the anti-development initiative that failed on the March municipal ballot.

Larry Gross, who heads the local tenant group Coalition for Economic Survival, said expanding rent control is vital, because it provides tenants with a stability akin to homeowners with a fixed mortgage, giving lower- and middle-income folks a better shot at staying in expensive cities.

Gross, who pushed for passage of L.A.s law decades ago, panned business groups assertion that construction would drop off if Costa-Hawkins was repealed.

Builders want to build here, Gross said. Rent control provides protection and levels the playing field.

No matter what happens in the Legislature this session, at least weve finally been able to get the discussion [going], he said.

Debra Carlton, senior vice president for public affairs with the California Apartment Assn., said the group is taking the threat of a repeal very seriously.

I think its  unfortunately  the beginning of the conversation, she said.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

Follow me @khouriandrew on Twitter

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Theres another Frank Gehry building going up in town. Its under the radar in El Segundo
The Walt Disney Co. has reached an agreement with the U.S. Labor Department that will provide $3.8 million in back wages to Disney workers.

Under the agreement, Disney will pay back wages to 16,339 employees of Disney Vacation Club Management Corp. and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc., both in Florida. The departments Wage and Hour Division found violations of minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping provisions.

Disney resorts in Florida deducted a uniform or costume expense that caused some employees hourly rates to fall below the federal minimum wage, the department said. The resorts also did not compensate employees performing duties during a pre-shift period before the designated start of their shifts, and during a post-shift period, according to the Labor Department. Additionally, the resorts failed to maintain required time and payroll records.

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These violations are not uncommon and are found in other industries, as well, said Daniel White, district director for the Wage and Hour Division in Jacksonville.

Employers cannot make deductions that take workers below the minimum wage and must accurately track and pay for all the hours their employees work, including any time they work before or after their scheduled shifts. We hope the resolution of this case alerts other employers who may be paying employees in a similar manner, so that they too can correct their practices and operate in compliance with the law, he said.

White, in a news release, said that the Disney resorts were very cooperative and worked with the division to ensure employees received the pay they earned, White said.

Disney said in a statement that the Department of Labor has identified a group of cast members who may have performed work outside of their scheduled shift, and we will be providing a one-time payment to resolve this. We are adjusting our procedures to avoid this in the future.

spedicini@orlandosentinel.com
Architect Frank Gehry, internationally recognized for his swashbuckling designs, has turned his talents on a comparatively demure new office building under construction in El Segundo.

The designer of Walt Disney Concert Hall has conceived a one-story office structure reminiscent of former industrial buildings common in El Segundo that are increasingly being repurposed as offices for businesses in creative fields.

So-called creative office buildings, usually created by upgrading old structures that have outlived their original purpose such as manufacturing, are the darlings of todays real estate market and often command higher rents than glitzy skyscrapers do.

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The $50-million building in El Segundo with one big floor containing 80,000 square feet is intentionally unassuming, the architect said in a videotaped interview.

Its not architectural in the sense that you are making an architectural statement, Gehry said. It is really creating an environment that energizes and promotes interactivity in a less formal way.

Ascend, as the building is known, is the first that Gehry has designed for his longtime friend Larry Field, the founder of Beverly Hills real estate development company NSB Associates Inc.

The men have been close for more than 40 years, when both were starting their careers in Venice and Santa Monica, said Anthony OCarroll, vice president of NSB.

NSB is erecting Ascend at the intersection of Utah and Douglas avenues, where it will be the sixth building in a creative office complex NSB fashioned among former Xerox research and development facilities.

NSB considered trying to renovate two old buildings on the site, but knocked them down when the famous architect entered the picture.

When we had the opportunity to work with Frank Gehry, we decided to pursue ground-up construction, OCarroll said.

While Ascend will share some traits such as high ceilings with other open-plan offices in the neighborhood, it will have some striking differences.

Commonly such buildings are like islands surrounded by parking lots. Ascend will effectively be on stilts, standing over 280 ground-level parking spaces and nearly filling the boundaries of its lot.

It will open onto 16,000 square feet of outdoor balcony patios and be illuminated by multiple windows and skylights.

We had the freedom to break from a traditional warehouse in the sense that theyre pretty much boxes with no windows, said Gehrys son Sam Gehry, an architect who is also working on the project. He spoke in a videotaped interview.

The firm Gehry Partners is based in what used to be such a traditional warehouse, a former industrial BMW facility in Playa Vista that Frank Gehry and Field bought together about 15 years ago.

Gehry redesigned the building and created a wide-open workplace under a cavernous ceiling that would become a model for creative offices. He said he got the idea for open offices from artist friends who made studios out of former industrial buildings.

Of course they were only one or two people but, when you bring a group of 20 or 30 people in, it changes the equation, Frank Gehry said. It does create some new ideas  that just happen serendipitously.

Gehry also designed the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif., that was heralded as having the the largest open-floor-plan office in the world when it opened in 2015.

He has two major projects for different developers yet to start construction in Los Angeles: the massive Grand Avenue Project of condominiums, apartments, shops, restaurants and a hotel on Bunker Hill downtown, and a residential and retail complex called 8150 Sunset at the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset boulevards in Hollywood.

El Segundo, which suffered from high office vacancies when the aerospace-defense industries concentrated there contracted after the end of the Cold War, has emerged as a creative hub in recent years.

The city is also home to numerous corporate headquarters such as Mattel, DirecTV and media company Internet Brands, said real estate broker Mike McRoskey of JLL, who will lease Ascend for NSB.

Rent has yet to be determined, he said, but recently renovated creative buildings in El Segundo typically lease for about $3.25 per square foot a month. Ascend is to be completed by the end of the year.

NSB owns or manages about 2.5 million square feet of commercial space, mostly on the Westside, OCarroll said. Among its tenants is Google, which rents four NSB buildings in Venice.

El Segundo now stands to attract more high-profile firms, he said. This project is a kind of a vote of confidence in that town.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Twitter: @rogervincent
Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday chided Wells Fargo Chief Executive Timothy Sloan, saying he and others at the bank met months ago with Republican staff of the House Financial Services Committee but have given Democratic staff the runaround.

In a letter sent to Sloan and to one of the banks attorneys, the Los Angeles Democrat and ranking member of the committee said her staff has repeatedly tried to schedule meetings with the banks top executives, but to no avail.

She said the banks failure to meet with the committees Democratic staff is one of several factors that could prolong her interest in investigating the banks practices.

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The countless revelations in the press of Wells Fargos egregious behavior and your failure to participate in interviews with Democratic staff tell me that this committees investigation is far from over, Waters wrote.

In an emailed statement, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Dunn said the bank is responding appropriately to committee requests.

We have fully cooperated with the House Financial Services Committees investigation, including by voluntarily participating in the September 2016 hearing, producing over 140,000 pages of documents, answering more than 50 written and numerous oral questions, and making our most senior leadership available for interviews, Dunn said.

The House Financial Services Committee was one of the congressional panels  along with the Senate Banking Committee  that last year grilled Wells Fargos then-CEO John Stumpf after the bank reached a $185-million settlement with regulators and acknowledged that it opened as many as 2 million accounts without customers authorization.

At that hearing, Waters called Wells Fargos behavior egregious and said she believed the bank should be broken up.

Republican members of the committee, including Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, were rough on the bank too, though in the months since then, have been quiet.

In her letter, Waters said Sloan and three other Wells Fargo executives  Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry, General Counsel James Strother and Chief Risk Officer Michael Loughlin  met with Republican committee staff on Dec. 5, 6 and 7.

Jeff Emerson, a spokesman for the committees Republican members, confirmed Wells Fargo executives met with Republican staff in December. He said Republican staff members briefed their Democratic counterparts on the interviews.

Waters said her staff started trying to schedule similar meetings shortly thereafter but have been put off repeatedly. She said she raised the issue to Sloan himself during a recent phone call.

You personally assured me that you would look into the matter, Waters wrote, referring to Sloan. My staff again followed up with your attorneys after our call and was again told that they did not have an answer. If this is indicative of how Wells Fargo responds to its customers, I can understand why so many of them are upset with their treatment.

A spokeswoman for Waters said the congresswoman remains interested in the banks sales-practices scandal, and in particular about revelations and allegations that have come to light in the months since last years congressional hearings.

Waters mentioned two such issues in her letter: allegations by former Prudential insurance employees that Wells Fargo workers sold life insurance policies to bank customers that didnt want or authorize them; and reports that Wells Fargo used to give its branches 24 hours to prepare for inspections, potentially allowing them to hide evidence of misconduct.

james.koren@latimes.com

Follow me: @jrkoren
When Hollywood looks for a location to stand in for small-town America, more often than not production companies load the grip trucks, hitch up the Star Waggons and head up the 110 to South Pasadena.

The city has so zealously protected its original charm and architectural character that it has become in many ways a time capsule of California living in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The desire to set itself apart first manifested itself in the late 1800s, when South Pasadenans voted to separate from Pasadena and incorporate as an independent town of 500 or so people.

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Tourism and agriculture were the primary industries, as they were in communities up and down the Arroyo Seco. Visitors came by trainload to ride the big birds at the nationally renowned Cawston Ostrich Farm, or to winter at the L.A. areas first grand resort, the luxurious Raymond Hotel.

Once all of those visitors clapped eyes on the beautiful Southern California countryside  not to mention the plentiful, relatively affordable land that stretched across the sparsely populated San Gabriel Valley  many of them decided to put down roots in South Pasadena.

The citys wealth of Craftsman architecture and well-preserved commercial districts owe themselves to this real estate boomlet, which was in turn aided by the extension of the Pacific Electric Red Cars into town.

The insular character of South Pasadena took an unfortunate turn in the 1940s, when the city began to write into deeds restrictions against the ownership of property by anyone other than whites.

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, members of the thriving Japanese community in the city were evicted from their homes and sent to relocation camps and were not allowed to reclaim their property at wars end. It was not until the 1960s that South Pasadenas exclusionary housing regulations were finally discarded.

That ugliness is in the past. South Pasadena today is a highly diverse, affluent city. Though the Raymond Hotel has long since been demolished, and the cantankerous denizens of Cawstons ostrich farm no longer roam the banks of the Arroyo Seco, the city weathered the loss of the tourist trade by embracing its rich legacy of classic residential and commercial architecture.

The Red Cars replacement, the Metro Gold Line, runs through the heart of a revitalized, walkable downtown, just steps from neighborhoods that look much as they did almost 100 years ago.

And the citys star shows no sign of dimming: The Rialto Theater featured prominently in La La Land, a movie that, appropriately enough, also makes a point of celebrating the past.

Neighborhood highlights

Schools: South Pasadena boasts one of the regions most prestigious public school systems, with excellent options from kindergarten through high school.

Small Town, USA: Aside from a bit of strip-mall ugliness on Fair Oaks Avenue, South Pasadena is the picture of 20th century small-town life, complete with a soda fountain.

Craftsman dreamland: For lovers of the quintessentially American style, South Pasadena offers up homes from such noted designers as Greene and Greene and G. Laurence Stimson.

Neighborhood challenges

High demand, short supply: Homes in South Pasadena, a completely built-up city with strong preservation ordinances, are at a premium  and real estate prices reflect that.

Expert insight

Sothebys agent Lin Vlacich was born and raised in South Pasadena, a city she praised for being community-oriented, diverse and architecturally significant.

What makes it great is it has been historically successful  its not an up-and-coming community, she said.

As such, South Pasadena weathered the housing crash well and rebounded quickly afterward, she said.

Potential homeowners hoping to buy in South Pasadena really, really need to get connected with a local agent, she said. Things get sold off-market.

Market snapshot

In January, based on seven sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in the 91030 ZIP Code was $1.388 million, a 38.1% increase over the same month the previous year, according to CoreLogic.

Report card

Within the boundaries of South Pasadena is Marengo Elementary, which scored 957 out of 1,000 in the 2013 Academic Performance Index. Other bright spots include Monterey Hills Elementary and Arroyo Vista Elementary, which scored 933 and 927, respectively.

South Pasadena Middle had a score of 936, and South Pasadena Senior High scored 891.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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Do you remember what you were doing on Twitter in 2010?

Twitter accounts have been compromised by a range of security issues lately  and in at least one case the vulnerability is tied to a decision users made years ago. It might be time to double check how secure your account really is.

Early Thursday morning, the official Twitter account for McDonalds pinned a tweet directed at President Trump. It read, You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.

The tweet remained up for about 20 minutes before it was removed. The fast-food giant, of which the president is a big fan, issued a statement saying the account had been hacked by an external source.

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READ MORE: McDonalds hackers tweet insulting Trump gets a lot of buzz, much of it positive 

McDonalds isnt the only Twitter account raising eyebrows this week. On Wednesday, accounts including Justin Biebers and Amnesty Internationals tweeted out Nazi symbols and political messages in Turkish.

The hacks with Turkish and Nazi messages have been attributed to a third-party tool called Twitter Counter, which provides users with statistics on the readership of their tweets. The service was hacked this week, a repeat of what happened to it four months ago. (It is not clear whether that is related to the rogue tweet from the McDonalds account.)

In the early days of Twitter, users often connected outside tools to their accounts to analyze followers, automatically tweet messages, or find new people to follow. These tools have fallen out of popularity  in part because Twitter now offers similar services itself  but lots of people connected them years ago and forgot about them.

How to protect your account

First things first: Check to make sure no tools are connected to your account that shouldnt be. Heres how to do that:

Go to Twitter.com on your desktop and log in. From the main screen, click your portrait on the upper right, and select Settings and privacy from the drop-down menu. From the next screen, choose Apps in the left-hand menu. See anything you dont use or recognize? Click Revoke access.

While youre in your settings, its a great time to change your password and add two-factor authentication to your account. The hacks that have affected Yahoo, Cloudflare and other sites and services may have released your password to people who shouldnt have it (like alleged Russian spies or hackers).

If you use your Twitter password for anything else  Uber, Fitbit, OKCupid, 1Password, or Yahoo, for instance, were affected by recent hacks  it could be vulnerable and needs to be changed.

To change your password, select Password from the settings menu. Youll be prompted to enter your old password and then plug in a new one twice.

Adding two-factor authentication tacks on another layer of security for your account. From the Settings menu, select Account and check the box next to Verify login requests. Youll be prompted to enter your cell phone number.

With two-factor authentication, any time you log in from a new computer or device, youll get a six-digit code on your phone that you must enter. That means that even if someone else gets their hands on your password, they wont be able to tweet unless they get your phone too.

Follow me on Twitter @jessica_roy.

jessica.roy@latimes.com
As the devastating documentary The Settlers demonstrates, ask a simple question and you end up with a complex, confounding series of answers.

Veteran Israeli director Shimon Dotan poses the same basic query  Are you a settler?  to residents of the West Bank, and the range of responses is telling.

One person flat out refuses to answer. Another says, I am in the land of my forefathers. A third prefers the less judgmental word inhabitant, and a fourth sneers, Thats how the media and leftists define me. Only one man, his eyes ablaze with the joys of zealotry, says, I am a settler, yes, I love this land, and I hope to be buried in it.

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Anyone with even a superficial interest in the Middle East knows about the settlers, the roughly 500,000 Israelis who live in violation of international law in 200-plus settlements in the midst of 2.7 million Palestinians and whose presence, depending on whom you ask, is either the biggest obstacle to peace in the region or the first step toward the world-changing arrival of the messiah.

Though many of todays inhabitants are economic refugees who live where they do to escape the claustrophobia of Israel proper, the settlements did not start that way, which is where Dotans work comes in.

Smart, thorough and thoughtful, this disturbing film unfolds like a slow-motion nightmare that has taken half a century to fully reveal itself, a trenchant examination that deserves to stand next to compelling Israeli documentaries on similar themes, including The Law in These Parts and The Gatekeepers.

Though its far from the only film to deal with the phenomenon, Settlers stands out in terms of the substantial access it obtained to several generations of the movements leaders, allowing them to lay out religious/philosophical underpinnings in considerable detail. A few dissenting voices are heard, but mostly these people have the floor.

By doing that, Settlers also, in the words of Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, makes it clear how and why Isreali politicians didnt see what we see now: a monster of half a million people standing in the way of peace.

Broken into discreet segments, Settlers begins with a fiery May 1967 speech by influential Orthodox Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who spoke about the deep pain hed felt 19 years earlier when the biblical land of Palestine had been partitioned by the United Nations.

When, just three weeks later, the Six Day War gave Israel possession of all that territory and more, including the West Bank, Rabbi Kook was looked on as a prophet.

His followers felt compelled as a religious imperative to colonize the newly occupied territory despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibited that kind of activity. By this definition, according to Hebrew University professor and peace advocate Moshe Halbertal, a settler is a person who builds a house on land over which the state of Israel has no authority and where Palestinians have no rights.

This mixture of politics and religion had far-reaching and toxic consequences. It meant that disagreement over politics was treated not as a difference of opinion but as a sin and that any government that did not agree with the religious establishment could be considered illegitimate. When democracy and Judaism clash, more than one leader says, Judaism has to triumph.

Hearing the settlement leaders, now often sporting long white beards, talk at length about what they accomplished, one is struck by how completely they believe that theirs is a mission mandated by God.

In fact, the late Rabbi Moshe Levinger, founder of the Jewish settlement in Hebron, is quoted as saying that once the messiah comes and peace is restored to the world, Palestinians will be grateful to the settlers for acting they way they did to make it happen.

If there is another through line in Settlers its how consistently Israels secular governments woefully underestimated the determination of their zealous religious brethren to act first and ask for permission later, leading to facts on the ground that proved impossible to reverse.

One of few Israelis to take on the settler movement was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who didnt hesitate to call Gush Emunim, one of the leading settler organizations, like a cancer on the democratic fabric of Israel. Rabin was assassinated by an observant Jew associated with the movement.

Issues surrounding the West Bank settlements are so various and so complex that The Settlers can spare only a few minutes for some of them, including the help the groups get from American Evangelicals as well as the unmistakable racist contempt that is close to the surface or even above it among some of the interviewees.

The aspect of the film that got the most attention when it premiered in Israel was director Dotans ability to get interviews with members of the youthful extremists known as hilltop youth who see no reason why Israeli settlements shouldnt extend even across international borders into the sovereign state of Jordan.

Everything, one young man says with a chilling air, is temporary.

Hopes for lasting peace in this part of the world, apparently, are the most temporary things of all.

----------------------

The Settlers

MPAA rating: None

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Playing: Laemmles Monica, Santa Monica.

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kenneth.turan@latimes.com

@KennethTuran
The closing night selection of the South by Southwest Film Festival is the world premiere of Life, directed by Daniel Espinosa and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds. In the film, screening Saturday night at Austins Zach Theatre, a team of astronauts on the International Space Station discover and successfully reanimate a life form from a soil sample taken from Mars.

Soon this breakthrough turns from tremendous to terrifying when what the astronauts have on their hands is a creature that gets out of their control and goes on the attack. We may wish to find life on other planets, but careful what you wish for.

This years SXSW festival had an emphasis on innovative genre storytelling, and so it makes sense that it should conclude with a sci-fi action horror hybrid that is by turns thoughtful and incredibly intense. That is in no small regard due to the work of screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

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The pair wrote the 2009 action horror comedy Zombieland and adapted last years smash hit Deadpool, for which they earned a Writers Guild of America Award nomination, bringing unexpected respectability to an irreverent deconstruction of the superhero movie.

Reese and Wernick first met in high school in Phoenix and have been writing together for more than 17 years. Ahead of the SXSW premiere of Life, they recently got on the phone from their respective homes in Los Angeles to talk about the origins of Life on the big screen.

You wrote this from an initial idea from producer David Ellison, what hooked you?

Reese: Well, we were both fans of the movie Alien, which of course our movie will be compared to, maybe fortunately or unfortunately. But on this our general feeling was Alien is, if you can believe it, almost a 40-year-old movie. And it was always set in a universe thats pretty far-flung from our own  its the future, its spaceships off in distant galaxies.

We were attracted to Life because it really felt like the grounded, real, science fact-ion version of this story. We really are on the hunt for life on other planets and on Mars itself. And we also are discovering different species on Earth often. We really liked taking the genre aspect, this alien, and dropping it into today and a location that actually exists, the International Space Station.

What better haunted house in the entire universe than the International Space Station? You cant get out, youre stuck.  Life co-screenwriter Paul Wernick

At every turn in the script wed ask ourselves,What would really happen? We didnt want a poison pill character who was secretly intending to bring the specimen back to Earth. We just wanted six astronauts good at their jobs who suddenly found themselves in over their heads against something they didnt understand.

Wernick: And what better haunted house in the entire universe than the International Space Station, 200 miles above Earth? You cant get out, youre stuck, its the ultimate haunted house.

So from your research and preparation, how real of a possibility do you consider the discovery of life on other planets?

Reese: Theres great debate in terms of how likely is it for life to spontaneously occur somewhere when the conditions for it are present. I think my basic understanding is that while it is an unlikely occurrence, the universe is a very big place and there are a lot of hospitable places that could support carbon-based life forms. So [its] likely we arent alone.

Thats both the dream and the frightening idea, that we arent alone.  Life co-screenwriter Rhett Reese

If you could search far enough and wide enough youd find some stuff. Now if what was happening in our movie were to happen, which is the discovery of life on a nearby planet, I think that would imply that life not only is out there but the universe is really teeming with life.

If it happens coincidentally in two places close to each other, its likely to be happening everywhere. I think thats both the dream and the frightening idea, that we arent alone and that what is out there may not take forms that are either compatible with us or we could really understand.

We just never would have guessed that Deadpool of all things would be our prestige play  Life and Deadpool co-screenwriter Rhett Reese

Let me ask about Deadpool, which of course also starred Ryan Reynolds. Why do you think audiences responded so strongly to the movie?

Wernick: I think it was an apple among oranges. Theres superhero movies upon superhero movies, and not only anymore in the summertime. Every month is the summertime, which is good for the movie industry but it feels like its just an onslaught of more of the same.

I think it had a freshness to it in the sense that people hadnt really seen anything like this, an R-rated, self-deprecating, self-loathing antihero who you fall in love with and root for.

The fear was, and why it took six-plus years to make, is because everyone, and perhaps including us, thought it had the potential to be a one-quadrant movie. It had the potential to only appeal to superhero geeks and nerds.

So I do think it came as a massive surprise that it did hit so many quadrants. And I think that was because he was a relatable character. Despite the fact he was scarred, he did feel like one of us.

Full coverage: 2017 South by Southwest Film Festival 

There is an escapist fantasy in watching some of these superhero movies because you do always picture yourself behind the mask. The nerds always saw Peter Parker and thought, Oh, thats me. And then you put on this mask and youre this amazing superhero who can save the world.

Deadpool, Wade Wilson, is a guy who has been kicked  so many times  the world has not been kind to him  and I think people related to him in a way, feeling like, Thats kind of me up on that screen. Hes dealt with everyday stuff, lifes tragedies that hit us all. And I think that resonated with audiences.

Which all must have made the films unexpected traction during awards season another surprise, including your WGA nomination.

Reese: It was incredibly surprising and gratifying. Basically we just never would have guessed that Deadpool of all things would be our prestige play. So I think the joy of it was the surprise and the gratification of how did this movie ever get considered in this fashion. It was certainly not something we ever expected.

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Mark.Olsen@latimes.com

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Mississippi blues harp player James Cotton was certainly considered lucky for the break he got joining Muddy Waters band in the late 1950s, taking over a spot previously held by such venerated harmonica whizzes as Little Walter and Junior Wells.

But it wasnt a one-way street. Cotton is credited with the suggestion that Waters add a particular song to his repertoire, one that soon became Waters musical calling card: Got My Mojo Working.

That may well be part of the reason that Waters was always ready to share the spotlight with other musicians with him on a bandstand.

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When one of my band members goes over big, I really like it, Waters told author James Rooney in his book Bossmen. A lot of people aint like that. They dont want to give their band members a break.  I let them all try. They feel good behind that, you know. Everybody wants to be a star. So I give em a chance.

Thats precisely what happened for Cotton, whod grown up tutored directly by no less a blues titan as Sonny Boy Williamson II. After leaving Waters band in the 1960s, Cotton launched a solo career that took him out on his own for decades, up until shortly before he died Thursday of pneumonia at 81 in a hospital in Austin, Tex.

During his life, Cotton released more than 30 albums and received a Grammy Award for best traditional blues album of 1996 for his Deep In the Blues album.

He also collected multiple awards from blues organizations and was inducted into Memphis Blues Hall of Fame in 2006.

It was in Memphis where Cotton received an early break from visionary Sun Studio founder Sam Phillips, who was ardent about recording black musicians from the region.

Phillips famously recorded Howlin Wolf (with whom Cotton also apprenticed as a teen), B.B. King, Ike Turner and other African American blues and R&B musicians before discovering and bringing to the world Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and other seminal rock n roll and country stars.

Phillips released two singles from Cotton, Straighten Up Baby in 1953 and Cotton Crop Blues the following year.

Cotton was still a teenager working as a regular on the Memphis music scene when Waters came to town in 1954 without Wells along, and hired Cotton to take over the harmonica spot in his band.

He came to this little beer joint where me and this guitar player were [performing] on a Saturday evening, Cotton told The Times in 1990. He said, Im Muddy Waters, and he said he wanted to give me a job.

Initially, Cotton was suspicious. He had heard Waters music on record and on the radio but had never seen the fabled Chicago blues man in person. That changed when he went to check out the club where Waters was booked to perform.

I saw the posters with his picture on em, Cotton said. I thought, Maybe this is the right cat. I never dreamed Id be going to Chicago or playing with Muddy Waters. But I played in Memphis [with Waters] that Saturday night, and that Sunday morning we were off to Chicago.

Upon returning to Chicago with Cotton now in the fold, executives at Chess Records insisted that Waters continue using Little Walter on his recordings. It is Walter who is heard on Waters 1958 recording of Got My Mojo Working after Cotton brought it to his attention. But Cotton got the spotlight on the subsequent live version recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960.

He confessed it wasnt easy following in Little Walters footsteps.

Little Walter Jacobs was in Chicago, one of the greatest harmonica players that ever lived, he said. There was a whole lot of pressure on me. I had to learn how to play harmonica all over again. It made a musician out of me.

After a dozen years playing with Waters, Cotton ventured out on his own, a move that allowed him to express his own musical vision.

I respected [Waters] so much, but there were other things that I wanted to play, and I would never mistreat him with his music, Cotton said. If it was rock n roll, he didnt want to touch it. But I felt that if I can play an instrument, I should play whatever I want.

James Henry Cotton was born July 1, 1935, in Tunica, Miss., and picked up the nickname Mr. Superharp, becoming famous for a highly energized performance style that incorporated much of the energy and performance dynamics from rock n roll.

After forming his own James Cotton Band in 1966, he was soon touring with blues-influenced rock acts such as Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Santana and Steve Miller as well as fellow blues players including B.B. King and Freddie King.

Two of the James Cotton Bands albums broke into Billboards 200 Albums chart, a relative rarity for blues musicians: 1967s The James Cotton Blues Band and 1975s 100% Cotton.

He received an all-star salute in 2010 at Lincoln Center in New York at a performance that featured Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, Taj Mahal, Shemekia Copeland and others.

He was honored in 2015 by the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal as the recipient of the festivals B.B. King Award, recognizing his seven decades in music.

Throughout his life Cotton remained open to other forms of music, including rap, although he said it wasnt a style hed want to attempt.

I listen to everything, he said. I cant do [rap], but I listen to it. They make a lot of money doing it, God bless em. Even if I tried it, it would come out like the blues.

He also noted that his constant companion through everything has been his harmonica.

Twenty-four hours a day, every day, youll catch me with a harmonica, he said. I sleep with em in the bed with me.  The highway is my home, and my Dodge van is my bed, and the blues is my companion. Im going to do it till I die.

Cotton is survived by his wife, Jacklyn Hairston Cotton, daughters Teresa Hampton and Marshall Ann Cotton and son James Patrick Cotton, as well as several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

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Created by Ted Tremper and Tim Baltz, who also stars, Shrink, which began online some years ago, wasnt the first series to play with improvised encounters between a person playing a therapist (Baltz) and a person playing a patient. (Showtimes Web Therapy, starring Lisa Kudrow, was one.) Now it has been filled out into a fine, full-fledged sitcom on NBCUniversals comedy-themed streaming service Seeso  a step closer to regular television  with a full complement of three-dimensional supporting characters and a satisfying long arc to connect its eight episodes, which are available now.

Baltz, who has been a regular on Drunk History and the Seeso reality-show parody Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, plays David, a recent medical school graduate whose progress toward practicing medicine has been stalled by his not getting a hospital residency.

I dont know how getting to be a doctor works in real life  in Chicago, where the series is set, or anywhere  but as we meet him he is half a million dollars in school-loan debt, living at home, pining for his former girlfriend and, unable to work in medicine, practicing clinical therapy in the garage, as a default.

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I am required to inform you, David announces to his patients, who have responded to a Craigslist post for free therapy from a future doctor, that I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or a registered therapist but that these therapy sessions are being tape recorded to provide a record of the 1,920 supervised clinical therapy hours required to acquire such a license. It is a sort of theme song, without the music. (The actual soundtrack, which features ruminative piano that sounds as if it were being played a room away, has a haunted feel.)

Its illegal for me to charge money, he informs a client.

Thats great, says the client. I wish you were a bakery.

David is a difficult character: angry, self-obsessed, childish, remarkably dense at times. But he is interested in doing good (I really want to help people, he says, you know, for money  I mean as a profession) and capable of feeling his clients pain  though it often inspires him to tell them about his own. Baltz has an Opie-esque boyishness that plays effectively against his floundering and aggression; that he is usually the less compelling character in any situation hes in feels structural and thematic, not a function of his performance.

To the extent the viewer roots for David, its in the hope that he wont hurt, and may even help the people around him. The superb supporting cast includes Joel Murray (perhaps best known as Freddy Rumsen on Mad Men) as his stepfather; Meagen Fey (Emma Stones mom in La La Land, to grab a glamorous credit) as his mother; Kyle S. More as his antagonistic stepbrother, selling watered-down tanning oil (Im going to make bank, son); and Mary Holland (Blunt Talk), as a patient with whom he shares an unethical attraction.

As the therapist David persuades to supervise his qualifying hours, Sue Gillan plays her part with comforting straight authority yet is somehow very funny doing so. And as his old friend Doug, with whom he works nights stocking shelves at a market called Happy Foods, Hans Holsen plays a completely original turn on the amiable, distracted sidekick, at home in the world in a way David is too fretful to be.

Analysis is a kind of improvisation, and its conversational exposition of human frailty and fecklessness does lend itself to comedy as easily as to drama. (Some of Davids interchanges with his clients, seen in intercut bits and pieces, do have an improvisational feel.) There is some heavy darkness here, to be sure, but the movement overall is toward the light  Shrink has heart, without getting sentimental  and, as do many smart comedies nowadays, it hangs together like an extended indie film. I, at least, came away feeling good.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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The Salton Sea, Californias largest lake at 370 square miles, once supported popular resorts and a thriving inland saltwater fishery. It is now shrinking and threatening to wreak havoc on air quality, habitat and local economies. Water transfers to metropolitan areas along the coast and other factors are exposing large swaths of lake bed and drastically increasing salt levels in the lake.

Read more: State unveils a 10-year plan to restore habitat and control toxic dust storms along the Salton Sea's receding shoreline

Receding shoreline

The Salton Sea in 2033

If nothing is done, water transfers and other factors reducing water inflow will result in a total loss of more than 500,000 acre-feet.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has come out in opposition to a so-called sanctuary state bill that would bar state and local policing agencies from using resources for immigration enforcement, according to a letter obtained by The Times.

In the letter addressed to Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), who introduced the legislation, McDonnell said the measure would block sheriffs officials from safely transferring inmates with immigration violations housed in county jails into the custody of federal immigration agents, forcing those agents into our communities in order to search out and find the person they seek.

While doing this, they will most surely cast a wide net over our communities apprehending and detaining those not originally the target of the enforcement actions, McDonnell wrote.

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Though the letter is dated March 9, De Leons office received the document in an e-mail Wednesday, his staff said. Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida confirmed the letter is authentic and was sent on March 9. She said McDonnell was unavailable for comment Thursday.

McDonnells letter echoes the statements from Republican lawmakers and other sheriffs who have expressed concerns over the legislation. Some stand to lose millions of dollars in federal funding contracts.

But McDonnells stance is stirring concerns among residents and immigrant advocates in the communities he polices. It also runs counter to the positions on the legislation by Los Angeles County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, all of whom support the bill.

Josh Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said in a statement:

We understand the State Legislature is still considering amendments to the bill and we look forward to participating in the ongoing discussions, but we have no comment at this time.

In a letter to Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), chair of the Senate Committee on Public Safety, sent in late January, Garcetti said the bill would help ensure that Californias values are reflected in its policies.

Hard-working immigrants who have built their lives in California contribute significantly to our states economy and quality of life, Garcetti wrote. Immigrant members of our community have rights, and they must be able to engage with law enforcement without fear when they are victims of and witnesses to crimes, seeking basic and other health services, or attending school.

De Leons measure, Senate Bill 54, would prohibit California law enforcement agencies from using resources  including their facilities, money and personnel  to respond to immigration-related transfer requests or assist federal immigration agents in accessing people for interviews, such as in jails.

To address some of the sheriffs concerns, De Leon on Friday added amendments that would require the state parole board or state corrections department to give the FBI a 60-day advance notice of the release date of inmates with violent convictions who are in the U.S. illegally. Sheriffs officials also would be able to provide the FBI with the scheduled release date of anyone confined in county jail for a misdemeanor offense who also has a violent felony conviction.

As the elected leader of the nations largest sheriffs department, McDonnell runs the largest jail system in the country, which houses approximately 18,000 inmates on any given day. Unlike some sheriffs departments in California, McDonnells agency does not lease jail space to federal officials to house those suspected of immigration violations.

Asst. Sheriff Kelly Harrington, who oversees the jail operation, has previously said that agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have access inside the countys jail system every day.

McDonnell has emphasized that his deputies do not act as immigration agents and cannot stop people on the street, for example, and inquire about immigration status.

What we want to be able to do is be as open as we can with the public, to let them know definitively, were here to protect you. Were not here to deport you, McDonnell said in a recent interview.

But some advocates have raised concerns about how immigration enforcement plays out inside the jails and worry that those in the U.S. illegally could be easily deported once in custody.

In the letter to De Leon, McDonnell states that the Trust Act  a 2013 law that protects immigrant inmates from federal immigration agents unless theyve been convicted of certain serious crimes  is sufficient in preventing the unlawful over-detention of people with possible immigration violations.

He also argued that the measure would not allow those convicted of several types of violent felonies to be flagged to the FBI upon release from jail.

maya.lau@latimes.com

Twitter: @mayalau

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

Twiter: @jazmineulloa

Times staff writers Dakota Smith and Cindy Chang contributed to this report

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University of California regents expressed an array of concerns Thursday over a controversial proposal to limit the number of undergraduates from other states and countries to 20% of total systemwide enrollment.

The regents, meeting in San Francisco, also unanimously approved Carol T. Christ, a longtime UC Berkeley administrator and professor, as the next chancellor to lead the renowned but troubled public research university.

Regents initially were scheduled to vote Thursday on the nonresident proposal, which UC unveiled this month to ease public controversy over its admissions practices and clear the way to receiving $18.5 million in additional state funding that is tied to adoption of a limit.

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UCs proposed cap allows for some growth  nonresidents currently make up 16.5% of the systems 210,170 undergraduates  except at UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. Those three campuses would be allowed to maintain but not increase their current percentages, which are higher than 20%.

But regents delayed a vote until May and will continue discussions until then as some critics call for lower limits and others for no quota at all.

The debate Thursday underscored the deep concerns over the proposal.

Regent Sherry Lansing fretted that the limit could deprive campuses with fewer out-of-state students, such as UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz, of future opportunities to attract them and the extra tuition dollars they bring in. James Chalfant, chair of the UC Academic Senate, echoed that concern, saying the proposal would create tiered campuses because some would be able to bring in more nonresident tuition dollars than others.

We dont want to reinforce a policy of haves and have-nots  and put them in competition with each other, Chalfant said.

Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley said the UC system should first make a better case to the state about its funding needs. He referred to nonresident tuition as sugar water and public funding as protein, to stress the need for the state to beef up the UC system with more money.

Others wanted to know how nonresident students affected campus diversity. Regent Gareth Elliott rejected adopting any nonresident policy at all.

But UC President Janet Napolitano reminded regents that state lawmakers required the UC system to set a limit before they released additional funding.

Somehow, weve got to navigate our way through this and end up  with the right answer, she said.

The 10-campus system quadrupled its nonresident enrollment between 2007 and 2016 to make up for steep state budget cuts following the recession. Although UC also increased the number of California students by 10% during that time, the growing reliance on nonresidents sparked a backlash from California families and legislators.

Chancellors from UCLA and UC San Diego told regents how the additional money from nonresidents  who pay about $27,000 more in annual tuition than their California counterparts  has helped pay for more faculty and courses as well as needed building repairs.

UCLA, for instance, received $145 million in nonresident tuition last year, which helped it make up significant state funding cuts, said Chancellor Gene Block. The money helped UCLA offer more courses, which reduced the average time needed to graduate to less than four years. It also helped UCLA manage rising costs for employee benefits and salaries.

This really made up the hole in UCLAs budget, Block said.

Regent Richard Blum added that the university richly benefits from international students who study at UC campuses and return home to become successful business and political leaders. At a UC Berkeley reunion in Hong Kong, he said, 500 people showed up.

Its amazing how many people  successful leaders, heads of companies  still talk about Berkeley and may give back one way or another, he said.

On other matters, the regents were firmly united.

They approved Christ as the new UC Berkeley chancellor enthusiastically and unanimously, as Board Chairwoman Monica Lozano put it after the vote.

Christ, currently Berkeleys interim executive vice chancellor and provost, will take the helm July 1. She will succeed Nicholas Dirks, who announced his resignation last year following widespread criticism over his handling of sexual misconduct scandals, the budget deficit and what many regarded as a distant and disengaged leadership style.

Christ, 72, will earn the same salary Dirks did: $531,939 annually. She has spent more than 30 years at Berkeley as a professor and administrator and also served as president of Smith College for a decade.

Napolitano told regents that Christ, the 11th chancellor and first woman to lead the 149-year-old campus, was a remarkable person, a visionary and a first.

Dr. Christ has a way with making things better. She builds strong relationships, and trust, with diverse groups and diverse individuals, and then forms consensus and finds solutions, Napolitano said.

Blum said Christs collaborative style and intimate knowledge of Berkeleys culture was just what the university needed.

Berkeley is a troubled campus in terms of people learning to get along, he said shortly before the vote. It is not going well, and we needed somebody from the inside who understood the place to straighten it out.

Christ, speaking to reporters after the vote, said she would focus on Berkeleys multimillion-dollar budget deficit, the student housing crunch, undergraduate education and faculty issues to help the renowned public research university through what she called its worst difficulties in 50 years.

Christ said she would aim to enhance Berkeleys tradition of excellence and access.

It is Berkeleys DNA, she said.

In other actions, the regents approved changes to rules on faculty sexual misconduct, including eliminating time limits to file complaints.

They also approved the UC systems first policy that would impose sanctions on regents found to have violated university rules on ethics and sexual misconduct, even outside their university roles.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Twitter: @TeresaWatanabe
Catrina Burks caught the first flight to Los Angeles on Thursday. Shed left her Michigan home in a rush the evening before and driven to the airport in Chicago after getting a call from her fathers attorney.

Hes getting out, the lawyer said. Maybe today.

After spending 32 years behind bars, her father, Andrew Leander Wilson, had just had his murder conviction thrown out by a judge.

When Wilson finally walked out of the Mens Central Jail on Thursday afternoon, he said he had no words to describe the reunion with his family. The reality of the release, he said, was still sinking in.

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Im happy Im at the end of it now, he said. Im all right.

He was taken into custody when Burks was 10. For his daughter, now a 43-year-old mother of six children whod never met their grandfather in person, the news of his release felt surreal. Shed always known he was innocent, she said, but never expected that people within the system would admit to past mistakes.

But thats what happened this week.

1 / 5 Following Andrew Wilsons release after 32 years behind bars, granddaughter Souriya Hemphill, 15, left; daughter Catrina Burks, 43; Wilson, 62; and his sister Gwen Wilson reunite during a news conference outside Mens Central Jail in Los Angeles. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 5 Attorney Jacqueline Rembis, left, and Legal Director Paula Mitchell  both of Loyola Law Schools Project for the Innnocent  embrace Andrew Leander Wilson during a news conference outside Mens Central Jail in Los Angeles. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 5 Andrew Wilson is surrounded by supporters and media upon his release from Mens Central Jail. After 32 years spent behind bars, his murder conviction was thrown out by a judge this week. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 5 Andrew Wilson, flanked by his sister Gwen Wilson, left, granddaughter Souriya Hemphill and daughter Catrina Burks, is in a jubilant mood after his release Thursday. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 5 Andrew Wilson, center, holding the hands of his daughter Catrina Burks, left, and sister Gwen Wilson, emerges from the Inmate Reception Center at Mens Central Jail in L.A. after his release. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Citing cumulative errors, a prosecutor Wednesday conceded that Wilson, 62, had been deprived of his right to a fair trial. A judge threw out his convictions for robbery and murder in the 1984 stabbing death of 21-year-old Christopher Hanson.

The district attorneys office has said it still believes Wilson was involved in the murder but will not refile charges. Attorneys with Loyola Law Schools Project for the Innocent, which advocated for Wilson, have argued that the evidence clearly exonerates him. A judge is expected to rule on his factual innocence at a later hearing.

By 2 p.m. Thursday  minutes before Wilsons scheduled release  a lifetime of memories without her father rushed through Burks mind.

She thought about her sons death in a crash several years ago and how she couldnt collapse into her fathers arms for support. She flashed back to her graduations from high school and college and the moment her cousin walked her down the aisle at her wedding. She remembered her mother, who died in 2003 knowing her husband was innocent but never knowing hed go free.

She never remarried, Burks said. It tore her apart.

To clear her mind, Burks lighted a cigarette and paced the sidewalk outside the jail. She stared at the swarm of reporters with TV cameras nearby.

Its been such a long road, she said. Hes a great man. Even though hes been behind bars all this time, hes been a great father. So kind.

She got a letter from prison every birthday, and he often called to speak with her children. Whenever she spoke with him by phone and he could tell she wasnt feeling well, he told her that her suffering hurt him too. Youre killing me, hed say.

But he always offered a fatherly remedy: Beet juice with a bit of cayenne pepper.

As she recounted the memory, she noticed commotion nearby and realized it was almost time for his release. She rushed through the glass doors with a big white sign above them reading, Inmate Reception Center.

As he walked through the doors with his family, Wilson smiled and greeted the crowd. Loyola Law School students who worked on his case burst into applause and Burks pulled her fathers hand, which was interlaced with her own, toward her heart.

I still have a parent, she said, smiling. This is my all.

Wilsons sister, Gwen, repeatedly kissed his hand and said she couldnt stop thinking about the memories of chasing him around the house when he was a baby.

When Wilson  dressed in a maroon Loyola T-shirt  walked to the microphones, he offered words of encouragement to others behind bars: Dont stop fighting. Dont give up. It seems like thats what the justice system wants you to do  give up.

Asked if he felt bitter toward the system or the people who had testified against him at trial, Wilson shook his head, calling it a waste of time.

He had two immediate plans to attend to: Eat a burger and visit his 96-year-old mother, Margie Davis, in St. Louis.

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

For more news from the Los Angeles County courts, follow me on Twitter: @marisagerber
The states top elected officials on Thursday completed their selections to fill three vacant positions on the California Coastal Commission  the powerful land-use agency that has been buffeted by controversy, including the firing of its executive director last year.

Gov. Jerry Brown made the latest appointment with the selection of Ryan Sundberg, 41, of McKinleyville, a member of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors since 2010.



For the record: An earlier version of this article gave the incorrect age for Coastal Commissioner Aaron Peskin. Peskin is 52, not 62.

He replaces Martha McClure, who was forced to leave the commission because she was not reelected to the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors last November.

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Sundberg was a tribal council member at the Trinidad Rancheria from 1994 to 2010 and a Farmers Insurance agent from 2003 to 2010. The new commissioner, who declined to state a party preference on his voter registration form, was appointed to a two-year term.

In February, Brown selected Donne Brownsey, 61, of Fort Bragg to replace Coastal Commissioner Wendy Mitchell of Los Angeles, who resigned late last year.

Brownsey, an attorney, was senior vice president of Sacramento Advocates Inc., a lobbying firm, from 2004 to 2015. She also founded Government Solutions Inc., where she worked from 1993 to 2004, and was the chief legislative consultant for state Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) from 1985 to 1993.

Brownsey, a Democrat, was appointed to a two-year term.

Earlier this month, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon appointed San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin to fill the commission seat of former Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, who stepped down at the first of the year because he was no longer an elected official.

Peskin, 52, a Democrat, has worked for environmental nonprofit groups for three decades. He served on the Trust for Public Land in the 1980s and was western regional director of the American Land Conservancy from 1990 to 1993. He is president of Great Basin Land & Water, a small nonprofit organization that seeks to protect the water quality of the Truckee River.

The new commissioner is also a member of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state planning and regulatory agency that served as a model for the Coastal Commission.

His appointment was supported by the Sierra Club and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The new commissioners are joining the commission at a tumultuous moment. Last year, the panel fired the agencys executive director, Charles Lester. Environmentalists accused some commissioners of catering more and more to development interests.

In February, the commission selected Jack Ainsworth, a career agency official who had been acting as interim director, to replace Lester.

Also last year, some commissioners came under fire for violating the public disclosure requirements related to private meetings they held with parties that had an interest in commission business. Those so-called ex-parte discussions are now the target of a civil lawsuit in San Diego.

In another appointment, Brown selected Coastal Commissioner Effie Turnbull Sanders in February to be the panels environmental justice representative  a position created by legislation in September last year. The bill requires a commissioner to live in and work with communities that are disproportionately and unfairly burdened by pollution and other environmental problems.

Turnbull Sanders has been an assistant general counsel at the Los Angeles Unified School District since 2006. She was a Los Angeles deputy city attorney from 2004 to 2006 and addressed blight and environmental hazards.

From 1998 to 2001 Turnbull Sanders was a special assistant to Cruz Reynoso, a former California Supreme Court justice and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She worked on environmental justice, civil rights and economic development issues.

dan.weikel@latimes.com

Twitter: @LADeadline16
A 16-year-old girl who was fatally shot by Fremont police during a robbery investigation was pregnant, authorities say.

The girl, who was a passenger in a stolen vehicle linked to a series of robberies, was in her first trimester of pregnancy, according to Sgt. Ryan Cantrell, a spokesman for the Hayward Police Department, which is investigating the shooting.

Cantrell declined to release the girls identity per department policy. However, the girls family identified her as Elena Mondragon.

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On a GoFundMe Web page created for the girl, her uncle, Miguel Minjares, described her as a witty, fun-loving girl. He said the Antioch teen was coldly shot by police.

Her family is feeling a pain that seems in this moment that will never go away, Minjares wrote.

The shooting occurred at 5:20 p.m. Tuesday near Cal State East Bay in Hayward, about 12 miles north of Fremont, according to Hayward police.

Fremont police detectives were investigating a rash of robberies in the Bay Area and had traveled to Hayward, where they located a stolen vehicle believed to have been connected to the robberies, a police statement said.

When the detectives tried to stop the vehicle at an apartment complex in the 25200 block of Carlos Bee Boulevard, the driver instead rammed their police vehicle, according to Hayward police. Two Fremont detectives were injured.

Thats when the detectives fired at the car, striking one of three passengers inside, police said.

The car then sped away from the apartment complex but crashed a short distance away, according to Hayward police.

When authorities reached the vehicle, they found the wounded teen.

Two other occupants of the car were taken into custody near the scene of the crash, police said. A fourth occupant who ran from the vehicle was arrested Wednesday night in San Francisco. Authorities did not identify any of the cars occupants.

The Hayward Police Department and Alameda County district attorneys office are investigating the shooting.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA

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Ten days after the election, a measure to raise the sales tax a quarter-percent to fund homeless programs across Los Angeles County was declared a winner Friday with a growing margin over the required two-thirds majority.

After counting the last 55,000 ballots, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder reported Friday afternoon that the yes vote for Measure H had climbed to 69.24%.

Its a great day for Los Angeles, said Mayor Eric Garcetti. Its a great day for people who have waited for something big to come and finally can see a model that can work. Now we have to make it work.

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Added to the half-cent transportation tax approved by voters in November, the measure will increase the sales tax rate to 9.5% across most of the county in July.

It is expected to raise $3.5 billion over a decade and launch what officials have characterized as the most comprehensive homelessness program ever attempted in the county.

Combined with the $1.2-billion housing bond approved by Los Angeles city voters in November, it will get 45,000 of an estimated 47,000 homeless people in the county off the streets in five years, according to predictions.

The Measure H money will provide rental subsidies for homeless people as well as case management and mental health services to help them stay housed. Also set to receive funds are initiatives that would, for example, remove homeless people from the justice system and prevent others from becoming homeless.

Thank God for the people of L.A. County who took matters into their own hands and opened their hearts in a way that said this vote will be governed by compassion, prudence and wisdom, said Mark Ridley-Thomas, chairman of the Board of Supervisors.

The early declaration of victory last week by some leaders of the Measure H campaign  with almost a third of the vote still uncounted  reflected their expectation that a final pre-election push had brought out thousands of yes voters.

The countys two major charitable organizations, United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the California Community Foundation, enlisted supporters from more than 300 organizations to reach out to voters.

Meanwhile, fundraising spearheaded by Ridley-Thomas, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor poured $3.5 million into mailing and advertising.

Its a great day for Los Angeles. Its a great day for people who have waited for something big to come and finally can see a model that can work.  Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles

In a separate campaign, the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office spent $1 million for outreach including television spots that highlighted Measure H. The Board of Supervisors authorized the spending to inform voters with a fair presentation of the facts.

The ads, which were characterized as educational rather than electioneering, showed homeless people either in the streets or newly housed. They finished with the message: Measure H on the March 7 ballot. LA County Homeless Initiative. Real Help. Lasting Change.

The registrar-recorder reported that records dating back to 1902 showed that Measure H was the only revenue proposal ever attempted during a March election, when generally low turnout poses an obstacle, especially in an era of supermajority requirements.

Despite the 77% margin city voters handed the Proposition HHH bond in November, success was far from certain.

Campaign strategists warned that the low turnout expected in a March countywide election would disproportionately draw older and more conservative voters less likely to favor a tax increase.

The team that led Proposition HHH to victory had to come up with an entirely new strategy for Measure H, said Tommy Newman, who coordinated the different groups involved in the campaign.

On the HHH campaign, we knew the voters would be there, Newman said. For the H campaign, we needed to make sure the right people voted and that we got the message to those people.

The campaign mailed more than 4 million pieces of literature and advertised in newspapers, including the front page of The Times. Political strategist Steve Barkan of SG&A Campaigns said ads placed online appeared on pages viewed 11 million times.

Barkan said Measure H was polling at 65% to 66% in late polls, but undecideds clearly broke toward a yes vote, and supporters were more motivated to turn out to vote.

Those voters were then targeted by mail, online and in person. To reach them in person, the California Community Foundation, which committed $300,000 to the campaign, hired California Calls, a nonprofit that organizes statewide to motivate new and infrequent voters.

California Calls worked with other organizations, including the Community Coalition in South Los Angeles, LA CAN in skid row and L.A. Voice to contact voters in targeted neighborhoods.

A combination of paid staff and volunteers made 550,000 phone calls, knocked on 10,000 doors and tracked 37,100 likely yes voters, said Ann Sewill, a California Community Foundation vice president.

doug.smith@latimes.com

@LATDoug

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UPDATES:

6:15 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction from Mayor Eric Garcetti and Mark Ridley-Thomas, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with the most recent election returns.

This story was originally published at 5:00 a.m. on March 17, 2017.
It was touted as a mega-bust: the successful end to a five-year investigation aimed at dismantling one of the largest insurance fraud schemes in California history.

More than a dozen people associated with Frontline Medical Associates were accused in 2015 of taking part in a $150-million scam that involved unnecessary surgeries by non-surgeons, doling out kickbacks for illegal patient referrals and fraudulently billing insurance companies.

But over the 18 months that followed, a judge dismissed most of the 132 counts laid out in two indictments. The most serious charges  for aggravated mayhem, carrying a potential life sentence  were dropped for a lack of evidence.

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Now, prosecutors are taking a second stab at the case after acknowledging flaws in how they presented it to a grand jury. At their request, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy Thursday threw out pending charges in the two indictments against 13 defendants, except for two suspects who are fugitives.

Prosecutors immediately brought new charges against a dozen people, filing three separate criminal complaints listing 194 counts, including aggravated mayhem, money laundering, insurance fraud and unlawful patient referrals. An 82-year-old physician who was accused of overbilling insurance companies was not charged in the new complaint; prosecutors noted that he is suffering serious health issues.

Prosecutors allege that Dr. Munir Uwaydah, the certified orthopedic surgeon patients believed would conduct procedures, instead let a physicians assistant perform surgeries. The scheme left nearly two dozen patients with lasting scars.

People were harmed, physically harmed, by the conduct of the conspirators, said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Dayan Mathai. They were invasively cut, scarred and suffered emotional damage.

Uwaydah, the accused ringleader who prosecutors initially said had been captured in Germany, remains at large. They believe he is living in Lebanon.

Defense attorneys called the move to drop and then refile charges a transparent stunt to dodge an evidentiary hearing scheduled for next week. They claim that prosecutors and investigators improperly reviewed thousands of records, including communications between defendants and their attorneys, protected by attorney-client privilege.

More than 50 prosecutors  including Mathai  and district attorneys investigators had been subpoenaed to testify, defense attorneys said.

Defense attorneys alleged in a court filing that some documents that prosecutors and others reviewed were used to bolster the criminal case.

In one example, an investigator developed leads based on correspondence between Uwaydah and one of his attorneys, leading to an undercover operation a year later, according to the filing. The investigators testimony before a grand jury led to three of the original counts.

The violation of the privilege could justify throwing county prosecutors off the case, defense attorneys said.

They want to basically say, We dont like the way this game is going so were turning the board over, said Benjamin Gluck, an attorney representing Uwaydahs business partner, Paul Turley. These people are going to be under the spotlight. Thats not a comfortable place to be. But you know what? The case has been going along  they made their bed, theyre going to have to sleep in it.

Its unclear if and when the evidentiary hearing will move forward  and in front of which judge.

Kennedy, who ordered the hearing last month, said that the allegations the defense raised arent going away.

All those issues are still going to be there, she said.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @AleneTchek
San Diego police have a new way to confirm the presence of marijuana and other drugs in impaired drivers  a mouth-swab device that is already being used by police departments in more than a dozen states and is expected to become more popular with the legalization of marijuana.

The two Drager DrugTest 5000 machines, which cost about $6,000 each, were donated by the San Diego Police Foundation last week.

They are expected to debut Friday night at the St. Patricks Day DUI checkpoint in downtown San Diego.

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The machine, about the size of a mini bookshelf stereo system, tests for the presence of seven drugs  marijuana, cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, amphetamine, methadone and benzodiazepines. The device does not read the level of intoxication; drivers would have to take a blood test for that information.

Its a huge concern of ours with the legalization of marijuana that were going to see an increase in impaired drugged driving, Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said at a news conference Thursday near the Ingraham Street Bridge in Mission Bay, a common DUI checkpoint spot.

California voters approved the use and cultivation of recreational marijuana by passing Proposition 64 in November.

To prepare for the effects of the law, a team of San Diego narcotics officers went to Denver to learn how Colorado has fared since recreational marijuana was legalized there and found that the region has seen an uptick in drugged driving, Zimmerman said. The numbers have been growing in California as well.

In 2014, 38% of drivers who were killed in motor vehicle crashes in California tested positive for drugs, whether legal or illegal, according to the state Office of Highway Safety. Thats up from 32% the year before.

We want to get these impaired drivers off the streets, the chief said.

The Drager 5000 premiered in the U.S. in 2009 and is used by police in places such as Los Angeles, New York, Arizona and Nevada, as well as in other countries such as Australia, Belgium and Germany.

In San Diego, the machines will be used primarily at DUI checkpoints for now.

Like the handheld preliminary alcohol screening devices frequently used in the field to test for booze, drivers cannot be forced to submit to a Drager 5000 test.

Officers trained to recognize the symptoms of drug impairment will first look for various indicators that a driver is high, such as an unsafe driving maneuver, bloodshot eyes, the odor of marijuana and blank stares, San Diego police Officer Emilio Ramirez said. Once there is ample suspicion of drug use, the officer can then request to perform field sobriety tests or for a driver to take the Drager 5000 test.

If the driver refuses at that point, the officer can force the person to submit to a blood test.

To use the machine, the driver is handed a mouth swab and instructed to run it around the inside of the mouth for up to four minutes. The swab is then placed into the machine, along with a vial of testing solution, and the machine does its work. It takes about six to eight minutes for results to print out.

A positive result will likely send the driver to a police phlebotomist for a blood test to determine precise drug levels.

If the mouth swab test is negative but the officer still has a suspicion of impairment, then a blood draw might still be mandated, because the Drager 5000 measures for only seven kinds of narcotics, Ramirez said.

When it comes to detecting marijuana, the machine only looks for the active THC compound that is responsible for the high. That component, delta-9 THC, can stay in a persons system for a few hours or longer, depending on how the cannabis was ingested and how the persons body processes the drug. The machine does not look for the inactive THC compounds, which can stay in a persons system for weeks, police said.

In other words, if someone legally smoked marijuana two days ago, there would be nothing to worry about if tested on the machine.

Evidence from the Drager 5000 will be admissible in court, although the machine is not expected to have a notable effect on how drugged driving cases are prosecuted, attorneys said.

Under California law, there is no legal threshold for the amount of drugs in a persons system when it comes to driving. Alcohol cases are more black and white  a .08% blood-alcohol level or higher is illegal.

Officers and prosecutors have instead had to rely on subjective measures and observations to build a case of drug impairment, which can be different from person to person.

Davis writes for the San Diego Union Tribune.

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned for the first time Friday that all options are being considered to counter North Koreas emerging nuclear threat, including a military strike if necessary to safeguard allies and tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in the region.

The threat of a U.S. military attack comes after a series of ballistic missile tests by Kim Jong Uns government in recent weeks has heightened tensions across northeast Asia and raised the possibility of a conflict with an adversary that now possesses nuclear arms and appears close to being able to strike U.S. territory.

For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, is being installed on Jeju Island. Plans call for it to be in Seongju County in the southeastern part of South Korea.

The tough talk appears to be a break from previous U.S. administrations, which emphasized diplomacy, economic sanctions and covert operations, including cyberattacks, to try to reduce the danger from one of the worlds most isolated, and unpredictable, dictatorships.

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Certainly we do not want for things to get to a military conflict, Tillerson told reporters in Seoul on the second leg of his three-nation visit to Asia, his first to the region since taking office.

Weve been quite clear on that in our communications. But obviously, if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that will be met with an appropriate response, he added.

Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended, he said, referring to the Obama administrations policy of trying to wait out the North Korean regime while pressing it with economic sanctions and covert actions.

Tillerson arrives in Beijing on Saturday, where he is expected to meet President Xi Jinping. China remains North Koreas chief political and economic patron but it has struggled over the years to rein in Pyongyangs leadership.

Tillerson emphasized the need for maintaining economic sanctions on Pyongyang but also made clear that the Trump administration would not be limited to that approach.

Were exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table, he said.

Among the options would be to boost South Koreas anti-missile defenses, a process that is underway, or to enable Japan to build an offensive missile capability. Japans 1947 Constitution, imposed by the United States, limits its military to defense only.

Washington also could reintroduce nuclear weapons to U.S. bases in South Korea to serve as a front-line deterrent. They were removed in 1991 under President George H.W. Bush as part of a post-Cold War effort to ease global nuclear tensions.

Previous administrations have considered a first strike against North Korean missile and nuclear facilities an option of last resort because it almost certainly would provoke a massive retaliation against South Korea and Japan. More than 75,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in those countries.

The mounting threat could pose the first major foreign policy crisis for the Trump White House. As a candidate, Trump suggested letting Japan and South Korea build their own nuclear weapons to counter North Korea, but he has not pursued that as president.

Even the threat of a preemptive American attack adds risks to a volatile situation since North Korea has always insisted that was the U.S. intention. Its leaders have used that claim to justify creating one of the worlds most heavily armed states.

Tillerson also appeared to reject the idea of trying to negotiate a freeze in North Koreas weapons program, a policy that the Clinton administration tried in 1994 by supplying oil and other aid to Pyongyang in an effort to block its then-nascent nuclear development.

The so-called Agreed Framework successfully slowed Pyongyangs ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium that could be used to fuel a bomb. But the deal collapsed in 2002 when Pyongyang shifted course and pursued a uranium-enrichment route to nuclear arms.

It conducted its first underground nuclear test in 2006 under the Bush administration, and four tests since then. The most recent, last September, was said to produce a destructive yield larger than the nuclear bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 at the end of World War II.

Another attempted freeze, under the Obama administration in 2012, lasted only 15 days before Pyongyang launched a missile that the U.S. said violated the deal.

North Koreas capabilities have expanded dramatically in the past year, suggesting it is getting closer to building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could carry a warhead to Alaska, Hawaii or the continental U.S.

It conducted more than two dozen missile tests, including one that could reach all of Japan, another launched from a submarine, and another that uses solid fuel and can be launched quickly.

An unusual launch this month involved four medium-range missiles. North Korea said the simultaneous salvo was a drill to practice hitting U.S. military bases in Japan. The missiles all fell in the ocean.

At this stage, Im not sure we would be willing to freeze with the circumstance where they exist today, given that would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat not just to the region but to American forces as well, Tillerson said.

On Thursday, the North Korean Embassy in Beijing invited reporters in for a rare news conference to blame the United States for putting the region at what it called the brink of nuclear war.

The bellicose language was not new but issuing the threat in Beijing, which the Trump administration hopes will help constrain Pyongyang, was notable. China has announced a ban on coal imports from North Korea, but analysts doubt Beijing will enforce the ban for fear of creating instability on its border.

For his part, President Trump declared on Twitter that North Korea was behaving very badly and dismissed a Chinese proposal to freeze North Koreas nuclear and missile programs in exchange for a halt to U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

Tillersons remarks, standing with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, came a day after he declared in Tokyo that two decades of attempts to block North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles had failed and that a different approach was required.

Earlier Friday, Tillerson toured the Demilitarized Zone, a heavily guarded buffer area between North and South Korea created after the 1953 armistice that halted fighting during the Korean War. The two nations have never signed a formal peace treaty.

A group of North Koreans, apparently tourists, waved from across the border during Tillersons visit. A helmeted North Korean soldier, just across the border, took pictures of Tillersons back as he posed with Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea.

Tillerson ate lunch with U.S. troops there and signed a brick with chalk, a tradition for dignitaries who visit the site.

Tillersons tour of the region comes as the U.S. military is participating in a two-month exercise with South Korean and Japanese forces, an annual exercise that North Korea routinely denounces as a prelude to war.

The Foal Eagle exercise involves fighter jets, submarines and ground forces involved in a range of complex drills. About 3,600 U.S. service members were deployed for the event, joining the 28,000 U.S. troops permanently based in South Korea.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Friday that the U.S. military has a number of plans in place in the event of hostile North Korean military action. He would not directly comment on the possibility of a preemptive U.S. attack.

Ill let Secretary Tillerson talk for U.S. policy, Davis said. Our job is to provide military options that give strength to foreign policy that he leads.

Tillersons meeting in Seoul comes amid political upheaval in South Korea. Its president was removed from office last week in a corruption scandal that threatens nearly a decade of conservative party rule.

The leading candidate in the polls, Moon Jae-in, says he wants to delay installation of a new U.S. antimissile system, known as THAAD, which is intended to shoot down North Korean missiles.

The U.S. began moving parts of the system into South Korea last month, although it is not yet operational. The missile battery is to be installed in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang province, in the southeastern part of the country.

Chinese officials have complained that the systems sophisticated radar would undermine Chinas own military deterrent, and have retaliated by disrupting tourism and commerce with South Korea.

While we acknowledge Chinas opposition, its economic retaliation is inappropriate and troubling, Tillerson said, calling on China to end the practice.

Staff writer Wilkinson reported from Washington and special correspondent Stiles from Seoul. Special correspondent Jessica Meyers in Beijing and staff writer W.J. Hennigan in Washington contributed to this report.

tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com

For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter

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The Trump administration filed a notice in a Maryland federal district court on Friday that it would appeal the courts decision halting the presidents revised travel ban.

The case, in which the judge on Thursday ruled against President Trumps effort to stop immigration for 90 days from six majority-Muslim countries, heads to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. The administration is asking the appeals court to reverse the lower courts decision.

The Maryland case, which was brought on behalf of immigrants and nonprofit groups that work with refugees, followed a Hawaii federal courts broader order against the travel ban on Wednesday. That order stopped its pause on immigration from the six nations and its 120-day moratorium on refugee resettlement.

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The travel ban was supposed to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday.

Both courts found Trumps travel rules to run afoul of the Constitution by discriminating against Muslims. The courts pointed to Trumps statements promising to suspend Muslim immigration and interviews with campaign and White House officials to make their cases.

President Trumps Muslim ban has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason  it violates fundamental provisions of our Constitution. We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court, Omar Jadwat of the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued against the travel ban in the Maryland court, said in a statement Friday.

Trump has vowed to take the travel ban to the Supreme Court and has said it falls within his rights as president to control immigration and protect the country from terrorism.

Speaking at a Nashville rally this week, Trump called the revised travel order a watered down version of a Jan. 27 executive order that was halted by a Seattle federal judge. That judges decision was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The first travel ban stopped refugee resettlement from all countries for 120 days  and from Syria indefinitely  and banned citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days while the government was to review its vetting procedures.

The new order attempted to address court concerns by removing a preference for refugees who are religious minorities and giving exemptions from the travel order to green-card holders and those who already have valid visas. It also removed Iraq from the list of countries whose citizens could not come to the U.S.

jaweed.kaleem@latimes.com

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The Trump administration has every reason to be exasperated by North Koreas continued acceleration of its nuclear weapons program, which poses a threat not only to South Korea but also to other countries in Asia and potentially to the United States. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went too far during his current swing through Asia by seeming to suggest that the United States might engage in a preemptive military strike against North Korea.

Certainly we do not want things to get to a military conflict, Tillerson told reporters in Seoul. But he added that if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces, then that will be met with an appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table.

Theres nothing new about the idea that the U.S. would defend South Korea against an attack from the North. But Tillerson seemed to be raising the possibility of a preemptive strike. If that was his meaning, the threat was premature, because the U.S. has other ways to deter North Korea. But the ambiguity of his words was itself a problem. Its vagueness recalled former National Security Advisor Michael Flynns warning earlier this year that he was putting Iran on notice.

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At the same time, Tillerson seemed to rule out resuming negotiations with the North even if the North agreed that the goal of the talks would be denuclearization. The policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said, referring to the Obama administrations strategy of hoping that economic sanctions would force Pyongyang to resume negotiations.

We dont fault Tillerson or President Trump for responding to recent North Korean missile tests. The U.S. is installing a missile-defense system in South Korea despite complaints by China that its sophisticated radar would thwart Chinese defenses, and the same system could also be deployed in Japan. Presumably the U.S. is also continuing cyber-attacks against the North Korean nuclear program. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to urge China to put more pressure on North Korea.

Nor was Trump wrong when he tweeted on Friday that North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been playing the United States for years. North Korea has made commitments not only to the U.S. but to other nations and then reneged on them, and the U.S. shouldnt engage it in negotiations until Pyongyang makes it clear that it is serious about giving up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees. But as the U.S. explores what Tillerson calls a new approach to North Korea, it should leave open the door to negotiations.

Meanwhile, its important that the president and the secretary of State not engage in what sounds like saber-rattling.

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A recently elected prosecutor in Florida announced Thursday that she would unilaterally take the death penalty off the table for murder cases handled by her office, a decision that drew a stern rebuke from some quarters, and led Florida Gov. Rick Scott to remove her from a pending case against an accused cop killer. But State Attorney Aramis Ayala, who represents two counties near Orlando, also drew accolades from others. Add me to the accolade list.

Ayala said Thursday she reached her decision after studying the role of the death penalty, and her role as a prosecutor, in seeking to achieve justice. The announcement came as a surprise. As the Orlando Sentinel noted, Ayala, a former assistant prosecutor in the office she now runs, waged a five-month election campaign without indicating she had doubts about the death penalty.

In fact, Jeff Ashton, her former boss and the incumbent she beat to win the office, said Ayala accepted a capital-punishment case assignment two years ago. She came to me. She was really excited because she got her first death penalty case, he told the Sentinel.

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But isnt this what we want elected officials to do? To look deeply at their roles, and to evolve positions as they learn? In Ayalas case, once she became the linchpin in the death-penalty system  there is no death sentence for a jury to consider if the district attorney doesnt seek it  she took it on herself to understand capital punishment within its entire context.

Ayala concluded that there is no reliable evidence to show the death penalty offers a public safety benefit or increases security for law enforcement, that capital punishment is not a deterrent to committing murder; offers false promises to families because executions occur rarely and long after the crime itself; and that millions of dollars spent pursing death sentences that likely wont take place divert resources from the criminal justice system.

What has become abundantly clear through this process is that while I currently do have the discretion to pursue death sentences, I have determined that doing so is not in the best interest of this community or the best interests of justice, Ayala said. Let me be very clear: I will continue to hold people who do harm in this community accountable for their actions. I will do so in a way that is sensible, fair and just.

Ayala is the second recently elected prosecutor to reject the death penalty. Denver Dist. Atty. Beth McCann made a similar announcement in January, but in her case, it was the fulfillment of a campaign promise in a region where death sentences are rarely handed down. The state has executed only one person since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, and there are only three people on Colorados death row.

A capital case doesnt get to a jury without one person  the district attorney  first making a decision.

Florida has executed 92 people since the practice was resumed, and 396 people sit on the states death row (though that could change due to recent legal problems with how death sentences used to be determined). Nine of the executions were in cases covered by what is now Ayalas district.

Orlando Deputy Police Chief Robert Anzueto  whose officer, Lt. Debra Clayton, was killed as she confronted murder suspect Markeith Lloyd  argued that the decision for someone to live or die in a case like this should be in the hands of a jury and not for one person to decide.

Yet a capital case doesnt get to a jury without one person  the district attorney  first making a decision. Murder charges are overwhelmingly prosecuted as a state crime, but there are wide county-by-county disparities within a state on whether the death penalty is sought. Whether someone in Florida  or California, for that matter  faces a capital charge depends on that first-step decision by the county district attorney.

So a crime that might be considered worthy of the death penalty in one county might not be in the next, the definition of arbitrary application.

While people perceive that a jury of peers is somehow a failsafe against injustice, history shows thats not the case. In fact, in capital punishment cases the jury is not even necessarily made up of peers, since anyone who opposes the death penalty tends to be rejected for cause, leading to a jury not reflective of the community and more likely to find a defendant guilty.

That Ayala has taken the death penalty off the table for cases handled by her office will have political ramifications in Florida, and for her. Its unclear whether the governor will seek to take more murder cases away from her office, a move that would likely draw challenges. Ayala was elected, and the democratic solution for those who disapprove of her decision is the next election, not gubernatorial override.

In fact, the November 2016 elections saw a number of tough-on-crime DAs unseated by challengers propelled by the Black Lives Matter movement and justice reformers (Ayalas race was part of that), and several of the elections occurred in counties that account for a staggering portion of the nations death sentences (further proof of its arbitrary use).

Still, it was a brave step for Ayala to take, and more district attorneys should exercise their prosecutorial discretion in recognition of the critical problems with the death penalty, including that it disproportionately affects the poor and minorities. Beyond its fundamental inhumanity, it is too flawed a system to be trusted as an arbiter of who should live or die.

Scott.Martelle@LATimes.com

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To the editor: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) targeted his outlandish remarks  we need to get our birthrates up and we cant restore our civilization with someone elses babies  at the U.S. as much as Europe. (Steve King yammers about European immigration problems, but his policies would replicate them in America, Opinion, March 14)

In so spouting, King artfully intimated that a steady influx of Muslim immigrants, with their historically high birthrates, would ineluctably erode our societal foundations.

Not likely. Though Muslim women average 3.1 children worldwide, that figure drops to about 2.2 for those who emigrate. That slightly exceeds Americas overall birthrate of 1.9 children per woman, but is far lower than our Mormon birthrates of 3.4.

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King evidently views Muslims as adherents of a fringe faith. Does he think the Mormons practice a mainstream religion that embodies his idea of American culture?

Kendra Strozyk, Cameron Park, Calif.

..

To the editor: King recently said, Id ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of [nonwhite] people that you are talking about.

Answer (just to name a few inventors, and limited to recent United States history): Frederick M. Jones, air-conditioning unit; Henry T. Sampson, technology used in cellphones; George T. Sampson, clothes dryer; T.J. Marshall, improving the fire extinguisher; Garrett Morgan, gas mask; Robert Flemming Jr., guitar; John Albert Burr, lawn mower; W.A. Martin, improving the lock; Philip B. Downing, mailbox; John Standard, improving the refrigerator; Edmond Berger, spark plug; George Washington Carver, peanut products; and Joseph N. Jackson, remote control.

African Americans and other people of color contribute greatly to the advancement of civilization in spite of unjust and persistent societal obstruction, small minds and underdeveloped hearts.

Hortense Bradley, Los Angeles

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TV ads target lawmakers on the fence over Gov. Jerry Browns plan to raise gas taxes to repair roads By Patrick McGreevy Gov. Jerry Brown talks to Steve Glazer in 2011, when Glazer was still an advisor to the governor and before he was elected to the Senate. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) With supporters of a road repair bill still counting votes, a coalition of business and labor leaders on Friday began running television and radio ads that target eight legislators who have not yet committed to vote for the measure. The Fix Our Roads Coalition is spending $1 million on a statewide, week-long ad blitz that urges legislators to vote next week for Senate Bill 1. The bill would raise gas taxes and vehicle fees to generate $52 billion the first 10 years to repair crumbling roads, highways and bridges, and expand mass transit. We are closer than ever to finally passing a transportation funding package to fix our long-neglected and crumbling roads, said Michael Quigley, executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs, which is co-funding the commercials. These new ads are part of an all-out grassroots, earned media, advertising and social media campaign to support passage of this bill by next week. In addition to ads that call on legislators to support the bill, eight advertisements call on legislators by name to support the plan. Those targeted include Sens. Steve Glazer (D-Concord) and Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres), and moderate Democratic Assembly members Adam Gray of Merced, Rudy Salas of Bakersfield, Sabrina Cervantes of Corona, Sharon Quirk-Silva of Buena Park and Al Muratsuchi of Torrance, as well as Republican Catharine Baker of San Ramon. The bill needs a two-thirds vote in both houses, which would require all of the Democrats to support the measure. Cannella and Baker are being wooed by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders to step in if one of the Democrats gets cold feet. Representatives of Cannella and Glazer said earlier this week that they were still weighing the issue. Brown and legislative leaders have called for the Legislature to act by Thursday, after which time the lawmakers head out on spring break. Facebook

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Former Assembly Speaker John A. Perezs views on the L.A. congressional race he dropped out of By Christine Mai-Duc (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Before he suddenly dropped out of the running citing health reasons, former Assembly Speaker John A. Perez was widely considered the favorite to replace Xavier Becerra in the 34th Congressional District. With Perez out, the race is wide open and isnt likely to be decided Tuesday, when 24 candidates compete in the primary. Instead, the top two vote-getters regardless of party are expected to advance to a June 6 election. (If any one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote Tuesday, its all over). Perez offered his thoughts on the race in an interview published Friday by Politico. Some of his major points: Perez said he thinks state Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez is significantly ahead of the pack and will make the runoff.

A cluster of candidates, including Alejandra Campoverdi, Wendy Carrillo, Arturo Carmona, Maria Cabildo and Robert Lee Ahn, are in a close enough race that any one of them could advance.

If Carrillo were to move forward, Perez says, the narrative in the runoff would be about which candidate is more progressive and whos an insider versus an outsider.

Perez says if he were the front runner, Campoverdi is the one Id be most concerned about running against due to her connections in Washington and her national profile, which could create a new level of viability. Facebook

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To fight against human trafficking, this state senator wants to train motel employees to spot signs of abuse By Jazmine Ulloa Former Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times) State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) wants to increase services for human trafficking survivors and make it easier in court to put away their abusers. Flanked by prosecutors and hotel industry officials at a news conference Friday in San Diego, the former Assembly speaker announced new housing and mental health assistance for victims and introduced legislation that would require hotels and motels to train their employees to spot signs of human trafficking. Another of her proposals would expand the character evidence that prosecutors can bring forth at trial against defendants charged with selling victims for sex or labor. The bills are meant to attack a multibillion-dollar trade that has a wide sweep in California, home to three cities on the FBIs list of 13 top human trafficking destinations: San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles. National human trafficking hotline calls across California generated 1,323 cases in 2016  nearly twice as many as any other state. Atkins is among lawmakers pushing the issue at the Capitol, where legislation has focused on targeting traffickers, protecting victims and addressing what advocates say is a law enforcement culture in which child survivors sometimes are treated like criminals. But funding for victims services and programs has been an obstacle. A bill by Atkins to develop pilot projects in three counties to address the commercial sexual exploitation of youth sailed through the Legislature without opposition last year only to be vetoed by the governor. Her second bill for a statewide task force died in the Senate appropriations committee. Atkins latest proposal to provide training for motel employees follows a similar bill by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens). It failed in the last legislative session amid opposition over costs to businesses. That hasnt stopped Atkins from trying again. Hotels are ground zero for sex trafficking in this state, she said in a statement. Sex traffickers are exploiting some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including children. These victims are often hiding in plain sight, and traffickers take advantage of the fact that many hotel employees dont recognize the signs. Facebook

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State Controller Betty Yee says Californias tax collection agency has been mismanaged and needs a complete overhaul By Patrick McGreevy Citing a review that found widespread mismanagement at the state Board of Equalization, State Controller Betty T. Yee on Friday called for stripping the panel of responsibilities for tax administration and audit and compliance functions so it can focus on handling taxpayer appeals. Yees proposal came in response to an evaluation by the state Department of Finance that found board officials were improperly redirecting resources and employees to pet projects in their districts. In order to rebuild taxpayer trust, meaningful reform is essential, said Yee, who serves as an ex-officio member of the board. I urge the Legislature and the governor to strip the board members of all statutory functions and permanently move these duties and assigned staff to a separate new department under the governor. The Department of Finance review found the board had difficulty providing complete and accurate documentation in response to inquiries, and various levels of management were not aware of and could not speak to certain actions, including the informal establishment of a call center, creating an unofficial office location and inconsistent use of community liaisons. The evaluation said personnel records showed workers assigned to administrative jobs that they were not doing, having been transferred to help board members in their districts. Even though each elected board member has a $1.5-million budget to cover office costs, some members borrowed workers from the head office, taking them from jobs that involved bringing in tax money and having them instead reach out to board members constituents, the review found. The redirection of workers violated state budget rules. In addition, the reviewers said the board provided 11 different versions of its proposed sales and use tax allocation adjustment and the Department of Finance found errors and omissions throughout. Facebook

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Sen. Kamala Harris has opened a gubernatorial fundraising account  but she has no plans to run for governor, aide says By Seema Mehta (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times) Sen. Kamala Harris opened a campaign fundraising account to run for governor in 2026, but that does not mean Californias newest U.S. senator has any plans to seek the office. Harris plans to use the account to store the $1 million in leftover funds from her successful 2014 reelection campaign for attorney general, said Sean Clegg, Harris political spokesman. Harris left her post as state attorney general mid-term when she was elected in November to the Senate seat opening created by the retirement of Barbara Boxer. She faced a March 31 deadline to shutter the attorney general account, and under election law cannot mingle money raised for state campaigns with funds raised to run for federal office. Its purely political bookkeeping, Clegg said. The 2026 date could raise eyebrows because after the 2018 gubernatorial election, that will likely be the next time the governors office is open because its occupant is termed out. But Clegg said Harris did not open an account for a lower office like lieutenant governor  as politicians in similar situations typically do  because, he said, we werent interested in being cute about it. So we designated the only potential future office one could conceivably contemplate, although were not contemplating it, he said. Were focused on the job were doing. Facebook

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This California lawmaker wants to crack down on toys and electronics that pick up conversations and personal information By Jazmine Ulloa State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), left (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press ) A California state senator wants to prevent companies from selling products that can listen in on conversations and collect personal information from unknowing consumers. Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) has filed legislation that would require manufacturers to equip their Internet-connected devices, including toys, clocks, kitchenware and electronics, with certain security and privacy features. Dubbed the Teddy Bear and Toaster Act, Senate Bill 327 takes aim at the so-called Internet of Things, the inter-networking of everyday devices that some tech and privacy experts say amounts to a growing industry with little oversight. The more we know and the more we learn about the Internet connection of all sorts of devices, many are realizing that we dont know the extent to which these devices are invading our lives, Jackson said. Under her proposal, companies would have to design their products so that they alert consumers  through visual, auditory or other cues  when they are gathering data. They would have to obtain user consent when they intend to transfer the information. And they would have to disclose at point of sale whether the devices are capable of sweeping up sensitive data, so that customers can take that into account while shopping. Most states, including California, have privacy breach laws to protect personal information. The proposal, which would extend those provisions to consumer devices, could be the first of its kind nationwide. But it is expected to garner wide opposition from retailers and manufacturers. A My Friend Cayla doll (AFP/Getty Images) Still, supporters point to growing privacy concerns. Some toys, like the My Friend Cayla doll banned in Germany, prompt children to give personal information, such as their parents names and their addresses, and their manufacturers reserve the right to target young buyers in direct marketing campaigns. Other smart devices lack the most basic security features that make them vulnerable to a hack or coordinated cyberattack. In a statement, James P. Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Kids Action, which is sponsoring the bill, said such toys and electronics can put consumers at risk. These products get rushed out to the market without the privacy issues being addressed in advance, and then consumers end up paying the price, he said. Facebook

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President Jerry Brown? Dont rule it out, governor quips By Patrick McGreevy Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislative leaders appealed Thursday for support for a proposed gas tax and vehicle fee increase to fix the states roads and bridges. (Patrick McGreevy / Los Angeles Times) In arguing for approval of a new transportation package on Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown appeared to enjoy himself in refusing to shoot down a supporters suggestion that he run for president  even as he noted his 79th birthday is next week. Standing next to other elected officials and construction workers at the rally in in Concord, Brown argued that gas tax and vehicle fee increases are needed to address a backlog of much-needed repairs to Californias crumbling system of roads, highways and bridges. Im telling you the truth because why would I lie to you? Brown said. I dont think Im running for office. All Ive got left is lieutenant governor, treasurer and controller. Or president, someone in the crowd shouted. Brown responded that he would be 82 when the next presidential election comes around. But you know, dont rule it out, he quipped, drawing laughter and applause. Lest the comment turn into a national story, an aide later clarified the governors intentions: He was joking. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown is making appeals to legislators for votes on his new transportation plan  one district at a time By Patrick McGreevy Gov. Jerry Brown stumps for the new transportation funding plan on Thursday in the Bay Area city of Concord. (Patrick McGreevy / Los Angeles Times) Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders on Thursday took their campaign for higher transportation taxes and fees to the Bay Area district of state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Concord), one of the holdouts in the state Senate who has not yet committed to vote for the package. Surrounded by dozens of construction workers, Brown warned that if the transportation bill unveiled on Wednesday isnt approved this year, it may not happen in the foreseeable future. There is nothing more fundamental in the business of government than making sure the roads and bridges dont fall apart, and they are falling apart, Brown said. Glazer recently withheld his vote from a bill proposing a similar plan for repairing state bridges, roads and highways, and on Wednesday, a spokesman said he had still not committed to any plan but wanted to review the detailed proposal before taking a position. Construction workers at the rally held signs that pictured crumbling roads and said, Senator Glazer Fix This Now. Vote for SB 1. Brown said Glazer, his former senior advisor, does not disagree with the intent of the bill. He loves this plan, but he has another idea on his mind and he wants to marry the two and see if he can get some outcomes that I dont want to get into at this particular place, Brown told reporters. Sen. Jim Beall, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said Glazer wants the transportation funding bill to include a clause barring employees of Bay Area Rapid Transit from going on strike. Beall said that is a labor-relations issue that cannot be included in the bill raising taxes. You cant do that, Beall said. A spokesman for Glazer said the senator is still undecided on the bill. The senator is continuing to have conversations with the principals, said Steve Harmon, a spokesman for Glazer. He declined to comment on Bealls statement. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said there may be similar rallies in Los Angeles and Riverside in the coming days. Two other Democrats who have not yet committed to the plan are Riverside Sen. Richard Roth and Woodland Hills Sen. Henry Stern. Brown acknowledged that there is work to do to secure the two-thirds vote needed in both houses of the Legislature to raise the base excise tax on gasoline by 12 cents per gallon, to a total of 30 cents per gallon, and to create a new annual vehicle fee that would average $51 based on the value of the car or truck. Rendon said approval of the transportation bill would cost the average California motorist an extra $10 per month, which he said is a deal compared to the current cost of $720 in annual vehicle repair costs required because of running over potholes and other rough road conditions. Hoping to force a Senate vote on the package early next week, Brown was accompanied to the Concord news conference by Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles). They urged lawmakers to support the bill, which would generate $5.2 billion annually for the first 10 years for road and bridge repairs, mass transit improvements and other projects to reduce congestion. Glazer, known as a maverick in the Legislature, was Browns campaign manager during the 2010 gubernatorial election and remained a senior advisor to the governor before running for the state Senate in a special election in 2015. ---- 1:23 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from a representative for state Sen. Steve Glazer. This article was originally published at 12:42 p.m. Facebook

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Who will be Californias next governor? New poll shows Newsom leads with 1 in 3 voters undecided By Seema Mehta (Nick Ut / Associated Press) In the race to replace termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown, the largest number of voters in a new statewide poll does not favor a candidate in the race. About 1 in 3 voters said they were undecided, according to the survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. Among candidates who have entered the race, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom holds a strong lead with 28% of the vote, followed by Republican businessman John Cox with 18%, according to the poll, which was released Wednesday. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa clocks in at 11%, state Treasurer John Chiang at 8% and former state schools chief Delaine Eastin at 3%. Because the race is far away and public campaigning has not yet started in earnest, the poll could primarily be an indicator of name recognition. The field of candidates is also likely to grow. Newsom has several natural advantages: He was the first person to enter the race in 2015 and has a large fundraising edge. He has perhaps been the candidate most in the spotlight among the Democrats running, notably for his support of the marijuana legalization measure on the November ballot. Cox may have benefited from being the lone Republican in that version of the poll. Pollsters conducted a second version of the poll with five additional potential candidates, none of whom have announced a run for governor in 2018  San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon and former state Controller Steve Westly. Newsom still led the pack to come in at 24%. The two Republicans, Faulconer and Cox, tied at 11% each. Faulconer has said he does not plan to run for governor. Garcetti, Villaraigosa, Chiang, Steyer, De Leon, Westly and Eastin all placed in the single digits. Steyer and Westly have the personal wealth to self-fund a campaign, giving them time to decide whether to enter the race. Westly unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006, losing in the Democratic primary to state Treasurer Phil Angelides. In the 2018 contest, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary will move onto the November general election. The poll of 1,000 registered voters in California was conducted online in English and Spanish between March 13 and 20, and has a margin of error in either direction of 3.6%. Facebook

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California legislators team up to expand John Muir National Historic Site By Sarah D. Wire Californias senators and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) filed legislation Thursday to add 44 acres to the John Muir National Historic Site. The John Muir Heritage Land Trust has offered to donate the additional land to the National Park Service, which operates the site, and the bill would authorize the agency to accept the parcel. The time John Muir spent with his daughters at their scenic home and its neighboring property played a major role in launching the national parks movement. Expanding the existing park to preserve more of this history and beauty is a fitting tribute to Muirs legacy of protecting land for all to enjoy, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement. Located about 30 miles east of San Francisco, the John Muir National Historic Site consists of Muirs Alhambra Valley home and 325 acres outside of Martinez. DeSaulnier said in a statement that expanding the property is a fitting celebration of his legacy, and will offer nature-goers greater access to enjoy the beauty of the East Bay. DeSaulnier sponsored the same bill last year, which passed the House unanimously but was not considered by the Senate. Feinstein and former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) carried the Senate version, which died after a committee hearing. Such bills often take a few attempts to pass, even without major opposition. Muirs writings helped inspire the creation of the National Park Service, starting with his lobbying of Congress to protect the Yosemite Valley from dams. He also was a founding member of the Sierra Club. Californians owe him a debt of gratitude, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said in a statement. Facebook

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Californias attorney general could investigate local police shootings under new legislation By Liam Dillon Attorney John Burris, center, comforts Robert and Deborah Mann, family members of Joseph Mann, who was killed by Sacramento Police in July, after a news conference on Oct. 3, 2016. (Rich Pedroncelli / AP) Californias attorney general could investigate local police shootings under a new bill authored by a Sacramento lawmaker. Democratic Assemblyman Kevin McCartys Assembly Bill 284 would allow local police departments or district attorneys to ask Atty. Gen. Xavier Becceras office to independently investigate police shootings of civilians. The legislation was prompted by high-profile police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner in New York City and last summers police shooting of Joseph Mann, a mentally ill homeless man, in Sacramento, according to McCartys office. In all three cases, local prosecutors declined to charge the officers. There is a growing skepticism and a perceived conflict of interest, of the current process of local district attorneys investigating local police, said a fact sheet on the bill provided by McCartys office. Given that they work so closely, it is a valid question of whether this is the most transparent process for the public. There is a growing appetite, both at the national and local level, to create a better and more transparent system for [police shootings] that is fair to police, families, and the community in order to restore public trust. McCartys bill would make state investigations voluntary in these cases and would be implemented only if lawmakers also give Becceras office money to pay for the effort. In 2015, McCarty tried to pass legislation that would have made state investigations of local police shootings mandatory, but that bill failed to make it out of legislative committees. This year, lawmakers have generally scaled back prior efforts to change the states rules governing police discipline and transparency. Facebook

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Former offenders will help award millions in Proposition 47 grants to rehabilitate inmates By Jazmine Ulloa We have listened to law enforcement talk about how horrible Prop. 47 is, said Vonya Quarles, an advocate for the formerly incarcerated. Now we have a chance to help the people who are hurting. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)) California officials will begin the process this spring of awarding $103 million in grants to programs for inmates centered on rehabilitation, substance abuse and reentry into society. The efforts will be funded with dollars saved from prison spending under Proposition 47, the sweeping 2014 ballot measure that downgraded six drug and theft crimes to misdemeanors and allowed defendants to renegotiate their punishments. For the large coalition of criminal justice advocates that poured millions into getting the proposition passed and that has closely tracked its implementation, this is a long-awaited step. Other states have passed similar laws, but California is the only state to invest those savings into services meant to help people stay out of prison. On the executive committee helping award the grants are formerly incarcerated people who know the system from the inside. Read More Facebook

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What would single-payer healthcare look like in California? Lawmakers release new details By Melanie Mason Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A proposal in California for a single-payer healthcare system would dramatically expand the state governments presence in medical care and slash the role of insurance companies. New amendments released Thursday fill in some key details on the universal healthcare measure proposed by state Sens. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), although the biggest political question  how it would be paid for  remains unanswered. Under the proposal, which was announced in February, the state would cover all medical expenses for every resident regardless of their income or immigration status, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency services, dental, vision, mental health and nursing home care. Insurers would be prohibited from offering benefits that cover the same services as the state. The program would eliminate co-pays and deductibles, and patients would not need to get referrals to see eligible providers. The system would be administered by an unpaid nine-person board appointed by the governor and the Legislature. A universal healthcare system run by the government has long been a dream of liberals, with many rallying behind insurgent Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposal for Medicare for all in the 2016 race. After a GOP effort to replace Obamacare stalled last week, Sanders said he intends to introduce a nationwide single-payer bill in the U.S. Senate. Proponents in California, who are no longer playing defense to preserve the Affordable Care Act, also touted a broader healthcare plan. With Republicans failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Californians really get what is at stake with their healthcare, Lara said in a statement. We have the chance to make universal healthcare a reality now. Its time to talk about how we get to healthcare for all that covers more and costs less. The cost  sure to be the biggest hurdle for the measure  so far remains unknown. The authors say they intend to pay for the program through broad-based revenue, but details of a funding proposal have not been hashed out. Gov. Jerry Brown sounded wary of a sprawling single-payer plan while speaking to reporters last week on his trip to Washington D.C. Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question, Brown said. The bill is sponsored by the California Nurses Assn., which already has been rallying its members in support of the bill, SB 562. There has been a seismic shift in our political system through grassroots activism; we have an inspired, motivated base that will make its voice heard, RoseAnn DeMoro, the labor groups president, said in a statement. Facebook

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California backs San Francisco court challenge of Trump administration threat to withhold funds from sanctuary cities By Patrick McGreevy Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Wednesday he has filed an amicus brief supporting San Franciscos court challenge to President Trumps order targeting so-called sanctuary cities and counties that refuse to enforce federal immigration laws. The move marks a half-dozen times the state has filed briefs supporting legal challenges to various Trump orders. Last week, Becerra filed papers supporting a lawsuit by Santa Clara County. That case and San Franciscos challenge the legality of the Trump administrations threats to withhold federal funds from states and local jurisdictions that the administration deems to be sanctuary jurisdictions. Becerras brief cites Californias interest in protecting state laws and policies that ensure public safety and protect the constitutional rights of its residents. Threatening to take away resources from sheriffs and police officers in order to promote misguided views on federal immigration policy is reckless and puts public safety at risk, Becerra said in a statement. It is the right and responsibility of California and each state under the Constitution to determine how it will provide for the safety and general welfare of its residents and to safeguard their constitutional rights. Facebook

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti asks the federal government to define a sanctuary city By Sarah D. Wire View Instagram post Amid a new call from the Trump administration to cut off federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck had a question for the head of Homeland Security on Wednesday: What exactly is a sanctuary city? Garcetti and Beck joined a bipartisan handful of mayors and law enforcement leaders from across the country in Washington to air their concerns about President Trumps recent executive orders on immigration to Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. Los Angeles is among the jurisdictions  often called sanctuary cities  that dont assist with federal immigration enforcement. State and local leaders in California have said they will continue to protect people in the country illegally despite the Trump administrations threats. After the closed-door meeting, mayors and police chiefs said their main request for Kelly was for a firm definition of what the federal government considers a sanctuary city. We think that as long as were complying with federal law then we shouldnt be labeled with whatever label intimates that were not, Beck said. Were looking for clarification; we are looking to be involved in the conversation so that decisions arent made that affect us without our input. Homeland Security spokesman Dave Lapan said the department is working on a definition but does not have a timeline for when it would be finalized. Although there is no legal definition of the term, the administration has seemed to define sanctuary jurisdictions as ones that dont comply when Immigration and Customs Enforcement asks them to detain prisoners after they have served their sentences so they can be picked up for deportation. Multiple federal courts have said the detainer orders differ from an official warrant and are not legal justification for holding someone who has served his or her sentence or is no longer under arrest. Los Angeles is one of several cities in California that does not hold people for immigration officials without a warrant, and Garcetti said that is going to continue. We see it as abiding by the Constitution, because there is case law that says we cant hold people for longer than permitted, Garcetti said after the meeting. Lapan said the Department of Homeland Security is working on ways to address concerns about the legality of holding someone for immigration officials, as well as the concerns of mayors of cities that have laws instructing law enforcement officers not to comply with immigration officials. Part of having this discussion is to find out, How can we get around this? Lapan said. If we are dealing with a criminal alien, somebody who is both in the country unlawfully and has committed crimes, the best place for us to take them into custody is in a jail or prison. Thats the safest for everyone, both our officers and the communities. Garcetti also disputes the administrations assertion that it can withhold federal funds from cities that dont comply with ICE orders. Garcetti pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court decision that said the government couldnt withhold Medicaid funds if states chose not to expand access to the program under the Affordable Care Act. I think we all feel on very strong constitutional and legal footing that it was decided in the Obama administration you cant put a legal gun to the head, a financial gun to the head of jurisdictions, whether its states or localities, and take their money if you dont agree with what they are doing in a different area, he said. Garcetti invited Kelly to visit Los Angeles. We need to make sure that we also are showing the perspectives of everyday people in cities like Los Angeles, he said. Garcetti also attended California congressional Democrats weekly lunch and met privately with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) before appearing on an immigration panel hosted by House Democrats. Facebook

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Anti-discrimination measure or blow to religious freedom? California bill sparks debate on employer codes of conduct By Melanie Mason Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A measure that would bar employers from firing workers for having an abortion or giving birth to a child out of wedlock is getting pushback from religious groups who say such a bill would prevent them from requiring employees to act in accordance with their faith. Under the bill by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), employers would not be able to discipline or fire workers for any reproductive health decision, such as pregnancy, in-vitro fertilization or abortion. What this bill does is make sure that people can make the best healthcare decisions for themselves and for their families without the fear that theyll risk their livelihoods in doing so, Rebecca Griffin of NARAL Pro-Choice California, a sponsor of the measure, said at a Wednesday afternoon hearing at the Capitol. A teacher at a Christian college in San Diego was fired in 2012 for becoming pregnant while unmarried. The school said her pregnancy violated its employee code of conduct, which prohibited premarital sex. In 2015, San Francisco Archibishop Salvatore Cordileone sparked a backlash when he proposed a new morality clause in the faculty handbook and contract for local Catholic schools that opposed same-sex marriage and certain reproductive medical procedures. With employees being fired for code of conduct violations in other states, proponents said California should set an example for the country, Right now, while were facing a federal government that is attacking reproductive freedom at every turn and condoning the type of discrimination that this bill prohibits, we feel like this is the time for California to take a stand for our values and make sure that our workers have the best protections possible, Griffin said. But the proposal faces opposition from religious groups, who argue such codes of conduct are integral to the relationship with their workers. The bill would specifically deny religious employers our 1st Amendment protections to infuse our codes of conduct with the tenets of our faith, said Sandra Palacios of the California Catholic Conference. The reaction from religious groups was not uniformly negative. The Rev. Rick Schlosser, executive director of the California Council of Churches, which represents mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations, pointed to the diverse positions on reproductive issues among his groups members to explain his support for the bill. Any legislation that limits peoples ability to make their own moral decisions is harmful to religious freedom, said Schlosser. But other religious groups said the measure threatened to undermine the very purpose of requiring their employees to abide by a code of conduct. An organization specifically chartered to support or oppose a specific set of beliefs or actions cannot fulfill its mission without requiring adherence to a code of conduct, wrote Jonathan Keller, president of the conservative California Family Council, in an opposition letter. Assemblyman Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond) asked why such codes of conduct should govern a personal decision an employee makes out of the workplace. Our community covenant does say that our employees are required to uphold our biblical values, and that certainly is a round-the-clock priority for us, responded Phillip Escamilla, the public policy chair of William Jessup University, a Sacramento-area evangelical Christian college Gonzalez Fletcher, herself a practicing Catholic, said she was not trying to unfairly target religious institutions. But, she said, she was trying to combat an inherent sexism that comes with enforcing such codes of conduct. A female employees reproductive decisions  such as entering an abortion clinic or being pregnant out of wedlock  can be seen by her employer, Gonzalez Fletcher said. A males decisions to whether or not theyre going to abide by a conduct never rise to that level, she said. So that inherent difference in how women and men are treated with these types of decisions just show how little privacy women are able to maintain. The bill, AB 569, cleared the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee, its first legislative threshold, on a 4-2 vote. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown, legislative leaders propose raising $5.2 billion annually to repair Californias roads and bridges By Patrick McGreevy (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Acknowledging that the states transportation system has been neglected, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders on Wednesday announced a proposal to raise gas taxes and vehicle fees to generate more than $5 billion annually for repairing Californias crumbling system of streets, highways and bridges, as well as to increase mass transit. It remains uncertain whether Brown will be able to muster the two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature needed to approve the new revenue sources, which include a 12-cent-per-gallon increase in the existing 18-cent base excise tax on gasoline. The package also includes a new, annual vehicle fee that would average about $48 based on the value of the car. The package was announced at a news conference on the Capitol steps attended by Brown, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles). California has not approved an increase in the base excise tax on gas for 23 years, according to Brian Kelly, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency. As a result, the state faces a $130-billion backlog of repairs to state highways and bridges and local streets. There is sizable money here to make things better, Kelly said. People are going to get improved neighborhood streets. They are going to get improved highways and bridges, more faith that they are traveling on safe structures. And we are going to invest to improve the congestion into our trade corridors and congestion on their commute. Assembly and Senate Republicans released a joint statement opposing the plan. Californians already pay some of the highest gas taxes in the nation, the statement said. The transportation proposal announced by the Capitol Democrats is a costly and burdensome plan that forces ordinary Californians to bail out Sacramento for years of neglecting our roads. Brown has set a deadline of April 6, the day before the Legislature leaves on its spring break, to have the new package voted on by lawmakers. Because Republicans have generally opposed the tax increases, the package may need the vote of every Democrat to get the two-thirds majority for passage. Three Democratic senators had been holding off their support before the new plan was released. Read More Facebook

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Election officials say mistake on Korean language ballots substantially smaller than previously thought By Christine Mai-Duc (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles County election officials say a mistake made on Korean-language sample ballots in the upcoming 34th Congressional District race likely affected fewer than 780 voters. The error, which listed the races 23 candidates in the wrong order on some Korean-language sample ballots, was discovered last week after Korean American voters pointed out their mail-in ballot materials looked different than English-language sample ballots sent to the same home or apartment building. Initially, election officials said they didnt know how widespread the problem was. As a precaution, they sent bilingual notices and corrected sample ballots to all 8,251 voters in the district who received Korean-language sample ballots. None of the sample ballots enclosed with actual mail-in ballots were affected, officials say. In a letter to election officials and L.A. County supervisors Tuesday, the Korean American Coalition called it a violation of federally protected voting rights. The letter asked officials to host a 24-hour hotline for Korean-speaking voters until election day, provide more information on the scope of the error and extend the mail-in voting deadline for those who had received the misprinted ballots. In a response sent Wednesday morning, County Registrar Dean Logan said the error was limited to a small number of sample ballots in a single print run of 777 sample ballots. Based on the agencys review, Logan wrote, it appears that substantially fewer than the 777 voters were affected. The registrars office says it is extending the hours of operation for its voter hotline and staffing it with Korean-speaking operators. Voters concerned that they may have been affected can call 1-800-815-2666 and select option 3 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. this weekend. Voters will also see additional signage at polls addressing the issue and Korean-speaking poll workers will be instructed to remind voters to check their ballots. Facebook

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Talks at Capitol focus on boosting California transportation funding by some $5.2 billion annually By Patrick McGreevy On Highway 1 in Big Sur, the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge has buckled, cutting off a community of hundreds from schools and isolating renowned businesses from customer traffic. (Robin Abcarian / Los Angeles Times) With a deadline looming, Gov. Jerry Brown is winding up negotiations with legislators in hopes of reaching an agreement on a plan that would provide at least $5.2 billion annually for a transportation backlog that includes repairing Californias aging and crumbling system of streets, highways and bridges, officials said Tuesday. Those close to the talks said an agreement on the package could be announced as early as Wednesday afternoon. The question remains whether Brown and leaders can muster the two-thirds vote needed to approve a phased-in gas tax increase of up to 12 cents by the April 6 deadline set by the governor. Key senators remained uncommitted to any plan as of Tuesday. And a new voter-approved rule requires a bill to be in print for 72 hours before it can be passed. The bill needs approval in both houses. Assembly Democrats were briefed on the evolving plan behind closed doors on Tuesday and some officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, said talks are progressing on a plan that would provide the bulk of money to a fix-it first program of road repairs divided evenly between state projects and those of cities and counties. Money would also be dedicated to mass transit, bicycle, pedestrian and trucking routs for ports. The proposal also would include reforms proposed by lawmakers, including Republicans, that would hold officials accountable for proper use of the money, including a requirement for regular audits, creation of an inspector general position and a ballot measure requiring new money to be spent on transportation projects. Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) authored a bill that would put a measure on the ballot, saying Tuesday such guarantees are required given the urgency of the deferred maintenance backlog, and the additional burden we are asking Californias taxpayers to carry. John Myers contributed to this report. Facebook

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Watch: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director attends community meeting in Sacramento Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown calls for countermovement against Trumps colossal mistake on climate change By Evan Halper California Gov. Jerry Brown warned that President Trump has just made a colossal mistake in gutting the federal governments effort to combat climate change, which will ignite a response Trump is unprepared to handle. It defies science itself, Brown said in a call to The Times shortly after Trump signed an executive order that aims to bring an abrupt halt to the United States leadership on global warming. Erasing climate change may take place in Donald Trumps mind, but nowhere else. Yes, there is going to be a countermovement, Brown vowed, predicting Trumps actions will mobilize environmentalists in a way President Obama never could. I have met with many heads of state, ambassadors. This is a growing movement. President Trumps outrageous move will galvanize the contrary force. Things have been a bit tepid [in climate activism]. But this conflict, this sharpening of the contradiction, will energize those who believe climate change is an existential threat. Brown and other big-state governors and mayors are moving swiftly to fill the global leadership vacuum Trump created with Tuesdays directive, which stops short of officially pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord of 2015. I see Washington declining in influence, but the momentum being maintained by California and other states aligned with China and those who are willing to do something, said Brown, who will be traveling to China soon for meetings on climate. There is a growing activism on the part of millions of people who will not stand by and let Donald Trump effectively tear up the Paris agreement and destroy Americas climate leadership and jeopardize the health and well-being of so many people. In the face of Trumps retreat on climate change, Brown said California will step up its own efforts to push others toward clean energy. We are not fully meeting the challenge of climate change yet, he said. We are doubling down on our commitment. We are reaching out to other states in America and throughout the world and other countries.  We have plenty of fuel to build this movement. This is real, Brown said of the threat created by climate change. The nations of the world have recognized it in Paris.  I will continue doing my best to work with and rouse the world community, whatever the politicians in Washington do or dont do. Facebook

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California and its allies hint at new legal battles over Clean Power Plan By Chris Megerian California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) President Trumps effort to roll back the Clean Power Plan could quickly run into legal challenges from California and its allies across the country. State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra and his counterparts from states including New York, Massachusetts and Oregon said they wont hesitate to protect those we serve  including by aggressively opposing [Trumps actions] in court. The joint statement was also issued by Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and other cities. Californias stance isnt surprising because the state joined Obama administration efforts to defend the Clean Power Plan in 2015. Further legal action could underscore the determination of local and state governments to push forward with fighting climate change even as Trump withdraws federal regulations. Read More Facebook

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Meeting climate change goals will require billions for transportation and housing improvements, reports say By Liam Dillon A major push to get Californians out of their cars and onto their feet, bikes and public transit is essential if the state wants to meet its aggressive goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, according to new reports from the state and UC Berkeley researchers. Californians will have to drive an average of 1.6 miles less a day  and regional government agencies believe it will cost billions of dollars to make the mass transit and housing improvements needed for that to happen. UC Berkeley researchers argue in a new study that a boom in dense housing across the state will bring major greenhouse gas reductions and economic growth. Read More Facebook

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California expects to be unscathed as Trump targets Clean Power Plan By Chris Megerian A solar farm in Kern County (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) Although Californias leaders may protest President Trumps announcement Tuesday that hes scrapping the Clean Power Plan, his decision is expected to have little effect on a state already marching toward renewable energy. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the Golden State are already below what the federal government would have required by 2030, and theyre expected to drop even further. Rollback of the Clean Power Plan is pretty much irrelevant to California, said Frank Wolak, a Stanford University economist who has advised state leaders on climate regulations. The federal rules, enacted by former President Obama as part of his campaign against climate change, were intended to push states away from coal and toward cleaner energy sources. But that was already underway in California. Los Angeles, one of the last places in the state to rely on coal, was already planning to stop importing electricity from out-of-state coal plants by 2025. In addition, state law requires California to generate half of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2030, and state Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) has suggested pushing even further. When it comes to fighting pollution and climate change, there are some areas where California relies on the federal government. For example, they share authority on regulating vehicle emissions, and Trumps preparation to roll back federal rules has caused alarm here. However, theres less of a concern when it comes to generating electricity. Trumps moves have caused some anxiety among California companies that are developing clean energy technologies and looking for new markets to sell them. Bob Keefe, executive director of Environmental Entrepreneurs, said the Clean Power Plan would have been a huge economic catalyst. President Trump is basically telling Californias more than 40,000 clean-energy businesses and the 500,000 workers they employ that they dont matter to him, he said. Rail cars filled with coal in Wyoming (Ryan Dorgan / Associated Press) Its an open question how Trump could affect various efforts for California to integrate its electricity grid with neighboring states, an idea that has failed to gain traction so far. Advocates of the concept say regional cooperation could expand the market for renewable energy, but the lack of federal pressure to cut emissions could dampen enthusiasm in places such as Utah and Wyoming, which rely on coal. They dont have the Clean Power Plan bearing down on them, said Don Furman, who directs the Fix the Grid campaign thats seeking closer relationships among West Coast states. Ralph Cavanagh, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he doesnt expect changes to the Clean Power Plan to harm efforts to create a regional electricity grid, because of the falling cost of renewable energy. The rationale is stronger today than it was yesterday, he said. Facebook

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California GOP lawmakers introduce bills to boost healthcare and jobs for veterans By Liam Dillon Sen. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove) speaks at a press conference introducing a package of bills aimed at helping California veterans. (Liam Dillon / Los Angeles Times) Republican state lawmakers unveiled a package of six bills Tuesday aimed at improving job training and healthcare services for California veterans. Our veterans have served this country bravely and it is only right for us to recognize their contribution and see that when they do come home they receive the care and assistance they deserve, said state Sen. Janet Nguyen of Garden Grove, who authored three of the measures. The six bills are: Senate Bill 410 from Nguyen and Assembly Bill 353 from Assemblyman Randy Voepel of Santee, which would expand hiring preferences. for veterans.

SB 409 from Nguyen and SB 485 from state Sen. Jim Nielsen of Gerber, which would increase mental health services and oversight at state veterans homes.

SB 411 from Nguyen, which would pay some military reservists $100 a month once they turn 50 if theyve served for 10 years or more.

SB 197 from Sen. Pat Bates of Laguna Niguel, which would waive state and local sales taxes for nonprofits that donate facilities to the U.S. Department of Defense  a measure aimed at helping construction of a mental health care facility at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. Facebook

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These Los Angeles girls went to Capitol Hill to ask the Senate to fight new immigration enforcement efforts By Sarah D. Wire Fatima, left, and Yuleni Avelica, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) during a news conference on Capitol Hill. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images) Fatima Avelica, 13, was training for the Los Angeles Marathon with her father before he was arrested by immigration agents last month after dropping Fatimas sister off at her Lincoln Heights school. Fatima had to pause repeatedly, pressing her fingers to her eyes, as she told the story to reporters at a news conference in the Capitol on Tuesday. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) handed handkerchiefs to Fatima and her sister Yuleni Avelica, 12. The girls had medals from completing the marathon dangling around their necks. Democratic senators held the news conference to urge their Senate colleagues to reject President Trumps request for $3 billion to hire thousands of new immigration agents, expand detention facilities and build a wall among the southern border as part of his pledge to deport millions of people in the country illegally. The White House has characterized the moves as necessary for public safety. Californias Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris said Trumps immigration enforcement orders are too broad, sweeping up nonviolent offenders or people accused of the civil offense of being in the country illegally. She called the executive orders, which vastly broadened who can be targeted for deportation and leaves a lot of discretion to local immigration officials misguided and misinformed. Its irresponsible to paint a whole population of people as racists and murderers and bad hombres, she said, referencing one of Trumps own lines about immigrants. Its actually ignorant and we cant afford to run our country that way. The girls father, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen, has lived in the U.S. for 25 years. ICE officials cited two misdemeanor convictions as the reason for his arrest. His four daughters were all born in the U.S. Fatima said the family is waiting for word every day on whether he will be deported. Fatima said she now wants to become an immigration lawyer. Its like a new marathon for me, and I know I can finish it, Fatima said, tears welling up again. But, I need my coach there. I need my dad. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blast President Trump on climate change By Chris Megerian California Gov. Jerry Brown (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Gov. Jerry Brown joined with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday to criticize President Trumps pending announcement to roll back climate regulations and insist that their states will push forward anyway. Dismantling the Clean Power Plan and other critical climate programs is profoundly misguided and shockingly ignores basic science, they said in a joint statement. With this move, the Administration will endanger public health, our environment and our economic prosperity. Brown and Cuomo represent the two largest states with the most ambitious goals for fighting global warming, and theyve already set equivalent targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Theyre also pushing to generate half of all their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. With or without Washington, we will work with our partners throughout the world to aggressively fight climate change and protect our future, Brown and Cuomo said. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) Facebook

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To stem rising prices, a California lawmaker is taking on how hospital chains craft their contracts By Melanie Mason Amid concern that sprawling hospital chains are leading to higher prices, a California state senator is trying to clamp down on how hospital networks craft their contracts to win market dominance. Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) is offering a measure that would prohibit hospitals from certain contracting practices he sees as anti-competitive, such as requiring health plans to contract with all affiliates of the hospital or mandating that health plans agree to binding arbitration for antitrust claims. Weve lost a level of transparency thats affected affordability and access and fairness, Monning said in an interview. Multi-hospital chains are becoming prominent throughout the country, with proponents saying such mergers make care more efficient and better coordinated. But a recent USC study found that while hospital prices in California have grown overall, the costs are higher in the states largest chains. Once you control a market, you can artificially increase costs, said Monning, adding those higher prices can spill over to neighboring hospitals, too. Competitors think if they can charge this much for a hip replacement, were going to as well, Monning said. Another study by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute found premiums in Northern California were 30% higher than those in Southern California, in part because of the dominance of a few healthcare systems in the north. Micah Weinberg, the institutes president, said hospital consolidation was a logical issue to look at, particularly because healthcare coverage expansion under the Affordable Care Act is now under less threat from Congress following the failure of the House Republicans replacement bill. We have to double down on the real work, which is getting people access to quality healthcare and affordable costs, said Weinberg. One of the biggest barriers to that is the lack of competition among healthcare providers. Weinberg said much of the question is a matter of federal antitrust enforcement. Its really difficult to do things at the state level that are effective here, he said. Still, consolidation has increasingly come under scrutiny in California. The state attorney generals office under Kamala Harris, now serving as U.S. senator, investigated consolidation of hospital and physician groups, and the effect on consumer prices. Last year, the healthcare trust for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, sued Sutter Health, alleging antitrust violations. The Pacific Business Group on Health, an organization that represents major companies such as Wells Fargo and Chevron, also raised alarms on Sutters requirement that firms use arbitration to resolve disputes--or face higher rates for Sutters healthcare services. The business group is a supporter of Monnings bill, as well as the California Labor Federation. The California Hospital Assn. has not taken a position on the bill. ------------ FOR THE RECORD March 29, 2017, 1:52 p.m.: A previous version of this article reported that the Pacific Group on Health sued Sutter Health. The United Food and Commercial Workers healthcare trust filed the suit. Facebook

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Los Angeles assemblyman returns to work in Sacramento after more than two-week absence By Melanie Mason Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) After more than two weeks away from the state Capitol, Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) was back at work Monday, with his staff blaming the absence on unspecified medical reasons. Im not going to comment on what the illness was, said his chief of staff, Darryl Lucien, who added that the legislator was feeling better Monday. Ridley-Thomas, 29, was not available for an interview to discuss his absence. He originally went on leave March 7. At the time, he did not specify an illness and so Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendons office considered him to be on personal leave. Under legislative rules, those absences did not allow him to receive per diem payments  a subsidy intended to offset the costs of traveling and living in Sacramento. On March 21, he informed Rendons office that he was on medical leave, thus becoming eligible for the $183 per diem. Lucien said the original personal leave request was an error and that all of Ridley-Thomas time away from work was for health reasons. Its medical leave, Lucien said. He has a doctors note that was submitted, excusing him for the time he was out. Ridley-Thomas was not entirely absent from legislative work during that time. While on leave, he yanked one high-profile piece of legislation  a measure that would exempt tampons and other feminine hygiene products from sales tax  from a hearing in the Assembly Revenue and Taxation committee, which he chairs. The bills author, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), said she spoke directly to Ridley-Thomas about a request to amend her bill days before that committee hearing. Lucien said Ridley-Thomas was working on a very limited basis, fielding calls from members to the extent he was able to speak with them. A fellow Democrat, Assemblyman Bill Quirk of Hayward, stepped in to chair the Revenue and Taxation panel during a March 13 hearing. A subsequent hearing on March 20 was canceled. Facebook

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Adam Schiff calls on Devin Nunes to remove himself from Russia investigation By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) on Monday urged fellow Californian Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) to remove himself from their investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Before late last week, Schiff had gone out of his way not to be critical of Nunes throughout the fledgling investigation. They have held the top positions on the House Intelligence Committee for two years, and have served in Congress together for more than a decade. This is not a recommendation I make lightly, as the Chairman and I have worked together well for several years; and I take this step with the knowledge of the solemn responsibility we have on the Intelligence Committee to provide oversight on all intelligence matters, not just to conduct the investigation, Schiff said in a statement. After much consideration I believe Chairman should recuse himself from involvement in investigation/oversight of Trump campaign & transition pic.twitter.com/jpfA1x80Si  Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) March 27, 2017 Nunes last week surprised many when he told reporters that conversations between Trump and his transition team may have been accidentally picked up during legal intelligence gathering. Nunes briefed the media and President Trump before informing his committee. A spokesman for Nunes, who was a member of Trumps transition team, said Monday he obtained the information from a source on White House grounds, which raised even more questions. Nearly a week after Nunes announcement, committee members still havent seen the evidence, Schiff said. There was no legitimate justification for bringing that information to the White House instead of the committee. That it was also obtained at the White House makes this departure all the more concerning, Schiff said. Nunes spokesman would not comment on calls for the chairman to recuse himself. House Democrats have called for an entirely independent investigation, but short of that were coalescing around the call for Nunes to step aside. Among others, Schiffs Intelligence Committee colleagues Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) and Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) have also called for Nunes to step aside from the investigation. The House and Senate intelligence committees are both investigating allegations that Russia tried to interfere with the presidential election and what, if anything, the Trump campaign knew about it. So far, too many people in the White House and administration, and now the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have betrayed their duty to conduct an independent, bipartisan inquiry into the Trump teams ties with Russia, Swalwell said in a statement. Chairman Nunes should no longer be anywhere near this investigation, let alone leading it. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in a statement that Nunes had tarnished the chairmanship. She also said it was long overdue for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to ask him to recuse himself from the investigation. Facebook

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Blasting federal action on immigration, Californias chief justice warns the rule of law is under threat By Patrick McGreevy California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye warned Monday that the rule of law in state is under threat. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye did not mention President Trump by name in her annual State of the Judiciary speech Monday, but she blasted federal actions on immigration and warned that the rule of law in the state is under threat. In addressing the Legislature, she also called on members to end years of underfunding of the state court system. The chief justice said the rule of law has failed repeatedly in the state, including when her husbands parents were among 120,000 Japanese Americans put in internment camps during World War II. Simply put, the rule of law means that we as a people are governed by laws and rules, not by a monarch, she said. People take the rule of law for granted until it is under threat, she added. I submit to you today that the rule of law is being challenged, she said. We are living in a time of civil rights unrest, eroding trust in our institutions, economic anxiety and unprecedented polarization. Cantil-Sakauye cited a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that California was home to 79 ethnic hate groups  more than any other state. Our values and our rules and laws are being called into question, and all three branches of government and the free press are in the crosshairs, she said. Without naming Trump, the chief justice criticized recent federal enforcement of immigration laws in which agents have gone into courthouses to take immigrants into custody. She said it was concern over the rule of law that caused her to write to the U.S. attorney general and the Homeland Security secretary recently, asking them to refrain from conducting immigration raids at or near courthouses. When we hear of immigration arrests and the fear of immigration arrests in our state courthouses, I am concerned that that kind of information trickles down into the community, the schools, the churches. The families and people will no longer come to court to protect themselves or cooperate or bear witness, she said. I am afraid that will be the end of justice and communities will be less safe and victimization will continue. The chief justice also repeated her concerns about the lack of sufficient funding for the judiciary even as legislators are adding laws by the thousands. Since 2011 when I became chief justice, 6,408 bills have become law in California, while the judicial branch budget has been shrinking, Cantil-Sakauye said. I have said before that we are on the wrong side of justice when it comes to funding our courts. Facebook

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Its not just Berniecrats: Korean voters could also swing L.A.'s congressional race in a big way By Christine Mai-Duc Robert Lee Ahn, center, is the only Korean American candidate running in a field dominated by Latinos in the 34th Congressional District race. (Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times) The crowded race to replace Xavier Becerra in the 34th Congressional District, which includes most of Los Angeles Koreatown, appears to be bringing Korean American voters out in large numbers. Thats in part because in a field dominated by Latinos, Robert Lee Ahn has a shot at becoming the only Korean American in Congress and the first Korean American Democrat to be elected to the body. Ahn, a businessman and former L.A. city planning commissioner, has raised a formidable amount of money in a short period of time, much of it from donors in the Korean American community. His campaign spent weeks helping register voters at Koreatown malls and restaurants, and says they registered more than 600 new voters so far. Part of our campaign is to build awareness and get the community more civically engaged, Ahn said on a recent Friday morning as his campaign embarked on a 34-hour voter registration drive outside the BCD Tofu House restaurant. As a Korean American, obviously thats a natural base of mine. Inside, Ahn shook hands with supporters and navigated the lunchtime rush to ask for voters support table side. Some of it may be paying off. More than a quarter of the 10,841 mail-in ballots turned in for the race so far were cast by Korean American voters, according to an analysis of surnames, birthplace and translated ballot materials by Political Data. Koreans make up just 6% of registered voters in the district. Nearly half of Korean American voters who have already cast a ballot in the race did not vote in the March 7 city elections. Ahn, who has said hell bring a business sensibility and common sense to the office, says he has been running a campaign that reaches out to all kinds of voters. But the fact that there hasnt been a Korean American in Congress for more than 20 years means his candidacy has gotten plenty of attention from the Korean American press. I think people recognize the importance and historic nature of this election, Ahn said. I think theres a hunger for a voice ... and theres a palpable frustration of not being heard, not being properly represented, and I think thats what were seeing in the early returns. But the result of those early votes so far is unclear, particularly after elections officials disclosed that a number of Korean-language sample ballots had been misprinted with the candidates listed in the wrong order. Those who used the faulty sample ballots to cast their vote could have inadvertently voted for a candidate they didnt intend to support, and officials still dont know how widespread the problem is. Ahn isnt the only Korean American candidate to energize the community in recent years. David Ryu, the first Korean American elected to the L.A. City Council, rode to victory in 2015 with the help of a wave of support from Koreatown leaders. I believe a political awakening is occurring in the Korean American community all over the nation, but especially here in L.A., said Joon Bang, executive director of the Korean American Coalition. Our community is evolving and its beginning with understanding the power of their vote. Facebook

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Nothing short of blackmail: California Senate leader denounces plan to cut funding from sanctuary cities By Jazmine Ulloa California Senate Leader Kevin de Leon. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) California Senate leader Kevin de Leon on Monday called U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions move to cut federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities nothing short of blackmail. In a statement, De Leon (D-Los Angeles) said Sessions and the Trump administration stuck to alternative facts when describing immigrants and sanctuary counties and cities, where local policies limit the cooperation of law enforcement agencies with federal authorities on immigration laws. Instead of making us safer, the Trump administration is spreading fear and promoting race-based scapegoating, he said. Their gun-to-the-head method to force resistant cities and counties to participate in Trumps inhumane and counterproductive mass-deportation is unconstitutional and will fail. De Leon was responding to an earlier announcement made by Sessions at a White House press briefing. Sessions urged all states and local jurisdictions to comply with federal immigration laws and said it would be a condition for receiving federal grants. Jeff Sessions: "countless Americans would be alive today. And countless loved ones would not be grieving" if sanctuary cities were ended. pic.twitter.com/sEgH3bvPwi  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 27, 2017 State leaders are still calculating the fiscal impact of the move in California, where the Senate leader has filed a bill that would prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from using resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Data shows sanctuary counties have lower crime rates than comparable nonsanctuary counties #SB54 https://t.co/rKZDsB8x8E  Kevin de Len (@kdeleon) March 27, 2017 Facebook

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California National Guard official tells legislators forced bonus repayments will be resolved by mid-summer By Melanie Mason A top official for the California National Guard told state legislators Monday that he hopes lingering issues from the soldiers being forced to repay enlistment bonuses will be resolved by mid-summer. A Times investigation last year found that the Pentagon demanded thousands of soldiers repay enlistment bonuses up to a decade after going to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. The claw-back came after audits revealed vast overpayments of bonuses, due in part to mismanagement and pressure to hit enlistment targets. The Times story prompted outcry that soldiers, who were not at fault for accepting the bonuses, were now facing financial hardship. Matthew Beevers, the deputy adjutant for the California National Guard, told a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly Veterans Affairs committees that just over 1,000 soldiers currently hold debt due to the bonus recoupment. Soldiers who are affected by the repayment demand must go through a federal waiver adjudication process, which Beevers described as unnecessarily long, complex and resource-intensive. He said the state-run Soldier Incentives Assistance Center was working with those who need to navigate the complex process to get those debts waived. "[If] you got a bonus and you completed your obligation and for some reason, you werent entitled to it, weve done everything we can do ensure that those soldiers get to keep those bonuses and we continue to do that today, Beevers said. Beevers said the state is trying to locate all soldiers who may be carrying debts due to the enlistment bonus. For those who complete the federal adjudication process, around 50% get their debts waived, he said. At the end of the day, there might be 600 or so soldiers out of 16,000 who might have to pay money, which is a very very small number, he said. Facebook

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Former California legislator Henry Perea will lobby for the oil industry in Sacramento By Chris Megerian (Tomas Ovalle / For The Times) As lawmakers debate the future of Californias climate policies, the oil industry is boosting its lobbying firepower with a former Democratic assemblyman from Fresno who has bedeviled environmentalists in the past. Henry Perea resigned his Assembly seat to work for a pharmaceutical group. Now hes jumping to the Western States Petroleum Assn. as a senior vice president, a role hes scheduled to start on May 1. Henry brings us unique expertise, said a statement from Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the associations president. He understands our state, our industry and how smart public policy can ensure Californias continued leadership in environmental protections while maintaining a diverse, vibrant economy. While serving in the Assembly, Perea led the so-called moderate caucus of business-friendly Democrats. He played a key role in stalling 2015 legislation that would have created tough new targets for reducing oil consumption. Environmentalists have made progress since then, successfully pushing through legislation to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Now these issues are being debated again as lawmakers consider whether to extend the states cap-and-trade program, which is intended to provide a financial incentive to reduce emissions. The oil industry supports extending the program, but its working to ensure favorable terms and to loosen the states other regulatory plans. Facebook

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Democrats out with ads targeting Rep. Mimi Walters for supporting GOP healthcare bill By Sarah D. Wire Republicans didnt vote on their plan to replace the Affordable Care Act on Friday, but Democrats already have ads out criticizing vulnerable GOP House members like Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine for backing the bill. The Internet ads, paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, will target 14 Republicans who voted for the bill in the House Budget, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce committees. The ads will run for at least a week on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram. Walters knowingly voted for a bill to raise premiums and deductibles, slap an age tax on older folks, and rip insurance away from 24 million hardworking Americans. Its critical that voters in Californias 45th District know where Walters stood on this harmful legislation, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan said in a statement. Walters, who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, was one of the earliest supporters of the bill among the California Republican delegation. Rep. Walters is committed to improving and expanding healthcare choices, lowering costs and protecting taxpayers. Her votes in the House reflect those principles and she will not be deterred by campaign ads created in Washington, D.C., by Nancy Pelosis political committees, said her campaign consultant, Dave Gilliard. The DCCC has already announced plans to target Republican representatives of the seven California congressional districts that backed Hillary Clinton for president. Clinton won Walters Orange County district by 5 percentage points. Walters was elected for a second term with 58.6% of the vote. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown says California wont be running to the courthouse every day to fight President Trump By John Myers With many of his fellow Democrats demanding multiple challenges to President Trumps proposals, Gov. Jerry Brown said this week he will continue to support a more measured approach. Were going to fight very hard. But were not going to bring stupid lawsuits or be running to the courthouse every day, Brown said during an appearance Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press. Were going to be careful. Well be strategic. The governors interview, taped on Thursday in Washington, came at the end of a four-day visit where he sought common ground on issues ranging from transportation to disaster relief. Brown also took aim in a visit to Capitol Hill at the now-failed Republican healthcare proposal. In the interview, Brown acknowledged that he is seeking a different path forward than Californias legislative leaders and other Democrats who are aggressively pushing back on a variety of Trump proposals. Well, if everythings a lawsuit, yeah, were in trouble here. I do curb the exuberance on either side, he said. People like to escalate. Republicans do that, and Democrats also do that. So Im there somewhat as the senior statesman now, and Im going to keep everything on an even keel. The governor used the national television interview to repeat recent suggestions that California has a number of projects that are ready to go should Trump make good on his promises to fund a major infrastructure effort. But Brown staunchly defended Californias acceptance of immigrants, including those who are in the U.S. illegally. He argued that immigration has been a major boon to the states economy and invoked the teachings of Christianity to criticize Trump and his fellow Republicans. Trumps supposed to be Mr. Religious Fellow, and I thought weve got to treat the least of these as we would treat the Lord, said Brown, who trained to become a Jesuit priest in his youth. So I hope he would reconnect with some of these conservative evangelicals, and theyll tell him that these are human beings, theyre children of God. They should be treated that way. The programs host, Chuck Todd, asked Brown whether he could offer national leadership for Democrats in the Trump era. The governor, who ran unsuccessfully for president three times, said he was willing to speak out in any way he could be helpful. Following last weeks historic defeat of a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, Brown also offered Trump advice on how to help the economically struggling states whose voters put him in the White House. Its going to take some income support from the federal government, the governor said. Its going to take healthcare. Its going to take the kind of programs that the Republican Party traditionally doesnt like. So heres the dilemma. Yes, Obama was not able to help those people in the way they felt they had a right to. But Mr. Trump, now the burden is on you. And you better figure it out, or youre not going to be there again. Facebook

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Small donations play big role in the 34th Congressional District By Christine Mai-Duc Congressional candidate Kenneth Mejia raised 90% of his money from small donors in the most recent campaign finance filing. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) More than 17% of individual contributions to all candidates in the 34th Congressional District came in small donations of less than $200, according to the latest campaign finance reports. The reports, which cover fundraising and spending between Jan. 1 and March 15, show that more than $250,000 of the $1.4 million raised by the candidates in the race came from un-itemized small donors, or those who gave less than $200 and are not named in campaign finance reports. Three candidates who raised a significant chunk of money from small donations were Arturo Carmona, Wendy Carrillo and Kenneth Mejia, all of whom are vying for votes from supporters of former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has preached the need to rid politics of special interest money. Many of the candidates have sent email pitches to supporters asking for donations of $10, $20 or $27, the amount made famous by Sanders, who often cited the number as the average donation given to his presidential campaign. Carmona, a former Sanders campaign advisor, raised the most in small donations, with $57,125, or 52% of his total. Small donors gave Carrillo $25,948, about 32% of her fundraising total and Mejia, an accountant and Green Party candidate, received nearly 90% of his total funds, or $31,957, in amounts of $200 or less. Federal law does not require candidates to itemize, or report the names of, donors who give below that amount. Alejandra Campoverdi raised $44,210 from small donors, who made up 28% of her haul, while Raymond Meza raised 48%, or $14,764 of his money from small-dollar contributions. UPDATE: 7:45 p.m. This post was updated to clarify that the numbers reported are based on un-itemized donations of $200 or less to candidates. Facebook

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Robert Lee Ahn raised the most money by far in latest campaign finance reports for L.A.'s congressional race By Christine Mai-Duc Robert Lee Ahn, left, and Vanessa Aramayo, second from left, join the other candidates for the 34th Congressional District. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles TImes) Congressional candidate Robert Lee Ahn far outstripped some of the top fundraisers in the 34th Congressional District, taking a surprise lead in campaign finance reports filed Thursday. The reports cover fundraising and spending between Jan. 1 and March 15 and will be the last numbers well have before the April 4 primary election, in which 24 candidates are running. Ahn, a former L.A. city planning commissioner, raised a whopping $338,702 in contributions and loaned himself an additional $295,000, bringing his total to more than $630,000 raised since January. Ahn, an attorney and the only Korean American candidate in the race for a district that includes Koreatown, got more than $100,000 in contributions from donors with Korean surnames. The closest behind Ahn was Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, who raised $244,766 over the same period, the majority of it from political action committees, including many donations from fellow legislators in Sacramento. Sara Hernandez, a former teacher and L.A. City Hall aide, was close behind Gomez with $224,783 raised. Alejandra Campoverdi, a former White House staffer and former Los Angeles Times employee, raised $156,432. Ahn has also spent the most money so far this year, at $352,538, and has $271,271 in the bank, more than any other candidate. Gomez ended the period with $274,830 cash on hand, while Hernandez and Campoverdi have $149,990 and $122,961 left to spend, respectively. Facebook

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Dispute in California Senate leads to ethics complaint against leader Kevin de Leon By Patrick McGreevy Then-state Sen. Isadore Hall III, left, talks with Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon in Sacramento last year. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Republican state Sen. Andy Vidak on Friday filed an ethics complaint asking for an investigation into whether Democratic Senate leader Kevin de Leon engaged in an improper cover-up of threats allegedly made by former state Sen. Isadore Hall III against a group of farmers. Anthony Reyes, a spokesman for De Leon, defended the decision not to investigate allegations against Hall. With due respect, the state Senate doesnt waste taxpayer resources investigating dubious hearsay accounts of private conversations held in hotel lobbies  and thats what Senator De Leon clearly and politely communicated to Senator Vidak, Reyes said. Any suggestion otherwise is patently ridiculous. Hall, a Democrat from Compton, was appointed in January to the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board by Gov. Jerry Brown. The appointment was opposed by farm industry groups, including the Western Growers Assn., which complained he received contributions from the United Farm Workers for his unsuccessful campaign for Congress last year. Vidak said that he had heard from multiple people that on Feb. 28, the evening before Halls confirmation hearing in the Rules Committee, Hall allegedly made threats in an obscenity-laced tirade in the lobby of the Sacramento Hyatt Hotel that he would get the farmers opposing his appointment, the senator wrote in a letter to the Senate Legislative Ethics Committee. The board is a quasi-judicial agency that rules on disputes between farm worker organizations and growers. The alleged threats were made to four farmers who are members of the California Fresh Fruit Assn., Vidak said. Vidak said he had formally asked De Leon, as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, to have the panel investigate the allegations and report the findings to the Senate. On Thursday, Vidak said, De Leon allegedly informed him that there would be no investigation. Senator De Leon told me yesterday that he and the leadership of the CFFA have worked things out so Hall wont be investigated,'" Vidak said in a statement Friday. Is this really how the Senate handles reports of threats and intimidation by someone pending a Senate confirmation vote? The association called the allegation that it worked out an agreement with De Leon baseless and false. The group said in a statement that Vidak did not talk to its members before he filed the complaint. If he did, he wouldve learned there is no agreement and that CFFA remains opposed to the confirmation of Senator Hall, the group said. Hall declined to comment on Vidaks complaint, said J. Antonio Barbosa, the boards executive secretary, responding on his behalf. Further, his testimony at his Senate Rules Committee confirmation hearing makes clear that he will be fair and impartial, make sound decisions, and speak to growers and farmworkers, Barbosa said. Reyes disputed Vidaks allegations. Chasing goofy conspiracy theories might fly on President Trumps Twitter feed, but it has no place in the California Legislature, Reyes said. In his letter to the ethics panel, Vidak says his complaint is that the Senates confirmation process of gubernatorial appointees may have been compromised in this situation. He asked for an investigation into whether credible information about potential criminal activity by an unconfirmed gubernatorial appointee has been intentionally ignored/withheld, and whether a member of the Senate Rules Committee is making arrangements with representatives of private organizations to bury investigations of gubernatorial appointees. Updated at 4:40 p.m. to include a comment from the California Fresh Fruit Assn. Facebook

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L.A.'s GOP congressman: It is hard to find a consensus on something that impacts more than 1/6th of our economy By Sarah D. Wire A handful of California Republicans had declined to take a position on the House GOPs healthcare bill, and now they wont have to. Rep. Steve Knight (R-Palmdale), the only Republican who represents L.A. County, said he was conflicted up until the vote on the bill was canceled Friday afternoon. In the past two weeks my colleagues worked to build a consensus on how best to repair our flawed healthcare system and build a patient-centered system that works for the American people, Knight said in a statement after the vote. We learned that it is hard to find a consensus on something that impacts more than 1/6th of our economy and the lives of almost every American. Saying they didnt have enough votes to pass it, House Republican leaders canceled a vote on their healthcare bill minutes before vulnerable Republican members like Knight would have had to vote on the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Knights district is among seven Republican districts being targeted by Democrats in 2018, and several of the members who represent those districts never took a stance on the bill, saying they were worried about the effects on their districts and were still hearing from constituents. Experts estimated millions of Californians would have lost insurance under the bill. Just two of the targeted members, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) and Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine), said they would vote for the bill. Walters had no comment after the bill was pulled, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee came out swinging, with committee spokesperson Evan Lukaske saying, Walters now owns this until election day. Other targeted members seemed to brush off President Trumps plan to let Obamacare go its way for a little while. Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), who didnt take a stance on the bill, said afterward Congress needs to keep working on healthcare. Congress must come together to enact legislation to stabilize our healthcare market, reduce federal spending, and ensure we are able to maintain access to healthcare for Americas most vulnerable populations. Any potential solution must be thoughtfully considered, he said in a statement. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) flirted with voting against the bill, saying he was not yet prepared to support it, but never committed either way. The [GOP bill] was an imperfect approach and I believe that we can do better, he said in a statement. We will go back to the drawing board and get this right for each and every American concerned with high costs in their healthcare and ever-dwindling choices and access to care. Facebook

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Despite threat of legal battle with Trump, California stays the course on vehicle emission rules By Chris Megerian Electric cars charge at a San Diego utility. (Rob Nikolewski / San Diego Union-Tribune) California will keep pushing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, state regulators decided Friday, even though President Trump is preparing to roll back rules in Washington. The restrictions represent a key part of Californias battle against climate change, and theyre intended to force automakers to build cleaner cars and sell more electric vehicles. Environmentalists cheered Fridays decision from the Air Resources Board. Were very disappointed by what were seeing at the federal level, so today feels warm and welcoming, said the Sierra Clubs Kathryn Phillips. California has the unique ability to set tougher standards than the federal government, but Fridays decision could put the state on a collision course with Trump. Under the presidents direction, federal officials are examining whether to loosen vehicle rules that were finalized in the waning days of the Obama administration. The California Air Resources Board meeting in Riverside this week. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) At risk is the existence of a national standard on vehicle emissions, something the auto industry has prioritized to reduce the complexity of its manufacturing operations. We should all be getting back to work on this, said John Bozzella, who advocates for international car companies as head of the Assn. of Global Automakers. Mary Nichols, chair of the Air Resources Board, questioned the industrys commitment to higher standards given their request for Trump to review the rules. What were you thinking when you threw yourself upon the mercy of the Trump administration? she said. A dozen other states have adopted Californias standards as their own, and environmentalists hope Fridays decision will foster a broader market for electric cars. This agency has seen federal administrations come
When Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trumps Supreme Court nominee, goes before the Senate next week, it will be a triumphant moment for originalism, the once-obscure theory that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the meaning of words and phrases as they were understood in the times they were written.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia was the foremost champion of this approach. Often frustrated inside the court, he traveled the country, scoffing at liberals who believed in a living Constitution that changes with the times.

Not since the failed 1987 nomination of Robert Bork has a prospective high court justice so embraced originalism as has Gorsuch, an appellate judge on the Denver-based 10th Circuit. Last year, he said courts must apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to the text, structure and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be  not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or policy consequences they believe might serve society best.

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Gorsuchs public endorsement of originalism helped him win the coveted nomination to succeed Scalia, and it is likely to play a key role in the debate over his confirmation.

Trumps victory assures a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. 

Advocates of originalism see it as a way to limit the power of judges lest they be tempted to rewrite and revise the Constitution as they see fit. The theory of originalism treats a constitution like a statute and gives it the meaning that its words were understood to bear at the time they were promulgated, Scalia once said.

He saw originalism as a way to protect democracy, ensuring voters and elected lawmakers, not courts, decide controversies like abortion, same-sex marriage and the death penalty.

Critics dismiss it as little more than a slogan that wraps conservative goals into a lofty constitutional doctrine.

At Gorsuchs days-long Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which begins Monday, senators are likely to press him to discuss his views on abortion, gay rights, gun control and campaign funding laws. He is not likely to reveal much. High court nominees usually say they cannot discuss issues that may come before the court  which of course is why senators ask.

But they may have more success pressing Gorsuch about his views on originalism, which in recent years has become proxy of sorts in the Supreme Courts conservative-liberal divide.

Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society vice president who served as a Trump adviser, said Gorsuchs commitment to originalism was a key factor in his selection.

At the same time, progressive activists, gay rights lawyers and prominent liberal professors have cited Gorsuchs belief in Scalias theory as a reason to firmly oppose his confirmation.

Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University, describes originalism as a sham and a charade because the courts conservatives regularly adopt a conveniently conservative view of the history.

It is a political label to define a movement, not a real method of constitutional interpretation, he said.

Others say looking at issues through an 18th century or 19th century lens almost always bodes poorly for modern-day struggles over things like affirmative action or womens rights.

Liberal jurists, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have viewed the Constitution as more of a evolving document that can be adapted to reflect a changing nation. Ginsburg, like the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, pointed out when the Constitution was adopted in 1787, most of Americas people  women, African Americans and Native Americans  could not vote.

Its a mistake, critics of originalism say, to apply narrow, fixed definitions to the Constitutions broad protections for liberty and equality.

An originalist asks if the original understanding of the equal protection clause was to mandate same-sex marriage. Obviously the answer is no, said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. For many Americans, that is not where the analysis should end. They have to recognize we cant fulfill the promise of equal protection without equal rights for LGBTs. We should look to the basic principles behind a constitutional provision and read those principles broadly to meet a changing society.

Its a significant debate because the high courts most important decisions often turn on how to interpret phrases such as freedom of speech, establishment of religion or cruel and unusual punishments, which appear in Bill of Rights of 1791.

Perhaps the most disputed clause, however, is in the 14th Amendment of 1868, which says no state may deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court cited the 14th Amendment as the basis for rights to abortion and same-sex marriage, rulings Scalia vehemently opposed on the grounds they did not reflect the original meaning.

But that charge can cut both ways. Scalia joined the 5-4 ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case that struck down federal campaign-finance restrictions and held that corporations had a free-speech right to spend unlimited sums on politics. Critics note this pro-corporate decision hardly reflected the original meaning of the 1st Amendment.

Some progressives support originalism, saying it does not necessarily lead to conservative results.

When you look at the full sweep of the Constitution, it is a progressive document concerned with voting rights, equality and democracy, said David H. Gans, lawyer for Constitutional Accountability Center, a self-described progressive group. He faults conservatives for ignoring the history of the Reconstruction era.

One key point of dispute is the 14th Amendments promise of equal protection of the laws. The Reconstruction Congress, which wrote the amendment, funded public programs to help newly freed slaves, and some scholars of that era insist that black equality was the overriding aim of the amendment.

However, Scalia and the courts conservatives have relied on the equal protection clause to strike down programs designed to help African Americans, such as affirmative action. They say the clause should be interpreted to forbid the government from considering a persons race, and therefore affirmative action preferences are illegal, regardless of their intentions.

A similar dispute rages over voting rights. The 15th Amendment, adopted in 1870, guaranteed that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the account of race, and that Congress shall have the power to enforce this promise.

Yet in 2013, the courts conservatives struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act  intended to protect the rights of black voters in the South  because, according to the 5-4 opinion, it conflicted with the principle that the states enjoy equal sovereignty. That principle is not mentioned in the Constitution.

In practice, the concept of originalism has had surprisingly little effect on major decisions of the Supreme Court.

Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas have been seen as the courts only true originalists, and they rarely had the opportunity to apply that theory in a major ruling, though they frequently raised it in dissents.

All the justices at times make references in their opinions to the Constitutions text and history, but frequently they do not agree on the interpretation.

This was illustrated when both sides invoked the original history of the 2nd Amendment in a 2008 case over gun rights.

The 2nd Amendment states, A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

For the 4th time, the Electoral College picks the loser of the popular vote. 

Speaking for a 5-4 majority in D.C. vs. Heller, Scalia cited history from England and the Colonial era to conclude the amendment protected a personal right to be armed for self-defense, setting aside nearly a century of precedents that found no such individual right.

In the dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens focused more narrowly on the adoption of the 2nd Amendment in 1791 and concluded its aim was to protect a states right to maintain a well-regulated militia.

Any discussion of originalism often turns into a dispute over Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion. Scalia and Thomas said the decision was wrong and should be overturned because neither the words nor history of the 14th Amendment would warrant striking down state laws that banned abortion.

Knowing that Gorsuch will avoid speaking directly on the topic, Senate Democrats are likely to press him to discuss his views generally on Supreme Court precedents. They will want to know whether an avowed originalist would be inclined to uphold or overturn long-standing decisions that were not based on the original history.

Even if they do not say the words, they will be asking whether Gorsuch would vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

david.savage@latimes.com

On Twitter: DavidGSavage

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In the flurry of news on his tax returns, his troubled healthcare plan and his suspicion that his phones were bugged, it was easy to miss one of President Trumps most startling comments Wednesday night on Fox News.

Trump was griping about the coverage he gets on every major television network except right-leaning Fox News, and he singled out NBC as a prime offender. After all the money that NBC made on his reality-TV franchise, Trump suggested, it owed him more favorable coverage of his presidency.

I made a fortune for NBC with The Apprentice, he told Fox anchor Tucker Carlson. I had a top show where they were doing horribly, and I had one of the most successful reality shows of all time. And I was on for 14 seasons. And you see what happened when Im not on. You saw what happened to the show was a disaster. I was very good to NBC, and they are despicable  theyre despicable in their coverage.

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What do NBCs profits on The Apprentice have to do with the way its journalists cover Trump?

Why would he see any relationship between the former and the latter?

Should NBC show the president gratitude by shaping its reporting more to his liking?

Its pretty astonishing, this idea of a quid pro quo, said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of PEN America, a group that seeks to protect free expression for writers around the world.

Trumps remarks, she said, were revealing about how he views the motives of TV networks and other major news outlets.

No ones saying theyre above commerce, she said. But that notion that this is a commercial relationship between a president and a media organization that entitles him to favorable coverage  hes so open about it.

An NBC spokesman declined to comment.

Trumps hostility toward the mainstream media exceeds that of any modern president. Even President Nixon, who loathed much of the press, stopped short of calling ABC, CBS, NBC and the New York Times the enemy of the American people, as Trump has.

No president but Trump has routinely accused reporters of making things up to harm him, a firing offense under boilerplate ethics codes of American newsrooms.

NBCs reporting has long annoyed Trump. On Twitter, he has called its star Trump campaign correspondent Katy Tur an incompetent and dishonest 3rd rate reporter who should be fired. (She now anchors a daytime news show on MSNBC.)

Among many other complaints, Trump objected to NBCs coverage of his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. When the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats as punishment for Russias interference in the U.S. presidential election, Trump called Putin very smart for declining to retaliate.

Russians are playing @CNN and @NBCNews for such fools  funny to watch, they dont have a clue! Trump wrote on Twitter. @FoxNews totally gets it!

Edward Wasserman, the dean of UC Berkeleys Graduate School of Journalism, said the idea that NBCs profits on The Apprentice should influence its coverage of Trump was ridiculous.

Wasserman also criticized Trumps broader efforts to discredit news organizations that report aggressively on his administration and his business entanglements. Its an attempt to neutralize the influence of the news media when they publish things that reflect unfavorably on him, he said.

To Nossel, the main thing missing from Trumps perception of the press is any sense that it provides a public service in a democracy by presenting facts and interpretation that help us understand what government is doing [and] reach conscientious decisions as voters and citizens.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

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President Trump refused Friday to back off his unsubstantiated accusation that President Obama ordered surveillance of him, instead dismissing questions about it by cracking a joke that revived one of the most troublesome diplomatic episodes of Obamas tenure.

Trump was asked twice about his wiretap claim during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He ignored the first question and only briefly addressed the issue in answering the second.



For the record: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the British prime minister at the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion. It was Tony Blair, not David Cameron.

As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps, Trump said, gesturing toward Merkel and prompting an awkward smile from the German leader as she shuffled papers at an adjacent lectern.

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Trump was referring to a disclosure in 2013 by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the U.S. had spied in Germany, including monitoring Merkels cellphone. The revelation dealt a major blow to U.S.-German relations and damaged Merkels standing at home. The U.S. had to make a significant diplomatic effort to patch up the relationship.

Fridays comments, in which the president variously blamed reporters, a Fox News commentator and British officials for rousing the debate, added to what has become worldwide fallout from Trumps allegations against Obama, made in a series of early-morning tweets March 4. The issue has consumed attention and energy that Trump might have otherwise spent to sell Republicans healthcare plan or his budget proposal or to contain the growing nuclear danger in North Korea.

Despite an avalanche of rebuttals from top intelligence officials and members of his own party, Trump has refused to apologize or retract the explosive allegation against his predecessor.

Republican leaders have grown visibly frustrated at having to answer questions about the claim, which the White House defended even after leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees said this week that they had seen no evidence to substantiate it.

In reviving the sore point with Merkel, Trump risked upsetting a delicate relationship with an important partner, which was already frayed by insults Trump lobbed at her during the presidential campaign in which he said she was ruining Germany by accepting too many refugees.

The controversy caused a separate rift with Great Britain, another close ally.

The British were ruffled after Trumps press secretary, Sean Spicer, read from a series of news stories while mounting a lengthy and vigorous defense of Trumps accusation during Thursdays televised White House briefing. One story included an allegation from Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano that Obama had used British spies to snoop on Trump at his New York high-rise.

The British government was not happy.

The allegations are nonsense and should be ignored, said an official for Britains General Communications Headquarters, its secretive signals intelligence agency, in a rare statement.

British media reported that Spicer and H.R. McMaster, Trumps national security advisor, issued a formal apology. A White House official who declined to be named pushed back against that characterization. The official conceded that British Ambassador Kim Darroch and Mark Lyall Grant, Britains national security advisor, expressed their concerns to Sean Spicer and Gen. McMaster.

Mr. Spicer and Gen. McMaster both explained that he was simply pointing to public reports and not endorsing any specific story, said the White House official, who would not be named while describing private discussions between U.S. and British officials.

Trump also brushed the issue aside during his news conference.

That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox, Trump said. And so you shouldnt be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox. OK?

But even Fox News, the conservative network that Trump considers a media ally, was unwilling to stand behind the commentary. Within minutes of Trumps comments, anchor Shepard Smith attempted to distance the network from Trumps allegations.

Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop, he said.

Despite all the blowback, Spicer made no effort to retract his efforts at defending his boss.

I dont think we regret anything, he told reporters Friday. We literally listed a litany of media reports that are in the public domain.

One House Republican called on Trump to apologize to Obama.

Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling proof, then ... President Obama is owed an apology in that regard, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). Because if he didnt do it, we shouldnt be reckless in accusations that he did.

Obama, who has previously denied ordering a wiretap of Trump, stayed silent. But his former aides fumed.

Spicers slam against the British yesterday and the presidents snide reference to a sticking point in modern U.S.-German relations, which the Obama administration worked assiduously to overcome, is just another indication that this administration prioritizes the presidents personal vanity over our broader national interests, Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and spokesman for the National Security Council during the Obama administration, wrote in an email.

Despite the raw nerves, the impact on the relationship with Britain will likely be short-lived and limited to top diplomats. U.S. and British intelligence agents have worked side by side for decades, and those working-level relationships are unlikely to be derailed by a dust-up with the White House.

Officers and investigators with the two countries spy agencies work daily at the ground level to share information on moves by China and Russia, dismantle international criminal networks and stop terrorist attacks, among other operations. They are among the so-called Five Eyes nations, along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that have an expansive intelligence-sharing agreement.

But there is a concern that if unfounded accusations are repeated over time, the confidence that close allies have in Trumps judgment could erode. U.S. and British intelligence officers are still bruised by the series of misjudgments over former Iraqi President Saddam Husseins supposed weapons of mass destruction that then-President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair used to justify the Iraq invasion.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

Twitter: @noahbierman

michael.memoli@latimes.com

Twitter: @mikememoli

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

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Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52  Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro  who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents  Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook

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Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place  including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta  protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

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Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown  tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants  known as Dreamers  who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats  joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies  were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook

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Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook

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In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one  a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast  the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history  the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many  if any  of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values  not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook

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Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook

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Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook

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Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook

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Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis  but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook

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Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook

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Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday.  Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance  you know, some of them called it a performance  I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook

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Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook

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Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay

President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018  This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18



On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who  the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook

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Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook

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Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book  Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week  served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it  theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election  and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

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Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook

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In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017  the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook

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Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook

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Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook

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Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook

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Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children  a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook

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Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook

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After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook

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Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook

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Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook

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Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series  attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with  was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage  sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m.  reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not  we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters  just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control  a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side  to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook

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In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook

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Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday  and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size  were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost
Adam Schiff views documents White House says back Trump surveillance claim By Michael A. Memoli (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) traveled to the White House Friday to view documents President Trump has said partially vindicate his claim that his predecessor ordered surveillance of him during the campaign. In a statement, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said he was told they were precisely the same materials viewed previously by the committees chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), which Schiff said should now be shared with the full panel membership. Nothing I could see today warranted a departure from the normal review procedures, Schiff said, adding that he could not discuss the contents of the documents, which remain classified. Nunes was shown the documents last week by White House officials surreptitiously, then announced to reporters the next day that he needed urgently to go to the White House to brief Trump about them. Schiff, in his statement, said that the White House has yet to explain why senior White House staff apparently shared these materials with but one member of either [Intelligence] committee, only for their contents to be briefed back to the White House. Schiff also had a brief but cordial meeting with Trump during his time at the White House, a spokesman said. White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters earlier Friday that other Democrats have been invited to the White House to view the materials, which he said would shed light on their investigation. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are conducting separate reviews of Russian interference into the 2016 election; Trump has asked each panel to also probe his own claim that his predecessor engaged in wire tapping of his phones at Trump Tower during the campaign, an assertion that has been denied by Nunes as well as the heads of the FBI and intelligence agencies. Facebook

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Mnuchin regrets plugging The Lego Batman Movie, pledges to exercise greater caution in the future By Jim Puzzanghera Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday told a top government ethics official he should not have publicly plugged The Lego Batman Movie  a film in which he has a financial stake  and promised to exercise greater caution in the future. I take very seriously my ethical responsibilities as a presidential appointee and the head of the Department of the Treasury, Mnuchin wrote to Walter Shaub, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. On Monday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Shaub to determine whether Mnuchin had committed an ethics violation last week when he discussed the movie during an event hosted by the Axios news website that aired on C-SPAN2. Read More Facebook

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Rep. Adam Schiff says its too early to consider an immunity deal for Michael Flynn By Associated Press The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says its too early to consider an immunity deal for President Trumps former national security advisor. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) says that Michael Flynn even discussing possible immunity in exchange for protection from prosecution is a grave and momentous step because of the seniority of his former position. Schiff says the House Intelligence Committee is interested in hearing Flynns story, but there would have to be coordination with the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department on the terms. The House and Senate intelligence committees and the FBI are investigating Russias meddling in the 2016 election. The investigation includes scrutiny of Flynns ties with Russia. Read More Facebook

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Trump administration admonishes California chief justice over claim that agents are stalking immigrants By Del Quentin Wilber U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) The Trump administration on Friday fired back at Californias top judge, disputing her characterization this month that federal immigration agents were stalking courthouses to make arrests. In a letter to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, leaders of Trumps Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security objected to her description of federal agents conduct. As the chief judicial officer of the state of California, your characterization of federal law enforcement is particularly troubling, wrote Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, objecting to Cantil-Sakauyes use of the word stalking. They said agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were using courthouses to arrest immigrants in the U.S. illegally, in part, because California and some of its local jurisdictions prohibit their officials from cooperating with federal agencies in detaining such immigrants under most conditions. Sessions and Kelly told Californias top judge that she should consider taking her concerns to Gov. Jerry Brown and the cities and counties that limit local law enforcements involvement with immigration agents. Cantil-Sakauye, a former prosecutor who rose through the judicial ranks as an appointee of Republican governors, said through a spokesman that she appreciated the Trump administrations admission that they are in state courthouses making federal arrests. Making arrests at courthouses, in my view, undermines public safety because victims and witnesses will fear coming to courthouses to help enforce the law, she said Friday. She expressed disappointment that courthouses, given local and state public safety concerns, were not listed as sensitive areas offlimits to agents. Federal policy lists schools, churches and hospitals as sensitive areas. The letter from the Justice Department officials defended the arrests of immigrants at courthouses. By apprehending suspects after they have passed through security screening at courthouses, federal agents are less likely to encounter anyone who is armed, the letter said. The arrest of individuals by ICE officers and agents is predicated on investigation and targeting of specific persons who have been identified by ICE and other law enforcement agencies as subject to arrest, they wrote. Cantil-Sakauye had asked the Trump administration on March 16 to stop immigration agents from seeking immigrants at the states courthouses. Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our countrys immigration laws, she wrote in a letter to Sessions and Kelly. Her letter did not say which courthouses had been the location of such stalking, but judges and lawyers in Southern California have complained of seeing immigration agents posted near courts. She said she feared the practice would erode public trust in the state courts. Sessions and Kelly urged Cantil-Sakauye to speak to Brown and other officials who have enacted policies that occasionally necessitate ICE officers and agents to make arrests at courthouses and other public places. Facebook

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Back in the spotlight, Hillary Clinton takes aim at Trumps budget By Evan Halper Hillary Clinton stepped back into the spotlight this week after laying relatively low since the election, and she had some advice for President Trump: Tear up the White House budget plan. Clinton was at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security to bestow an award named in her honor to Colombian leaders who helped bring an end to war in that country and elevate the role of women in the peace process. She spoke of the progress the world has made in advancing womens rights since she spoke forcefully on the issue two decades ago when the U.N. gathered world leaders to address it in Beijing. But she warned that progress is threatened by Trump. We are seeing signals of a shift that should alarm us all, Clinton said. This administrations proposed cuts to international health, development and diplomacy would be a blow to women and children and a grave mistake for our country. Clinton then raised the letter signed by 120 former generals and admirals beseeching the Trump administration not to make the cuts. These distinguished men and women who have served in uniform recognize that turning our back on diplomacy wont make our country safer. It will undermine our security and our standing in the world. A lot has changed since Clinton was on the campaign trail, but some things about her style on the stump havent. She pulled out a favorite line from last year as she began to talk about a study that backed up her point about the damage Trumps budget plan could do. Here I go again, Clinton said to whooping and cheering from an audience of mostly female students, talking about research evidence and facts. Facebook

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Seeking a way forward, Trump increasingly finds himself at odds with his own party By Michael A. Memoli (Evan Vucci / Associated Press ) President Trump won his office in spite of the best efforts of some in his party. Now, the tenuous nature of the bonds between Trump and the GOP are increasingly on public display as the president openly feuds with conservatives and White House officials debate whether to reach out to Democrats in order to restart his domestic agenda. The latest and strongest evidence came Thursday as Trump escalated his political battle against the members of the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative lawmakers who helped block the healthcare bill he backed. Early in the morning, he said on Twitter that the caucus would hurt the entire Republican agenda if they dont get on the team. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018! he added. It was an extraordinary message, suggesting that Trump might try to back challengers in primaries against lawmakers of his own party  something few presidents have tried, none with much success. Read More Facebook

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Tillerson tells NATO allies to pay more, do more to fight terrorism By Catherine Stupp Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday promised NATO allies that the United States will stand by their side but also expected them to spend more on defense and do more to fight terrorism. Tillerson participated in a day of discussions with foreign ministers from the 27 other NATO member nations, his first with the full roster of allies, who were sent scrambling last week to accommodate the top U.S. diplomat after he said he could not attend the meeting originally planned for early April. The United States is committed to ensuring NATO has the capabilities to support our collective defense. We understand that a threat against one of us is a threat against all of us, Tillerson said. But, he added, as President Trump has made clear, it is no longer sustainable for the U.S. to maintain a disproportionate share of NATOs defense expenditures. The United States is amping up pressure on NATO members to increase their defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product, in line with a 2014 agreement among the alliances 28 member countries to meet the target by 2024. Only five NATO countries meet the 2% threshold. The U.S. spends 3.61% of its GDP on defense, more than any other member of the alliance. Tillerson said that if countries have not met the 2% spending goal by the end of the year, they should at least have a concrete plan that clearly articulates how, with annual milestone progress commitments, the pledge will be fulfilled. Pressure to meet that strict deadline is likely to upset some allies. German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told reporters before Fridays meeting that he thinks it would be completely unrealistic for Germany to bring its military defense spending up to 2% of GDP. I dont know any politician in Germany who thinks that this would be reachable or desirable, Gabriel said. Germany is increasing its military spending this year to $39 billion, or 1.2% of its GDP. Gabriel rejected the Trump administrations focus on military expenditures, arguing that humanitarian aid and Germanys spending to take in refugees should be considered part of the defense budget. Tillerson also called on allies to take a greater role in the fight against terrorism. NATO can and should do more, he said. Fighting terrorism is the top national security priority for the United States, as it should be for all of us. Tillersons earlier announcement that he would skip the meeting struck a nerve among the alliance members, coming at a sensitive time when tensions between the Trump administration and NATO allies have soared. The schedule change caused an awkward protocol shuffle, with a handful of foreign ministers unable to make it to Brussels. What was supposed to be a two-day meeting was compressed into half of a day. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tried to cast optimism on the last-minute schedule change, calling it a sign of the strong transatlantic unity and flexibility of our alliance that we were able to find a date. The foreign ministers meeting is crucial because it lays the groundwork for a NATO summit with heads of state in May, which will be President Trumps first overseas trip since taking office. Tillersons day of talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels follows visits from Defense Secretary James Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence, who attempted to dispel fears that the Trump administration will seek to loosen ties with the alliance. Trump called NATO obsolete in an interview published days before his inauguration. He later insisted, during German Chancellor Angela Merkels visit to the White House earlier this month, that the U.S. will maintain its strong commitment to the alliance. Tillerson arrived in Brussels on Friday morning after meeting Thursday in Ankara, Turkey, with that countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to discuss terrorism and Syria, though the leaders failed to reach an agreement on how to combat Islamic State. Facebook

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Trump weighs in on Michael Flynns request for immunity President Trumps former national security advisor, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, is seeking immunity from prosecution in return for testifying to the House and Senate intelligence committees, a congressional aide said. The development was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Gen. Flynn certainly had a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit, his lawyer, Robert Kelner, said in a statement. No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances from unfair prosecution. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted his support for Flynns request. Flynn was ousted as Trumps national security advisor last month after news reports disclosed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about phone conversations with Sergey Kislyak, Russias ambassador to the U.S. The calls were picked up by U.S. surveillance targeting the Russian envoy, and a description of the contents was leaked to the Washington Post after the Justice Department warned the White House that Flynn could be subject to blackmail. Read More Facebook

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Former national security advisor Michael Flynn seeks immunity By David S. Cloud President Trumps former national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has been seeking immunity from prosecution in return for testifying to the House and Senate intelligence committees, a congressional official confirmed Thursday. The negotiations were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. In a statement, Flynns lawyer, Robert Kelner, said Gen. Flynn certainly had a story to tell and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit. No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances from unfair prosecution. Trump fired Flynn three weeks into the new administration after news reports disclosed that he had lied to White House colleagues, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, Russias ambassador to the U.S. In December, Flynn had telephone conversations with Kislyak in which he discussed sanctions that the Obama administration had recently imposed on Russia to punish Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn denied to Pence and other officials that he had discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. So far, the committees, which are investigating Russian interference and whether anyone close to Trump colluded with Moscow, have not taken Flynn up on his offer, the Journal reported. Facebook

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Trump administration appeals Hawaii judges order against travel ban By Jaweed Kaleem The Department of Justice has appealed a Hawaii court order that brought President Trumps travel ban to a national halt. The government has argued that the president was well within his authority to restrict travel from six Muslim-majority countries and put a pause on refugee resettlement. The appeal Thursday to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came a day after U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu refused to dismiss his temporary block of the travel ban that he issued on March 15. With the appeal, the government is now fighting to reinstate the travel ban in two appeals courts on opposite ends of the country. That increases the likelihood that one of the cases will make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice appealed a Maryland district judges order against the travel ban to the U.S. 4th District Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. Both rulings in Hawaii and Maryland said Trumps executive order discriminated against Muslims. Watson and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland cited Trumps campaign promises to suspend Muslim travel to the U.S. as proof of his orders anti-Muslim bias. The Hawaii ruling is broader than the Maryland one. It blocks a 90-day pause on travel to the U.S. from nationals of six majority-Muslim countries and a 120-day moratorium on new refugee resettlement. The Maryland ruling only halted the ban on travel into the U.S. by citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The 9th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over nine Western states, is the same court where a panel of three judges denied a government request last month to reverse ruling against the first travel ban by a federal judge in Washington state. Trump, in turn, lambasted the bad court and signed a new executive order on travel on March 6 that was modified in an attempt to survive court challenges. Facebook

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Senate heads for nuclear option if Democrats filibuster Gorsuch nomination By Lisa Mascaro One of the Senates most serious jobs  confirming the presidents choice for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court  has devolved into a game of political chicken. Senators are heading toward an institution-defining showdown next week as Democrats promise to try to block President Trumps nominee, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, with a filibuster, a rarely seen maneuver for high court appointments. Republicans are threatening to respond by changing long-standing Senate rules to circumvent the 60 votes that would be needed to overcome a filibuster. Instead they would allow confirmation with a simple majority. The outcome has the potential to not only shape the future of the Supreme Court  which has been without a full bench since the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year  it also could crush one final vestige of bipartisanship in the Senate, altering the upper chamber for years to come. The battle over the Supreme Court seat was always expected to be a partisan affair in todays heated political climate. But the polemics intensified after the Republican majority denied President Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing ahead of last years presidential election. Read More Facebook

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Scalias seat has been vacant longer than any Supreme Court justices in nearly 50 years By Colleen Shalby (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Its been more than 400 days since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalias death left his seat vacant. With Republicans having blocked a vote on then-President Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, and with Senate Democrats now making plans to filibuster President Trumps nominee, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, it could take even longer to replace Scalia. Its not unheard of for a justices seat to remain empty for a considerable amount of time. Pew Research Center did the math and found that the longest gap was 841 days, in the mid-1840s, from the time of Henry Baldwins death to his replacement Robert Griers confirmation. But the last time in recent history that a vacancys duration in this range occurred was after Abe Fortas resigned in 1969. It took 391 days to fill that seat, an interval that ended in 1970 when Harry Blackmun  the justice who authored the courts landmark opinion in Roe vs. Wade  was confirmed. Blackmun was President Nixons third pick to fill that seat. The second-longest vacancy in recent years occurred in 1988. It took 237 days to fill Lewis Powells seat after he retired, with Anthony Kennedy succeeding him. Its been 58 days and counting since Trump nominated Gorsuch. Heres how his waiting time from nomination to confirmation stacks up against the current justices: Elena Kagan: 87 days

Sonia Sotomayor: 66 days

Samuel A. Alito Jr.: 82 days

John G. Roberts Jr.: 23 days

Stephen G. Breyer: 73 days

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 50 days

Clarence Thomas: 99 days

Anthony M. Kennedy: 65 days If Gorsuch is confirmed soon, he wont start considering cases until the courts new term in October.

And if hes not confirmed? Trump would nominate another successor to Scalia  theres no limit on how many times he can do that. Until Scalias seat is filled, lower courts decisions serve as tie-breakers. Facebook

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Sens. Manchin and Heitkamp become first Democrats to announce support for Gorsuch By David Savage Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota became the first Democrats to say they will vote for Judge Neil Gorsuch and not support the effort to filibuster his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Their announcements came as no surprise. Both are centrists who have to run for reelection next year in states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. After considering his record, watching his testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee and meeting with him twice, I will vote to confirm him to be the ninth justice on the Supreme Court, Manchin said. I have found him to be an honest and thoughtful man.... I have not found any reasons why this jurist should not be a Supreme Court justice. Heitkamp said she was impressed with Gorsuchs record as a judge. This vote does not diminish how disturbed I am by what the Republicans did to Judge [Merrick] Garland, referring to the GOP-led Senates refusal last year to consider President Obamas choice to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But I was taught that two wrongs dont make a right, she said. The Republican majority in the Senate needs six more Democrats to join with them if they hope to stop the expected filibuster of President Trumps Supreme Court nominee. It takes 60 votes to end the debate under the Senates current rules. But the 52 Republicans may vote to simply eliminate this requirement if the Democrats stand firm against Gorsuch. On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to approve Gorsuch on a party line vote and send the nomination to the Senate floor. A final vote is expected April 7. Facebook

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White House invites lawmakers to see intelligence material after New York Times report By Noah Bierman The White House has invited House and Senate intelligence committee chairs to review documents that it says were recently discovered by national security staff that could help determine whether information gathered about American citizens was mishandled. White House spokesman Sean Spicer would not say whether these are the same documents that Rep. Devin Nunes, the Tulare Republican who chairs the House intelligence committee, said he reviewed last week. Nunes has refused to identify his sources. Some saw his disclosure as an attempt to give credence to President Trumps widely refuted claim that President Obama had ordered wiretaps on his phone during the campaign. Nunes said the material he reviewed suggested that intelligence agencies had incidentally collected information about Trump or his associates. He has declined to be more specific or share the information with the committee. But the New York Times reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources, that two White House officials helped Nunes get access to the documents. And now the same information may be provided to other members of the Intelligence committee. In a letter to the bipartisan group of intelligence leaders sent Thursday, White House Counsel Donald McGhan said administration lawyers would supervise the review given the sensitivity of the documents to protect the extremely sensitive intelligence sources and methods. The letter calls on the committee to investigate the possibility that classified information was inappropriately gathered and handled and whether civil liberties of American citizens were violated. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters that he welcomed the chance to review the materials, though he said he would be obligated to share them with the rest of his committee. More troubling to Schiff, he said, was the cloak and dagger stuff and circuitous route that the White House national security staff appears to have used to disseminate the materials in that secret meeting with Nunes. Schiff said White House staff may have been trying to launder information through the committee, rather than simply providing it directly to the president. If that was designed to hide the origin of the materials, that raises profound questions about just what the White House is doing, Schiff said. We need to get to the bottom of whether this was some sort of stratagem by the White House. In a letter to McGhan, Schiff said answering the White Houses questions would require asking intelligence agencies how the information in the documents was gathered. I hope you will confirm to the committee whether these materials are the same as those first shared with Nunes, Schiff wrote. 2:11: This story was updated with staff reporting Facebook

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Trumps team: A network of ties to Russia By Angelica Quintero The FBI is investigating possible coordination between people associated with the Trump campaign and Russian authorities during the 2016 election. The U.S. intelligence community has said it is confident that the Russian government directed hacking operations and intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. Take a look at how some high-profile people have been drawn into the investigation. See the graphic  Facebook

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Former RNC official is first to depart senior West Wing staff By Michael A. Memoli A former top Republican National Committee official and ally of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus will depart her West Wing post in the first significant shake-up of President Trumps senior staff. Politico first reported that Katie Walsh, the deputy White House chief of staff, will leave to take on an advisory position with political groups that were formed to support the presidents agenda from the outside. Walsh had served as chief of staff at the RNC when Priebus was party chair. At the White House, she served in a similar capacity under Priebus, tasked with overseeing the senior staff and the scheduling operation. Though White House officials denied the move was a signal of disharmony within the senior ranks, her departure spoke to issues dogging the new administration  a top-heavy operation in the West Wing and also the inability of the president to sustain the kind of grassroots support for his agenda that proved key to his electoral win. It was abundantly clear we didnt have air cover when it came to the calls coming into lawmakers, and nobody can fix this problem like Katie Walsh, Priebus told reporters later, according to Time. Facebook

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Putin: Read my lips, there was no Russian meddling in U.S. vote By Ann M. Simmons Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto during the International Arctic Forum in Arkhangelsk, Russia, on Thursday. (Sergei Karpukhim / AFP/Getty Images) Calling the accusations lies, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied that Moscow meddled in last years U.S. elections. Read my lips, no, Putin said during a panel moderated by CNBC, according to a report on the news agencys website. All those things are fictional, illusory and provocations, lies, the Russian president said. All these are used for domestic American political agendas. The anti-Russian card is played by different political forces inside the United States to trade on that and consolidate their positions inside. Putins comments came as the Senate Intelligence Committee was set to begin a hearing entitled Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns, which will focus on understanding the method of Russias active disinformation campaign and assess the extent of Moscows interference. FBI Director James Comey confirmed earlier this month that his agency was investigating Russias intrusion into the 2016 poll and whether there was any collusion between Moscow and President Trumps campaign. Read More Facebook

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Trump levels extraordinary threat against GOP conservatives; Ryan says he understands presidents frustration By Noah Bierman House Speaker Paul D. Ryan commiserated with President Trump Thursday after the president launched a Twitter assault on the group of rebellious Republicans known as the Freedom Caucus. I understand the frustration, I share the frustration, Ryan told reporters Thursday, when asked to respond to Trumps threat to campaign against fellow Republicans. Freedom Caucus members, who back limited government and have defined themselves in opposition to the Washington establishment, have been a major headache for GOP leaders. Ever since the Republicans took control of the House in 2010, conservative refusal to back key bills to fund government agencies has forced GOP leaders to negotiate with Democrats for the votes they need. Freedom Caucus members helped lead the charge against former Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). The caucus was blamed by many Republicans last week for torpedoing the leaderships plan, backed by Trump, to make significant changes to Obamacare. Still, Trumps threat to fight them in the 2018 elections was an extraordinary step. Trump had previously made electoral threats against wayward members of his party, but Thursdays tweet was especially direct, threatening to treat them the same way as Democrats. The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017 Freedom Caucus members have begun pushing back aggressively. A spokeswoman for the group argued on Twitter that Trump did not have his facts right and that Republican moderates were equally responsible for sinking the healthcare bill. View Twitter post Finding Trump supporters to challenge Republicans in a primary would be hard and could further thrust the GOP into civil war. Trump, despite low poll numbers nationally, remains popular in core Republican districts. Many members of Congress, however, ran ahead of him in their districts in the last election. The president has also suggested he might be open to cutting deals with Democrats, something the White House has discussed but not followed through on. That would also be difficult, given the rancor on the left. Ryan said Thursday that the best path is for Republicans to come together on healthcare and other issues About 90% of our conference is for this bill to repeal and replace Obamcare, and about 10% are not. And thats not enough to pass a bill, he said. What I am encouraging our members to do is to keep talking with each other until we can get the consensus to pass this bill. But its very understandable that the president is frustrated that we havent gotten to where we need to go, because this is something that we all said we would do. Facebook

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Pence casts tie-breaking vote to advance bill that would let states withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood By Lisa Mascaro Republicans needed Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote Thursday in the Senate to advance legislation that rolls back rules preventing states from withholding certain federal funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. With opposition from two Republican women, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Republicans did not have enough votes with their slim 52-seat majority to advance the bill. Pence, a longtime opponent of abortion, arrived to cast the vote breaking the 50-50 tie  and will be expected to do so later Thursday on final passage. We just saw a historic moment, said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) It is a sad day for the United States Senate. The measure rolls back a regulation finalized at the end of President Obamas administration that explicitly prevented states from denying federal Title X family planning funds to clinics, like Planned Parenthood, that also provide abortion services. Under longstanding practice, no federal funds can be used for abortions, but federal family planning money can flow to the clinics to provide other healthcare services. Some Republican-led state governments had been moving in recent years to choke off Title X funds from any clinics that offered abortion service. The Obama rule sought to prohibit such practices. The bill Thursday, sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), has already cleared the House. It is part of a series of bills being passed by Congress under the so-called Congressional Review Act, which allows federal regulations put in place during the final days of the previous administration to be undone by simple majority passage. Passage by the Senate later Thursday would send it to the White House for President Trumps signature. Busy day in D.C., but always happy to make time to meet visitors touring the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/4q6JG8wP0E  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) March 30, 2017 Facebook

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Senate committee narrowly approves Acostas nomination to be Labor secretary By Jim Puzzanghera (Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP) A Senate committee on Thursday narrowly approved R. Alexander Acosta to be Labor secretary, moving to fill one of President Trumps few remaining vacant Cabinet posts. The nomination of Acosta, a law school dean and former Justice Department official, was approved by a 12-11 vote by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. All of the panels Republicans supported the nomination; all of the Democrats were opposed. If confirmed in a full Senate vote, which is expected soon, Acosta will be the only Latino in Trumps Cabinet. A date for the final vote hasnt been set. Read More Facebook

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Follow the money and the trail of dead Russians, expert urges senators By Del Quentin Wilber (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) The Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday into Russian efforts to influence the November elections has been a long history lesson, tracing Moscows decades-long efforts to use misinformation to undermine democracies. But Clinton Watts, of the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University, provided a roadmap to better understanding the Kremlins efforts. He urged senators and the U.S. government to follow the money to figure out how misinformation websites and social media outlets are being funded. While the Russians conducted their hacking in the Internets shadows, their efforts to influence the election was hardly a secret, he said. You can hack stuff and be covert, but you cant influence and be covert, he said. You have to ultimately show your hand. And thats why we have been able to discover it online. The second way to trace Russian influence was more ominous: Follow the trail of dead Russians, he said. There have been more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation, he added. They are dropping dead, even in Western countries. Watts didnt finish the thought but was likely referring to a spate of deaths of high-profile Russians, some of which appeared to be assassinations although others appear to have been from natural causes. With the daytime execution of a Russian politician in Ukraine last week, at least eight Russian politicians, activists, ambassadors and a former intelligence official have died since the U.S. election. Facebook

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Russia has stepped up efforts to influence elections, experts tell Senate panel By David S. Cloud (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) Moscow has stepped up its interference in U.S. and European elections, using social media, hacking and other tools to undermine public confidence and to raise doubts about the U.S as an ally, Russia experts told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The committee was taking testimony from experts in Russian propaganda and intelligence operations as part of its investigation into Moscows meddling in the 2016 election. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the panel, emphasized that in addition to examining the broad topic of Russian efforts to influence the election, the panel also must seek to answer whether President Trumps campaign had contact with Russian officials last year, noting the the FBI has opened its own probe. I will not prejudge the outcome of our investigation. We are seeking to determine if there is an actual fire, but there is clearly a lot of smoke, Warner said. Dr. Eugene Rumer, Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the panel that Russian President Vladimir Putin probably viewed Moscows meddling in the U.S. election as an unqualified success. Facebook

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Tillerson meets Turkish officials to seek support for battle against Islamic State in Syria By Umar Farooq Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday met for more than two hours with Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as they hoped to shore up troubled relations between their nations. Making his first trip to Turkey, Tillerson became the highest-ranking Trump administration official to hold a face-to-face session with Erdogan, an increasingly authoritarian leader who is also a NATO member and key ally in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. The meeting went longer than planned. Turkey and the United States disagree sharply on how to combat Islamic State: Washington supports Kurdish militias that Erdogan regards as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey and the U.S. consider a terrorist organization. Trying to fight against Daesh through terrorist organizations such as ... extensions of the PKK, would be like shooting yourself in the foot, Erdogans senior advisor, Ibrahim Kalin, said ahead of Thursdays meeting. Daesh is a pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Read More Facebook

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Hawaii judge extends national halt on Trumps travel ban By Jaweed Kaleem Donald Trump in San Diego in May. (John Gastaldo / San Diego Union-Tribune)) The Hawaii federal judge who brought President Trumps revised travel ban to a national halt this month extended his order blocking the bans enforcement. The move Wednesday sets the stage for the Justice Department to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the ruling. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watsons original order halting the travel ban was issued March 15, a day before the ban was to go into effect, in the form of a temporary restraining order. At a hearing in Honolulu on Wednesday, federal lawyers asked Watson to either dismiss that order or narrow the restrictions to apply to fewer parts of the travel ban. Instead, Watson said he would turn the order into a preliminary injunction, which has the effect of extending his order blocking the travel ban for a longer period. Watson said he would keep intact the restrictions on the travel ban -- a block of its 90-day moratorium on travel to the U.S. from nationals of six majority-Muslim countries and its 120-day pause on new refugee resettlement. If the Justice Department appeals the case, it will be heard in the same court that upheld a national halt to Trumps first travel ban last month after a Seattle federal judge ruled against it. The administration has already appealed to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals a Maryland judges more limited March 16 ruling that stopped enforcement of the travel orders country-specific ban. Both the Hawaii and Maryland judges found Trumps executive order to discriminate against Muslims. They used the presidents campaign statements promising to suspend Muslim travel to the U.S. as evidence of the orders anti-Muslim bias. Government lawyers have argued that the president is not singling out Muslims but instead acting within his power to restrict immigration and safeguard national security while better vetting procedures are developed to prevent potential terrorists from entering the U.S. Trump has said hell take the case over the travel ban to the U.S. Supreme Court. Facebook

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Ivanka Trump gets formal White House role, with ethics obligations but no pay By Michael A. Memoli (Brendan Smialowski / AFP-Getty Images) Ivanka Trump is taking on a more formal White House role  with a title but not a paycheck  a move intended to quell ethics concerns raised about her status in her fathers administration. In a statement, the White House noted that the presidents elder daughter already had an unprecedented role in the administration different from that of previous presidential children. She now will take the title of special advisor to the president, and therefore assume the same responsibility to abide by ethics standards that other federal employees have, the statement said. The decision demonstrates the administrations commitment to ethics, transparency and compliance, the administration said. Although Ivanka Trump already had a West Wing office  as does her husband, senior advisor Jared Kushner  she now will have increased opportunities to lead initiatives driving real policy benefits for the American public that would not have been available to her previously, a White House spokesman said. The announcement came on a day when President Trump sought to promote his administrations commitment to empowering women. He delivered remarks at an East Room event that included other top women in his Cabinet, including U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon. Ivanka Trump held a roundtable with female business owners earlier, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said. Earlier Wednesday, leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Government Ethics raising concerns about the increasing, albeit unspecified position Ivanka Trump had held and the potential conflicts of interest that her government position might trigger with her personal businesses, including a retail clothing brand. The letter from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) asked the agency whether Trump would be required to divest herself of personal assets or if she could be required to recuse herself from certain functions. Trumps new position was first reported by the New York Times. In a statement to the paper, Trump said she was acting in response to ethics concerns, but noted she already had been voluntarily complying with all ethics rules. Facebook

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Russia inquiry one of the biggest congressional probes in decade, senators say By David Lauter Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, and Mark Warner (D-Va.). (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) The Senate Intelligence Committees probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election will be one of the biggest investigations in years and has already involved an unprecedented level of cooperation between Congress and U.S. spy agencies, the panels chairman said Wednesday. At a Capitol Hill news conference, the committee chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, and its ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, emphasized the bipartisan nature of the panels efforts, drawing a determined, though unstated, contrast with the partisan dysfunction of a parallel investigation in the House. The committee will go wherever the intelligence leads us, Burr said. And he pointedly refused to endorse White House statements that investigators inevitably will find that there was no collusion between President Trumps campaign and the Russians. It would be crazy to try to draw any conclusions at this point, Burr said. We know that our challenge is to answer that question to the American people, Burr said, referring to the issue of Trumps involvement. Warner said he had confidence in Richard Burr to run a fair investigation and produce a bipartisan conclusion. Warner said Americans should not lose sight of what the investigation is about: An outside foreign adversary effectively tried to hijack the election and favor one candidate over the other. They didnt do it because it was in the best interest of the American people, he said. "[Russian President] Vladimir Putins goal is a weaker United States. The Russian action should be a concern of all Americans regardless of party affiliation, he added. The committee staff already has reviewed thousands of pages of intelligence documents and has begun scheduling interviews with a list of 20 preliminary witnesses, who will be questioned in private before the panel holds public hearings, Burr said. He strongly implied that one of the potential witnesses is retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who was fired from his post as national security advisor to Trump after the disclosure that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russias ambassador to the U.S. You would think less of us if the committee had not talked with Flynn, Burr told reporters. The witnesses, including Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and advisor, will be questioned when the committee is ready, he said. Facebook

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Justice Department watchdog finds DEA cash seizure program may pose risk to civil liberties By Del Quentin Wilber A Ukiah, Calif., police officer works with a dog to search for drugs or cash in a motorists car on May 14, 2014. (Francine Orr/ Los Angeles Times) The way the Drug Enforcement Administration seizes cash and other assets may pose a risk to civil liberties, the Justice Departments internal watchdog reported Wednesday. The Justice Departments inspector general also determined that the agency does not measure or track how its asset seizure activities advance criminal investigations. Over the last decade, more than $28 billion has been seized through the departments asset forfeiture program. The effort and others in states have generated intense controversy in recent years, with critics contending that many seizures are unfair because some who lose their assets are never charged with crimes. Law enforcement officials, however, say that seizing property and cash is a key tool in disrupting criminal organizations and compensating the victims of crimes. Former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder in 2015 limited how state and local authorities can obtain seized funds by working with federal agents. In its report released Wednesday, the inspector general examined 100 cases in which the DEA seized cash. Eighty-five of the cases involved interdiction at transportation hubs, such as airports or parcel centers. Nearly 80 of those seizures resulted from the direct observation of agents or local police. The inspector general and the Justice Department have raised concerns in the past about such stops and searches, in part, due to the potential for racial profiling. Of the 100 cases, the DEA could verify that only 44 advanced ongoing investigations, led to a new investigation, or resulted in an arrest or prosecution, the inspector general found. When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution, the report said. The inspector general also found that the Justice Department does not provide enough training or require state and local officers working on federal task forces to be trained on asset forfeiture policies. The Justice Department responded in a letter to the inspector general that its analysis was flawed and its sample significantly underreported the amount of seized funds that are ultimately returned. In a statement, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said, Asset forfeiture is a powerful and effective law enforcement tool, allowing the department to compensate victims, deprive criminals of the proceeds of their crimes, remove the tools of crime from criminal organizations, and deter crime. The department believes that the ongoing public debate about asset forfeiture is healthy, she added, but as outlined in our formal response, we strongly disagree with large swaths of this report and its flawed methodology that failed to address the essential role asset forfeiture plays combating some of the most sophisticated criminal actors and organizations, including terrorist financiers, cyber criminals, fraudsters, human traffickers, and drug cartels. 9:23 a.m.: This story was updated with Justice Department comment. Facebook

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Hoax. Con job. Chinese plot. Trump tweets have bashed climate science for years By Michael Finnegan President Trump signs an executive order Tuesday to rescind Obama administration policies on climate change. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) As President Trump moved to halt federal efforts against global warming on Tuesday, he avoided an important phrase: climate change. It was the same story during his campaign for president; Trump rarely mentioned it. When he pledged in May to withdraw the United States from the Paris treaty, a pact among nearly every nation on Earth to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming, it was one of the few occasions when Trump broached the topic. Trumps muted approach made political sense. To reject science is to risk alienating millions of moderate voters who support action to stop global warming. But before Trump started running for president, he often bluntly attacked climate science. Some highlights from his Twitter feed: Read More Facebook

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Supreme Court rules in favor of merchants who want to advertise credit card fees By David Savage Supreme Court rules on swipe fees (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)) Merchants may soon have the right to tell customers that they will pay a surcharge if they use a credit card rather than pay with cash. The Supreme Court cast doubt Wednesday on laws in California, New York, Florida and seven other states that make it illegal for sellers to impose a surcharge on credit card sales. In a 8-0 decision, the justices said these laws regulate speech and may be challenged as violations of the 1st Amendment. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said these laws do not prevent merchants from offering a discount for those who pay cash. Rather, they simply forbid disclosing that a posted price includes a surcharge of 2% to 3% for using a credit or debit card. Merchants want to pass the fees along only to their customers who choose to use credit cards, he said. They also want to make clear that they are not the bad guys -- that the credit card companies, not the merchants, are responsible for the higher prices. But the ruling Wednesday was only a partial victory for the five New York businesses, including a hair salon and an ice cream parlor in Brooklyn, that sued to challenge the ban on advertising or disclosing surcharges for using credit cards. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York had upheld the law on the grounds it was a price regulation, not a speech restriction. Roberts and the high court disagreed. What the law does is regulate how sellers may communicate their prices, he said. A merchant who wants to charge $10 for cash and $10.30 for credit may not convey that price any way he pleases. He is not free to say '$10, with a 3% credit card surcharge. But the justices did not strike down the state laws, instead sending the case back to the New York court to decide whether this speech regulation could be justified. Sometimes, laws are used to regulate the words of commercial transactions to prevent buyers from being fooled or confused. Until recently, the major credit card companies had imposed contract restrictions that prevented merchants from disclosing surcharges. But those provisions have challenged and knocked down. That in turn led to new legal challenges against the state laws which forbid sellers from disclosing these surcharges. The case decided Wednesday was Expressions Hair Design vs. Schneiderman. Facebook

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Trumps poll numbers are low. But the people who put him in office say its not time to judge him  yet By Noah Bierman Its been five months since the euphoria of a Donald Trump rally at the local arena brought optimism to this former Democratic stronghold. The snow from a long winter has begun melting into the rocky soil, and the digital sign in a torn-up parking lot blinks hopefully: Warm days are coming. President Trump has yet to deliver jobs or the repeal of Obamacare. But here, in an area crucial to his unexpected election victory, many residents are more frustrated with what they see as obstruction and a rush to judgment than they are with Trump. Give him six months to prove himself, said an information technology supervisor. Give him a year, said a service manager. Give him four years, said a retired print shop owner. Give the man a chance, said Crystal Matthews, a 59-year-old hospital employee. Theyre just going to fight him tooth and nail, the whole way. Read More Facebook

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To fight womans defamation claim, Trump cites the Bill Clinton-Paula Jones case  which the president lost By David Savage President Trump is citing Bill Clintons famous sexual harassment battle in his effort to block a California womans lawsuit claiming Trump lied about groping her in the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007. Problem is, Clinton lost that bid for legal immunity when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1997 that the chief executive is not shielded from responding to a civil suit regarding his private behavior. Read More Facebook

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House sends Trump bill to kill landmark broadband privacy regulations By Jim Puzzanghera Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sponsored the repeal bill. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) The House voted Tuesday to kill landmark privacy restrictions for Internet service providers and sent the bill to the White House, which indicated President Trump would sign it and invalidate the rules before they go into effect. The measure, approved largely along party lines, repeals tough new Federal Communications Commission regulations that would require broadband companies to get explicit customer permission before using or sharing most of their personal information. The data include health information, website browsing history, app usage and the geographic information from mobile devices. The rules also tighten data security requirements. Republicans, along with AT&T Inc., Charter Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and other providers of high-speed Internet service, strongly opposed the rules. They argued that the restrictions are tougher than those for websites and social networks that also collect and use the highly valuable consumer data, which companies use to target advertising. Read More Facebook

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U.S. commander says theres a fair chance that coalition airstrike is responsible for civilian casualties in Mosul By W.J. Hennigan Rescuers are still recovering bodies from a suspected U.S. airstrike in the Iraqi city of Mosul. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) The top U.S. general commanding the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said that the U.S.-led coalition was probably responsible for a blast that killed more than 200 people. If we did it, and I would say theres at least a fair chance that we did, it was an unintentional accident of war and we will transparently report it to you, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters Tuesday via teleconference from Baghdad. He made the comments in response to witness reports that an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition leveled a large apartment block and killed scores of civilians, including women and children, in west Mosuls Jadidah neighborhood on March 17. My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties, Townsend said. But investigators are still trying to determine whether other factors -- possibly including repeated airstrikes in the neighborhood or an explosive device accidentally or deliberately planted near the building -- could have led to its collapse. The fact that the whole building collapsed contradicts our involvement, Townsend said. The munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building. So thats one of those things were trying to figure out in the investigative process. Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown calls Trump energy plan a colossal mistake that will galvanize climate change activists By Evan Halper Gov. Jerry Brown. (Gregory Bull / Associated Press) California Gov. Jerry Brown warned that President Trump has just made a colossal mistake in gutting the federal governments effort to combat climate change, which will ignite a response Trump is unprepared to handle. It defies science itself, Brown said in a call to The Times shortly after Trump signed an executive order that aims to bring an abrupt halt to the United States leadership on global warming. Erasing climate change may take place in Donald Trumps mind, but nowhere else. Yes, there is going to be a counter-movement, Brown vowed, predicting Trumps actions will mobilize environmentalists in a way President Obama never could. I have met with many heads of state, ambassadors. This is a growing movement. President Trumps outrageous move will galvanize the contrary force. Things have been a bit tepid [in climate activism]. But this conflict, this sharpening of the contradiction, will energize those who believe climate change is an existential threat. Brown and other big-state governors and mayors are moving swiftly to fill the global leadership vacuum Trump created with Tuesdays directive, which stops short of officially pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord of 2015. I see Washington declining in influence, but the momentum being maintained by California and other states aligned with China and those who are willing to do something, said Brown, who will be traveling to China soon for meetings on climate. There is a growing activism on the part of millions of people who will not stand by and let Donald Trump effectively tear up the Paris agreement and destroy Americas climate leadership and jeopardize the health and well being of so many people. In the face of Trumps retreat on climate, Brown said California will step up its own efforts to push others toward clean energy. We are not fully meeting the challenge of climate change yet, he said. We are doubling down on our commitment. We are reaching out to other states in America and throughout the world and other countries . We have plenty of fuel to build this movement. This is real, Brown said of the threat created by climate change. The nations of the world have recognized it in Paris  I will continue doing my best to work with and rouse the world community, whatever the politicians in Washington do or dont do. Facebook

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Trump orders government to dismantle Obamas climate change policies By Evan Halper  President Trump ordered an abrupt halt to Americas crusade against climate change. (March 29, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR) President Trump on Tuesday ordered the federal government to retreat from the battle against climate change launched by President Obama, issuing a directive aimed at dismantling the core policies that have made the U.S. a global leader in curbing emissions. The plan unveiled by Trump reflects an about-face for the U.S. on energy, and it puts into jeopardy the nations ability to meet the obligations it agreed to under the global warming pact signed in Paris with 194 other nations. It would shelve the landmark Clean Power Plan that mandates electricity companies reduce their emissions. It seeks to dislodge consideration of climate throughout the federal government, where it has been a factor in every relevant decision in recent years. My administration is putting an end to the war on coal, Trump said. I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy to reverse government intrusions and to cancel job killing regulations. Under the order, the government will abandon the social cost of carbon that regulators had painstakingly calculated and begun factoring into their decision on permit applications and rulemaking. Restrictions on methane releases at oil and gas drilling facilities would be eased. Agencies will also stop contemplating climate impacts as they launch into new projects, and restrictions on coal leasing and fracking on federal lands will be lifted. The directive, for which progressive states and environmentalists have been preparing for months, is certain to set off years of litigation and conflicts between Washington and state capitols. Some of the most far-reaching policies Trump is seeking to bring to a halt cannot be canceled unilaterally and require lengthy administrative proceedings. But others he can end with the stroke of his pen. Smoke rises from the Colstrip Steam Electric Station, a coal-burning power plant in Colstrip, Mont., on July 1, 2103. (Matt Brown / Associated Press) Facebook

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A trade war is brewing inside the White House between rival camps By Don Lee Soon after President Trump took office, an executive order was quietly drafted to suspend talks with China on an obscure but potentially far-reaching treaty about bilateral investment. After eight years and two dozen rounds of negotiations, the treaty terms were almost in final form. Pulling out after so much time and effort would send a clear message that the Trump administration meant to take a new and tougher approach to China. But the executive order never even got to the presidents desk. It was quietly shelved, according to sources inside and outside the White House, at the behest of former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, now Trumps top economic advisor. Killing the order was a small victory for a White House faction that supports free trade and the global economy. But it was only an opening skirmish in what promises to be a long and bitter struggle over trade policy that so far is being waged behind the scenes in the Trump administration. Read More Facebook

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Supreme Court reverses death sentence for Texas inmate who could not tell time or name the days of the week By David Savage The Supreme Court set aside a death sentence on Tuesday for a Texas inmate who as a 13-year-old could not tell time or name the days of the week, concluding he should not be executed in light of his mental disability. In a 5-3 decision, the justices reversed the Texas state appeals court that had restored a death sentence given to Bobby James Moore, a 57-year old prisoner who shot and killed a store clerk in a botched robbery in 1980. At issue was whether Moore had a mental disability that would make his execution cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment. The justices banned states from executing prisoners with a mental disability, but they left states some flexibility to set the standards. But three years ago, the justices faulted Florida authorities for relying almost entirely on I.Q. scores. In the Texas case decided Tuesday, the justices said state judges had ignored ample evidence that Moore had severe mental disability as a child. That evidence was not overcome by the fact that he had adapted well in prison, they said. At 13, Moore lacked the basic understanding of the days of the week, the months of the year and the seasons; he could scarcely tell time or comprehend the standards of measure, said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. After failing every subject in the ninth grade, Moore dropped out of high school. Cast out of his home, he survived on the streets, eating from trash cans, even after two bouts of food poisoning. After fatally shooting the clerk in the 1980 robbery, he was sentenced to death. The Texas courts reexamined his sentence after the high court abolished capital punishment in 2002 for defendants with a mental disability. A state judge listened to experts and set aside Moores death sentence, But the states criminal appeals court disagreed. Its judges said Moore had demonstrated adaptive strength by living on the streets and carrying out a robbery, and therefore did not qualify as having a severe mental impairment. Ginsburg said the state judges had relied on an outdated understanding of mental disability, and her opinion in Moore vs. Texas said the state court must reconsidere its decision. Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented. While he agreed the states authorities may have used outdated standards, Moore had I.Q. scores ranging from 69 to 79 that show he did not have the significantly sub-average intellectual functioning that would exempt him from the death penalty. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito agreed. Facebook

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The Freedom Caucus roars back to relevance to challenge Trumps agenda and strategy By Lisa Mascaro When House Speaker Paul D. Ryan pulled the plug on the GOPs Obamacare overhaul, lawmakers spilled out of the Capitol basement, angry, frustrated and stunned. But Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), leader of the conservative and rebellious House Freedom Caucus that led the fight against the bill, was uncharacteristically quiet, downplaying his political victory and mulling over the next move. After coming together to battle President Obama and becoming a driving force in the Republican Party, this 30-member-plus bloc of deficit hawks and right-flank conservatives had appeared for a while to be pushed aside by the movement that swept President Trump into office. But after helping defeat the GOP healthcare overhaul, the Freedom Caucus has roared back to relevance as a political power in the Trump era. It has reasserted itself as not just a renegade assemblage of mostly back-bench lawmakers, but as a core block of votes that Trump will need to push past the healthcare debacle to tax reform, budget battles and other issues. These guys saved the Republicans, said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a group that organized a North Carolina rally on Monday in honor of Meadows. As beaten and battered as they are, weve got a group thats willing to take the hard decisions. If youre going to drain the swamp, these are the guys who are going to do it. Read More Facebook

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White House stopped Yates testimony about Russian meddling in presidential election, lawyer says By Associated Press A lawyer for former Deputy Atty. Gen. Sally Yates said in letters last week that the Trump administration had moved to squelch her testimony in a hearing about Russian meddling in the presidential election. In the letters, attorney David ONeil said he understood the Justice Department was invoking further constraints on testimony she could provide at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday. He said the departments position was that all actions she took as deputy attorney general were client confidences that could not be disclosed without written approval. The Washington Post first reported the letters. A person familiar with the situation confirmed them as authentic to the Associated Press. The White House called the Post story entirely false. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and part of Trumps transition team, last week announced that the committee was canceling the planned public hearing with Yates and two former Obama administration intelligence officials  the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and former CIA Director John Brennan. Read More Facebook

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Did Mnuchin cross an ethical line in plugging The Lego Batman Movie? A senator wants to know By Jim Puzzanghera (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) A Democratic senator wants to know if Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin committed an ethics violation when he publicly plugged The Lego Batman Movie, a film in which he has a financial stake. A former Hollywood financier, Mnuchin was asked at the end of a question-and-answer session on Friday hosted by the Axios news website to name a movie people should see. Well, Im not allowed to promote anything that Im involved in. So I just want to have the legal disclosure, youve asked me the question and I am not promoting any product, Mnuchin said at the event, which aired on C-SPAN2. But you should send all your kids to Lego Batman,  he said. The crowd laughed. But Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wasnt amused. Hes asking the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to look into the comments. Read More Facebook

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Venezuela hits back in showdown with OAS, U.S. over democracy By Tracy Wilkinson The Venezuelan foreign minister had harsh words Monday for the regional organization that is considering sanctioning her country for its failure to hold democratic elections. Delcy Rodriguez, the foreign minister, accused the Organization of American States of wanting not to punish Venezuela but to destroy it. Rodriguez appeared at an OAS panel convened in Washington. D.C., after the United States and 13 other of the hemispheres nations united to demand the leftist Venezuelan government free political prisoners and set a date for long-overdue elections. Failure to do so, the 14 countries warned, could trigger a decision to suspend Venezuela from the 69-year-old regional body. OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro, a former Uruguayan foreign minister, has been especially critical of Venezuelas embattled government. He noted that President Nicolas Maduro canceled both a referendum that could have recalled his government and later regional elections, after the opposition made huge gains in parliamentary voting in 2015. In addition, thousands of people have been arrested for their political beliefs, Almagro said, including opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has been in jail for three years. But Rodriguez, in a speech to the OAS panel, said Venezuelas revolution continues strong. She accused Almagro of being a stooge of the U.S. government, a lying mercenary who is a traitor to everything a Latin American diplomat should represent. He lacks independence when he voluntarily bows to the wishes of the most powerful nation of this organization -- and becomes its spokesman, Rodriguez said. Although the OAS has often been accused of pro-Washington tendencies, 13 nations in addition to the United States have joined to condemn Venezuela, a significant shift in Latin America away from populist regimes. Other leftist-ruled countries, like Bolivia, have said they will support Venezuela. Rodriguez said the accusations against her government were unilateral, unjustified and biased. She called on the OAS to suspend discussion of Venezuela, but another session was scheduled to proceed on Tuesday -- the same day Maduros Socialist Party is planning big anti-imperialism marches at home. All of the countries most critical of Venezuela, including the United States, say suspension of the oil-rich, Caribbean country from the OAS should be a measure of last resort. Despite its oil wealth, Venezuela is in the throes of an economic and humanitarian disaster, with severe shortages of food and medicine and skyrocketing inflation and homicide rates. Facebook

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Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions criticizes sanctuary cities but offers no new policies By Michael A. Memoli  Decrying the safety risk posed when cities dont cooperate with federal immigration authorities, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions repeated previous statements that the Trump administration would seek to deny so-called sanctuary cities some federal grant fun Decrying the safety risk posed when cities dont cooperate with federal immigration authorities, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions repeated previous statements that the Trump administration would seek to deny so-called sanctuary cities some federal grant funds, but offered no new policies. Despite his high-profile appearance at the White House briefing room, Sessions merely reiterated Obama administration policy related to immigration. Justice Department officials said any new measures would be weeks or months in the future. The Obama administration issued instructions last July that required any cities applying for Justice Department grant programs be in compliance with federal law requiring cooperation between local, state and federal agencies with requests from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Sessions noted that any jurisdiction applying for grants from his department would have to certify that compliance. The Justice Department already has been requiring that, which indicates that police and sheriff departments which currently have Justice Department grants already have been asserting that they are meeting the requirements of federal law. Although many cities have policies that they, or critics, characterize using the label sanctuary, those policies do not necessarily mean they are violating the law. Sessions did say that the Justice Department could in the future institute additional requirements, but announced none. Fundamentally, we intend to use all the lawful authority we have to make sure that our state and local officials, who are so important to law enforcement, are in sync with the federal government, he said. He did offer a warning to jurisdictions considering adopting sanctuary status. The California legislature is considering a proposal to institute the designation statewide; Sessions, though, singled out Maryland for a similar proposal. That would be such a mistake, Sessions said, while noting Marylands Republican governor opposes the change proposed by the heavily-Democratic legislature. Sessions cited a high-profile case in San Francisco where a 32-year-old woman was killed by man who had been previously deported multiple times despite a request by immigration authorities to continue his detention to illustrate the administrations case against such policies. Countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended, Sessions claimed. Facebook

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Devin Nunes plot thickens, as his spokesman concedes he met source for surveillance claim at White House By David S. Cloud The day before the House Intelligence Committee chairman revealed that conversations by Trump transition officials may have been inadvertently picked up by U.S. surveillance, he met with the source of the information at the White House, his spokesman said Monday Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), went to the White House because there was a facility there for reviewing classified information, said Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, who has refused to divulge the identity of his source. Chairman Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source, Langer said. The latest news added another twist to a bizarre series of events last week: On Monday, FBI Director James Comey testified before Nunes committee that his investigators were looking at possible coordination during the presidential campaign between Russian officials and people close to Preisdent Trump. Tuesday night, Nunes went to the White House where someone showed him documents related to U.S. intelligence surveillance, according to his statement. On Wednesday, Nunes announced to reporters that he had seen evidence indicating that people close to Trump had been subjects of surveillance during the transition. He then went to the White House, saying that he needed to brief Trump about the revelations. On Thursday, Nunes apologized to committee members for not having shown the evidence to them before briefing the president. Later that day, his spokesman conceded that Nunes did not know for sure that any Trump aides had actually been subject to surveillance, just that their names had appeared in intelligence reports, which could have resulted from other people talking about them. That sequence of events could buttress Democrats claims that the episode last week was a White House ploy to shift attention away from the FBI investigation. Democrats already have been saying Nunes should be disqualified from heading an inquiry into whether Trumps aides had improper contacts with Russia. Nunes statement left several questions unanswered. One is why he would have had to go to the White House unless his source worked there, because members of Congress have access to a secure facility at the U.S. Capitol. Asked to explain Nunes actions, Langer said in an email, The information comprised executive branch documents that have not been provided to Congress. Because of classification rules, the source could not simply put the documents in a backpack and walk them over to the House Intelligence Committee space.  He added: The White House grounds was the best location to safeguard the proper chain of custody and classification of these documents, so the Chairman could view them in a legal way. Last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had dismissed speculation that the White House had supplied Nunes with the information, saying that the suggestion did not pass the smell test. He added, however, that he did not for sure what Nunes had told Trump or where his information came from. After Nunes apologized to members of his committee Thursday and promised to thoroughly investigate the surveillance, several lawmakers said Nunes had promised to provide them the surveillance information he had received. That has not occurred yet. In his first statement last week, Nunes said he was concerned that some Trump transition officials identities might have been improperly revealed in intelligence reports, despite rules requiring them to be kept confidential in most cases. The Chairman is extremely concerned by the possible improper unmasking of names of U.S. citizens, and he began looking into this issue even before President Trump tweeted his assertion that Trump Tower had been wiretapped, Langer said. Whether any officials names actually were unmasked is unclear. The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) has questioned Nunes assertions about improper unmasking. But Schiff noted that he has not seen the documents Nunes claims to have seen. Schiff had no comment on the news that Nunes had seen the documents at the White House. UPDATES 10:20 a.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting. This article was originally published as an Associated Press report at 9:06 a.m. Facebook

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Venezuela in showdown with OAS, U.S. over political prisoners By Tracy Wilkinson The besieged leftist government of Venezuela is under mounting pressure after the United States and 13 of the hemispheres other leading nations demanded the release of political prisoners and other pro-democracy concessions. The Organization of American States, the regions main collective body, has threatened to suspend Venezuela because of what it called the autocratic repression imposed by President Nicolas Maduro. Maduros foreign minister, Delcy Rodriguez, will appear Monday before an OAS panel in Washington to plead her governments case. This comes after members of the Venezuelan delegation stormed out of OAS meetings last week, according to diplomats. OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro, in a report on Venezuela, noted that Maduro canceled both a referendum that could have recalled his government and later regional elections, after the opposition made huge gains in parliamentary voting in 2015. A Maduro-controlled Supreme Court then stripped the parliament of much of its power. In addition, thousands of people have been arrested for their political beliefs, Almagro said, including opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has been in jail for three years. The OAS is demanding Venezuela hold elections or risk suspension from the group, a drastic measure. The last time a country was suspended was when the military and right-wing politicians staged a coup against the elected president in Honduras in 2009. Under OAS regulations, a country can be suspended when the democratic order is altered. Venezuela is in the throes of a devastating economic and humanitarian crisis. The oil-rich country has among the highest homicide and inflation rates in the world and suffers from severe shortages of food and medicine. The Maduro government angrily condemned the OAS actions as imperialist interference and vowed to resist. Adan Chavez, brother of the late Hugo Chavez, the socialist strongman who set Venezuela on its revolutionary path, claimed the OAS was plotting a coup against Maduro. Maduro views much of his opposition as right-wing oligarchs who have long repressed the poor. Although the OAS has often been accused of pro-Washington tendencies, it is significant that 13 nations in addition to the United States are united in condemning Venezuela. This marks a shift away from populist regimes in much of Latin America. The Trump administration, which has shown little interest in Latin America beyond Mexico, did issue instructions to diplomats to find ways through the OAS to put pressure on Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter. Those instructions came despite parallel administration plans to slash funds to the OAS and other multilateral institutions like the United Nations. Trump recently spoke by telephone to the presidents of Chile and Brazil and in both cases discussed Venezuela, the White House said. And he met at the White House with Lilian Tintori, the wife of Lopez, the jailed opposition leader, as she lobbied for her husbands freedom. The Treasury Department earlier this year slapped sanctions on Venezuelas vice president, Tareck El Aissami, alleging he was a major drug trafficker, charges he denied. Were not pushing for Venezuelas expulsion from the OAS at this time, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said late last week. However, we do think the OAS is the appropriate venue to deal with the ongoing situation in Venezuela, he said. Elections are essential to securing accountability, and the Venezuelan people deserve a voice in creating solutions to the myriad economic, political, and social and humanitarian challenges that they face. Facebook

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Trump takes to Twitter to blame GOP hard-liners over healthcare failure By Laura King (Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images) President Trump on Sunday blamed fellow Republicans and two influential conservative advocacy groups for last weeks failure of the GOP healthcare plan. The president had said on Friday that it was the fault of Democrats that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan pulled the measure from consideration rather than putting it forth for a floor showdown that the GOP leadership would have lost. In a Sunday morning tweet, the president appeared to shift culpability to the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of GOP lawmakers who were key to depriving Trump and his camp of the votes needed for passage. Democrats are smiling over the bills failure, Trump declared on Twitter. The Freedom Caucus, he said, had saved President Obamas Affordable Care Act with the help of Heritage Action and the Club for Growth, two organizations that had opposed the GOP measure. The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), declined to engage in any sparring with the White House, instead predicting that a Trump-led Republican effort to overhaul Obamas signature healthcare legislation eventually would move ahead. At the end of the day, the most valuable player will be President Trump, he said on ABCs This Week. Meadows also insisted there had been no conversation about any attempt to force out Ryan, who is being blamed for failing to marshal sufficient support for the measure he had spearheaded. Trump so far has refrained from public criticism of the speaker, but  again on Twitter  he specifically urged followers to watch a Fox News segment on Saturday night, featuring commentator Jeanine Pirro excoriating Ryan and calling for him to be ousted. That gave rise to speculation that Trump would seek to force the speaker to take the fall for the debacle. Read More Facebook

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After the GOP healthcare bill fizzles, Trump blames the Democrats and says he learned a lot about loyalty By Brian Bennett  President Trump addresses the cancellation of a vote Friday on the GOPs plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. After failing to land a deal on the healthcare bill, President Trump on Friday blamed Democrats, even though the GOP controls Congress and the White House, and made few overtures across the aisle when pushing the bill. When you get no votes from the other side -- meaning Democrats -- it is really a difficult situation, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after a revolt by Republican lawmakers forced House leaders to stop a vote in their bid to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. Trump insisted that the current healthcare law, commonly known as Obamacare, will collapse under its own weight, and then Democrats will want to make a deal with the White House. I truly believe the Democrats will come to us, Trump said. In the meantime, Trump is moving his attention to pushing through a tax reform bill, he said. We will probably be going really hard for the big tax cuts and tax reform -- thats next, he said. Trump, who has spent decades negotiating real estate deals and seeing many of them fall through, seemed sanguine discussing the effort he put into getting a healthcare reform bill passed. This was an interesting period of time, Trump said. We learned a lot about loyalty and we learned a lot about the vote-getting process. Trump stopped short of blaming House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and avoided singling out the group of conservative Republican lawmakers, who dug in their heels in opposition. Lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus that largely stood against the bill are very good people and friends of mind, he said. I was disappointed because we could have had it, he said. Im a little surprised, he said. When asked by a reporter if he would reach out now to Democrats for ideas on how to get a deal, Trump said, No, I think we need to let Obamacare go its way for a little while. Then well see how things go. Facebook

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Tillerson will meet with NATO counterparts, after all By Tracy Wilkinson Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with NATO allies next week in Brussels, a move that could quell controversy over his earlier decision to skip a long-planned summit of the transatlantic alliance. The State Department said Friday that Tillerson added a stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels to a previously scheduled trip to the Turkish capital of Ankara. Tillerson will be in Ankara on Thursday to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other senior Turkish officials to discuss the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and to reaffirm Turkeys important role in ensuring regional stability, the State Department said. The next day, he will go to NATO, the State Department said. NATO officials were attempting to put together a session with the other 27 allied nations. Earlier this week, news that Tillerson would miss the NATO ministerial meeting set for April 5-6, roiled the alliance. Administration officials said Tillerson would have to be in Washington to attend President Trumps first face-to-face meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 6-7. At the same time, Tillersons aides announced he would be traveling to Moscow the following week. Criticism was swift from European allies but also from several former American diplomats and key U.S. lawmakers, who said the decision raised questions about the Trump administrations commitment to NATO. During his campaign, Trump called the alliance obsolete, although more recently he has voiced support for it while also demanding members spend more money on defense. In response, Tillersons aides said they were exchanging possible alternative dates with NATO to attempt to arrange a meeting in which all parties could participate. It was not yet clear if next Fridays meeting will take the place of the April 5-6 session, which as of late Friday remained on NATOs formal calendar. Diplomats considered the ministerial meeting as especially important because it will lay the groundwork for a May 25 NATO summit of heads of state and government, which Trump has said he will attend. Facebook

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Charter promises Trump something new ($25-billion investment) and something old (20,000 jobs) By Jim Puzzanghera Charter Communications Chief Executive Thomas Rutledge. (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images) The chief executive of Charter Communications committed in a meeting with President Trump on Friday to invest $25 billion on broadband infrastructure while joining a trend of business leaders touting previously announced job creation at the White House. In the case of Charter  Southern Californias dominant cable-TV and Internet service provider  Chief Executive Thomas Rutledge said he expected to hire 20,000 new U.S. employees over the next four years. Charter had made the hiring promise in 2015 when it was purchasing Time Warner Cable. The new development was the time period in which it will occur. Nevertheless, Trump indicated the job creation was triggered by his election. Read More Facebook

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Threats made against Hawaii judge who ruled against travel ban By Jaweed Kaleem (George Lee / The Star-Advertiser via AP) The Hawaii federal judge who brought President Trumps revised travel ban to a national halt last week has become the target of threats. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson has received the threats since his March 15 ruling, according to FBI spokeswoman Michele Ernst. Ernst said the FBI is ready to assist but declined to provide more information. The U.S. Marshals Service also said it would not give details. The U.S. Marshals Service is responsible for the protection of federal judicial officials, including judges and prosecutors, and we take that responsibility very seriously, the agency said in a statement. While we do not discuss our specific security measures, we continuously review the security measures in place for all federal judges and take appropriate steps to provide additional protection when it is warranted. Watson, a judge in the U.S. District Court of Hawaii in Honolulu, issued a scathing 43-page opinion against the travel ban the day before it was to go into effect. He wrote that, despite the bans stated secular purpose, Trumps own words marked the executive order as a fulfillment of the presidents campaign promise to temporarily bar Muslims from coming to the U.S. The illogic of the governments contention is palpable, Watson said. In response, Trump said Watsons ruling was terrible and makes us look weak. Trump has vowed to take the travel ban case to the U.S. Supreme Court. An appeal of a separate Maryland federal judges ruling against the travel ban is currently pending in the U.S. 4th District Court of Appeals. Facebook

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House GOP gives up on healthcare bill as Trump suffers first legislative defeat By Lisa Mascaro Unable to muster enough support from his own party, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan again postponed a vote Friday on the GOPs plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. The move came at the request of President Trump, who just Thursday night issued an ultimatum that lawmakers should hold the vote regardless of the outcome. It was the second time House GOP leaders had to delay a final reckon
Its the story of a wandering knight devoted to defending his dream woman and punishing those who break the code of chivalry.

Don Quixote, the nonsensical nobleman who sets out on a quest with his squire Sancho Panza, gallops across Old World Spain in Festival Ballet Theatres rendition of the classical ballet based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes.

The full-length production, running March 25 and March 26 at Irvine Barclay Theatre, stars American Ballet Theatres principal dancers, Hee Seo and Marcelo Gomes, in the lead roles of passionate young lovers Kitri and Basilio.

Gomes, a Brazilian ballet dancer awarded the prestigious dance award Prix Benois de la Danse in Moscow for his role as Othello, has performed throughout the world. He has danced with Festival Ballet, Orange Countys premiere professional ballet company, four times; Don Quixote will be his fifth.

Seo, a South Korean ballerina who, five years ago at age 26, became one of the youngest dancers in ABT history to be promoted to principal, will mark her second time performing with Festival Ballet Theatre.

Im thrilled, Seo said about her upcoming performance in Don Quixote. I love classical ballet, and this has energy and its fun to connect with the role.

Seo, who will mark her first time partnering with Gomes, said she joined the performance for her love of dance but also because of Festival Ballet Theatres artistic director, Salwa Rizkalla, who is a special mentor in the young womans life.

Rizkalla established Southland Ballet Academy in 1983 and five years later founded the Fountain Valley-based Festival Ballet Theatre  with plans to enrich Orange Countys artistic community and appreciation for dance.

Rizkalla herself was a professional dancer who worked under the direction of world-renowned choreographers Leonid Lavrovsky and Serge Lifar. She studied with ballet masters of the Bolshoi and the Kirov ballets and later taught at Goldenwest College in Huntington Beach and the Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts.

Salwa is feisty and she tells you the truth, said Festival Ballet Theatre company dancer Tara Ghassemieh, who will perform the role of Mercedes in Don Quixote.

At age 16, Ghassemieh was offered a full scholarship to join the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in New York. She went on to roles in the Broadway show Movin Out,"the film Step Up and television shows Gossip Girl and CSI.

At 21, she broke her back. She would spend the next couple of years getting healthy again.

Rizkalla guided her.

I needed the queen to retrain my body, and it was her that made me a ballerina, Ghassemieh said. A ballerina has a presence about her. She floats. Nothing is overstated or understated. Its very much a being.

Mercedes, Ghassemieh said, is a sultry partner to a legendary bullfighter whose whirling cape and fiery chemistry create a grand presence.

Its a role that takes her back to a time when she had the utmost confidence in herself. She felt fearless and energetic. Don Quixote, a ballet she has never danced before, has helped her regain strength, she said.

For Rizkallas part, she wants not only to present powerful seasons of classical and contemporary dance, she also hopes to provide a nurturing environment for dancers and choreographers  a training ground that also draws top-tier talent.

Amid the fragile world of ballet, the company has survived on minimal donations for years, said Rizkalla, who nonetheless plans to enlarge the company and sustain its programs.

As part of the companys outreach, Festival Ballet Theatre members will perform excerpts from Don Quixote at noon Saturday at the Newport Beach Public Library. The program is being aided by a grant through the Newport Beach Cultural Arts and support from the city Arts Commission.

My hope is that people know Orange County has a great ballet company with amazing old and young artists who are nourished right here, Rizkalla said. Dancers feel at home with us and they love presenting a top level performance for audiences. Its a jewel in Orange County.

*

If You Go

What: Festival Ballet Theatres Don Quixote

When: 7 p.m. March 25 and 2 p.m. March 26

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive

Cost: $42 to $55

Information: (949) 854-4646, Ext. 1; festivalballet.org.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi
Local police departments plan to deploy additional officers Friday through early Saturday in an effort to quell intoxicated driving over St. Patricks Day weekend.

Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach police officers will be on the lookout for alcohol- or drug-impaired drivers in areas where DUI crashes and arrests typically occur in their cities, according to news releases from the departments.

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St. Patricks Day has become one of the nations favorite holidays to celebrate and party, a Newport Beach Police Department release states. Unfortunately, too many people are taking to the roads after drinking, making the holiday one of our most dangerous.

According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 252 people were killed in the United States in drunk driving-related crashes during the St. Patricks Day holiday periods from 2011 to 2015.

Funding for additional patrols is provided by grants from the California Office of Traffic Safety.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
Customers will be lining up first thing at 6:30 in the morning, continuing to queue in the midafternoon and standing by at night to get their moment at Malarkys Irish Pub on Friday  St. Patricks Day.

Theyll eat free corned beef and hash sandwiches amid a sea of revelers adorned in green. Bill Hamilton, the founder of the Newport Beach bar and restaurant who is now in his 90s, will revisit his old stomping grounds. Bagpipers will play Irish tunes.

Three generations of patrons, from grandparents to grandchildren, will walk in together and order pints of Guinness.

As in past years, Malarkys will be selling St. Patricks Day T-shirts and pins. Many regulars have collected them over the years and are known to walk in wearing old ones.

But this time, the holiday is more special for the Balboa Peninsula institution  Malarkys is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

For the past seven years, Malarkys has been co-owned by Mario Marovic and Brent Ranek. They acquired the business in March 2010, after St. Patricks Day. Hamilton wanted to enjoy one last hoorah before handing over the keys, Ranek said.

Ranek, a retired Newport Beach lifeguard who has worked at Malarkys since the late 1980s, served Marovic his first legal drink at age 21.

Thats how we met, Marovic said.

Marovic is a fixture in the Orange County bar and restaurant world. In Newport, he also owns the Stag Bar + Kitchen and Dory Deli, as well as establishments in Costa Mesa, Orange and Fullerton.

Marovic and Ranek compare Malarkys to the bar in the old TV series Cheers.

Theres no strangers here, Marovic said. Only friends you havent met yet.

The place maintains the fun culture of the Balboa Peninsula, they say. Things dont change much at Malarkys.

Most of the people around here, theyre not up for change, Ranek said.

The wall of shame and, across the room, the wall of fame are still there. Both recognize loyal customers who are known to assemble in their regular seats on their regular days.

The bar setup has never been altered. Malarkys bar is rectangular and, rather than set against a wall, is in the middle of the room, enabling patrons to take laps around it and easily see the action from all angles.

But as some regulars noted in interviews this week, Ranek and Marovics ownership did bring about some welcome changes: renovated bathrooms, more televisions, better sound equipment, a more sophisticated food menu. Malarkys hosts more families now than it traditionally has, particularly on Christmas Day, when the bar is one of the few places open.

On a recent afternoon, Leon Ettensperger, who lives near Malarkys, was enjoying a drink. He wore a Malarkys T-shirt from 2013.

He said longtime customers like himself love what the place has become.

Its like night and day, he said, complimenting the food and Marovic, who he said has been generous, throwing parties for regulars, hosting their events and giving out free grub.

Mario goes out of his way, Ettensperger said.

In coming weeks, Marovic said, hell take his recognition of Malarkys history and fans a few steps further.

Im going to start a Facebook page dedicated to people who met here and got married, he said.

Offline, photos of the couples will get coveted spots in the pub.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
The man who was stabbed and died at a Costa Mesa condominium Saturday was identified by Orange County coroners officials Thursday as 32-year-old Derek Valentine.

Costa Mesa police found Valentines body in his home at 610 Shasta Lane after receiving several emergency calls at about 5:20 a.m. reporting a stabbing. A knife that authorities believe was used in the crime was found in the home, and a 21-year-old woman was arrested.

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The woman, Amber Joy Angelovic of Huntington Beach, was charged Tuesday with murder in connection with Valentines death, according to court records.

Valentine attended the University of Florida and earned a bachelors degree in marketing in 2010, university officials said.

His LinkedIn page indicates he worked as a salesman at an AT&T store in Tustin and as a service manager and sales manager for the Bridgestone tire company in Texas and Florida. Photos posted on his Facebook page indicate he traveled to Maui and Australia in 2016.

On Jan. 30, Valentine posted a photo on his Facebook page of a beach sunset with the caption We travel not to escape life, but so that life doesnt escape us.

Valentines landlord, who was leaving the Costa Mesa condominium Thursday afternoon, confirmed to the Daily Pilot that Valentine was his tenant. He declined to comment further or to give his name.

Workers wearing face masks who answered the door to the home Thursday appeared to be cleaning. A Sacred Heart of Jesus candle remained burning near the front porch.

The relationship between Valentine and Angelovic remains unclear.

Angelovic graduated from Florida State University in 2016 and has worked as a nanny, an activities director and a surf instructor and as a saleswoman for a yacht company in Florida.

She is being held in Orange County Jail with bail set at $1 million and is scheduled to be arraigned March 24.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
Glendale residents who have attended a City Council meeting in the past decade may already know candidate Mike Mohill, who has often made his presence known speaking up during the public-comment portion of the meetings.

Others may know Mohill from his three previous attempts to win a council seat or, simply, as a neighbor who has lived in the east Glenoaks Canyon area for decades. Mohill is a Vietnam War-era veteran who served with the U.S. Army after graduating from Cal State Los Angeles.

Mohills current run for one of three open council seats is the the latest gesture of a civic-minded local resident who became involved in local politics after retiring from a career selling industrial chemicals to manufacturing plants all over Southern California.

Ive always had an interest in business and government and, since I was retired and I had the time  one issue after another brought me down to City Hall, and I started talking about the issues, Mohill said.

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The state of Glendales finances has and always will be Mohills No.1 concern, he said, particularly pension reform.

Mohill disputes with city government over what he says are outrageous salary and pension obligations to public employees as determined by participation in the California Public Employees Retirement System, known as CalPERS.

[The city of Glendale keeps] raising fees and taxes and creating new fees to balance the budget, Mohill said. The reason why they keep doing that is because we have more expenses than we have revenue, and its because of the obligation to CalPERS that we have this problem today. Our council people never want to address that and neither do the candidates who run.

As an immediate action, Mohill said he would place a temporary freeze on all salary increases and pay raises tied to the issuing of new job titles for city employees.

Mohill said hed also like to counteract the traffic congestion in downtown Glendale, which he said is a result of overdevelopment and inadequate parking in the area. As a solution, Mohill proposes rezoning parts of the city, for less dense and less developed use.

Other issues that are part of Mohills campaign include lowering utility rates, creating more parks and open spaces as well as investment in the citys infrastructure.

People will decide what they want to do on April 4 and, if they want the status quo, there are nine other candidates running for council, Mohill said. And if they want to see their electric and water rates increase itll happen again. But nobody else wants to balance the books.

jeff.landa@latimes.com

Twitter: @JeffLanda
Four La Canada Unified School District employees received commendations at Tuesday nights school board meeting for their role in thwarting a Feb. 15 attempted carjacking that took place in front of La Canada High School.

Carl Payne, Melvin Jones, Alvin Jones and Eliseo Williams  maintenance and operations employees at the school  were on campus at around 6:57 p.m. that evening when three minors from Altadena approached a 13-year-old, who was sitting alone in a car, and demanded he hand the vehicle over to them.

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The men intervened and called the Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Station. The three suspects fled the scene and ran into nearby Hahamongna Watershed Park, where they were eventually caught, placed into custody and sent to juvenile hall, according to a sheriffs detective.

On Tuesday, school board members joined sheriffs Deputy Eric Matejka in thanking the men. With help from the citys chamber of commerce, each man was awarded a $100 gift certificate. They also received certificates of recognition and a standing ovation.

Im not a hero, custodian Alvin Jones said of his actions that night. Its something I think anybody would do to help someone.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Local voters care more about improving the quality of education in La Canada schools than preventing tax increases, which bodes well for La Canada Unified School District officials as they consider placing a $149-million school bond on the November ballot.

Charles Heath, partner at San Francisco-based TBWB Strategies, and Tim McLarney, owner of Encinitas survey research firm True North Research, delivered to the school board the main findings of a two-week email and telephone survey, which polled 454 district voters on a number of issues and priorities pertaining to a general obligation school bond. Such a bond would fund improvements to facilities at all district campuses.

The initial results look promising, the pair reported, with about 65% of respondents saying they would either probably or definitely support a school bond, as opposed to 27% who said they would not. A general obligation bond needs 55% of voter approval in order to pass.

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Were starting this measure in a really positive position, Heath told the board. If we can adequately tell our story about the needs that youve identified, and the smart plan youve developed to address those needs, we have a very good chance of success.

Surveyors asked voters to rank issues most important to them, and found 84% of respondents said maintaining local property values was either very or extremely important. Educational quality ranked second, with 80% answering in the affirmative. By comparison, only 53% of those surveyed gave the same importance to preventing local tax increases.

Adam Bauer, chief executive and president of Irvine-based financial adviser Fieldman, Rolapp and Associates, found that keeping homeowners at around their existing tax level  roughly $60 per every assessed $100,000  but extending it out over decades would go over better with residents than a tax increase.

Its a new tax, but youre not increasing what taxpayers would be paying, Bauer said.

McLarney reported that when this explanation was made clear to survey participants, overall support for a bond jumped up to 70%. Respondents also indicated maintenance and repair of current facilities, student safety and technological upgrades in science labs and classrooms as projects and programs theyd be most likely to support.

At the end of the day, voters dont care so much about buildings and facilities as they do what the building and facility improvements will enable in the classroom, in terms of improving the quality of education, Heath told board members. So as you move forward with a bond measure, if thats what you choose to do, its really important to keep that in mind.

School board members will have to decide by Aug. 11 whether to pass a resolution calling for a bond. After that, a community-driven advocacy campaign would begin in advance of a Nov. 7 vote.

Classroom cuts

La Canada Unified officials announced Tuesday small preliminary cuts will be made to La Canada High Schools arts, English and world-language programs due to a lack of student enrollment. Decisions about reductions in service must be made by a March 15 state deadline for the upcoming school year, according to Assistant Supt. of Human Resources Jeff Davis.

LCUSD Supt. Wendy Sinnette explained that cutting one high school ceramics class, two French/Spanish classes and one high school English class came as the result a lack of student interest and could be reversed were enrollment trends to shift.

We always hope were able to rescind these when we run the student numbers, she said. But this is a precaution to make sure weve maximized efficiencies in our staffing.

Also on Tuesday, the school board:

Announced the creation of the Instructional Innovation Fund (IIF) program, newly established by the La Canada Flintridge Educational Foundation to allow teachers a chance to fund projects, trips or equipment that might enhance the teaching and learning experience.

Reviewed an administrative regulation detailing how LCUSDs board policy regarding the solicitation and selling of independent courses on school campuses would be executed and adhered to. Members expressed an interest in finding a way teachers might use a blind enrollment method to minimize potential conflicts of interest.

Agreed to further refine the districts policy and administrative regulation regarding how and when assessments may or may not be sent home with students for parental review. Discussion focused on whether tests might be emailed, if parent-teacher meetings should be encouraged and teachers uneasiness about having certain exams disseminated among students.

Discussed adopted Houghton Mifflin Harcourts Math in Focus textbooks for grades 7 and 8, and the districts new method of including parent input in the process. Some audience members said they felt more could be done to include parents earlier on and make more meaningful parent representative selections.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
A spokesman for Britains prime minister said the White House has promised that it wont repeat a claim that U.K. spies snooped on President Trump.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays spokesman, James Slack, said the British government has made it clear to the U.S. that the ridiculous claims should be ignored. He said on Friday that Washington has assured Britain they will not be repeated.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday cited Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, who suggested that the British electronic surveillance agency GCHQ had helped former President Obama spy on Trump before last years presidential election.

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GCHQ took the unusual step of releasing a statement calling the claims nonsense.

It said, they are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.
A sharp increase last year in migrant deaths underscored the ever-more perilous journeys undertaken by those fleeing poverty and violence around the world.

The International Organization for Migration documented 7,763 deaths in 2016, a 27% jump over the previous year, according to a report it released Friday.

Most of the increase occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, despite the growing number of search and rescue operations deployed by governments and aid groups to help migrants when their rickety boats run into trouble on the dangerous crossing to Europe.

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There were also significant rises in the number of migrant deaths in Africa and the Americas. Deaths dropped precipitously in Southeast Asia as the number of people using sea routes from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Thailand and Malaysia fell.

I think we are still quite shocked by the figures, said Frank Laczko, who directs the IOMs Global Migration Data Analysis Center, which produced the report.

There has been so much attention in the media and in policy circles given to the rising number of deaths, he said. But despite all of that, we still see the number of deaths, particularly in the Mediterranean, rising quite significantly last year.

With heightened attention has come better monitoring and reporting, which could account for some of the increase, Laczko said.

But the analysis of the evidence also suggests that smugglers are becoming increasingly cavalier about the safety of their passengers, packing migrants into less seaworthy vessels  even during the winter months, when the Mediterranean is at its most dangerous.

The researchers drew on a variety of sources to compile the report, including local coast guards, medical examiners, humanitarian groups, interviews with survivors and media accounts.

Even so, the report said, many more deaths likely went unreported.

The Mediterranean Sea

At least 5,098 people died trying to cross from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, a 35% increase over the previous year and a 55% increase over 2014. Most drowned, but 148 died because of conditions on the boats, including a lack of food and water.

Ten large shipwrecks in the Central Mediterranean accounted for more than half the deaths.

Since at least 2014, this has been the deadliest route for migrants trying to reach Europe, in part because of the longer distances traveled between North Africa and Italy than between Turkey and Greece. But the report said smugglers who ply this route are using more dangerous tactics, such as launching multiple boats at the same time, which makes rescue operations more difficult.

Most of the migrants who are headed to Italy depart from Libya, which has been engulfed in anarchy since the fall of its longtime strongman, Moammar Kadafi. Conditions there have grown so dire, that migrants may be willing to take more risks to get out of the country, Laczko said.

A total of 434 deaths were recorded on the eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey to Greece. Arrivals in Greece fell rapidly after the European Union began implementing a deal reached with Turkey last March to send back migrants who did not apply for asylum there.

More than 360,000 other migrants survived sea crossings to Europe in 2016, according to United Nations figures.

Africa

At least 1,600 migrant deaths were recorded in and around Africa last year, a more than 80% increase over 2015.

North Africa accounted for the largest share: 1,279 deaths. Collecting information about this region is especially difficult, because of the many different countries of origin and routes used.

However, the report noted that these routes frequently pass through the Sahara Desert, where the risks include dehydration, starvation and exposure to the elements. Migrants also described many instances of abuse by smugglers, including kidnappings, torture and killings.

The Americas

At least 707 migrant deaths were recorded in the Americas, a 43% increase over the previous year.

They include 400 people who died along the U.S.-Mexico border, many of them on harsh treks through Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Arizona Desert.

An additional 175 deaths were recorded in Central America, 27 in South America and 105 in the Caribbean Sea.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

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Russian leech farm supplies doctors who trust an ancient therapy

Yelena Titova shakes a jar holding a few dozen leeches writhing in slightly murky water. When one of them sinks to the bottom, motionless, she plunges her hand in and retrieves the late bloodsucker.

She doesn't mind when the survivors try to latch on to her  in fact, she quite likes it.

Titova's title is quality-control chief at the International Medical Leech Center, where she has worked for 28 years. But really, she says, she's a nurturer.

"All our leech growers are women, because you can tend to leeches with love and care only if you have a motherly instinct," she says. "Men are no good for this job."

Titova's breeding facility in this quiet, drab town produces as many as 3 million leeches a year for sale to medical clinics in Russia and nearby countries. Located in an industrial area about 20 miles southeast of Moscow, it's one of the oldest and largest leech-farming operations in the world.

The creatures may spark revulsion in much of the West, but in Russia, the ancient practice of leech therapy remains a common form of medical care, with tens of thousands of patients undergoing treatment with hirudo medicinalis and their anticoagulant saliva for anything from infertility to high blood pressure.

Because of the higher costs for more modern forms of medication, and a healthy fear of swallowing the bogus pills that have proliferated here, many Russians and their doctors continue to swear by the dark brown worms.

Titova, 52, explains that other companies in Russia and Europe collect wild leeches and grow them in open-air reservoirs. That's not her style.

"Our production is all indoors and all year round," she says during a tour of the farm. "We have everything here: a mating section, a breeding section, a cocoon section where mother leeches produce offspring."

She mentions that the facility once provided leeches for the dictator Josef Stalin, who used them to treat headaches and depression.

"You can only imagine the fear and horror the doctors administering leeches to this madman felt, as any painful sensation, any inconvenience, could cost them their lives," she says. "Luckily, Stalin felt good after each such treatment, and our farm got a future."

The short and sturdily built Titova sniffs at modern breeding techniques that involve big aquariums and computerized sensors, saying they can't detect sick or dying leeches.

As she passes through a section of the plant, she smells the air, then shakes her head. She calls out to a nearby leech tender, revealing her tendency to treat leeches as human: "Funny smell. Did someone die here?"

Yuri Kuranov, 55, a successful Moscow businessman, has used leeches periodically for the last seven years to treat a urinary condition.

He reclines comfortably on a couch in a private medical clinic in southwest Moscow. His eyes closed, a contented smile on his lips, he appears oblivious to the slimy creatures crawling below his exposed belly button.

"It is like a mosquito bite," Kuranov says as eight leeches do their work. "I understand it is mostly a psychological phenomenon, but almost immediately I start feeling as if a new life force is flowing up and down my veins and arteries."

In the United States, the use of leeches is rare, although they are an FDA-approved medical device (as are maggots). They're considered invaluable among some plastic and orthopedic surgeons, and are occasionally used to maintain circulation after the reattachment of fingers, hands and scalps.

"When there's a crisis and you can't structurally repair blood vessels, we call our friends the leeches," said Dr. L. Scott Levin, chairman of orthopedic surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The farm at Udelnaya typically sell the leeches for $1.50 apiece, and anywhere from one to 10 may be prescribed to feast on a patient, depending on the condition. Most of the leeches sold for medical use are 1 to 2 inches long. The breeder leeches are (somewhat alarmingly) larger.

The leeches that Kuranov's doctor says are helping increase his urine flow come from the rows of hundreds of 3-to-5-liter jars at Titova's farm.

After being hatched in specially built boxes filled with peat to mimic the wet turf the mother leeches burrow into in nature, the babies are placed in the jars, about 1,000 to a container. The jars fill five production shops on the farm.

I have this feeling as if these were my children."  Leech grower Lyubov Guseva

The leeches are separated by size as they grow. After a year, they'll be ready for sale.

Titova and about 30 tenders examine each of the jars several times a day. The glass nurseries, many of which once held pickled vegetables or tomato sauce, contain filtered water that's changed at least twice a week, she says.

One grower, Lyubov Guseva, who has worked at the farm more than 20 years, says you need to adore leeches to grow them properly. (Her first name means "love" in Russian.)

"I have this feeling as if these were my children as I feed them, caress them and give them my love," Guseva says tenderly as she puts one jar down and raises another to the light, stirring it to watch its inhabitants move.

"I can't tell if they know that I love them, but every time I hold them in my hands I feel this sensation of goodness."

The main component of the work at the farm is feeding. The leeches dine once every three to four weeks, sucking up five times their weight. Their food is cattle blood, supplied by slaughterhouses near Moscow. The plant uses about 300 gallons a week, the blood of more than 100 slaughtered cows. The blood is always fresh, sometimes still warm, supplied to the farm on the day of slaughter, Titova says.

The farm, which has been at the same location since 1937, started as a storage facility for specimens collected in the wild. It still collects some wild leeches, to mate with the mother specimens on the farm to prevent inbreeding, Titova says. (Inbred leeches, she's noticed, become less active and less efficient.)

The farm has supplied the Kremlin with choice specimens regularly since the Stalin days, though Titova doesn't know if President Vladimir Putin uses them.

The post-communist years after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union proved difficult for the farm, since many drugstores stopped ordering leeches because they weren't as profitable as pills. Many private clinics continue to practice leech therapy, but large, mainstream medical clinics rarely use the creatures anymore.

"When I first started, we used to have a bottle full of leeches on a round-the-clock duty desk, but not anymore," says Yelena Syrkina, a docent at the cardiological clinic at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. These days, "we usually prescribe anticoagulant drugs instead. Although from time to time when I see a patient, I still think, 'He could do with a leech.'"

Moscow pediatrician Irinia Pankova, however, believes that leeches remain an important treatment in the fields of urology and gynecology, as well as in blood pressure and stroke cases.

She says that many young doctors are reluctant to prescribe hirudo therapy but that it is still very popular with Russians who trust all-natural cures.

At the farm, the tour passes through a yard that hosts the only known monument to a leech: a depiction of a super-sized one slithering up a pole.

The tour ends in the cosmetics shop, where a 70-year-old guard with a holster dozes in a corner. A young female customer checks out various skin creams made with leech tissue, whose healing powers purportedly include improving skin tone and removing dark circles from under the eyes.

"Any manufactured drug has a long list of sometimes quite severe and even fatal side effects," Titova says. "But the leech has none. You just need to know how to apply it right."

Monte Morin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Contact the reporter

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A military vessel and a helicopter gunship attacked a boat packed with Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen overnight Friday, killing at least 42 people, according to a U.N. agency, Yemeni officials and a survivor who witnessed the attack.

Yemens Shiite rebels accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out the attack. The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni city of Hodeida, and it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons into the port in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

A Yemeni trafficker who survived the attack said the boat was filled with Somali refugees, including women and children, who were trying to reach Sudan from war-torn Yemen.

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Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed told the Associated Press that the boat had left from Ras Arra, along the southern coastline in Yemens Hodeida province, and was 30 miles off the coast, near the Bab al-Mandab strait, when the military vessel and then the helicopter gunship opened fire.

He described a scene of panic in which the refugees held up flashlights, apparently to show that they were poor migrants. He said the helicopter then stopped firing, but only after dozens had been killed. Mohammed was unharmed in the attack.

A top official with the U.N.'s migration agency said 42 bodies have been recovered from the attack. Mohammed Abdiker, emergencies director at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva, said the attack at around 3 a.m. on Friday was totally unacceptable and that responsible combatants should have checked who was aboard the boat before firing on it.

He said about 75 men and 15 women who survived the attack were taken to detention centers, and some bodies were laid in a fish market in the town of Hodeida because of a lack of space in mortuaries. Laurent De Boeck, the head of the IOMs Yemeni office, said the U.N. agency believes all those on board the stricken vessel were registered refugees.

The Houthis said they had shot down a helicopter gunship in the same area a day earlier, without providing evidence. They also said the coalition had carried out a wave of airstrikes over the last 48 hours in southern Hodeida, including a helicopter gunship assault on a fishing vessel that killed a number of fishermen hours before the strike on the migrant boat.

The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition began striking the rebels and their allies in March 2015, hoping to drive the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa, and restore the internationally recognized government. The rebels remain in control of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, and the conflict, which has killed an estimated 10,000 civilians, is in a stalemate.

A Yemeni medical official in Hodeida said only 14 bodies had arrived so far, adding that women were among the dead. Another 25 wounded people, including some who had lost arms and legs, were brought to the hospital, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to speak to the media.

The U.N. refugee agency said on its Twitter account that it was appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen.

Despite more than two years of fighting in Yemen, African migrants continue to arrive in the war-torn country, where there is no central authority to prevent them from travelling onward to a better life in neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

More than 111,500 migrants landed on Yemens shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.

The turmoil has left migrants vulnerable to abuse at the hands of the armed trafficking rings, many of which are believed to be connected to the multiple armed groups involved in the war.

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10:30 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the attack.

This article was originally published at 9:05 a.m.
Isidro Baldenegro Lopez, a son of the jagged and often lawless terrain of the western Sierra Madre, had no illusions about the threats he faced from sundry foes  drug traffickers, illegal lumber harvesters and other criminal elements who have infiltrated the remote highlands that are home to Mexicos Tarahumara people.

But relatives and friends say the indigenous leader, who won global acclaim for his defense of the regions ancient forests, could not be deterred from returning to Coloradas de la Virgen, his remote home village, a place cut off by mighty canyons and thuggish violence.



For the record: An earlier version of this article said that Julio Baldenegro, the father of activist Isidro Baldenegro Lopez, was slain in 1987. He was killed in 1986.

Isidro felt like he had work to do, he had to help his people, recalled his sister-in-law, Maximina Carrillo Torres, who, like much of the extended family, has fled Coloradas de la Virgen. Thats what he always did. That was his life.

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Maximina Carrillo Torres, 40, left, sister-in-law of slain activist Isidro Baldenegro Lopez, said that after his death relatives and friends fled their hometown of Coloradas de la Virgen. (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times )

Baldenegro  a 2005 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, the so-called Green Nobel  was shot six times on Jan. 15 at his uncles adobe home in Coloradas de la Virgen, south of majestic Sinforosa Canyon.

Two weeks later, a second Tarahumara community leader and environmental campaigner, Juan Ontiveros Ramos, 42, was forcibly taken from his home in the same rural municipality and shot and killed.

ENVIRONMENTAL WARRIORS: Defending the environment has become a suicide mission in many parts of the world 

The killings  like the slaying last year of Bertha Caceres, an indigenous anti-dam campaigner in Honduras and 2015 recipient of the Goldman Prize  dramatize how environmental issues have become a front-line human rights battleground in Latin America and elsewhere.

At least 200 environmental activists worldwide were killed in 2016, the highest such death toll on record, according to Global Witness, a British-based watchdog group. At least 33 ecological activists were killed in Mexico between 2010 and 2015, Global Witness said.

This month Chihuahua state prosecutors said they had arrested Baldenegros killer, whom they identified only as Romeo R.M., age 21.

Authorities say he confessed to shooting the 50-year-old Baldenegro with a .38 Super pistol, hitting him in the chest, abdomen and right leg, because of long-time personal animosities.

But activists and relatives suspect a crime boss deployed Romeo as a sicario, or hired gunman, to eliminate once and for all the meddlesome anti-logging campaigner, one of Mexicos best-known environmental advocates.

We acknowledge that Romeo was the killer of Isidro, but not the mastermind behind the assassination, said Isela Gonzalez Diaz, an anthropologist who heads the Sierra Madre Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. We urge authorities to solve his murder and those of other indigenous people who have been killed for their environmental activities.

The mountain range here is formally known as the Sierra Madre Occidental, but often called the Sierra Tarahumara, after the indigenous group celebrated for their legendary ability to run for dozens, if not hundreds, of miles. They call themselves Raramuri, a Tarahumara word that refers to their acumen for running.

The Sierra Tarahumara is regarded as one of the worlds most diverse ecosystems, a region of snow-covered peaks, pine-studded mountains and four canyons that rival the grandeur of Arizonas Grand Canyon.

For us, the Tarahumara, all the hills are sacred because in them the [shamans] conduct their ceremonies to cure illnesses, Baldenegro said when he accepted the Goldman Prize. All the forest, the sky, the sun, the stars, the moon we see as living beings with souls and life like us.

Activists blame endemic violence in the region on the influx of drug traffickers and allied illegal timber harvesters, among other criminal gangs, often acting in concert with corrupt authorities. The mobs recruit as mules and foot soldiers area men who see few economic horizons in the impoverished and drought-stricken highlands.

Isidro Baldenegro Lopez accepting the 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize, also known as the Green Nobel. (Goldman Environmental Prize / EPA )

Crime bosses launder drug proceeds through timber and ranching operations in an region where 99% of the old-growth forest has already been logged, according to environmental groups.

There has been a complete breakdown of the social fabric in some parts of the Sierra, said Gonzalez Diaz of the Sierra Madre Alliance. Criminal organizations intimidate the people and try to strip them of their land, provoking forced displacement.

The swath of southern Chihuahua state where the two recent murders occurred is situated within Mexicos Golden Triangle, a major cultivation zone for marijuana and the opium poppy used to produce heroin for the booming U.S. market. The regions rugged terrain, lack of law enforcement oversight and proximity to the U.S. border have made it a prime production and smuggling hub.

The triangle region, including parts of neighboring Sinaloa and Durango states, is generally regarded as turf of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, once headed by Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, the legendary capo recently extradited to the United States.

Last year, the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo  where both Baldenegro and Ontiveros were killed  led the nation in the number of opium poppy plants destroyed in Mexicos official eradication program. Ranking third was Guzmans infamously lawless home region, Badiraguato, in neighboring Sinaloa state.

Guadalupe y Calvo, home to some 50,000 people spread across scores of rural settlements, was also among 50 Mexican municipalities named on a government list last year detailing where about 40% of the nations murders had been committed.

In the Sierra Tarahumara, battles have broken out both among rival gangs and between criminal groups and outgunned subsistence communities resisting infiltration, forced recruitment and illegal logging on lands where communities have long kept livestock and farmed vegetables and wheat. The violence has forced multitudes to flee ancestral terrain and resettle in Chihuahua City, the state capital, and elsewhere.

We had no choice but to leave, said Cruz Sanchez Legarda, 50, who, along with dozens of others, fled the Tarahumara village of El Manzano in March 2015 after it was attacked by a group of about 60 armed and hooded men.

Sanchez, who was governor in his village, says one of his sons was wounded by gunfire in the assault, as outgunned residents resisted a seven-hour onslaught.

A month earlier, another son, Benjamin Sanchez, was killed when he refused to join a gang, according to a criminal complaint. A third son, Gilberto Sanchez, was murdered in June 2016.

There is no authority against organized crime, no one to help us, said Sanchez, a former small-plot farmer, speaking at an activists office in the state capital of Chihuahua City. He continues to fear for the safety of his wife and three children. In truth, we have lost all hope of ever returning home to El Manzano.

Tarahumara children fleeing from the violence with their families often display signs of war-like trauma, advocates say

The kids draw pictures of hooded men with guns, noted Diana Buticos, a teacher at a preschool here in this drab but generally secure town of Guachochi, where many Tarahumara have relocated. That is what they are used to seeing.

The mother of Isidro Baldenegro Lopez holds a picture of her son. (Luis Cortes / El Universal via AP )

Violence was all too familiar for Baldenegro, and it informed his activism.

His father, Julio Baldenegro, was murdered in 1986 because of his opposition to a local strongmans logging activities, according to family members, who say the young Isidro saw his father die. That motivated him to dedicate his life to the cause of developing non-violent resistance against exploitation of Tarahumara lands, say relatives and associates.

In the early 2000s, he organized sit-ins and marches and a human blockade to halt logging operations, gaining fame across the region and, eventually, internationally. He was arrested in 2003 and spent 15 months in prison on what would later prove to be false charges of arms and drug possession, noted his official biography from the San Francisco-based Goldman Foundation.

They wont shut me up, the jailed activist told Andrew Miller, a young scholar who visited Baldenegro while he was in custody. They cant silence the truth, insisted Baldenegro, recalled Miller, now an assistant professor at First Nations University of Canada.

In recent years, associates say, Baldenegro, a father of two young children, resided mostly in various highland towns, including Guachochi, which were more secure than his secluded village. But he frequently went back to Coloradas de la Virgen to sell home-made machetes, buy and sell livestock, and meet with relatives and friends, while continuing his efforts to protect native lands.

Isidro knew his life was in danger, said Gabriel Valencia Juarez, a journalist here and friend of the late activist. But he didnt want to leave, his life and work were in the Sierra. In the end, it cost him.

This story was reported with a grant from the United Nations Foundation.

Special correspondent Liliana Nieto del Rio and Cecilia Sanchez of the Times Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

twitter: @mcdneville

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This story was originally published March 17.
The U.S. military launched an airstrike at a building in northern Syria targeting what it says were senior Al Qaeda militants and is investigating reports that scores of civilians were killed or injured in the attack, the Pentagon said Friday.

Photos and videos on social media showed bloodied people emerging or being carried from a smoldering building in Aleppo province that local officials said was a mosque filled with worshipers at evening prayer.

The U.S. military insists dozens of militants were killed and denied bombing a mosque.

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The Pentagon released a black-and-white aerial photo of a compound that it said showed a small mosque still standing. A much larger building across the road was reduced to rubble.

We had tracked this building for some time, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. We know it was being used by Al Qaeda, but at this particular time its purpose was to host this meeting of very senior people in Al Qaeda.

After the Pentagon released the photo, some Syrians said on social media that the building destroyed was a newly opened mosque and that the standing structure was an older place of worship.

The military is investigating whether civilians were inadvertently killed or injured, Davis added, but he said the photo showed the mosque was relatively unscathed.

As of the moment, were not aware of any credible allegations of civilian casualties, he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with a network of activists in Syria, reported Thursday that an airstrike hit the mosque in Al Jinah village and at least 42 people were killed. The group did not specify who launched the air attack.

Some people [are] in critical situation and others are still missing, the groups report said, adding that the search for missing, dead bodies and survivors under the rubble of the destruction caused by the bombing is still taking place.

Al Jazeera news agency reported that the attack occurred during evening prayer so the mosque was full of worshipers, with local activists saying up to 300 people were inside at the time.

Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group better known as the White Helmets, shared a video of searching for survivors in the rubble and injured people being loaded into ambulances.

The incident is the latest example of the gulf in reporting that exists between the Pentagon and Syrian human rights and humanitarian aid groups on the impact of deadly airstrikes.

Obtaining accurate independent figures is difficult because of the challenges of reporting on the ground in the multi-sided Syrian civil war.

The Pentagon estimates that at least 220 civilians have been killed in more than 18,900 airstrikes launched by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Syria since the air war against Islamic State began in mid-2014.

Independent monitoring groups say, however, that errant bombs or poor targeting have caused thousands of civilian casualties.

The U.S.-led coalition, Russia and Syrias government all conduct airstrikes against various militant groups in Syria in a civil war that has left hundreds of thousands of civilians, military and insurgents dead since 2011.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @wjhenn

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UPDATES:

10:53 a.m.: This article was updated with new details.

7:30 a.m.: This article was updated with a figure for the number of airstrikes launched by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Syria since mid-2014.

This article was originally published at 7:10 a.m.
All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced.  19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
Kingsland Holdings, a minority shareholder in the Colombian airline, follows up on last month's lawsuit to halt a potential $800m alliance between the two carriers
Fukushima nuclear disaster has passed more than six years but still, Japan is dealing with its impacts. The damage of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant poses unprecedented technical challenges to Japan.

Around 100,000 people were evacuated but only about 13 percent have returned home. Although the government has announced that Fukushima is safe to return to some evacuation zones.

According to Scientific American, The Japanese public has lost faith in nuclear safety regulation, and a majority favors phasing out nuclear power. However, Japan's energy policy assumes nuclear power will play a role. Japan needs to find a new way of making decisions about Fukushima its energy future.

However, after the Fukushima disaster the government has estimated the total costs from the nuclear accident at about US $188 billion that is approximately twice as high as its previous estimate. The government is developing a plan under which consumers and citizens will bear some of those costs through higher electrical rates, taxes or both.

The Japan Times has reported that at the time of 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan had 54 operating nuclear reactors which produced about one-third of its electric supply. After the heavy earthquake and tsunami, Japanese utilities have shut down Fukushima and other 50 intact reactors one by one.

The government has released its first post-Fukushima strategic energy plan, which called for keeping some nuclear power plants as base load power sources. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has published a long-term plan in 2015 which suggested that nuclear power should produce 20 to 22 percent of Japan's electricity by 2030.

The news report has suggested that Japan also has nearly 48 tons of separated plutonium. Though many countries have expressed concerns about Japan's plan to store Plutonium and use it in nuclear fuel. China has worried that Japan could use the material for Fukushima plants to quickly produce nuclear weapons.

However, Japanese nuclear operator and governments also must find safe and secure ways to manage growing stockpiles of irradiated nuclear fuel for Fukushima and others nuclear plants. Beside this Japan should consider fundamental shifts in nuclear energy policy to recover public trust.


Last February, Samsung Company confirmed that it would launch the Samsung Galaxy S8 as well as the Galaxy S8 Plus on the Galaxy Unpacked event on March 29. However, the company was not able to confirm when the customers would be able to get their hands on the latest devices.

The company was in the process of debating as to when the exact pre-orders will open for the flagships of both Samsung Galaxy S8 and Plus. However, according to Phonearena, Samsung's senior official said that that the latest device will go on preorder on April 7 in South Korea.

The senior staff member added that the pre-order cycle for phones would end on April 17. But they ensure that that the phones will hit the shelves on April 21 only. Customers who want to get their hands on the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S8 should wait until April 21.

While the pre-order period ends on April 17, Samsung Galaxy S8 will make its debut on the market on April 21 also. And on April 18, the company will hold pre-launch events at the three top carrier's stores in South Korea.

According to BGR, Samsung Company intensifies its marketing strategy because it aims to get more customers to purchase the latest Samsung Galaxy S8. Furthermore, the company is expected to put their best efforts in promoting the new phone as the device is the tech giant's first major smartphone to launch after Galaxy Note 7 fiasco.

For the past months, the company was facing issues in connection to its president who was recently indicted on bribery charges. Samsung now wants the latest Samsung Galaxy S8 to do well to maintain the company's name and credibility.

Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to have an edge-to-edge Super AMOLED display with an iris scanner, a dual 12-megapixel and 13-megapixel rear cameras, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835/Exynos 8895 process, 3,000 mAh battery, and a Bixby artificial intelligence-based voice assistant.




Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is cold, lonely and has been complaining of auditory hallucinations. The most notorious drug lord is locked up in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn jail with not enough clothing to keep him warm. Reports say that 'El Chapo' has also started to hallucinate saying that he can hear music despite his radio being off. His attorneys are seeking for his release from solitary confinement saying that their client's health has slowly deteriorated.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was extradited to the United States in January 2017 where he faces a number of federal indictments in New York and California, Inside Edition reported. He has been accused of torture, drug trafficking and murder. 'El Chapo' was taken from his cell in Mexico to a counterpart in Brooklyn where he stayed in solitary confinement ever since.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman is a very famous drug personality and is the most wanted drug personality all over the world. He has escaped twice from his maximum security cell in Mexico and the U.S. has offered $5 million for information about his whereabouts. 'El Chapo' has pleaded not guilty to all charges including murder, conspiracy and drug trafficking, Los Angeles Times reported.

Notorious inmates are kept in strict isolation at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Mafia lords, drug personalities and terrorists are among those included in strict isolation. The United States government has allowed Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman to take private counsel because he is very well off but he has been prohibited to talk to his family members as well as his wife.

It is necessary to confine Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman to prevent him from escaping. By limiting communication from other inmates, he will be unable to conspire or solicit additional criminal activity. 'El Chapo' is also secured from people who could cause bodily harm or injury. His attorneys also said that their client misses being able to access the media. His lawyers argued that many documentaries and reports have been made according to 'El Chapo's' life but he is unable to comment on false information.
A leading candidate for the Mexican presidency has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Wednesday against US president Donald Trump.

The Mexican presidential aspirant opposed Donald Trump's border wall and his administration's treatment of immigrants.

According to Reuters, the populist leader of the National Regeneration movement, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has made the comments as part of a speech at the National Press Club about the future of NAFTA under the Trump administration. Obrador's statements came after the federal judge's decision to block Trump's latest travel ban.

Trump has ordered a wall built along the nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexico border. The president has moved to strip federal funding from "sanctuary" states and cities harboring illegal immigrants, and expanded the force of US immigration agents.

At the time of his election campaign, Trump has allegedly described Mexican illegal immigrants as rapist and criminals. He also mentioned that Mexico would pay for the wall and that caused simmering diplomatic tension and angered everyday citizens south of the border.

The petition presented to the Inter-America Commission on Human Rights that accused the Trump's administration of violating human rights laws and the US constitution. But the White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Obrador's charges.

CN Cronkite News has reported that Obrador's visit comes a week after a visit to Washington by another Mexican president Margarita Zavala. The person met with Arizona Sens, John McCain, and Jeff Flake to discuss topics such as trade between state and Mexico.

Both Obrador's and Zavala have denounced Trump's treatment of Mexican immigrants in the US. Both of them expressed their desire to maintain the close US-Mexico relationship that has enjoyed in recent years.

However, the petition he presented to the Inter-American Commission on Wednesday. Obrador's hopes for close economic ties between the two countries have not silenced his opposition to the new administration.


The hype for the "American Gods" TV series is steadily growing with its impending release coming next month. A trailer for the show has been released as well and it follows Shadow Moon (played by Ricky Whittle) and Mr. Wednesday (played by Ian McShane) in what looks like to be a fight against new "gods."

To give a little background, Neil Gaiman's novel is a fantasy genre that involves ancient deities and creatures who were transported in modern society. According to The Washington Post, the "American Gods" TV series will have the old gods fight the new gods who a personified in the form of the internet, technology and the media.

The "American Gods" TV series will center on Shadow Moon who is fresh out of the prison when he founds out that his wife, Laura (played by Emily Browning) was killed. He meets Mr. Wednesday whose real identity is the Norse god of thunder, Odin. They go on a journey to enlist the old gods from across the US in an inevitable fight with the new gods.

Joining the main cast of the "American Gods" TV series are Dane Cook who plays Shadow Moon's closest friend Robbie and Pablo Schreiber as the Irish leprechaun, Mad Sweeney.

Express reports that some of the old gods cast in the "American Gods" TV series include Kristin Chenoweth as the god of spring, Easter, Peter Stormare as the Slavic deity Czernobog and Chris Obi as the Egyptian god Anubis. The new gods for the show include Gillian Anderson as the Media and Bruce Langley as the Technical Boy

Author Neil Gaiman has also expressed his approval over on Twitter regarding the new trailer of the "American Gods" TV series which was just recently released. The series will air on Amazon Prime starting May 1 and episodes will come on a weekly basis.
Mar 17, 2017, 5:58am ET

Next Lexus GS canceled?

Rumors claim Lexus is worried the GS and the new LS will overlap.

Lexus has canceled the development of the next-generation GS, according to a report published in Japan.

Enthusiast magazine MAG-X learned the GS has been axed because Lexus officials are worried it will overlap with the new LS flagship that debuted in January at the Detroit Auto Show. The LS is markedly bigger than the GS, but both cars now come standard with a V6 engine. The hot-rodded, V8-powered GS F model (pictured) represents only a small fraction of sales.

The global decline of the sedan segment is another nail in the GS' coffin. Crossovers and SUVs now dominate the market in the United States and in China, and the GS has never managed to truly compete against the Germans on their home turf. It's difficult for executives to make a sound business case for the development of a brand-new sedan that's not certain to meet its sales targets.

The GS' life has been in jeopardy before. As website Lexus Enthusiast points out, it was almost axed at the end of the previous model's life cycle.

"I didn't want this car. Regional management teams fought me like crazy," revealed Toyota boss Akio Toyoda in an interview with Automotive News during the launch of the current-generation model in 2011.

Like most automakers, Lexus has a policy of not openly commenting on industry rumors. The next GS was tentatively scheduled to debut next year, so we'll have to be patient to find out whether the nameplate will live on.

Photo by Byron Hurd.
Mar 17, 2017, 3:58pm ET

Uber's autonomous cars require human intervention every mile

The fleet experiences an average of one \'critical\' intervention every 200 miles, each time avoiding hitting a person or causing significant property damage.

Uber's fleet of self-driving prototype vehicles is reportedly making slow progress toward achieving true autonomous operation without requiring frequent human intervention.

Internal documents obtained and analyzed by Recode provide a glimpse of Uber's project statistics for autonomous pilot projects in Phoenix, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. The numbers appear to focus on the past few months, revealing assessment metrics as Uber's fleet has collectively grown from 5,000 to 18,000 miles averaged per week.

Uber tracks different types of engagements to track progress, starting with a simple count of 'disengagement' incidents when a human driver takes control for any reason. Another metric focuses on 'critical' incidents, when human intervention was required to avoid hitting pedestrians or causing $5,000 or more in property damage. Importantly, Uber is also tracking 'bad experiences' when the autonomous systems cause potentially nauseating motions or hard braking.

The report suggests humans are intervening more than once per mile driven, showing no improvement over the course of the month. It is unclear, however, if the fleet was attempting more challenging test routes during the same period.

Critical interventions have varied wildly, from as low as 40 miles per incident in early February to as high as 200 miles per incident in March, though the numbers seem to be improving over time.

Unfortunately for passengers, the 'bad experience' data shows the opposite trend. A peak of 4.5 miles per incident dates back to mid-January. The number of incidents later climbed to a steady rate of around one recurrence every two miles in early March.

The numbers show that Uber's autonomous platform still has a long way to go before customers can be picked up by a drone taxi with no human chauffeur behind the wheel. The project's fate has also been put into question after the company was sued by Waymo, an Alphabet subsidiary spun off from Google's self-driving car project.
Allentown police are warning residents of a distraction burglary scam involving a woman posing as a utility worker.

Police said on Thursday evening, two residents in the city's West End reported a woman in a yellow jacket and tool belt coming to their doors and requesting to check the basement for "toxic water."

When the homeowners went into the basement with the woman, another person sneaked into the house and stole jewelry, police said.

The duo used a silver van, and hit areas on Tilghman Street and west of 15th Street, police said.

Scams where criminals impersonate utility workers are not new. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office recommends always asking to see a company photo ID of anyone claiming to be a from a utility company.

If you still have doubts, call the utility company to confirm workers are in the neighborhood before letting anyone into your home.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The allegedly drunken driver in a crash that killed his three passengers rejected a plea deal and will take the case to trial.

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli confirmed Terrell Barclay turned down the offer to plead guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide while DUI. He had a week to mull over the deal.

Morganelli admits it was a hard bargain. Barclay would have to accept the maximum sentence of five to 10 years in prison for each fatality, a total of 15 to 30 years. In exchange, Morganelli's office would drop 13 related charges.

Barclay, 28, of Orange, New Jersey, is permanently disfigured due to burns he suffered in the crash.

"He's in constant pain," Barclays attorney Tim Prendergast said at a court hearing last week.

Barclay was the driver at 1:22 a.m. May 6 in the crash that killed three passengers. He allegedly struck three parked cars while speeding in the 1800 block of Willow Park Road.

Killed were Amanda Martin, 26, of New Ringgold, Schuylkill County, Pa.; Ashlee Mosher, 29, of Easton; and Joshua Edwards, 28, of Easton.

Witnesses said Barclay was running around screaming after the crash. Later he was put in a medically-induced coma at the hospital.

He was discharged and claims he turned himself in immediately when he learned police were looking for him.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
A 25-year-old Bethlehem man is charged with theft and receiving stolen property in the armed robbery Oct. 29 of a Verizon store in Forks Township.

Nadir Chandler, 25, of Bethlehem, is charged with theft in the Oct. 29, 2016, robbery of a cellphone store in Forks Township, authorities say. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Nadir Naim Chandler, of the 1200 block of Livingston Street, was arrested Thursday in Georgia, township police said.

He was held without bail in the Gwinnett County Detention Center after being picked up by Gwinnett County police, according to records.

Chandler is charged with taking 79 cellphones and other electronic devices, with a total value of more than $2,000, from the Forks store, police said.

The arrest warrant in the Forks robbery, issued Thursday, was sealed by a county judge so some specifics of the crime that happened at 7:30 p.m. at the store at 301 Town Center Blvd. are unclear.

Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Mulqueen, when asked Friday morning why Chandler was charged with theft but not robbery, said she couldn't answer due to the ongoing investigation. Mulqueen heads a task force investigating at least five cellphone store robberies in the Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey, as well as a homicide and an abduction tied to the Forks robbery.

While she wouldn't go into detail, Mulqueen said authorities believe all the robberies, the killing and the abduction are related.

Forks Verizon Store employee Michael Davis was shot dead Nov. 21 outside his home in Palmer Township and store manager Michael DeRose, 42, was reportedly abducted and roughed up the next day in that township, police said at the time. No motives have been released in those crimes.

Authorities early on tied those crimes to the Forks robbery, but no one has been charged in either the killing or the abduction.

Police have charged others in connection with the wide-ranging investigation.

Vaughn Felix, 26, of the 1400 block of Spring Garden Street in Easton, and Gregory Lewis Jr., 26, of the first block of South 17th Street in Wilson Borough, are charged in the Feb. 9 armed robbery at a Wind Gap Verizon store. They are also charged with receiving stolen property from a Dec. 23 jewelry store robbery in Downtown Easton.

Eric Quentin Watson, who said he stays three nights a week with a friend in the 200 block of St. George St. in Allentown, was arrested about 6 a.m. March 3 by Bethlehem Township police at the warehouse where he works in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

He is charged with receiving stolen phones on Jan. 5 and Jan. 13 in Northampton and Lehigh counties, District Judge Patricia Broscius said during Watson's arraignment.

Patricia Calcano, 29, is accused of possessing between last Oct. 29 and Nov. 16 at the Allentown home four Samsung S7 Edge cellphones with a total value of $2,940, according to court records. The phones belonged to Verizon Wireless Nation, police said.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Mulqueen couldn't say what, if any, connection exists among Chandler, Felix and Lewis or the others.

Chandler was initially jailed Dec. 8 in Gwinnett County, Georgia, on two counts of theft and one count each of possession of a firearm by a felon and participating in gang activity, authorities said. He was a rear seat passenger during a traffic stop in Norcross, Georgia, in which two weapons -- a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun stolen in Gwinnett County and a Ruger SR9C stolen in Auburn, Georgia, that were found under the rear seats of the white 2005 Mercedes ML350, Gwinnett County police said in charging documents.

The stop was based on an "unsafe" lane change and the odor of marijuana led officers to search the car, police said. Two other men in the car faced similar charges, police said.

Chandler's Georgia charges were cleared and he was released Feb. 24, records show. He had an address in Lawrenceville, Georgia, according to court paperwork.

Documents for Thursday's arrest weren't ready, Gwinnett police said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Forks Township man who was driving with a suspended license, a gun and nearly a quarter-pound of marijuana fled a traffic stop Thursday evening and was involved in two crashes before being arrested, police said.

Salaam E. Stewart, 29, was apparently hurt and wasn't arraigned until midday Friday before District Judge Antonia Grifo on charges of possession with intent to deliver marijuana, possession of a firearm without a license, resisting arrest, failure to give aid at a crash and six other related offenses, authorities said.

He was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $75,000 bail, court records say.

Stewart, of the 200 block of Ramblewood Drive, was driving a 2007 5-series BMW sedan at 6:38 p.m. on Main Street in Glendon when a Pennsylvania State Police trooper discovered Stewart's licenses was suspended, court papers said. The trooper tried a traffic stop in the 2200 block of South 25th Street, but Stewart drove off through the Easton Children's Home property in Wilson Borough, police said.

At 25th Street and Freemansburg Avenue, the BMW struck a black 2013 Smart Car and didn't stop, police said. Stewart continued east on Freemansburg toward Butler Street in Wilson Borough, reaching speeds above 75 mph, police said.

Salaam E. Stewart, 29, of Forks Township, on March 16 led police on a high-speed chase in Wilson Borough. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

He went the wrong way on South 16th Street to Northampton Street and then onto North 17th Street, police said. He went east on Wood Avenue where he crashed head-on into a GMC Denali in the area of the Route 22 East ramp, police said.

Stewart, carrying a green backpack, got out of the now-disabled car and ran east on Wood Avenue toward 13th Street, police said. He refused the trooper's commands to stop but he was eventually wrestled to the ground and arrested, police said.

With Stewart handcuffed, a strong smell of marijuana was coming from the backpack and Stewart told the trooper he'd just bought a quarter-pound, police said. Troopers recovered 96 grams of pot, police said.

He also told the trooper he had an unloaded black Springfield XD 9mm handgun that he didn't own, police said. Four hollow-point bullets were also found, police said. Stewart was carrying $916 in cash, police added.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Lafayette College student dies in New York City car crash

Lafayette College junior Amanda Miner is seen in a photo posted in 2016 to her Facebook page. The 21-year-old was killed in a single-vehicle crash early Thursday, March 16, 2017, while home in New York City for spring break. (Facebook photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

A Lafayette College junior was killed in a crash crash early Thursday morning in New York City, the president of the Easton school said in a statement.

Amanda Miner was home in Brooklyn for spring break, President Alison Byerly said.

An anthropology and sociology major, Miner "just radiated niceness; she had a great, winning personality," said Professor David Shulman, her adviser, in the statement.

In class, according to Shulman, Amanda "spoke often, and had smart things to say. And she would speak her mind. If she had an opinion, she was going to offer it."

Miner was out to celebrate her 21st birthday when the crash occurred, the New York Daily News reports.

"We celebrated her 21st birthday yesterday and now I'm not going to see her graduate from college," her mother, Virginia Cabrera-Miner, told the newspaper.

Miner was a back-seat passenger in a 2013 Infiniti sedan that crashed on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, WABC-7NY reports.

Both reports identify the driver as 26-year-old Stefan Hoyte, a New York Police Department traffic enforcement agent. He was taken into custody and charged with driving while intoxicated, vehicular manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, according to the ABC affiliate.

He and another traffic agent, a 24-year-old man seated in the front, escaped with minor injuries in the single-vehicle crash about 3:30 a.m., according to WABC-7NY; the force of the crash split the car in two. The bridge is just down the street from the family's home, according to the TV station's report.

Byerly, from Lafayette, said she spoke with Miner's family Thursday "and expressed deepest sympathies from all of us at the college."

A vigil is scheduled 4:15 p.m. Tuesday in Colton Chapel in Miner's memory.

Miner went on an Alternative School Break trip to New Orleans in spring 2016 for Hurricane Katrina relief, according to Lafayette.

She spent five semesters as an America Reads tutor at Third Street Alliance in Easton, where she became "one of those tutors I will always remember because she just loved the program and was so dedicated," said Christine Cohen, Lafayette's America Reads director.

"She will be greatly missed," Cohen stated.

Miner's dedication to social justice issues also led Amanda to take an upper-level seminar as a first-semester sophomore, working with teen mothers and homeless families living in shelters, according to Lafayette.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Logan's Roadhouse

The Logan's Roadhouse in Airport Center closed March 12.

(Andrew Doerfler | for lehighvalleylive.com)

The Logan's Roadhouse in the Airport Center shopping center closed this week after the chain decided not to renew its lease.

The restaurant in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, known for steaks and burgers, opened in 2012. Since it closed on Sunday, the chain's nearest location to the Lehigh Valley is now the one in Hamburg, Pa.

"We really appreciate all the folks who've enjoyed great meals, conversations, and developed lifelong friendships with us over the years," the company said in a statement. "We're especially thankful for the hardworking and committed Logan's Roadhouse team members."

The company said it is offering severance packages and looking relocate employees to other locations when possible.

There are more than 200 company-operated and franchised locations of Logan's in 23 states. The company is based in Nashville.

Logan's isn't the only steakhouse chain to shutter a Lehigh Valley location recently. Lone Star Steakhouse in Palmer Township closed last year, later replaced by the Mexican restaurant Tacos y Tequila.

Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook.
A Lehigh County attorney will spend a few more months in jail, after trying twice to run down a cat-walking neighbor with his car.

Robert Creem, 70, has been held in Lehigh County Jail since the second attempt, which occurred while Creem was free on unsecured bail related to charges from the first try.

On Friday, Judge Kelly Banach sentenced Creem to nine to 23 months in county jail, followed by three years of probation, for two counts of aggravated assault.

Creem apologized to the victim, Dale Stickel, though the victim was not in court on Friday.

"The enormity of what I did was totally out of control compared to the things he did to me that got under my skin," Creem said.

Referring to violating the terms of his bail with the second attempt to run down Stickel, Creem said, "As an attorney and an adult, there is no explanation."

Creem has a mental health diagnosis, for which he receives prescription medication and treatment. On Friday, Creem said he had stopped taking his medication, which led to the incidents.

Creem said he missed a few doses and saw no negative effects.

"You think of yourself as normal without the medication," he said. "There's no justification for it, it just happened...I was way out on a limb, and I needed to be reigned in."

Whitehall Township police said Creem tried to run down Dale Stickel on May 31 as Stickel was walking a neighbor's cat near the parking lot of the condo complex where they all lived, Whitehall Estates.

After missing Stickel once, Creem turned around and tried to run him down again, according to police. Creem then drove off, but was later found by police and arrested.

After being freed on bail, Creem was back in court after allegedly returning to the condo complex, even though he was ordered to stay away, police said.

Creem sped up to about 60 mph in the parking lot and tried to run down neighbor Stickel, leading Stickel to jump out of the way, police said.

Creem reportedly stopped his car and told Stickel, "You're dead. I'm putting a contract on your head," before fleeing. Creem was eventually arrested.

Creem's sons said the plan is for Creem to move to Michigan once he is released from jail, and to live with his oldest son and his family.

Deputy District Attorney Greg Englert said the victim wants to be protected by the sentence, but that there is no guarantee Creem would come back to the area after being released from jail.

"If Mr. Stickel had not jumped out of the way (of Creem's car), he would have been hit," Englert said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The proposed PennEast pipeline would cut through 88 waterways and 30 parks, damaging and destroying farms, open spaces and wetlands, requiring the blasting of arsenic-rich bedrock and the removal of well-established trees, which will increase run-off and ensure arsenic, pesticides, sediments and other toxins from the pipeline will enter tributaries of the Delaware River.



Landowners face extreme financial losses in their property values. Pipeline companies threaten residents with eminent domain, despite the lack of any clear and honest demonstration of public need.

Local citizens don't want the product. In fact, the fracked gas will likely be liquefied and shipped overseas to the highest bidder. Forcing residents to sacrifice so much for the sake of corporate profit is just wrong.

Citizens and communities are overwhelmingly opposed; 24 townships in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have passed resolutions opposing PennEast.



This destructive intrusion would be just the start. The easement could be used to add more pipelines, more pollution and increase dangers to drinking water.

Many believe the Delaware River Basin Commission has the power to stop PennEast. This is why I joined hundreds of fellow citizens this week, braving snow and icy roads to let the DRBC know we stand united in opposition to PennEast.



Joe Guest

Indivisible Northampton County

Lower Mount Bethel Township
Representatives of Kildare County Council are in New York for St Patricks Day to promote Kildare as a tourism destination.

Yesterday, they met with senior executives from Tourism Ireland in the US.

They were briefed on Tourism Irelands promotional programme for 2017, which is in full swing right now.

Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Irelands Head of North America, said: We were delighted to meet with the representatives of KildareCounty Council and to have the opportunity to brief them about the extensive promotional programme we are undertaking in the United States this year.

Our ambition is to surpass the record-breaking performance of 2016 and to deliver a +9% increase in revenue and a +6% increase in visitor numbers from North America in 2017 i.e. 1.6 billion generated by 1.7 million visitors.

St Patricks Day traditionally marks the real start of the tourism season for us; our aim is to bring a smile to the faces of people everywhere and to convey the message that Ireland offers the warmest of welcomes and great fun, as well as wonderful scenery and heritage. We are using every opportunity to capitalise on Irelands heightened profile this week; the saturation coverage about Ireland at this time of year  across the airwaves, in newspapers and digital media  is an invaluable boost for our overall tourism marketing drive in 2017.

Tourism Ireland aims to build on the success of 2016, which was the fourth record-breaking year in a row for Irish tourism from the United States.

With the recent announcement by Norwegian of new flights to Ireland from New York (Stewart International Airport) and Providence (Rhode Island), the total number of transatlantic airline seats this summer will be 60,000 - a 10,000 increase over 2016.

For the first time ever, One World Trade Center (the main building of the re-built World Trade Center complex in New York and the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere), La Concha Visitors Center at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas and the fireworks show at the Plaza Hotel & Casino, also in Las Vegas, will participate in Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative to celebrate St Patrick and Ireland.

Other major landmarks to be illuminated in green include the Empire State Building, the Welcome sign in Las Vegas and the world-famous Niagara Falls.
A number of Kildare protestors took part in yesterdays Wind Aware Ireland protest at the Global Sustainable Capital Forum at Dublin Castle.

The Kildare Environmental Awareness Group (KEAG) has campaigned against Element Powers plans for a wind farm in Kildare. It has also criticised the government for delays in publishing the wind energy guidelines, which would determine future turbine set back distances from homes.

The group, along with many other local communities campaigning against wind farms, are also keeping a close eye on a High Court case taken by Cork families against a wind farm company.

It is listed for 10 days before the courts, from Tuesday, April 25.

In the High Court order issued on December 6, Mr Justice Gilligan adjourned proceedings to deal with damages and costs.

The order noted the court records that liability has been admitted by the Defendants in the action.

The case was taken by four members of the Shivnen family against Enercon Wind Farm Services Ireland Ltd. The case also includes six other separate actions.

The outcome of the April court case could be a watershed for existing and planned wind farms as well as for investor confidence in, and government plans for the future of on-shore wind in Ireland, said Wind Aware Ireland.

Further cases could follow pending the outcome of the case.

Wind Aware Ireland said; The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has known since 2015 that the minimum setback distance of a turbine from a house, required to protect human health from noise, is far greater than that currently recommended.

This information, which emerged from an Access to Environmental Information enquiry, was kept under departmental wraps and publication of updated planning guidelines promised by Minister Naughten within six months of this governments formation have been repeatedly postponed.

Wind Aware Ireland said this information is now in the public domain.

The State, by allowing continued development of wind farms is risking costly legal actions against it. In addition, local councils and individual wind farm companies will face similar cases. Rural communities have had enough," it said.

Meanwhile, Element Power is due to challenge An Bord Pleanalas decision to refuse permission for the 47 turbine Maighne Wind Farm in the commercial court. The wind farm, if approved, would have stretched up the west side of Kildare up towards the north of the county.

Wind Aware Ireland is calling for a ban on wind farm development pending an independent strategic environmental assessment (SEA), cost benefit analysis (CBA) and the implementation of evidence based planning regulation of industrial wind farms.
In 2016, 434 hectares of Leitrim land was planted with forestry. In the first three months of this year 24 hectares have been planted across the county.

The details were released in Dail Eireann last week by Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed.

Following a question from Roscommon Fianna Fail Deputy Eugene Murphy about the percentage of forestry in Leitrim, Roscommon and Galway, the Minister said the National Forest Inventory is due to be calculated this year. It was last taken in 2012 and at that time 16.7% of Leitrim land was covered in forestry. That figure was high compared with Roscommons 10.2% and Galways 9.7% and expectations are that it will have risen further in the past few years.

Deputy Murphy asked the Minister if local authorities will be given the power to veto further planting in areas when the projected target of 17% is achieved by 2020 in view of the negative impact on farming practices in small rural townlands.

Minister Creed informed the TD under Irelands forest policy the aim is to increase forest cover to 18% by 2050.

He said, It is difficult to say what rules will be place that far forward but currently the establishment of new forests are subject to rigorous checks and balances which undergo careful planning by professional foresters.

The Minister believes forestry has an important role to play in improving the quality of life in rural Ireland.

But locally there have been numerous calls from farming organisations and local groups and politicians to halt the progression of private planting in Leitrim.
The Erne Group Trust Fund set up to pay the legal bills of Sean Quinn and his family was the subject of a High Court application in Belfast last Friday, March 10.

Donations to this trust were found not to have come out of Sean Quinn's familys assets and Judge Sir Paul Girvan also refused to grant a declaration for the receiver that the funding for the Fermanagh-born businessman was not a proper arrangement.

Sean Quinn lost control of the Quinn empire on both sides of the border when it collapsed six years ago. With the family starved of financial resources for litigation in the Republic, supporters formed the trust in 2012 to help pay their legal costs.

A list of 35 individuals and companies have been identified as having contributed funds. The trust paid out nearly 1.7 million towards the cost of the Quinn familys litigation and associated fees in the Republic.

Contributors remain publicly confidential, but the scale of their donations was disclosed. One gave 400,000 while another paid in 300,000. Sixteen of them provided between 125,000 and 150,000, or equivalent amounts in sterling.

One married couple contributed 115,000 and 25,000. Another donor was described as a company with strong commercial links to the former Quinn Group.

Two charities  The Northern Ireland Hospice and Marie Curie Cancer Care  received 1,000 each from the trust.

Receiver Declan Taite for IBRC, formerly known as Anglo Irish Bank, wanted the court to draw an inference that Quinn money was being paid into the Erne Group Trust.

Sir Paul Girvan said, The monies in question were kept out of the hands of the Quinns who could not call for them to be paid over to them.

The judge also rejected a claim that the money put into the trust came under the receivers control.

Dismissing the application, he said, Since the receivers have no claim over the assets and are strangers to the trust with no legitimate legal or beneficial interest in the assets they are not entitled to a declaration that this was not a proper trust.
Farmers and Fishermen will summon the warrior Queen Medh to banish fracking from Ireland in the St Particks Day parades in Manorhamilton and Manorhamilton.

Mr Frackhead, a representation of the corporate fracking industry will be chased out of the North West by the mythical character Medh with help from her team of fishermen, farmers and solar power supporters.

Kate Ruddock, Deputy Director of Friends of the Earth said, Mr Frackhead represents the powerful corporate fossil fuel lobby that wants to set up a fracking industry in Ireland. In the parade we want to show the warrior Queen Medh banishing fracking from her land. She is supported by her team of farmers and fishermen who want to keep their land and water safe, and the solar power representing the renewable energy that will power our future.

Environmental advocates from Love Leitrim and Friends of the Earth are taking part in the Sligo and Manorhamilton parades to show gratitude to all the volunteers that have supported the campaign to ban fracking over the past few years.

A bill to ban fracking, introduced by local Fine Gael TD Tony McLoughlin got all party support in its first vote in the Dail, and is now being considered by an Oireachtas committee. Campaigners are pushing for it to be enacted into law before the summer.
The following deaths have occurred in the Leitrim area:

Noel Rooney, Glenwood, Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim

The death has occurred of Noel Rooney, Glenwood, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim on Wednesday, 15th March, 2017, after an illness bravely borne and surrounded by his loving family at University Hospital, Galway. Darling son of Betty and Dominic and beloved brother of Hugo and Eilis. Removal from his family home on Friday to arrive at St Clare's Church, Manorhamilton for Funeral Mass at 1 o'clock followed by cremation at The Lakelands Crematorium, Cavan. Family flowers only please, donations in lieu, if desired, to Cancer Care West, c/o Murphy & Fox Funeral Directors, Manorhamilton. House private on Friday morning please.

Charles Anthony Billings, The Cottage, Kiltycreevagh, Ballinamuck, Co. Longford

The death has occurred of Charles Anthony Billings, The Cottage, Kiltycreevagh, Ballinamuck, Co. Longford and formerly North Strand, Dublin, peacefully, on Wednesday, 15th March, 2017, in the care of the doctors, nurses and staff of St Joseph's Hospital, Longford. Predeased by his wife Teresa and brother David. Charles will be sadly missed by his loving daughter Suzanne and her partner Owen (Ballinalee), grandchildren Cameron and Alexander, brothers Donal and Frances, sister Lynda, brother-in-law, sisters-in-law, cousins, relatives, neighbours and friends. Always in our thoughts, forever in our hearts. May he Rest In Peace. Charles's remains will be reposing in Connell's Funeral Chapel, Church Street, Longford, on Saturday 18th from 6pm until 8pm, with prayers at 7.30pm. Funeral Mass on Sunday 19th at 1pm in St. Mel's Cathedral, Longford, followed by burial in Ballinamuck New Cemetery.

May they rest in peace.
In a few years time, when people may well be wondering why Parliament didnt stop the Government in its reckless pursuit of the most damaging brexit possible, it will be clear who stood up for their rights. As Labour crumbled in farce, Liberal Democrat peers stood firm for the rights of the EU nationals who are are parents, neighbours, partners, co-workers and against the Government. The Lib Dem lords did all they could to prevent the disaster.

Here is Jonny Oates speech when pressing the issue to a vote.

My Lords, I move this Motion for the following reasons. First, despite the large majority that voted for the amendment to the Bill in this House, the Government have failed to make any concessions and not even attempted to address the many issues raised by noble Lords in Committee. Secondly, the profound nature of the issue at stake should make us think very carefully before we concede. This debate is not over some arcane technicality or some petty, partisan disagreement; it is about peoples lives. It is about whether people will be allowed to live in the country that they have made their home with the people for whom they care, whether they can stay in a job or plan a career, and whether their children can remain in the school they know and study with the friends they have made. It is about their futures, their homes and their families, and it is about the fear and misery being caused by every further day of uncertainty.

Thirdly, we should weigh our decision very carefully, because this debate is also about the integrity of our country. It is about whether we will honour the unequivocal commitment made by the official Vote Leave campaign that, if the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, the rights of all EU citizens in the UK would be guaranteed. Unlike most other issues arising from the referendum, there is absolutely no dispute about what was promised to EU citizens. The Vote Leave campaign, which was supported by a number of noble Lords, made the following categorical statement:

There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.

There were no caveats; there was no issue of reciprocity or talk of negotiationsjust a categorical commitment unilaterally given.

Finally, this debate is about the role of this House. Precedent indicates that, when the rights of individuals have been threatened, this House has always been robust in its defence of them. I hope that we will live up to that precedent today. The facts are clear: a firm and explicit commitment was made by the Vote Leave campaign that the rights of EU citizens in the UK would be protected. Parliamentary committees of both Houses agree that a unilateral guarantee should be provided now, and all the bodies representing British citizens in the EU who have contacted me and many other Members of this House have supported that position

It is clear that, if we do not insist on our amendment, there is a real possibility that EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU may not have clarity as to their status for another two years. The House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee rightly described such a situation as unconscionable. I understand the nervousness of some noble Lords about challenging the elected House on this matter, but to those who argue that it is not the right time for us to insist on our amendment, that this Bill is the wrong place for us to insist or that precedent tells us that we should not insist, I respectfully argue the contrary. Your Lordships EU Justice Sub-Committee and the House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee unanimously agreed that the UK should act unilaterally and that the time to act was now. This Bill is the only place to act if we are to end the debilitating uncertainty that is causing so much distress.

The Minister says that we have the right to amend the Bill; we also have a right to insist on our amendments, and precedent tells us that we shouldthat when issues of important principle or individual rights are at stake, your Lordships House can and does insist on its position and, if necessary, repeatedly pushes the issue back to the Commons. It did so on the 2014 Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, and on the 2012 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. It did so no fewer than three times over the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, no fewer than four times over the 2006 Identity Cards Bill and no fewer than five time over the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Bill. It has regularly insisted on amendments to Bills when far less was at stake than today: on the powers of the Learning and Skills Council; or the means by which the chairman of the Legal Services Board is appointed; or even on the fitting of retro-reflective tapewhatever that ison heavy goods vehicles.

How then, when the rights of millions of people are on the line, could this House give up at the first attempt? How, when clear and unequivocal commitments were made to EU citizens in our country, could this House fail to insist that they are upheld? How, when the integrity of our country is at stake, could this House fail to insist that it is upheld? Many people will be watching us tonight: we cannot please them all, but we can show them that no matter what the pressures from the media or the threats from the Government may be, we are prepared to do what we know to be the right thing. I have no doubt that the right thing is to insist on this amendment to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK and, in doing so, to uphold the honour and integrity of this country. I beg to move.
Its Spring and much is stirring as people look cheerfully ahead at prospects new. Every well informed individual in the schools sector though looks ahead with scarcely disguised pessimism.

There is one very obvious reason for this. School funding is scheduled to nose dive. Heads know it,teachers know it and gradually parents are getting to hear about it. Today we have seen a new report published by the Education Policy Institute underlining the same grim statistics that troubled everyone from the National Union of Teachersto the National Audit Office. https://www.nao.org.uk/report/financial-sustainability-in-schools

The message is stark. Rejigging pupil funding on a national formula within a budget falling in real terms by 3 billion spells gloom for all. Nearly every school they suggest will lose and on average that will cost two teachers to primary schools and six to secondary schools. In many places the impacts will be worse.

Tragically the government is in denial but worse still intent on squandering what spare cash it has on pointless exercises in re-introducing selection and setting up free schools where no real need exists.

We are not talking crocodile tears here; we are talking real terms reduction. Money is not a sufficient condition of educational progress but as the impact of the London Challenge shows, it really helps.

As Liberal Democrats in government we did the right thing in ploughing significant resources into the pupil premium and watched the Conservatives reap what limited political benefit resulted from it.

Now we see a Conservative government taking schools in funding terms back to the 90s and in policy terms back to the 50s.

Lets not them get away with it. We need to champion the clear public interest and get home to ordinary voters where all this is heading. Our first chance is the County Council elections this May- our opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with our schools if not outside schools.

The data is all there and ALDC with the help of my office have put together an excellent campaign pack. As campaigners we need single-mindedly in a way parents can easily grasp get home the message that poorly funded schools can only mean poor outcomes. Happy campaigning.

* John Pugh was Liberal Democrat MP for Southport until 2017 and was elected as a Councillor for the Dukes ward of Sefton Borough Council on 2 November 2017.
I am not talking about the court ruling on version two of his travel ban. Neither am I talking about the mounting incredulity over his wiretapping claims and tax returns.

I am talking about an event that took place 3,843 miles away from the White House on the other side of the Atlantic the Dutch general election.

Trumps man was Geert Wilders. The anti-EU, anti-immigration, racist leader of the Netherlands Freedom Party who has bounced in and out of the Dutch courts on hate crime charges.

There was never any question of Wilders winning a majority in parliament and forming the next Dutch government. Their proportional representation system makes that a virtual impossibility for any political party.

However, Wilders Freedom Party was tipped to win more seats than any other Dutch party. He failed, miserably. And he failed with 80 percent voter turnoutup 5.5 percent from the 2012 elections.

The hope of President Trump and his alt-right eminence grise Steve Bannon was that a Wilders victory would be a fresh stiff breeze for the anti-EU, anti-immigration flag hoisted by Britains Brexit referendum on June 23rd.

Look at whats happening in Europe, say the Trump people. They are turning away from liberal values and demanding a return to the homogenous nation state in reaction to the immigrant takeover.

Well, not in the Netherlands. Or, at least, nowhere near a majority. Not only did Wilders fail to achieve the alt-right breakthrough, but the rabidly pro-EU, pro-immigration Green Party jumped from 4 to 19 parliamentary seats.

Led by the 32-year-old curly-haired telegenic Jesse Klavers, the Greens secured the youth vote when their leader told the BBC: We are the opposite of Geert Wilders. He is hate. We are love.

Wilders defeat is also a blow for Marine Le Pen, the right-wing National Front candidate in the two-round April-May French presidential elections. Le Pen has been slipping in the polls as centrist dark horse Emmanuel Macron has moved to just one point behind her. National Front failure to the reach second round voting would be a major setback for Europes far-right and destroy any hopes for Germanys Alternative for Deutschland party in the autumn German elections.

But back to Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. Why are they so opposed to the EU and its apparent liberal attitudes towards world trade, race issues and immigration? Because the failure of the EU and its rejection by the European electorate is justification for Trumps America first policy of walls, deportations, travel bans, aid cutbacks, increased defence spending and tariff barriers. The interdependent hip thigh bone theory of the world is not acknowledged by Trump economists, but it is embraced by his political philosophers.

Next Saturday EU leaders gather in Rome for the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome which established the European Economic Communityforerunner of the European Union. The EEC grew out of the recognition that the only way to end the long history of disastrous European wars was to make member states economically and politically dependent on each other.

For more than half a century it looked as if the founders had succeeded. The continent became the worlds number one trading bloc and delivered peace and prosperity to its members. But it has been downhill since the banking crisis of 2008-2009. There are economic woes in Spain, Italy, Portugal andmost of allGreece; immigration fall-out from a war-torn Middle East and thenworst of allBrexit. All of which has led people to voice the unspeakableCan the EU survive?

The 27 heads of government have been practising their brave face looks for the Roman festivities. Following the Dutch elections their task will be lighteneda bit.

* 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.
A PALLASKENRY farmer who claims that a smear campaign against him hampered his chances to become IFA county chairman has received a public apology from the organisation.

Addressing the associations Limerick meeting, Donal OBrien said that despite running a very clean campaign, he had been informed of a smear campaign against him, which he says did him detrimental damage.

In an effort to set the record straight, Mr OBrien stood in front of around 50 members of the IFA at Adares Woodlands House Hotel, and spoke of the deep hurt which the untrue allegations have caused him and his family.

Im deeply hurt over this campaign, and my wife and family are very hurt over it. Its a sad day when this happens in the IFA, said Mr OBrien at the meeting.

Deputy president of the IFA Richard Kennedy and new county chairman Shay Galvin apologised to Mr OBrien on behalf of the organisation.

Speaking on behalf of the Limerick County Executive, Mr Galvin apologised for these slanderous comments and the smear campaign that was done against you. There was no suggestion that Mr Galvin, who was elected chair last month, had anything to do with the smear campaign.

The new chairman stressed that he had no involvement in the rumours, while Mr OBrien made it clear that there was no ill will between the two men.

Mr OBrien said that he couldnt understand how people could stoop so low to destroy a fellow members character.

I will never know - and for what, to keep me out of the County Executive, when my only motive was to help my fellow farmers, Mr OBrien told the meeting.

According to Mr OBrien, distasteful rumours circulated in the 48 hours before the election surrounding both his personal and professional life.

He alleged that stories about ill-health, which sought to prove that he would not be in a condition to serve as county chairman were circulated, as well as rumours about his personal life and his rumoured involvement in shady deals.

A story which claimed that Mr OBrien had been arrested and jailed was also mentioned at the meeting.

I was never arrested or jailed in my life, he pointed out.

These stories are totally untrue.

I purchased all of my land through auctioneers either by private or public auction and all taxes and funds for the land were declared to revenue.

There are other allegations out there. They are so distasteful that I wont even mention them here tonight, but all I can say is I have received garda vetting and clearance through the various voluntary organisations I am associated with, which I would not have received if there was even a grain of truth in this. I am also certified in child protection, he added.

Mr OBrien went on to say that despite his and his fathers strong association with the IFA, none of his children have any desire to seek membership in the organisation.

Some of you might say, this is only sour grapes - this is not true. I have lost all trust in the IFA and I do not feel wanted or appreciated by the organisation. The campaign finished up being about keeping me out rather than electing a county chairman.

A number of fellow farmers described the rumours against Mr OBrien as disgusting, disgraceful, and shameful, with many vocalising their support for the Pallaskenry man.

It was an issue that went out of control and was appalling from a personal point of view, said one IFA member.

Another said: There are not enough [Donal] OBriens in our organisation, he is one of the only ones who puts his head on the block for his fellow farmer.
ANY more cuts to the post office network in Limerick would mean game over for rural communities, local representatives have warned.

One postmistress has said comments by An Posts top brass over closures are beyond scary.

There are currently 55 post offices across county Limerick, and there are fresh fears some may be axed, after An Post CEO David McRedmond said consolidation of some branches in nearby areas was on the way.

Post offices offer a variety of services on top of regular postal facilities, including cash withdrawals, which are key after AIB closed a number of rural banks in 2011. As well as this, social welfare and pension payments can be collected.

Local Fianna Fail TD Niall Collins said Fine Gael must stop a state company carrying out a swathe of closures, accusing the party of being anti-rural.

Fine Gael councillor Gerry Mitchell, meanwhile, has accused An Post of closing the door on rural Ireland.

Mary OBrien, who runs the Ballylanders post office, said if this was closed, it would be absolutely devastating to the village.

Its the hub of the community. We would have an age profile of a lot of elderly people. We have a community bus which brings them into the daycare centre. Theyre independent, they can come in and do their business with us, she explained.

Mary added that due to the fact the post office in the village offers a cash-withdrwal facility for AIB customers, she enjoys a lot of passing trade.

As part of cost-saving measures, Mr McRedmond has suggested some post offices may be relocated to within other facilities.

But the Ballylanders postmistress feels this is not appropriate, given many people using the post-office facilities want to retain a sense of privacy when conducting their affairs.

Also, people feel obliged to buy something if they go into a shop, which is also a problem, she said.

Donie Carroll, who runs the Hospital post office, added: Weve lost our bank already, and the nearest branch is in Kilmallock. I do a lot of AIB banking here to save people travelling. It will be a disaster for the town [if we close]. The money I give out is spread around to local businesses, shops and butchers. If people have to go somewhere else to get their money, its going to take it out of the town.

The Irish Postmasters Union (IPU) has launched a campaign after Mr McRedmonds comments.

They staged a protest at the GPO this week, while there will be a further rally outside the Dail next month.

The IPUs Limerick spokesperson Seamus OLuing said: It would be game over for some communities. For every euro which goes into the economy from a post office, its circulated six times over.

Also, theres the social aspect of the work which is done. Most postmasters go above and beyond the call of duty to look after customers who have problems with form filling or issues with technology.

Sinn Fein councillor Lisa-Marie Sheehy, who lives in Kilfinane, is to lay down a motion seeking fellow members opposition to any more rural closures.

She said: Post offices are the bread and butter of rural Ireland. They are nearly all thats left in some areas. You have the banks gone, a load of pubs gone, and the garda stations gone in some areas. I really believe if this comes to fruition, it will be the nail in the coffin of rural Ireland.

Cllr Mitchell said: Theyre closing the door on rural Ireland, and theyd want to open it up again. If we want people to live in rural Ireland and have a quality of life, people need facilities.

Mr Collins added: Its no wonder we have a two-tier economy and society, the greater Dublin area versus the rest of the country. What government needs to focus on is generating more business for post offices and making them operate as viable community hubs.
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The Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival has unveiled its 2017 programme.

Entitled Romance and Revolution, this year's event will welcome some of the finest artists to the county from July 29 to August 6.

The festival will include classical chamber music, an evening of jazz improvisation, a dance afternoon at Grimsthorpe Castle, and an evening of regal music narrated by Olivier Award winner Henry Goodman.

The event will also celebrate the bicentenary of Jane Austen's death.

In 2017, festival artistic director Ashley Wass will be joined by newly appointed co-artistic director, the violinist Matthew Trusler.

The festival launches on Saturday, July 29 with a performance celebrating one of the most dynamic young orchestras in the UK. Under the baton of Thomas Carroll, the Orpehus Sinfonia will perform beautiful serenades by Elgar, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.

Festivities continue on Sunday when screen star Henry Goodman takes to the stage with Mary Bevan (soprano) and Anna Tilbrook (piano) in a look at the rich relationship historically between music and the monarchy.

On Monday, July 31, Trio Apaches and Mary Bevan (soprano) mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution with Shostakovich's Blok Songs, a rare performance of Roslavets' Third Trio, plus Rachmaninoff's Trio elegiaque in D minor.

Two thirds of the Trio Apaches, Matthew Trusler and Ashley Wass, return on Tuesday, August 1 for a special concert celebrating their first year as co-artistic directors of the festival, and their respective 40th birthdays. The performance brings together some of the pieces they have most relished performing together during their careers.

From early August, events turn to theme of romance, with a number of concerts celebrating the bicentenary of Jane Austen's death.

On Wednesday, August 2, the Solem Quartet  Thomas Carroll (cello), Anna Tilbrook (piano), Mary Bevan (soprano) and Guy Braunstein (violin)  will perform works Jane Austen knew and loved in a programme affectionately entitled Jane's Jukebox.

Austen celebrations continue on August 5 with a dance afternoon held by the Lincolnshire Regency Society and a performance of Pride and Prejduice Live. Screen legend Hayley Mills will narrate Austen's work in the stunning surroundings of Grimsthorpe Castle, with Carl Davis' score performed by Matthew Trusler (violin) and Ashley Wass (piano).

The festival continues to offer children's concerts this year, with two performances featuring mime artist Les Bubb in collaboration with Trio Apaches on August 1 and 3.

Also on Thursday's programme is an evening of piano improvisation with Harry the Piano.

The following day, the Solem Quartet and Guy Braunstein (violin) present 20th century works as they reach milestone anniversaries, , including Gershwin's Lullaby for String Quartet and Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello.

The festival culminates on August 6 with a performance of Anglo-French music at St Katherine's Church, Lincoln.
Mar 17, 2017, 9 AM

Two 29 stamps issued together in 1993 show a woman signing I love you to her infant, and a hand communicating the same phrase.

The nondenominated (70) 2-ounce-rate stamp honoring Robert Panara, an innovative deaf educator from New York, will be issued April 11.

Prominent teachers of deaf students featured previously on U.S. stamps include Anne Sullivan, shown with her student Helen Keller on a 1980 commemorative, and Thomas H. Gallaudet, honored on a 20 definitive issued in 1993.

By Michael Baadke

Robert Panara, a leading educator who advanced innovative techniques for teaching the deaf, is being honored on a new United States stamp in the Distinguished Americans definitive series.

The nondenominated (70) 2-ounce-rate forever stamp will be issued April 11 in Rochester, N.Y., where Panara taught at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology.

A first-day ceremony, open to the public, will take place at 10 a.m. at the Robert F. Panara Theatre at Lyndon Baines Johnson Hall, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive, in Rochester, on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus.

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The U.S. Postal Service notes that the public can register online to attend the event.

The stamp issuance coincides with the 200th anniversary of the 1817 founding of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Conn., according to the Postal Service.

The Robert Panara stamp will be issued in panes of 20 that are offset-printed by USPS contractor Banknote Corporation of America in Browns Summit, N.C.

The stamp features a photograph of Panara signing the word respect. The photograph was taken by Rochester Institute of Technology alumnus Mark Benjamin, who is the official photographer for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

The stamp inscription Teacher, Pioneer of Deaf Studies is printed in white reading down from the upper-right corner. Robert Panara is printed along the bottom edge.

Though known and honored as a teacher, Robert Panara was a scholar of deaf culture, an interpreter of the arts, and a poet whose collection On His Deafness and Other Melodies Unheard was published in 1997.

Born July 8, 1920, in Bronx, N.Y., Panara lost his hearing at age 10 when he emerged from a 10-day coma brought about by spinal meningitis.

He attended the American School for the Deaf and graduated from Gallaudet College in 1945. He taught English and Drama at Gallaudet for 18 years, and also taught at the New York School for the Deaf, a private nonprofit school also known as Fanwood.

Panara helped to establish the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in 1967 and joined the staff as its first deaf professor, developing the curriculum and founding the English and Theater programs.

He taught classes that brought together hearing and deaf students.

I have been teaching deaf and hearing students in the same class, Panara said during a 1984 workshop at Johnson County Community College in Kansas. I enjoy that challenge. It was my good fortune to be the first deaf teacher to teach both hearing and deaf students together.

I use signs and I fingerspell, talk, act, pantomime  you name it! I think the hearing students enjoy watching a ham like me. Maybe my voice is a little bit different, like it has an accent. But after the first couple of days, the hearing students become used to me.

Panara developed methods of conveying drama and poetry using sign language and expression to interpret the written word more profoundly.

Panaras love of drama and theater made his classes some of the most sought after by both deaf and hearing students, wrote Vienna McGrain of the Rochester Institute of Technologys University News.

Panaras wife Shirley, who was also deaf, died in 2003. Like his father, their son John Panara teaches English at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Robert Panara died July 20, 2014, at age 94.

The new stamp is identified by the Postal Service as the 16th issue in the Distinguished Americans stamp series that began in 2000 with the 10 stamp honoring Gen. Joseph W. Stillwell (Scott 3420).

The first 12 stamps in the series, issued from 2000-09, are small (measuring 0.84 inches by 0.99 inches overall) and feature illustrations created by Canadian artist Mark Summers using the scratchboard technique (Scott 3420-3436).

The last three stamps from this group had color highlights added to Summers monochrome portraits.

In 2011, the Postal Service introduced a larger (1.19 inches by 0.91 inches) horizontal 84 stamp honoring stateswoman Oveta Culp Hobby (Scott 4510), with a full-color illustration by artist Sterling Hundley of Chesterfield, Va.

Though the stamp design was a dramatic departure from the earlier issues, the Postal Service identified the Hobby stamp as the newest issue in the continuing Distinguished Americans series.

It was followed in 2012 by a nondenominated (45) forever stamp honoring actor Jose Ferrer, with a similar design but prepared with the design elements arranged vertically (Scott 4666).

Most recently, a 70 vertical stamp honoring aviator C. Alfred Chief Anderson was issued in 2014 (Scott 4879).

The design of the Panara stamp takes another new turn, as it features a full photograph rather than the nearly square color illustrations featured as the vignette for the previous three stamps.

The Panara stamp is only the most recent U.S. issue to highlight deaf awareness and to honor a deaf teacher.

Anne Sullivan, who suffered hearing loss herself, was honored on a 15 commemorative stamp in 1980 with her famous student, Helen Keller (Scott 1824).

Thomas H. Gallaudet, a pioneer in education for the deaf, founded the American School for the Deaf, where Robert Panara learned to use sign language. Gallaudet is honored on a 20 definitive stamp issued in 1983 (Scott 1861).

Gallaudet University, where Panara later studied and taught, was founded by Edward M. Gallaudet, the son of Thomas H. Gallaudet.

Among numerous deaf or partially deaf individuals previously honored on U.S. stamps are Thomas Edison, first honored on a 3 stamp issued in 1947 (Scott 945); and anthropologist Ruth Benedict, on a 46 stamp from 1995 (2938).

Linns U.S. Stamp Notes columnist John M. Hotchner wrote about deafness as a U.S. stamp subject in Linns issues of Jan. 19, 2015, and June 13, 2016.

A se-tenant pair of 29 stamps captioned Recognizing Deafness and American Sign Language was issued in 1993 (Scott 2783-2784), with designs showing a mother signing I love you to her infant, and a hand signing the same phrase.

Technical details and first-day cancel ordering information for the Robert Panara stamp can be found below.

Nondenominated (70) 2-ounce-rate Robert Panara forever stamp

FIRST DAY April 11, 2017; city Rochester, N.Y., and nationwide.

DESIGN: photographer Mark Benjamin; designer, art director and typographer Ethel Kessler; modelers Sandra Lane and Michelle Finn; series Distinguished Americans.

PRINTING: process offset with microprinting; printer and processor Banknote Corporation of America, Browns Summit, N.C.; press Alprinta 74; inks cyan, magenta, yellow, black; paper overall phosphor tagged; gum self-adhesive; issue quantity 25 million stamps; format pane of 20, from 240-subject cylinders; size 0.77 inches by 1.05 inches (image); 0.91 inches by 1.19 inches (overall); 6.11 inches by 6.23 inches (full pane); plate numbers B followed by four single digits; marginal markings  plate numbers in two corners (stamp side); 2016 USPS, pane position diagram, USPS logo, bar code 114000 in two corners, promotional text (back side); USPS item No. 114004.

First-day cancel ordering information

Standard ordering instructions apply. Collectors requesting first-day cancels are encouraged to purchase their own stamps and affix them to envelopes. The first-day cover envelopes should be addressed for return (a removable label may be used), and mailed in a larger envelope addressed to FDOI-Robert Panara Stamp, USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services, 8300 NE Underground Drive, Suite 300, Kansas City, MO 64144-9900.

Requests for first-day cancels must be postmarked by June 11.

The Postal Services uncacheted Robert Panara first-day cover is item 114016 at $1.14. USPS item numbers for stamps and FDCs also appear in Linns 2017 U.S. Stamp Program.
May 4, 2021, 2 AM

Stamp Market Tips  By Henry Gitner and Rick Miller

British East Africa lay in the African Great Lakes area of the Rift Valley. British missionaries and tradesman arrived in the area in the 1840s.

The Imperial British East Africa Co. was chartered in 1888 and given administration of the territory. In 1890, Uganda was amalgamated to it. On July 1, 1895, the British government assumed control, and it became the British East Africa Protectorate. In 1920, the name was changed to the East Africa and Uganda Protectorate.

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After World War I, Great Britain received the part of German Africa known as Tanganyika as a League of Nations mandate. Tanganyika became independent in 1961. In 1964, it united with the former British protectorate of Zanzibar to become Tanzania. Uganda and Kenya became independent in 1962 and 1963, respectively.

On May 4, 2006, Kenya issued four Fish of Lake Tanganyika stamps denominated 25 shillings, 55sh, 75sh, and 95sh (Scott 789-792). These stamps were not widely marketed outside of Kenya. A postage rate change set the basic letter rate at 25sh. At that time, the Elephant Snout Fish stamp (Scott 789) was the only stamp available denominated 25sh. It sold out quickly, and almost all of the stamps were used for postage.

The 2017 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue lists the set of four stamps but does not value them because of lack of market activity. The Scott catalog also indicates that the 25sh and 95sh stamps are only known in used condition.

If you come across any of the stamps from this set in used condition or mint never-hinged condition at reasonable prices, they would be a good buy. If you come across one of the 25sh stamps in mint never-hinged condition it would be a real find.
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Richard Pena: World cinemas high priest Richard Pea has shaped the discourse around cinema for three decades. We caught up with him in Mumbai /how-to-lounge/movies-tv/richard-pena-world-cinema-s-high-priest-111646891586962.html 111646891586962 story

In 2012, Richard Pena stepped down as head of the New York Film Festival (NYFF). He had been the chairman of its selection committee for almost 25 years, taking over from Richard Roud in 1988, and championed key works by directors like Jia Zhangke and Olivier Assayas. Equally important was his long stint as programme director of New Yorks Film Society of Lincoln Center. By organizing retrospectives and becoming an early promoter of directors largely unknown to US audiencesincluding heavyweights such as Abbas Kiarostami, Pedro Almodovar and Hou Hsiao-hsienPena helped shape the critical discourse around cinema in the US and around the world.

Pena, whos of Spanish and Puerto Rican descent, was in Mumbai last week for A Panorama of Latin American Cinema", a lecture series organized by the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum and Columbia Global Center. The talks he gave before each screening offered a glimpse of his formidable knowledge of, and palpable enthusiasm for, cinema. His evocation of Latin American culture, history and politics made for an uncommonly rich viewing experience; for instance, his clarification that the word entranced" in Glauber Rochas Entranced Earth indicates violent convulsion, not a dream-like state, completely altered ones understanding of the film.

We caught up with Pena between screenings and asked him about his curatorial career and the state of cinephilia. Edited excerpts from the interview:

You discussed how the idea of Third Cinemaa developing world cinema proposed as an alternative to the dominant US-Euro-centric cinemagained traction in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Do you think this is valid any more?

The whole idea of film industries has come under such a challenge because, with digital production, there are so many mini-cinemas out there. I think the idea in Latin America at the time, certainly in Brazil, was to create this very strident national cinema that would turn its back on Hollywood. No one actually believes that can happen, or that its even necessary nowadays, because now you can make your films without that.

I dont think that Third Cinema ever really happened, nor will it happen. There was a moment when there was going to be this alternative cinemathe 1960s were a very heady timebut it didnt pan out.

Of the many directors and national cinemas you promoted, were there any you were particularly proud to bring to wider notice?

I was very proud of my association with Abbas Kiarostami. When we took a chance on him, he was really unknown. Jia Zhangke, the great Chinese director, was another person we really brought along. Then there were the non-Asian directorsOlivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Catherine Breillat. I sometimes say its like playing the stock market: You buy stock, and you see if it grows.

Any stock that grew more than youd have expected?

I was amazed how high and fast Iranian cinema grew. In 1991-92, when we began to show it, it was really unknownno one had any idea Iran made movies, let alone that they were very good. And then, by 1997, there were five Iranian films that were released commercially in New York City. That year at NYFF, we sold out the Iranian screenings very quickly. Seeing that happen was very gratifying.

Has the nature of cinephilia changed in the last few years, from being something you share with other people to something you acquire on your own?

I think it has. Jonathan Rosenbaum and others have written about this. Earlier, people came together to see films because they wanted to see what the films were about. Now, theres a certain kind of cinephilia thats more like collectingpeople dont have a real commitment to what theyre seeing. Ive seen 88 of the 115 Jess Franco movies"so, who cares? But some people care a lot.

Bhau Daji Lad Museum is one of the few places in Mumbai that hosts discussion-led screenings. Theres no dedicated repertory house in the city. Do many of these still exist in the US?

Not any more. Most of the action has been taken over by non-profits like the Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Film Forum, and by home video. There used to be dozens of houses in New York. Boston, where I lived, had a great repertory scene; now theres only oneThe Brattle Theatre.

As you alluded, I think were going through a transition from collective viewing to individual viewing. I dont think thats a good development. There was something in the nature of cinema that created a collectivity, and I think that was a really interesting and important part of the cinematic experience.

Are there any new national cinemas youre watching keenly?

There hasnt been a national cinema thats really risen for me in the last few years. I guess I was lucky to have seen the Iranians, the new Argentine cinema, South Korea. Israel has some wonderful film-makers, so does Palestine. But I dont think there has been another meteor.

Latin America continues to be good. After about 1975-76, it became less interesting for me. Then, around 2000, a wave of films started coming from Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile. Curiously, Brazil hasnt been part of this wave, maybe because television is so strong there.
Palette palace Rashtrapati Bhavan had its first foreign artist-in-residence in Bangaladesh's Shahabuddin Ahmed /news/talking-point/palette-palace-111646891821028.html 111646891821028 story

Spread across 330 acres, Rashtrapati Bhavan is one of the largest presidential estates in the world. For the last few years, a section of it has been transformed into an artists studio. Since 2013, when President Pranab Mukherjee announced two in-residence programmes for writers and artists, Rashtrapati Bhavan has played host to senior artists like Jogen Chowdhary, Paresh Maity and Jayasri Burman.

On 18 February, Bangladesh-born Shahabuddin Ahmed became the first foreign artist-in-residence. Mukherjee had seen his paintings at an exhibition at the Ganges Art Gallery in Kolkata in 2015.

The idea (behind the programmes) was to enable the creative mind to soak in the environment and be spurred by it," says Venu Rajamony, press secretary, Rashtrapati Bhavan. There is no pressure on the artists to create new works while they are there. The residency is not measured by any performance," explains Rajamony. So, if Maity painted up a storm during his time there, Ahmed simply soaked in the natural environs in February.

Freedom-II.

Ahmed used to be a Mukti Joddha, a platoon commander who, at the age of 21, fought in the war for the liberation of Bangladesh. On 16 December 1971, he hoisted the Bangladesh flag on the Dhaka Radio office (then, Pakistan Radio). However, rather than working on the theme of pain and suffering caused by war, as one might expect, Paris-based Ahmed chooses to paint the colours of liberation and peace. The images of jubilation following the liberation of Bangladesh are still fresh in his memory. Which is why, he says, his visual language is optimistic, not morbid.

One day, I wish that there would be no frontiers within the Indian subcontinent, just like there are none in Europe, especially since the ideas of non-violence and peace started with us," he says. Images of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman recur in his workssome of them were displayed at Rashtrapati Bhavan towards the end of his five-day residency.
Fuchsia Dunlop: Its bad luck that Chinese cuisine is labelled cheap Award-winning food writer Fuchsia Dunlop on the nuances of stir-fries, duck's tongue, and why one of the world's most popular cuisines is also the most misunderstood /news/talking-point/fuchsia-dunlop-it-s-bad-luck-that-chinese-cuisine-is-labelled-cheap-111646892098383.html 111646892098383 story

It is an uncomfortably warm day in the seaside town of Galle, Sri Lanka, when I first meet Fuchsia Dunlop, the award-winning British food writer and chef who has spent more than two decades specializing in Chinese cuisine. She has just spent the afternoon in the kitchen at the heritage Amangalla Hotel, slicing, dicing and prepping ingredients for a literary lunch" that she will be hostingand cookingthe next day (Dunlop was visiting Sri Lanka earlier this year as one of the guest speakers at the annual Fairway Galle Literary Festival).

While I await my turn, I watch her being interviewed by a television crew. It is a familiar story that she must have repeated scores of times over the yearsof how a tryst with China in her 20s led to an obsession with Chinese cuisine, a professional chefs qualification in Sichuan cooking and a successful career as a food writer and cookbook author. But there is nothing jaded about her response: She answers questions, even predictable ones, with the same energy and enthusiasm that underlines both her writing and her observations of China, the country that she has intermittently called home since the late 1990s.

Dunlops most recent cookbook, Land Of Fish And Rice: Recipes From The Culinary Heart Of China, was published in 2016 (by WW Norton & Co.). The cookbook, which focuses broadly on the cuisine of the Lower Yangtze or Shanghai region, has already stacked up numerous accolades, both in her native Britain and in the US, adding to a crowded shelf of honours. Her six bookscookbooks and a memoirand newspaper articles have won four prestigious James Beard awards, and she has been nominated for four more. In 2006, she was named Food Journalist of the Year by the British Guild of Food Writers. Land Of Fish And Rice won the 2016 Andre Simon Food Book Award in the UK.

But defining Dunlops career by awards would be incomplete acknowledgement of her achievements. She is often called the foremost Western scholar of Chinese gastronomy and, although this definition comes close, it still seems lacking. Dunlops singular contribution has been to offer the world a nuanced understandingand appreciationof a popular yet misunderstood cuisine.

Through her books, Dunlop has challenged the most pervasive stereotypes about Chinese cuisineas greasy spoon fare lacking finesse or as a sort of hinterland where everything is edible and the rules of civilized eating are turned on their head. Some of the most memorable passages in Sharks Fin And Sichuan Pepper, her memoir of the time she spent training as a chef in Chengdu and the subsequent years, dwell on the artistry and attention to detail that mark the Chinese approach to cooking.

...the Chinese make minute distinctions between different shapes into which ingredients may be cut, different combinations of tastes, and different kinds of braising and stir-frying," she writes. The basic word chao, for example, means stir-fry, but if you want to be really precise, you should specify whether you mean hua chao (slippery stir-fry), bao chao (explode stir-fry), xiao chao (small, simple stir-fry)...shu chao (cooked stir-fry) or sha chao (sand stir-fry). And those are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head."

Despite this depth and variety, I ask her why Chinese cuisine has seldom been regarded with the same reverence as other food cultures, such as Japanese, for instance. Its partly that Chinese cuisine has the bad luck of being labelled as something cheap," she says, with more than a hint of indignation in her voice. (Thats) because a lot of the early Chinese immigrants opened cheap Chinese takeaways. Also, I think that Chinese food is widespread but there arent that many skilled chefs."

Fuchsia Dunlops dish Squirrel Fish In Sweet And Sour Sauce at the Fairway Galle Literary Festival.

Dunlops own journey to becoming a chef was especially remarkable. She was the first foreigner to be accepted into the elite Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in Chengduand if that didnt make her conspicuous enough, she was one of the only two women in class. In addition, she has found herself in the unique position of confronting stereotypes that exist on both sides of the cultural divide that she straddles.

Perhaps the most reductive of prejudices is the one against the slimy, gritty, gloopy, offal-heavy textures of Chinese cuisine. As an insider who has long embraced this landscape of textures and smells, Dunlop says it is all about perspective. The Chinese have a very refined appreciation of mouthfeel," she says. Far from being turned off by the gristle of cartilage, the rubbery resistance of ducks tongue or chicken feet or the sliminess of snake meatthe challenging textures that Dunlops father calls the grapple factor"Chinese cuisine celebrates it.

On the other hand, the Chinese struggle to appreciate desserts or dairy productsboth absent from their traditional cuisine. Dunlop recalls taking a group of young chefs from Chengdu to Thomas Kellers celebrated French Laundry in Yountville, Californiaand the disappointment that ensued. I was very excited because it was their first introduction to Western food," she says. But the meal rapidly proved to be a disaster. They thought the dairy products were disgusting, and that only barbarians eat uncooked food. And there were a series of sweet courses that they had no interest in."

For more than two decades, Dunlops curiosity has been held by a cuisine that she says she can spend several lifetimes studying". As part of her resolve to wholeheartedly embrace it, Dunlop has ventured into the fringes of Chinese gastronomy, trying everything from sharks fin and snake blood to turtles and muntjac deer. By the end of her memoir, she confesses to having a crisis of consciencetorn between her open-minded omnivorousness and the ethical (and environmental) cost at which it comes. How does she negotiate this delicate balancing act?

I have had a policy of trying everything and, culturally, Im willing to eat anything," she says. But ethically, I dont want to eat trafficked, endangered species. I think its a very complicated area. Where do you draw the line? Some things are very clear cut, like sharks fin. But are you only going to eat free-range chicken?"

Its a perplexing question, but one that gives me a renewed appreciation for the curiosity and empathy that marks Dunlops explorations. Her latest cookbook, for instance, was inspired by a visit to Dragon Well Manor, a restaurant in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province. In a food landscape tainted by widespread adulteration and hazardous pollution, the restaurant is pioneering a return to the grass roots by following the farm-to-table concept and honouring local recipes from the Yangtze region. The restaurant has given Dunlop a reason to be hopeful. I dont know many people who have the level of commitment of the amazing man who runs the Dragon Manor," she says. There are now a few more organic farms, and I hope that it inspires other people to invest in similar ventures."

Even though Dunlop has written about an exhaustion with her peripatetic lifestyle", there is no doubt that China still holds her in thrall. She speaks of the absurd lengths she has gone to bring back pieces of China to adorn her home in London. She tells the story of how she once hauled back a long pot, a teapot with a long spout that is used in Chinese teahouses. It was fragile and it wouldnt fit anywhere, so I was holding it in my hand on the plane," she says, laughing. The stewardess offered to keep it safe for me, so she walked down the aisle with it. And all I could hear was a Mexican wave of laughs."
In Your City | Benares comes to Bengaluru Next month, Atul Kochhar will host a three-night pop-up at the Ritz-Carlton /news/talking-point/in-your-city-benares-comes-to-bengaluru-111646891573019.html 111646891573019 story

I think I should walk before I run," Atul Kochhar laughs when I ask him, a trifle hopefully, if he is testing the waters for a future opening in Bengaluru. The enigmatic answer only serves to heighten the anticipation around the chefs first-ever pop-up in India. Spread over three nights in April, the event will present tasting menus from Kochhars restaurants NRI (Not Really Indian) and Lima, both in Mumbai, and the Michelin-starred Benares in London.

Its true Ive never promoted Benares in India but, here in London, we conduct Chef Seasons throughout the year, as part of which leading chefs from the UK and around the world (specializing in non-Indian cuisines) come and create fusion menus with me," says Kochhar, in a Skype chat. It gives diners a break and allows the visiting chef to promote his product."

Products, in this case, as Kochhar showcases an assortment of South American dishes from Lima (the ceviche, the churrasco and the tres leche are the highlights) and Indian diaspora cuisine from NRI (expect a jerk-spiced chicken, lamb chops in a Malaysian marinade and a bunny chow main course). The hot ticket, though, is undoubtedly a seat at the Benares table, where Kochhar expects to serve a five-spice pickled prawn, a tandoori chicken tikka pie, chargrilled Scottish salmon, Cornish crab croquette and a roasted rump of English lamb, finishing off with a rhubarb bhapa doi.

This is my way of giving back to the country that has given me so much," says Kochhar, who studied hotel management in Chennai and worked with the Oberoi group before moving to the UK. Ive lived away from India for 23 years now and, with the restaurants and now this venture, Im looking to engage ever more deeply with India."

To that end, Kochhar has been shopping around for a while for collaborations. The Ritz-Carlton tipped the scales on two counts: Besides its executive chef Anupam Banerjees long personal association with Kochhar, the hotels F&B division has, in the past, invited chefs such as Vivek Singh of The Cinnamon Club, London, to dish up their skills. Bengalurus dining elite couldnt be happier.

The Atul Kochhar Experiential. Lima on 7 April, Rs4,000 per person; NRI on 8 April, Rs4,000; Benares on 9 April, Rs4,500; and a seat at the interactive kitchen bar, Rs5,200. Private dining (for four), Rs20,000. All prices exclusive of taxes. At The Ritz-Carlton, 99, Residency Road, Bengaluru. For details, call 080-49148000 or email Vaishnavi.Karthikeyan@ritzcarlton.com. Seating capped at 45 for each dinner.
Bringing Dogri to Delhi The curator of a food festival that introduced the low-key cuisine to the Capital shares secrets of 'kalari', 'dhungar' and 'madira' /news/talking-point/bringing-dogri-to-delhi-111646891978356.html 111646891978356 story

We must introduce Delhi to kalari. It is an absolute favourite of mine," said restaurateur Rohit Khattar.

Kalari is the traditional cheese of the nomadic Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes of Jammu and Kashmir. Come November, when the Kashmir Valley begins to brace itself for the unforgiving winter ahead, herdsmen descend to the warmer climes of Jammu. In their wake, the markets of Udhampur heave under snowy mounds of kalari, handcrafted from the rich milk of the tribes herds of cows and goats.

This ephemeral and limited-quantity treat forms a very special cultural and socio-economic link between the two parts of the state. Cooked in its own fat till it forms a golden-brown crust, the mozzarella-like, stringy, slightly sour cheese is packed between soft buns with lashings of sweet and spicy chutneys and served on the streets of Jammu as the popular kalari kulcha.

Would we be able to procure enough to feed Delhi?

A Kashmiri who knows his food intimately, Khattar was dismissive of such concerns as I curated a menu of Dogri heirloom recipes for Chor Bizarre, his restaurant in Delhi, in February. Our food trials began with a raid on Khattars personal stock of kalari. Once the chefs had mastered the art of frying this very temperamental cheese, the restaurants procurement team tracked down a supplier in Jammu, who agreed to send us fresh batches of kalari.

The team also sourced for us rajma (red kidney beans), small but full of flavour and colour, vibrant anardana (pomegranate seeds), long-grained basmatiall elements integral to Dogri foodin sync with the recipes I had retrieved from Jammu and Kashmir homes known to keep a good table. It is my firm belief that old families, with their collection of time-tested dishes, are the greatest repositories of a regions food heritage. Tap into their food legacy and you have a memorable meal on your hands.

With Jammu as their cradle, the predominantly Hindu Dogra community traces its roots back to the Aryans and is best known for its valour and warmth, as also the lilting Dogri language. Lost amidst the clamour around Kashmiri food, Dogri fare is often dismissed as simplistic and homely cuisine. It is unpretentious food, Ill give you that, but heartwarming in its depth of flavour and taste. My enthusiasm for this cuisine also stems from my Dogri mother, who made sure that her family recipe for raiwala kaddu (pumpkin with mustard) always found a place for itself on a largely Awadhi menu at my parents dinner parties. The sharp mustard and the smoked curd in this dish define Jammus food for me.

It is the flavour of smoke, in fact, that distinguishes many a Dogri dish: Dhungar, or smoking, is an intrinsic technique of their kitchens. Whether its the ambal, a sweet and sour mix of the humble pumpkin, or khatta (sour) meatthe most popular non-vegetarian preparation from the region, the unforgettable result of the alchemy between anardana and muttonthe infusion of smoke with hot charcoal gives these recipes that final umami lift of flavour.

When it comes to street food, the kalari kulcha finds stiff competition in the very sassy kachalu ki chaat, found in most of Jammus markets. The kachalu, a tuber very close in texture to a yam, with a hint of sweetness, is macerated in a sharp and tangy dressing of tamarind, rock salt, carom seeds, green chillies and mint. Bowls full of this tart treat are mixed with boiled rongi (black-eyed peas) and served as a filling snack. For ladies who lunch, the kachalu ki chaat was the favoured starter during the week-long festival.

The black-eyed peas in the chaat are an indicator of the large role played by rich, warming lentils like rajma and sabut urad (black gram) on the Dogri plate. In Jammu, the black grains of the hardy urad are slow-cooked with dollops of desi ghee till they break down, and then mixed with cooling yogurt and fistfuls of dry fruits to transform into the luscious maa ki dal ka madira. Interestingly, the dish also crops up in the Kangra belt of Himachal Pradeshclose to the Jammu region geographicallywhere, besides urad, madira is also made out of chickpeas.

It is essential to recognize the subtleties that set apart Dogri cuisine from the food of other (north Indian) states. One must maintain the integrity of regional cuisine to preserve it," says Jyotsna Singh, director of the Dara Shikoh Centre for the Arts in Kashmir and a member of the erstwhile Dogra dynasty of Jammu and Kashmir.

I couldnt agree more. Initially, while planning the menu, I was nervous about how the madira would go down with the calorie-conscious diner. Later, assessing the number of bowls of this sinful dal ordered during the festival served to reaffirm my belief that taste buds always triumph over reason. Given the chance, it could very well give the ever popular dal makhani a run for its money.

But theres more protein goodness in Jammu than the madira. The rajma from the Poonch or Bhaderwah region in the state is coveted for the richness in colour and taste. Its stewed into a thick curry, redolent with spices, and spiked with tamarind paste to befit its name, khatte rajma. Finally, the cooked beans are smoked, to transform into a rajma unlike one ever tasted before. Diners expecting just another plate of rajma chawal were more than pleasantly surprised at the play of flavours in this dish at Chor Bizarre.

Interestingly, while Kashmiri cuisine is dominated by an immense variety of red meat preparations, Jammus menu is largely vegetarian. A staple amongst Dogri households is the leafy green kadam ka saag (kohlrabi), which is made into a fragrant broth with dry ginger and powdered fennel and eaten with boiled rice. Even though this is not a typical restaurant dish, I was keen to feature an everyday staple from a Dogri table on the list of 10 curated dishes (though, perhaps not surprisingly, it didnt top the popularity charts!).

In Jammu, mustard greens are eaten with makki ka thodas, thick rough, ghee-smothered rotis made out of coarsely ground maize, which grows abundantly in the region. This simplicity of flavours marks the cuisine of the region, which relies heavily on indigenous wholegrains and seasonal vegetables.

Meetha chawal

Tartness, too, is a recurring note in Dogri food. Singh, who grew up in a Dogri household, explains: We have a penchant for using souring agents like tamarind and anardana." The dual notes of sweet and sour, too, are a common refrain, peaking in a variety of pickles and chutneys like galgal ka achaar, made with fragrant mountain lemons, kutra, where raw mangoes are desiccated and mixed with spices, a punchy anardana chutney and even the kadam, which is pickled with mustard and chillies into a delicious condiment.

While the world may be waking up to fermentation in food, the Dogras are ancient experts at this technique, using it to make spongy khameera and thothrus, breads to soak up all the sweet and sour goodness of their curries. The khatta meat with the khameera was a winning partnership during the week-long festival at Bikaner House, where Khattar has located the second outpost of his Indian restaurant (the first one is on Asaf Ali Road, also in New Delhi).

Celebrations in Dogri households are incomplete without the fragrant meetha chawal, sweetened with jaggery and accentuated by saffron. Deep-fried gheur, made out of a batter of fermented refined flour, is served on ceremonial occasions with curd and a sprinkling of sugar. Malpuyas drunk on sugar syrup, flaky patisas and chaklate, dense burfis that look like blocks of rich chocolate...the cup runneth over. The meetha chawal, which featured on my menu, was based on a family recipe shared by Singh.

Much of the food trial and tasting, in fact, was guided by tips from home cooks with an eye for detail. For instance, we learnt to lightly roast the anardana to introduce the right colour and tartness in the khatta meat, hunted down the right buns to accompany the kalari, and practised with the dhungar till the dishes acquired just the perfect smokiness.

For all the low-key nature of the cuisine, the festival was completely sold out. Proving yet again that with thoughtfully sourced local produce, time-tested recipes and cooking techniques, flavour trumps all.



Pomegranate seeds are used liberally in Dogri cuisine. Photo: iStockphoto

Khatte Rajma

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1kg rajma

100g tamarind

4tbsp plus 1tbsp ghee

1 tsp carom seeds

2 bay leaves

200g onion

25g ginger

25g garlic

2 tomatoes, made into a paste

Salt, to taste

Red chilli powder, to taste

5 cloves

2 black cardamom

1 inch cinnamon

1 tsp white cumin

Medium piece of charcoal

1 tsp mustard oil

Method

Soak the rajma for 7-8 hours.

Take the tamarind and soak in a glass of hot water for an hour. Strain out the seeds and reserve the pulp. Make a paste of the onion, ginger and garlic.

Cook the rajma in a pressure cooker until soft.

In a pan, heat 3-4 tbsp ghee and add carom seeds, bay leaves and the onion paste. When this mixture starts browning, add the tomato paste, salt and red chilli powder.

When the tomato is well cooked and begins to leave oil on the sides of the mixture, add the tamarind.

Now add the boiled rajma to this mixture and cook till the gravy thickens.

Temper the rajma with cloves, black cardamom, cinnamon and cumin sauteed in the rest of the ghee.

The final step is the dhungar. Take a piece of charcoal and heat it till it turns red. Put it on a piece of onion skin right on top of the rajma. Add mustard oil and trap the smoke in the dish by tightly covering with a lid for 10 minutes.
Power, prejudice and Curzon Like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Curzon too ruled India with self-appointed purpose. That it was the wrong purpose altogether is another matter, but his conviction was unparalleled /news/talking-point/power-prejudice-and-curzon-111646892161707.html 111646892161707 story

Narendra Modi, who looms larger than ever in fashioning a Congress-mukt Bharat, might be interested to learn that the last person to envision such a universe was a staid white man from an island called Britain. While for Modi it is dramatic electoral victories that pave the way, it was the factional feud between the moderates and extremists in 1900 that the viceroy, Lord Curzon, hoped would extinguish the Congress in his time. He didnt make Modi-style speeches but, writing to superiors in London, expounded his belief that Congress is tottering to its fall", adding how one of my great ambitions while in India is to assist it to a peaceful demise". He spent six years investing precisely in this ambition, only to withdraw frustratedthe Congress took a deep breath and resurrected the freedom struggle. Today, deep inhalations wont suffice. And thanks to Modi, the drowning gasps of the Congress may well be offering dear old Curzon belated graveyard consolations.

Like our resolute Prime Minister, Curzon too ruled India with self-appointed purpose. That it was the wrong purpose altogether is another matter, but his conviction was unparalleled. He always had a sense of his importance, and made every effort to flaunt it. At Oxford, his peers came up with the doggerel: My name is George Nathaniel Curzon/I am a most superior person/My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek/I dine at Blenheim (Palace) once a week. It didnt help that he also had that disagreeable habit of passing judgement everywhere he went. On a trip to Canada, he sniffed how there were few well-bred passengers on board, and the social status of the remainder is indicated by the aristocratic names they bearTulk, Tottle, and Thistle". As it happened, he married a blacksmiths descendant called Leiter, a match not too repulsive after the little matter of a not-too-little dowry was discussed.

It was India, though, that made Curzonand unexpectedly so. From nobodies," his American wife exclaimed, we have jumped into grandeur." Only 39 when he was propelled into his civilizing" viceregal mission, Curzon couldnt stand the demands of the native" elite for a share of power and a fraction of respect. The princes he dismissed as a set of unruly and ignorant and rather undisciplined schoolboys", while the Congress was a microscopic minority" of jobless lawyers, completely divorced from realitya sentiment with which many might relate today. You can as little judge of the feelings...of the people of India from the plans and proposals of the Congress party as you can judge of the physical configuration of a country which is wrapped in the mists of early morning, but a few of whose topmost peaks have been touched by the rising sun." This Curzon declared before he ever set eyes on a Congressman.

He did, however, show empathy for ordinary people, partly because in those days, ordinary people didnt ask inconvenient questions. When British soldiers raped a Burmese woman, he was horrified by the conspiracy to protect themthe entire regiment was expelled to Aden, the worst spot I could find". When a planter flogged his Indian servant to death and escaped a harsh sentence, Curzon appealed for real punishment. I will not," he wrote, be party to any scandalous hushings up of bad casesor to the theory that a white man may kick or batter a black man to death with impunity because he is only a damned nigger". The English, he argued, must set an example in India by their superior standards of honour and virtue". While he personally went about setting examples, other Englishmen continued to kick Indians, calling Curzon a nigger-lover".

Good intentions aside, Curzon was also the kind of man who centralized power and reigned over mountains of paper. The Government of India," he mourned familiarly, is a mighty and miraculous machine for doing nothing." His solution, though, was not to empower Indians, but to pile up more on his own imperial plateon one occasion, the viceroy himself set out to catch a chicken-thief when accounts did not add up in the stately kitchens of what is now Rashtrapati Bhavan. He couldnt quite understand why the Indian education systemof his own peoples designwas so focused on manufacturing a rush of immature striplings" interested not to learn but to earn". He made attempts to develop a research-oriented university system and emphasize technical education, though in implementing these wonderful ideas he again forgot to involve those brown people for whose benefit they were intended in the first place.

What most offended everybody, however, was Curzons notorious partition of Bengal. He had already carved the North-West Frontier Province out of Punjab, and had plans for Berar, Orissa, and other provinces as well. As the cradle of Indian nationalism, however, Bengal was unique. Despite mastering the principle of divide et impera, London warned Curzon not to proceed because the severance of old and historic ties and the breaking up of racial unity" would backfire on the Raj. But he went ahead anywayand lived to regret it. The partition, to begin with, settled the internal doldrums of the Congress, rallying all factions against this single cause. Curzon, who in 1904 began a second term, was recalled within 12 months into a future with no more spectacular prospects. By the time of his death this month 92 years ago, he was reduced to complaining how not enough people were visiting to check on his welfare. I must be entirely forgotten," he lamented, or have no friends left." Both were partially true.

There is, however, one thing for which Curzon deserves lasting credit: his genuine interest in preserving Indias monuments, a responsibility scandalously neglected" till then. When some complained that he was protecting pagan" structures, he reminded them that as sheer manifestations of human genius, to him the rock temple of the Brahmin stands precisely on the same footing as the Buddhist Vihara and the Mohammedan Masjid as the Christian Cathedral". Personally touring swathes of land, climbing up hills and down ruins, Curzon ensured that the Archaeological Survey of India began to do its job. And for all his prejudices, this one contribution was enough for Nehru, no great admirer of friendless, resentful Curzon, to later remark: After every other Viceroy has been forgotten, Curzon will be remembered because he restored all that was beautiful in India." That, one hopes, would give Curzon some more gratification than reports of the Congress imminent demise.

Medium Rare is a weekly column on society, politics and history. Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne: Chronicles Of The House Of Travancore.
In Tokyo Trial, Irrfan Khan watches the watchmen Were Japanese atrocities during World War II punishable by law? 'Tokyo Trial' considers both sides /news/talking-point/in-tokyo-trial-irrfan-khan-watches-the-watchmen-111646891719905.html 111646891719905 story

One Bengali equals a poet," goes an old (and excellent) joke. Two Bengalis equal a film society, three Bengalis equal a political party, and four Bengalis are two political parties." This is some admittedly accurate stereotyping, neatly capturing what the writer Patrick French, lauding the joke in his India: A Portrait, described as the artistic and disputatious Bengali". I venture that the coming together of five Bengalis would result in a Durga Pujo committee, and a more chaotic organization I do not believe can exist.

A committee, by its very nature, is counterproductive, the kind of thing thataccording to another hoary old chestnutleads to humpbacked horses. Tokyo Trial brings to our attention a vital moment in history where several men sat around a table so that justice could be meted outby justices. As we saw in Sidney Lumets immortal film about an indecisive jury, 12 Angry Men, absolute consensus is an impossibility. And here is a tribunal set up after World War II, made up of 12 of the finest and most respectable judges in the world. These are all men used to having the final word. There is, quite simply, no room for anger. Which isnt to say it wont rear its head.

Tokyo Triala co-production by NKH (the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation), FATT of the Netherlands and Don Carmody Television of Canada, and streaming now on Netflixis a deeply engrossing four-part miniseries that, fairly and compellingly, puts forth the arguments for and against punishment of war crimes. Twenty-eight Japanese leaders were put on trial by supreme commander Douglas MacArthurs tribunal, and over a thousand days passed in the deliberations about their punishment. The atrocities committed by the Japanese defendantswhich included the attack on Pearl Harborwere indeed inhuman, and yet, at the time they were carried out, these acts of aggression were a part of war. Charging these men for crimes" which were, for all intents and purposes, legal at the time they were carried out, is therefore not straightforward on any count.

Irrfan Khan plays Radhabinod Pal, distinguished judge of the Calcutta high court and vice-chancellor of the University of Calcutta. As the judge from India, he is added to the panel as a representational afterthoughtbut his impact is immediate. Pal was the solitary judge who never compromised from a stand of absolute dissent: He believed that this idea of justice imposed by the Allies was one born out of vengeance, not legal fairness. When other judgeslike Lord Patrick of the UKinsisted that this was the way for law to evolve, Pal emphasized that the international community had not yet reached the level of sophistication required to declare war a crime.

Khan plays Pal modestly, as a calm and rational freethinker who refuses to get swayed by arguments he considers irrelevant. In 1946, a few months into the tribunal, he confidently declares that India will get its independence the next summer. His reaction to the passionate judges around him is one of cool bemusement. He stands against the tribunals charter, and while several dissenting judges find their ideals compromised or altered by attrition or argument, Pal soldiers on. The majority of the judges took six months to draft their final judgement, while Pal composed his own stand-alone judgementweighing in at 1,235 pagesdeclaring the tribunals verdict victors justice".

The judge from the UK is shown as pig-headed in the belief that war can be prevented by criminalizing it, the judge from China is level-headed, while the one from the Philippines appears vengefulnearly as much as the judge from the Soviet Union, a military man and utter Stalinist, whose stand is often softened by a clever interpreter. The show revolves around the violin-playing judge from the Netherlands, Roling, who works as the moral compass, occasionally inconsistent in the way he is swayed by passionate justification.

This is a conversation-heavy series that doesnt shy away from intricate legal argument, and the attention to detail renders it an essential watch. It is a show about perspective, and deserves not merely attention but reflection. Modelled on the Nuremberg Trials, the Tokyo Trials led to the eventual founding of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Based in the Netherlands, the ICC counts among its members 124 nationsbut, notably, America, Russia and China refuse to join.

I would hold that each and every one of the accused must be found not guilty of each and every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges," Pal had declared, words that enshrined him as a folk hero in Japan. We ought to celebrate him as well. There is, after all, an art to being disputatious.

Stream of Stories is a column on what to watch online. It appears weekly on Livemint.com and fortnightly in print.
Gautam Sinha: Now, smell the coffee at Nappa Dori Gautam Sinha talks about Caf Dori, new launches, and his expansion plans /news/talking-point/gautam-sinha-now-smell-the-coffee-at-nappa-dori-111646891544559.html 111646891544559 story

A little over six years ago, Gautam Sinha started his own branded collection of leather products called Nappa Dori, which translates to leather and thread". Sinha, a graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology (Nift), Delhi, started out with a collection of colourful trunks with leather trims as well as a very well-received line of printed leather laptop sleeves and messenger bags. Today, Nappa Dori has six stores in India and two international stores, one each in Doha and Maldives. It also sells its products through distribution partnerships in Paris, London, the US, Japan and Singapore. Scandinavia, Europe and, closer home, Goa are next on Sinhas wish list as sales destinations. The company recently opened its biggest store in Colaba, Mumbai, just behind the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Sinha spoke to Lounge on the sidelines of the LyFe Symposium in Delhi, a consortium that nurtures small, distinctive luxury brands from emerging markets. Spanning two days, the conference saw dynamic exchanges between select stakeholders from the luxury and lifestyle sectors in Europe, South-East Asia and India. Sinha speaks about the launch of Cafe Dori in the Mumbai store, Nappa Doris global expansion plans, and the launch of their first footwear collection. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What is the most interesting development currently under way at Nappa Dori?

Cafe Dori. It is my baby. Im a coffee addict. Its a test run at this stage in Mumbai. But Im very keen on taking it forward. It is the way we see our brand growing. Its a user experience we are trying to create with take-away coffee and dessert, a way of making the customer stay longer, enjoy the space, because its a design space and the ambience of the store conveys that. We have also started selling magazines in the store, all indie design magazinesfrom Kinfolk and Monocle to Cereal. So it is all part of enhancing the user experience. And I think its very important when youre not trying to just sell a brand but an experience to the consumer.

A Nappa Dori laptop bag.

Which product category sells the most at your stores?

Our laptop bags are best-sellers. Bags in general are also best-sellers. Our trunks have created this unique identity for us. People recognize Nappa Dori through a trunk, which is great.

Which new product categories are you planning to launch?

We introduced stationery last year, which did really well. We are now looking at luggage and footwear. We did a collection of shoes about two-and-a-half years back. It was a test run but it did really well. There was a collection of Ikat-lined footwear, only for women. It is just that shoes are a high capital-intensive category. Having said that, it is work in progress, and we should have something ready in a year or so.

Tell us about your international expansion strategy.

It is definitely on the radar. We are currently in Doha, at the international airport. We just opened our first store in the Maldives at a property called Huvafen Fushi, one of the best luxury hotels there. From a strategy standpoint, we want to be at airports definitely given that the DNA of Nappa Dori is core to the concept of travel. One of our biggest recent deals has been with Qatar Airlines in Doha. We are their official partner for amenity kits for business- and first-class passengers. I find this a good way to create awareness about the brand without spending too much money in terms of promotions. We are the first Indian brand to strike a two-year deal for over a million kits.

A Nappa Dori laptop bag

How has the customer profile at Nappa Dori changed over the years?

The Indian audience and clientele have increased a lot, because earlier I was catering just to the expats who were travelling. And while that number hasnt gone down, the number of buyers from India has gone up.

Has your vision for the brand also changed alongside?

My vision hasnt changed but the customer experience I want to share keeps evolving; it is not just about selling a bag any more. It is about creating destinations where people can enjoy certain things.
Excerpt: The spark Rakhshanda Jalil's translation of Gulzar's short story wins a new prize for Urdu-English translation /news/talking-point/excerpt-the-spark-111646892004705.html 111646892004705 story

Late last week, it was announced that Delhi-based writer, critic and literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil would be awarded the inaugural Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English translation, instituted in the memory of Urdu poet and scholar Ali Jawad Zaidi by his family, on the occasion of his birth centenary. A recipient of the Padma Shri, the Ghalib Award and the Mir Anis award, Zaidi had to his name several books of ghazals and nazms, scholarly works on Urdu literature, including The History Of Urdu Literature, and was working on a book called Urdu Mein Ramkatha when he died in 2004.

Considering that much of Zaidis work served as a bridge between languages and cultures", his family felt the best way to honour his literary legacy would be to focus on translations. Since the prize was to be given to a short story in translation in the first year, submissions of an unpublished translation of a published Urdu story were sought. While Jalil won the prize, the joint runners-up were Fatima Rizvi, who teaches literature at the University of Lucknow, and Pakistani social scientist and critic Raza Naeem.

The judges, authors Tabish Khair and Musharraf Ali Farooqi, chose to award Jalil for her careful, and even" translation of a story by Gulzar, Dhuaan (Smoke), which talks about the violence and tragic absurdity of religious prejudice". It recounts the unexpected consequences of a Hindu mans wish to be buried, rather than cremated, as his religion dictated.

Fatima Rizvi was awarded the runner-up prize for her translation of Premchands The Outlaw, a story of caste and power from a childs perspective. Raza Naeem won it for his translation of Abdullah Hussains Spring.

We bring you the award-winning translation of Gulzars short story:

Smoke

The talk had caught fire very slowly but soon enough its smoke had filled the entire qasba. The Chaudhry had died at four in the morning. By seven when his wife, the Chaudhrain, had regained her senses after a prolonged bout of crying, the first thing she did was send for Mullah Khairuddin. The servant was given strict instructions not to say anything. When the servant escorted the mullah into the courtyard and went away, the Chaudhrain took him to the bedroom upstairs where the Chaudhrys corpse had been removed from the bed and laid down on the floor. A yellow-tinged white face draped in white sheets, it had white eyebrows, a white beard and long white hair. The Chaudhrys face emitted an otherworldly glow.

The mullah saw him and immediately recited Inna lillahe wa innalillahe rajaoon and offered a few token words of condolence. He had barely sat down when the Chaudhrain took out the will from a cupboard, showed it to him and made him read it. The Chaudhrys last wish was that he should not be buried; instead, he wished to be cremated and his ashes strewn in the river which watered his land.

The mullah read the will but remained silent. The Chaudhry had done a lot of good in the name of religion in this village. He was known to give equally to the Hindus and the Musalman in the name of charity. He had had a proper brick-and-mortar building constructed for the makeshift village mosque. What is more, he had even had a regular concrete structure erected at the cremation ground of the Hindus. Even though he had been sick for the past many years, and despite being confined to his bed, he had given instructions for the iftari to be made in the mosque for the poor and the needy at his expense during every Ramzan. The Musalman of the neighbourhood were devoted to him and had great faith in him.

Now, reading the contents of the will, the mullah was worried. What if it caused trouble? As it is, things are bad in this country: the Hindus have become more Hindu and the Musalman have become more Musalman!

The Chaudhrain said, I dont want to have any religious ceremony. All I want is that arrangements be made for him to be burnt in the cremation ground. I could have told Pandit Ram Chandar but I didnt call him because I dont want things to take a bad turn.

But things did take a bad turn when Mullah Khairuddin sent for Pandit Ram Chandar and gave the following prudent advice: Dont allow the Chaudhry to be burnt in your cremation ground, for it is possible that the Muslims of this neighbourbood might create trouble. After all, the Chaudhry was no ordinary man. Many people were associated with him in many different ways.

Pandit Ram Chandar assured him that he didnt want any sort of evil-mongering in his area. Before the news spread any further, he too would explain matters to some of his specially chosen people.

But the spark had been lit and the news gradually began to catch fire.

It isnt about the Chaudhry or the Chaudhrain; this is a matter of faith and belief. It concerns the entire community and religion itself. How dare the Chaudhrain even consider having her husband burnt instead of buried! Is she unaware of the fundamentals of Islam?

A few people insisted on meeting the Chaudhrain. She spoke to them with great patience: Brothers, this was his last wish. The body is nothing but dust after all; burn it or bury it. If burning brings comfort to his spirit why should you object to it?

A certain gentleman grew especially agitated. He asked: Will burning him bring comfort to you?

Yes, the Chaudhrains answer was brief. Fulfilling his last wish will bring me comfort.

As the day progressed so did the Chaudhrains anxiety. The task she wished to accomplish with accord and agreement was becoming prolonged and protracted. There was no complicated plot or story or secret behind the Chaudhrys wish. Nor was there a philosophy aligned to a particular religion or belief system. It was a simple, straightforward human desire: that not a single trace of him should remain after his death.

I am till I am; I wont be when I cease to be.

Years ago, he had said this to his wife but who has the time to go into such matters in any detail during the course of ones life. The Chaudhry, however, had written it down in his will. And to ensure that his wish was fulfilled was, for the Chaudhrain, a token of her love and loyalty. After all, it isnt as though one should forget all ones promises as soon as the person goes away.

The Chaudhrain tried to send Biru to fetch Pandit Ram Chandar but the pandit could not be found. His counterpart said, Look here, brother, we must put tilak and recite mantras before burning the Chaudhry.

Arre bhai, how can you change the religion of a dead person?

Dont argue too much. We cant set fire to a pyre without reciting shloka from the Gita. If we dont do that the soul doesnt find release. And if a soul does not find release then that restless spirit will trouble all of us: it will trouble you and it will trouble us. We are deeply indebted to Chaudhry sahab. We cant do this to his spirit.

Biru went away.

Panna spotted Biru as he was coming out of the pandits house. Panna went inside the mosque and informed the congregation.

The fire that was almost choking down caught flame again. Four or five respected Musalman went so far as to announce their decision in unequivocal terms. They were especially indebted to the Chaudhry; they could not bear to let his spirit wander. They gave instructions for a grave to be dug in the graveyard behind the mosque.

By the time evening fell, some more people gathered at the haveli. They had decided that the Chaudhrain must be intimidated, the Chaudhrys will must be taken from her and burnt; without the will what could the old woman do!

Perhaps, the Chaudhrain had sensed this possibility. She hid the will and when people tried to scare and bully her, she told them: Ask Mullah Khairuddin; he has seen the will and read all of it.

What if he denies it?

If he places his hand on the Holy Quran and denies it, I will show it; otherwise

Or else what?

Or else see it in the court.

The fact that the matter could reach the court now became clear. It could even be that the Chaudhrain would send for her lawyer, and the police, from the city. She could call the police and, in their presence, ensure that her decision was carried through. But what if she has already called them! For, how else could she put her husbands corpse on slabs of ice and talk with such self-assurance?

At night, news spread at the speed of rumours.

Someone said: A horse rider has just been spotted going towards the city. The rider had swathed his head and face with cloth, and he was seen coming out of the Chaudhrys haveli.

One man had even seen the rider coming out of the Chaudhrys stable.

According to Khadu, he had not just heard the sound of wood being chopped in the havelis backyard but had also seen trees being felled.

Without doubt, the Chaudhrain was making preparations for a pyre to be lit in her backyard. It made Kallus blood boil.

You cowards! Tonight a Musalman will be burnt on a pyre and all of you will sit around watching the flames feed the fire.

Kallu leapt out. Killing and bloodshed was his profession, but so what? After all, faith too counts for something.

Friends, not even ones mother can be dearer than ones faith.

Accompanied by four or five of his comrades, Kallu entered the haveli by scaling its rear wall. The old woman sat alone beside the corpse. Kallus axe sliced her head before she had time to get startled.

They picked up the Chaudhrys corpse and set off towards the rear of the mosque, where a grave had been prepared. As they walked, Ramza asked, What will happen when the Chaudhrains body is found in the morning?

Is the old woman dead?

Her head had been split; she is unlikely to survive till the morning.

Kallu paused and looked at the Chaudhrains bedroom. Panna understood Kallus deepest thoughts.

Carry on, boss; I know exactly what you are thinking. Everything will be taken care of.

Kallu carried on towards the graveyard.

That night when the flames from the Chaudhrys bedroom leapt up to touch the skies, the entire qasba was filled with smoke.

The living had been burnt.

And the dead had been buried.
Film Review: Beauty and the Beast A handsomely mounted but familiar retelling of the old fairytale /fashion/beauty/film-review-beauty-and-the-beast-111646892200152.html 111646892200152 story

In my favourite scene in the new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, gold leaves float down from the ceiling and stick onto Belles sunshine yellow dress. Its the only time I felt a certain wonder and a sense that the filmmakers had truly re-imagined an all-too-familiar fable.

Hollywood doesnt seem to tire of Beauty and The Beast. Remakes in different formats, with live actors, animation or a mix of both, working with new technologies and rearranging the classic songs -- its all been done.

In this latest musical drama, directed by Bill Condon from a script by Stephen Chbosky and Even Spiliotopoulos, the 1991 animated Disney film has been tweaked, but the source material is still the famous French fairy tale that explores the notion that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What do you do to make such an oft-interpreted story seem original and distinctive? You add new songs, amp up the idiosyncrasies of the recognizable characters, embellish the design with exquisite detailing, cast popular actors and add a dose of humour and a wink by making one of the characters gay (LeFou, played by Josh Gad).

The film opens with the tale of the prince (Dan Stevens) cursed by a beggar woman who transforms him into a ghastly beast and casts a spell on all the other living things in the castle. The beastly princes fate is linked to a single rose. The falling of the last petal will mean he will forever be entrapped in that gigantic wolf-like form, unless he can find true love.

Some years pass. Not too far away, we see Belle (Emma Watson) with her nose buried in a book. Shes an oddity in her parochial village, a free-spirited young woman who dreams of a life beyond the confines of the village and its small-mindedness. Belle lives with her widower father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), and is being courted by the narcissistic soldier Gaston (Luke Evans), who doesnt take kindly to being rejected by Belle.

One night Maurice gets lost during a storm and stumbles upon the forgotten castle, a dark and depressing place where it snows even in June. Heading out in search of her missing father, Belle comes to the castle and frees her imprisoned father by swapping places with him as the Beasts prisoner. What follows is an ancient French version of Stockholm syndrome. Belle realises that beneath the grisly, growling exterior is a kind and gentle soul who is also her intellectual equal (high five for gender equality). Acting as matchmakers are sundry objects in the castle such as a teapot, a candelabra, a clock and a piano. A-list talents including Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci voice the singing, dancing, speaking, scheming objects, some with annoyingly fake French accents.

Despite Watsons allure, Evans preening and Stevens oscillation between animalistic and insecure, Condons recreation of this world is over-designed and distracting. The songs (old and new) seem tired, adding to the lethargy of the storytelling which occasionally pauses to admire its own opulence.
In a medieval painting, a possible Guinea worm can be seen creeping out of the leg of St. Roch, a 14th-century French pilgrim.

Italian researchers examining a medieval painting may have found the earliest visual depiction of dracunculiasis, a horrifying parasitic infection in which a worm up to 3 feet long creeps out of the skin.

Currently endemic to areas in Chad, Ethiopia, Mali and South Sudan, the disease is transmitted to people who drink water infested with water fleas that are in the Cyclops genus, and that contain larvae of the guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis). One year after the person ingests the contaminated water, a spaghetti-like worm 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 1 meter) long erupts from a blistered area of the person's skin  usually in the lower part of the leg, according to he World Health Organization.

To relieve the pain and burning feeling that the worm causes when it erupts, the victims seek out water, prompting the worm to discharge its larvae, which starts the whole cycle over again. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites]

According to a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Infection, dracunculiasis clearly appears for the first time in a 15th-century altarpiece on display at the Pinacoteca di Brera (Painting Gallery), located in southern Italy's Puglia region.

St. Roch was a 14th-century French pilgrim who is said to have healed victims of the plague. (Image credit: Raffaele Gaeta)

The artwork is considered a rare example of Late Gothic painting in Puglia and depicts St. Roch, a 14th-century French pilgrim who is said to have healed victims of the plague, and came down with it himself.

"Indeed, St. Roch is typically represented with a bubo on the upper thigh," paleopathologist Raffaele Gaeta, at the University of Pisa, Italy, told Live Science.

The painting in Bari, showing the saint as a bearded man with long, curly blonde hair, is no exception. The anonymous painter portrayed St. Roch with a swelling on the left thigh, made visible by a rolled-down sock.

"However, the altarpiece adds a new, realistic detail: a white, thin filament comes out of the lesion and almost reaches the knee," Gaeta said.

He noted that art historians wrongly identified this element as a long drop of pus emerging from the infected wound. [25 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

"We believe instead that the painter portrayed an ancient case of dracunculiasis, an infectious disease caused by a nematode worm, the Dracunculus medinensis, well known in antiquity," Gaeta and colleagues Fabrizio Bruschi and Valentina Giuffra wrote in their study.

Dracunculiasis has plagued humankind for thousands of years. The Bible's Old Testament, dating to 1450 B.C., refers to the worm, according to the Carter Center. It is mentioned in the Egyptian medical Ebers Papyrus, dating from 1550 B.C., which suggested extracting the worm from the body by winding it around a stick  a method still used today.

Further evidence for the worm's existence in ancient Egypt was provided in the 1970s: A calcified guinea worm was found in the abdominal cavity of a 3,000-year-old mummy.

Parasitologists believe the biblical "fiery serpents" that attacked the Israelites who had escaped Egypt might have been guinea worms. The infection would have been widespread in the Middle East at the time of the exodus, as it was until recently.

"The worm doesn't kill, but leaves the victim in disabling misery," Gaeta said.

"The parasite could have earned its nickname 'fiery serpent' because it causes excruciating burning pain as it bursts through the skin," he added.

Although the disease is not documented in Italy, it is possible that the anonymous painter noticed the parasite in the wound of some traveler who arrived in Bari, which was an important port for people traveling to the East, particularly Syria and Palestine.

"He then added the long and thin white filament that comes out of the leg as a note of extreme realism," Gaeta said.

According to Francesco Galassi, a paleopathologist at Zurich University's Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, the research "offers room for a more general reflection on the importance of prevention of infectious diseases for international travelers in the modern world."

"I find it rather captivating that the authors hypothesize that this disease might have been portrayed on an individual coming to Bari from regions where, unlike the Italian Peninsula, the condition was endemic," Galassi told Live Science.

As a result of a 30-year campaign led by the Carter Center, a charity set up by former president Jimmy Carter, dracunculiasis will likely be the second human disease in history after smallpox to be eradicated. It will be the first parasitic disease to be wiped out and the first disease to be eradicated without the use of a drug or vaccine.

In 2016, only 25 cases of guinea-worm disease were reported globally, down from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986, according to the WHO's Global Health Observatory.

Original article on Live Science.
A photo taken on March 12, 2017, shows a view of Addis Ababa from the main landfill on the outskirts of the city, a day after a landslide at the dump left more than 100 people dead.

A massive wall of garbage collapsed at a dump in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last Saturday (March 11), killing at least 115 people, with dozens more still missing.

The tragedy isn't the first of its kind, according to a piece on the disaster in the American Geophysical Union's Landslide Blog, but it is the deadliest such incident in years.

"Garbage landslides are particularly horrible events," Dave Petley, a blogger and geoscientist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, wrote in a 2008 post about the phenomena. "For most people, being buried alive raises an inbuilt fear, but the thought of being buried by garbage is particularly unpleasant. In addition, garbage often releases toxic gas, which means that victims may die from poisoning whilst awaiting rescue. Garbage also generates heat, which means that the victims may die from hyperthermia. In extreme cases, the garbage may ignite." [Managing the World's Waste (Infographic)]

Deadly trash

Petley wrote the 2008 blog post in response to a garbage slide in Guatemala City, in which the deadly conditions were much like those in Addis Ababa: mountains of garbage piled with little regard for stability, picked over by armies of scavengers who make a living by pulling recyclables from the waste.

Rescue workers watch as excavators dig through garbage in search of missing people following the collapse of a mound of trash on an informal settlement at the Koshe garbage dump in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, March 13, 2017. (Image credit: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters/Zuma)

The Addis Ababa dump, called Koshe, may have been further destabilized by construction occurring on the site, according to Africa Review. Locals told the news organization that workers building a biogas plant had been packing down dirt with bulldozers, possibly precipitating the slide. An official investigation is underway.

Based on images released by news organizations, Petley wrote that the Koshe slide appeared to be a simple failure of an oversteepened slope. Gravity pulling down an oversteepened slope is the primary reason for any landslide, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Causes of disaster

Garbage-dump landslides are a significant problem for countries in the developing world, Petley wrote, but they are also a topic that scientists have not studied widely. One 2011 slide in the Philippines buried 20 houses when rains from Typhoon Nanmadol caused the collapse of a retaining wall. Another garbage landslide in the Philippines in 2000, the Payatas landslide, claimed the lives of at least 200 people and buried a shantytown at the site in up to 33 feet (10 meters) of trash. Gases from the decomposing garbage sparked several fires, hindering rescue efforts, according to an analysis of the disaster.

Whereas unstable, overly steep slopes are a risk factor for landslides of both land and garbage, trash slides pose a unique danger because of flammable methane and other decomposition gases, researchers have found. One 2005 garbage slide in Java, Indonesia, killed 143 people and illustrates such dangers. According to a study of that disaster, the garbage pile had a front slope approaching 100 percent  it was basically vertical. Along with heavy rains, methane explosions within the pile helped destabilize it. Plastic bags within the garbage pile gave the mountain of trash a low friction coefficient, meaning that the material within the landslide was particularly slippery. All of this instability combined with a vulnerable population of trash-pickers living at the foot of the precarious trash pile led to the staggering loss of life, the study found.

Huge garbage slides that kill many people get most of the attention, Petley wrote in 2008, but it's also quite likely that smaller, less-deadly slides are common and go unreported.

Original article on Live Science.
A special exhibit offering a detailed viewing of rarely seen Egyptian and pre-Columbian Peruvian mummies called "Mummies" is open at the American Museum of Natural History. One mummy included is known as the "Gilded Lady," a well-preserved mummy from Roman-era Egypt.

An Egyptian mummy named the Gilded Lady may be more than 2,000 years old, but visitors can gaze into her brown eyes and admire her dark, curly hair at "Mummies," an exhibit opening Monday (March 20) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City.

Patrons can't see the Gilded Lady's actual face, of course, but they can look at her exquisitely preserved mummy, including a gleaming gold-painted mask. Nearby is a life-size plastic replica of her skull, created from 3D-printed images of a computed tomography (CT) scan of the mummy's head.

French sculptor Elisabeth Daynes studied the plastic skull and created a hyperrealistic statue of the Gilded Lady that looks as if it's about to speak. [See the Gallery of the Mummies from Peru and Egypt]

The Gilded Lady, mummified in Roman Egypt, is one of 18 mummies in the museum's exhibit, which includes human and animal mummies from Peru and Egypt.

Using the technologies available, experts created this sculpture to show what the Gilded Lady may have looked like in real life. (Image credit: Copyright 2012. Photo: E. Daynes. Reconstruction: Elisabeth Daynes, Paris)

"You may think you know something about mummies from cartoons or movies  perhaps those mummies were rising out of their coffins and chasing after the unsuspecting while trailing long strips of cloth," Ellen Futter, president of the AMNH, told reporters Thursday (March 16). "I can assure you, that is not what this show is about. For us, mummies are serious business."

In ancient Peru, mummification was a way to honor, remember and stay connected with the dead. The Chinchorros (5000 to 2000 B.C) are the earliest culture on record to intentionally mummify their dead. Their process was fairly complex: They would remove the dead person's skin and organs, scrape any flesh from the bones and reinforce the skeleton with reeds and clay. Then, they would reattach the skin, paint the deceased black or red, and place a wig and a clay mask on the body's head.

In contrast, the later coastal Chancay culture (A.D. 1000 to 1400) used Peru's dry desert climate to simplify the process, which included burying their dead in an upright sitting position and wrapping them in layers of cloth. They also left gifts in the graves, including food and pots of corn beer, called chicha.

"Some people kept mummies in their homes or bought them to festivals," according to the exhibit. "Others brought offerings of food or drink to their loved ones' graves, which sat undisturbed for archaeologists to find centuries later."

Mummies in the Chancay culture found in present-day Peru were often buried with pots filled with "chicha," or beer made from corn. The Chancay would often refill food and drink offerings for their loved ones. (Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115208d_018E)

Egyptian mummies

Across the world, the Egyptians began mummifying their dead about 2,000 years after the Chinchorros did, probably after seeing it happen naturally in the desert. The desert naturally preserved the first known Egyptian mummy, that of a young woman wrapped in linen and fur. According to CT scans, she suffered from arthritis and hardened arteries before she died about 5,500 years ago.

Over time, the Egyptians created a complex mummification process to prepare people for the afterlife. Organs accelerate decay, so once people died, their livers, lungs, intestines and stomachs would be removed and preserved, wrapped and stored in separate containers, according to the museum. Egyptians left the heart in place, as they believed it was the source of emotion and intellect. However, they removed the brain through the nose because they thought it had little value.

Next, they would dry the body in salt for 40 days, embalm it with resins and oils and pad it to restore a body-like appearance before wrapping it in linen. Many wealthy Egyptians were buried with figurines known as "shawabti," which were thought to do work for them in the afterlife. [In Photos: A Look Inside an Egyptian Mummy]

The "Mummies" exhibit has a handful of mummified animals, including a mummified baboon, gazelle, ibis (a water bird), crocodile and numerous cats, including a few imposters with no bodies.

A baby crocodile was intricately wrapped and buried as an offering in an Egyptian tomb. (Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115211d_015D)

Many of the specimens are on display for the first time since the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Although the mummies in the exhibit are treated with respect (guests aren't allowed to photograph the human remains), specimens out in the field are in danger, partly because of climate change, especially in regions once covered with permafrost and ice.

"Once they're exposed  and usually these have usually been covered for 8,000 years or 10,000 years  they don't last long," David Hurst Thomas, the curator of North American Archaeology and the co-curator of "Mummies" at the AMNH, told Live Science. "They thaw out and they are gone."

The exhibit runs until Jan. 7, 2018, before returning to The Field Museum in Chicago.

Original article on Live Science.
Mummies across time

(Image credit: C. Chesek/Copyright AMNH)

Archaeologists used to unwrap Egyptian mummies with much fanfare in front of crowds, a stunt that destroyed cultural history and disrespected the deceased individual. Now, researchers can use computed tomography (CT) scans to noninvasively learn about mummies without literally unwrapping them.



Here is a look at the science behind "Mummies," an exhibit about Peruvian and Egyptian mummies that runs from March 20 until Jan. 7, 2018, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and then returns to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.



Read the full story here.

The "Gilded Lady"

(Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115214d_035B)

A special exhibit offering a detailed viewing of rarely seen Egyptian and pre-Columbian Peruvian mummies called "Mummies" is open at the American Museum of Natural History. One mummy included is known as the "Gilded Lady," a well-preserved mummy from Roman-era Egypt.

In full

(Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115214d_030A)

Egyptians used mummification to honor the dead and guarantee the deceased's spirits and bodies were reunited in the afterlife.

More ancient

(Image credit: C. Chesek/Copyright AMNH)

Mummification was used in many more areas than only Egypt. The exhibition presents preserved remains that come from South American cultures and were created at least 1,500 years prior to those from Egypt.

Complexity perfected

(Image credit: R. Mickens/Copyright AMNH)

Egyptians employed a complicated process in their mummification practices, including detailed embalming rituals, beautifully decorated sarcophagi and magnificent burial tombs meant to discourage grave robbers.

Technology peers into history

(Image credit: C. Chesek/Copyright AMNH)

Present-day technology allows archaeologists to study ancient mummies without destroying the specimens. A computed tomography (CT) scanner snaps hundreds of X-ray images, noninvasively providing views of history.

3D-printed displays

(Image credit: R. Mickens/Copyright AMNH)

Using 3D printing, the "Mummies" exhibition allows visitors to physically explore different aspects of these ancient cultural practices. Figurine offerings from the Egyptian and Peruvian mummies are available for examination.

Touch-screen learning

(Image credit: R. Mickens/Copyright AMNH)

Discovering details about each layer of a mummy from either Egyptian or Peruvian culture is made simple and educational via interactive digital touch screens.

Colorful rituals

(Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115204d_012C)

In Peru, people in the Chancay culture from a millennium ago would have topped the colorfully wrapped bodies of their mummified kin with uniquely decorated "false heads."

Peruvian pit burial

(Image credit: C. Chesek/Copyright AMNH)

The Chancay culture practiced pit burials. In this exhibit, a life-size example shows how the entire extended family would have been buried together. Living family members could access the site to provide food and drink for the deceased loved ones. This access also meant mummies could be involved in festivals and special events with the living.

Corn beer

(Image credit: Photographer John Weinstein, Copyright 2015 the Field Museum, A115208d_018E)

Mummies in the Chancay culture found in present-day Peru were often buried with pots filled with "chicha," or beer made from corn. The Chancay would often refill food and drink offerings for their loved ones.
A Michigan man will require amputations of parts of his hands and feet after experiencing a severe case of strep throat. But how do the bacteria that cause strep also cause such an extreme complication?

The 44-year-old man, Kevin Breen, first went to the emergency room in late December with flu-like symptoms and stomach pain, according to CNN. Then his stomach began to enlarge, and he was taken into surgery. Doctors found copious amounts of pus surrounding his organs, but they didn't know the cause of his illness.

A big clue came after Breen's surgery, when a rash appeared on his chest, which can be a symptom of a strep infection. Indeed, a test for streptococcus, the bacteria that cause strep throat, came back positive, CNN said. [27 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

Unfortunately, his infection caused him to develop septic shock, according to Breen's GoFundMe page, which was set up to help pay for his medical bills.

Septic shock is a life-threatening complication that occurs when an infection leads to dangerously low blood pressure, according to the National Institutes of Health. It happens when toxins released by the bacteria, as well as the body's own inflammatory response to the infection, damage the body's tissues, causing blood pressure to drop, the NIH says.

When people experience a dramatic drop in blood pressure, their body starts to shunt blood to vital organs, which reduces blood flow to the extremities, and so tissue in these areas starts to die, Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told Live Science in a 2015 interview.

In Breen's case, parts of his hands and feet started to turn black from tissue death. Breen will undergo surgeries to amputate his left hand, fingers on his right hand, and parts of both feet, according to his GoFundMe page.

Breen's complication is extremely rare  in most cases of strep throat, the bacteria infects the throat and tonsils, and causes such symptoms as a sore throat, fever and red spots on the roof of the mouth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the bacteria can spread to other parts of the body, including the sinuses, skin and ears.

With Breen, the bacteria spread to his stomach. There have been just 32 reported cases of strep bacteria infecting the stomach, and of these, just two involved men, according to the New York Daily News.

Before Breen's illness, his son had a strep throat infection, and Breen had visited the doctor at that time to see if he also had a strep throat infection. But this first test for the bacteria came back negative, according to NBC. About 10 to 20 percent of tests for strep throat are "false negatives," meaning the result is negative when a person really does have the illness, according to HealthPartners, a nonprofit health care provider.

Original article on Live Science.
The time has arrived to finally recap our full trip to the Caribbean! A few months ago when Shawn and I were deciding where we were wanting to travel to, I do what I always do  hop on Expedia , start plugging in random destinations, sort the results by highest property class first [a girl has gotta be picky when it comes to where she is laying her head at night ;)], then narrow down the choices by price [because a girl also has to be money conscious on where she is laying her head at night ;)], scour Trip Advisor to read every review possible for all of the potential candidates and then days, weeks and almost a month later, make our final decision. Booking a vacation can be a full-time job for this girl as I take the job very seriously and make sure that what we decide on fits within our budget while still offering a 5-star experience. Not an easy task, but one I love tackling.

For this adventure, after much research, we decided on an all-inclusive option, Sonesta Ocean Point Resort in St Maarten. St Martin/St Maarten is owned by the Netherlands (just East of Puerto Rico) and is split up into two sides  Dutch and French. We stayed on the Dutch side, with our resort being only 5 minutes from the main airport on the island. From Indiana, we flew to Newark, New Jersey and from there it was about a 3 1/2 hour flight to the island. Not bad at all when you know you have this to look forward to upon arrival

If youre okay with it, Im about to break down the entire trip as many of you have had questions and if you are considering this for your next vacation, Id love to be as helpful as possible! Lets jump in!

Arrival:

Like I mentioned, we flew into the main airport (SXM), were able to get through customs pretty quickly, and then walked out to the taxi area and were able to flag one down immediately to shuttle us the five minutes [if that] over to the resort. Sonesta Ocean Point shares a property with Sonesta Maho Beach Resort, which is the kid-friendly, older resort. Ocean Point is adults only and is much newer. Upon check-in, they provided us with a glass of champagne and cool towels and whisked us away to our room where cheese and fruit were waiting for us!

Room:

When booking our room the only category that was left was the Sunset Butler Suite so we bit the bullet and did it. The size of the room was awesome with a separate sitting area with a couch and chairs, comfortable king size bed, balcony large enough to eat our breakfast at every morning, a huge bathroom with probably our favorite walk-in shower [the water pressure was excellent] and the largest bathtub Ive ever been in. The room also had a mini-fridge, a wine fridge, etc. The only thing it was lacking were outlets next to the bed [maybe thats just a pet peeve of mine]. While it made you feel slightly fancy to have a butler, we actually didnt use them really for anything. The resort provides you with a cell phone that you can reach your butler at any time during the hours of 7 am  10 pm, but other than asking for a bottle of Captain Morgan and booking our massage, we didnt utilize them for anything else. While I wouldnt pay for the butler aspect of it again, I would pay for the location of the room again. We had an amazing view from bed of the ocean and it also overlooked one of the resort pools and the main resort restaurant, Azul. We could sit and watch cruise ships float on by, airplanes fly overhead, and even witness a proposal! The resort also offers several swim-up rooms on the ground floor, however, it didnt appear that many people actually used them. If I were to advise you on a room I would recommend a higher floor so you can have more of a view!





We were on the second floor, two in from the left

Food:

Being that the resort is all-inclusive, we did the majority of our eating at the resort itself. The nice feature of sharing a property with its sister resort meant that you were able to eat at any of the restaurants between the two buildings. For breakfast, you have the option of ordering room service [the pancakes with the whipped cream and coconut syrup were my jam] which we did often, along with a buffet style restaurant and a sit-down restaurant option. For lunch, you also had two different buffet option restaurants, a sit-down option and room service. For dinner they had a buffet option, a fine dining Italian option [we didnt get to eat at this as it was booked every night], a Chinese restaurant [we didnt like this at all, I would avoid!], a lava rock restaurant where you cook your meat on a hot plate at your table [this was fun and delicious!] and Azul, which is Ocean Points finer dining option with a menu that changes daily. We ate there three different nights for dinner and absolutely loved our meals every time. We really did like our food 99.9% of the time and would recommend it! I was surprised that there werent really any snack options during the day, so other than meals, we didnt eat much [which lets be real, worked to our benefit]. I loved the pizza at the buffet and then hated it when we got it for room service. Alcohol was on point and readily available at several bars on the property and also poolside.

Resort Amenities:

Aside from the restaurants and bars, Sonesta Ocean Point also has two different pool areas, one is sandy to make you feel like you are on the beach, while the other is more in the heart of the action and faces Maho Beach and the airport so you can watch the planes fly in and take off. The pools were a little colder than our preference so we didnt spend much time in them. We did love all of the lounge chairs and cabanas that were around the pools. It was especially nice to not have to pay anything to use the cabanas. You can walk directly to Maho Beach from the resort which was fun to walk the beach. There is also a big restaurant and a couple of bars on the beach that you can eat or drink at!

Additionally, there was Sunset Lounge which was a fun place to watch the sunset from and grab a drink, live music on certain nights, a casino across the street and a spa on property. We opted to have a massage at Serenity Point, which is where you can get a massage over the ocean on the property. It was perfection and reasonably priced [$300 total for a couples one hour massage]. My other favorite part of the resort was the hammock area which was situated next to the main pool area but underneath a bunch of shade trees. Another highlight of our trip was watching the airplanes fly in right overhead. Some have asked if it was a distraction, but it never felt like it as they didnt fly during the night and during the day, it was so fun to watch em come in and leave.













Service:

This one was a little iffy for us. Half of the employees were very friendly and upbeat and the other half were quite the opposite. Nobody was ever rude to us, however, you just didnt get that welcoming vibe from everybody. It was never a bother, just a little confusing sometimes. One nice thing was that there were security officers all over the resort, not because they were ever needed, but because on this island they take security and safety very importantly. Tourism is their only industry so they do everything in their power to keep the island a safe place for people to visit. This was very appreciated!

Things To Do:

The resort has a concierge service with a ton of different options for tours and excursions you can do. We opted to do two hour jet ski tour around the island with Water Boys which would have been so much fun if it wouldnt have rained the entire time. By doing this tour we were able to see many sides of the island while also getting a good glimpse of the island on the drive to get to the tour. We felt totally safe outside of our resort which was wonderful!

The other excursion we decided to do was a ferry day trip over to the island of Anguilla. It was a short twenty-minute boat ride over to Anguilla where we then went to Shoal Bay Beach which was hands down, the most beautiful part of our trip. The water was unlike anything I had ever seen and the sand was the prettiest with tiny shells. We hung out at a reggae grill on beach chairs all day and enjoyed a big ole lobster fest, music, and drinks. I would highly, highly recommend this tour!



Would we return?

Judging by our faces Ill give you one guess.

Yes, we definitely would! I think, however, on our next trip to this area we would choose to stay on Anguilla as we loved the beach and would love to have longer there! We checked out Zemi Beach and The Manoah and both look like great contenders! If you are looking for a vacation that you can do as little or as much as you want with perfect weather, this is the place for you!

And there you have it  our St Maarten trip in a loooong nutshell. If you have any questions at all dont hesitate to reach out!

ps. For a complete look at all of the outfits that I packed on this trip, see this post!
An investigation by the La Salle County Sheriffs Office and the Texas Rangers led to a pair of grand jury indictments being handed down last week against former employees of the Precinct 1 county commissioner for allegedly misappropriating government-owned equipment.

Charges of abuse of official capacity up to a value of $2,500 were filed against 53-year-old Abel Zertuche, former supervisor for the road & bridge services in the precinct, and Rene Garza, 52, a former worker in the countys road crews. Both Cotulla residents were arrested Thursday, March 9, after the La Salle County grand jury had concluded its hearing.
1 Intelligence director: Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats has been sworn in as the nations top spy chief. Vice President Mike Pence administered the oath of office after the Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Coats nomination by a vote of 85-12. Coats will be President Trumps top intelligence official overseeing 16 other intelligence agencies. Coats will be the fifth person to serve as director of national intelligence, a job the U.S. created after the 9/11 attacks. He succeeds James Clapper, who retired just before Trump took office.

2 No criminal charges: Federal and state prosecutors who have been conducting separate investigations into Mayor Bill de Blasios campaign fundraising practices said on Thursday that they would not be bringing criminal charges against him or his aides. However, the mayor did not escape unscathed. The state prosecutor, the Manhattan district attorney, criticized de Blasio, saying his effort to help state Democrats appeared to violate the intent and spirit of the law. The federal inquiry involved a broad examination of whether de Blasio or his administration or campaign aides exchanged favorable city action for donations to his 2013 campaign or his now-defunct political nonprofit.
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A Texas City father says he is heartened by news that a couple has been arrested and charged with cyberbullying in the death of his daughter, who committed suicide last year at age 18.

"I just feel like I'm blessed that we are able to get justice for our daughter," Raul Vela, 45, told the Houston Chronicle. "I can't explain how happy that makes me feel."

ARRESTED: Grand jury indicts 2 in connection with Texas City bullying victim's suicide

Vela said his 18-year-old daughter, Brandy, was driven to take her own life as her family watched after suffering nearly a year of harassment over social media and the telephone. The father has joined other families of cyberbullying victims to lobby the Legislature for passage of legislation that would stiffen penalties for the crime.

Andres Arturo Villagomez, 21, and Karinthya Sanchez Romero, 22, were indicted by a Galveston County grand jury and arrested Thursday on cyberbullying charges in the death of Brandy Vela, who fatally shot herself Nov. 29, authorities said.

Villagomez was Vela's ex-boyfriend, and Romero is Villagomez' current girlfriend, police said Thursday.

The indictment accuses Villagomez of intentionally publishing nude photographs of Vela to "cause her to be embarrassed and tormented."

READ THE ORIGINAL REPORT: Texas City police looking for possible cyberbullies linked to teen's suicide

Romero's indictment accuses her of threatening "to inflict bodily harm on Brandy Vela, making repeated telephone communications anonymously ... in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass or offend."

Villagomez is charged with unlawful disclosure or promotion of intimate visual material, a Class A misdemeanor, and was being held in the Galveston County jail on a $2,500 bond.

Romero is charged with stalking and online impersonation, both third-degree felonies. She was being held on a $10,000 bond for each charge.

If convicted, Villagomez could be sentenced to a maximum of one year in jail and fined up to $4,000.

Romero, if convicted, could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and fined up to $10,000 for each charge.

Texas City police Capt. Joe Stanton said Thursday that the investigation was ongoing and no further information on the case will be released.
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More charges are expected against at least one of the three men who police believe robbed a barbecue restaurant in Oak Ridge North Wednesday night.

Police say Cameron Moore of Houston, Xavier Flowers of Houston and Patrick Wilson of Tomball entered the Pappas Bar-B-Q restaurant in the 27700 block of Interstate 45 North shortly after 8 p.m. Wednesday and held up customers and staff. One of them went table to table demanding wallets, purses and cell phones while the other two robbed restaurant staff, Oak Ridge North Police Chief Andrew Walters said.

"They pretty much seized the store," Walters said. "They robbed the store and they started to rob each individual customer."

One of the robbers pointed a gun at children in the restaurant, Walters said, while making small talk with others as he was robbing them.

"They were asking them 'are you having a nice day?' or 'how's your day going?' and stuff like that," Walters said.

As the robbery was going on, an off-duty Harris County jailer and his significant other were able to slip out the restaurant's back door and dial 911. The jailer strapped on a bulletproof vest and armed himself as he watched for the robbers to exit the building.

When they rushed out of the restaurant, the jailer wound up running alongside them toward Woodson Road. The robbers allegedly shot at two cars that were driving in the area during their escape, Walters said, which is what could lead to additional charges for some of the three.

Moore, Flowers and Wilson are all charged with three first-degree felony counts of aggravated robbery, court records show. Walters is reviewing evidence to determine what kind of additional charges would be appropriate.

"If they hit up in the vehicle near the driver's area, it's not just an aggravated assault," Wilson said. "They were attempting to shoot the driver."

The robbers allegedly made off with only $3,000 in cash, Wilson said.

"We've got three men's lives ruined and a bunch of people traumatized all over $3,000," Walters said, adding the money will be returned to the proper owners soon.
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NEW YORK  Should a chimpanzee be treated as a person with legal rights?

That's what attorney Steven Wise tried to convince a state appeals court in Manhattan of on Thursday. Wise, who represents the Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project animal advocacy group, argued that two chimps named Tommy and Kiko should be freed from cages to live in an outdoor sanctuary.

Wise has been trying for years, unsuccessfully, to get courts to grant the chimps habeas corpus in order to, he says, free them from unlawful imprisonment.

He says the apes, which didn't appear in court, deserve a better quality of life. If the court agrees, they would be sent to live with others of their species on one of 13 islands amid a lake in Fort Pierce, Florida, that comprise the Save the Chimps sanctuary.

More Information More on the web: The Nonhuman Rights Project: https://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org The Primate Sanctuary: http://theprimatesanctuary.com See More Collapse

A five-judge panel will issue its ruling in the coming days or weeks.

Kiko's keeper, Carmen Presti, says he's not giving up the chimp.

He and his wife rescued the deaf chimp 23 years ago from a life of performing at state fairs and in the television movie "Tarzan in Manhattan." Kiko is believed to have lost his hearing when he was beaten by a trainer, and has medical problems requiring constant attention.

"If he's taken away, he could die without his family to give him the special care he needs, and to bring him into the house to play," says Presti, of Niagara Falls, New York, where he runs the nonprofit Primate Sanctuary, whose rescue animals are part of a youth educational program.

Tommy was caged at a trailer lot in Gloversville, outside Albany.

His keeper, Patrick Lavery, calls all the lawsuits "a ridiculous thing." He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he had temporarily cared for Tommy to spare him from being euthanized, then donated him to an out-of-state facility in September 2015. Lavery declined to provide further details, saying he didn't want to draw more attention to the chimps' legal drama.

Wise's Coral Springs, Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project has a history of litigation linked to chimps that started in 2013, when a lawsuit on behalf of Kiko was first filed in state Supreme Court in Niagara Falls and in Fulton County on behalf of Tommy. The same year, another suit named Hercules and Leo  chimps being used for anatomical research at Stony Brook University on Long Island. They're now at a Louisiana research facility, Wise said.

In 2014, an Albany appellate court ruled that Tommy was not legally a person because chimps cannot have duties and responsibilities. Wise countered by citing primate pioneer Jane Goodall's court brief in which she says chimps do carry out duties and responsibilities in animal family settings and that apes have complex cognitive abilities allowing them to make choices.

However, legal personhood does not mean animals are expected to perform daily human tasks. It's a technical term that ensures legal entities  in this case, chimps  have basic rights.

Presti is not taking any direct legal action. But he has the support of attorney Bob Kohn, who also wrote a brief for the Albany appeal, saying, "There's no practical need to provide human rights to nonhumans."

Still, Wise remains doggedly hopeful  especially after an Argentinean judge ruled in November that chimps in fact have habeas corpus rights. "We will win, in the end," he said.

Presti has his own view of the litigation.

"Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," Presti said with a chuckle. "But I believe he's doing this for publicity."
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Steve Patti was a mechanic in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II. He often flew in Stinson 10A aircraft as an observer off Marfa Army Airfield, Auxiliary Field Number 2.

On one occasion, I recall, we stopped at Johnsons ranch for a bathroom break. We didnt go to the house. That was President Johnson. At the time, he was senator or congressman or somebody and that was before he became a president of the United States.

Patti explained that this ranch was along the Texas-Mexico border.

The runway was quite a distance from the house. We didnt go to it. The house was like a mansion practically. We would just stop and get out and walk around the airplane for a little while and stretch our legs and just drink some water from our canteen, or whatever, and get back in. We never went to the house.

He said that he landed at the LBJ ranch along the border only once.

When asked if the observers were pilots, too, and if they flew any of the aircraft on border patrols, Patti explained, Yes, there was one pilot and his wife that were there; occasionally he would go as an observer, or as a pilot and he owned his own airplane. It was called Jax-Doll was the nickname that he put on the side of his aircraft. It was a yellow Stinson 10A and it was hangared there.

According to a photograph provided by Patti, the Jax-Doll II Stinson 10A at Marfa was flown by Lt. Filberts.

Patti said some observers were observers only and not pilots.

Ed Sieger was an observer and not a pilot  strictly an observer. He was from Los Angeles.

Patti said that the observers would take binoculars with them on flights along with their notepad and pencil.

When asked if the observers ever took a camera with them for patrols, he replied, No, not to my knowledge.

We were kind of a way-stop for pilots who were coming in from the north and the south. They would come in and fuel up. We had an underground fueling storage facility and we had CAP personnel that did the re-fueling of the aircraft.

Patti said that a man named Cato did the re-fueling of the aircraft.

Youll see him, a picture of him. His name was Cato. He looked Oriental.

Fuel tanks were underground. I think there might have been two tanks. We didnt refuel any military aircraft there  just our own. I never saw any military land there at all, just CAP.

Patti explained the difference between CAP Marfa AAF Auxiliary Field Number 2 and other CAP airfields in Texas.

Number 1 was down further south. I think it was Laredo or Eagle Pass. It was CAP Number 1. We were Number 2 to El Paso. El Paso was the main CAP facility to the Army Air Force base, which had some B-24 bombers and P-47s. That was our main (CAP) base in Texas there on the border in the northern part. There were other bases in Arizona, New Mexico and California, which I never got any information on them at all.

Some of the men lived in town and then some of us mechanics lived on the base.

When talking about the airfield, Patti said that sometimes it would be lit up at night.

I remember seeing it (the airfield) lit up on rare occasions. I think there was a method by which the runway lights could be turned on by an airplane by using their microphone.

Pilots could click their microphones a certain number of times when flying over an airfield in order to turn on the runways landing lights. This allowed a pilot to land at an airfield that was either closed or where all the personnel were already asleep. This functionality still exists today and pilots often use it when landing at small municipal airports.

Ive got a picture of the commanding officer there at the time, which was Ben McGlashon. He was from Los Angeles.

Patti took a picture of McGlashon landing his Stinson Reliant at Marfa.

He also took a photo of a Stinson 10A taking off to go patrol but the aircraft had no CAP insignias on it.

Even though Patti and the other men were in the CAP, the U.S. military provided all of their clothing.

We had G.I. coveralls. In the wintertime, we were there in the winter months, they gave us these flying wool boots, and pants, and coats, and helmets, and gloves. Temperatures there in the wintertime, temperatures got down to freezing. The wind was, persistent wind there that was blowing anywhere from, on a calm day, it was blowing maybe 10 or 15 miles an hour; and then on a windy day it would blow like 45 to 50 miles an hour.

The weather played its important role in CAP missions and sometimes determined if the men would even go out on patrol on a particular day.

If it was snowing, we didnt do much. We tried to stay warm.

There is a picture of me in heavy clothing on the framework where the windmill for the pump for the water from the underground well that was there.

When asked about the age range of the men stationed at Marfa, Patti replied, There ages ranged, there were a few in the 20-years, but Id say that the average was 35- to 45-year-old pilots.

When summing up his time at Marfa AAF Auxiliary Field Number 2, Patti said, It was very desolate  unforgiving temperatures and wind and cold and desolate. It was a place you wouldnt want to go there; and if you did, you wouldnt want to stay.

His next assignment was at Henderson Field in El Paso. He said that Biggs Field was also in El Paso and that both fields were back-to-back and practically one large base so it was referred to as Henderson-Biggs Field.

They had artillery training there. It was also a training base for Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes.

They had various different military personnel a lot of G.I.s. We didnt go to town that often. We mainly stayed on the base there.

Patti recalled one event where a man loading a belt of bullets into a fighter plane discharged the machine gun when Patti was walking near the plane.

The 50-caliber machine gun, the guy was loading 50-caliber bullets in there and he stomped on it for some reason or another and I had to hit the dirt face down on the concrete apron and the tracer bullets were going over my head about 50 feet over the top of me going out over the desert.

They had some civilian aircraft there but mostly military.

Patti did not go on anymore CAP observations missions at Henderson-Biggs. He just performed his duties as a mechanic.

When asked if the CAPs duty at El Paso involved monitoring any criminal behavior along the border, Patti replied, No. Theres one thing you have to remember. Everything we were doing was secret; and unless you had a secret clearance, you werent brought into the discussion and officers didnt socialize with mechanics.

More about the history of Finney Field and the CAP will be discussed in the next article. Readers are asked to visit the Breedlove-CPTP website at www.breedlove-cptp.com for more details about the glider program of WWII. Anyone with information about the Plainview Pre-Glider School at Finney Field should contact John McCullough at 806-793-4448 or email johnmc@breedlove-cptp.org.
A 24-year-old Abilene man who was caught masturbating in his car while staring at a 13-year-old girl was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday, according to police records.

Michael Arredondo was indicted by a Taylor County grand jury of indecency with a child, a third-degree felony.

RELATED: S.A.'s 'DWI Dude' denies scamming Colombian narco-terror group chief

Arredondo was inside his parked car at a Walgreens on June 26, 2016, when he began masturbating while staring at a 13-year-old girl, who was in the car next to him, according to court documents originally obtained by KTAB-TV in Abilene.

When the girl's mother returned to the car from the store, her daughter said a man had been staring at her. She looked at the adjacent vehicle and made eye contact with Arredondo as he "pointed to his genitals," the indictment states.

The woman and her daughter "could see that he was masturbating," so the woman told her daughter to take a photo or video of Arredondo while she called the police.

Arredondo then "smiled at them and gave a 'thumbs up' as he drove away," according to court records.

RELATED: Police arrest 23-year-old suspect accused of fatally stabbing woman at Converse apartments

The woman posted the video of the man to social media to warn people in the area.

"Within a few hours she received replies identifying the man as Michael Arredondo," the indictment states.

Police eventually tracked him down and arrested him. If convicted, Arredondo could face up to 10 years in prison.

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns
University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven named a new interim president of MD Anderson Cancer Center on Friday: Dr. Marshall E. Hicks, the center's head of diagnostic imaging, will be elevated to president on Tuesday, replacing Dr. Ron DePinho.

DePinho announced his resignation last week, following months of financial losses.
After being released from a downtown Houston jail, Julius L. Sheppard called his sister and told her not to pick him up. Stopped for speeding, officers discovered a warrant for unpaid parking tickets and took him into custody, sister Montrice Sheppard said. He walked all the way in the rain to Sharpstown (a community about 12 miles away), telling God he would do whatever he asked him to do, she said.

Sheppards life changed. Walking along his Emmaus Road led to nine years of pastoring at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church and making a difference on the East Side.

Recently diagnosed with leukemia, Pastor Julius Sheppard died March 11. He was 59.

He used to tell me and even preached it from the pulpit that he wouldnt pass 60, Montrice Sheppard said.

More Information The Rev. Julius L. Sheppard Born: Jan. 6, 1958, San Antonio Died: March 11, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Mother Gladys Richardson and father Cleveland Sheppard. Survived by: Wife Marylou Sheppard; sister Montrice Sheppard; son Julius Sheppard II, sister Tanicka Richardson. Services: Funeral service 11a.m. today at New Covenant Baptist Church, 1107 SE Loop 410. See More Collapse

Sheppard grew up in Sutton Homes, one of San Antonios oldest public housing complexes. Back then there were breezeways between the apartments and he and his friends, calling themselves The Temptations, would sing there, she said.

Gifted in math, Sheppard graduated from Fox Tech High School in 1976. He continued his education at Prairie View A&M and received a bachelors degree in accounting.

After graduation, he struck out for Houston, working two years for the Texas Comptrollers Office. He left for a tax accountant job at AT&T in Morristown, New Jersey.

Visiting home, Sheppard contacted Elgin Brown, a teacher he had in elementary school. Sheppards sister, remembering her brothers story, repeated Browns words: Boy, you have been teaching people math all your life. Go be a teacher.

When he moved back to San Antonio, he got his teaching certificate and taught math at Huppertz Elementary school. Later, he took a break and went to work for Project Grad in Houston, teaching teachers how to teach math, his sister said.

It was during this time Sheppard committed his path to God. He moved back to San Antonio and studied at the Guadalupe Baptist Theological Seminary. Sheppard went on to serve in the education ministry at Greater New Mt. Zion. Later he became pastor of Trinity Missionary Baptist Church, where they held Praise in the Hood, an event started by Sheppard to unite the community.

Sheppard once said to his sister, God can make you strong. He will never put anything on your plate that you cant handle; just follow his steps.

iwilgen@express-news.net
It was an emotional event as 65 purple balloons were released to remember the number of people who have died from CF in Ireland.

The march began at the Barracks and those involved made their way to the towns Market Square where the balloons were eventually released.

CF campaigners across the country are currently waiting with bated breath for word from the Government as to whether or not it will fund the new life saving drug Orkambi.

However, people like Jillian remain hopeful that a positive outcome will result.

There was an amazing turnout on Friday, a delighted Jillian McNulty told the Leader.

There were over 300 people there and the support has just been brilliant.

Students, business people, mothers, fathers and children took to the streets of Longford town in a show of support for CF awareness and the importance of State funding for Orkambi.

When we released the 65 balloons it was very emotional, continued Jillian.

There were people there who had lost children to CF, so was very meaningful to everyone.

It made me realise how lucky I am and I want people to know that I havent forgotten about them or their plight.

The Longford CF campaigner went on to say that there was still no confirmation on the funding of Orkambi but word was expected in the next week or two.

I am so thankful to everyone for their support, she added.

It means so much to me and to the other people who suffer with CF.
Local News, Crime, Press Releases, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 17 2017

Senator John E. Brooks (SD-8) has called for the restoration of $700,000 in funding for Elder Abuse Victims Services in the 2017-2018 New York State Budget.

A recent study of Elder Abuse Prevalence in New York State found that 76 out of every 1,000 older residents were victims of elder abuse in a one-year period.

Long Island, NY - March 16, 2017 - Senator John E. Brooks (SD-8) has called for the restoration of $700,000 in funding for Elder Abuse Victims Services in the 2017-2018 New York State Budget.

Many people do not realize how common elder abuse is. It is not as straightforward as causing physical harm to an elderly person. Elder abuse can also include psychological abuse, financial exploitation and neglect. said Senator Brooks. It is critical that we provide our seniors with resources and services to reduce instances of elder abuse and mitigate its damage.

A recent study of Elder Abuse Prevalence in New York State found that 76 out of every 1,000 older residents were victims of elder abuse in a one-year period. The study also found a dramatic gap between the rate of elder abuse events reported by older New Yorkers and the number of cases referred to and served in the formal elder abuse service system. The reported incidence rate is nearly 24 times greater than the number of referred cases.

Elder abuse victims are underreported and underserved in New York, said Senator Brooks. Elder Abuse Victims Services are critical to the health and safety of the elderly population, and any further reduction to these services will greatly jeopardize their security and well-being, continued Senator Brooks.
Sports & Recreation, Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 17 2017

As reflected by the entries in DEC's Angler Achievement Awards Program, 2016 was another exceptional year for anglers fishing the freshwaters of New York State.

Albany, NY - March 16, 2017 - As reflected by the entries in the State Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC's) Angler Achievement Awards Program, 2016 was another exceptional year for anglers fishing the freshwaters of New York State, DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos announced today. In 2016, more than 130 entries were submitted into the program. Largemouth bass and smallmouth bass, New York's most popular sportfish species, made up more than half of the entries in the Catch and Release category. Thirty-nine of New York's 62 counties were represented in entries submitted last year- an example of the great fishing opportunities that exist throughout the state.

"Few states can compete with New York in terms of the quality and diversity of fish found in our waters, and I am pleased that we can acknowledge the achievements of these skillful anglers," said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. "The fact that more than 75 percent of the fish entered into the program were caught and subsequently released is particularly noteworthy and reflective of the stewardship ethic of our anglers."

The top five counties that were represented in 2016 were Suffolk, Warren, Onondaga, Essex and Chautauqua Counties. Two state records were either established or tied in 2016. A new state record freshwater drum was caught by Amelia Whalen from Lake Champlain on June 4, 2016. Her record-breaking fish weighed 29 lbs. 14 oz. In a rare occurrence, Patrick Hildenbrand captured a smallmouth bass that tied the state record established twenty one years ago in Lake Erie. The 8 lb. 4 oz. pot-bellied fish was caught from the St. Lawrence River on August 28, 2016. Other notable catches include an impressive 30 lb. 1 oz. tiger muskellunge caught from Lake Como (Cayuga County), a 35 inch steelhead caught from the Salmon River (Oswego County), and a 38 inch lake trout caught and released from Lake Erie (Chautauqua County).

The Angler Achievement Awards program recognizes anglers that catch any of the 43 eligible fish species that exceed minimum qualifying lengths or weights. The three categories that make up the program are: Catch & Release, Annual Award (kept fish) and State Record. In addition to official recognition of their catch, anglers receive a distinctive lapel pin commemorating their achievement. State record holders also receive a custom laser cut wood plaque.

Further information about the Angler Achievement Awards Program, including a downloadable application form and photo slideshow of fish entered can be found at DEC's website. Full program details and an entry form can also be found in DEC's current Freshwater Fishing Regulations Guide. For additional information on the Angler Achievement Awards Program contact (518) 402-8891 or email.
Family & Parenting, School & Education, Local News, Press Releases

By WFSD News Published: March 17 2017

The William Floyd School District is pleased to announce the formation of the William Floyd Learning Center.

Shirley, NY - March 15, 2017 - The William Floyd School District is pleased to announce the formation of the William Floyd Learning Center, a new alternative elementary school program, which will, at its onset, serve approximately 24 students (kindergarten through second grade) who are in need of a more intensive building-wide management system and a smaller student-to-teacher ratio. Scheduled to open in September 2017, the program is expected to expand in student enrollment and grade levels in subsequent years. The students who will attend are currently being educated out of the district.

Selected to lead the new program and serve as its principal is Gary Bretton, the current assistant principal at John S. Hobart Elementary School, who has served in that role since 2013. Before joining William Floyd, Mr. Bretton taught elementary school for nine years including seven in the New York City school system.

We are excited about bringing our students back and providing them with an education in a much more intimate setting here at William Floyd, said Kevin M. Coster, Superintendent of Schools, William Floyd School District. With his previous experience in teaching and administration, we know that Mr. Bretton is the right person to lead this new program.

The program is expected to be cost neutral in its first year and will provide additional cost savings to the community as enrollment grows in subsequent years. The cap is expected to be at approximately 80 students.

This new program will allow students to gain greater immersion in the William Floyd school community by receiving their education in district. It will also provide greater integration opportunities with their peers in the adjoining William Floyd Elementary School in shared spaces like the school library, the playground, gymnasium, cafeteria, at school assemblies, in cultural arts activities, at after-school clubs and on field trips. Being educated in district, also removes the need for students to experience extended travel time. Currently, students travel approximately 35 miles roundtrip each day to receive their education.

By providing for this closer proximity, our students will also have more opportunities to be mainstreamed into classes that they otherwise would not have, said Dr. Stacey Scalise, Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Instruction, Administration and Pupil Personnel Services, William Floyd School District. Students who respond to the building-wide management system may be considered for less restrictive special education class ratios or general education classes. These opportunities become more readily available to our students with this new program, and are much more difficult to attempt when they attend schools outside of our district.

The William Floyd Learning Center will be located in the back of William Floyd Elementary School in close proximity to the universal pre-kindergarten provider, Just Kids. As a result, Just Kids will relocate some of its classes into each of the other four elementary schools and align the students from those catchment areas with their elementary schools.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Legislator Anker's Office Published: March 17 2017

At the General Legislature Meeting on Tuesday, March 7th, Suffolk County Leg. Sarah Anker and Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory honored Vincent Cordiale of Rocky Point for earning the Legislatures Employee Excellence Award.

Riverhead, NY - March 17, 2017 - At the General Legislature Meeting on Tuesday, March 7th, Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker and Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory honored Vincent Cordiale of Rocky Point for earning the Suffolk County Legislatures Employee Excellence Award. Mr. Cordiale is a Systems Analyst Supervisor for the Department of Information Technology. He has been an employee of the County for 20 years and is responsible for the Countys overall technological infrastructure.

I am proud to honor Mr. Vincent Cordiale with the Suffolk County Legislatures Employee Excellence Award. He is leader in the department and has been responsible for many projects, including the initial design and additional improvements of the technology infrastructure, said Legislature Anker. I would like to thank Mr. Cordiale for his dedication and commitment to his fellow employees and to Suffolk County.

Mr. Cordiales dedication and expertise are unparalleled. He is a true team player who always makes himself available to help solve a problem or to assist a fellow coworker, even during the evening and over the weekend. He has worked hard to ensure that County systems remain up and running during storms and was instrumental in keeping us online during Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Irene, and snowstorm Nemo. We are grateful to have him as a member of our IT staff.
Local News, National & World News, Press Releases, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 17 2017

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo issued a statement on the proposed federal budget.

Albany, NY - March 16, 2017 - "The Administrations proposed budget is dangerous, reckless, and contemptuous of American values. It should be rejected by Congress out of hand. The proposal undermines policies and positions that have been cherished and defended by men and women of both parties, some for more than a century. It leaves behind the most vulnerable among us, and puts our environment, our infrastructure, and our future at risk.



"The proposal takes a wrecking ball to the federal agencies that provide crucial support and relief to New Yorkers. Among other senseless cuts, major reductions at the Department of Transportation would remove critical funding for the Gateway Tunnel project between New York and New Jersey and other transportation upgrades throughout New York. This budget cuts National Institute of Health funding for life-saving research happening in New York and across the country. And by calling for the dissolution of the National Endowment for the Arts, it takes aim at one of the engines of Americas cultural heritage.



"It also entirely defunds the Clean Power Plan and guts funding for the EPA, withdrawing support that is essential to protecting New Yorks clean water and environmental resources. At the same time, the proposal cuts vital funds to our farmers and rural communities and hampers our ability to respond to extreme weather events that have wreaked destruction across New York.



"Finally, the Administrations budget slashes $6 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, eliminating Community Development Block Grants that have transformed affordable housing for New Yorkers in need. As a former Secretary of the HUD, I have firsthand knowledge of the crucial services the Department provides and the real, tangible harm these cuts will impose on vulnerable, hard-working Americans in New York and across the nation.



"Despite the reckless cuts to critical programs, the Administration is also contemplating providing more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. In short, Washingtons message to those who cant afford heat at the dead of winter, those struggling to provide an education for their child; and to commuters forced to sit through hours of traffic on a daily commute to work is that they dont matter. Essentially, this proposal lacks the most basic American values of compassion and care.



"Enacting this bill would mark a fundamental transformation in what America stands for, and what role our country plays in the world. We have always maintained a strong military, but we have always offered the world more than arms. The Lady in the Harbor does not brandish her fist at the world; she raises a light.



"New York will always stand up for the principles that have made America a beacon around the world for centuries. I will continue to work with New Yorks congressional delegation to fight to ensure that every New Yorker has the opportunity to succeed and that we are investing in the programs that will ensure a bright future for generations to come. We still believe in e pluribus unum."
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 17 2017

The Public Information Office reports the details of a Fire that occurred in Great Neck Estates on Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 5:43 pm.

Great Neck, NY - March 17, 2017 - The Public Information Office reports the details of a Fire that occurred in Great Neck Estates on Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 5:43 pm.

According to police, a Third Precinct Nassau County Police Officer on Patrol observed heavy black smoke emanating from the direction of Great Neck Estates. After investigating the officer was able to locate the source which was a Bayview Avenue residential garage fully engulfed in flames that was spreading to the residence.

The Nassau County Police Officer requested the assistance of the Vigilant and Alert Fire Departments, and then with the Assistance of a Great Neck Estates Police Officer they began to search for any occupants. The two officers did locate three persons inside, an 85 year old male and a 84 year old female, along with a 48 year old female home care aide that were taken out to safety.

During the incident the Nassau County Police Officer sustained smoke inhalation and was later transported to local hospital for treatment. The three persons found inside were also treated at the scene. The Arson Bomb Squad and the Nassau County Fire Marshall responded and will continue investigating the fire deemed not suspicious at this time.
Flag of Ansar Jihad

Ansar Jihad, an al Qaeda-linked group comprised of Central Asian and Turkish fighters, has released a video touting another training camp in northern Syria. Unlike other training camp videos from the group, this makeshift setup focuses on small arms training, explosives, and small unit combat.

Most of the video is dedicated to showing the jihadist group training in small arms fire near abandoned buildings somewhere in northwestern Syria. Kalashnikov assault rifles and PK machine guns are shown, along with the use of explosives and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs). The video ends with the jihadists partaking in physical training. Prior training videos have focused on snipers and close quarters combat.

Ansar Jihad is an al Qaeda-linked group that has fought alongside that organizations main branch in Syria in many battles. It has advertised its role in the fighting in Aleppo, including in the Oct. 2016 al Qaeda-led offensive named the Battle of Abu Omar Saraqib. A Uighur military commander of the group was killed in a US drone strike earlier this year alongside a longtime al Qaeda veteran known as Abu Khattab al Qahtani.

The groups commander, Abu Omar al Turkistani, reportedly played a leading role in the creation of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), a merger between Jabhat Fatah al Sham (JFS, al Qaedas branch in Syria) and several other rebel groups. Turkistani may have been in line to assume a position in the newly formed entity. As such, it remains possible that Ansar Jihad is a subsidiary of JFS/HTS.

Ansar Jihad also has ties to the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) in Afghanistan. Turkistani was a former commander in the IJU from around 2011 to 2015 when he migrated to Syria to join the jihad there. On Ansar Jihads Telegram page, it has also eulogized killed IJU fighters and has shared its videos. However, it is unclear if Ansar Jihad contains any other former IJU members. (See FDDs Long War Journal report, Uighur jihadist fought in Afghanistan, killed in Syria.)

Screenshots from the video:

Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
The US has bombed another suspected al Qaeda meeting location in Syria, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM). Although CENTCOM describes the building as being located in Idlib province, it is actually in the village of Al Jinah in Aleppo province.

The choice of target was immediately controversial, as Syrian activists said the building was a mosque filled with prayer-goers. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) went so far as to describe it as a massacre.

CENTCOM denies that a mosque was struck in the airstrikes yesterday, according to the New York Times. We did not target any mosques, Col. John J. Thomas, a US military spokesman, said. What we did target was destroyed. There is a mosque within 50 feet of that building that is still standing.

News quickly spread online that the building was a mosque. Hadi Alabdallah, an independent Syrian journalist who often reports from hotspots in the war torn country (including areas controlled by Sunni Islamists and jihadists), posted a video on his Twitter feed showing the rubble left by the airstrikes. A screen shot from the video can be seen above.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American who operates a small media outfit named On the Ground News, which provides pro-al Qaeda coverage, recorded his own video from the purported bombing site. Kareem shows what he says is a prayer room that was damaged in the airstrikes. Kareem claims that 56 people were killed.

Kareem also claims that the mosque was operated by Jamaat Tablighi, a proselytization group that has hosted prayers there every Thursday for the past four years.

It should be noted that while not all Jamaat Tablighi members are part of a Qaeda, US intelligence officials allege that the organization has repeatedly been used by the jihadists as a cover for their travels and operations. For example, Jamaat Tablighi is referenced throughout the declassified and leaked files prepared by Joint Task Force  Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention facility in Cuba.

JTF-GTMOs analysts noted Jamaat Tablighi is designated a National Intelligence Priority Framework (NIPF) Priority 2A Terrorist Support Entity (TSE), which is defined as a group that has demonstrated intent and willingness to provide financial support to terrorist organizations willing to attack US persons or interests.

Numerous Guantanamo detainees claimed affiliation with Jamaat Tablighi (JT), but JTF-GTMO found this was an al Qaeda cover story and al Qaeda used the JT to facilitate and fund the international travels of its members.

CENTCOM invites a comparison between the location bombed in Al Jinah and a large training camp that was bombed in January. CENTCOMs statement references the Shaykh Sulayman facility (an Al Qaeda terrorist training camp), where more than 100 fighters were being trained in terror tactics.

The Shaykh Sulayman training camp had been in operation since 2013, but was not struck until early 2017.

The US has targeted known al Qaeda veterans in Syria with precision airstrikes since 2014. The US rarely went after larger facilities associated with al Qaeda.

But that changed during the first three weeks of this year. The shift in tactics occurred before the Trump administration took power on Jan. 20. The Defense Department reported that more than 150 al Qaeda terrorists, including some suspected of plotting against Western interests, were killed between Jan. 1 and Jan. 19. Most of them were struck down at the Shaykh Sulayman training camp in Idlib province.

CENTCOM claims that several terrorists were killed in the bombings yesterday.

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.
Culture / Art Republik

Mar 17, 2017 | By Nadya Wang

In this Crossover issue, which marks a change in editorship, ART REPUBLIK shines a spotlight on artists whose work push and cross boundaries.

ART REPUBLIK is bringing themes back with this Crossover issue, to mark the change in editorship, and more importantly, to explore how contemporary artmaking increasingly relates to other creative fields such as architecture, design and music. One such story in the new issues is that of the B.Zero1 ring by Bulgari. For 2017, the luxury brand unveiled the new design that had been conceptualised by celebrated architect, the late Zaha Hadid.

Under new managing editor Nadya Wang, ART REPUBLIK refreshes its focus on the artworld in Southeast Asia from its vantage point in Singapore, with an eye on Asia and the rest of the world.

As ART REPUBLIK continues to champion emerging artists from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, the magazine plans to provide a more inclusive and expansive exploration of the art world, from public museums to commercial galleries, from policy-makers to artists as activists, and how they all connect to each other.

With the theme Crossover, the stories in the issue celebrate the openness and achievements of the people who embrace new fields, styles and ideas to make art. A special feature reveals the sources of inspiration five Southeast Asian artists look to, including Robert Zhao Ren Hui, Eiffel Chong, Alwin Reamillo, Zoncy and Anon Pairot.

Other artists featured in this issue include Filipino artist Ronald Ventura, Singapore avant-garde music performer Margaret Leng Tan, as well as the late Chinese photographer Ren Hang, among others.

Given the diversity of the art scenes in Southeast Asia and beyond, the magazine will include articles from more contributing writers, for fresh perspectives from individuals on the ground who are in the know. In the same vein, there will be more columns, from art law to the art market, to seek the views of industry experts on current trends and concerns. For this issue, read about the rise of the Vietnamese art market, as well as the new trend in corporate artist-in-residence programmes.

ART REPUBLIK 14 will debut at Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central. Previews of the art fairs are complemented by top picks for Hong Kong Art Week events, such as the LArche de Noe racontee par Van Cleef & Arpels installation at the Asia Society Hong Kong, and Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End to Experimentation at ArtisTree in Hong Kong. There are also reviews of art events in the region, including Art Fair Philippines, Galleries Night Bangkok, and Art Stage Singapore.

While we strive to inform, we also aim to entertain with more light-hearted thematic features and regular additions to the magazine. In addition, we have redesigned the magazine to make it lighter and sleeker while staying true to ART REPUBLIKs bright, fresh and lively identity, says Nadya Wang, Managing Editor of ART REPUBLIK. We remain committed to making art accessible to one and all, and we look forward to growing the magazine with your support.

Mr. Olivier Burlot, CEO & Publisher at Heart Media, comments: The Crossover issue represents the ART REPUBLIK teams efforts to engage more closely and creatively with the art community to put in the spotlight the very best the region has to offer through a thematic approach. Exciting times ahead for the magazine!

Visit ART REPUBLIKs digital page, for more art news. The tablet edition of ART REPUBLIK is also available for subscription on all Google Play and Apple Newsstands via Magzter, which is supported on all Android and Apple smart devices.

Follow ART REPUBLIK on Instagram (@art_republik), where a new social campaign has been launched, anchored by themed posts thrice weekly: #MustSeeMondays (new art exhibitions and events to check out), #WayBackWhenesdays (noteworthy art historical facts) and #FeatureFridays (people to watch in the artworld).
Superyacht holidays just got even more luxurious with Burgess recently launched range of charters. With seven of its finest Central Agency superyachts available for charter in the Indian Ocean and South East Asia, guests are given the opportunity to explore the Maldives, the Seychelles, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia and Palau. If seeking out exotic locates and adventurous experiences is on the agenda, charterers can anticipate Robinson Crusoe beaches, ancient temples, soaring karsts, golden pagodas, exclusive resorts and not to mention, a wonderful underwater world waiting to be explored.

Some of Burgess top selections include: the 77 meter Australian-built SILVER FAST by SILVERYACHTS, perfect for navigating the atolls of the Maldives or the islands of the Andaman Sea and accommodating up to 12 guests in eight cabins and a 19-member crew; the 70meter Joy by Feadship, which cruises in the Maldives or the Andaman Sea and features full spa and gym amenities as well as a professional on board therapist; the impressive 73 meter Titania by Lurssen-Werft that charters in the Maldives and South East Asia region with an extensive water park and water toys on board; and the 69 meter Saluzi by Austal, boasting accommodation for 32 people in 16 cabins, a shallow draft that allows for cruising into small coves and anchorages, as well as a license to legally charter in Palau (a top-rated diving destination) and Indonesia.

Smaller, though no less exceptional charter options include: the 59.3 meter Meamina by the stylish Italian Benetti brand, which offers spectacular views as it tours around the Maldives, Seychelles and Thailand; the 50.9 meter Northern Sun from Narasaki Shipyard, based in Thai waters and available for charter throughout the Andaman Sea and in Myanmar; and finally, the 44.2 meter Hemisphere from Pendennis Shipyard, currently the largest sailing catamaran in the world. Suitable for off-the-beaten-track cruising in Thailand and the Maldives, Hemisphere is also a certified PADI dive-training centre offering guests the opportunity to attain PADI certification while on board.

For more information, visit Burgess Yachts.

This article was first published in Yacht Style 37.
Our Back Pages

Issue 115

Issue Date: Summer 1996

Editor: Derk Wynand

Pages: 116

Number of contributors: 17

Buy Issue 115: Print Edition

Barbara Lambert's novella, "A Message for Mr. Lazarus" takes up over half of the pages of this issue. What literary magazine does that? Well, The Malahat Review does, obviously. Why? Because "Mr. Lazarus" was the winner of the 1996 Novella Prize (Lambert was also a finalist in Malahat's first novella contest). The prize itself separates us from some other literary magazines simply because we have, through this contest and its biennial counterpart, the Long Poem Prize, asserted the importance of these two slightly unwieldy forms (too short to be a book on their own, but too long for most quarterlies).

"A Message for Mr. Lazarus" is an example of why such dedication is worthwhile. It is a beautiful, moving story of a character known as "Wolf" who has escaped to a tropical resort hotel. He is on the run, in some ways, from the emotions attendant with, and the reality that his lover back in wintery Canada is dying of AIDS. It is a rich story and requires all of these Malahat pages in order to unfold with the grace that it does. As the title suggests, there several sorts of deaths and resurrections in the story and its complexities are richly layered. Lambert's writing here reminds me of the best of Timothy Findley's work and I suspect she would cite him as an influence. AIDS was a daily subject in the news in 1996, and though we hear the term less in 2017, the story is no less poignant now than it was thirty years ago.

The rest of the issue is for poetry: John Reibetanz, Sylvia Legris, Anne Swannell, Harold Rhenisch, and John Pass. Ken Babstock makes jigging for cod seem like a strange thing to do in "A Mainland Boy in Eastport." Julie Paul gets cheeky in "Cat Got My Tongue," and Tom Wayman meditates on "Autumn's Gate." Eric Miller, who will one day become the most erudite member of Malahat's poetry board has two poems herein, and the issue is rounded off by seven poems by Tomas Transtromer, here translated from the Swedish by Don Coles, himself no slouch when it comes to poetry.



 Jay Ruzesky

About Our Back Pages
Peravoor: Former Wayanad Child Welfare Committee chairman Fr Thomas Joseph Terakam, members sister Betty and sister Ophelia who are co-accused in the Kottiyoor rape case surrendered before the police on Friday morning.

All the accused were on the run after the arrest of the catholic priest Fr Robin, who was accused of raping a minor girl. The High Court had directed all the four accused in the case namely Father Thomas Therakam, Sister Opehlia, sister Betty and Thangamma to surrender before the probe authorities on Tuesday.

A case has been slapped against the accused for concealing the incident of the minor girl's delivery and they will be presented before the court today itself.
What Investors Should Make of Windfall Taxes and Export Bans

Editors Note: MarketMinder favors no politician nor any political party, assessing politics and policy ideas solely for their potential market and economic impact.

Crude oil and gasoline prices may be down from this years highs, but households worldwide continue dealing with high home energy costs, spurring governments to consider taking action. On our shores, the Biden administration is jawboning about an Energy sector windfall profits tax and banning oil and gas exports. Britain is mulling an extension of its own temporary windfall tax, and Australia is considering an export ban and capping natural gas prices. Now, this is obviously a politically sensitive topic, so please understand that we arent trying to take sides or wade into the political aspectespecially on the eve of Americas midterm elections. But considering policies impact is an important task from an investing standpoint. In this case, while we dont think any of these initiatives would likely be a net benefit, we doubt their imposition would be a huge new negative for stocks.

Take windfall profits taxes. The argument for them seems simple: Oil and gas companies have enjoyed bumper profits due to prices that rose for reasons outside their control this yeara happy accident, according to our politicianswhile consumers have suffered. Therefore, it is only fair to tax this temporary windfall and use the proceeds to help households and businesses having trouble making ends meet. Problem is, a windfall tax discourages new investment, which is what is ultimately needed to bring prices down. Why would companies invest in future production now when governments are signaling they could raid any profits that brings? It also ignores recent history as well as the Energy sectors cyclicality. In general, oil prices rise as demand exceeds supply. Eventually high prices incentivize new investment, which boosts production and brings supply in balance with demand. Inevitably, oil companies overshoot, creating a supply glut that pulls prices down. When that happens, they cut costs to stay afloat, which eventually reduces supply as new wells dont come online to replace spent ones. That leads to supply shortages, pushing prices higher and starting the whole cycle anew.

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MARTINSVILLE  Despite efforts to recruit more minority employees, the city is having a hard time doing so, according to officials.

Statistics presented to Martinsville City Council on Tuesday show that among 209 people on the city payroll last year, 183 (87.5 percent) were white, 25 (12 percent) were black or African-American, one (0.5 percent) was Native American and none were Latino.

However, the number of African-American employees was up by one from 2015, the statistics show. At that time, the citys workforce was 11.3 percent black.

Among 29 new employees hired last year, only six (20.7 percent) were black or African-American. Twenty-two (75.8 percent) were white and one (3.5 percent) was Hispanic or Latino, statistics show.

In comparison, among 23 workers hired in 2015, seven (30 percent) were black or African-American while 16 (70 percent) were white, figures reveal. No Latinos or Native Americans were hired that year.

No Asians, native Hawaiians or other Pacific islanders have been employed by the city at least during the past four years, statistics show.

Three of the five council members  Vice Mayor Chad Martin and Councilwomen Jennifer Bowles and Sharon Brooks Hodge  are black.

Hodge voiced concern that in a city with a population roughly 45 percent African-American, only 12 percent of its employees comprise that category.

We try very hard to recruit minorities, said Human Resources Director Kathy Vernon.

City job vacancies are advertised in newspapers, posted on Facebook and listed with the Virginia Employment Commission and regional colleges and universities, which can inform future graduates about career opportunities available in Martinsvilles government in their chosen fields.

Historically black universities contacted include Hampton, Shaw, Virginia State, N.C. A&T, N.C. Central, Norfolk State and Winston-Salem State, according to Vernon.

In addition, the city informs predominantly black churches, the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP and the Martinsville-Henry County Ministerial Association about its vacancies, Vernon said.

Among 968 job applications received by the city last year, 573 (59.2 percent) were from whites, 256 (26.5 percent) were from blacks or African-Americans, 97 (10 percent) were from people of two or more races, 19 (2 percent) were from Hispanics or Latinos, four (0.4 percent) were from American Indians or Alaska natives and three (0.3 percent) were from Asians. Another 16 applications (1.6 percent) were submitted by people whose races could not be identified, statistics show.

A total of 1,200 applications were received for city job vacancies in 2015. Of those, 272 (22.7 percent) were submitted by blacks or African-Americans while 787 (65.5 percent) were submitted by whites, the figures indicate.

Were certainly open to recommendations on what we can do differently to try and generate more applications from minorities, said City Manager Leon Towarnicki.

Its a very competitive market, he said, noting that other communities also are trying to hire more minorities.

Hodge indicated she wasnt complaining about current efforts.

I just want to make sure we explore all the avenues available for minority recruitment, she said.

Exploring options

Although city administrators are unsure why more blacks or African-Americans are not applying for jobs, they think there are two possibilities.

One is competition with area businesses that have openings more often, such as call centers. The city gets more applications from minorities for administrative jobs than non-administrative jobs, Vernon said.

They also believe it could have something to do with salaries and benefits not being competitive with those provided by other localities for similar jobs.

Mayor Gene Teague asked how many former employees have left in recent years due to getting jobs with better salaries and benefits.

Probably most of them, Vernon replied based on what employees have said during exit interviews.

Police Chief Sean Dunn, who was sitting in the audience, nodded his head in agreement.

Information provided by Vernon shows that in 2016, the police department lost 11 sworn officers. Four retired but four others accepted jobs with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Virginia State Police; Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and private industry. Three did not say why they quit.

Public works is another department that has seen high turnover. Seven utility crew workers left in 2016. Of those, four accepted private sector jobs and three were hired by the Virginia Department of Transportation, Vernons information shows.

Another concern of human resources officials, reports presented to the council show, is that of 29 city employees eligible to retire, four are department heads: Community Development Director Wayne Knox (who doubles as assistant city manager), Electric Department Director Durwin Joyce, Water Resources Director Andy Lash and Municipal Information Services Director Esther Artis.

Nobody currently in those departments is thought to have acquired the experience or skills needed to succeed them, officials indicated.

The lack of successors to department heads is frequently a concern, Towarnicki told the council during its strategic planning session Saturday morning, because the city has lost a lot of middle level employees. A hypothetical example, he mentioned, is someone between the water resources director and a water treatment plant operator.

Hodge cited a need for employees to be cross-trained for duties other than their regular ones, including managerial duties.

But some employees dont want to step into management positions, Knox said.

Towarnicki said the citys current employee evaluation process includes looking at where workers are at, where they aspire to be in a few years and what action is needed to help them get there.

The council did not discuss, either Saturday or Tuesday, employee salary issues in detail.
MARTINSVILLE  A new bank is going up at the Village of Martinsville.

According to city officials, site plans show SunTrust will erect an approximately 2,500 square-foot, standalone bank with two canopied drive-through lanes in the front parking lot of the shopping center on Commonwealth Boulevard, formally known as Liberty Fair Mall when it was enclosed.

SunTrust has a branch inside the Kroger supermarket at the shopping center.

The Martinsville Bulletin on Thursday was unable to obtain from SunTrust officials details of plans for the new bank, such as when construction is expected to start and be finished and whether the branch in Kroger will close.

While site preparation has begun  at this stage its premature to provide further details, Hugh Suhr, a SunTrust spokesman at the companys Atlanta headquarters, wrote in an email.

Anne Jenkins, spokeswoman for Krogers Mid-Atlantic Division based in Roanoke, did not return an email for comment.

The city has issued construction and electrical permits for the new bank, said Building Official Kris Bridges.

Thursday afternoon, a fence had been erected around the construction site and a layer of asphalt had been removed. Bricks were piled near the fence.

Assistant City Manager/Community Development Director Wayne Knox said his impression of the building, based on his review of the site plans, is that its not going to be a gaudy building, but it will be one that reminds you of a typical bank building.

Site plans call for the bank to have landscaping. Bridges said he understands it will be low bushes. Banks typically do not want large trees around their properties so as to prevent blind spots leading to security problems, he said.

City officials are just pleased that the site will have some landscaping. Knox recalled that the Hull Storey Gibson Companies (later Hull Property Group), the shopping centers former owner, removed plants and trees from the property when it turned the mall into a traditional-type shopping center in which store entrances open outdoors instead of an interior hallway.

They didnt want all of that landscaping on their property, Knox said.

In December, Augusta, Ga.-based Hull Property Group sold the Village of Martinsville to Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust of Virginia Beach for $23.53 million through a cash/credit combination. However, the vacant former Sears department store building was not part of the sale.

Bridges said he does not know how soon construction will start but once it does, he anticipates it will take about six months to complete.

The construction site is in the front center of the shopping centers parking lot, about equidistant between Kroger and the supermarkets gas station on the other side of the center in front of Belk.

Dollar Tree is directly across from the site, on the other side of Commonwealth Boulevard.
Information reaching Zurich from Russia at this moment, March 17, 1917, is so scanty, and events in our country are developing so rapidly, that any judgement of the situation must of needs be very cautious.

Yesterdays dispatches indicated that the tsar had already abdicated and that the new, Octobrist-Cadet government[2] had already made an agreement with other representatives of the Romanov dynasty. Today there are reports from England that the tsar has not yet abdicated, and that his whereabouts are unknown. This suggests that he is trying to put up resistance, organise a party, perhaps even an armed force, in an attempt to restore the monarchy. If he succeeds in fleeing from Russia or winning over part of the armed forces, the tsar might, to mislead the people, issue a manifesto announcing immediate conclusion of a separate peace with Germany!

That being the position, the proletariats task is a pretty complex one. There can be no doubt that it must organise itself in the most efficient way, rally all its forces, arm, strengthen and extend its alliance with all sections of the working masses of town and country in order to put up a stubborn resistance to tsarist reaction and crush the tsarist monarchy once and for all.

Another factor to bear in mind is that the new government that has seized power in St. Petersburg, or, more correctly, wrested it from the proletariat, which has waged a victorious, heroic and fierce struggle, consists of liberal bourgeois and landlords whose lead is being followed by Kerensky, the spokesman of the democratic peasants and, possibly, of that part of the workers who have forgotten their internationalism and have been led on to the bourgeois path. The new government is composed of avowed advocates and sup porters of the imperialist war with Germany, i.e., a war in alliance with the English and French imperialist governments, a war for the plunder and conquest of foreign landsArmenia, Galicia, Constantinople, etc.

The new government cannot give the peoples of Russia (and the nations tied to us by the war) either peace, bread, or full freedom. The working class must therefore continue its fight for socialism and peace, utilising for this purpose the new situation and explaining it as widely as possible among the masses.

The new government cannot give the people peace, because it represents the capitalists and landlords and because it is tied to the English and French capitalists by treaties and financial commitments. Russian Social-Democracy must therefore, while remaining true to internationalism, first and foremost explain to the people who long for peace that it cannot be won under the present government. Its first appeal to the people (March 17) does not as much as mention the chief and basic issue of the time, peace. It is keeping secret the predatory treaties tsarism concluded with England, France, Italy, Japan, etc. It wants to conceal from the people the truth about its war programme, the fact that it stands for continuation of the war, for victory over Germany. It is not in a position to do what the people so vitally need: directly and frankly propose to all belligerent countries an immediate ceasefire, to be followed by peace based on complete liberation of all the colonies and dependent and unequal nations. That requires a workers government acting in alliance with, first, the poorest section of the rural population, and, second, the revolutionary workers of all countries in the war.

The new government cannot give the people bread. And no freedom can satisfy the masses suffering from hunger due to shortages and inefficient distribution of available stocks, and, most important, to the seizure of these stocks by the landlords and capitalists. It requires revolutionary measures against the landlords and capitalists to give the people bread, and such measures can be carried out only by a workers government.

Lastly, the new government is not, in a position to give the people full freedom, though in its March 17 manifesto it speaks of nothing but political freedom and is silent on other, no less important, issues. The new government has already endeavoured to reach agreement with the Romanov dynasty, for it has suggested recognising the Romanovs, in defiance of the peoples will, on the understanding that Nicholas II would abdicate in favour of his son, with a member of the Romanov family appointed regent. In its manifesto, the new government promises every kind of freedom, but has failed in its direct and unconditional duty immediately to implement such freedoms as election of officers, etc., by the soldiers, elections to the St. Petersburg, Moscow and other City Councils on a basis of genuinely universal, and not merely male, suffrage, make all government and public buildings available for public meetings, appoint elections to all local institutions and Zemstvos, likewise on the basis of genuinely universal suffrage, repeal all restrictions on the rights of local government bodies, dismiss all officials appointed to supervise local government bodies, introduce not only freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion, immediately separate the school from the church and free it of control by government officials, etc.

The new governments March 17 manifesto arouses the deepest distrust, for it consists entirely of promises and does not provide for the immediate carrying out of a single one of the vital measures that can and should be carried out right now.

The new governments programme does not contain a single word on the eight-hour day or on any other economic measure to improve the workers position. It contains not a single word about land for the peasants, about the uncompensated transfer to the peasants of all the estates. By its silence on these vital issues the new government reveals its capitalist and landlord nature.

Only a workers government that relies, first, on the overwhelming majority of the peasant population, the farm labourers and poor peasants, and, second, on an alliance with the revolutionary workers of all countries in the war, can give the people peace, bread and full freedom.

The revolutionary proletariat can therefore only regard the revolution of March 1 (14) as its initial, and by no means complete, victory on its momentous path. It cannot but set itself the task of continuing the fight for a democratic republic and socialism.

To do that, the proletariat and the R.S.D.L.P. must above all utilise the relative and partial freedom the new government is introducing, and which can be guaranteed and extended only by continued, persistent and persevering revolutionary struggle.

The truth about the present government and its real attitude on pressing issues must be made known to all working people in town and country, and also to the army. Soviets of Workers Deputies must be organised, the workers must be armed. Proletarian organisations must be extended to the army (which the new government has likewise promised political rights) and to the rural areas. In particular there must be a separate class organisation for farm labourers.

Only by making the truth known to the widest masses of the population, only by organising them, can we guarantee full victory in the next stage of the revolution and the winning of power by a workers government.

Fulfilment of this task, which in revolutionary times and under the impact of the severe lessons of the war can be brought home to the people in an immeasurably shorter time than under ordinary conditions, requires the revolutionary proletarian party to be ideologically and organisation ally independent. It must remain true to internationalism and not succumb to the false bourgeois phraseology meant to dupe the people by talk of defending the fatherland in the present imperialist and predatory war.

Not only this government, but even a democratic bourgeois republican government, were it to consist exclusively of Kerensky and other Narodnik and Marxist social-patriots, cannot lead the people out of the imperialist war and guarantee peace.

For that reason we cannot consent to any blocs, or alliances, or even agreements with the defencists among the workers, nor with the Gvozdyov-Potresov-Chkhenkeli Kerensky, etc., trend, nor with men who, like Chkheidze and others, have taken a vacillating and indefinite stand on this crucial issue. Those agreements would not only inject an element of falseness in the minds of the masses, making them dependent on the Russian imperialist bourgeoisie, but would also weaken and undermine the leading role of the proletariat in ridding the people of imperialist war and guaranteeing a genuinely durable peace between the workers governments of all countries.

Notes

[1] The first news of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia reached Lenin on March 2 (15), 1917. Reports of the victory of the revolution and the advent to power of an Octobrist-Cadet government of capitalists and landlords appeared in the Zurcher Post and Neue Zurcher Zeitung by the evening of March 4 (17). Lenin had drawn up a rough draft of theses, not meant for publication, on the tasks of the protetariat in the revolution. The theses were immediately sent via Stockholm to Oslo for the Bolsheviks leaving for Russia.

[2] Lenin uses the appellation Octobrist-Cadet to describe the bourgeois Provisional Government formed at 3 p.m. on March 2 (15), 1917 by agreement between the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. The government was made up of Prince G. Y. Lvov (Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior), the Cadet leader P. N. Milyukov (Minister of Foreign Affairs), the Octobrist leader A. I. Guchkov (Minister of War and Acting Minister of the Navy) and other representatives of the big bourgeoisie and landlords. It also included A. F. Kerensky, of the Trudovik group, who was appointed Minister of Justice.

The manifesto of March 4 (17) mentioned by Lenin later on was originally drawn up by Menshevik members of the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee. It set out the terms on which the Executive was prepared to support the Provisional Government. In the course of negotiations with the Duma Committee, it was revised by P. N. Milyukov and became the basis of the Provisional Governments first appeal to the people.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/
The February Revolution: On February 23rd the revolution begins as strikes and protests in Petrograd erupt into a mass movement involving hundreds of thousands of workers; within 5 days the hated and seemingly omnipotent Tsarist Monarchy is overthrown.

What it is important to realise is that from the first the revolution was a revolution of the people. From the first moment neither the Duma nor the intelligentsia had any control of the situation. (Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent)

On 23rd February 1917 (according to the old Julian calendar, new calendar 8th March) the first explosive chapter of the Russian Revolution began. Beyond the expectations of any revolutionary organisation, the spontaneous strike action of women textile workers in Petrograd sparked a wave of revolt which would culminate in the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II within just five days.

The February Revolution saw a mass strike develop from below at a furious pace which posed the question of state power within a week of its inception. Workers in Petrograd took to the streets against intolerable bread shortages, the slaughter of thousands of Russian workers and peasants in a futile imperialist war, and the brutally oppressive rule of the tsar. They were soon joined by their comrades in the army and workers and soldiers across Russia. As Trotsky put it, the streets of Petrograd again speak the language of 1905, the year of the previous revolution in Russia.

The revolutionary masses, leaning on their experience from the 1905 revolution, immediately set up the the Soviets of workers and soldiers deputies. This led to a situation of Dual power with two organs of power. On the one hand was the Soviet - that is, the organised expression of the revolutionary masses - and on the other hand the Provisional Government and the Duma composed of the representatives of the landlord and capitalist class. This strugge would define the whole of the course of the revolution from February to October.

News of the Tsars overthrow sent shockwaves around the globe. For their part, Russian revolutionaries in exile including Lenin and Trotsky scrambled to return to the scene of these great events. They immediately their role as Marxists with a perspective for the Russian proletariat to take the power that the revolution now offered them.

It is vital that we study the development of the Russian Revolution from these first few days and extrapolate general lessons both from the events themselves and from the tactics of great revolutionaries in response to them. 100 years on from 1917, we are again in an epoch when revolution is the watchword. We must prepare ourselves for coming revolutionary events by examining the treasure trove of historical accounts and Marxist analysis of the greatest revolutionary event in history.

This list of chapters and articles on February is intended to supplement the broader reading guide for the Russian Revolution as a whole that we published earlier this year. It contains both sections from larger texts and stand-alone writings specific to the February Revolution, in order to equip the reader with a thorough understanding of this event in particular. Throughout the year we will be publishing reading guides to coincide with the anniversaries of other important stages of the Russian Revolution, such as the April Days, the July Days, the counter-revolutionary assault of Kornilov, and of course the October insurrection.

Introduction

The February Revolution of 1917: Storming Heaven | Alan Woods

Editor of In Defence of Marxism Alan Woods provides an overview of every aspect of the February Revolution, including its causes, a brief summary of its events and the implications it had for the Bolshevik Party and the Russian working class.

Before the Revolution

The History of the Russian Revolution Volume 1: Chapters 1-5 | Leon Trotsky Available for purchase

The definitive Marxist text on the Russian Revolution beginnings with Trotsky applying a dialectical analysis of its causes, as a well as a profile of the doomed royal couple.

On the Eve of 1917: Chapter 6 | Alexander Shliapnikov

Shliapnikov was a leading Bolshevik in Petrograd prior to and during the Russian Revolution. This chapter of his account deals with the burgeoning crisis in Russia from the second half of 1916, and how the Bolsheviks were preparing themselves for potential revolutionary events.

Before 1917: The Gathering Storm | Hamid Alizadeh

This article gives a background to the events of 1917, analysing how the conditions for revolution and the collapse of the monarchy were being prepared.

Memoirs of a British Agent: Book 3 Chapter 7 | Bruce Lockhart

Bruce Lockhart was a British spy stationed in Moscow at the time that the Revolution broke out. In this chapter of his memoir he recounts the mood of terror amongst the Russian bourgeoisie at an impending revolution.

On the Eve of the February Revolution | Hamid Alizadeh

This article describes the atmosphere in Russia, among both the workers and the ruling classes, immediately prior to the beginning of the Russian Revolution.

The Events of the Revolution

The History of the Russian Revolution Volume 1: Chapters 6-9 | Leon Trotsky Available for purchase

In these chapters of his History, Trotsky depicts the acts of the revolution itself, first from the Tsars camp and then from the streets. He also begins to deal with the questions of revolutionary leadership and state power.

On the Eve of a Revolution | Leon Trotsky

This essay was Trotskys first response to receiving news of the Revolution in exile. It captures the mood of exultant expectation about revolutionaries internationally at that time.

The First Stage of the First Revolution | V. I. Lenin

This letter was Lenins first examination of the Revolution in full. Although its only sources were the international press cuttings Lenin had access to in Zurich, as Trotsky suggests, the piece constitutes a finished analysis of the revolutionary situation.

Memoirs of a British Agent: Book 3 Chapters 8-9 | Bruce Lockhart

In these chapters of his memoir, Bruce Lockhart explains his own surprisingly insightful conclusions on the causes and events of the February Revolution from a bourgeois perspective.

Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution: Part 6 Section 1 | Alan Woods Available for purchase

Bolshevism is a history of the Bolshevik Party and its origins up to and including 1917. In this section of its final part, Alan Woods describes the events of the February Revolution.

The Provisional Government and the Dual Power

The History of the Russian Revolution Volume 1: Chapters 10-12 | Leon Trotsky Available for purchase

Here Trotsky looks at the formation of the new government, the role of the Soviets at this time and examines the question of dual power.

The New Government and the Proletariat | V. I. Lenin

In his second formal letter about the Revolution, Lenin discusses in detail the provisional government and what attitude the Russian workers should have towards it.

Two Faces | Leon Trotsky

This essay by Trotsky compares the liberal bourgeois provisional government with the Russian working class who initiated the February Revolution

The Growing Conflict | Leon Trotsky

Trotsky analyses this distinction further here.

Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution: Part 1 Section 2 | Alan WoodsAvailable for purchase

In this section of Bolshevism, Alan Woods discusses the various roles of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and the provisional government during and immediately after the February Revolution.

Revolution and War

The History of the Russian Revolution Volume 1: Chapters 13-14 | Leon Trotsky Available for purchase

Chapters 13 and 14 of the first volume of Trotskys History concern the army, Russias role in World War I and the new governments approach to the war.

Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers | V. I. Lenin

In this passionate letter written as he prepared to embark on his return to Russia, Lenin condemns the pro-war bourgeois Russian government, suggests that the Russian Revolution will inspire the international proletariat to follow suit and reiterates his slogan of revolutionary defeatism.

How to Achieve Peace | V. I. Lenin

Here Lenin explains that peace in Russia could only be achieved by a workers government.
The International Marxist Tendency is proud to present the In defence of October website - www.bolshevik.info - a new page dedicated to the Russian Revolution, with videos, reading guides and much more for all those who wish to study the Revolution and the ideas of Bolshevism.

100 years after the Russian Revolution, the lessons of that great event are more valuable than ever before. In 1917, the Russian workers and peasants led by Lenin and the Bolshevik party, overthrew the rule of the Tsar, the landlords, bankers and industrialists and took the first steps toward the socialist transformation of society.

Precisely because of this reason, year after year countless books, articles and documentaries are produced to bury under a heap of lies and distortions the real history and the lessons of the year 1917. The October revolution is presented as a coup and Lenin as a ruthless, blood-thirsty dictator, but all these so-called historical accounts conveniently forget to tell the story of the horrors the Russian masses had to suffer for centuries under the Romanov dynasty and the ferocity of the reactionary white armies who aimed to restore Tsarist rule after the Revolution.

The revolutions of 1917 were not carried out by a small group of conspirators, but by the vast majority of the masses who were tired of war, hunger, poverty and brutal absolutism, while the ruling class was living in conditions of opulence. This situation had not been created by the Bolsheviks, but by semi-feudal Tsarist Russia - a regime which the liberal bourgeoisie of Russia, supported by British and French imperialism, did everything they could to save right up to the last minute.

The liberals who came to power after the February revolution, were incapable of solving any of the major problems facing the masses. In fact, every democratic concession, even the abdication of the Tsar, was won by the masses against the resistance of the liberals. When the hour of truth came, the representatives of bourgeois liberalism, so often hailed as those who could have secured Russia a democratic path along the lines of western Europe, proved to be the most determined defenders of Absolutism.

The Bolsheviks exposed this hypocrisy and led the working masses, organised in the soviets, to take power into their own hands. The ruling class has never forgiven them for this.

The significance of all this is that today we are entering an epoch similar to the one that preceded 1917, an epoch of extreme turbulence and instability - of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Capitalism is at an impasse everywhere. From the phenomenon of Donald Trump, to Brexit and the crisis in the Middle East, the ruling class is stumbling from one crisis into another. At the same time it is carrying out the most vicious attacks against living standards in decades.

This explains why among the mass of youth and workers there is ferment and discontent. In a time when humanity's productive capacity and technological abilities have never been higher, living standards are being ruthlessly pushed down.

Everywhere one looks, the molecular process of revolution is preparing the conditions for the big events of the future. The ruling class is aware of this and is doubling its efforts to distort and slander the memory of the Russian Revolution. Their aim is to render revolution less palatable for the workers and youth of today. They understand the danger that the ideas of Marxism pose for their own system which is in a state of decline.

For revolutionaries, on the other hand, a thorough study of the 1917 events is crucial. As Lenin said, there can be no revolutionary movement, without revolutionary theory. It is an urgent task for all those who want to change the world to study the past struggles of the working class and to assimilate their lessons in order to prepare for the future. The Russian Revolution and experience of the Bolshevik Party is perhaps the richest source and the most complete laboratory experiment for revolutionary Marxist theory. In this revolution all the main ideas, methods and traditions of the workers movement were put to the ultimate test and revealed their inner essence.

That is why the International Marxist Tendency has launched the In Defence of October campaign of which this site is a key part. The campaign has already set up a Facebook page, as well as a Twitter account which follows the year of the revolution day by day as it unfolded exactly 100 years ago. And finally we will also be organising meetings, schools and other events on this topic in dozens of countries. If you are interested in helping out with the campaign or learn more about how to get organised in the struggle for a socialist revolution please contact us.

This new site is that latest part of the campaign. It already hosts all the works of Lenin and Trotsky from 1917 as well as many other works by other authors. These have been organised thematically and chronologically, as well as in a serie of reading guides. Throughout the year we will expand the site, as well as adding new features. Please contact us if you have any suggestions or if you spot any errors.

We hope that this page will become an essential tool for the education of a new generation of modern-day Bolsheviks. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, the working class will begin to move again, as it did in 1917. But it is only by learning the lessons of the past that we can prepare ourselves for the coming revolutionary upheavals, where this rotten capitalist system can be abolished once and for all along with all the misery and barbarism which it breeds. But it requires organisation and political education. This site is part of that.
mmm corned beef platter by jeffreyw flikr.jpg

Massachusetts Catholics seeking their fix of corned beef and cabbage this St. Patrick's Day are in luck. The Roman Catholic Church typically asks followers ages 14 and older to not consume meat on Fridays and Ash Wednesday during the season of Lent, the 40 days before Easter.

But lucky for Irish Catholics who wish to celebrate the St. Patricks Day holiday on Friday, all Bishops in Massachusetts have lifted the ban on meat.

Dispensation was granted for Catholics throughout Massachusetts, in the Archdiocese of Boston and the Dioceses of Fall River, Worcester and Springfield.

Boston Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley said, "Given the importance of this feast in the life of the Archdiocese and in the lives of so many of our families, I am granting a dispensation from the Friday Lenten abstinence on March 17, 2017," to those who wish to take advantage of this opportunity."

Springfield Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski told western Massachusetts followers a similar message, that they should find a substitute sacrifice or spiritual activity in lieu of fasting.

Worcester Bishop Robert McManus granted dispensation from the lenten requirement, while asking "the Catholic faithful who take advantage of this general dispensation to perform another act of penance on either the day before or after March 17, 2017."

Fall River Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha, who serves followers along the South Coast and Cape Cod, granted followers dispensation but also said to "carry out some some other sacrificial act or work of charity in keeping with the spirit of the Lenten season."
A 16-year-old teen is scheduled to appear in court Friday on charges that he fatally shot a 20-year-old man on Wednesday, causing police to surround a home while searching for him.

David Lima, of New Bedford, is being charged with murder, carrying an illegal firearm and carrying a loaded illegal firearm, according to a statement from the office of Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn. He will be arraigned in New Bedford District Court.

He will be arraigned in New Bedford District Court.

New Bedford police received 911 calls at 11 a.m. Wednesday reporting that a man had been shot near the intersection of Matthew and Bank streets.

The victim, identified as Jonas Trinidad Jr., was taken to St. Luke's Hospital where he was later pronounced dead, Quinn's office said.

After Trinidad was found at the intersection, police surrounded a home in the area, thinking that the suspect was inside. He was not.

Lima was arrested at an apartment on Cross Street in Fall River Thursday by the Fall River Police Department's Street Crimes Unit and State Police, Quinn's office said.

Lima was held in jail overnight pending his Friday arraignment.

In addition to New Bedford, Fall River and State Police, the Department of Youth Services and parole officers helped in the search for Lima, the statement said.

The arraignment will be handled by Assistant District Attorney Robert DiGiantomaso, who helped in the investigation along with Deputy District Attorney William McCauley, Quinn's office said.

The shooting remains under investigation.
Authorities in New Jersey arrested a Dracut man who allegedly attempted to contact a mother and daughter for sex online.

It turns out, however, that the mother and daughter he reached out to were actually undercover law enforcement agents.

According to the U.S. District Attorney's Office in New Jersey, 66-year-old Richard Bly was advertising to parents online interested in making their child available for sexual activity. Bly exchanged numerous emails with agents posing as the mother of an 8-year-old girl.

Bly was arrested in a hotel in Ramsey, New Jersey Thursday morning.

These are familiar accusations for Bly. In August, he was arrested after allegedly trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex at the Newburyport commuter rail station.

According to the Newburyport Daily News, Bly was instead surrounded by a group of police officers and arrested without incident.

Bly landed in Newburyport District Court about a month later and was about to be held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing. However, Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley overturned the lower court's ruling after Bly filed a bail review appeal, the Newburyport Daily News reported.

Essex County District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Carrie Kimball Monahan told the Newburyport Daily News that Feeley did not think a child enticement charge warranted a dangerousness hearing.

Bly was released on $5,000 bail.

If found guilty, Bly faces a maximum charge of life in prison, with a minimum 10-year sentence, and a $250,000 fine.
A University of Montana graduate student won first place in the Montana Small Business Development Center Shark Tank competition, held March 12-14 in Helena, for his business to help tour operators manage their digital marketing.

Evan Tipton, who is studying recreation resource management in UMs W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation and set to graduate in May, bested 24 other competitors to earn $5,000 for his business, TOMIS http://tomis.tech/ .

Full Story: http://news.umt.edu/2017/03/031617tipt.php

Missoula Tech Company, TOMIS, Wins SBDC Shark Tank Competition at the Governors Conference on Tourism and Recreation http://www.matr.net/article-75981.html
The electric grid is an amazing integrated system of machines spanning an entire continent. The National Academy of Engineering has called it one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century.

But it is also expensive. By my analysis, the current (depreciated) value of the U.S. electric grid, comprising power plants, wires, transformers and poles, is roughly US$1.5 to $2 trillion. To replace it would cost almost $5 trillion.

Joshua D. Rhodes University of Texas at Austin

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/opinion/columnists/the-old-dirty-creaky-us-electric-grid-would-cost-trillion/article_d02b36da-be37-52df-a3d7-1634cfb168af.html
For the first time in decades, Ambassador Max Baucus is living full-time in Montana. The states longest serving senator is far from retirement. In fact, he tells us hes entering a new chapter in his career.

In an interview with Becky Hillier, he revealed plans to launch The Baucus Institute http://www.umt.edu/facultysenate/archives/CenterReviews/Centers14-15/Baucus%20Institute%20Proposal.pdf , a public policy think tank focused on issues that are important to Montana. Hes working with the University of Montana to raise money to build a new wing to its law school that will house the institute. A Law School professor said theyre already holding meetings, but it will be years before they raise enough money for the new wing.

Video and Full Story: http://www.abcfoxmontana.com/story/34934485/max-baucus-as-youve-never-seen-him-before
"Let me make one thing clear, the Interior Department is in the energy business, and Mike is an energy guy who understands the balance we must strike when developing resources and creating jobs on our public lands. It is my hope that working together he will help identify areas where we can expand responsible mineral development while still conserving habitat and wildlife."

Jeremy Nichols with WildEarth Guardians  one of the environmental groups that fought the Greens Hollow lease  called Zinkes decision a "travesty."

Newly confirmed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke approved a $22 million coal lease for central Utah on Wednesday and made it clear his agency is in the "energy business."

The move by Zinke  his first official action impacting Utahs natural resources on federal lands  unlocks 56 million tons of recoverable coal in Sevier and Sanpete counties long sought by Bowie Resources to prolong the life of SUFCO, Utahs largest coal mine locally operated by Bowies subsidiary, Canyon Fuel Co.

In other action that Zinke says signals a new focus on energy development on public lands where "appropriate," he appointed Mike Nedd as acting director of the national BLM.

By Amy Joi O[email protected]

Full Story: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865675686/Zinke-Interior-Department-in-the-energy-business.html
My latest column in the March 2017 issue of Governing magazine http://www.governing.com/columns/eco-engines/gov-small-college-town.html is about how small liberal arts schools are partnering to try to help the small towns where they are located succeed. In this they are imitating big cities, where major institutions have often played a key role in driving revitalization efforts, often in part out of self-interest. Heres an excerpt:

by Aaron M. Renn

Full Story: http://www.newgeography.com/content/005563-small-colleges-and-small-towns-working-together-their-futures
Idahos internet speed was the slowest in the nation at the start of 2017, according to a report from Broadview Networks, a communications services provider on the East Coast.

Idahos average internet speed was 10.6 megabits per second, an improvement from 2014, when Idaho averaged 7.7 Mbps, eight-worst in the nation.

Among states neighboring Idaho, Utah was ranked 6th, Washington 10th, Oregon 18th, Wyoming 37th and Montana 39th.

BY ZACH KYLE

[email protected]

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article138863393.html#storylink=cpy

Full Story: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article138863393.html
Doctors at research hospitals and even the US Department of Veterans Affairs are piloting new, AI-driven suicide-prevention platforms that capture more data than ever before. The goal: build predictive models to tailor interventions earlier. Because preventative medicine is the best medicine, especially when it comes to mental health.

Megan Molteni

Full Story: https://www.wired.com/2017/03/artificial-intelligence-learning-predict-prevent-suicide/
i-PRO Co., Ltd., a global leader in professional security solutions for surveillance and public safety, today announced the latest version of its Active Guard plug-in.

The AI-based plug-in can turn video management systems (VMS) into powerful search engines capable of real-time searches or deep forensic analysis. Already supported by leading VMSs including Genetec Security Center and i-PRO Video Insight, the latest version now adds support for Milestone Systems X-Protect and i-PROs ASM300 software, and features the industrys largest number of search attributes and new UI enhancements.

With the addition of Milestone X-Protect, i-PRO Active Guard is now available to the major leaders in the global VMS market and will revolutionize how Security Officers conduct real time and post event searches, said Norio Hitsuishi, Global Head of Product Management at i-PRO. These enhancements combined with the extension of our AI-capable camera line-up are creating a powerful end-to-end AI security ecosystem that allows businesses to take their security infrastructure to the next level. This latest announcement underscores i-PROs mission as a trusted next-generation partner to make AI the new standard in the security industry.

Fast and intuitive, i-PRO Active Guard creates a more efficient and accurate AI-powered system without compromising on image quality or network performance. The plug-in integrates seamlessly into the existing UI of the VMS, appearing as just another function tab. It allows users to easily manage the AI analytics from multiple i-PRO cameras and allows users to easily set up sophisticated search parameters based on the industrys largest number of search attributes which include gender, age, clothing color, facial characteristics, vehicle color and direction, and many more.

With Active Guard, Security Officers no longer have to spend time looking at multiple screens for persons or vehicles of interest or watch hours of recorded video to search for important events. Operators can register specific characteristics in their watch lists (for instance male wearing a red shirt and blue pants) and the VMS will send them a real-time alarm whenever a match is identified, a feature that is unique to i-PRO. This enhances real-time situational awareness and enables proactive security. The same process can be set up for fast data mining of events during forensic investigations.

The metadata is captured and analyzed by i-PRO AI network cameras at the edge, which use the powerful Ambarella SoC, reducing bandwidth and eliminating the need for expensive servers. i-PRO Active Guard is a light-load and unique in the industry in that the edge-processed AI data results are sent to the Active Guard server eliminating the requirement for additional on-premises servers. The metadata is then searched and presented in the Active Guard plugin on the client.

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Four flights will land at SSRIA on Saturday 28th August 2021 with a total of 415 passengers.

1. Emirates Flight, EK 701 from Dubai at 0910 hours

2. Air Mauritius Flight, MK 015 from Paris at 09.30 hours

3. Air France Flight AF 470 from Paris at 12.35 hours

4. British Airways Flight BA 2063 from London at 13.05 hours

After completion of all formalities, these passengers will be conveyed directly to Hotels Resorts/Quarantines.

The public is hereby reminded that access to SSRIA is prohibited and consequently the relatives of passengers concerned are advised to refrain from calling thereat.

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Grab your bike and work up a sweat to raise money in the YMCAs latest campaign.

The Corpening Memorial YMCA of Marion is holding their inaugural Cycle-A-Thon on Monday, March 20 to raise money for several charitable funds in the county.

Participants who sign up for at least an hour or more will be able to choose their own teams, made up of friends, family and other YMCA members based around the various charitable programs. The goal is to raise $75 in funds to support the Annual Campaign with a minimum donation of $15 to participate.

Family and friends are welcome to support participants in their donation; support forms will be available at the Cycle-A-Thon table. There will be at least eight instructors at different intervals to ensure that cyclists have a safe ride during the event.

The event starts at 5:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. that evening at the Corpening Memorial YMCA Center.

For more information, call 828-659-9400.
I never thought I would be the type of person who listened to a podcast about a fitness guru.

Im not an avid exerciser. Friends know that I will be the first one to complain if excessive amounts of cheer and walking are combined. Im not a grouchy person, but I just believe in a balance of those two things.

Over the last few weeks, however, Ive found myself obsessed with Missing Richard Simmons. The new podcast interviews the people who know the Sweating to the Oldies star the best, and tries to explain his sudden disappearance from the world.

In case you didnt know, Simmons hasnt been seen on camera or in person since 2014.

Im only four episodes in, but I love this podcast, because each show shares a tidbit about Simmons personality that I would have never guessed. The New York Times calls Missing Richard Simmons a cult audio obsession.

In my mind Richard Simmons will always be that guy in spandex from the 80s screaming at average Joes to pick up the pace and sweat a little more. But through the shows interviews Ive learned that Simmons is a compassionate and complex person.

Hs friends have described dinner parties where the exercise pro cooked dinner for his guests without the help of chefs or maids.

Theyve also described Richard having periods of loneliness and depression, which contradicts his boisterous character on TV, but we all have something we hide away.

If you have even the smallest curiosity about the quirky fitness fanatic, I suggest you tune in to an episode of Missing Richard Simmons. You can check it out at missingrichardsimmons.com.
Medstro, an online community site for physicians, medical students, and healthcare innovators recently announced passing the milestone of 100,000 registered users  less than three years since it was founded by CEO, Dr. Jennifer Joe, MD and co-founder and COO, James Ryan. This self-funded Boston-based startup has grown impressively given its organic, grass-roots expansion since its official launch in April 2014.

This online community is not only an innovative platform of its kind, but offers its users the possibility of interfacing and collaborating with other experts and community members interested in medical and healthcare technologies. In fact, Medstros interactive online groups have offered such unique opportunities that several major industry players, including Google and Boston Scientific, as well as well-known medical societies in the country, have given their support to this platform through sponsorship and other resources.

We are very excited to bring you this exclusive interview with Dr. Joe and Mr. Ryan.

Alice Ferng, Medgadget: What inspired you to create Medstro?

Dr. Joe: We all go to medical school with a mission to serve patients, build a community, help the greater good, and those who are underserved. I grew up in MS, which is the poorest state in the country, so I grew up around poverty and a lot of injustices related to poverty. I was very passionate about these things, and going through medical school, residency, and fellowship  each time I was thinking that there were so many things I could be doing better to meet that mission. I think physicians and the entire medical team feels that way. As a physician-in-training a couple years back, I thought that maybe getting more power and authority when I finished my training would help things get changed, but I discovered that they dont because there are just so many emerging issues within medicine to fix. Things and times have changed; theres less time to communicate with patients and less ways to communicate with other physicians and colleagues for various reasons. Physicians used to communicate more with each other because it was a different time and they had more time. Now people are working more hours and are more physically tired as a result. There used to be more time to meet face-to-face with colleagues and patients, but due to the hectic times we live in now, we arent able to have as many of those important conversations about our profession and patient care to really address the things that need to be addressed.

When I finished fellowship it really hit me that I was waiting for a fix that just wasnt there and that we werent adequately communicating about these issues. Thats when I decided to create Medstro.

Medgadget: Many social networks for doctors have been operational for years, how is Medstro different from other networks such as Sermo or Doximity?

Dr. Joe: I wanted to create a platform where physicians could have meaningful discussions about medicine, whether that was about the latest scientific literature and what the literature means to the practice of medicine, or what heart failure medicines are best under what circumstances or what isnt working, or how policies affect coverage for our patients, etc. Its like that story when a patient who has lost health coverage comes through the Emergency Room, and then you see this case happen over and over again. You really feel this firsthand. Thats the point at which Medstro was founded, and because of this vision and mission, we have been very careful about making our technology decisions and for creating spaces that enable others to come up with various solutions. We have been super successful in doing that, and creating the right alliances. Our goal is to be a communications platform. Our goal is not to replace natural physicians communities. Communities, conversations, and relationships have to happen the old-fashioned way, and we are just hoping to provide the tools.

I think some of our most successful examples have been the NEJM forums, which is essentially a journal club that is open to students, residents, physicians, and anyone who wants to communicate across the nation and world that gives them access to directly speak with experts about their latest research. This really gives people an opportunity to ask questions about the research and data that has happened on the ground level, and to talk about the biases that may have occurred, and other similar scientific inquiries. We also bring experts around the country within these fields to help contribute and discuss experiences and research from their perspectives, which is incredibly powerful.

My hope would be to that this journal discussion platform can take something that has been recently published, on a new medication for example, and to move along these newer findings and have them be implemented sooner in hospitals and communities rather than waiting a decade for these findings to be utilized or for best practices to be created.

Mr. Ryan: We started this company because we had a mission, and we really wanted to improve the lives of physicians and to improve healthcare. We funded ourselves completely, and have never taken an outside investment or VC money, which is really huge. Ive been in startups for 25 years and every time you get a VC-funded startup, they start pressuring you to make bad short-term decisions in order to deliver revenue every quarter and to hit your revenue targets. We didnt want any VCs telling us to spill our user data, or to hire sales people to go after pharma ads. Many other sites such as Doximity, Facebook, and Twitter use the sales of user data or display of various ads to help generate revenue. We pride ourselves in not having advertising, and in having physicians trust us with their data. We dont sell their data, rent it out, or let anyone else use it and it will always stay this way. These are the reasons we have been able to build trust in our platform. So even though it may have taken us a lot longer than a platform like Doximity to grow the number of users, and even though we didnt have the monetary investments to market the way others have, its all been organic growth. Our #1 goal is for the users to have a good experience and not to satisfy the advertisers.

Medgadget: Networks such as Sermo have had issues such as verification of credentialed doctors  how does Medstro avoid similar issues?

Mr. Ryan: I understand why Sermo does that. Their business model is to provide market research for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharma companies therefore get to hear just what doctors have to say. Again, this is not our business model, so we require that people are physicians or medical students to join the main part of the site or any groups that have this restriction of them. People can create groups on our platform that restrict the members to physicians and students only, but there are also public discussion groups and online challenge platforms that are open to the community. We havent really found the need to have people fax their medical license over or to jump through hoops to prove their credentials as on other platforms since we are not a HIPAA compliant platform, and our users do not use it to talk about their patients. People could pretend to be a doctor to join the site, but there really is no reason or benefit to doing that since they can join in on discussions. If someone tries to join as a fake doctor and advertise a product, the community itself is pretty good at reporting this and this is immediately stopped.

Medgadget: What were the most difficult challenges to overcome when you first started Medstro? How did you find support for revenue and development of the platform and business?

Mr. Ryan: There were a lot of challenges. The first challenge was to figure out how to make enough money to pay for all of our developers. We developed everything in-house, and did not outsource anything. In fact, we have the same team now that we had when we first started, almost 4 years ago now, which is amazing for a startup. We really try to make sure we make Medstro is a great place to work, and we also have a policy that our workforce has to be 50% female. Another big challenge is to hire talented people at a startup where we cant afford to pay Google rates. But I think that we have been able to do that because we have been able to make Medstro a great place to work.

Dr. Joe: At Medstro, we also work very hard to listen and be responsive to our partners, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, and always go the extra mile whenever we can. We saw a real need in the technology space, and have really tried to build the med tech community in Boston. We have participated in creating a lot of our own events because when youre building an online community you really need to understand yourself what is being communicated. What we saw were a lot of clinicians, innovators, scientists, and designers who were really trying to come up with great solutions for the medical community but they didnt necessarily have a place to gather and to find each other and share what was happening. This was one of the reasons that we started our online challenges more often than not culminate in a live event where these people meet in person.

Mr. Ryan: We were lucky to find a business model that allowed us to fund our growth since we werent looking for venture returns. We really just want to sustain our company and grow the network. That was true working with NEJM and providing a platform to host their discussions, and working with other partners such as Google, who we run challenges with. Providing exciting and interesting content, and getting paid to do this without having to resort to selling user data or showing ads was really hard initially, but we have overcome this now and actually made a slight profit last year, which allowed us to give our employees slight bonuses for the first time since we began.

Medgadget: How is Medstro better than other platforms at connecting the community and in engaging the community to interact? Are these interactions sustained over time (e.g., do members maintain a certain level of activity once they join?)?

Mr. Ryan: I think we have 2 types of users  one type comes on board for a specific discussion or event, and the other type that pokes around Medstro that maybe gets involved in an online challenge or starts a user group similar to Facebook groups. Some get really engaged in various ways on the platform, and those tend to stay around, and others are just around for a discussion or two. The level of engagement really depends on what the user is coming on board for and what they are interested in.

Dr. Joe: I think things have really worked out well because we have been on the ground talking to people on a personal level to really build trust in Medstro. It is important that we truly understand physicians needs and to participate in that. That is one of the reasons I have remained a practicing physician in different settings. I manage medical students, nurses, PAs, and other trainees. I also belong to multiple communities, which helps me stay engaged and to network with people in all walks of life.

Medgadget: How do you come up with the topics of your online healthcare challenges? Do you propose them to companies, or do they come to you?

Mr. Ryan: We did the first one  and it was Jennifers idea  and it took off from there. Jennifer noticed some physicians that she knew at Boston Childrens and Brigham & Womens hospitals that were really excited about the Google Glass that had just come out at that time. They were doing very interesting things such as hacking into the Glass and making them more secure with encrypted WiFi, and so forth. One doctor even managed to get patients electronic health records to display on the Glass. We therefore created a challenge for using Google Glass targeted for any clinician to come up with any idea to use the Glass in their clinical work and got around 55 submissions. We didnt even ask Google for help, but after a while we got so much press that Google actually approached us and offered to invite the 10 top ideas and groups to come present their ideas in a Shark Tank pitch-off competition at Googles facility in Cambridge, MA.

After we had done this Google Glass challenge within our first year, we really starting noticing that there were many clinicians, physicians, patients, and community members with lots of ideas on how to improve healthcare. We decided at that point to build an electronic platform on Medstro that could help facilitate this process of innovation in 2014. Our next challenge was with the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care, Costs of Care, and the American College of Physicians in an event we called the Primary Care Innovation Challenge. We had another Shark Tank style event at Harvard after that, and since then we have really spread via word of mouth. People who thought one event was great will approach us and ask if we could do something similar for them. Since then, we have done many events. We do an online event every year with Google now, with Boston Scientific, Philips Healthcare, Partners HealthCare Connected Health, AARP, and many other groups.

Medgadget: What kinds of demographic populations are you targeting with these online innovation challenges, and who do you allow to submit projects or participate? Do you exclude those without an MD?

Dr. Joe: We are a technology platform, and we really piloted the idea to create these types of online innovation challenges, although we dont really come up with the challenge topics as often now. We really wanted to increase the transparency of the thought process that goes into this type of innovation. And also to allow people from different walks of life to collaborate with each other and to really engage the community at large in terms of big problems that the healthcare system sees because there is a lot of criticism around the healthcare community even though there are a lot of people doing good things.

There are some challenges that are hospital specific that are closed to a specific community. Its been great having these open platforms to show the transparency of what problems are identified by patients and to watch how healthcare workers then take this information and drive healthcare innovation with this input.

Mr. Ryan: We made these challenges very collaborative from the beginning so that you didnt just submit your idea and have it go to some black box and then have 3 months go by before you receive an email saying you won or lost. The idea goes onto the site and others can look at it, give you feedback, or ask to collaborate with you. We have a teaming feature where people can ask to join your team. There are also online mentors who read all the submissions and help out. These mentors are picked from a variety of backgrounds so that people can submit their ideas and learn from each other instead of just compete, and have the opportunity to make their ideas better.

Dr. Joe: Having this opportunity to collaborate and work together just expedites the whole process of scientific discovery and makes it more meaningful. The questions being asked are very complicated, and we hope by connecting the right people who are interested, we can help facilitate healthcare innovations and solutions.

Medgadget: How does Medstro plan to expand, and what exciting new ventures are on the horizon?

Mr. Ryan: We are not looking to be the next Facebook or to beat Mark Zuckerberg. We arent trying to double our revenue or please shareholders. The goal is to continue growing the company and to fund ourselves and staff with reasonable salaries. There is enough demand with the online challenges that we will be able to continue to grow just based on that. We have also just created a template based off of Medstro with similar features that others can adopt that are white-labeled and branded as something else, so you dont know you are on Medstro. An example of this is a platform hosted for NEJM called Resident 360 (https://resident360.nejm.org). This is a community for residents that provides study guides for all of the rotations internal medicine residents go through, discussions, and blogs.

Link: Medstros active online challenges
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by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 16, 2017

It turns out that Google has hired 10,000 contractors worldwide to judge search results. These raters get actual searches to conduct, drawn from real searches that Google sees. Guided by a 200-page manual, they then rate pages that appear in the top results on how good those seem as answers.

Part of the process includes spotting and reporting Upsetting-Offensive content defined in part as promoting hate or violence against a group of people based on criteria including (but not limited to) race or ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality or citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, or veteran status; racial slurs or extremely offensive terminology; and graphic violence, including animal cruelty or child abuse.

If we have learned anything this past year, it is that hope trumps truth for a vast swath of our citizenry. What you and I thought were somewhat universally understood truths are dismissed as "fake news" by those who are somehow inconvenienced by real facts, figures, history, science and other proof points.

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To question established "truths" and institutions that produce them is a classic Russian tactic frighteningly outlined in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. Disinformation worked there, why not here?

One wonders, therefore, how Google decided who gets to vote on content that turns up in its searches. And how many of them have to agree before Google takes action that is effectively a form of censorship by committee?

About 95% of the comedy I see these days on TV and online in some way disparages race or ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality or citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, or veteran status. It's pretty routine on most sitcoms regardless of network. So, can a 5,001 majority vote make it unfindable on the Internet?

The Web has thrown the idea of community standards totally out the window. So it will be interesting to see just how the Google Group of 10,000 defines Upsetting-Offensive.

Cheating in such systems is not unheard of. There was a time when 1,200 families with diaries (later, People Meters) pretty much decided what was renewed on TV and what got dropped based on how much they watched this or that. Turns out some of them routinely lied and either wrote down that they watched a certain show  or later, with meters watching, tuned in to their favorite shows even if they were not staying to watch them, because they knew that they had an important vote in keeping series alive.

Likewise, why wouldn't you vote up or vote down content that impacted you disproportionately, regardless of if there were any "global standards" to which others were trying to hew? After all, you were hired for your personal perspective; show it through your votes!

In a world where a crucifix standing in a in a glass of piss wins art awards  but is also seen by the more devoted as blasphemy of the worst kind  one can expect the Google Group of 10,000 will have some nasty fights over what is appropriate and what is not.
by Jess Nelson , March 16, 2017

A majority of Americans will celebrate St. Patricks Day on Friday, according to personal finance company WalletHub, with 56% of Americans expected to drink 13 million pints of Guinness beer.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts that 139 million Americans will spend $5.3 billion this weekend -- the highest spend predicted in the NRFs 10-year history of tallying consumer spending on St. Patricks Day, with a poll of 7,500 consumers via Prosper Insights & Analytics.

This is the first time the NRF has predicting spending to top $5 billion on St. Patricks Day, with Americans ages 25-34 expected to be the holidays biggest spenders. Older Millennials are expected to spend $46.65 each on St. Patricks Day, compared to the national average of $37.92 per person.

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Seamas Egan, associate director of revenue operations at email marketing service Campaigner, says email marketers can take advantage of the popular holiday with themed content that stands out in a competitive inbox.

Campaigner released five suggested email marketing strategies to Embrace The Luck Of The Irish. Recommended tips include sending newsletters earlier on in the day, A/B testing campaigns to determine what messaging tactics are most effective and sending responsive content that can be read on mobile devices.

Email marketers should aim to send responsive, dynamic campaigns to serve subscribers fresh content they can peruse while theyre having their first beer, browsing email, and waiting for their friends to show up, says Egan.

Themed campaigns dont just benefit B2C brands, either. B2B companies can also use creative content, timed around themes, says Egan.

The critical element is to understand your audience, says Egan. If you know your targeted audience is most likely to be celebrating on Friday night, particularly if they are Millennials, Saturday morning may be the most effective time to send an email.

Send an email the next day with the subject line Regrets of Last Night, laughs Egan. You might have a captive audience in bed with a headache, and an email could really resonate with them.
by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 17, 2017

There's only one story in town today. The Government, TfL, L'Oreal, The Financial Conduct Authority and The Guardian have boycotted Google's YouTube until it can provide a safe environment in which to advertise.

It's the latest installment in an investigation from The Times, which found that many brands were inadvertently funding extremists through advertising placed next to their hate speech videos. The only real surprise is that it has taken the aforementioned organisations a couple of weeks to instigate a ban and that more have not joined in the boycott.

This year is turning out to be the year that advertisers grow a spine. We might well look back on it as a movie entitled "Revenge of the Brands." It's interesting to note that agencies haven't boycotted Google. Johnny Hornby -- who is founder of The&Partnership, which is backed by WPP -- suggested that the tech giant be given until Cannes to sort itself out by tackling ad fraud and providing a safe place for advertisers to spend their budget. That's a three-month warning window. The brands mentioned at the top here have acted today, decisively.

Google has been on the offensive, saying that we must all sort this together. This is the biggest pile of horse manure that is constantly trotted out. It has been aired so many times, yet it still stinks -- and I can't imagine why anyone would give them a headline for it. The issue of brand safety is absolutely the responsibility of the publisher, and the same goes, as far as possible, for ad fraud.

Publishers should be doing far more to recognise bot activity and to either block it or not count a visit that looks like a bot as having served advertising. They also need to be the bouncers in their own nightclub. If there are people acting in an antisocial manner inside their establishment, they need to sort it out -- they can't expect their patrons to do it for them.

So let's put the whole "it's down to us all to work together" argument where it belongs -- the trash bin.

Google and Facebook were never going to do anything about their manifold problems until called out by the industry to do so. The only way this could happen is a boycott. The only way to stop this game of wasted budget and damaged brand image is to pick up your ball and take it home.

At the same time, I'm sensing a rebellion against the big stars of the intermediaries between advertisers and these mega publishers. Regular readers will know i was chatting with Britvic UK's marketing director just the other day about how brands don't want to fund huge London offices packed with agency staff all feeding off massive retainers. Instead, they want slimmed-down teams who work on a small retainer or entirely on project fees, bringing in freelance talent as and when needed.

The really interesting way he summed all this up is -- and I'm paraphrasing -- that advertisers don't buy in to the "rock star" status of some of these massive agencies. By that he means the guys and their agencies who made fortunes in the '80s and '90s, so much so their initials are usually on the door, are no longer naturally assumed to be the only source of wisdom on what's best for a brand and how that strategy should be executed.

The notion that the only way you can go to market is to chuck a fortune at a well-known agency, typically named after its rock star founder, is under serious examination.

As a complete aside, Britvic and BBH announced they were parting ways this week as the drinks giant seeks a new creative agency.

So there you have it. Without specific reference to the BBH news, brands are beginning to rethink the old accepted method of working with agencies who called the shots because they were demigods. At the same time, they're taking direct action to stop their names funding hate and fraud.

This is direct action. Brands are taking a stand -- and it's about time.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, March 17, 2017

The Honest Company, the healthy lifestyle brand started by actress Jessica Alba and serial entrepreneur Brian Lee in 2011, named Nick Vlahos, Clorox EVP and COO, as its CEO yesterday. He succeeds Lee, who also co-founded LegalZoom and ShoeDazzle. He remains on the board and will advise the company.

Nick shares our mission of building a modern brand with ethical standards, trust and transparency at the forefront, Alba says in a news release after citing the companys strategic shift from e-commerce to omni-channel brand.

The sky's the limit for what Honest can become and I look forward to working alongside Nick on the next phase of our journey, Alba also says, meaning Vlahos knows the inside aisles inside-out.

Honests board launched a search for a new CEO about three months ago, according to people familiar with the matter. Their goal was to find an experienced executive in the consumer and retail industry who could rein in operating expenses and manage Honest more like a traditional consumer-products company, the people said. Much of the companys future sales growth is expected to come from traditional retailers, rather than e-commerce, they added, report Sharon Terlep and Serena Ng for the Wall Street Journal.

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The talks started after a rough year for five-year-old Honest Co., after its IPO plans were put on hold. The company then had acquisition talks with Unilever, only to see the firm acquire another environmentally friendly company, Seventh Generation, instead, points out writes CNBCs Lauren Thomas.

In December, Honest Co. announced that it would cut 80 jobs in early 2017, and that President Sean Kane, as well as CFO and COO David Parker, were leaving the company, Thomas continues.

The move mirrors what Fortune reporter Beth Kowitt argued late last year: despite the fact that Honest pitched itself to media as a tech startup, its business is selling diapers, laundry detergent, beauty products, and other household goods, writes Fortunes John Kell. The disruption Honest is trying to do is more about popular consumer staples and less about technology.

Vlahos has held executive positions at other brands including Burt's Bees, Brita and Green Works. He has been with Clorox for 22 years and will help steer the baby and personal care products company as it aims to expand distribution and build upon the $300 million in sales it generated last year, Kell writes.

It has been our strategy to evolve the company into an omnichannel brand and Nicks tremendous background building global [consumer products goods] brands makes him the ideal person to lead us there, Lee said in the companys release.

His role at Burts Bees may be notable to Honest Company customers who choose its products because they believe in its nontoxic, eco-friendly branding. The association with Clorox might not resonate in quite the same way, writes Jason Del Rey for Recode.

Truth be told, theyll be more focused on the company first-ever consumer branding campaign, Honest Moments, which launched last month.

This campaign is about reaching out to our customers about the moments in their lives, in particular going from being an individual to having another life to care for, Honest Company SVP of creative Liz Elert tells Co.Creates Jeff Beer.

The Big One, the first spot of a dozen spots on the campaign, broke on an episode of The Batchelor last month. Featuring a score by will.i.am and footage provided by the narrators, it shows mothers telling stories about the birth of their children.

Its a fitting way to launch the consumer-goods companys first campaign, given that Alba was purportedly inspired to start The Honest Company after the birth of her first child, Eric Oster writes for Adweek.

The Big One doesnt promote a particular Honest Company product. Instead, it serves as an encapsulation of the brands For this moment. For every moment tagline, relying on the emotional weight of childbirth, Oster continues.

Overall, there are a dozen spots in the can, including The Personal Stylist  Friend of the Animals, a :15 that shows a mom discussing wardrobe choices with her toddler. Then theres The Bold-Faced Lie, a :15 plug for Honest Wipes that depicts a dad asking his towheaded son, Liam, did you get into the chocolate again? Liams adamant no is a pitch-perfect, one-word embodiment of the Irish art of blarney.
Tony Webster, Friday, March 17, 2017 2:34 PM

A Minnesota judge signed a search warrant for personal information on anyone who googled a person's name in the city of Edina. The hope was that the person's name, a bank fraud victim known only by the first name of Douglas, would help lead police to the person committing the fraud. Tony Webster initially wrote about the incident and posted the search warrant on his blog. Forbes reported that Google initially rejected the request.

Read the whole story at Tony Webster 
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 17, 2017

British authorities want to know why advertisements marketing the government's services appeared alongside videos carrying hate speech and extremist content on its YouTube Web site.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May told Reuters that the government suspended its advertising from YouTube and that on Friday Google would attend a meeting at the Cabinet Office to discuss the details.

Given the programmatic and ad-serving technology that allow companies to identify a consumer's likes and dislikes and pinpoint their geographic location to serve a relevant ad, some advertising insiders are confused. They wonder why companies like Google cannot detect and prevent the serving of inappropriate content next to appropriate videos and content on YouTube and publisher sites.

Retailers and publishers have begun experiencing the same issues.

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Sainsbury's and Argos, as well as The Guardian, withdrew advertising from Google for the same reason as the British government.

David Pemsel, CEO at The Guardian, wrote to Google to "say that it was 'completely unacceptable' for its advertising to be misused in this way." His media outlet would withdraw its advertising until Google can guarantee some sort of resolution.

That resolution may reside in rewriting how programmatic ad buying gets done. While there is a wealth of information through data on audiences, but not specific Web sites or content that serve up the content and how the two connect.

Machines have become largely responsible as to where the ads will run. They have taken the decision making process out of the hands of advertisers, per The Guardian.
In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University recently gained new insight into the shape of the human nose. The climate that our ancestors evolved in appears to play a role in the width of our noses. Share on Pinterest A new study investigates the links between nose size and climate. Our noses are arguably the most prominent feature on our faces; and, although some peoples noses are more prominent than others, their shape and form is unique to humans. Our noses carry out a number of important roles. Other than the obvious task of shepherding air and aromas into our head, it conditions the air we breathe, ensuring that it is warm and moist by the time it reaches our lungs. The nasal cavity also helps to prevent infections. Hairs trap larger particles and pathogens that we inhale and sticky mucus traps other unwanted visitors and microbes. The captured debris is then cleared away by tiny hair-like structures called cilia. The shape of your nose is, of course, dependent on the shape of your parents noses and their parents noses, and so on. Is there something else driving the variation seen in nose shapes across the world?

Nose shape investigated As far back as the 1800s, Arthur Thomson  a British anatomist and anthropologist  pointed out that long, thin noses tended to occur in colder, drier regions, whereas shorter, wider noses more often appeared in hotter, more humid areas. This rule is now referred to as Thomsons nose rule. Although the rule is well-established, it was not clear whether the differences arose as a response to selection pressures, or whether it was simply due to genetic drift  chance mutations, conserved without any particular survival benefits. Thomsons nose rule has previously been examined by studying skulls but, for the first time, the theory has been tested using live humans and 3-D facial imaging. Researchers set out to uncover whether nose size evolved as an adaptation to climate. The team, led by Arslan Zaidi and Mark Shriver, examined people of West African, East Asian, South Asian, and Northern European ancestry. Their results are published today in PLOS Genetics. The team measured each individuals nostril width, the distance between nostrils, the height of the nose, the length of the ridge, nose protrusion, external nose area, and the area of the nostrils. Once the 3-D data had been analyzed, the team concluded that the width of the nostrils and the base of nose measurements across these regions could not be explained by chance alone. They also found that wider nostrils correlated with populations whose ancestors evolved in warmer, more humid regions. This suggests that climate was a driving factor in the evolution of nose shape.
Though gender inequality remains an issue for women in medicine, great strides have been made over the past century. Women now make up almost half of medical students in the United States and a third of physicians  an accomplishment that can be largely attributed to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Share on Pinterest Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree.

Image credit: National Library of Medicine

In 1849, British-born Dr. Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree. The significance [of this] cannot be overestimated, as this was a time when a woman being a physician was not the social norm, Dr. Shelley Ross, secretary general of the the Medical Womens International Association (MWIA), told Medical News Today. Until her death in 1910, Dr. Blackwell was a strong advocate for women in medicine, spending much of her time campaigning for womens rights and establishing institutions dedicated to training female medical students in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Although Dr. Blackwell was widely slandered for these actions at the time, she emerged as a role model who led the way for women in medicine. Because Blackwell altered her role as a woman in pursuing a career as a physician, some viewed her as abnormal and unnecessarily rebellious, while others admired her strength and courage and saw what her accomplishments could lead to in the future, says researcher Alyssa Turose. Blackwell inspired those of the latter viewpoint, and many of them began to take risks themselves in order to cross the social barriers. In the fourth of a series of articles celebrating female role models in medicine, we look at the struggles that Dr. Blackwell faced to become Americas first female doctor. How has her life and career helped to set the stage for todays female medical students? What challenges remain for women in the medical profession?

Embarking on a moral crusade Elizabeth, it is of no use trying. Thee cannot gain admission to these schools. Thee must go to Paris and don masculine attire to gain the necessary knowledge, physician Joseph Warrington told Blackwell, after she enquired about attending medical college in the U.S. Never before had a woman been accepted to a medical college in America, but Dr. Blackwell was not deterred by the widespread discouragement. [] neither the advice to go to Paris nor the suggestion of disguise tempted me for a moment, Blackwell wrote in a letter to Baroness Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron in 1851. It was to my mind a moral crusade on which I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end. In 1847, after numerous rejections from medical colleges in the U.S., Dr. Blackwell applied to Geneva Medical College. The colleges faculty allowed the all-male student body to vote on Blackwells admission, assuming they would never let a woman into their ranks. In jest, the student body unanimously voted yes. She was finally accepted as a medical student, making her the first female medical student in the U.S.

The talk of the town Dr. Blackwells gender was initially a sore point at Geneva. Professors told her that she had to sit apart from the other students, and she was often excluded from the laboratory. She was also asked by a professor to avoid attending reproductive anatomy classes out of fear of embarrassing male students. Dr. Blackwell refused this request, stating that she wanted to be treated no differently to other students. This attitude earned her much respect and support from her fellow students and, academically, Dr. Blackwell thrived during her 2 years at Geneva. However, being the only female medical student at the institution made her the talk of the town; she was frowned upon by other women for opposing gender roles. I had not the slightest idea of the commotion created by my appearance as a medical student in the little town, Blackwell wrote in her journal. Very slowly I perceived that a doctors wife at the table avoided any communication with me, and that as I walked backwards and forwards to college the ladies stopped to stare at me, as at a curious animal. I afterwards found that I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory was fully established either that I was a bad woman, whose designs would gradually become evident, or that, being insane, an outbreak of insanity would soon be apparent [] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell Dr. Blackwell was undaunted by the negative attitudes toward her and maintained focus on her goal: becoming a doctor. In fact, she was driven by the gender discrimination she received. The idea of winning a doctors degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, she wrote in her journal, and the moral fight possessed an immense attraction for me.

A truly remarkable achievement In 1849, at the age of 28, Dr. Blackwell graduated top of her class, becoming the first woman in America to achieve a medical degree. Share on Pinterest For a woman to hold a degree and pursue a career that was seemingly intended for men only was truly remarkable.

Image credit: National Library of Medicine

At her graduation ceremony, the dean of Geneva Medical College, Dr. Charles Lee, publicly congratulated Dr. Blackwell on her achievement and said that he held admiration at the heroism displayed, and sympathy for the sufferings voluntarily assumed. In 1849 women still did not have the right to vote in America. For a woman to hold a degree and pursue a career that was seemingly intended for men only was truly remarkable, Dr. Kelly Thibert, National President of the American Medical Student Association, told MNT. It was acts like this one that were imperative to the womens movement, aiming to achieve equality in all aspects of life, including in the field of science and healthcare, she added. The news of her medical degree became widespread, and it achieved a mostly positive response. However, this favorable reaction did not guarantee Dr. Blackwell a medical career; the medical community in the U.S. remained reluctant to accept women into its ranks, and Dr. Blackwell was unable to find a hospital that would allow her to gain medical experience. Furthermore, despite Dr. Blackwells success at medical college, negative attitudes toward female medical students remained. On a printed edition of the speech he made at Dr. Blackwells graduation, Dr. Lee added a footnote stating that the inconveniences attending the admission of females to all the lectures in a medical school, are so great, that he will feel compelled on all future occasions to oppose such a practice []. Soon after, the State Medical Association of New York declared that no more women were to be accepted to medical schools. In the years to come, Dr. Blackwell would tackle gender inequality for female medical students head on, providing them with opportunity to train and practice.

Providing women with a safe environment to study Inspired by the challenges she faced as a minority in the field of medicine, Dr. Blackwell established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1858. Now known as the New York University Downtown Hospital, the aim of this institution was not only to provide medical care for the poor, but to provide medical training for female students and positions for female physicians. Having an environment where women could study without the stigma of being female or the harassment from male physicians would have provided a safe environment for study, Dr. Ross told MNT. Today, women account for around 47 percent of medical students in the U.S.  an achievement that may not have been possible without Dr. Blackwells determination to defeat gender inequality in medicine. [] the onset of various medical schools for women only showed the world that women were not going to be deterred from becoming doctors just because men thought they should not do so. If they could not be accepted into medical schools in existence, they would start their own. It takes one person with an idea, a second person to make it a movement and then it becomes O.K. to join, and this would be the way of acceptance for women in medicine. Dr. Shelley Ross Even after she stopped practicing medicine in the late 1870s due to health problems, Dr. Blackwell continued to campaign for womens rights, as well as reform in preventive medicine, hygiene, and family planning.
Public health officials are increasingly concerned over methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The bacteria have developed resistance to a number of treatments, even antibiotics of last resort in some cases. Now researchers report in ACS' journal Bioconjugate Chemistry that a new class of compounds can treat MRSA skin infections in mice with no signs of acute toxicity, and no signs that the bacteria would develop resistance to them after many applications.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year at least 2 million people in America become infected by bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and 23,000 people die from such infections. Researchers have been working to combat this major public health threat for years. One of the latest fronts in this fight involves antimicrobial peptides and lipopeptides, which can destroy bacterial membranes. But translating these molecules into clinical products has been difficult. More recently, researchers have developed a new class of membrane-busting compounds called lysine-conjugated aliphatic norspermidine analogues (LANAs) that have been effective at killing certain bacteria and the Ebola virus in lab tests. Mohini Mohan Konai and Jayanta Haldar wanted to see if these compounds could also work against MRSA.

The researchers found that LANAs were effective against four MRSA strains in lab experiments. Testing on mice showed that the compounds could eliminate MRSA skin infections, which form notoriously difficult-to-treat biofilms. Even after 20 passages, the MRSA bacteria failed to develop resistance to the compounds. The results suggest that LANAs could be strong contenders for treating MRSA skin infections, the researchers say.

The authors cite funding from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. They also acknowledge the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) for support via a senior research fellowship.

Article: Fatty Acid Comprising Lysine Conjugates: Anti-MRSA Agents That Display In Vivo Efficacy by Disrupting Biofilms with No Resistance Development, Mohini M. Konai and Jayanta Haldar, Bioconjugate Chemistry, doi: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.7b00055, published online 22 February 2017.
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Xiuling Li, Christopher G. Nelson, Rajesh R. Nair, Lori Hazlehurst, Tina Moroni, Pablo Martinez-Acedo, Alex R. Nanna, David Hymel, Terrence R. Burke, Christoph Rader. Stable and Potent Selenomab-Drug Conjugates. Cell Chemical Biology, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2017.02.012

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) may deliver a cytotoxic payload in a way that is tumor-selective.The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs), but these may neither attach the drug to a defined site on the antibody.Rader, said, "We've been working on this technology for some time.""It's based on the rarely used natural amino acid selenocysteine, which we insert into our antibodies. We refer to these engineered antibodies as selenomabs."Antibodies are found to be large immune system proteins that are capable of recognizing the unique molecular markers on tumor cells called antigens.Rader also noted that, antibodies are usually not potent enough to eradicate cancer. However, high specificity for antigens make them the ideal vehicles for drug delivery straight into the tumor cells."We now show for the first time that selenomab-drug conjugates, which are ADCs that utilize the unique reactivity of selenocysteine for drug attachment, are highly precise, stable and potent compositions and promise broad utility for cancer therapy."The author also noted that, the Antibody drug conjugates stability was found to be critical to its effectiveness. The research team also found that the new antibody drug conjugates were found to have excellent stability in human blood in vitro as well as in the circulating blood in animal models. The new antibody drug conjugates are highly effective against HER2 breast cancer which is difficult to treat, and also against CD138 multiple myeloma cells. These cells interestingly did not harm the healthy cells and tissues.Xiuling Li, TSRI research associate, said, "The selenomab-drug conjugate significantly inhibited the growth of an aggressive breast cancer.""Four of the five mice tested were tumor-free at the end of the experiment, a full six weeks after their last treatment."Further investigations on similar ADCs will also be carried out. Rader, along with TSRI Professor Ben Shen, was awarded with $3.3 million from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health inorder to test the highly cytotoxic natural products are discovered in the Shen lab using drug delivery vehicles as selenomabs.Source: Medindia
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Smokers who completed the program were 4.3 times more likely to quit smoking prior to surgery than those who were not enrolled in the program.

The percentage of smokers who quit all tobacco use prior to surgery increased with each level of participation in the program: 52 percent of those enrolled and 68 percent of those who completed the program quit smoking prior to surgery, compared to 18 percent of smokers who were never referred.

Smokers who completed the program reduced their daily cigarette consumption by more than 10.5 cigarettes per day, compared with a nearly five cigarette per day reduction in those who participated but didn't complete the program, and only two cigarettes per day in smokers who never enrolled. Smoking Cessation Reduced Surgery Complications



Patients who completed the program had fewer surgical complications, with a decrease in reoperation rates from 4.9 percent among all other smokers to 4.3 percent in the group in the smoking cessation program.



In knee replacements alone, researchers reported adverse events in 22 percent of patients who completed the program compared to 29 percent among all other smokers - a decrease of over 24 percent. Adverse events included hospital readmission, superficial and deep surgical site infection, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, pneumonia, stroke, and urinary tract infection.



The researchers plan to build on their promising pilot study and expand the program's capacity to include all smokers undergoing a total joint replacement or other elective orthopaedic operation, says senior study author Richard Iorio, MD, the Dr. William and Susan Jaffe Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and chief of the division of Adult Reconstructive Surgery at NYU Langone.



He adds that improved outcomes following smoking cessation could be worthwhile for reducing health care costs. Under this model, hospitals assume financial responsibility for any complications over an entire care episode, including post-surgical infections and hospital re-admissions.



"By delaying surgery in high-risk patients until they enroll in a program to quit smoking, we are not only improving how the patient will do after surgery, but eliminating some of the burden on the health care system caused by poor outcomes and increases in costly reoperations," says Dr. Iorio. "Our study adds that telling patients to stop smoking likely is not enough, and an established smoking cessation program may be most beneficial."



Reference



Amy Wasterlain et al., Smoking cessation programs benefit patients prior to joint replacements, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2017 Annual Meeting (2017).

"Not every risk factor can be reduced before a joint replacement, but smoking status is one that should be a top priority for orthopaedic surgeons and their patients."Smokers who undergo a total joint replacements have a 50% increased risk of experiencing complications during surgery and on average, result in $5,000 more in hospital costs compared to non-smokers, according to previous research.A voluntary smoking cessation program was designed to get smokers tobacco-free within one to two weeks of surgery. The program consists of four pre-operative telephone counseling sessions and nicotine replacement therapy as needed, and two post-operative follow-up sessions.Researchers reviewed medical records of 539 smokers who underwent total joint replacements at NYU Langone's Hospital for Joint Diseases between October 2013 - after the smoking cessation program was implemented - through March, 2016.Of those patients who used tobacco, 103 smokers were referred to the program by their surgeons, 73 of whom voluntarily enrolled and 47 patients who completed all six sessions.Source: Medindia


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Who would have imagined the nerdy timid Chandler could beat the prime minister of Canada. Matthew Perry confessed on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show that he had beaten up a young Justin Trudeau back in school. The FRIENDS star said a school friend, who had been his accomplice in the act, had recently reminded him of the incident.

I have a story about him that I'm not proud of," Matthew Perry said on the show.

 YouTube

Trudeau and Perry went to the same school in Ottawa; Trudeaus father was the prime minister of Canada at that time, and Matthew Perrys journalist mother served as former press secretary to PM Trudeau. Clearly, that didnt deter a young Matthew Perry from beating up the kid of the prime minister.

Trudeau was a few years junior to Perry who beat him up out of jealousy! "I think he was excelling in a sport that we weren't. So it was pure jealousy."

 Reuters

Of course, Perry is embarrassed about it; he told Jimmy Kimmel, "I'm not bragging about this, it was terrible, I was a stupid kid. But he cheekily added that the bullying could have motivated Trudeau to rise above this and become what he is today. Yeah right!

Not a good idea when the kid goes on to become this:

Justin Trudeau does yoga in Style https://t.co/InKWNImuJ7 pic.twitter.com/dTurdXEiRM  Joy Anderson (@Joy_Anderson) March 7, 2017

Moral of the story: Never bully a kid; you never know what hell grow up to become.

Watch the full interview here:
Akshay Kumar is an example of a man who always shows up when hes needed. After donating crores of rupees to flood hit areas and adopting draught hit villages, he has once again come in support of the Indian soldiers. This time around, Kumar has donated a total of 1.08 crore to the families of 12 martyred jawans of the CRPF.

 YouTube

Part of the 219 battalion, these bravehearts were killed in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district after the Naxals' armed militia ambushed a road opening party (ROP) in the area's Bheji village on Saturday. "Akshay Kumar is a true Patriot and stands with bereaved families of 12 #ShaheedsOfSukma & donates 9 Lakhs each. CRPF salutes noble gesture," CRPF tweeted.

 YouTube

Akshay Kumar had kept in close touch with the DIG of Jaisalmer and got details about the families of the slain soldiers. More power to Mr. Khiladi! He truly is the hero India needs!
The News in Brief

Enguri HPP Resumes Operation



The Enguri hydropower plant, Abkhazias main energy supplier, resumed its operation on February 28 following a temporary shutdown for monitoring the pressure tunnel.



During the monitoring period, which was launched on February 19 as part of the initial preparatory works for a larger rehabilitation project scheduled for 2018, power for the region was supplied by the Russian side and the deficit was covered by Georgia, as noted in the statement of the Georgian Energy Ministry released on February 21.



Speaking at a news briefing on March 3, Aslan Basaria, head of the Abkhaz state-owned energy company Chernomorenergo, said that the Enguri hydropower plant will be able to meet Abkhazias energy demand from early April.



If there will be no cold weather, we will be able to easily move to our own resources by late March or early April. At this point, power to Abkhazia is supplied by the Russian Federation, Basaria explained.



Breakaway Abkhazia fully relies on electricity generated by the Enguri hydropower plant, whose 271.5-meter-tall concrete arch dam is located on the Georgian side of the administrative border and its five generators are on the Abkhaz side in Gali district.



According to a long-standing, informal agreement between Tbilisi and Sokhumi 40% of the electricity generated by the plant goes to Abkhazia and the rest 60% is received by rest of Georgia.



In 2015 Georgia distributed 1,797 million kWh electricity to Abkhazia, 17.31% of Georgias overall consumption, according to Georgias Energy and Water Supply Regulatory Commissions report. In 2014 and 2013 Abkhazia was supplied by 1,638 million kWh electricity (16.11%) and 1,605 million kWh electricity (16.57%) respectively. (civil.ge)







EU denies link between Georgia visa waiver and refugee centers proposal



A member of the European Union's executive branch denies that there is any connection between a proposal to host refugee centers in Georgia and the recent decision to allow visa-free travel to the Schengen area for Georgian passport holders.



Large Russian media outlets have claimed that when Georgia was granted visa-free travel to the EU, it also accepted hosting centers for holding recent rejected refugees for the EU.



A spokesperson for EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told Voice of Americas Georgian service that visa waiver system for Georgia was based solely on an action plan presented to and accepted by the Georgian government in 2013. The plan contains no mention of refugee centers.



The Commission has been monitoring progress made by the Georgian authorities since the visa liberalization dialogue was launched and concluded in December 2015, that all benchmarks under this Action plan were met, reads a written comment by the EU officials spokesperson.



The fulfillment of the criteria in the Action Plan, and these criteria only, is the basis on which the Commission proposed to grant visa free travel to Georgian citizens for short stays.



The confusion was caused by an interview with Austrias Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz published in the German newspaper Bild, which stated that the EU needs refugee centers outside its external borders and suggested Georgia, Egypt and Balkan states as possible locations for such centers.



Kurtz visited Georgia a month earlier.



Georgian officials firmly rejected the idea of hosting such centers (dfwatch.net)







OSCE Chairmanship concerned about closure of crossing points, stresses negative implications for local population



Reacting to the closure of two crossing points along the Administrative Boundary Line of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, Nabakevi-Khurcha and Meore Otobaia-Orsantia, which reduces the number of crossing points to two, following the closure of two others in 2016, a spokesperson of the OSCE Chairmanship said today:



We have closely followed the latest developments on the ground. We believe this decision has a number of negative consequences, in particular concerning the freedom of movement of the population on both sides of the Administrative Boundary Line. We therefore call for meaningful dialogue as well as swift and pragmatic solutions, in order to avoid further repercussions for the local populations everyday life.



The spokesperson emphasized the importance of the Geneva International Discussions and the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism meetings as platforms for constructive engagement. These are respectively co-chaired and co-facilitated by the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus, Ambassador Gunther Bachler. (osce.org)







40-tetri microbus travel fare to increase in Tbilisi



The Tbilisi Microbus company has increased travel fares for some routes in Tbilisi. The company has released a statement in this regard, according to which, short distance travel fare will become equal to the municipal transport fare. In particular, passengers will have to pay 50 instead of 40 tetris. However, 80-tetri fares will not be changed.



According to the company, they adjusted their tariff policy to the economic situation of the country in 2011, when the company entered the market.



Despite the fact that since 2011 the national currency has suffered serious fluctuations which affected the prices of all the products that are needed for safe and comfortable transfer of passengers, we have maintained our tariff policy unchanged almost for six years, says the company in the statement.



According to the company, they decided to increase travel fare in order to improve the conditions of transfer of passengers and protect the labour rights of their employees. (ipn)




EAST LANSING  Three coveted awards. Two local students. One statewide convention.

Last week, hundreds of FFA students from all over the state packed into the Wharton Center, in East Lansing, for the 89th Annual Michigan State FFA Convention.

Dozens of awards were handed out to students and three individuals  two from Huron County  were selected as this years Stars. Each year at the convention, a Star is named in the following categories: agricultural production, agribusiness and agricultural placement.

The 2017 Star in agricultural placement is Laker FFA senior Jake Bushey. This years Star in agricultural production is North Huron FFA senior Kendall Pawlowski.

Busheys agriculture placement supervised agricultural experience is divided between his familys 3,000-acre cash crop farm and drain tile business.

Bushey is part of the fifth generation of his family to continue working on the farm. During spring planting, Bushey is in charge of running the field cultivator before the planter can begin. During dry bean planting, he rolls the beans after they are planted.

Throughout the summer months, Bushey works full time on the farm and is in charge of many different tasks, such as running the combine during wheat harvest.

In the fall, he works long hours in the field helping out with harvest. His farm also provides forage for a neighboring dairy, and he delivers the commodity to the customer.

Besides work on the farm, he also works with his brother and grandfather in their drain tiling business. Bushey is proficient in running various pieces of equipment and has extensive knowledge about tile installation.

During off seasons, Bushey spends his time in the shop performing repairs and metal fabrication on various pieces of farm and tiling equipment.

After high school, Bushey plans to attend Michigan State University to pursue a degree in crop and soil science. In the future, Bushey will return home to help manage his family farm and tiling business.

This honor is the capstone of the five years that Jake has invested in his Supervised Agriculture Experience at Bushey Farms, Laker FFA adviser Haley Schulz told the Tribune. He exemplifies what it means to be a Laker and upholds the high standard of excellence that we hope our students strive to achieve.

The Laker FFA has had 15 state Stars over the years  more than any other chapter  Jake being added as No. 16 speaks volume of the legacy he has worked to continue, but also of the bright future he has set himself up for, she added.

Meanwhile, Pawlowski has a diverse supervised agricultural experience program, growing crops and raising livestock.

He lives on his familys cash crop and beef cattle farm of 963 acres. Along with helping to run the farm, he manages his own 17 acres where hes responsible for farming and making management decisions, including what to plant and what to apply, with the assistance of his father.

Pawlowskis knowledge of equipment on the farm has grown tremendously since his freshman year in high school. He can operate a variety of equipment to make sure the farm runs smoothly.

Along with operating a variety of machines, he is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of all of the equipment. He plans to attend Baker College in Owosso to obtain a diesel mechanic degree before returning to the farm.

Pawlowski also owns beef cattle that are a part of his familys herd. In addition to helping raise the crops that feed the animals, Pawlowski helps care for the cattle.

Kendall has put a lot of time and effort into his Supervised Agricultural Experience at home, North Huron FFA adviser Joe Ankley said. Because of this, he received one of the most prestigious awards in FFA. It rewards his hard work and dedication he has shown toward farming in the future.

It is a first for our chapter and I am excited that Kendall was able to be the person that received this award, he added.
To the editor:

In reply to Robert Peruskis letter chiding the judges who blocked President Donald Trumps Muslim ban, I say thank God for their wisdom and their dedication to the rule of law. It may be all that can save us from this impulsive and vindictive president. The judiciary may end up being the voice of reason in the face of Trumps recklessness. It represents the system of checks and balances that our forefathers so wisely made a part of our Constitution.

When Trumps ban was struck down, a man worthy of the presidency would not have disparaged the judges. He would have kept his fingers off Twitter, kept his dignity, and made a plan B. Undermining the rule of law as Trump has done is dangerous and unAmerican. Trumps actions so far show that he and Congress, which must recognize his instability but will use him for their own political purposes, have headed our country in a dystopian direction; toward a society with no protection of our personal and civil liberties, toward an acceleration of environmental degradation, and toward a society good for only the whitest and richest citizens.

His latest incendiary and baseless claims against President Barack Obama, the source of which we now know was Breitbart, the ultra-right wing media organization and mouthpiece for the white nationalist movement formerly run by Trumps senior strategist Stephen Bannon, border on downright unhinged. The Republican party has elected a person who is at best an unstable adolescent and at worst, terrifyingly, a puppet of the Russians.

America is already great. Its not perfect, but Trump can only take us backwards.

Mary Ann Kelly

Port Austin
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A-LIST chef Michael Caines spoke passionately about the benefits of living in the Westcountry and his desire to support the local economy at the launch of the 2017 Express & Echo Business Awards .

The Exeter-born businessman, who has been awarded the Freedom of the City and an MBE for his achievements, was the keynote speaker at the event in the Exeter Guildhall.

Mr Caines gave an update on his latest business, the 8.5million creation of Lympstone Manor, which he called a "massive adventure".

The project, set alongside the River Exe on the former Courtlands Estate, will have 21 bedrooms and a 60-seat restaurant. Mr Caines has planned a two-week soft opening from March 20 with the official launch scheduled for April 3 when 400 guests are expected.

He said the aim was to make it the best country house hotel in the country.

Mr Caines also spoke about how important it was to promote the Devon economy, and the important part that the business awards played in that by recognising excellence and promoting local enterprises.

The chef, whose Lympstone Manor is sponsoring the Tourism and Hospitality category of the awards, told the audience that he went to Exeter College before his career took him to London and then France.

He said: "It's great to feel that I've been able to be successful in the business community of Exeter and the South West.

"It's a great honour to get behind an award which also showcases my industry."

Michael Caines at the business awards launch

He added: "I believe the South West offers an incredible experience to come and enjoy.

"We choose to work here in this community because of our lifestyle choices we want to make, the connections with the region in terms of its natural beauty, the coastline, the moors  it is a phenomenal place to be.

"And of course exporting that to the rest of the UK and Europe is an important part of what it's all about," he continued.

"Tourism plays an important part in terms of drawing people to the region, for them to disperse their income within the wider region and community of businesses."

Mr Caines, who told the audience that he was first mentioned in the Express & Echo for his swimming when he played water polo, also spoke of the importance of job opportunities, especially for young people, and said he was proud of the Michael Caines Academy at Exeter College.

"The awards are important to celebrate our successes," he said. "They also highlight some of the excellent businesses that are here in this community."

He added: "I chose to stay in the South West because I didn't want to leave it. I was born here, I wanted to make sure my future was secure here."

On the opportunities for tourism, he said inbound numbers from Europe were increasing, with the largest proportion from France. The drop in value of the pound after the Brexit vote meant the UK was more attractive, especially to US visitors, he claimed.

Mr Caines urged local authorities to work to further improve transport links so that when people came to the South West they discovered it was not just a holiday destination but a great place to live.

He said: "I say that life in the country may be slow but it gives us a little bit more time to enjoy it."

He pointed out that the 5.5million spent on refurbishment of Lympstone Manor was distributed among local businesses. And he was keen to work with local food producers to supply the hotel and restaurant.

He also paid tribute to the work of the Express & Echo: "Their work within the community is fantastic, the coverage that they do, not just through traditional print, but online is great too."

The business awards are now open to entries, with a deadline of March 30, and you can enter online . Judging day is April 7, and the awards ceremony takes place at Sandy Park on May 12.

There are still opportunities to sponsor the Corporate Social Responsibility, Digital and City Centre categories. For details, contact the Echo's business development manager, Alice Bryan, on 01392 346729 or email alice.bryan@expressandecho.co.uk.

Anyone who wants help with their entry can get advice from Chalk & Ward.

Headline sponsor is SW Comms and there are 12 categories for the 2017 Express & Echo Business Awards: Business of the Year (sponsored by SW Comms); City Centre; Apprenticeships (Devon County Council); Corporate Social Responsibility; Employer (Exeter College); Entrepreneur (Kitsons); Innovation (Reserved); Small Business of the Year (Pavey Group); Tourism and Hospitality (Lympstone Manor); Excellence in Manufacturing (Vanguard); Digital Business; Excellence in Customer Service (Walter C Parson). Walter H Squires is sponsoring the drinks reception.
They've been name-checked by the secretary of defense and started congressional kerfuffles. And now they want to take up space on your coffee table.

Paul Szoldra, a veteran Marine Corps infantryman and founder of military satire news site The Duffel Blog, celebrated the site's recent five-year anniversary by releasing a self-published book, "Mission Accomplished: The Very Best of Duffel Blog" including 100 of contributors' favorite stories -- as well as new insights and behind-the-scenes commentary for fans of the site.

"These are picked by me, by our writers," Szoldra said. "We voted on them; these are the best."

The site has come a long way since Szoldra published the site's first news story, "Tired Of 'Chair Force' Nickname, Air Force Colonel Bans Chairs," on March 4, 2012. Originally a one-man operation with Szoldra at the helm, the site rapidly attracted a following -- and with it, other troops and veterans eager to contribute.

"Eventually it got to the point where I was getting emails all the time, a lot of bad pitches," Szoldra chuckled. "I set standards: submit five headlines, a writing sample, tell me about yourself, to stem the flow and bring in higher-quality writers."

Now, he said, the site has more than 100 contributors, most of whom write under pseudonyms. For those still in uniform, this provides cover for the site's irreverent and edgy headlines, such as "Congressman Calls for Army Basic Training to Match Marine Corps Policy of Killing Some Recruits" and "Champagne Bottle Cracks Littoral Combat Ship's Hull During Christening," to name two recent examples.

Along the way, there have been some dust-ups.

There was that time, Szoldra said, when a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent called him asking for the identity of a contributor; and the episode in late 2012 when then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote the Pentagon in response to a Duffel Blog story, demanding to know why prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits.

But the site has also received a significant amount of high-profile praise. The new book cover features a plaudit from now-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, taken from a 2013 Wall Street Journal feature on the site.

"The lads have a well-tuned sense of humor and convincingly imaginative 'reporting' that bode well for a country that could use some laughs," Mattis, then a recently retired commander of Marine Corps Central Command, told the paper then. "I think the writers know that we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously."

Szoldra said he has coordinated with a Pentagon insider to hand-deliver a signed copy of the book to Mattis' office.

"He graces the cover; it's only fair," Szoldra said. "I really hope a picture will come about."

Szoldra said he wants to see Duffel Blog continue to produce high-quality content, with more video and multimedia content. More books may be forthcoming too, although Szoldra said he can't talk in detail about those plans yet. The future of the site, he said, may be determined by how well the "Mission Accomplished" book does with Duffel Blog readers.

"This is a test run," he said.

The book, available on Amazon.com for $19.99, includes a foreword by Maximilian Uriarte, author of the popular Marine Corps comic strip Terminal Lance.

Szoldra's favorite Duffel Blog story? It was a hard choice for him, but he settled on "Dozens Wet After Coast Guard Cutter Capsizes Off Florida Coast," a short piece that shines with dry humor and absurdism.

It was written by Ron Gullekson, a Navy veteran and early Duffel Blog contributor, who died unexpectedly in 2016, shocking the Duffel Blog community.

"I figured something like this would eventually happen, because it's military people. People deploy, people go to combat," Szoldra said. "But Ron was out [of the military], he was a contractor. You just never know."

The book, Szoldra said, is dedicated to Ron.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
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...
Fresh out of a closed-door briefing with lawyers and military brass on a nude photo-sharing social media scandal that is roiling the Marines Corps, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said he believes the thorny problems at the heart of the scandal have yet to be fully grasped by the service.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol Thursday, Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas, said both the legal issues in prosecuting those who shared compromising photos without consent via social media, and the social issues at the root of the alleged behavior.

"I think it's a very complicated problem involving social media," he said. "One of the challenges is what the government can do to investigate cases like this. Just think for a second about all the controversy we've had about privacy of emails and web surfing and all of that sort of stuff. There are limits to what the government can do even in investigations."

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, testified earlier this week that about 500 individuals were found to have accessed a Google Drive folder filled with naked and compromising images and identifying information of female service members, circulated on a Facebook page called Marines United.

On Thursday, lawmaker Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, said during a press conference that Naval Criminal Investigative Service has identified 700 active-duty Marines and 150 reservists who were members of the Marines United page, though it's not clear how many of them viewed and shared the illicit images.

Thornberry told Military.com he wasn't yet sure that additional laws or provisions were needed for satisfactory prosecution of offender in the scandal.

"I'm intentionally reserving judgment until we get further into the investigation and see what's happening," he said. "The lawyer talked about some of the potential provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that someone could be prosecuted under for this type of behavior. If there is a gap somewhere, I suspect people will want to close it. I don't know yet."

Another challenge for the Marine Corps, he said, would be to change the culture that fostered such bad behavior on social media.

"I am not fully convinced that the Marines or the other services have fully got a handle on this matter," he said. "I admit it's a challenging, daunting issue and there are societal implications of this. We expect more out of members who have served in the military and they expect more out of each other, because their success on the battlefield depends on them being able to trust one another."

Thornberry said he was convinced that both Neller and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ronald Green were willing to own the problem. On social media as in elsewhere in culture, he said, troops had to be held to a higher standard than the general population.

"Changing people's' social media habits is hard. Understanding their social media habits is hard," Thornberry said. "And yet we must, because this is a new dimension to many of our lives, and as I said it's eroding the trust that is essential for military cohesion. So it's got to be done."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents never personally visited a Facebook page allegedly used by Marines to circulate photos of nude and partially clad female service members or accessed a Google drive filled with the images, the head of the investigation said.

Instead NCIS and Marine Corps officials are scraping together cases against hundreds of members of the "Marines United" page who allegedly disseminated or commented on the images by using secondhand evidence -- a trove of some 600 screenshots of the page and drive provided by a source.

In a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon Friday afternoon, NCIS Division Chief Curtis Evans highlighted the challenges of prosecuting internet offenders when evidence can be deleted in an instant and Facebook groups close and re-open faster than officials can identify them.

"In cyberspace, the evidence is there for one minute; the next minute it's gone," Evans said. "This is a 24-7 thing for us."

Evans also clarified numbers that have emerged in recent days and caused some confusion.

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said he had been informed that about 500 individuals accessed a Google Drive full of nude images and identifying information for female troops. That figure was provided to Neller by journalist and Marine veteran Thomas Brennan, who got into the drive before its permissions were revoked and first reported on its contents, Brig. Gen. James Glynn, head of public affairs for Headquarters Marine Corps, told reporters.

Though the site had 30,000 members according to Brennan's report, the investigation is confined by what the screenshots show.

"None of us are on the inside of Marines United," Glynn said. "Thomas Brennan was. What he's provided in terms of support, to where we are able to investigate, we have no choice but to go with the numbers that he provided  this is what we have to work with. We don't have 30,000 to work with."

To date, Evans said, NCIS officials have used the screenshots to identify 725 active-duty Marines, 150 Marine reservists, 15 active-duty Navy personnel, and 310 non-military. While all were members of Marines United, he said, it's not yet clear that all participated in illegal or illicit activity on the site.

"From there, there's a limited amount of criminal intelligence in there that we launched criminal investigations on," he said.

To date, upwards of 20 self-identified victims of the non-consensual photo sharing have come forward to NCIS and the Marine Corps. A dedicated NCIS tipline has gotten hundreds of calls. Evans urged anyone with evidence of the page's activities to come forward and add to what so far appears to be incomplete evidence.

"We're specifically looking for individuals that had explicit photos taken without their consent and posted online," he said.

The investigation, Evans said, has now expanded to other groups and individuals unaffiliated with Marines United based on tips NCIS has received. The agency had also partnered with the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, the Army Criminal Investigative Decision, Coast Guard Investigative Service, and Marine Corps Criminal Investigative Division to go after all individuals in uniform found to have participated in related activity.

While the investigation is focused on nonconsensual photo dissemination, which is prohibited under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and in most states under "revenge porn" laws, Evans said NCIS is turning over evidence of Marines making disparaging and harassing comments about women to the Corps so offenders can be dealt with administratively.

NCIS has made multiple subpoena requests to internet providers for additional information, Evans said.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps plans to conduct focus groups around the Marine Corps in coming weeks to address cultural issues at the root of the misogynistic internet behavior, Glynn said. The Marine Corps also plans to require every Marine to sign a form verifying that they have read and understand the Corps' new social media policy, which explicitly prohibits cyber-bullying and harassment and spells out legal penalties under the UCMJ.

While this step might not prevent Marines from acting abusively on social media, Glynn said, it will lessen the Marine Corps' burden of evidence to show that a Marine understood the rules if he or she faces disciplinary action.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- Nancy K. Turtle has been named community bank president for the Kalamazoo and Southwest Michigan market by Mercantile Bank of Michigan.

Turtle has more than 20 years of commercial banking experience in Southwest Michigan, holding leadership positions with several financial institutions.

Before joining Mercantile Bank, a subsidiary of Grand Rapids-based Mercantile Bank Corp., she was vice president of commercial banking for First National Bank of Michigan. She joined that bank in May of 2007.

She was vice president of commercial banking at Fifth Third Bank from 1997 to 2007 and prior to that, worked in corporate accounting at First of America Bank from January of 1995 to August of 1996.

Turtle has a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in public administration, both from Western Michigan University.

"We are delighted to welcome Nancy to Mercantile," Ray Reitsma, president of Mercantile Bank, stated in a press release. "Her 20 years of commercial banking experience in Southwest Michigan and her understanding of Mercantile's relationship-based approach to business are terrific assets for the bank as we grow our base of business in these key markets."

Mercantile Bank is considered the third largest bank headquartered in Michigan, managing more than $2.28 billion in deposits as of June 2016, and total assets of about $3 billion.
Mercury Burger Bar opened on the corner of Michigan and 14th in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit in 2012. Since then, they've developed a loyal following for their hand pattied burger, fresh fries, and a fantastically boozy milk shake. They were a finalist on our search for Detroit's Best burger.

The traditional beef burgers feature an 80/20 blend of beef, that utilizes three flavorful cuts: brisket, chuck and sirloin. The beef, as well as the turkey, chicken and lamb, all comes from local Southwest Detroit packer Mark's Quality Meats.

Mercury sells a lot of their 1/3# beef burgers, usually upwards of over 1,000 pounds of beef a week. The "Classic" ($8.50) features just lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion. The "Juicy" ($9.50) is a fantastic little guy, with cheddar cheese both inside the burger and on top.

The "Southwest Detroit" ($11) is a bomb of a burger topped with a chorizo slider, jalapenos, munster cheese, tortilla strips, avocado, and zanahorias (pickled spiced carrots), salsa comes on the side. We loved the subtle spiciness that the chorizo contributed, and the pickled carrots gave a nice jolt of acidity to the burger.

Another customer favorite, and one that quickly became our favorite as well, is the "Topor Burger". Locally made Topor's Hungarian hot peppers shine on this burger, which also includes grilled onions, cheddar, fried egg, hot sauce, burger sauce, and crispy onion straws.

Head chef Juan Najar has been at Mercury for about a year now, and he loves working here. "I like my bosses, and my entire staff. It's rare to find an owner that cares about his staff this much. It's really more like a family here."

You can blame owner Dave Steinke for creating such a great environment here. He took a chance on the neighborhood after Tiger Stadium moved out, believing that "when the stadium left, that is when Corktown became valuable". He also owns Italian hot spot Ottava Via just up the street.

Other don't miss items include the fries, which are fried in lard, and can come topped with a variety of delicious items to just enhance their greatness. We also highly recommend the shakes, either the adult version or the regular. Chef Najar told us that when he first started at Mercury, he "had a shake every single day. But then I had to stop."

Well worth a stop, not only for their burgers, but also for the legendary Mercury hospitality. The hostess will probably ask you where you're from when you walk in, because she really does want to know. And everyone here really does want to give a great experience at this gem of Corktown.
Redcoat Tavern has been named Detroit's Best Burger by MLive's Michigan's Best team of John Gonzalez and Amy Sherman. For the first time, we focused on just one region in Michigan, where burger bars have been gaining popularity. Redcoat Tavern is a long time favorite in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, having opened their doors in 1972.

You can now enjoy their famous burger at both the original location on Woodward, or at the newer spot in West Bloomfield. You can enjoy the same menu at both places. We visited the Royal Oak spot on our search.

The burger at Redcoat is tasted every single day by corporate general manager Juan Garcia, and it's this attention to detail and quality that sets Redcoat apart. If the burger isn't right, Garcia sends it back for a new batch.

The meat comes from local supplier Fairway Packing, and is a proprietary blend, done just for Redcoat. A flat top grill creates just the right amount of sear, and because the meat is already flavorful, no extra seasoning is used at all.

"The hardest thing about this business", Garcia told us, "is to create the same product, year after year, always the same way. One of the greatest compliments we've gotten is when a loyal customer came back in after having lived in California for 10 years, got the burger, and told us that it tasted exactly the way he remembered it"

So how do they keep making these fantastic burgers, over and over, year after year? According to Garcia, this is all about the staff at Redcoat.

"They are the heart of our business, and do a great job. Our chef, Ollie Williams, has been with us for over 16 years, and he knows exactly what he's doing. He helps me taste test every day", Garcia said.

The search for Detroit's Best burger started with a call for nominations from our readers, with the area divided into 5 regions: Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties, downtown Detroit, and a separate division for chain burger joints. After Mlive readers voted on their favorites, visits were made to 23 finalists over the course of a week.

Redcoat is no stranger to winning awards for best burger, but each award is extra special to Garcia and his crew. "No one likes to come in second, and we've been excited by the number of calls we've gotten over the last few days from regular customers congratulating us, and calls from new ones hoping to come visit. An award like this lets you breathe a little easier, while still keeping you on your toes."

If you plan to visit Redcoat, you can build your own burger, or try the "Brasserie Burger" which is a new perfect combination of gruyere cheese, bacon, grilled onions, tomato, fresh watercress, and dijionnaise sauce on a brioche bun.

Detroit's Best burger is a thing of beauty, and congratulations goes out to the whole crew at Redcoat Tavern.

"Everyone here does such a good job, it really is like family here, and everyone puts in the work. To be sure that every plate comes out perfect is hard, but that's what we strive for", Garcia said.

We say keep on doing what you do, Redcoat Tavern.
The World Affairs Council of Western Michigan's Great Discussion series will continue at 6 p.m. Monday, March 27, with a discussion on "The EU: An Uncertain Future."

The topic will be presented by Dr. John McCormick, professor of European Union politics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Brexit, the Eurozone crisis, and the Syrian migration have strained the European Union and the discussion will explore whether the EU can survive. McCormick assesses the future of this union, and places his analysis in the context of rising populism around the world as well as growing criticism of immigration and globalization. He also will address how U.S. President Donald Trump will respond to the EU and the uncertainty it faces.

McCormick was educated at Rhodes University in South Africa, University College London, and Indiana University. His academic interests focus on the European Union, comparative politics, and transatlantic relations.

He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Exeter and Sussex in Britain, and at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. In 2010-13, he held a Jean Monnet Chair from the European Commission, awarded under an international program that supports teaching activities in European integration. In the spring of 2013 he was Fulbright-Schuman Chair in U.S.-EU politics at the College of Europe.

He is the author of 12 books and and journal articles, has written seven textbooks that have been published in 24 editions and seven languages and has won three university teaching awards.

World Affairs Council discussions are open to the public and no reservations are required. Cost is $10 and parking is free. The event will be held in the Aquinas College Performing Arts Center, 1700 Fulton St. SE.
On this week's Ag Report on

, Mike Wenkel, manager of the

, Inc. describes how Michigan's potato industry is able to provide a reliable supply of potatoes - giving the state a competitive edge.

"While many factors drive demand for our Michigan potatoes, reliability is a very important consideration for buyers. Michigan potato growers embrace the latest farming technology, constantly working together with researchers to find better ways to grow potatoes, and overcome challenges like pests and disease," says Wenkel. "In addition, we're a sustainable industry. Our customers know that when we grow potatoes, our commitment to long-term sustainability positions us to be successful in coming years."

Finally, says Wenkel, Michigan is a leader when it comes to marketing stored potatoes. By perfecting the technology to properly store potatoes, and thanks to a favorable climate statewide, Michigan farmers are able to sell potatoes throughout the year. This means that even when producers can't find fresh potatoes in certain regions, Michigan is ready to step in and meet the demand.

Michigan remains the top supplier of potatoes for chips in the U.S. - with one in four bags of chips consumed in the U.S. made with Michigan potatoes. Wenkel says every year, Michigan grows nearly 1.8 billion pounds of potatoes, pumping $554 million dollars into the state's economy and employing more than 3,200 workers.

You can hear this week's report

.

The Ag Report on

is brought to you by the

. It airs weekly on

and features voices from Michigan's growing agriculture sector.
State Republican candidates stop in Muskegon, Nov. 1, 2014 12

Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson speaks during a Republican campaign stop at Unruly Brewing Company in downtown Muskegon Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (Cory Morse | MLive.com)

(Cory Morse)

LANSING, MI -- Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson has released more rhymes in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

The holiday-themed limericks are meant to encourage Michigan residents to use the many Secretary of State services available online at www.ExpressSOS.com.

In the past, she has rapped about the topic with a kangaroo.

"In honor of this important day for the many sons and daughters of Ireland -- and also those who are Irish just for today," the news release reads. She offered these lines:

I'm the SOS who tries to rap a beat.

No other singing SOS can compete.

I'm saving you time.

It's the reason I rhyme.

So ditch the lines and hop online

ExpressSOS.com!

Nobody likes to wait in line.

There are better ways to spend your time.

So skip the trip.

And believe this tip.

ExpressSOS.com is oh-so fine!

You can listen to an audio version featuring Johnson reading the limericks here.
Mr. Ciruli is the Director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is an adjunct professor teaching public opinion and foreign policy. The Crossley Center conducts research and presents live and virtual programs on foreign policy, politics, public policy and public opinion.





Mr. Ciruli holds a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelors degree cum laude in political science from UCLA. He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and is the past-president of the Pacific Chapter of AAPOR (PAPOR). Mr. Ciruli is a board member of the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies and past-president of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board and the Denver Athletic Club.




Bitcoin exchange Unocoin now allows its users to convert blockchain based assets into bitcoin.

To make this happen, it has partnered with Shapeshift, digital asset exchange, supporting dozens of blockchain tokens. This partnership, which uses Shapeshifts API, will enable Unocoin users to convert popular blockchain assets such as Ethereum, Monero, Zcash and Dash directly into Bitcoin and then if desired, into Indian rupees.

Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder and CEO of Unocoin, said that this service is available on Unocoin's website and will be available on the app in two weeks.

At present apart from bitcoins, there is no other altcoin like Ethereum, Zcash etc, available for purchase and sale on Indian exchanges.

Cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin or Bitcoin alternatives are called altcoin. These are digital currencies which aim to either replace bitcoin or at least improve on some bitcoin component.

With the partnership with Shapeshift's, people owning various altcoins in international cryptocurrency exchanges will now be able to convert them to bitcoin with the help of Unocoin and converted bitcoin can then easily be withdrawn to the users bank account, Vishwanath told Moneycontrol.

There won't be any additional charge levied for currency conversion, he further added.

Theres an emerging range of blockchain based digital assets that serve different purposes; i.e. enabling smart contracts, enhancing financial privacy, etc. What is common among all of these blockchain assets is that they all run on open mining algorithms. In India, there has been very little interest in alternative blockchain assets due to it being difficult to convert digital assets into bitcoin and INR. Unocoin is taking the the first step towards solving this problem, the company said in a press release.

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?

At core, a blockchain is a software that maintains a decentralized public ledger that records transactions and ownership of cryptocurrency.

Many view bitcoin as digital gold and were always looking for ways to make it easier for people to get into bitcoin. Many people learn about bitcoin through other crypto currencies and once they do, wed like to give them an easy way to convert their blockchain assets into bitcoin. In the meantime, were keeping a close eye on the open blockchain ecosystem and may or may not introduce deeper integrations in the future, says Sunny Ray, Co-founder and President of Unocoin.

Bitcoin demand has seen a huge upsurge across the globe and in India since last year and is now trading close to USD 1,200. There has been huge talk on the benefits of blockchain adoption in various fields and even the RBI is upbeat on the idea of a digital rupee.

Overall, this partnership will drive more interest into the blockchain ecosystem and help drive user adoption for the emerging cryptocurrency space within India. More and more people are becoming interested in bitcoin via blockchain assets and an integration like this will help drive greater bitcoin adoption in India, Unocoin said.
A cow is seen near the AngloAmerican sign board outside the Mogalakwena platinum mine in Mokopane , north-western part of South Africa , Limpopo province May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo - RTSK0ZI

Mining Baron Anil Agarwal's earlier in the week showed interest in buying stake in the British mining giant Anglo American Plc for USD 2.4 billion. The stake as a personal investment through his family trust Volcan Holdings could be around 13 percent.

At 13 percent stake Agarwal will be the second biggest shareholder in the firm after Public Investment Corp of South African government, which owns 14 percent. However, if South African government plans to sell any stake in Anglo American, Agarwal will be in pole positions to turn the deal in his favour, according to Economic Times article.

Also with this purchase, the Chairman of Vendanta Resources Group could get a foothold in the diamond mining company De Beers, which is owned by Anglo American.

The shareholding of Anglo American is widely dispersed with the South African government holding a significant stake.

Sources close to the development say the bid does not seem to have been a hostile one since the move has come a year after a merger proposal by Agarwals Hindustan Zinc was rebuffed by Anglo.

Anglo American, the world's largest diversified metals and mining company is a USD 23 billion conglomerate with operations in Southern Africa, North and South America, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Although Indias diamond production is trivial, it is a hub for processing the stones and is one of biggest consumer of rough diamonds in the world. India imports about 80 percent of the total global production with an import bill of USD 15 billion.

In 2010, Vedanta had acquired Anglo American's portfolio of zinc assets in Namibia, South Africa and Ireland and through his entities, Agarwal has signed agreement with the South African government to share advanced mining technologies.

The investment will be financed through mandatory exchangeable bonds and the sale will be led by JPMorgan as sole bookrunner, on or around April 11, the closing date.

Commenting on the investment Agarwal said: "This is an attractive investment for our family trust. Anglo American plc is a great company with excellent assets and a strong board and management team who are executing a focused strategy to drive shareholder value. I am delighted to become a shareholder in Anglo American plc."
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State-owned construction firm NBCC (India) Ltd signed an agreement with the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) for a Rs 1,058-crore irrigation project in Maharashtra.

"NBCC has been allotted construction of irrigation scheme works in Maharashtra under Gosikhurd National Project, valuing approx Rs 6,000 crore," the company said in a statement.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the first phase of work valued at about Rs 1,058 crore was signed today in Mumbai. The first phase is part of the total work of Rs 6,000 crore to be implemented by the company.

"The scope of work under Gosikhurd National Project in Maharashtra includes upgradation of civic amenities of rehabilitation villages, right bank canal, canal and distribution system of Nerla and Mokhabardi LIS etc," the statement said.

The first phase of project is likely to be completed in about 18 months.

NBCC MD Anoop Kumar Mittal said that the company is eyeing overseas markets for expansion. He said the company has bagged Rs 250 crore project from Mauritius last week and is expecting to secure more projects in Mauritius and other such neighbouring countries.
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Himadri Buch & M Saraswathy

State-run UCO Bank has knocked on the doors of LIC for the second time in as many months requesting the latter to invest Rs 1,000 crore in tier-2 bonds of the bank. Moneycontrol has a copy of the letter written by UCO Bank to LIC. The insurer, however, may not be keen to comply as it feels size of the investment is too huge. It has reservations about the papers rating, too.

A source said that the insurer would be looking to invest in better-rated papers. However, they have not yet rejected the offer outright and may reconsider it if a better proposal comes along. An official mail sent to LIC remained unanswered. IRDAI has permitted insurers to invest in instruments including tier II bonds, but has cautioned that they should not invest in lower-rated papers.

Kolkata-based UCO Bank is raising capital to meet Basel III norms on capital. Banks are required to maintain a capital adequacy ratio of 10.25 percent at the end of March 31, 2017 as against 9.62 percent required on March 31, 2016.

Indian banks are expected to fully comply with Basel III standards by March 2019 to improve and strengthen their capital planning processes. The norms are being implemented to allay concerns on potential stresses in asset quality and their impact on profitability.

UCO Banks letter to LIC, submitted to the insurer on March 15, says: In accordance with Basel III guidelines, our (UCO Banks) existing tier-2 bonds which are not Basel III compliant are being discounted at 10 percent every year. Further, some of these bonds are also redeemed on maturity. In view of the same we propose to raise tier-2 bonds of Rs 1,000 crore. We request you to kindly consider for infusing tier-2 capital in the form of debt capital to the tune of Rs 1000 crore.

Currently, the banks rating for Basel III tier-2 instrument is AA- with stable outlook from India Rating and AA- from Brickwork rating agency.

In January, too, UCO Bank had written LIC seeking investments in tier-2 bonds of the bank. However, LIC did not respond to it.

UCO Bank has been taking several measures to meet the increased capital requirement. The bank has been requesting the government to infuse more capital over and above governments infusion of Rs 750 crore in the month of September 2016.

Additionally, the bank had raised tier-1 capital from the market raising Rs 750 crore in November, 2016.

In November, 2016, LIC had also infused equity capital of Rs 270 crore in the bank.
A Railway research centre in Australia has entered into an agreement with the Indian Railways to support future research and technology development related to critical infrastructure in India.

Representatives from Monash University Institute of Railway Technology (IRT) and Indian Ministry of Railways corporation DFCCIL (Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited) signed an agreement yesterday in New Delhi.

IRT with partners - Balaji Railroad Systems Ltd (BARSYL), leading railway consultants in India, PwC, and Indian Institute of Bombay (IITB) were selected as the preferred supplier from a competitive global selection process.

They will provide guidance on the establishment of a new applied research and development institute in India known as SRESTHA (Special Railway Establishment for Strategic Technology & Holistic Advancement).

SRESTHA will be locally engaged, but have a global reach with the aim to become a world leader in the advancement of rail.

Significantly, the project will provide guidance to the Indian Railways on international models that will be adapted to the Indian railway environment.

IRT Director Ravi Ravitharan said the partnership will help advance railway technology both in India and around the world.

"I am extremely pleased to be invited with our partners to assist with this significant project, which will support future research and technology development related to critical infrastructure for India. Indian Railways is one of the largest employers in the world and this is a very important project not only for IRT but also for Victoria and Australia," Ravitharan said.

IRT is the premier track and vehicle railway research centre in Australia.
India and Russia are setting up a USD 1 billion fund to promote mutual investments in infrastructure and technology projects, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

Both the countries would contribute USD 500 million to the fund, Sitharaman said while addressing India-Russia Business Forum at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS) here yesterday.

While the Russian funds would be channeled through Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Indian contribution will be accrued from National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.

Sitharaman elaborated upon other measures being taken by Russia and India to scale up their economic engagement and to boost bilateral trade and investment.

As part of these initiatives, the India Russia CEO Forum will hold its meeting this year at a mutually convenient date.

The forum was constituted in St Petersburg in June 2016.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Russia is estimated at USD 1.2 billion till date while Indian investment in Russia is around USD 4.9 billion.

"There is tremendous potential for enhancing such investments," the minister said, adding that initiatives like Make-in-India would catalyse Russian investment in several Indian sectors including Defence production.

"The Make-in-India initiative was launched by the government in order to encourage businesses to manufacture products in the country, creating additional jobs for local population. This is a major drive to foster innovation, enhance skill development, protect intellectual property and build best-in-class manufacturing infrastructure," she said.

India and Russia are engaged in robust cooperation in the energy sector, including collaborations in civil nuclear energy, hydrocarbons and renewable energy.
Minister of state for civil aviation, Jayant Sinha tells CNBC-TV18 that foreign carriers are interested in coming to India and he would welcome any foreign direct investment in the aviation sector.

Talking to Ashpreet Sethi of CNBC-TV18 he said that he is willing to offer land clearances to foreign companies for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) set up.

He said that modalities of 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in civil aviation are being worked out.

On the topic of Qatar Airways setting domestic airline in India, he said that no talks have been initiated with the company.

Below is the transcript of Jayant Sinha's interview to Ashpreet Sethi on CNBC-TV18.

Q: What are your views on Airbus setting up Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO)?

A: Boeing already has an MRO in Nagpur and most of the Boeing planes, in fact, go to Nagpur for their MROs and we need something similar for Airbus in India. That is absolutely required. Many Indian planes are going to foreign locations like Sri Lanka and Singapore and to the Middle East to get their MRO work done. We would like to get it done in India. We have put an enabling environment in place as far as taxes are concerned and certainly we have tremendous talent and resources here in India to be able to do the MRO.

So, I think Airbus should actually move forward on that initiative and ensure that we have MRO for Airbus in India as well.

Q: Coming to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) point here, the report that had come out. I am not going to the profit/loss fact here but they have suggested that the government should look at reducing the equity infusion. What is your view on that?

A: CAG, of course, provides very valuable suggestions and we will absolutely consider what they are saying. Air India is in the midst of a major transformation effort and that transformation is going quite well and as part of that transformation process, we will certainly look at all suggestions that we get.

Q: 100 percent FDI is something that has become a topic, not naming any airline here, but certain domestic airlines have come and raised certain concerns with you, so are we seeing any development in that?

A: There are different points of view on that subject. India has a very liberal FDI regime particular in aviation and we have seen media reports that there are foreign carriers that are interested in coming into India. We already have two, AirAsia and Singapore Airlines. So, we are welcoming of FDI in this sector. Let us see what comes forward as a concrete proposal and of course, there are points of view that have been expressed by our airlines as well.

Q: Let me end by just asking the RCS Financials which were being considered and evaluated right now. By when can we expect that to end and a final result coming?

A: That process is now complete. We are just in the final stages of wrapping all that up and getting all the formal approvals done for that and so we are expecting some time next week to make all the announcements.
An employee sorts Indian currency notes at a cash counter inside a bank in the northeastern Indian city of Agartala February 18, 2010. The Indian rupee weakened on Thursday, in line with domestic stocks and weighed down by a strong dollar overseas, and was stuck in a narrow range mirroring local shares. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey (INDIA - Tags: BUSINESS) - RTR2AH3Z

Plastic currency notes will soon be a reality in India, with the Reserve Bank of India being authorised to conduct field trials of plastic Rs 10 banknotes.

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said "it has been decided" to conduct a field trial with plastic notes at five locations of the country.

While the minister said that the plastic notes are expected to last longer than the existing cotton-substrate based banknotes, durability is only one of the factors that may have prompted this change in thinking.

Why the shift to plastic?

Over the centuries, money has taken many forms including leather, shells, precious metals, cotton paper and most recently plastic.

After using metal coins for hundreds of years, large commercial transactions around the 7th century forced people to use easier-to-transport paper currency, making it the currency of choice around the world.

But with technological advances in recent years, plastic notes have gained currency because of their longevity. Plastic notes have an average life span of about five years, three more than the existing paper notes.

In addition, plastic notes are difficult to imitate, cleaner, more energy efficient and offer better security features.

One of the disadvantages of paper notes was evident during Holi last week, The central bank had to clarify that while banks would accept notes stained with colours, intentionally colouring or dirtying the currency would not be advisable.

Central banks across the world have for long been exploring different solutions such as plastic notes for easy movement and to combat counterfeiting.

Plastic or polymer notes are currently used in more than 20 countries including Australia, Canada, Fiji, Mauritius, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Romania, and Vietnam.

Polymer gains currency

Polymer banknotes were first issued in 1988 by Australia, which in 1996 switched completely to polymer currency notes. The country recently launched a new series of notes, starting with the A$5 bill in September last year which had additional security features.

Polymer banknotes are made from a polymer such as biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP).

Such notes incorporate many security features such as metameric inks which are not available in paper banknotes. The ink works on the principle of metamerism, where two colours appear matching under one set of lighting conditions but appear quite different in a different environment.

Polymer banknotes last significantly longer than paper notes, with a lower environmental footprint and a reduced cost of production and replacement.

A polymer banknote contains three levels of security features that cannot be successfully reproduced by photocopying or scanning, making it very difficult to counterfeit. The complexities of counterfeiting polymer banknotes are intended to act as a deterrent to counterfeiters.
The Gravelines nuclear power plant is seen across the beach in Petit Fort Philippe, northern France, March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

The Donald Trump administration has finally endorsed India for a Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership alongwith two other export control groups namely Australia Group and Wassenar Group.

The bid to make India a part of NSG was initiated by the Obama administration and a draft was circulated among the group members last year.

A report in the Economic Times mentions that a US State Department official said that India is ready for NSG membership and also assured that US has not changed its stance on the matter under the new government.

The remarks comes just ahead of the US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons visit to China, which has been Indias biggest hurdle in getting a seat in the exclusive club.

However, it is unclear whether Tillerson will discuss the NSG during his trip.

Despite numerous efforts on the governments part and constant support from the former US President Barack Obama, China has opposed India becoming a part of NSG.

China is advocating a two-step non-discriminatory approach for admission of countries who have not signed the nuclear-Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the NSG, including India.

New members are usually inducted after signing a NPT or a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India has signed neither saying that both are discriminatory.

Earlier this month, China had said that India and Pakistan  who had applied for NSG membership together  should be given an equal chance to become members despite India having a cleaner nuclear record.

Ma Xiangwu, Functionary of the Communist Party of China, said that for a peaceful negotiation on NSG, India should make a wise political decision.

NSG is a group of 48 nuclear supplier counties that is working towards prevention of nuclear proliferation by controlling exports and technology that can be used to produce nuclear weapons of destruction.
Source:PTI

Germany could file a suit against the United States at the World Trade Organization over President Donald Trump's proposed border tax, the economy minister said on Friday ahead of a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Trump later in the day.

Trump has warned that the United States will impose a border tax of 35 percent on cars that German carmaker BMW plans to build at a new plant in Mexico and export to the US market.

Asked how Germany would react to the proposed tax, Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Deutschlandfunk radio it was very difficult because of the complexities of such a tax system.

"The other option is that we file a suit against him at the WTO - there are procedures laid out there because in the WTO agreements it is clearly laid out that you're not allowed to take more than 2.5 percent taxes on imports of cars," Zypries said.

Later on Friday Trump and Merkel are due to hold their first meeting since the new US president took office in January.

Merkel is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union and a commitment to fight climate change while he is expected to seek her support for his demand that NATO nations pay more for their defense needs.

Germany's 50 billion euro trade surplus with the United States has been a source of tension between Washington and Berlin.

"We know ourselves that that's a problem and we're working on it," Zypries said.

"Thankfully we just heard today that wage rises have been agreed again so that means domestic demand can increase again and we want to address tax incentives for research ... so we're on a good path," she added.

Around 72,000 steel workers in northwestern Germany will get 2.3 percent more pay from April and then a further wage increase of 1.7 percent from May 1, 2018 employers' group Arbeitgeberverband Stahl said on Friday.

"The Americans need our machines and our plants ... and the other point is that we only have an export surplus in the machines and plants sector; in the service sector it's the other way round," due to big internet companies in the United States, Zypries said.

Carl Martin Welcker, president of Germany's VDMA engineering industry association, warned in an interview with newspaper Tagesspiegel about the "poison of protectionist measures".

He said any such measures would hit Germany's engineering sector hard at a time when there is widespread concern, following Britain's decision to leave the European Union and calls from French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for a referendum on France's EU membership.

"First there's America first, then England's withdrawal and then perhaps a referendum in France soon - we're scared of this contagious disease because we sell 75 percent of our products abroad," Welcker said.
India's civil aviation secretary said on Friday it was not possible for a foreign airline to fully own an Indian carrier, but will examine whether it can be done through an investment partner.

Rajiv Nayan Choubey also said the government had not received any proposal from Qatar Airways to start a local airline.

Last week, Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said he wanted to set up a full service Indian carrier to fly domestic routes with around 100 narrowbody planes, now that the country has opened up the airline industry to foreign investors.

Under current rules, foreign airlines are still restricted to holding a maximum stake of 49 percent in Indian carriers, but other foreign investors may own up to 100 percent.
Pakistan: History of assassinations | Imran Khan: Victim of an endless cycle of violence| World News
Reliance Capital held an analyst meeting yesterday where Chairman Anil Ambani shared his long term outlook and assured investors about the company's turnaround story.

Nidhesh Jain, Analyst at Investec Capital Services who attended the meet, said that the simplification of the company's corporate structure and demerging of its commercial business while separately listing the reliance home finance business is a big positive for Reliance Capital.

This will help analysts and investors to better understand the profitability of the company's commercial finance book, he said.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18 he said that the divestment announcement of its non-core assets which includes Rs 2,000 crore of equity investments in listed and unlisted equities is also a major positive.
If you are thinking of booking profits at current levels as market touched record highs this March, you might want to reconsider your decision because the rally is not over yet, according to a poll conducted by Moneycontrol.

The S&P BSE Sensex touched a fresh 52-week high of 29,614.79 on Thursday but is still 400 points short of its all-time high of 30,024 scaled on March 2015. The index will not just reclaim its all-time high but climb a fresh peak of Mount 35K by December 2017, which translates into an upside of nearly 20 percent from current levels.

Almost 14 of 18 fund managers and analysts polled are of the view that the Sensex is likely to hover in a range of 30,000-35,000 while 2 analysts think that it could make an attempt to touch 40,000.

Sensex could well hover in a narrow band of 5000 points where 30,000 being at the lower end of the range while on the higher side it could top 35,000. The Nifty50, on the other hand, could move between 9,000 and 9,500 by December 2017, Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund told Moneycontrol.

The liquidity driven rally has already taken Nifty50 to fresh record high of 9,158.45 on Thursday and can well go beyond 9,500 by the end of this year.

Almost 60 percent of the analysts are certain that Nifty50 is likely to hover in 9,000-9,500 range by the end of the year while 40 percent feel that it could well surpass 9,500 marks and scale new peaks, according to analysts polled.

DSP BlackRock MF, which is one of the worlds largest investment management firm, sees Nifty50 climbing above 9,500 by December 2017 and sees Sensex to hover in 30,000-35,000 range in the same period.

Investors not just back home but globally cheered BJP's strong show in the just-concluded state elections where the ruling government managed to attain a majority in most states especially in Uttar Pradesh.

The NDA government is all set to form the government in four of the five states which went to polls in February-March. Importantly, it won the UP election with a thumping majority, garnering a 40 percent vote share and winning 80 percent of the total seats in the state (325 out of 403).

A majority in Uttar Pradesh elections which is expected to boost Rajya Sabha tally was seen to be a referendum on the governments performance and policies, particularly on demonetisation.

Strong macro data and stable December quarter earnings from India Inc. also boosted sentiment. Although some analysts are complaining about stretch valuation, analysts do not see a top emerging as yet.

Renewed retail appetite for equities has helped neutralize sustained selling by foreign institutional over the last seven months. This is contrary to the general trend in the past when retail investors entry was a sign of market topping out.

Between August 2016 and February 2017, local mutual funds net bought a little over Rs 45,000 crore of equities, compared to net sales of around Rs 2,600 crore by FIIs.

A dovish stance by the US Federal Reserve in its March policy meet settled nerves of investors across the globe including India. India is still a buy-on-dips market till it holds onto its crucial support level of 8,800 on Nifty50 and about 28,000 on Sensex.

Stocks, which hogged the limelight so far in the year 2017, are not a large cap but small and midcap stocks, some of which have more than doubled investors' wealth in the same period.

The S&P BSE Mid and Smallcap index rose nearly 15 percent compared to 10 percent gains in the S&P BSE Sensex. But the rally is not over yet.

Most experts polled by Moneycontrol.com said that investors can still accumulate small and midcap stocks while only 2 out of 16 analysts which gave their view said that investors should book profits now and then buy at lower levels.

Where is rupee headed?

Strong foreign institutional flows (FIIs) propped up the rupee following a fresh 16-month high after BJP managed to clinch a thumping majority in Uttar Pradesh.

The rupee is now the third best performing Asian currency after South Korean Won and Taiwanese dollar since the start of the calendar year. But, further appreciation looks unlikely.

Almost 72 percent of the respondents polled by Moneycontrol said that the rupee is likely to hover in the range of Rs 64-67/USD by December 2017 while 17 percent are of the view that it would go below 64 and the rest feels that it would depreciate beyond Rs 67/USD.

Poll Participants:

Manish Gunwani, Deputy CIO - Equity, ICICI Prudential AMC

Nilesh Shah, MD, Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund

Harsha Upadhyaya, CIO  Equity, Kotak Mutual Fund

AK PRABHAKAR, Head -Research at IDBI Capital

Pankaj Pandey, head of research at ICICIdirect.com

Siddharth Bothra, Fund Manager, Motilal Oswal AMC

DSP BlackRock MF

Angel Broking

Parth Nyati, Co Founder & COO, TradingBells

Mustafa Nadeem, CEO, Epic Research

Nitasha Shankar, Senior Vice President  Research Yes Securities (India) Limited

Jimeet Modi, CEO, Samco securities

Vinod Nair, Head Of Research at Geojit Financial Services

Siddhartha Khemka Head  Equity Research (Wealth)- Centrum Broking Limited

VK Sharma, Head Private Client Group (PCG), HDFC Securities

Rakesh Tarway, Head of Research, Reliance Securities

Vijay Singhania, Founder-Director, Trade Smart Online

Birendrakumar Singh, AVP  Technical Research at Systematix Shares & Stocks
BNP Paribas Mutual Fund said it is aiming to cross Rs 7,000 crore mark in average assets under management (AAUM) by the year-end from around Rs 6,000 crore now.

The fund house is also looking at achieving a growth of 30 per cent in its systemic investment plan (SIP) inflows by the year-end.

"At BNP Paribas Mutual Fund, we crossed AAUM of Rs 5,977 crore as on February 28, and we are looking at achieving a growth of 20 per cent in the AAUM by December. We are hopeful of taking it to Rs 7,000 crore by 2017-end," managing director and chief executive Sharad Sharma told PTI here.

He was speaking on the sidelines of launch of BNP Paribas Balanced Fund.

The open-ended fund, aimed at investors seeking long- term wealth creation through a combination of equity, arbitrage and debt asset classes, opens for subscription on March 17 and closes on March 31. It will reopen on April 7.

Talking about the SIP growth plan at his company, he said, "We are looking at achieving a 30 per cent growth in the SIP, which was currently having a monthly fund flow to the tune of Rs 20 crore with a total folio count at 50,000."

At present, the MF player offers four funds under equity category, seven under fixed income and two hybrid schemes. Besides, it manages USD 1.04 billion through its offshore advisory and discretionary portfolio management for international investors.

The company currently has 11 offices across eight cities, including four metros, and plans to expand its presence.

"We are looking to have our presence in more cities like Gurugram, Lucknow, Kanpur, Chandigarh and Jaipur, and also in Goa by December," Sharma said, adding, "We will also tap digital route to achieve the growth."
NBCC has won a Rs 250-crore order from the Mauritius government to build the new Supreme Court building. The company has been appointed as the project management consultant.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Anoop Kumar Mittal, Chairman of the company said the approximate value of the project is USD 33 million.

He said this is not the first project in Mauritius and before this the company had worked on the Indira Gandhi cultural centre.

Companys total order book is Rs 80,000 crore and margins from international orders is same as the domestic market.

There are few more projects in the pipeline for the company in Mauritius and one of the projects is housing for government employees.

We are also planning to launch a subsidiary which will be aggressive in the international market.

The company is targeting projects which are funded by the government.

NBCC has also won a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Air India and the project will start in the next financial year.

He also added that share buyback in not on cards for NBCC.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

Shares of Megasoft advanced 14.5 percent intraday Friday as it has signed MoU with Government of Bihar to enhance IT services with cloud technologies.

The company has been awarded a cloud-enabled solution & services contract by the Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation (BELTRON).

The state Government of Bihar, through BELTRON, plans to establish state-of-the-art cloud computing facility for use by its various e-Governance programs and other IT-driven initiatives.

G V Kumar, CEO & Managing Director of Megasoft said, Our Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution will not only ease BELTRONs infrastructure management efforts but also provide them the ability to automatically scale-up or scale-down services hosted in the cloud, based on user demand."

At 09:51 hrs Megasoft was quoting at Rs 21.85, up Rs 1.75, or 8.71 percent on the BSE.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
live bse live

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Morgan Stanley has remained overweight on Godrej Properties shares with a target price of Rs 433 on strong brand equity, geographic diversification, potential to unlock value from project/land acquisitions and reasonable valuation. The stock is trading at 26 percent discount to net asset value, it feels.

The Mumbai-based real estate firm, on March 15, has announced acquisition of 7.5 acres of land (0.8 million square feet saleable area, residential) in North Bangalore for a consideration of Rs 60 crore.

Given high IRR (internal rate of return), the brokerage house views this deal favorably, and it thinks this could lead to bigger investments in the quarters ahead (especially as capital gets released from commercial assets).

The site is located on Bellary Road (NH-7), which is a prominent residential area having close proximity to commercial and industrial catchments, along with good connectivity to international airport. The company plans to launch this project in second half of next financial year.

Morgan Stanley says assuming Rs 5,500 psf (per square foot) average selling price, it estimates Rs 420 crore in sales potential for this project. Assuming construction cost of Rs 2,500 psf and 5 years for project completion, it estimates the project's net asset value at Rs 60 crore, implying Rs 3 per share net asset value (around 1 percent of current market price).

Although the size of the investment is small and may not materially change the net asset value, the project appears to have an attractive IRR of 25 percent, the research firm feels.

It says though the investment size is small, Godrej Properties has for the first time in recent times shifted its strategy from a partnership model (joint development agreement, joint venture etc) to an outright land purchase method to add new projects.

At 12:02 hours IST, the stock was quoting at Rs 392.40, up Rs 15.30, or 4.06 percent amid high volumes on the BSE.

Posted by Sunil Shankar Matkar
Avinash Gorakshakar, Market Expert told CNBC-TV18, "Looking at a kind of weak trend in oil prices and I think the kind of gross refinery margins (GRMs) these companies have reported I think she should hold on to Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL). I think HPCL was down after reports that ONGC would take it over and it would be a combined entity. However, as of now nothing seems to be happening at least in the very near-term and I would suggest that if one can hold on for the next 6 to 12 months definitely HPCL looks quite well positioned both on the E&P side as well as the marketing side."

At 15:29 hrs Hindustan Petroleum Corporation was quoting at Rs 511.50, down Rs 8.60, or 1.65 percent on the BSE.
A Kashmiri labourer arranges sacks containing sugar inside a government warehouse in Srinagar, August 4, 2015. India is likely to bring in rules to make it compulsory for sugar mills to export millions of tonnes of surplus supplies to support local prices, sources said, in a move that could quell growing anger among farmers but add to a glut on global markets. Picture taken August 4, 2015. REUTERS/Danish Ismail - RTX1N31H

Angel Commodities' report on Sugar

Sugar Futures closed lower on Thursday tracking the spot demand. Market participants are expecting better summer demand from the industrial buyers as there is probability of lower production this season. Moreover, government is likely to revise down its estimate on sugar output in 2016 - 17 (Oct - S ep) from 22.5 mt forecast earlier due to shortage of cane in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Recently, ISMA lowered the production estimate by about 10 lakh tonnes (lt) for 2016/17. Moreover, Maharashtras cane crushing season of 2016 - 17 has come to an end. This is among the shorter seasons in Maharashtra after two consecutive droughts and has produced only 41.6 lakh tonne sugar so far compared to 83.75 lt of sugar as on 30th April 20 16. Raw sugar futures on ICE closed little higher traded in a narrow range and hovered above last week's three - month low for the third straight session. Prices were also supported by the strong real. Societe Generale in a report increased its estimate for a global 2016 - 17 sugar deficit to 3.8 mt from 2.4 mt and cut its global 2017 - 18 surplus forecast to 5 mt from 5.9 mt.

We expect sugar prices to trade lower sufficient supplies in the near term as sugar mills continue to sell sugar. However, due to lower production estimated this season and anticipation of higher sugar demand during summer the price may improve.

Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

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A worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rides his bicycle past the party's campaign billboard featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside their party headquarters in New Delhi, India, February 10, 2015. The billboard reads: "One India, Best India". To match Insight INDIA-MODI/ REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo - RTX2E3HK

The BJP on Friday named Trivendra Singh Rawat as its chief minister designate in Uttarakhand.

The party elected him as the leader of the BJP legislature party and he will take oath on Saturday at the Parade ground in Dehradun.

The CM designate Trivendra Singh Rawat met Governor KK Paul today and claimed the support of 57 MLAs to form government.

The BJP scored a massive victory in Uttarakhand winning 56 of the 70 seats in the state to storm to power, reducing Congress to a minuscule minority in the state Assembly with a poor tally of 11 seats.

An RSS veteran, since 1979, Trivendra did his post-graduation in journalism. He was appointed as an Uttarakhand organisational secretary for five years in 1970. Rawat also served as state cabinet minister in 2007 under BC Khanduri.

Meanwhile, Shyam Jaju, BJP Uttarakhand in-charge, informed that PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will attend the swearing-in ceremony of Trivendra Rawat.
(Adds comment by Mexican economy minister)

MEXICO CITY, March 16 (Reuters) - Canada is committed to keeping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a trilateral accord, Canada's trade minister said on Thursday, in a sign of support for Mexico as it prepares for tough negotiations with the new U.S. administration.

"For me it is quite clear. NAFTA is a three-nation agreement. So the way to renegotiate a three-nation agreement is on a trilateral basis," Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at an event in Mexico City organized by Canadian and Mexican business groups.

U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to submit to Congress his plan to renegotiate NAFTA, and could call for bilateral talks that analysts say would put smaller neighbors Mexico and Canada at a bigger disadvantage.

Champagne later met with Mexico's economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo and the two together said NAFTA talks should be three-way and guided by a "win-win-win vision," according to a statement from the economy ministry.

Trump has said he only wants to "tweak" U.S.-Canadian trade, while he would seek to change an "unfair" deal with Mexico.

The United States and Canada face a different set of issues, such as lumber trade, compared with Mexico and the United States, where Trump is concerned about the U.S. deficit with Mexico and the loss of factory jobs south of the border.

Champagne said that Canada was ready to sit down at the table and update NAFTA by including such issues as e-commerce, which was in its infancy when the deal took effect in 1994.

He added that it would be more clear what was at stake once Trump submitted his plan to U.S. lawmakers.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Jonathan Oatis & Simon Cameron-Moore)
Widely considered the favourite, Union Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said on Friday afternoon that he wasnt in the race to become Uttar Pradesh chief minister.

Sinha's remarks come a day before the Bharatiya Janata Party, which managed a three-fourths majority in the UP Assembly elections, holds a legislature party meeting on Saturday to zero in on a chief ministerial pick.

Sinha, a three-time parliamentarian who represents Ghazipur in the Lok Sabha, told reporters outside Parliament that he is not in the race for chief minister nor does he know about any such race.

Tipped by many to be the next chief minister, Sinha is a man without enemies.

In 2014, a local BJP worker in Ghazipur opened a dhaba on the outskirts of the city. He invited Manoj Sinha, the local MP, to inaugurate the dhaba but did not expect him to turn up. Sinha was, after all, a Union Minister by this point. To the workers surprise, Sinha made it for the inauguration. This connect with his constituents is not uncharacteristic of Sinha.

At least till late last year, he spent most weekends in his native Ghazipur. However, the weekends are not spent lazing with family but holding darbars with people from all over the district. Every Saturday and Sunday, over a hundred people gather at his Ghazipur residence with their complaints and Sinha gives them all a patient hearing, even offering tea to all.

BJP sources say that Sinha is a front runner because he is an Ajatshatru  a man without enemies.

He (Sinha) is friendly with all factions in the BJP. Above all, he enjoys the confidence of both Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. BJP wants to avoid any sign of internal infighting. In such a scenario, they will want someone who is acceptable to all sides. He is close to Modi on one hand, and Rajnath Singh on the other. He is not overly ambitious so he can never be threat to Modi, a close aide of the minister told News18.

Sinha cut his teeth in politics as a student leader. In 1982, at the age of 23, he became the president of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). However, it wasnt until 1998 that he got his big break and was elected to the Lok Sabha. He was elected again in 1999 and after a long hiatus, returned to the Parliament in 2014. The PM showed his faith in Sinha by appointing him to the cabinet. During the 2017 Assembly campaign, he was one of the few star campaigners allotted a helicopter to himself.

Modis trust in Sinha comes from his Mr Clean image. He is believed to be a no-nonsense, work-oriented minister. Sources close to Sinha said that during his time as Minister of State (MoS) Railways, he often picked up the slack when Cabinet Minister Suresh Prabhu dropped the ball. Suresh Prabhu confined himself to bringing in new technology while Sinha was largely looking after the day-to-day affairs. He impressed Modi during his time in railways and that is why he was given independent charge of Telecom Ministry after the Cabinet reshuffle, a source said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L) answers questions beside Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (R) during a joint press conference after their talks at the Iikura guest house in Tokyo, Japan March 16, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Yamanaka/Pool - RTX3192B

A US policy of strategic patience with North Korea has ended, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday, adding that military action would be "on the table" if North Korea elevated the threat level.

Tillerson began his first Asian visit as secretary of state in Japan on Wednesday and will travel to China on Saturday with a main focus on finding a "new approach" on North Korea after what he described as two decades of failed efforts to denuclearize the insular nation.

"Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told a news conference in Seoul.

He said any North Korean actions that threatened the South would be met with "an appropriate response".

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson said when asked about military action.

Tillerson also called on China to implement sanctions against North Korea and said there was no need for China to punish South Korea for deploying an advanced U.S. anti-missile system aimed at defending against North Korea.

China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system's powerful radar is a threat to its security.

"We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling," Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system.

"We also believe it is not the way for a regional power to help resolve what is a serious threat for everyone. So we hope China will alter its position on punishing South Korea."

"We hope they will work with us to eliminate the reason THAAD is required."

North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile launches since the beginning of last year.

Last week, it launched four more ballistic missiles and is working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told the joint news conference the missile system was only intended to defend against North Korea, not any other country.

FACING OFF AT THE DMZ

Earlier, Tillerson visited the Demilitarized Zone, and looked across the heavily fortified border at armed North Korean guards, staring back. He met some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

Tillerson also met South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is also acting president.

The latest bout of tension with North Korea comes at a time of political turmoil in South Korea. President Park Geun-hye was ousted last week after being impeached in a corruption scandal and an election for a new president will be on May 9.

A liberal opposition politician, Moon Jae-in, who has raised questions about the THAAD deployment, is leading in the opinion polls.

Tillerson, a former oil executive with no prior diplomatic experience, said he expected a new government would "continue to be supportive" of the deployment, adding it was also intended to protect U.S. troops in South Korea.

China resents U.S. pressure to do more on North Korea and says it is doing all it can but will not take steps to threatened the livelihoods of the North Korean people.

China has urged North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests and said South Korea and the United States should stop joint military exercises and seek talks instead.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that talks were the best way to resolve the problems of the Korean peninsula.

"As a close neighbour of the peninsula, China has even more reason than any other country to care about the situation," she told a briefing.

Hua also said the THAAD would "upset the regional strategic balance". Its radar, with a range of more than 2,000 km (1,250 miles), meant it could cover a large part of China, far outside the scope of the threat South Korea faces, Hua said.

"We do not oppose South Korean taking necessary measures to protect its security, but these measures cannot be based upon harming the security interests of South Korea's friendly neighbour, China," she said.
Discover safe, affordable and impressive destinations worth visiting alone.

When traveling on your own, you can prioritize self-fulfillment on a journey to remember. After all, you can relax, reflect and step out of your comfort zone in a variety of ways while globe-trotting alone. As you face new challenges on a boundary-pushing adventure, you'll not only gain self-awareness, but also enjoy the luxury of creating your own itinerary, avoiding kitschy tourist attractions and dining and sightseeing at your own pace. From checking out the night markets in Taipei, Taiwan, to biking across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, here are five solo getaway ideas to spark your wanderlust.

Taipei

Taipei is located at the tip of Taiwan, within the Taipei Basin along the Tamsui River. If you're a student on a budget traveling on your own, there's plenty to see and do, from exploring storied shrines to contemporary galleries to cutting-edge shops. Get to know the city on a leisurely bus ride. And at night, you can't miss getting your culture fix at the city's famous night markets, which stretch across 10 blocks and feature everything from pop-up shops to lively street vendors selling local dishes. What's more, there are plenty of places to hike around the city (hat tip: Yangmingshan National Park) to take in beautiful views.

Toronto

A diverse and welcoming city, Toronto offers a wonderful mix of big-city life and alluring green spaces. And though upscale hotels tend to lean toward the pricier side, you can save money on transportation since most top attractions are situated within walking distance of one other. During your visit, you won't want to miss strolling through the historic St. Lawrence Market, which features vendors ranging from crafters to farmers, or strolling along the Harbourfront Centre. After crossing top sights off your list, explore the Toronto Islands on a scenic ferry ride. Once there, you can bike, walk and enjoy people-watching over a leisurely picnic.

Story continues

Dublin

Dublin, with its plentiful free walking tours, fun-loving locals and vibrant green spaces, offers an appealing place to explore on your own. If you're a beer or whiskey lover, don't skip checking out the best pubs and Irish whiskey distilleries, the Guinness Storehouse or the Irish Whiskey Museum. Best of all, there are a wealth of free attractions and budget-friendly accommodation options to pick from, including hostels, bed-and-breakfasts and boutiques. What's more, getting around Dublin is easy. You can walk, bike or take the DART bus system to explore outside the city and the pastoral countryside.

Johannesburg

South Africa's largest city offers plenty of historical sights and urban thrills that cater to intrepid types. Home of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, Johannesburg's rich heritage especially appeals to history buffs. You won't want to miss checking out the Apartheid Museum, the Mandela House or Maboneng Precinct. After taking in must-see attractions, catch some amazing views from atop the Carlton Centre. South Africa also has unique natural wildlife and scenery to explore, and food and drinks are generally very affordable for tourists, making it an ideal pick for adventure-seeking soloists on a budget.

San Francisco

A breezy, easygoing and culturally rich city, San Francisco offers plenty of enticements for outdoorsy types, foodies and art aficionados alike. From the Ferry Building Marketplace to Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, there are plenty of areas worth exploring. Plus, the BART, the city's transit system, makes exploring each neighborhood quick and easy. If you're an art enthusiast, pick up a map of the many art galleries in the Mission. Another highlight: biking across the Golden Gate Strait, a 7-mile-long stretch of the Golden Gate Bridge. Catch a view of the fog rolling out from the bay and the sun shining over the bridge.





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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,
WEST CHESTER, OH--(Marketwired - Mar 16, 2017) - AK Steel Holding Corporation (NYSE: AKS) ("AK Holding") announced today that its subsidiary, AK Steel Corporation ("AK Steel"), has successfully priced its public offering (the "Offering") of $400,000,000 aggregate principal amount of 7% senior notes due 2027 (the "Notes"). AK Steel will pay interest on the Notes semi-annually on March 15 and September 15 of each year. Interest on the newly issued Notes will accrue from March 23, 2017. The Notes will mature on March 15, 2027. The Notes will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed by AK Holding, AK Steel's direct parent, and by AK Tube LLC, AK Steel Properties, Inc. and Mountain State Carbon, LLC (together with AK Holding, AK Tube LLC and AK Steel Properties, Inc., the "Guarantors"), three wholly-owned subsidiaries of AK Steel. The Notes will be unsecured senior obligations of AK Steel and the Guarantors.

AK Steel intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering, together with cash on hand and/or borrowings under its revolving credit facility, to finance AK Steel's previously announced cash tender offer for any and all of AK Steel's outstanding 7.625% Senior Notes due 2020 ("Old Notes"). If any Old Notes remain outstanding following the completion of the cash tender offer, AK Steel intends to promptly redeem such Old Notes in accordance with the terms of the Old Notes and the applicable indenture. The Offering is being made pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and is expected to close on March 23, 2017, subject to customary closing conditions.

The joint book-running managers for the Offering are BofA Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo Securities, Citigroup, Goldman, Sachs & Co., BMO Capital Markets, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities.

AK Holding, along with certain of its subsidiaries, has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus) with the SEC relating to the Offering. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus in that registration statement and other documents AK Holding and AK Steel have filed with the SEC for more complete information about AK Holding, AK Steel and the Offering. You may review electronic copies of these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC Web site at www.sec.gov.

Alternatively, AK Holding, AK Steel, any underwriter or any dealer participating in the Offering will arrange to send you the prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus if you request it by contacting BofA Merrill Lynch at Attention: Prospectus Department, One Bryant Park, New York, NY, 10036 (1-800-294-1322 or dg.prospectus_distribution@bofasecurities.com); Wells Fargo at Attention: Client Support, 608 2nd Avenue, South Minneapolis, MN 55402, telephone: (800) 645-3751 Opt 5, or email: wfscustomerservice@wellsfargo.com; Citigroup, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by calling (800) 831-9146; Goldman Sachs & Co. at Attn: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316, or email prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; BMO Capital Markets at 3 Times Square, New York, NY 10036, Attn: High Yield Syndicate, telephone: (212) 702-1882; Credit Suisse at Attention: Prospectus Department, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010, telephone: 1-800-221-1037, or email: newyork.prospectus@credit-suisse.com; or Deutsche Bank Securities at Attention: Prospectus Group, 60 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005-2836, email: prospectus.cpdg@db.com, telephone (800) 503-4611.

This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the Notes in the Offering, nor shall there be any sale of such Notes in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements the company made or incorporated by reference in this release, or made in other documents furnished to or filed with the Securities Exchange Commission, as well as in press releases or in oral presentations made by company employees, reflect management's estimates and beliefs and are intended to be "forward-looking statements" identified in the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "plans," "estimates" and other similar references to future periods typically identify forward-looking statements. The company cautions readers that forward-looking statements reflect the company's current beliefs and judgments, but are not guarantees of future performance or outcomes. They are based on a number of assumptions and estimates that are inherently affected by economic, competitive, regulatory, and operational risks, uncertainties and contingencies that are beyond the company's control, and upon assumptions about future business decisions and conditions that may change.

Forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve risks and uncertainties, resulting in the possibility that actual events or performance will differ materially from such predictions as a result of certain risk factors, including reduced selling prices, shipments and profits associated with a highly competitive and cyclical industry; domestic and global steel overcapacity; changes in the cost of raw materials and energy; the company's significant amount of debt and other obligations; severe financial hardship or bankruptcy of one or more of the company's major customers or key suppliers; our significant proportion of sales to the automotive market; reduced demand in key product markets due to competition from aluminum or other alternatives to steel; excess inventory of raw materials; supply chain disruptions or poor quality of raw materials; production disruption or reduced production levels; the company's healthcare and pension obligations; not reaching new labor agreements on a timely basis; major litigation, arbitrations, environmental issues and other contingencies; regulatory compliance and changes; climate change and greenhouse gas emission limitations; financial, credit, capital and banking markets; derivative contracts to hedge commodity pricing volatility; potential permanent idling of facilities; inability to fully realize benefits of margin enhancement initiatives; information technology security threats and cybercrime; as well as those risks and uncertainties discussed in more detail in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, as updated in subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As such, the company cautions readers not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only to the company's plans, assumptions and expectations as of the date hereof. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, except as required by law.

About AK Steel

AK Steel is a leading producer of flat-rolled carbon, stainless and electrical steel products and carbon and stainless tubular products, primarily for automotive, infrastructure and manufacturing, electrical power generation and distribution markets. Headquartered in West Chester, Ohio (Greater Cincinnati), the company employs approximately 8,500 men and women at eight steel plants, two coke plants and two tube manufacturing plants across six states (Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) and one tube plant in Mexico.
March 17, 2017

Which "War Torn" Country? - U.S. Slaughter In Somalia, Yemen And Syria



bigger - original tweet

When I saw the above tweet this morning I wondered which "war torn" country those Somalis were fleeing from when they were murdered. The tweet doesn't say. Were they fleeing from the "war torn" Somalia? Or were the fleeing from "war torn" Yemen?

It is a sad world when has to ponder such.

It tuned out these people were fleeing from both wars:

Coast guard Mohammad Al Alay told Reuters the refugees, carrying official UNHCR documents, were on their way from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab Al Mandeb strait.

An Apache attack helicopter shot up the refugees' boat. There are Saudi, United Emirati and U.S. Apache helicopters in or around Yemen. It is unknown which of them ordered and which executed the strike. These helicopters, their ammunition and the service for them are a favored U.S. export to belligerent dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.

The UN warns that 5 million people in Yemen are only weeks away from starving. The Saudis, the U.S. and the Emirates block all land routes, air ports and the coast of Yemen and no food supplies come through. This is an ongoing huge war crime and literally a genocide. But "western" media seem totally unimpressed. Few, if any, reports on the war on Yemen get published. Never have they so openly displayed their hypocrisy.

Somalia is falling back into an all-out civil war fueled by the decades old unwillingness of the U.S. to condone an independent local unity government. The Islamic Court Union, a unity government created by the Somalis in 2006, was the last working instance of a real Somali state. It had no Jihadist agenda and held down local warlords. It was destroyed by the Bush administration:

A UN cable from June 2006, containing notes of a meeting with senior State Department and US military officials from the Horn of Africa task force, indicates that the United States was aware of the ICUs diversity, but would not allow it to rule Somalia. The United States, according to the notes, intended to rally with Ethiopia if the Jihadist took over. The cable concluded, Any Ethiopian action in Somalia would have Washingtons blessing. Some within the US intelligence community called for dialogue or reconciliation, but their voices were drowned out by hawks determined to overthrow the ICU.

During the last 10 years an on-and-off war is waged in Somalia with the U.S. military interfering whenever peace seems to gain ground. Currently a new round of war is building up. Weapons are streaming into Somalia from Yemen, where the Houthi plunder them from their Saudi invaders:

Jonah Leff, a weapons tracing expert with conflict Armament Research, said many [Somali] pirates had turned to smuggling. They take boatloads of people [from Somalia] to Yemen and return with weapons, he said.

The wars on Somalia and Yemen are the consequences of unscrupulous and incompetent(?) U.S. foreign policy. (Cutting down the size of the U.S. State Department, as the Trump administration now plans to do, is probably the best thing one can do for world peace.)

The U.S. military should be cut down too. It is equally unscrupulous and incompetent.

Last night the U.S. military hit a mosque in Al-Jinah in Aleppo governate in Syria. It first claimed that the strike, allegedly targeting a large meeting of al-Qaeda, was in Idleb governate. But it turned out to be miles away west of Aleppo. Locals said a mosque was hit, the roof crashed in and more than 40 people were killed during the regular prayer service. More than 120 were injured. The U.S. military said it did not hit the local mosque but a building on the other side of the small plaza.

The U.S. maps and intelligence were not up-to-date. A new, bigger mosque had been build some years ago opposite of the old mosque. The old mosque was indeed not hit. The new one was destroyed while some 200 people were in attendance. Eight hellfire missiles launched from two Reaper drones were fired at it and a 500lb bomb was then dropped on top to make sure that no one escaped alive. Al-Qaeda fighters were indeed "meeting" at that place - five times a day and together with the locals they have pressed by force to attend the Quran proscribed prayers.

Had the Russian or Syrian army committed the strike the "western" outcry would have been great. For days the media would have provide gruesome photos and stories. The U.S. ambassador at the UN would have spewed fire and brimstone. But this intelligence screw-up happened on the U.S. side. There will now be some mealymouthed explanations and an official military investigation that will find no fault and will have no consequences.

Amid this sorry incident it was amusing to see the propaganda entities the U.S. had created to blame the Syrian government turning against itself. The MI6 operated SOHR was the first to come out with a high death count. The al-Qaeda aligned, U.S./UK financed "White Helmets" rescuers made a quick photo session pretending to dig out the dead. The sectarian al-Qaeda video propagandist Bilal Abdul Kareem, which the New York Times recently portrait in a positive light, provided damning video and accusing comments. The amateur NATO researchers at Bellingcat published what they had gleaned from maps, photos and videos other people created. The NATO think tank, which defended al-Qaeda's invasion of Idleb, will shed crocodile tears.

Each new lie and obfuscation the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East put out throughout the day was immediately debunked by the horde of U.S. financed al-Qaeda propaganda supporters. This blowback from the "information operation" against Syria will likely have consequences for future U.S. operations.

In another operation last night the Israeli air force attacked Syrian forces near Palmyra which were operating against ISIS. The Israeli fighters were chased away when the Syrians fired air defense missiles. This was an Israeli attempt to stretch the "rules of operation" it had negotiated with the Russian military in Syria. The Russians, which control the Syrian air space, had allowed Israel to hit Hizbullah weapon transports on their way to Lebanon. Attacks on any force operating against Jihadis in Syria are taboo. The Russian government summoned the Israeli ambassador. Netanyahoo broke the rules. He will now have to bear the consequences.

Posted by b on March 17, 2017 at 19:42 UTC | Permalink

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CONOVER  The Western Piedmont Regional Transit Authority Board of Directors voted Thursday morning to approve the budget for Fiscal Year 2018, which begins July 1.

The $5.3 million budget sees an increase of $488,438 from FY 2017.

North Carolina General Statutes 159-8 require all local governments and public authority to operate under a balanced budget.

A budget is considered balanced when the sum of estimated net revenues is equal to appropriations, according to documents provided at the meeting.

The WPRTA Board of Directors oversees and directs the Greenway Public Transportation services, which provide public transportation in the Unifour region. The board consists of members from Catawba, Burke, Caldwell and Alexander counties, as well as members from the cities of Hickory, Newton and Conover.

Greenway Public Transportation provides more than 250,000 rides per year to residents of the four counties, and if funding is approved, new routes are to be added in the upcoming year.

Finance Director Jeff Blalock presented the board with a financial report for the month of February followed by a presentation of the proposed budget.

No members of the public spoke during the public hearing portion, and the board voted to approve the new budget along with the WPRTA 2018 Capital Project Ordinance.

The 2018 Capital Project Ordinance is a separate budget used when WPRTA purchases assets to be capitalized, according to presented documents. The WPRTA plans on purchasing five new vans, one bus and one light transit vehicle (LTV) in FY 2018.

The total cost of the new vehicles will equal $907,300 and WPRTA requires a match from the counties and cities to help with these expenses. The four counties will provide a match of $20,137 each to help pay for the vans, while Conover, Hickory, and Newton will pay $21,280, $63,840, and $21,280, respectively, for the bus.

One of the reasons for the 10 percent increase in operating budget for FY 2018 is due to the expected addition of new routes.

We are going to be starting some new routes in Burke County  if that goes through, of course, there will be an increase in expenses, Blalock said.

Funding for the program comes from a number of different sources.

A lot of our funding comes from federal and state, so a lot of our expenses are reimbursed through different grants. It also requires that members  to match a lot of these grants, Blalock said.
One man was injured and taken to a local hospital after a fire consumed his house on Thursday morning.

Multiple fire departments arrived to a home located on 2202 Misti Brook Lane in Morganton around 7:15 a.m., said Fire Deputy Jerry Zimmerman with Brendletown Fire and Rescue.

Fire crews arrived on scene to a house that was fully involved in flames with the occupant already outside of the house, he said.

Friends of the home owner, who they identified as Jay Clark, say he was lucky to escape from the burning house, a friend of Clark's told WSOC-TV.

He woke up and was on fire and got out as fast as he could, Stuart Thompson told WSOC.

He had went to a neighbors house to get help and did have some burns, Zimmerman said.

Clark was taken to a local hospital with minor burns and the possibility of being intubated, he said.

Clark told firefighters that there was a space heater beside of him that may have caught a blanket on fire, Zimmerman said.

Fire officials later confirmed he was running low on propane gas and had three space heaters around his bed and a woke with a blanket on fire, said Chad Houston, a Burke County Fire Inspector.

Fire officials have deemed the cause of the fire to be accidental.

The majority of the fire was at the front part of the house with it spreading to the rest of the house and completely burning all walls and the roof.

We had a line going around the front side of the house and a line going around that back side of the house, Zimmerman said.

Once the fire was controlled and extinguished, firefighters started sifting through leftover remnants to see if they could find the origin or any space heater, Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman urges people to be mindful where they put space heaters because they can be extremely dangerous.

He also reminded people to keep their chimneys and space heaters clean and to take care of them properly.

Responding agencies were Brendletown Fire and Rescue, Salem and West End fire departments and Burke County EMS and the Burke County Fire Marshals Office.

Staff Writer Jonelle Bobak can be reached at jbobak@morganton.com or 828-432-8907.
NEBO  A wildfire near the base of Shortoff Mountain continued to grow Thursday night, doubling in size to an estimated 75 acres by midday Friday, according to information from the United States Forest Service.

The blaze, which is being called the White Creek Fire, was reported at 4 p.m. Thursday and is burning near Wolf Pit Road at the south end of Linville Gorge on the Grandfather Ranger District of Pisgah National Forest. The fire currently is 0 percent contained the USFS said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation

Thursday night, firefighters worked to reestablish fire lines on the south end of the fire with the goal of protecting private property, according to a release from the forest service. The Linville Gorge has an extensive fire history, allowing firefighters to fall back to existing lines established in the Table Rock (2013), Shortoff (2007) and Brushy Ridge (2000) fires. Friday, firefighters were conducting burn out operations to secure the southern edge of the fire, the release said.

Burke County Fire Marshal Mike Willis said the results of those fires in the area actually will make setting up shop to fight the White Creek Fire a little simpler. Dense, hard vegetation wont stand in the way for firefighters like it did at the Chestnut Knob Fire at South Mountains State Park in November and December.

The last time we had a fire up there was 2013 with the Table Rock Fire, Willis said. A lot of that vegetation is still in the early stages of growing, so we dont have a dense population of hard forest right now. So, the fire lines that were cut during that time are still in fairly good shape.

With the existing fire lines, theyre going to clean them up and help try to hold tight with what they had prior. All thats still new and fresh and its not as hard as going into rough ground and cutting a new fire line. So, they can just work it faster because precautions and the fire lines have already been cut, so what they focused on (Friday) morning, especially on that southern and eastern side, is to try to keep it off private property and use the existing fire lines and just go back and reinforce that.

One hundred firefighters were on scene at the blaze Friday, the USFS said. The USFS is leading fire response efforts, with support from the North Carolina Forest Service, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Burke County Emergency Management and North Carolina Emergency Management, the release said.

(As far as) Burke County resources, were staffing one medical standby crew, Willis said. Were making arrangements to do a night operation with our local fire departments just staffing one brush truck to help monitor. With (the forest services) personnel in the woods, its kind of hard for them at night. So, well try to pull a brush truck in at night like we did at South Mountains just to help maintain lines.

Areas around Lake James and Morganton could experience smoke today and tonight, especially along N.C. Highway 181 between Oak Hill and Linville Falls, according to information from the USFS. Smoke also was expected impact areas to the north and east as winds shifted Friday evening. The USFS urged travelers to use caution when driving in smoke by using headlights and increasing following distances.

All USFS lands east of State Road 1238 (Old NC Highway 105/Kistler Memorial Highway), south of Conley Cove Trail (Trail No. 229), south of Table Rock Picnic Area, west of Back Irish Creek Forest Service Road No. 118 (Blue Gravel Road) and Roses Creek Forest Service Road No. 99 and north of NC Highway 126 are closed due to the fire. Shortoff Trail (Trail No. 235), Rock Jock Trail (Trail No. 247), Pinch-In Trail (Trail No. 228), Linville Gorge Trail (Trail No. 231) south of Conley Cove Trail (Trail No. 229), Mountains to Sea Trail (Trail No. 440) from State Road 1238 at Pinnacles to the Table Rock Picnic Area and any social trails existing within the closure area are off-limits as well.

State Road 1238 (Old NC Highway 105/Kistler Memorial Highway) and Roses Creek Forest Service Road No. 99 remain open. Camping is limited to sites on the west side of Old NC Highway 105. Conley Cove Trail (Trail No. 229) and areas in the Linville Gorge Wilderness area north of the closure area remain open. The closure area is subject to change with changing fire conditions.

After an outpouring of community support for the Chestnut Knob Fire late last year, donations are not immediately needed for the White Creek Fire, Willis said. He said crews currently are operating self-sufficiently but if support is needed, information will be released at a later date.

Justin Epley can be reached at jepley@morganton.com or 828-432-8943.
Apple Inc. (AAPL) announced Friday morning that it will invest more than 3.5 billion yuan (about $506 million) to establish research and development centers in Shanghai and Suzhou, China. But the most interesting bit in the announcement comes in the boilerplate at the end of the press release: "Apple has created and supported 4.8 million jobs in China " (thanks to Google Translate). That's about 2.5 times the number of jobs the company claims to have created and supported in the United States.

At the end of 2015, Apple claimed it was "responsible for creating and supporting 1.9 million U.S. jobs." Most of those  1.4 million  "are attributable to the iOS ecosystem." The company said it directly employs more than 76,000 people in the United States, or "nearly two-thirds" of the company's worldwide workforce. Apple reported it had 116,000 employees worldwide at the end of its fiscal year in September 2016, and a story in The New York Times published last November cites an Apple statement that it has created "over two million jobs" in the United States since the iPhone was introduced.

ALSO READ: JPMorgan Out With Top Ranked Tech Networking/Hardware Stocks to Buy

This morning's press release also claims that Apple has "created and supported" 1.8 million iOS ecosystem jobs in China and that the company employs more than 12,000 people in its 22 Chinese offices and 46 Apple Stores.

The difference between the number of jobs Apple claims responsibility for in China and the United States is due primarily to its manufacturing contract with Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, which has the capacity at its mainland plant in Zhengzhou to assemble half a million iPhones every day.

Foxconn employs about 1.2 million people, most of whom work assembling iPhones. However, the company also has begun an automation program that it expects to result in building about 30% of its iPhones with robots by 2020. The company replaced 60,000 workers with robots last year in a first phase of the long-term plan.

Story continues

ALSO READ: 23% of Owners Say They Plan to Upgrade to New Apple iPhone in the Fall

The Taiwanese firm also has said it is considering moving some production to the United States but has not offered any specifics. That would add about $30 to $40 to Foxconn's cost of assembling an iPhone, according to a report from Bloomberg News. In China, assembling an iPhone adds about $10 to the cost.

If Foxconn is going to automate its iPhone production in China, it follows that if it were to set up a manufacturing facility in the United States the company would choose to automate that facility from the start. There would be no point in hiring thousands of people to build iPhones that could be more cheaply built by robots.

ALSO READ: Apple One of the Most Underappreciated Stocks in the World

Apple's supplier list for 2016 names its top 200 global suppliers. There are dozens of suppliers from greater China (mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan), many with more than one location. These likely account for about half the 4.8 million jobs that Apple claims it created and supported in China.

Excluding the 1.4 million iOS ecosystems U.S. jobs and the direct U.S. jobs Apple created and supported, the company could be indirectly responsible for another 500,000 to 600,000 U.S. jobs. That's a far cry from the 2 million or so Apple has created in China.

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The major revelations from employees of the TD Bank Group underscored the pressing need for a financial consumer code in Canada, according to a consumer interest organization.The Public Interest Advocacy Centre noted that the controversial sales practices, as revealed to CBC News earlier this week, present a bit of a grey area that might not fall under the jurisdiction of current financial regulators.In the CBC News expose, hundreds of current and former TD employees admitted to breaking the law when attempting to meet unrealistic sales targets, all at the expense of their clients. The whistleblowers told of a maximum-pressure environment that they described as insane, poisoned, and stress inducing, with zero focus on ethics.Among the alleged unsavory practices included the signing up of clients for certain financial products and services without their consent.We think that the proposed financial consumer code will provide a clear set of rules of the road, rules of engagement, between the banks and consumers, PIAC research analyst Jonathan Bishop said, adding that such a code will have to be enforced by an independent organization.Banks will have the opportunity to present evidence to an arbitrator about what they've done, and their tactics, as well as consumers have the opportunity to present their concerns and their views, Bishop explained.In the wake of the disclosures, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada announced on Wednesday (March 15) that it will be launching a review of the major banks business practices next month.FCAC commissioner Lucie Tedesco issued a statement reminding lenders of their obligations to secure prior consent before increasing lines of credit and providing customers with new products.Financial institutions compliance with these rules is non-discretionary and the message must be disseminated from the boards of directors on down to customer-facing staff, Tedesco said. Through the industry review we are announcing today, we will examine financial institutions business practices in relation to express consent and disclosure, including the identification of any factors that may be contributing to non-compliance.
One big bank is arguing the debt-to-income ratio is the most useless economic indicator out there.



167.3%.



Youll read a lot about these two numbers in the coming days. Thats the debt to income ratio for all Canadians and it just hit a new high in Q4 of last year.



Itll be whipped out when arguing against mortgage debt and for policies aimed at safeguarding Canadians from taking on even more debt.



But it isnt that simple, according to Benjamin Tal, chief economist with CIBC. And the ratio isnt even that useful.



The attractiveness of the ratio is that its simple one number catches all. But as we all know, the cost of simplicity is, at times, very high. The ratio compares the stock of debt to the flow of income, Tal wrote in response to the release of the figure. You are not required to pay off your mortgage in one year, so on that ground, that approach is faulty.



Its also the debt of people with debt, relative to the income of people with and without debt. Again a suboptimal comparison. And if foreign income plays a role in the housing market (and it does) that income is not part of the calculation.



Still, news organizations jumped on it.



Canadian households owed $2 trillion at the end of 2016, the CBC proclaimed.



Debt-to-income hits fresh record, Reuters said.



But while debt-to-income levels seem frightening, CIBC argues its anything but.



In many ways this ratio is designed to rise. In the past 25 years, the debt-to-income ratio fell only twice, Tal wrote. In a normally functioning economy, debt will rise faster than income.



For the ratio to fall notably you need a significant shock such as the US financial crisis which led to the US debt-to-income ratio falling from over 160% to 140%, he continued. Is the ratio rising too fast? Not really. Total real household debt is now rising by just over 4% (year-over-year)a rate that is in line with the performance seen during the jobless recovery of the 1990s.
TOKYO (Reuters) - British American Tobacco (BAT) said demand for its "glo" tobacco heating device overwhelmed supply in its Japan test marketing, as global cigarette giants shift focus to the new product category amid declining smoking population.

The "heat but not burn" tobacco is rapidly gaining popularity in Japan. Philip Morris International said earlier this month that it has more than doubled the supply of IQOS tobacco device but it was not enough to cover the demand.

BAT and Philip Morris were the first of the big tobacco firms to invest in cigarette alternatives a few years back, as growing health consciousness reduces traditional smoking.

Both glo and IQOS use cigarette-shape tobacco leaves. But instead of burning, the battery-powered devices heat the sticks to generate steams. The companies said the products emit far less smell than conventional cigarettes.

Global tobacco companies see Japan as a fertile test ground for these products since e-cigarettes, which use nicotine-laced liquid, are not permitted under the country's pharmaceutical regulation.

"We are seeing very strong sales. It's much beyond our expectations," Nami Uehara, brand marketing official at BAT Japan, told Reuters.

BAT, known for Kent and Lucky Strike cigarettes, started the sale of glo in the northeastern city of Sendai in December. The device is priced at 8,000 yen ($70.52).

The device is sold at about 600 convenience stores in the city and the glo flagship store. Uehara said in the first week of the sale, some people waited overnight in front of the flagship store to get the device.

BAT said the daily supply of devices at the flagship store is 100 for weekdays and 250 on weekends. But there were already more people waiting than day's supply three hours before the store's 10 a.m. open.

"We were giving purchase tickets at 7 a.m. but all of them were gone instantly," Uehara said.

Given the long lines of people waiting in front of the store every morning, the company switched from first-come-and-first served to on-line reservation since this month, with daily supply assigned by lottery.

Story continues

BAT said it plans to start selling glo in the rest of Japan later this year.

Japan Tobacco Inc, which commands a more than 60 percent share in the domestic cigarette market, said last month that it expected its domestic cigarettes sales volume to decline by 9.6 percent this year, partly because of the growing popularity of tobacco e-cigarettes.

Japan Tobacco has said it will begin selling Ploom Tech tobacco-based electronic cigarettes in some parts of Tokyo from June.

(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka and Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
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Midstream companies continue scrambling to meet demands to move the Permian Basins rising crude production to market.

Phillips 66 has become the latest company to join the effort, announcing the Reeves-Odessa Origination (Rodeo) Project, designed to serve producers and other shippers in the Delaware subbasin.

We see an opportunity to serve the logistics needs of growing production from the Delaware Basin, Rich Johnson, Phillips 66 spokesman, said in an email. He also said the company is not disclosing a price tag for the project.

The project is expected to include 130 miles of mainland pipeline with laterals of various lengths off the mainline, Johnson said. Origination stations will be located in Reeves, Loving, and Winkler counties as well as at Odessa. The system will include four destination options:

-- Wink,

-- Phillips 66 Partners Odessa station

-- a new terminal to be built near Odessa as part of the Rodeo Project and

-- the companys Midland terminal.

Johnson said many specifics of the pipeline will be determined by interest expressed in the open season for the project, which gets underway on March 24.

The pipeline will have an anticipated initial throughput capacity of up to 130,000 barrels per day with an ultimate potential throughput capacity of up to approximately 450,000 barrels per day, depending on shipper commitments in the open season. The open season terms and conditions include options for shippers to obtain committed shipper status through either an acreage dedication or a transportation and deficiency commitment, he said.

The pipeline system is expected to be in service in the second half of 2018.

Among Phillips 66s current holdings are the WA Line, a 12- and-14-inch crude oil pipeline extending 289 miles from Odessa to Borger and an interest in the Sand Hills NGL pipeline, a 20-inch, 1,190-mile line that extends from the Permian Basin to Mont Belvieu.
If youve grown up gorging on Honey Nut Cheerios, as I did, youre likely familiar with Buzz, the character whose visage adorns every box of the General Mills product. Hes a spritely, jolly mascot with mustard-yellow skin and a striped shirt, usually cradling a stick of honey as he circumnavigates your cereal bowl.

But hes gone missing. As of this month, Honey Nut Cheerios boxes are no longer emblazoned with his likeness, but, in its place, a pale, white silhouette.

#bringbackthebees A post shared by @thomjordan on Mar 10, 2017 at 11:25am PST

This gimmick is part of an awareness campaign that General Mills has launched, called #BringBacktheBees, meant to bring attention to the problem of the deterioration of bee colonies and the damage it's had upon the American food system. On the campaigns website, General Mills notes that these beloved Honey Nut Cheerios, along with 30% of General Mills ingredients across all brands and products, rely on honeybee pollination.

The companys Canadian arm mounted a similar campaign last year, and this year, it's expanded to the States. (Burt's Bees has also engaged in its own #BringBackTheBees campaign, while Haagen-Dazs has joined in with a similar one, too.) The site allows visitors to request free wildflower seeds from General Mills partner Vesey's Seeds thatll arrive within four to six weeks. When planted, the flowers have the pollen and nectar with essential nutrients that bees, and their co-pollinators, need in order to survive.

General Mills has outlined a lofty goal of planting 100 million wildflowers by the end of its campaign, and Buzz is likely to return to boxes once spring is over. Since launching the campaign late last week, General Mills has met 70% of its goal in America; it's currently at 47% in Canada.

As far as awareness campaigns go, Ill budge: This ones pretty smart. It's easy to treat news of declining bee population rates with apathy and inaction. If this campaign compels people to know more and to act, Im all for it. Whatever it takes.

What are your thoughts on this new General Mills campaign? Let us know in the comments.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation strongly denounced the cuts the White House proposed in the FY 2018 budget Thursday, emphasizing that slashing foreign aid and research and development will decrease safety around the globe.

"We are deeply troubled that the budget proposal disproportionately affects the poorest people, abroad and at home, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the foundation, said in a statement. Empowering people to lead healthy, productive lives creates more stable societies, which are critical to our national security.

The statement also included a fact sheet touting the benefits of providing foreign aid.

Trumps budget blueprint, released Thursday morning and titled America First, proposed steep cuts to foreign aid.

This past February, Bill Gates had said America First rhetoric could threaten global security. "If you interpret America First in certain ways, it would suggest not prioritizing the stability of Africa and American leadership" he told USA Today.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Crime rates in America have dropped steadily in the last 20 years. According to the Pew Research Center , violent crime rates fell over 50 percent from 1993 to 2015. Despite this overall trend, murder rates in the U.S. have gone up in the past two years. In some cities, murder rates increased at alarming speeds. For example, there were 496 murders in Chicago in 2015, compared with 762 in 2016.

Which American cities experienced the highest murder rates in 2015? FindTheHome, a real estate intelligence site by Graphiq, found out using data collected by the 2015 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The experts at FindTheHome ranked cities by their murder rate per 100,000 people. Only cities that had populations over 100,000 were included. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program defines murder and nonnegligent manslaughter as the willful killing of one human being by another.

It's important to note that although these 25 cities reflect a high murder rate in 2015, rates for the country overall are still historically low. Murder rates in the U.S. are down significantly from the 1980s and 1990s. Cities with higher murder rates range from large metropolises to smaller cities. Tackling crime and the murder rate in particular is a complex challenge for each city.

Note: Some cities, including Cleveland, Ohio and Newark, New Jersey, have had higher than average murder rates in the past, but are not reported on by the 2015 FBI UCR.



Note: The data published here is meant solely to illustrate the relative rates of crime, and not to make assertions about the effectiveness of law enforcement. There are many factors that affect the rate and nature of crime -- such as the degree of urbanization, composition of age groups, economic climate and modes of transportation within an area -- which are not considered here. For more information on how to interpret FBI crime data, click here.
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BRASILIA, March 17 (Reuters) - Brazil's Agriculture Ministry is temporarily closing three meatpacking plants, including one run by BRF SA, after a police investigation raised accusations of bribery of regulators to cover up unsanitary conditions.

Eumar Novacki, the ministry's executive secretary, told journalists on Friday that meat products from those factories would be removed from supermarkets.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu)
Musician Aaron Carter's twin sister, Angel Carter ConradShe has broken her silence about the death of her brother, with whom she had a turbulent relationship in the last years of his life. The former child singer was found dead at his home
SAO PAULO, March 17 (Reuters) - Brazil's Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi ordered on Friday the suspension of all officials involved in a federal police investigation of alleged bribery of food inspectors and politicians.

"The important thing now is separating the wheat from the chaff," he said on his Facebook page. Brazilian federal police raided on Friday the offices of dozens of meatpackers including industry giants JBS SA and BRF SA.

(Reporting by Brad Haynes; Writing by Bruno Federowski)
The flag of the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc is seen waving at the company headquarters in the Manhattan borough in New York June 11, 2015. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo (Reuters)

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government has referred Rupert Murdoch's planned 11.7 billion pound ($14.4 billion) takeover of European pay-TV group Sky to regulators to decide if the deal is in the public interest.

Media Secretary Karen Bradley told parliament it was important to seek advice from the regulator Ofcom on whether the deal would give Murdoch and his companies too much control of Britain's media, and whether the new owner would be committed to broadcasting standards.

Murdoch's U.S. TV business Twenty-First Century Fox already owns 39 percent of Sky. Murdoch and his family have long coveted full control of Sky, despite the damaging failure of a previous attempt in 2011 when their British newspaper business became embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal.

Bradley has given Ofcom a 40-day timetable to investigate, and expects to receive its report by May 16.

She said Ofcom, as an independent regulator, would assess in the same time frame whether Murdoch's company was a "fit and proper" holder of a broadcasting license.

Twenty-First Century Fox said it was looking forward to working with British authorities in their reviews of the deal, and it believed it would be approved.

"We are confident that a thorough review of our track record over 30 years will underscore our commitment to upholding high broadcast standards, and will demonstrate that the transaction will not result in there being insufficient plurality in the UK," the company said on Thursday.

POLITICAL OPPOSITION

Some opposition lawmakers oppose the deal, saying Murdoch, the owner of The Times and The Sun newspapers, would wield too much influence if he had full control of a pay-TV group present in more than 12 million British and Irish homes.

"Many of us believe if you look at the conduct of the Murdochs and the untrammeled power they already have it is not in the public interest for them to take over Sky and have full control," Ed Miliband, former leader of the opposition Labour Party, said on Thursday.

Story continues

Miliband was a prominent critic of the deal the last time it was proposed.

Murdoch's son James, who is chief executive of Fox and chairman of Sky, was criticized by Ofcom in 2012 over his handling of the phone hacking scandal.

The regulator said his management of the group's UK newspapers at the time "repeatedly fell well short of the conduct to be expected of as a chief executive and chairman", although it said Sky remained a fit and proper owner of broadcast licenses.

Twenty-First Century Fox, which owns cable, film and pay-TV assets around the world, said the media market had changed dramatically in recent years as broadcasters face new challenges from streaming services.

The Murdoch family's newspaper businesses have been split from its television and film assets in a move that helped pave the way for another tilt at Sky.

Sky has also combined its businesses in Britain, Germany and Italy since the previous bid.

James Murdoch has sought industry backing for the deal by recently praising the quality and creativity of British television and the positive contribution made by Sky.

He said a Fox-owned Sky would spend at least 700 million pounds a year on original British production.

Shares in Sky were largely unaffected by the decision, which had been widely expected after Bradley said earlier this month she was minded to intervene.

They were trading up 0.4 percent at 9.89 pounds. The buyout offer is priced at 10.75 pounds.

(Editing by Kate Holton/Keith Weir)
Sacramento, CA  President Donald Trump has signed off on another disaster declaration targeting California counties hit hard by Januarys extreme wet weather, including Tuolumne County.

This is the second time Tuolumne county has been included in a declaration related to winter storm damage. As reported here, another one was approved by the President in mid-February. Deputy Administrator and Office of Emergency Services (OES) Coordinator Tracie Riggs notes the funds are greatly needed, Tuolumne County has significant damage and some roads have been semi-permanently closed. They range from Marshes Flat Road, which has been closed, to Evergreen, Italian Bar and Kewin Mill roads, which are the primary damaged roads.

The request for this latest approved declaration was made by Governor Jerry Brown earlier this month, as reported here. It covers emergency work and repair or replacement of facilities damaged from January 18  23. The funds are available to state, local and tribal governments as well as nonprofit groups with a funding split of 75 percent federal reimbursement, 18.75 percent state and a county share of 6.25 percent. Without the feds, the state would foot 75 percent and the county 25 percent. It is a huge costs difference, as Riggs explains, Just the county of Tuolumne has approximately 7-million in road damagesIf we only had a California Disaster Assistance Act that share of cost would normally be almost $1.8 million. With the federal proclamation, it takes it from $1.8 million to $400,000and those are both rounded numbers, but its a huge different on the local level.

The White House says that other declarations may be made later depending on damage assessments. Riggs indicates a third disaster declaration request, which includes the county, is already in the works regarding Februarys storm damage with the total costs still being determined. She adds there could be a fourth depending on reports of rain next week, stating, The ground has still not had sufficient amount of time to really absorb all the moisture. If we were to get another atmospheric river as they [National Weather Service] were calling them and we had eight to ten days worth of rain again, I think we would absolutely experience more issues across the state.
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MEXICO CITY, March 16 (Reuters) - Canada is committed to keeping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a trilateral accord, Canada's trade minister said on Thursday, in a sign of support for Mexico as it prepares for tough negotiations with the new U.S. administration.

"For me it is quite clear. NAFTA is a three-nation agreement. So the way to renegotiate a three-nation agreement is on a trilateral basis," Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at an event in Mexico City organized by Canadian and Mexican business groups.

U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to submit to Congress his plan to renegotiate NAFTA, and could call for bilateral talks that analysts say would put smaller neighbors Mexico and Canada at a bigger disadvantage.

Champagne was set to meet with Mexico's economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, later on Thursday in the northern industrial city of Monterrey.

Trump has said he only wants to "tweak" U.S.-Canadian trade, while he would seek to change an "unfair" deal with Mexico.

The United States and Canada face a different set of issues, such as lumber trade, compared with Mexico and the United States, where Trump is concerned about the U.S. deficit with Mexico and the loss of factory jobs south of the border.

Champagne said that Canada was ready to sit down at the table and update NAFTA by including such issues as e-commerce, which was in its infancy when the deal took effect in 1994.

He added that it would be more clear what was at stake once Trump submitted his plan to U.S. lawmakers.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Seniors can be especially vulnerable to crime and are often targets of thieves. But theyre getting help from two people who are educating seniors on ways they can stay safe.

Training group visits communities throughout Central Florida, teacher self-defense

Group focuses on vulnerable communities, including seniors

In a safety class at a neighborhood clubhouse in DeLand on Thursday, Jo Martin showed seniors how a cane can be used as a weapon.

I can use it as a club, said Martin.

Its just one of several tips Martin, a martial arts instructor, and Randy Boyer, a longtime locksmith, teach in the safety class aimed at seniors.

We tend to focus on more vulnerable groups, for example churches are being targeted a lot these days. So we do training for church groups to raise their awareness and put procedures in place to help keep everyone more safe, said Martin.

The two travel throughout Central Florida to different neighborhoods and senior groups.

Randy and I tend to look for areas where people are vulnerable and try to use our expertise and knowledge to share some of that with them to help protect them, said Martin.

Used to be you trusted everybody, but the more you see on the news, you know, you have to take that extra step to be more aware of your surroundings, said Judy Williams, a DeLand resident.

Some of the safety tips may sound like common sense. But its advice Williams says shell remember in order to stay safe.

She gave us some little things that I thought, oh I didnt think of that, said Williams.

I probably should keep my car locked, and dont leave your information in your glove box because if they get in there they can get your address.

Anyone interested in the safety classes can find information on how to sign up at http://www.empowerfirearmstraining.com.
Daughters of the American Revolution

The Mary McCoy Baines Chapter of DAR convened March 8, 2017, for its regular meeting at Covenant Hospital Plainview. Regent Shirley Scott called the meeting to order and led the opening ritual. Chaplain Floy Smith gave the invocation, and a seated luncheon followed.

Fronty Carthel presented the program Biography of Alphonso Steele  A personal account of his service in the Battle of San Jacinto. In the voice of his fifth great-grandfather, Carthel related how his ancestor came to Texas from Kentucky just before the revolution in 1836. To avenge the atrocities of Goliad and the Alamo, he joined Sam Houstons Army and fought at San Jacinto where he was gravely wounded. Steele recovered and lived on to become the last survivor of the battle, honored by the 21st Texas Legislature in 1909.

Regent Scott brought the President Generals message which informed DAR members that all chapter work including service to American veterans, research, and genealogy projects could be counted as volunteer hours. She also gave the National Defense report on the history of the Pentagon, which houses the U.S. Department of Defense. Before it was built during World War II, the defense headquarters was scattered in 17 separate buildings. Today the five-sided building located in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac from the Capitol covers 29 acres and stretches a mile around. It is the worlds largest office building.

In officers reports, Librarian Carolyn Courtney said that progress was being made on cataloging the backlog of donated books in the genealogical section at Unger Memorial Library. Registrar Corky Terrell stated that we have two new members, Renee Williams and Cornelia McDonough, whose papers were recently approved.

In reports of standing committees, Indian Chairman Ramona Roberts gave members a handout of an essay by Paul Carlson, emeritus professor of history at Texas Tech, on the competing claims for Quanah Parkers birthplace. Conservation Chairman Betty Adams reported that milkweed seeds were available on the internet and from Kim Horne locally. Floy Smith, coupon chairman, said that $637 in coupons was collected in February.

In unfinished business there was some discussion of a new meeting place. After thanking hostesses Phyllis Wall and Kim Horne, Regent Scott adjourned the meeting. -- Carolyn Courtney

Plainview Lions Club

Spring has sprung, in their celebration of a break for teachers and students at public schools resulted in a downfall in attendance of the feline at their regular weekly meeting at the civic center. However, feline were in good hands with grand poo paw Misty Rowell manning the gavel and doing a bang up super job with the queen and princess both out for a weeks rest from school. Lion Fred Haakensen led pledges, Travis Thornton led a cappella singing and Mike Fox gave the invocation. Monsignor Rey Rodriquez offered a pep talk by reading psalms from his little black magic box. Lannell Julian introduced guests as follows: Sandy Forehand of Floydada, in town for a redo on her finger nails with Beverly Dunlap, and Wendell Dunlap with his daughter LeAnn Loftus and her two sons Andy and Tommy. Mike Fox had as his guest Michael Subaldea. Our weekly raffle conducted by the Ebeling boys, Donnie and Stephen, fetched $70.

Stacie Hardage introduced Carol Terrell of Covenant Hospital who talked on the history of the hospital and goals for the future. A film strip gave tons of pertinent information of the organization including future plans for the facility which is a national leader in its field with state-of-the-art facilities on the site at this time.

Its great to be a Lion. We serve  Ron White

Plainview Rotary Club

The Plainview Rotary Club met Tuesday at noon at the Plainview Country Club.

President Ted Baker called the meeting to order. Leslie Gattis led the invocation and Kenneth Hooper led the group in the Pledge of the Allegiance.

Guests were Philip Shackleford and Andrew Allison.

New member Paul Kite was inducted by Andrew Freeman and Janice Payne.

Meredith Walley introduced speaker Rodney Watson to the group. Rodney is the director of the Llano Estacado Museum on Wayland campus.

Rodney told the group he wanted to honor people that would make our community great.

He emailed Jimmy Dean and asked him if he would donate items for the museum. He was on board with the idea. He then sent a large box of items for the space in the museum. He and his wife Donna were very pleased with the display.

Danny Andrews called Jimmy Dean and asked him if he was interested in donating scholarship to Wayland. He then donated $1 million to Wayland. The money was used for scholarships, savings and video equipment.

Not long after Jimmy Dean passed. Jimmy had kept many items from music to movies in storage. The family tried to get a museum in Richmond, Virginia. However, attempts at a museum were constant roadblocks.

Wayland offered to take the items. The family accepted the idea and Donna gave Wayland $4 million to make this museum come true. She came for the groundbreaking and the grand opening. She was so proud.

Among the items donated was an autographed piano. There is also a museum store.

There have been bus tours to the museum as well as many out of town people. The numbers are good and attendance is well received.

Kenneth Hooper led the Four-Way-Test and Ted dismissed the group. -- Cynthia Gregory
AUSTIN -- The Senate Finance Committee completed work marking up the budget Thursday, approving workgroup recommendations in preparation for a final vote on the Senate's plan to pay for state services over the next biennium. For the past few weeks, members in smaller workgroups have focused on spending for education, healthcare, public safety, transportation and other critical state needs and this week met as a group to hear and vote on workgroup recommendations.

The final version has some significant differences from the version initially filed by Finance Chair and Flower Mound Sen. Jane Nelson in January, including more funding for mental health and foster care, with some cuts to university budgets through a change in funding philosophy.

The Article II workgroup, headed up by Health and Human Services Committee Chair Sen. Charles Schwertner of Georgetown, deals with the largest slice of the state budget. A down year for revenue meant hard choices had to be made, Schwertner told his colleagues. "Just like the people of Texas, we must live within our means," he said. "With that said, I believe the product before you represents a responsible budget that will meet the health and human services needs of Texans and address the most pressing issues we will face in the coming biennium."

Those issues identified by the workgroup were foster care and mental health care, which got special attention in the Article II recommendations. The committee approved more money to reduce the caseload for foster care workers to 17, an increase in payments for people who take in foster kids, and an expansion of a privatized case management program to four new regions. It also continues emergency funding approved during the biennium to improve operations in the foster care system. For mental health, funding will maintain current capacity levels and add new beds for maximum security patients.

The second biggest section of the state budget is education, and new attention on a specific funding source will mean less money for most state institutions. Called "special items," these are one-time appropriations intended to help colleges start new programs or increase capacity which then get renewed every budget cycle, eventually becoming part of base funds that universities rely on and expect year-to-year for general operations. This means that universities that rely more on standard formula funding rather than these items are at a disadvantage, said committee member and Higher Education Committee Chair Senator. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, who led committee efforts to examine the issue. Also, it makes institutions reliant on getting these special items renewed each biennium by legislators, which could lead to sudden losses of funding.

"What we foresaw instead of an ad hoc system with a special item here and a special item there, was to deal with it within the instructional operation formula," he said. "The good thing about a formula is, we have never cut formulas by 60, 70, 80 percent. Individuals items are easy to do that way."

Last year the state spent more than a billion dollars on these special items. The recommendations approved Thursday cut that amount to $700 million. It will go through funding formulas, and individual institutions will pick which special programs they want to fund. The cuts are spread across the university system, with no institution losing less than 6 percent of funding, but none losing more than 10 percent.

Nelson told members she expects to take a vote on the final budget as a whole by the middle of next week, and send it to the full Senate for consideration.

The Senate will reconvene Monday, March 20 at 2 p.m.
AUSTIN -- The Senate approved a bill Wednesday that would require people in public buildings, including schools, to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex on their current birth certificate. Dubbed the "bathroom bill" by media reports, the measure drew flak from opponents who say it unfairly targets transgender Texans. Bill author and Brenham Sen. Lois Kolkhorst said the bill wasn't about hurting people, but rather is needed to keep men out of women's restrooms. "The heart and the soul of this bill, I think, for me as a woman is the privacy, the safety and the security for all people, and the people that have bad intentions, we can prevent them before they act upon them" she said.

The bill applies to multi-stall restrooms and other "intimate facilities," like showers, dressing rooms and locker rooms in public buildings. Private entities and businesses would be left to decide their own policy, and government entities wouldn't be able to use those policies as criteria when deciding how to award government contracts. The bill also precludes cities and counties from enacting their own contrary bathroom policies, but does allow administrators of public buildings to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, like designating a single stall restroom for use by anyone. The bill now heads to the House for consideration.
Truly welcoming



Editor:



Newcomers to these shores have often been shunned by settled people. Ben Franklin railed against the horde of Germans pouring into Philadelphia. The Irish, starving during the potato famine, were greeted with Irish Need Not Apply signs when seeking work. A Volpini aunt of mine was told by her father that if an employer asked where she came from, she should respond, Im an American, and skip the Italian part. Welcoming the stranger, as noted in an op-ed March 4 by Charles Haynes of the Newseum Institute, has often required an act of courage. It was so before the Civil War, when courageous people harbored escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad. It was also so in the 1980s when people fleeing murderous Central American regimes were given sanctuary in many churches. But as Larry Morgenstein pointed out in a March 5 column, ships of Jews fleeing the Holocaust were turned away. Today, here in Connecticut, we have an opportunity to welcome to the stranger. Connecticut has resisted pressure to deputize local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws. The state has used several legal tools:



 The TRUST Act, which instructs police to concentrate on local policing, keeping our streets and neighborhoods safe from crime.



 The special Connecticut drivers license, which allows any state resident who can drive to obtain a license without having to prove U.S. citizenship. (Ive been told this law has brought $3 million to the states coffers  money which we can use).



 Education for the Dreamers, which allows undocumented children of immigrants to attend CT colleges for the in-state tuition cost. And since they are paying tuition, they also deserve to receive state scholarships since the money is part of the cost of tuition.



Can we dream of a truly welcoming America? I hope we can.



Steve Volpini, Meriden










A federal judge approved a $27 million settlement Thursday for more than 200,000 current and former California drivers for the ride-hailing company Lyft Inc., an agreement that increases their protection against dismissals but fails to resolve their employment status.

The drivers sued Lyft for classifying them as independent contractors, a move that required them to pay for gas and other work expenses and left them unprotected by labor laws such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance and collective bargaining.

Arguing for employment status, the drivers said Lyft dictates their fares, routes and reimbursement, and requires them to greet passengers with a smile and a fist bump. The company countered that drivers choose their own work hours and decide which passengers to accept.

The settlement allows Lyft to continue to describe the drivers as contractors, but leaves the issue open for a possible future case. They would be allowed to challenge dismissals before an arbitrator.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco had rejected a proposed $12.05 million settlement in April. He said the drivers might win as much as $156 million in damages if they went to trial and convinced a jury they should be classified as employees.

But Chhabria tentatively approved a renegotiated $27 million agreement two months later and gave final approval Thursday. He said the amount was fair, reasonable and adequate, in view of the uncertainty of the outcome of a trial.

Of the $27 million, attorney Shannon-Liss Riordan, who represented the drivers and negotiated the settlement, is to receive $3.65 million.

Lyft drivers who worked a few hours a week between May 2012 and July 2016, the dates of the settlement, will get about $130 apiece. But Liss-Riordan said nearly 1,000 drivers who regularly worked more than 30 hours a week would receive several thousand dollars.

A similar lawsuit is pending against the larger ride-hailing company Uber by 385,000 drivers in California and Massachusetts.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
Rallies and protest events are a part of political life in the Bay Area. Heres a roundup of whats happening in the next few weeks.

Sunday

Forum: A Jewish Community Forum to discuss the political climate and how it affects the Bay Area Jewish community, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, 1835 Ellis St., San Francisco. Tickets available: http://bit.ly/2mSh7qK.

Author series: A conversation with Aya de Leon, a local poet, author and performance artist, and Kate Raphael, author and producer of the KPFA-FM radio show Womens Magazine, on how to organize against President Trump. The talk will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia St., San Francisco.

Community conversation: Sierra Club San Francisco chapter leader Arthur Feinstein leads a discussion on local and statewide environmental issues, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Northern Police Station Community Room, 1125 Fillmore St., San Francisco. RSVP: www.sierraclub.org/san-francisco-bay/activities.

Monday

Political discussion: Panel talk on how to be involved at the local, state and federal level, hosted by the United Democratic Club. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6 union, 55 Fillmore St., San Francisco.

Climate change discussion: Occupy Sonoma County asks, Is Global Climate Disruption Happening to Us or For Us? The event is free and will focus on how humans impact climate change. It is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Peace and Justice Center, 467 Sebastopol Ave., Santa Rosa.

Tuesday

Protest: The Bay Area Resistance is calling for a boycott of banks to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline and other projects it opposes. A rally will be held at 5 p.m. outside the First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. The rally is followed by a march to Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bank in Oakland.

Thursday

Panel on women: Hosted by the California Historical Society, a panel on the roles women played in resistance and social protest movements in the Bay Area during the 1960s and 1970s. The event is free for members, $10 for nonmembers. It is at 6 p.m. at the California Historical Society, 678 Mission St., San Francisco.

March 25

Summit: The California Clean Money Campaign is hosting a summit on how to get dark money out of politics. The event is from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 505 East Charleston Road, Palo Alto. Register: www.yesfairelections.org.

Danville town hall: Hosted by Mayor Renee Morgan with Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, state Sen. Steve Glazer, Assemblywoman Catharine Baker and Contra Costa County Supervisor Candace Andersen. The event is from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Veterans Memorial Building, 400 Hartz Ave. Contact Nat Rojanasathira, assistant to the town manager, at (925) 314-3328 or nrojanasathira@danville.ca.gov for more information.

March 29

Political discussion: Panel talk on sanctuary cities, as well as stories of immigration challenges. The event featuring immigration attorneys and former members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors begins at 6:30 p.m., 3271 18th St., San Francisco.
WASHINGTON  A budget proposal by President Trump that would slash domestic programs, singling out the environment for its harshest cuts while boosting military spending and setting aside money for a border wall, met a tepid welcome from Capitol Hill Republicans and outrage from Democrats, indicating that the most conservative budget blueprint since the Reagan administration may never be enacted.

The document, called, America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, would also dramatically reduce funding for American diplomacy, scientific research, climate programs, the arts, low-income housing, disease research and public lands. The budget pours the savings into military and security programs, including detention centers for immigrants who are in the country without documentation, and puts down $2.6 billion as an initial payment on an estimated $30 billion wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

The document reflects Trumps basic governing priorities, carrying out what senior White House adviser Steve Bannon called the deconstruction of the administrative state. The administrations allies on the right, such as the Club for Growth, hailed the spending cuts, but protests came from everywhere else  from cancer advocates to the tech industry.

Democrats did not hold back.

This is the most draconian budget Ive ever seen proposed by a president, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She called the plan an absolute travesty for California and every state or community that thought they had a true partner in the federal government.

Feinstein accused Trump of betraying his promises to invest in the nations communities and infrastructure, and noted the budget will do nothing to reduce the deficit, a key Republican goal. Instead, she said, the plan goes after the only category of federal spending that has been shrinking in recent years  nondefense discretionary spending.

Trump, she said, does not seem to understand that these programs comprise a small share of the budget.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., called the plan morally obscene. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said it should never see the light of day.

Signaling that Republicans want major changes too, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called the budget merely an initial gesture, the very beginning of a long process.

And the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton (Orange County), said he was very concerned that deep cuts to our diplomacy will hurt efforts to combat terrorism and distribute critical humanitarian aid. In the Senate, some Republicans had already dismissed cutting existing programs to pay for the wall.

The administrations plan to eliminate funding for restoration of the nations major water bodies, from the Great Lakes to San Francisco Bay, met rebukes from both sides of the aisle.

Presidential budgets serve primarily as an outline of administration priorities and a request to Congress, which has exclusive authority over spending and taxes.

The presidents budget expresses his priorities, and we will consider them, but it is the congressional budget and appropriations committees that will establish our priorities and fund them over the coming months, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

A key problem for the administration is that its budget plan assumes the repeal of a 2011 budget law known as the sequester that caps both military and domestic spending. Republicans have a 52-48 Senate majority, eight shy of what theyll need to break a Democratic filibuster to lift those caps.

Domestic discretionary spending includes everything that is nonmilitary except entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The plan would limit spending to just 3 percent of the economy, its lowest share since 1962, said Robert Greenstein, head of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In the preface to the budget plan, Trump said our aim is to meet the simple, but crucial demand of our citizens  a government that puts the needs of its own people first.

When we do that, we will set free the dreams of every American, and we will begin a new chapter of American greatness, he said.

Reflecting what he described as these dangerous times, the budget proposed raising military spending by 10 percent and would offset it at the expense of domestic programs that have already been squeezed by seven years of budget austerity under the sequester. The Environmental Protection Agency takes the biggest hit, losing 31 percent of its funding.

The blueprint calls for eliminating programs across the government. Among the programs that would no longer get federal funding are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the Energy Star program that boosts the efficiency of household appliances.

Trump has promised a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure, but his budget would trim existing programs, including a $1 billion cut to the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates flood control projects for dams such as Oroville.

We are going to do more with less, and make government lean and accountable to the people, Trump said in the preface.

Dubbed a skinny budget, the document contains little detail on how the cuts to Cabinet agencies will translate to specific programs. The cuts cover only a third of the governments actual budget, leaving out the largest areas of government operations: taxes and entitlements.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged the lack of detail, promising a complete budget in May. He said the budget streamlines overlapping programs or those that have not proven their effectiveness, taking a business persons approach to finding efficiencies.

Climate change initiatives fall into the category. Were not spending money on that anymore, he said. We consider that to be a waste of your money.

In preparing the plan, Mulvaney said he pored over Trumps campaign promises and spoke with the president to set the administrations priorities.

This budget plan, he said, is the message the president wants to send to the public, adding it will be up to Cabinet secretaries to carry out the broad cuts outlined for their agencies.

Theres no question this is a hard-power budget, Mulvaney said. It is not a soft-power budget.

Trump clearly wants to send a message to adversaries and allies alike that the United States wants to project military might, not diplomacy, overseas, he said.

Although it is called a skinny budget, the document is unusually skimpy on details and is arriving a month later than those submitted during the first year by the past five administrations.

This is not a budget, said Stan Collender, a former top congressional budget staffer now at the public relations firm Qorvis MSLGROUP. Its a Trump campaign press release masquerading as a government document.

Next to the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department would take the biggest cuts at 29 percent. The Department of Interior, which overseas the national parks, would be cut more than 10 percent at a time when the parks have a $12 billion maintenance backlog.

California would stand to take major hits across the board, with big unspecified cuts in Energy Department research that are likely to hit the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories. Coastal programs would be axed across the board.

Environmental groups described the cuts as more severe than those of the early Reagan administration, many of which met stiff resistance in Congress and were ultimately reversed. This is a declaration of war against the environmental and conservation functions of the federal government, said David Goldston, head of advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The document covers fiscal year 2018, which takes effect Oct. 1, and does not address this years spending. A temporary measure to fund the government expires in late April and must be renewed to avoid a government shutdown.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead
Screengrab

A San Antonio doctor was sanctioned by the Texas Medical Board after she allegedly retaliated against an unhappy client by posting video of the patient in her in underwear to Facebook and YouTube.

The board said Dr. Tinuade Olusegun-Gbadehan, at the Dr. O Medical & Wellness Center, violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the federal law that prohibits medical providers from disclosing confidential patient information.
Canada wont choose between jobs, energy generation and the environment, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told oil and gas leaders in Houston during the recent CERAWeek event. The country will drill for oil and gas, build pipelines, reduce carbon emissions and develop green energy, all at once.

In a pointed rebuke to the U.S. fight between fossil fuel proponents and environmental activists, Trudeau said that Canada can tap oil and gas resources and also pioneer carbon-free technology, biofuels and next-generation electric car batteries.

Trudeau, in a speech in the nations energy capital, outlined a path clearly meant as an example the U.S. could follow to oil and gas development, job creation and also aggressive environmental stewardship.

There will come a day, far off but inevitable at some point, when traditional energy sources will no longer be needed, Trudeau told the annual CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston.

To prepare, Canada must develop clean energy. This creates good jobs. It also helps the planet, he said. Innovating, and pursuing renewables, isnt somehow in competition with those traditional resources. Its common sense.

Trudeau largely stuck to his script. He has frequently said that Canada must both build the economy and protect the environment.

Late last year, Trudeau proposed a carbon tax, which taxes energy companies for creating pollution, starting next year at about $8 a ton and rising to about $40 by 2022. The country also announced it would phase out coal-fired electricity by 2030.

For his work, CERAWeek awarded Trudeau its Global Energy and Environment Leadership Award. CERAWeek chairman Daniel Yergin, who emceed Trudeaus talk, called Trudeau a clarion voice for energy sustainability and economic prosperity.

Trudeaus speech also comes at a key time for U.S.-Canadian relations, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

The address gave Trudeau an opportunity to make the case for free trade with Canada in one of Trumps favorite industries, oil and gas.

He highlighted the merger between the Calgary-based pipeline giant Enbridge, and the Houston-based Spectra Energy, which created one of the largest energy infrastructure companies on the continent.

He called the relationship between Texas and Canada extraordinarily productive, estimating trade with the state at $35-billion last year, supporting about 460,000 Texas jobs.

And he called the relationship with the U.S. the most successful in the world, supporting millions of middle class jobs on both sides of the border.

We are the number one customer of two thirds of U.S. states  and in the top three for 48 states, he said.

But Trudeau also outlined a path clearly meant to provide a lesson to Canadas big brother.

There is no path to prosperity in Canada that does not include a thriving, vibrant energy sector  both traditional, and renewable, Trudeau said.

His administration supports new pipelines, such as Houston-based Kinder Morgans Trans Mountain line, which crosses the Rockies from Alberta to the Pacific, and TransCanadas controversial Keystone XL pipeline, recently approved by President Trump, from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

Trudeau criticized the U.S. environmental movements attack on pipelines, known as the leave-it-in-the-ground movement:

No country, he said, would find 173 billion barrels of oil and just leave it in the ground. The resource will be developed.

But Trudeau also argued that Canada must ensure oil and gas is developed sustainably.

Canadians will not accept that we have to choose between a healthy planet and a strong economy, he said.

We are showing that environmental leadership and economic growth are inseparable.






Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, right, shakes hands with Saudi Arabia's King Salman at Great Hall of the People in Beijing Friday, March 17, 2017. (Lintao Zhang/Pool Photo via AP)

BEIJING (AP)  Saudi Arabia's King Salman met with China's premier on Friday, a day after the two nations signed a memorandum of understanding on investment cooperation valued at $65 billion.

The landmark agreement aims to boost joint efforts in fields including energy, investment, finance, culture and aerospace, part of Saudi Arabia's drive to develop a growth strategy less dependent on oil.

Beijing meanwhile is rolling out a massive trade and investment initiative across Central Asia and the Middle East called "One Belt, One Road" that sees the desert kingdom as a regional linchpin.

Despite the eye-catching sum noted in the memo, the actual value of such commitments is usually much smaller once projects begin.

Saudi Arabia had been China's biggest supplier of imported crude oil before being overtaken by Russia last year, and the kingdom's state-owned oil producer, Aramco, is a partner with state-owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. The two operate a refinery in Fujian province along with other Chinese projects.

The signing of the agreement, which involves 35 separate projects, followed talks Thursday between Salman and President Xi Jinping, during which the Chinese leader said results of their burgeoning cooperation had already "surpassed our expectations."

Security ties between the two have also grown significantly, with the Saudi air force deploying Chinese unmanned attack drones and the two militaries holding joint counter-terrorism exercises in western China. Chinese navy vessels have also visited the Saudi port of Jeddah as part of increasingly active maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden.

However, China is also a close partner of Saudi Arabia's arch rival Iran, and has backed the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conflict, while Saudi Arabia has insisted on Assad's ouster and has supported the Syrian opposition, including Islamic militant groups.

The 81-year-old Salman's visit is part of a monthlong swing through Asia. Accompanied by a 1,500-strong retinue of businessmen, princes and support staff in close to a dozen aircraft, he has already visited Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

He was to travel next to the Maldives, but postponed that visit because of the spread of swine flu in the Indian Ocean island nation, according to the president's office.
Kale Williams

San Francisco police arrested two Stockton residents on Saturday in connection with a shooting that killed one person and wounded three others in the Tenderloin neighborhood in September, officials said Thursday.

Darrick Devereaux, 41, was booked into county jail on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, and Linda Jimenez, 22, was booked on suspicion of being an accessory to a crime and multiple drug-related charges.
Antioch police shot a man after he drove into their patrol car while attempting to flee the scene of gunfire, officials said as they investigated the latest in a rash of officer-involved shootings in the Bay Area in the past week  including three that were fatal.

Officers in Antioch responded to reports of gunfire about 11:15 p.m. Thursday in the 2000 block of Mokelumne Drive, a residential neighborhood.

Upon arrival, officers tracked down a vehicle suspected of being involved in the shooting, in which no one was reported injured. The driver of the car immediately fled when police attempted to stop him.

Officers chased the driver to Wawona Court, a cul-de-sac almost half a mile away from the shooting. The driver was cornered in the cul-de-sac and attempted to escape by ramming into the police vehicle, prompting the officers to shoot him, police said.

The man, who was not immediately identified, was taken to a nearby hospital and was listed in stable condition, officials said.

A firearm was found in the mans car, police said.

No officers were injured.

It was the fourth officer-involved shooting in the Bay Area over the past seven days.

Police in Napa shot and killed a knife-wielding man Monday in the parking lot of a busy shopping center. Witnesses said the man was lunging at cars before two officers arrived and opened fire, officials said.

Both officers, who were not immediately identified, fired multiple times. Following standard protocol for investigations of officer-involved shootings, they were placed on administrative leave.

A 16-year-old girl, who was in her first trimester of pregnancy, was fatally shot by Fremont detectives in Hayward on Tuesday when they opened fire on a stolen car she was riding in that officials said rammed the officers vehicle. The driver, who had fled the scene, was taken into custody in San Francisco on Wednesday night on an outstanding warrant for multiple robbery charges, police said.

Police officials have not yet released the names of the detectives involved in the shooting.

On March 10, police killed a man in Santa Clara after his parents called 911 to report that he was acting erratically. Police confronted the man, who reportedly had a weapon, at an overpass near his familys home.

Officer Colin Stewart, a 13-year veteran law enforcement officer, shot him in fear of his safety when the man refused to show his hands and started to advance toward Stewart, police officials said. Police did not find a weapon on him, but a bloody knife was found on the trail on which he was running, officials said.

Anyone with information on the Antioch shooting can contact the Police Department at (925) 779-6988.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
A Hayward man dialed up hundreds of police departments around the country, and several in Canada, in a series of obscene, annoying, threatening, harassing and sexually explicit calls over a nearly two-year period, according to unsealed federal court documents.

Sammy Sultan was charged with violations of interstate communications and making obscene or harassing calls, according to federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.

The FBI investigated the puzzling calls during which Sultan would most often ask to speak with a female dispatcher, claim he had recently been released from a mental institution, was armed and would not harm anyone if the dispatcher heard him out, an agent wrote in a affidavit included in court records. The calls were made from February 2015 to Aug. 25, 2016.

Authorities said they linked the calls made to dozens of police departments to five Metro PCS burner phones, which are difficult to track.

The federal investigation of Sultan started when authorities with the Massachusetts State Police contacted the FBI to report several harassing and threatening phone calls made to a female sergeant at the agencys South Yarmouth Barracks on Feb. 7, 2015.

Sultan told the sergeant  he specifically requested to speak to a woman  that he was staying at a nearby hotel and repeated the narrative that he had been released from a mental institution and had in his possession several guns, according to the affidavit.

As the sergeant tried to determine who Sultan was, he allegedly became increasingly erratic, on one occasion requesting to sniff the sergeants slippers.

After many more phone calls, police in Hayward zeroed in on Sultans home with the assistance of the FBI in June 2015. Sultan then denied owning a cell phone or making any phone calls, according to the affidavit.

While serving a search warrant on Sultans home on Aug. 25, 2016, detectives found several cell phones, according to records.

An attorney listed for Sultan did not immediately return a request for comment.

Sultan was released on $5,000 bond, provided he not contact police departments, save in the event of an actual emergency, court records show.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley
Ron Chapple/Getty Image

A 44-year-old San Bruno man was shot and killed Friday on a street in the Mission District of San Francisco, police said.

The man, identified by the medical examiners office as Jorge Martinez, was found suffering from at least one gun shot wound at 19th and Capp streets, said Officer Robert Rueca, a San Francisco Police Department spokesman.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim announced Thursday morning that he would not bring charges against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or his associates after a lengthy criminal investigation into potential pay-to-play fundraising.

The investigation centered on a lobbying nonprofit set up by de Blasio  the Campaign For One New York  which raised substantial funds from people doing business with New York City, as well as de Blasio's 2013 fundraising efforts when he ran for mayor and his 2014 efforts to try to flip the state Senate to Democratic control. In that latter effort, de Blasio's team raised funds and funneled them through various upstate county committees before they ultimately went to several Democratic Senate candidates, which appeared to be a circumvention of campaign donation limits.
BETHLEHEM  Three Bethlehem Central High School students were arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat after police say they threatened to "shoot up the school" on various social media sites.

Bethlehem police opened an investigation 10 days ago after concerned students and parents notified school officials of the comments, which were made on separate occasions on various Facebook, Instagram and chat room accounts, Commander Adam Hornick said. Police determined there is no imminent threat at this time.

"The problem is you never know how seriously to take comments like this, so we investigate no matter what," he said. "We really applaud all the people who came forward with this information. It shows genuine concern on the part of the community."

The students included one male and two females, all 15 years old. Their names were not released because of their age, Hornick said.

Each student was charged with one felony count of making a terroristic threat and referred to the Albany County Probation Department.

In a letter to parents Friday, Bethlehem Central School District Superintendent Jody Monroe urged parents to sit down with their children this weekend and "have an important discussion" about using good judgment.

"Administrators at the high school have been meeting with high school students to explain the consequences that can occur if you make a threat against the school," she wrote. "However, it is important that this message be reinforced at home. Students need to know that it is never acceptable to even joke about threatening a school and that these matters are serious and will be pursued as such."

The district is conducting its own investigation, as well, and will follow disciplinary procedures according to its code of conduct.

View the superintendent's letter here.

The arrests are just the latest in a string of school threat-related arrests around the Capital Region. Just this month, teenagers from Mechanicville Middle School and Corinth High School were charged after making separate threats about school shootings and violence.
Albany

The city will use a $1.5 million state grant to fight poverty, and the work will start immediately, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said Friday.

"We are now going to be hitting the accelerator to the floor and moving this along as quickly as possible," the mayor told reporters at a morning City Hall news conference. "This is about changing the trajectory of how we do things in the city of Albany. And I know that change is hard."

CARES Inc., a local nonprofit, will be the lead organization to form a plan to reduce and end poverty in Albany, the mayor said. Nancy Chiarella, the group's executive director, attended the event as did Pedro Perez, director of city's My Brother's and My Sister's Keeper Initiative. Perez will be lead planner

"For me this is personal," Perez said, explaining that he grew up in poverty and some close friends  even his brother  didn't make it out.

"It was because of caring adults, caring government, caring people that I stand here today," he said. "Had it not been for this kind of initiative, I would not be standing here today."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the $25 million Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative in his 2016 State of the State address. Ten upstate cities, including Albany and Troy, were selected to the state-funded pilot program.

The persistent problems that plague the state's most impoverished neighborhoods  inadequate housing, high unemployment, underperforming schools, crime and poor health  require "equally interconnected solutions," the governor's office said.

The initiative brings together state and local governments, nonprofit organizations and businesses to design and implement coordinated solutions for inequality. The model is based on a task force used to address extreme poverty in Rochester.

Two million adults and one million children live in poverty in New York. The 10 cities in the pilot program  Syracuse, Binghamton, Oneonta, Buffalo, Utica, Elmira, Jamestown, Oswego, Troy and Albany  have the highest poverty rates of all upstate cities, officials said.

Sheehan said Albany has existing organizations that do a great job fighting poverty.

"We're not going to start at zero. We're going to build on the work that we've done and on the relationships that we created," she said.

She said an uphill battle continues.

"We still have poverty. We still have needs in our community," the mayor said. "We still have an entire generation of young people who do not see themselves in the jobs and the opportunities that exist in this region."

Sheehan said while billions of dollars have been spent over years to fight poverty in America, she believes the $1.5 million grant can work "if we can change the way that we work together and truly listen to the community."

Albany, she said, is in a unique position.

"This is an area that's growing. This is an area where investment exists," the mayor said.

In the governor's 2017 State of the State address in New York City, he proposed funding another anti-poverty pilot program.

If Cuomo secures the $35 million in funding for that during this year's budget negotiations, Albany and Troy will be two of 16 cities piloting expanded after-school programs for impoverished students.

About 22,000 new after-school slots will be opened for kids who don't have a safe and supportive place to go after school, increasing enrollment by 36 percent.

"Data shows that more productive days result in higher academic outcomes, lower dropout rates, a reduction in juvenile crime and a better chance at succeeding in life," the governor's office said. "High quality after-school programs have also been found to have a $3 return on investment for every dollar spent."

The 16 cities selected for the 2017 Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative are, along with Albany and Troy, the Bronx, Binghamton, Buffalo, Elmira, Hempstead, Jamestown, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Oneonta, Oswego, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and Watertown.

After-school programs are currently supported by $65 million in state money and $88 million in federal funds. This additional $35 million will be awarded as competitive grants for extended-day programs.

emasters@timesunion.com  518-454-5467  @emilysmasters
B: I came from Taiwan, the island is called Formosa. It was supposed to be Portuguese. They are the first ones who discovered the island and that's why they give us the name.

J: That sounds beautiful. How long did you live there before you left Taiwan?

B: I was born there, my family -- so many generations came from China to the island, so its like almost 200 or 300 years of family on the island of Taiwan. I was educated there, went through the years of war, and all these things. I was growing up right after the Second World War. So we went through, you know, a lot of hard times. I came here when I was in my late 20s. I met an American young man who was from St. Paul, Minnesota, working for one of the biggest American industrial companies in the world. He was assigned to the island and I met him through my brother-in-law who worked for the Associated Press. That's how I met John.

J: Oh, so did you go to Minnesota with him?

B: Not right after, but we did. We still have family up there, so many family members there. Every year we go up to visit. He was assigned to the island for three years. I met him and then we got married. I was carrying my first child and I left Taiwan in 1970; we went to Karachi, Pakistan, together. We came to Greenwich in 1983 when my late husband was laid off by the big giant company. They laid off so many of them. The headquarters was right here in Stamford. He ...was asking to go to Washington, D.C., with another company and go back to Hong Kong with another ... and this was almost after six months. He didnt make it. He died of a sudden massive heart attack. And I stayed here with my daughter Mary, and never left Greenwich. It was 1984, he died in January.

J: Im so sorry. What were you doing in Taiwan before you met him and during that time?

B: Before I met John, I was working for one of the top travel agencies in Taipei for years. I enjoyed the travel agency; we handled some American tours, local tours, Asian tours. I'm not a tour guide, but I was working in the financial division. When I met John, I was in my late 20s already and decided to settle down and get married.

J: So you spent the first almost 30 years of your life in Taiwan? What was it like growing up? What was your family like?

B: I guess a lot of people know Taiwan because in the 70s and 80s, Taiwan was really helped a lot by the U.S. and tried to establish their small industries.

J: The only thing I know about Taiwan is that a lot of people came there from China. Do people there speak Chinese?

B: Well, after the Chinese came to Taiwan, we started learning Mandarin. It became the national language. Before that, Taiwan was under Japanese rule for 60 years. After the (Second World) war, Taiwan was ruled by China again, so they started teaching us Mandarin. I came from a family of seven -- five girls, two boys --but my parents, my sisters, they all grew under the Japanese occupation. My father was not able to find any job because they were all Japanese-educated. After the Chinese government took over, they were all sending people over from China, educating their language, Mandarin. My father never knew how to speak Mandarin.

J: And you grew up speaking Japanese?

B: I understand it because my parents speak Japanese, but I grew up with Mandarin Chinese. They tried really hard to deal with daily life, communicating with a new government. And now the parties are no longer, and China is trying to take back the island, and I am very worried that one of these days the Chinese government is going to take back control of the island.

J: And you said you have a child.

B: For some reason, I believe that your life is really just, already set up when you were born. My daughter Mary was born in Karachi. After three years, my late husbands job changed to Manila, in the Philippines. She was basically educated in the American school system overseas outside of the U.S., so she has no problem adapting or adjusting to school. After the Philippines, we went to Hong Kong for three years, and then we came back in 1983. She is doing very well. Now I'm retired after almost 30 years working for the bank, and enjoy very much the senior group.

B: Im Chinese and my husband of course was American. So when my daughter grew up, I spoke to her all in Mandarin so she would absorb it. And every year as soon as she was 6 years old, I brought her to Taiwan every summer for six months to study Mandarin.

B: But basically, Greenwich is such a nice peaceful, easy going place. I love the beach, the park, the library. You could go anywhere without fears, without worrying about security. I really enjoy the life here. So I decided to retire here too; I stayed. Ive spent more time here than my hometown.

J: Yes, Ill have to come back and hear more. Its like waiting for the next chapter.

E: jturiano@greenwichtime.com; T: @jturianoGT; IG: @greenwichgreen
Signage for a Chipotle Mexican Grill is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

(Reuters) - Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (CMG.N), which has been under pressure from activist shareholder Bill Ackman, on Friday said four of its 12 directors would not stand for re-election at the burrito chain's upcoming shareholder meeting.

John Charlesworth, Patrick Flynn, Darlene Friedman and Stephen Gillett have opted not to be on the ballot for the May 25 election, Chipotle said.

Chipotle's board long has been under fire for being too entrenched and too cozy with management. Shareholders have sought a major corporate overhaul as the chain battles to recover from a string of food safety stumbles in late 2015 that damaged its sales and reputation.

The company said the latest news represents good corporate governance and is not the result any influence from Ackman's New York-based hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management LP, which has a 10 percent stake in Chipotle and is its largest shareholder.

"These departures are the product of individual decisions, and are in no way part of our agreement with Pershing Capital and Mr. Ackman," Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said in a statement.

Pershing declined to comment.

Friedman is the Denver-based company's longest-serving director, with a 22-year tenure. Charlesworth and Flynn have served on the board for nearly two decades, while Gillett has been a director for about two years.

Chipotle in December appointed four new members to its board, including one from Pershing.

Some investors also are lobbying for a change in Chipotle's board leadership. They want an independent chairman at the company, where founder Steve Ells serves as both chairman and chief executive.

Among other things, Chipotle was linked in November 2015 to a multistate E.coli outbreak. The following month, a norovirus outbreak sickened at least 80 Boston College students who dined at the chain.

Following the food-safety lapses, which battered the company's shares, Chipotle abandoned its dual-CEO structure and named Ells the sole CEO.

Story continues

Chipotle has apologized, offered free and discounted food to regain lost customers and hired two high-profile food-safety experts to help address quality issues.

The company last week won the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming it defrauded shareholders about its ability to protect customers from the outbreaks.

In its latest quarter, the once high-flying Mexican-inspired chain managed to grow sales for the first time since the scandals.

Three months prior to the highly publicized outbreaks, Chipotle's stock hit a record high of around $758. The stock was up 0.1 percent at $401.52 in midday trading on Friday.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston and Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Dan Grebler)
Upon word that the Executive Office for Immigration Review will be detailing an immigration judge to Laredo, Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) issued a statement Friday morning.

"I have been working to get Immigration Judge Teams into border communities, like Laredo, for years and I applaud EOIR for sending a temporary judge to Laredo," Cuellar said in the statement. "I will be working with EOIR and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make that position in Laredo permanent and potentially add more."
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This week in 2002, Houston-area mother Andrea Yates received a life sentence for drowning her five children in her familys Clear Lake home.

The nation was rattled by the news of housewife Yates killing her kids in the family bath the previous year. Yates called 911, asking that Houston police come to her house. She didn't tell the dispatcher why.

THE AFTERMATH: 15 years after Andrea Yates case, attitudes towards postpartum are changing

Before the incident, she had been diagnosed and medicated for both postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.

In the years since her name has reemerged, connected usually to similar cases of women stricken with postpartum depression, killing or injuring their children, or when it's learned that she could be given certain privileges.

Yates was sentenced to life in prison on March 16, 2002 after being convicted of capital murder for the bathtub drowning deaths of Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke 2; and Mary, 6 months.

An appeals court later granted Yates a new trial and a jury found her innocent by reason of insanity in 2006, sentencing her to a mental hospital.

Yates, now 52, currently resides Kerrville State Hospital, where she will likely stay for the rest of her life.

A NEW LOOK: Andrea Yates' ex-husband tells Oprah wife didn't deserve 'cruelest' murder trial

Her husband, Rusty Yates, divorced Andrea in 2004 and has since remarried and started a new family. According to her longtime attorney George Parnham, his wife and another friend of Yates' are the only visitors she receives. She spends her free time doing arts and crafts.

In 2002, Parnham and his wife created the Yates Children Memorial Fund, to help bring awareness about postpartum depression to the Houston community. Since the fund's creation, over 600,000 brochures on postpartum illnesses have been handed out around the community.

The Yates children are all interred at Forest Park East Cemetery in Webster. Their final resting place is marked by an ornate monument featuring etchings of their faces. The oldest of the Yates children, Noah, would have turned 23 in February.

Check out reporter Carol Christians first-hand account of covering the Yates case in this HoustonChronicle.com Gray Matters report.
Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo officials announced that Garth Brooks will open and close 2018 RODEOHOUSTON, Feb. 27 and March 18.

"We are thrilled to welcome Garth Brooks back to the RODEOHOUSTON stage," said Jack A. Lyons, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo chairman of the board. "This is the first time in multi-entertainer Show history that one artist has opened and closed RODEOHOUSTON, and we could not think of a more engaging performer to take on this epic presentation."

The 2018 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is scheduled to run Feb. 27  March 18. The remaining 2018 entertainers and ticket information will be announced at a later date. To receive updates on specific dates, visit rodeohouston.com and connect with #RODEOHOUSTON online via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for all of the latest news.

2018 Season Ticket Give-Away

Fans will have the opportunity to win 2018 Season Tickets by visiting the 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Monday, March 20, through Friday, March 24. Attend a RODEOHOUSTON performance inside NRG Stadium during these dates for instructions on how to enter the text-to-win contest.

Ticket Availability

There are still more than 61,000 tickets remaining for the 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which runs through March 26. Buy your tickets today at rodeohouston.com.

About the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is a Section 501(c)(3) charity that benefits youth, supports education, and facilitates better agricultural practices through exhibitions and presentation. Since its beginning in 1932, the Show has committed more than $430 million to the youth of Texas. For more information, visit rodeohouston.com and connect with #RODEOHOUSTON online via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for all of the latest news.
The race for Position 2 on Pearland ISD's board pits a veteran trustee pleased with the district's progress against a Dawson High School senior focused on improving public transparency.

Incumbent Rusty DeBorde, 47, is seeking re-election to his third term after spending much of last year working to win passage of a $220 million school bond referendum approved by voters in November. That process, he said, confirmed that the district is open and has the public's trust.

"In my opinion, the biggest example of transparency recently on a large scale was the bond process, where we started off with strategic planning from a facility standpoint assessment to a demographic standpoint to tours (for a citizens advisory committee) through the facilities," he said. "And all that (information) was made available to the community and we also put together a community committee made up of all our stakeholders."

But challenger Michael Floyd, 18, believes the district should work harder to remove barriers to information. He supports posting more information on the district website such as the names of trustee candidates and campaign finance reports.

"I firmly believe that our district needs to be far more transparent than they are today both in regards to posting videos of board workshops online as well as disclosing what's going on during closed-door meetings," said Floyd, who has been accepted to several schools including the University of Texas and the University of Houston.

The district posts its regular meetings online as required by law but unlike Pearland City Council, it does not post workshop meetings.

"Now, I understand there are several things that the state of Texas will not allow school board members to talk about publicly," Floyd said. "But I want to reduce the amount of business that the district does behind closed doors. We are a district that is funded publicly, and I firmly believe that taxpayers have a right to know how the district is operating."

DeBorde, who works as works as a business development director for Texas-based engineering consulting and program management firm Raba Kistner Inc., said he would be open to the possibility of posting videos of the board's workshop meetings.

"We haven't discussed that, but I would definitely be open to that discussion with the board and the administration," DeBorde said. "I don't know what the limitations are and I haven't dug into that, but I would be open to the idea."

Last November, trustees voted to move the public comment portion of their meetings to 4:30 p.m. Floyd is critical of the board's decision.

"This is a textbook example of the school district trying to prevent taxpayers from having a say in our school system," Floyd said. "When it comes to our elected officials hearing us out and for people to have the ability to express themselves to our trustees, there should be no barriers. Most people get out of work at 5 p.m. The fact that they moved (the public comment segment) to 4:30 p.m. says they don't want the working people to be able to go and speak to their elected officials."

Although he said he didn't remember why the change in times for the public comment segment was proposed, DeBorde said the move wasn't meant to discourage people from speaking during the meetings.

"I can tell you with the greatest confidence there's nothing further from the truth that we don't want to hear what people say," DeBorde said.

In terms of the timing, DeBorde said the district is often able to be flexible.

"A lot of times we don't have anybody sign up and so we don't have an issue with it. But, even if (residents) get there at 5 p.m. there is still time to sign up," he said. "The problem becomes when there's some hot-button issue at the time and people come to sign up in a significant number and what we have to do is limit (the number of speakers) to five delegates.

"Otherwise we have 15 people talking on the same subject. That's the only time I've seen it become a problem, quite honestly. The majority of times even though the sign-up time starts at 4:30 p.m. people can get there later and still have time to sign up."

Floyd said he thinks the district should focus on being inclusive.

He disagrees with Superintendent John Kelly's stance on transgender students. Kelly has argued for requiring transgender students to use the restroom that matches the sex on birth certificates. Of allowing transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity, Kelly once asked, "What's next? Legalizing pedophilia and polygamy?"

Said Floyd: "I can pledge I will unconditionally support all our students regardless of whether they are transgender, if they're poor, if they're brown or black, if they come from east Pearland or west Pearland. It's time we treat all our students with the same unconditional support that we give our own children."

DeBorde gives Kelly high marks for his leadership.

DeBorde said he wants to build on the board's accomplishments during his tenure.

"I want to continue to look for ways to continue to build upon our success over the past six years and engage our students and enrich the lives and experience of all our stakeholders," he said.

DeBorde said that his opponent's desire to serve as a trustee while still a student is a positive reflection on the district.

"I think people should step up and run for the board. I think they should run against me and my fellow board members. Competition is a healthy process," he said. "Quite honestly, I think it is great Michael has chosen to run. It says a lot about Pearland ISD that we have students that want to be involved in their community and have the initiative to enter the race. With that said at the end of the day you have to honestly look at it say ask 'Who is the best candidate?' And, I think considering the body of experience, all the work that goes into being a trustee, the stage of your life, when you look at the candidates and weigh the pros and cons, I think I am the best guy for the job."

For information on DeBorde, check http://bit.ly/2nxfNqU on Facebook.

For information about Floyd, visit www.votefloyd.com

Election Day is Saturday, May 6.
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As a Houston firefighter, James Morrell is accustomed to the unpredictable.

He's handled wild Texans and blazes alike.

But Morrell was caught off guard when his wife Torri, needed to be taken to the hospital just hours after he returned from a 12-hour shift, early on Christmas Eve morning.

Torri Morrell, 52, is a charge nurse who oversees labor and delivery. She has bright olive green eyes and short, dirty blonde hair. She sits, mostly quiet, in a fuzzy, black Columbia jacket that she's become well-acquainted with since that hospital visit.

She had been at the Kingwood Medical Center - where she works - on Dec. 23 when she started feeling dizzy around three or four in the afternoon. There was a ringing in her ear, so she called her daughter to say she wasn't feeling well.

"When your mom is a nurse and your dad is a firefighter, you know there's got to be a bone sticking out or something," Taylor, her eldest daughter said, recalling her surprise.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Taylor saw her mother bundled in blankets despite the warm temperature in the room. Torri could barely move. She was nauseous too.

While she initially went to urgent care, she was eventually sent home. Doctors said she would feel better tomorrow.

More Information Want to help? What: Fundraiser for James and Torri Morrell Where: Track Shack Ice House, 25811 W. Hardy Road, Spring When: 1 p.m. April 15 Features: Live music, a raffle and silent and live auctions Admission: $10 door fee and $10 for BBQ plates Presale: Tickets are $20 which include admission, a BBQ plate and an entry in the raffle Details: Email teamtorri7@gmail.com about questions or donations See More Collapse

James returned home from his regular shift at Station 7 around 6 a.m. on Christmas Eve the next morning. Hours later, Torri was vomiting and struggled to stay balanced. By noon, she was back at the hospital.

"It was bad," Morrell said of his wife's condition, reiterating that he's a first responder.

He took her to the emergency room, thinking she was experiencing some sort of ear infection. James wondered if she should be taken to the Texas Medical Center instead, but she was shuttled away for scans and blood work.

There, on Christmas Eve, in the quiet hospital where their wife and mother worked for 25 years, the family waited.

When the doctor re-emerged with news, he said they were fortunate to have gotten her to the hospital when they did.

Torri, for her part, doesn't remember any of this; or what happened next.

She had suffered a brain aneurysm.

Through a scanner, the aneurysm resembles a large cotton ball, slightly askew at the top, on the left side of her brain.

In reality, the aging walls of her blood vessels gave way. As blood inflates the weakened wall, ballooning into a growth of sorts, it disrupts the brain's blood flow.

James recalls what the doctor told him.

"The brain is an enclosed space, so any swelling moves things around," he had said.

She underwent a 5-hour surgery three days later and spent 16 days in intensive care; James not far from her side when he could be - his truck was stolen from the hospital parking lot in the process.

The first day after surgery, Torri couldn't walk but by the second day she regained limited mobility, continuing to drag her legs.

Still, the aneurysm had damaged her speech and memory.

Taylor and her sister, Morgan, just hoped that they'd hear their mother's voice again.

And while physical therapy helped bring her body back to speed, the doctors told them it would take time for her brain to recover. She had also sustained significant hearing loss in her left ear.

Three months later, Torri appears well but her speech is still limited.

The family jokes that she saves most of her words to talk to the people who call or visit to check in on her.

"It feels like it happened five years ago," Taylor said, with a blend of exhaustion and elation.

Unfortunately, the medical bill is less fleeting. James said the sum exceeds $600,000 - insurance not considered.

To help offset those costs, a fundraiser is being held for the family at 1 p.m. on April 15 at Track Shack Ice House in Spring.

Torri left the hospital on Jan. 27. Her children say James didn't leave her side throughout the month that she was bedridden. Since then he's worked shifts here and there.

For Morgan and Taylor, the episode inspired them to re-examine their own health - the tendency to develop aneurysms is hereditary or comes with aging. It's also given them a greater appreciation for their parents' bond.

For the couple, retirement had been on the horizon but those plans have been tabled for the time being.

For now, the family is hopeful their mother will continue on the upswing, and are happy she can talk again.

"It'll be good," Torri said.
AMARILLO  A new book, Five Strands: A Landowners Guide to Fence Law in Texas, will be the topic of a webinar at 6 p.m. March 22, hosted by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

The book was written by Tiffany Dowell Lashmet, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agricultural law specialist in Amarillo, and Jim Bradbury and Kyle Weldon, both with James Bradbury law firm in Austin.

All rural and agriculture law attorneys in Texas get a lot of questions from landowners related to fence law issues, Dowell-Lashmet said. Whether it be liability questions, like if a cow gets hit on the highway, or neighbor relations questions when it comes to maintaining a fence, this handbook aims to answer this type of real-world questions.

Dowell-Lashmet and Bradbury will participate in the free one-hour webinar. The webinar registration page can be accessed on http://tscra.org/events/.

This is an excellent new resource for landowners in Texas, according to the TSCRA website. This interactive session will not only give you an overview of fence law in Texas, but give you an opportunity to ask questions of the experts.

The book was released in February. A copy of the handbook is available for download from http://agrilife.org/texasaglaw/published-materials. Print versions of the publication can be found at http://agrilifebookstore.org.

An important goal in writing this book was to create a resource that is easily usable for landowners, so we really focused on toning down the legalese and writing it in practical terms, Dowell-Lashmet said.

The book gives landowners a background on how Texas fence laws originated, explains current laws landowners should know, and details a few common fence dispute scenarios and solutions, she said.
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A Fairfield woman took home the top prize in the Fairfield Museum and History Centers photography contest.

The museum announced the grand prize winners of IMAGES 2017, its ninth annual Juried Photography Competition and Show at its Giving Day reception on March 9. More than 100 locals, including many of the featured photographers, were on hand to view the photographs and hear the announcement.

This years jury of Helen Klisser During, Dr. Philip I. Eliasoph, Francine Kass and Joe Standart selected the winners from more than 600 entries from photographers in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.

The professional/serious amateur winner was Kristie Kistner of Fairfield for her photograph Awestruck and the student winner was David Pisciotta of Shelton for his photograph Zion Sky. Kistners prize will be an exhibition at Southport Galleries, the exhibition sponsor, and Pisciotta will receive a professional portfolio review.

The winners were announced on Fairfield Countys Giving Day. Throughout a 24-hour period, generous supporters donated more than $6,000 to the museum to support its education programs, field trips, exhibitions, community events and more.

The photos will be on display through April 30.

The museum is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. daily and is located at 370 Beach Road.

Admission is $5 for adults; $3 for students and seniors. Members of the museum and children under 5 are free.

For more information, call 203-259-1598 or visit Fairfieldhistory.org.

An animal lover

Fairfield resident Kaitlin Conneely is combining her love of animals with her fundraising talents.

Conneely organized a Wear Your Pajamas to School day at Winston Preparatory School in Norwalk. Students contributed $2 each to wear their pajamas to school, totalling up to $224.

Conneely then donated that money toward the Beardsley Zoo s Red Panda exhibit construction.

After relocating to Connecticut from Toronto, Canada, Conneely joined the zoos award-winning Conservation Discovery Corps, a high school volunteer program where students educate zoo visitors on the animal collection and conservation efforts, as well as engage in active conservation in the local community to support wildlife.

The deans list

Fairfields Mackenzie Kilmartin and Katherine Yellen achieved the dean's list for fall 2016 at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. Each semester, Merrimack College undergraduate students earn the right to be named to the dean's list by earning a minimum 3.25 grade-point average based on a 4.0 GPA grading system.

Two Fairfield natives qualified for the dean's list at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. Both members of the class of 2018, Meghan Maciejewski and Elizabeth Revay each had a semester grade-point average of 3.5 or better and successfully completed all courses for which they were registered.

Art on display in Trumbull

Fairfield resident and artist Robin Berenson has been selected by I.M. Smitten, a new Trumbull studio and showroom gallery, to showcase her painting style on several headboards.

This original gallery concept features hand-made and hand-painted headboards by local artisans and artists and unique pieces from around the world.

A Fairfield resident for 19 years, Berenson has been an artist all of her life. She enjoys weaving the threads of her career in textiles into her projects through bursts of color and texture and is always experimenting with new techniques and materials to expand her creative horizon. Specializing in custom murals and furniture for clients in and around Fairfield at I.M. Smitten, Berensons work can be seen on a variety of headboards including Imperial Treasure and Sea Life that highlight her painting techniques and attention to detail.

All the headboards can be customized or designed from scratch to transform any room.

For more information, call 203-445-1170 or visit imsmittengallery.com.

Chambers of commerce plan Danube cruise

The Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, together with the Greater Norwalk, Westport-Weston and Danbury chambers, will be taking a group trip to the scenic Danube River, stopping at imperial cities along the way, departing Sept. 28 and returning Oct. 7.

Chamber members, guests, family and the public are invited to visit one of the most spectacular rivers in the world, the Danube. Included in the trip are stops in Munich, Passau, Melk, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava and Linz, with an optional, three-night extension stay in Prague.

Chamber trips are affordable, while providing the same high-quality travel of other tour groups.

Each city boasts unique and beautiful architecture, fine culture and specialty stores for shopping. On board the ship, with only 71 cabins, providing comfort without crushing crowds, guests experience superb dining with all meals included during the cruise, including complimentary, quality red and white wines from Europes great wine regions with every dinner onboard the ship.

The starting price is $4,199 for double occupancy.

If interested in learning about the trip, call the Fairfield Chamber at 203-255-1011.
A man accused of stealing more than $1.2 million worth of items at airports across Southeast Texas has been arrested, authorities announced on Friday.

The man, who police are not naming "due to the ongoing investigation," hit both the Beaumont Municipal Airport and the Jack Brooks Regional Airport in Beaumont, as well as two airports in Chambers County, two in Harris County, and an airport and avionics business in Conroe, according to information from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
Edwardsville High School had 27 students compete in the 39th Annual Illinois HOSA (Future Health Care Professionals) competition March 1 through 3 in Decatur.

Twenty-four of the students placed in the top 10 for the state event and five students placed in the top three qualifying them for the international competition this summer.

HOSA is an organization for future health care professionals who are middle school to college age students.

The organization has its annual state conference where students can participate in skill-based and team and leadership-based events around medical occupations themes. Students who place in the top three at state can compete at the international level in the summer.

This year there was record-breaking attendance with 1,356 attendees registered for the conference, EHS HOSA Sponsor Jennifer Weller explained.

EHS students placing at the state competition included Megan Daugherty in fourth place for Human Growth and Development and Amber Sommer in third place for Medical Reading in the category of Knowledge Test.

Sommer also placed sixth in Health Professions Events - Home Health Aide.

In Emergency Preparedness Events  Public Health, the team of Austin Dobler, Ryan Marstellar, Logan McKenney and Sam Bledsoe placed sixth while Paige Way also placed sixth in Leadership Events  Health Career Photography.

Morgan Ash placed third and Julia Paul placed tenth in Leadership Events  Healthy Lifestyle.

In the category Team Events, EHS had several teams place at state. In Forensic Medicine, the team of Morgan Ash and Amber Schwertman placed fourth. In Health Career Display, the team of Gayathri Kondepathi and Natalie Loveridge placed first, the team of Maggie Bailey and Luniva Singh placed fourth, the team of Katrina Springman and Caitlyn Thompson placed sixth, and the team of Payton Roberts and Paige Way placed seventh.

In Health Education, the team of Sam Bledsoe and Logan McKenney placed seventh.

The HOSA Bowl team of Halee Baker, Chloe Turner, Abu Khan, and Amber Sommer placed fourth while the team of Austin Dobler, Ryan Marstellar, Wyatt Hennig placed fifth.

The Public Service Announcement team of Syeda Hira Naqvi, Maddie McDaniel and Emily Dickerson placed seventh.

In addition, Syeda Hira Naqvi received the Barbara James Service Award. To qualify for the award Naqvi had to have over 100 community service hours.

The EHS HOSA Club organizes fundraising events like the recent Princess Tea Party to raise funds which they either donate to medical-related charities or HOSA students can use their volunteer time at these events to earn a portion of the funds to use for expenses to participate in the state or international competitions.

The Health Occupations Club will be hosting a one-mile fun glow run on March 18 to bring awareness to mental illness and available resources. A portion of the proceeds from this event will benefit NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Health) and also support HOSA students to pay for attending the International competition.

Check-In for the Shine the light on Mental Illinois, a one mile fun glow run, begins at 6:30 p.m. on March 18 at the EHS Wrestling Center parking lot. Cost is $10 per person. Registration and additional information is available online at https://runsignup.com/ShinetheLight.
car smoke exhaust tailpipe

President Donald Trump went to Detroit on Wednesday to announce that a review of fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas emission standards would be re-opened.

The review was concluded in January, before Scott Pruitt took over Trump's EPA. Swift and aggressive lobbying by 18 car companies paid off, as Trump needs hiring in Midwestern auto stronghold states to make good on campaign promises.

The carmakers were vocal in their displeasure about the EPA's action, and although they might not ultimately see the so-called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards rolled back, they'll get their chance to present their case.

They've argued that the market has turned against smaller, higher MPG vehicles in favor of big pickups and SUVs, which bring in higher profits.

Automakers also aren't keen on continuing to invest in electric vehicles when the global market for them has thus far disappointed; EVs make up just 1% of global sales.

After the Trump announcement, several consumer and environmental groups expressed their own objections to both the decision to re-open the review (originally designed to check progress on the goal of achieving by 2025 a fleet average of 54.5 mpg for all automakers selling cars and trucks in the US).

"They had ample time to comment," Mark Cooper, Director of Research for the Consumer Federation of America, said on a conference call with reporters.

"The fact they didnt like that outcome doesnt mean they can have more time. The [EPA] did its job and reached a fair conclusion."

Auto worker, factory, General Motors, assembly line

A short-circuited review

Automakers accused the Obama Administration of short-circuiting the review process and failing to take into account that both car companies and government had taken a long-term view on the more stringent CAFE standards, with the understanding the review would provide an opportunity for Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and 15 other car makers to point out the costs of developing new vehicles and to assess the realities of the market.

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Shannon Baker-Branstetter, Energy and Environment Policy Counsel at Consumers Union, which deals with public policy for Consumer Reports, wasn't buying it.

"The EPA worked many many thousands of hours with NHTSA and automakers and found the standards to be cost effective," she said on the Wednesday conference call.

"Now the automakers coming up with cost analyses that are higher. They'll get a new chance to put higher numbers into the record, but that doesnt mean the EPA's record doesnt stand on its own."

Sure Reid, Vice-President of Energy Programs at sustainability advocate Ceres, indicated that the carmakers are using the CAFE review to drag their feet in innovating.

"The 2022-2025 targets are more affordable to meet than contemplated back in 2011," she said. "Facts are the facts, and the analysis is quite good. Between when the standards were adopted and now, the world has been decarbonizing, so it's time to get on with it."

A unified view

The consumer advocates who joined the call were unified in their view that automakers were looking for short-term gains to their bottom lines at the expense of giving customers more fuel-efficient vehicles and alternatives to gas-powered cars and trucks, as well as getting out of step with global moves to address climate change.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks from Marine One as he returns to the White House in Washington. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Their arguments, however, are at odd with Trump's "America First" policies.

For some in the environmental community, the president's directive was baffling.

This change makes no sense," Rhea Suh, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement prior to Trump's announcement.

"Mileage standards save consumers money at the gas pump, make Americans less dependent on oil, reduce carbon pollution and advance innovation. The current standards helped the auto companies move from bankruptcy to profitability, and there is no reason they cannot be met. This is just another part of President Trumps retreat from action on climate change."

Her comments were echoed by Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, who also issued a statement.

We need to put clean car standards in the fast lane to keep our air clean and our climate safe," he said. "Donald Trump and the automakers are endangering the health of our children and families by abolishing life-saving vehicle emissions protections that cut down on dangerous smog pollution and asthma attacks."

He added: "Not only are our cars and trucks more efficient than ever before, but US auto sales have reached record highs since these safeguards were put in place ... Donald Trumps executive order is reckless and puts the health and safety of American families in jeopardy."

NOW WATCH: FORD CEO: This is why women and young people love SUVs





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San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force / San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force

A San Mateo County man operating an unlicensed dentist office and drug manufacturing den in one has been arrested, police said Thursday.

Joseph Hirsch, 59, has been operating an illicit business he called Thermal Dental in the 600 block of Old County Road in San Carlos for months, according to the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force.
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By Alexandra Alper

MONTERREY, Mexico March 17 (Reuters) - Country-specific rules of origin within the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would be "totally unacceptable", and a U.S. border adjustment tax would likely violate global trade rules, Mexico's economy minister said on Friday.

Under the trilateral trade deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada, rules of origin can specify that products must meet minimum regional (NAFTA-wide) content requirements to be tariff-free, but there are no national content requirements.

"In no trade deal, whether bilateral, trilateral or multilateral, has there ever been any precedent treaty of rules of origin by country. It would be totally unacceptable," Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told reporters at an event in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.

Mexican officials have said the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump could try to push for national content requirements in a revamped NAFTA to boost jobs at home.

Trump has said the NAFTA deal has given Mexico "unfair" advantages and he wants to cut the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico. He is expected to submit his plan to renegotiate NAFTA to U.S. lawmakers soon.

Guajardo said talks to renegotiate NAFTA should move ahead regardless of the timetable for a U.S. tax reform.

Trump wants to cut corporate income tax rates and Republicans have proposed a border adjustment tax that favors exports over imports.

Guajardo said such a border tax would "very likely" violate World Trade Organization rules.

Mexico sends nearly 80 percent of its exports to its northern neighbor and a U.S. border tax could slow factory growth in Latin America's No. 2 economy.

Germany's economy minister on Friday said her country could file a lawsuit against the United States at the World Trade Organization over the border tax ahead of a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Trump.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper)
At first, residents of Palm Beach found it exciting, myself included. Love him or hate him, having the President of the United States in your hometown is electrifying. Between Air Force One, motorcades, secret service agents and all of the added fanfare, its not a sight you see every day. But if you ask residents, its starting to feel like a regular sight -- and an unwelcome one at that.

According to a recent investigation by the Washington Post, President Trumps first three trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach have cost the federal treasury -- American taxpayers -- as much as $10 million within just the first month of his presidency. By the end of his term, that number could total hundreds of millions of dollars. By comparison, the Obama administration spent an estimated $97 million on travel-related expenses over eight years.

Related: Will You Thrive in the Trump Economy?

Part of the cost has to do with the need for security. Trump often chooses to do his business in very public places, such as dining with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe alongside other Mar-a-Lago members. Then theres the cost of flying a plane from Washington D.C. to Florida, which is a bit more expensive than taking the short helicopter ride from the White House to Camp David.

On a related note, the city of New York pays roughly $500,000 per day securing Trump Tower, where First Lady Melania Trump and son Barron are currently living. The annual cost could end up being around $183 million for this alone.

The impact on local businesses and daily life.

While the cost of President Trumps travels is certainly of interest, its also important to note just how disruptive these trips have been to the people and businesses of Palm Beach.

Whenever Air Force One flies into Palm Beach, the airport has to go into total lockdown mode. Experiencing a comprehensive shutdown for the presidents arrival can be neat at first, but when you consider that Trump has caused five total shutdowns since December, its easy to see why locals are getting a little frustrated.

Take Jorge Gonzalez, owner of SkyWords, as an example. His company operates four planes that tow advertising banners along the coastline in Palm Beach County. Considering that 97 percent of his business is done on weekends and holidays, the airport shutdowns are having a quantifiable impact. Gonzalez says he has another month, two at the most, left in peak season to turn a profit. "So every week that they drag their feet puts me closer and closer to closing my doors, he said.

Its not just Gonzalez who is being impacted, either. Every business that relies on Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana, which is situated just six miles from Mar-a-Lago, is struggling. This includes flight schools, small cafes and restaurants, sightseeing excursions and more.

Related: Tech and Trump: What the Next Four Years Might Bring

Dave Johnson, the owner of Palm Beach Aircraft Services, operates and maintains planes at Lantana. He has eight full-time employees and provides an upscale transportation service for prominent lawyers and doctors who travel around the country for work. Considering that no private flights can take off within a 10-mile radius and no arriving flights are allowed to land without first stopping elsewhere for security clearance, the effect on his business has been immense.

We never dreamed that hed be here every weekend -- thats the killer, Johnson said. Im getting customers that have been with me for years, and theyre actually moving their aircraft to other airports so they can fly.

From a local security standpoint, Palm Beach County is struggling to find adequate law enforcement resources for its airports. To date, the county has already tallied more than $1.5 million on police overtime pay.

Its not all doom and gloom, though. The folks at Mar-a-Lago seem to love brushing shoulders with the president, and the local economy could eventually see a long-term boost in value. Despite the controversy Trump brings, the international media attention shown on Palm Beach and West Palm Beach during broadcasts of the presidents visits has been a Chamber of Commerce dream come true, said Andy Reid, a reporter for South Floridas Sun-Sentinel. Tourism officials expect a long-term bump in visits thanks to potential customers in cooler climates getting frequent reminders of the local blue skies and balmy temperatures.

In the meantime, the struggle small business owners and local residents are facing is hard to overlook.

Something has to change.

For a businessman who claims to fight for small business owners and the millions of little guys across the country, President Trumps frequent and expensive trips to the Winter White House dont reflect well on his first month in office.

Related: Will Trump's Tax Plan Benefit Small Businesses

Something has to change fairly soon; otherwise, President Trumps lavish travels will squash a group of small business owners that are supposed to be directly benefiting from the administrations new policies.

He isnt the first president to enjoy a weekend outside of D.C., but he is the first to spend $10 million in one month while simultaneously straining a community that doesnt have the luxury of sitting back and watching it all unfold.

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Washington

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny is urging President Donald Trump to help Irish people living in the U.S. illegally, saying they just want to "make America great."

Kenny spoke at a luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday as part of a series of events celebrating St. Patrick's Day, including a one-on-one meeting with Trump at the White House, where the two discussed immigration, trade and the Irish economy. In the evening, the pair participated in the annual shamrock ceremony in which Trump was presented with a bowl of Ireland's famous greens.

Of those living in the U.S. illegally, Kenny said: "We would like this to be sorted. It would remove a burden of so many people that they can stand out in the light and say, 'Now I am free to contribute to America as I know I can. And that's what people want."
For one big week in March every year, Austin, Texas is overrun by culture and tech. Yes, Im talking about the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals. (Its often abbreviated SXSW, but dont try to pronounce that. People just call it South By for short.)

South By is four festivals held more or less simultaneously: Music, Movies, Comedy, and Interactive, better known as Tech. You can walk up and buy a ticket to one of them for $1,325, or all of them for $1,650. By the time youve paid for travel, hotel, and meals, its not cheap to go to this conferenceso as a public service, I decided to go for you.

Now, SXSW has some elements in common with other festivals. Theres an exhibit floor, and there are talks. This year, the speakers included Joe Biden, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Garth Brooks, Buzz Aldrin, Melissa McCarthy, James Franco and Seth Rogan, Charlize Theron, and plenty more. Not surprisingly, its hard to get in to those presentations.

I saw, for example, a great interview with Muppets superstar Frank Oz; a brilliant panel called Psychopaths in Silicon Valley; and a panel that was misnamed Hollywood Goes VR. (Its panelists included virtual-reality game makersno filmmakers, and no evidence that any Hollywood movies are, in fact, going VR.)

As for the tech conference this year, you can probably guess what was hot. Robots and AI. Virtual-reality headsets. Self-driving cars. The same stuff, really, you could have seen at CES a couple of months ago.

But what makes the conference so different is that the trade-show floors at SXSW are the streets of Austin itself. The parts you remember are the chance encounters on the street, the connections you make at the little hosted parties, the weird demos that just seem to pop up randomly.

And really good barbecue.

You could spend a week just at the food-truck lot, called Southbites. Phenomenal.

Overall, the roots of SXSW are like Austin itself: younger, weirder, and more bearded than most places.

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But thats changing. Austin, whose unofficial motto is Keep Austin Weird, is becoming more generic and corporate. Not all Austinites love having SXSW in their city, even though it poured more than $325 million into the local economy last year. The festival badly chokes traffic and jacks up hotel and parking prices, and the influx of startup douches drives the native, hippie-influenced Austinites crazy.

(When I landed in Austin, the Uber and Lyft apps told me that those services are no longer available in Austin. After waiting miserably in the cold rain for 30 minutes for a cab line, I tweeted, Hey, cities, heres a concept: Before you ban Uber and Lyft, how about making sure there are enough cabs or other ways of getting around?

Big mistake. I quickly was informed that Austin didnt ban Uber and Lyft; those companies preferred to leave rather than comply with a city requirement that drivers must be fingerprinted, along with other requirements.

In three followup tweets, I immediately apologized and clarified, but that wasnt good enough for the still-raw Austinites:

Gotta love how tourist scumbags like @Pogue barge into ATX and start b***hing about the fact that we passed a labor standards referendum, said one. Maybe dont tweet some salty bullsh** without knowing what youre talking about, jerkoff, said another. And: How bout you leave our city and never come back, you entitled bag of d****s.

Wow. Touchy much, Austin?)

Anywaythere you go. A micro-visit to SXSW, yours free.

As for the $8,000 I just saved you? Youre welcome!

Read more from David Pogue:

The little-known iPhone feature that lets the blind

David Pogue tested 40 blue tooth headphones to find the best one

I paid $3,000 for my MacBook Pro and got emotional whiplash

Pogue: Heres what Snapchat is all about

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the web, hes davidpogue.com. On Twitter, hes @pogue. On email, hes poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.
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A home is in ruins after a fire ravaged the structure in north Houston early Friday morning.

The Houston Fire Department responded to the blaze around 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Mosher and Sweetwater.

The fire rendered the one-floor wood frame home unlivable.

No one was injured. No one was in the house as it went up in flames.

The homeowners were not living in the residence at the time.

A neighbor said there were about half a dozen people that regularly stayed there. It's unclear at this time whether they were squatters or hired to help remodel the home.
The Comal County Sheriffs Office and Crime Stoppers are asking for assistance in tracking down a man accused of using stolen identities to purchase high-end retail items.

The sheriffs office believes the man pictured above has used stolen identities more than a half dozen times and has used them in purchasing goods, according to a news release.
A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper was hospitalized Thursday night after he was shot in the chest during an apparent home invasion in Kirby.

According to Sgt. Orlando Moreno, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, troopers were responded around 11:45 p.m. to an attempted home invasion at a trooper's home in the 5100 block of Tom Stafford Drive.

RELATED: Bexar deputy hospitalized in Hwy. 281 crash; multiple lanes closed

Authorities said the trooper, who was off-duty at the time, came home and heard a noise at his backdoor. Moreno said the trooper "retrieved his service firearm, put on his protective vest and went to investigate an intruder in his backyard."

As he walked out the backdoor, "he was immediately attacked by a male suspect who tried to force his way into the trooper's residence," Moreno said.

During the fight, the trooper's gun discharged, but the bullet was stopped by the trooper's vest.

By the time authorities arrived to the scene, the suspect had fled. The trooper, who's name has not been released, was transported to San Antonio Military Medical Center, where he is currently being held for further evaluation.

RELATED: Viral video shows spring break 'chaos' at Port Aransas

Authorities have not provided a description of the suspect.

Moreno said the Texas Rangers are investigating the incident. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office, San Antonio Police Department and the Kirby Police Department are all assisting.

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns
The best Walmart Black Friday deals Black Friday has come early to Walmart for the third year in a row.
The San Antonio lawyer known as the "DWI Dude" and "420 Dude" has pleaded not guilty to charges that he was involved in scamming more than $1 million from a member of Colombia's narco-terrorist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Jamie Balagia, 56, entered the plea to conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice charges during a hearing Thursday in the North Texas town of Sherman, proceedings that continue today to determine whether he can be released from jail on bond, records show.
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The campus backlash stemming from the death of a 20-year-old Texas State University student at an unregistered party could spell the end of Greek life on campus, according to an essay penned on the site Total Frat Move.

The anonymous author behind the post, who claims to be a sorority member at the San Marcos campus, say she's fed up with the way officials are treating fraternities.

The sanctions have caused her "poor chapter...to be stuck with the guys who play WoW [World of Warcraft] on weekends and smell like cheese puffs, lotion, and Kleenex."

This dark outlook on the future of Greek life at Texas State comes from the suspension of four fraternities for their role in an off-campus party where a 20-year-old sorority member was found dead.

RELATED: University records reveal shocking details of party where 20-year-old student was found dead

University officials avoided connecting the fraternity's infractions directly to the death of the student, but the party site and date referenced in the university documents matches the site and date where the student was found dead.

Jordin Taylor, who was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority, was found under a bus Oct. 29, 2016, the day after a party hosted by Pi Kappa Alpha, Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Alpha Order and Delta Tau Delta.

Since the suspensions of the four fraternities, according to the anonymous writer, Texas State "changed the way Greek Life at our school operates."

RELATED: Texas State fraternity suspends operations in wake of death of 20-year-old student

The essay-writer estimates that if things continue this way, Greek life at Texas State will cease to exist and, "who wants to go to a school devoid of Greek life?"

The writer says her sorority's president encourages members to avoid documenting the event on social media, or to not attend at all.

"It doesn't sound like a big deal to guys, but to girls, this sucks ass," the writer said. "It makes some of my sisters not want to go to the party  because some girls only do things if they can prove they did them on social media  which affects relations between sororities and fraternities."

The writer argues that putting fraternities on probation only causes them to host more unregistered parties, resulting in more probation  "a vicious cycle." The university's Greek Affairs office has a strict set of guidelines for chapter operations.

RELATED: 20-year-old Texas State sorority member found dead under bus near San Marcos River

Multiple Texas State students involved with Greek life on campus have spoken out against the anonymous essay on social media, saying it does not reflect their experience or chapter.

Taylor Thompson, Jordin Taylor's cousin, reacted to the essay on Twitter:

"I am Jordin's FAMILY. I'm not sorry for not giving a damn about your party life," she said. "Your parties are not worth her life."

On the Total Frat Move Facebook page, one commenter said they were experiencing the same kind of fraternity disappearance at their university.

When Total Frat Move shared the essay, they said on Facebook: "Things are apparently looking dim at Texas State."

It is unclear if the site is referencing Taylor's tragic death, or the university's crack down on Greek life.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
A 23-year-old Michigan man who traveled to College Station this week allegedly had sex multiple times with a 16-year-old girl he first met on social media, according to court documents.

Christopher David Galliway, of Fenton, Michigan, was arrested Wednesday and faces a second-degree felony charge of sexual assault of a child.
Over a month after Zuzu Verk's remains were found in a shallow grave in West Texas, her boyfriend, Robert Fabian, has been indicted with murder, Alpine police said Friday.

Fabian, 25, was indicted by a Brewster County Grand Jury, according to a post by Alpine Police on Facebook. He is being held on a $750,000 bond.
A 45-year-old Round Rock man was arrested this week after child porn was allegedly found on his personal computer by the Texas attorney generals Child Exploitation Unit (CEU).

Eric Christopher Lucas faces six counts of possession of child pornography, a third-degree felony, a news release said Friday.
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The 54-year-old man wanted in connection with a double homicide that occurred Wednesday in Austin came to an end in Mississippi Friday.

Randall Lee Burrows of Lakeway, a suspect in the shooting death of Richard Dale Guthrie and Susan Gulla-OLeary, both 60, shot and killed himself Friday after leading state troopers on a high-speed chase, according to an Associated Press report.

Burrows was last seen driving a white 2011 Ford Escape with Texas license plate number FVX 4037, a news release said (see in slideshow above).

RELATED: Boyfriend indicted on murder charge in death of West Texas college student Zuzu Verk

Travis County deputies responded to a report of shots fired at 7:40 p.m. Wednesday in the 2000 block of Whitebead Trail, where Guthrie and Gulla-O'Leary were found dead with gunshot wounds, the news release said.

A third victim was shot and is currently recovering at an area hospital.

Evidence at the scene points to a possible business dispute among the suspect and the victims on the night of the shooting.

RELATED: S.A. man arrested on capital murder charge allegedly swapped cars with mother to avoid arrest

Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Cpl. Brandon Fortenberry said the suspect, traveling in a white Ford Escape, had crossed the Mississippi-Louisiana line on Interstate 55 about 4:33 p.m.

About a mile south of Summit, he went into a field where he apparently shot himself about 5 p.m.

Authorities didn't name the man killed in the chase but said that he was suspected of killing the two people in Austin on Wednesday.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report



twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
MANILA (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang met Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's in his home city on Friday, becoming the most high-profile visitor from Beijing since two countries long at odds sought to chart a new course in relations.

Wang went to Davao City, where Duterte was mayor for 22 years before he became president in 2016 and sought a dramatic change in approach towards China at the height of a row over South China Sea sovereignty and amid the fallout of a bitter legal dispute that went to international arbitration.

The vice premier signed a six-year development programme to work together on trade and investment, part of Duterte's strategy to engage China as a buyer of Philippine farm and fisheries produce and a builder and financier of its much-needed infrastructure.

"Wang Yang noted the need to focus on common interests that bring more benefits than differences," presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said after the closed-door meeting between Duterte and Wang.

"The president said bilateral ties are found stronger, particularly in trade and commerce, and reaffirmed the importance of peaceful settlement of disputes."

The relationship has for years been characterised by disputes, with the Philippines repeatedly opposing China's island-building in parts of its exclusive economic zone and its repelling of fishermen from the disputed Scarborough Shoal.

Though Duterte has persuaded China to end the blockade and let fishermen operate around the shoal, China has continued to fortify some of its artificial islands with military hardware.

It was unclear, however, if Wang and Duterte discussed China's decision to start preparatory work this year for an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal.

The Philippines has recently said it was assured China would not carry out any building work there.

The six-year business deal covers loans, support with feasibility studies, grants for bridge construction, a proposed Philippines-China industrial park, dams, railways and agribusiness training.

Story continues

China last week committed to finance at least three Philippine infrastructure projects worth $3.4 billion, two of which could be rolled out in the first half of this year..

Wang's visit to Davao comes two months after that of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was the first foreign leader to visit the Philippines under Duterte, signalling Tokyo's intent to bolster its influence amid a changing geopolitical landscape.

Abe brought with him a 1 trillion yen ($8.77 billion) aid package.

Wang's trip was more businesslike than that of Abe, who has a close personal bond with the firebrand Philippine leader and had breakfast in his humble Davao home.

Duterte typically spends three days each week in Davao, or more. He is there visiting his newborn grandson, who is named "Stonefish".

Duterte was also visited on Friday by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who announced a A$90 million ($69.2 million) programme to support education and policy development in Mindanao, an impoverished Muslim region in the predominantly Catholic nation.

Mindanao has been plagued by decades of separatist rebellion and the Philippines is concerned it could become a hotbed of extremism if Islamic State gains a foothold.

"Both underscored that terrorism and violent extremism are serious threats," spokesman Abella said of their meeting.

($1=$A1.3006)

(Reporting by Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Nick Macfie)
After being released from a downtown Houston jail, Julius L. Sheppard called his sister and told her not to pick him up. Stopped for speeding, officers discovered a warrant for unpaid parking tickets and took him into custody, sister Montrice Sheppard said. He walked all the way in the rain to Sharpstown (a community about 12 miles away), telling God he would do whatever he asked him to do, she said.

Sheppards life changed. Walking along his Emmaus Road led to nine years of pastoring at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church and making a difference on the East Side.

Recently diagnosed with leukemia, Pastor Julius Sheppard died March 11. He was 59.

He used to tell me and even preached it from the pulpit that he wouldnt pass 60, Montrice Sheppard said.

Sheppard grew up in Sutton Homes, one of San Antonios oldest public housing complexes. Back then there were breezeways between the apartments and he and his friends, calling themselves The Temptations, would sing there, she said.

Gifted in math, Sheppard graduated from Fox Tech High School in 1976. He continued his education at Prairie View A&M and received a bachelors degree in accounting.

After graduation, he struck out for Houston, working two years for the Texas Comptrollers Office. He left for a tax accountant job at AT&T in Morristown, New Jersey.

More Information The Rev. Julius L. Sheppard Born: Jan. 6, 1958, San Antonio Died: March 11, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Mother Gladys Richardson and father Cleveland Sheppard. Survived by: Wife Marylou Sheppard; sister Montrice Sheppard; son Julius Sheppard II, sister Tanicka Richardson. Services: Funeral service 11a.m. today at New Covenant Baptist Church, 1107 SE Loop 410. See More Collapse

Visiting home, Sheppard contacted Elgin Brown, a teacher he had in elementary school. Sheppards sister, remembering her brothers story, repeated Browns words: Boy, you have been teaching people math all your life. Go be a teacher.

When he moved back to San Antonio, he got his teaching certificate and taught math at Huppertz Elementary school. Later, he took a break and went to work for Project Grad in Houston, teaching teachers how to teach math, his sister said.

It was during this time Sheppard committed his path to God. He moved back to San Antonio and studied at the Guadalupe Baptist Theological Seminary. Sheppard went on to serve in the education ministry at Greater New Mt. Zion. Later he became pastor of Trinity Missionary Baptist Church, where they held Praise in the Hood, an event started by Sheppard to unite the community.

Sheppard once said to his sister, God can make you strong. He will never put anything on your plate that you cant handle; just follow his steps.

iwilgen@express-news.net
On Mar. 21, 1877, Guy M. Bryan wrote the new President of the United States, an old college classmate, to recommend a relative for the Supreme Court.

William Pitt Ballinger had no idea why the caretaker governor of Texas summoned him in the middle of May 1865. But he was relieved to learn Pendleton Murrah and Gen. John Bankhead Magruder had accepted the fall of the Confederacy as an irreversible fact.

The war was over, and they needed someone to negotiate a separate peace for Texas. For once Ballinger's stubborn opposition to secession would come in handy. The victorious Yankees might be willing to talk to a Unionist, who had not shed a single drop of blood for the Lost Cause.

Accompanied by Ashbel Smith, a diplomat that negotiated treaties for the defunct Republic, Ballinger sailed for New Orleans on May 27, 1865. His twin objectives were to keep northern soldiers out of Texas and freed slaves working for their former masters.

Gen. Edward Canby was polite, even gracious, and let the visitors have their say. Then he told them there was no way Texas could avoid military occupation, which began on Jun. 19 with the arrival of 800 troops in Galveston. But Canby and his better known superior, Gen. Philip Sheridan, did assure the two-man delegation they would do everything in their power to maintain a stable black labor force.

For a discussion of political matters, Gen. Canby suggested the Texans speak directly with President Andrew Johnson. Ballinger and Smith decided to heed his advice and hung around New Orleans waiting for their travel documents.

But the Washington trip was canceled by soreheads back home. Radical Republicans, whose property Ballinger confiscated as Confederate receiver, "opposed me representing Texas for I had been engaged in the most odious work of the rebellion."

Ballinger learned upon returning to Galveston that Johnson had issued a general amnesty, which wiped the slate clean for most southerners. Only two groups of former Confederates, government officials and those with assets in excess of $20,000, were exempt and had to apply for presidential pardons.

Since he fell into both categories, Ballinger wasting no time in penning a personal appeal to the president. But he realized that full restoration of his rights could not be accomplished by mail.

Carrying glowing testimonials from the provisional governor and lesser luminaries, Ballinger made the difficult journey through the war-ravaged South. His first stop in Washington was the home of a kinsman, whose influence could tip the scales in his favor.

Ballinger and Samuel F. Miller had been close since their Kentucky childhood, and their warm friendship had weathered the war. Miller now sat on the Supreme Court, one of five Lincoln appointees.

The reunion with his brother-in-law left Ballinger worried and depressed. Miller told him flatly, "Reason dictates that in some way you should be punished." The justice insisted that examples had to be made of Confederate leaders, which meant prison for most and the gallows for "a half dozen of the most prominent and wicked."

When Ballinger called again, Miller had letters of introduction to the president and secretary of state William Seward waiting for him. One sentence leaped off the parchment: "I have never known a man whose integrity I would rely on more confidently."

Miller had gone to bat for him and knocked the ball out of the park. The pardon -- the first to a Texan -- was granted without the applicant setting foot in the White House.

Ballinger suddenly found himself in the absolution business. He presented 40 petitions from other worthy Texans to the obliging president and within the month had wonderful news for all 40 grateful clients.

Texas' top attorney did not secure the priceless pardons out of the goodness of his heart. His net profit after expenses was $7,500, a handsome sum for those times.

Even though Ballinger's fortune steadily grew after resuming his law practice, he always seemed preoccupied with money. It was the paltry pay that he cited as the reason for turning down a seat on the state supreme court offered in 1874 by Gov. Richard Coke.

Another brother-in-law put Ballinger on the spot three years later. As soon as Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn in as president, Guy Bryan launched an all-out campaign to convince his college chum to choose Ballinger for the highest court in the land.

This time the public-service shy lawyer could not plead poverty or trot out his second-favorite excuse that he could not bear to be parted from his family. So Ballinger argued that his Confederate past was bound to come back to haunt him and cause public embarrassment for everybody. He successfully planted the seed of doubt that undermined Bryan's efforts and eventually compelled him to withdraw his name from consideration.

The year after William Pitt Ballinger spurned a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, admiring Texans handed him the governorship on a silver platter. Once again he turned up his nose at the honor, and that was the last time anyone bothered to ask.

Bartee's three books "Texas Depression-Era Desperadoes," "Murder Most Texan" and "Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil" are available at barteehaile.com. And look for his fourth book "Unforgettable Texans" this summer!
Last weeks ruling by a three-judge panel in San Antonio that the Texas Legislature racially discriminated in drawing three congressional districts is being hailed as a major civil rights triumph in some legal quarters.

This is a huge victory for voting rights plaintiffs, wrote nationally recognized elections law expert Richard Hasen in his Election Law blog. He predicted the 2-1 decision was unlikely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because it closely tracks Justice (Anthony) Kennedys views of the issues in this area.

Kennedy is often the swing vote on the closely divided court.

Hasen said the ruling was especially important because it could lead to Texas once again being required to preclear redistricting and other election matters with the Justice Department, as it was before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is because Judges Xavier Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia found intentional discrimination in the case.

The Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not likely to be much of a watchdog on voting rights matters, but that would likely change if a Democratic president is elected in 2020.

The three judges who decided the case include one Democrat and two Republicans. Ironically, the decision may have gone the other way if one of the judges hadnt been punished for joining in an earlier ruling in the case. Heres the backstory.

Judge Rodriguez, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Texas law school, was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry. He lost in the Republican primary, however, when he had to stand for election. He returned briefly to private practice before being appointed to a federal district bench here by President George W. Bush.

Back in 2013, Rodriguez was asked to fill out the voluminous paperwork to be considered for promotion to the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. President Barack Obama had selected a Democratic judge from Corpus Christi, but the two Republican senators reportedly made it clear they would block her nomination. So the Obama administration lit on Rodriguez  a nonideological choice who had been appointed to important benches by two Texas Republican leaders.

But the appointment languished until 2015 when, a friend of Rodriguez said, he was told his name was withdrawn because of a lack of support from the two senators. The reason: His previous rulings in the redistricting case.

Had Rodriguez been elevated to the appellate court, he might well have been replaced with a more conservative Republican on the three-judge panel hearing the redistricting case. The 2-1 decision could have gone in the other direction, with Rodriguezs replacement joining the very conservative third member of the panel, Judge Jerry Smith of Houston.

Smith, a Reagan appointee, issued a bitter dissent. He was especially hostile toward lawyers from Obamas Justice Department.

It was obvious, from the start, that the DOJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings, Smith wrote. And the DOJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression, obviously presuming that plaintiffs counsel were not up to the task.

A postscript: The seat on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for which Rodriguez was considered remains vacant. In fact, two seats reserved for Texas judges on the appeals court are vacant. So, going back as far as 2011, are 11 seats on federal district courts around the state.

It appears that Republican refusals to grant Obama his Supreme Court nominee last year wasnt the sum total of Republican resistance, at least here in Texas.

This column first appeared as the Last Word on KLRNs Texas Week with Rick Casey. The program appears Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
We cant restore our civilization with somebody elses babies.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, supporting anti-Muslim Dutch Parlimentarian Geert Wilders

We invite Rep. King to San Antonio specifically and Texas generally.

A visit to San Antonio would show the somebody elses babies he speaks of running city government, marching at Air Force boot camp and otherwise serving in San Antonios other military installations. He would find them in the Texas Legislature, wearing judges robes here and throughout the state, and running or teaching schools all over, with a majority of the students they teach also fitting Kings definition of somebody elses babies.

Yes, Kings somebody elses babies are also in the states fields harvesting crops, and in restaurants cooking and serving the food we eat. Or fixing the roofs and houses damaged in recent tornadoes. But theyd also be represented  though not as much as wed like  in most of the states professions requiring degrees. Heck, some are even practicing religions that arent Christian and may be wearing hijabs.

And Texas and San Antonio civilization is mostly doing fine. Thats not to say we couldnt stand for some improvement by way of a lot of metrics. But Texans know that this replenishment by and mixing with a lot of somebody elses babies is old hat here and, demographically, this is Texas certain future.

Which means we have to make it work. History says that mostly we do. Americas success is grounded in its ability to assimilate a whole lot of somebody elses babies. This mixing is our civilization.

Its America; our names range from Wong to Ricci to Ramirez to Nazari to Schmidt to Johnson. Weve all been somebody elses baby.
Former Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri has won the Supreme Court appeal by the State contesting an order for forfeiture of his properties acquired over his 25 year tenure at the helm of the Police.

The National Prosecuting Authority had appealed against the removal of some of his properties from the unexplained wealth orders, five months ago.

Chihuri, who fled to exile in 2017, resumed control over some of the properties he acquired during his 25 years at the helm of the police force following a High Court judgment in June this year, which ruled partly in his favour.

But other assets and those of his companies fingered in possible corrupt business deals with the police force remained under the unexplained wealth orders. Dissatisfied with the lower court decision, The NPA took the matter up to the Supreme Court challenging the decision.

A three-judge panel comprising Justices Susan Mavangira, George Chiweshe and Joseph Musakwa upheld the decision by Justice Pisirayi Kwenda earlier this year and struck the appeal off the roll citing non compliant and defective grounds of appeal. The High court accepted Chihuris explanation on his source of funds generally. He retired after serving the ZRP for 37 years.

Chihuri argued that over the period of employment, he made savings on salaries, bonuses, savings from foreign trips and conditions of service benefits. He said he was a delegate and vice president for Interpol in Africa and was remunerated in US dollars.

The High Court noted that in any event Chihuri acquired all the assets prior to the period during which, the State alleges he became involved in serious crime. The allegation is that he was involved in crime in the year 2017.

He argued that all the properties acquired by him and his wife were bought through income from legitimate business.

He further argued that some of the properties were registered as the property of their children for estate planning purposes.

Justice Kwenda ruled that therefore the State is not justified in insinuating that they are proceeds of crime because they were all acquired prior to the year 2014. Chihuri claims that various documents had been submitted with the application to prove the acquisition; in some cases, disposal; and ownership of the various properties.

It was the courts conclusion that the unexplained wealth orders were unreasonable and unjustified and that had he (Chihuri) been afforded the opportunity to explain it is unlikely that this court, acting reasonably and carefully would have granted the ex parte unexplained wealth order.

Chihuri was represented by lawyer Addington Chinake of Kantor & Immerman while the state was represented by Chief Law officer and head of assets forfeiture unit Chris Mutangadura.

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Oracle provides the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems, with more than 370,000 customers including 100 of the Fortune 100 representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 145 countries around the globe.Job ID: 17000A8MLocation: Lagos, Nigeria, Occasional travel may be requiredJob Level: IC4 (46040)/IC5 (46050)Reports To: Senior Director, Digital Transformation, EMEA & APAC MarketingLeads the Contact Data Program for Region (EMEA/APAC)We are seeking an outstanding individual to programme manage the entire Contact Data Program for the region (EMEA or APAC). Contact data entails contactable details for customers and prospects and is critical to achieving business goals by supporting outreach to target market segments.To deliver continued high quality contact data as per the requirements of the business, this role will require extensive Stakeholders interactions and management across the business (Sales, Business Development Group & Marketing) as well as with Vendors and Marketing Shared Services.RESPONSIBILITIESThis individual will be an experienced Project Manager or Program Manager with an understanding of contact data and Accounts:Liaise with Business Stakeholders in Sales (Field, Oracle Digital Prime, Applications, Technology), Business Development Group and Marketing to understand requirements around contact data for markets, segments, Personas & Line of BusinessExecute on the requirements working with Vendors, Marketing Shared Services & Contact Data AnalystsScan vendor landscape for new capability and maintain market wise vendor lists that together with regional vendors provide maximum impactSetup local vendor partnerships to deliver contact data with a focus on KPIs, SLAs & cost effectivenessReport & manage vendor performance to extract maximum ROI from investmentsReport on overall results of contact data program. Clear & regular management & Stakeholder communication around results, the benefits and progress of initiativesTrack progress over time of contact data healthAssess levels of engagement with audiences & how often contacts are usedOwn data cleansing for region, working with Marketing Shared Services & vendors to update & maintain contact data information in the Marketing DatabaseSupport initiatives to enable better Rep access to contact data through Oracle systemsManage audience management process for region to determine who the Approvers should beProvide inputs for broader communication of program, objectives, progress, results & timelinesProvide enablement & communication material, as required, to Sales & Business Development Group to drive contact creation & options through RepsThe successful candidate should have:Experience in:Running transformative change programmes in a virtual environment (e.g. leading large scales contact data sourcing initiatives)The delivery of Marketing campaigns preferredProject and Programme ManagementWorking in a multicultural teamWorking and influencing senior management and different functions / lines of businessWorking with and reporting progress to Senior Management (up to VP)Outstanding Skills and Competencies:Engaging Virtual Teams & managing StakeholdersPassionate about best in class customer experience and deliveryEmbracing and Leading Change in a complex fast moving environmentWorking Globally and in multi cultural environmentsKPI tracking and reportingA collaborator, partner and influencer with Sales, BDG and other supporting functions across all levels of the respective organizations.Strategic thinking and attention to detailCommunication at all level of the organisationPrioritizationInfluencing and NegotiationOrganizational AwarenessPlanning & OrganizingResults OrientationNote for Austria:We offer a competitive compensation based on your qualification and experience.As part of Oracles employment process candidates will be required to complete a pre-employment screening process, prior to an offer being made. This will involve identity and employment verification, salary verification, professional references, education verification and professional qualifications and memberships (if applicable).Provides programs to improve operational efficiency, consistency, and compliance in support of the organization*s financial and tactical business objectives. Provides business practices and processes. Develops, communicates, and trains the organization on business practices and processes.Serve as a liaison with other divisions such as Finance, Contracts, HR, Legal, Shared Services, Accounts Receivable, Purchasing, and Risk Management in an effort to ensure accurate and timely transaction processing.Collect, input, verify, correct, and analyze data to measure key performance indicator actual versus business objectives. Provide updates to management regarding budget to actual, informing them of deviations and opportunities.Provide management with economic impact and compliance issues surrounding key business decisions and/or deals. Communicate Oracle Business Practices to the organization and monitor process and approvals for full compliance. Drive implementation of new processes and procedures.Leading contributor individually and as a team member, providing direction and mentoring to others.Work is non-routine and very complex, involving the application of advanced technical/business skills in area of specialization.Ability to collect, organize, and display data in spreadsheet format.Follow-through skills necessary to get information from internal and third parties and have data errors/omissions corrected.For this, relationship management skills strongly desired.Strong written and verbal communication skills.8 plus years relevant work experience.
Yves here. For those of you outside Canada, the recently appointed foreign minister Chrystia Freelands personal history has become a cause celebre. Freeland is fiercely anti-Russian and has attributed it as based on her grandfather having fled Ukraine in 1939 to escape persecution by Stalin.

In reality, Freelands grandfather was a high level Nazi propagandist. As John Helmer, who worked for Freeland when she was at the Globe & Mail, reported in January:

Chrystia Freeland (lead image), appointed last week to be the new Canadian Foreign Minister, claims that her maternal family were the Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution, who fled their home in 1939, after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed on a non-aggression pact and the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. She claims her mother was born in a camp for refugees before finding safe haven in Alberta, Canada. Freeland is lying. The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freelands maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Armys winning phase of the war, Chomiak celebrated in print the Wehrmachts success at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero. Just before Vienna fell to the Soviet forces in March 1945, Chomiak evacuated with the German Army into Germany, ending up near Munich at Bad Worishofen. On September 2, 1946, when Freeland says her mother was born in a refugee camp, she was actually in a well-known spa resort for wealthy Bavarians. The US Army then controlled that part of Germany; they operated an Army hospital at Bad Worishofen and accommodated Chomiak at a spa hotel. US Army records have yet to reveal what the Americans learned about Chomiaks war record, and how he was employed by US Army Intelligence, after he had switched from the Wehrmacht. It took Chomiak another two years before the government in Ottawa allowed the family to enter Canada. The reason the Polish Government is now investigating Freeland is that Chomiaks wartime record not only victimized Galician Jews, but also the Polish citizens of Cracow. In a salute to Freeland as a great friend of Poland by the Polish Embassy in Ottawa last week, Warsaw officials now believe a mistake was made.

And what was the linchpin information for this account? Chomiaks papers, which were found and included in research by John-Paul Himka, an expert in the Holocaust in Ukraine and a former professor of history at the University of Alberts. Himka is also Freelands uncle.

Freeland could have gone the route of saying she had no idea about her grandfathers background or otherwise distancing herself, since many people have horrid relatives and in most cases are not responsible for their actions. But that would expose Freeland to the risk of further digging exposing that she had known about her true family history for some time and continued to misrepresent it. So instead, she has enlisted allies who have shamelessly played the evil Rooskies card, in a way that makes the anti-Trump campaign look tame. But the Globe & Mail got to the bottom of the matter, reporting on March 7 that Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper for over two decades. Yet Freelands office issued a denial a mere day before.

Yet that revelation only pushed Freelands backers in the Canadian media into a higher register of screechiness, with a second article attempting to right Freelands listing reputation, repeatedly calling well-documented accounts of Freelands family history a hoax. As the lawyers say, If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law . If neither are on your side, pound the table.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Since Julius Caesar, Shakespeares version, expressed mortal surprise that his best friend Brutus would put in the knife, there have been no end of political surprises at whose hand turns out to be on the assassins knife. In the case of the hit in January on then-Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion, it is clear to the Canadian foreign policy establishment, members acknowledge, that it was Chrystia Freelands hand. Before, she was a junior trade minister; after, she took Dions portfolio as foreign minister.

Eight weeks later, its becoming clear to Canadian sources that the hand on the knife that is now sticking in Freeland is not the Russian one she is reporting to the Canadian press. That is sticking into her full frontally, and it is less than mortal. Her screams for help have brought a great many screamers to her side.

Its the knife in Freelands back that is more lethal. That, it is now revealed in Ottawa, is coming from a quiet group of foreign policy advisors around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They arent motivated by revenge on Dions behalf as much as concern for their Canada  the policy-making and money-making apparatus on which their future livelihoods depend. In that Canada they dont want Freeland to remain foreign minister or become prime minister. For one thing, they say, shes a liar and cannot be trusted by anyone. In December 2014, as he prepared his run at toppling Stephen Harper, then the Conservative Party Prime Minister, Trudeau assembled a council of advisors on foreign policy. Some were former military officers; some ex-diplomats; others were academics, think-tankers, lawyers. Some were what are known in the Berlin Chancellery, in the German language, as shoes. Thats individuals who are so far up the fundaments of their patrons, all you can see of them is their shoes.

Here is the original list of Trudeaus advisors. Freeland wasnt one of them. Ten months after Catherine McKennas (below, left) appointment to this council, when Trudeau defeated Harper in the election, she was promoted to the cabinet as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. She remains a backer of Freeland, and has been promoting her through media columns bylined by her husband, Scott Gilmore; he is a one-time Canadian government agent in the Indonesian war against East Timor.



Left: Minister McKenna with Prime Minister Trudeau; right, Ambassador Kinsman speaking for Trudeau.

Jeremy Kinsman (above, right) was the senior diplomat in the group; he has served as a counselor in the Canadian Embassy in Washington; then as ambassador in Moscow, Rome, London, and Brussels (European Union). Few Canadian foreign policy analysts are as acute as Kinsman at detecting political conspiracies aimed at Canadas national interests from so many corners of the hostile world; nor at distinguishing the genuine conspiracies from the fakes.

Last week he said: If the unearthing of a conspiracy reveals evidence of one, it is great investigative stuff. But if it doesnt convince, it remains a theory. Last week too, Kinsman was keeping an open book on Freelands future. He acknowledged that she is now under attack. Im not a hysteric about Russias alleged threat. But I think their [expletive deleted] has to be called out as vigorously as anybody elses.

Kinsman also acknowledges there is a higher goal than looking for evidence of conspiracy theories in the press, and thats getting to the truth of what Freeland is doing with Canadas foreign policy. On a deeper and more important level [this] is an issue of vast importance today, the search for truth  which for many reasons is running into purpose-built obstacles in an increasingly adversarial political climate between Russia and other countries. The deteriorated climate especially affects comment and reporting these days between Ukraine and Russia and between the US and Russia. It is aggravated by kompromat operations being levelled with gathering animosity.

Last week Kinsman was ready to give Freeland the benefit of the doubt. I consider that the evidence is not supportive.

This week Kinsman went public in Ottawa with more conviction. On the surface he and other sources from the Canadian foreign affairs ministry are charging someone with a mistake in ousting Dion, and then giving him a dual post that is unprecedented  ambassador to both the European Union and Germany at the same time. Read the report from The Hill Times, a management owned, small circulation publication for Ottawa insiders, which on March 15 published this account of the really unnecessary mistake Trudeau and Freeland have made.

The phrase and the judgement came from Kinsman to the Hill Times reporter. But Kinsman carefully avoided mentioning Freelands role in Dions ouster, and her role in consigning him to the empty space between Brussels and Berlin. How can you have two ambassadors? You cant, Kinsman was quoted as adding.

One of his friends, a former ambassador, sought anonymity in order to say the Dion appointment was foolish and bad judgement. Whose bad judgement do these men mean? And is the bad judgement limited to jobs for the boy, or does it extend to policy for the country? Wacko is the assessment of what is happening, as reported by The Hill Times from Ferry de Kerckhove (right), who has been a Canadian diplomat in Iran and NATO, as well as Canadas ambassador to three of the most important Muslim states  Pakistan (1998-2001), Indonesia (2001-2003) and Egypt (2008-2011).

So far it isnt clear whether wacko was the judgement of these veterans for the performance of the first foreign policy advisor Trudeau appointed to his inner office. That was Roland Paris, an academic hawk on war with Russia, whose engagement was announced in January 2016. Paris turned out to be a lightning rod; he lasted six months before he announced he was honoured to have helped out. Now back to my day job. Canadian media coverage of the judgement on Paris was limited to the remark in a Toronto newspaper that Mr. Paris did not give a reason for leaving.

Paris continues to tweet in support of Freeland, and for Canadian war against Russia.

To offset Pariss excesses and replace a retiring Canadian spymaster turned national security advisor, Trudeaus staff decided in May of last year to pick Daniel Jean, a foreign ministry veteran to be the new national security advisor. Daniel is still at his post, and has made almost no news. He appeared publicly after Freeland was sworn in, but only to explain what he and the rest of the Canadian government didnt know about US President Donald Trumps travel ban from Muslim countries.

According to more than one Canadian source, in putting wasps in the beehive Trudeau has created policy confusion and vulnerability for the policy-making regulars in the ministries and uniformed forces, as well as the veterans, establishment men, and power brokers like Kinsman. For them Freeland has been a rival they lacked the resources and the conviction to fight. They also calculated that for as long as Hillary Clinton looked likely to win the US presidential election, it was foolhardy for them to challenge Freeland directly. For details of the opportunity Freeland expected from Clinton last November, read this.

Then came the cold wind for Trudeau in January. A Toronto Star poll showed the worst numbers for Trudeau since his election day in October 2015. His approval rating was 48%, down 3 points from December 2016; down 10 points from November. His disapproval rating jumped over the same interval from 32% to 42%.

THE RISE AND FALL OF PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAUS POLITICAL RATINGS, DECEMBER 2016 TO MARCH 2017

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/leadermeter/index.html

Canadian politicians and analysts, as well as US observers south of the border, are asking whether Freeland is biding her time to challenge Trudeau for the prime ministry? The answer is in the political wind, Canadian sources say. They point to Wednesdays opinion piece in the Toronto Star, the countrys largest circulation newspaper, in which national affairs columnist Thomas Walkom assesses which way the wind is blowing for Freeland.

Walkom isnt sure, so he reports that the Russian version of Freeland may be true, and Freelands version may be a lie. Not all news that seems to favour Russia is false. The world is a complicated place Nothing illustrates this as neatly as the Freeland affair. The foreign affairs minister, a former journalist, is widely respected. She is smart and capable. By contrast, Putin is viewed as a villain controlling an army of evil minions. Anything that supports the villain by casting aspersions on this nice womans treasured grandfather couldnt possibly be true. Except, of course, when it is. This time, the minions werent lying. That too can happen.

In the British and American constitutional democracies the issue which obliges members of parliament and ministers to resign their office is an act of public turpitude, like lying. Canadian sources believe there is an active Ottawa faction which aims to oust Freeland for just that. For them, as well as for the personal advisors of Trudeau seeking to conserve his power against the dwindling polls, this is the value of the story of Freelands grandfather; his wartime involvement in the ethnic cleansing (mass murder) of Jews, Poles and Russians from the Ukraine; in Freelands involvement in the current war against the Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine; and in her lying.

Freelands small lie about meeting President Vladimir Putin last November, and talking to him at length in Russian, attracted no attention when Freeland said it publicly last January. Ive spoken with the top guy in Russia quite recently, Freeland claimed on Canadian state radio on January 13. We spoke in Russian and we had quite a long conversation. The Kremlin records no such conversation took place; a spokesman for the president added: Vladimir Putin did not have a meeting with Freeland. For more details, click to open.

The lie about Grandfather Michael Chomiak is much bigger. The telltale delay between Freelands appointment on January 10; first reports of her lying about Chomiak which started on January 19; and Freelands press conference statement on March 6 reflects an Ottawa operation to cut Freeland down. Freeland says the operation is a covert Russian one. There were efforts on the Russian side, she said in a scripted remark, to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldnt come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada,

There are Canadians in a position to know who believe there is an operation against Freeland; that it started in Trudeaus office; and that it is picking up momentum in the foreign policy establishment.

These sources believe Freeland got wind of the operation, and decided her best defence was a counterattack on Russia. If her defence fails, she goes. If she survives, her Ukrainian story will be a disqualification for higher office. Either way, Trudeau can calculate he wins.
Yves here. I suspect some readers will try invoking Thomas Schelling to debunk this post. We addressed his famous tipping point theory in ECONNED:

Indeed, appealing or impressive theories are often accepted without being validated. In 1971, highly respected economist, game theorist, and future Nobelist Thomas Schelling published an article, Models of Segregation, which set forth the concept called the tipping point. Schelling developed an elegant analysis using coins of two kinds placed on a game board to simulate mixed-race neighborhoods. He demonstrated that it would take only a small proportion who preferred living with people of the same race to lead to a series of moves that would produce racial segregation. Each set of departures would leave some of the people who remained uncomfortable with the new neighborhood mix, precipitating more departures. Aside from being a clever and novel approach, Schellings explanation may have become popular for darker reasons: after a period of protracted white flight from decaying inner cities, it suggested that perhaps most people werent really all that prejudiced; it took only a few bigots to produce ghettos. Although the theory seemed obviously true in 1971, more recent work by New York University professor of economics William Easterly has found that Schellings predictions were for the most part not borne out. Easterly tabulated census tract data from 1970 to 2000 for metropolitan areas and found that whites had departed neighborhoods that were mainly white to a greater degree than they had mixed-race neighborhoods. Easterly did stress that his findings were only a single check of the theory over a particular time frame. But his analysis still serves to illustrate how appealing stories are too often accepted as received wisdom.

By Klaus Desmet, Altshuler Professor of Cities, Regions and Globalisation, Southern Methodist University. Joseph Flavian Gomes, Assistant Professor, Navarra Center for International Development, University of Navarra, and Ignacio Ortuno-Ortin, Professor of Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Originally published at Alternet

Diverse countries tend to have more conflict, lower development, and worse public goods, possibly due to antagonism between groups. Based on recent research mapping local linguistic diversity across the entire globe, this column argues that local interaction with people of other ethnolinguistic groups can mitigate the negative effect of overall diversity on a countrys outcomes in health, education and public goods. This finding lends support to policies that influence the local mixing of ethnolinguistic groups.

Ethnocentrism is in, and multiculturalism is out, in many Western democracies. The result of the 2016 presidential election in the US and the victory of Brexit in the UK partly reflect a growing unease among the electorate about living in societies that are increasingly diverse. Likewise, in continental Europe, the refugee situation in Germany is bound to become a central theme in the 2017 national elections. The National Front in France is also likely to benefit in the 2017 presidential election by relating home-grown terrorism to diversity.

Although diversity might be increasingly looked upon with suspicion, paradoxically it is often viewed more negatively in relatively homogenous places than in areas that are already highly diverse. In the Brexit referendum, the perception that there were too many immigrants was especially strong in areas with few foreign residents, and much less so in cosmopolitan London: 85% of UK districts with a lower-than-average share of foreign-born residents voted in favour of leaving the EU, compared to only 44% of the other districts (Lawton and Ackrill 2016). Past US presidential elections showed the same pattern. President Trumps America-first rhetoric found little echo in the regions of the US with most undocumented immigrants.

These observations are consistent with contact theory. Although individuals may feel antagonism towards other groups in society, that prejudice is less strong if they interact with these groups in their daily lives (Allport 1954). At face value, this suggests that antagonism between groups in the UK would be minimised if every town mirrored the countrys overall diversity. It is not clear, however, that we can say this relationship is causal, or if it generalises to the whole world.

In fact, not everyone agrees with contact theory. The proponents of conflict theory argue the exact opposite: interaction with individuals of other groups is costly and generates greater antagonism. Empirical evidence is inconclusive on which theory prevails.

One reason we should care whether local interaction mitigates or reinforces antagonism is that diverse countries tend to have more conflict, lower development, and worse public goods, and this antagonism would be an explanation. In our recent work, we develop a global database of local language use to investigate how local interaction changes the impact of a countrys overall ethnolinguistic diversity on a countrys public goods outcomes in health, education and infrastructure (Desmet et al. 2016). If it were to mitigate the negative effect of overall diversity, we would interpret this as evidence in favour of contact theory.

The Theory of Local Interaction, Local Learning and Antagonism

Our starting point is a simple framework to measure a countrys antagonism. Suppose that an individual feels antagonism towards another randomly chosen individual in his country if they belong to different ethnolinguistic groups. Averaging across all possible random matches yields an antagonism measure that corresponds to the standard ethnolinguistic fractionalisation index  the probability that two random individuals of a country speak a different language. For example, if we take two Belgians at random, there is a 54% chance that they have a different mother tongue.

So far we have not taken into account local interaction. Now assume that the antagonism an individual feels towards someone from another group in his country is affected by the amount of local interaction he has with people from that group. For example, the antagonism of a Dutch-speaking Belgian towards all French-speaking Belgians in his country depends on how much he locally interacts with French-speaking Belgians. We refer to this additional effect as local learning.1 Depending on whether contact theory or conflict theory dominates, local learning can either mitigate or reinforce the existing antagonism as measured by fractionalisation.

Note that not all local interaction leads to the same amount of local learning. For example, if a Dutch-speaking Belgian interacts with an Italian-speaking Belgian locally, this will not affect overall antagonism much if there are few Italian-speaking Belgians in the rest of the country. In this example, there might be a lot of local interaction, but not much local learning. Hence, what matters for antagonism is the amount of effective learning that occurs because of local interaction.

The Geography of Diversity

Next we measure fractionalisation and local learning in the data. Combining detailed maps from Ethnologue on 6,905 unique languages spoken, and population counts at a fine geographic resolution from Landscan, we created a global database on local language use for each 5km-by-5km grid cell in the world.

This allows us to compute fractionalisation (Figure 1) and average local learning (Figure 2) for all countries. There are many interesting differences. For example, fractionalisation is much higher in Chad than in the Central African Republic, but the reverse is true for average local learning. This is a result of more local mixing in the Central African Republic, as can be seen in Figure 3, which shows local learning for each 5km-by-5km grid cell.

Another example may be useful to clarify the difference between overall fractionalisation and local learning. While fractionalisation is virtually identical in Guatemala (0.53) and Mauritius (0.52), local learning is much lower in Guatemala. In Guatemala indigenous language speakers are concentrated in the central and northwestern highlands, and have limited contact with Spanish speakers. In contrast, Mauritians switch languages according to the occasion in the way other people change clothes (Chiba 2006). As a result, our index of local learning was much higher in Mauritius (0.20) than in Guatemala (0.06).

Of course, how local learning affects a countrys overall antagonism depends on whether contact theory or conflict theory is a better explanation. If contact theory is correct, then local learning mitigates the antagonism that comes from fractionalisation. In that case, antagonism would be lower in Mauritius than in Guatemala. The reverse would be true if conflict theory were the dominant force.

Figure 1 Ethnolinguistic fractionalisation

Figure 2 Average local learning

Figure 3 Local learning



Health, Education and Infrastructure

Empirical research has found that ethnolinguistic fractionalisation tends to worsen public goods outcomes (La Porta et al. 1999, Alesina et al. 2003, Desmet et al. 2012). One interpretation is that antagonism makes it hard for a diverse society to agree on public goods. Different groups may fight over which language to use in education, the shape of the road network, or where to put the nations main hospitals.

Our discussion suggests that local learning may mitigate or reinforce the overall antagonism coming from a fractionalised society. Hence, we should take the degree of local learning into account when exploring the link between diversity and public goods outcomes. This is what we do in Desmet et al. (2016). Holding overall fractionalisation constant, we find that local learning improved a wide variety of public goods outcomes in health, education and infrastructure.

These results lend support to contact theory. The effects are large. For example, a one-standard-deviation increase in local learning lowers child mortality by 7.4 per thousand live births. To put this figure into perspective, in its effect on child mortality, a one-standard deviation increase in local learning is equivalent to a 61% increase in GDP per capita.

Before jumping to policy conclusions about local mixing, reverse causality is potentially a concern. In societies with poor public goods, individuals from the same linguistic group may prefer to cluster geographically to support each other. If so, this would lead to reverse causality, with public goods outcomes affecting the spatial sorting of individuals of different linguistic groups. To address this concern, we use an instrumental variable approach following Alesina and Zhuravskaya (2011). This allows us to conclude that there is a causal positive effect of local learning on the quality of public goods. Overall, contact theory trumps conflict theory.

Lets Mix

Going back to our earlier discussion, we can conclude that making each town mirror a countrys overall diversity would improve public goods outcomes. Although in most countries governments do not tell people where to live, there are many policies that would influence the local mixing of ethnolinguistic groups. European governments commonly use social housing to geographically spread ethnic minorities, making neighbourhoods and cities more equal in their diversity. Singapore, where more than 80% of the population lives in public housing, has a quota system ensuring that each housing block resembles the nations ethnic make-up. In a different setting, contact theory was also an important argument in the US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the racial desegregation of public schools (Putnam 2007). Of course, these policies would be controversial, because they trade off individual freedom of choice with desirable social outcomes.

See original post for references
Using gold coating to control luminescence of nanowires (Nanowerk News) In electronics, the race for smaller is huge.

Physicists at the University of Cincinnati are working to harness the power of nanowires, microscopic wires that have the potential to improve solar cells or revolutionize fiber optics.

Nanotechnology has the potential to solve the bottleneck that occurs in storing or retrieving digital data - or could store data in a completely new way. UC professors and their graduate students presented their research at the March 13 conference of the American Physical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hans-Peter Wagner, associate professor of physics, and doctoral student Fatemesadat Mohammadi are looking at ways to transmit data with the speed of fiber optics but at a significantly smaller scale.

Wagner and lead author Mohammadi are studying this field, called plasmonics, with researchers from three other universities. For the novel experiment, they built nanowire semiconductors with organic material, fired laser pulses at the sample and measured the way light traveled across the metal; technically, the excitations of plasmon waves.

University of Cincinnati graduate student Fatemesadat Mohammadi and Associate Professor Hans-Peter Wagner are exploring nanowire semiconductors to harness the power of light at the nano level.

"So, if we succeed in getting a better understanding about the coupling between the excitations in semiconductor nanowires and metal films, it could open up a lot of new perspectives," Wagner said.

The successful harnessing of this phenomenon -- called plasmon waveguiding -- could allow researchers to transmit data with light at the nano level.

Universities around the world are studying nanowires, which have ubiquitous applications from biomedical sensors to light-emitting diodes or LEDs. Four UC papers on the topic are among more than 150 others by nanowire researchers around the world to be presented at the March conference.

"You're trying to optimize the physical structure on something approaching the atomic scale. You can make very high efficiency devices like lasers," said Leigh Smith, head of UC's Department of Physics.?Smith and UC Physics Professor Howard Jackson also presented papers on nanowires at the conference.?Virtually everyone benefits from this line of research, even if the quantum mechanics underlying the latest biosensors exceed a casual understanding. For example, home pregnancy tests use gold nanoparticles - the indicator that turns color.?"People use technologies all the time that they don't understand," Smith said. "Arthur C. Clarke said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp., observed that the number of transistors used in a microchip has roughly doubled every two years since the 1970s. This phenomenon, now called Moore's Law suggests that computer processing power improves at a predictable rate.

Some computer scientists predicted the demise of Moore's Law was inevitable with the advent of microprocessors. But nanotechnology is extending that concept's lifespan, said Brian Markwalter, senior vice president of research and technology for the Consumer Technology Association. His trade group represents 2,200 members in the $287 billion U.S. tech industry.

"It's not a race to be small just to be the smallest. There's a progression of being able to do more on smaller chips. The effect for consumers is that every year they get better and better products for the same price or less," he said.

Nanotechnology is opening a universe of new possibilities, Markwalter said.

"It's almost magical. They get better, faster, cheaper and use less power," he said.

Markwalter said UC professor Wagner's research is exciting because it shows promise in using optical switches to address a bottleneck in data transmission that occurs whenever you try to store or remove data.

"It's really a breakthrough area to merge the semiconductor world and the optical world," Markwalter said. "[Wagner's] working at the intersection of fiber optics and photonics."

But even nanotechnology has its limits, Smith said.

"We're running toward the limits of what's physically possible with present technologies," Smith said. "The challenges are pretty immense. In 10 or 20 years there has to be a fundamental paradigm shift in how we make structures. If we don't we'll be caught at the same place we are now."

How one UC experiment works:

UC graduate student Fatemesadat Mohammadi and Associate Physics Professor Hans-Peter Wagner fire laser pulses at semiconductor nanowires to excite electrons (called excitons) that potentially serve as an energy pump to guide plasmon waves over a coated metal film just a few nanometers thick without losing power, a nettlesome physical property called resistivity

They measure the resulting luminescence of the nanowire to observe how light couples to the metal film. By sending light over a metal film, a process called plasmonic waveguiding, researchers one day could transmit data with light at the nano level.

"The luminescence is our interest. So we coat them and see: How does the photoluminescence characteristic change?" Mohammadi said.

To make the semiconductor, they use a technique called high-vacuum organic molecular beam deposition (pictured above) to spread organic and metal layers on gallium-nitride nanorods.

The use of organic film is unique to the UC experiment, Wagner said. The film works as a spacer to control the energy flow between excitons in the nanowire and the oscillation of metal electrons called plasmons.

The organic material has the added benefit of also containing excitons that, arranged properly, could support the energy flow in a semiconductor, he said.

Coating the nanorods with gold significantly shortens the lifetime of the exciton emission resulting in what's called a quenched photoluminescence. But by using organic spacers between the nanorod and the gold film, the researchers are able to extend the emission lifetime to nearly the equivalent of nanorods without a coating.

Once the gold-coated sample is prepared, they take it to an adjacent lab room and subject it to pulses of laser light.

Mohammadi said it took days of painstaking work to arrange the small city of mirrors and beam splitters bolted at precise angles to a workbench for the experiment (pictured above left).

The reactions in the nanowire take just 10 picoseconds (which is a trillionth of a second.) And the laser pulses are faster still -- 20 femtoseconds (a figure that has 15 zeros following it or a quadrillionth of a second.)
A golden discovery for wearable technology (Nanowerk News) Some day, your smartphone might completely conform to your wrist, and when it does, it might be covered in pure gold, thanks to researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Writing in the March 17 issue of the journal Science ("Epitaxial lift-off of electrodeposited single-crystal gold foils for flexible electronics"), the Missouri S&T researchers say they have developed a way to grow thin layers of gold on single crystal wafers of silicon, remove the gold foils, and use them as substrates on which to grow other electronic materials.

An example of a gold foil peeled from single crystal silicon. ( Science)

The research teams discovery could revolutionize wearable or flexible technology research, greatly improving the versatility of such electronics in the future.

According to lead researcher Dr. Jay A. Switzer, the majority of research into wearable technology has been done using polymer substrates, or substrates made up of multiple crystals. And then they put some typically organic semiconductor on there that ends up being flexible, but you lose the order that (silicon) has, says Switzer, Donald L. Castleman/FCR Endowed Professor of Discovery in Chemistry at S&T.

Because the polymer substrates are made up of multiple crystals, they have what are called grain boundaries, says Switzer. These grain boundaries can greatly limit the performance of an electronic device.

Say youre making a solar cell or an LED, he says. In a semiconductor, you have electrons and you have holes, which are the opposite of electrons. They can combine at grain boundaries and give off heat. And then you end up losing the light that you get out of an LED, or the current or voltage that you might get out of a solar cell.

Most electronics on the market are made of silicon because its relatively cheap, but also highly ordered, Switzer says.

99.99 percent of electronics are made out of silicon, and theres a reason  it works great, he says. Its a single crystal, and the atoms are perfectly aligned. But, when you have a single crystal like that, typically, its not flexible.

By starting with single crystal silicon and growing gold foils on it, Switzer is able to keep the high order of silicon on the foil. But because the foil is gold, its also highly durable and flexible.

We bent it 4,000 times, and basically the resistance didnt change, he says.

The gold foils are also essentially transparent because they are so thin. According to Switzer, his team has peeled foils as thin as seven nanometers.

Switzer says the challenge his research team faced was not in growing gold on the single crystal silicon, but getting it to peel off as such a thin layer of foil. Gold typically bonds very well to silicon.

So we came up with this trick where we could photo-electrochemically oxidize the silicon, Switzer says. And the gold just slides off.

Photoelectrochemical oxidation is the process by which light enables a semiconductor material, in this case silicon, to promote a catalytic oxidation reaction.

Switzer says thousands of gold foilsor foils of any number of other metalscan be made from a single crystal wafer of silicon.

The research teams discovery can be considered a happy accident. Switzer says they were looking for a cheap way to make single crystals when they discovered this process.
How fullerite becomes harder than diamond (Nanowerk News) Fullerite generally is a molecular crystal with fullerene molecules at its lattice nodes. Fullerenes are a form of molecular carbon where carbon atoms form a sphere. It was first synthesized over thirty years ago, and its discovery was awarded with the Nobel Prize. Carbon spheres in fullerite may be packed in different ways, and the hardness of the material strongly depends on how the fullerenes are connected to each other.

(left) molecule of fullerene, (middle) fullerite, (right) polymerized fullerite (SH-phase)

A group of scientists from MIPT, Skoltech, NUST MISIS and the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials (FSBSI TISNCM, Moscow, Troitsk) headed by Prof. Leonid Chernozatonskii from the Institute of Biochemical Physics (IBCP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Pavel Sorokin, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Science, leading researcher at NUST MISIS Inorganic Nanomaterials Laboratory, and professor at MIPT, managed to explain why fullerite becomes an ultra-hard material (Carbon, "Fullerite-based nanocomposites with ultrahigh stiffness. Theoretical investigation").

When we started to discuss this idea, I was working at TISNCM. There, in 1998, a group of scientists headed by Vladimir D. Blank obtained a new material based on fullerenes  ultrahard fullerite, or tisnumit. According to the measurements, this new material could scratch diamond, that is, it was in fact harder than diamond, remarked Alexander Kvashnin, Candidate of Physics and Mathematics, the main author.

The obtained substance was not single crystal material; it contained amorphous carbon and 3D-polymerized molecules of C 60 . Still, its crystal structure is not completely determined. The fullerene molecule has excellent mechanical rigidity. At the same time, the fullerite crystal is quite a soft material under normal conditions, but becomes harder than diamond under pressure (due to the 3D polymerization).

Although this material has been synthesized and studied for more than 20 years now, the reason why it becomes ultrahard is still unknown. There is a number of models that have been developed to explain how fullerenes can be polymerized into fullerite.

One of the models was proposed by Prof. Leonid A. Chernozatonskii. The X-ray diffraction pattern of the model perfectly agrees with experimental data and should have high volumetric bulk modulus, several times higher than the diamond value. But the relaxed structure of the model does not display such fascinating properties.

Model of fullerite inside diamond. (Image: A. Kvashnin)

Alexander Kvashnin remarks, We based our analysis on that model and the experimentally known fact that if you apply high pressure, more than 10 GPa to fullerene powder, and heat it above 1800 K, you obtain a polycrystalline diamond. The idea was to combine these two facts. On the one hand, a super-hard fullerite material, and on the other hand, under pressure, fullerenes turn into a polycrystalline diamon.

The scientists suggested that under pressure, part of the fullerite turned into diamond, while the other part remained as fullerite, but in a compressed state within the diamond. To simplify the model, the fullerite crystal structure proposed by Prof. Chernozatonskii was taken and placed inside a single crystal diamond. Then this composite material was studied. The idea was that fullerite inside diamond should be compressed.

It is known that in the compressed state, the elastic and mechanical properties of the material would increase. And diamond would act as a shell, which keeps the compressed fullerite inside to preserve all those properties.

In the study, they first analysed small models containing 2.5 nm fullerite grain inside the 1 nm thick diamond shell. However, such a small model did not comply with the experimental data. Then the researchers started modelling the composites, where the size of fullerite was increased up to 15.8 nm, and the thickness of diamond shell remained the same.

The changes in the X-ray diffraction spectrum showed that the increase in the fullerite size brought the spectrum closer to the experimental data. After comparing the spectra, it was assumed that most likely in the experiment, they had obtained an amorphous carbon medium with a hydrostatically compressed fullerite inside, while the model dealt with a diamond containing a fullerite inside. According to the calculated spectrum, the new model correlated very well with the experimental data.

The developed model will help us to understand the nature of its unique properties and to help to systematically synthesize the new ultra-hard carbon materials, as well as to contribute to the further development of this promising field of science, said Pavel Sorokin, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Science, head of the project.
Better nanoimages 'spin' the path to improved magnetic memory (Nanowerk News) In work that could help make possible a faster, longer-lasting and lower-energy method of data storage for consumers and businesses, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have developed a technique for imaging and studying a promising class of magnetic devices with 10 times more detail than optical microscopes.

Magnetic materials have attracted a growing number of researchers in the quest to more rapidly store and read bits of digital information. In a magnetic system, data is encoded by the direction of the magnetization: A bar magnet with its north pole pointing up can represent the binary code 0, while the same magnet with its north pole pointing down can represent a 1. Unlike the standard semiconductor computer chip, magnetic memory devices can retain information even if the power is turned off.

By controlling when and how quickly the magnetization can be flipped without expending significant electrical power, scientists hope to improve an existing technology called Magnetic Random Access Memory, or MRAM, into a leading tool for reading, writing and storing information. MRAM is not yet competitive with other existing methods of data storage such as flash RAM, but offers advantages over present-day technologies such as reduced energy consumption.

Strips of magnetic material (small colored rectangles) sit atop blocks of a nonmagnetic heavy metal (large blue rectangles). When an electric field is applied to a nonmagnetic block, a flow of spin-polarized electrons enters the magnetic strips and alters the direction of magnetization (black arrows). (Image: Dill/NIST)

To realize the promise of MRAM, researchers are probing the nanometer-scale magnetic structure of thin metal films that have the potential to serve as memory devices in MRAM. At NIST, Ian Gilbert and his colleagues have used a high-resolution electron-imaging technique, developed by physicist John Unguris, to examine the nanostructure of magnetic films before and after their magnetization is reversed.

The technique, scanning electron microscopy with polarization analysis (SEMPA), uses a beam of electrons scattered from a thin film to reveal the nanoscale topography, replete with miniature hills and valleys, of the films surface. Electrons ejected from the surface by the incoming electron beam are also detected and separated according to the direction of their spina quantum property that endows the charged particles with an intrinsic angular momentum and tiny magnetic field. The direction of the ejected electrons spins reveals variations in the samples magnetic structurechanges in the direction of magnetizationon a scale about 10 times smaller than seen with an optical microscope.

SEMPAs ability to discern tiny magnetic structures is critical as engineers fabricate smaller and smaller magnetic memory devices, noted Gilbert. With SEMPA, we can see these really fine textures in the magnetization, he said.

Gilbert and his collaborators, which include scientists from NIST and the University of Maryland, also used electron spin to flip the magnetization in their thin-film sample, an alloy of cobalt, iron and boron. By passing a small electric current through an underlying strip of a nonmagnetic metal film such as platinum, the team created a stream of electrons whose spins all point in the same direction. When this stream of electrons, known as a spin current, passed through the magnetic thin film, their spin exerted a small twisting force, or torque, on the magnetic regions of the film. The torque was large enough to rotate and flip the magnetization.

The SEMPA images taken before a current was applied revealed that the direction of the magnetization varied, on the nanoscale, across the thin-film sample. Each small region of the sample has its own preferred axis along which the magnetization points, said Gilbert. The team recently reported its findings in the journal Physical Review B.

Such nanoscale variations of the magnetization could become crucial to document, said Gilbert, for engineers trying to optimize the performance of a magnetic memory device. The variation in magnetization direction could also affect the ability of electron spin to flip the magnetization.

Instead of flipping magnetization up or down, the spin current flips the magnetization along whatever its preferred local [spin] axis happens to be, notes Gilbert. The variation in magnetization direction suggests that materials used for magnetic memory devices may need to be gently heated, a process that aligns nanoscale magnetic domains.

In separate work, NIST scientists Mark Stiles and Vivek Amin, who has a joint appointment with the University of Maryland, focus on the theor describing the torque measured in the SEMPA experiments. There, a stream of polarized electrons generated in a nonmagnetic metal strip interacts with the magnetization of an overlying material. In particular, the team has developed a model that may help determine which group of polarized electrons play the more important role in reversing the direction of magnetization in adjacent materialthose originating at the surface of the nonmagnetic material or those from the interior.

The answer could guide the fabrication of more efficient magnetic memory devices. For instance, determining which group of electrons are the dominant actors could suggest ways to minimize the current needed to flip the magnetization, Stiles said.

Right now, were in the process of publicizing the model to experimentalists, trying to get them to use it to better understand their data, he noted.

References

I. Gilbert, P.J. Chen, D.B. Gopman, A.L. Balk, D.T. Pierce, M.D. Stiles and J. Unguris, Nanoscale imaging of magnetization reversal driven by spin-orbit torque. Phys. Rev. B. Published online September 23, 2016. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.94.094429 (link is external)

V.P. Amin and M.D. Stiles, Spin transport at interfaces with spin-orbit coupling: Formalism. Phys. Rev. B. Published online September 16, 2016. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.94.104419 (link is external)
Watching the orbital angular momentum of plasmons on a nanoscale with subfemtosecond time resolution (Nanowerk News) A team of Israeli and German researchers from Technion in Haifa and the universities of Kaiserslautern, Duisburg-Essen and Stuttgart have been able to reveal for the first time the dynamics of the orbital angular momentum of plasmons. The researchers used a combination of extremely high-quality single crystals of gold, ultrafast laser pulses and an electron microscope. Their findings are published in Science in the March 17, 2017 issue ("Revealing the subfemtosecond dynamics of orbital angular momentum in nanoplasmonic vortices").

Illustration of light interacting with a gold surface with 4-fold symmetric Archimedean spirals: Plasmons with orbital angular momentum are excited and swirl towards the center. (Image: Sven Hein, University of Stuttgart)

When an electron orbits around the nucleus in an atom, simple models describe its motion with spin and angular momentum. Spin means, in a classical picture, that the electron spins around much like a little sphere, and angular momentum describes the motion of the electron around the nucleus. This model is very similar to the earth orbiting the sun, spinning around an axis that extends from the North to the South Pole (which takes a day), while simultaneously travelling around the sun (which takes a year).

Light can have similar properties: Its spin, which should rather be called helicity, tells us whether a photon has right-handed or left-handed circular polarization. But what corresponds to the angular momentum? This is the so-called orbital angular momentum, which describes a wavefront that spirals around like a helix, just like a staircase in a tower.

This orbital angular momentum has recently gained a lot of attention, as researchers hope to encode information into it and thus either enhance the capacity of fiber optical communication systems, or use it for quantum information protocols, which might be useful for secure communication.

However, the size of these beams cannot be smaller than one wavelength of light, or about half a micrometer in the visible spectrum, which limits the possibility to integrate such beams into tiny devices in the future.

Here is where plasmonics enters the picture. Plasmons are collective electron oscillations in metals that can be excited by light. If a stream of photons impinges, for example, onto a gold surface, the electric field of the light field makes the negatively charged electrons oscillate back and forth, just like water in a bottle when it is shaken. The advantage of these plasmonic oscillations is that they are bound to the surface of the gold or to the interface between gold and its substrate, and that they can have a much smaller wavelength than the original light. Therefore, they are ideally suited for integrated devices with sizes below 100 nm.

The Israeli/German research team cut Archimedean spirals into the gold, which allowed the light to excite plasmons that had orbital angular momentum. Grisha Spektor from Technion in Haifa, the first author of the paper, came up with the idea to vary the geometry of the spirals, hence creating angular orbital momentum that ranged from 1 all the way to 10. Bettina Frank from Harald Giessens group in Stuttgart was able to produce extremely high-quality gold samples that had single crystal properties and were atomically flat. They cut the spirals into those crystals. Martin Aeschlimann and Deirdre Kilbane in Kaiserslautern and Philip Kahl and Frank Meyer zu Heringdorf in Duisburg then used ultrafast lasers to shine light pulses as short as 13 femtoseconds (10 -15 seconds) onto the crystals, which created plasmon waves.

They observed with an electron microscope how the plasmons ejected electrons at the top of the metal and could in such manner image the plasmonic waves. By sending two ultrashort laser pulses with a delay onto the sample and then varying the delay, it was possible to record complete movies of the plasmon waves. In this case, the first pulse created the plasmon and the second pulse interacted with the plasmon and liberated electrons on the surface, which were then imaged.

The researchers were stunned to observe the formation of plasmonic vortices by inward spiraling plasmon waves, and to see how those vortices spun around on a time scale that was comparable with the time that light needs to complete an oscillation, a so-called optical cycle.

The larger the orbital angular momentum, the longer the vortex takes to spin around. Interestingly, the observation of the vortex dynamics can also be used to distinguish the helicity of the light, meaning that one can separate left- from right-handed circular polarization.
Transparent ceramics make super-hard windows (Nanowerk News) Scientists have synthesised the first transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic at DESY. The result is a super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride that can potentially be used under extreme conditions like in engines, as the Japanese-German team writes in the journal Scientific Reports ("Transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride").

Cubic silicon nitride (c-Si 3 N 4 ) forms under high pressure and is the second hardest transparent nanoceramic after diamond but can withstand substantially higher temperatures.

This is a sample of transparent polycrystalline cubic silicon nitride with a diameter of approximately two millimeters, synthesized at DESY. (Image: Norimasa Nishiyama, DESY/Tokyo Tech)

"Silicon nitride is a very popular ceramic in industry," explains lead author Dr. Norimasa Nishiyama from DESY who now is an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. "It is mainly used for ball bearings, cutting tools and engine parts in automotive and aircraft industry."

The ceramic is extremely stable, because the silicon nitrogen bond is very strong. At ambient pressures, silicon nitride has a hexagonal crystal structure and sintered ceramic of this phase is opaque. Sintering is the process of forming macroscopic structures from grain material using heat and pressure. The technique is widely used in industry for a broad range of products from ceramic bearings to artificial teeth.

At pressures above 130 thousand times the atmospheric pressure, silicon nitride transforms into a crystal structure with cubic symmetry that experts call spinel-type in reference to the structure of a popular gemstone. Artificial spinel (MgAl 2 O 4 ) is widely used as transparent ceramic in industry.

"The cubic phase of silicon nitride was first synthesised by a research group at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999, but knowledge of this material is very limited," says Nishiyama.

His team used a large volume press (LVP) at DESY to expose hexagonal silicon nitride to high pressures and temperatures. At approximately 156 thousand times the atmospheric pressure (15.6 gigapascals) and a temperature of 1800 degrees Celsius a transparent piece of cubic silicon nitride formed with a diameter of about two millimetres.

"It is the first transparent sample of this material," emphasises Nishiyama.

Analysis of the crystal structure at DESY's X-ray light source PETRA III showed that the silicon nitride had completely transformed into the cubic phase.

"The transformation is similar to carbon that also has a hexagonal crystal structure at ambient conditions and transforms into a transparent cubic phase called diamond at high pressures," explains Nishiyama. "However, the transparency of silicon nitride strongly depends on the grain boundaries. The opaqueness arises from gaps and pores between the grains."

Investigations with a scanning transmission electron microscope at the University of Tokyo showed that the high-pressure sample has only very thin grain boundaries. "Also, in the high-pressure phase oxygen impurities are distributed throughout the material and do not accumulate at the grain boundaries like in the low-pressure phase. That's crucial for the transparency," says Nishiyama.

"Cubic silicon nitride is the hardest and toughest transparent spinel ceramic ever made," summarises Nishiyama. The scientists foresee diverse industrial applications for their super-hard windows. "Cubic silicon nitride is the third hardest ceramic known, after diamond and cubic boron nitride," explains Nishiyama. "But boron compounds are not transparent, and diamond is only stable up to approximately 750 degrees Celsius in air. Cubic silicon nitride is transparent and stable up to 1400 degrees Celsius."
LONDON, March 17 (Reuters) - At least three euro zone countries are scheduled to sell bonds next week.

* On Monday, Slovakia is expected to offer two bonds due in 2023 and 2027.

* Also on Monday, Belgium will issue debt maturing in 2027, 2038 and 2041, according to the country's debt office.

* Germany is scheduled to sell 3 billion euros of 10-year bonds on Wednesday.

* Analysts said Portugal may also sell debt at auction next week, with a potential announcement later on Friday.

(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by John Geddie)
Controlling the formation of ice on surfaces

(Nanowerk Spotlight) In recent years, researchers working on de-icing and anti-icing strategies have been inspired by biology and nanotechnology to develop nanocoatings and other nanostructured surfaces.

Researchers now have demonstrated the ability to spatially control frost nucleation (ice formation from water vapor) and to manipulate ice crystal growth kinetics.

"The spatial control of icing in the condensation-freezing process and through the coating of hydrophilic materials has been demonstrated before," Ming-Chang Lu, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Chiao Tung University, tells Nanowerk. "However, the ice nucleation control and the confinement of ice crystal growth direction through manipulating the roughness scale have not been reported in the literature."

Control of ice growth kinetics. (A) Hexagonal ice composed by two basal facets (c-axis) and six prism facets (a-axis). (B) Random and aligned orientations of c-axes were found on trapezoid-shaped microgrooves (TMG) and V-shaped microgrooves (VMG) surfaces, respectively. (C) Ice embryos appear on the side walls, the edges, and the valleys of groove on TMG surfaces, resulting in different orientations of ice crystals. On the other hand, an ice embryo forms only at the valley of grooves on the VMG surface, leading to the confined ice orientation. Scale bars are 15 m. (Reprinted with permission by American Chemical Society) (click on image to enlarge)

In previous work, Lu and his team demonstrated that heterogeneous nucleation of condensation could be spatially controlled by manipulating surface roughness (Advanced Functional Materials, "Spatial Control of Heterogeneous Nucleation on the Superhydrophobic Nanowire Array"). This motivated them to further explore whether the same control could be achieved in the icing process.

Indeed, as they recently have reported in ACS Nano ("Control of Ice Formation"), they found that a surface's anti-icing (preventing ice formation) and deicing performances could be promoted through the control of nucleation and the confinement of the ice crystal growth direction.

The scientists achieved control of nucleation and the confinement of the crystal growth kinetics by manipulating the local free energy barrier for nucleation.

Moreover, the growth kinetics of ice can also be altered by adjusting the shape of microgrooves on the surface: Ice stacked along the direction of V-shaped microgrooves, whereas it grew in random directions on trapezoid-shaped microgrooves.

As the researchers demonstrate in their paper, the spatial control of frost formation and the confinement of ice-growing kinetics improved the anti-icing and deicing performances.

"We have shown that ice formation and ice crystal growth could be manipulated by tailoring surface roughness," notes Lu. "We believe that our results could be potentially applied to alleviate the icing issues in many industrial systems such as power transmission systems, telecommunication systems, heat exchangers, aircraft, etc."

In this work, the team systematically investigated  under an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM)  frosting and deicing processes on a plain silicon surface, a silicon nanowire (SiNW) array-coated surface, and V-shaped and trapezoid-shaped microgroove patterned surfaces.

Nucleation is the first step of the phase transition during freezing. The team's goal is to gain complete control of the ice formation process including nucleation, crystal growth, and ice spreading.

"The results we demonstrated were on a silicon surface and on a laboratory chip; in my opinion, the future directions for this research are to explore whether the phenomena could be realized on other materials and on a larger scale," concludes Lu. "The ultimate goal is to have full controls of icing and deicing processes."
General Petr Pavel met with the Spanish Defence Minister, Mrs. Maria Dolores de Cospedal, the Chief of Defence, Admiral Fernando Garcia Sanchez and other high level military officials during his visit to Madrid, Spain on 15-16 March 2017. The Chairman thanked them for Spains continued and active commitment to NATO. The Chairman stressed how much NATO valued Spains presence in NATO Operations, Missions and Activities and appreciated the professionalism and expertise of its soldiers.

Discussions with Mrs. Maria Dolores de Cospeda centered on NATOs adaptation, current and future security challenges, defence spending and capabilities. We face threats from many directions, and we do not have the luxury to choose among them. As the Alliance adapts, I am grateful for Spains continued support and strong commitment. Spain is a valuable Ally, said the Chairman.

Taking a moment to pay his respects to those soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for peace and security, General Pavel, accompanied by Admiral Fernando Garcia Sanchez, laid a wreath at the Monument to the Fallen of Spain.

While in Spain, General Pavel visited NATOs Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) located in Torrejon. The Chairman was greeted by the Command and staff, shown the Operations room and briefed by Maj Gen Ruben Carlos Garcia Servert, the CAOC Commander on the CAOCs mission and activities.

The Chairmans meeting with Admiral Fernando Garcia Sanchez focused on Spains active involvement in NATOs Operations, Missions and Activities. Spain makes significant contributions to our shared security. Wherever NATO is present, Spain is right there. On the land, on the sea and in the air said General Pavel.

Speaking to students at the Centro Superior de Estudios de la Defensa Nacional (CESEDEN), Spains National Defence Academy, General Pavel emphasised the need for cooperation and a holistic approach to current and future challenges. The Chairman stated Our strength comes not from our military might. Our strength comes from our network of allies, partners, and like-minded friends.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ended a two day visit to Denmark on Friday (17 March 2017) with talks with Prime Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen. Mr. Stoltenberg thanked the Prime Minister for his countrys continued commitment to the Alliance and the two discussed NATOs adaptation to the new security environment. The Secretary General and Prime Minister also discussed fair burden sharing in NATO and preparations for the upcoming meeting of Allied leaders in Brussels this May.

Denmark is actively engaged in NATO missions and operations and it supports efforts to project stability in Iraq, Georgia and Ukraine. Denmark also intends to join a UK-led battlegroup in Estonia next year. Other Allies from Europe and North America are deploying battlegroups to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to strengthen NATOs deterrence and defence.

During his visit to Copenhagen Mr. Stoltenberg had a private audience with Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II. The Secretary General also had talks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anders Samuelsen, and the Minister of Defence, Mr. Claus Hjort Frederiksen. Mr. Stoltenberg had a meeting with members of the Foreign Policy and Defence Committees.

On the final day of his visit the Secretary General took part in a wreath laying ceremony at the Monument to Denmarks International Effort Since 1948.
(Natural News) OxyContin has practically become synonymous with the opioid epidemic currently plaguing the United States. The infamous drugs manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, reportedly reeled in over $3 billion in profits from OxyContin by 2010  but these profits have come with a deadly price. In 2015, over 15,000 people died from an overdose involving a prescribed opioid and the CDC reports that approximately half of all over dose deaths in the U.S. are related to prescription opioids of some kind.

In recent years, several cities and states have sought to hold the pharmaceutical companies behind the drugs accountable for their role in the proliferation of opioid drug addiction. Purdue Pharma, which is widely considered to be the company that started it all, has paid out millions upon millions of dollars in settlements over the course of the last decade or so. The state of Kentucky, for example, filed suit against the drug company for fraud, conspiracy and negligence in the development and marketing of their star drug, OxyContin. Purude reportedly settled that suit for $24 million, but no admission of wrongdoing was ever uttered.

Purdue has a laundry list of legal complaints frequently related to their aggressive and misleading marketing tactics. The pharma giant has come under fire for billing OxyContin as a 12-hour drug, despite knowing that in many people, it wears off far sooner than that  and leaves consumers writhing for more as they experience narcotic withdrawal.

A new lawsuit filed by lawmakers from the city of Everett, Washington, has a different sort of spin on it: they claim that Purdue Pharma knew that their drug was being illegally trafficked, and did nothing to stop it.

Washington state officials are accusing the drug company for gross negligence, and they have proof.

LA Times investigation prompts legal action

The lawsuit follows a massive investigation led by the Los Angeles Times that traced illegally prescribed pills from LA up and down the West Coast. Reporter Harriet Ryan, who was part of the investigative team, recently spoke with NPRs Rachel Martin.

During the interview, Ryan explained that it all started with a fake clinic in downtown LA where corrupt physicians were writing hefty prescriptions of opioids to the homeless. The drug ring would then take the homeless person to the pharmacy to fill their prescription and inevitably, the pills were then being sold in cities along the coast. Ryan believes huge quantities of these so-called medications were being illegally trafficked throughout the western portion of the U.S.

Eventually, an employee of Purdue Pharma noticed what was going on, and flagged the behavior as suspicious. The pharma giant apparently does have security in place to monitor for diversion of their pills, and the corporation even launched an investigation of the clinics lead prescription-writing doctor. Their investigation led them to decide the doctor should go on a list that the company maintains of physicians that are suspected of misprescribing or colluding with drug dealers and addicts.

Of course, this list did not ensure that the company would report what they knew or suspected to law enforcement. Instead, Purdue chose to wait until three years after the drug ring had shut down for other reasons to give up what information they had to the U.S. Attorney Generals office in LA.

Purdues actions in this drug arena  or rather, their lack of action  are what have prompted Everetts lawsuit. But this lawsuit is different than others because the city is saying Purdue knew about the black market trade of their products and did nothing to stop it. As Ryan puts it, And Everett is suing solely on that basis and saying, you are responsible for the damage that criminals did to our town with your product.

How the lawsuit will pan out for the city of Everett is still up for debate. Some legal experts believe that they have a shot because Purdues own internal records show that they had evidence of illegal drug trafficking. But others say its a long-shot.

This also begs the question: what else do they know and havent reported? Who knows how many other unreported doctors and clinics are on that little list of theirs; there could be hundreds of people on that list engaging in illegal activity.

Should Purdue be held accountable for their failure to report a suspected drug trafficking ring  and the consequences their failure has had on communities across the West Coast?

Sources:prey

NPR.org

TheWeek.com

CDC.gov

SoutheastPennsylvania.LegalExaminer.com

LATimes.com
Friday, March 17, 2017 by: Ethan Huff Tags: cannibalism , CNN , Hinduism This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) Reza Aslan, host of the CNN show Believer, is making national headlines after partaking in a bizarre cannibalism ritual that caused many viewers to cringe in horror. For one of the latest episodes of his show, Aslan joined up with an extreme Hindu sect known as the Aghori that fed him alcohol from a human skull, as well as cooked human brain, which he ate on camera.

The incident took place in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, located in Uttar Pradesh, and was meant to be Aslans way of showing spiritual solidarity with this particular sect of Hinduism, which claims only about 100 members. But participating in cannibalism went too far, say critics, who include among them adherents to mainstream Hinduism, the vast majority of whom would never advocate for eating human flesh.

The premise behind Believer is to highlight Aslans journeys in pursuit of exotic religious traditions of which most people are unfamiliar. On each episode, Aslan immerses himself into a new religious paradigm, engaging in and partaking of whatever its adherents hold near and dear as part of their practice or worship. In this case, there was a whole lot of human death involved.

Reports explain that, upon his arrival to Varanasi, Aslan witnessed members of the Aghori smearing the cremated remains of human flesh all over their faces. These same individuals proceeded to fill a hollowed human skull with an alcoholic beverage that they served to Aslan, along with a kabob, of sorts, containing tissue from the human brain.

Mainstream Hindus more concerned about reputation than human brains being extracted for food

The 44 year-old, Iranian-born religious scholar is no stranger to controversy, having previously attended voodoo ceremonies and schmoozed with a cult member who calls himself Jezus. But this is the first time that Aslan has publicly defied conventional and even moral norms by consuming part of a human being.

Not only that, Aslan has also ruffled a few feathers in the Hindu community, where many mainstream religious adherents are outraged over his supposed stereotyping of Hindus as cannibalistic extremists. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), the only Hindu member of the American Congress, was among the first to outspokenly condemn Aslan for participating in the ritual.

Aslan apparently sought to find sensationalist and absurd ways to portray Hinduism, the politician commented. Aslan and CNN didnt just throw a harsh light on a sect of wandering ascetics to create shocking visuals  as if touring a zoo  but repeated false stereotypes about caste, karma, and reincarnation that Hindus have been combating tirelessly.

Tulsi, a U.S. Army Major who currently serves in the Hawaii National Guard, added that she is very disturbed that CNN even allowed the segment to air. She believes that the segment sends the wrong message to the public about what Hinduism is, offering a skewed view as to why potentially billions of people around the world claim this religious system as their own.

Shalabh Kumar, an industrialist, also took issue with the stunt, which he described to the Press Trust of India as a disgusting attack on Hinduism.

We are very disappointed, added United States India Political Action Committee chairman Sanjay Puri, who told the media that he and his group were very disappointed by the episode.

This is an issue that is of deep concern to the Indian-American community evidenced by the large number of calls/emails we have received, he added. In a charged environment, a show like this can create a perception about Indian-Americans which could make them more vulnerable to further attacks.

Aslan isnt sorry, though, as evidenced by a recent tweet in which he joked that people work all their lives for a headline like the one published by the American Council on Science and Health, stating, Why CNNs Reza Aslan Shouldnt Eat Human Brains.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

WashingtonPost.com
Climate groups such as the People's Climate Movement (PCM) have come in opposition of the supposed removal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) courtesy of the United States Administration under President Donald Trump. The group stresses a need to oppose this move as it poses a great risk to the environmental safety of the planet.

According to a PCM press release sent to Nature World News, invalidating the Clean Power Plan will remove all the protections that allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate various potential hazards to the environment. This includes pollutants such as carbon dioxide.

The Clean Power Plan is, after all, an important part of ensuring the climate change is curbed and the US will be able to transition to a cleaner energy economy.

Paul Getsos, PCM National Coordinator, said that this move will put the entire world at grave risk. This also sends a negative message that says the United States may very well be in fact more focused on profits over protecting the environment.

Getsos added that the move will only cement speculations that the Trump Administration is really committed to undermine progress related to environmental justice.

In opposition to this movement, the PCM is planning a mass mobilizaton called a "March for Climate, Jobs and Justice" on April 29. This will take place in Washington, DC, in the hopes of pushing the Adiministration to find better way sto protect the planet.

Numerous supporters of the March gave their respective comments about the benefits of the Clean Power Plan, and their opposition to its removal.

For instance, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. of the Hip Hop Caucus said that fossil fuels and carbon are directly linked to climate change and environmental pollution. Unfortunately, climate change deniers like Scott Pruitt may be obscuring the truth of this occurrence to ensure profit.

Tom BK Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network added that the removal of the Clean Power Plan is an "act of aggression" against the sacredness of the environment. Luisa Blue of the Service Employees International Union said that not only does the removal of the Clean Power Plan harms the environment, but poses great health risks to communities as well.

Patrick Carolan of the Franciscan Action Network said that this also goes against Pope Francis' recent letter in Laudato Si, where he acknowledged that everyone should do his or her part to curb climate change. According to Tom Steyer of NextGen, even jobs can be affected as the removal of the Clean Power Plan can destroy job opportunities generated by clean energy.

The PCM is a coalition composed of 50 groups all set to make bolder and better solutions that tackle climate change that can both help boost the US economy and uphold racial justice. They are composed of various faith-based groups, labor unions, indigenous groups, and civil rights and environmental justice groups.
A normally quiet Florida town was overwhelmed with panic as reports of an escaped cobra surfaced. The Internet reacted wildly to the news, and authorities launched a snake hunt to find the predator.

Florida authorities are reportedly issuing a warning to stay away from the loose cobra if seen. The cobra is a pet snake and it managed to escape from its owner who is from Ocala, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

Brian Purdy, the snake owner, filed a missing snake report last Monday Mach 13, according to a report. The cobra is already about two feet long. The following days, residents used Twitter to express their concern about the situation.

On Tuesday, March 14, authorities said they still weren't able to find the missing cobra. From here, notice and alerts were issued regarding the missing snake, creating a bit of hysteria for the residents who expressed concern over a loose cobra with potentially fatal venom in their neighborhood. Despite anger from neighbors and residents, the cobra owner is said to have legal license to care for a cobra since May 2016. By standards, cobra owners are mandated to keep the cages escape-proof.

"Public safety is the number one concern," Robert Klepper, a spokesperson from FWC said in an interview. "We wanted to emphasize that this is a venomous snake and a dangerous animal and should not be approached."

What worries the Florida residents is the potentially toxic venom that the cobra has. Anyone bitten by a cobra is advised to be rushed to the hospital as soon as possible to prevent the venom from spreading all over the body, also to have anti-venom shots administered.

The authorities, despite the urgency of the situation, tried to calm the residents. They say the cobra may be on the loose, but it won't be in plain sight because it will try to get away from humans.
PARIS (AP)  A 16-year-old student who had troubled relations with his peers opened fire at a high school in southern France on Thursday, wounding three other students and the principal who tried to intervene, officials said.

Police moved into the Alexis de Tocqueville school in the town of Grasse  the country's picturesque perfume capital  and quickly arrested the still-armed suspect, identified by the Interior Ministry spokesman as Killian Barbey.

The government minister for victims' affairs, Juliette Meadel, told BFM television there were 4 people shot three students and the high school principal  and 10 other victims.

The Grasse prosecutor said some of the victims were suffering from "emotional shock." None of the injuries was considered life threatening.

Prosecutor Fabienne Atzori said the young man  armed with a rifle, several pistols and a small grenade  entered a classroom then left, "not finding the person or people he was searching for."

"The motivation of the student appears linked to bad relations with other students in this high school in which it appears he had some difficulty integrating," Atzori said.

She said there was no reason to suspect the shootings were terrorism-related, "whatever the origin of the terrorist enterprise." A national police official said earlier there did not appear to be any other suspects.

Investigators were now trying to find out where did the suspect get the arms, she said.

Officials variously gave 16 and 17 as the age of the suspect. His Facebook page indicates he is 16.

After the suspect started shooting, students alerted the principle, who was wounded while "courageously" intervening, the prosecutor said. Some students only discovered shrapnel in their bodies once home, she said.

Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who visited the school Thursday, called it "the crazy act of a fragile young man fascinated by firearms ... We just missed the worst."

Story continues

The suspect's Facebook is filled with violent or gory images.

During the attack, some students hid at the school and others were evacuated. A police helicopter circled overhead in what is normally a relatively quiet corner of France.

Police cordoned off the area and worried residents gathered outside in the town, which is 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the southern city of Nice, site of last year's Bastille Day terror attack that killed 86 people.

The president of the region, Christian Estrosi, said the principal suffered an arm wound and told him that after being alerted to the presence of the armed student, "he tried to interpose ... to try to calm him, and unfortunately he didn't succeed."

Student Charlotte Camel, 18, told The Associated Press she was in the school library when "a teacher ran into the room shouting, 'There's someone with a gun, go hide!' That's what we did from the very beginning."

"We all very much panicked. I thought a lot about the other students in my class who were in class and I wandered if they were ok. I thought about my friends and the teachers too," Camel said.

The attack came amid France's state of emergency, a response to a string of deadly Islamic extremist attacks over the past two years.

While no terrorism link has been identified, "all this justifies the state of emergency," President Francois Hollande said, adding that it would remain in place until July 15, as planned.

The government sent out an alert warning of an attack after police reported that shots were fired, but later lifted it. The alert is part of a system implemented by the government after the deadly November 2015 attacks in Paris.

___

Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant in Paris, Alexander Turnbull in Grasse, and Raphael Satter in London contributed.
President Donald Trump's outline of his first federal budget is making people all across the nation nervous, but especially one group in the Bay Area.

The so-called skinny budget may reduce spending for vital programs like meals on wheels, which would be devastating to thousands of homebound seniors in the Bay Area.

The president wants to keep America safe by going lean and mean, but for some that may mean going with out a meal.

"Meals on Wheels provides half of my nutrition," said Walter Zintz, a 74-year-old Walnut Creek resident who lives on less than $900 a month.

Zintz has a debilitating back injury that keeps him from working, and if the program that provides him with a meal everyday is eliminated, "Id be scrambling for food," he said.

The proposed budget calls for the elimination of the $3 billion community development block grant program thats one of the sources of funding for Meals on Wheels.

"We want to make sure our representatives on the Hill know that we are aware of whats going on, and we want to stand up for seniors who do not have a voice," Meals on Wheels spokeswoman Marisa Melo said.

The presidents budget proposal seems to shift money away from senior programs and funding for the arts and bolster spending on defense, Homeland Security and veterans' care to the tune of $60 billion.

The Environmental Protection Agency also would be sliced by 31 percent, a portion that would include programs to combat climate change.

Meanwhile, Zintz knows Meals on Wheels is an agency struggling financially even before the proposed cuts to the program.

His message to decision makers in Washington, D.C.: "The government is taking care of you; there's no reason why it shouldn't take care of the rest of us also."
A small Alabama city reached a legal settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center Tuesday to end a federal lawsuit that accused it of running "a modern-day debtors prison," NBC News reported.

The lawsuit filed by the public interest law firm alleged that Alexander City was jailing people for being too poor to pay fines and fees for traffic tickets and misdemeanor offenses.

The law center says at least 190 poor people were wrongly jailed within two years. Indigent defendants had to pay off fines by serving time in the municipal jail at a rate of $20 a day.

Under the $680,000 settlement, people will get at least $500 for each day they were jailed illegally. A judge still must hold a final hearing on the settlement.
Rejecting arguments from the government that President Donald Trump's revised travel ban was substantially different from the first one, judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked the executive order from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday, using the president's own words as evidence that the order discriminates against Muslims.

The rulings in Hawaii late Wednesday and in Maryland early Thursday were victories for civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees, who argued that a temporary ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration argued that the ban was intended to protect the United States from terrorism.

In Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang  who was appointed by then-President Barack Obama  called Trump's own statements about barring Muslims from entering the United States "highly relevant." The second executive order removed a preference for religious minorities from the affected countries, among other changes that the Justice Department argued would address the legal concerns surrounding the first ban, which was also blocked in court.

"Despite these changes, the history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the Second Executive Order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban," Chuang said.

The initial ban sparked chaos at U.S. airports and widespread criticism around the world when it was signed in January. It was later blocked by a judge in Washington state, a ruling that was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Honolulu, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson criticized what he called the "illogic" of the government's arguments and cited "significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus" behind the travel ban. He also noted that while courts should not examine the "veiled psyche" and "secret motives" of government decision-makers, "the remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry."

Watson also wrote, referring to a statement Trump issued as a candidate, "For instance, there is nothing 'veiled' about this press release: 'Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.'"

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that the ban is lawful and suggested that the judges were overstepping their authority.

"I think for a judge to ignore that statute and talk about tweets or interpreting something that happened during the campaign trail is not in keeping with how they're supposed to interpret the law," Spicer said. "We tailored that second executive order to comply with the judge's order."

The Justice Department said in a statement that it would continue to defend the ban. The case was argued in court by acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, who said the ban "doesn't say anything about religion."

"It doesn't draw any religious distinctions."

Speaking Wednesday evening at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump called the ruling in Hawaii an example of "unprecedented judicial overreach" and said his administration would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which he said he wished he could implement.

"We're going to win. We're going to keep our citizens safe," the president said. "The danger is clear. The law is clear. The need for my executive order is clear."

While the Hawaii ruling temporarily blocks the travel ban, a temporary ban on refugees and a cap on the number of refugees who can enter the country, Chuang's ruling in Maryland applies only to the travel ban. The Maryland ruling took the form of a preliminary injunction, which will remain in effect indefinitely as the case is litigated. Chuang was also the first judge to stop the ban outside the 9th Circuit, which has a liberal reputation.

"Unless and until the president realizes that this is a battle in which he's going to keep losing and decides to do the right thing and abandon this course, for as long as he's on it we'll keep litigating it and I think we're going to keep winning," said Omar Jadwat, who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland.

Chuang wrote that the plaintiffs didn't sufficiently develop their argument that a temporary ban on refugees discriminates on the basis of religion. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case also had sought to stop a portion of the order that would reduce the number of refugees allowed to enter the country this fiscal year from 110,000 to 50,000.

Still, the judge's order is hugely meaningful for many plaintiffs, including a man in Texas whose same-sex fiance is seeking a visa to enter the United States from Iran, said Justin Cox, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center who also argued the Maryland case.

"This Muslim ban was threatening to either separate or continue to separate families who've already been separated for months and years," Cox said. "It has real-world consequences and we were obviously very glad to see that Judge Chuang recognized those and rejected the government's frankly callous argument that our clients have already been waiting and another few months couldn't possibly be irreparable."

If the administration appeals Watson's decision at the 9th Circuit level, the matter would likely be heard by different judges from the three who ruled on the case last month. The panel of judges assigned to such cases rotates every month, said court spokesman David Madden.

The 9th Circuit on Wednesday declined to reconsider the 3-0 decision not to reinstate the original ban. In a dissent, five judges said they considered that decision incorrect and wanted it vacated.

An appeal to the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, would not necessarily be easier for the Trump administration, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who is following the cases. The 4th Circuit has a conservative reputation but has become more moderate in recent years, he said.

The hearings in Maryland and Hawaii were two of three held Wednesday in federal courts around the country.

U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who blocked the initial travel ban last month, has denied Washington state's emergency request for his original preliminary restraining order to apply to Trump's revised executive order.

In all, more than half a dozen states are trying to stop the ban.
A firefighter died battling a 2-alarm blaze in Watertown, Massachusetts on Friday morning.

"It's a sad day for everybody," Watertown Police Chief Michael Lawn said. "This is a loss. A day like this is just not a good day here in Watertown."

Officials identified the fallen firefighter as Joseph Toscano, 54, of Randolph, a 21-year member of the Watertown Fire Department. He was married and had five children between the ages of 12 and 19.

"They're all devastated," firefighter's union president Rob Mannix said. "They lost the biggest thing in their lives."

"Joe took immense pride and joy in being a husband to Maureen, his wife of 25 years, and dad to Alyssa, Patrick, Mary Cate, William and Michael," the family said in a statement. "This is an unthinkable loss for our family. Joe's loving spirit will be with us forever."

Randolph residents like Frank Moynihan and his daughter, Jade, were stunned by the news.

"I couldn't think of a better neighbor," Frank Moynihan said. "I'm devastated."

"I love them a lot and I love their family," Jade Moynihan said. "I'm so sorry this happened."

"I feel like I'm blessed to have such a nice neighbor," said Jay Dave.

"He left this morning to go to work like he did every day," Watertown Deputy Fire Chief Bob Quinn said. "We all know the dangers. We never expect this day to happen, but it happened, unfortunately."

The fire was first reported around 10:16 a.m. on Merrifield Avenue. Police were the first on scene and were able to get two people and several pets out of the home safely. Fire officials said that heavy flames were showing when they arrived at the scene.

Quinn said Toscano was working inside the fire area when he collapsed. He was brought outside by his fellow firefighters and transported to Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was later pronounced dead. Officials said it appears Toscano might have suffered a heart attack.

"It's very sad here in Watertown today to have this situation occur," he said. "It's just such a traumatic event. It's going to be a long stretch today."

State Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey said the fire started on the second floor and was contained to one room. The cause remains under investigation.

"This is certainly a tremendous blow to this department," he said. "It's a very close group of people, a very tight-knit city. This is a terrible, terrible loss."

"Everybody's devastated," added Mannix. "Keep him in your prayers - Joe Toscano, father first, a great fireman. He's going to be missed."
For the first time in her short life, Stella Schaefer has left the Bali prison she spent the last two years growing up in with her mother Heather Mack.

The young child has been at the center of a custody battle involving her paternal grandmother, Kia Walker, who sought to bring the girl back to Chicago. But Stella has instead been released to a couple in Bali, near the prison where her mother will continue to serve her 10-year sentence.

Stella was born shortly before her parents were convicted in the 2015 killing of Mack's mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, who was beaten to death and stuffed in a suitcase.

Macks boyfriend and Stellas father, Tommy Schaefer, was sentenced to 18 years in the case.

Mack has been raising her daughter in Kerobokan jail since her birth in 2015, but local law only allowed the child to remain in the prison until the age of 2, a birthday she celebrated Friday.

Mack told the DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview that releasing custody of her daughter is tearing me apart.

'It's very hard for me but I'm so grateful to the prison for letting her spend the past two years with me here, the 21-year-old told the publication.

According to the DailyMail.com, a birthday celebration was held for Stella at the prison before her release. There, inmates had reportedly grown fond of the child, saying she is a little girl with 148 mothers.

Peter Schmiedel, the Cook County court-appointed guardian ad litem for Stella, said her new foster mother has been involved with Stella since her birth and she is someone the child is familiar with.

This is going to be a difficult transition, but were hopeful that its going to allow Stella to live as normal a life as she possible can for a beautiful-looking little 2-year-old girl, Schmiedel said.

He added that Macks parental rights have not been terminated and that Mack herself made the agreement to transfer the child.

Were hoping this works out so that she can lead as normal a life as possible, he said.

Macks uncle, William Wiese, is currently involved in a legal battle with Mack over her inheritance. However, he said the family is very pleased that Stella has finally been released from prison and will have a chance at having a normal life.

Wiese, as trustee, is allowing for money from a contested trust fund to be used to help pay for food, clothing and medical supplies for Stella. Wiese also provided the funds that were used to buy birthday presents for Stella.

I stand ready to fully support Stella as she embarks on a difficult path ahead. I also hope that everyone continues to remember the true victims of this horrific murder, Sheila, whose life was senselessly cut short, and Stella, an innocent baby brought into this world in very difficult circumstances, William Wiese said in a statement.

When Stella arrived at her new home Friday, she was greeted with a large pile of toys, stuffed animals and clothes.

Walker filed an appeal this week in another attempt to gain guardianship of her granddaughter.
A body pulled from Lake Michigan on the North Side on Monday morning has been identified as a missing Lincoln Park man.

The police Marine Unit responded to a report of someone in the water in the 3600 block of North Recreation Drive at 9:40 a.m. and discovered a man unresponsive, according to Chicago Police.

He has been identified as 52-year-old Kevin Narko of the Lincoln Park neighborhood, according to the Cook County medical examiners office.

Narko was reported missing after he was last seen about 7:20 p.m. on Jan. 30 jogging along the lakefront at North Avenue Beach, police said.

The marine unit searched the lakefront for at least two days after Narkos disappearance with no success.

An autopsy Tuesday found Narko drowned, and heart disease was listed as a contributing factor, according to the medical examiners office. His death was ruled an accident.
A 17-year-old Northwest Indiana boy was struck by a school bus early Friday morning, police said.

Officers were called to the 8800 block of Columbia Ave. in Munster, Indiana at approximately 7:12 a.m. after receiving a report of an accident involving a school bus and pedestrian, police said.

Upon arrival, a 17-year-old boy was found trapped underneath the bus near Munster High School, according to the Munster Police Department.

Munster Police Department officers, crews from the Munster Fire Department, and employees of the School Town of Munster school district were all on the scene.

Police said the boy was able to speak with first responders while under the bus, but the severity of his injuries was unknown.

The boy was transported by ambulance to Methodist Northlake Hospital in Gary for treatment of his injuries. [[416431033, C]]

A parent who witnessed the boy being rescued from under the bus told NBC 5 that a school administrator said the boy was a student at the high school who was hit by the school bus near 35th and Columbia Avenue, but that was unconfirmed by police.

The intersection of 35th and Columbia Avenue is often a "very congested" area with heavy traffic and many students before school hours, the parent told NBC 5.

Further details were not immediately made available.

The accident is being investigated by the Munster Police Department and the Lake County Sheriffs Office, officials said.

Anyone with any additional information is encouraged to contact the Munster Police Department at 219-836-6650.
J.C. Penney has released the list of 138 stores it plans to close in an effort to cut costs and grow sales at its strongest locations.

The release comes a few weeks after Penney's said it would close up to 140 stores this year, following similar decisions from Macy's and Sears. Between the companies' four biggest chains, which include Sears' Kmart brand, more than 300 big-box stores will go dark this year alone.

The closures highlight the pressures on traditional department stores, which are losing market share to off-price competitors and Amazon. They also underscore the deteriorating economics at lower-quality shopping centers, whose risk of failure rises when an anchor tenant exits.

Liquidations will start April 17, the company said on Friday.

Here are the Illinois stores the company plans to close:

Eastland Mall in Bloomington, IL

Fulton Square in Canton, IL

Village Square Mall in Effingham, IL

Freestanding in Macomb, IL

Peru Mall in Peru, IL

Northland Mall in Sterling, IL

Centerpointe of Woodridge in Woodridge, IL
A Spirit Airlines pilot and his wife were found dead in their home by their four children this week in what officials believe may have been an accidental overdose.

Brian Halye, 36, and his wife Courtney Halye, 34, were found unresponsive Thursday in their Centerville, Ohio home after two of their children called 911.

In 911 recordings obtained by NBC News, the children told the operator they woke up for school and found the couple on the floor.

The Montgomery County Coroners office said the official cause of death is pending a toxicology report, but preliminary examinations are consistent with an accidental overdose. Ken Betz, the director of the coroners office, said while the specific cause is not being released, it is so far consistent with what officials in the area have seen in fentanyl, carfentanil and heroin overdoses.

The area has seen a record number of overdoses in January and February this year, Betz said.

Spirit Airlines confirmed Brian Halye was a pilot for the airline for nine years. He took his last flight on March 10, less than a week before his death.

Our hearts go out to the family, friends, and colleagues of Captain Halye, the airline said in a statement.

The company added that Spirit Airlines is required by Federal Law and by its own internal standards, which exceed federal standards, to operate with the highest degree of care for the safety of the traveling public.

The DOT and FAA regulations require that the airline conduct pre-employment and random drug and alcohol tests on employees in designated safety-sensitive positions such as pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and dispatchers, the statement continued. Spirit Airlines remains compliant with DOT and FAA regulations for drug and alcohol testing for these safety-sensitive positions. Anyone who tests positive is immediately removed from their position.

Nancy Casey, 51, the mother of Courtney Halye, told NBC News she spoke with her daughter on the day she died and sensed something was out of sorts.

I had this dreadful feeling all day. Something was off with her and something was off with him, Casey said.

Caseys 11-year-old granddaughter found the couple the next morning, she said. The girl heard an alarm going off and went in the couples room where she found Brian Halye on the bed, unmoving.

She saw his face and it looked all white and pale and she knew something was wrong, Casey said. She then went to wake up her mother, and when she couldnt, authorities were called.

Casey said the couples death is a shock to her entire family and the community they lived in.

Casey noted the couple had been married for four years and each had two children from a previous marriage. She described her daughter as a light in a room, who was very loved.

People would talk about this aura she had, Casey said.

Casey said her daughter had type 1 diabetes and took insulin shots multiple times a day. She acknowledged her daughter had issues in the past with depression and was on medication then, but didnt believe her daughter was an addict.

They just got back from a cruise and I dont know if they wanted the party to continue or something but I just dont know, she said.
General Assembly Democrats want to drastically increase criminal penalties for hate crimes, and feel it necessary with increases in religious based discrimination to make it happen by the end of the 2017 regular session.

What were trying to do is say, in Connecticut, these behaviors are unacceptable," said Sen. Beth Bye.

Sen. Martin Looney, the President Pro Tem of the split State Senate, said there have been numerous "dog whistle," kinds of comments made by then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump which led to the proposal.

Since January, there have been two bomb threats made on the Jewish Community Center in West Hartford, miles from the State Capitol.

When a bomb threat is made against a religious center or a religious cemetery is desecrated, or a Mosque is vandalized, or individuals in the LGBT community are specifically targeted, that is a crime that affects not just the individuals in the building, the cemetery, but all members of the protected groups around our society," Looney said during a press conference in the Legislative Office Building.

The most noticeable change would be to increase the classification of hate crimes from misdemeanors to felonies, which would increase possible penalties. Further, Looney's proposal, which is expected to be heard next week in the Judiciary Committee, would also allow courts discretion to assign community service or other penalties as fines.

Rep. William Tong, who chairs the committee, said the state needs to send a message that things like bomb threat to Jewish Community Centers won't be tolerated.

This is just not acceptable and were going to bring the full weight of the law down on you if you do this.

Republicans were not invited to the press conference, which is notable because of a power-sharing agreement in the evenly split State Senate.

Sen. Len Fasano, the Republican President Pro Tem, wrote in a statement, The best way to combat hate is to show unity." He added, "Instead of working with Republicans to show a united front against hate crimes in our state, Democrats chose political theater."

Fasano described the issue itself as a, "certainly bipartisan issue," but declined to comment on the specifics of Looney's proposal.
An East Hartford staff member has been terminated for allegedly sending a student inappropriate Snapchat messages.

A staff member was fired from her job as a substitute with the East Hartford Woodland School.

NBC Connecticut obtained the termination written to the employee, which says the woman was exchanging personal information with a student in one of the classes she was assigned to.

The letter claims she sent messages on Snapchat, a social media video and messaging app, to a male student.

The employee is accused of sending the student her home address, inviting the student over her house and asking the student not to tell his guardians that they were communicating. In addition, the letter said she sent messages during the school day when she should have been working.

When the substitute was questioned about the allegations, she denied an interaction with the student through text message, according to school authorities. She also told school officials she was being set up and the text messages they had seen are fake.

The termination letters said the school "did not find it credible that such messages could have been created by students," and that the personal information given wouldn't be known by others.

The staff member's termination was effective immediately.

East Hartford police said they are reviewing whether or not there is any criminal element to this matter.

NBC Connecticut stopped by the substitute teacher's home Friday and a woman who identified herself as a family member declined to comment.

Officials from the state Department of Children and Families said they are not able to disclose case specific information.
A simple good-faith deposit turned into a five-month battle for a Wethersfield woman buying a home.

After years of watching children, and some grandchildren, grow from an apartment down the road, Margarita Herrera felt like it might be time to upgrade.

They said no you don't need to buy a house. And I said no I do, I need it, Herrera said.

Last summer, she found a three bedroom home just one town over in Newington. She paid $1,500 as a good faith deposit, plus a little more for a routine inspection the following week.

The inspector found problems in the garage, the attic and the roof.

The roof in the front, they added another layer of shingles and [the inspector] told me by law it's only two layers, not three, Herrera said.

Another problem: Herrera was closing in on her deadline to terminate the contract and hadn't heard whether the seller would fix the house's problems. Her broker filed for an extension, but the seller never signed it.

So a week later, she asked the seller to release her deposit. He refused, and instead agreed to make the necessary repairs.

By this time, Herrera no longer wanted the house. She wanted her money back.

But the seller said it was too late for that; she waited too long to cancel the contract.

That debate started in October.

I feel like theyre taking advantage of me. And that's not right, Herrera said.

When she had nowhere else to turn, she called NBC Connecticut Responds.

We settled the timeline with Herrera, her broker, the seller and his broker. The seller told us he never saw her request for a deadline extension.

After five months and dozens of phone calls and emails, the seller decided he would release Herreras deposit after all.

Herrera told NBC Connecticut, I think it means a vacation!
A woman who was delivering food in New Britain on Wednesday was found lying on the floor after being attacked, police said.

New Britain EMS and fire were dispatched to 160 Long Swamp Road at 10:30 p.m. for a fall complaint.

Responders found a woman lying in the roadway with a laceration to her forehead and two swollen eyes. When she was transported to the hospital, doctors found numerous broken bones on both side of the victim's face, which were not consistent with a fall, New Britain Police said.

The woman's money an personal items were missing, which leads police to believe it was a robbery.

The victim remains at a local area trauma hospital and told police she has limited memory of the incident.

New Britain Police are actively investigating and ask anyone with information to call Detective Karl Mordasiewicz at (860) 826-3141.
The death toll from a collapse at a landfill outside Ethiopia's capital has risen sharply to 113, an Addis Ababa city official said Wednesday, as the country began three days of mourning for victims who were mostly women and children.

Dagmawit Moges confirmed the new toll Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, Addis Ababa Mayor Diriba Kuma told state broadcaster EBC the search-and-rescue effort soon would be completed and an investigation into the cause of the accident would begin.

Hopes were waning for survivors, though an official with the city's emergency department, Nigatu Mamo, said one person had been pulled out alive on Monday, two days after the disaster.

Saturday's collapse of a mountain of garbage buried makeshift mud-and-stick homes inside the Koshe landfill on the outskirts of the capital. Excavators and rescuers have been pulling bodies from the black mud since then.

Nigatu said excavators were being redeployed from various construction projects around Addis Ababa to help in the search.

"We will continue the effort until we are directed to stop it. Our rescuers are working in two shifts, day and night," the emergency official said.

Residents have suggested various reasons for the collapse. Some blamed the dumping of trash that had resumed at the landfill in recent months after protests at a newer landfill site. Others blamed the construction of a new waste-to-energy plant at Koshe.

Officials said they have already relocated about 300 people from the landfill, where hundreds of waste-pickers salvaged items to make a living and others found inexpensive housing.

The mayor said people whose family members died in the collapse have received money ranging from $430 to $650 each, and that they would be resettled permanently in the coming years.

The landfill has been a dumping ground for the capital's garbage for more than 50 years. Smaller collapses have occurred at Koshe  or "dirty" in the local Amharic language  in the past two years but only two or three people were killed, residents said.

The deadly collapse has been a shock to many in a country that has prided itself on having one of Africa's fastest-growing economies.
Police said one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting an a Dallas neighborhood Thursday night. [[416411803,C]]

Dallas police said they responded to a shooting call in the 4100 block of Sun Valley Drive at 9:18 p.m. and found a man's body on the driveway.

Another man was transported to Methodist Dallas Medical Center with injuries that police said were not life threatening.

A witness told police that several men approached the victims and began shooting.

Police asked anyone with information about this incident to contact Det. Andrea Isom at andrea.isom@dpd.ci.dallas.tx.us or 214-671-3701.
The search for a fisherman who's been missing since Wednesday on Lake Ray Hubbard resumed Friday morning.[[416354523,R]]



Officials have identified the man as Mark Jordan of Rockwall County.

Due to extremely windy conditions on Thursday, crews called off the search at sundown and were set to resume Friday morning.

Jordan's pickup and trailer were located at the boat ramp along Texas Highway 66; his capsized boat was found by the Dallas Police Department's helicopter Air 1 about a half mile south of the Highway 66 bridge.

DFR's Marine 1 investigated the boat and said it was empty.

Jason Evans, with Dallas Fire-Rescue, said they were told Jordan typically fished in a certain area and never stayed on the water too long.

The Texas Game Warden and other local agencies are assisting in the search.
ronan harris

Google has responded to a growing number of brands' suspending their advertising from its services after finding their ads were appearing next to inappropriate and extremist content. In a blog post, the company said "we can do a better job" and that it would update its ad policies and tools to give brands more control over where their ads appear.

The online advertising giant was summoned to appear before the UK government on Thursday after authorities found that ads for taxpayer-funded bodies  such as the BBC, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy  had been positioned next to "extremist" YouTube videos. The government has pulled all its advertising from Google until the company can provide assurances that government ads will appear only in safe environments.

A source told Business Insider that Google would meet with the cabinet office on Friday.

Brands including The Guardian, Channel 4, the FCA, Transport for London, and L'Oreal have all suspended their campaigns from Google after finding their ads had appeared in inappropriate places on Google's websites.

In a blog post published Friday, the managing director of Google UK, Ronan Harris, said the company had policies to prohibit ads from appearing on pages or videos with "hate speech, gory, or offensive" content but acknowledged that with the millions of sites in its network and the 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, "we don't always get it right."

Harris said: "We've heard from our advertisers and agencies loud and clear that we can provide simpler, more robust ways to stop their ads from showing against controversial content. While we have a wide variety of tools to give advertisers and agencies control over where their ads appear, such as topic exclusions and site category exclusions, we can do a better job of addressing the small number of inappropriately monetized videos and content."

Harris continued to say Google had begun a "thorough review" of its ads policies and brand controls and would be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear on Google's services.

Story continues

When brands pay for online ad campaigns, they usually do not buy each ad placement individually. Instead they use a method called programmatic that uses automated systems to target large audiences across a swathe of websites or different YouTube videos.

Programmatic advertising is seen as an efficient way to reach specific audiences online, but it can also risk some ads inadvertently appearing next to undesirable content if proper white lists, blacklists, and other safety checks are not put in place by both the ad platform and the ad buyer.

Here is the full blog post from Ronan Harris, the managing director of Google UK and Ireland:

"From our founding days at Google, our mission has always been to make information universally accessible and useful. We believe strongly in the freedom of speech and expression on the webeven when that means we dont agree with the views expressed.

"At the same time, we recognize the need to have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear. The intention of these policies is to prohibit ads from appearing on pages or videos with hate speech, gory or offensive content. In the vast majority of cases, our policies work as intended. We invest millions of dollars every year and employ thousands of people to stop bad advertising practices. Just last year, we removed nearly 2 billion bad ads from our systems, removed over 100,000 publishers from our AdSense program, and prevented ads from serving on over 300 million YouTube videos.

"However, with millions of sites in our network and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recognize that we don't always get it right. In a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our monetization policies. We promptly remove the ads in those instances, but we know we can and must do more.

"We've heard from our advertisers and agencies loud and clear that we can provide simpler, more robust ways to stop their ads from showing against controversial content. While we have a wide variety of tools to give advertisers and agencies control over where their ads appear, such as topic exclusions and site category exclusions, we can do a better job of addressing the small number of inappropriately monetized videos and content. Weve begun a thorough review of our ads policies and brand controls, and we will be making changes in the coming weeks to give brands more control over where their ads appear across YouTube and the Google Display Network.

"We are committed to working with publishers, advertisers and agencies to address these issues and earn their trust every day so that they can use our services both successfully and safely."

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Several North Texas cities are banding together, gearing up for a hearing in Austin to stop an oil and gas company from drilling a waste water well near Lake Arlington.

State Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie sent a request to the Texas Railroad Commission to hold a Tarrant County hearing to give citizens an opportunity to share their thoughts and express their concerns about Bluestone Natural Resources' application for a fluid injection well located on the western edge of Lake Arlington.

I have heard from many members of the community who oppose the proposed injection well for fear that its proximity to Lake Arlington could harm Arlingtons municipal and industrial water supply, Turner said in a statement.

The proposed disposal well would be less than 200 feet from the lake. According to the Director of Arlington Water Utilities, Lake Arlington is the sole source of water for the Trinity River Authoritys Tarrant County Water Supply Project water treatment plant, which provides treated water to Bedford, Colleyville, Euless, Grapevine and North Richland Hills.

The cities of Arlington, Fort Worth, Bedford, Euless, North Richland Hills, and the Trinity River Authority have all sent letters to in protest of the waste water well, expressing concerns of water contamination and the risk of drilling causing earthquakes.

Even though, Fort Worth and Arlington have bans on waste water injection wells, the RRC approved Bluestones application stating application requirements were met. The overwhelming response of protest pushed the RRC to leave the final decision up to lawmakers in Austin. A hearing has been scheduled for May 24, but many residents feel the hearing should be held in North Texas.

The people I represent deserve a chance to air their concerns at a public hearing and not to have to travel to Austin to do so, Turner said. "If the Railroad Commission wants to make decisions about what happens in our backyard, they should travel to our backyard and listen to the people who will be most impacted."

The City of Arlington voted unanimously March 7 to hire outside attorneys and an industry expert to oppose the proposed saltwater disposal well.
Authorities say an off-duty state trooper was shot when he struggled with an intruder at the trooper's home near San Antonio.

The unidentified trooper with the state Department of Public Safety discovered someone in his yard late Thursday night and retrieved his service weapon and put on a protective vest before confronting the intruder.

Authorities say the trooper was attacked as he went outside and the suspect tried to gain entry to the home in Kirby, northeast of San Antonio.

The trooper's firearm discharged during the struggle and he was struck by the bullet, but protected by the vest.

He was taken to a hospital for observation.

The suspect fled the home on foot and authorities continue to search for him.
A deputy attorney general in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office says a Frisco school's prayer room may violate the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty.

In a letter to Jeremy Lyon, superintendent of the Frisco Independent School District, Deputy Attorney General Andrew Leonie urged neutrality toward all religions in response to complaints that Liberty High School's prayer room excluded non-Muslim students.

"It appears that students are being treated different based on their religious beliefs," said the letter. "Such a practice, of course, is irreconcilable with our nation's enduring commitment to religious liberty."

Leonie encouraged the environment of free religious practice, but warned against favoring one religion over another.

"I ask that you ensure that Liberty High School's prayer room is accessible to students of all religious denominations, consistent with the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty," said Leonie.

The letter was included in a press release sent to media outlets Friday.

Frisco ISD spokesperson Chris Moore said the district first learned about Leonie's concerns through calls from the media.

In a written response to Leonie on Friday afternoon, Lyon said the press release "appears to be a publicity stunt by the OAG to politicize a non-issue."

Earlier this month, the prayer room was featured in a news report by a student journalist at Liberty High School.

The video shows Muslim students praying in a classroom Moore says would otherwise be empty at that time.

"It gives us a way to like pray in our classrooms and then go straight back to class," said junior Sarah Qureshi, in the video published by Liberty Wingspan.

The process of praying during the day used to take more than an hour, the district says.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day.

Students used to have to leave school and go to a mosque until the prayer room was started in 2009.

"I think it is a really great opportunity," Qureshi said in the video.

The concern by the Attorney General's Office is that the room is dedicated to students of the Muslim faith and that it isn't available to students of other religions.

Moore says the prayer room is open to each of the schools 2,100 students.

"It's not just a room for Muslim students. It's a room Buddhist students, Jewish students, Catholic students, Hindu students, anyone who wants to use that room in that capacity can," Moore said.

Moore said he isn't sure why the Attorney General's Office would bring up the concerns publicly without contacting them first.

He says the district is eager to clarify its position.

In the meantime, the prayer room will remain open.

Liberty High School isn't the only Frisco school with a prayer room. Heritage High School has one as well.

See the full text of the letter below.

NBC 5's Jennifer Phillips contributed to this report.
Police in central Georgia said a woman has been arrested and charged with murder in the 1975 stabbing death of a 16-year-old girl.

Warner Robins police announced the arrest Thursday.

The Telegraph reported that 59-year-old Mary Jane Stewart was taken into custody in San Antonio on a charge of felony murder.

Police said Steward is accused of killing Cheryl White on Nov. 12, 1975 in Warner Robins. The city of about 67,000 residents is about 100 miles southeast of Atlanta.

Police said White and Stewart, who was 18 at the time, knew each other.

It wasn't known early Friday whether Stewart has an attorney who could be reached for comment on her behalf.

Few other details were immediately released.
Firefighters have extinguished a massive late-night fire that engulfed an apartment building under construction in North Carolina's capital city, authorities said early Friday.

NBC affiliate WRAL reported the structure on fire was an apartment building under construction in downtown Raleigh. The five-story building on West North Street caught fire just after 10 p.m. The fire was under control by 1:10 a.m.

Firefighters were still looking to control hot spots, but flames were out. One person was injured after being punctured in the chest by falling debris, a city fire official said.

The City of Raleigh tweeted out a warning to avoid the downtown area as police and fire officials responded to the blaze. Nearby buildings were evacuated, according to WRAL.

One video posted to Twitter shows a large tower crane falling down.

Downtown Raleigh watch tower crane fall pic.twitter.com/GsLRCEQwuL  Danny Horton (@Danny51legend) March 17, 2017

During the three hours that the inferno burned, the flames ignited surrounding vegetation and spread to utility poles.

The flames spread to a nearby high-rise about 10:30 p.m., and at least three buildings on McDowell Street were affected, WRAL reported.

Witnesses spoke of sparks and flying objects amid gusting winds.

"There were chunks burning about 3 feet wide," Torrin McBynum, of Garner, told the News and Observer of Raleigh. "One of them went under my sweater."

Firefighters on extended ladders dumped water on the flames as wind gusts spread smoke for blocks.

Officials do not know the cause of the blaze, which left about 250 people in the area without power.
A disbarred Harvard-trained attorney was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday for a kidnapping so elaborate and bizarre that police in California initially dismissed it as a hoax.

It was the sentence federal prosecutors sought for Matthew Muller, who pleaded guilty in September to holding a Bay Area woman for ransom. They realized that Denise Huskins was telling the truth about her March 2015 abduction only after Muller was implicated in a different crime.

On Thursday, Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn faced Muller in the Sacramento courtroom. Huskins spoke to her abductor directly.

"I am the woman behind the mask, the woman you raped and tortured," she said, sobbing.

Quinns mother said the couple had hoped for a life sentence.

"Life would have been a little bit better for Denise and Aaron because they would have never had to worry about this ever again," Marianne Quinn said.

Huskins' mother also was at the sentencing. She called her daughter incredibly brave: "She is a beautiful human being."

Muller, 39, could have received life in prison by U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

"Public safety requires that he be imprisoned until he is old and weak,'' wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Dean Segal, calling the crime "depraved and egregious.''

Defense attorney Thomas Johnson wanted a 30-year sentence, saying his client has been diagnosed as manic and depressive and can be rehabilitated with proper treatment for what he called "a truly debilitating mental illness.''

Muller mostly looked ahead emotionless but briefly addressed the court, saying he is "sick with shame." A Muller family spokesperson said its been shocking to hear what the former Marine and Harvard Law School graduate did.

"He is on his meds," Steve Reed said. "He is in a controlled environment, and to some degree, he is very happy he is in a controlled environment."

Federal prosecutors say Muller used a remote-controlled drone to spy on his victims before he broke into the Vallejo home Huskins shared with Quinn, tied up the couple and made them drink a sleep-inducing liquid. They were blindfolded while Muller played a pre-recorded message that made it seem as if there was more than one kidnapper.

He put Huskins in the trunk of his car, drove her to his home in South Lake Tahoe and held her there for two days before eventually releasing her in her hometown of Huntington Beach.

He claimed in emails to a San Francisco reporter that Huskins was abducted by a team of elite criminals who were practicing their kidnapping tactics.

After Huskins reappeared, Vallejo police called the kidnapping a hoax and erroneously likened it to the movie "Gone Girl,'' in which a woman goes missing and then lies about being kidnapped when she reappears.

Investigators dropped that theory after Muller was later arrested in an attempted robbery at another Bay Area home. Authorities said they found a cellphone that they traced to Muller, and a subsequent search of a car and home turned up evidence, including a computer Muller stole from Quinn, which linked him to the abduction.

Vallejo police have since apologized. Huskins is suing the city and two police officers, accusing them of defamation and inflicting emotional distress.

Muller, a former Marine, was admitted to practice law in California in 2011, and his state bar profile says he attended Harvard Law School. He lost his law license in 2015 in an unrelated incident.

"He will be dangerous for the rest of his life,'' Quinn wrote in advance of Muller's sentencing.
Divers have found a body believed to be that of a 2-year-old boy who vanished after his family's car plunged into a Southern California aqueduct two weeks ago.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department says the body was discovered Thursday afternoon in the California Aqueduct in Hesperia.

The identity of the body, believed to be Noah Abbott, will be determined by the coroner.

The toddler's mother and 3-year-old brother died when their Volkswagen drove through a fence and crashed into the channel on March 2. Noah apparently was swept away.

His 10-year-old brother, Elijah Estrada, was the only survivor.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

NBC4's Willian Avila and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bruce Nakashima looks forward to visits from Chris Clark. Clark brings a hot meal and the paper. The gentlemen chat about sports.

"Thats my only contact with people outside of TV or newspaper or seeing the landlord," Nakashima said.

The 73-year-old Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient lives alone with his cat in Santa Monica and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He is one of 400 West Los Angeles residents who rely on Meals on Wheels as their main source of food. But the future of the program is uncertain.

President Donald Trump's proposed budget, released Wednesday, eliminates all federal funds  about three billion dollars  for the Community Development Block Grant Program. Government officials say the program has not demonstrated results. The elimination of the program is part of a 13 percent decrease in funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Community Development Block Grant Program provides some money for local Meals on Wheels programs. Chris Baca, Meals on Wheels West Executive Director, said the West LA program receives about 3 percent of funds from the block grant program and another 14 percent of funds from other federal sources, which are in jeopardy under the proposed budget. Moreover Baca said the federal grants give the program credibility and make it easier for them to raise money locally.

President Trumps proposed budget includes a 6 percent increase in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs which could help people like Nakashima, but other homebound individuals could lose their meal delivery.

The presidents proposed budget is still in the draft stages. Congress is expected to approve a final budget later this spring.

For now, Nakashima said hell enjoy what he can. On the menu for his latest meal: pork, peas, sweet potato and good conversation with Clark, a fellow veteran.
Sicily's Mount Etna volcano unleashed an explosion Thursday, hurling molten rocks and steam that rained down on tourists, journalists and a scientist who scrambled to escape the barrage. Ten people were reported injured.

The tourists, who were drawn to Etna to observe the spectacle of the active volcano erupting, were caught by surprise when its flowing magma hit thick snow, causing a phreatic explosion that rained rock and other material down upon them.

A BBC journalist and camerawoman on assignment at the volcano were among the injured. Their film shows an explosion of steam followed by a second explosion of boiling rocks and people running away from the explosion. The clip continues in a snowcat, where a man holds a paper towel to stanch the bleeding from his head and hugs his wife.

Authorities say about 35 tourists were on the volcano when the explosion occurred around midday, and that the guides who accompanied them helped bring them to safety.

The president of the Italian Alpine Club chapter in Catania, Umberto Marino, said he was traveling up the volcano in a snowcat when injured people started running in his direction.

"The material thrown into the air fell back down, striking the heads and bodies of people who were closest," Marino was quoted by the Catania Today website as saying.

According to Italian news agency ANSA, four people including three German tourists were hospitalized, mostly with head injuries. None of the injuries was listed as grave.

Italy's volcanology institute said the explosion took place at about 2,700 meters (8,858 feet) above sea level, putting the tourists at more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) below the base of the newest southeast Mount Etna crater where the lava flow originated.

Among those present when the explosion occurred was a scientist from Italy's volcanology institute, Boris Behncke, who said on his Facebook page that he had suffered a bruise to his head.

"I am generally fine and having a good, well-deserved beer in this moment," he added.

The BBC's global science reporter, Rebecca Morelle, was on assignment on Etna and described the experience in a series of tweets.

"Running down a mountain pelted by rocks, dodging burning boulders and boiling steam  not an experience I ever ever want to repeat," Morelle wrote.

The BBC crew was shaken but physically OK despite having suffered cuts, bruises and burns, she wrote. Morelle later showed the camerawoman's jacket on the air with a big hole in the back where the material had melted in the explosion.

Morelle said the explosion was "a reminder of how dangerous (and) unpredictable volcanoes can be."

Mount Etna has been active for the past two days, creating a visual spectacle as it spews lava and ash into the air. A new lava flow started from the southeastern crater on Wednesday, and was advancing with a temperature above 1,000 degrees Centigrade (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit) in an area covered by snow, creating the explosion.

Officials at nearby Catania airport announced Thursday they would reduce arrivals by half to five flights an hour due to Mount Etna's ash clouds. Departures were continuing as scheduled.

Thousands of tourists each year visit Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes located on the eastern coast of Sicily. Eruptions occur frequently, although incidents that involve injured tourists are rare.

A similar phreatic explosion, caused when lava hits water, on Etna in 2002 injured 32 people, mostly firefighters and other emergency workers responding to a series of eruptions.

Authorities limited access to riskier areas on Mount Etna following a deadly eruption in 1979 that killed nine tourists who were standing at the volcano's rim. Reports indicate that the tourists who experienced the eruption Thursday were in a zone where access is permitted with a guide.

The volcanology institute said it was continuing to monitor the situation.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on North Korea Thursday to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, saying the isolated nation "need not fear" the United States.

Tillerson made that declaration after meeting his Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, where they discussed possible new approaches in dealing with Pyongyang.

He said 20 years of U.S. diplomatic and other efforts to get North Korea to denuclearize have failed, but gave no specifics about how the Trump administration, which is currently doing a policy review, would tackle the issue. Tillerson described the weapons programs as "dangerous and unlawful."

The former Exxon Mobil CEO is making his first trip to Asia as the top U.S. diplomat. Tensions are running high on the divided Korean Peninsula, and North Korea last week launched four missiles into seas off Japan and where the U.S. is currently conducting annual military drills with South Korea. Pyongyang views this as a rehearsal for invasion.

"North Korea and its people need not fear the United States or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with North Korea," the secretary of state told a news conference in Tokyo. "With this in mind, the United States calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and refrain from any further provocation."

He later met separately with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

In Beijing, a North Korean diplomat said Thursday that Pyongyang must act in self-defense against the U.S.-South Korea military drills which he said have brought the region to the brink of nuclear war. He said the drills were aimed at using atomic weapons for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Washington says the maneuvers are routine and defensive.

"The United States holds a joint military exercise every year to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to a serious situation, and that is the source of the super tough measures we must take," Pak Myong Ho told reporters in a rare briefing at the North Korean Embassy in the Chinese capital. He spoke through a translator.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and despite tough sanctions levied against it. Last year, the North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the United States within a few years.

Citing the continued North Korean missile launches this year, Tillerson said that "in the face of this ever-escalating threat it is clear that a different approach is required." He said his trip was intended to get input from other governments. Tillerson will travel Friday to South Korea and then China on Saturday.

Both Tillerson and Kishida urged China use its economic leverage with North Korea to push it to change course.

During last year's election campaign, presidential candidate Donald Trump called into question U.S. security alliances and called for Tokyo and Seoul to contribute more for their defense. Tillerson, however, stressed that cooperation with Japan and South Korea was "critical."

Kishida said the U.S. and Japan had an "unwavering bond." In a sign of that, Tillerson reiterated that a U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty covers Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea also claimed by China.

Japan and South Korea both host tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Washington has been urging its two allies to step security up cooperation despite their historically strained relations. This week, the nations' three navies have conducted missile defense information-sharing drills in the region.

Kishida described the trilateral cooperation as "indispensable." But he said the Japan-South Korea relationship has been strained over failure to implement a 2015 agreement in which Japan's government consented to compensate South Korean victims of sexual slavery inflicted by the Japanese military during World War II. In return, South Korea was to stop criticizing Japan on the issue.

Earlier this year, Japan withdrew its ambassador from South Korea after activists there erected a statue outside a Japanese consulate to commemorate the wartime victims, known as "comfort women."

Tillerson said he appreciated how "painful" it was to deal with such historical issues, but urged both sides to carry out the agreement and bring the matter to a rapid conclusion. He said it was important for all three nations to maintain a strong alliance "in which there is no space between us."
matt brittin

LONDON  Google has been summoned to appear in front of the UK government to explain why taxpayer-funded ads are appearing next to extremist content on YouTube, The Times reported.

The Times found government ads  and also those from the BBC, The Royal Air Force, and The Royal Navy  appearing next to videos from American white nationalist David Duke, a pastor who praised the killing of 49 people in an Orlando gay nightclub, and videos from Michael Savage, who the newspaper describes as a "homophobic shock-jock."

The issue is not only the juxtaposition of government ads next to inappropriate content, but the fact that those ads are making money for the video creators. The Times says a YouTube user earns $7.60 on average for every 1,000 times an ad is viewed.

On Thursday, the government suspended all of its YouTube advertising until Google can make assurances that ads from public-funded bodies would not appear in unsafe environments.

A government spokesperson sent Business Insider this statement:

"Digital advertising is a cost-effective way for the government to engage millions of people in vital campaigns such as military recruitment and blood donation.



"Google is responsible for ensuring the high standards applied to government advertising are adhered to and that adverts do not appear alongside inappropriate content.



"We have placed a temporary restriction on our YouTube advertising pending reassurances from Google that government messages can be delivered in a safe and appropriate way.



"Google has been summoned for discussions at the Cabinet Office to explain how it will deliver the high quality of service government demands on behalf of the taxpayer."

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The government joins a growing number of brands suspending their advertising from YouTube  and in some cases all of Google's advertising services  after they found their brands were unwittingly appearing next to inappropriate content.

Story continues

On Thursday, The Guardian announced it was boycotting Google and YouTube advertising until the internet giant can guarantee ads will only appear in safe environments. L'Oreal, The Financial Conduct Authority, Transport for London, and Channel 4 are also removing their ads from Google services, The Times reported.

In a statement provided to Business Insider on Thursday, following the Guardian pulling its ads, Google said it has "strict guidelines" that define where ads should appear and in the majority of cases, those policies work as intended.

"We accept that we don't always get it right, and that sometimes, ads appear where they should not. We're committed to doing better, and will make changes to our policies and brand controls for advertisers," the statement continued.

ISBA, the trade body that represents British advertisers said "more needs to be done urgently" to safeguard the reputations of advertisers on digital sites.

Phil Smith, ISBA director general, said in a statement: "The practice of placing advertising immediately against newly-uploaded content, before it has been classified, should be reviewed. Content should be quarantined until classified, to give advertisers confidence that their brands reputations will be protected."

When brands pay for online ad campaigns, they usually do not buy each ad placement individually. Instead they use a method called programmatic that uses automated systems to target large audiences across a swathe of websites  or different YouTube videos. Programmatic advertising is seen as an efficient way to reach specific audiences online, but it can also carry a brand safety risk, with some ads inadvertently appearing next to undesirable content if proper whitelists, blacklists, and other safety checks are not put in place by both the ad platform and the ad buyer.

NOW WATCH: Hackers and governments can see you through your phones camera  heres how to protect yourself





More From Business Insider


They have bright colors and unique looks and they aren't your typical dog or cat. We're talking about exotic animals, and on Saturday it's the Exotic Pet Amnesty Day at Zoo Miami.

"The purpose of amnesty day is to have animals like this not getting into our wildlife," said Ron Magill with Zoo Miami.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sponsors a day where exotic pet owners who can no longer care for their animal may surrender them with no questions asked.

"Exotic pet amnesty day we accepts all kinds of exotic pets... not domestics," said FWC education coordinator Jenny Novak.

The day exists so that non native species like this albino Burmese python isnt released into our backyards.

"Any exotic pet that you have, even a pet that required a permit, even one you were keeping illegally. no questions asked," Magill said.

FWC says every pet that is surrendered will be checked out by a vet and then placed with qualified adopters.

If you have an exotic animal and can longer care for it, head over to Zoo Miami on Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Florida expects to win its fight against flesh-eating maggots that threaten small, endangered deer in a national wildlife refuge, the state agriculture commissioner said Thursday.

"It's too early to declare mission accomplished, Commissioner Adam Putnam said, but he added that no wild screwworm flies have been found in the island chain known as the Florida Keys since Jan. 10.

That amounts to three life cycles of the parasite, and officials have decided it's safe to begin winding down efforts to keep the screwworms from spreading from the island chain onto the mainland, Putnam said.

New World screwworm can eat livestock and pets alive, and once cost the U.S. livestock industry millions every year. There hadn't been a U.S. infestation in over 30 years, until agriculture officials confirmed in September that screwworm was killing the dog-sized Key deer whose range is limited to a national wildlife refuge.

To kill the parasite's population, millions of male screwworm flies sterilized with radiation have been released since October over the Keys and agricultural areas south of Miami.

Putnam said those releases will end in late April. The last batches of sterilized flies will still offer protection through the deer's spring fawning season.

The state also plans as early as next week to shut down a highway checkpoint where animals leaving the Keys were inspected for screwworm infections. A stray dog found near Homestead in early January was the only animal on the mainland to show signs of screwworm.

The Keys' isolation helped control the infestation, Putnam said.

We had better control of access to the Keys, because we had one road in and one road out, he said. Unfortunately, the most impacted species was one of the rarest, the Key deer.

The infestation killed 135 Key deer, but none have died and no new infections have been reported since an infected deer was euthanized in early January, said National Key Deer Refuge Manager Dan Clark.

Only about 650 deer survive in the unique herd. Up to eight deer each day had to be euthanized during the infestation's peak, between October and December, but the infections slowed as sterilized flies saturated the area, Clark said.

We were concerned with how fast we were losing deer, but things turned after that, Clark said.

Monitoring of the deer will continue, but the animals likely will stop receiving anti-parasite medications over the next month.

It's still unclear where the screwworms came from. A traveler must have brought the parasite into the area around the refuge on Big Pine Key, but the genetic makeup of the flies in Florida doesn't match screwworm populations identified in the Caribbean, Putnam said.
Florida's governor is reassigning a case involving the killing of a police officer after an Orlando prosecutor said she no will longer seek the death penalty.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott said Thursday that the governor is reassigning the Markeith Loyd case to a prosecutor in a neighboring district northwest of Orlando.

Scott's action came hours after the top prosecutor in Orlando announced her office will no longer seek the death penalty in cases.

Scott had asked for State Attorney Aramis Ayala to recuse herself from the prosecution but he said she refused.

"Earlier today, I called on State Attorney Ayala to immediately recuse herself from this case. She informed me this afternoon that she refuses to do that. She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case to State Attorney Brad King," Scott said in a statement.

Loyd's case is the most visible one affected by Ayala's decision. He is charged with killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend and Lt. Debra Clayton.

Ayala says there is no evidence of improved public safety for citizens or law enforcement with the death penalty, and that such cases are costly and drag on for years.

Florida law allows a governor to reassign a case for "good and sufficient" reasons.

"She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case," Scott said in a statement.

Ayala's decision ignited condemnation from some law enforcement leaders.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in a statement that he was "extremely upset."

"The heinous crimes that he (Loyd) committed in our community are the very reason that we have the death penalty as an option under the law," Mina said.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi called the decision "a blatant neglect of duty," saying it sends a dangerous message to residents and visitors.

But Adora Obi Nweze of the Florida state conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said it was a step in the right direction.

"Ending use of the death penalty in Orange County is a step toward restoring a measure of trust and integrity in our criminal justice system," she said.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Tasha Jamerson, said the national association doesn't keep track of prosecutors who opt out of seeking the death penalty.

Ayala's decision comes just days after Scott signed a bill requiring a unanimous jury recommendation before the death penalty can be imposed.

The legislation was aimed at restarting death penalty cases, after questions about Florida's death penalty law during the past year brought executions to a halt.

The U.S. Supreme Court in January 2016 declared the state's death penalty sentencing law unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges to make the ultimate decision.

The Legislature responded by overhauling the law to let the death penalty be imposed by at least a 10-2 jury vote.

In October, however, the state Supreme Court voted 5-2 to strike down the new law and require unanimous jury decisions for capital punishment.
A Florida Highway Patrol trooper was rushed to the hospital after being struck by a car on the Dolphin Expressway in Miami-Dade Friday morning.

The trooper, identified as 37-year-old Carlos Rosario by law enforcement sources, was conducting a traffic stop in the westbound lanes of the expressway near Northwest 107th Avenue when he was struck by an out-of-control car, officials said.

The trooper was standing behind his vehicle on the shoulder with an emergency vest on when he was struck.

Rosario, a 12-year veteran of the FHP, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he was in critical but stable condition.

"He's got major injuries, mostly orthopedic injuries, a lot to his face, spine and lower extremities," a doctor said at a Friday press conference. At the hospital, loved ones and fellow troopers consoled each other as Rosario was being treated. Gov. Rick Scott and several local law enforcement agencies paid tribute to the injured trooper.

Friday evening, FHP officials said Rosario underwent facial surgery and was set to undergo hand surgery. Doctors were expected to operate on his legs Saturday if his condition improved.

Footage showed an FHP car and another vehicle with rear damage. Officials said the car stayed at the scene and the driver was cooperating with the investigation. He was bloodied from the crash, but not seriously hurt.

Officials said they have to determine how the driver lost control causing the vehicle to spin sideways and hitting the trooper. At this point, FHP has not filed charges or citations against the driver.

Rosario is a father of two. Florida Highway Patrol set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for the trooper and his family.
The Trump administrations proposed budget is looking to make some major cuts to many federal programs that will affect South Florida. The budget proposal, which needs to be approved by Congress, gives a big boost to military spending. South Florida schools, public broadcasting and local arts could feel the effects of the new budget cuts.

EDUCATION

Public schools nationwide are bracing for a $9.2 billion cut in federal funding, a 13.5% reduction in the Department of Education's budget.

"Largest reduction ever in the history of the Department of Education, we're told," said Miami-Dade Schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Standing at a white board with a marker in hand, former math teacher Carvalho broke down the numbers in President Trump's proposed budget, and he doesn't like what he sees.

"Not a good way to start the budget year particularly when we keep touting the fact that the economy is growing, it's a matter of values, where we place the most important issues, children should come first," Carvalho said, saying now is the time to invest in education, not cut it. "The impact on Miami-Dade is pretty staggering."

Carvalho did the math and says Broward County Public Schools probably stand to lose about $25 million, with the larger Miami-Dade Public School district losing up to $40 million. For example, the budget would eliminate the program that pays for teacher training.

"At a time when we're trying to increase the skill set of teachers, at a time when we're competing with the private sector for the talent to come into the classroom and teach this program that supports the incentivization and recruitment of teachers will disappear," Carvalho said.

The biggest blow, perhaps, is the elimination of federal funds for after-school programs. They are vital, Carvalho says, for providing tutoring, academic enrichment, and they give kids a place to go that keeps them out of trouble. They can be considered juvenile crime prevention programs.

"It creates a big hole that's gonna leave kids on the street with nothing to do and certainly it's going to impact the poorest kids, the ones who are learning English, those who actually need a helping hand," said Carvalho.

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The budget does provide money to create a new, $250 million dollar voucher program that allows parents to use public money to go to private schools. It's a priority of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Trump's proposal also shifts some Title I funding from schools to the student, meaning schools in rich areas would get money previously earmarked for schools that serve economically depressed areas. That drew withering criticism from Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten held a national conference call with reporters today.

"The budget also includes both back-door and front-door voucher programs that further the ideological crusade against public education," Weingarten said. "Budgets tell you priorities, and what you have here is a budget that shows President Trump's priority is not public education."

"This probably will dilute investment in high poverty areas like Miami-Dade," added Carvalho, who pointed out slashing or eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the AmeriCorps program will also hurt public schools.

The NEA provides grants that support art and music programs, and AmeriCorps runs the Teach for America program, which sends scores of young adults to work in the neediest schools in the nation.

The budget also cuts programs that help low-income families prepare their kids for college. Carvalho says these students will have a greater struggle to further their educations.

His biggest worry, however, is that something similar to Trump's budget cuts will pass through Congress, at the same time that the Florida Legislature is talking about reduced education funding. While Governor Rick Scott has proposed a 4% increase, which would still be below what Florida spent per-pupil in 2007, the Legislature is talking about cutting public school funds.

"Should these two waves collide, I think we'll be creating a perfect storm," Carvalho warned.

PUBLIC BROADCASTING

It costs taxpayers $1.35 a year to fund public broadcasting. It may sound like a small amount, but those dollars and cents add up. Presidents as far back as Ronald Reagan have tried to reduce funding to public broadcasting. Trumps budget proposal looks to cut all funds altogether.

PBS is home to masterpiece classics and educational shows like Sesame Street. Its how Jeneissy Azcuy learned how to speak English as a child.

It is Americas largest classroom. It gets kids ready for school kids from the ages of 2 and 8. Parents trust us,  said Azcuy, who is the communications director for PBS in South Florida. Shes dealing with the possibility of a cut to all federal funding not just at the local station, but across the country. The federal dollars help keep the station on the airwaves at what she calls, a low cost to tax payers.

Every $100 that the government spends only a penny goes to public media. So, it's minimal, said Azcuy.

The public broadcasting service has already taken to social media to call on taxpayers to speak out about the proposed cuts. Many have tweeted concerns and fears. Some are calling on the government to "defund it." Others say they cant live without it.

Make their voices be heard to the public officials, to the elected leaders and tell them how they feel about it because that makes a big difference, in fact, it makes all the difference in the world, said Azcuy.

PBS officials believe they have enough support on both sides of the aisle to get at least some of the funding restored.

The president is also looking to make cuts to programs affecting low income families. The proposal would cut funds to help families with energy bills, cut legal aid for the poor and also strip millions of dollars from the Meals on Wheels program.

Volunteers for the program deliver meals to 20,000 children and seniors in South Florida.

It's a scary time for us that serve the vulnerable and at risk populations, said Mark Adler, director of Meals on Wheels.

The president's proposal says, in general, the grant money "is not targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results." However, Adler says more than 800 people are on the waiting list to get meals. Volunteer Chris Cottone goes door-to-door delivering meals to the elderly.

Many are unable to leave their homes. Soon, if you then take away the weekly meal delivery, it would create a lot of stress on them, said Cottone. Volunteers say theyre getting by now, but worry more cuts, could mean more families on the waiting list.

THE ARTS

The art of music is a language that brings us all together -- a melodic expression of our creativity. But, as the Knight Foundation Arts Conference at FIU took place Thursday, President Trump unveiled his budget, which includes the elimination of the NEA.

Artists gathered at the conference  hosting panel discussions on the importance of the arts. Local artist and jeweler Nzingha says our next generation will feel the impact if the proposed cuts are approved by Congress. David Muir, a photo artist, is inspired through the lens of his camera. He believes the drastic cuts will limit people from expressing themselves and reshape the country's cultural infrastructure.

Without art we lose all of our culture and ourselves," said Muir.

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Darren Wats uses visual arts to captivate the public. Dont get rid of it. The whole culture is made of the arts, said Wats. He says the arts not only stimulate the mind, but also the economy -- by creating jobs and attracting tourism.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level "that we believe requires action."

Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat after visiting the world's most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rivals Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction.

Asked about the possibility of using military force, Tillerson told a news conference in the South Korean capital, "all of the options are on the table."t

He said the U.S. does not want a military conflict, "but obviously if North Korea takes actions that threatens South Korean forces or our own forces that would be met with (an) appropriate response. If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action that option is on the table."

But he said that by taking other steps, including sanctions, the U.S. is hopeful that North Korea could be persuaded to take a different course before it reaches that point.

President Donald Trump also weighed in on the issue in a tweet Friday morning, writing, "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been "playing" the United States for years. China has done little to help!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2017

Past U.S. administrations have considered military force because of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them, but rarely has that option been expressed so explicitly.

North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and appearing undeterred by tough international sanctions. The North conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the U.S. within a few years.

Tillerson met Friday with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se and its acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn on the second leg of a three-nation trip which began in Japan and will end in China. State Department officials have described it as a "listening tour" as the administration seeks a coherent North Korea policy, well-coordinated with its Asian partners.

Earlier Friday, Tillerson touched down by helicopter Friday at Camp Bonifas, U.S.-led U.N. base about 400 meters (438 yards) from the Demilitarized Zone, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953. He then moved to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, a cluster of blue huts where the Korean War armistice was signed.

Tillerson is the latest in a parade of senior U.S. officials to have their photos taken at the border. But it's the first trip by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

The DMZ, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops. More than a million mines are believed to be buried inside the DMZ. Land mine explosions in 2015 that Seoul blamed on Pyongyang maimed two South Korean soldiers and led the rivals to threaten each other with attacks."

Hordes of tourists visit both sides, despite the lingering animosity. The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, which means the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.

President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options  including military ones  for halting the North's weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of threatening the U.S. mainland.

Tillerson declared an end to the policy "strategic patience" of the Obama administration, which held off negotiating with Pyongyang while tightening of sanctions but failed to prevent North Korea's weapons development. Tillerson said U.S was exploring "a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures."

Central to the U.S. review is China and its role in any bid to persuade Pyongyang to change course. China remains the North's most powerful ally. Tillerson will meet with top Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping in Beijing this weekend.

While the U.S. and its allies in Seoul and Tokyo implore Beijing to press its economic leverage over North Korea, the Chinese have emphasized their desire to relaunch diplomatic talks.

Tillerson, however, said that "20 years of talks with North Korea have brought us to where we are today."

"It's important that the leadership of North Korea realize that their current pathway of nuclear weapons and escalating threats will not lead to their objective of security and economic development. That pathway can only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction, and only then will we be prepared to engage with them in talks," he said.

Six-nation aid-for-disarmament talks with North Korea, which were hosted by China, have in fact been stalled since 2009. The Obama administration refused to resume them unless the North re-committed to the goal of denuclearization, something that North Korea has shown little interest in doing.

Tillerson urged China and other countries to fully implement U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

He also accused China of economic retaliation against South Korea over the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system. He called that reaction "inappropriate and troubling" and said China should focus on the North Korean threat that makes the deployment necessary. China sees the system as a threat to its own security.

Last week, North Korea launched four missiles into seas off Japan, in an apparent reaction to major annual military drills the U.S. is currently conducting with South Korea. Pyongyang claims the drills are a rehearsal for invasion.
An admitted al-Qaida fighter was convicted on Thursday of federal terrorism charges for participating in a fierce firefight in Afghanistan that left two U.S. servicemen dead.

A jury in federal court in Brooklyn deliberated for about two hours Thursday before convicting Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun.

"As demonstrated by this case, the United States will be tireless in its efforts to hold al-Qaida members accountable when they target American citizens serving their country abroad," Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde said in a statement.

Harun, 46, was extradited from Italy to the United State in 2012. Prosecutors told jurors that while in Italian custody, he confessed that he threw a grenade and shot at an American military unit in a 2003 ambush that killed Army Pvt. Jerod Dennis, of Antlers, Oklahoma, and Air Force Airman Ray Losano, of Del Rio, Texas.

While on the run, Harun later masterminded a failed plot to bomb a U.S. embassy in Nigeria, the government said. He was under the direct supervision of al-Qaida higher-ups, including some still held at Guantanamo Bay, it said.

"The defendant is a man who made terrorism his life story," Assistant U.S. Attorney Melody Wells said in closing arguments on Thursday. "He made a career out of violent jihad."

The Saudi-born defendant who claims Niger citizenship had insisted he was a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than a civilian court prosecution. He refused to attend his trial, and his lawyers took the usual step of not giving a closing argument and focusing on post-trial motions challenging a conviction.

Harun faces a possible life term at sentencing on June 22.
Claude Lewis, one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists and a New York City native, has died at the age of 82, his family says.

Lewis was born and raised in New York City, where he attended public schools before graduating from City College with a degree in English. He worked as an editor and reporter for publications including Newsweek, New York Herald Tribute and The Philadelphia Bulletin.

Lewis later taught at Villanova University in Pennsylvania and became a syndicated columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer. He also worked on TV specials and documentaries, and in 1982, founded the nation's first African-American newspaper, The National Leader.

In his work, Lewis covered the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and met with and interviewed Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968, Lewis left a meeting in Philadelphia to join the King family in Memphis immediately after receiving the news that King was shot.

Lewis formed the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists in 1973 with Chuck Stone and Acel Moore, and the group would go on to become among the 44 founders of the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975 in Washington, D.C.

"Claude was a journalist miles ahead of his time, and he achieved recognition long before many recognized him," said Paul Brock, another NABJ co-founder.

Current NABJ President Sarah Glover, the social media editor at NBC-owned stations, called Lewis "a gentle giant and kind soul whose passion for equality and equal opportunity can be seen in his columns and life's work."

He died at the Virtua Hospital in Voorhees, New Jersey, Thursday morning. He's survived by his wife Beverly, four children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A memorial service is planned for a later date.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio are blasting President Trump's budget proposal, with the governor calling it a "wrecking ball," and New Jersey leaders fretting about potential cuts to a crucial infrastructure project.

De Blasio, a Democrat, says the budget puts New York City directly in the crosshairs.

"New York City stands to lose so much in this budget," de Blasio said at a news conference Thursday. "And maybe if he remembers where he comes from, maybe if he heard the voices of New Yorkers, it would help him realize that he needs to take a different path if he actually wants us to be safe and wants us to succeed."

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the Trump budget plan "dangerous, reckless and contemptuous of American values." He says the budget would cut funding for key transportation projects such as the Gateway Project -- the long-sought rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey -- and undermine affordable housing, health care research and environmental protection.

However, federal officials say that the budget proposal is only an outline and no specific or hard cuts have been laid out.

A Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that the budget blueprint represents the president's and the administration's priorities, "but does not capture the full budget intent of the administration."

De Blasio says these are the New York City programs that would be affected by the federal budget:

Under the proposed cuts to Homeland Security, New York City could lose as much as $190 million. Part of those cuts would include the $110 million that the NYPD receives annually as part of the Homeland Security grant program, which NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill called "absolutely critical" and the backbone of the department's counterterrorism apparatus.

New York City public schools could lose $100 million, which would impact training to teachers and class size.

700,000 families would lose access to low-income home energy assistance

Huge cuts to Housing and Urban Development would mean less money for senior citizens, less money for senior centers, cuts to home repairs for seniors

Cuts of $150 million to the city's Housing Authority operating funds and $220 million to the Housing Authority capital funds would impact 400,000 families

"In the end, every budget is a statement of values, and I regret to say that this budget confirms that President Trump does not value working families because they're gonna bear the brunt," de Blasio said. "The budget consistently contradicts his campaign promises."

Both Cuomo and de Blasio vowed to fight the proposed budget and to work with New York's congress members to battle it.

Republican congressman Peter King told News 4 that the numbers offered up by de Blasio and city officials were worst-case scenario estimates. He said he was told by a city official that the White House budget actually offered no specific numbers on potential security or counterterror cuts to New York City.

King, who represents parts of Long Island, says while some percentage of Homeland Security cuts may affect New York, he doesn't believe all the federal money to the city will be yanked. He vowed to fight to make sure "not one penny" is cut from federal counterterror funding for New York City.

Trump's plan also puts in jeopardy billions of dollars in federal funding crucial to the Gateway project by only paying for projects that have advanced to the final contract stage, New Jersey's Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez said.

The tunnel project has been approved for the funding program, called New Starts, but doesn't have a final grant agreement.

"President Trump's proposal to eliminate the New Starts program - and the Gateway Project along with it - is irresponsible, short-sighted, and demonstrates a complete failure of leadership," Menendez said.

Another component of the Gateway project, a replacement for the century-old Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River in northern New Jersey, a source of regular delays, also could be jeopardized.

Environmental permitting, engineering and design for a new bridge have been completed, and the project only awaits federal dollars to begin construction. Yet, like the tunnel, the Portal Bridge would be left out under the current budget proposal.

"Zeroing out funding for New Starts will interrupt both of these critical projects and delay the start of construction, which in the case of Portal Bridge, was anticipated to begin this year," John Porcari, interim executive director of the Gateway Program Development Corp., said in an email.

The tunnel, which is more than 100 years old, is expected to cost close to $10 billion, half to be paid by the federal government and half by New York and New Jersey through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Through a spokesman, Republican Gov. Chris Christie said he "will do all he can to fight any federal funding cut to this project of regional and national importance."

The tunnel is seen as a crucial need for the New York City region, as well as the wider Northeast transportation network. It already operates at peak capacity and is the site of delays due to electrical problems that can have a ripple effect along Amtrak's 457-mile Northeast Corridor, between Washington, D.C., and Boston.

About 750,000 people ride the corridor each day on Amtrak or several commuter lines, according to Amtrak.

The tunnel suffered saltwater damage from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and Amtrak officials have said that will force them to take both of its tubes out service for repairs within the next 15 to 20 years. Officials have painted a dire picture of crippling delays if a new tunnel isn't finished before then.

Jonathan Dienst contributed to this report.
What to Know Jose Gonzalez, 25, allegedly hijacked the ambulance when Yadira Arroyo and her partner pulled over in the Bronx to help someone Thursday

He ran over Arroyo and her partner when the two tried to stop him from driving off, police allege

Arroyo, a mother of 5 and 14-year FDNY EMS veteran, was dragged under the vehicle and left dead in the street

A 25-year-old man who allegedly stole an ambulance in the Bronx and ran over an EMT, a mother of five, has been arraigned on murder and other charges.

A contingent of EMTs stared down Jose Gonzalez as he was led out of the 43rd Precinct, professing his innocence, in handcuffs before dawn. Law enforcement sources say it's Gonzalez's 32nd arrest in 13 years; charges range from assault to criminal trespassing, robbery and public lewdness.

"I'm innocent, I didn't do nothing," a bruised Gonzalez said of the EMT case as he walked to a waiting vehicle.

At his arraignment later in the day, his attorney told reporters that Gonzalez was "severely mentally ill."

"Whatever happened in this case was not intentional," said Alice Fontier of Bronx Public Defenders. "He is not the person he is being portrayed to be."

Asked about the bruises and apparent injuries on Gonzalez, Fontier said he had been "arrested in a very rough fashion." He had severe bruising and a dislocated jaw, she said.

The lawyer, speaking to reporters after the arraignment, was mostly drowned out by an angry and emotional contingent of EMTs and colleagues who had gathered at the courtroom.

"This is obviously a very charged and emotional matter," she said. "It is abolutely a tragedy."

The EMTs gathered at the Bronx courtroom chanted "Yadi, Yadi" -- Arroyo's nickname -- and yelled, "Life, life," saying Gonzalez deserved to be imprisoned till death.

"He intentionally ran her over," said a union spokesman. "This was no mistake. This wasn't an 'I didn't see you.' This was murder."

Gonzalez is being held without bail.

Arroyo, a 44-year-old mother of five and beloved EMT veteran, was honored at a bunting ceremony at her Bronx stationhouse Friday evening.

Police said the 25-year-old Gonzalez was high on drugs when he hopped on the back of Arroyo's ambulance Thursday. A court complaint says Gonzalez darted into the driver's seat and ran over Arroyo after a man on the street flagged down the ambulance to say Gonzalez had seized his backpack; police said he was riding the back bumper of the ambulance after the apparent robbery.

Survellance video obtained exclusively by News 4 New York shows Gonzalez riding the bumper.

Arroyo and her partner tried to stop him and he put the ambulance in reverse; Arroyo fell to the ground and Gonzalez allegedly drove over her.

In addition to three counts of murder, Gonzalez is charged with grand larceny and operating a motor vehicle while impaired by drugs. He lives down the street from Arroyo, at a building run by Volunteers of America that houses homeless people or those who are cosidered "at risk." The organization didn't immediately respond to an email request for comment early Friday.




What to Know Yadira Arroyo, a 44-year-old mother of 5, was run over and killed by her own ambulance, hijacked by a man riding the back bumper, cops say

Arroyo was being honored by colleagues and the FDNY at her stationhouse in the Bronx Friday

Coincidentally, she lived on the same block as the man accused of mowing her down

Yadira Arroyo died a hero when she tried to stop a thief who hopped into her ambulance as the veteran EMT was on her way to a call Thursday, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro says.

The 44-year-old mother of five, who worked for 14 years at FDNY EMS station no. 26 in the Bronx, was mowed down by her own hijacked ambulance while she and her partner were on their way to a job.

Fire officials draped black and purple bunting over Arroyo's stationhouse in a somber ceremony as uniformed officers saluted and bagpipers played "Amazing Grace."

"We're mourning a hero," Nigro said. "We will, with her family, celebrate her life, we will mourn her death, we will stand strong together as this department has done for 152 years."

Arroyo, known affectionately as Yadi, was so uniquely selfless and compassionate that she was the matriarch of her EMS station, her supervisor said.

"She was not only a mother to five, she was a mother to the 100-plus people who worked here," said Lt. George Lampon, choking back tears.

"She wouldn't eat unless her partners ate. She wouldn't start her tour without asking somebody how they were doing," Louis Montalvo, a close friend and fellow EMT, told reporters at the suspect's arraignment Friday, where other colleagues had gathered. "She didn't have malice in her heart."

"Knowing she was out there gave us peace and understanding that the right thing was going to be done every single time," said station captain Joseph Jefferson. "The care and compassion she displayed every single time she touched a patient -- she touched a person, it was her family."

"That was her nature. I've served the department for 28 years, and rarely do you find a member who is so dedicated, so selfless," he said.

Arroyo was known for her contagious laugh, "this joy that no matter what she was going through, she set aside to do this job that was so noble," he added. "Her love, her laughter, her smile cannot be replaced. It will always be in our hearts. We will lift that up every day."

Arroyo was a single mother when she decided to become an EMT at the encouragement of her own mother, according to her brother Joel Rosado, also an EMT.

"She was my best friend," said the devastated Rosado, who says he's focused on pulling the family together.

"She was a good mom. She always took her kids out on vacations. She always tried really hard to be there for them," he told News 4.

Arroyo's sister-in-law Monica Salazar told the New York Post that Arroyo's children were able to say goodbye. The eldest is 24 and the youngest is 7 and lives in Connecticut with his dad. She says the children were devastated. But Arroyo's oldest son, Jose, said he would be a rock for them.

Another of Arroyo's children, Edgar Montes, was too distraught to speak much about his mother's death Friday morning. He told News 4 he lived with his mother and his uncle in Arroyo's apartment on Creston Avenue.

Madelyne Martinez recalled how kind and empathetic Arroyo was when she wound up in the back of her ambulance last week. She'd called 911 and was doubled over in pain when Arroyo arrived.

"She was telling me in the ambulance, 'Calm down, you're going to be OK. I have kids like you have kids,'" Martinez told News 4. "I have six, and she has five. That broke my heart right there."

"She was a really good person," she said.

In her Bronx neighborhood of Soundview, almost everyone had a story about Yadi. Joseph Brown said even though he didn't know her well, every time he couldn't afford a meal, she gave him money from her own pocket.

"She was a lifesaver. She was that kind of person that would give from her heart," he said.

Barber Valdimir Sencion said the two used to talk about their kids.

"It gives me pain that she died this way," he said. "We don't know how many lives she saved. And for her to die the way she did."

In an odd twist, Arroyo and the man accused of killing her lived on the same block, according to police. Jose Gonzalez, 25, lived at a building run by Volunteers of America that houses homeless people or those who are considered "at risk." The organization didn't immediately respond to an email request for comment early Friday.

Gonzalez professed his innocence as he was led out of the 43rd Precinct stationhouse early Friday morning after being arrested on murder and other charges.

"I'm innocent, I didn't do nothing," Gonzalez told reporters.

His attorney acknowleged the tragedy but says her client is "severely mentally ill."

"Whatever happened in this case was not intentional," she said.

Law enforcement sources say it's Gonzalez's 32nd arrest in 13 years; charges range from assault to criminal trespassing, robbery and public lewdness.

Arroyo and her partner were on their way to a call in the Bronx Thursday evening when they were alerted to someone hanging onto the back bumper of the ambulance, authorities said. Arroyo got out to check, and Gonzalez hopped into the idling vehicle and took off.

The EMTs tried to stop him, and Gonzalez put the ambulance in reverse; Arroyo fell to the ground and he ran over her, police said. He then went forward, dragging her into the middle of the intersection at White Plains Road and Watson Avenue.

"Yadi was on her way to a call. Someone who served the people of the Bronx for 14 years. You can imagine how that struck her, that he was interfering with her job," said Nigor. "She took it as a personal affront."

A passing MTA police officer witnessed the crash and immediately pulled over and subdued the suspect with the help of bystanders, authorities said.

Arroyos partner suffered minor injuries while struggling with the suspect, according to police. In the video posted to Twitter, she can be heard screaming in anguish as she stands over Arroyo, who is lying motionless in the street.

That partner is "broken apart," a union spokesman says. "She can't event speak. This is something she's gonna carry around for the rest of her life."

Funeral arrangements had yet to be scheduled as of Friday morning.



None of the people in the occupied vehicles hit by the stolen ambulance were hurt, authorities said.
What to Know A house in Rockville, Maryland, was destroyed after midnight Friday by an explosion felt for miles around. A man who lived there is missing.

The cause of the blast is under investigation. The fire chief said a gas leak is not believed to be to blame.

The house was set to be auctioned off later Friday.

A house in a suburb of Washington, D.C. was leveled early Friday by a thunderous explosion that sprayed debris across nearby homes and could be felt from 4 miles away.

One man is unaccounted for after the blast on the 11000 block of Ashley Drive in Rockville, Maryland. Two cars in the driveway are his, neighbors said.

The home was in foreclosure and was set to be auctioned off later in the day.

News4's Meagan Fitzgerald talked to neighbors after the blast that could be felt for miles. The fire chief said in an update Friday afternoon that the house had an illegal gas hookup.

Video shot from Chopper4 late Friday morning showed a heap of broken bricks and debris hardly distinguishable as having been a house. Cadaver-sniffing dogs worked through the rubble.

The damage is "catastrophic," Montgomery County fire department spokesman Pete Piringer said.

"It's just a pile of debris. it's just a pile of bricks. There's not anything left," he said.

A powerful explosion demolished a home in Rockville, Maryland, early Friday, leaving a pile of debris barely distinguishable as having been a house. News4s Megan McGrath and Justin Finch have live team coverage from the scene.

Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said in an update Friday afternoon that Washington Gas shut off natural gas service to the house in June 2015. Investigators discovered on Friday, after the explosion that there had been "unauthorized gas use" inside the structure since December 2016.

But the fire chief said the cause of the blast and fire were still unknown.

"It's too early in the investigation to identify if there is something that contributed that was gas-related," he said.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are assisting in the probe.

The occupant of a Maryland home is missing after it was leveled by an explosion early Friday. The fire chief said investigators are working to determine the case, but said there was "no concern about a gas involvement in this explosion."

Neighbors said they felt two ground-shaking booms about 12:40 a.m. People from as far away as Bethesda felt the blasts and called 911. On Ashley Drive, neighbors went outside and saw a huge fire. They ran toward the blaze to help.

"The people was running. I didn't understand what was happening," neighbor Angel Condorimay said.

Neighbors screamed into the fire, hoping to hear someone. But they heard nothing back, Condorimay said.

Update - 11422 Ashley Dr, Randolph Hills, numerous 911 calls recd, FFs arrived encountered widespread 'blast' debris field & rubble fire pic.twitter.com/A20mb401lU  Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) March 17, 2017

Firefighters were called to the scene just before 1 a.m. It took 75 firefighters about 20 minutes to control the blaze.

An explosion at a Rockville home early Friday was so powerful that authorities received calls from miles away. Neighbors said the blast shook their homes and blew out their windows.

One house nearby was damaged so badly that Montgomery County declared it uninhabitable. Nine additional houses were damaged, as well as nine cars.

The powerful jolt shook many neighbors from their sleep, including Luzia Ricci.

"I could feel it underground,'' she said of the explosion in the neighborhood of modest, mostly one-story single family homes. "I was wondering, 'Are we having an earthquake?' But it was so short."

She went outside to see what was going on and could see the flames from her backyard. She started to go closer with her daughter, but then she heard another pop and backed away.

Authorities are still working to locate and speak with the man's family members. Neighbors said the resident lived alone in the brick house for decades.

His house, listed as his primary residence, was scheduled to be auctioned at 1:30 p.m. Friday, according to RealtyTrac, the company that would have auctioned it. Montgomery County court records show the foreclosure case was closed.

Debris from the Rockville house explosion can be seen caught in the branches of tall trees nearby. The resident is still unaccounted for. pic.twitter.com/Oq97AfK9xP  Megan McGrath (@MeganMcGrath4) March 17, 2017

The debris field early Friday was so vast that a car across the street was covered in pieces of insulation, and pieces of debris hung in trees.

Neighboring homes were damaged, but no neighbors were reported injured. Crews boarded up windows blown out by the blast.

"...[W]e got calls down in Bethesda, people feeling the explosion itself," Goldstein said. Residents of Kensington also reported feeling the rumble.

The damage displaced several residents.

Neighboring homes were damaged after a Rockville home exploded early Friday. One man said his home shook and windows rattled, calling the incident startling.

Gas Line Leak Likely Not a Cause of the Blast, Fire Chief Says

The cause of the explosion is under investigation. Both Pepco and Washington Gas cut service. Piringer said there were no reports of any gas leaks before the blast, and Goldstein said he did not believe authorized use of utilities was to blame.

The fire chief said there was no evidence that the explosion was set intentionally.

"There is no information we have that identifies an intentional act, [or a] malicious or suspicious circumstance to have contributed to this," Goldstein said.

In 2011, another home exploded on the same street, less than half a mile away. In that case, investigators attributed the blast to a gas leak when residents attempted to convert a clothes dryer from gas to electric. A man and a woman were blown from the home and suffered severe burns.

Washington Gas executive Douglas Staebler sought to assure neighbors that their natural gas service was safe to use.

"Their houses are safe. Their gas service is safe," he said.

Editor's Note: A photo briefly published with this story was uploaded erroneously.

Huge Explosion Levels House in Rockville, Maryland
President Donald Trump says his agenda is all about jobs, jobs, jobs. But at a rally in Nashville, and a speech earlier the same day in Detroit, Trump made several misleading claims about jobs, and the effect he has had on them since taking office.

Trump boasted, In the first two job reports since I took the oath of office, weve already added nearly half a million new jobs. But only one of those reports pertained to Trumps time in office.

Trump also made the curious promise that were going to put our auto industry back to work. Auto manufacturing jobs have been steadily increasing for more than six years.

Trump said that because of him, a lot of auto manufacturing facilities that were going to get built overseas were stopped in their tracks. But auto industry experts said few planned overseas plants have been scrapped, and none because of Trump.

Trump boasted that he approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and ordered all new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. But only about half of the steel for those projects will be produced in the U.S.

Trump made a few other misleading claims in Nashville that we have heard before: on the size of a proposed defense spending increase, the number of refugees under federal investigation for terrorism, and the track record of an appeals court that blocked the presidents travel order.

You can see our annotated transcript of Trumps Nashville speech here.

Stay informed about local news and weather. Get the NBC 4 New York app for iOS or Android and pick your alerts.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Well start with a comment Trump made about jobs in general. Boasting about job gains since he took office, Trump touted January gains that occurred before his inauguration.

Trump, March 15: Already, because of this new business climate, we are creating jobs that are starting to pour back into our country like we havent seen in many, many decades. In the first two job reports since I took the oath of office, weve already added nearly half a million new jobs. And believe me, its just beginning.

Its true that the U.S. economy has added 473,000 jobs this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Trump wrongly takes credit for the 238,000 jobs added in January to make the claim that nearly half a million jobs have been created since I took the oath of office.

The BLS measures payrolls as of the week containing the 12th day of the month. Trump wasnt sworn in until Jan. 20. So the January numbers were based on a survey that was concluded before Trump took office.

We also note that this positive jobs trend is not something that began in January, or even since the election. As we have noted previously, the economy added more than 250,000 new jobs a month in 20 of the 96 months under President Obama. Overall, the nations economy added 11.5 million jobs under Obama, including a record 75 straight months of job growth  which was extended to 76 months in February.

We would also be remiss if we did not point out that in the past, Trump has repeatedly derided the monthly jobs data put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics  particularly its unemployment rate data  as phony. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made light of the presidents newfound respect for the BLS figures when he joked during a March 10 press briefing, Yeah, I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly  They may have been phony in the past, but its very real now.'

Auto Jobs

In Nashville, Trump also made this curious promise: Were going to put our auto industry back to work.

Its true that automobile manufacturing jobs are down from a peak in early 2000, and so perhaps Trump meant that he intends to restore the number of auto manufacturing jobs to that level.

But since plummeting in the Great Recession, auto manufacturing jobs have been on a fairly steady incline for more than six years, as the chart below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. The number of jobs in motor vehicle and parts manufacturing has risen by 37.5 percent since Obama took office in January 2009, and by just over 50 percent since its lowest point in the recession in July 2009.

U.S. vehicle sales hit an all-time high of 17.5 million in 2016, the seventh consecutive year of sales gains, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst for Autotrader.

At a rally earlier on March 15 in Detroit, Trump said that because of his election, plenty of overseas auto manufacturing plants were stopped in their tracks.

Trump, March 15, Detroit: Before NAFTA went into effect  by the way, NAFTA, a total disaster  there were 280,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is roughly 165,000 and would have been heading down big league if I didnt get elected, I will tell you that right now. That I can tell you. Plenty of things were stopped in their tracks. They were stopped in their tracks. A lot of bad things were going to happen, a lot of places were going to get built that arent going to get built right now in other locations.

It remains to be seen whether auto manufacturing jobs will continue to rise or, as many believe, have plateaued. Krebs thinks sales will dip slightly to 17.3 million in 2017, and other automotive industry forecasters have projected sales may dip even lower than that.

But auto industry experts we spoke to were hard-pressed to name any overseas plants that have been scrapped due to Trumps influence.

In the past, Trump has cited Ford as an example. But as we have written, Trump is claiming undue credit. Ford announced on Jan. 3 that it had canceled its planned $1.6 billion plant in Mexico, and that it would invest $4.5 billion over the next five years to ramp up production of electric cars, including an investment of $700 million at its plant in Flat Rock, Michigan.

The planned Mexico plant, where Ford had planned to build the next generation Ford Focus, was scrapped because weve seen decreasing demand here in North America for small cars, and we simply dont need the capacity anymore, Ford CEO Mark Fields said on Fox Business News. Instead, he said, Ford will build the Focus in an existing facility in Mexico.

As for the investment in electric vehicles, Fields said in announcing the plan that it was a reaction to the reality that the era of electric vehicles is dawning, adding that he expected to see production of electric cars exceed traditional gas-powered ones in the next 15 years.

Host Neil Cavuto asked if Ford would have announced the moves if Trump were not elected president. Yes, absolutely, Fields said.

Another example frequently cited by Trump has been Fiat Chrysler, which announced on Jan. 8 a $1 billion investment in plants in Michigan and Ohio, and the addition of 2,000 new American jobs. The company announced that expansion would enable the company to build Ram heavy duty trucks, currently produced in Mexico, in Michigan.

In comments the day after the announcement, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told reporters the announced investments were in the works for more than a year and had nothing to do with Trump or his policy ideas, USA Today reported.

Rather, he said, It has been part of the discussion going back to 2015 negotiations with the United Auto Workers.

Both company CEOs praised Trumps plan to slash regulations and cut corporate taxes  which they said would allow them to grow in the future. But both also noted that their U.S. expansion plans were part of a years-long investment strategy.

The Center for Automotive Research found that automakers have announced investments of $116.5 billion since January 2009, said Kristin Dziczek, an analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And 73 percent of that investment has come to the U.S., while Mexico has gotten 21 percent and Canada, 6 percent.

Aside from Fords decision  which Dziczek said was a market-driven decision due to sluggish sales of small cars  Im not aware of anything else that has been cancelled or pulled back from offshore in this time frame, she told us.

Steel Jobs & Pipeline Projects

Trump also boasted in Nashville that he approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, adding that all new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. But only about half of the steel for those projects will come from the U.S., despite Trumps directive.

Trump, March 15: Ive already authorized the construction of the long-stalled and delayed Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. A lot of jobs. Ive also directed that new pipelines must be constructed with American steel. They want to build them here, they use our steel. We believe in two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.

Its true that Trump issued a memorandum on Jan. 24 directing the commerce secretary to develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the United States, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the United States, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.

But for the Keystone XL project and the Dakota Access Pipeline, no more than 57 percent of the steel will be from the U.S. Thats because both projects were already far along in the planning and construction process, even though sections of them have been delayed, as Trump said.

Lets look first at Keystone XL, which would be built by TransCanada Corp. That pipeline would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The U.S. segment would run through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The 36-inch diameter line could carry up to 830,000 barrels (nearly 35 million gallons) of oil per day, according to a company brochure.

The Obama administration rejected the project  a decision that was reversed by Trump. As we have written before, the U.S. State Department estimates that about 42,000 temporary jobs would be added during construction, but that only 50 permanent jobs would be needed to operate the pipeline.

In a 2012 press release, the company said that it would use 660,000 tons of steel for the U.S. portion of the Keystone XL pipeline  about half of which would come from the United States, specifically from the Welspun Group in Little Rock, Arkansas. The rest would come from Canada (24 percent), Italy (16 percent) and India (10 percent).

We provided TransCanada with a link to its press release and asked if the information is still current. We were told that it is. So, nothing has changed, despite Trumps order.

In a statement to the media earlier this month, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained why Keystone XL was exempt from the executive order: The way that executive order is written. Its specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired. Since this one is already currently under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there; it would be hard to go back.

That is also true for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is even further along.

Once complete, the 1,172-mile pipeline will extend from the Bakken formation in North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa and into Illinois.

In early February, two months after the Obama administration halted construction, Trumps Army Corps of Engineers reversed course and gave an Energy Transfer Partners subsidiary, Dakota Access LLC, the go-ahead to finish building the pipeline. In court documents, the company said that part of the pipeline could be ready to use as early as March 20, depending on testing, according to a March 14 Forum News Service report.

In an August 2016 fact sheet on the project, Dakota Access said that 57 percent of the pipeline will be manufactured in the United States.

The same fact sheet said that the pipeline project was expected to create between 8,000 and 12,000 temporary construction jobs, but only as many as 40 permanent operating jobs beyond that.

Repeats

Defense: Trump boasted that his budget calls for one of the single largest increases in defense spending history in this country. As we have written, Trumps proposed FY2018 budget will include $603 billion in base defense spending, an increase of 9.4 percent from the current $551 billion. But Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan enacted double-digit increases in base defense spending five times in the 1980s  including increases of nearly 25 percent in fiscal 1981 and more than 20 percent in fiscal 1982. President George W. Bushs base defense budget increases also were larger in 2002, 2003 and 2008, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Refugees: Trump said, Hundreds of refugees are under federal investigation for terrorism and related reasons. As we have written, the administration has said 300 refugees are subjects of counterterrorism investigations without defining what that means. There are three levels of investigations, beginning with assessments  which do not require any particular factual predication, as explained in a 2014 inspectors general report. The New York Times last year reported that in recent years the F.B.I. has averaged 10,000 assessments annually, and 7,000 to 10,000 preliminary or full investigations involving international terrorism. What we do know is that no refugees were involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and no refugees have been responsible for any terrorism-related deaths in the U.S. since 9/11.

Courts: Trump criticized the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th District, which ruled against Trumps first executive order on foreign travel and would hear a challenge to a Hawaii federal judges order blocking the revised one. Take a look at how many times they have been overturned with their terrible decisions, Trump said of the 9th Circuit. In the 2015 term, the 9th Circuit had a reversal rate of 80 percent, while the average reversal rate for all 13 appellate courts was 67 percent. But a 2010 American Bar Association report noted that the Supreme Court reviews less than 1 percent of all circuit court rulings. Reversal rates for each court of appeals would be very small, in the range of a tenth of a percent, if calculated as the total number of cases reversed over the total number of appeals terminated by that court, the report said.

FactCheck.org is a non-partisan non-profit organization that will hold candidates and key figures accountable during the 2016 presidential campaign. FactCheck.org will check facts of speeches, advertisements and more for NBC.
President Donald Trump has approved a disaster declaration for California to address damage from January storms that were part of the state's extremely wet winter.

The action Thursday makes federal funding available to state, local and tribal governments as well as nonprofit groups.

The assistance covers emergency work and repair or replacement of facilities damaged from Jan. 18 to Jan. 23 in 16 counties, and hazard mitigation measures statewide.

Counties named in the declaration include El Dorado, Kern, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Napa, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yolo.

The White House says other declarations may be made later depending on damage assessments.

January saw California come under siege by storms fed by a series of so-called atmospheric rivers.
A calf from a critically endangered species of porpoise was found dead in the waters off Baja California, according to Sea Shepherd, the organization known for battling illegal fishing and poaching in the oceans.

The body of the vaquita, believed to be a newborn, was found floating in the Gulf of California just south of San Felipe on Sunday, March 12.

Locals gave the crews of the Sea Shepherd vessels photos of a second, adult vaquita they said was found nearby. The adult vaquita was not located.

The calf's body was turned over to Mexican authorities to determine a cause of death, the organization said.

More than half of the population has been lost in the last three years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Now, with only 30 vaquita porpoises left in the world, Rep. Todd Gloria (D-78th District) has introduced a bill in California to help save the rare sea mammal from extinction. The bill would make it illegal to possess or sell fish products caught in the northern Gulf of California with a gillnet.

More often than not vaquitas get entangled in nets meant for a fish known as the totoaba, which inhabits the same territory. The vaquitas are unable to surface to breathe and drown as a result.

The gillnets have led to a 90 percent decline in the vaquitas' numbers over the last five years, according a study by an international committee of experts.

In 2016, 31 illegal fishing nets for the totoaba were pulled from the Gulf of California.

Mexico has temporarily banned the use of gillnets for fishing of shrimp and other sea creatures in an effort to protect the vaquita.

However, there is a loophole that allows for the use of gillnets for fishing of Gulf corvina, a practice used to capture the totoaba fish.

Considered "aquatic cocaine," the fishing for totoaba is highly lucrative. Sea Shepherd estimates the fish is worth $20,000 per kilo.

On Tuesday, March 14, the crews of Sea Shepherd vessels discovered a net with 66 dead totoaba. Operation Milagro campaign leader Capt. Oona Layolle said the crew has never seen that many dead totoaba in one net.
Many Roman Catholics who ordinarily abstain from eating meat on Fridays during the 40 days before Easter have been given a St. Patrick's Day pardon.

The Washington-based Catholic News Service reports that many bishops across the country are giving the green light to eating the traditional corned beef and cabbage this year.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington is among those who have granted Catholics an exception to abstaining from meat on Friday.

"Catholics who avail themselves of this dispensation are encouraged to consider abstaining from eating meat the following day," the Archdiocese of Washington wrote in a statement March 4.

The Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, also gave an exception in a statement on its website.

"Having taken into consideration both past practice and present circumstances, and having judged that it would serve the spiritual good of the faithful, Bishop Burbidge has granted to the faithful of the Diocese of Arlington, as well as to any visitors or travelers who may be physically present within the territory of this diocese, a dispensation from the obligation of abstinence from meat on March 17, 2017," the statement said in part.

As of late February, dioceses or archdioceses allowing the pardon also included New York; Baltimore; Milwaukee; St. Paul and Minneapolis; Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; Omaha, Nebraska, and Jefferson City, Missouri.
Nonprofit organizations say holding events along Washington D.C.'s Pennsylvania Avenue costs thousands of dollars more because of President Donald Trump's hotel.

As part of an agreement with the Trump International Hotel, the D.C. government requires organizers of events or races that shut down Pennsylvania Ave. to hire a private company to wall off the curb lane around the hotel so guests can drive in and out.

"The requirement is the installation of construction grade water barricades in front of the Trump hotel from 12th Street to 10th Street. It costs about $7,500 dollars that the event has to bear the cost of," said Kathy Dalby, the CEO of Pacers Running.

For many years, the stretch of Pennsylvania Ave. from Freedom Plaza to the Capitol has been a preferred site for charity races. Dalby said holding a race, parade or festival in that stretch is already expensive as organizers have to pay the city $25,000 to shut down the roads. Organizations have had to foot a larger bill since the luxury hotel opened in October last year.

Michael Sapienza, the CEO of the Colon Cancer Alliance, said the organization had to pay nearly $8,000 plus additional fees for D.C. police to patrol the barricaded area for the Scope It Out 5K Run/Walk on Sunday.

"So that's $10,000 less that would go to patients," Sapienza said. "Passing the cost off to a nonprofit thats going to actually effect patients and their families is what I think, you know, upsets us the most."

Sapienza said over the past 12 years the Colon Cancer Alliance's annual charity race has raised more than $2 million to help cancer patients, but the hotel's requirement may mean the race will move out of D.C. next year.

Race organizers said if the city would allow themca to use orange cones rather than barricades, it could save the charities thousands of dollars.

Officials with the D.C. Department of Transportation said they are open to meeting with organizers to look at more options.

A spokesperson for the Trump hotel declined to comment.

The Colon Cancer Alliance hopes to raise more than $250,000 from Sunday's race.
A Virginia man pleaded guilty Thursday to a 2016 revenge killing.

DiJuan Marquie Clark, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and use of firearm in the commission of a murder in connection with the shooting of 23-year-old Saquan E. Hall in Alexandria July 2.

At 3:30 a.m. that day, Hall went to First Street and North Patrick Street to meet someone, according to the commonwealth's attorney's office. Clark fired multiple shots Hall as he ran, striking Hall in the back.

Clark then shot Hall in the head as he lay on the ground, according to the commonwealth's attorney's office.

The investigation found Clark believed Hall was responsible for his brother Pierre Clark's death just weeks before, according to the commonwealth's attorney's office.

"The motive for this murder was apparently the oldest motive known to man: Revenge," Commonwealth's Attorney Bryan Porter said.

"Citizens cannot be allowed to resort to self-help and violence to redress perceived injuries," Porter added.

Clark faces 5-to-40 years in prison on the murder charge and 3 years in prison on the firearms charge. Sentencing was scheduled for June 15.
A new round of heavy rains and mudslides this week have wrought havoc around Peru and caught residents in Lima, a desert city of 10 million where it almost never rains, by surprise. At least a dozen people have been killed.

In a dramatic moment caught on video, stunned residents watched as a woman escaped after being swept into an avalanche of mud, wood debris and farm animals about 53 kilometers (32 miles) south of downtown Lima.

Evangelina Chamorro, 32, had just dropped her two daughters at school and was feeding her pigs alongside her husband when they were pulled into a landslide. Armando Rivera, Chamorro's husband, told RPP radio they climbed a tree but the trunk broke. They held on to each other's hands but Chamorro eventually lost his grip and got separated.

She emerged near a bridge, lifting herself from a current of wooden planks and walking toward the shore covered head to toe in mud.

"There's a person there!" an onlooker cried out.

Chamorro collapsed as she reached land and was quickly carried by several men to an ambulance. She sustained only minor injuries.

Authorities said Thursday they expect the rains caused by El Nino, which generates a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to continue for another two weeks. Thus far, officials say a total of 62 people have died and 12,000 homes have been destroyed in storms this year.

In Lima, the swelling Huaycoloro river swept away two trucks and threatened to destroy a bridge. Schools nationwide have suspended classes. And seven of the nation's most dangerous criminals were temporarily transported to another facility after a river near the prison threatened to overflow.

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said late Wednesday that authorities are prepared to provide shelter and relief to those left homeless.
What to Know Thousands of people flooded midtown for the 256th New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade

Street closures and MTA service changes are in effect for the parade

Limerick native Michael Dowling, president & CEO of Northwell Health, is the first hospital head to serve as Grand Marshal of the NY parade

Thousands of revelers and marchers descended on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue for the 256th New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade Friday, turning the iconic street into a sea of festive green.

Revelers braved the crisp morning winds to watch acclaimed Irish violinist Greg Harrington begin the procession with a serene rendition of "The Parting Glass," a popular Scottish parting tune sung in Ireland. Little girls with green shamrocks painted on their cheeks excitedly bounced behind the barricade, waiting for marching bands to stroll by.

Dressed in traditional olive green camouflage, the 69th regiment of New York led the parade for the 165th time, waving American flags as company bag piper Joe Brady played and marched alongside soldiers. The "Fighting 69th" infantry was originally organized as a militia unit for Irish immigrants in New York.

The company marched ahead of the Valley Forge Military Academy and College Regimental Band. Wrapped in cadet grey jackets, snare drummers played in harmony with bass saxophonists. Not even the breeze could make the red tassles sway atop their black and gold hats as they marched up Fifth Avenue.

The Grand Marshall aides were all smiles in chic black suits and black top hats. They lined the street, delicately holding the Irish flag satin sash draped over their right shoulders as the crowd clapped and cheered.

For Grand Marshall Michael Dowling, the celebrations gave him an appreciation for the life he created in the United States from the hardships he endured during his childhood in a rogue Irish farming village.

"Just proves that's what the United States is all about," he said, grinning ear to ear. "No matter how you began, the United States gives opportunities that exist no other place in the world. To be in New York, to be in the United States, to be Irish on a beautiful day like this on St. Patrick's Day -- what could be better?"

Two FDNY officers led a wave of members down Fifth Avenue with a banner of Yadira Arroyo, complete with a poised photo of the late EMT who was killed Thursday after she was brutally run over by a man who hijacked the ambulance she was riding in.

Mayor de Blasio said the celebration honors not just the contributions of the Irish in New York, but throughout the country.

"It's a moment to reflect on," he told News 4. "We would not be New York City if it weren't for what the Irish-Americans have done for us."

NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill fully embraced his Irish heritage during his first march as commissioner in the parade. He thanked the men and women on the force for their daily hard work and said he was "so proud" to serve as commissioner.

NYPD officers dresed in their signature navy blue uniforms steadied golden flag poles against their shoulders as they regally marched to rounds of applause from the crowd. Four flags -- American, Irish, New York State and NYPD -- whipped against the wind.

This year's parade is dedicated to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York and to the New York State Police. Both organizations turn 100 years old this year.

Gov. Cuomo announced police will be cracking down on drunken driving as well as underage drinking at the parade. The law enforcement campaign will include sobriety checkpoints, and ID inspections at bars.

Alcohol is banned from Metro-North and LIRR trains. MTA police will enforce the ban on Friday through 5 a.m. Saturday, the agency said. MTA service changes are also in effect.

There's been a scramble to clear streets this week after a nor'easter dumped rain and snow on the tri-state area, which froze over as temperatures lingered below freezing for days. The Department of Sanitation was moving glacial snow mounds from Fifth Avenue and other parts of midtown on Thursday.
President Donald Trump defiantly refused to back down Friday from his explosive claim that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, and sidestepped any blame for the White House decision to highlight an unverified report that Britain helped carry out the alleged surveillance.

In brushing off the diplomatic row with perhaps America's closest ally, Trump also revived another: the Obama administration's monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls.

"At least we have something in common, perhaps," Trump said during a joint news conference with Merkel.

Merkel, who was making her first visit to the White House since Trump took office, looked surprised by the president's comment, which he appeared primed to deliver. The Obama administration's spying infuriated Germany at the time and risked damaging the U.S. relationship with one of its most important European partners.

Trump's unproven recent allegations against his predecessor have left him increasingly isolated, with fellow Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers saying they've seen nothing from intelligence agencies to support his claim. But Trump, who rarely admits he's wrong, has been unmoved, leaving his advisers in the untenable position of defending the president without any credible evidence.

On Thursday, spokesman Sean Spicer turned to a Fox News analyst's contention that GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, had helped Obama wiretap Trump. The president reiterated Friday that Andrew Napolitano was the source of his information that Obama wiretapped him.

That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldnt be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox, Trump said.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said Friday that the network didn't have any evidence that Trump was wiretapped and could not independently verify the reports from Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and commentator who has met with the president.

Smith also asked why Trump relied on Napolitanos commentary, rather than information from U.S. intelligence agencies.

Of course, the president could learn first-hand whether the building in which he lives was wiretapped, Smith said. All hed have to do is ask the intelligence services; they work for him.

The GCHQ vigorously denied the charges in a rare public statement, saying the report was "utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

According to a Western diplomat, Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, had told the White House Tuesday that Napolitano's assertions were not true. Still, it was among several news reports Spicer referenced in his briefing Thursday as part of an angry defense of the president's claims.

Darroch and other British officials complained directly to White House officials after the episode, Prime Minister Theresa May's office said it had been assured the White House would not repeat the allegations. Spicer was very apologetic when confronted by Darroch at a White House dinner on Thursday, the Western diplomat said.

But Trump himself offered no public apologies and suggested there was nothing wrong with the White House repeating what it had heard.

"All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television," Trump said during Friday's news conference. "You shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox."

Spicer was also defiant Friday, telling reporters: "I don't think we regret anything."

A White House official confirmed that Darroch and the British prime minister's national security adviser, Mark Lyall Grant, expressed concerns to both Spicer and Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. Spicer and McMaster said that the press secretary was simply pointing to public reports and not endorsing any specific story, the official said.

The U.S. and United Kingdom are members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, which prohibits members from spying on each other. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are the other members.

The diplomat and White House official both spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The president is a voracious consumer of news and frequently repeats information he reads or hears on television, often without verifying it first. It was a story in Breitbart  the far-right website once run by his senior adviser Steve Bannon  that appeared to spark Trump's March 4 tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping the New York skyscraper where he lived and ran his presidential campaign.

The White House has asked the House and Senate intelligence committees to investigate the matter as part of their inquiries into Russia's hacking of the presidential election and possible contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials. But the top lawmakers on both committees have said they have seen no indications that Trump Tower was wiretapped.

The Justice Department said Friday that it had complied with congressional requests for information related to any surveillance during the 2016 election. The department would not comment further on what information, if any, was provided.

Republicans in Congress also said Trump should retract his claims. Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., called the accusation against Britain "inexplicable" and the Trump's accusation against Obama unfounded.

"A president only has so much political capital to expend and so much moral authority as well, and so any time your credibility takes a hit, I think in many ways it weakens the officeholder," Dent said.

FBI Director James Comey is sure to be asked about the wiretapping allegations when he testifies on Capitol Hill Monday. The public hearing is the first of several that the intelligence committees are expected to hold on Russia's interference in the election.
A man is dead and a woman is in the hospital after police say they were shot by a teenager Wednesday in Farmington, New Hampshire.

Investigators were still parked on Oakwood Road collecting evidence Friday.

Neighbors say the people who live at the home are always firing guns in the backyard, so they never would have imagined that Wednesday's gunshots would lead to death.

Kameron Bradley says he was just at his friend's house a few days ago; with police now blocking the driveway.

"I was just kind of in shock," he said. "He seemed fine when I saw him. Something got into him maybe, he might've snapped or something."

At about noon on Wednesday, police say someone at the home called 911. Responding officers found one man shot to death and a woman alive, but suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office says a juvenile is now charged with second degree murder and attempted murder.

Authorities aren't releasing the teen's name, but his friends say this kind of violence is completely out of character.

"He seemed like a real nice kid, nothing was wrong at home," Bradley said.

"He was very quiet and shy," said Hannah Aubut.

The suspect's classmates at Farmington High School say everyone knows what's going on, though it's hard for anyone to believe.

"I've heard people talking about it, I have seen people getting really upset about it," Bradley said. "It's a shock for the whole town, because things like this don't usually happen."

Authorities have not released the names of the victims and will not confirm the relationship between the victims and the suspect.
A Pembroke, New Hampshire woman is facing felony charges after she allegedly threatened her daughter with a gun during an argument.

Police responded to 370 Hanover Street, Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday around 11:35 p.m. for a report of a domestic incident.

Police say the victim, Kayleigh Kousios, 26, had been in an argument with her mother, Evamarie Kousios, 50, of 12 Melissa Dr, Pembroke, on phone and via text. According to the daughter, her mother came into the apartment to continue the argument in a bedroom and pulled out a black case from her jacket that contained a semi-automatic handgun.

Evamarie allegedly pointed the firearm at Kayleigh while shouting at her. A relative living at the same address heard the commotion and entered the bedroom.

The two struggled to get the firearm away from Evamarie and secured it safely at another location in the apartment. Evamarie then fled the scene.

No one was injured as a result of this incident.

State police found Evamarie in her home soon after the incident and she was taken into custody.

Evamarie Kousios was charged with criminal threatening and felonious use of a firearm. She was admitted to a $5,000 personal recognizance bail and is scheduled to appear at the 9th Circuit Court Manchester on March 17, 2017 for arraignment.
At a town hall meeting in St. Johnsbury Thursday, Vermont senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sought to assure seniors that President Donald Trump will not necessarily get his way on a newly-proposed $1.15 trillion budget.

That blueprint would slash funding for the arts, programs that combat climate change, public broadcasting, and more.

Instead, Mr. Trump wants to invest those dollars in the military and national security, including his border wall with Mexico, insisting, "Without safety, there can be no prosperity."

Many seniors at the town hall meeting Thursday worried about the president's idea to cut low-income heating assistance and grants that partially fund many communities' meals on wheels deliveries.

It's horrific, said Vanna Guldenschuh of the Good Living Senior Center, describing her concern that low-income people and seniors may be harmed by the presidents budget proposals. I think it's a terrible idea.

That's what it costs Trump to go one weekend to Florida, as opposed to feeding all those seniors for a year, remarked Jim Verrill, who attends a senior meal site in West Barnet, regarding proposed cuts that may affect senior nutrition.

I know there is a lot of nervousness, observed Sen. Sanders, an Independent who ran as a Democrat for president, describing the mood in the country right now.

At the meeting, Sanders criticized the Trump administration for what he sees as an attitude to help the richest Americans at the expense of the poorest, through moves such as tax cuts.

Sanders promised to work hard to oppose many of President Trumps budget cuts. He told the audience he's also working to make prescription medication more affordable and to reduce potential harm he sees from the White House's promised changes to the Affordable Care Act.

Just because the president wants it, it does not mean it's going to happen, Sen. Sanders said of sections of President Trumps America First budget blueprint that propose cuts to programs Sanders predicted would affect lower-income Americans. It does tell you where he's coming from. But I can assure you that there are many, many members of the Senate and the House, including some Republicans, who do not believe in that.

In his budget blueprint, a letter from President Trump was directed to members of Congress.

We are going to do more with less, and make the Government lean and accountable to the people, part of the message to Congress said. Many other Government agencies and departments will also experience cuts. These cuts are sensible and rational. Every agency and department will be driven to achieve greater efficiency and to eliminate wasteful spending in carrying out their honorable service to the American people.

Sanders was scheduled to make 12 stops around Vermont Thursday and Friday, talking to individuals, businesses, and organizations about their concerns. Some groups he was meeting with included veterans care providers and renewable energy proponents.

Sanders has another public town hall meeting on his agenda Friday afternoon at 3:00 at Vermont Technical College in Randolph.

Vermonts other U.S. Senator, Democrat Patrick Leahy, also responded to Trumps budget proposal.

Like some of the presidents tweets, the Trump budget is a hasty list of appallingly unbalanced and short-sighted, but also politically-driven, priorities, Leahy said in recorded remarks. We dont Make America Great Again at the expense of middle-class families.

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, issued the following written statement Thursday in response to President Trumps budget proposal:

President Trumps budget sends a clear message: You are on your own. It doubles down on Pentagon spending at the expense of the middle class, vulnerable families, seniors, clean air and water, scientific research, diplomacy and the arts. President Trump calls it his America First budget. I call it an Americans last budget. Like the budgets of his predecessors, this one is dead on arrival. Congress will write the budget, not President Trump.
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As of mid-February, the plan for Verizon Communications to acquire a majority of Yahoos web assets is still on, despite the announcement of Yahoo having suffered two massive breaches of customer data in 2013 and 2014. The sale price, however, has been discounted by $350 million, and Verizon and Altaba Inc. have agreed to share any ongoing legal responsibilities related to the breaches. Altaba is the entity that will own the portion of Yahoo that Verizon is not acquiring.

Following the disclosure of these breaches, Yahoo was highly criticized for its lax stance on cybersecurity. For example, a team from Venafi Labs looked at the cryptographic posture of external Yahoo web properties and claims to have discovered that 27% of the companys security certificates had not been reissued since January 2015. According to Venafi, replacing certificates after a breach is a critical mitigation practice; unless certificates are replaced, breached organizations cannot be certain that attackers do not have ongoing access to encrypted communications. In addition, Venafi says 41% of the external Yahoo certificates discovered use SHA-1, a hashing algorithm that is no longer considered secure. Apparently, Yahoo isnt even attempting to close the barn door after the horses fled.

The Verizon acquisition of Yahoo provides a perfect example of why companies  even those not in the technology industry  need to include cybersecurity due diligence as part of any merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. Any company that plans to acquire another must thoroughly assess the cybersecurity posture of the target company. Too much cyber risk can undermine the value of the deal and delay a proper return on investment.

Tom Kellermann, CEO of Strategic Cyber Ventures LLC, says that companies in M&A activities need to be proactive. "Given the tenacity of the criminals in cyberspace, investors must apply cyber risk to their calculus. Due diligence per mergers and acquisitions must incorporate an assessment of the overall cybersecurity health," according to Kellermann.

As corporate boards get more deeply involved in understanding their own companys cybersecurity posture, it stands to reason they would want to know similar information about an acquisition target. Thus, cybersecurity due diligence is quickly becoming part of standard best practices in M&A deals.

The Cybersecurity and the M&A Due Diligence Process report from NYSE Governance Services and Veracode points out: Buying a company translates to buying data. And buying data means you are buying past, present, and future data security problems. The economic impact of a transaction can shift dramatically if, after the deal is consummated, past or ongoing data breaches come to light.

The NYSE Governance Services/Veracode report includes survey information from 276 public company directors and ocers: 85% of the respondents said the discovery of major vulnerabilities during the audit of an acquisition targets software assets would likely or very likely aect their nal decision to complete the deal; 22% of those surveyed said the occurrence of a high-prole data breach at an acquisition target would deter them entirely from completing the transaction; Only 4% of the respondents said its not important to evaluate the quality and extent of intellectual property and technology as part of M&A due diligence.

Even if major cyber risks are not discovered during the due diligence process, two companies that have vastly different levels of cybersecurity maturity can have problems uniting their systems together. Bringing the less mature company up to the standards of the more mature company can be complicated and expensive.

Outside cybersecurity attorneys and third-party forensic and technical advisors and consultants are becoming integral players in the M&A cyber risk due diligence process. Elaine Stanko, attorney with McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC, recommends that acquiring companies investigate the following of their target acquisition:

The companys privacy and data security policies, programs and procedures across all platforms, including mobile, cloud and web

Audit and compliance records for all applicable industry and government regulations

Information about all known breaches, even if they havent been made public

Contracts with third party vendors and any information pertaining to their cybersecurity risk postures

Information about physical security of the computing infrastructure

Identification of all critical or sensitive data, including protected classes of data, where it is located and how it is protected

A review of the companys social media presence and company policies on how employees use social media in an official capacity

To that list Ill add one more aspect to investigate, and thats the employee risk. Since many breaches are attributed to insiders, the acquiring company should look at employee cybersecurity training requirements and records.

These days, the fallout from cyber incidents can reach into the millions of dollars. Its critical that an acquiring company understands what its getting when it absorbs another company.
DUBAI, UAE / ACCESSWIRE / March 17, 2017 / A general theme for 2017 has been clean and renewable energy. Traditional fossil fuels are making a major shift. Forbes recently wrote about the clean energy revolution saying, "Driven by its emissions-reduction potential, electricity consumption will grow twice as much as total energy demand, which is forecast to rise by up to 70% in the next 25 years according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)."

When it Began

The push towards cleaner energy began in 2016 when multiple countries agreed to make a major shift toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The oil rich middle east has historically viewed energy resources as a public good. However, over time countries throughout the middle east, including Yemen has proven that a lot of money is being dished out to these energy services.

A 2016 article published by the World Economic Forum highlighted the efforts of 196 countries limiting global temperatures.

"Countries in the Middle East and North Africa region are willing to do their share to mitigate climate change, as demonstrated by their respective Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Morocco for one, indicated its interest to increase the share of renewables to 52 % by 2030, which is remarkable given the recent dependency on fossil fuels for power generation. It is clear that energy exporters are interested to maintain their role of global energy supplier, and have a stake in the global shift towards sustainable energy."

Recent Efforts

More recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there were many conversations around the push towards green efforts.

Saudi Arabia is already "leaving" oil behind. "As far as oil prices, and oil, I have left that behind," said Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, who led the country's oil sector for 21 years.

"Now, I'm much more interested in solar energy, making solar panels," he added.

Speaking on January 20th at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Saudi Energy Minister Khaled al Falih suggested that Saudi Arabia could become a "major exporter" of renewable energy, saying, "solar that is produced in Saudi Arabia can be exported all the way to Europe through a network."

Story continues

What it means for Yemen

Crude oil, coffee, dried and salted fish, and liquefied natural gas were Yemen's main exports in 2014. Flash forward to now and the country has ultimately halted exports. Solar, wind and thermal energy are all cheap options that could vastly help Yemen.

Affordable and clean energy is one of the 17 goals for the United Nations Development Programme. "Between 1990 and 2010, the number of people with access to electricity has increased by 1.7 billion, and as the global population continues to rise so will the demand for cheap energy."

The clean energy revolution is a good thing for Yemen. For countries like Yemen, it is very important that energy sources are diversified. The UNDP says, "Decentralized energy systems can help limit the risks to the energy sector, such as those related to disasters."

Clean energy in Yemen could reduce poverty, help with social progress and economic growth.

1 in 5 people around the globe are without electricity. Pushing towards greener resources can vastly help make energy accessible for all.

Haitham Alaini is an entrepreneur from Yemen with over 20 years of experience. He focuses on issues surrounding the environment, education, and preserving Yemen. Alaini is passionate about exploring innovative technology that will help improve Yemen, his native country.





To learn more about Haitham Alaini visit:

Haitham Alaini - Website: haithamalaini.org

Haitham Alaini (@haitham_alaini) - Twitter: https://twitter.com/haitham_alaini

Haitham Alaini - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/haithammalaini?fref=ts

SOURCE: Haitham Alaini
By Anna Irrera

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has joined the blockchain consortium led by startup R3, as financial watchdogs around the world seek to better understand the opportunities and risks of the emerging technology.

The Illinois regulator will collaborate with approximately 80 financial institutions that are members of R3 who are working to develop blockchain-based applications that are secure and scalable enough to run financial industry processes, the regulator and R3 said on Thursday.

While R3's member base includes the Bank of Canada and the Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong, this is the first time a U.S. regulator has joined its fold.

Illinois, with its large Chicago-based exchanges and trading firms, is one of the leading global hubs for derivatives trading.

The Illinois regulator's secretary Bryan Schneider said blockchain's "potential to dramatically lower transactional costs, automate manual processes, and reduce opportunities for fraud and risk are truly promising."

Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning cryptocurrency bitcoin, is a shared record of transactions that is maintained by a network of computers, rather than a centralized authority.

Financial institutions have been ramping up investments in the technology in the hopes that it can help them cut costs and simplify some of their processes, like the clearing and settlement of securities.

As each computer on a blockchain network must agree to changes to the ledger, proponents have argued that it would increase transparency, making it useful for regulators.

Yet questions remain as to whether it can meet the standards needed to run mainstream financial services processes.

This is leading more global regulators to take a closer look. In late 2016 the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that it was working with R3 to test using blockchain for interbank payments, while the Bank of England is part of the Hyperledger project, a blockchain consortium.

Story continues

R3 is looking to grow the number of regulators and government entities in its member base, said Charley Cooper, a managing director at R3.

The Illinois regulator's decision to join R3 is part of a wider state push about the nascent technology. In November, Illinois formed a consortium of state and county agencies, known as the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, to explore use cases.

Speaking at a conference in Washington on Wednesday, Illinois Blockchain Business Liaison Jennifer O'Rourke said the state was working on a series of tests including a system to track university credentials on the blockchain.

(Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has been elevated to the post of Senior Vice President, Amazon.



The company confirmed the development in an emailed statement.



"This indicates how excited Amazon is about the progress the company is making in India and the opportunity Amazon sees ahead," it added.



The promotion comes within a year of Agarwal's inclusion in a senior leadership team that reports directly to Amazon CEO and President Jeff Bezos.



Agarwal will continue to head the India operations.



Amazon, which has committed investments to the tune of USD 5 billion, remains one of the fastest growing for the US-based e-tailer.



The company faces intense competition in India from local player, Flipkart. The competition is further heating up as Chinese e-tailer Alibaba gears up for a stronger play in India through Paytm.

NEW DELHI: Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has been elevated to the post of Senior Vice President, Amazon. The company confirmed the development in an emailed statement. "This indicates how excited Amazon is about the progress the company is making in India and the opportunity Amazon sees ahead," it added. The promotion comes within a year of Agarwal's inclusion in a senior leadership team that reports directly to Amazon CEO and President Jeff Bezos. Agarwal will continue to head the India operations. Amazon, which has committed investments to the tune of USD 5 billion, remains one of the fastest growing for the US-based e-tailer. The company faces intense competition in India from local player, Flipkart. The competition is further heating up as Chinese e-tailer Alibaba gears up for a stronger play in India through Paytm.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will invest Rs 21,528 crore to develop Indias deepest gas discovery by 2022-23, helping it double output from its prime KG basin block. The exploration major had invested Rs 34,012 crore last year in bringing to production 10 oil and gas discoveries in its Bay of Bengal block. The company is in the process of appointing a consultant to assist in developing the ultra-deep sea gas discovery.

We have submitted a declaration of commerciality for the discovery. We will submit a final investment plan by end-2017 and hope to bring the discovery to production by 2022-23, said Tapas Kumar Sengupta, director (offshore), ONGC.

The oil explorer plans to drill nine wells on the discovery that lies in water depths of 2,400-3,200 metres and will produce a peak output of 19 million standard cubic metres a day. The company had previously decided to develop other discoveries in KG-D5 block and leave the ultra-deep sea find in the same block for a later date as it thought there was no technology to produce gas from such water depths.

A recent expression of interest meeting we had for developing the KG finds saw several consultants offering solutions for such water depths. Consultants who have shown to ONGC that discoveries deeper than ultra deep sea-1 have been put to production in recent times, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, Sengupta added.

Last year, the company finalised a $5.07 billion plan for developing finds by 2019-20. First gas production is envisaged by June 2019 and oil would start flowing from March 2020.

KOCHI: State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will invest Rs 21,528 crore to develop Indias deepest gas discovery by 2022-23, helping it double output from its prime KG basin block. The exploration major had invested Rs 34,012 crore last year in bringing to production 10 oil and gas discoveries in its Bay of Bengal block. The company is in the process of appointing a consultant to assist in developing the ultra-deep sea gas discovery. We have submitted a declaration of commerciality for the discovery. We will submit a final investment plan by end-2017 and hope to bring the discovery to production by 2022-23, said Tapas Kumar Sengupta, director (offshore), ONGC. The oil explorer plans to drill nine wells on the discovery that lies in water depths of 2,400-3,200 metres and will produce a peak output of 19 million standard cubic metres a day. The company had previously decided to develop other discoveries in KG-D5 block and leave the ultra-deep sea find in the same block for a later date as it thought there was no technology to produce gas from such water depths. A recent expression of interest meeting we had for developing the KG finds saw several consultants offering solutions for such water depths. Consultants who have shown to ONGC that discoveries deeper than ultra deep sea-1 have been put to production in recent times, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, Sengupta added. Last year, the company finalised a $5.07 billion plan for developing finds by 2019-20. First gas production is envisaged by June 2019 and oil would start flowing from March 2020.
Akram Mohammed By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: BJP MP Pratap Simha is in the eye of a storm with his remark on central deputation of IPS officers.

Calling it a migration, he said these officers go on deputation as they dont get a good posting in Karnataka.

His post on Facebook on March 14 got a sharp response from a woman IPS officer on March 16: It is just your imagination.

Roopa D Moudgil, DIG (Prisons), in her Facebook post, told the MP to allow them to do their job and not politicise bureaucracy.

Pratap had contended that IPS officer Madhukar Shetty had knocked on the Centres door as he was not given a good posting in the State. He listed IPS officers Sonia Narang (DIG-CID), Labhu Ram (Bengaluru DCP-North) and Kaushalendra Kumar (DCP -CCB) as other officials deputed to the Centre.

Taking him on, Roopa asked him to let bureaucracy be free from political endorsements. Because, politicisation of bureaucracy does not help the system and society in the long run, she has written in her 650-word post.

Terming his views wrong and dangerous, she said, You have said that Mr Madhukar Shetty left the state because no good posting was given to him which seems to be just your imagination. The fact is that there is no post as good or bad in rules and legislations.

Pointing out the challenges faced by IPS officers, she said that Shetty was never posted in a good post (by your measure) even in the previous government. Mrs Sonia Narang was left with no option but to file the case because it came to light that some people were collecting bribes in Lokayukta in her name. We, bureaucrats, know how to battle it out.

Politicians-bureaucrats nexus is one hated thing by the public, Roopa said, adding that the view endorsed by Pratap, will only add to the problem.

The BJP MP is not new to controversies. Recently he raised a storm after sharing an image on social media sites juxtaposing Gurmehar Kaur, the daughter of a martyr and a student of Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, with Dawood Ibrahim.

BENGALURU: BJP MP Pratap Simha is in the eye of a storm with his remark on central deputation of IPS officers. Calling it a migration, he said these officers go on deputation as they dont get a good posting in Karnataka. His post on Facebook on March 14 got a sharp response from a woman IPS officer on March 16: It is just your imagination. Roopa D Moudgil, DIG (Prisons), in her Facebook post, told the MP to allow them to do their job and not politicise bureaucracy. Pratap had contended that IPS officer Madhukar Shetty had knocked on the Centres door as he was not given a good posting in the State. He listed IPS officers Sonia Narang (DIG-CID), Labhu Ram (Bengaluru DCP-North) and Kaushalendra Kumar (DCP -CCB) as other officials deputed to the Centre. Taking him on, Roopa asked him to let bureaucracy be free from political endorsements. Because, politicisation of bureaucracy does not help the system and society in the long run, she has written in her 650-word post. Terming his views wrong and dangerous, she said, You have said that Mr Madhukar Shetty left the state because no good posting was given to him which seems to be just your imagination. The fact is that there is no post as good or bad in rules and legislations. Pointing out the challenges faced by IPS officers, she said that Shetty was never posted in a good post (by your measure) even in the previous government. Mrs Sonia Narang was left with no option but to file the case because it came to light that some people were collecting bribes in Lokayukta in her name. We, bureaucrats, know how to battle it out. Politicians-bureaucrats nexus is one hated thing by the public, Roopa said, adding that the view endorsed by Pratap, will only add to the problem. The BJP MP is not new to controversies. Recently he raised a storm after sharing an image on social media sites juxtaposing Gurmehar Kaur, the daughter of a martyr and a student of Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, with Dawood Ibrahim.
By Rajendra Jadhav

MUMBAI, March 17 (Reuters) - India rapeseed production in crop year 2016/17 is likely to jump by as much as 20 percent to the highest in three years at 7 million tonnes as farmers expanded the area planted with the oilseed due to ample rainfall and higher prices.

Rapeseed, a type of mustard, is the main winter-sown oilseed in India and higher production will help the country in trimming its edible oils imports.

India, the world's biggest buyer of edible oils, primarily imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia and soyoil from Argentina and Brazil. It also imports small amounts of sunflower oil from Ukraine.

"This year (rapeseed) production will recover as weather was good. We are expecting production between 6.5 million to 7 million tonnes," said B.V. Mehta, head of the Solvent Extractors' Association (SEA), a Mumbai-based trade body.

The higher output of rapeseed and also summer-sown soybeans will help India reduce its edible oil imports for the first time in six years, to 14 million tonnes in the year to October 2017, down from 14.6 million tonnes shipped a year ago, Mehta said.

The association is conducting a field survey to assess yields and will release its estimate on March 25, he said.

In crop year 2015/16, India produced 5.8 million tonnes of rapeseed.

India's soybean production, harvested in October, rose to 11.5 million tonnes, up from 7.0 million tonnes a year ago, the biggest annual output jump in more than a decade, boosting supplies and dragging down prices.

At the time of rapeseed sowing in November, prices of the oilseed were near record high levels, which prompted farmers to expand the planted area for the crop to 7.06 million hectares, up 9.3 percent from a year ago.

Since then prices have fallen 20 percent on expectations of a bumper crop and as prices of edible oils like palm oil and soyoil fell overseas.

The decline in prices has disappointed farmers like Ganesh Meghval from the top-producing northwestern state of Rajasthan.

"Expecting higher prices I have raised the area under rapeseed and applied more fertilizers. But at the current price level I am making hardly any profit," said Meghval.

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Tom Hogue)


MUMBAI: A magisterial court here today issued a non-bailable arrest warrant and an extradition order against businessman Vijay Mallya in a service tax default case.

The court also issued an NBW against Sanjay Agarwal, erstwhile CEO of Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines.

"The Esplanade metropolitan magistrate's court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya, to be executed through the Ministry of External Affairs, and also an extradition order," said Service Tax Department counsel Advait Sethna.

Mallya owes over Rs 100 crore to the department as of now, he said.

India has an extradition treaty with UK (where Mallya is believed to be staying) and therefore the court's order can be executed by the the concerned authorities, the lawyer said.

The Service Tax Department had issued a notice to the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs 87.5 crore in 2011-12.

The airline collected service tax from passengers but did not deposit it with the Department, it said.

"Mallya and Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal admitted the demand, but the company did not pay up the dues," said Sethna.

The department then moved the court for issuance of an NBW and an extradition order.

In April 2016, a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases too had issued an NBW against Mallya, while in January this year a CBI court issued an NBW against the beleaguered liquor baron in an IDBI loan default case.

MUMBAI: A magisterial court here today issued a non-bailable arrest warrant and an extradition order against businessman Vijay Mallya in a service tax default case. The court also issued an NBW against Sanjay Agarwal, erstwhile CEO of Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines. "The Esplanade metropolitan magistrate's court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya, to be executed through the Ministry of External Affairs, and also an extradition order," said Service Tax Department counsel Advait Sethna. Mallya owes over Rs 100 crore to the department as of now, he said. India has an extradition treaty with UK (where Mallya is believed to be staying) and therefore the court's order can be executed by the the concerned authorities, the lawyer said. The Service Tax Department had issued a notice to the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs 87.5 crore in 2011-12. The airline collected service tax from passengers but did not deposit it with the Department, it said. "Mallya and Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal admitted the demand, but the company did not pay up the dues," said Sethna. The department then moved the court for issuance of an NBW and an extradition order. In April 2016, a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases too had issued an NBW against Mallya, while in January this year a CBI court issued an NBW against the beleaguered liquor baron in an IDBI loan default case.
By Express News Service

Actor Rajkummar Rao, who has proved his versatility with diverse roles in films like Shahid, Queen, Love Sex Our Dhokha (LSD), Aligarh and Trapped, which was screened at MAMI, comes across as a meek and mild-mannered person, which is why this piece of news will make you sit up and take notice.

Rao, who had teamed up with Hansal Mehta for Shahid, Citylights and Aligarh, will play a radical British man of Pakistani origin, Omar Sheikh (infamous for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) in Mehtas upcoming film Omerta.

In an interview to a leading daily, Mehta said, This film is based on the said international fugitive, who was involved in Pearls murder, and it covers a host of terrorist activities (including 26/11) seen through the eyes of this person, who was at the centre of it all. After watching A Mighty Heart (2007), I wanted to know more about the predator and his reasons for choosing this path.

While various films have tried to highlight terrorism or its repercussions, I felt it was important to explore the other side of the spectrum - what goes on in the minds of these terrorists. There are so many stereotypes associated with terrorism, but the truth is far more murky and cold. Omar came from a privileged background before eventually being radicalised.

Actor Mukul Dev told me this story way back in 2005. I wanted to make this film before Shahid, but a lot of research was required and we kept revising the script.

As to why he roped in Rao for this role, Mehta said, It was interesting to see him play a character that is totally diverse from what he did in Shahid. Also, he surrenders himself to the role without any kind of baggage.

On his part, Rao said, Its a complete contrast to what I did in Shahid. I play the anti-hero here. Ive tried my best to make this character as real as possible. I even stayed in London for a while to get the hang of his way of life. The character is extremely cold and aloof and it was a challenge to convince myself as an actor to believe in his convictions. Sheikh is currently being held in a prison in Pakistan.

Actor Rajkummar Rao, who has proved his versatility with diverse roles in films like Shahid, Queen, Love Sex Our Dhokha (LSD), Aligarh and Trapped, which was screened at MAMI, comes across as a meek and mild-mannered person, which is why this piece of news will make you sit up and take notice. Rao, who had teamed up with Hansal Mehta for Shahid, Citylights and Aligarh, will play a radical British man of Pakistani origin, Omar Sheikh (infamous for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) in Mehtas upcoming film Omerta. In an interview to a leading daily, Mehta said, This film is based on the said international fugitive, who was involved in Pearls murder, and it covers a host of terrorist activities (including 26/11) seen through the eyes of this person, who was at the centre of it all. After watching A Mighty Heart (2007), I wanted to know more about the predator and his reasons for choosing this path. While various films have tried to highlight terrorism or its repercussions, I felt it was important to explore the other side of the spectrum - what goes on in the minds of these terrorists. There are so many stereotypes associated with terrorism, but the truth is far more murky and cold. Omar came from a privileged background before eventually being radicalised. Actor Mukul Dev told me this story way back in 2005. I wanted to make this film before Shahid, but a lot of research was required and we kept revising the script. As to why he roped in Rao for this role, Mehta said, It was interesting to see him play a character that is totally diverse from what he did in Shahid. Also, he surrenders himself to the role without any kind of baggage. On his part, Rao said, Its a complete contrast to what I did in Shahid. I play the anti-hero here. Ive tried my best to make this character as real as possible. I even stayed in London for a while to get the hang of his way of life. The character is extremely cold and aloof and it was a challenge to convince myself as an actor to believe in his convictions. Sheikh is currently being held in a prison in Pakistan.
By BNS

SS Rajamouli launched the theatrical trailer of Baahubali: The Conclusion at an event in Hyderabad wherein he revealed that he is eager to know how people react to the epic saga upon its release in April.

The director, confirmed that despite tweaking a few things to make the film look visually rich, the writers have not compromised with the basic premise.

The story and the screenplay is still the same. But yes, we did tweak few things to make the action and drama look better; having said that, I have not changed anything in the films story to suit the audience expectation.

Moreover, we had already shot a substantial portion of the second part even before Baahubali - The Beginning released, said Rajamouli.

When questioned if any of the fan theory as to why Katappa Killed Baahubali are true, the director said that the film is much more than merely that one incident. He said,Some of them did come close to predicting what I had in mind, but I am not bothered with the idea that people might have already guessed a big part of the story. You have to look at the narrative and how everything connects together which leads us to that epic moment in the film.

Baahubali: The Conclusion stars Prabhas, Rana Dagubatti, Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia and Sathyaraj in lead.



SS Rajamouli launched the theatrical trailer of Baahubali: The Conclusion at an event in Hyderabad wherein he revealed that he is eager to know how people react to the epic saga upon its release in April. The director, confirmed that despite tweaking a few things to make the film look visually rich, the writers have not compromised with the basic premise. The story and the screenplay is still the same. But yes, we did tweak few things to make the action and drama look better; having said that, I have not changed anything in the films story to suit the audience expectation. Moreover, we had already shot a substantial portion of the second part even before Baahubali - The Beginning released, said Rajamouli. When questioned if any of the fan theory as to why Katappa Killed Baahubali are true, the director said that the film is much more than merely that one incident. He said,Some of them did come close to predicting what I had in mind, but I am not bothered with the idea that people might have already guessed a big part of the story. You have to look at the narrative and how everything connects together which leads us to that epic moment in the film. Baahubali: The Conclusion stars Prabhas, Rana Dagubatti, Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia and Sathyaraj in lead.
By IANS

CHENNAI: In just 24 hours since its release, the highly anticipated trailer of "Baahubali 2: The Conclusion" has clocked a whopping 50 million views across four languages and has become the most viewed Indian film trailer.



Filmmaker Karan Johar, who is releasing the Hindi version of the film, tweeted on Friday: "Truly the biggest trailer ever. 50 million views. 'Baahubali 2' trailer."



On Thursday, despite an early leak, the film's trailer was released in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. In no time, the trailers became viral online.



Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, the second part of the franchise will finally shed the light on why Kattappa killed Baahubali.



Starring Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan and Sathyaraj, the film will release worldwide on April 28.

CHENNAI: In just 24 hours since its release, the highly anticipated trailer of "Baahubali 2: The Conclusion" has clocked a whopping 50 million views across four languages and has become the most viewed Indian film trailer. Filmmaker Karan Johar, who is releasing the Hindi version of the film, tweeted on Friday: "Truly the biggest trailer ever. 50 million views. 'Baahubali 2' trailer." On Thursday, despite an early leak, the film's trailer was released in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. In no time, the trailers became viral online. Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, the second part of the franchise will finally shed the light on why Kattappa killed Baahubali. Starring Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan and Sathyaraj, the film will release worldwide on April 28.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRI NAGAR: The ruling alliance partners in Jammu and Kashmir  PDP and BJP  are not on the same page on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) revocation in the State with the saffron party stressing that the controversial law should not be revoked unless peace and normalcy is restored in the militancy-infested State.

BJPs stand is very clear that AFSPA cannot be revoked unless and until peace and normalcy is restored in Jammu and Kashmir, said BJP vice president and incharge J&K, Avinash Khanna, on sidelines of a party convention here.

He said the Centre is closely monitoring the situation in Kashmir and will decide on AFSPA revocation at the appropriate time. Khannas comments come a day after Chief Minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti pitched for withdrawal of AFSPA from some areas.

Meanwhile, three separatist leaders were detained after they tried to take out a protest march. Hardliner Syed Ali Geelani, moderate Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and pro-independence JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik were scheduled to meet at Geelanis residence and later address a joint press conference.

As media representatives attempted to cover arrest of the separatist leaders, the policemen tried to prevent it. In the melee, a police officer assaulted two photo journalists. The two photo journalists injured were Tauseef Mustafa of AFP and Mubashir Khan of Great Kashmir, an English daily. Other photo and video journalists including Farooq Javed Khan (EPA), Shauib Masoodi (Indian Express) and Umar Sheikh (Times Now) were also beaten and abused by the officer.

SRI NAGAR: The ruling alliance partners in Jammu and Kashmir  PDP and BJP  are not on the same page on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) revocation in the State with the saffron party stressing that the controversial law should not be revoked unless peace and normalcy is restored in the militancy-infested State. BJPs stand is very clear that AFSPA cannot be revoked unless and until peace and normalcy is restored in Jammu and Kashmir, said BJP vice president and incharge J&K, Avinash Khanna, on sidelines of a party convention here. He said the Centre is closely monitoring the situation in Kashmir and will decide on AFSPA revocation at the appropriate time. Khannas comments come a day after Chief Minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti pitched for withdrawal of AFSPA from some areas. Meanwhile, three separatist leaders were detained after they tried to take out a protest march. Hardliner Syed Ali Geelani, moderate Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and pro-independence JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik were scheduled to meet at Geelanis residence and later address a joint press conference. As media representatives attempted to cover arrest of the separatist leaders, the policemen tried to prevent it. In the melee, a police officer assaulted two photo journalists. The two photo journalists injured were Tauseef Mustafa of AFP and Mubashir Khan of Great Kashmir, an English daily. Other photo and video journalists including Farooq Javed Khan (EPA), Shauib Masoodi (Indian Express) and Umar Sheikh (Times Now) were also beaten and abused by the officer.
By ANI

ITANAGAR: In a bid to make the life of visually impaired people easy; Anang Tadar, a class XI student of New Galaxy Academy, invented a gadget called Goggle For Blind (G4B) and has left everyone stunned with his brilliant innovation.



The gadget G4B will help blind people to detect objects in their surrounding without any physical contact by the means of principle of echolocation used by bats.



Echolocation is the use of sound waves and echoes to determine where objects are in space. Bats use echolocation to navigate and find food in the dark.



His invention was adjudged the most innovative award in recently concluded Regional Level Science Festival at Regional Science centre at Guwahati and was awarded the Dinanath Pandey Smart Idea Innovation Award.



On March 6, he participated in National Level Science Exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi, where Honey Bee Network, which is in collaboration with National Ignition Facility (NIF), Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), Global Youth Action Network (GYAN) and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) were quite impressed with his gadget.



NIF and UNICEF are willing to launch G4B in the market, therefore Anang has been asked to create few prototypes to test on the blind people.



Though his initial product is slightly bulky but with the help of other builders, it will be made light if successfully tested.



Apart from his current invention, he has a hobby of making robots and gadgets anything related to technology.



He has participated in many technical events organised by renowned technical colleges and secured first place most of the time.



His future project is to build an Exoskeleton which will help people to lift heavy objects.



Coming from a poor family, Anang has been using all his pocket money and sometimes borrowing money from his friends to build his products.



As of now, he needs financial assistance to build five or ten G4B prototypes for trial. Each G4B will cost around Rs. 15000.

ITANAGAR: In a bid to make the life of visually impaired people easy; Anang Tadar, a class XI student of New Galaxy Academy, invented a gadget called Goggle For Blind (G4B) and has left everyone stunned with his brilliant innovation. The gadget G4B will help blind people to detect objects in their surrounding without any physical contact by the means of principle of echolocation used by bats. Echolocation is the use of sound waves and echoes to determine where objects are in space. Bats use echolocation to navigate and find food in the dark. His invention was adjudged the most innovative award in recently concluded Regional Level Science Festival at Regional Science centre at Guwahati and was awarded the Dinanath Pandey Smart Idea Innovation Award. On March 6, he participated in National Level Science Exhibition at Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi, where Honey Bee Network, which is in collaboration with National Ignition Facility (NIF), Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), Global Youth Action Network (GYAN) and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) were quite impressed with his gadget. NIF and UNICEF are willing to launch G4B in the market, therefore Anang has been asked to create few prototypes to test on the blind people. Though his initial product is slightly bulky but with the help of other builders, it will be made light if successfully tested. Apart from his current invention, he has a hobby of making robots and gadgets anything related to technology. He has participated in many technical events organised by renowned technical colleges and secured first place most of the time. His future project is to build an Exoskeleton which will help people to lift heavy objects. Coming from a poor family, Anang has been using all his pocket money and sometimes borrowing money from his friends to build his products. As of now, he needs financial assistance to build five or ten G4B prototypes for trial. Each G4B will cost around Rs. 15000.
By PTI

PANAJI: A day after winning the trust vote in Goa Assembly, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar today asserted that his government will complete its tenure.

"Questions are being asked how the government will survive for next five years. I can assure you that this government will complete its tenure.

"Importance will be given to a common agenda that would be worked out between the alliance partners," he told reporters.

The 61-year-old IITian had yesterday proved his majority with 12 legislators from the BJP, three from the Goa Forward Party, three from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, three Independents and one from the NCP supporting the trust motion.

The strength of Congress was reduced to 16 MLAs in the 40-member House after one of its legislators, Viswajit Rane remained absent during the voting.

Rane later resigned as member of the Goa Assembly.

This is for the fourth time that Parrikar has become the Chief Minister of Goa, though he could not complete full term in any of his earlier stints. He had recently resigned as Defence Minister to return to his native state.

Parrikar chaired the first meeting of his Cabinet today at the state Secretariat.

"The Governor (Mridula Sinha) will present her speech on the floor of the House on March 23 which will make the direction of this government clear," he said.

The BJP leader said after winning the trust vote, he had held a series of meetings yesterday to discuss the issues of importance.

The state government has decided to work out a strategy to resolve the Mahadeyi water diversion dispute with neighbouring Karnataka, he said.

"You will come to know about our strategy on Mahadeyi issue on Monday," Parrikar asserted, adding that "some of the strategies need to be kept confidential to protect the interest of the state."

PANAJI: A day after winning the trust vote in Goa Assembly, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar today asserted that his government will complete its tenure. "Questions are being asked how the government will survive for next five years. I can assure you that this government will complete its tenure. "Importance will be given to a common agenda that would be worked out between the alliance partners," he told reporters. The 61-year-old IITian had yesterday proved his majority with 12 legislators from the BJP, three from the Goa Forward Party, three from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, three Independents and one from the NCP supporting the trust motion. The strength of Congress was reduced to 16 MLAs in the 40-member House after one of its legislators, Viswajit Rane remained absent during the voting. Rane later resigned as member of the Goa Assembly. This is for the fourth time that Parrikar has become the Chief Minister of Goa, though he could not complete full term in any of his earlier stints. He had recently resigned as Defence Minister to return to his native state. Parrikar chaired the first meeting of his Cabinet today at the state Secretariat. "The Governor (Mridula Sinha) will present her speech on the floor of the House on March 23 which will make the direction of this government clear," he said. The BJP leader said after winning the trust vote, he had held a series of meetings yesterday to discuss the issues of importance. The state government has decided to work out a strategy to resolve the Mahadeyi water diversion dispute with neighbouring Karnataka, he said. "You will come to know about our strategy on Mahadeyi issue on Monday," Parrikar asserted, adding that "some of the strategies need to be kept confidential to protect the interest of the state."
Namita bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Even before 2012, Gayatri Prajapati was associated with the Samajwadi Partys fringe outfits and had tested the political waters in Amethi twice in 2002 and 2007 on SP ticket but lost.

Despite the fall, his clout continued to grow within the SP. After becoming an MLA in 2012, Prajapati was sworn-in as the minister of state for irrigation in February 2013.

He was then elevated to cabinet rank within five months. It was in July 2015 that controversies started to erupt. Social activist Nutan Thakur lodged a complaint against him before the Lokayukta. Although the case was junked, it triggered a row when Mulayam allegedly threatened Nutans husband and IPS officer Amitabh Thakur for running campaign against the minister.

LUCKNOW: Even before 2012, Gayatri Prajapati was associated with the Samajwadi Partys fringe outfits and had tested the political waters in Amethi twice in 2002 and 2007 on SP ticket but lost. Despite the fall, his clout continued to grow within the SP. After becoming an MLA in 2012, Prajapati was sworn-in as the minister of state for irrigation in February 2013. He was then elevated to cabinet rank within five months. It was in July 2015 that controversies started to erupt. Social activist Nutan Thakur lodged a complaint against him before the Lokayukta. Although the case was junked, it triggered a row when Mulayam allegedly threatened Nutans husband and IPS officer Amitabh Thakur for running campaign against the minister.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a prosecution complaintequivalent to a charge sheet in police parlanceagainst two Hizbul Mujahideen operatives for money laundering in connection with a terror financing case related to Jammu and Kashmir. ED files prosecution complaint against Mubarak Ali & Inayatullah Wani associated with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen under PMLA in a terror funding case, the agency tweeted on Thursday.

The two accused hailing from the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir were earlier arrested by the State police for possessing Rs5.4 lakh in cash suspected to be illegal and intended to be delivered to an active HM terrorist, Ghulam Nabi alias Javed Qureshi.

The charge sheet was filed on Tuesday before a designated Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Jammu. The agency said both Ali and Wani were over ground workers of HM and were involved in a well-planned conspiracy to increase terrorist activities in Doda district by allegedly carrying the cash for Qureshi after receiving it from an unknown terrorist in Srinagar. In 2016, the ED had attached the seized cash

During investigation, Ali took plea that the seized money was carried by him and his maternal cousin Wani for his (Alis) treatment of mouth cancer. The doctor who was treating Ali, stated he was not suffering from mouth cancer and the treatment given to him was free of charge, the charge sheet noted.

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a prosecution complaintequivalent to a charge sheet in police parlanceagainst two Hizbul Mujahideen operatives for money laundering in connection with a terror financing case related to Jammu and Kashmir. ED files prosecution complaint against Mubarak Ali & Inayatullah Wani associated with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen under PMLA in a terror funding case, the agency tweeted on Thursday. The two accused hailing from the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir were earlier arrested by the State police for possessing Rs5.4 lakh in cash suspected to be illegal and intended to be delivered to an active HM terrorist, Ghulam Nabi alias Javed Qureshi. The charge sheet was filed on Tuesday before a designated Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Jammu. The agency said both Ali and Wani were over ground workers of HM and were involved in a well-planned conspiracy to increase terrorist activities in Doda district by allegedly carrying the cash for Qureshi after receiving it from an unknown terrorist in Srinagar. In 2016, the ED had attached the seized cash During investigation, Ali took plea that the seized money was carried by him and his maternal cousin Wani for his (Alis) treatment of mouth cancer. The doctor who was treating Ali, stated he was not suffering from mouth cancer and the treatment given to him was free of charge, the charge sheet noted.
By IANS

AGRA: Police on Friday patrolled the Yamuna river bank here and mounted extra vigil after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love.

An official said the information was passed on to the police and the intelligence agencies on Thursday after which several teams combed the area and stepped up vigil.

Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials, however, tried to play down the threat, saying the security arrangements were routine.

Local newspapers have published a photo from the website showing a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon.

The world heritage monument is visited by over six million tourists annually.

Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh said police teams were on alert and a close watch was being kept on crowds.

The internal security in the Taj Mahal is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force. The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts.

SWOT commandos have been put in charge at vantage points. Mock drills are being conducted every few hours to test the state of preparedness.

Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams are keeping a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking towards the eastern gate, the sources said.

Superintendent of Police Sushil Dhule and a team of the bomb disposal and dog squads on Thursday evening visited the entire area around the Taj Mahal.

The number of visitors to the Taj Mahal is on the rise. The annual Taj Mahotsava is set to begin on Saturday.

AGRA: Police on Friday patrolled the Yamuna river bank here and mounted extra vigil after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love. An official said the information was passed on to the police and the intelligence agencies on Thursday after which several teams combed the area and stepped up vigil. Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials, however, tried to play down the threat, saying the security arrangements were routine. Local newspapers have published a photo from the website showing a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon. The world heritage monument is visited by over six million tourists annually. Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh said police teams were on alert and a close watch was being kept on crowds. The internal security in the Taj Mahal is provided by the Central Industrial Security Force. The Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts. SWOT commandos have been put in charge at vantage points. Mock drills are being conducted every few hours to test the state of preparedness. Outside the 500 metre security ring, police teams are keeping a strict watch on the movement of vehicles both on the western gate parking and the Shilpgram parking towards the eastern gate, the sources said. Superintendent of Police Sushil Dhule and a team of the bomb disposal and dog squads on Thursday evening visited the entire area around the Taj Mahal. The number of visitors to the Taj Mahal is on the rise. The annual Taj Mahotsava is set to begin on Saturday.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Toshiba Corp is seen behind a traffic signal at its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan's industry minister said on Thursday he had agreed with the U.S. energy and commerce secretaries to share information on developments involving Toshiba Corp and its troubled U.S. nuclear affiliate, Westinghouse Electric Co, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

Toshiba said on Tuesday it was "actively considering" a sale and other strategic options for Westinghouse, as it expanded a probe into problems there that caused the parent group to miss an earnings deadline for a second time.

The Japanese conglomerate said it believed it could findbuyers for a majority stake in Westinghouse but sidestepped questions about a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for the unit, saying only there were various options. Sources have said bankruptcy lawyers have been hired as an exploratory step.

Kyodo said Hiroshige Seko, Japan's minister of economy, trade and industry, told Japanese reporters after talks in Washington with U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that he had agreed with them to share information about developments in the case.

According to Kyodo, Seko said the U.S. Cabinet members had said they considered the fiscal stability of Toshiba extremely important.

Kyodo said Seko had a separate meeting on Thursday with Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council.

A White House official said, "The Westinghouse issue did come up in the meetings and both sides are monitoring it closely."

The U.S. Commerce and Energy departments and the National Economic Council did not respond to requests for comment.

Seko was on a one-day visit to prepare for a high-level bilateral economic dialogue due to start next month led by Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

A sale of Westinghouse would represent the latest in a series of steps Toshiba is taking to grapple with losses stemming from the nuclear unit's ill-fated purchase of a U.S. nuclear power plant construction company in 2015.

Story continues

Toshiba has already put up most or even all of its memory chip business for sale to cope with an upcoming $6.3 billion writedown for the nuclear business and to create a buffer for potential losses down the road.

Westinghouse has been plagued by huge cost overruns at two U.S. projects in Georgia and South Carolina, and liabilities related to those projects mean it is unlikely to be an easy asset to sell, despite attractive technology.

Westinghouse has been negotiating a multi-billion-dollar deal to build six nuclear reactors in India after a 2008 civil nuclear accord, a deal supposed to showcase a new era of economic and strategic cooperation between the United States and India.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Express News Service

NEW DELHI/LUCKNOW:On the eve of the BJP legislature party meeting in Lucknow to elect the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, all attention in Parliament was focussed on the rather less-known Manoj Sinha.

As the hot tip for the hot seat, the minister of state for railways was mobbed by MPs during the brief time he spent in Parliament, eager to shake his hand and wish him all the best.

Suresh Prabhu, Sinhas boss in the Railway Ministry, beamed as he patted him on the shoulder. But Sinha himself fought shy, saying he was not in the race because desires are treacherous. Awkward amid the attention, the 57-year-old minister tried to make a getaway in his car to his constituency Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. All the same, one Uttar Pradesh MLA, stalking him in the forecourt of Parliament, managed to touch his feet.

Amid these colour smoke signals, the names of some of the other contenders got masked, notably that of Union home minister and Uttar Pradesh leviathan Rajnath Singh and the Uttar Pradesh BJP chief K P Maurya.

The air of certainty was a bit curious for BJP MPs have been saying that only the Super Boss knows who the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh would be on the morrow. Some of the certainty could be due to the deductive exclusion of Rajnath Singh and K P Maurya, and some educated guessing about Manoj Sinhas supposed proximity to the Prime Minister.

Rajnath was being discounted by pundits because he is a Thakur and the party had already chosen one Thakur, Trivendra Singh Rawat, for the hot seat in Uttarakhand. Also, Rajnath is said to prefer staying in New Delhi so that his son could be given a place in the Uttar Pradesh cabinet.

Part of the reason why the pointer has swung to Sinha is the pattern of chief ministerial choices Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made in the past. Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana and Raghubar Das in Jharkhand have all been choices made on the basis of administrative acumen, leadership qualities rather than mere caste and faction considerations.

So while MBC leader K P Maurya was strongly tipped right after the flood of positive results on March 11, pundits say it was Manoj Sinhas handling of the railways and telecommunications ministries that seemed to have swung it for him. As an IIT-BHU alumnus, Sinha also has the kind of technocratic mien that the Prime Minister is said to prefer rather than purveyors of ideology like Yogi Adityanath and Uma Bharti.

NEW DELHI/LUCKNOW:On the eve of the BJP legislature party meeting in Lucknow to elect the new Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, all attention in Parliament was focussed on the rather less-known Manoj Sinha. As the hot tip for the hot seat, the minister of state for railways was mobbed by MPs during the brief time he spent in Parliament, eager to shake his hand and wish him all the best. Suresh Prabhu, Sinhas boss in the Railway Ministry, beamed as he patted him on the shoulder. But Sinha himself fought shy, saying he was not in the race because desires are treacherous. Awkward amid the attention, the 57-year-old minister tried to make a getaway in his car to his constituency Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. All the same, one Uttar Pradesh MLA, stalking him in the forecourt of Parliament, managed to touch his feet. Amid these colour smoke signals, the names of some of the other contenders got masked, notably that of Union home minister and Uttar Pradesh leviathan Rajnath Singh and the Uttar Pradesh BJP chief K P Maurya. The air of certainty was a bit curious for BJP MPs have been saying that only the Super Boss knows who the next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh would be on the morrow. Some of the certainty could be due to the deductive exclusion of Rajnath Singh and K P Maurya, and some educated guessing about Manoj Sinhas supposed proximity to the Prime Minister. Rajnath was being discounted by pundits because he is a Thakur and the party had already chosen one Thakur, Trivendra Singh Rawat, for the hot seat in Uttarakhand. Also, Rajnath is said to prefer staying in New Delhi so that his son could be given a place in the Uttar Pradesh cabinet. Part of the reason why the pointer has swung to Sinha is the pattern of chief ministerial choices Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made in the past. Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana and Raghubar Das in Jharkhand have all been choices made on the basis of administrative acumen, leadership qualities rather than mere caste and faction considerations. So while MBC leader K P Maurya was strongly tipped right after the flood of positive results on March 11, pundits say it was Manoj Sinhas handling of the railways and telecommunications ministries that seemed to have swung it for him. As an IIT-BHU alumnus, Sinha also has the kind of technocratic mien that the Prime Minister is said to prefer rather than purveyors of ideology like Yogi Adityanath and Uma Bharti.
By PTI

LAHORE: Pakistan today conveyed to India that it was "seriously pursuing" with its law enforcement agencies the case of two missing Indian clerics, an issue External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said has been taken up with the Pakistani government.

Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI in Islamabad that, "no clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far" but Pakistan was "pro-actively pursuing" the case.

In a series of tweets, Swaraj said both Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at the Karachi airport and Pakistan government has been requested for an update on both the Indian nationals.

"We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," tweeted Swaraj.

80-year-old Syed Asif Nizami is the head priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah.

Official sources in New Delhi said Pakistan has conveyed that it was "seriously pursuing" the case with its law enforcement agencies.

"Indian nationals Syed Asif Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on March 8, 2017," Swaraj said.

Zakaria also said, "We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter", noting that the Foreign Office had received the request of the Indian government to trace the two clerics.

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.

LAHORE: Pakistan today conveyed to India that it was "seriously pursuing" with its law enforcement agencies the case of two missing Indian clerics, an issue External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said has been taken up with the Pakistani government. Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI in Islamabad that, "no clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far" but Pakistan was "pro-actively pursuing" the case. In a series of tweets, Swaraj said both Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at the Karachi airport and Pakistan government has been requested for an update on both the Indian nationals. "We have taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," tweeted Swaraj. 80-year-old Syed Asif Nizami is the head priest (Sajjadanashin) of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah. Official sources in New Delhi said Pakistan has conveyed that it was "seriously pursuing" the case with its law enforcement agencies. "Indian nationals Syed Asif Nizami aged 80 years and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami had gone to Pakistan on March 8, 2017," Swaraj said. Zakaria also said, "We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter", noting that the Foreign Office had received the request of the Indian government to trace the two clerics. Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.
We should abrogate all treaties with India. It only understands the stick. Indian Prime Minister Modi wants to make Pakistan a desert. So declared Irshadullah Khan, the secretary general of the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) Societys Islamabad chapter at a recent event in the Pakistani capital. Indias talk of reviewing the Indus Waters Treaty and building dams on rivers which flow into Pakistan from Kashmir may end in a nuclear war, where 500 most powerful bombs can go off swallowing up the whole world. Modi needs to be restrained immediately. Our intelligence agencies must reach out to their counterparts to explain what a dangerous game India is playing, he said.

Other speakers too raised the spectre of a nuclear war over water. This rhetoric comes in the backdrop of Modis declaration that blood and water cannot flow together and his threat to review the World Bank mediated treaty after the terrorist attacks on military bases in Kashmir last year. More recently, a wire service quoted Indian officials as saying that India has fast-tracked hydropower projects worth $15bn in Kashmir, despite angry protests from Pakistan.

We have developed barely one-sixth of the hydropower capacity potential in the state in the last 50 years, Reuters quoted a senior Water Resources Ministry official as saying earlier this week. At the same time, there are reports that although other talks are on hold, Indian officials may take part in a scheduled meeting of the Indus Commission in Pakistan later this month. Indias position is that the new power plants do not violate the treaty, and thus requires no mediation. While Pakistan, instead of silly sabre-rattling, should stop using terror as an instrument of state policy and build the infrastructure needed to store water, India should keep in mind that Kashmir is an ecologically sensitive area. Also, New Delhi should not forget that China controls the Brahmaputra water that flows into India.

We should abrogate all treaties with India. It only understands the stick. Indian Prime Minister Modi wants to make Pakistan a desert. So declared Irshadullah Khan, the secretary general of the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) Societys Islamabad chapter at a recent event in the Pakistani capital. Indias talk of reviewing the Indus Waters Treaty and building dams on rivers which flow into Pakistan from Kashmir may end in a nuclear war, where 500 most powerful bombs can go off swallowing up the whole world. Modi needs to be restrained immediately. Our intelligence agencies must reach out to their counterparts to explain what a dangerous game India is playing, he said. Other speakers too raised the spectre of a nuclear war over water. This rhetoric comes in the backdrop of Modis declaration that blood and water cannot flow together and his threat to review the World Bank mediated treaty after the terrorist attacks on military bases in Kashmir last year. More recently, a wire service quoted Indian officials as saying that India has fast-tracked hydropower projects worth $15bn in Kashmir, despite angry protests from Pakistan. We have developed barely one-sixth of the hydropower capacity potential in the state in the last 50 years, Reuters quoted a senior Water Resources Ministry official as saying earlier this week. At the same time, there are reports that although other talks are on hold, Indian officials may take part in a scheduled meeting of the Indus Commission in Pakistan later this month. Indias position is that the new power plants do not violate the treaty, and thus requires no mediation. While Pakistan, instead of silly sabre-rattling, should stop using terror as an instrument of state policy and build the infrastructure needed to store water, India should keep in mind that Kashmir is an ecologically sensitive area. Also, New Delhi should not forget that China controls the Brahmaputra water that flows into India.
By Express News Service

BELAGAVI: A first-year polytechnic female student allegedly committed suicide by setting herself on fire before jumping in front of a moving train at Tilakwadi in Belagavi on Friday afternoon.

The deceased is Sanjana Chandrakant Anagolkar (16) of Maratha Mandal Polytechnic, Belagavi. According to eye-witnesses, the girl poured some inflammable liquid, set herself on fire and jumped onto the railway track around 12.30 pm.

Passers-by stood stunned watching the burning body of Sanjana being run over by a train, killing her on the spot.

The identity of the deceased was established from the college bag found near the spot. Parents of the girl were immediately informed about the incident. An eyewitness told Express that the people at the spot had little time to react.

Police have traced a four-page letter written by Sanjana. It states that she was taking the extreme step due to her health problems and no one should be held responsible for her death.

Sanjana had been to her college as usual on Friday morning and even spoke to her friends, said her college mates.They recalled her boarding the school bus of Maratha Mandal after classes.

However, Sanjana got down at Tilakwadi saying she had some personal work and would meet them later. Police said Sanjana had planned her act well. After reaching Tilakwadi, she must have purchased petrol in a bottle from a fuel station and used it to set herself on fire, they said.

BELAGAVI: A first-year polytechnic female student allegedly committed suicide by setting herself on fire before jumping in front of a moving train at Tilakwadi in Belagavi on Friday afternoon. The deceased is Sanjana Chandrakant Anagolkar (16) of Maratha Mandal Polytechnic, Belagavi. According to eye-witnesses, the girl poured some inflammable liquid, set herself on fire and jumped onto the railway track around 12.30 pm. Passers-by stood stunned watching the burning body of Sanjana being run over by a train, killing her on the spot. The identity of the deceased was established from the college bag found near the spot. Parents of the girl were immediately informed about the incident. An eyewitness told Express that the people at the spot had little time to react. Police have traced a four-page letter written by Sanjana. It states that she was taking the extreme step due to her health problems and no one should be held responsible for her death. Sanjana had been to her college as usual on Friday morning and even spoke to her friends, said her college mates.They recalled her boarding the school bus of Maratha Mandal after classes. However, Sanjana got down at Tilakwadi saying she had some personal work and would meet them later. Police said Sanjana had planned her act well. After reaching Tilakwadi, she must have purchased petrol in a bottle from a fuel station and used it to set herself on fire, they said.
Akram Mohammed By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: A day after IPS officer D Roopa, Deputy Inspector General - Prisons, wrote a post criticising the claims made BJP MP Pratap Simha, the post was censored by Facebook.

Speaking to Express, Roopa expressed shock over Facebook removing her post. "I got an alert on Friday morning stating that the post was not available for view and directed me to contact Facebook helpline," she said.

The Facebook post had debunked claims made by the Mysuru-Kodagu MP, who had contended that IPS officers are 'migrating' from the State, as some officers were not given a post of their liking. The 650-word post was titled "Why the views of honorable MP Pratap Simha are so very wrong and dangerous".

She said that the gesture by Facebook was 'very insulting'. "There should be freedom for me to express my opinions. Moreover, the post did not use any abusive language," she said. Having served as Superintendent of Police in Cyber Crime, she recalled that despite complaints, Facebook would take hours or even days to remove indecent or pornographic images. "However, it appears that my post was removed on short notice," she told Express.

In a recent FB post, she said on Friday, "This is ridiculous! My FbB post countering honorable MP Pratap Simha's views has disappeared! Dear Facebook, this is not fair."

Below is the post, that she updated on her profile again:



Attached below are the screenshot of the post, just in case the original post goes missing again:

BENGALURU: A day after IPS officer D Roopa, Deputy Inspector General - Prisons, wrote a post criticising the claims made BJP MP Pratap Simha, the post was censored by Facebook. Speaking to Express, Roopa expressed shock over Facebook removing her post. "I got an alert on Friday morning stating that the post was not available for view and directed me to contact Facebook helpline," she said. The Facebook post had debunked claims made by the Mysuru-Kodagu MP, who had contended that IPS officers are 'migrating' from the State, as some officers were not given a post of their liking. The 650-word post was titled "Why the views of honorable MP Pratap Simha are so very wrong and dangerous". She said that the gesture by Facebook was 'very insulting'. "There should be freedom for me to express my opinions. Moreover, the post did not use any abusive language," she said. Having served as Superintendent of Police in Cyber Crime, she recalled that despite complaints, Facebook would take hours or even days to remove indecent or pornographic images. "However, it appears that my post was removed on short notice," she told Express. In a recent FB post, she said on Friday, "This is ridiculous! My FbB post countering honorable MP Pratap Simha's views has disappeared! Dear Facebook, this is not fair." Below is the post, that she updated on her profile again: Attached below are the screenshot of the post, just in case the original post goes missing again:
By Express News Service

KOZHIKODE: A week after the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi (KVVES) announced its decision to stop the sale of Pepsi and Coca-Cola across the State from March 14, the largest traders' body in Kerala took a U-turn on Thursday. The association has come out with an excuse that the movement against the MNCs will only get the desired result if all the traders joined the protest.

We have not deviated from our decision to boycott Pepsi and Coco Cola. As always, we are opposed to selling the multinational beverages. But there will be a real impact only if all other traders join us. We have requested Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take the initiative in forming a consensus on the issue among all the traders in the State, said KVVES State committee member Ashraf Moothedath.

KVVES, following the footsteps of traders in Tamil Nadu, had announced its decision to stop the sale of Pepsi and Coca cola in Kerala to register their protest against exploitation of ground water by the companies while the state was reeling under drought.

KVVES president T Nazaruddin had said the traders would make a formal announcement on the boycott on March 14 after seeking support of Chief Minister. According to him the traders had decided to promote local brands mainly lime soda and tender coconut to fight against the branded drinks.

Around seven lakh shops and traders were expected to join the protest, which would have been a major setback to the two companies.

KOZHIKODE: A week after the Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi (KVVES) announced its decision to stop the sale of Pepsi and Coca-Cola across the State from March 14, the largest traders' body in Kerala took a U-turn on Thursday. The association has come out with an excuse that the movement against the MNCs will only get the desired result if all the traders joined the protest. We have not deviated from our decision to boycott Pepsi and Coco Cola. As always, we are opposed to selling the multinational beverages. But there will be a real impact only if all other traders join us. We have requested Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take the initiative in forming a consensus on the issue among all the traders in the State, said KVVES State committee member Ashraf Moothedath. KVVES, following the footsteps of traders in Tamil Nadu, had announced its decision to stop the sale of Pepsi and Coca cola in Kerala to register their protest against exploitation of ground water by the companies while the state was reeling under drought. KVVES president T Nazaruddin had said the traders would make a formal announcement on the boycott on March 14 after seeking support of Chief Minister. According to him the traders had decided to promote local brands mainly lime soda and tender coconut to fight against the branded drinks. Around seven lakh shops and traders were expected to join the protest, which would have been a major setback to the two companies.
By Express News Service

KANNUR: Following the direction of the High Court, former chairman of the Wayanad Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Fr. Thomas Joseph Therakam, former CWC member Sister Betty Jose and Holy Infant Mary Orphanage head Sister Ophelia, accused in the Kannur Kottiyur rape case surrendered before the police at Peravoor, on Friday morning.

All the three were absconding after they were questioned by the police in connection with the rape case. After the arrest of Robin Vadakkancherry, former vicar of St Sebastian church Neendunokki in Kottiyoor, who allegedly raped a 16-year-old who later delivered a baby, Josesph Therakam and the two nuns went into hiding and later moved for a bail petition in the High Court.

The accused will be produced before a special court on Friday.

The High Court had directed the four accused in the case, including Thankamma, a helper, to surrender before the police as they would be granted bail, conditionally, on the same day.Thankamma is still absconding.

The victim had delivered a baby at Christhu Raj hospital near Koothuparamba and was later shifted to an orphanage in Wayanad.

The police had been hunting for all the accused over their role in concealing information and helping the priest to hide his crime.

KANNUR: Following the direction of the High Court, former chairman of the Wayanad Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Fr. Thomas Joseph Therakam, former CWC member Sister Betty Jose and Holy Infant Mary Orphanage head Sister Ophelia, accused in the Kannur Kottiyur rape case surrendered before the police at Peravoor, on Friday morning. All the three were absconding after they were questioned by the police in connection with the rape case. After the arrest of Robin Vadakkancherry, former vicar of St Sebastian church Neendunokki in Kottiyoor, who allegedly raped a 16-year-old who later delivered a baby, Josesph Therakam and the two nuns went into hiding and later moved for a bail petition in the High Court. The accused will be produced before a special court on Friday. The High Court had directed the four accused in the case, including Thankamma, a helper, to surrender before the police as they would be granted bail, conditionally, on the same day.Thankamma is still absconding. The victim had delivered a baby at Christhu Raj hospital near Koothuparamba and was later shifted to an orphanage in Wayanad. The police had been hunting for all the accused over their role in concealing information and helping the priest to hide his crime.
Kaushik Kannan By

Express News Service

MADURAI: Remember the Class XII boards scam in Bihar last year wherein the toppers hardly had any clue about their subjects? Something similar happened at the India Post recruitment examination for TN Postal Circle, if the version of some local aspirants is anything to go by.

They smelt a rat as several students from Haryana got high scores in the exams, shockingly, also in the Tamil language paper. Express managed to obtain the marksheets of two students, Dinesh and Rahul Kumar, both from Haryana who scored a jaw-dropping 24 and 22 in the Tamil paper respectively out of 25.

When Express tried reaching both of them, their phones were switched off. Suspecting forgery, more than 40 candidates submitted a petition to the district administration officials at the Madurai Collectorate on Thursday.

The results for the exam for recruitment of Postman and Mail Guard were published on Tuesday. I saw my result and started to check the marks of candidates next to my number. I saw that several students from Haryana had scored high marks in Tamil paper, mostly above 20 out of 25. I was shocked and alerted my friends, said one of the candidates on condition of anonymity.

The Tamil paper was tough even for us whose mother tongue is Tamil and who studied it in school. I wonder how candidates from Haryana managed to get such high scores.

Another student claimed he tried calling one of the toppers from Haryana, on the mobile number given in the mark sheet.

I went to the website, typed his registration ID and got his phone number. I tried talking in English, but he couldnt converse. Then I asked him if he knows Tamil, he responded in Hindi, saying mujhe Tamil malloom hai (I know Tamil).

Senior officials in the postal department said they were unaware of the matter. Yenna rascalaa? as SRK would say.

MADURAI: Remember the Class XII boards scam in Bihar last year wherein the toppers hardly had any clue about their subjects? Something similar happened at the India Post recruitment examination for TN Postal Circle, if the version of some local aspirants is anything to go by. They smelt a rat as several students from Haryana got high scores in the exams, shockingly, also in the Tamil language paper. Express managed to obtain the marksheets of two students, Dinesh and Rahul Kumar, both from Haryana who scored a jaw-dropping 24 and 22 in the Tamil paper respectively out of 25. When Express tried reaching both of them, their phones were switched off. Suspecting forgery, more than 40 candidates submitted a petition to the district administration officials at the Madurai Collectorate on Thursday. The results for the exam for recruitment of Postman and Mail Guard were published on Tuesday. I saw my result and started to check the marks of candidates next to my number. I saw that several students from Haryana had scored high marks in Tamil paper, mostly above 20 out of 25. I was shocked and alerted my friends, said one of the candidates on condition of anonymity. The Tamil paper was tough even for us whose mother tongue is Tamil and who studied it in school. I wonder how candidates from Haryana managed to get such high scores. Another student claimed he tried calling one of the toppers from Haryana, on the mobile number given in the mark sheet. I went to the website, typed his registration ID and got his phone number. I tried talking in English, but he couldnt converse. Then I asked him if he knows Tamil, he responded in Hindi, saying mujhe Tamil malloom hai (I know Tamil). Senior officials in the postal department said they were unaware of the matter. Yenna rascalaa? as SRK would say.
Doel Sengupta By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: India ranks 148 globally in terms of representation of women in executive government and parliament, according to a report published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women. The data published in the report Women in Politics 2017 Map showed that women make up only 11.8 per cent (64 MPs) of the 542-member Lok Sabha and 11 per cent (27) of the 245-member Rajya Sabha.

In terms of women ministers, India ranks 88 with only five ministers (18.5 per cent) in the cabinet. This level of gender representation among ministers is better than the Asian average of 11% but far worse than the leader of the table, Indonesia, which gives 25.6% of its ministerial positions to women.

The report stated that the number of women in executive government and in Parliament worldwide has stagnated, with only a marginal improvement since 2015. The head of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, called for reservation for women in lawmaking bodies across the world.

Regionally, womens representation in the Americas made the most significant gains, according to the report, rising from 22.45 per cent in 2015 to 25 per cent. In Africa, the proportion of female ministers saw a decline after years of steady growth. About 19.7 per cent of the regions ministerial posts are held by women.

In Europe, the total percentage of women lawmakers stood at 22.5 per cent. A surprise came from the Nordic countries which have traditionally led the global stage in politics, but whose number of female ministers fell by more than 6 per cent to 43.5 per cent.

Among the Arab States, 9.7 per cent of senior executive posts are held by women, led by Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, at 23.1 per cent and 26.7 per cent, respectively.

These developments show that progress in gender equality remains slow in all structures of power and types of decision-making. Power is still firmly in mens hands, and although we have witnessed some positive trendsfor example, the current record number of 53 women speakers of Parliament out of 273 posts, globally much remains to be done if women are to play on a level field with men, said IPU secretary-general Martin Chungong.

Equal representation in positions of power is a fundamental precondition for truly effective and accountable democracy, he added. In the sub-continent India fared lower than Bangladesh at 91 and Pakistan at 89. Sri Lanka was positioned 179 as far as representation of women goes.

The report was launched on the sidelines of the 61st Commission on the Status of Women.

A total of 227 countries were analysed in the survey.

CHENNAI: India ranks 148 globally in terms of representation of women in executive government and parliament, according to a report published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women. The data published in the report Women in Politics 2017 Map showed that women make up only 11.8 per cent (64 MPs) of the 542-member Lok Sabha and 11 per cent (27) of the 245-member Rajya Sabha. In terms of women ministers, India ranks 88 with only five ministers (18.5 per cent) in the cabinet. This level of gender representation among ministers is better than the Asian average of 11% but far worse than the leader of the table, Indonesia, which gives 25.6% of its ministerial positions to women. The report stated that the number of women in executive government and in Parliament worldwide has stagnated, with only a marginal improvement since 2015. The head of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, called for reservation for women in lawmaking bodies across the world. Regionally, womens representation in the Americas made the most significant gains, according to the report, rising from 22.45 per cent in 2015 to 25 per cent. In Africa, the proportion of female ministers saw a decline after years of steady growth. About 19.7 per cent of the regions ministerial posts are held by women. In Europe, the total percentage of women lawmakers stood at 22.5 per cent. A surprise came from the Nordic countries which have traditionally led the global stage in politics, but whose number of female ministers fell by more than 6 per cent to 43.5 per cent. Among the Arab States, 9.7 per cent of senior executive posts are held by women, led by Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, at 23.1 per cent and 26.7 per cent, respectively. These developments show that progress in gender equality remains slow in all structures of power and types of decision-making. Power is still firmly in mens hands, and although we have witnessed some positive trendsfor example, the current record number of 53 women speakers of Parliament out of 273 posts, globally much remains to be done if women are to play on a level field with men, said IPU secretary-general Martin Chungong. Equal representation in positions of power is a fundamental precondition for truly effective and accountable democracy, he added. In the sub-continent India fared lower than Bangladesh at 91 and Pakistan at 89. Sri Lanka was positioned 179 as far as representation of women goes. The report was launched on the sidelines of the 61st Commission on the Status of Women. A total of 227 countries were analysed in the survey.
By PTI

CHENNAI: Concerned over the reported killing of an Indian fisherman and arrest of many by the Sri Lankan Navy, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will meet the aggrieved fishermen from Tamil Nadu, Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

"The fishermen's representatives wanted to meet officials of the external affairs ministry. But the government has made arrangements for them to meet the external affairs minister herself. She (Swaraj) has come back to Parliament after recovering and is ready to meet them," Sitharaman told reporters at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show organised by EEPC India here yesterday.

She said the Centre is taking efforts at every level to resolve the issue, which crops up now and then. Asked about a timeline for such resolution, the minister said that since it involves another country (Sri Lanka) and its fishermen, all these factors should be taken into consideration.

On the protests on Jallikattu, Sitharaman said whether it is Jallikattu or the fishermen issue, people have taken to such a recourse because "there is a gap between the people and their representatives which needs to be bridged".

The purported killing of the fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy and arrests of several others have prompted India to raise the issue with Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Bridgo, 22, from Thangachimadam in central Rameswaram of Tamil Nadu, was allegedly shot dead earlier this month when he was fishing in a mechanised boat off the Katchatheevu islet, triggering protests in the state.

Besides, 24 Indian fishermen were picked up by the Sri Lankan Naval personnel on Sunday for allegedly crossing the international maritime boundary line and fishing in the island nation's territorial waters.

CHENNAI: Concerned over the reported killing of an Indian fisherman and arrest of many by the Sri Lankan Navy, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will meet the aggrieved fishermen from Tamil Nadu, Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman has said. "The fishermen's representatives wanted to meet officials of the external affairs ministry. But the government has made arrangements for them to meet the external affairs minister herself. She (Swaraj) has come back to Parliament after recovering and is ready to meet them," Sitharaman told reporters at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show organised by EEPC India here yesterday. She said the Centre is taking efforts at every level to resolve the issue, which crops up now and then. Asked about a timeline for such resolution, the minister said that since it involves another country (Sri Lanka) and its fishermen, all these factors should be taken into consideration. On the protests on Jallikattu, Sitharaman said whether it is Jallikattu or the fishermen issue, people have taken to such a recourse because "there is a gap between the people and their representatives which needs to be bridged". The purported killing of the fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy and arrests of several others have prompted India to raise the issue with Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Bridgo, 22, from Thangachimadam in central Rameswaram of Tamil Nadu, was allegedly shot dead earlier this month when he was fishing in a mechanised boat off the Katchatheevu islet, triggering protests in the state. Besides, 24 Indian fishermen were picked up by the Sri Lankan Naval personnel on Sunday for allegedly crossing the international maritime boundary line and fishing in the island nation's territorial waters.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Terming the State budget proposals unrealistic, Leader of the Opposition K Jana Reddy cautioned the state government that if higher projections were made in the budget with an eye to tap external borrowings, the State would suffer greatly in terms of Central assistance.

You may have increased the figures and showed higher revenues, for borrowing money. The CAG report stated that the State is revenue deficit one.

If you show that the state is in revenue surplus, then the 15th Finance Commission may not give much funds to the state. The tax devolution from the Centre too will be reduced for rich states. The tax devolution share of Telangana is just 2.437 per cent as of now. The percentage of share will further decrease, he said and advised Finance minister E Rajender to rectify the same.

Participating in the general discussion on the budget in state Assembly on Thursday, Jana Reddy said the government could not realise the revenues projected in the budget.

The Congress veteran said the revenue receipts projected in the budget were Rs 24,000 crore higher. Revenue collections may not be realised fully. As a result several schemes would not be implemented in the state, he said.

He recalled that the size of the budget for 2016-17 was Rs 1.30 lakh crore. However, the governments revised estimates put the budget at Rs 1.12 lakh crore, later. The average growth in revenue in the state is around 15 per cent. The 2017-18 budget proposals should be 15 per cent higher than the actual expenditure of Rs 1.12 lakh crore in 2016-17, Jana Reddy suggested.

The Congress senior leader said that though the states growth was 15 per cent, a projection of 30 per cent growth was indicated in the 2017-18 budget and stretched the budget size to Rs 1.49 lakh crore. Even the richest state like Gujarat did not give such projections in its budget, Jana Reddy claimed.

HYDERABAD: Terming the State budget proposals unrealistic, Leader of the Opposition K Jana Reddy cautioned the state government that if higher projections were made in the budget with an eye to tap external borrowings, the State would suffer greatly in terms of Central assistance. You may have increased the figures and showed higher revenues, for borrowing money. The CAG report stated that the State is revenue deficit one. If you show that the state is in revenue surplus, then the 15th Finance Commission may not give much funds to the state. The tax devolution from the Centre too will be reduced for rich states. The tax devolution share of Telangana is just 2.437 per cent as of now. The percentage of share will further decrease, he said and advised Finance minister E Rajender to rectify the same. Participating in the general discussion on the budget in state Assembly on Thursday, Jana Reddy said the government could not realise the revenues projected in the budget. The Congress veteran said the revenue receipts projected in the budget were Rs 24,000 crore higher. Revenue collections may not be realised fully. As a result several schemes would not be implemented in the state, he said. He recalled that the size of the budget for 2016-17 was Rs 1.30 lakh crore. However, the governments revised estimates put the budget at Rs 1.12 lakh crore, later. The average growth in revenue in the state is around 15 per cent. The 2017-18 budget proposals should be 15 per cent higher than the actual expenditure of Rs 1.12 lakh crore in 2016-17, Jana Reddy suggested. The Congress senior leader said that though the states growth was 15 per cent, a projection of 30 per cent growth was indicated in the 2017-18 budget and stretched the budget size to Rs 1.49 lakh crore. Even the richest state like Gujarat did not give such projections in its budget, Jana Reddy claimed.
By AFP

ADEN: More than 42 Somali refugees including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat in the Red Sea off the coast of war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida but managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said.

The bodies of more than 30 refugees were taken to hospitals where 35 wounded were also admitted, a hospital official said.

The International Organization for Migration said 80 survivors were rescued and taken to hospital, including 24 in "extremely critical" condition.

"Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths," said spokesman Joel Millman.

The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison.

The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition, which has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi forces.

It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was heading for Sudan.

Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought Yemen to the brink of famine, the country continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa.

Several refugee camps in southern Yemen are hosting Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area.

- Civilians bear the brunt -

The United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are leaving the country from further north than previously.

It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians.

"UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said.

The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials.

The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said.

That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces.

Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said.

Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said.

The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world," with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.

ADEN: More than 42 Somali refugees including women and children have been shot dead aboard a boat in the Red Sea off the coast of war-torn Yemen, officials said on Friday. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack. The refugees were hit by light weapons fire in waters off rebel-held Hodeida but managed to dock in the city's port, an official there said. The bodies of more than 30 refugees were taken to hospitals where 35 wounded were also admitted, a hospital official said. The International Organization for Migration said 80 survivors were rescued and taken to hospital, including 24 in "extremely critical" condition. "Our confirmation is that there are dozens of deaths," said spokesman Joel Millman. The port official said dozens of Somalis who survived the attack, as well as three Yemeni traffickers, had been taken to the city's prison. The rebel-controlled Saba agency accused the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents of attacking the refugees from the air but did not provide further details. There was no immediate comment from the coalition, which has been backing pro-government forces waging an offensive from the south to retake Yemen's Red Sea coast from Huthi forces. It was unclear whether those on board were trying to leave Yemen or seek refuge there, but the IOM said it believed the boat was heading for Sudan. Despite a war that has cost more than 7,000 lives since March 2015 and brought Yemen to the brink of famine, the country continues to attract people fleeing the horn of Africa. Several refugee camps in southern Yemen are hosting Somali refugees, although not in the Hodeida area. - Civilians bear the brunt - The United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR said that as conditions worsen in Yemen, refugees are leaving the country from further north than previously. It called on all sides in Yemen's war to protect civilians. "UNHCR is appalled by this tragic incident, the latest in which civilians continue to disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict in Yemen," it said. The coast south of Hodeida has seen violent clashes over the past 24 hours, leaving 32 dead including 10 civilians, according to military and medical officials. The fighting killed 14 rebels and eight soldiers supporting UN-backed government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, military sources said. That came as pro-Hadi forces sought to advance northwards from the port town of Mokha in an offensive to retake Yemen's western coast from Huthi rebel forces. Saudi-led coalition aircraft had taken part in the assault, the same sources said. Seven fishermen were also killed off Hodeida by gunfire from an unidentified source, while a further seven were killed in a car near Mokha, hospital workers said. The UN's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world," with two-thirds of the population in need of aid.
Express News Service

COLOMBO: International military cum diplomatic pressure forced Somali pirates to release the oil tanker Aris 13 and its eight-man Sri Lankan crew without ransom and without injuring them in any way, the Sri Lankan Deputy Foreign Minister, Dr.Harsha de Silva, told the media here on Friday.

Dr.de Silva thanked the US Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Atul Keshap, the Puntland President Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, the United Arab Emirates, the US-led Combined Maritime Force based in the UAE and the Sri Lankan navy for swinging the release.

The Puntland President was involved as the piracy took place off his countrys shores. Puntland had been the hideout and launching pad for pirates before piracy was stamped out in 2012.

The Sri Lankan Minister said that for the first time WhatsApp was used in communications and it was through WhatsApp that the Puntland President told him about the release early on Friday.

Aris 13 is said to have released the crew after the Combined Maritime Force, a 41 nation force based in the UAE and led by an American Admiral, intervened. Its entry also led to the Puntland military stopping its offensive action which might have set the oil laden tanker on fire and the Sri Lankans on board might have died in the inferno. The firing had caused great concern in Sri Lanka especially after the trapped crew called up to ask the Sri Lankan government to do everything it could to stop it. When contacted, the Puntland President assured that nothing would be done to harm the crew.

Some news agencies said that the pirates released the ship without ransom because the vessel had been hired by Somali businessmen to carry oil from Djibouti to Mogadishu. Somalian pirates take care to see that they do not harm the Somali business community which is very powerful.

Lt.Commander CRP Walakuluge said that Aris 13 was vulnerable to piracy because it was sailing close to the coast to save on fuel and was also going slowly. Further it did not have Sea Marshalls on board (again perhaps to save money). Lastly, there were no naval vessels around to rescue the captured vessel.

This is the first case of piracy off the Somalia coast since 2012. International maritime cooperation, and use of escort vessels and Sea Marshalls had forced pirates to retreat. But it is disturbing to see them back at work again.

COLOMBO: International military cum diplomatic pressure forced Somali pirates to release the oil tanker Aris 13 and its eight-man Sri Lankan crew without ransom and without injuring them in any way, the Sri Lankan Deputy Foreign Minister, Dr.Harsha de Silva, told the media here on Friday. Dr.de Silva thanked the US Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Atul Keshap, the Puntland President Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, the United Arab Emirates, the US-led Combined Maritime Force based in the UAE and the Sri Lankan navy for swinging the release. The Puntland President was involved as the piracy took place off his countrys shores. Puntland had been the hideout and launching pad for pirates before piracy was stamped out in 2012. The Sri Lankan Minister said that for the first time WhatsApp was used in communications and it was through WhatsApp that the Puntland President told him about the release early on Friday. Aris 13 is said to have released the crew after the Combined Maritime Force, a 41 nation force based in the UAE and led by an American Admiral, intervened. Its entry also led to the Puntland military stopping its offensive action which might have set the oil laden tanker on fire and the Sri Lankans on board might have died in the inferno. The firing had caused great concern in Sri Lanka especially after the trapped crew called up to ask the Sri Lankan government to do everything it could to stop it. When contacted, the Puntland President assured that nothing would be done to harm the crew. Some news agencies said that the pirates released the ship without ransom because the vessel had been hired by Somali businessmen to carry oil from Djibouti to Mogadishu. Somalian pirates take care to see that they do not harm the Somali business community which is very powerful. Lt.Commander CRP Walakuluge said that Aris 13 was vulnerable to piracy because it was sailing close to the coast to save on fuel and was also going slowly. Further it did not have Sea Marshalls on board (again perhaps to save money). Lastly, there were no naval vessels around to rescue the captured vessel. This is the first case of piracy off the Somalia coast since 2012. International maritime cooperation, and use of escort vessels and Sea Marshalls had forced pirates to retreat. But it is disturbing to see them back at work again.
By ANI

NEW YORK: A traveler has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled threatening slurs and even kicking a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the at John F. Kennedy Airport.

Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison.

Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, "Are you [expletive deleted] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?", said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employee's chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, "You did nothing but I am going to kick your [expletive deleted] a**," the complaint said.

Rhodes then kicked the employee in the leg, after which she tried to get away, but Rhodes persisted, kicking the door and stepping into her office and blocking her from escaping.

Another person, also not identified, tried to calm Rhodes and moved him away from the door, while the employee ran out of the office to the lounge's front desk.

Rhodes allegedly followed the employee, at one point getting down on his knees, bowing down in imitation of a Muslim praying.

He shouted, "[Expletive] Islam, [expletive] ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens."

According to the charges, the victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg and was placed in fear of physical injury, annoyance and alarm.

In the wake of the attack, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the Transportation Worker Protection Act, which would make any assault against an airport worker a felony, punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison.

NEW YORK: A traveler has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled threatening slurs and even kicking a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the at John F. Kennedy Airport. Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison. Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, "Are you [expletive deleted] sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?", said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employee's chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, "You did nothing but I am going to kick your [expletive deleted] a**," the complaint said. Rhodes then kicked the employee in the leg, after which she tried to get away, but Rhodes persisted, kicking the door and stepping into her office and blocking her from escaping. Another person, also not identified, tried to calm Rhodes and moved him away from the door, while the employee ran out of the office to the lounge's front desk. Rhodes allegedly followed the employee, at one point getting down on his knees, bowing down in imitation of a Muslim praying. He shouted, "[Expletive] Islam, [expletive] ISIS, Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens." According to the charges, the victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg and was placed in fear of physical injury, annoyance and alarm. In the wake of the attack, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the Transportation Worker Protection Act, which would make any assault against an airport worker a felony, punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: The US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling "get out of my country".

Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack. Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divide or define" the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them."

"These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital. Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

"I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'. "We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said. "This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said.

"Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations. "Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests. In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of. Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love. "We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said. "And with the resolve to fight hate."

WASHINGTON: The US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling "get out of my country". Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack. Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divide or define" the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them." "These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital. Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani. "I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'. "We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said. "This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said. "Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations. "Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said. Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests. In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of. Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla. To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials. Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love. "We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said. "And with the resolve to fight hate."
By Associated Press

St. LUCIA: Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

Walcott's death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early on Friday by his son, Peter.

"Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia," read a family statement released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity" of his writings including the 1990 "Omeros," a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as "majestic."

"In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet," said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott.

Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the "very rich and complicated experience" of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theatre, Walcott's work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Walcott to regional status because of "an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man."

Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

"I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer," he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. "The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets."

Walcott was born in St. Lucia's capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

In his autobiographical essay, "What the Twilight Says," he wrote: "Both the patois of the street and the language of the classroom hid the elation of discovery. If there was nothing, there was everything to be made. With this prodigious ambition one began."

Walcott once described straddling "two worlds" during his childhood in St. Lucia, then a sleepy outpost of the British empire.

"Colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles; that being poor, we already had the theater of our lives. In that simple schizophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives: the interior life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect," he wrote.

Early on, he struggled with questions of race and his passion for British poetry, describing it as a "wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body, as if the flesh were coal from which the spirit like tormented smoke writhed to escape." But he overcame that inner struggle, writing: "Once we have lost our wish to be white, we develop a longing to become black."

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called "1944," in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play "Henri Christophe" was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St. Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaica's University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theater in Trinidad's Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcott's treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, 'The Star-Apple Kingdom' he wrote of the "groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream."

For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including "Dream on Monkey Mountain" and "The Last Carnival," and founding theaters such as the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled "English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries."

Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write "The Capeman" story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics.

His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St. Lucia.

St. LUCIA: Derek Walcott, a Nobel-prize winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, has died on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87. Walcott's death in the eastern Caribbean nation was first confirmed early on Friday by his son, Peter. "Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia," read a family statement released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly. The prolific and versatile poet received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting Walcott, the academy cited the great luminosity" of his writings including the 1990 "Omeros," a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as "majestic." "In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet," said the Swedish academy in awarding the $1.2 million prize to Walcott. Walcott, who was of African, Dutch and English ancestry, said his writing reflected the "very rich and complicated experience" of life in the Caribbean. His dazzling, painterly work earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. With passions ranging from watercolor painting to teaching to theatre, Walcott's work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, and its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation. Soviet exile poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1987, once complained that some critics relegated Walcott to regional status because of "an unwillingness ... to admit that the great poet of the English language is a black man." Walcott himself proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer. "I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer," he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review. "The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets." Walcott was born in St. Lucia's capital of Castries on Jan. 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when Walcott and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies. His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature. In his autobiographical essay, "What the Twilight Says," he wrote: "Both the patois of the street and the language of the classroom hid the elation of discovery. If there was nothing, there was everything to be made. With this prodigious ambition one began." Walcott once described straddling "two worlds" during his childhood in St. Lucia, then a sleepy outpost of the British empire. "Colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles; that being poor, we already had the theater of our lives. In that simple schizophrenic boyhood one could lead two lives: the interior life of poetry, and the outward life of action and dialect," he wrote. Early on, he struggled with questions of race and his passion for British poetry, describing it as a "wrestling contradiction of being white in mind and black in body, as if the flesh were coal from which the spirit like tormented smoke writhed to escape." But he overcame that inner struggle, writing: "Once we have lost our wish to be white, we develop a longing to become black." At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called "1944," in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play "Henri Christophe" was produced by an arts guild he co-founded. He left St. Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaica's University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theater in Trinidad's Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992. Walcott's treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, 'The Star-Apple Kingdom' he wrote of the "groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid ... the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream." For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works. Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including "Dream on Monkey Mountain" and "The Last Carnival," and founding theaters such as the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled "English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most  if not any  of his English-born contemporaries." Not all his work was met with accolades. He collaborated with American pop star Paul Simon to write "The Capeman" story, which became a Broadway musical in 1997 and quickly became a major flop, closing less than two months into its run and getting panned by critics. His reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s. He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St. Lucia.
By PTI

DHAKA: An Islamist suicide bomber today blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladesh's elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion here, injuring two security personnel, a day after five militants were killed in police raids.



"It was an incident of suicide bombing. The suicide attacker targeted our camp," RAB spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said.



The area where the incident took place was earmarked for constructing the headquarters of the force.



The blast wounded two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka Cantonment.



The officer said the attack appeared to be an act of any militant outfit, but it was not clear immediately which of the Islamist outfits staged it.



"Right now we are concentrating our attention to ascertain if the complex and the neighbourhood are secured," Mahmud said as police's counter terrorism unit with bomb disposal team reached the scene while thoroughfares around the complex were blocked for vehicular movements.



Witnesses said the youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp, killing himself instantly and seriously wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber, aged around 25 years, apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall.



The attack comes a day after police's Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagong's Sitakunda where two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest. Two days ago, the ISIS terror group had called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh.



Bangladesh has witnessed a nationwide anti-Islamist crackdown since last week while police said they arrested over 80 militants.

DHAKA: An Islamist suicide bomber today blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladesh's elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion here, injuring two security personnel, a day after five militants were killed in police raids. "It was an incident of suicide bombing. The suicide attacker targeted our camp," RAB spokesman Commander Mufty Mahmud said. The area where the incident took place was earmarked for constructing the headquarters of the force. The blast wounded two RAB men who were being treated at the nearby Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka Cantonment. The officer said the attack appeared to be an act of any militant outfit, but it was not clear immediately which of the Islamist outfits staged it. "Right now we are concentrating our attention to ascertain if the complex and the neighbourhood are secured," Mahmud said as police's counter terrorism unit with bomb disposal team reached the scene while thoroughfares around the complex were blocked for vehicular movements. Witnesses said the youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp, killing himself instantly and seriously wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force. Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber, aged around 25 years, apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall. The attack comes a day after police's Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagong's Sitakunda where two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest. Two days ago, the ISIS terror group had called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has witnessed a nationwide anti-Islamist crackdown since last week while police said they arrested over 80 militants.
By Associated Press

KABUL: An Afghan official says a suicide truck bomber has targeted a military checkpoint in eastern Khost province, killing one soldier and wounding 10.

A district governor, Mohammad Akbar Zadran, says the early morning attack today in the district of Sabari started with the truck driver detonating his explosives-laden vehicle in front of the military post. He says the explosion was so powerful that it damaged nearby houses and a school.

After the blast, two Taliban gunmen opened fire at the troops, triggering a shootout that left both militants dead. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a message to the media that the Taliban targeted the military compound in Sabari in the attack.

KABUL: An Afghan official says a suicide truck bomber has targeted a military checkpoint in eastern Khost province, killing one soldier and wounding 10. A district governor, Mohammad Akbar Zadran, says the early morning attack today in the district of Sabari started with the truck driver detonating his explosives-laden vehicle in front of the military post. He says the explosion was so powerful that it damaged nearby houses and a school. After the blast, two Taliban gunmen opened fire at the troops, triggering a shootout that left both militants dead. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a message to the media that the Taliban targeted the military compound in Sabari in the attack.
By Associated Press

JERUSALEM: Anti-aircraft missiles launched were from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory early Friday following a series of Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the Israeli military said.

The military said its warplanes struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but it said the safety of Israeli civilians and the safety of the Israeli aircraft "were not compromised."

The army said the incident was the cause of sirens that wailed in Jewish settlement communities in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank. The military would not immediately comment on media reports that explosions were heard in the area.

The Jordan Valley part of the West Bank borders Jordan. Israel captured it along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians demand the areas for a future state.

Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes on advanced weapons systems in Syria  including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah positions  but it rarely confirms them.

The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is rare.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering only sporadic incidents of spillover fire over the frontier that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors of the Assad regime. Israel has responded to these cases lightly, with limited reprisals on Syrian positions in response to the errant fire.

JERUSALEM: Anti-aircraft missiles launched were from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory early Friday following a series of Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the Israeli military said. The military said its warplanes struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets. Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said. It would not say whether any other missiles struck Israeli-held territory, but it said the safety of Israeli civilians and the safety of the Israeli aircraft "were not compromised." The army said the incident was the cause of sirens that wailed in Jewish settlement communities in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank. The military would not immediately comment on media reports that explosions were heard in the area. The Jordan Valley part of the West Bank borders Jordan. Israel captured it along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians demand the areas for a future state. Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes on advanced weapons systems in Syria  including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah positions  but it rarely confirms them. The firing of missiles from Syria toward Israeli aircraft is rare. Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering only sporadic incidents of spillover fire over the frontier that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors of the Assad regime. Israel has responded to these cases lightly, with limited reprisals on Syrian positions in response to the errant fire.
By AFP

SEOUL: US President Donald Trump on Friday accused China of not doing enough to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, after his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against Pyongyang was an option.

"North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said on Twitter.

Earlier in Seoul, Tillerson said military action would be an "option on the table" if the threat posed by North Korea were to escalate.

In strong statements that appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country, the United States' top diplomat said North Korea's burgeoning missile and nuclear programmes must be halted.

"Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he told reporters in Seoul, but added: "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then that option's on the table."

"The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson told a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table."

"Strategic patience" is the term given to the US policy under former President Barack Obama when the United States ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses would bring about change.

Tillerson's visit to Asia -- South Korea is the second leg of the tour -- is his first foray into crisis management.

His remarks on Friday came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

Allowing the North to retain its present level of weapons technology was not appropriate, Tillerson said in Seoul.

"That would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat."

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

Tillerson will be going on to Beijing on Saturday to press it to do more.

"I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN Security Council resolution with full participation of all countries.

"We know that other nations can take actions."

Earlier in the day, Tillerson had visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself.

Under the glaring eyes of alert North Korean soldiers, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks on the ground. At one point they were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one taking either video or photos.

SEOUL: US President Donald Trump on Friday accused China of not doing enough to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, after his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action against Pyongyang was an option. "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!" Trump said on Twitter. Earlier in Seoul, Tillerson said military action would be an "option on the table" if the threat posed by North Korea were to escalate. In strong statements that appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country, the United States' top diplomat said North Korea's burgeoning missile and nuclear programmes must be halted. "Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he told reporters in Seoul, but added: "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then that option's on the table." "The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson told a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se. "We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table." "Strategic patience" is the term given to the US policy under former President Barack Obama when the United States ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses would bring about change. Tillerson's visit to Asia -- South Korea is the second leg of the tour -- is his first foray into crisis management. His remarks on Friday came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach. North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition. Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year. Allowing the North to retain its present level of weapons technology was not appropriate, Tillerson said in Seoul. "That would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat." The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them. Tillerson will be going on to Beijing on Saturday to press it to do more. "I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN Security Council resolution with full participation of all countries. "We know that other nations can take actions." Earlier in the day, Tillerson had visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself. Under the glaring eyes of alert North Korean soldiers, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953. North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks on the ground. At one point they were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one taking either video or photos.
By AFP

TURKEY: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Turkey on March 30, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said late Thursday, with meetings of the countries presidents also in the pipeline.

"The US state secretary said he wanted to come on March 30 and I told him that this would suit us in Ankara. If our prime minister is in Ankara, he will meet him," Cavusoglu told HaberTurk broadcaster in an interview.

He also said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would meet US President Donald Trump after a referendum in Turkey next month and would meet Tillerson if possible.

It would be the most senior visit by a senior official from the new administration as Ankara hopes to have better relations with the Trump White House.

Turkey will vote on April 16 on whether to approve constitutional changes that would create an executive presidency boosting Erdogan's powers.

The government insists it would be a system like that of France or the US but critics fear it will lead to one-man rule.

CIA chief Mike Pompeo came to Ankara last month in his first foreign visit after Trump's inauguration in January.

Turkey has greater hopes for Ankara-Washington ties after the relationship with Barack Obama was marked by disappointment and anger, especially over Syria.

TURKEY: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Turkey on March 30, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said late Thursday, with meetings of the countries presidents also in the pipeline. "The US state secretary said he wanted to come on March 30 and I told him that this would suit us in Ankara. If our prime minister is in Ankara, he will meet him," Cavusoglu told HaberTurk broadcaster in an interview. He also said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would meet US President Donald Trump after a referendum in Turkey next month and would meet Tillerson if possible. It would be the most senior visit by a senior official from the new administration as Ankara hopes to have better relations with the Trump White House. Turkey will vote on April 16 on whether to approve constitutional changes that would create an executive presidency boosting Erdogan's powers. The government insists it would be a system like that of France or the US but critics fear it will lead to one-man rule. CIA chief Mike Pompeo came to Ankara last month in his first foreign visit after Trump's inauguration in January. Turkey has greater hopes for Ankara-Washington ties after the relationship with Barack Obama was marked by disappointment and anger, especially over Syria.
By Associated Press

PESHAWAR: A Pakistan paramilitary official says two suicide bombers have attacked a training facility belonging to the Frontier Constabulary force in the north-west, triggering a shootout that left an officer and the attackers dead.

Liaquat Ali Khan, the commandant of the force, says the attackers sneaked into the training facility Friday morning to try to "cause maximum casualties." He said guards quickly responded and killed one of the attackers.

Khan said another attacker was killed when his jacket exploded when it has hit by gunfire.

He said two officers were wounded in the shootout, but are in stable condition at a hospital.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Militant have carried out numerous attacks in Pakistan over the last decade, killing thousands of people.

PESHAWAR: A Pakistan paramilitary official says two suicide bombers have attacked a training facility belonging to the Frontier Constabulary force in the north-west, triggering a shootout that left an officer and the attackers dead. Liaquat Ali Khan, the commandant of the force, says the attackers sneaked into the training facility Friday morning to try to "cause maximum casualties." He said guards quickly responded and killed one of the attackers. Khan said another attacker was killed when his jacket exploded when it has hit by gunfire. He said two officers were wounded in the shootout, but are in stable condition at a hospital. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Militant have carried out numerous attacks in Pakistan over the last decade, killing thousands of people.
By AFP

LEBANON: Jordanian UN official Rima Khalaf announced her resignation on Friday, saying the secretary-general had asked her to withdraw a report in which she accused Israel of being an "apartheid state".

Khalaf, under-secretary general and executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told a news conference: "The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN."

Her resignation comes after the United States on Wednesday demanded that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres withdraw an ESCWA report accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on the Palestinians.

LEBANON: Jordanian UN official Rima Khalaf announced her resignation on Friday, saying the secretary-general had asked her to withdraw a report in which she accused Israel of being an "apartheid state". Khalaf, under-secretary general and executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told a news conference: "The secretary general asked me yesterday morning to withdraw (the report). I asked him to rethink his decision, he insisted, so I submitted my resignation from the UN." Her resignation comes after the United States on Wednesday demanded that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres withdraw an ESCWA report accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on the Palestinians.
By AFP

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump hosts Germany's Angela Merkel at the White House today, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of words between the two ostensible allies. The cautious German chancellor and the impulsive US president will hold talks in the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues.

Talks had been scheduled for Tuesday before a blizzard in the eastern United States intervened and delayed the likely difficult meeting. For years Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.

With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a 140-character Twitter missive. Before coming to office the US president called Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and said she was "ruining Germany." He also demanded countries like Germany step up defence spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytises fiscal prudence.

In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind the real estate mogul of democratic values. Any "close cooperation," she said, must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."

Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world," a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House. Between meetings, the pair will hold a joint press conference that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements.

"Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence," said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain," he added.

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump hosts Germany's Angela Merkel at the White House today, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of words between the two ostensible allies. The cautious German chancellor and the impulsive US president will hold talks in the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues. Talks had been scheduled for Tuesday before a blizzard in the eastern United States intervened and delayed the likely difficult meeting. For years Merkel -- a trained physicist -- had been president Barack Obama's closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach. With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a 140-character Twitter missive. Before coming to office the US president called Merkel's acceptance of refugees a "catastrophic mistake" and said she was "ruining Germany." He also demanded countries like Germany step up defence spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytises fiscal prudence. In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind the real estate mogul of democratic values. Any "close cooperation," she said, must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief." Comments like that have prompted some of Trump's fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new "leader of the free world," a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House. Between meetings, the pair will hold a joint press conference that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements. "Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence," said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain," he added.
By Associated Press

TRAVERSE CITY: It sounds like an idea that would warm a conservative Republican's heart: Kill funding of a regional environmental cleanup that has lasted seven years and cost the federal government more than $2 billion, with no end in sight. If states want to keep the program going, let them pick up the tab.

That is what President Donald Trump's 2018 budget plan proposes for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ambitious push to fix problems that have long bedeviled the world's largest surface freshwater system  from invasive species to algal blooms and toxic sludge fouling tributary rivers.

During the Obama administration, the program generally got about $300 million a year. Trump's offer is zero. His spending plan released Thursday says it "returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities."

The response from Republicans in Great Lakes states: No, thanks.

"I think it makes sense for us to continue to make prudent investments in protecting and improving the Great Lakes," Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told The Associated Press, adding that he would lobby the Trump administration and congressional leaders to put the money back.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan considers Great Lakes funding "very important to Michiganders, therefore we know there is strong support among Michigan's congressional delegation and we will work with them to preserve the funding," spokeswoman Anna Heaton said.

GOP lawmakers from the region also rushed out statements defending the program. It "helps protect both our environment and our economy," U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said.

The reaction illustrates a political fact of life: Whether you consider something in the budget valuable or wasteful can depend a lot on where you're from.

And it underscores the resistance Trump may encounter to some spending cuts he is proposing for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior and other agencies that draw frequent attacks from congressional Republicans yet fund projects and services with support back home.

The president's spending blueprint also targets a Chesapeake Bay cleanup begun in 1983 that received $73 million last year, plus other "geographic programs." It doesn't identify them, but a proposal by the Office of Management and Budget this month called for cutting all or most funding for San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico.

Asked for more details, EPA released a statement saying the plan "reflects the president's priorities" and that Administrator Scott Pruitt "is committed to leading the EPA in a more effective, more focused, less costly way as we partner with states to fulfill the agency's core mission."

The Great Lakes region includes swing states crucial to Trump's election  Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. There's also New York, Minnesota and Illinois. And Indiana, whose former governor, Mike Pence, is now Trump's vice president.

Coincidentally, the budget plan was released as about 100 Great Lakes advocates paid a yearly visit to Washington, D.C., in support of the restoration initiative. They flocked to the offices of home-state lawmakers, reminding them that Congress voted only last year to extend the program another five years.

"We are going to turn once again to our bipartisan congressional champions," said Todd Ambs, director of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

While Democratic lawmakers excoriated Trump's proposal  "incredibly short-sighted and reckless," said Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan  Republicans noted that former President Barack Obama at times recommended more modest reductions to the initiative, which Congress rejected.

Some also pointed out that former President George W. Bush signed initial legislation authorizing a wide-ranging Great Lakes cleanup, although he sought little money for it.

The initiative has funded nearly 3,000 projects across the eight states. Among them: efforts to prevent Asian carp from invading the lakes, prevent nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algal blooms, rebuild wetlands where fish spawn and remove sediments laced with PCBs and other toxins.

Nearly all the federal grants require cost-share payments from a state, local or tribal agency, or perhaps a nonprofit organization. But Ambs said they can't afford to shoulder the burden alone.

Without federal support, "all of this restoration work would come to a halt," he said.

TRAVERSE CITY: It sounds like an idea that would warm a conservative Republican's heart: Kill funding of a regional environmental cleanup that has lasted seven years and cost the federal government more than $2 billion, with no end in sight. If states want to keep the program going, let them pick up the tab. That is what President Donald Trump's 2018 budget plan proposes for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ambitious push to fix problems that have long bedeviled the world's largest surface freshwater system  from invasive species to algal blooms and toxic sludge fouling tributary rivers. During the Obama administration, the program generally got about $300 million a year. Trump's offer is zero. His spending plan released Thursday says it "returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities." The response from Republicans in Great Lakes states: No, thanks. "I think it makes sense for us to continue to make prudent investments in protecting and improving the Great Lakes," Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told The Associated Press, adding that he would lobby the Trump administration and congressional leaders to put the money back. Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan considers Great Lakes funding "very important to Michiganders, therefore we know there is strong support among Michigan's congressional delegation and we will work with them to preserve the funding," spokeswoman Anna Heaton said. GOP lawmakers from the region also rushed out statements defending the program. It "helps protect both our environment and our economy," U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio said. The reaction illustrates a political fact of life: Whether you consider something in the budget valuable or wasteful can depend a lot on where you're from. And it underscores the resistance Trump may encounter to some spending cuts he is proposing for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior and other agencies that draw frequent attacks from congressional Republicans yet fund projects and services with support back home. The president's spending blueprint also targets a Chesapeake Bay cleanup begun in 1983 that received $73 million last year, plus other "geographic programs." It doesn't identify them, but a proposal by the Office of Management and Budget this month called for cutting all or most funding for San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico. Asked for more details, EPA released a statement saying the plan "reflects the president's priorities" and that Administrator Scott Pruitt "is committed to leading the EPA in a more effective, more focused, less costly way as we partner with states to fulfill the agency's core mission." The Great Lakes region includes swing states crucial to Trump's election  Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. There's also New York, Minnesota and Illinois. And Indiana, whose former governor, Mike Pence, is now Trump's vice president. Coincidentally, the budget plan was released as about 100 Great Lakes advocates paid a yearly visit to Washington, D.C., in support of the restoration initiative. They flocked to the offices of home-state lawmakers, reminding them that Congress voted only last year to extend the program another five years. "We are going to turn once again to our bipartisan congressional champions," said Todd Ambs, director of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition. While Democratic lawmakers excoriated Trump's proposal  "incredibly short-sighted and reckless," said Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan  Republicans noted that former President Barack Obama at times recommended more modest reductions to the initiative, which Congress rejected. Some also pointed out that former President George W. Bush signed initial legislation authorizing a wide-ranging Great Lakes cleanup, although he sought little money for it. The initiative has funded nearly 3,000 projects across the eight states. Among them: efforts to prevent Asian carp from invading the lakes, prevent nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algal blooms, rebuild wetlands where fish spawn and remove sediments laced with PCBs and other toxins. Nearly all the federal grants require cost-share payments from a state, local or tribal agency, or perhaps a nonprofit organization. But Ambs said they can't afford to shoulder the burden alone. Without federal support, "all of this restoration work would come to a halt," he said.
By AFP

SEOUL: Washington's top diplomat visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself Friday, a day after he declared 20 years of efforts to denuclearise it had failed.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Asia for his first foray into crisis management and was to hold talks with South Korea's Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn later after China challenged him to come up with a new way to confront the North Korean nuclear stand-off.

Under the glaring eyes of alert North Korean soldiers, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks on the ground. At one point they were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one taking either video or photos.

Tillerson did not comment to reporters.

Earlier, he landed at Osan air base in South Korea from Japan and transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter for his trip to the DMZ, where he met the commander of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the South to defend the country.

He vowed in Tokyo on Thursday to press Beijing to rein in its neighbour but, speaking after meeting Japanese officials, offered no new details of his plan to defuse the threat posed by Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests.

He warned that past policies and punishments have had virtually no effect on Pyongyang's ambitions and that a new course was needed.

"I think it's important to recognise that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed," he said.

On Saturday Tillerson will head to China to press the North's key diplomatic protector and trade partner to back tougher sanctions -- but Beijing has been infuriated by the deployment of a US missile defence system to the South.

North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.

Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.

It has continued to defy the international community, even after two rounds of UN-backed sanctions and last week test-fired a salvo of missiles that fell in waters off Japan.

"In the face of the ever-escalating threat it is clear that a new approach is required," Tillerson said.

And he reiterated Washington's vow to back key regional allies Japan and South Korea in the event of attack.

"The US commitment to the defence of Japan and its other treaty allies through the full range of our military capabilities is unwavering," he promised.

US President Donald Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves.

But since his victory he has twice met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and has been careful to offer complete support, as Tillerson reiterated.

US officials have been spooked by North Korea's accelerating progress towards building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten US mainland cities.

But China is perhaps the last country with significant leverage over Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime.

"We do believe they have a very important role to play," Tillerson said. "We will be having discussions with China as to other actions that they should be undertaking."

Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.

The issue is made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.

Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Thursday that Beijing stood by its call for a halt to joint US-South Korean exercises, to lower tensions.

"If the US or another country has a better plan, a better proposal, they can bring it out," she said.

In the absence of specific details on how to increase pressure on Pyongyang from either Tillerson or his Japanese host, observers see a range of stark options.

They include a pre-emptive strike against missile and nuclear facilities or stepped up sanctions.

But the United States could also open a dialogue with the North -- something it has currently made conditional on a tangible commitment by Pyongyang to stop the programmes.

SEOUL: Washington's top diplomat visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas to gaze on the North for himself Friday, a day after he declared 20 years of efforts to denuclearise it had failed. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Asia for his first foray into crisis management and was to hold talks with South Korea's Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn later after China challenged him to come up with a new way to confront the North Korean nuclear stand-off. Under the glaring eyes of alert North Korean soldiers, Tillerson toured the Panmunjom joint security area, guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953. North Korean soldiers watched from their side of the demarcation line -- marked by cement blocks on the ground. At one point they were only a few feet from Tillerson, with one taking either video or photos. Tillerson did not comment to reporters. Earlier, he landed at Osan air base in South Korea from Japan and transferred to a Blackhawk helicopter for his trip to the DMZ, where he met the commander of the 28,000 US troops stationed in the South to defend the country. He vowed in Tokyo on Thursday to press Beijing to rein in its neighbour but, speaking after meeting Japanese officials, offered no new details of his plan to defuse the threat posed by Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile tests. He warned that past policies and punishments have had virtually no effect on Pyongyang's ambitions and that a new course was needed. "I think it's important to recognise that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed," he said. On Saturday Tillerson will head to China to press the North's key diplomatic protector and trade partner to back tougher sanctions -- but Beijing has been infuriated by the deployment of a US missile defence system to the South. North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition. Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year. It has continued to defy the international community, even after two rounds of UN-backed sanctions and last week test-fired a salvo of missiles that fell in waters off Japan. "In the face of the ever-escalating threat it is clear that a new approach is required," Tillerson said. And he reiterated Washington's vow to back key regional allies Japan and South Korea in the event of attack. "The US commitment to the defence of Japan and its other treaty allies through the full range of our military capabilities is unwavering," he promised. US President Donald Trump stirred concern in the region during his White House campaign by suggesting allies like Japan and South Korea need to do more to defend themselves. But since his victory he has twice met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and has been careful to offer complete support, as Tillerson reiterated. US officials have been spooked by North Korea's accelerating progress towards building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten US mainland cities. But China is perhaps the last country with significant leverage over Kim Jong-Un's isolated regime. "We do believe they have a very important role to play," Tillerson said. "We will be having discussions with China as to other actions that they should be undertaking." Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions. The issue is made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea. Washington and Seoul say it is for purely defensive purposes, but Beijing fears it could undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has reacted with fury, imposing a series of measures seen as economic retaliation in the South. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Thursday that Beijing stood by its call for a halt to joint US-South Korean exercises, to lower tensions. "If the US or another country has a better plan, a better proposal, they can bring it out," she said. In the absence of specific details on how to increase pressure on Pyongyang from either Tillerson or his Japanese host, observers see a range of stark options. They include a pre-emptive strike against missile and nuclear facilities or stepped up sanctions. But the United States could also open a dialogue with the North -- something it has currently made conditional on a tangible commitment by Pyongyang to stop the programmes.
By AFP

ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged Turks residents in Europe to have five children, telling the millions-strong diaspora they were the continent's "future" as a bitter dispute festered between Ankara and Brussels.

Turkey and Europe are locked in diplomatic crisis after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from campaigning for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused EU states of behaving like Nazi Germany over what he sees as discrimination against Turks, in comments that have caused outrage across the continent.

"From here I say to my citizens, I say to my brothers and sisters in Europe... Educate your children at better schools, make sure your family live in better areas, drive in the best cars, live in the best houses," said Erdogan.

"Have five children, not three. You are Europe's future."

"This is the best answer to the rudeness shown to you, the enmity, the wrongs," he said in a televised speech in Eskisehir, a city south of Istanbul.

Some 2.5 million Turkish citizens resident in Europe are eligible to vote in elections in their homeland. But millions more people living in EU states have Turkish origins.

Erdogan, a father of four, has previously urged women in Turkey to have at least three children to help boost the population, in comments denounced by women's rights activists.

- Dutch 'banditry' -

Last weekend, just days before the Dutch election, police in Rotterdam used horses and dogs to disperse pro-Erdogan protesters demonstrating against the ban on Turkish ministers.

Erdogan said there was no difference between the tactics used by the police "and the gladiators in ancient Rome."

Several days later, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw off a challenge from far-right politician Geert Wilders at the ballot box, to the relief of other EU leaders.

But Erdogan said there was to be no reconciliation with The Hague.

"You use all kinds of banditry for your own ends against a state like Turkey and then you act as if nothing happened and continue as before."

Rotterdam's mayor had initially granted permission for a pro-Turkish protest to take place on Friday over the police's tactics at the weekend, but the organisers later called it off, a city council spokesman said.

Analysts say Erdogan is seeking with his volcanic rhetoric to woo nationalist votes in the April 16 referendum on constitutional change, which analysts believe is heading for a tight outcome.

Also on Friday, a Turkish pro-government newspaper ran a front-page mock-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform under the slogan "Frau Hitler".

German deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: "We are not taking part in a game of provocation."

- 'Blow Europe's mind' -

Erdogan also lashed out at a decision by the top EU court allowing European firms to ban employees from wearing political or religious symbols -- including the Islamic headscarf.

A day after accusing the EU of starting a "crusade" against Islam by the ruling, he said the court should "ban the kippa ban too" -- although in theory the Jewish skullcap should be included in the decision which covers all religious symbols.

"They are hypocrites!" said Erdogan.

With no end in sight to the tensions between Turkey and the EU which have raised new doubts over Ankara's long-standing membership bid, the government has also threatened to walk away from a key migration deal.

The deal, which was reached on March 18 last year, substantially reduced the flow of migrants to the EU which had peaked in 2015, and was exploited by the European far right.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, a hardliner who is close to Erdogan, threatened to "blow the mind" of Europe by sending over 15,000 refugees a month.

"Let us remind you that you cannot play games in this region and ignore Turkey," he said.

The EU says it expects Turkey to continue implementing the deal.

But the United Nations children's agency UNICEF on Friday said the agreement had been plagued by broken promises, and although it had curbed migrant flows, it had increased the suffering of children.

ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged Turks residents in Europe to have five children, telling the millions-strong diaspora they were the continent's "future" as a bitter dispute festered between Ankara and Brussels. Turkey and Europe are locked in diplomatic crisis after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from campaigning for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers. Erdogan has repeatedly accused EU states of behaving like Nazi Germany over what he sees as discrimination against Turks, in comments that have caused outrage across the continent. "From here I say to my citizens, I say to my brothers and sisters in Europe... Educate your children at better schools, make sure your family live in better areas, drive in the best cars, live in the best houses," said Erdogan. "Have five children, not three. You are Europe's future." "This is the best answer to the rudeness shown to you, the enmity, the wrongs," he said in a televised speech in Eskisehir, a city south of Istanbul. Some 2.5 million Turkish citizens resident in Europe are eligible to vote in elections in their homeland. But millions more people living in EU states have Turkish origins. Erdogan, a father of four, has previously urged women in Turkey to have at least three children to help boost the population, in comments denounced by women's rights activists. - Dutch 'banditry' - Last weekend, just days before the Dutch election, police in Rotterdam used horses and dogs to disperse pro-Erdogan protesters demonstrating against the ban on Turkish ministers. Erdogan said there was no difference between the tactics used by the police "and the gladiators in ancient Rome." Several days later, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw off a challenge from far-right politician Geert Wilders at the ballot box, to the relief of other EU leaders. But Erdogan said there was to be no reconciliation with The Hague. "You use all kinds of banditry for your own ends against a state like Turkey and then you act as if nothing happened and continue as before." Rotterdam's mayor had initially granted permission for a pro-Turkish protest to take place on Friday over the police's tactics at the weekend, but the organisers later called it off, a city council spokesman said. Analysts say Erdogan is seeking with his volcanic rhetoric to woo nationalist votes in the April 16 referendum on constitutional change, which analysts believe is heading for a tight outcome. Also on Friday, a Turkish pro-government newspaper ran a front-page mock-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform under the slogan "Frau Hitler". German deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: "We are not taking part in a game of provocation." - 'Blow Europe's mind' - Erdogan also lashed out at a decision by the top EU court allowing European firms to ban employees from wearing political or religious symbols -- including the Islamic headscarf. A day after accusing the EU of starting a "crusade" against Islam by the ruling, he said the court should "ban the kippa ban too" -- although in theory the Jewish skullcap should be included in the decision which covers all religious symbols. "They are hypocrites!" said Erdogan. With no end in sight to the tensions between Turkey and the EU which have raised new doubts over Ankara's long-standing membership bid, the government has also threatened to walk away from a key migration deal. The deal, which was reached on March 18 last year, substantially reduced the flow of migrants to the EU which had peaked in 2015, and was exploited by the European far right. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, a hardliner who is close to Erdogan, threatened to "blow the mind" of Europe by sending over 15,000 refugees a month. "Let us remind you that you cannot play games in this region and ignore Turkey," he said. The EU says it expects Turkey to continue implementing the deal. But the United Nations children's agency UNICEF on Friday said the agreement had been plagued by broken promises, and although it had curbed migrant flows, it had increased the suffering of children.
By AFP

ROME: A bishop in Sicily has banned known mafia criminals from acting as godfathers at baptisms in churches in his diocese.

Michele Pennisi, bishop of Monreale, near Palermo, said on Friday that he had issued a decree to that effect in a bid to challenge any notion that the bosses of organised crime have a paternalistic side to them.

"The mafia has always taken the term Godfather from the Church to give its bosses an air of religious respectability, whereas in fact the two worlds are completely incompatible," the bishop told AFP.

Pennisi's diocese includes Corleone, a vendetta-haunted village inland from Palermo which was the birthplace of Don Corleone, the fictional godfather in Mario Puzo's novel and Francis Coppola's films.

In February the bishop made headlines by criticising a priest who had allowed the son of one of Sicily's most notorious mobsters, Toto Riina, to act as godfather at a baptism.

That episode led to this week's decree, which he admitted would be tricky to enforce given the culture of 'omerta' - the law of silence - that has hampered Italy's efforts to bring organised crime under control.

"If someone has not been convicted we cannot judge people on rumours, without proof," he said, stressing that his decree did not close the door to mafia figures seeking to repent.

"If one of them admits to having done wrong, asks to be pardoned for the bad they have done, in that case we can discuss a path of conversion."

In a previous post, in 2008, Pennisi received death threats from the mob after he banned religious funerals for known gangsters.

ROME: A bishop in Sicily has banned known mafia criminals from acting as godfathers at baptisms in churches in his diocese. Michele Pennisi, bishop of Monreale, near Palermo, said on Friday that he had issued a decree to that effect in a bid to challenge any notion that the bosses of organised crime have a paternalistic side to them. "The mafia has always taken the term Godfather from the Church to give its bosses an air of religious respectability, whereas in fact the two worlds are completely incompatible," the bishop told AFP. Pennisi's diocese includes Corleone, a vendetta-haunted village inland from Palermo which was the birthplace of Don Corleone, the fictional godfather in Mario Puzo's novel and Francis Coppola's films. In February the bishop made headlines by criticising a priest who had allowed the son of one of Sicily's most notorious mobsters, Toto Riina, to act as godfather at a baptism. That episode led to this week's decree, which he admitted would be tricky to enforce given the culture of 'omerta' - the law of silence - that has hampered Italy's efforts to bring organised crime under control. "If someone has not been convicted we cannot judge people on rumours, without proof," he said, stressing that his decree did not close the door to mafia figures seeking to repent. "If one of them admits to having done wrong, asks to be pardoned for the bad they have done, in that case we can discuss a path of conversion." In a previous post, in 2008, Pennisi received death threats from the mob after he banned religious funerals for known gangsters.
A brazen thief in New York City stole a Secret Service agent's laptop computer that reportedly contained Trump Tower's floor plans, information about the Hillary Clinton email probe and national security information.

The theft from the agent's car in Brooklyn occurred Thursday morning, according to the New York Daily News, which cited police sources in a story published Friday.

The car was parked in the driveway of the agent's home. In addition to the laptop, other reportedly "sensitive" documents and an access keycard belonging to the agent were stolen, the Daily News reported.

The agent told investigators the information on the computer could compromise national security.

"It's a very big deal," a police source told the newspaper, which noted that the Secret Service  whose responsibilities include protecting President Donald Trump and his family  is heavily involved in the investigation.

"There's data on there that's highly sensitive," the source said. "They're scrambling like mad."

The Daily News story said that information on the stolen laptop includes evacuation protocols and floor plans of Trump Tower, which contains the Manhattan residence of President Donald Trump, and the place where his wife Melania and their son Barron still live full-time.

But the Secret Service, in a statement confirming the laptop theft that was issued after the News posted its story, said agency-issued "laptops contain multiple levels of security including full disk encryption and are not permitted to contain classified information."

The case came to light a day after it was revealed that the Secret Service is investigating allegations that two of its agents assigned to protect one of Trump's grandsons took selfie photographs with the eight-year-old boy as he slept.

And on March 10, a 26-year-old man was arrested after jumping the fence at the White House and getting close to the White House itself, while carrying two cans of Mace and a letter to Trump he had written.

Story continues

CNN reported on Friday that the man, Jonathan Tran, was on the White House grounds for 15 minutes, and possibly more, before he was spotted and detained by a Secret Service office.

The Daily News reported that the laptop thief, who may have gotten to the agent's home in an Uber, was seen on surveillance video walking away from the agent's car with a backpack.

Items including coins and a bag carrying a Secret Service insignia were later recovered. But the laptop remains missing.

When contacted by CNBC, the New York Police Department referred questions about the case to the Secret Service.

"The U.S. Secret Service can confirm that an employee was the victim of a criminal act in which our Agency issued laptop computer was stolen," the agency said, before noting the multiple levels of security and encryption in its laptops, as well as their lack of classified information.

"An investigation is ongoing and the Secret Service is withholding additional comment until the facts are gathered," the agency said. "The Secret Service requests anyone with information regarding this crime to please contact the New York Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service New York Field Office."

The agency is also probing claims that last week two agents assigned to protect Donald Trump III began taking selfies with him as they drove him from Westchester County, New York, to Manhattan.

The president's grandson "woke up and, as the source framed it, 'freaked out,' " according to a story about the probe published Thursday by Mother Jones.com.

"Upon return to Manhattan, he shared the experience with his mother, Vanessa Trump, who relayed her concerns to his father, Donald Trump Jr.," Mother Jones' story said. "The issue was quickly escalated to top management of the Secret Service. The two agents were ordered to report to the Secret Service Office of Professional Responsibility in Washington, DC."

A source told Mother Jones that the agents do not face a criminal probe, but instead questions about whether they abandoned their post while protecting the boy.

A Secret Service spokesman emailed a statement to CNBC on Friday when asked about that probe.

"The U.S. Secret Service is aware of a matter involving two of our agents and one of our protectees," the agency said. "Our Office of Professional Responsibility will always thoroughly review a matter to determine the facts and to ensure proper, long-standing protocols and procedures are followed."

"The Secret Service would caution individuals to not jump to conclusions that may grossly mischaracterize the matter," the statement said. "Secret Service Agents around the country are dedicated to protecting those under their charge."

Watch: Secret Service new Trump Tower amenity





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Trubore, a new inception for a popular brand in Mumbai

New Delhi , Mar 16 (ANI-BusinessWireIndia): 17th of January 2017, was the day when the city of Madurai observed Trubore's maiden launch event called Tru-Go. This event empowered the brand to enter into the pan-India market. Despite its familiarity in the South, Trubore took a rebirth in a completely bold new form. The company revealed its new-age logo in a spectacular fashion at the event, attended by over 300 dealers and distributors from across Tamil Nadu.





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Two other states experienced similar kind of Tru- Go launch events. First on12th of February, the event held in Hubli, second largest city in Karnataka where more than 100 dealers were present to witness new logo launch along with addition CPVC product category. On the 22nd of February, Trubore launch was held at Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh with 200 dealers attending the event.Joint Managing Director - Parag Chheda addressed the packed halls in all three events by welcoming trade partners in local flavor. After the deafening applause, Chheda introduced the company's bold new philosophy and logo - "Water, its slips through palms of your hands, splashes in the ponds, gushes through the rivers, seeps through rocks, water never stops. Water flows ahead. We at Trubore embrace this philosophy to flow ahead and tackle new challenges and opportunities in the piping industry.CPVC Plumbing Systems was also launched at the event following which, the company's General Manager Hemant Kumar delivered a presentation about the products in detail. With this, he also announced all the other imminent products namely uPVC, Agri-Pressure and Non-Pressure Piping Systems, uPVC Underground Drainage, Borewell Piping Systems and SWR.BRAND is geared up and excited to enter the market with wide range and new look. (ANI-BusinessWireIndia)
Source: Lockheed Martin. A new laser for warfare is ready to be delivered to the U.S. military

Lockheed Martin (LMT)said it has finished developing a 60 Kilowatt (kW) laser system and is now getting ready to hand it over to the U.S. Army.

The aerospace and defense firm claimed in a press release Thursday that in testing earlier this month the laser beam system achieved a 58kW blast, a world record for a laser of this type.

"We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air," said Robert Afzal, senior fellow for Laser and Sensor Systems at Lockheed.

According to Afzal, the Lockheed Martin team created a laser beam that was near "diffraction limited," meaning it was close to the maximum limit for focusing energy toward a single, small spot.

Lockheed believe the laser will act as a complementary weapon on the battlefield and will prove particularly effective in disabling drones or incoming rockets.

In 2015, the company used a 30kW laser weapon, known as ATHENA, to disable a truck sited a mile away.

Solid state laser technology is seen as a cheap option to defend against incoming attacks.

A Patriot missile, usually priced at about $3 million was recently used to shoot down a $200 quadcopter drone, according to a US general.

Conversely, in 2015 the Navy estimated that a solid-state laser can be fired for less than one dollar per shot.

Lockheed says it is now preparing to ship the "combined fiber" laser to a U.S. Army Command center in Alabama.





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Union Health Minister Nadda apprises Lok Sabha about National Health Policy 2017

New Delhi, Mar 16 : Union Health Minister JP Nadda said on Thursday that the National Health Policy proposes raising public health expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP in a time bound manner.





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The Union Cabinet has approved the National Health Policy 2017. The last National Health Policy was framed in 2002.Excerpts from his statement to both house of the Parliament on ThursdayThe policy informs and prioritizes the role of the Government in shaping health systems in all its dimensions- investment in health, organization and financing of healthcare services, prevention of diseases and promotion of good health through cross-sectoral action, access to technologies, developing human resources, encouraging medical pluralism, building the knowledge base required for better health, financial protection strategies and regulation and progressive assurance for health. The policy is aimed at reaching healthcare in an assured manner to all, particularly the underserved and underprivileged.The policy aims for attainment of the highest possible level of health and well-being for all at all ages, through a preventive and promotive health care orientation in all developmental policies, and universal access to good quality health care services without anyone having to face financial hardship as a consequence. This would be achieved through increasing access, improving quality and lowering the cost of healthcare delivery.The broad principles of the Policy are centered on professionalism, integrity and ethics, equity, affordability, universality, patient centered and quality of care, accountability and pluralism.The policy seeks to move away from Sick- Care to Wellness, with thrust on prevention and health promotion. While the policy seeks to reorient and strengthen the public health systems, it also looks afresh at strategic purchasing from the private sector and leveraging their strengths to achieve national health goals. The policy looks at stronger partnership with the private sector.As a crucial component, the Policy proposes raising public health expenditure to 2.5% of the GDP in a time bound manner. The Policy advocates a progressively incremental assurance-based approach. It envisages providing larger package of assured comprehensive primary health care through the Health and Wellness Centers and denotes important change from very selective to comprehensive primary health care package which includes care for major NCDs, mental health, geriatric health care, palliative care and rehabilitative care services. It advocates allocating major proportion (two-thirds or more) of resources to primary care. It aims to ensure availability of 2 beds per 1000 population distributed in a manner to enable access within golden hour. In order to provide access and financial protection, it proposes free drugs, free diagnostics and free emergency and essential healthcare services in all public hospitals.The Policy has also assigned specific quantitative targets aimed at reduction of disease prevalence/incidence under 3 broad components viz.(a)health status and programme impact, (b) health system performance and (c) health systems strengthening, aligned to the policy objectives.This policy focuses on tackling the emerging challenge of non-communicable diseases. It supports an integrated approach where screening for the most prevalent NCDs with secondary prevention would make a significant impact on reduction of morbidity and preventable mortality.The policy envisages a three dimensional integration of AYUSH systems encompassing cross referrals, co-location and integrative practices across systems of medicines. This has a huge potential for effective prevention and therapy,that is safe and cost-effective. Yoga would be introduced much more widely in school and work places as part of promotion of good health.To improve and strengthen the regulatory environment, the policy seeks putting in place systems for setting standards and ensuring quality of health care. TThe policy is patient centric and empowers the patient for resolution of all their problems. The policy also looks at reforms in the existing regulatory systems both for easing manufacturing of drugs and devices, to promote Make in India, as also for reforming medical education. The policy, has at its centre, the person, who seeks and needs medical care.The policy advocates development of cadre of mid-level service providers, nurse practitioners, public health cadre to improve availability of appropriate health human resource.The policy also seeks to address health security and make in India for drugs and devices. It also seeks to align other policies for medical devices and equipment with public health goals.Image: MinistryofHealth Twitter
Capt. Amarinder takes charge, vows to work for Punjab's development

Chandigarh (Punjab) , Mar. 16 : Captain Amarinder Singh, who today took charge as the Chief Minister, assured to fulfill all the promises made in the Congress manifesto for development of Punjab.





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"I will work on programmes mentioned in the manifesto from Monday. I will take up most of the issues in the first Cabinet meeting," he told ANI.Captain Amarinder, who led the Congress to victory in the state after a decade, was sworn-in as the 29th Chief Minister of Punjab earlier in the day.Governor V.P. Singh Badnore administered the oath of office and secrecy to Captain and nine members of his Cabinet at the Raj Bhawan here.Navjot Singh Sidhu, Manpreet Singh Badal and Charanjit Channi were among the other Congress MLAs who took oath as ministers.Former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar and former union minister Ambika Soni were among those who attended the swearing-in ceremony.Inducted into the Congress by late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980, Captain had been campaigning to mark the first state-election victory for the grand old party after the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle.The Congress secured 77 out of 117 seats in the state assembly polls. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won 20 seats on its debut, emerging as the second largest party in the Punjab Assembly.The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance fared the worst with 18 seats.
Gilgit-Baltistan won't get its due rights even after Pak's declaration: Shaukat Ali Kashmiri

Geneva [Switzerland], Mar. 16 : United Kashmir People's National Party (UKPNP) leader Sardar Shaukat Ali Kashmiri has said that people of Gilgit-Baltistan will not get their due rights even if Pakistan declares it as fifth province.





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He alleged that this decision of Pakistan proves they only want to get hold of the area at any cost.Shaukat said this decision would be an injustice to the people of the region.He said Pakistan only wants to occupy the land as they are not interested in the people of the region.Pakistan is planning to declare Gilgit-Baltistan region as its fifth province.The Gilgit-Baltistan area is Pakistan's northernmost administrative territory that borders the disputed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.A committee headed by Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz recommended to grant the region a provincial status, reports the GeoNews.Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh are four provinces of Pakistan.
UN appeals for nearly USD 170 million to aid pastoralists in northern Kenya

New York, Mar 16 : The United Nations and its humanitarian partners on Thursday appealed for USD 166 million to aid Kenyan pastoralists and farmers whose livestock and crops are suffering amid what the Government declared a national drought disaster.





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With these funds, humanitarian actors will provide life-saving food, health, water and sanitation services to 2.6 million vulnerable Kenyans over the next ten months, said Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya.Half of the country is affected by the drought brought on by a third consecutive year of unreliable rains.Below average rains are causing thirst and hunger, decimating livestock, destroying livelihoods, spreading disease, and causing large movements of people, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).The latest flash appeal is a complement to Kenyas ongoing nine-month response plan which faces a funding gap of $108 million, OCHA said.Earlier this month, OCHAs head, Stephen OBrien visited Kenya to highlight the risk of famine facing people there, as well as in Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.Reporting his observations to the Security Council upon his return, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator said the international community is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN.Photo: IRIN/Gwenn Dubourthoumieu (file)Source: www.justearthnews.com
Bihar govt signs MoU with Megasoft to enhance IT services with Cloud Technologies

Hyderabad, Mar 16 : Megasoft Limited on Thursday announced the award of cloud-enabled solution and services contract by the Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. (BELTRON).





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The state Government of Bihar, through BELTRON, plans to establish state-of-the-art cloud computing facility for use by ts various e-Governance programs and other IT-driven initiatives.The cloud-enabled State Data Centre (SDC) named iBihar Cloud is one of the important elements for supporting initiatives of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The primary purpose of the cloud computing solution is to establish a viable Private cloud environment for use by the various e-Governance applications of Bihar.Megasoft, acclaimed for its sophisticated cloud deployments, will provide infrastructure and technology solution and services to address various needs of multiple line departments within the state that come under the purview of Bihar Cloud.While the solution is focused primarily on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), other services such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will complement and be deployed on top of the basic IaaS services.Rahul Singh, Managing Director, BELTRON said, In the past, applications and websites of state departments were hosted on different servers. In such a scenario, introduction of a new application or website required all other applications and websites to be brought down. With Bihar Cloud, sufficient space will be allocated to various state Government departments based on their requirements. The unique feature of this project is that the cloud-based implementation will also further strengthen the security aspect of all the applications. The inauguration of the solution is planned shortly.G V Kumar, CEO Managing Director of Megasoft said, Virtualization and the cloud mean much more than mere consolidation. Our Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution will not only ease BELTRONs infrastructure management efforts but also provide them the ability to automatically scale-up or scale-down services hosted in the cloud, based on user demand. By addressing the systems and information technology needs from a holistic perspective, our delivery model will ensure that BELTRON implements Bihar Cloud in the most effective manner.Megasoft cloud-enabled solution is agnostic to the underlying hardware, storage, network and operating system. Besides enabling end customers to automatically provision services via a web portal it provides service assurance for maintenance operations activities performed by the users.
South-East Asia countries adopt Call for Action to accelerate efforts to end TB

New Delhi, Mar 16 : Health Ministers from countries in WHO South-East Asia Region which bear half the global TB burden, and WHO on Thursday signed a Call for Action for Ending TB, pledging to scale-up efforts and implement adequately funded, innovative, multisectoral and comprehensive measures to achieve the global target to end the disease by 2030.





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We need to make ending TB our central priority. The disease continues to be a leading cause of death and lost productive years in the crucial age group of 15-49 years causing catastrophic expenses, financial losses, outright impoverishment of individuals and households and massive aggregate costs to national economies. Ending TB is paramount for health and development across the Region, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia, told the Ministerial Meeting Towards Ending TB in the South-East Asia Region, here.In 2015 TB caused nearly 800 000 deaths in the Region while an estimated 4.74 million new cases were reported. Six of the Regions countries Bangladesh, DPR Korea, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand are among the 30 high TB burden countries globally.While countries in the Region have been making efforts against TB, the annual decline in TB incidence which is currently between 1.5% and 2% is insufficient and needs to be scaled up to at least 10% to 15% for the countries and the Region to meet the End TB targets. The global targets seek to reduce TB mortality by 90% and incidence by 80% by 2030.Committing to take exceptional action and high-impact interventions as per the Call for Action, the Ministers of Health agreed to lead the implementation of the national TB response through an empowered body reporting to the highest levels of Government.The Call for Action stresses upon increasing government and partner budgetary allocations to enable national TB plans to be fully funded.The Ministers discussed setting up of a Regional Innovation to Implementation (I 2 I) fund for accelerated sharing of knowledge, intellectual resources and innovations to reach out and treat all cases.Dr Khetrapal Singh said countries also need to apply best practices in taking comprehensive TB treatment and prevention programmes to universal scale, while improving quality and making them genuinely people-centered. They need to tackle poverty, malnutrition, quality of health care services, sub-optimum living conditions and other socio-economic factors that fuel TB.Opportunities to accelerate progress should be seized with rapid adoption of advances in diagnostics and medicines.Together we can and must end TB, the Regional Director said, while announcing that bending the curve to end TB would be a flagship programme of WHO in South-East Asia Region to support member countries take immediate action with an extreme sense of urgency to End TB.The investments in ending TB are expected to give huge returns, with more than 11 million lives expected to be saved and nearly 60 million infections expected to be prevented across the Region by 2035. This will also complement social and economic growth by averting nearly 300 million DALYs.Other than the Ministers of Health, officials from health departments of member countries, and representatives of partner organizations such as the World Bank, The Global Fund, Stop TB Partnership, USAID and DFAT Australia, attended the two-day meeting organized by WHO.
St. Patrick's Day: Irish PM gifts traditional 'shamrock bowl' to President Trump

New York[U.S.], Mar. 17 : As part of the White House St. Patrick's Day celebrations, President Donald Trump met today with Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny to discuss United States-Ireland economic and cultural ties.





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The Taoiseach also presented a bowl of Irish shamrocks to Trump as part of annual St Patrick's Day celebrations.Trump and the Taoiseach agreed on the importance of expanding the already powerful United States-Ireland trade relationship and of identifying new opportunities to collaborate on global issues, the White House said in a statement.The leaders also discussed the consequences facing, and the opportunities available to Ireland in the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to the leave the European Union.Finally, they agreed on the importance of Northern Ireland's political parties finding a way forward on a shared regional government in order to sustain the peace process launched by the Good Friday Agreement.Kenny said he had raised both the issue of legal immigration paths for Irish people, including the revival of a stalled proposal of a new E3 visa scheme, as well as the situation of undocumented Irish citizens living in the United States.
Vishwajit Rane was busy sipping coffee with Parrikar, alleges Digvijaya

New Delhi , Mar 17 : Taking a jibe at rebel legislator Vishwajit Rane who quit the party yesterday after the floor test, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh on Friday alleged that the former was sipping coffee with Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar when the grand old party was choosing its legislative party leader.





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"Letter to Governor goes after the leader is chosen. Which we did but the Governor took the decision without before that.. Who was most vocal in criticising Congress Observed in Goa. Vishwajit Rane," tweeted Singh."What was he doing when CLP leader was being chosen? Having coffee with Parrikar in a Hotel when we were choosing CLP leader," he said in a series of tweets.The Congress general secretary said that Rane showed him the guest list of Parrikar's swearing-in ceremony which constituted the names of all casino owners, hotel owners and mine owners."Guest list at Parrikar's swearing in, photo of which Vishwajeet Rane showed me on 14th. All Casino Owners Hotel Owners and Mine Owners," he added.After remaining absent during yesterday's crucial floor test in the Goa Assembly, Rane resigned as the MLA.Rane, who is upset with the Congress central leadership, also resigned from the grand old party."This is the first step of rebellion against the mismanagement of the party. I don't have any intention to stay with this party. I am disillusioned with them (Congress). I will contest the elections again," Rane said yesterday.The BJP, which ended up second behind the Congress with 13 seats in a split mandate in Goa, yesterday proved its majority on the floor of the Goa Assembly under Parrikar's leadership.The Congress won 17 seats in the 40-member Goa Assembly but was not able to prove majority.
By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to build dozens of new warships in one of the biggest peace-time expansions of the U.S. Navy. But interviews with ship-builders, unions and a review of public and internal documents show major obstacles to that plan.

The initiative could cost nearly $700 billion in government funding, take 30 years to complete and require hiring tens of thousands of skilled shipyard workers - many of whom don't exist yet because they still need to be hired and trained, according to the interviews and the documents reviewed.

Trump has vowed a huge build-up of the U.S. military to project American power in the face of an emboldened China and Russia. That includes expanding the Navy to 350 warships from 275 today. He has provided no specifics, including how soon he wants the larger fleet. (For graphics on projected strength of U.S. Navy, shipyard employment see: http://tmsnrt.rs/2n3vOr0)

The Navy has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis a report that explores how the country's industrial base could support higher ship production, Admiral Bill Moran, the vice chief of Naval Operations with oversight of the Navys shipbuilding outlook, told Reuters.

He declined to give further details. But those interviewed for this story say there are clearly two big issues - there are not enough skilled workers in the market, from electricians to welders, and after years of historically low production, shipyards and their suppliers, including nuclear fuel producers, will struggle to ramp up for years.

To be sure, the first, and biggest, hurdle for Trump to overcome is to persuade a cost-conscious Congress to fund the military buildup.

The White House declined to comment. A Navy spokeswoman said increases being considered beyond the current shipbuilding plan would require sufficient time to allow companies to ramp up capacity.

The two largest U.S. shipbuilders, General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc, told Reuters they are planning to hire a total of 6,000 workers in 2017 just to meet current orders, such as the Columbia class ballistic missile submarine.

Story continues

General Dynamics hopes to hire 2,000 workers at Electric Boat this year. Currently projected order levels would already require the shipyard to grow from less than 15,000 workers, to nearly 20,000 by the early 2030s, company documents reviewed by Reuters show.

Huntington Ingalls, the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, plans to hire 3,000 at its Newport News shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, and another 1,000 at the Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi this year to fulfill current orders, spokeswoman Beci Brenton said.

Companies say they are eager to work with Trump to build his bigger Navy. But expanding hiring, for now, is difficult to do until they receive new orders, officials say.

"Its hard to look beyond" current orders, Brenton said.

Smaller shipbuilders and suppliers are also cautious.

"You cant hire people to do nothing," said Jill Mackie, spokeswoman for Portland, Oregon-based Vigor Industrial LLC, which makes combat craft for the Navys Special Warfare units. "Until funding is there ... you cant bring on more workers."

SCALING UP WORKFORCE

Because companies won't hire excess workers in advance, they will have a huge challenge in expanding their workforces rapidly if a shipbuilding boom materializes, said Bryan Clark, who led strategic planning for the Navy as special assistant to the chief of Naval Operations until 2013.

Union and shipyard officials say finding skilled labor just for the work they already have is challenging. Demand for pipeline welders is so strong that some can make as much as $300,000 per year, including overtime and benefits, said Danny Hendrix, the business manager at Pipeliners Local 798, a union representing 6,500 metal workers in 42 states.

Much of the work at the submarine yards also requires a security clearance that many cant get, said Jimmy Hart, president of the Metal Trades Department at the AFL-CIO union, which represents 100,000 boilermakers, machinists, and pipefitters, among others.

To help grow a larger labor force from the ground up, General Dynamics' Electric Boat has partnered with seven high schools and trade schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island to develop a curriculum to train a next generation of welders and engineers.

It has historically taken five years to get someone proficient in shipbuilding," said Maura Dunn, vice president of human resources at Electric Boat.

It can take as many as seven years to train a welder skilled enough to make the most complex type of welds, radiographic structural welds needed on a nuclear-powered submarine, said Will Lennon, vice president of the shipyard's Columbia Class submarine program.

The Navy envisioned by Trump could create more than 50,000 jobs, the Shipbuilders Council of America, a trade group representing U.S. shipbuilders, repairers and suppliers, told Reuters.

The U.S. shipbuilding and repairing industry employed nearly 100,000 in 2016, Labor Department statistics show. The industry had as many as 176,000 workers at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s as the United States built up a fleet of nearly 600 warships by the end of that decade.

SUBMARINE CRUNCH

Apart from the labor shortage, there are also serious capacity and supply chain issues that would be severely strained by any plan to expand the Navy, especially its submarine fleet.

Expanding the Navy to 350 ships is not as simple as just adding 75 ships. Many ships in the current 275-vessel fleet need to be replaced, which means the Navy would have to buy 321 ships between now and 2046 to reach Trump's goal, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report in February.

The shipyards that make nuclear submarines - General Dynamics' Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington's Newport News - produced as many as seven submarines per year between them in the early 1980s. But for more than a decade now, the yards have not built more than two per year.

The nuclear-powered Virginia class and Columbia class submarines are among the largest and most complex vessels to build. The first Columbia submarine, which is set to begin construction in 2021, will take seven years to build, and two to three additional years to test.

Retooling the long-dormant shipyard space will take several years and significant capital investments, but a bigger problem is expanding the supply chain, said Clark, the former strategist for the Navy and now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Makers of submarine components such as reactor cores, big castings, and forgers of propellers and shafts would need five years to double production, said a congressional official with knowledge of the Navys long-term planning.

"We have been sizing the industrial base for two submarines a year. You cant then just throw one or two more on top of that and say, 'Oh here, dial the switch and produce four reactor cores a year instead of two.' You just can't," the official said.

In his first budget proposal to Congress on Thursday, Trump proposed boosting defense spending by $54 billion for the fiscal 2018 year  a 10 percent increase from last year. He is also seeking $30 billion for the Defense Department in a supplemental budget for fiscal 2017, of which at least $433 million is earmarked for military shipbuilding.

A 350-ship Navy would cost $690 billion over the 30-year period, or $23 billion per year - 60 percent more than the average funding the Navy has received for shipbuilding in the past three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who will have a major say in approving the defense budget, said in a statement to Reuters that he supported Trump's vision to increase the size of the Navy to deter adversaries.

"However, this is not a blank check," he said.

(Additional reporting by Luciana Lopez in New York, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Ross Colvin)
PM Modi cannot be defeated: BJP tells Opposition

New Delhi , March 17 : Taking a jibe at the appeal made by Janata Dal (United) leader Sanjay Singh to make Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar a prime ministerial face, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday said every political party should remember that by just making 'imaginary plans', one cannot be elected as Prime Minister.





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"It doesn't cost a penny to make such statements. AAP wants to see Arvind Kejriwal as a prime minister, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee are also there in the race. Every regional party projects there leader suitable to the post of a prime minister, but just by imagining things, one cannot be elected as the prime minister," BJP leader Sushil Modi told ANI.Another BJP leader C.P. Thakur said that there is no such candidate, who can stand against Prime Minister Modi."They are just building castle in the air. They are making imaginary plans, no matter how good image Nitish Kumar has, it's not possible to defeat Prime Minister Modi," he said.Earlier this day, in the wake of Prime Minister Modi-led BJP adding one state after another in its kitty, the JD (U) urged all opposition parties to come together and create an alternative against the former.JD(U) leader Sanjay Singh, while speaking to ANI, said that Nitish Kumar will be the best alternative to fight Prime Minister Modi fame."Opposition should come together in order to create alternative against Prime Minister Modi. And, that alternative will be Nitish Kumar," Singh told ANI.After the BJP's stupendous performance in the recently-held assembly elections, the central leadership has asked leaders and legislators to gear up for the 2019 general election.BJP president Amit Shah has reportedly asked party leaders to be ready for the Lok Sabha elections, and asserted that the party's recent victories were an outcome of people's vote against caste-ism, family rule and corruption, and in favour of Prime Minister Modi's leadership.
Pak intelligence agencies behind disappearance of Indian Sufi clerics: Sources

New Delhi , Mar. 17 : It has emerged that Pakistan intelligence agencies are behind the disappearance of two Indian Sufi clerics missing since Thursday, say sources.





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Two clerics, Asif Nizami and Nazim Nizami, had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives after which they headed to Lahore to visit the shrines of Sufi saints.Syed Asif Ali Nizami is the head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah.Meanwhile, a Dargah Committee meeting is underway in Delhi's Nizamuddin regarding the disappearances.Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that she has taken up the matter with Islamabad.Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria also acknowledged that an Indian request seeking assistance for the recovery of two clerics had been received.
Creating ghost entity in 'Phillauri' was really exciting: Anushka Sharma

Mumbai (Maharashtra) , Mar. 17 : Essaying the role of a ghost in her second Bollywood production 'Phillauri', actress Anushka Sharma said that creating a ghost entity, with special effects, was really exciting.





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The 28-year-old actor told ANI, "Actually, 'Phillauri' was director Anshai Lal's idea because his friend's wife had to marry a tree as she was a 'Manglik'. He used to make fun of her by saying if there was a ghost on that tree, then she will be possessed by it. The story is built around this plot and Anvita Dutt has written it.""We found the story really convincing and creating an entity or character of a ghost with special effects was really exciting," she added.The 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkill' star also expressed her happiness over the appreciations she is receiving for her unconventional choice of movies, "Through a social media campaign, we have created curiosity in the minds of the people of what this film is about. We are very happy that people are loving and finding the film funny. I am getting very good feedback for the movie."'Phillauri,' also starring Diljit Dosanjh, Suraj Sharma and Mehreen Pirzada in the lead roles, is scheduled for release on March 24.
Amanda Seyfried secretly wed her fiance Thomas Sadoski

New Delhi , Mar. 17 : Congratulations are in order for Amanda Seyfried as it turns out, she is not only a mom-to-be, but also married!





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Seyfried and her fiance Thomas Sadoski, who are expecting their first child, eloped and got married in a secret ceremony on March 12.During an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, the 40-year-old actor revealed,"We eloped. We just took off into the country with an officiant and, just the two of us, and we did our thing."Showing off his own wedding band on the talk show, Sadoski declared Seyfried his wife and said, "Listen, she's the person that I love, admire, respect most in the world," Sadoski.The 'Wild' star, who revealed that he and his new bride wrote their own vows, also noted, "It was beautiful. It was everything that it should be. It was just the two of us talking to each other."The lovebirds first met when they were working together on the off-Broadway show 'The Way We Get By' in mid-2015, but their romance started after they reunited on the set of their forthcoming drama.
As the Marines grapple with an uproar over photos of naked women jarheads being passed around the internet, new revelations are emerging in a sordid, long-running Navy scandal involving alleged bribes over an eight-year period that cost the service tens of millions of dollars.

Related: Dozens of Navy Officials Bribed with Cash, Prostitutes

Earlier this week, the Justice Department released an indictment of seven Navy officers  including an admiral and four captains  and a Marine colonel for giving military contractor Leonard Glenn Fat Leonard Francis inside information, some of which was classified, in exchange for $25,000 watches, Cuban cigars, $2,000 bottles of liquor, stays in pricey hotels and champagne-fueled parties with hookers, according to The Washington Post.

In one incident at a Manila hotel, Navy revelers engaged in a multi-day party, guzzling all the Dom Perignon available and costing Fat Leonard some $50,000, the Post said.

In 2011, the Post said, Glenn Defense won deals valued at $200 million to service U.S. vessels at ports stretching from the Russian Far East to Australia. Fat Leonard has admitted that his Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, defrauded the Navy of more than $35 million, according to the Justice Department.

Besides Fat Leonard -- a 63, 350-lb. native of Malaysia who is awaiting sentencing and said to be cooperating with investigators -- multiple Navy officers and civilian employees have admitted to being part of the far-flung corruption network.

Related: Trumps Big Naval Buildup Could Cost $750 Billion Over 30 Years

Among them is a Navy commander, 28-year veteran Michael Vannak Khiem Misiewicz, who was sentenced to six years in federal prison last April for giving Glenn Defense confidential information about ballistic missile defenses and schedules for the U.S. 7th Fleet, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau, the highest-ranking active officer charged, pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, and 30 other admirals are said to be under investigation.

Story continues

But Fat Leonards tentacles didnt just extend to the officer corps; he also compromised at least one investigator looking into the corruption scandal, which has been called the largest case of fraud in U.S. Navy history. Last October, an officer of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was sentenced to 12 years in prison for helping to keep Fat Leonard one step ahead of the law by supplying him with more than 80 reports on his criminal activities.

The highest-ranking officer charged this week is retired Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, a former director of naval intelligence.

Related: The US Navys $13 Billion Answer to China and Russia

As new developments emerge in the Fat Leonard scandal, the Marines are confronting a different kind of controversy: The sharing of explicit photos of women Marines on a Facebook page hosted by a 30,000-member group called Marines United. The group page has been taken down, but the photos reportedly exist on a different Facebook page.

On Tuesday, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller underwent a grilling on Capitol Hill over a culture of sexual harassment in the corps. Facing sharp questioning by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Neller said: I know you've heard it before, but we are going to have to change how we see ourselves and how we treat each other. That's a lame answer, but ma'am, that's the best I can tell you right now. We've got to change, and that's on me."

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Separatists reject Pak's proposal to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as fifth state

Srinagar(Jammu and Kashmir), Mar. 17: Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Omer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik on Friday said that Pakistan's proposal to declare Giglit-Baltistan as fifth state of Pakistan is unacceptable.





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In a joint statement, the leadership said that Jammu and Kashmir' political destiny is yet to be decided."We hail the role of Pakistan regarding the issue in international flora. However, any deviation in its stance about Kashmir and its geographical entity is improper and will prove detrimental for Kashmir's cause. Declaring Pakistan as a prime party to Kashmir issue, the leadership said that people in Jammu & Kashmir have always regarded and accepted the role of Pakistan as a party to the issue, however any step which may hamper the disputed status of Kashmir is unacceptable," the statement said.Earlier, the Centre strongly reacted to Pakistan's move to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as the country's fifth province.Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Gopal Baglay had said any such step would not be able to hide the illegality of Pakistan's occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which it must vacate, forthwith.Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh are the four provinces in Pakistan.
A new restaurant has plans to move into the former Carmella's Pizzeria
The idea of choosing between dozens of parties in a national election is daunting, especially for those unaccustomed to complex political systems. No wonder then that this photo of the massive Dutch paper ballot went viral in the height of yesterdays much anticipated vote.

The Dutch ballot with 28 parties in the running. I needed two producers to hold it up! #DutchElection pic.twitter.com/bhMjyEL5xi  Hala Gorani (@HalaGorani) March 15, 2017

The image is more than comicalits symbolic. For all the fretting about the potential spread of populism across the US, Britain, and greater Europe, the visual shows the shortcomings of comparing the rise of populism in the US and Britain to other countries. The Dutch election, widely seen as a bellwether for upcoming votes across Europe, was never just about whether far-right politician Geert Wilders would win the most votes, because unlike in the US and Britain, the Netherlands is not a winner-takes-all system.

The face-off between incumbent prime minister Mark Rutte and Wilders was one of many Dutch electoral battles that have yet to be waged in a deeply fragmented, multi-party system. Despite a lot of fear-mongering about the far rights grip over the Dutch electorate, no one candidate had a chance of winning the majority vote.

In the end, all but one party claimed victory.

Some European leaders were quick to suggest the Dutch results marked a halt to populism in Europe. Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European parliament, claimed it shows why French presidential candidate and far right leader Marine Le Pen will lose the election.

Story continues

People want constructive and reliable politicians to govern their country. This is why Le Pen will also fail. https://t.co/iIjbvrgqqZ pic.twitter.com/4qM9jD8zuE  Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) March 16, 2017

But if theres a lesson to draw from the Dutch vote, its to not jump to conclusions. Rem Korteweg, a senior research fellow at the think tank Centre for European Reform (CER), says the French and Dutch political systems arent really comparable. If you want to talk about the populist tide, the tide is still there, he says, but there are definitely breakwaters you need to take into account, including how the Dutch political system works.

For instance, because the French presidential election occurs in two rounds, much has been made of the prediction that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen will win the first round. But the hype about her dominance fails to account for the fact that the votes against her are divided among many candidates.

The second round of voting distinguishes the French from the Dutch system. In the absence of a more-than-50% vote for any one candidate, the two leading French candidates are left to compete in a second round, in which case polls suggest the final face-off will be between Le Pen and centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron. In theory, the votes against Le Pen would transfer to Macron, though that too is up for debate.

How come Le Pen is seen as getting 26% in 1st round and 40% in runoff ? Here are the cracks in the anti-FN front @FT pic.twitter.com/vr0PuYvrlk  Anne-S Chassany (@ChassNews) March 10, 2017

By contrast, in the Dutch system, the winner isnt so concrete. Ruttes win for the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) leaves him with eight fewer seats than last years election. Meanwhile, Wilders Freedom Party (PVV), which came in at a distant second, increased his seats from 15 to 20 (though in the 2010 elections, he won 24 seats (paywall)). Rutte now has to build a coalition that incorporates (paywall) some of the hard-right sentiments popularized by Wilders.

At the other end of the spectrum, hell also have to contend with the elections biggest winner, the GreenLeft, led by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver who has been dubbed the Dutch Justin Trudeau. The pro-European party for social equality gained 10 seats (for a total of 14) in parliament.

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Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
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Pelvic inflammatory disease (or PID) represents a polymicrobial infection usually occurring in sexually active females when causative microorganisms ascend from the lower into the upper genital tract. The severity of clinical manifestations may vary, with a majority of patients presenting with a rather mild disease. The adequate diagnosis is often delayed due to nonspecific presentation  hence there is always a need for clinical suspicion.

Common symptoms of pelvic inflammatory disease

The most commonly observed symptom of acute PID is abdominal pain that is bilateral and restricted to the lower abdomen. It is severe in the acute stages, accompanied with a high temperature, and spreads upwards if general peritonitis ensues. Vomiting may also be a sign, and the patient may develop profuse and prolonged uterine bleeding.

The patient usually presents with tachycardia, while the tongue indicates signs of dehydration. Abdominal examination reveals distension combined with rigidity and tenderness in the lower parts of the abdomen.

In later stages, after the tenderness lessens following therapy, a fixed sensitive mass arising from the pelvis is often palpable.

The affected women may also suffer from dyspareunia (i.e. recurrent or persistent genital pain during or after sexual intercourse), backache and infertility. The uterus is often in retroverted position with restricted mobility, with a possible thickening of the appendages which are, again, painful on palpation.

Short-term complications of PID may include periappendicitis and perihepatitis (also known as Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome). Whilst the pathogenesis of the latter condition is not completely elucidated, up to 15 percent of patients who present with PID will experience this complication. Accompanying symptoms are mild or severe abdominal pain (most notably in the right upper quadrant), enlargement of the liver, and tenderness to abdominal palpation.

Differences according to the putative microorganism

There are also certain differences regarding the implicated microorganism. While PID caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae is associated with symptoms that last three days or fewer, chlamydial PID usually presents with symptoms that last more than seven days. Non-gonococcal and non-chlamydial PID present as similar to gonococcal disease.

A body temperature higher than 38 C, mucopurulent cervicitis and palpable adnexal masses are also signs that are more commonly observed when Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a primary factor in causing PID. In contrast, Chlamydia trachomatis is more likely to cause abnormal uterine bleeding and an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR).

In the PEACH trial (an acronym for PID Evaluation and Clinical Health trial), women with PID primarily caused by Chlamydia trachomatis or Mycoplasma genitalium presented to the gynecologist or their attending physician. This was compared with women that had gonorrhea-associated PID, suggesting an altogether milder clinical course for this disease.

Clinical evaluation and differential diagnosis

Generally, the clinical presentation of PID can be quite variable; therefore a high index of suspicion is warranted. In practice, when a woman of a generative age presents with pelvic or lower abdominal pain, PID must be taken into account in the differential diagnosis. Other potential diagnoses are ectopic gestation, intrapelvic bleeding, ovarian torsion, acute appendicitis, endometriosis, diverticulitis, cholecystitis or gastroenteritis.

Key constituents of the physical examination include an abdominal exam (with right upper quadrant palpation), vaginal speculum exam (that includes inspection of the cervix), bimanual exam (to assess cervical motion, adnexal tenderness and pelvic masses), as well as microscopic evaluation of a cervicovaginal discharge sample.

Sources http://www.aafp.org/afp/2006/0301/p859.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16303062 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16932044 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4530285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843151/ www.dovepress.com/pelvic-inflammatory-disease-improving-awareness-prevention-and-treatme-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IDR Padubidri VG, Daftary SN, editors. Howkins & Bourne - Shaw's Textbook of Gynecology, 16th Edition. Reed Reed Elsevier India Private Limited, 2015; pp. 177-186.

Further Reading
Pelvic inflammatory disease (usually referred to as PID) represents a complex infection that affects millions of women worldwide. It should be considered as a spectrum of reproductive tract infections, and viewed as a dynamic progressive infection that can rapidly migrate from the cervix to the uterus and involve fallopian tubes and ovaries.

Once the disease has shown a progressive route, it can result in devastating consequences on the reproductive tract and the reproductive capabilities of affected women. The biggest problem is that the disease is often asymptomatic, thus women with this infection are not aware of its presence, nor that their reproductive capability has been jeopardized.

The condition is most often caused by the sexually-transmitted pathogens Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Mycoplasma genitalium and microorganisms associated with bacterial vaginosis also play a prominent role in PID and are increasingly being sought in microbiological evaluations.

In any case, due to potential serious consequences, all key players responsible for the care of women (most notably gynecologists, obstetricians, general practitioners, but also nurses and residents in training) have a major role in the prevention and appropriate treatment of PID.

Epidemiology of pelvic inflammatory disease

As PID is not a reportable disease, it is quite difficult to accurately ascertain the number of women affected by this condition on an annual basis. By analyzing outpatient and hospital discharge codes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 750 thousand women experience an episode of acute PID every year.

Furthermore, in the United States, PID is a common cause of visits to the emergency department, with 106 thousand outpatient visits and 60 thousand hospitalizations every year. Financial aspects are substantial as well; therapy costs for each affected women with PID are approximately two thousand USD, which can rise up to six thousand USD if chronic pelvic pain ensues.

Surveillance and early detection would, therefore, be a way forward. Therein lies the problem; there is no simple, cheap, and accurate diagnostic test or PID. Furthermore, there is no single infection as the cause of PID and no pathognomonic (i.e. disease-specific) signs or symptoms, which is further compounded by the fact that routine, large scale diagnostic techniques can hardly reach the female upper genital tract.

Generally, disease rates are two to three times higher among African-American women when compared to Caucasian women, which is consistent with the pronounced racial disparities observed for both gonorrhea and chlamydia. Nevertheless, if we take into account the subjective methods by which PID is usually diagnosed, such data on racial disparity may be inaccurate.

Hospital admission rates may serve as a crude marker of this condition in resource-poor countries, where PID is responsible for 17 to 40 percent of all gynecological hospital admissions in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 37 percent in Southeast Asia, and 3 to 10 percent in India.

Risk factors for developing the condition

At the greatest risk of developing PID are young women with multiple partners; and indeed, most of the cases are seen in women between 15 and 29 years of age. This may be partially due to an immature cervix which predisposes them to the infection with the commonly causative organisms. A previous history of PID also increases the risk of successive episodes.

In the past, intrauterine devices (IUDs) had been considered the main culprits for developing PID. Today it is known that the use of modern IUDs increase the risk by only a margin, which is reduced even more if a woman is tested and (if necessary) treated for sexually-transmitted infections before their insertion.

Refraining from the use of condoms and barrier methods also increases the risk of developing PID. Some studies have also demonstrated a protective effect of combined oral contraceptives. While current research suggests that they do not decrease the incidence of developing PID, it has been shown that they do reduce the severity of the condition.

Sources http://sti.bmj.com/content/76/2/80 http://www.aafp.org/afp/2012/0415/p791.html http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMra1411426 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843151/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907941/ Barash JH, Hillson C, Buchanan E, Suaray M. Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. In: Skolnik NS, Clouse AL, Woodward JA. Sexually Transmitted Diseases: A Practical Guide for Primary Care. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013; pp. 71-84.

Further Reading
The spread of the Zika virus, which can cause devastating birth defects, has become a pressing public health issue in many countries. To this day, there is no vaccine to prevent and no medicine to treat Zika virus infections.

The Honourable Jane Philpott, Canada's Minister of Health, announced a $3 million investment for Zika research in May 2016. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, today announced the names of the three teams of Canadian scientists who will collaborate with Latin American and Caribbean researchers to study the Zika virus.

Dr. Tom Hobman, from the University of Alberta, and his team will study how the Zika virus changes host cells during infection, with the goal of developing anti-viral therapies that can be used against the virus.

Dr. Keith Pardee, from the University of Toronto, and his team will test a new, low-cost tool to rapidly detect the presence of Zika virus in patients' bodily fluids. The new diagnostic tool is designed to be used in remote, under-resourced locations and will be field tested in Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia. Current tests to diagnose Zika virus are time consuming and prone to false positives due to the possibility of a patient's prior infection with other flaviviruses such as dengue.

Dr. Beate Sander, from Public Health Ontario, and her team will conduct field studies in Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador to better understand how the virus is spread from mosquitoes to humans, predict which areas in the region are most at risk and use computer simulations to assess the most effective intervention methods, including mosquito control measures and vaccine development.

Together, the international teams will create new knowledge to help develop diagnostics for Zika virus infection, understand the pathology caused by the virus, and ultimately prevent its transmission and morbidity.

"In collaboration with their counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean, these Canadian scientists will help answer some of the many outstanding questions we have about the Zika virus, ultimately providing evidence that will inform public health policy and improve how governments respond to outbreaks of the virus."- Jane Philpott Minister of Health

"The health research community is only beginning to come to grips with this dangerous pathogen. These three research teams have the potential to shed new light on the Zika virus and save lives. They may come up with faster ways to test for infection, finding the best methods to stop the mosquitoes that spread the virus and develop therapies that are effective against Zika."- Dr. Marc Ouellette Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity

"This initiative is key to helping protect populations in the Americas and Canada from Zika and other related diseases. Zika is an insidious virus that exacts a severe burden on vulnerable groups in Latin America, particularly mothers, children and poor urban populations facing limited access to health services. This funding will allow leading researchers from Latin America and Canada to collaborate on cutting-edge research, discovering new knowledge and tools to more rapidly detect, respond and control the virus."- Jean Lebel President, International Development Research Centre

Quick Facts

To date, there have been 481 cases of Zika virus detected in Canada, most of which have been travel related, although the virus can also be transmitted from mother to fetus and sexually transmitted. There are currently no cures for Zika virus infections or vaccines available against the virus.

Zika is linked to severe birth defects, like microcephaly, and neurological disorders including Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition in which the body's immune system attacks its nervous system.

The Public Health Agency of Canada recommends that pregnant women and those planning a pregnancy avoid travel to countries or areas in the United States, like Florida, with reported mosquito-borne Zika virus.
Dawn Andersen lost her husband to lung cancer, and as a longtime smoker herself, she also was at high risk for the disease.

So Loyola Medicine pulmonologist Sean Forsythe, MD, recommended Mrs. Andersen undergo a CT lung cancer screening test, which has been shown to save lives among longtime smokers by detecting lung cancer in early stages when it's most treatable.

The CT scan detected a growth in her lung that a later biopsy confirmed was a tumor. Fortunately it was a slow-growing type of cancer (called a typical carcinoid) and it had not spread to her lymph nodes.

Loyola thoracic surgeon James Lubawski, MD, removed the tumor in a minimally invasive procedure called video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. The incisions were less than an inch-long and Mrs. Andersen spent just two days in the hospital.

Mrs. Andersen did not require chemotherapy or radiation.

"Her outlook is great," Dr. Lubawski said.

Since Loyola began offering low-dose CT lung cancer screenings to people at high risk of lung cancer, more than 1,000 smokers and ex-smokers have been screened. Early-stage cancer has been detected in 20 smokers before they experienced symptoms.

Any patient who undergoes CT lung cancer screening at Loyola and who still smokes is counseled on where they can get help to quit. Mrs. Andersen, 73, who smoked for 50 years, successfully quit after her diagnosis.

"It's never too late to quit," Dr. Forsythe said. "For example, quitting between age 55 and 64 can add three years on average to a smoker's life. And the cardiac benefits of quitting begin within three weeks."

Following American Cancer Society guidelines, Loyola offers lung cancer screening for people aged 55 to 77 who are in fairly good health, have smoked the equivalent of at least a pack a day for 30 years and are currently smoking or have quit within the past 15 years.

Loyola performs the gold standard test of lung cancer screening: low-dose spiral CT scan (LDCT scan). An X-ray machine scans the body in a spiral path, and a computer produces highly detailed pictures of the lungs. The procedure uses low-dose radiation and is not recommended for people who are at average risk for lung cancer.

Lung cancer screenings are available at the Loyola Center for Health at Burr Ridge, Loyola Center for Health at Oakbrook Terrace and the Loyola Outpatient Center on Loyola's main campus in Maywood.
An algorithm based on levels of metabolites found in a blood sample can accurately predict whether a child is on the Autism spectrum of disorder (ASD), based upon a recent study. The algorithm, developed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is the first physiological test for autism and opens the door to earlier diagnosis and potential future development of therapeutics.

"Instead of looking at individual metabolites, we investigated patterns of several metabolites and found significant differences between metabolites of children with ASD and those that are neurotypical. These differences allow us to categorize whether an individual is on the Autism spectrum," said Juergen Hahn, lead author, systems biologist, professor, and head of the Rensselaer Department of Biomedical Engineering. "By measuring 24 metabolites from a blood sample, this algorithm can tell whether or not an individual is on the Autism spectrum, and even to some degree where on the spectrum they land."

Big data techniques applied to biomedical data found different patterns in metabolites relevant to two connected cellular pathways (a series of interactions between molecules that control cell function) that have been hypothesized to be linked to ASD: the methionine cycle and the transulfuration pathway. The methionine cycle is linked to several cellular functions, including DNA methylation and epigenetics, and the transulfuration pathway results in the production of the antioxidant glutathione, decreasing oxidative stress.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is estimated to affect approximately 1.5 percent of individuals and is characterized as "a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The physiological basis for ASD is not known, and genetic and environmental factors are both believed to play a role. People with ASD "may communicate, interact, behave, and learn in ways that are different from most other people." According to the CDC, the total economic costs per year for children with ASD in the United States are estimated between $11.5 billion and $60.9 billion. Research shows that early intervention can improve development, but diagnosis currently depends on clinical observation of behavior, an obstacle to early diagnosis and treatment. Most children are not diagnosed with ASD until after age 4 years.

Hahn's research, titled "Classification and Adaptive Behavior Prediction of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder based upon Multivariate Data Analysis of Markers of Oxidative Stress and DNA Methylation," appears today in PLOS Computational Biology, an open access journal published by the Public Library of Science. In the article, Hahn describes an application of Fisher Discriminant Analysis - a big data analysis technique - to data from a group of 149 people, about half on the Autism spectrum. Deliberately omitting data from one of the individuals in the group, Hahn subjects the dataset to advanced analysis techniques, and uses the results to generate a predictive algorithm. The algorithm then makes a prediction about the data from the omitted individual. Hahn cross-validated the results, swapping a different individual out of the group and repeating the process for all 149 participants. His method correctly identified 96.1 percent of all neurotypical participants and 97.6 percent of the ASD cohort.

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"Because we did everything possible to make the model independent of the data, I am very optimistic we will be able to replicate our results with a different cohort," said Hahn, a member of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS). "This is the first physiological diagnostic and it's highly accurate and specific."

Researchers have looked at individual metabolites produced by the methionine cycle and the transulfuration pathways and found possible links with ASD, but the correlation has been inconclusive. Hahn said the more sophisticated techniques he applied revealed patterns that would not have been apparent with earlier efforts.

"A lot of studies have looked at one biomarker, one metabolite, one gene, and have found some differences, but most of the time those differences weren't statistically significant or the results could not be reliably replicated," Hahn said. "Our contribution is using big data techniques that are able to look at a suite of metabolites that have been correlated with ASD and make statistically a much stronger case."

"Professor Hahn's innovative work to improve the diagnosis for Autism as well as other ongoing efforts to advance diagnostics and develop new treatments for Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative diseases at CBIS show how new breakthroughs in health care are possible when we focus our work at the interface between traditional boundaries," said Deepak Vashishth, director of the CBIS.

Hahn's interdisciplinary research at Rensselaer combines systems engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science to develop new ways of analyzing nonlinear systems found in biological or chemical processes. He began investigating ASD about two years ago. His recently published work on ASD offers additional insights into the disorder. For example, a recent paper published in the journal PLOS ONE with the research group of Arizona State University Professor James Adams made use of the same big data analysis techniques and showed a difference in the excretion of certain elements in the urine between children on the Autism spectrum and their neurotypical peers; these results further strengthen the findings as differences in the transulfuration pathway can be responsible for differences seen in the urine. Furthermore, work published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology with the research group of Arkansas Children's Hospital researcher Jill James found differences in the parameter distribution functions of reaction rates in the methionine cycle and the transulfuration pathway.

The full results of Hahn's work on ASD diagnosis are publicly available and Hahn is hopeful his work will lead to a widely available test that can support early diagnosis, although he does not intend to commercialize his results. For Hahn, the next step is to replicate the results with a new cohort working with his clinical collaborators. In the long run, Hahn hopes the model and diagnostic tool will aid in developing treatment options.

"If these pathways are different, what happens if I can manipulate the pathway so that it works similarly to the neurotypical ones?" said Hahn. "What do I need to prod? Which molecules do I need to add or take away? Having a model that describes these pathways makes it a lot easier to adjust them."
Treating the brain with a preventative course of radiation may help Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) patients - whose tumors often spread to their brain -- live longer, according to a new study from researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A separate study revealed that the most commonly-targeted mutation of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) is most likely to result in progression at the primary site. Both projects will be presented this weekend at the 2017 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium in San Francisco.

The first study (Oral Abstract Session, Presentation #11) deals with SCLC, which is a type of lung cancer with the strongest ties to smoking. It's particularly aggressive, with between 60 and 70 percent of patients diagnosed at advanced stages of the disease. The disease will spread to the brain in more than half of the patients.

Penn researchers looked into a treatment called Prophylactic Cranial Irradiation (PCI), which involves treating the brain with radiation before the cancer has spread there in hopes of preventing the disease's spread and prolonging survival.

"PCI is controversial for patients with extensive stage disease because two past randomized control trials have looked at this question but came to conflicting results," said the study's lead author Sonam Sharma, MD, chief resident of Radiation Oncology.

The group studied 944 propensity score matched patients in the National Cancer Database who had metastatic SCLC but whose disease had not spread to the brain, making this the largest study to ever examine the question of PCI.

They found PCI had a positive impact on survival. Among patients who survived at least six months, those who underwent the preventative brain radiation treatment lived an average of almost three months longer than those who did not receive PCI. Among patients who had a minimum overall survival of at least nine months, survival among patients receiving PCI was about two and a half months longer.

The data also shows certain patients were more likely to receive PCI than others. African Americans, patients 75 or older, and those with additional diseases were less likely to receive the treatment.

"Our study demonstrates that PCI has a significant impact on overall survival for patients with metastatic small cell lung cancer," Sharma said. "It also highlights existing healthcare disparities in potentially life prolonging therapies."

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The second study (Presentation #162) focuses on NSCLC, the most prevalent form of lung cancer. There are multiple known genetic mutations within NSCLC tumors, each of which affects treatment in different ways. The idea is to identify the specific genetic change that has occurred - called drivers - then use an inhibitor drug to precisely target the mutation instead of using general chemotherapy. The most common driver mutation physicians are currently able to target is known as EGFR.

Researchers from Penn focused their study on NSCLC patients with EGFR mutations who had been treated with inhibitors - specifically a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) like afatinib, gefitinib, or erlotinib-- which target the specific enzyme that is mutated in this subtype of lung cancer. They hoped to learn how the disease in these cases is likely to progress even in the face of drug treatment.

"It's sometimes hard to identify patients when you're being this specific," said David Guttmann, MD, MS, assistant chief resident of Radiation Oncology and one of the study's authors. "Fortunately, using the database available through Penn's Center for Personalized Diagnostics, we were able to identify 74 patients who fit our criteria."

Abigail Berman, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Radiation Oncology and the associate director of the Penn Center for Precision Medicine, was the study's lead author.

Of the patients treated with a TKI whose cancers did progress, almost half (46 percent) experienced that progression at the primary tumor site within the lung. Guttmann noted patients who also have metastatic liver disease seemed to have a particularly high rate of progression at their primary site, something he says warrants further investigation. The team's analysis also showed that upfront treatment to their primary tumor was associated with improved progression-free survival. Patients who had received prior treatment to the primary tumor prior to initiating TKI therapy survived an average of 20 and a half months without progression, while patients who had no upfront therapy average 11 months.
For more than a year, Tom Hobman and his research team have devoted most of their waking hours to a headlong pursuit of knowledge about the Zika virus. Hobman, a professor of Cell Biology in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is one of thousands of researchers across the globe racing to stop the rapid spread of the mosquito-borne virus that first came into the global spotlight in late 2015. His focused efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Hobman has been announced as one of three Canadian scientists who have received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for their teams to study the Zika virus. Hobman's lab has been awarded $500,000 over three years to investigate how the virus changes host cells during infection, with the goal of developing antiviral therapies that can be used against the pathogen. There are currently no antivirals or vaccines available to protect against Zika.

The three Canadian teams will collaborate with South American and Caribbean researchers who are funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre. Hobman's team will work closely with a group from the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"They have really been at the forefront of the Zika virus epidemic. They have access to thousands of clinical samples and have been studying viral genomics. So they really have been at the front lines of the battle," says Hobman of his international research partners. "We are going to do what we're good at--cellular imaging and protein interactions--and they are going to do what they are good at. But the idea is to synergize our efforts and to accomplish more than we could individually."

As part of the project, Hobman is also interested in understanding one of the key characteristics of the Zika virus, it's ability to persist in the body for months at a time. The trait makes it unique from other mosquito borne viruses such as Dengue and West Nile viruses which are typically cleared out by the immune system in a week or two.

"By understanding the process, possibly one can develop some way to block persistence. Obviously the longer it can persist, the bigger the window of time in which the virus can be transmitted from person to person," says Hobman.

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"In collaboration with their counterparts in South America and the Caribbean, these Canadian scientists will help answer some of the many outstanding questions we have about the Zika virus, ultimately providing evidence that will inform public health policy and improve how governments respond to outbreaks of the virus," said Jane Philpott, Canada's Minister of Health, in a statement.

The CIHR grant is the second to be awarded to Hobman to research the Zika virus over the past calendar year. In July 2016 he received more than a million dollars over a five-year period to screen for antiviral compounds, as well as develop research tools and diagnostic tests for the virus. As part of the project, Hobman and his collaborators hope to gain a better understanding of how the virus spreads throughout the body.

Hobman says his team's success in attracting major funding to further the research stems from the early support of the U of A's Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology and the Women and Children's Health Research Institute. Both provided early seed funding to the team.

"The seed funding was critical and allowed us to start doing experiments right away. With the support from Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology and the Women and Children's Health Research Institute funding, we were able to generate a lot of preliminary data that allowed us to secure long-term funding."

While the work that is required to stop the Zika virus remains daunting, Hobman is encouraged by the progress made over the past year as much of the world's scientific community has turned its attention to the virus.

"The scientific response to this virus has been enormous. The pace of discovery is absolutely breathtaking," says Hobman. "It's just fantastic to see how quickly things move when there is funding available. It's really remarkable. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this."

Source: https://www.ualberta.ca/medicine/news/2017/march/zeroing-in-on-the-zika-virus
A state-of-the-art research centre to help accelerate the development of new antibiotics is set to be established by the University of Liverpool.

The University has been awarded 630,000 of infrastructure funding by Innovate UK to create the Centre for Antimicrobial Pharmacodynamics (CAP) in partnership with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and North Bristol NHS Trust.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing problem worldwide, and with few new drugs making it to the market, there is an urgent need for new drug treatments to manage infections caused by resistant pathogens.

A deep understanding of pharmacodynamics (the study of how a drug affects the body) is a regulatory requirement for the development of antimicrobial drug treatments and enables the right dose of a new drug to be studied the first time.

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The new centre will cover a significant gap in the UK's capability to develop new antimicrobial drugs by providing researchers and companies with access to pharmacodynamics research expertise, facilities and training.

Professor William Hope, University of Liverpool, who will lead the new Centre, said: "Characterising the preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of anti-infective drugs is a relatively recent and mandatory regulatory requirement, which has created a bottleneck for AMR project progression because there is a lack of global skills and capacity to meet demand.

"The CAP will build on Liverpool's existing strength in antimicrobial pharmacodynamics and therapeutics research to give scientists access to the skills and equipment they need to advance the development of new antibiotics."

The facility will be aligned with AMR accelerators in the USA and Europe and will provide a local resource for around 20 UK and 90 global AMR companies. Capabilities will include state-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo models of infection; preclinical imaging facilities; advanced pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK-PD) and mathematical modelling skills, as well as a focus on teaching and training for all aspects of antimicrobial pharmacodynamics.

In addition to the Innovate UK funding, the University will invest in new senior academic posts, while LSTM will contribute state-of-the-art laboratory space in the 24m Liverpool Life Sciences Accelerator building, which is due to open later this year.

The CAP is also the first project to be announced as part of the newly-launched Centre of Excellence in Infectious Diseases Research (CEIDR), a joint collaboration between the University of Liverpool and LSTM.
A Maryland woman traveled to the Dominican Republic early in her pregnancy, spending three weeks with family. She felt dizzy and tired and, at first, attributed the lethargy to jet lag. Then, she experienced a rash that lasted about four days. She never saw a bite or slapped a mosquito while in the Dominican Republic but, having heard about the Zika virus, asked to be tested.

Her blood tested positive for Zika.

Why was this pregnant woman infected by Zika while others who live year-round in Zika hot zones remain free of the infectious disease? And why was she among the slim minority of Zika-positive people to show symptoms?

Youssef A. Kousa, D.O., Ph.D., M.S., a pediatric resident in the child neurology track at Children's National Health System, is working on a research study that will examine whether interplays between certain genes make some women more vulnerable to symptomatic Zika infections during pregnancy, leaving some fetuses at higher risk of developing microcephaly.

At sites in Puerto Rico, Colombia and Washington D.C., Dr. Kousa and his research collaborators are actively recruiting study participants and drawing blood from women whose Zika infections were confirmed in the first or second trimester of pregnancy. The blood is stored in test tubes with purple caps, a visual cue that the tube contains an additive that binds DNA, preventing it from being cut up.

When the blood arrives at Children's National, Dr. Kousa will use a centrifuge located in a sample preparation room to spin the samples at high speed for 11 minutes. The sample emerges from the centrifuge in three discrete layers, separated by weight. The rose-colored section that rises to the top is plasma. Plasma contains tell-tale signs of the immune system's past battles with viruses and will be analyzed by Roberta L. DeBiasi, M.D., M.S., Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Children's National, and Dr. Kousa's mentor.

A slender line at the middle indicates white blood cells. The dark red layer is heavier red blood cells that sink to the bottom. This bottom half of the test tube, where the DNA resides, is where Dr. Kousa will perform his genetic research.

While certain poverty-stricken regions of Brazil have recorded the highest spikes in rates of microcephaly, more is at play than socioeconomics, he says. "It didn't feel like all of the answers lie in the neighborhood. One woman with a Zika-affected child can live just down the street from a child who is more or less severely affected by Zika."

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While Dr. Kousa concentrates on Zika's most devastating side effects, his colleague Sarah B. Mulkey, M.D., Ph.D., is exploring more subtle damage Zika can cause to fetuses exposed in utero. In the cohort of Colombian patients that Dr. Mulkey is researching, just 8 percent had abnormal fetal brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs). At first glance, the uncomplicated MRIs appear to be reassuring news for the vast majority of pregnant women.

In the fetus, the Zika virus makes a beeline to the developing brain where it replicates with ease and can linger after birth. "We need to be cautious about saying the fetal MRI is 'normal' and the infant is going to be 'normal,' " Dr. Mulkey says. "We know with congenital cytomegalovirus that infected infants may not show symptoms at birth yet suffer long-term consequences, such as hearing deficits and vision loss."

At 6 months and 1 year of age, the infants' motor skills will be assessed, such as their ability to roll over in both directions, sit up, draw their feet toward their waist, stand, take steps independently and purposefully move their hands. Videotapes of the infants performing the motor skills will be scored by Dr. Mulkey and her mentor, Adre du Plessis, M.B.Ch.B., Chief of the Division of Fetal and Transitional Medicine at Children's National. The Thrasher Research Fund is funding the project, "Neurologic outcomes of apparently normal newborns from Zika virus-positive pregnancies," as part of its Early Career Award Program.

Drs. Kousa and Mulkey will present preliminary findings during Research and Education Week 2017 at Children's National.

Both projects are extensions of a larger multinational study co-led by Drs. du Plessis and DeBiasi that explores the impact of prolonged Zika viremia in pregnant women, fetuses and infants; the feasibility of using fetal MRI to describe the continuum of neurological impacts in Zika-affected pregnancies; and long-term developmental issues experienced by Zika-affected infants.
ASUNCION, March 17 (Reuters) - Paraguay's treasury minister and central bank president will meet with investors in the United States and Europe next week to drum up interest in a planned $500 million bond sale, the treasury ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The meetings will take place next Monday and Tuesday, with Treasury Minister Santiago Pena traveling to Boston and New York and Central Bank President Carlos Fernandez Valdovinos heading up meetings in London.

The landlocked South American country's plan to issue bonds to pay off existing debt and finance infrastructure projects ran into roadblocks last year, when lawmakers challenged the constitutionality of the planned sale. President Horacio Cartes vetoed Congress' budget proposal, which limited debt issuance.

But the country's Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cartes' center-right administration in February, which the treasury ministry said at the time would serve as an assurance to investors.

"Depending on financial market conditions and the interest expressed by investors, at the end of these meetings we could go through with the sovereign bond sale," the ministry said in the Friday statement.

Paraguay has sold $1.88 billion in sovereign debt since its market debut in 2013.

(Reporting by Daniela Desantis; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Sandra Maler)
The Government of Somalia has launched an oral cholera vaccination (OCV) campaign today with the support of WHO, targeting over 450 000 people in 7 high-risk areas around the country. It is the first OCV campaign to be conducted in the country, and comes at a critical time after Somalia announced the ongoing drought as a national disaster and faces the possibility of another famine.

Health workers vaccinate children in the first oral cholera vaccination campaign at the Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo: Karel Prinsloo/ Gavi

The campaign is being held in select communities in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Beledweyne through a combination of fixed and mobile sites for maximum accessibility by the communities. The vaccines, which will be administered to at-risk persons aged one year or older, are being delivered in 2 rounds. The first round of the campaign has commenced today and will continue until 19 March, and the second round of the campaign will be held from 18 to 22 April.

This is one of the largest oral cholera vaccination campaigns conducted in Africa, said Dr Ghulam Popal, WHO Representative in Somalia. This vaccination campaign will contribute to the reduction in the number of new cholera cases, interrupt transmission and limit the spread of cholera, he said.

Somalia is currently experiencing a large-scale outbreak of cholera with a total of 10 571 over 11 000 cases of cholera and 269 268 deaths with a case-fatality rate of 2.5% reported in 11 regions since the beginning of 2017. This is more than half the number of cases reported in total for 2016. The response efforts by the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF and health partners have included active case search, effective case management, intensive household chlorination campaign, and community awareness.

The oral vaccination campaign was preceded by extensive social mobilization efforts to inform the community of the benefits, availability and necessity of the vaccine. Vaccination is a preventive measure against cholera that supplements, but does not replace, other traditional cholera control measures such as improving access to safe water and sanitation and hygiene measures/interventions.

Somalia has long experienced a humanitarian emergency due to conflict, insecurity, displacement of people and limited access to health system. This situation is further compounded by drought, malnutrition and lack of access to clean water and sanitation facilities. If the current drought and food insecurity continue, the number of cholera cases is likely to increase. Preventative measures such as oral cholera vaccine can mitigate these numbers, and save lives.

The vaccination campaign is supported by the Global Task Force on Cholera Control, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF and health partners in its various stages of planning and implementation. WHO is also providing support for the campaign in the areas of planning, organization and monitoring.
It is also considering a nationwide "fat tax" for so-called "junk foods", a senior government official said, although that is unlikely to be rolled out in the near term.

India's carbonated drinks sector is estimated to grow an average 3.7 percent annually between 2017 and 2021, while the packaged food sector will grow by 8 percent a year during the same period, Euromonitor International estimates.

"These are complex public health issues which require (a) holistic multi-stakeholder approach and we are committed to work with authorities," Khajuria said in an email.

But India has been slow to finalise rules on products high in fat, sugar and salt, whose consumption health advocates say urgently needs to be checked to safeguard public health.

Another labelling proposal under review was a "traffic light" system, where red, yellow and green colours depict nutritional value, similar to one used in the United Kingdom. "Traffic light is making (reading labels) simple," Agarwal said. "Red people associate with danger, green is okay".

"Most Indian foods will be red. So what purpose does it serve?" said the group's president, Subodh Jindal.

Several food and drink multinationals and trade groups met in recent weeks to discuss how to lobby more effectively against Indian proposals for higher taxes and stricter labelling rules on fatty or sugary foods, sources familiar with the talks said.According to officials, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration has begun to look closely at policy proposals under discussion since at least 2015, raising concerns over the possible impact on the $57 billion sector.Alarmed by rising rates of obesity and diabetes, India plans to frame draft rules within a month requiring manufacturers to display the fat, sugar and salt content of products on packaging.Last month, executives from companies including PepsiCo, Nestle and Indian consumer firm ITC met trade groups in New Delhi to coordinate efforts and urge the government to resist pressure from health advocates, according to an industry source aware of the meeting.The attendees, who felt their efforts to push back had been too piecemeal, talked about forming a core group to unify their message when engaging the government, the source said.PepsiCo and Nestle in India did not comment directly on the meeting or its outcome. ITC did not respond to requests for comment.Trade group All India Food Processors' Association (AIFPA), whose members range from street vendors to global conglomerates, said two industry-wide meetings were held in February.Its members, who also discussed ways to offer more nutritious products, plan to send a joint representation to the government and approach health and food officials to express concerns about stringent regulations.The stakes are high for companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestle and McDonald's, which have collectively committed billions of dollars to expand in the world's fastest growing major economy.Government pressure comes in various forms.Modi recently told PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi that her company needed to focus more on public health, an aide to the prime minister said.Separately, the prime minister's office asked PepsiCo to outline how it would reduce sugar in beverages sold in India, the aide added.PepsiCo did not comment on those remarks by Modi and his office. It referred Reuters to its October 2016 global commitment "to transform its portfolio and offer healthier options". Modi's office did not respond to an email seeking comment.A Coca-Cola India representative referred questions on proposed regulatory changes to the Indian Beverage Association, which said their impact was "under evaluation".Nestle corporate affairs executive Sanjay Khajuria said the company was "working to improve the nutrient profile" of their products.The CEO of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Pawan Kumar Agarwal, welcomed industry concerns about tougher rules."It is a good thing if it helps in providing healthier options," he told Reuters in an interview.The number of obese men and women in India rose to about 30 million by 2014 from 1.2 million in 1975, according to a study by British medical journal The Lancet, although the comparative figure for China was around 90 million.Concerns about the health effects of fast food and soda drinks have been growing globally in recent years.Mexico imposed higher taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, for example, while South Korea placed television advertising restrictions on specific food items.Agarwal denied industry pressure was affecting the implementation of tighter regulations, adding that India was nudging companies to make healthier products while working on new rules.The FSSAI is considering advertising norms to check on health claims made by companies and is working on educating consumers about the health effects of foods containing high levels of sugar or fat.One government official said the regulator was deliberating whether disclosures about the nutritional value of food should be placed on the front of packages.But trade body AIFPA said such labelling was of no use.Potentially more significant for major brands would be a nationwide "fat tax", which authorities are discussing and was last year announced by the southern state of Kerala.There, branded restaurants like McDonald's and Domino's Pizza face a 14.5 percent tax, higher than that applied to smaller, indigenous outlets serving the same fare or Indian cuisine often high in sugar and fat."It makes the larger players nervous," said an industry executive, calling the discourse on "junk food" in India discriminatory and unscientific.McDonald's India did not comment on the government's discussions on a nationwide "fat tax". Domino's India said its spokesman was not available.
Defying an escalating anti-alcohol movement and conservative bureaucrats in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia's only craft brewer is tapping into demand for better quality booze among the country's small number of drinkers.



Despite the fact about 90 percent of Indonesia's population is Muslim, and in theory banned from drinking, most practise a moderate form of Islam and alcohol is available in cities and holiday destinations, with local brewers producing mostly Pilsner lagers.



Unimpressed by the generic, mass-produced drinks on offer, local businessman Bona Budhisurya and his brother-in-law Jacob Suryanata decided to come up with an alternative, and in 2011 introduced Stark craft beer with a wheat and dark wheat variety.



"We had been abroad and drank a lot of good quality beer," said Budhisurya, a member of Indonesia's Christian and ethnic Chinese minorities, adding that on his return to Indonesia he found that "there was no quality beer here".



By producing such brews -- generally defined as beverages created in small, independent breweries -- they have made Indonesia an unlikely new addition to the global craft beer revolution.



The trend has seen micro-breweries spring up worldwide as consumers sick of flat, flavourless ales and gassy lagers seek out something with more character. Major beer-consuming countries -- such as Britain and the United States -- have seen explosive growth in the sector.



Since its launch, Stark has expanded to include six varieties, including lychee- and mango-flavoured beers and an Indonesian Pale Ale, a less bitter alternative to Indian Pale Ale.



But setting up a brewery is a risky move nowadays in Indonesia.



Although most Indonesians are moderate Muslims and alcohol has long been available, growing opposition from politicians pushing a more conservative brand of Islam has created an uncertain climate.



The government banned beer sales in the country's ubiquitous minimarts in 2015, leading to sharp profit falls for major brewers, and Muslim political parties have proposed legislation to prohibit booze consumption entirely, although it seems unlikely this will pass.



Trouble brewing



It is hard to get permission to brew alcohol and only a handful of companies -- such as Multi Bintang which produces popular local lager Bintang, and is majority-controlled by Dutch brewer Heineken -- possess licences that they have had for decades.



Budhisurya -- who studied in the US for several years -- eventually managed to obtain a licence in Hindu-majority Bali, a popular holiday island where drinking is more common, and Stark set up its brewery near the town of Singaraja.



The site has a staff of about 50, including a head brewer hired from Australian beer maker Little Creatures.



The company says brewing in Bali gives them an edge as they have easy access to clean water, unlike some other brewers whose operations are near Jakarta where water is often polluted and must undergo a long filtering process.



"We have a principle -- if the water is not good, we can't make the beer," Albert Kurniawan, operations manager at Stark's brewery, told AFP from the red-brick building.



Budhisurya said that the biggest challenge has been dealing with the official Food and Drug Monitoring Agency, which must approve alcoholic beverages before their release.



He said the official time to get approval from the agency, which is staffed by conservative bureaucrats, is about four months, but in reality it takes six months to a year.



Still, Stark has persevered and carved out a small niche by mainly selling to bars and some supermarkets favoured by a growing number of Indonesian consumers.



Stark says its beers offer a quality alternative to pricey imported ales. It is so far proving a modest success, with about 3,000 to 5,000, 24-bottle cases sold every month, mostly in Jakarta and Bali.



Due to religious considerations and high taxes that push up prices, relatively few Indonesians drink -- alcohol consumption in 2015 was an average of just 1.4 litres per person, according to BMI Research.



But the market is still potentially huge in a country of 255 million people, and Stark sees a bright future.



"It does not matter whether it is local or imported -- we are a craft beer, which means quality," Budhisurya said.
Beirut: Warplanes struck a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jina, in northwest Syria, killing at least 42 people and wounding dozens, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Thursday.



The jets struck the village, southwest of Atarib near Aleppo, as the mosque was full of worshippers at evening prayer, said the Observatory, which monitors the Syrian war via a network of contacts across the country.



The U.S. military said it carried out an air strike on Thursday against al Qaeda militants, killing several, at a meeting location in Idlib province, but it was unclear if it was referring to the attack on Al-Jina.



The statement from U.S. Central Command made no mention of civilian casualties.



Syrian and Russian military have also carried out many air strikes in Idlib and Aleppo provinces during the war.



Al-Jina is located in one of the main rebel-held parts of Syria, the northwest that includes Idlib province and the western parts of Aleppo province, and its population has been swollen by refugees, U.N. agencies have said.



Rebels in northwest Syria fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad also include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.
Adhikari raised interest levels of many with this question in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour on March 15: Will the Prime Minister be pleased to state  whether an Indian spacecraft is planning to brew beer on the moon? If so, the details of research plan and viability of yeast test therefore; and the universal rules on moon lander therein?

"As understood, the aim of this experiment is to test and observe the survivability of yeast in space and how it performs under Moons gravity conditions," Singh added.

I was not personally following the development. I came across an article and put it forward to know facts, he says.

No, says Sisir Adhikari, he wasn't looking forward to good times in the magnificent lunar desolation. The Trinamool MP merely wanted to know whether the Indian government was part of a proposed project to brew beer on the moon.The reply from Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office took away the fizz. Singh said there was no such plan by any spacecraft to be made by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).Singh clarified that the proposed experiment was reportedly by Team Indus, the privately funded moon mission team. Team Indus spacecraft is proposed to be launched onboard ISROs Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) under a commercial launch agreement.Team Indus by the Axiom Research Labs Private Limited, is among the five finalists for the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE competition towards building a spacecraft capable of soft landing and roving on the Moon.Adhikari tells News18 that his interest in the lunar beer brewing experiment was purely academic.The Kanthi MP's efforts however went went flat as the experiment was out of the race and the Indian finalist decided on a more arcane Photosynthesis on Moon by Extremophile Cyanobacteria. The winner from Italy proposed Radiation Shield using Bacteria.Beer on the moon will have to wait for another day.
Lucknow: The fear of unknown, that's what has gripped the bureaucracy in Uttar Pradesh following the landslide victory of the BJP in Assembly polls.



And it's obvious, as 70 percent of bureaucrats and police officials serving in the state have never seen or worked under the BJP rule. So, now, as BJP gears to officially form the government, bureaucrats have gone in a huddle trying to make links with people who can matter in the BJP and simultaneously are also busy familiarising themselves with the party's manifesto. No wonder, the BJP manifesto has virtually become a Bible for many a top babus.



This sense of disconnect with new political masters is obvious. While the BJP has been in and out of political power in UP during the '90s - the last government being that of Rajnath Singh as Chief Minister, which remained in office till 2002 - the political spectrum for more than two decades has been, more or less, dominated by regional players, like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.



The subsequent result has been that bureaucracy not just got to familiarise with work style and mind set of leaders like Mulayam Singh, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, many a top officers, both in administration and police, slowly worked upward to make personal relations with top leaders of these parties.



But this familiarisation was not just limited to understanding the work style, mindset, and having a personal connect, a big aspect of political narrative was also about an open caste and religious bias.



A senior bureaucrat, who has served on several important posts under both Mayawati and Akhilesh government, said, "So far bureaucracy and police officials had been accustomed to caste and sometimes religious preferences in appointment during BSP and SP rule. It came as privilege for some and disadvantage for others. The caste bias in postings was seen from top to bottom, from secretariat to districts, from DGP office to police stations. Now, a government under a national party will probably put an end to this practice."



Another interesting aspect about the latest scenario for the bureaucracy is that most of the IAS officers up to the level of Commissioners and DIGs are those who came in service over the last decade and a half. Hence, during their service they never got the experience to work under the BJP rule.



A woman bureaucrat, with around six years of service, said: "Like me and many others, there had been no brush ever with a BJP government so far. But now, the general sense among officers is that a government of a national party, and most importantly driven by vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, will go for merit in appointment, rather than caste and personal considerations."



On the question whether bureaucrats will get respite from the rowdyism of leaders and political workers of the ruling dispensation, bureaucracy is a bit divided in its opinion; while the above mentioned bureaucrat feels that things will be far better than political intervention at district and thana level during the Akhilesh government, others are a bit apprehensive because of the sort of mandate which the BJP has got.



A senior bureaucrat cautioned: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It will be a tough time for the new government to bring in the respect for 'rule of the law' among its cadre and leaders, on the ground."



But for the moment, the entire bureaucracy remains in a state of flux. From CM Secretariat to DGP office in Lucknow, incumbents are in a state of 'ready to move'. Similar is the situation across districts. Officers anticipate a large scale bureaucratic and police reshuffle.



While most officers are consigned to their fate, not all of them are in mood to 'accept as it comes'. It's this lot which has desperately started to cultivate links and contacts with those leaders who will likely matter in the new government.



A senior BJP functionary shares the experience. He said: 'I never got so many calls, best wishes and sweet boxes from officers on any Holi before this year. The reason for this new love is easy to understand."



Senior bureaucrats and police officials, eyeing top postings like chief secretary, DGP and others are reportedly also getting in touch with senior leaders in the Union government. Eyes are also on some senior bureaucrats presently on central deputation. Some of them are expected to return back to UP.



Apart from attempts at building personal contacts, bureaucrats, in key offices, have already started working on the BJP manifesto.



A very senior bureaucrat, presently posted as Principal Secretary in Lucknow, said: "BJP's election manifesto is the guiding document for us. We know, we will not be given much time for policy formation. The Modi government's model of 'deliver, and deliver fast and accurate' will be implemented in the state as well. Hence, for officers like us, the manifesto or vision document has become a Bible.
New Delhi: Following a brawl over parking, a 39-year-old businessman was crushed under the wheels of a car by two unidentified persons in west Delhi, police said on Thursday.



Police said the incident occurred on Wednesday evening at around 5.30 pm when the deceased, Tarun Gupta, got into a verbal duel with two persons as they parked their car in front of his restaurant in Rohini Sector 22.



"One of the accused persons went to purchase some articles from a nearby shop, while another one was seated inside the car. When Tarun Gupta asked one of them to park the car at the next shop, where they were doing the shopping, they instead started a heated argument," a senior police officer said.



As some local shopkeepers started gathering at the spot, both the accused tried to flee. In the process, they first hit a bike from their car and then crushed Gupta under its wheels when he tried to stop the car, the officer added.



Gupta, a resident of Karala village of Rohini Sector 22 was rushed to a nearby private hospital where he was declared brought dead.





"We are examining the CCTV footage of the nearby shops to ascertain the identity of the accused persons who managed to flee the spot," the police officer added.



Gupta was running his restaurant on the ground floor of his residence.




Parliament recently passed The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016 which says successors of those who migrated to Pakistan during Partition will have no claim over the properties left behind in India. There are some who argue that it vilfies anyone who was unfortunate enough to have had an ancestor who migrated to Pakistan. That the sins of the father are being inflicted upon the son. Here is one such argument.



The immediate result of the partition of India in 1947 was the death of a million people and mass migration of more than 15 million people. But Partition did not finish there.



Families such as mine suffered internal partitions. My grandfather was a member of the Muslim League and moved to Pakistan in 1957. His wife, his son and his brother always remained Indians.



Indeed, his brother wrote a letter to Jinnah asking what provisions there would be for the protection of minorities and Shias in Pakistan. In a letter to his tutor J. A. Chapman, he wrote, I have not yet gone to Pakistan and I have no intention of doing so.



My grandmother did not even want to consider moving away and my father, who was all of 4 years old at partition, travelled on her Indian passport. Meanwhile, my grandfather was immediately disillusioned with Pakistan and moved away within two years, first to Iraq and then to England.



In the 1960s, at a conference convened by Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, he acknowledged his mistake in agitating for a Muslim country in a paper entitled Some Memories. Sadly, political mistakes can have ramifications that are felt for generations.



In 1965, when Pakistan went to war with India, both the countries instituted a set of laws that later came to be known as the Enemy Property Act. This was nothing new. Earlier in the century, America, the United Kingdom, Germany and many other countries also had similar legislations.



Following international norms, the Indian act was also temporary in nature and temporarily vested the properties and belongings of a citizen of an enemy country in a Custodian appointed by the State for the purpose of management. However, when the war ended, the government continued to hold the properties.



In 1973, my grandfather died a broken man, twice exiled, as he himself put it. His son, my father, who had always been an Indian citizen, then began a legal battle that spanned almost 40 years and went all the way from the civil court to the Bombay High Court and finally the Supreme Court in 2005. He won at each stage.



The Supreme Court held that an Indian citizen could in no way be held to be an enemy and that once my grandfather passed away, my father inherited his ancestral properties which were only temporarily vested in the state. The tag of enemy which I had heard associated with my family as child, even before I knew what an enemy meant, was finally removed. Importantly, the judges observed that to be just and act in a just manner is writ large in our constitution and the laws. After all it is justice that is the most sacred covenant between citizen and state.



The government appealed the decision of the Supreme Court but this was dismissed. However, even the verdict of the court of highest appeal did not satisfy them. Five years after my father won the case, UPA-II passed a retrospective ordinance that changed the very nature of the law in order to undo the Supreme Courts judgment. They changed the temporary nature of the vesting in the custodian into a permanent vesting and once again took over various properties including religious trusts.



A contingent of armed policemen was sent to our home and they camped inside the entrance. This was despite the fact that our home is the centre of many religious activities throughout the year and much of it is a public, religious and charitable trust. The ordinance did not pass muster in Parliament and so another legal battle began.



We fought in the courts to get back the properties that had been taken under the now lapsed ordinance. In January 2016, the current government promulgated another ordinance even more vicious than the first. They re-promulgated it five times - a first in India's history. The Supreme Court recently held that the re-promulgation of ordinances is a fraud on the Constitution. Our lives were once again put on hold as we watched the state bludgeon its way into getting what it wanted.



During the first legal round up to 2005, my grandmother, grand-uncle, grand-aunts and various other elders, all Indians, passed away before the blemish of enemy was removed from our familys name. In the second legal battle, post the 2010 ordinance, a number of uncles, aunts, cousins and other relatives who had momentarily rejoiced at the Supreme Court verdict also passed away with the stigma of being labelled an enemy.



In 2016, the lower house of parliament was able to pass a bill to make permanent the proposed changes in the ordinance using its brute majority. The proposed bill was then sent to the upper house where it did not have a majority and so the proceedings were sent before a committee. A number of people deposed in front of this committee including my father who asked the very fundamental question about how an Indian citizens rights could be retrospectively taken away.



The opposition added notes of dissent to the proposed bill as it sought to vilify anyone who was unfortunate enough to have had an ancestor migrate to Pakistan. The fact that they chose India as their homeland did not matter, for the government deemed, that the sins of the father should be inflicted upon the son.



Despite not having a majority in the Upper House, the bill was passed in the presence of 31 members of parliament on the 10th of March 2017. The opposition had been assured the matter would not be taken up that day. A few days later the lower house again ratified the bill. A number of speeches were made during the course of this that not only misrepresented facts but indeed sought to rewrite history.



It was made out as if the intention of the original act was a permanent vesting of the property in the government whereas as was stated earlier and as was held by the Supreme Court, the nature of the vesting was temporary. Indeed, the very designation of the Custodian of Enemy Property for the officer who was responsible for managing these properties reflected the temporary and transient nature of the original act. Thus, far from being clarificatory changes, the bill completely rewrites the law retrospectively and even bars people from approaching the civil courts in matters related to enemy property.



Arguments were made that the changes are in the interest of national security. However, since only those Indians who chose to remain in their homeland will feel the consequences of the new law, it seems bizarre to invoke security. Indeed, there will be absolutely no ramifications for any Pakistani citizens or indeed their government.



The fact that Pakistan took over enemy property is often invoked to justify the changes in the law. However, just because there is no rule of law or indeed any effort to preserve the rights of citizens in Pakistan, irrespective of religion or ethnicity, it shouldnt mean that we in India define natural justice by merely mimicking what they do.



One of the points that was repeated in both houses of parliament was that the Mahmudabad family collaborated with the British in suppressing the uprising of 1857. However, Muqeemuddaula Nawab Ali Khan together with various Hindu rulers was martyred fighting against the British. Another lie that was propagated in parliament was that my grandmother and father came back to India from Pakistan for the properties. However, they had never stopped being Indians in the first place. But then of course it is those with power who re-write history. In our post-truth world it seems the one perennial fact is that everything can be sacrificed at the altar of populism and political power.



Inqilaab-e Aasmaan se kyun na ho uljhan mujhe

Mein pukaaroon dost ko awaaz de dushman mujhe



(Why should I not worry at the churnings of the skies

I call out for a friend but it is an enemy who answers.)



Ali Khan Mahmudabad is assistant professor at Ashoka University where he teaches political science and history. All views are the author's and not News18.
London: India on Friday expressed dismay at the UN's continued struggle to find a definition for terrorism, saying how can it can fight an undefined enemy.



Singling out terrorism as a major obstacle, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar told the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meeting here that India will not allow the forces of violence in its neighbourhood to succeed.



"India has become the pivotal power of the 21st century because this century will be controlled by which shape Asia takes. If the forces that inspire violence begin to expand, the implications are very grave. We won't allow it, because of our security prowess, our belief system, our philosophy. The world must recognise, participate and join India in this battle," he said.



The minister also expressed dismay at the UN' continued struggle to find a definition for terrorism since 1996.



"How do we fight an enemy we can't define," he questioned, calling on multi-lateral frameworks like the UN to recognise the need to reflect the realities of the 21st century.



"No international institution can remain mired in the past. We believe that there has to be, in all international fora, a re-examination and finding a purpose for the 21st century," he said, making a reference to India's aspirations for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.



The minister highlighted India's hope that the organisation will work towards increasing the things it has in common.



"The Commonwealth should not just be an exercise in meetings between governments. It must become more people-centric," Akbar said.



The author and Rajya Sabha MP, who is in the UK for the CMAG summit, also held talks with UK ministers Priti Patel and Alok Sharma and addressed an audience of MPs and peers at the House of Commons complex on 'India in the changing world' at an event hosted by Indian-origin Labour MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on India Virendra Sharma earlier in the week.



"India is on a mission that is a search for prosperity. But prosperity and its first cousin development are not enough to describe what Indians want. India wants a prosperity that is shared, it wants it within and internationally," Akbar said.



Making a reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first speech in Parliament, he articulated the government's vision as "poverty elimination" over poverty alleviation.



The senior BJP leader highlighted how Modi's "radical thinking" had led to reforms across different sectors, which were transforming the lives of ordinary people.



"Miracles are happening...the mobile phone is becoming the greatest instrument, not only of literacy but economic transaction. The digital revolution is bringing about a radical change in the lives of the poor," he said.
Kolkata: Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan has 'rejected' a bailable warrant which was served to him by West Bengal DGP Surajit Kar Purakayastha on Friday. The warrant was issued against Justice Karnan by the Supreme Court in a contempt case.



The warrant was served to him a day after he passed a suo motu order, directing the CJI and other six judges to pay him Rs 14 crore as compensation.



The move comes a week after Karnan issued an "order" of registration of a case under the appropriate sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 on Chief Justice of India Justice JS Khehar and six other judges.



Addressing a press conference at his residence, Justice Karnan had said the apex court had "no locus standi" to issue a bailable warrant against a sitting judge.



On March 10, the Supreme Court had issued a bailable warrant against Justice Karnan to ensure his presence before it on March 31 in a contempt case.



Justice Karnan goes down in the Indian judicial history as the first serving High Court judge against whom an arrest warrant has been issued by the apex court in a contempt case.



A seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar had taken strong note of Justice Karnan's non-appearance, despite being served with the contempt notice and had asked the Director General of West Bengal Police to execute the warrants on the judge to ensure his presence at 10.30 am on March 31.







The apex court has turned the alleged contemptuous letters written by Justice Karnan against the Madras HC Chief Justice which were addressed to the CJI, Prime Minister and others, into contempt proceedings against him.



He was transferred from the Madras HC to the Calcutta HC for his alleged contemptuous conduct.



(With PTI inputs)




Two Indian clerics, including Syed Asif Ali Nizami - top cleric of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami - are missing in Pakistan.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday spoke to Pakistani authorities about the two Indian Sufi clerics who went missing in Karachi while sources in that country told CNN-News18 they may have been detained.Senior Journalist Pakistan Arsalan Bhatti confirmed CNN-News18 report. "They might have been taken by sensitive agency for interrogation and it is expected that the Pakistan police chief will clear all questions within next 24-hours."However, Punjab government spokesman, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, ruled out that they were detained in Pakistan.He said, "There is no straightway claim that any agency took them. We have some leads that they went to some places on their own. It's not a case of abduction, we are looking into details."They visited Lahore on March 13 to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine. On March 14, they offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine also in Lahore.The next day when they reached the airport to take a return flight for Karachi, Nazim Ali Nizami was stopped to clear some documentation and Syed Asif Ali Nizami was asked to board the flight.He reached Karachi airport and asked his relatives to pick him up but he did not come out.Since then, their mobile phones have been switched off and their family in India has not been able to get in touch with them.Reacting on the issue, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, tweeted, "Indian nationals Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami went to Pakistan on March 8," she tweeted."We have taken up this matter with the government of Pakistan and requested them for an update."
Ankara: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged Turks resident in Europe to have five children, telling the millions-strong diaspora they were the continent's "future" as a bitter dispute festered between Ankara and Brussels.



Turkey and Europe are locked in diplomatic crisis after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from campaigning for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.



Erdogan has repeatedly accused EU states of behaving like Nazi Germany over what he sees as discrimination against Turks, in comments that have caused outrage across the continent.



"From here I say to my citizens, I say to my brothers and sisters in Europe... Educate your children at better schools, make sure your family live in better areas, drive in the best cars, live in the best houses," said Erdogan.



"Have five children, not three. You are Europe's future."



"This is the best answer to the rudeness shown to you, the enmity, the wrongs," he said in a televised speech in Eskisehir, a city south of Istanbul.



Some 2.5 million Turkish citizens resident in Europe are eligible to vote in elections in their homeland. But millions more people living in EU states have Turkish origins.



Erdogan, a father of four, has previously urged women in Turkey to have at least three children to help boost the population, in comments denounced by women's rights activists.



Dutch 'banditry'



Last weekend, just days before the Dutch election, police in Rotterdam used horses and dogs to disperse pro-Erdogan protesters demonstrating against the ban on Turkish ministers.



Erdogan said there was no difference between the tactics used by the police "and the gladiators in ancient Rome."



Several days later, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw off a challenge from far-right politician Geert Wilders at the ballot box, to the relief of other EU leaders.



But Erdogan said there was to be no reconciliation with The Hague.



"You use all kinds of banditry for your own ends against a state like Turkey and then you act as if nothing happened and continue as before."



Rotterdam's mayor had initially granted permission for a pro-Turkish protest to take place on Friday over the police's tactics at the weekend, but the organisers later called it off, a city council spokesman said.



Analysts say Erdogan is seeking with his volcanic rhetoric to woo nationalist votes in the April 16 referendum on constitutional change, which analysts believe is heading for a tight outcome.



Also Friday, a Turkish pro-government newspaper ran a front-page mock-up of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform under the slogan "Frau Hitler".



German deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: "We are not taking part in a game of provocation."



'Blow Europe's mind'



Erdogan also lashed out at a decision by the top EU court allowing European firms to ban employees from wearing political or religious symbols -- including the Islamic headscarf.



A day after accusing the EU of starting a "crusade" against Islam by the ruling, he said the court should "ban the kippa ban too" -- although in theory the Jewish skullcap should be included in the decision which covers all religious symbols.



"They are hypocrites!" said Erdogan.



With no end in sight to the tensions between Turkey and the EU which have raised new doubts over Ankara's long-standing membership bid, the government has also threatened to walk away from a key migration deal.



The deal, which was reached on March 18 last year, substantially reduced the flow of migrants to the EU which had peaked in 2015, and was exploited by the European far right.



Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, a hardliner who is close to Erdogan, threatened to "blow the mind" of Europe by sending over 15,000 refugees a month.



"Let us remind you that you cannot play games in this region and ignore Turkey," he said.



The EU says it expects Turkey to continue implementing the deal.



But the United Nations children's agency UNICEF on Friday said the agreement had been plagued by broken promises, and although it had curbed migrant flows, it had increased the suffering of children.
In the state Budget announced recently, the Telangana government sought to restore the confidence of the people in the public health care system.This incident comes as a big blow to that effort.Unable to pay a bribe of Rs 150 for a wheelchair at Gandhi Hospital, Telanganas biggest government hospital, a patient was forced to use his childs mini-scooter to reach the doctors ward.Raju, 33, has been awaiting surgery for a head injury for six months now. He had met with an accident in August last year.Earlier, we used to pay. But during our last three trips, we have been using our childs mini-scooter. We are very poor. We cannot pay Rs 100-150 for a wheelchair each time," Raju's wife Santoshi told CNN-News 18.Reacting to CNN-News18's story, state minister KT Rama Rao contacted the superintendent of Gandhi Hospital and asked him to intervene in the matter.Raju was treated in hospital for two months after the accident and then discharged. The family was asked to arrange for blood before the surgery. Since then, every time the family visits the hospital, they are told that no bed is available."We have four children. We are facing a very tough time. Doctors say there are no beds. They ask us to arrange 4-5 packets of blood, saying the surgery can take place only then. We don't know many people here. What should we do?" she asked.When hospital staff saw her talking to mediapersons, they were promptly provided the family a wheelchair.Raju and Santoshi are now appealing to the government to help them in arranging blood and getting the surgery moved up.
It's always a risk to recreate a classic that has been etched deep into the minds of the audience and the task becomes heftier if the original film is the first animated film ever to have won a Best Film Academy Award. However, after the massive success of live-action remake of The Jungle Book, a confident Disney decided to go for a live-action remake of Beauty and The Beast. In 1991, Disney brought magic on screen with a love-story between a village girl and a beastly prince, that won the hearts all over, in 2017 Disney gave the animated characters flesh, bones and much more.The film's story is an intriguing love story of a brave and intelligent Belle who finds herself trapped in the regressive mentality of her village and seeks to go on an adventure far and beyond. Situations lead her to meet a cursed prince in a forgotten castle and how her kindness and urge for freedom transforms the beast into a caring soul is what the film is about. Unlike other Disney fairytale, Beauty and The Beast has always been regarded progressive because of its strong-headed female lead who saves a prince from a life-long curse.Starring Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as The Beast, the film rides high on both the central characters. Emma is flawless as Belle and almost an extension of herself. Belle is fierce, strong-headed and kind . Disney made a smart move to rope in Emma for Belle as there couldn't have been anyone better than Watson to bring in the required changes so effortlessly without really changing the essence of the character. Emma gave a new depth to the 'thinking girl's' princess. The live-action Belle is not only a romantic at heart but an adventurer by her soul. She works alongside her father as an inventor, reads despite the entire village calling her names and hopes to get out of her provincial life. She's a rebel, defying the conventional norms and making her own decisions and choices. Emma Watson imbibes these traits beautifully, making Belle her own. From Watson's attire to her attitude as Belle, everything about her is how a perfect role-model for young ones should be.Dan Stevens as Beasts has one of the most challenging roles, and he performs beautifully. The back story of the beast and pain and remorse in his eyes makes it easy to connect to the Beast despite his rude behaviour. Luke Evans as Guston is a little underplayed. Guston, known for his vanity, could have had more flair and selfishness, but Evans brought it down a notch, making it a little difficult to relate to him as the villain in the story. One man who completely owns his part is Josh Goad. The friend and close companion of Guston, Gas as LaFou is entertaining. He's sarcastic, funny and his love for Guston can easily be sensed in every scene. Voiceover of the animated objects in the castle has been done by veteran actors like Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen and Emma Thompson, all are brilliant at their parts and make the castle scenes truly enchanting.Coming to the treatment of the film, director Bill Condon makes sure that the retelling more progressive and relatable to the new generation. The way characters speak is simpler, Belle and Beast discuss Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the entire sarcastic under-tone of LaFou, and newer additions to classic Belle are some of the notable things. The film also touches upon the topic of homosexuality in the film, where La Fou is openly gay and in one scene a manly hunter is seemed pleased with his feminine dressing done by Madame de Garderobe. However, one might get a little disappointed with the exclusive, much-hyped blink or you'll miss it 'gay moment'. The makers have also added depth to the story by giving a glimpse of Belle and The Beast's childhood. While Belle finds out about her fearless mother in Paris, the audience gets to know Beast's loss of innocence by his father in the past.The songs in the film are its soul. Disney composer Alan Menken, who penned songs for the original animation has written three new ballads for the live-action retelling. The film also features unused lyrics from the original that were penned by the late Howard Ashman. You might just come out of the theatre humming Guston or Belle, but its Be Our Guest that enchants you to a different world. Everything in the song is spectacular. Another song sequence that hits the nostalgia bone is the title track, with Belle dancing in her iconic yellow gown with the Beast as the makers take us back in the tale as old as time. The dance sequence is truly magical as it captures the moment both the characters finally fall in love with each other.Overall, Beauty and The Beast is the perfect live-action remake the world has been waiting for. It's deeper, progressive and visually appealing. The spectacular magical retelling deserves a watch for Emma Watson's ever powerful Belle and Dan Stevens' vulnerable Beast.Disney does it again, amusing us with its visuals and storytelling while making us nostalgic at the same time. A story as old as time served in an appealing glass of wine.Also Read: Tweet Review of Beauty and The Beast
Mumbai: Filmmaker Karan Johar on Thursday said he is extremely upset over the vandalism and arson attack on the Kolhapur set of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati.



"It's deeply saddening to me as a filmmaker, as a human being, as a citizen of our prestigious and wonderful country that we have to endure something like this. My thoughts, my support and all my ideologies are with Sanjay. Everytime I read something like this, it deeply saddens me," Karan said at the trailer launch of Baahubali: The Conclusion here.



His comment comes after an outdoor set of Padmavati near Kolhapur was vandalised and torched by hooded grou of men on early Wednesday. Around 80 to 90 per cent costumes and jewellery on the set were reduced to ashes.



This was the second such setback for Bhansali.



The filmmaker had moved the film's shoot to Maharashtra after activists of Shri Rajput Karni Sena outfit had assaulted him and vandalised the movie's Jaipur set in January over alleged distortions of history in the film's script.



"Padmavati" tells the story of Alauddin Khilji, the medieval-era Delhi ruler who was infatuated by Rajput queen Padmavati.


Five days after the first sexual harassment allegation against TVF Founder Arunubh Kumar surfaced online, the team has issued a second statement after the much-criticized 'severe-justice' response letter.



TVF has now admitted that they could've handled the situation better, instead of issuing a response that was 'quick and emotional'



Its been a tough couple of days for us at TVF, as you would know. We needed to first & foremost take care of our internal team that has been most impacted by the recent events.



Yes, there have been allegations of misbehaviour against our Founder, from several women. When the first blog appeared on March 12th, it shocked all of us including our extended set of associates. The allegations were severe. We were confused & taken aback.



The blog alleged that he/she was an employee with the organisation & even indicated specific content production they were a part of. We immediately began checking the facts internally.



We did send out an instant response, which may have been a bit too quick & emotional. We recognise that we should have handled that response better. However, it is a fact that we have found no records of any such person on our pay roll, in that given time period, as described in the blog.



Even as we were dealing with the first episode, several other allegations surfaced soon thereafter. Please know that we are sincerely looking into each one of them. We are committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations. Many of you have asked so we would like to confirm that yes, we have an ICC Committee set up in each location.



We as a team of 240 strong professionals are determined to work hard in winning your love back. We will do everything in our capacity to learn & get better, get bigger. Give us that chance.



CEO and founder of a popular Youtube channel, The Viral Fever (TVF), Arunabh Kumar, has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment after an anonymous post on the Medium.com went viral on Monday in which a writer, levelled the allegations.



The writer had accused Kumar of sexually harassing her during the time she was an employee of TVF. Following the blog, several other women who had worked in Arunabh started supporting the allegation, forcing an investigation.



Earlier, TVF released an official statement countering Indian Fowlers post, claiming that the incident was fictitious and that no such person ever worked in their company. The statement made no claims about any investigation, rather said that "severe justice will be served for making such false allegations."



In the wake of the controversy, TVF has pushed the date of their much-anticipated web series Bitch Please, which was earlier supposed go online on March 18.


"I am a psychologist, so studied and analysed MLAs.Then I felt I should speak to Arun Jaitley and called him: Goa Gov on how she decided CM"  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Going to raise in Parliament and petition to the President on conduct of Governor, Goa  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who was the partys election in-charge in Goa, has blamed Governor Mridula Sinha after losing out on government formation in the coastal state, saying she broke the Constitution by inviting the BJP first.The Governor broke the Constitution. A junior-most MLA was chosen as pro tem Speaker despite the norm of a senior member being chosen, he told Network18. It was the Congress which got the mandate by the public. The Governor should have called the Congress party first.Earlier in the day, he had tweeted that he would petition the President against the Governors conduct.Digvijaya Singh was referring to an interview Governor Mridula Sinha gave to the Mumbai Mirror on Thursday, in which she said she was waiting for the Congress, which had 17 seats, to come up with the numbers. She said that she took a call when the Congress didnt turn  after speaking to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.I didnt speak with the Centre, no one approached me, no one called me. Then Parrikar informed me around 6.30 pm on Sunday that he would show up with his supporters and they came and I spoke with them for about an hour and a half, she told Mumbai Mirror.I am a psychologist, so I studied and analysed them. I saw their signatures on the letters. I deliberated on the matter. The Congress had not shown up.Then, I felt I should speak with Arun Jaitley, and I called him around 9.30 in the evening, discussing the situation. I informed him I had verified the numbers and was satisfied and that Congress leaders hadnt arrived yet. He said that if any party comes with the numbers, it has to be considered. So that settled it, she said.The issue also echoed in the Rajya Sabha on Friday when Congress members demanded a discussion on the Governors role. The demanded was rejected by Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien. The BJP, however, said it was ready for a discussion if Congress MPs brought in a motion.
Congress was blamed for being late in deciding its Leader. BJP yet to decide leader in UP and Uttarakhand. Results came on 11th evening.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Congress- Punjab decided it's CLP Leader on 13th. Manipur and Goa on 12th.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

In Manipur there was a sitting Chief Minister in Goa 4 Ex CM got elected as MLAs but we chose the leader on 12th.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Letter to Governor goes after the leader is chosen. Which we did but the Governor took the decision without before that  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Who was most vocal in criticising Congress Observed in Goa. Vishwajit Rane.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

What was he doing when CLP leader was being chosen? Having coffee with Parrikar in a Hotel when we were choosing CLP leader.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

I admire Pratap Singh ji Rane who supported expulsion of his son from Congress. Full Marks to him.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Guest list at Parrikar's swearing in, photo of which Vishwajeet Rane showed me on 14th. All Casino Owners Hotel Owners and Mine Owners.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

The Core Team of Parrikar.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

When I and Chella Kumar took charge of Goa inn 2013 out of 9 Congress MLAs only 6 were active the whole organisation was in a disarray.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Even Congress Leaders were predicting 2-4 seats for Congress.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

A senior Hindi tv journalist who has a flat in Goa and who was very active for Congress in 2012 election predicted a clean sweep for AAP  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

And that too as late as January 2017. Result AAP reduced to Zero BJP came down from 22 to 13 and yet Digvijaya is a villain ! Unfair !  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

For this I give full credit to Chella Kumar Secretary AICC, PCC President, Girish Chodankar from the Party and all secular forces of Goa.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

As a strategy I had proposed a secular alliance with regional party headed by Babush Monserrate and Goa Forward headed by Vijay Sardesai.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Our alliance with Babush went through and we won 3 out of 5 but our alliance with Goa Forward was sabotaged by our own leaders. Sad !  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Goa Forward won 3 out of 4 they contested. Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Still Digvijaya Guilty? I leave it to you to judge.  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

"I am a psychologist, so studied and analysed MLAs.Then I felt I should speak to Arun Jaitley and called him: Goa Gov on how she decided CM"  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

Going to raise in Parliament and petition to the President on conduct of Governor, Goa  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) March 17, 2017

I have resigned from the Congress. I am too small a voter to merit even a phone call. @OfficeOfRG @nayanchandra @sureshnakhua  Savio Rodrigues (@PrinceArihan) March 17, 2017

In a series of tweets, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has defended his handling of the campaign as the partys election in-charge in the costal state, saying the prospect of an alliance with the Goa Forward Party was sabotaged by our own leaders.The GFP, which has three seats, eventually supported Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who comfortably won the floor test on Thursday. The Congress emerged as the single-largest party in the Assembly with 17 seats, but was unable to enlist the support of non-BJP MLAs to reach the majority mark of 21.Adding to the partys embarrassment, MLA Vishwajit Rane skipped the floor test and later resigned from the Assembly and the party. Hitting out at Rane, Singh questioned his decision to have coffee with Parrikar.Digvijaya Singh also denied suggestions that failure to zero in on a CM led to the Governor inviting the BJP to form the government.Singh also mocked the guest list for Parrikars swearing-in ceremony.He also claimed that the state unit was in a disarray before he took charge of the state in 2013.In a veiled reference to Rane, Singh also accused our own leaders of sabotaging the prospect of an alliance with the Goa Forward Party.He expressed confidence that had the alliance gone through, the Congress would have reached the magic figure of 22.Digvijaya Singh also raised questions over the "conduct" of Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, saying he would approach the President over the issue.Meanwhile, Goa Congress leader Savio Rodrigues has tendered his resignation.I am the vice-chairman of the Minority Commission. We had the mandate. It was our responsibility to make the claim (to form the government) and someone else has made the government. This is shameful. We lost because of stupidity. Earlier, we lost because of arrogance, he told CNN-News18.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra Assembly was adjourned thrice on Friday as the stand-off continued in the House over the farmers' loan waiver issue.



As soon as the House assembled for the day, the MLAs of Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP trooped into the well shouting slogans.



The Sena MLAs said, "Shiv Sena cha bhajapa la ishara. Shetkaryacha saat baara kora zalaach pahije (Shiv Sena warns the BJP that land records of farmers should be clear)."



The Congress and NCP members demanded that the loans of farmers should be waived off.



Speaker Haribhau Bagde appealed to the members to take their seats as he wanted to make an announcement.



He wished Congress MLA and former state Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on his birthday Friday.



The members cutting across party lines then greeted him by thumping the desks. Chavan stood up and accepted the good wishes with folded hands.



However, as some of the opposition members continued to shout slogans in the well, Bagde adjourned the House.



After the adjournment, the members who were in the well shouting slogans went to greet Chavan.



When the House reassembled, Yogesh Sagar (BJP), who was in the Chair, appealed that the Question Hour be taken up.



He said it would be unjust not to take up the questions given by the members.



Sagar called out to Congress MLA Rahul Bondre, whose question was listed first.



Bondre stood up but as the uproar by opposition members continued, he could not speak.



Sagar then adjourned the House and the Question Hour was washed out.



When the House assembled again, Speaker Haribhau Bagde, who was in the Chair, took up the tabling of papers and reports by various ministers, even as the opposition members continued to shout slogans demanding farmers' loan waiver.



Amid the noisy scenes, State Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar tabled the Economic Survey 2016-17.



Rajendra Patni (BJP) tabled the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report.



However, as the din continued, the Speaker again adjourned the House till 1 PM.
Lucknow/Dehradun: The suspense over who will be the next Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand continues as the BJP yet to reveal the names, but has fixed March 18 for the swearing-in ceremony in the hill state.



Party insiders said the next UP chief minister's name will be announced on Saturday after the Legislative Party meeting in Lucknow.



All of the 312 MLAs of the party and 12 MLAs from allies will meet at 5 pm to pick the next Chief Minister of the state.



Senior party leaders Venkaiah Naidu and Bhupendra Yadav will be flown in as "special observers" for the meeting. State BJP President Keshav Prasad Maurya was ruled out of the reckoning after party chief Amit Shah had said, "Keshav jiska naam tay karenge, uspe mohar laga denge (We will give our stamp of approval to anyone who's name Keshav decides on)."



In Uttarakhand, the party is gearing up for the swearing-in of the new government on Saturday. Uttarakhand BJP chief Ajay Bhatt said the oath taking has been fixed for 3 pm. "The name of the new Chief Minister and the ministers is yet to be declared, but preparations are underway," he said.



All 57 newly elected legislators of the BJP have been asked to come to the state capital between Friday and Saturday to take part in the swearing-in, which is likely to be a grand affair as the party has swept back to power after five years with a landslide majority.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah along with select ministers from the Union government and central office bearers are likely to be present at the oath-taking ceremony.



BJP leaders Trivendra Singh Rawat and Prakash Pant are said to be front-runners in the race.



Security arrangements are being made at the Parade Grounds, keeping in mind the VVIPs who will attend the event. Senior police and district officials, along with some BJP legislators, have been visiting the venue to oversee arrangements for Saturdays event.



The newly elected lawmakers of the BJP are likely to meet later on Friday to elect their new leader who will also be the next Chief Minister of the state. BJP president Amit Shah has named two central observers  Saroj Pandey and Narendra Tomar, to oversee the election of the new legislature party leader.
By Marcin Goclowski

WARSAW (Reuters) - As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, the country hoping to win the most jobs from London's financial centre is not Germany or France, but Poland.

While the likes of Frankfurt and Paris are competing for top investment bankers after Brexit, Poland has set its sights on mid-tier financial and technical work where salaries may not be astronomical but jobs are far more numerous.

Since the country joined the EU in 2004, many Poles have gone to Britain to work; now the government wants to attract more jobs currently based in Britain for Poles to do at home.

The Association of Business Service Leaders in Poland is working on projects with seven big financial firms about shifting jobs from London, said the Association's managing director Pawel Panczyj. The focus is on middle office functions such as risk management and information technology.

"We are talking with banks, insurance institutions and investment funds who want to move their middle office abroad. The main factor behind their decision (now) is Brexit," he told Reuters.

Panczyj's efforts are likely to bear fruit. The regional head of one global investment bank told Reuters that he estimates as many as 20 percent of jobs at the lender's London base could eventually be done in Poland.

Last year's referendum when Britons voted for Brexit has forced banks and other financial firms to seek new bases for some operations in a country that will remain in the EU, allowing them to continue serving clients in the bloc.

They are also under pressure to cut costs as they look at how to reorganise their operations. In some cases, this includes work that could still be based in Britain from a regulatory point of view, but needs to be done more cheaply than is possible in Europe's dominant financial capital.

Already, post-communist Poland has established itself as a major offshoring site for banks, with estimates of financial services jobs moved from all Western countries ranging from 35,000 to 45,000. Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) and UBS (UBSG.S) are among those basing large IT and back office administrative operations in the country.

Story continues

Now financial firms are starting to move more sophisticated work there such as risk management and product development, taking advantage of a well-educated workforce as well as office space and wages that are cheaper than in most of Europe.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) has 300 people working at its office in Warsaw and is seeking 200 more this year in areas ranging from risk modelling to working on the technology for its fixed income trading systems. It wants candidates with degrees in computer science or chartered financial analyst (CFA) qualifications, according to job advertisements.

UBS is looking to hire close to 300 people at its offices in Krakow and Wroclaw, according to its website.

HUBS OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY

"At the very beginning banks were hiring young people without (high) qualifications, but now they are becoming hubs of high technology," said Brunon Bartkiewicz, chief executive of Dutch-controlled Polish lender ING Bank Slaski.

The growth of high-tech roles reflects the changing make up of the people who work at investment banks.

The days of trading floors packed with hundreds of highly-paid dealers are coming to an end, with more of their market operations being automated. Banks need fewer people in front-office roles, and more in technology and as well in compliance and risk management to deal with tighter regulation since the global financial crisis.

That means Frankfurt and Paris are battling over a shrinking pool of front line investment bankers. Officials from the cities' lobby groups estimate they could each win around 10,000 jobs after Brexit.

By contrast, Poland's government expects to attract around 25,000-30,000 jobs from Britain in the business services sector just this year, with many of those in finance.

The shift to Poland started well before Britain voted to leave the EU, but plans to move more jobs have accelerated since the referendum, recruiters and consultants say.

TALENT BATTLE

In central Warsaw BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) employs 700 people in the Spire office complex, supporting the French bank's fund management business. Ryszard Piskorz, who runs BNP Securities Services there, says the bank is still expanding but needs to make itself an attractive place to work to fend off competitors who are also recruiting.

"Poland is an emerging country and in our sector Poland is coming out as a role expert, maybe even challenging Luxembourg as a fund industry centre," said Piskorz.

Marta Aserigadu, a recruitment consultant at Experis, part of Manpower Group, said more well-educated Poles are finding it appealing to stay in their home country as banks basing operations there pushes up wages.

"There is no need to leave Poland now. The difference in salaries concerns only (recent) graduates. But this difference vanishes very quickly when you take further steps in your career," she said.

"These people can reach high-level, decisive jobs within global corporations. Staying at home, with low Polish costs of living, they can start their international careers. There is no need to leave to London and live an immigrant's life."

The government is pushing to keep this trend going. The ruling Law and Justice party has a protectionist stance against foreign lenders in retail banking, but hosting investment banks' back and middle office operations brings in jobs and taxes without any loss of control over its financial system.

"Some time ago Poles were departing to London, but now it is the other way round," Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in January.

(This version of the story corrects staff number at Goldman Sachs in 11th paragraph)

(writing by Rachel Armstrong; editing by David Stamp)
Irish low cost airline Ryanair announced on Wednesday its first flights to Ukraine, with four new routes departing from Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands.



Europe's busiest carrier said it would operate 15 weekly flights, with five of them from Kiev airport to London Stansted and three to Manchester.



It also will launch four weekly flights from Kiev to Stockholm Skavsta and three more to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.



"Ryanair is pleased to announce that low fares have arrived in Ukraine, our 34th country of operation," Ryanair's Chief Commercial Officer David O'Brien said in a statement.



The Ukraine flights will start in October. Ryanair forecasts that 250,000 customers would use the routes annually, O'Brien added.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House on Friday for a meeting that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape the working relationship between two of the world's most powerful leaders.



The new U.S. president greeted the long-serving stateswoman at the White House with a handshake upon her arrival before they began talks in the Oval Office. Both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good.



The leader of Europe's largest economy and the U.S. president were expected to discuss funding for NATO and relations with Russia in their first meeting since Trump took office in January. Asked if they talked about NATO, Trump said the two leaders had discussed many things.



Merkel smiled comfortably in her chair next to the president, who sat with his legs apart and hands together. They are scheduled to hold a joint press conference around 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT.)



The meeting is consequential for both sides.



Merkel, who officials say has prepared carefully for the encounter, is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union.



Trump, who as a presidential candidate criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, will seek her support for his demand that North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations pay more for their defense needs.



Relationship building is a less overt but important agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman.



"Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government.



Trump is eager to see follow-through on his demand that European countries shoulder more of the burden of paying for the NATO alliance, which he has criticized.



He will also seek ideas from Merkel on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader Merkel has dealt with extensively and whom Trump, to the consternation of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, has praised.



"The president will be very interested in hearing the chancellor's views on her experience interacting with Putin," a senior administration official told reporters.



CLIMATE ACCORD



A U.S. official said the Trump administration's position on U.S. participation in the Paris agreement to curb climate change would likely come up in the Merkel meeting and be further clarified in the weeks and months ahead. Merkel is a strong supporter of international efforts to fight global warming.



Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed during his campaign to "cancel" the Paris agreement within 100 days, saying it would be too costly for the U.S. economy.



Since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue. In a New York Times interview in November, he said he would keep an open mind about the Paris deal.



Merkel is also likely to press Trump about U.S. support for European security, despite assurances from Vice President Mike Pence about that issue on a recent trip to Europe.



"There is still lingering doubt about ... how the U.S. sees European security, and whether the U.S. sees its security and Europes security as intrinsically linked and inseparable," Jeffrey Rathke, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told reporters.
Jerusalem: The Israeli military said it shot down one of numerous anti-aircraft missiles launched on Friday at its air force which was operating in Syria.



Rocket sirens had sounded in Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank and two Reuters witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later.



The military said in its statement that one of the anti-aircraft missiles had been intercepted. The blast was heard as far away as Jerusalem, dozens of miles away. There were no reports of casualties or damage.



"Overnight IAF (Israeli Air Force) aircraft targeted several targets in Syria. Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and IDF (Israel Defence Force) Aerial Defence Systems intercepted one of the missiles," the military said in its statement.



Israel has carried out dozens of strikes to prevent weapons smuggling to the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting rebels alongside the Syrian army.



Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's staunchest backer and has provided militia fighters to help him. Israel is concerned Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006, is trying to obtain sophisticated weapons it could use against Israel.



Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss what he charged were Iran's attempts to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria.


Even so, Tillerson said the United States' "strategic patience" had ended  the stance of the previous administration under Barack Obama.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson told reporters at a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-Se.

The United Nations has imposed multiple sets of sanctions on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes, but its main diplomatic protector and trade partner China is accused of not fully enforcing them.

Military action by the United States against nuclear-armed North Korea is an "option on the table" if the threat from the rogue regime escalates, Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said on Friday.The strong comments from the secretary of state, in Asia for his first foray into crisis management, appear to signal a sea change in American policy towards the isolated country.Tillerson's tour comes after a missile launch last week that Pyongyang described as a drill for an attack on US bases in Japan.The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from the North, but the capital Seoul is within range of Pyongyang's artillery and analysts believe any conflict could risk rapid escalation and heavy casualties.Under that policy, the US ruled out engaging the North until it made a tangible commitment to denuclearisation, hoping that internal stresses in the isolated country would bring about change."Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict," he said. "If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe require action, then, that option's on the table."North Korea has a long-standing ambition to become a nuclear power, saying it needs to be able to defend itself, and conducted its first underground atomic test in 2006, in the teeth of global opposition.Four more test blasts have followed, two of them last year.Tillerson's remarks came a day after he said in Tokyo that 20 years of efforts to denuclearise the North had "failed" and promised a new approach, without giving specifics.On Saturday Tillerson will head to Beijing to press it to do more."I don't believe we have ever fully achieved the maximum level of action that can be taken under the UN security council resolution with full participation of all countries," he said."We know that other nations can take actions." Beijing shares US concerns over Pyongyang's attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear devices, but has also blamed Washington for escalating tensions.The issue is also made more complicated by the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea.
London: Britain said on Friday it had received White House assurances that claims it had snooped on Donald Trump would not be repeated, after spy agency GCHQ dismissed them as "utterly ridiculous" in a rare public denial.



Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman reiterated GCHQ's denial of the claims -- which had been repeated by the US president's spokesman on Thursday -- as "utterly ridiculous" and said they "should be ignored".



"We have made this clear to the administration and have received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated," the spokesman said.



"The facts is, within the Five Eyes pact, we cannot use each other's capabilities to circumvent our laws," he said.



"We have a close, special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case."



Britain and the United States -- along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand -- are part of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing alliance forged from the embers of World War II.



Late on Thursday, a spokesman for GCHQ said: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then-president elect are nonsense."



The press office of GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, told AFP on Friday that it was "not unusual" for the agency to make public comment but acknowledged that "perhaps the tone of it was unusual".



The electronic eavesdropping agency does not normally comment on intelligence matters, though it has stepped up its public relations in recent months, including for recruitment drives and warnings on cyber-security.



'Harms our security'



Trump accused former US president Barack Obama on March 4 of a Nixon/Watergate-like wiretapping plot that would almost certainly break US law.



In the subsequent Fox report, Napolitano claimed that "three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command" to order the surveillance.



"He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice," Napolitano said, claiming that Obama used GCHQ to circumvent US law.



Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer repeated the allegations on Thursday, quoting from the Fox News report in which Napolitano spoke.



Members of Congress from both parties who are investigating the claims have found no evidence to support them.



Tim Farron, leader of Britain's opposition Liberal Democrats, called Spicer's repetition of the claims made by Napolitano "shameful".



"Trump is compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment," he said, adding: "This harms our and US security."




Anderson Cooper wiretapping wiretap

The unsubstantiated wiretapping allegations President Donald Trump lobbed at President Barack Obama nearly two weeks ago on Twitter have continued to haunt Trump.

Republicans and Democrats alike have denounced Trump's allegations. The president on Wednesday night essentially acknowledged that he had no evidence to back up his original assertions. The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee echoed that there were no indications to believe any wiretapping had taken place.

CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night took it a step further.

"Tonight, we know the president of the United States has no facts," Cooper said at the opening of his program. "No facts to back up his startling allegation that the former president of the United States, President Obama, wiretapped him in Trump Tower during the campaign."

Cooper pointed to a heated exchange that unfolded between the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, and reporters on Thursday, in which Spicer attempted to defend Trump's unsubstantiated wiretapping claims. Cooper also referred to comments Trump made during a Fox News interview Wednesday night.

Related Video:

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

"I've been reading things," Trump said, pointing to a New York Times article that he indicated backed up his assertions  as well as remarks a Fox News host made about investigations into potential ties between Trump associates and Russia.

Devin Nunes

Congressional inquiry turns up nothing

Trump said he wanted a congressional investigation over his wiretapping claims. The House Intelligence Committee chair, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, said on Wednesday that the committee found no such evidence of an Obama-ordered spying operation against Trump.

Story continues

"Clearly, the president is wrong," Nunes said of his conclusion if Trump's tweets were to be taken "literally."

Senate Intelligence Committee leadership said in a joint statement on Wednesday that there was no indication that Trump Tower was targeted for surveillance during the 2016 election.

Despite the rebukes, the president and the White House have persisted.

Spicer indicated earlier this week that he was "extremely confident" the Department of Justice would find evidence to back up Trump's claim. Trump intimated similar assertions Wednesday night, saying, "I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks."

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in a CNN interview on Thursday night that Trump's relentless wiretapping assertions were starting to hurt him.

"We're not in an election anymore, and it's not his opponent he's throwing off," Santorum said. "I think it's him that he's throwing off."

Watch Cooper's monologue below:





NOW WATCH: Here's why the former head of the CIA says Obama never tapped Trump's phones





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Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters North Idaho Veterans Stand Down coming in May March 16, 2017 The 24th North Idaho Veterans Stand Down will be held from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 13, at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, 4056 North Government Way, Coeur dAlene. The event kicks off a program created by St. Vincent de Paul to assist veterans and their families in Eastern Washington and the five North Idaho counties with services throughout the year.



The original Stand Down for Veterans was modeled after the Stand Down concept used during the Vietnam War to provide a safe retreat for units returning from combat.



Today, Stand Down refers to a community-based intervention program to assist all veterans who are homeless or at risk of being homeless with information and services.



The North Idaho Veterans Stand Down also incorporates services for veterans dependents. Veterans will have the opportunity to meet personally with VA healthcare and benefits representatives. Organizations that provide medical, dental, counseling, housing, clothing, clothing repair, food assistance, haircuts, massages, and bike repair will be available. A hot meal will be served to all attendees, volunteers and service providers. Employers with job openings will also be present. Homeless veterans will be eligible to receive military surplus.



The Stand Down is a time for the community to connect with the homeless veteran population and address this crisis that affects every city and state in this country. The Hand Up, Not a Handout philosophy of the Stand Down is carried out through the work of volunteers and organizations in North Idaho.



To volunteer, request more information or for veterans assistance, please contact Eric Swanbeck, Veteran Services Coordinator at St. Vincent de Paul, (208) 664-3095 or email at eric@stvincentdepaulcda.org. Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail!
Good France cuisine on the menu

So said French Ambassador H?di Picquart at the launch of the event on Wednesday at the French Embassy in St Clair.

Go?t de France/Good France highlights French cuisine at diners around the world. In TT , two restaurants will be participating in the food fest Zazou Bistro Modern located in the Country Club, Maraval, and Melange Restaurant on Ariapita Avenue, Woodbrook.

Worldwide, some 250,000 diners are expected to savour French fare at 2,000 restaurants.

Picquart said: Go?t de France/ Good France is a celebration of the vitality of French cuisine. It is an event that promotes dialogue about different cultures by providing a common language: The language of food. He said the third edition of the event, which began in 2015, will focus on training for the catering, hotel and tourism industries, bringing together schools and students from all over the world.

Seventy-one culinary schools from around the world will take part in the event by serving French-style dishes on March 21, he said. More than 2,000 restaurants and 150 French embassies on all five continents will take part in the event by providing dishes that celebrate all categories of restaurants - from gourmet dining to exceptional bistros. The event, organised in the form of a dinner, will honour the excellence of French cuisine, its capacity for innovation and the values that it conveys: sharing, enjoyment, respect for our peers, the planet and the art of eating well.

Two chefs, one local and the other from France will be responsible for the local input for this culinary adventure.

We have the pleasure, here in Trinidad and Tobago, to have the participation of two great chefs, Pierre-Yves Le Bihan [France] and Moses Ruben accompanied by his daughter Collette, who, at their respective restaurants, Zazou Bistro Moderne and M?lange, will participate in this global event as they present their art and their culinary expertise, Picquart said.

Each menu will feature dishes that are lower in fat, sugar and salt, thereby promoting the art of eating well and respect for the environment, and each restaurant will commit to paying five percent of sales to a local NGO (non-governmental organisation) working to support health and the environment.

Le Bihan will present a fivecourse meal with ravioli, tuna, duck, cheese and dessert using local ingredients but keeping the French spirit and techniques in his food.

Rubens dishes will be international with a local fusion. His menu will include chicken, salmon, mousseline, lamb and dessert.
Vicious, barbaric act

Williams told reporters yesterday at the Scarborough Police Station in Tobago, investigators are pursing the case with vigour to ensure the 22-year-old officers killers are brought to justice. It has traumatised the nation and it has traumatised the entire Police Service, Williams said. Such a vicious and barbaric act by individual or individuals is one, no one in this society would endorse or condone. He said, I want to give the public the assurance that we are going to continue to focus on this investigation in a special way because it is a police officer who has died, but we will also continue to focus on other investigations in a special way. We extend resources at our disposal to solve crimes. In this particular instance the entire society has been traumatized. And we have to lift our game to ensure crime is solved. When asked about the findings of the investigations thus far, he stated, I will not be speaking on the stage of the investigation or the content of the investigation.

I will tell you the investigation is being pursued at this point time with all effort. We have detained several persons and I would not give the names of the name of those persons at this point in time, but yes we have detained persons.

There are some key indicators but I dont want to share at this point in time. We will brief the media in a substantial way shortly. When questioned about a video circulating on social media with what seems to be WPC Joseph being choked and tugged by a male friend, Williams said he is unaware of the particular incident but went on to say he will reserve any further information surrounding the death of WPC Joseph, at this time. The police service has planned to cover all cost for the burial of WPC Joseph. Williams said WPC Joseph short time with the police service will be remembered.

He said in light of all the circumstances with this death, an extremely young officer just passed out just months ago, are such where we have to do something special. As the head of the organisation we will undertake to cover the expenses of the funeral. Thats what we intend to do. WPC Joseph,22, was reported missing on the March 9. She was four months in the service and was attached to the Morvant Police Station.

After six days of land and sea searches, the body of the missing officer was discovered on Wednesday by a Felicity fisherman out at sea in the Gulf of Paria off Sea Lots. Williams said the police service is grieving the loss of a young officer and sent condolences to her family and close friends.
Autopsy inconclusive

Yesterday, Josephs mother Paula Guy and a female relative went to the Centre accompanied by police officers and were led into the mortuary room to assist in identifying the body of WPC Joseph.

Newsday understands that the body was identified via the slippers Joseph was wearing as well as her clothing.

Josephs mother appeared dazed as she stared at the battered body of her daughter whose face on the right side was bashed in. The rope around Josephs neck which had two foundation blocks were yesterday removed by mortuary attendants who also removed rope used to bind her hands.

Mortuary attendants also removed an iron anchor from around the neck of the woman.

Following the hour and a half long autopsy, Josephs mother and the other female relative were led to a police vehicle and driven away.

Reporters who gathered outside the centre waiting to interview the mother, were not allowed near her as she left the centre. Police investigators said that they were told that due to the advanced state of decomposition it was difficult to determine conclusively a cause of death.

Police are now relying heavily on the evidence of eye witnesses to prepare a case against the main suspect, a 36-year-old labourer and a 24-year-old man both of Sea Lots.

Officers said that they expect to wind up the investigations by Saturday and will approach Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC by Sunday for his directions.
Man, teen reported missing

Cozier, a pupil of Bon Air West High School, was last seen leaving her Ghandi Street, St Helena home at 2.30 pm on Wednesday.

She was wearing a white and blue flowered dress. She has been described as being five-feet tall, of medium build and dark brown in complexion.

The teenager was reported missing to the Las Lomas Police by her mother, Allana Williams.

Golden of Fatima Trace, Paramin in Maraval, was last seen at the corner of Nicholas Street and Morne Coco Road at about 1.30 pm, last week Friday. He was wearing a pair of blue three-quarter pants, a black coloured t-shirt and a pair of black and white sneakers.

He is of mixed descent, and is five feet, seven inches tall.

Any one with information on the whereabouts of these two missing people are asked to call 800- TIPS or contact the police at 555, 999, 911 or any police station.
PM goes on vacation after US trip

Speaking at the post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Anns, Rowley said he will leave the country on March 29 to meet with executives of British Petroleum, Shell and Exxon in Houston.

He noted that Shell is playing a integral part in this countrys ongoing energy initiative with Venezuela, and explained that discussions with Exxon are important in terms of keeping TTs eyes focused on what is happening in Guyanas emerging energy sector and how this country can partner with its Caricom neighbour in that sector.

When all of this is done, I would have been on my feet since August (2016). When Im through with the assignment in Houston, it is my intention to take one week vacation. Its only for a week, so dont let that shock you, Rowley told reporters.

He reminded that he is entitled to 28 days vacation and has not taken any large vacation in the last five to seven years. He took a brief vacation last August, when he went to the US for a medical check-up. The Prime Minister subsequently said his doctors gave him a clean bill of health.

Rowley also said he will be travelling again at the end of May to New York, to attend his daughter Sonels graduation. I would not miss her graduation for anything, he said.

After his return to TT, Rowley will pay a state visit to Chile. That visit takes place from May 29 to 31. A state visit to China is unlikely to happen this year, he said.

Disclosing that the next few weeks will see several sittings of Parliament to deal with a plethora of legislation, Rowley said a daily newspaper (not Newsday) in an editorial last week advised the Government that it did not want to hear anything about happened before, it just wants the Government to get on and do what has to be done. The Prime Minister countered, Let me promise that editorial writer and anyone else in this country...that you will continue to hear about what has happened before (the Peoples National Movement was elected in September 2015). He added that the country will be expected to hold those who were there before accountable for what happened before. Rowley said, If you ignore the past, you surrender the future.
It May Not Be the Time

You Think It Is
At the cutting edge of medical science, stem cell therapy holds tremendous potential. But it's still relatively new, and it still needs to be studied vigorously for safety and efficacy as it pertains to a wide range of health issues. Two dramatically different new reports further highlight the need for more research and perhaps regulation, NPR reports. In the first, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report on three elderly women who had stem cells derived from fat tissue injected directly into their eyes at a for-profit clinic in Florida in an attempt to treat macular degeneration. They each paid $5,000 for the unproven approach, meant to treat the most common cause of blindness in the elderly; instead, they went blind. One doctor warns that if something "sounds too good to be true," it "may even be horrible."

In stark contrast, a study out of Japan, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports on the promise of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which can be made using any cell in the body to create cells that resemble embryonic stem cells. Japanese researchers converted these stem cells into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells, which macular degeneration destroys, injected them into one eye of a patient, and found that the progression of the disease stopped altogethera "really remarkable medical advance," an outside researcher says. Other trials using iPE cells to treat diseases like Parkinson's will soon be underway, reports Science magazine, though a Japanese researcher cautions that diseases aren't likely to fully reverse: "Regenerative medicine is not going to cure patients in the way they hope." (Stem cells may help to halt multiple sclerosis, too.)
McDonald's employee Pedro Viloria doesn't typically jump through the drive-thru window, but a shocking moment during his Tuesday breakfast shift in Doral, Florida, led him to do just that. Now, he's being deemed a hero for his quick actions. Mashable reports that after handing over an order to an off-duty police officer at the pick-up window, Viloria noticed she was struggling to breathe. She then fell unconscious, causing her foot to slide off the brake, per Fox News. The officers SUV then began rolling forward with her two children inside, yelling in the back seat. In one swift motion, Viloria leapt through the window to help. (You can see video at CBS Miami.

"In that moment, I thought, I'd rather save that woman's life," Viloria tells WPLG. The SUV narrowly missed colliding with another vehicle before coming to a stop at a curb. Another McDonald's employee, who asked to remain unnamed, administered CPR along with a number of first responders who happened to be at or nearby the scene. The condition and identity of the officer has yet to be released after she was transported to the hospital. I think I speak for our McDonalds family when I say how proud we are of Pedro," says a statement from McDonald's that also thanked his co-worker. "Their quick thinking and action were everything in that moment. (Read more McDonald's stories.)
In 2015, Australian 6-year-old Aidan Fenton attended a controversial week-long "self-healing" workshop meant to treat his diabetes. After attending a course and returning to a nearby hotel, the boy collapsed in his family's room; his parents' screams got the attention of staff, who called police, but Aidan died at the scene, the Washington Post reports. Now, nearly two years later, his parents, ages 56 and 41, have been arrested and charged with their son's manslaughter. Police say Aidan was denied food and insulin, and they say his parents were complicit in that denial; their "gross negligence" caused his death, police say, per the Sydney Morning Herald. If convicted, they face 25 years in jail.

The workshop was run by Hongchi Xiao, a Chinese man who describes himself as a "healer" and practices what he calls "paidalajin" therapy. It involves fasting, stretching, and slapping the skin until it bruises in order to release "poisoned blood." He has not been charged in Aidan's death, and in a Facebook post shortly after the incident he denied responsibility. But he was arrested in November in the UK on suspicion of manslaughter after a 71-year-old woman with diabetes died during one of his retreats. He's currently out on bail. Xiao insists that a study shows his paidalajin therapy can "cure" diabetes, though he notes that during a "healing crisis" while undergoing the therapy, patients needed treatment including "rapid action insulin to prevent ketoacidosis," a medical emergency that can lead to death. (A family faces charges in the death of a teen after a 68-day fast.)
State troopers have charged two Pennsylvania women with disorderly conduct for a hair-pulling fight that erupted over a newly shoveled parking spot on a snowy street, the AP reports. Troopers in Schuylkill County say a 23-year-old woman claimed she shoveled the spot only to have her 43-year-old neighbor's husband park his pickup in it. It happened in Ashland borough on Tuesday night. The region took the brunt of that day's winter storm. Police say the women argued about the parking space before pushing and punching one another, and then pulling each other's hair. Both have been charged with disorderly conduct. (Read more weird crimes stories.)
British officials are trying to trace the owner of a trove of gold coins worth a "life-changing" amount of money found stashed inside a piano, the AP reports. A coroner investigating the find on Thursday urged anyone with information to come forward. When the piano's owners took it to be tuned last year in Shropshire, central England, it was found to contain a hoard of gold sovereigns minted between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Investigators have determined that the piano was built in London in 1906 and sold to a pair of piano teachers in Saffron Walden, eastern England. They are seeking information on its ownership before 1983.

Anyone wanting to make a claim has until April 20, when coroner John Ellery will conclude his inquest. If the gold's owner or heirs cannot be traced, it will be declared treasure, and the piano's current owners will reap the reward. Officials have not disclosed how much the coins are worth. Peter Reavill, who assesses finds for the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme, describes the coins as "potentially life-changing for somebody to receive." (Read more strange stuff stories.)
Looks like North Korea and the US finally agree on somethingthough unfortunately, that something is the possibility of war. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in South Korea, where he said Friday that the era of "strategic patience" is over and pre-emptive military action is definitely an "option on the table," the BBC reports. Tillerson, speaking after a visit to the DMZ that divides North and South, said that while military conflict isn't what the US wants, American forces will deliver an "appropriate response" if they or their South Korean allies are threatened, reports the AP, which notes that previous administrations have rarely raised the option of military action "so explicitly."

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, then that option's on the table," Tillerson said, calling for China, the next country on his Asia trip, to fully implement sanctions against Pyongyang. A day earlier, after meeting with Japan's leaders, Tillerson said 20 years of diplomacy had failed and it was time to try a "new approach" to stop North Korea's nuclear program, the Washington Post reports. Soon afterward, Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing held a press conference, vowing to continue the nuclear program and warning that "peace and stability" was being threatened by the US and Seoul. (Read more North Korea stories.)
The White House is standing by its explosive allegation that former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower phonesdespite the Senate Intelligence Committee's finding that there's no evidence for the claim. "Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," committee chief Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, said in a statement with ranking Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. The statement came the day after a similar statement from the head of the House Intelligence Committee, the New York Times reports.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday that the president stands by the claim. During a testy news conference, Spicer refused to answer questions about the president's reaction to the congressional statements. Instead, he repeated that the president meant surveillance when he said "wiretapping" and read out news reports he said backed up the claim, becoming annoyed when reporters told him they were based on the "anonymous sources" the White House has often criticized, Politico reports. Spicer repeated Trump's claim that more information will surface in the weeks ahead. (The Breitbart editor who wrote the story Trump may have based the claim on says it was more of a "potential scenario.")
An admitted al-Qaeda fighter was convicted on Thursday of federal terrorism charges for participating in a fierce firefight in Afghanistan that left two US servicemen dead. A jury in federal court in Brooklyn deliberated for about two hours Thursday before convicting Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, the AP reports. "As demonstrated by this case, the United States will be tireless in its efforts to hold al-Qaeda members accountable when they target American citizens serving their country abroad," Acting US Attorney Bridget M. Rohde said in a statement. The Saudi-born defendant, who claims Niger citizenship, had insisted he was a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than a civilian court prosecution.

Harun, 46, was extradited from Italy to the US in 2012. Prosecutors told jurors that while in Italian custody, he confessed that he threw a grenade and shot at an American military unit in a 2003 ambush that killed Army Pvt. Jerod Dennis, of Antlers, Okla., and Air Force Airman Ray Losano, of Del Rio, Texas. While on the run, Harun later masterminded a failed plot to bomb a US embassy in Nigeria, the government said. "The defendant is a man who made terrorism his life story," Assistant US Attorney Melody Wells said in closing arguments on Thursday. "He made a career out of violent jihad." Harun, who refused to attend his trial, faces a possible life term at his sentencing on June 22. (Read more al-Qaeda stories.)
An endangered Hawaiian monk seal has died after wandering into a net pen and becoming trapped at a fish farm funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii. Officials with NOAA said the death of the 10-year-old monk seal happened at Blue Ocean Mariculture, the same fish farm that NOAA's National Marine Fishery Service has been using for research in conjunction with a plan to expand aquaculture into federal waters around the Pacific. NOAA officials said they believe the seal drowned after the farm operators opened one panel of a net pen to release a shark that had gotten inside, per the AP. Only about 1,400 Hawaiian monk seals are left in the wild, according to official estimates.

"We did not see any signs of trauma or entanglement or any gashes or lacerations," says NOAA's National Marine Fishery Service's David Schofield, the marine mammal response coordinator for the region. "The seal, B18, had a stomach full of fish and otherwise appeared in good body condition so we can draw no other conclusion than that the animal did die in the fish pen likely due to drowning or suffocation." Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair Suzanne Case said in a statement that the death is a tragedy and that the state will work with federal officials to prevent something similar from happening again. (Read more endangered species stories.)
Ashley Hallford was 32 weeks pregnant when the diagnosis came. A hard lump on her neck wasn't caused by an infection in the salivary gland as doctors had suspected. Rather, it was "a rare and very aggressive" form of cancer, Hallford tells WXIA. A week later, the Georgia woman was induced and gave birth to a baby boy who didn't spend a moment in the neonatal intensive care unithe was just four pounds but as healthy as a full-term infant, per Northwest Georgia Oncology Centers. "That was just a miracle," says Hallfordbut it was only the first. After her softball-sized mass was removed days later in November 2007, doctors told Hallford she had stage 4 cancer with tumors all over her body. Despite receiving the lifetime maximum dosage of radiation in six weeks, the tumors kept multiplying until there were too many for doctors to count.

Given just five weeks to live, Hallford began chemotherapy, but she also started praying. Members of her church prayed for her, too. Then during a checkup in July 2008, doctors told Hallford that her cancer was in remission. "I was so dumbfounded," she says. Hallford has since given birth to two more children, though a fertility specialist had previously told her she would never become pregnant again. While she acknowledges the role that medicine played, "I credit my recovery to God," says Hallford, now 35, who speaks at churches in the hope that she'll "give people the strength to go on." Adds her oncologist: "Theoretically, with stage 4 cancer, you're not curable." Her recovery, therefore, is "nothing short of miraculous." (Read more uplifting news stories.)
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He Insulted Her on Campaign Trail. Now, They Meet

Trump, Merkel are seen as polar opposites in personality and world view
Orlando's police chief said this week he was "extremely upset" to hear prosecutors wouldn't be going for the death penalty in the case of a man accused of killing a cop and his own ex-girlfriend, the Orlando Weekly reports. Those feelings may be soothed after hearing Florida Gov. Rick Scott's latest news: that he's reassigned Markeith Loyd's case to another attorney in a nearby district, USA Today reports. Instead of State Attorney Aramis Ayala of Orange County's 9th Judicial Circuit Court handling the first-degree murder probe, State Attorney Brad King will be taking on the case instead after Ayala refused to recuse herself, per a release from Scott's office. "These families deserve a state attorney who will aggressively prosecute Markeith Loyd to the fullest extent of the law," said Scott, who added he was "outraged" and "sickened" by the murders Loyd is accused of.

Loyd has been hit with 11 counts of murder and firearm charges, among others, after allegedly killing his pregnant ex, Sade Dixon, in December, then gunning down Orlando Lt. Debra Clayton in January, per CNN. Ayala had noted before she was kicked off the case that, after "painstaking thought," she'd decided not to seek capital punishment in any cases, as she doesn't think it's effective or humane. "The death penalty traps many victims, families in a decades-long cycle of uncertainty," she noted, just two days after Scott signed a bill reinstituting the Florida death penalty, per the Sun Sentinel. While human rights groups like Amnesty International took Ayala's side, Orlando Police Chief John Mina railed against her in a statement, noting "heinous crimes" like the one Loyd is accused of "are the very reason" for capital punishment. (What will happen now to these 200-plus Florida death row inmates?)
Mudslides in Peru have killed more than 60 people this month, per CNN, but an amazing video shows how one woman narrowly avoided joining that list. As an astonished onlooker shouts, "A person!" the woman identified as 32-year-old Evangelina Chamorro Diaz emerges from the fast-moving muck outside Lima, reports the Guardian. She is a little confused, but she is very well and will recover because she is a warrior, says the nation's health minister after visiting her. Diaz saved herself by grabbing a tree branch amid the deluge, according to local media reports. (This video shows an abducted woman's dramatic escape from the trunk of a car.)
The White House has reportedly apologized to the British government for its allegations that a UK intelligence agency helped then-President Obama to wiretap Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. An anonymous White House official tells CNN that national security adviser HR McMaster talked to his British counterpart Thursday, telling him that Sean Spicer's comment was "unintentional" and that the UK concerns "were understood and heard and ... would be relayed to the White House." The official also says the British ambassador to the US called Spicer Thursday to discuss the matter. CNN describes the conversations Spicer and McMaster had with British officials as "what amounted to an apology," while the Telegraph refers to them as formal apologies.

But both CNN and the Telegraph are citing anonymous sources, and the White House has not confirmed. A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May says, per the BBC, that the British government made it clear to the US that the allegations are "ridiculous and should have been ignored." The spokesperson says May has "received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated," but a former UK foreign secretary tells the BBC that's not enough: "That's not the same as saying it was rubbish in the first place." UK intelligence agency GCHQ had earlier slammed Spicer's allegations as "nonsense." (Read more President Trump stories.)
A hiker wasn't even one mile into what was supposed to be a 600-mile trek on the Appalachian Trail taking him from Pennsylvania to Tennessee when an accident cut his journey shortand cost him his hand. The unidentified 34-year-old man was apparently using black powder in an attempt to start a campfire Wednesday night when the powder exploded after he attempted to spark it, the Reading Eagle reports. "It blew his hand off," Ethan Kunkel, deputy chief of the Kempton Fire Company, tells the Morning Call. The Pennsylvania man, who was near the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary at the time of the accident, called 911 with his cellphone.

It took 21 rescuers to get him down from the mountain; there were 18 inches of snow at the time. Rescuers went in on foot, climbing a half-mile of rocks over 25 minutes to retrieve the hiker, who was then carried about a third of the way out on a stretcher, then pulled across the snow on an inflatable pontoon boat, then driven the rest of the way out before being taken via helicopter to a hospital, where he remained Thursday night. Kunkel says the hiker's hand was not expected to be reattached: "From what I understand, it was in pieces, shattered." (Read more Appalachian Trail stories.)
Update: The family of a pregnant teenager who was shot and killed by undercover police officers in 2017 has been awarded $21 million by a federal jury. The verdict was reached Friday, the AP reports. John Burris, the family's lawyer, said the jury split culpability between the man driving the car in which Elena Mondragon was riding when she was shot and the police officers. The Northern California city of Fremont would have to pay about $10 million, he said, praising the jury's decision as "a tremendous verdict for the family." The Alameda County District Attorneys Office decided in 2018 that the shooting was justified. Fremont officials did not comment about the verdict. Our original story from March 2017 follows:

A 16-year-old California girl who was fatally wounded during an incident with police earlier this week was pregnant, KTVU and KGO report. The teen, IDed as Elena Mondragon, was a passenger in a car that had been reported stolen and was being sought in a bunch of armed robberies. When Fremont cops driving in Hayward spotted the vehicle around 5:20pm Tuesday, they tried to make a traffic stop, but as officers neared the car, the driver allegedly drove his car right into the police vehicle, hurting two detectives. Police started shooting, and Elena was struck by gunfire before the car sped away.

The panicked driver crashed the car not far from the scene, however, and fled on foot. Two other passengers besides Mondragon were taken into custody, but although firefighters tried to save the teen, she eventually succumbed to her injuries at a nearby trauma center. The coroner notes the girl, known as "Ebbie" to family and friends, looked to be in her first trimester. A GoFundMe that has already collected more than $3,000 to help defray funeral costs has been set up in her name. Meanwhile, police arrested the man they believe to be the driver Wednesday night in San Francisco, hauling him in on an outstanding warrant for various robbery charges. Those close to Elena tell KGO the suspect is her boyfriend. (A Bakersfield man with dementia was shot dead by cops.)
Late last year, a Twitter user sent a flashing video to reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, along with the message, "You deserve a seizure." The Dallas Morning News reports the FBI on Friday morning made an arrest in the incident, which did in fact cause the Vanity Fair contributing editor and Newsweek senior writer to have a seizure. The suspect's name has not been released, but Eichenwald says the suspect is facing federal charges and will likely get additional charges from the Dallas DA, according to the Verge. Raw Story reports the sender of the strobe had already been suspended by Twitter.

Eichenwald, who has covered President Trump since before his foray into politics, was sent the tweet after appearing on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight. He says more than 40 people sent him the same strobe after he spoke out about the first attack. Eichenwald says the FBI now has their information, as well, and people should stop sending him strobes. (Read more Kurt Eichenwald stories.)
A recent study reveals that spiders eat 400 to 800 metric tons of insects each year. This makes the arachnids to be on top of the predator chart.

According to a report, a study published in the journal the Science of Nature indicated that spiders eat insects with the same consumption that humans do with meat and fish each year. Dr. Martin Nyffeler, a scientist at the University of Basel and the lead author of the study, indicated that the weight of insects killed each year by the British spider population is more than the combined weight of the human population.

Nyffeler has been inspired by the 1958 book titled A World of Spiders by William Bristowe. Nyffler then studied spiders in the fields and spent several hours doing so. He also gathered spider ecology studies that have been published around the world.

He shared that these hours of study on spiders was needed for him to be able to publish his findings. For four decades he was able to gather enough information on how much the spiders consume each year. The study on the spider being a top predator has not been intended to scare anyone but rather it is an awareness that these creatures are important in the web of the global food chain.

A report indicated that spiders have exceptional survival skills. Spiders go wherever there is food despite the climate. They could be found in the Arctic or in the deserts and still survive. Spiders are present all throughout the globe and they prey on insects whenever they can.

Meanwhile, there are 45,000 known spider species and they all eat meat. Aside from being hunters and survivor, these spiders are also food to other species. Spiders are eaten by 8000 species of birds and there are other animals on Earth that feed exclusively on spiders.
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This may come as a surprise, but President Donald Trump isn't a typical Republican.

This week, two pages from a single Trump tax return from 2005 was leaked by mail to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, possibly by the president himself. For over a year, the media have been asking Trump for his tax returns, which candidates typically turn over prior to an election.



The document held few surprises. Trump made more than $150 million in 2005 and paid about 25 percent in taxes largely due to the alternative minimum tax. But one minor detail is interesting: On this return, Trump supported public financing of elections by checking the often-overlooked box on his 1040 form.

The Presidential Election Campaign Fund provides public campaign financing for candidates willing to follow the program's strict rules and spending limits. The fund was created after the Watergate scandal and has supported nearly every campaign since then.

In 2008, President Barack Obama became the first general election candidate to turn down the funding, despite an earlier pledge to take it. In the last general election, neither major party candidate accepted the money.

Checking the box on a tax return doesn't cost the filer a thing  it just directs the IRS to move $3 into the fund. Still, fewer and fewer Americans check the box each year  only about 6 percent elected to support the fund last year.

Even politicians with plans to take public money may not opt to keep it well-funded. Ronald Reagan took $37 million from the fund in 1980 (more than half his funding), and $50 million in 1984, but he declined to support the fund on every tax form he released. George W. Bush also accepted millions from the fund without checking the "yes" box.

Generally, recent Republican candidates have been less inclined to check the box, while Democrats are more friendly to the fund. Although we have only one year to go by, Trump seems to be an exception to that trend, along with Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Trump didn't take public money, despite being in the unique position of needing it in the middle of his campaign.

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"I don't like the idea of taking taxpayer money to run a campaign," Trump told the AP in May. "I think it's inappropriate."

While the public campaign finance of today is generally considered inadequate to meet the financing needs of a modern election, the idea of freeing candidates from fundraising and political interest groups has historically received support from both sides of the aisle.

It was Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who first proposed a public financing fund, in his 1907 State of the Union speech.

"The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties," he said. "An appropriation ample enough to meet the necessity for thorough organization and machinery, which requires a large expenditure of money."

John F. Kennedy raised the idea again in 1960, but his proposal was blocked by Congress. Lyndon Johnson instituted the Presidential Election Campaign Act in 1966, which was deactivated by Democratic senators and then revived again by Democrats in 1973. The modern system was set up in 1974 after Watergate.

Recently, Republicans have pushed back on the fund, pointing out that its restrictions make it nearly irrelevant. Jeb Bush called public finance "welfare for politicians" and campaigned against it, despite supporting it on his taxes at least once. In the last election, only Martin O'Malley and Jill Stein took public funds, leaving the majority of the money untouched.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New Delhi:

Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal has decided to donate Rs six lakhs -- Rs 50,000 each -- to the families of the 12 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) men killed in an encounter in Chhattisgarh on March 11. Saina, who turned 27 on Friday, said she is pained by what happened last week and this is a small contribution to the families who have suffered irreparable loss.

"My heart goes out to our soldiers who put their lives at risk to keep us safe. I can't bring those soldiers back who lost their lives in Chhattisgarh but in my small way I want to donate this six lakhs for those families," Saina told PTI from Bangalore.

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar also donated Rs 1.08 crore to the families of slain CRPF soldiers on Thursday.

Officials said, soon after the incident, the actor approached the Union home ministry with a request to obtain the bank account numbers of the family members of the jawans.

They said the ministry, accepting Kumars request, directed the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to share the bonafide bank account numbers of the families of the slain personnel.

Kumar transferred Rs 9 lakh each in the bank accounts on Wednesday.

The 219 battalion's CRPF soldiers were ambushed by Maoists in Bhejji when the troops were guarding a road being built between the village and Injeram on National Highway-30.

The militants had used locally-made mortars, tiffin bombs and arrows with explosives attached to their heads. The Chhattisgarh Police had said the Maoist attack was planned and executed with "deadly accuracy".

The deceased CRPF personnel have been identified as inspector Jagjit Singh, assistant sub-inspectors HB Bhatt and Narender Kumar Singh, head constables Jagdish Prasad Vishnoi and PR Minde and constables Mangesh Pal Pandey, Rampal Singh Yadav, Goraknath, Nand Kumar Patra, Satish Kumar Verma, K Shankar and Suresh Kumar.

(With inputs from PTI)

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New Delhi :

The Bombay High Court on Friday asked the CBI to submit details of all the convicts in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case related to the sentence prescribed to them and the period they have spent in jail so far.

A division bench of Justices V K Tahilramani andMridula Bhatkar had last year reserved its judgement on the appeals filed by 11 persons convicted in the case and also the appeal filed by the central agency seeking death penalty for three of them.

The bench asked CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar to submit the details of the convicts, the sentence awarded to them and the period they have spent in jail so far.

"We want the exact time period they (convicts) have already spent in jail pending trial and till date," the bench said.

A special court had on January 21, 2008 convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment 11 men for gang raping Bilkisand murdering seven of her family members in the aftermath of the Godhra riots.

The convicts later approached the HC and sought quashing of the trial court's order. The CBI had also filed an appeal in the HC seeking death sentence for three of the 11 convicts on the ground that they were the main perpetrators of the crime.

Also Read | Dec 16 gangrape: SC asks for report on prison conduct of death row convicts

According to the prosecution, a mob had attackedBilkis' family at Randhikpur village near Ahmedabad during the post-Godhra riots on March 3, 2002 and killed seven members.

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New Delhi:

Delhi University undergraduate admission process may start early this year, by two months, which is by March end. The students can fill the forms just after board examinations results are out. Well, every year, the registration process for the university starts by May end that concludes by mid-June.

The DU admission process extends to three months that is, through the entire June, July and August. During this, the cut off lists by the colleges is declared, verification of documents and final registration are done by the colleges.

In 2016, Central Board of Secondary Education Board exams results were declared by May 21 but 2017 exams will end on April 29. The registration process in Delhi University started on June 2 and ended on June 19 in 2016. This means, the students will have to submit the marks and other details after the registration dates are over if the results are declared by the boards the DU undergraduate registration is over.

Well according to reports, the system of filling forms and uploading certificates will remain same. The detailed schedule will be declared by Delhi University later.

Delhi University colleges released the first cut off on June 30 and second cut off list was released on July 5 in 2016.

Later the third, fourth and fifth cut off lists were released on July 7, July 12 and July 16 respectively. And the admission process was closed by August 16.

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Srinagar :

National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Friday termed Kashmir as a "political" issue which cannot be resolved through financial packages and other concessions but only through political means.

"Kashmir is a political issue and it cannot be resolved through economic packages or other concessions. This crucial issue can be resolved only through political means," he said interacting with the delegations of former panchayat members and party leaders at the party headquarters here.

He said the NC had been saying since 1947 that Kashmir issue was a political problem and needs a political solution.

"We are seeking restoration of autonomy which was snatched from us," the NC leader said, adding that Jammu and Kashmir had been granted special status under Article 370 of theConstitution after prolonged battle and sacrifices.

Abdullah, who is contesting the forthcoming by-polls fromSrinagar parliamentary constituency, said that his party would play would play responsible opposition to safeguard the interest of the people.

Describing Panchayati raj as the "Root of Democracy", he said it was the responsibility of the people to elect honest and popular leaders in the forthcoming panchayati elections.

"We need to demonstrate maturity in electing panchs, surpanchs and panchayat members because of the panchayats worklike governments in their villages," he said, adding that the central government will directly transfer money to panchayats for the development work of the people.

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Mumbai :

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday refuted suggestions that he could be appointed as Union Minister, saying he is going to be around in the state.

Fadnavis was speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai.

Asked about speculations of his promotion as Defence Minister at the Centre, he said, If your organisation can hold a national event in Mumbai, first time outside New Delhi, I do not need to go to Delhi. I am going to be around.

Earlier, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also denied reports of Fadnavis being shifted to the Union ministry.

Also read: I will continue to pursue my aspirations: Amruta Fadnavis

Media speculates and gets the joy of writing various things. However, no decision has been taken in Delhi on this, Gadkari said on Thursday.

Fadnavis said that the BJP-led government at the Centre was in control of things and handling the bureaucracy well to increase the efficiency of the state machinery.

For instance, the Navi Mumbai airport clearance was pending for over 10 years. In just one video conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered us clearances of eight various departments, he said.

There is a lot of positivity in the bureaucracy right now, he said.

Brushing aside ally Shiv Senas threat to the state government and the critical editorials in its mouthpiece Saamana, Fadnavis said he does not read it.

On Shiv Sena acting like an opposition party, he said, I take inspiration from our former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. If he can run a successful government of 22 regional parties at the Centre, I can easily manage one ally in Maharashtra.

Asked if he thought that the BJPs growth will lead to decline of other parties, Fadnavis said, BJP is not of the mindset to finish any party. It is done by people, who select or reject a party.

In case of BJP, Prime Minister Modi is setting up new standards and those who could comply with it...will sustain, he said.

On the Goods and Services Tax, he said, Every state will gain from GST. We will gain something but at the same thing we will lose too. I am confident that the GST will roll-out by July.

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New Delhi :

President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said that there should be no room for hate and intolerance on the campuses of educational institutions and universities.

While speaking at the convocation programme of Mumbai University, Mukherjee said the educational institutions are meant for debate and sharing thoughts of diverse instead of spreading hate and intolerance.

The president said Indians are known for healthy discussions but they never turned intolerant. He said no one can grow if people get involved in the skirmish on religious ground.

If they become dysfunctional, it results not only in institutional paralysis but also has ripple effects across system: President Mukherjee pic.twitter.com/TPCZy6hdqM  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Mukherjee said a nation not only represents geographical boundaries but also its culture and views to the world.

There should be no room for intolerance, prejudice and hatred within the spaces of our educational institutions: President Pranab Mukherjee pic.twitter.com/1BJ50kh5SH  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Also Read | Ramjas College row: Delhi Court orders police to verify authenticity of video in which alleged anti-national slogans were raised

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Lahore/New Delhi:

Pakistan said on Friday it has no clue so far about the two Indian clerics, including the 80-year-old head priest of New Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, who went missing in the country.



"No clue to the missing Indian priests has been found so far. However, we are pro-actively pursuing this case," foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told PTI. "We have asked all departments concerned to look into the matter," he said, adding the foreign office had on Thursday received the request of the Indian government to trace the two missing clerics.



External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Friday the Indian government has taken up the matter with Pakistan.



"We have taken up this matter with government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals in Pakistan. Both are missing after they landed in Karachi airport," Swaraj tweeted.



Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami went missing after they landed at Karachi airport. Syed Asif Nizami is the head priest of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah.

No info on whereabouts of Hammad,local person who works at airport(Karachi) and had gone to receive them:Sajid Ali Nizami,son of Asif Nizami pic.twitter.com/s6nCN1QSvz  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

The two had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight to Karachi on Wednesday.



The clerics had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine. A Federal Investigation Agency official at the Lahore airport told PTI that they have no idea about the missing of the two clerics from the airport premises.



"It is not clear whether they have gone with someone on their own or there is some other matter," he said. A senior Punjab police officer also expressed his department's ignorance about this matter saying: "Neither we have received any application about the missing Indian priests nor the federal government has asked us to look into this matter". Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.

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Srinagar :

Any move by Pakistan to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as its fifth province will not be acceptable, Kashmiri separatist leaders said on Friday.

In a joint statement Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik said Jammu and Kashmir is a long-standing issue in the international forum, and the world community has agreed to decide its political destiny through resolutions acknowledged by the United Nations.

"Unless and until the people of Jammu and Kashmir are provided with an opportunity to decide the future course of the state through a referendum, no division, alteration and changes are acceptable," they said.

SAS Geelani, Mirwaiz Farooq & Yasin Malik issue joint statement against any proposal to make Gilgit Baltistan 5th state of Pakistan pic.twitter.com/nH2SGe1pjt  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Rejecting any idea of merger of any part or division ofJammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan, they said: "both India and Pakistan have no authority to alter the geographical status of the state."

They also asked Pakistan to show "wisdom" and "desist" from taking any such steps which may hamper the political and geographical position of Jammu and Kashmir.

Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik also expressed hope thatPakistan Prime minister Nawaz Sharif will fulfil his commitment regarding the geographical entity of Jammu and Kashmir, and will desist from annexing Giglit-Baltistan as the fifth state of Pakistan.

Also Read | FEMA case: Separatists Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik get ED summons

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New Delhi :

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday described the National Health Policy as a futuristic document which places the interests of the citizens foremost.

National Health Policy marks a historic moment in our endeavour to create a healthy India where everyone has access to quality healthcare, he tweeted.

National Health Policy marks a historic moment in our endeavour to create a healthy India where everyone has access to quality healthcare. pic.twitter.com/7jOyhauCTd  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 16, 2017

#NationalHealthPolicy2017 is comprehensive & futuristic, placing the interests of the citizens first & foremost, he added.

The policy, which was cleared by the Cabinet on Wednesday, was unveiled today in Parliament by Health Minister J P Nadda.

#NationalHealthPolicy2017 is comprehensive & futuristic, placing the interests of the citizens first & foremost. https://t.co/2emooDj6fd  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 16, 2017

It sets ambitious targets like raising of public expenditure on health care to 2.5 per cent of GDP from the current level of about 1.5 per cent.

Also read: Modi Govt unveils National Health Policy 2017, first of its kind to transform health care in India: Here are key highlights

It also entails introducing yoga much more widely in schools and work places.

The policy also envisions increasing life expectancy to 70 years from 67.5 years and proposes free diagnostics and drugs at all public hospitals.

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By Jeff Mason and Andreas Rinke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel started awkwardly on Friday and ended even more oddly, with a quip by Trump about wiretapping that left the German leader visibly bewildered. The two leaders share different views on trade, Russia and immigration, leading to some uncomfortable moments at a joint news conference on Friday in which they took pains to downplay differences that were hard to mask. Friday's meeting was the first between the new U.S. president and the long-serving stateswoman, who leads Europe's largest economy. It was seen as one that could help determine the future of the transatlantic alliance and shape their working relationship. Though Merkel appeared relaxed, the body language between them was not especially warm. Trump and Merkel shook hands when she arrived at the White House but did not do so in the Oval Office where she frequently leaned towards him while he stared straight ahead, sitting with his legs apart and hands together. In the Oval Office both leaders described their meeting in brief remarks to reporters as having been very good. She began her remarks at the news conference by saying it was better to speak to each other than about each other. "We held a conversation where we were trying to address also those areas where we disagree, but we tried to bring people together ... (and) tried to find a compromise that is good for both sides," Merkel said. They shook hands again at the end of the press conference and then exited the East Room together. Near the start of the news conference, Trump pressed Merkel for Germany to meet NATO's military spending target, and Merkel reiterated her country's commitment to the 2 percent military spending goal. "I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defence. Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years, and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe." Trump also stood by unproven claims that the Obama administration tapped his phones, and expressed solidarity with a surprised Merkel, whose government charged Washington in 2013 may have been spying on her. As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps, Trump said to Merkel, who looked bewildered as she stared back at him from her podium. In 2013 the German government said it had information that the United States may have monitored Merkel's mobile phone, prompting her to call Obama to demand immediate clarification. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee issued a statement on Thursday rejecting Trump's assertion that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on him. IMMIGRATION DIFFERENCES Trump, who as a presidential candidate had criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, said immigration was a privilege, not a right. Merkel hinted at differences, saying: "This is obviously something we had an exchange of views about." The new U.S. president has sought through executive orders to ban people from six Muslim-majority countries temporarily from entering the United States, causing an uproar domestically and internationally among critics. Aside from business and foreign policy goals, relationship building was an important if less overt agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Obama and George W. Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman. "Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government. The two also discussed Ukraine and Afghanistan. Trump said he expected the United States to do "fantastically well" in trade with Germany, while Merkel said she hoped the United States and the European Union could resume discussions on a trade agreement. Trump said he did not believe in isolationism but that trade policy should be fairer. Before the news conference, Trump and Merkel held a meeting with business leaders from the United States and Germany at the White House. (Additional reporting by Noah Barkin in Berlin, and Emily Stephenson and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and James Dalgleish)
Jammu:

SOS International, an organisation of refugees from PoK, on Thursday threatened to boycott the upcoming panchayat polls if the government fails to announce the date of release of the second instalment of relief package for them.



It is just the first instalment of relief package (for PoK refugees) and there is state of confusion also.



Until and unless, government confirms the date of the second instalment before Panchayat polls, Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) displaced persons (DPs) wont participate in elections, SOS International Chairman Rajiv Chuni said.



Moreover, they will boycott Panchayat polls because PoK DPs are not in mood to let anybody to exploit them. This is the right way to show our anxiety and anguish by boycotting from our participation in democratic practice, he said.



The Central government had approved a Rs 2,000-crore package for refugee families from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) last year.



More than 36,700 refugee families mostly comprising Hindus and Sikhs have been living in Jammu and Kashmir.



These families crossed over to the Indian side from PoK following the wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971.

Read | Union ministers calls for probe into antecedents of Rohingyas, Bangladeshi settlers in J&K

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New Delhi :

The Uttar Pradesh police on Friday scaled up the vigil on the banks of the Yamuna River after a website threatened to target the Taj Mahal, the 17th century monument of love.

The authorities told that they have conveyed the information to the police and the intelligence agencies as several teams have been pressed for the patrolling in the area.

Archaeological Survey of India and senior police officials said that they have enough arrangements of police personnel and the exercise was in the normal routine.

As per reports were published in local newspapers, a photo from the website depicted a graphics of the Taj Mahal with a terrorist who was standing alongside holding what looks like a weapon.

Senior Superintendent of Police Preetinder Singh informed that police officials have kept a close eye on each movement and they are monitoring all crowded places in the vicinity.

Also Read: NIA takes custody of suspected ISIS operative, held from Kullu in Dec

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has been managing the internal security of the monument while the Uttar Pradesh Police and Provincial Armed Constabulary man the outer posts.

Agra: Security tightened after terror threat to Taj Mahal pic.twitter.com/vC1Axtcshj  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 17, 2017

Beside this, SWOT commandos have been placed at vantage points.

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Kolkata :

Amid the allegations of tampering of EVMs in the recent UP assembly polls, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said the Election Commission of India should convene an all-party meet to discuss the issue.

"Whether one would accept or not is absolutely their choice. But the Election Commission may call for an all-party meeting. Let it be discussed," said Banerjee.

Asked whether she would favour a probe into the charges of tampering of Electronic Voting Machines, she said," I have seen the Election Commissioner's version that there is nothing.. But I have also gone through a video tape of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy saying these EVMs can be tampered."

Banerjee showed reporters the SWamy's video clippings his views on the feasibility of tampering EVMs.

In the video clippings, Swamy is seen saying that the EVMs were made in Japan but ballot papers were used even there during elections because the machines can be tampered.

Even countries like the US and Germany are using ballot papers instead of EVMs, the BJP leader was heard saying in the in the video footage. Describing Swamy as "very strong legally," Banerjee said, "What he (Swamy) has said is not wrong... he has not said anything bad.. I have not said anything but I think there can be an investigation in this."

Incidentally, Mayawati has accused the BJP of murdering the democracy, saying that the tampering of EVMs was responsible for her party?s poor show in Uttar Pradesh.

Also Read | MCD polls: Delhi LG Baijal rejects CM Kejriwal's demand for paper ballot instead of EVMs, says change not feasible

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New Delhi :

Bharatiya Janata Party has done all preparations for the swearing-in ceremony except the decision of chief ministerial pick for the state which will be decided on Saturday during partys legislature meet in Lucknow.

Even, it seems that the party has followed the astrologers and shifted the timing of swearing-in ceremony from 5:00pm to 02:15 pm on Sunday.

The venue was already decided and government officials have started decking up Kanshiram Smriti Upvan for the event which is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and other top party leaders.

Uttar Pradesh: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah to be present at the oath ceremony. pic.twitter.com/6ElSH3dW0z  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 17, 2017

Manoj Sinha, Rajnath Singh, Yogi Adityanath and Smriti Irani are being touted as frontrunners for the top job in the state. Take a look at top CMs post contenders-

Manoj Sinha

Manoj Sinha is an MP from Ghazipur and currently serving in the Modi government as Union telecom minister. This highly-educated BJP strategist also enjoys a good repo with the Prime Minister and BJP chief Amit Shah. Sinha is also considered the all-knowing man of the BJP who has information on each and every seat of Uttar Pradesh.

Rajnath Singh

The last BJP chief minister that Uttar Pradesh had in 2002, Rajnath Singh may turn out to be a natural choice for the saffron party. Despite Singh, an MP from Lucknow, has put all speculations to rest of taking command of the state once again, he is still a top contender for the post. A two-time BJP national president, Singh has been a major figure in the party after stalwarts Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani took a backseat.

Yogi Adityanath

The firebrand leader with Hindutva leanings is also being touted as the chief ministerial candidate. However, his chances of leading the BJP government are very slim as the party would not want to marginalise minority community due to his hardliner image in the run-up to the next general elections.

Satish Mahana

Amid growing suspense over the announcement of the name of UP chief minister, seven-time MLA from Maharajganj Satish Mahana may emerge as a dark horse. Mahana has served as the urban development minister during the regimes of Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh. Also, his seniority and experience add to his already impressive CV.

Smriti Irani

Smriti Irani took on Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha elections 2014. Despite she lost the election to Congress vice-president, but emerged as strong face within party. She is serving as Union minister in Modi government and could be a possible face to the top job. Smriti is a fine orator and has the ability to connect with the people.

Also Read: Is Manoj Sinha the next UP chief minister? Know all about Modis trusted lieutenant

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New Delhi:

Buoyed by a spectacular win in four out of five state assembly elections in March 2017, Bharatiya Janata Party may decide to dissolve Gujarat Assembly and call for an early election.



The rumour, strengthened by PM Narendra Modis quick visit to Gujarat a day after his massive campaign in Varanasi for UP Polls, suggests that BJP President Amit Shah is planning to encash on the positive wave in favour of the party.



The likelihood of BJP going for snap elections seems more evident by Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupanis statement of partys preparedness for the polls.



The win in UP is not a momentary outburst of peoples sentiments for the BJP, but the wind is blowing in favour of the party as people have faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rupani said as quoted by Hindustan Times, We are prepared even if elections are held early.

Read | Modi's BJP blooms in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur as saffron surge sweeps nation



According to reports, the question now being asked in political circles in Gujarat is not whether the ruling party would return to power this year but whether the BJP would outperform the Congress Partys 149 Assembly seats, out of a total of 182, which it won under the leadership of the then Chief Minister Madhav Sinh Solanki in 1985.



PM Modi had visited Gujarat immediately after his three-day long campaign in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi and even had a closed door meeting with Shah. Reportedly, during the meeting with BJP leaders, Modi himself set a target of winning at least 150 seats in next elections.



The elections are due in Gujarat for December, but if reports are to be believed, BJP may try for Gujarat polls to coincide with Delhi MCD polls in April/May 2017.



Despite the Modi wave there is no rest for PM and Shah, as the BJP continues to struggle ever since Modi left the post in 2014.



The party had two chief ministers during its 22-year-rule in Gujarat. But it had to try two chief ministers in two years since Modis exit after a 13-year stint.



Ever since Narendra Modi left Gandhinagar, the ruling party in his home state has been struggling to contain political unrest and anti-incumbency. The BJP had even to replace Anandiben Patel, a protege of the PM, with that of Vijay Rupani, whose mentor is Amit Shah. Even Modi has, so far, visited Gujarat as many as 10 times , seven times only since September 2016, just to make the warring leaders fall in line.

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London:

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday rejected a call for a referendum on Scottish independence before Britain leaves the European Union, a move condemned as a democratic outrage by Scotlands nationalist leader.



May and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon both dug in their heels in a showdown that could complicate Britains path out of the EU and threaten the future of the United Kingdom.



May said now is not the time to reopen Scotlands independence debate, though she did not rule out a referendum in the future. Britain is to begin the two-year exit process from the 28-nation EU by the end of this month.

Read | UK PM Theresa May receives Parliament support to trigger Brexit



The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK as a whole decided in a June 23 referendum to leave the EU, but Scots in that ballot voted 62 to 38 per cent to remain.



Sturgeon announced earlier this week that she will seek a referendum on Scottish independence to be held between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019, so Scottish voters can decide whether to leave the EU with the rest of the U.K. or go it alone.



The Conservative-led British government, however, must agree to a legally binding referendum, and May said now is not the time.



All our energies should be focused on our negotiations with the European Union, May said, adding that holding a Scotland referendum while EU exit talks are still underway would make it more difficult for us to get the right deal for Scotland and the right deal for the U.K.



The British governments Scotland minister, David Mundell, said Mays administration will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a new referendum on Scottish independence.



But Sturgeon, undeterred, plans to ask the Scottish parliament next week to start the process of seeking a new referendum.



She said it would be a democratic outrage for the British government to stop the people of Scotland having a choice over their future.

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Beijing :

China plans to build an environmental monitoring station on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, potentially raising new concerns over Beijings actions to assert its claims in the strategically crucial waterbody. The top official in Sansha City that administers Chinas island claims was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying such stations were being built on six islands and reefs, including Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.

Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie told the paper that preparatory work on the stations was among the governments priorities for 2017, but gave no other details. Beijing seized tiny, uninhabited Scarborough in 2012 after a prolonged standoff with Philippine vessels. Taiwan also includes the island in its South China Sea claims. The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group that China has controlled since seizing parts away from Vietnam in 1974. Also this week, the commander in chief of Chinas navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing.

Also read | US: McDonalds apologises over hacked Tweet criticising Donald Trump

China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnams central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam.

The two navies and their countries should together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, Shen was quoted as saying by Chinas defense ministry.

South China Sea tensions have eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines, invalidating Chinas sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal.

China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunals ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated USD 5 trillion in global trade passes each year.

Chinas creation of seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, complete with airstrips and military installations, has drawn criticism from the US and others and focused attention on Beijings long-term plans for Scarborough.

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London/Islamabad:

The International community should play a more active role in Kashmir, Pakistans top diplomat Sartaj Aziz has said during a meeting with the British National Security Advisor in London.

Aziz, the Pakistan Prime Ministers Foreign Affairs advisor who is in the UK to attend the 50th meeting of Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, raised the issue of alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir during a meeting with British National Security Advisor Mark Lyall Grant, Radio Pakistan reported.

Aziz underscored the need for the international community to play a more active role in Kashmir, it said.

He also emphasised the need for a criteria-based approach for any new member in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the report said. Aziz discussed issues related to peace, development, trade and investment, security and counter-terrorism with Grant.

They also discussed needs to further strengthen the existing relations through the available mechanism of Pakistan-UK Enhanced Strategic Dialogue.

The US on Wednesday said it was working with India and NSG members to push for New Delhis membership in the elite grouping, indicating that there was no change in Americas policy on the issue under the Trump administration.

Besides India, Pakistan has also applied for the membership of the NSG, a bloc that governs civilian nuclear trade worldwide.

Indias membership in the NSG has been blocked by China, Pakistans close ally.

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Dhaka:

A suicide bomber on Friday blew himself up inside a camp of Bangladeshs elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion here, injuring two security personnel.

The suicide attacker targeted our camp, RAB legal and media wing Director Mufti Mahmud Khan was quoted as saying by the bdnews.

Witnesses said a youth exploded a powerful bomb as several RAB men gathered at a common bathing place at the camp killing him instantly and seriously wounding two members of the elite force which draws personnel from army, police, navy and air force.

Residents in the neighbourhood said the bomber was aged around 25 years and he apparently sneaked into the complex after scaling the wall.

The attack comes a day after polices Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit conducted a raid in Chittagongs Sitakunda where two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest.

Bangladesh has witnessed a nationwide anti-Islamist crackdown since last week while police said they arrested over 80 militants.

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Washington:

The US military said it carried out a deadly air strike on an Al-Qaeda meeting in northern Syria and would investigate reports that more than 40 civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in the raid.

We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did targetwhich was where the meeting took placeis about 50 feet (15 meters) from a mosque that is still standing, said Colonel John J Thomas, spokesman for US Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement, US forces conducted an airstrike on an Al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists.

ALSO READ | Anti-aircraft missiles launched from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory

The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclearbut that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike, he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people died, most of them civilians.

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US President Donald Trump says he has convinced skittish lawmakers to back a Republican healthcare reform plan (AFP Photo/SAUL LOEB) (AFP)

Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump said Friday he has won over several Republican lawmakers skeptical of the Obamacare replacement and insisted the health care overhaul was "coming together beautifully," despite resistance from some in his party.

"We have a plan that's getting more and more popular with the Republican base," Trump said at a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Earlier the president met with a dozen members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, which has gone on record saying they want important changes to what is being called the American Health Care Act. Trump said he won them over.

"These folks were no's, mostly no's yesterday. And now every single one is a yes" on the legislation, Trump said.

"They all have given me a commitment that they're voting for our health plan."

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the bill, which Trump said he backs "100 percent," on Thursday, in what may be the most important congressional vote yet in the Trump era.

Keenly aware of the importance of the vote, Trump portrayed himself as a leader bridging divides between factions.

"I think I have a unified party," Trump stressed.

But several Republicans who were not at the White House huddle have voiced either outright opposition or deep reservations, putting the outcome of the vote in doubt.

The House Freedom Caucus, comprised of 30 far-right Republicans, threw cold water on Trump's pronouncements.

"The House Freedom Caucus still opposes the GOP replacement bill in its current form," the group tweeted.

- Obamacare Lite? -

Some conservatives have said the Republican plan is too similar to Obamacare in that it replaces the 2010 law's health coverage subsidies with tax credits that fulfill a similar role.

They also call for changes to the provision that rolls back the expansion of Medicaid, the health coverage program for the poor and the disabled.

Story continues

Republican Study Committee chairman Mark Walker, who attended Friday's meeting with Trump, has said his group's 170 members support instituting work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults on Medicaid.

Some conservatives also want to see the Medicaid expansion ended after 2017, not 2020 as required in the bill.

Moderate Republicans are nervous that the plan would cause struggling families to suffer, a prospect highlighted this week by a damning congressional projection that 24 million people could lose insurance within a decade under the new bill.

Trump signaled that he and the Republicans in the meeting agreed to having the legislation "rejiggered."

"It's coming together beautifully," he said.

Trump is reportedly considering a change that would make the tax credits more generous for low-income people, especially adults between ages 50 and 64, and adding a Medicaid work requirement.

The key question is whether the changes will convince enough Republicans to toe the line and help pass the bill in the House, where the party can afford no more than 21 defections if all Democrats vote no, as expected.

House Republican Justin Amash was having none of Trump's strong-arm tactics.

"Absolutely not true that conservatives have flipped to yes on the health care bill," Amash wrote on Twitter. "It doesn't repeal Obamacare. It remains a disaster."

Twenty-three Republicans including Amash have gone on record either opposing the bill or leaning against it, according to a CNN tally. None on that list was in the White House meeting.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, one of the bill's architects and chief champions, refused to say this week whether the bill could pass his chamber without changes.

On Thursday he acknowledged the legislation would need "improvements," but it remained unclear just how or when the changes would be made before Thursday's vote.

The overhaul is also encountering resistance from some Republicans in the Senate, where the party holds a slim 52-48 majority. If three Republicans vote no, along with expected full Democratic opposition, the bill would fail.
Trumps win in the U.S. presidential election has been a pain for several foreign country investing. But it was Mexico that faced maximum wrath. Mexico has been so far been deemed as a Trump-unfriendly investment due to his plans of building a wall along the border as part of his immigration strategy and making an unwilling Mexico pay for it (read: Foreign ETFs to Win or Lose on Trump Victory).

Apart from the wall issue, restriction on outsourcing makes Mexico ETFs more vulnerable. Several auto companies have their manufacturing hub in that country. Speculation is rife that Trump may impose huge tariffs on imports from that country. Mexican peso in fact slumped over 12% to a record low when Trump announced a victor. The key Mexico ETF iShares MSCI Mexico Capped EWW lost about 10.5% (as of March 14, 2017) since Trumps victory till the assuring comments were disclosed.

Also, Trump has indicated in his campaign that he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  or totally remove it. The agreement had tied up the U.S., Canada and Mexico for more than two decades. The deal permitted manufacturers and farmers to do seamless business. Now, this agreement may be threatened as Trump intends to bring back jobs offshored to countries like Mexico to America (read: How Deep is Trump Trouble for Mexico ETFs?).

However, about four months have passed since Trumps win and we have seen many of his stringent and protectionist views toward foreign countries and trade relations getting softer in the meantime.

Is Mexico Now Safe from Trump Punch?

If this was not enough, one of U.S. President Donald Trump's most protectionist trade advisers  Peter Navarro delivered some peacemaking comments about a coalition with Mexico on March 15. He wants the two countries and Canada to build a regional manufacturing "powerhouse" with stricter rules of origin.

This appeasing news was enough to firm up Mexico's peso which reached almost its highest level since Trump's election. Investors should note that Navarro was initially a strong proponent of high tariffs on goods from Mexico and China to help lower U.S. trade deficit during the election campaign. But his latest conciliatory tone meant that there is no huge risk to the 23-year-old NAFTA trade agreement.

Story continues

As per Navarro, the Trump administration is re-examining a critical component of the free trade pact: the rules of origin, which dictate what percentage of a product must be manufactured in North America. He also went on to say that there is a tremendous opportunity, with Mexico in particular, to use higher rules of origin to develop a mutually beneficial regional powerhouse where workers and manufacturers on both sides of the border will benefit enormously."

Market Impact

The key Mexico ETF EWW added over 3.2% on March 15, 2017. iShares Currency Hedged MSCI Mexico HEWW advanced over 1.3% following the news. The gain in currency-hedged Mexico ETF was lower as dollar lost strength on that day. PowerShares DB US Dollar Bullish ETFUUP was down about 1.2% on March 15.

ProShares Ultra MSCI Mexico Capped IMI UMX  which looks to offer double the daily investment results of the large, mid and small cap segments of the Mexican market  added over 7.4% on March 15. The Mexican peso gained over 1.5%, the strongest level that the currency has seen since Trumps win (see all Latin American Equity ETFs here).

Bottom Line

Trump now intends to effect bilateral trade deals with Canada and Mexico, rather than the current three-nation framework. Also, some changes are expected to take place in the agreement if Trump has to lower Americas $500 billion trade deficit, as per experts.

Though things should be smooth for Mexico ETFs in the near term, we believe investors should wait a little longer before being bullish on these country ETFs. This is because we are yet to know the concrete trade plans of Trump.

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Personal attorneys working for President Trump are weighing possible legal action against the cable news network MSNBC and a private journalist for reporting a portion of the presidents 2005 tax returns, a move the Trump legal staff believes could have violated federal privacy laws, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Personal attorneys working for President Trump are weighing possible legal action against the cable news network MSNBC and a private journalist for reporting a portion of the presidents 2005 tax returns, a move the Trump legal staff believes could have violated federal privacy laws, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Trumps tax returns were published Tuesday by DCReport.org, a website operated by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. They were simultaneously aired on MSNBCs The Rachel Maddow Show.

Legal experts say any case would be a long-shot given First Amendment protections for journalists and an important Supreme Court precedent that dates back to the famous 1971 Pentagon Papers case. Trump would also have to show that the journalists were complicit in stealing his tax returnswhich both Johnston and Maddow have denied.

Trumps lawyers could try and sue but they will get the crap kicked out of them in court, said veteran white collar attorney Stanley Arkin. Its the First Amendment. What are they going to sue them for? Stealing the returns? Nobody made any money out of it. Nobody was bribed.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks would neither confirm nor deny the presidents interest in a possible lawsuit against MSNBC or Johnston.

In a statement, MSNBC told FOX Business: There is no legal prohibition against journalists publishing these tax returns. It is protected by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.

Johnston, who obtained the tax documents before appearing on MSNBC, wrote a biography called The Making of Donald Trump in 2016 and won the Pulitzer Prize at The New York Times for exposing loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code. He didnt respond to emails or telephone calls for comment. During the MSNBC broadcast, Johnston said he received Trumps tax documents anonymously through the mail.

Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul with business interests around world, has refused to release his tax returns, citing an ongoing audit by the Internal Revenue Service. The move has been controversial since it broke from recent protocol dating back to the presidency of Richard Nixon in which presidents released their tax returns to disclose possible conflicts of interest.

Story continues

Democrats in Congress have claimed that a full airing of Trumps tax returns could show conflicts involving his real estate and branding empire and his White House dealings.

Trump maintains no such conflicts exist now that he has handed over operational duties of the Trump Organization to his sons, Eric and Donald Jr.

The 2005 tax documents aired by MSNBC and published by Johnston, however, provided no evidence to substantiate possible conflict of interest claims; the two pages of Trumps 1040 tax forms showed little more than that Trump earned $153 million in income in 2005, and paid $38 million in taxes.

In fact, some political commentators have suggested that Trump himself leaked the forms because they portrayed his tax issues in a relatively positive light, namely that he made a lot of money and paid an effective tax rate of 24%, which is higher than what former President Obama paid in 2015 and even what large corporations pay to the government.

Still, people close to President Trump say he was incensed by their release, believing possibly that the documents were stolen, and that Johnston and MSNBC should not have aired what he believes to be illegally obtained personal information.

On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted out:

After another MSNBC host, Joe Scarborough, suggested Trump himself leaked out the documents, Trumps personal attorney Michael Cohen tweeted:

Later that day, the president told Fox News host Tucker Carlson: I have no idea where they got it but its illegal and theyre not supposed to have it and it's not supposed to be leakedIts certainly not an embarrassing tax return at all, but its an illegal thing theyve been doing it, theyve done it before and I think its a disgrace."

During the presidential campaign, The New York Times published a portion of Trumps 1995 New York State tax returns, which showed then candidate Trump took a $916 million loss on his taxes that year. The large loss would have allowed Trump to cancel the same level of taxable income over nearly the next two decades. Marc Kasowitz, an attorney for Trump, wrote The Times that it was illegal to publish the returns, but no lawsuit was filed.

People with knowledge of the matter say Cohen is now at the center of the debate over whether to file a lawsuit for the latest tax disclosures. Cohen would neither confirm nor deny whether he and Trump are contemplating a lawsuit.

Legal experts say one federal law at the center of possible legal action would be the Unauthorized Disclosure of Information Act, which makes it illegal to publish an unauthorized tax return or return information without receiving authorization from the individual whose taxes are being reported on.

According to the federal statute, any violation of the law shall be punishable by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment of up to five years."

Still, various First Amendment precedents protect journalists from such sanctions. In 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Nixon administration, which tried to stop The New York Times and other news outlets from publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers, which were a classified government study of US involvement in Vietnam.

In the landmark ruling, the court said the government needed to show a heavy burden of proof to upend the First Amendment and stop the publication of the documents involving the machinations of public officials.

Legal experts tell FOX Business that other precedents would shield journalists from legal action unless reporters were directly involved in a theft of the tax documents, which Johnston has denied. In fact, Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee said if Trump went ahead with a lawsuit, he could end up in the same position as Richard Nixon was in in 1971 during the release of the Pentagon Papers.

MSNBC is in the same position as The New York Times, if Trump sues as the president, Coffee said. If Trump sues as an individual, he will then be subject to discovery and depositions, which he will not like.

Related Articles
Actresses Emma Watson and Amanda Seyfried are taking legal action following nude photos of themselves being stolen and leaked online.

Watson's reps told Metro.co.uk that the photos taken of the "Beauty and the Beast" actress were during a swimsuit fitting two years ago and reps insist that the photos are not nude. Other photos show a nude woman in the bath, but her face is cropped from the shot and Watson denies these photos are of her.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under fire in Turkey, with the pro-government daily Gunes depicting her in a Nazi uniform on its frontpage on March 17 (AFP Photo/YASIN AKGUL) (AFP)

Ankara (AFP) - A Turkish pro-government newspaper on Friday depicted Chancellor Angela Merkel on its front page in Nazi uniform with a Hitler-style moustache, labelling the German leader "She Hitler" amid a bitter war of words between Ankara and Berlin.

Right-wing tabloid-style daily Gunes ("Sun") printed the picture along with the words in German: "#Frau Hitler" and called her an "ugly aunt".

The mocked-up image took up most of the front page of the daily, with a Nazi swastika on Merkel's "uniform" and another swastika next to her head while she is shown holding a gun.

Turkey and Europe are locked in a bitter spat after Germany and the Netherlands blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies to campaign for a 'yes' vote in next month's referendum on expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers.

Erdogan has repeatedly accused Germany and the Netherlands of acting like "Nazis", and claimed Merkel is "supporting terrorists".

His behaviour has prompted an angry reaction from Europe, with Merkel and French President Francois Hollande lashing the comments as "unacceptable" on Thursday.

The front page also accused Merkel of trying to be the leader of fascists, creating anti-Turkish enmity using Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium in "Germany's backyard".

"Germany, which has open arms for terrorist organisations... is trying to instigate the whole of Europe against Turkey," the daily said.

German deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter refused to be drawn into the controversy, only saying: "We are not taking part in a game of provocation."

The front page was published two days after German mass circulation daily Bild lashed out at Erdogan, accusing him of "endangering Europe's stability through his lust for power".

"Bild tells the truth to Erdogan's face -- you are not a democrat! You are hurting your country!" the German daily had said.

Story continues

Bild's front page hugely upset Ankara and the foreign ministry issued a statement describing the article as "mind-boggling" and part of a mindset "hinging on hatred".

The media outlets that publish such articles are "are doomed to take their places in the trash of history," the foreign ministry said.

burs/ric
It's not just about St. Patrick's Daythe entire month of March is Irish-American Heritage Month.

According to the U.S. Census, congress proclaimed March as Irish-American Heritage Month in 1991, and the President issues a proclamation commemorating the occasion each year.
H John Voorhees III / H John Voorhees III

DANBURYA Connecticut Ballet benefit performance Sunday will raise money for the Khalda Logan Dance Scholarship, which funds arts training for middle and high school students in Danbury.

The ballet, held 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 19 at Broadview Middle School, will feature various dance styles, including ballet, hip hop and ethnic dance. The Khalda Logan Dance Scholarship program honors Khalda Logan who died eight years ago. Logan was a member of the ballets Danbury Dance Initiative Task Force and a faculty member at Western Connecticut State University.
Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media

RIDGEFIELDAlmost 100 people joined state legislators Saturday, March 11 to discuss various political issues including voting rights, the opioid crisis and the state economy.

The Meet Your Legislators event, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Ridgefield, featured state Sen. Toni Boucher (R-26), Rep. John Frey (R-111) and Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-138). After a moderator-led discussion on the election process in the state and the opioid crisis, residents took to the microphone for a question-and-answer session.
As contract negotiations between the Connecticut State University faculty union (CSU-AAUP) and Connecticuts Board of Regents continue, some in our state appear to be making every effort to manipulate public opinion.

One example is a study authored by Andrew Biggs titled Unequal Pay: Public vs. Private Sector Compensation in Connecticut and published by the Yankee Institute for Public Policy  a self-described free market think-tank in September 2015, which argues that public sector employees in the state of Connecticut are overpaid. Cutting their pay  the study claims  would result in savings of about $2 billion annually, which would help the states budget deficit.

What Biggs did not mention is the fact that the state of Connecticut has gotten into this predicament not by bloated state government but by having a regressive tax structure, resulting in lower tax revenues. As a 2015 report of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows, the bottom 20 percent of income groups paid 10.5 percent of their income in taxes while the top 1 percent paid only 5.3 percent of their income in taxes. Lower tax revenues led to budget cuts on many public services, including higher education, the one thing that could lead to better-pay jobs and hence higher tax revenues.

As Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute documented so meticulously in her recent report, the Yankee Institutes study is heavily biased and deeply flawed. Conveniently, in calculating average salary, Biggs excluded the majority of public sector workers, especially teachers  exactly those who earn about 22 percent less than workers in private sector with similar qualifications  but included them to calculate the costs of benefits, knowing that they receive better benefits than those in private sector (for good reasons).

Furthermore, Biggss findings grossly exaggerate costs of benefits: 77-107 percent instead of 51 percent, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The study concludes that not only state government employees are paid 5.7 percent higher than those in private sector, their benefits are also about three-quarters to more than 100 percent higher than the benefits those in private sector get. Again, Morrissey finds this to be a gross exaggeration. Her analysis using the human capital model finds that public sector employees are being paid 14-16 percent less than those in private sector. On the other hand, public sector workers receive about 16 percent more in benefits than those in private sector, hence offsetting the wage differential for the most part.

The larger point is that the Yankee Institute report is a clear attack on public sector employees, particularly faculty in the CSU system, given the current contract negotiations.

The state has been cutting the budget of higher education, which results in students paying a larger and larger share of their college education. This is a completely wrong strategy: College education is a public good because its positive externalities (benefits) extend to society, such as better decision-making and more skilled workers with better pay, resulting in a broader tax base, which should lead to higher tax revenues in the future.

Therefore, college education should be a public investment. Instead, the state of Connecticut decides to quash the future of many young people, especially those of minority and low-income households, who are a lot more likely (than those from high-income households) to attend one of the branch campuses of the CSU system. In effect, the state is robbing itself and its residents of a better future.

Shame on those in Connecticut state government who cant see the shortsightedness and unfairness of this approach. Connecticut residents should stand up and demand their policymakers make the right decision for the sake of future generations. If not us, who?

Rotua Lumbantobing, a Danbury resident, is an assistant professor of economics at Western Connecticut State University.
MONTREAL, March 16, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - BioAmber Inc. (NYSE:BIOA), today announced that its audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, which were included in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2017, contained a going concern qualification from its registered independent public accounting firm. This announcement is made in accordance with NYSE MKT Company Guide Section 610(b), which requires separate disclosure of receipt of an audit opinion containing a going concern qualification. This announcement does not represent any change or amendment to the Company's audited financial statements or to its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

About BioAmber

BioAmber (NYSE: BIOA) is a renewable materials company. Its innovative technology platform combines biotechnology and catalysis to convert renewable feedstock into building block materials that are used in a wide variety of everyday products including plastics, paints, textiles, food additives and personal care products. For more information visit www.bio-amber.com

SOURCE BioAmber Inc.

For further information: BioAmber Investor Contact: Roy McDowall, Senior VP, Corporate Communications & Strategy, 514-844-8000 Ext. 260, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.bio-amber.com/


TSX symbol: BX

TORONTO, March 16, 2017 /CNW/ - BIOX Corporation ("BIOX" or the "Company") (TSX: BX), a renewable energy company that owns and operates biodiesel production facilities, today announced that it is working with Forge Hydrocarbons Corporation ("Forge"), a private company, to explore the co-location of a renewable diesel production facility using Forge technology on the existing BIOX site in Sombra, Ontario.

BIOX acquired a 50 million litre nameplate capacity biodiesel production facility at the Sombra site, together with 25 acres of land, in June 2016. The biodiesel facility is currently undergoing upgrades and BIOX expects to commission the facility in time to capture a portion of the Ontario biodiesel blending season during the third quarter of calendar 2017.

The proposed transaction with Forge contemplates Forge leasing up to four acres at the site for the construction of a new 25 million litre nameplate capacity renewable diesel production facility. Forge will be responsible for obtaining funding for the project, which Forge estimates to be approximately $25 million in order to bring the facility into production. Subject to the entering into of definitive agreements with Forge, BIOX would operate and manage production at the facility.

Forge is conducting preliminary engineering to determine the site's suitability for the facility, which it expects to complete by the spring of 2017. An agreement to co-locate is subject to, among other things, a successful outcome from the pre-engineering work, Forge securing the necessary funding and an agreement on commercial terms between BIOX and Forge as it relates to the land lease and operations agreement.

Renewable diesel and biodiesel are both produced from fats and oils. Renewable diesel is a diesel molecule that can be "dropped in" to existing distillate fuels while biodiesel is a methyl ester that requires proper blending with diesel fuels. BIOX believes the two fuels represent complementary compliance pathways for any obligated parties and broadens the sales and marketing offerings.

About BIOX Corporation

BIOX is a renewable energy company that, owns and operates 287.5 million litres of nameplate biodiesel production capacity at plants located in Houston, Texas and two facilities in southern Ontario. BIOX has an innovative, proprietary and patented production process that is capable of producing the highest quality, renewable, clean burning and biodegradable biodiesel fuel utilizing a variety of feedstocks - from pure seed oils to animal fats to recovered vegetable oils with no change to the production process. BIOX's high quality biodiesel fuel meets North American (ASTM D-6751) quality standards.

Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking" statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, objectives or achievements of BIOX, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance, objectives or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such statements relate to, among other things, Forge's ability to secure the necessary funding to proceed with its facility, the results of Forge's preliminary engineering work to determine the site's suitability for its facility, whether definitive agreements between BIOX and Forge can be reached on terms acceptable to both parties and the completion of upgrades to and commissioning of BIOX's Sombra facility, including obtaining up to $5 million of additional financing in the near term for such upgrades. These statements reflect BIOX's current views regarding future events and operating performance, are based on information currently available to BIOX, and speak only as of the date of this press release. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions and should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such performance or results will be achieved. Those assumptions and risks include, but are not limited to, the fact that BIOX's results of operations and business outlook are highly dependent on a mix of legislation and producer payment programs and tax credits and upon commodity prices, which are subject to significant volatility and uncertainty. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of BIOX to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including factors described in this press release and those discussed in BIOX's publicly available disclosure documents, as filed by BIOX on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) except as updated herein. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this press release as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Unless required by applicable securities law, BIOX does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. To the extent any forward-looking statements herein constitute financial outlook, they were approved by management as of the date hereof and have been included to provide an understanding with respect to BIOX's financial performance and are subject to the same risks and assumptions referred to herein. There can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which these forward-looking statements are based will occur.

SOURCE BIOX Corporation

For further information: Alan Rickard, CEO, BIOX Corporation, 905-521-8205 ext. 253, [email protected]

Related Links

www.bioxcorp.com


VANCOUVER, March 17, 2017 /CNW/ - The health and well-being of Indigenous children is a top priority for First Nation communities and the Government of Canada. We are committed to supporting First Nations across the country on how we can change together outcomes for children and families.



Today, March 17, marks the 15th anniversary of the creation of the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) with representatives from the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), the First Nations Summit and the BC Assembly of First Nations. The FNLC is an organization advocates for, and is directed by, First Nations in British Columbia.

Minister Bennett met with the FNLC on March 15, 2017, to discuss the work of improving First Nations Child and Family Services in British Columbia. The involvement of First Nations in the development of solutions is essential to ensure that every child and family receives access to the care they need when they need it.

Canada, the Province of British Columbia and the FNLC have formed a tripartite working group to focus on ways to bring about real change in child welfare in the Province of BC. All parties have agreed to a Terms of Reference for the working group.

A Reconciliation Charter is also being developed and is a commitment for all partners to work towards creating a range of flexible options that are responsive to First Nations' capacity and needs and are led by the nations towards jurisdiction and governance for children and families.

Quotes

"As we transform the child protection system to a system focussed on children's well-being it is crucial for all partners to be involved. The tripartite working group brings together the First Nations Leadership Council, the Province of British Columbia and Canada in order to work together with Indigenous communities on the reforms necessary to improve the lives of First Nations children and families throughout British Columbia. "

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P.

Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs

"For the first time both the federal and provincial government and First Nations are at a common table to reform the archaic children and families welfare system, that is overrepresented by Aboriginal children in care, the focus will be bringing about substantive changes for prevention and well-being to support First Nation based governance, jurisdiction and decision making for children."

Kukpi7 Judy Wilson, Union BCIC Secretary-Treasurer

"We are at a critical juncture in our collective histories in terms of making systemic change to today's broken child welfare system. The number of aboriginal children in care today supersedes the number of children who attended residential school. For the first time in 25 years we have all the necessary parties at the table to begin discussions and create a First Nation - Crown relationship to address the challenges of jurisdiction and authority on child well-being in B.C. We look forward to realizing the real change required to improve the circumstances of our children and families so they can live a high quality of life in their communities, with their families, rooted in their language and culture."

Cheryl Casimer, First Nations Summit, Political Executive

"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's first 5 Calls to Action were focused exclusively on Indigenous child welfare, and it's with this momentum that carries the three parties at this table to address the fundamental and transformative change that is required for BC's child welfare system. We know that removing Indigenous children from their homes leads to devastating outcomes and the BCAFN and our partners remain committed to this important and necessary work."

A/Regional Chief Maureen Chapman, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations



Quick Facts

The FNLC comprises the BC Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, and provides a forum for First Nations in BC to address issues related to treaty negotiations as well as other issues of common concern.

A list of Canada's actions to support First Nations Child and Family Services is available on our website.

Associated Links

First Nations Child and Family Services

Union of BC Indian Chiefs

First Nations Summit

British Columbia Assembly of First Nations

Stay Connected

Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.

You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions.

SOURCE Government of Canada

For further information: media may contact: Sabrina Williams, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, 613-697-8316; INAC Media Relations, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 819-953-1160
WHITEHORSE, March 16, 2017 /CNW/ - The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, along with Government of Yukon Premier Sandy Silver, Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) Grand Chief Peter Johnston and Yukon First Nations Chiefs met today at the Intergovernmental Forum in Whitehorse.

Today's meeting provided an opportunity for governments to provide updates on common priorities including reconciliation initiatives, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and Bill C-17 to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act (YESAA). Various intergovernmental fiscal matters were a key discussion item, and a presentation on the Arctic Policy Framework rounded out the meeting.

All parties are encouraged by progress made to date and that dialogue is continuing on key issues.

Quotes

"Today's meeting with Yukon First Nations Chiefs, Grand Chief Johnston and Premier Silver builds on our strong commitment to reconciliation. The Yukon is an inspiration and an example of the transformative change that can be achieved when we work together. I'm encouraged by our collaborative relationship and what we are able to accomplish when we work in partnership. We have come a long way together and I look forward to the work ahead".

The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P.

Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs

"Our conversations today set the stage for positive relationships among our governments. Our discussions focused on topics of critical importance to Yukon First Nations and all Yukoners  reconciliation, our fiscal relationships with the federal government, Yukon's assessment regime and Arctic policy."

Sandy Silver

Premier of Yukon

"Yukon First Nations had the opportunity to meet with Minister Bennett to discuss important issues facing Yukon First Nations. We are encouraged by this dialogue and look forward to the Minister returning in the fall for the next Intergovernmental Forum."

Peter Johnston

Grand Chief, Council of Yukon First Nations

Quick Facts

Yukon is home to 11 First Nations with completed land claim and self-government agreements, approximately half of all such agreements in Canada .

You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds or e-mail. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions.

SOURCE Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada

For further information: Sabrina Williams, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, 613-697-8316, [email protected]; Erin Macpherson, Communications, Yukon Region, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 867-667-3315, [email protected]; Sunny Patch, Cabinet Communications, Government of Yukon, 867-393-7478, [email protected]; Stephanie Brown, Council of Yukon First Nations, 867-393-9223, [email protected]
MONTREAL, March 16, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - The Palais des congres de Montreal presented an Ambassador Achievement Award and welcomed new members to its Ambassadors Club, during its Recognition Award Gala, which salutes the exceptional contribution of influential and dynamic individuals from Montreal's various segments of excellence who step outside of their usual professions to actively bring international conventions to the city. Held under the theme of Montreal's 375th anniversary, the event was attended by nearly 450 of the city's decision-makers.

New Ambassadors join the Club

With Julie Boulet, Quebec Minister of Tourism and Minister responsible for the Mauricie region, in attendance, leaders were honoured during the ceremony and named Ambassadors for playing an active role in bringing major international conventions to Montreal that will generate major economic spinoffs for the city's and province's economy, thanks to the 18,000+ business tourists they will attract. "It is with great pride that I salute your commitment to your field of work to make this province a prized destination for business tourists from Quebec, Canada, and the world over," said Minister Boulet. "We are pleased to celebrate these new Ambassadors for their contribution to making Montreal the top host city in the Americas for international events for a fifth straight year. Because of their determination and involvement, these decision-makers will make it possible to generate significant benefits essential to advancing science and building knowledge," added Raymond Larivee, President and CEO of the Palais des congres.

Ambassadors appointed in 2017

Philippe Archambault

4 th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, May 13 to 16, 2018

1500 delegates, $2 .5 M in economic benefits

4 World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, 1500 delegates, .5 M in economic benefits Francis Brown

Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAIE), October 11 to 13, 2017

700 delegates, $1 .35 M in economic benefits

Conference of the Americas on International Education (CAIE), 700 delegates, .35 M in economic benefits Denis Coderre , Emeritus Ambassador

XII Metropolis World Congress, June 19 to 23, 2017

1000 delegates, $2 .1 M in economic benefits

, Emeritus Ambassador XII Metropolis World Congress, 1000 delegates, .1 M in economic benefits Pierre-Luc Desgagne

EVS29 - 29 th Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exhibition, June 19 to 22, 2016

1800 delegates, $3 .9 M in economic benefits

EVS29 - 29 Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exhibition, 1800 delegates, .9 M in economic benefits Sara Iatauro

22 nd Annual RoboCup International Symposium, June 18 to 22, 2018

4000 delegates, $10 M in economic benefits

22 Annual RoboCup International Symposium, 4000 delegates, $10 M in economic benefits Fabrice Labeau

URSI XXXII General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, August 19 to 26, 2017

1200 delegates, $5 .4 M in economic benefits

URSI XXXII General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, 1200 delegates, .4 M in economic benefits Denis-Claude Roy

International Society for Cellular Therapy 2018 Annual Meeting, May 2 to 5, 2018

2000 delegates, $5 .9 M in economic benefits

International Society for Cellular Therapy 2018 Annual Meeting, 2000 delegates, .9 M in economic benefits Jonathan Sasson

Harvard World Model United Nations - WorldMUN 2017, March 13 to 17, 2017

2500 delegates, $6 .2 M in economic benefits

Harvard World Model United Nations - WorldMUN 2017, 2500 delegates, .2 M in economic benefits Simon Tanguay

40th Congress of the Societe Internationale d'Urologie, October 8 to 11, 2020

3500 delegates, $8 M in economic benefits

Dr. Pavel Hamet, President of the Ambassadors Club, also addressed the newly minted Ambassadors: "You will feel immense pride in hosting your peers from all over the world. Your meetings will spark invaluable intellectual benefits that will enable Montreal to preserve its title as a major knowledge hub."

Recipient of the Ambassador Achievement Award

In addition to being inducted as an Emeritus Ambassador for bringing a second international convention to Montreal, Denis Coderre was also presented with the Ambassador Achievement Award for the dedication and leadership he has demonstrated throughout his career, and for his commitment to Montreal. An ardent defender of the city's interests, and recognized worldwide as a dynamic and determined individual, Denis Coderre contributes to the city's success and to its reputation among the world's major tourism destinations. The brainchild behind the city's Office of International Relations and involved in numerous organizations, including the Strong Cities Network and Metropolis, he helps Montreal shine on the world stage. Throughout 2017, Mr. Coderre continues to show his deep love for Montreal by passionately contributing to the organization of celebrations surrounding the city's 375th anniversary.

A tribute to emerging researchers

During the Gala, Professor Remi Quirion, Quebec's Chief Scientist, honoured three etudiants-chercheurs etoiles (star student researchers), Bruno Belzile, Isabelle Bouchard and Said Izreig, all winners of the Fonds de recherche du Quebec competition. The competition makes it possible to recognize the excellent research being conducted by students and to foster research careers within Quebec universities. Also, Marie Larue, President and CEO of the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauve en sante et en securite du travail, presented the IRSST award for best scientific article to Laeticia Bonifait.

An exceptional evening

Hosted by Eve-Marie Lortie, the evening also showcased the culinary talents of Capital Catering and the city's major hotels: the Delta Hotel by Marriot Montreal, Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, Marriott Chateau Champlain, Westin Montreal, Sheraton Centre Montreal, InterContinental Montreal and Hyatt Regency Montreal. Produced by the Palais des congres, the 2017 Recognition Award Gala was made possible with the support of Freeman Audio Visual Canada and Idees au cube.

The gift of sustainability

Together with Societe de developpement social and Sky Cadeaux et fleurs, the Palais des congres is proud to have given the table centrepieces a second life by donating the flowers to the residents of the Centre d'hebergement Manoir-de-l'Age-d'Or. An original way to spread happiness while fostering the social aspect of the Palais' longstanding sustainability plan!

For complete details on the event, go to congresmtl.com/gala.

About the Palais des congres de Montreal

Recipient of the highest quality standards certification in the industry and shortlisted for the World's Best Congress Centre award (AIPC), the Palais des congres de Montreal attracts and hosts conventions, exhibitions, conferences, meetings and other events. It generates major tourism revenues and intellectual wealth for Montreal and Quebec, while also contributing to the international reputation of Montreal, the top host city in the Americas for international events. www.congresmtl.com

Twitter: @Palais_Montreal

Facebook: www.facebook.com/PalaisMontreal/

SOURCE Palais des congres de Montreal

For further information: Source: Chrystine Loriaux, Fellow Adm.A., B.A.A., Director, Marketing and Communications, Palais des congres de Montreal; For information: Amelie Asselin, Advisor, Communications and Public Affairs, Palais des congres de Montreal, [email protected], Phone: 514 871-5897
WHEN: Tuesday, March 21, 2017



WHERE: Atrium of the CRTC building  1 Promenade du Portage, Gatineau, Quebec



TIME: 1:30  3:00 PM

OTTAWA and GATINEAU, QC, March 17, 2017 /CNW/ - To mark Canada's 150th anniversary of the Confederation the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will be honouring outstanding individuals who, through their achievements, values and ideals, have positively impacted Canadian communications over the last 150 years. Families of these outstanding individuals will be present at the event.

For media interested in attending the event, please contact Media Relations at 819-997-9403 or [email protected]

For media interested is setting up camera equipment we would ask you to arrive no later than 12:45 p.m.

Follow and Like our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/crtceng

SOURCE Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

For further information: CRTC Media Relations: Tel: 819-997-9403, Fax: 819-997-4245, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.crtc.gc.ca


TORONTO, March 17, 2017 /CNW/ - The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is contributing $10,000 to assist four drought stricken communities in south-eastern Guatemala. Already facing high levels of poverty, families in this region have lost their corn and bean crops due to five consecutive drought seasons.

The aid will be channelled through the Steelworkers Humanity Fund's long-term partner in Guatemala, ASDENA (Health and Community Development Organization New Dawn in Spanish) to help 210 families whose needs are critical. ASDENA will provide beans to these families to bridge them to the next harvest season.

"Poor communities are increasingly suffering the impacts of climate change in Guatemala. In addition to supporting ongoing development projects to build the resilience and sustainability of peasant communities, the Humanity Fund felt we had to respond to this emergency" said Ken Neumann, President of the Steelworkers Humanity Fund and National Director of the United Steelworkers.

The Steelworkers Humanity Fund is a registered charitable organization that contributes to development projects and emergency aid in developing countries, as well as supporting Canadian communities in crisis. United Steelworkers members contribute to the fund through clauses negotiated into collective agreements. In some cases employers make matching contributions to the fund.



SOURCE Steelworkers Humanity Fund

For further information: Ken Neumann, USW National Director, 416-544-5951; Bob Gallagher, USW Communications, 416-544-5966 / 416-434-2221 / [email protected]
Russia and the United Arab Emirates will fund efforts to develop a light fifth generation jet, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said on Monday.

Weve signed an agreement on industrial cooperation in the field of military engineering, Manturov said at the 13th international weapons show IDEX -2017.

Isis not clear what the final configuration of the new fifth-generation aircraft will look like. Indeed, Russian sources offered conflicting information about the project. While Rostec chief Sergei Chemezov told TASS Russian-language service that the new fighter would be developed from the Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum, Slyusar said that no decisions had been made on the configuration of the new jet.

The more modern fifth generation aircraft will be created on the basis of the MiG-29 Chemezov told TASS. Work on this aircraft, I think, will begin next year. It will take about seven or eight years.

Slyusar, however, said that the while both Sukhoi and Mikoyan will contribute to the project, no decision has been made on the final configuration.
Russias reserve fund could be depleted in mid-2017, perhaps a few months later, said Ondrej Schneider, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance.

Russia may start building up its Reserve Fund in the second half of 2017, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said January. This would be if oil prices average $50 per barrel and ruble rate remains at current levels, the budget could get additional 1 trillion rubles (13.5 billion) in oil and gas revenues, resulting in a budget deficit of around 2 percent of gross domestic product in 2017.

Oil is currently at $48.86 per barrel. However, there is concern that OPEC-Saudi Arabia will stop oil production cuts in June. This could start an oil price war. US frakkers have gotten more efficient and are rebuilding production even with prices at $50 per barrel.

Venezuela is down to its last few billion.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is considering all options to counter North Koreas nuclear threat while criticizing China over moves to block a missile-defense system on the peninsula.

In some of his most detailed comments yet on North Korea, Tillerson ruled out a negotiated freeze of its nuclear weapons program and called for a wider alliance to counter Kim Jong Uns regime. He also left the military option on the table if the North Korean threat gets too large.

If they elevate the threat of their weapons programs to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table, Tillerson told reporters on Friday on a trip to South Korea when asked about the possibility of a military strike. He ruled out talks with North Korea until it commits to giving up its nuclear weapons.

Let me be very clear: this policy of strategic patience has ended, Tillerson said. All options are on the table. North Korea must understand that the only path to a secure, economically prosperous future is to abandon its development of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other weapons of mass destruction.

Any US pre-emptive strike would involve conventional stealth fighters and bomber and cruise missiles

Any pre-emptive strike would be similar to other conventional strikes that the US has made

The initial targets would include nuclear reactors, missile-production facilities, and launching pads for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Cruise missiles and F-22s would target North Koreas rudimentary air defenses, and B-2s would hit known missile sites.

Planes like the F-35 and the F-22 would hunt down mobile missile launchers, which can hide all over North Koreas mountainous terrain. In the event that North Korea does get off a missile, the US and South Korea have layered missile defenses that would attempt to shoot it out of the sky.

North Korea would hit back with artillery and roll tanks on South Korea. They would also try to fire any surviving missiles at South Korea and possibly Japan.
By Chris Prentice

NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - More than 20 U.S. senators pressed President Donald Trump on Thursday to reject requests from oil refiners to overhaul the U.S. biofuels program, weighing in on a debate that has roiled markets from soybeans to gasoline in recent weeks.

Oil refiners have requested that the U.S. government change the program to push the burden of meeting annual biofuels use requirements downstream, a move that has been met with criticism and backlash from ethanol producers, fuel retailers and others.

The change would be "unwarranted and indefensible," said the bipartisan group of senators that included Charles Grassley from Iowa and Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota in a letter to Trump.

The White House said last week it was considering the changes, whose supporters include billionaire investor and special advisor on regulations Carl Icahn. Icahn is a majority stakeholder in oil refiner CVR Energy Inc.

The news shook the market for biofuels compliance credits and whipsawed some grain prices as traders fretted over how to position ahead of any changes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under former President Barack Obama in November proposed denying the requests from refiners, but opened the issue up for public comment.

"This type of change would not only wholly undermine the intent of the program, but would also result in a massive, costly, time-consuming shift in compliance," the letter dated March 16 said.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, signed into law by former President George W. Bush, was designed to boost use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel in gasoline and diesel in a bid to curb greenhouse gas emissions, boost rural economies and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

The program has been stymied by regulatory delays and become a battleground between the oil and corn industries in Washington.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice; Editing by Richard Chang)
Four Niger Delta militants, who dropped their arms, went back to school and made First Class Bachelors degrees, have been employed as lecturers by Benson Idahosa University in Edo State.

According to the co-ordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) and Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Brig-Gen. Paul Boroh (rtd), the names of the lecturers are Fianka Diamond Tamara (Computer Science), Debrah Ikpaazaere (Business Administration), Odiki Otogo (Political Science and Public Administration) and Lucky Boleidowa (Political Science and Public Administration).

Boroh made this disclosure at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja.

He said;

In fact, the Benson Idahosa University retained as lecturers, four of our students who had First Class. The performance of our students abroad was even more stunning.

A total of 454 of them graduated mainly from British universities with 20 having First Class and 41, Second Class Upper,

He also said that the recent visits of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to states in the Niger Delta region was a winning formula which has solidified the relationship between the region and the administration.
Sierra Leone has discovered huge deposit of diamond, the largest in the country in 46 years, government said on ThursdayThe precious stone, one of the worlds largest, is said to weigh 706 carats.It is ranked the third largest diamond ever found in the West African country.It was discovered in Koidu town in the eastern Kono District.Kono is a diamond-rich district where the precious stones were first discovered in the 1930s.In 1972, the largest gemstone, dubbed The Star of Sierra Leone and weighing 969 carats was unearthed there.The latest discovery was made by a Christian pastor who is also an artisanal miner.The local chief headed a delegation to the capital Freetown where it was handed over to the government. It is now locked up in the central bank.President Ernest Bai Koroma assured the citizens of fair play in the processing and sale of the stone. He stressed that it would be sold in the country and in a transparent manner.In the past, such transactions have been shrouded in controversies, with finders and communities in the diamond-rich areas failing to benefit. This has caused many miners to smuggle their finds out of the country.Under my presidency the process will be transparent and I am sure everyone will be satisfied, he said.It is our responsibility as a government to ensure it goes through the right process for everyone to know the value and how much it will sell.Sierra Leone is one of Africas largest diamond exporters. Others are South Africa, DR Congo, and Botswana.Two of the worlds 10 largest diamonds were found in Koidu, the capital of Kono District  the Star of Sierra Leone in 1972 and the 770-carat Woiye River diamond in 1945.The 969-carat Star of Sierra Leone was sold in 1974 for $2.5 million.Read more: Africa Review
Aero Contractors Airline, which is under the management of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), has sacked 60 per cent ...

Aero Contractors Airline, which is under the management of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), has sacked 60 per cent of its workforce.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that letters of redundancy were issued to the affected employees during the week.Media Consultant to the airline, Mr Simon Tumba, who confirmed the development in a statement issued on Thursday in Lagos, said the workers would be paid their pension and gratuity.Tumba said the airline had been grappling with huge and unrealistic personnel cost as well as other operational challenges worsened by lack of enough aircraft to keep all the workers meaningfully engaged.The issuance of notification of redundancy is a business decision that will ensure Aeros survival.The current situation where over a thousand people are basically not engaged due to lack of serviceable aircraft is not sustainable for the airline.The huge monthly salary associated with a bloated workforce will eventually kill the airline, which is not the intention of the current government, he said.According to him, Aero Contractors currently has aircraft-to-employee ratio of 1:500, which analysts believe is perhaps the worse in the history of global airline industry.Tumba said governments intervention in Aero was to save it from total collapse therefore, all steps such as this (issuance of redundancy letters) to ensure its survival must be put into consideration to save the airline.He said :This decision will immediately reduce the whooping operational cost, which has been stifling Aero; enable the management bring in more aircraft through savings from overheads and pay for C-checks.It will also enable Aero have a more manageable and committed workforce in line with international best practices of 50 to 60 personnel to one aircraft unlike what obtains in Aero at the moment.He, however, added that those in Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) and other essential staff in critical departments would not be affected.Tumba said Capt. Ado Sanusi, the Chief Executive Officer of Aero, had also assured the workers that they stand a chance of being recalled as soon as the airline increases the number of aircraft in its fleet in the near future.A part of the redundancy letter made available to NAN read:, Following the operational challenges of Aero culminating in loss of business opportunities that adversely affected company finances vis-a-vis operations, we are constrained to place you under redundancy pending a possible future review.This decision was communicated to the unions where their understanding was solicited in view of prevailing operational difficulties.Whilst Aero appreciates your contribution to the company and continues to regard you as worthy ambassadors, we solicit your understanding as we struggle to stabilise operations and rebuild the company.However, the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and the Air Transport Senior Staff Services Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) , have kicked against the move by the airline.Mr Frances Akinjole, General Secretary, ATSSSAN, told NAN that a notification had been sent by the unions to the affected workers not to accept the purported letter of redundancy .We are totally against it because in the first place, our members are still being owed salaries and we have not even negotiated the redundancy package.If they go ahead with this move then the unions are prepared to face them headlong, he said.(NAN)
The Nigeria army has revealed that it lost five personnel during a Boko Haram attack in Magumeri, a town in Borno state.

The Nigeria army has revealed that it lost five personnel during a Boko Haram attack in Magumeri, a town in Borno state.Sani Usman, spokesman of the army, who disclosed this on Friday, also declared three officers missing in the attack which happened late Wednesday.Usman did not disclose the names of the officers, but security sources told TheCable that one AC Oguntoye, a lieutenant, was killed in the attack.The sources said the militants ambushed Oguntoye and his colleagues on their way from a shooting range competition in Munguno, still in Borno.The officers were pinned down by terrorists in Magumeri, they razed down houses, including a police station in the town, a witness said.The militant rode into the area in 10 utility vehicle, shooting and attacking a military formation.But Usman said the army successfully repelled the attack.Troops chased the fleeing Boko Haram terrorists up to Doho, Mina Maideni, Donari, Salari, and Lawari villages, he said in a statement.After hot pursuit and mop up the troops were able to neutralise an unconfirmed number of Boko Haram terrorists and recovered 1 gun truck, 2 anti-aircraft guns, two extra barrels, two rocket propelled grenade bombs, 31 pieces of Nitrogen 57mm bombs, 1 roll of nitrogen cable and a 60mm mortar bomb.Others were assorted general purpose machine gun and anti-aircraft ammunition and their links, three spare vehicle tyres with rims, 1 vulcanising machine, 1 Qlink motorcycle, foodstuff and three Boko Haram terrorist sown camouflage.Unfortunately we lost and officer and 4 soldiers, while 3 others were still missing.
President Muhammadu Buhari directed Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele to ...

President Muhammadu Buhari directed Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele to quickly facilitate the payment of the second tranche of the London-Paris Club refund to  to ease states financial hardship.Many Are not paying workers because they are short of cash.The President said the money  about N500 billion  should be used to pay outstanding workers salaries and pension.He gave the directive during a meeting with governors after the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting. The NEC is chaired by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.A statement by Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, quoted the President as telling the governors: I will not rest until I address those issues that affect our people. One of these basic things is the issue of salaries.It is most important that workers are able to feed their families, pay rent and school fees, then other things can follow.Although he did not mention the amount involved, The Nations lead story on Monday scooped that about N500billion is to be shared among the 36 states.The Federal Government has given the conditions that the states must meet to get the cash.Part of this is that they must give account of how the first tranche of the refund was spent.The seven states being investiogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over the alleged diversion of part of the money must be cleared by the anti-graft agency.President Buhari, who went round the Council Chamber to greet the governors one after the other, praised the unity of the Forum of Governors.He thanked them for displaying love and respect for him.It was the Presidents first meeting with the governors as a group since his return from a 50-day medical vacation.According to him, he was overwhelmed by his recent experience in which states, irrespective of political differences, urged their citizens to pray in mosques and churches for his well-being. He apologised to governors for barring them from visiting him while he was in London.I didnt want government to move to London. I wanted it to remain here and I am glad it did, Buhari said.After narrating his experience while on vacation, Buhari noted the suggestion by the governors for him to have more rest, but insisted that he would remain relentless in the pursuit of the interest of Nigerians at all times.This, he said, is the only way to show his gratitude to the people who had given so much to me. I was overwhelmed by the celebration of my return all across the country, Buhari said.The Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Abdul-Aziz Yari, Governor of Zamfara State, assured the President, on behalf of his colleagues, that they would continue to support his policies and actions which they had adjudged as being in the nations best interest.Governors Rochas Okorocha (Imo), Udom Emmanuel (Akwa-Ibom), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun) and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia) thanked President Buhari for saving the day for states through the first tranche of the London-Paris Club refund.They also praised the trust the President reposed in the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who they said did not disappoint when he acted as President.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday arraigned Christian Oyovweyho, alias Femi Adesina, before Justice Z. B. Abubakar ...

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday arraigned Christian Oyovweyho, alias Femi Adesina, before Justice Z. B. Abubakar of the Federal High Court Kano on a two-count charge of obtaining by false pretence.The defendant allegedly impersonated the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammad Buhari, Femi Adesina, and attempted to obtain N300,000 from a professor of Economics at Bayero University Kano, Dalhatu Galadanci.According to the complainant, sometime in July 2016, the defendant sent him a text message claiming to be Femi Adesina, S.A to the president on Media and Publicity. The defendant fraudulently claimed to be speaking on behalf of the president and that the name of the professor has been forwarded for appointment in the presidency. The complainant further stated that the defendant claimed to be searching for a better office for him.Subsequently, the defendant asked the professor to make payment of N300,000 to facilitate his appointment to Nigeria Port Authority or Nigerian Railway Cooperation and Rural Electrification. At that point, the professor got suspicious and reported the matter to the commission.After listening to the charge, the defendant pleaded not guilty.Prosecution counsel Musa Isah requested a date for trial in view of the plea of defendant.The counsel representing the defendant, T.M. Oyedema however brought a motion for bail, praying the court to admit his client to bail pending the hearing and determination of the case.Justice Zainab granted the defendant bail in the sum of N500,000 and two sureties in like sum. One of the sureties must be a state or federal government official not below grade level 8.The other surety must be a respected member of the society with a landed property within the jurisdiction. Also certificate of Occupancy in respect of the landed property shall be deposited with the Deputy Chief Registrar of the court.The case has been adjourned to April 11, 2017 for commencement of trial while the defendant remains in prison pending the perfection of his bail terms.
The Federal Government has announced plans to resettle Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Bakassi.

The Federal Government has announced plans to resettle Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Bakassi.This announcement was made by the Commissioner, Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, Hajia Sadiya Farauk, at the Cross River state Government House in Calabar, the state capital.She said the Federal Government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and ECOWAS on statelessness of the IDPS.The people of Bakassi have proved their link with Nigeria, they would not be allowed to become stateless.On his part, the Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, commended the initiative but appealed for a quick process so that the people can reunite with their loved ones.
Controversial US trained journalist, Kemi Olunloyo has disclosed that she has been sent to Port Harcourt Prison for defaming the General Overseer of Salvation Ministries, Pastor David Ibiyeomie.Recall that Kemi revealed she was picked up by the police two days ago.She took to her Instagram page to reveal that she had been taken to Port Harcourt prisons on the orders of Pastor David Ibiyeomie.She added that it was over a post she published alleging that the pastor was having an affair with actress Iyabo Ojo and that he gave her the Range Rover she was driving.She wrote, FFK is my spokesman. All media to contact him. I am in Port Harcourt prison.Driven here Tuesday on orders of the IG. David Ibiyeomie of Salvation ministries says I defamed him because I posted a letter a church member sent me alleging corruption and adultery with Iyabo Ojo.Both newsmakers will not confirm or deny the allegations. The pen is mightier than the sword.I will continue to be the best investigative journalist.
The Jehovahs Witnesses have been classified an extremist organization.

The Jehovahs Witnesses have been classified an extremist organization.This is the position of Russia, where its Justice Ministry has filed a request with the nations supreme court for the classification, potentially endangering the 175,000 members in the country.Jehovahs Witnesses, with history of over 140 years worldwide, first filed to be a recognised religion, a requirement in Russia, in 1991.They were granted renewal in 1999, according to the groups international website. Despite the official recognition, Jehovahs Witness groups have faced periodic harassment by law enforcement at the local level.The Justice filing was released Thursday but is not dated and has not been scheduled for legal action, USA Today reported.It was confirmed by RAPSI, the Russian Legal Information Agency. Russian officials raided the groups national headquarters in February and confiscated a reported 70,000 documents that were turned over to the Russian General Prosecutors office. Local prosecutors have likened the religion to a cult and have called it a danger to Russian families.It is not the first time Jehovahs Witnesses have faced legal hurdles. In 2009, a court ruled a Russian-language version of the groups publication The Watchtower an extremist publication and barred it.In 2015, a Russian court ruled the groups website was also an extremist publication. The international head of the Jehovahs Witnesses estimated there are about 175,000 practicing members in Russia in some 2,200 congregations.The press office for the Russian branch of the religion released a statement Thursday in response to the filing, saying it would represent dire consequences for religious freedom in Russia if approved.Extremism is deeply alien to the Bible-based beliefs and morality of Jehovahs Witnesses, the statement said.Persecution of the faithful for peaceful anti-extremism legislation is built on frank fraud, incompetent individual experts and, as a result, a miscarriage of justice.Jehovah Witnesses emerged from the Bible Student movement, founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell with the formation of Zions Watch Tower Tract Society, with significant organisational and doctrinal changes under the leadership of Joseph Franklin Rutherford.The name Jehovahs witnesses was adopted in 1931 to distinguish themselves from other Bible Student groups and symbolise a break with the legacy of Russells traditions.Jehovahs Witnesses are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake!, and refusing military service and blood transfusions. Adherents of the group, now over 8.5million worldwide, believe that Jehovah is the only true God, the creator of all things, and the Universal Sovereign.They believe that all worship should be directed toward him, and that he is not part of a Trinity; consequently, the religion places more emphasis on God than on Christ. They believe that the holy spirit is Gods applied power or active force, rather than a person.
WASHINGTON (AP)  In a story March 17 about the House Republican health care bill, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., is a freshman from the Hudson River Valley. He is a second-term lawmaker from upstate New York.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Trump OKs changes in GOP health care bill, winning support

President Donald Trump has agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill

By ALAN FRAM and ERICA WERNER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill Friday, bolstering the measure with support from some conservative lawmakers but leaving its prospects wobbly. House leaders discussed other amendments calibrated to round up votes and scheduled a showdown vote Thursday.

"I just want to let the world know I am 100 percent in favor" of the measure, Trump said at the White House after meeting around a dozen House lawmakers and shaking hands on revisions. "We're going to have a health care plan that's going to be second to none."

While the rapid-fire events seemed to build momentum for the pivotal GOP legislation, its fate remained clouded. One leading House conservative said the alterations were insufficient and claimed enough allies to sink the measure, and support among moderates remained uncertain.

"My whip count indicates that there are 40 no's," enough to defeat the bill, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who leads the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. He said the change "doesn't move the ball more than a couple yards on a very long playing field."

Across the Capitol, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., facing re-election next year, became the fourth Republican senator to announce his opposition. That left Senate GOP leaders at least two votes shy of what they'd need to prevail in the chamber, which they control 52-48.

Congressional Democrats remain solidly opposed to the GOP effort.

Story continues

Thursday will mark the seventh anniversary of when President Barack Obama signed his health overhaul into law, one of his milestone achievements enacted over unanimous GOP opposition. Beyond symbolism, Republican leaders want Congress to complete the measure before an early April recess exposes lawmakers to two weeks of lobbying and town hall pressure tactics by activists, doctors, hospitals and other opponents.

The Republican bill would kill much of Obama's health care law, including tax penalties for people who don't buy insurance and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor. It would create new tax credits that would be less generous than current federal subsidies for many consumers, and repeal levies on the wealthy and medical firms that helped finance Obama's expansion of coverage to 20 million Americans.

Trump's deal with lawmakers would let states impose work requirements on some of Medicaid's roughly 60 million recipients. The condition would apply to healthy people with no dependents, a White House official said.

The agreement would let states accept lump-sum federal payments for Medicaid, instead of money that would grow with the number of beneficiaries. The program currently costs the federal government around $370 billion annually and covers costs no matter the amounts.

Also, any additional states that expand Medicaid would not receive the additional federal money Obama's law provided them for doing so. Thirty-one states have enlarged their Medicaid rolls under the law.

"These changes definitely strengthen our numbers," said the House GOP's top vote counter, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. "But they also show that President Trump is all-in now" to help win converts.

Those accepting the agreement included Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., leader of the Republican Study Committee, a large group of House conservatives.

It seemed clear that GOP leaders remained short of the 216 votes they'll need, and additional changes were in the works.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., assured him that the bill's tax credit would be focused more on lower-income people. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., among those who met with Trump, said the president "told his people" to work on changes making the measure more generous for lower-earning and older Americans.

Conservatives seemed unlikely to achieve their demands that the GOP bill's phase-out of Obama's Medicaid expansion  now 2020  be accelerated to next year and that the credit be denied people with little or no tax liability. Centrists remained wary of yanking constituents from coverage. Many represent states where voters have gained Medicaid and other insurance under the 2010 statute.

GOP Rep. John Katko, from a closely divided district in upstate New York, said late Friday he opposed the measure. He said it would provide inadequate insurance access and cost controls and hurt hospitals.

In a report that weakened GOP support, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the legislation would leave 24 million people uninsured in a decade and boost out-of-pocket costs for many.

Heller, whose state has expanded Medicaid, joined three fellow GOP senators in opposing the bill: Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas have voiced strong objections, and Senate moderates don't want to boot constituents off coverage.

___

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Kevin Freking, Matthew Daly, Jill Colvin and Kenneth Thomas contributed to this report.
Houses in Otodo Gbame, a waterfront community in the Lekki area of Lagos state, are currently being demolished by the government, despite...

Houses in Otodo Gbame, a waterfront community in the Lekki area of Lagos state, are currently being demolished by the government, despite a subsisting court injunction stopping the forceful eviction of residents.





The team carrying out the demolition is being assisted by armed security personnel.





The development took residents by surprise as a court had earlier restrained the government from carrying out the act.





One of the affected residents accused the government of being unfair to the poor.
Lawal Daura, director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), and Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial C...

Lawal Daura, director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), and Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), observed Jumat prayer with President Muhammadu Buhari at the mosque in the presidential villa in Abuja, on Friday.This is the first time that both men will be seen in public since the senate rejected Magus nomination on Wednesday.The upper legislative chamber based its action on a report of the DSS.The secret police had failed to give Magu a clean bill of health ahead of his screening.Magu has failed integrity test and will constitute a liability to the anti-corruption drive of the present administration, read a report the agency presented to the senate.Magu had denied all the allegations, saying the DSS did not give him fair hearing.There is a right to fair hearing, but up till now the DSS has not invited me to hear my own side. This is a constitutional issue, he had told the lawamkers.But his explanation could still not save him.Some dignitaries who also observed Jumat service at the presidential villa are: Babagana Monguno, national security adviser; Abubakar Malami, minister of justice; Abdullahi Ganduje, governor of Kano state; and Abdulrahman Dambazzau, minister of interior.
Shehu Sani, Senator representing Kaduna Central, has blamed the rejection of Ibrahim Magu as the substantive chairman of the Economic and ...

Shehu Sani, Senator representing Kaduna Central, has blamed the rejection of Ibrahim Magu as the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on a cabal fight in the presidency.Addressing representatives of the National Association of Muslim Law Students in his office on Thursday, Senator Sani said, Magu is a victim of the civil war in the Presidents kitchen cabinet. It is high time the President stood his feet to stop power blocs who are desirous of undermining and subverting his efforts.Magu was rejected by the Senate because of a DSS report.
As if the row with the senate is not enough, the house of representatives has ordered the probe of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) under...

As if the row with the senate is not enough, the house of representatives has ordered the probe of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) under the leadership of Hameed Ali, comptroller-general of the service.At plenary on Thursday, the lower chamber of the national assembly mandated its committee on customs and excise to investigate the failure of the agency to auction confiscated goods.This followed the adoption of a motion on the Need to Investigate the Failure of the Nigerian Customs Service to Auction Confiscated Goods.Prestige Ossy (Abia-PDP), sponsor of the motion, said ban on the auction of goods seized by the NCS had resulted to the forfeiture of such goods to the federal government.Ossy expressed worry that since the ban took effect in 2015, it had resulted to the proliferation of seized goods at various formations of the Nigerian customs service.He said goods seized in large numbers from different parts of the country included vehicles, consumables, clothing materials and containers of assorted household goods.The lawmaker said instead of auctioning the seized items worth billions of naira, the service left them to degrade.He said most of these goods, especially the vehicles with duty paid value (DPV) worth over N6 billion, are rapidly depreciating.The customs service will eventually spend huge amount of money in disposing them when it ought to have generated huge revenue for the government by auctioning them before they wither away.Ossy said the service had announced the establishment of an auction sale website in 2015, but said two years on, the website had not materialised.The failure to auction goods in its custody had denied the federal government over N1 trillion which ought to accrue to it from the auctioning of those goods, he said.After the adoption of the motion, the house passed it to the committee on customs and excise to investigate and report back in eight weeks.The senate has asked Ali to appear before it in uniform.
A 22-year-old US-based Nigerian, Kawan Okoye Gaidowsky, has been arrested by US police for exposing himself to no fewer than three women w...

A 22-year-old US-based Nigerian, Kawan Okoye Gaidowsky, has been arrested by US police for exposing himself to no fewer than three women while masturbating in a public place.According to the Redding Police Department, Gaidowsky carried out the act in a parking lot at 55 Lake Boulevard in Redding, California.The police said Gaidowsky admitted he was driving a gray, 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt when he pulled up next to a woman in the Shopko parking lot, pulled out his penis and began to masturbate on Wednesday around 8:42am.The woman he was referring to, Ashlee Libolt, reported the cars description and license plate to police.Following Libolt complaint, officers checked the cars records and found it was registered to Gaidowsky.Upon his arrest and interrogation, the Redding Police Department said the Nigerian also admitted to exposing himself to two other female victims.Sergeant Les James disclosed that the 22-year-old first exposed himself last month and the other was not reported.The officer noted that the US-based Nigerian was arrested for indecent exposure and booked at the Shasta County Jail in California.
Donald Trump hosts Germanys Angela Merkel at the White House Friday, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of wor...

Donald Trump hosts Germanys Angela Merkel at the White House Friday, a meeting delayed by a snowstorm and still clouded by a storm of words between the two ostensible allies.The cautious German chancellor and the impulsive US president will hold talks in the Oval Office, hoping to narrow differences on NATO, Russia, global trade and a host of other issues.Talks had been scheduled for Tuesday, before a blizzard in the eastern United States intervened and delayed the likely difficult meeting.For years Merkel  a trained physicist  had been president Barack Obamas closest international partner, with the two sharing a strong rapport and a similar deliberative approach.With Trump, Merkel may settle for avoiding an open argument or a 140-character Twitter missive.Before coming to office the US president called Merkels acceptance of refugees a catastrophic mistake and said she was ruining Germany.He also demanded countries like Germany step up defense spending, a sensitive issue for a nation that has had a strong pacifist tradition since World War II and proselytizes fiscal prudence.In a similar vein, Merkel has sought to remind the real estate mogul of democratic values.Any close cooperation, she said, must be on the basis of the values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief.Comments like that have prompted some of Trumps fiercest critics to declare Merkel the new leader of the free world, a moniker normally taken up by the occupant of the White House. Voice of Europe Between meetings the pair will hold a joint press conference that is sure to dredge up past barbed disagreements.Germany looks toward Washington with a mixture of vulnerability and confidence, said Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Germany is the de facto leader of the European Union, but the Union is undergoing internal and external trials that make its future uncertain, he added.And Germany has placed all of its security eggs in multilateral baskets.Since coming to office Trump has tempered his comments slightly, but is still likely to press for higher defense spending.And European officials still fret that Trump has too closely embraced the nationalist ideology of key advisor Steve Bannon.Bannon who has championed trade protectionism and opposed the European Union and other multilateral institutions that underpin the world order.Merkel is sure to raise the issue of a proposed US border tariff that would hit German manufacturers hard. To underscore the point she will bring a host of German business leaders along for the trip.Before departing for the United States, Merkel also noted she will be going to Washington as an envoy of Germany, but also Europe.I will of course point out that for us, our country and our membership in the European Union are two sides of the same coin, Merkel said ahead of the visit.But in a conciliatory tone, a White House official said that Trump will seek out Merkels views on Russia.That is a nod to her years on the international stage and experience growing up in communist East Germany, where she learned Russian.The president will be very interested in hearing the Chancellors views on her experience in interacting with Putin, said the official, on condition of anonymity.Of course she has been doing this for more than a decade, the official said. Hes going to be very interested in hearing her insights on what its like to deal with the Russians.Trumps own background may also help break the ice.His family hails from Kallstadt, a tidy village nestled in southwest Germanys lush wine country.His grandparents left for America more than a century ago fleeing poverty and later, after a brief return, trouble with the law.






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Thanks for joining our live coverage of the draw!









Good morning and welcome tolive commentary of the UEFA champions league quarter final draw taking place in Nyon, Switzerland.The quarter-finals of this year's Champions League now have all eight participants, but Manchester City will not be one of them.Pep Guardiola's men let slip a two-goal advantage on Wednesday, as Monaco battled back to win a pulsating tie on away goals.The Ligue 1 leaders join Leicester City, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich on the list of teams safely through to the last eight.With the draw to decide the matchups for the quarter-finals coming up on Friday, here is all you need to know about the next round of Europe's top competition.The quarter-final draw is open and unseeded, so the teams are unranked and clubs from the same country can face each other. Put simply, it is a totally random draw and anyone can face anyone.The clubs that come out of the hat first for each tie will play the first leg at home.The first legs will be on Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 April, with the returns on 18 and 19 April.Quarter-finals: 11/12 & 18/19 AprilSemi-final draw: 21 AprilSemi-finals: 2/3 & 9/10 MayFinal: Saturday 3 June, National Stadium of WalesLeicester City caused one of the biggest shocks of the last round, seeing off Sevilla and Craig Shakespeare is eyeing another upset.Craig Shakespeare: "It will be memorable for everyone at the football club. We might just be the surprise team.Dortmund reached the last eight with a 4-1 aggregate win over Benfica and there is one team that Thomas Tuchel definitely wants to avoid.Tuchel: "I don't want an all-German draw. Not because we would be scared, but because we want to compete internationally."Dortmund will surely not be the only team hoping to avoid Bayern Munich in the draw. Carlo Ancelotti's men put 10 (ten) goals past Arsenal in the round of 16 running out 10-2 aggregate winners - the worst defeat by an English team in Champions League history.Bayern weren't the only high scorers in the last round. Manchester City hit six in two games against Monaco but still went out. The Ligue 1 side prevailed on away goals after a 6-6 aggregate draw and they will surely fancy their chances of scoring against anyone.Perhaps the most remarkable game in the last round came at Camp Nou where Barcelona pulled off arguably THE greatest comeback in Champions League history, and possibly the history of football. Trailing 4-0 from their first leg they won 6-1 with three goals in the last seven minutes to break Parisien hearts. Does that mean this is going to be their year?Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu on THAT round of 16 comeback: "This is a historic achievement that will be remembered forever."Gianluigi Buffon, Juventus goalkeeper: "I would like to avoid Leicester City. Theyre a dangerous side, theres a feelgood factor around the place and they have the ability to hurt you if you take the game to them. You have everything to lose against them."We wanted to be among the top eight and that's our level. If you're always in the mix with the best sides, sooner or later you end up winning the competition."Just a few minutes to go now until the official draw ceremony starts in full. So stay tuned as we bring you all the latest as soon as it happens.Well nearly, but not quite Pedro Pinto, Uefa's chief of communications is kicking things off with a quick recap of the last round - which was the highest scoring knockout round of football the Champions League has ever seen.Uefa are full of praise for Leicester this morning for reaching the quarter-finals. "Your story is beautiful and is a lesson to everyone how beautiful and unpredictable football can be."HERE WE GO!Ready, steady....first team out is




LYON V BESIKTAS

AJAX V SCHALKE

CELTA VIGO V GENK

Manchester United will play Belgian club Anderlecht in the Europa League quarterfinals.United boss Jose Mourinho had previously suggested he would prioritise winning the Europa League which would guarantee Champions League qualification -- if they eliminated Rostov in the round of 16.United's first ever European game came against Anderlecht in 1956, when they won 2-0 in the European Cup preliminary rounds. Their 10-0 victory in the second leg remains United's record win. The two clubs met again in the 1968 European Cup second round, when United progressed 4-3 on aggregate.Should Mourinho's side win the competition this season, they would become only the fifth club to win all three major European trophies, after Ajax, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Juventus.Ties will be played April 6 and 13:ANDERLECHT V MANCHESTER UNITED!
President Muhammadu Buhari has revealed the reason he did not allow governors to visit him all through his 49-day medical vacation in the ...

President Muhammadu Buhari has revealed the reason he did not allow governors to visit him all through his 49-day medical vacation in the United Kingdom.Apart from Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun, no governor visited Buhari during his vacation.Speaking on Thursday at the national economic council meeting chaired by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, Buhari said he stopped governors from coming to see him because he did not want government to move to London.Buhari, who went round the council chambers to greet the governors one after another, apologised to them for over the development.I apologise to the governors for barring visits while I was away. I didnt want government to move to London; I wanted it to remain in Abuja and I am glad it did, he said.He thanked them profusely for their display of love and respect to him, and commended them for working together.The president said he was moved by how governors, irrespective of political differences charged their citizens to pray in mosques and churches for his well-being.After narrating what he went through while in London, Buhari noted the suggestion by the governors for him to add more rest, but insisted that he would be relentless in the pursuit of the interest of the Nigerian people at all times.This, according to him, was the only way to show his gratitude to the people who, he said, had given so much to me. I was overwhelmed by the celebration of my return all across the country.High profile politicians like Senate President Bukola Saraki; Ahmad Lawan, majority leader of the senate; Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives; Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC); and Bisi Akande, former governor of Osun state, were among those who visited Buhari at the Abuja House in London.
A former Governor of Enugu State, Mr Sullivan Chime, has confirmed that he has left the PDP.

A former Governor of Enugu State, Mr Sullivan Chime, has confirmed that he has left the PDP.Speaking in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Friday in Enugu, Chime said that his decision to quit the PDP was because the party was no longer in existence in the true sense of it.Chime said, however, that he had yet to join another political party, contrary to speculations that he had defected to the APC.He said that he was still making consultations to determine the political party to join, pointing out that his decision to dump PDP had nothing to do with his corruption case with the EFCC.The PDP, we used to be members of is dead. The party I joined in 1999 and had the opportunity of leading in the state for eight years is no longer in existence.We have two groups claiming to be in charge of the party as chairman. These two, none of them can actually lay claim to the chairmanship of the party.There is no provision in PDPs Constitution for interim caretaker committee led by Sen. Ahmed Maikarfi.The PDP convention has no power to set up a caretaker committee and did not seek to amend the partys constitution, he stated.The former governor explained that Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff on his own was brought in to serve out the tenure of former PDP National Chairman, Adamu Muazu, adding that the tenure had long elapsed.Chime said that remaining in the PDP would be a deceit, advising his supporters to look for a better platform to actualise their political aspirations.He said that he could not explain why INEC had not deregistered the PDP.It is surprising or maybe INEC has not deregistered the PDP because the organisation is no longer working in tandem with the constitution that created it.The PDP as originally formed has been cremated and no serious-minded politician will remain in it.If those still remaining feel strongly about coming together they can come back, secure de-registration of the party and then form another party.
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, on Thursday said that he ordered the expulsion of armed herdsmen out of his state was to protect the...

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, on Thursday said that he ordered the expulsion of armed herdsmen out of his state was to protect the lives and property of his people.Speaking with State House correspondents at the end of the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, he said that it was incumbent on him to secure the people against any internal and external aggression.Stressing that he couldnt have continued watching helplessly while his people were getting killed by the herders, he said that his action is in line with the rule of law.The governor also disclosed that he had appropriately directed the security agencies to ensure that the armed herdsmen were arrested and prosecuted.He said: I ordered armed herdsmen out of my state. They are not friendly to my people. They are killing them and I cannot tolerate that. My job as governor is to provide security for lives and property.I cannot watch seeing people being killed unprovoked. It is not right. The only thing my people are living on is farming. When you go to their farmland and destroy their crop and then when they complain you kill them, that will never be acceptable. I will not fold my hands to watch this happen.I have told the security men to ensure they arrest of all those who have arms. You are aware that through my amnesty Programme, I was able to disarm the criminal elements in my society because I believe in the rule of law and due process.Without the rule of law, there is no way we can govern. A stronger person will come and take over the affairs of the state from where ever you are. And so, we must abide by the rule of law. The impunity is what we should stand up and fight outside from corruption. he saidHe went on: Another thing is impunity, it is worse than corruption. So, why we are fighting corruption, we just also fight impunity. This is not right. Those armed herdsmen, are they above the law?So, the security men must track and arrest them and prosecute them according to the law. I have told my people that as farmers, they have no business carrying arms. And so, I will protect them as long as I am governor is my state. he saidHe also refuted the claims that his directives were not accepted by the Commissioner of police, stressing that they were both on the same page.People with arms? The commissioner of police should arrest those people with arms. These are not licensed arms. I was with him when we went to Buruku, he never said anything to contradict what I said earlier. I dont know where this fabrication is coming from. As far as I am concerned, I am in touch with my security council in Benue State. We meet regularly and all these problems we discuss them when we meet.And I as far as I am concerned, we are on the same page to ensure that those weigh arms should be arrested otherwise, they should leave the state, he said.
ATLANTIC COUNTY -- Three volunteers at a county-operated animal shelter have filed a federal lawsuit alleging their First Amendment rights were violated when they were blocked from commenting on the shelter's public Facebook page.

Anna Strang, DawnMarie Jacoby and Michael Price filed sued against the Atlantic County Animal Shelter on Thursday after their critical comments about the shelter were deleted and they were then banned from posting on the shelter's page.

The comments dealt with allegations of abuse against dogs as well as the three volunteers' belief that the shelter doesn't follow proper protocol in handling or euthanizing animals, their lawyer Edward Harrington Heyburn said by phone Friday.

"When you have a government (Facebook) page, you can't censor it," said Heyburn, an East Windsor-based attorney. "These posts can't be deleted and you can't prevent someone from commenting."

Earlier this month, the local Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issued a report that determined allegation of abuse at the shelter were unfounded, according to PressofAtlanticCity.com.

Heyburn said the SPCA didn't ask for the shelter's records and that his clients were never interviewed as part of the investigation. He also noted a sign hangs at the shelter instructing volunteers to feed dogs less because their food is too expensive.

None of the three plaintiffs were notified they were being blocked or told why the shelter scrubbed their comments from its Facebook page, according to the suit. All regularly commented on posts made by the shelter before they were "muted" earlier this year, Heyburn said.

The plaintiffs, all Atlantic County residents, are seeking an injunction that would prohibit comments from being removed because of their viewpoint. They also want their attorney's fees paid.

Strang and Jacoby are long-time volunteers at the shelter while Price's involvement is more recent, according to their attorney.

Katherine Kelsey, the director of the publicly funded shelter in Pleasantville, was named as a defendant.

The shelter deferred comment to a spokeswoman for Atlantic County. Public information officer Linda Gimore said the county has received the suit and is reviewing it. She added the county will provide a response when the review is complete.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Camden.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - March 16, 2017) - Seattle-based humanitarian organization World Concern is responding to the worsening drought crisis in Somalia.

According to UNOCHA, 6.2 million people in Somalia -- half the population -- are facing acute food insecurity. Of these, nearly 3 million need urgent, life-saving assistance. The prolonged severe drought is raising fears of famine equal to or worse than the 2011 Horn of Africa famine that killed 260,000 people.

"We are gravely concerned about the worsening drought crisis unfolding right now in Somalia. This severe drought is threatening the lives of children and families who are in dire need of immediate assistance. Families have lost entire herds of livestock -- their only source of income, and are migrating in search of food and water," said World Concern President Jacinta Tegman. "World Concern has worked in Somalia for 35 years, and we're on the front lines of this disaster. We were there during the 2011 famine, and we're responding again now with emergency aid to those who are suffering. We ask for prayers and support to assist as many as possible."

World Concern is delivering emergency water to 10 communities, and cash transfers and emergency supplies to drought-affected families in the Sool and Sanaag regions of Somaliland. Eighty-four trucks, each carrying 8,000 liters of water, will deliver water to communities in urgent need. And more than 1,300 families will receive cash transfers to buy food and meet critical needs.

More than 360,000 children in Somalia are acutely malnourished. Two-year-old Saleban was visibly thin and had suffered from diarrhea for two-and-a-half months when World Concern staff discovered the toddler during an assessment of the village where his family is staying temporarily. The family traveled here in search of water and food after losing all of their animals to the drought, said his mother, Xaawo. World Concern helped Saleban get to the hospital, where he's receiving treatment for severe acute malnutrition. "We are very grateful to World Concern for their help and kindness that they have shown us by taking care of our son," said Xaawo.

Story continues

Severely malnourished children under age 3, like Saleban, will receive emergency therapeutic nutrition from World Concern. Our Somalia team made a pledge this week that "No child will die on our watch," and are committed to doing everything possible to prevent child deaths from hunger in the communities World Concern is reaching. An urgent response from donors and the public is needed to help ensure this happens.

For on-the-ground interviews or more information, please contact Communications Director Cathy Herholdt, at 206-794-9775 or cathyh@worldconcern.org.

For more information on World Concern's programs or to donate, please visit www.worldconcern.org.

World Concern global relief and development organization extending life-saving help and opportunity to people facing the most profound human challenges of extreme poverty. Our areas of expertise include disaster response, clean water, education, food security, child protection, microfinance and health.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/3/15/11G133218/Images/2-year-old_Saleban_-_World_Concern_-_Somalia_Droug-a7a0139e5cae805693fc0b7a30d11590.JPG


FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit.
New Orleans officials can begin the process of removing the statues of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle, Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Mid-City and the Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard at the City Park entrance, a federal appeals court ruled Monday March 6, 2017. (David Grunfeld)
A group numbering in the hundreds gather to protest the appearance of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky., and the policies of the Trump administration outside of the Jeffersontown Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, in Jeffersontown, Ky. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
More than 1 million people visit the "Topography of Terror" annually, making the German documentation center one of the most-visited places of remembrance in Berlin. During the Third Reich, the headquarters of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the SS and the Reich Security Main Office were located here.(Photo by Robert Mann)
Ovarian cancer patient Phyllis Lea attends Gov. John Bel Edwards' press conference marking the one-year anniversary of Medicaid expansion in Louisiana at University Medical Center in New Orleans, Jan. 12, 2017. (Ted Jackson)
Experience in public office or the need for change. Voters in District 9 are being asked at Tuesdays election to judge what they value more when it comes to who will represent them on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.
When buying a business, learn first how to avoid assuming the sellers tax liability.

What Is a Tax Clearance Certificate?

A tax clearance certificate is a document issued by a state government agency, usually the Department of Revenue. It certifies that a business or individual has met their tax obligations as of a certain date. The IRS also issues tax clearance certificates in certain situations, such as applications for federal contracts.

Tax clearance certificates might also be called tax clearance letters, tax status certificates or letters, certificates or letters of compliance or tax compliance, or letters or certificates of good standing.

The taxes that might be covered in a clearance certificate for a business include sales tax, use tax, franchise or corporate tax, unemployment tax, and other types of taxes, depending on the laws and requirements of each state.

When Do You Need a Tax Clearance Certificate?

Many states have what's called successor's liability laws, which mean that you can be held responsible for unpaid taxes even though the taxes were incurred by a former owner. States might require business owners to obtain a tax clearance certificate when they close or sell their business, but to protect your interests, you, the buyer, should obtain a tax clearance even if it is not legally required.

If you are expanding your business from your home state into a new state, you might find that the new state where you are locating requires a certificate. The same might be true if you are applying for a loan or government contract.

Most states require you to register your business, usually with the Secretary of State. Getting a tax clearance doesn't eliminate the need to register the business you are purchasing.

Deciding What Tax Information You Need

If you are buying a business, you will first need to know the types of taxes levied on the business you are buying. Some states will search all tax databases to fulfill a tax clearance request, but others will ask you to state the types of taxes you want to include in the search. The types of tax liabilities you should check for include:

sales and use taxes

gross receipts taxes

withholding taxes

excise taxes

franchise or corporation taxes

special taxes like gaming, liquor and fuel

employment taxes like unemployment and withholding taxes

Some states levy permit and license fees and you will want to be certain the seller is up to date on those taxes as well.

How to Get a Tax Clearance Certificate

In most states, the Department of Revenue will issue a tax clearance certificate, but in others it might be the Department of Taxes, Department of Finance, Secretary of State, or another agency. Many states provide forms for requesting a tax clearance online. Others require you to submit a written request.

Refer to the 50-state table for the agency that issues tax clearance certificates in your state. The procedures for getting a certificate vary widely from one state to the next, and the procedure depends on the type of business entity, the industry, and the location within the state. It's a good idea to check directly with the state agency responsible for issuing clearances before submitting your application to learn exactly what the certificate will cover.

Some state revenue and taxation agencies include employment taxes, such as unemployment tax and withholding tax, in their search to determine whether a seller has any outstanding tax liabilities. But in other states, you might need to request employment tax information separately from the Department of Labor or a similar agency.

Local governments, including counties and cities, might also levy taxes. You might have to contact the taxing agency in the local area where your business is located to determine whether a seller is up to date on those taxes.

What You Need to Request a Certificate

In general, you'll need to supply the following information to get a tax clearance certificate:

the name, address, and phone number of the buyer and seller

a business address or addresses if multiple locations are involved

the date of sale

a bill of sale or purchase agreement for the business

the tax and employer identification numbers for the seller and buyer, and

escrow company information, if one was involved

More Questions to Ask

Which taxes are subject to successor's liability rules? As explained above, most states hold the buyer of a business responsible for the seller's unpaid taxes. The type of taxes (such as sales and use tax) that are subject to those laws varies by state.

Does the state require you to withhold funds to cover unpaid taxes? Many states require the buyer to withhold enough funds to cover the seller's unpaid taxes, along with interest and penalties. Unfair as it might seem, buyers might be charged a penalty if they fail to set aside those funds.

Does the state impose requirements for closing a business? Some states require business owners to file a formal notification when they close or sell their business. This notification alerts the state to check for unpaid taxes. Buyers in these states should request a copy of the close or sale notice, especially if the state uses the notice in lieu of issuing a clearance certificate. Some states offer the option of verifying the closure through the state's website. If the seller does not file a required notification and owes taxes, the state might come after the buyer for payment.

Will the state issue a tax clearance to the buyer? Typically, the seller applies for the tax clearance, but some states allow the buyer to apply for it. Other states will issue a tax clearance only to the seller, and you'll have to work with the seller to get a copy. Others allow the buyer to receive a copy of the tax clearance directly if the seller provides written authorization.

Will you need a separate tax clearance for multiple locations of a business? If the business you are buying has more than one location, you might need a separate clearance for each location.

Does the agency issue clearances when the seller has a payment plan in place? In some states, a tax clearance might not mean that the seller has no unpaid taxes, but rather that the seller has arranged a payment plan to pay the taxes. It's important to understand your rights if the seller doesn't live up to the payment plan in the future.

What About Liens?

A lien allows a creditor to legally take a borrower's property or assets if a loan that is secured by property goes unpaid. The lien "sticks" to the property, no matter who owns it. To avoid the specter of losing your newly acquired property to the seller's lender, make sure that the assets you are acquiring are not subject to any liens.

In most cases, you can do a Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) public search on the website of the Secretary of State to determine if someone has placed a lien against the property you are purchasing. This gives you notice of what secured debt you'll be acquiring (if any) related to the business's equipment, inventory, and other items. You will want to do this whether you are buying the business in an asset purchase (where you own the property of the business) or a stock purchase (where you own the business entity and the entity owns the property.)

It's also a good idea to investigate other kinds of business debt, such as guarantees and other private contractual obligations.

Getting a Tax Clearance Certificate in Your State
One of Council Bluffs longtime leaders is leaving.

Bob Mundt, president and CEO of the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce, announced today that he has accepted a position as president and CEO of the Fox Cities Regional Chamber of Commerce in Appleton, Wisconsin, effective in mid-April.

Mundt was named president and CEO of the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce in June 1992 after serving as executive director of the Brookings, South Dakota, Chamber of Commerce for five years.

This is a sad day for Council Bluffs, said James Watson, chairman of the Chambers Board of Directors. Bob was a fantastic man whos done a great job for Council Bluffs.

Watson said Mundt will remain with the chamber here until April 14, adding that the chambers executive board will be meeting on a regular basis to start the task of naming Mundts replacement as president and CEO of the 800-member organization. Watson said any decisions regarding the scope of the search for Mundts replacement will be made by the executive board.

Finding someone to fill Bobs shoes will be difficult, Watson said. Thats a big set of shoes to fill. Well be looking for someone who can take the chamber to the next level. Finding a new director for a high-profile organization is always a challenge.

Bob will clearly be missed, Watson added. The progress made in Council Bluffs over the past 25 years  sometimes with the chamber in front and sometimes with the chamber working behind the scenes  has been phenomenal. Fortunately, Bob has set up a machine that will continue working when hes gone.

Mundt said the Fox Cities Regional Chamber of Commerce, a combined chamber and economic development organization, serves four major cities and a number of smaller cities and villages spread out over a three-county area about 30 miles south of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Its a larger chamber organization with about 1,200 members, Mundt said.

Mundt and his wife, Martha, have three children, two of whom have completed college, with the youngest still attending.

Ive been fortunate in being able to stay here for 25 years and raise my family, Mundt said. But Im looking forward to the new challenge.
The effects of a statewide testing scandal should have minimal effect on the Council Bluffs Fire Department.

The department was among the 94 outfits informed by the Iowa Department of Public Safety last week that they had firefighters who should not have been granted certifications by its Fire Services Training Bureau.

But Fire Chief Justin James told The Nonpareil that wont cause much hardship.

James said he knows of at least three firefighters in his department were affected. He is seeking additional information from the bureau to see if other firefighters will need to retake tests.

One Council Bluffs firefighter was given the wrong grade in a pump operator class prior to joining the department. Hell retake the test, James said.

A second firefighter will have to retake a fire inspector class. The third firefighter was improperly scored in a hazardous materials class. James said the department member wont have to retake that test because he later passed the next level of testing for hazardous materials.

Itll have little impact on us, James said. Well get through it.

The public safety department announced in January that 1,706 firefighters and emergency personnel in Iowa were issued nearly 2,300 improper certifications between 2012 and 2016. The new revelation affected an additional 739 emergency responders.

A review of tests last year found that they did not have the scores they needed to pass written exams and earn certifications in areas such as basic firefighting knowledge, hazardous materials handling and operation of fire trucks.

Council Bluffs has a full-time training division that makes it easier to respond to concerns.

Im not worried about their qualifications, James said of the citys firefighters.

James said the fallout of the scandal will disproportionately hit volunteer departments.

When youre in a rural area, (theres) not the same tax revenue to pay for firefighters. Those volunteers, theyre donating their time out of their own good will, he said. Its a big burden to go back and take those tests. Its a logistical nightmare for the smaller departments.

In southwest Iowa, letters were initially sent to the volunteer departments in Carter Lake, Treynor, Underwood, Neola, Lewis Township, Glenwood, Avoca, Shelby, Missouri Valley, Logan, Woodbine, Persia, Pisgah, Minden, McClelland, Crescent, Hancock, Oakland, Clarinda and Atlantic.

The second round of letters included Council Bluffs and Clarinda. Attempts to reach the Clarinda Fire Department on Thursday were unsuccessful.

The certifications are not mandated by Iowa law, but some departments require them to be hired or promoted. James said that one of his firefighters retaking a test is doing so because its part of the requirements for a promotion.

Carrying the seals of the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress and the National Board on Fire Service Professional Qualifications, the credentials are also recognized by departments in other states and used as prerequisites for more advanced training.

John McPhee, the former certification and accreditation coordinator for the Iowa Fire Services Training Bureau, is accused of failing to properly grade tests for years and simply assigning them random scores. He has pleaded not guilty to misconduct in public office and tampering with records, and he is awaiting trial.

Its a travesty really as far as that it happened. It shouldve never happened, James said, noting that by not grading tests McPhees actions affected not only the test takers but the bureau itself.

Its not only masking the deficiencies of what the personnel know, but whats being taught, James said. If youre not grading them, you dont know if that class is making the impact it needs to make.

The state department said last week that 350 firefighters have undergone retesting since it began last month. Affected firefighters have through the end of this year to retake the tests.

 Ryan Foley of the Associated Press contributed to this story.
A Council Bluffs woman who told police she had been carjacked at gunpoint on March 7 was cited for reporting false information after investigators said she knew the alleged suspect and no robbery had taken place.

Brittnie Holz, 26, originally claimed she had been in her car at the Buckys gas station near South 24th Street and Interstate 80 when a man got into her car, pointed a gun at her and told her to drive. But police determined Holz provided false statements during interviews after the incident.

Holz was issued a criminal citation Tuesday for reporting false information to the police.

 Reporter Mike Bell can be reached at 712-325-5764 or by email at mbell@nonpareilonline.com.
The Daily Nonpareil has been notified about a solicitation from a company touting an employment website.

The company, based in Pennsylvania, may solicit advertisers who placed an employment ad in their local newspaper or on its website. Similar activity has been reported by other newspapers in the area.

In those circumstances, a customer reported and provided documents to their respective newspaper that appear similar to an invoice. Though the document notes that it is not a bill, it is a solicitation. Some vendors have reported that they thought it was a bill for services provided by the newspaper.

The Nonpareil wants to alert businesses and customers to the solicitation, and does not have any association with this Pennsylvania firm. The Nonpareil does not provide customer contact information to other companies for solicitation services.

If you have a question about a bill or document you have received, please contact The Nonpareil at 712-328-1811 or contact your advertising representative directly.

 Managing Editor Courtney Brummer-Clark can be reached at 712-325-5724 or via email at courtney.brummer-clark@nonpareilonline.com.
Less than five years after leaving the Omni Centre Business Park, Centro Latino is set to return.

Centro Latino held an open house from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday in Suite 40 at the Omni Centre, with Latino food and beverages.

The center was looking for a space that would better accommodate its programming, said Roger Garcia, executive director.

Were also exploring adding some new programming this year, he said.

The center hopes to offer Hi-Set high school equivalency classes in Spanish, Garcia said. Currently, students must travel to Omaha to take the classes in Spanish.

The new space will have five offices, one of which will be used for childcare; a large meeting room for classes; a kitchen; and two private restrooms.

Were also going to be in the building that has a lot of our nonprofit and government partners, Garcia said.

Centro Latino was founded in 2002 as a mission project of the United Methodist Churchs Iowa Conference and Southwest Iowa District.

It operated in a corner of the former Council Bluffs Community Health Center at the Omni Centre until 2012, when the clinic said that it would not have as much extra space when it moved into its new building as All Care Health Center.

Centro Latino closed on Feb. 15, 2012, and reopened in the Care and Share House at 600 Main St. on Nov. 1, 2012.

In May 2014, with the help of a $35,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation, it expanded into the former Over Over & Over law offices next door.

It will officially open in its new space in the Omni Centre on April 1.

With the citys diverse population continuously growing, this organizations presence in Council Bluffs continues to serve a good purpose to area residents.

To have the organization remain invested in the community is good for Council Bluffs.
Trumps revised order blocked by court rulings in Maryland, Hawaii

GREENBELT, Md. (AP)  Rejecting arguments from the government that President Donald Trumps revised travel ban was substantially different from the first one, judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked the executive order from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday, using the presidents own words as evidence that the order discriminates against Muslims.

The rulings in Hawaii late Wednesday and in Maryland early Thursday were victories for civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees, who argued that a temporary ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration argued that the ban was intended to protect the United States from terrorism.

In Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang  who was appointed by then-President Barack Obama  called Trumps own statements about barring Muslims from entering the United States highly relevant. The second executive order removed a preference for religious minorities from the affected countries, among other changes that the Justice Department argued would address the legal concerns surrounding the first ban, which was also blocked in court.

Despite these changes, the history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the Second Executive Order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban, Chuang said.

The initial ban sparked chaos at U.S. airports and widespread criticism around the world when it was signed in January. It was later blocked by a judge in Washington state, a ruling that was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Honolulu, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson criticized what he called the illogic of the governments arguments and cited significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus behind the travel ban. He also noted that while courts should not examine the veiled psyche and secret motives of government decision-makers, the remarkable facts at issue here require no such impermissible inquiry.

Watson also wrote, referring to a statement Trump issued as a candidate, For instance, there is nothing veiled about this press release: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday that the ban is lawful and suggested that the judges were overstepping their authority.

I think for a judge to ignore that statute and talk about tweets or interpreting something that happened during the campaign trail is not in keeping with how theyre supposed to interpret the law, Spicer said. We tailored that second executive order to comply with the judges order.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it would continue to defend the ban. The case was argued in court by acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, who said the ban doesnt say anything about religion.

It doesnt draw any religious distinctions.

Speaking Wednesday evening at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which he said he wished he could implement.
NRL referees boss Tony Archer has confirmed that the NRL Bunker's decision not to award a try to Storm centre Will Chambers in Melbourne's thrilling 14-12 win over Brisbane on Thursday night was the correct one.

Chambers' 68th minute effort saw him brought down short of the line by Broncos winger Corey Oates with the ball coming free from his grasp before rolling forward and making contact with the try-line while still in contact with the centre's forearm.

Chambers No Try decision:



Left screen confirms ball short of line.



Right screen confirms lost possession.#NRLStormBroncos #NRL pic.twitter.com/1aZpeuoL32  NRL Bunker (@NRLBunker) March 16, 2017

Despite commentators insisting in the live coverage on both Channel Nine and Fox League that a side-on angle indicated a fair try, Archer confirmed this was not the case.

"I have had the opportunity to fully review the decision," Archer said on Friday.

"The decision to rule that Will Chambers loses possession of the ball short of the line is the correct one.

"Further review of the live decision of no try by the Bunker confirmed that Chambers' hand had come away from the ball, whilst the ball is on the ground, prior to the ball touching the tryline."

The end-on view clearly showed the ball came free from Chambers' grasp before touching the line, Archer noted.

"Split screen technology allowed the review officials to pinpoint the moment the player lost possession. At the same point, the end-on camera showed that the ball was short of the line," he said.

"That is a knock-on, and any subsequent promotion of the ball using the forearm was irrelevant as the knock-on had already occurred."



Storm score late win in Slater's return

Storm v Broncos: Five key points

Storm stars set for injury lay-off

Broncos suffer back-to-back heartbreak


Brisbane Broncos forward Sam Thaiday has been charged by the NRL match review committee following his side's 14-12 loss to Melbourne Storm at AAMI Park on Thursday night.

Thaiday was charged with grade one contrary conduct for an incident involving Storm prop Jesse Bromwich in the 65th minute.

This charge carries a base fine of $1,500 however Thaiday has two non-similar prior offences in the past two years, increasing the fine by 40 per cent, up to $2,100.

Thaiday can pay a $1,550 fine with an early guilty plea.
The Golden Years may not be so shiny, according to a recent government report.

More than 66 percent of workers with access to 401(k) plans and other defined-contribution retirement saving plans arent using them, according to recent research from the Census Bureau. Additionally, only 14 percent of companies offer these types of retirement plans, far lower than previous estimates, the analysis found.

What should you be doing to prepare for retirement? We asked local experts to share their experience and knowledge on the topics of saving for retirement and estate planning.

***

Joe Starkey, Partner and Investment Adviser, Oak Partners Inc., Crown Point

Q: When is the right time to start planning for retirement?

A: The easy answer to this question is now. The earlier in life one starts to put money away for retirement, the longer it has to grow and compound upon itself. Whether be it in an IRA or your 401(k) at work, putting something to the side from the start is the best move you can make, especially if you work for an employer that offers matching contributions.

Q: What should people do if their employer does not offer a 401(k)?

A: There are other ways to save outside of a 401(k). One can contribute up to $5,500 per year to both Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs with catch-up contributions starting at age 50. Traditional IRAs offer many tax advantages and grow tax-deferred, while Roth IRAs are not tax-deductible, but grow tax-free.

Q: Whats the biggest mistake people make when planning?

A: Failing to plan is planning to fail. Blindly saving money is a good thing. But it is not nearly as efficient as looking at the whole picture. Accumulating assets is important, but paying down debt is just as important. Understanding how much money one will need in retirement is a function of understanding how much money theyll need to live on in retirement. In preparing for this day, get debts in orderpay down the mortgage, pay off credit cards, take care of large home improvement projects.

***

John Amatulli, Certified Financial Educator, Amatulli Financial Services, Schererville

Q: How can people who started late make up ground in saving?

A: Retirement accounts such as 401(k)s, IRAs, and Roth IRAs all have catch-up provisions that allow people over 50 years of age to contribute larger amounts. Its important for people to work with a professional to determine how much replacement income they need, and then create a savings plan.

Q: What can people do who are living check-to-check?

A: The first advice we give is to create a budget. Many people are surprised by the difference between their income and the amount they really need for living expenses. The rest is discretionary. Its important to understand the amount of monthly discretionary income, and then devise a plan to use that money as savings for retirement or to pay down additional debt. Some clients learn that they need additional working hours of a part-time job in order to save for retirement.

Q: Whats the role of a financial adviser in the process?

A: Planning with a trained professional is essential. As a financial educator, I help people understand the importance of budgeting, saving, paying debt, and how they all work together as part of a comprehensive plan. A major emphasis is made on paying yourself first, meaning automatic deductions into your chosen savings account. I make recommendations to my clients based on their individual situation. Then we schedule a review and monitor session twice a year to ensure we are on target.

***

Amy Nowaczyk, Attorney, ODrobinak & Nowaczyk, P.C., Schererville

Q: What is the role of a legal adviser in estate planning?

A: People work hard all their lives to accumulate wealth. When we are ready to retire, many of us are concerned with preserving our wealth, and ultimately distributing it when we pass away. Many people do not give a thought to the certainty of their own death; yet it will happen to every one of us. Some of us may also become incapacitated. An estate planning attorney can help people face the financial and emotional consequences of death and incapacity and help to minimize the effects on their families. An estate planning attorney can assist with the creation of a definite plan for managing your wealth while youre alive and distributing it after your death.

Q: What are the pros and cons of long-term health care insurance?

A: For some people, long-term care (LTC) insurance is the best way to plan for the possibility of needing skilled nursing care. The best way to make that decision is to sit down with your estate planning attorney to go over the cost of LTC insurance versus the benefits. The median nationwide cost of a year in a long-term care facility was about $92,500 in 2016, and the average stay was just over 2.5 years. LTC insurance is an option and people need to understand how the plans work and how to evaluate the benefits offered by each type of long-term care plan. Its a good idea to look into LTC policies in your 50s and early 60s, as the premiums should still be relatively affordable.

***

David Hiestand, Attorney, Hiestand Law Office, Chesterton

Q: What types of documents are critical to proper estate planning, such as a will or a living will?

A: Generally, there are three documents critical to an estate plan: first, a will; second, a health care directive, which includes the appointment of a health care representative and a living will; and third, a power of attorney. More advanced estate planning may include a revocable (or living) trust and other trust documents. Outside of documents that an attorney prepares, you should review beneficiary designations and other non-probate methods of transferring wealth upon your death. An estate planning attorney can assist with creating and implementing a solid plan.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes people make with regards to estate planning?

A: The biggest mistake a person can make is failing to plan. Indiana Statutes will provide you with an estate plan regardless of whether you intended to make a plan, so you should proactively make the plan you want and not rely on the State's plan. For married couples, a common mistake is creating a probate estate with the first death by having individual assets instead of jointly held assets. You don't want your spouse to have to deal with a probate estate in addition to your passing. Bottom line, there is no one-size-fits-all solution out there. You should speak with a legal adviser that can provide a solution custom-made for your situation based on your asset mix, family relationships and goals.
MICHIGAN CITY  People will have another place to buy tires in the city and then a place to get those tires and the rest of the car washed.

Belle Tire, with more than 100 locations in Indiana, Michigan and northern Ohio, has set a tentative opening date of March 24 for a tire store and service center at 4431 Franklin St. just south of Red Lobster. There are also plans for a Soapy Sands  a car wash that pulls motor vehicles into the automatic wash stall on a conveyor belt-driven system  on the west side of Franklin St. just south of Big Lots.

Mayor Ron Meer said the new businesses will add to the city's major commercial area, which has experienced new life at Dunes Plaza but also has seen its struggles the past few years with Marquette Mall losing J.C Penny and the closure of Ryan's Family Steakhouse.

Belle Tire, based in Allen Park, Michigan, was founded in 1922. Among its Indiana locations are South Bend, Mishawaka, Elkhart and Ft. Wayne. It is family owned.

Its service work includes auto glass repair and replacement, brakes, alignments, batteries, struts and shocks, exhaust repair and oil changes.

The new 10,000-square-foot service center includes 10 service bays, two full-alignment pits and a mezzanine warehouse built to hold more than 3,000 tires. It will employ about two dozen people.

Our aim is to not only offer the best tire prices in the business, but we also want to be a part of the community, investing in the local economy, creating jobs and providing competitive value and service to our customers, said Don Barnes III, Belle Tire president representing the third generation of family ownership.

Monica Cheik, a spokesperson for the company, said final approvals and inspection from the city are needed before ''they will hand over the keys.'' But tentative grand opening festivities have been set for April 1.

The Soapy Sands car wash could be under construction as early as this spring.

The same company also owns Lighthouse Car Wash, which already has locations in Michigan City and LaPorte and other places like Granger.

''It's one of the most modern of its type that's going up around the country,'' said Meer.
GRIFFITH  The School Board on Thursday held a special forum for parents, residents and school employees to voice their thoughts on the open enrollment program that allows out-of-town students to register in the Griffith public school system.

The program, which the new board recently suspended after its first two years of operation, allows up to 10 nonresident students for each grade level within the school town.

The board said it wanted to study the program's affect on the school system before allowing it to resume.

"It is a voluntary program" in the state of Indiana, board President Gary Sutton noted.

Results of the study were given by several school officials, including Superintendent Peter Morikis, Director of Curriculum and Instruction Aaron Borowiak, Middle School Principal Dustin Nelson, Beiriger Elementary School Principal Ashley Cotton and Director of Finance and Operations George Jerome.

The program's first two years included the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years.

Elementary grade ISTEP English scores in the program's first year found 70.6 percent of open-enrollment students received a passing grade and 64.5 percent of Griffith residential students passed, Borowiak said.

In the math department, 70.6 percent of open-enrollment kids passed and 61.9 percent of Griffith students passed.

Among board members' concerns is the program might be inflating the size of classrooms to the detriment of the students.

Borowiak gave the average class sizes of 23 students in the elementary grades, 21 in middle/high school math classes and 22 for middle/high school English.

In terms of discipline during the program's first year, 9 percent of open-enrollment students were suspended at least once and 11 percent of Griffith students.

Over the program's second year, 6 percent of open-enrollment students were suspended compared to 9 percent of Griffith students.

The state gives a school system $5,903.39 for each student to help fund their education, including open-enrollment students.

Sutton has said he hopes for a vote by mid-April on whether or not to restore the program.

"If not sooner," he said.

If it does, the program would resume in the fall.

If it does not, the 103 current open-enrollment students will remain in class, Sutton said.

The public input portion of the forum had not started at press time.
HAMMOND  After some initial smirks and nervous laughter, consultant Isha Haley seemed to get through Thursday to the hundreds of teens in the auditorium at Clark Middle/High School. She told them she was sexually abused by a female family member from age 7 to 11, then later abused again by her stepfather from age 14 to 17.

Amy Liptak, with the Fair Haven Center for Women in Highland, said she was sexually abused at 15 years old, and drowned her pain in alcohol. She said her life didn't change until she was 19 and had a nervous breakdown.

North Township Trustee Frank Mrvan said his wife and her sister were the victims of sexual abuse as they grew up. He said his wife worked through her pain and is in pharmaceutical sales, while his sister-in-law became dependent on opiates and died.

This trio were among those who gave students a tough message as part of a tour called, No More Secrets.

Mrvan organized the No More Secrets campaign following the release of an August 2015 report that found Indiana had the second-highest reported rate of forced sexual intercourse among high school females in the nation.

The campaign began visiting several schools in the North Township area Monday. It will host a symposium Saturday to raise awareness about child sexual abuse in Northwest Indiana.

The free event will feature a keynote address by Erin Merryn, a sexual abuse survivor and author who advocates for states to enact Erin's Law, which mandates sexual abuse-prevention curriculum in schools.

The campaign promotes Senate Bill 355, an Indiana version of Erin's Law. If approved, it will require schools to provide child abuse and sexual abuse education to students in kindergarten to 12th grade.

Those speaking out hope to reassure, inspire youth

Haley, a transplant to Northwest Indiana from New York who has established her own consulting business, told students sexual abuse is not gender-specific. She said it can happen to anyone.

"I was sexually abused by a family member. I didn't know if my parents would believe me. I worried about what would happen to my family member," she said. "I knew I wouldn't like my stepfather when I met him. There was just something about him.

"At 19, I had a nervous breakdown, and I couldn't speak. I was at my mother's house and she gave me a piece of paper. On it, I wrote down that I had been hurt. It's hard for me to talk about this. But if one child is brave enough to share their story, then it's worth it," she said.

Ryan Holmes, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, and Patti Van Til, with the Lake County Sheriff's Department, talked to students about being careful on social media. They said anyone, including predators, can gain access to their personal information.

Clark sophomores Julian Davis and Crispina Marrufo thought the presentation was interesting.

"Overall it was a powerful message," Davis said. "If I knew someone who was going through any of that, I would report it. I know people who have sent sexting messages. Now, I would advise them not to do it. I would tell them to be more careful. Before, I just looked at it."

Marrufo said some people are scared and afraid to talk about being the victim of sexual abuse.

"The lady who spoke really motivated me. It's never happened to me but I hope people who hear her and are going through that situation would be motivated to speak out and report it," Murrafo said.

"Some of the kids smirked, but I think they know it's serious. It's not something you should joke about."

Mrvan said the presentations to students have been successful, and about 27 students have reported they are victims of sexual abuse.
CROWN POINT  A 25-year-old postal worker was charged Thursday in Lake Criminal Court with official misconduct and three counts of misdemeanor theft on allegations she stole mail in Highland.

The U.S. Postal Service learned Jan. 4 that two Target gift cards were missing from mail sent to a resident in the 8400 block of Fifth Place in Highland, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Iesha L. Crumpton was a substitute mail carrier on the resident's route who had previously been suspected in 2015 of opening mail, the affidavit states.

Police obtained surveillance footage from a Target store in Munster after they learned the gift cards were redeemed Dec. 11 and Dec. 23, according to the affidavit.

The footage showed Crumpton and a second woman using the stolen gift cards, the affidavit states.

Crumpton was also seen on the footage using a second gift card, which police learned was stolen from a resident in the 8400 block of Johnson Street in Highland, the affidavit states.

Crumpton alleged she bought the gift cards from unknown persons in Chicago, the affidavit states.

Her bail is set at $25,000.
ROLLING PRAIRIE  Three people were killed Friday morning in a head-on collision with a semi along U.S. 20 less than three miles west of where another triple fatal crash occurred exactly two months earlier, according to police.

A semi truck driver hauling a 50,000-pound steel coil veered far to his right but couldnt avoid an oncoming car sliding toward him, police said. The driver and two passengers in the car were killed on impact.

"They didnt know what hit them," said Kankakee Township Volunteer Fire Department chief Don Stoner, who assisted in extricating the victims.

"This was a crash that simply was not survivable," LaPorte County Sheriff John Boyd said.

The deceased were identified as Judith Peachey, 22, of Goshen; Lanie Nace, 17, and Rosalie Koehn, both of Greensburg, Kansas. LaPorte County Coroner Bob Cutler did not know Koehn's age but said she was as young as the two other victims.

Truck driver Joseph Green, 44, of Mishawaka, wasn't injured.

The passenger vehicle containing the three who died was traveling west on U.S. 20 in the area of County Road 300 East when it collided with the eastbound truck, police said.

A mixture of freezing precipitation was falling at the time of the 7 a.m. crash, and the four-lane highway was slushy and beginning to ice over, Boyd said. He said Peachey was behind the wheel in the passing lane.

Boyd said the investigation has not confirmed if weather conditions were a factor, but no other reasons were uncovered yet to explain why the car began sliding.

The crash occurred one mile west of Rolling Prairie and about 20 miles west of South Bend, police said.

One night before the earlier triple fatal crash on Jan. 17, a double fatal crash occurred elsewhere on U.S. 20, police said.

Boyd said close to 500 traffic stops were made during the afternoon shift alone in February to try and get more drivers to pay closer attention and slow down.
INDIANAPOLIS  The Indiana Court of Appeals is leaving intact the five-year prison sentence issued to a former Highland High School teacher who pleaded guilty last year to sexual misconduct and inappropriate communication with middle school students.

Samuel Fies, 38, of St. John, asked the state appeals court in January to reduce his prison term.

According to court records, he claimed it was excessive for the crimes given his otherwise exemplary character.

Specifically, Fies pointed to his lack of criminal history, decision to plead guilty, record of gainful employment, sincere remorse, law-abiding behavior on pretrial release and letters of support from family and friends as evidence of his good character.

The appeals court, in its 3-0 decision, agreed that record is part of the story, but concurred with Lake Superior Judge Salvador Vasquez who found that Fies' "manipulative, opportunistic and predatory behavior toward his young student victims bodes against his character."

The appellate judges also noted that five years in prison only is slightly more than the advisory sentence of four years, and well below the maximum sentence of eight years for what they described as "very serious" crimes.

Department of Correction records show Fies could be released as soon as April 2019 if he earns the maximum credit for good behavior.
INDIANAPOLIS  A Gary man serving a 110-year prison term for two 1996 East Chicago murders that he committed at age 16 cannot take advantage of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders.

On Thursday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago rejected a resentencing application from McKinley Kelly, now 38, who argued that he effectively was sentenced to a life term since he'll only be eligible for early release two weeks prior to his 71st birthday  in 2050.

In a 2-1 decision, the federal appeals court concluded Kelly was not sentenced to a mandatory life term, rather Lake Superior Judge Richard Conroy properly considered the various aggravating and mitigating factors, including Kelly's age, when deciding how long Kelly should be in prison.

The judges noted that Kelly only was ordered to serve Indiana's advisory 55-year sentence for each murder, when he could have been sentenced to 65 years each given the aggravating circumstances of the crime.

"The sentencing court had considerable leeway in fashioning Kelly's sentence and in fact considered his age when deciding on the appropriate term. Accordingly, we ... dismiss his application," the court said.

Judge Richard Posner dissented from the appellate decision because he said given the life expectancy of teenagers sentenced to long prison terms  50 1/2 years  Kelly effectively is serving a life sentence.

As a result, Posner said Kelly deserves the opportunity for a judge to determine whether he is among the "incorrigible" few individuals convicted as juveniles for whom the Supreme Court said a life sentence still is warranted.

Or, he said, whether Kelly, like most serious juvenile offenders, has grown up, and is unlikely to re-offend if ever released from prison.
INDIANAPOLIS  Despite the recent spate of threats to Jewish institutions in Indiana and across the country, Hoosier lawmakers are unlikely to revive a bias crimes sentencing enhancement that last month failed to advance out of the Senate.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said Thursday that he personally supported Senate Bill 439, which would have permitted crimes motivated by bias toward a victim's actual or perceived race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, disability, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation or police affiliation to count as an aggravating factor when a judge issues a criminal sentence.

But Bosma said because the proposal could not garner enough votes to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, he does not believe its provisions should be inserted in Senate-approved legislation now being considered by the Republican-controlled House.

"I don't know that without a hearing, without pre-planning and without a full opportunity for the bill to be aired here, that it's something to stick in late in the second half of the session," Bosma said.

A coalition of minority groups recently called on state lawmakers to find some way to enact a bias crimes statute during the five weeks remaining in the annual legislative session.

"At a time of rising anti-Semitism in Indiana and across the country, my community is feeling anxiety like no time in recent memory," said David Sklar, of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council.

He said Indiana should not remain one of just five states in the country that does not have a hate crimes law on the books.

House Democratic Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, insisted it's entirely possible to still revive the bias crimes proposal, and promised that members of his caucus will continue seeking opportunities to do so.

"We've looked at incidents around the country. We have seen data that is showing an increase in this type of criminal activity," Pelath said. "We can't afford to wait anymore."
MUNSTER  The 17-year-old boy who was struck and dragged Friday morning by a school bus near Munster High School is in stable condition, police said this afternoon.

Police said it does not appear drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.

"At this time, there is no sign of any impairment," Munster Police Chief Stephen Scheckel said.

The bus driver was required by law to submit to drug and alcohol testing as part of the ongoing investigation, he said.

Emergency officials said they were called out at 7:12 a.m. to the area of Columbia Avenue and 35th Street where they found the boy pinned underneath the bus at the midway point with his backpack.

The school is offering counseling services to students who witnessed or were otherwise impacted by the incident, Scheckel said. The bus that struck the boy had students on board and other students were on foot in the area, he said.

Police said the boy was talking to first responders before being rushed off to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary.

Officials have not yet released his identity.

Officials have not yet released details about how the incident occurred. It remains under investigation by state, Munster and Lake County police.

Munster Schools Superintendent Jeff Hendrix could not be reached for comment.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Munster Police Department at 219-836-6650.
CROWN POINT  A new state-of-the-art animal hospital and boarding kennel opens here Monday.

Located near the southeast corner of Broadway and 109th Avenue, the nearly 15,000-square-foot Coyne Veterinary Center will offer a hospital with 11 exam rooms, boarding, day care, grooming, house calls and adoption.

"We try to provide every service that we can," owner Dr. John Coyne said.

Coyne said its biggest niche is pet owners do not need to make an appointment. They can bring their pet to the facility anytime during its hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

The facility includes a bone-shaped swimming pool for dogs.

"It's designed to make day care fun," Coyne said. "We're going to send them home tired."

Coyne operates several facilities in Illinois and also two smaller ones in St. John and Portage. The largest ones are Orland Park and Countryside in Illinois and now the Crown Point center. It will be equipped with ultrasound, digital dental, digital X-ray and laser therapy and surgery.

"Our goal is to be cutting-edge and friendly and do a good job," Coyne said.

Coyne Veterinary Center also will offer free care for Crown Point fire and police dogs.

"The community has quite an investment in those animals," he said. "We want to make sure they are in good shape."

Coyne said the center will start out with three to four doctors, three to four technicians and multiple other employees, including receptionists and kennel attendants.

"It's a big place to take care of and as needed, things will be added," he said.

Coyne, who has been a veterinarian for more than 40 years, said he chose to open a facility in Crown Point because the city is a progressive community.

"We thought there would be an opportunity here to have a successful practice," he said.

Mayor David Uran said in addition to the medical care and other services offered by the facility, it preserves and adds value to the city's Broadway corridor.

"This overall value is measured in several ways like the intitial $5 million in new construction, and 60 estimated additional permanent full-time jobs for our community."

A grand opening celebration will be held in May.
CROWN POINT  The city celebrates its 10th annual St. Patrick's Day nighttime parade tonight in what one participant calls "a festive way to break away from winter."

"Crown Point is a real community-orientated city and events like these bring people out and celebrate," said Fred Laud, owner of Carriage Court Pizza, which has a float in the parade. "It's always fun to participate in."

Mayor David Uran started the parade in 2008 when he came into office and wanted a unique way to celebrate and capture a popular day to showcase the city and its downtown.

"The long winter months here in Northwest Indiana can be challenging and we wanted to kick off the spring season and invite people out of their homes and get excited for the change of season," he said. "The parade is very popular and now is a staple of our many family free events that takes place in Crown Point."

The parade is the city's largest event of the year and it's an "all hands on deck" for the city employees including the police, public works and parks departments.

Police Chief Pete Land said his department's role in the event starts in February, applying for a road closure permit from the Indiana Department of Transportation because the route involves state roads.

On the day of the event as closures begin and public works set up the pedestrian barricades, police are responsible for getting all the parked cars off the route, including all the way around the square.

"Event assignments are made, which typically consist of 15 or so officers, beginning at 5 p.m.," he said. "We also have at least the same number of EMA personnel who assist us in crowd control."

The assignment ends whenever the square is cleared and all streets are reopened. The assignments also include all of the police administration.

"I make this a mandatory assignment for myself and administration," Land said.

The parade begins at dusk and takes place regardless of how Mother Nature is feeling that night.

"We've had some great weather and we've had some really rough weather," Special Events Administrator Diana Bosse said. "Whatever the weather, it happens."

There are just over 30 participants in this year's parade, which is about the norm. Bosse said they typically don't make the parade longer because they don't want to extend it late into the evening.

"I love that it's a family friendly event," Bosse said. "I just like to see all the kids having so much fun. And it brings everybody out after being cooped up all winter."

Debbie Metsch-Lilly, owner of Debbie's Designs, worked on her float earlier this week. She was in last year's parade and has been in the city's Fourth of July parade for more than 25 years.

Four generations of her family will be on the float tonight.

"It's a family thing," she said.

The South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority always takes part in the parade and this year's entry features a trailer pulled by a "hashtag" with two large screens that will stream live social media photos. People at the parade who take pictures and use the hashtag #CPSquare could have their photos broadcast on the screens. If it rains the television screens won't be used.

But the parade will go on.
As I've listened to President Donald Trump go on tirades against the "very dishonest" media, I've tried not to take his criticism personally.

Lord knows, I've made my share of mistakes in my career. But they've never been on purpose, or out of malice.

In fact, after more than 30 years, I can still remember the phone call from a grieving relative when I misspelled a name in an obituary (I wrote Ronald instead of Roland). This was before articles were published online, so print newspapers were the permanent record. The man's family had to live with my error. However Trump bashes journalists, he'll never make me feel as bad as I did back then.

So here's the truth:

The press is not the opposition party. The media is not the enemy of the American people. Negative stories are not fake news.

And when Trump keeps making these claims, he isn't just attacking the press; he is chipping away at one of the pillars of our democracy.

It means something that a president who is all over the map on policy is so single-minded about going after reporters every chance he gets. In a recent tweet, Trump raised the stakes, calling the media "a great danger to our country."

At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, Trump again bashed "fake news," though he's the one with only a passing relationship with the truth. He complained about leaks and anonymous sources, though his administration is perfectly happy to take advantage of both. He even claimed that the media says its coverage can't be criticized because of freedom of the press.

"I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me," he said. "Nobody."

He has chutzpah, I'll give him that.

But what's more alarming is that he also said the media "doesn't represent the people, it never will represent the people and we're going to do something about it."

It's not clear what the president plans. He talked during the campaign about changing the law so that it's easier for politicians to sue for libel and slander  a terrible idea that would discourage robust reporting.

And what if an unhinged supporter takes Trump's rhetoric seriously and literally and physically assaults a journalist? What will the president say then?

Trump is choosing a phrase  "enemy of the people"  that has been used by communist dictators and Nazi propagandists.

Unfortunately, only a few Republican leaders stood up to that attack on a free press: "Without it," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, "I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started."

Trying to control coverage, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has called only on friendlier media outlets at some news conferences. He took it a step further during a recent question-and-answer session, blocking reporters from several major news organizations that have had critical coverage of Trump, including looking into the administration's Russia connections.

Another part of the White House strategy, it seems, is to trap reporters. When there are leaks, officials sometimes wait until after the news story is published to respond. This apparently happened earlier this month when The Associated Press reported that a draft memo showed the administration was considering calling up National Guard troops for immigration raids.

It's a cynical ploy. The administration can see how popular its ideas are and pull them back if they're too controversial. When the most extreme versions don't happen, it further damages the media's credibility. And if the public is unsure about what's real, it opens up more room for Trump to do what he wants.

So reporters need to be aggressive, but also careful. Journalists can't get too defensive, or distracted from doing our jobs, or lose sight of what Trump is actually doing  giving Wall Street free rein, looking out for the wealthy and tearing down government.

This is going to be a long struggle, day after day. Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, made that clear, declaring at CPAC that the war with the media is "not going to get better. It's going to get worse."

Yet, times of crisis like this bring clarity. Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said Sunday on CNN that the mission of news organizations is clearer than it has been in years  to hold Trump and others in power accountable.

He's absolutely right, but it's more important for the public to support a free press. And this would be a good time, with Sunshine Week, the annual recognition of the importance of a public's right to know.

It's encouraging that a new poll found that Americans trust their favorite news source over Trump, 67 percent to 29 percent.

It's also great to hear from people like Charles Marchant, of Placerville: "I just want to say thank you for being here, for doing your job and for doing your part in our democratic system," he wrote in a letter to the editor.

"I write not to grind any particular ax, but to let you know I do NOT consider the press my enemy. I value the hard work you do, which is a vital role in our society."

Thanks a lot, Mr. Marchant. We'll keep doing our best, whatever President Trump throws our way.
Indiana has nearly 20 percent of the 178,000 American voucher students. We are the exception, not the norm. My elected officials, Indiana Sen. Ed Charbonneau and Indiana House Rep. Ed Soliday, have waved off pleas for more public school funding by arguing education is the largest line item in the budget.

By design, they have made it thus so they can justify cuts. With a 1.1 percent budget increase for education in the budget bill, far lower than a cost-of-living increase, combined with voucher expansion, they continue to turn the taps to a trickle and complain about the waste. Tell them to put the plug in the drain and stop so-called "public" charter expansion and end vouchers, full stop.
Methodist Hospitals has signed on as a sponsor of World Civility Day on April 13 and will present a workshop at the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond.

Registered nurse Jennifer Mullen, trauma program coordinator for Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus and board certified in emergency and trauma nursing, will present a workshop called Stop the Bleed from 9:50 to 10:20 am.

"Stop the Bleed" is a nationwide campaign to empower individuals to act quickly and save lives.

No matter how rapid the arrival of professional emergency responders, bystanders will always be first on the scene after an injury. Uncontrolled bleeding is the top cause of preventable death after trauma. You can help save a life by knowing how to stop bleeding if someone, including yourself, is injured.

Community Civility Counts, which started as a partnership of the Gary Chamber of Commerce and The Times Media Co. in 2015, is hosting the activities of World Civility Day for a second year. A series of workshops will take place at the Indiana Welcome Center during the day, and an awards dinner and celebration will be held at Avalon Manor in Merrillville in the evening.

Here is the full workshop schedule:

 Kickoff at 8:30 a.m.

 World Civility Day Ambassadorship, 8:45 to 9:45 a.m. Presented by Dr. Clyde Rivers, World Peace ambassador, special representative from Interfaith Peace-Building Initiative to the United Nations, and Ambassador at Large from Burundi, Africa;

 Stop the Bleed, 9:50 to 10:20 a.m. Presented by Methodist Hospitals.

 Civility in the Community, 10:30 to 11:15 a.m. Presented by the National Civility Center;

 Civility books and publishing, 11:20 to 11:40 a.m. Presented by Propriety Publishing of Canada;

 Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, 11:40 to noon. Presented by Cal Bellamy;

 Box lunch available

 Where do we go from here  chaos or community? 12:15 to 1 p.m. Presented by Urban League of Northwest Indiana;

 The Business Case for Civility at Work, 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. Presented by Lew Bayer of Civility Experts of Canada;

 "Stand Up, Speak up, Stop Bullying," 2 to 2:45 pm. Presented by Edgewater Systems;

 Civility in the Classroom, 2:30 to 3:20 p.m. Presented by Summer Moore of Community Civility Counts and teachers involved in the program in two Gary charter schools;

 Cyber Bullying in Schools, 3:30 to 4 p.m. Presented by Cathie Bledsoe of the Indiana State Police.

In addition to the Gary Chamber of Commerce and The Times Media Co., World Civility Day sponsors include Methodist Hospitals, AT&T Indiana, National Civility Center, Civility Experts, Propriety Publishing, Legacy Foundation, Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce, Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors, Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, and Lake Area United Way.

Tickets can be ordered through the Gary Chamber of Commerce. Call (219) 885-7407. Tickets are $25 for the day sessions and lunch and $60 for the celebration and awards dinner. Tables of 10 for the dinner can be reserved for $550.

Like the Civility Counts Facebook page for updates on World Civility Day and to follow the activities of Community Civility Counts.
BALI, Indonesia  An American woman convicted in her mother's "suitcase murder" in Indonesia gave custody of her young daughter on Friday to an Australian woman until her release from prison.

Heather Mack is serving a 10-year sentence for assisting her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer in Sheila von Wiese-Mack's murder, in which the body was stuffed in a suitcase. Schaefer was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The baby girl, Stella Schaefer, was born shortly before her parents were convicted in 2015. Under Indonesian law, she was allowed to live with her mother in her cell in Kerobokan prison until she turned 2 years old on Friday.

Prison chief Tony Nainggolan said the girl's development will be supervised by government social workers.

"We will allow the girl to meet her mother any time," Nainggolan said.

Mack, 21, broke down in tears as she gave Stella to Oshar Putu Melody Suartama, an Australian woman married to a Balinese man, said Mack's Indonesian lawyer, Yulius Benyamin Seran.

He said Suartama, who has two sons and lives in Bali, befriended Mack when the couple was first detained for murder. She helped Mack as an interpreter and supported her during the trial.

"She is the right person to raise Stella, she loves her," Seran said.

Von Wiese-Mack's badly battered body was found stuffed in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St. Regis Bali resort. She reportedly did not approve of her daughter's relationship with Schaefer.
Gone are the days when cyclists had to put away their bikes for the winter. These days, hard-core riders are staying outdoors year round thanks to "fat bikes" that allow them to conquer winter's worst instead of staying indoors on a stationary bike.

The bikes, with comically large tires, have come into the mainstream in the past couple of years, after being introduced about a decade ago.

John Grondin, 48, got his fat bike to kick the winter blues.

"I wanted to get outside and ride in the winter," he said. "I like to ride, period. I'll ride a road bike. I'll ride a mountain bike. I just want to ride."

The ginormous tires are wide enough to float over snow and bounce over obstacles. Groomed snowmobile trails provide miles and miles of winter riding.

Fat bikes represent the first major bicycle trend in several decades, after BMX bikes in the 1970s and conventional mountain bikes in the 1980s, said Jay Townley, partner in Pennsylvania-based Gluskin-Townley Group, a consultant and market research company focusing on the bicycle business.

Growth in the segment has provided something to cheer about for bike retailers and has prevented a slide in bike sales, which number about 18 million units a year, he said.

"The industry, quite frankly, needed something. If anything, the fat tire bike helped to keep a stable bike industry instead of losing volume," he said.

The NPD Group, which tracks retail sales of bikes in the U.S., reports that fat tire bike sales have grown eightfold in the past three years, to $74.7 million in 2016.

The growing popularity can be seen at fat bike races.

Every weekend there are races and festivals across the nation's snowbelt. Dozens of riders braved single-digit temperatures in February for the Sugarloaf Fat Tire Festival at Maine's tallest ski mountain.

The bikes aren't cheap. Purchased at an independent bike shop, they can easily top $1,000, and the price goes up from there. But less-costly versions are being sold these days at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart.

Bike shops appreciate the extra business during what's typically a slow time of the year.

The Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop used to close for the winter but is now offering fat bike rentals for riding inside Maine's Acadia National Park. Cyclists can ride their fat bikes even if there's a lack of snow that sidelines snowmobiles and cross-country skiers and others winter sports, said shop manager Adam Gariepy.

Range Morton, sales manager at Gorham Bike and Ski in Portland, said fat bike sales creep upward when there's a lack of snow that leads to a corresponding decrease in ski sales.

"The fat bikes really help us to get through the winter," Morton said. "They were a big help last year and this year."

David Crowell, of Laconia, New Hampshire, said riding takes him back to his childhood, except that he couldn't afford a $5,000 carbon-fiber bike when he was 12.

Getting outdoors, there's a sense of freedom, and perhaps a bit of danger. After all, there's no way to avoid the occasional spill while bombing around in the snow. Thankfully, riders note, snow hurts less than pavement in a crash.

"There's something about those big fat tires  they tend to put a grin on people's faces," Crowell, 47, said. "It's like being a kid. You're out there doing something. Maybe you shouldn't be doing it, but you're doing it anyway."
PORTAGE  "Walk it out," Danny Gonzalez told the elementary school students as they got up from their chairs and started walking in place.

"We're going to transition here from the walk to the little jog. Jog it out!"

The kids started moving faster, until the classroom sounded and felt like it was quaking.

"Remember to breathe. That's the most important part," Gonzalez said.

They went into jumping jacks, then butt kicks, then squats.

The third-graders laughed and panted and talked back to Gonzalez, a registered nurse and health and wellness coordinator for St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart.

When he was done instructing them to exercise, he asked them a question. "I'm here every week to try to prevent childhood ... ?"

"Obesity," they answered, largely in unison. They then listed the conditions obesity can cause: heart disease, stroke, cancer.

The number of overweight and obese children in the world younger than 5 rose from 32 million to 1990 to 42 million in 2013, Gonzalez noted. That number is predicted to jump to 70 million by 2025 if nothing changes.

Gonzalez hopes to make changes.

As part of the LAUNCH program, developed and funded by St. Mary Medical Center and the Portage Y, he visits third-graders at Myers Elementary School in Portage on a weekly basis to teach them about exercise and healthy eating.

The school is located in a food desert, an area the federal government has identified lacks access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. About 60 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.

"We need to be physically active but more than that we need to learn how to properly ... ?"

"Eat!" the students called out.

Gonzalez went over the food groups, before going into a lesson about dairy.

He asked them what nutrients it contained.

"Calcium." "Potassium." "Vitamin D." (He was quizzing them on the dairy lesson he taught them the previous week.)

"How many servings of dairy should we have every day?"

The kids held up fingers.

"If you had the number three, you are correct."

"Who invented milk?" he asked, before the kids yelled out answers. "Did somebody say Mickey Mouse?"

He went over how milk makes it to their lips, from the farm to the processing plant to the supermarket. He then fed them string cheese  only 50 calories, with 7 grams of protein  and yogurt with granola and fruit.

"These kids don't have the opportunity all the time to taste some of these foods," he said. "Some kids have never tasted a lentil or a kiwi or a mango. If they like it, maybe they'll continue to eat it."

Their teacher, Emily Bayer, said she once had the students write essays on whether schools should be allowed to ban junk food.

Among their responses:

"I think it should be banned because it not healthy for you. I don't want my blood sugar to go up. I don't want other kids to be obese."

"Healthy fresh food is hard to find, but there is a convenience store just a block away from where I live."

"If people aren't making healthier choices, then people are going to die."

And, perhaps showing that LAUNCH has been working:

"Kids are already eating healthier than they used to."

The third-graders were asked what they've learned from the LAUNCH program.

"Heart disease is the No. 1 thing in America that's been killing Americans," Ashton Robinson said. "We compared protein to Legos because it builds your body."

"Fish doesn't have as much fat in it. It's a lean protein," Jayden Standish said.

"I never knew about obesity until he told us," Janna Chapman said. "I never knew obesity could hurt a lot of people."
Inside the newest Primark store, there is clothing as far as the eye can see. To be more exact, its about 55,100 square feet of clothing.

Primark, a clothing store based in Ireland, is a popular European brand known for its stylish but affordable clothes.

On Thursday, the brand opened up shop at the Staten Island Mall.

"Well Staten Island is a great place to be, Primarks USA President Jose Luis Martinez de Larramendi said. We found this mall particularly encouraging."

Fashion blogger Kendall Kremer was one of the first customers.

"I'm really excited about it, she said. I've been hearing about Primark for a while so I'm kind of excited to get in, check it out."

The massive clothing store is able to sell such low cost items because it does no advertising, buys in large volumes, and sources materials close to where they're made.

"I think people are going to be much more willing and excited to kind of take chances with trends and fashion and not be afraid to try something out, Kremer who writes for Styled Snapshot said. And if it doesn't work they only spent a couple dollars on it, so I think it's going to be great."

This Primark location will not only be the seventh one in the U.S., but it will be the first in New York City. That fact makes the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce members happy. Along with city-wide customers, the store is bringing in more than 200 local jobs.

"It's nice when Staten Island gets picked and is on the map, representing New York City, that doesn't happen too often, Linda Baran, President of the Chamber said. So I think for us to be in the limelight like this, for them to select Staten Island is really positive."

From clothes, to accessories, and even a "re-charge station, Primark is hoping to make a mark on the borough.
2013 - 2017 Wyatt James Bess, 3, joined our Lord, Jesus, for a celebration in Heaven Tuesday, March 14, 2017. Wyatt passed peacefully with his parents by his side at Children's Hospital of Alabama. Wyatt was born in Gainesville, Florida on September 24, 2013. Most of Wyatt's life involved a continuous struggle with physical and neurological challenges. It was not until August 22, 2016 that he began his battle with Neuroblastoma cancer. Wyatt was always faced with difficult challenges, but the world would not have known it by all of the smiles and laughter that he shared. Wyatt never spoke a word, or walked a step, but was able to bless us every day by showing our friends and family his perpetual strength, love and happiness. He is survived by his parents David and Joshlyn Bess; maternal grandparents Debbie and Randy Bush; paternal grandparents Christine Johnston (Pete) and Arthur Bess (Valerie); aunts and uncles Franklin Bush, Adam and Jenn Bess. Visitation will be held in the Parlor at Frederick-Dean Funeral Home on Sunday, March 19, 2017 from 1:00 until 2:45 p.m. Funeral Service will be held at Frederick-Dean Funeral Home on Sunday, March 19, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Interment will follow at Town Creek Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to ABBA fund, Give Kids the World Village, Make-A-Wish Foundation Alabama or The Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders. www.FrederickDean.com
Totes in fun designs are popping up at farmers markets, grocery stores and online, thanks to California voters approving Proposition 67. Because grocery stores are charging for paper and plastic bags, more shoppers are turning to colorful, reusable ones.

And theyve gone upscale. Consider Lilly Pulitzers Market Bag, Kate Spades signature black-and-white dotted New York Le Pavilion carryall and three affordable canvas totes spotted at Madewell, sporting designs that include a peace sign, a heart and a palm tree and Bien Fait (French for, what else, made well).

I see our bags everywhere, from grocery stores to the beach, said Sara Stein of Sisters of Los Angeles, which sells gifts and modern memorabilia inspired by Los Angeles and California at sistersoflosangeles.com. With our lifestyles here, we have a comfortably, easy breezy way of styling ourselves.

The company has a variety of products, including tote bags. Particularly popular are those that show local and state pride  offering props and shoutouts to such places as downtown Los Angeles and Southern California beaches.

We want to be accessible to people while celebrating city and state pride, said the Silver Lake mother and businesswoman. Pride aside, she says the reusable tote is the new it bag. Its how we live and function these days.

Retailers such as Sprouts and Trader Joes have sold fun bags for years.

We believe we have an obligation to respect our communities and the planet through waste-reduction initiatives, such as our reusable bag program, said Dana From, brand marketing manager for Sprouts.

The company has a team of graphic artists in Phoenix that develops designs for whimsical bags.

Many people enjoy expressing their personality by toting a bag that features a funny food pun, inspirational quote or pride in their home state, From said.

Are they selling?

Like hotcakes, some more than others, she said. But Every Day Im Brusselin is by far our most popular.

Contact the writer: ssproul@scng.com@SuzanneSproul on Twitter
TUSTIN Silly McGilly spent a very mischievous week at Tustin Community Preschool, leaving wee green footprints all about, wrapping students bikes with crepe paper and remaking the dollhouse beds with shamrock comforters.

The leprechaun even left behind green water in the toilets.

Well, hes got to use the bathroom somewhere, said Shelley Burnett, the schools director.

All those antics culminated Friday morning with the biggest  or maybe just loudest  St. Patricks Day bash in town. Not only did the kids parade around a 20-foot helium-balloon rainbow in their hand-decorated green capes, they got to pet a real live unicorn.

OK, real is a bit of a stretch. The unicorn, on which Silly McGilly made his grand entrance, was actually a black pony with a horn attached. As the toy elf basked in the limelight from his mount, delighted children squealed and giggled.



It was the first time the school invited a unicorn to the annual event  a tradition for 25-plus years.

I love this day! Burnett enthused. Someday Ill grow up. Im only in my fifties, you know.

Burnett took over as director four years ago from Libby Kayl, an Ireland-phile who launched the St. Paddys parade. Burnetts now-adult children attended the preschool when she was just a mom and she never left  staying on as a teacher there.

Tustin Community in Old Town Tustin is a cooperative where volunteer parents pitch in as aides. It has 68 children in its preschool and 48 in its toddler program.

On St. Patricks Day, decked-out students rode their bikes, trikes and razors around the parking lot while a bagpiper provided Irish music.

Cupcakes  elaborately adorned, of course  added another thrill.

We dont usually allow sugar at our school, Burnett said.

Now that Silly McGilly has gone back to Ireland where he lives the rest of the year, Burnett will miss his adventures.

No more green paint everywhere, she said. Its going to be clean and lonely without him.

Contact the writer: sgoulding@scng.com
FRIDAY, MARCH 17

Alpin Hong: As part of the Arts for Life series, pianist Alpin Hong will perform classical music while also sharing his passion for extreme sports, martial arts and video games. 7 tonight at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center. Free. 6200 E. Atherton Street, Long Beach. 562-985-7000 or carpenterarts.org

Matt Mauser & the Sinatra Big Band: In a musical tribute to the legendary Frank Sinatra, Matt Mauser and the Sinatra Big Band will perform such hits as Thats Life, Come Fly With Me, Night and Day, All The Way, My Kind of Town and New York, New York. The ensemble will perform at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts at 8 tonight. $40-$60. 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 562-467-8818 or cerritoscenter.com

Whipped Cream: American Ballet Theatre will perform the world premiere of artist in residence Alexei Ratmanskys Whipped Cream. Featuring sets and costumes designed by pop-surrealist artist Mark Ryden, the new ballet tells the story of a young boy who overindulges on pastries and falls into a delirium. He dreams of being rescued from the hospital by Princess Praline and her court and is transported to a land of sweets. Pacific Symphony will perform the score by Richard Strauss. 7:30 p.m. tonight and Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 6 p.m. Sunday at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. $39-$129. 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 714-556-2787 or scfta.org

SATURDAY, MARCH 18

The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra: The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra has entertained audiences for more than 30 years, earning Grammy nominations and recording with celebrated jazz musicians such as John Pizzarelli, Gladys Knight and Diana Krall. The 19-piece orchestra will perform at the Irvine Barclay Theatre at 8 p.m. $40-$100. 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. 949-854-4646 or thebarclay.org

John Cleese: Comedic master John Cleese (Monty Pythons Flying Circus) is often regarded as one of the funniest men alive. He will share anecdotes about his life and career at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. 3 and 8 p.m. $75. 6200 E. Atherton Street, Long Beach. 562-985-7000 or carpenterarts.org

The Perfect American: This opera shows Walt Disney in different stages of his life. The first act shows him as the public figure that everyone knows. The second act explores the psychological struggle of being the creator of a world without death, but ultimately having to face his own mortality. 8 p.m. $49-$150. 3029 E. South Street, Long Beach. 562-470-7464 or longbeachopera.org

Ricky Nelson Remembered: Twin brothers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson will be perform music by their late father, who topped the charts with songs like Travelin Man, Poor Little Fool, Lonesome Town, and Hello Mary Lou. The show features never-before-seen video footage of the Nelson family as well as celebrity interviews. 8 p.m. at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. $40-$65. 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 562-467-8818 or cerritoscenter.com

Santiago Art District Art Walk: Every third Saturday of the month, residents of the Santiago Street Lofts host the Santiago Art District Walk, a community art walk event. Free parking is available at the Santa Ana train depot. 7 to 10 p.m. santiagoartdistrict.blogspot.com

SUNDAY, MARCH 19

Its Magic!: As the longest-running magic production in the country, Its Magic! brings an award-winning cast to perform sleight-of-hand illusions, stage tricks, comedy and variety acts. Tony award-winning ventriloquist Jay Johnson, the First Lady of Magic Juliana Chen and other magic masters will be featured. 3 p.m. Sunday, March 19 at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. $40-$65. 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 562-467-8818 or cerritoscenter.com

TUESDAY, MARCH 21

Finding Neverland: Based on the Academy Award-winning film of the same name, Finding Neverland comes to Segerstrom Center for the Arts with a story about playwright J.M. Barrie and his relationship with the family that inspired Peter Pan. As Barrie spends time with the Jack, George, Michael and Peter, he conjures up the magical world of Neverland. Various times through April 2. 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 714-556-2787 or scfta.org

THURSDAY, MARCH 23

The Wailin Jennys: This folk music trio frequently appears on A Prairie Home Companion and their folk-pop sound attracts crowds all over the world. Audiences at the Irvine Barclay Theatre will hear tight harmonies, impressive instrumentals and vocals as well as witty banter on stage. 8 p.m. $32-$100. 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. 949-854-4646 or thebarclay.org

Beethovens 3rd Piano Concerto: Pianist Zhang Zuo will make her Pacific Symphony Debut with a performance of Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 3. Nicknamed Zee Zee, the pianist will also perform Huang Ruos Folk Songs for Orchestra and Elgars Enigma Variations. 8 p.m. at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 714-755-5799 or pacificsymphony.org
Each trial,conviction and sentence handed down to members of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department since 2014 exposed deep flaws within the nations largest law enforcement agency of its kind, observers and civil rights activists said this week.

The years-long legal saga, they said, sent a message to the department that no one was above the law, not even former Sheriff Lee Baca, who was found guilty Wednesday of obstruction and other charges in connection with an FBI probe into corruption and excessive use of force inside the Mens Central Jail. Baca was the 10th member of the department, and the highest ranking, to be convicted of such charges. The court cases and ensuing headlines forced Los Angeles County officials to scrutinize the department and jails and push for reforms.

For many years, the LASD appeared to take pride in the fact that they were feared by the community, said Ronda Hampton, a vocal critic of the department and the way deputies handled the case of Mitrice Richardson, a 24-year-old woman who went missing from the Malibu/Lost Hills sheriffs station in September 2009 and was found dead 11 months later. Hampton has said the Sheriffs Department failed to take Richardsons disappearance seriously.

But she agreed that the nearly six-year-long federal effort to expose inmate abuse and cover-ups by deputies in the jails has brought change to the Sheriffs Department.

What I think has changed most is that the citizens of Los Angeles are aware of the level of corruption that exists (and existed) in the department and, most importantly, people are not as fearfulto point out misbehaving officers, she said.

When Mitrice Richardson went missing, myself, as well as her family and friends, were expressing our concern about the corruption in the department and we were mocked and ridiculed; that has changed, as now the community at large is more aware of the fact the department was not always acting in the best interest of the community.

RELATED: Heres the fallout from the LA County Sheriffs Department jail abuse scandal

On Thursday, the ACLU of Southern California applauded the Baca verdict and what it called positive steps taken by L.A. County officials to reform the policies and practices within the Sheriffs Department. The ACLU had been documenting abuses in the jails for years, which prompted the FBI investigation. Since then, a long-awaited civilian oversight commission was established to push reforms within the Sheriffs Department. The commission was approved by the Board of Supervisors in November, two years after it was first proposed.

Supervisors also approved new restraining procedures for inmates in August and expect quarterly updates by the Office of Inspector General on the Sheriffs Department, including grievances by inmates,officer-involved shootings and use of force.

But those steps, along with the convictions of Baca and Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, do not mitigate the continued need for reform, said Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel of the ACLU of Southern California, said in a statement.

He cited overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that continue to plague county jails, as well as the number of inmates with mental illnesses who may not be receiving the treatment they need.

Moving forward on these reforms will make the Los Angeles County jail system a model for the nation, he added.

But while change needs to continue, the public also should not judge everyone within the department, said Ron Hernandez, president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, in a statement.

As we have said over and over again, todays hardworking deputies should not be judged (or pre-judged) based on the past actions of others just as our current sheriff and executive staff would not want to have those evaluating their actions automatically assume they are continuing the misdeeds of Baca and Tanaka, Hernandez said.

Our focus will now turn to working with the department in support of hiring the best candidates possible to be deputy sheriffs and district attorney investigators, Hernandez said. History has taught us that hiring standards for law enforcement should not be relaxed.

Deirdre Fike, the assistant director in charge of the FBIs Los Angeles Field Office, said in a news conference after the verdict on Wednesday that the dark chapter for the Sheriffs Department is coming to a close. She said she was confident in the leadership of Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who was elected to lead the department in 2014.

RELATED: Former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca found guilty in corruption trial

Baca, 74, retired in 2014. A sentencing date has not been set. Bacas attorney, Nathan Hochman, plans to appeal.

But Hampton, who is currently assisting in the disappearance of Elaine Park, a missing 20-year-old Glendale woman last seen around Calabasas on Jan. 28, said she hopes McDonnell will focus on continuing to improve the department. Still, she was critical of his decision to allow the department to shell out $300,000 to change the color of the belt buckles.

What needs to happen next is that Sheriff McDonnell needs to focus more on citizen complaints and concerns and less on perfecting the uniforms that the officers are wearing, Hampton said.

While attire can be important in carrying out ones duties as an officer, I am more concerned for my safety and the safety of the community at large than I am about the quality or color of a belt buckle, Hampton added.

Hampton said that more changes are needed.

Sheriff McDonnell needs to wake up and inform himself of the needs of the community or the department will remain stagnant and not grow from the negative tone that was set under the leadership of Lee Baca.
Mediterranean-style homes, with stucco exteriors and red tile roofs  the stereotype about Orange County is that it can look pretty homogenous. But hidden here and there are stand-out gems that break the mold. One such place is a palatial residence in Crystal Cove thats like a visit to an ancient, exotic land: Morocco.

This vision was five years in the making, said designer Ohara Davies-Gaetano. She worked on the project alongside builder Rob Glass and San Clemente architect Doug Mansfield from the time the property was a hole in the ground.

Whats surprising about the result is the way it evokes an Old World atmosphere despite its being new construction. But this is Old World imagined in a new way.

Old World has been pigeonholed as something dark and heavy, but it doesnt have to be that way, Davies-Gaetano said.

I travel a lot, and when you go into these old beautiful estates in Europe, and if theyve been modernized, theres something thats still classic to the design of the original property. But theres a freshness to it.  It can feel clean and it can feel crisp, but still very, very soulful.

Thats the approach she took to the majestic home in Crystal Cove. The house is just under 16,000 square feet, including the 7,000-square-foot garage that can hold 32 cars. To make the house a home, Davies-Gaetano balanced the antique with the modern and the ornate with the simple, and included a range of textures.

ART AND TRAVEL

Davies-Gaetano grew up in a New York household where art was a big focus. Her parents filled their home with vintage, antique and one-of-a-kind objects. Its a sensibility she takes to her projects.

I was very much exposed to the world of, you curate your lifestyle around these pieces that you love, she said. In Southern California especially, with so much new construction, a lot of times there is an overriding desire for perfection, she says. I actually try to create things that feel like theyve been in existence for a very long time, even if its new drywall.

When she took on the project in Crystal Cove, she found that the homeowners, who declined to be interviewed for this story, didnt have furniture that harmonized with a Moroccan vision. Since she was a part of the project from the get-go, Davies-Gaetano was able to slowly build the couples collection so it seemed as if it had been acquired over time.

Enter a home in the South of France and youll see this same approach, Davies-Gaetano points out. Its Old World, but it layers the vintage and the modern. Some pieces will be from France, but some will be antiques from Italy, perhaps complemented by a piece of modern art on the wall.

Because the architecture of the Crystal Cove house is so striking, it was important to choose furniture and fixtures that complemented, rather than competed with, distinctive features like the arched doorways and ceilings fitted with carved wood in riblike and geometric patterns. At the same time, Davies-Gaetano wanted to avoid a matchy-matchy look. Her solution: Mix a variety of styles and shapes and stick to a neutral palette.

It appears in places like the great room. Elaborate arched doorways lead into the salon, which also has a fireplace detailed with a herringbone design. Davies-Gaetano filled the room with a wide variety: from the modern, like the glass and agate end table and abstract art above the fireplace, to the more traditional, such as the tufted chaise lounge and coffee table with an agate top and gold legs with an antique finish. All of it stays within a neutral palette.

Davies-Gaetano also came up with some creative solutions to go with the uncommon design of the home. The master suite, for example, presented a challenge because of its huge size.

They wanted a small bed in a very big room, so I had to play with the scale of everything, she said of the homeowners instructions. I had to be very mindful of how all these elements came together in a way that felt like they were illustrating all the architectural details  but also making a statement on their own.

Instead of a small bedside lamp, she created a larger light that was more of a centerpiece, made from a slice of agate and fitted with a box-shaped shade. Gauzy white curtains hang from the frame around the bed, and a large chest of drawers sits at the end  two more ways Davies-Gaetano worked with the large scale of the room.

In a home that borrows so heavily from Morocco, an inlaid chest of drawers might almost seem like a cliche. But Davies-Gaetano got around that with another creative idea. She found a Moroccan chest of drawers with inlay in New York City and turned it into a vanity.

The lighting throughout the house is another highlight. I sourced lighting from all over the world. Fixtures and lamps came from France, Morocco, Italy and the United States. Some are antiques, some are reproductions, and some are Davies-Gaetanos creations, like the agate lamp.

THE BUILDER

The craftsmen responsible for building those elements were Rob and Josh Glass of Glass Residential Group, with locations in Irvine and Santa Monica.

The father-and-son team specializes in classical European styles, meshing them with modern technology, Rob Glass said. Like Davies-Gaetano, Glass has drawn inspiration from his travels, including to Morocco. The home is Moroccan in style, but its also Andalusian, a region with an Islamic influence in southern Spain.

Its almost a work of art, Glass said. Modern conveniences like appliances and computer-controlled lighting systems have been incorporated among the columns salvaged from Europe and doors purchased in Morocco. The cobblestone in the arched ceiling of the 32-car garage was recovered from streets in Belgium that were being demolished, Glass said.

You cant really copy and emulate the real antiques from  yesteryear, he said about using reclaimed materials. It just kind of brings a flavor  Yes, its today, but its still bringing back the flavor of the original style of days ago.

Even new fixtures have been made to look old in the house, he said. The sink and faucet in the Moroccan vanity, for example, were antiqued with acids and coloration. The Glasses used an antique finish on the elaborate ceilings, too, which are formed from modules that fit together like a puzzle.

You can see all the detail, Glass said. The sum of the parts create this great jewel.

When you walk through the home, it evokes this very calm and tranquil feel, Davies-Gaetano says. You want to kick off your shoes and sit on the sofa  and not be intimidated by the house, she says. Its a very inviting and warm environment.

Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
Darrell Issa, who built a reputation in Congress as an imposing conservative attack dog, has got a brand new bag.

With Democrats closing in on his seat last fall, Issa mailed a campaign ad praising President Barack Obama for signing a victims rights bill Issa supported  the same Obama he unrelentingly criticized while serving as the high-profile chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

The pro-life congressman, who squeaked out reelection to a ninth term by 0.7 percentage points, told constituents at a town hall March 11 that he opposed fellow Republicans call to defund Planned Parenthood.

Despite a lifetime legislative score of just 4 percent from the League of Conservation Voters, Issa also told the crowd that he also opposed any reduction in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency. Two days later, the same politician whos said theres no consensus on climate change joined the House Climate Solutions Caucus.

Hes expressed reservations with the GOPs proposed replacement to Obamacare and has taken other steps to distance himself from President Donald Trump, even though he endorsed Trump last year and introduced him at a San Diego rally.

He is certainly changing his message to appeal to moderates and even left-leaning Democrats, said Graeme Boushey, a UC Irvine political scientist. I think hes making a calculated political decision and maybe a correct one. He was disliked by the same voters hes trying to win over now. Its a hard pivot to make and sell to voters, but its very practical.

Issas district, which straddles the Orange-San Diego county line, is a traditionally Republican stronghold thats trending blue. The GOPs voter-registration advantage of 14 percentage points in 2012 was cut in half by Novembers election, and the district favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, 51 percent to 43 percent, according to a Daily Kos analysis. A quarter of the districts voters are independents.

The congressional district is one of just 23 nationwide where voters who favored Clinton are represented by members of the GOP.

The party that wins the presidency usually loses seats in the next congressional election, and the New York Times is among those whove said Issa may be the most vulnerable House member. Two Democrats have already hired campaign staff for a 2018 challenge of Issa and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid for a full-time organizer in the district.

Issa has maintained that hes not changed his political outlook, pointing out his criticisms of the administration during George W. Bushs presidency and his opposition to the TARP bailout of Wall Street.

Issa spokesman Calvin Moore reiterated that rebuttal last week, although he acknowledged that Issas image has changed in the eyes of many.

I think people are just paying attention more closely and understanding what an independent voice hes been, Moore said. His job is to listen to the needs of his district and respond to that. Thats what hes been doing since he was first elected to office.

Others say they see a difference in Issas public statements but wonder how sincere he is.

The question is whether he will back up these suggestions with actual votes or legislative proposals, said John Compton, a Chapman University political scientist and former congressional aide. And on that point, I think the jurys still out.

A bit of Hamlet

Democrats going after Issa, well aware of Clintons clear victory in the district, are tenacious in efforts to paint Issa as a Trump lackey.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wasted no time in alerting the media when Issa opposed a resolution calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to turn over to Congress documents related to investigations in ties between Trump and Russia.

The resolution was voted against by the Judiciary Committee 18-15 in a party line vote on Feb. 28.

Congressman Issa is one of President Trumps biggest cheerleaders, so there was never any question that he would vote to shield the Trump Administrations potential ties to Russia when he had the chance, blasted DCCC spokesman Tyler Law in a press release.

But Issa may have gotten even more attention two days later when he became one of the first congressional Republicans to call for an independent investigation of Trump links to Russia, and in calling for Sessions to recuse himself from any such investigation.

We need a clear-eyed view of what the Russians actually did so that all Americans can have faith in our institutions, he said. The Putin government is a bad actor whose actions should be carefully scrutinized  and regardless of what side of the aisle you sit on  we have a vested interest in fully understanding exactly what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

At one point, Issa also called for a special prosecutor, although he later appeared to walk back that statement.

Issas town hall endorsement of existing funding levels for the Environmental Protection Agency also marked a clear break from Trump, whose March 16 budget proposal called for a 31-percent cut to the office.

In defending the EPA, Issa was responding to a question from Democratic environmental attorney Mike Levin, who joined the congressional race earlier this month. Levin later dismissed the suggestion that Issa is changing his core conservative ideology.

Its too little, too late, Levin said. People can see through people who say one thing and do another.

Doug Applegate  the Democratic attorney, retired Marine colonel and first-time candidate who came out of obscurity to nearly upset Issa last year  said hes not sure what Issa really believes.

He reminds me a little of Hamlet, said Applegate, who is again challenging Issa. The man has no moral compass. What principle has he ever held firm?

Applegate says the prominence of the Camp Pendleton Marine base in the district is one of his advantages over Levin, while Levin has said Applegate is vulnerable to further attacks from Issa. Last year, Issa ads highlighted aspects of a difficult divorce Applegate went through years ago. Another clear difference between the two is Applegates support of Bernie Sanders in last years primary, while Levin backed Clinton.

Delicate dance

Issas campaign polling shows that his support of Trump is negative strike most commonly cited by voters in his district.

The early December survey found that 14 percent of voters cited his backing of Trump and another 14 percent pointed to him being dishonest or corrupt as Issas biggest shortcomings. Asked for his most positive trait, 18 percent said he was effective or he was doing a good job.

The poll became public when it was submitted by Issa in an unsuccessful lawsuit alleging that Applegate attack ads libeled the incumbent. Issa claimed one TV ad inaccurately gave the impression that the congressman had used his position to benefit himself financially, and the other misled voters about his voting record to compensate victims and first responders in the 9/11 terrorists attacks.

Asked which attack ads against Issa they remembered most, 27 percent of voters named the one highlighting Issas support of Trump. Just 8 percent cited the self-enrichment attack and 2 percent named the 9/11 issue.

In 2018, if it becomes a referendum on the Trump agenda, Issa is going to need to distance himself, said UC Irvines Boushey.

Boushey also detailed the delicate political dance involved for the incumbent. While he needs to connect with those who voted for Clinton, he cant afford to lose much  or any  of the 43 percent who cast ballots for Trump.

Conservative voters arent going to vote for a Democrat, he said. But they might stay home and not vote at all.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@scng.com
The Trump administrations proposal to eliminate funding for a program that addresses major environmental and health threats in the Great Lakes would have a devastating impact on millions of Canadians, officials and environmental groups said Thursday.

The White Houses 2018 budget proposal would, if approved by Congress, gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a federal program that has helped to remove water pollution and harmful algae on both sides of the border. The issue could become one more point of friction between the United States and Canada, already divided over trade and immigration.

The budget proposal, which reflects Trumps wish to drastically reduce the size and scope of the Environmental Protection Agency, has dismayed the Canadian government, which cooperates with the United States to clean up and protect the Great Lakes. The lakes are the source of drinking water for 45 million people  including 10 million in Ontario, about 90 percent of its population. Ontario has the largest shoreline on the Great Lakes of any jurisdiction in Canada and the United States.

Canada has a long history of working collaboratively with the U.S. and invests significant resources in restoring and protecting the Great Lakes, Catherine McKenna, Canadas environment and climate change minister, said Thursday. We have done so to protect the health and economies of communities around the Great Lakes. We must now pursue that commitment to keep protecting this precious resource.

McKenna was in Washington on Thursday to press her U.S. counterparts to maintain U.S. funding for the program, about $300 million annually. Since the program was established in 2009 by President Barack Obama, more than $2.2 billion has gone to fund more than 2,000 projects across eight states. The projects have been aimed at removing toxic waste, restoring wildlife habitats and girding against invasive species such as the Asian carp in the vast freshwater bodies, which hold one-fifth of the worlds fresh surface water. Canada contributes more than $13 million annually for Great Lakes restoration, government officials said.

Although the budget cuts would target projects in the United States, Canadian towns and cities that rely on the lake system would also be affected, advocates say. These include five binational Areas of Concern, like the Detroit River, a long-polluted waterway between Ontario and Michigan, as well as nutrient management projects in Lake Erie that focus on preventing algae blooms triggered by industrial contaminants.

Since word of the proposed cuts to the program leaked this month, dozens of Canadian mayors and other officials have spoken out about the harm their cities and towns would suffer if the proposal were to go into effect.

As the largest city on Lake Huron, the cuts will undo decades of work by many to clean up the Great Lakes on both sides of the border, said Mayor Mike Bradley of Sarnia, Ontario. What good is it having lower taxes when you cant drink the water?

Sarnia, at the mouth of the St. Clair River, across from Michigan, began working to remove water contamination in 1985, when the city discovered a 200-foot-long oily slick beneath the river that turned out to be 2,900 gallons of perchloroethylene, a chemical used for dry cleaning that had been spilled by a nearby Dow Chemical plant. Despite marked progress in cleaning up the river and surrounding habitats, the city remains designated as an Area of Concern by the Canadian government.

Residents and politicians on both sides of the border say they are mystified by the proposed budget cuts, which they say would do massive damage to waters still reeling from decades of industrial contamination.

A large amount of the programs funding has in past years gone toward preventing toxic algae blooms, like one in 2014 that forced Toledo, Ohio, to temporarily shut off its water intake system after samples were found to contain microcystin, which can cause liver and kidney damage and respiratory failure. Earlier this month, the Ontario and Canadian governments released a draft plan to reduce algae blooms in Lake Erie, part of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement with the United States.

Mark Mattsen, president of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, an environmental advocacy group based in Toronto, said the proposed elimination of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative would threaten the regions $7 billion fishery. The cuts would end infrastructure plans to prevent the spread of the Asian carp, an invasive species brought to the United States 40 years ago to eat algae. It has destroyed numerous fisheries and is making its way toward the Great Lakes.

Were at a crossroads, Mattsen said. Canada is going to have to lead by example and show the U.S. this isnt the right direction.
NEW YORK  One member of New York Citys emergency medical services was killed and another injured when a man got into the drivers seat of their ambulance and ran over one of them in the Bronx on Thursday night, the authorities said.

The man, 25, was taken into custody but the police did not identify him publicly.

The police said the episode happened around 7:10 p.m. Eastern time at the intersection of White Plains Road and Watson Avenue near the Soundview section of the Bronx.

Two female emergency medical workers were responding to a call and were alerted by a passer-by that someone was riding on the back bumper of the ambulance, officials said.

The emergency medical worker in the passenger seat got out first, and then the driver, who went behind the ambulance to confront the man. He started to walk away but then turned back and went around her to the cab of the ambulance and got into the drivers seat, officials said.

As the emergency medical workers struggled with the man on both sides, he put the vehicle in reverse, striking the passenger and running over the driver, who was killed. The police had previously reported that the passenger was critically injured, but officials later clarified that she had suffered minor injuries. The ambulance also struck parked cars.

An on-duty officer from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority got out of his vehicle and, with the help of four or five civilians, took the man into custody, officials said. Videos posted to Twitter by a passer-by showed a chaotic scene as the emergency medical worker who was injured cried loudly and screamed, My partner!

At a news conference at Jacobi Medical Center on Thursday night, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the emergency medical worker who was killed was 44 years old and the mother of five. The authorities did not publicly identify her because some members of her family had not yet been notified. The mayor said she was a 14-year veteran of the Fire Department.

The mayor said he spoke to some family members, adding that they were going through unspeakable grief.

On Thursday night, dozens of ambulances, some with their lights flashing, lined the roads leading to the trauma center at the medical center. Two lines of emergency medical workers extended from the entrance.

Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said the emergency medical worker was the eighth member and third woman of the emergency medical services to die in the line of duty.

Relatives of the man who was taken into custody said he had been depressed since his mother died when he was an adolescent. The man was known to the police because they have had numerous encounters with him as an emotionally disturbed person, they said.
Californians like to brag they are the nations pioneers, pointing to freeways, Disneyland and In-N-Out Burger. Theyve started construction on a 118-mile high-speed rail segment, the first in the nation, from Madera (population: 61,416) to Shafter (population: 16,998). Theyre paying for it with revenues from a statewide cap-and-trade system, which sells permits allowing industry to emit carbon dioxide.

That first segment, which is over land as flat as a table, requiring very little bulldozing and very few superelevated curves, was supposed to cost $6.4 billion, but thats already ballooned to $10 billion. As Steven Greenhut at Reason.com wrote earlier this year, its costing the train to nowhere a lot to get there.

Twenty-five percent of the cap-and-trade permit revenue is earmarked for the train, which is generated by four sales a year. The last tranche of sales, which was supposed to produce $600 million in revenue, only sold $8.2 million. This was the third sale in a row that has gone badly, and if it keeps up, the train to nowhere is headed for oblivion unless money can be reallocated from elsewhere in the California budget.

Whats going on? The spin from environmentalists is cap-and-trade permits are not selling because industry has been so successful at reducing its emissions that it doesnt need those stinking permits.

If only that were true! That would mean that reducing emissions 40 percent by 2030, as mandated by California law, is a piece of cake, and that the whole world will soon follow.

But thats not the case. The problem is the cap-and-trade program is probably illegal. It was passed by a simple majority in the Legislature, but in California, taxes require a two-thirds supermajority. The California Chamber of Commerce and a tomato processor have sued over this, because it looks like a tax (the government taking your money) and acts like a tax (it spends it on dozens of different projects). The California Appellate Court may declare, after all, that it is a tax, and if it does not, the case will go to the state Supreme Court.

A judgment ruling its a tax will suspend the program, which legislatively sunsets in 2020 anyway, also helping to explain why no one is buying the permits. Gov. Jerry Brown, whose term ends in 2019, is now asking the Legislature to admit its a tax, and pass a new bill with a two-thirds majority. He has also made rumblings that the program can continue without specific legislative authority, sounding curiously like the nations last president on climate policy.

Passing this tax may be a problem. Even though the Democrats hold a supermajority in both state houses, a defection of one senator or two Assembly members will kill the bill. There are surely some in the less-blue parts of the state who dont want their taxpayers to be responsible for these costs.

There are a large and diverse number of contenders to succeed Gov. Brown, and one or more may stake out a position against cap-and-trade. It was one different candidate vying against a dozen others with similar ideas that resulted in the Republican nomination of Donald Trump. Polls have support for the cap-and-trade around 54 percent.

California is not the first location of a cap-and-trade train wreck. In December, 2010, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the nations first carbon dioxide cap-and-trade market, shut its doors when the U.S. Senate had the good sense to run away from cap-and-trade, less than two months after the Democrats lost control of the House as a result of passing it.

Will Californias cap-and-trade program meet a similar fate? If the legislature doesnt extend it, the train to nowhere might come to the end of the line.

Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.
Democrat Harley Rouda has come fast and hard out of the gates in his challenge of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, announcing Tuesday, March 14, that hed raised $100,000 in less than two weeks after declaring his candidacy.

At the same time, it emerged that Rouda had given $1,000 to Republican John Kasich in last years presidential primary and some began questioning the businessman and first-time candidates faithfulness to the Democratic Party. Rouda is one of two Democrats in the race, with Laguna Beach real estate broker Boyd Roberts rounding out the field so far.

A review of the Federal Elections Commission site reveals that Rouda also gave at least $9,200 to Republican congressional candidates from 1993 to 2007, and nothing to Democratic candidates during that period.

In a Facebook response, Rouda explained that he was once a Republican but realized that the Democratic Party better reflected his positions. He explained that he gave to Kasich because he and his wife had been friends with the Kasichs for nearly 30 years.

We gave  because they are personal friends  not because he is someone who I share a political ideology with  and because I wanted to stop Donald Trump and his divisive campaign, he wrote. For president, I supported Hillary Clinton.

When I followed up, Rouda said he grew up in a Republican household but has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee since 2004.

I am 100% Democratic and strongly for Democratic values, he said, specifically citing his support of gay marriage, abortion rights and immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship for most of those in the country illegally.

I asked Sue Dvorak of Indivisible OC 48, an anti-Donald Trump group that demonstrates at Rohrabachers office weekly, about her colleagues reaction to Roudas Republican past.

The impressions fall into three categories, she said. Some people think Harley is a Republican in disguise. Others are withholding judgment for now. And some think hell be able to appeal strongly to more voters throughout the district because of his background.

Dvorak noted that her husband is a former Republican.

For me, personally, I can understand how somebody can change, she said.

Voter fraud

The county grand jury on Monday, March 13, issued a report entitled No Voter Fraud Here, although the document did not address vulnerabilities in the system.

The Grand Jury found no evidence of widespread or organized voter fraud or vote interference in Orange County election processes in (last years) General Election, the report says.

One vulnerability several readers have expressed concern about is polling place impersonation.

If you know the name and address of a registered voter who has voted before but hasnt voted in the current election, you can show up at their polling place under their guise and cast a ballot in their name. Thats one argument for requiring photo ID at the polling place.

Grand jury Chairwoman Carrie Carmody noted that there is virtually no evidence of that happening and downplayed the threat.

How many times could somebody really do that and how much could it change the outcome? she told me. All those issues were discussed with the Registrar (of Voters, Neal Kelley).

Meanwhile, the online news site CALmatters looked in the 948 election-related complaints received by the secretary of states office in 2016.

The office determined that more than half (525) did not merit criminal investigation. Of the remaining complaints, 140 are still being screened, 194 were non-criminal problems referred to local officials and 89 triggered investigations by the Secretary of State, CALmatters reported.

Of the 89 investigations the Secretary of State opened in 2016: 56 are allegations of double voting, 16 are allegations of fraudulent voter registration and one is an alleged case of fraudulent voting. The rest allege wrongdoing by candidates, people who circulate petitions and others who work in the elections arena  not by voters themselves.

Together, the cases the Secretary of State is investigating and those it referred to counties amount to one one-thousandth of one percent (0.001%) of the more than 23 million votes cast in Californias primary and general elections last year.

The Orange County District Attorneys Office looked into two complaints: one of somebody campaigning too closely to the polling place and the other of somebody registering to vote who wasnt eligible.

In the latter case, the individual didnt speak English well and may not have understood that the canvasser was signing him up to vote, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh. No charges were brought in either case because filing of criminal charges was not appropriate or warranted, said Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the District Attorney.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@scng.com
The J.C. Penney at the Village at Orange will shutter this summer, the lone retail store in Southern California among 138 marked for closure nationwide by the company.

Three other California stores, all to the north in Bishop, Lodi and Richmond, were part of the announcement Friday. The company indicated most of the stores would begin liquidation sales April 17 and shut in June. In a phone call to the Orange store Friday, an employee said she thought the store would close June 16.

In Orange, J.C. Penney was unable to renew its lease with property owner A&C Ventures of Sonoma, the firms broker, Michael Brandon, said Friday. The real estate firm, which leases property across the country to brands ranging from Rite Aid to Taco Bell, is looking for a relevant and modern retailer to fill the space, said Brandon, owner of Newport Beach-based retail restaurant consulting firm Brandon-California.

The retail space is roughly 102,000 square feet, according to CoStar, a commercial property database.

J.C. Penneys exit comes as malls  both traditional and modern  are losing once reliable retail anchors. As consumers turn more to the internet for essentials from clothes to appliances, developers are re-thinking how to use the big-box spaces.

When Macys left the Irvine Spectrum last year, the Irvine Company chose to raze the building and construct a collection of smaller retail spaces.

But Brandon said A&C has no plans to demolish the J.C. Penney building. Adding restaurants or a movie theater is not on the table either, he said.

Its going to end up being another big-box store, Brandon said.

Rumors of J.C. Penney leaving the decades-old mall have been flying for more than a year. In mid-2015, the malls previous owner, Vestar, accidentally posted conceptual plans on its website that showed a 16-screen movie complex in the J.C. Penney space.

When asked about the plans, Vestar said the drawings for The Village were posted in error. The company immediately removed the plans.

Though A&C has no plans to lease the space to a movie theater, Brandon said he wouldnt be surprised if the malls current owner, Carlsbad-based TRC, considered a theater elsewhere on the property.

Last fall, after investing millions in the mall, Vestar sold the Village to TRC for $84.5 million. TRC, formerly known as Terramar Retail Centers, owns about 36 shopping centers.

The mall was 92 percent leased at the time of sale, according to HFF. Managing director Bryan Ley, who is based in HFFs Los Angeles office, said the new owner is expected to finish upgrades started by Vestar more than a year ago.

Over the last 18 months, upgrades have included a makeover of the malls two main entrances. New tenants targeting a younger demographic include The Habit Burger Grill, Buffalo Wild Wings, Noodles & Co., Ulta Beauty and Jimmy Johns Gourmet Sandwiches.

The J.C. Penney closures will impact roughly 5,000 jobs nationwide, the company said. Last month it said retirement packages would be offered to some 6,000 employees.

A company map of stores indicates there are 79 J.C. Penney stores in California. A rough count in the four-county Southern California region amounted to 33 stores. The companys store closure lists represent about 13 percent to 14 percent of the department store operators current store count, and less than 5 percent of total annual sales.

Local distribution hub to close

In February J.C. Penney announced plans to shutter a distribution facility in Buena Park and relocate the center to the Inland Empire.

No details were provided regarding the number of employees that would be impacted by the looming Buena Park facility closure.

The 1-million-square-foot, 24-acre compound at 6031 Orangethorpe Ave., was assessed at roughly $35 million last year, making it a valuable real estate asset for the troubled retailer. CoStar Group, a commercial real estate data provider, indicates the property, built in 1967, is used as a hub for J.C. Penneys West Coast operations.

The driver here is selling industrial facilities in Southern California, Louis Tomaselli, a senior managing director at JLL, told the Register in February. They could sell this million-square foot DC (distribution center) that is pretty antiquated and sell it for over $130 million.

Tomaselli said the move to the Inland Empire makes economic sense for the retailer.

They go sell a 40-year-old facility and then they lease a brand new facility  a brand new, state-of-the-art facility, a huge truck court. And they pay current market rates, which are well below what it would cost to operate the Orange County facility at the price level it was worth.

This is happening all over Southern California, he said.

J.C. Penney has been recovering from a poorly conceived reinvention plan under former chief executive Ron Johnson. Profits declined sharply in 2012 and 2013.

Mike Ullman took over the role of chief executive in 2013 and stabilized the company. Marvin Ellison became chief executive in 2015 and helped the company looks for ways to increase sales and improve its e-commerce.

The company brought in a $1 million profit for the full fiscal year in 2016, for the first time since 2010.

Ellison told CNBC that he is looking to tap into the $300 billion home services market.

The company is testing six new programs in 100 stores, allowing shoppers the ability to buy a washing machine, arrange a remodel consultation, get a haircut at the InStyle salon and pick up Nike workout gear all at J.C. Penney.

Ellison worked at HomeDepot before moving to J.C. Penney.

Other department stores

J.C. Penney isnt the only store suffering as more consumers turn online to shop.

In February, Sears announced plans to shave $1 billion in annual expenses by selling locations, cutting jobs and putting more brands on the block.

Sears Holdings Corp., which also owns Kmart, in January announced it would close of 150 of its 1,500 stores.

Few of the closures impacted Southern California, where only a Kmart at 3001 Iowa Ave. in Riverside was slated to shutter.

Sears owns much of its retail real estate, which analysts have speculated is worth more than the brand itself.

Last August Macys announced plans to shutter 100 stores. Earlier in 2016 the chain announced 40 store closures, including one at the Irvine Spectrum Center.

Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans
The family factions warring over the welfare of Ryan Morris, a mentally disabled man, agreed on Thursday to enter mediation, even as their battle wends its way through the justice system.

It was probate court Judge Thomas Cahramans first day on the unusual case, and he noted that it involves complex issues of psychology and sociology, and is fraught with strong emotion. Cahraman told the feuding parties  Ryans biological family and Ryans husband  to return to court June 9 to report their progress in mediation. But just in case that doesnt prove fruitful, Cahraman also began planning a summer trial in Riverside Superior Court before a civil judge.

Notably absent was the man all this conflict is about: Ryan Morris.

Ryan suffers from a long list of maladies requiring powerful medications. He has the intellectual capacity of a kindergartener. He cant think abstractly, manage money or make his own medical decisions, according to court documents. And as such, he requires a legal guardian to protect him. Right now, that guardian is also his husband, Sean Spicer.

Ryan also has an identical twin brother, Ronald Moore. Moore and two of his aunts seek to oust Spicer as Ryans legal guardian  or conservator, in California parlance  and step into that role themselves. They have grave concerns, voiced in court filings, that Spicer may be sexually abusing and controlling Ryan, causing irreparable harm.

Spicer, of Romoland, says thats not true. He takes good care of Ryan and doesnt want to relinquish conservatorship. Ryans biological family is trying to break up the marriage because it doesnt accept that Ryan is gay, Spicers family argued in court paperwork. Ryans court-appointed attorney said that Ryan wants Spicer to remain as conservator  but Ryan has not been in court to answer that question directly.

The fate of the identical twins has been in court before. Ryan and Ronald were swept into state custody shortly after their birth; their mother had a history of mental illness, and had not received prenatal care. Ronald was healthy; Ryan was not. Their grandmother sought custody of both boys, but got only Ronald; Ryan was kept in foster care because of his many special needs, which social workers said were beyond his grandmothers ability to address.

Despite his biological familys protests, the state ultimately approved Ryans adoption by his foster mother in 2002. She cut off communication with biological family members soon after. Ryans biological family was stunned, in 2015, to learn that Ryan was married, despite having the intellectual capacity of a kindergartener.

The case raises uncomfortable questions that go beyond whether identical twins should be raised together or apart, or even how much power the state can wield over families. Can a man with cognitive disabilities so serious that he cant think abstractly, manage money or care for himself, give informed consent to a marriage and intimate relationship? And does the equation change if that disabled person marries someone of normal intelligence, who then becomes empowered to make the most fundamental life decisions?

The biological family wants the Riverside County Public Guardians office appointed as Ryans temporary conservator so there are outside eyes on Ryans welfare while the conflict wends through the justice system. Cahraman said hed consider the question if raised in the proper legal format.

Both sides say this is a step toward some sort of resolution.

The situation is dynamic, but this is good progress, said Andrew J. Beechko, the attorney representing Ryan.

Olivia Mukai-Lechner, one of the aunts seeking conservatorship, agreed that its progress. What Ryan needs is a family, she said. I know he needs a spouse too if thats what he wants. If Sean would allow the family to see him, this might not be happening  but now thats not the case. Its tragic.

The courtroom seemed straight out of a movie set  dark wood paneling, soaring ceilings and gold-embossed inscriptions citing the wisdom of the ages. He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help, said the quote from Lincoln.

Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com
LOS ANGELES  President Donald Trump has approved a disaster declaration for California to address damage from January storms that were part of the states extremely wet winter.

The action Thursday makes federal funding available to state, local and tribal governments as well as nonprofit groups.

The assistance covers emergency work and repair or replacement of facilities damaged from Jan. 18 to Jan. 23 in 16 counties, and hazard mitigation measures statewide.

Counties named in the declaration include El Dorado, Kern, Los Angeles, Mendocino, Napa, Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yolo.

The White House says other declarations may be made later depending on damage assessments.

January saw California come under siege by storms fed by a series of so-called atmospheric rivers.
So where does the guy who runs one of the worlds hottest shopping mall like to shop?

Anton Segerstrom is the boss at South Coast Plaza and son of family patriarch and mall visionary Henry Segerstrom, who died two years ago. The high-end shopping center in Costa Mesa, with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, is celebrating 50 years in business this year.

We asked Segerstrom about his most memorable shopping moments (obviously outside of his family-owned mall) and he came up with two distinct retailing experiences.

I have fond memories of visiting the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy, he said.

It has beautiful architecture that has stood the test of time, luxury boutiques, and wonderful Michelin-starred restaurants. On the other hand, I also love visiting the Ferry Building when I am in San Francisco.

Milans Galleria, one of the worlds oldest shopping centers, dates to 1877. Much like South Coast Plaza, this Italian mall is known for its high-end merchants and chefs housed under distinctive glass-vaulted arcade ceilings.

The Ferry Building Market also has eye-catching architecture, but its a bit earthier. This center is popular with Bay Area locals and tourists for its novel collection of a farmers market, artists selling all sorts of wares and handicrafts, plus cutting-edge restaurants.

Contact the writer: jlansner@ocregister.com
A woman convicted of identity theft was cleared to work as an administrator for an elderly care home, complete with access to residents sensitive personal information.

Another, arrested for committing a lewd or lascivious act upon a dependent person, was permitted to work for months in a senior home before Californias Department of Social Services learned of her conviction and forbade her from entering.

Convicted of pimping or pandering adults? Identity theft? Rape of an unconscious spouse? Rape under the color of authority? One can still get clearance to work in state-licensed child care, senior and foster homes in California, according to a troubling new report by State Auditor Elaine Howle.

Social Services does not always obtain or review all appropriate information before allowing individuals access to facilities, concluded the review by Howle, whose office is charged with keeping an eye on the machinations of state government.

The agency has allowed people to work with vulnerable clients even before their out-of-state criminal histories are completed; has inappropriately directed staff to ignore some minor convictions; and relies too heavily on an honor system where workers self-disclose their criminal histories.

The Department of Social Services is the statewide gatekeeper charged with evaluating background checks for more than 70,000 state-licensed care facilities that care for hundreds of thousands of Californians from Oregon to the Mexican border. The agency decides who can and cant work in those facilities.

In the last fiscal year, the Department of Justice responded to more than 366,000 criminal background check inquiries for would-be care workers. More than 23,000 of them  about 6 percent  produced criminal histories that Social Services needed to evaluate further, Howle said.

But Social Services doesnt receive all the information it needs to protect vulnerable clients, she said. Other local and state agencies with potentially vital information  police departments, courts, the Justice Department and others  often fail to promptly or effectively share that information, Howle wrote.

She recommended a host of changes to streamline the process and better ensure public safety, and called on the Legislature to add more crimes to the list of those that would prevent care workers from obtaining state clearance. Crimes that should disqualify them include the pimping and prostitution of adults, rape under color of authority and of rape of an unconscious spouse, among others, the report said.

The Legislature should also require Social Services officials to wait for California and out-of-state criminal histories to be completed before granting people access to licensed facilities, it said.

In separate responses, the departments of Social Services and Justice largely agreed with Howles findings and recommendations, particularly as they relate to swifter and more complete sharing of information between them.

At least one legislator called Howle courageous, and bemoaned that her work often falls on deaf ears.

Not getting this information to protect vulnerable clients is unconscionable. Not sharing information between departments is unacceptable. Not fully reviewing all of the required information is insubordination, said Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa.

Allowing 40 individuals with arrests or convictions, without documentation fully explaining their ability to enter facilities where vulnerable clients are located, is a dereliction of duty. Not devoting time to the tasks at hand is unexplainable. But, if there is no one to follow up on the Auditors reports, then the accountability is hollow.

A CEO would jump in and work with Justice to improve forwarding information to Social Services, he said. But if the worst that can happen is that a legislator introduces a bill to tell these departments to do their jobs, wheres the incentive?

Bad roads. Bad dams. Bad communication. Bad work product. Big raises. More tax increases. No wonder constituents are angry. I know I am, Moorlach said.

Contact the writer: tsforza@scng.com
LOS ANGELES  Andrew Leander Wilson, a broad smile on his face and no bitterness in his heart, clasped hands with his family on his first day of freedom Thursday after spending 32 years in prison for a murder he denied committing.

Wilson, 62, was released from the Los Angeles County Mens Central Jail downtown into a sea of cameras and cheers and applause from university law students who worked to free him.

This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable, Wilson said.

Wilson maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1984 for the stabbing death of Christopher Hanson, 21, in Los Angeles.

A day earlier, Superior Court Judge Laura Priver ordered Wilson released after prosecutors conceded he did not get a fair trial.

Loyola Law Schools Project for the Innocent, which fought for Wilsons release, pointed to numerous due-process violations.

Its been a nightmare but I survived and got to the end of the road, Wilson said.

Wearing a red Loyola shirt, Wilson held hands with his sister and daughter. His 15-year-old granddaughter was by their sides.

Wilson said he holds no bitterness because that would be a waste of time.

Believe it or not, I think Im all right upstairs, he said, drawing laughter from his family members.

I still have a parent, Wilsons daughter, Catrina Burks, 43, of Muskegon, Michigan.

Its been a long 32 years and Im glad that its over  I stayed hopeful all the way, said Gwen Wilson, 49, of Inglewood.

She was 14 when her brother was sent to prison.

It was scary because it is my brother and he would never come back; thats what I thought in the moment, she said.

Asked what he thought of his prosecutor, he said, Im past it. I just want to go get something to eat right now and love my family.

If he didnt eat soon, Im going to eat my shoes, Wilson joked.

Wilson will travel as soon as he can to St. Louis to visit his 96-year-old mother, Margie Davis, who was a tireless advocate for his innocence over the decades, according to his lawyer, Paula Mitchell.

Mitchell said before the hearing that numerous due-process violations recently came to light that showed Wilson did not receive a fair trial.

She pointed particularly to a weeks-long delay before police began canvassing for suspects with Hansons girlfriend, Saladena Bishop, who was 17 at the time. Bishop was the prosecutions only eyewitness.

Among missteps by the prosecution was the suppression of evidence that Bishop previously filed a false police report accusing another man of rape, according to court papers filed by Mitchell and other attorneys with Loyola Law Schools Project for the Innocent.

The district attorneys office said it would not retry Wilson. Another hearing was set for May 3 to begin the process to determine whether he is factually innocent, which could lead to compensation claims.
SANTA ANA  Trial is now set to begin on Sept. 18 for Rachel Buffett, the ex-fiancee of convicted killer Daniel Wozniak.

Buffett, 29, has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of accessory-after-the-fact linked to her then-fiancee Wozniak killing two people in Costa Mesa in 2010. She is accused of lying to police.

In a case that made national news, Wozniak, a former Costa Mesa community theater actor, was sentenced to death last year for killing his neighbor, Samuel Herr, 26, and Herr friend Juri Julie Kibuishi, 23, in a plot to steal money to pay for his wedding and honeymoon.

Buffett, an actress who once worked as a princess at Disneyland, was charged in 2012 as an accessory for allegedly lying to police multiple times in an attempt to protect Wozniak.

In one instance, prosecutors said, she repeated a story that Wozniak had told police about a mystery man being with Herr on the day he was killed. Wozniak later told police that was a lie, prosecutors said.

Detectives have long maintained that Buffett played a role in the killings, while she has denied any connection to the crimes. In a Dateline NBC interview last year, Buffett said she has been wrongfully accused and is totally innocent.

Im innocent, and thats what hurts me most in this whole situation is theyre trying to say Im something Im not, she said.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com
SANTA ANA  A 25-year-old man was charged Thursday, March 16, with pimping a 22-year-old woman and a 13-year-old girl he is accused of sexually assaulting in Orange County.

Darnell Bray Jr. was charged with pimping, pandering, human trafficking of a victim younger than 18, pandering with a minor younger than 16, lewd or lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14 and pimping for a prostitute younger than 16, according to court records.

The alleged victims told Anaheim police they met the defendant in Los Angeles and they were taken to Orange County, according to court records.

The three went to a local motel, where Bray told the girl he would have sex with her, according to a motion regarding bail.
Ash Soto was only 12 years old when she was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare skin condition that causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Dealing with the changes to her appearance and the social stigma associated with vitiligo was tough for a teenage girl, but she ultimately managed to accept her condition and make the best of it. Today, Ash even incorporates the unique patterns on her skin to create beautiful body art that inspire and empower people to embrace that we are all different and thats what makes us special.

It all started with a small spot Ash saw on her neck one day. It looked like a sun spot, so she didnt pay much attention to it, until another one appeared a few months later. She went to see a doctor about it with her mother, and was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare and incurable skin condition. Soto was just 12 at the time, and couldnt yet understand how much this diagnosis would affect her life.

I didnt know how to react because I had no knowledge on what vitiligo was or what would happen to me, Ash Soto recalls. I remember my mom sitting there crying and I just sat there confused and scared. I didnt know how much my life would change from that moment on.

As the vitiligo continued to spread on her body, Ash turned from an outdoor young girl who loved going to the beach and cheerleading into an introvert plagued by anxiety and depression. She couldnt even look at people anymore, and would only leave the house wearing long-sleeved shirts and jeans.

I excluded myself from everything and everyone. I tried to be happy and smile, but over time I was filled with so much self-hatred for myself that I stopped doing the things I loved, Soto told a plus. It was so bad, I couldnt even look at people in the eye anymore and I just wanted to be inside all the time. I developed anxiety and depression. I remember looking at girls in magazines or on social media and I would be so jealous because they had perfect skin and I didnt.

But with support from her family, and the help of social media and the body positivity movement, Ash was able to accept that she was beautiful just the way she was, and that she didnt have to meet societys standards to feel good about herself. She started going out wearing short sleeve t-shirts and shorts, and forced all the negative thoughts out of her mind.

I get stretch marks just like everyone else regardless of if I have a skin condition or not. I go through all the same struggles you all go through thats why I preach self love so much. I dont care if I have to repeat myself in every caption to love who you are regardless if you have tiger stripes, #vitiligo, or whatever the case may be. Ill sound like a broken record each time because at least someone reminded you to appreciate and love yourself unconditionally always  A post shared by Ash Soto (@radiantbambi) on Jan 13, 2017 at 1:11pm PST

I remember I would write down on a paper everyday repeating to myself that I am beautiful, I am strong and I am enough, the 21-year-old said. I told myself I didnt have to meet societys standards to be beautiful and unique.

Instagram played a huge role in her struggle to accept and embrace her appearance. At first, she just set up an account to share makeup tricks, and would hide her condition in the photos and videos she posted, but at one point she built up the courage to reveal herself completely to her followers.

Be your own kind of art and be unapologetically you. Dont ever be afraid to bare it all. If no one told you today, youre beautiful  A post shared by Ash Soto (@radiantbambi) on Feb 10, 2017 at 4:38pm PST

It was a tough decision, especially knowing how cruel people can be, especially behind the safety of a keyboard, but Ash felt that she was strong enough mentally to handle any kind of reactions. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with people showing their support and sharing their own experiences with vitiligo. It inspired her to promote self-love and acceptance, but also to use her skin condition in artistic ways.

A few months ago, Soto started an artistic project called The Marker Chronicles, through which she tries to show that we are all art. She uses a marker and paint to outline or cover her vitiligo spots, turning her body into a beautiful canvas.

Be your own kind of art and be unapologetically you. Dont ever be afraid to bare it all. If no one told you today, youre beautiful  A post shared by Ash Soto (@radiantbambi) on Feb 10, 2017 at 4:38pm PST

This project has been a way to show that what others might perceive as your flaws are actually what makes you beautiful and sets you apart from the rest, Ash says. Each of us get one life to live and the things that make us different from one another are those that us special. The only person that has to accept you and love you is you. The standards of beauty in our society are unattainable to most of us. These standards should not be your goal, but instead the acceptance of the things that make you imperfect should be your main focus.
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Agricultural News

Founding Board Member Bob Funk Pledges Five Million Dollars tio Help Establish an Endowment for the Oklahoma Youth Expo







Longtime Oklahoma Youth Expo (OYE) Board Member Bob Funk announced during the grand drive at of the Oklahoma Youth Expo, held Thursday evening, that he and his family would be donating a $5 million to help esstablish an endowment for the organization, to help generate operating expenses for the show to continue on into the future.





Once fully funded at ten million dollars, the endowment is expected to generate $500,000 to $600,000 a year in interest and will be used to help meet the organization's expenses throughout the year. A fund raising campaign is now in the early planning stages to raise a matching five million dollars that has been pledged by the Funk family.





Funk spoke with Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays following the grand drive. You can listen to Hays' interview with Bob Funk at the Oklahoma Youth Expo, by clicking or tapping the LISTEN BAR below at the bottom of this story.





"I've been thinking for the last 15 years how we could keep this going," he said. "I really want the young people of Oklahoma to know how much we appreciate them and how much we're willing to give them for the effort they put in."





Following Funk's gesture, it was announced that the show will start awarding the "Bob Funk OYE Legacy Scholarship Award" to be given each year, beginning in 2018, to the graduating senior with the best combined ten year show career with OYE. Future winners will compete for the prize in leadership, academic excellence and show ring success. The Bob Funk Legacy scholar will be chosen from OYE's top eight academic performers each year and will add an additional $5,000 to the winning purse for a total of $10,000 in scholarship funding.





"It's not us that's made the difference," Funk said acknowledging all those who make OYE a success, "it's the people that's made the difference."







Our Coverage of the 2017 Oklahoma Youth Expo is a service of ITC Great Plains, Your Energy Superhighway- learn more about this high voltage, transmission only utility and their commitment to the communities they serve which is the cornerstone of their business- click here for their website. We also salute the title sponsor of the 2017 OYE, McDonalds- click here for more information about how McDonalds sources USDA inspected beef from US ranchers- as well as the other responsibly grown food you enjoy under the Golden Arches.







Reports will be heard daily on great radio stations that cover Oklahoma and that are a part of the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network- on the internet- our reports of the 2017 OYE can be found on the Blue Green Gazette page- available here. We will be adding pictures daily to our official 2017 OYE Album of Photos on FLICKR, found here.









For more information about the Oklahoma Youth Expo, click here for the home page of the OYE website.







Click here for the complete schedule of all of the events at the 2016 Oklahoma Youth Expo.



























Listen to Ron Hays talk with Bob Funk about his $5 million endowment to the Oklahoma Youth Expo

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If the point of it all is just the sweaty pursuit of mountains of cash. And if Disneys chief way of doing that is to keep pulling nostalgia-rich intellectual properties out of its vault. And if every big new movie from here on out is just a cynically calculated corporate product ...

If that must be the case, I guess Ill gladly take a product as pleasurable as Beauty and the Beast.

The live-action (though largely computer-generated) remake of Disneys 1991 classic is mostly a scene-for-scene re-enactment with the added padding of a bit more plot and a few new songs.

The new Beauty and the Beast (directed by Bill Condon from a screenplay by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos) doesnt mess with the originals formula too much. Which is wise, because to call the 1991 movie beloved would be an obscene understatement; worshipped would be more accurate.

Its easily the most popular version of the oft-told fairy tale. Its the only animated film to be nominated for best picture before the Oscars expanded the categorys number of nominees. Along with The Lion King and Aladdin (both of which are soon getting the live-action treatment as well), Beauty and the Beast represents the pinnacle of Disney Animations early 90s revival.

And so the new Beauty and the Beast is mostly content with being a handsome, state-of-the-art, $160 million tribute to a great 90s movie.

Like its predecessor, it will thrill tiny young people as well as many of their caretakers. Like 2015s Jurassic World, this ones aimed squarely at the hearts of millennials who have been let down by their lives and the promises of adulthood. And on this disappointed millennial, the movie thoroughly worked its magic.

I was fully aware I was being pandered to, but I didnt really mind. This movie was basically a time-machine ride back to when I was last happy. I was grateful for the trip.

A quick recap for those who dont have the 1991 movie etched onto the insides of their cerebral cortexes:

An enchantress curse transforms a caddish prince (Dan Stevens) into a beast and his castles servants (voiced by Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson and many others) into various household items.

The independently minded Belle (Emma Watson) lives a provincial life in a nearby village with her eccentric father (Kevin Kline). Shes pursued by the creepier-than-you-remember Gaston (Luke Evans), and Gaston is himself pursued by his sycophantic sidekick, LeFou (Josh Gad).

Belles dad winds up at the cursed castle, where hes imprisoned by the Beast. Belle takes her fathers place. She hates the Beast. Then she likes him. Then maybe she loves him? Which would break the curse and turn the computer-animated creature back into Dan Stevens and the appliances back into BAFTA winners. You know how this all ends because its the same movie.

Here are some things that work in the new movies favor:

It was very expensive, and it looks very expensive.

Alan Menkens songs are as great as they ever were and account for much of the movies success as a machine that makes 90s kids cry.

Watson, Stevens, Evans and Gad are perfectly cast. Watson, a real-life self-professed bibliophile, gets to play Belle as a well-read feminist hero. Stevens performance manages to shine through millions of dollars of motion-capture tech. Evans ups Gastons bro sociopathy to disturbing new levels. And Gad gets to be a much more sympathetic and marginally more gay LeFou.

Disneys first openly gay character is already a point of controversy (i.e., angry tweeting), but much of the film leans toward an overtly progressive direction.

Other things Beauty and the Beast champions: libraries, the arts, consent, women teaching other women how to read. It also champions a strong and capable heroine, one always ready to cast aside her pretty dress and get down to the dirty work of saving the day.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Grade: B+

Rating: PG for some action violence, peril and frightening images

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Running time: 2 hours, 9 minutes

Theaters: Alamo, Aksarben, Bluffs 17, Majestic, Midtown, Oakview, Regal, Twin Creek, Village Pointe, Westroads
A boisterous crowd of more than 500 grilled Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., with questions at a town hall meeting Friday morning at Elkhorn South High School.

Sasse seemed prepared for the combative crowd and stayed patient, pausing often to ask the audience to stop yelling over him as he fielded their many pointed concerns, mostly about health care legislation and President Donald Trumps budget proposal. Scheduled to last an hour, the event stretched to 90 minutes.

Sasse repeatedly addressed the issue of polarization, which he said was more acute on Capitol Hill than in Nebraska.

This nation is more divided in Washington than any coffee shop in Nebraska, he said as the meeting began.

It was hard to tell that, however, from the tone of the questions and the audience reactions Friday. The loudest voices at the town hall were in opposition to recent Republican actions.

Several people lined up at the microphone with questions about the House GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, which is often called Obamacare. Sasse called the Republican proposal not a sufficient answer to the problems we face and said he supports a system of portability, meaning health care plans that would follow someone as they age, change jobs and move around the country.

The number one reason people are uninsured in America is not because of socioeconomic status, Sasse said. Rather, he said, its because of people changing jobs.

One woman grew emotional as she expressed concerns about in-home health care for the elderly in rural areas. Sasse said neither the current law nor the Republican replacement plan would do enough for those populations.

That answer prompted booing and shouts of How would you vote? Sasse replied that the issue, like many, wasnt a binary choice.

We need a much more nimble conversation than good versus evil or legislation X versus Y, Sasse said.

As Sasse addressed the first few questions on health care legislation, audience members shouted single payer and free market and waved red pieces of paper to indicate they didnt support his answers. Raising his own voice to overcome the shouting, Sasse asked: What are we going to get out of people screaming slogans?

Sasse told some critics at the Omaha event that their positions  especially on environmental regulations  werent necessarily representative of rural Nebraskans. He said he supported more state and local regulations rather than federal ones.

Deja Weber of Bennington said she felt Sasse was being dismissive.

The room was clearly not in his favor, she said. But its annoying to be told that Im part of some group that doesnt represent the state. That was condescending.

As a registered independent, Weber said, she tries to listen to both sides and has supported Sasse.

Im just glad he had the courage to show up, she said. He definitely bristled at some of the issues but it seems like he came in expecting a crowd like this.

As several people voiced concerns about proposed budget cuts and an increased military budget, Sasse noted that 70 percent of the budget goes to entitlement programs.

Defense spending isnt whats cutting out your priorities, entitlements are, he said to more booing.

Sasse also spoke briefly on Trumps attempted travel ban, saying that he did not support Trumps first proposal. He did not specifically address the presidents second proposal, except to say that he did support better vetting systems to ensure terrorists cant come in as refugees.

Its happened a whole bunch of times in Europe, he said to loud booing and shouting.

The U.S. is not at war with Islam, he said. We are at war with people who will kill in the name of religion.

Sasse did earn enthusiastic cheering when he said a release of Trumps tax returns would be in the public interest and that building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would not be the most effective means for border security.

Barry Anderson, 65, a Republican, said he wished the audience would have refrained from interrupting the senator.

Passions are high on all sides, as they should be, he said. Im just glad he held the town hall and that so many people came to voice their concerns.
Taipei, March 17 (CNA) The Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has declared that no code of conduct in the South China Sea will be binding on Taiwan if it is cast out of the negotiations and dialogues aimed at creating a set of rules to avoid conflict among rival claimants in the waters.
LINCOLN  The head of a state agency charged with regulating telecommunications also works for a private telecommunications consulting company.

The arrangement has been in place since Jeff Pursley took the job as executive director of the Public Service Commission on July 1, 2015.

PSC Chairman Tim Schram of Gretna said Pursley has been upfront with the commission about his other job and has filed appropriate forms with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

I have every confidence in Jeffs ability to fulfill his duties in a fair and impartial manner, Schram said Thursday.

But State Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, who has introduced several bills this year concerning the Public Service Commission, said he learned about the arrangement only recently and was troubled by it.

I think that we have a responsibility to avoid the appearance of impropriety, he said. I would think the PSC job is sufficiently busy and involved that it would require someones undivided attention.

Commissioner Crystal Rhoades of Omaha also said she has serious concerns about the situation.

When Pursley was hired, she said, commissioners were told he planned to stay with his consulting job long enough to finish things up.

It was not communicated he intended to stay on with them indefinitely, Rhoades said.

She said the commission members, who are elected officials, have been having internal discussions about the situation.

The commission regulates several key industries in Nebraska, including telecommunications, natural gas utilities, grain dealers, taxis and manufactured homes and recreational vehicles.

The commissions newest task is the regulation of major oil pipelines. It will be considering the new application for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Documents filed with the state show that Pursleys second job is with Parrish, Blessing and Associates, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

He began working with the firm in 2008 after leaving a staff position with the PSC. He returned to the PSC in 2015 as executive director.

But he did not seek guidance about his outside employment from the accountability commission until last week.

In a memo dated March 6 he requested an opinion about whether his second job represented a conflict of interest under state law.

Pursley said in a statement Thursday that he would abide by the accountability commissions response.

I have fully disclosed my part-time work in accordance with my employment contract and state law, he said.

Pursley did list Parrish, Blessing as a source of more than $1,000 income on his financial disclosure statements for 2014, 2015 and 2016. The statements are required for agency directors. They do not require that filers list the amount of their income from any particular source.

As of April last year, Pursley was being paid $150,000 annually in his PSC position.

In his memo to the accountability commission, Pursley said his work with Parrish, Blessing primarily focuses on federal telephone compliance work for companies not regulated by the PSC. He said he puts in five to six hours a week, using evenings, weekends and vacation time.

However, he said Windstream, a telephone company that is regulated by the PSC, recently contracted with the firm for the type of federal documentation that he handles.

He said other Parrish, Blessing employees would do the work for Windstream but will use a model that he developed.

As such, concerns have been raised as to whether this constitutes a conflict of interest, Pursley said.

In the memo, he also said it had been brought to his attention that he was still listed on the Parrish, Blessing website as a company director. His biography was on the site as of Feb. 18 and listed his PSC job prominently. It has since been removed.

Pursley said he had asked the firm to remove his contact information and to not use his name in marketing efforts.

Under state law, public employees are barred from taking official actions or making official decisions that could benefit or harm themselves financially.

The law also prohibits actions or decisions that could benefit or harm the employees immediate family or any business with which the employee is associated.

If there is a conflict, said Frank Daley, the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission executive director, the commission typically advises employees to abstain from participating in actions or decisions related to the problematic area.

He noted that the legal definition of conflict of interest differs from the man-on-the-street perception of a concern.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., held a a town hall at Elkhorn South High School. Follow World-Herald reporter Mara Klecker for updates, and check back with Omaha.com for more coverage following the town hall.

*****

WASHINGTON  Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., is holding a town hall this morning at Elkhorn South High School.

Before the town hall was set to begin at 8 a.m., a crowd had lined up outside.

Lawmakers across the country, particularly Republicans, have been facing intense crowds at their town halls as President Donald Trump begins implementing his agenda.

Constituents with questions on everything from health care to Trumps ties to Russia have been packing auditoriums to share a piece of their mind.

Sasses choice of timing quickly drew criticism on social media, with questions about hosting a town hall so early on a weekday  and with less than 24 hours' public notice.

Sasse spokesman James Wegmann noted that the senator has a full schedule Friday that also includes visiting students at Waverly High School, a talk with the Lincoln South Rotary Club and another town hall in Aurora at 3 p.m.

He plans to end the day with a fish fry in Grand Island and the St. Patricks Day festival in ONeill.

Indivisible Nebraskans will meet privately with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at his office, 13906 Gold Circle. The group opposes the health care changes proposed by the Republicans.
The Douglas County Board deserved to learn from Douglas County Assessor Diane Battiato, not the state, that she was seeking extra time to revise property valuations.

But Battiato failed to properly communicate. Such stumbles have become a disappointing hallmark of her short stint leading the office that sets taxable valuations of local properties.

Battiato sought an extension to the March 25 deadline for submitting the countys valuations for state review. The Nebraska Department of Revenue agreed to wait until April 3.

Battiato says she did not have to notify an external entity, referring to the elected board that sets her budget.

The assessor also hasnt communicated to the board or to her constituents about how or whether the delay might affect Douglas County property owners.

Its true the county assessor is elected separately. But the County Board deserved the courtesy of a heads up. After all, County Board members have been fielding concerns and complaints about the valuation process from constituents.

And as the countys Board of Equalization, they have a direct role in the process. The Board of Equalization weighs any challenges to property valuations.

Battiato sent her written request for an extension to the state March 7.

The County Board found out about the request a week later from the states reply, not the county assessor.

This makes the assessor seem tone-deaf about the need to keep the board  and by extension the public  informed about what County Board chairwoman Mary Ann Borgeson appropriately called the biggest thing happening in county government.
Right thinking people should use their might to wipe separatists out: Amartya

This House will miss you: Dr Manmohan Singh gets a pat on the back

Amartya Sen stands 'humiliated and exposed': Economist Jagdish Bhagwati

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 17: Globally acclaimed economist Jagdish Bhagwati on Friday said demonetisation will promote growth while Amartya Sen and other experts who denounced it stand 'humiliated and exposed'.

"On the effects of demonetisation on growth, I should say that I was the one economist who had argued, from first principles, that demonetisation would increase, not diminish, growth," he said.

"And that is exactly what appears to have happened," he added.

"The Prime Minister's success in Uttar Pradesh has therefore meant that Amartya Sen and his friends who argued that demonetisation would hurt growth, have been humiliated and exposed as much as the Congress," Bhagwati told PTI in an email interview.

He is a professor of Economics, Law, and International Relations at the Columbia University.

"After BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh, indeed Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now in an even stronger position than when he was first elected resoundingly," Bhagwati said.

He also said that three things ought to be noted that made Prime Minister Modi's current position 'unassailable'.

"First, he has finally decimated the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, so the Congress is not merely on the ropes; they also lack currently anyone of stature who can rescue it from oblivion," he said. Second, the Muslim vote no longer is a monolithic anti-BJP vote, Bhagwati said, adding, "I suppose that while BJP did not field Muslim candidates in the Uttar Pradesh election, surely Muslims were aware that the propaganda that Prime Minister Modi was anti-Muslim was an outrageous lie."

PTI
KARTET Result 2022: Answer Key to be out by this week

Bengaluru police taking steps to reach out to NE people: Rijiju

India

oi-Madhuri

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday urged the Karnataka government to take strong action on Arunachal student case. He further informed that Bengaluru Police are taking steps to stop discrimination against northeastern people.

''The Home ministry has been issuing advisories to the state government for safety and stringent actions if there is any attack on people from the northeast,'' Rijiju said.

Higio Guntey, who hails from Arunachal Pradesh and is a fourth-semester student of Christ University, was allegedly beaten and forced to lick his house owner's shoes for using excessive water in Bengaluru on March 6. The incident came to light on March 9 after Guntey filed a police complaint against the landlord.

The house owner was identified as Hemanth Kumar and a case was registered against him on March 9 following Guntey's complaint.

OneIndia News
Bengaluru: Security guard asks woman for a kiss, arrested

India

oi-Anusha

The Bengaluru police arrested a 25-year-old security guard for allegedly sexually harassing a HR professional. The guard identified as Shiva, a native of Assam is accused of behaving indecently with the woman who lived alone in an apartment and tearing her clothes for resisting. The security guard was arrested following a complaint by the woman.

The Bengaluru east division police said that the incident took place on March 7 in an apartment in Baiyappanahalli. The victim who is a native of Kerala approached the police stating that Shiva, who entered her residence on the pretext of repairing electric wires had asked her for a kiss and tore her clothes, molesting her, after she resisted.

The apartment complex witnessed a short circuit at around 10.30 PM on March 7. The security guard who was on duty visited a few apartments to check where the short circuit was and realised that the survivor was alone. He returned to her apartment at around 11.45 on the pretext of checking wires. He managed to gain entry by telling the victim that short circuit was caused by wires in her apartment. As soon as he entered the apartment, the victim alleged that he asked her for a kiss. She reprimanded him and asked him to leave and the accused allegedly tore her clothes and molested her.

Following her complaint the following day, the accused was booked under Indian Penal Code section 354B and arrested.

OneIndia News
Congress in crisis: Rahul Gandhi goes missing, once again

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, March 17: The recent drubbing in the assembly elections has totally shattered the Congress. At such a juncture, when party insiders want structural and leadership changes in the grand old party, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has gone abroad.

On Thursday, reports cited that Rahul went to the US to be with his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi, who is undergoing treatment in the country. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala informed that Rahul will be accompanying Sonia on the return leg.

Congress President,Smt. Sonia Gandhi, is traveling abroad for a health check-up. 1/2  Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) March 16, 2017

Congress VP Shri Rahul Gandhi, shall travel there today to be with her and accompany Congress President on the return journey. 2/2  Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) March 16, 2017

Although there is nothing wrong to be with his mother when she needs him the most, party workers feel that Rahul should return at the earliest to help revive the Congress. This is not for the first time when Rahul has 'abandoned' the Congress when the party needed him the most. Earlier, Rahul went for a long vacation when Parliament was in session in 2015.

During the Budget session in 2015, the Congress VP had sought leave from his party to 'reflect' upon the then 'events' of his party. His 'love' for taking breaks was slammed by many, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

A mini-rebellion is brewing in the Congress after the party failed to form governments in four states out of five that went to assembly elections recently. Several senior Congress leaders have questioned the party's top leadership in failing to win elections.

The leaders are mostly upset after the Congress failed to form governments in Goa and Manipur even after winning the highest number of seats in these two states. Since the assembly election results, Rahul has been lying low.

During his only public appearance where he spoke to reporters, Rahul denied to accept his party's total annihilation. The Congress managed to win just seven seats in the UP assembly polls. The party fielded 105 candidates in the 403-member polls.

There are 'ups and down' for every party, Gandhi said, adding, "We had a little down in UP, which is fine, we accept it. But we have an ideological fight with the BJP and we will continue to do that."

[A little down in UP? Is Rahul Gandhi in sync with Indian politics?]

"I would like to say that the BJP won the election in UP and I would like to congratulate them. Why they won it, there are multiple reasons. Large part of it is polarisation. But the fact is that they won the election," he said.

However, Rahul admitted that the party needed to bring changes. "As far as the Congress party is concerned, we do need to make structural and organisational changes and that is a fact," he said. To bring changes in the party, Rahul needs to be present and work continuously with his colleagues, instead of taking regular 'breaks'.

OneIndia News
Bihar assembly elections 2020: Heres how you can cast your vote using the EVM and VVPAT

EC should aggressively dispel rumours against EVMs, stresses ex-CEC Quraishi

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, March 17: As a couple of 'losing' parties in the recently concluded assembly elections in five states have alleged that votes went in favour of 'winning' parties because of tampering of electronic voting machines, former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi has slammed the critics of EVMs in strong words.

In an interview to Scroll, Quraishi said the Election Commission should take all the accusations against tampering of EVMs 'head on'.

"Perhaps the EC should take these accusations head on and counter the aggressive propaganda against it. Instead of making a one-line token statement, the EC should dispel any misgiving vociferously, aggressively and proactively. If I was there, I would hold a press conference and demonstrate the workings of EVMs. Why is the EC shy of doing it?" he added.

In his column for The Indian Express, Quraishi slammed political parties and leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and Mayawati for spreading 'lies' against EVMs.

"Controversies about EVMs have been raised time and again. Every political party has questioned the EVMs at one point or another. When they win with the same machines, they just keep quiet instead of publicly apologising and eating their words," the former CEC wrote.

The entire controversy started after Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati alleged that EVMs were tampered to give a favourable result to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The BSP won just 19 seats and the BJP along with its alliance partners won 325 seats in the 403-seat UP polls, the results of which were declared on Saturday.

After making the allegations, Mayawati is planning to go to the court to 'prove her point'. It is not just Mayawati, Delhi chief minister Kejriwal also made similar allegations against tampering of EVMs during the Punjab Assembly polls. Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party contested elections in both Punjab and Goa.

While in Goa the party failed to win a single seat, in Punjab the AAP won 20 seats in 117-member Punjab Assembly elections. The Election Commission denied the charges saying that the EVMs can't be tampered. Many say that Kejriwal and Mayawati are crying foul over EVMs as they faced humiliating defeat in the elections. The BJP leaders have suggested that both Kejriwal and Mayawati should accept the verdict gracefully.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, March 17, 2017, 7:47 [IST]
EVM row: Mamata wants all-party meeting

India

pti-PTI

Kolkata, Mar 17: Amid the allegations of tampering of EVMs in the recent UP assembly polls, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said the Election Commission of India should convene an all-party meet to discuss the issue.

"Whether one would accept or not is absolutely their choice. But the Election Commission may call for an all-party meeting. Let it be discussed," said Banerjee.

Asked whether she would favour a probe into the charges of tampering of Electronic Voting Machines, she said," I have seen the Election Commissioner's version that there is nothing.. But I have also gone through a video tape of BJP leader Subramanian Swamy saying these EVMs can be tampered."

Banerjee showed reporters Swamy's video clippings about his views on feasibility of tampering EVMs. In the video clippings, Swamy is seen saying that the EVMs were made in Japan but ballot papers were used even there during elections because the machines can be tampered. Even countries like the US and Germany are using ballot papers instead of EVMs, the BJP leader was heard saying in the video footage.

Describing Swamy as 'very strong legally', Banerjee said, "What he has said is not wrong... he has not said anything bad.. I have not said anything but I think there can be an investigation in this."

Incidentally, Mayawati has accused the BJP of murdering the democracy, saying that the tampering of EVMs was responsible for her party's poor show in Uttar Pradesh.

PTI
Fadnavis on shifting to Delhi: We abide by what PM says

India

oi-Lisa

Mumbai, March: 17: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis while participating in a debate at India Today Conclave 2017 on Friday said that he has no plan to go to Delhi. He said with a smile that when the conclave was moved to Mumbai from Delhi for the first time why were they asking him about going to Delhi. He, however, added that the PM was the ultimate decision maker and they abide by what he says.

He added that as chief ministers, their work is to reform and they should stick to that. He said that to quicken the growth it is important that bureaucracy functions. He said, "Bureaucracy is a horse and we need to ride it. There is a lot of positivity in the bureaucracy right now."

Fadnavis expressed his views on how GST will affect states and said, "I am confident that GST will roll out by July. He said that we will gain something but at the same time we will lose too. He said that every state will gain from GST though."

He sounded very confident when he was asked about his equation with the Shiv Sena which is an ally in Maharashtra government. He said, "In a democracy, one party cannot destroy its rival, it is the people who decided the future of a party. If Atalji could run the government with 22 regional parties, I can run my government with one ally. I will manage the Shiv Sena, don't worry."

"Our Constitution gives us a lot of forums to cooperate," he said, when asked how would it be possible to incorporate cooperative federalism when interests of states conflict.

When asked that what would Fadnavis want to endorse he promptly replied he would want to endorse 'Brand Maharashtra'.

OneIndia News
Give me Rs 14 crore for disturbing my mental peace; Justice Karnan tells SC

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Kolkata, March 17: Justice C S Karnan has dashed off a letter to the Supreme Court seeking a compensation of Rs 14 crore. He says that the orders of the Supreme Court have disturbed his mind and hence compensation of Rs 14 crore be paid to him.

Justice CS Karnan writes to CJI &other judges of Constitution Bench,seeks compensation of Rs 14 Cr for 'disturbing mind&insulting in public' pic.twitter.com/nPioUJoKDD  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Justice Karnan of the Calcutta high court has been in the news after the SC initiated contempt proceedings against him. The case was taken up suo motu by the Supreme Court. Karnan had defied the SC order and failed to appear before the bench.

Karnan had created a storm after he alleged that he was being targetted because he is a Dalit. He also questioned the collegium of the Supreme Court which transferred him from the Madras high court to Calcutta.

[Order against me issued to ruin my life: Karnan on bailable warrant]

Senior counsel K K Venugopal appearing for the Madras high court told the bench that the judges need protection from Karnan's verbal abuse and wild charges. He also said that the judge had levelled malicious rape charges against a Madras HC judge.

The Supreme Court had issued contempt notices to Karnan, a sitting judge of the Calcutta high court. The SC also directed the judge to be present before the court on February 13 to explain why contempt proceedings could not be initiated against him. The court also withdrew all judicial work from Karnan and asked him to return all files.

It is for the first time in history that a contempt case is being heard against a sitting judge of a high court. A seven-judge Constitutional Bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar is hearing the case against Karnan who had lashed out at his colleagues accusing them of corruption.

Karnan had also written to the Prime Minister on January 23 accusing a sitting high court judge due for elevation of corruption. He also said that the charges levelled by him must be probed.

OneIndia News
How BJP conquered Deoband in UP

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

One of the unique factors about the Bharatiya Janata Party's mammoth win in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections was the victory in Deoband. The BJP managed to sweep through in most Muslim-dominated regions. It won all the six constituencies in Muzzafarnagar. It also bagged Bijnor, Deoband, Bareilly and Sahranpur. All these belts have a major Muslim population.

Deoband, that houses the Darul Uloom was bagged by the BJP. It is one of the five constituencies in Sahranpur district which falls in northern Uttar Pradesh. This place accounts for 65 per cent Muslims and for the BJP this was a major victory. Following the riots in Muzzafarnagar in 2013, the Darul Uloom came out very strongly against the Samajwadi Party which was ruling the state at that time. It said that it was lack of efficient management that led to the riots and the SP did little to stop it.

For the SP, the riots changed everything. Deoband was a stronghold of the SP and BSP. In the 2017 elections, there was a clear division of the Muslim votes between the SP and BSP. Moreover, there was also a consolidation of the Hindu votes in favour of the BJP.

The consolidation of Hindu votes could have been a result of the questions raised against the Deobandi community. There were allegations that post the riots in 2013 the Darul Uloom had created a rift between the Hindus and Muslims. This was surprising since this place had remained peaceful in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid incident. These are the factors that led to the consolidation of Hindu votes, as a result of which the BJP conquered Deoband.

OneIndia News
I am not going anywhere, says MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan

India

oi-Lisa

Mumbai, March 17: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday took part in 'The Great Debate: Cooperate and Compete; The New Federalism' hosted on the first day of India Today Conclave 2017 in Mumbai.

He said, "We are focussing on our states and centre has its own role to play in the development of the country and the states." He added that states play an important role in the implementation of various public welfare schemes.

He endorsed the idea of 'Team India', but when asked if he would be moving to Delhi and be part of the Central government he said, "No one is going to Delhi, this is for sure."

Chouhan said that there is a healthy completion going on in the country and added that Niti Aayog is not partial towards BJP-ruled states. He gave an example that when Madhya Pradesh did well in the implementation of Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the state was given an extra Rs 200 crore.

On how growth has been in his state, Chouhan said, "There is doubdouble-digit wth in MP since past many years. Agricultural growth rate is 20 per cent plus in the last four years. It is no longer a bimaru state. He said that per capita income in MP has increased and 'we are gradually marching towards development'.

On farmer suicides, he said that a lot more needs to be done for the farmers as there are various reasons behind that.

On the biggest issue faced by his state, he said that conservation or rivers and environment is one of the biggest issues today. He said that now to conserve Narmada River lakhs of people have come together. He was quick to add that such a huge task can't be done by the government alone, he added that he was happy that conserving Narmada has become a mass movement.

Chouhan strongly supported demonetisation and said that, "It was Congress's immaturity to make demonetisation a poll issue and they paid for it." He said no one was annoyed with demonetisation and that the nation was standing strong with the PM on the decision.

Asked which Central ministry he would opt for if the PM calls him to Delhi, he said that he will not comment on a hypothetical question.

OneIndia News
India salutes brave space woman Kalpana Chawla on her birth anniversary

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Kalpana Chawla, the Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian woman in space, the nation paid rich tributes to her on Friday.

Born in Karnal, Haryana on March 17, 1962, Chawla died on February 1, 2003, over the southern United States when Space Shuttle Columbia and the crew perished during entry into atmosphere, 16 minutes before the scheduled landing.

Because of her special journey from Karnal to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the US, Kalpana is a role model for women across the world. The hashtag, #KalpanaChawla, was trending on Twitter on Friday.

Here we bring you a few nuggets from her extraordinary life...

From Haryana to America Kalpana completed her school education from Karnal. Thereafter, she did a course in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh. Then she went to the US in 1982 where she obtained a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas. She also obtained her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado. It all started at the NASA Kalpana joined the NASA Ames Research Center in 1988. After becoming a naturalised American citizen, she joined the NASA Corps in March 1995. ISRO honours Kalpana In the honour of Kalpana, the Indian Space Research Organisation launched Kalpana-1 meteorological satellite. Maiden flight to space Kalpana's first flight was on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. The mission began on November 19, 1997, and Kalpana was a part of a six-astronaut crew. Second flight to space was her last too Three years after her first flight she was chosen as the crew in STS-107. After much delay, the mission commenced in 2003. Unfortunately, the 16-day flight, that took off on January 16 collapsed 16 minutes before landing the earth's atmosphere.

Picture Credit: Wikimedia

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 17, 2017, 12:32 [IST]
In J&K, first multiplex to open on Sep 20 after 32 years; Laal Singh Chaddha, RRR likely to be screened

Is Manoj Sinha next UP chief minister?

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha is likely to be appointed as the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said sources.

With several bigwigs such as Rajnath Singh and Keshav Prasad Maurya being considered for the top post in politically significant state, the BJP sources close to OneIndia said that Sinha has emerged as the party's choice. They, however, also said that last minute changes cannot be ruled out.

Sinha, an alumni of IIT-BHU, is a three-time BJP MP in Lok Sabha and represents Ghazipur in the Lower House. He was also the BHU Students Union president during his college days.

Uttar Pradesh is a state where caste equations matter a great deal. Sinha is a Bhumihar, but largely seen as caste-neutral politician having acceptance across castes.

After a landslide victory in the Uttar Pradesh poll, it had become a problem of plenty for the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP's Uttar Pradesh unit president Keshav Prasad Maurya was bestowed with the responsibility of choosing the UP chief minister, necessarily meaning that he was out of the race.

Reports say that Rajnath Singh, who was being seen as the front runner for the CM post, is undoubtedly the tallest leader in Uttar Pradesh, but a politician of his stature and credentials are needed at the Centre.

The BJP will announce the name of the CM formally at 5 pm on Sunday following the party's legislature meet to be held in Lucknow. The swearing in ceremony is likely to take place on Sunday.

OneIndia News
I will break your legs: SFI issues threat to principal in presence of cops in Kerala

'If I have nominated even one person using authority, I'll resign': Kerala governor on VC row

Kerala: Three accused in Catholic priest rape case surrender

India

oi-Madhuri

The three co-accused, who allegedly helped Kottiyoor priest Robin Vadakkumchery in covering up the rape of minor after which the girl gave birth to a baby, have surrendered before the police at Kannur on Friday.

Those who surrendered were former chairman of Child Welfare Committee Joseph Therakam, and members of the committee, sister Ophelia and a medical professional Betty Jose.

Kerala: Priest & Nuns accused of covering up the rape case involving Father Robin, surrender before police in Kannur pic.twitter.com/kjUFZa0cmj  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Robin Vadakkumcherya, 49-year-old Catholic parish vicar near Kannur, was arrested on February 28 allegedly raping a 17-year-old school girl, who gave birth to a baby boy last month. He even offered a sum of of Rs 10 lakh to the family to hush it up. Vadakkumchery is a vicar of St Sebastians Church in Kottiyoor and the girl is a student in the school that is run by the Church.

Therakam has been named as co-accused for his role in helping the main accused to flee the country. For this dubious act, he was even divested of the post later by CWC Chairman.

The high court of Kerala had directed all the persons named in the case, who were on the run, to surrender to the police.

OneIndia News
Key suspect in IISC attack held by Gujarat ATS

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

A key operative of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba wanted in the Indian Institute of Sciences attack, Bengaluru has been arrested in Tripura by the Gujarat Anti Terrorist Squad. The operative has been identified as Habib Miya. He is also wanted in some cases in Gujarat and will be taken to the state where he will be questioned.

Miya was arrested following a tip off by the intelligence agencies. His movements were being tracked. It is however unclear what he was doing in Tripura. He is a wanted accused in several terror cases including the attack on the IISC.

On December 28 2005 at around 7 pm, two men in army fatigues opened fire at a crowd gathered at the IISC, Bengaluru. A professor from Delhi died in the attack. In 2011, six persons linked to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba were convicted on charges of conspiracy.

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Story first published: Friday, March 17, 2017, 19:13 [IST]
Meditation politics continues in TN: Deepa's husband quits party

India

oi-Anusha

Meditation politics refuses to die down in Tamil Nadu. Deepa Jayakumar's husband J Madhavan is the latest to keep up the trend. Madhavan announced his resignation from Deepa Jayakumar's political platform after meditating at Jayalalithaa's memorial in Chennai.

Madhavan who arrived at Jayalalithaa memorial on Friday evening followed the trend of Panneerselvam and his wife Deepa Jayakumar to make a big announcement. Madhavan, who had supported his wife all along, announced his decision to quit from her political platform, MGR Amma Deepa Peravai.

"Deepa is being influenced by wrong elements. There are elements working against the good in her party and I decided to quit,"Madhavan told media persons. He also stated that he would consider contesting in the R K Nagar bypoll after consulting the public.

In typical meditation politics style, J Madhavan also stated that he would reveal details about the people who were influencing Deepa in the wrong direction at the 'right time'. Jayalalithaa memorial has become the site of political revelations and announcements after O Panneerselvam started the trend.

OneIndia News
Modi not authoritative, is open to ideas: Mehbooba Mufti

India

oi-Lisa

Mumbai, March 17: Democracy is about sharing and caring and there is a need to reach out to the youth of Jammu and Kashmir, said Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. She said that PM Modi is trying to evolve the country as a true federal structure and that he is open to ideas.

She said, "I have met Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few times and I have found that he is open to ideas. He is not authoritative." She was speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 on Friday.

Mufti talked about the issues that Jammu and Kashmir faces and invited businessmen and investors to come with their families to the state and invest. She added that despite encounters, J&K is one of the safest states for women. She said that being a border state they are given a special treatment and asked what was wrong if the state got special treatment as they are the victims as well.

She was of the opinion that, "The Centre and the state government both need to think about phasing out AFSPA from the Kashmir valley." Sharing her views on how political landscape has changed in India she said, "The political landscape is going to change, it can't be ignored. Regional parties are going to stay; they can't be ignored. People like Mayawati are gone but not out."

Not the one to mince words, Mehbooba was prompt to say that personally she doesn't like Jallikattu but would not take it away from the people of Tamil Nadu to go ahead with it as it is something that is what they identify with just the way people of Kashmir are keen to keep Article 370. She categorically said, "The self-respect of states has to be honoured."

When asked which is her favourite tourist destination outside Jammu and Kashmir she said Pahalgamm, and agreed that 'once a Kashmiri always a Kashmiri'.

OneIndia News
UP ATS picks up two more accused in Al-Qaeda radicalisation case

New UP government: Will BJP be able to fix these challenges?

India

ians-IANS

By Ians English

With 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil, but with an economy the size of Qatars -- which has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnore -- the new government of Indias most-populous state Uttar Pradesh faces myriad problems.

The GDP of Uttar Pradesh is comparable to Kenya's, and its infant mortality rate rivals Mauritania, a poverty-ridden, west-African nation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party won an unprecedented victory in the state in the 2017 assembly election, with 312 out of 403 seats, but with some of India's worst development indicators, there is much to do.

We analysed six major challenges and the corresponding promises made by the BJP to fix them in its election manifesto, called the""Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra-201"".

1. Second-highest maternal mortality, half the child population stunted

Despite having the largest population, Uttar Pradesh spends Rs 452 per capita on health, 70 per cent less than the average spending by states.

One in two children in the state is not fully immunised, and it has Indi''s second-highest maternal mortality rate (258 deaths per 100,000 live births) and highest infant mortality rate (64 deaths per 1,000 live births), according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).

There are 84 per cent fewer specialists than needed, 50 per cent fewer nursing staff, and the lowest share of health workers (19.9 per cent) in India.

As many as 46.3 per cent of the stat''s children are stunted (low height-for-age), 17.9 per cent are wasted (low weight-for-height) and 39.5 per cent are underweight, according to NFHS-4.

What the manifesto said: The BJP has promised to have a primary sub centre in all villages with the latest equipment and technology. Further, it promised to set up 25 new medical colleges and specialty hospitals and one hospital at par with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in every six blocks.

The BJP has promised a malnutrition-free state in five years.

2. Low learning levels, high absenteeism

Uttar Pradesh has achieved high enrolment of children in primary school, with 83.1 per cent of primary school-aged children enrolled in in 2015-16, according to the data from the governmen''s Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE).

Major issues for the new government now include low learning outcomes, high absenteeism, and lower enrolment in grade VI and further -- 60.5 per cent of upper-primary school-aged students enrolled in school in 2015.

In 2016, about half (49.7 per cent) of Grade I students surveyed in households could not read letters, while 44.3 per cent could not recognise numbers up to nine, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a citizen-led assessment of learning in rural India.

The survey also found that a little over half of students (56 per cent) were present in primary school on the days of the survey.

What the manifesto said: It majorly concentrates on inputs - free education, books, uniforms, teacher-student and classroom-student ratios, along with laptops and free internet for college students, and a Rs 500 crore scholarship fund for poor students.

3. High youth unemployment, high migration for jobs

The low quality of education in the state (and dearth of jobs) is reflected in high unemployment. In 2015-16, more people per 1,000 were unemployed (58), compared to the Indian average (37). Youth unemployment was especially high, with 148 for every 1,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 years unemployed, compared to the Indian average of 102, according to 2015-16 Labour Ministry data.

Between 2001 and 2011, over 5.8 million people between the ages of 20 and 29 years migrated in search of jobs, but, for most of these migrants, low educational attainment likely resulted in low-paying jobs in the informal sector.

Voters recognise the lack of jobs as a major issue in the state. As many as 20 per cent of voters surveyed said jobs were the most important issue this election year, according to a FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey.

What the manifesto said: The BJP government will create seven million jobs or opportunities for self-employment in the next five years, its manifesto said. As many as 90 per cent of all jobs in industries will be reserved for local youth. The manifesto also promises Rs 1,000 crore for a start-up venture capital fund, which will also create jobs for the youth.

4. Industrial growth one of slowest in country

Uttar Pradesh reported an annual industrial growth (2004-05 constant prices) of 1.95 per cent and 1.93 per cent in 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively, according to the NITI Aayog -- among the bottom five in the country.

The state is struggling even in industries that have traditionally been strong. For instance, Kanpu''s leather industry is in deep distress with 146 of its 400 leather tanning units shutting down in 10 years.

Uttar Pradesh ranked 20th out of 21 states on the 2016 State Investment Potential Index, a ranking of states on labour, infrastructure, economic climate, political stability, governance, and perceptions of a good business climate.

The index, released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, identifies a shortage of electricity and vocationally-trained people as the main concern in the state.

What the manifesto said: It promises to triple current investment by the creation of an investment board. Further, it calls for a single-window clearance department, headed by the Chief Minister, for industries. The manifesto also promises to build six IT parks, a pharmaceutical park, and a dry port connected to a sea port to encourage exports.

5. 20% of Indi''s agri households, but slow agri growth

By 2012-13, Uttar Pradesh, with an estimated 18.05 million agricultural households, made up 20 per cent of Indi''s total agricultural households. Three out of four rural households depend on agriculture, making agricultural reforms a key agenda in one of Indi''s most fertile belts.

For the nine years between 2004-05 and 2012-13, the agriculture and allied sector recorded the slowest compounded annual growth rate of 2.9 per cent, below the national growth rate of 3.7 per cent.

The state recorded a growth rate of 4.2 per cent in agriculture and allied activities (constant 2004-05 prices), slower than Uttarakhand, which recorded a growth rate of 5.12 per cent, and Madhya Pradesh, which grew at 18.85 per cent, in 2014-15.

Outstanding farmer loans stood at nearly Rs 75,000 crore as of two years ago. Of these, a little more than 10 per cent, or Rs 8,000 crore, was loaned through state cooperative banks or primary agricultural credit societies, which are the only loans that the newly formed government can choose to waive off -- the other loans are controlled by scheduled commercial banks. This amount includes loans to all farmers in the state, and not just small and marginal farmers.

What the manifesto said: It promises that all agricultural loans will be waived off for small and marginal farmers, while future loans will be provided interest-free. The new government will also create a roadmap to double agricultural income in the state by 2022.

Further, it promised to pay sugarcane farmers in the largest sugarcane-producing state within 14 days of sale, while also coordinating with mill owners and banks to repay previously-owed amounts to sugarcane growers within 120 days of forming the new government.

6. More than half the households unelectrified

In Uttar Pradesh, power cuts were the leading election issue for one-third of voters polled. It remains one of Indi''s most poorly electrified states -- with 51.8 per cent of rural households unelectrified -- despite having the third-largest installed coal capacity in the country by end-January 2017.

Corruption and red tape within electricity distribution companies, which are responsible for the timely disbursal of funds for electrification projects, are a major factor in the lackadaisical progress of electrification across the state.

What the manifesto said: Every household in the state will be provided with 24-hour power supply, while poor households (below the official poverty line of Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas) will be given electricity connections free of cost. Poor households will also be provided the first 100 units of electricity at a discounted rate of Rs 3 per unit.



IANS
NIA takes over Bhopal train blast case

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The National Investigation Agency has taken over the probe into the Mach 7 Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast. It was confirmed that this blast which took place two weeks back was an act of terror and the suspicion was on the Islamic State.

All relevant documents were handed over to the NIA. A team of the NIA arrived at Bhopal and will commence its probe into the incident from Friday onward. The agency would begin by questioning Mohammad Danish, Mohammad Atif and Syed Hussain who were arrested in connection with the blast.

[Why NIA needs to take over the Lucknow encounter probe]

NIA officials say that these persons were closely associated with Saifullah who was killed in an encounter at Lucknow a few hours after the blast took place. The police as part of their preliminary probe suggested that the trio were closely associated with Saifullah who subscribed to the ideology of the Islamic State. The police said that they found a pipe bomb with the inscription, ISIS now in India. At least 10 persons were injured in the IED blast which took place on the train near the Jabri station in Madhya Pradesh on March 7.

OneIndia News
Now every restaurant in Delhi will keep restrooms open for public

India

ians-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, March 17: The order imposed on South Delhi restaurants to open their restrooms to the general public has not gone down well with the owners, who welcome the move only with a few qualifications. The order came following deliberations between corporation and Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, where both decided to go ahead with the move, prominently to cater to women who generally find it difficult to relieve themselves when in need, owing to the crunch of public toilets. Overall, restaurants have welcomed the move but insisted on their freedom to refuse service when they liked.

"We do not have any issue with the move. Even the shopkeepers come here and use our washrooms. But we have to maintain a brand image and we cannot allow everyone inside indiscriminately," Ravi, manager of a Costa Coffee outlet in Green Park market, told IANS. "And that five rupees charge is a joke. We are not here for five rupees," he added.

Similar sentiments were echoed by other personnel in charge of the upkeep of their entities, who insisted on reserving the right to admission and a responsibility to maintain their brand image.

"We usually allow all alike, customer or no customer. But I believe the decision is a 'wrong number' in that the majority of the population which they (SDMC) want us to cater to, belong to higher end of society, who we allow anyway. But what about such people in not-so-posh areas- like Najafgarh, where they are very unlikely to find either the public washroom or restaurants," Labh Singh, Manager, Dunkin Donuts, told IANS.

[Also read: Sanitation workers hold dharna outside Kejriwal's house]



"This is a complete misfire. The authorities are asking us to do their job, which is to make more public washrooms, which they should be doing," he added. A manager recounted an incident as a way to forebode, what may lie in future of the business if the move is implemented forcefully.

"Once we allowed a 'beggar' woman to use our washroom, who created a complete mess inside and outside the lavatory. She was using the hose to wash her legs and in doing that she let the water flood entire floor... if such things happen then we may have to use our discretion," a stall manager at coffee joint in Hauz Khas said.

Two others in-charge of restaurants in the same locality -- one of the posher ones -- said that they need to assess the 'profile' of the customers using their restrooms and said that they would not want to cause their customers any unease who in their turn may object to outsiders. Another concern voiced by the restaurateurs uniformly was one of hygiene.

"This is not a public toilet. How can the authorities ask us to follow this rule! Not everyone has the same hygiene standards, we cannot throw open the doors of our toilets, which we so fondly maintain, for all alike," a supervisor at a resto-bar named Maquina told IANS.

The order -- going to be implemented from April 1 -- has thus drawn congruent responses from the outlets who insisted on maintaining, contradictorily, their right to admission with a refrain that they will not have an issue with the order if only a certain kind come to use their washrooms. The question to ponder then is - to whose benefit has the order been issued?

IANS


Rebellion brewing in Karnataka Congress? Digvijaya lacks connect, allege partymen

India

oi-Anusha

The fear of Karnataka Congress going the Goa way looms large for leaders and supporters alike. All is not well in Karnataka's Congress unit, and frequent visits of state leaders to Delhi is proof of the same. "The Congress in the state is reaching a breaking point over leadership concerns and if immediate action is not taken, expect the scenario to be worse than Goa," said an office bearer of the All India Congress Committee.

Cadres are unimpressed, to say the least, with Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh's handling of the crisis in the Karnataka unit as it prepares for assembly elections in 2018. Digvijaya, who is in-charge of Karnataka lacks connect with regional party affairs, alleges another office bearer. "There is a definite disconnect. The senior leadership doesn't realise that things are not favourable for the Congress and the party needs to act to made amends starting from leadership. Digvijaya's handling of the party in Karnataka is worse than it was in Goa," he added.

The primary concern of the party is that the senior leadership fails to recognise issues when they burn a hole in the party's prospects and indulge in firefighting after it is too late. "We are sick and tired of the way the party is functioning. We have put forth our conditions including change of guard and if the same are not met, we will be forced to quit the party," said an office bearer speaking to OneIndia.

The BJP's win in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and the Congress' handling of the situation in Goa and Manipur have had its effects on the cadres in Karnataka who now fear that if amends are not made, Karnataka is sure to go the Goa way.

OneIndia News
Why is the DMK continuing to oppose the imposition of Hindi? - 50 years of struggle and the truth!

Stalin seeks Modi's intervention on passage of women's bill

India

pti-PTI

Chennai, March 17: DMK Working President and Leader of Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly M K Stalin today sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in ensuring the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill.

"The bill which was moved to empower women's voice in the Legislatures and Parliament of our great nation is struggling to succeed. This is really disheartening," he said in a letter to Modi. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had made two 'great efforts,' in 1998 and 1999, to get the bill passed, "but the efforts did not materialise," he said.

Stalin recalled that his father and DMK President M Karunanidhi had written to Modi in 2014 mentioning Vajpayee's efforts in this regard and had pleaded with him to pass the Women's Reservation Bill. He said his party has been consistently seeking social, economical and political justice for women and fighting for women's emancipation in letter and spirit.

DMK considers women's rights as human rights and therefore had brought legislations to empower and honour the women in Tamil Nadu, Stalin said. These included an Act granting equal rights to women in inheritance of property, 33 per cent reservation for them in local bodies and a 30 per cent quota in government jobs, Stalin said.

Seeking Modi's personal intervention at the earliest to get the Women's Reservation Bill passed, Stalin said it will facilitate the long-pending representation for women in legislatures.

PTI
Sushma Swaraj to meet aggrieved fishermen from Tamil Nadu

India

pti-PTI

Chennai, Mar 17: Concerned over the reported killing of an Indian fisherman and arrest of many by the Sri Lankan Navy, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will meet the aggrieved fishermen from Tamil Nadu, Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman has said.

"The fishermen's representatives wanted to meet officials of the external affairs ministry. But the government has made arrangements for them to meet the external affairs minister herself. She (Swaraj) has come back to Parliament after recovering and is ready to meet them," Sitharaman told reporters at the ongoing International Engineering Sourcing Show organised by EEPC India here yesterday. She said the Centre is taking efforts at every level to resolve the issue, which crops up now and then.

Asked about a timeline for such resolution, the minister said that since it involves another country (Sri Lanka) and its fishermen, all these factors should be taken into consideration. On the protests on Jallikattu, Sitharaman said whether it is Jallikattu or the fishermen issue, people have taken to such a recourse because "there is a gap between the people and their representatives which needs to be bridged".

The purported killing of the fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy and arrests of several others have prompted India to raise the issue with Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Bridgo, 22, from Thangachimadam in central Rameswaram of Tamil Nadu, was allegedly shot dead earlier this month when he was fishing in a mechanised boat off the Katchatheevu islet, triggering protests in the state.

Besides, 24 Indian fishermen were picked up by the Sri Lankan Naval personnel on Sunday for allegedly crossing the international maritime boundary line and fishing in the island nation's territorial waters.

PTI
Why is the DMK continuing to oppose the imposition of Hindi? - 50 years of struggle and the truth!

Tamil Nadu: Heavy rains in several parts of Tamil Nadu in next 2 days

Tamil Nadu: BJP names music director Gangai Amaran for R K Nagar bypoll

India

pti-PTI

Chennai, Mar 17: The BJP on Friday announced veteran Tamil film music director Gangai Amaran as its candidate for the April 12 by-election in R K Nagar constituency.

The candidature of Gangai Amaran, who has recently publicly supported former chief minister O Panneerselvam for his revolt against AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, was announced by the BJP in a release on Friday evening.

#TamilNadu: BJP names noted playback singer and music director, Gangai Amaran as its candidate for April 12 RK Nagar bypoll. pic.twitter.com/ZONszr12Z7  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

Gangai Amran, brother of music mastero Illayaraja, had joined the BJP in 2014. A noted lyricist, Gangai Amaran had recently accused Sasikala of arm twisting him to part with his farm house on the city outskirts during late chief minister Jayalalithaa's first regime from 1991 to 1996.

AIADMK has fielded its deputy general secretary T T V Dinakaran as its candidate for the bypoll, necessitated by the death of Jayalalithaa, while the rebel camp headed by O Panneerselvam has named E Madhusudanan.

Opposition DMK has announced Marudu Ganesh, a journalist-turned politician, as its candidate in the election, seen as a first litmus test for the AIADMK after Sasikala took over the party.

PTI
Target Taj Mahal: Here is what the Islamic State has in mind

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Islamic State has released a graphic in which it lists out a major plan for India. Agra istishhadi (Agra martyrdom seeker), it says in a graphic. The target is the Taj Mahal in Agra, reported SITE Intel Group.

The graphic which was released and posted on messaging app Telegram on March 14, 2017, shows a fighter holding a rocket propelled grenade. Interestingly, there is also a van in the graphic which appears to be proceedings towards the Taj Mahal. This indicates that the IS wants to ram the van into the Taj Mahal and destroy it. With a target symbol on the Taj Mahal, the text below it reads, 'New Target'.

The IS has been trying to gain entry into India and has set up an exclusive recruitment wing for Indian Muslims. Intelligence Bureau officials say that the graphic released is another sign that the IS is laying out a roadmap for India.

It wants its fighters to start off with a major attack in India. The Taj Mahal is a symbolic structure in India and any attack on it will cause ripples not just across India, but across the world too, the IB officer also explained.

The recent Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast was initially investigated as an act committed by the IS. However, there was no concrete evidence to suggest that there was an IS hand in it. The NIA is currently kept the probe ended and is investigating all possible angles, including one relating to the Indian Mujahideen.

OneIndia News
40 down and counting: Forces on the verge of wiping out Pakistani terrorists in Valley

Mubin did it in Coimbatore: Why do Islamist terrorists shave their body before a suicide mission

Terrorists flee after Pulwama encounter in J&K

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Terrorists fled from the spot following a brief encounter that took place at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, on early Friday morning. The encounter broke out on Friday after terrorists opened fire at the security forces.

The security forces had kept the terrorists engaged for a long time. However, the terrorists managed to flee from the spot. Combing and search operations have begun to track down the terrorists who are suspected to be part of the Hizbul Mujahideen.

It may be recalled that an encounter had broken out in the Pulwama district on March 8. In the encounter, two terrorists were killed by the security forces. The terrorists involved in the encounter were part of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, officials said.

OneIndia News
When 100 policemen went to serve Justice Karnan a warrant

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

About 100 policemen were at Calcutta high court Justice C S Karnan's doorstep to serve him a warrant issued by the Supreme Court on Friday. It was a sight of sorts to see: early 100 policemen to serve a bailable warrant!

The police team was led by the West Bengal police chief. However, Karnan was not moved and instead decided to sue the Supreme Court for Rs 14 crore. He said that he was mentally disturbed by the Supreme Court order, and hence, decided to sue them.

[Give me Rs 14 crore for disturbing my mental peace; Justice Karnan tells SC]

Karnan had created a furore last week when he refused to appear before the SC. Instead, he called a court on the lawns of his residence. He then ordered a CBI inquiry against the seven-judge SC bench, which issued the warrant against him.

Earlier, Karnan dashed off a letter to the SC, seeking compensation of Rs 14 crore. He said that the orders of the Supreme Court have disturbed his mind and hence compensation be paid to him.

Karnan has been in the news after the SC initiated contempt proceedings against him. The case was taken up Suo Motu by the Supreme Court. Karnan had defied the SC order and failed to appear before the bench.

Karnan had created a storm after he alleged that he was being targetted because he was a Dalit. He also questioned the collegium of the Supreme Court which transferred him from the Madras high court to Calcutta.

OneIndia News
UP BJP meet on Saturday to elect new leader

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Uttar Pradesh BJP legislators party meet will be held at 5 pm on Saturday to elect a new leader. The meet will decide on who would be the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh where the BJP put up a startling show.

The suspense over who would be the next UP CM has been on for the past one week. Several names have cropped up including that of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Singh, however, denied that he was in the race.

[Talk of me becoming UP CM is futile and unnecessary: Rajnath Singh]

Hectic discussions were held by top leaders of the BJP since the past week. Several names had cropped and the BJP's top brass wants a leader who can cater to all communities in UP. The BJP is unlikely to get into caste calculations while chosing a leader. Many in the BJP feel that Rajnath Singh is the right choice for the post.

OneIndia News
UP CM: How Amit Shah added to the suspense

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

New Delhi, March 17: The BJP's national president, Amit Shah handed over the responsibility of chosing the next Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to Keshav Prasad Maurya who is the party's chief in the state. The name of the UP CM will be revealed at a meeting of the party at Lucknow on Saturday at 5 pm.

Shah said he has given the responsibility of chosing the next UP CM to Maurya. This statement left everyone confused and questions whether Maurya would chose himself as the UP CM were raised. When Maurya was asked about this, he said, "How can I choose myself?"

Maurya was one of the front-runners to the post of UP CM. There has been speculation rife in the media regarding Maurya and the statements by Shah only added to the suspense and confusion.

The other strong contenders to the post are Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Union Minister of Communication (independent charge) and Minister of State for Railways, Manoj Sinha.

OneIndia News
UP CM to be sworn-in on Sunday

India

oi-Anusha

The BJP is yet to decide on who will be Uttar Pradesh's chief minister but sources indicated that the swearing-in ceremony will be held on Sunday. After a landslide victory in the Uttar Pradesh poll, it had become a problem of plenty for the Bharatiya Janata Party, but it is likely that the chief minister, as well as ministers, will take oath at Smriti Upvan in Lucknow on March 19.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national President Amit Shah are expected to be in attendance at the oath taking ceremony along with a dozen other leaders of the BJP. The BJP's Uttar Pradesh unit president Keshav Prasad Maurya was bestowed with the responsibility of choosing the UP chief minister, necessarily meaning that he was out of the race.

The BJP had been careful about the choice of CM for Uttar Pradesh given the huge mandate the party received. Their initial plans of appointing a non-Yadav OBC candidate had to take a backseat after the party received support from voters cutting across caste lines. While Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's name was doing the rounds, Minister of State Telecom, Manoj Sinha has also emerged as a frontrunner for the post.

OneIndia News
Will development speak for itself again in UP?

India

oi-Ratan Mani Lal

The slogan kaam bolta hai (Work speaks for itself) may not have yielded expected results for the Samajwadi Party and its Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in the recently-concluded assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, work on most of the mega projects initiated by the SP regime is not likely to be affected after the Bharatiya Janata Party government gets going.

Work on the first phase of the Metro train is continuing at a fast pace on the stretch between the airport and the railway station in Lucknow. The officials, engineers and workmen involved in the task are hopeful that the Metro stretch between Transport Nagar (close to the Lucknow airport) to Charbagh (railway station) would be opened for commercial run by March 27, the date fixed by the outgoing Government.

The Lucknow Metro is the most visible among the dozens of projects initiated by the SP government, and in fact the party had, in its election campaign, even claimed that the Lucknow Metro had been 'completed' in record time. And this had prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a dig at the SP, saying that he would like to come to Lucknow and take a ride in the Metro with Akhilesh Yadav -- if the Metro was ready to run at all.

Five years could admittedly be not enough for more than a dozen mega projects to be initiated, completed and opened for the public, regardless of the composition and complexion of any Government. The SP government appeared to be in a hurry to launch several projects especially after 2014 when Akhilesh had settled down in his work, but the remainder term of his government was just not enough for all projects to be commissioned. During most of 2016 and the election campaign in January-February, Akhilesh was candid enough to admit that he was inaugurating the projects regardless of the state of their completion so that he could beat the "election code of conduct" deadline.

Unfortunately for him, the hurried inauguration of incomplete projects such as the Lucknow Metro, Lucknow-Agra Expressway, Awadh Shilp Gram (handicraft and cultural complex), Gomti riverfront development in Lucknow, Dial-100 (police response system) and some others did not pay the expected dividends. Not only the half-completed state of these projects came to be known by more and more people, the intent of the ruling party to take electoral mileage out of this regardless of their completion went against the SP.

Akhilesh's disappointment at the mega projects' failure to win him the election is obvious -- he said at a post-result press conference that the people of the state probably wanted the bullet train instead of the Metro train. "Maybe the people didn't like the expressway we built, maybe they voted in hope of a bullet train in UP," he said. Hoping that the next government will do 'better than us', Akhilesh sounded as if he had been humble in accepting defeat, but clearly he is deeply hurt by the electoral failure of his so-called 'development plank'.

Many spokesmen of the SP and its ally Congress, have been saying that the UP results are a 'defeat of development'. However, responses of people with no political affiliation, indicates that claiming credit for any sort of development has never been profitable for any political party in the past. The spectacular failure of the 'India Shining' campaign in the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha election is remembered as a case in point.

According to J P Shukla, veteran political analyst, apparently, people expect ruling parties to do some work that is visible, for which claiming credit is never profitable. "Building roads, parks, memorials and monuments may have added to certain cities' splendour but it did not help the Bahujan Samaj Party acquire electoral gains," he remembers.

Will it weigh upon the new BJP government and the chief minister, so much so that they will shy away from starting something ambitiously new and grand? According to indications, the BJP government is not likely to launch mega schemes but the focus could be on timely and qualitative completion of existing, half-ready projects. "The Lucknow Metro project is partly Centre-funded, and completing it on time is assured, and other projects where external finance is involved, too will be taken up after a routine review," according to a BJP leader who did not wish to be named at least until after the new chief minister is named.

Work on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, too, is continuing with the only difference being that its completion may take a little more time than proposed. Work on other projects, however, has slowed down and probably awaits directives from the new government.

With the failure of the kaam bolta hai slogan fresh in the minds of the BJP leaders, the party is not likely to go for a similar campaign in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Instead, the party would like its development agenda to speak for itself, with the focus likely to be on improving the state of governance, tightening of the police and law and order machinery, and creating an environment of fair decision-making devoid of caste or community biases, according to party leaders. A major decision regarding small farmers' loan waiver could be a beginning.
Job of advisor to Rahul Gandhi: Amit Shah says 'no thank you'

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Friday said he would not like to take up the job of advising the Congress vice president.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave on the government formation in Goa, Shah said the Congress party never staked a claim form government in the state.

"Congress had 17 seats but were not able to get the support to reach to magic figure. We spoke to other parties and were able to get their support, so we approached the Governor," Shah said.

He said the entire campaign in the Uttar Pradesh was based on development and not on the lines of castes and religion. The BJP president said the people of UP have rejected dynasty politics and caste-based politics, which were the main basis of the campaign by the opposition parties.

"We never said that we don't want Muslim votes," he said.

Shah further praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership and said he knew that people of UP would support them.

He said BJP-led government at the Centre was working for the welfare of poor and has launched several schemes to benefit them.

Shah said the win in UP has proved that people approve BJP-led government's initiative to curb black money menace and corruption.

"We have freed he nation from policy paralysis. We have made several legislations to stop corruption and black money transactions. We have also put cap on cash donations to political parties. We are committed to weed out this black money menace," he said.

OneIndia News
Donald Trumps's travel ban reeks of religious bias: Judge

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Donald Trump's comments suggest religious bias, a judge had said while lifting the travel ban. A federal judge in Hawaii on Thursday blocked United States president Donald Trump's new travel ban. The order came up hours before the ban was set to go into effect.

[Trump's new travel ban blocked by court]

The judge observed in his 43-page order that the illogic of the government's contentions is palpable. "The notion that one can anyone can demonstrate animus towards any group of people only targetting them all at once is fundamentally flawed," the judge observed.

"Any reasonable, objective observer would conclude, as does the court for purposes of the instant Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, that the stated secular purpose of the Executive Order is, at the very least, 'secondary to a religious objective' of temporarily suspending the entry of Muslims," the judge observed.

As a result of this ruling which is applicable in the entire nation travellers from six Muslim-majority countries -- Iran, Libya, Somalina, Sudan, Syria and Yemen -- will be able to travel to the US.

OneIndia News
Kansas recognises Mar 16 as Indian-American Appreciation Day

International

pti-PTI

Washington, Mar 17: The US state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as 'Indian-American Appreciation Day' to honour an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling "get out of my country".

Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack. Asserting that the senseless act of violence "will not divided or define" the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, "The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very very thankful to them." "These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas," Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the State Capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla. Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani. "I'd like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery," he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the 'Indian American Appreciation Day'. "We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the State of Kansas," the Governor said.

"This is a deplorable act that happened, We will not let it define us as people," he said. "Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan," Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

"Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms," he said. Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests. In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla. To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to is honouring Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter. The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials. Vipin Kumar, Executive Director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love. "We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace," Kumar said. "And with the resolve to fight hate."

PTI
Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out

12-year-old girl found dead with rope around her neck

Constable sentenced to life for instigating minor to suicide after sexual abuse

UP: Man films wife committing suicide, does nothing to stop her

Pak: One killed in twin suicide attacks at Shabqadar's FC centre

International

oi-Madhuri

At least one paramilitary soldier was killed and two others injured on Friday in twin suicide attacks on a Frontier Constabulary Centre in Shabqadar in Pakistan. The injured were shifted to a nearby hospital in Shabqadar for treatment.

One killed and two injured after a suicide attack on a Frontier Constabulary Centre in Shabqadar near Charsadda: Pakistan media pic.twitter.com/vWatkcXddS  ANI (@ANI_news) March 17, 2017

The FC centre is located in the Ayesha Korona area of Charsadda district on the confluence of Mohammad Agency.

Last month a suicide bombing at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar's shrine in Sehwan killed over 70 people and wounded scores of others.

OneIndia News
Pakistan asks Facebook, social media sites to help fight blasphemy

International

pti-PTI

Islamabad, Mar 16: Pakistan on Friday urged Facebook and other social media platforms to help in combating blasphemy while vowing to lead the fight against it at the global level.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said his county would lead the global Muslim community in combating the blasphemous content on social media platforms. He made the remarks while addressing the media on the issue of alleged prevalence of blasphemous material on social media.

"I have asked the Foreign Office to appoint a representative in the US to liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and these social media websites on a daily basis," he said. Nisar instructed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to hire an international lawyer on the issue.

"They (FIA) have been instructed to find a lawyer that understands international law and can advise us on these matters," he said. Nisar urged the popular social media websites like Facebook to provide information about blasphemous material. "Facebook and other service providers should share all information about the people behind blasphemous content with us," he said.

Nisar said such content has been posted on social media websites for years and expressed surprise that no other Muslim country had raised the issue till now. "We will take any steps necessary to make sure that our message against such content gets across to those websites as well as the rest of the world," he said.

Nisar said Pakistan cannot stop posting of blasphemous material from abroad but the FIA has identified such posts from within the country. "We would ensure that those who have committed these crimes do not get away scot-free," he said. His remarks came after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier this week ordered authorities to take immediate action against 'blasphemous' content on the social media and remove sacrilegious contents and punish the perpetrators, days after a high court order.

The Islamabad High Court judge Shuakat Siddiqui last week had directed the interior ministry to take actions against Facebook pages with alleged anti-Islam material. Blasphemy is very sensitive issue in Pakistan and those accused of it become an easy target for extremists.

PTI
Saudi court bans popular cleric from writing on Twitter

International

pti-PTI

Riyadh, Mar 17: A Saudi Islamic leader with more than two million Twitter followers has been banned from writing in his twitter account by a court that convicted him of jeopardising public order.

Awad al-Qarni, previously accused of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, was also fined 100,000 riyals (Approx Rs 17 lakh), Okaz newspaper reported on its website late on Thursday. It did not name the 'famous preacher' but Qarni himself confirmed the verdict on his @awadalqarni Twitter account late Thursday.

'I am prevented from writing' on the account, he wrote, before issuing a Twitter message early Friday thanking his followers.

Qarni was 'one of the key clerics of the Sahwa movement', British scholar Toby Matthieson has written. The Sahwa emerged in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 70s as 'a modern form of Islamic activism' which had wide impact and whose founders were exiled Muslim Brothers, according to another expert, Stephane Lacroix.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have all declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a 'terrorist group'. Okaz said Riyadh's Specialised Criminal Court, which handles 'terrorism' cases, convicted the preacher on Thursday of spreading content on Twitter which 'could jeopardise public order and provoke public opinion'.

It said the content 'could affect the relationship of the people with the leadership, and the relationship of Saudi Arabia with other countries'. There were no further details but Okaz said Qarni was tried without having been arrested.

"We have appealed the case," Qarni said on Twitter. Lacroix, of Sciences Po university in Paris, told AFP in December that changes late last year to the kingdom's highest religious authority confirmed an 'anti-Sahwa, anti-Muslim Brotherhood' trend. In 2010, Qarni was charged in absentia by an Egyptian court with funding the Muslim Brotherhood.

PTI
Sufi priests detained by Pak intel agencies

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The two Sufi priests who went missing on March 15 are in the custody of the Pakistan intelligence agencies. Pakistan is likely to release some information regarding them soon. They have been identified as Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami. Sources say that they were detained by the Pakistan intelligence agencies when they landed in the country to meet their relatives.

The duo was last spotted at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine in Lahore and has been missing since Wednesday evening. Pakistan had claimed that that Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, but Nazim was stopped at the airport itself. However Indian agencies have learnt that the duo was picked up and detained by the agencies in Pakistan. "We are expecting a communication from them shortly on the issue, Indian agencies had said.

India has taken up the matter seriously with Pakistan. The family members had requested the government for help and the same had been assured.

OneIndia News
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It was in the rebel held area, so sometimes you wind up killing innocents to get the bad ones. You do the best you can but in the end,,,it happens. I don't think the rebels adhere to any rules of conflict, so what's good for one side had to apply to the other side.



Besides, it was probably done by the Russians,,, we have seen before they are ruthless,,, children hospitals etc etc
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St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Cedar Bluffs will be hosting an American Red Cross blood drive from 12:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

All blood types are needed. Donors can save up to 15 minutes at the blood drive by using RapidPass to complete their pre-donation reading and health history questions online at www.redcrossblood.org/RapidPass before arriving at their appointments.
AutoMotions 28 Oct 2022

Less weight, more downforce, more speed: With the A110 R, Alpine is pushing the limits of its mid-engine model further towards..
Recent Market Research  Shavers Market Future Trends and Industry Analysis to 2022 By Market Reports Center

SHAVERS Market Report

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Shavers MarketWiseGuyReports Publish a Latest Market Research Report On  Global SHAVERS Market Report 2017  Industry Research, Manufacturers, Sales, Consumption, Segmentation, Price, Revenue, Share and Forecasts to 2022.Complete Report @Description:In this report, the global Shavers market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Shavers in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Shavers market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingConair CorporationBaBylissHelen of Troy LimitedKoninklijkePhilips ElectronicsPanasonic CorporationThe Procter & Gamble CompanyGilletteBraun GmbHSpectrum Brands Holdings, IncRemington Products CompanyWahl Clipper CorporationEltron CompanyWahl Clipper CorporationIzumi Products CompanyFlycoPOVOSSIDOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoReciprocating Type ShaversRotary Type ShaversOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Shavers for each application, includingExclusive ShopSupermarketOnline SalesRequest Sample Copy of this Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comTable of ContentsGlobal Shavers Market Research Report 20171 Shavers Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Shavers1.2 Shavers Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Shavers Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Shavers Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Reciprocating Type Shavers1.2.4 Rotary Type Shavers1.3 Global Shavers Segment by Application1.3.1 Shavers Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Exclusive Shop1.3.3 Supermarket1.3.4 Online Sales1.4 Global Shavers Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Shavers Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Shavers (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Shavers Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Shavers Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Shavers Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Shavers Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Shavers Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Shavers Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Shavers Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Shavers Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Shavers Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Shavers Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Shavers Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Shavers Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion7 Global Shavers Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Conair Corporation7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Conair Corporation Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 BaByliss7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 BaByliss Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Helen of Troy Limited7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Helen of Troy Limited Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Koninklijke7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Koninklijke Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Philips Electronics7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Philips Electronics Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Panasonic Corporation7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Panasonic Corporation Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 The Procter & Gamble Company7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 The Procter & Gamble Company Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Gillette7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Gillette Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Braun GmbH7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Braun GmbH Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Shavers Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc Shavers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Remington Products Company7.12 Wahl Clipper Corporation7.13 Eltron Company7.14 Wahl Clipper Corporation7.15 Izumi Products Company7.16 Flyco7.17 POVOS7.18 SID..CONTINUEDCheck Discount on this report @CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations and 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.Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers, Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune  411028, Maharashtra, India
Global Visual Chart Market Research Segments Based On Manufacturers, Challenge, Industry Trend, Analysis and Forecast To 2022

Visual Chart Market

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Visual Chart MarketWiseGuyReports Publish a Latest Market Research Report On  Global Visual Chart Market Report 2017  Industry Research, Manufacturers, Sales, Consumption, Segmentation, Price, Revenue, Share and Forecasts to 2022.Complete Report @Description:In this report, the global Visual Chart market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Visual Chart in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Visual Chart market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingAccutomeBriot USAEssilor InstrumentsGilrasInmoclincJiangsu Dengguan Medical Treatment InstrumentKeelerMedmontNIDEKReichertRightonShanghai Yanke InstrumentOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoColor Vision Test ChartBacklight Test ChartPolarized Light Test ChartOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Visual Chart for each application, includingHospitalHouseholdPhysical Examination CenterOptical ShopRequest Sample Copy of this Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comTable of ContentsGlobal Visual Chart Market Research Report 20171 Visual Chart Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Visual Chart1.2 Visual Chart Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Visual Chart Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Visual Chart Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Color Vision Test Chart1.2.4 Backlight Test Chart1.2.5 Polarized Light Test Chart1.3 Global Visual Chart Segment by Application1.3.1 Visual Chart Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Hospital1.3.3 Household1.3.4 Physical Examination Center1.3.5 Optical Shop1.4 Global Visual Chart Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Visual Chart Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Visual Chart (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Visual Chart Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Visual Chart Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Visual Chart Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Visual Chart Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Visual Chart Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Visual Chart Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Visual Chart Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Visual Chart Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Visual Chart Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Visual Chart Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Visual Chart Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Visual Chart Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion7 Global Visual Chart Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Accutome7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Accutome Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Briot USA7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Briot USA Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Essilor Instruments7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Essilor Instruments Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Gilras7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Gilras Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Inmoclinc7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Inmoclinc Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Jiangsu Dengguan Medical Treatment Instrument7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Jiangsu Dengguan Medical Treatment Instrument Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Keeler7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Keeler Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Medmont7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Medmont Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 NIDEK7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 NIDEK Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Reichert7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Visual Chart Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Reichert Visual Chart Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Righton7.12 Shanghai Yanke Instrument..CONTINUEDCheck Discount on this report @CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations and 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.Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers, Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune  411028, Maharashtra, India
Fresh Food Packaging Market ; Application(Sea Food, Meat Products, Vegetables, Fruits)Forecast (2016-2021)

Fresh Food Packaging Market 2021

http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/FBR0084/fresh-food-packaging-marketby-material-typeglass-metal-paper--paper-boards-plastics-others-by-technology-active-packaging-intelligent-packaging-modified-packaging-others-applicationsea-food-meat-products-vegetables-fruitsforecast-20162021

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Fresh Food Packaging is well-defined as a synchronized method of organizing food for transportation, supply, storage, transaction, and end-use to fulfill the crucial customer with optimum cost. It is crucial part of society; commercially processed food couldnt be moved and circulated securely and proficiently deprived of packaging. APAC is the fastest growing market and it is estimated to continue the same in during the forecast period.Check Complete Report @The Fresh Food Packaging market has been segmented on the basis of type, technology, application and geography. The Fresh Food Packaging market is classified into several material types such as glass, metal, paper & paper boards, plastics and others. It is used in various kinds of applications such as sea food, meat products, vegetables, fruits and others.Get Sample Brochure of the Report @The demand for fresh food packaging is growing at a faster pace due to its functions such as containment, protection/preservation, easy communication, proper utility of products and many more. Food & Beverages is the largest application for packaging market which is used in various products such as fruits, vegetables, meat and others. APAC is considered as the major consumer of fresh food packaging. A detailed qualitative analysis of the factors responsible for driving and restraining growth of the fresh food packaging market and future opportunities are provided in the report.The global market for fresh food packaging was estimated to be $XX billion in 2015. The global market for fresh food packaging market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of XX% and is forecast to reach $XX billion by 2021. North America and APAC are estimated to occupy a share of more than XX% during 2016-2021 due to the rise in annual disposable income and the change in the consumers preferences.Order a copy of Fresh Food Packaging Market Report now @About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated. It curates the list of reports, publishers and studies to ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand  Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact us:Mayur SSales Manager2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statespr@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343
Five Jacksonville-Based Media Outlets to Compete in Games as Teams to Win Money for Local Charities

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Pet Paradise Resort and Day Spa Presents Mutts and the MediaJACKSONVILLE, Fla.  Pet Paradise Resort and Day Spa, a Jacksonville-based upscale pet boarding resort, is hosting its second annual Mutts and the Media event on Thursday, Nov. 3 from 6:15 p.m. to 8 p.m. where local media personalities compete to win money for local charities. The public is invited to view the event online ator via Facebook Live atTeams from five local media outlets will compete in games including Best Pet Look ALike, Limericks, Name that Price and Best Pet Trick. Participating media outlets include:First Coast NewsJacksonville Business JournalJacksonville MagazineNews4Jax  WJXTWJCTTeams will score points based on their performance in each game. Local social media influencers and dignitaries will referee the teams, judging them  and their furry friends  on their talents and skills. Referees include:Antonio Allegretti, executive director, Cultural Council of Greater JacksonvilleStuart Boslow, executive producer, River City LivePatty Jimenez, Leisure Communications Specialist, Visit JacksonvilleDavid Johnson, Design and Social Media Manager, Jax ChamberErin Ostrowsky, Research Director, Jacksonville Business JournalScott Saxton, Social Media InfluencerKerry Speckman, Blogger, The Specktator, Host of Another Round Podcast and Jacksonvilles Official Queen of SelfiesRenee Parenteau, Renee Parenteau Photo and Renee Parenteau Hair & MakeupCharities benefiting from Pet Paradises Mutts and the Media event include:Clay HumaneCommunity Hospice FoundationJacksonville Humane SocietyNorth Florida School of Special Educations Barkin Biscuits ProgramThe Old Dog HouseThe media team that earns the most points comes in first place, winning $1,000 for their charity. The media team in second place wins $750 for their charity and the third place team secures $500 for their charity. All participating charities take home $100.Charities are assigned to media teams at random with journalists picking the name of their charity from a black top hat prior to the event.Pet Paradise supports a large number of charities across the seven states where the company has resorts. With 26 locations, Pet Paradise donates thousands of dollars each year to animal-related charities.About Pet ParadiseHeadquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., with more than 600 employees, Pet Paradise, an upscale pet resort was formed in 2002 and currently has 26 facilities in operation with 12 locations in Florida, three in Houston, three in north Dallas, three in the Charlotte area, two in Atlanta and one each in New Orleans, Phoenix and Albuquerque. At Pet Paradise our mission is to create a safe, clean and fun environment for our four-legged guests. The Pet Paradise facilities include spacious dog and cat boarding suites as well as day camp and grooming services. For more information about each resort, visitor visit our social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vimeo and Pinterest.Point Taken Communications1616 N Market St.Jacksonville, FL 332206
RSO Oceana FCPOA Get Their Custom US Navy Shirts Today!

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When First Class Associations want the finest in shirts they turn their creative goals to Vision-Strike-Wear.ComWhether its a perched crow atop the Liberty Bell, an F-18 screaming off the deck of a carrier for the FCPOA that are associated with these ships and commands or possibly its the location like NAS Oceana the FCPOA does want the best when it comes to their custom shirts. At Vision-Strike-Wear.Com they get it.For over 9 years the United States Navy has turned to VSW to have cutting edge, razor sharp military graphics developed for their needs. Whether in support of a CPO365 program, a 5K run, CrossFit challenge or simple something for wear when working in support of some fundraising effort they have pulled their incredible experience together with the design talents of VSW to produce some of the best custom military shirts in the industry.When the FCPOA at NAS Oceana contacted VSW and requested a design for their Sailors they got it! The FCPOA wanted the best and they knew they wanted the best. What did they have in mind? Unique. Original. Hand drawn original artwork with cutting edge detail that other companies simply would not provide. At Vision-Strike-Wear.Com they received exactly what they wanted and could not have been happier.For over 9 years the men and women of Vision-Strike-Wear.Com have been producing custom military shirts for their brothers and sisters in every branch of the US military. Their designs have been seen on aircraft carriers, destroyers, in hangars for squadrons, on deployment shirts in Afghanistan and Iraq, travelled from Djibouti, Africa to Subic Bay Philippines and more places than you can shake a stick out. Their art has been sought after because they do not compromise. They also dont cut and past their art together on the cheap like so many of their competitors do. Their art is original and it is built with a collaboration between artists and the point of contact for the unit or the command.They are busy as artists go but that is because they spare nothing when it comes to the detail that others will not do but VSW will on a daily basis. Another reason why so many of their designs are copied and fail to pass inspection.So when the FCPOA at NAS Oceana wanted a cool Navy Chief shirt design they got it and they did so with the flair and gusto only achieved at VSW. They asked for the moon with their custom design and VSW was happy as hell to deliver it. It was so successful they reordered almost immediately. Check it out here -When you and your unit are in the market for military shirts custom designed and printed then you have to go to Vision-Strike-Wear.ComThe mission is to produce the most detailed, cost efficient, USA Made muscle car products in the industry. With offices located throughout the United States from Oregon to California, Texas to Florida each of our offices brings a dedication to serving America with design and printing found on everything from apparel items like shirts and hoodies, to drinkware including steins, coffee mugs and more. Their design expertise with their combined knowledge and background as US Veterans and a fervent desire to provide the very best military designs and products is at the heart of everything they do.Vision Strike Wear4802 SW Scholls-Ferry Rd Ste CPortland, OR 97225
Cloud-RAN (Radio Access Network) Market size in terms of volume and value 2014-2020

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Cloud-RAN,orCentralized-RAN (C-RAN) is an advanced cellular network architecture for mobile network infrastructure that can support 2G, 3G and 4G system and meet wireless communication benchmarks. Cloud-RAN is outpacing traditional cellular network system as it doesnt require RF (radio frequency) equipment, antenna, BTS (baseband unit) and digital processor to be deployed in the cell site. Traditional cellular network architecture demands more power, space, additional big cell towers and directional antennae to support new air interface technologies such as LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and multi-frequency bands. Moreover, enhancement of traditional cellular network in a wireless network to support data traffic demand becomes economically unsustainable. In contrast, Cloud-RAN enhances mobile communications and helps cellular network operators in delivering qualitative and effective mobile communication services at a reasonable cost.Cloud-RAN ensures centralization of baseband processing in one location. To connect to RRH (remote radio heads), fibre optical cables are required.Cloud-RAN is based on new technologies,viz. cloud computing thatcan take advantage of advanced remote antennae or radio head techniques and SDN (software-defined network) approaches.Request For Report Sample@Cloud-RAN offers various benefits like reduction in cost of network operations. The three types of cost reductions are energy consumption, site rental expenses and operational & maintenance cost of network. These savings can be balanced against cost incurred on fibre optical cables required to meet fronthaul capacity and latency requirements. Cloud-RAN also enhances capacity due to coordinated multipoint and ensures speedy performance. Aforementioned benefits of Cloud-RAN architecture automatically increase the value of service to end-users. However, initial high investment required to deploy Cloud-RAN architecture acts as one of the major challengesfor the growth of Cloud-RAN market.The Cloud-RAN market can be categorizedinto component, services and geography.The market is segmented on the basis of thenatureof its components, which includes six major categories -BBU (Baseband Units), RRU (Remote Radio Units), optical transport network, servers, processors and measurement device. On the basis of services segment, the Cloud-RAN market can be categorized into network services, custom services and system integration services. The market can also be segmented on the basis of major geographies, into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa.Cloud-RAN is a global multi-billion dollar market which is expected to exhibit a considerable growth in CAGR, from 2014 to 2020. The key drivers include need to reduce increasing data traffic and Capex&Opexexpenditure, which are the biggest revenue generators for the Cloud-RANmarket. The key restraint to this market is high initial cost of deployment and dependency on availability of fibre. Major players in Cloud-RAN market focuses on partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisition &merger strategies in order to outperform their competitors. For instance, in 2013 Intel Corp. acquired Mindspeed Technologies and extended its offerings with new mobile system services i.e. Cloud-RAN.Visit For TOC@Some of the key players identified in the Cloud-RAN market are Ceragon Networks Ltd.,Actix Ltd., Aricent Technologies, JDSU, 6WIND, MTI Radiocomp, Altera Corp., Mindspeed Technologies, Inc., Intel Corporation, VitesseSemiconductor, Telco Systems, VPI Systems, Telco Systems and TEOCO 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.comWebsite:
Dimer Acid-Based (DAB) Polyamide Resins Market 2015-2025 by Segmentation: Based on Product, Application and Region

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Dimer acids which are also known as dimerized fatty acids belong to the group of dicarboxylic acids. Dimer acids are viscous fluids that are transparent and non-toxic in nature. Dimer acids are manufactured by dimerizing unsaturated fatty acids that are obtained from oleic acid, canola oil, tallow, cottonseed, tall oil and rapeseed among others. Dimer acids are widely used to synthesize polyamide resins and hot melt adhesives. Dimer acid-based polyamide resins have varied properties which makes them either reactive or non-reactive in nature. Reactive polyamides are primarily used as curing agents for epoxy resins that are generally used in the manufacturing of adhesives and surface coatings. On the other hand, the non reactive polyamides are predominantly used in the manufacturing of printing inks and hot-melt adhesives. Dimer acid-based polyamide resins exhibit physical properties such as heat resistance, cold resistance, film flexibility, fast curing, oil resistance, excellent adhesion and good compatibility among others. Dimer acid-based polyamide resins are widely used as decorative coatings, fabrics, interlining, shoe stretch, fold plastic and Baotou glue.Growing economies of developing countries coupled with rising disposable income has boosted the overall demand for residential properties which in turn is expected to augment the overall growth of construction industry. Construction industry is the major application of adhesives and surface coatings. Thus, the growing demand for adhesives and surface coatings from various end-use industries such as construction is expected to drive the overall dimer acid-based polyamide resins market. Dimer acid-based polyamide resins are also mainly consumed in the manufacturing of printing inks. Dimer acid-based polyamide resins exhibit improved freeze thaw characteristics to the printing ink compositions. Thus, the use of dimer acid-based polyamide resins plays a crucial role in improving the overall quality of the printing inks. Thus, growing demand for printing ink is expected to augment the overall growth of dimer acid-based polyamide resins market.Request For Report Sample@China is the major consumer of dimer acid-based polyamide resins owing to the presence of huge demand for adhesives and surface coatings from construction and automobile applications. North America is expected to be the next largest consumer of dimer acid-based polyamide resins owing to the presence of huge demand for printing inks in the region. The demand for DAB polyamide resins is expected to grow rapidly in Europe owing to the huge demand for surface coatings from the automobile industry present in the region. Rest of Asia Pacific is anticipated to experience huge demand for dimer acid-based polyamide resins owing to the growing construction industry in countries such as India, Japan and Korea present in the region. Rest of the World is expected to exhibit sluggish growth in the demand for dimer acid-based polyamide resins market in the near future.Visit For TOC@Arizona Chemical, Anqing Hongyu Chemical Co., Ltd., The Dow Chemical Company, Jinan Tongfa Resin Co., Ltd. and RITEKS are some of the major participants of the dimer acid-based polyamide resins market. The companies are mainly focused towards achieving economies of scale. Hence, most of the leading players are striving towards increasing their production capacities for manufacturing dimer acid-based polyamide resins market. The companies are also hugely investing in research in order to develop innovative products having superior qualities.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.comWebsite:
Global Win CE Automotive AVN Market 2017- Bosch, Denso, Pioneer, Alpine, Aisin, Continental and Kenwood

Win CE Automotive AVN

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This report studies sales (consumption) of Win CE Automotive AVN in Global market, especially in United States, China, Europe and Japan, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringBoschDensoPioneerAlpineAisinContinentalKenwoodSonyClarionGarminPanasonicThe market research report by QY Research provides detailed study on the overall Win CE Automotive AVN market size, its financial positions, its unique selling points, key products, and key developments. This research report has segmented the Win CE Automotive AVN market based on the segments covering all the domains in terms of type, country, region, forecasting revenues, and market share, along with analysis of latest trends in every sub-segment.Click Here to Request Sample Report @The qualitative segmentation of Win CE Automotive AVN market covered in the report gives in-depth information of the overall market. Furthermore, the market size, share, forecast trends, analysis, sales, supply, production, demand, major manufacturers, end-users, and many other vital factors are comprised in the Market Research Win CE Automotive AVN report by QY Research. By these comprehensive data, it is simple to take and make precise and accurate decisions taking into consideration the present market situation and the forecasts of the global market, which in turn may result into profitable step for our clients.A competitive landscape that identifies the major competitors of the global market and their market share are further highlighted in the research report. A deliberate profiling of major competitors of the Win CE Automotive AVN market as well as a inclusive analysis of their current developments, core competencies, and investments in each segment are also elaborated in the research report.Browse Full Report at @The overall information of the Win CE Automotive AVN market provided in the report helps our client to make precise and accurate decisions in order to gain maximum profit in this cutthroat competition in the global market. The report comprises various elements such as table, figure, charts, TOCs, chapters, and so on so as to provide a crystal clear data to the client giving a brief of the market and its trends. Thus, the report provides in-depth information of the Win CE Automotive AVN market in terms of revenue, value, volume, region, and many more.About Us:QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651
Market Research on Flooring and Carpets Market 2015 and Analysis to 2025

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This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market, contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, statistically-supported, industry-validated market data, carpets and floorings are a vital part of any household or commercial structure. In addition, carpets and flooring are increasingly gaining importance in other applications such as automobiles, aerospace and aviation. Carpets can be made from various materials such as wool, polymer staple fibers and bulk continuous fibers. In addition, rugs may also sometimes be classified under carpets. Resilient flooring, wood flooring, laminate flooring, rubber flooring and ceramic floor tiles are different types of flooring available in the global market.Recovery of the construction industry in developed regions such as North America and Europe is expected to be one of the main drivers for the growth of the market over the next few years. In addition, increasing construction activities in emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India is expected to fuel the demand for floorings in this region. Moreover, increased consumer expenditure on interiors of houses, hotels and offices is expected contribute significantly to the growth of the market. More and more automobile manufacturers are strategically using carpets and floorings in automobiles to enhance the vehicles appearance. However, price volatility of raw materials such as polymers, rubbers and ceramic are expected to hamper the growth of the market. Development of innovative designed light weight carpets and floorings is expected to open opportunities for the growth of the market in the near future.Request For Report Sample@Market for ceramic tiles was significantly large in Asia Pacific and South America while the market for carpets was substantial in North America and Europe. Rapid industrialization and favorable economic conditions in Asia Pacific is expected to drive the construction market, which in turn is expected to bolster the demand for flooring and carpets over the forecast period. Demand for flooring and carpets are expected to be significant in the Americas over the same time period.Visit For TOC@Some of the key participants of the market include Armstrong World Industries, Autoneum Holding, Beaulieu Group, Dixie Group, FRITZ EGGER, Hangzhou Nabel Group, Interface Incorporated, Mohawk Industries, Oriental Weavers, RPM International and Suminoe Textile among others. The market is highly fragmented in nature owing to the presence of several small, medium and large-scale manufacturers.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.comWebsite:
Mobile VR Market: 2017 Global Trend and 2021 Forecast Research Report

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Mobile VR Report by Material, Application, and Geography  Global Forecast to 2021 is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific) and the main countries (United States, Germany, united Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and China).Request a sample of Global Mobile VR Market Research Report @The report firstly introduced the Mobile VR basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.Browse the full Global Mobile VR Industry Research Report @The report includes six parts, dealing with:1.) basic information;2.) the Asia Mobile VR Market;3.) the North American Mobile VR Market;4.) the European Mobile VR Market;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.Some of the points from table of content:Part I Mobile VR Industry OverviewChapter One Mobile VR Industry Overview1.1 Mobile VR Definition1.2 Mobile VR Classification Analysis1.2.1 Mobile VR Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Mobile VR Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Mobile VR Application Analysis1.3.1 Mobile VR Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Mobile VR Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Mobile VR Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Mobile VR Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Mobile VR Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Mobile VR Product Market Development Overview1.6 Mobile VR Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Mobile VR Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Mobile VR Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Mobile VR Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Mobile VR Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Mobile VR Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Mobile VR Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia Mobile VR Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Mobile VR Market Analysis3.1 Asia Mobile VR Product Development History3.2 Asia Mobile VR Competitive Landscape Analysis3.3 Asia Mobile VR Market Development TrendChapter Four 2012-2017 Asia Mobile VR Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2012-2017 Mobile VR Capacity Production Overview4.2 2012-2017 Mobile VR Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2012-2017 Mobile VR Demand Overview4.4 2012-2017 Mobile VR Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2012-2017 Mobile VR Import Export Consumption4.6 2012-2017 Mobile VR Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginThe Report Contains: 167 Pages.Price of the report: 2850$ (single user license)Make an enquire of this report @About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) 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 customized 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 specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Us:Hector CostelloSenior Manager  Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019Follow Us on LinkedIn:Follow us on Twitter:Follow us on G+ :
Oil Storage Market to hit 2,298.3Mn m3 by 2025: Global Market Insights, Inc.

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The report Global Oil Storage Market Size By Reserve (Commercial Reserve, Strategic Reserve), By Fuel (Crude Oil, Gasoline, Aviation Fuel, Middle Distillates, LNG, LPG), Global Forecast, 2016  2025 by Global Market Insights, Inc. says Oil Storage Market size is expected to reach 2,298.3 million m3 by 2025.Low crude prices coupled with increasing production rate will drive the global oil storage market size during the forecast period. Commercial reserves accounted for over 20% of volume share in 2015 owing to escalating petroleum product demand. Strategic reserves are developed and maintained by countries in order to overcome the emergency conditions and is anticipated to witness substantial growth.Request for Sample PDF of the Report @India is building underground storage tank to store 5.33 MT crude in Padur, Vishakhapatnam and Mangalore to overcome supply disruption and price shock in the near future. Carbon steel is favored for storing flammable liquids on account of its operating temperature range. Revenue for 2015 was valued over USD 3 billion and is expected to rise over 5.5% by 2025.Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic are corrosion resistant, light weight and possess high strength to weight ratio and is estimated to reach over USD 3 billion by 2025. LNG commercial oil storage market size was valued at USD 1.9 billion in 2015 which is likely to be reach 35 MCM by 2025. Rising demand for natural gas from industrial and power sector will boost the demand for LNG storage.Rising exploration and production of shale gas will drive the U.S. oil storage market share. Mexico was valued over USD 370 million in 2015 and is likely to be reach over 13 million m3 by 2025 in term of volume.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Key insights from the report include: Rising exploration and production of shale gas will drive the U.S. oil storage market Azerbaijan oil storage market was over 3 million m3 in 2015 and is anticipated to grow over 5% during forecast period. Azerbaijan has plan to develop storage capacity in Iran to meet the demand of crude during winter season. The country is also planning to increase gas storage capacity over 5 billion cubic meter. Middle distillates demand was valued at 71 million m3 in 2015 and is anticipated to grow over 3.4% by 2025. UAE is expected to witness a growth over 4% in forecast period. Adnoc, UAE entered into an agreement with India to store its surplus crude oil into strategic reserves. Steel tank was valued over USD 4 billion in 2015 and is predicted to grow over 4% during forecast period. Increasing crude demand from refiners will drive the China oil storage market size from 2015 to 2025. LPG commercial reserve was valued at 16.1 million m3in 2015 and is expected to reach over 3.7% in term of revenue by 2025. Increasing oil production may favor the growth of Russia crude oil storage market share during forecast period. CST Industries, Inc, Synalloy (Palmer), Assmann Polyethylene Tank, ZCL Composites, Inc, Containment Solution, Holvrieka, Vopak, Poly Processing, Enduro, Tuffa Tank, Snyder Industries, Inc., Belco Manufacturing Company, Red Ewald, Inc., Polymaster, Zepnotek Storage Tank, L.F. Manufacturing are major industry companies.Oil storage market research report includes in-depth coverage of the industry with estimates & forecast in terms of revenue in USD billion and volume in million m3 from 2013 to 2025, for the following segments:Global oil storage market by reserve Commercial Reserve Strategic ReserveGlobal oil storage market by fuel Crude Oil Gasoline Aviation Fuel Middle Distillates LPG LNGGlobal oil storage market by material Steel Carbon Steel Fiberglass Reinforced PlasticBrowse Related Reports: Drill Pipe Market Size By Grade (API, Premium), By End Use (Onshore, Offshore), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Norway, UK, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, China, India, ASEAN, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Angola, Nigeria, Algeria, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016  2025About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Healthcare Master Data Management Market Dynamics, Forecast, Analysis and Supply Demand 2016-2026

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Information Technology has revolutionised every industry and brought about substantial changes. It has made the world more interconnected, interdependent and increased the volume of data to be processed enormously. However, if the data is compromised by way of a leak or hack, it can also have devastating consequences. This is particularly true in medical healthcare and thus, there is a focus on the healthcare Master Data Management market. MDM is the processes, policies, and tools that allow an organisation to define and manage its critical data, leading to a single point of reference. The healthcare master data management market is a major component of MDM. Medical healthcare facilities need to keep critical records of their patients health and security. Any lapse by way of administering an inadequate or incorrect dosage could even lead to death. It is vital for organisations to keep accurate, up-to-date records of their patients to avoid mistakes that could lead to reputational as well as financial harm to the organisation. Master data in healthcare is mainly divided into identifying data like the patient, provider or location and reference data i.e. linkable vocabulary like LOINC, RxNorm, ICD, SNOMED, etc.Healthcare Master Data Management Market DriversThere are three drivers of the healthcare master data management market  mergers & acquisitions (M&A), Health Information Exchange (HIE) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). In todays globalised world, M&As have become commonplace and this also holds true for the medical industry. National boundaries have become irrelevant and healthcare institutions can go in for M&As for the same reasons as other organisations. It is very rare for two medical institutions to have the same type of data management techniques & each will have its own master data. MDM is crucial to helping the two entities organise, manage and then merge the healthcare data. There is also a great deal of interaction & information exchange between hospitals worldwide now. It may be for a second opinion, diagnoses or patient reassurance. To successfully exchange information across different locations, HIEs need to have reconciled the master data file. The last major driver of the healthcare master data management market is ACOs. They are a group of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who provide medical assistance to their Medicare patients voluntarily. It neednt be mentioned that they would all have different data organisation & management methods, hence they would need to look at the healthcare master data management market.Request Report Sample@Healthcare Master Data Management Market RestraintsSome of the restraints constraining the growth of the healthcare master data management market are  data ownership, multiple sources of data, lack of true integration between clinical & administrative apps & lack of analytical talent. Autonomous clinics have largely funded their own data management systems to the exclusion of the entire healthcare system. With increasing M&As in the industry, this issue has only been compounded recently. While patients have the right to their healthcare data, the question of who owns the data continues to linger. A second challenge is the sheer volume of data. Not only is it in individual organisation departments, some data might also be in a proprietary format like Picture Archiving Communication Systems (PACS). This might be controlled by an external source, making it difficult to extract or claim. Many healthcare institutions struggle to understand modern technology like healthcare payments, coding, reimbursements or other data. Integrating it for decision-making is another challenge entirely! Another major challenge for the healthcare master data management market is the lack of analytical talent. Healthcare providers struggle to find the right experts to help them exploit their databases to the fullest. There is a massive shortage of data scientists, especially in healthcare, who can use big data techniques to optimise healthcare records.Healthcare Master Data Management Market Key RegionsThe largest healthcare master data management market at present is the U.S. It is also expected to grow at the highest rate due to legislation like the Affordable Care Act, EHR adoption, and government focus on customised medicine, healthcare management and hospital reimbursement. Key Asian markets are China, India, Japan and Korea.Request For TOC@Healthcare Master Data Management Market Key Market PlayersSome of the companies competing in the healthcare master data management market are IBM Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Verisk Analytics, Allscripts Health Solutions and Health Catalyst.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: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Detailed Study of China Quality Management Software Market with a Forecast during 2017-2022

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Albany, New York, March 17, 2017: Market Research Hub has recently added a new report to its report offerings, entitled as China Quality Management Software Market Research Report 2017. This report provides comprehensive information about the market covering all the aspects of the industry. It provides a wide-ranging study with value chain analysis. It also include drivers & restraints and a forecast is made 2017-2022.Request for Sample Report:Firstly, the report begins with a basic outline of the management software market including its scope, business overview, product overview, applications and business processes. China quality management software market analysis is prepared bearing in mind the major raw materials, price trend of key raw materials, suppliers of raw materials and market concentration rate of raw materials. Other aspects affecting the manufacturing cost structure including manufacturing expenses, labor cost, rentals and other recurring expenses are also examined. Upstream and downstream analysis is carried out for raw materials sourcing and buyers.Marketing strategies are provided by taking inputs from industry experts and researchers for improved growth and development. Marketing systems involving distributors, traders, market positioning, marketing channels, marketing channel development trends, brand strategies and pricing strategies. Factors like technological risks, substitutes threat, technological progress in related industries, changing consumer desires & preferences and political & economic environmental change that stall the growth are discussed.Moreover, segregation is done based on geography into the following:South ChinaEast ChinaSouthwest ChinaNortheast ChinaNorth ChinaCentral ChinaNorthwest ChinaOn the basis of product type, total market is split into Cloud and On-premise. For each type, production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate is examined. On the basis of application, market is divided into IT and telecom, logistics, consumer goods and retail, transportation, defense and aerospace, manufacturing, healthcare and other. Factors like consumption, market share and growth rate of Quality Management Software are provided for each type.This report focuses on the top players in Chinese market which includes Aras Corporation, Arena Solutions, Autodesk, DassaultSystemes, EtQ, IntelexTechnolgyInc, IQMS, MasterControl, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Parasoft Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, PSC Biotech Corp, PTC, Siemens, SAP, SAS Institute, Sparta Systems and Verse Solutions. Factors like capacity, production, price, revenue and market share are discussed for each manufacturer.Browse Full Report with TOC:In the end, the report studies key statistics related to the industry and provide important suggestions and directions for individuals and companies interested in the market. The feasibility report for new investments is prepared and overall research conclusions are provided. Information about latest happenings and future prospect are provided. Overall, the report provides a detailed insight of China Quality Management Software Market and Prospects by covering all important aspects and research conclusions.About Market Research HubMarket 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.Contact Us90 State StreetAlbany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel : +1-518-621-2074Email : press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite :Follow us on LinkedIn:
Polyamide-6 Market with Current Trends Analysis, 2016-2026

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Polyamide -6 (PA6) is a semi-crystalline polyamide commonly known as Nylon-6. Polyamide-6 is generally produced by polymerization of caprolacta. The strength, durability and elasticity which it offers is widely appreciated in industries. Properties such as ability to withstand high pressure, temperature and various chemical makes it a highly valued material. These physical and chemical properties makes Polyamide-6 suitable for various application sectors. Of all the Polyamides types produced, Polyamide-6 accounts for approximately more than 60% of worldwide production in terms of volume. The global capacity of Polyamide-6 in 2013 is anticipated to be approximately 6.6 million metric tons.Polyamide -6 Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe major drivers for the global polyamide-6 market is its usage is its wide application sectors such as automotive, electronics & electrical, engineering plastics, packaging, wires & cables, textiles, and films & coating and others. Therefore, increasing demand for the above application sectors is expected to have a positive impact on the market in the coming years. The numerous niche applications for PA6 such as its usage in healthcare & music instruments is expected to positively affect the demand for polyamide 6 (PA6) in the coming years.Request Report Sample@Though the polyamide-6 (PA6) is regarded as one of the ideal materials for its physical and chemical properties yet some properties such as high shrinkage in molded sections, reaction with strong acids and bases may hamper the selection of PA6. Over specification, such as in automotive industry regarding the safety reasons may drift towards alternative products such as reinforced polypropylene, thereby restraining the growth of PA6. The insufficient flame retardance and significant flammable dripping might affect the use of PA6.Polyamide -6 Market: SegmentationOn the basis of type, the global polyamide-6 market is segmented into:Polyamide-6 (PA6) FiberPolyamide-6 (PA6) ResinOn the basis of application, global Polyamide -6 Market is segmented into:TransportationElectrical and ElectronicsTextileIndustrial ApplicationOthers (includes music, healthcare, coating sector)Polyamide -6 Market: Region Wise OutlookThe consumption of Polyamide-6 is expected to grow at a significant CAGR of more than 5% during the forecast period, globally. Asia Pacific especially China, Japan, Taiwan and India are the major consumers of polyamide-6 since this region offers significant opportunities for Polyamide-6 in various application sectors such as transportation, electrical & electronics, textiles and others. It is estimated that by the end of 2015, China and Taiwan would account for approximately half of the worlds polyamide-6 production in terms of volume. Demand for polyamide-6 in regions such as North America and Latin America is forecasted to grow at a stagnant CAGR.Request For TOC@Polyamide -6 Market: Key PlayersSome of the market participants in the global polyamide-6 (PA6) market are BASF SE, Honeywell International Inc., DuPont, Royal DSM N.V., UBE INDUSTRIES, LTD., Invista, Formosa Plastics Corporation, Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals and 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:616 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:
Growth Of Cigarette Market in Netherlands  Business Trends And Forecast

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Albany, New York, March 17, 2017: A latest research report labeled as Cigarettes in Netherlands 2016 has been added to the vast portfolio of Market Research Hubs online research offerings. Cigarettes in Netherlands 2016 is an analytical report by GlobalData that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the Spanish market. The report offers Market size and structure of the overall and per capita consumption based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing analysis, and our in-house expertise. The report delivers a thorough analysis of the market current status and future growth prospects for the forecast period of 2017-2022. Also, major dynamics such as drivers, restraints and opportunities for the growth in the global market have been included.Request for Sample Report:The cigarettes market in Netherlands has always been one of the most stable in Europe. The market was positive in 2014 although a fall still occurred as specific excise was again increased. Volumes dropped by 4.4% to 10.22 billion pieces as a result. Forecasts for 2015 are more hopeful with only a 1.1% fall expected to 10.10 billion pieces. The Netherlands had, until recently, one of the largest cigarette manufacturing industries in Western Europe, despite only having a modest domestic market, due to its position as an important export production base for Philip Morris and also until recently BAT.Scope:- The Netherlands had, until recently, one of the largest cigarette manufacturing industries in Western Europe, despite only having a modest domestic market, due to its position as an important export production base for Philip Morris and also until recently BAT.- The Netherlands had until recently maintained a fairly moderate tax regime, increasing taxation only slowly and maintaining consumption level fairly stable. The market was more positive in 2014 although a fall still occurred as specific excise was again increased.- Volumes dropped by 4.4% to 10.22 billion pieces as a result. Forecasts for 2015 are more hopeful with only a 1.1% fall expected to 10.10 billion pieces.- The pipeline guide encapsulates all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects.- The pipeline guide reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) (Infectious Disease)Browse Full Report With TOC:Reasons to buy- Get 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.About Market Research Hub: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.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comFollow us on:Twitter: twitter.com/MktResearchHubLinkedIn:Facebook:
FMI Releases New Report on the Tumour Ablation Devices Market 2016-2026

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Tumours are the groups of abnormal cells that accumulate together and form lumps and grow consistently. Tumour are categorized into noncancerous and cancerous tumours. Precancerous conditions have the potential of developing into cancer. Tumour ablation is a tool utilized to treat cancerous malignancy. Tumour ablation is the process of removing the cancerous cells from the body. Tumour ablation became more useful during 1970s and 1980s due to advances in laparoscopic surgical approach. The most common means for definitive treatment of primary and metastatic focal malignancy, is the evolution of imaging devices during the past two decades and image-guided tumour ablation.Tumour Ablation Devices Market: Drivers & RestraintsIncreasing prevalence and incidences of cancers, technological advances and increasing geriatric population, increasing numbers of hospitals and healthcare awareness are facilitating the growth of global tumour ablation devices market. Additionally, economic pricing, short recovery time, low risk of infection, and minimal hospital stays are increasing the importance of tumour ablation devices.Side effects associated with ablation treatment and limited performance of the devices are the factors restraining the growth of global tumour ablation device market.Request Report Sample@Tumour Ablation Devices Market: SegmentationThe global tumour ablation devices market has been classified on the basis of product type, application and end user:On the basis of product type, the tumour ablation devices market is segmented into the followingRadiofrequency ablationLaser ablationHigh intensity focused ultrasound ablationMicrowave ablationCryo ablationBased on application type, the tumour ablation devices market is segmented into the followingLiver Cancerkidney CancerColorectal CancerBone CancerBreast CancerLung CancerProstate CancerOther CancersBased on end use type, the tumour ablation devices market is segmented into the following:Hospitalso 500 and more beds hospitalso 200 to 499 beds hospitalso Less than 200 beds hospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersRequest For TOC@Tumour Ablation Devices Market: OverviewThe lung cancer application segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the next five years due to large patient population of lung cancer present across developing and developed regions. This has increased the investment of manufacturers to develop and commercialize innovative lung cancer ablation products. The radiofrequency ablation is widely used technique due to specificity of treating target tissue without causing damage to the surrounding cells. Microwave ablation product segment is expected to grow significantly due to increase in adoption rate of microwave ablation devices by healthcare professionals.Tumour Ablation Devices Market: Region-wise OutlookRegion wise, the global tumour ablation market is classified into regions namely, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East and Africa.The global market is expected to be dominated by North America due to factors such as early introduction and adoption of rate of tumour ablation products in the region, trend of replacing older technologies and introducing the new technologies, and increase in private and public funding to develop and commercialize the novel tumour ablation products.The Asia-Pacific market is expected to grow at a higher CAGR in the forecast period due to factors such as large population with the high prevalence of various cancers in the region, government initiatives for developing and modernizing the healthcare infrastructure.Tumour Ablation Devices Market: Key PlayersKey players of tumour ablation devices market are Boston Scientific Corporation, St. Jude Medical, Inc., Biotronic NeuroNetwork, LLC, Baylis Medical, biolitec AG, Spectranetics, Esaote SpA, ALPINION MEDICAL SYSTEMS Co., Ltd., Chongqing Haifu Medical Technology Co., Ltd., Koninklijke Philips N.V, Hironic Co., Ltd., Monteris Medical, Inc, EDAP TMS, EYE TECH CARE, NeuWave Medical, Inc, Vison medical, AtriCure, Inc, Galil Medical Inc, ENDOCARE INC, IceCure Medical, Sanarus HealthTronics, Inc, MEDTRONIC, MedWaves, AngioDynamics, Microsulis Medical, Perseon, SympleSurgical Inc. to name a few.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Beautiful home renovation ideas for Adelaide homes

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Australia 17-03-2017. King Constructions is the leader in industry who gladly serves in commercial, light industry, new residential builds and home renovations, property development and interior design. While renovating home, hiring professionals can make all difference and you can even reduce your stress. They will manage your renovation project from conception to completion and never let you bother. If you want to transform your home into your dream home then you need to hire expert services for home renovations in Adelaide.Home renovation usually covers a number of things and it is really a wise investment you can ever do. You can transform the interior or exterior of home or can only transform kitchen or bathroom. By utilizing unique bathroom designs or making use of latest bathroom equipments, you can make your bathroom more inviting. There must be range of designs for Adelaide bathroom renovations and you should chose according to your needs, ideas and requirements.When it comes to home renovations in Adelaide then you often need professional and skilled services from experts to carry out the renovation process. Leading construction companies must provide you the best standard of building solutions to exceed your expectations. Home renovation doesnt only boost the value of home but also improves the appearance and make it more comfortable place to live. No doubt, home is the place where we spend our most of time so it needs to be comfortable and ideal to live. If you want to modify your old home in new way or just want to increase living space home renovation is the merely a way will definitely work over your need.Home renovation is quick and simple process, if you have reference of right building company in Adelaide. For your any type of home renovation project, King Constructions is the leading building company can easily meet your needs.For extremely professional and skilled home renovation services simply visit at:King Constructions is the full service construction company in Adelaide specializes in commercial, light industrial, new residential builds, home renovations, property development and interior design. It provides extremely professional construction services whenever you want kitchen of bathroom renovation in Adelaide.When it comes to home renovation in Adelaide then King Constructions is the company to contact.37 Percy st Prospect, 5082, Adelaide, South Australia,Australia
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Market - Improved Productivity with IIoT Systems Favors Growth

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The report on industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) opens a discussion about the various factors determining the progress of the global market. The research report, titled Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016  2023, has been compiled using primary and secondary research methodologies to offer readers a detailed understanding of the trajectory of the global market. The publication includes interviews, recommendations, and valuable comments of market leaders. Additionally, the report also includes a SWOT analysis that presents an explanation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by the various segments of the IIoT market.The ability of IIoT systems to analyze data and offer solutions to improve productivity has won heart of consumers across various industrial verticals. Today, they are being used for industrial as well as for personal usages. The remarkable developments in the cloud technology has propelled the global market in recent years. Integration of cloud solutions has enabled better accessibility, affordability, and unlimited storage for end users. The global IIoT market has also received a push with initiatives such as Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) established by companies such as AT&T Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corporation, General Electric Company, and International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Analysts anticipate that the increasing availability of low-priced and exceptionally efficient sensors will also contribute to the growth of the global market. Furthermore, the lack of margin for error in industries such as defense, aerospace, healthcare, energy, transportation, and manufacturing is projected to boost the adoption of IIoT systems. The phenomenal innovation in big data analytics is also expected to create several lucrative opportunities for the overall market in the near future.Geographically, the global IIoT market is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Europe. Of these, North America is expected to dominate the overall market in the coming years due to high awareness about technological innovations in the region. Analysts expect that Asia Pacific will also show a steady growth in the market due to the growth of the manufacturing and healthcare industry.Some of the leading players operating in the global industrial internet Schneider Electric SE, General Electric Company, Intel Corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation, Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., AT&T Inc., Siemens AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Rockwell Automation Inc., and Accenture PLC. The research report provides a fair assessment of these market players and elaborates on their business and marketing strategy for the coming few years. Additionally, the publication also provides an explanation about the threat from substitutes and new entrants with the help of a Porters five forces analysis. The research report has been aimed at giving the readers a comprehensive overview of the global market in a detailed manner.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
How to help students overcome fear of failure

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Considerable research has been done into the human psyche to know why we are afraid of failures and how we can adapt our thoughts and behaviour to overcome this emotion. It has been documented that fear of failure is directly associated to self-worth. It has been found that students put themselves through unbelievable psychological plans to avoid failure and maintain a sense of self-worth.Some of the best schools in Delhi are working towards using such techniques in classroom, which condition students mindsets and enable them to acquire self belief. It is only through confidence and strength of beliefs that one overcomes challenges. It has also been observed that some of the nursery schools in Delhi believe in conditioning students right at the preschool level. As they grow up, they will turn out to be confident individuals who do not give up in any situation.The faculty at Presidium school understands this concept and drives its students towards overcoming their fears and achieve their dreams. Here are some important tips for teachers for helping students deal with feelings of failure and help them to achieve their true potential:1. Emphasize effort over ability:Many teachers have started giving more importance to student efforts rather than their ability. This is particularly important for teachers of primary students at nursery schools, as research shows that when children get older, they tend to give more value to ability over effort.Teachers should provide specific feedback that recognizes and praises the efforts of students. Studies show that students who receive this kind of feedback are motivated to succeed and have the belief that they can succeed. Advice them to try harder if they fail even after putting in a lot of effort to succeed, otherwise, they will doubt their abilities and eventually start accepting failure.2. Encourage students to practice self-compassion:The heart of the fear of failure lies somewhere between self-acceptance and being able to see ourselves as who we really are. This is where self-compassion should set in. Rather than making our self-worth dependable on academic success, appearance, or popularity, we should value ourselves only for the fact that we are human beings and should learn to accept that failure is part of the human experience.If we practice this, it is easier for us to extend compassion to ourselves when we fail. Rather than self loathing for not being perfect in academics, we should practice self-assurance which is kind and compassionate. This makes it easier to look realistically at the situation that caused failure and then consider how to improve next time.Research shows that people who practice self-compassion recover quickly from failure and are likely to try new things.3. Build positive relationships with students:This is specifically important for those students who accept failure. Research shows that students are motivated to try their best when the teachers who they are attached to value their performance in academic tasks. Students are less motivated when faced with teachers who they feel do not care about them.Talking to students about how the fear of failure will impact their lives is crucial. When subjected to such conversations, they feel grateful for the information as it helps them to take control of their attitude and behaviour in school.Understanding how the complexity of fear can lead some students to success in school while pushing others to give up-makes it clear that telling students to have courage and deal with the situation makes all the difference.Gaining a better understanding of the fear of failure makes us more compassionate and understanding towards students as well as ourselves. The key is that teachers should know their students well and identify when they are starting to engage in behaviour that encourages acceptance of failure. These little changes could make a positive impact on students and help them in school as well as in life.Presidium SchoolPresidium is a senior secondary school redefining education in India. It was conceived and established by renowned educationist and popular parenting expert, Mrs.Sudha Gupta.School Name: Presidium SchoolBusiness Type: EducationWork Phone: 7838654446, 41781100, 32417772Email ID: info@presidiumonline.comWebsite:
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market to be Driven by Rising Incidence of Neurological Disorders

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The market for neurorehabilitation devices holds a lot of potential, analysts have found. Already well-established markets in North America and Europe, coupled with immense growth opportunities in the emerging economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America indicate the favorable pace at which the global neurorehabilitation devices market is likely to grow over the coming years. The introduction of wearable technology and robotics has been having a tremendous impact on the development of neurorehabilitation devices and this push by researchers and device manufacturers alike is exactly what the global market needs.Browse Market Research Report @The emergence of several new therapies over the past few years and the potential presented by additional investigational treatments are anticipated to drive the value of the neurorehabilitation devices market from US$894.9 mn in 2015 to US$3.2 bn by 2024 at a 15.5% CAGR therein.Alarming Rise in Road Traffic Incidents in Asia a Leading Growth DriverThe global market for neurorehabilitation devices comprises five main regional segments: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa.The alarming rise in the incidence of stroke has driven the North America neurorehabilitation devices market to account for a 42% share in 2015. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that almost 130,000 Americans die from stroke each year, with an average of one America dying from stroke every 4 minutes. This wide-spread prevalence of stroke, resulting in various neurological disorders, is forecast to boost the demand for neurorehabilitation devices in North America from 2016 to 2024. Neurological disorders are also brought on with age and as a result, countries with a large geriatric population base are likely to be the potential markets for neurorehabilitation devices. This is one of the key factors driving the market in Europe, especially in countries such as Spain, Germany, France, the U.K., and Italy.Asia accounts for an estimated two-third of the worlds disabled population and the number is projected to rise in the next decade. This can be attributed to not just the growing incidence of stroke in the region but to the alarmingly high road traffic fatality rates. Asia is home to highest percentage of traumatic brain injury resulting from road traffic accidents, unintentional injuries, and falls. These patients demand the availability of neurorehabilitation devices, thereby rendering the Asia Pacific region a massively lucrative market for global as well as regional players, registering a 17.0% CAGR from 2016 to 2024.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Growing Prevalence of Parkinsons Disease in Developed Countries Presents Major OpportunityNeurorehabilitation devices include brain computer interfaces, neurorobotic systems, wearable devices, and non-invasive brain stimulators. Neurorobotic systems held the largest share in the neurorehabilitation devices market in 2015 and is likely to continue its dominance in the market over the course of the forecast period. Non-invasive brain stimulators, on the other hand, are projected to witness the highest growth rate from 2016 to 2024.The major applications of neurorehabilitation devices include traumatic brain injury, Parkinsons disease, stroke, spinal cord injury, and cerebral palsy. The demand for neurorehabilitation devices for Parkinsons disease is estimated to register the fastest growth rate during forecast period owing to the rising incidence of Parkinsons in developed countries such as the U.K., the U.S., Iceland, Finland, and Ireland.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. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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:
IoT Sensors Market - By Type - Accelerometers, Gyroscopes, Magnetometers, Pressure Sensors, Temperature Sensors, Light Sensors

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Internet of Things (IoT) is a network that is embedded with sensors, electronics, network connectivity, and software enabling physical objects to gather and exchange data. As IoT rises into dominance, sensors are playing a pivotal role for measuring the physical quality of objects and enumerating it into a value, which can be read by another device or user. IoT devices are equipped with sensors which are capable of registering changes in pressure, temperature, motion, light, and sound. In the physical world, more and more objects can now communicate with each other through embedded IoT sensors, actuators, and tags. The global IoT sensors market has been segmented on the basis of types, application and geography. In addition, an exhaustive cross sectional analysis of the global IoT sensors market across four broad regions has been covered under the scope of the study.A surge in demand for IoT sensors in the automotive industry and the booming Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market are strongly driving the growth of the IoT sensors market. Furthermore, increase in demand for consumer electronics and growing demand for smart devices is boosting the market growth. Smart devices account for a considerable portion of consumer electronics. Thus, increasing global sales of consumer electronics is fueling growth of the IoT sensors market. While smartphones and related products are already used to a large extent, smart electricity, gas and water meters are expected to witness rising demand over the next few years. The conjoint effect of all these trends and drivers is thus set to bolster the growth of the global IoT sensors market during the forecast period.For more information on this report, fill the form @Stringent government regulations and policies across the globe are encouraging the development of smart cities and this is offering a potential growth opportunity to the global IoT sensors market. IoT sensors would be used in smart cities in smart meters, smart grids, intelligent traffic management systems, and smart parking among others. Further, technological advancements in the medical industry are set to offer a substantial opportunity for the growth of the IoT sensors market. The deployment of healthcare devices using IoT sensors could transform the healthcare industry by focusing on better patient care, lowering costs, and increasing efficiency. The IoT sensors market has huge opportunity and scope in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Rest of the world (RoW). Emergence of new players in the developing markets such as China, Japan, India, Australia, Russia, and Brazil coupled with the adoption of better and advanced technologies has led to the increase in competitiveness in the market.The competitive profiling of the key players in the global IoT sensors market across four broad geographic regions is included in the study. These include different business strategies adopted by the leading players and their recent developments as in the field of IoT sensors. The market attractive analysis of the major application areas has been provided in the report, in order to offer a deep insight of global IoT sensors market.A comprehensive analysis of the market dynamics that is inclusive of market drivers, restraints and opportunities is included in the purview of the report. Market dynamics are the distinctive factors which impact the market growth, thereby helping to understand the ongoing trends of the global market. Therefore, the report provides the forecast of the global market for the period from 2015 to 2023, along with offering an inclusive study of the IoT sensors market.Some of the major players in the IoT sensors market are: Infineon Technologies (Germany), STMicroelectronics N.V. (Switzerland), IBM (U.S.), Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), Ericsson (Sweden), InvenSense Inc. (U.S.), Libelium (Spain), ARM Holdings Plc. (U.K.) and Digi International Inc. (U.S.) among others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Special Purpose Needles Market to be a US$ 17.26 Bn Market by 2026

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Special purpose needles are used in target specific drug deliveries or collection of samples such as fluid and cells from organs or lumps and are available in the market with various advanced features, shapes, and sizes. The global market for special purpose needles is showing a steady growth owing to an increasing geriatric population. In terms of revenue, the global special purpose needles market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 7.4% during the forecast period (20162026) and is expected to be valued at US$ 17,261.5 million by the end of 2026.The global special purpose needles market can be segmented on the basis of product type (Fine Aspirating Needles, Biopsy Needles, Hypodermic Needles, Pen Needles, Suture Needles, IV Catheter Needles, Implantation Needles, Dental Needles, Ophthalmic Needles, Blood Collection Needles, Spinal Anaesthesia Needles, Epidural Needles, AV Fistula Needles, Cannula Needles); application (Sample Collection, Drug Delivery); and distribution channel (Hospital Pharmacies,Private Clinics, Retail Pharmacies and Drug Stores, E-Commerce). The Hypodermic Needles product type segment and the Drug Delivery application segment are projected to dominate the global special purpose needles market in terms of value. The Hospital Pharmacies distribution channel segment is expected to hold maximum share of the global special purpose needles market.Key market dynamicsIncreasing prevalence of diabetes and infectious diseases and increasing incidence of cancer and spine disorders across the globe are the primary factors driving the growth of the global special purpose needles market. Growing government regulations on the use of safety needles, increasing focus on advanced healthcare systems, joint efforts by supply chain executives to increase efficiency, and rising government support in developed economies is creating high potential growth opportunities for players operating in the global special purpose needles market. However, high costs associated with special purpose needles, an increasing awareness of needle-free injection technology, and product recalls due to low quality are some of the factors likely to impede growth of the special purpose needles market over the forecast period.Request For Sample@The global special purpose needles market is likely to witness some key trends in the next 10 years. There is an increasing collaboration between the government and private medical companies to raise awareness among patients regarding the unsafe use of reusable needles. Companies are also directing their efforts towards the production of user-friendly safety needles to prevent needle injuries that are the main cause of a rising prevalence of HIV and other blood borne diseases.Regional market projectionsThe global special purpose needles market is segmented into seven main regions  North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, and Middle East & Africa (MEA). In terms of value, North America is expected to be the dominant regional market by the end of 2016 and is expected to reach a market valuation of US$ 5,506.7 Mn by the end of 2026, registering a CAGR of 8.2% over the forecast period. APEJ is expected to be the fastest growing market in terms of revenue growth in the global special purpose needles market, registering a CAGR of 7.7% over the forecast period. The APEJ market is anticipated to reach US$ 2,383.1 Mn by the end of 2026. The markets in North America, Western Europe, and APEJ are estimated to collectively hold 74.7% market share of the global special purpose needles market in 2016.Leading market playersMedtronic, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Terumo Corporation, Smiths Medical, Boston Scientific Corporation, Novo Nordisk A/S, Argon Medical Devices, Inc., Stryker Corporation, NIPRO Medical Corporation, Cook Medical, and SERAG-WIESSNER GmbH & Co. are some of the major players operating in the global special purpose needles market.Send An Enquiry@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.comWebsite:
Global Coconut Water Market- Yeniu, Yedao, VITA COCO, Tradecons GmbH, Taste Nirvana, Sococo

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Global Market Study Evaluate on Coconut Water Industry by Type, Manufacturers, Application, Type, and Regions, Forecast up to 2022The scope of the global Coconut Water market report is:This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Coconut Water market. It does so by in-depth qualitative insights, historical Coconut Water market data, and verifiable projections about global Coconut Water market size. The projections featured in the Coconut Water market report have been derived using proven research assumptions and methodologies. By doing so, the Coconut Water market research report serves as a repository of analysis and Coconut Water industry information for every facet.The global Coconut Water market can be segmented on the basis of Type, Coconut Water Manufacturers, Regions, and Applications. Geographically, Coconut Water market can be divided into Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle-East & Africa (MEA), and South America.Enquire Here Before Accessing the Coconut Water Report with complete TOC atGlobal Coconut Water Market Segment: By Key Players/Manufacturers Analysis* Yeniu* Yedao* VITA COCO* Tradecons GmbH* Taste Nirvana* Sococo* Pepsico(ONE,Amacoco)* PECU* Naked Juice* Maverick Brands* Grupo Serigy* Edward & Sons* Coconut Palm Group* CocoJal* Coca-Cola(Zico)* C2O Pure Coconut Water* Beiqi* Amy & BrianGlobal Coconut Water Market Segment: By Applications Analysis* 0-14 yrs* 15-34 yrs* 35-54 yrs* 55 yrs upGlobal Coconut Water Market Segment: By Type Analysis* Pure Coconut Water* Mixed Coconut WaterGlobal Coconut Water market regional analysis covers:* Latin America Coconut Water Market (Middle and Africa)* EuropeCoconut Water Market (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)* Asia-Pacific Coconut Water Market (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)* North America Coconut Water Market (Canada, Mexico and USA)Highlights of Global Coconut Water market report:Global Coconut Water Market includes Manufacturers Profiles in Coconut Water Market with their Business OverviewIt also includes Coconut Water market by Type and ApplicationCoconut Water Market by Price, Revenue, Sales and Coconut Water Business ShareGlobal Coconut Water Market Competition, by manufacturer, Coconut Water Sales and Coconut Water Revenue by Regions (2012-2017)Request Sample Coconut Water Research Report atGlobal Coconut Water Market report mainly covers 12 sections. They are as follows:Section 1 gives us Coconut Water Introduction, market overview, product scope, Coconut Water market opportunities, market threat, Coconut Water market driving force;Section 2 shows the global Coconut Water market by regions, with sales, Coconut Water market share and revenue of Coconut Water, for each region, from 2017 to 2022;Section 3 and 4 displays Coconut Water market forecast, by regions, application and type, with revenue and sales of Coconut Water market, from 2017 to 2022;Section 5 shows the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share of Coconut Water market in 2016 and 2017;Section 6 covers the global Coconut Water market key regions, with sales, market share and revenue by key countries in these regions, from 2012 to 2017;Section 7, 8 and 9 analyzes the top manufacturers of Coconut Water, with revenue, sales and price of Coconut Water, in 2016 and 2017;Section 10 shows the global Coconut Water market by type and application, with sales Coconut Water market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Section 11 and 12 at last, gives details about Coconut Water sales channel, traders, distributors for Coconut Water industry, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source;About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Market.Biz has access to the worlds most comprehensive and up-to-date databases in your business sector, including countless market reports that can provide you with valuable data relating to your business. We understand the needs of our clients, and keep our reports updated as market requirement changes.Contact Us:James JohnsonS. no. 51/14 First Floor,Office No. 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, Pune.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Blog:
Balloon Catheter Market Estimated to be Valued at US$ 4,191.7 Mn by 2026

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Balloon catheter is an innovative medical device that comprises guidewire and catheter, which is inserted into the femoral artery in the leg or sometimes into the radial artery in the arm to treat constricted blood vessels. These products are generally used to prevent blood vessel constriction caused due to atherosclerosis  deposition of lipid substances in the blood vessel. In terms of revenue, the global balloon catheter market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 3.8% during the forecast period and is expected to be valued at US$ 4,191.7 million by the end of 2026. The global balloon catheter market is expected to represent US$ 1,304.3 Mn in terms of incremental opportunity between 2016 and 2026.The global balloon catheter market is segmented on the basis of product type (Normal Balloon Catheter, Cutting Balloon Catheter, Scoring Balloon Catheter, Drug Eluting Balloon Catheter, Stent Graft Balloon Catheter); disease indication (Coronary Artery Disease, Peripheral Vascular Disease); raw material (Polyurethane, Nylon, Others); and end user (Public Hospitals & Private Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratories). The drug eluting balloon catheter segment is expected to expand at a significant CAGR of 20.0% over the forecast period owing to the unique benefits offered by these balloon catheters in the treatment of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). The stent graft balloon catheter segment is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.0% in terms of value over the forecast period.Factors and trends impacting the marketThe global market for balloon catheters is expected to witness moderate growth rate in terms of value owing to increasing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and growing number of cardiology intervention procedures globally. Moreover, growing healthcare expenditure and reimbursement support for vascular disorders, increasing geriatric population, introduction of next generation drug eluting balloon catheters, and increasing research and development activities for multipurpose balloon catheters is creating high potential growth opportunities for players operating in the global balloon catheter market.Request For Sample@A high cost of coronary angioplasty and stenting treatment and risk of infection and artery collapse associated with balloon catheterisation is likely to hinder market growth over the forecast period.The global balloon catheter market is likely to witness some key trends influencing the market in the next 10 years. Growth in interventional cardiology is facilitating the use of advanced balloon catheters such as drug eluting balloon catheters. Also, the prevalence of patients suffering from end stage renal disease and an increasing number of patients undergoing renal replacement therapy is likely to increase the use of balloon catheters for treatment. Further, the manufacturing of low cost balloon catheters and adoption of capacity expansion is expected to provide key opportunities for the growth of the global balloon catheter market.Regional market projectionsThe global balloon catheter market is segmented into seven key regions  North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, and MEA. Revenue from the balloon catheter market in APEJ is expected to expand at a relatively higher CAGR (4.2%) due to an increase in the elderly population in countries such as China and India. The APEJ market is expected to account for 20.8% revenue share in the global balloon catheter market by 2026. North America is expected to be most attractive market in the global balloon catheter market over the forecast period and is estimated to account for 32.2% revenue share in 2016. Revenue from the Japan balloon catheter market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 3.9% from 2016 to 2026.Send An Enquiry@Key playersBoston Scientific Inc., Medtronic, Terumo Corporation, MicroPort Scientific Corporation, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Jotech GmbH, QX Medical LLC, Meril Life Pvt. Ltd., Hexacath, Abbott Laboratories, Tokai Medical Products Inc., Biosensors International Ltd., Cook Medical Inc., Cardionovum GmbH, Cordis Corporation, and Biotronik Inc. are the leading companies operating in the global balloon catheter market.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.comWebsite:
Peripheral Intravenous Catheter Market worth US$ 5.22 Bn by 2021

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Peripheral intravenous catheter is a sophisticated medical device widely used to deliver certain fluids, especially medicines, into a patients body through a vein. It is a critically important part of a medical treatment procedure that facilitates drug delivery through an intravenous route. It can also be used in body fluid collection for a patients physical examination. PIVC is considered ideal for easy, direct administration of antibiotics, IVs, analgesics, and psycoleptics. It plays a vital role in prevention of blood-borne pathogenic infections. These attributes are currently driving the market for peripheral intravenous catheter on a global level.FMI indicates that the global peripheral intravenous catheter market will see steady growth over the next few years. The market is predicted to expand at a CAGR of 6.1% over 2016-2021. The revenues are estimated to reach US$ 5.22 Bn by the end of 2021.Disease Prevalence and Frequent Epidemics Spur Demand for PIVCIncreasing disease prevalence and rising incidences of infection will continue to spur the demand for catheterisation in hospitals, healthcare centres, ambulatory surgical centres, clinics, and home healthcare units. Soaring frequency of disease epidemics is anticipated to generate substantial demand for peripheral intravenous catheters in order to accomplish patient examination, diagnosis, and treatment. This is likely to include a larger share of PIVCs, compared to other catheters.Increasing Preference for Safety IV Catheters Primarily Drive MarketIncreased spending on healthcare and advancements in healthcare infrastructure will continue to hold a positive influence on market growth. Moreover, the advent of PIVC technology will further boost the sales. Rising ability to afford expensive medical treatments, such as catheterization, will remain a key driver to market growth. User-friendly material composition of peripheral intravenous catheters compared to other counterparts, is another factor that makes them a preferred choice among physicians as well as patients.Request For Sample@Improvisation of PIVC Material and Design Favour Market GrowthTechnological innovations in catheterization technique are also expected to propel the demand for peripheral intravenous catheters. Growing usage of non-irritant, harmless, and user-friendly materials in manufacturing of PIVC can reportedly eliminate associated ill effects and risks, extending the expected PIVC access. Moreover, manufacturers have already started improving PIVC design to overcome the complications associated with previous designs. This is considered to be an important factor influencing the market growth.Expensive PIVC Price Hampers Market Growth, Especially in Developing RegionsDespite having a wide range of advantages, the PIVC market has to face certain technological and qualitative complications, as well as price restraints. Higher costs and reported complications and ill effects of PIVC, such as needle-stick injuries and exposure of blood, may remain a longstanding barrier to mass adoption of peripheral intravenous catheter in near future. Unaffordable catheterisation procedure can hamper PIVC penetration in developing markets in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Conventional PIVC sales is likely to witness a significant drop owing to stringent regulatory measures related to medical devices in some regions, including EU, Japan, China, Brazil, and Russia.Short PIVC Continue to Gain Higher TractionOn the basis of product, the global peripheral intravenous catheter market is segmented into the short peripheral intravenous catheter and integrated/closed peripheral intravenous catheter. Short PIVC segment is sub-segmented into ported peripheral IV catheter and non-ported peripheral IV catheter, and will dominate market with nearly 67% value share, expanding at a moderate CAGR over 2016-2021. However, integrated/closed PIVC segment will witness the highest CAGR of 5.5% during the forecast period.Safety PIVC Highly Preferred over Other Catheter ProductsBased on technology, safety PIVC segment is estimated to dominate the market, accounting for the largest revenue share by 2021 end. This segment will witness a promising CAGR during the forecast period, attributed to user-friendly material composition and extended access.Hospitals Continue to Generate Highest Demand for PIVC, Followed by Ambulatory Surgical UnitsBy end-user, the global market for peripheral intravenous catheter is segmented into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centres, clinics, home use, and others. Hospitals segment is expected to register the highest revenues by the end of 2021, accounting for a dominating market share. Ambulatory surgical centres segment is likely to remain the second-largest segment, contributing significantly to the entire market revenues.North America Remains the Largest Shareholder, Asia Pacific Witnesses the Fastest GrowthNorth America will continue to represent over 45% of the entire market value, reaching the revenues of around US$ 2.37 Bn over 2016-2021. Europe is expected to remain the second largest regional market. APAC will demonstrate the fastest growth rate over the assessment period. This growth is primarily due to burgeoning geriatric population and increasing healthcare expenditure.Send An Enquiry@Product Innovation Remains at the Centre Stage for Key Market PlayersKey companies in the global peripheral intravenous catheter market are B. Braun Melsungen AG, Becton Dickinson and Company, Vygon Group, C. R. Bard, Inc., Smith Medical, Tangent Medical, and Terumo Corporation. B. Barun recently featured one of their latest product advancements - Ster-ASSIST i.e. Sterile Peripheral IV Catheter Insertion Kit (30th Association for Vascular Access (AVA) Annual Scientific Meeting).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.comWebsite:
Advanced Combat Helmet Global Market Industry Analysis Report Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Albany, New York, March 17, 2017: Market Research Hub has recently announced the addition of a new report to it broad database titled as Advanced Combat Helmet Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024. The rapid escalation of global warfare, terrorists activities, cross border insurgencies and internal conflicts among others are increasing the need for more ballistic protective equipment.Request for Sample Report:The advanced combat helmet is a modern combat helmet designed to protect soldiers head during any combat operations. The advanced combat helmet protects the soldiers from severe head injuries caused from gun shots, IED explosion, and inflammable liquids. The headgear is majorly used by military & defense forces and law enforcement agencies across the globe. These helmets are equipped with latest technologies such as night vision cameras and communication system for the ease of the soldier to combat the enemy.The major factors boosting the market for advanced combat helmet are the growing demand for the safety of the soldiers, increasing need for use of the latest technologies, and mounting security threats. The advanced combat helmet protects the military personnel and law enforcement officers from mortar shrapnel, flying glass, explosive fragments among others. The night vision cameras are incorporated into the helmet to help the soldiers and law enforcement officers to operate in the dark as well. The earphones and microphones offer the military personnel and law enforcement officers the ability to communicate with each other and also help in better understanding of situational awareness. The world is facing a rapid growth in terrorism, and security threats which has increased the risk of the life of the soldiers. This has resulted in increase in demand for helmets among the military & defense and law enforcement agencies .However apart from the increasing demand, the advanced combat helmet has few limiting factors which are hindering the growth of the market such as the high cost of the head gear, and malfunctioning of few integrated technologies. The high cost of the scratch resistant glass, Kevlar fiber, night vision cameras and communication systems is increasing the cost of the final product which is hindering the adoption of the advanced combat helmet. Moreover, it has been noticed that few integrated technologies malfunction at times, which jeopardize the on field operations. These factors are inhibiting the growth of the market for advanced combat helmet during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Make an Enquiry:Global Advanced Combat Helmet Market: Scope of the StudyThe advanced combat helmet market is segmented on basis of application and geography. The major two application segments are military & defense and law enforcement agencies. The military & defense is heavily adopting the advanced combat helmet due to increasing security threats from terrorism, border insurgencies and global warfare. The law enforcement officers are responsible for the safeguarding of the nations internal factors from riots and conflicts. During any internal conflicts or riots, the law enforcement officers needs to be equipped with latest technology helmets to protect themselves from bullets, flying glass, and gun shots. This is boosting the advanced combat helmet market among the military & defense forces and law enforcement agencies.Geographically, the advanced combat helmet market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Asia Pacific being the fastest growing market estimated during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are predicted to grow at a significant rate.Global Advanced Combat Helmet Market: Competitive LandscapeThe market attractiveness analysis provided in the report highlights the major segments for investing in the global advanced combat helmet market. The report intends to help the manufacturers, suppliers and distributors to understand the market for advanced combat helmet.Get Full Report With TOC:The report also provides the description of different advanced combat helmet players across the globe. The company descriptions include SWOT analysis, strategies adopted by the companies to sustain in the industry of advanced combat helmet, regional presence and the financial information. The key players in the advanced combat helmet market are ArmorSource LLC, BAE Systems, Gentex Corporation, Honeywell International Inc., Revision Military, Morgan Advanced Material PLC, Ceradyne Inc., Point Blank Enterprises Inc., MKU Limited and DuPont.About Market Research HubMarket 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.Contact Details:90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Follow Us on:Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Lancet and Pen Needles Market to Register a Strong Growth By 2021

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Europe, the Middle East and Africa Lancet & Pen Needles Market including classification, application and industry chain overview; Then we deeply analyzed Europe, the Middle East and Africa growth forecast indicators by the as well as the regional market conditions that including the product price, profit, utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced medical suction device market SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, market share analysis and competitive landscape, company profiles by analyzing the major players It is a depth research study on Europe, the Middle East and Africa Lancet & Pen Needles Market.Request a Sample Copy @Brief TOC for Lancet and Pen Needles Market:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of the Study1.2.1 Research Objectives1.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model3 Report Excerpt4 Forecast Indicators4.1 Introduction4.2 Growth Drivers4.3 Growth Barriers4.4 Growth Opportunities4.5 Macroecnomical Indicators5 Market Analysis6 Europe, the Middle East And Africa Lancet Market, By Type6.1 Introduction6.2 Standard Lancets6.3 Safety LancetsContinueStudy objectives of Lancet and Pen Needles Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Lancet and Pen Needles Market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Lancet and Pen Needles market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by type, by application, by end user and its sub-segments. To provide overview of key players and their strategic profiling in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Lancet and Pen Needles Market.We are thankful for the support and assistance from Europe, the Middle East and Africa Lancet & Pen Needles Market chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.Access Report Details @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
In-Depth Analysis Of Moroccan Cigarette Market Displays Positive Growth Until 2022

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Albany, New York, March 17, 2017: A latest research report labeled as Cigarettes in Morocco 2016 has been added to the vast portfolio of Market Research Hubs online research offerings. Cigarettes in Morocco 2016 is an analytical report by GlobalData that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the Moroccan market. The report offers Market size and structure of the overall and per capita consumption based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing analysis, and our in-house expertise. The report delivers a thorough analysis of the market current status and future growth prospects for the forecast period of 2017-2022. Also, major dynamics such as drivers, restraints and opportunities for the growth in the global market have been included.Request for Sample Report:Morocco is one of Africa's most important and sophisticated cigarette markets. Nonetheless recent years have seen demand slow, with sales falling back between 2012 and 2014 as the effects of rising prices have impacted on demand. Volumes dropped back to 13.10 billion pieces in 2014 or 10.6% below their level in 1990. Despite recent strong growth the effect of price rises, combined with a ban on smoking in public places, have impacted on duty paid demand with the non-duty paid sector benefitting somewhat. The impact of recent increases in excise duty has dented sales volumes. With no further shocks to the market expected GlobalData foresees some degree of recovery in sales with this largely driven by population expansion and some forecasts in the profile of the non-duty paid sector.Scope:- There is a growing preference for blond cigarettes, yet this trend has historically been constrained by supply shortages resulting from limited domestic production capacity. Light products are growing their share of sales, in large part boosted by the success of blond varieties in the market.- The Moroccan cigarette market is dominated by a single company: Imperial Tobacco Maroc. Formerly Rgie de Tabacs. Competitors are obliged to import their products, which automatically puts them at a significant price disadvantage and restricts sales to more affluent consumers and international visitors.- PMI is the leading competitor and JTI is currently the only other notable player.Browse Full Report With TOC:Reasons to buy- Get 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.About Market Research Hub: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.com
Trends in the Connected Home Appliances Market 2016-2026

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Connected home appliances are smart electronic appliances having internet connectivity, which can be accessible from any remote location using mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops. In short, any electronic home appliance if provided with internet connectivity would become connected home appliance. Smart home appliances enable users to monitor and control household activities from remote location. Growth of connected home appliances depends upon various factors such as internet infrastructure availability and smart phone penetration rate of the targeted region. If internet infrastructure of any country is robust and efficient, there would be more demand for connected home appliances. Being the more energy efficient solution compared to their traditional counterparts, connected home appliances are being adopted with substantial high adoption rate across the globe.Connected Home Appliances Market: Drivers and RestraintsPersonal and family security is the primary factor driving the adoption of connected home appliances by consumers across the globe. Over the last decade, adoption of connected home appliances grown quickly with the evolution of consumers who are more technology enthusiast. Also, with increasing adoption of smart phones, consumers are becoming more familiar with touch controls and world of apps which, in turn driving their attraction towards adoption of smart appliances. As connected home appliances generate more profit for the appliance makers as compared to traditional ones, manufacturers are diverting their focus from simple appliance manufacturing business to this business (connected appliance manufacturing), in order to increase their profitability margin. On the other hand, in various under developed or some of developing regions, lack of internet infrastructure and affordability issue are the factors hindering the growth of global connected home appliances market.Request For Report Sample@Connected Home Appliances Market: SegmentationSegmentation of global connected home appliances market is done on the basis of appliance type, technology and region. On the basis of appliance type, global connected home appliances market is segmented into laundry appliances, security appliances (smart alarms and smart lock systems), water treatment appliances, kitchen appliances and others. These segments can further be sub-segmented into their respective sub-segments. As laundry appliances segment is sub-segmented into smart washers, smart dryers and other connected laundry units. Kitchen appliances segment is sub-segmented into smart refrigeration, smart cooking appliances (ranges, wall ovens, range hoods and vents) and cleaning appliances (dishwashers, disposers, trash compactors etc.). Water treatment appliance is sub-segmented into replacement smart filters, smart water heaters, smart water softeners and water filtration systems. Others appliances type includes smart LED lighting, smart air purifiers & filters, smart compactors etc. Among all the aforementioned appliances type segment, kitchen appliance type is estimated to dominant the global connected appliance market and by the end of forecast period others appliance type segment is expected to gain substantial market share in global market. On the basis of technology, global connected home appliances market is segmented into Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth. Among all these technology segments, Wi-Fi technology is the popular one and expected to remain dominant technology segment throughout the forecast period.Geographically, global connected home appliances market is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among all the regions Asia Pacific is the highest contributor in term of revenue in global connected home appliances market followed Europe and North America. In Asia Pacific, china is projected to be the leading market of connected home appliances in near future.Request For TOC@Connected Home Appliances Market: Market PlayersThe key players of global connected home appliances market include AT&T Inc., Honeywell International, Inc., ARRIS Group Inc., Comcast Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung Group, Whirlpool Corporation, General Electric and others.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: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Electronic Security Systems Industry Reach at USD 59 Billion - Panasonic System, Sony, Cisco Systems and Honeywell international

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Market OverviewThe global electronic security systems market is poised to reach at market size of USD ~59 billion by end of year 2022 growing with ~30% CAGR. The growth in the electronic security systems market is driven by the increasing smart cities, rising incidents of security concern, improvement in network infrastructure and technologically advanced security products. Further, the rising demand for CCTV cameras & video surveillance system and investments by government in security projects are boosting the growth of the global electronic security systems market in the upcoming future. However, the factors hindering the growth of the electronic security system market are privacy & security issues, high cost of electronic security systems and lack of consumer awareness.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players 3D Datacom (U.S.) Bosch Security Systems (Germany) 3VR Security, Inc. (U.S.) Honeywell international Inc. (U.S.) A&B Security Group (U.S.) Panasonic System Networks Co. Ltd (Japan) Sony Corporation (Japan) Schneider Electric (France) Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.) A-TEC security system, Inc. (U.S.)Electronic Security Systems MarketThe electronic security systems market can be segmented into its type, end-users and regions. The market has various types such as access control, intrusion detection, vehicle security and video surveillance. Video surveillance systems accounted for the largest market share to help in improving the customers business by providing effective solutions for loss prevention, and merchandising among others. Various end-users of electronic security system comprises of healthcare, BFSI, residential and others. The healthcare, and banking & finance segment accounted for the largest market share, since it provides security solutions to monitor organizational premises and prevent unauthorized access.SegmentationBy Type Access - control, Intrusion detection, Vehicle security, Video surveillanceBy End-user - Healthcare, Residential, Industrial, BFSI, GovernmentBy Region  North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and RowRegional AnalysisNorth-America is the largest region for the electronic security systems market. However, Asia countries, especially China, India and Japan are expected to grow over the forecast periods. China is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic security systems thereby contributing in generating high revenue for electronic security system market. Also, growing civil infrastructure in this region boosting the overall growth of the market.Table of Content1. Executive Summary2. Research Methodology3. Market Dynamics4. Global Electronic Security Systems Market, by Type4.1 Introduction4.2 Access Control4.3 Intrusion Detection4.4 Vehicle Security4.5 Video Surveillance5. Global Electronic Security Systems Market, By End-users6. Regional Market Analysis7. Competition AnalysisContinuedBrowse full ESS Market @List of TablesTable 1 Global Electronic Security Systems Market, By TypeTable 2 Global Electronic Security Systems Market, By End-UsersTable 3 Global Electronic Security Systems Market, By RegionsTable 4 North America Electronic Security Systems, By CountryTable 5 North America Electronic Security Systems, By TypeTable 6 North America Electronic Security Systems, By End-UsersTable 7 Europe Electronic Security Systems, By CountryTable 8 Europe Electronic Security Systems, By TypeTable 9 Europe Electronic Security Systems, By End-UsersTable 10 Asia-Pacific Electronic Security Systems, By CountryContinuedTaste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 100 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on The Electronic Security Systems Market Research Report -Forecast to 2022.List of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Global Electronic Security Systems Market: By Type (%)Figure 3 Global Electronic Security Systems Market: By End-Users (%)Figure 4 Global Electronic Security Systems Market: By RegionFigure 5 North America Electronic Security Systems Market, By Type (%)Figure 6 North America Electronic Security Systems Market, By End-Users (%)Figure 7 North America Electronic Security Systems Market, By Countries (%)Figure 8 Europe Electronic Security Systems Market, By Type (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research FutureAt 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.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.comWeb:
Global Titanium Dental Implants Sales Market Report 2017

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Titanium Dental Implants" to its huge collection of research reports.The Titanium Dental Implants is the target of analysis presented in this research report which is a highly descriptive and insightful publication. It chalks out a detailed, all-inclusive, and logical perspective of the market, casing all crucial categories and their pieces, along with the aspects that have so far shown the potential of having a deep influence on the market over the coming years. The report is therefore a 360-degree representation of the analysis of the current state of market.The market has been quarried to its microscopic nuances, where rudimentary data and key, industry-specific classifications of the market and its elements that are being defined in the overview. The report then moves ahead into a 360 degree analysis of the Titanium Dental Implants, while sticking to phrases of the market, such as specific definitions, applications, industry chain structures, government policies, and recent developments.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The large volumes of data presented in this report, on the Titanium Dental Implants, have been garnered with the aid of different research methodologies, both primary and secondary. This data is further concentrated by means of standard analytical processes based on industry practices, and therefore only the significant sections of information are provided to the readers of this report.The governing and competitive landscape of the Titanium Dental Implants are studied in this research report. The different stages and their details, such as rules, protocols, procedures, and strategies are also included in addition to an analysis of their effect on the overall growth rate of the market. The report also contains a comprehensive analysis of the business profiles of the most influential vendors in the Titanium Dental Implants.Table of ContentsGlobal Titanium Dental Implants Sales Market Report 20171 Titanium Dental Implants Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Titanium Dental Implants1.2 Classification of Titanium Dental Implants1.2.1 Single-stage Titanium Dental Implant1.2.2 Two-stage Titanium Dental Implant1.3 Application of Titanium Dental Implants1.3.1 Hospital1.3.2 Dental Clinic1.4 Titanium Dental Implants Market by Regions1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Titanium Dental Implants (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global Titanium Dental Implants Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Titanium Dental Implants Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Titanium Dental Implants (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Titanium Dental Implants (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.4 Global Titanium Dental Implants (Volume) by Application3 United States Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Application4 China Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 China Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers4.3 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type4.4 China Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by ApplicationBrowse Complete Report with TOC @5 Europe Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers5.3 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Application6 Japan Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)6.1.1 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.2 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)6.1.3 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)6.2 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers6.3 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type6.4 Japan Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Application7 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7.1 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)7.1.1 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)7.1.2 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)7.1.3 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)7.2 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers7.3 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type7.4 Southeast Asia Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Application8 India Titanium Dental Implants (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8.1 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Value (2012-2017)8.1.1 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)8.1.2 India Titanium Dental Implants Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)8.1.3 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)8.2 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers8.3 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by Type8.4 India Titanium Dental Implants Sales and Market Share by ApplicationAbout UsQYReseachReports.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. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Disk Stack Centrifuge Market- Alfa Laval , Flottweg , GEA , Gruppo Pieralisi , Huading Separator, HAUS Centrifuge Technologie

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Global Disk Stack Centrifuge Market report 2017 is an in-depth research on the current situation of the Disk Stack Centrifuge industry.The Scope of the Disk Stack Centrifuge research report:The Global Disk Stack Centrifuge Market primarily includes a basic overview of the Disk Stack Centrifuge industry. It also includes Disk Stack Centrifuge definitions, classifications and applications. It segments the market by applications, types, regions, competitive players and also analyzes Disk Stack Centrifuge market size, business share and Disk Stack Centrifuge revenue, price and sales. The report mainly covers the Disk Stack Centrifuge market in North America, the Disk Stack Centrifuge market in Europe, the Disk Stack Centrifuge market in Asia-Pacific, the Disk Stack Centrifuge market in Latin America, Middle as well as Africa.Enquire Here Before Purchasing The Global Disk Stack Centrifuge Market Report with TOC:Global Disk Stack Centrifuge Market Segment By Key Players/Manufacturers Alfa Laval Flottweg GEA Gruppo Pieralisi HAUS Centrifuge Technologie Huading Separator Mitsubishi Kakoki Kaisha Nanjing Lvdao Polat Makina SPX FLOW (Seital) US Centrifuge Systems Zhangjiagang Peony MachineryGlobal Disk Stack Centrifuge Market Segment By Type Hermetic centrifuge Nozzle-type centrifuge Self-cleaning centrifugeGlobal Disk Stack Centrifuge Market Segment By Applications Biopharm Food and beverage industries Others Petroleum and chemical industriesMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis cover up North America Disk Stack Centrifuge Market (Canada, Mexico and USA). Latin America Disk Stack Centrifuge Market (Middle and Africa). Disk Stack Centrifuge Market in Europe (Germany, France, Italy, UK and Russia). Asia-Pacific Disk Stack Centrifuge Market (South-east Asia, China, India, Korea, and Japan).Request Sample Disk Stack Centrifuge market Research Report atThe report (Disk Stack Centrifuge market) focuses on worldwide major leading Disk Stack Centrifuge industry players, which further includes information like company profiles, Disk Stack Centrifuge price, Companys Disk Stack Centrifuge market revenue etc. Growth prospects of the overall Disk Stack Centrifuge industry have been presented in the report. However, to give a detailed view of the readers, detailed geographical segmentation within the globe Disk Stack Centrifuge market has been covered in this study. The key regions along with their revenue forecasts are included in the report.Report on (Disk Stack Centrifuge Market Report) mainly covers 15 Topics acutely display the global Disk Stack Centrifuge market.Topic 1, to describe Disk Stack Centrifuge market Introduction, Scope of the product, Disk Stack Centrifuge market overview and market opportunities, Disk Stack Centrifuge market risk, market driving force;Topic 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and Disk Stack Centrifuge market share by key countries in these regions;Topic 7, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Disk Stack Centrifuge, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 8, analyzes the top manufacturers of Disk Stack Centrifuge, with sales, revenue, and price of Disk Stack Centrifuge, in 2016 and 2017;Topic 9 and 10, shows the Disk Stack Centrifuge market by type and application, Disk Stack Centrifuge market share, with sales and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 11, Disk Stack Centrifuge market forecast, by regions, application and type, with revenue and sales, from 2017 to 2022;Topic 12, to display the competitive situation among the top leading manufacturers, with sales, revenue and Disk Stack Centrifuge market share in 2016 and 2017;Topic 13, 14 and 15, to describe Disk Stack Centrifuge sales channel, distributors, dealers, traders, Conclusion and Research Findings, data source and appendix;About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Market.Biz has access to the worlds most comprehensive and up-to-date databases in your business sector, including countless market reports that can provide you with valuable data relating to your business. We understand the needs of our clients, and keep our reports updated as market requirement changes.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office No. 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, Pune.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Blog:
Global Fishing Equipments Market- AFTCO Mfg. , Barfilon Fishing , Beilun Haibo, Dongmi Fishing , Cabelas Inc. , DUEL(YO-ZURI)

Global Fishing Equipments Market

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Global Fishing Equipments Market report 2017 is an in-depth research on the current situation of the Fishing Equipments industry.The Scope of the Fishing Equipments research report:The Global Fishing Equipments Market primarily includes a basic overview of the Fishing Equipments industry. It also includes Fishing Equipments definitions, classifications and applications. It segments the market by applications, types, regions, competitive players and also analyzes Fishing Equipments market size, business share and Fishing Equipments revenue, price and sales. The report mainly covers the Fishing Equipments market in North America, the Fishing Equipments market in Europe, the Fishing Equipments market in Asia-Pacific, the Fishing Equipments market in Latin America, Middle as well as Africa.Enquire Here Before Purchasing The Global Fishing Equipments Market Report with TOC:Global Fishing Equipments Market Segment By Key Players/Manufacturers AFTCO Mfg. Barfilon Fishing Beilun Haibo Cabelas Inc. DUEL(YO-ZURI) Dongmi Fishing Eagle Claw Gamakatsu Globeride(Daiwa) Humminbird Newell (Jarden Corporation) O. Mustad & Son Okuma Fishing Pokee Fishing Preston Innovations RYOBI Rapala VMC Corporation Shimano St. Croix Rods Tica Fishing Tiemco Weihai Guangwei GroupGlobal Fishing Equipments Market Segment By Type Electronics Line, Leaders Lures, Files, Baits Others Rods, Reels and Components Terminal TackleGlobal Fishing Equipments Market Segment By Applications Freshwater Fishing Saltwater FishingMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis cover up North America Fishing Equipments Market (Canada, Mexico and USA). Latin America Fishing Equipments Market (Middle and Africa). Fishing Equipments Market in Europe (Germany, France, Italy, UK and Russia). Asia-Pacific Fishing Equipments Market (South-east Asia, China, India, Korea, and Japan).Request Sample Fishing Equipments market Research Report atThe report (Fishing Equipments market) focuses on worldwide major leading Fishing Equipments industry players, which further includes information like company profiles, Fishing Equipments price, Companys Fishing Equipments market revenue etc. Growth prospects of the overall Fishing Equipments industry have been presented in the report. However, to give a detailed view of the readers, detailed geographical segmentation within the globe Fishing Equipments market has been covered in this study. The key regions along with their revenue forecasts are included in the report.Report on (Fishing Equipments Market Report) mainly covers 15 Topics acutely display the global Fishing Equipments market.Topic 1, to describe Fishing Equipments market Introduction, Scope of the product, Fishing Equipments market overview and market opportunities, Fishing Equipments market risk, market driving force;Topic 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and Fishing Equipments market share by key countries in these regions;Topic 7, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Fishing Equipments, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 8, analyzes the top manufacturers of Fishing Equipments, with sales, revenue, and price of Fishing Equipments, in 2016 and 2017;Topic 9 and 10, shows the Fishing Equipments market by type and application, Fishing Equipments market share, with sales and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 11, Fishing Equipments market forecast, by regions, application and type, with revenue and sales, from 2017 to 2022;Topic 12, to display the competitive situation among the top leading manufacturers, with sales, revenue and Fishing Equipments market share in 2016 and 2017;Topic 13, 14 and 15, to describe Fishing Equipments sales channel, distributors, dealers, traders, Conclusion and Research Findings, data source and appendix;About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Market.Biz has access to the worlds most comprehensive and up-to-date databases in your business sector, including countless market reports that can provide you with valuable data relating to your business. We understand the needs of our clients, and keep our reports updated as market requirement changes.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office No. 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, Pune.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Blog:
Global Aluminium Market Analysis To 2020 - Market Size, Growth, And Forecasts In Over 60 Countries

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This publication enables readers the critical perspectives to be able to evaluate the world market for aluminium. The publication provides the market size, growth and forecasts at the global level as well as for the following countries:Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, VietnamDownload Sample Copy Of This Report:The market data covers the years 2009-2020. The major questions answered in this comprehensive publication include:What is the global market size for aluminium?What is the aluminium market size in different countries around the world?Are the markets growing or decreasing?How are the markets divided into different kinds of products?How are different product groups developing?How are the markets forecast to develop in the future?Which are the most potential countries and markets?The market information includes the total market size for aluminium as well as the market size and trends for the following kinds of products:Aluminium foilAluminium bars, profiles and rodsAluminium plates and sheetsAluminium pipes and tubesAluminium wireUnwrought aluminiumAluminium powders and flakesThe publication is designed for companies who want to gain a comprehensive perspective on the global aluminium market. This publication makes it easy to compare across different countries and product groups to be able to find new market opportunities and make more profitable business decisions.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 Ice Cream Market- Amul, Lotte Confectionary , Blue Bell Creameries , Dean Foods , General Mills

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Global Ice Cream Market report 2017 is an in-depth research on the current situation of the Ice Cream industry.The Scope of the Ice Cream research report:The Global Ice Cream Market primarily includes a basic overview of the Ice Cream industry. It also includes Ice Cream definitions, classifications and applications. It segments the market by applications, types, regions, competitive players and also analyzes Ice Cream market size, business share and Ice Cream revenue, price and sales. The report mainly covers the Ice Cream market in North America, the Ice Cream market in Europe, the Ice Cream market in Asia-Pacific, the Ice Cream market in Latin America, Middle as well as Africa.Enquire Here Before Purchasing The Global Ice Cream Market Report with TOC:Global Ice Cream Market Segment By Key Players/Manufacturers Amul Blue Bell Creameries Dean Foods General Mills Lotte Confectionary Mars Meiji Mengniu Morinaga Nestl? Turkey Hill Unilever Yili GroupGlobal Ice Cream Market Segment By Type Hard Ice Cream Soft Ice CreamMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis cover up North America Ice Cream Market (Canada, Mexico and USA). Latin America Ice Cream Market (Middle and Africa). Ice Cream Market in Europe (Germany, France, Italy, UK and Russia). Asia-Pacific Ice Cream Market (South-east Asia, China, India, Korea, and Japan).Request Sample Ice Cream market Research Report atThe report (Ice Cream market) focuses on worldwide major leading Ice Cream industry players, which further includes information like company profiles, Ice Cream price, Companys Ice Cream market revenue etc. Growth prospects of the overall Ice Cream industry have been presented in the report. However, to give a detailed view of the readers, detailed geographical segmentation within the globe Ice Cream market has been covered in this study. The key regions along with their revenue forecasts are included in the report.Report on (Ice Cream Market Report) mainly covers 15 Topics acutely display the global Ice Cream market.Topic 1, to describe Ice Cream market Introduction, Scope of the product, Ice Cream market overview and market opportunities, Ice Cream market risk, market driving force;Topic 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and Ice Cream market share by key countries in these regions;Topic 7, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Ice Cream, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 8, analyzes the top manufacturers of Ice Cream, with sales, revenue, and price of Ice Cream, in 2016 and 2017;Topic 9 and 10, shows the Ice Cream market by type and application, Ice Cream market share, with sales and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Topic 11, Ice Cream market forecast, by regions, application and type, with revenue and sales, from 2017 to 2022;Topic 12, to display the competitive situation among the top leading manufacturers, with sales, revenue and Ice Cream market share in 2016 and 2017;Topic 13, 14 and 15, to describe Ice Cream sales channel, distributors, dealers, traders, Conclusion and Research Findings, data source and appendix;Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Market.Biz has access to the worlds most comprehensive and up-to-date databases in your business sector, including countless market reports that can provide you with valuable data relating to your business. We understand the needs of our clients, and keep our reports updated as market requirement changes.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office No. 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, Pune.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Blog:
Automotive Fuel System Market Pegged for Robust Expansion During 2016 - 2026

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In the past few years, government norms pertaining to emission reductions has become stringent, which in turn has forced the manufacturers to opt for technologies to reduce emissions. It has been observed that, many automobile companies all over the world are using automotive fuel system for improving efficiency and to reduce pollution. Growing automotive industry is expected to be the major reason for the rise in demand for automotive fuel systems. A fuel storage tank, pump, filter, and injectors or a carburetor are included in the automotive fuel system. Now a days maximum vehicles are powered by gasoline or diesel fuel. Fuel vehicles have two separate fuel systems. One fuel system is made in such a way that it runs on gasoline. The other fuel system is designed for running in CNG (compressed natural gas) or LPG. LPG is the more popular in this category. Automotive fuel system is also used in the hybrid vehicles. A combination of conventional fuel and electric power are used in the hybrid vehicles. Most of the time gasoline plays the role of primary power source and the electric motor is used for the assistance for higher speed. In addition to this, its competitive advantages such as high power output and efficiency is influencing the automobile manufacturers to use the automotive fuel system. It has been noticed that the automotive fuel system is being used by the maximum automobiles companies because the initial cost of that particular system is less. In line with this, the revenue generated from sales of global automotive fuel system is expected to increase at a higher pace between 2016 and 2026.As mentioned earlier, the global automotive fuel system market is anticipated to be driven by its competitive advantages such as high power output, fuel efficiency, emissions performance, less maintenance and reliability. Growing preference for light weight vehicles is expected to drive the global automotive fuel system market. In addition to this, the increasing population coupled with rising disposable income is anticipated to boost the demand for automotive fuel system, thus increasing the automotive fuel system market. Stringent government norms pertaining to reducing the hazardous emissions is expected to fuel the global automotive fuel system market. The companies are focusing on research & development and product innovation in order to retain their market share in the global automotive fuel system market.The global automotive fuel system market is segmented on the basis of vehicle type as passenger cars, light commercial vehicle and heavy commercial vehicles. Automotive fuel system market can also be segmented on the basis of components such as intake manifold, throttle body, air filter, fuel injectors, PCM/ ECM, airflow meter, fuel filter, fuel pump, fuel tank, and pressure regulator. In addition to this, the automotive fuel system market also can be segmented on the basis of engines type of the vehicles such as petrol & diesel.Request for Sample Report and Table of content @Geographically, the Global automotive fuel system industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America and Europe are expected to retain their dominance in the global automotive fuel system market. Moreover, Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a high pace over the forecast period.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, macroeconomic indicators and governing factors, along with market attractiveness within the segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and various 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.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
BET Inhibitors Exhibit an Emerging Pipeline with 35+ Drug Candidates

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BET inhibitors currently exhibit a strong pipeline with estimated 38 drug candidates.BET inhibitors offer novel therapeutic approach for cancerThe study analyzed that the BET inhibitors pipeline comprised 38 drug candidates, of which 19 were in Pre-Clinical stage of development. The high prevalence of cancer across the globe fuels the extensive research and development for BET inhibitors. BET inhibitor constitutes that class of drugs, which prevents interactions between BET proteins, and transcription factors and acetylated histone. This results in immunosuppressive and anti-cancer properties of BET inhibitor. Inhibition of BET proteins offered a new therapeutic approach for the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other diseases.Browse the Report Summary at:Insights on pipeline segmentsAs per the findings of the research, around 16% of BET inhibitor drug candidates target BRD4 and 63% of the product candidates target BET. Other targets constituting 21% of candidates of the BET inhibitors pipeline include, but are not limited to, BRD2, BRD3, BRDT, Dual BET/DRD2, PI3K, super enhancer complex (SEC) and JAK2. Around 44% BET inhibitor pipeline drug candidates are being developed to be administered by oral route, and 3% by subcutaneous route.IC50 value and Kd of different types of BET inhibitorsIn BET inhibitors, IC50 value is measured as the concentration of drug at which 50% of the target is inhibited. IC50 is a pharmacokinetic measure; the lower the IC50 of drug candidate, the lesser the desired effect, and the less likelihood of the drug to have some off-target effect. Kd is known as dissociation constant of drug. It measures the rate of dissociation of the drug and its binding affinity. Birabresib (MK8628), a BET inhibitor by Merck & Co., has IC50 value of 100nM.Browse Other Related Report at:Strategic collaborations for the development of BET inhibitorsThe research finds that different companies are collaborating for the development of BET inhibitors. In January 2017, ConverGene entered into a sponsored research agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Under this agreement, University of Maryland School of Medicine Professor Curt I. Civin, M.D., who is associate dean for research and director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine, will investigate the in vivo anti-leukemic effects of ConverGenes lead BET inhibitor drug candidates, CG223 and CG250. Some of the key players developing BET inhibitors are Resverlogix Corp., GlaxoSmithKline plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Merck & Co., Inc., AstraZeneca plc, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Zenith Epigenetics Ltd., and Incyte Corporation.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:AbhishekExecutive  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-Free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016
BACE Inhibitors Exhibit an Emerging Pipeline with 10+ Drug Candidates

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BACE inhibitors offer novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of Alzheimers diseaseThe study analyzed that the Beta Secretase inhibitors pipeline comprised 15 drug candidates, of which three products are in Phase III, three products in Phase II, one product in Phase I, and one product is in Discovery. The development of two BACE inhibitor candidates was found to be inactive, and five products were discontinued. BACE is a cleaving enzyme of aspartyl protease with beta-secretase activity. It acts as a precursor of beta-amyloid (A) protein. In Alzheimers disease, the A protein fragments get accumulated in plaques in the brain. BACE initiates A production by cleaving amyloid precursor protein (APP) to generate APP and C99, which is critical for the subsequent cleavage of C99 by gamma-secretase to release A1-40 and A1-42. Inhibition of BACE enzyme disrupts the production of toxic A and formed plaque and new soluble oligomers.Browse the Report Summary at:Insights on pipeline segmentsAs per the findings of the research, around 80% pipeline drug candidates of BACE inhibitors are being developed to be administered by oral route and 7% by intravenous route. Most of the therapeutic candidates are being developed to be administered by oral route due to high patient compliance.Alzheimers disease drug development receives Fast Track designationAmong BACE inhibitors, AZD3293, a drug candidate of AstraZeneca plc and Eli Lilly and Company, received Fast Track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August 2016. The FDAs Fast Track program was designed to expedite the development and review new therapies to treat serious conditions and tackle unmet medical needs.Browse Report Sample at:Major companies collaborate for the development of BACE inhibitorsThe research finds that different companies collaborated for the development of BACE inhibitors. In September 2015, Novartis entered in a global collaboration with Amgen to commercialize and develop BACE inhibitor program in Alzheimer's disease. Novartis oral CNP520 will be the lead molecule and further compounds from both companies Pre-Clinical BACE inhibitor programs may be considered as follow-on molecules. The collaboration also focused on new Amgen drugs in the migraine field, including Phase III AMG 334 and Phase I AMG 301. For the migraine program, Novartis was expected to have global co-development rights and commercial rights outside the U.S., Canada and Japan.Browse Other Related Report at:Some of the key players developing BACE inhibitors are AstraZeneca plc, Eli Lilly & Company, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Inc., Novartis AG, Eisai & Co., Ltd., CoMentis, Inc., vTv Therapeutics, Inc., Pfizer Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., and Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:AbhishekExecutive  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-Free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016
Global Tissue Banking Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Tissue Banking Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Tissue Banking devices are used to store tissues in controlled environment for quality, safety and effective use in different disease treatment. The report on global Tissue Banking market, analyzes the current and future prospects of the market. The report consists of an executive summary that provides information about the products, its segments and sub-segments, along with a market snapshot and comparative analysis by geography, in terms of revenue %, for 2015.Global Tissue Banking Market: Scope of the ReportA detailed overview of market dynamics, including the drivers, restraints, and opportunities of the Tissue Banking market, along with porters analysis, and value chain analysis, of the global market, has been provided in this report. Market revenue and volume analysis for all the above mentioned segments, and their sub segments has been provided for the forecast period of 2016-2024, considering 2015 as the base year, and 2014 as the historical year, along with compound annual growth rate (CAGR %), for the forecast period of 2016-2024. Market share estimations were based on in-depth analysis and study of products, and their features, prices etc. Pricing analysis, for every region has been provided considering the Average Selling Prices (ASP), of products, in these regions.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @This report provides in-depth analysis of the Tissue Banking market. The stakeholders for this report include companies involved in the manufacturing of Tissue Banking devices. For providing a snapshot of this market to the stakeholders, executive summary section is included in this report, which summarizes the market size, trends and competition in different regions. Market share analysis among the market players is analyzed to signify percentage share of the major players operating in the Tissue Banking market. Furthermore, the report incorporates market attractiveness analysis by geography that depicts the most attractive and significant region in the global market in 2015.The research methodology is a combination of primary and secondary research. Primary research includes information collected via e-mails, and telephonic interviews of Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), and forms the bulk of our research. Secondary research includes information collected from various sources, by study of company websites, annual reports, stock analysis presentations, press releases, and various national and international databases.Global Tissue Banking Market: SegmentationBased on Equipment type, the global Tissue Banking market has been segmented into Freezers, Storage system, Thawing Equipment, Labelling and Coding Equipment, Alarming and Coding equipment. Freezers are the highly growing market growing at a CAGR of % which is followed by storage system. Based on applications, the Tissue Banking are segmented into Clinical and Therapeutic, Research & Development, Drug Discovery. Tissue banking are highly used in clinical and therapeutics and growing at a CAGR of % and followed by research and development. Based on end users, the market is segmented as Hospitals, Tissue Banks, Research and Academics Institutes and Diagnostic Laboratories. Umbilical cord blood transfusion is highly growing therapeutic treatment segment in tissue banking globally.Global Tissue Banking Market: Geographical and Competitive DynamicsBased on geography, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The regions are further segmented into major countries which include, U.S., Canada, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, rest of Europe, China, Japan, India, Australia, Rest of Asia Pacific, Brazil, Mexico, Rest of Latin America, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Rest of Middle East & Africa. The report also comprises list major players in the market, their SWOT analysis, market share of these players in the Tissue Banking market, key business strategies, product portfolios, and recent developments. Key market players profiled in this report include, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Brooks Automation, Taylor-Wharton, Panasonic Biomedical, Backman Coulter Inc., Custom Biogenic Systems, Inc., Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, and BioLife Solutions, Inc., others. Majority of companies acquiring strategy of merger and acquisition for overall market growth. The technological advancement are another trend adopted by several companies for growth of business segment.Global Tissue Banking market has been segmented as follows:Global Tissue Banking Market, by Equipment- Freezers- Storage System- Thawing Equipment- Labelling and Coding Equipment- Alarming and Monitoring EquipmentGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by Application- Clinical and Therapeutic- Research & Development- Drug DiscoveryGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by End-users- Hospitals- Tissue Banks- Research and Academics Institutes- Diagnostic LaboratoriesGlobal Tissue Banking Market, by Geography- North America- U.S.- Canada- Europe- U.K.- Germany- France- Spain- Italy- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Japan- India- Australia- Rest of Asia Pacific- Latin America- Brazil- Mexico- Rest of Latin America- Middle East & Africa- Saudi Arabia- South Africa- Rest of Middle East & AfricaMake 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 @
New Study Reveals Retort Packaging Market - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Retort Packaging Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.This report provides forecast and analysis of the retort packaging market on the global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with forecast from 2016 to 2024 based on volume (Mn units) and revenue (US$ Mn). It includes drivers, restraints and the ongoing trend of the retort packaging market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. The report also comprises the study of opportunities available in the market for retort packaging on the global and regional level. It includes value chain analysis with list of raw material manufacturers, plastic film manufacturers, plastic film converters, packaging manufacturers and end users in the value chain.In order to provide the users of this report with comprehensive view of market, we have included detailed competitiveness analysis and company players. The competitive dashboard provides detailed comparison of retort packaging manufacturers on parameters such as companys revenue, unique selling propositions and key strategic developments. The study encompasses market attractiveness analysis, by product type, material type, form type, application type and by geographic region.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Retort Packaging Market: Research MethodologyMarket statistics have been estimated based on average consumption and weighted average pricing of retort packaging by product type and the revenue is derived through regional pricing trends. Market size and forecast for each segment have been provided in the context of global and regional markets. The retort packaging market has been analyzed based on expected demand. Prices considered for the calculation of revenue are average regional prices obtained through primary quotes from numerous retort packaging manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors. All key end users have been considered and potential applications have been estimated on the basis of secondary sources and feedback from primary respondents. Regional demand patterns have been considered while estimating the market for various end users of retort packaging in different regions. Top-down approach has been used to estimate the retort packaging market by regions. Market numbers for global product type, material type, form type and application segments have been derived using the bottom-up approach, which is cumulative of each regions demand. The market has been forecast based on constant currency rates.A number of primary and secondary sources were consulted during the course of the study. Secondary sources include Factiva, World Bank, Packaging Digest, Plastic Manufacturers Association, Society of the Plastics Industry, Plastics Europe, and Hoovers, and company annual reports and publications.Global Retort Packaging Market: Competitive DynamicsThe report provides detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of key participants operating in the global market. Key players in the global retort packaging market include, Amcor limited, Bemis Company, Inc., Sealed Air, Coveris Holdings S.A, Mondi Group, Sonoco Products Company, Berry Plastic Group, Inc., Ampac Holdings LLC., Winpak Limited Company, Clondalkin Group and Flair Flexible Packaging Corporation.The global retort packaging market is segmented belowBy Product TypePouches- Stand- up Pouches- Back-seal Quad- Spouted Pouches- Gusseted Pouches- Trays- Cartons- Others (Cans, Bottles)By Material- Cast Polypropylene- Nylon (Bi-Oriented Polyamide)- Polyester (PET)- Polyethylene (PE)- Aluminum Foil- Paper & Paperboard- Others (PVDC, PVC)By form- Flexible- Rigid- Semi-rigidBy Application- Food- Meals Ready-to-Eat (MRE)- Sea Food- Pet Food- Baby Food- Soups & Sauces- Others (Meat stew)- Beverages- PharmaceuticalsBy Region- North America- Latin America- Europe- Asia Pacific- Middle East & AfricaMake 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 @
High Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 | Researchmoz.us

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "High Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.High resolution dispensing systems are high end dispensing equipment that are ideal for electronic applications and are capable of dispensing drop sizes as precise as ~300um-400um and above. Dispensing technology has come a far way in the last 50 years and the technological advancements have included the change from manual to semi-automatic or upgrade to robotic dispensing from the semi-automatic one. A key trend that has been observed in the recent years is the reduction in the drop size which is a key driver in the precision micro fluidic markets for the precision dispensing applications.A surge in demand for accuracy and precision coupled with the increasing usage of high resolution dispensing systems and equipment in electronic applications is driving the growth of the global market. These systems are being deployed in electronics to increase the productivity of electronic assembly, molding, shielding and encapsulating applications. High precision adhesive and sealant dispensing systems help to precisely dispense a diverse range of products for electrical and electronic component manufacturing, that include thin-line, intricate dispensing for highly miniaturized personal communication devices and also foam-in-place gasketing for comparatively large consumer electronics.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Additionally, rapid technological advances are fueling the global market growth. The introduction of robot dispensing, and technologies such as manual load and unload robotic dispensing system and fully integrated robotic dispensing system are augmenting the growth of the market. Thus, the conjoint effect of all these drivers is set to bolster the growth of the global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market in the coming years.Growing popularity in end-user industries coupled with healthy economic growth of emerging economies are offering potential growth opportunities to the global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market. High-resolution dispensing systems and equipment are expected to gain popularity across several end user applications such as medical and solar and this is set to boost the market growth in the coming years.High Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market: SegmentationBased on type, the global market has been segmented into semi-automatic dispensing systems and automatic dispensing systems. By application, the global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market has been broadly classified into electronics and others. Electronics application has been further sub-divided into adhesive and sealant dispensers, glue dispensers, liquid material dispensers, powder dispensers and others. By geography, the high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market has been segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South America.High Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market: Scope and Competitive DynamicsThe report includes the market attractiveness analysis of the electronics applications for offering and insight into the major application area of the high resolution dispensing systems and equipment. An exhaustive analysis of the market dynamics of the global market that is inclusive of the market drivers, restraints and opportunities is covered under the purview of the study. Therefore, the global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market report offers and extensive study of the market along with providing the forecast of the market in terms of revenue (USD Million) and volume (Units) from 2016  2024.The key players in the global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market have been competitively profiled across the five broad geographic regions. This competitive landscape is inclusive of the various business strategies adopted by these major players and their recent developments in the field of high resolution dispensing systems and equipment.Some of the major players operating in the high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market are: Nordson Corporation (U.S.), AptarGroup, Inc. (the U.S.), Dover Corporation (the U.S.), Franklin Fueling Systems Inc. (the U.S.), Jensen Global Inc. (the U.S.), Graco, Inc. (the U.S.), Musashi Engineering Inc. (Tokyo), Mycronic AB (Sweden) Illinois Tools Works, Inc. (the U.S.), Besi (Netherlands) among others.The global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market has been segmented into:High Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market, by Type- Semi-Automatic Dispensing Systems- Automatic Dispensing SystemsHigh Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market, by Application- Electronics- Adhesive and Sealant Dispensers- Electrical Conductive Adhesives- Nonconductive Adhesives- Glue Dispensers- Liquid Material Dispensers- Powder Dispensers- Others- OthersHigh Resolution Dispensing Systems and Equipment Market, by Geography: The market is broadly segmented on the basis of geography into:- North America- Europe- Asia Pacific- Middle East and Africa- South AmericaMake 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 Personal Lubricant Industry Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 7% During The Period 2016-2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Personal Lubricant Market 2016-2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Personal lubricants are liquids or gels used during sexual intercourse and masturbation to reduce friction, enhance pleasure, and reduce pain. Lubricants can prevent dryness and chafing during penetration. Based on composition, they are classified into water-based, oil-based, and silicone-based lubricants.Technavios analysts forecast the global personal lubricant market to grow at a CAGR of 7% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global personal lubricant market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the overall retail sales of the personal lubricant products globally.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavio's report, Global Personal Lubricant 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 vendorsBioFilmChurch & DwightReckitt BenckiserTopco SalesOther prominent vendorsBlossom OrganicsBodywiseCleanStreamB.CummingGood Clean LoveHathor Professional SkincareHLL LifecareLive Well BrandsLovehoneyMaximus lubePassion LubeSensuous BeautySliquidSmile Makers Wellness and BeautyThe Yes CompanyTrigg LaboratoriesMarket driverIncrease in customer acceptanceFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeSide effectsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncreased demand for sexual wellness products from womenFor 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 @
Global 360-Degree Camera Industry Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 34.85% During The Period 2016-2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global 360-Degree Camera Market 2016-2020" to its huge collection of research reports.360-degree cameras are considered to be revolutionary VR products. A 360-degree camera records a video simultaneously from all angles of a scene. Spherical view originated from street view. It converts a 360-degree view into a landscape image. 360-degree cameras were primarily used for mapping. Over the years, 360-degree cameras have found applications in various domains. 360-degree cameras can be used to take panoramic photos, shoot interactive videos, and make films.Technavios analysts forecast the global 360-degree camera market to grow at a CAGR of 34.85% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global 360-degree camera market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of 360-degree cameras for VR applications.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavio's report, Global 360-Degree Camera 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 vendorsLG ElectronicsNikonGoProSamsung ElectronicsOther prominent vendors360flyBublcamFacebookGIROPTICIC Real TechImmersive Media CompanyEastman KodakLucidCamNokiaRicohSphericamMarket driverGlobal brands increasing awareness of VR.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLimitations of 360-degree camera hardware and software.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendGrowing acceptance of 360-degree camera as next-generation technology.For 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 @
Extraction Machine Market 2017 - Precision, Colorado, Apeks, Goyum Screw Press

Extraction Machine Market

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A market study based on the "Extraction Machine Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Extraction Machine Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Extraction Machine industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Extraction Machine market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This ReportPrecisionColoradoApeksGoyum Screw PressThe report studies the industry for Extraction Machine across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Extraction Machine market & dynamics of demand and supply of Extraction Machine into consideration. The 'Extraction Machine' research study covers each and every aspect of the Extraction Machine market globally, which starts from the definition of the Extraction Machine industry and develops towards Extraction Machine market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Extraction Machine market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Extraction Machine market. The geographical segmentation of the Extraction Machine industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Extraction Machine is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Extraction Machine market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Extraction Machine market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Extraction Machine market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Extraction Machine production volume, data regarding demand and Extraction Machine supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis has been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Extraction Machine across the globe.About UsApexResearch offer reports from top publishers and update to serve you with immediate on-line access to professional insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development Executive| sales@apexresearch.biz
Heat Furnace Market 2017 - Andritz, ALD, Ipsen, Despatch, Mersen, TPS, CEC, AVS, TAV, Shenwu, Tenova, Aichelin Group, SECO/WARWICK

Heat Furnace market

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A market study based on the "Heat Furnace Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Heat Furnace Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Heat Furnace industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Heat Furnace market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This ReportAndritzTenovaPrimetals TechnologiesAichelin GroupInductotherm CorporationALDIpsenDespatchSECO/WARWICKNachi-FujikoshiPVA TePlaCieffe(Accu)MersenGasbarre FurnaceTPSSurface CombustionCECSistem TeknikAVSTAVNutec BickleyShenwuPhoenix FurnaceThe report studies the industry for Heat Furnace across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Heat Furnace market & dynamics of demand and supply of Heat Furnace into consideration. The 'Heat Furnace' research study covers each and every aspect of the Heat Furnace market globally, which starts from the definition of the Heat Furnace industry and develops towards Heat Furnace market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Heat Furnace market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Heat Furnace market. The geographical segmentation of the Heat Furnace industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Heat Furnace is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Heat Furnace market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Heat Furnace market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Heat Furnace market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Heat Furnace production volume, data regarding demand and Heat Furnace supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis has been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Heat Furnace across the globe.About UsApexResearch offer reports from top publishers and update to serve you with immediate on-line access to professional insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development Executive| sales@apexresearch.biz
Global Hemodynamic Monitoring Systems Market to Surpass US$ 508.4 Million by 2021 End

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Persistence Market Research (PMR), in a recent report, Global Market Study on Hemodynamic Monitoring System: Growing Demand for Critical Congenital Heart Disease Screening to Drive the Market by 2021 , projected the hemodynamic monitoring systems market to expand at a healthy CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period. The report offered trends driving the market and delivered analysis and insights on the potential of the hemodynamic monitoring systems market in specific regions.In terms of revenue, the hemodynamic monitoring systems market was valued at US$ 328.7 Mn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 508.4 Mn by 2021. Factors driving market growth include government and private sector initiatives to reduce healthcare costs, rising prevalence of lifestyle diseases, growing the geriatric patient population, increasing the incidence of respiratory disorders and growing demand for the screening of critical congenital heart disease (CCHD).In terms of region, North America dominated the hemodynamic monitoring systems market with over 30% share in terms of value in 2014 but is expected to lose its market share to APAC by 2021. Europe accounted for over 20% of the total hemodynamic monitoring systems market share in 2014 and will maintain its dominance through 2021. Among the regions, APAC is projected to register the highest CAGR over 20152021 due to low-cost product offerings by manufacturers in the region. As of 2014, APAC was the third-highest contributor to the overall hemodynamic monitoring systems market, accounting for over 18% market share. By the end of 2021, it is projected to gain 330 BPS.On the basis of device type, the market has been segmented into pulse contour, oesophageal Doppler, volume clamp, hemodynamic monitoring sensors and pulmonary artery catheters.The pulmonary artery catheters segment had a dominant share in the global hemodynamic monitoring systems market in 2014, while the volume clamp segment accounted for over 20% share.Global hemodynamic monitoring systems market is further segmented on the basis of end use into hospitals, clinics, ambulatory surgery centres, home care settings and independent catheterisation laboratories. Revenue contribution of the hospitals segment was over 40% in 2014 and is projected to increase to over 42% by 2021, registering a significant CAGR of 7.3%. Home care settings segment is anticipated to record highest CAGR during the forecast period as hemodynamic monitoring systems are being adopted increasingly in home care settings.By application type, the hemodynamic monitoring systems market is segmented into invasive hemodynamic monitoring, noninvasive hemodynamic monitoring and minimally invasive hemodynamic monitoring segments. Among the three segments, minimally invasive hemodynamic monitoring segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 8.0% over 2015-2021. The invasive hemodynamic monitoring segment accounted for over 30% market share in 2014 but is projected to lose its share to the other two segments by the end of the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Key players in the global hemodynamic monitoring systems market include Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, ICU Medical, Inc., Teleflex Incorporated, LiDCO Group Plc and PULSION Medical Systems SE. Global players focus on research and development initiatives for introducing innovative products to attain sustainable advantages over their competitors. In addition, they also focus on expanding their regional presence through mergers and acquisitions. In developed regions, hemodynamic monitoring systems manufacturers prefer selling their products directly to the consumer. By contrast, most vendors in countries such as China have tie-ups with suppliers to enhance their customer reach. Globally, medical equipment manufacturers in China account for over 50% market share for exporting noninvasive devices.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:
Polishing Machine Market 2017 - Buehler, DEWALT, FLEX, Meguiars, Robert Bosch Tool, Griots Garage, Porter-Cable, The Eastwood Company

Polishing Machine Market

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A market study based on the "Polishing Machine Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Polishing Machine Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Polishing Machine industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Polishing Machine market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This ReportRobert Bosch ToolDEWALTGriots GaragePorter-CableThe Eastwood CompanyFLEXMilwaukee ToolMeguiarsTORQ Tool CompanySHANGHAI KEN TOOLS CO.BuehlerThe report studies the industry for Polishing Machine across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Polishing Machine market & dynamics of demand and supply of Polishing Machine into consideration. The 'Polishing Machine' research study covers each and every aspect of the Polishing Machine market globally, which starts from the definition of the Polishing Machine industry and develops towards Polishing Machine market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Polishing Machine market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Polishing Machine market. The geographical segmentation of the Polishing Machine industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Polishing Machine is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Polishing Machine market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Polishing Machine market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Polishing Machine market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Polishing Machine production volume, data regarding demand and Polishing Machine supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis has been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the industry for Polishing Machine across the globe.About UsApexResearch offer reports from top publishers and update to serve you with immediate on-line access to professional insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends. Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezBusiness Development Executive| sales@apexresearch.biz
Global Financial Services Security Software Market Research Report 2017

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This report studies Financial Services Security Software in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringOracleTrendmicroBeyondtrustNCRCigitalTripwireCheckpointKasperskyLuxoftGomoxieMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Financial Services Security Software in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IISplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Financial Services Security Software in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Download Sample Copy of Report atTable of ContentsGlobal Financial Services Security Software Market Research Report 20171 Financial Services Security Software Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Financial Services Security Software1.2 Financial Services Security Software Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Financial Services Security Software by Type in 20151.2.2 Type I1.2.3 Type II1.3 Financial Services Security Software Segment by Application1.3.1 Financial Services Security Software Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Application 11.3.3 Application 21.3.4 Application 31.4 Financial Services Security Software Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Financial Services Security Software (2012-2022)2 Global Financial Services Security Software Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Financial Services Security Software Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Financial Services Security Software Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Financial Services Security Software Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Financial Services Security Software Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Financial Services Security Software Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Financial Services Security Software Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Financial Services Security Software Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionMarketResearchReports.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 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:Email: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Fertility Testing Devices Market is Driven by Continuous Rise in the Technological Advancements in the Fertility Monitoring Techniques and Investments

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Fertility testing is done by both men and women for the assessment of their fertility and various conditions associated with it. A reasonable period of unprotected intercourse without conceiving is a condition referred to as infertility. Couples carry out fertility testing to detect the root causes responsible for their infertility. Men and women both experience the fertility problems at equal rates, but women are considered to be more concerned about fertility testing.The gynecologist or general physician first review the fertility test results to diagnose the exact issue and recommends the corrective measures or treatment accordingly. The rising awareness about fertility testing devices is driving the patient adoption rate effectively for such devices instead of opting for laboratory based tests. Fertility testing is performed at home and is time saving and economical, helps maintain privacy, and is comfortable for females.Browse Market Research Report @Increase in infertility cases due to changing lifestyles in women, growth in awareness about the fertility testing in women, rise in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) cases, continuous decline in fertility rate in both men and women globally are factors which are expected to drive the growth of the global fertility testing devices market by 2024. The restraints which impact the growth of the global fertility testing devices market are high cost of fertility and ovulating monitors, increase in utilization of mobile applications & websites for ovulation tracking, and easy availability of generic diagnostic tools such as saliva testing and blood testing.Some of the trends in the global fertility testing devices market are monitoring sperm quality by keeping track of heart rate, body temperature, air quality & environmental function, and emergence of technological advances such as trak system. Introduction of various techniques such as hysterosalpingogram, sonohysterogram (ultrasound scan), laparoscopy, and hysteroscopy are projected to boost the growth of the global fertility testing devices market.The global fertility testing devices market can be segmented by product and end-user. The product segment involves ovulation predictor kits and fertility monitoring devices. The ovulation predictor kits are further segmented into urine based kits, saliva based kits, and others. In 2015, the ovulation predictor kits segment captured a significantly large share in the global fertility testing devices market, which is attributed to lesser cost and user-friendly technique.However, the fertility monitoring devices segment is expected to grow at a higher rate during the forecast period, which is driven by continuous rise in the technological advancements in the fertility monitoring techniques and investments. Based on the end-user segmentation, the global fertility testing devices market is classified into hospitals, specialty clinics, and homecare settings.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Geographically, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America held a significant share of the fertility testing devices market in 2015, which is attributed to the rise in awareness about technological innovations and their benefits in the fertility testing market and increase in prevalence of PCOS. The awareness about the fertility testing is high in the region. Therefore, the use of ovulation predictor kits and fertility monitoring devices is increasing in the North America fertility testing devices market.The anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test is likely to be adding more value to the existing Europe fertility testing market leading to its further growth in region. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a higher rate during the forecast period owing to increasing investments in the fertility testing devices market, declining fertility rate, and rising number of women suffering from lifestyle disorder in the region.Major players operating in the global fertility testing devices market include Hilin Life Products, Church & Dwight Co., Inc., Fairhaven Health LLC, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Geratherm Medical AG, AccuQuik, Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc., Quidel Corporation, and Alere Inc.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. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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:
Insight report on Algeria Touat Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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"The Report Algeria Touat Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Algeria Touat Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.View Report @ScopeOverview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicatorsKey financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of ReturnReview of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlookDetailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity producedCash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liabilityIndividual valuations for equity holdersSensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsGet Sample Copy Of This Report @Reasons to buyUnderstand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an assetBenefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analystsBasic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planningUtilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision makingIdentify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsTable Of Contents :1 Table of Contents1 Table of Contents 11.1 List of Tables 21.2 List of Figures 22 Project Panorama 33 Project Update 44 Outlook 55 Asset Summary 66 Development Overview 117 Geology 128 Challenges 139 Reserves and Production 1410 Economic Analysis 1711 Appendix 2011.1 Contact Us 2011.2 Disclaimer 20Table 1: Project Details 3Table 2: Participation Overview 6Table 3: Key Valuation Metrics 6Table 4: Asset Valuation Metrics 8Table 5: Cash Flow Summary 9Table 6: State Take Summary 9Table 7: Production Summary 15Table 8: Production Data 15Table 9: Project Cash Flow 18Figure 1: Annual Cash Flow 7Figure 2: Full Cycle Expenditure And Revenue Split 7Figure 3: Remaining Expenditure And Revenue Split 8Figure 4: NPV Sensitivity 9Figure 5: Percentage NPV Difference 10Figure 6: Production 14About 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.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Market Report Focus On Senegal SNE Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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"The Report Senegal SNE Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Senegal SNE Project Panorama, GlobalDatas latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.View Report @Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with GlobalDatas analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsGet Sample Copy Of This Report @Reasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsTable of Contents1 Table of Contents 11.1 List of Tables 21.2 List of Figures 22 Project Panorama 33 Project Update 44 Outlook 55 Asset Summary 66 Development Overview 117 Geology 138 Challenges 149 Reserves and Production 1510 Economic Analysis 1811 Appendix 2111.1 Contact Us 2111.2 Disclaimer 211.1 List of TablesTable 1: Project Details 3Table 2: Participation Overview 6Table 3: Key Valuation Metrics 6Table 4: Asset Valuation Metrics 8Table 5: Cash Flow Summary 9Table 6: Fiscal Take Summary 9Table 7: Production Summary 15Table 8: Production Data 16Table 9: Project Cash Flow 191.2 List of FiguresFigure 1: Annual Cash Flow 7Figure 2: Full Cycle Expenditure And Revenue Split 7Figure 3: Remaining Expenditure And Revenue Split 8Figure 4: NPV Sensitivity 9Figure 5: Percentage NPV Difference 10Figure 6: Production 15About 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.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
The SON (Self-Organizing Networks) Ecosystem Emerging Evolution, Innovation 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts

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SON (Self-Organizing Network) technology minimizes the lifecycle cost of running a mobile network by eliminating manual configuration of equipment at the time of deployment, right through to dynamically optimizing performance and troubleshooting during operation. This can significantly reduce the cost of the operators services, improving the OpEx to revenue ratio.Amid growing demands for mobile broadband connectivity, mobile operators are keen to capitalize on SON to minimize rollout delays and operational expenditures associated with their ongoing LTE and small cell deployments.Originally targeted for the RAN (Radio Access Network) segment of mobile networks, SON technology is now also utilized in the mobile core and transport network segments. In addition, Wi-Fi access point OEMs are beginning to integrate SON features such as plug-and-play deployment, autonomous performance optimization, self-healing and proactive defense against unauthorized access.Despite challenges relating to implementation complexities and multi-vendor interoperability, SON revenue is expected to grow to more than $5 Billion by the end of 2020, exceeding conventional mobile network optimization revenue by a significant margin. Furthermore, the SON ecosystem is increasingly witnessing convergence with other technological innovations such as Big Data, predictive analytics and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection).Download Sample Copy Of This Report:The SON (Self-Organizing Networks) Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the SON and associated mobile network optimization ecosystem including key market drivers, challenges, OpEx and CapEx savings potential, use cases, SON deployment case studies, future roadmap, value chain, vendor analysis and strategies. The report also presents revenue forecasts for both SON and conventional mobile network optimization, along with individual projections for 10 SON submarkets, 6 regions and 15 countries from 2016 through to 2030.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report.The report covers the following topics:Conventional mobile network planning & optimizationSON technology and architectureKey benefits and market drivers of SONChallenges to SON adoptionSON use casesSON deployment case studiesFuture roadmap of the SON ecosystemCompany profiles and strategies of over 120 SON ecosystem playersOpEx and CapEx saving analysis of SONWireless network infrastructure spending, traffic projections and value chainConvergence of SON with Big Data, predictive analytics and DPIStrategic recommendations for SON solution providers, wireless infrastructure OEMs and mobile operatorsMarket analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast SegmentationMarket forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets and their subcategories:Mobile Network OptimizationSONConventional Mobile Network Planning & OptimizationSON Network Segment SubmarketsMacrocell RANHetNet RANMobile CoreMobile Backhaul & FronthaulSON Architecture SubmarketsC-SON (Centralized SON)D-SON (Distributed SON)SON Access Network Technology Submarkets2G & 3GLTEWi-Fi5GRegional MarketsAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeCountry MarketsAustraliaBrazilCanadaChinaFranceGermanyIndiaItalyJapanRussiaSouth KoreaSpainTaiwanUKUSAThe report provides answers to the following key questions:How big is the SON and mobile network optimization ecosystem?How is the ecosystem evolving by segment and region?What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?Who are the key SON vendors and what are their strategies?What is the outlook for QoE based SON solutions?How can SON ease the deployment of unlicensed LTE small cells?What SON capabilities will 5G networks entail?What is the outlook for C-SON and D-SON adoption?How will SON investments compare with those on traditional mobile network optimization?What opportunities exist for SON in mobile core and transport networks?How will SON use cases evolve overtime in 3GPP releases?Which regions will see the highest number of SON investments?How much will mobile operators invest in SON solutions?What is the outlook for SON associated OpEx savings by region?The report has the following key findings:Despite challenges relating to implementation complexities and multi-vendor interoperability, SON revenue is expected to grow to more than $5 Billion by the end of 2020, exceeding conventional mobile network optimization revenue by a significant margin.Mobile operators have reported up to a 50% reduction in dropped calls and over 20% higher data rates with SON implementation. Besides common network optimization use cases, operators are also capitalizing on SON platforms to address critical business objectives such as refarming 2G/3G spectrum for LTE networks.In a bid to differentiate their products, Wi-Fi access point OEMs are beginning to integrate SON features such as plug-and-play deployment, autonomous performance optimization, self-healing and proactive defense against unauthorized access.SON platforms are moving from reactive systems to more advanced implementations that incorporate predictive analytics technology to make necessary changes to a network before any degradation occurs.Infrastructure and software incumbents are continuing to acquire smaller established C-SON players to accelerate their entry path into the C-SON market.List of Companies Mentioned3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)Accedian NetworksAccelleranAccuverActixAexioAircom InternationalAirHop CommunicationsAirspan NetworksAlcatel-LucentAltiostar NetworksAlvarion TechnologiesAmdocsAniteArcadyan Technology CorporationArgelaARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses, Japan)AricentAriesoARItelArtemis NetworksAscomAstelliaASUS (ASUSTeK Computer)AT&TAT&T MobilityATDIATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions)AvvasiBaicellsBelkin InternationalBenu NetworksBLiNQ NetworksBroadcomBrocade Communications SystemsBwtechBytemobileCableLabsCasa SystemsCaviumCBNL (Cambridge Broadband Networks Limited)CCS (Cambridge Communication Systems)CCSA (China Communications Standards Association)CelciteCellMiningCellwizeCeltroCENTRICisco SystemsCitrix SystemsComarchCommAgilityCommScopeCommsquareConnectemContelaCoriantCrowdXDatang MobileDell EMCDell TechnologiesDigitataD-Link CorporationECE (European Communications Engineering)Eden Rock CommunicationsEquiendoErcomEricssonETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)EXFOFlash NetworksForskFreescale SemiconductorFujitsuGemtek Technology CompanyGeneral Dynamics Mission SystemsGlobe TelecomGoNet SystemsGuavusGWT (Global Wireless Technologies)HitachiHuaweiInfoVistaIngenia TelecomInnovileIntel CorporationInterDigitalIntracom TelecomIP Wirelessip.accessIpanema TechnologiesJRC (Japan Radio Company)Juni GlobalKDDI CorporationKeysight TechnologiesKKTCell (Kuzey K?br?s Turkcell)Kumu NetworksLemko CorporationLifecellLinksysLuminate WirelessMentumMIMOonMobixellMojo NetworksNEC CorporationNetScout SystemsNew Postcom Equipment CompanyNewfield WirelessNGNM (Next Generation Mobile Networks) AllianceNokia NetworksNuRAN WirelessNutaqNXP SemiconductorsOceus NetworksOpera SoftwareOptimiOptulinkP.I.WorksParallel WirelessPhluidoPlano EngineeringPotevio (China Potevio Company)PureWave NetworksQualcommQuanta ComputerQucellRADCOMRadisys CorporationReardenRED TechnologiesRedline CommunicationsReverb NetworksRohde & SchwarzRorotikaRuckus WirelessSamji Electronics CompanySamsung ElectronicsSchemaSEDICOMSerComm CorporationSeven NetworksSiklu CommunicationSingtel GroupSK GroupSK TelecomSK TelesysSmall Cell ForumSpiderCloud WirelessStar SolutionsSuperComTarana WirelessTecoreTEKTELIC CommunicationsTektronix CommunicationsTelecom ItaliaTelefonica GroupTelrad NetworksTelumTEOCOTI (Texas Instruments)TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile)TIM BrasilTP-Link TechnologiesTrendiumTSDSI (Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India)TTA (Telecommunications Technology Association of Korea)TTC (Telecommunication Technology Committee, Japan)TTG InternationalTulinxTurkcell GroupVasona NetworksVector SrlViavi SolutionsVodafone GroupVodafone Hutchison AustraliaWBA (Wireless Broadband Alliance)WebRadarWNC (Wistron NeWeb Corporation)WPOTECHXceed TechnologiesXCellAirZ-Com (ZDC Wireless)ZTEZyXEL Communications CorporationCountires CoveredAustraliaBrazilCanadaChinaFranceGermanyIndiaItalyJapanRussiaSouth KoreaSpainTaiwanUKMarketResearchReports.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 Infant Formula Market Regulations and Competitive Landscape Outlook to 2024

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In a new market research report published by Credence Research Infant Formula Market (Protein Source  Cow Milk Protein-based, Soy-based, Hypoallergenic and Specialized Infant Formula) - Growth, Share, Opportunities, Competitive Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2023, the global infant formula market was valued at US$ 9.40 Bn in 2015 and is estimated to expand with a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2023.Browse the full report atMarket Insights:The infant formula market is highly driven by the rising ratio of females in workforce worldwide. People are more inclined towards purchasing baby care products that are convenient and also ensure baby nutrition. Thus, further rise in female workforce may substantially fuel the market growth especially in the developing economies. Another major factor propelling the market growth is the rising discretionary income of people worldwide. Manufacturers are more focused towards designing nutrition-rich products and offering organic infant formula products. With the rising purchasing power of people worldwide, such infant formula products are expected to witness warm demand in the coming years.However, major factor affecting the market growth is the regulations supporting breastfeeding and controversies over infant formula products. The market has been facing the hurdles of controversies over infant formula products since several years. Organizations such as WHO and UNICEF highly recommend and promote breastfeeding over its substitutes in order to ensure infant health. Infant formula products are recommended only in cases where breastfeeding is not possible. This acts as a major challenge for the market.Competitive Insights:The global infant formula market is consolidated and regulated in nature with a few major international players contributing to more than fifty percent of the total market revenue. The most significant concern for the market players is to comply with the standards issued by various food regulatory bodies worldwide. Thus, market players majorly compete upon the quality of their products thereby designing nutritious infant formula products causing no harm to the babies.Apart from product development and brand-name, infant formula providers focus on attractive packaging of their products. Attractive packaging plays crucial role in case of baby products as it largely helps driving the consumers. This makes attractive packaging is one of the most important strategies adopted by the infant formula manufacturers. Another major trend among the companies is the promotion of breastfeeding over infant formula at least for the first six months of babies.Browse the full report atKey Trends: Organic baby food products for better health High focus on quality in order to meet food standards Focus on India and China by launching price competitive products Online product promotion Brand-name promotionToC:Chapter 1 Preface1.1 Report Description1.1.1 Purpose of the Report1.1.2 Target Audience1.1.3 USP and Key Offerings1.2 Research Scope1.3 Market Segmentation1.4 Research Methodology1.4.1 Phase I  Secondary Research1.4.2 Phase II  Primary Research1.4.3 Phase III  Expert Panel Review1.4.4 Assumptions1.4.5 Approach AdoptedChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1 Market Snapshot: Global Infant Formula Market2.2 Global Infant Formula Market, By Protein Source2.3 Global Infant Formula Market, By Distribution Channel2.4 Global Infant Formula Market, By GeographyChapter 3 Market Dynamics3.1 Product Insights and Market Overview3.1.1 Global Infant Formula Market Revenue, 2014  2023, (US$ Bn)3.2 Key Market Trends and Future Outlook3.3 Market Drivers3.4 Market Growth Inhibitors3.5 Impact Analysis of Market Drivers and Inhibitors3.5.1 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints3.6 Consumer Behavior Analysis: Infant Formula Market3.7 Key Regulations: Infant Formula Market3.8 Competitive Analysis3.8.1 Market Positioning of Key VendorsChapter 4 Global Infant Formula Market Analysis, By Protein Source4.1 Market Analysis4.2 Cow Milk Protein-based Formula4.3 Soy Protein-based Formula4.4 Hypoallergenic Formula..Request Sample:Media ContactName: Chris SmithAddress: 105 N 1st ST #429,SAN JOSE, CA 95103 USE-mail: sales@credenceresearch.comPh: 1-800-361-8290Web:In a new market research report published by Credence Research Infant Formula Market (Protein Source  Cow Milk Protein-based, Soy-based, Hypoallergenic and Specialized Infant Formula) - Growth, Share, Opportunities, Competitive Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2023, the global infant formula market was valued at US$ 9.40 Bn in 2015 and is estimated to expand with a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2023.Browse the full report atMarket Insights:The infant formula market is highly driven by the rising ratio of females in workforce worldwide. People are more inclined towards purchasing baby care products that are convenient and also ensure baby nutrition. Thus, further rise in female workforce may substantially fuel the market growth especially in the developing economies. Another major factor propelling the market growth is the rising discretionary income of people worldwide. Manufacturers are more focused towards designing nutrition-rich products and offering organic infant formula products. With the rising purchasing power of people worldwide, such infant formula products are expected to witness warm demand in the coming years.However, major factor affecting the market growth is the regulations supporting breastfeeding and controversies over infant formula products. The market has been facing the hurdles of controversies over infant formula products since several years. Organizations such as WHO and UNICEF highly recommend and promote breastfeeding over its substitutes in order to ensure infant health. Infant formula products are recommended only in cases where breastfeeding is not possible. This acts as a major challenge for the market.Competitive Insights:The global infant formula market is consolidated and regulated in nature with a few major international players contributing to more than fifty percent of the total market revenue. The most significant concern for the market players is to comply with the standards issued by various food regulatory bodies worldwide. Thus, market players majorly compete upon the quality of their products thereby designing nutritious infant formula products causing no harm to the babies.Apart from product development and brand-name, infant formula providers focus on attractive packaging of their products. Attractive packaging plays crucial role in case of baby products as it largely helps driving the consumers. This makes attractive packaging is one of the most important strategies adopted by the infant formula manufacturers. Another major trend among the companies is the promotion of breastfeeding over infant formula at least for the first six months of babies.Browse the full report atKey Trends: Organic baby food products for better health High focus on quality in order to meet food standards Focus on India and China by launching price competitive products Online product promotion Brand-name promotionToC:Chapter 1 Preface1.1 Report Description1.1.1 Purpose of the Report1.1.2 Target Audience1.1.3 USP and Key Offerings1.2 Research Scope1.3 Market Segmentation1.4 Research Methodology1.4.1 Phase I  Secondary Research1.4.2 Phase II  Primary Research1.4.3 Phase III  Expert Panel Review1.4.4 Assumptions1.4.5 Approach AdoptedChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1 Market Snapshot: Global Infant Formula Market2.2 Global Infant Formula Market, By Protein Source2.3 Global Infant Formula Market, By Distribution Channel2.4 Global Infant Formula Market, By GeographyChapter 3 Market Dynamics3.1 Product Insights and Market Overview3.1.1 Global Infant Formula Market Revenue, 2014  2023, (US$ Bn)3.2 Key Market Trends and Future Outlook3.3 Market Drivers3.4 Market Growth Inhibitors3.5 Impact Analysis of Market Drivers and Inhibitors3.5.1 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints3.6 Consumer Behavior Analysis: Infant Formula Market3.7 Key Regulations: Infant Formula Market3.8 Competitive Analysis3.8.1 Market Positioning of Key VendorsChapter 4 Global Infant Formula Market Analysis, By Protein Source4.1 Market Analysis4.2 Cow Milk Protein-based Formula4.3 Soy Protein-based Formula4.4 Hypoallergenic Formula..Request Sample:About Us:Credence Research is a worldwide market research and counseling firm that serves driving organizations, governments, non-legislative associations, and not-for-benefits. We offer our customers some assistance with making enduring enhancements to their execution and understand their most imperative objectives. Over almost a century, weve manufactured a firm extraordinarily prepared to this task.Media ContactName: Chris SmithAddress: 105 N 1st ST #429,SAN JOSE, CA 95103 USE-mail: sales@credenceresearch.comPh: 1-800-361-8290Web:105 N 1st ST #429, SAN JOSE,CA 95103, United States
Frozen Bakery Market Trends Based on Packaging and Application- Global Market to Grow at CAGR of 7% from 2016 to 2022

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Synopsis of Frozen Bakery MarketMarket ForecastMarket Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report on the Global Frozen Bakery Market. The Global Market for Frozen Bakery has been estimated to grow over 7% post 2022.Market OverviewThe region experiencing extreme climates demand more for frozen bakery product. As there is shortage of fresh bakery products, frozen bakery can be easily stored for a longer time. Among various segments, whole grain frozen bakery products is gaining more attention backed by rising awareness among the consumers of its health benefits.Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.Request a Sample Copy @Global Frozen Bakery Market Key Players: Arztya (Switzerland) Lantmannen Unibake (Denmark) Associated British Food plc (UK) Kelloggs (U.S.) Europastry (Spain) Flower Food (U.S.) General Waffel Manufactory (Belgium) American Desserts (France) Karea (France) Tsingbuy Industry Limited (China)Access the market data and market information presented through more than 60 market data tables and figures spread over 110 numbers of pages of the project report Global Frozen Bakery MarketBrowse Report Details @Brief Table of Contents for Global Frozen Bakery Market1 Executive Summary2 Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of the study2.3 Market Structure2.4 Stakeholders3 Research Methodology3.1 Research process3.2 Secondary research3.3 Primary research3.4 Forecast model3.5 Market Size estimation4 Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restraints4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges5 Market Trends5.1 Trends in Supply/Production5.2 Trends in Demand/Consumption5.3 Emerging Markets (Supply & Demand)5.4 Emerging Brands5.5 Trade (Import-export) Analysis5.6 Innovations in Products/Process5.7 Macroeconomic indicators Analysis for top 5 Producing countries6 Market Factor Analyses6.1 Introduction6.2 Value chain analysis6.3 Porters five forces6.4 Supply Chain Analysis7. Global Frozen Bakery Market -By Method7.1 Introduction7.2 Market size (sub segments)8. Global Frozen Bakery Market -By Type8.1 Introduction8.2 Market size (sub segments)9. Global Frozen Bakery Market -By Packaging9.1 Introduction9.2 Market size (sub segments)10. Global Frozen Bakery Market-By Application10.1 Introduction10.2 Market size11. Global Frozen Bakery Market-By RegionCONTINUEDMake an Enquiry of your Interest @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
Eyewear Market: - Middle East Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Forecast 2023

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The eyewear market in the Middle East is marked by the rising use of disposable contact lenses, increased affordability, an enhanced sense of fashion, and high consumption of luxury sunglasses and high-end spectacle frames. With contact lenses and frequent replacement of corrective spectacle lenses coming under the realm of a constantly expanding middle class population, the Middle East eyewear market is projected to witness healthy expansion in the years to come.According to Transparency Market Research, the Middle East eyewear market is set to expand at an 8.8% CAGR over the period between 2015 and 2023 in terms of revenue. Growing at this rate, the market is expected to expand from US$2.75 bn in 2014 to US$5.86 bn by 2023. In terms of volume, the market is expected to exhibit a 4.8% over the same period. The vast deficit between revenue- and volume-wise growth prospects of the market point at the possibility that the consumers in the region are rapidly shifting towards opulent choices for eyewear.Obtain Report Details @Corrective Eyewear Remains Key Determinant of Market GrowthBased on the type of products in the Middle East eyewear market, the segment of corrective eyewear, comprising spectacles and contact lenses, accounts for a dominant share in the overall market. Of these, the spectacles segment has a clear lead, in terms of both valuation and volume.The segment accounted for a share of nearly 75% in terms of value and 60% in terms of volume of the overall market in 2014. Spectacle lenses and spectacle frames come under the purview of the spectacles segment, of which, the high frequency of replacement aid the increased demand for spectacle lenses, enabling them to account for a dominant share. The rising prevalence of a number of vision-related problems at younger ages and rising geriatric population have aided the healthy growth of the spectacles segment in Middle East eyewear market in the past few years.For more information on this report, fill the form @UAE and Saudi Arabia to Remain Attractive MarketsOn the basis of geography, the market for eyewear in UAE emerged as the leading contributor to the overall revenues of the Middle East eyewear market in 2014, accounting for over 39% in the market. In terms of volume as well, UAE led the Middle East eyewear market, accounting for a 38% share. The UAE marker for eyewear benefits from the high population of affluent consumers, strengthening economy, and the easy availability of luxury brands.With over 23% share in the Middle East eyewear market, Saudi Arabia emerged as the second leading regional market in 2014. Over the forecasting horizon as well, UAE and Saudi Arabia are expected to remain the dominant regional markets, with the share of UAE rising to 39% and Saudi Arabia nearing 24% of the Middle East eyewear market by 2023.The competitive landscape of the Middle East eyewear market features mostly foreign companies such as Luxottica S.p.A, Carl Zeiss A.G, Essilor International, Safilo Group, and Johnson and Johnson Vision Care. Luxottica S.p.A., the company having luxury brands such as Prada, Ray-Ban, and Oakley under its portfolio, rules across most regional markets, accounting for over 40% share of the overall market in countries such as Egypt, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.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:
Internet of Things (IoT) Professional Services Market worth 158.28 Billion USD by 2021- New Report By MarketsandMarkets According to a new market research report "Internet of Things (IoT) Professional Services Market by Service Type (Consulting, Infrastructure, System Designing & Integration, Support & Maintenance, and Education & Training), Applications, and Regions - Global Forecast to 2021", by MarketsandMarkets, the IoT Professional Services Market size is expected to grow from USD 57.18 Billion in 2016 to USD 158.28 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.6% during the period 20162021.



Browse 64 market data tables and 41 figures spread through 147 pages and in-depth TOC on Internet of Things (IoT) Professional Services Market- Global Forecast to 2021"

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The major drivers for upsurge in demand for IoT Professional Services Market include rising trend of adopting IoT professional services to reduce Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX), demand for highly customized IoT services in the industrial and transportation sector, and increasing adoption of digital transformation services in organization by opting specialized IoT business and technology consulting services.



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IoT Consulting Services is likely to hold the largest market share in the IoT Professional Services Market



The consulting services team ensure interoperability and develop & implement the right IoT applications and architecture for the business or clients. The key benefits of IoT technology consulting services include better align technology to the organizations needs, realize business benefits in a timely fashion, reduce costs of compliance & risk management, security concerns, sketch an infrastructure plan, and enhance the internal functionality. The growth of IoT consulting services is attributed to the increase in the adoption of the technology, connected devices, and automation.



Smart transportation and logistics segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period



Smart transportation and logistics is all about integrating advanced technologies with the existing transportation and logistics infrastructure, delivering real-time online information about the traffic flow, tracking of the assets, and passengers/commuters. IoT professional services help the transport and logistics vendors in order to achieve automation by deploying the IoT technological solutions. The increasing requirement for analytics, security, logistics management, inventory management, digitalization, high volume networking and increase in the overall operations and responsiveness drives the smart transportation and logistics management.



North America is expected to hold the largest market share in the IoT Professional Services Market



As per the geographic analysis, North America is likely to benefit from its technological advancements and followed by robust internet infrastructure, widespread adoption of new technology and presence of a strong domestic solution providers have all contributed to the shifting towards smart infrastructure from conventional infrastructure. The need for better operational efficiency and business process at a low operating cost is expected to drive continuous growth in the IoT Professional Services Market.



The major vendors covered in the IoT Professional Services Market for this study include Accenture PLC (Dublin, Ireland), Atos SE (Besons, France), Capgemini S.A. (Paris, France), Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation ( New Jersey, U.S.), IBM Corporation (New York, U.S.), Infosys Limited (Karnataka, India), NTT DATA Corporation (Tokyo, Japan), Tata Consultancy Services Limited (Maharashtra, India), Tech Mahindra Limited (Maharashtra, India), and Wipro Limited (Karnataka, India).



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Micro-Irrigation Systems Market Projected to Post a CAGR of 5.2% during the Period of 2016 to 2022

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Synopsis of Micro-Irrigation Systems MarketMarket Forecast:Market Research Future published a Half Cooked Research Report on the Micro-irrigation Systems Market. Global Micro-Irrigation Systems Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 5% Post 2022Market HighlightsMicro-irrigation is an approach to irrigation which helps to reduce the water demand; it has been driven by commercial farmers in dry regions of United States of America and Israel in farming areas where water is scarce. Many parts of the world are now using micro-irrigation technology especially small scale farmers in developing countries are slowly adopting this technique. A number of organizations are looking at the way to reduce the cost of micro-irrigation and coming up with different innovative approaches such as drip irrigation and pipe irrigation.Market Drivers:Global Micro-irrigation Systems Market is mainly driven by increasing concern over exhausting water resources and need of efficient use of water especially in regions where water is scarce. Many local governments are encouraging farmers to implement micro-irrigation systems as a standard practice to conserve water which is also driving market growth. Reduction in rainfall due to climate change and pressure to fulfil demand of quality products is supporting the growth of market.Request a Sample Copy of Report @Market Key Players and Competitive Analysis:The major key players in Micro-irrigation Systems Market are Akplas (Turkey), Netafim Ltd Corporate (Israel), Jain irrigation systems (India), Irritec (Italy), Rivulis (Israel), Hunter Industries (U.S.), Antelco (Australia), Lindsay Corporation (U.S.), The Toro Company (U.S.) and Weishi Huifa Machinery Plant (China)In recent years many key players have introduced new micro-irrigation systems. Netafim has launched its next generation low flow drippers whereas Toro introduced Aqua traxx flow control pipe to increase efficiency to save more waters.Access the market data and market information presented through more than 60 market data tables and figures spread in 110 numbers of pages of the project report Global Micro-irrigation Systems MarketBrowse Report Details @Downstream Market AnalysisDepend upon amount of water available and type of a crop and farming method, different types of micro-irrigation techniques are used. Drip irrigation system is considered as most efficient micro-irrigation technique. People from South Australia have recently developed the new micro-irrigation technique named Measured irrigation which basically operates on rain water and sunlight. Farmers from developing countries prefer to buy affordable and efficient micro-irrigation technique and it is mainly influenced by government initiatives in that particular region. Irrigation system based on real time sensor is becoming popular in developed countries.Make an Enquiry for this Report @Regional AnalysisThe global Micro-irrigation Systems Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Among this North America region has major market share followed by Europe and APAC. Mexico, U.S., India, Australia and France are major importers of micro-irrigation systems from last few years. Micro-irrigation is being newly implemented in developing countries especially from Asia and Africa.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
Booming E-commerce Industry to Generate Lucrative Opportunities for Players in Global Laminated Labels Market

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The global market for laminated labels is expected to witness healthy growth rate in the next few years. The growing demand from a wide range of industries and the increasing focus on attractive and safe packaging and labeling are anticipated to encourage the growth of the overall market in the next few years. According to a research study by Transparency Market Research, in 2015, the global market for laminated labels was worth US$20,022.4 mn and is likely to reach a value of US$ 30,979 mn by the end of 2024. The market is anticipated to register a healthy 5.105 CAGR between 2016 and 2024.Obtain Report Details @Several concerns related to the development and growth of the laminated labels market across the globe has been discussed at length in the scope of this blog. Some of the questions have been addressed below:How is the competitive landscape of the global laminated labels market in the coming years?The global market for laminated labels is highly competitive in nature with a presence of a large number of players operating in it. Some of the prominent players operating in the market are Hub Labels, CCL industries Inc, Coveris Holdings, Avery Dennison Corporation, Langley Labels, and Cenveo. These players are expected to dominate the overall market in the next few years. The increasing number of mergers and acquisition is predicted to encourage the growth of the market in the near future. In addition, the rising focus of these players on advancements in technology and new product development are anticipated to fuel the growth of the market in the coming years.For more information on this report, fill the form @Which regional segment is projected to grow at a progressive growth rate in the near future?According to the research study, Asia Pacific is anticipated to lead the global laminated labels market in the next few years and register a healthy 5.30% CAGR between 2016 and 2024. The high growth of this region can be attributed to the increasing pace of industrialization across Asia Pacific. Moreover, the increasing focus on innovations is estimated to fuel the growth of the Asia Pacific laminated labels market in the coming years. Furthermore, North America and Europe are expected to witness progressive growth in the next few years.Which growth factors are anticipated to supplement the growth of the global laminated labels market?A substantial rise in the demand for laminated labels from diverse industries, such as consumer durables, food and beverages, logistics, and pharmaceuticals is anticipated to encourage the growth of the global laminated labels market in the coming years. In addition, the growing popularity of the e-commerce market across the globe and the growing disposable income are predicted to accelerate the growth of the overall market in the next few years. Furthermore, the introduction of bio-based labelling materials is likely to generate lucrative opportunities for key players in the global laminated labels market in the near future.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:
Global Smartphone Screen Protector Market 2017 Size, Share, Trend Split by Application, Regions, Capacity, Production & Price

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In our aim to provide our erudite clients with the best research material with absolute in-depth information of the market, our new report on Global Smartphone Screen Protector Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Smartphone Screen Protector Market is an in-depth study and analysis of the market by our industry experts with unparalleled domain knowledge. The report will shed light on many critical points and trends of the industry which are useful for our esteemed clients. The report covers a vast expanse of information including an overview, comprehensive analysis, definitions and classifications, applications, and expert opinions, among others. With the extent of information filled in the report, the presentation and style of the Global Smartphone Screen Protector Market report is a noteworthy.Request a sample of this report @The Global Smartphone Screen Protector Industry report provides key information about the industry, including invaluable facts and figures, expert opinions, and the latest developments across the globe. Not only does the report cover a holistic view of the industry from a global standpoint, but it also covers individual regions and their development. The Global Smartphone Screen Protector Industry market report showcases the latest trends in the global and regional markets on all critical parameters which include technology, supplies, capacity, production, profit, price, and competition. The key players covered in the report provide a detailed analysis of the competition and their developments in the Global Smartphone Screen Protector Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Smartphone Screen Protector Market report.The report also focuses on the significance of industry chain analysis and all variables, both upstream and downstream. These include equipment and raw materials, client surveys, marketing channels, and industry trends and proposals. Other significant information covering consumption, key regions and distributors, and raw material suppliers are also a covered in this report.Browse the complete report @Finally, the Smartphone Screen Protector Market report ends with a detailed SWOT analysis of the market, investment feasibility and returns, and development trends and forecasts. As with every report on Orbis Research, the Smartphone Screen Protector Industry is the holy grail of information which serious knowledge seekers can benefit from.If you have any enquiry before buying a copy of this report @Some Points from Table of Content:Chapter Two: Global Smartphone Screen Protector Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)Chapter Three: Global Smartphone Screen Protector Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Smartphone Screen Protector Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) 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 customized 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 specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Us: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.com
Global 3D Printing for Medical Sector Market Industry Insights 2024

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Reasonable price of 3D printed medical products leading to increasing popularityRegional governments of various countries are focusing on burden of expensive medicines on patients through effective price control measures. However, reducing profit margins negatively impact investments in research and development (R&D) phase. 3D printed medical products can effectively address the concerns of governments and the industry. Spritam (Levetiracetam) from Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, is the first 3D printed tablet that received U.S. FDA approval in March 2016. Low cost of production would in turn reduce cost of product and make it more affordable to patients. Researchers are the University of Toronto, Autodesk Research, and CBM Canada used 3D printing to produce low cost customizable prosthetic sockets for patients especially in low-income countries especially Uganda. This would further boost investment in 3D printing by healthcare providers to reduce product cost and increase profit margins.Similarly, expensive stents, prosthetics, and implants can be made available at a much cheaper rate with improved therapeutic outcomes in the emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Russia, which would increase affordability and accessibility of medical products.Get sample copy of this report:A plethora of medical applications3D printing technology is primarily used to create artificial skin, kidney, liver, pancreas, pills, and orthopedic and dental implants. The current manufacturing capabilities are not adequate to produce artificial organs with precise shape and size of miniature organ parts. Biological models made from 3D printing technology can help in surgical training, planning, and offering personalized medicines, thus enhancing quality of life of the user. While the use of 3D printing is widely implemented in dental applications, other medical segments such as tissues, prosthetics, medicines and heart valves, medical equipment and synthetic skin are also expected to deploy 3D printing technology to a greater extent in the near future.Different raw materials cater to different 3D printing demands3D printing technology uses numerous materials such as the metals, ceramics, polymers, and biological cells for printing skin, organs, and medical devices. Metal printing is widely used in prosthetics and implants. Biological cells are widely used in skin and tissue printing. In 2014, LOreal S.A. announced partnership with Organovo Holdings, Inc. to 3D-print human skin. Organovo printed the first blood vessel in 2009 and is in the process of developing 3D-printed tissues through strategic partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM)a research institute associated with Wake Forest School of Medicineis involved in printing organs and tissue using gel and patients own cells. Ceramic is used in dental implants printing. Also, prosthetics can be printed using ceramics and polymers. Polymers are used in printing dental, orthopedic and cranio-maxillofacial implants, and biological models.Favorable government policies and government funding to boost the 3D printing market for medical applicationsThe U.S. government is encouraging innovation in healthcare through funding and establishing manufacturing hubs. For instance, in 2014, the National Institutes of Health established a 3D Print Exchange organization to promote open-source sharing of biomedical 3D print files and tutorials. While the U.S. FDA currently approves only dental, orthopedics, cranio-maxillary and tissue engineering for 3D printing, clearance of the 3D printing in other segments would boost the 3D printing market growth significantly. Similarly, the Japanese government supports manufacture and sales of professional-grade printers for 3D printing (also used for medical applications). In June 2013, the Chinese government announced plans to set up ten 3D printing innovation centers across the country. In May 2016, SHINING 3Da China-based 3D printing companyestablished its new headquarters in Zhejiang 3D industrial zone.Ask for discount on customization:3D Printing  Revolutionizing the Healthcare Industry3D printing is a rapidly emerging cost-effective technology with significant potential to transform healthcare delivery and clinical activities. This technology can be used in a range of devices such as prostheses, hearing aids, custom-made knee and hip implants, dental implants, and surgical instruments. The global 3D printing for medical sector market was valued at US$ 412.2 million in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 11.7% during the forecast period (2016  2024).About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Blog:
Global Blood Processing Devices and Consumables Market to Grow Globally

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Blood processing devices are an integral part of blood banks and diagnostic laboratories in order to maintain blood components in their actual form for storing and blood transfusion process. Alteration in the blood components may make it unusable. As blood is an integral requisite in stem cell therapy and organ transplant, demand for blood processing devices and consumables is directly proportional to number of surgical procedures, which is increasing rapidly.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :Market DynamicsNeed for blood processing devices and consumables is projected to continue along an upward growth trajectory, owing to increasing number of blood banks and growing incidence of blood infection and blood disorders. Moreover, number of blood transfusion surgical procedures is increasing due to increasing incidence of immunodeficiency diseases. According to the 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, around 112.5 million units of donated blood are collected every year globally. WHO recommends implementation of a national blood policy to ensure maintaining quality (free from infection) of the blood collected. This in turn ensures consistent demand for blood processing devices and consumables globally.Market TaxonomyThis report segments the blood processing devices and consumables market on the basis of devices and consumables. On the basis of device type, the global blood processing devices and consumables market is analyzed for plasma freezers, blood bank refrigerators, lab refrigerators, lab freezers, ultra-low temperatures, shock freezers, grouping analyzers, warmers, hematocrit centrifuges and cell processors. Consumables include blood administration sets, blood bags, blood collection needles, blood collection tubes, slides, sedimentation tubes, slide stainer and blood grouping reagents among others.Key features of the study:-This report provides in-depth analysis of the blood processing devices and consumables industry and provides market size (US$ million) and Cumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) (%) for the forecast period (2016  2024), considering 2015 as the base year-It elucidates potential revenue opportunity across different segments and explains attractive investment proposition matrix for this marketThis study also provides vital insights about market drivers, restraints, opportunities, new product launches or approval, regional outlook, and competitive strategy adopted by the leading playersAdditional Information on such Research Findings can be Availed At:-It profiles leading players in the global blood processing devices and consumables market based on the following parameters  company overview, financial performance, product portfolio, geographical presence, distribution strategies, key developments and strategies and future plans-Key companies covered as a part of this study include AbbottLaboratories, Becton, Dickinson And Company, Roche Holdings AG, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Biomerieux SA, Immucor, Inc., Danaher Corporation, Terumo Corporation, Macopharma SA, Grifols International, Haemonetics Corporation, and Thermogenesis Corporation-Insights from this report would allow marketers and the management authorities of the companies to make informed decision with respect to manufacturing or research outsourcing, cost reduction opportunities, and operational strategies-The global blood processing devices and consumables market report caters to various stakeholders in this industry including investors, device manufacturers, consumable manufacturers, raw material suppliers, distributors, new entrants, and financial analysts-Stakeholders would greatly benefit from various strategy matrices used in analyzing the blood processing devices and consumables market, which would aid them in making effective decisionAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @
Global Deep Brain Stimulation Devices Market Industry Insights 2024

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Increasing incidence of Parkinsons disease to drive the deep brain stimulation devices market growthAccording to the Parkinsons disease Foundation, there are over 10 million people suffering from Parkinsons disease worldwide as of 2016. As per findings published by the organization, incidence rate increases with age, and only 4% of people with PD are diagnosed before the age of 50 years. In U.S. alone, incidence is as high as 60,000 each year as noted by the Parkinsons disease Foundation. According to Parkinsons Australia Inc., there were approximately 11,544 new cases of PD diagnosed in Australia in 2014, while as per stats released by Parkinson Canada, the number of people suffering from Parkinsons disease in the country is projected to increase to over 163,700 by 2031 (double than the prevalence in 2011). Increasing incidence of PD across the globe is projected to drive growth for deep brain stimulation devices market.Development in technology to increase therapeutic outcome and enhance application of DBS in other disease treatmentAccording to a study published in the Neuron journal in December 2016, deep brain stimulation, targeting entorhinal cortex and hippocampus regions in the brain, demonstrated negative impact on improving memory. Researchers, however, are optimistic about obtaining successful results through further research in enhancing memory, especially in Alzheimer patients.Get sample copy of this report:Activa PC+S system by Medtronic Inc., is a closed-loop DBS device being utilized for research purpose among few physicians in Europe. This system records the electrical activity in brain and develops an algorithm of the closed-loop system. The device is being tested in patients with advanced Parkinsons disease. Once commercialized, the closed-loop DBS system would make treatment for Parkinsons disease more effective and customized according to unique patient needs. This is expected to benefit patients significantly and thus augment the deep brain stimulation devices market development.Increasing demand for minimally-invasive treatment options in emerging economies to create opportunities in the respective deep brain stimulation devices marketParkinsons and Alzheimer disease involves long-term administration of medications, making it unaffordable to major section of the population in emerging economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Advent of minimally-invasive technology has led to increase in demand for such procedures and devices for treatment of chronic disease conditions such as diabetes, stroke, Parkinsons disease, blood clot, and Alzheimers disease. Deep brain stimulation devices being an effective minimally-invasive therapy for Parkinsons patients, is projected to gain significant growth traction in emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil, Israel, and North African countries. This in-turn is expected to fuel the deep brain stimulation devices market growth.Deep Brain Stimulation DevicesDeep brain stimulation (DBS) device, often described as brain pacemaker, aids in alleviating symptoms of Parkinsons disease (PD). The device is implanted at one of the three FDA approved brain sites to block the electrical signals from these sites to the brain. The three FDA approved targeted brain sites are ventrointermedialis (VIM) nucleus of the thalamus, subthalamic nucleus (STN), and globus pallidus pars interna (GPi). DBS surgery is performed on patients suffering from Parkinsons disease for at least four years, and are on medications albeit with motor complications. Though there are other surgical options such as thalamotomy and pallidotomy, deep brain stimulation is the most preferred option, as it does not involve tissue destruction and is a reversible surgical treatment.Ask for discount on customization:The global deep brain stimulation devices market was valued at US$ 664.4 million in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.2% during the forecast period (2016  2024).About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Blog:
Waterjet Cutting Machinery Market, Pressure Ranges - Up to 4,200 Bar and More than 4,200 Bar; Horsepower - Up to 4,200 Bar and More than 4,200 Bar)  Outlook 2024

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Global Waterjet Cutting Machinery Market: OverviewThe waterjet cutting machinery market report provides analysis for the period 20142024, wherein the period from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period and 2015 is the base year. The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a key role in waterjet cutting machinery market growth over the forecast period. It also highlights the drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence markets growth during the said period. The study provides a holistic perspective on the waterjet cutting machinery markets growth throughout the above mentioned forecast period in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn), across different geographies, including Asia Pacific, South America, North America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).Browse Market Research Report @The market overview section of the report demonstrates the market dynamics and trends, such as the drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of this market. An attractiveness analysis has also been provided for every geographic region in the report, in order to give a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario of the waterjet cutting machinery market, globally. Moreover, the report provides an overview of the various strategies of key players present in the market. Key market indicators included in the report provide analysis of the factors which are capable of affecting the market scenario. These indicators are expected to define the market scenario during the forecast period.Global Waterjet Cutting Machinery Market: Scope of the StudyThe report segments the global waterjet cutting machinery market on the basis of product type into 3D waterjet cutting, micro waterjet cutting and robotic waterjet cutting. Machine sizes included in the report are small size, medium size and large size. By application, the market has been classified into job & machine shop, exotic metal and non-traditional material cutting, machine manufacturing, ceramic/stone cutting, glass/metal artwork, gasket cutting, fiberglass cutting, surgical instrument manufacturing, foam product cutting, slitting operations, electronics and others. High pressure pumps are divided on the basis of pressure rage into up to 4,200 bar and more than 4,200 bar segments and according to the horsepower into between 0 to 50 horsepower, between 51 to 100 horsepower and others segments. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross-segment analysis of the waterjet cutting machinery market and classifies it into various levels, thereby providing valuable insights at the macro as well as micro levels.On the basis of country, North America market is divided into the U.S. and Canada. Similarly, Europe market is divided into Germany, France and Rest of Europe. Asia Pacific has been segmented into China, India and Rest of Asia Pacific. Middle East and Africa covers the GCC Countries, South Africa and Rest of Middle East and Africa, similarly, South America region includes Brazil, Argentina and Rest of South America. This report provides all the essential information required to understand the waterjet cutting machinery and its components. Also, the report provides insights related to the policies and regulations according to the various geographical regions mentioned above. These policies and regulations are directly or indirectly influencing the waterjet cutting machinery market. Furthermore, Porters Five Forces analysis explains the factors which are currently affecting the waterjet cutting machinery market. This report also provides the value chain analysis for the waterjet cutting machinery which explains the participants of the value chain.Global Waterjet Cutting Machinery Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report also highlights the competitive landscape of the waterjet cutting machinery market, thereby positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence and recent key developments. The comprehensive waterjet cutting machinery market estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews, and in-house expert panel reviews. These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the Waterjet Cutting Machinery markets growth.Make an Enquiry @DARDI International Corporation, ESAB Group, MD Corporation, KMT Waterjet Systems, Inc., A Innovative International Ltd, Flow International Corporation, Manufacturers Supplies Company, Bystronic Laser India (Pvt.) Ltd., Water Jet Sweden AB, Waterjet Corporation s.r.l., WARDjet, Inc., TECHNI Waterjet, BFT GmbH, Hypertherm, Inc., Jet Edge, Inc., OH Precision Corporation, Uhde High Pressure Technologies GmbH, Water Jet Germany s.r.o., PressureJet Systems Pvt. Ltd., WSI Waterjet Systems International, OMAX Corporation, Hughes Pumps Ltd, Resato International BV and NLB Corp are some of the major players operating within the global waterjet cutting machinery market profiled in this study. Details such as financials, SWOT analysis, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players have been duly provided as part of company profiling.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:
Global Industrial Furnace Market by Technology, Application & Geography - Analysis & Forecast to 2021.

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Global Industrial Furnace Sales Market Report 2016 Purchase This Report by calling ResearchnReports.com at +1-888-631-6977.This report studies sales (consumption) of Industrial Furnace in Global market, especially in USA, China, Europe, Japan, India and Southeast Asia, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringThermal TechnologyTENOVANabertherm GmbHSMS SiemagCarbolite GeroAlhern-MartinCM FurnacesCAN-ENGYP LLC.Cress Mfg.IFCGrieve CorporationHeatTekL&L Special Furnace Co.Noble Industrial FurnaceMIFCOAssociated Industrial FurnacesKeith CompanyThermcraftKleenair ProductsEpcon Industrial SystemsWellman FurnacesLentonGasbarre Furnace GroupGet Sample Copy of this Report:Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, and market share and growth rate of Industrial Furnace in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeUSAChinaEuropeJapanIndiaSoutheast AsiaSplit by product Types, with sales, revenue, price and gross margin, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IIType IIISplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Industrial Furnace in each application, can be divided intoMetallurgical industryThe silicate industryOther industriesGet Discount on this report:Table of Content:-Global Industrial Furnace Sales Market Report 20161 Industrial Furnace Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Industrial Furnace1.2 Classification of Industrial Furnace2 Global Industrial Furnace Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application3 USA Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4 China Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5 Europe Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6 Japan Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)7 India Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)8 Southeast Asia Industrial Furnace (Volume, Value and Sales Price)9 Global Industrial Furnace Manufacturers Analysis10 Industrial Furnace Maufacturing Cost Analysis11 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers12 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders13 Market Effect Factors Analysis14 Global Industrial Furnace Market Forecast (2016-2021)15 AppendixCompany Overview:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat United States and Global and Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports)
Global CAR T Cell Therapy Market Industry Insights 2024

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CD 19 to dominate the market throughout the forecast periodAcute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is highly prevalent among children. Adults account for over 40% cases of ALL. Changing lifestyle along with increasing incidence of cancer among children necessitates an effective treatment approach in the healthcare industry for effective treatment of the same. As a result, CAR- T cell therapy has emerged as one of the potential therapies to address this issue. CD-19 marker is highly effective in tackling the growing incidence problem of ALL. The CD-19 antigen CAR T Cell segment is expected to be valued at US$ 1.2 billion by 2023 and is expected to continue dominate the market (in terms of revenue) through the remainder of the forecast period.North America to retain its dominance in the CAR T cell therapy market through 2028North America is home to state of the art R&D labs along and is characterized by high prevalence rate of blood cancer. Each year, over 171,000 people are diagnosed with blood cancer in the U.S. Of these, around 46% suffer from lymphoma (U.S. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society), thereby creating major market opportunity for CAR T cell therapy industry players to capitalize on highly lucrative growth opportunities in the region. North America is expected to account for 52.5% of overall market share by 2020. Kite Pharma Inc. along with Novartis International AG are expected to gain significant market share in the region, as these companies have already applied for U.S. Biologics License Application (BLA). Moreover, these companies have established dedicated manufacturing sites for CAR-T cell therapy products; Kite Pharma established its 43,500 square foot plant in the U.S. for production of CAR-T cell products. The plant is expected to produce up to 5,000 patient therapy products in 2018. In 2016, Juno Therapeutics invested US$ 20 million to set up of CAR-T cell products manufacturing facility in the U.S. These companies are analyzed to greatly benefit from first mover advantage.Get sample copy of this report:Europe is expected to second-most prominent market (in terms of revenue) through 2023, post which it would lose it position to Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at the fastest rate, expanding at a CAGR of 62.5% between 2019 and 2028. Japan and China are the key regions in Asia Pacific that market players would focus on during the latter half of the forecast period to pave a way for higher return on investment (ROI).Diversification of CAR T Cell in other therapeutics application is expected to create lucrative market opportunities for market playersCurrently, Juno Therapeutics along with Kite Pharma and Novartis are working on CD 19 antigenresponsible for blood cancers. These companies also have a product roadmap to commercialize products based on CD 30 and 22 responsible for solid cancers. FDA approval of these products by 2025 is projected to drive the market growth over the latter half of the forecast period.CAR T Cell Therapy Market  A Revolution in Cancer TreatmentOver the last few years, CAR T Cell therapy has gained wide recognition in the healthcare industry. CAR T cell is an innovative technique that involves removal of T Cells from patients blood before reinsertion using a genetically altered mechanism. The technology is still in the nascent stage; however, is expected to grow at double digit growth rate creating multi-billion absolute dollar opportunity for industry players in the near future. As of 2016, just over 40 companies are engaged in CAR T cell therapy market. Novartis International AG, Juno Therapeutics, and Kite Pharma Inc. are the only players that are expected to launch products by 2018. With long impending clinical trials and research activities carried out using chimeric antigen receptor cells (CAR-T) cells, these players in the pharmaceuticals industry are expected to launch various products in 2017 and commercialize them in the following two to three years.Ask for discount on customization:The competition in the CAR T cell therapy market is projected to intensify following commercial launch of products of other companies by 2022. In 2015, Cellectis entered into clinical alliance with MD Anderson for development of UCARTCS1 in MM, UCART22 in ALL, UCART38 in T-cell ALL and UCART123 in a rare non-curable cancer.The global CAR T cell therapy market is estimated to be valued at US$ 72.0 million in 2017 and is projected to expand exponentially at a CAGR of 46.1% during 2019  2028.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Blog:
Latest Market Research Report on Customer Segmentation in UK Insurance: Exclusivity

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Customer Segmentation in UK Insurance: Exclusivity" to its huge collection of research reports.A small group of consumers positively identify with the Exclusivity customer segment. Around 14% fit into this category. Here, the apparent value for money and level of service received from an insurer is just as important as the brand of the provider. In this regard, Exclusivity consumers fall into two separate groups, each of which prioritizes the brand of an insurer for different reasons.Standard demographic analysis often fails to reveal sufficiently deep insight into how consumers behave and the motivations behind it. We have produced an attitudinally based segmentation of the consumer market, and have used this to produce an examination of the market for key financial products and services. Here we focus on those falling into the Exclusivity category, and explore the characteristics of these individuals. There are two ways in which Exclusivity individuals can be defined and how their approach to financial products and services can be analyzed: those who seek branding over apparent value for money (Brand Chasers), and those who are usually the first to try new products (Early Adopters).To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Scope- Consumers aged 18-24 represent the largest proportion of those falling into the Exclusivity customer segment at 17.5%.- 51.9% of consumers who agree that value for money is more important than branding chose a private motor insurance provider because they offered the cheapest quote.Insurers with a track record for developing new products and propositions will appeal to those categorized as Early Adopters, with this group mainly consisting of younger consumers who are always willing to try a new invention.Reasons to buy- Inform your strategy with knowledge of the key trends and sub-trends that influence insurance consumption habits and develop a competitive advantage around consumer attitude and behavior trends.- Understand the importance of being led by the consumer in insurance, and define your strategies with insight based on what your customers really want.- Align your marketing strategies with the crucial trends influencing how consumers react to certain brands and their propositions.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 @
The Cards and Payments Industry in Italy: Emerging Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "The Cards and Payments Industry in Italy: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.GlobalDatas 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Italy: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2021' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Italian cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including direct debits, check payments, payment cards, cash transactions and credit transfers during the review period (2012-2016).The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (2017-2021). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes.The report brings together GlobalDatas research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @GlobalDatas 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Italy: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2021' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Italian cards and payments industry, including -- Current and forecast values for each market in the Italian cards and payments industry, including debit, credit and charge cards.- Detailed insights into payment instruments including direct debit, credit transfers, cash transactions, checks and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.- E-commerce market analysis.- Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Italian cards and payments industry.- Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit and charge cards.- Comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes and buying preferences for cards.- The competitive landscape in the Italian cards and payments industry.Scope- This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Italian cards and payments industry.- It provides current values for the Italian cards and payments industry for 2016, and forecast figures to 2021.- It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting the Italian cards and payments industry.- It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry.- It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions.Reasons to buy- Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Italian cards and payments industry and each market within it.- Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Italian cards and payments industry.- Assess the competitive dynamics in the Italian cards and payments industry.- Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Italy.- Gain insights into key regulations governing the Italian cards and payments industry.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 Allergy Immunotherapy Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report (2015-2019)

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Allergy Immunotherapy Market: Trends and Opportunities (2015-2019)" to its huge collection of research reports.The report titled Global Allergy Immunotherapy Market: Trends & Opportunities (2015-2019) provides an in-depth analysis of the global allergy immunotherapy market with detailed analysis of market sizing and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. Global allergy immunotherapy market penetration rate is also provided in the report. The report also provides market size of allergic rhino conjunctivitis (AR) and HDM allergy disease. The report provides detailed market share analysis of the global allergy immunotherapy market by types, regions and players. The market share of allergy immunotherapy market in the respiratory market and prescription allergy market is also explained in detailed.The report provides detail regional analysis of the allergy immunotherapy market in the United States and Europe. In regional analysis market by value, key players are provided with market for pipeline products.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @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 overall global allergy immunotherapy industry has also been forecasted for the period 2014-2019, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition is global allergy immunotherapy market is stiff and dominated by the big players like ALK-Abello. Further, key players of the allergy immunotherapy industry like ALK-Abello, Stallergenes; and Allergy Therapeutics are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Country Coverage- United States- EuropeCompany Coverage- ALK-Abello- Stallergenes- Allergy TherapeuticsExecutive SummaryAllergen immunotherapy, also known as allergy shots, is a form of long-term treatment that decreases symptoms for many people with allergic rhinitis, allergic asthma, conjunctivitis (eye allergy) or stinging insect allergy. Allergy shots decrease sensitivity to allergens thats why it is known as desensitization or hypo-sensitization and often lead to lasting relief of allergy symptoms even after treatment is stopped. This makes it a cost-effective, beneficial treatment approach for many people. Allergen immunotherapy is a preventive treatment for allergic reactions to substances such as grass pollens, house dust mites and bee venom. Whole allergen immunotherapy is the only treatment that targets the actual cause of the allergy and attempts to re-educate the immune system to tolerate the allergen.In the 2013 World Allergy Organization White Book, the WHO estimated that there were 400 million people in the world suffering from allergic rhinitis and 300 million from asthma, which shows the scale of the problem. The most common allergens found in the US and Europe.Patients presenting with allergies are questioned and the tested in an attempt to ascertain exactly what they are allergic to. Once this has been identified, a treatment regime can be put in place. However, the approaches in the US and Europe are quite different, largely because of differences in product availability. The type of product used falls into three categories: SCIT, SLITD and SLITT.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 Breast Pumps Market to Surpass US$ 0.9 Billion By 2024:Coherent Market Insights

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Growing number of women in the workforce providing growth impetusAccording to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), around 57% of women were part of the U.S. workforce in 2015. Furthermore, the DOL projects that by 2024, women in the age group of 25 to 34 years would constitute the major share of employed women in the U.S. On the contrary, emerging economies such as India have witnessed a decline in the female workforce from 35% in 1990 to 27% in 2014 (as per the World Bank Statistics). This is mainly attributed to cultural and societal factors and dearth of suitable jobs opportunities close to place of residence. However, liberalized thinking women empowerment programs are expected to change the scenario and drive growth in the number of women enlisted with the workforce in the country during the forecast period. Countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have reported a significant increase in participation of women in the workforce as per the 2015 World Bank data.Additional Information on such Research Findings can be Availed At:Increasing disposable incomes and favorable reimbursement policies driving demand for electric breast pumpsAutomated electric pumps with double pump system offer convenience to women in expressing breast milk. Increasing insurance coverage and availability of reimbursement policies is driving adoption of electric breast pumps in developed markets. Aftermarket for electric breast pumps has witnessed major traction in recent years, wherein renting is an affordable option for women, especially in developing countries. The single-electric breast pump segment is projected to expand at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period (2016  2024). However, these devices are bulky and cumbersome to carry, inhibiting adoption to a certain extent.Battery-powered systems are a more practical solution for on-the-go users. Thus, due to better features and benefits offered by electric and battery-powered breast pumps, demand for manually operated breast pumps is projected to experience a downward spiral during the forecast period.Technologically advanced breast pumps to replace manually operated breast pumpsIn November 2016, Medela AG launched Sonataa smart breast pump connected to a mobile app MyMedela. This system aids mothers to track babys activities, get access to expert tips, get real-time notifications, and track specific preset goals. In December 2016, Naya Health, Inc. launched Naya pump based on water-based technology. The device connects to the Naya Health Tracker app and helps mothers control the machine and track the amount of milk expressed and consumed by the baby. Such innovative technologies are expected to significantly inhibit demand for manually operated breast pumps, as it offers ease and convenience in managing nursing sessions.Request For Customization:Breast pumps are a boon for working women who cannot constantly nurse their babies due to work commitments. Commercially available types of breast pumps are manual, battery-powered, and electric breast pumps. Inclusion of these devices within the reimbursement purview in the U.S. is boosting demand for electric breast pumps. Demand for breast pumps significantly varies across regions, owing to difference in economic condition and culture and societal beliefs.The global breast pumps market was valued at US$ 606.6 million in 2015 and is projected to expand at a moderate CAGR of 4.8% during the forecast period (2016  2024).To know the latest trends and insights prevalent in this market, click the link below:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Opportunities for the global biometric system market to reach $32.4 billion by 2022

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According to a new market report published by Lucintel, the future of the global biometric system market looks promising with opportunities in the government, commercial, healthcare, and banking sector. The global biometric system market is expected to reach an estimated $32.4 billion by 2022 and it is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 15% from 2017 to 2022. The major growth drivers for this market are increasing focus of safety and security in private and business sectors related to unauthorized access, growth in the e-passport program for personal identification, and the growing adaption of voice recognition systems in the banking and financial services sector.In this market, fingerprint, automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS), iris recognition, facial recognition, hand geometry, vein recognition, signature recognition, and voice recognition are the major biometric technologies used for identification and access control. Lucintel forecasts that AFIS is expected to remain the largest technology due to the increasing demand in various law enforcement and civil applications. The voice recognition technology segment is expected to experience the highest growth rate in the forecast period supported by increasing demand from the banking and finance sector in addition to the healthcare sector.Within the biometric system market, government & law enforcement is expected to remain the largest segment due to the growing demand for biometric systems in defense sectors and homeland security. Lucintel predicts that the financial & banking sector is likely to experience the highest growth in the forecast period supported by increasing use of biometrics to enhance security and protect the financial information and identity of customers.North America is expected to remain the largest region during the forecast period due to the stringent government regulations for security in the US and Canada.Asia Pacific is expected to witness good growth over the forecast period because of growing adoption of biometric technologies in national ID and e-passport programs.Emerging trends, which have a direct impact on the dynamics of the industry, include development of advanced biometric modalities, such as body odor, ear pattern, and lip biometrics and increasing use of advanced biometric sensors. Safran SA, NEC Corporation, 3M Cogent, Precise Biometrics, and Fujitsu Ltd are among the major biometric system manufacturers.Lucintel, a leading global strategic consulting and market research firm, has analyzed growth opportunities in the global biometric system market by type, technology, end use industry, and region and has come up with a comprehensive research report entitled Growth Opportunities in the Global Biometric System Market 2017-2022: Trends, Forecast, and Opportunity Analysis. The Lucintel report serves as a spring board for growth strategy as it provides a comprehensive data and analysis on trends, key drivers, and directions. The study includes a forecast for the global biometric system market by type, technology, end use industry, and region as follows:By Technology [$M shipment analysis from 2011 to 2022]: Fingerprint AFIS Iris Recognition Facial Recognition Hand Geometry Vein Recognition Signature recognition Voice Recognition OthersBy End Use Industry [$M shipment analysis from 2011 to 2022]: Government and Law Enforcement Commercial and Retail Health Care Travel and Immigration Financial and Banking OthersBy Type [$M shipment analysis from 2011 to 2022]: Physiological Type Behavioral TypeBy Region [$M shipment analysis for 2011  2022]: North America Europe Asia Pacific The Rest of the WorldThis 176-page research report will enable you to make confident business decisions in this globally competitive marketplace. For a detailed table of contents, contact Lucintel at +1-972-636-5056 or helpdesk@lucintel.com. Lucintel offerings include Medical Market Analysis, Medical Market Research, Opportunity Screening and Analysis, Capital Investment Feasibility and SWOT Matrix.About LucintelLucintel, the premier global management consulting and market research firm, creates winning strategies for growth. It offers market assessments, competitive analysis, opportunity analysis, growth consulting, M&A, and due diligence services to executives and key decision-makers in a variety of industries. For further information, visitThis report answers following 11 key questions:Q.1 What are some of the most promising, high-growth opportunities for the global biometric system market by type (physiological and behavioral), by technology (fingerprint, AFIS, iris recognition, facial recognition, hand geometry, vein recognition, signature recognition, voice recognition, and others), by end use industry (government and law enforcement, commercial and retail, health care, travel and immigration, financial and banking, and others), and by region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World)?Q. 2 Which segments will grow at a faster pace and why?Q.3 Which regions will grow at a faster pace and why?Q.4 What are the key factors affecting market dynamics? What are the drivers and challenges of the market?Q.5 What are the business risks and threats to the market?Q.6 What are the emerging trends in this market and reasons behind them?Q.7 What are some changing demands of customers in the market?Q.8 What are the new developments in the market? Which companies are leading these developments?Q.9 Who are the major players in this market? What strategic initiatives are being implemented by key players for business growth?Q.10 What are some of the competitive products and processes in this area and how big of a threat do they pose for loss of market share via product substitution?Q.11 What M&A activity has occurred in the last 5 years?Lucintel, the premier global management consulting and market research firm, creates winning strategies for growth. It offers market assessments, competitive analysis, opportunity analysis, growth consulting, M&A, and due diligence services to executives and key decision-makers in a variety of industries. For further information, visitLucintel222 Las Colinas Blvd West, Suite 1650, Irving, TX 75039, USAPh: +1-972-636-5056 Fax: +1-877-883-5140marketing@lucintel.com
Global Cocoa Processing Market to Reach 4.6 Million Tons by 2022

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Cocoa bean is derived from the cocoa tree which belongs to the species Theobroma cacao. Being native to the Amazon region, it grows well in hot, rainy and tropical climates. Earlier considered a very important crop in Central and South America, the popularity of cocoa has today spread all around the world. Cocoa bean contains a number of healthful compounds which include phenylethylamine, theobromine, polyphenols, essential vitamins, minerals, potassium and copper. It also provides various health benefits such as improved cardiovascular and brain health, and relief from high blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, constipation, diabetes, bronchial asthma, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome and various neurodegenerative diseases.Get sample of the report:Cocoa bean serves as a key feedstock for cocoa processing plants which process it into different forms such as cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, cocoa cakes and cocoa powder. These processed cocoa products currently find numerous applications in a number of industries. Cocoa powder with its unique flavour, is widely used as a colouring agent as well as in the preparation of chocolate milk, biscuits, syrups, ice cream, cakes and other confectionery products. On the other hand, cocoa butter is used in the production of soaps, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. These wide-ranging applications of processed cocoa have facilitated the growth of the global cocoa processing market. According to a new report by Expert Market Research, the market reached a volume of 4.2 Million Tons in 2016 and is further expected to reach 4.6 Million Tons by 2022.Browse full report with TOC:Key findings from the report:Two major types of processed cocoa products are cocoa butter and cocoa powder.Region-wise, Europe dominated the market with the majority of the market share. It was followed by Africa, North America, South America and Asia-Pacific.Being fragmented in nature, the global cocoa processing market is surrounded by a number of small and big players. Some of these players include Barry Callebaut, Cargil, ADM, Blommer, Mondelez, Guan Chong, Nestle, Ferrero, BT Cocoa and Ecom Cocoa.Expert Market Research has analysed the global cocoa processing market according to type, major regions and top players:Market breakup by TypeCocoa ButterCocoa PowderMarket breakup by RegionEuropeAfricaNorth AmericaSouth AmericaAsia-PacificTop PlayersBarry CallebautCargilADMBlommerMondelezGuan ChongNestleFerreroBT CocoaEcom CocoaFind more reports related to food & beverage industry:Expert Market Research (EMR) is a market research and consultancy firm providing syndicated and custom research along with consultancy services to a wide clientele base which includes Fortune 1000 companies as well as small and medium enterprises. With our tailored approach, the clients gain valuable and unbiased insights that help to improve their competitive edge and realize sustainable growth.With a keen focus on the qualitative aspect as well as accuracy of the reports, we align our resources and services as per the clients requirement and offer a flexible engagement model that best suits their needs. We offer market intelligence across a range of industry verticals which include Pharmaceuticals, Food and Beverage, Technology, Retail, Chemical & Materials, Energy & Mining, Packaging and Agriculture.Expert Market Research85 Broad StNew York, NY 10004United StatesWebsite:Email:sales@expertmarketresearch.comUS & Canada Phone no: +1-415-325-5166UK Phone no: +44-702-402-5790
Anti-Suicide Drugs Market to Grow Globally

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Anti-Suicide Drugs  Beacon Light of Life on the HorizonDepression is one of the major healthcare burdens worldwide leading to lower productivity and in severe cases leading to suicidal tendencies. Anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs are especially high in demand during economic crisis and social negligence. These drugs also serve as a therapy for preventing suicidal thoughts and attempts. However, overdose of these drugs can be fatal and therefore, needs to be administered under the direction of a physician. Extensive research related to suicide treatment is expected to provide a better solution to the global population during the latter half of the forecast period (2016-2024). This would improve the outlook of global anti-suicide drugs market and would help in reducing deaths due to suicide.Get PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:The global anti-suicide drugs market was valued at US$ 3,318.3 million in 2015 and is expected to witness a moderate CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Anti-Suicide Drugs Market to be on High Growth Trajectory Post Launch of Anti-Suicidal DrugNeuroRx Pharma has developed a novel anti-suicidal product Cyclurad (D-cycloserine and Lurasidone) which is indicated for Acute Suicidal Ideation/Behavior (ASIB) in Bipolar Depression. The estimated commercialization of the drug post-2020 is expected to be a major breakthrough innovation for the anti-suicide drugs market. Moreover, introduction of other such novel drugs for suicide would augment the anti-suicide market growth. People with major depressive disorder and risk for suicide would greatly benefit from such novel drug therapies.High Suicidal Rates to Contribute Towards the Positive Anti-Suicide Drugs Market OutlookAccording to the World Health Organization (WHO), suicide accounted for 1.4% of the total deaths worldwide in 2012, accounting for around 800 thousand deaths each year. Russia, India, Republic of Korea, Guyana, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and Japan are among the nations with high suicidal rates as per the WHO 2012 data. Emerging nations therefore possess immense opportunity for anti-suicidal drugs. However, being the first ever oral anti-suicidal therapeutic drug, companies are likely to capture the anti-suicide drugs market in developed regions such as North America and Western Europe. This mainly due to rapid adoption of new therapies and accessibility to healthcare facilities in these regions as compared to emerging economies.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :Anti-Suicide Drugs Market to Gain Initial Traction in Developed EconomiesMajor players operating in the global anti-suicide drugs market include Pfizer, Inc., AstraZeneca plc, Eli Lilly and Company, Allergan plc, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Merck & Co., Inc., H. Lundbeck A/S, NeuroRx, Inc., and Johnson & Johnson. High healthcare expenditure in developed economies of North America and Europe is responsible for a higher market size of anti-suicidal drugs in these regions. Moreover, developed regions offer better healthcare infrastructure and are usually early adopters of new therapies. The anti-suicide drugs market in North America and Europe is expected to gain significant traction during the latter half of the forecast period, with the launch of anti-suicidal drug. Increasing healthcare expenditure in emerging economies and high prevalence of suicides in these regions is expected to bring about a paradigm shift in the market. Companies are expected to focus on capitalizing on lucrative opportunities in these regions at the turn of the following decade. This would ensure sustained growth for the market in the foreseeable future.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @
Global Dental Equipment Market - Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2016 - 2024)

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Advent of CAD/CAM & 3D printing fueling dental equipment market growthLaser and electro surgery techniques enable precise incision during surgeries, causing minimal damage to tissues and subsequently aiding faster healing. Advent of CAD/CAM has reduced time for prosthodontic restoration procedures to one day. Replacement of conventional radiology equipment with digital radiology equipment equipped with picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) facilitates archiving treatment records. 3D printing technology has improved outcomes of dental treatments. Cone beam CT systems provides clear extra oral images with minimal exposure to harmful X-rays compared to the conventional CT systems.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:High treatment costs in developed economies fueling influx of dental tourists in emerging economiesAccording to the New National Survey published in the American Dental Association in 2014, 40.2% of adults in the U.S. indicated that they would forego dental care due to high costs associated with it. According to 2016 statistics of the Oral Health Foundation, 88% of adults in the U.K.do not have dental insurance and around 63% of adults prefer visiting National Health Service (NHS) dentists rather than private dentists due to high costs associated with the later. High dental cost involved in cosmetic dentistry dental caries, periodontal disease treatment and overall dental care in developed economies is fueling growth of dental tourism in emerging regions such as Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Rapid development of dental tourism hubs such as India and Brazil would spur growth of the dental equipment market in emerging regions.Increasing preference for refurbished dental equipment impacting the growth of overall dental equipment marketBudget constraints in emerging countries such as India, China, Brazil and Eastern European countries is driving demand for refurbished dental equipment. This aids the newly established dental clinics and laboratories to achieve cost-efficiency with quality throughput. New dental equipment such as cone beam CT systems, vacuums & compressors, cad/cam, digital X-ray units and laboratory equipment involve high capital investment. This may increase the cost of patient dental procedures, thus negatively impacting the number of patient visits. Therefore, most dentists and hospitals in emerging countries prefer refurbished equipment, which in turn helps them pass on the cost-saving benefits to their patients. Market players such as Danaher Corporation, Planmeca Oy, and Dentsply Sirona, Inc. must consider the cost parameters while targeting the cost-sensitive customer base in emerging countries that are projected to be highly lucrative dental equipment markets in the near future.Ask for discount on customization:Dental Equipment  Advance low cost technologies to drive the dental equipment marketDentistry is an ever-evolving healthcare segment, with numerous technologies being researched, developed, tried and commercialized to improve therapy outcomes. Growing number of dental clinics is in turn driving adoption of dental lasers, computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems, dental radiology equipment, and other laboratory equipment.The global dental equipment market was valued at US$ 6,342.3 million in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.7% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Browse Global Strategic Business Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
High Growth Predicted for Flat Panel X-Ray Detectors Market in the Next Five Years

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A collective share in the global flat panel x-ray detectors market of 56.1% in 2015 was held by Konica Minolta, Inc., PerkinElmer, Olympus Corporation, and Rayence, Inc. Their strong presence in the market has overshadowed the much smaller shares held by regional players in the key regions of North America and Europe.As stated in a research report published by Transparency Market Research, the global flat panel x-ray detectors market is likely to continue being dominated by these players in terms of size and revenue generation rates. The degree of rivalry between them is expected to be very high over the coming years, while players are trying to cater to the growing demand for new, improved, advanced flat panel detectors. The leaders in the market are largely interested in creating cost-effective solutions in order to penetrate the markets in emerging economies.Browse Market Research Report @The global flat panel x-ray detectors market is expected to reach US$1.08 bn by the end of 2016. The markets value is expanding at a CAGR of 5.9% within a forecast period from 2016 to 2024 and will lead the market to reach US$1.7 bn in 2024.Technological Improvements in Flat Panel X-Ray Detectors Find Greater Regional ContactMany markets have taken up the advantages to civilization brought about by globalization and attaining a global commercial perspective, including the global flat panel x-ray detectors market. The introduction of newer technologies is being received positively by all key regions, thereby creating a surge in uptake for all advanced X-ray systems. Digital X-ray systems are far more advanced than the older analog technologies and have been successfully introduced to the large client pools from emerging economies, states a TMR analyst.The global flat panel x-ray detectors market is also being driven by the steadily lowering price caps of flat panel technologies, primarily due to an increase in their manufacturing rate as taken up by nations such as India and China. The market is also benefitting from the current advancements in radiology. One of the key application segments that players from the global flat panel x-ray detectors market need to look out for is the manufacturing sector. Manufacturers are increasingly adopting flat panel x-ray detectors in order to improve product quality to get an edge over competitors. This is seen especially in the manufacture of automobiles, healthcare devices, and defense and aerospace equipment. Security companies are also taking up flat panel x-ray detectors amid the growing concerns over safety and anti-infiltration advancements in aerospace.Make an Enquiry @Advancements Slowed by High Regulatory PressureOne of the key factors hindering the overall growth rate of the global flat panel x-ray detectors market is the extremely strict regulatory framework surrounding them. Flat panel detectors technically fall into the category of radiation emission and radiation devices. This puts an additional strain on manufacturers into building devices considered as safe under these norms.The emerging economies are currently showing a great deal of promise to ramp up their demand for flat panel x-ray detectors. India, China, Brazil, and South Africa are among the key countries that global entities are targeting in terms of increasing sales of flat panel x-ray detectors as well as introducing manufacturing facilities. Countries in the Asia Pacific regions are showing an especially positive outlook towards adopting newer technologies, thereby improving the revenue generation scope of current players, adds the analyst.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:
An In-depth Industry Study of the Non-Alcoholic Drinks Market, 20142022

Non-Alcoholic Drinks Market

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Allied Market Research has recently published a report on the non-alcoholic drinks market, which is an in-depth study of the entire industry for the time period 20142022. The report is a comprehensive analysis of the market and examines the key driving factors, restraints, opportunities, and challenges faced by industry players operating in the market. It emphasizes on the various products types available in the market, such as soft drinks, bottled water, tea, coffee, juices, and dairy drinks. The report profiles the major market players working in the industry, along with a close look at their product profiles, business performances, and marketing strategies. The vital statistics, tables, and charts provided in the report are provided to give more credibility to the research conclusions and findings.Access Full Summary of the Report:The non-alcoholic drinks market report highlights the progressive growth of the industry in the given forecast period. According to the study, the entire market is expected to reach an impressive value of $1,548 billion by the year 2022. This will be exhibited by an expected CAGR of 4.4%, during the period 20142022. The industry is expected to reach great heights with several factors and government regulations augmenting its growth in the current decade.Key findings of the Non-Alcoholic Drinks Market Report: In 2015, the bottled water segment accounted for nearly one-fourth share of the entire market value. The soft drinks segment is projected to hold on to its dominant position, in terms of revenue generation, in the forecast period 20162022. The segment generated for nearly half of the entire market share by generating the highest revenue in the year 2015. The Asia-Pacific region is estimated to lead the global market, in terms of geography. China is touted to witness the highest growth with a CAGR of 9.2% during the given forecast period. The largest country, in terms of demand and supply of non-alcoholic drinks, is USA. This was observed in 2015.The report includes critical data and inputs about the various production volumes and consumption of non-alcoholic beverages across various geographical regions. The significant data relating to product analysis and value chain analysis of the industrys supply chain are also included in the report.The key players in the non-alcoholic drinks market are expanding the scope of their business operations in the developing countries by including innovative products in their product portfolios. The report includes a detailed competitive analysis of the major market players, such as A.G. Barr, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Dydo Drinco, Attitude Drinks, Co., Livewire Energy, Calcol, Inc., Danone, Nestle S.A., PepsiCo, Inc., and The Coco-Cola Company.Enquire more about report:The study is an in-depth analysis of the non-alcoholic drinks market. It enables the interested business owners and individuals understand the market landscape with the help of critical industry insights. Investors can assess the driving factors and restraints, and decide how to be a part of the markets growth. The non-alcoholic drinks market report takes a closer look at the consumer preferences and the potential innovations that can enhance the markets potential. The geographical synopsis of the industry portrays the market presence in various regions and opportunities for growth.The assessment of risk factors and restraints to the market gives sufficient insights to stakeholders on how to mitigate potential losses. For those planning to expand their reach in various regions, along with development of product lines, the report offers more than just insights.About Us:Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Contact Us:Dhananjay Potle5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesInt'l: +1-503-894-6022Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 (U.S. & Canada)E-mail: sales@alliedmarketresearch.com
Global Dental Implants Market To Surpass US$ 6269.8 Million By 2024: Coherent Market Insights

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Dental ImplantsDental implants are witnessing steady growth in demand, owing to rise in geriatric population and higher inclination of the populace towards maintaining aesthetic looks. Post the invention of dental implants in1954, the dental implants market revenue has grown manifold and is still highly lucrative for market players. Demand for dental implants is steadily increasing as the procedure offers a perfect solution for artificial teeth surgically imbibed in upper and lower jawbone.Request Report Sample for more Professional and Technical Insights:Cosmetic and dental issues arise as a result of aging. According to National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, geriatric population (aged 65 years and above) have an average of 18.9 remaining teeth, in turn creating a highly lucrative market for dental implants. Technological advancements coupled with high demand for dental implant procedure has resulted in a highly lucrative market characterized by high profit margin for players across the value chain. Advancements in technology allow for implants in people without a proper structured or weak jawbone. In 2015, dental implants accounted for over 15% share of global dental device market revenue.Dental implants market witnessed a very sluggish growth in terms of innovation post-1957. However, post 2000, many new companies emerged in the market leading to fierce competition among players in a highly fragmented industry. As a result, companies are emphasizing on product innovation to sustain and expand their global market presence. For instance, in 2016, Israelbased Magdent launched a miniature electronic device (MED) capable of accelerating bone growth three times faster than normal. The product is yet to receive approval from the U.S. FDA.The global dental implants market revenue was valued at US$ 3,619.0 million in 2016 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 6.3% during 2016  2024.Titanium dental implant has emerged as the highest revenue contributor among product segmentsTitanium implants is expected to dominate the dental implants market throughout the forecast period. The segment accounted for 44.7% of global market revenue in 2015. However, the segment is expected to lose market share to zirconia product segment through 2024. Companies are coming up with mini-titanium dental implants solutions. These are compatible with biologically active drugs that are usually incorporated on the surface of implant to improve osseointegration. Titanium dental implants have relatively longer lifespan making it favorable among consumers.Ask for FREE Request Customization:Zinconia is a corrosion free mental and is one of the newly introduced concepts in dental implants market. The segment is expected to register highest CAGR over the forecast period.Highly competitive Europe market to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast periodEurope is expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. The region is expected to account for 30.8% of overall market share by 2024. Competition in dental implants market has increased primarily between Straumann and DENTSPLY Implants. According to Europa, over 25% of the population in Europe is expected to fall under geriatric age group by 2020. This coupled with high discretionary income in the region is expected to continue to position the region as a highly lucrative market for dental implants. Germany is one of the key markets for dental implants. The country spends highest per capita income on teeth than any other country in Europe.Asia Pacific, followed by Latin America is expected to register fastest CAGR between 2016 and 2024. Asia Pacific market growth is primarily driven by increasing number of dental implants procedure in China, India, and Japan. India dental implants market is expected to register highest regional CAGR over the forecast period. There are over 5,000 dental laboratories with around 300 dental institutes and 200,000 dentists in India. Increasing growing consumer base along with better economic growth is expected to create lucrative market opportunity for industry players. In 2015, India imported over 77% of dental implant products from Germany, U.S., Japan, and Italy. The Make in India campaign initiated by the Indian government is expected to bolster number of manufacturing facilities across various healthcare verticals including dental manufacturing sites in the country.Emerging economies to present highly lucrative growth avenuesDental implant players are focused towards strengthening of direct distribution channel along with partnership with regional manufacturers and distributors. DENTSPLY Implants, Straumann AG, Bicon Dental Implants, Anthogyr, KYOCERA Medical Corporation, Lifecore Dental Implants, Zest Anchors, Implant Innovations Inc, and BioHorizons IPH, Inc., Neobiotech USA. Inc., Sweden & Martina, TBR Implants Group, Global D, and MOZO-GRAU, S.A. are some of the key industry players in dental implants market. Straumann AG and DENTSPLY Implants are leading players in Europe. However, there is a wide variation in Europe market, since there is high presence of regional players in Europe. For instance, while TBR Implants Group is a leading France-based dental implants manufacturer, Sweden & Martina holds significant market share in Italy. Nobel Biocare holds significant market share in Asia Pacific, with the company generating around 17% of its regional revenue from Japan.To know the latest trends and insights prevalent in this market, click the link below:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Wedding Apparel Market Research Report 2017 Industry Study of Worldwide Growth, Sales, Demands, Types, Pricing & Trends - Pronovias, Rosa Clara, Pepe Botella

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Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Wedding Apparel in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Wedding Apparel market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingPronoviasRosa ClaraDe La Cierva Y NicolasCarolina HerreraPepe BotellaFranc SarabiaYolan CrisVictorio & LucchinoJesus del PozoWhite OneImpression BridalOscar De La RentaMonique LhuillierVera WangAmsale AberraOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoChinese Style Wedding ApparelKorean Style Wedding ApparelJapanese Style Wedding ApparelWestern Style Wedding ApparelOtherOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Wedding Apparel for each application, includingPersonal PurchaseWedding Dress Renting ServiceOtherTo Get a Free Sample Copy of this Report Visit @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 Cell Culture Market To Reach US$ 22.5 Billion By 2024, Says Report:Coherent Market Insights

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Cell culture process can include various complications such as obtaining fully traceable botanical extracts and raw material supply. Furthermore, increasing focus on ensuring regulatory compliance related to environmental sustainability can hamper efficacy of the product. To overcome these complications in 2017, in place of using wild or field-grown plants, researchers at ABResearch srl utilized the callus cultures and cell suspension cultures for better results. According to News Medical Life-sciences, in 2017, researchers are inclined towards developing culture model that can be used in early treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is the third major cause for total vision loss and also more prevalent in elderly people.Additional Information on such Research Findings can be Availed At:The global cell culture market was valued at US$ 12,251.3 million in 2015 and is expected to witness a robust CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Cell culture is fast emerging as an important tool for diagnosing and clinically treating various disease such as cancer and Alzheimers. Companies are focusing on diversifying their cell depository and enhancing their expertise by laying major emphasis on recruitment of highly trained professionals in order to gain a competitive edge in the market. The European Collection of Authenticated Cell Cultures (ECACC) is serving the patent depository for Europe for carrying out research by acting as international depository authority. According to VF Bioscience SAS, cell culture technique is also gaining popularity in the field of food and beverages, a trend that is estimated to gain significant traction in 2017. Furthermore, cell culture are also gaining preference as an important ingredient in production of high quality plant actives.High Investment in research and development by biotechnological companiesPlayers in the global cell culture market are making major investments in R&D to introduce advanced products used in the cell culture process owing to rise in number of application and better return on investment. Furthermore, companies are inclined towards novel product development. For instance, Biovest International, in 2009, has developed a product named AutovaxID-C, which is expected to reshape the biologic production made in the industry. The product favors the automated cell growth by replacing conventional cell growth chambers that use to acquire a large space in the laboratory. Various other factors such as increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, high importance of tissue or organ replacement with cell culture process, and increasing demand for antibody production are in turn projected to fuel cell culture market growth. Also, rise in prevalence of age-related macular degeneration is expected to underpin the cell culture market growth. Eye conditions such as diabetic retinopathy in tune with rise in number of diabetic patients globally in turn creates a conducive environment for growth of the cell culture market. AMD ranks third with a prevalence of around 8.7% globally in 2015, according to W.H.O.Request For Customization:Major Players acquisitions are expected to fuel product diversificationAn advanced and schematic integration of major players, followed by various acquisitions in cell culture market is fueling the frequency of product introduction in biotechnology and molecular biology field. Also, Advancements in mammalian cell culture techniques under recombinant protein production is propelling the cell culture market to new heights. In 2013, according to MDPI AG., Journal of Pharmaceutical, between 2006 and 2011, around 15 recombinant protein therapeutics were approved by U.S. FDA. Rise in number of biologics have spurred demand for biosimilars, which in turn is expected to fuel growth of the market for cell culture in the near future. In recent times, the global cell culture market has witnessed a high level of strategic mergers and acquisitions leading to development and advancement of new cell culture products. For instance:In 2014, a Japan based stem cell company ReproCELL acquired Reinnervate Limited  a U.K based 3D Cell Culture Company along with a U.S. based human tissue supplier Bioserve, this is expected to help the company in the field of drug toxicity testing, neuroscience and cancer research by producing next-generation toolsIn 2013, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.  manufacturer of life science research and clinical diagnostic products purchased all the assets of a division of MorphoSys AG named AbD Serotec by paying US$ 71.3 million in cash, this is expected to favor the companys antibody manufacturing power in terms of kits and accessoriesIn 2013, Evotec AG acquired Cell Culture Service GmbH  a Hamburg based company  this is expected to strengthen the companys cell-based screening and reagent platformIncreasing number of research collaborations is expected to improve the time-to-market of highly effective and advanced products.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Raj ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
South Korea - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband And Digital Media - Statistics And Analyses

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South Korea has one of the worlds most active telecommunications and Information Technology (IT) markets backed by strong support from the government. As well as the commitment of the government, the sector is boosted by an innovative private sector and a technologically savvy population. Spending on ICT and high-technology equipment helped lead a transformation of the economy. The government aims to transform the country into a knowledge-based information society in a smart-age.By 2017, KT was still the largest telephone and fixed-line company. With declining revenues from its fixed-line services, the company has forged ahead with IPTV and LTE. Competition with LG U+ and SK Broadband had intensified on many fronts ranging from IPTV to VoIP.South Koreas mobile market has slow growth over the last few years due to a highly mature market. Organic growth by the three main mobile operators, together with the multitude of niche MVNOs will result in further growth to 2018 however growth rates will taper off further over the next few years as the market further matures. Market penetration reached 117% in 2016 and is predicted to reach between 119% and 122% by 2021 driven by the uptake of both 4G and 5G services. The split in mobile operator market share has remained relatively constant over the last two decades. LG Telecom however has made a marginal increase in market share over that time.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:The mobile broadband market is highly mature in South Korea. Penetration has increased moderately over the past five years from 105% in 2012 to 111% in 2016. Prepaid voice services have not been particularly prevalent in South Korea, with the subscription model dominating the mobile market. South Korea has the worlds highest number of broadband services per capita. Koreas policy emphasis has been to establish an Ultra Broadband convergence Network (UBcN) with 1Gb/s speeds on fixed lines and 10Mb/s on wireless.Since breaking through the 10 million subscriber mark in 2002, subscriber growth has steadily increased, reaching over 20 million fixed broadband subscribers by 2016. Market penetration is predicted to continue to grow moderately over the next five years reaching over 50% by 2021, with a market penetration of 41%. Growth is being driven by an expected increase in converged solutions being offered such as IPTV and Smart Home services. Much will depend on the continuing strength of the economy in South Korea.Internet use is widespread in South Korea with surveys even including children as young as three years of age. The internet has permeated all aspects of society and has made a significant contribution to education even at pre-school level. Internet penetration reached 91% by 2016.The widespread adoption of the Internet in South Korea coupled with the continued pace of development has resulted in an exciting digital economy. This report also looks at various aspects of the digital economy in South Korea that support the drive to converged services. It includes information on e-commerce users, e-banking and e-government. It also contains information on internet usage patterns.Key developments:ISK Telecom (SKT) signed a contract with Samsung Electronics for the deployment the worlds first commercial Internet of Things (IoT)-dedicated nationwide LoRaWAN network.KT and Nokia Networks launched the first IoT lab in South Korea.Three operators hold over 80% of the Korean broadband market: KT, SK Broadband and LGU+.South Koreas broadband subscriber base continues to rise. The move towards faster speeds and becoming full-service operators is expected to further drive this trend.FttX deployments have increased as operators try to gain customers through bundled services such as high-definition IPTV.Growth is being driven by an expected increase in converged solutions being offered such as IPTV and Smart Home services.South Koreas mobile network operators are expected to roll out trial 5G services in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics.SK Telecom (SKT) completed a successful test of five-band carrier aggregation (5C).SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus launched the worlds first commercial interconnected VoLTE service.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
High Energy Savings with LEDs Keep Segment in Forefront - Smart Lighting and Control Systems Market

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Global Smart Lighting and Control Systems Market: OverviewThis report provides an analysis of the global smart lighting and control systems market for the period from 2014 to 2024, wherein the period from 2016 to 2024 comprises the forecast period and 2015 is the base year. Data for 2014 is provided as historical information. The report covers all the prominent trends and technologies playing a major role in the growth of the smart lighting and control systems market over the forecast period. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the markets growth during this period.The study provides a holistic perspective of the growth of the smart lighting and control systems market throughout the forecast period in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Bn), across Asia Pacific (APAC), South America, North America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA) regions. The report provides analysis of the global smart lighting and control systems market in terms of market estimates and forecasts for all the segments across different geographic regions.Browse Market Research Report @Global Smart Lighting and Control Systems Market: Drivers and TrendsSmart lighting and control systems enable high energy efficiency and improved lighting controls in lighting applications. The increasing adoption across residential and outdoor lighting applications such as street lighting, parking lots, walkways, and others such as playing fields is developing strong demand for smart lighting and control systems across the world. The growing deployment of smart lighting solutions in street lighting projects, and home automation projects are primarily driving the smart lighting and control systems market. The robust demand for wireless lighting controls is forming around the globe owning to the growing penetration of smartphones and internet of things technology (IoT). In addition, the governments across the world are emphasizing on greenhouse emission awareness, and energy conservation by promoting substantial initiatives and implementing sustainable solutions which is supplementing the growth of smart lighting and control systems market.Businesses across these various sectors such as commercial, and industrial are focusing on implementation of smart lighting and control systems in order to reduce the operation and maintenance costs. Many vendors are integrating various technologies such as daylight sensing, proximity sensing, and smartphones with smart lighting to enhance the performance and competency of lighting systems. The penetration of IoT and other technologies such as cloud is rising in emerging economies such as South America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa is expected to offer opportunities for smart lighting and control systems market. In addition, increasing demand for implementation of smart lighting and control systems across outdoor lighting applications such as street lighting, walkways, parking lots, and others such as playing fields across the world is generating strong opportunities for smart lighting and control systems market.Make an Enquiry @Global Smart Lighting and Control Systems Market: SegmentationOn the basis of lighting source, smart lighting and control systems market is segmented into fluorescent lamps and compact fluorescent lamps, high intensity discharge lamps, and light emitting diodes (LED). Based on end-use application, smart lighting and control systems market is segmented into residential, commercial, industrial, and outdoor lighting applications. By control system, smart lighting and control systems market is categorized into smartphone enabled technology, daylight sensing technology, proximity sensing technology, and others. The report also includes competitive profiling of the key players associated with the smart lighting and control systems market. The important business strategies adopted by them, their market positioning, and recent developments have also been identified in the research report.Key Players Mentioned in this Report are:The increasing adoption of advance and wireless lighting controls has led to the substantial presence of smart lighting and control system vendors around the globe. Some of the key players in smart lighting and control systems market are General Electric Company, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Belkin International, Inc., Eaton Corporation, Lightwave PLC, Elgato Systems, LiFI Labs, Inc., Honeywell International, Inc., Lutron Electronics Company, Inc., and Acuity Brands Lighting, Inc.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:
Overview of Global Baby Oral Care Products Market 2016 Industry Analysis, Trends, Shares, Annual Growth, Sales, Demands, Forecast to 2021

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The Global Baby Oral Care Products Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Baby Oral Care Products industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Baby Oral Care Products market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out.Whats more, the Baby Oral Care Products industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.To Get a Free Sample Copy of this Report Visit @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
Germany - Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband And Digital Media - Statistics And Analyses

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Germany has one of Europes largest telecom markets, as befits a country with a population of more than 82 million. Penetration in the broadband and mobile sectors is about average for the region. Both the fixed network and broadband markets are dominated by Telekom Deutschland, though other notable players including freenet, Vodafone and Telefonica. These altnets have gained market share as the incumbent continues to struggle against regulated network access conditions and market competition, both of which have led to declining revenue during the last few years.The number of mobile subscribers approaches 114 million. In common with most developed markets, the main driver for growth is in mobile data, with the number of mobile broadband subscribers having increased rapidly in recent years on the back of universally available 3G infrastructure and the extensive reach of LTE networks. Operators have invested in MIMO and carrier aggregation technologies to provide improved data rates. Looking forward, there is also increasing activity in 5G, with Deutsche Telekom in February 2017 announcing its intention to provide 5G across its networks from 2020.The mobile market is dominated by a triopoly of MNOs, led by Telefonica Germany and followed by Telekom Deutschland (Deutsche Telekoms domestic unit) and Vodafone Germany. Telefonicas acquisition of E-Plus created an operator which by early 2017 had more than 44 million subscribers, while Telekom Deutschland had almost 42 million and Vodafone some 30 million. There is also healthy competition from an increasing number of resellers. This has placed pressure on voice and data tariffs, resulting in lower ARPU. Regulatory pressure on roaming charges and mobile termination rates have also eroded operator revenue, and encouraged them to step-up their development of data applications to improve profits.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:Germanys digital media market has grown strongly on the back of DSL, cable and fibre infrastructure, all of which are continuing to undergo upgrades with new technologies. The capacity for consumers to make use of videostreaming services will increase considerably during the next few years as cable operators begin to roll out services based on the DOCSIS3.1 standard across their footprints, complementing the expansion of Telekom Deutschlands FttP network and the implementation of vectoring VDSL and G.fast technologies. Together, the deployment of these technologies is helping the country reach broadband targets set for 2020, as well as the more ambitious aim of creating a gigabit Germany by 2025.This report introduces the key aspects of the German telecom market, providing data on the countrys fixed network infrastructure as well as key regulatory developments including the status of interconnection, local loop unbundling, number portability, and carrier preselection. It also profiles the major operators, and details the development of Next Generation Networks and issues relating to NGN access.The report also covers the mobile voice, data and broadband markets, including an overview of regulatory developments and an evaluation of the main operators and their strategies for dealing with competition and emerging technologies in coming years. In addition the report profiles Germanys fixed and wireless broadband markets, together with forecasts to 2021 and an analysis of developments with related technologies such as FttP, powerline broadband, wireless broadband, Wi-Fi and internet via satellite.Key developments:Regulator decides on future bitstream access requirements;Telecom market revenue showing continued decline;EWE to invest more than 1 billion in fibre-based infrastructure to 2026;Industry pressure to develop a gigabit society by 2025;Government progresses with Digital Agenda 2014 - 2017 program to expand broadband services nationally by 2018;Telekom Deutschland expands vectoring VDSL;Unitymedia to launch 1Gb/s service based on the DOCSIS3.1 later in 2017;Vodafone Germany launches cloud-based GigaTV service;Unitymedia makes Netflix available as an app on its Horizon TV platform;Unitymedia to shut down analogue TV services in June 2017;Telekom Deutschland launches NB-IoT network;Vodafone Germany increases LTE speeds to 500Mb/s;O2 reports having over 12 million LTE customers;Deutsche Telekom commits to 5G across its network footprint;Report update includes the regulators market data for 2015, VATMs 2016 market data, telcos operating and financial data to Q4 2016, recent market developments.Companies mentioned in this report:Telekom Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom, freenet, Tele2 Germany, Telefonica Germany (O2 Germany), Vodafone Germany, E-Plus, CallMobile, United Internet, Tiscali, QSC, Kabel BW, Kabel Deutschland, Unitymedia, PrimaCom, The Cloud, Energie Baden-Wurttemberg, Sky Deutschland.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 Carbon Brush Market Research Report to 2020 - Industry Sales, Types, Revenues, Demands, Growth, Trends, Pricing : Mersen, Morgan, Schunk

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This report studies sales (consumption) of Carbon Brush in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringMersenMorganSchunkAVOHelwig Carbon ProductsE-CarbonOhioFujiTrisToyo TansoDremelHarbin Electric Carbon FactoryDononSunkiNantong KangdaMorxinMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, market share and growth rate of Carbon Brush in these regions, from 2011 to 2020 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product types, with sales, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoElectrographite BrushGeneral BrushMetal BrushSilver BrushSplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Carbon Brush in each application, can be divided intoIndustrial EquipmentAutomotive applicationHome applicationMicro motorsTo Get a Free Sample Copy of this Report Visit @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
Asia - Mobile Network Operators And MVNOs

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The focus of this report is on the operators within their individual national markets. In addition to these individual operators there are those companies such as SingTel, Vodafone, and Axiata (formerly Telekom Malaysia International) that have built a substantial presence around the Asian region beyond their own domestic market through their shareholdings in operators in multiple other markets. While this aspect of the regional operations is not discussed in any detail, it is mentioned in passing in the relevant country reviews.The telecom market across Asia has an estimated total of 4 billion mobile subscribers by end 2016. This sector of the overall market continues to experience moderate growth; however, in the more developed markets, growth is shifting away from a focus on subscriber numbers towards the expansion of new generation platforms and increased data usage driven by value-added services and increased ARPUs.Whilst there are still developing markets continuing to grow their mobile subscriber base at high annual rates, total market growth has eased considerably in the last few years. This is not surprising given that a significant number of markets have well and truly saturated over the last year or so.Download Sample Copy Of This Report:Macau is the leading country in Asia in terms of overall mobile penetration with a penetration of 326% in 2016. Hong Kong takes second place with mobile penetration of 227% in 2016. Maldives in third place has penetration of 220% followed by Kazakhstan in fourth spot with 180%. Singapore has the fifth largest market in terms of mobile penetration with penetration reaching 149% in 2016.Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing rapidly. While mobile and fixed will always exist in parallel, there is no doubt that with a faltering fixed network and an excellent mobile network, mobile will give fixed a run for its money.However the reality for the success of mobile broadband is that the network will rely more and more on fibre. In the end most mobile stations will have to be connected to a fibre optic network in order to cope with the volume of traffic.Key highlights of the mobile operator market in Asia in 2016 include:China leads the market in terms of total number of subscribers, with its mobile market reaching 1.32 billion subscribers by 2016.India follows not far behind with 1.03 billion subscribers followed a lot further back by Indonesia (338 million), Japan (159 million) and Vietnam (145 million).China has three of the four top mobile operators in Asia by number of subscribers: China Mobile (850 million), China Unicom (262 million) and China Telecom (215 million).India is also very active in the market with five of the top ten operators. The top three of which are: Bharti (265 million), Vodafone Essar (198 million) and Idea Cellular (175 million).Indonesia and Thailand are the only other Asian counties with operators in the top 10 operators with Telkomsel of Indonesia having 154 million subscribers. And AIS of Thailand having 39 million subscribers.The countries covered in this report include: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and VietnamMarketResearchReports.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
United States WiFi Hotspot Industry 2016 Market Applications & Trends in Leading Segments of USA - New York, Chicago, Albany, Brooklyn, Washington

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This report studies sales (consumption) of WiFi-Hotspot in United States market, focuses on the top players, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player, coveringChina Mobile Communication CorporationChina UnicomChina TelecomVodafoneAirtelAmerica MovilAxiataTelefonicaMTN GroupVimpelComTelenorOrangeTeliaSoneraSTCT-MobileEtisalatVerizonWirelessRelianceTIMOoredooTo Get a Free Sample Copy of this Report Visit @Table of Contents1 WiFi-Hotspot Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of WiFi-Hotspot1.2 Classification of WiFi-Hotspot1.3 Application of WiFi-Hotspot1.4 United States Market Size Sales (Value) and Revenue (Volume) of WiFi-Hotspot (2011-2021)1.4.1 United States WiFi-Hotspot Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)1.4.2 United States WiFi-Hotspot Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)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
Medicinal Cannabis Market to Grow Globally

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Medicinal cannabis, also known as medicinal marijuana, is used either to treat disease or improve symptoms. Cannabis has been considered to be a major source of drug addiction. Extract from the dried flower bud part of the plant called as Marijuana has certain medicinal properties. The two cannabinoids - delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are being used in treatment of certain disease or health conditions such as pain, blood pressure, memory, concentration, appetite, sensory stimulus, muscular problems, and seizures.Browse Global Strategic Business Report :Medicinal Cannabis Market DynamicsHowever, the debate still continues regarding the approval, safety and usage of cannabis (marijuana) for medicinal purpose, due to differences in the laws pertaining to this smoked drug. Hence, studies are conducted extensively to establish the safety aspect of this drug. Various states in the U.S. have already legalized cannabis (marijuana) for medicinal purposes. Scientific research of chemicals in the cannabis plant for its potential medicinal use has led to a shift in its demand purpose. Regulatory clearance has played a major role in the growth of medicinal cannabis market.Other names of Cannabis - grass, pot, dope, Mary Jane, hooch, weed, hash, joints, brew, reefers, cones, smoke, mull, buddha, ganga, hydro, yarndi, heads, and green.The U.S. FDA has approved two medications, Marinol and Syndros, which contain dronabinol in pill form. However, the FDA has not approved the marijuana plant as a medicine. The medicinal cannabis (marijuana) is administered in either of the ways  liquid extract, vaporized form, smoked or solid form.Prevalent Scenario in the Medicinal Cannabis MarketAccording to the Medical Marijuana, Inc., the estimated size of the legal marijuana industry in the U.S. is US$ 7.1 billion in 2016. This is an increase of 25% Y-o-Y. As of 2016, 28 states in the U.S. have legalized marijuana for medicinal purpose with some more gearing up for votes on the recreational use of marijuana. California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts states in November 2016, voted to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana. The accelerated pace of legalization of cannabis (marijuana) in the U.S. has attracted the attention of global investors in the medicinal cannabis market. However, lack of formulation of a comprehensive law pertaining to medicinal marijuana in some states inhibits patient access to the drug.Additional Information on such Research Findings can be Availed At:Important role of Regulatory Authorities in the Medicinal Cannabis Market TrendAccording to the United Nations, marijuana was the most widely used drug globally in 2014, with around 183 million users. Such a large user base makes it highly lucrative taxable opportunity, which is influencing various governments worldwide to initiate studies regarding legalization of the drug for medicinal use. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is still conducting research on cannabis (marijuana) to treat numerous diseases and conditions such as autoimmune disease, pain, inflammation, seizures, mental disorders, and substance abuse disorders. Regulatory compliance is a key factor that influences cost, quality, and safety of cannabis (marijuana) medicines, as well as the capacity for the manufacturers in the medicinal cannabis market to be responsive, scalable, and innovative.Medicinal Cannabis Market Future OutlookPotential medicinal cannabis markets other than the U.S., include Canada, Israel, Australia, and Spain. Mexico is also in process to consider the legalization of cannabis. Other countries are expected to consider legalization of the drug, once conclusive evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of cannabis are obtained through extensive research. According to Arcview Groupa cannabis industry investment and research firmaround 200 investors met companies to capitalize on lucrative opportunities from commercialization of medicinal cannabis. This implies that there is a huge potential in the medicinal cannabis market and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies need to focus on increasing awareness about the drug emerging economiesAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @
Global Opioids Market To Reach US$ 25.7 Billion By 2024, Says Report: Coherent Market Insights

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High prevalence of chronic pain to drive the opioids market growthAccording to the American Academy of Pain Medicine (2011), around 1.8 billion people suffered from chronic pain. Moreover, the NIH estimates (2015) that one in 10 people in the U.S. suffer from chronic pain. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal in 2016, nearly one-third to half of the population in the U.K. suffers from chronic pain. Use of opioids in treating pain is a common practice. This has also resulted in self-medication by patients, resulting in misuse or overdose of opioid containing drug products. Besides, rising prevalence of pain, cough and, diarrhea is the other factor contributing to growth of opioids market. Hydrocodone is the highly prescribed opioid in the U.S.Request Report Sample for more Professional and Technical Insights:Legalizing Cannabis to Impact Opioids Market GrowthOpioids are generally prescribed for treating pain. The opioid drug class includes morphine, hydrocodone, oxycodone, heroin, codeine, morphine, fentanyl, and methadone. It is also used as a cough suppressant and in diarrhea treatment. Opioids can be administered either through pills, liquids, intravenous, transdermal patches, or lozenges. Developed countries in North America and Europe are notorious for the high levels of abuse of this drug. Drugs such as codeine, morphine, fentanyl, and hydrocodone have become a source of addiction, especially among the population in these regions due to easy availability of the drugs in these regions. According to the World Drug Report 2016, a staggering 17.4 million people were affected by opioid drug abuse in 2014. However, global organizations and regulatory agencies such as the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are working towards limiting the abuse of opioids by creating awareness and educating prescribers to be cautious while prescribing these drugs. In 2016, the CDC issued guidelines to prescribe opioids, limiting the daily dose of opioids to 90 morphine milligram equivalent (MME).In recent times, cannabis has emerged as a potential alternative for opioids. Cannabis is legalized in many states in the U.S. as it is considered safer than opioids. U.S. being a major consumer of such drugs, legalizing cannabis (marijuana) is expected to have a detrimental impact on the opioids market growth.Request Customization:The global opioids market was valued at US$ 17,132.5 million in 2015 and is expected to witness a moderate CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Opioids market majorly impacted by rising adoption of cannabisThe global opioids market experiences volatility due to various factors such as rampant production of opium and inclination of the masses towards use of alternate drugs such as cannabis. Cannabis is now being legalized in most parts of the U.S.the major consumer of cannabis drug. Moreover, cannabis is the most cultivated drug crop in the world. Also, consumers in the U.S. find administering cannabis more effective than opioids, which is also impacting consumption of opioids. Due to this, Colorado is experiencing a decline in the number of opioid deaths. Cannabis is considered to be a healthy alternative to opioids. U.S. accounted for 77% share in the global opioids market in 2015. A study conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia, found that 32% of Canadians switched from using opioids to cannabis for relieving pain. Production of opium according to the World Drug Report 2016 declined in 2015 by 38% compared to that in 2014.Increasing drug abuse impacting the opioids market outlookThe U.S. FDA considers all opioids as schedule 2 drugsdrugs that have high abuse potential. Codeine, fentanyl, meperidine, methadone, morphine, and hydrocodone are the most abused prescription opioid analgesics. Contrary to other regions, wherein codeine is expected to dominate the market globally, North America is expected to be primarily driven by sales of hydrocodone opioids. Drug abuse with opioid is characterized by prolonged use or overdosing of the prescribed medication. A 2015 study by the CDC concluded that people who are addicted to prescription analgesics are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin. Furthermore, CDC also states that 73% of all drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2015 were due to opioids (57% in 2010). Although the use of prescription opioid for non-medical purpose has decreased over 20122014, use of heroin has increased significantly during this period. The deaths accounted due to opioid abuse has also increased consequently over the years. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2015 data, there was a 2.8 fold increase in deaths in the U.S. due to overdose of opioid during 20022014. The death incidence rose to nearly 33,000 in 2015 from 23,000 in 2012 in the U.S. Similarly, non-prescription use of cough syrups containing codeine is also a major issue to be addressed.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Vacuum Blood Collection System Market Insights 2024

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Europe to dominate vacuum blood collection system market with EU dominating the market throughout the forecast periodThe vacuum blood collection report covers market analysis across regions  North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.Global vacuum blood collection system market is witnessing a positive trend with Europe dominating the market. The region is primarily driven by Germany and UK. EU-5 accounted for over 70% of the regional market. The region is however, expected to lose a major chunk of the market in near future.North America trails Europe with both regions accounting for over 57% of global market. The region is primarily driven by U.S.Penetration rate of vacuum blood collection tube in Asia Pacific is low compared to developed regions. However, is expected to witness huge growth over the time frame. China and India are expected to drive the market in near forecast period.Latin America and MEA are expected to grow at relatively sluggish rate.Access Full Report with TOC:Technological advancement towards offering better therapeutic results with single drop blood along with rising pharmaceutical R&D spending to create good market prospects for the industry leadersRising incidences of diseases, changing lifestyle, increasing surgical and transfusion procedures and emergence of many new diagnostic centers in developing regions is expected to create substantial market opportunities for the players.Moreover, the system has its added advantage over other blood collection technique. It is light weight, close loop, safety protection cap and easy to handle making it preferable choice among end-users. High shelf life also makes it one of the key products available in the market. It has a long shelf life of as high as 16 months.Market Taxonomy:Coherent Market Insights has segmented the vacuum blood collection system market byProductEnd-userOn the basis of product, vacuum blood collection tube has been segmented into gel tube, heparin tube, EDTA tube, serum tubes and others.By end-use, pathology laboratories are expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. However, clinics are expected to gain significant traction over the forecast period.You can also get exclusive discount on this CMI report by clicking on this link:Vacuum blood collection tube has gained significant valuation in the last few decades. Emergence of this technology has led to significant drop in overall blood contamination; while offering ease-of-use and accuracy in blood to additive ratios. As a result, many laboratories are well characterized by presence of vacuum blood collection tubes. Vacuum blood collection gained major market share at start of 1970s wherein many leading players along with new entrants emerged in the market. Since then, the growth was however staggering before making major leap at start of 21st century. This blood collection tube industry is expected to create significant market opportunity over the forecast period 2016-2023. Vacuum blood collection system is a double pointed needle with a plastic holder and series of vacuum tubes with stoppers at the end.China based players are gaining significant market traction and are expected to capture major chunk of the market in developing regions.Some of the key players in the vacuum blood collection system market includeTerumo, Shandong Wego, Hebei Xinle Sci&Tech Co.,LTD, Dickinson and Company (US), Sunphoria Co., Ltd., Narang Medical Limited, CML Biotech, Bio  X, Labtech Disposables, BectonAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Blog:
DUSHANBE -- Judicial authorities in Tajikistan have sentenced prominent human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov, who is serving a 23-year prison sentence, to an additional two years behind bars.

Yorov's lawyer, Mavluda Mamatqulova, told RFE/RL on March 16 that the Supreme Court found her client guilty of contempt of court and insulting a government official on March 15 and sentenced him the same day.

Yorov's wife, Zarina Nabieva, told RFE/RL that her husband will appeal the ruling.

Yorov was sentenced to 23 years in prison in October, after the Dushanbe City Court found him guilty on charges of issuing public calls for the overthrow of the government and inciting social unrest.

At that trial, Yorov pleaded not guilty and called the case against him politically motivated.

He then read out verses by the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam about fools, which led to the charges of contempt of court and insulting a government official.

Yorov was a lawyer for 13 members and leaders of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which President Emomali Rahmon's government labeled a terrorist organization and outlawed in 2015.

Dozens of members of the IRPT, which had long been the only registered Islamic political party in any of the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, have been jailed in the past two years.

Yorov is among at least five human rights attorneys who rights groups say have been targeted by authorities in Tajikistan in connection with their work.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and other organizations have called for their immediate and unconditional release.

Rahmon, who has been in power for almost a quarter century, tolerates little dissent.
Global Green Packaging Market to Grow at a CAGR of 5.29% during the peirod 2017-2022

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SummaryOrbis Research Presents Global Green Packaging Market By Product Type (Recyclable, Reusable, Bio-degradable), End User Industry (FMCG, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Fashion and Apparels, Electronics and Appliances and Automotive), Geography, Trends, Forecasts (2017-2022)DescriptionThe world has reached a population of over 7 billion out of which it is estimated that 2.5 billion are of the age group 15-35. This consumer segment is driving the demand for packaging solutions in some of the major countries of the world. This younger generation is also aware of the environmental impact of the packaging materials and has now started demanding green packaging solutions which are safe for consumption and have minimum impact on the environment. This growing conscientious population is expected to drive the growth of the green packing market. Other factors include the formulation of new regulations by several governments all over the world, for both the private and public sector, encouraging business to reduce their carbon footprints and environmental impacts.The global green packaging market is estimated at USD 212.1 billion in 2016 and is projected to reach USD 288.87 billion by the end of 2022 which is growing at a CAGR of 5.29% during the peirod 2017 - 2022. Asia-Pacific is leading the market with 37% share in 2016 followed by North America and Europe. Recycled content holds the major share of 92% in 2016, whereas degradable packaging market is growing at the highest rate.Increasing environmental concern is one of the major factors fueling the demand for the worldwide green packaging market. Owing to this factor, considerable efforts are being made for reduction of toxic waste emissions. Green package results in very less toxic emission and causes less pollution in the form of landfills. Consequently, there is an increasing demand for green packaging to keep the environment clean and pollution-free. Moreover, an increasing number of government's are taking initiatives for a cleaner environment and thus have formulated strict regulations. Manufacturers are now under pressure to use eco-friendly material in packaging and adopt methods that have less adverse impact on the environment.Get a PDF Sample of Global Green Packaging Market Report at:The global green packaging market is segmented on the basis of type: recyclable (paper, plastic, metal and glass), reusable (drums, plastic containers), degradable and regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, rest of the world) with further country-wise segmentation. The market is also segmented on the basis of industry verticals such as FMCG, hospital, manufacturing, agriculture, fashion and apparels, electronics & appliances, automotive and others. This report also describes a detailed study of the Porter's five forces analysis of the market. All the five major factors in these markets have been quantified using the internal key parameters governing each of them. It also covers the market landscape of these players which includes the key growth strategies, geographical footprint, and competition analysis.The report also considers key trends that will impact the industry and key profiles of leading suppliers of global green packaging market. Some of the top companies mentioned in the report are Tetra Pak, Amcor, Mondi Group, Imex Packaging, McNichols Co., Rohrer Corporation, Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Bayer Material Science, Berkley International Packaging, EarthFirst Brand Films, GreenBlue and Others.DRIVERS Growing conscientious population Stringent government regulationsRESTRAINTS Lack of supply of bio-plastics and related materials Higher costsPlace a Purchase Order for this Report at:What the report offers Market definition for the global green packaging market along with identification of key drivers and restraints for the market. Market analysis for the global green packaging market, with region-specific assessments and competition analysis on a global and regional scale. Identification of factors instrumental in changing the market scenario, rising prospective opportunities and identification of key companies that can influence the market on a global and regional scale. Extensively researched competitive landscape section with profiles of major companies along with their strategic initiatives and market share. Identification and analysis of the macro and micro factors that affect the green packaging market on both global and regional scale. A comprehensive list of key market players along with the analysis of their current strategic interests and key financial information.Major Points Covered in Global Green Packaging Market Report: Introduction Research methodology Executive summary Market dynamics Technology Snapshot Market segmentation Investment analysis Future of Green PackagingOrbis Research (orbisresearch.com) 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 customized 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 specialization. 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; +9164101019Follow Us on LinkedIn:
Global and Chinese Forestry Crawler Dozer Market Outlook, Growth, Industry Trends 2016-2021

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A market study of forestry crawler dozer is a crawler (continuous tracked tractor) equipped with a substantial metal plate (known as a blade) used for logging, skidding and towing transport operations in forest. Most of the crawler dozers can be equipped with an optional single shank or multi shank ripper attachment. This attachment is fixed at the back of the dozer and is operated hydraulically to force the tooth or teeth in the ground to the designed depth.Browse Full ReportThe global forestry crawler dozer market size is estimated to drop from USD 426.56 million in 2015 to USD 359.73 million by 2021, at an estimated CAGR of -2.8% between 2015 and 2021. Worldwide, 3,286 Units forestry crawler dozer have been produced in the year 2015, while North America attributes close to 47.9% of the world production, China close to 30.31%, and Asia-Pacific 9.68%. In terms of types, 160-230HP accounts for 57.05% of all forestry crawler dozer produced, compared to 30.25% for 230HP.The global forestry crawler dozer market report profiles some of the key technological developments in the recent times. It also profiles some of the leading players in the market and analyzes their key strategies.The major players in the global Forestry Crawler Dozer market are,CaterpillarJohn DeereShantuiKomatsuLiugongSINOMACH-HILiebherrZoomlionHBISXiagongFor sample request click onPart 1. Scope of Report1.1 Research Methodology1.2 Geographic Scope1.3 Years Considered1.4 Key Findings of Forestry Crawler Dozer IndustryPart 2. Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 History and Description2.3 Composition of a Crawler Dozer2.3.1 Tractor2.3.2 Blade2.3.3 Ripper2.4 Value Chain Analysis2.4.2 Upstream2.4.3 DownstreamAbout Market Research Store:Market Research Store 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. Market Research Store is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading publishers and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Tuoda ResearchUnited States
Alkaline Proteases Market Insights 2024

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Alkaline Proteases Market DynamicsAlkaline protease enzymes demonstrate high stability and resistance to proteolytic hydrolysis, owing to their high degree of cross-linking to hydrogen bonds, disulphide bonds, and hydrophobic interactions. They are stable in association with chelating agents and perbonates. Developments in field of protein engineering coupled with development of industrial enzymes is expected to create substantial demand for industry players in artificial proteases market.Alkaline Proteases Market TaxonomyThe global alkaline protease market outlook can be segmented on the basis of:TypeSourceApplicationGeographySerine protease and metalloprotease are the two types of alkaline proteases. They are also classified as endo-peptidases and exo-peptidases based on the position of the peptide bond cleavage.Access Full Report with TOC:Alkaline Proteases Market ApplicationsOn the basis of application, the alkaline proteases market size has been classified into detergents, pharmaceuticals, meat tenderizers, protein hydrolyzates, food products, and waste processing. Alkaline proteases play a crucial role in the bioprocessing of used X-ray or photographic films for silver recovery. The use of alkaline proteases in detergents is being increasingly preferred over conventional synthetic ones due to their better cleaning properties, safer dirt removal conditions, and higher performance efficiency at lower washing temperature. Immobilized alkaline protease obtained from Bacillus subtilis has been studied for development of ointment compositions, non-woven tissues, gauze, and new bandage materials. Aspergillus oryzae derived proteases are used as a diagnostic aid in certain lytic enzyme deficiency syndrome. Alkaline proteases with keratinolytic activity are being explored in feather degradation and feather meal production for glues, fertilizers, biodegradable foils, and films.Advancements in molecular biology has greatly reshaped the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry over the last couple of decades. Rapid innovations in healthcare technology has also boosted growth of pharmaceuticals verticals, including alkaline proteases market scenario.Enzymes have long been used as alternatives to chemicals to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of a wide range of industrial systems and processes. Alkaline proteases also known as basic proteases are a group of enzymes used primarily as additives in detergents and are active in a neutral to alkaline pH range. Most alkaline proteases have an optimal pH of around 10, with an isoelectric point of around pH 9. These are produced by alkalophilic micro-organisms and can resist extreme alkaline environments produced by a wide range of alkalophilic microorganisms. Alkaline proteases are obtained from various microbial sources such as fungi, bacteria, and certain yeasts.You can also get exclusive discount on this CMI report by clicking on this link:Bacillus Species: Major Source of Alkaline ProteasesAlkaline protease enzymes can be obtained from bacterial and fungal sources. Bacillus Species is often commercially used in bioremediation mixes, or as probiotic agent in aquaculture. Other sources include Aspergillus species, Issatchenkia orientalis, Yarrowia lipolytica, Aureobasidium pullulans, and Cryptococcus aureus. Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus coagulans can be used profitably for large scale production of alkaline protease. Alkaline protease from B. subtilis was used for management of waste feathers from poultry slaughterhouse.Also, alkaline proteases obtained from fungal origin offers an advantage of separation due to easy removal of the mycelia from the final product by simple filtration. Moreover, the fungus can be grown in inexpensive substrates.Increasing number of Studies being conducted to Increase Stability and Explore Additional Applications in Alkaline Proteases MarketHigh production cost is inhibiting the widespread use of extracellular enzymes for remediation. Technological development in the field of immobilized enzymes offers possibility of wider and economical use of these enzymes. Advancements in microbiology and biotechnology have created a favorable condition for development of proteases. Extensive studies are underway to increase stability to pH, temperature, organic solvents, reuse, and recovery of enzymes with the help of various enzyme immobilization techniques such as whole cell and cell free immobilization techniques. Characterization of enzymes, isolation and identification of promising strains, and optimization of products is a continuous process for improving existing application and also discovering potential application areas.Get sample copy of this report:North America and Europe to dominate the alkaline proteases market size throughout the forecast periodPresence of wide range of end-user industries ranging from pharmaceutical industries to food & beverages processing companies along with high spending on industrial infrastructure is expected to boost the alkaline proteases market revenue growth in North America. Geographically, North America and Europe are expected to capture a major chunk of the market between 2016 and 2024. The market in Asia Pacific, primarily driven by China and India, is expected to burgeon at a significant rate over the forecast period.Ab Enzymes, Acumedia Manufacturers, Inc., Advanced Enzymes, Novozymes, Noor Enzymes, Royal DSM, Sigma Aldrich Corporation, Solvay Enzymes and Specialty Enzymes & Biotechnologies Co. are some of the key players in the global alkaline proteases market.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Blog:
Global Cyber Security for Oil & Gas Market Size, Growth, Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)

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http://This report studies sales (consumption) of Cyber Security for Oil & Gas in Global market, especially in USA, China, Europe, Japan, India and Southeast Asia, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringHoneywell InternationalIntel SecuritySymantec CorporationHewlett-Packard EnterpriseIBMCisco SystemsMicrosoft CorporationSiemens AGBMC SoftwareCA TechnologiesDell Inc.Lockheed Martin CorporationWaterfall Security SolutionsRapid7, Inc.Fireeye, Inc.Trend Micro, Inc.Sophos Ltd.Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, market share and growth rate of Cyber Security for Oil & Gas in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), likeUSAChinaEuropeJapanIndiaSoutheast AsiaSplit by product Types, with Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoNetwork SecurityEndpoint SecurityApplication SecurityCloud SecurityOthersWe provide qualitative analysis of the current market scenario, latest market trends, price and cost changes, product growth rate and market share of the competitors through our exclusive syndicated research. Our comprehensive syndicated reports penetrate deep into micro levels of each target segment of the referred industry.Liberty Society,Koregaon Park, Pune- 411001,Maharashtra, India.US:+1-888-376-9998sales@marketresearchglobe.cominfo@marketresearchglobe.com
Instant Coffee Market: Retail Stores to Remain Most Preferred Distribution Channel

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According to a new research study by Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global instant coffee market demonstrates a highly consolidated competitive landscape. In 2016, the top five players, namely, Nestle S.A., Starbucks Corp., Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Unilever Plc., and Tata Global Beverages, collectively accounted for more than 90% of the overall market.Over the coming years, the market is likely to witness a substantial increase in the rivalry between the leading participants, fueled by their rising involvement into mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships for their geographical expansion and better visibility, states the report.Obtain Report Details @As per TMRs estimations, the overall opportunity in the global market for instant coffee was worth US$28.12 bn in 2016. Rising at a CAGR of 4.80% during the period from 2017 to 2025, the market is likely to reach US$42.5 bn by the end of the forecast period. Retail stores are the most preferred distribution channel for the sales of instant coffee and are expected to continue like this over the forthcoming years.Increase in Preference of Consumers for Instant Coffee to Ensure Asia Pacifics LeadThe research report also provides a comprehensive study of the geographical spread of the worldwide market for instant coffee. Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, Western Europe, and the Rest of the Europe have been considered as the key geographical segments of this market in this study. In 2016, Asia Pacific dominated the global market with a share of nearly 36%. Analysts expect this regional market to remain on top throughout the forecast period, thanks to the increasing preference of consumers for instant coffee, especially in China and India.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The demand for instant coffee in the Rest of Europe is also increasing at a steady rate. Especially in Poland, Russia, and Bulgaria, the rate of demand is quite high and is projected to keep on increasing in the near future. Amongst others, North America, on account of a higher preference for filter coffee, is likely to experience sluggish growth in its market for instant coffee over the next few years. The Middle East and Africa, on the other hand, will show a healthy progress in the uptake of instant coffee, upgrading its market in the years to come, notes the research study.Changing Lifestyle of Consumers to Influence Demand for Instant CoffeeThe changing lifestyle of consumers, especially younger ones vigorously conforming .o western culture, is having a significant impact on the uptake of instant coffee, reflecting greatly on its sales, states the author of this research study. The shift in consumer preference from tea to coffee, particularly in emerging economies, such as India, China, Ukraine, and several Middle Eastern countries is, consequently, boosting the market for instant coffee considerably across the world.Consumers, nowadays, are ever busy with their fast-paced lives and are seeking beverages that can be prepared easily in less time with no fuss. Instant coffee provides these comforts to consumers without being tough on pockets. This, as a result, has led to a rocketing demand for instant coffee across the world and the scenario is not expected to change anytime soon in the future.Apart from this, the rise in awareness level pertaining to the harmful effects of aerated drinks is projected to fuel the consumption of instant coffee over the forthcoming years. However, the growing concerns regarding the usage of acrylamide in instant coffee, which is injurious to human health is anticipated to hamper the growth of this market in the years to come.The study presented here is based on a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR), titled Instant Coffee Market (Distribution Channel - B2B (Hotels and Restaurants) and Retail (Online and Offline); Packaging Type - Jars and Sachets) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025.The global instant coffee market can be segmented as follows:By Distribution ChannelB2BHotelRestaurantOthersRetailOnlineOfflineDepartmental StoresHyper and Super MarketOthersBy Packaging TypeJarsSachetsAbout 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:
Allergy Diagnostic and Treatment Market: Global industry analysis and forecast 2016-2024

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High incidence of allergic diseases such as allergic rhinitis, asthma, sinusitis, food allergy and other respiratory allergies are expected to boost growth of the allergy diagnostic and treatment market in the near future. For instance, according to the WHO, globally over 300 million patients suffered from asthma in 2013 and are expected to increase to over 400 million by 2025. Moreover, according to statistics provided by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, globally around 15% of the population are affected by allergic rhinitis. Increasing prevalence of allergies among the global populace is expected to drive growth of the global allergy diagnostic and treatment market outlook.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report:Furthermore, increasing government support for development of novel therapies and vaccines along with high research and development initiatives for development of advanced diagnostic techniques are expected to fuel growth of this market in the near future. Technological advancements in the field of in-vitro diagnostics and increasing focus on retaining superior quality of life are some of the factors that are projected to contribute towards growth of this market over the forecast period. However, high cost of these tests and unavailability of the tests kits are some of the factors that are projected to negatively influence growth of this market.Increasing availability of effective treatment options is a major factor fueling growth of the allergy diagnostic and treatment market size. Overall, the billion dollar allergy diagnostic and treatment market revenue is expected to grow at a significant rate over the forecast period (20162024). With government taking key measures to improve healthcare facilities, many private players have emerged in the healthcare market to optimize and revolutionize the healthcare industry. These macro healthcare factors are expected to drive growth of various markets in the healthcare sector, most notably allergy diagnostic market.Allergy is a form of hypersensitivity medical disorder of the immune system when the system reacts to a foreign substance (allergen). Symptoms of allergy include runny nose, red eyes, itchiness, hives, eczema or more severely an asthma attack. In similar context, allergy diagnostic services are used to identify the type of allergy and accordingly determine treatment regimen of allergic conditions. Moreover, with the amalgamation of advanced technologies in the field of point of care diagnostics, it is expected that the allergy diagnostic and treatment market would experience a significant growth in the near future.Allergy Diagnostic and Treatment Market TaxonomyCoherent market insights has segmented the market on the basis ofAllergy TypeTests PerformedMedicationEnd UseOn basis of type of allergy, the allergy diagnostic and treatment market scenario can be segmented as follows:Drug AllergyAllergic RhinitisFood AllergySkin AllergyInsect AllergySinusitisGeneral AllergySinusitis and food allergies are especially prevalent in developed regions.Drug allergy segment is expected to grow at double digit rate between 2016 and 2024.Get discount on this report by CMI @Some of the major diagnostic tests performed for detection of the types of allergy are as follows:Specific IgE testingPatch testingBlood testingOthersOn the basis of medications, the allergy diagnostic and treatment market is segmented intoAntihistaminesDecongestantsCorticosteroidsLeukotrienes inhibitorsMast cell inhibitorsOthersNorth America and Europe are expected to dominate the global allergy diagnostic and treatment market sizeNorth America, followed by Europe accounted for the largest share of allergy diagnostic and treatment market revenue, mainly fueled by high incidence of allergic diseases in the U.S. According to a research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013, in the U.S., between the periods of 1997 to 2011, food allergies among children increased around 50%. Moreover, according to the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), over 17 million people in Europe were affected by food allergy in 2015.A highly fragmented and immensely competitive marketThe market is expected to witness an exponential growth rate due to increasing prevalence of various types of allergies in developed nations such as the U.S, the U.K., France, Canada, and Spain. Some of the major companies in the allergy diagnostic and treatment market are bioMerieux, Danaher Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Hitachi Chemical Diagnostics, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Omega Diagnostics Group PLC, Siemens Healthcare, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.,.Browse Research Report At:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Agricultural Disinfectant Market in Global Industry : Segmentation, Trends and Opportunities 2017-2024

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ALBANY, NY, March 17, 2017 : ResearchMoz presents professional and in-depth study of "Agricultural Disinfectant Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024".Agricultural Disinfectants are the most important component that primarily are used for crop and livestock protection. These agricultural disinfectants are categorized into different forms and the most important forms are liquid forms, powder forms, and granule and gel forms among others. These are applied on land, water sanitizing and aerial. By end use the market has been bifurcated into agricultural farms and livestock farms. Proper disinfection is required to protect crops and livestock from harmful diseases or sterilize the microorganisms.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Agricultural Disinfectant Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe market for agricultural disinfectant is growing at a magnifying pace across all geographical regions worldwide. Globally, the market is expanding at a magnifying rate, majorly driven by demand for meat products from the China and India. The market for agricultural disinfectant in all these regions is expected to show significant results owing to increasing research and development for enhancement of disinfectants in the region. Moreover, emphasis on improving performance, reducing operating expenditures, maintaining regulatory standards, increasing the demand to ensure crop protection are impacting the market for global agricultural disinfectant globally.Development of vertical farming and green house vegetable production coupled with rising number of diseases among livestock population are major drivers of the agricultural disinfectant market globally. Although rising demand for meat products from the emerging countries like India and China under the Asia Pacific region is majorly accounted for the steady growth in agricultural disinfectant.In addition proper health of livestock is gaining importance across the globe due to the rising demand for meat products. It is imperative to protect the livestock population through proper application of disinfectants in drinking water, yards, surface, among others to protect them from harmful diseases. Routine cleanliness, frequent removal of manure and using proper disinfectants provides better results in terms of health for the livestock population. Owing to this factor, the impact of this driver is high and is expected to remain high during the forecast period. Moreover, increasing demand for quality meat products coupled with changing lifestyle patterns of the population is boosting the use of disinfectants on the new born vulnerable livestock population so that they do not catch diseases. Health of the human population is dependent on the health of the livestock population; therefore, it is crucial to protect these animals.Increasing development of vertical farming methods coupled with increasing greenhouse vegetable production techniques has led to a boom in the global agricultural disinfectant market. This has led to increased application of disinfectants in crops for better production and to ensure food security. However the recent downturn in the agricultural disinfectant products market is due to the harmful effects of these products that has impacted the growth of the disinfectant market negatively. Disinfectant manufacturing companies are currently refraining from new projects due to the harmful arising due to the lack of knowledge among the farmers regarding the proper usage methods of the disinfectants.Research and development laboratories offer huge growth potential for the agricultural disinfectant market. There has been an increase in research projects pertaining to the use of environment friendly agricultural disinfectants in developing countries. Therefore, considering the benefits associated with the use of agricultural disinfectants in developing countries, it is expected to act as a prime future opportunity for the market.Agricultural Disinfectant Market: SegmentationBy end use agricultural disinfectants are applied on agricultural farms and livestock farms and it is seen that consumption of agricultural disinfectants among the livestock farms are seen more due to the increased consumption of meat products. Poultry cattle and swine buildings are cleaned regularly so that the diseases are not spread to the successive groups that are reared. Moreover, in this report the study provides different countries included in different regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa. North America includes the U.S. and Rest of North America. Europe includes U.K., Germany, France, Russia, Italy and Rest of Europe.Asia Pacific includes countries such as India, China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. In addition,. Middle East and Africa includes country such as UAE, South Africa and Rest of Middle East and Africa.Latin America comprise of countries such as Brazil and Rest of Latin AmericaGeographically, Asia Pacific agricultural disinfectant market is experiencing the fastest growth from 2016 to 2024 in global agricultural disinfectant market.Agricultural Disinfectant Market: Competitive LandscapeIn order grab a better picture of the agricultural disinfectant market, a key trends analysis has been done. The leading players in the market include Zoetis (Florham Park, New Jersey United States), The Chemours Company (Wilmington, Delaware, United States), Nufarm (Melbourne), The Dow Chemical company (Midland, Michigan, United States), The Stepan Company, (Northfield, Illinois, U.S.), The Thymox Technology (Quebec, Canada),Neogen corporation (Lansing, Michigan, U.S.), Fink Tec GmbH (Oberster Kamp Germany), QuatChem Limited. (United Kingdom) and Entaco NV. (Belgium) among others.The global agricultural disinfectant market can be segmented as follows;-Global Agricultural Disinfectant Market, by FormsLiquidPowderOthers(Gel, Granules)Global Agricultural Disinfectant Market, by ApplicationLandWater SanitizingAerialGlobal Agricultural Disinfectant Market, by End UseAgricultural FarmsLivestock FarmsMake an Enquiry of this report @Global Contact LensMarket, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeU.K.GermanyFranceRussiaItalyRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaRest of APACLatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaUAESouth AfricaRest of Middle East & AfricaResearchMoz 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
Growth rate, Market Size & Raw Material Availability Of Automotive Lubricants Global Market Between 2017 - 2024

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Growth rate, Market Size & Raw Material Availability Of Automotive Lubricants Global Market Between 2017 - 2024".Global Automotive Lubricants Market: OverviewAutomotive lubricants are predominantly used to reduce friction and gain smooth functioning of a vehicle. Examples of automotive lubricant products are engine oil, gear oil, transmission fluid, greases, coolants, bearing oil, brake fluid, etc. Engine oil is estimated to expand at a significant rate during the forecast period due to increasing number of vehicles. Stringent environmental regulations on emissions across the globe is estimated to influence use of synthetic or bio-based lubricants over mineral oil based lubricants. Asia Pacific is likely to have a major share in consumption of automotive lubricants during the forecast period.Global Automotive Lubricants Market: Scope of the StudyThe report estimates and forecasts the automotive lubricants market on the global and regional levels. The study provides forecast between 2016 and 2024 based on volume (million tons / kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Bn / US$ Mn) with 2015 as the base year. The report comprises an exhaustive value chain analysis for each of the segments. It provides a comprehensive view of the market. Value chain analysis also offers detailed information about value addition at each stage.The study includes drivers and restraints for the automotive lubricants market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. It also provides key market indicators affecting the growth of the market.Further, the report analyzes opportunities in the automotive lubricants market on the global and regional level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through quantitative and qualitative data. These have been verified through primary and secondary resources. Furthermore, the report analyzes substitute analysis of automotive lubricants and global average price trend analysis.Global Automotive Lubricants Market: Research MethodologyThe report includes Porters Five Forces Model to determine the degree of competition in the automotive lubricants market. The report comprises a qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein end-users and regions have been analyzed based on attractiveness for each region. Growth rate, market size, raw material availability, profit margin, impact strength, technology, competition, and other factors (such as environmental and legal) have been evaluated in order to derive the general attractiveness of the market. The report comprises price trend analysis for automotive lubricants between 2016 and 2024.Secondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to, company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report.In-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report.Primary research represents the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. Key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and strengthening secondary research findings. Primary research further helped in developing the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.Make an Enquiry of this report @Global Automotive Lubricants Market: SegmentationThe study provides a comprehensive view of the automotive lubricants market by dividing it into product, base oil, vehicle type, distribution channel, and geography segments. The products have been segmented into engine oil, gear oil and transmission fluid. The base oils are segmented into mineral oil, synthetic oil and bio-based oil.Based on the vehicle type, the market is segmented into passenger car (PC), light-weight commercial vehicle (LCV) and heavy-weight commercial vehicle (HCV). The distribution channels are segmented into OEM and aftermarket. These segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends.Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast consumption of automotive lubricants in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Market segmentation includes demand for consumption in all the regions individually.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Royal Dutch Shell plc, ExxonMobil Corporation, BP p.l.c., Chevron Corporation and Others. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview (wherever applicable).The global refinery catalysts market has been segmented as follows:Automotive Lubricants Market  Product AnalysisEngine oilGear oilTransmission fluidAutomotive Lubricants Market  Base oil AnalysisMineral oilSynthetic oilBio-based fluidAutomotive Lubricants Market  Vehicle type AnalysisPassenger car (PC)Light-weight Commercial Vehicle (LCV)Heavy-weight Commercial Vehicle (HCV)Automotive Lubricants Market  Distribution channel AnalysisOriginal Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)AftermarketAutomotive Lubricants Market  Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeU.K.FranceGermanyItalySpainRest of EuropeTo 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 @
Global Market Overview Of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) During The Forecast Period 2017 - 2024

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Global Market Overview Of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) During The Forecast Period 2017 - 2024".Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) Market: OverviewVertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSEL) are semiconductor lasers, or more precisely laser diodes with monolithic laser resonator, where the light emitted leaves the device in a perpendicular direction to the chip surface. This is in contrast to the conventional edge-emitting lasers where the beam is emitted by splitting the single chip out of the wafer. VCSELs have a number of advantages over its conventional counterparts. These include high compatibility with other circuitry and detectors, high reliability, scalability, package ability, and consumption of low power. Moreover, manufacturers prefer VCSELs because it can be tested at a number stages throughout the production process to check for processing issues and material quality. This is a key advantage of VCSELs over edge-emitting lasers and helps in lowering significant production cost. The above mentioned advantages increase the demand for VCSELs and boost the global VCSELs market.The growth of the VCSELs market can also be attributed to the increasing rate of adoption of VCSELs in emerging applications, such as atomic clocks, GPS, magnetometers, and proximity sensing.Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) Market: SegmentationThe global VCSELs market is segmented on the basis of raw materials, applications, and geography. By raw materials the global VCSELs market is segmented into gallium nitride (GaN) indium phosphide (InP), gallium arsenide (GaAs), and others (AlGaAs, InGaAsN, etc.). The gallium arsenide (GaAs) based VCSELs hold a significant share of the market and is expected to so during the forecast period. The gallium nitride (GaN) based VCSELs have a number of advantages but suffer from lack of conductivity due to which its growth will be limited. Indium phosphide (InP) based VCSELs have great potential and is expected to grow with a significant CAGR.On the basis of applications the global VCSELs market is categorized into eight parts. These include chip scale atomic clocks, biological tissue analysis, computer mice, laser printers, absorption spectroscopy, analog broadband signal transmission, and optical fiber data transmission. By applications optical fiber data transmission holds the largest market share and is expected to hold its position during the forecasted period from 2016 to 2024. Laser printers hold the second largest market share followed by computer mice. Chip scale atomic clocks is relatively new application of VCSELs but is expected to gain popularity during the forecast period. Biological tissue analysis is also a potentially attractive market for VCSEL especially with the rise in the public awareness regarding health issues and the increase in the incidence of diseases, such as cancer.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) Market: Regional OutlookBy geography, the VCSELs market has been classified into four regions namely Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World (RoW). Currently, Europe held the major share of the market, followed by North America, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). Countries of Europe are bouncing back from the recent depression and as the economy is stabilizing it is strengthening the VCSEL market in this region. The VCSEL market in North America is expected to grow and remain strong during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. With emerging economies like that of India, China, and Japan the VCSEL market in Asia Pacific is expected to be the most attractive during the forecasted period. Countries in Rest of the World (RoW), which includes countries in South America, Middle East, and Latin America are also showing promise and the growth of VCSELs market in this part of the world is expected to be impressive.Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSELs) Market: Companies Mentioned in the ReportKey players profiled in this report include IQE Public Limited Company (United Kingdom), Finisar Corporation (United States), Broadcom Ltd (Singapore), II-VI Incorporated (United States), Coherent, Inc (United States), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Newport Corporation (United States), Royal Philips Electronic N.V (Netherlands), Princeton Optronics, Inc. (United States), and Lumentum Holdings, Inc. (United States).The segments covered in the VCSELs market are as follows:Global VCSELs Market: By Raw MaterialsGallium Nitride (GaN)Gallium Arsenide (GaAs)Indium Phosphide (InP)Others (InGaAsN, AlGaAs, etc.)Global VCSELs Market: By ApplicationsOptical fiber data transmissionAnalog broadband signal transmissionAbsorption SpectroscopyLaser printersComputer miceBiological tissue analysisChip scale atomic clocksOther applicationsGlobal VCSELs Market: By GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaMexicoEuropeU.K.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 @
Ultraviolet Disinfection Equipment Market Globally Grow At A CAGR Of 15.93% Between 2017 - 2020

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Ultraviolet Disinfection Equipment Market Globally Grow At A CAGR Of 15.93% Between 2017 - 2020".Ultraviolet irradiation provides effective and rapid inactivation of micro-organisms. The reproduction process and lifecycle of bacteria, viruses, and protozoa can be altered by exposure to germicidal wavelengths of ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet rays from the sun have always played significant roles in the earth's atmosphere. The ultraviolet spectrum is higher in frequency than visible light and lower than X-rays. As a water treatment procedure, ultraviolet light remains an effective disinfectant due to its strong germicidal ability.Technavios analysts forecast the global ultraviolet disinfection equipment market to grow at a CAGR of 15.93% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global ultraviolet disinfection equipment market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the ultraviolet disinfection equipment vendors.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Ultraviolet Disinfection Equipment 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 vendorsAquionicsAtlantic UltravioletGE LightingPhilips LightingTrojan TechnologiesTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Other prominent vendorsAmerican UltravioletAtlantium TechnologiesCalgon Carbon CorporationEnaquaEvoqua Water TechnologiesXenex Disinfection ServicesXylemMarket driverDetrimental effects of rapid industrial development.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLower cost of conventional chlorine-based technology.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendLower cost of conventional chlorine-based technology.For 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 @
Growth of Cerebral Oximeters Market is Driven by Increase in Prevalence of Traumatic Brain Injuries

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The fundamental aim of the anesthetic process is maintenance of sufficient amount of oxygen to organs and tissues, especially the brain. Though the dangers to the brain of reduced oxygen delivery and prolonged hypoxia are well documented, the brain is still the least monitored organ in the course of anesthesia. Cerebral oximeters are used to obtain cerebral oxygenation values using continuous, noninvasive near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology or near-infrared spectroscopy technology.The cerebral oximeter setup includes an oximeter probe which is attached to a cable that is then connected to the cerebral oximeter monitor. Most cerebral oximeters are able to support 2 to 4 oximeter probes with their respective monitor cables. Probes are attached to the scalp of a patient using adhesive pads, where the frontal lobe is the chosen part of the scalp. Probes are composed of fiber optic light source along with light detectors.Browse Market Research Report @Light is released by the source in the infrared range either by light-emitting diodes (LED) or through stimulated emission of the radiation. The emitted light which is in the infrared range is able to reach the underlying cerebral tissue by easily penetrating through the skull. The light which is emitted is either redirected, absorbed, reflected, or scattered. A change is observed in the light spectrum when infrared light comes in contact with hemoglobin. The change depends upon the hemoglobin molecules oxygenation status. The light detectors present in the oximeter probes detect the reflected light once it returns toward the surface.The growth of the global cerebral oximeters market is due to factors such as growth in the older population, increase in prevalence and incidence of neurological disorders, and gradual rise in the awareness levels about neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, the market growth is driven by increase in prevalence of traumatic brain injuries and sustained efforts by manufacturers to bring in technological advancements in the equipment. The demand for these devices can grow as there is a huge untreated population with neurological conditions as well as rise in demand for minimally invasive and non-invasive devices.Greater focus of the manufacturers on digitalized devices, their extended therapeutic applications, and increase in use of these devices in clinical trials are some of the opportunities that could drive the growth of the market. However, the market growth could be impeded due to high cost of the equipment. As the devices are complex, the costs associated with them are very high. Furthermore, factors such as shortage of highly trained professionals, concerns about the accuracy of the diagnostic devices, and unfavorable reimbursement policies may hinder the growth of the market during the forecast period.Fill the Form for an Exclusive Sample of this Report @The global cerebral oximeters market is segmented based on product type, therapeutic application, end-user, and geography. The market in terms of product type is divided into portable oximeters and finger oximeters. Based on therapeutic application, the market is classified into traumatic brain injuries, stroke, and other therapeutic applications. In terms of end-user, the market is divided into hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centers, and others.Geographically, the global cerebral oximeters market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to have the prime share of the market. Factors such as rise in prevalence of various neurodegenerative disorders, government initiatives and support for technological advancements, well-established sales & distribution network of major neurodiagnostic companies, and ease of reimbursement for brain monitoring techniques.North America is followed by Europe in terms of market size. The market is expected to grow in Asia Pacific due to improvement in health care infrastructure, rise in disposable incomes, and increase in incidence of neurodegenerative disorders as well as health care reforms initiated by governments.The prominent players operating in the global cerebral oximeters market are GE Healthcare, Medtronic, Masimo, Natus Medical Incorporated, Omron Healthcare, Nonin Medical, Boston Scientific, Edwards Lifesciences, and Spacelabs Healthcare.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. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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:
Computer Assisted Coding Market - Technological Advancements, Evolving Industry Trends And Insights

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Hospitals need to manage and store a large quantity of patients medical record in its system. These medical records contain patients personal data and treatment history which is documented in a proper manner. The document is used by administrative staff for billing purpose during patients discharge from hospital. Thus, the handling and preservation of records is a tedious work for administrative person in hospital. However, with the introduction of information technology, these medical records are now being recorded in digital form and are stored in a computer. However, the time taken by an administrative person to extract appropriate information from the document is more as the person needs to read the whole document carefully. Computer assisted coding software aims to resolve this issue by analyzing the medical record or document for specific keywords. The keywords are analyzed by comparing the document data with available database. Thus, computer assisted coding software provides appropriate keyword to the administrative person or coder who can use it for billing purpose.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Computer assisted coding software uses structured input or natural language processing (NLP) technology for document processing. This helps to increase productivity and reducing process time of the administrative person or coder. Computer assisted coding software also helps in reducing errors and improving efficiency of healthcare facility. It can be used by billing personnel, compliance officers and auditors to verify document in healthcare industry. Today, computer assisted coding software is available in cloud-based and on-premise types depending upon the hospital requirement.The rapid adoption of electronic health record (EHR) in many healthcare facilities is creating demand for computer assisted coding market. Computer assisted coding software can be used for insurance claim reimbursement in healthcare sector. Computer assisted coding software will see more adoption in healthcare facilities due to the adaptation of ICD-10 coding in coming years. ICD-10 is the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) list which is promoted by World Health Organization (WHO). ICD-10 contains codes for diseases, abnormal findings, symptoms, complaints, social circumstances and causes of injury or diseases. This is used by computer assisted coding software as a coding database.Browse Market Research Report @The major challenge for computer assisted coding software is its high initial cost and the problem of adaptation by the hospital management. Hospitals consider it as an unnecessary investment and focus on improving other facilities. Computer assisted coding software also have problem in processing handwritten notes for coding processes. This limits use of computer assisted coding software in traditional healthcare facilities were information technology is not yet implemented.Developed economies such as North America and Europe will see a good demand for Computer Assisted Coding market in coming years. This is due to strict regulation norms adopted by the governments in developed economies. The demand for computer assisted coding software in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil is going to increase in coming years due to the increase in healthcare infrastructure. Some of the key Computer Assisted Coding software providers are Cerner Corporation, MModal IP LLC, Optum Inc, PlatoCode LLC, QuadraMed Affinity Corporation, 3M Company, Artificial Medical Intelligence Inc, Craneware PLC, Mckesson Corporation, Dolbey Systems Inc, Optum Inc, Precyse Solutions, Nuance Communications Inc, and Trucode.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:
Software Defined Perimeter Market - Leading Players See Opportunities in Innovative Product Development

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Software defined perimeter (SDP) which is also known as a "Black Cloud", is an approach to computer security which is evolved from the work done at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) under the Global Information Grid (GIG) Black Core Network initiative around 2007. Software defined perimeter is a security framework that has been developed by cloud security alliance, a not-for-profit organization promoting security assurance within cloud computing. This framework is based on the Department of Defense's "need-to-know" model. The mentioned model states that all endpoints attempting to access a given infrastructure must be authorized and authenticated prior to entrance. Successful network-based attacks such as man-in-the-middle attacks, denial-of-service attacks, and lateral movement and server vulnerabilities attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting are lowered due with the adoption of SDPs.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The global software defined perimeter is driven by the growing demand for cloud-based software defined perimeter solutions as it is cost-effective and feature more scalability in comparison to the traditional software defined perimeter. Organizations are rapidly deploying security testing solutions either on-premises or on cloud to ensure efficient security solution to the organization. Moreover, organizations are increasingly adopting these solutions to minimize human intervention in security functionalities and enable synchronization between security policies and enterprises dynamic computing environment which in turn is boosting the deployment of software defined perimeter. However, factors such as increased adoption of freeware security applications is expected to hamper the market growth.Browse Market Research Report @Lack of security awareness on virtual environments is also thwarting the growth of SDP market. Learning about SDP now and starting to plan accordingly could have significant benefits for the security team are opening new opportunities for the participants in software defined perimeter market. Also increasing number of connected devices due to IoT are expected to create growth opportunities for the SDP market.The software defined perimeter market is segmented on the basis of deployment type, application, component type, end-user and region. In terms of deployment segment, the market can be classified as cloud and on premise. The application segment includes security and authentication. The market can also be classified on the basis of component used for building the software, such as software and service. The software can be further segmented as end-point, controller and gateway. The service segment can be further broken down into consulting, system integration and operation and maintenance. On the basis of end-user, the market can be classified into banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), technology, manufacturing, electronics, telecom and healthcare and life sciences among others. The market segments in terms of geographical regions include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America, and Middle-East and Africa (MEA). The North America market is expected to generate high revenue as there is high focus on innovations obtained from research and development and technology in the developed economies such as the U.S. and Canada. Moreover, the APAC region is expected to exhibit high growth potential due to the high demand for adoption of cloud based software defined perimeter from Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in this region during the forecast period.Industry participants dominating the software defined perimeter market with the most significant developments are Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., Cisco Systems, Inc., Intel Corporation, Symantec Corporation, EMC RSA, Fortinet, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Cartes Networks, Inc., Catbird, Inc., Vidder,Inc., Cryptzone North America Inc., Trusted Passage, and Velo Cloud Networks, Inc. among others.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.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.
CUSTOM LASIK SURGERY MARKET TO SURPASS US$ 3.5 BILLION BY 2024

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Rapid increase in demand for custom LASIK surgery procedure in the emerging economies to boost market growthNorth America, followed by Europe accounted for major share of global custom LASIK surgery market revenue in 2016. These two regions are together estimated to account for 65.1% of overall market revenue. However, the market for LASIK surgery procedure in Asia Pacific is projected to surpass that in in Europe by 2019. The primary factor for market growth in Asia Pacific is increased installations of LASIK systems in eye-care facilities in Japan. Japan is projected to account for 51% share of the custom Asia Pacific LASIK surgery market in 2017. Increasing patient awareness, high disposable income and improvement in the healthcare infrastructure has resulted in rise in number of LASIK surgeries and in turn, is resulting in growth of the custom LASIK surgery market in the country.Request a sample copy of this report @Introduction of technologically advanced products and long-term partnership of leading players with regional hospitals are key trends observed in the custom LASIK surgery market. There are over 1,050 LASIK centers catering to around 650,000 patients annually in the U.S. Companies such as Abbott Medical Optics and Alcon offer wavefront guided LASIK products. Government institutes in developed regions are supporting custom LASIK surgery procedure. As a result of this, several programs such as BlueCross Blue Shield QualSight program have been launched to offer support to product development and subsidies on the LASIK surgery.The global custom LASIK surgery market size was valued at US$ 1,537.6 million in 2016 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.7% during 2016  2024.Wavefront guided has emerged as the highest revenue contributor among procedure segmentsWavefront guided procedure segment is expected to dominate the custom LASIK surgery market procedure throughout the forecast period. The segment has been estimated to account for 45.8% share of the global custom LASIK surgery market revenue in 2016. This procedure involves detailed wavefront generated measurements of light traversing through the eyes. The procedure helps in offering personalized treatment to patients based on the unique anatomy of the patients eye. It is highly precise and more specific compared to conventional LASIK surgery.Get Discount for First Time Buyers @WaveScan System CustomVue LASIK (Abbott Medical Optics), Technolas 217z Zyoptix System for Personalized Vision Correction (Bausch + Lomb) and iDesign Advanced CustomVue LASIK System (Abbott Medical Optics) are some of the FDA-approved wavefront guided custom LASIK systems.WaveLight Allegretto Wave Eye-Q Excimer Laser System (Alcon) is a FDA approved wavefront-optimized LASIK systems.Topography-guided LASIK systems have gained significant traction in the last few years. Contoura Vision with the WaveLight Allegretto Wave Eye-Q Excimer Laser System is one such example of FDA approved topography-guided LASIK system.Custom LASIK Surgery  Alternative to EyewearLASIK surgery is a highly effective method to correct vision and is especially useful in treatment of various refractive disorders such as myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. In the U.S. alone, over 34 million patients are suffering from myopia according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology 2016 estimates. Moreover, around 150 million people in the U.S. wear corrective eyeglasses. Custom LASIK surgery market revenue is expected to witness upward trajectory growth, owing to increase in demand for effective therapeutic treatment for disorders related to the eyes.Request for Customization @Multinational players need to tap into potential addressable market in emerging economiesProduct portfolio expansion and partnerships with local players are key custom LASIK surgery market trends, which are expected to shape the industry in the near future. Moreover, companies are focusing on receiving regulatory approval for their products to differentiate their product offerings. For instance, Abbott received FDA approval for iDesign Advanced WaveScan Studio in 2015. Major players in the global custom LASIK surgery market include Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Bausch & Lomb, Carl Zeiss, Inc., Abbott Medical Optics, Nidek, Inc., and Technolas Perfect Vision GmbH.Click here to know more about this report @About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Coherent Market Insights Blog @Connect with us on LinkedIn @
The role of technological advancements in growth of the global UV Photoinitiator DETX industry?

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UV Photoinitiator DETX Industry InsightsThe organic chemical industry has rapidly evolved over the recent decade. The market provides raw materials to a range of end-use industries, such as plastic, paint and adhesive manufacturing. Increased consumer consumption and a rising export in UV Photoinitiator DETX is expected to boost the market growth across various regions. Organic chemicals are mainly produced from petroleum and natural gas routes. However, recent volatility in the cost of petroleum & natural gas along with continuous declining gas reserves has led industry players to look for alternative feedstock such as coal, biomass, and coal bed. Manufactures explore new applications and incorporate technological advancements in the manufacturing processes to boost the market growth.Rapid industrialization, fast growing chemical industry in the emerging regions such as China, India, and Brazil, would create abundant growth opportunities in the UV Photoinitiator DETX market. Furthermore, growing financial prosperity across the globe and rising discretionary income levels across emerging economies offer promising growth prospects along the forecast period.Strategic Insights:Producers and manufacturers focus on research and development activities to find alternatives methods of production to address the volatility in market prices. Chemical companies have set up manufacturing plants in regions with cheap availability of raw materials and easy access to cheap labor. This leads to operational efficiency and maximizing their revenue across various segments. In addition, market players collaborate with indigenous distributors to achieve economies of scale and augment their market share and size. Furthermore, the increased adoption of bio-based end-products would lead to more innovations in organic chemicals market and open new growth opportunities for the investors in the market.Ask Sample Report @:Key Takeaways The report offers a comprehensive overview of the key dynamics by covering market definition & scope, product classifications & specifications, manufacturing technology, and recent technological advancements in the UV Photoinitiator DETX market . The study offers a detailed account of raw materials used for various chemical process industries, upstream analysis, and profile of downstream clients, supply chain overview, and competitive landscape scenario. The report segments the UV Photoinitiator DETX market on the basis of types, applications and regions. The report offers detailed insights into market estimations on various segments and factors affecting the market dynamics are highlighted. Insights into revenue share and profit margin of prominent companies along the historical period and forecast period are provided in the study. The study provides offers detailed profile of key manufacturers & vendors along with the strategies adopted by them to expand their presence.Key benefits The report offers an overview of the UV Photoinitiator DETX market status by extensively covering supply and demand for various downstream products, forecast on revenue margin by value and volume across major regions during 20xx-20yy. A detailed segmental analysis is done to determine the largest revenue generating segment across various countries. The report takes a closer look at the regulatory framework and favorable government initiatives to boost the growth of the market. The analysis evaluates the various factors through SWOT analysis of key vendors. Prominent strategies adopted by key market players involved in the production of UV Photoinitiator DETX are covered in detail which will help the stakeholders and producers to gain an in-depth understanding of the market. A detailed account of current and emerging technologies for the production, distribution, and end use of UV Photoinitiator DETX are offered in the analysis. Production share of major manufacturers help to understand the investment trends in the industry. A critical examinations of various government regulations on energy and environmental concerns are offered in the report.GeographyThe report covers the major regions such as the U.S., E.U., North America, and Asia-Pacific with a focus on China. The strategies adopted by market players in China that will help to expand their presence across international markets are offered. Governments in emerging nations offer fiscal incentives to modernize the manufacturing technologies. Recent initiatives by market players in developing nations have led to favorable trends in investment in the growth of UV Photoinitiator DETX industry.To Read the Complete Report with TOC Visit:About Prof Research Reports:Prof Research Report is a high end market research & consulting firm that offers current and future market intelligence across 30 industrial verticals such as energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc through is quality database. Prof Research Report has successfully utilized technology to manage complex and massive market related database, which offers research reports of high analytical value. Prof Research Reports aim is to help our clients in achieving sustainable growth by providing insightful and qualitative research reports. Our research reports help our clients to achieve the competitive edge in the market.Contact Us:James Jordan5320 SW Macadam Avenue, Suite 100,Portland, OR 97239, United States.E-mail - help@profresearchreports.comUS: +1-971-202-1575Toll Free: +1-800-910-6452Website -Blog -
Side score caps & closure Market: Emerging Trends, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, Forecast 2024

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Over the past few years, the packaging industry is observing an impressive growth, mainly driven by the changing needs of brand owners along with rising customization based on the customers need. Moreover, one of the important role of packaging is to protect the product as well as to enhance the brand value of that particular product by providing innovative and aesthetic look. Caps & closure are also considered to be one of the important packaging solution among the manufactures of beverages & cosmetic & personal care products. One of the most widely used caps & closure serving the purpose for most of the brand owners is side score caps & closure. Side score caps & closure is gaining popularity among various end user industries owing to the growing preference towards the luxury packaging. The anti-counterfeit property of side score caps & closure is expected to create a positive impact in the global side score caps & closure market during the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Side score caps & closure: Market DynamicsThe global side score caps & closure market is driven by the increasing growth of beverages industry during the forecast period. Increasing number of middle income population in developing economies is expected to intensify the growth of beverages that in turn is expected to escalate the demand of side score caps & closure. Moreover, changing life styles of the people is also expected to fuel the sales of alcoholic beverages that is further propelling the sales of side score caps & closure during the forecast period. In addition, rising chances of counterfeiting and other threats in the supply chain is also anticipated to fuel the sales of side score caps & closure in the upcoming decade. Cosmetic & personal care industry is also witnessing an impressive growth owing to manufactures preference to create luxury packaging in order to enhance the new customer base along with the existing customers. Moreover, side score caps & closure are used widely in the cosmetic & personal care industry to further stimulate the sales of side score caps & closure in the near future.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Side score caps & closure Market: Regional outlookIn terms of geography, the global side score caps & closure market has been segmented into five key regions including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Among these region, Asia Pacific is expected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period owing to the impressive growth in beverages & pharmaceuticals market. Moreover, many beverages, and cosmetic & personal care industries are exploring the innovative packaging solutions. Furthermore, India, China and Japan markets are expected to be the most lucrative destination for the side score caps & closure manufactures. North America is also anticipated to witness healthy growth during the forecast period due to the rising growth of pharmaceuticals along with the beverages. However, Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to witness sluggish growth and over the forecast period.Side score caps & closure Market: Key playersSome of the key players in the global side score caps & closure market are Nippon Closures Co Ltd., Closure Systems International, Kornelis, McKernan Packaging Clearing House, Valspar Corporation, and others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
X-Ray Irradiators Market by Type, Application, Element, Region  World Trends and Forecast to 2022

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Worldwide X-Ray Irradiators market report of 2017 provides a detailed market overview as well as industry analysis for / of companies, manufacturers and distributors covering data on gross margin, cost structure, consumption value, sale price and more.X-Ray irradiator is a kind of high-tech device enables safe irradiation of in vitro and in vivo biological samples within a laboratory environment, to meet the needs of medical and biological research application.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the X-Ray Irradiators in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversPrecision X-RayFaxitronXstrahlRad SourceGilardoniBest TheratronicsRequest a sample copy of Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Research Report @Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Segment by Type, coversImage Guided X-ray IrradiatorCabinet X-ray IrradiatorThe listed pricing for this Global X-Ray Irradiators Market report starts at $ 4880. Request Discount for Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Research Report @Table of Contents in Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Research Report1 Market Overview1.1 X-Ray Irradiators Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Image Guided X-ray Irradiator1.2.2 Cabinet X-ray Irradiator2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Precision X-Ray2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 X-Ray Irradiators Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 2Global X-Ray Irradiators Market of 116 pages having tables and figures is available for purchase atMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoBlood IrradiationMaterial IrradiationAnimal IrradiationBrowse full table of contents and data tables For Global X-Ray Irradiators Market Report @Related Reports: -2016 Global X-Ray Systems Market Status, 2011-2022 Market Historical and Forecasts, Professional Market Research ReportThis report focused on global and regional market, major manufacturers, as well as the segment market details on different classifications and applications.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter
Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017: Market size forecasters

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The market research report Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market 2017 Forecast to 2022 aims to offer insights into new business opportunities for companies active in Vehicle Wiring Harness Market as well as for those players that are aiming to get an entry into the industry.Vehicle Wiring Harness refers to the contact terminal made of copper materials is made of (connector) and wire and cable crimping, the plastic insulator or external metal shell, Automotive Wiring Harness binding form a connection circuit component. At present, whether it is luxury car or economic - ordinary cars, Automotive Wiring Harness into the form is basically the same, are composed of wire, plug and parcel tape.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Vehicle Wiring Harness in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversYazaki CorporationSumitomoDelphiLeoniLearYuraRequest a sample copy of Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Research Report @Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (USA, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Segment by Type, coversLight Vehicles Wiring HarnessHeavy Vehicles Wiring HarnessThe listed pricing for this Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market report starts at $ 4880. Request Discount for Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Research Report @Table of Contents in Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Research Report1 Market Overview1.1 Vehicle Wiring Harness Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Light Vehicles Wiring Harness3 Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Competition, by Manufacturer3.1 Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Sales and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.2 Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Revenue and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.3 Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Price by Manufacturer (2016-2017)Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market of 120 pages having tables and figures is available for purchase atMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPassenger VehicleCommercial VehicleBrowse full table of contents and data tables For Global Vehicle Wiring Harness Market Report @Related Reports: -Global and Chinese Automobile Shock Absorption Belt Wheel Industry, 2017 Market Research ReportThe 'Global and Chinese Automobile Shock Absorption Belt Wheel Industry, 2012-2022 Market Research Report' is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Automobile Shock Absorption Belt Wheel industry with a focus on the Chinese market.MarketSizeForecasters.com, a Skyline Market Research LLP brand, is an online aggregator of market research reports. MarketSizeForecasters.com offers a comprehensive collection of full length reports on global and regional markets in 100+ industry verticals. We have partnered with some of the leading business and market research publishing houses and regularly update our online library to offer wide range of reports to our customers.Market size forecastersThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketsizeforecasters.comWebsite:Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter
Diamond Semiconductor Substrates Market - Applied Diamond Inc, Pure Grown Diamonds And Element Six Makes To The Top Player

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A diamond is the hardest material on earth, and has long-since been recognized for its beauty as a gemstone. The major producing countries include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, Botswana, Russia and South Africa. The two types of diamond semiconductor substrates available in the global diamond semiconductor substrates market are natural and synthetic. One of the major factors for this segment will be the rising usage of diamonds in sectors such as electronics, healthcare and construction among others. The other factors boosting the market are low cost of synthetic diamond as compared to natural diamond. In addition, identification of new applications in semiconductor and electronics industry is anticipated to act as an opportunity for the diamond semiconductor substrates market for the near future.Browse Market Research Report @Based on types, the diamond semiconductor substrates market is segmented into natural and synthetic. In 2015, the synthetic segment expected to be the most important market and anticipated to be the same during the forecast period. The major factor driving the market is large number of industrial applications. Some of the other factors are usage of synthetic diamond in different industries such as chip production, construction, mining activities, oil and gas industries, in surgeries and stone polishing and cutting. Thus, the specific increase in these activities has lead to an increase in the demand for the diamond semiconductor substrates market. The synthetic diamond is used in research services and for extremely rough tasks such as polishing and cutting. However, complex manufacturing process is the restraining factor for diamond semiconductor substrates market in the forecast period.Based on the various applications, the diamond semiconductor substrates market is segmented into healthcare, consumer electronics, construction & mining, electronics and others. In 2015, the consumer electronics segment anticipated to be the foremost market. There are numerous major factors boosting the diamond semiconductor substrates market such as growing adoption of diamond semiconductor substrates in jewelry making. In addition, rising research and development activity to deliver better products in the forecast period is other factor driving the market for diamond semiconductor substrates market. However, the time consumed for making synthetic diamonds is expected to hinder the expansion of this diamond semiconductor substrates market during the forecast period of 2016  2024.Based on the regions, the diamond semiconductor substrates market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). Asia Pacific holds the major market share followed by North America. In addition, North America is the second largest market for diamond semiconductor substrates market followed by Europe and Rest of the World. China and India are the key contributors to the diamond semiconductor substrates market in Asia Pacific. Diamond semiconductor substrates is high in Asia Pacific is due to identification of new applications of synthetic diamond in electronics and semiconductor industry. However, the market for diamond semiconductor substrates has seen the growth in product improvement from companies like Pure Grown Diamonds, Applied Diamond Inc., Washington Diamonds Corporation, Element Six, and ILJIN among others nearly one hundred others company. Furthermore, opening manufacturing plants in rising country of Asia Pacific such as India, Japan and Korea among others will also give output on higher returns on investments this in turn driving the market for diamond semiconductor substrates market.Some of the important players in the diamond semiconductor substrates market includes are Applied Diamond Inc (The U.S.), Pure Grown Diamonds (The U.S.) and Element Six (Luxembourg). These top players are aiming to penetrate increasing economies and are adopting various methods to drive their market share. Some of the others players are New Diamond Technology LLC (The U.S.), Scio Diamond Technology Corporation (United States), Washington Diamonds Corporation (The U.S.) and ILJIN Diamond Co., Ltd (Korea) among others.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @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.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) Analyzers Market

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Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) can be defined as the rate at which red blood cells or erythrocytes sediment in a period of one hour. ESR is usually measured in millimeter per hour (mm/hr) and a value above 100 mm/hr indicates a disease condition, such as a disease that causes inflammation, active infection, cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, blood disease, diabetes, and collagen vascular disease. However, ESR is a non-specific test for inflammation and is used in conjunction with other tests such as C-reactive protein.Normal ESR result does not rule out the possibility of inflammation. Similarly, an elevated ESR without any symptoms of the disease does not aid in making any medical decision. ESR analyzers are devices employed to measure the sedimentation rate of erythrocytes for an accurate reading. Automated ESR analyzers need to comply with the 2011-published Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines for measuring ESR. The analyzer works on the basic principle of Westergrens method followed to determine ESR.Browse Market Research Report @The ESR analyzers market can be segmented based on modality, end-user, and region. In terms of modality, the market can be segmented into automatic analyzers, semi-automatic analyzers, and manual analyzers. Based on end-user, the ESR analyzers market can be segmented into hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, and academic institutions. In terms of region, the ESR analyzers market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa.ESR is one of the basic hematology tests performed to identify various disease conditions, which would contribute to the growth of the ESR analyzers market. Technological upgrades leading to the development of automated ESR analyzers from manual ESR analyzers would also contribute to the growth of the market. In addition, the increasing number of infections leading to various health hazards would contribute to the rising number of ESR tests, which in turn would drive the ESR analyzers market in the near future.However, the non-specificity of the tests and the necessity for other tests to be performed to confirm the diseased condition could have a negative impact on the ESR analyzers market, as demand for specific tests increases. Furthermore, false negative results of ESR due to the effect of drugs such as oral contraceptives, dextran, methyldopa, penicillamine procainamide, theophylline, vitamin A, aspirin, cortisone, and quinine also make ESR less desirable, thereby impacting the growth of the ESR analyzers market.For more information on this report, fill the form @Automatic analyzers are expected to dominate the ESR analyzers market during the forecast period, owing to their abilities to enhance the workflow and turnaround time. Diagnostic laboratories and hospitals are expected to be the leading segments of the ESR analyzers market. Geographically, North America is expected to be the major market for ESR analyzers. Growth of the market in the region can be attributed to the well-developed health care infrastructure in the region.Asia Pacific is expected to witness the highest growth rate during the forecast period, owing to increasing infections, evolution of new diseases, and poor sanitation conditions which lead to increased infections among the population. In addition, government focus on enhancing the health care infrastructure and providing better health care facilities to the population contribute to the growth of the ESR analyzers market in Asia Pacific.Leading players in the ESR analyzers market include Sysmex, R&R Mechatronics International B.V., TRANSASIA Bio Medicals Ltd., Diesse Diagnostica Senese Spa, Vital Diagnostics, Caretium Medical Instruments Co, Limited, Grifols, S.A., Beckman Coulter, Inc., ALCOR Scientific, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Perlong Medical, BPC Biosed Srl, and SFRI.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. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.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:
High-availability Server Market Witness Positive Growth with the Rising Demand for these Servers

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The global high-availability server market has been segmented into four key geographical segments: Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. So far, North America has been a dominant region in the global market.However, during the forecast period, Asia Pacific is expected to drive the growth of the market owing to the rising demand from various end-use sectors such as banking and financial services.Some of the key players in the global high-availability server market are International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, CenterServ, Dell Inc., NEC Corporation, HP Development Company, L.P., Oracle Corporation, and Unisys Global Technologies.The market players are focusing on emerging economies where the rapid growth of industries has led to a growing demand for high-availability servers.Browse Market Research Report:High-availability systems are capable of working over long durations without any breakdown or failure.Due to the generation of a large amount of critical data in present times, high-availability servers are in demand as they offer higher stability, flexibility, reliability, and speed along with almost zero probability of system failure.The various hardware and software components in high-availability servers are specifically designed and thoroughly tested to serve over extended periods of time.The global high-availability server market is expected to witness positive growth with the rising demand for these servers across various end-use industries, where system failures can lead to huge losses.High-availability servers are extensively used across various sectors such as telecommunications, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), retail, manufacturing, medical, health care, and public.The demand for high-availability servers from the BFSI sector is particularly high owing to the growing requirement to store a large amount of critical data.In terms of operating system, high-availability servers can be classified into Linux, UNIX, Windows, FreeBSD, and others including Debian, CentOS, and Fedora. Currently, the demand for Windows operating system-based high-availability servers is the highest.On the basis of availability level, the global high-availability server market has been segmented into availability level 1, availability level 2, availability level 3, availability level 4, and availability level 5.These levels are based on the configuration of servers including storage capacity of HDD, number of virtual CPUs, and size of Random Access Memory (RAM). The configuration of high-availability servers varies according to their applications across different sectors.The growing adoption of high-availability servers across the banking and financial services sector has propelled the growth of the global high-availability server market.In the banking sector, a large amount of confidential and critical data needs to be stored and accessed round the clock. As a result, high-availability servers are widely used to ensure the security of data.Make an Enquiry:These high-availability servers ensure low or almost zero risk of system failure, thereby letting organizations run their business smoothly without any interruptions in accessing business applications and data resources.Extensive research activities dedicated toward the development of advanced and true fault tolerant infrastructure have further augmented the growth of the market.For data storage, the redundant array of independent disk (RAID) approach is used widely in high-availability servers. Furthermore, the storage area network (SAN) approach has been lately introduced for the effective functioning of high-availability servers.About TMRTMR 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 TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
SAGlobal Europe Acquires Leading Microsoft Partner - M4 Systems

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17th March 2017  Cardiff: SAGlobal Europe, announces today that it has acquired Cardiff-based Microsoft Partner, M4 Systems Ltd, which is a long established and highly successful Dynamics Partner boasting a strong team and client roster, strategically important expertise in the CRM market, and a strong portfolio of enhancement products.We are very pleased to announce the acquisition of M4 Systems. M4 Systems is a mirror image of SAGlobal in terms of its dedication to customer service and delivery excellence. Their complementary product focus completes our vision of being able to deliver all aspects of the exciting new Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform which combines the CRM and ERP offerings into a new cloud business said SAGlobal CEO, Stephen James. With this acquisition, we become one of only a handful of partners globally with the skills and resources to leverage the full potential of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform for our clients.Joining with SAGlobal provides an opportunity to accelerate the success and momentum of our business, said Dave Saunders Managing Director of M4 Systems. The two businesses share the same vision of what it means to be a successful technology company today. Together we have the ability to provide compelling customer experiences across more industries, market segments and solution areas than ever before. From small businesses to large enterprises, our mutual customers will benefit from having a full-stack Microsoft partner focused on the complete lifecycle of IT transformation.About M4 Systems Ltd:M4 Systems provides business management solutions based upon Microsoft Dynamics product lines  both ERP and CRM. Established in 2000, M4 Systems has offices in Cardiff as well a software development team located in Belgrade, Serbia.About SAGlobal:SAGlobal provides Microsoft Dynamics implementation services and industry-specific solutions to customers in over 75 countries worldwide. Every day, we help thousands of users worldwide to deliver operational excellence and financial performance for their organizations. For more information, please visitSAGlobal (Europe) Ltd 3 Ty Nant Court, Morganstown, Cardiff, South Wales CF15 8LW, United Kingdom
Waterproofing Admixture Market- Global Industry Analysis,Trends and Forecast 2024

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Global Waterproofing Admixture Market: OverviewWaterproofing admixture is a porous chemical ingredient employed during cement or concrete formulation to resist water penetration and water-borne contaminants. Waterproofing admixture is primarily used in residential, commercial, and infrastructure sector. Concrete being sustainable building material can reduce carbon footprint by 30-40%, but being porous in nature it is susceptible to chemical attack. Thus, waterproofing admixtures if employed during formulation provides excellent resistance to alkali attack during climate and weather changes. It also reduces maintenance cost and enhances the durability of concrete structures.Browse Market Research Report @The report estimates and forecasts the waterproofing admixture market on the global, regional, and country levels. The study provides forecast between 2016 and 2024 based on volume (KiloKilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Bn) with 2015 as the base year. The report comprises an exhaustive value chain analysis for each of the product segments. It provides a comprehensive view of the market. Value chain analysis also offers detailed information about value addition at each stage. The study includes drivers and restraints for the waterproofing admixture market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. The study also provides key market indicators affecting the growth of the market. The report analyzes opportunities in the waterproofing admixture market on the global and regional level. Drivers, restraints, and opportunities mentioned in the report are justified through quantitative and qualitative data. These have been verified through primary and secondary resources. Furthermore, the report analyzes global average price trend analysis of waterproofing admixture.Global Waterproofing Admixture Market: Research MethodologySecondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report.In-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report. Primary research represents the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. Key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and strengthening secondary research findings. Primary research further helped in developing the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Global Waterproofing Admixture Market: SegmentationThe study provides a comprehensive view of the Waterproofing Admixture market by dividing it into product type, application and geography. The waterproofing admixture market has been segmented into crystalline, pore-blocking, and others. Application segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated in terms of volume (Kilo Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Bn) between 2016 and 2024.Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for activated alumina in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Additionally, the report comprises country-level analysis in terms of volume and revenue for end-user segments. Key countries such as the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil have been included in the study. Market segmentation includes demand for individual end-users in all the regions and countries.Global Waterproofing Admixture Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report includes Porters Five Forces Model to determine the degree of competition in the waterproofing admixture market. The report comprises a qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein application and countries have been analyzed based on attractiveness for each region. Growth rate, market size, raw material availability, profit margin, impact strength, technology, competition, and other factors (such as environmental and legal) have been evaluated in order to derive the general attractiveness of the market. The report comprises price trend analysis for Waterproofing Admixture between 2016 and 2024.Get Request For Discount On This Report @The report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V.,BASF SE, Sika AG, Wacker Chemi AG, Mapei S.P.A. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview (wherever applicable).The global waterproofing admixture market has been segmented as follows:Waterproofing Admixture Market  Product Type AnalysisCrystallinePore-blockingOthersWaterproofing Admixture Market  Application Type AnalysisResidentialCommercialInfrastructureAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
North America accounts for second-largest market share of the Waterproofing Membrane Market

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Global Waterproofing Membrane Market: Brief AssessmentCoating that prevents passage of water into structural components of a construction is known as waterproofing membrane. Waterproofing activity of the membrane retains structural integrity of a foundation. Structural units of a building such as roof, walls, and basements are protected from intrusion of moisture and water with the aid of waterproofing membrane. Hydrostatic pressure exerted by molecules of water, both in liquid and vapor state, is controlled by application of waterproofing membrane. This type of membrane is composed of plastic, rubber, or coated fabric with water-resistant activity. Waterproofing membrane can be applied to interior side of the building (negative-side waterproofing) as well as exterior side of the building (positive-side waterproofing).Browse Market Research Report @Single or multi-layer materials such as rubber, elastomer, bitumen, PVC, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyurethane, and other polymers are major components of waterproofing membrane. Based on composition, waterproofing membranes are classified into different types such as PVC (polyvinylchloride), TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin), EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer), HDPE (high-density polyethylene), and LDPE (low-density polyethylene). The most important feature of the membrane is to provide water adsorption activity. Waterproofing membrane has wide industrial applications due to its efficient water-resistant performance. Construction (such as roofing, walls, and building structure), water and wastewater treatment, mining, civil, and transportation (tunnel liners, bridge, and highway) industries are key end-users of waterproofing membrane.Global Waterproofing Membrane Market: Trends and OpportunitiesTPO waterproofing membrane is widely employed as roofing material in several end-user industries. This is anticipated to drive demand for TPO waterproofing membrane. Easy installation steps, eco-friendly nature, and high performance efficiency are key benefits of TPO membrane. Energy efficiency, durability, and heat resistance features are primary factors boosting rise in demand for waterproofing membrane globally. Lightweight feature and environment sustainability are chiefly responsible in enhancing the popularity of waterproofing membrane in its end-user industries. Booming construction industry in China and other countries in Asia Pacific contributes to rising demand for waterproofing membrane. Increasing awareness about saving energy and environment-friendly usage fuels consumption of waterproofing membrane in developed as well as developing countries. Key players focus on market expansion through mergers and acquisitions, product innovation, and research initiatives. However, companies need to follow stringent rules and regulations empowered by the U.S. EPA to ensure their products are eco-friendly.Global Waterproofing Membrane Market: Regional OutlookThe global waterproofing market witnessed significant growth in the last few years, and this positive trend is estimated to continue in the next few years. Size of the global waterproofing membrane market is anticipated to rise significantly in the next few years. Enormous growth in construction industry and wastewater management system in Asia Pacific due to rise in urban population is fueling the waterproofing membrane market. Asia Pacific accounts for the largest share of the waterproofing membrane market. Increased usage of waterproofing membrane in roofing, mining, water, and wastewater treatment in this region is likely to boost market prospects. North America accounts for second-largest market share of the waterproofing membrane market. The market in North America is projected to experience steady growth in the near future. Sluggish growth in construction industry in Europe results in a relatively smaller market for waterproofing membrane, whereas the Middle East and Africa appears to be an emerging market. Establishment of new production plants in the developing nations indicates increase in demand for waterproofing membrane.Global Waterproofing Membrane Market: Companies Mentioned in the ReportKey manufacturers of waterproofing membrane include The Dow Chemical Company, Carlisle Companies, Inc., Siplast, BASF SE, W. R. Meadows Inc., Johns Manville, Soprema Group, Firestone Building Products Company, LLC, GAF Materials Corporation, and Sika AG.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @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 UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Hybrid Power Generation Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size,Trend & Forecast : 2024

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Hybrid Power Generation Market: OverviewThe global market for hybrid power generation is poised to expand at a healthy pace over the years as more and more consumers and industries realize the environmental and economic benefits of this technology. The focus has been shifting from developed nations, where advanced renewable technologies to curb carbon emissions are already in place, to developing economies, where the demand for cheap, reliable, and uninterrupted energy is on the rise.Browse Market Research Report @The vendor landscape in the hybrid power generation market is defined by the presence of many large global and regional players. Increased competition in this market is owing to extensive portfolios of energy management solutions, companies customizing their offerings to cater to evolving consumer needs, and regular investments in research and development activities. It has been noted that new players will find it particularly difficult to compete with established companies due to high capital resource requirements.Hybrid Power Generation Market: Trends and OpportunitiesAs indicated above, the urgent need to limit greenhouse gas emissions has been driving the adoption of hybrid power generation methods. Also boosting the uptake of these methods is the need to restrict the dependency on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels such as coal and crude oil have been rapidly depleting, compelling industries to look for alternative methods of power generation to cater to the ever-rising demand for energy. Hybrid renewable energy systems come into play in such cases and the market for the same is likely to benefit from this trend.On the down side, it has been estimated that the high prices of components for capturing renewable energy, such as solar panels, in several countries act as a major barrier to the large-scale adoption of hybrid power generation methods. Moreover, the fluctuating cost of natural gas and oil will limit its market. Nevertheless, TMR predicts that the demand for hybrid power generation is only slated to grow in the coming years and any hurdles in the growth trajectory of this market will be overcome by ongoing technological advancements to bring down the costs.Hybrid Power Generation Market: Regional OutlookOf the main regional segments studied in the report, Asia Pacific is one of the leading contributors to the growth of the global hybrid power generation market. It is predicted that this region will likely continue its trend throughout the forecast period. The growing demand for power across residential and non-residential sectors, supported by unreliable power grid infrastructures, is the primary factor driving the hybrid power generation market in Asia Pacific. In addition to this, the role of the government in supporting standalone hybrid power systems in several emerging countries such as Indonesia and India is boosting the uptake of this method of electricity generation.Europe as well as the Middle East and Africa also present a healthy outlook owing to rising demand for the same in the residential sector. Hybrid power plants are used across these regions mainly for the generation of thermal power. Across the Americas, the growing need to curb carbon emissions and the falling price of technology are supporting the adoption of hybrid renewable power generation in several large-scale industries.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe dominant players featured in the report on the global hybrid power generation market include Siemens AG, Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe Ltd., NYE Thermodynamics Corporation, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co. Ltd., and MJB International. Apart from these, there are several large and small companies operating in this market owing to the immense potential it presents. These include Repowering Solutions, Elgris Power, Alpha Power, AEG Power Solutions, Danvest, WindStream Technologies, Inc., Electro Power Systems, ReGen Powertech, Schneider Electric, Urban Green Energy, KLiUX Energies, and Eltek Power.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global CCTV Market Will hit at a CAGR 20% from 2016  2020

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Market Synopsis Of CCTV MarketThe global CCTV market is likely to be valued around $19 billion in 2015. This market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 20%. There is a precipitous rise in the demand of CCTVs across the globe due to growing focus of governments towards public safety and city surveillance. Furthermore, the CCTV market is shifting from unorganized sector to organized which is another factor fueling the growth of the market. Citing the demand and potential of CCTV market, various venturing capitalist firms are also investing in this market and aiding companies to develop new and advanced products. This is another major reason for the high growth of this market. However, low awareness of people in the developing countries regarding advanced CCTV products can hinder the market growth up to some extent.Video Content Analysis (VCA) is one of the major trends observed in this industry. There is a clear trend to embed intelligence in the CCTVs for automatically analyzing video to detect and determine temporal and spatial events. Another major trend followed in the industry includes growing preference towards fixed dome camera from box cameras. Fixed dome cameras are easy to install and aesthetically pleasing. The industry is witnessing various other trends as well, which are discussed in report in detailed manner.SegmentationsThe CCTV market is segmented on the basis of types of CCTVs. Analogue, HD analogue, and internet protocol cameras are the major types of CCTVs. The IP cameras market is further sub divided into wired IP cameras, and wireless IP cameras. The IP camera market is poised to witness the highest CAGR in the CCTV market by type due to technological advancements.On the basis of technology, the CCTV market is divided into CMOS and CCD technology. The demand for CMOS technology is poised to increase in coming years due to its user friendliness. The CCTV market is again subdivided on the basis end users into educational centers, hospitals, hotels, real estates, religious places, government, retail, IT sector, and transport sector. Amongst all the above mentioned end users, government is the largest end user for CCTVs. The large share is attributed to wide usage of CCTVs in government offices and roads.The market is further divided according to the channel structure into distribution channel and retail channel. The distribution channel accounted for the largest share in the global CCTV market. However, the retail market will witness a high growth.Request a Sample Report @Scope of the ReportThis market research report covers the global CCTV market by type, technology, end user, distribution channel, and region.Global CCTV Market by Type Analogue Camera HD Analogue Camera Internet Protocol (IP) Camera Wired WirelessGlobal CCTV Market by Technology CMOS Technology CCD TechnologyGlobal CCTV Market by EndUser Educational Centers Hospitals Hotels Real Estates Religious Places Government Retail IT Sector Transport Sector Global CCTV Market, by Channel Structure Distribution Channel System Integrator/Retail ChannelBrowse Report Details @Key PlayersThe prominent players in this market include: Hikvision Digital Technology Honeywell Security Bosch Security System Safran Security Dahua Technology AssaAbloy Tyco Security Products Flir Systems Samsung Axis Communications amongstRegional AnalysisBased on region, North America is the largest market for CCTV followed by Europe and Asia. The Asian market especially India and China are focus for the growth the global CCTV market. Improving infrastructure, government initiatives, and high economic growth in this region has triggered the growth of this market.The reports also cover brief analysis of Geographical Region including: North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany France U.K. Italy Spain Rest of Europe Asia Japan China India Rest of Asia Rest of the WorldAbout 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.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Smart Cameras Market: Current Trends, Business Opportunities, Challenges & Global Industry Analysis by 2022

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Global Smart Camera Market, by Technology (Sensor (CMOS, CCD), Scanning (Area, Line)), by Type (Embedded systems, Stand-alone, Single chip), by Application (Automobile, Medical, Transportation, Video surveillance) - Forecast 2022Objective Study of Smart Cameras Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next five years of the various segments and sub-segments of the global Smart Cameras Market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To Analyze the Smart Cameras Market based on various factors- porters five force analysis, mega trend analysis, macroeconomic indicators etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by type, by component, by technology, by applications and sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global Smart Cameras Market.Get a Sample Report @Market Synopsis of Smart Cameras MarketMarket ScenarioThe major growth driver of Smart Cameras Market includes growing technological advancement in camera market, growing electronics and semiconductor industries, and rise in adoption of automation systems by homes and industries among others.Hence the market for Smart Cameras is expected to grow at XX% CAGR (2016-2022).However, high cost of cameras, and lack of technical expertise are some of the factors which are hindering the growth of Smart Cameras Market.SegmentsGlobal Smart Cameras Market can be segmented as follows:Segmentation by Type: Stand-alone, Single-chip, Embedded system, and PC & network based smart cameras among others.Segmentation by Component: Display, Image sensors, Processors, Lens, and communication interface among others.Segmentation by Technology: sensor (CMOS, CCD), and Scanning (area scan, Line scan) among others.Segmentation by Applications: Video surveillance, Industrial, Transportation, Automobiles, and Medical among others.Regional Analysis of Smart Cameras Market:Asia-Pacific is dominating the Global Smart Cameras Market with the largest market share in the region, and therefore accounting for $XX million and is expected to grow over $XX billion by 2022. Smart Cameras Market in North-America market is expected to grow at CAGR of XX% from $ XX million in 2016 to $XX million by 2022. The Europe market for Smart Cameras Market is expected to grow at XX% CAGR (2016-2022).Key PlayersSome of the major players in Global Smart Cameras Market include Samsung electronics Co. Ltd. (South Korea), Sony Corporation (Japan), Bosch security systems, Inc. (Germany), Canon Inc. (Japan), Nikon corporation (Japan), Flir Systems, Inc. (U.S.), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Raptor Photonics Ltd. (U.K.), Olympus Corporation (Japan), Polaroid Corporation (U.S.) and Watec Cameras Inc. (Japan) among others.Industry News: Flir Systems, Inc. has acquired Armasight Inc., a global leader in in night vision, and day light imaging products for sports, hunting and military customers. This acquisition would increase scopes and sight business of Flir systems to better serve outdoor sports, law enforcement and military market. Raptor Photonics has launched Toucan, a spectroscopy detectors technology recently in September 2016 for OEM and other instrumentation market.Browse Report @Target Audience: OEM of Natural language Processing (NLP) Research Organizations Education institutes Media Military Resellers and Distributors Government AgenciesSmart Cameras are high-quality image sensors which generate application specific data which is to be used in an autonomous and intelligent system. It is designed for special application purpose which includes surveillance and industrial machine vision. The growing demand of surveillance in industries, education, and healthcare is generating demand for the market growth study of smart camera market; it also provides competitive advantage to various major companies.The report for Smart Cameras Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.comAbout 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.Market Research Future Office No. 524/528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India
Lithium-ion Battery Market- increase in the production capacity 3.3 million cells to 4.3 million cells

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Market Synopsis of Lithium-ion Battery MarketMarket ScenarioLithium-ion Battery is a kind of rechargeable battery which is used in various industries for various purposes. These batteries consists great life cycle with the high energy density. From the last decade, Lithium-ion Battery market has seen tremendous growth due to the high demand from the consumer electronics and automotive sectors. As new devices are coming in market and runs on portable power source, Lithium-ion battery has become a great option.Market Segmentation Segmentation by Battery Type: Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO2), Lithium Manganese Oxide (LiMn2O4), Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4), Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide (LiNiCoAlO2) & Lithium Titanate (Li4Ti5O12) among others. Segmentation by Material Type: Anode Materials, Cathode Materials, Electrolyte & Separator. Segmentation by Application: Consumer Electronics (Laptop & Smartphone, Wearable Devices, UPS), Energy (Grid Storage and Renewable Energy Storage), Automotive & Industrial Heavy Equipment (Cars, Buses, Motorbike, Cranes and mining equipments, Trains & Aircrafts), Other.Request a Sample Report @Study Objective of Lithium-ion Battery Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Lithium-ion Battery Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the Lithium-ion market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by type, by application, by material type and sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Lithium-ion Battery Market.Browse Report Details @Key playersThe prominent players in the market of Lithium-ion Battery are- Panasonic Sanyo (Japan) Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) (Japan) LG Chem. (South Korea) SAMSUNG SDI Co., Ltd. (South Korea) Li-Tec Battery GmbH (Germany) Toshiba (Japan), A123 Systems (U.S.) GS Yuasa (Japan) SK Energy (South Korea) BYD (China) Sony Corporation (Japan) Beijing Pride Power (BPP) (China) among others.Industry News In April 2016, BYD Company announces the plans of obtaining the lithium supply to cut down the cost of battery. In April 2016, SK Energy announces the expansion plans for production of lithium-ion battery separator. In December 2015, Sony Corporation announces the plan of boosting the Lithium-ion battery performance up to 20% by 2020. In June 2015, A123 Systems announced the increase in the production capacity 3.3 million cells to 4.3 million cells.Request Table of Contents for this Report @Regional AnalysisAsia-Pacific is dominating the market of Lithium-ion Batteries with the market share. The main factors behind this growth are the growth of consumer electronics market in China, Japan and India. As Asia-Pacific accounts for more than 40% of global population and most of the countries of this region is in developing phase, high adoption rate of consumer electronic products and high consumption of automotive products making the Asia-Pacific a leader in this market. Europe stands as the second biggest market of Lithium-ion Market followed by North America which accounts market share.The reports also covers brief analysis of Geographical Region includes:Americas North Americao USo Canada Latin AmericaEurope Western Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo Spaino U.Ko Rest of Western Europe Eastern EuropeAsia Pacific Asiao Chinao Indiao Japano South Koreao Rest of Asia PacificThe Middle East& AfricaAbout 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
Global Nut Butters Market Rapidly Growing in Food, Competitor Analysis, Complete Study of Current Trends and Forecast 2027

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Global Nut Butters Market Information-by source (edible nuts, vegetable extracts, oilseeds and others), by packaging (squeeze packs, jars and others), by application (Table purpose, confectioneries, bakery products, snacks, and others) and by Region - Forecast to 2027Study Objectives of Global Nut Butters Market In-depth analysis for individual segments and sub-segments for Nut Butters To estimate market size by source, packaging, and application To understand the market dynamics of the market and provide market snapshot To provide region level market analysis and future outlook for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) and their countries Company profiling of major players in the market and competitive landscaping Identifying the crucial stages for developments in the value chain of nut butters Supply chain analysis of the product indicating the stake of the various suppliers, both basic producers and formulators/distributors, till the end-user Evaluation of historical market trends, patents and technologies, and current government regulatory requirements related to Nut Butters marketGet a Sample Report @Synopsis of the Global Nut Butters MarketMarket ScenarioGlobally, the market for Nut Butters has been increasing due to increase in demand for convenience food products. Advancements in food processing and changing food consumption patterns have boosted demand for Nut Butters. Hence, Nut Butters Market is expected reach US$ XX Million at the end of the forecasted period and is expected to grow at CAGR of X.X% from 2016 to 2027.SegmentsThe market for Global Nut Butters Market is segmented on the basis of source, packaging and application; by source the Global Nut Butters market is segmented as edible nuts, vegetable extracts, oilseeds and others. On the basis of packaging the Global Nut Butters Market is segmented as squeeze packs, jars and others. By application, the market finds its usage in table purpose, confectioneries, bakery products, snacks, and othersRegional Analysis of Global Nut Butters MarketEurope dominates the Global Nut Butters Market with the largest market share followed by North America, accounting for $XX million and is expected to grow over $XX million by 2027, Asia-Pacific and RoW are the other major markets for Global Nut Butters and are expected to grow at CAGR of XX% respectively from 2016 to 2027.Key PlayersThe key players profiled in Global Nut Butters Market report include- Justin's, Funky Nut Company, futtersnutbutters, vtpeanutbutter, Nuttzo, Krema, Bliss Nut Butters, Betsysbest, Barney Butter and YopeanutBrowse Report @The report for Global Nut Butters Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.comAbout 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.Market Research Future Office No. 524/528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar Pune - 411028 Maharashtra, India
Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Report by Material, Application, and Geography  Global Forecast to 2021

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Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Report by Material, Application, and Geography  Global Forecast to 2021 is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific) and the main countries (United States, Germany, united Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and China).The report firstly introduced the Oxygen Concentrator Regulator basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with:1.) basic information;2.) the Asia Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Market;3.) the North American Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Market;4.) the European Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Market;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.For Sample Report Request:Table Of Content:Part I Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Industry OverviewChapter One Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Industry Overview1.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Definition1.2 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Classification Analysis1.2.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Application Analysis1.3.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Product Market Development Overview1.6 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Oxygen Concentrator Regulator Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisAbout Us:We are a leading repository of market research reports and solutions from the top publishers and market research companies across globe, catering to various industries. This large collection of reports assists organizations in decision-making on aspects such as market entry strategies, market sizing, market share analysis, competitive analysis, product portfolio analysis andopportunity analysis among others. We also assist in determining the best suited and targeted report from our large repository of global reports, company-specific reports and country-level reports.Our custom research services help clients to meet specific market research requirements by coordinating with our esteemed research partners. Our experienced analysts are always available to cater to your queries pre- and post-purchase. We believe in providing best-in-class after-sales service to our clients and wish to build a long-term and a mutually fruitful relationship.Contact Us:Pune, Maharashtra - 411 014IndiaEmail: sales@reporthive.comCall: +1-312-604-7084
Global Swab Market Trends & Analysis, Segment, Key Players(Puritan med products, FI medical mwe medical wire, And Others), Research Report Forecast To 2027

Global Swab market Research Report

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https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/swab-market

Market IntroductionA swab is an absorbent pad or a material utilized as a part of surgery and medicine for cleaning wounds, applying medication, or taking specimens. A small piece of retentive material attached to the end of a stick or wire and utilized for cleansing a surface. It is basically used to clean a cut or take a small amount of substance from a body using a small piece of soft material (Swab)Market SegmentSegmentation for the global Swab market comprises of the following test types such as DNA, Urine, and Saliva. By types Alcohol, cotton, dry, gauze. By application Pharmaceutical, microbiological, laboratory. By shafts Aluminum, and polypropyleneStudy Objectives of Swab Market:To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Swab MarketTo provide insights about factors affecting the market growthTo Analyze the Global Swab Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc.To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (RoW)To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospectiveTo provide country level analysis of the market for segments by tests, types by applications, by shafts and sub-segments.Request a Sample@To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the marketTo track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Swab MarketKey Player Puritan med products Sarstedt, FI medical mwe medical wire Copan Para burch medical Lab M Adva care pharma, Clean cross co. ltd GPC medical ltdNorth America US Canada Latin AmericaEurope Western Europe Germany France Italy Spain U.K Rest of Western Europe Eastern EuropeAsia Pacific Asia China India Japan South Korea Rest of Asia PacificAccess to report@The Middle East& AfricaThe report for Global Swab Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regionsAbout Market Research FutureAt 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.About Market Research FutureAt 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.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Cardiac Output Monitoring Devices Market Research Report by Share, Size, Growth & Forecast 2024 Illuminated by New Report

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cardiac-output-monitoring-devices-market.html

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Cardiac output is known as the volume of blood is pumped by from the right or left ventricle of heart per minute and which is dependent on heart rate, and stroke volume. The cardiac output increases during acute exercise and mental stress, while decreased cardiac output might include physical exercise of a intensity that the patient is not able to bear because of decrease in oxygen supply, obesity, ingestion of large meals that place an added workload on the heart, retention of fluid, emotional stress, hypervolemia, and smoking. It is essential to assess the state of patients blood circulation. Low cardiac output usually leads to a common problem of low blood pressure which might surface occur during surgery, or during postoperative care in the intensive care units.In high-risk surgical patients and critically ill patients the arterial blood pressure and cardiac output usually are monitored more comprehensively. Cardiac output monitoring devices are used to know the cardiac output of heart and arterial oxygen content which enable the circulation of continuous systemic oxygen supply to the body. Doubling the cardiac output leads to double amount of the oxygen supply to the tissues, while the low cardiac output leads to inadequate supply of oxygen to organs like brain and the low amount of cellular oxygenation can cause tissue and organ failure. The major observed causative factors for the decrease cardiac output are congenital heart defects, pathologic changes in the heart's muscle, blood dyscrasias, chronic pulmonary disease and electrolyte imbalances (as of potassium or calcium). According to North American Nursing Diagnosis Association, decreased cardiac output is defined as a state in which inadequate blood is pumped by the heart to meet the metabolic demands of the body. Cardiac output monitoring devices market is classified on the basis of product type, methods, end-user and geography.On the basis of product type the market is broadly classified into invasive, minimally-invasive and non-invasive cardiac output monitoring devices. The invasive cardiac output monitoring has been traditionally accomplished using the pulmonary artery catheter (PAC), but complications associated with PAC has markedly decreased the widespread use of the PAC. The market demand for the non- invasive devices is high followed by minimally invasive devices as compare to invasive devices, due to factors such as ease, accessibility and cost- effectiveness and fast response time. By methods the market is segmented as thermodilution method, pulse pressure analysis, Doppler method, bioimpedance and applied Fick principle. Each methods has its own merits and demerits. On the basis of end-user the market is segmented as hospitals, ambulatory care and critical care centers. By end-user hospitals covers the major market for cardiac output monitoring devices, because of reliability and conjunction of other therapeutic treatments. The factors such as raising incidences of cardiovascular diseases, increase in the number of people suffering from obesity, growing ageing population, and raising healthcare infrastructure facilities are the growth drivers of this market.Browse full report on Cardiac Output Monitoring Devices Market -By geography, the market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the world. Geographically, North America was observed to have the major share of cardiac output monitoring device market due to high healthcare awareness, prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and technological advancement in the region. Europe contributes to the second largest share in the cardiac output monitoring device market growth with raising ageing population. However, Asia Pacific region is expected to be the fastest growing due to the gradual adoption of improved technologies, emerging health care infrastructures, and raising population with cardiac problems and obesity. Followed by Rest of the world.The major key players operating in cardiac output monitoring device market include Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, Cheetah Medical, PULSION Medical Systems SE, Philips Healthcare, LiDCO Group plc, Boston Scientific Corporation, GE Healthcare, and others. Bioreactance-based NICOM Cheetah Medical remains the topmost non-invasive market leader.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth insights, understanding market evolution by tracking historical developments, and analyzing the present scenario and future projections based on optimistic and likely scenarios. Each research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology developments, types, applications, and the competitive landscape.The study is a source of reliable data on:Key market segments and sub-segmentsEvolving market trends and dynamicsChanging supply and demand scenariosQuantifying market opportunities through market sizing and market forecastingTracking current trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive insightsOpportunity mapping in terms of technological breakthroughsThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)Request for brochure of this 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:
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market : Competitive Dynamics & Global Outlook 2024

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Neurorehabilitation Devices Market: SnapshotThe market for neurorehabilitation devices holds a lot of potential, analysts have found. Already well-established markets in North America and Europe, coupled with immense growth opportunities in the emerging economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America indicate the favorable pace at which the global neurorehabilitation devices market is likely to grow over the coming years. The introduction of wearable technology and robotics has been having a tremendous impact on the development of neurorehabilitation devices and this push by researchers and device manufacturers alike is exactly what the global market needs.The emergence of several new therapies over the past few years and the potential presented by additional investigational treatments are anticipated to drive the value of the neurorehabilitation devices market from US$894.9 mn in 2015 to US$3.2 bn by 2024 at a 15.5% CAGR therein.Browse full report on Neurorehabilitation Devices Market -Alarming Rise in Road Traffic Incidents in Asia a Leading Growth DriverThe global market for neurorehabilitation devices comprises five main regional segments: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa.The alarming rise in the incidence of stroke has driven the North America neurorehabilitation devices market to account for a 42% share in 2015. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that almost 130,000 Americans die from stroke each year, with an average of one America dying from stroke every 4 minutes. This wide-spread prevalence of stroke, resulting in various neurological disorders, is forecast to boost the demand for neurorehabilitation devices in North America from 2016 to 2024. Neurological disorders are also brought on with age and as a result, countries with a large geriatric population base are likely to be the potential markets for neurorehabilitation devices. This is one of the key factors driving the market in Europe, especially in countries such as Spain, Germany, France, the U.K., and Italy.Asia accounts for an estimated two-third of the worlds disabled population and the number is projected to rise in the next decade. This can be attributed to not just the growing incidence of stroke in the region but to the alarmingly high road traffic fatality rates. Asia is home to highest percentage of traumatic brain injury resulting from road traffic accidents, unintentional injuries, and falls. These patients demand the availability of neurorehabilitation devices, thereby rendering the Asia Pacific region a massively lucrative market for global as well as regional players, registering a 17.0% CAGR from 2016 to 2024.Growing Prevalence of Parkinsons Disease in Developed Countries Presents Major OpportunityNeurorehabilitation devices include brain computer interfaces, neurorobotic systems, wearable devices, and non-invasive brain stimulators. Neurorobotic systems held the largest share in the neurorehabilitation devices market in 2015 and is likely to continue its dominance in the market over the course of the forecast period. Non-invasive brain stimulators, on the other hand, are projected to witness the highest growth rate from 2016 to 2024.The major applications of neurorehabilitation devices include traumatic brain injury, Parkinsons disease, stroke, spinal cord injury, and cerebral palsy. The demand for neurorehabilitation devices for Parkinsons disease is estimated to register the fastest growth rate during forecast period owing to the rising incidence of Parkinsons in developed countries such as the U.K., the U.S., Iceland, Finland, and Ireland.Request for sample of this 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:
Arts and cultural organizations in Oregon say they stand to lose not just money but also opportunities to provide economic invigoration and civic engagement if President Donald Trump is successful in eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as proposed in his federal budget plan.

The proposed cuts were denounced Thursday by arts and cultural groups and their supporters, including Brian Ferriso, director and chief curator of the Portland Art Museum and president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, which represents 245 North American museums. "The arts are a shared expression of the human spirit and a hallmark of our humanity," the association said in a statement.

Trump on Thursday submitted to Congress a $1.1 trillion federal budget proposal that, among numerous other cuts, calls for eliminating four federal cultural agencies: the arts and humanities agencies as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The four agencies have a combined budget of $971 million.

Andrew Proctor, executive director of Portland's Literary Arts, was among many noting that the proposed cuts amount to less than 1 percent of the total federal budget proposal. "This is an ideological blow," Proctor said. "Cutting it isn't about saving money. It's about cutting it."

In purely financial terms, Oregon doesn't stand to lose much if the federal cultural agencies are eliminated.

According to the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency, in fiscal 2016 the National Endowment for the Arts made 32 direct grants totaling $795,000 to Oregon arts organizations and projects. It also gave $727,700 in partnership funding to the Arts Commission, which combined the money with state funds to make 267 additional grants. That's a total of $1.522 million for the entire state - just over 10 percent of the $14 million annual operating budget of the state's largest arts institution, the Portland Art Museum.

On the humanities side, Oregon Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities' state affiliate, received nearly $912,000 from the federal agency in 2016 toward its $1.5 million budget. "We take a very small amount of federal funds and amplify it and get it out all around the state," said executive director Adam Davis. The federal agency also makes other grants, typically in the four- and five-figure range, to other Oregon humanities organizations and projects.

It's where and how those federal arts and humanities funds land that is significant.

The list of arts grant recipients "is very long and highly diverse, geographically speaking," Proctor said, including not only Literary Arts and other Portland arts groups but also the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, the Eugene Ballet Company and Eugene Symphony, the Caldera arts community in Sisters, the Fishtrap writers workshop in Enterprise, and the Playa artists retreat in Summer Lake, among others.

And "organizations who are in rural communities are going to be disproportionately affected by this cut," Proctor said. He cited eastern Oregon's Wallowa County as an example: It is home to Fishtrap as well as to the city of Joseph, which depends in part on its outdoor collection of life-size bronze sculptures to draw tourism dollars. "That is like the poster child for economic development in that region," he said, adding that "the investment from the NEA is so small and has had a tremendous impact on that little town and fragile economy."

As for the humanities, Davis said Oregon Humanities' work is a key contributor to weaving "the fabric of the state."

"Everything we do is in partnership with community organizations," he said, citing in particular Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project, which brings together communities to discuss topics ranging from immigrants and refugees to Oregonians' relationship with the wild.

"That's my biggest concern about this development - that all takes a hit. ... These are all efforts to strengthen our civic infrastructures," he said.

Ferriso said the arts and cultural agencies' primary significance lies in their depth and reach and how they've shaped American lives since their establishment in 1965. For instance, as a child he visited the King Tut exhibit, "Treasures of Tutankhamun," at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art - "it was an exhibition that I think shaped a generation and it was supported by the NEH," he said.

"Arts organizations across this country are phenomenal at bringing communities together," Proctor said, pointing to Literary Arts' sponsorship of a talk last week by Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond about his new book, "Evicted," which examines housing instability.

"That event, though focused on an issue, was brought to you by an arts organization," Proctor said. "Thousands of people were there, one of the biggest events he's ever done."

"It's not about pretty things, your aesthetic, necessarily," Proctor said. It's about "this critical social glue that we provide."

An earlier version of this post mischaracterized National Endowment for the Humanities funding in Oregon.
Two Portland beer bars and a third in Eugene were named among USA Today's list of America's 10 best.

The Portland bars -- Bailey's Taproom and Belmont Station -- are also among The Oregonian/OregonLive's picks for the city's 10 best beer bars (see gallery above). The Bier Stein in Eugene rounds out the Oregon entries.

Here's what USA Today had to say about...

... No. 10: Bailey's Taproom

"There's always something new and interesting pouring from Bailey's Taproom's 26 rotating taps, though this beer bar does place an emphasis on Oregon brews. Patrons at this Portland bar are welcome to bring their own food to enjoy (no food is served on-site) while sipping a beer, and bottled beers can be enjoyed on site or purchased to-go."

... No. 9: The Bier Stein

"With 30 rotating taps and more than 1,000 bottles of craft beer from all over the world, Bier Stein in Eugene is a beer enthusiast's heaven and one of the best craft beer bars in the Pacific Northwest. Cicerone-certified "beer stewards" help patrons make informed decisions, and style-specific glassware adds to the experience. In addition to enjoying a pint in the pub, a huge selection of bottles are available for purchase in the shop."

... No. 6: Belmont Station

"Founded in 1997, Belmont Station has become a favorite destination for beer drinkers in Portland, thanks to its more than 20 rotating taps in the Biercafe and 1,200-plus bottles in the adjacent bottle shop. Many draft beers are also available for growlers to go."

See the full list here.

And in case you missed it, yes, Belmont Station turns 20 this year. They plan to celebrate on April 1 -- no joke, I hope -- by walking from their original Southeast Belmont Street home next to the Horse Brass to their current digs at 4500 S.E. Stark St. The public is welcome to join the brewers, distributors and members of the Oregon Piper Society in marching the four blocks for a complimentary toast of of 3-Headed Monster IPA, the first tapping of this Barley Brown's, Boneyard and Melvin Brewing collaboration.

-- Michael Russell
Blame Burger Stevens. In the year since the powder blue Southwest Portland food cart landed on our list of 2016's 10 best carts, its perfectly simple cheeseburgers, fries and soft serve have helped inspire a wave of nostalgia-based burgers. Has the reign of monstrous bistro burgers buried under thick onion rings or slabs of fatty pork belly come to an end? It's too soon to tell, but the best burgers of 2017 look a lot more like the ones we loved as children -- slim singles or double-stacked doubles loaded with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and oozing with American cheese. Here are four new burgers you need to try, plus one that needs to go back to the drawing board.

BYH Burgers

Turns out, Pine Street Market was craving a good burger. And so, on Valentine's Day, Shalom Y'All packed up its pita and left the upscale food hall, making room for Bless Your Heart (BYH) Burgers, the lucky seventh restaurant from burger savant John Gorham. At BYH, the fries are McDonald's-esque, the cocktail list has a fondness for cola, and the burgers are fast-food simple, with crisp-edged, well-charred patties sizzling under melty American cheese, shredded lettuce, mayo and housemade pickles. Get the classic single (or double, appetite dependent) instead of the messy namesake burger, which is overwhelmed by its chili and Duke's mayo-heavy slaw.

Inside Pine Street Market, 126 S.W. Second Ave., 503-719-4221, byhpdx.com

Expatriate

Eating a burger at Expatriate, Northeast Portland's globetrotting cocktail bar, almost feels out of place. Alongside Chinese sausage corn dogs, Burmese tea leaf salads and crab paste-corn noodles is the American Standard, a double dose of summertime nostalgia plated straight from a gingham tablecloth. Two slider-sized burgers arrive simply adorned with gooey American cheese, French's mustard and Heinz ketchup. The petite, thick patty is cooked to a greasy mid-rare that runs down your hands. We wished for a leaf or two of iceberg lettuce to help the circlet of onion cut through the richness, but this basic version proves that dishes here don't always need to travel the world in search of ingredients to be good.

5424 N.E. 30th Ave., expatriatepdx.com

Guero

Hamburgers typically aren't the first thing we crave when we think of Mexican food, but Guero has changed that. Here at our favorite torta shop, now firmly ensconced in a handsome new brick-and-mortar, owners Megan Sanchez and Alec Morrison have added a resplendent take on the hamburguesa, the surprisingly ubiquitous Mexican street food. And Guero's large burger is one of the best we've had all year, with a thin Painted Hills beef patty, American cheese, chicharron de queso (basically, a crunchy slice of fried cheese), habanero slaw and guacamole on a griddled sesame seed bun. It has all the hallmarks of a classic 'murican burger -- the well-cooked patty and gooey cheese -- remixed with a texture lover's dream: the chewy-crunchy chicharron, creamy guac, lightly spicy pickled jalapeno and habanero slaw, and touch of sour from a tamarind-braised tomato. What have we been missing all these years?

200 N.E. 28th Ave., gueropdx.com

Kask



Does this kitchen hold a pot of burger gold? From the same location as Gruner -- makers of one of our favorite all-time burgers -- comes another winner, this one from meat aficionados Greg and Gabrielle Quinonez Denton (Ox). Kask's messy double stack, also available at neighboring SuperBite, piles a pair of four-ounce Painted Hills beef shoulder and shiitake mushroom patties with a cascade of stringy, melted cheddar and fontina on a housemade sesame seed bun. This spiritual descendent of the Denton's towering creation at Metrovino (their pre-Ox digs), boasts a pure burger flavor and copious tang from pickles and the mustard-spiked "fancy sauce" dripping down the sides.

1215 S.W. Alder St., 503-241-7163, superbitepdx.com/kask

Nomad.PDX

What happens when your $14 sous-vide burger tastes like meat boiled in a bag? Find out at Nomad.PDX's Ash Bar, the cave-like watering hole hidden inside the prix-fixe pop-up's new digs. Here, the bar burger looks the part, albeit the part of a slider, with a house-made potato bun, pickles, smoked shallots and Tillamook cheddar so plasticky we wondered if this cheeseburger had gone from water bath to table still in its sous-vide bag. The beef was cooked to temperature -- 100 precise grams of textbook medium rare -- but lacked the fat, juice or char you'd expect from any old restaurant, let alone one serving one of Portland's most expensive set menus. For your money, you get four large, rectangular fries, soft inside and out, stacked around a dollop of strangely astringent chicken liver pate. Go to Burger Stevens and buy two cheeseburgers instead.

575 N.E. 24th Ave., 503-206-4085, nomadpdx.com

-- Samantha Bakall

sbakall@oregonian.com

Follow @sambakall
On St. Patrick's Day, millions of people will be swimming in Guinness Beer, hoisting pints of the dark ale and celebrating the luck of the Irish. Don't stop there.

You can be surrounded by Guinness year round if you lived in one of Ireland's most historic homes: The 18th-century "Guinness beer" castle, as it's known, is for sale at $29.5 million.

The 5,000-acre property, in Wicklow County's Roundwood near Dublin, was owned by one of the three "golden" Guinness girls, sibling heiresses described as "blonde and blue-eyed -- corkers all."

Their father, Ernest Guinness, the younger son of the first Earl of Iveagh, bestowed the beer-bought estate on his favorite daughter, the thrice married Oonagh Guinness Oranmore, also known as Lady Oranmore and Lady Browne.

Here, Oranmore lavishly entertained the world's most glamorous people, including the Rolling Stones, U2's Bono, artist Lucian Freud and Anjelica Huston, who grew up next door.

Oranmore's wealth came from Dublin's most famous export. Guinness beer was first sold in the United States in 1817 when the company was headed by Arthur Guinness II, according to research by TopTenRealEstateDeals.com.

The former hunting lodge, named Luggala, "boasts all the appurtenances of a grand castle but on a miniature scale," according to Sotheby's International Realty marketing materials.

In all, the estate has 19,099 square feet of living space sheltered under the main house as well as guest houses, lodges and cottages. In total, there are 27 bedrooms and 18 full baths.

The main house has a large entrance hall, three main reception rooms, a grand dining room and library.

The Gothic-style architecture is adorn with battlements, crochets as well as trefoil and quatrefoil windows. Ogee mantelpieces crown fireplaces. Limestone obelisks embellish the top of the main door and corner projections.

The estate belonged to the family of Rose La Touche, a 19th-century beauty who had received the unwelcome attentions of English art critic John Ruskin. It was then bought by Oranmore's father, Ernest Guinness, according to Oranmore's obituary, which appeared after her death at age 66 in 1995.

The story also said she used the castle to entertain "intelligentsia, literati, painters, actors, scholars, hangers-on, toffs, punters, poets and social hang-gliders."

Robert O'Byrne, author of "Luggala Days: The Story of a Guinness House" ($45, CICO Books), called the beer estate "the most decorative honey pot in Ireland."

- Janet Eastman with research by TopTenRealEstateDeals.com



jeastman@oregonian.com

503-799-8739

@janeteastman




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(Andrew Selsky/AP file)

A group of Oregon lawmakers has sent a letter to Gov. Kate Brown and public health officials urging them to preserve Oregon's pesticide testing requirements.

The legislators said they shared "grave concern" about proposed rule changes, which scale back testing requirements for cannabis extracts. The group said it wants the Oregon Health Authority to keep current rules in place.

The lawmakers said they're particularly concerned about the impact of rule changes on the marijuana testing industry.

"These constantly changing rules have made it very difficult for these businesses to continue to operate, let alone make the investments needed to continue to expand," they wrote.

The bipartisan group signing last week's letter were: Rep. Andy Olson, R-Albany, Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, Rep. Carl Wilson, R-Grants Pass, Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, Rep. Susan McLain, D-Hillsboro, Rep. Chris Gorsek, D-Troutdale, and Rep. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha.

Olson, Kruse and Wilson were the only members of the 10-member joint committee on marijuana implementation to sign the letter.

The health authority sets pesticide rules for both medical and recreational marijuana. Among the proposed changes to the rules: Instead of requiring that every batch of marijuana extract and concentrate be screened for pesticide contamination, the products would be randomly tested annually. But all of the marijuana used to make those products would first be screened for pesticides.

The state also has proposed new rules for marijuana flower headed to the market. Current rules require about 33 percent of all batches of marijuana flower for the recreational system be tested for pesticides.

The change would give authority to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to require less testing. Under the proposal, at least 20 percent of marijuana flower would undergo pesticide testing. (In the medical marijuana system, 100 percent of medical flower batches still would undergo pesticide testing.)

Changes to the pesticide testing requirements continue to be politically charged, with some labs pressing for more testing and some marijuana producers, processors and retailers arguing for less.

Don Morse, who represents the Oregon Cannabis Business Council, an association of marijuana businesses, said many feel the current rules overreach.

"Keeping it this way is stymying" the industry, said Morse, a Portland store owner. He said the people pressing to keep the rules in place are "lobbying in their own best interest."

A few labs have formed a political action committee -- Oregonians for Public Health and Safety. Lobbyist Caleb Hayes, who represents the group, said the organization also includes the Oregon Sungrown Growers Guild, which is comprised of outdoor growers.

"This is in the interest of public health and safety period," Hayes said. "We collectively feel these testing rules are the wrong direction for Oregon."

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
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(Gordon Oliver/Special to The Oregonian/OregonLive)

As public policy goes, the state's home-mortgage interest deduction that helps shrink Oregonians' tax bills flunks the test of public benefit.

The practice, which allows homeowners to deduct the amount of annual interest they pay to mortgage lenders, will cost Oregon nearly $500 million in lost revenue this year. The subsidy largely benefits higher-income tax filers who are more likely to itemize their deductions and who are the ones securing larger mortgages in the first place. Renters, who arguably pay property taxes just as homeowners do through their rent payments, get no similar benefit.

It's irrational, and several states, including Massachusetts, New Jersey and Ohio, don't allow taxpayers to deduct it in computing their taxable income for state purposes. But will legislators have the stomach to revise this practice?

Despite the inevitable blowback, legislators should take on this challenge. With Oregon HB 2006, a bill sponsored by the House Human Services and Housing committee, lawmakers have the opportunity to at least start the work of breaking down resistance and educating the public why this deduction is not in their or the state's interest. While imperfect, the bill offers some reasonable proposals for curbing an excessive giveaway that this state can't afford in the face of far more pressing needs in housing and elsewhere.

Editorial Agenda 2017

Boost student success

Get Oregon's financial house in order

Help our homeless

Honor our diverse values

Make Portland a city that works

Expand access to public records

________________________

Read more about the editorial board's priorities for Oregon.

The bill calls for capping the amount of mortgage interest that someone can deduct on their state tax returns to $15,000. That's well above the average deduction claimed by the nearly 500,000 filers who submitted itemized returns in 2013, according to the Oregon Department of Revenue's most recent tax expenditure report. It also calls for eliminating entirely the deduction on second homes. In addition, anyone whose adjusted gross income is $100,000 or more (or joint filers earning $200,000 or more) would not be allowed to claim any mortgage interest deduction for state tax purposes. The proposed changes would not apply to the mortgage interest deduction on the federal level.

The Legislative Revenue Office has not yet analyzed the proposal. But the Oregon Center for Public Policy, one of the members of the coalition that developed the proposal, estimates it could bring upwards of $200 million or more per biennium for the state, Juan Carlos Ordonez, spokesman for the center, told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board. That money would then fund assistance for down payments, initiatives to build starter homes and other programs that increase the supply of housing, said Jes Larson of the Welcome Home coalition, another member organization of the network behind HB 2006. Addressing supply is key - there is no way to legislate our way out of this housing crisis if nothing is done to significantly increase the inventory of places for people to live.

Oregonian editorials

Editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom.

Members of the editorial board are Laura Gunderson, Helen Jung, Mark Katches, John Maher and Len Reed.

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If you have questions about the opinion section, contact Laura Gunderson, editorial and commentary editor, at 503-221-8378 or lgunderson@oregonian.com.

That said, this bill is far from perfect. The revenue office's vetting could change some of the projections. And other provisions, such as the arbitrary $100,000/$200,000 income cut off could be problematic. While Ordonez maintains that six-figure Oregonians can easily absorb the hit, his conclusion seems driven by assumptions that anyone of that income level is immune to financial strain and can adapt in a heartbeat. Good public policy calls for objective consideration of how best to limit fallout when longstanding rules suddenly change.

Yes, mortgage interest deductions are a form of welfare for the better off. But the threat of immediately revoking it from people who may have based significant financial decisions on the promise, is bound to trigger unintended consequences. Not the least of which might be sparking opposition from those who might otherwise support the $15,000 cap. And this proposal needs all the support it can muster.

Legislators also must recognize the multi-faceted budget disaster that Oregon faces. While the mortgage interest deduction is a worthwhile debate, they must also confront thornier issues as easing the public-pension burden on public employers and raising new revenue from businesses.

Oregonians can be stubbornly protective of irrational, nonsensical policies that mask their destructiveness with short-term sweeteners (see: personal kicker rebate). That does not give legislators a pass on addressing it, however, particularly when the state faces a $1.6 billion budget deficit. Start the work toward a saner system, pair it with real change on pension reform and corporate taxation, and show Oregon what true leadership and progress looks like.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 15, 2017 in Washington, DC.

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Scrap the Republicans' plan: The story headlined "CBO: Ranks of uninsured will jump by 24 million in Republican plan" (March 13) stated that while the Republican health care law would increase the number of uninsured Americans, there was "some good news in the report" - the federal deficit would be cut. This may be good news for the federal government but it is not good news for patients. They are the ones who will pay the price.

The article itself mentions the up to 20% increase in premiums patients will see in 2018. What is not mentioned is what hospitals will face. The American Hospital Association found that hospitals may lose up to $160 billion from Medicaid cuts alone. OHSU announced a hiring freeze in January in anticipation of repeal of the Affordable Care Act. This will lead to patients who have no insurance being cared for in hospitals that are understaffed to meet their needs. This is not sustainable - for patients or hospitals.

I ask that Oregon's Congressional delegation, especially Greg Walden, whose district has had the largest Medicaid expansion enrollment of any Republican congressional district, to commit to scrapping the Republican health care law and work to repair the ACA. Let us strive to make our state and country as healthy as it can be.

Smitha R. Chadaga, Northeast Portland

Walden will take the blame: Now that the CBO report on the effects of the Republican replacement for Obamacare is out and we can see just how many millions of people will suffer if it passes, we can understand why neither Trump nor Ryan want it named after themselves. There won't be Trumpcare or Ryancare. My bet is that, before long, they will all start calling it Waldencare and stick Greg Walden with the blame. He's the handiest little guy. As my father-in-law always said, the little guy always gets gigged.

Donald Berg, Southwest Portland

Buy now, pay for it later: The administration has denounced the Congressional Budget Office's report on the cost and consequences of the proposed American Health Care Act. They argue that AHCA will be rolled out in a "three prong approach" and criticize the CBO for releasing their report based on just the first prong. By their own admission, information about the additional prongs has not been released because the details are still being worked out. Yet the administration and Republican leaders in the House are asking the House and Senate to enact the AHCA based on information and details available now. They offer assurances that the concerns raised by the CBO report will be addressed later.

Suppose a developer wanted to sell you a house, showing you the completed foundation only, but asked for cash up front amounting to the price of a finished house, with assurances but no proof, no plans or guarantee that it would or could be be built. Would you buy it?

Merrie Ziady, Southeast Portland

People with disabilities also lose: Congress is working quickly to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. There has been wide coverage of the millions of people who will lose health care when the Medicaid expansion population is eliminated. It is equally important, however, to focus on the deep cuts that are slated for those who keep Medicaid coverage.

Many seniors and people with disabilities - individuals and families across Oregon -- rely on our local Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan. It provides funds for home and community based services & supports that allow our most vulnerable neighbors to stay in their homes, or live independently. The federal government pays about two thirds of the costs for these services and supports.

Under the ACA replacement bill, the Medicaid program will be capped in 2020 at the rate paid by the federal government in 2016. The federal match for home and community-based services will be immediately cut by 6 percent. There is no money in the state budget to replace these funding losses. This means devastating cuts to existing services and supports that allow a person to stay in their home. Instead, we will see wait lists and unnecessary placements in nursing homes and other institutions.

People with disabilities have long fought for the right to live in the community. The replacement bill will undermine that right and erode our fellow Oregonians' independence and dignity.

Bob Joondeph, Southwest Portland

The author is executive director of Disability Rights Oregon

Reject the GOP plan: Has the GOP ever stopped to consider that the only part of our health care system people are generally happy with is the place where the government has been involved? Through Medicaid expansion and tax subsidies, the ACA became law so we don't depend on profit motives getting in the way of providing health care for Americans. The GOP doesn't get it, or chooses not to, when nearly $300 billion dollars of tax cuts can be provided for insurance companies and CEOs. Trump/Ryan Care is a a tax cut bill disguised as health care reform, and all Americans should reject the GOP health care plan.

John Scherner, Tigard
Nancy Pelosi

Women members of the House Democratic caucus walk out of the House of Representatives to recognize International Women's Day and 'A Day Without a Woman' - movements that a local writer says women should take further.

(Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Angela Uherbelau

I joined in the recent "A day without a woman," the national strike organized by the Women's March to celebrate International Women's Day and to honor women's labor. While wholly embracing the ends, it was hard not to feel ambivalent about the means. Asking women to take a day off of work is like asking for the moon -- lovely in theory, but Herculean in practice. More than half of all children below the poverty line live in families headed by women. Two-thirds of minimum wage earners are women. More than one in eight women live in poverty and Native American, Hispanic, Black and Asian women experience poverty at higher rates than whites.

Foregoing a day's wages is impossible for many, but women are fierce with the free time they do manage to cobble together. Give us a specific task and something urgent at stake and we can write, call and organize the hell out of it. Women in concert flex considerable political muscle. We also have an idea of where, exactly, that muscle's needed now.

Recently, 71 percent of women told Quinnipiac University pollsters that the president should publicly release his tax returns. Seventy-five percent supported an investigation into potential links between Donald Trump's campaign advisers and the Russian government. It's not hard to imagine women's desire for transparency climbing even higher after Attorney General Jeff Sessions' failure to disclose his meetings with the Russian ambassador and the president's own dark, unsubstantiated accusation of being wiretapped by his predecessor. The fact the President wrote off $100 million on his 2005 taxes only whets our appetite for the rest of his returns.

When the country appears to agree on so little, female consensus on these two particular issues begs the question: How do we harness the energy and passion of American women to hold our elected leaders accountable?

Demanding truth from an increasingly furtive and autocratic government is fundamental in the fight to protect women's rights, human rights and American rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The next Women's March collective action could help us do just that by marshaling women to call on Congress to establish an immediate, independent investigation into the president's ties to Russia and to support Sen. Ron Wyden's bill to compel the President to release his tax returns.

Our Polish sisters have shown us how it's done. Last year, they took to the streets on "Black Monday," protesting a legislative proposal to ban abortion. The massive action caused Polish politicians to reverse themselves, effectively annihilating the legislation. Similarly, "A day women demand answers" here in United States could achieve a political outcome of game-changing proportions.

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Submit your essay of 500 words or less to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification.

The unified pressure we'd bring to bear on politicians through calling, writing and virtual organizing would also widen the Women's March circle of sisterhood. A majority of Republican women told pollsters that they want to investigate the President's campaign aides' ties to Russia. Ninety percent of non-white women want to see the President's tax returns.

No matter who we are or where we come from, American women sense something rotten in the state of our union. We just might be able to get to the bottom of it working together as one.

Angela Uherbelau is a writer who serves on the board of Emerge Oregon, which trains Democratic women to run for office. She lives in Northeast Portland.
The most up-to-date post can be found here.

In the months since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, stories of racism and bullying have surfaced around the country. As of Feb. 7, the Southern Poverty Law Center had received 1,372 reports of "hateful harassment and intimidation."





In this post, we will catalog reports of this nature in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Are we missing a verified incident in Oregon or Southwest Washington? Please send us an email at trending@oregonian.com.

Troutdale, March 28: The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday morning that deputies responded to a residence on Southeast 26th Court and found damage to belongings and graffiti "consistent with an Intimidation/Bias Crime," according to a news release. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the responsible party left a note -- kept in place by ammunition arranged in the shape of a cross -- that reportedly said: "If I see you here next month, I will shoot you and burn your house."

Southeast Portland, March 12: Police said an officer found swastikas on cars, fences, trees and other things in the Richmond neighborhood after being called there on reports of hate graffiti.

Salem, March 7: Jason Lee Kendall, 52, was charged with assault and intimidation after he allegedly attacked an employee at a Middle Eastern restaurant with a pipe Tuesday afternoon, yelling, "Get out of America," according to police.

Lake Oswego, March 1: Weeks after Lake Oswego High School administrators introduced a series of racial sensitivity seminars in the wake of a senior prank that involved a "KKK club," the Lake Views student newspaper reports that racial slurs have been found in three boys' bathrooms at the school.

Hillsboro, Feb. 23: Administrators at Liberty High School say several times in recent weeks they have found swastikas and racial slurs written on walls at the the school, KPTV reports.

Eugene, Feb. 4: Two Eugene businesses reported swastika graffiti over the same weekend, reports KOIN.

Northeast Portland, Jan. 25: Some people in Northeast Portland woke to discover Nazi and anti-feminist graffiti in their neighborhood.

Ashland, Jan. 23: Pro-Nazi, white nationalist fliers appeared in downtown Ashland either late Sunday or early Monday. For the most part, said Ashland Police Chief Tighe O'Meara, "People just took the signs down and threw them away."

Oregon City, Dec. 16: Two Oregon City High School students face possible expulsion after a video emerged of them on social media using a racial epithet to refer to African Americans at their school and the school principal.

Pasco, Nov. 30: The Tri-City Herald reports that an argument about Donald Trump turned violent when a 29-year-old Trump supporter, Raymond Williams, called 40-year-old Alvaro Campos-Hernandez a racial slur in a Pasco bar. Pasco police told the Herald both men had knives and that, "The two men struggled, and the fight ended with Williams suffering a 1-inch wound to his windpipe. He was taken to Lourdes Medical Center."

Oregon City, (roughly) Nov. 15 and Nov. 21: A 15-year-old student at the Clackamas Academy of Industrial Sciences (CAIS) in Oregon City told KATU she has received racist notes, written in her notebook, twice in November. Joy Simmons, a freshman studying engineering, said the notes contained the N-word. Simmons, her mother and Teressa Raiford, organizer of Don't Shoot Portland, are asking for an outside investigation into this incident and other reports of racism in Oregon City School District.

Tigard, Nov. 20: Several swastikas, as well as "derogatory messages" about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were discovered at Alberta Rider Elementary School, KATU reports.

Salem, Nov. 17: Salem City Councilor Daniel Benjamin shared a "violent, racially charged" video on Facebook, according to KATU. The video showed African Americans being run over by vehicles and included a description from conservative blogger, Ron Dwyer, which said, "As this video shows people are starting to get tired of the Black Lives Matter bullies blocking the roadways." Benjamin told KATU the post has nothing to do with race and, "To infer I'm a racist is actually racist."

Happy Valley, Nov. 16: A Happy Valley woman said her garage was vandalized with a large swastika Wednesday afternoon after she said she had a run-in with men chanting racist slogans on her way home from a nearby grocery store.

Vancouver, Nov. 15: A custodian at Skyview High School found "hate graffiti" on two walls at the school early on Nov. 15, reported The Columbian. The graffiti covered "a number of subjects, including race, religion and gender." The Clark County Sheriff's Office is aware of the incident.

Portland, Nov. 13: In an email sent out to Portland Village School "Families and Friends" on Nov. 14, Principal Paul Berg wrote, "This weekend our school was hit hard by one, or more graffiti vandals, and there was damage to property, as well as some very hateful language painted on our campus." The school has not yet responded to a request for a comment.

Portland, Nov. 12: Racist, pro-Trump, anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti was found written on bathroom walls at Reed College, KATU reports.

Portland, Nov. 10: Maria Frazier, a medical assistant at OHSU who is African-American noticed a miniature noose taped to a door above a sign that said, "Stress Reduction Kit" and "Bang Head Here," KOIN reports. For many Americans, a noose symbolizes lynchings but when asked about it, the 47-year-old Caucasian man who put it up said it was a joke related to stress. Frazier did not find the joke funny and the union who represent her called OHSU's response "tone-deaf."



"OHSU thoroughly investigated the employee's complaint and subsequent grievance in accordance with well-established policies and procedures. OHSU does not tolerate discrimination or retaliation in the workplace," said OHSU in a statement.

Silverton, Nov. 9: Two students were suspended from Silverton High School for intimidating classmates. Witnesses reported they were part of a crowd yelling, "Pack your bags, you're leaving tomorrow" and "Tell your family good-bye" at Hispanic students.

Eugene, Nov. 9: Three people were seen wearing blackface on the University of Oregon campus.

North Bend, Nov. 9: In North Bend, "students shouted and chanted 'Go back to Mexico' at an 11-year-old student from Colombia who is an American citizen," wrote The World, "while racist jokes reportedly were told throughout the school."

Bend, Nov. 9: At High Desert Middle School in Bend, several Hispanic students said they were targeted by classmates after the election. "They said that we're dumb, we're rapists, we're retarded, we have no jobs," student Brian Zendejas told NewsChannel 21.

Do you know of a verified incident of racism in Oregon or Southwest Washington? Please send us an email at trending@oregonian.com.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
Noting a recent spate of anti-Semitic "hate incidents" in the Portland area, Democratic U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have introduced legislation to clamp down on hate speech and prejudice-fueled attacks.

Portland's Mittleman Jewish Community Center received a bomb threat this month, and a March 4 rally in Lake Oswego to support President Donald Trump was marked by the presence of a prominent neo-Nazi and Klansman, Steven Shane Howard.

Americans must "stand up" against intimidation and violence sparked by a person's race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, said Wyden, who is Jewish.

"The wave of hate crimes since the election is intolerable," said Merkley. "This is not who we are as Americans."

U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley, left, and Ron Wyden.

The senators are two co-sponsors of the Democrat-backed National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality Act -- or, NO HATE Act. Introduced Wednesday, the bill would bolster resources for victims of hate crimes, according to a news release from the senators.

Victims of hate crimes could seek big damages from the perpetrators in federal court. States would get money to create hate crimes hotlines. Judges could require perpetrators to perform community service among the group targeted by their hate crimes.

Law enforcement agencies would also be brought up to speed on cataloging and reporting hate crimes to the FBI. From 2009 to 2015 more than 17 percent of local law enforcement agencies failed to file a hate crimes report, according to the FBI.

The bill is co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Edward Markey, D-Mass.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; and U.S. Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va.; David Cicilline, D-R.I.; Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.; Hank Johnson, D-Ga.; Ron Kind, D-Wis.; Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; and Paul Tonko, D-N.Y.

Given that the bill is backed only by Democrats and one independent, it's uncertain if it wil be granted a hearing. Republicans control the U.S. House and Senate.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com; 503-221-8209
An article published Friday in The New Yorker magazine details how Oregon's Art Robinson has been floated as a potential pick for national science advisor to President Donald Trump.

Robinson, a sheep rancher and biochemist who gained public attention from his four failed campaigns for Congress, told The Oregonian/OregonLive he didn't know he had been considered.

"I don't have any knowledge about that," he said. "No one has called me or asked to interview me. I'd love to do the job but nobody has offered it to me."

The New Yorker article focuses on the ways billionaire businessman Robert Mercer aided in Trump's ascendancy to the White House. But it also describes how Mercer backed Robinson and how his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, was involved with the Trump transition. It was she who suggested Robinson be the president's national science advisor.

Robinson operates a laboratory in Cave Junction financially backed by the Mercers. He has faced criticism for his denial of evolution and dismissal of climate change as a "false religion" -- along with his experiments on human urine, which he hopes will delay human aging.

Rebekah Mercer's suggestion to Trump administration officials that Robinson be named national science advisor "has gone nowhere," according to the article, which was first highlighted by Willamette Week.

The current frontrunners for the position are Princeton physicist William Happer and Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, according to science and technology publication Ars Technica. Both have more traditional science backgrounds but align with Robinson on one key point: their strong denial of climate change.

Along with his scientific exploits, Robinson is known for his candidacies in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 for Oregon's 4th Congressional District, which is held by Peter DeFazio, a Democrat.

As for Robinson, he said it was "pretty nice" of Rebekah Mercer to think of him as potential for a presidential appointment.

"I'm a long way from Washington and New York, so I'm not sure what's going on there," Robinson said. "Where do I find this New Yorker article?"

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com; 503-221-8209
Brittany Bright flips a small white switch on a gray metal box and a warm glow radiates through the dark Hazelnut Grove library. Bright can finally enjoy a late night paging through the well-worn novels of science fiction writer Octavia Butler -- her favorite author.

The library is an escape from life in the homeless village, an ornate wooden shed donated by neighbors, but the glass doors don't let in enough light to read on cloudy days or after the sun sets.

There are 20 of the boxes at the homeless camp, donated by the inventors -- a group of high schoolers from Portland's private Catlin Gabel school. They created the JuiceBox, a solar-powered LED light and charger, to allow people living outdoors to connect to their communities.

Some use the boxes to power their laptops in the evenings, keep their phones functioning or just enjoy the evening.

"Especially in the winter when the sun sets at 5 at night, their day is over," said sophomore Solomon Olshin.

The 12-member InvenTeam at Catlin Gabel is an extra-curricular club that brings together robotics and engineering nerds with social justice-minded friends. Each year, they design a project that tackles a social issue with simple technology.

In years past, they created a water purifier out of a tire and a smartphone app that coordinates carpool rides.

This year, they focused on helping people without permanent housing, a problem the teenagers see more often as Portland's homeless population continues to grow.

"It's right here in our community, and they're people who need the most support," said Olshin, a sophomore. "There's a lot of need and it shows."

They brainstormed ways to incorporate solar panels into the project, a passion of another team member.

The JuiceBox - a play on calling energy "juice" -- is almost so simple it seems like it should already exist.

A solar panel connects to a heavy-duty battery surrounded by cut Styrofoam pool noodles in a metal box. The battery powers two large LED lights, a USB plug and a charging outlet.

Fully charged, it can run three to four hours a night for seven nights straight. But the solar panel with each of the lights means that they're recharging continuously most days, so they rarely run out of juice.

The team started in November and a few months later, installed prototypes at the village in North Portland.

The people at Hazelnut Grove used them for a while and then offered feedback for improvements. The boxes originally came with only a USB plug, but the campers needed to power their laptops and other devices wall socket-type plugs.

Olshin volunteered at Hazelnut Grove with his father sometimes, but most of the student inventors were unfamiliar with the issues homeless people face. Hazelnut Grove is a de facto village of more than a dozen people who built shelters and tiny homes for themselves on land in the Overlook neighborhood. They set rules for the community and police and support each other. The students spent time listening to the residents and were sometimes surprised at how many maintain jobs and lives outside of day-to-day survival.

"They really do need power and they do need these connections so they can be part of the community," said sophomore Layton Rosenfeld.

The students kept tweaking the design until the lights were simple enough to produce quickly, while being powerful enough to be useful.

Then they entered the Lexus Eco Challenge against hundreds of other high school teams with a plan to funnel any award money back into the project. They won $10,000, which should be enough for 30 more units.

Now, they're in phase two of the contest with $30,000 on the line. They need to show they can grow the reach of the project, and so are taking the JuiceBox to the world. The team published the design and instructions online for anyone to replicate.

Rosenfeld joined the InvenTeam with an interest in helping with outreach and communications. She had never taken a robotics course, but quickly learned how to put together the JuiceBoxes. The contraptions take two to three hours to make with the right tools and knowledge.

The ease that novices like her learned the design sparked the idea that others could easily pitch in. The InvenTeam hopes students across the country to start building JuiceBoxes for their communities, starting with nearby robotics teams they asked for donated batteries during the initial stages of their project.

"No matter where you are, there's a need for a system like this," Olshin said.

The team plans to also provide the boxes for the newly approved tiny house homeless village in the Kenton neighborhood. Ultimately, they'd like people in the homeless community to be able to make a JuiceBox for themselves or others.

"As you can see, it's not too high-tech," said Robin Attey, a senior, pointing at the pool noodles holding the battery in place.

"It's high-tech, but it's accessible," Olshin replied.

The cost and functionality of the components would have made this project impossible five years ago, said Dale Yocum, the Invent Team and robotics program director. But now, it's relatively affordable at $350 and even more so for the students because most parts are donated. They're hoping to secure a way to further reduce the cost of the most expensive part, the solar panels at $120 each.

It's not lost on the students that their project represents the gaping chasm between Portland's increasing socioeconomic divide. High school tuition at Catlin Gabel is more than $30,000 a year -- though about a quarter of the students receive some form of scholarship or grant to attend.

Rosenfeld acknowledged that, in turn, the students have access to a robotics lab that many high schools don't. This is one way to bridge that gap.

Attey loves robotics and joined the Invent Team for exactly that purpose.

"In high school, you sort of feel powerless in the world and you want to help," she said. "You can take skills you're already interested in and apply that to the real world."

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger
pub.JPG

A spike in drunk-driving crashes happens every St. Patrick's Day -- a holiday synonymous with alcohol consumption.

(Beth Nakamura/staff)

If you've been to the pub, consider public transit.

Or a cab. Ridesharing services and designated drivers work, too.

Authorities urge people who indulge to the point of impairment this St. Patrick's Day weekend to stay out of the driver's seat, and law enforcement agencies are deploying additional patrollers intended to spot people driving under the influence.

A spike in drunk-driving crashes happens every St. Patrick's Day -- a holiday synonymous with alcohol consumption -- according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency said that more than 250 people died in crashes during the holiday between 2011 and 2015.

"Any time you have a holiday that is alcohol focused ... you're going to see higher instances of impaired driving and fatalities," said Dan Estes, the Oregon Department of Transportation's impaired driving program manager.

Estes said sound judgment is the first thing to go when you're impaired by alcohol.

For example: He said authorities have ran programs where they give someone a measured amount of alcohol over a set period of time, test their blood alcohol content and have them perform field sobriety tests.

People who have a blood alcohol content of .03 or .04 percent say they wouldn't ever get behind the wheel, he said. But at .07 or .08 percent they'll ask for the keys.

And just because you don't blow a .08 percent, the legal limit for driving, doesn't necessarily mean you're unimpaired. Estes said impairment really starts when you have a blood alcohol content of half that.

His advice to those celebrating St. Patrick's Day?

"Plan ahead," he said. "Have a designated driver. It does not get any more simple than that."

The Portland Police Bureau said it's working with other metro-area law enforcement agencies and Oregon state troopers to keep impaired drivers off the roads.

"If you choose to drink, please do it responsibly and remember that buzzed driving is drunk driving," the police bureau said in a news release. It also urged people to call 911 if they see impaired drivers.

Other metro-area agencies have announced increased patrols.

The Washington County Sheriff's Office said it will have extra deputies on patrol throughout the weekend. Hillsboro police said they will also be upping their driving under the influence of intoxicants enforcement.

Battle Ground, Vancouver and Washougal officers, as well as Washington State Patrol troopers, will be out in higher numbers Friday, as well, according to Vancouver police.

"Officers, who are also drug recognition experts, will be among those conducting these increased DUI patrols," Vancouver police said in a news release. "So whether it's green beer, or another type of green, getting behind the wheel impaired could mean a DUI."

-- Jim Ryan

jryan@oregonian.com

503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
New Orleans Fire Department Captain Ross Hennessey was amazed when a lop rabbit named Pierre regained consciousness moments after he rescued the bunny from an Uptown house fire last year.

The firefighter said Pierre survived because he was on the floor, and "the difference between the floor and five feet above the floor might be 300 degrees."

Hennessey's actions will be honored Sunday (March 19) as the House Rabbit Society plans to give Hennessey its first-ever Amy Espie Hero Award. The nonprofit's award commemorates those who do something extraordinary to help rabbits. The organization's executive director, Anne Martin, said Wednesday that the captain's actions exemplified their award.

The incident occurred on Nov. 28, 2016. Neighbors noticed a fire at the home on Calhoun Street, Hennessey said Thursday. Authorities arrived to find the top half of the house ablaze, and the neighbors told firefighters a rabbit was inside. Firefighters extinguished the flames and went through the house before they a saw cage in the corner.

"I said, 'Yep, that must be where the dead rabbit is," Hennessey said. He went over to the rabbit and gave him a nudge when the animal suddenly moved. That's when Hennessey said "Damn, I think this rabbit's still alive."

We would like to give a HUGE shoutout to the New Orleans Fire Department for helping to save this little bunny. Pierre... Posted by Avian & Exotic Animal Hospital of Louisiana on Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The SPCA gave the department an animal resuscitation kit several years ago that authorities had yet to use, Hennessey said. He decided to put it to use on Pierre after he brought the rabbit outside. Hennessey said Pierre "popped back up" moments after the kit delivered oxygen to the rabbit. A Tulane student who owned the rabbit managed to escape earlier and was not on scene when Pierre was rescued, he said.

Even though Hennessey "brought the rabbit out of a fire," he stressed that the family next door "did far more than I did." The family brought the rabbit to veterinarians and cleaned him before they got him back to his owner. Hennessey laughed and said "I just did the easy part." He said Pierre survived because his cage happened to be low and in a corner.

June Booth, an educator with the House Rabbit Society, learned about Hennessey's actions after the Avian & Exotic Animal Hospital of Louisiana described the rescue on its Facebook page. The hospital stated Pierre sustained smoke inhalation symptoms and mild corneal ulcers, but doctors expected him to completely recover. Martin said Booth recognized the captain's actions because her son-in-law is a retired firefighter in Slidell, and firefighters often "go out of their way" to save animals without credit for it.

"House Rabbit Society wants to recognize and celebrate the heroes in our midst who do something exceptional to save the life of a rabbit," Martin said. House Rabbit Society's president, Margo DeMello, called Hennessey the "obvious candidate" for its first award, which is named after one of the nonprofit's founding directors who passed away in 2009. DeMello said his action's were "brave and compassionate."

Hennessey joked that he's always been "an animal person" who "likes animals more than most people." The New Orleans native and father of two owns two dogs, two cats, four turtles, a tortoise, three snakes, a bearded dragon and several fish. He added that he also regularly has "rats in my house, but they're really not pets. They're really there to keep the snakes company."
TOKYO - The Trump administration gave its clearest signal yet that it would consider taking military action against North Korea, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that "all options are on the table" to deter the threat from Pyongyang.



Tensions are running high in Northeast Asia, with North Korea making observable progress toward its goal of building a missile that could reach the U.S. mainland and China incensed over South Korea's decision to deploy an American antimissile battery.



Tillerson's remarks, ruling out diplomatic talks and leaving the door open to military action, will fuel fears in the region that the Trump administration is seriously considering what Washington euphemistically calls "kinetic" options.



"Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended," Tillerson said at a news conference in Seoul with Yun Byung-se, the South Korean foreign minister. He was referring to the Obama administration policy of trying to wait North Korea out, hoping that sanctions would prove so crippling that Pyongyang would have no choice but to return to denuclearization negotiations.



"We're exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table," Tillerson said. While the United States does not want military conflict, threats "would be met with an appropriate response," he added.



"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action, that option is on the table," Tillerson said.



In a surprise turn of events, Yun appeared to suggest that South Korea would support military options.



"We have various policy methods available," said Yun, who is unlikely to remain in his position for much longer, as elections for a new government will be held in early May. "If imposing diplomatic pressure is a building, military deterrence would be one of the pillars of this building. We plan to have all relevant nations work together more closely than in the past and make sure that North Korea, feeling pain for its wrongdoings, changes its strategy," he said.



Sanctions and diplomatic engagement so far have failed to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But U.S. administrations have long considered military action out of the question because North Korea has artillery targeting Seoul, metropolitan area of more than 20 million people just 30 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.



Now, however, military threats are beginning to feel like one of the few remaining options for dealing with North Korea, said Hahm Chai-bong, president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.



"At this point, it's almost the inevitable next step in the escalation. The only thing is that we've never been here before," Hahm said. "The U.S. and South Korea have never put this much pressure on North Korea or responded in such a direct way before."



Some lawmakers in Seoul are now pushing for the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, while there is increasingly open talk in Washington of military strikes against North Korea if it tests an intercontinental ballistic missile.



It would likely come down to a question of who blinks first, Hahm said. "And we always blink first because we have so much more to lose."



North Korea is known for its exaggerated and bellicose rhetoric, but the combination of threats and missile launches, coinciding with Chinese anger at South Korea, has raised tensions in the region to a level seldom seen in recent years.



North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said earlier this year that North Korea is working on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland. President Donald Trump responded in a tweet: "It won't happen!"



But his administration, which is now conducting a review of North Korea policy, has given few clues as to how it might stop Kim in his tracks. As part of that policy review, Tillerson, who headed ExxonMobil before becoming secretary of state last month, is visiting Japan, South Korea and China to hear those governments' views.



In Tokyo on Thursday, he said that 20 years of diplomatic efforts to prod North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions had failed. He went further in Seoul on Friday, signaling that multilateral talks - with or without North Korea - were not under consideration.



"Conditions must change before there's any scope for talks to resume, whether they be five-party or six-party," Tillerson said. The six-party talks were a multilateral effort toward denuclearization involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas. The group met without North Korea on occasion.



But the United States and its allies still have options on the spectrum between diplomatic talks and military action for persuading Kim and his regime to give up their nuclear weapons, he said.



More sanctions could still be applied, and China could put more pressure on North Korea, Tillerson said. He will head to Beijing on Saturday to try to urge the government there to use more of its leverage over North Korea.



Earlier Thursday, Tillerson toured the joint security area in the Demilitarized Zone, a spot that former president Bill Clinton once famously described as "the scariest place on Earth." North Korean soldiers in helmets stood just a few feet away from Tillerson as he stood at the line and inside the meeting hut, taking photos of the secretary throughout.



"With his visit, he was sending a message to North Korea: We are watching you closely," said Park Cheol-hee, professor of international relations at Seoul National University.



The line was arbitrarily drawn across the peninsula almost 74 years ago, at the end of the Korean War, by one of Tillerson's predecessors as secretary of state, Dean Rusk, who was a colonel in the army at the time. A reporter asked Tillerson on Friday if being at the DMZ brought home the threat of North Korea, but he did not respond.



The conundrum of dealing with North Korea has become significantly more complicated with the impeachment last week of former president Park Geun-hye on corruption charges.



Tillerson met with the acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is running the country until a snap election is held on May 9. As in his talks with foreign minister Yun, Tillerson found a readily agreeable ally.



But that could change in early May. Opinion polls give a strong lead to progressive candidate Moon Jae-in, who has vowed to steer South Korean policy toward North Korea in a sharply different direction from the hard-line approach taken by the conservative Park government.



Moon has pledged to go to Pyongyang before he visits Washington - a sign, he has said, of his concern about the North Korea problem - and he has heralded a return to the "sunshine policy" of previous liberal governments. Moon has said he will resume economic engagement with North Korea, including reopening the joint industrial complex that Park said was helping fund Pyongyang's weapons programs.



Moon has also suggested that he would review the South Korean government's decision to host the American antimissile battery called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD. The battery is meant to guard against the threat to South Korea from North Korea's missiles, but Beijing has strongly protested the deployment, apparently fearing that the system's radar would be used to peer into China.



The Chinese government is now inflicting economic pain on South Korea - banning many imports from South Korea and stopping Chinese tourist groups from traveling there - to try to prompt Seoul to change its mind on the missile system.



A change to a progressive government in South Korea would pose a significant challenge for the Trump administration, making the United States and South Korea out of step on North Korea policy.



--Washington Post
Tom Price,Susan Brooks,Pat Tiberi,Phil Roe

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, center, joined by, from left, Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, and Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, March, 17, 2017, as House Republicans push for unity on their "Obamacare" replacement bill.

(J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump agreed to add fresh Medicaid curbs to the House Republican health care bill Friday, bolstering the measure with support from some conservative lawmakers but leaving its prospects wobbly. House leaders discussed other amendments calibrated to round up votes and scheduled a showdown vote Thursday.



"I just want to let the world know I am 100 percent in favor" of the measure, Trump said at the White House after meeting around a dozen House lawmakers and shaking hands on revisions. "We're going to have a health care plan that's going to be second to none."



While the rapid-fire events seemed to build momentum for the pivotal GOP legislation, its fate remained clouded. One leading House conservative said the alterations were insufficient and claimed enough allies to sink the measure, and support among moderates remained uncertain.



"My whip count indicates that there are 40 no's," enough to defeat the bill, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who leads the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. He said the change "doesn't move the ball more than a couple yards on a very long playing field."



Across the Capitol, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., facing re-election next year, became the fourth Republican senator to announce his opposition. That left Senate GOP leaders at least two votes shy of what they'd need to prevail.





Congressional Democrats remain solidly opposed to the GOP effort.



Thursday will mark the seventh anniversary of when Obama signed his health overhaul into law, one of his milestone domestic achievements enacted over unanimous GOP opposition. Beyond that symbolism, Republican leaders hope to allow time for Congress to complete the measure before an early April recess exposes lawmakers to two weeks of lobbying and town hall pressure tactics by activists, doctors, hospitals and other opponents.



The Republican bill would kill much of former President Barack Obama's health care law, including tax penalties for people who don't buy insurance and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor. It would create new tax credits that would be less generous than current federal subsidies for many consumers, and repeal levies on the wealthy and medical firms that helped finance Obama's expansion of coverage to 20 million Americans.



Trump's deal with lawmakers would let states impose work requirements on some of Medicaid's roughly 60 million recipients. Details were initially unclear, but Republicans have discussed aiming them at healthy people with no dependents.



The agreement would also let states accept lump-sum federal payments for Medicaid, instead of an amount that would grow with the number of beneficiaries. The program currently costs the federal government around $370 billion annually and covers costs no matter the amounts.



"These changes definitely strengthen our numbers," said the House GOP's top vote counter, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, among Trump's guests Friday. "But they also show that President Trump is all-in now" to help win converts.



Those accepting the agreement included Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., leader of the Republican Study Committee, a large group of House conservatives.



It seemed clear that GOP leaders remained short of the 216 votes they'll need, and additional changes were in the works.





Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said he'd been assured by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the bill's tax credit would be adjusted to focus more benefits on lower-income people. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., among those who met with Trump, said the president "told his people" to work on changes making the measure more generous for lower-earning and older Americans.



"Everything has to be a change that would increase the vote count," Scalise said.



Conservatives seemed unlikely to achieve their demands that the GOP bill's phase-out of Obama's Medicaid expansion -- now 2020 -- be accelerated to next year and that the credit be denied people with little or no tax liability. Centrists remained wary of yanking constituents from coverage. Many represent states where voters have gained Medicaid and other insurance under the 2010 statute.



"We'll see what changes they're going to make," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.



In a report this week that prompted many GOP lawmakers to emerge as opponents, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would leave 24 million people uninsured in a decade, including 14 million next year, and boost out-of-pocket costs for many.



Heller joined three fellow GOP senators in opposing the bill: Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas have voiced strong objections, and Senate moderates don't want to boot constituents off coverage.



Republicans have a 52-48 Senate majority.



Nevada has expanded Medicaid and GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval has expressed opposition to the Republican legislation.

-- The Associated Press
A former Washington County sheriff's sergeant has admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old boy in Idaho after meeting him through a dating app in 2015.

Michael Alexander, 46, of Lake Oswego pleaded guilty Friday in Canyon County 3rd District Court in Idaho to lewd conduct with a child under 16. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 8.

An additional charge of enticing a child over the Internet was dropped as part of a plea agreement. The maximum penalty for the lewd conduct charge in Idaho is life in prison, said Joe Decker, a Canyon County spokesman.

Alexander, a patrol sergeant based in Cornelius, was placed on unpaid administrative leave in late February 2016 when the Meridian Police Department in Idaho told the Washington County Sheriff's Office that it was investigating text messages between Alexander and the boy, according to a search warrant affidavit.

The texts included discussions of the two having sex in Alexander's pickup and a photo of the sergeant wearing his uniform and badge while sitting behind a desk with a sheriff negotiator placard on it, the affidavit said.

Alexander resigned in March 2016. He had worked for the Sheriff's Office for 19 years. Alexander declined comment when reached by phone Thursday.

The boy told investigators he created an account on Grindr in January 2015 and claimed he was 18. He reported beginning to text with Alexander while on vacation on the Oregon coast two months later. Alexander drove to the boy's home in Idaho while his parents were away that June and sexually abused the child, the affidavit said.

The two had another sexual encounter in September when Alexander again drove to Idaho, picked up the boy from his home and had sex in his truck while parked at a business parking lot, the affidavit said. The two continued to text each other afterward.

The investigation began when the boy's mother discovered the texts between the boy and Alexander.

Alexander's arrest last year came amid criminal investigations that led to the firing or resignations of three Washington County sheriff's deputies.

Dan Cardinal, a former sergeant, was sentenced to two years of probation in January 2016 for repeatedly having sex with female co-workers while he was on duty. He pleaded no contest to official misconduct.

Former Deputy David Bergquist received a year and a half of probation that March for pulling a female colleague's breast out of her clothing and putting his mouth on it during a union party in 2015. He pleaded guilty to sexual harassment.

Former Cpl. Jon Christensen was sentenced in September 2016 to two years of probation for choking a female co-worker the year before while demanding that she continue with their sexual relationship. He pleaded guilty to coercion, strangulation and official misconduct.

The three all were placed on leave after an anonymous letter was sent to the Sheriff's Office and The Oregonian/OregonLive in April 2015 claiming widespread sexual misconduct by workers in the agency. Bergquist wasn't named in the letter, but the other two were.

Christensen was later fired by the Sheriff's Office. Cardinal and Bergquist resigned.

The female deputy who was attacked by Christensen has since sued him, the county, the sheriff and others alleging the agency regularly subjected her and other female employees to sexual misconduct by male colleagues, discouraged them from reporting it and retaliated against her for disclosing wrongdoing.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
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The first Michigan Maple Weekend of the year is being celebrated across central and southern Michigan this weekend, but Mother Nature has made syrup production challenging this year.

Ron Rhynard predicts not a stellar production year, but a decent one. Hes president of Sugar Bush, the maple syrup-producing section of the Shepherd Maple Syrup Festival.

The warm weather when we had it get 60 at night put an end to the run, he said. The warm temperatures scare me more than the cold.

Alternating episodes of freezing and thawing cause the sap to move within maple trees, according to the Michigan Maple Syrup Association, and while this happens for a few weeks in the spring and fall, spring is when most maple syrup is produced because the weather conditions are generally more favorable for sap flow.

Its like farming  you cant control the weather, you take what you can get, Rhynard said.

His preference is a harder winter, followed by a cooler spring in the 50s or less. The unseasonably warm weather threw things off and if temperatures had remained in the 50s-60s another half week to week, We probably would have been done, he said. When the buds get too far along, the sap gets a bitter taste to it.

His ideal sap run temperatures are 40 during the day and 20-25 at night. Sugar Bushs normal production is from March 1 into the first week or two of April. They try to tap some silver or soft maples, as well as the harder sugar maples.

For the Sugar Bushs open house this weekend, Id like to see it get in the low to mid-40s, he said. My fear is that the upper 30s like theyre calling for Friday and Saturday, were not going to get the sap running.

When cold days hit earlier this year, he explained, It took a day or so of that warmer weather before the trees really took off and ran.

If they dont have sap flowing this weekend, theyll run the evaporator with water instead to simulate the process. And when conditions are right, production will be in full swing.

We might be busy next week by the looks of it, Rhynard said.

Syrup production also has been challenging at the Chippewa Nature Center, said Kyle Bagnall, manager of historical programs. Mid-March usually is peak flow, but this year it was mid-February.

The fear was that would continue unabated and wed bud out early and wed be done, he said. Were kind of back in a cold snap now, which has slowed production, which is good for us.

Soft maple trees tend to bud first, then the harder sugar and black maples that CNC taps.

The hard maple will give you 2 to 4 percent sugar, while the soft maple is half that, Bagnall said. That leads to the often cited 40-1 ratio of gallons of sap to finished syrup.

In Alaska, theyll tap birches. Youre talking 80 to 1 for birch, he said. Other trees can be tapped as well  walnut, which has a different flavor than would be expected, and even box elder, although with the latter not only is the sap more watery, the trees tend to be smaller.

The Chippewa Nature Center is hosting its annual Maple Syrup Day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Events include a pancake meal for purchase until 2 p.m., plus free games, crafts, music and demonstrations of sap boiling and tree tapping. For details see http://www.chippewanaturecenter.org/events-programs/maple-syrup-day/

The Shepherd Sugar Bush will host an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at its building, 415 N. 3rd St., Shepherd. In addition to demonstrations and childrens activities, there will be free pancakes and maple syrup, maple candy, cookies and maple ice cream cones. Tours of the Sugar Bush also will be available during the Shepherd Maple Syrup Festival, April 27-30, but syrup production will be over then.

Michigan Maple Weekend will be celebrated in Northern Lower Michigan the weekend of March 25-26 and in the Upper Peninsula during April 1-2. For locations and times, see michiganmapleweekend.com
The late Patricia (Schreiner) Naegele gave a gift of $525,000 from her estate to heart research at Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin.

Naegele, who passed away July 25, 2015, was a dedicated supporter of research along with her husband, the late Robert Naegele, since 1987.

The Robert and Patricia Schreiner Naegele Endowment for Heart Research endowment will fund continued research in heart health by Marshfield Clinic clinicians and scientists.

Patricia and Roberts commitment to philanthropy throughout their lives is inspiring, said Teri Wilczek, chief philanthropy officer at Marshfield Clinic Health System Foundation. Their vision for the future of accessible, compassionate care will help us advance heart research for years to come.

Naegele was born and raised in Marshfield, graduating in 1943 from Marshfield High School. She and her husband, Robert, met in Milwaukee and were married in Marshfield in 1946. After their marriage, they moved to Midland where they lived, worked and were actively involved in the community until Robert passed away in August 2000. The couple supported many causes throughout their lives.

Though Naegele did not spend her adult life in Marshfield, she never forgot the community she once called home.

The Robert and Patricia Schreiner Naegele Endowment for Heart Research ensures that Bob and Pats legacy will continue to support research at Marshfield Clinic, said Karen Piel, gift planning officer at MCHS Foundation. Pat knew the importance of heart health in our Wisconsin communities, and she wanted to make a difference beyond her lifetime. Her remarkable generosity will make a significant impact on the future of research and patient care.

Fritz Wenzel, interim executive director, Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, knew the Naegeles well and visited with them often.

We are so pleased and grateful for the estate gift from Pat Naegele, Wenzel said. This gift will go a long way to support heart research conducted here in Marshfield. As we move toward health services research, we are working on research areas that will translate to patient care as quickly as possible. The diseases that affect the heart are most certainly conditions where our emphasis lies. We thank all who made this gift possible.

Naegele also played a key role at Marshfield Clinic as a member of the Clinics National Advisory Council from 1991-2013. The National Advisory Council served as consultants to Marshfield Clinic to enhance the Clinics ability to provide quality health care and to continue its leadership role in medical research and education, before the Marshfield Clinic Health System board of directors was created.

Robert and Patricia Naegele also were featured in MCHS Foundations Legacy Book, a collection of stories from Marshfield Clinic supporters celebrating Marshfield Clinics 100th anniversary. In the book, Naegele shared, I am one of the privileged to have been born and raised in Marshfield, and I did know the quality of life was better because of the special doctors and staff serving us at the Marshfield medical complex. Giving, doing what we can while we enjoy the fruits of what life has to offer means leaving benefits to those after we have gone.
JC Penney has announced its Midland store will be one of 138 locations closing as part of its effort to advance sustainable growth and long-term profitability.

Other Michigan stores closing are in Battle Creek, Escanaba, Holland, Houghton, Kingsford and Sault Ste. Marie.

About 5,000 positions nationwide will be impacted by the store closures, most of which will occur in June.

JC Penney is in the process of identifying relocation opportunities within the company for leaders, according to the company.

Additionally, JC Penney will provide outplacement support services for those eligible associates who will be leaving the company.

Most affected stores will begin the liquidation process on April 17.

Here is the list of all affected locations.

The first JC Penney store opened in Midland in March 1939, on the north corner of Main and Ashman streets, on the first floor of the Reinhart building. The Penney store served Midland from 1939 until March 26, 1954, when fire demolished the Reinhart building, destroying the Penney's store, other business establishments and professional offices. Construction already was underway before the fire to move the business across the street to a new location. JC Penney was only out of business for two weeks; the new store opened in April 1954.



The Midland store was remodeled in October 1976, and again in 1984,

On Aug. 15, 1990, it was announced J.C. Penney would be one of four anchor stores at Midland Mall.

The downtown store closed as the new one in Midland Mall opened in October 1991.

The downtown store was demolished in January 1992, making way for the Ashman Court Hotel.




The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.

Thursday, March 16

12:40 a.m.  A person was arrested at East Patrick Road and Bayliss Street for marijuana possession.

1:08 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at North Saginaw Road and Sturgeon Avenue for driving without a valid license.

1:38 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at East Lyon Road and Bayliss Street for driving on a suspended license and ticketed for improper plate.

Wednesday, March 15

10:38 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at U.S. 10 and Jefferson Avenue for driving on a suspended license.

4:30 p.m.  Police assisted probation agents in the 200 block of West Ellsworth Street.

7:11 p.m.  Police assisted Child Protective Services in the 300 block of Sandy Ridge Court.

8:23 p.m.  Deputies were sent to an Ingersoll Township home after a report of unwanted guests.

10:23 p.m.  A motorist was arrested in the 2000 block of North Saginaw Road for drunken driving.

11:03 p.m.  A deputy investigated a conditional bond violation in Mount Haley Township.

Tuesday, March 14

8:23 a.m.  Police investigated a case of fraud in the 5100 block of Dale.

9:59 a.m.  Deputies received a referral from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding inappropriate contact between boys, both age 6. Counseling options are being sought.

10:23 a.m.  Police investigated a case of fraud in the 600 block of Lambert Road.

11:31 a.m.  Property was stolen from the 1800 block of South Saginaw Road.

12:49 p.m.  Property in the 1100 block of James Savage Road was damaged.

1:07 p.m.  Officers were sent to the 1700 block of Dilloway Drive to investigate a case of fraud.

2:20 p.m.  A Lincoln Township woman, 55, reported someone used her checking account information to purchase UBER services in the amount of $108.83.

2:33 p.m.  Police investigated a case of theft and fraud in the 600 block of Hillcrest Drive.

4:22 p.m.  Police assisted probation agents in the 200 block of West Ellsworth Street.

5:27 p.m.  An Edenville Township woman, 43, reported a possum was lying on the porch near the door. The woman said she left the animal alone and let it walk away.

11:50 p.m.  A Coleman man, 35, was arrested in Greendale Township for driving while his license was restricted.
The following column was provided by the Michigan Press Association in conjunction with Sunshine Week, March 12-18, which is designed to shed light on the need for government transparency.

Newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst described the grist of his industry this way: News is something which somebody wants suppressed.

By that measure, Michigan is a state teeming with potential news stories.

Weve been stuck with an F grade in public access to information, and a rating of 50th out of 50 states in transparency and accountability in government, since a 2015 study by the Center for Public Integrity.

That dubious ranking, and the conditions in Michigan and across a deeply divided country, make this years observance of Sunshine Week extremely timely and relevant for citizens, the press, advocacy groups and anyone who does business with government entities.

Sunshine Week is a nationwide celebration of open government and readily accessible public information. Its promoted in our state by the Michigan Press Association, which represents and lobbies for not only the news industry, but for the rights of all Michiganders to have insight into the workings of their elected leaders.

Right now, the Michigan Legislature, the governor and the lieutenant governor all are exempted from the Freedom of Information Act  only one of two states with that blackout at both the legislative and executive levels. The consequences of that still resonate in the frustratingly inconclusive trail of accountability on the Flint water crisis, which is a month away from its three-year anniversary of misery for city residents. Criminal investigations have tagged responsibility as high as emergency managers appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder, but with exemptions in place, the public can only see the documents that the governor has decided to release.

Is it any wonder citizens in Flint, and their elected representatives, talk of a crisis of trust, as well as one of public utilities?

Last year, bills died in committee that would have extended the FOIA to the governor and legislators. In what would appear to be an encouraging development, that push has been revived under House Bills 4148-4157. One of the bills, 4149, even puts a bow on it by renaming FOIA to the Freedom of Information and Legislative Open Records Act. That, coupled with public campaigning by Lt. Gov. Brian Calley for more transparency in government, might lead you to believe that our leaders are serious about improving the states standing on transparency scorecards.

Not so fast  lets read the fine print:

 All appeals would go through a state Legislative Open Records Act coordinator, and it would ban the right to sue through civil court;

 The acts would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2019, and nothing made prior to that would be considered public records;

 Records and communications related to registered lobbyists would be public, but Lansing is home to a great many unregistered lobbyists and influencers;

 It provides an exemption for communications with constituents  in effect, any person in a legislators home district whom is influencing in any way would fall under that designation;

 It provides an overly broad internet-use exemption, without detailing what those specific exemptions would be. Personal information is understandable, but general communications and other records could be cloaked.

This kind of improvement would only feed a growing cynicism that government is an insular club that doesnt serve the interests of the people it represents.

Last fall, MLive reporter Emily Lawler teamed with the Michigan Campaign Finance Network to expose scores of secret accounts where corporate cash is flowing to state lawmakers, with no public access to who is donating, or how it is being spent.

What it means is Michigan legislators potentially can be bought and sold, said Jane Briggs-Bunting, president of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government.

The reporting by Lawler and Craig Mauger from MCFN is a finalist for best investigative reporting in the Associated Press news awards. Or, as Mr. Hearst might have said during Sunshine Week: That suppressed information sounds a lot like news.

John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group, which includes eight newspapers and the mlive.com website.
Military senior officers from nations throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region gathered March 14 and 15, during the first-ever Pacific Air Forces-hosted F-35 Symposium, to discuss the future of F-35 operations in the Pacific.



"The F-35 is not just a new fighter, it's a fundamentally different capability,"" said U.S. Air Force Gen. Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy, PACAF commander, during his opening remarks. "From the technology to the integrated training, it brings an unprecedented combination of lethality, survivability, and adaptability, to the fight. The F-35 is the backbone of future joint and combined air operations."



As the Pacific's 5th Generation Center of Excellence, PACAF will shape all aspects of employment and integration for fifth-generation aircraft in the region, enhancing bilateral relations between Pacific allies.

Subject matter experts from Japan, Australia and the Republic of Korea as well as the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force participated in open discussions, briefings and expert panels focused on setting the stage for future F-35 operations in the Pacific.



The two day symposium delivered an occasion for the U.S.'s Pacific allies to fuse with experts with the F-35 Joint Program Office, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps to learn more about fifth-generation aviation.



Sharing information and lessons learned was the centerpiece to the event. Participating nations formed the baseline of future F-35 operations and engagements through discussion on F-35 bed down, integration, logistics, sustainment and combat operations. O'Shaughnessy noted that the symposium would not be a one-off event, but the first in a reoccurring schedule of forums that bring F-35 stakeholders together.



"We have a rare face-to-face opportunity to dive into an extremely sophisticated jet, as a joint and multinational team, to maximize the interoperability of the most lethal weapons system to grace the skies," added O'Shaughnessy. "The F-35's ability to fuse multi-domain information is a game-changing capability that will give us a tactical advantage. It's because of the F-35's fusing capability that we must enhance the interoperability among all partners and allies who fly it."



The F-35 is a next-generation multi-role fighter that combines advanced stealth with speed, agility and a 360-degree view of the battlespace and will form the backbone of air combat superiority for decades to come. The two-day symposium served as a springboard for F-35's future in the Pacific by strengthening the forces involved, leading to a better, more fully interoperable joint and coalition team.



"Together with our Pacific allies and partners, we're sending a clear message to our neighbors and friends in the region," said Brig. Gen. Craig Wills, PACAF's Strategy, Plans and Programs director. "We will continue to invest in the combat capability required to assure our ability to defend the security and stability in this region and to uphold the rules-based international order."



This inaugural Pacific F-35 Symposium featured the largest gathering of fifth-generation warfighters in history. Approximately 91 senior officers and F-35 experts from a variety of organizations participated. Among the organizations represented were U.S. Pacific Command, Air Combat Command, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Marine Corps Forces Pacific and the Air Force Integration Office.



"The scale of participation we've seen with the F-35 Symposium accentuates just how important the F-35 is to us and our allies. The Lightning II is a phenomenal fighter and an incredible investment in our warfighting capability and ability to defend freedom," Wills said.



U.S. F-35s have reached Initial Operational Capability with Marines and Airmen both flying operational and combat ready aircraft. In addition to the F-35As with the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, ten F-35Bs from the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing out of Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz., are deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, with six more scheduled to arrive later this year.



Japan started its pilot training program in late 2016, the Republic of Korea is scheduled to receive its first aircraft in 2018 and Australia has been training pilots in two Royal Australian Air Force F-35s in Arizona since late 2014.
BLOOMINGTON  The owners of Eastland Mall on Friday said the upcoming closure of J.C. Penney is an opportunity to reuse that retail space and the space being vacated later this month by Macy's.

J.C. Penney announced Friday the locations of 138 stores it will close, including its longtime Eastland store, that will lead to loss of 5,000 jobs nationwide.

The company said most of the closures will occur in June with liquidation beginning in April.

City of Bloomington staff members are actively partnering with CBL & Associates Properties Inc., the company that owns and manages Eastland, to assist with the redevelopment of the J.C. Penney space, said Austin Grammer, the city's economic development coordinator.

"Obviously, big box stores are having trouble throughout the country, but this does underscore the need for us to work with Eastland Mall to help them reinvent themselves," added Mayor Tari Renner.

The closure announcement is the second for a major Eastland retailer in recent months.

Earlier this year, Macy's announced it was closing on March 31. CBL is purchasing that property for $2 million, according to property transfer records.

"While it is unfortunate when a department store closes, we view it as an opportunity to recapture underperforming space and deliver a fresh new mix that drives increased traffic and sales to the entire property," CBL spokesman Stacey Keating said in an email on Friday.

"In anticipation of these closures at Eastland, we have engaged in discussions with tenants for both locations. However, it is too early to announce concrete plans or potential tenants."

The 71,000-square-foot J.C. Penney opened in November 1966 at what was then called Eastland Shopping Center.

The closure of the 154,000-square-foot Macy's store, open since 2006, will affect 55 employees. It is unknown how many employees the local J.C. Penney store has.

Grammer said he is optimistic that CBL will be successful in redeveloping the J.C. Penney and Macy's spaces in light of the recent investments nearby in the Empire Street/Veterans Parkway corridor by a number of national retailers, including Dicks Sporting Goods, PetSmart, HomeGoods, Fresh Thyme, Five Below, Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), OshKosh BGosh and others yet to come.

Several of the new stores opened in the former 88,000-square-foot Kmart store that the developer subdivided to create multiple spaces for retailers.

We've seen in the age of people shopping online that the small specialty stores do better than the big box stores. I believe the figure is that there has not been an enclosed mall that has been built in the United States in the last decade, said Renner.

Renner noted the conversion of Normal's College Hills Mall, which opened in 1980 as an enclosed shopping center and later was largely demolished and rebuilt in 2005 as the Shoppes at College Hills, an outdoor center that retained the original mall's anchor stores as standalone buildings.

That's what I mean by helping (Eastland Mall) reinvent themselves, said Renner.

But Gordman's in the Shoppes at College Hills is among other recent retail stores in trouble, with the parent company filing bankruptcy last week and the company announcing liquidation of its 160-plus stores.

Other recent store closings in the Twin Cities include MC Sports, The Limited, Radio Shack and two Gap stores, all at Eastland Mall.

Renner said Bloomington and Normal raising their sales tax in 2015 one percentage point to 8.75 percent is not related to the store closings.

If that were the case, Macy's would have closed its store in Champaign that has a higher local sales tax "rather the one in Bloomington, said Renner. That's not what national chain stores are looking at. They need raw sales.

Renner added: Even with the one penny increase, we have the lowest sales tax of any of the metropolitan areas in Central Illinois. We're lower than Decatur, Champaign, Urbana, Peoria and Springfield. Those are at least 9 percent except us.

Other J.C. Penney stores in Illinois on the closure list include ones in Canton, Effingham, Macomb, Peru, Sterling and Woodridge.

In addition to the store closings, J.C. Penney also will close a supply facility in Florida and relocate a supply facility in California. The company said it will provide outplacement support services for those eligible associates who will be leaving the company.

"The national retail landscape is constantly changing and retailers must adapt and evolve to meet the demands of the consumer," said Grammer.
DUI crash  A Normal woman faces charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of an accident after she crashed her vehicle into a utility pole early Friday, according to the Bloomington Police Department.

Police said Elizabeth Menssen was driving north on Main Street when the single-vehicle accident happened at 12:34 a.m. at the intersection with Chestnut Street.

The driver, who was the sole occupant of the vehicle, was not transported to the hospital, police said.

All traffic was routed onto Locust Street from Main Street while Ameren crews shut off power to repair the pole, police said. The street was reopened to traffic at 1:45 a.m.

She posted $335 on the charges and was released.
NORMAL  The Illinois attorney general's office said Thursday the Normal City Council's policy for public comment at meetings is illegal and should be changed.

"The Public Access Bureau concludes that the (town's) rules governing public comment impermissibly restrict the right of members of the public to address public officials at public meetings," according to a letter from Deputy Public Access Counselor Neil Olson. "The (council) violated (the Illinois Open Meetings Act) by prohibiting members of the public from addressing it more often than once every 45 days."

In response, Olson wrote, the council should pass an amended policy. Mayor Chris Koos called for such a change March 6, and a proposal is on the agenda for the council's March 20 meeting.

Koos said Thursday the new policy, to be published Friday morning, is what he suggested March 6: Speakers would be able to speak at as many meetings as they wish, for three minutes each time, and each meeting would have a maximum of 20 minutes of public comments. Current rules allow each speaker two minutes for a total of 10 minutes of comments per meeting.

Several other current restrictions on comments  including comments must be related to an agenda item; speakers must notify the town of their intent to speak at least two hours before the meeting; and speakers must state their home address before speaking  would stay in place.

Were pretty much in line with other policies in the state, Koos said of the new policy. "We do this with the understanding that on issues that are more volatile, well suspend the rules and hear more people.

Marc Tiritilli, who is opposing Koos for mayor in the April 4 election and pushed for the 45-day policy to be changed, described the new rules as "definitely a major step forward.

Olson also wrote that the town's policy should no longer ask speakers to speak only about agenda items, state their address or notify the town of their intent to speak two hours before a meeting.

Koos noted those are "recommendations, not rulings."

"We will absolutely require that public comment be issues pertinent to the agenda. Were not going to back off of that. The address issue makes no difference to me one way or another, he said. We will still require prior notice. We think thats prudent."

Tiritilli noted other local public bodies, including the Bloomington City Council, don't restrict comments to agenda items or require notice so far in advance. The city's policy doesn't say whether a speaker should give a home address.

If they recommended they go, I would say we should remove them, Tiritilli said of the rules. A lot of intelligent people have a lot to contribute to the discussion, and weve been excluding their input for far too long.

Tiritilli said he doesn't believe the town would have changed the policy without the state review and a bill from state Rep. Steve Andersson, R-Geneva, that would have eliminated the 45-day rule. Andersson said Normal's policy inspired the bill, which which is expected to get a second reading this spring.

Koos said he hadn't see the letter as of 6:30 p.m. Thursday, and the proposed policy changes are "proactive and not reactive to this letter.

(Corporation Counsel Brian Day) called after we made the announcement at the last council meeting and gave an overview of what we were doing, which he thought would put an end to it, Koos said.
Cheers

... and Happy St. Patrick's Day: "May there always be work for your hands to do; May your purse always hold a coin or two; May the sun always shine on your windowpane; May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain; May the hand of a friend always be near you; May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you."

The Sharin' of the Green parade steps off at 1 p.m. Saturday in uptown Normal. Dust off your green tie and your leprechaun shoes, dye your beard red and dance around uptown circle.

Cheers

... to the Bloomington Fire Department and residents and businesses of Bloomington, for their shared work in reducing the number of fire calls within the city during 2016.

While there were 138 fewer fire calls in Bloomington last year than the 2,625 fire calls in 2015, the resulting property loss rose by about $1.7 million.

Last year's fire calls included 83 structure fires, compared to 110 structure fires the previous year.

Cheers

... to the organizers of last week's International Women's Day rally and an anti-hate rally. Hundreds of people showed up at both events to show their support for women's rights and respect for all of our neighbors.

At the government level, the Twin Cities have been publicly at odds for the last few weeks. It's good to know that the citizenry of both Normal and Bloomington can put aside differences to show their support for members of our communities. Both mayors and county government leaders participated, too.

Our communities have so much to give. We need to remember that.

Jeers

... to the state of Illinois for the "clerical error" that mistakenly had part of Deputy Gov. Leslie Munger's salary paid from a pool of insurance premiums that feed the group health insurance account.

Gov. Rauner says it was a mistake, and we'll take his word. But during these years of budgetary problems, it's crucial that our state workers triple-check their work on such items to make sure Illinois won't be in even worse shape, or that its leaders will have another black mark against their names.

The other half of Munger's salary will be paid from federal money the state receives for human services, The Associated Press reported.

Cheers

... to Mayor Tari Renner, for rethinking his plan for the city liquor commission. The commission used to have three members: the mayor and two appointees. Renner changed that in recent months, so that he would lead the one-person commission. He now has decided to resume having a commission with two appointees in addition to himself.

In a city the size of Bloomington, the liquor commission has too many duties for the work to fall to one person. Having multiple people on the commission also lessens the possibility of anyone saying a decision was made solely for personal reasons.
In an interview with the UK's Rollacoaster magazine, One Direction cutie pie Liam Payne revealed that his band had the distinct honor of being thrown out of a hotel by the future President of the United States! And all because they refused to answer a summons to Tiffany Trump's chamber in the middle of the night (I mean, we're assuming it's Tiffany because if it was Ivanka, that would be really weird).

Let's let Liam tell it:

"Trump actually kicked us out of his hotel once. You wouldn't believe it. It was about [meeting] his daughter. He phoned up our manager and we were asleep. He said 'well, wake them up' and I was like 'no' and then he wouldn't let us use the underground garage. Obviously in New York we can't really go outside. New York is ruthless for us.So he was like, 'OK, then I don't want you in my hotel.' So we had to leave."



This outrageous story is completely unsurprising given everything we know about Trump, except for the fact that it seems like he was actually trying to do something nice for Tiffany. Can you imagine how 'Like a Bird' would have popped if it featured Zayn and Harry instead of Sprite and Logic? We'll never know. Damn.





[h/t The Cut]

Splash image via John Salangsang/BFA
An 8-year-old girl wrote a letter to the thief who ransacked their home in Florida on Feb. 13. Wendy Chay Son poured her heart in her message, asking the thief why he robbed their house and wishing the person to "change and be good."

Chay Son returned home from school with her mother Alberthina to find their home was broken into. Chay Son's father, Jose, was at work when the robbery happened.

Among the items stolen from the household included jewelry, two computers, cellphones, some clothes and shoes, and the tablet the 8-year-old used for her school assignments. The thief also took two piggy banks which had around $180, according to Palm Beach Post.

Upset, Chay Son was prompted to write the letter to put up by the window at their house. She wanted the thief to know what the person made a family sad.

"There are good kids and people in this house," the girl wrote, as per ABC 13. "We are people who do not steal. We are sad that you have been stealing in this house," Chay Son added.

She also asked the thief why resort to stealing and she offered she will teach the person to be nice. "I hope you will change and be good. God will forgive you," Son said in the letter.

Chay Son's mother said the house was their first-owned home since moving from Guatemala nine years ago. They have only been living in it for a month after moving from a rented house in Delray Beach. It was formerly a crack house before the Chay Sons moved in.

Neighbors opened a GoFundMe for the Chay Sons after learning about the robbery and it was there that the public got wind the 8-year-old girl's letter. The fundraiser aimed to raise $3,500 but it has now reached over $4,000 as of press time.
A new middle school located in Lake Nona, Florida is set to open its doors to students this August amid a looming controversy. Parents are demanding that the Innovation Park Middle School change its name. They are upset because of its "disgusting" acronym: IPMS.

It was officials of the school board who picked out the name for IPMS. They apparently compromised between Innovation Way and Moss Park, two popular sites around the school's location, according to CNN.

What's making matter worse is that the school's chosen color is red. Parents said they cannot imagine their children wearing red school shirts with the letters IPMS printed on it for inter-school competitions.

"They just don't want to be ridiculed or be made fun of from other students from other schools," a parent, Christal Feldman, told Click Orlando. "They're trying to find themselves and middle schoolers can be harsh and mean and we're already seeing it at the elementary stage, so the middle school level it's going to be even worse," she added.

Feldman is one of the people actively seeking the IPMS name change. So far, 302 people have signed the petition on Change.Org.

Daryl Flynn, a member of the school board who suggested the names, confirmed receiving a deluge of emails from parents demanding a name change. Flynn said the controversial issue "puts a pall on what should be an exciting time for a new school," as per Orlando Sentinel.

Flynn also said she did not notice the name's association with premenstrual syndrome (PMS). "We feel the abbreviation of the proposed name - IPMS (Innovation Park Middle School) is a potential disgrace and embarrassment to the students, faculty and school board of Orange County," the petition read.

The school board has reconvened to discuss the name change Tuesday following the outrage from parents. It's likely that the new name will be revealed in the first week of April.
A popular Oklahoma City restaurant put up a sign against transgender customers and it received backlash from many. In the sign, the owner wrote they do not have transgender bathroom so customers should be careful to not get caught in the wrong one.

Transgender bathroom bills in different states such as North Carolina and Texas received a flurry of criticisms and concern from many especially the supporters of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) community. This, however, was not the first time such move took place in Oklahoma City but reports said the sign has been up for 10 months now, News 4 San Antonio reported.

Bob Warner, the owner of the restaurant called Steak and Catfish Barn, said the sign is not at all discriminatory or threatening like what others believe. He said the intent of the sign is to protect not only his property but his customers.

"We have a lot of redneck guys that come in here, truck drivers and everything," Warner explained. "They're big husky guys, and I said 'Man alive! If their wife or their little girl walked in that bathroom and a man followed them in there, I wouldn't have a restaurant."

Warner also said his transgender patrons are still welcome to use his bathroom but they have to be dressed appropriately. The restaurant owner did not elaborate on what he meant with appropriate clothing.

Even though the sign has been up for the past 10 months, a transgender woman in the area, Paula Schonauer, said she was made aware of it just recently. Troy Stevenson, with Freedom Oklahoma, said the sign made him feel disturbed as it implied threat of potential violence against someone who will use the bathroom that does not correspond to his or her biological gender, as per KFOR.com.

Schonauer continues that she's hoping the incident will be an opportunity to show what transgender people deal with every day. It is unclear if police will be involved in the future in case someone complains about the sign at the restaurant.

Do you think the sign was discriminatory or do you believe the owner was really protecting his customers and his business? Let us known in the comments below!
Amid the plans of repealing and eventually replacing the Affordable Care Act, which is best known as the ObamaCare, President Donald Trump appealed to his supporters regarding rallying behind the bill. However, he admitted the healthcare policy they are working on will affect his supporters.

The proposed replacement will remove Medicaid and federal support to help Americans get private health insurance and will base the insurance on a person's age and not income. With this, experts conducted studies and found out it is possible the new health care policy will result to 26 million Americans losing their health insurance coverage by 2026.

Trump seemed reserved regarding pushing through with the repeal when he appeared on "Fox News" and talked with Tucker Carlson. Carlson asked the president if the new healthcare policy will hurt his supporters and he conceded there are a lot of things that are not consistent as opposed to his promises during the campaign like when he said he will provide insurance for everybody. He also admitted Democrats will never vote for the new bill and for the Republicans, he knew around six senators will not support it, Vanity Fair reported.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration gave conflicting statements about the ObamaCare replacement bill. Trump said he was open to major changes in the bill while his White House adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said the bill was already in its final form.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan also said on Wednesday he made some necessary improvements and refinements to the proposed bill in order to answer the concerns of the people, The New York Times shared. Many Republicans spoke against Trump and Ryan's plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

Trump then urged his supporters at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, saying his administration wants Americans to be able to purchase the health insurance plan they want and not what the government forced on them in the past years. He added, "We're going to all get together, we're going to get something done."

It is believed the ObamaCare replacement will be finalized by next year. The Trump administration never released a specific timeline on the proposed repeal and replace move.
A North Carolina couple shared their story about their baby girl getting a heart donor just minutes after they left church when their co-church goers offered prayers fort their daughter. The couple regarded it as a "God moment."

The parents, Melanie and Mike Leitner, said their daughter Ella Kate had a large mass on a heart ventricle. Doctors told them about the diagnosis last November. On January 29 this year, after the couple attended Sunday mass services at their church in Mooresville, they received a call about a heart donor match for their child, ABC News shared.

Melanie said, "Celine, our other coordinator, called and said we got the offer for the perfect heart for Ella. If this wasn't a God moment, I don't know what could be." They placed Ella Kate's name under transplant list shortly after the diagnosis. The doctors also told the parents the heart transplant was necessary because Ella Kate might not survive for long. Melanie and Mike also revealed they started to lose hope because their daughter's condition worsened, Daily Mail revealed.

Ella Kate, who is now one-year-old and doctors said she is doing well, had complications regarding breathing. She was also gray most of the time. She underwent surgery after the heart donor match call and Dr. Gonzalo Wallis of the Levine Children's Hospital's pediatric heart transplant program took care of the child.

Despite the success of the operation and the happiness of the couple, Melanie and Mike said receiving a transplant for their daughter meant heartbreak for another family. Melanie said the other family lost their child but even through the dark time, they made a decision to help save Ella Kate.

The story came out days after an Oklahoma couple decided to push through with their pregnancy despite knowing their baby will not live long after her delivery. The parents of the baby girl, Keri and Royce Young, said they wanted to develop their baby girl to the full term even if she does not have a cortex so as to donate her organs that are needed by many. Below is the couple's story:
A 17-year-old armed teenager opened fire at a school in France. Authorities succeeded in arresting the perpetrator, who wounded at least three people.

The student from Tocqueville High School, located in a small southeastern French Town called Grasse, wounded the headmaster and two more, who were not identified. The injuries were only light gunshot wounds. France's Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said the teen did a crazy act and described the teen as a young man fascinated by firearms.

There were conflicting reports about the total number of people injured from the incident. Other publications claimed there were four injured from gunshot wounds while others said there were only three. On top of those injured from when the student opened fire, authorities confirmed five more received injuries due to the stampede after shots rang out. Other publications claimed six people received injuries from the attempt to get out of the school, Washington Post revealed.

The teen had a rifle, two handguns, and two grenades with him when he went to school. The headmaster spotted the teen taking out his handgun but before he could do more serious damages, the headmaster rushed to the teen and tried to reason with him. The teen reportedly looked at American-style mass killing videos and drew inspiration from them.

One of the videos he watched was the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. The teen also loved playing a violent game called "Hatred."

Police said the incident was not related to terrorism, Aljazeera reported. The possible motive for the attack was reportedly because of the teenager's difficulty in establishing a relationship with the other students.

The suspect was of European descent. Authorities did not release any other information about the teen.

Authorities ordered a lock down in all schools in the area after the shooting. It was ruled the incident was an isolated case.

The attack at the high school came after the November 2015 Paris attack wherein 130 people died when the members of the Islamic State carried out simultaneous attacks. France continued to be under the state of emergency.
In October 2015 Microsoft's Corporate VP for Surface, Panos Panay, launched 'Surface Book' at a special event in his typically excitable way to say that it was 2X more powerful than Apple's MacBook Pro. Panay had previously tried to sell their Surface Pro tablet as a 'better MacBook Air.' Panay and his team are obsessed with beating Apple in the hardware game and recently introduced the Surface Studio desktop to outdo Apple's iMac. They've gotten great reviews and applause from the PC press for their hardware, but that's about it. Their sales are meaningless against Apple, in fact an embarrassment. But if anything, the Surface team have persistently marched on like worker bees with nothing distracting them from their mission of challenging Apple through innovation. Yet if a new report surfacing today turns out to be true, we could be witnessing a crack in Microsoft's confidence.



The Surface Book is a great product, especially if you're in the market for both a tablet and notebook. The problem is that it's currently overpriced and that early adopters got burnt with a nightmare 'Sleep of Death' bug that all but killed any sales momentum dead in its tracks.

With a little patience, both of the initial Surface Book problems would have been sufficiently addressed. Now a new supply chain report has surfaced to confuse the issue. It appears that Microsoft may be about to kill the Surface Book's famed 2-in-1 design.

While I'd like to think that Microsoft is simply expanding its Surface Book line-up, the report is unyielding in its belief that the company has decided to cut costs by dropping its tablet mode and shifting to a traditional clam shell design so as to better compete against the MacBook Pro.

According to Digitimes, Microsoft's new Surface Book recently entered mass production and shipments are expected to rise each month. The sources believe that Microsoft is likely to announce the new notebook at the end of March or April.

The report goes on to note that "The new Surface Book is expected to adopt a clam shell design instead of its traditional 2-in-1 and will feature a starting price lower than that of its predecessors.

Microsoft has recently cut the prices for its existing Surface Book products with the Core i5 128GB model dropping from US$1,499 to US$1,299. The sources believe the move is meant to help Microsoft clear its inventory to welcome the new product's arrival.

The new Surface Book continues to feature a 13.5-inch display and chassis made of magnesium-aluminum-alloy. The product is expected to be priced at around US$1,000, much lower than the starting prices of Microsoft's existing Surface Books, which range from US$1,499-3,199.

The sources believe Microsoft's decision to lower the price range for its new Surface Book is because the existing Surface Book's high price level has significantly limited demand, while the detachable design also created conflict with its Surface Pro product line in terms of product position. Because of these two factors, the sources estimate that Microsoft only shipped 500,000 Surface Books in 2016."

Once again, it's hard to believe that Microsoft would actually shoot itself in the foot by killing off the one advantage that the Surface Book had over a MacBook Pro and other similar Windows based notebooks. Microsoft's advertised hard to show artists and engineers finally finding the perfect solution with a device with two distinct functions in one form factor.

So to kill off the 2-in-1 design instead of extending the Surface Book line-up to include a clam shell unit would be a black eye for Microsoft, plain and simple. It would expose Microsoft's confidence in itself for hardware as being paper thin.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that consumers and Businesses alike hate flaky companies constantly shifting strategies like season-to-season fashion.

Is Microsoft really dumb enough to drop their 2-in-1 form factor next quarter or has Taiwan's supply chain sources finally fallen off a cliff here by misinterpreting Microsoft's game plan?

While it's certainly an interesting development if true, we won't know what Microsoft is actually doing here until Panos Panay steps unto a stage to introduce the all-new Surface Book with a clam shell and spells out their notebook game plan.

William Shakespeare once wrote: To be or not to be, that is the question. And yes, it's the question of the day. Will Microsoft introduce a new extension to their Surface Book line-up in the weeks ahead with a clam shell design or will they admit that their unique 2-in-1 form factor was a miscalculated disaster?



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Not long ago, a friend and colleague of mine posted a query in a Buddhist academic group: what sutras or other suitably ancient Buddhist writings could one read today as appealing to something like the social activism we see in America now?

The ensuing discussion was lively and, for some perhaps, disappointing. In short, there are none. No pre-modern Buddhist writing can be found that will exhort people to go to the streets, to directly help the poor, or work to overcome systemic oppression.

However, this is true of all ancient traditions. All reflect and speak to a different context, a different set of needs in the people. What keeps religious and philosophical traditions alive are their universal teachings and their adaptability to new contexts.

As Buddhism has moved to different cultural and geographical contexts, it has reappropriated the best of its own teachings that could be applied to the new situation. The India of the 1st-5th centuries C.E. was vastly different from the India of the Buddhas time. Buddhists had to adjust and adapt to that, re-energizing their own tradition by engaging deeply with increasingly sophisticated Hindu/Brahmanic philosophies and practices. When Buddhism went to Tibet and to China, there, too, vastly different philosophies and practices challenged Buddhists: What do we keep? What do we alter? How do we present what we think is most important in ways that will be taken up in this new culture?

And in many ways, this is exactly what is happening in Western Buddhism(s) today. We are tasked with asking those same questions. Things we keep often include architecture, clothing, styles of sitting, chanting (languages), often structures of hierarchy with old titles like lama and new like venerable. Things were altering include the strong patriarchy and isolation of most traditions. Our new presentations have been varied, from the poetry and romantic ideals of the beat generation to quests for simplicity and austerity of later years to contemporary fascination and pairing with neuroscience.

One of the needs of the current age, of course, is social engagement. As I wrote in January, Buddhism and Buddhists have always been socially engaged, just perhaps not in ways readily apparent to our 21st-century gaze.

In this video, Rev. Kosho Finch, of the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism, offers a lecture and discussion of Buddhist Social Engagement.

Topics include the life and edicts of Ashoka, which included provisions for universal healthcare (minimal, but public and free); rules on hunting and killing certain animals, etc.

The Japanese Prince Shotokus 17 Article Constitution, which was written in the 7th century and can be compared with the Magna Carta.

The text of the Medicine Buddha Sutra, with its verses on health care, economic disparity, and womens equality.

Moving forward, he discusses Thich Nhat Hanhs relationship to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Asian Buddhist attitudes toward marriage equality and abortion.

Rev. Finch concludes with thoughts on Where do we go from here discussing the pressures and complexities of our technologically interconnected age. He focuses especially on non-violence in the Civil Rights movement, how it worked in the US, how Gandhis movement worked in India, and why non-violence might not work right now in Tibet.

See also:
In 2009 I traveled to China to experience Chinese Buddhist monastic life and learn about the practice, philosophy, and history unique to Chan Buddhism. That trip was organized mostly for graduate students in Buddhism or Chinese culture/religion/history but the program has since grown in size and scope to look a bit like the one that was then run separately at Fo Guang Shan monastery in southern Taiwan.

My experience with the 2009 program was so positive that I applied for and participated in the 2010 Taiwan program as well and wrote about my experience here (and posted additional reflections and photos here). Today the Woodenfish Project, run by Ven. Yifa, is no longer affiliated with Fo Guang Shan, but continues its mission of offering firsthand experience of Chinese Buddhist monastic life.

The program based in Taiwan continues separately under Fo Guang Shans leadership and more information about it is available at https://www.fgs.org.tw/events/fgmonasticretreat/. That program is accepting applications now too.

Last year I returned to China once again, this time as teaching faculty. We settled in to Longquan Temple () in Taiyuan () for two weeks of classes and an intense meditation retreat before heading to Mt. Wutai () for a cultural tour. For reflections from recent participants, see the websites testimonials page. I would add that if you go, you will be joining an amazing group of people from all over the world. Its not everyone who chooses to spend a chunk of their summer vacation in a monastery in China, sharing tight quarters with other participants, waking each day at 5:30am, and practicing monastic discipline. Participants come mainly from Europe and the Americas, but some will be from mainland China itself  and we had two students from India in 2016.

Here are some of my photos from the trip.

I will be back this year to teach (missing out on the later portions of the program, unfortunately). If you have questions I could assist with as a faculty member, post them in the comments below. All general management questions should be directed to staff (be sure to read the thorough FAQ on the website first). From the site:
In my last post we looked at an origin myth of Hekate in which she was actually a human princess of the Tauri. In this post we are going to look at another myth about Hekate, the one where She begins life as the very human Iphigenia.

Iphigenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra and her story begins during the Trojan war.

Iphigenia

But when they had put to sea from Argos and arrived for the second time at Aulis, the fleet was wind-bound, and Calchas said that they could not sail unless the fairest of Agamemnons daughters were presented as a sacrifice to Artemis ; for the goddess was angry with Agamemnon, both because, on shooting a deer, he had said, Artemis herself could not (do it better), and because Atreus had not sacrificed to her the golden lamb. On receipt of this oracle, Agamemnon sent Ulysses and Talthybius to Clytaemnestra and asked for Iphigenia, alleging a promise of his to give her to Achilles to wife in reward for his military service.  The Library, Apollodorus.

One day, as some of the stories put it, Agamemnon was hunting and afterwards boasted that he was better at hunting than Artemis Herself. This of course angered the Goddess and She decided to punish him by not allowing his fleet to move at all. Divination revealed the only way to appease Artemis was to sacrifice one of Agamemnons daughters.

Agamemnon decides on Iphigenia (in some stories Iphigenia is specified in the divination) and sends Odysseus (or goes himself) to Clytemnestra with a concocted story to convince her to send Iphigenia to him. The story told is that Iphigenia will be given to Achilles as a reward for his military service. Clytemnestra agrees and sends her daughter along.

In Iphigenia at Aulis, she begins her part in the story as quite the innocent and naive child. Of course this is precisely what makes her so suitable for the sacrifice, a young maiden who knows little of the world outside of her own childs eye perception. In some versions of the story she doesnt realise she is to be sacrificed until the very end, but in others she learns of the ruse. When she first discovers her true purpose for being called on by her father she begs for it to not happen, for it is better to live a dishonourable life than to die.

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

If Artemis wishes to take my body, will I, a mortal, stand in the way of a goddess? No! Impossible! I give my body to Greece. Make the sacrifice! Eradicate Troy! For a long time to come that will be my monument, my children, my marriage, my fame!  Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides

But in the lead up to the sacrifice Iphigenia becomes a different person entirely. While listening to her mother and Achilles talk about how they want to stop the sacrifice, she suddenly changes her tune. In moments she goes from wilful scared child to a young woman willing to give all she can give for the sake of her father, her family and her people. She goes to the sacrifice willingly. Her reasons are many, to save her family, to help her people win the war, to destroy Troy, to honour and obey the Gods and because, in her words, men are far more important than women so how can she put her life above the lives of her father and his army.

There are a few different versions of what happens during the sacrifice. In some Agamemnon attends the sacrifice himself, but in others it is his men who perform the sacrifice and come to tell him about it afterwards. But the biggest difference is the end result. Of course in some of the stories Iphigenia is simply sacrificed, all goes well and the army is able to go to Troy.

But in other versions, such as in Hyginus Fabulae and Euripides Iphigenia at Aulis, she is about to be sacrificed when suddenly Artemis appears and snatches her away. In her place Artemis leaves a deer or calf to be slaughtered instead. She is then taken to Tauric Chersonese to become a priestess to Artemis and perform sacrifices of strangers to the Goddess there. Her story continues for much longer.

Iphigenia the Goddess

When the expedition had mustered a second time at Aulis, Agamemnon, while at the chase, shot a stag and boasted that he surpassed even Artemis. At this the goddess was so angry that she sent stormy winds and prevented them from sailing. Calchas then told them of the anger of the goddess and bade them sacrifice Iphigeneia to Artemis. This they attempt to do, sending to fetch Iphigeneia as though for marriage with Achilles. Artemis, however, snatched her away and transported her to the Tauri, making her immortal, and putting a stag in place of the girl upon the altar.  Cypria, fragment 1. So Clytaemnestra sent her, and Agamemnon set her beside the altar, and was about to slaughter her, when Artemis carried her off to the Taurians and appointed her to be her priestess, substituting a deer for her at the altar ; but some say that Artemis made her immortal.  Apollodorus, The Library Artemis made a bull calf appear by the altar instead of Iphigenia whom she carried off far away from Greece, to the Sea of Pontus with its welcoming name of Euxine, to Thoas son of Borysthenes. She called the tribe of nomads there Taurians because a bull had appeared instead of Iphigenia on the altar. She also named her Tauropolos. After the passage of time, Artemis transferred Iphigenia to what is called the White Island to be with Achilles and changed her into an ageless immortal deity, calling Her Orsilochia instead of Iphigenia. She became the companion of Achilles.  Antonius Liberalis, Metamorphases.

How Iphigenia becomes a Goddess is not really discussed in many of the myths, other than that it is Artemis who is responsible for her deification. As we can see in one of the fragments we have of Cypria, and the mention in The Library, how and when she becomes immortal is not really expounded upon. Its mostly mentioned as though in passing.

But we do know the virgin Goddess worshipped by the Tauri, while sometimes named Artemis, is other times identified as Iphigenia. Sometimes Iphigenia is nothing more than an epithet for Artemis, which leads some people, like Carl Kerenyi, to believe that Iphigenia was the original Greek virgin Huntress of people like the Tauri and was conflated with and eventually subsumed by Artemis. And it is important to remember that when writing about places they didnt live in or had never been to, it was common for ancient writers to use the name of a common Hellenic deity to make an unknown similar foreign deity more recognisable.

So it is possible that the story of Iphigenia arose out of the need to explain the existence of an unknown Goddess of a certain region. With no origin story of her own in the classic lore, the need arises to find a feasible origin for Her that fits well enough with the already existing lore. And so, an unknown Goddess named Iphigenia is created by Artemis, to be much like Artemis. The idea of Iphigenia being the Goddess in certain areas before Artemis took Her place is also implied by Pausanias.

There is also a temple of Artemis, with an image in the style of art of the present day. The priesthood is held by a virgin till she attains a marriageable age. Here, too, stands an ancient image : the inhabitants say it represents Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. If they are right, the temple must clearly have been made originally for Iphigenia.  Pausanias, Description of Greece, Aegira, XXVI.

Iphigenia and Hekate

I heard another story of Iphigenia told by the Arcadians, and I know that Hesiod in his Catalogue of Women says that Iphigenia did not die, but became Hecate by the will of Artemis. In harmony with this account, Herodotus writes that the Taurians on the borders of Scythia sacrifice castaways to a virgin, and say the virgin is Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon.  Pausanias, Description of Greece, Megara, XLIII.

But this is where things get tricky. While we can easily see the reason for and believe the stories of Iphigenia becoming a Goddess, there is more to it than that. In a few versions Iphigenia didnt just become a Goddess in Her own right, nor did She become merely an epithet of Artemis. In some stories Iphigenia is turned, by Artemis, into a Goddess named Hekate.

Unfortunately for us the most original text that we know of to contain this account, no longer exists. All we have is a small fragment, not even a fragment, just a small mention by Pausanias that he knew of or read about it in Hesiods now lost Catalogue of Women. There is also one other fragment, which is actually a mention of a mention of Hesiods Catalogue.

Stesichorus in the Oresteia follows Hesiod in identifying Iphigeneia daughter of Agamemnon with her whom we now call Hecate.  Philodemus, Piety (discussing Stesichorus, Oresteia, which is also lost), trans J.M. Edmonds.

And so we have at least two versions of the myth of Iphigenia where she is turned into Hekate, and both of them  Catalogue of Women and Oresteia  are unfortunately lost to time and only exist through mentions and quotes by other writers. This makes it extremely difficult to really get into this myth, to explore it and figure it out.

Without the original myths it is difficult to discuss what this might be all about, how this origin of Hekate can fit with the already well-established origins that we have. How can a Titaness, born of Titans, older than the Gods of Olympus and much respected and honoured by those younger Gods suddenly be a deified human? And then just looking at how vastly different Iphigenia is to the Goddess Hekate, well its a difficult one to parse to be honest.

Hekate, Artemis, Iphigenia and the Tauri

It is odd that the two myths regarding Hekate being human seem to involve and/or revolve around Tauris. In the one she is a human Princess, daughter of the king of Tauric Chersonese. In the other she is the defied Iphigenia, who was priestess to Artemis in Tauris. So it all seems to come back to Tauris.

Its possible this is all nothing more than an attempt to explain how three different Goddesses ended up being worshipped by a people who clearly only worshipped one Goddess. We have a foreign Goddess the early Greeks named Iphigenia being worshipped, some people name Her Artemis because, conflation, and lots of people name Artemis, Hekate. To reconcile these three we have one of Them turn another of Them into the third one. Voila! All fixed up.

But it also doesnt really work out. It still doesnt mesh with Hekates usual origin story. And without the original texts, the full stories about Iphigenia turning into Hekate, this isnt something I can really explore much further. Its one thing to have conflation between the three Goddesses, but its quite another to completely change a Titaness origin story in such a monumental way. It doesnt fit, and it doesnt make much sense at all.

But I think it must come back to the Tauri, there is something about that place and those people. That this place is a focus for both of Her human origin stories is telling. I just dont know what it is telling. Maybe I have it backwards, for all we know Hekate could have originated in Tauris and was subsequently subsumed by Iphigenia and then Artemis. We still dont know for sure where Hekates cultus originated, Tauris is not an impossibility.
Growing up in a white evangelical conservative Republican home, I remember my parents saying that my brothers, as white males, were the most discriminated against demographic in society. People in any other demographic, he said, would get hired before they did. I was also given to believe that evangelical Christians face persecution in the United States today. All of this is to say that even as a nonreligious progressive today, these graphs from a recent PRRI survey werent a complete surprise.

Thats right, more white evangelical Protestants believe there is a lot of discrimination against Christians than believe there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims. Note that these individuals were not asked to make a direct comparison. Rather, they were asked separately to rate how much discrimination a given group faces. 57% of white evangelical Protestants said Christians face a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today; 44% said Muslims face a lot of discrimination.

There are other things going on here that I find more surprising than the evangelicals response. For instance, a third of all Americans overall believe that Christians face a lot of discrimination in a country that is three-fourths Christian. Never mind the fact that the United States has never had a non-Christian president, or that our current Congress is 92% Christian. How do 30% of white mainline Protestants believe there is a lot of discrimination against Christians in the U.S.? Is this the product of evangelicals winning in a messaging war?

But the perception problem here isnt just white evangelical Protestants. Its actually far more troubling and widespread than that.

Im not sure there was ever a graph that put political differences in more stark relief. Democrats overwhelmingly stated that there is a lot of discrimination against blacks (82%), gay and lesbian people (79%), transgender people (79%), immigrants (82%), and Muslims (85%). In comparison, dramatically lower numbers of Republicans stated that there was a lot of discrimination against blacks (27%), gay and lesbian people (40%), transgender people (48%), immigrants (41%), and Muslims (45%).

The difference is most stark when it comes to discrimination against African Americans: Only 27% of Republicans stated that blacks face a lot of discrimination in the United States today, in comparison with 82% of Democrats. Taken together, 58% of all Americans believed that blacks face a lot of discrimination.

There is also a stark difference in another area as well: While relatively few Democrats believed that whites (19%) or Christians (21%) face a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today, larger numbers of Republicans believed that whites (43%) and Christians (48%) face a lot of discrimination. That close to half of Republicans believe whites face a lot of discrimination points, perhaps, to the success of the alt-right in reshaping narratives about race.

Critically, 43% of Republicans indicated that whites face a lot of discrimination while only 27% of Republicans said the same about blacks.

Let that sink in.

Republicans are nearly twice as likely to say that white people face a high level of discrimination than they are to say that black people face a high level of discrimination. The Republican Party has lost its damn mind. But lets not forget how it got hereI grew up in a conservative Republican family, and I remember hearing in the early 2000s that my white brothers would face more discrimination than any other demographic. We cant pin these statistics on the success of the alt-right alone. The belief that black people have the advantage today and that it is white people who are pushed down is not new to the Republican Party.

In case youre wondering, my white brothers havent had any trouble finding college admission or ready employment.

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump ran on the idea that the American people in general and his predominantly white base in particular had been victimized by the otherwhether Muslims, or immigrants, or racially coded crime. Over and over again he told his followers that America had been taken advantage of by other countries and that immigrants were taking their jobs. He pointed to Islamic terror and to violence against police to prop up the idea of white, non-foreign Americans under threat.

If were not careful, these poll results will grow only more stark.

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I made a pilgrimage to Medina yesterday  Medina, Ohio, that is, although I actually turned right at the intersection and so went to Akron rather than Medina. Akron is the location of this years Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society meeting. Under the auspices of that regional SBL meeting, E. Bruce Brooks Alpha Christianity group meets. They are one of the few groups working on the New Testament texts who are also seriously interested in the Mandaeans. You can read the papers that were circulated in advance of the conference on the Alpha Christianity webpage. The discussion of the possible relationships between New Testament texts and other NT texts, as well as Mandaean sources, was provocative and valuable.

The session after that on extracanonical literature featured papers on ring composition in Josephus, exploring in particular verbal and structural parallels between stories about characters named Antiochus in Books 1 and 7 of Jewish War; whether famous rabbis in the 4th century could have been secret Christians as claimed in Epiphanius Panarion, and as suggested by the evidence about Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Elisha ben Abuyah in rabbinic sources (see the saying attributed to him in Avot de R. Nathan), and Eleazar ben Damah; and whether 4Q501 was produced by the Qumran sectarians.

This has been a really good meeting, and well worth the drive!
Patna: Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) President and Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday accused Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of all talks and no action when he alleged that the Grand Alliance had failed to implement the food security bill resulting in the recent death of a dalit woman in Sheikhpura.

"Nitish Kumar was in a real rush to launch food security scheme in Bihar so he could take full advantage of it in the state elections. However, once the elections were over, the Chief Minister showed no interest in its implementation," the Union Food and Public Distribution Minister said.

Accusing the state government of making false claims to project Nitish Kumar as a very progressive leader, Paswan, however, excoriated him for being 'all talks and no action'.

"Nitish Kumar never misses an opportunity to pat his own back and take credit for everything good in Bihar while passing on the blame for his failure on the NDA government at the Center. The fact, however, remains that the poor folks of Bihar are not getting any food-grains resulting in starvation-related death in the state," the LJP chief said.

Demanding a high-level probe in the starvation death of a dalit woman in Sheikhpura, Paswan said that a team of central officials would soon visit Bihar to review the implementation of the food security scheme under the Nitish administration.
Patna: The father-son fugitives from Bihar running from the law after cases of rape and other crimes were lodged against the son last December were brought to Patna on Friday following their dramatic arrest from Paudhi Garhwal area near Laxman Jhoola in Uttarakhand last Tuesday.

Automobile showroom owner Nikhil Priyadarshi and his retired IAS father Krishna Bihari Prasad Sinha, shortly after their arrival in Patna on Friday, were presented before a Scheduled Caste special court where special judge Akhilanand Dubey, after completing the legal formalities, sent them to Beur Jail under judicial custody.

Nikhil Priyadarshi is accused of raping, sexually and physically assaulting the minor daughter of a former Congress leader. After the victim filed charges against him in Patna on December 22, 2016, Nikhil went underground. However, by some quirk of fate, he was caught last Tuesday in Uttarkhand where he had been hiding at his retired father's house.

The father has been charged with providing shelter to a person running from the law.

Patna police has filed a request with the court to take Priyadarshi in a 3-day police custody for interrogation.

Earlier, police had arrested Priyadarshi's brother Manish and three other acquaintances of the family Prakash Raj, Gaurav Kumar and Prem Pandey.

As reported, a case of rape and other crimes was lodged with the Buddha Colony police station in Patna against Nikhil Priyadarshi, Congress leader Brajesh Pandey, Manish Priyadarshi, and Sanjit Sharma. However, Nikhil Priyadarshi managed to give the police a slip and went underground for the next three months until his luck ran out last Tuesday.

Reports said the victim had met with Nikhil on Facebook. What started as a simple friendship soon took dark turn as Nikhil allegedly started to abuse her sexually and also allowed his friends to abuse her sexually. When she objected to his or his friends' behavior, she was brutally beaten and threatened with blackmail if she tried to go to the police.

According to the lawyer of the retired IAS officer, the vehicle carrying them from Uttarakhand to Bihar met with an accident near Ara causing serious injury to the 72-year old former bureaucrat.

"He already has heart problems and with this injury, his condition is expected to get worse. Hence, I request the court to transfer him to the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) so he could get proper medical treatment," the lawyer said.
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Rouhani's Intelligence Ministry and Khamenei's IRGC Widen Crackdown Ahead of Election

03/17/17

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran



President Hassan Rouhani with IRGC Chief General Mohammad Ali Jafari



The number of arrests carried out by Iran's Intelligence Ministry, operating under the control of President Hassan Rouhani, increased in the last few months leading up to Iran's May 2017 presidential election.

Research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) indicates that since January 2017, the ministry has increasingly targeted civil and women's rights advocates, journalists, dual nationals, ethnic and religious minorities, environmentalists, the administrators of social media pages, and relatives of protesters killed during the state's crackdown on peaceful protestors following the disputed 2009 presidential election.

The increasing arrests may be the result of a growing rivalry between the Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, which has also stepped up its arrests.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei set up the organization, which the office of the presidency has no control over, in 1997 after the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami. Amid the protests against the contested presidential election in 2009, Khamenei expanded the organization's powers.

Rouhani would not have been elected in 2013 without the support of reformists and civil society, both of which are being targeted by Khamenei's security apparatus and that of a president they helped to elect.

While there are several possible explanations for why the Intelligence Ministry is stepping up its arrests at this particular time, the widening crackdown proves to the Iranian people that Rouhani-who will be seeking a second term on May 19-has failed to carry out his campaign promise of freeing political prisoners and loosening the Islamic Republic's tight grip on civil society.

Rouhani's Intelligence Ministry: Protector or Aggressor?

"A desirable Intelligence Ministry is the hopeful home of the oppressed," Rouhani told the ministry's staff on January 21, 2014, less than a year after his election. "Respecting the rights of citizens, as well as ethnic and religious minorities is an unavoidable necessity."

"Your primary duty is to protect people's dignity and privacy and preserve public trust at the highest level," he said, emphasizing that his administration "believes in transparency and telling the truth to the people as our patrons."

"We insist on the principle of plurality of views and tastes in society," he added. "Supporting the rights of citizens is part of the ministry's duties."

The Intelligence Ministry's record under Rouhani has not only shown a failure to realize that vision, but also a continuation of oppressive policies now being conducted in parallel with the IRGC's Intelligence Organization.

When Mahmoud Alavi was introduced to Parliament as the new minister of intelligence on August 7, 2013, he told legislators that he would carry out his responsibilities in a manner that would "build public trust" while being "accountable to relevant authorities, watchdog agencies and public institutions."

He added that he would "interact with the elite, academics, political parties, mass media organizations and lawful groups;" "avoid the creation of a security climate;" "restore the ministry's duties within a lawful and natural framework in accordance with the Constitution;" "support and recognize criticism in political, social and cultural fields;" and "respect the rights of citizens, including ethnic and religious minorities."

Alavi also promised that under his management, the Intelligence Ministry would "make an effort to rebuild the country's political landscape in regards to human rights issues" and "withdraw from irregular missions that do not conform with the ministry's stature."

However, in the first few months of 2017, the Intelligence Ministry arrested the following individuals for their peaceful activism and personal beliefs. One activist even predicted that she would be arrested as part of a campaign run by hardliners to make Rouhani appear weak before the election.

Hengameh Shahidi: Before she was arrested in the Iranian city of Mashhad on March 8, 2017, the political activist said she was being targeted "as part of a project to arrest political activists and journalists before the presidential election so that the designated candidate (of the hardliners) would be guaranteed a victory, just like in the 2009 election." In the hand-written letter, posted on March 13 on her Instagram page, Shahidi also said she would go on hunger strike as soon as she was taken into custody. Shahidi was an adviser to Mehdi Karroubi, a former presidential candidate and opposition leader who has been under house arrest since 2011. She was also a journalist for his party's newspaper, Etemad Melli.

Sepideh Ghoulian: The civil rights activist was arrested at her home in Ahwaz, Khuzestan Province, on February 24, 2017 and released on bail several days later. She has not been charged, but informed sources believe she was arrested because of her Instagram posts about child labor and environmental issues.

Farzaneh Jalali: The civil rights activist was arrested on February 23, 2017 in the city of Kermanshah. In 2010 she was banned from continuing her graduate studies for having previously engaged in peaceful activism while she was an undergraduate at Tehran University. She was arrested on March 13, according to a post on her Facebook page.

Mehrnaz Haghighi: The medical doctor and civil rights activist was arrested at his home in Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan Province, on February 19, 2017. No information is available about the charges, if any, have been issued against her.

Mohammad Kab-Aomair: The seventeen-year-old ethnic Arab environmentalist was violently arrested on February 8, 2017 at his home in the city of Ahwaz. His left arm was broken while he was being arrested.

Shahnaz Akmali: The mother of Mostafa Karim Beigi-who was killed by a bullet wound to the head in 2009 during what came to be known as the "Ashura protests"- was arrested on January 25, 2017. She was released on bail on February 19.

Zeinab Karimian: The Rouhani supporter and former reporter for the state-funded Mehr News Agency was arrested on January 23, 2017. She has had limited contact with her family since being detained. Very little information is known about her condition or case.

Saleh Deldam: The film director and producer was arrested in early January 2017 and charged with "acting against national security" and "propaganda against the state."

Tahereh Riahi: The social affairs editor of the state-funded Borna News Agency was arrested on December 27, 2016 and accused of "propaganda against the state."

"Cyrus Day" Fans: On October 28, 2016, more than 70 people were arrested for publicly celebrating the unofficial birthday of the founder of the Achaemenid Emperor. Some allegedly shouted slogans calling for an end to Iran's theocratic government and a return to pre-Islamic values. Branch 1 of the Shiraz Revolutionary Court sentenced the defendants to prison terms ranging from three months to eight years. Upon appeal in February 2017, many of the defendants had their sentences reduced to less than a year in prison or they were released for time served.

Ahmadreza Jalali: The Iranian-born resident of Sweden was arrested in April 2016 after being invited by Tehran University to share his expertise on emergency and disaster medicine. He has been charged with "collaborating with enemy states."

Social Media Site admins: On January 20, 2017, the Intelligence Ministry announced the arrest of "anti-revolutionaries aiming to penetrate and organize online networks inside the country" through a channel they had created, called the "Immortal Guards," on the popular Telegram messaging application.

By arresting individuals for their peaceful activities in cyberspace, the Intelligence Ministry is alienating Rouhani's moderate and reformist supporters who are active online.

Until recently, the IRGC's Intelligence Organization or the Cyber Police (FATA) carried out most arrests of cyber activists. The Intelligence Ministry may have stepped up its role in this area to assuage hardliners who accuse the government of not doing enough to censor the internet.

The publication of a forced confession of one of the alleged members of the Immortal Guards on February 2, 2017 on several far right websites also serves as a reminder that the ministry has no intention of abandoning the practice of extracting confessions under the threat of or actual torture.

The growing number of people arrested by the Intelligence Ministry for their peaceful political or civil activities is taking place despite Rouhani's declaration on April 20, 2016 that "state agencies should not be controlling people whenever they feel like it."

"You cannot limit people's freedom with directives and the arbitrary taste of some individuals or organizations," he said during a speech. "People's freedoms cannot be curtailed by anything other than the law. Not even the government or the judiciary can limit them."

Intelligence Ministry vs. the IRGC

Towards the end of February 2017, Iranian media reports began hinting at the growing rivalry between the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC's Intelligence Organization.

On February 24, the acting commander of the organization, Gen. Mohammad Hossein Nejat, claimed that his agents "were able to arrest 15 terrorists who were planning sabotage and explosions at the rally (in Tehran) celebrating the anniversary of the revolution on February 11."

Two days later, an "informed Intelligence Ministry official" denied Nejat's statement.

"The team of terrorists that had entered the country to carry out operations against national security on February 11 was exclusively under the surveillance of the Intelligence Ministry from start to finish and they were arrested by the Intelligence Ministry," said an unnamed official on February 26, according to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).

"Despite the immense respect we have for our dear and exalted brother, Commander Nejat, we needed to clarify matters for the public," added the official.

The official also said the Intelligence Ministry should be credited for the 2010 arrest of Abdolmalek Rigi, the former leader of the violent Baluchi Jundallah separatist organization, and for playing a leading role in the negotiations over the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the US in January 2016.

"The Supreme National Security Council asked the Intelligence Ministry to conduct the negotiations for the repatriation of one billion and 710 million USD from the US during the negotiations for the release of the prisoners," he said.

"Every stage of the negotiations was carried out by a representative of the Intelligence Ministry with the cooperation of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the president's Legal Affairs Office," he said, adding that "no other agencies were involved in any of those three cases."

The next day, Nejat retorted: "The IRGC's Intelligence Organization is in complete harmony with the Intelligence Ministry and we won't complain if the press gives credit to the ministry for any of our activities."

He also claimed that Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was part of the US-Iran prisoner swap, was arrested by the IRGC's Intelligence Organization, "which eventually led to the release of a portion of Iran's assets" by the US.

"The IRGC's Intelligence Organization is an active member the Intelligence Coordination Council, which convenes regularly under the chairmanship of the minister of intelligence, and if there are any differences of views, they will be discussed and resolved there," he added.

The Intelligence Coordination Council was formed by Article 2 of the law for the establishment of the Intelligence Ministry.

Its members include the intelligence minister, prosecutor general (representing the judiciary), minister of interior, the heads of the IRGC's Intelligence Security Organization and Intelligence Organization, the heads of the army's Intelligence Security Organization and Intelligence Organization, the head of the Police Intelligence Security Organization and the foreign minister.

The council's mission includes "discussion about intelligence-related topics and operations, exchanges of views about how to delegate and pursue intelligence operations within the legal boundaries of each agency, and decisions on the responsibilities and powers of each agency within the law."

It is also supposed to "coordinate parallel cases with the National Security Council" and "establish intelligence crisis groups in times of emergency."

In October 2014, the Fars News Agency, which maintains close relations with the IRGC, reported that "the Intelligence Coordination Council had entered a new chapter," adding that "based on available information, the council's members had collaborated to establish common intelligence and security assessments on different topics."

The report added that "one of the most important things the council did (in the Iranian year ending March 21, 2014) was assess the damaging and threatening aspects of cyberspace, the security situation in various parts of the country, and intelligence threats and operational intelligence exchanges while coordinating and following up on joint intelligence operations by members of the intelligence community."

Increasing Arrests: Why Now?

The Intelligence Ministry has stepped up its arrests of peaceful activists and dissidents ahead of the May 2017 presidential election for three possible reasons.

First, a close examination of the decisions made by the National Intelligence Council during the Rouhani era indicates that some of them could have resulted from recommendations by the IRGC's Intelligence Organization or the prosecutor general as a representative of the judicial branch.

In other words, the Rouhani administration could be bending to the wishes of hardliners.

Second, hardline core members of the Intelligence Ministry may be initiating the arrests against the wishes of Alavi and Rouhani, both of whom promoted moderate agendas at the beginning of the president's first term.

A similar power struggle occurred in 1998 under Khatami when his intelligence minister, Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, inherited an organization controlled by hardliners who were secretly assassinating dissident politicians and intellectuals.

The action plan Alavi published when he became intelligence minister in 2013 stands out as the third possible explanation for the growing number of arrests.

In the document's section on domestic security, Alavi describes a need to "revive the role of the ministry in the country's intelligence community while cooperating and interacting with other agencies and preventing parallel actions."

The most important intelligence agency operating in parallel with the Intelligence Ministry is the IRGC's Intelligence Organization.

Rouhani and his intelligence minister may be initiating more arrests to prevent the IRGC's Intelligence Organization from becoming more powerful and to reduce its dominating role in carrying out widespread arrests of political and civil rights activists.

However, if the Intelligence Ministry has stepped up arrests simply to compete with the IRGC for power, Rouhani will likely lose the crucial base of support he had among civil society during his first term.

That crucial voting bloc of opinion-influencers, including activists, university students, academics and artists, are now being repressed by two major security organizations under Rouhani's watch.
Predicting Her Arrest, Reformist Activist Hengameh Shahihi Wrote Letters Criticizing Rouhani's Failure to Protect Citizens

03/17/17

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Hengameh Shahidi, a reformist senior member of the Etemad Melli (National Trust) opposition party, has decried her arrest as part of a crackdown by hardliners on reformists ahead of Iran's upcoming presidential election. In two open letters, she also criticized President Hassan Rouhani, who will be running for re-election on May 19, 2017, for failing to protect citizen's rights.



Reformist journalist Hengameh Shahidi

Anticipating her arrest, which occurred on March 9, 2017, the former journalist had pre-composed two letters and arranged to have them published after she was detained.

In the first letter, published on her Instagram page on March 11, Shahidi said she was being targeted "as part of a project to arrest political activists and journalists before the presidential election so that the designated candidate (of hardliner's) could be guaranteed a victory, just like in the 2009 election."

"You were supposed to be a breath of fresh air for reformists after the oppressive years under (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, and not choke the air out of them to become president like he did," she wrote in the second letter published on March 15.

Rouhani's election in 2013 would not have been possible without the support of reformist leaders.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned that Shahidi, who lives in Tehran, was arrested by security agents in the city of Mashhad on her way to her grandmother's funeral on March 9. In Evin Prison in Tehran she was taken to Ward 209, which is controlled by the Intelligence Ministry.

She informed her family during a short phone conversation on March 11 that she had been detained, but the charges against her, if any, remain unknown.

Shahidi was a reporter for the reformist Norooz newspaper and an adviser to Mehdi Karroubi, the Etemad Melli party's candidate in the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Karroubi, former presidential candidate Mir Hosseini Mousavi, and Zahra Rahnavard have been under extrajudicial house arrest since 2011 for challenging the validity of the 2009 election and leading mass street demonstrations that came to be known as the Green Movement.

In the March 15 letter, Shahidi called on Rouhani, as the head of the executive branch, to "stand against the pointless, fabricated cases brought against journalists and political, civil and social activists in the country."

While poking fun at his law degree, she also pointed out Rouhani's hypocritical stance of constantly touting his Citizen's Rights Charter while extrajudicial arrests happen regularly under his watch.

"Please tell us where in the charter does it say a suspect can be arrested without a written order?" she wrote. "Where does it say a suspect's family members can be threatened and harassed?"

In the March 11 letter, Shahidi described the charter, which Rouhani signed in December 2016, as "only a deceptive slogan for international consumption" because in reality "all political suspects are sent to unlawful detention centers on security charges and humiliated in the worst way."

She also discussed her recent expulsion from a staff position at a university south of Tehran: "Where in the charter does it say a university academic can be denied the right to teach and threatened with an acid attack and issued an arrest order by the parliamentary Committee of National Security Affairs and other agencies in order to silence her?"

Shahidi was fired from her position as an international law instructor at the Varamin-Pishva Islamic Open University after teaching only two classes on the first day of the fall term on October 10, 2016.

The day before Shahidi was sacked, a local hardline news site posted an article saying it was "regrettable" that someone who was convicted in connection with the 2009 "sedition" had been chosen "as a professor for shaping the future builders of Islamic Iran."

Iranian officials have consistently referred to the peaceful protests that followed the disputed 2009 election as the "sedition."

On June 30, 2009, soon after Karroubi, Mousavi and Rahnavard disputed the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's re-election, Shahidi was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison by Judge Yahya Pirabbasi of Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court for "propagating against the regime," "acting against national security" and "insulting the president."

In June 2012 she was granted conditional release on medical grounds.

In recent months, several journalists have been arrested for unknown reasons by the Intelligence Ministry or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Intelligence Organization.

Tahereh Riahi, the social affairs editor of the state-funded Borna News Agency, has been held in Evin Prison since December 27, 2016 without access to legal counsel.

Zeinab Karimian, a producer for the state-run "Salam Khorshid" (Hello Sun) television show and former reporter for the official Islamic Republic News Agency, was arrested by security agents on January 23, 2017. Very little information is known about her condition or case.

Reformist journalist Ehsan Mazandarani was shocked with a Taser stun gun by the IRGC's Intelligence Organization on March 11 and taken to Evin Prison, less than a month after he completed his prison sentence for "assembly and collusion against national security" and "propaganda against the state."

Reformist political commentator Issa Saharkhiz and centrist commentator Afarin Chitsaz, a columnist for the Iran newspaper, the official publication of the Rouhani administration, have been imprisoned since November 2, 2015 after being arrested in the largest wave of arrests by the IRGC since 2009.
US welcomes India's plan for Iran's Chabahar port

03/17/17

Source: Press TV



The United States has welcomed India's plan to expand Iran's Chabahar port as a project that a top military official says will help the long-term stability of Afghanistan. US Army General John Nicholson, who commands US combat operations in Afghanistan, told the US Senate in a hearing that he welcomed the Chabahar project because it would offer Afghanistan a viable and economic alternative to shipping all its goods via Pakistan.



Significance of Chabahr port to the region

(see detailed map)



"Iranian-Indian-Afghan cooperation over the Chabahar port presents great economic potential. With over $2 billion development aid executed since 2002, and another $1 billion pledged in 2016, India's significant investments in Afghan infrastructure, engineering, training, and humanitarian issues will help develop Afghan human capital and long-term stability," General Nicholson told a US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on February 9, as reported by Asia Times news website.



As per a basic agreement signed between Iran and India last May, India is to equip and operate two berths in Phase I of Chabahar project with a capital investment of $85.21 million and annual revenue expenditure of $22.95 million on a ten year lease.



Besides the bilateral pact to develop the Chabahar port, for which India will invest $500 million, a trilateral agreement to create a transport and transit corridor that would start from Chabahar and lead to Afghanistan has also been signed by India, Afghanistan and Iran.



Last week, India said that it expected to complete the first phase of the construction of Chabahar port in 2018.



"We can complete the work on the first phase of the project in 2018... The funds are likely to be released shortly. Tenders are out for the project," India's Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari was quoted as saying by the media.
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Windows 10 Home users may soon lose some of their already limited ability to prevent Microsoft from forcing automatic system updates on their PCs.

While theres no official way to prevent updates in Windows 10 Home, a workaround is to mark your Wi-Fi connection as metered. The Windows Insider Preview Build 15058 released on Tuesday reduces the effectiveness of that workaround, as WinSuperSite recently spotted.

In build 15058, heading to Settings > Update and Security > Windows Update reveals the following note: Well automatically download and install updates, except on metered connections (where charges may apply). In that case, well automatically download only those updates required to keep Windows running smoothly.

That last sentence, where Microsoft says it will automatically download updates to keep Windows running smoothly, is absent in the current version of Windows 10. Microsoft told WinSuperSite it made the change so that it has the ability force critical update patches if necessary. We dont plan to send large updates over metered connections, but could use this for critical fixes if needed in the future, Microsoft said.

Update: Microsofts current metered connection FAQ reveals that with flagged connections, Windows 10 will only download priority updates. The new verbiage makes that caveat more visible.

Marking a connection as metered is the only way for Windows 10 Home users to prevent Windows from updating. In general its advisable for most users to have automatic updates turned on. Yet some users with unusual hardware configurations may want to prevent system updates to avoid any potential conflicts.

Others prefer to download updates on a delayed schedule so that if any problems pop up they can wait for Microsoft to release a fix. If you think thats overkill, consider the Windows 10 Anniversary Updates slew of nasty bugs, or this tale of woe over at How-To-Geek, where Chris Hoffman complains about Windows 10s automatic updates breaking his PC mere days ago.

The impact on you at home: The metered connection setting was never meant as a tool for users to prevent Microsoft from downloading automatic updates. Instead, it was intended to avoid large automatic downloads in order to prevent Windows 10 updates from blowing through a users bandwidth cap. Nevertheless, many people who dislike Windows 10s mandatory updates took advantage of the loophole. Now that loophole is closing, if only just a little bit.

The good news is that while Microsoft is taking a little bit away from Wi-Fi metered connectionsassuming this change makes the final cut for the upcoming Creators Updatethe company is also giving back. The new metered connections settings in build 15058 also allow users to set a wired ethernet connection as metered, while the current version of Windows 10 allows this for Wi-Fi connections only.
Alphabets autonomous car unit Waymo is concerned about giving Uber Technologies internal counsel extensive access to documents it filed under seal in connection with its lawsuit alleging theft of trade secrets and patent infringement by the ride-hailing company.

But on Thursday, District Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Nicole Bartow, in-house counsel for Uber, could review material even at the highest level of confidentiality, given that she has agreed to be bound by the protective order and is hereby ordered to do so.

The side-plot in Waymos dispute with Uber reflects the fierce competition in the burgeoning automated cars market and the particular distrust between the two companies in the current dispute. Waymo has alleged in its complaint that Uber got a head start by pilfering its technology, building its own comparable LiDAR system within nine months.

Waymo filed a suit in the California court last month, alleging that a former employee stole trade secrets relating to self-driving cars before leaving to start Otto, a self-driving trucking company that was later acquired by Uber. Other former Waymo employees who left for Uber and Otto were also found downloading sensitive files, Waymo alleged. The ride-hailing company is already testing its automated cars in two locations in the U.S. and also holds a permit to test these vehicles in California.

Waymo also charges Uber with infringing two patents. Last week, it gave notice of a motion for a preliminary injunction asking that Uber should be banned from accessing, using, imitating, copying, disclosing, or making available to any person or entity Waymos asserted trade secrets or from making, using, selling, or offering to sell devices that infringe its patents.

Ubers external lawyers at Morrison & Foerster had written to the judge earlier this week that Waymos counsel will not provide unredacted papers to the law firm without an agreement to a form of interim protective order that would preclude access by Uber in-house counseleven those not involved in competitive decisionmaking.'

Waymo claimed to have filed a 69 page document with over 120 trade secrets, according to the letter from the law firm. We have not seen that document, Ubers lawyer wrote.

The law firm said it could not agree to Waymos request because it anticipated that the in-house counsel would provide essential assistance in litigating Waymos motion for preliminary injunction.

Waymo could not be immediately reached for comment after business hours.

In a response on Wednesday to the letter from Morrison & Foerster, the company had replied to the court that it was not opposed to any disclosure of its trade secret litigation materials to an in-house attorney for Uber. Instead, Waymo asks that such access is granted sparingly, and only after the attorneys work responsibilities are sufficiently disclosed to ensure that there will be no possibility of (further) improper use of Waymos trade secrets by Defendants, it added.

Waymo added that it had from the beginning made it clear that it was willing to provide unredacted preliminary injunction papers on an outside-counsel-eyes only basis.

In a tentative order Wednesday regarding access to the material under seal, Judge Alsup said the condition imposed by Waymo was unreasonable, if true. If the allegations in the complaint are true, then defendants already know the sensitive information, Judge Alsup wrote. The Judge also shortened to 48 hours the 14-day period for parties to object to the disclosure of protected material to experts.
Several attacks observed over the past few months that rely heavily on PowerShell, open-source tools, and fileless malware techniques might be the work of a single group of hackers.

An investigation started by security researchers from Morphisec into a recent email phishing attack against high-profile enterprises pointed to a group that uses techniques documented by several security companies in seemingly unconnected reports over the past two months.

During the course of the investigation, we uncovered a sophisticated fileless attack framework that appears to be connected to various recent, much-discussed attack campaigns, Michael Gorelik, Morphisecs vice president of research and development, said in a blog post. Based on our findings, a single group of threat actors is responsible for many of the most sophisticated attacks on financial institutions, government organizations, and enterprises over the past few months.

The Morphisec investigation started with a phishing email that distributed a Microsoft Word document with malicious macros inside. When opened, the document asked the victim to click on the Enable Content button in order to view the supposedly protected content. Doing so allowed the malicious embedded code to execute.

From that point on, the attack used a succession of scripts written in PowerShell, a powerful scripting engine included in Windows, to set up persistence through registry keys and establish a communication channel with the attackers server.

The attackers then downloaded and executed various open-source tools that allowed them to perform a deeper investigation of the system, steal locally stored Windows credentials, and open reverse shells to their server.

Some of the observed tools included Mimikatz, Lazagne, and Meterpreter, the payload of the popular Metasploit penetration testing framework. These programs were loaded directly into the computers memory and left no traces on disk.

In February, researchers from Kaspersky Lab reported a string of stealthy, fileless attacks against more than 100 enterprises, banks, and government organizations from around the world. Those attacks used very similar techniques and tools, including PowerShell, Mimikatz, and Meterpreter.

In the attack investigated by Morphisec, the attackers also used a PowerShell script that established a two-way communication channel using DNS TXT records. A similar script was documented by researchers from Cisco Talos in early March in a PowerShell-based attack that they dubbed DNSMessenger.

The fileless malware techniques and DNS communication method were also described by researchers from FireEye in a March report about attacks targeting employees from various U.S. organizations whose jobs involved Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. FireEye attributed those attacks to a financially motivated attack group that the company has been tracking for a while under the name FIN7.

Previous FIN7 operations used the same malware as a group that Kaspersky tracks as Carbanak and is believed to be responsible for the theft of more than US$500 million from financial organizations and other companies.

The Morphisec researchers couldnt establish the identity of the group but had a brief interaction with one of the attackers.

It was clear that a person from the other side was waiting to connect on his Meterpreter session, Gorelik said. During the brief interaction, our researchers tried to identify the actor. The attackers immediately blocked the connection and later shut down the C2 server entirely, thereby losing their foothold in the systems of victims connected to that communication server.

In light of these attacks, organizations, especially those from the financial sector, should ensure that they have monitoring systems in place that can detect dual-use tools like Mimikatz and Meterpreter. They should also monitor for unauthorized PowerShell scripts and code loaded directly in memory that creates no executable files on disk.
Inland youths who have excelled in the arts over the year got the chance to tell state lawmakers the importance of such programs as part of an annual event known as California Youth In Theatre Day.

On March 14, more than 300 theater students, teachers and school administrators from around the state congregated in Sacramento for a field trip that includes a meet-and-greet with state lawmakers.

Other activities will include performances in dance, monologues, acting and singing, as well as workshops on how students can become advocates for the arts.

The program was started 20 years ago through the California Educational Theatre Association.

Students who won in various state festivals were selected to participate.

Inland participants include:

From Nuview Bridge Early College High School, teacher Cassandra Shott-Hammond and students senior Garrett Wyatt; senior Madison Demaris; junior Noah Buyak; junior Julissa Lopez; and junior Tanyeasia Brewster;

From Lakeside High School, teacher Scott Karlan and Juliana Cuevas.

From Temecula Valley Prep, teacher Joseph Arreola and eighth-grader Riley Waterman; junior Saul Esqueda; and senior Ridge Wyatt

Murrieta Valley High School was also represented.
Leaders of diverse faiths gathered in San Bernardino on Thursday with versions of the same message: Were all descended from refugees, and our God commands us all to care for refugees today.

Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Bahai faith leaders spoke at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Waterman Avenue for a symposium titled Refugees, Dignity and Humanity: Perspectives of the Great Religious Founders.

The event came as President Donald Trump pushes for a ban on refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries, which he frames as a security measure.

Courts so far have blocked both of Trumps executive orders on the subject, saying they appear to be unconstitutional Muslim bans.

Most speakers Thursday didnt explicity touch on the specifics of policy.

But regardless of religion, its important to help the most vulnerable, said Faheem Ahmad, president of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Inland Empire Chapter, which co-hosted the event along with the Mormon church.

The commonality throughout religions of serving the world gives us the foundation on which to build solid, interfaith relationships, Ahmad said. Every religious founder preached a message of compassion and humanity for those who flee persecution. Those messages are sorely needed right now, and San Bernardino, a diverse and vibrant city, is the perfect place to come together.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, whose Chino mosque is the largest Muslim mosque in San Bernardino County, is the only Islamic organization to believe that the messiah has come in the person of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908.

Speaking Wednesday evening at a rally in Nashville, Tenn., Trump called the ruling in Hawaii an example of unprecedented judicial overreach and said his administration would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also called his new travel ban a watered-down version of the first one, which he said he wished he could implement.

Were going to win. Were going to keep our citizens safe, the president said. The danger is clear. The law is clear. The need for my executive order is clear.

Civic leaders also attended Thursdays symposium, which included messages by San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan and Mayor Carey Davis.

Davis, a Mormon and Republican, quoted from the Declaration of Independence as well as the Bible: If a man says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar, Davis quoted. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

The Rev. Sandy Tice of First Presbyterian Church of San Bernardino said Jesus was born a refugee, and she told listeners to consider the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The stranger  someone from a religious tradition that Jesus hearers would not have trusted  that was the person who stopped, she said. That was the person who showed mercy. That was the person that Jesus told his followers to be like. . He invited his followers to leave home and family and the familiar, and you might say he invited them to come with him and be refugees. And he told us over and over and over again to love our neighbors.
Forecasters seem to have somewhat solidified their prediction that the Inland Empire will see rainfall next week. If the current predictions hold true, well see at least two showers.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Derek Schroeter said forecasters give rainfall Tuesday into Wednesday a 50 percent chance of materializing and they have about the same confidence in a similar system that would arrive toward the following weekend.

Starting next week were definitely going to see a pattern change as a low-pressure system moves in to Southern California, Schroeter said.

The timing and intensity are still a bit too far out to predict with reasonable accuracy, but he said it doesnt seem likely that the incoming storms will wreak havoc on the area.

Though confidence in the building storm systems has grown, forecasters have backed off their initial more intense predictions.

The latest trends in the models show really kind of light-to-moderate rain Tuesday into Wednesday, he said.

As the low-pressure system approaches, temperatures will begin to drop, with highs dropping from near 89 on Friday to 84 Saturday. Theyll drop to the mid-70s on Monday and hit the high 60s by Tuesday, according to the Weather Service.

Staff writer Alex Grovers contributed to this report.
Chairman of the Executive Assets sub-committee of the Transitional Team that ushered in President Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) into office, Lawyer Joseph Ayikoi Otoo, has revealed that as many as 234 vehicles belonging to the state have still not been accounted for.



Even though the said vehicles were purchased and used by members of the previous Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration which handed over power to the NPP a little over two months ago, Mr Ayikoi Otoo, former Attorney General, said there were no details about the location of the vehicles, confirming the earlier reports that they were missing.



Speaking to the members of the Presidential Press Corps yesterday, Nii Ayikoi Otoo revealed, We were handed over a list from the office of the President [previous administration] they had designated them into VVIP, protocolthe first time they gave us the list, they said it was not accurate so we shouldnt use it.



Mr Ayikoi Otoo explained, In view of government policy that where an official uses a car for more than two years, he could apply to buy it, that policy was still in existence and that we were not sure whether the list they had given us did not include those ones.



So we held on and they gave us a fresh list with the understanding that those who have bought all those vehicles have been taken out of the list.



That list, according to him, contained a total of 707 vehicles, including 176 V8s, 68 Prados, saloon cars, buses and ambulances  468.



Most of these vehicles were not licensed [registered] hence were using what is referred to in security terms as operational numbers with no regular number plates except their identifiable chassis numbers.



In that regard, he revealed,  We take the number, we identify the vehicle, we go look for the chassis number and if it is there we mark it, regardless whatever number [plate] it has.



Out of the 707, he indicated, The ones we were able to mark to say that we have found them were as follows: V8  101, Prados  36, others  saloon, bus269.



From the 707, the vehicles that we could not find; what we call missing vehicles, came down to 301 and the breakdown will be as follows; V8  75, Prados  27, others  saloon, bus-199.



Even that, he indicated, We were able to identify 67 vehicles not listed but we were able to identify them.



So if you deduct the 67 vehicles from the 301 missing vehicles, we still have 234 vehicles which could not be accounted for. That confirmed initial claims by the Acting Director of Communication at the presidency, Eugene Arhin, to the effect that over 200 government vehicles had either gone missing or had been stolen.



This is part of reasons the Chief of Staff, Frema Osei Opare, has set up a task force to hunt for these vehicles with a call on Ghanaians to volunteer information about their locations.



Parting Gifts



Not long after the shout of missing vehicles, a former presidential staffer under John Mahama, Sam George, confirmed that some of the NDC staffers purchased 271 saloon cars at the presidency.



It appears however, that majority of these unaccounted vehicles were among the ones that were bought by the NDC appointees as parting gifts from Mahama.



According to Mr Sam George  Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram  about 271 of the vehicles allegedly missing from the presidents vehicle pool, were purchased by some officials of the NDC government.

Source: Daily Guide









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A Human Rights Court has fixed March 31 to deliver its verdict in the case involving a former Senior Police Officer, DSP Gifty Tehoda who was cited in missing cocaine which later turned into baking soda.



The Court presided over by Mrs Justice Gifty Adjei Addo was expected to deliver her judgement today but deferred it.

The trial judge noted that after a perusal of the inherited case docket she realised that there was a writ and motion on notice for the enforcement of human rights.



According to the trial judge she did not know which of them that she was to deliver her judgment called on plaintiffs Counsel Mr Livingston Amenuvor to clarify that.



Mr Amenuvor explained that the motion for the enforcement of human rights had been truncated and prayed the court to deliver its judgment on the substantive writ.



DSP Tehoda in September 2011, was cited in the case of one Nana Ama Martins who was arrested for possessing large parcels of substance suspected to be cocaine, but was later discovered that it had turned into bicarbonate or baking soda.



DSP Tehoda who was then in charge of the Commercial Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service was later interdicted by the Police administration and subsequently dismissed by the service.



DSP Tehoda was subsequently acquitted and discharge by an Accra Circuit but the Police Service declined to reinstate her and this compelled her to seek justice at the court of law for wrongful dismissal.



The case was before a judge who was dismissed following allegation of his involvement in the Anas Judicial saga.

The matter was therefore transferred to Mrs Justice Addo.

Source: GNA









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Mr Mustapha Ussif, Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS) said he is determined to expand the scope of the scheme operations and to realize the aspirations of the youth.



He said, notwithstanding the many successes chalked out by the scheme, he was confident that the scheme would embarked on many innovations that would benefit the youth of the country.



Mr Ussif said the primary objective for the introduction of National Service was to inculcate in the youth a sense of discipline, patriotism, volunteerism and a culture of hard work.



He said NSS thus became an instrument to mobilise and deploy the youth of 18 years and above to selected sectors of the economy for a period of one year to serve the country.



Mr Ussif who was addressing delegation a from Uganda who visited Ghana and the scheme as a worthwhile destination to learn about volunteerism and youth development.



He said the NSS was established about three decades ago by a military government (National Redemption Council) by a Military decree (NRCD 208) in 1973 and mandate all citizens within the stipulated age to undertake National Service.

Mr Ussif said as Ghana transitioned into democratic governance, the Scheme gained legitimacy under the 1979 Constitution, which promulgated and passed the National Service Scheme Act of 1980, Act 426 by Parliament.



The National Service Act, Act 426 broadly sets out areas of interest that the Scheme ought to venture including: Agriculture, Education, Health, Local Government, Military, Rural Development, Youth Programmes and any area prescribed by the Board.



He said the mandate remained, but the duration for the Service was extended from one year to two years, out of which, each Service Personnel was to undertake a six- month military training.



The Executive Director said that contrary to the statutory two years mandatory service, Cabinet resolved in 1997 and effectively reduced the duration of National Service to one year; largely due to financial constraints.



He said in fulfilment of the NSS mandate, the scheme over the years embarked on numerous projects aimed at realising its mandate as dictated by law and for the reason of our establishment.



At each service calendar year, the Scheme deploys an average of 100,000 young graduates into areas of Agriculture, Education, Rural Development, Health and in recent times the Urban Traffic Management, Private Sector Support and Urban Waste Management.



Mr Ussif said many prominent Ghanaians including himself were products of National Service who gave their time in service to mother Ghana and that Ghanaians owe it as sacrifice to the generation unborn.

The bigger picture and ultimate truth is that we have a duty to serve our country.

Source: GNA









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The Center for Democratic Development (CDD) Ghana, has asked the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to downsize his government.



In a statement issued on Thursday, the CDD said President Akufo-Addos 110 ministers and deputies was unprecedented and obscene and likely to have a negative impact on the public purse.



Below is copy of the CDD statemnt



CDD-GHANA STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT AKUFO-ADDOS APPOINTMENT OF 110 MINISTERS AND DEPUTY MINISTERS



The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) is deeply dismayed by reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has nominated an additional 54 people to serve as ministers or deputies to the various ministries.



When confirmed by Parliament, as they are more than likely to, that would bring the total number of ministers and deputy ministers appointed so far in the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government to an unprecedented 110.



CDD-Ghana considers this move and the obscene number of ministers a wrong one for several reasons:



First, it would represent the largest ministerial team assembled by any president/head of state of Ghana since independence. In addition, it also sets a negative record for a country infamous for its oversized ministerial teams.



The United States, a larger and more economically and financially complex country has approximately 46 ministers. Similarly, India, a country of some 1.3 billion has 75 ministers. It is being argued that the large ministerial team will bring more focus, supervision, and efficiency to President Akufo-Addos ambitious governance and socio-economic plans.



In the Centers view, this argument is weak, as there is no proven relationship between a large government and a well-governed, prosperous society. In addition, there is no correlation or causation between the large retinue of political heads and political/socio-economic transformation. What is clear and certain is that, a smaller government is a cost saving measure that signals a high level of discipline and focus of a government that wants to protect the public purse.



Second, the appointments betray inadequate sensitivity to the weak fiscal condition of the country today, as it flies in the face of the Presidents promise to protect the public purse. It is difficult to see how appointing such a large number of ministers, who will all be on ministerial salaries and benefits, can possibly amount to the promise of protecting the public purse. Indeed, a reduction in the cost of running government, including appointing the minimum number of ministers required by the Constitution, particularly those drawn from Parliament, was one of the list of 10 actions CDD-Ghana urged the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government to undertake in its first year.



Third, it further undermines Ghanas already weak state bureaucracy. Placing a team of politician ministers on top of the existing hierarchy of the ministries will lead to unnecessary duplication of senior personnel and eventually undermine the authority of the professional senior civil and public servants (particularly, chief directors and directors) in the same ministries; it will also encourage the politicisation of the bureaucracy.



In addition, the appointment of that many ministers does not in any way help to address the structural weakness of Parliament vis a vis the Executive, which the President alluded to in his State of the Nation Address.



By appointing so many of his ministers and deputy ministers from Parliament, currently standing at 64 MPs, the President is further weakening the legislative body and at the same time undercutting his own promise to strengthen the institution to enable it serve as an effective check on the Executive.



Above all, CDD-Ghana is deeply concerned about the negative signals sent out by these appointments. We note with consternation that nearly the entire presidential and ruling party campaign team as well as a large number NPP MPs have been appointed to ministerial and other state bureaucratic positions.



This suggests a continuation of the anti-developmental practice of party in government system (conflation of the ruling party and the government), whereby political appointments are treated as jobs-for-the boys or some form of material reward for individuals who played key roles in the election campaign of the president and his party, and an opportunity for them to rake in rents.



To be sure, the presidents appointment of as many as 50 ministers and 60 deputies may have been made in strict conformity with the provisions of the 1992 Constitution and long-standing practices in Ghanas 4th Republic.



However, in the exercise of his legitimate discretionary authority, President Akufo-Addo would have been better served by heeding to the admonition in 1st Corinthians, 10:23: I have the right to do anything, but not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but not everything is constructive.



In this instance, the Center wishes President Nana Akufo Addo had taken a lesson from the examples of Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and John Magafuli of Tanzania who significantly downsized the size of their governments to signify change upon assumption of office  instead of lowering the bar of unwisely ministerial size and government in Ghanas 4th Republic.



Accordingly, the Center implores the President to reduce the number of deputy ministerial nominees sent to Parliament for vetting and approval; and additionally calls on the President to publish the salaries and emoluments of all appointed public office holders so Ghanaians can begin to appreciate the true of cost of governing the country.



Lastly, CDD-Ghana fervently prays that the NPP government does not attach an army of technical advisers to the already bloated personnel at the ministries, departments, and agencies of the state.



In the medium term, the Center would like to see a law passed that puts a ceiling on the maximum number of ministers and deputies the president can appoint at a time and or make it mandatory for the president to explicitly provide the rationale for appointing more than one deputy minister per ministry.



The Center urges the Akufo-Addo-NPP administration to be sensitive to the voice of the people and take steps to reduce the growing burden on the public purse.

Source: CDD-GHANA









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Former Chief Executive of the Ghana Gas Company Limited, Dr George Sipa-AdjahYankey, has ruled out any intention to contest the flagbearership of the National Democratic Congress ahead of the 2020 general elections. There have been social media posts suggesting Mr Yankey either intends or being pressured to contest for the flagbearership position to enable him contest the 2020 presidential election.

But a statement issued by Mr Yankey Thursday rejected the claims, stating he has no intention whatsoever to contest for the NDC top job or on any other political party in the country. I wish to state for the record that I have no intention of contesting the Presidential elections of 2020 on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or any other political party or as an independent candidate, he said. Mr Yankey who has long attained the compulsory retirement age, said having served in as Health Minister and CEO of Ghana Gas, he has decided to spend my retirement in reflection over my long period in public and political office.

He said he is currently concentrating on writing his memoir and in the process of setting up of a legal, finance and investment consultancy firm. I will, however, continue to give my unflinching support and assistance to the NDC, the party that I love and which I have loyally served during my political career, he stated.

Source: 3news.com









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The deputy Speaker of Parliament and a former Minister of Health, Hon. Alban Kingsford Sumani Bagbin has stated that it is needless to debate on who founded the country Ghana.



He stated that most researchers, authors and historians have credited Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah with the founding of the country Ghana given the exceptional role he played in the independence struggle.



He further said that it is only some few elements within the United Party (UP) tradition who are yet to accept this reality.



He was speaking on Ahotor fm.



He added that, he was so surprise about the inaugural speech delivered by the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo because the president was partly a product of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.



He stated that history has made it known to us that the president of Ghana went against his father in support of Dr. Nkrumah and attended the Dr. Kwame Nkrumah ideological institute in Winneba in the Central Region. The president was also an active member of the students movement in support of Nkrumah.



He continued by saying that he admits that many compatriots played several roles in the freedom fight but Nkrumahas role is so profound to be glossed over.



aNkrumah after he joined the UGCC as itas General Secretary moved beyond the coastal territories to other areas in the country to further the freedom fight and his ingenuity, fortitude and struggle brought the others to liberate Ghana , he opined.

Source: Ahotor FM









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Pressure group, Occupy Ghana, has announced the resignation of two executives from their respective positions.



A statement released by the group indicated that NPP Member of Parliament for Awutu Senya West in the Central Region, George Andah and another person named Yofi Grant have both resigned from the Executive Board.



Mr Yofi Grant has been appointed and currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) whilst Mr Andah, currently a member f parliament representing the people of Awutu Senya West has been nominated as a deputy minister for communication by President Akufo-Addo.



Read full statement below:



Press Statement



RESIGNATION OF NENYI GEORGE ANDAH AND YOFI GRANT FROM OCCUPYGHANA EXECUTIVE COUNCIL



OccupyGhana wishes to formally announce the resignation of Nenyi George Andah and Yofi Grant from its Executive Board.



Nenyi and Yofi however remain members of OccupyGhana and will carry to their respective positions, the core values and ideologies of OCCUPYGHANA, promoting good governance and abhorring corruption.



We thank them for their past and continued dedication to the OCCUPYGHANA cause and wish them very well in their new endeavours.



Yours in service for God and Country



OCCUPYGHANA

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi /Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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An airport service dog has been shot dead by police at Auckland International Airport after it ran away from its handler onto the tarmac, delaying more than a dozen flights.

The dog, named Grizz, was reportedly on the loose for around three hours before the shooting, which was considered a last resort. Emergency operations had attempted to recover Grizz through other means before instructing police to shoot the dog.

Unfortunately an Aviation Security dog was shot this morn @AKL_Airport staff had tried for 3 hours to catch it our thoughts are with handler  Auckland Airport (@AKL_Airport) March 16, 2017

They did everything they could, but unfortunately the dog had to be shot, said airport spokesperson Lisa Mulitalo. Were really upset about it.

Airport authorities say they are investigating what originally spooked Grizz and whether it can be avoided in future with other service dogs.

Inspector Tracy Phillips, one of the police officers on the scene, confirmed that the dogs death wasnt an outcome anyone particularly wanted. This followed considerable efforts over several hours by Avsec and airport staff to contain the dog, she said. This is not an outcome which anyone wanted, and police were only asked to be involved as a last resort.

The response from the public in New Zealand has been pretty harsh  with many on social media and beyond demanding to know why Grizz wasnt tranquilised as a last resort instead of being killed.

. @AKL_Airport so the dog died? If so the dog died so commercial airlines could avoid expensive delay costs. Absolutely shameful decision.  Carolyn Deuchar (@CarolynD_NZ) March 16, 2017

So Auckland airport security fatally shot their own dog because it was delaying flights. They didnt tranquilize, they killed. Poor dog   Reagan Morris (@TheReaganMorris) March 16, 2017

Embarrassed to be a kiwi today. Killing a dog so flights can continue Auckland Airport. No excuse! Disgusting #poordog #aucklandairport  juliette banks (@julzbanks) March 16, 2017

Do they not have a tranquiliser gun? asked TV host Hilary Barry. I dont care if your plane is delayed. You dont need to shoot the dog.

A review of the incident is currently underway.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo: Getty Images.
In news that will shock absolutely no-one whos been following the lauded actors social media presence for any length of time, its emerged that Sir Patrick Stewart is a big, big fan of the ganj.

Hes released a statement expressing his support for new research into medicinal marijuana to be carried out by Oxford University, which will be the first on the matter in the United Kingdom.

Stewart explains that he was prescribed medical marijuana two years ago by a Los Angeles doctor, to treat hereditary osteoarthritis affecting his hands. Since being advised on the good greens pain-alleviating properties, Sir Pat has been using ointment, spray and edibles containing marijuana, saying:

I believe that the ointment and spray have significantly reduced the stiffness and pain in my hands.

Presumably the edibles are just for fun, and for making things like patting your adorable rescue dog, making out with Conan OBrien, honouring your rad bromance with best mate Sir Ian McKellan, and voicing a poo in a movie about fucken emojis a whole lot chiller.

Sir P goes on to say of his Mary Jane journey:

I have had no negative side effects from this treatment and the alternative would have been to continue taking NSAIDs, Advil, Aleve and Naproxen, which are known to be harsh on the liver and to cause acid reflux. This is an important step forward for Britain in a field of research that has for too long been held back by prejudice, fear and ignorance. I believe this programme of research might result in benefits for people like myself as well as millions of others.

Onya, P-Stew. Show those Tory squares what theyre missing out on: full range of mobility in their old-ass hands, and the pure pleasures of lying in a bathtub dressed like a lobster.

P.S. Seems like nows as good a time to revisit the best piece of Patrick Stewart-themed media ever created. ENGAGE.

Source: AV Club.

Image: Twitter / @SirPatStew.
Actor Ricardo Medina, who played the red Power Ranger in several iterations of the popular TV series, has admitted to the murder of his former roommate, stabbing him with a sword following an argument.

The 38-year-old was originally facing charges of first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of 26 years to life, but this week, he made a guilty plea to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and now faces six years behind bars.

Prosecutors in the case alleged that Medina killed his roommate, 36-year-old Josh Sutter, in their Los Angeles home in January 2015, after an argument about Medinas girlfriend turned physical.

The defence claimed that, after the pair came to blows, Medina and his girlfriend locked themselves in his bedroom, but Sutter broke down the door and charged in at the pair.

They claim Medina picked up the nearest weapon, which was a large Conan the Barbarian-style sword, and stabbed him in the abdomen in self-defence. Sutter later died in hospital.

Medina will be sentenced on March 30, and lawyer Stanley Friedman says that his client is happy and enthusiastic with the deal that was offered, as it will allow him to avoid life in prison.

I think its a good resolution for both parties, Friedman added. The [DAs] office gave it a lot of consideration. I think they did a good job of evaluating the evidence and the risk.

The actor played the Red Lion Force Ranger in Power Rangers Wild Force in 2002, and returned to the series for Power Rangers Super Samurai in 2011 and 2012.

Source: NBC News.

Photo: Michael Tullberg / Getty.
Weve teamed up with our pals at Virgin Australia to bring you all the goss and glam from this years Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival. Soz in advance for the wardrobe envy.

Its a truth universally known that whats worn by stylish attendees of fashion festivals and the like is just as important (sometimes more, soz) as the clothes that comes down the runway.

And when youre young, hot and cashed up like Aussie actress, Westfield ambassador and social media extraordinaire Sarah Ellen, youve got a pretty decent selection of designer accessories to sport: like the v. cute Prada Cahier bag she wore to sit FROW at Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival.

It features regularly on her Instagram, as any bag that costs $2,000+ bloody should:

A magical night with an important topic. Thanks for having me & dressing me, its always a pleasure @Prada ?? A post shared by Sarah Ellen (@sarahellen) on Nov 17, 2016 at 2:37am PST

Before everyone took their seat for whats basically regarded as the week-long festivals highlight  the Virgin Australia Grand Showcase, which saw celebrated Sydney design duo Camilla & Marcs return to the catwalk after a four year break  we hit up Sarah and some of her fellow bloggers, including Jasmin Howell (Friend In Fashion) and Klara Belle (House of Klara), to ask about the most expensive item they had on. **Spoiler: lots of Chanel, lots of Prada and a hint of YSL.**

If you didnt catch that and the rest of the shows BTS action on our Snapchat (add PEDESTRIAN.TV), you can catch the video below.

After the show  which featured a 21-piece orchestra playing a score specially composed for the event  30 guests filed into a tent styled to look like Hollywoods Chateau Marmont for an exclusive dinner hosted by the folks at Virgin Australia and the airlines resident celeb chef, Luke Mangan.

There were candles. There were gold, chocolate domes hiding dessert. There was a violinist.

Jealous, us?

Virgin Australia is launching flights from Melbourne to Los Angeles on 4 April 2017. To find flights, click HERE.





Photos: Carolyn Duchene.
One year can make all the difference.

That's the thesis of "1917: How One Year Changed the World," a new exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History, which opened on March 17. You can take a mini, virtual tour of the exhibit in the gallery at the top of this post.

MORE:

The exhibit looks at three key events: America joining World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Balfour Declaration (in which Great Britain stated its support for a Jewish state in Palestine).

Those events changed the political and social landscape in America and led to more stringent immigration policies, conflicts in the Middle East and an obsession with appearing "American" above all else.

The exhibition is meant to get people thinking about what it means to be American. What does it look like? What does being an American mean? Can one still be a patriot if they identify also ethnically with another culture? Should one question their government?

"Every century or so a society has to ask itself really hard questions," said Rachel Lithgow executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, which partnered with the museum for the exhibit. "I think what this exhibition hopes to do is inspire those questions amongst all the visitors and attendees."

These questions were faced by many Jews in America in 1917.

"In WWI Jews fought disproportionately to their population in the United States," Lithgow said. "13 percent of the army was foreign speaking, foreign born."

"These men and women laid down their lives for a country that at the time was questioning whether or not they were true citizens," she continued. "That is a story that I think is extremely relevant to today."

The highlight of the exhibit is the Balfour Declaration, which is shown in two different versions. There's the original handwritten draft (composed on hotel stationery) and a typed version with handwritten edits. It's the first time the original draft has ever been on display in the United States.

"You can really see, looking at the document, the pain and struggle and care that its authors went through to draft this small paragraph," Lithgow said. "To look into the future now, we see what was created out of this single sheet of paper. It's remarkable."

1917 also saw Emma Goldman fighting for reproductive rights, distributing cervical caps as an early form of birth control. Goldman would eventually be deported from America for being an anarchist. Her story is one of those told in the exhibit.

Another is that of William Shemin, a Jewish soldier in World War I that, because of anti-Semitism, wasn't honored with a Medal of Honor until 2015, decades after he had died.

There's also a larger story concerning immigration.

"The xenophobia that comes out of America's entry into World War I and the other events we talk about in the exhibition -- it gets worse and really culminates in the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act," said Ivy Barsky, CEO for the museum. "That, in essence, closes the door to immigration for a lot of ethnic minorities who are seeking safety in the United States."

That act and its quotas was in effect during the 1930s when many Jews tried to escape Europe as Hitler rose power.

"Those stringent immigration laws which came out of that anti-immigrant sentiment participated in many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people perishing in Europe that might not have had America's doors been open to them," Barsky said "History is history but it also has important implications for today and understanding the implications of our actions."

The exhibition runs until July 16. After that date it will move to New York's American Jewish Historical Society, where it will be on display from Sept. 1-Dec. 29.

Throughout its stay at the Museum of American Jewish History, there will be public programs that will help people dive deeper into the exhibit, including a curator tour at 10 a.m. on April 27 and a lecture from Alon Ben-Gurion about his grandfather, the first Prime Minister of Israel at 7:30 p.m. on May 11.

The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. It is located at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Admission to the museum is $12 for adults, $11 for seniors and youths (13-21) and free for children 12 and under or those with an active military ID. For more information visit nmajh.org.

Want more Philadelphia stories? Click here for all our coverage on the City of Brotherly Love.

This story has been updated to clarify why Goldman was deported.
The floods of 1936 occurred throughout Pennsylvania March 17-20 and became known as the St. Patrick's Day Floods.

The St. Patrick's Day floods affected all areas of Pennsylvania - Easton, Williamsport, Bloomsburg, Sunbury, Johnstown and Pittsburgh. More than 100 people in Pennsylvania died and the damage estimate was $300 million.

According to the book, Great Floods of Pennsylvania by William H. Shank, "The winter of 1935-36 had been one of the most severe that Pennsylvania had seen for years. Huge quantities of snow fell in January and February throughout the state, and prevailing low temperatures preserved it well."

In late February, the cold spell ended, according to the book, "with remarkably warm weather and light rains. This resulted in the rapid melting of two months accumulation of dormant moisture throughout the state, all of which was turned loose on the streams and rivers within a period of about 10 days."

"An early effect of the warm spell was the thawing of the heavy layers of ice, fifteen to twenty (or more) inches thick, formed on the rivers during the intense cold period. As this ice melted, and as the rivers raised, the ice 'gorged' or jammed at various points, forming temporary dams, with resulting high 'back-up' water. The heavy ice cakes, borne in-shore by the high water, resulted in great damage to properties or communities where the jams occurred."

The author said that on March 7 he and a friend viewed an ice jam north of the bridge at Duncannon. The broken ice on the Juniata River, he said, had formed a dam at the bridge and water was pouring across Route 22 at Amity Hall, joining the Susquehanna River.

"Pennsylvania Department of Highway engineers had dynamited the roadway at Amity Hall to provide a temporary channel and prevent under mining of the entire roadway between Amity Hall and the Clarks Ferry Bridge," he wrote.

That evening, 10 miles of river ice above Harrisburg broke loose and gorged at multiple locations, causing an abrupt rise in the water level, and "carrying huge cakes of ice in shore, which did tremendous damage. The town of Dauphin, 8 miles north of Harrisburg, was particularly hard hit. The ice gorge there occurred so suddenly that the townspeople literally ran for their lives to escape the inshore rush of water and ice cakes. Virtually every cottage and home along the river bank was either completely destroyed or badly damaged by the ice."

In the next week, he wrote, the level of the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg rose and fell. The maximum level on March 13 was 21.7 feet, with flooding in south Harrisburg and some West Shore suburbs.

"The big flood, however, started on March 17 when the water began a steady and inexorable rise which continued until about 28 percent of the city was under water - 4 to 15 feet deep in some places. The peak of 30.33 feet was finally reached at 6 p.m. March 19, the highest reading to that date ever recorded on the Walnut Street gage at Harrisburg. The official crest, recorded on the Nagle Street gage downstream, was 29.23 feet," he wrote.

Because the city's pumping station and island water filtering plant were submerged at 27 feet, he said the city was left with only about a week's worth of uncontaminated water in its reservoirs.

The water began to recede on March 21. "Damage was tremendous," he wrote. "Gas mains, water supplies, power lines, highways and bridges in the area were left in pitiable conditions. For weeks whole caravans of tank trucks rushed in drinking water supplies to fill the dwindling reservoirs. Water was rationed and boiling was recommended for what little water still remained in the reservoirs. It became almost a criminal offense to take a bath. Most West Shore citizens got typhoid shots."

In Pittsburgh, it was the worst flood in the city's history.

The water reached flood stage of 25 feet on March 17 then the next day peaked at 46 feet.

About 100,000 buildings were destroyed.
LANCASTER -- The people of Lancaster had their first opportunity to hear from one of the five people who could replace outgoing Mayor Rick Gray next year.

Hundreds of city residents took the opportunity to meet mayoral candidates at an NAACP forum Thursday evening at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. Norman Bristol Colon, Danene Sorace and Kevin Ressler are competing in the upcoming Democratic primary, while Cindy Stewart is the lone candidate on the Republican ticket.

Newcomer Tony Dastra, who recently announced his independent campaign for mayor, also participated in the event. Dastra is completing his bachelor's degree through Arizona State University and works at Starbucks. He is not officially on the ballot at this time but participated in the forum because the organization is about inclusion and giving the potential leaders a platform to speak, said moderator and NAACP member Patricia Hopson-Shelton.

Candidates addressed questions energetically and passionately for nearly two hours. Each often related answers similar to those of their opponents in responding to NAACP and audience queries. All agreed top goals for the next mayor should include income inequality, affordable housing and safe neighborhoods, a shift to a community policing model, and looking for different ways to fund city initiatives.

Other issues discussed included how the candidates would deal with the challenges the city faces, development ideas for southeast and southwest Lancaster, enhancing the quality of life for all ethnic groups and bridging the gap between police and communities of color.

The candidates also explained how they would build on Gray's commission on poverty, what they would do to aid the School District of Lancaster to provide better education to city children, and whether they support the ban the box initiative, among other issues.

Dastra stood apart from the other candidates early, pointing to his desire to restructure Lancaster's city government. His idea is to make the city government representative of the people with a ward system, shifting it from the at-large system. Dastra said that would bring power to the people and effectively put the neighborhoods in charge of themselves.

Bristol Colon reiterated his promise at the launch of his campaign to have the most diverse and inclusive administration the city has ever seen. He said the next mayor has an amazing opportunity to invest in the city in total rather than focusing on specific areas, as was the case with downtown and the northern regions of the city.

In noting a need for extending downtown's prosperity to the neighborhoods, Sorace said it is important the next administration leverage what is right about the neighborhoods and work to build investor confidence so that the areas can grow and develop.

Bristol Colon pushed for a clear agenda in southeast Lancaster with economic and social justice in mind. He said the city should preserve the rich history of its African-American community as well as pushing for more black-owned businesses and people taking advantage of local ventures run by minorities.

Stewart stressed the need for paths to engagement at various points during the forum. She said that until people feel empowered enough to step forward, no mayor can fix problems such as poverty and other issues.

Both Stewart and Dastra agreed on a need for increased transparency in city government, with Dastra continuing to commit to live-streaming city council meetings as well as proposing a "virtual" city clerk's office to help get young people involved in government. Stewart said transparency goes beyond posting documents and means being inclusionary from the start.

Ressler, who has worked as an activist for refugees and with Black Lives Matter, said he is in favor of citizen review boards to work with police, as well as de-escalation, anti-discrimination and mental health trainings. He noted that he was going to participate in a ride-along with Lancaster police and considers Chief Keith Sadler a respected friend, so he hopes to hear from police on how to improve relations as well.

Bristol Colon said it is important for communities to understand police have policies they must follow but said he would support a review board in circumstances where processes aren't fair or answers don't come in a timely fashion.

Both Bristol Colon and Ressler referred to the police-involved killing of Jose Efrain Rodriguez in February when addressing policing issues.

Sorace said there is what she calls a sequencing problem in Lancaster, and the larger county, with getting people connected to the open jobs in the area. In some cases, job seekers aren't aware of the competencies or skills needed, and it is the city's responsibility to connect employers with the right people but also to ensure people are adequately trained so they can have steady income and provide for their families.

Referencing historical inequality and privilege, Dastra said the city should work with places like Thaddeus Stevens to create trade jobs. He also pointed to a need for homeownership as well as jobs people can walk to in the city.

Stewart didn't definitively answer whether she was for the ban the box initiative, because she said the issues run deeper than just removing questions about criminal history from job applications. She said full disclosure in hiring is important, but added that it is important to educate employers about what they could be missing by skipping over someone who does have a record.

She said employers must understand that shouldn't be the end of the conversation, to which Ressler agreed, adding that there should be context. As an example, he said, someone with a retail theft offense wouldn't go into homes with Meals on Wheels Lancaster but could work in the kitchen.

The candidates were generally amiable towards each other and often cracked jokes about sharing microphones and losing track of whose turn it was to speak during the event. Bristol Colon garnered the biggest laugh of the night, explaining that he has lived in nearly every neighborhood in Lancaster and brings diverse residency along with his ideas for inclusion.

The NAACP of Lancaster partnered with Bethel A.M.E. Church, Crispus Attucks Center, League of Women Voters of Lancaster County and South Ann Street Concerned Neighbors to host the event. A meet the candidates event hosted by Neighbors United is scheduled for March 22.
A Pittsburgh man has been indicted by a grand jury on a federal hate crimes charge after a post-election incident in which he allegedly pummeled an Indian man seated next to him at a bar and said, "things are different now ... I don't want you sitting next to me, you people."

The Department of Justice announced the indictment against 54-year-old Jeffrey Allen Burgess on Thursday in connection with the Nov. 22 incident at a Red Robin in Pittsburgh's South Hills Village shopping mall.

According to WTAE-TV, the incident occurred as Burgess was seated next to a man named Ankur Mehta at the restaurant's bar. Mehta was working on his tablet with his earbuds in and failed to notice Burgess taunting him and using racial and ethnic epithets, the station reported.

According to police, Burgess then "launched an unprovoked attack on the victim as he was seated at the bar," striking Mehta in the face with his elbow and fist multiple times.

KDKA-TV reported that Burgess had mistakenly believed that Mehta was a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent, and used an ethnic slur indicating as much.

Witnesses told police Burgess had grabbed Mehta by the head and punched him. Witnesses also said Mehta was defenseless and unaware of Burgess's impending attack, local stations reported.

Officials later said Mehta was taken to a local hospital with a loose tooth and a cut to his upper lip, while Burgess was arrested on suspicion of ethnic intimidation, simple assault, harassment and public drunkenness by local authorities.

On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced a grand jury's federal indictment against Burgess for a single count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Bryd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Before a recent court appearance on the local charges, Burgess blamed alcohol for his actions, adding, "I'm not that kind of person ... It happened and I'm remorseful about it."

The incident came amid a reported spike in hate crimes and ethnic intimidation cases in the wake of the Nov. 8 election. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 867 "hate incidents" in the 10 days after Donald Trump was elected president, more than 300 of which included direct references to the president-elect or his campaign rhetoric, the group reported.

According to the Washington Post, "the incidents -- documented in the media or reported through a form on the center's website -- included vandalism of places of worship, attacks on Muslim women in headscarves and bullying of Hispanic students in schools."

The Post added that the "Southern Poverty Law Center also counted 23 incidents it classified as 'anti-Trump,' including one in which someone grabbed a man wearing a Trump hat by the neck on a subway in New York."

And while other attempts to track post-election reports of ethnic violence and intimidation have come up with numbers lower than the Southern Poverty Law Center's, advocates say they have no doubt that hate crimes are on the rise nationwide.

This as new research cites a more than 20 percent increase in hate crimes in nine U.S. metropolitan areas in the last year. Trump has condemned such incidents, but often not to the satisfaction of his critics.

Meanwhile, a 2016 report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that ethnic or racially-motivated hate crime incidents in the Pittsburgh area were previously among the highest in Pennsylvania, with 11 such incidents reported there in 2015 compared to Philadelphia's six.

In Pittsburgh, Burgess is facing a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both, if convicted on the federal hate crime count stemming from the Nov. 22 incident in South Hills Village.

PennLive was unable to reach his lawyers for comment Thursday. A non-jury trial has been scheduled in his case for May 1 in the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas, online records indicate.
By C.C. Parker

Pennsylvania is in desperate need of leadership in addressing the opioid epidemic. We must quit talking about it and do something about it.

I worked for almost 28 years for the Office of Attorney General as both an investigator and a supervisor.

I have seen firsthand the devastation caused by drugs in Pennsylvania. I have seen the devastation of crack cocaine, methamphetamine, prescription drugs and heroin.

For years investigators were wondering why there was nobody addressing the rampant abuse of Vicodin.

Then Oxycontin hit the market and the devastation is still haunting us in Pennsylvania.

We found it curious that when Purdue Frederick changed the formulation of Oxycontin to a tamper proof formula that doctors were reluctant to prescribe it because "it didn't work as good as the original formulation".

After the prescribing of Oxycontin diminished we immediately saw rampant prescribing of immediate action oxycodone, not in the 5 mg variety but in 15 and 30 milligrams.

Often, they were prescribed together.

As investigators, we had learned that there were no scientific studies that ever proved that the long term use of opiate pain medication for non-cancer chronic pain was a safe and effective treatment.

However, we would see rampant prescribing of opiates along with concomitant prescribing of benzodiazepines such as Xanax or Clonazepam, which for some was a death sentence.

The response by our government has been dismal.

We have law enforcement agencies all operating independent of each other and often times with one agency not knowing what the other agency is doing.

There are two state agencies in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania State Police and the Office of Attorney General, that investigate drug trafficking in the Commonwealth along with others.

From past experience, I can unequivocally say that after the dissolution of the drug strike forces (offices where Troopers of PSP and Agents of the OAG worked together) the exchange of investigative information between the two are virtually non-existent.

There may be isolated cases, but working independent of each other is the most often the norm.

Add to those two agencies, county task forces, federal task forces, local departmental investigations etc. and one can quickly realize that so much could be accomplished if only they all worked toward a common goal.

At what cost to us the taxpayer/victim of the opioid epidemic is the bill for this?

I have tried to reach out to agency heads and others who have occasionally publicly spoke about what a priority this epidemic is and how they as an individual or group are attacking the epidemic.

I have either received no response or a polite political thank you.

One agency head described treatment as the only way that we will solve this epidemic. I will tell you in no uncertain terms that treatment usually happens after months or years of addiction.

Treatment usually comes at the tail end of the problem. We cannot focus on treatment alone to solve this epidemic.

Treatment is an important part but is not the end all solution. Everyone must have the ability to provide treatment information to those facing addiction and efforts must be made to help them get the treatment they need but it is not the only answer.

I hear politicians say we cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

I say to everyone that many of my arrests resulted in a person getting treatment and success stories would make their way back to me in the form of a thank you or a phone call.

We may not be able to jail our way out of this problem but an arrest many times triggers the help some so desperately need.

Our Prescription Drug Monitoring Program is inefficient and has been crafted in such a way that it does not meet the needs of our Commonwealth.

A case in point is that an investigator from the Office of Attorney General can drive to 20 pharmacies and request prescription drug information which would take at least a day or more to complete.

But that same investigator is held to a standard of a court order or search warrant if they wish to obtain the exact same information from the PDMP program.

Likewise, investigators can only search exact names and dates of birth.

In cases where people use multiple names and dates of birth, the exact search is ineffective and a waste of time, money and resources.

I am going to strongly suggest that Pennsylvania is desperately in need of prescribing regulations and not guidelines.

Whether it's a nurse practitioner, physician or physician's assistant, time and again horror stories are repeated throughout Pennsylvania where prescribing led to addiction or death.

A guideline is nothing more than a suggestion and is extremely ineffective is stopping prescribing practices that are killing our citizens.

If we as Pennsylvanians wish to fight a war on addiction then it is long overdue that we have a commander to lead that fight.

If citizens were being killed by some foreign enemy surely our military would have a leader to fight that war. If we are going to consider opiate addiction an epidemic then we should focus as much effort as we did when the Ebola or Zika outbreak faced our nation.

The time is now that we must quit talking, quit having hearings or town hall meetings and fight this epidemic at each and every level.

During the time that you have read this article there were most likely people dying on our streets from a heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil or prescription opiate addiction.

It is time that every single resource is focused as one and putting an end to this very real, very deadly epidemic.

C.C. Parker spent nearly 28 years on the front lines of the drug wars in the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. He is now retired.
Curtis M. Scaparrotti,Dalia Grybauskaite

Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite, right, speaks with NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR) U.S General Curtis Scaparrotti prior to their meeting at the President's palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, Thursday, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

(Mindaugas Kulbis)

By Joseph R. Nunez

I was a happy NATO warrior during the Cold War. Even deploying on one of the coldest major NATO exercises - Return of Forces to Germany or Reforger '85 - was a positive experience.

I was convinced the United States had to reinforce democratic Europe against the expansionist threat of the communist Soviet Union. This show of force helped reassure NATO allies and hold the Russian Bear in check.

My happy NATO warrior spirit peaked in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. The post Cold War era yielded much strategic fog.

The unipolar moment was squandered with peacekeeping and peacemaking operations, declining defense budgets rationalized as peace dividends, and growing international instability from failed states and rogue challengers to the status quo.

The 2001 attacks on the United States further strained NATO relations because Afghanistan was seen as a just mission, but the Iraq mission was largely rejected; the neoconservative argument for preemptive war was seen as irrational and untimely.

Neither conflict went well, though NATO support held in Afghanistan for about a decade, yet only few partners opted for the heavy lifting of combat operations.

As Iraq and Afghanistan force reductions occurred, Russia emerged under Vladimir Putin.

Seeking to regain former Russian glory and strength, Putin flexed military muscle in several former Soviet republics to suppress political and economic independence, and retaliated against religious factions opposed to Moscow's influence and control. Concurrently, the United States significantly reduced its force posture in Germany.

Putin supported the conflict in Ukraine by aligning with ethnic Russians in 2014. This clearly was a countermeasure to NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.

Ukraine is not happy with NATO support, especially since the lack of arms was a significant factor in territorial losses that included Crimea.

The upshot of this Russian violation of sovereignty is that Europeans are now scared. Now American troops are deployed in several European countries to reinforce allies and hold Russians in check, once again.

Further complicating NATO's situation is that it watched while Russia sent forces into Syria to support the brutal Assad regime in concert with Iran.

This changed Assad from being defensive to offensive, which resulted in thousands of innocent people killed and created a massive refugee flow that challenges Europe politically, economically, and socially.

Even Germany is having second thoughts about its refugee policy.

Given this, one would assume NATO defense expenditures would have increased to meet these threats, near and far.

That would be an incorrect assumption; for 2016, only five NATO members met or exceeded the 2 percent of GDP threshold for defense expenditures: United States, Greece, United Kingdom, Estonia, and Poland. Those spending less than 1.25% of GDP: Croatia, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Slovak Republic, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Canada, Slovenia, Spain, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

As an American, I want my European friends to know that we are your loyal ally.

However, when we go out to dinner and the check comes, you need to stop ducking and dashing. Nobody likes a free-rider, so pay your fair share.

I recognize collective action is a dilemma. It is often difficult to get individuals, groups, and states to agree. Still, the threats to Europe are real, whether Russian expansionism or anti-Western terrorism. They will not go away by sitting on the sidelines.

One of the great rewards of a strong and allied defense is that it often discourages expansionist powers from bad behavior.

To paraphrase the esteemed Elihu Root: We are not seeking to make war; rather, we are endeavoring to preserve the peace.

Defense preparation and cooperation are codified in Article 3 of the NATO Charter: "In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack."

Today, too many members focus on mutual aid and collective capacity, while far fewer are committed to self-help and individual capacity.

For almost half a century, NATO was an effective regional defense and security organization. It provided a protective umbrella over Europe and North America. The mission and threat were clear.

This agreement set the conditions for economic development and stronger democracies; benefits outweighed the costs. But NATO has been largely adrift for the last two decades.

I was encouraged by recent comments made by NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, and U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis.

Both exhorted member states to do more in terms of defense spending and readiness. But this NATO is not enough to meet current and emerging threats.

Col. Joseph R. Nunez (ret), served in NATO assignments, commanded a battalion, taught at the U.S. Military Academy and the Army War College, and served five years in Iraq between 2007 and 2013, most of it with the Department of State. He is currently a private political-economic advisor.
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump speaks at the American Center for Mobility, Wednesday, March 15, 2017, in Ypsilanti Township, Mich.

(Paul Sancya / AP)

At first glance, the budget proposal that President Donald Trump sent to Congress this week holds plenty of bad news for Pennsylvania.

Consider:

Trump's budget would eliminate the federal Low Income Heating Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which provides financial assistance on heating bills. If enacted, it would cut off 345,000 Pennsylvanians, including 121,000 senior citizens and 67,000 families with children aged 6 years old and younger.

Trump's budget

The administration's budget cuts funding to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, putting the burden back on states already dealing with funding problems of their own to ensure citizens have access to clean air and safe drinking water. In Pennsylvania, federal funding accounts for

Trump's budget kills funding for a host of independent agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, In central Pennsylvania,

Trump's budget hurts those who can afford it least - the poor and the aged - who, ironically, were among his most passionate supporters.

But because Washington abhors a vacuum, it's still entirely likely that vast portions of Trump's spending plan will ever become law. And, again, in another delicious irony, it will be Republicans who bear the blame for it.

To get his budget passed, Trump will have to bypass The Sequester, the fiscal gatekeeper Congress approved just as the economy was beginning to slowly rebound in 2010.

The law imposed hard caps on defense and non-discretionary defense spending. To overcome an inevitable Senate filibuster to get rid of them, Trump would have to successfully woo Democrats to his cause.

Given the icy relations between the two sides, that's a long-shot even in the Bizarro World parallel universe where such things are possible.

And were he ever to win Democrats, Trump would have to alter his spending framework so significantly that he'd sacrifice whatever Republican support he'd managed to garner for it, as Annie Lowry noted in a piece for The Atlantic last week.

"Show me the budget deal that would increase defense spending, lift the budget caps, keep all Republicans, and bring in eight [Senate] Democrats," Todd Harrison, a military spending expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign-policy think tank told Lowry, summing up the White House's current dilemma. "It doesn't exist."

There is a budget agreement to be had, to be sure. But one that would pass both houses of Congress requires more fiscal and intellectual maturity than the current White House appears capable of mustering.

So, perhaps it's fortunate that Congress actually does the work of budget writing, rendering Trump's budget plan little more than a statement of policy priorities.

And as a statement goes, it is distressingly enlightening.

Trump has said he wants to trim government waste and make the federal government operate more efficiently.

That's something even the most radical of Democrats would agree is a good idea. No one wants to see the taxpayers' hard-earned money disappear down Washington's drain.

But the plan Trump sent to Congress this week accomplishes little beyond harming the poor while handing massive tax breaks to the wealthy and further enriching the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about so many years ago.

We hope Congress will move quickly past it and approve a budget that works for all Americans.
Here, there, everywhere  why car washes seem to be on every corner
Petrobras to restart asset sales

BRASILIA

Petroleumworld.com 03 17 2017

Brazil's federal audit court TCU on Wednesday allowed state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA to proceed with its divestment program, but required the company to restart the process except for two projects.

The decision means that moves by Petrobras, as the company is known, to sell off a controlling stake in its fuels distribution unit BR Distribuidora will start from scratch.

Petrobras had been prevented from signing any new asset sales while TCU reviewed its procedures and the court overturned an injunction that suspended sales in December.

The two assets that Petrobras will be able to sell without restarting the process are the rights to operate the Bauna and Tartaruga Verde offshore oil fields, and a share of Petrobras' deepwater rights in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Other assets will have to be sold under new rules that were not immediately made public. Sale decisions will remain the responsibility of the board of directors, through direct negotiations with buyers instead of a bidding process.

Petrobras said in a statement it would follow recommendations by the TCU to improve the divestment process and make it more competitive.

"This decision is fundamental for the company to press ahead with its plan for partnerships and divestments, one of the pillars for reaching its target of reducing leverage," the statement said.

Saulo Puttini, the TCU's infrastructure coordinator, told reporters the new rules will increase transparency and oversight in future asset sales.

Petrobras has sold about 30 assets since 2012 when the divestment program began, Puttini said, noting that another 40 remain to be sold.

The divestment plan has also been held up by an injunction obtained by the Alagoas oil workers union in Sergipe state, Sindipetro-AL/SE. The injunction has blocked the sale of the Bauna and Tartaruga Verde oil fields, the Bauna and Tartaruga Verde oil fields, as well as the inland fields in the states of Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Sergipe, Bahia and Espirito Santo.

Petrobras's statement did not mention the oil worker's injunction.

The union's lawyer, Raquel Sousa, said in an interview that the oil workers would not accept the sale of Petrobras assets without a bidding process as provided for by Brazilian law to protect the country's capital.

The injunction in November forced Petrobras to suspend talks with Karoon Gas Australia Ltd on the sale of a 100 percent stake in the 45,000 barrels-per-day Bauna field, in the Santos Basin, and a 50 percent interest in Tartaruga Verde, still in development, in the Campos Basin.


Saudi Arabia and China agree on $65 bln in deals as king Salman visits

BEIJING

Petroleumworld.com 03 17 2017

Saudi Arabia's King Salman oversaw the signing of deals worth as much as $65 billion on the first day of a visit to Beijing on Thursday, as the world's largest oil exporter looks to cement ties with the world's second-largest economy.

The deals included a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between giant state oil firm Saudi Aramco and China North Industries Group Corp (Norinco), to look into building refining and chemical plants in China.

Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) and Sinopec, which already jointly run a chemical complex in Tinajin, also agreed to develop petrochemical projects in both China and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's octogenarian monarch, who has overseen the launch of an ambitious economic reform plan since his accession two years ago, is on a month-long Asian tour.

The visits to countries that are some of world's fastest growing importers of Saudi oil aim to promote investment opportunities in the kingdom, including the sale of a stake in Aramco.

Saudi Arabia has sought to boost oil sales to China, the world's second-largest oil market, after losing market share to Russia last year, by working mostly with China's top three state oil firms.

In Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People, President Xi Jinping told Salman that China was a reliable and stable oil export market and the two countries should deepen cooperation.

"For a long time, China and Islamic countries have respected each other and had win-win cooperation, and have created a model of the peaceful coexistence of different cultures," Xi said, according to China's Foreign Ministry.

Salman told Xi he hoped China could play an even greater role in Middle East affairs, the ministry added.

"Saudi Arabia is willing to work hard with China to promote global and regional peace, security and prosperity," Salman said.

'OLD FRIENDS'

Deputy Chinese Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said the memorandums of understanding and letters of intent were potentially worth about $65 billion, involving everything from energy to space.

"President Xi Jinping and King Salman are old friends," Zhang said. "Practical cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia has already made major achievements, and has huge potential."

A statement later posted on Saudi state news agency SPA said the documents included an MoU for the kingdom to participate in China's Chang E-4 moon mission and a partnership agreement for manufacturing drones.

Besides the MoUs agreed between the two governments, Saudi and Chinese companies signed 21 deals, ranging from exploring investments in oil and petrochemical plants to ecommerce and co-operating in renewable energy markets.

For Saudi Aramco, the potential investments fit with its strategy to expand its refining and chemicals portfolio in its bid to diversify assets and secure long-term agreements for its oil.

Beijing, for its part, has recently loosened its grip on a sector long dominated by the country's top three energy giants in an effort to boost private investment as the economy cools.

The Norinco deal could involve exploring the possibility of a greenfield refinery and chemical plant in Panjin, Liaoning province, while also upgrading an existing refinery and petrochemical facility in the same location, an industry source said.

"This MoU shows Aramco is determined to expand its market share in the Far East by looking beyond oil majors and working closely with new independent clients within its biggest market," said Sadad al-Husseini, an energy consultant and former senior Aramco executive.

Aramco said in written statements the MoU was for the development of refinery and chemical facilities.

The state oil giant also signed an MoU with Aerosun Corp for the manufacture of reinforced thermoplastic pipes and components.

'HONEST BROKER

China has traditionally played little role in Middle East conflicts or diplomacy, despite its reliance on the region for oil. But it has been trying to get more involved in efforts to end Syria's six-year-old civil war, where Riyadh supports rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad.

Last year China also offered support for Yemen's government, which is backed by a Saudi-led Gulf Arab coalition in a war against the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement that controls much of the country.

Zhang said both the Yemen and Syria crises were discussed by Salman and Xi, and both leaders agreed that these issues must be resolved politically via talks.

China has had to tread a careful line, though, as it also has close relations with Iran. Xi visited both Saudi Arabia and Iran in January last year.

Next week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits China.

One Beijing-based diplomat from a Muslim-majority country told Reuters that China was trying to play the role of "honest broker" in the Middle East, as it lacks the historical baggage of the Americans or the Europeans.

"China does not take sides and that is appreciated," said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.


A gas pipeline to be build by Shell from Venezuela to Trinidad





Royal Dutch Shell to build a 17 Km gas pipeline between Venezuela's gas field Dragon and TT's gas field Hibiscus

PORT SPAIN

Petroleumworld 03 17 2017

Oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell is expected to build a 17 kilometre (10.6 mile) pipeline from Venezuela's shallow-water Dragon gas field to its Hibiscus platform off the north coast of Trinidad, following agreements signed Wednesday in Caracas, according to Venezuelan government statements.

Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Stuart Young is expected to make the announcement today at the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing in Port of Spain.

On Wednesday in Parliament, he said he "just came off a plane" and would make an announcement within 24 to 48 hours on what Government is doing to help the declining oil and gas sector. Hours before, he was excused from the Lower House sitting by Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George who said he was out of the country.

At a press conference in Caracas yesterday, Young said he wanted "to also welcome to the table, Shell, who have shown themselves to be a willing partner with both the Government of Venezuela as well as the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, and to emphasise and to concur with my fellow minister, his excellency (Venezuela's Oil) Minister (Nelson) Martinez in telling Shell that we want to contract and crunch the time frame and to make this happen as quickly as possible and you have the full support of both Governments and our respective teams to make this a reality."

Venezuela's State-owned oil and gas company Petroleos de Venezuela (PdV) President Eulogio del Pino said at the press conference: "We've signed an agreement to supply gas to Trinidad through the National Gas Company of T&T (NGC) and Shell, and also to build a gas pipeline between Venezuela and Trinidad."

US$100m investment

NGC Chairman Gerry Brooks signed on behalf of NGC while del Pino signed on behalf of PdV and Port of Spain-based Luis Prado, on behalf of Shell. NGC President Mark Loquan was also on the one-day trip to La Campina, Caracas. Young signed on behalf of the Government of T&T while Martinez signed on behalf of the Government of Venezuela. The agreements were not shared with the media. However, Young was quoted in one of the Venezuelan Government's statements as saying the development of the project could entail an investment of more than US$100 million.

The agreements cover "the construction, operation and maintenance of a gas pipeline from Dragon field, located in the north-east of the Paria Peninsula, Sucre State, to Trinidad's Hibiscus platform," a Venezuelan Government statement said.

"After this pipeline is completed, natural gas will be supplied to the Trinidadian domestic market and to a gas plant on the island, from where it is expected to be sold to the international market," the Bolivarian Government said.

"The initial idea is to start producing for Trinidad and Tobago, between two to three years, some 200 or 300 million (standard) cubic feet of gas (per day)," (mmscfd) Martinez said at the press conference at PdV headquarters in Caracas. Martinez said the gas to be exported to T&T "has the potential to be transformed into liquefied natural gas (LNG) or any kind of raw material," suggesting both Atlantic, majority-owned by Shell, and Point Lisas could benefit.

Enough to supply T&T plus export

"The Dragon field is the closest to Trinidad and has a very interesting perspective, since it can generate gas for the domestic market and for export. Gas exports are of particular interest," Martinez said. He said Venezuela has the gas potential - around 197.1 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves - to fully satisfy T&T's domestic market and still have leftover to export.

From Wednesday, a team of experts from Shell, PdV and the NGC will work together to define the operational, commercial and legal parameters that will govern the project, Martinez said.

"We already have the infrastructure on the Trinidad side and we have the willingness to accept this challenge. The benefit for the two countries is very clear," he said.

The Dragon field is one of the four fields that make up the 14.7 tcf Mariscal Sucre Project (MSP) to the north of the Paria Peninsula, which aims to produce in the long term, 1.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas and up to 28 thousand barrels of oil per day. Other fields in the MSP are the Patao, Mejillones and Rio Caribe fields.

After the signing, Young paid a courtesy call on Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Delcy Rodriguez, and then flew to Piarco, whence, according to Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, he was whisked with "flashing blue lights" to Parliament to contribute to a bill to make borrowing from the Corporacion Andina de Fomento (CAF) legal.

Rowley: Dragon at 'Business Plan' stage

On March 6, Opposition Member of Parliament for Caroni Central Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie asked: "Would the prime minister provide an update on the status of negotiations with Venezuelan authorities regarding the Dragon Field Project and advise this House on his assessment of progress made up to this point?"

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley responded: "Madam Speaker, as you know, these are very delicate negotiations, except to say that we have made some progress. We are at the stage of finalizing the kinds of documents that would put us on a path to move from concept to business plan, but I do not want, at this stage, to publicly discuss where we are at, given that these are very delicate and sensitive negotiations."








"Globalization could be going in reverse, Statoil CEO after D.C. visit



Trump win, Brexit are warning signs for global trade: Saetre

OSLO

Petroleumworld 03 17 2017

After the surprise election of Donald Trump, the head of Norway's biggest oil company headed to Washington D.C. this month looking for reassurance. He came away as worried as ever.

I was looking for clarity, also some guidance, good advice, and also some people to talk to -- new relationships within the administration, Statoil ASA Chief Executive Officer Eldar Saetre told a conference in Oslo on Thursday. I have to be honest with you -- I didn't get much of any of it.

Saetre, whose company has stakes in three U.S. onshore areas and in the Gulf of Mexico, was concerned about the protectionist bent of the new president's rhetoric. Combined with last year's Brexit vote and looming elections in Europe where nationalists are gaining influence, he sees Trump's victory as a threat to global free trade.

From Brexit to Trump, we see warning signs that globalization could be going in reverse, Saetre said at the annual Swedbank Energy Summit. For our industry, I believe that would be very negative.

Trump's energy policies could benefit oil producers in the U.S. by loosening regulations and freeing up more areas for drilling. However, his protectionist agenda could affect economic growth and trading relations with countries from neighboring Mexico to Asia.

Global Collaboration

Global collaboration and integrated markets have been and will remain key to make our industry prosper, Saetre said. Fair, open access to markets are keys to enable investments, value creation and jobs in our industry.

Cross-border cooperation is also essential to solve climate change, making it more important than ever, Saetre said. Trump signaled during his campaign he could pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement to limit global warming, which he has called a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

Statoil, which is 67 percent owned by the Norwegian government, is one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies with production of almost 2 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2016. It gets more than a third of its output from overseas.

Saetre made the trip to Washington on his way to the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston this month, which drew energy industry bosses from Moscow to Riyadh.

He has asked his staff to set up a new trip to the U.S. in the hope of a better outcome.








Vegan eating has skyrocketed in popularity over the course of recent decades, with more than 1,400 plant-based restaurants opening all across the US. While Philadelphia is historically known for cheesesteaks, countless vegan restaurants now call the city home. This is
SIOUX CITY | Two people were charged with first-degree robbery Wednesday in connection with a shooting in the parking lot of the Singing Hills Walmart last week.

At 3 a.m. on March 9, Kelsey Kritzer, 23, arranged to meet two subjects at the store to collect money for a previous drug debt, court documents said.

The Sergeant Bluff woman asked Luis Lira, 22, also known as "Lil Cholo," to come with her during the collection.

When the subjects arrived, Lira walked up to the passenger side of the vehicle and told them to roll down the window and demanded the money, the documents said.

When the window was down three inches, Lira pointed a pistol at the victims, which caused them to speed away.

Lira then fired the pistol at the fleeing car. The documents said one bullet entered through the rear window and struck the driver in the back of the right shoulder.

The documents did not say the severity of the victim's injuries.

Lira, of Sioux City, was arrested Wednesday morning following a traffic stop. A glass pipe, a scale and 1.5 grams of meth were found inside the car.

Lira was booked into the Woodbury County Jail for a number of drug charges and first-degree robbery, reckless use of a firearm and a felon in possession of a firearm. His bond amount is $300,000.

Kritzer was also arrested and booked Wednesday evening on charges of first-degree robbery and driving on a suspended license. Her bond has been set at $100,000.

Both have court dates on March 27.

Alex Boisjolie writes for the Sioux City Journal, another Lee Enterprises newspaper. Reach him at aboisjolie@siouxcityjournal.com.
WATERLOO  Dwight Clark had a surprise for Gene Holmes under an olive-drab blanket.

It was something he hadnt seen since he lugged one around in Korea in 1951. It was a flamethrower.

Remember how much it weighed loaded? Clark asked Holmes.

Seventy-two pounds, Holmes said, without hesitation.

Oh boy. I hadnt seen one of those on a long time, Holmes said later.

Holmes served in a Marine unit in Korea. Clark served in the Marines in Vietnam. Both are part of the planning for a Korean War exhibit at the Grout Museum scheduled to open in July on the 64th anniversary of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 war  where forces on both sides are lined up across the 38th parallel from each other to this day.

The exhibit will occupy much of the same space as a recent Vietnam exhibit.

Major elements of the exhibit are still being formulated, but it will include a Faces of the Fallen display with names and photos of Iowans killed in the war.

Clark trades and accumulates war equipment memorabilia and is helping the Grout accumulate items for the Korean War exhibit, as he did for a year-long Vietnam War exhibit, which ran through last July.

Among the items Clark has available for display, in addition to the flame thrower, are a mortar, a light machine gun and and an M-1 military rifle.

But the exhibit will be about more than weaponry. Itll be about the people, specifically Iowans, who served in what is still known today as The Forgotten War.

Thats kind of our focus  the troops story, particularly Iowa troops, said Erin Dawson, Grout exhibits curator.We are trying to pick out individuals.

We really, really want to place a larger emphasis on individuals, on Iowa veterans stories to tell the story, said Chris Shackelford, historic content and program developer for the Grout district.

The museum district will rely on the veterans on its planning committee, video-recorded oral histories of veterans and their photo albums, diaries and artifacts they bring in from their service to be displayed.

There are historical and news service photos available, Shackelford said, However, Theres something about seeing a photograph an Iowan took, seeing it literally through their eyes, this photograph that is passed on. Its amazing how many of them have it. In the 1950s cameras were a lot more available to the general public.

A lot of these pictures, composition-wise, are amazing, Dawson said. Its really nice, to hear at least from the vets on the committee, their experiences during the war. What the temperature was like, whether it was hot or cold. What the rice paddies smelled like. Everything.

I was there during the winter, during the monsoon, and during summer,Holmes said. The winters  they talk about the Chosin guys. Boy, those guys were something else. He recalls, in winter, eating fried eggs that were frozen to his mess kit by the time he finished them.

Its a much more human experience than reading it out of a textbook, Shackelford said.

Gene Holmes said he became involved because he served with the father of retired Grout exhibits curator Robin Venter. Holmes was in the Reserves when the war started.

I got called back in by Uncle Harry  (President) Truman, he joked. I was one of the replacements for the boys who were at the Chosin, relieving Marines encircled at the Chosin Reservoir, who fought their way through Chinese Communist forces in bitter winter conditions to the port of Hungnam and safety. Many local Marines served in that campaign. Hed been married four months when called up for Korea.

Holmes, a retired John Deere worker, had previously contributed items to the permanent Korean War section of the Grouts Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum.

Its been a good experience, Holmes said of planning the exhibit.Its a real hoot to be with these guys (Grout staff) who know what theyre doing and plan the exhibit.

The contributions of Holmes and his fellow veterans are crucial, Dawson and Shackelford said.

To me its invaluable, Dawson said. Theres no way we would understand the perspectives of anybody over there.

Its indispensable, Schackelford said. Its magnificent these gentlemen (and women) are around. Given the attrition rate of surviving Korean War veterans, now in their 80s, its imperative this be done now, instead of 10 years from now.

The input of these gentlemen is exactly what we need to complete this project.

Most of us are old duffers, said Holmes, who turned 89 in January. Hes already brought in some of his old uniforms. The field shoes still have Korean dust on them, he said.

Planning committee member Sid Morris of Cedar Falls, former head of the Tallcorn Chapter of Iowa Korean War veterans, is especially fond of one decoration he received from the Korean government on the wars 60th anniversary, made from fence from the 38th parallel dividing South and North Korea.

I slept under that damn fence, said Morris, an Army veteran who served in the 31st Field Artillery regiment of the 7th Infantry Division. He served, at times, as a forward observer.

I was on Old Baldy and Pork Chop Hill, Morris said.

Im very honored theyre doing this for the Korean War, Morris said of the exhibit, because the Korean war did have, I think, a major impact on this country. Its called The Forgotten war, but it was the first war to stop the spread of communism. And that, I think is very important.

The differences between the South and North, Korean economies and government are significant, Morris noted.

Thats the best example I know of what freedom can do, Morris said. The conflict is still significant and relevant today in light of the heightened tensions involving North Korea.

For more information about the exhibit and its planning, call the Grout at 319-234-6357.
2016 was another record year of biologics sales with antibodies accounting for two-thirds

Details Category: Press Room Published on Friday, 17 March 2017 13:34 Hits: 5222

STUTTGART, Germany I March 17, 2017 I Sales of branded originator biologics in 2016 continued to reach a record high of US$ 163 bln, a plus of 5.8% compared with the previous year. Growth drivers were therapeutic antibodies for treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases, especially the emerging immuno-oncology antibodies and novel anti-inflammatory antibodies different from anti-TNF. Interestingly, sales of all anti-inflammatory antibodies including the anti-TNF family were 63% higher than those of the cancer antibodies. Nearly two-thirds of all biologics sales are attributable to antibodies, while 2016 sales of therapeutic proteins were 10% lower than those in 2015. Nearly all classes of therapeutic proteins except enzyme replacement therapies have seen a decline of sales in 2016.

A total of 42 biologic therapeutics reached blockbuster status with 2016 sales exceeding US$ 1 bln: 25 antibodies and 17 proteins. Eight biologics reached global sales in 2015 of more than US$ 5 bln. Four biologics were new in the blockbuster biologics list, among them the immune checkpoint modulator nivolumab which made it among the TOP 10 blockbuster biologics. Six biopharmaceutical companies posted biologics sales of more than US$ 10 bln in the year 2016.

The report Blockbuster Biologics 2016: Sales of Recombinant Therapeutic Antibodies & Proteins can be acquired at La Merie Publishings News Center and Online Store www.PipelineReview.com: https://www.pipelinereview.com/index.php/store-online/blockbuster-biologics-2016-sales-of-recombinant-therapeutic-antibodies-proteins-detail

The report provides a compilation of the sales data of recombinant therapeutic proteins and antibodies in the calendar year 2016. Sales data were obtained from company publications and refer to branded products originating from companies based in regulated markets. All sales data were converted from their original, published currency into US$. Sales figures represent the sum of revenues in all territories where the products were marketed. Growth rates usually are listed as reported (in some cases on constant exchange rates).

Sales data are presented for each product within the respective class of biologics. The data were analyzed to establish a ranking list of blockbuster biologics with 2016 sales higher than US$ 1 bln. Another ranking list was prepared for companies according to biologics sales in 2016 and the percentage of antibody sales vs protein sales.

About La Merie

La Merie Publishing is a Business Intelligence enterprise fully dedicated to provide high quality R&D information to the biopharmaceutical industry. La Merie offers individual consultancy services and publishes reports and periodicals. For more information visit www.lamerie.com and www.PipelineReview.com, the Biologics News Center and Online Store of La Merie Publishing.

SOURCE: La Merie Publishing
CLEAR LAKE | Authorities are asking the public's help locating a Clear Lake woman who has been missing since Monday.

Janet Dorenkamp, 62, was last seen leaving her home on Clear Lake's South Shore at 6 a.m. Monday, according to a Cerro Gordo County Sheriff's Office statement.

She was driving her silver 2014 Toyota Rav 4. It has an Iowa license plate of 101TAL.

Dorenkamp is described as a five foot six-inch tall white woman who weighs about 130 pounds. She has blonde hair.

She was officially reported missing on Friday afternoon, but deputies had been notified on Tuesday that Dorenkamp hadn't been seen and they should be on the lookout for her.

Sheriff's Deputy John Crom said there is no signs of foul play, but deputies are trying to locate Dorenkamp because she has not been seen in four days.

Anyone with information can contact the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff's Office at 641-421-3000.

 Molly Montag
Lt. Debra Clayton. Her accused killer will not face the death penalty. (Photo: Orlando PD)

Florida lawmakers, the community, and law enforcement are weighing in on a decision announced Thursday by Orange-Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala that her office would not seek the death penalty against accused cop killer Markeith Loyd or in any other cases that were once considered for the death penalty, reports WFTV.

Loyd is accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon in December and Orlando Lt. Debra Clayton in January.

Many lawmakers and members of law enforcement have disagreed with Ayala's decision.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott released a statement Thursday that called for Ayala to recuse herself:

"I want to be very clear, Lt. Debra Clayton was executed while she was lying on the ground fighting for her life," Scott said.

"She was killed by an evil murderer who did not think twice about senselessly ending her life. I completely disagree with State Attorney Ayala's decision and comments and I am asking her to recuse herself immediately from this case.

"She has made it abundantly clear that she will not fight for justice for Lt. Debra Clayton and our law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line every day."

Related:

No Death Penalty Sought for FL Cop Killer Suspect, Orlando Chief 'Furious'
Investigators say a fight over doughnuts Wednesday led a man to kill his mother's fiance and wound a Florida sheriff's deputy.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told the Associated Press the incident began when 24-year-old Jeffrey Falsey asked his mother to get him doughnuts. When Susan DiFabbio refused, her son became angry. She called for help.

Gualtieri says shots rang out after deputies arrived. Two hours later, negotiators persuaded Falsey to leave the home. Inside they found 68-year-old Daniel Kulwicki dead. Deputy Michael Ficocelli was shot in the leg.
MASON CITY | Three people are accused of stealing a large amount of merchandise from a Mason City retailer.

Susan Khamsai, 32, Boonmee Vongsee, 33, and Gary Black, 43, were each charged with felony second-degree theft and misdemeanor methamphetamine possession.

They're accused of stealing between $1,000 and $10,000 from Mills Fleet Farm on Thursday morning.

Police say they stole a large number of items.

Khamsai and Vongsee, both of Webster City, were taken into custody in the store's parking lot. Black, of Des Moines, was found inside the store.

Investigators were initially summoned to the store by Fleet Farm staff, who told officers they were watching a group of people who were believed were shoplifting from the store.

All the stolen property was returned to Mills Fleet Farm.

Black also was charged with nine counts of removing a theft detection device, a misdemeanor. Khamsai also faces a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia and a second count of possession of a controlled substance.
Investigators say Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton was killed in January by Markeith Loyd. (Photo: Orlando PD)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday removed Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala from the case of accused cop killer Markeith Loyd after she announced that she would not pursue the death penalty in his or any other case during her tenure.

In an executive order, Scott gave the case to Lake County State Attorney Brad King, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Earlier today, I called on State Attorney Ayala to immediately recuse herself from this case, Scott said in a statement. She informed me this afternoon that she refuses to do that. She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice, and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case.

Scott cited a state law allowing Floridas governor to appoint a different prosecutor if he finds a good and sufficient reason to take it away from the original prosecutor.

Loyd is charged with killing Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton as well as his pregnant girlfriend. An Orange County Sheriff's deputy, Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, died during the manhunt for Loyd when he was thrown from his motorcycle in an accident.
Stephen Hamper has been convicted of attacking a Denver officer and attempting to take her gun. (Photo: Denver PD)

A 29-year-old man has been convicted of viciously beating a Denver Police officer after he was seen wandering into traffic and washing his clothes in a storm drain near Interstate 25.

A Denver jury convicted Stephen Hamper on multiple counts Wednesday after a two-day trial. He was found guilty of first degree assault causing serious bodily injury, two counts of second-degree assault of a peace officer and criminal attempt to disarm a peace officer for the September 2014 attack.

Court documents say it all started when Thompson tried to handcuff Hamper on a ramp to southbound I-25.

As Thompson tried to get him out of the road, prosecutors say Hamper turned around and punched her in the face, before breaking loose and rushing toward her patrol car.

He then turned back around and hit her several times, knocking her down. He proceeded to get on top of her and tried to grab her gun.

Two people driving by saw the attack and intervened, KUSA TV reports.
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During CNNs The Messy Truth with Van Jones on Thursday, Republican congressman Chris Collins of New York said that Donald Trump deserves a solid A for the job hes done so far  and the crowd quickly laughed at his poor grading skills.

Video:

Some in the crowd chuckle as GOP congressman says Trump deserves a solid A for the job hes done so far. pic.twitter.com/q1ZKgT5aVn  Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) March 17, 2017

With a straight face, Collins said Trump deserves a solid A.

He continued: Hes doing everything that he promised he would do  working to secure our borders, took us out of TPP, has the best cabinet that has never been assembled in history.

The best cabinet in history? Has he talked to Betsy DeVos? What about Jeff Sessions? Steve Mnuchin? Anyone?

This was definitely an appropriate time for laughter, but its also terrifying that a member of Congress could say, with a straight face, that Trump  after a disastrous two months in the White House  is doing a great job.

Its particularly troubling since his comments come as the president continues perpetuating the myth that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, despite bipartisan agreement in Congress that there is no evidence to support such a ridiculous claim.

If Collins view of reality is this distorted, perhaps its time for the voters in New Yorks 27th district to reconsider sending him back to Congress in 2018.
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It is always humorous to listen to a hypocritical Republican preach incessantly about personal accountability and accepting the consequences of ones own choices and actions. This is particularly funny when the same Republican starts whining like a little sissy when they feel societal pressure for making choices and taking actions that are bigoted, racist, chauvinistic and unconstitutional. In a very important way, all Republicans are like evangelical fanatics that turn into crybabies and pull the persecution card when they are forbidden, by the U.S. Constitution, from forcing something unpopular, or their religious beliefs, down every other Americans throats against their will.

According to former North Carolina governor and evangelical bigot Pat McCrory, he is being persecuted over his staunch support for the so-called North Carolina toilet law, HB2. McCrory was giving an interview (starting at 17 minutes) on one of those evangelical fanatic podcasts Friday past where he complained bitterly that he is having uncharacteristic problems finding employment due to his support for HB2. In a related note, the N.C. Democratic Party responded to poor persecuted Pats complaints stating:

North Carolina has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity and thousands of jobs as a direct result of House Bill 2, but I guess we can start adding Gov. McCrorys career to the total as well.

The former North Carolina governor related that he has been considered for part-time university teaching positions, but they have not materialized because of opposition to a religious bigot on campus. McCrory didnt use the word persecution, but he did complain that academic and university leaders have shown reluctance [to hire him] because of student protests against an evangelical extremist as part-time instructor; he certainly shouldnt be called a professor. Preacher maybe, but never Professor.

Poor persecuted Pat. He claimed, like every other religious Republican, that protests against Republican tyranny are not the way America works; but he stopped short of assailing the 1st Amendments freedom to assemble. However, he did claim that he is being purged because American citizens are exercising that 1st Amendment right many Republicans want to see abolished when they protest against Republican policies and agendas, or a corrupt, deranged lunatic living in the White House. McCrory said about protests targeting him: Thats not the way our American system should operate  having people purged due to political thought. Poor, persecuted Pat.

McCrory isnt being purged from anything and the Americans protesting are not doing so over his political thought. They are protesting because he was, and still is, an overtly zealous supporter of unconstitutional discrimination against Americans who are worthy of the same Constitutional rights as the evangelical bigots behind hateful unconstitutional religious laws like HB2. Another way of stating what McCrory is really bitching about is that he is annoyed because American citizens are protesting against his attempt to force his religious beliefs disguised as political thought on other Americans.

As is typical of Republicans, especially after deceitful Don got to move in the White House, McCrory lied through his teeth during a Christian network interview. McCrory went out of his way to claim HB2 was simply a privacy law and religious North Carolina Republicans means of prohibiting any individual from gender self-identification; something McCrory claims is the purview of anyone but the individual. However, McCrory signed HB2, supported it savagely, and even filed a lawsuit against the federal government for criticizing it; so he knows exactly what the law entailed and yet he still lied on a Christian network by calling it a privacy law. It certainly is much, much more than a discriminatory toilet law and actually attacked every non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male and non-Christian demographic in the state of North Carolina.

HB2 may have been dubbed the toilet law, but it was the most strident attack on equal, civil, and employment rights in America and to prove the point it was only written, passed, and signed into law for the express purpose of abolishing an anti-discrimination law passed and enacted in one North Carolina city. It was never about which toilet a student relieves themselves in, sneaks a quick puff between classes in, or preens in front of the mirror in, and McCrory knows it.

The Republicans HB2 law attacks every demographic except white Christian males and legalizes discrimination against women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, non-Christians, atheists and anyone else an evangelical bigot concludes is ungodly. And, just for good measure, HB2 prohibited any city, county or municipality from ever passing any kind of non-discrimination statute as well as forbidding any city, county, or municipality from raising the minimum wage ( Section  2.1). Remember, the whole anti-transgender movement began because this authors birthplace, Charlotte North Carolina, passed a simple non-discrimination law extending 14th Amendment rights to the LGBTQ community; the only one in the state. It is worth noting that if North Carolina Republicans and their evangelical fanatic supporters had simply followed the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, and the 5th and 14th Amendments guarantee of equal rights under the law for all American residents, the Charlotte city council would not have had to pass a specific law guaranteeing equal rights for non-heterosexuals.

McCrory, a typical persecuted evangelical, said that liberal groups opposing HB2 have harmed his stellar reputation. If you disagree with the politically correct thought police  youre a bigot, youre the worst of evil. Its almost as if I broke a law. Actually, supporting, or signing into law any legislation that is a statewide mandate legalizing discrimination is against the law of the land, the United States Constitution.

Look, McCrory is a sad, pathetic crybaby who cant accept that not everyone in America, or North Carolina for that matter, is a bigot clinging to religion to deny other Americans their constitutionally protected equal rights under the law of the land; a document that McCrory and most Republicans summarily reject. Except, of course, the 2nd Amendment and sometimes the 10th if it involves passing unconstitutional religious laws legalizing discrimination or punishing women.

If McCrory is really so upset that no reputable academic institution is willing to hire him, even for part-time work, because they are appalled at his ardent support for legalized discrimination founded on his religious beliefs, then he should pick up his trusty King James and read what Jesus Christ preached about tolerance. Then he should go the nearest public library, or any Internet search engine, and peruse that document he swore to uphold. Then he might fully understand why any patriotic American hates him and protests against his attempt to force his religious beliefs down their throats  because that is what HB2 is about and that is why poor persecuted Pat cant get a job.
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Hillary Clinton took to Twitter and cut the failing Trump presidency down to size with a single tweet.

Clinton tweeted:

Things I learned today. https://t.co/lM2xAjIg3H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 17, 2017

Former Sec. Clinton used Trumps favorite method of communication (Twitter) to show America just what kind of inept and in over his head failure of a president that the country is dealing with. For anyone wondering if Clinton is over the Electoral College loss, her tweet provides an answer. I am not sure how well anyone would be over winning the popular vote by 3 million votes but losing the election because of 78,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

People who actually understand how government works are expressing awe over Trumps ignorance that is bordering on criminal cluelessness. Health care is a hard that is why it took Democrats more than four decades to pass substantial health care reform. Diplomacy is exhausting, but the reward is peace. Yes, Russians spy which is why it isnt a good idea for a presidential campaign to potentially collaborate with them to win an election.

Hillary Clinton is the kind of competent president that the country could have had. Instead, the nation is being dominated by insane wiretapping conspiracies and Russia scandal that inches closer to paralyzing the US government by the day.

In her post-politics life, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated a talent that no one knew existed. She is master Internet troll of Donald Trump.
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The Trump administration through Sean Spicer and National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster have apologized to Britains intelligence service, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, for falsely accusing it Thursday night of wiretapping Donald Trump at the request of President Obama.

All based on something they watched on Fox News. Sean Spicer said during a press conference that because Fox News said so, we must take the threat of British spying seriously, to which claim GCHQ  which never responds to news stories  correctly responded, Utterly ridiculous.

Watch the sordid details courtesy of The Telegraph:



According to Spicer,

Hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on it.

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command  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.

This was Spicers source, Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News on March 14th:

Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command  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.

He used GCHQ. What is that? Its the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trumps conversations, involving president-elect Trump, hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot.

Right.

According to The Telegraph,

Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that both Mr Spicer and General McMaster, the US National Security Adviser, have apologised over the claims. The apology came direct from them, a source said.



General McMaster contacted Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Ministers National Security adviser, to apologise for the comments. Mr Spicer conveyed his apology through Sir Kim Darroch, Britains US ambassador.

Yes. This is the math Republicans do. Fox News + Donald Trump = apologies to Americas ally Great Britain.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays spokesperson said,

Weve made clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. Weve received assurances that these allegations wont be repeated.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office.

This latest Trump foreign policy fiasco is completely unacceptable. Media Matters Eric Boehlert asks, remind me again: how many times did Obama have to apologize to our oldest ally?

We can answer him easily: ZERO times. And 0, as it happens, is an important number to the Trump administration.

Donald Trump has gone exactly 0 days without being a national embarrassment since taking office two months ago. At this rate, it isnt likely hell ever reach one day, let alone string two or more together.

Republicans and Fox News falsely accused President Obama of carrying out an apology tour but here it turns out the real apology tour is coming from Donald Trump and his collection of conspiracy theorists with the collective lying ability of an eight-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

As Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes said this morning, This is a crazy way to conduct foreign policy. Sad!
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The White House has formally apologized to the British government after Press Secretary Sean Spicer cited a bogus Fox News report that the British intelligence helped Obama spy on Donald Trump.

Video of Spicer using Fox News as a source:

https://youtu.be/59TPpwoCBOY

The Telegraph reported, The US has made a formal apology to Britain after the White House accused GCHQ of helping Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump in the White House.

Reuters added that a spokesman for British PM Theresa May told reporters, Weve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and weve received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated.

The claim was originally made by Fox Newss Andrew Napolitano:

Napolitano said, Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. 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. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trumps conversations, involving president-elect Trump, hes able to get it and theres no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot.

The British government had already debunked this claim, but Sean Spicer still trusted Fox News over the government of an ally.

The problems are numerous. The White House should not be using media over their own intelligence resources. The President can pick up the phone and clear up anything in a matter of moments, so why is he getting his information from a partisan cable news network?

The Trump White House has forced America to apologize because the person who is running the country is a volatile senior citizen who trusts Fox News more than his own government

Trump was never spied on by Obama, and the White Houses refusal to admit the truth is causing international incidents.

The lesson for all Americans is that they shouldnt believe everything that they see on Fox News, and hopefully, someone with takeaway President Trumps TV time before people start losing their lives.
Pizza has been a constant in Brian Kesslers life, from the time he got a job in a pizzeria as a teenager until the day he met his wife in a pizza joint. Read moreIggy's Pizza Shop is now open in Mount Pleasant
Watchdog and Public Service reporter

Thad Moore is a reporter on The Post and Couriers Watchdog and Public Service team and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. To share tips securely, reach Moore via ProtonMail at thadmoore@protonmail.com or on Signal at 843-214-6576.
Doug Rozendaal has been flying airplanes for more than four decades, but when he took off from Mason City Airport on Friday it was a first for
Cody Gathers (second from right), 26, matched into a pediatrics residency at Boston Childrens Hospital on Friday at the Medical University of South Carolinas Match Day at the Charleston Music Hall. U.S. News & World Report names that hospital the top in the country in pediatrics. Gathers, who is also class president, ranked Boston Childrens as his top choice, but it came as a surprise when he opened his envelope with his match information onstage. Dawn Brazell/Medical University of South Carolina
The Nexx Level Sports Center, planned to be built in Irmo, would host major sports tournaments weekly, and is projected to bring $51 million in spending to the area in the first five years, if developers can line up the financial support needed to build it. Read moreProposed Columbia area sports complex seeking financial commitments from county, state
MASON CITY | Two teams from Rolling Acres Christian Reformed Church recently went to Guatemala to hep build a church that also will be used as a school.

One of the team members, Deb Schmidt, said she has been on mission trips before, but this one to the community of Nueva Concepcion was especially meaningful because, "I was building God's house."

So many people who attend Rolling Acres wanted to go on the mission trip that they were divided into two teams that went on separate one-week trips.

Eagle Grove-based GoServ Global works with Mark and Kelly Lee, missionaries to Nueva Concepcion.

Team member Terri Pals said GoServe Global makes it easy for people to go on mission trips. Those who go pay their own airfare and another set fee per day that includes food and board.

The church/school will be a two-story building.

"It's going to be impressive,' Pals said.

Schmidt said Mark Lee's vision is not to be the permanent pastor at the church, but to eventually step aside so a local pastor can take over.

Lee also wants the school's teachers to all be from the local population.

"He wants it to be their church, their school," Schmidt said.

Other schools in the area only accept children who are registered, meaning their parents have records of their birth and certain other documents.

The mission school, which the Lees hopes to open by January 2018, will accept all children, whether they are registered or not.

Wes Bonnema, another team member, said most children in the area leave school after the sixth grade to work in the fields.

The mission school will give them a chance "to break the cycle of poverty," he said.

The Lees also have lots of other ideas for the mission, including a fish farm where the people will raise fish in ponds and use the water to grow organic vegetables they can sell.

Pals said this will provide a better income for the local population, noting those who work in the fields only make $7 a day.

Other future plans include establishing a medical clinic.

Mission team members has the chance to interact with the children of Nueva Concepcion.

Pals said the people there were "beautiful inside and out."

They gave the team members a warm welcome to their community, according to Pals.

She said she wondered, "Would we have been so welcoming if they came here?"

The Lees are coming to a potluck Sunday at Rolling Acres. Another team from the church plans to return to Nueva Concepcion in November.
The oft-told story of a frog perishing in a pot as the water slowly warms and then cooks him is not actually based in fact; the metaphor persists because it describes something that is true: We are less aware of change that occurs gradually than when it happens all at once. Read moreEditorial: Referendums based on slow evolution: Berkeley, Dorchester aren't so rural anymore
South Carolina voters head to the polls Nov. 8, casting ballots in midterm elections that will not only determine the state's next governor but will also act as the first major referendum on the Biden era. Read moreYour voter guide to top races, key issues in South Carolina's 2022 midterm elections
NEW YORK  Syrian journalist and activist Kholoud Helmi was struggling with her emotions.

"It's too much sometimes," she said. "I feel like a chocolate that has a shell outside, but inside it's hollow. People don't want to hear the pain. And if I cry days and nights, it won't change anything."

Helmi, from the Damascus suburbs, could be forgiven her tears. Her brother long ago went missing and is feared dead in the nearly 6-year-old conflict; an uncle, cousins and many friends have been killed.

"Sometimes you lose control. And then you go to bed, hug your pillow, weep and get up and don't show any of it when you get up the next day," Helmi said in an interview.

The 33-year-old is a key subject in "Cries From Syria," Oscar nominee Evgeny Afineevsky's harrowing new documentary about the conflict's victims. She was in a side room at the Council on Foreign Relations last week after a screening of the film.

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"Cries From Syria," which had its premiere on HBO on Monday night, shows a side of the war few Americans know or are willing to expose themselves to. The movie is graphic, even by the gruesome standards of the unfortunate subgenre of Syrian war documentaries. A father tries to save his children on a rickety boat as one by one they drown. A school is razed by a missile. A town filled with children is decimated by a chemical attack.

'You won't be laughing'

Before the screening, Sheila Nevins, HBO's documentary chief, took the stage.

"I'm glad you're laughing now because you won't be laughing later," she said to a smattering of nervous laughter.

The audience then watched silently and sometimes weepily as Afineevsky and a battalion of citizen journalists showed the victims, particularly children, caught in the vise of Bashar Assad's military in its conflict with the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian Democratic Forces and various jihadi groups.

With the death toll approaching half a million and the displaced topping 6 million, the conflict has long descended into humanitarian catastrophe, and the audience watched children talk about the loss of dreams and a reason, even slightly, for hope.

(Filmmakers have sought to explore various angles of the issue: Sundance saw the debut of several movies, including "Cries," Matthew Heineman's ISIS-oriented citizen-journalist tale "City of Ghosts" and Firas Fayyad's "Last Men in Aleppo," which won a grand jury prize. Last month at the Oscars, "The White Helmets," about the rescue workers in particularly violent areas of Syria, took home the prize for documentary short.)

Exorcising fear

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After the "Cries" screening, a panel of experts joined Helmi and Afineevsky at the front of the room.

"I challenge anyone to see this movie and not understand why people are fleeing," said Ciaran Donnelly, a senior vice president at the International Rescue Committee, addressing the Western backlash to refugees and the presidential travel ban that it engendered.

Afineevsky, the Russian American filmmaker who earlier in the day had recorded "Charlie Rose," explained why he shifted from the Ukraine setting of his "Winter on Fire."

"This is a refugee crisis the world has not experienced since the Second World War," he said. "I needed to go back in history, like a time machine, and find out, in-depth, why so many people were leaving their homes."

He added, "We, through the press, have fear of this people. In order not to have fear I made this movie."

Got hope?

Someone in the audience asked whether the Trump administration would take a more aggressive approach in Syria to halt the atrocities. "Trump is not a reversal of Obama  he's a doubling down of Obama," demurred Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council.

The room grew quiet when Helmi spoke. She laid out the endgames being played by various leaders. The moderator asked her whether she felt the U.S. government was supporting opposition groups.

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She paused, and her voice grew quiet and laden with meaning.

"No," she said.

Helmi lives in Turkey now, where she is instrumental in refugee causes including schools and newspapers  part of a band of women in the refugee underground, many of whom have lost children, trying to rebuild Syria in absentia.

She said her work is aimed at future generations; she believes anyone of a certain age now has lost its opportunity amid the violence and displacement.

"I lost the whole universe when I left," she said. "But I believe I'll be back to Damascus one day. I really do. At that point I won't feel so much like I lost my hometown or lost so many people."

She managed to keep some moments of humor through the pain.

"The last time I came to the U.S. (at Sundance) the president signed a travel ban two days later. And now," she said, alluding to Trump's reissued executive order, "I've come again, and he's signed another one.

"Maybe," she added drolly, "I should stop coming to the U.S."
A man accused of choking a woman and threatening her with a hammer made his first appearance Monday in Olmsted County District Court.

Matthew Jonathan Marquette, 25, of Rochester, faces one count each of domestic assault by strangulation, threats of violence, domestic assault and false imprisonment, all felonies, as well as misdemeanor counts of obstructing the legal process and fleeing a peace officer on foot.

He remains in custody in lieu of $200,000 unconditional bond and is due back in court March 27.

The charges stem from an incident that was reported Sunday morning, when Rochester police were called to a local emergency room for a report of an assault.

A woman there said Marquette had called her earlier that morning and wanted her to come over; he sent a taxi to retrieve her. She arrived about 6 a.m. and found Marquette in the basement of his home on Eighth Street Northwest.

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He appeared agitated and began calling her degrading names, the report says; the victim believed he was using methamphetamine and heroin, so she took a roll of aluminum foil that she knew he used to do drugs.

The woman went upstairs and told Marquette she was leaving; but had to go back downstairs for her purse. Marquette allegedly followed her down, stood behind her, put his arm around her neck, covered her nose and mouth with his other hand and "put me down to the ground," the woman said.

She couldn't talk or breathe until Marquette released her, court documents say. As she "crawled on her hands and knees in an effort to get back up," Marquette came up behind her and pulled her head back by her hair, the document continues.

He then reportedly began to swing a hammer in a circle above her, telling the woman, "you're going to get it," "I'm going to kill you," "I'm gonna finally kill you," the complaint says. Marquette put the hammer on top of her head, then lifted it up and pretended he was going to hit her with it by swinging it toward her, then stopping suddenly.

Marquette allegedly dragged the woman to a bed by her hair, then opened and closed a knife in front of her. She continued to cry, apologize and beg him not to kill her, the reports say; he demanded she take her clothes off and stop crying, or he'd "kill her in 4 seconds."

When she couldn't stop crying, Marquette said "that's it," flipped her onto her stomach, pulled her head toward him, again covered her nose and mouth so she couldn't breathe, the court documents say, and punched her several times on the sides of her head. She bit his hand to force it away from her mouth.

She allegedly tried to escape several times, but Marquette prevented her from leaving by grabbing her arm and pulling her back downstairs. She eventually managed to break free from his grip, ran to a bathroom and locked the door; Marquette threatened to kill her if she didn't open the door, the paperwork says.

The woman was able to get outside and went to a neighbor's house to call for help.

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The reports note multiple injuries to the victim, including cuts, scratches, scrapes and bruises. As officers spoke with her in the emergency room, Marquette sent multiple threatening text messages, stating, "you (expletive) up (expletive) you called the cops," "(expletive) you, you stupid piece of (expletive)," and more, the complaint says.

He refused to answer the door when police arrived at his home, saying he didn't do anything. A search warrant was obtained; before it was executed, Marquette was seen running out the back door. He was arrested soon after and declined to provide a statement.

A search of the house recovered a hammer in the basement that matched the one described by the victim.
WINONA  A Wisconsin man has racked up 18 felony charges after authorities say he stole nearly $84,000 from a Winona business.

Terry Lee Odegaard, 42, of Fountain City, made his first appearance Wednesday in Winona County District Court, where he faces eight counts of theft, eight counts of theft by swindle and two counts of financial transaction card fraud.

He's been released on his own recognizance and is due back in court April 10.

The investigation began in September 2015, when the business  which was not identified in the criminal complaint  notified law enforcement that an employee had been stealing money.

It was Odegaard, the complaint says, who'd been an employee for more than 15 years and handled nearly all customer service transactions.

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The month before, a new employee noted that the records management system was at least six updates behind, court documents say; he knew the updates were important and allowed for better reports to find accounting errors.

Odegaard was responsible for training the new employee, who watched as Odegaard took a customer's cash payment, put it in a folder and said the manager would deposit it later. When the employee spoke with the manager the next day, the folder and money were found on Odegaard's desk; he told them he was getting it ready for deposit.

The employee later found that Odegaard had allegedly tried to fabricate a credit card purchase for that invoice, and deleted the purchase from the system.

When he was questioned about a customer's large unpaid balance, Odegaard quit on the spot. After his departure, management staff began sifting through accounts, the complaint says, and realized invoices were deleted. Most carried a notation suggesting a credit card transaction, but the credit card records didn't match up.

In addition, several customers had paid by checks, which were made out to Odegaard  or changed to his name  and not deposited into the business's account, the paperwork showed.

Many customers told management that Odegaard gave them a discount if they paid in cash; none of those transactions were entered into the system and the invoices showed they'd been "zeroed out," though not deleted.

From January 2012 through August 2015, Odegaard is accused of taking $82,112.93, the documents say. Though he had no permission to do so, Odegaard also allegedly used the business credit card to pay his home gas bill in 2014 and 2015 for a total of $1,760.78 and his $59.32 phone bill in April 2015.

The total comes to $83,933.03.

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Odegaard told authorities in October that he didn't update invoices; it was the manager's job. The manager and owner also had access to the system, he said. Odegaard denied deleting invoices and destroying customer folders, and denied ever using the business credit card "that he knew of," the complaint says.

He also denied changing any checks, telling customers there was a discount for paying in cash and taking any cash from transactions.
A Rochester man will take his case to a jury after being accused of threatening people with a knife and exposing himself.

Kurt Wayne Meiners, 51, was charged after the incident with second-degree assault and threats of violence, both felonies; gross misdemeanor stalking and misdemeanor fifth-degree assault.

He pleaded not guilty to all counts in December; a trial was set to begin Wednesday.

The case began Nov. 3, when Rochester police responded to an assault call. The male victim and two witnesses all described the event, giving essentially the same story, the criminal complaint says.

The witnesses, who were visiting the victim, were using a microwave in the community room of the building where Meiners and the victim both live. Meiners, they said, came into the room and was angry at them for using the microwave, made vulgar comments to the woman and threatened to call the police.

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They told their friend about the exchange; he went to Meiners' apartment to speak to him.

Meiners answered the door wearing only pants. His genitals were exposed, the court documents say, and he was holding a knife in his right hand, pointing it at the victim.

As the witnesses watched  one of them recording the incident with his cell phone  Meiners walked toward the victim and allegedly asked him, "Do you want to die? I will stab and kill you right now."

All three of them began backing down the hallway as Meiners continued walking toward them, still threatening them with the knife, the reports say. He allegedly asked again, "do you want to die?"

Meiners told officers he didn't know what happened earlier, claiming he came home from a night out and went to bed. When the officer asked if he'd had a confrontation with the victim, Meiners described the man, then said, "I hope so," the complaint says.

He claimed the victim was yelling at him, threatening to beat him up, so Meiners told him, "bring it on." Meiners went on to say he hasn't lost a fight in 31 years and he hoped the victim would fight him.

He told the officers the victim started the confrontation in the hallway, but couldn't say anything else about it because he didn't remember it. Meiners was arrested; a knife was allegedly recovered in his apartment.

Meiners spotted the victim and two witnesses as he was being led out, and told the man, "I will not forget. I will not forget you fat (expletive)."
In July, after five years in the Byron school district, Superintendent Jeff Elstad will make the move to head up Owatonna's school district.

Elstad, like superintendents in the region, is taking a new position with another, bigger district in an upward career move.

Turnover like this isn't uncommon  and is often tied to district size  but the Southeast Minnesota region can expect about a 20 percent turnover in leadership, regional experts say, mirroring an even bigger national trend of leadership change expected.

Nationwide, more than one-third of superintendents plan to be retired five years from now, and another 17 percent plan to move to another district, according to a 2016 survey by AASA , the School Superintendents Association.

That means about a 50 percent turnover in the next few years, which the organization called a "striking" outflow of leadership, predicting it will have "major implications" for the preparation pipeline of the next group of superintendents.

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Though the reasons for the moves being made by each superintendent differ, the impact on district leadership is clear. Superintendents often set the education agendas for a district. Continuity in top-level leadership and a strong relationship built with school boards have positive impacts on test scores, graduation rates and even property value, said Mort Sherman, associate executive director with AASA.

"The longer the superintendent serves in the seat, usually the better the district performs long-term... That impact of a good solid voice over time helps shape a community," Sherman said. "And when you look at ZIP codes and real estate, it's tied to how effective the schools are."

Though turnover fluctuates year-to-year, a sort of cascade often begins every time a position opens, with superintendents from smaller districts moving to fill the vacancies in larger ones. At least five area superintendents are leaving their posts for others, or retiring this fall, and many others from smaller districts are jockeying for those openings in bigger districts.

Districts and education organizations are responding, with partnerships, increased training and mentorships so that experience and knowledge are passed on to the next generation of superintendents.

Challenges bring new strategies

As challenges grow, and the pool of candidates shrink in the state, those in the education community are looking for ways to prepare their next set of leaders.

To ensure some of that knowledge and experience of long-term leaders stays in the community, experienced area superintendents created a mentorship program for the newer ones.

Superintendents like Stewartville's Dave Thompson and former Dover-Eyota Superintendent Bruce Klaehn started a mentoring program for training, networking and professional and social support, consistency, and ultimately, student achievement.

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Thompson, who planned to retire two years ago, was brought back on contract to stay while the district tried to pass a referendum. He'll retire after this school year.

Experienced superintendents are paired with those who have anywhere from five to seven years of experience in the mentor program, Thompson said. It also helps with training, networking social and professional support for consistency and ultimately, student achievement.

"For me, I'm happy I got to give back," he said.

Support and training like this is springing up locally, and nationally, to make sure the knowledge and experience that's been accumulated over a career isn't lost after superintendents retire.

And it's one of the first of such efforts in the country, said Suzanne Riley, executive director of the Southeast Service Cooperative, the region's nonprofit education cooperative.

The superintendent serves a very public role, and is often criticized for decisions that affect people's most valuable asset  their children. The job itself hasn't necessarily become more difficult, Elstad said, but the "exposure of my decision-making" has certainly increased because of things such as social media.

Other challenges include statewide testing, legislation, discipline and persistent achievement gaps. But the most notable one is the lack of trust for public education that Elstad said he's seen develop during his 25-year career.

New leadership isn't necessarily a bad thing though, Riley said. She tracks the region's superintendent turnover each year.

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"You've got a combination of losing some long-term intellectual capital, yet you're bringing in fresh thinking," she said.

But more support, especially for rural superintendents is something that's becoming apparent at the national level, Sherman said. It's something that AASA plans to tackle this summer.

"I think we're seeing a greater need," he said.

Will fewer teachers mean fewer administrators?

Minnesota's experiencing a teacher shortage now, but could that translate into an administrator shortage down the line? Some say that is the next challenge education may face.

With fewer people going into, and staying in teaching, fewer people are working their way up the ladder to become principals, administrators and superintendents.

More than a quarter of teachers leave the profession after just three years, according to the Minnesota Department of Education's 2017 Teacher Supply and Demand Report released in February.

According to that same report, about 50 of the state's 397 school districts that responded to the survey had "somewhat difficult" or "very difficult" time filling a superintendent position last year.

Around the region

Of the Southeast Minnesota region's 41 school districts, at least five will see major leadership changes. But it's likely there will be more.

Byron's Jeff Elstad is taking a job opening in Owatonna, Winona's Stephen West stepped down amid plagiarism allegations in January , and Stewartville's Dave Thompson plans to retire at the end of the year .

Though Stewartville's first pick won't end up taking the job, other regional superintendents, such as La Crescent-Hokah's Kevin Cardille was also interested in the position.

St. Charles' Mark Roubinek announced his retirement in January .

And there's uncertainty with other district leaders as well. Triton's Brett Joyce's contract was briefly rescinded, but later renewed by the school board . Rochester Superintendent Michale Munoz was also a finalist for an out-of-state position about a year ago.

The search is already underway to fill many of these positions, but many remain optimistic about the turnover. Even though he's making the move to a new district, Elstad said he's glad he'll still be in the region.

"Southeast Minnesota is a great place to be a superintendent," Elstad said, noting that even though there is often turnover, many leaders stay in the region. "The communities are supportive of the schools.""

And the other positive trend the Southeast Service Cooperative's Riley said she's seeing in the region: more women superintendents.

Noting female leadership in districts such as Pine Island, Houston, Spring Grove, Lyle, Hayfield and Cannon Falls.

"It's really exciting," she said.
The state teachers union is calling President Donald Trump's budget proposal an "attack on the promise of public education."

This follows a budget proposal released this week which would cut about 13.5 percent, or $9.2 billion, of the U.S. Department of Education's funding. The total education budget would be $59 billion.

"The mission of public schools has always been to welcome and educate all students, regardless of their needs or their family's ZIP code, because our country depends on a trained workforce and informed citizens," said Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, the state teacher's union. "That whole mission is coming under attack in Minnesota and throughout the country."

The budget proposal would eliminate grants for teaching training, after-school programs and college tuition aid for students in poverty, the Associated Press reported.

Education Minnesota also noted the $250 million voucher program, for use at private and parochial schools, included in the budget.

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The administration is proposing to allocate an additional $1.4 billion for school choice programs and to eliminate two programs worth $3.6 billion that provide funding for teacher preparation and after-school programs, among other plans.

School choice  charter and private schools programs for families who are not happy with traditional public school options available to them  has been a key priority for Trump and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos who has said that a "one size fits all" system doesn't work for America's children.

"When our leaders should be striving to give all children an adequate and equitable education, too many politicians in Washington and St. Paul are pushing schemes to send children to unaccountable and exclusive private schools, alienate teachers and abandon those students who need good schools the most," Specht said.

Education Minnesota represents 70,000 educators throughout the state.
MASON CITY | Mayor Eric Bookmeyer said Friday afternoon he supports moving forward with Gatehouse Capital's proposal to build a hotel and connect it with The Music Man Square via skywalk.

His announcement comes a day after he said he would ask the City Council to authorize bond issues on the Gatehouse proposal.

Those bonds would have been on the same ballot as an Aug. 1 referendum on a bond issue for the proposed ice arena.

"Over the last 24 hours, a consensus has formed that was not present yesterday," the mayor said in a press release.

"I value that consensus. It is healthy and allows us to have a firm direction. I will support moving forward Gatehouse's bold proposal and look forward to negotiating a development agreement that works for both parties. There is no question it will positively change the landscape of Mason City for the future," he said.

"Council is open to using urban renewal provisions to finance the project which are not subject to a public referendum. But the public will retain the ability to submit a reverse referendum," he said.

Earlier this year, the city sought proposals from developers interested in building a downtown hotel. Two proposals were received  from Gatehouse, to build a hotel in a portion of the Southbridge Mall parking lot and from G8 Development, to build a hotel in the parking lot west of City Hall.

G8, owned by Philip Chodur, proposed essentially the same plan last year but had to back out when he could not secure financing. His proposal this year contained confirmation of financing from a North Carolina bank.

Earlier this month, Bookmeyer called a special meeting of the council to consider and possibly act on the proposals.

Council members said they had just received the information packets on both proposals the day before, so they put off taking any action until the March 21 council meeting.

The city is required to secure $10 million in private investment  which either hotel proposal fulfills  to receive state funding for the River City Renaissance project.

Mason City has been pre-approved for funding for the project, which includes a music pavilion, parking ramp, mixed-use building and ice arena/multipurpose center.

Bookmeyer said the council will be asked Tuesday night to authorize the start of negotiations for a development agreement with Gatehouse, the first step in the process.

Gatehouse official David Rachie said via phone Friday there has been a flurry of questions and answers between the company and Bookmeyer, the council and other city officials the past few days.

This council and the mayor have put a lot of time into understanding what our proposal was over the last three to four days, he said.

Were very excited about this project, Rachie continued. We look forward to working with them if they do pick us.

Rachie said Gatehouse continues to welcome questions from Mason City residents, as it did during a forum Tuesday at The Music Man Square.

That kind of openness from Gatehouse to the community will always be there, he said.

Rachie can be reached at drachie@gatehousenorth.com.
CHISAGO COUNTY  After pressure from the U.S. Justice Department, the siting of a Muslim cemetery may go forward in rural Chisago County. The county commissioners voted in December to deny the project.

A Bosnian Muslim organization asked for the permit to use land for a cemetery just south of Lindstrom. The commission originally declined to issue the permit by a vote of 3-2. On March 1, the Justice Department told the board it was investigating.

Attorney Paul Reuvers recommended a new vote to approve the permit, and warned commissioners that another vote against the cemetery could prove expensive for taxpayers, not only stemming from federal scrutiny, but also a possible lawsuit from the applicant.

The board voted unanimously, with one commissioner absent. Lora Walker was seriously injured in a head-on crash Saturday that killed the other driver.

Commissioner George McMahon voted against the cemetery in December. But at Wednesday's special meeting, he made a different motion, to approve the application.

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County Administrator Bruce Messelt said the cemetery was supported by county staff and the planning commission. Three commissioners who voted against the cemetery last year said at the time it came down to zoning.

"Some of the county commissioners felt that it wasn't a good fit for the neighborhood and there was also some concerns about traffic. And what they called the general unsightliness of potentially what cemeteries can look like if they're not maintained," Messelt said.

Commissioner Mike Robinson said some commenters "seemed like they were going more against religion than right and wrong. There was a lot of meanness that came out on Facebook. And it was just a frustrating deal."

Robinson voted to allow the cemetery back in December and Wednesday.

"I felt that was the right vote at the time and I felt the same right now," Robinson said. "It was the right thing to do."

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Minnesota, said challenges made through zoning can violate the law.

"We are very happy to see a positive resolution and we thank the leadership of the commissioners here and the community," Hussein said. "And I think we all look forward to moving on and building a deeper relationship between the Bosnian community, the Muslim community."

An attorney for the man who wants to build the private cemetery declined to comment Wednesday.
ST. PAUL  Minnesota's Republican House speaker moved Thursday to block lawmakers' first pay raise in nearly two decades, a $14,000 increase recently approved by an independent body, prompting constitutional questions about the Legislature intervening to stop a constitutionally mandated pay increase.

Minnesota voters set the 45 percent raise in motion in November, overwhelmingly approving a constitutional amendment that removed lawmakers' ability to set their own pay and handing that power to a new Legislative Salary Council. Late last week, the council approved an increase from the current $31,000 annual salary to $45,000 starting in July  the Legislature's first pay raise since 1999.

But lawmakers still need to authorize the extra money to cover those larger paychecks, roughly $2.8 million in total. Speaker Kurt Daudt made clear in a Thursday letter that the House would not provide that funding, and directed House payroll staff not to issue the raises. He drew a clear line between voters' approval of the constitutional amendment shifting responsibility over setting salaries and the scope of the raises that the council eventually approved.

"For us to accept that pay when others are not getting that kind of pay increase really would be wrong," Daudt told reporters.

Daudt said handing off the power to set pay was wrong. The speaker said a possible campaign for governor in 2018 was not a factor in his decision.

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The passage of the amendment in November put the authority to set salaries directly in Minnesota's constitution. Daudt argued that because the Legislature has the sole power to appropriate state funding, the independent council has no authority to issue a pay increase until the Legislature provides the money.

But others disagree. Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, a fellow Republican, said Thursday it's clear that the larger salaries are now mandated by the constitution, and the Legislature has no say in the matter.

"I don't know how you can possibly get around that," Gazelka said. "We're not going to fight it."

Though Daudt said the House also wouldn't authorize the money for raises in the Senate, it's unclear whether that would also block the raises from going to all 67 state senators.

Sen. Kent Eken led the effort in 2014 to put the question to voters. The Twin Valley Democrat said it's a shame that the debate over pay was being pulled back into the Legislature after Minnesota residents voted to remove it.

"We should be focusing on our constituents, not on our pay. That was the whole point of the constitutional amendment," Eken said. "It's going to be in the hands of the courts to decide on this issue."

Daudt said he sought legal advice before issuing the order to block pay raises, and that advice was split on whether the action was constitutional or not.

"Will we end up in court? I don't know," he said.
One of the great lies of public broadcasting is that taxpayer support amounts to only a tiny portion of their budget. For example, heres what NPR said two years ago:

On average, less than 1% of NPRs annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB [the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting] and federal agencies and departments.

Yet the same piece says:

Federal funding is essential to public radios service to the American public. Its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR. . . Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalismespecially local journalismand eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities.

One of these statements has to be a lie. Which is it? Probably the first one, which relies on Hollywood-style accounting to obscure that a lot of the station fees NPR collects from affiliates come from taxpayers, but NPR doesnt count that as taxpayer support in its financial reporting. Who would miss 1 percent of their budget? Typical Beltway trickery.

Looks like Trump is going to call their bluff. The New York Times breathlessly reports:

Public Broadcasters Fear Collapse If U.S. Drops Support The potential elimination of about $445 million in annual funding, which helps local TV and radio stations subscribe to NPR and Public Broadcasting Service programming, could be devastating for affiliates in smaller markets that already operate on a shoestring budget. Patricia Harrison, the corporations president, warned in a statement on Thursday that the Trump budget proposal, if enacted, could cause the collapse of the public media system itself.

And right on cue, we get headlines about how heartless Republicans want to kill Big Bird. (Actually Id like Big Bird served up fried in the Colonels Famous Recipe.) Politico asks, Can Big Bird Survive Trump? Yes, Big Bird can, because Big Bird is Big Business! Big Bird makes money! Investors Business Daily reports:

Last year, Sesame Workshop had $121.6 million in revenues. Of that, $49.6 million came in distribution fees and royalties and $36.6 million in licensing of toys, games, clothing, food and such. In 2014, only 4% of its revenue came from government grants. Despite being a taxpayer-supported nonprofit, however, Sesame Workshop pays its top executives fabulously well. According to tax filings  the most recent of which covers 2014  then-president and CEO Melvin Ming was paid more than $586,000 in salary and benefits in the nine months before retiring, which included a $37,500 bonus and $18,700 in benefits. The year before that, Ming cleared $672,391 in salary, bonuses and benefits. Thats five times the average pay for CEOs at nonprofits, according to Charity Navigator. (Its twice as much as the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets paid.) The average compensation for the other 10 top officials at Sesame Workshop in 2014 was a very handsome $382,135  which is about six times the median household income in the U.S.

Like all the other subsidies that flow out of Washington, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is just another fillip to rich people. Trump should not only kill it off completely, but abolish the Hollywood tax breaks while hes at it. That should get Big Bird hopping.
In Marin County, a Brownshirt strikes:

Michael Savage, the popular right-wing radio personality and fierce Donald Trump supporter, says he was assaulted by a man as he was leaving a Marin County restaurant Tuesday night.

***

[Attorney Daniel] Horowitz suggested its unlikely his client was the aggressor, given that hes 5 feet 6 inches tall and 75 years old.

Horowitz said Savage, who lives in Marin County, had finished up a quiet dinner alone at Servino Ristorante. He had a bag of leftover food in one hand and his constant companion, his toy poodle Teddy, in the other.

Outside the restaurant, the man, who stands around 6 feet 5 inches, came at Savage, yelling insults, Horowitz said.

After Savage told the man to go away, he started to turn. Horowitz said it appears that the man knocked Savage to the ground while also pushing his dog out of the way.

At that point, another customer from the restaurant intervened, and Savages alleged assailant punched him in the face, Horowitz said. Savage was somehow able to get back up and help the good Samaritan while also calling police.
OSAGE | The Mitchell County Board of Supervisors approved 2017-18 wage increases for county employees 2-1 earlier this month, but not without a few heated exchanges.

The supervisors are required by state law to submit a budget  which includes employee wages  for certification by March 15.

Prior to a public hearing on the budget, supervisors discussed employee wages and benefits for the coming year. In past years, the board approved increases typically set at 3 percent  with a minimum of 55 cents per hour  along with insurance benefits.

Department heads this year were directed to apply those amounts to their proposed budgets, allowing supervisors to determine if the general fund could handle the increase.

Auditor Lowell Tesch instructed department heads to factor in a 3 percent wage increase into their budgets, following the compensation boards recommendation Dec. 6, 2016.

Supervisor Stan Walk repeatedly expressed displeasure in Teschs instruction to department heads, who Tesch said needed a place to start in preparing their budgets.

The compensation boards recommendation was not approved until a Feb. 14 supervisors meeting, where supervisors in a lengthy discussion considered raises between 2.75 percent  matching raises negotiated with the secondary roads department  to 3.5 percent.

Eventual approval was given to recommended 3- and 4-percent raises.

Tesch had told the supervisors when they decided to start lowering compensation board salary recommendations, they needed to apply that decrease to all groups asking for increases in their requests, including nonprofits in the county who annually request funding.

"It's not fair to the county employees who make all of you look good," Tesch said. "Cut employee wages  cut organization donations."

During Tuesdays meeting, Supervisor Joel Voaklander said no motion was needed for the wage increase or insurance coverage, since the wage increase was already in the budget.

Stan Walk again expressed his frustration in department heads inserting the three percent into their budgets and to be consistent, I am voting against the budget.

Prior to the final vote, Voaklander asked what would happen if the budget didnt pass. Deputy Auditor Barb Baldwin said she would have to ask the state if the county could request an extension.

Voaklander expressed his displeasure in how, when groups approached the board to request funding, they were never given a clear idea if funds were approved.

We tell groups we will plug the numbers in and see what happens, Voaklander said. They leave not knowing what happened. They assume everything is fine and put the numbers in their budgets.

Voaklander added some consideration needed to be given in possibly lowering the countys contributions to organizations.

The county budgeted $321,092 to local nonprofits and organizations in 2016-17, according to Tesch. For the upcoming fiscal year, the county budgeted $356,539, an increase of approximately 10 percent.

Mitchell County Attorney Mark Walk recommended the board not allocate the money so specifically in the budget, rather just allocate a certain amount of money in the budget and requests be considered until the money runs out.

Voaklander said he didnt like the idea but said something needed to be done differently next year.

Paulus and Voaklander voted in favor of the proposed 2017-18 budget, with Stan Walk voting against it.

The supervisors also held tax levies flat for the upcoming fiscal year.
Two federal judges, one in Hawaii and one in Maryland, have enjoined execution of President Trumps travel order. These court orders are obviously illegal and unconstitutional. Under the Constitution and federal law, the president has the power to suspend immigration from any and all countries if he deems it in the best interest of the United States.

The idea that Trumps travel order discriminates against foreign Muslims is ridiculous. The Supreme Court has made clear, in cases we have cited repeatedly, that no foreigner has a right to enter the U.S. Our immigration and travel policies are entirely our business. If we choose to discriminate, we are entitled to do so, and have in fact done so throughout our history.

What we are witnessing is nothing less than a left-wing judicial coup, an effort to nullify the result of the last election by unconstitutionally depriving the president of his powers. And what reason is there to assume that the coup will stop with Trumps inoffensive travel order?

Professor William Jacobson writes: Hawaii TRO and 9th Circuit En Banc Denial effectively strip Trump of executive powers.

The net result is that Trump has been stripped of his constitutional and statutory powers to protect the nation through control of who is permitted to enter the country.

***

As discussed in prior posts, the power to control who enters the country is uniquely a presidential power. Not anymore, unless the Supreme Court acts to restore that power.

I disagree to this extent: the moment the next Democratic president is inaugurated, the executives constitutional powers will magically be restored and, indeed, extended.

Arguably President Trump has a duty to disregard the Hawaii and Maryland courts illegal injunctions, and direct the executive branch to carry out his order. His obligation under the Constitution is to exercise his powers in defense of the American people.

If that proposition seems debatable, it is only because the presidents travel order has such minimal impact. If, for example, the United States were under attack, and a judge ordered the president to ground the U.S. Air Forceperhaps because using the Air Force would discriminate against the country that attacked usthe president would disregard the injunction. No one would criticize him for doing so.

The only difference between that hypothetical and the situation we are in now is that the need for Trumps travel order is less urgent. But the illegality of the courts action is the same. We are, as I said, observing a coup in progress.
Ammo Grrrll makes a simple request to whom it may concern: STOP TELLING US WHO WE ARE! She writes:

Any time a Leftist disagrees with a policy, a person, or an idea, if he has already used up the tedious racist/sexist/whatever deal, and hasnt started rioting yet, he has one more lame argument in his bag of tricks. He has learned from ex-President Obama, to point his nose skyward and assert, Thats not who we are! Please. Do us the courtesy of not telling us who we are when you dont even know us. You know precious few Heartland Americans, as we can tell by the movies you make about us. They ring as true as Hillarys mortifying black preacher accent when shes no ways tahrd.

Barrys other go-to threat was that we would end up on the wrong side of history. But History just kicked him in the nuts, as History will sometimes do, so its back to telling us who we are.

As Scott reminded us again last week, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton borrowed the Not Who We Are battle cry to scold and threaten anyone in St. Cloud, MN who questioned the resettlement there of large numbers of Somali Muslims, virtually ordering anyone who objected to leave. Have you ever noticed on the question of Jews building Jewish housing in Jerusalem the AP and other Leftist news outfits have a stylebook that mandates the phrase traditionally-Arab East Jerusalem? Why, then, do we never see traditionally-white Catholic St. Cloud from the same stylebook? And, who knew the Left cared about tradition?

Maybe the last word has not yet been written on who we are. But we know some of the things we are. Besides winners of the last election. We first and foremost have every right to defensible borders. A country without borders is not a country. So we Americans reserve the right to preserve and protect our borders.

If people do enter illegally, and commit heinous crimes in addition to the original crime of entering illegally, we do not care to spend $50,000 a year to feed and house them in prison. We want them deported to their home countries. There are many places for those millions of taxpayer dollars besides warehousing foreign criminals.

We are a free people with the constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech. Hate speech  which is what the Auld Left calls any speech it disagrees with  is a fiction invented by the Left to shut down genuine free speech. Free speech does not include the right to prevent others from speaking by shouting them down, or shutting down the entire event with arson and rioting. That is what perhaps 70 percent of us still believe, with the exception of most Democrat celebrities, most Democrat media outlets, and most Democrat academics, who cheer on the masked totalitarians and promise us it is only the beginning of anarchy. Though these effete snobs are liars by the clock, on this, we would do well to take them at their word.

We are also a people with the constitutionally-guaranteed right to keep and bear arms to defend our homes, our persons and our loved ones. Its not only who we are but WHY we are! It is the right that protects all the others. Get a gun and learn to use it.

Because we have not taken leave of our senses, most of us would rather kill pitiless terrorists than unborn babies. Thats just how wacky we are. Why, most Americans are so pro-baby, a bunch of co-workers in San Bernardino gave a baby shower for radical Islamic terrorist refugees who showed their gratitude for such generosity by trying to murder them all.

The Statue of Liberty is not weeping, Madame Albright, for keeping such people out for a short vetting time. If the Statue of Liberty could turn happy cartwheels, she would, if the French hadnt skimped on material and left off her underwear.

We have traditionally been a people loyal to our friends and allies and strong in the face of our enemies. For the last eight years, that practice got flipped on its head. Our President betrayed Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and sent a literal BALE of cash to our sworn enemy in Death to America hostage-taking, theocratic Iran. But in a free and fair election we voted to return to sanity.

When assured, mocked, and taunted that we were going to lose in a landslide as late as the day before the election, we Trump voters didnt riot; we didnt block ambulances on freeways; we didnt smash a single Starbucks window despite their ludicrous prices and snotty baristas; we hadnt prevented one single Democrat from speaking. Ever. We just voted. Its who we are  a tolerant, law-abiding people who will put up with a lot. But not forever.

The Chattering Classes who pretend they know us and love to define us never even saw it coming. Because sometimes, when necessary, we can be a stealthy people. It has ever been thus, since General Washington went on a chilly little night cruise across the Delaware, snuck up on a bunch of drunk Hessian mercenaries and killed or captured them all. Did I mention it was on Christmas? Hooyah!

We voted in our imperfect but feisty Trump guy without tipping our hand, without even letting the pollsters  who very much resemble drunk mercenaries  know we were going to bolt. Psych! Made almost every single prognosticator and election night blatherer look first, like a fool, and then, a crybaby. Righteous! It never gets old, does it? And its only mid-March of Year One of four or  God willing!  eight or sixteen.
President Trump admires Andrew Jackson. He sees himself as Jacksonian.

Accordingly, it might instructive to recall how President Jackson is said to have responded when the Supreme Court ruled, in Worcester v. Georgia, that Georgia laws calling for the seizure of Cherokee lands violated federal treaties. Here is the statement Jackson may have made:

John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

Jackson may never have uttered these words. However, both Georgia and Jackson ignored the Supreme Courts decision. Chief Justice Marshalls decision was never enforced.

At the rate liberal judges are going, we might see similar defiance of the judiciary by President Trump. I dont expect Trump to respond that way if the ruling that he cannot temporarily ban immigration from six countries fails to survive judicial review. That ruling doesnt seem important enough to defy the judiciary over.

But what if the judiciary overturns the presidents decision to cut the number of refugees the U.S. will accept from 100,000 to 50,000 per year? Neil Munro of Breitbart reports that a federal judge in Maryland today indicated that he will consider whether to do just that once the issue has been fully briefed. (As Munro explains, this mischief occurs in a footnote to the judges opinion rejecting the temporary ban on immigrants from six nations.)

If the Maryland judge were to order the administration to admit 100,000 refugees per year, and if this ruling somehow were to survive judicial review, I can see President Trump adopting Andrew Jacksons defiant approach. There is something particularly egregious about judges deciding how many immigrants must be injected into American communities. Im not sure Trump would tolerate this.

More generally, if liberal judges continue to wage war against the Trump administration through the kind of ridiculous, made-up law being fashioned in the immigration order cases, it seems quite likely that at some point in the not-too-distant future President Trump will refuse to obey the robed politicians.

Andrew Jackson got away with it. He won his fight with John Marshall. If Donald Trump picks his case shrewdly, he might well win too.
Winter is finally coming to an end, and though this winter was comparatively mild by most any standardespecially in some areasit seems to be going out with a bit of a bang. Sufficiently so, in fact, that Syracuse, New York recently saw an outage of its own, and a substantial one at that. The specifics around the incident, and its immediate aftermath, all demonstrate the value of power protection systems.

The reports noted that the outages startedbased on word from National Gridwhen a substation went down for reasons unknown. The power, in turn, went down to about 1,650 customers around noon, and estimates suggested the power would be back on by about 5:00. The estimates proved slightly flawed, as reports noted power was restored to all but 177 customers by 6:15.

The outage shut down several parts of Syracuse and surroundings, particularly the Federal Building and the Onondaga County Courthouse, as well as significant portionsbut apparently not allof the Syracuse University campus. Indeed, the Federal Building shut down operations altogether, as did the courthouse; the Federal Building actually had no heat during the incident. Syracuse University sent home any worker who was working in a building that had lost power, though thankfully, university students were on spring break when this happened, and therefore not much disruption happened on that front.

However, in this outage, there was a demonstration of power protection's value; the AXA insurance company, operating in AXA Towers, noted that power was out for just over two hours before, at about 2:15, the company went on backup generators. AXA spokesman John Cline noted that there was no appreciable business interruption.

That in a nutshell is the biggest reason to have power protection measures in place. Not that backup generators are specifically required; some power protection can be as simple as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system that allows just a little extra energy for workers to shut down systems properly and save work. The more robust the power protection system, though, the better the chance that no appreciable business interruption will take place. AXA has demonstrated that having backup generation systems can help keep business running even when grid power is out, and your author has likewise seen that effect thanks to his own power protection methods.

Personally, anecdotally, and even statistically, power protection methods have been proven time and again to mean direct, appreciable value for business. No matter what form it takes, having it ready to go before an outage helps ensure that business will carry on no matter what the outside world can throw at it.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi
Normally, when we think about power protection in a business setting, the first thing we think of is our computers and network connections. These things are naturally vital to the operation of everyday businesses, but there's a point for businesses to consider that we generally only extend to our home lives: food safety. For businesses like restaurants, coffee shops, and even hotels and hospitals, food safety in a power outage becomes even more important.

First, some good news: there are some comparatively simple ways to protect food in a refrigerated environment. First, refrigerators themselves are sufficiently well-insulated to protect food safely for at least two hours. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggests that can be as long as four hours if the refrigerator itself is kept shut. Using a cooler filled with ice, dry ice, freeze packs, or even snow can augment this time considerably.

The use of a metal-stem meat thermometer can also be helpful here, and certain foods can be stored without refrigeration for longer times, particularly fruits and vegetables, but potentially even cheeses and some condiments. These should be checked prior to consumption for odor, texture and color, but never taste foods that may be off to determine their quality.

Power protection measures can also play a role here, as being able to deliver power to refrigeration units allows these problems to be eliminated right away. Though this can be expensivethe addition of generators to a business operation can be a five-figure operation, though that depends on the overall circumstancesit's also the kind of thing that might save just as much product from being rendered unusable in a power outage.

We recently saw as much with AXA, an insurance agency in New York that turned to generators two hours into a power outage in Syracuse. Thanks to its generators, the company reported no appreciable delay in business operations or even damage. Not everyone can put generators to work, of course, but even the addition of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system can at least allow workers to save work and shut down systems properly.

No matter what method of power protection is used, being ready for an outage is a vital part of business operations that, sometimes, we don't even think about. That's a potential disaster for a business, and a great opportunity to make a few simple moves today that can save business tomorrow.

Edited by Alicia Young
South Africas Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, said that Nigerias exports to South Africa hit N552.2 billion (R23 billion) in 2016.

According to a statement from the countrys Department of Trade and Industry on Thursday, Mr. Davies said South Africas exports to Nigeria slightly declined to about N153.7 billion (R6.4 billion) in 2016.

He said the two countries continuously traded goods at high capacity and Nigeria maintained the trade surplus of R23 billion (N552.2 billion) in 2016.

According to the minister, the department of trade and industry would lead a business delegation on a trade and investment mission to Nigeria and Ghana from March 20 to 25.

He said the trade mission is aimed to identify and create export markets for South African value-added products and services.

It will also serve to promote South African products, and service offerings, whilst creating business partnerships between business communities of the respective countries, he said.

Mr. Davies noted that the trade mission sought to advance Ghana, Nigeria and South Africas trade and investment relations.

Ghana and Nigeria feature as key strategic partners for South Africa in the West Africa, region and are pivotal partners towards advancing integration on the continent, he said.

The trade mission also seeks to enhance relations in the areas of agroprocessing, infrastructure, mining and capital equipment.

The programme for the mission will include trade and investment seminars, site visits and business-to-business meetings.

(NAN)

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The Federal Government said on Friday it would soon make it an offence for anyone to export unprocessed minerals out of the country.

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Kayode Fayemi, said in Lagos on Thursday at a Town Hall meeting with interest groups in the mining sector that government was taking the decision to stop the activities of some foreign nationals who have been taking unprocessed minerals though illegal routes out of the country.

The illegal activity, he said, had denied the country enormous amount of revenue that could have accrued to it through its vast mineral endowment.

The meeting was attended by representatives of local and international mining outfits, officials of federal, states and local governments, financial institutions, manufacturing companies, professional bodies, community organizations, security agencies and the civil society.

The minister agreed that the activities of some foreigners who take out unprocessed minerals had robbed the youth of the country of massive job opportunities in the sector.

He said the ministry was working with the Customs services and other relevant security agencies to make it illegal for anyone to take out unprocessed minerals.

Mr. Fayemi said while unauthorised export of unprocessed minerals was injurious to the economic plans of the government, the ministrys current focus was to ensure that operators set up plants in the country, process the minerals and then export the finished products.

Taking out unprocessed minerals under any guise is unacceptable and we have taken a firm position on this.

We will make it difficult for anybody to take out unprocessed minerals. We are working with the Customs and other relevel security agencies to put an end to this.

He said government would support and encourage operators to set up plants, process the minerals here and then export it.

The minister stated that the economic diversification and employment generation could only be realised with operators cooperating with government on the mining policy.

Speaking further, the minister said government was taking the security of mines more seriously, adding that a special task force has been put in place to check nefarious activities in mining sites and also to ensure compliance with environmental and security regulations.

He announced that the Nigeria Police had responded to the security issue with the establishment of Mines Division in all its state commands.

The Mine Police, which according to the minister, was structured after the Mine Police active in the 1960s and 1970s, would help to halt criminal activities in the sector.

Noting that the country has one of the best mining laws, he said enforcement had always been a challenge. He said many criminal-minded individuals had taken advantage of the poor enforcement to enrich themselves at the expense of the country.

Mr. Fayemi who lauded the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, for the Mine Police initiative, urged artisans and operators in the country to comply with regulations guiding the mining sector, as contained in the Minerals and Mining Act 2007.

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A Pastor has found one of the worlds largest uncut diamonds, weighing 706 carats, in Sierra Leones eastern Kono region.

The stone, a photograph of which was posted on the presidents official website, is being stored in the countrys central bank, government sources said.

A local chief from Kono handed the stone to President Ernest Koroma on behalf of Emmanuel Momoh who made the discovery.

The government plans to auction it.

The presidency said in a statement on that Mr. Koroma thanked the chief who acted as an intermediary for not smuggling it out of the country.

Diamonds fueled a decade-long civil war that ended in 2002 in which 50,000 people were killed.

Rebels forced civilians in the east to mine the stones and bought weapons with the proceeds, leading to the term blood diamonds.

He (Koroma) underscored the importance of selling such a diamond here as it will clearly give the owners what is due them and benefit the country as a whole, the statement said.

The stone is yet to be valued but could be worth millions of dollars. Sierra Leones gross national income per capita stood at 620 dollars in 2015, according to World Bank data.

The United Nations lifted a ban on diamond exports from Sierra Leone in 2003.

The International Monetary Fund expects the country to export 113 million dollars worth of diamonds this year though the sector remains plagued by smuggling.

Inspite of its size, the discovery is considerably smaller than the Cullinan diamond, which was found in South Africa in 1905.

That 3,106-carat stone was cut into several polished gems and the two largest pieces are part of Britains crown jewels.

A 1,111-carat diamond was unearthed in a Botswana mine in 2015.(Reuters/NAN)

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U.S. President Donald Trump has asked for another $30 billion for the Defense Department to rebuild the armed forces and accelerate the campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Mr. Trump made the request in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, according to a statement by the Department of Defense. The request was for 2017 fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

The fiscal 2017 budget amendment provides 24.9 billion dollars in base funds for urgent war fighting readiness needs and to begin a sustained effort to rebuild the armed forces, according to the presidents letter, the statement read.

The request seeks to address critical budget shortfalls in personnel, training, maintenance, equipment, munitions, modernization and infrastructure investment.

It represents a critical first step in investing in a larger, more ready and more capable military force.

The request includes 5.1 billion dollars in overseas contingency operations funds so the department can accelerate the campaign to defeat ISIS and support Operation Freedoms Sentinel in Afghanistan, he said.

He noted that the request would enable the Department to pursue a comprehensive strategy to end the threat ISIS poses to the United States,  the statement read.

John Roth, the acting undersecretary of defense-comptroller, said our request to Congress is that they pass a full-year defense appropriations bill, and that the bill includes the additional 30 billion dollars.

We are now approaching the end of our sixth month under a continuing resolution, one of the longest periods that we have ever been under a continuing resolution.

Roth said much of the money in the 2017 fiscal year request is funding for operations and maintenance.

Were asking for additional equipment maintenance funding, additional facilities maintenance, spare parts, additional training events, peacetime flying hours, ship operations, ammunitions and those kinds of things.

This is the essence of what keeps this department running on a day-to-day basis. It keeps us up and allows us to get ready for whatever the next challenge is.

(NAN)

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Saudi Arabia on Friday said Iranians would take part in the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage in the kingdom this year after they missed the annual ritual in 2016 amid a dispute between both countries.

The Saudi Ministry of Pilgrimage said that authorities in both countries had finalised arrangements for Iranians participation in the upcoming Hajj season slated for early September.

The arrangements were discussed during a visit last month by an Iranian official delegation to Saudi Arabia, the ministry added in a statement, according to Saudi Arabias state news agency SPA.

Relations between the two regional rivals reached a low point in 2016 when Iranians were unable to go to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj due to a row on pilgrimage regulations.

Mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran back opposite sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen.

In January 2016, Riyadh cut off diplomatic ties with Iran after a mob stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in protest against Saudi Arabias execution of 47 people, including a prominent Shiite cleric.

Devout Muslims are expected to perform the Hajj, one of Islams five pillars, at least once in their lifetime, provided they are fit enough and have the financial means to do so.

(dpa/NAN)

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FOREST CITY  A new lumber store has opened in a familiar location.

North Iowa Lumber and Design opened this winter in the former Spahn and Rose building along Highway 18 outside of Forest City.

Spahn and Rose closed its Forest City location in January 2016.

"We're excited to be here and be available for the community again," Derek Engh said. Engh, who works at the company's Britt location, is helping with the Forest City store's grand opening March 23-25.

North Iowa Lumber and Design, based out of Algona, has locations in Britt, Emmetsburg, Estherville and now, Forest City.

"We had good relationships with the building owners and the contractors in the area, so it was a good fit," Engh said of the new location.

The store features a full hardware section, along with building materials and lumber.

Engh said the store caters to not only contractors, but also those looking to make home improvements themselves.

"Replacing windows to additions to a home remodel  any project it is, we can help with it," he said.

Rhonda Sullivan, who works at both the Britt and Forest City locations, said they can offer assistance with any of those projects.

"Customer service is a big deal," said Sullivan.

The grand opening will feature a number of sales and refreshments on Thursday, March 23, and Friday, March 24. A meal will be served Saturday, March 25.

"I encourage people to come out to see what we have to offer," Engh said.
The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, in a rare memo to Muhammadu Buhari, has told the Nigerian President how bad the nation was faring under his watch, how the presidents policies, actions and in-actions have contributed to the nations woes, and what could be done to steer Nigeria back to greatness.

Mr. El-Rufai sent the 30-page memo, published by Sahara Reporters on Thursday, to Mr. Buhari on September 2016.

In the memo, he touched several areas, ranging from the ailing economy, to the dynamics of the nations politics, lack of coercion within the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and the poor relationship between the president and the national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, and other party leaders, including the APC governors.

He said Mr. Buhari was yet to have control over the party structures and blamed the situation partly on the people who were advising the president.

He said many of the party leaders  like Mr. Tinubu, the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and Musa Kwankwaso  were feeling aggrieved that they were most often not consulted by the president or by those that the president assigned such duties to.

This may not be your intention or outlook, but that is how it appears to those that watch from afar, Mr. El-Rufai said.

This situation is compounded by the fact that some officials around you seem to believe and may have persuaded you that current APC State Governors must have no say and must also be totally excluded from political consultations, key appointments and decision-making at the federal level.

These politically-naive advisers fail to realise that it is the current and former state governors that may, as members of NEC of the APC, serve as an alternative locus of power to check the excesses of the currently lopsided and perhaps ambivalent NWC.

Alienating the governors so clearly and deliberately ensures that you have near-zero support of the party structure at both national and state levels.

Mr. El-Rufai said Mr. Buharis closest aides like the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, and the presidents Chief of Staff werent fit to manage the presidents politics.

The SGF is not only inexperienced in public service but is lacking in humility, insensitive and rude to virtually most of the party leaders, ministers and governors.

The Chief of staff is totally clueless about the APC and its internal politics at best as he was neither part of its formation nor a participant in the primaries, campaign and elections.

The governor also wrote on the Senate President, Bukola Sarakis corruption trial and the frosty relationship between Mr. Buhari and the senate.

He told the president that the federal civil servants across the country were so used to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the PDP way of doing things, so much so that their loyalty was to the opposition party, because of the several years of the PDPs administration in the country.

Mr. President, there is a perception that our government has been captured by a shadowy public service/PDP cabal such that we have won elections but the country is still run largely by these elements that are hostile to you and to us all.

There is a strong perception that your inner circle or kitchen cabinet is incapable, unproductive and sectional. The quality and the undue concentration of key appointments to the North-East and exclusion of South-East are mentioned as evidence of this.

There is a perception that your ministers, some of whom are competent and willing to make real contributions, have no clear mandate, instructions and access to you. Ministers are constitutional creations Mr. President and it is an aberration that they are expected to report to the Chief of Staff on policy matters.

Mr. President, there is an emerging view in the media that you are neither leading the party nor the administration and those neither elected nor accountable appear to be in charge, and therefore the country is adrift.

Mr. El-Rufai, a well-known political ally of Mr. Buhari, said bluntly in the memo that the APC administration under Mr. Buhari has failed to live up to the expectations of Nigerians who voted the party into power.

In very blunt terms, Mr. President, our APC administration has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight change but has failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance outside of our successes in fighting BH insurgency and corruption, Mr. El-Rufai said, adding that the general feelings among the party supporters today was that the government wasnt doing well.

On the economic front, Mr. El-Rufai acknowledged that Mr. Buhari inherited a bad situation, but said that the administration, having been in power for more than a year now, could not, therefore, continue to blame the previous administration for the hardship in the country.

We were elected precisely because Nigerians knew that the previous administration was mismanaging resources and engaged in unprecedented waste and corruption.

We must, therefore, identify the roots of our enduring economic under-performance as a nation, and present a medium-term national plan and strategy to turn things around.

Mr. El-Rufai provided the president with detailed and insightful analysis of the nations economy and offered suggestions on what could be done to put the nation back on the pathway to prosperity.

For instance, he said that Nigeria was currently producing less electricity than the city of Dubai, and that the power sector reform that was started in 2000, earlier than the reforms in the telecoms sector, was now in serious crisis and nearly at the point of total collapse.

On the state of the transport sector, he told the president, Inter-state (Federal) roads are generally in a state of disrepair. The national rail system is still the colonial narrow gauge constructed by the British for the extraction of needed raw materials rather than for the encouragement of intra-national trade and connectivity.

The dual track, standard gauge national railway system initiated by the Obasanjo administration in 2006 has been partly abandoned in favour of piecemeal implementation of sections rather than the integrated programme.

There is significant potential in the development of inland waterways but there has been no serious effort at seeing the dredging of Rivers Niger and Benue to completion.

The aviation sector is largely private and mostly insolvent. Virtually all the major airlines are beholden to AMCON, and their services are poor, unreliable and expensive.

He advised the president to, among other things, appoint for himself a high profile economic adviser, as well as set up a two-level economic team  one at a political level to be chaired by the Vice President, and another at a technical level consisting of the heads of key economic agencies to do the more detailed technical analysis and present options for decision and action.

Mr. El-Rufai said, The President must communicate actively and directly with the Nigerian public about his vision  the governments plans, strategy and roadmap to take the country out of the current, dire economic situation.

We need a five-year national development strategy and plan urgently.

The Kaduna state governor said he was inspired to write the memo to the president because of Mr. Buharis contribution to his rise in politics and that his political future was tied to the performance of the president.

Mr. El-Rufai described the president as the only hope for Nigeria, and urged him to run for re-election in 2019.

You have to run again in 2019 if your objectives of national restoration, economic progress and social justice are to be attained in the medium and long term.

You must, therefore, succeed for the good of all of us  individually and collectively, and particularly those of us that have benefitted so clearly from your political ascendance, Mr. El-Rufai told the president.

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Rowaye Jubril quietly walked out of the dock after the judge pronounced a 10 years jail term on him for fuel subsidy fraud. He whispered to one of his staff, We will appeal it.

On Thursday, Justice Lateefa Okunnu of an Ikeja Division of the Lagos High Court, said she considered Mr. Jubrils body language during the trial before pronouncing her sentence.

I have taken into consideration that the defendant (Mr. Jubril) is a first time offender, I have also noted his demeanour, said Mrs. Okunnu as she read her two hour-long judgment.

I find the first and second defendants guilty on each count and are hereby convicted on each of the (13) counts.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arraigned Mr. Jubril and his company, Brila Energy, in November 2012 for allegedly perpetrating a N963.7 million subsidy fraud.

The accused had pleaded not guilty.

The prosecution presented 20 witnesses before the judge while 43 documents were tendered as evidence during the trial.

The defence did not call any witness.

In delivering her judgment on Thursday, Mrs. Okunnu said she relied, among others, on a 79-page document submitted to the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency by Mr. Jubril while acting for Brila Energy Ltd.

According to the defendants, a ship, MT Overseas Limar, delivered over 13,000 metric tons of petrol to a daughter vessel, MT Delphina, at Cotonou, offshore Benin Republic, and later to a smaller shuttle vessel which deposited the product to Obat Oils tank farm in Lagos.

The purported transaction occurred in January 2011.

The judge agreed with the prosecutions case that all the documents used for the transaction were forged by the defendants.

Also, the location of MT Overseas Limar, the mother vessel, on the day of the purported transaction was in Canada, Central America, from where it departed to Venezuela, according to Lloyds List Intelligence report.

The EFCC also proved that two documents the defendants claimed originated from a Brazilian company which supplied the refined crude  certificate of quantity and gasoline analysis  were forged.

The Brazilian firm confirmed to the agency that the said documents had been used for a different transaction two years earlier.

The law is for he that asserts to prove. The prosecution must prove its case to a standard that all reasonable doubt is eliminated, the judge noted.

It is not for the defendant to prove his innocence; it is rather for the prosecution to prove his guilt.

The judge noted, from the documents presented by the defendants, that the ships manifest stated that the vessel left Brazil on 22nd November, 2010, while another document showed that the gasoline analysis began on the same day and didnt end until the next day.

It beats the imagination how this could happen, Mrs. Okunnu said.

This circumstance further erodes the integrity of the defendants, she added.

The judge lauded the testimony of one of the prosecutions witnesses, Kalu Peters, a cargo inspector at General Marine and Oil Ltd, for being direct and first hand.

His credibility as a witness of truth was not tainted through the test of cross examination.

As a result, the judge relied fully on Mr. Peters evidence that it was another vessel, MT Gabro, and not MT Overseas Limar, that discharged 13,200 metric tons to MT Delphina in January 2011.

MT Overseas Limar was never mentioned at all, the judge said.

The defendant in my opinion always knew that MT Overseas Limar had no part to play in the exercise.

The first that heard of MT Overseas Limar was during the subsidy claim.

It is my finding that the defendants were parties to a crime, even though the physical crime of forgery was not committed themselves. They intended to deceive and did deceive because they received payments.

The judge further noted that the firm, Ports Cargo Experts Ltd, which claimed to have supervised the trans-shipment of the products by the defendants made a false claim. She said the companys Certificate of Incorporation showed that Mr. Jubril sits on its Board.

The defendant by presenting the firms claims knowing that the contents were false, there was a proven intention to defraud, Mrs. Okunnu said.

The judge said the first defendant, as the managing director and chief executive officer of the second defendan,t was its alter ego and directing mind.

Being the alter ego, hes just as culpable as the second defendant. One of them cannot excuse himself or itself of criminal liability.

Before the judge pronounced her sentence, the defence counsel pleaded that she temper justice with mercy because the convicts were first offenders and that Mr. Jubril had consistently shown remorse.

The counsel also prayed the judge to be lenient because the first convict is diabetic and hypertensive.

But Seidu Atteh, counsel to the EFCC, said there was no record of the convicts health condition.

The judge convicted Mr. Jubril on Count One of fraud and sentenced him to ten years imprisonment.

She also convicted him on counts 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 for forgery and sentenced him to eight years on each counts.

For counts 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 on altering of documents, the judge convicted the defendant and sentenced him to eight years on each of the counts.

The sentences are to run concurrently, according to the judge, meaning the defendant will spend a maximum 10 years in prison.

For the second defendant, Brila Energy Ltd, Mrs. Okunnu made an order of restitution for the refund of N963,796,199.88k obtained by false pretences to the Nigerian government.

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The Lagos State government has advised an indefinite shutdown of Queens College over the outbreak of water-borne disease in the school.

Addressing journalists in Lagos on Thursday, Jide Idris, the states Commissioner of Health, said the schools resumption should be delayed until appropriate health measures are put in place for the safety of the students.

Two students have died since the outbreak of water-borne diseases in the school, with more than 50 others currently on admission in the schools clinic after eating spaghetti and drinking water in the refectory.

Mr. Idris said water samples were collected from the school and analysed at the states Drug Quality Control Laboratory as well as the Microbiology Department of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.

The results from the two laboratories showed high bacteria content in the water samples from kitchen, behind dining hall and Queens Delight, the school water factory, said Mr. Idris.

The bacteria range from Coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Klebsiella ozoana, and Aeromonas hydrophilia.

The school, a federal government-owned institution, is billed to reopen from its midterm break on March 19, but Mr. Idris called for a postponement because, according to results from schools sick bay, onset of the students illness began on January 16.

The total number of students who presented at the clinic on account of abdominal pain, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea was 1,222 from the first date of presentation (11/01/17) to the last date of presentation (15/02/17), Mr. Idris said.

There were four different peak periods of infection namely 31st January 2017, 2nd, 8th, and 14th of February 2017.

16 ill cases were admitted in various hospitals. Nine have been discharged, two died, while one is still on admission at the Intensive Care Unit of LASUTH and three at LUTH.

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The inhabitants of Otodo-Gbame, a fishing settlement outside Lekki, Lagos, on Friday raised alarm about an ongoing demolition of houses and destruction of properties despite a subsisting court injunction stopping the forceful eviction of residents.

Residents claimed that about 8.30 a.m. on Friday, three backhoes accompanied by anti-terror police officers and officials of the Lagos State environmental task force arrived the community and started pulling down houses and other structure.

They claimed they were shocked by the demolition as they had not been served notice of demolition by the state government.

This is the second time in five months that houses in the community will be demolished.

In the early hours of November 9, 2016, gang of boys linked to the Elegushi family had attacked residents of Otodo Gbame and proceeded to set fire on their bamboo houses.

Residents claimed they invited police officers from nearby Ilasan police station to intervene in the fracas but they were shocked that when the police officers arrived, they soon joined the hoodlums and started pulling down and setting fire to their homes.

The Lagos State government denied it had ordered the demolition at the time.

But curiously, the incident occurred a day after the ruling of a Lagos State High Court stopping Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who had vowed to demolish all illegal waterfront communities in the state, from going ahead with his threat.

The demolition stopped following a well-reported protest by residents at the office of the Lagos governor.

However, on Friday, four months after they returned to piece together what was left of their lives and belongings, resident say officials of the states Ministry of Environment task force entered the community and began demolishing the rebuilt parts of the town.

Megan Chapman, co-director of Justice Empowerment Initiatives (JEI), a community-based legal and empowerment organisation, which represents the residents of Otodo-Gbame, said at least 4,598 people will be affected by Fridays demolition.

Im here now. I can tell you who is on-ground is Lagos State task force, police, officials from the Ministry of Environment, Lagos State, those are ones that put on the navy blue with red uniforms and also, military wearing red beret. They are the ones on ground and demolishing the houses, she said.

Ms. Chapman said the officials on ground claimed that the state government was personally supervising the demolition in a helicopter that hovered overhead.

There was absolutely no notice whatsoever. They just showed up this morning, she added.

She said Fridays action by the state government was even more shocking as they had just commenced a court-ordered mediation with the state government last week.

As you are probably aware there is a case going on right now between 15 waterfront communities including Otodo-Gbame in which JEI is representing the community as counsel. The Lagos State High Court gave an interim ruling on the 26 of January saying that this type of demolition without an opportunity for people to find alternative shelter or without provision of alternative shelter constitute cruel and degrading treatment.

The court ordered the state government to go into a mediation with us.

We started the mediation process last week and it is still on-going and we were supposed to report to the court at the beginning of next month. The court also ordered that the parties should maintain the status quo until the ending of the mediation and the subsequent judgement of the court. So this in direct violation of the court order, she said.

Also, human rights group, Amnesty International, has condemned the on-going demolition, adding that it condemns forced eviction in any form and calls for a halt. The affected community are entitled to Right to Housing. Forced eviction without consultation, relocation or compensation is a violation.

The spokesperson to the Lagos State Governor, Habib Haruna did not answer or return several called made to his mobile telephone number. He also has not responded to a text message sent to him for comment.

When reached for comment, the Lagos police spokesperson, Olarinde Famous-Cole, said he would get the full details from the divisional police officer in-charge of the area before responding on the involvement of the police.

He did not respond to subsequent calls and was yet to get back on his findings.

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The police in Borno have confirmed that two officers were killed by Boko Haram, but said the victims were not officials of the Borno Police Command.

The Borno command said none of its personnel were killed during the Wednesday night attack on military formations in Magumeri village of Borno.

The spokesperson of the Borno State Police Command, Victor Isuku, explained his commands stance in a statement on Friday.

The attention of Borno state police command has been drawn to a news report over the attack by boko haram terrorists at Magumeri town, in Magumeri LGA of Borno state on 15th March, 2017, said Mr. Isuku, a Deputy Superintendent of Police.

According to the report, a police Sergeant. Aliru Aliyu was killed, while Sergeant Ayeni Lawrence was injured when the terrorists attacked Magumeri police station.

For avoidance of doubt, and to put records straight, the command wishes to state that the fallen police Sergeant Aliru Aliyu, the injured Sergeant Ayeni Lawrence, and one Corporal Zachariah Mohammed who was initially reported missing in action, but later found dead, are all personnel of 16 PMF Squadron Abeokuta on Counter Insurgency Special Duty in the state.

They are also among the over 500 police personnel deployed to Operation Lafiya Dole. They were briefed and deployed by the military to Nigerian Army Base at Magumeri town

He explained that the casualty recorded by the police was as a result of the attack on the military base in Magumeri and not on Magumeri police station as wrongly reported.

Boko Haram gunmen had on Wednesday night staged their very first attack on Magumeri targeting security locations in the dusty agrarian community.

The military said the attack was repelled but blamed it on the villagers connivance with Boko Haram.

Details on casualty remained sketchy, even as the Borno State Deputy Governor, Usman Durkwa, who visited the attacked village of Thursday said the casualty on the side of the security operatives was under reported.

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In response to the query President Muhammadu Buhari ordered, the embattled acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, questioned the sincerity and motive of the State Security Service, SSS, which accused him of integrity deficiency and professional misconduct, official correspondence reviewed by PREMIUM TIMES showed.

The SSS allegations blocked Mr. Magus confirmation as the substantive chairman of the EFCC, twice, as the agency repeatedly advised the Senate to reject his nomination because he has failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption drive of the present administration.

After the Senate first rejected Mr. Magus nomination by Mr. Buhari in December 2016, citing the allegations made against the nominee by the SSS, the President authorised the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to investigate the validity of the allegations.

President Muhammadu Buhari

In compliance, Mr. Malami, on December 19, asked Mr. Magu to respond within 48 hours to the SSS allegations.

In his response, on December 21, Mr. Magu said he considered all the issues raised against him and provided point-by-point response.

MISSING FILES AND DISMISSAL FROM EFCC

Mr. Magu admitted official documents relating to cases under investigation were found in his private home when raided on the order of Farida Waziri when she succeeded Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as chairman of the EFCC.

But in defence, he said at the time, he had not formally handed over to Umar Sanda, his successor, as head of Economic Governance Unit, and that carrying out his duty at the time was impossible without working from home.

The documents found in my house were actually found in my office bag where I kept documents relating to investigations, he said. I was in the process of handing over and it would be wrong to suggest that I wilfully kept the Commissions files at home.

Following the raid on his home, Mr. Magu was placed on suspension without pay for 20 months during which the police investigated the matter, he said.

But in the end, I was reprimanded, recalled and promoted to Assistant Commissioner of Police.

He continued: It is important sir, to draw your attention to the fact that some of us that worked closely with (Nuhu) Ribadu were victimised after his exit. And my ordeal was orchestrated as punishment for being the chief investigative officer for most of the high profile cases involving politically exposed persons some of whom became very influential in government at the time.

Mr. Magu later returned to the EFCC upon the exit of Mrs. Waziri.

But the SSS said his close working relationship with Ibrahim Lamorde, Mrs. Waziris successor, indicated his culpability in the allegations of corrupt tendencies of the Lamorde-led EFCC.

Replying, Mr. Magu said it was preposterous for the SSS to allege he was recalled, in 2012 when he was serving in the Anambra police command, to do hatchet job for Mr. Lamorde.

My job schedule as Deputy Director, Department of Internal Affairs, under Lamorde, was simply handling issues of professional responsibility in the Commission. I had no inputs in core operations duties of the Commission, said Mr. Magu.

HOUSE RENT, EXTRAVAGANCE, CONTROVERSIAL TIES

Contrary to the claim by the SSS that the residence Mr. Magu currently occupies was rented for him by a questionable business man at N40 million for two years, with another N43 million to lavishly furnish the apartment, the acting EFCC boss said, The entire cost for both two-year rent and the furnishing of the house is N39.628million.

Director General of SSS, Lawan Daura

Details of the transaction are contained in the contract award letter and payment schedule which are attached to this letter.

The SSS had claimed the house was gotten from Mohammed Umar, a retired air commodore, now being tried for money laundering and illegal possession of firearms.

Mr. Magu denied penchant for air travels in private jet belonging to Mr. Umar, but admitted he flew the said aircraft on two occasions: one, offer of ride from Kano to Abuja after an official assignment with two EFCC directors; two, when he was traveling to Maiduguri to see his sick mother.

These, for me, were harmless gesture as we were both members of the presidential investigative committee on arms procurement. At the time I had no knowledge that he was under investigation for any alleged crimes, he said.

He also denied he flew with the Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Nnamdi Okonwko, who is under investigation by the EFCC, to Maiduguri in Mr. Umars private jet, saying he had never flown in a private aircraft with any bank chief.

Further debunking claims he is flamboyant, he said in one instance he flew on a first class ticket with Emirate Airline to perform the lesser Hajj in Saudi Arabia, but argued that was not enough for the SSS to conclude he keeps extravagant lifestyle.

Moreover, he said he opted for first class because tickets for other classes had been sold out at the time, and that he funded the trip from his private pocket.

He did not disclose the cost of the trip for the pilgrimage, but the SSS said it was N2,990,196 (about N3 million).

He said his relationship with Mr. Umar was one of professional acquaintance devoid of issues of conflict of interest since their paths crossed when they became members of the arms procurement probe panel.

He said: The claim that EFCC documents, including EFCC letters addressed to the Vice President and being investigation reports on the activities of Emmanuel Kachikwu and his brother Dumebi Kachikwu, were found in his home during a search by the DSS came to me as a surprise.

If that is correct, he should be made to disclose how he came by such documents. I never discussed my official duties with him let alone give him documents pertaining to investigations being conducted by the Commission.

RELUCTANCE TO ARRAIGN FORMER AIR CHIEF AMOSU

Indeed, among the suspects arrested over the arms procurement scandal, he (Adesola Amosu) was most cooperative. The Commission recovered N2.835billion cash from him, aside from property worth One Billion Five Hundred and Eighty-One Million Naira (N1,581, 000, 000), Two Million One Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars ($2,150, 000) and One Million Pounds Sterling (1, 000, 000), said Mr. Magu, explaining that Mr. Amosus arraignment was delayed because he cooperated with the EFCC in the process of recovery of proceeds of crime.

Since a key focus of the investigation was to recover as much proceeds of crime as possible, Mr. Magu added, the EFCC took its time to ensure it had recovered what was possible before arraigning the suspect in court.

This had nothing to do with the wish of any individual.

Mr. Magu also denied vendetta against Stanley Lawson, whom the SSS report described as one working in the interest of the Federal Government.

Diezani Alison-Madueke

According to the anti-graft chief, Mr. Lawson was arrested in relation to the investigation into the mismanagement of $118 million public funds for electioneering campaign involving former petroleum resources minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

Denying a bid to settle personal scores as SSS alleged, Mr. Magu said: It was discovered that he (Mr. Lawson) made payment of $25 million into Fidelity Bank and also facilitated the purchase of Ogeyi Place Le Meridien Hotel in Port Harcourt for Mrs. Alison Madueke, for which he collected Ninety-Four Million Five Hundred and Sixteen Thousand Naira (N94, 516,000) as commission.

Lawson was arrested and he made a refund of the N94.5million traced to him. He was never placed on any watch list.

He also challenged the SSS to expose any EFCC operative working closely with me who is found to have indulged in unethical practices or living beyond legitimate means.

That was a response to the allegation that he uses police cronies who had acquired a lot of landed property to execute operations and cover his tracks.

The anti-graft chief then questioned the fact that DSS authored two separate reports on me.

PREMIUM TIMES saw the two SSS reports  one to the Senate and the other to the Presidency  released same day, October 3, 2016 and signed by one official, Folashade Bello, on behalf of the Director-General, Lawal Daura.

However, while the two reports discredited Mr. Magu, the one to the Senate asked that he should not be confirmed, while the other one to the presidency said, it may be expedient to give him benefit of doubt and be considered.

The two reports emanating from the same agency raise questions of sincerity and motive, Mr. Magu said. You will want to find out why they came up with two conflicting reports on the same subject on the same day.

It is important to note that in all this, I was not given the opportunity of fair hearing.

Following Mr. Magus response to the attorney generals query ordered by Mr. Buhari, Mr. Malami reported back to the President.

Acting on the feedback and advice by the attorney general, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and the Itse Sagay-led anti-corruption advisory council, Mr. Buhari wrote back to the Senate in January, re-nominating Mr. Magu and clearing him of any wrongdoing in respect of the allegations by the SSS.

By re-nominating Mr. Magu and telling the Senate allegations against him were false, the SSS competence and capacity were challenged.

But the President did not query the SSS headed by his kinsman, Lawal Daura, over the services claims.

Consequently, on the eve of Mr. Magus confirmation hearing following the second nomination, the SSS wrote the Senate reaffirming its position that Mr. Magu lacked integrity and should not be confirmed, brushing aside the clearance from the Presidency.

With the SSS reaffirmation, the Senate again rejected his nomination.

While Senate President Bukola Saraki suggested that Mr. Buhari should replace Mr. Magu immediately, the presidential advisers on anti-corruption, led by Mr. Sagay, said the president should either re-nominate Mr. Magu for the third time or keep him in acting capacity because he is the best man for the job.

But many have accused the president of losing control of his own government in view of the SSS action, and questioned his sincerity about Mr. Magus confirmation.

READ FULL LETTER BELOW

===========================

EFCC/EC/JUS/07/263 21st December, 2016

THE HONOURABLE ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE FEDERATION

& MINISTER OF JUSTICE

Federal Ministry of Justice,

Shehu Shagari Way,

Abuja.

RE: REQUEST FOR COMMENTS

RE: REPORT BY THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE SERVICES

I most respectfully refer to your letter referenced HAGF/EFCC/2016/Vol.1/23 dated 19th December, 2016, asking me to respond within 48 hours to the allegations contained in a report written by the Department of State Service, DSS, and which provided the basis for the non-consideration of my confirmation on December 15, 2016, by the Senate.

2. Having carefully considered all the issues, I hereby present a point-by-point response as follows:

i. Missing EFCC Files

It is true that my residence was searched on the orders of Mrs. Farida Waziri, shortly after she succeeded Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as Chairman of the EFCC and some documents relating to cases under investigation were found in my house. At the time of the raid, I was yet to formally hand over to my successor, Umar Sanda, as head of the Economic Governance Unit.

My schedule at the time warranted that I work round the clock and it was impossible to conclude all assignments without working at home. The documents found in my house were actually found in my office bag where I kept documents relating to investigations. I was in the process of handing over and it would be wrong to suggest that I willfully kept the Commissions files at home.

Nevertheless, the incident was thoroughly investigated by the police as I was placed on suspension without pay for 20 months. But in the end, I was reprimanded, recalled and promoted to Assistant Commissioner of Police.

It is important sir, to draw your attention to the fact that some of us that worked closely with Ribadu were victimized after his exit. And my ordeal was orchestrated as punishment for being the chief investigative officer for most of the high profile cases involving politically exposed persons some of whom became very influential in government at the time.

ii. Return to EFCC under Lamorde

I was Assistant Commissioner of Police in Charge of Operations at the Anambra State Police Command when I was recalled to the EFCC in 2012. I did not lobby to return to the EFCC. It is preposterous for anyone to suggest that I was recalled to do a hatchet job for Lamorde as alleged in the DSS Report. My job schedule as Deputy Director, Department of Internal Affairs, under Lamorde, was simply handling issues of professional responsibility in the Commission. I had no inputs in core operations duties of the Commission.

iii. Tenancy of My Official Residence

I live in the official residence of the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). This accommodation, contrary to the report of the DSS is not my private home, neither was it rented and furnished for me by Commodore Umar Mohammed (rtd). It was rented and furnished by the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory through the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council, under the safe house scheme.

It is also false that the house was rented for N20million per annum and furnished for N43million. The entire cost for both two-year rent and the furnishing of the house is N39.628million.

Details of the transaction are contained in the contract award letter and payment schedule which are attached to this letter.

iv. Expensive Air Travels

Honourable Minister, the claim that I have a penchant for expensive air travels in a private jet belonging to Commodore Mohammed is baseless The two times I can recall travelling in Commodore Umars aircraft, were on a trip from Kano to Abuja, and Abuja to Maiduguri. In the first instance, I had gone to Kano on an official assignment with two of my directors, and Mohammed who was on his way back to Abuja offered us a ride in his jet. The second occasion was when I was going to see my sick mother in Maiduguri. These, for me, were harmless gesture as we were both members of the presidential investigative committee on arms procurement. At the time I had no knowledge that he was under investigation for any alleged crimes.

Claims that I flew in Mohammeds jet to Maiduguri in company of the Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Nnamdi Okonkwo is false. I have never flown in a private aircraft with any managing director of any bank let alone one that was under investigation by my agency. I have no personal relationship whatsoever with him.

v. High Profile/Dual Lifestyle

The allegation that I live a flamboyant lifestyle is also surprising to me. While it is true that I did travel first class on Emirates Airline to Saudi Arabia for Umrah, this action to the best of my knowledge, did not contravene the directive of Mr. President on First Class travels as suggested by the DSS Report.

My trip to Saudi Arabia was a private journey to perform my religious obligation and it was not financed with public funds. More importantly, my decision to fly first class was not borne out of quest for luxury but compelled by necessity. The trip was made during the last ten days of the Ramadan and other classes of ticket were not availbale.I had no other choice

That I flew first class in one instance is not enough evidence to suggest an extravagant lifestyle as alleged by the DSS Report. It is also not enough to suggest a dual personality. Any one that has associated closely with me will attest to the fact that I am not known for ostentatious living. And my new office as acting chairman of the EFCC has not changed this.

vi. Mutually Beneficial Relationship with Commodore Mohammed Umar (rtd)

Sir, it is important to situate my relationship with Commodore Mohammed Umar (rtd), in proper perspective. Our paths crossed when we became members of the Presidential Committee on the investigation on arms procurement. He was instrumental in getting some of the information that helped the committee to make significant breakthrough in its assignment.

Beyond that, the relationship between Umar and myself is one of professional acquaintance, devoid of issues of conflict of interest. So, it comes to me with shock, the imputation by the DSS that we have a mutually beneficial relationship. This appears suggestive that Mohammed and I were involved in activities that could be said to be untoward. I certainly have no knowledge of such activities.

The claim that EFCC documents, including EFCC letters addressed to the Vice President and being investigation reports on the activities of Emmanuel Kachikwu and his brother Demebi Kachikwu, were found in his home during a search by the DSS came to me as a surprise. If that is correct, he should be made to disclose how he came by such documents. I never discussed my official duties with him let alone give him documents pertaining to investigations being conducted by the Commission.

Interestingly, Mohammed was detained for several months by the DSS. In all those months, did he claim that I mandated him to commit any crime or that I was an accomplice to any crime? If there is any such claim, I will wholeheartedly like to be confronted with the allegation.

It is interesting to note that when Mohammed was eventually charged to court, the charges against him were money laundering and illegal possession of firearms, and nothing related to my purported shady relationship with him.

vii. Perceived Reluctance to Arraign Vice Marshall Adesola Amosun

The DSS Report that the reason EFCC delayed the arraignment of a former Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice Marshall Adesola Amosun, was because Mohammed never wanted Amosun to be prosecuted is astonishing. Anyone familiar with the EFCC under my watch knows that I perform my duties with the highest sense of responsibility. The reason Amosun was not arraigned when the likes of Alex Badeh and Umar were arraigned was because he cooperated with the Commission in terms of assisting the process of recovering the proceeds of crime.

Indeed, among the suspects arrested over the arms procurement scandal, he was most cooperative. The Commission recovered N2.835billion cash from him, aside from property worth One Billion Five Hundred and Eighty One Million Naira (N1,581, 000, 000), Two Million One Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars ($2,150, 000) and One Million Pounds Sterling (1, 000, 000).

Since a key focus of the investigation was to recover as much proceeds of crime as possible, the Commission took its time to ensure it had recovered what was possible before arraigning the suspect in court. This had nothing to do with the wish of any individual. Moreover, the suspect has since been arraigned before a court of competent jurisdiction.

viii. Alleged Vendetta Against Stanley Lawson

The suggestion by the DSS Report that Stanley Lawson, a former Group Executive Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was placed on a watch list, to settle scores with him is strange. It may interest you to know that I do not know Stanley Lawson personally and could not be settling personal scores by framing somebody that I do not know.

Lawsons encounter with the EFCC is in relation to the investigation into the mismanagement of $118million public funds for electioneering campaign involving former petroleum resources minister, Diezani Alison Madueke. It was discovered that he made payment of $25million into Fidelity Bank and also facilitated the purchase of Ogeyi Place Le Meridien Hotel in Port Harcourt for Mrs. Alison Madueke, for which he collected Ninety Four Million Five Hundred and Sixteen Thousand Naira (N94, 516,000) as commission. Lawson was arrested and he made a refund of the N94.5million traced to him. He was never placed on any watch list.

ix. Work through Police Cronies in EFCC

I do not understand what the report meant by working with cronies. If what was implied is that I have preferred officers that I work with and who go about their work in unethical manner, my response is that nothing of such exists in the EFCC. Officers who work with me know that the easiest way to lose your job is to be found to be involved in unethical or corrupt activities. Indeed, when I assumed office as acting chairman, my first action was to return police officers with integrity issues back to the Nigeria Police Force. If the DSS finds that there are police officers in the EFCC who are working closely with me and have properties that their incomes cannot support, the Service is at liberty to expose them.

3. Conclusion

Honourable Minister, Sir, I invite you to take notice of the fact that the DSS authored two separate vetting reports on me, one referenced SV.114/3 addressed to the Clerk of the National Assembly and the other referenced SV.114/3 addressed to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate). Both letters were dated 3rd October, 2016, and signed by the same Officer, Folashade Bello, on behalf of the Director General. While one of the reports advised the senate against my confirmation, the other asked it to favourably consider my confirmation. The two reports emanating from the same agency raises questions of sincerity and motive.

You will want to find out why they came up with two conflicting reports on the same subject on the same day.

It is important to note that in all this, I was not given the opportunity of fair hearing.

Above all sir, I am persuaded by my conviction in my innocence that in all the issues supposedly raised against me, no one has accused me of receiving gratification to act against my conscience or the interest of the country.

I have attached to this letter all supporting documents and materials that would enable you arrive at fair position on all the issues raised.

4. Be assured of my usual respect and highest consideration.

IBRAHIM MAGU

Ag. EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN

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Although they are safe for consumption, Fanta and Sprite should not be used to take any medicine, the federal government has said.

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, said the two beverages, manufactured by the Nigeria Bottling Company, NBC, are safe for human consumption but cannot be taken with any drug.

The minister stated these on Friday, after a meeting with the Department of Food and Drug Services, Federal Ministry of Health; National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC; and Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON; to address the concerns raised over the drinks by a judgement of a Lagos High Court.

The Court had ordered NAFDAC to direct the Nigeria Bottling Company Plc to include a warning on the bottles of the products that the contents cannot be taken with Vitamin C.

The judgment was on a suit filed by a Lagos-based businessman, Emmanuel Adebo, and his company, Fijabi Adebo Holdings Limited, against NBC Plc and NAFDAC.

In his suit, Mr Adebo urged the court to declare that NBC was negligent to its consumers by bottling Fanta and Sprite with excessive levels of benzoic acid and sunset additives.

He had tried to export Nigeria-produced Fanta and Sprite to the UK, where they were described as poisonous by authorities there and destroyed.

Benzoic acid is a white, crystalline powder with a faint, non-offensive odour. Though it serves as preservative, if used excessively causes cancer and has been linked to asthma problems and increased levels of hyperactivity in children.

Benzoic acid is also used in the manufacture a wide variety of products such as perfumes, dyes, topical medications and insect repellents.

Sunset yellow is a dye that can be found in foods like orange juice, ice cream, canned fish, cheese, jellies, soft drinks and many medicines. It can also be dangerous for human health as it causes urticaria, rhinitis, allergies, hyperactivity, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting in some individuals.

NAFDAC on Thursday said it has filed an appeal and a motion to stay execution of action on the judgement.

The NBC, bottlers of Coca Cola products in Nigeria, has also said it is appealing the judgement.

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The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, said on Friday it was fully committed to implementing various measures it considered necessary to achieve full recovery of its missing petroleum products stored in the facilities of two indigenous downstream operators in Lagos.

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported on Thursday on the missing 130 million litres of premium motor spirit, PMS, popularly called petrol, owned by the NNPC Retail, a downstream subsidiary of the NNPC, stored in the products depots belonging to Capital Oil & Gas and MRS Petroleum.

The products stored in the two private facilities under a throughput arrangement to build a robust strategic national reserve got missing in controversial circumstances.

Under the terms of the throughput arrangement, The NNPC Retail paid N2 for every litre of petrol stored in a private depot.

Consequently, N200 million was paid to Capital Oil and N60 million paid to MRS for 100 million and 30 million litres of petrol stored in the two facilities.

NNPC Chief Operating Officer, Downstream, Henry Ikem-Obi, said in Abuja that part of the measures considered to facilitate the recovery of the products included its decision to alert the State Security Service, SSS, and the Economic Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Mr. Ikem-Obih said the corporation had also reported to the relevant committees of the National Assembly with oversight functions on the corporations downstream operations, to help recover the asset contrary to the insinuation that NNPC kept mute over the infraction until the Senate uncovered it.

He said so far, MRS petroleum had fully complied by returning the 30 million litres of petrol used illegal without NNPCs permission.

The COO said the NNPC was not making much progress in relation with Capital Oil & Gas, which was yet to return about 82 million litres of petrol, valued at N11billion, out of over 100 million litres kept in its facility.

He further disclosed that NNPC had set up two committees to evaluate the roles played by some of its staff in the illegal product evacuation and review its entire throughput policy in order to align it with global best practices.

Mr. Ikem-Obi said the infraction was discovered earlier in January when the NNPC needed to access the over 100 million litres of petrol stored at the Capital Oil & Gas depot for NNPC Retail and just over 30 million litres in MRS Limited depot, all in Apapa area of Lagos.

We instructed the Nigerian Products Marketing Company (NPMC) a subsidiary of NNPC, to send additional trucks to those locations to move products for distribution aimed at meeting a supply shortfall we discovered in the market.

But after days of not being able to access the terminals, we had to take a decision as NNPC Management to invite auditors and inspectors to go and do a physical check on the inventories The visit revealed that there was no molecule of product for the NNPC to evacuate, he said.

The COO said the infraction by the two downstream companies was a clear violation of existing throughput contract, which prohibited owners of the facilities from tempering with the volumes in their custody without express permission of the NNPC

Armed with the findings, he said the NNPC invited the two companies to explain what happened to products in their custody.

Letters were later issued to the companies to either return the full volume of what was stored in their depots, or pay the full value of the products they took without NNPCs approval.

CAPITAL OIL REACTS

In its reaction, the management of Capital Oil & Gas Limited said on Friday it had written to the NNPC to demand the full reconciliation of accounts for debts owed the company over the last two years.

The Chairman of Capital Oil, Ifeanyi Uba, told PREMIUM TIMES on Friday that his firm had been writing to NNPC on several occasions in the past to get its management to agree to sit and reconcile the accounts on various petroleum products supply transactions.

NNPC has been owing us (Capital Oil) on petroleum products supplies over the last two years. We have written several letter to them calling for reconciliation without success. We have written to them calling for total reconciliation of accounts, and they have agreed, Mr. Uba said in a telephone chat on Friday.

Although Mr. Uba did not say how much the NNPC was owing Capital Oil, he said that would be determined at the end of the reconciliation exercise.

To forestall a repeat of similar occurrence in the future, the COO NNPC Downstream said a disciplinary committee was constituted to investigate the level of involvement of its staff with a view to applying appropriate sanctions as a deterrence measure.

The second committee, he said, was reviewing the Corporations policy and guidelines for engaging in throughput arrangements with third parties to establish control measures to help avert a similar incident in the future.

On possible punitive measures to be meted out to culpable staff and erring firms, the COO said it would be better to allow the committees decide that in line with existing laws and regulations.

On the impact of the product diversion on the supply system, he said there was no fear of under-supply as the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Maikanti Baru, has approved an increase in importation of petrol to make up for the shortfall.

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A special meeting of the National Economic Council, NEC, will be conveyed to discuss security issues as they affect the country, the council said Thursday.

This was revealed on Thursday by the deputy governor of Kaduna state, Bala Bantex, after the NEC meeting, which held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Mr. Bantex said the meeting became necessary after the council received briefing from the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno.

He said the meeting reiterated the connection between lack of employment and security threats across the country.

He said NEC, which is headed by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and has as members all the 36 state governors, praised the Federal Governments Social Investment Programmes, noting its potential role and significance in enhancing the security.

The National Security Adviser had indicated that unemployment plays a role in some of the security issues and concerns in the country, he said.

Mr. Bantex said the NSA briefed the council on the security situation in the country with particular reference to Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, cattle rustling, ethnic militias/security outfits, kidnapping, armed robbery, militancy in Niger Delta and the proliferation of small arms across the country.

Mr. Bantex said the council subsequently resolved to hold an extra-ordinary session to fully discuss pertinent national security matters especially as it has to do with the economy.

Policy on afforestation and reforestation

The governor of Abia state, Okezie Ikpeazu, who spoke earlier, also said the council was briefed by the Minister of State for Environment on the policy direction on afforestation, reforestation and sustainable forest management in the country.

The governor said a meeting of the National Council on Environment, which held in Lafia, Nasarawa State in July 2016, resolved to encourage States to promote forestry development and afforestation programmes and to also promote the use of alternative sources of energy.

He said NEC had agreed on the temporary lifting of the suspension on wood export and issuance of convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wood Faora & Flora permit.

He said the Ministry of Environment had commenced strengthening processes that would enable legitimate businesses to obtain the required permit.

He said NEC had recommended the need to accelerate and review the extant National Forest Policy as well as ensure its backing through the enactment of relevant Forest Laws.

Massive Afforestation/Reforestation of degraded forest and landscape outside Forests.

Establishment of take-off of the National Forestry Trust Fund through contributions by Wood Products Exporters according to products classification (tally processed, semi processed, charcoal) and

Establishment of National Forest Model Estate in all the States and FCT.

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Justice Muslim Hassan of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on Friday declined further hearing of the case involving former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, Nenadi Usman, and Danjuma Yusuf over a N4.7 billion fraud levelled against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC.

Mr. Hassan ordered that the case file be returned to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Ibrahim Auta, for re-assignment to another judge. He directed Mr. Fani-Kayode and his co-defendants to await further directive from Mr. Auta.

The EFCC had on June 28, 2016 arraigned Mr. Fani-Kayode; former minister of state for finance, Nenadi Usman; former national chairman of Association of Local Government of Nigeria, ALGON, Yusuf Danjuma, and a company, Jointrust Dimentions Nigeria Ltd. on a 17-count charge of fraud and money laundering.

The accused had pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Fani-Kayode had accused the judge of bias in the handling of the matter, stating that he wanted the judge to not only withdraw himself from the case but to transfer the matter to the Abuja division of the court.

Mr. Fani-Kayode through his counsel, Norrison Quakers, also said he was afraid of not getting justice if Mr. Hassan presided over the case on the grounds that Mr. Hassan once worked as a legal officer in the employment of the EFCC.

Mr. Fani-Kayode recalled that Mr. Hassan, then a senior counsel with the EFCC, was the officer who drafted, filed and signed a charge marked FHC/L/523c/2008, leading to his trial for alleged N100 million money laundering before Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the same federal court.

He said though the EFCC vigorously prosecuted the case, he was discharged and acquitted by Justice Ofili-Ajumogobia on July 1, 2015 after seven years of trial, a development, Mr. Hassan was not happy about, according to Mr. Fani-Kayode.

Following Mr. Fani-Kayodes claims, the EFCC had filed a counter-affidavit, wherein it described the accuseds application as a ploy to frustrate his trial and urged the judge to dismiss it.

The EFCC prosecutor, Rotimi Oyedepo, had argued that no reasonable person who watched the proceedings during Mr. Fani-Kayodes trial would say Justice Hassan was biased against him.

In his ruling on Thursday, Justice Hassan upheld Mr. Oyedepos submission that he (the judge) was not biased.

The judge, however, said he considered it safe to withdraw himself from the case.

It is not in dispute that I signed Exhibit FFK1 as far back as 2008 over nine years ago, as the then Head of Legal, Lagos office of the EFCC, prior to my elevation as a judge of the Federal High Court, Mr. Hassan said.

But it must be emphasised that as at then, I never participated in the trial of the second defendant (Fani-Kayode) and at all material times during the pendency of that case.

I never appeared for the prosecution as the entire proceedings were conducted by Mr. Festus Keyamo and his chambers before Honourable Justice Rita Ngozi Ofili-Ajumogobia, which led to the discharge and acquittal of the second defendant as erroneously argued by learned senior counsel as the record of the proceedings will bear me out.

The judge further noted that his conduct throughout the duration of the trial would leave no one in doubt that, so far, justice had not been done to the defendants in the case.

But that notwithstanding, this court will exercise caution and restraint as it would be safer and more in the interest of justice to refuse taking further proceedings in this matter, he continued.

I refer this case to the Chief Judge of this honourable court for re-assignment to another judge.

Having declined jurisdiction based on the fear or apprehension of the second defendant that he will not get fair trial and since the defendants are on joint trial, any other pronouncement made by this honourable court in respect of venue and severance of the charge and other issues raised in the applications of the first and third defendants will be an exercise in futility and an academic exercise.

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STACYVILLE | Hazel Heimer, 79, of Stacyville, died Wednesday, March 15, 2017, at the Stacyville Community Nursing Home in Stacyville.

A Funeral Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 21, at Visitation Catholic Church in Stacyville, with Father Raymond Burkle and Msgr. John Hemann officiating.

Burial will be at Visitation Catholic Cemetery.

Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday at Visitation Catholic Church in Stacyville with a rosary at 4:30 p.m. and a vigil service at 7 p.m.

Champion-Bucheit Funeral Home, Osage, is in charge of arrangements.
The Senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, has said there are corrupt power blocs in the presidency whose civil war cost Ibrahim Magu his confirmation as the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Speaking when he received representatives of the National Association of Muslim Law Students in his office on Thursday, Mr. Sani became another elite voice to have raised concern about the President Muhammadu Buharis effective control of his government where his close allies and aides engage in open rivalry and crossfire.

Two former leaders of the country, told PREMIUM TIMES, speaking on strict condition of anonymity, that Mr. Buhari had lost control of his government and should consider overhauling his administration, after the State Security Service again blocked the confirmation of Mr. Magu, brushing aside the Presidents clearance in letter to the Senate in January.

The Senate rejected the re-nomination of Mr. Magu on Wednesday, after the SSS reaffirmed its position the acting EFCC chairman will constitute liability to the anti-corruption campaign of the administration because he lacks integrity.

But Mr. Sani said: Magu is a victim of the civil war between in the Presidents kitchen cabinet. It is high time the President stood his feet to stop power blocs who are desirous of undermining and subverting his efforts.

On Thursday, Sahara Reporters published excerpts from a leaked memo Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State sent the President, saying in blunt terms the Buharis administration was not delivering on promises made to Nigerians and accusing the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation of being clueless and inexperienced.

He said Mr. Buhari had made progress in the fight against corruption to good degree and also degraded Boko Haram.

But Buhari is alone in the fight against corruption in the sense there are many persons around him who are corrupt.

They did not declare their assets publicly like the President, Osinbajo and myself, hiding under the secrecy law, Mr. Sani said.

An ad-hoc committee headed by Mr. Sani last year indicted the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, for breaching the countrys law in respect of grass cutting contract awarded by the Presidential Initiative on the North East, prompting the Senate to ask the President to sack and ensure prosecution of the SGF.

But the president wrote back to the Senate, clearing Mr. Lawal with claims the SGF was not given fair hearing and that the report of the committee was a minority one.

Mr. Sani then hit back at the President and accused him of bias in the fight against corruption.

Mr. Sani said, the Eight Senate is not rubber stamp Senate, but it is also not dagger or sword Senate.

Advising the visiting students who asked him to talk to them on activism, Mr. Sani said the future of the country belongs to youth who should hold the leaders to account and be responsible.

He also urged action against religious extremism and ethnic tension.

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The Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, on Thursday said he ordered all armed herdsmen out of Benue State because they engaged in killing citizens with provocation.

He said it was his duty as a governor to take the decision in order to ensure the safety of lives and property of the citizens of the state.

Mr. Ortom spoke with State House correspondents shortly after he came out of a meeting of the National Economic Council NEC, at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He however, said unarmed herdsmen and those who do not engage in violence also need protection.

Mr. Ortom had on Monday given Fulani herdsmen in Tombo-Mbalagh, Buruku Local Government Area of the state, a two-day ultimatum to leave the area.

He gave the order in Tombo-Mbalagh during a visit to ascertain the damage allegedly inflicted on the community by herdsmen over the weekend.

I ordered armed herdsmen out of my state. They are not friendly to my people. They are killing them and I cannot tolerate that, the governor said.

My job as the governor is to provide security for lives and property. I cannot watch seeing people being killed unprovoked. It is not right.

Mr. Ortom said the only thing citizens of the state are engaged in is farming. He however, said when you go to their farmlands and destroy their crops and then when they complain, you kill them. That will never be acceptable. I will not fold my hands to watch this happen.

He said his order is for security men to arrest all arms-bearing herdsmen.

He also recalled that an amnesty programme he launched earlier enabled him to disarm the criminal elements in my society because I believe in the rule of law and due process.

Without the rule of law, there is no way we can govern. A stronger person will come and take over the affairs of the state from where ever you are. And so, we must abide by the rule of law, he said.

Mr. Ortom said apart from fighting corruption, governments at all levels must be ready to fight impunity as well.

He said impunity was worse than corruption.

Another thing is impunity, it is worse than corruption. So, while we are fighting corruption, we must also fight impunity. This is not right.

Those armed herdsmen, are they above the law? So, the security men must track, arrest and prosecute them according to the law.

I have told my people that as farmers, they have no business carrying arms. And so, I will protect them as long as I am governor is my state, he said.

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Justice Festus Ntong of Akwa-Ibom State High Court sitting in Ikot Ekpene has declined an application to stop the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, or any other federal anti-corruption agency from investigating allegations of corruption involving the finances of the Government of Akwa Ibom State.

The Akwa Ibom State Attorney General, Uwemedimo Nwoko, had filed a suit before Justice Ntong, seeking the court to restrain ICPC or any other federal anti-corruption agency from investigating the government of the state for alleged corrupt practices without prior authorisation by the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly.

The Akwa Ibom State Attorney General had argued in the suit that a federal agency would be acting beyond its powers if it investigated a matter involving an official or agency of the Akwa Ibom State Government.

He, therefore, joined the Speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly and the Akwa Ibom State Government as respondents in the matter because, in his opinion, they were not exercising their power and rights to prevent a federal agency from encroaching on their jurisdiction. Others joined as respondents in the suit included the Inspector General of Police, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and some banks.

Upon a preliminary objection filed by ICPC disputing the competence of the court to entertain any claim against the Federal Government or any of its agencies, the trial court ruled that the State High Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain such a claim and therefore struck out the case.

It may be recalled that in a similar case brought before the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt by all the 23 local government councils of Rivers State in suit number FHC/PH/CS/432/2010, Justice Tijani Abubakar by a ruling dated May 31, 2012 dismissed the plaintiffs claim and held that the issue of the constitutional authority of ICPC to investigate any person or authority in Nigeria for alleged corrupt practices had been decided with finality by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in the case of Attorney General of Ondo State vs Attorney General of the Federation (2002).

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The Ondo State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, on Thursday promised to meet all the demands of medical practitioners after they ended their five-week strike on Wednesday.

According to a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Segun Ajiboye, Mr. Akeredolu commended the doctors who operate under the umbrella of the National Association of Medical and Dental Practitioners in the state for calling off the strike.

The governor praised the doctors for their commitment to their duties, and assured them of his administrations plan to meet their demands.

He said he would not renege on his promise to move the state beyond where he met, while sympathising with the doctors for their sufferings as a result of unpaid salaries.

Mr. Akeredolu also assured the doctors that they would not be owed salaries under his administration as salaries would henceforth be paid promptly.

The doctors embarked on an indefinite strike on February 6, 2017 to demand the payment of salaries running to seven months.

The chairman of doctors association, Ismaila Busari, hailed the governors intention and assured him of the unions support.

Mr. Busari said were it not for the governors intervention, members of the association would still have continued with the strike action.

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The Lagos State Government on Friday assured Lagosians that the new Environmental Protection and Management Law initiated by the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode-led administration was done in the overall interest of all Lagosians to ensure cleaner environment and public health safety in the state.

In a press statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Steve Ayorinde, the state government explained that the law was in tandem with the reforms in the environment sector, aimed at charting a new direction in recognition of the fact that water, sanitation and hygiene are non-negotiable requisites in a mega city like Lagos.

According to the Commissioner, the rapid growth of Lagos, its dream of 24-hour economy and government financial limitations have made it pertinent to make investor-friendly laws that will attract the desired investment into the sector.

With the Cleaner Lagos Initiative, the government reassures all and sundry of its determination to clean the environment in our state and we are already taking the necessary steps in that direction, he said.

Mr. Ayorindes position comes days after environmental activists complained about the inaccessibility of the new law.

Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to also obtain a copy of the new law was unsuccessful.

Mr. Ayorinde said the government would not be frustrated in its determination to achieve a cleaner Lagos by seeming vested interests working against the reforms, adding that all issues pertaining to the Cleaner Lagos Initiative are being addressed, especially in the crucial area of waste management.

The government is aware of the complaints by well-meaning citizens over delays being experience in the area of waste collection. The Ministry of the Environment, the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) and our sanitation gangs are on top of the situation and will not give in to the sabotage by those who are opposed to the reforms, Mr. Ayorinde stated.

He also said there was no such thing in the law that seeks to criminalise individuals sinking boreholes, stating that only boreholes dug for commercial purposes require license or payment and this is not a new practice as it has been in existence since.

The position of the law today as provided in sections 253 and 259 of the Environmental Management and Protection Law as it relates to construction of borehole or well has not changed from what it used to be.

First, Landlords are free to dig or construct boreholes in their houses without any permit or licence, provided that the regulation on location of such bore-hole is followed, that is the bore-hole, or well must not be sited near soak away or septic tank, he explained.

The Commissioner stated that licence is required only by landlords that intend to construct a borehole or a well for commercial or industrial use, meaning that if you dig or construct to sell or for industrial use, you need location permit.

He added that in order to make it accessible to citizens, the law has now been uploaded online and can be accessed on http://laws.lagosstate.gov.ng.

He urged Lagosians to team up with the government to work for the realisation of its development agenda and sustainability goals, particularly as they relate to the reforms in the environment sector where the people are the direct beneficiaries of the 27,500 new jobs being provided through this initiative; a cleaner state, and all-year-round drainage management for effective and efficient flood control, among others as contained in the environmental law.

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A 37-year-old internet fraudster, Akintunde Abiodun, was on Friday sentenced to six years in jail after the Lagos high Court sitting in Ikeja convicted him of forgery and stealing.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had on January 23 arraigned Mr. Abiodun, a.k.a. Christopher Williams, before the court presided by Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye on an amended 12-count charge of stealing and forgery to the tune of seven million, eight hundred and six thousand, and ninety-three naira.

Mr. Abioduns walk to jail began after he presented himself as Christopher Williams to his victim, D. Bonni, whom he met on a dating site on the Internet.

The convict had told Mr. Bonni that he inherited gemstones worth $18, 050,000 from his late father in the United Kingdom.

He also forged an American passport with which he convinced his victim of his purported nationality.

Consequently, the convict received various sums of money at different times from the victim.

When he was arraigned, Mr. Abiodun pleaded not guilty to the charges, thereby setting the stage for his trial.

The prosecution counsel, Ola Sesan, tendered several documents that were admitted in evidence and presented witnesses who testified against the accused.

In view of this, the convict later filed an application for plea bargaining before the court.

Delivering his judgment Friday, Justice Ipaye found the convict guilty and jailed three years each on counts 1 to 11 of stealing.

The convict was also found guilty and jailed three years on count 12 of forgery.

The sentences are to run separately from the date of arraignment meaning the convict will spend six years in jail.

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MIDDLE TOWNSHIP  Seventh-grader Ariel Caro received a thundering ovation from her classmates Friday morning at Middle Township Middle School.

Caro is undergoing treatment for brain cancer at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, and in solidarity with her and other cancer patients and survivors, 72 students, staff members and members of the community shaved or cut their hair Friday.

In the process, they raised more than $25,000 for childhood cancer research through the St. Baldricks Foundation.

I cant wait for it to start, Caro said before the event. I feel really amazed that theyre helping out.

Its really cool that so many people are here, added Nicolette Carty, a graduate of the middle school and a survivor of brain cancer.

Some of the participants donated their hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which provides wigs to women with cancer.

The St. Baldricks Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that has funded $200 million in grants for childhood cancer research since 2005, according to its website.

More than 1,200 head-shaving events were held as part of the organizations efforts in 2016, according to the foundation.

Other schools in the area also participated in head-shaving events Friday.

At Lower Cape May Regional High School, more than 20 people signed up to have their hair buzzed or clipped.

The event raised more than $18,000, according to the foundations website.

The Richard M. Teitelman School, a middle school in Lower Township, surpassed its goal of $7,500 and raised more than $8,000, according to the events fundraising page.
The signs covering a music room wall at Lakeside Middle School in Millville are a montage of musical humor: Those are sharps, not hashtags, says one featuring Twitters famous # sign.

But Erika Zeiters students already know that. Some started music lessons at school as early as third grade, and almost all had started an instrument by fourth grade.

The result is Zeiters is blessed with three school bands of about 50 students each in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. During a recent class, the seventh-graders expertly practiced the Introduction to Mozarts Symphony No. 40.

It is awesome to have kids who are so great by seventh grade, Zeiters said as they finished.

Millville has remained committed to offering instrumental music lessons in elementary school. But statewide, as state aid has remained flat and property taxes have been capped, music programs have suffered, especially in the most underfunded districts.

Lacking public funds, schools have turned to band boosters, community members and online fundraising. And after years of cuts, the arts may be making a comeback.

Several years ago, the Egg Harbor Township school board reluctantly eliminated instrumental music lessons in fourth grade to balance the budget. Fifth grade also was cut, but later restored.

Students learn best at younger ages, board member Pete Castellano, who oversees the budget committee, wrote in an email. He said students who cant afford private lessons are the hardest hit.

Kids never get those years back, he said.

When the high school needed a new piano, the Community Partnership for EHT schools donated a concert grand.

Zeiters used the website Donors Choose to raise $1,900 to buy a new bass drum for Lakeside School. James Robbins, 13, was the first to play.

When you hit it, it vibrates, he said. You can feel it.

Robbins started playing bells and then drums in fourth grade. He picked them, he said, because they reflect his personality.

All the time Im banging on stuff, he said.

Zeiters also has appealed to the community to donate used instruments, which has been successful in supplementing the brass and woodwind instruments that make up the majority of the band.

We never have enough clarinets and flutes, she said. We try to keep a few spares in case one breaks.

She said even if donated instruments need repair, the school works with Coles Music Service in Gloucester County for repairs and trade-ins.

Atlantic City schools have benefited from the generosity of former state Sen. William Gormley and his wife, Ginny, who attended the high school. The couple started Friends of Music almost a decade ago. Between some fundraisers and donations, he estimated they have raised some $200,000 for instruments for local schoolchildren.

Ginny doesnt like presents, and she always remembered the orchestra program at the high school, Gormley said, explaining how Friends of Music began with a donation in lieu of holiday gifts.

They are currently partnering with the music academy program at Sovereign Avenue School.

The teachers put in so much of their time, Gormley said. We just do whatever they tell us they need.

The Bay-Atlantic Symphony has also operated a music mentorship program in Atlantic City schools.

Bob Morrison, executive director of the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership, said while challenges remain, arts programs may be growing again after years of cuts.

Music educators are creative and resourceful, he said. He said foundations such as VH1 Save the Music, the Mr. Hollands Opus Foundation and Little Kids Rock have helped schools fill the gaps and raise the profile of the value of music education.

Galloway Township has maintained its music program, but also relies on fundraisers, grants and donations to supplement the budget, Superintendent Annette Giaquinto said. The district is celebrating Music in Our Schools month with a series of concerts by the music teachers.

A Rutgers-Eagleton poll last fall, which kicked of an ArtsEdNow campaign, found 95 percent of respondents believe an education in the arts is very or somewhat valuable. But in South Jersey, fewer respondents believed their children receive enough opportunities in the arts.

Movement draws attention to role of arts education GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP  Student post-it notes fill the bulletin board in the dance studio at Abs

In 2008, the state Board of Education mandated all students must get at least one year of arts instruction as a high school graduation requirement. But a 2011 arts education census found at the elementary level, the percentage of schools with full-time music teachers had dropped from 94 percent in 2006 to 77 percent.

Morrison is currently compiling the results of the 2016 arts education census, which will be released in September. He sees renewed interest.

There was a period from 2000 to 2015 when there was a period of neglect, Morrison said. We had the recession, and PARCC tests and so much change. But now the pendulum is swinging back.

Morrison cites the conversion of STEM  or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math  education, to STEAM, to include the arts, as recognition of their value in many disciplines.

If schools provide programs students want, it reduces absenteeism, he said. Music is something students really look forward to.

Zeiters can testify to that. She has taught in Millville for eight years, and even with tight budgets considers herself lucky for the support music receives. She has watched the high school band grow from fewer than 50 students to more than 100, largely due to a commitment by teachers and the district to develop musicians at the lower grades.

Her school recently got three oboes, and Naizamere Garcia, 12, volunteered to switch from clarinet.

I like that you can create music, he said of his interest in learning an instrument.

Zeiters led the students through the Mozart piece a second time.

Youre all good at forte (loud), she said. We still have to work on piano (soft).

A third time through and she was happier.

That was much cleaner, she said. But lets do it one more time. We dont want to make Mozart roll in his grave.
Question: I own a large collection of Harry Potter items and have decided to sell some duplicates.

I would appreciate information about and values of 1) a first edition softcover Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book signed by J.K. Rowling, published by Bloomsbury, and 2) a 17-inch-high Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone Lego store display. Both items are in very good condition.  C.L., Rio Grande, Middle Township

Answer: Your Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second in a series of fantasy novels written by British author J.K. Rowling from 1997 to 2007.

Published by Bloomsbury Press in London and later by Scholastic Press in the U.S., the books have enjoyed worldwide popularity for years.

Your softcover book, one of the first Harry Potter paperback editions published by Bloomsbury, is considered a desirable collectible by many folks who search for examples in near-fine or fine condition. One near-fine example fetched $1,000 this year.

The Lego store display, featuring the series first book, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, is a promotional item. It advertises a 2001 customer Enter to Win contest featuring Legos interlocking plastic scenes, buildings and characters associated with Harry Potter books and films.

During the past two years, similar Harry Potter Lego displays in very good to excellent condition sold for $225 to $275.

Question: I inherited a large box of 1920s and 1930s Art Deco costume jewelry purchased by my mother from an elderly relative years ago.

I am particularly interested in a sparkling silver pin, 3 inches wide and 1 inches high with F and B inside a diamond-shape mark.

It has a round, opaque, deep blue central stone speckled with gold and is described on the estate list as a Boucheron lapis lazuli in marcasite setting brooch. Anything you can tell me about the description and the pins possible worth is appreciated.  L.C., Ocean City

Answer: The mark on your brooch indicates it was made by Boucheron, a renowned Parisian jewelry company founded in 1858 by Frederic Boucheron (1830-1902). Famous for its fashionable, quality Art Nouveau and Art Deco designs as well as exemplary craftsmanship, the firm later added branch stores in London and New York.

Popular Bouchard items include pins, necklaces, earrings, watches, bracelets, dress clips, compacts, and cigarette and card cases offered as expensive pieces fashioned from precious metals and gemstones. Costume pieces like yours are created from semi-precious materials.

The broochs opaque, deep blue central stone is lapis lazuli, also known as lapis, a semi-precious mineral valued for its intense color.

Often naturally enriched with small, sparkling gold-colored flecks, it has been used for centuries to make carvings, jewelry, ornaments, statues, mosaics and unusual items, such as the eyebrows on King Tuts funeral mask.

Your pins marcasite setting probably is fashioned from the metallic mineral pyrite. Since marcasite and pyrite are in many ways very similar minerals, pyrite jewelry often is incorrectly described as marcasite. Because marcasite is very brittle, easily crumbles and falls apart, it is rarely used for the manufacture of jewelry.

Brooches like yours are valued at $150 to $250.

Alyce Hand Benham is an antiques broker, appraiser and estate-liquidation specialist. Send questions to: Alyce Benham, Life section, The Press of Atlantic City, 1000 W. Washington Ave., Pleasantville, NJ 08232. Email: treasuresbyalyce81@gmail.com. Letters may be used in future columns but cannot be answered individually, and photos cannot be returned.
ATLANTIC CITY  Mayor Don Guardian launched his re-election campaign Thursday outside City Hall, where he hopes to stay for four more years.

Guardian and his allies held a rally and revealed his Republican council running mates. Union leaders, elected officials and a diverse group of residents praised the mayor, sometimes in different languages.

Four years ago, everything was broken, Guardian said. We needed a new beginning beyond casinos. But four years ago, people said I could never fix any of the problems that were plaguing Atlantic City.

Guardian then listed achievements, including cleaner streets and parks, a reduction in the city budget and increased investment in the resort, among others.

Four candidates are challenging Guardian for mayor.

Perennial candidate Joseph Polillo is seeking the top spot on the local Republican ticket. The municipal Republican committee will meet Saturday to decide who will be the Column A mayoral candidate in the June primary.

A lot of rhetoric there, huh? joked Polillo, who watched the rally from the back of the crowd. Im not against Guardian. Im against the city not doing anything (against the state takeover).

Council President Marty Small, Councilman Frank Gilliam and Fareed Abdullah are facing off on the Democratic side.

Guardians running mates will be Ron Bailey, Paul Tonacci and Stacey Kammerman.

Bailey, a lifelong resident and EMT, said he would bring new programs for the citys youth and vowed to keep his phone on 24 hours a day for constituents.

Kammerman, the first woman to declare her council candidacy and the owner of Kammermans Marina, said she is hardworking and honest and would work to bring more investment to the city.

Tonacci, an immigrant from Chile and former managing partner of Atlantic City Bottle Co. and The Iron Room Restaurant, promised to bring an unwavering sense of responsibility, drive and commitment to the job.

In 2014, Guardian became the citys first Republican mayor since 1990. Almost immediately since taking office, Guardian has leapt from crisis to crisis, dealing with a rash of casino closings and a controversial state takeover of the citys finances.

On Thursday, Guardian said the job has been challenging but rewarding.

People always ask me why I would run for mayor of Atlantic City again, Guardian began his speech to laughs. And my answer is simple. I love my city.
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ATLANTIC CITY  A show of union support for the citys police officers and firefighters Friday caught the attention of visitors and residents, many of whom were concerned layoffs could threaten the publics safety.

Obviously, weve read and heard whats going on, said Jim Smith, of New York. Why, I dont know, but I do believe you have to support your Fire Department and Police Department.

A news conference at City Hall attacked manpower and spending cuts in the citys two public safety departments that are proposed under the state takeover of the city. Afterward, a handful of police and fire union members walked to the Boardwalk, handing out Dont Gamble on Safety fliers.

One of them ended up in the hands of Smith and his wife, Antoinette.

I would not feel safer, thats for sure, she said.

Even before the campaign officially kicked off Friday, residents and employees of the city discussed the possibility of budget cuts to the citys po-lice and fire departments.

At Lenox Cafe, across the street from the Public Safety Building, owner Dan Caldwell stood behind the counter, where he serves many city police officers and firefighters.

Its unfortunate, Caldwell said, Theres a lot of good people who will be hurt by the cutting of police and fire department personnel.

Andrea Ospina-Torres lives in Egg Harbor Township but works in Atlantic City.

Were supposed to take care of each other. Were a community, Ospina-Torres said.

Down Atlantic Avenue, resident Mike Lopez started his day at Tonys Baltimore Grille, a favorite restaurant for locals and visitors.

Atlantic City has 39,000 residents, but more than 25 million come into the city every year, Lopez said. Were not like any other town.

Lopez, who is also the president of the Atlantic City Republican Club, attended the public-safety press conference and took Dont Gamble on Safety fliers to distribute in his own neighborhood.

During Fridays press conference, New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech said community involvement and legislative measures will be what helps the citys police and fire unions campaign be successful.

The community is going to make sure that the people that stand up with us will have support, and the people who dont stand with us wont have support,
ATLANTIC CITY  The state can proceed with plans to slash pay and benefits for city firefighters, Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez ruled Friday.

The judges ruling means the state is allowed to cut salaries, eliminate benefits, increase work hours and switch firefighters to a new health care plan, among other unilateral contract changes that take effect Monday.

The ruling came minutes before union leaders kicked off a campaign against public-safety cuts. Union leaders, Mayor Don Guardian and police Officer Joshlee Vadell, who was shot in the head in the line of duty, spoke out against the states plans.

The cuts amount to a 25 percent loss of compensation for firefighters, according to the lawsuit filed by the union, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 198.

The decision comes as the citys police unions have filed a similar lawsuit seeking to block cuts to their contracts. A judge temporarily blocked the state from imposing contract cuts to the police unions until an April 10 hearing, said Matthew Rogers, president of Police Benevolent Association Local 24.

Mendez temporarily blocked the state from cutting the departments staff nearly in half, from 225 firefighters to 125. The state wants to lay off 100 firefighters this fall when a federal grant paying for about 80 of them expires.

Were very pleased with the recognition of the authority that we have under the (state takeover law), and that were able to take the steps economically to protect the city, said former U.S. Sen. Jeffrey Chiesa, who is overseeing the citys finances.

Michael Bukosky, the unions attorney, said the firefighters may consider an appeal of the ruling. He said hes confident the union will win a larger legal case against the state takeover of the city, which he argues impairs the unions contract rights.

If the Chiesa law firm goes ahead with the contract changes, they may simply be buying a very big bill, Bukosky said. If we win, all this money is to come back.

The takeover law, called the Municipal Stabilization and Recovery Act, gave the state sweeping power over the citys finances, including authority to break union contracts.

Vadell stood before a packed City Council chambers and criticized the state takeover. He got a standing ovation.

Im only doing my duty, again, to protect the community of Atlantic City from out-of-town thugs taking away constitutional rights and putting a paid man in control of their government, Vadell said.

Among the states proposals are a 30 percent cut in workers compensation for injured officers. Chiesa has exempted Vadell, who is still recovering from the September shooting, from the compensation cuts. But union officials and Vadells wife said the state never told them of Vadells exemption.

They didnt notify us of that. They sent a letter yesterday to the media about that, which goes to show who theyre speaking to, Rogers said Friday. Theyre not speaking to us.

The campaign against the cuts, already underway, includes billboards, direct mail, online advertising and grassroots activities such as handing out fliers on the Boardwalk, according to the New Jersey AFL-CIO.

In addition to 100 fewer firefighters, the state seeks to cut the Police Departments staff from 274 to 250. The city had 331 police officers in 2011 and 272 firefighters in 2014.

The campaign, called Dont Gamble on Safety AC, says the states cuts would result in unsafe staffing levels.

One hundred percent of the high-risk occupancies, like a building greater than seven stories, will be unable to receive the necessary number of firefighters in any timeframe, said IAFF Local 198 President Bill Dilorenzo.

Chiesa, who is billing taxpayers $400 per hour to lead a takeover of the city, dismissed the union lawsuits as no more than money grabs in an interview with WPGs Harry Hurley.

In an interview with The Press of Atlantic City, Chiesa said he relied on experts to come up with the 125-person staff level. The state plans to alter the platoon structure and work schedule to make remaining firefighters work more hours.

Were happy to listen to the Fire Department and their leaders and experts to come to a (staff) number that makes sense and the judge will be comfortable with, he said by phone.

Chiesa said he asked police Chief Henry White to identify 24 officers who could be cut. Instead of making a merit-based list, White chose the youngest officers, Chiesa said.

That demonstrates to me that public safety is nowhere near their motivation here. Their motivation is simple. Its to protect the highest-salaried individuals, Chiesa said.

PBA Local 24 said on Twitter the chief doesnt have appointment authority to make decisions regarding layoffs.

The cuts to police would save the city $20 million, while the reductions at the fire department would save $14 million, according to the state.

The city is hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. The citys tax base has dropped from $20 billion to $6.5 billion in recent years amid a downturn in the citys casino market.
ATLANTIC CITY  Atlantic City police and fire officials denounced a state plan to cut public safety staffing and salaries at a news conference on Friday.

Among the speakers was police officer Josh Vadell, who was shot in the head in the line of duty in September.

Vadell is still recovering from the shooting. Under cuts imposed by the state Wednesday, injured officers would receive 30 percent less in workers compensation.

"It bothered me that this was going on, not only to me but to the other employees of the city," Vadell said. "It's my time to support the city that support my family and I."

Hes certainly not happy about how this is playing out, Matthew Rogers, president of Police Benevolent Association Local 24, said of Vadell on Thursday. If something like what happened to him happened to someone else, they would be in this predicament where they would be taking severe cuts just for doing their jobs.

Asked about Vadell, a state official said he wont be affected by the cuts in recognition of his commitment to protecting and serving the Atlantic City community.

Sen. (Jeffrey) Chiesa has determined that none of the changes the state is making to the Atlantic City Police Department will affect Officer Vadell, state spokeswoman Lisa Ryan said.

On Twitter, PBA Local 24 criticized the states statement.

Oh ok so each officer that gets shot going forward will we just have to sue to get this same determination. Thanks, the tweet said.

Rogers said the cut to workers compensation was a big issue in the negotiations.

At one point that came out of their offer, Rogers said. As they continuously gave us a proposal back, it found its way back in and when we questioned it, it all kind of fell apart.

Union representatives and Mayor Don Guardian also will speak at the news conference to kick off the campaign, which will include billboards, direct mail, online advertising and other activities. After the news conference, public safety workers will hand out fliers on the Boardwalk.

State officials overseeing a takeover of the citys finances want to lay off 100 firefighters and 24 police officers to cut costs in the cash-strapped city. In addition, the state seeks to slash salaries, increase hours and eliminate some benefits.

The cuts to police would save the city $20 million, while the reductions at the fire department would save $14 million, according to the state.

The citys police and firefighters unions have sued the state to block the cuts. A Superior Court judge still hasnt issued a ruling on whether cuts can proceed while a larger legal case against the state takeover of the city advances.
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.

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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.





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View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

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Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




LONDON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

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- Europe Automotive Engine Oil Market Forecasts 2017-2027 in volume (KT) and market value ($m) terms

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- Synthetic

- Mineral

 Engine Type submarket forecasts from 2017-2027 in volume (KT) and market value ($m) terms covering

- Gasoline

- Diesel

- Natural Gas

 Vehicle Type submarket forecasts from 2017-2027 in volume (KT) and market value ($m) terms covering

- Passenger Car

- Commercial Vehicle

- Motorcycle

 Porter's Five Force Analysis of the key factors driving growth in the automotive engine oil market

 Profiles of the leading 10 automotive engine oil companies

- TOTAL SA

- Royal Dutch Shell PLC

- Exxon Mobil Corporation

- BP

- FUCHS Lubricants

- Chevron Lubricants

- China Petroleum and Chemicals Corporation (Sinopec Corporation)

- Lukoil Lubricants

- Citgo Petroleum Corporation

- Amsoil Inc.

Who should read this report?

 Anyone within the automotive industry

 Automotive OEMs

 Automotive engine oil & lubricant manufacturers

 Engine manufacturers

 Component suppliers

 Oil companies

 Oil refineries

 Industry regulators

 Industry analysts

 Business development managers

 Marketing managers

 Technologists

 Suppliers

 Investors

 Banks

 Government agencies

 Contractors

Visiongain's study is intended for anyone requiring commercial analyses for the automotive engine oil market and leading companies. You find data, trends and predictions.

Buy our report today Automotive Engine Oil Market Report 2017-2027: Forecasts By Base Oil Type (Synthetic, Mineral), By Engine Type (Gasoline, Diesel, Natural Gas), By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Commercial Vehicle, Motorcycle) & By Region Plus Analysis of Leading Companies. Avoid missing out by staying informed - get our report now.

To request a report overview of this report please email Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com or call Tel: +44-(0)-20-7336-6100

Or click on https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1819/Automotive-Engine-Oil-Market-Report-2017-2027

List of Companies

AMSOIL Inc

Amsoil Inc

BMW

BP

Castrol

Cespa Lubricants

Chevron

Chevron Brasil Lubrificantes

Chevron Corporation

Chevron Lubricants

China Petroleum and Chemicals Corporation (Sinopec Corporation)

Citgo Petroleum Corporation

Cummins

Elf

ENEOS

Exxon Mobil

Ferrari

Ford

FUCHS Lubricants

Fuchs Petrolub

Gulf Factory

Halfords Group Plc

Holly Frontier

Honda

InfoTEK

JX Nippon Oil & Energy

LUKOIL

LUKOIL Lubricants Company

Mercedes Benz

Mobil

Pepco

PetroChoice,

Petronas Lubricants International

Pioneer Fuels

Porsche

Repsol

Royal Dutch Shell Plc

Shell

Shell Canada Ltd

Sinopec Lubricant Company

Starfire Premium Products,

Suncor Energy

Total SA

Toyota

Universal Lubricants

Utrapar

Vistony

Yuchai Lube Company

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
PEORIA, Illinois, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT; Euronext: CATR) informs its stockholders that today, in accordance with Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, one Form 4 (the report on Form 4 being a statement of beneficial ownership of its officers, directors and 10% owners) was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").

Caterpillar files electronically with the SEC required reports on Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, Form 10-K and Form 11-K; proxy materials; ownership reports for insiders as required by Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and registration statements on Forms S-3 and S-8, as necessary; and other forms or reports, as required. All of the forms and reports filed electronically with the SEC are available on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov ).

Caterpillar also maintains an Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com) and copies of its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to these reports filed or furnished with the SEC are available free of charge through Caterpillar's Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com/secfilings ) as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant document has been filed with the SEC.

CONTACT: Rachel Potts, Corporate Public Affairs, +1-309-675-6892

This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.

SOURCE Caterpillar Inc.
HELSINKI, Finland, Mar 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Solteq Plc Stock Exchange Bulletin 17.3.2017 at 3.15 pm

The Annual General Meeting of Solteq Plc was held in Vantaa today. The Annual General Meeting and the Board meeting, held after the Annual General Meeting made the following decisions:

DECISIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION

Solteq's Annual General Meeting approved the financial statement for period 1.1.-31.12.2016 and discharged the CEO and the Board of Directors from liability.

The Board of Directors' proposal of to the General Meeting that a dividend of EUR 0.05 per share be paid from the financial year ended on 31.12.2016 was accepted. The dividend will be paid to shareholders who on the record date of 21.3.2017 are registered as shareholders in the Company's shareholders' register held by Euroclear Finland Oy. The dividend is paid on 28.3.2017.

The Annual General Meeting decided that The Board of Directors includes five (5) members. A monthly remuneration of 3.000 euros to the Chairman of the Board and 1.500 euros to the Board members and remuneration of 500 euros per meeting will be paid to the Chairman of the Board and to each Board Member.

Aarne Aktan, Eeva Grannenfelt, Kirsi Harra-Vauhkonen, Markku Pietila and Mika Uotila were re-elected as Board members.

Authorised public accountants KPMG Oy Ab was re-elected as auditor of the company.

DECISIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPOSALS OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Annual General Meeting authorized the Board of Directors to decide on share issue, carried out with or without payment and on issuing share options, and other special rights referred to in Chapter 10, Section1 of the Finnish Companies Act as follows:

The maximum total amount of shares or other rights is 5.000.000. The authorization includes the right to give new shares or convey company's own shares. The authorization includes a right to deviate from the shareholders' pre-emptive right of subscription if there is a significant reason in company's opinion, e.g. to improve the capital structure, to finance and execute business acquisitions and other business improvement arrangements or to be used as a part of remuneration of personnel. The authorization includes that the board of directors may decide the terms and other matters concerning the share issue. The authorization is effective until the next Annual General Meeting, however, no longer than until April 30, 2018.

DECISIONS OF THE BOARD MEETING HELD AFTER THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

In the Board meeting, held after the Annual General Meeting, Markku Pietila was elected as the Chairman of the Board.

In addition the Board of Directors decided to appoint the Audit Committee. The members of the Audit Committee are Aarne Aktan, Markku Pietila and Mika Uotila. Mika Uotila acts as the Chairman of the Audit Committee.

SOLTEQ PLC

CONTACT:

For further information please contact:

Markku Pietila, Chairman of the Board of Directors

Tel +358 500 4551 56

E-mail: markku.pietila@profiz.com

Antti Karkkainen, CFO

Tel +358 40 8444 393

e-mail: antti.karkkainen@solteq.com

Distribution:

NASDAQ OMX Helsinki

Key media

www.solteq.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

The following files are available for download:

http://mb.cision.com/Public/10667/2217752/970a9446ef4706c5_org.jpg Solteq cards1600x900

SOURCE Solteq
WEST DRAYTON, England, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

On World Sleep Day, sleep experts encourage people to understand the value of healthy and solid sleep. Interrupted sleep is associated with significant health problems, both physical and psychological, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, depression and anxiety.[i],[ii],[iii],[iv],[v],[vi]

On World Sleep Day, experts say that waking to go to the toilet (nocturia) at night is the leading cause of a broken night's sleep. Learn more about nocturia via the 'A to Zz of sleep and nocturia' (PRNewsFoto/Ferring Pharmaceuticals)

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479500/World_Sleep_Day_Infographic.jpg )

The most common cause of sleep disturbance is nocturia - the need to go to the toilet more than once in the night.[vii] It is a condition that affects 8.63 million people in the UK and isn't isolated to a particular demographic.[viii] One in three adults over the age of 30, and two thirds of adults over the age of 65 experience nocturia.[ix]

Dr Neil Stanley, a UK-based independent Sleep Expert says: "Good, undisturbed, sleep is vital for good physical, mental and emotional health and so conditions disturbing sleep, such as nocturia, need to be managed pro-actively."

The broken night's sleep caused by trips to the bathroom can have huge consequences for sufferers. Productivity, relationships and career success can be impacted.[i] Lack of sleep can also affect mental functioning, making it much harder to concentrate, remember things and pick up new skills or facts.[i] Nocturia has also been shown to result in an increase in morbidity and mortality, with studies showing that waking up two or more times a night to urinate increases a person's risk of mortality by up to 22%.[x]

The chronic loss of sleep due to nocturia places a significant burden on the UK economy - the estimated annual societal cost due to loss of productivity is 4.32 billion.[viii] Nocturia also has a major impact on the UK healthcare system, with approximately 10 million patient visits, 63,000 hospital admissions and 130,000 fractures happening yearly due to the condition.[xi] The annual healthcare cost of managing nocturia and its consequences is 1.35 billion.[xi]

There are several reasons why people are affected by nocturia, with a major cause being nocturnal polyuria - an overproduction of urine at night - contributing in up to 76-88% of cases.[xii],[ xiii],[ xiv] It can also be caused by external factors such as excess fluids before bedtime, medications, alcohol, caffeine, or diuretic medications; in rare cases it could also be a symptom of something more serious such as diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease.[xii] If you are experiencing lack of sleep due to the need to urinate do speak to your doctor.

Mr Dudley Robinson, Consultant Urogynaecologist, Kings College Hospital agrees. "Nocturia, waking one or more times at night, is a common symptom which is often under recognised, poorly diagnosed and inappropriately managed. As well as having an important impact on quality of life it leads to daytime sleepiness and reduced productivity. Whilst the causes of nocturia may be multifactorial we know have an efficacious and safe therapy for those patients with nocturnal polyuria which is the cause of nocturia in over 75% of cases."

About Ferring Pharmaceuticals

Headquartered in Switzerland, Ferring Pharmaceuticals is a research-driven, specialty biopharmaceutical group active in global markets. The company identifies, develops and markets innovative products in the areas of reproductive health, urology, gastroenterology, endocrinology and orthopaedics. Ferring has its own operating subsidiaries in nearly 60 countries and markets its products in 110 countries. To learn more about Ferring or its products please visit http://www.ferring.com.

About Nocturia

Nocturia is a complex condition characterised by the regular need to awaken once or more during a night to urinate (or void the bladder).[xv] Although there are several reasons why people may be affected by nocturia, the night-time overproduction of urine - known as nocturnal polyuria - is a major contributor.[xiii],[ xiv]

About World Sleep Day

World Sleep Day is an annual event intended to be a celebration of sleep and a call to action on important issues related to sleep. It is organised by the World Sleep Day Committee of the World Sleep Society (founded by World Association of Sleep Medicine and the World Sleep Federation) and will take place on Friday 17th March 2017.[xvi]

References

[i] Orzel-Gryglewska, J. Consequences of Sleep Deprivation. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health 2010; 23(1): 95-114. doi:10.2478/v10001-010-0004-9.

[ii] Taheri S, Lin L, Austin D et al. Short sleep duration is associated with elevated ghrelin, reduced leptin and increased body mass index. PLoS Med 2004; 1(3): e62.

[iii] Gottlieb DJ, Punjabi NM, Newman AB et al. Association of sleep time with diabetes mellitus and impaired glucose tolerance. Arch Intern Med 2005; 165(8): 863-7.

[iv] Meier-Ewert HK et al. Effect of Sleep Loss on C-Reactive Protein, an Inflammatory Marker of Cardiovascular Risk. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2004; 43(4). doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2003.07.050

[v] Neckelmann D, Mykletun A, Dahl, AA. Chronic Insomnia as a Risk Factor for Developing Anxiety and Depression. Sleep 2007, 30(7): 873-880.

[vi] Petrovsky N et al. Sleep Deprivation Disrupts Prepulse Inhibition and Induces Psychosis-Like Symptoms in Healthy Humans. The Journal of Neuroscience 2014; July, 34(27)-913409140.

[vii] Benefield LE. Facilitating Aging in Place: Safe, Sound, and Secure, An Issue of Nursing Clinics. 2014

[viii] Weidlich D et al. Eur J Health Econ 2016. Doi: 10.1007/s10198-016-0826

[ix] Bosch JL, Weiss JP. The prevalence and causes of nocturia. J Urol 2010 Aug; 184(2): 440-6. doi:10.1016/j.juro.2010.04.011.

[x] Fan Y et al. Int J Cardiology 2015; 195:120-122.

[xi] Weidlich D et al. Value in Health 2016; 19: A130

[xii] National Association for Continence website, Nocturia page. [Last Accessed March 2017] Available from: http://www.nafc.org/nocturia/

[xiii] Weiss JP et al. J Urol 2011;186:1358-13636.

[xiv] Weiss JP et al. BJU Int 2013;111:700-716.

[xv] Van Kerrebroeck P et al. Neurourol Urodyn 2002;21:179-183.

[xvi] World Sleep Day website. Homepage. [Last accessed March 2017] Available at: http://www.worldsleepday.org

NOQ/798/2017/UKa March 2017

SOURCE Ferring Pharmaceuticals
FRANKFURT, Germany, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Record financial result achieved due to Manila compensation payment - Airports in Fraport's international portfolio report mixed results

FRA/gk-rap - Fraport AG looks back on a successful 2016 business year (ending December 31), which was marked by a record financial result achieved despite challenging framework conditions for the aviation industry and slightly declining traffic at the Group's Frankfurt Airport home base.

Group revenue declined by 0.5 percent year-on-year to 2.59 billion. Adjusting for changes in the scope of consolidation due to the sale of shares in Fraport Cargo Services (FCS) and the disposal of the Air-Transport IT Services subsidiary, Group revenue would have risen by 46.2 million or 1.8 percent. This resulting increase in revenue (on an adjusted basis) was stimulated in particular by the ongoing growth at the Group's airports in Lima (Peru) and Varna and Burgas (Bulgaria), as well as at the Fraport USA subsidiary, and by revenue gained from property sales.

The Group's operating profit or EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) advanced by 24.2 percent, reaching a new record high of 1.05 billion. This strong growth was supported by the compensation payment received for the Manila terminal project, which boosted EBITDA by 198.8 million. Fraport's successful sale of a 10.5 percent share in Thalita Trading Ltd., the owner of the operating company of Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg (Russia), contributed another 40.1 million to EBITDA. Adjusting for these effects and the creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program, the Group's EBITDA would have remained on the previous year's level of about 853 million. Although this adjusted EBITDA was curbed by previous year's weaker traffic performance and a slowdown in FRA's retail business, reflecting lower spending by passengers, the Group's external business also had a compensating positive effect on EBITDA.

The Group result (net profit) increased by 34.8 percent to 400.3 million. Without the aforementioned effects and unscheduled depreciation and amortization, Fraport's Group result would only have reached about 296 million. In contrast, operating cash flow declined by 10.6 percent to 583.2 million. Likewise, free cash flow contracted by 23.3 percent to 301.7 million, also due to ongoing construction of Frankfurt Airport's future Terminal 3.

Traffic at the company's Frankfurt Airport (FRA) home-base slightly declined by 0.4 percent to approximately 61 million passengers in 2016. This was, in particular, a result of the relatively weak spring and summer months characterized by markedly restrained travel bookings in the wake of geopolitical uncertainties. In the last quarter of 2016, traffic figures noticeably rebounded, even reaching a new December monthly record. Cargo tonnage expanded by 1.8 percent to some 2.1 million metric tons, helped by the economic recovery in summer 2016.

Fraport's international portfolio of airports displayed mixed results in 2016. The strong 30.9 percent decline in traffic at Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey - which was impacted by the country's geopolitical and security situation - could be largely offset by the traffic performance of Group airports at other locations. Strong growth was recorded in particular at Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru (up 10.1 percent), Burgas Airport (BOJ) and Varna Airport (VAR) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast (up 22.0 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively), and Xi'an Airport (XIY) in China (up 12.2 percent).

On the basis of the Group's positive financial performance, a dividend of 1.50 per share will be recommended to the 2017 Annual General Meeting. This corresponds to an increase of 0.15 or 11.1 percent per share and to a payout ratio of 36.9 percent of the Group result attributable to shareholders.

Commenting on Fraport AG's business performance in 2016, executive board chairman Dr. Stefan Schulte stated: "Despite the challenges of the 2016 business year, we have achieved our best annual result ever. The sale of the 10.5 percent share in our Pulkovo Airport subsidiary in St. Petersburg has demonstrated that we are able to develop international airport concessions even amid difficult market environments. We will therefore continue to consistently pursue our strategy of operating a broadly diversified international portfolio."

For the 2017 business year, Fraport expects traffic at Frankfurt Airport to grow by 2 to 4 percent. Revenue is anticipated to see a noticeable increase up to approximately 2.9 billion, backed by positive traffic growth both at Frankfurt Airport and Fraport's international Group airports. Also the expected consolidation of the Group's activities in Greece will contribute to a marked rise in revenue. The Group's operating profit (or EBITDA) is forecast to reach a level of between approximately 980 million and 1,020 million, while EBIT is expected to be between approximately 610 million and 650 million. The Group result is anticipated to reach between 310 million and 350 million.

Regarding the Group's business outlook for 2017, CEO Schulte said: "We are optimistic about the current business year and expect Frankfurt Airport's traffic to grow both in the low-cost segment and the traditional hub traffic. At the same time, we will continue to strategically develop our international business. By taking over the operation of the 14 Greek airports, we will unleash further growth potential."

In view of the expected long-term traffic growth at Frankfurt Airport, construction of the new Terminal 3 is being pushed forward as scheduled, with the first construction phase expected to be completed by 2023. The focus of Fraport's international business is currently on the take-over of operations at the 14 Greek airports, which is expected to take place in the next few weeks.

Overview of Fraport's four business segments:

Aviation:

Revenue in the Aviation business segment declined by 1.8 percent to 910.2 million in business year 2016. This was largely due to the slight drop in passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport, the loss of the tender to perform security services in Concourse B, and lower revenue from the re-allocation of infrastructure costs. The creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program, higher wages in business year 2016 due to collective agreements, as well as higher non-staff costs let the segment's EBITDA decline by 8.3 percent to 217.9 million. Depreciation and amortization increased significantly year-on-year, particularly due to the full unscheduled depreciation and amortization of the goodwill in the FraSec GmbH subsidiary in the amount of 22.4 million, as a result of the company's lower long-term earnings forecast compared to previous years. Correspondingly, the segment's EBIT significantly dropped by 39.5 percent to 70.4 million.

Retail & Real Estate:

Revenue in the Retail & Real Estate segment edged up 1.2 percent to 493.9 million in business year 2016, despite the slowdown in the retail sub-segment. Revenue performance was positively affected by sales of land and the changed presentation of rental income due to changes in the scope of consolidation related to sale of shares in the Frankfurt Cargo Services (FCS) subsidiary. Net retail revenue per passenger was at 3.49 (2015: 3.62). The decline was attributable to a lower average spend by passengers from China, Russia and Japan, as well as the impact from the depreciation of various currencies against the euro. With 368 million, the segment's EBITDA was down 2.9 percent on the previous year, largely as a result of higher personnel expenses. These were attributable, in particular, to higher demand for manpower, rising wages set by collective agreements, and the creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program. With depreciation and amortization almost flat, the segment's EBIT reached 283.6 million (down 3.9 percent).

Ground Handling:

In the 2016 business year, revenue in the Ground Handling business segment markedly decreased by 6.3 percent to 630.4 million compared to the previous year. This was due, in particular, to the sale of shares in the Fraport Cargo Services (FCS) subsidiary and slightly declining passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport. Adjusted for the effects from the sale of shares in FCS, segment revenue saw underlying growth of 1.8 percent. Reasons for this adjusted increase included a change in the presentation of personnel expenses as a result of changes in the scope of consolidation related to the sale of shares in the FCS subsidiary, as well as slightly higher revenue from infrastructure charges. The creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program and rising wages due to collective agreements led to a 25.2 percent decline in the segment's EBITDA to 34.7 million. Contracting by 11.5 million to minus 5.5 million, the segment's EBIT reached negative territory due to the provisions for the personnel-restructuring program.

External Activities & Services:

Revenue in the External Activities & Services business segment increased by 8.1 percent to 551.7 million in business year 2016, supported in particular by the Group companies in Lima, Peru (up 27.8 million), Twin Star, Bulgaria (up 9.9 million) and Fraport USA Inc. (up 3.2 million). In addition, the compensation payment from the Manila terminal project and revenue gained from the sale of shares in Thalita Trading Ltd. had a markedly positive impact on the segment's revenue. Due to these effects, also the segment's EBITDA more than doubled, reaching 433.5 million (2015: 186.1 million). The segment's EBIT showed similar growth, rising by 242.1 million to 345.2 million.

For further information about Fraport AG please click here: http://ots.de/aboutFraport



Fraport AG

Mike Peter Schweitzer

Corporate Communications

Press Office

60547 Frankfurt, Germany



Telephone: +49-69-690-70555

E-mail: m.schweitzer@fraport.de

Internet: www.fraport.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/FrankfurtAirport

SOURCE Fraport AG
PORTLAND, Oregon and PUNE, India, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

ENT & bronchoscopy devices market was valued at $14,476 million in 2015, and is projected to reach $24,999 million by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2016 to 2022, According to a new report published by Allied Market Research. The hearing care devices segment accounted for more than two-fifths of the total market in 2015.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140911/647229 )

Smelling disorders, hearing disorders as well as problems associated with speaking or snoring are rectified by ENT devices. The complete airway of a patient including lungs and alveoli is examined via bronchoscopy. Both ENT & bronchoscopy devices assist otolaryngologists for the treatment of patients suffering from disorders of ear, nose, throat, and related structures of the head & neck.

Get access to detailed report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/ent-and-bronchoscopy-market

The market is driven by high incidence of hearing and nasal disorders, new technological advancements in ENT & bronchoscopy devices, growth in geriatric population, and increase in patient preference for minimally invasive procedures. However, this growth is limited by high cost of these devices (especially in developing nations) and lack of skilled professionals. The demand for cosmetic ENT procedures and emerging markets in Asia-Pacific and LAMEA are expected to provide several opportunities for key players.

Hearing care devices is expected to maintain its dominant position throughout the analysis period, due to increase in incidence of hearing disorders and technological innovations in hearing devices, such as development of miniature hearing aids, anti-inflammatory drug-releasing cochlear implants, and auditory brainstem implants.

Surgical ENT & bronchoscopy devices segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 12.5% in the future, owing to increased demand for radiofrequency devices, balloon sinus dilation devices, and ENT lasers.

According to Hemali Narkhede, Manager, Healthcare Research at Allied Market Research, "There have been revolutionary advancements in ENT & bronchoscopy devices, such as development of smaller hearing aids that are not visible from outside. This has increased the adoption of hearing aids among patients as well as healthcare providers." she further added.

Key findings of ENT & bronchoscopy devices market:

Based on product type, hearing care devices segment accounted for more than two-fifths of the total market in 2015.

Flexible endoscopes accounted for nearly two-fifths of the ENT endoscopes market in 2015.

Balloon sinus dilation devices segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 16.5%, as the device provides a minimally invasive approach for the treatment of distorted/blocked sinus pathway.

Hospitals & clinics accounted for nearly half of the total market share in 2015.

Asia-Pacific is expected grow at a high CAGR of 9%, owing to the presence of ample growth opportunities in terms of unmet medical needs for the treatment of ENT disorders.

North America accounted for majority of the share (nearly one-third) in the market in 2015, and is expected to remain dominant throughout the forecast period. This is attributed to the increase in incidence of nasal and hearing disorders along with the rise in geriatric population, increased patient awareness about the availability of treatment options, and favorable reimbursement framework for ENT procedures. In addition, the high adoption rate of technologically advanced devices and presence of highly sophisticated healthcare infrastructure are anticipated to provide new growth opportunities for the key players in this market.

The major companies profiled in the report include Karl Storz Gmbh & Co. Kg, Medtronic PLC, Smith & Nephew PLC, Olympus Corporation, Johnson & Johnson (Acclarent, Inc.), Cochlear Limited, Hoya Corporation (Pentax medical), Sonova Holding AG, William Demant Holding A/S, Entellus Medical, Inc., MED-EL, Sivantos Pte. Ltd. and GN Store Nord A/S.

Read more about this research into the Medical Devices market: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/life-sciences/medical-devices-market-report

About Us:

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

Contact:

Rahul Thakur

5933 NE Win Sivers Drive

#205, Portland, OR 97220

United States

Direct: +1-503-894-6022

Toll Free: +1 (800) 792-5285 (U.S. & Canada)

Fax: +1-(855)-550-5975

E-mail: sales@alliedmarketresearch.com



Website: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com

SOURCE Allied Market Research
Women Advancing Africa Forum to convene pre-eminent women in business, government, the private sector, philanthropists, academia, civil society, thought leaders and influencers from the continent, as well as global shapers and leaders August 10-12 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Graca Machel Trust (GMT) announced today the launch a Pan-African initiative to 'Multiply the Faces and Amplify the Voices' of African women as a force for economic and social transformation.

The Women Advancing Africa (WAA) initiative seeks to 'Multiply the Faces and Amplify the Voices' of African women to drive inclusive, sustainable growth across the continent. The Trust will challenge African leaders, government participants and private sector partners to design innovative solutions and commit to specific "Calls for Action" that will increase women's economic power and elevate the role of women in African development.

On what makes the Women Advancing Africa Forum different, Mrs. Graca Machel says, "To our knowledge there are not many places or platforms where extraordinary examples of successes by African women is showcased. Through this forum, we want women to come together to strategise, share and learn from each other on how to grow and develop to the next level in their economic and social journey."

The inaugural Forum will take place from 10-12 August in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and will convene more than 250 women leaders, rising stars and global champions to explore the critical role women play in shaping Africa's future. Under the overarching theme of 'Driving Social and Economic Transformation', the Forum will focus on three core pillars: promoting financial inclusion, increasing market access and driving social change. The Trust believes that the selection of these three thematic areas provides a common agenda for women in the economy, as they are cut across all sectors of the economy and speak to all women at different levels of the economy.

"Driving Social and Economic Transformation means that we need to look holistically at womens' roles and perceived value. Transformation is not only about numbers, although the numbers of women represented on Boards, as CEOs, or Department Heads is important, we need a transformative agenda which challenges the conceptualization, social norms, outlook and value given to women and their contribution to the economy and society," adds Machel.

African women are a powerful economic force but continue to face significant barriers across the continent. Today, seventy percent of African women are financially excluded and many lack access to critical markets, resources and services needed to succeed. In a report released on International Women's Day, the Trust found that more than 50 percent of female entrepreneurs in East Africa cite access to finance and markets as major challenges in growing their businesses.

Initial support for the WAA initiative is generously provided by The Intel Foundation and The UPS Foundation. Media partners include: the ABN360 Group, incorporating CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa; the Nation Group and locally based Azam Media Group. These partners share the Trust's belief that advancing women economically is crucial to the health and prosperity of African families, communities and nations.

The Trust is seeking additional partners to assist in the execution of WAA.

The Trust has also selected APCO Worldwide, the largest women-owned communications firm in the world, to be the convening partner for the Women Advancing Africa initiative. With deep roots in Africa and a long history of planning and executing high-profile events around the world, APCO is working closely with the Graca Machel Trust to bring this important, first-of-its-kind initiative to life.

For more information about the Women Advancing Africa Initiative and the Graca Machel Trust, please visit http://womenadvancingafricaforum.com and http://gracamacheltrust/new.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGracaMachelTrust

Twitter: @G_MachelTrust

Email: waa@gracamacheltrust.org

ABOUT:

The Graca Machel Trust is an organisation that works across the continent to drive positive change across women's and children's rights, as well as governance and leadership. Through our support of local initiatives and connecting key stakeholders at a regional, national and sub-national level, we help to catalyse action where it is needed. By using our convening power the Trust seeks to: amplify the voices of women and children in Africa; influence governance; promote women's contributions and leadership in the economic social and political development of Africa.

ABOUT:

APCO Worldwide

Founded in 1984, APCO Worldwide is an independent global communication, stakeholder engagement and business strategy firm with offices in more than 30 major cities throughout the world. We challenge conventional thinking and inspire movements to help our clients succeed in an ever-changing world. Stakeholders are at the core of all we do. We turn the insights that come from our deep stakeholder relationships into forward-looking, creative solutions that always push the boundaries. APCO clients include large multinational companies, trade associations, governments, NGOs and educational institutions. The firm is a majority women-owned business. For more information, please visit www.apcoworldwide.com.

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SOURCE Graca Machel Trust
Users can just post their needs across relevant categories and let its human centric approach based engine automatically match them with the right users. Whatever, whenever, wherever they need it.

Your human needs could be a travel agent in Hawaii, an adventure trip to Mount Everest, search for a travel partner, business needs of a company in Silicon Valley, a buyer in your location, a recruiter hiring for your skill sets, a marketer running offers for your kind of audience or a scuba diver in Bangkok. Incredible users across global locations are now at your fingertips.

Everyone on Socialyk has a detailed profile with samples of their work. You can see their interests, skill sets, preferences and the full range of their expertise. Reviews help you choose the right company for your next job. On Socialyk, you can add your existing team; let people know about your services and products or build an entire team through our job post feature from the ground up. Socialyk's human focused approach brings information and opportunities for your needs to your disposal. Socialyk also handles the marketing researches, business intelligence and surveys for companies and individuals and helps you with informed decision making through real-time business data.

So whether you are a recruiter, job seeker, freelancer, company owner, brand or a media conglomerate; Socialyk helps you focus on doing what you love most; doing amazing things. Availing opportunities brought to you by Socialyk; real-time, every time.

Contact: engage@intelliber.com

Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL3GSQdSeaw

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479512/Socialyk_Logo.jpg

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479506/Intelliber_Logo.jpg

Photo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479480/Socialyk.jpg

Related Links

http://www.intelliber.com



SOURCE Intelliber Technologies Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Being a small business has always been considered as one of the banes of being an enterprise. SMB's have their own kinds of challenges and their success majorly depends upon the support received from the ecosystem or the visionary strengths of its management team.

According to Entrepreneur 360 Intelliber Technologies has been recognized as one among top 360 companies and it is now considered as one of the Best Privately-Owned Businesses in America. Entrepreneur 360 releases its lists through a magazine named as Entrepreneur magazine. This magazine includes a list of highly anticipated companies which is also known as Entrepreneur 360 list of companies which comprises of Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America.

In this Second Annual Entrepreneur 360 List, which was issued on 25th October 2016 comprises of 360 companies in which America's Best Privately-Owned Companies are showcased. According to this list Intelliber Technologies (Previously Intelliber) has been ranked 332nd Best company in America in the 2nd annual list of Entrepreneur 360 Companies. This list is based upon comprehensive study where independently-owned companies are ranked using exclusive algorithm and advanced analytics. This algorithm is fabricated on a scorecard which is measured on the basis of four metrics innovation, growth, leadership and impact which reflects a true entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur 360 looks for crazy business ideas and identifies 360 small business companies in America every year and.

About Intelliber Technologies

Intelliber Technologies is an innovation, customer focused and primarily a product startup and has some of the best products industry has ever seen, named Socialyk, Employrr, Convask apart from other subsidiaries in its portfolio like ITMRD, Contentuals and Network Story. Intelliber Technologies is also known for providing industry leadership in areas like BPM, Cloud Computing, Mobile Apps designing, Cyber Security, Ecommerce and Software Automation Testing and functionality focused business platform via its IT Solutions concern ITMRD. Intelliber Technologies is a fully bootstrapped enterprise running under the tactful leadership of our Founder & CEO; Mr Jyoti Ranjan who is an IIMC dropout.

Intelliber Technologies rank can be viewed in this exclusive list of Entrepreneur 360: http://features.entrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-360/ranking

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479506/Intelliber_Logo.jpg

Related Links

http://www.intelliber.com



SOURCE Intelliber Technologies Inc.
In April 2016, after successfully obtaining the five-year European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) re-accreditation, Tongji SEM consecutively won the five-year AACSB accreditation and AMBA re-accreditation, becoming one of the only four business schools in Mainland China holding the three most prestigious global accreditations.

Gaining of accreditations has qualified the School for authoritative international rankings. For example, the British Financial Times requests participants to have either EQUIS or AACSB accreditation for ranking. In 2014, the year Tongji SEM gained EQUIS accreditation, SEM took part in the Master in Management global ranking of Financial Times, and ranked 65th, as one of two business schools from greater China on the list.

In 2015, taking accreditation as an opportunity, the teaching and research quality of the school continuously improved, at the meantime, the employment and salary levels of our graduates substantially increased, and the amount of international publications increased by 20% year on year. SEM was ranked 52nd worldwide. In 2016, with persistent efforts, the Master in Management program of the school edged into world's Top 50 by the Financial Times ranking.

The European Quality Improvement System (referred to as EQUIS), is one of the world's top two authoritative and influential accreditations for business schools. 2017 witnessed the 20th anniversary of EQUIS, which pays special attention to the continuous improvement of the teaching and research quality and the internationalization and corporate connections of business schools. So far, there are only 167 schools and universities from 41 countries around the world having obtained EQUIS accreditation, accounting for only 1% of the world's 15,000 schools.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479209/Tongji_SEM.jpg

SOURCE Tongji University SEM
NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

A Latest Research Report Published by Persistence Market Research Predicts That on the Grounds of Abovementioned Drivers, the Global Market for Power Quality Equipment Will Have Reached US$ 68,757.2 Mn by the End of 2026

The Proliferation of digitization trends in the global telecommunications industry will keep fueling the sales of power quality equipment. Over the past decade, losses and transients associated with power transmission have increased. In the years to come, adopting power quality equipment to retain efficacy of power distribution systems will be considered as a necessary measure. Furthermore, the world will eventually consume a lot more power than it does today, thereby necessitating the employment of power quality equipment. At present, Persistence Market Research has estimated the value of global power quality equipment market at US$ 44,162.3 Mn.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438683logo )



In the report, titled "Global Market Study on Power Quality Equipment: Automotive & Industrial End User Industry Segment Anticipated to Witness Robust Growth Through 2026 (http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/power-quality-equipment-market.asp)," the global market for power quality equipment is anticipated to surpass US$ 50 Bn in revenues between 2017 and 2020. The report also projects lucrative growth across the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region. The APEJ power quality equipment market will not only account for 30% share in global revenues, but through 2026, the region will also register a resolute 6.3% CAGR. On the other hand, regions such as North America, Western Europe, Japan and Latin America will incur a downtick in their presence in global power quality equipment market.

A sample of this report is available upon request @ http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/14662

Leading manufacturers of power quality equipment in the world are also profiled in the report. These include manufacturing behemoths such as ABB Ltd., Eaton Corporation PLC, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Schneider Electric SE, and Toshiba International Corporation. Other companies prominent for manufacturing power quality equipment include, National Instruments Corporation, Celestica Inc., EMOC Limited, Delta Electronics, Inc., AMETEK Inc., Hubbell Incorporated, Fluke Corporation, Cordyne Inc., Advanced Protection Technologies, Inc., LEA International, Unipower Cyber Power Systems, Inc. and Kyoritsu Electrical Instruments Works, Ltd.

During the forecast period, the global market for power quality equipment will be majorly dominated by sales of power conditioning products. The demand for power quality testing & measurement equipment will also gain traction but at a marginal amount of less than 4% share on global market value. In 2017, global sales of harmonic filters are projected to bring in US$ 2,341 Mn, while the report also projects surplus sales of motor generator sets. The report also identifies telecommunications as the largest end-user industry for power quality equipment. The global telecommunications industry is expected to account for more than US$ 25 Bn value of the global power quality equipment market by the end of 2026.

Request to Download Report Table of Contents, Figures, and Tables@ http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/power-quality-equipment-market/toc

Persistence Market Research Overview

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

Persistence Market Research

U.S. Sales Office:

305 Broadway, 7th Floor

New York City, NY 10007

United States

USA - Canada Toll-Free: 800-961-0353

Web: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com

Email: sales@persitencemarketreserach.com



SOURCE Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.
JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CPhI South East Asia returns to the Jakarta International Expo in Indonesia for its fifth edition during 22nd-24th March 2017 as the regional pharma companies expect robust growth. Sign up today!

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A press conference was held on March 16th and saw the participation of Mr. Wiwy Sasongko -- General Manager Quintiles IMS Indonesia, Mr. Kendrariadi Suhanda -- Chairman of the Pharma Materials Management Club (PMMC) and Deputy secretary general at Indonesian Pharmaceutical Association (GP Farmasi), Mr. Teddy Iman Soewahjo -- Executive Director and Head of Packed Ingredients Division of PMMC, Mr. Vincent Harijanto -- Head of GP Farmasi's Research and Development of Raw Ingredients Trade and Industry and Vice Chairman of PMMC and Mr. Ivan Ferrari -- General Manager, PT UBM Pameran Niaga Indonesia.

Several key topics, relevant to the region, were discussed. In fact, the slowing pace of global markets and the increasing threat of a new protectionist wave is transforming the outlook of South East Asian manufacturers which are now shifting their focus more on the actual prospects of regional exports. Mirroring this trend, international investors and companies are now pushing for more business in this regional market, across the entire ASEAN economy.

Comprising of 40% of the SEA economic output, Indonesia is the largest pharma market in the South East Asia Pacific region (SEA/AP). The country has the biggest and fastest growing economy in the SEA region and a pharma economy consisting of over 200 pharmaceutical companies. There are already 25-30 generic domestic companies with access to the international market, and equally, there are approximately 35 multinational companies established in the area.

These favourable macro trends are reflected at CPhI South East Asia where domestic manufacturers in particular are increasingly attending the event, with a view to opening up sales in international markets. As the biggest pharma event in the ASEAN region, CPhI South East Asia will gather over 5,500 attendees from 41 countries and more than 260 exhibitors (click here for the full list) to network, learn and do business for three days. Co-locating this year with Health Ingredients South East Asia, the event welcomes the best pharma ingredients professionals, packaging experts, machinery providers and contract manufacturing as well as nutraceutical companies from across the region.

The event's conference programme is a dedicated, content-enriched platform that will cover business outlook and markets, regulations and compliance, and manufacturing and supply chain. Sessions include "Strategies to improve market access", "Effective compliance strategies when managing 3rd parties" and "Big Data trends and applications in Supply Chain" and panel discussions on "A look at the pharmaceutical industry in South East Asia" and "ASEAN regulatory harmonization developments".

The event is supported by the national and regional governments and regional trade groups, such as: the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Industry, Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board, National Agency for Drug and Food Control.

Highlighted features at CPhI South East Asia in 2017 include:

The Investment Forum, matching key international players interested in investing in Indonesia with the top tier pharma companies in the country looking for reliable partners.

matching key international players interested in investing in with the top tier pharma companies in the country looking for reliable partners. All distributors in the region have been invited to visit the event and network with peers and exhibitors through CPhI South East Asia's Distributor Network -- expanding its database of providers in the region with the aim of magnifying the reach throughout the whole ASEAN region.

-- expanding its database of providers in the region with the aim of magnifying the reach throughout the whole ASEAN region. The Business Matchmaking programme provides attendees with the opportunity to browse potential clients, schedule meetings before the event, and find new business partners.

provides attendees with the opportunity to browse potential clients, schedule meetings before the event, and find new business partners. Roadshows have been organized in many ASEAN countries to further promote CPhI South East Asia as a pharma bridge in the region.

For more information please visit: http://www.cphi.com/sea/

About CPhI

CPhI brings together more than 100,000 pharmaceutical professionals each year. CPhI hosts events in Europe, Korea, China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, Istanbul and Russia.

Ivan Ferrari

+62-21-2930-5959

ivan.ferrari@ubm.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479249/UBM__Purple_Logo.jpg

Related Links

http://www.cphi.com/sea



SOURCE CPhI SEA
DUBLIN, Mar 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "South America Two-Wheeler Market By Type (Motorcycle and Scooter), By Country (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, Suriname and Rest of South America), Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011-2021" report to their offering.

Two-wheeler market in South America is projected to cross USD7 billion by 2021.

Two-wheeler market in South America has been segmented on the basis of type into motorcycles and scooters, out of which motorcycle two-wheeler type dominated South America two-wheeler market during 2011-2015, and the same trend is anticipated to continue through 2021. Leading two-wheeler markets in South America include Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.



Two-wheelers can be segmented on the basis of type into motorcycles and scooters. Motorcycles are two-wheelers with engine mounted in middle and fuel tank above it. Whereas, scooters are two-wheelers with engine located in between the rider and the rear. Demand for two-wheelers in South America region declined at a significant pace during 2011-2015, owing to economic slowdown witnessed in most of the countries in this region.

Two-wheeler market in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia were also impacted by the political instability witnessed in these countries over the past few years. Moreover, economy of Venezuela has been in a state of recession since 2009, which significantly impacted the two-wheeler market in the country. However, economic crises in most of the countries in South America is anticipated to fade away in the coming years, which would significantly boost demand for two-wheelers in the region during the forecast period. Furthermore, rapid urbanization and lack of proper public transport infrastructure are other major factors anticipated to boost growth in South America two-wheeler market during 2016-2021.



In 2015, these countries cumulatively garnered a volume share of more than 75% in South America two-wheeler market.



Major companies operating in two-wheeler market in South America are



Honda

Yamaha

Dafra

Suzuki

Bajaj

Motomel

Mavilla

Kawasaki

Zanella

Lifan

Wanxin

Zongshen

Shineray

Motor Uno



Key Topics Covered:



1. Product Overview



2. Research Methodology



3. Analyst View



4. South America Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



5. Brazil Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



6. Colombia Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



7. Argentina Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



8. Paraguay Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



9. Peru Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



10. Ecuador Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



11. Bolivia Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



12. Chile Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



13. Suriname Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



14. Venezuela Two-Wheeler Market Outlook



15. Strategic Recommendations



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6tc6cf/south_america

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
ZUG, Switzerland, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Vodafone VAMS, Strategic User of the brainwaregroup Spider Product Range, won no Less Than two of the Coveted Prizes at 'SAMS Strategies' in Berlin, Europe's Biggest SAM Specialist Fair - 1st Prize in the Category 'Tool/Software' and 2nd Pr ize in the Category 'Project/Strategy'

The project was presented to a specialist audience of over 350 persons within the context of SAMS 2017. The subsequent voting for both categories resulted in top ratings for Vodafone, which on the basis of the Luxembourg-based company 'Vodafone Asset Management Services S.a.r.l. (VAMS)' is establishing a platform for the management and settlement of global and regional licence agreements. brainwaregroup COO Marius Dunker said, "We not merely deliver the Spider product range for software licence management to our partner Vodafone, but are also closely involved in the implementation of the entire project. We are therefore absolutely delighted to have won these important prizes. We warmly congratulate Vodafone VAMS and in particular your Project Lead Stanislav Pavlin."

Innovative smartphone app

An innovative smartphone app attracted particular interest during the course of the awards ceremony. This was presented live by Stanislav Pavlin and enables authorised users around the world to retrieve dashboards on the licensing status of manufacturers and regions. In real time and with maximum transparency.

Award also thanks to Spider

Due to data volumes and complexity, the legally compliant management of software licenses cannot be realised without suitable tools. The Spider product range gives companies an efficient tool that meets high licence management criteria, while at the same time cutting costs through optimisation. "This means decision makers are kept properly informed at all times and are able to take well-founded decisions," said Marius Dunker.

Managing licences

In the interim, the Vodafone project has become operational. The system gives licence managers at the regional Vodafone companies the ability on the one hand to manage their regional software licences and agreements, while on the other, to take part in global agreements. The Vodafone VAMS obtains a clearer understanding of regional requirements and can negotiate global agreements more efficiently.

About brainwaregroup:

Founded in 1989, brainwaregroup stands for comprehensive IT management based on solutions that are developed in-house. The ability to install automated client and server systems, as well as to protect these, to administer support tickets and to link the administration of commercial data such as guarantees, licences and legal agreements, offers clients significant utility value while at the same time being easy to operate. From its headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, brainwaregroup operates branches in Europe, Africa and Asia. Further information is available under http://www.brainwaregroup.com.

About Vodafone:

Vodafone Group Plc is an internationally active British mobile phone company with headquarters in London. The name Vodafone is an acronym of voice, data and fone, and represents the services offered by the company. Vodafone operates in almost all European and many international markets, and with some 108,000 employees generated sales of GBP 41 billion in the 2016 financial year.

Media contact:

Rey Schallberger

CEO

Tel. +41-41-748-22-00

sales.ch@brainwaregroup.com



SOURCE brainwaregroup
DUBLIN, Mar 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --



Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Worldwide Acoustic Foam Insulation market - Drivers, Opportunities, Trends & Forecasts up to 2022" report to their offering.

Global Acoustic Foam Insulation market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period to reach $7.80 billion by 2022

Industrial applications segment is expected to maintain global dominance in application segments, whereas China and India driven Asia Pacific region is expected to increase its regional share in global acoustic foam insulation.



The demand for acoustic foam insulation is growing consistently, especially in European and Asia Pacific markets. This growth is supported by increasing transportation and building & construction sectors respectively. Currently, Europe is the global leader in the acoustic foam insulation market with Germany being center for premium transportation market. Premium transportation coupled with high standard of living and stringent regulations, Europe accounts for maximum contribution to the global acoustic foam insulation market. Asia Pacific is expected to grow with the fastest growth rate during the forecast period due to growing industrial penetration and increasing per capita income in developing countries.

From the material end, open cell polyurethane foams give high level of fire resistance which makes it suitable for the use in various construction applications. Polyether polyurethane foam is the leading material used in acoustic foam insulation due to relatively cheaper price and good sound proofing quality. Polyester polyurethane has the high cost in comparison to polyether polyurethane due to which it has relatively low market in the acoustic foam insulation market. One of the most expensive, melamine foam is growing in popularity for its light weight property, creating usage especially in aircraft and ceiling panels.



Some of the key players in acoustic foam insulation are BASF, Techlite, PolyOne Corporation, and Dow Chemicals.



Market Dynamics



Drivers



Stringent government regulations for noise control in the developed countries

Increasing penetration in developing countries

Restraints



Low penetration in underdeveloped countries

Slow economic growth in developed countries

Opportunities



Large untapped market in developing and underdeveloped countries

Development of green building products

DRO - Impact Analysis

Key Topics Covered:

1 Report Outline

2 Executive Summary

3 Market Positioning

4 Market Outlook

5 Market Characteristics

6 Materials: Market Size and Analysis

7 Application: Market Size and Analysis

8 Regions: Market Size and Analysis

9 Companies to Watch for

10 Competitive Landscape

11 Expert's Views

Companies Mentioned



3M Company

Acoustical Surfaces.Inc

BASF SE

Bechtel Corporation

Boeing Corporation

Dow Chemical Company

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V

General Electric Company

Huntsman Corporation

K-Flex

PolyOne Corporation

SINOYQX

Siemens AG

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xmwlml/worldwide

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
HOUSTON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "I wanted to find a common thread that brought us all together."

These are the words of Loris Simon Salum, a beautiful 20-something woman who was struggling to find the meaning of life. She went in search of answers and in the process of making an award-winning film and penning a thought-provocative book, Ensoulment: Exploring the Feminine Principle in Western Culture (www.ensoulmentfilm.com), she invites others to share in the dialogue.

She sought to find out answers to so many questions. Loris focused on women for answers, "seeking out those hidden traits that women surely held deep in their bosoms the womanly forces that must hold the key to inner liberation and world peace."

But she realized as she searched for what noted psychologist Carl Jung coined as the feminine, she wasn't looking to focus on gender. The feminine is something inside each of us  men and women  and Loris went on to interview dozens of male and female experts, authors, professors, and psychoanalysts. She narrowed her attention to the six primary areas that consume or influence us most: the media, the body, men, relationships, the workforce and religion.

Ensoulment is an encounter with a younger filmmaker struggling to explain the feminine, in accordance with psychologist Carl Jung's theories. She interviews authors and leaders, including Dr. James Hollis, Dr. Abigail Disney, Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, and Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, amongst others, to broaden her perspective about what the feminine is and how it takes place in Western culture. What starts out as an attempt to make a film, ends in a search of meaning, belonging and the path back to her true self.

Loris makes some strong, insightful conclusions, including these points:

The feminine is a psychological phenomenon not associated with gender.

The feminine refers to qualities such as creativity, receptiveness, and/or nurturance. These qualities are mostly paired with right-brained thinking or emotional intelligence.

The mission of the book is to bring attention to the feminine qualities we have devalued as a society. The intention is not to promote a solely feminine lifestyle, but to reach a balance between feminine and masculine qualities.

An individual that practices nurturing both feminine and masculine qualities within him/her is much more likely to lead a healthier life, inside and out.

Contact Information : MEDIA CONNECT

Brian Feinblum 212-583-2718 [email protected].

SOURCE Loris Simon Salum
CINCINNATI, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cincinnati, Ohio-based Malibu Group, a boutique investment banking and strategic advisory firm focused on selling Midwest private companies, has added a new member to its ownership group and rebranded itself as ArkMalibu. The announcement comes as the company confirms completion of a deal between Camargo Pharmaceutical Services, a leader in its industry, and a private non-institutional investment firm. This partnership will enable Camargo to take a long-term, disciplined approach to expand and develop new capabilities, drive growth in the accelerating 505(b)(2) market, and facilitate an increased global presence in drug development consulting. The investment firm was attracted to Camargo's position as the market leader in this rapidly growing drug development consulting space, the Company's growth prospects, and the alignment with the management team. ArkMalibu provided strategic financial advice under the leadership of the firm's new partner, Rene Robichaud, who will continue to serve as chairman of ArkMalibu's board of advisors. The firm's founder, Peter Kubasek, makes up the other half of the new ownership group and will continue as chief executive officer of ArkMalibu.

Rene Robichaud (left) and Peter Kubasek (right), partners at Cincinnati-based ArkMalibu.

Following a busy year advising on a variety of M&A transactions, ArkMalibu closed the Camargo Pharmaceutical Services transaction to kick off 2017. The match was made after a thorough review of the company, its industry and more than 100 potential investors. ArkMalibu worked to identify a partner who aligned with the client's corporate culture, growth strategy and overall goals. "ArkMalibu's efforts have resulted in Camargo being a better company. They led us to recognize and leverage our cultural values and we look forward to rapidly growing our company in the coming years," said Ken Phelps, Chief Executive Officer of Camargo Pharmaceutical Services.

"ArkMalibu's efforts during due diligence and papering the deal were instrumental in keeping it moving all the way through close," added Ruth Stevens, Chief Science Officer of Camargo Pharmaceutical Services.

"ArkMalibu's focus has always been on Midwestern, private companies, many of which are family owned," said Robichaud. "Regardless of company size, we're looking out for the seller. Our business model focuses on sell-side transactions, which is how we stay free of conflicts of interest. In other words, we do not find ourselves negotiating against potential clients. For most of our clients, this is the biggest deal they're going to do in their lives. They're selling their business, and they have one chance to get it right. We take that responsibility very seriously."

Two examples of these clients are featured in deals that ArkMalibu helped negotiate in 2016. The first included leading the sale process for the multi-generational, family-owned school supply business, John R. Green Company, which sold to Kurtz Bros., a strategic buyer. The other was with Connext, a leading lender in industrial equipment finance, who partnered with Engs Commercial Finance Company. The combination of Engs' nationally recognized transportation finance vertical and Connext's industrial equipment vertical will generate $500 million in annual lease and loan originations and expand Engs' footing as one of the largest independent commercial finance companies in the U.S.

For ArkMalibu, the firm's own growth plan for 2017 is aggressive as the new ownership group builds on its vision to help more companies find their right partner through mergers and acquisitions. "As a firm, we're able to help people execute complex transactions during one of the most significant times of their lives. Sometimes it's not just about finding the highest bidder, it's about protecting a legacy they've built for years and in many cases over generations. It's also about finding a partner who will honor that legacy and build future success around it," said Kubasek.

About ArkMalibu (formerly The Malibu Group)

Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, ArkMalibu is an investment banking boutique serving privately-held businesses. Founded in 1990 by Peter Kubasek, the firm has established a strong reputation as a creative and trusted M&A advisor with an ability to deliver value well above market expectations for mergers and acquisitions. In 2016, Rene Robichaud formalized a partnership with Peter Kubasek to establish ArkMalibu. The 'Ark' in ArkMalibu represents 'the Associates of Robichaud and Kubasek'. The firm continues to add talent to its team and to focus on leading sell-side transactions while providing advisory services for clients. It is one of the only investment banks to win the Torch Award from the Better Business Bureau (2006) and was the 2010 recipient of the Association of Corporate Growth's (ACG) Deal Maker of the Year and is a Finalist for the 2016 ACG Deal Maker of the Year award. To learn more about ArkMalibu, please visit http://arkmalibu.com.

About Camargo Pharmaceutical Services

Camargo has established an unrivaled track record of drug development utilizing the 505(b)(2) pathway and the global equivalent processes. Experts at Camargo have participated in more than 1,100 Agency meetings, resulting in over 200 drug approvals. The Company has more than 30 PhDs with expertise in drug development, including comprehensive in-house specializations of pharmacokinetics; toxicology; and Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC), with offices in Durham, North Carolina, and Cincinnati, Ohio. To learn more about Camargo Pharmaceutical Services, please visit http://camargopharma.com.

Media Contact

Jon Reischel

[email protected]

513.237.7758

SOURCE ArkMalibu

Related Links

http://arkmalibu.com


SAN DIEGO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Law Office of Vikas Bajaj, APC is proud to welcome its newest associate Mark Marion. Mr. Marion attended Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, CA. He was on the Dean's Honor Roll every semester and graduated Magna Cum Laude. In 2015, Mr. Marion was listed in the 2015 Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges.

Mr. Marion takes pride in aggressively fighting for his clients from the moment they retain him. "We are confident that Mark will be a great addition to our team," says Mr. Bajaj.

Law Office of Vikas Bajaj, APC was founded by lead attorney Vikas Bajaj. Mr. Bajaj has over 15 years experience successfully defending those accused of a crime. He handles all criminal matters including DUI, drug crimes, theft crimes, domestic violence, white-collar crimes, federal crimes, and many more.

If you or a loved one has been charged with crime, contact the Law Office of Vikas Bajaj, APC for more information.

Please visit our website to learn more about the firm: https://www.bajajdefense.com

Law Office of Vikas Bajaj, APC

1230 Columbia Street Suite 565

San Diego, CA 92101

(619) 525-7005

SOURCE Law Office of Vikas Bajaj, APC

Related Links

https://www.bajajdefense.com


LONG ISLAND, N.Y., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovative web design company and digital agency BOWEN  also known as Bowen Media  has taken home the Long Island Business News's (LIBN) Excellence in Communication Award for web design. This coveted accolade recognizes the company's dedication to design fluency, creative curiosity, and client loyalty. Their primary focus is mid-to-large-sized businesses, including Fortune 500 corporations and global non-profits.

BOWEN

The Long Island and New York City-based company's diverse and talented team work closely alongside each client, uncovering their unique needs and desires in web design, marketing, branding, and more.

The strategic digital agency then takes the client's vision and makes it a reality with the ethos of a devoted craftsman. Every member of the team works meticulously to ensure the finished product fulfills the brief. It is this commitment to quality and ingenuity that earned BOWEN LIBN's web design award.

The user-experience remains the inspiration at the forefront of design. BOWEN's websites feature fluid, instinctual navigation, so visitors can find the information they need with ease. Expertly crafted copy ensures succinct communication, while the client's values are seamlessly woven throughout every aspect of the textual and visual design.

Finally, BOWEN strives to always be one step ahead of its competition, which is no easy task in the ever-evolving digital environment. With vast changes in both aesthetics and technologies happening at a rapid pace, committing to the cutting-edge requires a global perspective, courage, and above all, creativity.

With each client, BOWEN aims to deliver more than a typical website, more than an online brochure. Instead, the web design company creates design experiences under the mantra "Live Imaginatively. Work Vigorously. Spread Inspiration. Stay Curious."

About the LIBN Excellence in Communication Award:

LIBN is the top source of business news in Long Island, with a weekly publication covering the area's 149,000 plus businesses.

The Excellence in Communication Awards recognizes leading industry professionals in areas of communication, public relations, graphic design, marketing, and web design. The awards ceremony will be held at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, NY on March 22, 2017.

Learn more at www.bowenmedia.com

Media Contact:

Dan Bowen

Phone: 516.308.3539

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 BOWEN

Related Links

http://www.bowenmedia.com


LONDON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 80 per cent of people feel disillusioned by the current state of the world, yet four in five believe that exploring their creative side helps improve their outlook on life, according to new research by Julius Meinl. The findings were revealed alongside the launch of Pay With A Poem, a global initiative designed to brew optimism through poetry.

Pay With A Poem

Offering coffee to spark inspiration, the brand invites customers to visit participating locations serving Julius Meinl on World Poetry Day (21st March, 2017). Those who write a poem can use this as currency to receive a complimentary coffee or tea of their choice.

Despite the thinking that creativity increases optimism, the research also uncovered that less than one in ten currently engage with poetry. Further to this, while 43% of respondents admit to having written poetry as a child, over half have not explored it since then.

In response, the Vienna-based coffee roaster is embarking on its biggest and boldest mission yet: to awaken inner poets across the globe, and ultimately, showcase the power poetry has to increase optimism.

Sharing the brand's passion to ignite creativity and bring more poetry into the world is global ambassador, tattoo artist and creative director of Sang Bleu, Maxime Buchi.

Maxime's ongoing drive to shine a light on the parallels between sociology and art, sees him joining the Pay With A Poem movement.

"Poetry is not a practice, it is a mindstate. The one thing that always remained constant in my work is its trans-practice quality. Designing a tattoo, clothes, publishing or teaching proceed from the same vision, and so does writing and composition. Techniques are means, poetry is the end."

Speaking about the campaign, Julius Meinl's CEO, Marcel Loffler says: "With a heritage in Viennese coffee house culture  a creative and artistic environment  we have a natural intrigue into how poetry can positively impact our emotions. This research reaffirms our commitment to celebrating poetry  our creative voice is a truly valuable and positive tool."

"This World Poetry Day, join Pay With A Poem and experience how a simple cup of coffee  paid for by poetry  can inspire creative and poetic moments in life."

This year's Pay With A Poem is set to take place in more than 200 new venues than the 2016 initiative. To find out how you can take part, visit facebook.com/JuliusMeinlOfficial and meinlcoffee.com, or watch the Pay With A Poem social experiment here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQG8MM61ng

Follow the social conversation using #PoetryForChange and #PayWithAPoem.

ADDITIONAL RESEARCH FINDINGS

Julius Meinl commissioned a study in January 2017 through UK market research firm, 72 Point. The online survey polled 2,000 adults.

Brewing Optimism

Over a third of respondents feel strongly disillusioned by the current state of the world

Fifty seven percent of people feel optimistic about 2017

A fifth don't do anything to improve their outlook on life

Engaging An Inner Poet

Of those that have ever written poetry, the majority (54%) haven't since childhood

Nearly a fifth of the population believes that poetry is only likely to be written by the well-educated, or members of the 'literati'

Just one in 10 people think poetry is likely to be written by people other than well-educated literature fans

7% of people have never read a poem in their lifetime

NOTES TO EDITORS

Julius Meinl is an internationally successful Austrian family company and has been the global ambassador of Vienna's beloved coffee house culture for more than 150 years. The global success of Julius Meinl is based on traditional values: five generations of coffee expertise, premium-quality products and excellent customer service, values that are no longer a certainty these days. Julius Meinl is a global ambassador for Viennese coffee culture and today inspires people all over the world, just as the coffee house literati did in days gone by. Restaurants and business customers in more than 70 countries rely on Julius Meinl coffee and tea. The company already ranks among the top 3 premium coffee brands in over 40 countries. Julius Meinl is the market leader in hotels, restaurants and cafes in Austria, CEE, Adriatics, Russia and Dubai

Established in 1862

700 employees worldwide

Marketing in more than 70 countries worldwide; among the top 3 premium coffee brands in over 40 countries

Market leader in the hotels, restaurants and cafes in Austria , CEE, Adriatics, Russia and Dubai

, CEE, Adriatics, and Some 40,000 customers worldwide

Production locations in Vienna ( Austria ) and Vicenza ( Italy )

( ) and Vicenza ( ) Sales in 2016: EUR 160million

About World Poetry Day: World Poetry Day is on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to "give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements".

Enquiries to:

Devries Slam

Phone: 020 7067 0528

E-mail: [email protected]

Related Files

BREWING OPTIMISM AND CREATIVITY ON WORLD POETRY DAY.docx

Related Images

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image2.png

Related Links

Julius Meinl Official Facebook

Julius Meinl Website

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQG8MM61ng

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Julius Meinl
NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential securities fraud at BRF S.A. ("BRF" or the "Company") (NYSE:BRFS).

The investigation focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws. Specifically, on March 17, 2017, multiple news outlets reported that Brazil's federal police raided BRF offices and other meatpackers following a two-year investigation into alleged bribery of regulators regarding the inspections of their facilities. The investigation, known as "Operation Weak Flesh," exposed approximately 40 cases of meatpackers who bribed inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary procedures. It was reported that Brazilian police arrested three BRF employees, and 20 public officials.

On this news, BRF American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") declined significantly, causing harm to investors.

Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/BRFS. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Take Action

If you invested in BRF ADRs and would like to discuss your legal rights, visit www.faruqilaw.com/BRFS. You can also contact us by calling Richard Gonnello toll free at 877-247-4292 or at 212-983-9330 or by sending an e-mail to [email protected] Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP also encourages anyone with information regarding BRF's conduct to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others.

Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP (www.faruqilaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner.



FARUQI & FARUQI, LLP

685 Third Avenue, 26th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Attn: Richard Gonnello, Esq.

[email protected]

Telephone: (877) 247-4292 or (212) 983-9330

SOURCE Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An emerging approach for cancer treatment seeks to combine radiation therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICPIs) to more effectively control tumors in the chest with an acceptable risk of severe treatment-related side effects. Ten percent of patients in a retrospective analysis of metastatic lung cancer experienced severe toxicity as a result of the combination therapy. Findings will be presented tomorrow at the 2017 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium.

Cancer cells produce proteins that are designed to stop the body's natural immune response to overtake the disease. One type of targeted therapy uses immune checkpoint inhibitors to stop cancer growth by blocking these proteins, which allows the immune system to remain active and attack malignant cells more successfully. A potential downside to this form of immunotherapy, however, is that the immune system may also target healthy cells and cause serious treatment-related side effects for some patients. Moreover, research on the potential of immune checkpoint inhibitors used in conjunction with traditional therapies, such as thoracic radiation therapy (RT), is still relatively new.

"In previous analyses, our team found that a combination of radiation therapy and anti-PD-1 therapy was safe and effective in treating melanoma-related brain metastases," said Kamran A. Ahmed, MD, lead author of the study and a resident in radiation oncology at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. "The current findings show potential for the tolerability and efficacy of this combined approach for treating thoracic tumors, as well."

Findings are based on a retrospective analysis of 29 metastatic lung cancer patients treated with thoracic RT and immune checkpoint inhibitors at a single institution between February 2012 and May 2016. Patients received RT within the six months preceding or six months following initiation of ICPIs , given as anti-PD-1 therapy or anti-PD-L1 therapy alone or in combination with anti-CTLA-4 therapy. Seventeen patients (59%) received a single-agent ICPI, and 12 patients received combination ICPIs. All patients received ICPIs until their disease progressed.

The median patient age at the time of study enrollment was 64 years, and 55 percent of patients were female. Most patients presented with non-small cell lung cancer (79%) and ECOG 1 performance status (69%). The number of metastatic sites ranged from two to eight, with a median of three sites.

The primary outcome was treatment-related toxicity, namely pneumonitis and other types of lung damage; occurrence and severity were assessed qualitatively from patients' clinical records. Median follow-up was 6.6 months following treatment. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to determine estimates of progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) from the date that ICPI therapy began.

Roughly half of the patients (52%) received thoracic RT concurrent with or after ICPI therapy. The other 14 patients were administered radiation two weeks to 5.5 months before they began ICPI therapy, with a median interval of 2.2 months between RT and ICPI. Total radiation doses ranged from 10 to 70 Gray (Gy), delivered in one to 35 fractions.

For the patients in this study, median PFS was 3.8 months, and median OS was 9.2 months following initiation of ICPI therapy. These cancer control rates are similar to other prospective studies that used ICPIs to treat NSCLC.

Three patients (10%) experienced severe possible treatment-related toxicity, including one grade 5 toxicity two weeks following radiation treatment and two cases of grade 3 pneumonitis at two and four months post-radiation treatment, respectively. For all three of these patients, thoracic RT was administered following ICPI therapy. None of the patients who received RT prior to ICPI therapy experienced severe treatment-related toxicity as a result of radiation therapy.

Two additional cases of pneumonitis, one grade 2 and one grade 3, were noted following anti-PD-1 therapy but before radiation treatments began. Both of these patients subsequently received thoracic RT without any additional pulmonary toxicity.

"Our results suggest that a treatment regimen combining thoracic radiation therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors may carry a modest risk of severe side effects," said Dr. Ahmed. "These findings should be evaluated further within the context of prospective clinical trials, particularly those that examine the risk of lung toxicity and the potential opportunity to improve outcomes with this emerging form of combination therapy."

The abstract, "Tolerability and safety of thoracic radiation and immune checkpoint inhibitors among patients with lung cancer," will be presented in detail during the oral abstract session at the 2017 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium in San Francisco (full details below). To schedule an interview with Dr. Ahmed or an outside expert, contact the ASTRO media relations team at [email protected] or 703-286-1600.

ATTRIBUTION TO THE 2017 MULTIDISCIPLINARY THORACIC CANCERS SYMPOSIUM REQUESTED IN ALL NEWS COVERAGE.

Abstract and Presentation Details

Tolerability and Safety of Thoracic Radiation and Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors among Patients with Lung Cancer

News Briefing: Thursday, March 16 , 12:30  1:30 p.m. Pacific time , Foothill F, Briefing slides and audio

, 12:30  , Foothill F, Briefing slides and audio Oral Abstract Session, Friday, March 17 , 11:00 a.m.  12:30 p.m. Pacific time , Yerba Buena Salon 9

,  , Yerba Buena Salon 9 This news release contains additional and/or updated information from the study author(s). Full original abstract and author disclosures available from [email protected] or thoracicsymposium.org.

Resources on Lung Cancer and Radiation Therapy

ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM

The 2017 Multidisciplinary Thoracic Cancers Symposium, co-sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), features the latest advances in surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and novel molecular biologic therapies for thoracic malignancies such as lung cancer. The symposium will be held March 16-18, 2017, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. For more information about the symposium, visit www.thoracicsymposium.org. For press registration and news briefing information, visit www.astro.org/thoracicpress.

ABOUT ASTRO

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) is the premier radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 10,000 members who are physicians, nurses, biologists, physicists, radiation therapists, dosimetrists and other health care professionals who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. As the leading organization in radiation oncology, the Society is dedicated to improving patient care through professional education and training, support for clinical practice and health policy standards, advancement of science and research, and advocacy. ASTRO publishes three medical journals, International Journal of Radiation Oncology  Biology  Physics (www.redjournal.org), Practical Radiation Oncology (www.practicalradonc.org) and Advances in Radiation Oncology (www.advancesradonc.org); developed and maintains an extensive patient website, RT Answers (www.rtanswers.org); and created the Radiation Oncology Institute (www.roinstitute.org), a nonprofit foundation to support research and education efforts around the world that enhance and confirm the critical role of radiation therapy in improving cancer treatment. To learn more about ASTRO, visit www.astro.org.

ABOUT ASCO

Founded in 1964, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is committed to making a world of difference in cancer care. As the world's leading organization of its kind, ASCO represents more than 40,000 oncology professionals who care for people living with cancer. Through research, education, and promotion of the highest-quality patient care, ASCO works to conquer cancer and create a world where cancer is prevented or cured, and every survivor is healthy. ASCO is supported by its affiliate organization, the Conquer Cancer Foundation. Learn more at www.ASCO.org, explore patient education resources at www.Cancer.Net, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

ABOUT STS

Founded in 1964, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons is a not-for-profit organization representing approximately 7,200 cardiothoracic surgeons, researchers, and allied health care professionals worldwide who are dedicated to ensuring the best possible outcomes for surgeries of the heart, lung, and esophagus, as well as other surgical procedures within the chest. The Society's mission is to enhance the ability of cardiothoracic surgeons to provide the highest quality patient care through education, research, and advocacy.

Contact: Liz Gardner

703-286-1600

[email protected]

Leah Kerkman Fogarty

703-839-7336

[email protected]

SOURCE American Society for Radiation Oncology

Related Links

http://www.astro.org


GREEN ISLAND, N.Y., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Crystal IS, a leading developer of high performing UVC LEDs, today celebrates the company's 20th anniversary. The occasion commemorates Crystal IS's history of innovation, from R&D to full commercial production of deep UV LEDs.

Tweet this: From R&D to commercial production of UVC LEDs for disinfection and analytical instrumentation. Crystal IS celebrates 20 years.

"Celebrating our company's 20th year lets us look back and be proud of what we've accomplished so far," said Larry Felton, President and CEO. "We brought the first commercial semiconductor based on native Aluminum Nitride (AlN) substrates to market and didn't stop there. We now produce and ship UVC LEDs to innovative companies creating new products for homes and hospitals where disinfection is a priority."

Over the past 20 years, Crystal IS has achieved several notable accomplishments in technology and people along the way. Five years ago, Asahi Kasei recognized the potential of UVC LEDs with its acquisition of Crystal IS. As part of the Asahi Kasei family, Crystal IS has effectively moved from R&D to full production of UVC LEDs.

Technology

Crystal IS has been granted 34 U.S. patents.

Crystal IS successfully transitioned to 2 inch substrates for all commercial production of UVC LEDs. With this increased capacity, Crystal IS now meets the volume and cost pressures of companies designing disinfection products for both healthcare and consumer applications.

The smooth evolution from R&D to commercial manufacturing facilitated Crystal IS production of two important product lines  Optan for spectroscopic application in analytical and life science instrumentation and Klaran for water, air and surface disinfection. Organizations using Crystal IS's high performance UVC LEDs include Chelsea Technologies Group, Marion Research and Sensorex.

People

Crystal IS has expanded its manufacturing footprint in Green Island, New York as well as Fuji, Japan to accommodate increased commercial capacity. And, with that capacity, the company has grown exponentially, more than doubling around the world since 2014.

Crystal IS employees are recognized as leaders in research and innovation. Employees are called to speak at industry events including IUVA and sit on association committees where industry standards are determined. Crystal IS is currently represented on the National Sanitation Foundation and ASHRAE industry standards committees.

To learn more visit: http://www.cisuvc.com/ or contact us at: http://www.cisuvc.com/contact

Media Inquiries:

MSLGROUP

Nina Gill or Lauren Goldman at 781-684-0770 or [email protected]

About Crystal IS

Crystal IS, an Asahi Kasei company and ISO 9001:2008 certified, is an innovative U.S.-based manufacturer of proprietary, high-performance UVC LEDs. Crystal IS products are suitable for monitoring, disinfection and sterilization in a variety of applications, including industrial and point-of-use (POU) water purification as well as infection control in air and surfaces in healthcare industries. The company's powerful and reliable UVC LEDs provide customers with the flexibility to develop new products that enhance and sustain life. For more information, visit cisuvc.com.

SOURCE Crystal IS

Related Links

http://www.cisuvc.com


Born in 1932 in the Bronx, New York, he began his journalism career distributing New York's daily newspapers to his teachers in junior high school and later at DeWitt Clinton High School. After school hours, he worked as a Wall Street messenger collecting handwritten stock quotes for the New York Herald Tribune's financial news statisticians. While a freshman at City College of New York, he became a full-time copyboy at the Herald Tribune and was appointed the paper's college correspondent for CCNY.

Before graduating from City in 1953, he was named a copy editor in the Trib's business and financial news department. He switched to writing in 1956 and his investigative articles appeared in the New York and Paris newspapers. During his fifteen years on the Trib's editorial staff, Mr. Steinberg reported on developments in virtually every major industry. In 1958 he won the first ever Loeb Newspaper Award for "distinguished business reporting." He traveled extensively to interview international business leaders and heads of state for his weekly column, "World Tradewinds."

Mr. Steinberg was the first American journalist Fidel Castro invited to see "La Habana Nueva." Eager for a positive review, Castro ordered casino croupiers to let Mr. Steinberg win every hand. Upon his return to New York, Mr. Steinberg filed a less-than-favorable report on the new regime. He was not invited back. In Helsinki, he was given the key to the city for a series of articles on Finland's growing economy and efforts to improve trade relations with the United States. Two of these articles were deemed valuable enough to US trade and investors to be read into the 1961 US Congressional Record.

During New York's 114-day citywide newspaper strike in 1963, Mr. Steinberg served as business and financial news editor of the "Daily Report," a temporary strike tabloid. Later that year, Mr. Steinberg joined PR Newswire (PRN), which pioneered simultaneous high-speed distribution of press releases to news media over leased Teletype circuits. The major architect of the innovative international network, he served as PR Newswire president and chief executive for 16 years until retirement in 1992 and continued as vice chairman of PR Newswire and chairman of Canada Newswire until 2002.

In 1965, Mr. Steinberg secured recognition of PRN operations by the New York and American stock exchanges and the Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing transmission of corporate and financial news releases directly to Wall Street as a new vehicle of disclosure in full compliance with "timely disclosure" regulations. Under his direction, PRN became a state-of-the art digital communications network, acquired several local "pr wires," and evolved into an international service with some 700 employees transmitting hundreds of time-critical and market-sensitive news releases daily to hundreds of news media and the financial community.

Today, PR Newswire is a global operation owned by Cision, a worldwide media company that also owns Gorkana, PRWeb, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and iContact. Headquartered in Chicago, Cision serves over 100,000 customers in 170 countries and 40 languages.

Mr. Steinberg was a former governor of the New York Financial Writers Association, president of the World Trade Writers Association, a member of the Deadline Chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, the Professional Journalism Society and the Silurians, a New York group of veteran news editors and reporters.

A devoted husband, father, brother, and uncle, David Steinberg is survived by his wife of 65 years, Anne, his sons, Howard and Michael, his sister, Abby Schroeder, his niece, Rachel Schroeder, her husband, Danny Camiel and other niece and nephews.

Memorial contributions can be made to CancerCare (www.cancercare.org) or the Simon Wiesenthal Center (www.wiesenthal.com).

SOURCE Michael Steinberg
DENVER, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Denver Mattress Company, one of Furniture Row's four specialty stores, is pleased to announce the grand opening of a new store in Helena, MT. Located at 1100 Road Runner Drive, Helena, MT, 59601 next to McKenzie River Plaza, the debut store represents the 112th in the U.S.

Discussing the new store, district manager Mike Farnsworth says, "Our goal at Denver Mattress is to make mattress shopping a comfortable experience by providing the best service, selection, quality, and value. I want people in Montana to be able to find the perfect mattress at a very reasonable price. I am especially excited to share our patented custom mattress fittings, where our experts help individuals find the best mattress for their body type and sleep patterns."

By using the same high-quality materials as other leading brand name manufactures, Denver Mattress is able to eliminate the middleman and pass the savings on by taking on the role of manufacturer, retailer, and distributor. In many instances, Denver Mattress' prices can be up to 50% less than the competition.

Denver Mattress carries the widest selection of top mattress brands, including their own extremely popular Doctor's Choice mattress, the best mattress buy under $800 as selected by the nation's leading consumer magazine. For years Denver Mattress has been ranked as one of the very best mattress stores in the nation for quality, service, selection, and value. With a 365 Night Better Sleep Guarantee customers can rest easy knowing they'll find a mattress that meets their comfort standards.

During the grand opening celebration from March 20th through May 11th, shoppers can get two free BedWorks Grand Vitae Pillows (up to a $100 value) with the purchase of $499 or more.

About Denver Mattress Company

Denver Mattress manufactures its mattresses in its Denver-based factory and distributes them to its own retail stores. By having a single factory, Denver Mattress is able to maintain high quality control standards and deliver a more consistent product at a lower cost than multiple factory producers. A Better Tomorrow Starts Tonight. Visit www.DenverMattress.com.

About Furniture Row Companies

The specialty stores of Furniture Row (Denver Mattress, Sofa Mart, Oak Express, and Bedroom Expressions) provide home furnishings, mattresses, and linens all at one convenient location. Family-owned and operated with more than 330 stores in thirty states, Furniture row is one of America's largest furniture and bedding retailers. Real Furniture. Real Value. Visit www.FurnitureRow.com.

Furniture Row also owns and sponsors their own NASCAR racing team. The driver lineup includes Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 78 Toyota Camry and rookie Erik Jones in the No. 77 Toyota Camry. Visit www.FurnitureRowRacing.com.

Contact: John Knippenberg | Furniture Row Marketing

[email protected]

SOURCE Denver Mattress Company

Related Links

http://www.DenverMattress.com


Dr. Shepard, who has over 30 years of experience in the oncology field, will lead the company's Global Oncology Medical Affairs function. He will be responsible for the overall strategic and operational leadership of the Oncology Business Group's medical affairs activities, including but not limited to the global strategic life cycle management of Eisai's existing oncology portfolio of commercialized products, real world evidence trials, investigator initiated trials, and the company's continued medical education and medical information programs. He will serve as the medical leader and expert resource to the Medical Affairs teams globally and other cross-functional stakeholders ensuring effective portfolio and resource optimization.

"Based on his extensive global experience in medical strategy and supportive tactics for the portfolio of commercialized brands, life cycle management and assistance in the launch of products, Dr. Shepard will be a tremendous asset for Eisai," said Terushige Iike, President of Eisai's Oncology Business Group. "We are confident that he will play a key role in the growth of Eisai's oncology business worldwide."

Dr. Shepard joins Eisai from Shire Pharmaceuticals, where he served as Senior Vice President & Head, Global Medical Affairs following the company's acquisition of Baxalta US, Inc. (formerly Bioscience Baxter Healthcare Corporation) in June 2016. During his four-plus year tenure with Shire and Baxalta, Dr. Shepard was in charge of leading the life cycle management of the company's oncology, neurology, hemophilia, hematology and immunology products, as well as biosimilars. Key activities included overseeing the publication planning process for scientific review and approval of abstracts and manuscripts prior to submission; developing strategic objectives with the regional directors; and the conducting and reporting of supplemental data analyses from company-sponsored studies to support treatment guidelines, clinical decision making, and label enhancements. Prior to Baxalta, Dr. Shepard served as Senior Vice President, Global Medical Affairs at Takeda Pharmaceuticals International for over four years. Dr. Shepard began his pharmaceutical career with Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (formerly Roxane Labs, Inc.), where he spent 17 years in roles at the vice president and senior vice president level.

Dr. Shepard received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati Medical School, which included an internal medicine residency at Case Western Reserve University and an oncology and hematology fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Shepard has had more than 50 medical publications in journals and books. He currently serves as President of the Medical Affairs Professional Society. In 2015, he was selected as one of the 100 Most Inspiring People in the Pharmaceutical Industry by PharmaVOICE.

Eisai Inc.

At Eisai Inc., human health care (hhc) is our goal. We give our first thought to patients and their families, and helping to increase the benefits health care provides. As the U.S. pharmaceutical subsidiary of Tokyo-based Eisai Co., Ltd., we have a passionate commitment to patient care that is the driving force behind our efforts to discover and develop innovative therapies to help address unmet medical needs.

Eisai is a fully integrated pharmaceutical business that operates in two global business groups: oncology and neurology (dementia-related diseases and neurodegenerative diseases). Each group functions as an end-to-end global business with discovery, development, and marketing capabilities. Our U.S. headquarters, commercial and clinical development organizations are located in New Jersey; our discovery labs are in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania; and our global demand chain organization resides in Maryland and North Carolina. To learn more about Eisai Inc., please visit us at www.eisai.com/US.

Eisai Co. Ltd.

Eisai Co., Ltd. is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as "giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides," which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realize our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in various therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including oncology and neurology. For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit www.eisai.com.

Media Inquiries Investor Inquiries Patti Councill Ivor Macleod Eisai Inc. Eisai Inc. 201-746-2139 201-746-2660

SOURCE Eisai Inc.

Related Links

http://www.eisai.com


NEW YORK, March 16, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Guggenheim Investments, the investment management division of Guggenheim Partners, today announced that the following Guggenheim equity exchange traded funds (ETFs) have declared quarterly distributions. The table below summarizes the distribution for each Fund.



Distributions Schedule Ticker Exchange Traded Fund Name Ex-Date Record

Date Payable

Date Total Rate Per

Share XLG Guggenheim S&P 500 Top 50ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.779 RSP Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.350 OEW Guggenheim S&P 100 Equal Weight ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.097 RPV Guggenheim S&P 500 Pure Value ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.308 RPG Guggenheim S&P 500 Pure Growth ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.153 RFV Guggenheim S&P MidCap 400 Pure Value ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.197 RFG Guggenheim S&P MidCap 400 Pure Growth ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.383 RZV Guggenheim S&P SmallCap 600 Pure Value ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.199 RZG Guggenheim S&P SmallCap 600 Pure Growth ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.131 RTM Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Materials ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.395 RGI Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Industrials ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.268 RYT Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Technology ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.233



Distributions Schedule Ticker Exchange Traded Fund Name Ex-Date Record

Date Payable

Date

Total Rate Per

Share

RYH Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Health Care ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.157 RHS Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Staples ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.484 RCD Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.317 RYE Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Energy ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.308 RYF Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Financials ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.197 RYU Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Utilities ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.690 EWRE Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Real Estate ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.000 EWMC Guggenheim S&P MidCap 400 Equal Weight ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.187 EWSC Guggenheim S&P SmallCap 600 Equal Weight ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 3/31/17 $ 0.154 EWEM Guggenheim MSCI Emerging Markets Equal Country Weight ETF 3/17/17 3/21/17 9/30/16 $ 0.056

Past performance is not indicative of future performance. To the extent any portion of the distribution is estimated to be sourced from something other than income, such as return of capital, the source would be disclosed on a Section 19(a)-1 letter located on the Funds website under the Literature tab. Distributions may be comprised of sources other than income, which may not reflect actual Fund performance.

For more information, please visit http://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/etf.

About Guggenheim Investments

Guggenheim Investments is the global asset management and investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners, with $209 billion1 in total assets across fixed income, equity, and alternative strategies. We focus on the return and risk needs of insurance companies, corporate and public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations, consultants, wealth managers, and high-net-worth investors. Our 275+ investment professionals perform rigorous research to understand market trends and identify undervalued opportunities in areas that are often complex and underfollowed. This approach to investment management has enabled us to deliver innovative strategies providing diversification and attractive long-term results.

Media Contact

Ivy McLemore

Director of Intermediary Communications

Guggenheim Investments

Ivy.mclemore@guggenheimpartners.com

(212) 518-9859

Read a funds prospectus and summary prospectus (if available) carefully before investing. It contains the funds investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses and other information, which should be considered carefully before investing. Obtain a prospectus and summary prospectus (if available) at http://guggenheiminvestments.com or call 800.820.0888.

The referenced funds are distributed by Guggenheim Funds Distributors, LLC. Guggenheim Investments represents the investment management business of Guggenheim Partners, LLC (Guggenheim), which includes Guggenheim Funds Investment Advisors (GFIA), Security Investors, LLC (SI), the investment advisors to the referenced fund. Guggenheim Funds Distributors, LLC is affiliated with Guggenheim, SI, and GFIA.

1 Guggenheim Investments total asset figure is as of 12.31.2016. The assets include leverage of $12.3bn for assets under management and $0.4bn for assets for which we provide administrative services. Guggenheim Investments represents the following affiliated investment management businesses: Guggenheim Partners Investment Management, LLC, Security Investors, LLC, Guggenheim Funds Investment Advisors, LLC, Guggenheim Funds Distributors, LLC, Guggenheim Real Estate, LLC, GS GAMMA Advisors, LLC, Guggenheim Partners Europe Limited, and Guggenheim Partners India Management.
COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In recognition of the 30th anniversary of the first AIDS drug  AZT, Equitas Health looks at the impact of AZT, the current state of HIV, and hopes for the future.

The early years of the AIDS epidemic were an incredibly challenging time as researchers and doctors struggled to understand the virus, how it was being spread, how to detect it, and how to intervene. "AZT was a critical first step  it offered hope to patients for the first time, it spurred HIV drug development, and the world began to see AIDS as a treatable disease," said Dr. Herchline, Infectious Disease Physician at Equitas Health.

In 1996, the introduction of the "AIDS cocktail", a triple combination therapy with AZT, another drug of its class, and a protese inhibitor, gave patients and doctors new hope. "Now you take one pill a day with three drugs in it; it stops the virus from multiplying, your body heals, and you have a normal life expectancy," said Dr. Herchline.

Despite remarkable advances in drug therapy and testing services, 1 in 5 people are HIV-positive but don't know it. If current rates continue, 1 in 6 gay and bisexual men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, with men of color disproportionately impacted. "Thanks to our integrated patient-centered care model, 92% of our HIV positive patients are engaged in an anti-retroviral drug regimen, compared to 37% nationally. Our viral suppression rate, meaning those individuals who are HIV-positive and living with such low levels of HIV in their body they are not able to transmit the disease, is 87% compared to 30% nationally," said Bill Hardy, President & CEO of Equitas Health.

While there has been tremendous progress, an HIV-positive diagnosis remains a challenging diagnosis for many. "Today, treatment still requires indefinite, sometimes costly, daily medication and potential side effects. In the near future, there may be alternative treatments available and someday, hopefully, a cure. In the meantime, Equitas Health remains committed to providing a welcoming healthcare home for those at-risk or infected with HIV/AIDS," said Dr. Herchline.

ABOUT EQUITAS HEALTH

Equitas Health (formerly AIDS Resource Center Ohio) is a not-for-profit community-based healthcare system founded in 1984. Its expanded mission has made it one of the nation's largest HIV/AIDS, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) healthcare organizations. For more information, visit www.equitashealth.com.

CONTACT: Alyssa Chenault, (614) 526-4161

SOURCE Equitas Health

Related Links

http://www.equitashealth.com


FRANKFURT, Germany, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Record financial result achieved due to Manila compensation payment - Airports in Fraport's international portfolio report mixed results

FRA/gk-rap - Fraport AG looks back on a successful 2016 business year (ending December 31), which was marked by a record financial result achieved despite challenging framework conditions for the aviation industry and slightly declining traffic at the Group's Frankfurt Airport home base.

Group revenue declined by 0.5 percent year-on-year to 2.59 billion. Adjusting for changes in the scope of consolidation due to the sale of shares in Fraport Cargo Services (FCS) and the disposal of the Air-Transport IT Services subsidiary, Group revenue would have risen by 46.2 million or 1.8 percent. This resulting increase in revenue (on an adjusted basis) was stimulated in particular by the ongoing growth at the Group's airports in Lima (Peru) and Varna and Burgas (Bulgaria), as well as at the Fraport USA subsidiary, and by revenue gained from property sales.

The Group's operating profit or EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) advanced by 24.2 percent, reaching a new record high of 1.05 billion. This strong growth was supported by the compensation payment received for the Manila terminal project, which boosted EBITDA by 198.8 million. Fraport's successful sale of a 10.5 percent share in Thalita Trading Ltd., the owner of the operating company of Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg (Russia), contributed another 40.1 million to EBITDA. Adjusting for these effects and the creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program, the Group's EBITDA would have remained on the previous year's level of about 853 million. Although this adjusted EBITDA was curbed by previous year's weaker traffic performance and a slowdown in FRA's retail business, reflecting lower spending by passengers, the Group's external business also had a compensating positive effect on EBITDA.

The Group result (net profit) increased by 34.8 percent to 400.3 million. Without the aforementioned effects and unscheduled depreciation and amortization, Fraport's Group result would only have reached about 296 million. In contrast, operating cash flow declined by 10.6 percent to 583.2 million. Likewise, free cash flow contracted by 23.3 percent to 301.7 million, also due to ongoing construction of Frankfurt Airport's future Terminal 3.

Traffic at the company's Frankfurt Airport (FRA) home-base slightly declined by 0.4 percent to approximately 61 million passengers in 2016. This was, in particular, a result of the relatively weak spring and summer months characterized by markedly restrained travel bookings in the wake of geopolitical uncertainties. In the last quarter of 2016, traffic figures noticeably rebounded, even reaching a new December monthly record. Cargo tonnage expanded by 1.8 percent to some 2.1 million metric tons, helped by the economic recovery in summer 2016.

Fraport's international portfolio of airports displayed mixed results in 2016. The strong 30.9 percent decline in traffic at Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey - which was impacted by the country's geopolitical and security situation - could be largely offset by the traffic performance of Group airports at other locations. Strong growth was recorded in particular at Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru (up 10.1 percent), Burgas Airport (BOJ) and Varna Airport (VAR) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast (up 22.0 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively), and Xi'an Airport (XIY) in China (up 12.2 percent).

On the basis of the Group's positive financial performance, a dividend of 1.50 per share will be recommended to the 2017 Annual General Meeting. This corresponds to an increase of 0.15 or 11.1 percent per share and to a payout ratio of 36.9 percent of the Group result attributable to shareholders.

Commenting on Fraport AG's business performance in 2016, executive board chairman Dr. Stefan Schulte stated: "Despite the challenges of the 2016 business year, we have achieved our best annual result ever. The sale of the 10.5 percent share in our Pulkovo Airport subsidiary in St. Petersburg has demonstrated that we are able to develop international airport concessions even amid difficult market environments. We will therefore continue to consistently pursue our strategy of operating a broadly diversified international portfolio."

For the 2017 business year, Fraport expects traffic at Frankfurt Airport to grow by 2 to 4 percent. Revenue is anticipated to see a noticeable increase up to approximately 2.9 billion, backed by positive traffic growth both at Frankfurt Airport and Fraport's international Group airports. Also the expected consolidation of the Group's activities in Greece will contribute to a marked rise in revenue. The Group's operating profit (or EBITDA) is forecast to reach a level of between approximately 980 million and 1,020 million, while EBIT is expected to be between approximately 610 million and 650 million. The Group result is anticipated to reach between 310 million and 350 million.

Regarding the Group's business outlook for 2017, CEO Schulte said: "We are optimistic about the current business year and expect Frankfurt Airport's traffic to grow both in the low-cost segment and the traditional hub traffic. At the same time, we will continue to strategically develop our international business. By taking over the operation of the 14 Greek airports, we will unleash further growth potential."

In view of the expected long-term traffic growth at Frankfurt Airport, construction of the new Terminal 3 is being pushed forward as scheduled, with the first construction phase expected to be completed by 2023. The focus of Fraport's international business is currently on the take-over of operations at the 14 Greek airports, which is expected to take place in the next few weeks.

Overview of Fraport's four business segments:

Aviation:

Revenue in the Aviation business segment declined by 1.8 percent to 910.2 million in business year 2016. This was largely due to the slight drop in passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport, the loss of the tender to perform security services in Concourse B, and lower revenue from the re-allocation of infrastructure costs. The creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program, higher wages in business year 2016 due to collective agreements, as well as higher non-staff costs let the segment's EBITDA decline by 8.3 percent to 217.9 million. Depreciation and amortization increased significantly year-on-year, particularly due to the full unscheduled depreciation and amortization of the goodwill in the FraSec GmbH subsidiary in the amount of 22.4 million, as a result of the company's lower long-term earnings forecast compared to previous years. Correspondingly, the segment's EBIT significantly dropped by 39.5 percent to 70.4 million.

Retail & Real Estate:

Revenue in the Retail & Real Estate segment edged up 1.2 percent to 493.9 million in business year 2016, despite the slowdown in the retail sub-segment. Revenue performance was positively affected by sales of land and the changed presentation of rental income due to changes in the scope of consolidation related to sale of shares in the Frankfurt Cargo Services (FCS) subsidiary. Net retail revenue per passenger was at 3.49 (2015: 3.62). The decline was attributable to a lower average spend by passengers from China, Russia and Japan, as well as the impact from the depreciation of various currencies against the euro. With 368 million, the segment's EBITDA was down 2.9 percent on the previous year, largely as a result of higher personnel expenses. These were attributable, in particular, to higher demand for manpower, rising wages set by collective agreements, and the creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program. With depreciation and amortization almost flat, the segment's EBIT reached 283.6 million (down 3.9 percent).

Ground Handling:

In the 2016 business year, revenue in the Ground Handling business segment markedly decreased by 6.3 percent to 630.4 million compared to the previous year. This was due, in particular, to the sale of shares in the Fraport Cargo Services (FCS) subsidiary and slightly declining passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport. Adjusted for the effects from the sale of shares in FCS, segment revenue saw underlying growth of 1.8 percent. Reasons for this adjusted increase included a change in the presentation of personnel expenses as a result of changes in the scope of consolidation related to the sale of shares in the FCS subsidiary, as well as slightly higher revenue from infrastructure charges. The creation of provisions for a personnel-restructuring program and rising wages due to collective agreements led to a 25.2 percent decline in the segment's EBITDA to 34.7 million. Contracting by 11.5 million to minus 5.5 million, the segment's EBIT reached negative territory due to the provisions for the personnel-restructuring program.

External Activities & Services:

Revenue in the External Activities & Services business segment increased by 8.1 percent to 551.7 million in business year 2016, supported in particular by the Group companies in Lima, Peru (up 27.8 million), Twin Star, Bulgaria (up 9.9 million) and Fraport USA Inc. (up 3.2 million). In addition, the compensation payment from the Manila terminal project and revenue gained from the sale of shares in Thalita Trading Ltd. had a markedly positive impact on the segment's revenue. Due to these effects, also the segment's EBITDA more than doubled, reaching 433.5 million (2015: 186.1 million). The segment's EBIT showed similar growth, rising by 242.1 million to 345.2 million.

For further information about Fraport AG please click here: http://ots.de/aboutFraport



Fraport AG

Mike Peter Schweitzer

Corporate Communications

Press Office

60547 Frankfurt, Germany



Telephone: +49-69-690-70555

E-mail: [email protected]

Internet: www.fraport.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/FrankfurtAirport

SOURCE Fraport AG
XIAMEN, China, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gates Corporation has entered the rapidly expanding Chinese bike share market with the launch of the Baicycle bike share program in this city. Baicycle uses a Gates Carbon Drive belt instead of a chain or shaft drive due to the higher performance, lighter weight and low maintenance of the Gates system.

Gates Carbon Drive will display the Baicycle at its booth at the Taipei Cycle Show (March 22-26) and is inviting city bike share representatives to come view the bike and consider it for use in their communities.

With a clean white aesthetic, Baicycle is an app-based bike that represents the modern look and technology of next-generation fleet bicycles. Users locate, rent and unlock their Baicycles via a GPS enabled smartphone app that helps riders navigate their city and locate nearby landmarks. To ensure a comfortable riding experience Baicycle uses an ergonomic saddle and adjustable seat post. Next generation technology allows for kiosk or non-kiosk rentals and bike reservations, allowing users to leave their bikes throughout the city like car sharing schemes.

Baicycle launched in early 2017 in the city of Xiamen, a tourist and business destination on the southwestern coast of China. The name Baicycle is a clever play on a historic Dutch free bike program, and the Chinese word for white, which is bai. In 1965, some Dutch citizens placed free bicycles painted white on the streets of Amsterdam, hoping to encourage people to ride. Some call it the first modern bike share program.

From those humble beginnings, bike shares have exploded in popularity worldwide as a solution for urban congestion. This is especially true in China, where the bike share market is rapidly growing as entrepreneurs and the government launch initiatives to get people out of cars and onto bicycles to reduce pollution and cut traffic congestion.

While Baicycle is the first bike share program in China for Gates Carbon Drive, the Gates system is used on other leading bike share fleets in the United States (the Gotcha Bike program on college campuses) and Europe (the GoBike electric bike share in Denmark and Norway).

"Baicycle is a fast-moving company that has a strong eye for design and a smart business model with a goal to succeed over the long term by offering a superior riding experience and bicycles with durable components that lower fleet maintenance costs," says Todd Sellden, Director of Gates Carbon Drive Systems. "Gates Carbon Drive has become popular on urban bicycles in Europe due to its clean, simple and grease-free qualities, and now we are excited to bring these advantages to the Chinese bike share market. The Gates system lowers the manpower required for maintenance, eliminates rust and greasy lubrication, and it is also lighter and faster than the heavy and sluggish shaft drives used on some bike share bicycles."

Baicycle is financially supported by Mi, a large consumer electronics company that is Baicycle's primary investor. The goal of the companies is to build on the success of the Xiamen launch and expand to other cities in China, and worldwide.

Gates will display the bike in the Gates Carbon Drive booth at Taipei Cycle Show (4F-M0828) and present it to bike share program officials.

About Gates Carbon Drive

Consisting of two metal sprockets and a high-strength belt embedded with carbon fiber cords, Gates Carbon Drive is a low-maintenance, chain-replacing technology from Gates Corp., the global leader in automotive and industrial belts. Clean, quiet, light and strong, Carbon Drive requires no greasy lube, weighs less than a chain and will not stretch. Due to its low maintenance and cleanliness, Carbon Drive is a technology makes it easier for people to get on bikes. www.gatescarbondrive.com

About Baicycle

Launched in the city of Xiamen, Baicycle is an innovative bike share program that seeks to increase ridership by offering technologically advanced bikes that are fun to ride and promote the goal of reduced city air pollution and traffic congestion. Baicycle plans to expand to cities throughout China, and to provide bicycle fleets for bike share programs in Europe and the United States. www.baicycle.com

SOURCE Gates Corporation

Related Links

http://www.gatescarbondrive.com


DUBLIN, Mar. 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Next Generation Sequencing Market Assessment & Forecast: 2017 - 2021" report to their offering.

The Global Next Generation Sequencing Market Was Valued at US$ 3,509.6 Million in 2016 And is Expected to Reach US$ 7,527.0 Million By 2021 Growing at a CAGR of 16.02%.

The market has witnessed series of acquisitions and strategic agreements in the recent past and become more competitive. It is also anticipated that the market would consolidate, remain dominated by the North America region. However, rapid growth is anticipated in Asia Pacific region due to increased adoption of the technology in varied fields. In 2016, China announced the opening of China National GeneBank (CNGB). The bank consists of biorepository, bioinformatics data center and living biobank, and a digitalization platform and synthesis and editing platform. Similar gene banks in Japan, South Korea, India and others are contributing immensely to genetic research in agriculture. Chinese FDA granted Class I status for Vela Diagnostics' Sentosa SX101 instrument for clinical use. In 2015, KEW Group Inc. and Denka Co., Ltd. announced collaborative agreement for evaluation of KEW's CancerPlex NGS Testing in Japanese cancer patients.

Government investment in genome sequencing projects and widespread integration of NGS technology with other research programs are driving the NGS market. Increasing efforts by regulatory agencies in keeping pace with rapid technology developments and proactive approach in approval of NGS based tests in disease diagnosis has encouraged companies and investment firms to consider NGS technology as one of the most lucrative options.



Next generation sequencing (NGS) technology market is constantly evolving due to continuous technology upgrades. At least five companies are currently developing novel NGS technology that is anticipated to commercialize during the forecast period. Although currently the market is dominated by Illumina, various other companies are investing in development of novel methods for efficient and cost effective sequencing. Genapsys is currently developing Gene Electronic Nano-Integrated Ultra-Sensitive (GENIUS) technology, a portable sequencer targeted for research and diagnostic laboratory purposes.



The company opened early access registration in 2014, yet commercial launch has not been announced officially. Agilent Technologies invested US$ 80 million in LaserGen for development and commercialization of the proprietary lightning terminators technology. Although Nabsys had closed operations in 2015 after 10 years of struggle in development of its next generation sequencing technology, the company was re-launched as Nabsys 2.0 in 2016. The company also received US$ 42 million in funding from a Chinese company Zixin Pharma. Majority of the sequencing technologies in pipeline are nanopore based.

Key players mentioned in the report include Illumina, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Oxford Nanopore, Pacific Biosciences, Qiagen N.V., Roche Sequencing, Stratos Genomics, GnuBio and others.

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1 Preface



Chapter 2 Precis



Chapter 3 Market Dynamics



Chapter 4 Next Generation Sequencing - Global Market Assessment by Key Players, Forecast: 2017 to 2021



Chapter 5 Next Generation Sequencing Services - Global Market Assessment by Applications, Forecast: 2017 to 2021



Chapter 6 Next Generation Sequencing Instruments, Reagents and Consumables - Global Market Assessment by End-Users, Forecast: 2017 to 2021



Chapter 7 Next Generation Sequencing - Global Market Assessment by Geography, Forecast: 2017 to 2021



Chapter 8 Key Player Analysis: Global Next Generation Sequencing Market, 2016



Chapter 9 Epilogue

Companies Mentioned



GnuBio.

Illumina Inc.

Oxford Nanopore

Pacific Biosciences

Qiagen N.V.

Roche Sequencing

Stratos Genomics

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/j7mxgj/global_next

Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing with champion spirit, the national Minority Women Professionals (MWPs) are MVPs conference tour will take place on April 2, 2017 at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, drawing women from New York and the tri-state region. This conference will feature a series of guest speakers, workshops, networking and mentorship opportunities aimed to inspire and empower MWPs from diverse backgrounds, while also equipping them with essential tools and skills to "survive and thrive" in their professions.

Minority Women Professionals Conference

The event, the 2nd of a multi-city national conference series targeting MWPs, will feature a number of prominent women leaders and speakers, and, notably, the event has secured international activist, journalist, filmmaker, and TedX sensation, Parisian-born Rokhaya Diallo, for the keynote.

"The time is now," said Professor Nwando Olayiwola, MD, MPH, the conference creator. "Minority women professionals are so essential to communities across the nation and in the world, especially in New York City, a mecca of diversity in background, beliefs and orientations. Having Rokhaya come from Paris to address this group of women in the tri-state region is an incredible honor."

Hosted by Dr. Olayiwola through her organizations, Inspire Health Solutions, LLC and the Association of Minority Women Professionals, and in partnership with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Office of Diversity Enhancement, the conference, expected to host over 100 professional women and students, will not only discuss strategies and tools for succeeding in the workplace but also celebrate the achievements of diverse career-oriented women of color, of non-dominant faiths, with disabilities, of diverse sexual orientations and ages, and of various national origins. Additional speakers include Dr. Irene Blanco, Associate Dean of Diversity Enhancement at Albert Einstein; physician leaders Dr. Soussan Ayubcha and Venis Wilder; Noopur Agarwal, MBA, VP for Public Affairs at MTV; Employment, Discrimination & Family Law Attorney Sylvia Onyejekwe, Esq.; Terina Matthews, MA, Campus Recruiter at S&P Global; Pilin Anice, nationally recognized performing artist & yoga instructor; Bukky Ojeifo, founder of the Essence magazine recognized Hair on Purpose organization, and more. The conference will also feature local women entrepreneurs, innovators and a special performance by the Serendipity Dance Troupe, a multi-ethnic women's empowerment dance ensemble in New York.

"This is an important time to unify and elevate women of diverse backgrounds in New York and the tri-state region, harnessing our strengths and commonalities," said Dr. Irene Blanco. "This conference is an opportunity to position professional women, students and trainees for success."

For registration information and to learn more about the MWPs conference series, please visit the Inspire Health Solutions website. #MWPSareMVPs

Media Contact: Holly Baird [email protected] (310) 426-8521.

SOURCE Inspire Health Solutions
WASHINGTON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Janus Global Operations (JGO), an integrated stability operations firm and the world's largest demining company, has been awarded a contract to conduct clearance of unexploded ordnance in Yavoriv, Ukraine.

Assigned this task by the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, JGO will clear nearly 18 million square meters of "munitions and explosives of concern" and "material potentially presenting an explosive hazard" at the Yavoriv International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) training range located in western Ukraine.

The more than $8.4 million project will begin in April 2017 and is scheduled to be completed by January 2018. About 150 JGO employees will be engaged in the range clearance tasks.

The U.S. military has participated in training exercises at the IPSC, along with other NATO and Ukrainian military forces, in the past and will continue training there until at least 2020. From June 27 to July 8, 2016, U.S. military forces participated in a joint multinational force exercise, Operation Rapid Trident. According to the Army's website, this exercise supported interoperability among Ukraine, the U.S., NATO, and Partnership for Peace member nations, and included 14 countries and approximately 2,000 personnel.

JGO works globally to provide safety and environmental remediation services at military training sites, eliminating threats wherever they are posed by landmines, improvised explosive devices, dropped munitions (bombs, dispensers and submunitions), projected munitions (projectiles, mortars and rockets) as well as other unexploded ordnance.

Janus Global Operations is an integrated stability operations company with thousands of employees serving clients in North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South and East Asia. JGO's services include munitions response, demining, intelligence support, logistics, life support, risk management, communications, and other services in some of the world's most challenging environments.

The company's website is www.JanusGO.com.

SOURCE Janus Global Operations

Related Links

http://www.JanusGO.com


JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- After much anticipation and excitement, Jollibee, the largest Asian restaurant company, is finally coming to Jacksonville, Florida. This is the 36th store in the US, as well as the first in the state and Southeast US. It will open to the public on Saturday, March 18, 2017.

Jacksonville is the most populous city in the Sunshine State, and home to the largest Filipino-American community in Florida. The long-awaited arrival of Jollibee in the city has been the talk of the town since 2016.

With the opening, Floridians will get to try Jollibee's signature menu items such as the world famous Chickenjoy. This dish is delicately breaded to be crispylicious on the outside and juicylicious inside. The well-loved Jolly Spaghetti is a favorite of both kids and kids-at-heart because of its signature sweet-style sauce, loaded with chunky slices of savory ham, ground meat, and hotdog. Other classic menu favorites include the juicy and cheesy Jolly Hotdog, and the Peach Mango Pie, which is made with real Philippine sweet mangoes and a flaky golden brown crust.

"As Jollibee debuts in Florida, we anticipate seeing not only a multitude of excited Jollibee patrons waiting to get their hands on their Jollibee favorites, but also first-timers waiting to have their own Jollibee experience," said Jose Minana, Jollibee Foods Corporation's Group President for North America. "There's no greater joy for us than serving the needs and tastes of Jollibee fans in the community. At Jollibee, we aim to bring families together for happy moments over great tasting food with superior value, served with warm and friendly service  our own brand of joy."

Similar to recent openings in Skokie (first store in Illinois) and Winnipeg (first store in Canada), Jollibee is expecting its loyal fans to line up even before the sun rises on opening day, just to be among the first in the Sunshine State to get a taste of Jollibee. The brand has become a symbol of nostalgia and warm childhood memories for many overseas Filipinos in the U.S. To many, Jollibee is the go-to restaurant of Filipinos for both special events and everyday occasions.

Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) is currently the largest Asian restaurant company in market capitalization, operating in 14 markets, with a total of 3,254 stores globally, of which 1,145 are Jollibee brand stores. The company's aggressive expansion plan in North America is part of its overarching goal to be among the top five restaurant brands globally. In its pipeline, Jollibee also has plans to open its first store in Manhattan, New York.

"Ever since our early beginnings as an ice cream parlor back in 1975, it has always been our mission to bring joy to families and friends over good food," says Ernesto Tanmantiong, Jollibee Foods Corporation CEO. "More than 40 years and 1,000 stores later, we continue to fulfill this by expanding our horizons to a global market. We still get a thrill each and every time we open a new store and introduce our brand of happiness to different parts of the world."

About the Jollibee Brand

Jollibee is the largest fast food chain brand in the Philippines, operating a Philippine network of more than 950 stores. A dominant market leader in the Philippines, Jollibee has embarked on an aggressive international expansion plan, now with more than 150 international stores.

Technomic has consistently cited Jollibee among its Top 500 ranking restaurants in the United States.

About Jollibee Foods Corporation

Jollibee Foods Corporation is the largest Asian restaurant company and the largest restaurant company in the Philippines. It operates over 3,000 stores globally with store branches in the Philippines, United States, Canada, China, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The brands under its portfolio are Jollibee, Greenwich, Chowking, Red Ribbon, Mang Inasal, Burger King Philippines, Yonghe King, and Hong Zhuang Yuan.

JFC also has considerable investments with the brands Highlands Coffee, Pho 24, 12 Hotpot, Dunkin Donuts in China and U.S. based burger chain Smashburger.

Jollibee Foods Corporation has grown brands that bring delightful dining experience to its customers worldwide, in line with its mission of serving great tasting food and spreading the joy of eating to everyone.

Jollibee Foods Corporation has been named the Philippines' most admired company by the Asian Wall Street Journal for eight years in a row, and was honored as one of the '200 Best Under a Billion Companies in Asia' and one of 'Asia's Fab 50 Companies' by Forbes Asia Magazine.

SOURCE Jollibee
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150630/227348 )



Hadyn Parry, Chief Executive Officer at Oxitec, said, "We are delighted to welcome Jorge to the Oxitec team. Jorge's managerial experience in the life science sector and track record in marketing and driving growth will be an asset to the company as we continue to expand our operations in Brazil and beyond."

Mr. Espanha brings to Oxitec over 20 years of marketing, commercial and operational experience in local, regional and global markets including the United States, Europe and Latin America. Most recently he was General Manager at Merial for Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. In October 2016, for the second time in four years, he was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in Brazilian Agribusiness by Dinheiro Rural Magazine. Prior to Merial, Mr. Espanha held key roles at Zoetis, Pfizer Animal Health, and SmithKline Beecham having a significant growth record in the businesses he managed. Mr. Espanha is also president of the Brazilian Association for Rural Marketing & Agribusiness (ABMR&A).

Mr. Espanha added, "It is an honour to be part of the Oxitec/Intrexon group. Oxitec has the noble mission of helping Brazilian authorities prevent the spread of vectors that transmit serious diseases and implement new technologies in Brazil."

In conjunction with Piracicaba City Hall, Oxitec do Brasil is currently deploying its self-limiting Friendly Aedes mosquitoes in an area of 65,000 people, in order to suppress the dangerous mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. In October 2016, the company opened a new mosquito production facility in Piracicaba, which has the capacity to produce 60 million Friendly Aedes per week. A survey conducted in November showed that 92.8% of the city's population support Oxitec's vector control solution.

About Oxitec

Oxitec is a pioneer in using genetic engineering to control insect pests that spread disease and damage crops, and was founded in 2002 as a spinout from Oxford University (UK). Oxitec is a subsidiary of Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON), which engineers biology to help solve some of the world's biggest problems. Follow us on Twitter at @Oxitec.

Oxitec Contact:

Matthew Warren

Press Officer

Tel: +44(0)-1235-832-393

[email protected]



SOURCE Oxitec Ltd
NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Labbrand, a leading global brand consultancy, previewed its findings on U.S. and Chinese millennials' digital drivers. The findings, based on an extensive online survey with young adults aged 20 to 35 years of age in both countries, showed that Chinese millennials use digital tools to satisfy functional and emotional needs  food, expenditure, socializing  more prevalently than their U.S. counterparts. Among the key indicators, 85.6% of Chinese millennials use mobile payment in physical shops at least once a week, as opposed to 44.7% of U.S. millennials. Such findings can be leveraged by global brands crafting their digital strategies for these and other international markets.

Other noteworthy initial findings of the survey were also revealed. In terms of socializing, for example, Chinese millennials are highly expressive online  71.4% post answers to questions on Q&A sites or forums at least once a week, while 77.6% post reviews on movies, restaurants, travels or other activities at least once a week. U.S. millennials fell short of reaching 50% (41.8% on posting answers and 44.8% on posting reviews) on both questions. Overall, the majority of Chinese millennials agree that they tend to share everything they do online (55.3%), whereas only 28.3% of American millennials felt the same way.

Labbrand released the initial findings of the survey at the Millennial 20/20 summit in New York. At the event, Denise Sabet, Labbrand's Managing Director of North America, presented on "The Digital World of Chinese Millennials", while also highlighting takeaways for brand marketers in the U.S. "The term millennial has been overused, and the definition has become too broad," said Sabet, "Brands need to uncover deeper and more specific insights on millennial consumers, and to tailor their brand actions to the characteristics of more targeted segments."

Based on the Digital Drivers model developed by Labbrand, the survey results also indicated that U.S. millennials are driven to digital platforms mainly by the need to seek pleasure, while Chinese millennials tend to be simultaneously driven by the needs of connection, discovery, actualization as well as pleasure.

The Digital Drivers model helps brands to look beyond generic data to gain deeper insights into the drivers behind digital behaviors. A more in-depth analysis of Labbrand's latest survey on U.S. and Chinese millennials' will be released in the coming LABReport on March 31.

About Labbrand

Labbrand is the leading China-originated global brand consultancy with a rapidly expanding global footprint that includes regional operations in APAC (Shanghai, Singapore), Europe (Paris), and North America (New York). Through brand innovations, we create, grow, and disrupt to be strong and resilient in dynamic markets. We are multi-cultural in approach and cross-disciplinary in research, strategy, naming, design, and digital. Together this gives us the foresight and ability to build brand equity. labbrand.com

About Millennial 20/20

Millennial 20/20 Summits are the grand gathering of brands, retailers, corporates, service providers, investors and start-ups to celebrate the modern age of commerce and business powered by the millennials and future consumer generations. The summits focus on the impact of technology, digital and the rise of the internet of beings which is drastically changing how, where and when we consume and interact with brands, retailers and start-ups in the following industry sectors: Fashion & Beauty, Food & Beverage, Travel & Hospitality and Fitness & Health and in the key pillars of retail, marketing, mobile, payments, video, data, social, e-commerce and CRM. Millennial 20/20 has been created with the belief that business events need to advance with the times and deliver a curatorial, experiential and personalized experience for attendees.

SOURCE Labbrand
English Korean

SAN DIEGO, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Bright Cell, a leading e-cigarette and vaping company in South Korea, has partnered with Next Generation Labs to captivate the growing female vape market in Korea with the October 2016 launch of its Scala e-liquid brand. Developed with Next Generation Labs TFN Nicotine  a test-verified non-tobacco derived synthetic nicotine liquid  the Scala brand features a feminine design, and uses creative emotional branding to appeal to its targeted audience.



The Bright Cell representative Nayeon Kim comments, Influences from Confucian culture have created a generally negative attitude toward female e-cigarette users in Korea. However, there has been a steady growth in female e-cigarette users in Korea, presenting the opportunity to shift the nations attitude toward women who vape. We launched the Scala brand to aid in creating a more positive attitude toward female e-cigarette users by offering a unique, feminine brand that women could feel good about using.

The Bright Cell developed Scala with TFN Nicotine due to the pure nature of the synthetic nicotine, which offers a cleaner vape experience. This complements the Scala brand, which promotes the enjoyment of daily life regardless of gender  in fact; the name Scala comes from the 'Teatro alla Scala', an Italian opera theater built in 1778, which is a metaphor of life as a stage for people.

The Scala e-liquid line features seven flavors, each of which are named after the emotions faced daily by every person, capturing the feelings of everyday life. The branding combines basic human emotions with the days of the week, creating a unique product that draws the attention of its users.

"The Korean market has faced many challenges as consumers have been mislead by unscrupulous companies using low-quality raw materials. The Bright Cell is proud to use TFN Nicotine in the Scala brand as we continue to develop our products with the highest quality ingredients to ensure our end-consumers have the best possible experience, concludes Kim.

Vincent Schuman, CEO of Next Generation Labs adds, The branding, flavors and satisfaction of Scala e-liquids have been extremely well received within the Korean market and we anticipate further success for The Bright Cells TFN brands in 2017."

About Next Generation Labs

Founded in 2014, Next Generation Labs developed TFN Nicotine, the worlds leading synthetic nicotine that is not derived from tobacco. TFN Nicotine is used in over 40 e-liquid brands and is playing a central role in revolutionizing the e-cigarette and vaping industry.

www.nextgenerationlabs.com
SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A federal judge has approved a $27 million monetary settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Lyft, after Teamsters and Lyft drivers filed legal objections to a preliminary settlement of $12.5 million, calling it "insufficient."

The objections were filed by the Uber Lyft Teamsters Rideshare Alliance (ULTRA), Teamsters Joint Council 7 and Teamsters Joint Council 42 to a preliminary settlement in the case in March 2016. Following the objections, the judge ordered the parties to go back to the table to correct the deficiencies in the preliminary settlement covering nearly 100,000 California drivers.

"We're happy for the drivers who got more of the money that they were owed, and felt it was our duty and role as Teamsters to step up with Lyft drivers in this lawsuit to correct a wrong. The initial settlement amount of $12.5 million was inaccurate and the judge recognized that workers were owed more," said Rome Aloise, President of Teamsters Joint Council 7 and Secretary-Treasurer of Local 853 in Oakland.

The $12.5 million preliminary settlement amount included inaccuracies in calculating the mileage logged by drivers.

The settlement does not address the issue of misclassification of Lyft employees in California as independent contractors. Unlike employees, independent contractors do not have the rights to receive overtime pay, reimbursement for expenses and many other rights under the California Labor Code.

The Teamsters and ULTRA also objected to the initial settlement proposal because it will not change Lyft's business model of misclassifying employees as independent contractors.

"While the judge indicated that employee classification would need to take place legislatively or through means other than his court, Lyft drivers are as determined as ever to continue the fight to be treated and counted as employees, because they are in fact employees," Aloise said.

Teamsters have been engaged in an ongoing effort to organize TNC drivers in the Bay Area.

Also in the high tech industry, hundreds of drivers at tech companies, including Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and others in Silicon Valley, have organized with the Teamsters. The union has negotiated strong contracts for the drivers, including good wages, benefits and workplace protections.

The Teamsters Union is part of a growing movement of labor, faith and community-based organizations and workers challenging income inequality in Silicon Valley through an innovative partnership called Silicon Valley Rising. For more information, visit http://siliconvalleyrising.org.

For more information on tech worker organizing with the Teamsters, visit http://teamster.org/tech-drivers-deserve-union.

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women in the United States and Canada. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Doug Bloch, (510) 333-1179

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Joint Council 7

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


BALTIMORE, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HempStaff, a medical marijuana staffing and training agency, is hosting two Medical Marijuana Dispensary Agent Training Classes in Maryland. There are two sessions to choose from at each location: 8:00am-12:00pm or 1:30pm-5:30pm.

The Baltimore event will be held on Saturday, March 25th at the Doubletree Baltimore Airport 890 Elkridge Landing Road, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090.

The Silver Spring Class, which will also cover Washington D.C. regulations, will be held at the Doubletree Washington DC - Silver Spring, 8727 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring MD 20910.

The cost is $249 with prior online registration or $300 cash at the door, if seats are still available.

Medical Marijuana will be sold in Maryland by the end of 2017! Staffing will be needed in Maryland as cultivation centers are schedule to open late summer and dispensaries by the end of the year. HempStaff's four-hour course is designed to prepare participants for work in a medical marijuana dispensary so that business owners are getting educated and well-prepared candidates when they start to fill new positions.

The course educates the participants on cannabis and cannabis products along with all the information to keep up-to- date with Maryland's medical marijuana laws. HempStaff offers it's students a resume review to help best prepare them for seeking employment in this course as well. The end of the course offers a certification exam, that the student must score at least 75% to get a HempStaff Dispensary Agent Certification. Since HempStaff is also a recruiting agency, when employers seek to fill entry level dispensary agents or cultivation site workers, students are contacted first.

HempStaff has trained and certified more than 2,000 dispensary agents nationwide and continues to hold classes across the United States. In addition to the class held in the Maryland/DC area, classes are currently scheduled for Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Illinois and New England. Future 2017-2018 classes are slated for Arkansas, Michigan and California.

Those who have already taken the HempStaff course have provided exceptional feedback about the training. "I enjoyed the fast paced but engaging training course. I learned everything I needed to know and nothing I didn't. The speakers were polite, funny, and down to earth and I felt welcomed. The other students were very friendly too. Overall, it was a great experience! " notes one recent participant. Another previous student stated, "I was satisfied and felt optimistic in the direction things are moving after seeing others talk about one of my biggest passions the past 4 years. Highly approve of approach to let those who do not pass the Budtender certification test return until they know and understand the basics needed to succeed and grow as an individual."

Additionally, for those Maryland Cannabis Business Owners, our team of recruiters are on hand to help new businesses with all their staffing needs with just one phone call. To learn more about the HempStaff, the upcoming Maryland training or to purchase a seat, visit HempStaff.com.

About HempStaff

HempStaff is a marijuana industry recruiting, staffing and training agency specializing in finding management ln the industry leader in Marijuana Industry Recruiting and Dispensary Agent Training. For more information, visit HempStaff.com.

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This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE HempStaff

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LONDON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The fall in molybdenum prices which persisted between the second half of 2014 through to the end of 2015, eventually reached a floor at the start of 2016. Ferromolybdenum prices increased from a low of US$6.14/lb Mo in January 2016 to a peak of US$9.39/lb Mo in June, driven by factors on both the supply and consumption sides of the market. Since mid-2016 molybdenum prices have fallen back, though remained at least 30% higher than at the start of 2016, supported by increased demand.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150909/264974LOGO )



The importance of China to the molybdenum industry has grown markedly over the past ten years, with Chinese domestic consumption increasing by 14.4%py over the period. China now accounts for 36% of global consumption, compared with below 12% in 2006, greater than the USA and EU consumption combined. In comparison, molybdenum consumption in the USA has contracted since 2006, caused by the overall decline in US domestic special steels production. In 2016, however, increased demand for molybdenum bearing steels from the oil and gas industry halted the decline in US molybdenum consumption.

Recovery in oil and gas prices saw demand for oil country tubular goods return

The recovery in oil and gas prices in the first half of 2016, and associated increase in active drill rigs, supported molybdenum demand as greater volumes of oil country tubular goods and equipment used in refining were required. The increase in active drill rigs was centred on the North American industry, which has acted as a swing producer when oil prices have exceeded production costs. The Baker Hughes rig count showed an 87% increase in active rigs in the USA and Canada between May and December 2016, though the global total only increased by 26% over the same period as a result of falling production in the Middle East and South America. Further growth in consumption from oil and gas applications is expected in 2017 as the recovery in production from North America continues.

Continued urbanisation and growth in the middle class in developed economies has increased consumption of stainless steel in consumer products and construction, particularly in China where per-capita consumption has increased as the economy becomes more developed and service-based. Global consumption of molybdenum in stainless steels increased 7.7% in 2016 as steel mills restocked and demand is forecast to increase by over 2% in 2017.

Cut-backs by major producers eroded by higher prices

The price recovery was also supported by cut backs in production by major molybdenum producers. Freeport McMoran reduced production by 14% in 2016, largely from the Climax and Henderson primary molybdenum mines in the USA. Nine major Chinese producers planned to cut molybdenum production by 10% in 2016, though the increase in prices throughout the first half of 2016 caused all but three of the companies to renege on these plans. By-product molybdenum producers increased the share of global production to over 70% of for the first time in 2016, as many primary operations had suspended or curtailed production amidst lower prices. By-product molybdenum operations in Chile increased output, with production from CODELCO in Chile increasing by 12%, though the majority of by-product operations in the Americas also curtailed molybdenum output.

Positive outlook for prices in 2017

Molybdenum prices fell back towards the end of 2016, though prices began to show positive movements in December 2016 and early 2017. Ferromolybdenum prices increased by 3.4% in December 2016, which was followed by a further increase of 1.5% in January and February 2017. Price increases are forecast to continue in 2017, as demand from the steel industry continues to increase and supply from some producers remains disrupted. The release of stockpiled material could slow the rate of any increase in prices, though it is unlikely the release of any stockpiled material will cause prices to fall significantly or for a prolonged period. The supply demand balance is forecast to remain tight in 2017, supporting ferromolybdenum prices of between US$9.00-US$11.00/lb Mo in 2017.

Beyond 2017, the introduction of new primary and by-product operations and increased output from existing producers will be required to keep pace with strong growth in molybdenum demand from special steel and chemical applications. This is expected to support further price increases, though stronger prices are expected to support increased output from 'swing' primary molybdenum producers which will slow price rises beyond 2019.

Roskill has released its new molybdenum market report with forecasts out to 2026. It is essential reading for anyone requiring a comprehensive overview of this sector.

Molybdenum: Global Industry, Markets & Outlook to 2026, 13th Edition is now available from Roskill Information Services Ltd, 54 Russell Road, London SW19 1QL UK. Click here to download the brochure and sample pages.

Web: www.roskill.com

SOURCE Roskill Information Services
MARLBOROUGH, Mass., March 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued medical technology guidance recommending the use of Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) powered by EnduraLife Battery Technology for treating patients with heart failure.

In their evaluation, NICE  which provides evidenced-based guidance to improve health and social care in the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom  concluded that the extended battery life observed with Boston Scientific EnduraLife-powered CRT-Ds is likely to reduce the number of avoidable replacement procedures a patient may have to undergo, thereby offering improved outcomes for patients and potential savings to the NHS in England of approximately 6 million in the first five years.

The savings were calculated by modeling the costs associated with early replacement procedures, such as a reduction in hospital admissions, bed days and procurement costs. Fewer replacement procedures also equate to a reduction in associated costs accrued from post-operative complications and infections  both of which also have a measurable impact on morbidity and mortality.

"The NICE guidance reinforces the multi-faceted importance of battery longevity in devices treating patients with heart failure and life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias," said Dr. Jay Wright, consultant cardiologist, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, Liverpool, United Kingdom. "Additionally, the reduction in replacement procedures and potential savings identified within the guidance could offer longer-term relief to NHS providers who have recently seen an increase in the number of patients requiring further in-hospital treatment."

The NICE medical technologies advisory committee found that the evidence from 16 independent clinical and economic studies supported a case for adoption and concluded that EnduraLife-powered CRT-Ds have a greater battery capacity and longer battery life compared with other CRT-Ds reviewed.

"Battery life should be a key consideration in cardiac device selection for the millions of patients who rely on them daily," said Kenneth Stein, M.D., senior vice president and chief medical officer, Global Health Policy and Rhythm Management, Boston Scientific. "We are proud to have our EnduraLife Battery Technology recognized by NICE's evidence-based review process and available for the benefit of patients and the healthcare system at large."

EnduraLife Battery Technology, which has nearly two times the usable battery capacity as certain competitive devices[i],[ii] and is packaged in a device up to 18 percent smaller than other CRT-Ds[iii],[iv],[v], was introduced in the company's line of CRT-Ds in 2008.

For more information on the NICE guidance, visit https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/mtg33.

About Boston Scientific

Boston Scientific transforms lives through innovative medical solutions that improve the health of patients around the world. As a global medical technology leader for more than 35 years, we advance science for life by providing a broad range of high performance solutions that address unmet patient needs and reduce the cost of healthcare. For more information, visit www.bostonscientific.com and connect on Twitter and Facebook.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words like "anticipate," "expect," "project," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "intend" and similar words. These forward-looking statements are based on our beliefs, assumptions and estimates using information available to us at the time and are not intended to be guarantees of future events or performance. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding our business plans, clinical trials, regulatory approvals and product performance and impact. If our underlying assumptions turn out to be incorrect, or if certain risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. These factors, in some cases, have affected and in the future (together with other factors) could affect our ability to implement our business strategy and may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the statements expressed in this press release. As a result, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of our forward-looking statements.

Factors that may cause such differences include, among other things: future economic, competitive, reimbursement and regulatory conditions; new product introductions; demographic trends; intellectual property; litigation; financial market conditions; and future business decisions made by us and our competitors. All of these factors are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many of them are beyond our control. For a further list and description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect our future operations, see Part I, Item 1A  Risk Factors in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we may update in Part II, Item 1A  Risk Factors in Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q we have filed or will file hereafter. We disclaim any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or in events, conditions or circumstances on which those expectations may be based, or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. This cautionary statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained in this document.

CONTACTS:

Media:

Laura Aumann

Boston Scientific Corporation

(651) 582-4251 (office)

[email protected]

European Media:

Chiara Ennas

Boston Scientific Corporation

+44 (0) 1442 411618 (office)

[email protected]

Susie Lisa, CFA

Investor Relations

Boston Scientific Corporation

(508) 683-5565 (office)

[email protected]

[i] Medtronic Evera XT VR DVBB2D4 Device Manual page 25.

[ii] Boston Scientific Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Physician's Technical Manual 359050-003 EN US 2014-01 page 30.

[iii] Boston Scientific CRT-D Physician's Technical Manual 359401-002 EN US 2015-10.

[iv] Quadra AssuraTM Cardiac Resynchronisation Therapy Defibrillator (CRT-D) product manual. https://www.sjm.com/en/professionals/resources-and-reimbursement/technical-resources/cardiac-rhythm-management/cardiac-resynchronization-therapy-crt-devices/crt-defibrillator/quadra-assura-cardiac-resynchronization-therapy-defibrillator-crt-d. Updated August 19, 2013. Accessed February 28, 2017.

[v] Quadra Assura MPTM Cardiac Resynchronisation Therapy Defibrillator (CRT-D) product manual. https://www.sjmglobal.com/en-int/professionals/resources-and-reimbursement/technical-resources/cardiac-rhythm-management/cardiac-resynchronization-therapy-crt-devices/crt-defibrillator/quadra-assura-mp-cardiac-resynchronisation-therapy-defibrillator-crt-d-cd3371-40c-and-cd3371-40qc-with-parylene-coating. Updated December 8, 2015. Accessed February 28, 2017.

SOURCE Boston Scientific Corporation

Related Links

http://www.bostonscientific.com


LONDON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The global niobium industry has witnessed substantial alterations to its corporate landscape over the past few years. As recently as 2011, the Brazilian niobium and ferroniobium giant CBMM was wholly owned by the Salles family, with Anglo American providing the balance of the country's ferroniobium output. The only other significant ferroniobium producer, Canada's Niobec, was in the hands of the Toronto-listed miner IAMGOLD.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150909/264974LOGO )



Things now look very different Roskill states. During 2011, CBMM sold 30% of itself for US$3.9Bn to two consortia of Asian investors, one Japanese/Korean, the other Chinese. Both groups include steelmakers (i.e., CBMM's own clients). In 2015, IAMGOLD sold Niobec to the Toronto-based private-equity firm Magris Resources, which is backed to a large extent by investors in Singapore and Hong Kong. That deal was worth US$0.5Bn. This was followed by the conclusion in 2016, of China Molybdenum's (CMOC) acquisition of Anglo American's Brazilian niobium and phosphate businesses for a total of US$1.7Bn, an earnings multiple that surprised most in the industry. With this, CMOC gained the Catalao operation, the second-largest producer of ferroniobium in the world.

These changes have been set against the backdrop of a relatively stable niobium market. Since 2011, ferroniobium supply has remained with the narrow range of 53-54ktpy Nb, with the exception of 2013. Brazil and Canada continue to dominate mine and ferroniobium supply with the Rest of the World accounting for only 2% of ferroniobium production.

For a metal that many people have never even heard of, upwards of US$5Bn of investment in less than five years is pretty impressive. Equally remarkable is that, from a standing start, Asian investors have gained control of, Roskill estimates, at least a third of global ferroniobium production capacity.

So why are people still investing very large sums of money in the industry, when growth prospects for steel are not spectacular and even the current ferroniobium production capacity is far bigger than demand and will remain so?

The reasons why the three ferroniobium producers divested are fairly clear. CBMM certainly didn't need the money; it wanted to lock-in some of its largest customers. IAMGOLD had acquired Niobec as part of a purchase of another gold miner and did not see it as a core business. It definitely needed the money to plug a gaping gold-related hole in its balance sheet. Anglo American simply wanted to get rid of non-core businesses, not to mention a large pile of debt.

Why other companies would have wanted to invest in this industry is somewhat less obvious. Demand for ferroniobium surged during the 2000s, more than doubling during the first half of the decade and continuing to grow until the global financial crisis kicked in. There are two main reasons for the growth. One is that consumers gained better understanding of the benefits of using ferroniobium in steel. The addition of niobium at the rate of fractions of a per cent by weight, and at a cost of only a few dollars per tonne of steel, greatly increases the strength of steel. This is of benefit in structural applications, where large structures can be built using less steel, and in automotive applications, where benefits come from weight savings and thus increases in fuel efficiencies.

The other driver was the explosive growth in global steel production, particularly in China. Related to this and applying mainly to CMOC, is the desire on the part of China to gain greater influence over its raw material supply chains (and CMOC is part-controlled by the Chinese government).

The global financial crisis caused a huge fall in demand for steel and for ferroniobium but it recovered quickly and in recent years has remained within a fairly narrow range close to the peak level of the late 2000s. The outlook for global steel production now seems starkly different to what it was just a few years ago, especially in China. Overall growth in steel production is not going to be the main future driver of demand for ferroniobium, Roskill contends.

Although the ferroniobium market is already comfortably met by existing (huge) surplus production capacity, and will remain so, new producers are trying to enter the market. There are several projects in the pipeline and at least two of them are at, or near, the financing stage. They would not be large in tonnage terms by CBMM standards but is there even a place for them? It all boils down to the market's desire for diversity of supply of what is, essentially, a commodity product and made using similar and well-understood processes by existing producers; processes that would also be used by any new producer. For any project these days, securing offtake agreements is key to securing project finance, particularly debt finance (which makes getting equity finance rather easier, too).

On the non-steel supply side, in 2008, Peruvian tin miner Minsur purchased Mineracao Taboca and its Pitinga tin mine from Paranapanema for US$0.47Bn. Mineracao Taboca's main product is a FeNb-Ta alloy (40% Nb, 7% Ta min), which is exported mostly to processors in China, USA, Estonia and Germany. In 2011, US-based Molycorp acquired the Sillamae plant in Estonia, which produces a variety of niobium and tantalum products. Following Molycorp's exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2016 under the name Neo Performance Materials, Molycorp Silmet was renamed NPM Silmet. Also in 2011, Uralkali gained the loparite mining operation at Lovozero and the niobium and tantalum oxide producer, Solikamsk (SMW), incorporating them into the same corporate group.

Consumption of niobium in non-steel market segments, such as high performance alloys, remains concentrated in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. These are used in aerospace and land-based power generation. These markets show trends that generally mirror overall economic trends very closely and future growth in demand for niobium will reflect that of the global economy. Consumption of niobium in non-steel applications in 2016 is estimated to have amounted to roughly one-tenth of total consumption.

The niobium industry in its current form is really only a few decades old. It has seen big changes over the last decade or so and there may well be more to come.

Roskill has released its new niobium market report with forecasts out to 2026. It is essential reading for anyone requiring a comprehensive overview of this sector.

Niobium: Global Industry, Markets & Outlook to 2026, 13th Edition is now available from Roskill Information Services Ltd, 54 Russell Road, London SW19 1QL UK. Click here to download the brochure and sample pages.

SOURCE Roskill Information Services
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nova Austral, noted salmon producer located in Region XII in Chile, the isolated Magellan and Antarctic Region, will previews its new brand of premium, sustainably farmed salmon  Sixty South  at the Seafood Expo in Boston this March and in Brussels in April.

Premium Salmon from the southernmost operative farms in the world and offering continuous supply of never treated salmon, certified ASC.

The name 'Sixty South' pays homage to the farm's waters of origin  sourced from pure, untouched, icy cold waters from the Antarctic  to raise salmon without anti-biotics or pesticides. It is the first Chilean salmon farmer to offer never treated, ASC-certified salmon year-round. The brand's extreme south location provides sustainable conditions for raising salmon at the highest standards.

This unique origin creates superior quality and flavor for a salmon that is smooth, rich and silky in texture.

Described by Nova Austral CEO, Nicos Nicolaides, "We are very excited to present a preview of Sixty South  our new brand of premium, sustainable salmon raised in Antarctic waters. In terms of a pristine and pure environment for farming salmon, the Antarctic waters are special. These are the southernmost operative farms in the world and offering continuous supply of never treated salmon, certified ASC. With Sixty South, we're offering a whole new class of sustainable salmon raised on natures terms. It's a product of exceptional quality that is responsibly raised without antibiotics or pesticides, to provide a distinct flavor and superior source of protein you can feel good about."

Sixty South is part of the company's ambitious program to supply salmon from ASC-certified sites year-round.

The company will be showcasing Sixty South for the first time at the Seafood Expo in Boston, Mass., March 19-21 2017. Stop by at Booth 2117 or contact the Nova Austral team to arrange an appointment.

About Nova Austral

Nova Austral is a Chilean salmon farmer and processor, owned by the equity funds Altor and Bain Capital. The company's entire operations are located in Chile's Region XII, in the Magellan and Antarctic Region, over 2,500 km from Santiago, the country's capital city. Nova Austral salmon enjoy the best environmental and biological conditions  their farms have no sea lice, no pesticide and no antibiotic use. It is one of few salmon companies in Chile projected to increase its production over the coming years and to continue its history of sustainable development, and has a local, world-class processing plant with 40K ton capacity in Tierra del Fuego island. Nova Austral, committed to the people of Magallanes and the Antarctic region, employs over 10% of the local workforce, is developing technical training programs and an ambitious housing program for the inhabitants of Porvenir.

Contact:

Nova Austral: [email protected] // www.nova-austral.cl // www.sixtysouthsalmon.com

Nicos Nicolaides, CEO: [email protected] // +56 993189329

Yngve Myhre, COB: [email protected] // +47 916 30174

Juan Esteban Navarrete, Sales Director - Americas and Asia: [email protected]

Per Arne Skjerven, Sales Director - Europe: [email protected]

Related Links

Nova Austral / Sixty South website

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com.

SOURCE Nova Austral

Related Links

http://www.nova-austral.cl


VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

According to Future Market Insights,

Advent of digital imaging technology can be identified as the point from where roll films were ordained to go out of business.

The declining demand for cameras with film rolls is directly associated with growing adoption of digital cameras. Consumers grew more inclined towards digital cameras, thereby making photo printing and merchandise obsolete.

Furthermore, time consumed by dye sublimation photo printers added to this shift towards instantaneously-rendered digital images. Poor image quality and expensive costs of conventional inkjet printers further deterred consumers from photo printing & merchandise.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO )



Future Market Insights' recent report predicts a very unavailing future for the global photo printing & merchandise market. Above factors have been compiled in the report to define the dynamics of global market for photo printing & merchandise. Based on these, the US$ 16.8 Bn market for photo printing & merchandise will see a decelerated revenue growth at 2.6% CAGR, bringing in just over US$ 21.7 Bn by the end of 2026. Future Market Insights projects that in the ten-year forecast period, photo printing & merchandise worth a little less than US$ 5 Bn will be sold across the globe. The report also highlights trends which will, in one way or another, boost the sluggish adoption of photo printing among digital age consumers.

Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1588

Firstly, manufacturers of photo printing merchandise are expected to maintain more focus on introducing kiosks for increasing marketing exposure. Companies like Fujifilm Group have already deployed their SmartPix photo kiosks across various commercial settings such as supermarkets, malls and camera shops, and have also augmented them with enhanced connectivity features. Instating NFC capabilities in photo printing kiosks can be also observed as another promising opportunity for manufacturers to generate interest among customers towards conventional photo printing.

Although, almost half of global photo printing & merchandise revenues are likely to be coming from online sales. While instant kiosks account for less than 10% of the market value, online distribution of photo printing & merchandise will bringing more than US$ 12.2 Bn revenues through 2026. Meanwhile, distribution of photo printing & merchandise through retail channels will be scaling down rigorously, exhibiting a negative 1.6% CAGR during the forecast period.

Preview Analysis on Global Photo Printing and Merchandise Market Segmentation By Module - Film Printing, Digital Printing; By Mode Of Printing - Desktop Application, Mobile Application; By Distribution Channel - Instant Kiosk, Over The Counter, Retail and Online: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/photo-printing-market

The report has analysed that in 2016, an estimated one-third of global photo printing & merchandise revenues emanated from sales of film printing. This indicates that a majority of consumers are preferring digital printing merchandise. Also, over the forecast period, the report projects an impressive growth in demand for mobile application-based photo printing. Desktop applications are expected to lose out to mobile applications as this mode of printing is projected to register a comparatively faster revenue growth at 4.9% CAGR.

Speak with Analysis for any Report Related Queries: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1588

The report also predicts fastest revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan region - 3.9% CAGR. North America is also expected to dominate with nearly one-fourth stake in global revenues, although the region is likely to lose out its presence beyond 2020. Leading manufacturers of photo printing & merchandise, profiled in the report, include Sanpfish, Eastman Kodak Company, Cimpress NV, Bay Photo Inc., Digitalab, AdoramaPix LCC, Shutterfly, Inc., and Mpix.

More from FMI's Cutting-edge Intelligence:

Europe & Asia Pacific Herbal Beauty Products Market Segmentation By Type - Hair Care (Hair Oil, Powder, Shampoo, Conditioner, Masks And Creams), Skin Care (Cleansers & Toners, Cream & Lotion, Scrubs & Facewash), Fragrance and Oral Care; By Distribution Channel - Supermarket, Specialty Stores, Departmental Stores, Drug Stores, Beauty Salons and Online/Direct Selling: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/europe-and-asia-pacific-herbal-beauty-products-market

Segmentation By Type - Hair Care (Hair Oil, Powder, Shampoo, Conditioner, Masks And Creams), Skin Care (Cleansers & Toners, Cream & Lotion, Scrubs & Facewash), Fragrance and Oral Care; By Distribution Channel - Supermarket, Specialty Stores, Departmental Stores, Drug Stores, Beauty Salons and Online/Direct Selling: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/europe-and-asia-pacific-herbal-beauty-products-market Middle East Flooring and Carpet Market Segmentation By Product Type - Carpets, Tufting, Woven, Rugs, Artificial Grass, Carpet Tiles, Vinyl Flooring and Laminate Parquet Flooring; By Material - Polypropylene, Nylon, Polyester and Others; By Application - Residential, Commercial Offices, Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare & Hospitals, Education Institutes, Automotive, Industrial and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/middle-east-flooring-and-carpet-market

Segmentation By Product Type - Carpets, Tufting, Woven, Rugs, Artificial Grass, Carpet Tiles, Vinyl Flooring and Laminate Parquet Flooring; By Material - Polypropylene, Nylon, Polyester and Others; By Application - Residential, Commercial Offices, Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare & Hospitals, Education Institutes, Automotive, Industrial and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/middle-east-flooring-and-carpet-market U.S Men's Underwear Market Taxonomy By Category - Regular Brief, Boxer Brief, Boxer Shorts, Trunks and Thongs; By Distribution Channel - Mass Merchant, Mono-Brand Outlet, Pharmacy Store, Online Store and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/us-mens-underwear-market

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 and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.

Browse More Retail and Consumer Products Market Insights

Contact Us

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Valley Cottage, NY 10989,

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T: +1-347-918-3531

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Website: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com

SOURCE Future Market Insights
STATE COLLEGE, Pa., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of the Wolf Administration's Schools That Teach tour, Education Secretary Pedro A. Rivera visited State College Area High School this week to meet with students and hear their perspectives on the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools.

"The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is committed to helping schools ensure that every learner has access to a world-class education that helps prepare them for success in and out of the classroom," Rivera said. "It is critical that we create a culture of inclusiveness at all schools, where students feel safe, respected, and welcomed. Students can offer valuable input on these topics that shape their daily educational experience and help administrators and policy makers develop resources that will help improve the overall climate of Pennsylvania schools."

The students represented a variety of groups including student government, the Student Senate, the Gay Straight Alliance Club, and the Diversity Club. District superintendent Dr. Robert O'Donnell and high school principal Mr. Curtis Johnson also joined the discussion.

The conversation centered on the importance of student voice and involvement in mobilizing efforts when issues arise that require a change in the school community. Additional discussion centered around the important role teachers can play in promoting a classroom culture that allows for students to share ideas free from judgment or criticism and that student clubs can be a safe place for students to address issues and topics that are important to them while also serving as an effective link between individual students and the administration.

When racially-charged incidents occurred in some schools last November, the Wolf Administration condemned the acts of bigotry and intolerance and releasing a 60-second PSA to promote a message of diversity. PDE also worked quickly to convene a group of stakeholders to solicit their expertise and provided resources to ensure schools' immediate needs were met.

Currently, the Department is preparing a toolkit to provide educators and administrators with a resource to help them prevent, respond to, and recover from bias incidents in their schools.

For more information about Pennsylvania's education policies and programs, visit the Department of Education's website at www.education.pa.gov or follow PDE on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. A Google Map of all tour stops is available here.

MEDIA CONTACT: Nicole Reigelman, 717-783-9802

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Education

Related Links

http://www.education.pa.gov


A press conference was held on March 16 th and saw the participation of Mr. Wiwy Sasongko -- General Manager Quintiles IMS Indonesia, Mr. Kendrariadi Suhanda -- Chairman of the Pharma Materials Management Club (PMMC) and Deputy secretary general at Indonesian Pharmaceutical Association (GP Farmasi), Mr. Teddy Iman Soewahjo -- Executive Director and Head of Packed Ingredients Division of PMMC, Mr. Vincent Harijanto -- Head of GP Farmasi's Research and Development of Raw Ingredients Trade and Industry and Vice Chairman of PMMC and Mr. Ivan Ferrari -- General Manager, PT UBM Pameran Niaga Indonesia.

Several key topics, relevant to the region, were discussed. In fact, the slowing pace of global markets and the increasing threat of a new protectionist wave is transforming the outlook of South East Asian manufacturers which are now shifting their focus more on the actual prospects of regional exports. Mirroring this trend, international investors and companies are now pushing for more business in this regional market, across the entire ASEAN economy.

Comprising of 40% of the SEA economic output, Indonesia is the largest pharma market in the South East Asia Pacific region (SEA/AP). The country has the biggest and fastest growing economy in the SEA region and a pharma economy consisting of over 200 pharmaceutical companies. There are already 25-30 generic domestic companies with access to the international market, and equally, there are approximately 35 multinational companies established in the area.

These favourable macro trends are reflected at CPhI South East Asia where domestic manufacturers in particular are increasingly attending the event, with a view to opening up sales in international markets. As the biggest pharma event in the ASEAN region, CPhI South East Asia will gather over 5,500 attendees from 41 countries and more than 260 exhibitors (click here for the full list) to network, learn and do business for three days. Co-locating this year with Health Ingredients South East Asia, the event welcomes the best pharma ingredients professionals, packaging experts, machinery providers and contract manufacturing as well as nutraceutical companies from across the region.

The event's conference programme is a dedicated, content-enriched platform that will cover business outlook and markets, regulations and compliance, and manufacturing and supply chain. Sessions include "Strategies to improve market access", "Effective compliance strategies when managing 3rd parties" and "Big Data trends and applications in Supply Chain" and panel discussions on "A look at the pharmaceutical industry in South East Asia" and "ASEAN regulatory harmonization developments".

The event is supported by the national and regional governments and regional trade groups, such as: the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Industry, Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board, National Agency for Drug and Food Control.

Highlighted features at CPhI South East Asia in 2017 include:

The Investment Forum, matching key international players interested in investing in Indonesia with the top tier pharma companies in the country looking for reliable partners.

matching key international players interested in investing in with the top tier pharma companies in the country looking for reliable partners. All distributors in the region have been invited to visit the event and network with peers and exhibitors through CPhI South East Asia's Distributor Network -- expanding its database of providers in the region with the aim of magnifying the reach throughout the whole ASEAN region.

-- expanding its database of providers in the region with the aim of magnifying the reach throughout the whole ASEAN region. The Business Matchmaking programme provides attendees with the opportunity to browse potential clients, schedule meetings before the event, and find new business partners.

provides attendees with the opportunity to browse potential clients, schedule meetings before the event, and find new business partners. Roadshows have been organized in many ASEAN countries to further promote CPhI South East Asia as a pharma bridge in the region.

For more information please visit: http://www.cphi.com/sea/

About CPhI

CPhI brings together more than 100,000 pharmaceutical professionals each year. CPhI hosts events in Europe, Korea, China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, Istanbul and Russia.

Ivan Ferrari

+62-21-2930-5959

[email protected]

SOURCE CPhI SEA

Related Links

http://www.cphi.com/sea


With a continued shift away from fee-for-service payment models and transition from volume to value-based care, healthcare organizations are challenged to help prevent and reduce costs while improving the quality of care. At ACC.17, Philips will demonstrate how its comprehensive suite of cardiology solutions enable hospitals to reduce system response and streamline processes to improve the management of cardiac patients in emergency situations. By enabling seamless communication across the health continuum, from home to hospital and back, Philips is bridging the gap in patient flow before entrance to the hospital and after discharge, which is critical to reducing costs and achieving optimal outcomes for patients.

"As a focused leader in health technology, Philips aims to provide integrated solutions across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and after care at home, in order to combat the rising incidence of chronic diseases such as those caused by cardiovascular conditions," said Bert van Meurs, Business Leader, Image Guided Therapy. "We offer a broad portfolio of innovative solutions to optimize the image-guided minimally invasive treatment of cardiovascular conditions, while managing costs."

Philips will exhibit the company's advanced, connected health offerings in the cardiology space at ACC.17, including:

Azurion  Philips' recently launched, next generation image-guided therapy platform allows clinicians to easily and confidently perform a wide range of routine and complex procedures, helping them to optimize interventional lab performance and provide superior care. Azurion is powered by ConnectOS, a new operating system that provides a seamless integration of real-time information from all relevant technologies in the interventional lab. ACC.17 attendees will have one of the first opportunities to interact with Azurion firsthand.

 Philips' recently launched, next generation image-guided therapy platform allows clinicians to easily and confidently perform a wide range of routine and complex procedures, helping them to optimize interventional lab performance and provide superior care. Azurion is powered by ConnectOS, a new operating system that provides a seamless integration of real-time information from all relevant technologies in the interventional lab. ACC.17 attendees will have one of the first opportunities to interact with Azurion firsthand. Evolution 3.0  Philips introduces the X8-2t Live 3D TEE transducer , which allows for new levels of Live 3D imaging bringing the next generation of 3D TEE features, including a new acoustic design with higher frequencies and bandwidth to provide increased resolution and tissue filling. Fast, easy and confident transthoracic and transesophageal echo allows clinicians to diagnose surgical pathology in real time.

 Philips introduces the , which allows for new levels of Live 3D imaging bringing the next generation of 3D TEE features, including a new acoustic design with higher frequencies and bandwidth to provide increased resolution and tissue filling. Fast, easy and confident transthoracic and transesophageal echo allows clinicians to diagnose surgical pathology in real time. HeartModel AI  Philips' premier Anatomical Intelligence Ultrasound (AIUS) application brings advanced automated quantification, 3D views, robust reproducibility and significant time-savings to echocardiography quantification. Results of a multi-center study validating the robustness of Philips HeartModel AI were recently published in the European Heart Journal.

 Philips' premier Anatomical Intelligence Ultrasound (AIUS) application brings advanced automated quantification, 3D views, robust reproducibility and significant time-savings to echocardiography quantification. Results of a multi-center study validating the robustness of Philips HeartModel were recently published in the European Heart Journal. IntelliSpace Cardiovascular  Provides access to advanced cardiovascular informatics applications, brings multi-modality images and clinical tools together in a single workspace for integrated clinical decision support. It seamlessly integrates with IntelliSpace Portal advanced visualization solution, IntelliSpace ECG data management solution, and the Philips Xper Information Management cath lab workflow solution.

 Provides access to advanced cardiovascular informatics applications, brings multi-modality images and clinical tools together in a single workspace for integrated clinical decision support. It seamlessly integrates with IntelliSpace Portal advanced visualization solution, IntelliSpace ECG data management solution, and the Philips Xper Information Management cath lab workflow solution. DreamStation BiPAP autoSV Advanced  Designed to deliver optimal ventilation with minimal intervention for patients with central sleep apnea, complex sleep apnea and periodic breathing. Philips' clinically proven algorithm provides support when needed to help reduce events and normalize ventilation and works with the patient's breathing pattern to minimize applied pressure, pressure support and machine breaths which can help patients experience comfortable, restful sleep.

Also at this year's conference, new groundbreaking iFR (instant wave-Free Ratio) outcome results from over 4,500 patients will be announced on Saturday, March 18 at 10:45 a.m. The data, which represent the largest randomized coronary physiology outcome studies to date, has the potential to help shape revascularization guidelines. The announcement and presentation of the outcome data follows Philips' announcement last year of three clinical studies designed to assess the safety of deferring cardiovascular interventions using the company's proprietary iFR pressure measurement technology.

In addition to presenting data around the benefits of iFR technology, Philips will host "Cardiology Talks," a program of short talks and conversation on key findings, trends and ideas impacting the cardiology specialty today. During the 20-minute sessions held in the Forum area of the Philips booth, clinicians, scientists and thought leaders will share their experiences and perspectives, discuss innovations, and invite attendees to join in the conversation. To view the full schedule of sessions, visit the Philips Cardiology Talks page.

For more information on Philips' integrated cardiology solutions, visit Philip's booth (#1024) at ACC.17 or visit the Philips event page. Follow the #ACC17 conversation via @PhilipsLiveFrom and @PhilipsHealth.

For further information, please contact:

Alicia Cafardi

Philips Group Press Office

Tel: +1 412-523-9616

Email: [email protected]

Twitter:@aliciacafardi

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2016 sales of EUR 17.4 billion and employs approximately 71,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

SOURCE Royal Philips

Related Links

http://www.usa.philips.com


English French

Paris, Amsterdam, March 17, 2017

Press Release

The Supervisory Board of Unibail-Rodamco will elect its new Chairman following its Annual General Meeting, in accordance with its succession plan

Due to the successive mandates as a member of the Supervisory Board, Rob ter Haar will cease his responsibilities as Chairman and member of the Supervisory Board of Unibail-Rodamco at the General Meeting of April 25, 2017.

A Dutch national, Mr ter Haar has been a member of the Supervisory Board of Unibail-Rodamco since 2007, and its Chairman since 2012.

For the same reason, Yves Lyon-Caen, member of the Supervisory Board since 2007, will also leave the Supervisory Board at the General Meeting.

The General Meeting will be invited to approve the appointment of three new members to the Supervisory Board, Colin Dyer, Philippe Collombel and Roderick Munsters, as well as the reappointment of Dagmar Kollmann, each for a 3-year term.

A British and US national, Mr Dyer, 64 years old, was President and CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. until 2016 and is currently a non-executive Director of this company.

A French national, Mr Collombel, 56 years old, is Co-Managing Partner of Partech Ventures.

A Dutch and Canadian national, Mr Munsters, 53 years old, was until recently Head of Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management.

Following a thorough succession process led by Jean-Louis Laurens, Vice-President of the Supervisory Board, with the Governance, Nomination & Remuneration Committee, the Supervisory Board will formally appoint Mr Dyer as its Chairman following the Annual General Meeting.

Christophe Cuvillier, Chairman of the Management Board of Unibail-Rodamco, states: "On behalf of the Group, its Management Board and all its employees, I would like extend my heartfelt thanks to Rob ter Haar for his unwavering support and the relationship of great trust he built up between the Supervisory Board and the Management Board during these past ten years. I am very pleased that the Group will welcome to its Supervisory Board three great professionals with such international profiles and complementary skills. I look forward to working on the development of the Group with Mr Dyer, our future Chairman of the Supervisory Board."

For further information, please contact:

Investor Relations

Marine Huet

+33 1 76 77 58 02

marine.huet@unibail-rodamco.com

Media Relations

Pauline Duclos-Lenoir

+33 1 76 77 57 94

pauline.duclos-lenoir@unibail-rodamco.com

About Unibail-Rodamco

Created in 1968, Unibail-Rodamco SE is Europe's largest listed commercial property company, with a presence in 11 EU countries, and a portfolio of assets valued at 40.5 billion as of December 31, 2016. As an integrated operator, investor and developer, the Group aims to cover the whole of the real estate value creation chain. With the support of its 1,990 professionals, Unibail-Rodamco applies those skills to highly specialised market segments such as large shopping centres in major European cities and large offices and convention & exhibition centres in the Paris region.

The Group distinguishes itself through its focus on the highest architectural, city planning and environmental standards. Its long term approach and sustainable vision focus on the development or redevelopment of outstanding places to shop, work and relax. Its commitment to environmental, economic and social sustainability has been recognised by inclusion in the FTSE4Good and STOXX Global ESG Leaders indexes.

The Group is a member of the CAC 40, AEX 25 and EuroSTOXX 50 indices. It benefits from an A rating from Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings.

For more information, please visit our website: www.unibail-rodamco.com
AUSTIN, Texas, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Portal Instruments, a clinical stage medical device start-up company based in Cambridge, MA received the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award in the Health, Med & Biotech category at the 20th annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Innovations Awards ceremony. The award was in recognition of Portal Instruments' ground-breaking work in the development of an innovative, needle-free drug delivery platform to transform the administration of high viscosity biologics and enhance the patient experience for chronic disease management. Known for celebrating the most inspiring, creative advancements of the year, the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award recognized Portal's needle-free drug delivery platform as "the new technology that best improves the quality, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care in health and medicine."

Emceed by "Sleepy Hollow" actresses Janina Gavankar and Lyndie Greenwood, the Awards Ceremony honored 13 of the best and latest advancements across categories including Health Med & Biotech, Innovation in Connecting People, Innovative 3-DIY, Music & Audio Innovation, New Economy, Privacy & Security, Responsive Design, SciFi No Longer, Smart Cities, Student Innovation, Visual Media Experience, VR & AR and Wearable Tech. Six additional honors were awarded at the Ceremony, including: David Carr Prize, Best of Show, People's Choice, Breakout Trend of the Event, Speaker of the Event and Meme of the Year.

"We are delighted to receive this prestigious Interactive Innovation Award from the SXSW community, further validating our break-through technology and mission to make needles and syringes a thing of the past and to empower patients with a transformed therapy experience," said Patrick Anquetil, CEO of Portal Instruments.

The Portal drug delivery technology is needle-free, fast and computer-controlled. It automatically adjusts the injection velocity up to one thousand times in the half-second it takes to completely deliver a 1 ml dose. The result is the precise administration of high viscosity biologic drugs through the skin, via an extremely collimated jet, the size of a strand of hair. HIPPA-compliant, automatic collection and transfer of injection and health data sets a new standard of engagement between the care team and the patient. With a clear view of patient behavior, protocols can be better managed, research is better informed and compliance is improved.

"The Interactive community extends our sincere congratulations to this year's winners for this esteemed industry accolade and well-deserved recognition," said Mason Stewart, SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards Coordinator. "Over the next few years, we look forward to seeing many more outstanding achievements from the winners of the 2017 SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards."

For a complete list of SXSW Interactive Innovation Award finalists and winners, visit the following: https://www.sxsw.com/apply-to-participate/interactive-innovation-awards/.

About Portal Instruments

Portal Instruments is a Series B funded medical device company focused on advanced drug delivery and backed by strategic and venture investors. Portal Instruments is developing and commercializing a highly innovative needle-free drug delivery platform technology to transform the administration of medicines and improve the patient experience for chronic diseases. Portal's needle-free delivery technology is derived from research at MIT and enables the administration of high viscosity biologic drugs with less discomfort and without the anxiety of handling needles. Real time tracking and reporting sets a new standard for interactivity between the patient and care teams, monitoring adherence and potentially improving patient outcomes. For more information, please visit: www.portalinstruments.com or follow @portalcambridge on Twitter.

About SXSW Interactive

SXSW dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. The event, an essential destination for global professionals, features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. SXSW 2017 will take place March 10-19, 2017.

SXSW 2017 is sponsored by Esurance, Mazda, Monster Energy, Bud Light, Capital One, McDonald's, The Austin Chronicle, Sonicbids and Pandora.

SOURCE Portal Instruments, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.portalinstruments.com


WASHINGTON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Members of the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) will bring their concerns directly to Capitol Hill when they convene April 5-6 in Washington, D.C., for the 2017 PIA Federal Legislative Summit (FLS).



The annual PIA Federal Legislative Summit is a gathering of PIA members from around the country who come together to meet with their members of Congress and advocate for their positions on issues important to Professional Insurance Agents.

"Legislative victories on our issues are made possible by the continued commitment and involvement by PIA members," said PIA National President Gary Blackwell. "It's part of our year-round coordinated program of grassroots advocacy."

PIA members will encourage Congress to defend state regulation of insurance; abolish the Federal Insurance Office (FIO); provide a long-term authorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP); protect a strong and stable crop insurance program as part of the new Farm Bill; and reinstate fair and just compensation in healthcare.



In addition, PIA will support a clear and simple tax code, a reduction in individual and corporate income tax rates for small businesses, and will oppose tax provisions or regulations that impede small business growth.



"PIA members will advocate for solutions that enable agents to better serve their clients and communities," said PIA National Vice President of Government Relations Jon Gentile. "We look forward to continuing to work with lawmakers to support the independent agency system and Main Street insurance agents everywhere."

The 2017 PIA Federal Legislative Summit begins on the evening of Wednesday, April 5, at the Crystal City Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, PIA's headquarters hotel, with an in-depth issues briefing session and Q&A to prepare attendees for their congressional visits. The day ends with a fundraising event for the Professional Insurance Agents Political Action Committee (PIAPAC).

The following morning, April 6, PIA members will gather for a kickoff breakfast before making their way to Capitol Hill for a day of advocacy visits with their members of Congress.

"The new Congress combined with the new Administration presents a chance to further advance PIA's legislative priorities," said PIA National Executive Vice President & CEO Mike Becker. "We are optimistic that the victories PIA has achieved in recent years will accelerate in the new environment in 2017."



For more information, visit the FLS webpage at www.piafls.com.

PIA thanks its FLS Platinum sponsors The PIA Partnership and LexisNexis Risk Solutions; Gold sponsor ADM Crop Risk Services; Silver sponsors Liberty Mutual Insurance, Nationwide Independent and State Auto Insurance Companies; and Bronze sponsors The Motorists Insurance Group and the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI).



Founded in 1931, PIA is a national trade association that represents member insurance agents and their employees who sell and service all kinds of insurance, but specialize in coverage of automobiles, homes, and businesses. PIA members are Local Agents Serving Main Street AmericaSM. PIA's web address is www.pianet.com.

This press release is online at:

http://www.pianet.com/news/press-releases/2017/piaholds2017flsapril56301617

2017 PIA Advocacy and Policy Priorities:

http://www.pianet.com/docs/2017/piapolicyplan2017

SOURCE National Association of Professional Insurance Agents

Related Links

http://www.pianet.com/


Two-day auction sets new site records for sales, as well as number of bidders, sellers and lots

FORT WORTH, TX, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - As the dust settled after two action-packed days at Ritchie Bros.' Fort Worth auction site (March 15-16), the sales figures and turnout revealed the company's largest-ever Texas auction. More than 5,675 people registered to bid in person and online, purchasing 6,250+ equipment items and trucks for US$75+ million.

Approximately 45 percent (US$33+ million) of the equipment in the auction was sold to online bidders. U.S. buyers purchased US$69+ million of equipment (92 percent), including US$33+ million sold to Texas buyers (45 percent). International buyers purchased eight percent.

"We've started strong in Texas with a great Houston auction in February and now a record-breaker here in Fort Worth," said Dolan Aucoin, Sales Director, Ritchie Bros. "We had a packed house in Fort Worth this week, with very active bidding and solid pricing on the record-setting selection of equipment and trucks available. As a result, we set a new Texas record for gross auction proceeds, and were up 32 percent over the same auction last year. I'd like to offer a huge thank you to all the sellers and buyers who took part in this historic auction."

Ritchie Bros. sold equipment for a site record 690+ sellers, including 100+ hydraulic excavators, 600+ vocational trucks, 670+ trailers, and a large selection of oil & gas equipment.

Specific sales highlights:

Four 2011 Grove RT890E 90 ton 4x4x4 rough terrain cranes sold for a combined US$1.18 million

Five 1998 Caterpillar 583R pipelayers sold for a combined US$1.55 million

A 2008 American Augers DD440 portable directional drill sold for US$700,000

A 2012 Caterpillar 623H elevating motor scraper sold for US$390,000

A 2010 Caterpillar D8T dozer sold for US$310,000

Auction quick facts: Fort Worth, TX (March 2017)

Gross auction proceeds  US$75+ million * new site record

US$75+ million * Amount sold to online bidders  US$33+ million

US$33+ million Total registered bidders (onsite and online)  5,675+ * new site record

5,675+ * Online registered bidders  3,800+ * new site record

3,800+ * Number of lots sold  6,250+ * new site record

6,250+ * Number of sellers  690+ *new site record

Ritchie Bros. has dozens of auctions on its upcoming auction calendar at rbauction.com, including its next Houston, TX on April 19  20, 2017. The company's next Fort Worth auction will be held in May 2017; contact the site at +1.817.237.6544 to consign your equipment.

About Ritchie Bros.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world's largest industrial auctioneer, and one of the world's largest sellers of used equipment for the construction, transportation, agriculture, energy, mining, forestry and other industries. Ritchie Bros.TM asset management and disposition solutions include live unreserved public auctions with on-site and online bidding; EquipmentOneTM, an online auction marketplace; Mascus, a global online equipment listing service; private negotiated sales through Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty; and a range of ancillary services, including financing and leasing through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services. Ritchie Bros. has operations in 19 countries, including 45 auction sites worldwide. Learn more at rbauction.com, EquipmentOne.com, mascus.com, rbauction.com/privatetreaty and rbauction.com/financing.

Photos and video for embedding in media stories are available at rbauction.com/media.

SOURCE Ritchie Bros.
HILLSDALE, Mich., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillsdale College congratulates alumnus Ryan Walsh,'09, for being named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30: Law & Policy list. Walsh joins 600 select individuals across 20 industries recognized on the prestigious Forbes lists, during what the magazine called "the most extreme competition ever."

"Ryan was an exceptional student here at Hillsdale. He exemplifies the good character and sound principles the College stands for," said Nathan Schlueter, professor of philosophy and director of the pre-law program, who served as an academic mentor for Walsh. "A real classical liberal arts education, rooted in a study of the great books, is an excellent preparation for the legal profession. Ryan's success shows that."

Walsh currently serves as the chief deputy solicitor general for the state of Wisconsin. He was previously an associate attorney at the elite law firm Jones Day where he focused on administrative and constitutional law. He clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Walsh was class president during his senior year at Hillsdale College and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies. He earned his J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School with high honors and was named a John Marshall Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.

The 2017 Forbes "30 Under 30" list recognizes just 600 individuals from among 15,000 nominations, which constitutes a 4 percent acceptance rate that is lower than the nation's two most selective colleges, Stanford University (4.8 percent) and Harvard University (5.2 percent), according to Forbes' website.

Walsh's full profile in the Forbes "30 Under 30" list can be found here.

About Hillsdale College

Hillsdale College, founded in 1844, has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an educational outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a circulation of more than 3.5 million. More information available at Hillsdale.edu.

SOURCE Hillsdale College

Related Links

http://www.Hillsdale.edu


FARMINGDALE, N.Y., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Mother Theodore statue dedication event will take place this Saturday, March, 18, 2017, at approximately 5:15 PM on the parish grounds of St. Joseph Catholic Church. 1029 Kundek St., Jasper, IN 47546-1918.

Saint Joseph Parish was founded in 1837 by a missionary priest from Croatia. His name was Father Joseph Kundek. From the moment of his arrival, Father Kundek applied his abundant energy and dedication to building up the community of 39 families. His effort in those early years is evidenced by the following list of accomplishments which preceded his death in 1857 at the age of 47. Starting in 1841 he built the new brick church; 1844 founded the parishes in Ferdinand, Fulda, Celestine and Rockport: the coming of the Sisters of Providence to Jasper; 1845 building of the Dubois County Courthouse; 1854 The coming of the Benedictine monks from Einsiedeln, Switzerland, to found Saint Meinrad Abbey; 1855 Building of the rectory. Father Kundek played a role in the missionary efforts of the Church over the larger part of Southern Indiana, Illinois and as far as Chicago and New Orleans.

The first church of the parish was a small log cabin. Within 3 years the congregation consisted of nearly 100 families and had outgrown the original facility. A new brick church was begun in 1840. The building was under roof and used for the first time on December 8, 1841. The brick Church, small in comparison to the present one, was 100 feet long and 54 feet wide.

The present church is the product of the almost singlehanded effort exerted by the fourth pastor, Father Fidelis Maute, O.S.B. Father Fidelis served as architect, contractor, foreman, laborer, fund raiser, and pastor to the new church. All the building materials and labor for the building were provided by the parishioners. The foundation was begun in 1867 and the cornerstone blessed and laid in 1868 by the first missionary to Jasper, Bishop de St. Palais. The church was completed and blessed in 1880 and consecrated in 1888. The cost of the original construction was $80,000.

The church was renovated in 1954 at a cost of $200,000. During this renovation the walls and columns were stripped of their plaster, reinforced and covered with sandstone veneer.

Fr. Fidelis finished the belfry of the tower. The tower was completed in 1904 under the direction of Fr. Basil Heusler, O. S. B. The tower now stands at 235 feet. Fr, Basil took the idea for its design from the tower that is home to Big Ben in London. There are four bells housed in the tower, weighing 12 tons with their hangings. The bells can be heard 10 miles from the church.

The 3 altars are Italian marble; the main altar has two groups of figures representing Abraham and the Melchisedech and each is 7 feet tall. The three large mosaics above the altars were imported from Austria in small sections and assembled on the location. The mosaic over the main altar represents Christ the High Priest. Above the altar on the north side of the church, the Assumption of Mary is portrayed, and above the south altar one sees the betrothal of Mary to Joseph. The stained glass windows are Swiss and were installed in 1898.

Within the church, the 14 columns supporting the roof are 67 feet high, each a single giant timber of yellow poplar cut from nearby forests and covered in plaster. From the floor to the apex of the groined naves measures 90 feet. The total dimensions of the church are 82'5" by 193'5". The walls are from 4 to 6 feet in thickness and made of sandstone.

On the south lawn of the church stands a cross which is the result of a vow made over 100 years ago. During their voyage to the United States, a violent storm threatened the lives of the German immigrants aboard. George Bauman, a stonecutter, vowed that if they should land safely he would erect a stone crucifix wherever they settled. The cross was completed in 1848 in fulfillment of that vow. Destroyed in a storm itself in 1928, the original was replaced by the present figure in 1932.

The "Plaza of Pastors" on the east lawn of the church honors 3 of St. Joseph's great pastors who served the parish for a combined total of over 100 years. Fr. Basil Heusler, O.S.B. (1898-1942) stands in the center. Fr. Fidelis Maute, O.S.B. (1865-1897), with a carpenter's square in one hand and a cross in the other, has his face turned toward the church he built. Fr. Joseph Kundek (1837-1857), the founder, looks out over the town of Jasper and the other towns in the distance which he founded. Pastor in charge of present day St. Joseph Catholic Church is Father Raymond A. Brenner, whose leadership has continued the proud tradition of excellence and faith so closely tied with this church and its congregation.

Father Brenner was born in Evansville, Indiana. He earned his B.B.A. at St. Meinrad College and his M.Div. at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology He was ordained as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1969. He was a Deacon of the Nativity Church in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1968 and Associate Pastor of St. John's Church, Loogootee, Indiana, 1969-74. From there, he was Pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Church, Haubstadt, Indiana, 1974-78, Pastor of Saint Mary's Church, Sullivan, Indiana, 1982-86, Pastor of St. Joan of Arc Church, Jasonville, Indiana, 1982-86, Pastor of Resurrection Church, Evansville, Indiana, 1986-02. Since then, he has been Pastor of Saint Joseph Church in Jasper, Indiana. Pastor Brenner's expertise lies in marriage counseling, training in financial management and support groups for divorcees.

Pastor Brenner has numerous affiliations including: Member, Catholic Charities Board, Evansville, 1972-75; Vice President, Ministerial Association, Sullivan, Indiana, 1985-86; President, Council of Priests, Evansville, Indiana, 1989; Diocesan Chaplain, Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Evansville, Indiana, 1990-94;Member, Wabash Valley Human Services, Vincennes, Indiana, 1982-86; Sullivan Housing Authority, 1983-85; Federal Emergency Management Agency, Sullivan, Indiana, 1984-96; Emergency Food Bank, Sullivan, Indiana, 1984-86; Spiritual Advisor, Evansville Catholic Cursillo, 1994 to the present; Chaplain, German Township Volunteer Fire Department, 1998-2002; Community Marriage Builders, 1997-2006; Member Optimists (Chaplain Evansville Westside Club, 1990-2002, District Chaplain, Indiana South, 2006-07); Elks Order of Moose Democrat. Father Brenner is also an esteemed member of the original Strathmore's Who's Who, who continues to play a pivotal role in the promotion of Saint Joseph Catholic Church in 2016-17, alongside their America's Registry sister organization.

Historically, Strathmore's Who's Who publishes an annual two thousand page hard cover biographical registry, honoring successful individuals in the fields of Business, the Arts and Sciences, Law, Engineering and Government. We select mid to upper level management professionals from companies, large and small, throughout the United States as well as internationally. In addition the entire publication is published in a searchable database on this website giving many types of search options. Based on one's position and lifetime of accomplishments, we honor professional men and women in all academic areas and professions. Inclusion is limited to individuals who have demonstrated leadership and achievement in their occupation, industry or profession. We are proud to promote Father Raymond A. Brenner and the beautiful and blessed Saint Joseph Catholic Church.

SOURCE Strathmore's Who's Who
FARMINGDALE, N.Y., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The St. Mother Theodore statue dedication event will take place this Saturday, March, 18, 2017, at approximately 5:15 PM on the parish grounds of St. Joseph Catholic Church. 1029 Kundek St., Jasper, IN 47546-1918.

Saint Joseph Parish was founded in 1837 by a missionary priest from Croatia. His name was Father Joseph Kundek. From the moment of his arrival, Father Kundek applied his abundant energy and dedication to building up the community of 39 families. His effort in those early years is evidenced by the following list of accomplishments which preceded his death in 1857 at the age of 47. Starting in 1841 he built the new brick church; 1844 founded the parishes in Ferdinand, Fulda, Celestine and Rockport: the coming of the Sisters of Providence to Jasper; 1845 building of the Dubois County Courthouse; 1854 The coming of the Benedictine monks from Einsiedeln, Switzerland, to found Saint Meinrad Abbey; 1855 Building of the rectory. Father Kundek played a role in the missionary efforts of the Church over the larger part of Southern Indiana, Illinois and as far as Chicago and New Orleans.

The first church of the parish was a small log cabin. Within 3 years the congregation consisted of nearly 100 families and had outgrown the original facility. A new brick church was begun in 1840. The building was under roof and used for the first time on December 8, 1841. The brick Church, small in comparison to the present one, was 100 feet long and 54 feet wide.

The present church is the product of the almost singlehanded effort exerted by the fourth pastor, Father Fidelis Maute, O.S.B. Father Fidelis served as architect, contractor, foreman, laborer, fund raiser, and pastor to the new church. All the building materials and labor for the building were provided by the parishioners. The foundation was begun in 1867 and the cornerstone blessed and laid in 1868 by the first missionary to Jasper, Bishop de St. Palais. The church was completed and blessed in 1880 and consecrated in 1888. The cost of the original construction was $80,000.

The church was renovated in 1954 at a cost of $200,000. During this renovation the walls and columns were stripped of their plaster, reinforced and covered with sandstone veneer.

Fr. Fidelis finished the belfry of the tower. The tower was completed in 1904 under the direction of Fr. Basil Heusler, O. S. B. The tower now stands at 235 feet. Fr, Basil took the idea for its design from the tower that is home to Big Ben in London. There are four bells housed in the tower, weighing 12 tons with their hangings. The bells can be heard 10 miles from the church.

The 3 altars are Italian marble; the main altar has two groups of figures representing Abraham and the Melchisedech and each is 7 feet tall. The three large mosaics above the altars were imported from Austria in small sections and assembled on the location. The mosaic over the main altar represents Christ the High Priest. Above the altar on the north side of the church, the Assumption of Mary is portrayed, and above the south altar one sees the betrothal of Mary to Joseph. The stained glass windows are Swiss and were installed in 1898.

Within the church, the 14 columns supporting the roof are 67 feet high, each a single giant timber of yellow poplar cut from nearby forests and covered in plaster. From the floor to the apex of the groined naves measures 90 feet. The total dimensions of the church are 82'5" by 193'5". The walls are from 4 to 6 feet in thickness and made of sandstone.

On the south lawn of the church stands a cross which is the result of a vow made over 100 years ago. During their voyage to the United States, a violent storm threatened the lives of the German immigrants aboard. George Bauman, a stonecutter, vowed that if they should land safely he would erect a stone crucifix wherever they settled. The cross was completed in 1848 in fulfillment of that vow. Destroyed in a storm itself in 1928, the original was replaced by the present figure in 1932.

The "Plaza of Pastors" on the east lawn of the church honors 3 of St. Joseph's great pastors who served the parish for a combined total of over 100 years. Fr. Basil Heusler, O.S.B. (1898-1942) stands in the center. Fr. Fidelis Maute, O.S.B. (1865-1897), with a carpenter's square in one hand and a cross in the other, has his face turned toward the church he built. Fr. Joseph Kundek (1837-1857), the founder, looks out over the town of Jasper and the other towns in the distance which he founded. Pastor in charge of present day St. Joseph Catholic Church is Father Raymond A. Brenner, whose leadership has continued the proud tradition of excellence and faith so closely tied with this church and its congregation.

Father Brenner was born in Evansville, Indiana. He earned his B.B.A. at St. Meinrad College and his M.Div. at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. He was ordained as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1969. He was a Deacon of the Nativity Church in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1968 and Associate Pastor of St. John's Church, Loogootee, Indiana, 1969-74. From there, he was Pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Church, Haubstadt, Indiana, 1974-78, Pastor of Saint Mary's Church, Sullivan, Indiana, 1982-86, Pastor of St. Joan of Arc Church, Jasonville, Indiana, 1982-86, Pastor of Resurrection Church, Evansville, Indiana, 1986-02. Since then, he has been Pastor of Saint Joseph Church in Jasper, Indiana. Pastor Brenner's expertise lies in marriage counseling, training in financial management and support groups for divorcees.

Pastor Brenner has numerous affiliations including: Member, Catholic Charities Board, Evansville, 1972-75; Vice President, Ministerial Association, Sullivan, Indiana, 1985-86; President, Council of Priests, Evansville, Indiana, 1989; Diocesan Chaplain, Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Evansville, Indiana, 1990-94; Member, Wabash Valley Human Services, Vincennes, Indiana, 1982-86; Sullivan Housing Authority, 1983-85; Federal Emergency Management Agency, Sullivan, Indiana, 1984-96; Emergency Food Bank, Sullivan, Indiana, 1984-86; Spiritual Advisor, Evansville Catholic Cursillo, 1994 to the present; Chaplain, German Township Volunteer Fire Department, 1998-2002; Community Marriage Builders, 1997-2006; Member Optimists (Chaplain Evansville Westside Club, 1990-2002, District Chaplain, Indiana South, 2006-07); Elks Order of Moose Democrat. Father Brenner is also an esteemed member of America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals, the organization that has been instrumental in promoting Saint Joseph Catholic Church in 2016-17.

America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals is a membership organization that gives its members the type of national recognition they strive for. As a powerful third party endorsement, America's Registry offers this kind of recognition for individuals on a national basis with the added benefit of instantaneous networking with the other members. Members are encouraged to welcome, network and assist each other whether they are in the same industry or not. Being a part of this organization commonly results in widespread coverage and notoriety for causes and companies of all kinds. America's Registry is delighted to call Father Raymond A. Brenner a lifelong member, and is proud to promote the agenda and most blessed work of Saint Joseph Catholic Church.

Contact: Bea Hanley, 516-997-2525 ext. 100, [email protected]

SOURCE America's Registry of Outstanding Professionals

Related Links

http://www.americasregistry.com


MALVERN, Pa., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Scala, Inc., will be first-time exhibitors at two tradeshows in Las Vegas next week, Shoptalk "next gen commerce event" and Adobe Summit Digital Marketing Conference, in booths #1522 and #148 respectively. Scala, a member of the STRATACACHE family of complementary digital solutions companies, will debut a new platform, EXP, at Adobe Summit, being held March 21-23. EXP is a web standards-focused platform with built-in tools and infrastructure for developing high-impact digital experiences, leveraging existing assets, workflows and skill sets of the experience designers. Further, EXP's flexible content creation uses modern web technologies, allowing for seamless integration with existing apps and systems as well as popular social, technical and retail cloud services.

"We built this new platform with developers and designers in mind," said Joe Sullivan, Scala COO. "EXP allows them to remain focused on solving the creative aspects of executing the experience or vision by eliminating many devops-related tasks. Debuting it at an event like the Adobe Summit, lets us reach technical creative minds who may be looking to push the boundaries of traditional digital signage. We can show them what's possible and that we have the tools to bring it to life."

Sullivan will be on hand at Adobe Summit for in-depth discussions of EXP along with members of the Scala professional services and EXP development teams.

The Scala booth at Shoptalk, which is being held March 19-21, will display solutions that inspire retail innovators and marketers to use digital to impact and impress shoppers, leaving them with a lasting impression of the brand. The solutions focus on interactivity, drawing shoppers into a high-touch, in-store experience and leveraging technology seamlessly behind the scenes.

Interactive Fitting Room  RFID tags on product price tags can detect when an item of apparel enters, moves or leaves an area of the store. When guests enter the fitting room, a touchscreen is triggered to display item details and compelling images. Shoppers can use the fitting room touchscreen to learn more about the brand and apparel, request assistance or even "click and ship" their purchase.

 RFID tags on product price tags can detect when an item of apparel enters, moves or leaves an area of the store. When guests enter the fitting room, a touchscreen is triggered to display item details and compelling images. Shoppers can use the fitting room touchscreen to learn more about the brand and apparel, request assistance or even "click and ship" their purchase. Smart Mannequin  Customers are treated to the high-touch experience that draws them into brick-and-mortar stores with the Smart Mannequin. By touching sensor-embedded 2XU high-performance athletic apparel, a nearby touchscreen is triggered to display detailed product information, allowing the shopper to browse and learn more on their own.

 Customers are treated to the high-touch experience that draws them into brick-and-mortar stores with the Smart Mannequin. By touching sensor-embedded 2XU high-performance athletic apparel, a nearby touchscreen is triggered to display detailed product information, allowing the shopper to browse and learn more on their own. Instore Re-Targeter  Using beacon technology and connecting to a retailer's app, it's possible to detect and act on fact-based consumer profiles and purchase history for in-store customers. Sales associates with live data dashboards can adjust screen content to be as relevant as possible to one specific customer in the store to highlight recently viewed items, suggest complementary purchases and offer tailored promotions.

About Scala, Inc.

Scala solutions deliver engaging retail experiences by connecting networks of digital signs, kiosks, mobile devices, websites and Internet-connected devices. Scala, a STRATACACHE company, provides the platform for marketers, retailers and innovators to easily create and centrally manage deployment of shopping experiences while retaining the flexibility to rapidly adapt to local business conditions and preferences of customers in the store. With 30 years of experience entertaining, informing and educating audiences, Scala is well-known for its innovation and leveraging best-of-breed technologies, such as mobile and predictive analytics, to create award-winning solutions that are easy-to-use, yet infinitely customizable. Headquartered near Philadelphia, PA, Scala's network of partners and developers located in more than 90 countries drives more than 500,000 screens worldwide.

Media Contact:

Kim Karelis

LEWIS

Phone: 781-761-4500

SOURCE Scala, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.scala.com


WASHINGTON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The security of the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, and cooperation against terrorism, were discussed in depth during the Washington visit of Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense.

Prince Mohammed returned to Saudi Arabia today.

"I would like to commend again the historical and strategic relations between our two countries witnessing further development in all fields," stated Prince Mohammed in a cable to President Donald Trump upon his departure.

Prince Mohammed met with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at the White House on Tuesday. During the meeting, they reaffirmed the importance of the Saudi-U.S. strategic partnership, which the White House termed "strong, broad, and enduring."

The leaders stressed their determination to strengthen their cooperation in the economic, commercial, investment, and energy fields.

On March 16, Prince Mohammed met with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to review progress in the bilateral defense relationship, including the two nations' efforts to confront the most pressing security challenges to the region, such as Iran's destabilizing regional activities and the ongoing campaign to defeat Daesh (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations.

SOURCE Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office
SAN FRANCISCO, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SmartPay Leasing, a leading provider of mobile device consumer leasing, announced today that it has secured $50 million in senior secured credit from a new financing partner. The agreement also includes a commitment to increase financing to $150 million at the lender's discretion.



"We are pleased that our demonstrated success has led to a significant increase in our capital funding, and the completion of this agreement marks another important step in providing capital for the rapid expansion of SmartPay. We continue to add new retail partners and securing the capital to support our growth is critical to our business," said Ken Pedotto, President of SmartPay.

SmartPay has developed the industry leading SmartPay Plus Program, where SmartPay and mobile carriers partner to provide a package of a phone lease and the prepaid service plan for an attractive monthly payment. SmartPay currently partners with 3 of the 5 largest U.S. mobile retail carriers and as a result has leased more than 500,000 mobile devices since inception. SmartPay is currently available in more than 15,000 retail locations nationally.

For more information about SmartPay and the several payment options it provides retailers, visit SmartPayLease.com.

About SmartPay

Based in San Francisco, CA, SmartPay focuses its retail leasing products on the mobile phone industry, serving mobile carriers and retailers with its innovative leasing products. SmartPay was launched in 2012 by the San Francisco-based financial technology start-up Better Finance, and was acquired by CNG Holdings, Inc. in 2015. SmartPay partners with its affiliated company, TEMPOE Leasing, to offer a comprehensive suite of retail finance products nationally. While SmartPay focuses its leasing products exclusively on mobile retailers and carriers, TEMPOE provides retail leasing and financing products to all other types of retailers, including e-com solutions. For more information on TEMPOE Leasing, visit www.TEMPOE.com

SOURCE SmartPay

Related Links

http://www.smartpaylease.com


John-Laurent Tronche, managing editor of Americas crude, at S&P Global Platts, said: "Refiners on the U.S. Gulf Coast continue to be major consumers of medium sour grades of crude oil produced both offshore domestically and imported from abroad, despite booming U.S. onshore production of sour and sweet crudes. The new LOOP Sour price assessment meets the industry's need for a versatile benchmark that encompasses U.S. and foreign crudes while offering unique visibility into the storage market."

Platts LOOP Sour will:

Reflect the open market value of the blended crude in-cavern at the LOOP terminal near Galliano, Louisiana

Reflect an outright price in U.S. dollars per barrels for one-, two- and three-calendar months forward

Be of potential interest to Middle East oil producers that export to the U.S.

Richard Swann, director of oil for the Americas, S&P Global Platts, said: "As a blend of offshore U.S. crudes and Middle Eastern imports, LOOP Sour has a distinctive set of attributes that represent a diverse and growing set of market participants involved in the buying and selling of the blend components as well as the final blend itself."

A special S&P Global Platts analysis shows:

As of 2015, more than 50% of U.S. Gulf Coast refinery runs comprised heavy, sour and medium, sour crude

The U.S. Gulf Coast has the world's largest sour crude refining capacity

Crude slate adjustments towards shale-related sweeter crudes has occurred, but on limited basis

LOOP is the only U.S. deep-water oil port, capable of offloading large VLCC and ULCC** vessels

LOOP is capable of receiving 2.4 million barrels per day

LOOP Sour blend itself is distinctive and would benefit from its own independent valuation

Richard Redoglia, chief executive officer, Matrix Auctions LLC and chief operating officer, Matrix Global Holdings, said: "We see Platts' decision to assess a LOOP Sour as a very positive one. The LOOP Sour Grade is comprised of several widely used grades that create a well-balanced deliverable stream that refiners, producers and merchants use to manage their energy requirements. We believe that Platts' assessment will significantly expand the LOOP Sour program and we look forward to working with all parties to accelerate the progress."

The LOOP Sour assessments augment Platts' existing suite of physical market price references for other sweet and sour crude oils in the U.S. Gulf Coast. The full suite brings transparency to pricing that supports continued oil imports to the U.S., ongoing and future increases in U.S. production, and new U.S. export markets, the latter of which has been aided by the recent-year launches of Platts free-on-board (FOB) Eagle Ford crude and condensate and FOB West Texas Intermediate (WTI) assessments.

The LOOP Sour assessments utilize the Platts Market-on-Close (MOC) methodology, a structured, highly-transparent price assessment process based on the principle that price is a function of time. The MOC process in oil identifies bids, offers and transactions data by company name and results in an independent, time-sensitive, end-of-trading-day daily value reflective of prices as determined by buyers and sellers in the open market. For more information, visit this methodology and specification page of the Platts website.

The LOOP Sour value assessments will be published in real-time service Platts Global Alert, as well as Platts Crude Oil Marketwire, Platts Oilgram Price Report and Platts North American Crude and Products Scan. For more information on oil visit the Platts website at www.platts.com.

*LOOP Sour blend is comprised of two domestic U.S. crudes Mars and Poseidon, produced in the Gulf of Mexico, and three Middle Eastern grades: Arab Medium, Basrah Light and Kuwait

** VLCC= very large cargo containers; ULCC=ultra-large cargo containers; both are specific ship sizes

Contact

Americas: Kathleen Tanzy, + 1 917 331 4607, [email protected]

About S&P Global Platts

At S&P Global Platts, we provide the insights; you make better informed trading and business decisions with confidence. We're the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets. Customers in over 150 countries look to our expertise in news, pricing and analytics to deliver greater transparency and efficiency to markets. S&P Global Platts coverage includes oil and gas, power, petrochemicals, metals, agriculture and shipping.

S&P Global Platts is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.platts.com.

SOURCE S&P Global Platts

Related Links

http://www.platts.com


ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB:KBLB) (Company), the leading developer of spider silk based fibers, announced today that the Companys management just completed a site survey trip in Quang Nam province, Vietnam, with Vietnamese officials.



Company leadership worked with local officials to identify potential locations for the Companys silk production operations. Properties identified include a Greenfield site and existing facilities that should meet both short term and long term requirements for space and production. The Company is now working with Vietnamese officials to pursue approvals for investment and for the introduction of our hybrid silkworm.

After touring the province and reviewing numerous potential sites, I believe weve found excellent locations to begin production in Vietnam, said COO Jon Rice. We are still working to secure necessary approvals and no final decisions have been made. However, the regions existing infrastructure and expertise are cause to believe that we should be able to follow the same operation ramp up as our Indiana facility. We would like to, again, thank our Vietnamese host for their hospitality and look forward to future meetings and discussions.

To view the most recent edition of Kraigs Spider Sense quarterly newsletter and/or to sign up for Company alerts, please go to www.KraigLabs.com/newsletter

About Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc.

Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (www.KraigLabs.com), a fully reporting biotechnology company is the leading developer of genetically engineered spider silk based fiber technologies. The Company has achieved a series of scientific breakthroughs in the area of spider silk technology with implications for the global textile industry.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information

Statements in this press release about the Companys future and expectations other than historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are made on the basis of managements current views and assumptions. As a result, there can be no assurance that managements expectations will necessarily come to pass. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as believes, plans, expects, anticipates, foresees, estimated, hopes, if, develops, researching, research, pilot, potential, could or other words or phrases of similar import. Forward looking statements include descriptions of the Companys business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions and goals. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security.
CHERRY HILL, N.J., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Subaru of America, Inc. today announced it has donated more than $23.4 million to national and local charities during its annual Share the Love event in 2016, bringing the total donated throughout the life of the program to more than $94 million. Held at the end of each year, Subaru donates $250 for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased to a host of charitable partners, per the selection of each customer.

This year's ninth-annual Share the Love event continued its contribution to four national charities, including the ASPCA, Make-A-Wish, Meals on Wheels America and National Park Foundation. In addition, each Subaru retailer selected a hometown charity from their local community to support, adding more than 660 local causes to the Share the Love campaign. Select local retailers also participated in the hometown charity donation matching program totaling $1.3 million which, paired with Subaru of America's existing contribution, culminated in a donation grand total of $24.8 million to national and local charities.

"For the ninth consecutive year, we are proud to honor our continued commitment to supporting the causes our customers care most about through the Subaru Share the Love event," said Alan Bethke, senior vice president of marketing, Subaru of America, Inc. "Since its inception, Subaru has donated more than $94 million to our national and hometown charity partners through the program and we look forward to witnessing how the latest contribution will positively impact communities all across the country."

Follow Subaru on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/subaruofamerica

http://www.facebook.com/subaruofamerica Join the dialog: http://www.twitter.com/subaru_usa #sharethelove

About Subaru of America, Inc.

Subaru of America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan. Headquartered at a zero-landfill office in Cherry Hill, N.J., the company markets and distributes Subaru vehicles, parts, and accessories through a network of more than 620 retailers across the United States. All Subaru products are manufactured in zero-landfill production plants, and Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc. is the only U.S. automobile production plant to be designated a backyard wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. For additional information, visit media.subaru.com.

Diane Anton

Subaru of America, Inc.

856-488-5093

[email protected]

Michael McHale

Subaru of America, Inc.

856-488-3326

[email protected]

SOURCE Subaru of America, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.subaru.com


FREMONT, Calif., March 17, 2017 Tailored Brands, Inc. (NYSE: TLRD) announced that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.18 per share payable on June 23, 2017 to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 13, 2017.

About Tailored Brands, Inc.

Tailored Brands, Inc. is a leading authority on helping men dress for work, special occasions and everyday life. We serve our customers through an expansive omni-channel network that includes over 1,600 locations in the U.S. and Canada as well as our branded e-commerce websites. Our brands include Men's Wearhouse, Jos. A. Bank, Joseph Abboud, Moores Clothing for Men and K&G. We also operate an international corporate apparel and workwear group consisting of Dimensions, Alexandra and Yaffy in the United Kingdom and Twin Hill in the United States.

For additional information on Tailored Brands, please visit the Company's websites at www.tailoredbrands.com, www.menswearhouse.com, www.josbank.com, www.josephabboud.com, www.mooresclothing.com, www.kgstores.com, www.mwcleaners.com, www.dimensions.co.uk, www.alexandra.co.uk. and www.twinhill.com.

Contact:

Investor Relations

(281) 776-7575

[email protected]

Julie MacMedan, VP, Investor Relations

Tailored Brands, Inc.

SOURCE Tailored Brands, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tailoredbrands.com


The recognition program is led by the ESGR, an organization under the U.S. Department of Defense. ESGR was established in 1972 to promote cooperation and understanding between employers and its civilian employees regarding an employee's military commitment. Takeda earned the Pro Patria Award, the highest recognition given by the U.S. government to an employer 'who demonstrates exceptional support for national defense by adopting personnel policies that make it easier' for employees to participate in the National Guard and Reserve.

"We're proud of the supportive environment we have established for our reservists and military veterans. This award recognizes our commitment to military-connected employees and their families, which are only one of the many employee groups supported by Takeda's diverse programs and policies," said Laurene Giagnorio, senior vice president, human resources and administration, Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc.

Takeda has received several consecutive workplace awards for its outstanding employee programs, Giagnorio explains. One of those programs includes sponsoring six employee resource groups (ERGs), which help build a more supportive and inclusive culture. The ERG for military-connected employees, called Supporting Troops and Inspiring Veteran Engagement (STRIVE), is among the company's largest ERG with over 200 members.

Takeda's Scott Maxson, manager of security and intelligence, also was recognized at the ceremony and received the Patriot Award for his continued support of a team member's military service commitment, including a recent month-long assignment as part of his Navy Reservist status.

About Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE: 4502) is a global, R&D-driven pharmaceutical company committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to patients by translating science into life-changing medicines. Takeda focuses its research efforts on oncology, gastroenterology and central nervous system therapeutic areas. It also has specific development programs in specialty cardiovascular diseases as well as late-stage candidates for vaccines. Takeda conducts R&D both internally and with partners to stay at the leading edge of innovation. New innovative products, especially in oncology, central nervous system and gastroenterology, as well as its presence in emerging markets, fuel the growth of Takeda. More than 30,000 Takeda employees are committed to improving quality of life for patients, working with our partners in health care in more than 70 countries.

For more information, visit http://www.takeda.com/news

About Takeda in the U.S.

Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. is the U.S. commercial organization of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. Takeda has a strong commitment to the U.S. with more than 5,000 employees, a significant R&D presence, Oncology and Vaccine headquarters and manufacturing capabilities.

SOURCE Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc.

Related Links

http://www.takeda.com


OMAHA, Neb., March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Union Pacific Railroad Company announced today that it has determined the contingent interest and sinking fund payments due in respect of Available Net Income for 2016 under the terms of certain bonds and debentures originally issued by the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company (MPRR). Union Pacific Railroad Company is required to publicly announce such annual determination. The bonds and debentures were assumed by Union Pacific Railroad Company as a result of the merger of MPRR with and into Union Pacific Railroad Company on Jan. 1, 1997.

On April 1, 2017, Union Pacific Railroad Company will pay contingent interest ($4.75 per $100 principal amount) on each of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company 4 % General Mortgage Income Bonds Series A Due 2020 and the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company 4 % General Mortgage Income Bonds Series B Due 2030. The Company will also on April 1, 2017, make sinking fund payments of $349,630 and $338,020, respectively, for the Series A and Series B bonds. In addition, on April 1, 2017, Union Pacific Railroad Company will make contingent interest payments ($5.00 per $100 principal amount) for the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company 5% Income Debentures Due 2045.

The close of business on March 28, 2017, has been established as the record date for determining persons owning registered Bonds and Debentures without coupons who are entitled to receive interest. Interest on registered Bonds and Debentures without coupons will be paid by check mailed to the registered holder, as of the record date, at the address indicated in the Trustee's records.

A copy of the 2016 Available Net Income calculation is available for inspection during regular business hours at the Trustee's offices, The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., 2 North LaSalle, Suite 1020, Chicago, IL 60602.

The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company contact: Daniel Donovan, Vice President, (312) 827-8547

Union Pacific contact: Gary Grosz, Assistant Vice President-Corporate Finance, (402) 544-6175

ABOUT UNION PACIFIC

Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE: UNP). One of America's most recognized companies, Union Pacific Railroad connects 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country by rail, providing a critical link in the global supply chain. From 2007-2016, Union Pacific invested approximately $34 billion in its network and operations to support America's transportation infrastructure. The railroad's diversified business mix includes Agricultural Products, Automotive, Chemicals, Coal, Industrial Products and Intermodal. Union Pacific serves many of the fastest-growing U.S. population centers, operates from all major West Coast and Gulf Coast ports to eastern gateways, connects with Canada's rail systems and is the only railroad serving all six major Mexico gateways. Union Pacific provides value to its roughly 10,000 customers by delivering products in a safe, reliable, fuel-efficient and environmentally responsible manner.

www.up.com

www.facebook.com/unionpacific

www.twitter.com/unionpacific

SOURCE Union Pacific

Related Links

http://www.up.com


MONTVALE, N.J., March 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sharp Robotics Business Development (SRBD), a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation (SEC), announced the appointment of U.S. Security Associates (USA) as an authorized guard services reseller of the Sharp INTELLOS Automated Unmanned Ground Vehicle (A-UGV). Introduced to consumers of security technologies and human guard services by Sharp at the ASIS International September 2016 security exhibition in Orlando, Florida, the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV is a cost-effective, multi-terrain, mobile sensor platform that can capture video, audio and environmental data, while providing a visible deterrent. The data collected by the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV can enhance outdoor surveillance, security, safety and maintenance inspections, helping organizations meet the challenges of an ever-changing security landscape by augmenting a skilled guard force.

Leadership Teams of Sharp Robotics Business Development and U.S. Security Associates: (left to right) O'Brien Collins, David Kahn, Mike Kobelin, Jerry Yoakum, Cliff Quiroga, Richard Wyckoff, Dan Miranda, David Lewis, Alice DiSanto, and Paul Lutz

Cliff Quiroga, Vice President of SRBD, lauded the relationship with USA. "Robots in security will help protect people, infrastructure and assets. To Sharp, protecting people means caring first for those who care for the rest of us - our frontline security officers. The human workforce can be availed of tedious, repetitive and often dangerous tasks. Instead, their attention can be focused on more intelligent-based work."

Richard L. Wyckoff, President and CEO of U.S. Security Associates, stated, "Our agreement with Sharp ensures USA's clients will continue to have the most innovative capabilities and additional layers of protection to enhance daily security measures. Importantly, the Sharp INTELLOS A-UGV can also provide a first response protection capacity in an emergency or crisis situation."

"As part of our industry exclusive P3SM Technology Platform, we now offer the market leading capabilities to mitigate risk, eliminate incidents and create the best outcomes for our clients," stated Wyckoff.

About U.S. Security Associates

U.S. Security Associates (USA) is North America's security solutions leader, with locally-responsive offices providing premier national security services and global consulting and investigations. The company provides career paths for over 50,000 security professionals serving several thousand clients and a range of industries. Innovative applications of leading-edge, proprietary technology enable USA to rank annually among the world's best training companies, sustain the highest standards of quality, and underscore world-class customer service with unparalleled accountability. USA's rise as one of today's largest security companies is a natural byproduct of these differentiators together with a commitment to investing in employee reward and development, giving back to local communities, and relentlessly striving to be the best: Safe. Secure. Friendly.. For more information, visit www.ussecurityassociates.com.

About Sharp Electronics Corporation

Sharp Electronics Corporation is the U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Sharp Corporation. Sharp is a worldwide developer of one-of-a-kind home appliances, networked multifunctional office solutions, professional displays, robotics and energy systems. For more information, visit SharpUSA.com.

Contact: Alice DiSanto, SRBD Director of Marketing

Telephone: 914-582-8464

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Sharp Robotics
WASHINGTON, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Center for Plastic Surgery will hold an Anti-Aging Event on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, featuring one-on-one consultations and special pricing on a wide range of non-surgical treatments for the face and body. The event is open to the public and will take place at the Center's Annandale, Virginia office from 8:00AM to 4:00 PM.

The board certified plastic surgeons at Center for Plastic Surgery say the event aims to provide patients with an opportunity to receive expert, personalized advice on anti-aging treatment options, as well as a chance to save on popular non-surgical treatments, including CoolSculpting fat reduction and ThermiVa feminine rejuvenation.

"Anti-aging medicine is in the midst of a technological renaissance. Recent years have ushered in a host of new options to treat everything from wrinkles and sun damage to excess fat deposits and sagging tissues on the face and body," says Dr. Wesley Price, who co-founded Center for Plastic Surgery (CPS) in 1986. "However, new doesn't always mean better for every individual, and the need for professional guidance is greater than ever for patients to ensure the treatments they choose are safe, effective, and appropriate for their needs."

Dr. Samir Rao, who joined CPS in 2013, emphasizes that the event will feature non-surgical treatment options across the spectrum of facial rejuvenation, body contouring, and skin care. "An effective anti-aging strategy extends well beyond wrinkle treatment. Prevention, in the form of a quality at-home skin care regimen, as well as addressing age-related skin sagging and fat deposits on the face and body, are equally important."

Specials the practice plans to offer during the Anti-Aging Event, while supplies last, include:

SAVE 20% on CPS Brand Skincare Products

$100 off any single Juvederm, Voluma, or Volbella filler treatment, plus additional Allergan Brilliant Distinctions savings coupons

off any single Juvederm, Voluma, or Volbella filler treatment, plus additional Allergan Brilliant Distinctions savings coupons $400 off Kybella injectable chin fat reduction (two treatments)

off Kybella injectable chin fat reduction (two treatments) $50 off BOTOX during event + $50 off a future treatment

off BOTOX during event + off a future treatment Buy 2, get 1 free on IPL Photofacial and chemical peels

Free skincare treatment with purchase of 5-treatment package

Purchase 3-treatment series of ThermiVa and save $500 on maintenance treatment

on maintenance treatment $50 to $140 savings on Luxury HydraFacial treatments

savings on Luxury HydraFacial treatments Additional savings on already-discounted CoolSculpting

Purchase an area of permanent makeup and receive a FREE 3mL Latisse kit!

Gifts and complimentary product samples for all who attend

Additionally, CPS will feature their newest skin care line, Alastin Skincare, at the event.

CPS licensed skin health professionals will be present during the event to answer questions about treatment options and will provide individual treatments by appointment. Patients may also stop by the CPS Annandale office during the March 21 event to purchase designated skin care products and treatments at the special event rates. Those unable to attend are encouraged to phone the practice prior to the event to pre-pay for products and treatments at the special event rates; those who pre-pay can receive their purchases and book applicable treatments on or after the event date.

CPS co-founder Dr. James French adds that the event will be especially valuable for patients who are new to aesthetic medicine and would like an introduction to treatment options from a highly trusted source. "This event is a fantastic opportunity for new and returning patients to talk one-on-one with an experienced skin health professional, design an anti-aging treatment plan to match their goals, and begin their treatment plan at a reduced price."

Those who wish to reserve a treatment appointment during the March 21 Anti-Aging Event in Annandale or make advanced purchases should contact the practice at 877-427-7888. Patients can also visit cpsdocs.com to learn more about treatment options at Center for Plastic Surgery.

About the Center for Plastic Surgery: The Center for Plastic Surgery serves the greater Washington, D.C., area with offices in northern Virginia and Maryland: 3299 Woodburn Road, Suite 490, Annandale, VA 22003, 703-560-2850; and 5550 Friendship Boulevard, Suite 130, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815, 301-652-7700. For more information, visit http://www.cpsdocs.com.

Media Contact: Debbie Barwick, 877-427-7888.

SOURCE Center for Plastic Surgery

Related Links

http://www.cpsdocs.com


MORRISVILLE, North Carolina, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Miroslav Backonja, M.D., Senior Medical Director at Worldwide Clinical Trials (http://www.worldwide.com), will be presenting two sessions at the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) Annual Meeting, being held March 16-18, 2017 in Orlando, Florida.

Now in its 33rd year, AAPM brings together clinicians, researchers, and educators in pain medicine to discuss emerging trends and research. Dr. Backonja's two sessions, titled "Neuropathic Pain: Making the Diagnosis" and "Small Fiber Peripheral Neuropathy: New and Often Missed," will take place consecutively on Saturday, March 18 from 10:15 to 11:45 a.m.

"I'm honored to be presenting at this year's AAPM meeting, where I'll be sharing insights with attendees about small fiber neuropathy and neuropathic pain," commented Dr. Backonja. "The AAPM meeting presents a great opportunity for the leaders in our field to discuss and exchange ideas on how to improve diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic pain. Certainly, our collective goal is to improve care of our patients suffering from pain and that should translate into their improved functional pain outcomes and quality of life."

Dr. Backonja, who is board-certified in both neurology and pain medicine, has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and serves on the editorial boards for a number of pain journals, including Pain, Pain Medicine, the Journal of Pain, and Clinical Journal of Pain. He was recently named as a leading doctor in pain medicine by Seattle Magazine's Top Doctors 2017 report, an annual report that ranks the Puget Sound's most trusted physicians, based on recommendations from 8,700 Seattle-based doctors.

About Worldwide Clinical Trials

Worldwide Clinical Trials employs more than 1,400 professionals around the world, with offices in North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, Russia and Asia. One of the world's leading, full-service contract research organizations (CROs), we partner with sponsors in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to deliver fully integrated clinical development and bioanalytical services, extending from first-in-human through phase IV studies. Grounded in medicine and science, we help sponsors move from discovery into clinical development and commercialization across a range of therapeutic areas, including neuroscience, cardiovascular diseases, immune-mediated inflammatory disorders (IMID), and rare diseases. For more information, visit Worldwide.com.

SOURCE Worldwide Clinical Trials
ALFRED, Maine, March 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- York County Federal Credit Union is pleased to announce its partnership with York County Shelter Programs (YCSP) to host its first Run to End Hunger 5K run/walk on Saturday, May 20 at the YCSP Alfred campus. Both runners and walkers of all fitness levels are encouraged to attend.

Check-in and registration begins at 8:00 am for the 9:00 race. Early bird registration ($20  includes t-shirt) is open until April 22. General registration ($25) is open April 22 until the day of the race. Students are encouraged to participate at a flat $10 rate.

"As a committed community partner, we are excited to team up with York County Shelter Programs for our first 5K," said Erin Jones, Chairman of the Ending Hunger Committee at York County FCU. "Their food programs support folks all over York County, and we're ready to rise to the challenge of raising money to ensure these programs help everyone who needs them."

Run to End Hunger 5K t-shirts will be available for purchase on the day of the event. All proceeds from the race will benefit York County Shelter Programs and their fight to end hunger in York County, Maine. For additional information about the Run to End Hunger 5K, please visit www.facebook.com/YorkCountyFederalCreditUnion.

YCSP (York County Shelter Programs) is a nonprofit organization that serves people suffering from addiction, mental health, poverty, and homelessness in a variety of capacities and is located in Alfred, Maine. Find them on Facebook and learn more on their website: http://www.yorkcountyshelterprograms.org/.

York County Federal Credit Union (YCFCU) is a community-centered financial institution based in York County, Maine. Founded in 1954, YCFCU served educators, but expanded their charter to include area businesses, organizations, and their families. Membership is open to anyone who lives, works, worships, or attends school in York County. Additional information about YCFCU's products and services is available at www.yorkcountyfcu.com.

Melissa Clark

York County Federal Credit Union

(207) 324-7511, ext. 5200

[email protected]

SOURCE York County Federal Credit Union

Related Links

http://www.yorkcountyfcu.com


During the presentation, Micky Pant highlighted five areas that have been central to Yum China's success in China including proactive product and menu localization to cater to evolving consumer preferences; developing talent and empowering people through programs such as granting shares to all qualified restaurant general managers; innovative marketing initiatives to connect with Chinese consumers; establishing leadership in digital engagement and delivery; and combining international perspectives with local insights.

"2017 marks the 30th year of Yum China and we are enormously proud of the positive contributions we have made to the country's economic and social development during this time," said Micky Pant, CEO, Yum China. "We would not have achieved what we have today without the incredible people we have right across our business. Yum China has always encouraged our people to become better, offering on-the-job training and development programs as well as exploring new ways to inspire the next generation of business leaders. I am really excited to have the opportunity to come to Peking University today and talk directly with some of China's business leaders of the future." Following the presentation, Mr. Pant led a discussion with the students on how international brands could innovate and localize their businesses in order to successfully expand in the Chinese market.

Yum China has a long and successful track record of doing business in China. As the first international restaurant chain operator entering the China market, it opened the country's first KFC in 1987 in Qianmen, Beijing. From one restaurant 30 years ago, Yum China is now the largest restaurant company in China, with more than 7,500 restaurants of KFC, Pizza Hut, Little Sheep, East Dawning and Taco Bell in over 1,100 cities. In the past five years, Yum China has opened an average of two new locations per day, serving 2 billion customers every year.

"Over the past 30 years, we have supported the modernization and evolution of the country's restaurant sector by introducing international standards, sharing global knowledge and training generations of industry professionals. As an independent company focused on China, we are now in a position to make even greater contributions to the industry, our communities and the country," added Mr. Pant.

30 Years of Yum China

1987 -- KFC opens its first China location in Qianmen, Beijing

1990 -- Pizza Hut opens its first China location in Beijing

2001 -- Pizza Hut Home Service launches in Shanghai

2004 -- KFC opens its 1,000th restaurant in China

2005 -- First East Dawning restaurant opens in Shanghai

2012 -- Yum! Brands acquires Little Sheep

2013 -- Pizza Hut Casual Dining opens its 1,000th restaurant in China

2015 -- KFC opens its 5,000th restaurant in China

2015 -- Yum China opens its 7,000th restaurant in China

opens its 7,000th restaurant in 2016 -- Yum China spins off from Yum! Brands and lists on the New York Stock Exchange

About Yum China Holdings, Inc.

Yum China Holdings, Inc. is a licensee of Yum! Brands in mainland China. It has exclusive rights in mainland China to KFC, China's leading quick-service restaurant brand, Pizza Hut, the leading casual dining restaurant brand in China, and Taco Bell, which opened its first restaurant in China at the end of 2016. Yum China also owns the Little Sheep and East Dawning concepts outright. Yum China is well positioned for growth thanks to its strong competitive position, integration of its brands into Chinese popular culture and consumers' daily lives, expanding geographic footprint in China and existing operational expertise. It has a strong capital position, no external debt and expects to continue growing its system sales and profit by adding new restaurants and through growing same-store sales. Yum China had more than 7,500 restaurants and more than 420,000 employees in over 1,100 cities at 2016 year end. A new generation of younger consumers who are digitally sophisticated and brand driven are fueling growth in consumption in China. The ongoing growth of the middle class and urban population in China is expected to create the world's largest market for restaurant brands, with Yum China poised to be the market leader.

Yum China Media Contacts

Yum China Holdings, Inc.

Forest Liu

Director, Financial Media

+86 21 2407 7505

Brunswick Group

Naomi Tudhope

+86 21 6039 6388

SOURCE Yum China Holdings, Inc
PALATINE, Ill., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB:ACUR) and MainPointe Pharmaceuticals, LLC today announced that they have entered into a License Agreement (the "Agreement") to have MainPointe exclusively market NEXAFED and NEXAFED Sinus in the US and Canada. The pseudoephedrine-containing NEXAFED brand products utilize Acuras IMPEDE Technology which disrupts the extraction and conversion of the pseudoephedrine into the illicit drug, methamphetamine. MainPointe will assume all manufacturing and commercialization activities from Acura.



MainPointe is an emerging OTC pharmaceutical company that brings added leverage to our NEXAFED business, commented Bob Jones, Acuras President and CEO. With additional products in distribution and new customer contacts, MainPointe is well positioned to expand on the US pharmacy distribution achieved by Acura over the past several years.

Conversion of pseudoephedrine products into methamphetamine remains an acute problem in many communities, said John Schutte, MainPointes Chairman and CEO. The NEXAFED products have proven to be a success in curbing this costly problem and we look forward to driving this business forward.

The Agreement provided for an upfront cash payment of $2.5 million to Acura. Acura is eligible to receive a royalty 7.5% based on commercial sales by MainPointe.

About Acura Pharmaceuticals

Acura Pharmaceuticals is a specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the research, development and commercialization of product candidates intended to address medication abuse and misuse, utilizing its proprietary LIMITX, AVERSION and IMPEDE Technologies. LIMITX contains ingredients that are intended to reduce or limit the rate or extent of opioid release when multiple tablets are ingested. AVERSION contains polymers that cause the drug to gel when dissolved; it also contains compounds that irritate the nasal passages if the product is snorted. IMPEDE is designed to disrupt the processing of pseudoephedrine from tablets into methamphetamine.

OXAYDO (oxycodone HCl immediate-release tablets) which incorporates the AVERSION Technology, is FDA approved and marketed in the U.S. by our partner Egalet Corporation.

NEXAFED and NEXAFED Sinus, which are pseudoephedrine containing products, utilize the IMPEDE Technology.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to:

our ability to fund or obtain funding for our continuing operations;

the expected results of clinical studies relating to LTX-04 or any successor product candidate, the date by which such study results will be available and whether LTX-04 or any successor product candidate will ultimately receive FDA approval;

whether LIMITX will retard the release of opioid active ingredients as dose levels increase;

whether we will be able to reformulate LTX-04 or any successor product candidate to provide an efficacious level of drug when one or two tablets are taken;

whether we will be able to reformulate LTX-04 or any successor product candidate to improve its abuse deterrent performance;

whether the extent to which products formulated with the LIMITX technology deter abuse will be determined sufficient by the FDA to support approval or labelling describing abuse deterrent features;

whether our LIMITX technology can be expanded into extended-release formulations;

our and our licensees ability to successfully launch and commercialize our products and technologies, including Oxaydo Tablets and our Nexafed products;

our and our licensees ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals and commercialize products utilizing our technologies;

the market acceptance of, timing of commercial launch and competitive environment for any of our products;

expectations regarding potential market share for our products;

our ability to develop and enter into additional license agreements for our product candidates using our technologies;

the ability to avoid infringement of patents, trademarks and other proprietary rights of third parties;

the ability of our patents to protect our products from generic competition and our ability to protect and enforce our patent rights in any paragraph IV patent infringement litigation;

the ability to fulfill the FDA requirements for approving our product candidates for commercial manufacturing and distribution in the United States, including, without limitation, the adequacy of the results of the laboratory and clinical studies completed to date, the results of laboratory and clinical studies we may complete in the future to support FDA approval of our product candidates and the sufficiency of our development process to meet over-the-counter (OTC) Monograph standards, as applicable;

the adequacy of the development program for our product candidates, including whether additional clinical studies will be required to support FDA approval of our product candidates;

changes in regulatory requirements;

adverse safety findings relating to our commercialized products or product candidates in development;

whether the FDA will agree with our analysis of our clinical and laboratory studies;

whether further studies of our product candidates will be required to support FDA approval;

whether or when we are able to obtain FDA approval of labeling for our product candidates for the proposed indications and whether we will be able to promote the features of our abuse discouraging technologies; and

whether Oxaydo or our Aversion and LIMITX product candidates will ultimately deter abuse in commercial settings and whether our Nexafed products and Impede technology product candidates will disrupt the processing of pseudoephedrine into methamphetamine.

In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "may," will, "should," "could," "would," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," indicates, "projects," predicts," "potential" and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We discuss many of these risks in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
WILMINGTON, Del., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Andrews & Springer LLC, a boutique securities class action law firm focused on representing shareholders nationwide, announced today that a securities fraud class action lawsuit has been filed by another law firm in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana, Case No. 3:17-cv-7, on behalf of investors of OneMain Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:OMF) (OneMain Holdings or the Company) that purchased OneMain Holdings securities between March 3, 2015 and November 7, 2016.



A copy of the complaint is available from Andrews & Springer LLC. If you currently own shares of OneMain Holdings and want to receive additional information or would like to join the class action and protect your investment free of charge, please visit our website or contact Craig J. Springer, Esq. at cspringer@andrewsspringer.com, or call toll free at 1-800-423-6013. You may also follow us on LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/company/andrews-&-springer-llc, Twitter  www.twitter.com/AndrewsSpringer or Facebook - www.facebook.com/AndrewsSpringer for future updates.

NO CLASS HAS YET BEEN CERTIFIED IN THE ABOVE ACTION. UNTIL A CLASS IS CERTIFIED, YOU ARE NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL UNLESS YOU RETAIN ONE. YOU MAY ALSO REMAIN AN ABSENT CLASS MEMBER AND DO NOTHING AT THIS POINT. YOU MAY RETAIN COUNSEL OF YOUR CHOICE.

OneMain Holdings was formerly known as Springleaf Holdings, Inc. (Springleaf) until Springleaf purchased OneMain Financial Holdings, LLC (OneMain Financial), and the combined company was named OneMain Holdings.

On March 3, 2015, Springleaf entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire OneMain Financial from CitiFinancial Credit Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Citigroup. In a press release on March 12, 2015, Jay N. Levine, President and Chief Executive Officer of Springleaf at that time, touted OneMain Financial's position as a leading national provider of personal loans, stating, [w]e look forward to  building on the enormous potential of the combined company. Subsequently, the company predicted an optimistic financial outlook, stating that it expected to generate core net income of $830 million to $900 million in 2017. Levine further stated, As we continue to execute on the integration of the two companies, we are further strengthening our foundation for continued growth and strong returns. However, the complaint alleges that OneMain Holdings officials omitted material information regarding the projected net income to be achieved by the Company following the merger.

On November 7, 2016, during a conference call with investors, OneMain Holdings disclosed that it was slashing guidance for full-year 2016 and 2017 with respect to the growth in its loan portfolios and its preferred measure of earnings. In particular, the Company revealed that it would lower its guidance for its consumer insurance adjusted earnings per share from $4.20-$4.70 per share to a range of $3.60-$3.70 per share for 2016 and from $5.60-$6.10 per share to $3.75-$4.00 per share for 2017. Further, the company stated that it would lower guidance for receivables growth in 2016 from 10-15% to 5% and in 2017 from 10-15% to 5-10%.

As a result of this news, OneMain Holdings share price dropped by $10.67 per share, or approximately 38%, to close at $16.90 per share on November 8, 2016, causing shareholders to incur millions in losses.

A OneMain Holdings shareholder represented by another law firm has filed a class action complaint against OneMain Holdings for federal securities fraud. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of Indiana, Case No. 3:17-cv-7.

If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than March 20, 2017. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. If you wish to join the litigation, or to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact Craig J. Springer, Esq. at cspringer@andrewsspringer.com, or call toll free at 1-800-423-6013. You may also follow us on LinkedIn  www.linkedin.com/company/andrews-&-springer-llc, Twitter  www.twitter.com/AndrewsSpringer or Facebook - www.facebook.com/AndrewsSpringer for future updates.

Andrews & Springer is a boutique securities class action law firm representing shareholders nationwide who are victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty or corporate misconduct. Having formerly defended some of the largest financial institutions in the world, our founding members use their valuable knowledge, experience, and superior skill for the sole purpose of achieving positive results for investors. These traits are the hallmarks of our innovative approach to each case our Firm decides to prosecute. For more information please visit our website at www.andrewsspringer.com. This notice may constitute Attorney Advertising.
New Delhi, March 12 : Terming the BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls as "unprecedented", party chief Amit Shah said the win is a stamp of approval on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's work.

Shah said the party would win the 2019 Lok Sabha poll with a bigger mandate than 2014.

"The victory is a stamp of approval on Prime Minister's work," Shah said addressing party workers and supporters at the BJP's national headquarter at 11, Ashoka Road here.

"It is after a long time that a party is getting two-thirds majority in Uttar Pradesh. This victory is unprecedented in many ways," Shah said.

"After independence, Narendra Modi is the leader who has not just talked about the poor, but worked for them. He is the most popular leader," Shah added.

He said demonetisation, free cooking gas connections to the poor, mission on toilets under the Clean India programme and Jan Dhan accounts worked in favour of the BJP.

"This is two steps ahead of our victory of 2014. In the coming days, we will also spread to eastern and western states. We will get a bigger mandate in 2019 under the leadership of Narendra Modi," he said.
Islamabad, March 13 : Contingents of Chinese and Turkish armies are to participate in the Pakistan Day parade for the first time, the army said on Monday.

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said in a tweet that Chinese soldiers will take part in the parade being held on March 23, to mark the Pakistan Day celebrations.

"A Turkish military band will also participate in the parade, " the tweet added.

The parade is organised by joint staff headquarters in Rawalpindi, which oversees the three armed forces of Pakistan and this was the first time, Chinese and Turkish troops would be participating in parade.

Contingents of the Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force have reportedly arrived in the federal capital for parade rehearsals, with stringent security measures in place.

The military parade had been halted for the past few following a wave of terrorism in the country. However, after the success of operation Zarb-e-Azb, the parade was resumed in 2015 after a gap of seven years.

The parade is seen as a manifestation of the military's show of strength in the wake of the massacre in the Army Public School in 2014, that left over 150 people dead, mostly school children.

Pakistan Day commemorates the passing of the Lahore Resolution, when a separate nation for the Muslims of The British Indian Empire was demanded on March 23, 1940 as well as the declaration of the Republic on the same day in 1956.

Apart from the Pakistan parade, scores of events would be organised on the day.
New Delhi, March 14 : Punjab's Chief Minister-elect Amarinder Singh on Tuesday reiterated it was the right time to elevate Rahul Gandhi as the Congress President.

Amarinder made the remark after he called on Rahul Gandhi at the Congress Vice President's residence in New Delhi to congratulate him on the Congress victory in the February 4 Punjab assembly polls, where it bagged 77 of the 117 seats.

"Now is the right time to elevate Rahul Gandhi as party President. I have been maintaining this for the past one year," Singh said.

After a 10-minute meeting with Gandhi, the Punjab Congress President and Congress Legislature Party leader told the media: "It was a courtesy call. There was no discussion on Cabinet formation during the meeting."

Singh invited Rahul to attend the swearing-in ceremony slated for Thursday morning in Chandigarh.

This was the first meeting between the two after the Punjab elections.

Rahul expressed the confidence that Punjab will once again rise to its true potential under a Congress government.

Amarinder also lashed out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for refusing to accept its defeat gracefully.

"Instead of acknowledging that his party failed to connect with the voters of Punjab, (Delhi Chief Minister) Arvind Kejriwal is making allegations about (tampering of) Electronic Voting Machines. Incidentally, his own party workers were guarding the EVMs," said Singh.

"AAP workers were camping outside centres where the EVMs were stored. It is evident that Kejriwal is unable to digest loss of election as well as face after the assembly poll outcome, which he was hoping to leverage to further his national ambitions," he added.
New Delhi, March 14 : A court here on Tuesday extended interim protection from arrest till March 20 to former "Bigg Boss" contestant and self-proclaimed godman Swami Om, who has been accused of molesting and threatening a woman.

Special Judge Hemani Malhotra, who was hearing the anticipatory bail plea of Swami Om, also granted more time to submit the video footage of CCTV installed in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Daryaganj, to find the truth behind Swami Om's claim.

Claiming innocence, Swami Om told the court that he had gone to the office of a senior police officer at Daryaganj here on the day the incident is said to have taken place.

Swami Om had moved an anticipatory bail plea, saying that he was falsely implicated in the case, as he had been advocating Indian culture and anti-social elements wanted to stop his "social activity".

His counsel advocate A.P. Singh assured the court that if granted anticipatory bail, Om would not misuse his liberty.

A woman has lodged an FIR against Swami Om and Santosh Anand, accusing them of wrongfully restraining and abusing her, and committing objectionable acts.

The woman in her complaint alleged that the accused had ripped off her clothes on February 7.

The complaint was registered at Indraprastha Estate police station.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kalytera Therapeutics, Inc. (TSXV:KALY) today announced that Mr. Pini Ben-Elazar has been appointed to Kalyteras Board of Directors.



In connection with Kalyteras recent acquisition of Talent Biotechs, Ltd., the selling shareholders of Talent had the right to nominate a person to join Kalyteras Board of Directors. The selling shareholders nominated Mr. Ben-Elazar.

Mr. Ben-Elazar is the Chief Executive Officer of Mor Research Applications (Mor), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clalit Health Services (Clalit), the largest HMO in Israel. Mor serves as the technology transfer arm for all inventions created by Clalit professional staff and provides tools to develop ideas into applicative research. Mors commercialization portfolio includes a number of successful startups in the medical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology fields, and 60+ projects in various stages of development.

About Kalytera Therapeutics

Kalytera (TSXV:KALY) is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company pioneering the development of a next generation of cannabinoid therapeutics. Through its proven leadership, drug development expertise, and intellectual property portfolio, Kalytera seeks to establish a leading position in the development of novel cannabinoid medicines for a range of important unmet medical needs, with an initial focus on Graft versus Host Disease (GvHD). Kalytera is also developing a new class of proprietary cannabidiol (CBD) therapeutics. CBD is a remarkable compound that has shown activity against a number of pharmacological targets. However, there are limitations associated with natural CBD, including its poor oral bioavailability. Kalytera is developing innovative CBD formulations and prodrugs in an effort to overcome these limitations, and to target specific disease sites within the body. Kalytera intends to file composition of matter and method of use patents covering its novel inventions, with the goal of limiting future competition.

Forward-Looking Statement Disclosure

This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Although Kalytera believes in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because Kalytera can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. Kalytera undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of Kalytera, its securities, or its respective financial or operating results (as applicable). Kalytera disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.
New Delhi, March 14 : Amid allegations that EVMs were tampered with in the just-concluded assembly polls, the Delhi unit of the Congress on Tuesday approached the state Election Commission seeking that the upcoming civic polls in the city be conducted through ballot papers.

In a letter to state Election Commissioner S.K. Srivastava, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken, airing doubts about the efficacy of electronic voting machines (EVMs), said voters had apprehensions about the fairness of the electoral process.

"Serious doubts have cropped up in the minds of the voters as to the free and fair nature of the electoral process. Even the Supreme Court in January 2017, reiterated the need for vote verifier paper audit trail (VVPAT) in EVMs," said Maken.

"We demand that these elections should be held using the traditional ballot paper system as an immediate step so as to erase doubts in the people's mind," he said.

Earlier, Maken on Twitter urged Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to hold the elections to the North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations -- due in April -- through ballot papers.

"Many are doubting EVMs. Not prejudiced, nor casting aspersions on results. I want Arvind Kejriwal to hold MCD elections through ballot papers," Maken said on Twitter while clarifying that he wasn't disputing the outcome of the just-concluded assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab.

Following the decimation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, party chief Mayawati alleged the voting machines had been "managed" to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

She asked the Election Commission of India to hold the results of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkahand assembly elections invalid and do re-polling using paper ballots.

The poll panel subsequently rejected her allegations.
Lucknow, March 15 : Gang rape accused Gayatri Prajapati, a senior Samajwadi Party leader and minister in the outgoing Uttar Pradesh government, was arrested on Wednesday and sent to 14-day's judicial custody.

Absconding since February 27, Prajapati was arrested in Lucknow's Aashiana area early on Wednesday by a joint team of the Special Task Force and the local police.

Sources told IANS that the mining minister in the outgoing government, known for his proximity to Samajwadi Party (SP) founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, was first taken to the Alambagh police station for recording his statement.

The police has already arrested other accused, including Amrendra Singh aka Pintu, Roopesh and Vikas Verma, gunner Chandrapal, a revenue official Ashok Tiwari, Ashish Shukla and had detained the sons of the minister.

Prajapati apparently came under pressure after two of his sons were detained by the Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday.

Prajapati unsuccessfully contested the recent state assembly elections from Amethi. He had won from there in 2012. Six others accused in the same case were held earlier.

In February, the Supreme Court had ordered the state police to lodge an FIR against him. The gang rape victim had accused Prajapati's henchmen of terrorising her and her daughter in a Delhi hospital.

Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad said Gayatri was being tracked for some time and that he was constantly changing his locations.
New Delhi, March 15 : The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday witnessed multiple adjournments amid chaos over the Congress' allegations that the BJP "murdered democracy" by not honouring the people's mandate in Goa and Manipur assembly elections.

The upper house was first adjourned soon after it assembled at 11 a.m. as Congress member Anand Sharma raised the issue, saying the BJP was "violating mandate of the people" in Goa and Manipur.

"Congress has emerged as the single-largest party in these two states and in case of no clear majority, such party is invited to form the government," he said.

Sharma alleged that the BJP was "stealing MLAs".

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abas Naqvi tried to intervene but the Congress members gathered in the well of the house and began shouting slogans against the BJP.

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien, who kept on requesting the agitating members to return to their seats, then adjourned the house till 11.30 a.m.

Similar scenes were again witnessed during the Question Hour at 12 noon.

This time, Leader of Opposition in the house Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the matter and said "it was a murder of democracy" and the issue should be discussed in the house.

"It's a question of India's democracy," he added.

Chairman Mohammad Hamid Ansari requested him to take up the issue after lunch and "let the Question Hour proceed".

Nobody paid any heed to his pleas and he adjourned the house for 15 minutes -- till 12.19 p.m.

After two adjournments, the upper house was again in chaos as Congress members gathered in front of the Chair, shouting slogans against the government. The house was finally adjourned till 2.00 p.m.

The house again witnessed similar scenes as it met after lunch with Azad saying that in Goa the mandate was totally against the BJP.

He said the central government was trying to destabilise the Congress governments for the past one year.

"Why is BJP so eager to form governments in states where it has no majority, no mandate," he asked, adding that the party was not doing anything to form governments in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttrakhand where it has got the majority.

Responding to it, Leader of House Arun Jaitley said that there was no such precedent or a decision that single largest party has to be invited to form the government.

"Governor can also invite a coalition that has majority," he opined.

On this, Congress members again gathered in the well of the house and started shouting slogans against the BJP.

The house was then adjourned till 3 p.m.
New Delhi, March 15 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday alleged that EVMs may have been tampered with in Punjab, resulting in 20-25 per cent of AAP votes getting transferred to the SAD-BJP alliance and thus propping up the Congress to power.

The Aam Aadmi Party leader told the media here that there were numerous booths where his party got only "two, three or four" votes when though the number of its own activists and family members were in dozens.

He said there was widespread suspicion that "20 to 25 per cent of votes polled in favour of the AAP had been transferred to the Akali Dal-BJP alliance" by tampering the Electronic Voting Machines.

The Congress won the Punjab election with 38.4 per cent vote share, the defeated Akali Dal-BJP alliance got 30.5 per cent of votes while the AAP, now the main opposition party, got only 23.5 per cent of votes.

"There was anger against the ruling Akali-BJP alliance and people were saying the AAP will sweep the polls with Akali-BJP getting only 5-6 per cent votes," Kejriwal said.

"But in the end, AAP got barely 25 per cent votes and the SAD got almost 31 per cent. How is it possible?"

AAP "volunteers and their families... are all ready to swear on affidavit that they voted for us" in areas where the party got only two to four votes, he said.

Kejriwal said there were no two views about the AAP sweep in the Malwa region in Punjab and yet all seats there went to the Congress.

Pointing out the vulnerability of EVMs, Kejriwal said the Election Commission cannot shirk away from its responsibility of restoring people's faith in the electoral process.

He said similar doubts had also been raised about the EVMs following the Maharashtra civic polls and the just concluded assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.

"Many countries have stopped using EVMs. Even the BJP in the past including (L.K.) Advaniji had said they can be tampered with. The Supreme Court too has said EVMs can be tampered with."

Kejriwal said that in 32 of the 117 constituencies in Punjab, Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system was installed.

"We demand the (poll panel) to match the details of the VVPAT with EVMs. We strongly suspect that around 20-25 per cent of our votes were transferred to the SAD-BJP through tampering of EVMs.

"The EC should count the VVPAT slips where they were used and match them with the EVM result. If the results match, people's trust in EVMs will increase."

Kejriwal said the Punjab election process cannot be countermanded but underlined he did not want what happened in Punjab to take place anywhere else.

"If EVMs can actually be tampered with, then there is no point in holding elections," Kejriwal said.

The AAP, which was confident of winning in Punjab, finished a distant second with 20 seats (an ally won two seats) while the Congress secured nearly two-thirds majority. The Akali Dal-BJP alliance got 18 seats.

The BJP accused Kejriwal of "damaging the credibility" of the Election Commission and the electoral process.

Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari said Kejriwal was unable to accept his defeat in Punjab and Goa.

He accused Kejriwal of creating a controversy about the EVMs to use during the civic polls in Delhi to be held on April 22 where he said the AAP will face defeat.
New Delhi, March 15 : Admiral Vladimir Korolev, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, is visiting India heading a four-member delegation that ends on March 18.

The visit aims to consolidate bilateral naval relations between India and Russia and explore new avenues for naval cooperation, an official statement said.

On Wednesday, Admiral Korolev held discussions with Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of the Naval Staff and other officials of the Indian Navy.

The Admiral is scheduled to meet Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, Army chief General Bipin Rawat and the Defence Secretary.

India is the largest importer of defence equipment from Russia and a majority of the armament inventory in the Indian armed forces are of Russian origin.

The Indian and Russian navies cooperate "on many fronts, which include operational interactions, training, hydrographic cooperation, IT and exchange of subject matter experts in various fields," said an official statement.

In addition, they have been conducting bilateral Maritime Exercise 'Indra Navy' since 2003. Eight editions have been held.

The Admiral will also visit Mumbai where he will meet the Commander-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, and visit an indigenously built destroyer INS Mysore.
Islamabad, March 15 : Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday categorically rejected reports about deployment of Pakistani army personnel in Saudi Arabia to assist the kingdom in the ongoing Saudi-Yemen conflict.

"No military personnel have been sent to Saudi Arabia in connection with the Saudi Arabia-Yemen conflict," the minister was quoted as saying by Dawn news.

He was speaking in the National Assembly in response to a point of order raised by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member Shafqat Mahmood.

Mahmood was referring to some reports and posts on social media which suggested that a Pakistan Army brigade was sent to Saudi Arabia.

Asif said: "It is our policy not to get involved in Saudi Arabia-Yemen conflict. If any decision had to be taken, it will flow through parliament."

As discussed in this house and approved, he stressed: "It would be our endeavour that our role is not partisan rather we would play a conciliatory role."

Saudi Arabia and its mostly Gulf Arab allies intervened in Yemen's civil war in March 2015 after Houthi rebels deposed the administration of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, which then went into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The coalition has since launched thousands of air attacks on the Houthis and their allies in Yemen's army but paused the strikes on Sanaa in March after reaching an informal agreement with the Houthis to cool combat on the Yemeni-Saudi border.
New Delhi, March 15 : The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday was adjourned for the day around 3 p.m. after repeated disruptions and short adjournments earlier in the day.

As soon as the house re-assembled, the Congress members came near the Chairman's podium and started shouting slogans, protesting political developments in Goa and Manipur. Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien then adjourned the house for the day.

Earlier in the day, the upper house saw multiple adjournments and chaos over the Congress' allegations that "BJP murdered the democracy by not honouring the people's mandate in Goa and Manipur assembly elections".

The house was first adjourned soon after it met at 11 a.m. as Congress member Anand Sharma raised the issue of Goa and Manipur developments, and said the BJP was "violating mandate of the people" in the two states.

"Congress has emerged as the single-largest party in these two states and in case of no clear majority, such party is invited to form the government," he said.

Sharma alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was "stealing MLAs".

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abas Naqvi tried to intervene but Congress members gathered in the well of the house and began shouting slogans against the BJP.

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien, who kept on requesting the agitating members to return to their seats, then adjourned the house till 11.30 a.m.

Similar scenes were again witnessed during the Question Hour at 12 noon.

This time, Leader of Opposition in the House Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the matter, and said "it was a murder of democracy" and the issue should be discussed in the house.

"It's a question of India's democracy," he added.

Chairman Mohammad Hamid Ansari requested him to take up the issue after lunch and "let the Question Hour proceed".

Nobody paid any heed to his pleas and the Chairman adjourned the house for 15 minutes -- till 12.19 p.m.

After two adjournments, the upper house was again plunged into chaos as Congress members gathered in front of the Chair, shouting slogans against the government. The house was again adjourned till 2.00 p.m.

After it met post-lunch, the house again witnessed similar scenes with Azad saying that in Goa the mandate was totally against the BJP.

He said the central government was trying to destabilise the Congress governments for the past one year.

"Why BJP is so eager to form governments in states where it has no majority, no mandate," he asked, adding that the party was not doing anything to form governments in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand where it has got majority after the recent elections.

Responding to it, Leader of House Arun Jaitley said that there was no such precedent or a decision that single largest party has to be invited to form the government first.

"Governor can also invite a coalition that has majority," he said.

On this, Congress members again gathered in the well of the house and started shouting slogans against the BJP.

The house was then adjourned till 3 p.m.
Jammu, March 15 : The central government on Wednesday assured Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of looking into resuming cross-LoC trade disrupted due to shelling on the border.

Mehbooba Mufti took up the issue of Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC) at Chakan da Bagh with the minister following shelling three days ago, an official statement said.

"The Home Minister assured her of looking into the matter and directing agencies concerned accordingly."

The Chief Minister said the livelihood of a large number of traders was dependent on business activities at the TFC.

The cross-border trade and bus service across LoC were stopped due to Pakistani shelling in Poonch district.
Brasilia, March 16 : Thousands of Brazilians staged protests across the country against a proposed government reform of the retirement system.

The protests on Wednesday were organised by labour unions and social movements, Efe news reported.

Public employees and teacher unions took part in the protests, forcing schools and universities to stay shut for the day in several states, including Rio de Janeiro.

Transport services were also hit as bus drivers and metro and rail operators in cities such as Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba joined the protests.

Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, woke up on Wednesday to no buses and a partially operational metro although the transportation system normalised as the day progressed.

Blockades were reported on major roads, along with huge traffic jams and the closure of some banks.

Amidst the chaos, President Michel Temer again defended the reform saying it would prevent a collapse of the pension system and that it was the right time for Brazil to undertake an extensive reform in order to prevent a crisis in the future such as the ones Portugal, Greece and Spain have faced.

Temer's plan raises to 65 the minimum retirement age for both men and women to begin receiving retirement benefits.

According to the current law, Brazilian women may retire with 30 years of work history and men with 35, with no lower age limit, allowing people to take advantage of the social safety net sometimes starting at the age of 50.
Tokyo, March 16 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday called for a "different approach" to dealing with North Korea amid the country's rising threats over its nuclear programme.

Tillerson arrived in Japan on Thursday morning beginning his first Asia tour as US secretary of state.

"I think it's important to recognise the diplomatic efforts of the last 20 years to bring North Korea to the table have failed," he said after a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, the Washington Post reported.

His reference to 20 years of failure alluded to the 1994 deal between the US and North Korea that would have seen Pyongyang receive aid and two proliferation-resistant nuclear power plants in return for freezing and eventually dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

That deal collapsed in 2002 and years of stop-start efforts to reach a new deal have amounted to little, with North Korea actively pursuing nuclear weapons and the missiles with which to deliver them, according to the report.

Over that time, the US had given North Korea a total of $1.35 billion in assistance "as an encouragement to take a different pathway", Tillerson said, but it had been met with continued weapons development.

"It is clear that a different approach is required," he said, adding that he and Kishida had "exchanged views about a different approach".

Kishida said he had conveyed Japan's views to Tillerson for consideration during the policy review, but he didn't go into details.

While in Tokyo, Tillerson was also scheduled to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who forged a bond with President Trump during his visit to Washington last month.

The US and the countries on Tillerson's itinerary are trying to find ways to convince the regime led by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to stop firing missiles and pursuing development of nuclear weapons, reported the newspaper.

On Friday, Tillerson will head to South Korea, which is in political turmoil after its President Park Geun-hye was impeached last week as the result of a corruption scandal.

There, the US is currently deploying a controversial missile interception system known as Thaad (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence), which could be halted by South Korea's next leader.

On Saturday, Tillerson would be visiting Beijing where, apart from North Korea, trade will also be a key topic of discussion.
LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc. (OTCQB:PMCB), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing targeted treatments for cancer and diabetes using its signature live-cell encapsulation technology, Cell-in-a-Box, today released a statement by Chief Executive Officer Kenneth L. Waggoner that addresses the companys position on releasing a date for filing its Investigational New Drug application (IND). Mr. Waggoners statement can be read below:



PharmaCyte does not plan to publish a date for the filing of its IND. At the current time, its extremely difficult for the company to supply a development timeline that will accurately predict when the IND will be filed. It would be irresponsible of the company to release what, at this point, would be a hopeful date for filing the IND. This date could change from day-to-day and week-to-week based upon several unforeseen variables  many of which are beyond PharmaCytes control. This means that we cannot give an accurate timeline for filing the IND because we too are awaiting a list of items to be completed by others.

What can be said with certainty is that PharmaCyte is on the right track for filing its IND at the earliest opportunity. With the help of Facet Life Sciences and TD2, the company is committed to doing everything the right way by following the guidance given to the company by the FDA during the pre-IND meeting. In doing that, PharmaCyte will maximize the possibility of preparing a successful IND rather than having the companys IND put on clinical hold or even outright denied because it didnt follow the FDAs guidance. Getting to a point where the IND can be filed is not an overnight or even a one-month process. During the companys conference call, I tried to convey this point to shareholders. Any shareholder who thought that the pre-IND meeting would be held one day and then the IND would be filed the next had completely unrealistic expectations. This never occurs.

PharmaCytes pre-IND meeting with the FDA was the best possible way for the company to introduce its pancreatic cancer therapy, past clinical trial results and trial design to the FDA, and, in turn, received invaluable feedback from the FDA and suggestions and ideas to best advance our therapy in the clinical trial. The pre-IND meeting served as the starting point of getting PharmaCyte and the FDA on the same page for the company to properly prepare for a clinical trial in inoperable locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC).

The pre-IND meeting represented a critical point in the regulatory process for PharmaCyte and allowed the company to establish a strong relationship with the FDA. It also provided PharmaCyte and the FDA the opportunity to agree on a development strategy that should lead to a successful IND and, hence, the start of the clinical trial. The discussions held during the pre-IND meeting have the potential to save PharmaCyte both time and money in the long run, and have definitively shaped the overall strategy for the development of PharmaCytes therapy for LAPC.

If youre wondering how the pre-IND meeting could have meaningfully benefited PharmaCyte and possibly reduce time to market, the FDA has addressed this question on its website, indicating the following benefits pertaining to PharmaCyte:



Identifying and avoiding unnecessary studies;



Ensuring that necessary studies are designed to provide useful information to the FDA;

Gaining FDA support for PharmaCytes proposed strategy;



Minimizing the chance for a clinical hold being issued by the FDA after filing the IND which would, of course, delay the start of the clinical trial;



Providing an opportunity for PharmaCyte and the FDA to creatively embark upon an exchange of ideas about all aspects of the clinical trial;



Obtaining regulatory insight from the FDA into the proposed clinical trial, particularly about PharmaCytes cell therapy for LAPC;



Minimizing costs so PharmaCyte doesnt unnecessarily spend money on its development program;



Defining acceptable endpoints and goals that the FDA finds acceptable; and



Allowing early interactions and ongoing negotiations with the FDA related to the clinical trial.

The company now has the guidance it needs to complete what is expected to be a successful IND process. PharmaCyte was charged with completing numerous tasks identified by the FDA during the pre-IND meeting. Many of these tasks came about because PharmaCytes treatment for LAPC is novel in that it is a live cell-based therapy that also involves a unique form of cell encapsulation technology. When these tasks are completed by PharmaCyte, Austrianova, TD2 and others, PharmaCyte will file its IND. It will be then that the public is notified the IND has been filed.

About PharmaCyte Biotech

PharmaCyte Biotech is a clinical stage biotechnology company developing therapies for cancer and diabetes based upon a proprietary cellulose-based live cell encapsulation technology known as Cell-in-a-Box. This technology will be used as a platform upon which therapies for several types of cancer and diabetes are being developed. PharmaCytes therapy for cancer involves encapsulating genetically engineered human cells that convert an inactive chemotherapy drug into its active or cancer-killing form. These encapsulated cells are implanted as close to the patients cancerous tumor as possible. Once implanted, a chemotherapy drug that is normally activated in the liver (ifosfamide) is given intravenously at one-third the normal dose. The ifosfamide is carried by the circulatory system to where the encapsulated cells have been implanted. When the ifosfamide comes in contact with the encapsulated cells they act as an artificial liver and activate the chemotherapy drug at the source of the cancer. This targeted chemotherapy has proven effective and safe to use in past clinical trials and results in no side effects.

In addition to developing a novel therapy for cancer, PharmaCyte is developing a treatment for Type 1 diabetes and insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetes. PharmaCyte plans to encapsulate a human cell line that has been genetically engineered to produce, store and release insulin in response to the levels of blood sugar in the human body. The encapsulation will be done using the Cell-in-a-Box technology. Once the encapsulated cells are implanted in a diabetic patient they will function as a bio-artificial pancreas for purposes of insulin production.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are generally statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the words "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "plans," "will," "outlook" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current plans, estimates, assumptions and projections, and speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement in light of new information or future events, except as otherwise required by law. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and are generally beyond our control. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those implied by the forward-looking statements because of the impact of a number of risk factors, many of which are discussed in more detail in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

More information about PharmaCyte Biotech can be found at www.PharmaCyte.com. It can also be obtained by contacting Investor Relations.




Mumbai, March 16 : A group of Congressmen including legislators on Thursday staged a protest outside the State Bank of India headquarters at Nariman Point protesting its Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya's remarks on farm loans waiver.

The protesters numbering over two dozen raised slogans against SBI and entered the SBI building demanding to meet some senior officials to register their formal grievance.

"However, even as a senior officer was going to meet them, the protesters had left the premises," an SBI official said.

Yesterday, Bhattacharya expressed her reservations over the assurances and demand for complete farm loans waiver, coming up from different quarters in recent months.

These include the Maharashtra opposition parties and ruling ally Shiv Sena, besides the Karnataka government, and assurances to this effect during the recent election campaign in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Bhattacharya, 60, said that this would disturb the credit discipline among the borrowers, they would keep expecting more such waivers in future and even those (future) loans would remain unpaid.

The Congress, NCP and ruling Shiv Sena have been vehemently demanding a package to fully write off all existing farm loans in Maharashtra since the Budget Session of the state legislature started.

The Shiv Sena has even warned its ally that it would disrupt the proceedings till the farm loan waiver package is announced and create hurdles in the budget presentation this week.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis informed the legislature on Thursday that in the past five years, there have been 16,000 farmers suicides despite writing off farm loans, and asked the opposition, "Who would guarantee that suicides will stop after another such scheme is implemented?"
Mumbai, March 16 : The Maharashtra Opposition parties on Thursday protested against State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya's comments on farm-loan waiver and warned her of a breach of privilege motion in the legislature unless she tendered an apology.

Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said Bhattacharya's comments were an insult to the farmers and breach of privilege of the state legislature.

His statement came after a large number of Congress and Nationalist Congress Party legislators and activists protested outside the SBI headquarters at Nariman Point.

Though Bhattacharya was reportedly not present, a senior SBI officer was planning to come and meet the protestors but they left before he could reach them, an SBI official said.

On Wednesday, Bhattacharya expressed her reservations over the assurances and demand for complete farm-loan waiver, coming up from different quarters in recent months.

These include the Maharashtra opposition parties and ruling ally Shiv Sena, besides the Karnataka government, and assurances to this effect during the recent election campaign in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Bhattacharya, 60, said that this would disturb the credit discipline among the borrowers, they would keep expecting more such waivers in future and even those (future) loans would remain unpaid.

Condemning Bhattacharya's comments, Vikhe Patil said she is not "a policy-maker" for the country or the state and any decision on waiving of farm loans can be taken only by the legislature.

Questioning her statements, he demanded why Bhattacharya kept mum when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced farm loan waivers during the Uttar Pradesh election campaign.

He said that on one hand, the SBI chief speaks of financial discipline for farm loans waiver, but on the other it has written off debts worth around Rs 140,000 crore for defaulters like Vijay Mallya and other rich industrialists.

"When it's a question of Maharashtra farmers, how did she suddenly remember financial discipline? If she has the courage, then she should express her opinion before the PM," Vikhe-Patil advised, demanding an apology from Bhattacharya.

"Bhattacharya is only a public servant... She has attempted a breach of privilege of the legislature... She must continue to serve the public and not act like a master of the farmers," Vikhe Patil observed in a sharp rebuke to the SBI Chairperson.
Beijing, March 16 : China and Pakistan on Thursday agreed to continue and further increase military cooperation, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.

The development came during Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa's three-day trip to China, ISPR said in a statement.

The army chief thanked the Chinese leadership for their defence support and cooperation and termed it as a source of strength between the two countries.

General Bajwa is expected to hold meetings with China's senior political and military leadership.

He met Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Chairman Central Military Commission General Fan Changlong, Chief of Joint Services Department General Fang Funghui and General Li Zuocheng Commander People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The Chinese leadership on the occasion also expressed their complete understanding of the geo-political and security environment of the region.

China's leadership appreciated Pakistan's fight against terrorism with a special mention of eliminating Al Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), added the ISPR statement.

China blames ETIM for carrying out attacks in its far western region of Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people. China had long urged Islamabad to weed out what it says are militants from Xinjiang.

China, during the meetings held, also expressed concern over the growing threat of the Islamic State and ETIM in Afghanistan.

They expressed their satisfaction on the security measures taken to safeguard the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Itanagar, March 16 : Arunachal Pradesh Governor P.B. Acharya and Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Thursday shot off letters to their Karnataka counterparts seeking legal action against the landlord for assaulting Higio Gungtey, an undergraduate student.

The 22-year-old Gungtey, a fourth-semester student of Christ University in Bengaluru, was allegedly assaulted by his landlord Hemanth Kumar on March 6 over the usage of water. He was also forced to lick his landlord house owner's shoes for using excessive water.

Acharya, who had a telephonic talk with his counterpart Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala, said such irresponsible and uncivilized behaviour of a few needed to be condemned by one and all.

"It is against the very spirit of national character," the Arunachal Governor said and requested Vala to give special attention towards these problems and challenges of students from the North East, particularly Arunachal Pradesh.

Acharya also directed Karnataka Chief Secretary Subhash Chnadra Khuntia to take immediate and strong action against the culprits.

"A criminal case under the provision of SC/ST act may also be initiated against the culprits," he demanded.

Acharya, who also met Gungtey's relatives at Raj Bhavan, spoke to the boy's parents Higio Tama and Higio Yame, who are in Bengaluru to meet their son and take further steps.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu also shot off a letter to his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah requesting his personal intervention in punishing the culprit.

Khandu specifically noted in his letter that though several charges were filed against the culprit, Hemanth Kumar, a lawyer by profession, had managed to obtain anticipatory bail.

The Chief Minister drew Siddaramaiah's attention to the fact that every year, thousands of students from Arunachal Pradesh go to Karnataka, particularly Bengaluru, for higher and technical education.

While pointing that these students face racial discrimination in one or other form, Khandu asserted that such discrimination ought to be negated in every possible way.

"I would therefore seek your personal intervention in the present case to ensure that the culprit is punished according to the law of the land and justice is delivered to the victim and his family members."
Mumbai, March 16 : As the Maharashtra assembly witnessed noisy scenes over the demand for farm-loan waiver, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday asked whether those demanding it could guarantee that suicides by farmers will stop if debts were written off.

He also assured to take up the issue with the Centre.

The Chief Minister said that since the loan waiver scheme of 2008-2009, as many as 16,000 state farmers had committed suicide, and accused the opposition of playing politics over a critical and sensitive issue.

Fadnavis's contention came in response to the aggressive demand by the opposition and ruling ally Shiv Sena for waiver of farm loans, an issue that continued to disrupt the ongoing Budget session proceedings for the second week.

"We are not opposed to farm loan waiver. I want opposition leaders to give guarantee if we waive outstanding loans of Rs 30,000 crore," Fadnavis said in an attempt to corner the opposition even as the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena legislators noisily demanded farm loan waiver.

The Chief Minister attacked the Congress and the NCP for what he said was "not doing enough for farmers" during their 15-year rule and raising the issue of farm loan waiver after they were routed in the civic body elections.

Nevertheless, he assured, he would discuss the matter of writing off farmers' debts with the Centre, including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh.

Reeling off statistics, Fadnavis said the outstanding dues totalled Rs 30,500 crore against 3.10 million farmers in Maharashtra.

In comparison, the government is spending Rs 19,434 in agriculture, Rs 2,000 crore for insurance, Rs 8,000 crore as compensation for natural calamities and Rs 1,500 for various agro-related schemes.

"Hence, an almost equal amount is already being spent for the betterment of farmers and improving agriculture by our government. If a loan waiver is announced, we shall have no funds for investment in this sector," he said.

Fadnavis said farmers had become debt-ridden within a year after the loan waiver scheme and banks did not consider farmers credit-worthy for making fresh advances.

Attacking the Congress and the NCP, he said they are pressing for loan write-off to bail out district cooperative banks run by them.

After Fadnavis's statement, Sena legislator from Junnar, Anil Kadam, said his party wants a complete farm-loan waiver package.

"Please sit and work out something and include it in the state Budget (2017-2018) to be tabled on Saturday," he urged.

A day earlier, the Shiv Sena had said it will not allow Budget presentation before announcement of farm debt write-off.

Later, Congress Member of Legislative Council Sanjay Dutt said that if the Centre is prepared to bear the burden of farm loans in Uttar Pradesh, why discriminate against Maharashtra farmers.

Dubbing Fadnavis's statement as "misleading and making baseless allegations against the opposition", Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil (Congress) said the government must first announce loan-waiver after which the opposition will come to the table.

"While in the opposition, Fadnavis and other leaders raised the demand, but when they are in power now, they are reluctant to offer farm-loan waiver," Vikhe-Patil said.

Later, the Congress and the NCP protested outside State Bank of India head office against bank Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya's statements allegedly opposing the loan waiver.

In a sharp statement, Vikhe-Patil demanded an apology from Bhattacharya failing which the Congress will move a breach of privilege motion against her in the assembly.
Chandigarh, March 16 : With the agitating Jat community threatening to lay siege to national capital Delhi on March 20, the Haryana government on Thursday held talks with Jat leaders in Panipat and claimed that the discussions were "positive".

Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, who led the Haryana government panel in the talks with Jat leaders, said that a final breakthrough was likely to be achieved by Friday.

The Jat leaders are likely to meet Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in New Delhi on Friday.

They were earlier in talks with a five-member panel of senior government officers but the talks had remained inconclusive.

The All-India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) had earlier announced that the community would intensify its agitation by taking their protest to Delhi on March 20.

The Jat leaders said that they would gherao entry points of Delhi from seven sides.

The AIJASS, led by Jat leader Yashpal Malik, has been agitating to press for its demands in Haryana since January 29. The agitation completed 47 days on Thursday.

Talks between the state government and the Jat leaders hit a roadblock last month as the Haryana government made it clear that it has no jurisdiction to withdraw cases being investigated by the CBI against some Jat leaders over violence during the agitation last year.

Haryana Chief MInister Manohar Lal Khattar accused the Jat leaders of increasing their demands and changing goalposts.

Their demands include reservation for Jats, jobs to the next of kin of those killed in violence in the Jat agitation last year, compensation to those injured, withdrawal of cases against them and action against the officers, who ordered action against the Jats, among others.

Violence during the agitation last year had left 30 people dead and over 200 injured. Government and private property worth hundreds of crores of rupees was damaged during the violence in February 2016.
Washington, March 17 : US President Donald Trump's administration will appeal rulings by two federal judges who blocked his second attempt to institute a travel ban, media reports said.

"We intend to appeal the flawed rulings," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in his daily press briefing on Thursday, referring to temporary stays issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Spicer said Trump had the authority to impose a 90-day ban on the issuance of visas to people from six Muslim-majority countries...and halt the US refugee program for 120 days, Efe news reported.

"The danger (of terrorists entering the US) is real. And the law is clear," said the White House spokesman.

He added that the Trump administration was exploring all available options to vigorously defend the revised executive order.

Trump's original travel ban suspended US entry for all refugees as well as travellers from a group of Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Imposed on January 27, the travel ban also was blocked by a federal judge.

Among the alterations made in the revised order were the removal of Iraq from the list of targeted nations and an exemption for lawful permanent residents and travellers who obtained US visas ahead of the January 27 announcement.

The revised order also does not indefinitely bar Syrian refugees from entering the US.

The federal judges who issued the latest stays found that Trump's order did not offer solid evidence of a terrorist threat and was unconstitutional because it discriminated against people on the basis of their religion.
Seoul, March 17 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here Friday morning to talk with his South Korean counterpart over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, a media report said.

The airplane carrying the top US diplomat arrived in the Osan Air Base, some 60 km from here around 10 a.m. for the second stop of his East Asian tour, TV footage showed.

Tillerson visited Japan on Thursday, meeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to leave for Beijing on Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Tillerson is scheduled to meet South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as the acting President after former President Park Geun-hye was ousted.

After the meeting, he will hold a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se here.

Key agenda on the table for Friday's talks between Yun and Tillerson would be the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

Tillerson said in Tokyo on Thursday that diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to realise the denuclearisation of the peninsula have failed, stressing the need for a new approach to the issue.
Kolkata, March 17 : The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe into the Narada sting operation in which prominent leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress were purportedly seen taking wads of currency notes.

A Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T. Chakraborty asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its preliminary inquiry in 72 hours.

The court also asked the CBI to lodge a FIR in the case if it felt it was necessary.

The bench told the CBI to take possession within 24 hours of all devices now in the possession of the court which were used in the sting operation.

The court gave the order after hearing three Public Interest Litigations seeking an independent probe into the controversy that came to light in March 2016.

The web portal Narada News had then uploaded a series of video footage purportedly showing a number of high-profile Trinamool leaders, including former and present ministers, MPs and MLAs receiving money in exchange for doling out favours to a fictitious company.
Kolkata, March 17 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday described the Calcutta High Court order for a CBI probe into the Narada sting operation as "unfortunate" and said her government and the Trinamool Congress will move the Supreme Court against the verdict.

"My government and party will go to the higher court for justice," she told the media.
Late-Breaking SURTAVI Pivotal Clinical Trial Presented at ACC.17 and Published in NEJM Meets Primary Endpoint at Two Years

DUBLIN and WASHINGTON, D.C. - March 17, 2017 - Medtronic plc (NYSE: MDT) today unveiled first-ever clinical data from the Surgical Replacement and Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (SURTAVI) Trial, which was presented at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) 66th Annual Scientific Session and published simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)1.

Data from the trial showed the Medtronic self-expanding TAVR platform met its primary endpoint of all-cause mortality or disabling stroke at two years. Rates of all-cause mortality or disabling stroke at two years were similar to surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) (12.6 percent for TAVR versus 14.0 percent for SAVR; posterior probability of non-inferiority >0.999). The minimally-invasive TAVR procedure also demonstrated significantly better mean aortic valve gradient (7.8 mm Hg vs. 11.8 mm Hg; p<0.001) at two years, while neither TAVR- nor SAVR-treated patients displayed evidence of structural valve deterioration at two years.

"We observed excellent outcomes in both arms of the study and were pleased to see the self-expanding platform perform as well as the gold standard of surgery in this intermediate risk patient population," said Michael Reardon, M.D., professor of cardiothoracic surgery and Allison Family Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Research at Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, principal investigator and author of the SURTAVI trial. "Importantly, near-term results showed critical insights for the therapy. In the first 30 days, patients treated with TAVR experienced statistically lower rates of stroke, lower rates of new onset atrial fibrillation, a quicker hospital discharge, less acute kidney injury and transfusions, and an improved quality of life. SAVR was associated with less aortic regurgitation, major vascular complications and need for permanent pacemaker implantation."

The SURTAVI trial is a global, prospective, multi-center, randomized study evaluating the Medtronic CoreValve(TM) System and CoreValve(TM) Evolut(TM) R System versus open-heart surgery at two years. The SURTAVI trial enrolled intermediate risk patients and compared 863 TAVR patients (STS: 4.4 percent) to 794 SAVR patients (STS: 4.5 percent).

"This is a landmark trial demonstrating our commitment to generating clinical evidence to support the expansion of global patient access to life-changing therapies such as TAVR," said Rhonda Robb, vice president and general manager of the Heart Valve Therapies business, which is part of the Cardiac and Vascular Group at Medtronic. "We are delighted to have met the primary endpoint in the SURTAVI trial, the results of which have been submitted to the FDA to support an intermediate risk label expansion."

The use of the CoreValve and Evolut R systems in intermediate risk severe aortic stenosis patients is investigational only in the U.S.

Following the launch of the self-expanding CoreValve System in the U. S. in 2014, the CoreValve Evolut R System became the first-and-only recapturable and repositionable TAVR device approved in the U.S. for severe aortic stenosis patients at a high or extreme risk for surgery in 2015. The Evolut R system received CE (Conformite Europeene) Mark for intermediate risk severe aortic stenosis patients in 2016.

In collaboration with leading clinicians, researchers and scientists worldwide, Medtronic offers the broadest range of innovative medical technology for the interventional and surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrhythmias. The company strives to offer products and services that deliver clinical and economic value to healthcare consumers and providers around the world.

About Medtronic

Medtronic plc (www.medtronic.com), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is among the world's largest medical technology, services and solutions companies - alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life for millions of people around the world. Medtronic employs more than 88,000 people worldwide, serving physicians, hospitals and patients in more than 160 countries. The company is focused on collaborating with stakeholders around the world to take healthcare Further, Together.

Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic's periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.

-end-
Mumbai, March 17 : The opposition on Friday moved a notice of breach of privilege of the Maharashtra assembly against Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson of State Bank Of India, for her comments on farm loans waiver.

The Leader of Opposition in the assembly, Congress's Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, moved the notice under the Maharashtra Legislature's Section 273, addressed to Speaker Haribhau Bagade.

In the notice, Vikhe Patil said that in recent times there has been a spate of farmland suicides across the country and 8,000 farmers have ended their lives in the past two years in Maharashtra alone.

"The people of Maharashtra have been demanding a complete farm loans waiver package and the issue has been repeatedly raised in the legislature in the past few days. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has assured it will take a decision on loans waiver in the very first cabinet meeting," Vikhe Patil said.

Under these circumstances, he pointed out that Bhattacharya's public comments that such a measure "would disturb the credit discipline among the borrowers, they would keep expecting more such waivers in future and even those (future) loans would remain unpaid" was tantamount to rubbing salt in the farmers' wounds.

Vikhe Patil said the SBI chief was "a public servant" and not "a policy-maker" for the country or the state.

Besides, he said her comments were beyond her jurisdiction since any decision on waiving off farm loans can be taken only by the legislature and by her comments she had insulted the Maharashtra legislature.

Keeping these aspects in view, he urged the Speaker to take further steps.

Vikhe Patil's move came a day after the opposition parties trolled Bhattacharya for her comments and demonstrated outside the SBI headquarters.

The opposition on Thursday demanded an apology to the farmers failing which they threatened to move a notice of breach of privilege against the SBI chief.
Mumbai, March 17 : A tiny colony of seven endangered Humboldt Penguins, imported from an aquarium in Seoul last July, finally went on public display at the Mumbai Zoo here on Friday -- amidst a controversy over their 'western' names.

Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray inaugurated the specially-chilled enclosure in the zoo where the seven flightless birds -- that have been given "Western" names, including those of cartoon characters -- will be exhibited for the first time in the country.

"Now, penguins will no longer be seen only in books and television, Mumbaikars, especially students, can view them in our Mumbai Zoo," Thackeray said on the occasion.

Castigating opponents of the pet Penguin project, he said it was a tough task implementing and "not simple like buying pigeons from Crawford Market".

The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) imported eight Humboldt Penguins from Coex Aquarium for around Rs 2 crore, of which one named Dory, died on October 23, 2016, following an infection, sparking off a major political row.

Most major political parties demanded that they should be sent back as their lives could be at risk in Mumbai's hot, tropical climate.

Now a new controversy has erupted over their names on the inaugural day.

"The BMC has named the Penguins as 'Donald, Daisy, Olive, Popeye, Bubble, Flipper and Mr Molt' -- We strongly protest these Western names and demand that they should be renamed with good Indian names," Pravin Chheda, Congress's ex-BMC Leader of Opposition told IANS.

These Humboldt Penguins belong to the South American species found in the icy cold coasts of Chile and Peru.

Owing to a steep decline in their population, this species has been listed since 2000 as "vulnerable" in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Switzerland.

Considered a brainchild of Yuva Sena chief Aditya U. Thackeray, the import of the Humboldt Penguins is part of an ambitious Rs 2.5 crore modernisation plan of the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan or Mumbai Zoo.

These Humboldts are black-and-white penguins with a black head and white border running from the eyes around the ears and chins and joining at the throat, blackish-grey upper parts, whitish underparts with black breast-bands extending to the thighs, and a fleshy-pink base to the bill.

The Humboldt Penguins, which grow up to 65-70 cms, have a life span of around 25 years, are presently exhibited in around 100 select zoos worldwide.

After they were imported, the Humboldt Penguins were quarantined in a special enclosure for the past nearly eight months without outside contact, to acclimatise them to Indian conditions and the change of location.

These penguins can withstand temperatures of between four to 24 degrees Celsius and the quarantine areas will provide this controlled air-conditioned temperature while on display.

The special enclosure includes around 1,800 sq. feet air-conditioned space with an average 15-17 degrees C and a pool of 6,000-8,000 litres of water as their permanent residence in the zoo, with provision for feeding them around eight kg of certain fish varieties daily.
Panaji, March 17 : In an industry where star children are lined up for their grand launch into filmdom, actress Kriti Sanon admits her ride in Bollywood would have been easier if she was from a film background, but she is "proud" that she doesn't have a "godfather".

Delhi girl Kriti, daughter of a chartered accountant and an associate professor, spoke to IANS about her journey on the sidelines of the fourth edition of India Beach Fashion Week 2017 here.

Talking about how having some backing helps, she said: "People would have known me much faster... To register a new face, especially when that face doesn't come from a film background and you don't know the surname, it takes a little while for the audience to connect with you."

"I am quite proud of it, of where I've come. I never thought of becoming an actor to where I am right now . I don't have any particular godfather, who is always there and helping me out. But at the same time, I am making my own mistakes and learning through them," she said.

Also, the 26-year-old actress feels "rawness helps as an actor".

"It's good sometimes to not know too much," Kriti said.

The actress has starred in two romantic films "Heropanti" and "Dilwale". As of now, she has two movies -- "Raabta" and "Bareilly Ki Barfi" in her kitty.

Asked if she wants to stick to the romantic genre, Kriti said: "I am a romantic at heart. I love 'love stories', and that is something that should never go out of fashion. The four films I have done are very different from one another."

She says "Raabta" is a romantic drama. And one cannot actually put "Bareilly Ki Barfi" in one genre because it has got a little bit of romance, comedy, drama and slice of life feel to it.

"Yes, there is a little bit of romantic angle in them, but I don't choose scripts on the basis of, 'Oh, it should be like this'. I go with an open mind when I go for narrations and if I like a script, I just go with it," said Kriti, who walked the ramp for Sukriti & Aakriti at the India Beach Fashion Week 2017 here earlier this month.

Kriti said she is more of an "instinctive person" and if an action film comes her way and she likes the content, she would go with it.

In just three years, Kriti has managed to have a strong fan base. The actress has 979K followers on Twitter and 6 million followers on Instagram.

Does that make her feel like she's arrived?

"Not yet. Very honestly speaking, because I think sometimes I do feel that people forget that I am just two films old. My first film was more or less figuring myself out... When you don't come from a Bollywood background, you don't know anything about the film world. So, you are basically learning, and you are learning throughout," she said.

"Dilwale" was more of an experience for Kriti with names like Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Varun Dhawan.

"It was an ensemble project. So of course, the amount you have as an actor to perform is not so much. I have not yet, in these two films, got a platform where I could explore more as an actor," she said, adding that "Raabta" and "Bareilly Ki Barfi" are more performance-oriented.

(The writer's trip was at the invitation of India Beach Fashion Week organisers. Durga Chakravarty can be contacted at durga.c@ians.in)
Los Angeles, March 17 : The artistic community has denounced US President Donald Trumps proposal to eliminate funding to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA).

Trump has reportedly proposed the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the body, nor its subsidiaries National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) plan to take this lying down.

PBS President and CEO Paula Karger issued a statement outlining the low costs and high returns of public broadcasting, reports variety.com.

The statement read: "PBS and our nearly 350 member stations, along with our viewers, continue to remind Congress of our strong support among Republican and Democratic voters, in rural and urban areas across every region of the country. We have always had support from both parties in Congress, and will again make clear what the public receives in return for federal funding for public broadcasting.

"The cost of public broadcasting is small, only $1.35 per citizen per year, and the benefits are tangible: increasing school readiness for kids 2-8, support for teachers and homeschoolers, lifelong learning, public safety communications and civil discourse."

In a separate statement, NEA Chairman Jane Chu wrote: "We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every Congressional District in the nation."

According to variety.com, an online petition to support federal funding of the arts has already received over 230,000 signatures.

Actors and artists took to social media to denounce the proposed budget cuts.

Indian-American actor Kal Penn posted a call to action writing: "Proposed Trump #SkinnyBudget eliminates @NEAarts. Tell your representative we need to #SAVEtheNEA."

Author Mark Harris called out the disparity in spending. Trump aims to increase military spending by $54 billion.

Actress Sophia Bush showed support for PBS and NPR, tweeting, "Let's keep them going."
Lucknow, March 17 : The swearing in of a new BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will most likely take place on Sunday, party sources said on Friday.

The oath taking ceremony of the new Chief Minister and the cabinet was likely to be a grand affair with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah attending the event.

An estimated one lakh people are also expected to attend the ceremony at the Kashiram Smriti Upvan in the evening.

Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states are also likely to attend.

While no official announcement has been made so far about the next Chief Minister, the sources say the name of union minister Manoj Sinha has "more or less been finalized" by Amit Shah.

A formal announcement will be made on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar and Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad presided over a high-level meeting on Friday to take stock of the preparedness for the mega event.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is returning to power in the country's most populous state after a gap of almost 15 years. It won 325 seats along with its allies in the 403-member House.
New Delhi, March 17 : The government on Friday said it still has to work out the modalities of any policy to allow 100 per cent FDI in domestic airlines.

"We have not initiated any talks with anyone. What the government said is it will invite 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in aviation. The modalities of how we are going to do it is still to be worked out," Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju said on the sidelines of a function in connection with the inauguration of the Airbus India Training Centre (AITC) here.

"This is a suggestion that emerged; decisions came from the Commerce Ministry. Unless we make up our minds on how we are going to make anything operational, we will not be commenting on it," he added.

On Wednesday, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha had, in a written reply, told Parliament that the Centre has not received any application from foreign airlines to start domestic passenger carriers through the 100 per cent FDI route.

The Minister's reply came after a query on Qatar Airways plan to start a fully-owned domestic passenger carrier in partnership with an institutional investor.

Earlier, Qatar Airways said it plans to set up an airline in India along with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund.

Under the current rules, a foreign airline can invest only up to 49 per cent in domestic airline. However, in partnership with an institutional investor, the foreign airline can invest and set up a 100 per cent-owned domestic passenger carrier.

Sinha said the government was considering stakeholders' views before framing any policy that allows for 100 per cent FDI in domestic airlines.
New Delhi, March 17 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev on Friday discussed a wide range of issues pertaining to bilateral economic relations, official sources here said.

Trutnev, accompanied by leaders from Russia's far east and a business delegation, is on a visit to India from March 15-18.

The two leaders "agreed that the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia, based on longstanding and time-tested ties, is very deep and extends to all spheres of mutual interest".

"Sushma Swaraj specifically stressed the growing mutual beneficial ties between India and Russia in energy sector, particularly in the Russian far east," said an official statement.

"The Minister emphasised on cooperation in maritime and agricultural sector, and on institutional linkages between the countries in these areas," it added.

Sushma Swaraj also thanked Trutnev for inviting the Indian participation in the Third Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in September.

The two leaders agreed that interaction between various ministries of India and Russia will further boost economic cooperation.

Russia is India's foremost defence and strategic partner and largest exporter of defence equipment and nuclear technology.

Recently, Russian oil major Rosneft agreed to invest $10.9 billion in Indian hydrocarbon sector and Indian oil companies like Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India and Oil and Natural Gas Commission had acquired stakes in Russian Vankor and Tass-Yuryakh oil fields.
Dehradun, March 17 : Trivendra Singh Rawat was on Friday formally elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party in Uttarakhand. He will take oath as Chief Minister on Saturday.

"Trivendra Singh Rawat was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party. His name was proposed by Satpal Maharaj and Prakash Pant. The proposal was accepted unanimously," Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the media here.

Tomar said that the BJP legislators, headed by Rawat, would meet Governor Krishan Kant Paul and stake claim to form the new government in the state.

BJP's National Vice-President and Uttarakhand in-charge Shyam Jaju said that oath-taking ceremony would take place on Saturday.

He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah would attend the oath-taking ceremony.
Mumbai, March 17 : Disruptions in Parliament are totally unacceptable as nobody has the moral authority to postpone the business of the House, President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Friday.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave here, Mukherjee said: "The disease of disruption has crept in. Disruption is totally unacceptable to me. Session after session pass without transacting any business. Who will make law? Money and finance needs to be discussed."

Mukherjee said that when he entered politics Parliament used to meet more frequently - around 24-26 weeks in a year - but that was no longer the case.

He said that Parliament must examine the rationality of expenditure as it is the taxpayers' money which was being spent.
Dehradun, March 17 : Long-time RSS activist Trivendra Singh Rawat was on Friday elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party and will take oath as the next Chief Minister of Uttarakhand on Saturday.

His name was proposed by BJP leader Prakash Pant and seconded by Satpal Maharaj. The two BJP men were also in the race for the post.

All the other 54 Bharatiya Janata Party legislators then unanimously approved Rawat's candidature.

A former associate of now Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rawat was Agriculture Minister in the previous BJP government in Uttarakhand, which was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000.

Rawat will be sworn in as the ninth Chief Minister of the hill state at a grand ceremony at the Parade Grounds in the presence of Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.

Party sources told IANS that six ministers were also likely to be sworn in with Rawat.

"Rawat was elected leader of the BJP Legislature Party... The proposal was accepted unanimously," Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told media here.

Tomar said Rawat later met Governor Krishan Kant Paul and staked claim to forming the new government.

Rawat was elected in the presence of party observers and senior leaders from Delhi -- Tomar, Saroj Pandey, Dharmendra Pradhan, Shyam Jaju and J.P. Nadda -- as well as Uttarakhand BJP President Ajay Bhatt.

Elected from Doiwala, where he defeated Congress's Hira Singh Bisht with a margin of over 24,000 votes, Rawat is widely regarded in the party for his organisational skills. He is a 'Pracharak' in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological parent.

Besides being closely associated with Modi when the present Prime Minister was a BJP General Secretary, Tomar also worked with Amit Shah in Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. That was when the BJP created history by sweeping 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, leaving only five to the opposition and two to an ally.

Rawat, a Thakur, was among the frontrunners for the post and is largely credited with the BJP win in Jharkhand where he oversaw the party's assembly polls in 2014.

In the just ended assembly elections, the BJP stunned the Congress by winning 57 of the 70 seats in Uttarakhand.

Rawat will be the fifth BJP chief minister in Uttarakhand. The party formed its first government in the state when it was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000 with Nityanand Swami as the first Chief Minister. Swami was replace by BJP's B.S. Koshyari in March 2001.

The Cogress won the first election in the state in 2002 and N.D. Tiwari headed the government. The BJP returned to power in 2007 with B.C. Khanduri as Chief Minister. Ramesh Pokhriyal replaced Khanduri in 2011.

In 2012, the Congress formed the government after a nail-biting finish with the BJP in the assembly elections that year. Vijay Bahuguna was made the Chief Minister but he was replaced two years later by Harish Rawat in 2014.
ORLANDO, Fla., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Immune Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQB:IMUN), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for a range of conditions using Lodonal, its proprietary formulation of lower-dose naltrexone, announced today that the Dominican Republic Ministry of Public Health has granted Immune's request to export Lodonal to Kenya.



Immune Therapeutics formulates and manufactures Lodonal in the Dominican Republic. Local laws require a Certificate of Pharmaceutical Product ("COPP") to export Lodonal to Kenya.

"The granting of our export license by the Ministry represents the next critical step in our strategy to initiate future commercialization of Lodonal in Kenya," stated Noreen Griffin, Chief Executive Officer of Immune Therapeutics, Inc. A New Drug application cannot be filed without a valid Certificate of Pharmaceutical Product.

The Ministry's approval for Lodonal was granted and registered for the period of five years, under No. 2017-0068, in accordance with Regulation No. 246-06 dated 22 June 2006. Separately, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance Vice-Ministry of Quality Assurance General Directorate of Medicines, Foods and Health Products issued a Certificate of Pharmaceutical Products for Lodonal for export to Kenya.

With our COPP in place, our next step is to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) to Kenyan regulators along with data from our Lodonal preclinical and clinical study program, noted Ms. Griffin. Once our application is accepted, we will receive a registration number (marketing authorization). From there, we will move through the regulatory approval process including manufacturing (GMP) assessment, National Quality Control laboratory analysis, regulatory committee review and committee recommendations before the board issues its final ruling. If we are given fast track status, the approval process could take as little as 90 days, after which we will be prepared to take orders for shipment through our recently announced distribution agreement. As previously announced, the Company expects to reach commercialization for its patented Lodonal therapy in the current year.

On March 7, 2017, Immune Therapeutics announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") for the distribution of Lodonal in Kenya. The MOU is a three-way distribution agreement between the Company, its local partner Nairobi, Kenya-based Omaera Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., a leading Kenyan pharmaceutical importer and distributor, and GB Pharma Holdings, which is working closely with Immune Therapeutics to introduce and market Lodonal to market in Western and Central regions of Africa. The MOU sets forth standard terms and conditions for distributing Lodonal in Kenya.

Initial orders for Lodonal are expected to be generated from the Ministry of Health, and/or any of several global healthcare agencies that fund treatment for indigenous patients with HIV/AIDS. At that time, Immune Therapeutics, GB Pharma, and Omaera will finalize its exclusive, definitive agreement based on the volume and pricing of those purchase orders prior to commencing sales, marketing, and distribution.

About Immune Therapeutics, Inc.

Immune Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQB:IMUN) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing its proprietary version of lower-dose naltrexone Lodonal as standalone and conjunctive therapy in patients with a wide variety of conditions including HIV/AIDS, autoimmune diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative conditions and other inflammatory conditions. Lodonal is a novel compound with a unique mechanism of action and has clinical data on over 400 patients in several clinical studies. The drug has a favorable safety profile, is well tolerated by patients and has demonstrated efficacy in at least one clinically meaningful endpoint.

Forward-Looking Statements



This release may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ from those projected due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the possibility that some or all of the matters and transactions considered by the Company may not proceed as contemplated, and by all other matters specified in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are made based upon current expectations that are subject to risk and uncertainty. The Company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements in this news release to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting such forward-looking information. Assumptions and other information that could cause results to differ from those set forth in the forward-looking information can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov), including its recent periodic reports.




New Delhi : Mumbai, March 17 (AINS) President Pranab Mukhrejee on Friday said he was impressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's way of dealing with things and his quick learning.

"He (Modi) has his own way of dealing with things and I must give him credit how quickly he picked up," Mukherjee said at India Today Conclave here.

He said it was noteworthy how without any prior experience in Parliament, Modi acquired mastery over complex international affairs and economic matters in no time.

"Every other Prime Minister from Charan Singh to Chandra Shekhar, all of them had profound experience in Parliament. But a man coming straight from a provincial government and acquiring mastery over foreign relations, complicated external economy... speaks volume of him," Mukherjee said.

He mentioned how Prime Minister Modi was deftly handling the "informal but powerful" G-20 group that deals with "major issues of international finance, trade, sanctions".
New Delhi, March 17 : The third edition of the 'GoAt de France' international culinary event is all set to celebrate French gastronomy in the capital.

The festival aims to highlight the art of French living and French regional produce.

Indeed, gastronomy is one of the cornerstones of French heritage, and the unique nature of the country's products and wines reflect the diversity of its landscape and typical regional products.

The expertise of French chefs continues to attract greater number of tourists and travellers from all over the world.

In the upcoming festival that will be held on March 21, there will be a participation of 14 restaurants from Delhi and Gurgaon, among other Indian cities, as also across the world.

Over five continents, 2,000 restaurants, 71 culinary schools, and 150 embassies of France will become a part of the festival. All kinds of eateries are involved, from haute cuisine restaurants to quality bistros.

On the occasion, the French Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler, will host a special dinner at his residence in Delhi, which will be dished up by famous Michelin-starred French Chef Akrame Benallal.

In the spirit of Indo-French cultural cooperation, Benallal, who is known for his flair for blending the unexpected with the traditional, will also conduct a gastronomy workshop for French business school Vatel's hospitality programme at Ansal University.

"GoAt de France celebrates the vitality of French cuisine. Through this festive moment, it creates a dialogue between cultures by offering the common language of a shared French meal," Ziegler said in a statement released on Friday.

"We are proud that India ranks third internationally in terms of participating restaurants, reflecting the Indian public's growing interest in discovering new flavours, especially the subtle and innovative palette of French gastronomy," he added.

"GoAt de France will highlight the French "art de vivre" and thus contribute, I hope, to attract a greater number of Indian visitors to France," Ziegler explained.
President Pranab Mukherjee conferred an Hon. D.Litt. on renowned agro-scientist 91-year old Dr. M. S. Swaminathan at a Special Convocation of University of Mumbai, on Friday. Also seen are ... Image Source: IANS News

President Pranab Mukherjee conferred an Hon. D.Litt. on renowned agro-scientist 91-year old Dr. M. S. Swaminathan at a Special Convocation of University of Mumbai, on Friday. Also seen are ... Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, March 17 : President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said there should be no room for "intolerance, prejudice and hatred within our educational institutions" that are meant for free exchange of views.

He said ancient India, with its centres of learning like Nalanda and Takshshila, was known for a high level of philosophical debate and discussion.

The country was not a mere geographical expression, but reflected an idea and a culture, Mukherjee said in his speech at a special convocation of the University of Mumbai here, held to confer an honorary D.Litt. on renowned agro-scientist M.S. Swaminathan.

"Conversation and dialogue are part of our ethos and life. They cannot be done away with. We should embrace free conversation and even argument, leaving behind narrow mindsets and thoughts," the President said.

The lesson for a modern Indian university is to ensure that this great tradition finds new life and vigour within its precincts, and they must act as "flag-bearers for the coexistence of multiple views, thoughts, and philosophies," he said.

He said the higher education ecosystem has a crucial role to play in national developmental efforts and influences various growth centres in the economy.

"Economy's growth depends on higher education in important ways. The quality of training provided to students employed by the economy determines its competence. Induction of quality manpower is the first point of contact that the economy has with the higher education system," the President said.

The graduates must meet the skill-set requirements of the domestic economy and the curricula must be attuned to industry needs, he advised.

For this, the President said, it will be beneficial to have corporate experts advising academic managers on industrial requirements in the course curricula.

President Mukherjee said the 21st century is expected to be an 'Asian Century' with the Asian countries regaining pre-eminence in the world through all-round development.

President Mukherjee said it was a rare opportunity to honour Swaminathan at the University of Mumbai, whose alumni include Mahatma Gandhi. Others conferred honorary D.Litts in the past were prominent personalities like Sir R.G. Bhandarkar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Sir C.V. Raman and Sir M. Visveswaraya.

Lauding Swaminathan, the President said his work has brought about a sea change in the nation's life.

It was due to his pioneering efforts that Indian was transformed from a ship-to-mouth existence to one of the leading producers and exporters of food grains in the world now, Mukherjee said.

In the past 65 years, Swaminathan, 91, collaborated with scientists and policy-makers on varied problems in basic and applied plant genetics and agriculture research and development.

Maharashtra Governor C.V. Rao, Vice-Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh, state Education Minister Vinod Tawde and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
Kochi, March 17 : Harish Salve, a counsel for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the SNC-Lavalin case, on Friday defended his client for over four hours in the Kerala High Court, giving point-to-point rebuttal to the charges levelled by the CBI.

In the SNC-Lavalin case, in which Vijayan is an accused, had got a huge relief when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in the state capital exonerated him and all others of the charges.

But later, the CBI approached the Kerala High Court against the exoneration, and the hearing in the case began earlier this month.

On his arrival in the city on Thursday, Salve spent considerable time with Vijayan discussing the case.

Vijayan decided to rope in Salve, regarded one of the top lawyers of the country, after the CBI decided to call former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai as a witness in the case.

The court room was crowded with lawyers, who came to hear what Salve had to say in the defence of Vijayan.

The case pertains to an agreement with Canadian company SNC-Lavalin in 1997, when Vijayan was the state Power Minister, to repair three generators, which allegedly caused a loss of Rs 266 crore to the exchequer.

Vijayan was arraigned by the CBI as the seventh accused in the case, leading to a political furore.

Salve said that the charges against Vijayan were all fabricated by the CBI.

He pointed out that SNC-Lavalin was an accredited agency of the Canadian government and hence there could not be any sort of conspiracy between them and Vijayan as alleged by the CBI.

Salve also pointed out that along with Vijayan, three others also had signed the agreement with Lavalin, but it was only Vijayan who was named as an accused.

The hearing is taking place in the court of Justice P. Ubaid, and a final verdict on whether the CBI court ruling was right or wrong is likely soon.
New Delhi, March 17 : One of the accused in the alleged gang-rape of a US tourist pleaded in a Delhi court on Friday for discharge due to alleged lack of evidence against him.

After hearing arguments, the court listed the matter for hearing on March 21.

Accused Aniruddha Singh moved the discharge application before Additional Sessions Judge D.K. Sharma, saying it is unbelievable that the woman was reluctant to lodge a complaint in the crime.

Police opposed the discharge application, saying closed-circuit television footage of a hotel, where the crime allegedly occured, and a mobile phone were sent for forensic tests to a laboratory in Hyderabad and the report is awaited.

The woman filed a police complaint with the help of a non-governmental organisation in early December, saying the accused drugged her and sexually assaulted her for two days and also recorded it. The accused, however, denied the charge.

Delhi Police have filed a charge sheet against Aniruddha Singh, Omprakash, Maqsood and Vivek. They were arrested in December last year.

Aniruddha Singh is a Nepal-based tourist guide, Omprakash a driver, Maqsood a helper, and Vivek a bell boy at the hotel.

The 30-year-old woman alleged she was gang-raped at the luxury hotel in the first week of April last year.

An FIR was registered on her complaint after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj intervened.
London, March 17 : The White House has apologised to the British government after claiming that a British intelligence agency spied on US President Donald Trump at the behest of his predecessor Barack Obama.

US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster spoke to his British counterpart on Thursday about Press Secretary Sean Spicer's claims that British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a White House official said on Friday.

The official described the conversation as "cordial" where McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional."

McMaster also told his counterpart that "their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House."

The official said there was "at least two calls" from British officials on Thursday and that the British ambassador to the US called Spicer to discuss the comment.

"Sean was pointing to the breadth of reporting, not endorsing any specific story," the official said.

A senior administration official told CNN that Spicer and McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government.

Earlier Friday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said senior UK officials had protested to the Trump administration after the claims were repeated by Spicer on Thursday.

The claims of GCHQ spy agency involvement were initially made by former US judge Andrew Napolitano earlier this week.

"Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer had said.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said that it has been made "clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated."

The spy agency said the claim was "nonsense" and "utterly ridiculous".

Then, at a regular press briefing, Downing Street said it had sought and received reassurances that the allegations would not be repeated.

"This shows the administration doesn't give the allegations any credence," the Downing Street spokesman said. "We have a close special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise, as was true in this case," he added.
New Delhi, March 17 : India is not happy with the label of world's biggest importer of arms, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.

"India has third-largest armed forces in the world. We are also one of the largest importers of defence equipment in the world. This definitely is not a label we are happy with," Jaitley said at the India-Russia Military Industrial Conference here.

Jaitley, who took charge as Defence Minister for the second time since 2014, said Russia will have a "comparative advantage" in partnering with India in the 'Make in India' programme.

"Russia being our oldest partner in defence hardware and equipment, Russian companies will have a comparative advantage in partnering with Indian ones for realising 'Make in India' potential in defence production," the minister said.

As per the latest report of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India is the world's largest arms importing country accounting for 13 per cent of global arms imports between 2012 to 2016. Russia supplied 68 per cent of the arms India imported in this period.

Jaitley said Indian and Russian companies can partner to produce spare parts and maintenance of Russian equipment in the Indian inventory.

"With regard to maintenance and life-cycle support also, it is our endeavour that most components and spare parts required for maintaining the platforms, which have been procured from Russian companies, are manufactured by Indian companies through technology transfer or through joint ventures with Russian companies.

"It will ensure serviceability of platforms is improved and we do not lose critical time in repairing and maintaining these equipments," he said.

"Relations with Russia are a key pillar of India's foreign policy and Russia has been a longstanding and time-tested strategic partner of India for the last 70 years," the minister said.

He said the bilateral relations have evolved from one of seller and buyer to a point where both are indulging in joint research and development.

"India has a longstanding and wide-ranging cooperation with Russia in defence. India-Russia Military Technical Cooperation has graduated from a simple buyer-seller relation to the one involving joint research, development and production of advanced defence systems. BrahMos missile system as well as the licensed production of SU-30 in India are examples of such flagship cooperation," he said.

Minister for Industry and Trade of Russian Federation, Denis Manturov, meanwhile pointed out that Russia is the only country sharing technology with India.

The two-day India-Russia Military Industrial Conference, which started on Friday, has been organised by the Department of Defence Production.

The conference primarily aims at addressing the issues related to lifecycle support and maintenance of major Russian-origin equipment and platforms like the SU-30 MKI aircraft, Mi-17 helicopters, MiG-29K aircraft, aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya and T-90 tanks.
Washington, March 17 : President Donald Trump on Friday accused North Korea of "behaving very badly" and "playing" the US for years, shortly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted that military options were on the table.

"China has done little to help!" Trump also said in a tweet from his personal account.

Tillerson, on a visit to South Korea, is due to visit Beijing on Saturday and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Friday, Tillerson told reporters that the US "policy of strategic patience has ended".

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table," he said during a joint news conference in Seoul.

While the US does not want military conflict, if North Korea elevates the threat of its weapons program to a level Washington believes requires action, "that option's on the table," Tillerson added.

North Korea has tested four ballistic missiles last week, and vowed "merciless ultra-precision strikes from ground, air, sea and underwater" if the US and South Korea violate its "sovereignty and dignity even a bit".
Riyadh, March 17 : Iranian pilgrims, after an absence last year during tensions between the regional rivals, will participate in this year's annual Hajj, Saudi Arabia on Friday said.

"The ministry of hajj and the Iranian organisation have completed all the necessary measures to ensure Iranian pilgrims perform hajj 1438 according to the procedures followed by all Muslim countries," the official Saudi Press Agency said, referring to this year in the Islamic calendar.

For the first time in nearly three decades, Iran's pilgrims -- which would have numbered about 60,000 -- did not attend the Hajj in 2016 after the two countries failed to agree on security and logistics.

Riyadh and Tehran have no diplomatic relations, and tensions remain as Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia repeatedly accuses Iran of fuelling regional conflicts by supporting armed Shia movements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

But the Saudi Hajj ministry said that the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, welcomes "all pilgrims from all the different nationalities and backgrounds".

Custodian of Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia organises the annual Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once in a lifetime.

Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years between 1988 and 1990 after clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi police in 1987 left around 400 people dead.

Diplomatic ties were restored in 1991, but relations have deteriorated once again in recent years, particularly over the countries' support for opposing sides in the Syria and Yemen wars.

In January last year, relations were severed again after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabia's embassy and a consulate following Saudi Arabia's execution of a Shia figure along with 47 "terrorists".
Mumbai, March 17 : Actress Anushka Sharma on Friday said that through most of her early years in the industry, she felt hyper-anxious because the boundaries and expectations from her were pre-decided.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2017 here, Anushka shared snippets from her childhood and how her values have shaped her as a person.

Talking about empowerment, she said it means "independence" to her.

"It's my ability to think, decide and take on life on my own. It also includes the ability to question and re-examine all that is supposed to be right or the established way of doing something. Most of what we do in our lives, with our lives, all that is shaped by the values we receive," she said in her speech.

"As kids, our minds are so impressionable, we soak up everything we see and hear around us, that shapes our personalities," she added.

The "NH 10" actor said her father always told her to do the right thing, however difficult it is, and that's the secret to living happily.

"Success in life is never guaranteed, leading a righteous life will at least be peaceful and you will never regret. Stand up for what's right, no matter what. If you feel strongly from within that you're being treated unfairly, don't accept it," said Anushka.

Talking about the experience of entering Bollywood, she said: "I became increasingly aware of my gender and that the boundaries and the expectations of me were pre-decided, this didn't make any sense to me. Most of my early years in the industry, I felt hyper-anxious," she said.

She also revealed that her decision to turn producer was welcomed with shock in the industry.

"I questioned all established norms. I wanted to be a producer, which was treated with shock often. Common perception in the industry is that only those female actors become producers who are to wrap up their careers in a short while."

Anushka was briefly joined on stage by actor Suraj Sharma, who stars in her forthcoming production "Phillauri".
NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Attorney Advertising -- Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC notifies investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Patriot National ("Patriot" or the "Company") (NYSE:PN) and certain of its officers, on behalf of shareholders who purchased Patriot securities between August 15, 2016 and March 3, 2017, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). Such investors are encouraged to join this case by visiting the firm's site: http://www.bgandg.com/pn.

This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, defendants made materially false and misleading statements and failed to disclose that: (1) Patriot National special committee was beholden to CEO Steve Mariano; (2) therefore, the special committee was operating for the benefit of Mariano and not Patriot National or its shareholders; (3) the special committee did not independently assess the merits of the Ebix transaction; (4) the special committee was not exploring strategic alternatives in order to maximize shareholder value; and (5) consequently, defendants' statements about Patriot National's business, operations, and prospects, were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to review a copy of the Complaint you can visit the firm's site: http://www.bgandg.com/pn or you may contact Peretz Bronstein, Esq. or his Investor Relations Analyst, Yael Hurwitz of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC at 212-697-6484. If you suffered a loss in Patroit you have until May 15, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.

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Chandigarh, March 17 : Accusing the BJP government in Haryana of hatching a "conspiracy" to weaken their agitation, the Jat community on Friday said they will continue with their protests across the state and will also lay siege to the national capital on March 20.

Talks between top Jat leaders and Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, which were scheduled to be held in New Delhi on Friday, could not be held.

Jat leaders accused Khattar and his government of going back on assurances made to the Jat community on Thursday and earlier.

However, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar told media in Chandigarh said that the Jat leaders had backed out of talks which were to be held on Friday.

"It has come to my notice that they want to hold a joint press conference along with me. I have not received any information from the committee of ministers that I had to address such a press conference in Delhi," Khattar claimed, adding that he left for Chandigarh due to prior engagements.

"I am always prepared if the Jat leaders want to have a dialogue with me. Although my schedule for tomorrow is already fixed, but I will be available for meeting with Yashpal Mailk and other Jat leaders on Saturday in Chandigarh or Sonipat or Delhi. My sole purpose is to restore and maintain peaceful atmosphere in the state. The government is keen to move forward with all sections of the society," Khattar maintained.

Jat leader Yashpal Malik told the media in Rohtak town, 70 km from Delhi, that the BJP government had hatched a conspiracy to weaken the Jat agitation by misleading the Jats.

He said Khattar left Delhi on Friday for Chandigarh without meeting the Jat leaders.

The meeting had been announced by the seniormost minister in the Haryana government, Ram Bilas Sharma, in Panipat on Thursday.

"The state government hatched a conspiracy against us and misled the people in order to weaken the agitation. The cancellation of the meeting with the Chief Minister has left us with no alternative but to continue the agitation," Malik said.

The Jat agitation, which began on January 29, completed 48 days on Friday.

The Haryana government on Thursday held talks with Jat leaders in Panipat and claimed that the discussions were "positive".

Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, who led the Haryana government panel in the talks, said a final breakthrough was likely to be achieved by Friday.

The Jat leaders were earlier in talks with a five-member panel of senior government officers but the talks had remained inconclusive.

The All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) had earlier announced that the community would intensify its agitation by taking their protest to Delhi on March 20.

The Jat leaders said that they would gherao entry points of Delhi from seven sides and protest at the Parliament complex.

The AIJASS, led by Jat leader Yashpal Malik, has been agitating to press for its demands in Haryana since January 29.

Talks between the state government and the Jat leaders hit a roadblock last month as the Haryana government made it clear that it has no jurisdiction to withdraw cases being investigated by the CBI against some Jat leaders over violence during the agitation last year.

Khattar accused the Jat leaders of changing goalposts.

Their demands include reservation for Jats, jobs to the next of kin of those killed in violence in the Jat agitation last year, compensation to those injured, withdrawal of cases against them and action against the officers, who ordered action against the Jats, among others.

Violence during the agitation last year had left 30 people dead and over 200 injured. Government and private property worth hundreds of crores of rupees was damaged during the violence in February 2016.

Khattar said in Chandigarh that the Jat leaders had backed out of the Friday talks.

"I am always prepared if the Jat leaders want to have a dialogue with me. Although my schedule for tomorrow is already fixed, I will be available for meeting Yashpal Mailk and other Jat leaders tomorrow in Chandigarh or Sonipat or Delhi.

"My sole purpose is to restore and maintain peaceful atmosphere in the state. The government is keen to move forward with all sections of the society," Khattar said.
Kolkata, March 17 : Targeting West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee after the Calcutta High Court ordered a CBI probe into the Narada sting operation case, CPI-M state Secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra on Friday said she was "not above suspicion".

"I can't say the Chief Minister's hand is clean, or that she is above suspicion with regard to Saradha (multi-billion rupee Saradha chit fund scam) or Narada," Mishra told the media, calling upon the central agency to quickly dig out those involved in the larger conspiracy by bringing under its dragnet all the big fishes.

Mishra, who did not take Banerjee's name, said the Chief Minister's comments on the Narada controversy from time to time was full of self-contradictions.

The purported sting footage uploaded by a portal Narada News in March last year showed a number of prominent Trinamool Congress leaders, including ministers and MPs and state legislators, taking wads of currency notes in lieu of doling out favours to a fictitious company.

The videos, which had come to light in the midst of the state assembly election campaign, became a major issue, with the opposition harping on it in every meeting.

Refering to Banerjee's speech ahead of the polls that she would not have given nomination to those shown in the Narada footage had she known about the videos earlier, Mishra said: "After the polls, she ordered a probe.

"Today, the court has said the police acted like a 'puppet'," said Mishra, asking at whose bidding the police were trying to hush up the matter and shield those seen in the videos.

"Who is running this government? The court has asked for steps against an IPL officer. Why was not action taken against him all these months?" he said referring to senior police officer S.M.H Mirza, who purportedly figured in the video, with the portal claiming that he described himself a "key person who collects funds for the Trinamool Congress".

Ridiculing Banerjee's claim that those seen accepting money had only taken it as donation to fund their election campaign, Mishra said: "Does that mean IPS officers take the donations on behalf of your party? Do the conversations heard in the tape indicate donation?"

Mishra also repeated the old opposition allegations of Banerjee meeting Rose Valley group chief Goutam Kundu -- now in jail in connection with the ponzi scam involving his company -- at a Bungalow in Darjeeling district's Delo in 2012. He also raised question over Banerjee's painting being sold for an astronomical amount.

"She has never given any proper reply. Whatever she has said has only deepened the suspicion," he said.

"Chit fund scam, Rose Valley, meeting at Kalimpong's Delo, lot of questions we had asked. How much money her pricture fetched? But, there was no proper reply.

"People believe she is not clean. She is not above suspicion. Whatever she has done, has only deepened the suspicion," said the CPI-M politburo member.

BJP national Secretary Rahul Sinha also made a veiled reference to the Chief Minister. "Wherever there is some whiff of corruption, the link to Kalighat (place in south Kolkata where Banerjee resides) is always there."

Latest updates on IPL 2020
Brasilia, March 17 : The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Brazil have signed three accords on air transport and reciprocal exemption of entry visa requirements.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and his Brazilian counterpart Aloysio Nunes met on Thursday to discuss bilateral relations and signed the three accords.

Their talks focussed on advancing the UAE-Brazil relations in economic, investment, trade, tourism and renewable energy sectors.

The leaders also spoke about developments in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Iraq.

"Relations between the UAE and Brazil are strong and there is continued interest in advancing them in all spheres," Sheikh Abdullah said. He described the UAE's partnership with Brazil as "successful and deep-rooted".

"The UAE and Brazil have signed agreements on air transport services, on reciprocal visa waiver for holders of ordinary passports, as well as an MoU on reciprocal visa exemption for holders of diplomatic, special, official and service passports. This indicates growing and prosperous co-operation between the two countries," he said.

Sheikh Abdullah also said that with more than $2.5 billion in non-oil trade between the countries in 2016, the UAE believes that there are more opportunities for expanding co-operation in various sectors.

UAE Ambassador to Brazil Hafsa Abdulla Al Ulama attended the meeting.
Washington, March 17 : Indian-American Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, on Friday said the Trump administration is taking a new, tougher approach towards China in an effort to deter North Korean aggression.

Haley was speaking to Fox News Channel on Friday as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is on his first trip to the Asia region. She said the US has taken a "soft" stance towards China, but the new administration now plans to "go harder" and make China prove they're serious about deterring North Korea.

"Don't just tell us you do. Prove it. It's gotta be real proof," said Haley, calling on Beijing to push for more sanctions and renewed negotiations.

She said North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is conducting increased missile tests and is suspected to have ordered the assassination of his estranged half-brother at a Malaysian airport.

"These are problems. It shows they are not listening and that nothing has worked," said Haley.

Speaking from the Korean Demilitarised Zone, Tillerson told Fox News that "nothing has been taken off the table" when it comes to dealing with the rogue regime.

"We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table," he said.

President Donald Trump also took to Twitter on Friday and accused North Korea of "behaving very badly" and "playing" the US for years.

"China has done little to help!" Trump also said in a tweet from his personal account.

Meanwhile, Tillerson is due to visit Beijing on Saturday and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
New Delhi, March 17 : India and Russia on Friday signed two agreements for long-term support to the Su-30 MKI fleet of the Indian Air Force (IAF), which is expected to improve the maintenance and serviceability of the aircraft.

One of the agreements, signed between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) that produces Su-30 MKI under licence, and PJSC United Aircraft Corporation of Russia, is for the supply of spares and technical assistance for five years.

The second agreement was signed by HAL with JSC United Engine Corporation for the supply of spares for engines of Russian origin.

India has around 230 Su-30 MKIs, designed by the Irkut Corporation specifically for India and produced by HAL at Nashik, Maharashtra. India has overall ordered for 272 Su-30 MKIs.

The frontline strike fighter of the Indian Air Force has suffered serviceability problems in the past.

A report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in December 2015 said Su-30 MKI aircraft with the IAF suffer from poor serviceability, which is just around 55 per cent against the prescribed norm of 75 per cent.

In January 2017, the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the serviceability of the fighters has improved, and is now at 60 per cent. Informed sources said the present serviceability of the Su-30 MKI fleet is between 60 and 65 per cent.

Since its induction in the IAF in 2004, seven Su-30 MKIs have crashed, the last one on Thursday in Rajasthan.

Following a crash near Pune in October 2014, the entire SU-30 fleet was grounded for a month before it was allowed to fly again in November.

It was the longest period for which the fleet was grounded since 2009 when its operation was suspended for nearly three weeks following an accident.

A study conducted about aircraft's engine failure found out of total 69 cases in three years, 33 cases were due to presence of chips in oil; 11 cases are due to engine vibration as a result of bearing problem; and eight cases due to low pressure of lubricating oil.

Parrikar informed the Lok Sabha in May 2016 that on 34 occasions between April 2014 and March 2016, the fighter jet was forced to land with single engine after its another engine failed.

He said modifications in process of overhaul and manufacturing, proposed by Russian designers, have been implemented at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and the OEM.

The Russian manufacturers had also advised certain precautions and predictive maintenance during exploitation of engines which were implemented by the IAF.

The agreements were signed at the India-Russia Military Industrial Conference in presence of Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Denis Manturov.
Mumbai/New Delhi, March 17 : After two flights from India went 'missing' in international airspace, the DGCA has issued stringent guidelines to ensure cockpit discipline for crew of all airlines in the country, official sources said on Friday.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has stipulated that the emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz must always be monitored along with speaker volumes in the cockpit to be maintained at an appropriate level and not lowered or switched off.

The headset shall not be worn by non-resting crew when the other crew is in controlled rest. Before going into controlled rest, the Cabin Crew In Charge (CCIC) should be informed, the guideline stipulates.

After the first 20 minutes of the controlled rest, the non-resting pilot, or the CCIC, must establish contact with each other, and after 40 minutes the CCIC will contact the non-resting pilot, provided normal contact was made after the first 20 minutes, the DGCA said.

Henceforth, all airlines have been ordered to maintain a log for the controlled rest available by the crew and the DGCA would make random checks on the same.

The DGCA also plans to carry out random checks of Cockpit Voice Recorders (CVR) to ensure airlines comply with its Operations Circular 08-2013.

An Air India Ahmedabad-London-Newark flight with 249 passengers lost contact with local ATC over Hungary and was escorted by fighter jets safely to its onward journey on March 10.

Earlier, a Jet Airways Mumbai-London flight with 345 passengers lost contact with ATC over German airspace and fighter jets escorted it on its journey on February 19.

Both flights had reportedly gone 'missing' for brief periods ostensibly due to frequency fluctuations.
Lucknow, March 17 : The suspense over next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh further deepened on Friday evening, with neither of the Union Ministers -- Manoj Sinha and Rajnath Singh, the "front runners" in the race for the post -- visiting Lucknow on Saturday.

The newly-elected BJP legislators are scheduled to elect their leader in the state capital on Saturday evening.

According to officials in the office of the Union Minister of State for Railways and Telecom, Sinha will reach Ghazipur, his parliamentary constituency, on Saturday and will go to Mughlasarai later in the day.

According to protocol issued by the ministry, Sinha will leave for New Delhi by a night train from Varanasi.

Another name doing the rounds for the top job in Uttar Pradesh, where BJP won 325 seats along with its allies in the 403 member House, is that of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. But he is also not scheduled to come to Lucknow on Saturday.

His trip to Lucknow is scheduled for Sunday when the new government will be sworn in, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah.

Singh, who was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh during 2001-2002, has ruled himself out of the race and called all speculation about him being named as the state Chief Minister as "crap".

Other names now doing the rounds are those of Mayor of Lucknow Dinesh Sharma and senior BJP leader Swatantra Dev Singh.

BJP's national General Secretary Bhupendra Yadav and Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu are flying into Lucknow on Saturday morning from Delhi to oversee the election of the new legislature party leader.

In-charge of the state Om Mathur is also coming on Saturday, a party leader said.
Agartala, March 17 : Three tribals, including a woman, were killed and two others injured in BSF firing in southern Tripura, an official here said.

"BSF troopers were on routine patrol when they spotted a large number of locals trying to smuggle cattle to Bangladesh. When asked to stop, the villagers attacked the troopers with sharp weapons and batons. The troopers then resorted to firing and killed three persons," a Border Security Force official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Two persons injured in the firing at Chittabari village along the India-Bangladesh border were admitted in a government hospital.

However, locals complained to police that two BSF men tried to molest a tribal woman, which was resisted by the villagers before the firing.

The deceased are Man Kumar Tripura, 30, Par Kumar Tripura, 40, and Saralaxmi Tripura, 33. The injured are Jiban Kumar Tripura and Senchandra Tripura.

Senior BSF and police officials along with a large contingent of security forces led by south Tripura's district police chief Tapan Debbarma rushed to the area, 145 km south of Agartala.

Tripura shares an 856-km border with Bangladesh, a portion of which is still unfenced.
New Delhi, March 17 : A 22-year-old rape accused, who had escaped eight months ago from police lock-up, has been arrested from Gurugram in Haryana, police said on Friday.

Police said Lal Singh, a driver by profession, had kidnapped a minor girl on June 23, 2016 from outside her residence in Nangloi area of west Delhi and abused her sexually.

Singh was arrested in Gurugram last week, police said.

On the complaint of her parents, a case of kidnapping was registered on June 23 in Nangloi Police Station last year.

Police had arrested Singh and rescued the victim on June 26, 2016. However, in the early hours on June 29, Singh had managed to escape after breaking the iron bar of lock-up in the Nangloi Police Station, Tiwari said.

"The victim had said that she had met the accused at her relative's house in Nooh of Haryana. On that day, Singh met her outside her house and offered her some drink, after which she felt dizzy. He then took her away in a van at several places in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh," Deputy Commissioner of Police M.N. Tiwari said.

Singh told police that he had been regularly changing his hideouts in Rajasthan and Mewat in Haryana to evade arrest, the officer added.
New Delhi, March 17 : The Delhi High Court on Friday issued notice to the central government on a plea seeking to strike down the amendments made in the rape law post December 16 gangrape incident here, claiming that amendments are being abused.

A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice V.K. Rao sought response from the government by July 5 on a plea filed by academician Madhu Purnima Kishwar.

The plea sought striking down of some of the provisions of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, which provides for amendments to the Indian Penal Code, Indian Evidence Act and Code of Criminal Procedure on laws related to sexual offences.

The plea also sought a direction to reconsider the case in which a sentence of imprisonment has been passed post the amendments.

It also sought direction to summon records from the National Crime Records Bureau and Tihar Jail, among others, to assess the profiling features of rape prosecution post the 2013 amendments.

After the gangrape of a 23-year-old woman on December 16, 2012, a committee under the chairmanship of a retired Supreme Court judge was constituted to suggest amendments to the criminal law to sternly deal with sexual assault cases.
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vanir Construction Management Inc. today announced that Cheryl Humann, P.E. has been promoted to Colorado area manager. Humann joined Vanir in April 2016 as a senior project director and has been the acting area manager for Colorado since that time.



As area manager, Humann will continue to lead company operations and pursuits in Colorado and Wyoming that include program, project and construction management services, condition assessment, program controls, cost estimating, scheduling, constructability review and value engineering. She also oversees key markets segments, including K-12 and higher education, justice (courthouses, jails and law enforcement facilities), public buildings and healthcare facilities. Humann is based at Vanirs office in Greenwood Village, Colo.

Vanir and our clients are fortunate to have Cheryl leading our efforts in Colorado, said Guy Mehula, president of Vanir Construction Management. She has tremendous industry experience, is great with people and is a proven leader in program and construction management, technology information systems, and public procurement.

Humann has worked for 31 years in facilities planning, including 22 years on K-12 capital facilities programs. She has owned a project management consulting firm, served as a facilities executive with Jefferson County (Colo.) Public Schools, and held operations, program and project director roles for construction management, architecture and engineering firms.

Humann earned a bachelors of science degree in mechanical engineering at University of North Dakota and a masters degree in computer information systems from University of Phoenix.

A high-resolution image of Humann can be downloaded at http://www.vanir.com/NewsandEvents/Pressroom/PhotosCherylHumannVanirCM.aspx.

About Vanir Construction Management

Vanir Construction Management Inc. is one of the nations leading, privately-held program, project and construction management firms. Since 1980, it has delivered over $21 billion in construction value to clients in education, healthcare, justice, water/wastewater, public buildings, transportation and energy markets throughout the United States. Headquartered in Sacramento, Calif., Vanir has been ranked for more than 25 years by Engineering News-Record among the Top 100 Construction Management Firms. Visit www.vanir.com for more information.
Kolkata, March 17 : State-run lender Allahabad Bank on Friday said it has raised Rs 300 crore additional tier-one capital through private placement at an annual coupon rate of 11.15 per cent.

The bank had earlier informed that its board approved raising of additional tier-one capital aggregating Rs 1,000 crore through private placement.

"...the bank has on date successfully raised Additional Tier 1 (AT-1) capital of bank through private placement of AT-1 perpetual bonds aggregating up to Rs 300 crore at an annual coupon of 11.15 per cent," the lender said in a filing on Friday.

In January, the lender had raised Rs 1,000 crore capital of Basel III-compliant Tier-2 Bonds through private placement at an annual coupon of 8.15 per cent.
Mumbai, March 17 : BJP President Amit Shah on Friday said a massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh and Uttrakhand for the party is a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies and his popularity among the masses.

Participating in 'India Today Conclave 2017' here through video-conferencing, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief said elections could not be won due to one or two reasons and multiple reasons helped the party win.

"For us, Modi-ji and his policies made it possible to win assembly elections with such a huge mandate," Shah said.

"There was a wave in BJP's favour in Uttar Pradesh and results proved that caste-based and dynastic politics has no place in India.

"The BJP's motto is inclusive growth of the country without any appeasement policy."

As for the BJP forming governments in Goa and Manipur despite not having the mandate, Shah said: "There were hung assemblies in the two states. Any party with majority can form a government in cases like these."

Commenting on Modi government's demonetisation, the BJP President said it was a "multi-dimensional step" and was not aimed at polls.

"It was just one step in a massive effort to curb black money and corruption," he added.

He said: "Reform is a small word; "it aims at transformation."

"We took some hard steps with regard to funding for political parties. Change will come gradually; we have started the process," Shah said.

Asked about BJP's alliance with Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Shah said: "Our alliance with the Shiv Sena is intact and will remain so."

"There's no issue with the Shiv Sena; there was a friendly match in Maharashtra civic polls with the Shiv Sena," he said.

He ridiculed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati for their charge that electronic voting machines were tampered with in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

"They should know the EVMs can't be tampered with. No one listens to Kejriwal in the country," he said.

Shah said he hoped the BJP will again form the government at the Centre in 2019, saying that every election is important for the BJP.
Islamabad, March 17 : The Pakistan Senate on Friday passed the Pakistan Climate Change Bill 2017, making the country the fifth in the world to adopt comprehensive legislation on the issue.

The layout report of Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change was presented by Senator Samina Abid on March 16 in the Senate. The National Assembly has already approved this Act, local media reported.

The legislation was passed to meet the country's obligations under international conventions relating to climate change and to address its effects.

Climate Change Minister Zahid Hamid, who introduced the legislation, said that Pakistan ranks 153rd in greenhouse gas emitting countries but is the seventh-most vulnerable to climate change.

"The Pakistan Climate Change Act 2016 has been hammered out to tackle the pressing climate risks and secure global funding for implementing projects to boost country's climate resilience, protect lives and livelihoods of the people, mainly those associated with agriculture," he explained.

He added that the country was likely to produce four times more greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and would need $40 billion to mitigate the effects.

During the debate in the Senate prior to the approval, the move to promulgate the Climate Change Act was appreciated by the opposition, which acknowledged its unprecedented significance.
Kolkata, March 18 : An artificial intelligence-enabled app launched by the West Bengal government lets commuters know about the real-time location of over 700 state-run buses and other related information, an official said on Friday.

According to Rachpal Singh, Chairman of West Bengal Transport Corporation, the app called "Patha Disha" once downloaded on one's phone can inform on availability of seats and specific buses and estimated time of arrival at the destination. It even provides data on how crowded the bus is.

"The app was launched in sync with the prepaid electronic transport card. The app analyses commuter behaviour, commuting pattern and feedback for smooth service. The real-time tracking services and prepaid system will be extended to trams and waterway transit services as well," Singh said.

The prepaid card is modelled on London's Oyster Card which is plastic pay-as-you-go card. Users are entitled to all public transport options such as bus, Tube, tram, London Overground, rail, River Bus and most National Rail services within London.

Under the revamped public transport system in Kolkata, buses will be equipped with GPS and CCTV cameras.

In case of accidents, the app can be used to alert police, hospitals and fire stations.
Rocketship Program Kids Our week at camp was a never-ending opportunity for students to be curious, ask questions, and investigate the scientific method.

Bay Area-based non-profits Web of Life Field (WOLF) School and Rocketship Education have partnered for the 2016-17 schoolyear to bring 5th grade students from ten Rocketship Bay Area elementary charter schools to WOLF Schools Yosemite-area campus, Camp Tuolumne Trails, for customized residential outdoor science school trips tailored to Rocketships economic and curricular needs. Already this partnership has brought 101 students and 20 teachers to camp, with 213 more students and another 20 teachers from Rocketship slated to attend WOLF School through March 2017.

Founded in 2007 in the heart of Silicon Valley, Rocketship Education is a non-profit network of public elementary charter schools serving primarily low-income students in neighborhoods where access to excellent schools is limited. While Rocketship has grown to encompass schools around the country, their birthplace remains their largest sector, comprised of ten schools in San Jose, one school in Redwood City, and one school in Concord. This network of schools, referred to as Rocketship Bay Area, together serve over 6,000 TK-5th grade students, 84% of which qualify for free and reduced price meals.

More than just running high-quality schools, Rocketship addresses the underlying factors that help to eliminate the achievement gap for students: quality teachers, dedicated leaders, engaged parents, and active communities. This support network aims at developing the whole child, giving students every opportunity to become well-rounded individuals and successful adults.

An integral component in our achieving Rocketships mission of closing the achievement gap is getting kids in low-income communities as prepared for the world as their counterparts in any other school district, says Alyssa Warren, Schools Team Senior Associate for Rocketship Education. We have vast natural resources in California, yet many of our students have never even left San Jose. Our obligation is to expand students horizons beyond their hometown, and an incredible way to do that is through the life-changing outdoor experiences gained at science campa rite of passage for many of Californias students. It is one piece of a big puzzle, but it is definitely an important piece.

From 2010-2016, Rocketship Bay Area succeeded in running their own, teacher-led science camp program for 5th grade students at a camp and conference center available for rent called Camp Tuolumne Trails. Located just outside of Yosemite National Park, the camp provides students the chance to connect to Californias public lands and a stunning natural landscape where they can learn hands-on outdoor education. Each year the experience had a profoundly positive impact on their students; so much so, that ahead of the 2016-17 schoolyear, Rocketship began searching for a sustainable solution to make sure that future students could continue to benefit from science camp.

Warren continues, While we teach science in our schools, it is the hands-on learning that makes science come alive. Not only that, students gain immense social skills when they go off together and see each other in a new setting. Camp inspires positive risk-taking, and there is a new level of trust and maturity seen in students after a week of outdoor science school. It allows them to be their truer self. That is why we wanted to find a way to continue offering this to our students for many years to come.

At the urging of Camp Tuolumne Trails facility director, Rocketship reached out to an outdoor school also operating at the camp: WOLF School. As it turns out, they were the missing puzzle piece.

Since 1989, WOLF School has excelled at providing residential, outdoor education programs for Californias K-12th grade students, and the organization is known for their ability to interweave state standards based science curriculum with customized lessons that support both teachers classroom instruction and individual student groups. Driven by their mission of building respect, appreciation, and stewardship within the web of life, WOLF School believes in the transformative power of the outdoors for all students when given the opportunity to make connections to their environment, themselves, and their communities. Homebased in the Santa Cruz Mountains at Little Basin Cabins and Campgrounds, part of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, WOLF School operates at multiple professionally-managed camps throughout California, including Camp Tuolumne Trails.

We are so thrilled to partner with Rocketship Bay Area, says WOLF School Director Heather Butler. One of our biggest goals as an organization seems simple but can be surprisingly difficult: get kids outdoors. We strive to bring the outdoor educational experience to all youth regardless of barriers, and we became motivated to find a way to get Rocketships students to camp, to get them outdoors.

Initially concerned at the cost of an outdoor school with the expertise of WOLF School, Rocketship quickly discovered one of WOLF Schools key values: affordability. WOLF School worked to tailor a program that fit within Rocketships budget, and Camp Tuolumne Trails owners, the Bill and Paula Baker Foundation, offered a discount to further reduce camp costs. Additionally, WOLF School developed a curriculum specifically for Rocketship Education, meeting their educational requirements and easing the burden from teachers. The outcome: a sustainable solution ensuring the continuation of outdoor education for Rocketship Bay Areas future 5th grade students.

I was so excited to learn that we would be partnering with WOLF School! shared Caitlin Malloy, a teacher at Rocketship Brilliant Minds, located in San Jose. Our week at camp was a never-ending opportunity for students to be curious, ask questions, and investigate the scientific method. They discovered elements about themselves and each other as people, too, and have since carried a new sense of team with them back to our campus. The program could not have gone any better; I would recommend WOLF School to anyone and everyone.

Rocketships students arrive at WOLF School with such appreciative attitudes and astonishing academic preparedness, Butler adds. They are so receptive to the experience, and our naturalists are having as much fun teaching as the students are learning.

During the 2016-17 schoolyear, WOLF School will serve Rocketships one Redwood City-based school: Redwood City Prep, and nine of Rocketships San Jose-based schools: Discovery Prep, Spark Academy, Mateo Sheedy Elementary, Alma Academy, Si Se Puede Academy, Brilliant Minds, Los Suenos Academy, Fuerza Community Prep, and Mosaic Elementary. The future goal is to include Rocketships two new Bay Area elementary schools, and to spread this successful model for outdoor education to all of their schools throughout the country.

Visit wolfschool.org to learn more about these organizations.
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: Majedie Asset Management Limited (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



TESCO PLC (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 16 March 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" No





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:



ORD 5P



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 247,551,115 3.03 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL:



247,551,115



3.03

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: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages:

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 ORD 5P Purchase 297,548 187.4736 ORD 5P ORD 5P ORD 5P

(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





(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

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description



e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit





(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)





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: 17 March 2017 Contact name: Matthew Hambly Telephone number: 0207 618 3900

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service.

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.
TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi Travel, Japan, Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hokkaido, Okinawa, Wi-Fi, Wifi, Mobile, Apps, Sakura

Tourists travelling to Japan can stay connected more easily through TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi, Japans number one free Wi-Fi application with the largest number of hotspots countrywide and unlimited data usage.

Telecommunications Corporation Wire & Wireless Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of KDDI, Japans largest mobile operator, TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi (http://wi2.co.jp/tjw/rd/global.html) has recently increased its number of hotspots to over 200,000, available to all users without limits. This makes TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi, which launched 2 years ago and is aimed at foreign travellers, the free Wi-Fi application provider with the largest number of hotspots in Japan. The stark increase of tourists entering Japan over the past few years spurred the need for more and more accessible Wi-Fi hotspots which resulted in the inception of the program.

Well over 1,500,000 foreign tourists have already downloaded and used TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi which is available in multiple languages, such as English, Korean, Thai and Chinese. Users recommendations and raving reports on social media underline its popularity.

In order to further boost the user experience TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi now is the first Wi-Fi application without charge to include a loginless auto-connect functionality. The application automatically connects them whenever Wi-Fi hotspots, such as Wi2, Wi2_Club, Wi2premium, and Wi2premium_club, are in reach. In addition the application automatically provides tourists with information on nearby shops and sight-seeing spots, as well as a wealth of discount coupons and a map and navigation functionality.

The use of TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi which runs on both Android and iOS devices is simple and straightforward with set up taking as little as only 1 to 2 minutes.

Download and set up can be done prior to travelling so that tourists can launch the app immediately upon arrival in Japan and leave it running to automatically get Wi-Fi access at major airports, train stations, tourist spots, popular shops, restaurants and cafes.

We are thrilled about the success of TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi, states Teppei Kawanishi of Wire & Wireless. Satisfied Users are our most enthusiastic advocates proving that the application is really making a very positive difference to peoples travel experience in Japan.

 Ends 

Notes to the editors:

Wire and Wireless Co., Ltd

Founded in 2007 Wire and Wireless Co., Ltd (Wi2) is a major provider of end-to-end wireless LAN services in Japan with the particular focus on Wi-Fi service. Wi2 is a subsidiary of KDDI Japans largest mobile operator and the linchpin of KDDI Groups Wi-Fi business. The au Wi-Fi service is provided via Wi2 and Wi2 offers Wi2 300, Wi2s own brand Wi-Fi service, to expanding customer base.

Wire and Wireless aims at offering a communication environment ensuring seamless IP continuity, or in other words, achieving services accessible indoors, on moving vehicles, and outdoors without changing an ID not only in Japan but also overseas.

More information about Wire and Wireless Co., Ltd (Wi2) is available on

http://www.wi2.co.jp/en/

For more detail for TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi APP, please go to:

http://wi2.co.jp/tjw/rd/global.html

Download URL for TRAVEL JAPAN Wi-Fi APP:

http://wi2.co.jp/tjw/lp/cp6/index.html

Images:

http://wi2.co.jp/tjw/img/index/TJW_en_01.png

http://wi2.co.jp/tjw/img/index/TJW_en_02.png
SIGNiX and Citizens National Bank Partnership At SIGNiX, we understand that customer trust and loyalty are of the utmost importance for banking institutions.

SIGNiX, the first provider of cloud-based digital signatures in the U.S., has announced its partnership with Citizens National Bank to offer e-signature technology company-wide. This partnership stems from SIGNiXs relationship with the Tennessee Bankers Association, who selected SIGNiXs Independent E-Signature technology in 2016 as the secure and trusted solution to promote to its members.

SIGNiXs digital signature technology provides the independent validation and data security our bank is looking for, said Pam Ihli, chief technology officer of Citizens National Bank. Knowing that SIGNiXs digital signatures can be verified independently and come with a wide range of security features gives us the confidence we need to offer this technology to our customers.

One key benefit of SIGNiXs Independent E-Signatures is that the bank has full ownership and control over where signed documents reside, even to the point of limiting them to the banks server and removing them from SIGNiX altogether. Additional risk-mitigating factors in the banks decision include: 1) the technology adheres to international, published standards that minimize unforeseen external factors affecting a digital signatures validity, 2) a range of identity authentication methods to provide the necessary security for each transaction, 3) tamper-evident technology clearly indicates when a document has been changed in any way by an unauthorized user and 4) a complete audit trail captures every initial, signature and other step from start to finish.

At SIGNiX, we understand that customer trust and loyalty are of the utmost importance for banking institutions, said Jay Jumper, CEO of SIGNiX. We strive to meet our banking clients needs and provide them with the tools that lend safety and independence to the banking process. We are pleased to partner with Citizens National Bank to make managing the lending process more efficient.

SIGNiXs Independent E-Signatures are perfect for the financial industry because they have so many security features that greatly reduce the risk of fraud, said Stacey Langford, senior vice president of membership at TBA. We are glad to see banks in our association use e-signatures to become more efficient while enhancing security and customer convenience.

###

About SIGNiX: SIGNiX, the most trusted name in Independent E-Signatures, makes signing documents online safe and secure with comprehensive legal evidence permanently embedded in each document to eliminate any dependence upon SIGNiX. The companys cloud-based service uses patented technology to give businesses and organizations the most secure and legally defensible e-signatures available at a fraction of the cost of wet ink signatures. SIGNiXs products help the worlds leading companies become more efficient, decrease risk and boost profits. For more information, visit http://www.signix.com. You can also follow SIGNiX on Twitter @signixsolutions and LinkedIn.

About Citizens National Bank:

Headquartered in Sevierville, Tenn., Citizens National Bank is a full-service community bank with 20 branches in Sevier, Jefferson and Knox counties. For more information, visit https://www.cnbtn.com.

###
Mohr Partners, Inc., (Mohr) a global corporate real estate advisory firm, today announced that Nickie Taylor has joined the company as its new Director of Lease Administration in its Global Corporate Services (GCS) division.

Nickie brings valuable experience and long tenures with some of our larger peers including The Staubach Company and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, says Derith Jarvis, Managing Partner, GCS of Mohr. Her experience providing lease administration as a service provider to corporations and managing large teams will allow her to hit the ground running.

Prior to joining Mohr, Nickie was a member of a global sales team for JLL, holding the position of Senior Vice President of Lease Administration, Product Development, and Global Sales. Nickie is an industry expert and we are extremely delighted to announce she is joining our GCS leadership team. says Bob Shibuya, President of Mohr.

Nickie specializes in portfolio/lease administration, lease auditing, lease accounting, financial reporting, process strategy, team development, and training. She is also proficient in implementing and utilizing a wide array of lease administration software solutions.

About Mohr:

Mohr Partners, Inc. is a global corporate real estate advisor, providing corporate tenants with portfolio services including strategic planning, portfolio/lease administration, research and site selection, project and construction management, comprehensive demographics analysis and economic incentives negotiations. Since 1986, Mohr has been managing real estate portfolios for corporations, and each year completes transactions for its clients in all 50 U.S. states, all provinces of Canada and locations around the world. Mohr seamlessly provides corporate real estate services globally through its strategic alliance partners. For more information on Mohr, please visit http://www.mohrpartners.com.

For more information contact:

Jennifer Cheek

Managing Director, Marketing Communications

214 273 8647

jennifer.cheek(at)mohrpartners(dot)com

###

This release may contain forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, including statements that address activities, events or developments that we or our management intend, expect, project, believe or anticipate will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on managements assumptions and assessments in light of experience and trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other relevant factors. They are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ significantly from those envisaged by our forward-looking statements. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described or implied in the forward-looking statements are general business and economic conditions, production delays resulting from lack of regulatory certifications and other factors, competition in our existing and future markets, lack of market acceptance of our products and services, the substantial leverage and debt service resulting from our indebtedness, loss or retirement of key executives and other risks disclosed by us or generally associated with our business.
We are excited to announce the winner of our 2016 Military Scholarship contest. The recipient of this award is Amber Sheffer, a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago and she will be awarded $2,000 for her submission.

The prompt of the scholarship essay was to explain How has your parents service shaped your life growing up and how does it affects future goals and dreams? Our team at Orent Law, wanted to create a scholarship that would highlight and appreciate all of those who have selflessly served our country. The goal of this scholarship is to assist those families who have risked their lives to give back to their community.

We received many creative essay submissions and had a hard time choosing the winner in a sea of expressive and inspiring military stories. Craig Orent congratulated Sheffer by saying, I am pleased to award Amber Sheffer this military scholarship. She blew us away with her dedication to her family and her desire to serve others as a career after observing her step-father's duties. In her essay, Sheffer expresses her utmost gratitude to her step-father who served as a Major General in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Sheffer is currently working on her PhD in Public Administration, which has been a long-time goal of hers. After graduating with a Bachelors degree in psychology from The University of Illinois at Chicago, Sheffer worked in homeland security and emergency management. Sheffer explains she worked with the federal government, local and state government to protect our homeland against terrorism  following in her stepfather's footsteps of serving and protecting her community. Sheffer attributes her support system largely to her stepfather, whom she greatly respects and admires.

We would like to thank everyone who submitted an essay sharing personal stories of how the military has shaped their life. We truly appreciate the service from each family and we admire the strength and support each applicant has had throughout their lives with family members in the military.
The Law Office of Shannon Hennessy Pulaski is pleased to announce that Shannon Hennessy Pulaski has been selected to the 2017 New Jersey Rising Stars list, an annual list that recognizes the state's top up-and-coming lawyers. Ms. Pulaski had previously been named to the New Jersey Rising Stars list in 2015. Each year, no more than 2.5 percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by the research team at Super Lawyers to receive this honor.

Candidates must be 40 years old or less or in practice for ten years or less. Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area.

Ms. Pulaski concentrates her practice in the areas of business law, contract law, and intellectual property law and has extensive experience with trademark prosecution. Ms. Pulaski received her B.A. from Boston College and her Juris Doctor from Seton Hall University School of Law where she completed a concentration in intellectual property law. Ms. Pulaski is licensed to practice law in New Jersey, New York, and Florida. For more information visit http://www.shpulaskilaw.com. For more information about Super Lawyers, visit http://www.superlawyers.com.
Carnegie Council, Making Ethics Matter Carnegie Council is one of the world's top creators of nonpartisan educational resources on international ethics used by professionals, journalists, educators, students, and the greater public.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs announces its upcoming current affairs programs, which are open to the public.

To attend in person, please RSVP.

Events take place at:

Carnegie Council

170 East 64 Street, New York, NY 10065.

Or watch them as live webcasts here: http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/live.

The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice

Mar 21, 6:00-7:30 PM ET

Kenny MacAskill

In 1988, Pan Am 103 departed London for New York. Shortly after take-off, a bomb detonated, killing all on board and devastating the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime. His subsequent release from prison and deportation to Libya caused a political controversy in the UK and severely damaged Anglo-American relations.

Shades of Red and Blue: Uniting Our Divided Nation

April 1, 12:30-9:00 PM ET

THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

This nonpartisan forum of six conversations featuring high-profile speakers from both sides of the political divide will address some of the most pressing issues of our time. Speakers include Salman Rushdie, Thomas M. Nichols, Anne-Marie Slaughter, John W. Dean, Leon Botstein, Jamil Dakwar, and more.

Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought

April 5, 6:00-7:30 PM ET

James T. Kloppenberg

The story of democracy remains one without an ending, a dynamic of progress and regress that continues to our own day. How have understandings of self-rule changed over time on both sides

Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline from Obama to Trump and Beyond

Apr 12, 8:00-9:15 AM ET

Gideon Rachman

Easternization is the defining trend of our age. The growing wealth and power of Asian nations over the last 50 years is transforming the international balance of power, bringing a near 500-year period of western dominance to a close. How will this turbulent process define politics in the 21st century?

Advancing Women's Rights in Two Muslim Countries: Qatar and Pakistan

Apr 20, 6:00-7:30 PM ET

H. E. Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, H. E. Ms. Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al-Thani

While there are many misperceptions in the West about the problems faced by women in Muslim countries, progress continues to be made to create a class of educated women ready to contribute to society outside their homes. How are Qatar and Pakistan addressing the challenges of advancing women's rights?

The Coming War with China? The Ethics of Confrontation in the Pacific

Apr 27, 6:00-7:30 PM ET

Ian Buruma, Joshua Eisenman, Jennifer M. Harris

This panel will examine the prospects for armed conflict in the Pacific and America's moral imperative to keep the peace while still maintaining its values and credibility. Can the U.S. and China avoid miscalculation and instead find common ground?

ABOUT CARNEGIE COUNCIL

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1914, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an educational, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that produces lectures, publications, and multimedia materials on the ethical challenges of living in a globalized world. Go to http://www.carnegiecouncil.org.
Burk Uzzle is an artist of the highest caliber who has made an important and powerful contribution to the visual culture of America." -Waterford Visual Art Department Chair Colby Brewer

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) will host photographer Burk Uzzle on Friday, March 24 at 7 p.m. in collaboration with the Waterford School. The event is free and open to the public.

Uzzle will present At the Heart of Who We Are, a conversation about his journey with photography from the 1960s to the present day. Following Uzzles presentation, filmmakers David Raymond and Jethro Waters will present their trailer for f/11 and Be There, a feature length documentary about Uzzle and, according to their website, his unique gift to amplify how we see our collective selves, values, and communities" through photography.

Uzzles visit coincides with this years Arts Week at the Waterford School. He will be visiting classes throughout Waterfords Arts program and working primarily with photography faculty Andrew Patteson and Bernie Meyers and their students. In addition to addressing Waterfords entire student body in an Arts Week assembly, Uzzle will offer critiques to advanced photography students, lead a studio lighting workshop, and print some of his current work in the Waterford photo studios.

"Waterford is so excited to partner with UMOCA in offering a public lecture and panel discussion with photographer Burk Uzzle and filmmakers David Raymond and Jethro Waters, said Waterford Visual Art Department Chair Colby Brewer. Burk is an artist of the highest caliber who has made an important and powerful contribution to the visual culture of America. We believe our students learn so much from working with the diverse array of artists we bring to campus through our Visiting Artist Program, and we wanted to share Burk with the greater Salt Lake community as well. This event at UMOCA is the perfect way to do that."

Uzzle began his impressive career as documentary photographer for LIFE before becoming a member of the international Magnum cooperative. During his 16 years with Magnum, Uzzle produced hundreds of notable images, including photos of Woodstock and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His current work focuses on the simple beauty he encounters in Americas small towns and its people, especially those around his studio in North Carolina.

For more information on Burk Uzzle, visit http://burkuzzle.com/.
Multivariate Optical Element innovator, CIRTEMO, announced today that Semiconductor Devices (SCD) and SCD USA will showcase a Multivariate Optical Element hyperspectral imaging demonstration at SPIE DCS 2017 exposition in Anaheim, CA April 9-13, 2017. SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing Expo hosted at the Anaheim Convention Center, is the key premier exhibition for researchers, engineers, product developers, and purchasers who specialize in optics and photonics.

Our goal for this demonstration is to help our partners and customers understand how IR sensors can be combined with Multivariate Optical Elements to provide high value chemical information in real-time. said Jason Williamson, CIRTEMO founder. Multivariate Optical Elements can optimize the performance of traditional hyperspectral systems and in some cases reduce post processing and data storage by up to two hundred times. This is a game changer for companies and end users developing hyperspectral imaging systems for industrial, defense, agricultural and life science applications.

CIRTEMO designs and manufactures patented optical filters, called Multivariate Optical Elements, which are encoded to detect/measure complex chemical compounds and attributes. Its patented Multivariate Optical Element platform enables optical systems to perform high value detection and analysis at the speed of light, to a variety of industries. Multivariate Optical Elements are ideally suited for point detection sensors and hyperspectral imaging systems.

During the SPIE DCS 2017 conference, CIRTEMO personnel, will be at the Semiconductor Devices (SCD) booth #301 to provide a technology overview of how companies and end users can leverage the patented Multivariate Optical Element for advanced hyperspectral imaging applications.

CIRTEMO primarily partners with Optical Filter Manufactures (OFMs) and Optical Component and System Manufacturers (OCSMs). The Multivariate Optical Element platform allows OFMs and OCSMs to differentiate their offerings with a well-protected IP position and enable their customers to tackle new applications that are not possible with traditional optical filters and coatings.

CIRTEMO is the second company to be founded to commercialize the patented Multivariate Optical Element platform that was invented by Dr. Michael Myrick at the University of South Carolina. Prior to founding CIRTEMO, Jason Williamson founded Ometric in 2005. Ometric successfully commercialized the Multivariate Optical Element platform in a wide variety of large industrial sectors, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pet nutrition, mining, food and many others. The company was sold to Halliburton in 2011. Although the exact sale price of Ometric is considered confidential, Halliburton paid more than eight figures for the company, and the transaction generated the largest royalty payment in history ever paid to the University of South Carolina ($2.7M).

About CIRTEMO

CIRTEMO designs and manufactures patented optical filters, called Multivariate Optical Elements, which are encoded to detect/measure complex chemical compounds and attributes. CIRTEMOs patented Multivariate Optical Element platform enables optical systems to perform high value detection and analysis at the speed of light, to a variety of industries, including life sciences, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical devices, agriculture, food and beverage, semiconductors, pet nutrition, environmental, plastics, and multiple cleantech applications. For more information, visit http://www.cirtemo.com or call 803-467-4189.
The ISOA Awards Program will salute businesses who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. These Awards will honor government contracting leaders in the ISOA ideals of accountability, transparency, and ethics. - Howie Lind, the President of ISOA

The International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) is calling for nominations for the 2017 ISOA Achievement Awards ceremony and celebration recognizing individuals and companies for their outstanding work in the stability operations field.

Eligible nominees include corporate members of the ISOA who are in good standing with the industry. Companies may apply who are not members of ISOA, but to be selected as a finalist, your company must have joined the association. The ISOA Stability Operations Awards will be awarded to companies who consistently demonstrate commitment to accountability, transparency, and ethics in the stability operations arena based on the size of your company  small, medium, large.

The top award, based on company size, will be presented as a Vanguard Award. Individual Awards recognizing sustaining support of ISOA and an ongoing commitment to the stability operations field will also be presented, for which nominations are not required.

Nominations are accepted via a downloadable Award Nomination Form. All nominations must be received via email to howielind(at)stability-operations(dot)org by Friday, March 31, 2017. Email submissions are preferred, and early submissions are also encouraged.

Winners will be selected by our three independent judges and will be announced in April 2017. The honorees will be recognized at the 2017 ISOA Awards Dinner on Thursday, June 1, 2017 at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

For specific questions about the nomination process, please contact our awards committee members, Michelle at 2023449030, or Kelley at 202-680-9888.

Submit your Award Nomination - due by March 31: http://stability-operations.org/events/2017/2017-isoa-achievement-awards

Attend the Awards Dinner - June 1: http://stability-operations.org/isoa-achievement-award-nomination-form
Valeo has been certified as a Top Employer in the United States and Mexico by the Top Employers Institute for 2017, its fourth year in a row. Valeo also is one of only 10 companies to earn Global Top Employer certification, achieving this honor for the third year in a row.

In North America, Valeo has quadrupled its revenue and tripled its workforce over the past several years and continues to grow, seeking new talent throughout the region.

The Top employer certification is a key element in our Talent Strategy. In our current Talent War, very strong in North America, this is an asset to attract talented new comers. But it demonstrates as well our ambition to be a nice place to work and to offer several possibilities for our employees personal development, said Gregoire Ast, National HR Director for Valeo North America. To get this certification, the fourth in a row, we are audited on our talent development processes and well-being at work programs. We walk the talk, let me thank all our teams involved in that achievement.

With an ambitious strategic vision, Valeos innovative products, systems and solutions contribute to reducing carbon emissions and to the development of intuitive driving technologies, making cars cleaner, safer and smarter. Valeo is helping transform the auto industry from mechanics to electronics and software, working with traditional customers and new players in mobility at its growing R&D centers throughout the region.

To qualify for the Global Top Employer label, 20 countries must be certified individually on five continents. Valeo earned Top Employer certification in 23 countries on five continents, including Belgium for the first time this year.

Top Employer certification is based on a variety of criteria, including talent strategy and performance management, where Valeo earned the highest scores.

Top Employer certification, awarded by the Top Employers Institute, recognizes organizations that demonstrate the best human resources management practices, particularly in the areas of attracting and developing talent, compensation and benefits, training and leadership development.

For information about Valeo career opportunities visit http://www.valeo.com/en/working-at-valeo/.

About the Top Employers Institute: Founded in 1991, the Top Employers Institute is a global certification company recognizing excellence in the conditions that employers create for their people. The institute has been identifying Top Employers around the world for more than 25 years, creating a community of more than 1,200 Top Employers across 116 countries today.

About Valeo North America: In North America, Valeos regional headquarters are located in Troy, Mich., and the company has 21 production sites and eight research and development centers. The company employs 14,000 people across the United States, Mexico and Canada, and was responsible for 24 % of the Groups 2016 global annual original equipment sales.

Valeo is an automotive supplier, partner to all automakers worldwide. As a technology company, Valeo proposes innovative products and systems that contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions and to the development of intuitive driving. In 2016, the Group generated sales of 16.5 billion and invested over 11% of its original equipment sales in research and development. Valeo has 155 plants, 20 research centers, 38 development centers and 15 distribution platforms, and employs 91,800 people in 32 countries worldwide. Valeo is listed on the Paris stock exchange and is a member of the CAC 40 index.

Contact

150 Stephenson Hwy, Troy MI 48083

+1 (248) 619-8377

dan.saad(at)valeo(dot)com

http://www.valeo.com

Follow us on @Valeo_Group
NEW YORK, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against INSYS Therapeutics, Inc. (Insys or the Company) (NYSE:INSY) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 17-cv-01954, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Insys securities between February 23, 2016 and March 15, 2017 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 Insys securities during the Class Period, you have until May 16, 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 rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Insys, a specialty pharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes supportive care products. The Company markets Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray for breakthrough cancer pain in opioid-tolerant cancer patients in the United States. Its lead product candidate is Syndros, an orally administered liquid formulation of dronabinol. The Company is also developing Cannabidiol Oral Solution, a synthetic cannabidiol for childhood catastrophic epilepsy syndromes; and other product candidates, including other dronabinol line extensions and sublingual spray product candidates.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Companys business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Insys had overstated its 2015 net revenue; (ii) Insys had misstated its sales allowances for 2016; (iii) accordingly, the Company lacked effective internal controls over financial reporting; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Insyss public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On March 15, 2017, post-market, Insys announced that it would delay the release of its financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2016. Insys advised investors that [t]he Audit Committee of the Companys Board of Directors has been conducting an independent review of the Companys processes related to estimation of, and increases to, certain sales allowances recorded during 2016, with a potential reduction of 2015 net revenue and pre-tax income not expected to exceed $5 million, as well as extended payment terms offered to certain customers during the third quarter of 2016.

On this news, Insyss share price fell $0.49, or 4.64%, to close at $10.06 on March 16, 2017.

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
We are not working for the Russians, says Grantham, we just don't think NATO expansion will work for America.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) scolded Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) yesterday for achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin by not agreeing to another round of NATO expansion. However, expansion actually poses a security risk for all member states, according to a recent study by National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Fellow David Grantham.

We are not working for the Russians, says Grantham, we just don't think NATO expansion will work for America. Aside from the disproportionate financial burden-sharing, Grantham argues, previous expansions have actually undermined Europes defense capabilities:



The United States provides the bulk of armed forces for NATO engagement: 14 percent of troops in Kosovo and 64 percent of troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, for instance.

NATO has less money and fewer military assets since its latest expansion and now has more ground to cover.

The United States has always contributed more than its European partners despite having a smaller population size and less GDP.

Grantham argues that NATO should consider halting future expansion and installing benchmarks for members to meet, leading up to the promise of 2 percent in defense expenditures by 2024. He says NATO should also adopt precise language requiring that the 2 percent be spent on specific military hardware, personnel or training to hedge against the possibility of defense money being diverted to unrelated programs.

The Economics of NATO Expansion: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ib200.pdf
This educational collaboration will allow hospitals to continue to build on health care quality improvements they have made.

The American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians (ABQAURP) has been selected by the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET), an affiliate of the American Hospital Association (AHA), to serve as the continuing medical education accreditation provider. HRET remains focused on supporting the hospital fields work to improve quality and meet goals of reduced hospital-acquired conditions and hospital readmissions. As quality improvement work continues to evolve, improving health equity and reducing health care disparities will become key strategies for improvement.

The HRET along with thousands of hospitals across the country are focused on eleven core areas of harm for quality improvement. In addition to these core eleven topics, hospitals and health systems will work to decrease preventable patient harm. Within these areas, ABQAURP will accredit the educational courses HRET designs to support the implementation of proven best practices and lessons learned, with webinars and educational sessions to participating hospitals. HRETs broad network of hospitals and state hospital association partners will receive this education and training in support of their quality improvement efforts in the targeted areas.

This educational collaboration will allow hospitals to continue to build on health care quality improvements they have made, said Arthur Broder, MD, ABQAURP Chairman of the Board. We are extremely honored to have been selected to be the accreditation provider for this project. The Health Research & Educational Trust has brought together hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, patient advocates, and state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly. These educational programs will strengthen the goals of keeping patients from getting injured or sicker, and helping patients to heal without complications through education on quality techniques and tools which reduce medical errors, ensure patient safety, eliminate waste and unnecessary services, and avoid potentially harmful delays in care.

"HRET is pleased to enter into this partnership as we work to continually expand and strengthen our educational offerings," said Jay Bhatt DO, Chief Medical Office of AHA and President and CEO of HRET. "Aligning quality improvement goals among health care professionals and further engaging clinicians in quality improvement work will increase the chances of sustainability."

Hospitals have access to content and learning opportunities in eleven core areas of focus as well as additional topics and measurement approaches. Topics include diagnostic errors, hospital culture of safety and airway safety.

For more information on the project, visit http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2016-Fact-sheets-items/2016-09-29-2.html.

About the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians (ABQAURP)

Established in 1977, ABQAURP brings health care quality management and patient safety to the forefront by providing the highest standard of education, information, and resources to its members. Through its ultimate goal to improve the quality of health care, ABQAURP is dedicated to providing health care education and certification for physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals.

ABQAURP Provides:



Membership & Fellowship

The only Health Care Quality and Management Certification Exam administered through the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME)

Accredited CME & CE Online Courses, Live Conferences, and Home Studies

ABQAURP is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. We are committed to providing superior health care quality and patient safety education. ABQAURP is approved by the Florida Board of Nursing to provide contact hours (CEs) for nurses in our educational programs.



Sub-Specialty certification in the following categories:

-Physician Advisor (physicians only)*

-Transitions of Care

-Managed Care

-Patient Safety / Risk Management

-Case Management

-Workers Compensation

For more information about ABQAURP programs: call (800) 998-6030 or visit http://www.abqaurp.org.

*The Health Care Quality and Management Certification and the Physician Advisor Sub-Specialty are endorsed by the American College of Physician Advisors.

National Board of Medical Examiners and NBME are registered trademarks of the National Board of Medical Examiners.
Mike Slubowski For many colleagues who worked with Mike at Trinity Health, he already is a trusted friend and mentor with a record of inspiring people to do their best.

Trinity Health today announced that Mike Slubowski will be President and Chief Operating Officer for the system, adding another experienced health care leader to help the system achieve its People-Centered 2020 strategic plan.

Reporting to Trinity Health Chief Executive Officer Richard J. Gilfillan, M.D., Slubowski will be responsible for operational and clinical activities across the system. He will begin his new role on May 15, 2017.

Mike is an exemplary strategic leader who shares our Mission and our vision for a people-centered health care system, and we are fortunate he is joining our team, Gilfillan said. For many colleagues who worked with Mike at Trinity Health, he already is a trusted friend and mentor with a record of inspiring people to do their best.

Trinity Health is in the midst of significant growth and transformation, and I look forward to helping the system continue on its path to serving people and communities nationwide, Slubowski said. This transition also keeps me firmly grounded in Catholic health care, which is a personal passion and a critical ministry for millions of people.

Slubowski is the President and CEO of SCL Health, where he has a seven-year record of health system innovation and transformation, leading its ministry of 12 hospitals, multiple other facilities and 15,000 employees in three states. During his tenure, the system has successfully executed a complex merger; improved quality, patient experience, and colleague safety outcomes; and built standard platforms for electronic medical records and system services. SCL Health also has experienced significant growth and improved stewardship results.

Slubowski has 35 years of experience as a health care leader. Before SCL Health, he worked at Trinity Health as president of hospital and health networks for the system. Previously, he held executive leadership positions at other health systems in Michigan and Arizona.

Slubowski is involved deeply in the industry and the community. He is a board member of the Catholic Health Association. He holds fellowships in both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the American College of Medical Practice Executives, and he serves in a variety of regional and national health care professional organizations.

Slubowski received his bachelor's and Master of Business Administration degrees from Wayne State University.

About Trinity Health

Trinity Health is one of the largest multi-institutional Catholic health care delivery systems in the nation, serving diverse communities that include more than 30 million people across 22 states. Trinity Health includes 93 hospitals, as well as 120 continuing care programs that include PACE, senior living facilities, and home care and hospice services. Its continuing care programs provide nearly 2.5 million visits annually. Based in Livonia, Mich., and with annual operating revenues of $16.2 billion and assets of $23.4 billion, the organization returns almost $1 billion to its communities annually in the form of charity care and other community benefit programs. Trinity Health employs about 97,000 full-time employees, including 5,300 employed physicians. Committed to those who are poor and underserved in its communities, Trinity Health is known for its focus on the country's aging population. As a single, unified ministry, the organization is the innovator of Senior Emergency Departments, the largest not-for-profit provider of home health care services  ranked by number of visits  in the nation, as well as the nations leading provider of PACE (Program of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly) based on the number of available programs. For more information, visit http://www.trinity-health.org. You can also follow @TrinityHealthMI on Twitter.

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Eds deep knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem and passion for driving digital transformation in mid and large enterprises aligns perfectly with New Signatures vision and mission, says Jeff Tench, New Signature CEO

New Signature announced today that Ed Schwartz has joined the organization as Executive Vice President, Business Development in North America. In this role, Ed is responsible for setting the strategic direction for business development activities while enabling organizational alignment to market trends and solutions.

Ed has spent the last 20 years in the Microsoft enterprise consulting space where he has led large commercial teams responsible for ensuring client success. Prior to joining New Signature, Ed spent 14 years at Accenture, as a senior leader in the Microsoft consulting practice branded Avanade.

Eds deep knowledge of the Microsoft ecosystem and passion for driving digital transformation in mid and large enterprises aligns perfectly with New Signatures vision and mission. We are delighted to welcome Ed to our incredibly talented team, says Jeff Tench, New Signature CEO.

As EVP of Business Development, Ed will bring together New Signatures sales and solution architect professionals to craft transformational solutions that solve customer challenges.

I am thrilled to be part of the New Signature team. Their reputation for being an outstanding Microsoft Partner is well-known and their commitment to client success is unparalleled. I am really excited to contribute my experience and knowledge to this growing team, says Ed.

As an exclusive Microsoft partner, New Signatures appointment of Eda seasoned Microsoft professionaldemonstrates a clear commitment to the ecosystem and to the direction of the market. Microsoft and New Signature are laser focused on growth through cloud technologies and digital platforms like Azure. With Ed leading the New Signature business development team, the organization will be looking at significant growth across the breadth of the business.

About New Signature

New Signature is a cloud-first Microsoft partner focused on delivering innovative technology solutions that solve human challenges and drive transformation for businesses. New Signature was the proud recipient of the Microsoft US Partner of the Year award in 2014 & 2015 and the Microsoft UK Partner of the Year award in 2014. As an exclusive Microsoft Partner, New Signature hold 22 Competencies  18 Gold and 4 Silver and the team holds over 500 individual Microsoft certifications. New Signature has a global presence with offices in the US, UK and Canada.

newsignature.com
Established as a leading organic, artisan-quality pure maple syrup brand, Crown Maple today announces a new partnership with Sunniva, continuing to build on its growing collection of maple-centric beverage offerings. The delicious new Sunniva Super Coffee, the worlds first Super Coffee, was unveiled at Natural Products Expo West earlier this month.

"We are grateful to announce our partnership with the ambitious Crown Maple team, said Sunniva Chief Executive, Jim DeCicco. Our goal is to provide healthy energy and sustained focus; the antioxidants from the maple tree enhance Sunniva's focused energy. After a detailed diligence process we chose Crown Maple as the ideal partner due to their state of the art facility, social/environmental responsibility and the unrivaled purity of their maple syrup. It turned out to be the ideal relationship as their farm is based in our hometown hills of the Hudson Valley."

Blended with organic Colombian coffee and fortified with protein for power, coconut oil for focus, and Crown Maple syrup for light sweetness and antioxidants, Sunniva Super Coffee is a cleaner, healthier version of the typical bottled coffee or energy drink consumers are used to seeing on store shelves. Made with all-natural ingredients, Sunniva Super Coffee packs a powerful punch of energy without processed additives.

Crown Maples pure and natural flavor, combined with its many healthy benefits like vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, make it a perfect partner for a brand like Sunniva, said Mike Cobb, CEO of Crown Maple. Being able to combine our own organic products with such a special product like Sunnivas beverage recipe is an exciting way to bring the power of maple to more people than ever. And the fact that Sunniva Super Coffee products contain less than 7g of sugar make the partnership  ironically  that much sweeter.

Offered in Vanilla Bean, Black Brew, Dark Mocha, and Hudson Valley Hazelnut, Sunniva Super Coffee is now available in locations nationwide, from colleges and offices, to airports and country clubs. Sunniva is also available in Whole Foods Markets Mid-Atlantic and will soon expand to the North-Atlantic and New England Regions. Crown Maple syrup will be included in all Sunniva products, with the exception of the Black Brew, and will be included in packaging, beginning May 2017. For more information, visit: CrownMaple.com or Sunniva.co.

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About Crown Maple

Crown Maple is Quite Possibly the Purest Maple Syrup on Earth and sets a new standard of excellence for maple. Established in 2010, Crown Maple has been carefully crafted from the ground up to become the preeminent maple syrup brand. By pairing the best from nature with artisan craftsmanship and breakthrough state of the art proprietary production technology, Crown Maple creates an exceptional maple experience. Crown Maple syrup and sugar products are estate-produced, certified-organic and provide a superior and distinctive taste and performance that elevates Crown Maple beyond a sweetener and into a defining ingredient.

The Crown Maple Estate is based in New Yorks Hudson Valley and has quickly become New Yorks No. 1 maple syrup producer. Open to the public on weekends, Crown Maple invites guests to visit the estate, experience the sustainable maple grove firsthand, and learn about the maple production process. The on-site maple-infused cafe also offers a variety of innovative maple foods and craft beverages to further inspire guests.

In an effort to continually push industry boundaries, Crown Maple regularly collaborates with an array of nationally-known brands to incorporate maple syrup into a variety of sweet and savory foods and beverages that go well beyond the pancake platter, and the brand is the syrup of choice served at top restaurants, resorts, and culinary institutions nationwide. Crown Maple products are available for purchase from coast-to-coast at select grocery stores, natural retailers, specialty stores, and foodservice distributors. Crown Maple products can also be purchased online at http://www.CrownMaple.com.

About Sunniva Super Coffee

Sunniva Super Coffee is a family owned and operated business headquartered in Washington, DC, on a mission to inspire healthy, productive lifestyles. Founded by student athletes out of necessity, their gluten-free, preservative-free, low-calorie, low-sugar, high-energy bottled beverages are created for optimal taste, health and energy.
As Americas Diner, it was important for us to look for a partner with strong strategic business acumen, intimate audience insight and a keen understanding of the dynamics of franchisee businesses.

Denny's Corporation, one of America's largest full-service restaurant chains, today announced that it has selected Publicis Groupes Conill (http://www.conill.com) as its Hispanic advertising agency of record. The California-based agency will handle strategy, creative development, social media and digital communications targeting Hispanic audiences at both the local and national level. The assignment was the result of a competitive review.

Todays families are busy, connected and diverse, said John Dillon, Dennys Chief Marketing Officer. As Americas Diner we strive to engage with our multicultural audience in ways beyond traditional advertising, making an emotional connection and resonating with them both in and outside our restaurants. As Americas Diner, it was important for us to look for a partner with strong strategic business acumen, intimate audience insight and a keen understanding of the dynamics of franchisee businesses. Conills credentials in these areas stood apart.

Conill will work very closely with Dennys longtime agency partners Erwin Penland and Blue 449 to ensure a holistic brand message across all guest segments.

Collaboration is an integral part of our DNA, said Conill President Carlos Martinez. The pace of change in the U.S. marketplace leaves little time for monolithic thinking. You have to be quick to learn, quick to deliver and even quicker to adapt to the always-on demands of todays brands. Were eager to hit the ground running with the brand team, franchisees and our agency partners to bring Americas Diner into the heart of the conversations happening right now among a diverse group of guests.

ABOUT DENNY'S CORP.

Denny's is one of America's largest full-service family restaurant chains, currently operating over 1,700 franchised, licensed and company-owned restaurants across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guam, the United Arab Emirates, Chile, Curacao, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Philippines. For further information on Denny's, including news releases, please visit the Denny's website at http://www.dennys.com or the brands social channels via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram or YouTube.

ABOUT CONILL

Founded in 1968 as the nations first Latino marketing agency, Conill is currently among the fastest growing multicultural agencies in the U.S. It has been recognized in Advertising Ages annual Agency A-List Report seven times in the past ten years, including Multicultural Agency of the Year honors in 2011 and 2007. The agencys roster of clients includes Aflac, Nationwide, Procter & Gamble, T-Mobile and Toyota Motor Sales.

A subsidiary of Saatchi & Saatchi, Conill is the largest multicultural agency within Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40]. Web: http://www.conill.com | Twitter:@Conill
International law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP has been recognized with the North American Social Infrastructure Deal of the Year award at the annual IJGlobal Americas Awards ceremony held in New York last night.

IJGlobal is an online intelligence service that tracks global infrastructure finance market activity. The IJGlobal Americas Awards recognize the best energy and infrastructure deals, based on performance, innovation and excellence.

The Greenberg Traurig team, which included Shareholders Charles J. Kolin, David J. LaSota, Michael D. Robson, Lorraine M. Tyson, and Of Counsel Lea K. Rosenthal, won the award for their work on the University of Californias Merced Redevelopment project. The team represented a consortium of nine private placement investors, who provided $660 million for the Merceds campus expansion at the University of California. This was the first ever higher education availability payment Public-Private Partnership (P3) project to be awarded in the United States.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP  Global Energy and Infrastructure Practice

Greenberg Traurig's Global Energy and Infrastructure Practice is known for its broad-ranging representation of upstream and midstream energy companies as well as renewable energy companies and traditional power generation companies. The firm's energy practice is further distinguished by lawyers with broad FERC experience and multifaceted energy finance representations. Several of Greenberg Traurigs energy attorneys are former General Counsel at energy industry companies and provide a valuable business perspective for our energy clients across the globe. Greenberg Traurig's Global Energy and Infrastructure Practice expanded significantly in Latin America and Europe with the establishment of Mexico City and Warsaw offices.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GTLaw) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. One firm worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the second largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2016, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.
Utilis wins the 2017 Water Data Challenge "The 12 companies advancing to Imagine H2O's 2017 accelerator represent the kind of business innovation, visionary talent and technological know-how required to advance resource sustainability"

Imagine H2O, the water innovation accelerator, showcased the winners and finalists of its 8th annual innovation program at WaterGala 17, an event yesterday evening featuring over 350 industry executives, investors, utility managers, government officials and sustainability experts. Twelve promising water data startups were selected from a global field of 180 applicants in 30 countries.

Utilis won top honors with its cost-competitive satellite imagery solution to detect leaks in water distribution systems. Over the past 12 months, Utilis has surveyed over 75,000 miles of buried pipe infrastructure and identified over 8,000 suspected leaks. Arable Labs, a crop and weather sensor, and Triple Bottom Line Enterprises, a data solution for designing affordable piped-water systems, were recognized as the runners-up.

"We are honored to be part of Imagine H2O's program this year and be recognized for our work to improve resilience of drinking water infrastructure around the world," said Lauren Guy, Founder & CTO of Utilis. "The resources, insights and network of advisors that Imagine H2O offers will be instrumental in helping us develop and scale the impact of our business this year, added Elly Perets, CEO of Utilis.

These three companies, along with the remaining finalists, advance to Imagine H2Os 2017 Accelerator Program and will benefit from cash awards, mentorship, industry exposure as well as introductions to customers and investors. Imagine H2Os 2016 portfolio companies are on the path to raise over $30 million in financing and secured a host of customer deployments with the organizations Beta Partners, a network of over 50 municipal, agricultural and industrial end-users.

Data innovation is fundamental to improve how we manage water, said Chris Morrison, Asst. Vice President, Ecolab (Water) Global Technology Partnerships who served on the judging panel. The twelve companies advancing to Imagine H2O's 2017 accelerator represent the kind of business innovation, visionary talent and technological know-how required to advance resource sustainability.

Imagine H2O also announced a new three-year sponsorship with American Water, enabling the organization to provide customer validation opportunities with the nations largest investor-owned utility. Partnerships such as these further expand Imagine H2Os capability to support the deployment of innovation to solve water challenges globally.

Imagine H2Os other partners include Wells Fargo (Headline Sponsor), Suez, Tetra Tech, American Water, Morrison Foerster and a network of private family foundations. GE Water & Process Technologies and the Water Environment Federation were primary sponsors of WaterGala 17.

The twelve finalists showcased at WaterGala '17 and selected to participate in Imagine H2O's 2017 accelerator include: Acoustic Sensing Technology; AquaSeca; Arable Labs; EMAGIN; Flo Technologies; FREDsense; Hydromodel Host; Lotic Labs; Pluto AI; Sutro; Triple Bottom Line Enterprises; Utilis.

About Imagine H2O

Imagine H2O is a nonprofit organization that empowers people to develop and deploy water innovation to solve water challenges. Since 2009, Imagine H2O has transformed emerging water startups into scalable, high-impact businesses. The organizations flagship business accelerator program has helped 80 water technology businesses win customers and receive more than 10% of early-stage investment in the water sector.
"Change of Address," the new CD by baritone saxophonist Jared Sims. There are a lot of gold standards on tenor. I was trying to find a way to move past those influences. Playing the baritone felt really natural to me. I felt like I could do something personal and interesting with it.

After two decades in New England, where multi-reed virtuoso Jared Sims made his mark as an instrumentalist, bandleader, educator, and all-around musical provocateur, Sims celebrates his return to West Virginia with "Change of Address," his fifth album as a leader. On the new CD, which will be released April 14 by Ropeadope Records, Sims sticks to his favorite instrumentthe baritone saxin the company of an airtight, organ-dappled quintet.

"Change of Address" commemorates Simss homecoming to his alma mater, West Virginia University in Morgantown, which has named him Director of its Jazz Studies Department 20 years after he earned his own jazz studies degree there.

The music on the album is notable for instilling the jazz-soul tradition with an up-to-the-minute sensibility and is deftly interpreted by the leader, joined by an intriguing collection of players for whom he wrote its tunes, Ellington-style. They include the wife-and-husband team of organist Nina Ott and bassist Chris Lopes (a longtime crony of guitarist Jeff Parker), and a pair of young Boston-area veterans in guitarist Steve Fell and drummer Jared Seabrook (older brother of guitar provocateur Brandon).

Among the highlights on "Change of Address" are Ghost Guest 1979, which showcases a full range of textural effects from Fell and seamless interaction between bass and Hammond B-3; the sprightly, wide-open Lights and Colors; and Forest Hills, inspired by the Boston neighborhood in which he lived.

Sims (b. 1974) started playing the baritone in the fifth grade in his hometown of Staunton, Virginia, but only became dedicated to this most colossal of saxes after bringing a tenor to a class at the New England Conservatory (NEC) and having his instructor chide him he would never be great on it because he would be following in the footsteps of too many legends.

Far from taking offense, Sims took his teachers words to heart. There are a lot of gold standards on tenor, he says. I was trying to find a way to move past those influences. Playing the baritone felt really natural to me. I felt like I could do something personal and interesting with it. A compelling example of this is Simss Seeds of Shihab, a tribute to baritone great Sahib Shihab, which like the other tracks on "Change of Address" luxuriates in the brawny, bottom-rich sound of the instrument.

Sims attended his first jazz concert, by Michael Brecker, in tenth grade, and saw the World Saxophone Quartet perform the following year. His fascination with the saxophone went over the top after he spoke with members of the WSQ following the show.

At WVU, he had a strong saxophone teacher in David Hastings, who schooled him in traditional styles. At NEC, where he played clarinet in addition to baritone, alto, and tenor, he tried to catch up to all the kinds of music he hadnt been exposed to, including Third Stream, under the wing of distinguished faculty members Gunther Schuller, George Russell, and Ran Blake.

Sims went on to study for his doctorate in classical music performance at Boston University, where his lecture recital was on the modern Italian composer Luciano Berio and his solo Sequenza pieces. He also did research work on Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, and American popular music.

While in Boston, where he earned a reputation as a saxophone colossus, Sims roomed for four years with standout baritone saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase, a cog in Either/Orchestra, who turned him onto Shihab. One of his mentors at NEC was Allan Chase, with whom he continues to play in a band, Blow-up!, dedicated to the music of bebop baritone legend Serge Chaloff (they recorded in March 2017). He also played in numerous Boston-based bands including the Afro-Latin group Mango Blue (in which he continues to perform); the organ funk outfit Akashic Record; Blueprint Project with guitarist Eric Hofbauer, and the jazz-rock quartet Miracle Orchestra. The list of artists he has collaborated is an eclectic one and ranges from the late Bob Brookmeyer, Han Bennink, Matt Wilson, Dave Liebman, and Anat Cohen to the Temptations, 10,000 Maniacs, and Oasiss Noel Gallagher.

Sims made his recording debut as a leader with the trio effort "Acoustic Shadows" (2009). He followed it with another three-man outing "Convergence" (2011), the collective quartet album "The New Stablemates" (2012), and "Layers" (2016), on which he overdubs himself playing saxophones, clarinets, and flute on tunes by Ellington, Monk, and Mingus.

Jared Sims will celebrate the release of "Change of Address" at the following engagements: 4/14 James Street Gastropub, Pittsburgh; 4/27 The Bitter End, NYC; 4/28 Third Life Studio, Boston (with same personnel as the CD).
Access to someone with Mr. Fishmans experience is a rare opportunity for those interested in public service careers, the practice of criminal law, or the compliance profession," Dean Kathleen M. Boozang

Seton Hall University School of Law welcomes Paul J. Fishman, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Mr. Fishman resigned his post last Friday, March 10 after seven-and-a-half years of service as U.S. Attorney, and more than 21 years with the United States Department of Justice.

Mr. Fishman received an honorary degree from Seton Hall Law in 2011 and comes to the law school with a distinguished history of public service and substantial accomplishments as a practitioner. He will guest lecture in classes, meet informally with students, and serve as a keynote speaker in Seton Hall Laws globally recognized healthcare compliance program.

According to Dean Kathleen Boozang, Access to someone with Mr. Fishmans experience is a rare opportunity for those interested in public service careers, the practice of criminal law, or the compliance profession. He is already well known among students who have interned in the U.S. Attorneys Office as a fabulous mentor who impresses upon them their duty of practicing law with integrity and a commitment to fairness and justice. His energy and intellect are the ingredients for a very successful classroom presence.

Mr. Fishman was nominated by President Barack Obama as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey in June 2009 and was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate in October 2009. In addition to his service as U.S. Attorney, Mr. Fishman served as the Vice Chair and Chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC). The AGAC is a committee of U.S. Attorneys that advises the Attorney General of the United States on policy and management issues affecting the U.S. Attorneys Offices around the country.

Mr. Fishman started his career as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1983-1994, and held the positions of Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, Chief of the Criminal Division, and First Assistant U.S. Attorney during that period. He then served as a senior advisor to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the United States from 1994-1997. From 1998-2009, Mr. Fishman was a partner at Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman where he handled complex civil litigation and headed the firms white collar practice.

He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. from Princeton University.

About Seton Hall University School of Law

Founded in 1951 and located in Newark, Seton Hall University School of Law is New Jerseys only private law school and a leading Catholic law school in the New York metropolitan area. Seton Hall Law is dedicated to preparing students for the practice of law through excellence in scholarship and teaching, with a strong focus on clinical education. The Law School also offers a robust selection compliance programs for law, graduate students, as well as mid-career professionals in the health, life sciences, and financial services sectors.

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DALLAS, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rocky Mountain High Brands, Inc. (OTCQB:RMHB), a fully reporting consumer goods company specializing in hemp-infused food and beverage products and a naturally high alkaline water, offered an explanation of its recent move to increase the voting and conversion rights of its Series A Preferred Stock.



Michael Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rocky Mountain High Brands, Inc., said, With the recent acquisition by LSW Holdings, LLC of the Companys Series A Preferred Stock, we have reviewed our equity structure and are making changes to it to both protect the Company and to provide for its future growth. The Series A Preferred Stock is the Control Block for the Company. It has special rights associated with it and is not designed or intended to be converted to Common Stock. Changes to its voting rights and conversion rights were made to ensure that LSW Holdings maintains control of the Company in the event of corporate actions such as a merger/acquisition or hostile takeover.

Welch continued, Lily Li and other principals and representatives of LSW Holdings were in Dallas this week to meet our Rocky Mountain High team and discuss future plans for the Company. With the opportunities that LSW Holdings will bring into the Company, we need to protect the Company and its shareholders from a hostile takeover or any other uninvited action not in the best interest of the Company or its shareholders. The restructuring of the Series A Preferred Stock voting and conversion rights are a part of that plan.

About Rocky Mountain High Brands:

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH BRANDS, INC., is a consumer goods company specializing in brand development of health conscious, hemp-infused food and beverage products. The Company currently markets a lineup of four naturally flavored hemp-infused beverages (Citrus Energy, Black Tea, Mango Energy and Lemonade) and a low calorie Coconut Lime Energy drink. Rocky Mountain High Brands also offers hemp-infused 2oz. Mango Energy Shots and Mixed Berry Energy Shots. The Company recently launched a naturally high alkaline spring water, Eagle Spirit Spring Water.

For interested investors, our stock symbol is RMHB.

For ordering information please visit: LiveRockyMountainHigh.com

For corporate information please visit: RockyMountainHighBrands.com

For information on our high alkaline water visit: EagleSpiritWater.com

For Rocky Mountain High Distribution Contact:

Chuck Smith (972) 955-0964

chuck@rockymountainhighbrands.com

Visit us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rockymountainhighbrands?fref=nf

Visit us on Twitter:

#GetYourHempOn

Visit us at Investors Hangout: http://investorshangout.com/Rocky-Mountain-High-Brands-Inc-RMHB-69150/

Investors Hangout is the only authorized Investors blog page for Rocky Mountain High Brands, Inc.

Safe Harbor Act: This release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involves risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, the ability to meet customer demand, the ability to manage growth, acquisitions of technology, equipment, or human resources, the effect of economic business conditions and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel. The Company is not obligated to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
The purpose of this book is to initiate a wider scope of thinking for treating multiple sclerosis (MS). I feel compelled to tell My Story with the hope that the reader learns through my journey that we always have a choice.

A combination of memoir and guidebook, Doctor, Heal Thyself chronicles physician and author D.J. Ferners nearly ten-year journey with multiple sclerosis  of discovery, acceptance, and healing.

The National MS Society defines multiple sclerosis as an immune-mediated disease in which the bodys immune system mistakenly attacks myelin in the central nervous system.

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2008, Ferner has continually worked as a physician while overcoming deficits associated with the disease. He says, I am a physician, and I have, in many ways, healed myself. I feel compelled to tell this story of multiple sclerosis (MS), with the hope that sharing My Story might make a difference in someones life.

Doctor, Heal Thyself starts with the story of Dis-Ease and ending with a new understanding of life and the capacity to overcome. This book is a tool to share with those who are struggling with multiple sclerosis. It will be life-changing for some as they find ideas and assistance to navigate the turbulent waters of the disease.

While this is not the first book to challenge conventional thinking for treatment of MS, it is not intended to be a replacement for disease modifying therapy. Ferner commented, The purpose of this book is to open new doors and initiate a wider scope of thinking for treating Dis-Ease. In the end, we always have choice.

Others concur. Dr. Ben W. Thrower, Medical Director of Shepherd Centers Andrew C. Carlos Multiple Sclerosis Institute says, As a physician, D.J. Ferner is keenly aware that traditional Western medicine has much to offer in the long-term management of MS, but any person dealing with a chronic health challenge must find an appropriate place in their life for that challenge. Ferner points out that the treatment toolbox includes much more than just medications.

A full-time emergency physician, Ferners current medical practice is focused on adult medicine and trauma at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Georgia. He lives in a suburb of metro Atlanta with his wife Kelli and daughter Kendalyn.

Doctor, Heal Thyself: A Physicians Journey of Discovery, Acceptance, and Healing with Multiple Sclerosis (Amazon Digital Services LLC, $7.99, Kindle ebook, ASIN B06XGXYHHC) is available on http://www.Amazon.com.

For more information visit http://www.djferner.com.

# # #

CONTACT: D.J. (Dave) Ferner, djferner.book (@) gmail.com

Author is available for interviews.

About DJ Ferner, MD, FACEP: D.J. (Dave) Ferner earned a Bachelors Degree in Biology from Heidelberg University, then graduated from the Medical College of Ohio, now known as the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Science. His residency training in Emergency Medicine was at St. Vincents/Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. Boarded by the American College of Emergency Physicians, Ferner also holds Fellowship status with the college. A full-time emergency physician, Ferners current medical practice is focused on adult medicine and trauma at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Georgia. http://www.djferner.com

About Multiple Sclerosis (from NationalMSSociety.org): Multiple sclerosis (MS) involves an immune-mediated process in which an abnormal response of the bodys immune system is directed against the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Within the CNS, the immune system attacks myelin  the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates the nerve fibers  as well as the nerve fibers themselves. When any part of the myelin sheath or nerve fiber is damaged or destroyed, nerve impulses traveling to and from the brain and spinal cord are distorted or interrupted, producing a wide variety of symptoms.
Verizon Platinum Master Agent SOVA and BlackWire Consulting just announced they have formed strategic alliance BlackwireSOVA to provide BlackWire Consultings MSPs, VARS, IT consultants, and agents with the widest selection of Verizon services. SOVA will deliver expedited quoting and ordering, executive level escalations, field sales support, and platinum level commissionsall supported by a highly experienced 25-person back office staff.

SOVA President Gene Esopi said, We are very pleased, but not surprised, that a company with BlackWire Consultings fine reputation in the telecom industry would want to work exclusively with SOVA and Verizon.

BlackWire Consulting has been operating a robust telecom solutions business since 2010 and wanted to move the organization to the next level by focusing on a highly valuable niche.

BlackWire Consulting CFO Michael Bongart explained, We were conducting research on different partners inside of the Verizon organization. We talked to a number of different companies and were really impressed with Gene and Mary. It boiled down to credibility. They did everything they said they were going to do and literally went the extra mile. We loved that they wanted to drive in from out of state to meet us face to face. Thats the way we do business too. We like to know who we are dealing with.

That similar business philosophy includes the deliberate decision by both companies to focus on a single carrier. We decided we wanted to be experts on the biggest and best, Bongart said. We will live and die by that.

Esopi agreed. Years ago we chose to have a deeper and broader knowledge of a select number of carriers rather than be all things to all people. Verizon was a natural choice for us since they have the best reputation in the business community and public sector and also because we are both headquartered in the Northeast.

Bongart and BlackWire Consulting CEO Salvatore Orefiche chose SOVA primarily because of the companys outstanding back office support and secondarily because of its higher than average compensation level.

We also appreciated their expertise and the ability to work through all of Verizons service offerings with one point of contact, Orefiche said. They are exceedingly well connected inside of Verizon itself all the way up to the top. And they have staying power; theyve been in this fast-paced business 25 years. To me this proves that they can weather the storms and thrive.

SOVA works with MSPs, VARs, call centers and agent organizations of all sizes. Some partner with multiple telecom master agents and others work exclusively with SOVA. Bongart recommends the latter. In the business world it doesnt get any better than dealing exclusively with them, he said. They are large enough to professionally handle very large deals and small enough to provide amazingly personal service. For us, SOVA acts as a true partner.

BlackwireSOVA, a strategic partnership with a deep telecommunications foundation, includes two long-standing successful companies whose mission is to provide cost-effective Verizon telecom solutions. Offices are staffed with more than 25 highly skilled professionals with over 100 years of combined experience in the technology industry. BlackwireSOVA has offices in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Colorado. To contact BlackwireSOVA fill out the request form at http://blackwiresova.com/important_contacts or call 862-229-9067. To learn more about BlackwireSOVA visit http://www.blackwiresova.com
The Phoenix office of international law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP has six attorneys featured in the March 2017 issue of AzBusiness Magazine and its Top 100 Lawyers in Arizona list. No other Phoenix firm has more attorneys recognized. Featured in the publication are:



Brian H. Blaney, Shareholder (securities law)

Rebecca Lynne Burnham, Shareholder (real estate)

Pamela Overton Risoleo, Shareholder (complex commercial and class action)

Brian J. Schulman, Shareholder (complex commercial and securities)

Jeffrey H. Verbin, Shareholder (financial services)

E. Jeffrey Walsh, Shareholder (business litigation)

We are honored to be featured prominently in the Top 100 Lawyers in Arizona list, said Nicole M. Goodwin, Managing Shareholder of Greenberg Traurigs Phoenix office. We believe this recognition is a reflection of our commitment to the Arizona business community, and we are proud to be a part of it.

Top Lawyers is an annual list published by AzBusiness Magazine, the largest business magazine in Arizona. The selection process is overseen by the publications editors and nonpartisan partners. The publication and rankings can also be found online here.

About Greenberg Traurig's Phoenix Office

In Arizona, Greenberg Traurig counsels clients on a wide range of critical issues, such as dispute resolution, securities, labor and employment, real estate, public finance, bankruptcy, and intellectual property matters.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GTLaw) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. One firm worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the second largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2016, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.
Jason Bradley, director of national monitoring operations, advises that consumers shopping for a security system ask, Does the company own and operate its monitoring centers? and Are they UL-listed? The answers should always be yes, he advises.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a highly respected, global independent safety science company with more than a century of expertise, recently certified that Guardian Protection Services newest monitoring center, located in Tempe, Arizona, not only meets, but exceeds, its UL827 standards for central station alarm services. This is Guardians second UL certification, joining one that is held by the monitoring center Guardian owns and operates in Warrendale, Pennsylvania.

Not all monitoring centers qualify for UL listing. Those that do are required to meet rigorous UL specifications related to the construction quality of the building in which the monitoring center is located, interior and exterior building security measures, communication and signaling equipment, power and backup sources and redundant voice and data communication pathways, in addition to operator-on-duty staffing levels.

The UL listing supports Guardians vision to deliver a superior customer experience, said Mike Overby, vice-president of customer service. He stated, Many of our customers are sensitive to, or have experienced, a past traumatic event such as an intrusion, a fire or medical situation. We are keenly focused on delivering the most reliable and professional monitoring service in the industry and with ULs accreditation of our alarm monitoring centers customers can trust the reliability, accuracy and speed of alarm responses they will receive from our monitoring centers.

Jason Bradley, director of national monitoring operations, recommends that consumers who are in the market for a residential or commercial security system always ask two questions: Does the company own and operate its monitoring centers? and Are the monitoring centers UL listed? The answers should always be yes, according to Bradley, because this provides consumers an additional level of quality assurance.

While burglary, fire and medical security system signals are handled exclusively by the dedicated experts at the east and west coast 24-hour monitoring centers, Guardian also has customer service teams in both of the facilities to respond to other types of consumer needs, such as billing and technical questions. Our mission is to help protect and enhance peoples lives and what they value most, concluded Bradley. This is just one of the many ways we make it happen.

Company Information: Guardian Protection Services is one of Armstrong Group of Companies and provides its monitoring services to more than a quarter-million residential and commercial clients throughout the U.S. Along with security monitoring, Guardian provides home automation and business security services. The company has been in operation since 1950. For more information, visit About Guardian Protection Services
SOLIDWORKS Customer Satisfaction Award More is Possible is not just our tagline, it is the way we run our business. This attitude inspires both our customers and the DesignPoint team members.

DesignPoint, experts in 3D software and 3D printers for engineering and manufacturing companies in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, received the coveted SOLIDWORKS #1 in Customer Satisfaction Award. The award is presented to the Dassault Systemes SOLIDWORKS Reseller with the highest customer satisfaction score in all of North America. The score is determined by a survey sent to all SOLIDWORKS customers asking for candid feedback regarding their reseller. DesignPoint was pleased to accept this prestigious award at the annual, worldwide gathering of SOLIDWORKS users, SOLIDWORKS World 2017 event held February 5-8 in Los Angeles.

More is Possible is not just our tagline, it is the way we run our business  this attitude inspires both our customers and the DesignPoint team members to think beyond the obvious and explore alternatives to reach the best solutions, said John Cioffi, CEO of DesignPoint. We are fanatical about delivering superior customer service and serving as a trusted partner to our customers. This award reflects our companys passion and our Application Engineering team, through daily engagement with our customers, is the driving force.

Application Engineering Manager, Roy Mutalik, explains the focus on customer service comes from the top down. John and Fran, our founders, give me the flexibility to build a strong team that is focused on facilitating our customers success. We developed a comprehensive set of measures that ensures we are meeting and exceeding our customers expectations. Mutalik concluded, Receiving this award for North America is a tremendous honor. I want to acknowledge my team and the entire DesignPoint family for a job well done.

DesignPoints customers are unwavering in their support of the company. Below is a snapshot of customer comments.

The team at DesignPoint is dedicated to making sure Garvey Corporation is getting the most out of its investment in SOLIDWORKS. We have worked together to create a long-term plan that includes software, analysis, consulting and training. Our partnership with DesignPoint is a key element in helping us keep up with demand and build a solid foundation for continued growth.

Thomas G. Garvey, Garvey Corp.

"The DesignPoint Team is my #1 dial for all of my engineering and 3D printing needs!"

--Dr. Drury, Owner at Clinical Kinetics

We are a new DesignPoint and SOLIDWORKS customer. We were using Autodesks Inventor and PTCs Creo, but we decided to explore consolidation onto a single platform. It turns out SOLIDWORKS is much more than a CAD system. It has an accurate costing module that revolutionizes our bidding process. Moreover, DesignPoint is more than just a reseller to us; their expertise has helped to make our transition to SOLIDWORKS seamless.

-- Andy Mulkerin  APX York Sheet Metal / APX Enclosures / APX Industrial Coatings

ABOUT DesignPoint

DesignPoint is passionate about building solutions that help product design, engineering and manufacturing companies maximize their potential. We believe in developing trusted partnerships with our customers by helping them achieve game-changing results. Our mission is to support our customers' journey as they strive for more. With DesignPoint, More Is Possible."

We offer SOLIDWORKS 3D design products, 3D Systems and MarkForged 3D printers, support, design & consulting services, and training needed to streamline product development.

DesignPoint offices are located in Lancaster, Pa.; Philadelphia, Pa.; and Clark, N.J. For more information, please visit http://www.design-point.com.

DesignPoint knows More Is Possible.

DesignPoint and More Is Possible are trademarks of DesignPoint. All other brand or product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
UCMnow App "The growth of UCM has been amazing and we are expecting even more accelerated growth in the near future," says Keith Algozzine, CEO of United Concierge Medicine.

Upstate Concierge Medicine, the premier provider of virtual concierge medical care, is rebranding to United Concierge Medicine and is introducing the new and improved UCMnow platform and mobile app. In just 3 short years, United Concierge Medicine has gone from providing access to a few thousand patients in Upstate NY, to over 100,000 patients across the country who now have access to their virtual concierge services.

"The growth of UCM has been amazing and we are expecting even more accelerated growth in the near future," says Keith Algozzine, CEO of United Concierge Medicine. "While our roots and central operations are in upstate New York, we needed a name and brand that better reflected who we are today and where we are going in the future."

While most of UCM's initial growth has come from within New York State, they are now seeing rapid growth from other areas across the country. Many organizations now want to offer virtual concierge care to improve quality, increase access, and reduce healthcare costs. Some examples include employers, brokers, technology corporations, health information systems, colleges, wellness companies, travel assistance programs, health systems, union benefit funds and many more. As part of the new UCM services and expansion, in addition to their most popular offering of an employee concierge clinic, they now offer Workers Compensation, college health, mental health, virtual urgent care and nursing/residential home solutions.

"It's really quite simple," says Dr. Michael Bibighaus, Chief Medical Officer for UCM. "When you combine convenience and affordability with high quality, compassionate, and personal medical care that patients trust, everyone wins."

The timing of the brand change also comes as UCM launches its new and improved virtual care platform called UCMnow.

"Whether it's private labeling our platform and app so other healthcare organizations can leverage our technology and telemedicine expertise, or providing our patients with the latest technology, the UCMnow platform is designed to help deliver the most convenient and secure healthcare," Algozzine says.

About United Concierge Medicine

United Concierge Medicine is the premier provider of virtual concierge medical care. We connect providers to patients 24/7 using every day technology such as phone, text, video and secure messaging. We can diagnose, prescribe medications, order lab/x-rays and even refer to local PCPs and specialist. By providing ease of access and quality care, we cut costs by removing barriers, improving health and reducing unnecessary urgent care and emergency room visits. Our business to business solutions allow employers, colleges, healthcare organizations and insurers to leverage our providers, technology and expertise to provide virtual healthcare services under their brand.



UCM is only one of a few organizations in the entire country that is accredited by the American Telemedicine Association for our quality, transparency and security. We provide a group of dedicated providers that become experts in delivering our clients telemedicine solution and use the latest technology to optimize efficiency.

At UCM it is our core mission to treat patients and partners like we treat our friends and family. We not only provide diagnosis and treatment of many common disorders, but in conjunction with strategic partners we can even treat more complex conditions helping to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations. If we believe the condition is beyond our scope, we can refer to PCPs or specialists. We can also answer simple to complex medical questions and are committed to follow up with patients after our initial consultation.
CHICAGO, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yesterday, the White House released their FY 2018 Budget outline, America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, which proposes cutting $403 million from federal health professional and nursing workforce programs and $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Institute for Nursing Research (NINR).



In response, National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) CEO David Benton, RGN, PhD, FFNF, FRCN, FAAN, made the following statement:

NCSBN opposes the cuts to nursing workforce programs as proposed in the White Houses budget blueprint. The way that health care is delivered is rapidly changing and we must strive to understand what impact that has on the nursing workforce and the competencies nurses require. We must provide education to the professionals that deliver care in this ever evolving environment. By not funding the tools that help us comprehend how health care is changing, we will be unable to equip nurses with the necessary skills to care for patients, effectively putting those patients unnecessarily at risk."

He continued: "Through its own research and the research of NIH and NINR, NCSBN seeks to promote evidence-based regulatory excellence for patient safety and public protection. Cutting funding for health research at the NIH and NINR is not only counter to NCSBNs mission, it is also antithetical to the very premise of providing evidence of efficacy that the White House is seeking to deliver through their budget blueprint. In this financially challenged environment, ensuring that nursing research supports these efforts is critically important to improving safety for patients, facilitating access and achieving optimal efficiency and effectiveness.

Founded March 15, 1978, as an independent not-for-profit organization, NCSBN was created to lessen the burdens of state governments and bring together boards of nursing (BONs) to act and counsel together on matters of common interest. NCSBNs membership is comprised of the BONs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories  American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands. There are also 27 associate members that are either nursing regulatory bodies or empowered regulatory authorities from other countries or territories.

NCSBN Member Boards protect the public by ensuring that safe and competent nursing care is provided by licensed nurses. These BONs regulate more than 4.5 million licensed nurses.

Mission: NCSBN provides education, service and research through collaborative leadership to promote evidence-based regulatory excellence for patient safety and public protection.

The statements and opinions expressed are those of NCSBN and not the individual member state or territorial boards of nursing.
English Swedish

SEB issues Additional Tier 1 Capital (AT1) to refinance an old similar instrument that reaches its call date later this year and to optimize its capital structure. The USD 600 million issuance has a coupon of 5.625 per cent and an issue price of 100 per cent.

The loan has no final maturity but entail a possibility for the bank to redeem the loan after 5 years, and any time thereafter. The issuance is in the form of a debt instrument with automatically conversion into Class A-shares if the CET1 ratio of the bank decreases to a certain level.

The issuance of the new AT1 is part of SEB's capital planning and in line with what the bank has previously communicated. The transaction has, at an attractive coupon level, demonstrated the strength of SEB in the international capital markets with an aggregate demand from investors of approximately USD 3bn.

The issuance will be subscribed by and allotted to the joint lead managers. Settlement date is 23 March 2017. The instruments will be listed on the Global Exchange Market regulated by the Irish Stock Exchange.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paul Mueller Company (OTC:MUEL), based in Springfield, Missouri, USA is announcing plans to build a new facility in Groenlo, a town in the east-central portion of The Netherlands. The new facility will be located 10 kilometers (approx. 6 miles) from one of Paul Mueller Companys current Dutch manufacturing facilities in Lichtenvoorde.



Groenlo was chosen because of its close proximity to the current Lichtenvoorde location, easing the transition for the majority of the production employees said Paul Mueller Company CEO David Moore. Working together in one location, our co-workers can better develop common goals and address customer needs.

The new facility will consolidate four locations the Company currently operates in The Netherlands, including the Lichtenvoorde location. The 20 million ($21 million) project is expected to have a positive return based on reducing the costs of operating four separate facilities, the rent paid on three of the facilities, and the sale of the primary manufacturing location in Lichtenvoorde.

According to Wytze Tjepkema, General Manager of Paul Mueller Company subsidiary Mueller BV in The Netherlands, this project will combine the companies acquired in 2008 into one location creating a stronger culture and improving collaboration and efficiencies.

Pending final approval of construction plans and loan documents, construction should start in the summer of 2017 with a completion date projected to be in the summer of 2018.

Paul Mueller Company is headquartered in Springfield, MO with manufacturing and sales operations in Iowa, The Netherlands, and Vietnam. Paul Mueller Company employees build innovative processing equipment for dairy farms and a wide variety of other applications in food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and chemical facilities worldwide.

http://www.paulmueller.com.
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With the arrival this week of President Donald Trumps first budget plan, a number of members in the arts community have become deeply concerned about the proposal to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The elimination of the NEA could have a severe trickle-down effect in the small press world, as many indie publishers depend on funding from the organization to stay afloat.

The NEA, which had a budget of nearly $148 million last year, supports arts participation in American communities. It also supports numerous small publishers throughout the country.

One group particularly worried about Trump's budget proposal is the Berkeley, Calif.-based Small Press Distribution (SPD), which serves more than 400 small publishers. The nonprofit literary distributor was founded in 1969 by bookseller Peter Howard and bookseller/editor/publisher Jack Shoemaker.

SPD has received $1,198,000 in grant funds from the National Endowment for the Arts since 1998funds that support all the publishers served by the distributor. The group's executive director, Jeffrey Lependorf, said the NEA cuts would have a dramatic ripple effect on independent publishing.

Last year, the money SPD received from the NEA accounted for 4% of the nonprofit's $1 million budget. While 4% may sound like a small percentage of [our] overall budget, those monies more or less flow through to our hundreds of publishers, Lependorf explained.

In Lependorf's eyes, if the NEA money stopped flowing to SPD, it would put many small presses out of business. A 4% cut to the income of our presses could easily make the difference between just covering costs and just failing to cover their costs. It's the difference between existing or not existing." Lependorf recalled that in the 1970s and '80s, the NEA provided about half of SPD's operating budget, noting that "without that support then we surely would not exist today."

During the 2014-2015 sales year, SPD sold nearly 165,000 books, and its sales exceeded $1.75 million. More than 60% percent of those titles were poetry booksa category with historically small print runs and sales spread out over many years. These razor-thin margins give small publishers little wiggle room when it comes to the bottom line. As Lependorf put it, those working at many small presses in the U.S. essentially "donate their labor" and hope to cover costs "without dipping too far into their own finances.

Despite the shock Trump's proposed budget has sent through the arts community, the attempt to cut off funding from the NEA is not new. The arts organization, which was founded in 1965, has been a popular target for conservative leaders since the 1980s. During his first days in office, President Ronald Reagan threatened to cut NEA funding in half. In the end, the federal budget shaved $16 million off the organizations $159 million budget that year. Reagans transition had considered, though, dropping the NEA altogether.

The NEAs future remained in jeopardy throughout the 1990s. Controversy over NEA-funded projects early in the decade inspired Republican Congressional leaders to suggest eliminating the organization. In 1997, the House voted to shutter the NEA, but the Senate restored funding for it. By 1998, NEA funding had dropped to its lowest levels in 20 years.

Although Lependorf is deeply concerned about the NEA's fate, he stressed that small publishing will survive this coming storm. His more immediate concern is that, if the NEA cuts happen, it will affect the kind of stories small presses publish, forcing them to reconsider taking chances on marginalized and risky material.

Without crucial NEA support, we could still find a way to operate, Lependorf said. "But we would be forced to take on fewer new presses without a proven track record of sales. We would be forced to make more of our decisions based on marketplace potential alone, and this would be critically damaging to literature in the long term.
Sales at Regnery Publishing were up modestly in 2016 over 2015 and profits rose as well, company president Marji Ross said. Regnery is the largest part of Salem Media Groups publishing division, which had a 7% increase in revenue, to $25.5 million, last year over 2015. According to Ross, sales in 2016 picked up after the Republican convention. Before that, Ross said, Regnerys customers seemed conflicted about the nomination process, but became galvanized to beat Hillary. That helped lift our books. Indeed, Hillarys America by Dinesh DSouza sold very well in the second half of 2016, as did the trade paperback edition of Ann Coulters Adios America and the hardcover of her In Trump We Trust.

Since its acquisition in early 2014 by Salem, a $274 million media company that owns a major Christian and conservative radio network and websites, Regnery has worked with other parts of Salem not only to promote its books but also to look for authors, Ross said. The clearest result of Salems influence on Regnery has been the growth in the Regnery Faith imprint, the yearly output of which has grown from three titles in 2014 to nine planned titles this year. In fact, Regnery Faith will publish what Ross believes could be one of the companys biggest books of the year: the publisher has just shipped 80,000 copies of The True Jesus by David Limbaugh, which will go on sale April 10.

In addition to higher sales of religion books, American history has been a steady growth segment for Regnery. Ross said she has gradually increased Regnerys history line because the books have proven to be good backlist sellers. Ross is high on two titles this year that feature two still-living World War II pilots. Jerry Yellin, a captain who flew one of the last missions over Japan, is the subject of The Last Fighter Pilot. Coffin Corner Boys is about George Starks, who was shot down over enemy territory in Europe but managed to make it to Switzerland. Ross said it wasnt until both books had been signed that Regnery realized the men now lived close to one another in the Orlando area. The publisher arranged for the two to meet, and Regnery did interviews and compiled footage of the veterans. Both are expected to do some promotions for the books.

Another relatively new area for Regnery is fiction. It released Libertys Last Stand by Stephen Coonts last year, and the novel did well enough that Regnery has signed Coonts for two more books, one of which, The Armageddon File, is coming later this year. Regnery has also picked up veteran author Tom Grace. It will publish his next book, Undeniable, this year, and has also acquired his backlist.

Its new ventures notwithstanding, politics remains at Regnerys core. Another DSouza title, The Big Lie, is coming in July, and Regnery has signed Ed Klein to do a fifth book with the house. Villians will published in October. A new book that Ross believes will generate its share of controversy will be released in April: Drain the Swamp by Ken Buck, a Republican who was elected to Congress in 2014 and who is critical of both Democrats and Republicans whom he considers more interested in being career politicians than in serving the public. Ross said Buck names names in the book.

As a publisher of conservative books, Regnery faced the prospect of its readership losing some interest in its titles now that Republicans are back in power. But Ross said Regnerys base remains very engaged and is interested in not only reversing some of the policies of the Obama administration but keeping an eye on the Trump presidency as well.

In August, Salem acquired the self-publishing company Hillcrest Media. In its 10-K filing made with the SEC last week, Salem said it paid $3.5 million for Hillcrest and assumed $1 million in revenue liabilities. Hillcrest added $1.1 million in revenue to the Salem publishing division following its purchase, which offset a $400,000 decline in book sales from its Xulon Press self-publishing unit. Self-publishing fees at Xulon rose by $300,000 in 2016. (Total self-publishing fees of Hillcrest and Xulon in 2016 were $6.1 million). Salem said it is in the process of integrating Hillcrest with Xulon to create the Salem Author Services group.
Holly Tucker. Norton, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-393-23978-2

Tucker (Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Science Revolution) vividly brings to life a slice of Parisian history in this rigorously researched true-crime epic, set during the reign of Louis XIV. The book opens in 1665 with the murder of the citys criminal lieutenant, the public official with jurisdiction over most crimes committed in the city, who was stabbed to death by some inept burglars, followed by the poisoning of one of his colleagues, who resolved civil disputes, a year later. The embarrassment about these deaths led to the appointment of the first police chief of Paris, Nicolas de La Reynie, who began with reforms to literally clean up the filthy streets of the city and to deter nighttime crime with a massive campaign to install thousands of lanterns on most Paris streets. Eventually, he investigated the Affair of the Poisons, a series of crimes involving members of Frances high nobility and reaching into the palace. The investigation led to the creation of a secret tribunal that imprisoned hundreds and executed more than 30 people. Although many documents were burned by the king himself after La Reynies death, Tucker draws on other contemporary records to meticulously reconstruct this fascinating chapter in the annals of true crime. The result reads like a combination of the most compelling mystery fiction and Dumass romances of twisted court intrigues.
With three offices in China and one in Lebanon, Anhui Childrens Publishing House adds about 800 new titles annually to its 15,000-title catalogue. Known for introducing licensed characters including Peppa Pig, Angry Birds, and Transformers to Chinese children, the publisher is known for producing original works in childrens literature, popular science, and animation and comics, as well as preschool titles. In fact, 70% of ACPH publications are originals, and more than 1,000 titles have been sold to different countries, including Belgium, France, Poland, and the U.S.

ACPH excelsand differentiates itself from industry counterpartsin comics. The companys 20-volume TV tie-in Homer & Landau: Legend of Seven Knights has sold 16 million copies since its 2006 launch, and the Big-Head Son and Little-Head Father series has exceeded 24 million copies sold since 2014. Another specialty is creating novelty titles for babies; ACPHs classic fairy tales series on EVA foam and plastic bath books has been sold to Lebanon, Syria, and the U.A.E.

The effort to cultivate new and younger writersnot just for the local market, but for the worldneeds to be intensified, says Zhang Kewen, president of ACPH, whose recent bestselling series include Peppa Pig (15 million copies sold), Mos Mischief: Comics Edition (7.3 million), and Yang Hongyings Fairy Tales (1.5 million). The current crop of authors and illustrators is insufficient to support the needs of our domestic market of 370 million children, and we need more to balance out the imports, Zhang says. For ACPH, it has become our mission to uncover new talents, develop their works, and popularize them.

To ensure that new and existing talents have the support they need, Zhang has built an online ecosystem that includes writers groups, fan clubs, and reading promotion centers as well as an online store.

Last November 11, Singles Day in China (the equivalent of Black Friday), ACPH sold 30 million copies of books through its online store, making it the #1 seller among similar stores operated by other childrens publishing houses. Developing, promoting, and protecting authors and their works is the promise of Anhui Childrens Publishing House, and that has remained unchanged in the past 33 years, adds Zhang.
Childrens Fun Publishing is a joint venture between Egmont Group and Posts & Telecommunications Press, so the wealth of foreign works in its 6,000-title catalogue is not surprising. But what is most unique is the companys specialization in edutainment materials in four categoriescomics, picture books, games/activity kits, and childrens literature.

Fun is literally our middle name, and we have been delivering that to children of all ages since we started 23 years ago, says Ao Ran, general manager of Childrens Fun Publishing. In 1993, the launch of the Chinese edition of Mickey Mouse magazine kick-started the companys publishing program. There was no such childrens magazine in China then, and ours became a bridge linking Chinese kids with their Western counterparts, providing them with the best classical stories and characters to love and learn from, Ao says.

Since then, products based on licensed charactersincluding Caillou, Miffy, Mr. Men and Little Miss, My Little Pony, Thomas & Friends, Tiger Team, and Winnie the Poohhave cemented CFPs reputation and foothold in the Chinese childrens book market.

In all, Ao and his team have collaborated with more than 30 international companies and brands including BBC, Disney, Hasbro, Mattel, Rovio, and Sanrio. The diverse range of companies and products that we work with represents our goal of rummelig, a Danish word that roughly translates to open, adds Ao, pointing out that the companys publications are intended to inspire Chinese children to adopt a much more open and inclusive attitude toward the world around them.

Among the CFP partnerships, the longest and most extensive is with Disney, which gives the team in-depth understanding on the product, marketing and localization needs. In total, CFP has sold more than CNY 1 billion ($145 million) worth of Disney titles in China. A special 2007 edition, 80 Winnie the Pooh Stories for Personal Development, is the companys #3 bestselling title, at 530,000 sets. Last June, to commemorate the opening of the Shanghai Disney Resort, Ao and his team released a limited edition boxed set of 17 Disney titles; 9,800 sets sold within a day.

The importance of translated titles aside, 30% of CFPs catalogue are original works, including the bestselling comic series The Legend of Nezha and Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, both of which have firmly established the companys brand and reputation in the minds of Chinese parents, teachers, and children. Sales of Pleasant Goat have exceeded 20 million copies. In the childrens literature segment, there are two big titles: Shen Shixis Wolf Queen, which has chalked up sales of 620,000 copies since 2013, and The Schakal Wolf, which has been translated into eight languages including English, German, Polish, and Russian.

More large-scale original works are being added to CFPs catalogue. Last May, the team launched the countrys first graded Chinese-language reading series for ages 4 to 8; all 29 titles are based on Disney stories. China is almost a virgin territory when it comes to such graded readers, Ao says. We have to learn about the required vocabulary, pedagogy, and context; do our homework using popular English-graded readers as models; understand exactly what children need; and work with experts and scholars to come up with the full program. This process actually reveals the gapsand opportunitieswithin the childrens publishing market that need to be addressed. CFP recently introduced Japanese picture-book series The Bears School in an effort to make reading (and schooling) more fun, less stressful, and appealing to children.

Ao adds his company remains focused on being a link between the East and the West, publishing high-quality, age-appropriate, fun materials to help children with their development and reading progress. He adds, Our focus is on grabbing their interest with the right content, and by doing so, to get them to start reading and cultivate good reading habits that will endure throughout their lives.

To further understand what parents, teachers, studentsand even grandparentsneed in terms of content, Ao finds social media to be a great resource. Topic- and interest-specific social communitiesand there are a lot out thereare great conduits not just for direct selling but also in providing information and tips to help us tweak our publishing program, he says. Their exchanges, often reflecting societal concerns and market shifts, are very important to the growth and relevance of any publisher in this modern and competitive marketplace.
This 27-year-old publisher (a veritable young man in the industry, says editor-in-chief Bai Bing) is less concerned with generating more new titles than publishing quality content for children. And of the books that Bai has chosen to translate over the years, many have landed on the bestseller list, including Goosebumps (with sales of 10.8 million copies and counting), My First Discovery (7.6 million), I Spy (6.2 million), Mission Survival (5.3 million), and Twilight (4.3 million).

Bear Gryllss Mission Survival series, which started in 2014, was lauded nationwide for addressing safety education, a subject that was conspicuously missing from the curriculum. Attuned to societal and educational needs, Jieli capitalized on the series success by collaborating with a local safety education specialist to provide talks to more than 30,000 students and teachers in over 10 provinces across China. A dedicated portal and social media account further provide short stories and assessments on the topic. Not surprisingly, 75 new titles from Grylls are already in the works.

Innovation and out-of-the-box thinking drive our publishing program, adds Bai, whose team strives to make translations even betterin design and presentationthan the originals. For Gallimards My First Discovery series, Jieli eschewed saddle-stitching and traditional covers, opting for thread stitching and rounded corners to make the titles user-friendly and safer for young kids. The company also published a preschool activities guidebook with perspectives from eminent educational specialists to help kindergarten teachers and parents to better use the series (and similar titles) in educating children. We work on turning each series into a brand of its own, and extending that brandtogether with its sales potential and longevityto include newly created products which the original authors may not think of, Bai says.

Sales-wise, the above bestsellers pale in comparison with Jielis #1 original, Yang Hongyings Mos Mischief series, which has sold more than 30 million copies. Mos Mischief entered the market in 2003, at a time when the Chinese book world was enthralled by Harry Potter, Bai says. It was a turning point for the hitherto lackadaisical childrens book segment, marking the start of what many refer to as the golden age of childrens books in China.  Bai, author of many titles including the picture book Bird in the Cloud, is highly aware of the need for strong and cohesive author-publisher relationships. This is clearly seen from his decision to dedicate editorial and marketing staff to each Jieli author and title to ensure successful branding and market penetration.

This is about promoting content creators, and expanding their influencebeyond their publicationsto captivate the reading public. It seeks to achieve top-of-the-mind awareness when parents, teachers, or children are selecting or picking up a book, explains Bai. Even though there are a lot of new Chinese authors out there, few have considerable market recognition or influence. So in most cases, we release new titles or editions by established authors while evaluating and figuring out how to effectively position new authors and their works vis-a-vis market competition and demand.

In 2016, backlist from a catalogue of 1,200 titles accounted for nearly 70% of Jielis total sales. Six series sold upwards of CNY 100 million ($16 million). Overall, Jielis total sales grew by approximately 14% last year, hitting CNY 492 million, nearly 45% of which came from online channels.

The continuing search for new works and authors has seen Jieli recently launch the Cao Wenxuan Childrens Novel Award and the Jinbo Childrens Literature Award, respectively honoring two renowned names in Chinese publishing; both events will be held every two years. These will energize the industry with new creative works to suit changing times, and to provide children with an even-wider reading selection, Bai says.

In terms of marketing strategy, Bai made news in 2015 when he collaborated with Egypt-based partners to open a Jieli branch in Cairo and distribute to 22 Middle East countries. Since then, about 20 Arabic titles have been released. In January, Jieli launched an imprint to translate and publish selected titles from London-based Usborne for the Chinese market. Says Bai, We are unwavering in our goals of producing quality titles, forming new partnerships, and making use of new media and distribution channels to go direct to the market.
LISLE, Ill., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eckrich, the makers of naturally hardwood smoked sausage and savory deli meats, partnered with WinCo Foods and Operation Homefront to honor a Boise military family on Friday. Eckrich surprised the Danes family at WinCo Foods in Nampa, Idaho to honor and thank the family for their service.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0dfad399-0344-435e-af07-fb26f7bdbe8e

When the family arrived at the store, they were surprised with a shopping spree. Upon checking out at the register, the Danes family received another surprise: free groceries for a year at WinCo Foods, courtesy of Eckrich. The gift is valued at more than $10,000.



Joseph Danes, a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, has served honorably for 15 years. He is currently serving in the Marine Corps Reserves. Danes has completed multiple tours overseas and earned three bachelors degrees. He and his wife, Ashley, have been married for 13 years and have four children. She is a member of Operation Homefront's Hearts of Valor program, a network of more than 3,000 caregivers of wounded service members which provide annual retreats, support groups, and online communities.

"We are immensely grateful," said Ashley Danes. "This gift of free groceries is going to be a huge relief for our family. We cannot say thank you enough to Eckrich and WinCo for this amazing surprise."

The surprise is part of the ongoing campaign by Eckrich to honor, thank, and support military families through its partnership with Operation Homefront. Eckrich, in its sixth year of partnership with Operation Homefront, has donated more than $2.5 million to the organization since 2012. Operation Homefront is a national nonprofit whose mission is to build strong, stable, and secure military families so they thrive -- not simply get by -- in the communities they have worked so hard to protect.

Eckrich is honored to give back to such a deserving military family, said Jennifer Zmrhal, Smithfield Foods senior director of marketing. We appreciate the partnership from WinCo Foods, and are so proud to support the dedicated service members who keep our country safe.

For more information about Eckrich, please visit www.eckrich.com or follow Eckrich on Facebook and Twitter.

Eckrich is a brand of Smithfield Foods.

About Eckrich

Founded by Peter Eckrich in 1894, Eckrich has a rich heritage starting from a small meat market in Fort Wayne, Ind. Through it all, Eckrich meats have been recognized for their great taste and supreme quality, craftsmanship, care and pride. For more information, visit www.eckrich.com.

About Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $14 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, John Morrell, Cook's, Kretschmar, Gwaltney, Curly's, Margherita, Carando, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Morliny, and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.

About Operation Homefront

Founded in 2002, Operation Homefront is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to build strong, stable, and secure military families so that they can thrive  not simply struggle to get by  in the communities they have worked so hard to protect. Recognized for superior performance by leading independent charity oversight groups, 92 percent of Operation Homefront expenditures go directly to programs that support tens of thousands of military families each year. Operation Homefront provides critical financial assistance, transitional and permanent housing and family support services to prevent short-term needs from turning into chronic, long-term struggles. Thanks to the generosity of our donors and the support from thousands of volunteers, Operation Homefront proudly serves Americas military families. For more information, go to www.OperationHomefront.org.
Before she moved to Austin in late 2015, Whitney Rose had never been to Texas or danced the two-step. Now, the 30-year-old native of Prince Edward Island, Canada, is a Lone Star to the bone.

"I absolutely love Austin," Ms. Rose -- who will perform in the Village of East Davenport on Tuesday -- said in a recent interview, citing its friendliness. "It's one of the biggest things I fell in love with -- it's very much a music scene, but it's not remotely competitive. All musicians want to do there is lift each other up and help each other any way they can. I know that's rare."

With Americana music, the U.S. has "hundreds of radio stations playing this kind of music. Up in Canada, there are like four," she said.

Ever since I moved here Ive been going out and watching live music, and falling in love with musicians around town, Ms. Rose said. The music scene here is unlike anything Ive ever experienced before. So I have been writing nonstop."

She recorded her new six-song EP "South Texas Suite" over two days at Dale Watsons Ameripolitan Studios in North Austin, accompanied by Grammy winner Redd Volkaert, Merle Haggards former guitarist; Earl Poole Ball, who spent two decades on keyboards for Johnny Cash; Kevin Smith, now playing bass in Willie Nelsons Family Band; and Tom Lewis, who has drummed with the Mavericks, among others.

A review at allmusic.com says a "large part of the charm -- and the success -- of 'South Texas Suite' is how it was written by an outsider who has a keen eye and ear for the quirks of Texas. Rose sees Texas clearly but, better still, she's still on her honeymoon with the state, so 'South Texas Suite' is infused with genuine passion: it's a love letter to the Lone Star State."

The sweet, old-fashioned suite also resulted from unexpected circumstance. In October 2015, shortly after the release of her debut album "Heartbreaker of the Year," Ms. Rose packed up her boot collection and headed south to play a two-month residency at Austins famed Continental Club.

But that went so well, she wound up staying. Since then, shes toured with Sam Outlaw, made her European debut and signed with Six Shooter Records. Not knowing anyone in Texas at first, her "Heartbreaker" producer, Raul Malo, "hooked me up with awesome musicians," Ms. Rose said. "I knew I'd be in good hands,."

Her sensuous waltz of the opening song, Three Minute Love Affair, captures both the Tex-Mex flavor and the south Texas tradition of the two-step. Ms. Rose said she wrote it as she soon as she moved.

I love the dance culture in Texas; Im completely enamored, she said. Thats absolutely what inspired Three Minute Love Affair  as a song starts, the world kind of stops and youre like lovers for three minutes, and then its over and youre strangers again. But theres this beautiful little moment in time.

"It's very much an outsider's perspective," she said of the song. "It's just witnessing two strangers become one for three minutes, is a really special thing. With everything going on in today's world, the fact that it exists every night in Texas, strangers come together, young and old alike, everyone in Texas knows how to two-step.

"It's so friendly, no strings attached, and so romantic. The world needs more of it," Ms. Rose said. She also paid tribute, in honky-tonk, to the Texas clothing essential, My Boots."

One she didn't write, but embodies her musical and life philosophy, is "Analog," by her friend Brennen Leigh, singing the praises of lazy rivers and that needle skipping on my old hi-fi."

"She is very much a staple on the Austin music scene. Not only is she an incredible writer, she's an awesome human being," Ms. Rose said. Of old vinyl, which she grew up on, she said: "It's a better way to listen to music, you hear more; it feels more real. I'm a little hypocritical, since I rely on Spotify, mobile devices."

Born to a very young mom, Ms. Rose loved listening to her grandparents' country-music collection. "I liked that so much better than everything else I heard," she said. "My personal preference is older music. I think lyrically and sonically, it's better."

"The most diplomatic way to say it, what is on quote unquote country radio right now, it's incredibly formulaic. I don't subscribe to it," Ms. Rose said. "There are some songs I hear, that's a cool tune. But when you have 12 songwriters on a song, I don't get it."

She played a Daytrotter session last August, and recorded her next full-length album in Nashville in January, to be released this September. Of its 11 tracks, she wrote nine herself. Ms. Rose gets stories from meeting other people, including a man who helped set up her bank account.

"He told me this incredible story -- on my contract I have lyrics written down," she said. "His grandfather was a trucker, and at his funeral, there were two different families. He had a wife on the West coast and the East coast." That song, "Trucker's Funeral," is on her new record.

"What was really cool about that, you wouldn't be able to do that now," Ms. Rose said. "With Facebook, Twitter, everyone knows everything about people's lives."
JERICHO, N.Y., March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nathans Famous will host the Texas qualifier for the annual Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest at 1 P.M. on Saturday, March 18, 2017. The event, presented in partnership with H-E-B supermarkets, will take place at Alamodome North Plaza in San Antonio as part of the H-E-B Big League Weekend Fan Fest.



The top male and female finishers in the event will qualify for a seat at the Nathans Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, Brooklyn, on July 4th, 2017, where they will face reigning champions Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo.

The journey to July 4th and the high point of summer has begun, said Scott Harvey, executive vice president of Nathans Famous. Nathans is honored to be traveling the nation in search of new eating talent to participate in our annual July 4th tradition.

Competing in Coney Island on July 4th is item number one on most peoples bucket list, said Major League Eating Chairman George Shea. Texas is known for great eaters and we are confident that we will find a local athlete in San Antonio who can represent the great state of Texas on our nations birthday.

Joey Chestnut of San Jose, CA, currently holds the title of hot dog-eating world champion after defeating Matt Stonie with a July 4th world-record 70-hot-dog performance in 2016. Chestnuts all-time best is a world record 73 Nathans Famous hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. Miki Sudo of Las Vegas, NV, will defend her title as female champion, having consumed 38 1/2 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes in 2016.

In recent years, an estimated 35,000 fans have traveled to the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues in Coney Island to watch the Nathans Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest in person. The live telecast of the event has consistently attracted millions of viewers since ESPN first aired the contest in 2004.

According to legend, the Nathans Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest has occurred each July 4th in Coney Island, N.Y., since 1916, the year Nathan Handwerker opened the legendary restaurant. MLE, the governing body of all stomach-centric sports, sanctions the Nathans Famous Hot Dog-Eating Circuit and ensures the contests are judged professionally and that safety standards are in place at each event.

Those interested in competing in the Texas qualifier should visit www.majorleagueeating.com to obtain information and register. All competitors must be over 18 years of age.

Smithfield Foods is the licensee of Nathans Famous.

About Nathan's Famous, Inc.

Nathans is a Russell 2000 Company that currently distributes its products in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Cayman Islands and ten foreign countries through its restaurant system, foodservice sales programs and product licensing activities. Last year, over 500 million Nathans Famous hot dogs were sold. Nathans was ranked #22 on the Forbes 2014 list of the Best Small Companies in America and was listed as the Best Small Company in New York State in October 2013. For additional information about Nathans please visit our website at www.nathansfamous.com. The contents of our website have not been incorporated into and do not form a part of this press release.

About Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $14 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, John Morrell, Cook's, Kretschmar, Gwaltney, Curly's, Margherita, Carando, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Morliny and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.
A local group formed late last year to promote a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for immigrants and other vulnerable groups in the Quad-Cities announced initiatives on Thursday to monitor and hopefully prevent incidents of "hate speech and hate activity."

One Human Family QCA began forming after the 2016 presidential election, Rabbi Henry Jay Karp, of Temple Emmanuel in Davenport, said. Rabbi Karp hosted a news conference at the temple to spell out four task forces the group has formed to promote awareness, provide support and collect data.

Concerned Quad-Cities faith leaders and others began noting "the growth of hate activity and hate speech" a year and a half ago, Rabbi Karp said.

"As the presidential election moved forward, so much of the rhetoric that came out of that election encouraged those who hate to step out from behind the shadows and to assert their bigotry in public," he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported "867 hate incidents that had taken place in the first 10 days after the election," he said. "So this is a deeply concerning issue."

"While our country has been plagued with a tremendous amount of hate and violence, so far, we in the Quad-Cities have been spared much of that because we are a welcoming and inclusive community," he said. "One core part of our task is to keep our community that way, and make it even better."

One Human Family will hold a meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Temple Emmanuel, 1115 Mississippi Ave, Davenport.

Leaders of four new task forces explained the scope of their activities, as set so far:

* Community education and awareness:

Bob Babcock, of Davenport, said this group has printed red, white and blue yard signs, that state -- in Spanish, English and Arabic -- "No matter who you are or where you're from we're glad you're our neighbor." The signs can be picked up at the Metro Community Church Quad Cities, Davenport, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Quad Cities, in Davenport, among other locations.

The task force also has set a meeting called "OUCH! That Stereotype Hurts -- Communicating Respectfully in a Diverse World" from 7 to 9 p.m. April 5 at the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, 725 Tanglefoot Lane, Bettendorf.

There is also a resolution on "affirming a safe, welcoming and diverse community" the task force hopes that local school boards and city councils will pass, Mr. Babcock said.

* Immigration:

Glenn Leach, of Davenport, said this group will help immigrant families prepare for the possibility that aggressive deportation policies and repeated efforts to institute a travel ban from Muslim countries, under President Donald Trump, will break up families.

"We have children who are afraid that when they come home from school, they'll come home to an empty house, with their parents gone," he said. "So what we must do is help the people plan for that eventuality. It's not an 'if,' it's a 'when.' ... Most immigrant families are a mixture of citizens, legal permanent residents, and those who are not yet documented."

* Resource list development and data collection:

This task force has a form for reporting a "hate incident" for data collection and forwarding to the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the Rev. Richard Hendricks of Metro Community Church Quad Cities.

"Whether it is a gay slur or racist insult, religious prejudice or a remark that someone should go back to their own country," Rev. Hendricks said, "One Human Family QCA wants to hear about it."

"... By focusing the light of public attention on disgraceful acts, we will wake people up to the need for us to stand together," he said.

The organization is also partnering with United Way's 211 information line for help for those who have been victims of hate incidents, he said.

* School safety:

"Our mission is to provide support and resources for schools, families and, most importantly the students," Viminda Shafer, of Matherville, said. "Currently we are gathering information from the school districts regarding their policies and procedures and practices on how they promote inclusivity and how they handle bullying.

"In the near future, we want to reach out to marginalized communities in the area as well as minority communities and ask them how we as a task force can truly support them," she said.
HONOLULU (AP)  Lawmakers in nearly half the states want to add a requirement for presidential candidates: Show us your tax returns.

The issue has dogged President Donald Trump, who became the first presidential candidate in modern times to refuse to make his returns public. It flared anew this week after MSNBC said it had obtained two pages of Trump's 2005 federal return, prompting the administration to release the documents preemptively.

State lawmakers around the country, mostly Democrats, want to ensure transparency in future presidential campaigns so voters can evaluate candidates' sources of income and any possible conflicts of interest. Most of the bills would require presidential contenders to release copies of their returns as a condition for appearing on that state's ballot, although it's unclear whether they could pass constitutional muster.

The aim is to find out about potential conflicts that candidates might have before they take office, said Hawaii Rep. Chris Lee, a Democrat who introduced one of the Hawaii bills.

"With what we've seen so far with this administration, there are clear conflicts with respect to whether or not parts of the president's business empire are directly benefiting from federal contracts to house Secret Service at his own hotels, for example, or pressuring foreign dignitaries or other corporations indirectly to patronize the businesses that the president or his children run," Lee said. "And the real question is, What else don't we know?"

Hawaii was the first state to have votes on the bills before the full Legislature. The Democratically controlled House and Senate recently passed separate but largely similar measures, which would prevent the state's delegates to the Electoral College from voting for candidates who withheld their tax forms.

Lawmakers are likely to send just one of those to Hawaii Gov. David Ige, a Democrat who expressed concerns about whether the proposed changes are constitutional. He said he does not think the state can place limits on the presidential election that are inconsistent with how the election is conducted around the country.

Some legal experts raised similar flags, saying states do not have the power to create additional qualifications for the office of the president. That's up to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that states and the federal government cannot add to the qualifications of senators and congressional representatives outlined in the Constitution. Some legal experts said that guidance likely would extend to the office of the president.

"I think a requirement of revealing one's tax returns would be regarded as an additional qualification," said Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School. "And then there's the tax law problem, because federal law guarantees the confidentiality of tax returns. And I think that law would pre-empt any state law requiring someone to divulge their returns."

But Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the Constitution has conflicting provisions.

"The question is whether a law that would deprive a presidential candidate of ballot access on the basis of a failure to provide a tax return would be creating an unconstitutional additional qualification, or whether it would be permissible within the state's power to set the rules for presidential elections," Hasen said. "Nobody's tried it before."

Trump has refused to make his tax returns public, breaking a decades-long tradition among presidential candidates. He initially promised to do so but then claimed he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and said his attorneys had advised against it. Experts and IRS officials said such audits do not prohibit taxpayers from releasing their own returns.

Trump's full tax returns would contain key information, including his sources of income, how much he earned from his assets and what strategies he used to reduce his tax bill.

Presidential tax return legislation has been introduced in at least 24 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most were introduced by Democrats, although bills in Kansas and Minnesota were introduced by Republicans.

New Jersey's Democratic legislature approved a presidential tax return bill on Thursday. Its prospects are uncertain once it lands on the desk of Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump supporter.

New Jersey Republicans criticized the measure as a stunt.

"This is a doozy," GOP Assemblyman Jay Webber said. "This is both transparently political and blatantly unconstitutional."

While bills in Democratic-leaning states such as Maryland and Vermont have had legislative hearings, those introduced in Republican-controlled statehouses such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania are stalling.

"I suspect that these bills will be very similar to the birth certificate legislation introduced after President Obama's election  political statement bills that likely aren't constitutionally sound or likely to be signed into law," said Daniel Diorio, senior policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "If one were to become law, I'm sure it would be challenged immediately."
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP)  Tompkins Conservation signed an agreement with Chile's government Wednesday to donate 1 million acres for new national parks in the largest private donation of its kind for the South American nation.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed the deal with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, the widow of American conservationist Doug Tompkins, who built a legacy protecting threatened ecosystems in Argentina and Chile.

"This is a key step to treasuring this giant source of biodiversity and safe keep it in the public interest," Bachelet said at a ceremony in southern Chile.

The agreement will provide land to create three new national parks, expand three existing national parks and unite some national forests into two national parks. Bachelet is expected to sign the decrees to create the parks before she ends her presidential term in March 2018.

The proposal will eventually help create the "Route of Parks," a network of 17 parks spanning more than 1,500 miles from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn. In all, the plan ultimately seeks to increase Chile's national parkland by more than 10 million acres. Tompkins Conservation said the area that will be protected is three times the size of the United States' Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined.

Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, used much of his fortune to buy large tracts of land in Patagonia, a sparsely populated region of untamed rivers and other natural beauty straddling southern Chile and Argentina.

At first, his purchases of land to preserve swaths of wilderness stirred suspicion and opposition by local politicians, loggers, power companies and nationalists who stirred rumors that he was trying to steal water resources. But he shrugged off the protests, insisting he would eventually return the land to both governments to be preserved as nature reserves or parks.

Since her husband's death in a kayaking accident last year, McDivitt Tompkins had been working non-stop to permanently protect from development the millions of acres the couple acquired over a quarter century.

"I wish my husband, Doug, whose vision inspired today's historic pledge, were here on this memorable day. Our team and I feel his absence deeply," she said. "But I know that if Doug were here today, he would speak of national parks being one of the greatest expressions of democracy that a country can realize, preserving the masterpieces of a nation for all of its citizenry."
I was surprised by the number of people I know that knew nothing about the Lt. Clint Lorances case. I hope this letter will enlighten readers. It is impossible to cover everything in 250 words, but Google Lt. Clint Lorance to find more information.

In July 2012, while serving as a Rifle Platoon leader in a remote sector of Kandahar Province Afghanistan, First Lieutenant Clint Lorances platoon embarked on what was seemingly a normal combat patrol. Army pilots warned Clint over the radio of enemy presence to the North, East and West of the Platoons position on the ground.

A two-wheeled motorcycle bearing three military-aged males came down the road at a higher than normal rate of speed. As the motorcycle approached the patrol, one of Clints soldiers asked for permission to fire. Clint granted his soldier permission to fire. The soldier fired, and missed.

The men dismounted and began approaching the patrol. The Afghan soldiers who were in front of Clints men instinctively raised their weapons and prepared to fire, shouting at the men to stop. The men ignored the Afghan Armys commands.

Clint gave permission to fire, killing two of the men; one ran away.

Lt. Clint Lorance was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years.

In November 2014, Clints defense team uncovered information that showed the two men killed were biometrically connected to IED attacks on U.S. soldiers. The Army had this information and did not divulge it.

Jim Turner,

Fenton
If you listen to the media narrative on climate change and clean energy, youd think that the rest of the world has moved smartly and seamlessly toward 21st-century green energy, while the U.S. is the high-polluting laggard that just wont get with the program to save the planet.

Think again. The green energy revolution around the world has turned into a Big Green meltdown with many nations sprinting away from renewable energy as if they were X-Bolt.

Here are a few of the latest news flashes from Europe and Asia.

In Germany, the world leader in green energy, electricity prices have now reached a level triple those paid in the United States. Imagine the anger here if middle-class Americans saw a tripling of their utility bills each month.

In Britain, to comply with renewable energy requirements, power stations are burning hundreds of millions of pounds of wood pellets (pellets imported from the U.S.). Environmental experts confirm that burning wood is much worse for the environment than burning natural gas or even coal.

Australia, another green energy leader, saw its electricity prices skyrocket this past winter. According to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Research, power costs surged unbelievably from $100 per megawatt hour to $10,000 per megawatt hour, because of heavy dependence on its unreliable renewable energy program. The government had to reopen one of its shuttered natural gas plants to keep prices from further exploding. Sweden announced a decade ago that it was all in on green energy and launched a wind power program that the politicians have now had to embarrassingly acknowledge has become hopelessly expensive and inefficient. They are now shutting down wind turbines and the government will phase out the subsidies that have been lavished on the industry.

In each of these cases, the economies and local factories are taking a big hit. According to the IER analysis of Australia: The government has found that its electric system that is heavily reliant on wind power (40 percent comes from intermittent renewable sources) cannot cope without reliable power from traditional generation sources. The fallout is that Australia is finding that its energy-intensive businesses are relocating to Asian countries that provide stable regulation and costs, lower taxes, cheaper wages, and less red tape.

So very quietly, Europe and other nations arent going so green anymore. The EU spent an estimated $750 billion on green energy handouts over the past decade and what it has bought for that is a doubling of its power costs. This has given American steel, auto, light manufacturing, agriculture, and technology firms a big competitive edge in world markets. This is why European nations and Australia are understandably desperate for the U.S. to move to the same green energy policies that they adopted years ago.

What would that mean for America? One study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that if America were to adopt the same mandates for renewable energy, the total cost to American consumers would be more than $600 billion and industry would pay out at least $30 billion more.

By the way, the U.S. already provides subsidies to wind and solar power that are five times higher per unit of energy produced than for nuclear power and 20 times more generous than for fossil fuels, according to a 2016 American Action Forum study.Yet wind and solar are still less than 5 percent of American energy output despite all the money spent. Why not just eliminate all American energy subsidies and let the free market decide.

The left disparages this approach as a move toward dirty energy. Wrong. Even though the U.S. has never been all in on green energy the way Europe has, the Department of Energy reports that America has reduced its carbon emissions more than the EU has because we are producing and consuming more clean burning natural gas.

Thankfully, President Trump has made it known that adopting more of the policy quackery of Europe  at a time when the U.S. Has more recoverable shale oil and gas and more clean coal than any other nation on the planet  is no way to make America great again. Europe is running away from the fantasy of green energy, and this is one rare instance when America may want to follow their lead.
Belleek Floral Springtime Pitcher is rated 4.9 out of 5 by 28 .

Rated 4 out of 5 by puppykins4 from SO ME !!!! Perfect shape, love the painting and delicate coloration. I bought 2 one for me and one for my dear friend. will likely use mostly for flowers, though it is meant to be used for liquids too. Hope it comes back in stock as I would like to see more of these for gifts. Even love the interesting wood like texturing that was done behind al the petite flowers. Bottom was a little uneven and wobbly but not enough to return.

Rated 5 out of 5 by nvrl8 from Timeless and Beautiful I bought this through QVC several years ago and I never get tired of looking at it. Every spring I add fresh flowers to celebrate the season. I turn it around to the simpler side to fit into my decor in the winter months. You will not be disappointed!

Rated 5 out of 5 by class from So Very Lovely! Received my Belleek Springtime Pitcher today..... so WELL packaged for shipping and so absolutely beautiful. I had previously purchased the Illuminaire Springtime Lamp and what a wonderful matching pair they make. In this day of so much mediocracy in merchandise, it is such an incredible pleasure to see the unbelievable artistry and workmanship that Belleek presents. Thank you Belleek for such remarkable quality. Belleek should be so proud! I am just perfectly delighted with my purchase. Thank you QVC.

Rated 5 out of 5 by JoyGG from Beautiful I have been collecting Belleek for years. I also have the matching bowl from last year and decided to do as another reviewer did and make them a wash set. The pitcher sat a bit low in the bowl so I took 3 round marble coasters and lifted the pitcher in the bowl. It makes a beautiful set. The workmanship and detail is extraordinary! A must purchase so happy I did!

Rated 5 out of 5 by Anonymous from Irish pitcher Absolutely beautiful! I have placed the pitcher in my dining room hutch so that everyone can enjoy it.

Rated 5 out of 5 by ouna from Beautiful! I am a first time Belleek buyer and was so thrilled when I opened the box and saw this beautifully crafted Springtime Floral Pitcher". The colors are so vibrant and the craftmanship is outstanding. Please Belleek keep up the great work.

Rated 5 out of 5 by sewstitches73 from Lovely The pitcher matches the beautiful lamps and luminarie I purchased from Belleek last year. These pieces are beautiful. Please bring the bowl back.
Choice of Glendara Art Framed Picture is rated 4.9 out of 5 by 115 .

Rated 5 out of 5 by jobeth from Quiet Man Bliss The nicest item I've bought from QVC in a long time. Beautiful rendition of a beloved classic that is just the right size & perfectly suited for any home. Highly recommend any of these lovely prints.

Rated 5 out of 5 by julidc from Beautiful print of a memorable scene! Ive been looking at these prints being presented for several years, and finally took the plunge when my favorite Quiet Man Bliss went on sale. The colors are vibrant & impressionistic style gives this work a dream like quality. The Quiet Man film holds special meaning for my husband & me, so its lovely to have this particular piece of art in our little cottage. Our print came with a numbered COA, as well as a card from the artist. The matte & framing are very high quality on this ready to hang art too.

Rated 5 out of 5 by Anonymous from Quiet man Bought this as a gift for my husband, who is a John Wayne fan. He absolutely loved the print.

Rated 5 out of 5 by MMoxxy from Perfect size subtle and vibrant Bought this for my parent's wedding anniversary because The Quiet Man is very much their movie and their story. We watched it as a family every Easter. It hangs in the kitchen and the size is perfect to put anywhere, the colors are vibrant, and the picture details are beautiful. I absolutely recommend it. Goes with everything and in any room.

Rated 5 out of 5 by Megrin from Beautiful I have the Quiet man bliss. Which is from the movie  The Quiet Man. I was named after that the female character that John Wayne married. Of course I had to buy this for my new home and I have it hanging over my bed in the master bedroom. The picture is beautiful, very detailed and the colors are visited. I highly recommend any of this pictures.

Rated 5 out of 5 by party of 6 from BEAUTIFUL! Just purchased #7 and #8 THANK YOU Tim Moloney for bringing a little Ireland to the USA! Over the years I have purchased MANY "Irish" items through QVC in March and October, so grateful to QVC for bringing AUTHENTIC items MADE IN IRELAND. They are on the smaller side but simply beautiful. I have some grouped together and others sprinkled throughout my home. I absolutely plan to collect more when they are available, they do sell out fast.

Rated 5 out of 5 by owls from Just beautiful I'm not Irish but love castles and this one is a beauty!
When Jacinda Ardern was rattling off the things that matter most to all of us incredible Kiwis - it rang a little hollow when held up against Labours record.

6 hours ago
LAS VEGAS, March 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Everi Holdings Inc. (NYSE:EVRI) (Everi), announced today that it has entered into a binding settlement agreement with its former President and Chief Executive Officer, Ram V. Chary. Pursuant to the terms of the settlement agreement, and Mr. Charys employment agreement, Mr. Chary will receive payments totaling $4.6 million inclusive of $0.9 million in legal fees.



E. Miles Kilburn, Everis Chairman of the Board, commented: This is another step forward in our initiatives to position Everi for improved performance based on our strong and diverse portfolio of gaming and payments solutions. I personally appreciate the integrity with which Mr. Chary approached the negotiations that resulted in this settlement agreement.

About Everi Holdings

Everi Holdings is dedicated to providing video and mechanical reel gaming content and technology solutions, integrated gaming payments solutions and compliance and efficiency software. The Companys Games business provides: (a) comprehensive content, electronic gaming units and systems for Native American and commercial casinos, including the award winning TournEvent slot tournament solution; and (b) the central determinant system for the video lottery terminals installed at racetracks in the State of New York. The Companys Payments business provides: (a) access to cash at gaming facilities via Automated Teller Machine cash withdrawals, credit card cash access transactions, point of sale debit card transactions, and check verification and warranty services; (b) fully integrated gaming industry kiosks that provide cash access and related services; (c) products and services that improve credit decision making, automate cashier operations and enhance patron marketing activities for gaming establishments; (d) compliance, audit and data solutions; and (e) online payment processing solutions for gaming operators in states that offer intrastate, Internet-based gaming and lottery activities.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements often address our expected future business, plans, objectives and financial performance, and often contain words such as goal, target, future, estimate, expect, anticipate, intend, plan, believe, seek, project, may, should, or will and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or assumed, including, but not limited to, the risks identified in the "Risk Factors," "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Business" sections of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, as applicable, and the other risks identified from time to time in our other press releases, reports and filings with the SEC. If any of our projections or assumptions prove to be incorrect, our actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from the forward-looking statements.
Transportation industry veteran Ralph Ehlers has joined Parsons Corp. as Vice President of Rail and Transit, Canada, based in Markham, Ontario.

Ehlers will focus on implementing new rail lines, expanding existing systems, and providing project management services for all elements of mass transit, including mainl ine railways, commuter rail, high-speed rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), and urban transit.

With more than 26 years of global transit and roadway design experience, Ehlers has led extensive programs using alternative project delivery methods, including public-private partnerships. Among the numerous projects with which he has been involved are the East Rail Maintenance Facility and the VivaNext BRT Program with Metrolinx. Ehlers also has extensive experience in the Middle East, specifically in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where he led a transportation practice.

Ehlers holds a bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, and is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario and the Transportation Association of Canada Road Safety Standing Committee and Climate Change Task Force.

Ralphs global experience contributes to his innovative ideas, and we are proud to have him on our team, said Parsons Group President Michael Johnson.
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The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PardeeRAND.edu) is home to the only Ph.D. and M.Phil. programs offered at an independent public policy research organizationthe RAND Corporation.
MONACO - March 17, 2017 - GasLog Ltd. ("GasLog" or the "Company") (NYSE:GLOG), an international owner, operator and manager of liquefied natural gas ("LNG") carriers, announced today that it priced its public offering of $250.0 million aggregate principal amount of 8.875% Senior Notes due 2022 (the "Notes") at a price to the public of 100% of the principal amount. The Notes will mature on March 22, 2022 and will bear interest at a rate of 8.875% per annum, payable quarterly in arrears on March 30, June 30, September 30 and December 30 of each year, beginning on June 30, 2017.



The net proceeds from the offering after deducting the underwriting discount and estimated offering expenses are expected to be approximately $245,280,750. The Company plans to use the net proceeds from the offering for repayment of debt and general corporate purposes, including working capital.



Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated and DNB Markets, Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers and structuring agents of the offering. Arctic Securities LLC, DVB Capital Markets LLC and Pareto Securities Inc. are acting as co-managers of the offering.



The offering is expected to close on or about March 22, 2017.



Alastair Maxwell, CFO of GasLog, commented, "We are delighted with the results of this offering which marks GasLog's entry to the US debt capital markets. The proceeds of the offering will further diversify our sources of funding and will enable us to manage proactively our upcoming debt maturities."



The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus. When available, the prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained from Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Attention: Syndicate Department, One South Street, 15th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202, telephone: (855) 300-7136, email: syndprospectus@stifel.com or DNB Markets, Inc., 200 Park Ave, Floor 31, New York, NY 10166, telephone: (212) 681-3800.



This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction.



About GasLog Ltd.



GasLog is an international owner, operator and manager of LNG carriers providing support to international energy companies as part of their LNG logistics chain. GasLog's consolidated fleet consists of 27 LNG carriers (22 ships on the water and 5 on order). GasLog also has an additional LNG carrier which was sold to a subsidiary of Mitsui Co Ltd. and leased back under a long-term bareboat charter. GasLog's consolidated fleet now includes nine LNG carriers in operation owned by GasLog's subsidiary, GasLog Partners. GasLog's principal executive offices are at Gildo Pastor Center, 7 Rue du Gabian, MC 98000, Monaco.



Contacts:

Jamie Buckland - Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +44-203-388-3116

Email: ir@gaslogltd.com





Forward-Looking Statements



All statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, projects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future, particularly in relation to our operations, cash flows, financial position, liquidity and cash available for dividends or distributions, plans, strategies, business prospects and changes and trends in our business and the markets in which we operate. We caution that these forward-looking statements represent our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this press release, about factors that are beyond our ability to control or predict, and are not intended to give any assurance as to future results. Any of these factors or a combination of these factors could materially affect future results of operations and the ultimate accuracy of the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not unduly rely on any forward-looking statements.



Factors that might cause future results and outcomes to differ include, but are not limited to the following:



general LNG shipping market conditions and trends, including spot and long-term charter rates, ship values, factors affecting supply and demand of LNG and LNG shipping and technological advancements and opportunities for the profitable operation of LNG carriers;

continued low prices for crude oil and petroleum products and volatility in gas prices;

our ability to enter into time charters with new and existing customers;

increased exposure to spot market and fluctuations in spot charter rates;

changes in the ownership of our charterers;

our customers' performance of their obligations under our time charters and other contracts;

our future operating performance, financial condition, liquidity and cash available for dividends and distributions;

our ability to obtain financing to fund capital expenditures, acquisitions and other corporate activities, funding by banks of their financial commitments, and our ability to meet our restrictive covenants and other obligations under our credit facilities;

future, pending or recent acquisitions of or orders for ships or other assets, business strategy, areas of possible expansion and expected capital spending or operating expenses;

the time that it may take to construct and deliver newbuildings and the useful lives of our ships;

number of off-hire days, dry-docking requirements and insurance costs;

fluctuations in currencies and interest rates;

our ability to maintain long-term relationships with major energy companies;

our ability to maximize the use of our ships, including the re-employment or disposal of ships no longer under time charter commitments, including the risk that our vessels may no longer have the latest technology at such time;

environmental and regulatory conditions, including changes in laws and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities;

the expected cost of, and our ability to comply with, governmental regulations and maritime self-regulatory organization standards, requirements imposed by classification societies and standards imposed by our charterers applicable to our business;

risks inherent in ship operation, including the discharge of pollutants;

our ability to retain key employees and the availability of skilled labor, ship crews and management;

potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents, political events, piracy or acts by terrorists;

potential liability from future litigation;

our business strategy and other plans and objectives for future operations;

any malfunction or disruption of information technology systems and networks that our operations rely on or any impact of a possible cybersecurity breach; and

other risks and uncertainties described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on March 1, 2017 and available at http://www.sec.gov.



We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events, a change in our views or expectations or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of these factors. Further, we cannot assess the impact of each such factor on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to be materially different from those contained in any forward-looking statement.



The declaration and payment of dividends are at all times subject to the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on, amongst other things, risks and uncertainties described above, restrictions in our credit facilities, the provisions of Bermuda law and such other factors as our board of directors may deem relevant.


It is widely believed that the Department of Defense is currently paying billions of dollars a year to maintain excess infrastructure because Congress has prohibited additional rounds of Base Realignment and Closure, commonly known as BRAC. For example, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in February, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General Daniel B. Allyn and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Stephen W. Wilson expressed their support for additional rounds of BRAC. According to their testimony, even after increasing to 490,000 active-duty soldiers the Army will have 21 percent excess capacity. The Air Force currently has 25 percent excess capacity.

According to the 2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, BRAC actions in 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995 resulted in the closure of more than 300 bases across the U.S. The 2005 commission identified an additional 12 bases for closure. In its Fiscal Year 2017 budget estimates, the Department of Defense reported that the annual recurring savings from these base closures and realignments are about $7 billion.

This situation invites the question: If it is widely recognized that a new BRAC could free up billions of dollars to be spent on readiness, equipment, and increases in the size of the armed forces, why is it so difficult to get the necessary authorization from Congress?

Opponents of BRAC have argued that the last round did not produce the expected net benefits.

One factor is a debate about the net costs and benefits of off-loading the excess infrastructure. BRAC activities present near-term expenses, such as environmental remediation and clean-up of unexploded ordinance, in the expectation of greater savings in the long term. Opponents of BRAC have argued that the last round did not produce the expected net benefits.

Nonetheless, the underlying answer to this question is that no potentially impacted community or its elected representatives wish to be the bill payer for an action that would benefit everyone else while hurting them economically. In the political science literature, this forms what is called a collective action problem.

The communities in which military bases are located benefit economically from the direct spending by the Department of Defense on expenses such as the salaries of military personnel and government civilian employees. In turn, these individuals and their families spend money on numerous things such as groceries, haircuts, gasoline, and car repairs. This spending results in employment for store clerks, barbers, mechanics and countless other workers. Even if it would make the DoD more cost efficient as a whole, it should be no surprise that communities fight to keep their bases.

The situation is made more complex by the fact that the Department of Defense can, and sometimes has, relocated units without closing their old base. This means that the community lost a significant portion of direct spending without any offsetting benefits such as the gain of real estate. These losses may exceed the value of the direct spending maintained at a base that is kept open despite a significantly reduced military presence.

However, the political science literature also offers a solution to collective active problems such as this: side payments. This approach entails the beneficiaries of an action helping to defray the cost experienced by the losers in order to gain their cooperation. For example, an under-appreciated outcome of a base closure under BRAC is that it usually results in the transfer of valuable property to the local government or some other public entity. For example, in my hometown of San Diego the closure of the Naval Training Center eventually resulted in the creation of Liberty Station, a vibrant area of hotels, restaurants, and shops that probably create more economic activity than the previous Navy base. But this result took many years and at the time of closure the eventual outcome was uncertain.

Previous BRAC rounds also provided some impact funding, but not enough to sway the affected communities. Redevelopment assistance and other types of payments to impacted communities could be significantly increased and thus decrease opposition to additional closures. Such an arrangement would reduce the total amount of cost savings of a BRAC to the Department of Defense, but if calculated properly would still produce a significant net benefit.

As the new administration calls for increases in military spending, there is a risk that people might believe that additional funding for the military will obviate the problem of excess infrastructure. This is not true. Even when the size of U.S. military forces was at its recent peak during the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were plenty of bases that were wasteful to keep open. Taxpayer dollars have been used inefficiently for decades to maintain bases that should have been realigned or closed. This condition is not merely a result of the post-Operation Iraqi Freedom and post-Operation Enduring Freedom drawdowns. Counterintuitively, the military budget increases proposed by the Trump administration present an opportunity to push for base closures by increasing the availability of funds to support the near-term costs such as impact funds.

The details are complex and need to be negotiated, particularly the amounts of impact funds and precisely how they should be dispersed (e.g., block grants to cities and counties, funding for non-governmental agencies, extended impact funding for local schools, etc.). Nonetheless, if the goal is more efficient use of defense dollars, policymakers might want to consider the option of allowing new rounds of BRAC that provide significant offsetting funds for impacted communities.

Christopher M. Schnaubelt is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on The Hill on March 15, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Terrorism is defined as violenceactual or threatenedcalculated to create fear and alarm or, in a word, terror. Terrorism is primarily aimed at the people watchingthe identity of the actual victims is often irrelevant to the terrorists. Its effects, above all, are intended to be psychological. Terror causes people to exaggerate the strength of the terrorists and the threats they pose. Terrorism is much more a matter of perceptions than of easily quantifiable risks or losses.

This observation has profound implications for security. To successfully create terror, terrorists do not have to overcome security measures. They simply have to be good at creating terror. Terrorism (the actions of terrorists) and terror (the psychological effects of terrorist actions) are separate domains. Even low levels of terrorism can, and do, cause high levels of alarm. Therefore, terrorists with limited capabilities and minimal resources can achieve disproportionate effects.

To create terror, terrorists don't have to overcome security measures. They simply have to be good at creating terror.

This is especially true in the context of today's media-drenched society. Media coverage greatly extends the reach and effects of terrorism. If terrorism is theater, contemporary communication through mass and social media enables terrorists to reach an audience of global proportions almost instantaneously. The mass media also tend to increase the drama by repeatedly broadcasting the visuals terrorists choreograph. Think of how many times you have watched the World Trade Center towers fall over the last decade and a half. Broadcasters mobilize legions of talking heads to weigh in, fueling the endless speculation. In these on-air discussions, warnings of imminent doom have an advantage over those counseling calm. Fear sells.

Partisan politics further incentivize the creation of fear. Every terrorist incident can be portrayed as a failure for which someone is to blame and heads must roll. Politicians pound podiums and point fingers. They demand that more be done to protect citizens. It is politically safer to support increases in security than to oppose them. Even those who see little utility in particular proposed security measures risk being condemned for their substandard zeal, for imperiling the lives of citizens if they do not agreeand being pilloried if another attack occursany terrorist attack, which most likely will happen.

Fear drives security increases that, once decided upon, must be supported by a commensurate level of assumed threat. As a result, the security measures adopted end up driving subsequent threat portrayals. There is no point in diminishing the dragons one promises to slay.

By demanding and unrealistically expecting absolute security, the public contributes to its own fear. It encourages the government to overpromise, setting it up for failure, which will, in turn, exacerbate public alarm.

Terrorists do not have to succeed tactically to get media attention and create alarm. A terrorist bomb may fail to kill anyoneit may not even workbut its mere discovery can cause fear that there may be other undiscovered devices or that a determined person or group may succeed next time. At a minimum, an attempted terrorist event will be viewed as a failure of security, which must then be increased to prevent further such events.

By demanding and unrealistically expecting absolute security, the public contributes to its own fear.

The jihadists clearly have discovered this and have recently modified their strategy to exploit these vulnerabilities. Jihadist rhetoric now urges followers with limited capabilities to launch low-level attacks, even if they are likely to fail, confident that public and political reactions will still provide a good return on their investment.

Security strategy understandably focuses on risk reduction through prevention and physical protection. These address the terrorism component of the threat but ignore the terror component. The possibility of creating a counterterror strategy that draws upon traditional and admired strengths in American societycourage, true grit, coolness under fire, self-reliance, sticking together in the face of danger, helping each other in emergencieshas hardly been explored. Such a strategy does not mean building new barriers or belittling individual fears, but helping society understand how terrorism worksthen working together to foster a psychologically more resilient and less vulnerable mindset.

Brian Michael Jenkins directs security research at the Mineta Transportation Institute and is the author of The Challenge of Protecting Transit and Passenger Rail: How Security Against Terrorism Works. He also serves as senior adviser to the president of the nonprofit RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on United Press International on March 16, 2017. Outside View  2017 United Press International.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Former top managers of restoration company to be tried for alleged embezzlement

ST. PETERSBURG, March 17 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  Investigators from St. Petersburg have completed investigation into a criminal case against former head manager of restoration company Intarsia, Viktor Smirnov, and his deputy, Dmitry Sokolov, who are charged with embezzlement, RAPSI learnt from investigators on Friday.

A representative of the Main Investigative Directorate of the St. Petersburg Investigative Committee department said that Smirnov had been charged and would be tried in absentia.

According to the case documents, in October 2009, Smirnov signed a contract for conducting a full range of works on repairs and restoration of the Lobanov-Rostovsky house, located on Voznesensky Prospekt, to turn it into a hotel.

Investigators allege that in 2012 the customer terminated contract because of violation of terms and requirements of work. Smirnov and Sokolov allegedly prepared forged documents containing false information about the amount of work completed and submitted these documents to the customer for payment. Allegedly they received 320 million rubles ($5.5 million) and fraudulently tried to steal another 390 million rubles ($6.7 million).

The case was transferred to a court.
Russia extradites twelve Crimean prisoners to Ukraine

MOSCOW, March 17 (RAPSI) - Twelve individuals, who were convicted and given prison terms in Crimea before the republics reunification with Russia, have been extradited to Ukraine for serving their sentence, press service for the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia announced on Friday.

The prisoners transfer took place at a checkpoint in the Belgorod Region, the statement reads.

Ukraine's Deputy Justice Minister, wrote on his Facebook page in February that these people are not political prisoners. They are persons convicted by Ukrainian courts, and they have a right to return to Ukraine like other citizens of the country, he said.

The process of convicts transfer is regulated by the 1983 Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Russia signed the Convention in April 2005 and ratified it in August 2007. Ukraine ratified the document in September 1995.

Crimea reunited with Russia following a referendum in March 2014. Over 96 percent of those who took part in the polls voted for joining Russia.
Russian Justice Ministry to draft bill on requirements for foreign lawyers

MOSCOW, March 17 (RAPSI)  The Justice Ministry have started working out a draft law setting requirements for foreign attorneys working in Russia, the ministry announced on Friday.

Amendments will be proposed to the Federal Law On Advocate's Activity and the Bar in the Russian Federation.

Under the bill, the government would be authorized to determine requirements for foreign lawyers and conditions of provision of legal assistance by them in Russia.

The draft law envisages that attorneys must notify the Russian Justice Ministry of disbarment in a foreign state, coming of a court ruling on their conviction into legal force and court decisions declaring them deprived of legal capacity or partially incapacitated.
No, Mr. Putin does not want to re-create the old USSR, but he does want a return of the Russian empire, or maybe even a hybrid version of the Soviet Union, without the communism.
The Indonesian archipelago is a place of relative calm in a restive neighborhood. To its north, China and its neighbors are disputing Beijings man-made islands in the South China Sea, North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and democracy is on the wane in Thailand; to the west, India and Pakistan are glowering at each other, and Afghanistan is, well, Afghanistan.

Indonesia is the worlds fourth-largest country, its third-largest democracy, and its largest Muslim-majority country, so it is important that the Trump administration make an early approach to Indonesia to confirm Washingtons long-standing relationship with Jakarta and to seek new opportunities for cooperation and commerce.

Indonesias most visible characteristic is its position astride the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and offers the shortest sea route from China to India. The strait is the worlds busiest shipping lane, hosting more than 80,000 passages in 2016 alone. And the strait isnt just busy: its daily traffic includes a significant amount of liquefied natural gas shipments and 15 million barrels of oil, a quarter of the worlds seaborne oil, mostly bound for China, Indonesia, and Japan. More than 40 percent of the worlds seaborne trade traverses the strait each year.

All that cargo traffic attracts the attention of two parties: pirates and China. In the early 2000s, piracy increased to a point where the strait was the site of 40 percent of piracy worldwide by 2004. A concerted effort in 2005 by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore to increase patrolling and coordination reduced the incidence of piracy.

China views Indonesia through the lens of what it calls the Malacca Dilemma: Beijing is over-reliant on the strait, and it has few alternatives. Though China and Indonesia have a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, there are opportunities for cooperation on maritime security. The strait is one of the reasons China intends to develop a blue-water navy. Beijing fears a blockade of oil from the Persian Gulf and of its manufactured goods headed west.

Indonesia is seeking more foreign direct investment from China, which is Indonesias largest trading partner and recently displaced the United States as Indonesias third-largest foreign investor. The administration of President Joko Widodo forwarded an economic stimulus package that aims to increase FDI by opening 35 industrial sectors to 100 percent foreign ownership. Indonesia is now ranked as the worlds 41st most competitive economy. It has slipped recently because of the need for improvements in health and education, as well as rigidities in the labor market such as the low labor force participation rate of women.

Indonesias steady progress as an attractive destination for investment has been validated in internationally recognized league tables. It climbed 15 places in the World Banks ease of doing business index for 2017, from 106 to 91, but political and business leaders must stay focused as the country has demonstrated only incremental progress fighting corruption over the past five years.

Indonesia is a growing destination for Western and Asian FDI, but it hasnt fully leveraged cultural ties through its Islamic faith to attract investment from Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and it has even lagged its Muslim-majority neighbor Malaysia in this regard. Saudi King Salmans month-long trip to Asia is emphasizing the kingdoms non-oil exports, and Saudi Aramco has already notched a $6 billion agreement with Indonesias state-owned oil and gas concern, PT Pertamina, for refinery projects. However, Indonesias uneven application of sharia in resource-rich but corruption-prone Aceh Province may prove off-putting even for Islamic investors and institutions.

As a country that is reconciling Islam and modernity, Indonesia can be a leader in the Muslim world. The country is over 80 percent Muslim, with a small ethnic Chinese population that is active in business and controls much of the countrys wealth, leading to tensions with the majority Javanese population. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a popular corruption-fighting Chinese-Christian politician, is running for re-election as governor of the capital, Jakarta, while on trial for blasphemy in a process that will illustrate whether minorities are susceptible to public pressure over religious issues.

As its wealth and political heft increase, Indonesia is taking an interest in regional security issues. Closest to home, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea share a 470-mile border which is a source of conflict between Indonesian security forces and refugees from Indonesias West Papua province seeking safety in Papua New Guinea. Indonesia supports U.N. peacekeeping efforts, where it is the largest troop contributor of the ASEAN nations. Indonesia and Australia formalized their security relationship in the 2006 Lombok Treaty and followed with a defense cooperation agreement in 2012, which will facilitate their keen interest in counterterrorism. Indonesia has mooted the possibility of Indonesian-Australian joint naval patrols of the South China Sea in the wake of Chinas assertion of overlapping claims to waters close to Indonesias Natuna Islands.

Indonesia and the United States have historically had friendly relations, and the United States is viewed positively by the Indonesian public. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided development assistance to Indonesia since 1950, and recently the United States and Indonesia have expanded military cooperation to improve Indonesia's defense readiness.

This recent cooperation, along diplomatic engagement, intelligence sharing, and ongoing U.S. upgrades to Indonesias stock of defense equipment, will lay the foundation for a solid working relationship between the new Trump administration and a friendly country in a region critical to regional security and the worlds economy.
North Koreas missile launches last week are an early warning that the Trump administrations Asia strategy could end up triggering the worlds next major war.

Spurred by the launches, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is touring Japan, South Korea and China this week. But Pyongyangs nuclear and missile activities are not Trumps priority in Asia.

For Trump and inner circle advisers like Steve Bannon, the top concern is economic. Trump and his team see U.S. trade deficits, concentrated in Asia, as draining Americas wealth and threatening its national security. Trump claims he is out to redefine U.S. economic ties to Asias major economies.

Whatever this goals merits, from my experience at the National Security Council, on the State Departments Policy Planning Staff and as a visiting scholar at Peking University, I believe it is dangerously flawed as a basis for U.S. Asia strategy. Asia today is more economically interdependent than any other part of the world. It also has serious security challenges. Besides competitive posturing on the Korean peninsula, these challenges include escalating disputes in the East and South China seas.

Yet there is no mechanism bringing America and its Asian allies together with China to manage these problems through multilateral diplomacy.

This raises risks that regional security challenges will turn into armed conflicts. The devastation that such conflicts would wreak on global welfare makes it imperative that Washington and major regional players create an effective security framework. Im concerned that Trumps strategy ignores this imperative.

Trump and Asias diplomacy deficit

Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programs highlight the dangers flowing from Asias lack of a regional security mechanism. North Korea is chronically concerned that its security is at risk. Consequently, it takes steps to develop nuclear and missile capabilities that, from Pyongyangs vantage, might keep America and its allies at bay. But Pyongyangs quest for deterrence also raises risks that conventional conflict in Korea escalates to nuclear war.

In my assessment, Trump does not view conflict prevention in Korea as an urgent focus. Trumpian rhetoric emphasizes radical Islam and illegal immigration as immediate threats to Americans. Through this prism, war in Asia seems less directly dangerous. North Koreas pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles could even be a useful lever to advance Trumps real regional goals.

North Korean nuclear and missile tests give Trump openings to reassure Japan and South Korea, in more fulsome terms than his campaign rhetoric suggested, of U.S. commitment to their security. He has already done so directly and through Defense Secretary James Mattis. Last week, Trump deployed the first Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) units to South Korea, which can purportedly intercept North Korean warheads.

It appears Trump is playing on these moves to seek more Japanese and Korean investment in the United States. He also wants understandings on currency valuation and more balanced bilateral trade.

With China  a major economic partner, but not an ally  Trump aims to leverage U.S. military power and other coercive levers to wrest trade and monetary concessions.

To this end, Trump seeks to increase pressure on China by expanding Americas regional military posture. Pyongyangs weapons tests create openings to do so. Already, Beijing worries that THAAD deployments to Asia could ultimately threaten Chinas defensive and deterrent capabilities.

But Trumps strategy offers no solution to security problems associated with North Koreas nuclear and missile development.

Solving the North Korea problem

As previous U.S. administrations have learned, there is no preventive military option against Pyongyangs nuclear and missile capabilities. Attacking them will trigger Seouls destruction by North Korean conventional artillery.

Saying the problem is Chinas to solve wont work, either.

Beijing is increasingly displeased with North Koreas nuclear and missile displays. But there are 30,000 U.S. soldiers in South Korea today. In such a setting, Beijing will not accept U.S.-allied South Koreas effective extension to Chinas border. This could enable deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops to that border. Thus, Beijing will never press Pyongyang in ways that bring North Korea to the verge of collapse, no matter how much Washington wants it to.

If Trump wanted to solve the Korea problem, he would pursue what China proposed last week: dual track diplomacy aimed at denuclearizing the peninsula on the one hand and establishing a peace mechanism on the other. Initially, this would entail suspension for suspension. Pyongyang would halt its weapons tests; Washington and Seoul would stop joint military exercises.

Parties could then negotiate more comprehensively. America and its allies would seek a Korea without nuclear weapons. For Pyongyang and Beijing, denuclearization would be joined with a regional peace mechanism and a U.S.-North Korean peace treaty.

But the dual track would commit America to a cooperative approach to Asian security. And that would not help Trump pursue his economic goals. In a stable Asia, how would Trump leverage military power to extract economic concessions from allies or from China?

Barring major changes in Trumps Asia strategy, North Korea will likely keep developing its strategic deterrent. This will continue raising risks that conventional conflict on the Korean peninsula escalates rapidly to nuclear war.

China is reacting deliberately to what it sees as provocative U.S. policies. President Xi wants a summit with Trump before Julys G20 summit. Chinese officials and analysts also say Xi wants to keep Sino-U.S. relations on a relatively even keel through this falls 19th Party Congress. The Congress will approve Xis second term as Chinas top leader. Xi wants to be seen as a steady steward of Chinese interests in a global order still significantly influenced by Washington.

Meanwhile, China may not mind if Trump renegotiates Americas economic relationships in Asia  especially to the extent this happens at the expense of U.S. allies. But if Trump keeps building what China sees as a more robust and ultimately offensive regional military posture, Beijing will respond.

China will leverage its own economic and political ties to U.S. allies in Asia to constrain and undermine Trumps strategy. Recently impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye will probably be replaced by a progressive figure espousing engagement with Pyongyang and more multilateral regional security approaches. This could position Beijing to contain and ultimately reverse U.S. THAAD deployments.

Overall, Trumps Asia strategy is unlikely to boost Sino-U.S. cooperation on regional security. Instead, it will almost certainly intensify Sino-U.S. security competition.

Flynt L. Leverett, Professor of International Affairs and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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The University of Georgia is continuing to conduct research on the 105 gravesites found under Baldwin Hall in November 2015. According to a UGA Today press release, information about these bodies, said to have been remnants from the mid-1800s, will be officially documented and accessible by Athens residents within the coming year.
This can mean companies like Apple, Zara can sell in India through wholly-owned subsidiaries

The Narendra Modi government is planning the next big round of foreign direct investment (FDI) liberalisation, which could have significant implications for several sectors, including print media and retail.

Economic ministries are learnt to be working on a proposal to step up the FDI limit in print news media to 49 per cent, from the current cap of 26 per cent. Also, there are plans to allow single-brand retail companies with up to 100 per cent FDI to go through the automatic clearance route.

A draft Cabinet note on phasing out the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) is already in the making and could be ready for approval by the Union Cabinet by the end of April. FDI rules could be eased subsequently in some of the sectors.

Successive governments have done all they can in raising FDI limits across sectors. Further liberalisation can now happen through easing the rules governing approval routes, said a senior government official, aware of the inter-ministerial deliberations.

Print news media could be an exception where talks are on to relax the level of FDI, the official said. The person added that while the bureaucracy has no issues with the proposal to raise sectoral cap to 49 per cent from the existing 26 per cent in print media, it could face political hurdles. The proposal will be pursued further, the official said.

For single-brand retail, while 100 per cent FDI is allowed, 49 per cent is through automatic route and beyond that is FIPB approval route. A second official said a proposal to allow 100 per cent FDI through the automatic route, provided the domestic sourcing norms are met, will be taken up soon.

If such a proposal is accepted by the government, it could mean companies like Apple and Zara can sell in India through wholly-owned subsidiaries, without going through the clearance bottlenecks.

Business Standard has also learnt the draft cabinet note for bringing the curtain down on FIPB states FDI proposals which require approval will be given by either sectoral regulators or line ministries. FIPB will not be replaced by another body, officials said.

In his 2017-18 Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the dismantling of FIPB. In the meantime, further liberalisation of FDI policy is under consideration and necessary announcements will be made in due course, he had said.

The draft Cabinet note has been circulated by the finance ministry to other departments for comments. While initially there was a proposal to let the licensing bodies approve new investments, stakeholders from domestic industry had complained of the long time required by such bodies to provide even licences. Hence these bodies could likely be ruled out.

FIPB had the final say in approving FDI proposals in the country till now, other than proposals exceeding Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) which are cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs.

Sectors where industry players have asked for further easing of rules include aviation, defence and pharmaceuticals. The government had allowed up to 100 per cent FDI in defence through the approval route, over the 49 per cent investments currently open under the automatic route.

For brownfield projects in the pharmaceutical sector, automatic approval had been extended to 74 per cent. These are likely to be unchanged.

Photograph: Reuters
The company has launched only 3 new products during 2015 when compared to 14 launches in 2014

Dr Reddys Laboratories (DRL) is likely to leverage its relationship with existing and new partners to continue the momentum of product launches in the regulated markets. The company has launched only three new products during 2015 when compared to 14 launches in 2014.

This sharp decline is due to a series of inspections and warning letters from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the numbers picked up in the last year with around ten launches.

To see further rise in new launches this year, DRL might look towards strategic partners like Gland Pharma or subsidiaries such as Promius Pharma to market and distribute its abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) in the US market.

The product pipeline of the company has witnessed another major obstacle when the US FDA issued form-483 with 13 observations during the re-audit at its oncology formulation facility at Duvvada in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh (AP).

A sharp recovery was expected in DRLs earnings, as the company was confident about the US FDA clearance in the first round of audit at the three facilities that were issued warning letter in November 2015.

The other two facilities are active pharmaceutical ingredients manufacturing units at Miryalaguda (Telangana) and Srikakulam (AP).

The US FDA has issued form-483 with three observations after the re-audit at Miryalaguda facility during last month. The re-inspection report of the third unit at Srikakulam will be ready by the end of this month. When asked about the companys plans on the ANDAs filed from these units, DRL spokesperson declined to comment.

We need time to study the US FDA assessment. Our immediate focus is on responding to the observation letter in proper fashion, the spokesperson said.

According to Nomura research analyst Saion Mukherjee, DRL should submit the response to satisfy the US FDA in an adequate manner within 15 days.

The regulator may also extend the time if needed. The re-inspection may not affect the new launches of the company for financial year 2017-18, but it may face delay in launching the products filed from these sites.

It may also prepare fresh plans to go for side transfers in fiscal year 2018-19. Analysts are waiting for the contents of the form-483 to revisit revenue estimates of the company.

Image used for representation purpose only.

Photograph: Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters
In a few years from now, India will be looking at an entirely different type of military adversary across the borders, in our waters, in the air, in space and in our communication networks, says Nitin Pai.

What caught public attention recently was the announcement that Chinas defence outlays have crossed a trillion yuan ($151 billion) for the first time, albeit growing at a slower 7 per cent in line with slower economic growth expectations.

As usual, foreign analysts complained that the figures were opaque, and if you were to count pensions and military research and development allocations, the real defence expenditure would be around 50 per cent higher.

But lets face it: To the extent that revealing how much you spend on defence is part of defence -- in that you deter adversaries by showing how strong you are -- how transparent you want to be is a matter of strategy.

The United States might deter its adversaries by showing off how much it is spending on acquiring awesome technological might. China, on the other hand, has calculated that being inscrutable works to its advantage.

While we do not know how much China is spending on defence, we know a couple of things: First, that Beijing is emphasising expansion of maritime power and second, that it is signalling that it will not -- as of now -- get into a spending race with the United States.

We should expect the Chinese naval forces to resist the supremacy of the US navy in the Western Pacific and increasingly assert their power in the Indian Ocean.

The Peoples Liberation Armys Navy has already acquired a submarine fleet and anti-ship missiles to challenge the US Navys surface fleet, and is now investing in a surface fleet that can project power further away from its shores.

While Indian defence circles have been aware of Chinas maritime push for some time now, what has gone largely unnoticed is that President Xi Jinping has rolled out deep structural reforms to the Chinese armed forces.

While India has been hemming and hawing about appointing a chief of defence staff (CDS) or improving the teeth-to-tail ratio of the armed forces, President Xi has ordered changes that can dramatically alter the PLAs war-fighting capabilities.

The changes are big enough to call for a wholesale review of Indias defence structure beyond what the Kargil Review Commission advised.

Heres how the PLA has changed: First, the army, navy, air force and missile force have been reconstituted into five joint theatre commands.

Like the United States, the theatre commanders will report directly to the civilian-political leadership, as will the service chiefs. This is a structure optimised for fighting modern wars.

Second, the Central Military Commission, the military high command, has been restructured by breaking up the four general staff departments and giving the top leadership direct control over its 15 constituent organisations.

Third, the Chinese government commenced the demobilisation of 300,000 PLA personnel, most of them from the army and half of them officers. The reductions will mostly come from non-combat units, but it is possible that some infantry units will face cuts too.

Beijing is doing this amid open protests by PLA veterans across the country over the past few years, complaining about inadequate and unpaid pensions and failure to provide them the promised civilian jobs.

PLA pensions depend not on rank but domicile: Two soldiers with the same rank and same length of service can get extremely different pensions depending on whether they are domiciled in rural or urban areas.

President Xi has not let the slowing economy and fewer jobs to come in the way of getting the PLA into fighting shape.

Fourth, President Xi has taken the anti-corruption campaign to go after top brass: Two former vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission have been arrested for selling positions and 42 high-ranking officers have been purged.

That this has coincided with President Xis political power grab should not detract from the fact that corrupt generals have been brought to book.

Finally, the PLA is now amid the deepest drive yet to divest itself of commercial activities.

It was not unusual for PLA units to run factories, own companies and preside over real-estate empires. The revenues from these activities would not go back to the treasury, but instead support formal PLA activities and line the pockets of its officers and commissars.

It will take some of these changes to take effect and success is likely to be uneven. Even if the journey is of a thousand miles, China has taken the first step.

Unfortunately, the common Indian response to profound military changes across the Himalayas has been to say Oh, they can do it because they have an authoritarian government.

Yet, the reality is, facing similar political and fiscal challenges as India, the Chinese government has taken a purposeful approach to military reform. They are acting in the supreme national interest.

The sense of urgency that the Kargil Review Committee sought to impart 15 years ago does not seem to manifest itself in our defence planning circles even today.

Its now been reduced to whether or not New Delhi will appoint a permanent Chief of Defence Staff, as if appointing one officer who wears one more star is a substitute for structural reforms that were deemed necessary a decade and a half ago.

Its worse when it is suggested that raising a new mountain corps is an adequate response to the next generation PLA.

In a few years from now, India will be looking at an entirely different type of military adversary across the borders, in our waters, in the air, in space and in our communication networks.

We can seek refuge in our political and bureaucratic excuses, but let us be clear that our current path and pace of modernisation will tilt the balance of military power to Chinas advantage in less than a decade.

Our nuclear arsenal will deter a direct major conventional attack, but it is unlikely to prevent coercion, indirect conflict or a steady erosion of our geopolitical footprint.

So no, we will not have a repeat of 1962. We will have an entirely different fight on our hands. And we are not going to be ready for it.

Image: People's Liberation Army officers arrive at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 4, 2016, ahead of the opening ceremony of the National People's Congress. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters.

The writer is the co-founder and director of Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.
It would be far more sensible for AAP to build on what they have achieved than to destroy what credibility they have by floating wild conspiracy theories, says Sankrant Sanu.

IMAGE: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, right, with Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh, addresses a press conference in New Delhi, March 15, 2016. Photograph: PTI Photo

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal excels in political theatre.

It was this that built up the hype of AAP winning the election in Goa and Punjab.

An AAP Goa party account tweeted that an 'internal survey' showed they were storming to victory with 41.9% of the vote share in Goa.

AAP's national spokesman Raghav Chadha claimed on national TV that he would resign if AAP got less than 85 seats in Punjab.

In the end, AAP got only 6.3% of the vote in Goa and 20 seats in Punjab.

While all parties show bravado leading up to the elections, most concede gracefully once the results are announced.

However, Kejriwal upped the ante on theatrics where he claimed large-scale tampering in the electronic voting machines may have led to 20% to 25% of the AAP votes in Punjab being shifted to the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine.

These kind of wild allegations by a sitting chief minister turn this into dangerous theatre that undermines confidence in the entire democratic process.

They need to be laid to rest.

As someone with a background in computer science, I am quite aware of the limitations of technology. Almost anything can be hacked with persistence.

However, there are several layers of safeguards in the EVM system.

To hack anything, one needs to have access to it, either through a network or physically.

The EVMs are isolated machines, they are not connected to the Internet or any other network.

They are also physically secured, using processes learnt from the much more voluminous storage of physical ballots.

India conducts the biggest elections on the planet, often times in very difficult conditions.

The electoral process has evolved to accommodate that scale and complexity.

While the EC itself has come out to call the allegations of tampering 'wild and baseless', there are other non-technical ways to gauge whether the democratic process is working, at least at a macro level.

The first and foremost is a peaceful transition of power.

While the BJP may have had genuine concerns about the process in 2009 when the United Progressive Alliance retained power, the results of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 put the concerns to rest.

This is a case when the UPA, which was in power, was swept out all over India, retaining a mere 44 seats.

If widespread EVM tampering were possible by the power-bearers, those results would be highly unlikely.

There are three main power centres involved in the conduct of elections.

One is the Election Commission, which is an independent body; the other is the state government, which supplies most of the local administrative and security support; and the third is the government at the Centre, which appoints the election commissioners and may supplement administrative and security resources.

Finally, the parties and their representatives are themselves closely involved in the process of testing and sealing of the EVMs.

During the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, the UPA was in power at the Centre. Since it had been there for two terms, the election commissioners were also appointed during its tenure.

In Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends most MPs to the Lok Sabha, the Samajwadi Party was in power.

Despite none of the power centres being in its control, the BJP won 71 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2014 with a 42.3% vote share in the state.

The results decimated the Congress whose seat tally came down from 21 to 2 and the Bahujan Samaj Party lost all 20 of its seats. Even the Samajwadi Party tally came down from 23 to only 5.

If large-scale EVM tampering were possible by those in power, the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 would have been the best place to do so, to prevent the BJP from coming to power.

What, then, of the just-concluded assembly elections which the BJP won by a landslide, winning 312 out of 403 seats in UP with 39.7% of the vote. Note that of the three power centres, only the central government had changed from the UPA to the National Democratic Alliance.

Chief Election Commissioner ,strong>Syed Nasim Zaidi had been appointed to the Election Commission in 2012 by the UPA government.

The SP was still in power in UP, exercising strong control over the state administration and police.

Yes, the BJP was in power at the Centre, but even so its vote share is hardly incredible. It actually came down from the 42.3% it secured in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In terms of seats it had won 71 out of 80 -- 88.75% of them -- Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and won 312 out of 403 -- 77.4% -- of the seats in the 2017 polls.

Of course, assembly and Parliamentary elections are different, but the point is that the voting percentage the BJP got in UP was certainly very achievable; it had obtained a similar result barely three years ago.

Notably, BSP leader Mayawati did not throw around allegations of rigging after the 2014 elections, as she has done now. Perhaps the assembly results jolted her to the possibility of political oblivion.

But she also made the allegations, because the allegations could appear more credible.

As I said earlier, the best test of an electoral system is in the transfer of power.

When the BJP controlled none of the power centres in 2014, allegations of electoral rigging would not have had even emotional credibility, but since it is now the ruling party at the Centre (though it neither controlled the Election Commission nor the state government), the allegations, even if irrational, can carry some emotional weight among her supporters.

Which brings us back to Kejriwal.

Kejriwal has repeatedly been prone to wild allegations including ones in which he was sent to jail as a result of a defamation case filed by Nitin Gadkari.

But his reasons for attacking EVMs, the Election Commission, and the credibility of the entire democratic process by his theatrics, are far more insidious.

When a party claims its 'survey' says it is getting 42% of the vote(external link) but polls only 6%, there are only two real options.

Either it is really stupid to be unable to gauge the difference between a landslide sentiment, which is what a 42% vote translates to, and a barely ran (AAP lost almost all of its deposits in Goa).

Or it was aware of the ground reality, but was outright lying.

Now I don't believe AAP is that stupid. Why would it lie to that extent?

A new party needs to project the real possibility of winning. It needs this to raise funds, enthuse volunteers, get good candidates. It needs to create a buzz.

For all that, some exaggeration is natural.

AAP has also been buoyed by its success in Delhi and has had ambitions of extending it elsewhere.

However, Delhi is really just a city, despite its statehood, although it gets more media coverage because of being the capital and the focus of the national and international media.

This give AAP disproportionate coverage, much more than a regional party -- say, the Biju Janata Dal which is more significant than AAP in that it rules a major state, Odisha -- gets.

This creates hubris and a sense that replicating the Delhi success elsewhere is easily possible.

This exaggerated sense of self and hype gets the party manufacturing, then believing, its own propaganda.

When it all comes tumbling down, like in Goa and Punjab, rather than face reality, Arvind Kejriwal has chosen the easy way out -- to create conspiracy stories of tampered EVMs.

As I said, the BJP's success in UP is easily explained, and it did lose significant seats in Goa and Punjab where Kejriwal alleges tampering.

In the 2017 elections, the Shiromani Akali Dal won about 25% of the vote and the BJP about 5%, down from about 35% and 7% in the 2012 Punjab assembly elections.

AAP alleges the SAD-BJP stole 20% to 25% of its votes by EVM tampering. This would imply the voter base of an old entrenched party in Punjab like the SAD would practically disappear in one assembly cycle. This is hardly credible.

Even the Congress, with all its problems, still got about 19% of the votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Also, if a party had the ability and intent to do that scale of tampering, why wouldn't it go for an outright win?

If anything, AAP has had remarkable success in Punjab and even in Goa for a first-time party.

Getting 25% and 6% of the vote respectively is no small feat.

It would be far more sensible for AAP to build on what they have achieved than to destroy what credibility they have by floating wild conspiracy theories, if only to justify their own earlier exaggerations.

Parties are built over decades, not a couple of years.

Getting votes is not like manipulating a Twitter trend for a day.

While he excels at political theatre, perhaps a few steady, mature hands on Kejriwal's shoulder may help the most.

That would be good for AAP, and for Indian democracy.

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This historic judgement brought the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace into the mainstream discourse. Given the achingly slow pace of social progress in India, this is no small cause.



IMAGE: A demonstrator takes part in a New Delhi protest rally in December 2012. Photograph: Mansi Thapliyal/Reuters.

In 1997, the Supreme Court broke new ground for the cause of gender equality by setting out the first explicit definition of sexual harassment in the workplace and guidelines to deal with it.

Twenty years on, how do we assess its legacy?



First, lets recognise that this judgment -- which came to be known as the Vishaka judgment/guidelines after the primary non-government organisation that moved a public interest litigation -- marked an emphatic leap forward for the cause of womens rights for multiple reasons.



One, it went some way towards rectifying a depressing saga of lower court injustice against a woman, a gutsy Rajasthani grassroots community worker, who was gang-raped by upper caste men for trying to prevent another crime, a child marriage.



For another, the Vishaka guidelines, delineated by a three-member bench headed by then chief justice of India, J S Verma, turned the klieg light on an embarrassing truth in the post-economic reform India Rising story. That, reflecting our deep-rooted societal misogyny, the average Indian workplace is hostile at worst and unappealing at best for the average working woman.



The Vishaka judgments definition of workplace harassment was broad enough to attract at least one of three sections of the Indian Penal Code. Importantly, it brought lewd behaviour -- with which almost every professional woman is undoubtedly familiar -- and not just physical contact within the definition of harassment.



The guidelines also stipulated that organisations were to set up complaints committees headed by a woman with women comprising at least half its members.



Because of its pioneering nature, the judgment was assiduously covered by the media. But -- unsurprisingly perhaps -- the code and guidelines were observed mostly in the breach by corporations large and small.



With no penalty for violating the guidelines, the issue never became a critical one for Indian organisations, even as more women were joining the workforce and competing with men on equal terms.

Ironically, entrenched gender discrimination may have played a part in the underwhelming response: The lack of women in sufficiently senior positions to make up a credible complaints committee cohort.



Thus, in Indias mostly male business milieu, the rampant practice of workplace harassment became a non-issue. Industry chamber chiefs, breathless in their endorsement to global investors of Indias status as the worlds fastest-growing democracy, never thought it worthwhile to chivvy their members to improve the environment for women employees.

Cases like Infosyss dismissal of Phaneesh Murthy for sexual harassment in 2002 were honourable exceptions that understandably grabbed the headlines.



It took 16 years for the issue to engage Parliament, that too after a non-workplace related gang-rape and death of a para-medical student in 2012.

With protests on Raisina Hill making the country the focus of international opprobrium, Parliament passed in quick succession, tougher rape laws and a workplace harassment act.



The ponderously labelled Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, replaced the Vishaka guidelines (Justice Verma had a hand in framing this law too).



The act considerably expanded the scope of workplace harassment, the powers of the complaints committees, the responsibilities of organisations of a certain size to ensure gender-sensitive workplaces, and it set out timelines within which complaints must be disposed of. The Act also made it mandatory for firms to report sexual harassment cases in their annual reports.



The progress since then has been incremental but not discouraging. The statute has seen a bump in women coming forward to report. In FY16, Nifty 50 companies reported a 26 per cent increase in sexual harassment cases and the National Crime Records Data Bureau reported a doubling of such cases in 2015 over 2014, and a 50 per cent rise in harassment in work-related premises.



Yet entrenched chauvinism means that sexual harassment, like rape, remains an under-reported crime. An Indian Bar Association survey this year said 70 per cent of women did not report sexual harassment by superiors for fear of reprisals.

Isolation within an organisation for a complainant also discourages women from coming forward.



The princely fine of Rs 50,000 for employers that do not implement the provisions of the Act is a mild deterrent.

Several surveys show that almost half of information technology and advertising and media companies, which employ large numbers of women, do not have complaints committees.

This included Tehelka, which, ironically, organised a huge seminar on womens rights just after which its proprietor was accused of sexual misconduct.



Small and medium enterprises, which account for the bulk of employment and operate under the radar, can be guaranteed to be in violation of the Act, since compliance checks will be an unwieldy task.



For all that, the Vishaka guidelines set off a process -- however imperfect -- that brought the issue into the mainstream discourse. The attention to cases like those at TERI, Tehelka, Infosys and Indian Hotels have shown that.

Given the achingly slow pace of social progress in India, this is no small cause to have celebrated on International Womens Day recently.
'Responding with outrage is not enough,' says Aakar Patel.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Usually this column appears with the disclaimer that though the writer works for Amnesty India, these are his personal views. This column is Amnesty's view.

For those who watched appalled as Donald Trump bellowed to victory in the US presidential election on a platform of fear, xenophobia and hate, there was always the consolation that his poisonous campaign rhetoric might be a mere vote-winning strategy.

Style over substance. Just words. And the hope that his demonisation of entire groups of people would not have any real consequences.

Yet, in India, people have watched with concern reports of hate crimes against Indians and people of Indian origin in the past few weeks.

President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has clearly contributed to an atmosphere of xenophobia in the country, spurring violence against people from minority communities.

The new President has also swiftly backed up his hateful discourse with a series of concrete policy decisions that pose a grave and immediate threat to human rights in the USA and beyond.

A series of repressive executive orders passed Trump in his first two months in office will have far-reaching, catastrophic, consequences. And this is not just a US problem -- far from it.

The policies of Trump's White House will have a ripple effect in all corners of the globe, with the most vulnerable hit the hardest.

It should come as little surprise that Trump's two main targets in the Oval Office are the same ones he singled out on the campaign trail: Muslims and refugees. If you are a refugee who also happens to be Muslim, so much the worse.

With the January 27 executive order, 'Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals,' Trump declared war on Muslim refugees around the world. Its haphazard implementation swiftly sowed fear and chaos.

There was a brief reprieve on February 3, when a US district court issued a nation-wide order blocking the blatantly discriminatory measure, but it was short-lived.

On March 6, following weeks of suspense, the White House issued a revised executive order.

Despite the tinkering at the edges, it is a thinly veiled affront to the judiciary and remains a Muslim ban by any other name.

With the stroke of a pen, the President again shut the door to anyone -- including refugees -- from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Not only are these all predominantly Muslim countries; they are places where most people seeking asylum are fleeing conflict and human rights violations.

By slightly narrowing the scope of the new executive order, the Trump administration may have remedied some of its predecessor's constitutional flaws. But it remains blatantly discriminatory and reinstates many of the most repellent elements of the original.

Trump claims to be blocking the entry of 'terrorists' who would harm the USA. But in reality, there is no data to support the view that refugees -- Muslim or otherwise -- pose more risk of committing acts of terrorism than citizens.

Trump also imposed an annual refugee cap of 50,000. With Barack Obama's administration having already pledged to admit 110,000 refugees in the current fiscal year, this order will affect 60,000 vulnerable people in 2017 alone.

The fact that this comes amid a global emergency in which 65 million people are displaced due to war and persecution underlines its callousness.

But in the era of 'fake news' and trumped-up 'alternative facts,' the truth is clearly of no interest to the President.

For the refugees and migrants facing real life-and-death decisions, pretense and fakery are not luxuries they can indulge in.

Since the travel ban first took effect, Amnesty International and others have encountered tales of terrible suffering in its wake in various countries around the world.

Families rent asunder, lives put on hold, hopes of new beginnings crushed overnight.

Like the man who went to Iran for his father's funeral and was suddenly faced with the prospect of not being allowed to return home to the US.

Or the Yemeni family in New York whose one-year-old baby is now stuck thousands of miles away in Malaysia because the travel ban forced them to leave her behind.

Or the persecuted Sudanese journalist living underground in Egypt, fearing for his life, who is now questioning how safe Trump's USA would be to seek asylum in.

Then there are large numbers of refugees in other countries -- overwhelmingly in the 'global South' -- who may now feel abandoned by the international community.

Will Trump's travel ban prompt a knock-on effect of those host countries increasing forcible expulsions of refugees?

Amnesty International's I Welcome campaign has been a powerful platform for millions of global citizens who choose to stand in solidarity with refugees.

Trump's border security policies, based on hatred and fear, are a direct confrontation to that movement.

In the six weeks since taking office, Donald Trump has waged all-out war on human rights. Responding with outrage is not enough.

It is the time, and the responsibility of all who hold those rights dear, to fight back.

Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. You can read Aakar's earlier columns here.

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'We will do it either by removing all the Constitutional hurdles or by mutual consent.'

IMAGE: Ayodhya MLA Ved Prakash Gupta, in the orange kurta, campaigns in Ayodhya; Photograph: kind courtesy: Ved Prakash Gupta/Facebook

Tareef teri nikli hai dil se, aayi hai lab pe lekar qawwali... Shirdi wale Sai Baba, aaya hai tere dar pe sawali... This memorable song from Amar Akbar Anthony greets you when you call Ved Prakash Gupta, the Bharatiya Janata Party's newly elected MLA from Ayodhya.

Gupta won the Ayodhya assembly seat by a handsome margin of 50,440 votes defeating his nearest rival, then Uttar Pradesh minister of state for forest Pawan Pandey of the Samajwadi Party.

So sweeping was Gupta's victory that he polled almost 49 per cent of the 217,488 votes (if you include the 1,544 votes recorded in the NOTA (none of the above) category).

Gupta, a first time member of the UP legislative assembly, discusses his victory and the construction of a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya with Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.

Who do you credit your victory to?

The welfare policies of the honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modiji and the blessings of our wonderful people has helped me win this seat from Prabhu Shri Ram's nagari (Lord Ram's birthplace).

Now that the BJP has a huge mandate in UP and there is a BJP government at the Centre, do you feel a Ram Mandir should be built in Ayodhya by 2022?

Not just the people of India, but the people belonging to the Hindu community across India worship Prabhu Ram. It is a matter of our belief that a Ram Mandir will be definitely built.

We will do it either by removing all the Constitutional hurdles or by mutual consent (of the Muslims and all parties involved in the dispute).

But before that, since the great people of Ayodhya and Lord Ram has given us their blessings, we will work for the development, welfare, beautification and cleanliness of Ayodhya.

What plans do you have for Ayodhya's development?

Ayodhya is one of the most sacred pilgrimages of Hindus, so the most important thing will be Ayodhya's development as a tourist attraction.

This will help increase not only earnings of the temples in the town, but also improve the livelihood and employment opportunities for the people on the principle of sabka saath, sabka vikas (Narendra Modi's clarion call since 2014 when he campaigned for the Lok Sabha elections).

The other grand plan is to develop Ayodhya as a religious-spiritual town so that we can bring back Ayodhya's lost grandeur and prestige.

We will develop all the dilapidated temples and places of importance that have their origin in the time of Prabhu Ram.

We would like the pilgrims who come to Ayodhya to go back with beautiful memories and spread them when they go back home.

Would you agree with the view that Muslims voted in significant numbers for the BJP and that helped, to some extent, the party win an overwhelming 312 out of 403 seats?

Modiji and our party raised the issue of triple talaq during the elections.

That issue started a debate in the country and that has helped many Muslim women believe in us and our sincerity hoping that we will help them stop this malpractice in their society.

Muslim women have reposed their faith in Modiji's leadership.

What about Muslim men? Didn't they vote for Modi?

Yes. The Muslim community has seen Modiji's ground work. Not just Muslim women, every section of Muslims is impressed by Modiji's development agenda.

How much of this impression contributed to the BJP's victory in this election is difficult to say, but I can say confidently that even Muslims have blessed us for our good work and issues the BJP has been raising.

Modiji's nara (clarion call) is sabka sath, sabka vikas. We do not discriminate against anybody, and gradually everybody will realise our sincerity.

On what issues did you fight the election in Ayodhya?

I have been president of the regional traders association for the last 25 years. I am socially connected with the people in my constituency.

Because of my image as a clean, non-corrupt, person, the people of Ayodhya were rooting for my candidature.

Once my party decided to field me from here the people fulfilled their long cherished desire to have me in the UP assembly.

I have never worked for my personal or family's benefit.

My business is looked after by my children. I spent my time doing social work among the people.

I never joined politics for personal gratification or greed.

I believe in what the BJP stands for and will continue to work to spread the party's message.

That is what impressed my voters and Ayodhya's people the most.

Also, the two-and-a-half year of Modiji's rule and the development he ushered through his policies left no doubt in the mind of people that only the BJP can help the state get rid of its backwardness, poverty, corruption and goonda raj.

In these elections, the BJP got the huge support of voters even from rural areas where we were considerably weaker.

The BJP's Sankalp Patra helped us bridge the gap with rural voters.

All these factors combined together to help me win the Ayodhya seat.

Do you see yourself getting a ministry given that you come from Ayodhya and you also defeated a minister?

This is a decision best left to the national leadership of our party. I have nothing to say in this matter.

If the national leadership thinks that giving me a cabinet berth will help the development of Ayodhya, then I may get an opportunity.

But even if I don't get it (a ministerial berth), then too I will continue with my work for Ayodhya and the party.

I have been elected by the people to work for Ayodhya's development and I will not disappoint them.

Who should be UP chief minister?

The way the people of Uttar Pradesh showered their blessings and faith in the BJP and honourable prime minister by giving us 323 seats, I think our honourable party president Amit Shah sahab and Narendra Modi sahab will take a very considered and well-thought decision to give this state a chief minister capable of creating a clean image for the state.

Would you and the people of UP welcome Rajnath Singh back as chief minister?

We will welcome any person who is given an opportunity to serve the state by the honourable Narendra Modiji and Amit Shahji.

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Two Indian clerics, including the head priest of New Delhis Nizamuddin Dargah, have gone missing in Pakistan, prompting India to take up the matter with the Pakistani government.

According to official sources in New Delhi, Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore and were to catch a flight from there to Karachi on Wednesday.

As per their families, while Asif was allowed to go to Karachi, Nazim was stopped at the Lahore airport on grounds of incomplete travel papers.

While Nazim went missing from Lahore airport, Asif went missing after arriving at the Karachi airport, a source said.

The matter has been taken up with the Pakistan government both in New Delhi as well as through the Indian mission in Islamabad, the source said.

The duo had gone to Karachi to meet their relatives on March 8 before travelling to Lahore to visit the shrine.

Exchanges between clerics of the Nizamuddin Dargah and the Daata Darbar are part of a regular tradition.

Image: Asif Nizami, the chief priest, and Nazim Nizami had gone to visit the famous Daata Darbar shrine in Lahore.
'Wait for 2019, there will be no space for the BJP in UP'

Amit Agnihotri reports.

Strategic alliances, rather than building up a national narrative against the Bharatiya Janata Party, should be the focus of the Congress ahead of the 2019 general election, party strategists feel.

The Congress, which was keen to present the recent five assembly polls as a 3:2 match, had to be content with 1:4 after the BJP manipulated smaller parties to form governments in Goa and Manipur.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi charged the BJP of using money power to block his party from coming to power in the two states.

After Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar suggested going back to the 2003 formula under which party chief Sonia Gandhi forged strategic alliances and took back power from the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre in 2004, senior leader C P Joshi expressed similar views.

Noting the political narrative has changed in the country, Joshi cited the example of the Bihar assembly polls in 2015 where a Janata Dal-United-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress grand alliance defeated the BJP-led NDA.

According to Joshi, a similar formation could have stopped the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, but Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati played spoilsport.

Doing some number crunching, the Congress leader said that while the BJP vote share in UP dropped from 43 per cent in 2014 to 39 per cent in 2017, the SP plus Congress vote share is around 29 per cent.

If the BSP's 23 percent was added, the SP, BSP, Congress combined vote share would be 53 per cent, much ahead of the saffron party.

"Wait for 2019, there will be no space for the BJP in UP," said Joshi.

In contrast, Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Sitaram Yechury favoured building up a national narrative against the BJP through a dialogue between like minded parties and public movements on the ground.

According to Yechury, doing maths is a more academic exercise while mobilising popular support in favour of a political philosophy is what will educate voters and bring about a change in her/his preferences.

Citing the example of West Bengal, where the Congress had an informal seat adjustment with Yechury's party, Joshi said a convergence of non-BJP votes will have to be worked at.

"We will do everything that is required to challenge and expose Modi politics, but political challenges vary from state to state," said Joshi.

When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance defeated the BJP-led NDA in the 2004 national polls, the Left parties supported the formation from outside till 2008 when they pulled out over the India-US civil nuclear deal.

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Calcutta high court Justice CS Karnan has demanded Rs 14 crore from Chief Justice of India JS Khehar and six other senior judges as compensation for disturbing his mind and normal life.

In a two page letter written to seven judges who were part of the special bench which had issued warrant against Justice Karnan, he said, You have constituted an unconstitutional bench after breaking the Indian constitutional law and passed a suo motu contempt order and restrained me from judicial and administrative work and that order was passed with malafide intention in order to harass a Dalit Judge (myself).

Judge means a dignified person of law who has to hear both sides of the case and pass order in accordance with law. Hence, I request you (CJI and other six judges) to cancel the unconstitutional bench and restore my normal work. The seven judges should pay compensation, a sum of Rs 14 crores since you have disturbed my mind and my normal life, besides you have insulted me in the general public consisting of a population of 120 crores in India due to lack of legal knowledge, the letter reads.

Karnans letter comes six days after the Supreme Court issued a bailable warrant against him for failing to appear for contempt proceedings despite its notice.

The contempt proceedings have been initiated against Justice Karnan for writing letters to various judges including the prime minister, accusing several judges of corruption.

A seven judge bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar had directed the Director General of West Bengal Police to execute the warrants on the judge to ensure his presence on March 31 after he failed to appear even today despite being served with contempt notice.

Bengals top cop serves bailable warrant to Justice Karnan

West Bengal Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purakayastha on Friday served a bailable warrant to Justice C S Karnan of Calcutta high court which was issued by the Supreme Court in a contempt case on March 10.

The DGP visited the residence of Justice Karnan in New Town area along with Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar and DIG (Criminal Investigation Department) Rajesh Kumar and handed him over the warrant.

The DGP handed over the bailable warrant to Justice Karnan at his New Town residence this morning, a senior official of the state police force said.

A large police team was posted outside Karnans residence when the three senior police officials visited the place.

In an unprecedented order, the Supreme Court had issued the arrest warrant against Justice Karnan to ensure his presence before it on March 31 in a contempt case.

Hitting back at the apex court, Justice Karnan had stated that they have no locus standi to issue a bailable warrant against a sitting judge and alleged that he was being targeted for being a dalit.

Justice Karnan also issued an order of registration of a case under Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 against Chief Justice of India Justice J S Khehar and six other judges.

-- With inputs from PTI
The move was taken to honour Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him at his friend at a bar.

IMAGE: A picture of Srinivas Kuchibhotla surrounded by flowers during a vigil in honour of him at Crossroads Park in Bellevue, Washington. Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

Amid increasing hate crime incidents against Indian-Americans, particularly the Sikhs in the United States, the state of Kansas has recognised March 16 as Indian-American Appreciation Day.

The move was taken to honour Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, an Indian techie who was killed last month in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Kuchibhotla was killed when 51-year-old US Navy veteran Adam Purinton opened fire at him and his friend Alok Madasani at a bar in Olathe on February 22 before yelling get out of my country. Madasani and American national Ian Grillot were injured in the attack.

Asserting that the senseless act of violence will not divide or define the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said, The unique contribution of Indian community has made Kansas a better place. We are very, very thankful to them.

These actions can never overshadow our shared values and believes, the dignity of mankind...We will continue to welcome and support the Indian community in the State of Kansas, Brownback said at an event in Topeka, the state capital.

Madasani and Grillot also attended the event to commemorate the life of Kuchibhotla.

IMAGE: A man holds a sign during a vigil in honor of Srinivas Kuchibhotla. Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

Brownback publicly apologised for the loss of life and injury to Madasani.

Id like to thank Ian Grillot for his heroic efforts to intervene, and I wish Alok and Ian both a speedy recovery, he said at the event during which he issued a proclamation to recognise March 16 as the Indian American Appreciation Day.

We find peace in the Sanskrit mantra Satyamev Jayate or truth alone triumphs. With this proclamation today, I am declaring Indian American Day in the state of Kansas, the governor said.

This is a deplorable act that happened. We will not let it define us as people, he said.

Srinivas, embodied what it means to be a Kansan, Brownback said, adding that his is a similar story of tens of thousands of Indian Americans who have called Kansas home over the generations.

Moving forward, Kansas remain committed to standing with the Indian community. We will always reject the acts of violence and harm. We reject hatred in all its forms, he said.

Brownback said Kansas is committed to protect all its neighbours and its guests.

In his brief remarks, Madasani said the proclamation is an honour that Kuchibhotla would be proud of.

Meanwhile, India House, Houston held a candle light vigil in honour of Kuchibhotla.

To celebrate true American spirit, India House has also decided to honour Grillot, who tried to stop the shooter.

The candle light vigil was attended for a large gathering of both Indian Americans, friends and several elected officials.

Vipin Kumar, executive director of India House said, the community will work toward combating ignorance and blind hatred and promoting the Hindu values of peace and love.

We conclude this event today with a message of hope, love and peace, Kumar said.

And with the resolve to fight hate.
Keeping an eye on the 2019 elections, the PM has asked leaders to connect with the youth and hold events in each panchayat and municipal ward across the country. Archis Mohan reports

The Narendra Modi government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party are putting in place elaborate plans to mark three years of the government at the Centre. The campaign is expected to contribute to the governments and partys push for re-election in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The focus of the celebrations is going to be an appeal to party workers to take the message of the Modi governments garib kalyan agenda and related schemes to the remotest areas.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Modi cautioned the BJP parliamentary party, which comprises all its 330-odd Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members, against overconfidence after the wins in the recently held assembly polls.

Na baithunga, na baithne doonga (Neither will I rest nor will let you), Modi said, asking the MPs to prepare for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The PM asked the party to make youths the ambassadors of his governments works.

Modi said youngsters depend on mobile phones more than newspapers and TV channels to get information, and stressed the need to use smart phones to tap them. The PM also asked the party leaders to contact the youngsters while they are still in Class XII, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said.

The PM briefly attended the Rajya Sabha proceedings after the parliamentary party meeting. He spent about 15 minutes in the House. The Question Hour on Thursdays is reserved for questions relating to the prime minister and his office.

While members of the ruling party stood up as the PM entered the House, some opposition members jeered him, saying dekho dekho kaun aaya hai, Hindustan ka sher aaya hai.

As for the BJPs plans, from April 6 (its foundation day) to April 14 (the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar), the party will hold events in each panchayat and municipal ward across the country. This will also be an effort to consolidate the BJPs outreach among the Dalits. The PM asked party leaders to publicise Ambedkars works and contributions, besides popularising the BHIM App.

Party workers and leaders will take part in a Swachh Bharat campaign on the foundation day. BJP MPs and legislators will also be required to spend 72 hours in a village in their constituencies in the run-up to May 26, when the Modi government will mark its three years. He said polling booths were the real power centres and ministers to legislators should visit polling booths.

BJP chief Amit Shah said the public has supported the Centres demonetisation move, as reflected in the recent poll wins. The next target is 2019, he said.

The BJP parliamentary party also passed a resolution thanking voters for their support and also partys workers for their efforts under the leadership of Modi and Shah.

Image: A BJP supporter wearing a Modi mask celebrates the party's victory in Uttar Pradesh. Photograph: PTI Photo
Observing that conduct of public figures must be beyond reproach, the Calcutta high court on Friday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct a preliminary probe into the Narada sting operation in which some Trinamool Congress leaders were seen allegedly taking money.

The court also directed the CBI to register an FIR, if required, after completion of the preliminary enquiry and initiate formal investigations thereafter.

Reacting to the order, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the Trinamool Congress and her government will challenge it before the Supreme Court. "The TMC will fight the order both politically and legally."

She termed the court order to stop the Kolkata Police investigation into the matter as "unfortunate".

The Opposition parties in West Bengal seized upon the judgement and demanded immediate removal of "tainted" ministers from the state Cabinet.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre and Justice T Chakraborti directed the CBI to take possession of all material and devices related to the sting operation within 24 hours and to conclude the preliminary enquiry within another 72 hours.

It said that given the persons against whom allegations have been made are ministers, MPs and other senior leaders from the state, it would be just to direct the CBI, and not a state agency, to conduct a preliminary enquiry.

The court also observed that the CBI was the most suitable agency for conducting an independent probe into the matter.

The Narada sting tapes, which were released to different news organisations before the 2016 Assembly elections in West Bengal, showed some leaders allegedly taking money.

The division bench noted that a report by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, had said that the tapes were untampered.

Mathew Samuel, editor of Narada News, had told the court that the recordings were done using an iPhone, which were transferred to a laptop and were then stored in a pendrive. All these devices were taken possession of by a committee set up by the high court.

Three petitions had been filed before the high court seeking independent probe into the sting tapes after examining the genuineness of the recordings.

The division bench also directed the state government to initiate disciplinary action against IPS officer S M H Mirza, who was allegedly seen in one of the tapes.

Concurring with the judgement, Justice Chakraborti observed that corruption is a reprehensible crime and that it shakes the confidence of the people.

Adding to the judgement read by acting Chief Justice Mhatre, the brother judge observed that society at large has a stake in the investigation.

Samuel had told the high court that the tapes made in 2014 were released in March 2016.

Banerjee, who stood by her ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Sovan Chatterjee and Firad Hakim, alleged that the sting operation was staged and the video released at the BJP office.

"Of course our party and government will go to the Supreme Court for justice. If we think we have not got justice, we have the right to go to the higher court," she told reporters.

Opposition parties welcomed the verdict.

"We welcome the verdict of the honourable court. The state government and Trinamool Congrss had tried to hush up the matter by misusing the police administration.

We demand that the tainted ministers should be immediately removed from the cabinet and the TMC MPs purportedly seen taking money in the video should resign," BJP secretary Rahul Sinha said.

Leader of opposition Abdul Mannan said, "I would like to ask the chief minister whether she would help in conducting the CBI investigation or again hit the streets on this issue. The TMC which claims to be a symbol of honesty has turned into a symbol of corruption," Mannan allged.

Communist Party of India-Marxist state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra too welcomed the court's order but hoped that the "political match fixing" between TMC and BJP would not halt the progress of the investigation.

"We welcome the high court verdict to conduct CBI inquiry on the #NaradaString. The TMC-BJP nexus must not be an impediment to conduct proper enquiry," Mishra tweeted.
Bubble, Daisy, Donald, Flipper, Molt, Olive and Popeye.

The seven Humboldt penguins that had been kept in the quarantine area of Mumbais Byculla zoo for seven months before being moved to the permanent enclosure on March 6, are all set for their public exposition on Saturday.

Since the civic authorities are yet to approve a proposal to approve an entry fee ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 150 to see the rare birds, the public can for now get to see them for only Rs 5, the cost of entering the zoo located in the heart of the commercial capital.

The enclosure officially inaugurated on Friday by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray whose idea it was to house the penguins in the city zoo.

Mumbai has thus become the first city to house Humboldt penguins, popularly known so because of the Humboldt current that flows north from Antarctica along the Pacific coast of South America, where the birds live.

Originally eight penguins, including five females, were procured from Coex Aquarium in Seoul on July 26, 2016, and brought to Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (popularly known as Byculla zoo). However, due to some bacterial infection, one of the penguins had died last October.

After being kept in a 250-square feet quarantine area, the flightless birds were moved permanently to the enclosure, which is spread over 1,800 sq ft and which consists of a water pool, accommodation area, air handling units and a chiller system to maintain temperatures between 12 to 14 degrees Celsius.

The penguins, each up to 70 cm tall and weighing up to 6 kg, were to be moved to the exhibit area earlier but it could not be done as the zoo authorities were awaiting reports of some microbiological test done on them.

Mid-Day newspaper reports that the penguins will be monitored round the clock by a team of four veterinarians comprising Dr Madhumita Kale, Dr Neha Shah, Dr Ganesh Atole and Dr Govind Mangnale.

Mid-day also quoted Dr Kale, who heads the team of vets, as saying: We feed them twice a day -- in the morning and evening. Every penguin eats around 700-800 gm of fish. We take the utmost care when it comes to their food. The fish is cleaned thoroughly. In two weeks or a month, we will send the fish used for feeding for testing at the Bombay Veterinary College.

As part of safety measures, visitors to the zoo will not be allowed to use flashlight while photographing the penguins.

Also, in order to prepare them for the crowds that may throng the zoo to see the exotic birds, small batches of people have been let into the enclosure.

So, go visit the zoo to meet Mumbai's new friends.

Photographs: Hitesh Harisinghani/Rediff.com
Here's a look at eight images that prove we live in an odd, odd world!

Dinosaur robots acting as receptionists greet a hotel employee demonstrating how to check-in to the hotel during a press preview for the newly-opening Henn na Hotel Maihama Tokyo Bay in Urayasu, east of Tokyo, Japan. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters

Participants wearing cosplay costumes attend the "Made in Asia" fair in Brussels, Belgium. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

Villagers whose feet are cast in cement blocks sit on a chair as part of four days of protest to draw attention to what they say is environmental damage to their farmland from a cement factory, in Rembang, Central Java, outside the presidential palace in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters

A cyclist takes part in the "World Naked Bike Ride" to defend the rights of cyclists to ride on the streets in safety, on Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

A man drinks champagne under the water at an open-air hot bath in Bogacs, Hungary. Photograph: Laszlo Balogh/Reuters

A model presents a creation from Moschino's Autumn/Winter 2017 women's collection during Milan Fashion Week in Milan, Italy. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

French Model Emeline Duhautoy poses with her collection of 1,679 stuffed toy cows she has been collecting for over seven years at her home in Saint-Omer, northern France. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

An employee demonstrates the Groove, "a wearable glove device that enhances the dancer's expression," at the Trade Show at the South by Southwest Music Film Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters
The Congress on Friday forced an adjournment of Rajya Sabha proceedings over the conduct of the Goa governor in inviting Bharatiya Janata Party to form the government in the state after she reportedly consulted Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Congress members alleged breach of propriety and constitutional norms in the consultations Goa Governor Mridula Sinha held with Jaitley. They stormed into the Well of the House raising slogans against murder of democracy, forcing Deputy Chairman P J Kurien to adjourn the House till noon.

Earlier when the House met for the day, Digvijaya Singh (Cong) said he has given a notice under rule 267 seeking setting aside of the business of the day to take up gross constitutional impropriety committed by Governor of Goa.

Singh read out from an interview Sinha gave to a newspaper in which she reportedly said she did not expect BJP to form the government but spoke to Jaitley before arriving at the decision to call the party to form the government ahead of the Congress which had emerged as the single largest party in elections.

Kurien said the conduct of a Governor can be discussed only on the basis of a substantive motion and he had disallowed Singhs notice under 267.

Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said the conduct of the governor was discussed when the Arunachal Pradesh issue was debated in the House.

Why dont you move a substantive motion, Kurien asked.

No. I have to go by rules. You can bring substantive motion, Chairman will consider it.

Azad said his party colleague Singh had not raised any issue with the conduct of the governor but merely stated what she had said in an interview.

In the interview, he said, the governor said she did not accept BJP to form the government and she had called Jaitley at 2130 hours on Sunday night before inviting BJP to form the government.

How can the governor seek permission of a Cabinet minister to form a government, Azad asked as Kurien insisted on a substantive motion for any discussion.

Singh said the House was supreme and a sense of members present can be taken and his notice under rule 267 converted into a substantive motion.

Anand Sharma of the Congress said the Constitution clearly defines the duties and powers of Governor in appointing chief minister and it does not anywhere state that the Governor is supposed to consult serving cabinet minister.

Constitution does not allow Governor to consult cabinet minister for government formation, he said. Kurien said if the Governor has violated the Constitution, a substantive motion can be brought.

You are going by a newspaper report. I am not bothered about that. I have made it very clear that if you feel that the Governor has violated any of the provision of Constitution, please bring a substantive motion. I cannot allow you to discuss the conduct of Governor, he said.

Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India-Marxist said a cabinet minister is answerable to House. To this, Kurien said if any minister has violated any provision of the Constitution, there can be a motion for that as well. We can discuss that. I have no problem.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the government is ready to discuss if the Congress was to bring a substantive motion. He went on to say that the opposition party by its continued protests was insulting the verdict of the people as also the ruling of the Chair.

Congress members then trooped into the Well shouting slogans against what they said was murder of democracy. Treasury benches also countered the slogan shouting.

Kurien again said he was not against any discussion. I am not denying or refusing any discussion... if you want to discuss (Governors conduct), please give a substantive motion. I will also request Chairman (to consider it) and then we can have a discussion anytime.

But Congress members continued to insist on a discussion. Singh said Jaitley is a member of the House and he can avail of his right to reply. He then went on to state that a substantive motion will be given.

Azad said the House should be adjourned for an hour for the substantive motion to be framed and submitted and the same can be discussed thereafter.

But this was not agreeable to the Chair or the treasury benches. As the slogan shouting continued, Kurien adjourned the House till 1200 hours.
Suspense remained on Bharatiya Janata Party's chief ministerial pick in Uttar Pradesh as newly-elected MLAs were all set to meet in Lucknow on Saturday to elect the leader, with Union Minister Manoj Sinha among the frontrunners.

"The new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh along with his Cabinet colleagues would take oath on March 19 at 5.00 PM at Kanshiram Smriti Upvan," Governor Ram Naik said in a statement in Lucknow.

State BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said that the legislature party meeting will be held on Saturday at Lok Bhavan -- the newly constructed chief minster's office located adjacent to the UP BJP office.

Central observers -- Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav -- will remain present at the meeting to elect the chief minister.

Besides Sinha, Home Minister and former state chief minister Rajnath Singh and state party chief Keshav Prasad Maurya are being projected as strong nominees for the post by their partymen.

All these leaders in their interactions with the media have played down their chances with Sinha turning poetic on Friday, citing a verse which translates as 'desires are treacherous, and change once fulfilled'.

"Naa mujhe kisi race kaa pata hai, naa main kisi race main hun (neither do I know about any race, nor am I in any race)," Sinha told reporters outside Parliament when asked if he was in the race to become the chief minister of the country's politically most important state.

Maurya, who was discharged following his hospitalisation on Thursday after he complained of uneasiness, is seen as a favourite if the party opts for an OBC face.

He parried questions and said that the state legislature party will decide on the chief minister on Saturday.

"Legislature party will decide who will be the chief minister. The oath taking ceremony will be on March 19 and all national leaders of the party will attend the ceremony," he told reporters.

"If the name of the new chief minister is revealed before the meeting of the newly-elected MLAs, then the relevance and sanctity of the meeting would be lost," he said.

The home minister, several leaders said, is a natural contender due to his profile and vast administrative experience.

With the BJP leadership often springing a surprise with its choice of state leaders like Manohar Lal Khattar and Vijay Rupani, both of whom were not among the favourites to lead governments in Haryana and Gujarat, sources said a relatively lesser known leader cannot be ruled out.

The central observers will most likely inform the MLAs about the BJP top brass' choice which will be subsequently endorsed at the meeting on Saturday.

UP government officials said that they have started preparations for the swearing-in ceremony. Kanshiram Smriti Upvan is being decked up for the event which is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and other top party leaders.

BJP vice-president Om Mathur, Maurya and senior party leaders are also likely to attend Saturday's meeting.

"The name of the new Uttar Pradesh chief minister will be known tomorrow at 4.00 pm," Maurya said.

With various pros and cons weighing heavily on mind, BJP top brass has taken its time to decide on the UP chief minister after results were decalred on March 11. The party bagged 325 seats along with its allies in the 403-member House.

The sources said that the party is extra cautious as it is returning to power in Uttar Pradesh after a 15-year hiatus. Moreover, in view of Lok Sabha election in 2019, the BJP cannot afford to take any wrong decision, said some party insiders when asked about the delay in declaring the CM's name.

After a stupendous win in the assembly election, the party can ill afford to lower its guard for 2019. Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha and is extremely important in the BJP's scheme of things.

Party insiders said that the overwhelming mandate has posed a fresh challenge for the BJP to meet sky-high expectations.

"The preparations for the swearing-in ceremony is going on and I have visited the spot to oversee it," BJP state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said.

People from all over the state and special invitees, whose list is yet to be finalised, are expected to take part in the ceremony.

In the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the BJP secured 312 seats, while its allies Apna Dal-Soneylal and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party got nine and four seats respectively. The Samajwadi Party bagged 47 seats, while its ally the Congress stooped to one of its lowest tallies with seven seats.

Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party could manage to get only 19 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative assembly.

-- UTTAR PRADESH ELECTIONS 2017
After its stellar poll show in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party will strive to rid the state of its 'Bimaru' tag as development is the way forward in Indian politics now, party president Amit Shah said on Friday.

The upcoming BJP government will erase the UP's `Bimaru' (laggard) label and end the caste bias in bureaucracy in the country's largest state, he said in Mumbai.

A decision on the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh will be taken on Saturday, Shah said.

Shah said that he will "never accept" the job of advising the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.

"I will never accept this job," Shah said, when asked what would he do if he were asked to advise Rahul Gandhi after the Congress' poor show in the recent elections.

Asked if he and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had no reason to worry as long as the Congress was led by Rahul Gandhi, Shah said, "We don't depend on our rivals' weakness."

To a question about his "earlier stint as a stock broker", Shah said, "I earned enough money then. ("Paisa toh maine theek thak kamaya tha").

On his relationship with Modi, Shah said, "My relationship with him is the same as it should be between a PM and (ruling) party president."

After its success in the just-concluded assembly polls of five states, the saffron outfit is gearing up for elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka (likely to be held between 2017-end and 2018).

"We are preparing for polls in these states," he said during an interactive session at the India Today conclave.

"Right now, there are the BJP state governments in 58 per cent of the country's area. Along with our allies, we have governments in 65 per cent of the country's area, besides the government at the Centre," Shah said.

Asked if his party learnt lessons from debacle in the 2015 Bihar polls and made course correction in Uttar Pradesh, Shah said that he believes in looking forward and not in the past.

Asked if he expected the BJP to win over 300 seats in Uttar Pradesh, Shah stated, "I had said anything can happen after we cross 240-seat tally. That mark meant a wave in our favour but a wave is beyond any (electoral) calculation."

Asked why the party did not field a single Muslim candidate in the state, Shah said that the BJP doesn't believe in caste, gender-based politics.

"The BJP doesn't believe in caste, gender-based politics. The party only believes in development of all. In this country, only politics of performance will work."

People supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation drive and this was reflected in the outcome of the recent elections, he said, adding last year's surgical strikes on terror camps across-LoC have secured our borders.

On Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati's claim of EVM tampering in UP, Shah trashed the charge and said that the same machines were used when she was voted to power in the state.

On a similar charge by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in context of the Punjab polls, Shah said, "If that was the case (EVM tampering), why did the Congress win in Punjab and not us?"

"The days of politics based on caste, dynastic rule and appeasement are over. Now there will be only politics of performance," Shah said at the conclave via video link.

The BJP leader supported the prime minister's suggestion that all elections -- from panchayat to the Lok Sabha level -- be held simultaneously. "The country must get out of this cycle of frequent elections."

"A lot of things are going on (development front) but the media does not take note of them, he said. "BJP ki safalta aapke gale nahi utarti (media can't digest the party's success)," he added.

On the BJP and its bickering ally Shiv Sena contesting the recent civic polls separately, Shah said, "It was a friendly match. It has ended. Our alliance has been there for a long time and will continue."

Asked when will the BJP implement its poll promise of farm loan waiver in UP, Shah said, "A decision will be taken at the first meeting of the Cabinet" after the new government takes charge in Lucknow.
'That winsome smile is a key asset. And says a lot about her too.'

Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

In the week after Holi you can feel the arrival of summer quite acutely at Mumbai's City Civil and Sessions Court, located near Kala Ghoda, south Mumbai, where the Sheena Bora murder trial has been unfolding since early February.

Unlike the much more stately, 1878, Gothic-design Bombay high court, a kilometre or so away, with its air-conditioned courtrooms, high ceilings, cool stone corridors and central shady courtyards with trees, the dowdy, cement block new wing of this court suffers a brutal Indian summer!

The lifts are still not working 45 days later. Or else they are available only to some...

Lawyers trussed up in stuffy black jackets and stiff white collars, undertrials, prisoners' relatives, chaiwallahs, court personnel, journalists, policemen tramp up and down the innumerable flights of steps, huffing and puffing in the sweltering 32 degrees Celsius heat.

The corridors, where so many accused sit with their kin, eating tiffins and waiting interminably, lack fans and the sun sharply beats in.

The ceilings in the courtrooms are low, the fans not that powerful; as a consequence the rooms are suffocating.

No surprise that Judge H S Mahajan, who is presiding over the Sheena Bora murder trial in Courtroom 51, has a special pedestal fan pointed at him. No small wonder either that the canteen boys are running up and down with stacks of mineral water bottles.

This annexe of the court, with its tacky bathroom tiles on the stairways, grubby walls that have not seen a paint job in a decade (it would appear), crumbling cement floors, piles of rubble and garbage, like the one outside the lift as you enter the building, is dismaying in appearance.

Peter Mukerjea, clutching a bottle of Bisleri and a file, and the perpetually stooped green-shirted Sanjeev Khanna, hanging onto his now familiar Grofers bag, arrived quite promptly on Thursday, March 16, just after 11.

The more agile Khanna reached the third floor first and was greeted by Peter's family. Peter's progress was a little slower as he approached the building, along with a multitude of other suspects.

You can quite easily close your eyes and imagine what the profile of the average defendant would be like around here.

Mainly young Muslim boys, many of them bearded, met by their large, not very well-to-do families, the women folk, the majority in burqas, hanging onto a herd of kids.

And a smattering of luckless, clueless, Africans, negotiating their way around a foreign court in broken English via policemen with equally broken English. No lawyers in sight, to dance around them, as they do outside Courtroom 51.

The battery of lawyers hanging out at Courtroom 51 didn't have much dancing to do on Thursday.

Hardly did Indrani Mukerjea arrive, later than usual -- clad in bright white, white bindi too, her hair also luminously white (she has a lot of white hair for someone who is 44 years old) -- and the trio of accused filed to the back of the room towards the aaropeechi jaga or the accused's enclosure and the hearing had concluded. The trio didn't get time to even sit down.

A little rewind here: At the last hearing, February 23, the defence took strong and vocal exception to CBI Prosecutor Bharat Badami's introduction of Khar police constable Ganesh Dalvi as a witness, who spoke about apprehending then accused Shyamvar Rai, the Mukerjeas' driver.

Rai is now the approver in the case and therefore his testimony is no longer considered admissible. Judge Mahajan agreed to get an opinion from the high court on this.

The opinion has still not come in because the CBI filed its objections in that court. The next hearing in this court is scheduled for March 31 and so ended the day's business.

It is uncertain if the high court's legal view will come by that date. The likelihood of the high court's advice coming in before Thursday was also unlikely, but the accused are routinely called to court in any case.

A helpful court reporter explained to me that since the accused are in the custody of the court, the judge needs to see them every 15 days for their safety and in case they have any issues to lay before him.

The Mukerjeas and Khanna were given half an hour to meet their relatives in the corridor outside and no time for lunch by the judge, although Peter took a little bag of something special to eat from his folks.

The family on Thursday consisted of his sister Shangon, who is a spitting image of Peter, his brother Gautam, a friend, his son Rabin (foreign, elegant girlfriend absent) and this time his strapping California-based nephew Shujah Das Gupta who favours pencil-thin square sideburns (Shagun's son).

The crowd of family that faithfully and sweetly surround their precious Peter -- incidentally born Pratim -- makes him fairly inaccessible. You have to peek past four policemen, three lawyers and six fierce-looking family members to see what he is up to.

Journalists are largely held at bay as the family is wary of, what they term, a trial by media like it allegedly happened to the Talwars (in the Aarushi murder case).

Sanjeev Khanna, sitting next to Indrani outside, collected some fresh clothes from his dour but loyal cousin (one tends to admire this young photographer relative, Nikhil Kapur, who has put his life on hold to be there for Sanjeev).

The Mukerjeas' and Khanna's day in court was following its usual rhythm with them about to wind up and head prison-wards, when who should walk in but one of Mumbai's top lawyers Mahesh Jethmalani.

Journalists quickly peppered him with: "Sir, have you come to see how things are going?"

Suddenly, the tempo changed in the oppressive hallway.

Suave Jethmalani has a booming voice and a presence. He immediately very respectfully sought the judge's permission to speak to his client for just 15 minutes.

"Next time it will be only 10 minutes," the lawyer assured the judge, thanking him repeatedly and graciously. Then he went out to speak to Indrani.

Peter was one bench away engrossed in deep conversation with the serious, sober, less flashy, equally respected lawyer, Shrikant Shivade (who defended actor Salman Khan).

Indrani in discussion with Jethmalani was the most animated I have seen her till date.

Her hands, holding a narrow metallic blue reading glasses case, flew about as she talked and rifled through papers with the legal eagle; her face full of life.

Her sprightly figure (in spite of mothering three children), white hair and contrasting youthful skin give her an odd young-old look. Like a very girlish woman wearing a wig of white hair.

She was surrounded by four young policewomen, one of them incongruously holding up a 1950s vintage musket, just in case Indrani decided to run off and needed to be apprehended.

When Jethamalani was done and got up to leave I didn't see him go over to the Mukerjea family or speak to Shivade, or maybe I missed it given the wall of Peter's relatives.

Instead, he went back into the courtroom to again profusely thank Judge Mahajan.

The judge was the liveliest I have seen him although he is not a grim man. Judge and lawyer began chatting. The judge shared details of his training and people he has encountered in his career.

While this was going on, Indrani stepped back into the courtroom to speak to the CBI contingent in Hindi.

When Mahajan noticed her, he interrupted his conversation with Jethmalani and asked why she was there, not unkindly.

She candidly explained (she has a very strong Assamese accent when she speaks Hindi; it is less pronounced while she speaks English) that she needed a copy of her late mother Durga Rani Bora's will.

Judge Mahajan mildly chided her, asking why would the CBI team have it.

The CBI did have it, Indrani told the judge in a firm voice, and she needed it.

Her mother, she added, had left everything to Sheena and Mekhail (Indrani's son with her first husband Siddhartha Das), but now with "Sheena..." -- she left the sentence hanging, open-ended -- it might go only to Mekhail.

Why she had to set that right was not clear. Evidently, there is Mekhail's petition lodged before the Guwahati high court that will be shortly up for a hearing, asking that Sheena's share of Durga Bora's Guwahati house should come only to Mekhail since Indrani had abandoned them.

The judge gave his assent to her obtaining an attested copy.

The lively Jethmalani-Mahajan banter -- some of it in Queen's English and some in chaste Hindi -- resumed and for some reason meandered to the tantrik Chandraswami who had once been Jethmalani's celebrated lawyer father Ram Jethmalani's acquaintance.

Judge Mahajan asked where Chandraswami was these days.

Mahesh Jethmalani, an engaging raconteur it would seem, went on to offer, in his thunderous and probably best courtroom voice, a tale about the godman, that he said needed a place in a book.

He had occasion to travel with Chandraswami to an African country "by the name of Zaire." He was careful to explain where Zaire was and how big it was -- "powerful desh" -- to the judge and anyone else who was listening.

Chandraswami was apparently in Zaire (once Congo) on the invitation of its notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

When Mahesh Jethmalani and Chandraswami presented themselves before the tinpot African ruler they were startled to discover that he sat flanked by "live tigers."

The upshot was that Chandraswami was there to perform a havan for Mobutu.

Jethmalani ended his story, saying: "That was his (Chandraswami's) prabhav (influence)!"

Then he bowed again reverentially and thanked Judge Mahajan two more times, exchanged a few words with the CBI's lawyer Badami and exited Courtroom 51.

So did Sanjeev, Peter and Indrani, in that order.

When it comes time to send the accused back to jail, the police posse always approach the much more amenable Sanjeev, to tell him his time is up, even though Peter and he travel to prison together.

Sanjeev, who comes across as gentle, departs invariably without a protest or squeak.

Then begins the policemen's task to pry the doughty Peter away from his clan.

Peter mostly ignores their requests till they are repeated multiple times, more and more insistently.

Peter is something of a phenomenon in this drab court building. He attracts attention, curiosity and some respect. People/lawyers stop to stare at him or say hello.

Indrani did a Peter on Thursday. She departed for jail, swishing along in white, trailed by Lady Cop 1, Lady Cop 2, Lady Cop 3, Lady Cop 4 and the long musket. They were soon out of sight.

Ten minutes later, she was back. She stood at the barricades near the prison bus -- her escorts looking possibly disconcerted and sweaty -- and with sign language endearingly, albeit slightly imperially, requested one of the journalists to call her lawyer because she had some papers to hand over.

Indrani may not have any friends or family soldiering along with her through this long trial. And even if she is down, she is certainly not out. In spite of being alone.

Her charm has not deserted her. That winsome smile is a key asset. And says a lot about her too.
They needed a helping hand. And when they got it, these women worked wonders, discovers Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar.

IMAGE: Maria has stepped out of an abusive marriage and is today economically self-sufficient.

"I set myself on fire after pouring kerosene over my head. I was very upset after a fight with my husband," says Maria.

All the 25 year old is willing to say about her former husband -- she was married for a year -- is that he was a fisherman and a drunkard.

"My mother saved me or I would have died that day."

Maria could have been talking about stepping outside the house for a chore; she is that matter-of-fact.

Instead, that fateful day 20 months ago, she was rushed to the Kilpauk Medical College hospital in Chennai, where it took the doctors a month to get her back on her feet.

In the hospital she came into contact with the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care, an NGO that helps victims of domestic violence run by criminologist Dr Prasanna Poornachandra.

Popularly known as PCVC, it runs a special project called Vidial (dawn) aimed at supporting burn victims, most of whom are also victims of domestic abuse.

Once Maria had recovered, PCVC sent Maria for a six month dessert making course at the Winery Bakery in Alwarpettai, Chennai.

Today, the Class 9 pass makes croissants and desserts which are part of the mouth-watering display at Writer's Cafe in Royapettah, Chennai.

IMAGE: Karan Manavalan moved from Pune to Chennai to run Writer's Cafe.

"We make everything here," says manager-cum-chef Karan Manavalan, who used to run a bar in Pune.

Of the 30 employees at the cafe, seven are burn victims; four more will join the staff as soon as they complete their training.

Both the Winery Bakery and Writer's Cafe are owned by the same person; Chennai knows him as 'Hot Breads' Mahadevan (You can read his fascinating story here).

Professor M Mahadevan's -- he quit teaching to launch a multi-million dollar business that includes restaurants and bakeries and has a footprint that spans 16 countries -- latest baby is his newest restaurant, Writer's Cafe.

A CSR initiative started in tandem with the book chain, Higginbothams, the cafe employs mainly burn victims.

Higginbothams has placed 18,000 book titles on sale here as well as a variety of magazines.

The spacious cafe, which offers coffee, tea, sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, a wide variety of desserts and free wifi -- "A Swiss chef trained us to make pastas, pizzas and snacks," says Karan -- was opened to the public on December 11, 2016.

It is open for business from 9 am to 10.30 pm and already boasts of a steady clientele. All proceeds are donated to aid burn victims.

Like Priya, who makes the coffee and the juices. And Parimala. Komala. Asma.

All domestic abuse victims, today they proudly go by their single names.

IMAGE: M Punithavalli is happy that she contribute to the family income.

Then there are others like M Punithavalli, a 28 year old who had an accident in the kitchen a year-and-a-half ago.

"The stove exploded," she says. She was in the KMC hospital for nearly a month; like Maria, this is where she came in touch with PCVC.

"The first two months," she recalls the days after her discharge, "were difficult as I could not even lift my hand. I stayed at the PCVC home in Anna Nagar where they have a physiotherapist to help us."

When she finally returned home, she could not find a job. "On the phone, they would tell me the job was available, but when they saw my burnt face they would say they had already appointed someone else."

A dejected Punithavalli would return home and cry.

Finally, though PCVC, she too trained at the Winery Bakery where she learnt to make sponge cakes, cookies and other confectionaries.

Today, she lives a full life with her husband, A Murugadas, and their two children -- son Naveenkumar who is in Class 7 and daughter Shameen who is in Class 2.

IMAGE: Manjula is grateful to PCVC and M Mahadevan for rescuing her family.

Manjula, 43, works at Writer's Cafe as well, but she is not a burns victim. "I had a fight with my husband, who is a painter and does white washing jobs," she says. "PCVC helped us through counselling."

They also trained her as a home nurse, but she could not get work. So they sent her to train at the Winery Bakery.

"My son, who is 22 years old, is mentally handicapped," she says. "PCVC has helped with his treatment as well. He too works for Mr Mahadevan."

"Most of these girls are victims of domestic violence," says Shweta Shankar of PCVC. "We train them to become economically self-reliant."

Like that old proverb goes, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish...'

Photographs: A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com
As the Iraqi and American forces enter the final stages of the fight to take back Mosul from Islamic State, Monali Sarkar points out, 1 million people are expected to become refugees.

This is what a modern-day mass exodus looks like.

Iraqi Special Forces comb through a street in West Mosul after it was taken back from Islamic State on March 4. Mosul had fallen to IS in 2014.

Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

The battle to win back this key Iraqi city from IS began in October 2016 and is now approaching its final stages.

Video: Hitesh Harisinghani/Rediff.com

As Iraqi forces gain ground, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Mosul.

The photographer who shot this now iconic photograph says, 'Both screaming in terror, a father and the young daughter he cradled in his arm fled through the rubble-strewn streets of Wadi Hajar, transformed in a flash into a battleground between Islamic State fighters and Iraqi special forces.'

'They and their neighbours -- some wearing rubber sandals, some barefoot -- were running from an IS counter-attack in this part of Mosul, dodging gunfire as the militants closed in... The father was so beside himself, so panicked. I believe they will both be taken to a refugee camp.'

Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

It is a desperate scramble to escape IS and the crossfire...

Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

... And the humiliation.

'When they reached the special forces lines,' the photographer recounts, 'males were ordered to lift their shirts to prove they weren't suicide bombers. Some had to take off their clothes or show their belts, though not those carrying children.'

Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies predict that 'more than 1 million people could be displaced by the offensive by Iraqi government forces to retake the country's second city.'

Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

The displaced Iraqis mostly flee on foot.

Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters

Often abandoning even the necessities along the way.

Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

It is a long, tough walk to the outskirts of the city...

Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

... where they can board trucks and buses that will take them t0 the UN-run refugee camps.

Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

The camps are fast running out of space. The UN is urgently setting up new camps...

Photograph: Suhaib Salem/Reuters

... and expanding existing ones to shelter new arrivals, many of whom, they say, 'are visibly traumatised, hungry and dehydrated.'

Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

The camp gives the refugees much needed safety, shelter, and basic amenities, but both them and the security officials are constantly on guard to make sure IS terrorists don't find a way in.

Photograph: Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters

For now -- and in all likelihood for a long time to come -- those displaced will remain in limbo. Much like the city they have left behind.

Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters
An alien monster to begin with, the Kochi art biennale has slowly wormed its way into citizenss hearts, says Anjuli Bhargava.





IMAGE: P K Sadanandan's mural, measuring 15 m x 3 m is an on-going work of art the Kochi Biennale 2016-2017. Photograph: Rajesh Karkera/Rediff.com

Rinshad Hussein works at the Tea Bungalow in FortKochi as a bellboy and waiter.

The 24-year-old has recently been selected for a bodybuilding competition in the state.

When he learns that I am there for a holiday -- and have timed it with the art biennale --Hussein is delighted.

He presents me with a pamphlet and map of the various locations that house the art this year and tells me his own sketches were part of the last biennale in 2014. He happened to help one of the foreign artists who was staying at the hotel he was working with then and the artist acknowledged his contribution by including his work in the show.

He has a view on each biennale -- although his favourite is the second one -- where his work was included.

Hussein is one of Kochis lakhs of residents who have adopted the biennale with a ferocity that would surprise any outsider.

A few autorickshaw drivers I encounter have been there thrice already (Monday afternoon entry is free and is the most crowded time).

They are happy to discuss their favourites, what they didnt like and which of the three biennales has been the best while they take you around from venue to venue.

Shopkeepers, waiters, the fish sellers outside Kochi club, reception managers, masseurs, students -- no matter who you speak to -- have visited the show; most have been there for all three.

For an event that started amidst great controversy and opposition (theres even a book, Against All Odds, on the initial travails and allegations faced by the founders), the Kochi art biennale seems to have taken a special place in the hearts of its residents.

I ask the owner of a large hotel how the public (who strike me as extraordinarily pragmatic -- they even have a crossing named X-Ray Junction after an X-ray hospital nearby) makes sense of something as esoteric as this and he says they dont necessarily. He recalls an incident in reply.

IMAGE: A volunteer guides a visitor wearing virtual reality glasses through the Symphony Of a Missing Room by Lundahl and Seitl at the Kochi Biennale 2016-2017. Photograph: Rajesh Karkera/Rediff.com.

At the first biennale, a reporter asked a family -- the father worked in a bank, the mother was a schoolteacher and the child in school -- what they thought of the event. Complete madness, the father had replied, but this is our third visit.

They couldnt make much sense of it; yet something was pulling them to it. And that, in a nutshell, sums up how Kochi and its citizenry have taken to this event.

The curator of this years biennale argues that an event like this cant work everywhere in the country.

Keralas high literacy and its history and tendency to look out, imbibe and assimilate other cultures -- even in its literature -- makes such engagement possible. A kind of engagement he is yet to see anywhere in the world.

One of the trustees tells me that after the first biennale itself, a bucket brigade that went out to seek peoples contribution to bridge the deficit in funds was quite successful; even if the amount raised was not large, almost everyone contributed, signalling acceptance.

Although it is non-commercial (nothing is for sale; art for arts sake), the biennale has also enormously helped the commerce of the capital.

Although December is always a busy month (due to the carnival), in biennale years you will be hard-pressed to find a room available in the FortKochi area.

But as the reception manager at my hotel points out, it is the establishments who couldnt get bookings earlier who have benefitted the most as now they find themselves booked well in advance. The popular hotels and resorts sell for higher rates.

Despite the rising mercury levels, the biennale extends the peak season to the end of March.

Restaurants, cafes, roadside outlets that cook fish that you buy fresh near the waterfront, the auto drivers -- almost everyone reports brisk business for the just over three-month period.

Italian food joints, shawarma and falafel roll vendors, all quite alien to the locals, have sprung up to cater to the influx of foreign palates.

One of the only bars in the area -- Seagull -- is jam-packed with tourists who are still grappling to make sense of a recent rap on the knuckles of Keralas alcohol industry.

For the art world, too, Kochi has been a find.

An artist I meet who is exhibiting at the biennale says that when the event happened for the first time in 2012, his first question was: Kochi? Wheres that?

Now, they all know.

MUST-READ: Why the Kochi Biennale is a must visit
Estimados amigos,

Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.

Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.

Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.

Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.

Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos.

Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
EU-Turkey Deal: A shameful stain on the collective conscience of Europe

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, EU-Turkey Deal: A shameful stain on the collective conscience of Europe, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cb9ccf4.html [accessed 7 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.

The EU-Turkey deal which has resulted in the suffering of thousands of refugees and migrants is a stain on the collective conscience of Europe, said Amnesty International on the first anniversary of the agreement.

The deal aimed at returning asylum-seekers back to Turkey on the premise that Turkey is safe for them, has failed on its own terms but left thousands exposed to squalid and unsafe conditions on Greek islands.

"Today marks a dark day in the history of refugee protection: one in which Europe's leaders attempted to buy themselves out of their international obligations, heedless of the cost in human misery," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe.

"A year ago, the Greek islands were transformed into de facto holding pens, as Europe's shores went from being sites of sanctuary into places of peril. One year on, thousands remain stranded in a dangerous, desperate and seemingly endless limbo."

The majority of asylum seekers in the camps are not allowed to leave the islands. They are corralled in overcrowded, squalid conditions and at times, have been victims of violent hate crimes. Five refugees on Lesvos, including a child, have died as a result of circumstances strongly linked with these conditions.

Although European leaders maintain the fiction that Turkey is a safe third country for refugees and asylum seekers, Greek courts have so far blocked the return of Syrian asylum-seekers to Turkey on this basis.

Amnesty International has nonetheless documented how some Syrian asylum-seekers have been forcibly returned to Turkey without having access to asylum and without being able to appeal against their return, in breach of international law. Others have 'voluntarily' returned to Turkey because of the misery on the Greek islands.

The anniversary of the deal coincides with a deadline for lawyers to submit additional evidence on a case being considered by Greece's highest administrative court which will determine whether Turkey can be considered a "safe country" for refugees.

The case involves "Noori", a 21 year old asylum seeker, who has been unlawfully detained for more than six months after his asylum claim was declared inadmissible by Greek courts on the basis that Turkey is a 'safe third country' for him. Depending on the court's decision, he could be immediately sent back to Turkey. The verdict, expected within the month, could set a precedent and could open the floodgates for further returns.

Instead of trying to return asylum seekers and refugees to Turkey, where they do not have effective protection, the EU should be working with the Greek authorities to urgently transfer asylum-seekers to mainland Greece for their cases to be processed. European governments should provide asylum seekers with access to relocation or other safe and legal ways to other European countries such as family reunification or humanitarian visas.

Despite its manifest failures and flagrant breaches of international law, the EU-Turkey deal has been touted by some European leaders as a model that could be replicated in agreements with other countries.

"The fact that European leaders are heralding as a success a deal which has caused such immeasurable suffering exposes the fact that the EU-Turkey deal has nothing to do with the protection of refugees and everything to do with keeping them out of Europe," said John Dalhuisen.

"The EU-Turkey deal is a stain on the collective conscience of Europe. As it enters its second year it should not be seen as being a blueprint for other deals, but rather a blueprint for despair for thousands of desperate people who have fled war and conflict in search of sanctuary."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Myanmar: Act now on Rakhine Commission report

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Myanmar: Act now on Rakhine Commission report, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cb9e144.html [accessed 7 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.

Myanmar's authorities must immediately act on the urgent calls made in an interim report by the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, Amnesty International said today.

"The authorities must immediately act on the Rakhine Commission's recommendations to grant humanitarian access, end the media blackout in northern Rakhine State, and ensure the perpetrators of human rights violations are held accountable," said Champa Patel, Amnesty International's Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

On 16 March 2017, the Commission published its interim report, with recommendations to the Myanmar government on "improving the welfare of all people in Rakhine state". The report's authors said their recommendations must be met with "urgent action" by the Myanmar authorities.

"Unfortunately, the commission's recommendations do not far enough to address the increasingly dire situation on the ground. There is much more the authorities can and should do, including lifting restrictions on freedom of movement for the Rohingya and other Muslims," said Champa Patel.

The Commission's recommendations fall short of ensuring full respect for the protection and rights of the Rohingya. Amnesty International is particularly concerned about the Commission's failure to recommend necessary amendments to Myanmar's highly discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law, which effectively denies citizenship to the Rohingya - something it should address, along with other human rights violations, in its final report, due by August.

The Rakhine Commission does not have a mandate to investigate allegations of human rights violations by the security forces, which the UN and Amnesty International believe may constitute crimes against humanity. The government's own investigations also lack the independence and impartiality necessary to deliver justice for victims.

"Given the Myanmar government's repeated failure to carry out a credible and effective investigation, the UN should mandate a Commission of Inquiry, as recommended by the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar," said Champa Patel.

Background

In December 2016, Amnesty International published a report, "We are at breaking point": Rohingya Persecuted in Myanmar, Neglected in Bangladesh, which documented a wide range of human rights violations by Myanmar's security forces in northern Rakhine State, including unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, rape and other sexual violence, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detentions, and the torching of hundreds of Rohingya homes and buildings.

In February 2017, the United National Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published a "flash report" also documented these human rights violations.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Crimea: Rapidly Deteriorating Human Rights Situation in the International Blind Spot

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2017 Reference EUR 50/5886/2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Crimea: Rapidly Deteriorating Human Rights Situation in the International Blind Spot, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cb9e824.html [accessed 7 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.

Three years after the peninsula's unlawful annexation by Russia in March 2014, the human rights situation in Crimea is worsening fast. It is exacerbated by the absence of any effective international monitoring mechanism with access to the peninsula, which has emboldened the Russian and the de facto authorities in Crimea to persevere in their relentless campaign against all vestiges of dissent. Ensuring effective international human rights monitoring in Crimea, including agreeing on the practicalities for a relevant mechanism's unobstructed access to Crimea, should be a priority for the international community.

In December 2016, Amnesty International published a briefing Crimea in the dark: The silencing of dissent, (1) which documented the abject disregard for, and assault on, the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association by Russia and the de facto authorities in the peninsula. Since then, the persecution and harassment of any remaining dissenting voices, most of them of ethnic Crimean Tatars, has further intensified.

The criminal prosecution of members and leaders of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, designated an "extremist" organization by the Russian authorities, has reached new levels. Additional charges have been brought against activists already accused, on spurious grounds, of membership of the Islamist organization "Hizb ut-Tahrir" which is on the official Russian register of terrorist organizations. Few lawyers dare to take up cases of individuals accused under extremism or terrorism-related charges in Crimea, and the two most prominent ones who have (one from Russia and the other resident of Crimea), have faced intense harassment by the de facto and Russian authorities.

Meanwhile, ordinary ethnic Crimean Tatar residents of the peninsula face new levels of harassment too, particularly in the form of house searches by security forces, which appear to target their community arbitrarily. The use of administrative detention against social media users who have posted content deemed "extremist" in Russia has seen a rise, even when the post preceded Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Following Russia's occupation of Crimea, international and regional human rights mechanisms have been refused entry to the peninsula by the de facto authorities. Among the first of these were the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. Since Russia established a border between Crimea and mainland Ukraine, it has regarded visits to the peninsula as entry into the Russian Federation. This, apart from requiring permission to enter from the Russian authorities, has made access to Crimea for international and regional human rights mechanisms impossible on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine and would not be seen as, or amount to, recognition of the change of Crimea's status and a violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity. Ukraine's official requirements for travel to Crimea were formulated in the Law "On Provision of Rights and Freedoms of Citizens and the Legal Region on the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine" (adopted in April 2014) and formalized in the Cabinet of Ministers' Decree "On Approval of the Regulations for Entry to the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine and Exit from It" (issued on 4 June 2015). According to these, foreign visitors to Crimea require a formal permission from the State Migration Service of Ukraine and can only access it via specific checkpoints on mainland Ukraine. Access to Crimea via Russia now constitutes a criminal offence under Ukrainian law, and, if undertaken "with the purpose of causing damage to interests of the state", is punishable by up to eight years of imprisonment (under Article 332-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

On 14 March 2014, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

(OHCHR) deployed a Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (HRMMU) to monitor and report on the human rights situation throughout the country. Its mandate included monitoring and reporting from Crimea. The territorial integrity of Ukraine, including its sovereignty over Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, was reiterated by the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 68/262 adopted on 27 March 2014.2 However, the Mission has been denied access to the peninsula while its mandate over Crimea has not been recognized by Russia.

International and regional human rights monitoring mechanisms should be given unconditional and immediate access to Crimea, and be able to report on their findings from the ground, without any obstruction or interference by any party. This should include, but not be limited to, the UN HRMMU, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, other UN human rights mechanisms and relevant special procedures, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Council of Europe human rights monitoring mechanisms and bodies, including the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the Commissioner for Human Rights. International and regional organisations whose mandate extends, fully or partly, to the areas in which human rights violations have occurred in Crimea, including UNESCO in particular within its area of competence, should consider establishing mechanisms for monitoring the situation in Crimea, within their respective competences, and to seek effective and unimpeded access to the peninsula to be able to monitor and report on the respective issues.

New levels of harassment and persecution faced by members of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis

In April 2016, the de facto and Russian authorities banned the self-governing Crimea Tatar Mejlis as an "extremist" organization for its members' peaceful defiance of the Russian occupation of the peninsula. Since then, individuals associated with the Mejlis have faced increasingly aggressive persecution. A meeting of the Mejlis's members in the privacy of one of their own homes may result in a fine imposed for purported administrative violation or lead to criminal charges.

Several members of the Mejlis held a private meeting in the house of Ilmi Umerov, a deputy leader of the Mejlis and veteran Crimean Tatar activist on 22 September 2016. A few days later, nine of them were summoned for questioning to the Ministry of the Interior's Center for the Prevention of Extremism, commonly known as "Center E", in Simferopol. Three of them, including Ilmi Umerov,

received administrative fines of between RUB 750 and 1,000 (US$ 13-17) under Article 20.28 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation (participation in the activities of a forbidden organization).(3)

When trying to pay the fine, in December 2016, Ilmi Umerov discovered that he had already been put on the Russian federal list of "extremists" in connection with a criminal investigation against him under extremism-related charges, which is still ongoing.(4) Being on this list means that Ilmi Umerov cannot freely access his banking account, and any financial transaction by him now needs to be explicitly approved by the security department of his bank.

On 30 January 2017, Ilmi Umerov was formally charged with making "public calls against the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation" (Article 280.1 of the Russian Criminal Code) in connection with his TV appearance in March 2016 on the ATR channel (a Crimean Tatar-language channel which was forced into exile from Crimea to mainland Ukraine in June 2015) in which he said that Russia should be "forced to leave Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk". If convicted, Ilmi Umerov faces up to 2 years in prison.

Amnesty International considers the charges against Ilmi Umerov to be groundless. His calls for cessation of Russia's occupation are protected by the right to freedom of expression. Ilmi Umerov has never called for or advocated the use of violence. His prosecution is unlawful, and should be terminated immediately.

Violation of fair trial principles in the "26 February case"

The trial of another deputy leader of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis and prisoner of conscience Akhtem Chiygoz, is currently ongoing. Since the court hearings in his case began, on 2 August 2016, Akhtem Chiygoz has been denied the possibility of attending his trial in person. He is required to take part via Skype, despite the fact that he is being held in detention less than a block away from the courthouse. This measure was introduced because of the "danger" Akhtem Chiygoz would ostensibly pose if present in the court room in person. This restriction is both arbitrary and has, in practice, compromised his ability to participate effectively in his own trial. For example, during a typical court hearing observed by Amnesty International on 27 September 2016, Akhtem Chiygoz could not hear everything that was said in court, and the trial had to be interrupted several times because of the bad quality of the internet connection. Because of the video link, at no point during the hearing was Akhtem Chiygoz able to consult his lawyer in private.(5)

Akhtem Chiygoz stands accused of having "organized mass disturbances" in Crimea on 26

February 2014. On that day, pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian demonstrators assembled

simultaneously in front of the regional parliament in Simferopol. There were skirmishes between the two crowds, but there were no "mass disturbances" according to the terms of the definition in the Russian Criminal Code. Not a single alleged participant from the pro-Russian side has been prosecuted or identified. Furthermore, the date of the event in question precedes Russia's annexation of Crimea.

After Akhtem Chiygoz was arrested on 29 January 2015, the Russian security services arrested five other Crimean Tatars, as part of the same criminal investigation, and accused them of participating in the same "mass disturbances". On 20 July 2016, the de facto Supreme Court of Crimea decided to separate Akhtem Chiygoz's case for separate criminal proceedings as the "organizer" of the "mass disturbances", in which the others were mere "participants". Out of the five, only Ali Asanov and Mustafa Dehermendzhy remain in detention, while the other three were released on bail in 2015. In court, Mustafa Dehermendzhy has testified that he was approached by the investigating authorities with an "offer" to testify against Akhtem Chiygoz, in exchange for release from detention, but he refused.

As Akhtem Chiygoz's trial has progressed, the absence of sufficient grounds for his prosecution has become increasingly apparent. Thus, with the exception of three secret witnesses for the prosecution, who testified on 6 December 2016, 13 February and 13 March 2017 respectively, not a single witness questioned in person in court testified in support of the prosecution's assertion that Akhtem Chiygoz "organised mass disturbances" on 26 February 2014 in

Simferopol.(6)

In Russian courts, secret witnesses are typically questioned by video link with their voices changed and their faces hidden. Amnesty International was not able to attend the court sessions in question but, according to journalists who report regularly on legal matters and who were present in court on these days, the secret witnesses, contradicted themselves in their testimonies, were inconsistent, and changed their statements repeatedly when they contradicted the prosecution's assertions. There are a total of seven secret witnesses in Akhtem Chiygoz's case (only three have testified so far). If convicted, Akhtem Chiygoz faces up to 15 years in jail.

Mustafa Dehermendzhy is one of the witnesses called to testify in the case against Akhtem Chiygoz, as well as being a defendant, himself, in what is now a separate "26 February" case. In his court testimony on 6 March 2017, in the case against Akhtem Chiygoz, Dehermendzhy stated that he had not seen Akhtem Chiygoz during the events on 26 February 2014. He also told the court that while in detention, the Federal Security Service (FSB) requested his "cooperation" in exchange for freedom, and that he had been further pressured by the Crimean Mufti to testify against Akhtem Chiygoz, but that he had refused.7 The trial of Mustafa Dehermendzhy and his codefendant Ali Asanov has also started, but is still in its early stage.

Ali Asanov has four children, and has never seen the youngest who was born after his arrest. Mustafa Dehermendzhy used to take care for his elderly parents. Both men face up to eight years in jail, if convicted.

New charges against people accused of membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir

Crimean human rights defender Emir-Usein Kuku, and Vadim Siruk, both arrested on 11 February 2016 and prosecuted together as part of the same case, were initially accused of membership of the Islamist organization "Hizb ut-Tahrir" (which in Russia is designated as a terrorist organization). Recently, new charges have been added in their case.(8)

Emir-Usein Kuku is a prisoner of conscience whose prosecution is politically motivated and intended as a reprisal for his peaceful activism and his human rights work in Crimea. Amnesty International has previously raised concern about the violation of his and the other suspects' right to a fair trial.(9)

On 17 January 2017, Emir-Usein Kuku and Vadim Siruk were separately informed that they are now also suspected of conspiring to seize or retain power by violent means (Article 278 of the Russian Criminal Code). According to their lawyers, the decision to present new accusations was based on the results of so-called "linguistic-religious expertise" requested by the investigating authorities, which examined the content of a secretly recorded conversation between Kuku, Siruk and four other men about politics. All six individuals are currently in pre-trial detention. Their lawyers have requested to see the expert conclusions to be able to challenge their remand and their prosecution but have been refused. Their court appeal against the refusal has been unsuccessful.

In Russia, membership of a terrorist organization carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Conspiring to seize power by violent means is a crime also punishable by up to 20 years' imprisonment.

Harassment of ordinary Crimean Tatar residents of the peninsula

From the beginning of Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Crimean Tatar

community has been seen as disloyal by the de facto and Russian authorities, and subjected to routine harassment by security forces. For instance, there have been numerous house searches targeting members of the community - often ordinary residents of Crimea who are ethnic Crimean Tatars.

Independent media outlets which would often report such incidents, many of them publishing in Crimean Tatar language, were forced to close in 2015. Since their closure, word of mouth and posts on social media are the only source of information about house searches and other forms of harassment of ethnic Crimean Tatars (for local residents access to media outlets reporting from mainland Ukraine over the internet is often blocked in Crimea).

Typically, when security forces arrive and begin searching a Crimean Tatar home, local residents quickly arrive at the site and film or take pictures of the event.

In a recent, characteristic incident, on 22 February 2017, activist Marlen Mustafa was arrested near his home by members of the police's Centre for Combating Extremism. He was taken to their headquarters in Simferopol but managed to raise awareness of his detention through his mother, who witnessed it. While Marlen Mustafa was in Simferopol, the de facto law enforcement officials performed a search of his house. Ten people gathered outside Marlen Mustafa's home to film the search but were themselves arrested and promptly sentenced to five days of administrative detention each, for participating in an "unsanctioned mass event" (which is an administrative offence in Russia). Marlen Mustafa was sentenced to 11 days of administrative detention for reposting an "extremist" video on his social media account in 2014.10 They have all served the full length of their administrative sentences and been released.

Harassment of lawyers Emil Kurbedinov and Nikolay Polozov intensifies

Lawyers defending those accused on extremism and other charges in Crimea have also been come under attack. Lawyers Emil Kurbedinov and Nikolay Polozov have come under increasing pressure from the de facto authorities to desist from defending their clients in Crimea. The harassment has gone as far as threatening both lawyers with criminal prosecution.

The Russian lawyer Nikolay Polozov is part of the defence team of Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz. At the request of the FSB, Kievskiy District Court in Simferopol ruled on 13 December 2016 that Nikolay Polozov should be compelled to testify as a witness in Ilmi Umerov's case, despite being his lawyer. After refusing to sign a summons for questioning on 15 December, Nikolay Polozov was forcefully taken by security officials from his hotel in Simferopol to the FSB Crimea headquarters on 25 January and questioned by the FSB investigator in Ilmi Umerov's case.

The questioning did not follow due process. Nikolay Polozov requested that a lawyer be present as his legal representative, but was refused. He reminded the investigator about the inadmissibility of his statements as "witness" because of his role as Ilmi Umerov's lawyer. Despite this, the questioning continued, with the questions revolving around Nikolay Polozov's role in Ilmi Umerov's trial. Polozov was videotaped during the questioning. He refused to sign the report (protokol) of his questioning. Nikolay Polozov and Ilmi Umerov now fear that Nikolay Polozov might be removed from the case because of his new status in the case as a "witness", should the FSB make such a request to a judge to do so.(11)

Around the same time, on 26 January 2017, lawyer Emil Kurbedinov was arrested by members of the Centre for Combating Extremism on his way to Bakhchisaray, where he was intending to offer legal aid to Seyran Saliev, who was arrested on a suspicion of having "extremist" literature in his home. The "Centre E" members promptly took Kurbedinov to their headquarters in Simferopol and searched his house and office, in contravention of the law which protects lawyers against searches to ensure confidentiality of their relations with their clients. On the same day, Zheleznodorozhnyi District Court in Simferopol found Kurbedinov "guilty" of posting a video on his social media account in 2013, and sentenced him to 10 days of administrative detention for spreading "extremist" information. Seyran Saliev was found guilty of "spreading extremist materials" and sentenced to 12 days of administrative detention. Both were released after serving their respective sentences.(12)

Human rights violations in Crimea must be reported and addressed

The international community should explore every available opportunity for effective monitoring of the human rights situation in Crimea.

Intergovernmental bodies, Ukraine's and Russia's international partners should use every available opportunity, at bi- and multilateral fora, to raise the issue of access to Crimea for human rights monitoring mechanisms, and insist on it being granted immediately and unconditionally - alongside insistence on full respect for human rights in Crimea.

The de facto and Russian authorities must respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and the right to a fair trial, for everyone in Crimea, and ensure that these rights can be exercised by any individual and group, without discrimination on the grounds of political or religious views, ethnicity, or any other grounds.

For a full detailed list of recommendations regarding human rights violations in Crimea, see Crimea in the Dark: The Silencing of Dissent.(13)

1 - Crimea in the Dark: The Silencing of Dissent, available at https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR5053302016ENGLISH.PDF.

2 - In the Resolution, the UNGA concluded that the "referendum" held in Crimea had "no validity" and could not form the basis for any alteration of the status of Crimea and of the city of Sevastopol (paragraph 5). For more information about the HRMMU mandate, see paragraphs 7 and 8 of the "Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Ukraine", 19 September 2014, available at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session27/Documents/A-HRC-27-75_en.pdf (accessed 9 March 2016).

3 - Amnesty International remote interview with Nikolay Polozov, Ilmi Umerov's lawyer, on 20 Feburary 2017.

4 - For details on the criminal prosecution of Ilmi Umerov, see Crimea in the Dark: The Silencing of Dissent, available at https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR5053302016ENGLISH.PDF (accessed 10 March 2017).

5 - For more details, see Crimea in the Dark: The Silencing of Dissent, available at https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR5053302016ENGLISH.PDF.

6 - After the forcible exile of the Mejlis's leader Refat Chubarov in July 2014, the Deputy Chairman Akhtem Chiygoz emerged as its most senior member still residing in Crimea. He was arrested on 29 January 2015 after the de facto authorities accused him of having organized "mass disturbances" on 26 February 2014 in front of the Supreme Council of Crimea. Amnesty International considers Akhtem Chiygoz a prisoner of conscience.

7 - Amnesty International interview with Mavile Dehermendzhy, sister of Mustafa Dehermendzhy in December 2016 in Kyiv; 15Minut news agency, "Mustafa Dehermendzhy na 'sude' po 'delu' Chiygoza rasskazal, chto 'mufti' Kryma Ablaev sklonial ego k sotrudnichestvu s okkupantami v obmen na osvobozhdenie", 6 March 2017, available at http://15minut.org/news/169629-mustafa-degermendzhi-na-sude-po-delu-chijgoza-rasskazal-chto-muftij-kryma-ablaevsklonyal-ego-k-sotrudnichestvu-s-okkupantami-v-obmen-na-osvobozhdenie-video (accessed 10 March).

8 - Amnesty International remote interview with Meriem Kuku, wife of Emir-Usein Kuku, in January 2017.

9 - For more information about Emir-Usein Kuku and other Hizb ut-Tahrir cases, see Crimea in the Dark: The Silencing of Dissent, available at https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR5053302016ENGLISH.PDF.

10 - "Vse arestovannye v Krymu zayavili chto im namerenno ne davali pit vodu s utra do pozdnego vechera", Fakty, available at http://fakty.ua/230985-vse-arestovannye-v-krymu-zayavili-chto-im-namerenno-ne-davali-pit-vodu-s-utra-do-pozdnegovechera (accessed 9 March 2017).

11 - Amnesty International remote interview with Nikolay Polozov on 20 February 2017.

12 - Amnesty International remote interview with Emil Kurbedinov on 15 February 2017.

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The Financial Fire Next Time

WASHINGTON, DC  In early 2007, the worst financial crisis in almost 80 years began to unfold, coming to a head 18 months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and shock waves felt around the world. Desperate government measures saved us from Great Depression II, and officials vowed never again would we face the same risks. Politicians and central banks embarked on a broad process of national-level reform and international coordination  all intended to reduce the chance that very large banks could collapse.

A decade later, the global financial system has in some ways become safer as a result of these efforts. In other ways, however, the structure has not changed much  and may even have become more vulnerable. But, instead of completing the reform process, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic seem determined to undo most of the measures underpinning what progress has been achieved.



The past decade has yielded three main accomplishments. First, some financial firms failed, and for good reason: their business models were bad, they were badly run, or both. At the same time, stronger financial firms expanded their market share.

Second, the funding of banks shifted away from debt and toward equity. More than one prominent bank before the crisis had less than 2% of its funding from equity  meaning that it was more than 98% financed by debt. That does not happen today.

Third, there are now restrictions on the activities of the largest banks. The so-called Volcker Rule prevents proprietary trading  a form of in-house speculation  by United States-based banks. In other countries, bank supervisors have become more skeptical about supposedly sophisticated risk-taking. Caution is in the air.

Unfortunately, all of these achievements may prove ephemeral. Powerful people want to remove restrictions on banks in the US and the United Kingdom. For example, the Volcker Rule can be expected to come under great pressure from Goldman Sachs and its many alumni now serving in senior US government posts.

Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president and chief operating officer who now heads President Donald Trumps National Economic Council, says that we should reduce capital requirements (meaning allow more debt and less equity funding at banks) in order to boost the economy. This is exactly what happened in the early 2000s. If Cohn gets his way, the consequences will be similar: disaster.

Since 2008, the global financial system has become more concentrated in important ways. The biggest US banks did well relative to their competitors, including large European banks. As a result, in key markets  and throughout the worlds essential financial infrastructure  banks such as JPMorgan Chase remain far too big to be allowed to fail.

Finance sometimes seems complicated, but what is at stake is quite straightforward. US Senator Jack Reed recently summed it up well:

My constituents dont need fancy Wall Street calculators or formulas to understand that there is a value and a benefit to reforming Wall Street and keeping reckless greed in check. There is a value and a benefit to protecting consumers and their hard-earned wages. And there is a value and a benefit to keeping a family in their home and avoiding foreclosure.

Government officials views on policy are shaped by how they see the world  and what they have experienced. If someone was dramatically hurt by a financial crisis, that person is less likely to want to go through the same thing again.

But if someone did really well  by buying assets on the cheap at the bottom of the cycle, for example, or expanding market share  it seems reasonable to suppose that they are less likely to favor caution. Reed made precisely this point in speaking to the suitability of Steve Mnuchin  a former Goldman Sachs executive vice president  as Treasury Secretary:

[A]n individual who made his fortune aggressively foreclosing on his fellow Americans does not possess the right values, in my view, to be our Treasury Secretary. Based on his record, I am not convinced Mr. Mnuchin is capable of draining the swamp, and I fear he may end up further rigging the system in favor of the 1% at the expense of working-class Americans.

But the Senate confirmed Mnuchin, which suggests that we are about to come full circle. As James Kwak and I documented in our book 13 Bankers, financial deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s led to a real-estate boom in the early 2000s; that set the stage for the 2008 financial bust, which in turn gave rise to a new wave of reform in 2010 and after. The reforms were serious; but they did not go far enough, and they can be rolled back without much difficulty. The Trump administration is poised to do exactly that.

The big banks will get bigger. Capital levels will fall. And reasonable risk-management practices will again become unfashionable. Powerful people do well from booms and busts. The rest of us can expect deeper inequality and more crisis-induced poverty.
Relief operations in western Mosul reaching 'breaking point' as civilians flee hunger, fighting  UN

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 16 March 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Relief operations in western Mosul reaching 'breaking point' as civilians flee hunger, fighting  UN, 16 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba4d24.html [accessed 7 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.

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners in Iraq are scrambling to get emergency sites ready amidst a mass exodus from West Mosul, with nearly 700,000 civilians still living in the city where Iraqi forces are fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country.

"The number of people is higher than expected," Lise Grande told journalist in New York via videoconference from Iraq. "If the pace accelerates further, it's going to stretch us to the breaking point."

She added that if 50,000 civilians flee in a single day, the current system would not work properly. The UN and its partners have already started to set up large warehouse size structures which will house the families as they await "the dignified support they deserve," said Ms. Grande.

According to the latest figures she disclosed, there are still an estimated 650,000 to 680,000 civilians in Mosul's Old City.

"We fear the civilians there might be trapped in an extremely difficult situation. Families that chose to stay are at risk, families that leave are also at risk," said Ms. Grande, noting that ISIL is targeting people who try to flee what is expected to be a prolonged siege.

Meanwhile, people who stay are without food and water. No steady supplies have been able to reach the city since mid-November, Ms. Grande said.

Families with resources are trying to trade what they can to eat even one meal a day, according to stories from people who were able to flee, while some people go for days without meals.

"Whether you stay or whether you go there are significant risks to the civilians," Ms. Grande noted. "The greatest problem is water."

When the military operation to oust terrorists from the area began on 17 October 2016, some 1.5 million civilians were living in Mosul. In the eastern part of the city, some 345,000 were displaced - of whom about 70,000 returned home because "conditions are ready and safe to do so," journalists were told today.

The western part of Mosul is more densely populated, however. There is hope that civilian casualties will be limited because the Iraqi forces adopted a so-called "humanitarian concept of operations" which prohibits artillery strikes, requires civilians to remain in their homes, and provides humanitarian exit corridors wherever necessary.

Those who do flee are screened at the Hammam al Alil site, with the men separated from the women and children. Once interrogated and cleared, the families are reunited.

The senior UN official said the Organization and its humanitarian partners are working "around the clock" in support of the Iraqi Government to quickly get sites ready for the displaced civilians. Aid workers receive the site, set up tents and mattresses, clear and construct sanitation areas, and then transfer the areas to Iraqi military, who move in civilians on civilian buses.

Ms. Grande said that there are concerns about water and sanitation at the screening sites, and that the Government has asked for additional support to help it correct those conditions.

The UN and its partners are supplying food, water and other services to the sites, with more than 1.4 million people reached.

Coordination between the UN, its partners and the Government is good, but "complicated," Ms. Grande acknowledged, noting that the UN is part of 19 daily coordination forums, which include a range from local to national officials.
Half of Central African Republic's people need aid; Security Council discusses peace operations

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 16 March 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Half of Central African Republic's people need aid; Security Council discusses peace operations, 16 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba5484.html [accessed 7 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.

Senior officials today called for strong political support and adequate resources for the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic (CAR), where half of the population urgently needs aid, according to the latest United Nations figures.

Addressing the Security Council alongside CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera, Under-Secretary-General for UN Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous lauded the efforts of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) in helping to pave the way for the gradual stabilization and restoration of State authority.

"As MINUSCA illustrates, when peacekeeping has the right leadership and capabilities, it can play an irreplaceable role in supporting national efforts, and with international partners, promote and support reforms that are essential to the sustainable resolution of a country's conflict."

Mr. Ladsous noted the security and operational efforts in the city of Bambari have loosened the armed groups' grip, and led all of the main 14 armed groups to join a national committee on disarmament.

The move is important for a nationwide disarmament programme, without which, Mr. Ladsous noted, MINUSCA peacekeepers will be unable to provide security by force in a territory the size of France.

To further such progress, the World Bank has said that it would provide $30 million for social reintegration of fighters in a national programme on disarmament, demobilization, reintegration and repatriation.

Among other issues he raised, Mr. Ladsous called on the international community to follow through on $2.2 billion worth of pledges made at the Brussels conference hosted by the European Union in November.

Supporting development to build peace

In addition to peacekeeping efforts, the Council was briefed today on the peace building programs, including the work being coordinated by the UN, the European Union and the World Bank. These three organizations are working to, respectively, support peace, review the social contract between the population and the Government, and promote economic recovery.

In his address, Omar Hilale, the Permanent Representative of Morocco to the UN, who briefed in his capacity as the Chair of the CAR Configuration of the Peacebuilding Commission, announced that he would visit CAR "soon" to discuss the main challenges and ways to optimize the international community's support.

The Peacebuilding Commission works between the Security Council, the General Assembly, whose membership includes all 193 Member States, and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) which works with the 14 specialized UN agencies, to address root causes of conflict in a country and try to stabilize it before conflict breaks out or help it restabilize after fighting.

Half of the country in dire need of aid

CAR also faces an immediate humanitarian crisis. The upsurge in violence since last September has left roughly 2.2 million people - half of the population - in dire need of aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) today announced.

In addition, the fighting since the upsurge in fighting last September, one in five Central Africans are either displaced or a refugee in a neighbouring country.

"Let us not leave Central African Republic to become a forgotten or neglected crisis by the international community", said the Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for CAR, Michel Yao, alongside the Minister of Humanitarian, Social Affairs and National Reconciliation, Virginie Baikoua, at a briefing session for donors yesterday in Yaounde, Cameroon.

The UN and its humanitarian partners had appealed for $399.5 million to aid CAR as part of the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan. To date, only five per cent of that amount - roughly $19 million - has been raised.

Mr. Yao warned that without adequate funding, the country risks plunging into an acute humanitarian crisis.

The situation is particularly concerning because aid workers deliver much of the basic social services. For example, more than half of the health infrastructure is managed by the humanitarian community.
Russia: The Specter of Revolution  Part 1

Publisher EurasiaNet Author Igor Torbakov Publication Date 1 March 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Russia: The Specter of Revolution  Part 1, 1 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba6494.html [accessed 7 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.

The centennial of the Russian revolutionary events of 1917 is presenting the Kremlin with a difficult dilemma. Vladimir Putin's regime simply cannot ignore one of key points of Russian history, and yet it seems to be struggling to fit the story of 1917's political upheaval into its preferred historical narrative, which puts a premium on stability.

One saying goes that revolutions are started by politicians, but it is historians who end them. Myths often shroud revolutions, and it is left to historians to peel away the layers of fable to expose facts that can disturb long-held assumptions. This was the case with the French Revolution: Francois Furet, an outstanding 20th-century French historian, challenged revolutionary myths in a series of highly influential books, and famously liked to proclaim that "the French Revolution is over." It also holds true for the American Revolution. The understanding of the American rebellion against King George III has undergone a vast shift in the past 50 years, thanks to historians like Bernard Bailyn, who famously recast the revolution not only as a war for home rule, but also one over who should rule at home.

In present-day Russia, however, historians are not in the lead when it comes to interpreting the past. It is Russia's political and security elite that is in charge of elaborating a "correct" interpretation of history.

According to Russian media reports, Putin's Kremlin considers the question of how the 1917 centennial is observed to be a matter of national security. Late last year, media outlets reported that experts on the scientific committee at Russia's Security Council discussed the centennial, and determined that the government needed to take steps to control the narratives, driven by a belief that outside forces were intent on intentionally distorting the revolutionary era, as well as other important periods of Russian history. The committee reportedly concluded that historical memory becomes an object of "deliberate destructive actions on the part of foreign government agencies and international organizations which seek to pursue their geopolitical interests through conducting the anti-Russian policy."

Besides the Russian revolutions of 1917, the Security Council's experts identified several other significant historical themes as vulnerable to falsification and in need of protection. These are the nationalities policy of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union's role in the defeat of Nazi Germany; the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; and the Soviet reaction to the political crises in the GDR, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other former East bloc countries.

It is eminently telling that the Russian General Staff drafted the key presentation at the Security Council's session on the national security implications of the manipulation of history. Remarkably, speaking in late January at the first meeting of the Jubilee Committee for the preparation of the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian Revolution, Vitaly Tretyakov, a conservative political commentator, bluntly suggested that Russia's national interests would be better served if historians were sidelined in the process of appraising the sociopolitical outcomes of 1917. It would be "unwise and unfair," he contended, to give historians a free hand in shaping public attitudes towards the revolution. Tretyakov cited two reasons to support his argument: "First, for the most part today, as always, historians are ideologically biased.  And second, they are not political thinkers."

Whatever the shortcomings of professional historians, Russian authorities appear to be at a particular loss when it comes to marking the centennial of the Bolshevik Coup in November 1917 (October under the old style). Prior to that event's 90th anniversary, the Kremlin opted for a seemingly "simple" solution: in 2004, it swapped an old revolutionary holiday on November 7 for a newly invented nationalist one on November 4 - National Unity Day, which commemorated the expulsion of Polish occupation forces from Moscow in 1612.

Curiously, this decision coincided with the publication of a book, titled Sociosophy of Revolution, by Igor P. Smirnov, a Russian literary scholar based in Germany. In his study, Smirnov offered a highly unorthodox interpretation of False Dmitry's reign and the Time of Troubles, contending that it was Russia's first revolution. It is unlikely that the Smirnov study had any impact on the Kremlin's politics of memory, but the routing of the Poles, and the establishment of an autocracy in the form of the Romanov dynasty's 300-year rule obviously seemed like a good thing to celebrate.

However, the new holiday idea proved to be highly unpopular, and the Kremlin, unnerved by "color revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine, shifted its approach in a clear attempt to bring subversive revolutionary ideology into public disfavor. On February 27, 2007, the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta published Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Reflections on the February Revolution. For Solzhenitsyn, a conservative-monarchist, February 1917 was nothing more than a ruinous prelude to the catastrophic October. So his essay (originally penned in the early 1980s) unambiguously cursed the entire revolutionary period and mourned the loss of stability, sovereignty and the statehood of "historic Russia."

Ten years on, political upheavals in the world, including Ukraine's Euromaidan uprising, seem to indicate that the specter of revolution cannot be ignored. At the same time, Russian leaders do not have a clear message to convey. A sign of this confusion is a recent article written by Sergei Mironov, a Putin ally in the State Duma.

Mironov's essay, titled February - a Harbinger of October and published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, seems to demonstrate the Kremlin's growing "poverty of philosophy." It is a disjointed assembly of contradictory theses. Mironov acknowledges the February Revolution's positive achievements, including the establishment of a republican form of government and the recognition of political rights. But he also bemoans the downfall of tsarism, claiming the February Revolution caused the erosion of traditional Russian values. "Power lost its sacredness" in 1917, he also laments. He goes on to add, referring to the chaos that accompanied the Soviet collapse, that "the same devastating effect of the spiritual and ideological crisis we observed in the 1990s."

The chief lesson Mironov draws in his analysis of 1917 is that Russia requires a strong hand at the helm of state. "Russia is not a country that can afford to have a weak power, led by such a weak-willed ruler like Nicholas II," he wrote. "It is a great boon for all of us that in the current difficult times the country is ruled by such a strong personality as President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin."

Mironov's conclusion fails to take into account an important fact: as 1917 (and 1991) showed, autocratic regimes may be outwardly strong, but can be inwardly brittle, and can therefore collapse with startling speed. Autocracy tends not to supply enough glue to keep the social fabric together during times of economic and political stress. "Rus' has faded away within two days. At most, within three," the Russian writer Vasily Rozanov incredulously noted in 1917.

The divergence between the image of the Russian Empire's greatness and its ingloriously swift demise should raise uncomfortable questions for those who support a new form of autocracy in Russia. The history of the 20th century shows that autocracies and authoritarianism can be more brittle and more susceptible to sudden breaks than other systems that allow for broader public participation.

Editor's note: Igor Torbakov is Senior Fellow at Uppsala University and at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Sweden.

Copyright notice: All EurasiaNet material  Open Society Institute
Georgia: With TV Station Takeover, Is Free Speech at Stake?

Publisher EurasiaNet Author Giorgi Lomsadze Publication Date 3 March 2017 Cite as EurasiaNet, Georgia: With TV Station Takeover, Is Free Speech at Stake?, 3 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba7eb4.html [accessed 7 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.

Journalists at Georgia's last major opposition broadcasting company are digging in and refusing to comply with a court order altering the outlet's ownership structure. Doing so, they say, would sound the death knell for independent media in the country.

Defiant supporters pitched tents outside the studios of the television channel Rustavi2, forming a human shield in front of the building in response to a March 2 Supreme Court decision to return ownership of the broadcaster to businessman Kibar Khalvashi. "We will continue our work and we are staying on the air," said Rustavi2's General Director Nika Gvaramia, who was flanked by the company's news crews as he spoke.

The governing party, the Georgian Dream, has long criticized Rustavi2 as a hyperpartisan outlet, supportive of Georgia's self-exiled ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili. But Rustavi2 also has been a must-watch for its critical coverage of the Georgian Dream's performance. The station may now be headed toward a standoff with law enforcement officials, given that it has mobilized opposition political parties, civil society groups and prominent public figures to defy execution of the court verdict.

The Supreme Court on March 2 rejected the company's appeal of an earlier verdict to reinstate Khalvashi as majority owner. The company and its supporters allege that the Georgian Dream party and its founder, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, influenced the Supreme Court's decision in order to bring the recalcitrant channel to heel. Government officials deny meddling in the case, insisting that the ownership dispute is strictly commercial in nature.

However, Georgia's leading human rights watchdogs and freedom of information advocacy groups joined forces in criticizing the Supreme Court's judgment and earlier verdicts by lower courts, describing the decisions as legally dubious. "All three instances of judicial proceedings, as well as the final result, do not meet the requirement of independent court decision-making, and strengthen our doubts about the government's crude interference," several of Georgia's most prominent civil society groups, including Transparency International Georgia, said in a joint statement.

The United States Embassy in Tbilisi said that it "views with concern" the Supreme Court's decision that "could effectively limit the access to opposition voices to Georgian broadcast media." Similar concerns were voiced by international media freedom watchdogs - like Freedom House.

Rustav2's chief, Gvaramia, said that he and his staff are eager to buy the company back from Khalvashi - an offer the businessman was quick to decline. He said such a buyout could land the station back in the hands of self-exiled ex-president Mikhail (Misha) Saakashvili. "So long as there is a Misha menace, I am not selling the TV company," Khalvashi said.

The businessman claims that he was improperly strong-armed by then-president Saakashvili to relinquish his majority stake in Rustavi2 in 2006. Gvaramia served as a minister of justice and, later, headed the Education Ministry during Saakashvili's administration. Leaked phone conversations last year suggested that Gvaramia and Saakashvili maintain close contact, including engaging in strategy sessions to stave off what they describe as a government takeover of Rustavi2.

Many media analysts charge that the court decision could mark the final act in an assiduous campaign carried out by the Georgian Dream to neutralize mass media's watchdog function. Initially, during the early days of its rule, the Georgian Dream was credited with breaking the Saakashvili-era government's control of the national airwaves, which were at that time dominated by three news channels: Rustavi2, Imedi and Public TV. But observers say that the Georgian Dream later carried out its own takeover of television news broadcasts, via which the vast majority of Georgians obtain information about the doings of the government.

"We have seen the [Georgian Dream] government slowly but surely moving to usurp the media space, focusing primarily on television," said Nino Danelia, a media studies professor at Tbilisi-based Ilia Chavchavadze University.

Imedi TV dropped two major current-affairs talk shows in 2015 amid claims of government pressure. The network moved to absorb a small, mostly free-wheeling station, Maestro, and then merged with GDS, a station owned by billionaire Ivanishvili's son, Bera. Imedi TV now leans toward celebrity gossip and infotainment, and is largely government-friendly. In February, Public TV announced controversial plans to suspend political talk shows citing the need to upgrade both the equipment and content.

Rustavi2 has been seen as the last holdout operating beyond the influence of Georgian Dream officials. One opposition group, the Republican Party, went so as far as to warn in a March 3 statement that the court ruling on Rustavi2 marks a pivotal moment in Georgia's post-Soviet experience, in which a pluralistic system is giving way to the "formation of an authoritarian regime."

"The Georgian Dream already has full control of other democratic institutions, like the executive government, the parliament and, as we've seen, the judiciary, so full submission of the news media is its goal now," Danelia said.

The Georgian Dream and Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili refuted those allegations and called for the court's decision to be respected. The government will "spare no efforts to protect the freedom of the media in the country," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

The dispute over Rustavi2's ownership dates back to the Saakashvili era, when the company went through byzantine, reportedly government-orchestrated, ownership changes. Founded in 1994 in the town of Rustavi, about a 20-minute drive outside of Tbilisi, Rustavi2 gained popularity for broadcasting exposes on corruption and stagnation during the administration of the late president, Eduard Shevardnadze. Eventually becoming the nation's most watched news channel, Rustavi2 played an instrumental role in catalyzing the Rose Revolution, which brought Saakashvili to power.

Two of the company's original founders, entrepreneurs Davit Dvali and Jarji Akimidze, claimed they were robbed of the station by the Saakashvili government in 2004. Khalvashi was then seen as one of the government's many hand-picked favorites to take over Rustavi2, but he too was allegedly forced to sell his stake under duress after a falling-out with the government.

Khalvashi and the two original founders became unlikely allies in the current ownership dispute, with the businessman promising to give half of his shares to Dvali and Akimidze should the court reinstate him as the channel's majority owner. Following the Supreme Court's decision, though, Khalvashi appeared to back away from that promise.

With the court decision in place, many media observers and opposition leaders are painting a dark future for free speech in Georgia. Gvaramia said that what was ultimately at stake was "whether free speech will exist in Georgia, whether democracy will have a chance in Georgia, [and] whether Georgia will become a part of the Euro-Atlantic space."

Other observers remain guardedly optimistic that the government will be unable to control the flow of information. "No Georgian government has won a battle with the media," said Danelia, the media studies professor. "It may take a long time, but ultimately the government will lose."

Editor's note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance journalist and a frequent contributor to EurasiaNet.org's Tamada Tales blog.

Copyright notice: All EurasiaNet material  Open Society Institute
Russia: The 1917 Revolutions and the Ambiguity of Post-Soviet Identity

Publisher EurasiaNet Publication Date 8 March 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Russia: The 1917 Revolutions and the Ambiguity of Post-Soviet Identity, 8 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba91e4.html [accessed 7 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.

Today marks the centennial of the start of upheaval in Petrograd - events now known to history as the February Revolution - which forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate and paved the way for an experiment in Communism that lasted over 74 years.

Russia's present-day leader, Vladimir Putin, would love nothing more than to be seen as the heir to the power and glory of the halcyon days of the Romanov dynasty that was toppled back in 1917. Yet, the system that Putin presides over, in its shape and form, is more of an outgrowth of Soviet Communism than a link to Russia's tsarist tradition.

This dichotomy is the primary reason why Kremlin ideologues find themselves in an awkward position these days: in the historian Mark Edele's words, the tumultuous events of 1917 "can neither be fully embraced, nor fully disowned" by today's Kremlin.

Putin clearly has a love-hate relationship with Bolshevism. On the one hand, he has stated that he is no great fan of Lenin and his followers. He has described the Bolsheviks as traitors who sabotaged Russia's war effort in World War I - something that ultimately led to Russia's "losing to the losing side." He has likewise heaped scorn on their domestic and economic policies, and characterized Lenin's nationalities policy as a time bomb that detonated in 1991, causing the Soviet Union's collapse.

At the same time, Putin has remarked that he "very much liked, and still likes communist and socialist ideas." Moreover, Putin is proud of his membership in the Communist Party, as well as his 20 year service in the KGB - an agency that was, he once said, seemingly with pride, "the successor organization to the Cheka" and widely known as "the Party's armed unit."

The contradictory views held by Putin are not just the result of cognitive dissonance. The Kremlin's ambivalence about the revolutions of 1917 stems from ambiguity relating to Russia's post-Soviet identity.

In terms of cultural identification, Putin's Russia yearns to reconnect to the lost world of the Romanov dynasty. The Russian Orthodox Church has canonized Nicholas II, and Putin now stages pomp-and-circumstance rituals that clearly strive to evoke a sense of tsarist-era grandeur. But there is no escaping the fact that in purely legal terms, the present-day Russian Federation is a direct successor of the Soviet regime. The reality is that the Bolshevik decree of November 22, 1917, abolishing all laws of the Russian Empire, retains its validity. That decree erased centuries of tradition from Russia's legal memory.

The way post-Soviet Russia handled the issue of property rights underscores the strength of the Soviet legacy. Russia's economic relations today rest upon the decision made following the Soviet collapse in 1991 to recognize the legality of Soviet notions of property, i.e. that land, structures and enterprises belonged to the state, not individuals. It was then easy for all such "state" property to be privatized, as if it had previously never belonged to anyone. The privatization that occurred in the 1990s, then, ignored the rights of tsarist-era owners who had seen their property arbitrarily expropriated by the Bolsheviks.

The decision to not offer redress for the Bolsheviks' "nationalization" of property continues to have adverse ramifications today in that it abets an atmosphere of lawlessness and insecurity when it comes to property rights. A dynamic economy cannot be constructed unless property rights are secure and uniformly applied.

Notwithstanding the Putin administration's occasional criticism of past totalitarian practices, the Communist era of Russian history has yet to receive a comprehensive moral and historical assessment. The Communist regime's many crimes have never been repudiated and condemned, and, as a result, no acts of national atonement have occurred. One could even argue that the process of the Russian nation's moral revival has not yet begun.

Such a perspective was held by Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of the leading "architects" of perestroika, the reform drive in the late 1980s that aimed to make Soviet-style Communism more efficient, but which ultimately sowed the seeds of the system's demise. Not long before his death in 2005, Yakovlev was interviewed by Jonathan Brent, who at that time was the editorial director of Yale University Press and founder of the "Annals of Communism" series.

"In conversation," Brent wrote in his 2008 book Inside the Stalin Archives, "Yakovlev always returned to the fact that Russia was never fully de-Sovietized. There was no Nuremberg trial, no general accounting, no public reconciliation between victims and victimizers, no restoration of property, or adequate compensation to the many millions whose lives were permanently damaged or destroyed by [Lenin's and] Stalin's 'utopia.'"

"Instead the country drifted into indifference and forgetfulness, hardly knowing whether it wanted freedom or not - hardly remembering freedom at all," Brent added.

The Russian leadership's ambiguous stance toward the revolutions of 1917 is also a byproduct of its inability to formulate an inspiring vision for the future. What is present-day Russia's social ideal? Where is it heading? Some segments of the Russian political elite style themselves as supporters of conservative ideas. But conservatism presupposes respect for institutions. Others say they are the champions of a political system that is led by the wise and strong "national leader." But an ideology built upon a charismatic leader demands a grand vision.

Ultimately, post-Soviet Russia is not a country that holds institutions in high esteem; nor is it the home of big ideas. Incapable of generating a compelling vision for Russia's future, the country's leadership is mainly concerned simply with perpetuating its own power.

As a result, Russian claims to Great Power status, as well as the Kremlin's domestic emphasis on centralized authority and the preservation of stability above all else, are built upon an eclectic historical foundation, developed from a mish-mash of the Soviet and tsarist past.

Editor's note: Igor Torbakov is Senior Fellow at Uppsala University and at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Sweden.

Copyright notice: All EurasiaNet material  Open Society Institute
Karabakh: Diplomatic Attention Needed to Address Growing Risks

Publisher EurasiaNet Author Fuad Shabazov Publication Date 10 March 2017 Cite as EurasiaNet, Karabakh: Diplomatic Attention Needed to Address Growing Risks, 10 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cba9d94.html [accessed 7 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.

A recent flare-up of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh highlights a growing risk of renewed, full-fledged warfare between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

On February 25, clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces marked the most intense fighting since early April of 2016, when several hundred soldiers on both sides were killed. According to Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry, the February clashes were caused by Armenian troops, allied with the region's separatist forces, who attempted an incursion in the Khojavand-Fizuli sector of the Karabakh frontline, known as the line of contact. Five Azerbaijani soldiers were killed, including a major and a senior lieutenant, and ongoing skirmishes made it difficult to collect their bodies from the neutral zone; it took two days for the Azerbaijani side to retrieve them.

Armenian officials and Karabakh separatists have denied Baku's account, instead accusing Azerbaijan of instigating the violence by opening fire on Armenian positions in Khojavand with TR-107 rocket launchers. The strikes had been pre-planned, Yerevan claimed, citing as evidence reports of a recent frontline visit by two senior Azerbaijani officials-Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov and Army Chief of Staff General Najmaddin Sadigov. Both men urged that Azerbaijani forces act more resolutely.

Two other incidents followed. On March 1, Azerbaijan launched an artillery attack, destroying an Armenian military compound and hitting several vehicles carrying Armenian soldiers, as shown in aerial footage released by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry. And on March 2, according to an official ministry statement, Armenia-backed forces attacked Azerbaijani positions in the Aghdere-Tartar section of the frontline before being forced to retreat.

The extent of Armenian losses has once again emerged as a sharply contested issue. The only casualty the Armenian government has acknowledged since tensions re-escalated is a contract serviceman, Nver Babajanyan, who reportedly died of shrapnel wounds. Azerbaijani officials have questioned this report, in an echo from April 2016, when Baku repeatedly accused Yerevan of concealing the real number of its casualties in Karabakh.

Meanwhile, Armenia has once again floated the possibility of deploying powerful Iskander missiles (supplied by Russia in 2016) in a bid to gain a strategic edge.

These events underscore just how tenuous the Karabakh ceasefire remains today, more than two decades after it was concluded in 1994. Incidents such as the downing of helicopters and the use of heavy artillery near civilian areas have long become regular here, affirming the Karabakh conflict as a trench war that is far from over.

The bitter rivalry has been re-shaping national identities in both countries, with far-reaching political implications. The first generation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis who have no direct experience of peaceful coexistence is coming of age, shaped by hostile rhetoric.

In Baku, the April 2016 clashes sparked spontaneous marches by young men and women eager to celebrate their army's successes. In Yerevan, Karabakh war veterans angered by a possibility of concessions to Azerbaijan stormed a police station last summer, killing two officers. In both capitals, public rallies have been fueled by patriotism and anger. The subsequent demonstrations against the lack of government accountability and economic stagnation have shown that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue can catalyze broader civic movements.

Although the fresh flare-up of violence has not yet triggered large protests, there have been some expressions of discontent, since there is a deep dissatisfaction in the members of Sasna Tsrer (a militant organization of Karabakh war veterans) with the current government's policy towards Nagorno-Karabakh. The members of the organization claim that power in Armenia was usurped in 2008, and it is time to take it down.

The date when the first clash occurred, February 25, was heavy with significance. It marked the 25th anniversary of the Khojaly Massacre in which 613 Azerbaijani civilians died at the hands of Armenian troops. This coincidence meant that commemorative marches across Azerbaijan and in Tbilisi took place within days of demonstrations against Azerbaijan by Armenian diaspora groups.

The recent clashes should acts as an alarm for all those involved in the long-stalled Karabakh peace process. Without a significant diplomatic breakthrough, the risk of further serious hostilities in Karabakh this year is very high. At the minimum, further skirmishes could result in civilian casualties and displace civilians from both sides. While it remains to be seen if the recent violence escalates, one fact remains clear: such escalation would have destabilizing effects far beyond Nagorno-Karabakh.

Editor's note: Fuad Shahbazov is an Adviser-Expert at the Baku-based Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. His expertise areas include regional security, religious radicalism and political Islam. He is the author of "Syria 1946-2012" and "Tunisian Model of Democracy in Arab World" books.

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Georgians Wary of Turkey's Rising Influence in Batumi

Publisher EurasiaNet Author Joshua Kucera Publication Date 9 March 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Georgians Wary of Turkey's Rising Influence in Batumi, 9 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbaa6a4.html [accessed 7 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.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech last October in Rize, less than 100 miles from the Georgian border, to justify Turkey's military actions in Syria and Iraq. During the address, he evoked the Ottoman Empire, arguing that Ankara's interests coincide, at least emotionally, with those of the Golden Porte.

"Our physical boundaries are different from the boundaries of our heart," he said. By way of example, he asked: "Is it possible to separate Rize from Batumi?"

The mention of Batumi, Georgia's second-largest city, received scant attention from most of the world. But in Georgia it was cause for alarm about what, exactly, was meant by "boundaries of the heart."

Turkey's ambassador to Tbilisi was forced to clarify that Georgians "misunderstood" Erdogan's comments. "Among the neighbors of Georgia, Turkey is the only country which does not have questions regarding borders," said the ambassador, Levent Gumrukcu. "Batumi is Georgia and Rize is Turkey and it will always be this way."

These days, though, it does seem that less and less separates Rize from Batumi.

Batumi now has a population of about 150,000 and is the center of the Autonomous Republic of Ajara, in the country's southwestern corner. Ajara has not been part of Turkey since the Ottomans ceded it to the Russian Empire in 1878. But over the past decade and a half, Turkish investments have poured into the region, and today Batumi's center and the Black Sea shore have been remade by rows of luxury hotels and casinos, largely built with Turkish money. While the government does not release figures on the levels of Turkish investment in Ajara, it represents roughly 80-90 percent of the total foreign investment in the region, a former regional government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A section of the city's historic center, once an Armenian quarter, is now dominated by Turkish restaurants, bars, and teahouses. Dozens of "Thai massage" parlors, fronts for prostitution, cater to mostly male Turkish visitors. Far more Turkish than Georgian is heard, and restaurant touts do not bother with any other language, beckoning visitors with "buyurun, hos geldiniz."

At the same time that its commercial presence has grown, Turkey also has sought to increase its political influence in its former territory. Erdogan has increasingly weighed in on Ajara's affairs, supporting the construction of a new mosque in Batumi and asking the Georgian government to close down the casinos there. In February, Georgia's government shut down a Batumi school associated with Fethullah Gulen after Turkish officials criticized it.

Georgians also look with a wary eye to Turkey's growing embrace of its Ottoman heritage and the rise in popularity of irredentist maps showing Turkey with borders expanded into the former Ottoman Empire, usually including Ajara.

All of this is feeding a growing sense of mistrust of Turkey in Batumi. "The historical context very strongly affects these processes," said Ruslan Baramidze, an anthropologist at Batumi's Shota Rustaveli State University who studies Islam in Georgia.

Baramidze noted that in addition to Ajara's three centuries under Ottoman rule, during which most of the population converted to Islam, the region's autonomous status is also the legacy of Turkish influence. The 1921 Treaty of Kars, which delineated the border between the Soviet Union and the Turkish Republic, stipulated that Ajara would be granted autonomy within Georgia because of a Turkish demand that the area's Muslim character be respected.

"This history is always in the background, so this issue of Turkish influence is felt much more strongly here in Batumi than in Tbilisi, for example," Baramidze said.

The former government of Mikheil Saakashvili opened the door to the large Turkish presence, with its enthusiastic embrace of foreign investors and geopolitical orientation toward NATO. The then-opposition Georgian Dream coalition tried to use that against Saakashvili, exploiting anti-Turkish sentiment in its victorious campaign in Georgia's 2012 parliamentary elections. But since taking power the GD has softened its tone, and the anti-Turkish niche has been filled by a more nationalist party, the Alliance of Patriots, which campaigns on a strongly anti-Turkish message. The alliance's strong performance was the surprise of the 2016 parliamentary elections.

Resentment toward Turkey has manifested itself most sharply in public opposition to the construction of a new mosque in Batumi. Currently, the city has only one, the 19th century Orta Mosque, which Muslim leaders say is too small to accommodate all the city's worshippers. One plan, sponsored by Turkey, was to recreate a former Ottoman mosque, named after an Ottoman sultan. But that ran into significant public opposition heavily inflected with anti-Turkish sentiments, including baseless rumors that it would be built on top of the graves of Georgian soldiers who fought with Soviet forces in 1921 against Turkey. The plan is no longer to recreate the Ottoman mosque, but to build a mosque with solely Georgian money, though the details have yet to be decided, said Jemal Paksadze, the former chief mufti of Georgia and now an advisor to the Ajaran government on Islamic issues.

Turkey's heavy-handed interventions have only poured fuel on the fire, locals say. Paksadze said he distinguishes between "educated and uneducated" Turks, and highlighted the good that Turkey has done for Georgia, notably Ankara's support for Tbilisi in its 2008 war with Russia. Turkey funded the reconstruction of 150 homes in Gori that were destroyed in the fighting.

In Batumi, though, Turks often behave with a proprietary attitude, Paksadze said. "It's citizens of Turkey who are to blame for the poor relations," he said. "When I used to work at the mosque, Turks would come here and say 'we built this.' And I would correct them: no, it was Georgians who built it." A security guard at the mosque, Tamaz Tshiteladze, chimed in: "Even the Turkish consul, when he brings Turkish visitors here, he says 'Ajara is ours.'"

(The Turkish consulate in Batumi told EurasiaNet that the consul had "made no such remarks.")

Local attitudes toward the large Turkish presence are complex and evolving, said Keti Dumbadze, a local journalist. In the early years of Turkish investment, many in Batumi were uncomfortable working for Turkish companies, particularly young women, in the belief that Turkish men were lecherous, Dumbadze said. But with the passage of time that fear has faded and people appreciate the good salaries paid by Turkish companies. These days, it is becoming common for young people to try to learn Turkish to improve their career prospects, she said.

Nevertheless, social tensions remain. Fights in nightclubs between Georgian and Turkish men, usually over women, are common, and women sometimes feel uncomfortable walking around the Turkish quarter. Men there will "look very directly at you," Dumbadze said. "It makes me feel a little like a foreigner, it's an uncomfortable situation and so sometimes I avoid the area."

Editor's note: Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at EurasiaNet, and author of The Bug Pit.

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Central Asia: What Will US Foreign Policy Toward the Region Look Like?

Publisher EurasiaNet Publication Date 13 March 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Central Asia: What Will US Foreign Policy Toward the Region Look Like?, 13 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbaaef4.html [accessed 7 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.

A few days after the arrest of a leading opposition politician in Kyrgyzstan, the US State Department replied to a reporter's query about the incident with a circumspect statement.

"We refer you to the government of the Kyrgyz Republic for information on the details of this case," the note addressed to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty stated.

The note was brief. Yet it was tellingly dismissive, and possibly spoke volumes about the future look of Washington's human rights agenda under the Trump administration.

Central Asian governments are taking note, given that some of them, in particular Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are among the world's most serial violators of political, religious and media freedoms.

A broader signal was given at the start of March when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson elected not to attend his department's annual launch of its reports on human rights conditions around the globe. That no-show was criticized even by some Republican lawmakers. "For 1st time in a long time @StateDept #humanrights report will not be presented by Secretary of State. I hope they reconsider," US Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, wrote on his Twitter account.

New York-based Human Rights Watch was more categorical about the implications. "Secretary Tillerson's absence from the State Department's annual human rights report release reinforces the message to governments, rights activists and at-risk minorities that the State Department might also be silent on repression, abuse, and exploitation," Sarah Margon, Washington Director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on March 3.

As the State Department's own reports document, there is a dearth of governmental respect for many basic rights in Central Asia. The annual surveys are, by design, intended to avoid explicitly indicating nation's trajectories - if they are getting better or worse - but the proliferation of problem cases is telling in itself.

Taken individually, each country in the region presents its own set of rights challenges - ones that a distracted and underfunded State Department may struggle to meet.

If the United States ignores its national interest in promoting basic individual rights around the world, authoritarian political systems are sure to grow stronger. By not paying attention to the region now, then, the United States might be creating more complicated diplomatic problems for itself later in Central Asia and elsewhere, suggested Surat Ikramov, a prominent rights activist in Uzbekistan.

"For the countries of Central Asia, and for Uzbekistan, the consequences will be significant. This means a strengthening of dictatorial regimes, a deepening of corruption, a worsening in the standard of life of the population, and an increase in emigration," Ikramov told EurasiaNet.org.

Tajikistan presents a particular challenge for US diplomacy in that it is run by a weak strongman. Washington has pursued a diplomatic course there that is intensely focused on security, given that Tajikistan shares a long and poorly defended border with Afghanistan. Accordingly, US diplomats have remained largely silent in response to escalating repression against opposition politicians and independent journalists. The Tajik crackdown picked up steam in September 2015, when authorities claimed they had been targeted by a reported coup attempt.

In recent months, in another surprising turn of events, a long-time loyalist was removed as mayor of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, and now appears to be in the crosshairs for criminal prosecution. The US Embassy has made no public comment on the case, although Ambassador Elisabeth Millard did on March 7 meet with his successor, Rustam Emomali, who is also the president's son.

The challenge for Washington vis-a-vis Kyrgyzstan is to get bilateral ties back on track. Bilateral relations fell off a cliff in mid-2015, when the State Department decided to bestow a human rights award on a jailed ethnic Uzbek activist - an act that Bishkek perceived as a hostile gesture. Rights-related issues have collectively acted as the single greatest irritant in US-Kyrgyz ties.

Once rights are removed from the table - or at least shoved to one side - prospects seem to get better for improved bilateral relations, some observers believe. But such action would come at a cost - undermining the US image as an advocate for justice.

Fatima Yakupbayeva, a lawyer in Kyrgyzstan who has regularly defended victims of rights abuses in court, takes a sanguine view. "Trump is a patriot of his own country and he will accordingly be pursuing policies that are only convenient to the Unites States," Yakupbayeva said.

Beyond individual rights, lots of experts are wondering about the general shape of US policy toward Central Asia. Speaking at a recent conference at George Washington University, Roger Kangas, a Central Asia specialist at the National Defense University, said that it was still too early to determine where the emphasis of Trump administration diplomacy will lie.

"We still don't have a lot of staffing in place, in the State Department [and] in the Defense Department amongst others," Kangas said. "[Central Asia] is completely off the radar screen No real discussion has taken place on this region, except in perhaps a very modest way of supporting combating violent extremism."

Kangas predicted that in line with Trump's general approach toward life and business, relations between Central Asian nations and the US may become increasingly transactional - that is contingent less on general principles, and revolving more around bargaining on specific issues. Under this scenario, security matters are likely to take the front seat.

With the Trump administration making noises about significant cuts at the State Department - meaning the likely reduction of aid programs that have benefitted Central Asia to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the decades - Washington may be lacking enough financial carrots to incentivize its Central Asian partners to buy into US policy preferences.

"If I'm a Central Asian leader, or a business official  what does the US have to offer me?" Kangas said.

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Tajikistan and Islamic State: Threat or Bogeyman?

Publisher EurasiaNet Publication Date 14 March 2017 Other Languages / Attachments Russian Cite as EurasiaNet, Tajikistan and Islamic State: Threat or Bogeyman?, 14 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbabbd4.html [accessed 7 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.

p>Perhaps the greatest existential threat facing Tajikistan is posed by the Islamic State militant group, according to the government narrative. Or maybe not, some officials suggest.







For the past few years, authorities in Tajikistan have presented a murky, muddled and contradictory public message - on the one hand warning of a clear and present danger of religious extremism, while also claiming that they are containing the challenge.







In January, a top security official told reporters that the number of Tajik citizens joining the ranks of Islamic State in 2016 had dwindled to only a few dozen. But at least one recent report has dampened the optimism behind Tajik officials' statements. According to research by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, based in The Hague, an alarming number of Tajiks over the past year have carried out suicide missions in Syria and Iraq.







Based on data covering December 2015 through November 2016, the think tank said that of the 186 foreign citizens known to have embarked on suicide missions, easily the largest subgroup - 28 - comprised citizens of Tajikistan.







"Over the twelve months in question, significantly more Tajiks died in [Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device] and inghimas [suicide fighter] operations in Syria and Iraq than any other foreign national [group]. This figure is even more striking when considered on a per capita basis, and suggests that Tajiks were being singled out for use in suicide attacks at least in part because of their nationality," the report said.







"While a similar phenomenon appears to be the case with the other top-scoring states, the disproportionality of Tajikistan is strange indeed," the report added.







Sporadic reports also hint at a possible new trend for those joining militant groups. Given the significant setbacks endured recently by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, new Tajik recruits appear to be turning their attention to nearby Afghanistan.







Earlier this month, a group of five people from Tajikistan's Khatlon region - a couple with three children - were reportedly detained in Iran, in a location along the Afghan border, as they tried to make their way to an Islamic State outpost. RFE/RL's Tajik service, Radio Ozodi, reported that the family had traveled to Russia around six months ago and then moved onward to Turkey, from where they traveled to Iran's Zahidan region.







Ozodi noted that the family had fallen under the sway of a militant originally from the town of Nurek in southern Tajikistan. During a visit to Nurek in April 2016, President Emomali Rahmon lamented that the shortcomings of area officials had contributed to an increase in recruitment of locals by radical groups. Security officials contend that Anushervon Azimov, a native of Nurek, recruited "hundreds" of Tajiks to Islamic State before he was killed in Syria last year.







Another recent example of the apparent shift toward Afghanistan involves the case of 29-year-old Muhammad Hodjayev, who was recently made the subject of a criminal investigation by the General Prosecutor's Office in Dushanbe. Radio Ozodi has reported that investigators believe Hodjayev, a Tajik citizen, almost successfully made his way to Afghanistan through Iran's Zahidan region.







Whether such isolated instances represent a systematic shift, however, cannot be determined definitively at this time.







"With the difficulties and setbacks in Syria, it does seem that we will see more Tajik citizens going to Afghanistan [via Russia]. But I don't think they will be a game changer. More likely they will be cannon fodder," Edward Lemon, a Tajikistan specialist who has closely studied the phenomenon of recruitment by radical militant groups, told EurasiaNet.org.







Sporadic and muddled information provided by the Tajik government complicates the ability of independent analysts to assess the situation.







On January 20, Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda stated during a news conference that around 41 Tajiks had joined Islamic State in 2016. He also endorsed the notion that radicalized Tajiks are increasingly turning to Afghanistan as a destination where to join militant groups, but he declined to provide an estimate on the scale of the phenomenon. "I didn't go to Afghanistan and count them," he told reporters.







While the number of Tajiks joining militant groups in Afghanistan might be in the dozens, Rahimzoda warned that upwards of 15,000 militants had massed near the Afghan-Tajik border. https://news.tj/en/news/tajikistan/security/20170120/235773







General Prosecutor Yusuf Rahmon said at a news conference in February that Tajik authorities had over the past year blocked more than 2,000 websites with allegedly radical content. Rahmon said another 4,200 videos "of a terrorist nature" had been deleted from the Internet at the behest of Tajik authorities.







For the first time at such an event, Rahmon did not address the issue of how many Tajiks are now believed by the government to be fighting in Syria or elsewhere. That omission prompted local media outlets to speculate that this information had been classified.







Media reports have previously cited officials as estimating the number of Tajiks in the ranks of Islamic State at 1,000-2,000.







Rahimzoda reportedly told a law enforcement conference in September 2016 that more than 150 Tajiks active in foreign-based militant groups - including 133 with Islamic State - had been returned to their homeland in the preceding 18-month period. If accurate, the comment raises the possibility that the contingent of Tajik fighters abroad is not just growing more slowly, but may actually be shrinking.







While Tajiks may not constitute a statistically important percentage of the overall number of Islamic State militants, they appear to play an outsized role in terms of prestige. One well-known Islamic State commander is Gulmurod Khalimov, who served as a high-ranking officer in Tajikistan's OMON riot police before defecting in early 2015. According to some reports, Khalimov recently assumed a top job in Islamic State's hierarchy.







"Khalimov's promotion as a key militant commander appears to be a well-crafted strategy by [Islamic State]. He is not only qualified being a former special operations colonel, but it is also meant to increase recruitment among Russian-speaking individuals, including Tajiks, for its ranks," the Singapore-based International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research observed in a paper published earlier this year.

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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.




By targeting journalists in this manner, the US president ended a longstanding American tradition of promoting freedom of expression and sent a powerful message to media censors. The Washington Post called it "a gift to tyrants everywhere".

In January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan endorsed Trump's latest allegations that the CNN television network was guilty of broadcasting "fake news" in its report on ties between the US president and Russia.





A warning to the media





The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, appeared to have taken his cue from Trump when he said of journalists in February: "Donald Trump understands that they are an anarchic group."





Two days earlier, his spokesman issued what he called a warning to foreign media outlets, threatening to "crush" those that endanger "peace and stability" and citing Trump's treatment of the press as a justification for the warning.





"The so-called fight against fake news has become a propaganda tool for the predators of press freedom," said RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire. "Of course, it is more necessary than ever for Internet users to disentangle fact from fiction in the flow of information. However, the fight against fake news should be conducted by promoting free and independent journalism as a source of reliable and high-quality information."





Russia's legal ban on the "dissemination of false information"





The Russian telecoms regulator is preparing a draft decree designed purely and simply to block all content that contains false information. Before Trump's statement, Russia, ranked 148th in RSF's World Press Freedom Index, had already made it a requirement "not to disseminate false information" for bloggers to operate legally. The fight against "misleading information" has been a classic feature of post-Soviet Russia. The bill, imitated by several countries such as Uzbekistan, has enough leeway to allow for the broadest possible censorship.





Since July 2016, content aggregators are required to verify the veracity of reports that they publish if they do not come from media outlets registered in Russia, and could face harsh penalties.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has posted a new section on its official website dedicated to debunking fake anti-Russian news stories published by international news outlets.



The TV news network Russia Today, funded by the Russian government, went so far as to set up its own fact-checking service in March. Other Russian state media outlets, such as the news agency RIA Novosti, have also tried to take advantage of the ill-defined phenomenon of "fake news" to launch their own "Media Wars" sections, intended to highlight Western lies and attacks on the Russian media.





Punishing "fake news" denies journalists the right to make mistakes





In sub-Sahara Africa, the concept of fake news is often abused to put pressure on journalists. Some countries' laws provide for severe penalties without taking account of the intentions of journalists, who sometimes simply make mistakes.





In any case, the penalty is disproportionate to the seriousness of the news report, even if it is wrong. In Cote d'Ivoire, for example, insulting the head of state or the dissemination of false news reports may be enough for a journalist to be taken into custody, despite the fact that such offences were meant to be decriminalised under the 2004 press law.





Last month, six senior Ivorian journalists, including three newspaper publishers, were detained and questioned in Abidjan, accused of "publishing false news" about an army mutiny earlier in the month.





In Madagascar, a new communications code has been strongly criticised by journalists for referring to the criminal code in its rulings on press offences, which could lead to the criminalisation of the profession. It provides for heavy fines for infringements ranging from insults to defamation, and refers to the dissemination of "false news", an imprecise offence which removes the right of journalists to make mistakes.





In Somalia, the Universal TV channel was suspended on 5 March for broadcasting false reports alleged to have threatened the stability and peace of the region after it referred to overseas trips by the president.





Information control is key for those who want to impose their version of events





The South African government plans to impose a system of online control of the media in order to meet the "challenge" of "fake news". Growing hostility to the media probably has its roots in an unprecedented crisis in President Jacob Zuma's African National Congress, whose leaders tend increasingly to silence dissident voices.





In Burundi, the control of news and information is a key issue for the ruling authorities. The government fosters the idea that the media are partisan and that there is an international plot against the country.





Since 2015, any report or statement is instantly interpreted as either for, or against, the government and the goal of the authorities is to impose its version of events as the only one.





In Egypt, journalists are frequently accused of disseminating false information whenever they criticise the government, or report on sensitive issues that upset it. This widespread practice leads to self-censorship among journalists in their coverage of events for fear of joining the long list of colleagues who have been prosecuted and imprisoned.





The investigative journalist Ismail Alexandrani, an expert on the Sinai Peninsula, has been held since his arrest at Hurghada airport on the Red Sea in November 2015 on charges of publishing false information and of membership of the Muslim Brotherhood.





In Bahrain, the prominent citizen journalist and human rights campaigner, Nabeel Rajab, was accused last December of publishing false news about the kingdom of Bahrain in a cybercrime case. He could face up to two years' imprisonment on this latest charge, which arises from interviews he gave in 2014 and 2015 to local and regional TV stations on human rights in Bahrain.





Fake news used by French politicians





The use of fake news to silence media critics is not the unique preserve of authoritarian or countries that are known for undermining press freedom. In France, the National Front, through its vice-president Florian Philippot, who has frequently categorised the work of journalists as "fake news". During the programme "l'Emission Politique" on the TV station France 2 on 9 February, in which National Front leader Marine Le Pen took part, the party set up a "fake news alert team" which posted some 20 real-time alerts online "whenever members of the team believed that France 2 journalists put out fake news".





Presidential candidate Francois Fillon earlier this month accused TV news channels of falsely reporting that his wife has committed suicide, before admitting no such reports had been broadcast.





In Italy, Beppe Grillo, the leader of the Five Star movement, accused Italian journalists of "manufacturing false news" designed to harm his party. He called for the creation of "a popular jury to determine the veracity of the news published".





The FNSI journalists' union said it amounted to the "lynching of all journalists". Five Star said journalists themselves were responsible for Italy's low ranking in the World Press Freedom Index.





The United Nations concerned at growth of fake news





David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights issued a joint statement on 3 March expressing concern at the use of "fake news' for government propaganda and to curb press freedom. "Criminal defamation laws are unduly restrictive and should be abolished," the signatories said.
Iran: Repression of those seeking truth and justice for 1980s killings needs to stop

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 16 March 2017 Cite as Article 19, Iran: Repression of those seeking truth and justice for 1980s killings needs to stop, 16 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbc264.html [accessed 7 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.

The Iranian authorities should stop the harassment, intimidation and prosecution of human rights defenders seeking truth and justice on behalf of individuals who were summarily executed or forcibly disappeared during the 1980s and their families, said 20 human rights groups.

Over the past few months, several human rights defenders, including Mansoureh Behkish, Maryam Akbari-Monfared and Raheleh Rahemipour, have been subjected to harassment, reprisals or prosecution on vague national security-related charges for their peaceful efforts to learn the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones. The persecution signals renewed efforts by the authorities to suppress the struggle that has been ongoing for over three decades to reveal the truth about the gross human rights violations that were perpetrated by the Iranian authorities during the 1980s, including the extrajudicial executions of several thousands in 1988 and their burial in unmarked mass graves.

The latest wave of persecution of those seeking truth and justice appears to have been triggered by the release in August 2016 of an audio recording of a meeting in 1988 in which senior officials are heard discussing and defending the details of their plans to carry out the 1988 mass executions.

The audio recording has sent shockwaves across the country and prompted the authorities to admit for the first time that the mass killings of 1988 were planned at the highest levels of government. Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the late Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was at that time the Deputy Supreme Leader, has since been sentenced to imprisonment for posting the audio file on his fathers website.

The undersigned human rights organizations are deeply concerned about these developments and call on the Iranian authorities to quash the convictions and sentences issued against Maryam Akbari-Monfared, Raheleh Rahemipour and Ahmad Montazeri; close the criminal case opened against Mansoureh Behkish; and immediately and unconditionally release Maryam Akbari-Monfared. The authorities should also ensure a safe and enabling environment in which it is possible for human rights defenders, including family members, to seek information about the mass killings, express themselves without any fear of persecution, and defend the rights to truth, justice and reparation, as a first step to ending impunity in Iran.

The undersigned human rights organizations urge the Iranian authorities to stop their attempts to silence human rights defenders and others seeking to shed light on past atrocities. Instead, they should respect their obligations under international human rights law to carry out thorough and impartial investigations into the serious human rights violations committed in the 1980s, including the 1988 extrajudicial executions, and ensure the rights to truth, justice and reparations for the victims and their families.

Cases of individuals targeted

Individuals who have been targeted in recent months for seeking truth and justice include human rights defenders Mansoureh Behkish, Maryam Akbari-Monfared and Raheleh Rahemipour, and the son of the late Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Ahmad Montazeri.

Mansoureh Behkish was informed on 29 October 2016 that she had been charged with gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security and spreading propaganda against the system. The charges stem solely from her peaceful human rights work to seek truth and justice, including her work with the Mothers and Families of Khavaran, a group comprised of mothers and other family members of political prisoners summarily executed during the 1980s, and from holding commemorative gatherings at her home and going with other families to Khavaran, a deserted mass gravesite in the south of Tehran where Iranian authorities buried some of the thousands of political prisoners extrajudicially executed in the 1980s, including Mansoureh Behkishs sister, four brothers and brother-in-law.

Maryam Akbari-Monfared has faced reprisals since October 2016, when she filed a formal complaint from inside prison requesting an official investigation into the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s, including her brother and sister; the location of the graves where their bodies were buried; and the identity of the perpetrators involved. Officials have cancelled her medical care arrangements for her rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid problems and restricted visits from her family, including her three children, in retaliation. The prosecution authorities have also threatened her with new charges. According to her family, the Associate Prosecutor of Evin prison has said: What does she want to know? Those who executed her brothers and sister have either died or become elderly and her brothers and sister are probably buried in Khavaran Such complaints are of no use. They would only make her conditions in prison more difficult and impede her release or access to [prison] leave.

Maryam Akbari-Monfared is serving a 15-year sentence in Tehrans Evin prison on several charges, including enmity against God (moharebeh), after a May 2010 sentencing. Amnesty Internationals research indicates that her conviction was based on the fact that she had made several phone calls to her siblings, who are members of the banned opposition group known as the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), and had once visited them near the PMOI-run Camp Ashraf in Iraq. She has consistently denied her alleged membership in the PMOI. She was never provided with a written judgement, setting out the evidence and legal reasoning relied upon to convict her. Her husband has said that during her trial session, the judge told her she was paying for the activities of her brother and sister with the PMOI. Her appeals were dismissed in a summary fashion with no reasons provided. Her request for judicial review is currently pending before Irans Supreme Court.

Raheleh Rahemipour was sentenced to one years imprisonment in January 2017 after Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran convicted her of spreading propaganda against the system for her peaceful efforts to learn the truth about the whereabouts of her brother Hossein Rahemipour, who was summarily executed in 1984, and his baby daughter Golrou Rahemipour, who was forcibly disappeared 15 days after she was born in Evin prison. The prison authorities took the baby away, ostensibly for medical tests, but never returned her to her mother. The family was subsequently told that baby Golrou Rahemipour had died, but the authorities never provided a death certificate, information about her death, or where she had been buried.

The court verdict issued against Raheleh Rahemipour cites her media interviews, her participation in peaceful gatherings while holding a sign that read You killed my brother! What did you do to his daughter?, and her signature on a petition in support of demands for truth and justice for those summarily executed as evidence of acting against national security. In May 2016, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances sent a communication to the Iranian authorities with regard to the case of Raheleh Rahemipours brother and niece. The authorities had not responded by the end of February 2017. Raheleh Rahemipour remains at liberty, awaiting the outcome of her appeal.

Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the late Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment in November 2016 after the Special Court of Clergy convicted him of several charges including spreading propaganda against the system and revealing plans, secrets or decisions regarding the states domestic or foreign policies in a manner amounting to espionage. The court ruled that in light of Ahmad Montazeris family history and lack of a criminal record, he only needs to serve six years of the sentence. Ahmad Montazeris conviction stems from the publication of the audio file on his fathers website, which the authorities said advanced the interests of the enemies of the Islamic Revolution, and the media interviews that he subsequently gave to media outlets based outside Iran. Ahmad Montazeri was imprisoned on 22 February 2017 to begin serving his sentence, but was granted temporary prison leave the next day. He was informed several days later that his prison sentence had been suspended.

Background

Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was once in line to become the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeinis successor but he lost his status after he voiced strong opposition to the 1988 mass killings. In the audio file released by his son in August 2016, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri is heard saying: The greatest crime committed in the Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us, has been committed at your hands and, in the future, your names will go down in history as criminals.

Under international law, individuals against whom there is evidence of criminal responsibility for serious international crimes, including those with command responsibility, should be prosecuted and tried before a court established by law and with all necessary procedural guarantees, in accordance with international fair trial standards.

If found guilty, they should be punished with appropriate penalties, which take into account the grave nature of the crimes but which do not include the death penalty or corporal punishments.

Signatories:
Turkey: Oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 15 March 2017 Cite as Article 19, Turkey: Oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council, 15 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbc764.html [accessed 7 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.

JOINT ORAL STATEMENT ON THE DETERIORATION OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MEDIA FREEDOM IN TURKEY

UN Human Rights Council 34th Special Session

Item 4: Human rights situations that require the Council's attention

Delivered by Sarah Clarke, PEN International

15 March 2017

Mr President,

PEN International, ARTICLE 19 and 66 organisations are deeply concerned by the continuous deterioration of freedom of expression and media freedom in Turkey following the violent and contemptible coup attempt on 15 July 2016.

Over 180 news outlets have been shut down under laws passed by presidential decree following the imposition of a state of emergency. There are now at least 148 writers, journalists and media workers in prison, including Ahmet Sk, Kadri Gursel, Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, Ayse Nazl Ilcak and Inan Kzlkaya, making Turkey the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The Turkish authorities are abusing the state of emergency by severely restricting fundamental rights and freedoms, stifling criticism and limiting the diversity of views and opinions available in the public sphere.

Restrictions have reached new heights in the lead up to a crucial referendum on constitutional reforms, which would significantly increase executive powers, set for 16 April 2017. The Turkish authorities campaign has been marred by threats, arrests and prosecutions of those who have voiced criticism of the proposed amendments. Several members of the opposition have been arrested on terror charges. Thousands of public employees, including hundreds of academics and opponents to the constitutional reforms, were dismissed in February. Outspoken No campaigners have been detained, adding to the overall climate of suspicion and fear. The rights to freedom of expression and information, essential to fair and free elections, are in jeopardy.

In the run-up to the referendum, the need for media pluralism is more important than ever. Voters have the right to be duly informed and to be provided with comprehensive information on all views, including dissenting voices, in sufficient time. The prevailing atmosphere should be one of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. There should be no fear of reprisals.

We urge this Council, its members and observer states, to call on the Turkish authorities to:

Guarantee equal broadcasting time for all parties and allow for the dissemination of all information to the maximum extent possible in order to ensure that voters are fully informed;

Put an end to the climate of suspicion and fear by: Immediately releasing all those held in prison for exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression; Ending the prosecutions and detention of journalists simply on the basis of the content of their journalism or alleged affiliations; Halting executive interference with independent news organisations including in relation to editorial decisions, dismissals of journalists and editors, pressure and intimidation against critical news outlets and journalists;



Revoke the excessively broad provisions under the state of emergency, the application of which, in practice, are incompatible with Turkeys human rights obligations.

Thank you Mr. President

Signatories

ActiveWatch  Media Monitoring Agency

Adil Soz - International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech

Albanian Media Institute

Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain

ARTICLE 19

Association of European Journalists

Basque PEN

Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

Cartoonists Rights Network International

Center for Independent Journalism - Hungary

Croatian PEN centre

Danish PEN

Digital Rights Foundation

English PEN

European Centre for Press and Media Freedom

European Federation of Journalists

Finnish PEN

Foro de Periodismo Argentino

German PEN

Global Editors Network

Gulf Centre for Human Rights

Human rights watch

Icelandic PEN

Independent Chinese PEN Center

Independent Journalism Center - Moldova

Index on Censorship

Institute for Media and Society

International Press Institute

International Publishers Association

Journaliste en danger

Media Foundation for West Africa

Media Institute of Southern Africa

Media Watch

MYMEDIA

Nigeria PEN Centre

Norwegian PEN

Pacific Islands News Association

Pakistan Press Foundation

Palestine PEN

PEN American Center

PEN Austria

PEN Canada

PEN Catala

PEN Centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina

PEN Centre of German-Speaking Writers Abroad

PEN Eritrea in exile

PEN Esperanto

PEN Estonia

PEN France

PEN International

PEN Melbourne

PEN Myanmar

PEN Romania

PEN Suisse Romand

PEN Trieste

Portuguese PEN Centre

Punto24

Reporters Without Borders

Russian PEN Centre

San Miguel PEN

Serbian PEN Centre

Social Media Exchange - SMEX

South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO)

South East European Network for Professionalization of Media

Vigilance pour la Democratie et lEtat Civique

Wales PEN Cymru

World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WANIFRA)

Additional signatories

Cambodian Center for Human Rights

Centre quebecois du P.E.N International

Freedom Forum

Hungarian PEN Centre

Kurdish PEN

Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance

PEN Belgium Dutch-speaking

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Tanzania: Cybercrimes Act upheld in further blow to free expression

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 15 March 2017 Cite as Article 19, Tanzania: Cybercrimes Act upheld in further blow to free expression, 15 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbca04.html [accessed 7 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.

ARTICLE 19 is disappointed by the High Court of Tanzania's decision to declare Sections 32 and 38 of the Cybercrimes Act constitutional. The constitutional petition against the provisions was filed by Jamii Media in March 2016, following the passage of the controversial law in June 2015.

The Cybercrimes Act violates international human rights law on freedom of expression and contradicts democratic values. ARTICLE 19 continues to urge its repeal.

"Section 32 of the Cybercrimes Act does not make it mandatory for the investigating police officer to seek judicial oversight while engaging in surveillance, and thus provides leeway for the abuse of surveillance powers." said Henry Maina, Director of ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa

"Section 38 on the other hand prevents a person to effectively challenge a government's interference with his or her privacy given that request for surveillance is done ex parte. The High Court has failed to acknowledge that these provisions are clearly in violation of international standards on privacy and freedom of expression, and must be reformed", continued Maina.

In delivering the judgement, the Tanzania High Court affirmed that Tanzania's police have unfettered power in investigating cybercrimes. This judgement violates both Article 16 of Tanzania's constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in that it allows the state to infringe on citizens' right to privacy without much needed judicial oversight.

Article 16(2) of the Tanzanian Constitution provides that:

"For the purpose of preserving the person's right in accordance with this Article, the state authority shall lay down legal procedures regarding the circumstances, manner and extent to which the right to privacy, security of his person, his property and residence may be encroached upon without prejudice to the provisions of this Article."

The provisions are also in contravention of the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, specifically the principles of User notification, Competent judicial authority and Due process, which were drafted by an international coalition of civil society including ARTICLE 19. These principles require that all decisions relating to Communications Surveillance be made by a competent judicial authority acting independently of the government and in accordance with due process of law, and that those whose communications are under surveillance should be notified of a decision authorising Communications Surveillance with enough time and information to enable them to challenge the decision or seek other remedies and should have access to the materials presented in support of the application for authorisation.

ARTICLE 19 calls upon the government to respect and uphold media freedom and the right to freedom of expression and information as recognised in the Tanzanian Constitution, as well as in international law. We urge the government to initiate the process of reforming the unjustifiable limit on freedom of expression created by these provisions of the Cybercrimes Act.

We also call on the government to review the Penal Code, the Cybercrimes Act and the Media Services Act as it promised during the London Summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the 2016 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
European Union Poised to Scrap Visa Requirements for Ukraine

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Oleg Varfolomeyev Publication Date 16 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 36 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, European Union Poised to Scrap Visa Requirements for Ukraine, 16 March 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 36, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbd124.html [accessed 7 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (a.k.a. the Council) struck an informal deal, on February 28, for Ukrainian citizens to travel visa free throughout the EU, except for in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Later, the deal was endorsed by the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament (Ukrainska Pravda, March 9). Although EU bureaucratic procedures still require a formal approval of the deal by the European Parliament and the Council, Ukraine is now almost sure to follow Georgia into the privileged club of countries whose citizens do not need visas to enter the EU's border-free Schengen area. The formal endorsement is expected in May, and Ukrainians will start to travel to the Schengen area without visas by the end of June, according to EU Ambassador Hugh Mingarelli (UNIAN, March 13; Ukrainska Pravda, March 2).

Visa-free travel to the EU was one of the main demands of the pro-European protesters in November 2013. Those "EuroMaidan" demonstrations led to the toppling of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Several months later, Ukraine signed an association and free trade deal with the EU, which provisionally came into effect in January 2016. However, it would be wrong to think that the EU rewarded Ukraine for the pro-Western and anti-corruption revolution. Ukraine introduced its own visa-free regime for the EU, the United States and other Western democracies in 2005 and began its talks with the EU on both free trade and visa-free travel in 2008. Ukrainians had for years complained of red tape involved with applying for visas to EU countries, which often resulted in travel plan cancelations. Ukraine had met most of the EU's requirements for visa waivers by 2014.

The EU was reluctant to scrap visa requirements in 20142015 because it feared an inflow of refugees following Russia's invasion of southeastern Ukraine. Last year, the EU bureaucracy was worried by the migrant crisis triggered by the war in Syria. This prompted another delay related to Ukraine and Georgia, as the EU decided to first set up a visa-waiver suspension mechanism to prevent similar emergencies in the future. The final agreement on the mechanism was reached last month (Liga.net, February 27). Now, the delay until MayJune seems to be due to the upcoming elections in France in AprilMay, where it is apparently feared that a visa waiver for Ukraine might boost the popularity of anti-establishment and Euro-skeptical candidates.

The absence of a visa-free-travel regime has not prevented millions of Ukrainians from already seeking jobs in the EU, mainly Poland. In January 2016, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydo claimed in the European Parliament that her country accepted one million refugees from Ukraine. However, only 2,000 Ukrainian citizens applied for refugee status in Poland in 2014, and only two of them were granted the status in 2015, according to local statistics (Radiopolsha.pl, January 20, 2016). The people Szydo was evidently alluding to were labor migrants. Poland issued over 1.3 million work permits to Ukrainian citizens last year (BBC Ukraine, January 23).

Once the visa curtain is lifted, more people from Ukraine are likely to seek jobs in the EU countries more economically developed than Poland, such as Germany, whose Ukrainian consulates have thus far been much more reluctant to issue visas than the Polish ones. According to a survey conducted by the local pollster Rating last December, 36 percent of Ukrainian labor migrants work in Poland, but that destination is preferred by only 22 percent of them. Meanwhile, Rating reports, Germany, where only 5 percent of Ukrainian labor migrants work, is preferred by 23 percent overall. Moreover, 61 percent of the polled said their unemployment was informal, mainly seasonal in construction and agricultureso the EU's caveat that the visa waiver will not apply to job seekers is unlikely to be an effective deterrent for seasonal labor migrants from Ukraine (Ratinggroup.ua, February 1).

Low incomes rather than joblessness prompt Ukrainians to seek work in the EU. Last year, unemployment did not exceed 10 percent in Ukraine (Ukrstat.gov.ua, accessed on March 16). This is worse than in Germany and Poland, but better than in Italy or Portugal, where many Ukrainian guest workers also reside. At the same time, wages are incomparable. The average monthly income barely exceeded $200 in Ukraine last January. This is roughly half the minimum wage in Poland, which itself is not rich by EU standards.

The EU visa waiver will be a rare achievement for President Petro Poroshenko, who has thus far failed to fulfil such election campaign promises as an end to the war with Russia and a successful anti-corruption campaign. The middle class, which brought Poroshenko to power in 2014, will benefit from free travel most of all. After all, the richest Ukrainianswho could afford to pay the steep fees to visa intermediaries in order to travel to Europefrequently have multiple citizenships or hold diplomatic passports and thus rarely encountered any visa barriers anyway. The support of the middle class may again be crucial for Poroshenko if he runs for re-election in 2019.

The worse-off may also benefit from more access to seasonal jobs and lower transportation fares, as European low-cost air and bus carriers are likely to queue up to the local market after the visa waiver comes into effect. Ryanair, Europe's biggest low-cost airline, has already announced its first 11 new routes from Kyiv and Lviv to EU airports, to be launched next fall (UNIAN, March 15). Thus, the impact of the EU's visa-free travel regime for Ukraine could prove significant for the country's gradually recovering but still fragile economy.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Baltics Take Step Toward Creating Single Security Space

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Olevs Nikers Publication Date 15 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 35 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Baltics Take Step Toward Creating Single Security Space, 15 March 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 35, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbf744.html [accessed 7 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

The issue of closer defense cooperation among the three Baltic StatesLithuania, Latvia and Estoniawas raised again, on March 3, by defense professionals and distinguished speakers from the United Kingdom and the United States, during a conference on "Social Resilience Against Hybrid Threats in the Baltic Region." The international gathering, held at the parliament building in Vilnius, Lithuania, was organized by the Lithuanian National Defense Foundation. From a military point of view, the three Baltic States geographically are located within a single region of operations. This leads to an interdependence between them, wherein the fall of one country would inevitably affect the others (La.lv, March 3).

The Baltic States cooperate on an inter-parliamentary and inter-governmental level, a relationship that was institutionalized as early as November 1991, with the founding of the Baltic Assembly. In military operational terms, meanwhile, the closest cooperation was established in 1994 under the BALTNET joint regional aerial surveillance project (Mil.ee, December 19, 2012). In addition, one of the most sustaining joint projects among the three post-Soviet Baltic republics has been the Baltic Naval Squadron (BALTRON), whose aim is to improve the permanent preparedness of the Baltic navies' mine detection vessels (Mil.ee, January 6, 2015). BALTRON operations train the participating crews to handle both national tasks as well as missions connected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) naval mine countermeasures group. Finally, one of the greatest successes of Baltic tripartite military cooperation has been the Baltic Defense College (Mod.gov.lv, Accessed February 6).

Nevertheless, the turning point in cooperative Baltic relations came soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On February 18, 2015, the Baltic States established the Combined Joint Staff Element as a framework for closer military cooperation, the coordination of their defense planning, capacity building of their land forces, as well as joint military intelligence (Sargs.lv, February 18, 2015). Moreover, since 2016, the Baltic States have applied to participate in the NATO Response Force with a joint battalion unit (BALTBAT)an opportunity to deepen and develop their military coordination and increase their Armed Forces' mutual compatibility (Mod.gov.lv, accessed February 6).

The Lithuanians, in particular, have an especially ambitious vision for Baltic military cooperation: they desire to create a common Baltic division. However, Nora Vanaga, a researcher at the National Defense Academy of Latvia, believes that under existing circumstances, even creation of a joint brigade-size unit would be impossible to achieve. All three countries have a limited number of military personnel and resources, and there is no one who could command such a division, Vanaga argues. In turn, Latvian parliamentarian Janis Adamsons asserted last month that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would be unable to form anything larger than a joint Baltic Brigade because only about 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers exist to be drawn from within the current regional security environment. "If necessary," he added, however, "this unit could be used not only in the Baltic countries, but also elsewhere" Adamsons (Latvijas Avize, February 8).

Latvian defense ministry official Edwards Seliska has dismissed the idea of forming a joint Baltic military unit, noting that "there is [already] ongoing cooperation between Baltic land forces on a daily basis through exercises and training, which provides a certain format for joint force formation." According to Seliska, there is no need for a large joint unit, because it is too expensive.

Speaking with the author, on February 3, Dr. Maris Andzans, of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, commented that there is still a significant space for enhancing defense and security related cooperation among the Baltic States. Opportunities sparked by the "post-Crimea situation" should be further utilized. Cooperation among the Balts' Armed Forces should be strengthened via common procurements and the integration of both strategic and tactical planning, in particular, he stressed.

Past inadequacies in joint procurement stem from differences in funding procedures and varying levels of development of the Baltic republics' Armed Forces. For instance, the Latvians purchased used armored personnel carriers, while Estonians were buying completely new and more advanced models. In addition, the current administrative and legal framework can actually make joint purchases much more expensive. As an example, the Balts' joint procurement of ammunition for the "Carl Gustav" anti-tank system, administered by the European Defense Agency, escalated the price by 20 percent (Sargs.lv, August 5, 2016).

On the other hand, one of the Baltic States' greatest shared successes in recent years came out of the NATO Warsaw Summit (July 2016), wherein the Alliance collectively agreed to deploy multinational battalions to each of these countries and Poland. Papering over any pre-existing differences in strategic vision, there is now a common perception that NATO needs to maintain a "united frontline" in the Baltic region. Frequent military training and exercises within the framework of deterrence and collective defense provide for common operational thinking in the region. And this significantly improves all the elements of Host Nation support while, importantly, ensuring ever greater interoperability of the Balts' militaries with other allied countries' armed forcesand with each other.

Thus, despite the existing disagreements and differences among the three Baltic countries, there is strong promise that further integration of their militaries will continue. Increasingly, the Baltic States believe that joint and synchronized actions are crucial to successfully withstand both the conventional and asymmetric threats originating from their common adversary.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
To Afghanistan Not Syria? Islamic State Diverts Tajik Fighters South

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Edward Lemon Publication Date 15 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 35 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, To Afghanistan Not Syria? Islamic State Diverts Tajik Fighters South, 15 March 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 35, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbbfbe4.html [accessed 7 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

In February, the Iranian government extradited five members of the same family originating from Hamadoni district, in southern Tajikistan, back to their home country (Radio Ozodi, March 2). Abdulfayz Vazirov, 33, and his sister Mohira Salimova, 32, left Tajikistan for Russia in the summer of 2016 with her three children. Under the guidance of Abu Nureki, a Tajik fighter in Iraq, they traveled to Turkey. But they could not cross the border with Syria and made their way to Iran instead. Khojaev traveled directly to Iran from Novosibirsk, where he had been working as a mediator on a construction site. The family was detained near Zahedan, in southern Iran, while trying to cross the border into Afghanistan to join the Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP)the local Afghani wing of the international terrorist organization.

This was not an isolated incident. Muhammed Khojaev, 29, from Mastcha, in northern Tajikistan, had crossed the border from Iran into Afghanistan in December 2016 (Radio Ozodi, February 23). As the Islamic State (IS) continues to lose ground in Syria and Iraq, some recruits from Tajikistan are apparently being diverted to fight in Afghanistanalthough this is not yet an established conventional militant route.

Hundreds of Central Asians joined the jihad in Afghanistan prior to the 2001 invasion led by the United States. But in recent years, the number of fighters traveling to the region's southern neighbor reduced to a trickle. Relatively few fighters have been reported in the media or on casualty lists (Afghan Analysts Network, June 27, 2014). In contrast, between 3,000 and 5,000 citizens from Central Asia have traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria since 2013. The Middle Eastern battlefield was more attractive for a number of reasons (Afghan Analysts Network, October 8, 2014). With most recruitment taking place in Russia, where millions of Central Asians work as labor migrants (see EDM, September 9, 2015; September 15, 2015; May 19, 2016), traveling to Syria and Iraq via Iran is easier than crossing the militarized Afghan frontier. Divorced from family and kinship networks, migrants have proved more susceptible to extremist messaging than closely watched communities at home. Thanks to its adept user of social media, the Islamic State was seen as winning when it declared its "caliphate" in June 2014, helping attract more fighters from the region.

But since its peak in the summer of 2014, the Islamic State has lost 62 and 30 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria, respectively (Twitter.com/coalition, February 11). With the loss of territory has come a sharp drop in income, from an estimated $1.9 billion in 2014, to $870 million in 2016 (Icsr.info, February 17). At the same time, the border with Turkey, the main route for fighters entering the country, has become more difficult to cross. As a result, the number of Central Asians going to fight in the Middle East has decreased in recent years. According to government figures, 1,100 Tajik citizens have traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq. In 2016, according to the Ministry of Interior, just 40 citizens of Tajikistan took this journey, with 80 returning from the battlefield (Radio Ozodi, January 20). The recent cases of Tajiks trying to enter Afghanistan (see above) appear to be a product of this decline of the Islamic State's fortunes in Syria and Iraq.

Having declared itself in January 2015, the ISKP has struggled to make inroads in Afghanistan. Estimates of the number of militants fighting with the Afghan wing of the Islamic State vary. Last year, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin put the number at 6,000, but other experts have provided a more circumspect figure2,500 (24News, July 4, 2016; Usip.org, April 7, 2016). ISKP is based in Nangarhar province, on the border with Pakistan, but has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks in Kabul (Afghan Analysts Network, July 27, 2016). Like their comrades in Syria and Iraq, fighters for the ISKP have suffered heavy casualties in recent months, losing 497 members in the final quarter of 2016, according to one report (Religionandgeopolitics.org [London], January 20). A number of Tajikistanis and Uzbekistanis are already fighting with the ISKP. But their strength is still unknown. Many joined in July 2015, when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) swore allegiance to the ISKP (Furqon TV, July 31, 2015). The presence of ethnic-Tajik, -Uzbek and -Turkmen communities in northern Afghanistan has confused the process of identifying foreign fighters, with officials often describing Afghan citizens as "Tajik" or "Uzbek." Given this tendency, the precise number of fighters in Afghanistan from post-Soviet Central Asia in fact is likely to be minimal.

Although a few Tajikistani citizens have attempted the RussiaIranAfghanistan route, ostensibly on orders from the Islamic State, the pathway is not yet fully established. More Central Asians can be expected to attempt that journey, but their success will depend on how tightly the Iranian government controls the border. The interdiction of one group trying to cross the border in February indicates a willingness on the part of the Iranian authorities to halt militant traffic. In summary, the diversion of Tajik recruits from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan is a sign of the Islamic State's overall weakness rather than its strength. Given the group's numerous setbacks, the IS's recruitment rates are unlikely to return to their 2014 levels. Meanwhile, a few extra Central Asian militants will not tip the balance in ISKP's favor in Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Private Military Companies Forming Vanguard of Russian Foreign Operations

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Publication Date 16 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 36 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Private Military Companies Forming Vanguard of Russian Foreign Operations, 16 March 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 36, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbc13f4.html [accessed 7 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.

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The massive Russian military involvement in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad may be the first move to reestablish Moscow's influence over the entire Middle East (see EDM, March 8). Russia has also been seeking contacts in conflict-ridden Libya, which still lacks an effective national government following the fall of long-time dictator Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011. Vladimir Putin, who in 2011 was temporarily Russian prime minister, publicly criticized the then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, for not using Moscow's veto power to prevent a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Qaddafi's use of airpower to suppress an uprising against his regime. The resolution allowed for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya and the subsequent Western military intervention, which eventually ousted Qaddafi. In 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin as president, while Medvedev was relegated to the prime minister post. Since then, Moscow has continued to accuse Western involvement in Libya of being destabilizing and promoting terrorism, all the while seeking ways to reestablish a foothold in the oil-rich country (Mk.ru, February 9).

Notably, Moscow has been cultivating relations with General Khalifa Haftarthe most powerful warlord in eastern Libya, supported by Egypt. Haftar, an army general, commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) and a former citizen of the United States, who lived in exile in that country for nearly 20 years, has twice visited Moscow. Last January, he was entertained onboard Russia's aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, off the shore of Libya. The Kuznetsov was on course back to its Barents Sea base for repairs, after a combat tour bombing targets in Syria (see EDM, February 1). While on board, Haftar had video conference talks with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu about jointly "fighting international terrorist groups in the Middle East" (Militarynews.ru, January 11). Later, Moscow denied reports it had agreed to supply Haftar's LNA forces with $2 billion worth of arms and military supplies, though some weapons deals could be underway. Russia has been in contact not only with Haftar, but also with the UN-recognized national unity government in Tripoli and has called for the formation of a joint front against the Islamic State and other jihadist militants in Libya. Still, for Russia, the best outcome would be a stable oil-rich Libya, ruled by a secular authoritarian strongman who would make lucrative arms and technical cooperation deals, promote Russian interests and provide military bases: Haftar, not the Tripoli government, is Moscow's obvious choice (Mk.ru, February 9).

This week (March 13), it was reported that some 22 Russian special forces "with drones" were spotted on the border with Libya, at the Egyptian Sidi Barrani airbase, close to Haftar's main strongholdthe port city Tobruk. The possible deployment of Russian special forces on the Libyan border could be interpreted as the first phase of a possible Russian engagement in support of Haftar. In Moscow, the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense immediately refuted any Russian military presence in Sidi Barrani or anywhere in Haftar-controlled territory (Interfax, March 14). But as the official denials were being registered, Oleg Krinitsyn, the director general of the private Russian military company RSB-Group, told Russian journalists that his employees (all former well-trained servicemen) have been recently clearing mines in Benghazi, in Haftar-controlled territory, under an "official contract" but were "not involved in any combat." Private military activities are absolutely illegal in Russia, and hiring mercenaries is a felony. The RSB-Group is officially registered as a security firm; but for missions abroad, it has, according to Krinitsyn, also registered a company in the British Virgin Islands. Krinitsyn boasted the RSB-Group could easily raise a "2,000 strong" military force if there is a patron ready to pay (RBC, March 13).

The increasing use of private military companies, known in Russia as Chastnye Voennie Companiy (ChVK), has become the modus operandi of the Russian military/political activities abroad. Armed volunteers were hastily organized and sent to Crimea in March 2014 to provide cover for Russian special and regular forces occupying and annexing the peninsula. Volunteer formations, including ChVK, have been deployed to fight in the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donbas to provide the Kremlin with plausible deniability of any involvement. Under the Russian constitution, any foreign deployment of Russian service members into combat must be publicly approved by the upper house of parliamentthe Federation Council (FC). This clause was written into the 1993 constitution to avid the unpopular and costly secret foreign wars the Soviet military was fighting during the Cold War. The chair of the FC Defense Committee, Victor Ozerov, told journalists: "We did not vote to send special forces to Libya or Egypt, so there are none. ChVKs are and will stay illegal in Russia. If they are registered offshore, Russia is not legally responsible for anything" (Interfax, March 14).

The so-called "Vagner" ChVK has been involved in fighting in Donbas and has reportedly been heavily involved in fighting together with pro-al-Assad forces in Syria. Unlike Western private military contractors, which are legally employed and primarily involved in performing auxiliary tasks, providing security, handling logistics and carrying out training, the Russian volunteersincluding the Vagner ChVKare frontline fighting forces, armed with heavy weapons and even armor. They not only provide the Kremlin with plausible political deniability but also apparently take casualties the Russian authorities do not report. The latest official casualty list of the Russian military in Syria is 28 dead since September 2015; the number of killed volunteers may be much higher. In Russia, Vagner volunteers train at special forces bases, and in Syria they are under the command of special forces officers. Reportedly, there are at least some 2,500 Vagner combat personnel in Syria. A Vagner recruit is reportedly paid some 80,000 rubles ($1,400) per month in Russia while training and three times more when in combat in Syria (RBC, March 7).

On December 9, 2016, at a reception in the Kremlin honoring Russia's heroes, Putin took a photo together with Dmitry Utkin (nicknamed Vagner, which he adopted during his deployment in Donbas). Utkin is, in fact, the commander and founder of the Vagner ChVK. The Kremlin acknowledged Putin did take "photo-ops with many guests," but did not meet anyone purposely (Tvrain.ru, January 13). Volunteer casualties in Donbas and Syria are kept secret and do not upset Russian public opinion. The Donbas war has created a large pool of potential mercenaries ready to fight Russia's wars for cheap but without the health and social guarantees of regu

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China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 2): Remaining Uncertainties

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Andrew S. Erickson & Kenneth Allen Publication Date 14 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 4 Related Document(s) China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 1): Spotlight on Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong Cite as Jamestown Foundation, China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 2): Remaining Uncertainties, 14 March 2017, China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 4, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbc2c04.html [accessed 7 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.

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Part 1 of this series discussed Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong's background, meteoric rise, and recent promotion to PLAN Commander. However, his appointment raises a number of questions about his role in the PLA Navy's modernization, his promotion's implication for China's promotion system, and about his predecessor's continued presence on the Central Military Commission. Part 2 will explore these important factors in depth and suggest possible conclusions and implications.

Promotion to commander of the PLA Navy has traditionally carried with it appointment to the PLA Central Military Commission (CMC), China's highest military decision-making body. However, the latest Chinese state media reports state that Admiral Wu Shengli still serves on the CMC (Xinhua, March 5). In his capacity as a high-ranking CCP member, Wu has been a full member of the CCP Central Committee since 2007, serving on the 17th and 18th Committees. It remains uncertain when and how, or even if, Shen will assume similar roles. Perhaps there is a deliberate overlap so that Wu can help Shen learn the ropes.

During the 1990s and 2000s, there was a generally consistent path to full general/admiral and to CMC Member, combining rank and grade promotions that rarely occur simultaneously (China Brief, July 22 and August 5, 2010). However, it has always remained unclear who decides the appointment of any key leadership positions in the CMC, including the vice chairmen, the minister of national defense, directors of the four departments, and the services, as well as the theater command leaders. Shen's appointment then raises a number of questions: 1) did Wu Shengli submit Shen's name, or not, or as one of several names; 2) did the PLAN Party Standing Committee submit several names and then vote; 3) did the CMC vice chairmen or Xi Jinping submit Shen's name; and 4) does the full CMC vote on the final contenders? 5) What if any role did personal connections (guanxi)known to be a key factor in selecting any PLA leaders at multiple levelsplay in his selection? [1] Examination of the general steps used for promotion and notable exceptions to these rules provides a framework for understanding the dynamics at play during Shen's promotion.

Although none of the six previous PLAN commanders, including Shen, have had similar career paths, they have met the required time-in-grade and time-in-rank requirements (See Table 2 in Part 1 of this series) (China Brief, July 22, 2010; August 5, 2010). [2] While the bullets below show the pattern in 2010; it is clear that the PLA is already adjusting past practices to meet Xi's new requirements.

Step One: A LGEN/VADM in a Theater Command (TC) (former MR) Deputy Leader-grade moves laterally to a second position in the same grade. Relevant TC Deputy Leader billets in the PLAN include:

PLAN deputy commanders and chief of staff (e.g., Director of the Staff Department)



PLAN Fleet commanders, who serve concurrently as TC deputy commanders



TC permanent deputy commanders and chief of staff (e.g., Director of the Joint Staff Department)

Step Two: As a general rule, in order to replace the PLAN, PLA Air Force (PLAAF), and PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) [former PLA Second Artillery Force (PLASAF)] commanders as CMC members, their successors must first serve in a TC (former MR) leader-grade billet for at least two to three years. As shown below, the PLA as a whole has only three TC (MR) Leader-grade billets that are relevant to the path to becoming the PLAN commander:

Deputy Chief of the Joint Staff Department (former Deputy Chief of the General Staff / DCGS)



Commandant, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS)



Commandant, PLA National Defense University (NDU)

Step Three: After approximately three years as a LGEN/VADM in a TC (MR) leader-grade position, they receive a rank promotion to full general. However, it is theoretically possible that some adjustments may have been made in 2016 as a result of the restructuring of the PLA.

After approximately three years as a LGEN/VADM in a TC (MR) leader-grade position, they receive a rank promotion to full general. However, it is theoretically possible that some adjustments may have been made in 2016 as a result of the restructuring of the PLA. Step Four: In order to become a CMC Vice Chairman or CMC Member, the officer must also be a member of the CCP Central Committee.

The primary reason for this four step process was to help eventual CMC members broaden their areas of expertise beyond just their service experience. Prior to 2004, such experiences were vital, as only Army officers were on the CMC. Despite the addition of the commanders of the Air Force, Navy, and Rocket Forces, the Ground Forces still predominate. Although the PLA has always had general guidelines for promotions, politics has frequently intervened. A review of how the CMC has been organized since the PRC was created in 1949 shows that the CMC's structure has been adjusted multiple times to allow certain personnel to take key positions. [3] If Shen does, in fact, become a CMC Member in late 2017, this will be one of those cases.

Although the PLA has generally implemented the four-step process in recent years, several changes have occurred under Xi in order to allow certain people to fill key billets. [4] In this, as in other areas, Xi is making bold efforts at restructuring, but the methods that he is using leave institutions, processes, and rules unclear. This lack of predictability is both confusing and of potential concern. While piecemeal rule changes are thus clearly underway to meet new directives from a powerful Xi, the full extent and overarching logic of Xi's new rules will not become fully apparent until the 19th Party Congress this autumn.

Options for Shen

Although it is clear that Shen has become the PLAN commander, it appears that Wu has retained his position as a CMC member until at least the 19th Party Congress in late 2017. As such, Shen most likely received a promotion in grade from TC Deputy Leader to TC Leader on the day he took office.

Based on the steps noted above, however, the following are potential obstacles to Shen becoming a CMC member:

Shen will not receive his third star under the current rank structure until at least mid-2019, which is confusing to foreign navies who deal with him in terms of military relations since most foreign naval commanders are four stars. This is similar to Wu Shengli's situation when he became the commander in August 2006 but did not receive his third star until July 2007. It is not clear which officers will have three stars and four stars. Furthermore, it is not clear who will remain on the CMC following the Party Congress (China Brief: Part 1, February 4, 2016; Part 2, February 23, 2016). As such, there is a possibility that (a) Shen will have his two stars upgraded to three stars but retain the rank of Vice Admiral; (b) he could get a fourth star early. Shen will only have about ten months' time-in-grade as a Theater Command (Military Region) Leader-grade officer, which is similar to Wu Shengli's situation when he became the commander but did not become a CMC Member for 14 months until the 17th Party Congress in 2007. [5] It is not clear if Shen has served as an alternate member of the CCP Central Committee, which appears to have been a criterion for other service commanders.

If Shen does not meet these criteria, that would raise important questions: What does that say about him, the PLAN, or a possible overall change of criteria for other leaders? One possible explanation is that, at Xi's behest, either the PLA as a whole or the Navy, in particular, is rethinking the criteria regarding who could best serve as PLAN commander. For example, whereas the PLAAF's next commander, General Yi Xiaoguang, has met all of the criteria to replace General Ma Xiaotian, Shen clearly has not yet met all of the criteria to replace Wu. At the same time, however, the Second Artillery Force (now Rocket Force) made an exception for Wei Fenghe by promoting him in both rank and grade before he had met the previous criteria. Although Shen's tenure may be overshadowed by Wu's continued presence on the CMC, he is taking over the day-to-day operations of the PLAN at a pivotal moment.

Admiral Shen's Role in PLAN Modernization

In critical respects, the contribution of Shen's predecessor Admiral Wu Shengli is unprecedented in its thoroughgoing nature. That is to take nothing away from Admiral Liu Huaqing, who served as the PLAN commander from August 1982 to January 1988 before becoming a CMC Vice Chairman; in a manner that has been likened to Theodore Roosevelt's impact as a sea power promoter, including as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (CIMSEC, October 8, 2014). Liu did nothing less than rescue the PLAN from stagnant backwaters and set it on a modern course. But it was Wu who took the PLAN to an entirely new level of sophistication through complex intensive development long after most easier, simpler improvements had already been made. In a conservative service that prizes conformity, Wu did so as a forthright, vision-driven disciplinarian. His forceful personality was both noteworthy and well suited for this demanding task. Similar in the degree to which Admiral Hyman Rickover transformed the U.S. Navy in the realm of nuclear propulsion, Admiral Wu has transformed the PLAN overallno small feat.

Wu's transformation required a sea change in the missions, organizational structure, and institutional culture of China's navy to a degree that would challenge any service. Rather than cloistering himself within the PLAN's hierarchy, Wu injected himself directly in virtually every conceivable aspect of its development, including a growing interaction with foreign navies. Thanks to such thoroughgoing efforts, it can truly be said that Wu leaves the PLAN a fundamentally different service from the one he inherited in 2006. His instrumental contributions to force structure and operations catapulted the PLAN from a largely coastal defense force still focused in part on fast missile boats to an emerging blue-water expeditionary force with modern warships and submarines that are increasingly well-networked and -supported at home and abroad. It is intensifying counter-intervention capabilities along China's maritime periphery in concert with missile and air forces ashore while expanding its influence and reach farther away.

Despite Wu's determined efforts and the ubiquity of his fingerprints, however, the PLAN's transition remains ongoing, leaving much for Shen to accomplish. To better understand how Shen may ultimately find his own place in the lineage and legacy of PLAN commanders, it helps to consider what his Commander in Chief Xi Jinping may ask of him. Shen shares Xi's emphasis on realistic training. In 2003, as director of a "naval vessels training center," Shen was credited with establishing a "new comprehensive training system for new-type vessels," involving substantial shore-based simulation capabilities (China Youth Daily, August 3, 2003; PLA Daily, January 1, 2003). In 2007, as Commander of the North Sea Fleet's 10th Destroyer Flotilla (; zhidui), Shen was quoted as emphasizing "actual combat experience" and the maintenance of "information superiority" (China Youth Daily, September 7, 2007; People's Navy, December 11, 2006). "Efficient and rapid formation of a combat force requires resolutely stressing military training," he stressed (PLA Daily, December 3, 2007).

In 2011, as Commandant of the Naval Command College, Shen helped to develop a 31-person "Blue Force Center" that served as a "whetstone" in honing opposition force exercises targeting principal foreign opponents along the "formidable enemy" model, particularly their "command decision-making procedures and methods of operation" under realistic conditions of the "future maritime battlefield." Having supported multiple PLAN fleets in online exercises, monitored real world events, and produced and submitted reports to PLAN leadership, the Center is credited with "accelerating the transformation of the naval troops' combat power generation model" (People's Navy, June 21, 2014). Shen was also credited with improving integrated joint instruction and training, and embracing stricter assessment criteria for a "Training and Assessment Program Outline": "If you lower the requirements in peacetime training, you are bound to suffer a great loss in wartime" (People's Navy, October 14, 2011; PLA Daily, October 6, 2011; People's Navy, February 10, 2014). Such achievements may be one of a variety of ways in which Shen caught the attention of and impressed his superiors, as well as their civilian masters.

Finally, unfolding events will likely make Shen's South Sea Fleet experience particularly germane. With Shen's elevation, moreover, in the first instance of a non-ground forces officer assuming charge of a Theater Command, former North Sea Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai () was promoted to head the South Sea-focused Southern Theater Command on or before January 13, 2017 (Global Times Online, January 22; Global Times, January 22).

Conclusion

For Xi, the PLAN is a versatile foreign policy tool and indispensable to realizing his vision of the "China Dream." This role brings heightened opportunities and challenges for Shen's service. For a variety of reasons, the U.S. and China appear headed for greater tension in the Near Seas, particularly the South China Sea. Yuan's elevation may likewise represent a new level of resolve and operational focus for Beijing regarding the South China Sea. While politically prestigious and budgetarily lucrative, however, the PLAN's responsibilities in these troubled waters will impose constant challenges and the risk of sensitive mistakesa significant burden for Shen.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute. He serves on the Naval War College Review's Editorial Board. Since 2008 he has been an Associate in Research at Harvard University's John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University and studied Mandarin at Beijing Normal University's College of Chinese Language and Culture. He can be reached through www.andrewerickson.com.



Kenneth W. Allen is a Senior China Analyst at Defense Group Inc. (DGI). He is a retired U.S. Air Force officer, whose extensive service abroad includes a tour in China as the Assistant Air Attache. He has written numerous articles on Chinese military affairs. A Chinese linguist, he holds an M.A. in international relations from Boston University.

Notes
China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 1): Spotlight on Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Andrew S. Erickson & Kenneth Allen Publication Date 2 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Related Document(s) China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 2): Remaining Uncertainties Cite as Jamestown Foundation, China's Navy Gets a New Helmsman (Part 1): Spotlight on Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong, 2 March 2017, China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 3, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbc3424.html [accessed 7 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.

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A new leader has just taken the helm of the world's largest navy. Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong () reportedly replaced Admiral Wu Shengli () as PLAN Commander on January 17, 2017 (Global Times Online, January 20). On the morning of January 20, Shen offered Lunar New Year greetings to sailors on patrol in the Gulf of Aden via video-teleconference (Chinese Navy Online, January 20). Authoritative state media reports have offered few details on Shen, making it important to analyze a broad array of Chinese-language sources to distill what his elevation may mean for China as a maritime power. Given Xi Jinping's sweeping and ongoing military reforms, the organizational dynamics surrounding Shen's rise merit particularly close examination. Understanding these dynamics can help outside observers anticipate the identity, experience, promotion of PLAN leaders, as well as the positions that they hold relative to the PLA and its key commands.

Shen's Selection

Admiral Sun Jianguo, long viewed as Wu's natural successor as PLAN commander by many, represented China at the 2015 and 2016 Shangri-La Dialogues. Sun is now expected to retire by the end of February 2017. Sun's impending retirement opened up possibilities for a set of Vice Admirals considered by foreign observers to be potential candidates to succeed Wu, namely Tian Zhong, Liu Yi, Ding Yi, Jiang Weilie, Yuan Yubai, Su Zhiqianand, most importantly, Shen Jinlong (China Brief, September 20, 2016).

Of note, Shen was the last one of this group to be promoted to Military Region (MR) Deputy Leader, now Theater Command (TC) Deputy Leader, grade (December 2014) and the last one to receive his second star (2016). Normally, when someone lower in protocol order moves to the top of the protocol list or is promoted to the next grade, this indicates that the others will not get a grade promotion and will retire at their mandatory age based on their grade. However, as with many situations under Xi Jinping, certain rules appear to be changing. Specifically, when Shen became the PLAN commander, VADM Yuan Yubaia year ahead of Shen in grade and time in rankwas simultaneously promoted to the same grade and became the commander of the Southern Theater Command. [1] As will be discussed in Part 2, it is not yet clear if Shen will become a PLA Central Military Commission (CMC), member when Wu retires at the end of 2017.

Several of Shen's career highlights point to his status as an emerging leader. In August 2014, shortly after the end of Shen, flew to Hawaii commanded a three-ship task force for a port call to San Diego had just finished participating for the first time in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the world's largest international maritime exercise (China Military Online, August 6, 2014). In September 2016, Shen headed the PLAN delegation to the twenty-second International Seapower Symposium at the U.S. Naval War College. One pattern common to Chinese bureaucracy is a tendency toward incrementally testing, grooming, and socializing rising leaders over time. In retrospect, Shen was clearly being groomed.

Historically, the PLA's service commanders are authorized only one trip abroad per year, while only a few lower-level PLA officers are lucky to travel abroad at all and are limited to only one visit. [2] For example, VADM Zhao Xingfa, who was a PLAN deputy commander in 2008, accompanied then Chief of the General Staff, General Chen Bingde, to Serbia and Norway. Although Zhao retired as a deputy commander, participation in certain senior officer-led visits is an indicator of grooming for the commander's position (Xinhua, September 10, 2008). For example, as a PLAAF deputy commander, Lieutenant General Liu Shunyao accompanied Defense Minister and CMC Vice Chairman Chi Haotian to the United States in November 1996 and became the commander the next month. [3] In September 1998, one of the PLAAF's Deputy Political Commissars, Lieutenant General Qiao Qingchen, accompanied CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Wannian to the United States and became the political commissar three months later.

Career Background

Although no information was found concerning any direct connection between Shen and Xi Jinping, since Xi assumed power in 2012, Shen has risen rapidly. Table 1 provides information about Shen's career since he joined the PLAN as an enlisted member in 1974.

Table 1: Shen Jinlong's Career Path

Date Billet Grade Rank 1974 Soldier & Squad Leader None None 1978 Commander, Platoon Platoon Leader None [1980]* Navigation Director, U/I vessel [Company Deputy Leader] None 1982 CO, Tug Boat [Company Leader] None 1990 Coxswain, Submarine Hunter Boat [Battalion Deputy Leader] [LT/LCDR]  1992 CO, Frigate Battalion Leader [LCDR/CDR] [1994] Chief of Staff, Frigate Dadui Regiment Deputy Leader [CDR/LCDR] 1995 Commander, Frigate Dadui Regiment Leader [CPT/CDR] [1998] Chief of Staff, Zhidui Division Deputy Leader [CPT/SCPT] [2000] Deputy Commander, NSF Vessels Training Center Division Deputy Leader [CPT/SCPT] 2002 Commander, NSF Vessels Training Center Division Leader SCPT Nov. 2004 Commander, 10th Destroyer Zhidui (Dalian) Division Leader SCPT 2009 Commander, Lushun Support Base Corps Deputy Leader SCPT Apr. 2010 Commandant, Dalian Naval Ship Academy Corps Deputy Leader SCPT & RADM Aug. 2011 Commandant, Naval Command College (Nanjing) Corps Leader Grade RADM Sep. 2014 Deputy Commander, South Sea Fleet Corps Leader Grade RADM Dec. 2014 Deputy Commander, Guangzhou MR and Commander, South Sea Fleet Military Region Deputy Leader RADM Mar. 2016 Deputy Commander, Southern Theater Command and Commander, South Sea Fleet Theater Command Deputy Leader RADM & VADM Jan. 2017 Commander, PLA Navy Theater Command Leader VADM * The information in brackets are logical assumptions based on the time frame as well as the grade and rank structure. The PLA's rank system that was abolished in 1965 was not re-implemented until 1988.



Comparison with Former PLAN Commanders

The PLAN has had eight commanders since its creation in 1949. None of them, including Shen, have shared similar career paths. [4] The first two commanders, Xiao Jinguang and Ye Fei, moved from the Army to the Navy and served primarily in political commissar roles. Liu Huaqing served in Army, Navy, and weapons development billets, finishing his career as a Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission and as the last PLA member to sit on the Politburo Standing Committee. Zhang Lianzhong and Zhang Dingfa served primarily as submarine officers, while Shi Yunsheng was a naval aviator. Wu Shengli and Shen Jinlong are career surface officers. As shown in Table 2, the only common progression for Shen and his two predecessors is that they all served as fleet deputy commanders and commanders.

Table 2: PLA Navy Commander Career Paths

Shen Jinlong Wu Shengli Zhang Dingfa Shi Yunsheng Zhang Lianzhong Liu Huaqing CMC MBR X X Dep Chief of the GS X X AMS CDT X PLAN DCDR/CS X X Fleet CDR X X X Fleet DCDR/CS X X X X X Command College CDT X Academy CDT X X Base CDR X X X X Base DCDR/CS X X Flotilla/Division CDR X X X Flotilla/Division DCDR/CS X X X Squadron/Regiment CDR X X Squadron/Regiment DCDR/CS X X

While Shen is not yet well known outside Chinese military circles, the sixty-year-old brings wide-ranging professional military education (PME), operational, and international experience to his new position. Shen was born in October 1956 in Shanghai's Nanhui District (), now part of Pudong New District. Since joining the PLAN at 18 in 1974, he has served as commanding officer of a frigate and chief of staff and commander of a frigate squadron (; dadui). He also commanded the North Sea Fleet's 10th Destroyer Flotilla (; zhidui); and then served as commanding officer of the North Sea Fleet's Lushun Support Base () (Mingpao News Net, January 12). Like Wu before him, Shen was Commandant of the Dalian Naval Vessel Academy (; April 2010August 2011). Shen was sufficiently well-regarded within the PLAN to have been sent to advanced studies at Russia's Kuznetsov Naval Academy in Russia in 2001, as well as at the PLA National Defense University in 2008 and 2012. Available information concerning his background suggests that he appears to have always been an avid reader and to have conducted considerable self-study on military topics.

On July 20, 2010, Shen was promoted to Rear Admiral, while serving as the Commandant of the Dalian Naval Ship Academy, a corps deputy leader-grade billet (People's Navy, July 21, 2010). In August 2011, he received a grade promotion to corps leader grade and was appointed Commandant of the Nanjing Naval Command College (). In this capacity, Shen participated in what was arguably a watershed intellectual event for the PLAN: On February 23, 2012, Shen's college convened the first International Escort Forum (). The two-day event gathered a large number of PLAN officers and 84 foreign participants, including from the United States, to discuss anti-piracy experiences in the Gulf of Aden and prospects for further cooperation in that area.

By September 29, 2014, Shen was appointed Deputy Commander of the South Sea Fleet with the same grade of corps leader (China News Online, September 30, 2014). On December 30, 2014less than four months after being appointed Deputy Commander, he received a grade promotion to Military Region Deputy Leader grade and was appointed as both Commander of the South Sea Fleet (like Wu before him) and deputy commander of what was then known as the Guangzhou Military Region (Zhejiang News Online, December 31, 2014). In both this leadership capacity and as the head of two PLAN PME institutions, he gained considerable experience in receiving foreign delegations. On July 29, 2016, Shen was promoted in rank to Vice Admiral but retained the same grade (People's Navy, July 30, 2016).

From June through August 2014, the guided-missile destroyer Haikou (; (DDG-171), the guided-missile frigate Yueyang (; FF-575), and the replenishment ship Qiandaohu (; AO-886) formed Task Group 171 to participate in RIMPAC 2014 (June 26August 1) and a follow-on visit to San Diego (Xinhua, August 2, 2014; PRC Embassy, USA, August 16, 2014).

Senior Capt. Zhao Xiaogang, who was the commanding officer of an unidentified East Sea fleet destroyer flotilla (zhidui), reportedly served as the commanding officer during the RIMPAC exercise. Shen then flew to Hawaii, boarded the Haikou, and served as the commanding officer for the trip to San Diego, where PLAN deputy commander, VADM Tian Zhong, arrived and apparently served as the lead officer.

While en route to San Diego, the vessels conducted exercises related to the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea () with the USN's USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) and USS Independence (LCS-2) (PLA Daily, August 11, 2014). This was followed by a five-day port call in San Diego, at which time, Tian Zhong apparently served as the delegation leader. While in San Diego, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, and Consul General of Los Angeles, Liu Jian, participated in the port call, which involved the Commander of the U.S. Third Fleet (PLA Daily, August 14, 2014).

This deployment meant the PLAN would be closely observed by most of the world's other major navies. Given that all three phases were executed well, Shen's participation most likely helped further his selection as the next commander.

Conclusion

The aforementioned experiences constitute valuable preparation to serve as PLAN commander and likely played a role in Shen's selection. Beyond his documented qualifications, however, it remains unclear if Shen's appointment to PLAN commander was influenced decisively by inter-service rivalry, personal choice by Xi Jinping, the promotion system or some combination of factors. Examining and contextualizing Shen's position of leadership offers potential insights into the PLAN's evolving organization and ongoing development as well as its relation to the PLA and its civilian masters. Part 2 of this series will further explore these important factors.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is Professor of Strategy in, and a core founding member of, the U.S. Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute. He serves on the Naval War College Review's Editorial Board. Since 2008 he has been an Associate in Research at Harvard University's John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University and studied Mandarin at Beijing Normal University's College of Chinese Language and Culture. He can be reached through www.andrewerickson.com.

Kenneth W. Allen is a Senior China Analyst at Defense Group Inc. (DGI) and a concurrent Senior China Analyst with the Long Term Strategy Group. He is a retired U.S. Air Force officer, whose extensive service abroad includes a tour in China as the Assistant Air Attache. He has written numerous articles on Chinese military affairs. A Chinese linguist, he holds an M.A. in international relations from Boston University.

Notes
UN agency must keep up pressure on Qatar as government's migrant labour reforms fall short

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, UN agency must keep up pressure on Qatar as government's migrant labour reforms fall short, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbc69e4.html [accessed 7 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.

The International Labour Organization (ILO)'s governing body must continue to scrutinize Qatar's record on migrant labour abuse, Amnesty International said, ahead of a crucial 21 March decision on a complaint brought by trade unions against the Gulf state.

Last week the government stated it had "repealed" its controversial sponsorship law, including the requirement that migrant workers obtain an exit permit from their employers to leave the country. Amnesty International does not accept this claim and considers that there are not currently sufficient grounds to close the complaint against Qatar. The organization is calling for the ILO's complaint process to continue, in line with a draft decision issued ahead of Tuesday's session.

"This is a critical juncture for migrant workers in Qatar. The government has made some public commitments in response to ILO pressure, but its claims that it has abolished the sponsorship system simply do not add up," said James Lynch, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Global Issues Programme.

"If the ILO governing body endorses Qatar's inadequate reforms by dropping this complaint, this could have damaging consequences for migrant rights in Qatar and across the region."

The ILO has been reviewing labour abuse in Qatar since 2014, with a specific focus on forced labour and labour inspection. On Tuesday, the governing body will consider a draft decision that proposes to give Qatar a further eight months to show it has made adequate migrant labour reforms.

The government of Qatar has made a series of labour-related announcements in the run-up to the ILO governing body meeting, which suggests that the complaint process is having some impact. However, these announcements have not yet led to substantive reforms, and further pressure is needed to turn these promises into reality.

Background on Qatar's new employment law

Last week, the Government of Qatar told the ILO that its new employment law (Law 21 of 2015) "repealed the kafala [sponsorship] system", and that a subsequent amendment, (Law 1 of 2017) had "repealed the exit permit".

While Qatar's new employment law does include one potentially significant change, removing the rule preventing migrant workers from returning to work in Qatar for two years unless their former sponsor agreed, the law has changed little for workers overall. The words "sponsor" and "sponsorship" have been removed but the core elements of the sponsorship system which drives labour abuse remain. In particular:

Workers still need their employer's permission to seek alternative employment, during the period of their contract, which can last up to five years. If they change jobs without this permission they face criminal charges for "absconding" which lead can lead to their arrest, detention and deportation.
Face to face with the Eritrean exodus into Ethiopia

Publisher IRIN Author James Jeffrey Publication Date 16 March 2017 Cite as IRIN, Face to face with the Eritrean exodus into Ethiopia, 16 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbe2294.html [accessed 7 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.

Under the early morning sun in the most northern region of Ethiopia a motley group of Eritrean men, women and children arrive dusty and tired at the end of a journey - and at the start of another.

After crossing the border under cover of darkness (leaving Eritrea without authorisation is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail), they are found by Ethiopian soldiers and taken to Adinbried - a compound of modest buildings at one of the 12 so-called "entry points" dotted along this barren 910-kilometre border. This is where their long asylum process will begin.

"It took us four days travelling from Asmara," a 31-year-old man tells IRIN of his trek from the Eritrean capital, about 80 kilometres north of the border. "We travelled for 10 hours each night, sleeping in the desert during the day."

With him are another three men, three women, six girls and four small boys. The smuggler who guided them charged $2,500 each.

"He was good," the man says. "He showed us the safe paths, and helped carry the children on his shoulders. He didn't ask for more money like some do."

He says they carried very little because of the distance and because they didn't want to betray their intentions to Eritrean soldiers.

Asylum pipeline

From the 12 entry points, Eritreans are taken to a screening centre for registration in the town of Endabaguna, 60 kilometres west of the popular tourist destination of Aksum. Then, they are assigned to one of four refugee camps in the Tigray region, bordering Eritrea.

In February 2017, 3,367 Eritreans arrived in Ethiopia, according to Ethiopia's Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs.

There are around 165,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in Ethiopia, according to the UN refugee agency. Thousands more Eritreans live in the country outside the asylum system.

"Sometimes we get more than 120 people a day," says Luel Abera, the reception coordinator at Adinbried. "The stories I hear are very sad: pregnant women delivering on the way, people shot at or wounded, hungry and hurt children."

Luel fought with the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front when it was a rebel group (it is now the largest party in Ethiopia's ruling coalition), which, alongside the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, toppled Mengistu Haile Mariam's dictatorship in 1991. In May of that year, the EPLF marched into Asmara, reinstating Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia.

"The Eritrean people are good," Luel says. "They fought for independence for 30 years. But from day one, [Eritrean President] Isaias [Afwerki] has ruled the country without caring about his people's interests."

Push factors

Among those dropped off at Adinbried when IRIN visits are three Eritrean soldiers - or deserters. Escaping poorly paid and protracted national service is one of the most common reasons cited by Eritrean migrants for fleeing their country.

"Living conditions in Eritrea are more dangerous than crossing the border," says one of them, a 39-year-old who served 20 years in the military.

He explains that the three of them were farmers from the same village who, when drafted into national service, were posted to different locations along the Ethiopian border.

They decided to cross as it was getting harder to leave their duty stations for the month they needed to be on their farms for harvest time, and because the government recently introduced a new tax on each head of livestock.

The three soldiers weren't allowed mobile phones, so, in planning their escape, they communicated by word of mouth and through letters using colleagues they trusted. Each left a wife and child behind.

"The wives didn't want us to go and were too scared to come," the 39-year-old says. "But they're not angry with us. Whether we are in national service or Ethiopia, they still can't see us."

It's just over 24 hours since they crossed the border and both groups have moved to the screening centre in Endabaguna. The place is jammed with migrants - mostly teenagers and young adults.

"Most say they faced military conscription, religious persecution, arbitrary detention, torture. Land division by the government is a new complaint," says centre coordinator Teshome Kasa, adding that 1,008 new asylum seekers have arrived in the last seven days alone.

Forgotten

From the reception centre at Endabaguna, it is on to the camps.

Opened in 2004, Shimelba was the first Ethiopian camp for Eritrean refugees. Residents are allowed to construct their own dwellings here and now it looks like a small town. It is home to more than 6,000 people, mostly from the Kunama ethnic group, one of nine in Eritrea and historically the most marginalised.

Asked whether she would like to be resettled outside Ethiopia, Nagazeuelle, a Kunama who has been here for 17 years, tells IRIN: "I have no interest in going to other countries My interest is in my country [Eritrea].

"I need my country," she repeats. "We had rich and fertile land, but the government took it. We weren't an educated people, so they picked on us. I am an example of the first refugees from Eritrea, but now people from all nine ethnic groups are coming."

Haile, a Tigrayan Eritrean in his fifties who has been a refugee for five years, tells IRIN his father and brother died in prison in Eritrea.

"The world has forgotten us, apart from the US, Canada and Ethiopia," he says. "The United Nations is too tolerant of Isaias. What is happening is beyond [words]. It is a deep crisis. So why is the international community silent?"

About 50 kilometres south of Shimelba lies Hitsats, the newest and largest of the four camps. It has 11,000 refugees and four in five of them are under the age of 35.

Outside camp coordinator Haftam Telemickael's office, a group of Eritreans is meeting a staff member to renew ration cards. Each month, every Hitsats resident is entitled to 10kg of wheat, 1kg of palm oil, 1kg of protein powder, a quarter kilogramme of salt and sugar each, one piece of soap, and 60 Ethiopian birr ($2.75) spending money.

"At least here they get permission to move freely and visit family in places like Addis Ababa," says Tesfaye, a refugee who also works as a camp social worker. "In Eritrea there are six zones and you can't move to another zone without permission. Even in Asmara you have to get permission to move to different parts of the city."

Sudan is the other main overland option for Eritrean asylum seekers. But around and even inside the refugee camps there, Eritreans are particularly vulnerable targets for gangs who kidnap migrants for ransom, often torturing them during phone calls to relatives to persuade them to send money.

"In Sudan, there are more problems. We can sleep peacefully here," says 32-year-old Ariam, who came to Hitsats four years ago with her two children after spending four years in a Sudanese camp.

Ariam owned a small hotel in Asmara but couldn't sell it before she left as that would have aroused government suspicion. She lost about 80,000 nakfa ($5,000) on it. Now she survives on rations and by making and selling flatbread injera, generating about 3,000 Ethiopian birr ($136) a month.

The common thread to everyone's story here is the hardship they experienced in Eritrea, a country under semi-autocratic rule that is all but cut off to journalists.

"It was difficult to live in Eritrea because of my small salary," says 23-year-old Samrawit after entering Ariam's home for coffee. "My husband is in prison because he tried to cross the border. I want to go to another country. I don't dislike it here, but from Ethiopia it's difficult to communicate with my family. From other countries it would be easier."

Worst of neighbours

Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara soured not long after Eritrea regained independence and in 1998 degenerated into a two-year border war that cost thousands of lives. The neighbours remain bitter enemies to this day and their shared border is highly militarised.

One of the entry points is in the town of Badme, the war's flashpoint, in a region still occupied by Ethiopia in defiance of an international adjudication attributing it to Eritrea.

"I crossed after hearing they were about to round people up for the military," says 20-year-old Gebre. "I wasn't going to go through that -you're hungry, there's no salary, you're not doing anything to help your country; you're just serving officials."

With Gebre are another 14 young men ranging in age from 16 to 20 who also crossed to avoid military service, but there are plenty of young mothers too.

"Life was getting worse," says 34-year-old Samrawit. "I had no work to earn money to feed my children." Only her two youngest children are with her. "I would like to make sure coming here is worth it before the elder two come," she explains.

She travelled with 22-year-old mother-of-two Yordanos, having met her at the Eritrean town of Barentua, about 50 kilometres north of the border - their rendezvous point with their smuggler. He took them by car to the Mereb River, where they crossed into Ethiopia.

Neither knows how much the smuggler was paid, payment having been organised by their husbands who now live in Switzerland and Holland.

An army truck pulls up while the women and young men are waiting at the Badme entry point. It hasn't come to take them to the screening centre, rather to deposit another eight refugees picked up at the border.

"Our soldiers don't get any sleep they are so busy at night collecting refugees," says an Ethiopian major.
Central African Republic: What's gone wrong?

Publisher IRIN Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as IRIN, Central African Republic: What's gone wrong?, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbe46a4.html [accessed 7 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.

Under the early morning sun in the most northern region of Ethiopia a motley group of Eritrean men, women and children arrive dusty and tired at the end of a journey - and at the start of another.

After crossing the border under cover of darkness (leaving Eritrea without authorisation is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail), they are found by Ethiopian soldiers and taken to Adinbried - a compound of modest buildings at one of the 12 so-called "entry points" dotted along this barren 910-kilometre border. This is where their long asylum process will begin.

"It took us four days travelling from Asmara," a 31-year-old man tells IRIN of his trek from the Eritrean capital, about 80 kilometres north of the border. "We travelled for 10 hours each night, sleeping in the desert during the day."

With him are another three men, three women, six girls and four small boys. The smuggler who guided them charged $2,500 each.

"He was good," the man says. "He showed us the safe paths, and helped carry the children on his shoulders. He didn't ask for more money like some do."

He says they carried very little because of the distance and because they didn't want to betray their intentions to Eritrean soldiers.

Asylum pipeline

From the 12 entry points, Eritreans are taken to a screening centre for registration in the town of Endabaguna, 60 kilometres west of the popular tourist destination of Aksum. Then, they are assigned to one of four refugee camps in the Tigray region, bordering Eritrea.

In February 2017, 3,367 Eritreans arrived in Ethiopia, according to Ethiopia's Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs.

There are around 165,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in Ethiopia, according to the UN refugee agency. Thousands more Eritreans live in the country outside the asylum system.

"Sometimes we get more than 120 people a day," says Luel Abera, the reception coordinator at Adinbried. "The stories I hear are very sad: pregnant women delivering on the way, people shot at or wounded, hungry and hurt children."

Luel fought with the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front when it was a rebel group (it is now the largest party in Ethiopia's ruling coalition), which, alongside the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, toppled Mengistu Haile Mariam's dictatorship in 1991. In May of that year, the EPLF marched into Asmara, reinstating Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia.

"The Eritrean people are good," Luel says. "They fought for independence for 30 years. But from day one, [Eritrean President] Isaias [Afwerki] has ruled the country without caring about his people's interests."

Push factors

Among those dropped off at Adinbried when IRIN visits are three Eritrean soldiers - or deserters. Escaping poorly paid and protracted national service is one of the most common reasons cited by Eritrean migrants for fleeing their country.

"Living conditions in Eritrea are more dangerous than crossing the border," says one of them, a 39-year-old who served 20 years in the military.

He explains that the three of them were farmers from the same village who, when drafted into national service, were posted to different locations along the Ethiopian border.

They decided to cross as it was getting harder to leave their duty stations for the month they needed to be on their farms for harvest time, and because the government recently introduced a new tax on each head of livestock.

The three soldiers weren't allowed mobile phones, so, in planning their escape, they communicated by word of mouth and through letters using colleagues they trusted. Each left a wife and child behind.

"The wives didn't want us to go and were too scared to come," the 39-year-old says. "But they're not angry with us. Whether we are in national service or Ethiopia, they still can't see us."

It's just over 24 hours since they crossed the border and both groups have moved to the screening centre in Endabaguna. The place is jammed with migrants - mostly teenagers and young adults.

"Most say they faced military conscription, religious persecution, arbitrary detention, torture. Land division by the government is a new complaint," says centre coordinator Teshome Kasa, adding that 1,008 new asylum seekers have arrived in the last seven days alone.

Forgotten

From the reception centre at Endabaguna, it is on to the camps.

Opened in 2004, Shimelba was the first Ethiopian camp for Eritrean refugees. Residents are allowed to construct their own dwellings here and now it looks like a small town. It is home to more than 6,000 people, mostly from the Kunama ethnic group, one of nine in Eritrea and historically the most marginalised.

Asked whether she would like to be resettled outside Ethiopia, Nagazeuelle, a Kunama who has been here for 17 years, tells IRIN: "I have no interest in going to other countries My interest is in my country [Eritrea].

"I need my country," she repeats. "We had rich and fertile land, but the government took it. We weren't an educated people, so they picked on us. I am an example of the first refugees from Eritrea, but now people from all nine ethnic groups are coming."

Haile, a Tigrayan Eritrean in his fifties who has been a refugee for five years, tells IRIN his father and brother died in prison in Eritrea.

"The world has forgotten us, apart from the US, Canada and Ethiopia," he says. "The United Nations is too tolerant of Isaias. What is happening is beyond [words]. It is a deep crisis. So why is the international community silent?"

About 50 kilometres south of Shimelba lies Hitsats, the newest and largest of the four camps. It has 11,000 refugees and four in five of them are under the age of 35.

Outside camp coordinator Haftam Telemickael's office, a group of Eritreans is meeting a staff member to renew ration cards. Each month, every Hitsats resident is entitled to 10kg of wheat, 1kg of palm oil, 1kg of protein powder, a quarter kilogramme of salt and sugar each, one piece of soap, and 60 Ethiopian birr ($2.75) spending money.

"At least here they get permission to move freely and visit family in places like Addis Ababa," says Tesfaye, a refugee who also works as a camp social worker. "In Eritrea there are six zones and you can't move to another zone without permission. Even in Asmara you have to get permission to move to different parts of the city."

Sudan is the other main overland option for Eritrean asylum seekers. But around and even inside the refugee camps there, Eritreans are particularly vulnerable targets for gangs who kidnap migrants for ransom, often torturing them during phone calls to relatives to persuade them to send money.

"In Sudan, there are more problems. We can sleep peacefully here," says 32-year-old Ariam, who came to Hitsats four years ago with her two children after spending four years in a Sudanese camp.

Ariam owned a small hotel in Asmara but couldn't sell it before she left as that would have aroused government suspicion. She lost about 80,000 nakfa ($5,000) on it. Now she survives on rations and by making and selling flatbread injera, generating about 3,000 Ethiopian birr ($136) a month.

The common thread to everyone's story here is the hardship they experienced in Eritrea, a country under semi-autocratic rule that is all but cut off to journalists.

"It was difficult to live in Eritrea because of my small salary," says 23-year-old Samrawit after entering Ariam's home for coffee. "My husband is in prison because he tried to cross the border. I want to go to another country. I don't dislike it here, but from Ethiopia it's difficult to communicate with my family. From other countries it would be easier."

Worst of neighbours

Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara soured not long after Eritrea regained independence and in 1998 degenerated into a two-year border war that cost thousands of lives. The neighbours remain bitter enemies to this day and their shared border is highly militarised.

One of the entry points is in the town of Badme, the war's flashpoint, in a region still occupied by Ethiopia in defiance of an international adjudication attributing it to Eritrea.

"I crossed after hearing they were about to round people up for the military," says 20-year-old Gebre. "I wasn't going to go through that -you're hungry, there's no salary, you're not doing anything to help your country; you're just serving officials."

With Gebre are another 14 young men ranging in age from 16 to 20 who also crossed to avoid military service, but there are plenty of young mothers too.

"Life was getting worse," says 34-year-old Samrawit. "I had no work to earn money to feed my children." Only her two youngest children are with her. "I would like to make sure coming here is worth it before the elder two come," she explains.

She travelled with 22-year-old mother-of-two Yordanos, having met her at the Eritrean town of Barentua, about 50 kilometres north of the border - their rendezvous point with their smuggler. He took them by car to the Mereb River, where they crossed into Ethiopia.

Neither knows how much the smuggler was paid, payment having been organised by their husbands who now live in Switzerland and Holland.

An army truck pulls up while the women and young men are waiting at the Badme entry point. It hasn't come to take them to the screening centre, rather to deposit another eight refugees picked up at the border.

"Our soldiers don't get any sleep they are so busy at night collecting refugees," says an Ethiopian major.
China: Disclose Details of Terrorism Convictions

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, China: Disclose Details of Terrorism Convictions, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbee484.html [accessed 7 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.

The Chinese authorities' failure to release details about terrorism convictions heightens concerns that the country's counterterrorism law is being used to prosecute nonviolent activity, Human Rights Watch said today. The 2017 Supreme People's Court (SPC) report, presented on March 12, 2017, departs from past practice by excluding details on 2016 terrorism cases, such as the number of individuals convicted. China's new Counterterrorism Law took effect in January 2016.

Human Rights Watch said that China's terrorism prosecutions, primarily in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, are subject to politically motivated abuse because of the expansive definition of terrorism, lack of transparency, and violations of fair trial rights.

"The Chinese government claims it's combating terrorism threats, particularly in Xinjiang, but gives scarce details about these incidents while strictly controlling access of journalists and other independent monitors," said Sophie Richardson, China director. "By refusing to provide information on terrorism cases, Beijing can easily suppress rights to peaceful criticism and religious identity."

The 2016 SPC's annual report to the National People's Congress stated that in 2015, Chinese courts convicted 1,419 people for threatening state security, inciting "splittism," and taking part in terrorism - nearly double the numbers of the previous year's report. But the court's 2015 and 2016 reports did not disclose a breakdown of these numbers, so it is unclear how many people were convicted for terrorism and precisely for which offense.

Human Rights Watch examined available data from China Court Net, a general news site run by the SPC, and the Peking University Law Database for information on terrorism-related cases in 2016. Only four court verdicts related to terrorism prosecutions from 2016 are publicly available. These two sources may only contain a small percentage of terrorism-related verdicts in 2016. The SPC decision that required court verdicts be posted online provides exemptions for cases that involve state secrets or personal privacy, and cases that are otherwise "not suitable for making public," which gives the courts wide latitude to withhold information.

The four cases involved seven people - all but one ethnic Uyghurs from Xinjiang. Five received prison sentences from eight months to three years, while one was given a suspended sentence and one was exempted from criminal penalties.

In all four cases, the individuals were convicted of possessing, accessing, and distributing terrorism-related videos or audios. Three of the verdicts gave details about these materials:

Yu was convicted for clicking on weblinks that contained images of flags of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and of jihad, masked men with guns, and masked women, as well as essays "that encouraged people to join jihad." Yu forwarded some of these materials to a relative.

Duo was convicted for distributing to a WeChat public group of 62 people a short video of a beheading by two masked men.

Abdusemet Halik (), one of a group of four convicted, possessed over 100 e-books, 100 audio clips, and 346 videos, most of them produced by ETIM and focusing on waging jihad in China, including on how to make bombs. Memet Rishit () possessed 11 news videos about Rebiya Kadeer, leader of exiled Uyghurs; 3 videos by ETIM promoting a holy war against "the blood-sucking atheist Communists" who "have occupied the East Turkestan and call it Xinjiang"; and 53 e-books on "religious extremism." Yunus () had 16 videos and audio recordings produced by ETIM on "religious extremism." In addition to possessing and distributing these videos to their classmates, the three - plus the fourth defendant, Rizwangul Halik () - were also convicted of organizing others and participating in "physical training in imitation of the violent videos" in a park in Changchun City, Jilin Province, and of attempting to travel via Hong Kong to join Al-Qaeda, according to the verdict. During the trial, three of the four defendants told the court that they were tortured to confess.

In addition to these cases, Human Rights Watch learned about a dozen other individuals who were punished with days of detention and fines under administrative laws for watching, downloading, or storing audio, videos, and pictures related to extremism and terrorism during this period, but which were not severe enough to constitute criminal acts.

State media reports about the implementation of the new Counterterrorism Law, in effect since January 1, 2016, show a similar focus of the authorities to punish, through fines or days of administrative detention, possession or distribution of materials that the authorities consider as "terrorist" or "extremist" in nature, as well as distributing "fake terrorism information." The Counterterrorism Law gives expansive definitions of "terrorism" and "extremism," and does not clearly articulate what constitutes "fake terrorism information."

Governments may prosecute speech that incites criminal acts - speech that directly encourages the commission of a crime, is intended to result in criminal action, or is likely to result in criminal action - whether or not criminal action does, in fact, result. But laws that impose criminal punishment for what has been called "indirect incitement" - for example, justifying or glorifying terrorism - encroach on expression protected under international human rights law.

The implementation of China's Counterterrorism Law has also focused on punishing hotels and courier services for failure to comply with the government's "real name registration" requirements, in which individuals staying in hotels or sending courier posts must use their identification cards.

None of the publicly available information about the people who received administrative or criminal punishments on terrorism-related charges in 2016 indicates they perpetrated or were linked to violent acts. The last two state reports about violence in Xinjiang, for example, suggested that those who committed violent acts were killed at the scene by security forces.

Xinjiang, home to 10 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, is a site of pervasive discrimination, repression, and restriction on fundamental human rights including freedom of religion. Opposition to central and local policies has been expressed in peaceful protests, but also through bombings and other acts of violence.

A 2015 report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project documented more than 600 casualties in violent incidents in Xinjiang between 2013 and 2014, which included people killed by criminal offenders and state security forces.

The Chinese government has often blamed attacks on "foreign" forces including ETIM, an alleged separatist organization founded by Uyghurs which has been on the United Nations list of terrorist organizations since 2002, though the group's existence has been debated. The government has not offered invitations to independent monitors to investigate such incidents, including the UN special rapporteur on torture and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

"China's terrorism convictions will generate disbelief as long as the criminal process remains opaque and so little information reaches the public," Richardson said. "The government needs to open up the system to independent monitors from China and abroad, including the UN."



Abuses of Individuals Suspected of Terrorism, Extremism

China's laws on terrorism and extremism open the door to abusive treatment of suspects accused of such crimes.

Under the Counterterrorism Law, police are empowered to impose far-reaching restrictions on individuals they merely suspect of being involved in terrorism, even if they have little or no evidence (articles 39, 53). If police "receive a report of suspected terrorist activity, or discover suspected terrorist activity," they can "order" the suspects to comply with "one or more of these restrictive measures" (article 53).

The restrictions include bans on traveling outside the suspect's area of residence or the country without police approval, bans on taking public transportation or entering specified venues without police approval, as well as ID and passport confiscation.

The decision to impose these restrictions is an entirely internal procedure within the police system. Because there are no clear criteria in the Counterterrorism Law on imposing or withdrawing any of the restrictions, they can be imposed arbitrarily and, for some of the restrictions, indefinitely. Moreover, these restrictions apply prior to the stage of a police investigation, effectively giving police the power of preventive detention before a decision is made whether to file a case (ch: li'an). This means that the legal guarantee of the right to legal counsel, or any procedural rights stipulated in China's Criminal Procedure Law, do not apply throughout this process.

Some of the suspects subjected to this preventive detention will proceed to pretrial proceedings under the Criminal Procedure Law, but pretrial proceedings in terrorism cases are opaque: the Criminal Procedure Law denies terrorism suspects basic defense protections, including access to family members and lawyers, and allows suspects to be held for months in undisclosed locations. The Counterterrorism Law states that terrorism suspects and prisoners "may be" subjected to solitary confinement (article 29); the Xinjiang Implementing Measures state those who are "major ringleaders" will always be subjected to solitary confinement because of their crime (article 40). The same applies to those who commit or incite others to commit crimes while in confinement, or refuse to be "re-educated" and show "violent tendencies." The Implementing Measures do not outline any review mechanisms for imposing solitary confinement, or conditions for lifting it. This is contrary to the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules), which prohibit the use of indefinite solitary confinement as it amounts to torture. China is a party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which it ratified in 1988.

Under the Counterterrorism Law, prior to release, prisons or detention centers are empowered to conduct an assessment of the "danger  posed to society" by these individuals when they complete their sentences (article 30). The assessment is sent to the intermediate people's court of the region where the sentence was served.

If the court finds that the convict is a "danger to society," it should "order" the person to receive an "educational placement" (ch: jiaoyu anzhi), a measure undertaken by provincial governments, even after a sentence is completed. Yet there are no clear criteria for such an assessment, or clear explanation whether this "educational placement" involves deprivation of liberty. The Counterterrorism Law also does not provide a time limit for this "educational placement" measure. The Implementing Measures state that it is the "education placement" institutions that can make a recommendation to the local court to remove such measures, but do not explain how the individual being subjected to the measure can apply to have it removed.

These provisions mean that even after someone has served a full sentence they can remain effectively indefinitely detained, with little or no recourse.



Vague, Overbroad Definitions of Terrorism in Chinese Law

Since 2014, the Chinese government has revised or drafted new legislation to combat terrorism. Taken together, these laws criminalize a wide range of activities. They restrict participating, abetting, organizing, or funding terrorism, as well as possessing, publishing, printing, or distributing content that contains terrorism, including digital content. They encourage "the masses" to report on terrorists and terrorism activities, and they set out penalties for those who withhold such information.

Xinjiang is the only region in China that has a set of Implementing Measures on the Counterterrorism Law (Xinjiang Implementing Measures), which have been in effect since August 1, 2016. Two recently revised regional regulations - one on religious affairs and one on prevention of juvenile crimes - also mention prohibitions against terrorism. The National People's Congress is also drafting a new Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Anti-Religious Extremism Law, according to state media.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised human rights concerns in China's approach to terrorism and extremism. Chinese laws define terrorism in an overly broad and vague manner, and do not necessarily require actual action or violence to prompt prosecution, deprivation of liberty, or other restrictions:

Article 3 of the Counterterrorism Law includes in the definition of "terrorism," "advocacy" (ch: zhuzhang) or "behavior" (ch: xingwei) that "elicit panic in society, endanger public security, infringe upon personal and property rights, or threaten state agencies or international organizations through violence, destruction, intimidation, or other means to achieve its political aims." The term "advocacy" could apply to proposed policy changes or criticism of government policy, or conduct that is within the boundaries of freedom of expression as set out under international human rights law. This article also notes that mere possession of "terror publicity materials" is considered a "behavior" that constitutes "terrorism," yet there is no clear definition of "materials that promote terrorism." This article also defines "terrorist incident" (ch: kongbu shijian) as an episode that is "in the process of occurring or which has already occurred and which has caused or may cause significant harm to society." The open-ended nature of the last clause provides authorities with a legal basis to abuse their power on occasions they deem as constituting a "terrorist incident." The Chinese government has, in the past, labeled the Dalai Lama's prayers for self-immolations as "terrorism in disguise," and Tibetans who self-immolate in protests against Chinese government rule as "terrorists."

Article 4 of the Counterterrorism Law defines "extremism" as "the ideological basis of terrorism," and elaborates by saying that "the state opposes all forms of extremism, such as inciting hatred, discrimination, or agitating violence through distorting religious doctrines or other means." This vague and overly broad definition provides the authorities with a legal basis to violate freedom of religion; allegations of "religious extremism" have been routinely employed to limit and often prosecute religious activities that merely take place outside state-controlled religious institutions.

Under these expansive definitions of terrorism and extremism, a large range of activity relevant to ethnic and religious expression and custom are punishable and are being prohibited, including:

"Exploiting religious teaching, sermons, exegesis, study, weddings, funerals, gathering and cultural or recreational activities and so forth to advocate terrorism or extremism" (article 50(1), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Making, downloading, storing, reproducing, reviewing, or copying audio, video, images or print materials or network links with terrorist, extremist or other such contents" (article 50(2), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Illegally possessing printed or electronic products with terrorist, extremist or other such content" (article 50(3), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Designing, making, distributing, mailing, selling, or displaying clothing, symbols, flags, badges, utensils, souvenirs and so forth that have terrorist or extremist content (article 50(4), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Using clothing, symbols, and so forth to advocate terrorism or extremism in a public place or compelling others to wear or don terrorist or extremist clothing or symbols (article 50(5), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Organizing, forcing, instigating, encouraging or enticing a minor to participate in religious activities" (article 51(2), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Exploiting religion to obstruct or interfere with others' activities such as weddings and funerals or inheritances" (article 51(3), Xinjiang Implementing Measures)

"Distorting the concept of 'halal,' or generalizing the concept of 'halal,' expanding and mutating it into social life and other areas" (article 51(4), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Intimidating or inducing others to boycott national policy measures, or destroy state documents prescribed for by law, such as resident identity cards, household registration books, and marriage certificates, or currency" (article 51(5), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Deliberately sensationalizing, fabricating or distorting socially sensitive cases (incidents), or intentionally starting rumors or spreading false information, undermining the implementation of social management" (article 51(2), Xinjiang Implementing Measures);

"Using extremism to incite or coerce the masses to undermine the implementation of legally established systems such as for marriage, justice, education or social management" (article 120(4), Chinese Criminal Law); and

"Where methods such as violence or coercion are used to compel others to wear or adorn themselves with apparel or emblems promoting terrorism or extremism" (article 120(5), Chinese Criminal Law).

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Russia: Government vs. Rights Groups

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Russia: Government vs. Rights Groups, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbef8a4.html [accessed 7 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.

For the past four years, the Kremlin has sought to stigmatize criticism or alternative views of government policy as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, or even traitorous. It is part of a sweeping crackdown to silence critical voices that has included new legal restrictions on the internet, on freedom of expression, on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and on other fundamental freedoms.

An enduring, central feature has been the 2012 law requiring independent groups to register as "foreign agents" if they receive any foreign funding and engage in broadly defined "political activity." In Russia, the term "foreign agent" can be interpreted by the public only as "spy" or "traitor." To date, Russia's Justice Ministry has designated 158 groups as "foreign agents," courts have levied staggering fines on many groups for failing to comply with the law, and about 30 groups have shut down rather than wear the "foreign agent" label. Organizations targeted include groups that work on human rights, the environment, LGBT issues, and health issues, groups that do polling about social issues. A court forced the closure of AGORA Association, one of Russia's leading human rights organizations , in response to a Justice Ministry suit alleging that the group violated the "foreign agents" law and carried out work beyond its mandate. The ministry has removed its "foreign agent" tag from over 20 groups, acknowledging that they had stopped accepting foreign funding. Accordingly, as of March 17, 2017, the official list of active "foreign agents" consisted of 100 groups. The 'Foreign Agent' Law Under the 2012 law, groups must register with the Justice Ministry as "foreign agents" if they receive even a minimal amount of funding from any foreign sources, governmental or private, and engage in "political activity." The definition of political activity under the law is so broad and vague that it effectively extends to all aspects of advocacy and human rights work. Initially, the law required all nongovernmental organizations that met these criteria to register with the ministry and to identify themselves as "foreign agents" in all their public materials, with legal consequences for failure to comply. Russia's human rights groups resolutely boycotted the law, calling it "unjust" and "slanderous." In 2013, Russia's then-federal ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, challenged the law in Russia's Constitutional Court. In 2014, the court upheld the law, finding that there were no legal or constitutional grounds for contending that the term "foreign agent" had negative connotations from the Soviet era and that, therefore, its use was "not intended to persecute or discredit" organizations. The court also found that the "foreign agent" designation was in line with the public interest and the interest of state sovereignty. Two years of mounting pressure by the authorities, court proceedings, and massive fines did not succeed in forcing groups to voluntarily register as foreign agents. In May 2014 Russia's parliament amended the "foreign agents" law to authorize the Justice Ministry to register groups as "foreign agents" without their consent. In May 2016, parliament adopted another set of amendments to the law, expanding the controversial definition of "political activity" to include, among other things, any attempt by an independent group to influence public policy, regardless of the group's mandate. To date, the registry of "foreign agents" includes the following organizations:

Association of NGOs in Defense of Voters' Rights "Golos" (Moscow) - June 5, 2014 Regional Public Association in Defense of Democratic Rights and Freedoms "Golos" (Moscow) - June 5, 2014 Center for Social Policy and Gender Studies (Saratov) - June 5, 2014 (the organization was shut down - May 22, 2015) Women of Don (Rostov region) - June 5, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - February 29, 2016) Kostroma Center for Support of Public Initiatives (Kostroma) - June 5, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - June 19, 2015) Interregional Human Rights Association "Agora" (Kazan) - July 21, 2014 (the organization was shut down - December 29, 2016) Regional public organization "Ecozaschita! - Womens' Council" (Kaliningrad) - July 21, 2014 Public Verdict Foundation (Moscow) - July 21, 2014 Human Rights Center "Memorial" (Moscow) - July 21, 2014 Lawyers for Constitutional Rights and Freedoms / JURIX (Moscow) - July 21, 2014 (the organization was shut down - May 26, 2015) Soldiers' Mothers (Saint Petersburg) - August 28, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - October 23, 2015) Freedom of Information Foundation / Institute for Information Freedom Development - August 28, 2014 PIR Center - September 3, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - February 24, 2016) Association "Partnership for Development" (Saratov) - October 2, 2014 (the organization was shut down - November 6, 2015) "News Agency MEMO.RU" (Moscow) - November 20, 2014 Regional Press Institute (St. Petersburg) - November 20, 2014 Moscow School of Civic Education - December 9, 2014 Rakurs, Arkhangelsk regional non-governmental LGBT organization - December 15, 2014 All-Russian movement "For Human Rights" - December 22, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - December 30, 2015) Human Rights Center (Kaliningrad) - December 25, 2014 Krasnodar Regional Social Organization of University Alumni - December 25, 2014 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - April 22, 2016) Regional social organization "Public Commission for Academic Sakharov's Heritage Preservation" - December 25, 2014 Resource Human Rights Center (St. Petersburg) - December 30, 2014 (the organization was shut down - November 3, 2015) Regional Public Organization "Man and the Law" (Republic of Mari El) - December 30, 2014 Center for Social Development "Vozrozhdeniye" (Pskov) - December 30, 2014 (the organization was shut down - January 31, 2017) Public Human Rights Organization "Civil Control" (St. Petersburg) - December 30, 2014 The League of Women Voters (St. Petersburg) - December 30, 2014 (the organization was shut down - May 22, 2015) Free Press Support Foundation - December 30, 2014 Interregional Non-Governmental Organization "The Committee Against Torture" - January 16, 2015 (the organization was shut down - September 13, 2016) Educational Center "Memorial" (Sverdlov region) - January 16, 2015 Autonomous non-profit human rights organization "Youth Center for Consulting and Training" - January 20, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - July 22, 2015) "Information Bureau of the Nordic Council of Ministers in St. Petersburg" - January 20, 2015 Jewish regional branch of the Russian public organization "Municipal Academy"- January 26, 2015 (the organization was shut down - May 22, 2015) The noncommercial partnership "Press Development Institute - Siberia" - January 30, 2015 Center for social, psychological and legal help to victims of discrimination and homophobia "Maximum" (Murmansk) - February 4, 2015 (the organization was shut down - October 28, 2015) Interregional public fund for civil society development "Golos-Povolzhye" (Samara) - February 6, 2015 Interregional charity organization "Siberian Environmental Center" (Novosibirsk) - February 12, 2015 Center for Civic Analysis and Independent Research / GRANI (Perm) - February 13, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - June 19, 2015) Municipal public organization "Samara Center for Gender Studies" (Samara) - February 16, 2015 Regional Fund "Center for Defense of Mass Media Rights" (Voronezh) - February 26, 2015 Regional Charitable Social Foundation "For nature" (Chelyabinsk) - March 6, 2015 Regional Ecological Social Movement "For nature" (Chelyabinsk) - March 6, 2015 Humanist Youth Movement (Murmansk) - March 13, 2015 (the organization was shut down - August 25, 2015) Regional Social Organization for Contribution to Harmonization of Interethnic Relations "Azerbaijan" - March 13, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - July 22, 2016) Regional Social Environmental Organization "Bellona-Murmansk" - March 19, 2015 (the organization was shut down - October 16, 2015) "Educational Center for Environment and Security" (Samara) - March 20, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - October 8, 2015) Foundation "Migration XXI Century" - March 27, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - November 25, 2016) Eco-logika (Rostov) - April 3, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - March 30, 2016) Transparency International Russia - April 7, 2015 Social Environmental Organization "Planeta Nadezhd" - April 15, 2015 Foundation for Consumers' Rights Defense (Novosibirsk) - April 17, 2015 (the organization was shut down - May 12, 2016) Civic Assistance Committee - April 20, 2015 Foundation 19/29 - Foundation for Support of Investigative Journalism - April 24, 2015 Commemorative Centre of History of Political Repressions "Perm - 36" - April 29, 2015 (the organization was shut down - August 18, 2016) Women's League (Kaliningrad ) - April 29, 2015 (the organization was shut down - December 16, 2015) Legal Expert Partnership "Soyuz " - May 7, 2015 (the organization was shut down - 25 August 2015) Center for Development of Non-Commerical Organizations - May 13, 2015 Club of Accountants and Auditors of Non-Commercial Organizations - May 13, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - March 30, 2016) Informational Bureau of the Council of Ministers of Northern Countries (Kaliningrad) - May 13, 2015 Sutyajnik (Yekaterinburg) - May 15, 2015 Human Rights Academy (Yekaterinburg) - May 15, 2015 Ecological Center "Dront" (Nizhny Novgorod) - May 22, 2015 The non-profit organization "Liberal Mission" Scientific Foundation of Theoretical and Applied Research - May 25, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - September 11, 2015) The non-profit Dynasty Foundation - May 25, 2015 Union of Employers (Tula region) - May 28, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - December 13, 2016) Youth organization "Nuori Karjala/Young Karelia" - June 19, 2015 (the organization was shut down - March 25, 2016) Siberian Center for Support of Social Initiatives - June 19, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - September 21, 2016) Interregional Social Foundation for Peace in the South and in the Northern Caucasus - June 19, 2015 Informational Center "Free Inform" - June 22, 2015 (the organization was shut down - June 21, 2016) Center for Independent Sociological Studies (St. Petersburg) - June 22, 2015 Regional Organization for Population and Development - June 23, 2015 Geblerov Ecological Societ (Barnaul) - June 23, 2015 Association "Legal Basis" (Yekaterinburg) - July 3, 2015 Interregional Non-governmental Organization "Northern Environmental Coalition" (Petrozavodsk) - July 8, 2015 (the organization was shut down - December 1, 2015) Komi Human Rights Commission "Memorial" (Syktyvkar) - July 21, 2015 Altai Regional Public Fund for 21st Century Altai (Barnaul) - July 22, 2015 (the organization was shut down - March 28, 2016) Interregional Public Foundation for Civil Society Development "GOLOS-Ural" (Chelyabinsk region) - July 22, 2015 SREDA Foundation - July 28, 2015 Non-governmental environmental organization "Green World" (Nizhny Novgorod) - July 29, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - October 28, 2016) Civic Action Foundation (Perm) - August 5, 2015 Alliance of Funds of Local Communities of the Perm territory - August 11, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - October 26, 2016) Kabardino-Balkaria Human Rights Center - regional branch of the "For Human Rights" All-Russian movement (Nalchik) - August 18, 2015 (the organization was shut down - November 6, 2015) The Human Rights Center of the Chechen Republic (Grozny) - August 21, 2015 Interregional Social Ecological Foundation "ISAR-Siberia" (Novosibirsk) - August 26, 2015 Perm Regional Human Rights Center (Perm) - September 3, 2015 Siberia's lifeline (Novosibirsk) - September 3, 2015 Golos Foundation in Support of Democracy - September 4, 2015 (the organization was shut down - June 21, 2016) Jewish Cultural Center "Hesed-Teshuva" (Ryazan) - September 11, 2015 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - December 13, 2016) Sakhalin Environment Watch (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) - September 18, 2015 Yasavey Manzara Information and Research Center (Naryan-Mar) - September 23, 2015 (the organization was shut down - June 15, 2016) Consumer Rights and Environment Protection Association "Princip" (Moscow region) - October 5, 2015 Far East Center for the Development of Civil Initiatives and Social Partnership (Vladivostok)- October 13, 2015 Russian Research Center for Human Rights - October 20, 2015 Women of the Don (Rostov region) - October 27, 2015 Friends of the Siberian Forests (Krasnoyarsk) - October 28, 2015 (the organization was shut down - December 6, 2016) Photography Club "Sobytiye" (Omsk) - October 28, 2015 (the organization was shut down - December 16, 2015) Research and Information Center "Memorial" (St. Petersburg) - November 6, 2015 Baikal Environmental Wave (Irkutsk) - November 10, 2015 (the organization was shut down - August 1, 2016) Glasnost Defense Foundation - November 19, 2015 Human Rights Institute - November 20, 2015 Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North - November 27, 2015 Green World (Leningrad region) - December 2, 2015 Mashr (Republic of Ingushetia) - December 8, 2015 Woman's World (Kaliningrad) - December 11, 2015 Panorama Information and Research Center (Moscow) - December 18, 2015 Dauria Ecological Center (Chita) - December 30, 2015 (the organization was shut down - September 1, 2016) Yekaterinburg Memorial Society (Yekaterinburg) - December 30, 2015 Bureau of Public Investigations (Nizhny Novgorod) - January 14, 2016 Committee for the Prevention of Torture (Orenburg) - January 14, 2016 Institute of Forecasting and Resolving of Political Conflicts (Nizhny Novgorod) - January 22, 2016 Ryazan Historical, Educational and Human Rights Center "Memorial" (Ryazan) - February 1, 2016 Society of Assistance to Social Protection of Citizens "Peterburgskaya EGIDA" (Saint Petersburg) - February 2, 2016 (the organization was shut down - April 26, 2016) Center for Health and Social Support "SIBALT" (Omsk) - February 15, 2016 Chelyabinsk Regional Organ of Public Independent Action "Ural Human Rights Group" (Chelyabinsk) - February 15, 2016 Women of Eurasia (Chelyabinsk) - February 15, 2016 Ural Democratic Foundation (Chelyabinsk) - February 15, 2016 Legal and Social Support Charitable Foundation "Sphere" (Saint Petersburg) - March 1, 2016 Centre for Civic Education and Human Rights (Perm) - March 3, 2016 The International Development Fund for Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation "Batani" (Moscow) - March 11, 2016 Center for Social and Labor Rights (Moscow) - March 21, 2016 Arkhar (Gorno-Altaysk) - April 5, 2016 (the organization was shut down - October 6, 2016) Publishing House "Valentin Manuylov" - April 15, 2016 Tengri School of Soul ecology (Altay) - May 17, 2016 Hanse Buero / Information Bureau of Schleswig-Holstein in Kaliningrad (Kaliningrad) - May 24, 2016 (the organization was shut down - December 30, 2016) Krasnoyarsk Regional Public Organization Agency of public initiatives (Krasnoyarsk) - May 27, 2016 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - September 21, 2016) Saratov Regional Public Organization "Socium" (Engels) - May 30, 2016 Perm regional non-governmental organization "Perm Civil Chamber" (Perm) - June 9, 2016 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - September 21, 2016) Regional non-governmental organization Integration center "Migration and Law" (Moscow) - June 16, 2016 Non-Profit Partnership "ESVERO" (Moscow) - June 22, 2016 Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice (Moscow) - June 29, 2016 Altai regional sport and patriotic youth public organization "Arctica" (Biysk) - July 6, 2016 ("foreign agent" status was suspended - February 8, 2017) Autonomous non-governmental organization "Free Word" (Pskov) - July 13, 2016 The Institute of Economic Analysis (Moscow) - July 22, 2016 Penza regional youth civic organization for prevention of negative phenomena among youth "Panacea" (Kuznetsk) - August 15, 2016 (the organization was shut down - December 8, 2016) Samara regional, civic organization "American alumni club" (Samara) - August 26, 2016 Autonomous non-for-profit organization "Publishing house 'Park Gagarina'" (Samara) - August 31, 2016 Levada Analytical Center (Moscow) - September 5, 2016 Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (Maikop) - September 13, 2016 Autonomous non-for-profit human rights organization "Draftee's school" (Chelyabinsk) - September 21, 2016 Foundation for support of civil freedoms "Legal mission" (Chelyabinsk) - September 21, 2016 International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society Memorial (Moscow) - October 4, 2016 Sverdlovsk regional non-profit foundation "Health Era" (Ekaterinburg) - October 11, 2016 Chapaevsk non-profit organization "Chapaevsk city medical personnel association" (Chapaevsk) - October 21, 2016 Regional charity foundation "Samarskaya gubernia" (Samara) - November 2, 2016 Non-profit partnership "Internet Community" (Samara) - December 13, 2016 Autonomous non-profit organization for social support "Project April" (Tolyatti) - December 19, 2016 ANNA Centre for the prevention of violence (Moscow) - December 26, 2016 Southern Human Rights Centre (Sochi) - December 26, 2016 Sverdlovsk branch of the International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society Memorial (Ekaterinburg) - December 29, 2016 SOVA Center for Information and Analysis (Moscow) - December 30, 2016 Sverdlovsk civic organization for assistance to legal migration "Nelegalov.Net [No Illegals]" (Ekaterinburg) - January 10, 2017 Environmental human rights center Bellona (Saint Petersburg) - January 16, 2017 Youth civic organization "Pro-movement" (Altay region) - January 25, 2017 Kaliningrad regional civic organization "Society for German culture and Russian Germans Eintracht - Soglasie" (Kaliningrad) - January 31, 2017 Foundation for development assistance to mass communication and legal education "Tak-Tak-Tak" (Novosibirsk) - February 20, 2017

And the four NGOs which registered voluntarily:

Non-commercial Partnership "Supporting Competition in the CIS Countries" - June 27, 2013 "The Union of Young Political Scientists", Karachay-Cherkess Republican Youth Social Organization - December 15, 2014 Regional Social Movement "Novgorod Women's Parliament" (Veliky Novgorod) - March 6, 2015 Center of Independent Researchers of the Altai Republic - June 10, 2015

Leader of at least 1 NGO faces criminal charges personally:
UAE: Jordanian Journalist Convicted

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 17 March 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, UAE: Jordanian Journalist Convicted, 17 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbf00c4.html [accessed 7 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.

A United Arab Emirates court sentenced a Jordanian journalist on March 15, 2017 to prison and a large fine for "insulting the state's symbols," Human Rights Watch said today. The sentence against Tayseer al-Najjar was related to Facebook posts in which he criticized Egypt, Israel, and Gulf countries.

UAE authorities held al-Najjar without access to a lawyer for more than a year before bringing him to trial in January. WAM, the UAE's official news agency, reported that the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court convicted al-Najjar under Article 29 of the country's cybercrime law, sentencing him to three years in prison and a fine of 500,000 UAE Dirhams (US$136,000).

"Jailing a journalist on spurious charges does far more to 'insult' the UAE and its symbols than anything Tayseer al-Najjar ever wrote," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The UAE's president should immediately vacate this senseless sentence and allow al-Najjar to return to his wife and family in Jordan."

On December 3, 2015, UAE authorities at Abu Dhabi airport prevented al-Najjar from boarding a flight to Jordan to visit his wife and children, al-Najjar's wife, Majida Hourani, told Human Rights Watch. On December 13, the UAE authorities summoned al-Najjar to a police station in Abu Dhabi and detained him.

Al-Najjar's wife said he had been a journalist for more than 15 years, and had been working in the UAE since April 2015, when he became a culture reporter for the UAE-based newspaper Dar.

Hourani said that during his detention authorities questioned al-Najjar about comments he made on Facebook during Israeli military operations in Gaza in 2014, before he had moved to the UAE. He expressed support for "Gazan resistance" and criticized the UAE and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt. She said that investigators also questioned him over two 2012 Facebook posts in which he apparently criticized the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, but al-Najjar denied writing those comments. The comments were the evidence against al-Najjar at his trial, she said.

The Jordan Press Association (JPA), which appointed al-Najjar's lawyer, said that it would work to appeal the verdict. Tariq Momani, the head of the group, told the AFP that "[the JPA] truly believed he would be found innocent."

Article 29 of the UAE's 2012 cybercrime law provides for prison sentences of between three and 15 years for publishing information online with the "intent to make sarcasm or damage the reputation, prestige or stature of the State or any of its institutions."

The UAE has ratified the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which in Article 32 protects the right to freedom of expression and in Article 13 protects the right to a fair trial.

"There's no chance at a fair trial when vague charges are designed specifically to limit free speech and harshly punish peaceful criticism," Stork said.

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
BB.Q Chicken, which just opened in Koreatown, claims to be the "most popular fried chicken in Korea." While we can't confirm or refute that claim, we can definitively say that the restaurant offers up quite a bit of poultry-based dishes, everything from their extra virgin olive oil fried options to grilled delicacies like Jamaican BBQ and Bulgogi Chicken Galbi. Wherever they are in quality, they at least have the quantity down.

BB.Q Chickenwhich stands for "Best of the Best Quality" as opposed to anything relating to the American south, for exampleis a behemoth anyway you look at it, boasting over 2,200 locations in 57 different countries. Their NYC flagship features a grab-and-go section on the street level and a stark sit-down restaurant ("Chicken & Beer") downstairs festooned with large color posters of their various poultry offerings, big screen TVs and neon signs championing their tagline.

Employees attend a Chicken University to learn how to cook their signature Golden Olive Chicken, a serving of which comes with six pieces and pommes frites for $16.99 and a "Cheesling" dish of mascarpone and cheddar cheese-coated pieces of boneless chicken. Wings come in flavors like Honey Garlic, Red Hot Garlic and Soy Garlic; they've got "K-Food" like duk-bokki (rice cakes), jjim-dak (marinated steamed chicken) and kimchi fried rice; and...pizza! BRB moving in.

25 West 32nd Street; bbqktownnyc.com. Sit-down restaurant open 5 p.m. daily, until 1 a.m. Sunday - Wednesday and 2 a.m. Thursday - Saturday; Grab-N-Go 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

BB.Q Chicken Menu by Nell Casey on Scribd
Could Uzbekistan be Opening Up?

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 15 March 2017 Citation / Document Symbol RCA 808 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Could Uzbekistan be Opening Up?, 15 March 2017, RCA 808, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58cbfad44.html [accessed 7 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.

In the three months since his appointment, Uzbekistan's new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has taken a number of measures that appear to show willingness to open up one of the world's most isolated states.

His predecessor Islam Karimov, who died in September 2016, was an authoritarian and ruthless leader who had ruled with an iron fist for 27 years.

But recently, as well as apparent efforts to cool tensions with neighbouring states and relax visa restrictions, the regime released three long-serving political prisoners.

John MacLeod, senior analyst for Russia and CIS at Oxford Analytica and a former IWPR managing editor, said that these were "early signals" of an intention to change, but warned that substantive domestic reforms remained unlikely.

IWPR: Uzbekistan announced a plan to abolish short-term entry visas for nationals of some 27 countries as of April, although this has since been postponed. Do you see this as an attempt to boost the tourism industry, or as part of a wider plan to open up to the world?

MacLeod: It's certainly designed to increase tourist numbers but it also signals a change in attitude away from bureaucracy and towards greater openness. However, it will take quite a few more steps of this kind, and real changes in things like the business environment, to change outside perceptions of Uzbekistan.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev chose to pay his first visit as head of state to Turkmenistan, in early March. What role does Uzbekistan play in the Central Asian region?

Uzbekistan is geographically the central state, with the biggest population and the region's historical and cultural heart. That's the way it sees itself, anyway, and it's been as much a curse as a blessing in the last couple of decades. The Uzbeks were a bit resentful at Kazakstan's emergence as an oil state and had difficult relationships with smaller Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over water and some political issues. Turkmenistan is a similarly isolationist, authoritarian state, but there were frictions in that relationship, too.

The new president signalled early on that he wanted that to change and he's reached out to Uzbekistan's neighbours. If that is sustained, and Uzbekistan is prepared to set aside - but not ignore - areas of dispute with its neighbours, that's got to be a good thing for it as the region's centre, and for all the other "stans" as well, as trade, transport and energy links improve.

Flights between Tashkent and Dushanbe resumed in early 2017 for the first time in 25 years, and some Tajik experts even expressed hopes for cooperation on the Roghun dam. This giant hydroelectric project has proved controversial as it could potentially deprive Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states of vital irrigation. However, Uzbekistan then suddenly denied permission for an aircraft from Tajikistan to land in Tashkent on February 20. What is your take on that?

I understand that flights will go ahead and that whatever technical or administrative glitch blocked the first attempt will be sorted out. It's immensely important for Tajikistan to accept the hand that's being reached out.

Again, it's going to be no easy task. The Roghun dam issue is a big problem. The Tajiks are determined to complete this giant structure which the Uzbeks say will shut off water that is essential to their agriculture. This has led to antagonism. The two states now have a rare opportunity not to find an immediate solution to the dispute, but to find mechanisms and methods of discussing it in a less confrontational manner, finding areas of commonality and perhaps working towards some kind of resolution that involves compromise but works for both.

The prominent dissident journalist Muhammad Bekjon was recently freed after spending 18 years in prison. Could this be a sign of bigger reforms to come?

I am not sure the release of Muhammad Bekjon is the start of a real change. Bekjon and two others -Rustam Usmonov and Samandar Qoqonov- had been kept in jail for about two decades. The late president, Islam Karimov, had a personal vendetta against people who stood up to him in the early post-Soviet years. And Bekjon is the brother of Karimov's number one enemy, exiled opposition leader Muhammad Solih.

Mirziyoyev doesn't have a personal reason to hold onto these veteran political prisoners, and releasing them does him no harm.

What we are seeing at the moment is early signals of an intention to change things. Nothing more. There are many, many obstacles to Mirziyoyev holding onto this intention, understanding what changes are needed and then delivering them. He's operating within a rigid political system that is designed not to change, and a system of which he himself is a product.

I fear that changes to the domestic political system will be minimal and really just cosmetic. On foreign policy, there is scope for change: less of Karimov's instinctive isolationism and more understanding of the benefits of economic cooperation, especially when you're living in a doubly landlocked state.

Karimov was part of the Soviet nomenklatura, while Mirziyoyev's career was shaped after Uzbekistan had become an independent state. How might this affect Mirziyoyev's leadership style?

I don't see Mirziyoyev as being so fundamentally different from Karimov in background. After all, the undemocratic hierarchy that is in charge now is very much a product of the Soviet system. If you join it, you adapt to it, not it to you. We see that even with younger officials who've been educated in the West. They slot into roles in a closed-off, authoritarian and often corrupt administration, where the only competition is between rival patronage networks.

So I am very pessimistic about the prospect of Mirziyoyev suddenly showing liberal tendencies and a desire to reform the system in ways that would give the electorate a real choice about how things are run. As I've said, he's a product of the system, and that makes it very hard to take a detached view of it, even if he wants to.

This publication was produced under IWPR project Strengthening Capacities, Bridging Divides in Central Asia, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Policie CR,Krajske reditelstvi policie Usteckeho kraje, odbor cizinecke policie v. Salah Al Chodor, Ajlin Al Chodor, Ajvar Al Chodor

Publisher European Union: Court of First Instance Publication Date 15 March 2017 Cite as Policie CR,Krajske reditelstvi policie Usteckeho kraje, odbor cizinecke policie v. Salah Al Chodor, Ajlin Al Chodor, Ajvar Al Chodor, European Union: Court of First Instance, 15 March 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,EU_CFI,58cc04014.html [accessed 7 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.

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Second Chamber)

15 March 2017 (*)

(Reference for a preliminary ruling - Criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection - Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 (Dublin III) - Article 28(2) - Detention for the purpose of transfer - Article 2(n) - Significant risk of absconding - Objective criteria - Absence of a legal definition)

In Case C528/15,

REQUEST for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU from the Nejvyssi spravni soud (Supreme Administrative Court, Czech Republic), made by decision of 24 September 2015, received at the Court on 7 October 2015, in the proceedings

Policie CR,Krajske reditelstvi policie Usteckeho kraje, odbor cizinecke policie

v

Salah Al Chodor,

Ajlin Al Chodor,

Ajvar Al Chodor,

THE COURT (Second Chamber),

composed of M. Ilesic, President of the Chamber, A. Prechal (Rapporteur), A. Rosas, C. Toader and E. Jarasiunas, Judges,

Advocate General: H. Saugmandsgaard e,

Registrar: L. Hewlett, Principal Administrator,

having regard to the written procedure and further to the hearing on 14 July 2016,

after considering the observations submitted on behalf of:

- the Policie CR, Krajske reditelstvi policie Usteckeho kraje, odbor cizinecke policie, by D. Franc,

- the Czech Government, by M. Smolek, J. Vlacil and S. Sindelkova, acting as Agents,

- the Greek Government, by M. Michelogiannaki, acting as Agent,

- the United Kingdom Government, by S. Brandon, acting as Agent, and M. Gray, Barrister,

- the European Commission, by M. Condou-Durande, M. Simerdova and G. Wils, acting as Agents,

after hearing the Opinion of the Advocate General at the sitting on 10 November 2016,

gives the following

Judgment

1 This request for a preliminary ruling concerns the interpretation of Article 28 of Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person (OJ 2013 L 180, p. 31) ('the Dublin III Regulation'), read in conjunction with Article 2 of that regulation.

2 The request has been made in an appeal on a point of law brought by the Policie CR, Krajske reditelstvi Usteckeho kraje, odbor cizinecke policie (Police Force of the Czech Republic, Regional Police Directorate of the Usti nad Labem Region, Foreigners Police Section; 'the Foreigners Police Section') concerning the annulment, by a lower court, of the decision taken by the Foreigners Police Section to detain Salah, Ajlin and Ajvar Al Chodor ('the Al Chodors') for 30 days for the purpose of transferring them to Hungary.

Legal context

The ECHR

3 Article 5 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 ('the ECHR'), is entitled 'Right to liberty and security', and provides:

'1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law:



(f) the lawful arrest or detention of a person to prevent his effecting an unauthorised entry into the country or of a person against whom action is being taken with a view to deportation or extradition.  '

EU law

The Charter

4 Article 6 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union ('the Charter') provides that: 'everyone has the right to liberty and security of person'.

5 Article 52 of the Charter, entitled 'Scope and interpretation of rights and principles', states:

'1. Any limitation on the exercise of the rights and freedoms recognised by this Charter must be provided for by law and respect the essence of those rights and freedoms. Subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others.



3. In so far as this Charter contains rights which correspond to rights guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the meaning and scope of those rights shall be the same as those laid down by the said Convention. This provision shall not prevent Union law providing more extensive protection.

 '

The Dublin III Regulation

6 Recital 9 of the Dublin III Regulation states:

'In the light of the results of the evaluations undertaken of the implementation of the first-phase instruments, it is appropriate, at this stage, to confirm the principles underlying [Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national (OJ 2003 L 50, p. 1)], while making the necessary improvements, in the light of experience, to the effectiveness of the Dublin system and the protection granted to applicants under that system. Given that a well-functioning Dublin system is essential for the [Common European Asylum System (CEAS)], its principles and functioning should be reviewed as other components of the CEAS and Union solidarity tools are built up. A comprehensive "fitness check" should be foreseen by conducting an evidence-based review covering the legal, economic and social effects of the Dublin system, including its effects on fundamental rights.'

7 Recital 20 of the Dublin III Regulation is worded as follows:

'The detention of applicants should be applied in accordance with the underlying principle that a person should not be held in detention for the sole reason that he or she is seeking international protection. Detention should be for as short a period as possible and subject to the principles of necessity and proportionality. In particular, the detention of applicants must be in accordance with Article 31 of the Geneva Convention. The procedures provided for under this Regulation in respect of a detained person should be applied as a matter of priority, within the shortest possible deadlines. As regards the general guarantees governing detention, as well as detention conditions, where appropriate, Member States should apply the provisions of Directive 2013/33/EU [of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 laying down standards for the reception of applicants for international protection, (OJ 2013 L 180, p. 96)] also to persons detained on the basis of this Regulation.'

8 Article 2 of the Dublin III Regulation, entitled 'Definitions', provides:

'For the purposes of this Regulation:



(n) "risk of absconding" means the existence of reasons in an individual case, which are based on objective criteria defined by law, to believe that an applicant or a third-country national or a stateless person who is subject to a transfer procedure may abscond.'

9 Article 28 of that regulation, entitled 'Detention', provides:

'1. Member States shall not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is subject to the procedure established by this Regulation.

2. When there is a significant risk of absconding, Member States may detain the person concerned in order to secure transfer procedures in accordance with this Regulation, on the basis of an individual assessment and only in so far as detention is proportional and other less coercive alternative measures cannot be applied effectively.

3. Detention shall be for as short a period as possible and shall be for no longer than the time reasonably necessary to fulfil the required administrative procedures with due diligence until the transfer under this Regulation is carried out.

 '

Directive 2013/33

10 Under Article 8 of Directive 2013/33 ('the Reception Directive'):

'1. Member States shall not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is an applicant in accordance with Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection [(OJ 2013 L 180, p. 60)].

2. When it proves necessary and on the basis of an individual assessment of each case, Member States may detain an applicant, if other less coercive alternative measures cannot be applied effectively.

3. An applicant may be detained only:



(f) in accordance with Article 28 of [the Dublin III Regulation].

The grounds for detention shall be laid down in national law.

 '

Czech law

11 Paragraph 129(1) of Law No 326/1999 on the residence of foreign nationals in the Czech Republic and amending other laws ('the Law on the residence of foreign nationals') states:

'The police shall detain a foreign national who has entered or stayed in the Czech Republic illegally for the period of time necessarily required in order to secure transfer procedures in accordance with an international treaty concluded with another Member State of the European Union before 13 January 2009 or with directly applicable legislation of the European Union.'

12 At the time when the order for reference was made, a legislative process seeking to amend that article was pending, involving the addition of a fourth subparagraph to Paragraph 129, worded as follows:

'The police shall decide to detain a foreign national for the purpose of his transfer to a State bound by directly applicable legislation of the European Union only if there is a significant risk of absconding. There is considered to be a significant risk of absconding in particular where the foreign national has stayed in the Czech Republic illegally, has already previously avoided transfer to a State bound by directly applicable EU legislation, or has attempted to abscond or expressed an intention not to comply with a final decision to transfer him to a State bound by directly applicable EU legislation, or if such an intention is apparent from his behaviour. There is also considered to be a significant risk of absconding where a foreign national who is to be transferred to a State bound by directly applicable EU legislation which is not immediately adjacent to the Czech Republic cannot lawfully travel to that State independently and cannot provide the address of a place of residence in the Czech Republic.'

The dispute in the main proceedings and the question referred for a preliminary ruling

13 The Al Chodors, who are Iraqi nationals, travelled to the Czech Republic, where they were subject to a police check on 7 May 2015. As they did not produce any documents establishing their identity, they were interviewed by the Foreigners Police Section.

14 During their interview, they declared that they were of Kurdish origin and that their village had been occupied by fighters of the Islamic State terrorist organisation. The Al Chodors travelled via Turkey to Greece, from where they continued their journey by lorry. In Hungary they were stopped by the police, who took their fingerprints. Salah Al Chodor stated that he signed a number of documents on that occasion. The following day, the Hungarian authorities brought them to a railway station and directed them towards a refugee camp. The Al Chodors left the refugee camp after two days with the aim of joining family members in Germany.

15 After stopping the Al Chodors in the Czech Republic, the Czech Foreigners Police Section consulted the Eurodac database and found that they had made an asylum application in Hungary.

16 The Foreigners Police Section took the view that there was a serious risk of absconding, given that the Al Chodors had neither a residence permit nor accommodation in the Czech Republic while awaiting their transfer to Hungary. Furthermore, notwithstanding the rules forbidding them from doing so, they had left the refugee camp in Hungary, with the intention of travelling to Germany, without waiting until a decision had been made in relation to their asylum application. The Foreigners Police Section accordingly placed the Al Chodors in detention for 30 days pending their transfer to Hungary pursuant to Paragraph 129(1) of the Law on the residence of foreign nationals, read in conjunction with Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation.

17 The Al Chodors brought an action against the decision ordering their detention. The Krajsky soud v Usti nad Labem (Regional Court, Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic) annulled that decision, finding that Czech legislation does not lay down objective criteria for the assessment of the risk of absconding within the meaning of Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation. That court accordingly ruled that the detention was unlawful. It based its decision on, inter alia, two similar judgments delivered by courts in other Member States; one by the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice, Germany) (judgment of the Bundesgerichtshof, 26 June 2014, Case V ZB 31/14) and the other by the Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Administrative Court, Austria) (judgment of the Verwaltungsgerichtshof, 19 February 2015, Case RO 2014/21/0075-5).

18 Following the annulment of the decision of the Foreigners Police Section, the Al Chodors were released from custody. They left the Czech Republic for an unknown destination.

19 The Foreigners Police Section brought an appeal on a point of law before the Nejvyssi spravni soud (Supreme Administrative Court, Czech Republic) against the decision of the Krajsky soud v Usti nad Labem (Regional Court, Usti nad Labem). According to the Foreigners Police Section, the inapplicability of Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation cannot be justified by the mere absence in Czech legislation of objective criteria defining the risk of absconding. That provision subjects the assessment of the risk of absconding to three conditions, namely an individual assessment taking account of the circumstances of the case, the proportionality of the detention, and the impossibility of employing a less coercive measure. The Foreigners Police Section has submitted that it satisfied those conditions.

20 The referring court is unsure whether Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction with Article 2(n) thereof, and/or Paragraph 129(1) of the Law on the residence of foreign nationals, constitute a sufficient legal basis where the national legislation does not contain objective criteria defining the existence of a significant risk of absconding.

21 In that regard, it points out that the language versions of Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation diverge. While the French- and German-language versions of that provision require a definition, laid down in legislation, of the objective criteria for the purposes of assessing the risk of absconding, other language versions require a definition of those criteria 'by law (in the general sense)', with the result that the meaning of the term 'defined by law' does not follow clearly from the wording of that provision. Furthermore, the referring court notes that the European Court of Human Rights interprets the term 'law' broadly, in so far as, for that court, that term is not limited solely to legislation, but also includes other sources of law (ECtHR, 24 April 1990, Kruslin v France, CE:ECHR:1990:0424JUD001180185,  29). In the context of the detention of persons who are staying illegally, it is clear from the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 9 July 2009, Mooren v Germany (CE:ECHR:2009:0709JUD001136403,  76 and 90 to 97), that it is necessary to assess the quality of the legal basis, in particular in terms of clarity, accessibility and predictability.

22 Accordingly, the referring court is uncertain whether the recognition by its settled case-law of objective criteria on the basis of which the detention of persons pursuant to Paragraph 129 of the Law on the residence of foreign nationals may be carried out can meet the requirement of a definition 'by law' within the meaning of Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation, in so far as that case-law confirms a consistent administrative practice of the Foreigners Police Section which is characterised by the absence of arbitrary elements, and by predictability and an individual assessment in each case.

23 In those circumstances, the Nejvyssi spravni soud (Supreme Administrative Court) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling:

'Does the sole fact that a law has not defined objective criteria for assessment of a significant risk that a foreign national may abscond [within the meaning of Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation] render detention under Article 28(2) [of that regulation] inapplicable?'

Consideration of the question referred

24 The referring court asks, in essence, whether Article 2(n) and Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction, must be interpreted as requiring Member States to establish, in a national law, objective criteria underlying the reasons for believing that an applicant for international protection ('the applicant') who is subject to a transfer procedure may abscond, and whether the absence of those criteria in a national law leads to the inapplicability of Article 28(2) of that regulation.

25 It should be noted at the outset that the Dublin III Regulation, pursuant to Article 28(2) thereof, permits the detention of applicants, in order to secure transfer procedures in accordance with that regulation, when there is a significant risk of absconding on the basis of an individual assessment, and only in so far as the detention is proportional and where other less coercive alternative measures cannot be applied effectively. Article 2(n) of that regulation defines, in turn, the term 'risk of absconding' as the existence of reasons in an individual case, which are based on objective criteria defined by law, to believe that the person concerned may abscond.

26 The Foreigners Police Section and the Czech Government submit, in the first place, that a regulation is directly applicable in the Member States and therefore does not require prior transposition into national law. Consequently, they argue, Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation does not require the national legislature to implement, by way of a national law, those objective criteria defining a risk of absconding.

27 In that regard, it must be recalled that, according to well-established case-law of the Court, pursuant to Article 288 TFEU and by virtue of the very nature of regulations and of their function in the system of sources of EU law, the provisions of those regulations generally have immediate effect in the national legal systems without its being necessary for the national authorities to adopt measures of application. Nonetheless, some of those provisions may necessitate, for their implementation, the adoption of measures of application by the Member States (see, to that effect, judgment of 14 April 2011, Vlaamse Dierenartsenvereniging and Janssens, C42/10, C45/10 and C57/10, EU:C:2011:253, paragraphs 47 and 48 and the case-law cited).

28 This is the case with regard to Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation, which explicitly requires that objective criteria defining the existence of a risk of absconding be 'defined by law'. Since those criteria have been established neither by that regulation nor in another EU legal act, the elaboration of those criteria, in the context of that regulation, is a matter for national law. That finding is, moreover, confirmed by a combined reading of, on the one hand, Article 8(3)(f) of the Reception Directive, under which an applicant may be detained in accordance with Article 28 of the Dublin III Regulation, and, on the other hand, the final sentence of Article 8(3) of the Reception Directive which specifies that the grounds for such detention are to be laid down in national law. Furthermore, recital 20 of the Dublin III Regulation provides, in turn, that, as regards the general guarantees governing detention, as well as detention conditions, where appropriate, Member States should apply the provisions of the Reception Directive also to persons detained on the basis of that regulation, that directive specifically containing, in its Article 8, a direct reference to national law. It follows that criteria such as those listed in Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation require implementation in the national law of each Member State.

29 Next, it is necessary to determine whether the word 'law' referred to in Article 2(n) of that regulation must be understood as including settled case-law which confirms, as the case may be, a consistent administrative practice.

30 In accordance with the settled case-law of the Court, in interpreting a provision of EU law, it is necessary to consider not only its wording but also the context in which it occurs and the objectives pursued by the rules of which it forms part (judgment of 26 May 2016, Envirotec Denmark, C550/14, EU:C:2016:354, paragraph 27 and the case-law cited).

31 As regards the wording of Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation, a purely textual analysis of the notion of 'defined by law' cannot determine whether case-law or a consistent administrative practice are capable of coming within that concept. In the different language versions of that regulation, the term equivalent to the term 'loi (legislation)' has a different scope. Thus, the wording used, for example, in the English-, Polish- and Slovak-language versions is similar to the concept of 'droit (law in the general sense'), which can have a wider scope than 'loi (legislation)'. Certain other versions, for example, the Bulgarian-, Spanish-, Czech-, German- and French-language versions, have a more restrictive scope.

32 Where the various language versions differ, the scope of the provision in question cannot be determined on the basis of an interpretation which is exclusively textual, but must be interpreted by reference to the purpose and general scheme of the rules of which it forms part (judgment of 26 May 2016, Envirotec Denmark, C550/14, EU:C:2016:354, paragraph 28 and the case-law cited).

33 With regard to the general scheme of the rules of which Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation forms part, the Court has previously held that it is apparent from recital 9 of that regulation that, while confirming the principles underlying it, that regulation is intended to make the necessary improvements, in the light of experience, not only to the effectiveness of the Dublin system but also to the protection afforded to applicants under that system, to be achieved by, inter alia, the judicial protection enjoyed by asylum seekers (judgment of 7 June 2016, Ghezelbash, C63/15, EU:C:2016:409, paragraph 52).

34 This high level of protection afforded to applicants covered by the Dublin III Regulation is also provided for with regard to the detention of those applicants, as is clear from Articles 28 and 2(n) of that regulation, read in conjunction. Article 28 of that regulation, as mentioned in recital 20 thereof, places significant limitations on the power of the Member States to detain a person. Thus, it is clear from Article 28(1) of that regulation that the Member States may not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is an applicant for international protection. Furthermore, Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation permits the detention of a person in order to secure transfer procedures pursuant to that regulation only where there is a significant risk of absconding, the assessment of which must be based on an individual assessment. In addition, the detention must be proportional and is justified only where other less coercive alternative measures cannot be applied effectively. Moreover, under Article 28(3), the detention must be for as short a period as possible. Finally, Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation requires that the finding of a risk of absconding be based on objective criteria which must be defined by law and applied on a case-by-case basis.

35 Furthermore, it must be noted that the Dublin III Regulation provides greater guarantees in relation to detention than did Regulation No 343/2003, of which the Dublin III Regulation is a recast version. Regulation No 343/2003 did not contain any provision relating to detention. That development highlights the greater focus afforded by the EU legislature to the protection of applicants, as is also clear from the judgment of 7 June 2016, Ghezelbash (C63/15, EU:C:2016:409).

36 As regards the objective pursued by Article 2(n) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction with Article 28(2) thereof, it must be recalled that, by authorising the detention of an applicant in order to secure transfer procedures pursuant to that regulation where there is a significant risk of absconding, those provisions provide for a limitation on the exercise of the fundamental right to liberty enshrined in Article 6 of the Charter (see, by analogy, judgment of 15 February 2016, N., C601/15 PPU, EU:C:2016:84, paragraph 49).

37 In that regard, it is clear from Article 52(1) of the Charter that any limitation on the exercise of that right must be provided for by law and must respect the essence of that right and be subject to the principle of proportionality. In so far as the Charter contains rights which correspond to rights guaranteed by the ECHR, Article 52(3) of the Charter provides that the meaning and scope of those rights must be the same as those laid down by that convention, while specifying that EU law may provide more extensive protection. For the purpose of interpreting Article 6 of the Charter, account must therefore be taken of Article 5 of the ECHR as the minimum threshold of protection.

38 According to the European Court of Human Rights, any deprivation of liberty must be lawful not only in the sense that it must have a legal basis in national law, but also that lawfulness concerns the quality of the law and implies that a national law authorising the deprivation of liberty must be sufficiently accessible, precise and foreseeable in its application in order to avoid all risk of arbitrariness (see, to that effect, judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 21 October 2013, Del Rio Prada v Spain, CE:ECHR:2013:1021JUD004275009, 125).

39 Furthermore, according to the case-law of the Court of Justice in that regard, it must be noted that the objective of the safeguards relating to liberty, such as those enshrined in both Article 6 of the Charter and Article 5 of the ECHR, consists in particular in the protection of the individual against arbitrariness. Thus, if the execution of a measure depriving a person of liberty is to be in keeping with the objective of protecting the individual from arbitrariness, this means, in particular, that there can be no element of bad faith or deception on the part of the authorities (see, to that effect, judgment of 15 February 2016, N., C601/15 PPU, EU:C:2016:84, paragraph 81).

40 It follows from the foregoing that the detention of applicants, constituting a serious interference with those applicants' right to liberty, is subject to compliance with strict safeguards, namely the presence of a legal basis, clarity, predictability, accessibility and protection against arbitrariness.

41 With regard to the first of those safeguards, it must be recalled that the limitation on the exercise of the right to liberty is based, in the present case, on Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction with Article 2(n) thereof, which is a legislative act of the European Union. The latter provision refers, in turn, to national law for the definition of the objective criteria indicating the presence of a risk of absconding. In that context, the question arises as to what type of provision addresses the other safeguards, namely those of clarity, predictability, accessibility and protection against arbitrariness.

42 In that regard, as was noted by the Advocate General in point 63 of his Opinion, it is important that the individual discretion enjoyed by the authorities concerned pursuant to Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction with Article 2(n) thereof, in relation to the existence of a risk of absconding, should be exercised within a framework of certain predetermined limits. Accordingly, it is essential that the criteria which define the existence of such a risk, which constitute the basis for detention, are defined clearly by an act which is binding and foreseeable in its application.

43 Taking account of the purpose of the provisions concerned, and in the light of the high level of protection which follows from their context, only a provision of general application could meet the requirements of clarity, predictability, accessibility and, in particular, protection against arbitrariness.

44 The adoption of rules of general application provides the necessary guarantees in so far as such wording sets out the limits of the flexibility of those authorities in the assessment of the circumstances of each specific case in a manner that is binding and known in advance. Furthermore, as the Advocate General noted in points 81 and 82 of his Opinion, criteria established by a binding provision are best placed for the external direction of the discretion of those authorities for the purposes of protecting applicants against arbitrary deprivations of liberty.

45 It follows that Article 2(n) and Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction, must be interpreted as requiring that the objective criteria underlying the reasons for believing that an applicant may abscond must be established in a binding provision of general application. In any event, settled case-law confirming a consistent administrative practice on the part of the Foreigners Police Section, such as in the main proceedings in the present case, cannot suffice.

46 In the absence of those criteria in such a provision, as in the main proceedings in the present case, the detention must be declared unlawful, which leads to the inapplicability of Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation.

47 Consequently, the answer to the question referred is that Article 2(n) and Article 28(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in conjunction, must be interpreted as requiring Member States to establish, in a binding provision of general application, objective criteria underlying the reasons for believing that an applicant who is subject to a transfer procedure may abscond. The absence of such a provision leads to the inapplicability of Article 28(2) of that regulation.

Costs

48 Since these proceedings are, for the parties to the main proceedings, a step in the action pending before the national court, the decision on costs is a matter for that court. Costs incurred in submitting observations to the Court, other than the costs of those parties, are not recoverable.

On those grounds, the Court (Second Chamber) hereby rules:

Article 2(n) and Article 28(2) of Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person, read in conjunction, must be interpreted as requiring Member States to establish, in a binding provision of general application, objective criteria underlying the reasons for believing that an applicant for international protection who is subject to a transfer procedure may abscond. The absence of such a provision leads to the inapplicability of Article 28(2) of that regulation.

[Signatures]
Everything these days is a sequel, a remake or an adaptation of some other property. Hell, just look at last year's highest-grossing movies: only two of the ten were anything close to original ideas. Want more proof? Just a week after a guy was busted for allegedly trying to smuggle coke into the country by taping bags of it to his legs, another man was allegedly caught pulling the same trick. A lack of creativity like this is almost enough to make you just give up on drugs entirely... Almost. You will want to take a little something to enhance the rest of this blog post.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that they arrested one Mayobanex Ruiz Gomez of the Dominican Republic for allegedly attempting to smuggle five pounds of cocaine into the country by taping the bags to his legs. Customs agents claim that Gomez exhibited signs of nervousness when he stepped off a flight from the Dominican Republic, and that they discovered the bags of coke when they physically searched him.

According to Homeland Security, the value of the five pounds of coke was over $83,000.

"It was like deja vu all over again for U. S. Customs and Border Protection officers," a press release from Customs incorrectly claimed. Deja vu is commonly thought of as living an experience that you already seem to have a memory of, therefore this instance of another man trying to smuggle coke in his pants is really just normal deja vu. If, somehow, a third man is arrested for this (and someone probably will be because everyone just loves trilogies), that will be deja vu all over again.
A look back on all of our reporting of the Delphi murders since 2017